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tv   Key Capitol Hill Hearings  CSPAN  October 25, 2016 10:00am-12:01pm EDT

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us today, another edition of the program comes your way tomorrow. see you then. >> c-span's road to the white house coverage begins today with 2 events. an early voter rally with five poles gathered by real clear politics showing with a four- point lead in florida. the rally will start at 2:15 p.m. eastern.
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2.r on c-span in the meantime, here is a look at the latest campaign ads. >> i don't want someone running the country as a business. i'm a human being. she gives every individual. that is what i appreciate from hillary clinton. vote forma says hillary, i'm going to vote for hillary. i am hillary clinton. i approve this message. >> i'm donald trump. i approve this message. >> the man that murdered joshua was an illegal alien and should not have in here. he took him to a field and doused him with gasoline and set
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him on fire. the hardest day of my life. hillary's border policy will allow people into the country just like the one that murdered my son. >> c-span brings you more debate from key u.s. senate and governor races. this evening at 7:00 p.m. eastern, the indiana governors debate between area cocoa, john bell.and libertarian rex then democrat van hollen and democrat kathy shirley again for the senate seat. then a debate for the florida senate between marco rubio and patrick murphy. on thursday night at 8:00 eastern, republican senator kelly ayotte and maggie hassan debate. watch key debates from the
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house, senate, and governor's races on the c-span network, c-span.org, and the radio at. c-span, where history unfolds daily. election day, november 8, the nation decides the next president and which party controls the house and senate. stay with c-span for coverage of the presidential race, and looting campaign stops with hillary clinton, donald trump, their surrogates. and senate candidates with coverage of their speeches. c-span, where history of falls daily. >> 2 republican campaign advisers and 2 liberal advocates talk about race and justice in america. they also gave advice for the next resident. this is part of a recent harvard university conference. >> now, i have the pleasure of
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introducing the moderator for our next and final panel. he is a new york times best-selling author. assistant adjunct professor at columbia university, tv commentator, journalist, actor, and public speaker. each of keith's books have been nominated for literary awards. recent books.most it also won the american library association stonewall award in 2013. educated at dartmouth and harvard, he attended school with president barack obama. he served in the white house as personal assistant to bill clinton where he was the highest ranked openly gay person in the white house. he participated in the first ever meeting between a sitting president and members of the lgbt community. he has been involved on progressive causes. he is a veteran of six political campaigns including two
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presidential campaigns and was named one of the top instructors when he worked at american university. he is currently a cnbc contributor and bet columnist. there is a lot here. one more thing. i think it is important. he is a founder and first president of the national black justice coalition. he has spoke to audiences large and small. he delivered a landmark speech to 200,000 people. and gave a speech on the aids epidemic. with that, i will turn it over to keith as we jumpstart our next panel. keith: thank you, i was definitely not expecting that. we are going to discuss race in america after obama for the
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final panel discussion. we going to do this differently. we had a chance to meet almost all of the panelists before. i'm going to throw questions to them and try to move along as quickly as we can. try to have answers that are ancise and allow for opportunity for a with the audience here as well. i want to begin, i'm not going to read everyone's bios, just a briefs and obsessed. -- just a brief synopsis. i'm going to begin with mary frances berry. we have a hundred days left in the obama administration. after that, we will have president trump or president clinton. what should the agenda before the next president in terms of issues of race and social
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justice? mary: first you have to read my entire bio. including all 12 of my books. [laughter] keith: first we have to get your microphone working. mary: then you can read my entire file. then i will answer the question. seriously, when michael was talking, i was thinking, it made me sad what he said. he was so full. -- he was so hopeful. one of the books i read, i'm not going to tell you which one it was, five dollars and a pork chop sandwich. vote buying and the corruption of american democracy. which i published last year and all my democratic party friends said i should not have published it.
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it was about people who say that they have been waiting for politicians to do what they say they are going to do when they run for election and come around each year, generating turnout for every election, both state and local, and make all these -- and national, and make all of these promises to them. in louisiana, ms. williams said, they never do what they say they are going to do. they tell you they are going to do this and do that. put a roof on the school. they never ever do what they say they are going to do. some of them don't even try to do. at least every year, when they take me to vote, they bring me back and give me five dollars and a pork chop sandwich, so at least i know i'm going to get that. now what i think obama, and i have to explain, what you can do
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so you can get something done. i think protest is an essential ingredient of politics. i have written that someplace, too. so you can get something done. i think when we focus just on politics and what can happen after obama and so on, what can happen with clinton, if we are not prepared to bring pressure to bear and all we are prepared to do is to recite, frederick douglass said power concedes nothing without demand, and we do not demand, we will get nothing. we in my view, whoever comes after obama is going to have to try to overcome that polarization in order to get some policy done. the reason why it has happened, it is not just him. he has not been able to figure out a way to do what michael said about the red states, blue
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states and all of that stuff , that people thought was so hopeful and beautiful what he said. we like it. all the polarization, obama has been very effective at trying to balance some issues of race like police shootings, the role of the police. he has been less effective in my view in trying to balance other issues, like immigration and lbgtq issues. my position is, my favorite position he takes, that is not the point, all the disaffected people, the deplorables out there still, remain disaffected because the way they feel they have been treated is we don't even want to hear what you have to say. we don't want to try to think of some way to discuss what you have to say. you people are just outside the realm of discussion. we don't want to have anything to do with you. the heck with you.
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when you do that to people, whether personally or in terms of policy, all you do is harden positions with people. you don't have to agree with them, but you can at least say, you may have a point about x but let's talk about y. polarization is going to be the main problem. the issues to be dealt with her clear. -- with our clear. -- are clear. obamacare needs to be fixed, it has got to be fixed. that is going to require less polarization. immigration, if there is going to be reform, that is going to require less polarization. some middle way to make people feel, at least, that they are being accommodated. policy,ike refugee which we did not discuss this morning. there has to be some kind of middle way. we don't want terrorism but at the same time, we are a generous people.
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we want to take people in who need it. police issues. black people are not going, we want to take people in who young people especially, stand aside and see the is continued shootings and people getting killed without doing anything. i am out of them. -- i am proud of them. i have been trying to pass the baton for 30 years. maybe now i found somebody i can pass it to. i think what he has left to his successor is capitalism intact, but you still got all this inequality. they probably teach here at the kennedy school that capitalism requires inequality. that is part of the definition. the point is, how much inequality and what can we do about it? he has left a good example of how you behave in the presidency personally so you can look like somebody who should be in the office. if anyone black or latino and
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wants to be president, nobody says, we cannot have anybody like that be president. keith: let me move on to charles badger, a republican strategist. charles, you heard from mary frances berry four items on the agenda. she mentioned exceed obamacare. immigration. refugee policy. policing. would you agree with those issues? what approach would you like the president to take on those next issues? what would you like to add to the agenda? charles: i would agree with a number of them. the refugee policy. there is a humanitarian crisis in syria, the likes of which the u.s. has not seen in a long time. possibly since milosevic and rwanda. obviously, we've got to get
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refugees. to say nothing of the neighbors in the region taking in refugees. we have to get the refugee policy right. health care is a delicate balance. there is a huge political polarization going on, that is going to make it difficult to get anything done. president obama and his successor, if it is president clinton who i believe it will , be, they will have to figure out how to make fixes but the republican congress does not want to make fixes. which i think is a misguided position. all the issues berry brought up are clearly big agenda items. i want to talk about poverty. i think we haven't talked enough
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about policy in this campaign. neither candidate unfortunately. one of the issues that does not get very much discussion at the national issue, cost of living. the affordability of our cities, where folks live. back in the 1970's, mitt romney, his father george romney, he had a big fight with nixon. romney had a visionary idea of using federal dollars as a chokepoint to get local municipalities to make progress toward racial desegregation. back black= -- to roll exclusionary policies to roll , back policies.
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you have a variety of public policy challenges by way of local ordinances, municipal policies, around limiting the housing stock. limiting buildings. not in my backyard issues, when you want to add economic diversity to a neighborhood. there is a large body of social science research coming out over the last 20 years about poverty is its own sort of issue. robert putnam and others would talk about poverty being a problem, and added issue, a force multiplier, the concentration of poverty. how do you break up concentrations of poverty? new jersey has an interesting history. trying to create economic diversity in a neighborhood. that benefits everybody there. there are ways to use the leverage of federal policy and grants to lean on states and municipalities to bring about these sorts of things. also, it is about organizing at the local level.
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every major city has a homeless problem. an issue of gentrification. both people of color and low income folks, the working poor. every person in the service sector to every major city in america, pushed further and further out. the cities are unaffordable. also, ways in which the federal government can be involved. one example, hud, for a number of years has been doing this idea of mobility vouchers to deal with the issue of concentration of poverty. how do we break up those concentrations by moving folks to neighborhoods with a per capita income that is different? where schools are better and the crime rates are different. you break up these things and it becomes an economic benefit for everybody, up and down the income scale. you get the social effects, whether you are talking about schools, parks, neighborhoods, shared resources. when folks have to share resources with folks who don't
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look like them, come from different backgrounds, different incomes, you get all sorts of -- low income folks having access to networks. resources, transportation resources. closer to jobs. that is the major area of poverty. i think it has been under addressed. it is a fruitful area that if a president wanted to taco, they -- wanted to tackle they could and should. keith: he is president of the foundation for the equal opportunity editor for forbes. i went to find out from you, we have had six items on the agenda. you agree with that list? what would you add to the agenda and how would you approach it?
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>> i want to thank leah for having me at this conference. it has been wonderful to learn from everybody. we can talk a lot about the policy agenda. i would agree with almost everything that has been said. i would like to take it a step above that. we can all put our heads together, we are smart people, come up with great policy initiatives we would like to see the next president sign and congress passed. none of that matters unless there is broad public support that allows you to get through the house representatives, 60 votes for the senate, and the president to sign it. for me, the biggest hurdle we have to overcome is not that we don't have ideas to address these problems. there is a degree to which we need better ideas than of the past, i think that is true.
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particularly addressing poverty. simple re-distribution has not worked. we need to do a better job finding jobs for a, economically -- finding jobs for people economically improve , communities. the macro problem is segregation. i don't just mean in the sense of black, white. in the economic and social science cents. the fact that ideologically, where liberals and conservatives live are segregated. ural communities that are more homogenous. urban and suburban communities that are more diverse. that leads to different cultural outlooks. the fact that partisan affiliations are more segregated. we have wealthy and poor people in segregated areas. college educated and non-college-educated individuals are geographically segregated.
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that has led to two different countries, living simultaneously within each other. interspersed with each other, interrelated with each other's -- with each other. that is the reason we have the polarization we have in america. we were talking about, and last night, that one of the big problems, criminal justice, isn't that the ideas of aren't good. it is common sense. the challenge is, you have a large group of people who live in communities where, i have never had a bad interaction with the police. this is made up. this isn't my experience. this is politically correct exaggeration. there is a lack of empathy you can accuse them of. in some cases you can accuse , them of racism or just not wanting blacks to do better. but the biggest problem isn't that evil intent. the biggest problem is you have people who just don't know
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anyone who has had that experience. they just don't have that ability to empathize and relate because it is not part of their life. and vice versa, by the way. i think there are a lot of people in the urban intelligentsia who have no sense of what it is like to struggle in a west virginia coal mine. or on a farm in kansas. the people who live in those communities feel like, people on television and in hollywood have no sense of how they live and the struggles they face. they are told that they have white privilege. they look around and say, what privilege do you see in my community? that is part of the challenge, too. a big part of what i am trying to do with this new think tank, research for equal opportunity, freeopp.or freeopp, g, i want to build a new thatstem on the right
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tries to build common ground with progressives and people in the center on issues we all care about. i think that has been a big challenge for both sides. is to actually create these mechanisms where we are learning from each other. one thing i have benefited so much from, i spent a lot of time on msnbc. as one of their token conservatives, i guess. the advantage of that for me, it has been tremendous. it has allowed me to learn a lot about the thoughtful people who are bringing up issues of real gravity on the left that the right is not talking about. i have learned from that and brought some of those concerns and issues to the right. others have, too. a big part, in general, macro theme of what i am trying to do, assemble the ecosystem of institutions that are liberty
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minded and doing this kind of work. about social mobility and economic mobility and poverty. addressing the historic legacy of slavery and segregation. bring them together to build a new conservative movement that is not merely stating it is about opportunity for all but actually executing on that. keith: thank you, i want to follow up. i will interject, i had an experience as a token liberal on fox news and did not quite have the same revelatory results. we will move on, here. clarissa, we have heard three different points of view. i would like you to add your point of view and perspective. what issues would you like to see on the agenda that have not been mentioned?
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or what you want to second on other people have already said? clarissa: on the policy agenda, mostly seconding. with the acknowledgment that we are very much focused on domestic policy not because , foreign policy is not important but that is what we , are focused on here. we really need a serious policy intervention on jobs. as you mentioned earlier, one that is targeted to the communities that need those jobs more than anywhere else. i think that is going to cover a number of different communities. it needs to be targeted and real. criminal justice reform, which for me also includes policing. also immigration. immigration reform. not just because it is important for immigration policy, but because it is having impact on
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the civil rights of any community that doesn't look american, whatever the notion of looking american is. it has definitely not caught up with what american is these days. i do want to go to the point you made. i think those are the policy priorities. while who gets elected in november matters a great deal, the reality is regardless of who gets elected, whether it is the democratic or republican aisles we need a cleanup on aisle , three. civil society. i totally agree what we are seeing, we need to figure out how we are going to strengthen our civil society to up the game on accountability and delivery. folks have talked about how politicians come around when they are up for election and you do not see them again.
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the reality is, the only people who win on election day are the candidates who have the more votes. in order for communities to win and the country to win, we need to be there the day after and hold them accountable. also, to have their back when they try to stretch themselves to work with the other side, whoever the other side is. without the ability to work toward agreement, there is no governing. we are in a state of politics where agreement has almost become equivalent to treason. there is no upside for people to try to deliberate and get to something. we need all of us to pressure on the outside so those agreements do capture the aspirations of the vast majority of americans. the reality is, we are not necessarily rewarding
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problem-solving. that is a big call to action for all of us. i do agree with you that segregation, racial and in all of its forms, what it tends to feed is a lack of exposure to each other. to that exposure alone leads empathy, but it is the opening to at least understand, even if you don't agree. requirement, in some ways, conducive to reignite the problem-solving approach in our communities. i think the opportunity is there. it is not an easy task. that is the next thing that we have to look at in terms of a civil society. that is what i would like us to see. one step, big and small, can we
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commit to take in our own communities where our own neighbors and the people around us can pull back from thinking did thisof "what president do or didn't do ?"a why are politicians so messed up? the politicians are a reflection of us and we need to be more active in the process of doing that. we will talk about redistricting are other things that distilling lack of agreement, which results in having, ghazi pilots -- having, ghazi -- having kamikaze pilots instead of legislators who are happy blowing things up. keith: i'm glad you mentioned redistricting. that leads to the next question i wanted to get to. this whole issue, i have heard it over and over, with the
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limitations are of the presidency. the president can do this because congress is against this. at what point do we start to revisit, reconsider, the whole concept of federalism? at what point do we reconsider the possibility of constitutional amendments to change the structure of government itself so we don't have these debates that we can only argue on the margins? we can change what can be accomplished by any president. is that a possibility? avik: the idea of state and local accountability has a autonomy hasomy -- a stigma on the left because of segregation. if we are able to transcend that, it is more accountable to citizens. it is easier for community to
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change what is happening at the local level then win a presidential election and get 60 senators and congress to do something. actually, one thing about the conservative movement, because it has been more ideologically friendly to the ideas state and nomyl economy, -- local auto there are state and local think , tanks in every state that try to generate policy ideas around state and local reforms. i mentioned the missouri, changing the way police departments are budgeted. we were talking about the texas public policy foundation which has a whole program called the ride on crime initiative. it is about state and local-based criminal justice reform. this is an area that has been neglect it. ande are not state local-based think tanks and ideological movements to the same scale. it is more grassroots.
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in terms of the policy engines, it is not so much there. if there is more emphasis there, we wouldn't invest all our hopes and a president and then get disappointed. mary: i am deciding whether or not to say something i know will be unpopular. [laughter] i was think maybe i should just stop. but, i thought long and hard about what you said about federalism. federalism is like judicial activism. when the national government does something you like, and you don't like what the states did, you would love to not have the states have any power in that area. as my friend says on lgbt issues. why do we have to fight with the
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states? but when the national government does something you don't like, then you are happy in your state constitution, be it massachusetts or california or someplace, you still have a degree of autonomy to shape what you in massachusetts want to do. it depends on whose actions we are talking about. the founding fathers, i know they are dead white men, the founding fathers who put this jerryrigged thing -- and i teach about this, so that is another thing i know, they knew it wasn't perfect. throughout our history, we have shifted from this. a lot of people think we have a national right to vote. i have run into that in a lot of studies. and then some issue comes up any state passes something, they think the national government is in charge of our voting.
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the constitution gives that to the states. we can only come in in the federal government if there is some discrimination under the constitution, 14th amendment. that is good when your state wants to do something. i would shutter to have someone call a constitutional convention. what do you think would happen if in the polarized situation we live in in this country right now, somehow congress got itself together and started, or the states demanded, a constitutional convention to rewrite the constitution? they are people that think if trump got elected, we would be slaves. if we had a constitutional convention, all kinds of things could happen. we are not going to have one, that is number one.
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they made it hard to change the constitution. i think federalism on balance, despite over the years the ups and downs, leave some states as laboratories to engage in often progressive politics that you wouldn't he able to do if you just depended on the national government. i would say instead of doing that, let's get -- campaign finance money in politics. charles: i think we should go to complete public financing. i would like to subversively blow up this concept of federalism. there is a south african concept, i am because you are.
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i think we could use a greater sense of that in our politics. particularly in the federalism issue. in the obamacare case, was not the mandate question. there was a second, lower -- got much lower press, medicaid extension. there is a body of law out of the supreme court about the federal government is constricting the states to be an agent of the state. that is what the legal question turned on. the absurdity of that is, i have worked in state governments. if you have worked in a state government, the absurdity of
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that question is 80-90% of state agencies are composed of administering federal programs. hud is administered through state and local governments. there is not enough staff in hud, washington, or their satellite offices to in minister -- to administer even just that one federal roadway in section 8. the idea we are constricting state, if we are going to use that word, it is a huge deal. with the romney thing, using federal dollars and grants as a chokepoint to lean on states as a point of leverage. this is one of the reasons -- that progress is so slow in criminal justice reform.
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doctors are afraid of their ability to write prescriptions. why doctorseasons are afraid of writing prescriptions is because of the fda leaning on them. getting in trouble with their ability to write prescriptions. also the entryway between the federal and state government. the extent to which states have a vast, we overestimate that autonomy.a vast mary: but they have the right to do it. if you don't want to do something, you don't have to take medicaid expansion. keith: i really want to focus on what happens next. the political question, explicitly political.
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arguing in the new republic last year, or earlier this year, that hillary clinton would be more effective in terms of race issues or social justice issues then president barack obama because she is a white woman. as opposed to a black man. i wonder what, anyone who would like to tackle that question, would respond. you think that a white woman, or a white person in general even a , president trump if he were so inclined, would be more capable of achieving african-american civil rights or social policy agenda than a black president, obama? avik: president trump could be effective because it is like nixon going to china. he built a campaign on blue lies -- blue lives matter and lock her up. if he flipped, that would be a powerful gesture.
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the case of hillary clinton, president obama could have been more effective on criminal justice reform. the one thing i would say in that case, i think he spoke eloquently. one of the problems with president obama, he was not very good at directing with people in -- at interacting with people in congress to hash out the details of legislation. he preferred to give the speech and let congress work out the details. where is a, because of her temperament, is somebody diligent about listening to people, put people together. that was her reputation in the senate. convening and bringing people together. fashioning deals. that aspect of hillary clinton, her temperament and personality, could be effective accomplishing some of these objectives. not necessarily because she is a white woman. keith: anyone else?
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clarissa: i think there is something to that. in the earlier panel i mentioned that it was bill clinton who took on welfare reform. it was the unexpected that a democrat would do that. frankly, our organization had a lot of problems with how he proceeded. in some ways, he had more space because he was a democrat. the same way potentially george w. bush could have done immigration if he hadn't waited so long because he was a republican. if you follow that argument, you could say being white, might for your hand to move forward. i think with president obama, it was also an attempt to deflect an attack that was very much out there. a narrative being built that he would only be a president for african-americans or for certain
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people. he was very cautious on how he approached those issues, at least in the narrative around the steps that were taken. mary: if she did something counterintuitive with well for -- as bill clinton did with welfare reform, she would see doing something bad for black people. his policy was bad for poor people. welfare reform. that is why the guys at the kennedy school, they had a tough time being there. my good friend peter edelman. in any case, that would be bad. if you mean by your question, which she then be someone who would feel the pressure to do something because she is white? the answer is she probably would feel greater pressure, because african-americans are more willing to say something to a white person who is in office
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than barack obama. we just want him to be there and stay and don't die. what she would do, i don't know. if she follows the pattern the clintons followed before, which i am very familiar with, she would do a lot of social thing. people would sleep in the lincoln bedroom. any bigmouth preacher could sleep in the lincoln bedroom. people could come to this and that. keith: you are expressing an opportunity for change simply because, the more likelihood of accountability from the community? mary: might not vote for you next time. keith: do you expect african americans or other communities of color will held her more accountable? mary: they will notice more what
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she does and she will worry more. that is the problem. she will worry more of. i have to keep these people some kind of way. that is what the sleeping in the bedroom and coming to parties is about. [laughter] keith: there is another issue, explicitly political. the lame-duck session of congress. after november 8, we have until january 20th when there are a number of issues. tpp, the supreme court nomination of garland. immigration. the possibility of a presidential directive or policy.tion on drug -- on corona -- on drone policy. a lot of these issues affect social justice concerns or people of color. what pressure can people in our
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communities put on whoever the incumbent president is to focus of issues of our concern? or the current outgoing president, president obama, during this interim time? avik: you mentioned a number of them. paul ryan has a criminal justice reform bill he is hoping to get through the house. it is something he wants to do. in terms of likelihood, i have not studied the vote count. i cannot put odds on it. clarissa: the reality is we are in uncharted territory. if you look at the lame-duck in 2010, it was incredibly productive. action on lgbtq issues. you almost saw progress on immigration. they worked almost all the way till christmas. this one, who knows? some folks say, if clinton wins, republicans may want to confirm the justice before she puts
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someone more liberal, rather than someone who is a moderate. they might want to get some of those things done before she comes in. you could make the same argument, if trump won. they would like to make some progress before they face an uncertain presidency. it is a crapshoot, really. keith: one last question along this line. depending on who wins the election, how different do you think the strategy should be in terms of the civil rights community approaching president trump or president clinton? what should be the approach? avik: with president tump -- he changes his mind.
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his policy advisers are having to throw the old papers and write new ones. fortunately, we are not going to have to deal with at most likely. with president clinton, the opportunity is there. there are people on both sides ideologically working on this issue. a federal strategy in terms of sentencing reform is available. i would say, as we were talking about earlier, a big part of criminal justice reform is a the state and local level. there are certain things the president and congress can do, but the energy has to come from the state and local level. charles: i find difficulty going with the premise of the question. not to you, keith, but the notion of a donald trump
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presidency is so noxious, i have difficulty engaging with this as a thought experiment. [laughter] my conviction is so certain he cannot win, first of all. it is an empirical matter. keith: let me ask you about that. you are a republican. what happens to your party if there is a trump presidency? i know it is kind of hard. even if there isn't a trump presidency, what happens to the republican party? charles: i don't know how this can be anything other than -- in a logical universe, this would be the end of the two-party system. not just this general election,
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but the primary, what we saw with bernie. there is a demand on the left for more options, as we clearly saw in the primary. there is clearly a parent demand on the right as well. we are the only western liberal democracy that has the two party system. it had a good run. 200 plus years. i find it difficult, it is like a wounded animal in the woods. i don't see how it persists much longer with this loss of blood. you've got to let it go die a merciful death. we've got to have multiple parties. every other liberal democracy in the world, look at the europeans, they have talked about the white nationalist part of the gop. every other liberal democracy has a white identity party. there is a political party for
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those people who want to use their politics and the national government. a vehicle for advancing white nationalist interests. every other democracy, they have their own party. you need multiple parties. you break up the two party, it would be a fringe, marginal party as it ought to be, which would hopefully allow them to understand they are never going to be a majority. you give opening for coalitions of folks of better will to form. avik: two things to add. the interesting thing will be, what happens the republican party after trump goes down. there is a split among conservatives who believe it has to be inclusive, and those who believe it should be a vehicle for white identity politics and
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a white interest group. that split was there before. the trump nomination has made it clear who was on what side. there is a real cleavage. fortunately or unfortunately, the two party system is going to continue. i'm not clear it is going to be the same system we are going to have in the future. you can imagine a system where sanders crew and the green party become the second party and the democrats become the center-right party. the white nationalists keep the republican party and that fades away. that split between white identity politics republicans in the inclusive of her terry and in inclusive libertarian and conservative party, it is
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emerging and is going to be more significant. not just because of trump, but is a generational thing, too. one of my columnists at forbes wrote a great piece called the jim crow generation. imagine ifhe says you were born in the same year that donald trump was born, 1946. you grew up white in america. whereew up in an america all of the police officers and police officers were white. all the politicians are white. all the people in authority, and all of a sudden you are in an unfamiliar world. the younger generation did not have that experience. younger generations, people like us, grew up in a more integrated mid andrse in fire country. the younger generations are passionate about fairness when it comes to racial and ethnic of -- ethnic equality of whatever
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ideological stripe, then people who are older for whom it is unfamiliar. as the baby boomers die out, sorry to the boomers in the room, we are going to have a much healthier conversation and comity. to be different. -- i think the politics are going to be very different. clarissa: the one thing i want to say, regardless of who wins, they may not call it grappling with racial and ethnic tensions, but there has got to be something in that space. the reality is we are having, we have to grapple with how do you govern effectively in an increasingly diverse society? particularly in one where we are in the midst of the resulting environment of more than a decade of dog whistle politics, designed to make people afraid of each other and divided from
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each other. you can't govern effectively if we can't he got a way to tackle that. maybe it is going to be meek and tinkering around the edges. obviously, who wins is going to make a difference. it is hard to figure out where a trump presidency is going to be in terms of policies because it varies from moment to moment. the one thing that has not changed, speaking from the latino community, 76% of whom are u.s. citizens, his platform has been predicated on whether latinos belong in the american family or not. that is very real. it has been done in other ways with other communities, as we have talked before. that is a very important piece. i think, generally speaking, when you have to figure out what is our role in pushing that
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conversation to happen. part of what happened in 2012 was there was one autopsy on why romney won or lost any need to be more inclusive, which i would welcome. maybe naively, i thought 2016 would be the year republicans would give democrats a run for their money competing for latinos and other communities of color. frankly, democrats take these communities for granted and rely and republicans doing their job for them. when it comes to latinos, for example, republicans are their own worst enemy and democrats' best friend. that post election and analysis, we don't want it to focus on, it was because we had a bad candidate. not the full on rejection and
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choice making. maybe it was a bad candidate but it was a bad candidate running on a platform you have been fueling for more than a decade. you need to reject the platform as well. keith: i would argue in 2012, they never dealt with those issues. it was more about cosmetics than substance. clarissa: it never took hold. there was a portion saying, romney was not conservative enough. if you would have been conservative enough, it would have been different. going after the missing voters that donald trump is focusing on. charles: that autopsy made one policy recommendation. the gop needs to pass comprehensive immigration reform. keith: they immediately rejected it. avik: that created hostility to the autopsy. the one recognition was immigration reform. the talk radio right solve this
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-- radio right solve this as the rnc elites have a secret plot to foist illegal immigrants on us. that is terrible. clarissa: one clarification, and the 2012 aftermath, one of the interesting things everybody , involved changed their mind. even hannity was calling for immigration reform. that did lead to a bipartisan senate bill. again, not perfect, but it led to legislation in the senate. the issue was, by the time you got to the house, that memory was cold. people were focusing -- again, in a midterm election went crazy is dominant in terms of narrative. keith: we have to let you go. mary: what was left out of the discussion of what is going to happen to the republicans, what
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is going to happen to the democrats. the fact that all those people who are trump supporters are not solely motivated by race and ethnic views. a lot of them are motivated by their poverty and their joblessness and the technological obsolescence. they don't know what to do. i care about them. we ought to. have socialoing to peace, you have to take everyone into account. haveemocratic party, you millions of disaffected people who supported bernie sanders, because they did not have anyone else to support. supported somebody who has been the victim of obsolescence, have felt like the party has left them behind, there is no party of the working poor and the
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unions, they are disappearing and being taken for granted. there is no party of the people for whom efficiency has left out technologically. there might be a coming together of these people. not about the issue connected to economics, but around a new alignment coming in that direction. what i hear is the writing off of those people who do not fit. we say we should not write off people who do not look like us, but also those who do not think like us. they are americans like we are. who? keith: does that include racists and xenophobia? i should not be talking, i should let the audience ask a
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question. remember, you should end your question with a question mark. yourselves.identify we have microphones, >> my name is audience. -- avian. just following up on some things you said. capitalism requires inequality for it to work. you said that. and the race is a social construct that was created to cause inequality in our society so capitalism can work. after the election, president obama has said he will try to pass the tpp, when reason why he
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says it has not passed is because he says he cannot help it that businesses' primary way of making money is to make sure they have cheap labor. with the current presidency election going on with you know, shows us that -- have come out and donald trump, what happened with bernie, what will you think will happen if this is turned into a corporate democracy my rather than capitalism -- democracy, rather than capitalism for the public? mary: i meant that the definition of capitalism, as i understood it, was you assume inequality, because some people will have more, and some people less. and we have an economy under the constitution.
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we have private property. so we should expect there to be some inequality. people talk about that there will never be any more inequality, that does not work, because as long as we have capitalism we will have any quality. the question is, how many barriers will be put in the way of people, whether race or some other thing, gender, and what will we do about it said that the ups and downs are more fairly distributed. so that is the thing i was talking about. and the tpp, it is clear, and i was running the civil rights commission under clinton and we had nafta, and people worked very hard to get it. we were told it was going to benefit american workers. it benefited those purchasing cheap goods, but not workers. so i think trade is a tough
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issue. the main problem is, if you really care about poor people and we really care about working-class people who in fact are suffering, we would figure out what is next after every policy we engage in. we engage in policies and then when there is roadkill, we figure out, maybe we should do something about it. what should we do? like when they tell us, when we have driverless cars, the jobless -- driverless checks -- trucks, millions of truck drivers will be put out of work. what will we do? we are one step thinkers. we do not move on policy. let's hope that the next president, obama has tried, but let's hope that the next one, whenever we want to do something, let's hope they figure out what we will do and
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how to minimize any quality. keith: a question over here. i will come back to. >> my name is franklin. i go to a boarding school in new jersey. i hear a lot of discussion about divisiveness among the older generations, and millennials particularly, so i wonder if you have advice for those in my generation in regards to tpp trade and race going forward for the next elections ahead of us? keith: i want to ask you a question. i was at the convention in philadelphia and a lot of people were protesting tpp, tell me what it is about tpp that interests young people so much?
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>> i think with regards to young people, it is about what they do not know. it is a broad thing, especially the prospect of having the private court that would basically let larger corporations bully the smaller countries into letting them benefit from the resources. for young people, i believe personally, especially around the fact that we do not fully understand the aspects of the politics around it and the way it functions in the world. for us, it is more like it, we want this to happen, but we do not have how to reach it. balance, the main point, and at the convention we were -- we wanted somebody like bernie sanders or hillary clinton to show us that way to reach prosperity, not necessarily tpp, or other trade -- but other trade bills. >> i will have to disagree with the indictment of capitalism.
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[laughter] mary: it was an indictment? keith: you do not think it requires inequality? avik: capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty man any other system invented by humans. the inequality is simply transferred to the politically connected. keith: that is not a fair comparison. avik: it does not matter. if you are going to say that capitalism is bad. mary: i do not say it was back. keith: i think what she said reminds me of the church hill quotes. i mean, i am curious as to the question of inequality according to you, disagree or agree with that capitalism requires inequality. compared to other systems. avik: it has less any quality than any other system, because
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it lives people out of -- people out of poverty and it gives them the opportunity through hard work and enterprise. state-based systems in which the government controls more of the economy, more politically connected -- over people who try to work hard and do things out of the system. it is not just any quality that any quality, it is relative income that matters. churchill said that socialism, there is any quality -- inequality in that system. but cost of living matters. that gets us to free trade. one thing it does is it lowers the cost of goods and services so we can buy. that is effective. that is inequality, and if income is low -- mary: i said that. avik: i am responding to the question. free trade not only makes life
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better for people today because it lets their dollar go farther, but let's not forget that free trade is also beneficial to the people who are supplying with -- us with goods and services. if you are making a t-shirt in vietnam and that is zero livelihood, we are helping those people in those countries. keith: if you are making an iphone in china for pennies an hour you are helping those people too? avik: absolutely. china has a middle-class now of millions of people thanks to them entering the global market. we have to note the gains and recognize them and not just say it is so terrible that people -- clarissa: i think this is where we get stuck. every time we have a discussion, we try to make it into a binary proposition.
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and the reality is, there is truth to what you said and it is true that capitalism requires a certain amount of it in -- amount of inequality. americans were willing to accept that equation that there would be some inequality because there was the promise of upward mobility. if you work hard and did your job and did what you are expected to do, you would not always be stuck in the same position. and your kids could do better and so forth. but the promise of upward mobility allowed people, generally speaking, to say, ok, i can put up with inequality because there is that promise. what is exposed right now when we see communities who do not have a way forward generation after generation, not only that, now we see parents seeing their
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children not doing better than they did, we knew that there were problems with upward mobility, but now it is exposed in a more explicit way, the same way that dog whistler politics have been exposed. so we see a great deal of commonality between those responding to part of the donald trump method or the burning method -- bernie method, these communities are desperate and they may be responding, if the communities could see that they were abandoned and left behind, because it does not matter whether it is democrat or republican, the same people conceded the benefits. i do not want to establish a false equivalent, there are many differences, but that is the reality. many communities are feeling bad and we have heard from both sides of the aisle, talk about that pain, and blame people for
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their own condition. whereas, yes, some resilience is important and it is part of the american dna, but the notion that if you work hard and you will have the opportunity has been challenged and the emperor has no close and that is what people are reacting to. keith: thank you. is there a question back there? >> thank you. keith, hopefully i can get to the question that you wanted to ask. but my question is, we are seeing working with the deplorables, coming from eight years from the president, working with students from higher education, the conversation comes down to that president obama cannot get anything done because he is a black president. for me, i think with this election, is there anything that will be done with for years or eight years of a woman being
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president? these xenophobia and the misogynistic types that are not just voters, but continuing with the election, that there are politicians using the same jargon. so does that relate to policy and how to we work with those xina folks, the racists, the populations in terms of policy reforms for a woman president in the next four years? charles: on the gender piece of the question, what is troubling come of supporters have a #, repeal the ninth amendment. in response to things coming out from political scientist, if only women had to vote, they would win the election with a gigantic land psychomotor 400 plus -- landslide, 400 plus.
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and the opposite is true. if only men could vote, that donald trump would win. it tells us something deeply troubling. about the gender divide politically in this country. back to the point, with the deplorables, and as the resident millennial over there like you, i graduated in the middle of the recession that came out when jobs were scarce. whether we are talking about deplorables or people of color, we are always stuck in this individual attribution claim. that was discussed earlier with criminal justice. what did you do wrong? millennials who graduated during the recession, right away no jobs. and all they can do -- well, you have to hustle, are
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you sending out your resume? do you file no -- follow up? yes, i did, and so did the 500 other people. [laughter] charles: the problem is we never get to the underlying problems. when we talk about millennials and we talk about globalization and jobs going overseas. the next up is trade. and displaced workers. into your point about the overall opening of jobs, there was a great piece in politico about shareholder buybacks. and to the other conversation, the caution about binary sources, there is a good book couple years ago about good capitalism, bad capitalism. and -- has not existed in the world at any other time.
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every government is regulated. it is how you will do it. this is all mixed economies. so it becomes a question of good capitalism or bad capitalism and how we operate. there is a piece about shareholder buybacks. clinton talked about it on the campaign show. for example, playing games with the numbers as a corporate culture. and investing in jobs. right, especially if you are an existing employee and creating new jobs. dealing with anti-competitive practices so that we are finding out new, smaller, scrappy businesses entering into the market because you have big conglomerates, the corporations, who have monopolistic features. keith: ok. another question. i want to ask a question while
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we are taking a question over here. do you consider yourself a republican? [laughter] keith: i have not heard one republican idea today. charles: maybe before donald trump. [laughter] avik: he has not said the word republican. >> i am from the anon -- vietnam. and i am familiar with the import and exports. i have grown up with this transaction all my life. the country is poor, but now it is growing up because we do a lot of trade with england. we are doing the best we can. but it is really hard for us. and now we move to america.
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and now because -- i have a question, because i watched the debates and donald trump says, we can not do tpp or nafta and we need to make america great again, but from my knowledge, i am asking -- is it these policies? you do not want to trade with anybody, but there is a new generation and people want to go, they do not want to stay in one place. you cannot go anywhere when you grow up. america is a big country. but the rest of the world, people are trading everyday. you do not know that a small country is trading with england and australia. keith: what is your question? >> yes, i am asking about the
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upcoming presidents, for donald trump, so who is going to become the president? because there is a lot -- keith: what will the next president do about the issue of trade? particularly, not just with vietnam -- >> all the countries. keith: i understand. i want to give an opportunity to answer. thank you for your comments. >> because america -- for the rest of the world. this is definitely important. how can who will become president achieve this position? keith: america has been perceived as the policeman of
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the world and the trade issues we think of differently here than other countries where people are affected directly. so who wants to respond? mary? mary: i have been to vietnam. i was there during the war and sense, -- since, so i am very familiar with the situation there. and another -- a number of other places with which we trade in the east. my point about trade earlier was about the working poor and unions and all of that stuff. what i meant was, when you make a policy, whether it is about trade or something else, we do not think about what will happen to the people in this country. and it is true, whether we like it or not, as americans and our government, the first responsibility is to the people of the united states. that does not exclude
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responsibility to others, but think about americans when you do make these policies. and too often we have had policies where nobody thought through what will happen to people in the united states if we have a trade deal this way or that way. too often they say things like, my good friend here, that it will help the people in that country. it may, it may or may not. or that we ought to do it because it is the right thing to do and after all, we should go where the labor is. i am saying, american workers need to be taken into account. what will we have them do? otherwise, we have a look -- lack of it -- and polarization and people that have to be taken care of. that was my plea. not trade with anybody. and i think that the next president, if it was clinton, will follow that policy.
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what she said sounds like that is our policy. clarissa: there is a deep problem here. i do not think it is necessarily trade, it is how well we do it. the reality is all of these trade agreements might be free trade agreements, but they are managed agreements, and it is about who has the power to benefit their industry or sector, that is the reality. under the free trade agreement, we had to fight like hell to get congress to agree to the trade assistance programs that would help displaced workers in the u.s. and mexico to manage the effects of it. going to your point. but what we see right now is not unique in terms that politicians will not engage in meaningful conversations with constituents or folks that there -- that are trying to engage.
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so trade bad, i am against it, becomes the real thing. as opposed to a real conversation of what it needs to look like and what do we need to engage in. one example, this is true on immigration, where we have had democrats for decades feel like they needed to say nothing or be silent on the issue, they are evolving from there. but if senator lindsey graham won his primary for senate in south carolina, the most brutal primary in the nation, sticking to his guns and trying to expand on conservative principles and why immigration reform makes sense, you cannot tell me that politicians cannot have real conversations with their constituents.
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it is that they don't do it. and we sometimes as voters welcome that were demanded that. avik: i will make a quick point. a lot of people think donald trump has no coherent view of politics. i would argue that is not the case. his views are coherent and this is how i would draw it. he is a nativist across all policies. he is against foreigners competing with americans for labor. he is against foreigners competing with america for goods and services. that is free trade. and he is against american involvement in for policy, broadly speaking, he wants to say, i will not be involved in foreign wars and everything else. so he is a nativist. involvement in for policy, everything one of his policies are about looking inward and being afraid of engaging with
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other countries were particularly non-european countries. and that is -- i understand that there are legitimate policies and the debate about whether free trade is good or bad and how to make them work for workers in america. there is a strain of the anti-trade movement that is about nativism and not about economics. keith: yes? >> quickly. the obama policy on medicare is critical because almost all of the red states have refused to the expansion of medicaid, and with all the votes that took place in congress, they actually took place on the ground around the country in those red states. the reorganization that is
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necessary on a political level has to do with exactly that, including everybody and not letting policies against poor people go forward. keith: i think we were talking about medicaid expansion in kentucky. do you want to tackle that? and you are from kentucky, right? charles: i went to school in kentucky. i will say that there have been, and the point about my party today, i will point you in the direction of some republicans. oddly enough, i'm sure that pence could speak about this. i think about my state governor in tennessee. there are these hybrid things
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with the aca. they are changing eligibility standards and asking people to kick in in terms of premiums. these kinds of things. i believe pence would know better, but there are a handful of republican governors who have done these expansions and implementations by requesting certain waivers, to do it in their own way and change some of the rules and not do it exactly the way it was contemplated, but to do it in a conservative way, asking people to pay a little bit more. that is as close republicans have come to it. mary: i have something to say about this. i said something about it this one. the only one of those red states in the south where poor people live that have taken medicaid expansion, louisiana, because mr. vitter had these sex
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scandals, the republican, he lost to the democrat and the democrat got in and he has accepted it in louisiana. the point i want to make is -- ask yourself why there was such a big hole in the language in obamacare, that left space, i put it this morning like a truck could drive do it, for the supreme court to decide that the states could not make up their own minds about this money, when there is money involved, usually there is money on the stump and you take it and run -- but the reason i am told by the guys that negotiated obamacare, they might be lying, people like to lie about things they did or did not do, but they did not want to negotiate with republicans in congress and did not want them to see what they were doing. and they did not want them to read what they were doing.
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so they were happy to pass it as it was and figure out, we will get the holes taken care of later, so it was a classic example of something that -- it is a good thing i like obamacare and i like people getting health insurance, but it is another example of something that leads to polarization and more problems for some of the poor people who were left out. keith: we have time for one last question. two people who have had their hands up all day club i can only call on one. >> my name is june and i am a medical student. i am with five other students from the public health school. i say this to everyone, not to offend, but in form.
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the lunch we enjoyed today was made from the replacement workers of harvard university dining services and they are replacement because the workers right now are outside the building, fighting on strike, for living wage. these people are often people of color, people who we label under low economic status. so with all of that, i want to ask the leaders right now, how do you reconcile the irony of g toting for civil justice, be complicit on a personal level? perhaps they would not be an a dichotomy. does how do you rectify
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this difference? yourself?you justify there are numerous examples of institutions like harvard that because they can call themselves nonprofit, the use that as a shield to engage in all sorts of incredibly self and grand eyes and dish self-aggrandizing and gritty behavior. there is this entire economy that takes advantage of their tax-exempt status that if it was a for profit publicly traded corporation we would be up in arms. >> the ncaa. >> that is another great example. this is outside the scope of our discussion today, but i would love for the kennedy school to put some thought into that, how nonprofit institutions are not always living up to their moral obligation. >> charles?
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>> i do not know why you called on me. at the expense of being the find of a am quite certain james crawford quote -- , there are no solutions in life, there are only trade-offs. all we do day-to-day is make a series of trade-offs. >> i am not in the habit of making trade-offs so i did not know they were outside and i did not know that the people who made those were doing that. had i known that, number one i would not have eaten the lunch and i would have gone out to find out why they were protesting. to see if there is something i would like to protest along with them. i am a low information person.
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we do not have a chance to follow up unfortunately. >> i would like to build on that question, because i think it is important to -- a lot of times we go toward something so specific that we could miss the bigger point and responsibility. i do agree that everybody makes trade-offs every day. i think the question you posed is a question that is important for each and every one of us to grapple with every single day. certainly it is a question for us to reflect on but it is a question for you. it is a question on so many different levels. how are we complicit in that situation, but how are we complicit in the broader situation we have been talking about all day and what are we going to do about it? for my parents who have a job where i work on civil rights and social justice issues that was different from
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what my parents got to do, and frankly for what my first job in the u.s. was. it definitely jove home my mom and dad device of stay in school -- drove home my mom and dads advice of stay in school. what i would like us to think about, i used to think of myself i want tomist and now revise that and say i am maybe a skeptical optimist. if you did not have some optimism he would not be able to keep fighting for these things. i think that grappling with that question is also about, what is our role as a civil society in strengthening an accurate and actionable story of who we are, a story of who we are as a country that reflects what the
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country really is. not the doom and gloom that some folks are selling to try to scare us away from each other and play it for political damage. not glossing over the things that we need to fix, but a way least the where at majority of americans are able to see themselves whether they are white, latino, african-american, asian, or native american. bringing it back to the kennedy school, i do remember crisply that in the fondness of doing case studies to analyze different problems, it was incredibly apparent in almost every single case study that were were -- there were elements of race and necessary -- ethnicity, and it was never dealt with. it was always handled as a management challenge or a business challenge without
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addressing those issues. bringing in at home what i would say in terms of the steps that ,e can each take, big and small for the kennedy school as it seeks to prepare a future generation of people who will be in public service, one of the biggest challenges facing us as a country is how do we govern effectively in light of an increasingly diverse nation? let's not obscure those things and make sure that those topics, those approaches and attempted solutions are infused in every not in specialnd panels on summit but in every class and the challenges we deal with. >> we will end this discussion. thank you very much to the panelists for your presentations. [applause] hi, everyone. first i would ask another round
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of applause for our wonderful panel. [applause] >> we are live this morning here at the atlantic council, going to be hearing from jonathan pershing, the u.s. special envoy on the paris agreement. he will be speaking ahead of the next global climate conference. just waiting for this to get started in washington, d.c..
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>> c-span live this morning, just waiting for the arrival of u.s. special envoy on the paris agreement, jonathan pershing. he will be attending the meetings in morocco next month as the paris agreement gets put into action. the paris agreement on climate change, ratified in the early days of this month by the eu which put the agreement over the threshold. it will enter into force next friday, november 4 and shortly thereafter the conference of parties in morocco will be held. we will be hearing from the u.s. special envoy attending those meetings in morocco, deciding how the climate goals will be
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implemented. later on c-span, road to the white house coverage continuing with two events. hillary clinton will be in coconut creek, florida for an early voting rally at 2:15 eastern. at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span two, donald trump holding a rally in tallahassee.
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>> i think we can begin. good morning, everyone. maybe it is afternoon by now. , andss good afternoon
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welcome to the atlantic council. i am did morningstar, the chairman of the local morningstar and i'm pleased to welcome you here for the conversation with special envoy for climate change jonathan pershing. he will be talking of course about the upcoming 22nd conference of parties or cop 22 in marrakesh, morocco. to haveeally very proud special envoy pershing here to choose the atlantic council as a asue to deliver his remarks to what our priorities are with respect to marrakesh. yearre very proud last that secretary kerry came and spoke prior to paris. we are doing more and more all the time in the climate change
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area, and it is certainly a priority for the global energy center. just last week we launched a paper with a program by bob i transformation in developing countries after , which is an incredibly important topic with respect to implementation issues, and will be carrying on with further programs in that vein. it is also espially 5,nificant that on october the european parliament ratified the paris agreement which approvals tootal the 55%, over the 55% admissions threshold. the agreement will actually go into effect next week on the fourth of november. and so the cop 22 meeting is
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going to be the first meeting of signatories with a ratified agreement, and to talk about what is absolutely key, how are the commitments going to be implemented? obviously that is going to be the key to success. i will just say briefly, you ,ave the bio of dr. pershing obviously a distinguished career. heore his present position was at the department of energy and before that, deputy special envoy for climate change. he has had a five year career at iea as part of their environmental division, has done other things that you can read. there is nobody that knows more about this than jonathan pershing. of course, the person who will be the moderator of the timession, new york
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correspondent choral devonport where her energy and climate expertise came as a fellow of the metcalfe and the two and has covered energy and environment for the national journal, professional quarterly, and the new york times. i am really looking forward to this conversation. we think of you for being here today. i want to remind everybody that today's discussion is on the record. it is streaming live, and you can join the conversation on on ac global energy so that, jonathan, the floor is yours. much, andthanks very thank you for hosting me here at the atlantic council. it is a pleasure to be here.
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i cannot fill the illustrious shoes of secretary kerry so get -- stay tuned for a high-level evident presentation that helps you -- hopefully gives you some idea of what is going on in the climate change agenda. it is often interesting to start with this story that frames the issue, and i have chosen one that i think is relevant to me. i grew up in new york. southernmost tip of manhattan there is all of these connections that come through it. on october 29, 15 million gallons of salt water poured into the south ferry station. salt water mixed with raw sewage and every completely inundated and destroyed the power system. it wrecked every mechanical system. the escalators, turnstiles, all
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of the problems. yorkrgely immobilized new during superstorm sandy in october 2012. tunnels were4 entirely flooded, unable to withstand the storm surge. to rehabilitate and open this ferry station is going to top, that one station will top $630 million. repairs to this day, the transit authority and local and federal officials have been installing flood covers on all the openings. at there 540 openings six stations in lower manhattan. new york was not built with superstorm sandy in mind although new york is almost better prepared than any other city in the hemisphere. day, sandyof the
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represented a one in 700 year event and when it arrived, every vulnerability was laid there. national center for environmental research, climate change is partly to blame. they say warm seas likely played a role in camping up superstorm sandy and the fact that the sea level has risen means that sandy's surges were able to wash further inland. here is the framework, here is the outcome, here is the climate change impact, that is only the tip of the iceberg. take the spread of the zika virus. the mosquitoes responsible cannot survive cold winters. know their reproductive cycle has accelerated significantly in warmer temperatures, and while epidemiologist and local health effectors -- they agree that climate change is playing a disputable role in the spread of
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these diseases. as colder regions warm and precipitation patterns shift, the mosquitoes that carry zika are expanding their habitable range. they are not exclusively in the united states. i a recent trip to nigeria, talked about the impact of environmental crises with their environmental minister. one of the things is the threat by boko haram. threats also a second that you are probably less aware of, the conflict between the farmers and ranchers in the community. in both cases, drought is the culprit. in the northern part of the country where boko haram his it has led to a failure of systems and that has driven recruits to boca raton -- boko haram. those droughts have forced cattle ranchers onto farms and
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into conflict. the crop is drying up and there is less availability and the grazing land is drying up, there is less availability so they are coming into conflict. these cannot exclusively be laid to climate change though they have been made noticeably worse. they will become worse still as warming continues. if the stories represent the local and immediate effects of climate, a global impacts are no less daunting and the global statistics did -- bear it out 15 of the 16 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001. the arctic ice sheet has hit new lows in coverage. ice and snow cover that used to reflect heat back into space disappeared. sea level has risen an average of nine inches over the last century and the pace is accelerating. hurricane intensity and energy has increased by 70% just in
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recent decades. our oceans have warmed and this sounds like a small number, but it is enormous, about a half a degree celsius or one degree fahrenheit per decade in the last 30 years. these are extraordinary statistics and are only a few of the countless ones that we have got. climate change is a problem that does have solution. it demands cooperation across borders. backngle nation can turn these global forces on its own. threat, theis global community has begun to rise to the challenge not a moment too soon. in december 2015, 195 countries came together in paris in search of common ground to solve this problem, and by any measure they clearly succeeded. as the u.s. special envoy for climate change i responsible for
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representing the united states, but i cannot claim credit for paris. credit is due to my predecessor. he was following a very strong lead provided by president obama and secretary kerry, to whom we owe an enormous debt of gratitude from having moved us down this agenda with that kind of power. it is useful in trying to evaluate paris to start earlier. start at the beginning of the u.n. negotiations in the early 1990's. i was present at the very first meeting of the u.n. when it became the convention on climate change and was convened by president george bush, the first george bush outside of washington, d.c. did not have a lot of pageantry, had a small number of scientists, no ceos or visiting dignitaries, no organizations
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touting the programs, but it did set the framework for action. it did establish a forum for further negotiation. the first negotiation done underneath the office of the u.n. convention concluded in 1997, the kyoto protocol. missions that emissions cuts to developed countries, leaving the rest of the developing world to pursue vague and undefined actions. 12 years later under the offices of the convention, the copenhagen accord succeeded with a wider variety of commitments with developed and developing countries. that represented a major breakthrough in a precursor to the paris agreement, but the session ended chaotically and a global agreement was still not in place. fast-forward to 2015 and the 21st session.
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the french led session brought nearly 50,000 attendees. presidents, prime ministers, and ceos competed and tried to outdo each other with sweeping announcements and statements of new and renewed action to climate -- combat climate change. we adopted the first time a durable agreement known to all nations as the foundation on which i think we can build successfully. the paris agreement relies on national climate goals, known as nationally determined contributions, to cut greenhouse gas emissions. almost all countries put forward the specific goals, the latest count 186 nation. the big players are all in. 65%a set a target of 60% to reduction in emissions intensity. india pledged 40% and couple promise to build
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solar panels. the target of 40% below 1990 levels by 2040. the united states has goals of cutting them 25 percent to 28%. smaller countries are in as well. smallest in many cases have even more impressive target. costa rica and a number of small island states have alleged to reduce net emissions to zero. a number of countries have called for the complete elimination of emissions from their power sector, all of that in trying in commitments announced in the run-up to paris. you -- the universality of this agreement and comprehensiveness of coverage is a first. never before have we had this kind of participation. it was clear that the pledges by
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themselves were not be sufficient. for it to work parties had to have confidence that others would meet these national commitment, and that they would be there for progress. you have to have monitoring and a robust system to verify these goals. this is the system that was in trying to in paris at the negotiations. accountability, review mechanisms to match countries' words with their deeds. warmingrk to eliminate to well below two degrees, that is the framework we adopted. we had an agreement to ratchet up emissions over time. would not bease sufficient to solve the problem and we needed to continue to go forward. the announced numbers would not keep us below two degrees of warming. it calls for revisiting national pledges every five years. as countries achieve their targets and costs of solutions
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come down we anticipate they will make stronger pledges going forward. the agreement does not just lay out a process for setting and advising international contributions, it provides assistance and help for countries to make their target. it marshals a broad array of support to help nations invest in infrastructure, technology, and science to meet their goals, and help vulnerable countries become more resilient in the face of certain climate impacts. that is the architecture. system, accountability national targets, a system to track target, renewing targets over time, and a framework to support the low carbon transition and help vulnerable companies respond. now that the community has taking the step of adopting the agreement we are faced with the task of implementing it, translating it into tangible action. already we are beginning to see this happen.
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in the u.s. we have adopted new -- we-- regulations that have developed and hope to soon begin implementing the president's clean power plan to reduce major sources of carbon dioxide from the industrial sector and power plant. well there are legal challenges that are moving their way through the system, we are confident it remains on solid legal footing and will soon begin to bend the curve of emissions. since paris, congress is actually passed laws providing support for renewable energy. these have led to the rapid uptake of clean power and taken together, always initiatives represent an unprecedented approach to climate change. the effects are already apparent.
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energy accounted for two thirds of all new electricity generating capacity installed in the u.s. according to the department of energy. year, wind power represented about 41% of all new generating capacity and a 2014 there were nearly 71,000 megawatts powered across 48 states. the u.s. solar energy now implores more people than coal -- employees more people than coal. process of in the developing technical projections to the longer-term, not stopping in 2025 but looking beyond. bulkan we squeeze the vast of carbon emissions out of our economy by 2050? the pathways we lay out in which we plan to release in a couple weeks will detail scenarios in which the u.s. can build a very low emission economy that lets
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us play our part in achieving our long-term global target of avoiding dangerous climate change. the dramatic shift i have outlined are not limited to the united states. last year an estimated 147 gigawatts of renewable power was installed around the world. that is equivalent to about 20% of the entire u.s. electrical supply just last year and a global level. china by itself announced plans for 150 to 200 gigawatts of renewable energy using solar panels by 2020, four times their previous target which is not too old. they want to lift their wind power to 200 and 50 gigawatts the same year. these numbers are simply enormous. canada, prime minister trudeau would be that canada establishing a carbon tax
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starting at $10 canadian and rising at $10 per year for the next five years. significant commitment. in just a few weeks over the course of the last month, we have passed a series of international agreement. in montreal we passed in october the international civil aviation organization adopted agreement establishing a global market mechanism for civil aircraft. for the first time asking them to offset their emissions. this was excluded not only from the original convention but from every climate agreement since. if international aviation was a country it would be among the top dozen emitters and is growing quickly. then just the couple weeks later we finished another breakthrough. we had a meeting of the parties where nearly 200 countries agreed to pare down their use of
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hydrofluorocarbons. currentlye gases account for only a few percent of global emissions, in the absence of any agreement they were expected to increase rapidly. avoiding those emissions brings us much closer to meeting the goals we set in paris. perhaps most significantly of 4, we passed the threshold required for entering into force the paris agreement. representing at least 55% of global emissions and those numbers continue to grow. parties we can expect to follow through on what they said they would do and abide by the provisions of the agreement. as we have already outlined, these are critical for putting us on a trajectory to meeting our common goals and ramping up local ambition over time in a transparent and accountable manner. emission reduction