captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- >> hello, i'm linda gasparello, co-host of "white house chronicle, " which is coming right up. just a few thoughts of my own. you may have noticed i am wearing a hat today. everybody used to wear hats, had sworn at church, to go to cocktail parties, hats were worn a lot in washington, they say until president kennedy came along. then they were worn because he

never wore one to his inauguration. haps used to be worn in the white house by reporters. there was one special reporter who worked for gannett who used to wear the crazy hats. she was a tiny woman running around. she used to ask president kennedy in center questions which he used to like to answer. he liked to diffuse some of the tensions in the white house press corps, and as a matter of fact, she used them to great effect. perhaps had flowers all over them, so i'm thinking maybe this is some way i could get a question to president obama. i will wear this hat, put a lot of flowers on it and make my questions is centered and maybe i will get one in. what do you think? anyway, we will be back right after the titles with my very egocentric against. >> "white house chronicle" is pollute -- produced in

collaboration with the va is beauty, however city television. now the program host, national syndicated columnist llewellyn king and co-host, linda gasparello. >> hello, welcome back to "white house chronicle." i'm linda gasparello, co-host, and my center at -- east centric gassed happens to be none other than llewellyn king, the host. he put his thinking cap on. >> howdy, ma'am. i procured this had or it was brought -- bought for me and it came into my possession when i thought the first bush and a second bush would bring texas to washington and i would ingratiate myself what the administration by wearing this had. first of all, it doesn't go with

a fading british empire accent. and they did not bring any texas to washington. some people wore cowboy boots, but people always wore cowboy boots. actually looking around i think more democrats wear cowboy boots that republicans. so, alas and alack, this had that has some bieber in a -- >> and a lot of dust. >> because i did not wear it very much. we think it is sad when something goes out. and it is not replaced. >> indeed. >> i noticed neckties are dying out. more and more people are going in public places without neckties, but they have not found anything to compensate so they have open shirts looking a little bit scrappy. they have not come up with some shirt design for the post- connect time period in history. i am not a fashion designer, we

are here to discuss politics. >> but you are an english eccentric and they have the most amazing taste. >> i am from zimbabwe, but i am from the king was -- english persuasion. >> something is happening in washington. the u.s. chamber of commerce have decided there is so much creeping socialism and the united states and threatens to squander our unmatched capacity to innovate that they are launching a campaign called the campaign to support free enterprise. this is going to be a $100 million campaign. you think it is a worthwhile endeavor? >> i don't know. i think if in the course of doing it they persuade people it is very exciting to start their own businesses, which it is. i did so many years ago. i started quite a few. one stock. but i come from a long line of people who start of nonbusiness is.

they didn't succeed, but they did it. my father was always a self- employed, sometimes disastrously and sometimes he managed to support his family in a decent way. i don't know if they will really understand that. what amazes me is what happens when you try to stir up the launch of a real spirit from the top. there is an outfit called the kauffman foundation, academically you can stimulate low down under manorialism. i doubt it. i think a big threat to launch a bernard -- our entrepreneurs is old companies, big, established proprietaries in their habits. and step right forward -- it used to be there were thousands, tens of thousands of individual pharmacies in this country. night have walgreen, wright aide, cvs.

where are that entrepreneurs? take home depot, which destroys the small hardware stores in its path. not deliberately, but that is the net result. not a very nice place to do business, and it also makes the country so bland. you go to a shopping center in florida and you can go to the same one more or less in virginia. where are the shopkeepers? i used to love in new york, taking a taxi to the airport, going over to 59th street through all of the little shopping things. i would look at the store that sold shoe, a store that sold carpets. who are these people, these entrepreneurs? the chamber of commerce, supported entirely almost -- they say they are not, but the big money comes from the people who have the money -- i doubt they are going to do the job that should be done.

>> i think that is actually one of the unintended consequences of the fact that the government has gone into the private sector activity, like gm, is the fact that we maybe -- people will have been laid off, they go off to garages and, with nonbusiness is. >> i hope so. it also need what i call habitat. >> that is an idea. >> at the end of my business, which i owned and operated for 33 years, in the end, the rent was killing. it was just huge. you need space. everybody says, political people, politicians say it is taxes, taxes. most of the companies did not make enough money to pay taxes. the problem is a rent, health insurance, if you have the humanity to care about your workers he will provide health care.

and it is not taxes that kill most companies but it is what i call habitat, the pace of -- a place to do it, whether industrial or retail, and some way to keep people healthy. >> this is one of the things -- habitat is really an interesting concept because in the recession, as we have noticed, the big box stores are going out of business in the shopping centers. they are often being replaced by small family-owned businesses that now have habitats because now the shopping centers are going, begging for tenants, and the targeting them in at a really cheap rates. >> which is why if you want to go to an interesting ethnic restaurant, find an old strip mall. if you want a dry cleaner, which is usually locally owned, a lot of entrepreneurs in there. a small strip mall. you will not find it next to the wal-mart. >> and there is a lot in

california where they are suffering terribly now from the recession, you find micro credit coming into california and small family-owned businesses starting. >> we are getting away from what i really think is motivating the chamber -- and hopefully on this program we are going to have mr. donahue, the head of the chamber, he has been a guest here before, to explain this. but what i motivating it, i fear, is this blind anxiety that certain class's of this country has, that socialism is at the top of the stair and it is going to grab them. >> of the bogeyman. >> socialism. talking about reforming health care, socialism. talking but saving jobs, socialism. so solution -- socialism, you got to define it. to the most extreme it is as totalitarian as and penalized by joseph stalin did to me it is what you find in western europe,

and right across the border in western europe, especially in scandinavia but it is true of all of the countries. >> talking about democratic socialism. >> democratic socialism. including brake -- great britain that has a lot of social services that we don't have here. >> and it is amazing that it is supported not only on the left but on the right. >> there is no constituency in europe to dismantle the welfare state. there are downsides to them, and i tell you as an entrepreneur, it is very difficult to get a business started in europe. there are too many regulations, and great difficulty of employment. if you hire someone -- you know, and this country, they serve at will, which means they can be fired and gives employers an enormous amount of strength but also gives them great flexibility. in europe, once you hire somebody, it is very difficult to fire them.

you will likely have to go before an industrial or labour tribunal which has been set up essentially to defend the worker -- it is implicit in the nature of the animal that it serves. so people are hesitant to hire, and once hired, you are in this sort of lifetime employment. >> and there is not a lot of mobility because he really got to stay. >> everybody who has run a small company knows that the way it happens is that the good people move on and the bad people stay. and unless from time to time you can discipline and clean out, you end up with a very inefficient workforce. it happens to europeans. there are things that take forever to do in europe that happen very quickly in the u.s. you want to start a business, do it here. if you want a certain quality of

life, you may want to live in europe. it has -- there has been a steady by the oecd trying to trace the happiness. >> corp. development. >> like a huge think tank based and paris but supported by 30 governments or 60 governments, others have participation, but pretty good economists and they were trying to track have been is as opposed to our traditional in america tracking of standard of living largely having to do with money and appliances and they find that most of the people in scandinavia are the happiest, but they have -- something they don't understand, there are quite a few -- quite a lot of suicides, comfortable people, psychological pressures rather than physical pressures. in africa where there is terrible poverty, people and not

take their own lives. there are other things that take their lives. interesting. but socialism is not on the march here. we are not headed towards it. and a lot of people are building it into a great strongman that it is around the corner and it is going to come, and when it comes at a going to tell you which dr. to go to come to tell you what to do and take your gun away, by the way, goes with that set of beliefs -- that is not true. >> i like your idea of happiness tracking. i think we ought to do a lot more. >> it is a very difficult thing to do. but there was a time, in a 1990's, when most people in europe would have moved to the u.s. and they have the option. i don't think it is true today. >> that is a very interesting point. >> but again, it depends on your own circumstance. if you have a job from a good job, and you are likely to keep it, you might be quite happy because everything else can be

adjusted. if you are out of work, you are in a terrible situation, and worse here than in europe when there are many benefits -- you don't have to pay for medicine, there is public transportation everywhere, you don't have to have an automobile, and you can't survive. but you are not going to go out and is listed company and make real money, which is the american promise. >> for the benefit of our listeners on series satellite and xm satellite radio on channel 110 and channel one third, i would like to end business up again, linda gasparello of "white house chronicle" and llewellyn king, my guest, the host of "white house chronicle." we are having a wonderful conversation just about everything. let us move on to a different topic, energy. for a very long time he ran one of the most distinguished publications in washington in the energy field. energy is such an important topic in the united states right now. the democrats and president

obama have an idea of what our energy future should be like. and republicans have an idea. i thought you might want to weigh in on the republican side because these -- this needs a bit of airing. >> i am a great admirer of obama. i think he is unique. there is an excitement with him that i had not detected since john kennedy and i also think as energy ideas are dead wrong and the republicans generally are right on energy. and the difference is that obama has a more left-of-center theory that you don't need big, centralized electricity, that you don't need to drill for oil and gas in many places and that you could make it through with what they call alternative energy, which is largely wind power, a little bit of solar power, off in the distance, wave

power. hydro -- there is a little bit of it around. one in the east river in new york, a turbine stopped and a river. a very low tech, basically. but it is diverse, spread out. it takes a lot of power to collect it and a lot of maintenance. all this has made its. and some advertisement on the radio says 37 million jobs would be created. i don't think so. be created. i don't think so.