last but not least, mohammad usman is a senior at depauw university majoring in urban policy and conflict studies with a minor in religious studies. he was a part of the national bioethics bowl, the winning team in the last year so congratulations on that. and before attending depauw was a special assistant in advocate for acts of civil legal justice at the university of new york school of law. so welcome to all of them. i would like to hear from all of you, and last night when we heard governor romney talk about states as the laboratory of democracy so while that may have been a republican democrat comment it got me thinking about our mayor and the work that they do in their communities and i'm going to hand the floor over to them. if you could both talk a little bit about how you see the future of american politics. >> thank you for having us first of all and thanks to all of you for coming to this event. i do believe that our politics is local and as mayor i've had the opportunity to witness decision-making on a local level that has implications for the state and federal government. i