inabili to communicate in any meaningful way, wesley w assumed to be retarded, t adnces in the underanding of autism now raise some questions. are these people lacking in intelligence? arthey simply unable to communicate in ways that are understandable? or is it both? this is a magic moment inome ways because if you had asked that a year ago, i would have said that the literature and experience tells us that most people with autism, certainly 75%, have the additional problem of mental retardation. i'not saying that isn't true. i'm saying we don't know what that meananymore cause many of the young people with autism who have been given a visual-- a written-word means to communicate demonstrate that they have fairly good symbolic ability. they're ch more e of what's going on than they er gave any indication of from their affective, observable behavior, and they can use the written word to communicate, when nobody ever taught theto read. thmethod of communicating is a small electronic keyboa that can display typed messages, a device often u by peopl who have lost their ability to speak. inhis

. >> i underand where the president thinks he's coming from rhetorically.od to people who pay $50,000, you will not be touched but people making more than you we'll go after them. most americans don't want to hurt other americans . they want to help every american and if you hurt the americans who are making more than $250,000 by the way, i don't know where he went to school to get the math. millionaires. $250,000 is $750,000 away of being a millionaire. just so we get clear on that. here's the problem. if those people making that amount of money pay more for the government. guess who they can't pay it to? to you. that means you don't get a bonus and a pay raise and you don't get extra benefits and you may not keep your job. this is it why i hope the president is sincere when he said he is not married to the opinions. those opinions and the president need a american needs real solutions. now that the president has won a second term in the white house, he could be faced with finding replacements for the member of the cob netasked if he was going to be stayin

" >> yeah, i mean, if you look at history of american democracy it is about a broadening of our underanding of political equality toan incorporate african-americans and women and ultimately to also incorporate the idea that large inequalities of property were a threat to democratic equality. so fdr, during the great depression, famously said that political equality was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. so we now, i think, understand that inequality of income and wealth is part of a capitalistic society but it can't overwhelm our democracy. and wha we've seen in the last 30 years is a gradue erosion of the firewas that protect our democracy from the inequalities that are occurring in the market. money has come into politics much more. nd the power that people have in the market is being used more and more in politics as well and that's a concern. because americans have very complexed views about equality but they all agree in this basic idea that as thomas jefferson famously said "all men areas created equal." and he meant men probably, but you know, the modern understanding of