Transcripts For CSPAN Politics Public Policy Today 20130101

Emancipation proclamation. But followed by other historians on the controversy and debate. Part of four days of American History tv at 9 30 on cspan3. The president of the United States [applause] thank you. Happy new year to you. Hello, everybody. Thank you. Everybody have a seat. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the white house. I realize that the last thing you want to hear on new years eve is another speech from me. But i do need to talk about the progress being made in congress today. For the last few days, leaders of both parties are working toward an agreement that will prevent a middleclass tax hike from hitting 98 of all americans starting tomorrow. Preventing that tax hike has been my top priority. The last thing that folks like the folks appear on this stage can afford right now is to pay an extra 2,000 in taxes next year. Middleclass families cannot afford it, businesses cannot afford it, our economy cannot afford it. Today, it appears an agreement to prevent this new years tax hike is within sight. But it is not done. There are still issues left to resolve but we are hopeful that congress can get it done. It is not done. Part of the reason i wanted to speak to all of you today is to make sure that we emphasize to congress and members of both parties understand across america that this is a pressing concern on peoples minds. Now, the potential agreement that is being talked about would not only make sure the taxes dont go up on middle class families, it also would extend tax credits for families with children, it would extend our tuition tax credit that has helped millions of families pay for college, it would extend tax credits for Clean Energy Companies that are creating jobs, it would extend Unemployment Insurance to 2 million americans who are actively looking for jobs out there. I have to say that ever since i took office, throughout the campaign, and over the last couple of months, my preference would have been to solve all these problems in the context of a larger agreement, a bigger deal, a grand bargain or whatever you want to call it, that solves the deficit problems in a balanced and responsible way that does not just deal with taxes but also spending so that we can put all this behind us and focus on growing our economy. With this congress, that was obviously too much to hope for at this time. [laughter] maybe we can do it in stages. We will solve this problem instead in several steps. In 2011, we started reducing the deficit through 1 trillion in spending cuts which have taken place. The agreement being worked on right now would further reduce the deficit by asking the wealthiest 2 of americans to pay higher taxes for the first time in two decades so that would add additional hundreds of billions of dollars to deficit reduction. That is progress but we will need to do more. Keep in mind that just last month, republicans in congress of they would not agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest americans and the agreement being discussed would raise those rates permanently. [applause] keep in mind, we will still have more work to do. We still have deficits that have to be dealt with, we will still have to think about how we put our economy long term project for growth, how we continue to make investments in education and infrastructure that help our economy grow. Keep in mind that the threat of tax heights going up is only one part of this socalled fiscal cliff. What we also have facing us starting tomorrow or automatic spending cuts that are scheduled to go into effect. Keep in mind that some of these spending cuts that congress has said will automatically go into effect have an impact on our Defense Department but that also have an impact on things like head start. There are some programs that are scheduled to be cut. We are using an ax instead of a scalpel. It may not always be the smartest cuts. That is a piece of business that still has to be taken care of. I want to make clear that any agreement we have to deal with these automatic spending cuts, those also have to be balanced. My principle has always been to do things in a balanced, responsible way and that means revenues as to be part of the equation in turning off the sequester as well as spending cuts. The same is true for any future deficit agreement. We will have to do more to reduce our debt and deficit. I am willing to do more but it will have to be balanced. We will have to do it in a responsible way. I am willing to reduce our governments medicare bills by finding new ways to reduce the costs of health care in this country. That is something which all agree on. We want to make sure that medicare is there for future generations but the current trajectory of Health Care Costs is going up so high that we have to find ways to make sure that it is sustainable. That kind of reform has to go hand in hand with doing some more work to reform our tax code so that wealthy individuals, the biggest corporations, cannot take advantage of loopholes and deductions that are not available to most of the folks standing up here for most americans. There is still more work to be done in the tax code to make it fair even as we are also looking at how we can strengthen Something Like medicare. If republicans think i will finish the job of the deficit reduction through spending cuts alone, you hear that sometimes, after today that we will try to shove a always spending cuts [applause] shoved spending cuts that will hurt seniors or heard students or hurt middleclass families without asking also equivalence sacrifice from millionaires or companies with a lot of lobbyists. If they think that will be the formula for how we solve this thing, theyve got another think coming. That is not how it will work. Weve got to do this in a balanced, responsible way and if were going to be serious, then it will have to be a matter of shared sacrifice as long as im president. And i will be president for the next four years. [applause] any way for now, our most immediate priority is to stop taxes going up for middleclass families starting tomorrow. I think that is a modest goal that we can accomplish. Democrat and republicans in congress have to get this done but theyre not there yet. They are close but they are not there yet. One thing we can count on with respect to this congress is that if there is even one second left before you have to do what you are supposed to do, they will use that last second. as of this point, it looks like i will spend new years here in d. C. You all will be hanging out in d. C. , too. I can come to your house . [laughter] i dont want to spoil the party. The people who are with me here today, people watching at home, they need our leaders in congress to all stay focused on them, not on politics, not on special interests they need to be focused on families, students, grandmas, folks who are out there working really, really hard and are just looking for a fair shot and some reward for that hard work. They expect our leaders to succeed on their behalf and satellite. Keep the pressure on over the next and lets see if we can get this thing done and i thank you all and if i dont show up at your house, i want to wish everybody a happy new year. Thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] now we will get reaction to president obamas remarks from senate republicans. We will hear from senators john mccain, lindsey gramm, and Senate Minority leader mitch mcconnell, who has been negotiating with vicepresident biden over tax increases. From the senate floor, this is about 30 minutes. I thank the senator from maryland as always for courtesy. I think she had a very important message, and i appreciate not only the words themselves, but her eloquence and passion. South carolina be included in a colloquy during my remarks. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Mccain mr. President , i, like i believe all of us just finished watching the president s remarks at i guess it was the executive office building. And im not sure yet as i sort out my impressions of the president s remarks as to whether to be angry or to be saddened. Ive been around this town for a number of years, and as is well known, i had an interest in the presidency more than academic and ive watched a lot of president s, going back to president reagan from the standpoint of a member of congress. And ive watched these other crises as we go through them, whether it be the potential shutdown of the government when Newt Gingrich was speaker of the house, weve seen these other crises as the debt limit expired and a number of others. And its sometimes unfortunately a way the way we do business here. But i must say at a time of crisis, on new years eve when at midnight at least certain actions take place or have to be planned to take place, we have the president of the United States go over and have a cheerleading, ridiculing of republicans exercise in speaking to the people of the United States of america. As i watched other president s address crises, the way that they were able to address them and resolve them with president ial leadership and thats why we elect president s, to lead they did it by calling the leaders of both parties to the white house and sit around the table and do the negotiations and the discussions and they are sometimes concessions have to be made, compromises have to be made. So what did the president of the United States just do . Well, he kind of made fun, he made a couple of jokes, laughed about how people are going to be here for new years, sent a message of confrontation to the republicans, i believe he said if they think theyre going to do that, then theyve got another thought coming. I guess i have to wonder, and i think the American People have to wonder whether the president really wants this issue resolved or is it to his shortterm political benefit for us to go over the cliff . I can assure the president of the United States, i can assure him that historians judge president s by their achievements. We all read the polls. We all, republicans, know what is in the polls. And that is the majority of the American People, 50some percent approve the president of the United States. We also see the Approval Ratings of congress, 10 , 12 , 15 , and i havent seen one that high lately but historians judge president s by what happens on their watch. And for the president to go out and make comments which clearly, which clearly will antagonize members of the house, we are a bicameral government here, and will clearly antagonize them because once we get an agreement, and i appreciate the negotiations that have been going on here in the senate between the majority leader and the republican leader. The fact is that whatever is done and whatever is agreed to has to be ratified by the house of representatives. Men and women who were elected on the premise, promising their constituents that they wouldnt raise taxes. Now, whether they should have made that commitment or not, whether that was the right thing to do, the fact is that thats what they said. So the president basically in his talk to whoever it is that group of people he was talking to had who were laughing and cheering and applauding, as we are on the brink of this of this collapse of this incredible problem this creates for men and women all over all of our citizens, so what he was saying is to the republicans on both sides of the aisle but particularly in the house of representatives, take it or leave it. Thats not the way president s should lead. This these are draconian effects. Now, whether we should be at this cliff or not is another discussion for the scholars in years to come. But we are where we are. Frantic discussions are going on. Went on in the middle of the night last night. So whats the president of the United States doing . In the middle of this, hopefully theyre reaching, there was, as i understand it, a very one major issue remaining , he comes out and calls people together and has a Group Standing behind him, laughs and jokes and ridicules republicans. Why . Why would the president of the United States want to do that . And i want to say a word about sequestration. Sequestration is about to kick in. The pentagon and our Defense Department is like a giant oil tanker. You got to turn it around in a very difficult and slow manner, because they have to make plans and they have to have contingencies procurement of weapons, have to do all the things that are necessary to make sure our men and women who are serving in the military are the best trained, best equipped and most professional in the world, which they are. But were looking at sequestration here when the department of defense says it will decimate our adilt ability to defend this nation. Shouldnt the president of the United States be concerned about that . But what is his own secretary of defense is saying and what his own chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, his selection, is saying. Instead, we kind of joke around and tell people theyre going to be here fear new years eve. Thats not the way to lead this nation. So i come to the floor and say to my colleagues, we need to get this done. We all know that we need to get this done. We go over the cliff, were going to disappoint the people that we are elected to represent and we will disappoint them mightily as we already have. But i also say it is the time for president ial leadership. Its time to stop the cheerleading. Its time to stop the campaigning. The president won. We all know that. He won fair and square. But isnt it now time to govern, and isnt the best way to govern to sit down with people from the other party and from both houses and say this is an issue we must resolve for the good of the American People . So i hope that, again, the president will spend some time with the leaders on borat parties in the oval office and sitting down, and ironing this ironing this out before the people of this country pay a very heavy price. My friend from South Carolina was around when we almost went over the cliff the last time, as we were about to shut down the government and it was all kinds of consequences but we pulled back from the brink after going over it, and it was the most serious of all these that ive seen. And i guess i would ask him, isnt it true that in our experience that president s, whether they be republican or democrat, no matter what party or affiliation, going back to the famous Ronald Reagan and tip oneill relationship where they sat down together and they saved Social Security for about 25 years, and it was tough medicine but they did it together, the president of the United States basically dismissed Social Security and medicare from his list of priorities, and what, as my friend from tennessee pointed out, we have a 16 trillion debt. And for to us say that were not going to do anything about spending when we all know that spending is the biggest problem we have in this agreement, again, that is throwing kerosene on the fire thats on the other side of the capitol and thats my republican colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have committed and pledged to their constituents that we will end this hemaging that hemorrhaging that we call spending which has given us the greatest debt in the history of this country. So i guess i would ask my colleague from South Carolina, who is usually very modest and reticent in explaining his views particularly in various Media Outlets of his view on this situation. Mr. Graham thank you, senator. I guess my first view is its better not to go over the cliff than to go over the cliff, but its also important, as you just said, to understand what weve accomplished. Lets assume for a moment and lets hope that this is a good assumption that we reach an agreement by the end of the day, that raises taxes tax rates on people that make over 400,000. I dont think thats a good idea because i think it hurts job creation. The better way to get revenue is to eliminate deductions and exemptions for businesses and wealthy individuals and take that money back into the treasury, lower tax rates to create jobs and pay down debt. Thats what bowlessimpson did. Not juan Bipartisan Group who has tried to solve our debt problem and our spending problem and our revenue problem suggested raising tax rates. Bools, a bowlessimpson, a Bipartisan Group, actually lowered tax rates and did it by eliminating deductions and exemptions and they put a lot of money on the debt, they had a 25 corporate rate and the top personal rate was 30 . They took this 1. 2 trillion we give out every year in exemptions and deductions to the favored few, they brought it back into the treasury, they paid down debt and they lowered tax rates to help create jobs. This president s approach is the opposite of simpsonbowles and the gang of six. You had six senators, three democrats and three republicans, how did they try to solve our longterm problems . They reformed the tax code by eliminating virtually all deductions. They took that money back into the treasury. They paid down debt and they lowered tax rates, just like simpsonbowles. Now, this president has taken another path. He wants to raise tax rates to generate revenue. My concern is the higher the tax burdens in america, the less likely to create a job in america. There are better ways to generate revenue. But hes gone his way and hes going to win. Hats off to the president for having the courage of your convictions. You said during the campaign youre going to raise tax rates on everybody who made above 250,000, but youre probably not going to get that but its going to be somewhere around 400,000. The money to be generated, you say you want it to go on the deficit. Thats good. Yesterday, the proposal by our democratic colleagues was to take that increased revenue from raising tax rates and they spent 600 billion on the government. And thats why we dont have a deal. I am willing to swallow my pride and vote for a tax rate increase even though i dont think its good policy just to save the country from going into the abyss and destroying the military. Im willing to do that, and i will take some heat but thats the way democracies are. You win some, you lose some. But what im not going to do is raise tax rates on anybody and take that additional money to grow the government when we all know we need to get out of debt. Thats what was going to happen yesterday. By 2037, the amount of debt we have in the nation will be twice the size of our economy. Every child born in america owes 51,000 of debt on the day of their birth. And when you look at medicare, Social Security and medicaid, the three big spending programs called entitlements, in about 25 years, the cost of those programs are going to consume all the revenue coming into the government, and there will be no money for the Defense Department. So when the president said today that round two will be the debt ceiling, hes right. He won round one, but we have done nothing, as senator mccain indicated, to lower the deficit in any real way. If you took every penny of the money were generating from raising tax rates for people above 400,000, thats 6 of the national deficit. So that doesnt even begin to solve the problem. So this is a hollow victory, a victory of revenue with no change in the nations march toward becoming greece, no real reduction in our deficit or our debt. The good news, senator mccain, is that were one big deal away from dominating the 21st century because americas problems are really less than most other places. The bad news is that that deal is elusive, it requires president ial leadership, and i havent seen much of it, and if we say on the course were on today, were going to lose the American Dream because your grandchildren and your children cannot pay off the debt youre about to pass on to them. So in about two months, round two begins and we will be asked to raise the debt ceiling. Trust me, i dont want to default on our obligations, but in august of 2011, we borrowed 2. 1 trillion because we ran out of money and 42 cents of every dollar we spend is borrowed money. If you dont keep borrowing, you will have to cut the government by 42 . Nobody suggests that thats a good idea overnight. But heres what i wont do. I wont continue borrowing money unless we address in the process what got us into debt to begin with. So when we have to raise the debt ceiling again, im going to make a simple request. Lets come up with a plan bipartisan in nature to save Social Security and medicare from bankruptcy because they are going to run out of money and become insolvent in the next 20 years, and lets also create a spending Reduction Plan that will allow us not to become greece. If you want to raise more revenue by capping deductions, you can count me in because well need some more revenue. But in 17 months, ladies and gentlemen, we spent 2. 1 trillion. Were burning through money like crazy. It took us 200 years to borrow the first 2 trillion. We spent 2. 1 trillion of borrowed money in 17 months. Thats got to stop. So to president obama, congratulations on your tax rate increase. You fought hard and you won. I hope i have the courage of my convictions not to raise the debt ceiling until you and others will work with me to find a plan to begin to get us out of debt. So you mentioned medicare today in your speech. Im glad you did. In 2024, it completely becomes insolvent. Think of how many people in this country need medicare and will need it 20 years from now. If we dont do something, its going to run out of money. The age of eligibility for medicare recipients is 65. It hasnt changed one day since 1965 when it was first started. Were all living longer. I propose we adjust the retirement age to 67 over a 10 or 20year period. That will save the program in many ways. People in my income level, we shouldnt get any money from the government to help buy my prescription drugs. I should pay the full cost because i can afford to. Thats called means testing. And this c. P. I. Thing you hear a lot about, thats how you evaluate benefits. It needs to be reevaluated based on real inflation. Were overestimating the cost and its adding burdens to these programs. So thats kind of technical stuff, but heres what im telling you. I am not going to vote to raise the debt ceiling until we do something to save Social Security and medicare from bankruptcy, and im not going to borrow a bunch more money that your grandkids will have to pay off without a plan to get out of debt. If thats too much to ask, so be it, but its not too much to ask of you at home, because if you spend a lot more money than you make, you go to jail. We call it good government. Thats got to stop. So round twos coming, and were going to have one hell of a contest about the direction and the vision of this country. The president we need two months from now is going to be the one who will come down here and talk with us and work with us and not have a press conference, because, mr. President , i want to make you an historic president. I want on your fouryear watch for us to change the course of the country. I want to save medicare and Social Security from insolvency, and i will give you the full credit as a president ial leader if you will help us as a nation to find a way to save these programs from bankruptcy. I want to turn around the spending problem we have that will prevent us from becoming greece, and if you will lead, i will follow, and yes, i will raise more revenue in a responsible way, but without you, its going to be hard for us to get there. So the next time we meet is going to be around the debt ceiling, and the image i want is not a bunch of people behind the president who are clapping for him, but members of congress, republicans and democrats behind the president clapping for the president because he signed a bill that will save all of us from a certain fate. And our fate is being sealed as i talk unless we make changes. We cannot survive on the course were taking today. The good news is with some bipartisanship and president ial leadership, we still have time to turn around this country and actually dominate the 21st century. Its going to take some pain, its going to take some sacrifice, but one final story. When i was 21, my mom died. When i was 22, my dad died 15 months later. We were in my family owned a liquor store, a restaurant and a pool room, and everybody i know about politics i learned in the pool room. My sister was 13. We had my uncle take over the businesses. He left the textile industry to run the businesses. We moved in with my aunt and uncle. They never made over 25,000, 30,000 in their entire life. If it werent for Social Security Survivor Benefits for me and my sister, we would have had a hard time majority it. She went to college on pell grants. I am 57. Im not married. I dont have any kids. Im part of the problem. Thats whats happening all over america. When i was 22, we needed every penny we could get in Social Security benefits. Today, i could easily give up 400 or 500 when i retire and not feel it at all. I could pay more for medicare, and i would. And im going to ask people in my situation to do that. We just have to have the courage to ask. I think most americans will say yes. So medicare and Social Security are not programs to me. I know what they do for real people. And if we do nothing, in 2032, which seems forever but its not, Social Security becomes insolvent and you have to cut benefits 25 for everybody whether they can afford it or not or raise taxes by 38 , whether the business can afford it or not. And the way you solve that is you reform the programs like Ronald Reagan and tip oneill. Mr. President , i am willing to play, along with my other republican colleagues, the role of tip oneill. You just need to play the role of Ronald Reagan. So the next time we talk about fiscal problems in america, i want a News Conference where the president is center stage, not surrounded by political activists, surrounded by republicans and democrats who can celebrate accomplishing something that we should all be proud of. They tell me this is the least Productive Congress in the history of the nation. If its not, i would hate to be in the one that was. We havent done a whole lot up here. Senator mccain, i know urve here a few years now. I know you have been here a few years now. Whats your opinion of where were going as a nation and how we get along with each other . Mr. Mccain well, i would say to my friend, first of all, we have had some meetings of a bipartisan fashion to try and improve the process here so that we can move legislation forward. The issue before us i believe right now at nearly 3 00 p. M. , nine hours from midnight, and we still have not reached an agreement, and the longer it takes for us to Reach Agreement, the less time we will have examining it and the less time we will have before voting. As the senator from South Carolina said, we cant keep doing business like this, and we cant. But on this particular issue, i want to express as i began my disappointment in the president in having a cheerleading rally when we should be sitting down together and resolving this issue. Thats what i have seen other president s, republican and democrat, do. I hope now that the president has made his statement with his cheering section that now he would sit down as president s have and should work to hammer out this agreement and agreements in the future. The president ial campaign is over, he won, congratulations. Now lets get down to the Serious Business of governing this country in a bipartisan fashion. I yield to the senator from georgia. Mr. Isakson i rise for a moment to associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from tennessee, the gentleman from arizona and the gentleman from South Carolina. And i want to tell a personal story somewhat like the south carolinian told. You know, i made my living my entire life before i got here for 33 years selling houses, causing two people to come together and agree on a price, agree on terms, sign, shake a deal and walk away from a closing table feeling like both of them won. Ive also been elected to every legislative body i could be elected to in my state, and ive served in the legislatures for 34 years. I have negotiated deals, been on conference committees, and i never once found myself making a deal by intimidating or insulting the other side. What the president did this afternoon set us back in civility and in leadership and in deal making. Now, im a big enough guy to know im not going to take it personally. If the desire was to offend me, the speech did, but if the desire was to deter me, it did not. It is time we all found ways to come together as americans and solve our problems, not just in the short run but in the long run, not fill our room through a partisans borders but instead cause everybody to sit together around the table and find a way to make a deal. This is the greatest country on the face of this earth, and it will continue to be unless we forget what got us here. What got us here are the American People, not the american politicians. The american businessman, the american entrepreneur, the american worker, the american laborer and the american leader, people who through their sweat, their blood and their toil built businesses, built factories, built companies and made this great enterprise known as the United States of america work. If we want to raise our revenue, sure, you can raise by a percentage looks your revenue by raising your assess many, but if you lower your base, your revenue goes down. What we need to do is empower our base by raising the prosperity of the american businessman, the american employee and the american worker, and as their prosperity rises, taxes will go up not because were charging them more by ratebaugh because they are making more in the rate and what they pays goes up because they are more prosperous. You will never raise the revenue you need by insulting the American People or taking away the incentives to work, make a living, take a risk and be an entrepreneur. So while we had a speech today whose intention i really dont know what it was, it probably protracted and delayed what were trying to do here today, and thats find a way to come back and fight another day. I agree with senator graham. The big battle is yet to come and its over the debt ceiling. Its going to be a big battle, and i share every comment and every sentiment that senator graham said because thats the one where we have to find a way to make a deal. And the president is not going to make a deal by poking us in the eye and by charging one side against the other to try to have a winwin proposition. I never made a deal if it wasnt a winwin proposition. I always lost a deal when i made it a winlose proposition. Im at the table. I continue to negotiate. I want to make this one work, but lets Work Together, lets find common ground, and in the 12th hour and the 11th hour, lets do whats right for the American People. But i want to thank senator graham, senator corker and senator mccain for their remarks. I associate myself with them. Senator mccain, i yield back to you. I yield to the senator from tennessee. Mr. Mccain i yield. The presiding officer the senator from tennessee. Mr. Corker i thank the senator from arizona, South Carolina and georgia for the comments that they have made. I have already addressed the issue of the speech. I want to talk about two and i agree with the comments that have been made by my colleagues here. I want to address the substance. We get caught up in terminology here and sometimes talk beyond each other. I dont know what most people are doing today, but the country almost came to a halt in august of 2011 as we negotiated some reductions in spending, 2. 1 trillion worth. Most people felt like that was not near enough. I know that everybody in this body has been contacted by fix the deck folks and others who think that we need to have a 4. 5 trillion to 5 trillion deal thats done here. By the way, i agree 100 and had hoped thats what we were going to be doing during this month, so as the senator from South Carolina said, we would have this behind us and we could focus on the tremendous potential this country has. Were not going to do that. But let me go back to august of 2011. We agreed to reduce spending by 2. 1 trillion of the we implemented some and then we put something off to whats called the sequester, which is what were im talking about for a moment here on the floor. Is and thafloor. And that sequester was to kick in on january the 1st of this year, tomorrow, in the event we didnt Reach Agreement on other spending reductions. And i had hoped we would come up with other spending reductions. My friend, the presiding officer, had hoped the same. But we havent. Heres the substance of what the president just said in his speech and that is that since we did not come up with an agreement on spending reductions, were going to deal with the sequester that kicks in tomorrow, the 1. 2 trillion the presiding officer if i could ask the senator a senator if i could ask the senator to yield for just a moment. Mr. President , i ask unanimous consent the period for morning business for debate only be extended until 5 00 p. M. With senators permitted to speak up to ten minutes each. The presiding officer is there objection . Without objection. A senator i thank the senator. Mr. Corker thank you. I see the senator from kentucky who i think most people would rather listen to that be myself so im going to yield the floor for a moment as he makes his comments and may come back to the podium. Mr. Mcconnell mr. President , are we in a quorum call . The presiding officer the senate is not in a quorum call. The senator from tennessee has yielded the floor. Mr. Mcconnell mr. President , yesterday, after days of inaction, i came to the floor and noted the obvious, which is that we need to act. But that i needed a dance partner. So i reached out to the Vice President in an effort to get things done. And im happy to report that the effort has been a successful one and, as the president just said in his television appearance, were very, very close to an agreement. We need to protect American Families and job creators from this looming tax hike. Everyone agrees that that action is necessary. And i can report that weve reached an agreement on all of the tax the tax issues. We are very, very close, as the president just said. The most important piece, the piece that has to be done now, is preventing the tax hikes. The president said quote for now, our most immediate priority is to stop taxes going up for middleclass families starting tomorrow. I agree. He suggested that action on the sequester is something we can continue to work on in the coming months. So i agree. Lets pass the tax relief portion now, lets take whats been agreed to and get moving. Let me say, this was not easy to get to. I mean, the Vice President and i last spoke about yesterday about 12 45 this morning and then again at 6 30 this morning and then multiple times this morning. This has been clearly a a goodfaith negotiation. We all want to protect taxpayers and we can get it done now. Right now. So let me be clear, well continue to work on finding smarter ways to cut spending, but lets not let that hold up protecting americans from the tax hike that will take place in about ten hours. Ten hours from now. We can do this. We must do this. I want my colleagues to know that well keep everybody updated as we continue to try to wrap this up. Now we get reaction from democratic senator tom harkin. He has been critical of raising the rate at which taxes go up to four hundred thousand dollars. This is about 10 minutes. Morning that some kind of agreements are being made here. Somehow that democrats have agreed to raise the level of, from 250,000 to 450,000, and that somehow theres been an agreement reached that we would keep the estate taxes at the 5 million level, at 35 . Mr. President , this is one democrat that doesnt agree with that at all. What it looks like is it looks like all of the tax things are going to be made permanent, but all of the other things that the middle class in america depend on is extended for one year, maybe two years. One year or two years at the most; but the tax system is made permanent. I think thats grossly unfair. Grossly unfair. And then again, were going to lock in forever the idea that 450,000 a year is middle class in america . Need i remind people that at 250,000 a year, thats the top 2 income earners in america. I know the president keeps saying he wants to protect tax cuts for the middle class. Fine, im all for that. If you go up to 250,000, thats a tough pill to swallow, because that covers everyone except the top 2 . If you make 250,000 a year, youre not middle class. Youre in the top 2 of income earners in america. What have we forgotten . Have we forgotten average income earners in america are making 25,000, 30,000, 40,000, 60,000 a year . Thats the real middle class in america and they are the ones getting hammered now, getting hammered with housing costs, rental, heating bills, kids going to school. They have no retirement. Now theyre talking about raising the tee raising the retirement age, people standing on their feet, women standing on their feet for 30, 40 years; going to raise the retirement age on them. Again, if were going to have some kind of a deal, the deal must be one that really does favor the middle class, the real middle class, those that are making 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 a year. Thats the real middle class in america. As i see this thing developing, quite frankly, as ive said before, no deal is better than a bad deal. And this looks like a very bad deal the way this is shaping up. So i just want to make it clear, im all in favor of compromise. Ive been here a long time, mr. President. Ive made a lot of compromises. Im twoeulg make more kroeuplz. But im willing to make more compromises. But this is one time where decisions that are made on this socalled deal could lock in for the next years what kind of a country this is going to be, what kind of society. So we better be darned careful. If no deal is reached, then on the tax side, we go back to the taxes that were enacted under president clinton. Now we all voted, at least all the democrats here, that were here then voted for the clinton tax bill in 1993. We heard all kinds of talk from the other side of the aisle how this is going to be disastrous, it was going to kill the economy. It was just going to be awful. And not one republican supported it. But we passed it. President clinton signed it into law, and guess what happened . The economy took off. Unemployment came down. The economy started going. And we were paying down the deficit. We had three straight years or four of surpluses. C. B. O. Said if we continued on that way, we would pay off the National Debt by 2010. Well, then george bush came into office, they looked at all the surpluses out there and said guess what . Weve got to take some of that and give it back in tax cuts, and thats what they did. Now thats whats ending tonight. Thats what ends tonight, are those bush tax cuts. So we go back to the tax system that we had under bill clinton. I ask, whats so bad about that . It worked pretty darned well. The economy was going well. We were paying down the deficit. Things were going well under bill clinton, under that tax system, and thats what well go back to tomorrow. Whats so bad about that . Well, whats happened is in the last ten years a lot of people have gotten very rich in this country. Very rich. And now they want to protect their wealth. And thats what they want to do. They want to lock in this system on estate taxes and lower tax rates up to 450,000 or 500,000 or a million or whatever they want. They want to lock that in. I think its time for them to start paying their fair share, and they did under the clinton tax provisions that we had in place at that time. So to go back to the tax provisions that we had under bill clinton doesnt frighten me one bit. But now we hear the same song and dance from the republicans. If we do that, the skys going to fall. The world will end tomorrow. The markets will just go all to heck. We heard that in 1993, and it was wrong. Were hearing it again today about what will happen if we go back to the clintonera tax provisions. They say the skys going to fall. Theyre wrong again. Theyre just wrong again. So i for one am not do not fear going back to a system of taxation that basically worked very well for our country. The bush tax cuts that messed everything up for ten years. Few people got very rich but kept the middle class from advancing any at all. So again, this idea that somehow a deal is going to be cooked up thats going to make permanent permanent all these Tax Advantages that people had over the last ten years and that they have now in estate taxes are going to make that permanent somehow does not sit well with this senator. And yet, everything else, when were talking about Unemployment Insurance, when were talking about investments that other parts of our economy, the Sustainable Growth rate for our hospitals and our doctors and medicare, well thats only good for one year, you see. Thats only good for one year or two years. But the tax side that lets those most privileged in our society continue to not pay their, i think the share they should be paying, thats not a good deal. Thats not fair. Thats not equitable. Thats not just. I hope that those that are negotiating continue to negotiate. If there was a deal that could be made that really does focus on the middle class, gets our estate taxes back where they were before at some reasonable level, not at the level theyre at right now, well, maybe we could live with Something Like that. But from what i read this morning and the direction theyre headed is just absolutely the wrong direction for our country. Mr. President , wit the white house and congress have failed to reach an agreement on the fiscal cliff before the midnight deadline. Tomorrow we look at the latest on where the country stands on tax hikes and spending cuts. Then at 8 30, charlie hurt of the Washington Times joins us. Washington journal, each morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. A lot of people looking back that i know, looking back on the last four years, will say the Space Program has been a jobs program. How many jobs can you get in your district and your state . It passed by one vote because it was passed all around the country. I can tell you some pretty brutal stories about the politics involved in the Space Program. It is bring home the bacon, and the bacon is jobs. Votes keep a congressman or senator in office. Tuesday night, apollo astronaut buzz out balls aldrin on the future of Space Exploration buzz aldrin. Tuesday night on cspan. Next, a debate on emerging economies around the world in 2013, including india, brazil, and china. We will hear from the author of winnertakeall on what it means for the world. The emerging economies were the place to go if you wanted to feel optimistic. This year, there is a pretty sharp slowdown in emerging economies and i think a lot of questioning as to whether they can keep up the stellar growth rates. Whether there is something bigger changing. If the models themselves have to be looked at. That is what has to be looked at for 2013. We have outstanding individuals that are both known for very contrary and views on emerging economies, we will start with bill easterly. He is probably best known to you for his books that have been best sellers. Why the west has done so much harm and so little good, a very nonprovocative book. And how they both fundamentally changed the way people thought about growth and development. Bill was named as one of the top intellectuals, one of the most influential voices. [applause] what is going to happen . Have they lost their luster . Will they retain in it . Ellen to focus on china. Thee talking already about chinese economic slowdown, and i think this is a major moment for a major moment for development thinking. The idea of the authoritarian growth miracle that china has done so much to promote is really over at this point. Let me give you a couple insights as to why it might be over. The first is that authoritarian groschen miracles dont last. Hall asked a question of you. How many of you have heard about the togalese growth miracle . Raise your hand if you have heard of that . I thought we would have more in the audience. The reason you have not heard of it is that it only allows from 1960 until 1975, when things did not go that well. The point of the example is that they dont last. They go on for a while and systems are prone to booma nd bust. Boom and bust. We keep thinking the chinese one is going to last forever. This is going to last forever. It is going to slow down a lot more. Why does that give us insight into the grove miracle . Let me take a drink of water before i give you this profound insight. If it was never really an authoritarian miracle to begin with, let me make two simple points. We thought the effect of political and Economic Freedom was not on the change of income, but countries with heavy political repression, and economic repression or reports. What does that imply . When you see rapid growth, one possible thing that could be going on, you have predicting changes. You have a change in freedom and that change predict the change in income which we call rapid Economic Growth. What happened in china . Yet one of the worst to egalitarian systems and history, and you had a big increase in freedom. You even had some increase in political freedom. Compared to the totalitarian system, the Chinese People today are much more free, even politically. This release all the energies and the tremendous dynamism of the Chinese People. If you want that growth continued, you have to key changing freedom in the right direction. That is the story line i am going to give you as to why the miracle will not last. I will illustrate with an example from the onion. I thought it would buy the extra time. I dont know how many of you have heard this story recently, the onion that i hope you all know is a satirical newspaper declared north koreas leader the sexiest man alive. And the Chinese Communist Party Official newspaper did not realize this was a satire and a reprinted it. Congratulations for being named the sexiest man alive. This is a little bit funny. I think there is a little bit of insight into the current chinese leadership there as well. If leadership only allows worship with leadership and allows that kind of irreverent, they dont recognize satire when they see it. They dont recognize it when it comes along. It might seem absurdly you could possibly mistake and onions story for the real story, but they did. The lesson is the fundamental flaw of an authoritarian system, you have no feedback. You need feedback to hollow correct and when the bus comes to prevent her from being too deep. We now know that, thanks to the onion. I think that i will first have that, a very influential writer that was shaking up the conventional wisdom. Why aid is not working and there is a better solution for africa. And winner takes all solution for china and what it means for the world. And this time, what is going to happen in 2013 . [applause] i can only say, ye have little faith. I think you are absolutely wrong. I dont want to get arguing why, but i will give my prediction for 2013. Why do i say that . I will talk about the bricks in a minute. I am talking about south america, eastern europe, parts of asia. Why do i love this story . It is basic macroeconomics. The key ingredients that drive growth. We know the story of debt, deficit, fiscal cliff. We know that the story of the aging population and financing, if you look at the statistics are round or they measure the performance in mathematics, science, and reading, you can see where the problem is. Today, they were in the number 27, 28, and so on. Productivity generally is the x factor that accommodates for 60 of why one country grows and another does not. Generally, it includes things like political dynamic, so we know what is happening there. That is not my prediction. Look at this framework, capital, labor, productivity. You will see why i am incredibly bullish. In terms of capital, these economies by a large did not have the debt burden that other countries are facing right now. Why is that important . These countries are not suffering from a deal leveraging problem. 60 70 is under the age of 25. In you got there, over 50 is under the age of 15. We can talk about that once i sit down. Once again, a really interesting story. They were talking about 30 increases over goods and services. In virtually all statistics, things like political improvements and freedoms, this is really essential. Countries like rwanda have been ranked no. 1. If you look around the markets, you will see the authority. 90 of the worlds population. Theyre going to see improvements in those lives. There will be issues, but the story is very strong and that is why we are seeing the story being very positive. Tell us about the Frontier Markets because you cite the story of capital Labor Productivity. It will explode very dramatically . I think there is a clear delineation between the advanced emerging economies and the frontier economies, but our related or integrated it is to the developed market, how much exposure do they have . In terms of trade and foreign direct investment, it is heavily dependent on the United States and europe. Africa has 1 billion people and is less than 2 of world trade or direct investment. The real engine of growth is not going to be trade, unfortunately. If you look at valuations of the banks and trading in the local market, the story is credible and hits to the story rather than be integrated. It doesnt depend on Commodity Prices . It does, to some extent. But it is not entirely the case. Today, there are about a thousand stocks and over 85 of stocks or commodities. The think theyre missing out on one of the biggest trades nigeria is significantly in driven by the banks. But this story is being replicated in places like colombia, peru, bangladesh, sri lanka. This is a about a desperate or insatiable demand for services. I will say that we know that china is slowing, but i dont think it is a hard landing. Of course, to the extent china is the biggest buyer of these commodities, it will impact. Lets focus on china. You have very different views on et. I sense a somewhat determinism in your view. Is there not any capacity for this new leadership . We can implement the kinds of Economic Reforms that are needed. Do think that they just cannot do it . I think the latter that you cannot do it. You need to have an open and intellectual debate going on with society to get the feedback he needed to get the correct Economic Reforms. We have been able to get away with it for a long time. It is running out now, and this cannot go on without having an honest and critical feedback about what is wrong with the current system. You only get that with freedom of speech and freedom of thought. You have some feedback. You do have the capacity for some kind of summit. It is not as black and white. What do you think we need for the growth miracle . You have chinese twitter but it doesnt allow engaging with the rest of the world. There is a curtain where the autocratic countries are behind, and those of the countries where you dont only allow the debate but the International Spread of ideas. This thing about the United States, it is something that we heard last week. It is called making democracy work, but they reminded us that the United States for many decades, without housing the universal suffrage, i will give you specifics. The u. S. Constitution was written in 1787. It was very clearly articulated. We took the United States until 1956 before there is universal suffrage in this country. They have Sustainable Growth that has propelled the world to a new level of both income level and so on without having Democratic Society in the way that we know it today. Does that mean i am saying it is great . I am not. I am saying that we need to be a little bit more patient because china is having this discussion. The question is about implementation. This is what i hear from Chinese People every time we go there. We know that we need to have democracy. How do we implement democracy . There is a piece written about democracy on the ground and we know that they have hall elections. It is not perfect, but it is better. This is a question about the emerging markets. The u. S. Example is very relevant for emerging markets in the long run. We are having a discussion that i think is useful. You never have a perfect democracy. There is evidence that we still dont have a perfect democracy. It makes it possible to have this increase in freedom where the double standard in which what is male, and that double standard has progressed over time. Appealing for that civilrights revenue, that is what makes it possible. China and the poor countries are going to be condemned to not have a positive change that you need so much. Can i push back home another . By the standards of what he laid out, india is doing pretty well. There are many parallels with the u. S. If you look at what has happened, huge excitement with doubledigit growth and a very young population. In indian terms, it is very low. A few supply side ha problems, but they are not different in the sense that everyone knows they need to get done. We dont decide on Global Warming depending on weather today is a warm day or not. We are talking about longrun predictions. I think this out luck already has the growth miracle that it has already had with being a democracy. Democracy is much more than majorityrun elections. There is massive corruption, and massive violation by the rich to realize dramatic democratic potential. If you have more specific questions. Nevertheless, whether the party will be to the internet, the fact 1. I think it is harder to predict. I am hopeful it will happen in china sooner rather than later. The fact that so many chinese intellectuals and welleducated engineers and scientists are going back, they will be part of the vanguard to bring us back. That is actually a sign of hope. [inaudible] is singapore the exception to your view of the world . Taiwan while youre at it. Several countries in africa. Theets not forget one of basic point i was trying to get across. Growth, which is why we get so excited about east asia, it is about changes. Singapore also had a remarkable positive change during the modern era when it opened up and became a huge trade and finance center. Not so much on political. Singapore already has slowed down. It has slowed down several percentage points. I think the support will also return to the days of higher growth. And as you become a progressive economy, it never slows down. Autocracy can grow faster because lets go for that one right there. I am interested in political reform in china. The western democracies system . Nobody has to imitate exactly any other country. I think it is about ideas and principles, nobody has ever found a very good way for the consent of the governed that does not include a majority vote collection. The principles are really about the power, the checks on the power of the government to do bad things to individuals. There are many ways to protect the individual against the power of the government. It does not have to be an exact imitation. The comments of the countries in africa, some are absolutely not democracies. Do you see any difference in the ones that are particular i am biased because i am an economist and not a political scientist. I do not think political structures impede Economic Growth. I think they are basically touching on that point. You dont necessarily have to have that place. There is enough evidence to show that if you have the right working economy, what you really want is driving Economic Growth first to you can create the middle class. A lot of people going around standing and voting. They are democratic principles. Let me pick up on something that bill set earlier. It will be itos of how this country operates. There is a schism between emerging markets. If you go back to the declaration of human rights, it becomes very clear why we are having this discussion now. The definition of human rights was political freedom, the ability to hold government accountable. Even then, there is a debate where you would have the ability to deliver education. I think this is where the issue lies. I strongly believe that well get the political reform. We have to evolve in a way that is organic. It has to evolve organically for the local markets and the local environments to actually stick. I know everyone knows, but the United States largest economy, and democracy is that the political egos. You have china, the second largest economy in the world. We are sitting here saying no democracy and state capitalism. These countries have the same income inequality right now. It is only marginally worse. We can talk about trajectory, but thinking about the emerging world, you have to make a decision about which model you pick. Is it really the case that it needs to be set before Economic Development can occur . I think we have time for one more question. Yes, the lady there. Five rows back. I have an uproar. The gentleman there. My original question was directed for professor easterly about the declaration of human rights providing a basis for generalizing the declaration of independence and it also does include the countries with so called positive rates. I would like to hear comments of both of you. I will get one or two other questions and have you both answer them. Lady here. Four rows back. In regards to africa, i was in west africa a couple years ago. From the educated population, there is a strong sense of stop aid. My question is around innovation. There are people doing important things like clinton, goldman sachs, and without that external money, how does that economy actually grow and develop . You have the right people to ask. You take the un. The sad thing about the un declaration of human rights, the agencies themselves do not respect the declaration. The world bank, the organization i know best being a prisoner there for 14 years, they never once used the word democracy. I had a blog tormenting him about this. He has never used the word democracy and he is not allowed to use that word. The world bank was not even endorsing the un declaration for human rights. They were giving aid to autocrats in ethiopia, using aid and to the document to end the document, star of his political opponents. Starve his political opponents. When the un is not recognizing that right we reduce poverty by relying on aid, giving the africans more aid, that is rubbish. All i heard is that they cant go to the market. They called it shearing off from the rest of the world. It wasnt based [indiscernible] 750 billion came through and it was more aggressively priced than italy, spain, and portugal. That is where you create economic prosperity. The agencies are doing fantastic stuff but it will not create what we need on that continent. The marginal interventions are not going to create Economic Growth. We know how to create jobs, so instead of having large subsidy programs, start there. Get rid of those programs and we can talk about Economic Growth. You can understand why they are the most prominent voices in the business. [applause] and a kid from the capital. Republicans have reached an agreement joe biden is on capitol hill. We saw the Vice President with harry reid. We will bring you more of this tonight. More now from the world in 2013 for somum. The discussion contains language some viewers might find objectionable. We are going to shift gears a bit. I took my tie off the war earlier this morning. First, there is wifi here. You should log on to the nyu guest account. User name is guest131. Password is right there for you. We will talk about the use of social media. It has been on everyones lips the last couple of years. We have wonderful guests that are known for their engagement with their audience. I predict we are going to hear a little bit of criticism and push back on some of the wisdom of social media. First we will hear from the author of public parks. We also have the author of what will google do. He is an associate professor for journalism. Give us your prediction. Thanks. Predictions are necessarily bullshit. The social media is bullshit. I dont agree with everything in that book, but i agree with the entitlements of social media itself as a misnomer. Looking at the world and our image, it is not media at all. It is speech. It is people talking. That is how we have to look at this. My prediction is very easy. It is not likely will have a cool tool. We will use it for speech. The prediction is that we will continue to have threats. That is what we have to worry about because we already see this happening. We also see in the u. K. That there are people being arrested. It may be nasty stuff. Turning around, after the levison inquiry, regulating media. Where is speech . This is a dangerous stance we are about to go under here. There is a fight over the effort to make google pay for the link. If you can do that for media, maybe you can do it for bloggers like me. There is danger there. In dubai, they refused to have a favor of having the right on line. Instead, they ordered the introduction of a firmly worded press release. Speech is in danger this year. Facebook is a place where we can share and can act. It is going wrong a round. I urge you to recognize that we must not only get enamored with new tools and toys. We have an obligation to protect the freedom. We must protect the net. [applause] the phrase rock star is thrown around a lot. I am happy to welcome a bonafide rock star, Amanda Plummer is best known as one half of the dresden dolls. She started releasing solo albums produced by ben folds two is wonderful himself. She is best known as a social media queen rockandroll. She is engaged with her fans through social media and is known for finding her next album via kickstarter, a paywhat youlike for my music model. Welcome amanda. [applause] highlight to begin by agreeing that predictions are bullshit and social media is also bullshit. That being said, it helps me a lot. Not so much the prediction that i would make, but everything that has happened to me in the last few months, the kickstarter i did that raised over 1 million, it brought a discussion of about my use of twitter and connecting i have done with my audience and my fans. The conversation that i hear happening every year between artists and musicians is that people are beginning to measure the cost of connections. And by that, i mean you have people engaging on your behalf as the artist and engaging constantly with fans. The pros and cons are starting to shake out. The past few months, these sorts of people coming to me are my uncle that is a very successful person that runs an Office Furniture company. The costume shop by lived and in australia, they are in their 70s and they say a man that, should we do amanda, should we do twitter . They feel terrified that they are not engaging in social media. The big question is, what is the necessity of constant connection . Are we measuring it correctly . I would argue that in a lot of cases, we are not. We are now being defined by how we are conversing and the tools that we are using. What we have to say will continue to be interesting. The fact that we are being engaged by the volume of how much we are connecting, this is what i hear everybody talking about. That also means the human and emotional cost of what it means. I heard on npr the other day that the vast majority of social media is taking place in the bathroom. When people leave the restaurant, i think we can agree that there is a terror that our have been best horror lives are being compromised. This is the confirmation the conversation that i see exploding. The prediction i would make is the etiquette and value of social media is going to be caused in the question. Into question. [applause] in the spirit of the conversation, i asked twitter what i should ask. Geoff, can you lend me a few thousand followers . One of the questions was to the point that she just made, is there a danger that youre being known for social media as opposed to being known for your music . No, i dont feel that way at all. I agree so much with what jeff said, it isnt media. It is a conversational tool. I remember being amazed and really feeling like things were changing when the first person came up to me and said, i am embarrassed to tell you this, i dont like your music, but i love your blog. I said, that is really flattering. Any kind of connecting really is the means of the artist. I feel like a fundamental content provider. There are ways of bringing people just the same way that people dont care how they got in the door. There might be people out there that would never have heard about me. We like to write about journalists because we are obsessed with ourselves. Do you ever want to throw the stuff away and go right about city hall or something . Writing about the ways that we communicate. Is there some danger that is overwhelming . She is not at risk for being known for twitter than art. There is a larger danger that we are reading too much into technology. We tend to think that we make newspapers. We dont, we explain the world. We concentrate on the tool to much. We need to see that we have our relationship with the public and that journalism is not a product. We see ourselves as servants. We fill columns with type. From a regulatory perspective, this new thing we had better regulate because it is disrupting. The first serious discussion did not come to the u. S. Until 1890. It freaked us out because we had a new technology that change behaviors. We talk about etiquette. We try to deal with trolls, bozos and assholes online. No, it depends on how you use it. I dont want to get rid of it all. It gave me a second childhood. It changed my career and the view of the media and everything else. I recognize that there are choices to make. Speaking of trolls, bozos and assholes, you engage with your fans on twitter, can you tell a personal story . This ties in really well with the use of social media. It really does bother me to this day when people say i dont really get twitter. It is people sharing photos of their breakfast and talking about really inane stuff. How can it possibly be useful . I counseled musicians for a dozen years and a few days ago, i announced that i was canceling an entire season of shows that went on sale, thousands of tickets purchased that will have to be refunded or postponed because of my best friend is in treatment for cancer and i want to stay with him. By sending an email to my fan base, i did not send a press release, i just let everyone pick it up. A best friend is in treatment. I do not send a press release. And what was fascinating was i woke up and the news had not been announced. The first saw were people had not heard the information from me. The voices sound like teenagers. Someone was quitting my dad is disappointed. There is a handful of these. Thousands of people came to me with lerone stories about having had cancer themselves. Kirtland changing experience. Outpouring of law only understanding when compassion but these people bring their personal stories on his face would. And were you can fit information in a small space. 10 years ago the only choice was to send a press release and pray that everyone understood and instead i engaged in one of the most touching, deep interaction with my fan base people are saying i am sitting on the subway crying while reading your twitter feet. Feed. There is a constant conversation. We could talk about this for hours. You end up with more faith in your fellow man. So much about this is everyone is able to share the possibility of that connection. The number of things we have to Pay Attention to has increased exponentially. You are on the train, you keep a rock star schedule. Just keeping up with all these things wears me out. I am going to throw my phone in the leg. In the early days, people would say i do not have time for this, have more important work. I would say these things might save effort. It has changed the way i have lived. I am reading all this stuff going on here. I find it harder to concentrate. On longer things. It comes back day after day. It it changes the way we do things. There is wonderful i recommend looking this out. About the gutenberg parenthesis. Before, we communicated mouth to mouth and things changed. There was terrible sense of ownership. Convert changed everything gutenberg taste everything. He argues were going back to a more natural state. I would like to take some questions from the audience. If there are some. I think i saw so facebook is a distribution platform. Theres a lot of value to you. As a consumer of content in thrown off when your content is prioritized over my friends or my moms. My news feed is controlled by an algorithm. There is a motion saying that google should be neutral. It is useless. I what relevance. Want relevance. Google gets signals about me and give me more relevance. I welcome that. I welcome my overlord. I for one do. Algorithms are made by humans and they have prejudices. A brilliant researcher at harvard talks about his book, the predecessor of the duodecimal system. There is 100 numbers in christianity and 54 judy ism and one for everything else. There is a prejudice built in and you have a proper complaint about that. Here is the feedback loop. You start using it less. It arises or you lose the service because it does not do a good job. If there is a feedback loop it will work. What about the danger that we just get cat videos. The things that people do more. I welcome cat videos. I love cat videos. This is a question for jeff. Social media is the platform for speech in general. Isnt it true people hide behind their screens and say things online that it would not say facetoface . Does not change the way we speak to each other fundamentally . We talked about that. How do you see this evolving . As an artist, that is a sensitive question. I spent a lot of time discussing this with artists and musicians because criticism is painful. When you are sharing personal art. And that is that is one of the most painful things to write a personal song and read the youtube comments. But she is ugly. This is a Big Conversation right now between me and the artists. A used to be that you would just not read your reviews. That is pretty easy. Now if you are engaging with their fans, your ability to go back and forth is directly polluted by people saying negative things that you come in can be very painful and i see. One thing about twitter is unlike youtube, it remains a generally positive place. Those throwing out negativity look like assholes and it is easy to call those people out and say youre not welcome here. Unless you are a troll. That is your goal. It is difficult to be a trial on twitter. I know a few. What i would hope and you just spoke to this, the internet will move towards a more twitterlike atmosphere in which people are accountable for what they say at the dinner table as at the dinner table. You have an identity and our reputation, the way you the way you present is important. My hope is this is true and it is a pain in the ass now. Personality on the internet will demolish the patrol. We have one question. We know that social media plays a big role. Do we need to change the title of social media . [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] do you have a suggestion . Revolution. Political media . I do not know. Do think that social media or are we going to call it it will play a bigger role. In peace in the world. And tolerance between cultures. Theres hope for do you see hope for peace in the world . [inaudible] or education or journalism because theyre a bunch of dolts. I do not believe that. They can be used for bad. It is not media. It is not a mediator. It connects us. Maybe it is a social connector. Very important to say they were not done by tools, there were done by a brave people with vision. All they have is a few new tools. If i were able to produce a ukulele, would you be willing to place a song . Play us a song . And a microphone. Thank you. I love your question and i love your answer. I want to go on record saying i have never seen more positive change than hanging out on twitter for the last few years. It is extraordinary what is happening and especially looking at young people and what theyre being exposed to. And how theyre connecting, you know, it is amazing. And i have never called it [inaudible] media. Is someone elses job. We just use it. This is a song for you. I am not ukulele player. I am a piano player. You will understand why. Sid vicious played a four string bass guitar and could not sing foreryone hated him except the ones who loved him. He did smack and probably killed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen he would have been happy. Maybe he would not have suffered such a sad end. He may be would have sat around just singing nine songs to his girlfriend to play your favorite cover songs especially of the words are wrong even if your grades are bad it does not mean that you are failing bring your etch a sketch to work and play area clearly your ukelele it is painfully simple, play your ukelele badly ukelele save the people Lizzie Borden took an axe and give her mother 40 whacks ukulele save the people ukulele gleaming gold and from the top of every steeple gave her mother 40 waxn if only they had given her an instrument those puritans would love the plot see what happens when you muzzle a persons creativity and do not let them sing in stream and now its worse because with the automatic hand guns it takes an hour for someone to play the ukulele to teach someone to bailed standard type of you do the math so play your favorite cover song especially if the words are wrong because even if your grades are bad doesnt mean youre failing do your homework with a fork and eat your fruit loops in the dark and bring your flask of jacques to work and play your ukulele ukulele sing of wonder ukulele one of thunder you can play the ukulele too in london and down under play and sing and play jack brow and eminem and tell the children crush the hatred play your ukulele naked if anybody tries to steal your ukulele let them take it imagine theres no music imagine there are no songs imagine that john lennon wasnt shot from his apartment now imagine if john lennon had composed imagine for the ukulele maybe people would have truly got the message you may think my approach is simple minded and naive like if you wanted to change the world then why not quit and feed the hungry the people for melin yeah had made music to survive and thats why i promised john that i will not feel guilty to play your favorite beatles song and maybe the subway long there are only 1995 that isnt lots of money play it until the sun comes up and play until your fingers suffer play a sound system on your ukulele chrisas on your blog and stop pretending art is hard do not practice daily youll minimize some stranger sadness with a piece of word and plastic holy socket so fantastic playing ukulele eat your homework with a fork an do your froot loops in the dark and bring your ethc a sketch vibrator your mom and dad your disco stick your sound track to karate kid your rosary your black c. D. Your new glass high your phone your breakfast tea your Ice Cream Truck your missing wife your will to live your urge to cry the number when were all going to die so play your ukulele [cheers and applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] a look here inside the capital where Vice President joe biden emerged from harry reids office within the past half hour. And he could be heard heading into further meeting with senate democrats. He was speaking to some of the reporters outside the ohio clock wishing the reporter as happy new year as he headed into those meetings with democrats. According to the Associated Press the white house have reached an agreement on the fiscal cliff. The Vice President has been meeting with senate leaders. Postponing the sequester spending cuts. The senate could be later on throughout the evening. Were keeping an eye on the senate floor possibly into the new year. The house is out until tomorrow at 12 00 noon. Next a look at social and political movements. Topics include the occupy wall street protest. And well also hear from the founder of the burning man festival. Its part of the world in 2013 festival hosted by the economist. [applause] after the current popularity of lincoln that in 2013 William Harry harrison will enjoy a huge vote. [laughter] actually, its not my prediction. Its my happy to in 2013 well findly learn to lessen the debt session that were meyered in, begin to think of a time not in these not according to our Attention Spans or not according to the Quarterly Report but in a measure that means something. But thats only my hope. I dont predict that will happen. I cant tell you. Thank you. [applause] and next id like to welcome to the stage d. J. Spooky also known as paul miller. Pauls the executive director of origin margzeen. Hes a composer, editor and author. His d. J. Mix has been downloaded more than 12 million times. And hes serving the first artist at the metropolitan museum of art. Paul . Its a real pleasure to share the stage with larry. Im a huge fan. So what im going to do is a little bit of nonlinear engagement after going after larry is going on after onken knit gailbrathe or something. What we saw in the last election is that one side of the political discourse the republicans they dont do the math. You know, so im predicting that mathematics is going to have to be internalized for republicans to ever have relevance ever again. So its kind of a situation where, you know, one of my favorite writers William Gibson has a great phrase where he says the futures already here. Its just unevenly dribt. Its 2013 for us next year. The mayans had another calendar. And dont forget even the emperor. Now, its the ninth montana. My prediction is that the world will become more nonlinear and we can enjoy it. There we go. [applause] so were here to talk about social movements. Is my mic on . Ok. Great. Were here to talk about social movements. The last four years theres been a flowering of social movements. 10 years ago maybe pre9 11 people were apathetic. They just wanted to enjoy their ainfluence. There wasnt any real force behind any special change. Weve seen two big ones. First we had the Tea Party Movement come out of the early years of the Obama Administration. Perhaps its a response to the crisis we had of course, occupy wall street. At the same time the Tea Party Movement is seen as maybe as an evading force on the right and occupys wall street one Year Anniversary just came and went quietly. I wonder what this can teach us about social movements Going Forward . First and foremost, i have to admit im a liberal with a capital l. I firmly believe in womens right and that most republicans are really annoying right now. So the problem with social movements and the good thing about places like moveon. Org or that avas. Org is that you can see these movements as catalyzers. There are certain manifestos and writing that they were citing as some of their key documents. The good news is that they seem to have overplayed their hand. Ann coulter was never fun to me. They are building more Cultural Capital now. Im hoping to see a lot more of the people who actually won the culture wars which is people who believe in human rights, womens choice, gay marriage, all these things that would make normal Tea Party People burst in flames. Great. You live on the other coast. You live in san francisco. Things were different. You had occupy oakland and you had a different feel. Whats your view on the last few years of social movement . Well, i think youre right. The occupy movement and the Tea Party Movement have and both have fizzled away. You know, i saw what happened in oakland with occupy. They well, you know, they they they occupys problem was that they understood consensus to a fall, they began the degradation of the democratic dogma and then you couldnt come up with a mature way to deal with with create discourse within their ranks. To do that you have to concede theres such a thing as hierarchy and its not necessarily patriarchal or evil. Its a massive gathering. We had this spontaneous order. You dont need a formal pecking order but you will out of a crowd get rules and get order. Burning man despite its size is said to be very well run. There are norms. There are practical laws on the crowd. Indeed, thats what we do. We i dont know if anybody wants to raise a hand. But you might want to tell them about it. Well, we build a temporary city in the desert. It has all the all the is everything any city normal city would provide. It lasts for eight days. Its known our event is known ive seen that were radical. It is kind of radical but radical in both senses of that term. Radical conventionally means, you know, pushing boundaries going beyond normal categories. But it it the thing about how its used it also means deeply rooted in the human soul. Its a very conservative meeting. Sorry. Things that go deep and dont change that are fixed. And we create a kind of city that goes to goes to those extremes at the same time. If you go two extremes at the same time it broadness your feel. You can comprehend a greater subject. So we have a this wailing provization taking place, ungoverned interactions, all of us unplanned. Just as nature is unplanned. But at the same time at the center of it you have a man at the center and the whole city is laid out as a temple complex. And combine those things at the same time this radical coherence and this radical freedom then you can create a meaning thats substantial. Do you want to jump in there . Yeah. We were talking about it earlier. I d. J. Ed some of the early men in the 1990s. We were talking about art backstage and the idea of Cultural Capital. I think considering were looking at the economics of culture, one of the most beautiful things about the festival is that i think if you look that idea spontaneous order, complexity theory, theres a lot of simple things that go into that, like creating a complexity from very simple rules. Remember you were calling it a city. Probably. Yeah. But you had some other great ideas about the way cities kind of function about networks. You want to talk about that for a second . Well, we have created institutions or rather they created themselves but we acted on those. One novel thing we did, of course, probably the most novel thing is we said there is no part in our event. What that did and then we said lets take ate step further make it more positive and say its a gift. Gifts are by their nature unconditional. Theyre not based on, you know, exchange. Theyre based on simply giving things without expectation of returns. In order,s, they have an unconditional value. Thats a term that the economist thats all an objective measure. But meaning in a society is interest objective. And its another creature all together. There are, in fact, many economists looking at the measure of happiness and seing what they can measure. You may not know that much about buton but france were measuring things about productivity. Theres all this Research Going on, yes. And then you have a man like daniel pic pink you need better results from employees. Instead of trying to pay them higher salaries. You face him with three things, salary and purpose. Thats called meaning. And we set up a city entirely for that purpose. But, i mean, theres a really interested writer named louis hyde who inspires my work a lot. Im very interested in this idea of the gift economy in general. When i was coming up as an artist i would give away d. J. Mixes. Everything on our stage is free if you want to take our shoes, feel free. The fun part about d. J. Culture is that its about the interplay of memory and who owns memory . This is something that i think as we move forward in the 21st century intangible goods are going to people are going to figure out its very difficult to quantify these things but. Its actually looking at the ancient models. Ive been spending a lot of time in a group of islands next to the polynesia. They are rated as one of the happiest place on earth. But their economy is 90 unemployment. But unemployment in the South Pacific island isnt, you know so you know, theres different kinds of gifts as well. Lets take some questions now from the audience. Put your hand up nice and clear where i can see it because these stage lights can blind you. If you dont have a question, i promise ill come up with one. Theres a gentleman right here. Wait for the microand everybody in the back can here you wait for the mic and everybody in the back can hear you. I have a question for larry now that you see that burning man is becoming a major cultural entity. Whats your future for burning man . Well, i think i think where burning man is today it started on the beach with about four people, right . I think where it is today in relation to the future as that beach man took burning man today which is to say were ambitious. And we have reason to be because we attract people from all over the world and at the same time people have fanned out from the event and started entities all over the world. We have entities on every continent. So now we want to do various things. We want to we know the surest thing that tran mist our values of our culture are these experiences. So we want to multiply it 10 fold and 100 until they grid the globe and listen our folks are starting to do that anyway. Were just going to help them to do it faster because we can be consultants to them and at the same time were going to build our capacity and then it will be interesting after that because people will go out and they will absorb this is the kind of cull churl Cultural Technology and they have a myriad of ways to apply it. They will collaborate at burning man itself. Then they will come back to us an then well just well just help them to tend to that garden. And then it will organize itself in ways that we cant imagine. Well be humbled before. Really what were trying to do is engineer a World Movement at the grass roots at the same time m theres a gentleman with a question here. If i can you to keep it brief so we can maybe take another one. All right. You mentioned that some of these movements like occupy wall street have fizzled out. The biggest crisis, i think were facing in humanity is Climate Change. What do you think social movements can do to turn this around and make both corporations and governments really take action . Paul, i think thats yours . Yeah, ive been working with 350. Org and bill whos a very compelling advocate. He just did a tour called dom the math. Its very easy to remember. But the whole idea is that i think these kind of cultural initiatives help reframe the debate as weve seen with the last election, with the discussion wasnt about the numbers at all. It was about the emotional logic. And with sandy you cant warg the storm. You know . The storm will come an it will mash your house. Even if even if youre ann coulter, it will smash your house. Im sorry. So we have to really understand that this is more of about internalizing science and making the science become a part of the cultural vocabulary. The thing about this huge crowd of misinformation is that essentially people are very naive and the arts can help make and catalyze more of an emotional discussion because the flurms already speak. Weve had record level droughts. Weve had record level fire storms. Of course now storms. Colorado, texas, the list goes on of places that have been hammered. And you know, you have to be an absolute fool or somebody like george fwoush not process that. But you still its increbled. People you still have to point out. Your house is on fire. And theyre like really . You know, anyway, thats my take on it as a downtown d. J. Lets try get one short question from the gentleman. I promise. This will be the last question and the last answer on the left. Thank you. So part of what you said about the giftgiving economy, david greber wrote a book on gifted economy and he wrote another book which touches on the certain things that came up with occupy oakland and we saw with the tea party or occupy that it moved from an active to a very reactive standpoint which social movements around the world and in the coming year. Do you see it maybe you can speak it to do you see it more going towards reaction and then fizzling out . Or do you see this accelerating, the move from creative to reactive force . Well, everythings a reaction to something, right . We all came from some stream before us. Yeah, you want to do that and ill maybe well, ill go back to be what i said at the podium. I for one, of course, im a member of whats called the creative class. Id like this recession that were in. I really like it because its forcing people to think in longer terms. Where as during boom as a resident of san francisco, i know all about boom. And people cant think beyond the next quarter. They cant think beyond the next day. Well, they cant think. And its guaranteed that very little creative thinking will happen. They just want more versions of what they know to make more money. It narrows the range of your minus the way fear does actually. And so, yeah, i hope it continues for a while. Because if we if we cant think beyond the next year or the next quarter or the next month, you wont do anything about Global Warming. Were living in a world where in which everything about our life is unsustainable. I mean, ask yourself do a onesided experiment. What if everybody in china had a car and a Swimming Pool . Well, thats unsustainable. Its all unsustainable folks. And the reason we cant make any political progress is that the situation at the debt situation they said save your money and consume more at the same time. Amazing. So weve got to get beyond an economy thats predicated on unlimited increasing amounts of consumption with no end in sight because the end is in sight. So maybe if we have to cope with rude reality for a while longer we get a little more intelligent. On that note, i know we have to wrap up. But one of the thanges really intrigues me where this kind of situations is that ideas are very scarce resource. And we have to start thinking about maximizing and amplifying ideas. I think that is so incredible because the idea of possibility is so, i think, important to celebrate. When i say possibility if people say you cant do that and you cant do this and you cant think that, you know, its people like, you know, theres a whole simiology in words. If you cant describe it, i think youre at the end of your vocabulary. Above all, the fact that youre right, i mean, its if we dont do it, the planet will do it for us, ill leave it at that. I can imagine the near future where theres a tremendous am of upheaval. The u. S. Military considers weather as a weapon that point. Ill leave it at that as well. Theres a lot of intense stuff el nino, el nina. I went to antarctica. It looked like a nuclear bomb fell on it. Huge chunks of ice but you dont hear that in the news. Its been a real pleasure. I know was have to wrap up. Paul, larry, on that note thank you very much. Oh [applause] and back to capitol hill tonight. Reporters waiting in the area known as the ohio clock. You can see the clock just on the right of your screen. Democrats currenting meeting with Vice President joe bide inon the fiscal cliff which the president and the republicans would agree to. It would include a return to clinton era tax rates for people make mrg than 450. That rate would go to 39. 6 . The agreement also includes a postponement of the sequester spending cuts. How long that is, the postponement were not quite sure that point as details trickle out from these meetings and from the reporters as lawmakers decide how to deal with these issues, well continue to have more live updates here on the cspan networks. Next, a discussion on innovation and technology that could impact the health care industry. We go back to the world in 2013 festival. Its hosted by the economist. And this is 30 minutes. Thank you. I have the pleasure of talking about health care in 2013. 2013 is going to be a big year for health care. Theres an enormous amount of Exciting Research both in mobile health and in personalized medicine. At the same time the Affordable Care act is continuing its torturous imply mentation as 2014 the big year when medicaid will be expanded, when people will be required to get insurance and this continuing question of how you expand access to health care, how you improve health care, how you lower cost is going to heat up in the next year if thats even possible given the tenor of the debate in the last few years. But to discuss these issues we have ester dyson the chairman of adventure holdings. She also has trained as an astronaut and it turns out going space is much, much easier than health reform. So please welcome ester. [applause] good morning. Lets oh, yeah. So im going to talk very briefly, make predictions for three markets concerning health. They are the markets for health care which youre all familiar with, the market for bad health which youre also familiar with maybe not urn that name and final will the market for health itself. So the Health Care Market is what you think of drugs, karma, doctors, hospitals. In the u. S. Weve got in close health reform. Things are changing and things are slowly turning towards keeping people healthy rather than treating them when theyre sick. Drug companies are going to continue to whine because they cant make new drugs. The Insurance Companies are going to whine because they have to treat people that are sick as opposed to get healthy ones that they pick. But theyre going to figure out to some extent how to align their insenities with that. The government is going to not pay so that Companies Like health luke are helping institutions to change their processes to improve that kind of thing. And that will continue, i think overall its pretty good. But dont expect any dramatic changes. The market for bad Health Companies are beginning to understand that they need to promote healthy food. So theyre going to put new additives into the same old bad food. So now you have like fruit with yogurt. Or you have candy with fiber. Its really, really hard because theres a huge market for bad food. It includes not just the bad food itself but advertising. Everyone around you is eating stuff thats full of sugar and salt and it tays really great. So that will continue as well. The third market, were seeing some exciting and dramatic changes based on two fundamental things that have been moving along for a while. They are coming together and youre going to see announcements even over the next two days as well as in 2013. Its first of all the rice of user generated data, whether its things like my nike fuel or my fifth bit, all kinds of iphone apps. Your Blood Pressure. The big holy grail which may or may not get closer to being realized in 2013 is a noninvasive monitor for internal marks like blood sugar or other chemical components in your blood. Theres a big excitement about the bacteria in your gut. People are going to start collecting that stuff on themselves, sharing it, posting it, etc. And so the second half of whats making this all happen is online networks. You heard about social media. It will be used in two ways. One, people will encourage other people to engage in how they behave. Avoid the products of the second market, i mentioned or at least keep an eye on moderation. Were going to be generating a whole lot of data which amounts to Clinical Trials out in the open after drugs were released or maybe things that arent Cost Effective because nobodys excited about selling them like oat bran or, yeah, the number of glasses of water you drink or sleeping more. Were going to generate data that will allow us to quantify the effects of our behavior on our health. Thank you. [applause] thank you. I think your last point is var good segway for our next speaker, depan yell craft whos the deck execity director at future meds. Dan cell craft whos the director at future meds. Please welcome daniel. So its a fastmoving world and i think the tpwhorled 2013 needs shift. I need the first slide up, please from where its been currently. I was at Massachusetts General Hospital where i did my residency in the 1990s. Its defined as old bucks. You think the opportunity in 2013 is to stop unfollowing hale care in terms of analogy. Part of that big shift, i think the incentives to practice reimbursement basement. So technology is helping us to watch that. A lot of thats been enabled through a lot of really, really fast moving technologies. Were sort of at an exponential rate. Theres theyre coming together and helping a variety of folks reinvent health care. Weve drop the price and geno is the third. There were a few thousands in 2013. There will be 10s of how sands of children in that. Its not just sequencing. Its our podium the fact that you can drop something in the mail and get get analyzation. Computation is getting faster. One prediction would be that were going change old procedures an start doing those quick c. T. Scans for example a 30 second, sen us there. And personalize the therapy or not. What kind stint. Those are verbs of is going to come together in powerful new ways including it might replace ultrasounds with quick m. R. I. That you can access from your mobile laptop. Obviously the phone has been a dramatic change in its evolution. Its been very impactful in hale care. Now, just in the last few month there was a 35 android a prving p thing. This has huge implications. Were going to see these new dashboards on our pads, the fact that we came and get, a prick was describing apps. Were seeing the didgesation of data not just through our regular phones but increasingly the able to use them as a smart platform. Last week was this new iphone case that helped me do a real emple k. G. So thats an example. Thats one example of something moving to the phone. Its not just diagnostics. Its my baseless watch that can measure my heart rate and my motions. Scales of tweets have been out. Theyre getting small. Those are beginning to the brent we can have point of care diagnostics. Tell its going to move quickly in 2013. Finally, article intelligence will be where we common street. In hale care because we cant keep up. We need intelligence. Whats happening with our patients to the point where well have an an star for our bodies. Were starting to wear simple versions of those and those are getting more complex. Just last year there was a prize and now we have produce as the quarter today. 110 million person. Heres an early propo type that was just released not Just Announced the day. I can put this try quarter device on my forehead and get streaming data to our smartphone. Heart rate. Temperature rate. Speaking to my phone ander eventually to my clinician. These will be selling on 2014. Last couple of examples will be connected health, leveraging on behavior. So what will look like i downloaded an app, this is me if i gained 50 pounds. So im unleveraged, right . All in reality were going to start to enter health care. Robotics will enable the paralyzed to walk to allow the truly disabled. They will allow us to control their environment and treat hdhd. No more riddling of course. Another prediction that the stem cell role is going to emerge from 3d printing. Its been covered by the economists. Well see more of that with more complex organs. I Teach University and. Were reinventing other elements. Were bringing you people into health care who traditional may not havent been in hale care. Thats whats really powerful. Theres no new programs like deserveers. So in 2013, were going see Design Thinking just like in the world of aviation. And i had been a pilot in the last decade. For example are you familiar with the checklist. In aviation theyre being put in the operating room. Were starting to see the application in our dwash word. So all this data, sim plation. Its simulation. You see how we increase and change health care. The data is now classified. Well have that for our own health care type g. P. S. Coaches. We want just the right amount of information, not too much information. Well be overhemmed. And one things we were going to work on is google glass. I can see my patience in different ways. You can utilize the data. Thats going to be a larly different. Youre trying to lose weight and eat prack fast in a new form as eat breakfast in a new world as well. If we can see for example our cars and we drive ourself driving apps will enable us to use it. Understand where the roadblocks are. Thats the opportunity. For example the influenza. Leverages your social network again to know who not to shake hands with that day based on whats integraded. Dashboards are coming into our health care. And were going move starting to move starting with these new tos to one thats continuous and proactive. Well pick things up earlier. I think thats fr example my world well enter this were starting to be every one is secret, for example. And i think it will help us revent health care in 2013 because in many ways the futures already here just not evenly distributed. So thanks a lot. [applause] thank you. Thank you for that presentation. Its a really exciting vision that you paint for 2013. The reality is often somewhat different. Its not as fast moving fsm you look at Labor Productivity has increased by almost two points, percentage point as year. And health care continues to climb by about. 6 each year. Theres data showing that Electronic Health records actually in many cases costs lower productivity. Theres a gap between the vision and the reality. What is keeping some of the ideas that both of you described from taking hold of the Health Care Sector in a bigger way . I will answer that but i first want to argue a little bit about the productivity in terms of were not measuring productivity the right way. And thats part of the problem. Imagine were measuring well, how many cat scans did you do versus how many lives did you improve . That sounds very erie ferry but thats the problem. Were counting the wrong stuff thats what in part obama care, Accountable Care all these other things are trying to change. Labor productivity yes, ok. But Labor Productivity and output of a cat scan 20 versus yeah, if you made the cat scan cost more you would increase the productivity. And so its just its its obvious were measuring the wrong things. Were starting to change that, number one. Number two, were measuring them were measuring them too closely. In other words were looking for instant gratification. And what you spend now on a Home Health Care aid who looks very unproductive. She makes 12 an hour. She goes and visits old people. She doesnt seem to do much. But those old people are happier. They live longer and happier. But they dont go into the hospital next year. So those things dont get counted. Thats theres a huge amount of productivity to be gained not like paying doctors more but by bringing in more low paid people who will make the people they serve healthier. We have a massive primary care doctor shortage. We can give the Nurse Practitioner and give them the experience. By the next year the overall hospital mortality rate went down by 30 . The new medical students for example at stamford get a new ipad. Theyre going to be practicing medicine differently. But they want the old fashion clinical trial. They want to show that it works. Sometimes things work so quickly you cant do the oldfashioned Clinical Trials. Patients like me type Online Patient engaged trials in realtime. So some of the incentives are starting to shift for Value Base Care high as aically any shan can describe you and an app in a Blood Pressure app. And by Companies Like medicare are starting to recognize that. A big piece of this is both you using technology to change work flow on the provider side, doctors and nurses operating in a more efficient way. You pull out all these gadgets, start thinking about your blazer with the mary poppins bag continue to have more out of each pocket. But its a very specific type of consumer is going invest in all these and be interested in using them or not. How applicable is this era of quantity fide self complete Health Measurement for a broader side of consumers . Let me take that on with two stories, one is yes, daniel and i are both kind of weird. Were part of the quantity fide self movement. And we go out and we get a lot of free bees but we also occasionally pay for stuff. More and more people so much nicer. Now we can spring control. Youll have these leading edge people who do this. And were going to start to generate some data. Its clear. Were motivated. Were techies, all this. Employers are going to start saying, you know, we give people free coffee. We z our lunches. I dont know. We have daycare. We have a basketball court. Why dont we try this . Maybe our tools will make our employees healthier. Employers they actually benefit from you being healthy. Its not simply avoiding the cost of illhealth but the benefit of happy workers who show up and theyre going to have teams that play baseball. With luck theyre going to generate data that shows this stuff works. It actually is in their interest and social norms will change. Second is ra mada health. Its a combination of online and human. Its counseling for free diabetics. One counselor can tend 10 groups of 10 people. The really cool thing is a lot of the people not only lose weight but they want to become counselors. So were solving unemployment as well as diabetes. I thinkest theyre mentioned the quantity fide health movement. These are Consumer Devices for tracking heart rate and motion. But soon a cardiology will describe one. It will be incentivized because they might have Lower Health Insurance premiums and it knows that you checked into the gym versus mcdonalds. It can start to enable the patientdoctor relationship. You wont want to see the doctor. If i can see them i can have a followup vs. Taking a half day out of work. One last question before we take questions from the audience. The question of who knows this data is become increasingly important as we talk about tidbits that you can buy at your corner store but also implanted devices that have a more complex stream of information about your health conditions. How do you see that debate evolving . Who should have that data . Why dont patients have it now in i think you as an individual should own your own data and hopefully in some cases decide to share it, hopefully safely. My friend hugo campos has an implantable defill bri lay tor but the company defibrillator but the company wont give it to him. We can start to mine some of this health data. And i think with hipa and all the other challenges, if we incentive vise the systems hopely with can find that with your own connectivity. You can decide do you want to donate it to science. Just in passing, there was a congressman talking about genetics data which in some states and certainly in many countries, individuals can get access to. This guy said women are finding this data and theyre taking out their own ovaries which is completely ridiculous. But the point is theres still a pa personalism both in the medical profession and in the congress that thinks we cant handle this stuff. Questions from the audience . Hi, i have a question. This sounds all new and cool. But if we dont have essential Health Benefits covering hearing aids and we have a popthrations aging and living longer, whats the reality of actually covering any of this . And do you have any information on how to get hearing aids covered. Great question. Who pays . I dont know the details about hearing aids. But everything were talking about is actually going to cost less and bring more health in the long run so that question afford hearing aids for everybody. I know that sounds like a Congress Person speaking. [indiscernible] let us come talk to them for you seriously because yeah. With hearing aids theyll be much heathier. Even though theres a longterm fading but theres a short cost. Do you have any ideas on how to reduce it . There are thousands of apps but Companies Like aetna are buying them and putting them together. You can stay on top. And theyre recognizing tools that are getting cheaper. Hearing aids, even for vision its coming. The trick is who pays for it . But hopefully some of these technologies are getting cheaper like these cheap tablets that can augustment the sorts of rising costs. Further questions . Theres one. Ok. Im in emergency medicine. And i do agree with miss dyson that i think the wrong factors are being measured right now. Because what i see where were measuring like c. T. Use for practitioners and grading them and so forth, ive seen children get missed for vascular tumors in their head. Ive also seen medicare, multiple sclerosis patients in tears because theyre admitted in 30 days and the new obama care doesnt allow readmissions in 30 days. What isnt measured and the redundancy that people dont see most of the time is that when i take a patient from an outside practitioner for an admission to the hospital, theyve already decided that the patient will be admit. They send them through the emergency room to be admitted again through the hospital. That costs extra money. And the other redundancy that occurs, they dont send them in with their studies that theyve already done so what is the question . Well, what im saying is, i think that we arent measuring the right factors and i do think that were going to have to look at other factors in the future to measure that are in medicine. There are equivalency. You are familiar with yelp for restaurants. Youre going to what the surgeons outcome. Theyre going to start getting dinged for that or rewarded for keeping their patients with good glucose or Blood Pressure. Theyre all very different. And different incentives happen there. My prediction for 2013 is were going o have to get better at statistics so we can understand the results of a doctor who gets lots of sick patients and the change he made in their health vs. Someone who got healthy patients and made them worse. Last question . Yeah. The patient owns the data. That sounds like a very interesting metta physics. But its not really practical. When the state department loses hundreds of thousands of classified secrets, to think that the patient can protect his data is a fantasy. He cant protect it but he owns it. So at least weve got this principle. The world is imperfect and the realities i leave a piece of hair behind and somebody can get my genetic profile. But the fundamental just like what william was saying about democracy, the basic principle we own it, we should be able to control it. Obviously we want it used wisely and the worlds imperfect. And what happens now and were all sequenced at work what happens when my pacemaker gets hack, go to your a. T. M. Im turning off your pacemaker. You just need to be mindful as we go. So we have visions of hope and disaster for 2013. Thank you to both of our panelists for sticking with us. Thank you. [applause] back on capitol hill tonight, reporters just having surrounded Ohio Democratic senator shr rod brown still Milling Around here as other democrats emerged from a 90minute meeting with vermont president Vice President biden they would include to the clinton era tax rates for families making more than 450,000. That rate would go from 35 to 39 . It would go into effect in just another hour and a yearlong extension of unemployment benefits. As the reporters surround the lawmakers, i can read you some of their tweets coming from the capital. Senator schumer being quoted as saying Vice President biden was very persuasive but didnt need to do much convincing. Senator Sherrod Brown democrat of ohio one of the most liberal senators in the body says hes vote for the deal. Another one from mark knoller saying that democratser energying from the caw discuss heading to the senate floor and schumer said a vote for it is hoped by midnight. Well take a look as the reporters talk on the floor. Weve got debbie stebenou in the middle of reporters here. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] Barbara Boxer surrounded by reporters. Just taking a look here and seeing if there is word coming from the capital after that meeting. Moving on now, we turn to a discussion on the global food supply and the environment. We continue to bring you updates from the capital. In the meantime, dan barber. Food in 2013. Food has become increasingly a contentious topic. People are thinking and fighting about these questions of how to properly feed the world. In some places, people do not get enough food. In other places, people get way too much or they get the rhine wrong kind. There are a lot of different points of view on how to tackle this problem. Please welcome dan barber. [applause] the economist has published articles about how to feed the world, a population that is expected to grow to 9 billion in 2015. Though i love the magazine and a love of writing, and i generally respect them, when it comes to this issue, it has pretty much got it wrong. They did not know i would say that when they invited me. [laughter] we have come to this real Inflection Point in agriculture. Much of my favorite writers wrote a book and i think he got it right. He generally said 25,000 years ago, when we were hunter gatherers, we had the most efficient food system we have ever had. He said we would get 20 kilocalories of food for every kilocalorie. To the beginning of agriculture 10,000 years ago, we did not do quite as well. For 10 kilocalories of food, we expended one kilocalorie. Fast forward again to the discovery of petroleum and fossil foods. He argues this is the least efficient food system we have ever known, because for every kilocalorie of food, we expend 10. We went from 20 to one. It is predicted this will be a short time. 500 years. Biologically speaking. There is a real choice right now to be made. It is one of the most important choices today for our future. The answer is continue down this road of industrialization, improved technology, maximize yields, put the pedal to the metal. Here is my problem. What powers all of that technology is free Ecological Services. There are a lot of them. I will be reductive and say there are 3 milliomain ones. A very predictable climate. Faw we do not have the time to go into cheap fossil fuels and abundant water. This idea we will have a stable weather pattern for sure, we entered out of the era when we had one of the more stable and predictable weather patterns in the last 500 years. That was a blessing. That is what powered in part of the green revolution. If these free Ecological Services will not be available, one could still argue we will get to feed the 90 Million People even though we do not do it today. Maybe we figure out with this technology, now what we are the saudi arabia of petroleum production, maybe we hit that goal. What happens in 2051 . A truly sustainable idea for the future. Can our ecological sources support that for the future . My prediction is we are entering into an era of a vastly different food system. I believe it will be more regional and more local. I believe we will have to change our diet. We will be forced to before we are convinced it is the best thing to do. The seventh ounce steakcentered on our plate is not going to be feasible, ecologically or financially. To end, i will say i am accused of being a negative guy. My wife says i am always looking for the hole in the doughnut [laughter] my good news prediction is i think future food will be above it. It will demand we eat very differently. I also believe because of that, it will be instantly delicious. Thank you. [applause] nice to meet you. My husband accuses me of being too skeptical. I will play the skeptic. [laughter] i hear what you are saying. I will defend the economist position. The idea that there is a role for local food, agreed. The idea of organic food would sustain, i am skeptical. Not t see how you ca think of technology. What would be your answer . Part of the answer is what i said. I think we will be forced into a position where we will go more locally and regionally and organically. That has nothing to do with the demand for people like me looking for better food and more nutritious food. I think we will be forced into it because of the cost of producing industrialized food. By argument for organic and local is to say when we are forced, if you are a farmer, you are opting out of a monocle system. That goes without saying. You need fertility for the soil. If you do not get it chemically, you have to get it through rotation. You have to plan things other than corn and soy. Things will become more diverse. When the diversity increases, the attraction to processing food cheaply becomes less. The price will increase. There will be a diversity of food that will give an advantage to non industrialized food. I do believe we are entering into an era where we should and could have available to us an enormous distinction verses the offerings of today. If we are being forced out of an industrialized food chain, it seems to me we will be lovingly caressed into a more a food system that requires us to cook a little bit more. If they are not easily industrializing food, i believe once we called for ourselves more, we will eat more helpfully. Healthfully. If we look at the problem of obesity, which i know it is something you are interested we are missing the forest. The food system is broken. Obesity is one huge issue, but only one. The resiliency of our ecological structure is broken. I think writers like you will help us get there. But also, the economy. You are describing a few trends that need to be separated. The types of food people are buying from the grocers for, the lack of fruits and vegetables people are buying, and the importance of cooking, but i think we will agree on those issues. The question is whether production comes from local farming. I do not know why it would necessarily. Additionally, the question of being forced away from investor of agriculture, there is not evidence industrial agriculture, there is not evidence. It is not clear to me mobilization will solve what you are describing. Very specific inputs are convincing in one sense, but if you look at the life cycle of a plant, and the price of these free Ecological Services, all of the sudden, the industrialized food system becomes less appealing. When a barrel of oil is 100, the system is not bill for that. You saw ramifications throughout the industrialized all of the of the things we are talking about that are bad for the food systems. They become a lot less attractive from an economic and what critics standpoint. Economic standpoint. Fossil fuels is an issue that, for years ago, we were not talking about. We are talking about half efficiencies from a local point of view that look disastrous from a comparative standpoint. When you take the free Ecological Services, you measure them against the true cost of producing the industrialized food. There are reforms that need to the way farming is done by. I think those can be dealt with by limiting the use of nitrogen and phosphorus, but that does not mean you do away with the whole system. That is true. You could cut down on the amount of fertilizers you are using. Some studies have shown it is 80 of what is leaking out of the gulf of mexico. One easy solution is increase the diversity. The issue is you need to have a market for it. Farmers are not opposed to it. They are doing it because it is the only thing that will be bought. If you create a demand, and i think chefs have a huge role in it, the culture is so closely tied to creating that demand, the price is going to force that. The Ecological Services are making the cheap suit cheap food so cheap. One last point, it seems to me we are having in the original conversation here. In 2008, there were food riots all over the place. I just do not see a future where, in africa, you are not looking at nutrients. Genetic modification. There are people who are starving and are nutrient deficient. To give those people the single bullet prescriptions for Better Health and better nutrition is incredibly intoxicating. I do not buy it because the very people who are owning that modification. This is another subject. That is a moral argument. My argument for all of us here today is that we are going to be forced into very different agricultural paradigms. I know it is coming at some point. We need to look at a cultural shift. Questions. Ke i was wondering if mobile technology will have a role in producing efficient distribution. I am glad you asked. One of the least sexy subjects when you talk about food is distribution. It is so cheap to produce. The real cost of bringing something to bear on the market is through the distribution chain. It is not through the yield breaker. I see that 35 miles from where we are sitting. Our yield breaker is enormous. We are not producing corn and soy season after season, month after month. We are producing an enormous diversity. That is where the calculation is so wrong. We do not talk about how enormously complex and expensive it is. Technology could help on that. I am not an expert. Anything that could help decrease the cost of distributing local food would go a long way to convincing people the economy is not quite as exciting as one proposes for industrialized agriculture. We are out of time. We have launched next. Lunch next. There is a list of restaurants where you can get a discount. Some food will be locally sourced, and some will be genetically modified. [laughter] barber for joining us. [applause] democrats emerge from my 90 minute meeting. Fewer than 20 democrats will vote no on the fiscal bill they have been working on. Another clique another tweet writes about the farm bill. A statement was issued that the house will honor its commitment to consider the Senate Agreement if it is passed. A decision will not be made until house members and the American People have been able to review the legislation. Included in that legislation, a tax increase on families making more than 450,000. And individuals making more than 400,000. An increase in the state tax and Capital Gains and dividend tax. I will show you more that we the show you more now from th economist world in 2013 festival. This is 30 minutes. Our next session is on energy in 2013. We have three panelists. [applause] good to see everyone here. Thank you for having us. Where is Energy Demand going . I will use part of my time to do that. This is a story that is probably familiar to everyone in the room. The population from 7 billion today to 9 billion in the middle of the century, potentially doubling Energy Demand. I will tell you the one phrase that caught me. That kind of growth is the equivalent of creating a new city of 1 Million People every week for the next 30 years. When you think about the Energy Consumed by a city of 1 Million People, imagine that. The question becomes, how will we supply that level of Energy Demand around the world . The prediction of where energy is going is an enormous increase. We worked into a lot of interaction with other companies around the intersection between food, water, and energy. These are very connected. Trying to sort out how these connected elements have a positive impact over the coming decades. A couple other quick points. You can look at what is happening in north america. You can call it an energy revolution. I use the word revolution intently. It has an amazing impact. It is changing the dynamic. Has impacts on geopolitics, the choices companies are making, and the choices the countries are making. If you brought in from north america, one of the Big Questions is, will that revolution we have seen in north america be replicated in other parts of the world . One of the first Big Questions is around china. China is exploring. We are helping them explore. That has enormous impact on where the world goes. I will cycle back down to grenobles. This is setting up for a conversation here. Everything you will hear me say does fit into the hall of the above energy strategy. We think that is what we need. If things go very well, grenobles could supply 30 of the worlds Energy Demand by the end of the century. I will stop there. [applause] a quick follow up on that. The 30 , it is an Enormous Growth rate. Which renewals do you see in particular having that sort of potential . Wind, solar . You double Energy Demand in the world. It takes everything. Wind is part of that. Maybe solar. There is optimism. Hydrogen may be on the table. All of these are imported. They all need Additional Technology applied to them. Our focus right now, when it comes to the idea of why we would push renewable, our focus is around storage and biofuels, particular types. And we have a wind business. It is not growing very fast. I hope we will come back to this. Lets move on to our next prediction. Thank you. [applause] in 2013, i predict this country will finally begin a long over the long overdue conversation about Climate Change. M put in place the commonsense rules. Half Hurricane Sandy was not caused by Climate Change but it was made worse by it. The surge in new york was higher because the oceans are higher. The winds were speedier because the oceans are warmer. We have got to attack power plants and reduce the Carbon Pollution from them. It not only causes Climate Change, but also asthma and cancer. We also have to attack fossil fuel subsidies. But we have got to level the Playing Field so clean energy has a chance to complete compete. We must finally modernize our electric grid, which is incredibly antiquated. We saw a few places were able to become islands of power and keep their lights on while other places had to evacuate patients. There are more antiquated policies we need to change. If you have solar panels on your house, not only should you be able to food to feed them in the great, but you should be able to use them to keep the lights on. All sorts of Power Production should be facilitated by the rules in all of our states. This will be the year when we begin to get the policies in place to do that. [applause] you mentioned sandy a couple of times. What sort of impact does an event like that have on your members and the interest and the engagement in the sorts of issues you are involved in . I do not think i can overstate how much it galvanizes people. I think people saw an opening to talk about these rigid this issue that was swept under the rug by politicians and others. Neither the president or romney talked about Climate Change during the election. People began to talk about the issue. Mayor bloomberg endorses the president in part on Climate Change. The storm, the prolonged drought affecting our nations crops, they do not change everything. We have not won the battle. They do open up a conversation from which we can begin to make the changes we desperately need to make. We will come back to issues around that. Lets hear the last set of predictions from the governor, who was the head of epa under george w. Bush. Also, the 50th governor of the state of new jersey. He has more powers in the state than any other government. It is a very important position. [applause] thank you. Making predictions about 2013 is a dicey proposition. The chances of getting anything right are getting more difficult. I will say that you have a department of energy calling for a 22 in trees. In power demand. That is yesterday. Making sure there are decisions. What do i see for the future . Were going to see an increased discussion on Climate Change. It will be driven by the private sector. The state and local governments have been the laboratories of democracy. You will see projects and new regulatory schemes coming through from the state and local level. Look at what gov. Christie is going to have to face. Were going to have to face in jersey on the shore. It will drive the ability to start reducing our emissions. That will get us to climb change. We have seen an unwillingness. What were going to look at this point to be a mix. It is an all of the above strategy. It is frustrating for many americans. If we do this one thing everything will be ok. There is no such one thing for industry. It has to be a part of an overall understanding of how climate that into that. It fits into our fiscal health. Youre going to see more emphasis on renewable. Youre gone to see more emphasis on nuclear power. They just issued their first. This is going to take and help us move along. You are going to locate those. If you are looking for based power, that is. Nuclear will be part of that discussion. We need to talk about this. Because of the pressure utilities will have their having to pay for Hurricane Sandy in the destruction. They will create the kind of climate that will allow congress to act. Those would be my projections. [applause] i would like to pick up on what he said about new jersey. New jersey not the 2013 i am sure you would be monitoring that very closely. What can the state do so sore line. So chris declined to be a huge line. It is our secondlargest industry. It is a longer the jersey shore. It will not be back where it was. My hope is this opportunity we can do in a sustainable way. Hi, the governor will control that, as it was. Did the governor have copy costs to plan . Between the two of them my hope is that we understand that why do we not cool those communities. We are not going to be able to build in the same way. Were not going to continue to rebuild. We will see more of these storms. We have enormous territory to cover. One place to start is the amazing revolution. It is through unconventional gas and oil. Hong the governor would have the Biggest Oil Producers of a saudi arabia in rusher. What are the implications of this d. C. Energy dependence by the united misstates in the very near future . Whether it is a right thing to do or whether they choose to move to self sufficiency is completely different. One of the things i would like to pretend that is in 2012 the u. S. Would actually develop a u. S. Policy. Some of this will develop this natural gas so and these unconventional things. A year relaxed about this whole a certain sum of the industry happening so fast. In the other part of the world there is the misgiving about this. Relax is not the word i would have chosen. Chris has become an extraordinarily contentious issue. One of the reasons it has been contentious is because theyre in packs. Too often up until now Many Companies have tonight there are any impacts. The communities see their water contaminated not necessarily buy tractors but by spills on the surface. They see their water getting contaminated. I visited in pennsylvania 30 minutes out of pittsburgh as part of president obama appointed seven of us to chart a safe path forward. I had a woman who said she was forced to abandon her family farm because of the Noxious Emissions from the neighboring wells. Her son in order to continue going to school was living with a neighbor. She was living out of her car. No one should be forced to trade their health for good energy. Were starting to see states began to put the rules and place to protect communities and protect public health. That is critical to the involvement in this issue. We are going to frak a lot of shale. We have got to get tough rules in place. The last thing i would say on this is that there is another issue that is very serious. That is the global issue of these fugitive emissions from the wells. We have over 3. 5 emissions that would be worse for the claimants. Shale and several other companies are joining with us to go out and measure what they are. I not only wanted thing shoving willing to cooperate and getting to the science. In colorado just repeatedly now shell has been there calling for stronger regulations of its own industry, agreeing with how to go forward in a way that really is notorious. I want to thank you for what theyre doing on this topic. [applause] e mentioned the mix of energy. Is there a danger that the extraordinary growth creates a sense of abundance and they no longer need to worry about renewable oils. It is certainly having an impact. It has slowed down. Theres Something Like 17 Nuclear Reactors being considered just to keep us at 20s term. That has backed off. The thing we have to worry about is putting all of our eggs in one basket. We have been here where natural gas was a very low cost. Then we saw the prices by. It is not where you want to over and guess. As we look at the issue of Climate Change we need to look at all of those other forms of power that can give us the ability that we would never be energy independent. We certainly are a lot less dependent on countries that do not like us. It will have an impact on our International Policy and what we do in the middle east. It is a grave concern. Right now because and natural gas is having an impact on the Decision Makers of where you put your money and how fast you develop. I think they have been on this path before to the degree they understand that it will be a mix. Most of them to invest in other forms of power. We will not have time. Not to disagree, it is a skeptic of resources and claims about how big they are. I think they are different than what we have seen ever before. If we do this the right way, it is a new world from what we have seen. I have been a bit biased toward this side of the room. Do you feel like the private sector to could respond well to record their focus on cleaner forms of energy production. Is this Something Like a carbon protection plan. What would that be like . There are others who are more directly involved within ibm. Clearly the utilities are going a demand and a need asking them to reduce their carbon footprint. Goodre seen this as a Marketing Tool and as a way to distinguish themselves from others. They can see that there will be some advantage to making these kinds of investments as they move forward. I think there is a very good sign. You will see more attention to those things. That is what theyre starting to look at. They have been influenced by the Climate Change we have been seen. Hi. I write about riskmanagement and insurance. Climate change is a really important topic. Due to the drought in big storms, it affects the ability to offer affordable coverage. We have been speaking to a lot of regulators who are growing that Climate Change is something we need to put at a national agenda. For an article i was speaking to the executive of a wind turbine manufacturing company. They had just lost half of their workforce. We really do need to think about switching to alton utilities in the state of the companys is not very strong. Do need to put the agenda for workforce are doing to develop Strong Energy companys first . From a private sector simply taking advantage of the opportunity right in front of us which is using mechanisms to dry a change in the energy mix. In my mind a delete there a cap and trade system. Even if it took some form as a carbon tax there are other ways to get there. You get the full weight of all of that drive and Investment Technology and so forth. It is more important than taking what feels like more of a one off. We have a little time in the back. Thank you. Shell is driving the push into the arctic. Can you talk about some of the environment lease sustainable things you are doing there . It is means you have to do the Development Part right. You have often been of service of how did you have to be conservative and how they use energy. The drive behind it is a belief that the world will need this resource. This is in the arctic. In such a short time that is all i can tell you. It is about the scrutiny about whether or not we are doing it the right way. I have been north of the Arctic Circle of a couple of times. It is a very fragile and precious place. We have to be extremely careful there. It does not break up as fast but it spills. I would also say those of us to think a lot about Climate Change is pretty easy to be depressed. It is pretty gloom and doomy. It is cutting on weight faster than the scientists who work for me of the woman. Capitalism accounts for this external costs. It is what is driving this. It is what the economists call externalities. Do you think we can have a carbon tax in america . I would like to see a price linked to a cap on carbon that guarantees that we have reductions. The trick is not what the prices. We have to get a system in place that mandates construction. When we tried capitalism only put this in place so that solar and wind power and geothermal have a level Playing Field watch what happens. It is implementing a carbon system. We are moving in more and more places to a place where we do more. The governor has called for where we use capitalism, get the incentives right. That makes me hopeful. This can give as a clean planet. I would echo what they say. The economic drivers are there. I think it will happen at the state level. Driedbe the states back it. Multinational Companies Want to have three genes in place. It makes it difficult for companies to do business across country lines. Theyre subject to penalties by not meeting some of the requirement of other states. It is a very difficult position. I do not see that much appetite for a carbon tax. That is a pretty clean way to do that. We will have to leave it there. Thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] another look at the Capitol Building tonight where lawmakers and reporters, lawmakers working on a bill to deal with the fiscal cliff. They emerged from a meeting earlier tonight and spoke briefly with reporters. Speaker boehner issued a statement saying they would honor the commitment for a Senate Agreement if it is passed. A decision will not be made until the house members and the American People have been able to review the legislation. This will probably take longer than anyone thinks. Everyone thinks. Senate democrats next critics expect a strong vote. A tax increase for people making more than four audited the thousand dollars a year and individuals making 400,000 a year. An increase in state tax. An extension of Unemployment Insurance for one year. We will continue to bring you updates here on the cspan network as they become available. A lot of people that i know, looking back on the last four years, the program has been a jobs program. How many jobs in your district and your state. The Space Shuttle passed by one vote. It was passed all around the country. We have people working in different places. I can tell you some pretty brutal stories about politics that involved in our Space Program. Bring home the bacon. The bacon is jobs because jobs get votes. Keep a congressman and senator in office. Tuesday night at 8 00. Followed at 9 00 with a debate responding to a nuclear iran. Tuesday night on cspan. Next, a discussion on the history and influence of media. We will hear from Brooke Gladstone, who looks at the current state of media, coverage of the 2012 election, and changes from the socalled golden age. This is an hour and 20 minutes. Our moderator tonight is the professor of media studies, the author of four books on cultural programming, and he was the head of special projects for 50 years. He frequently moderates events around the city for the screen actors guild, and for us. Please welcome brian rose. Next, we could not be more honored and delighted to have Brooke Gladstone here tonight. She is the managing editor and coast of npr and cohost of npr. I just want to let you know we signing ofe doing a her book. She has been at npr for many years. She covered the last turbulent years. I know all of you media groupies out there will agree there is something about brook that just pulls you in. Each week, even at 7 00 a. M. On saturday, just like michael lewis, brooke can somehow take any subject and make it very interesting. Please welcome Brooke Gladstone. [applause] thank you. I would like to start with your book. In this book, you talk about a number of media biases. One of my favorites is the narrative bias. The media takes a story and, the matter what it is, has to come up with a beginning, middle, and and. We have end. We have just gone through an election where there were thousands of just such events. Do you think we miss a lot when president ial elections are treated as a beginning, literally, the day after the last election is held. I am careful not to completely condemn it, because that is a big part of the story. The problem is that one gets completely fixated on that and it becomes a hot for that and who said this and how the that have an impact. Some of these are really quite revealing. You have your 47 remark, which anyone would argue could possibly be extremely revelatory. He said he didnt mean it and then after the election he pretty much said the same thing again. It did tell us a lot and had a great impact. At least for a while, the president s poor debate performance. These are all part and parcel of American Life and democracy. The problem is that we are wired for that. We organize our information in the form of stories. There are lots of breaking items that really dont lend themselves, but we have to use it anyway. It is part of what is wired in to the business of journalism. For instance, discussions of tax policy, discussions of obamacare, and so forth. Once you have said, can you say it again . To keep reporting the same thing over and over again, every time somebody represents it. How would you characterize the way the press handled this election compared to other elections . All suck, lets face it. I cannot remember one that i thought was a truly good experience. For the last four elections, at least. I am there waiting for it, there is. So it goes on election cycle after election cycle. Your show itself played some role in covering the election so extensively. You faced one of the great media john sununu. I wonder if you can share what it was like. It was one of the most contentious interviews i have ever done. Just a truly train wreck sounding interview. When he said, when i questioned one of his remarks, he said york public radio, you are just there to kiss the president s butt. Public radio is always so simple. So civil. A way, it is kind of refreshing. Here he is, here is the guy unvarnished. It was very edited. I never edit to win the argument. But he was who he was. I thought it was really useful, even though i was all the way through it. You bring up the notion of npr, and why are npr and pbs such a target for people like sununu or romney . Particularly where fairness and of the activity seemed to be so rigid why are you such a target for people who you would think would embrace fairness and objectivity . Who would that be . Why is big bird such an enemy . It is not big bird. Big bird is the savior. Every administration has collided with npr and complained about it, republican and democratic. It is only republicans that want to zero out the budget. The only thing that comes back every time is a big bird. He is invincible. He just slices right through the opposition. Why public radio and Public Television is such a target is, public radio is increasing, and 10 of public radios money comes from the government. That money were not there, if they did not have the taxpayer banner to wait, that would not have a case to make. We would just be anybody else that they dislike. It is not as if the New York Times has not been singled out over and over again as well. It has been 30 years of this notion that mainstream may be Mainstream Media reports and a liberally biased way. A lot of people feel ill served by Mainstream Media. There was one completely dead form of media that was single handedly resurrected by rush limbaugh, and that was a. M. Radio. It was a place people unserved by Mainstream Media could go and be angry. I watched fox news almost exclusively on election night. Who didnt . Tavis wanted to see how they covered it. Shepherd smith was a very fair guy. It was more diverse than msnbc by far. You had the great moment when karl rove produced that primal scream and you saw flocks trying very hard to address this in a clear and open way as they could. I understand that roger ailes, the head of fox news said to his staff before the election, it looks like obama is winning. Dont act like somebody ran over your dog. Some did, but mostly they didnt. We live in an age now where this ossicle to be hermetically sealed away from it be that does not agree with your own. Is it really that different from the way the press used to behave . We live in an age of cable news network. Is it now possible for one point of view it ever really except another point of view . You are right about history. A big part of my book recounts the history of journalism from the invention of the written word to the year 2042. What i find is over and over again that golden period that so many people refer to is basically a golden age of media. Contrary to media trends of the media getting cheaper and cheaper, there with the creation of a medium that was slightly more essential. Required assembling enormous audiences, and how do you do that . It marginalizes outsiders and appeals to a broad middle. If you want to watch television, you will have to find yourself identifying with that great middle, no matter that your life has nothing to do with the life that Beaver Cleaver lead. That is to is on television. There are a lot of people that who are not otherwise represented, people with all different colors, immigrants who never saw themselves on television who were forced, more or less, to subscribe to this great middle. Likewise, at the time that television was being created, television newscasts were being created, the government was in the midst of a political moment that was for of existential lee existentially. It created the style of objectivity, which basically was leaving stuff out and creating a big, Central Point of view. That made everybody happy, especially the governments that would like to see television regulated. To get back to your question about can we ever find voices that reflect the views with which we dont agree . Of course we can, if we want to. There is a study that was done at harvard that found that people who worked incredibly well informed before the internet were even more informed after the internet. And people who were not interested in news before the internet where now even less informed after the internet. It just shows what i have always believed, and what i think all the evidence bears out. The new Technology Just makes me more of what we were going to be anyway. If you are naturally curious, and you are willing to venture out of your comfort zone, the environment is so rich. By the same token, people who might be liberals or conservatives do at least have an enemy they can identify with, which was not always possible in the age of walter cronkite. That had enemies, they just were not on television. When you think about it, consider walter cronkite, known to many in the day as of all walter. Uncle walter. Would be ludicrous to call any newscaster a relative today. Can you imagine anybody trying to get away with a presumptuous Statement Like and thats the way it is. Everybody craved the comfort of that dinnertime slice of consensus reality. I think that the more media sources you have dividing up the audience, the smaller the Public Square becomes. Less consensus, but you are exchanging that comfort for the comfort of knowing that there are other people like you in the world who care about the things that you care about. I am always in favor of more speech, rather than less, even though everything has a side effect. Speaking of more speech, a lot of cities in the country, cleveland is next to be the target, or facing the prospect of having their local newspapers disappear. I think going to three days a week is the same as disappearing. It is only a matter of time before they say, do we even need three days a week. What do you think the impact will be when there is no longer any central voice of a particular locale . One study found that the biggest black that the new media era has created is local accountability. There are some of blogs that have tried to rise to the occasion. Certainly that is true in denver. There is a database, public online site. Partners with local television and everyone else. I think you will see a lot of partnerships coming up to fill that gap eventually. The public has to value it. It is really up to the public to value all these things. Everybody says you cannot monetize online. Everybody has viewed the information for free. When i was a kid, i was used to tv being freed. You get used to paying for things once you realize how much they matter to you. I also found that people love their gadgets and they will pay for content on their gadgets that they will not necessarily pay for on the internet. They love to have the special apps on the phone to make the consumption of information very convenient. There are pay walls that never worked before that are working better now. There is the old italian communist wrote in his prison daris that famous statement, the old world is dead, the new world is yet to be born, and in between there is much morbidity. Welcome to morbidity, folks. Your book devotes a considerable amount of time to talking about the development of objective reporting, fairness in journalism. I am sure a number of people in this room undoubtedly hope to follow in your footsteps and become a journalist. I wonder if you could talk about what you think are the major challenges they will be confronting in terms of trying to practice serious, and biased reporting. Unbiased, objective, fair, they are all slightly different. I think that the obligation of the journalist is to tell the whole truth, and to tell both sides barely, not to be invisible or pretend to belong to some order of passionless beat that does not really care. That you cannot bring any judgment you have accrued to that experience into your reporting. I think that we are entering a period of more reflective reporting. Some of the greatest reporting america has ever seen was done by muckrakers. Ida tarbell and exposing standard oil. These amazing investigative enterprises that did so much to expose what was wrong in the country. I think that the golden age, which is a misnomer, has passed. And i think that anybody wants to be a journalist today should not try and follow days of your, working in the mail room. Anybody who wants to be a journalist in the next generation needs to find something they care about, and develop expertise, and then go there and start writing about it. I first encountered a New York Times writer when he was doing little blog about people dating, which everyone in the industry was looking at. Did anybody know that he was 16 or 17 . He came to the office for an interview and i said, are you old enough to do this . He said next year. Need i mention nate silver, who has become a byword . He had expertise in an area that was filled with gas worked. Insert filled with guesswork. Serve at journalism it served journalism. He came in and fill this need and i think by any terms, he is doing great. He is a household word. Those are just two examples of people who were passionate and knowledgeable and found their way into an area that people were not following. It was extraordinarily, these are the people you should be looking to, not me. My path was weird and cannot be followed. Lets open it up to questions from the audience. When you come to the microphone, please give us your name and where you go to school. If anyone would like to come up. Here is our first inquire. He is adjusting it. Until someone gets the courage up, you mentioned nate silver. He offers the fascinating thesis that it is that talking heads on all the cable channels are the ones who are constantly predicting things that, believe it or not, have the worst prognostication records. He said that the amount of minutes you are on television or inverse proportion lead inversely proportionate to the accuracy of your predictions. I listen to your show every sunday afternoon. I want to know, i saw on your web site that you went through an independent bookseller. I am wondering about the role of amazon in the book industry and how it is hurting it. Haslett, norton bought the book. They wanted it. Actually, norton bought the book. I was delighted that they did. We were proceeding along very well. It is owned by time warner, and they came in and said by the way, we own all rights to it. We can do what we want with it without any input. It started as a graphic novel, which i shifted to a nonfiction when i discovered i did not know how to plot any thing. Warner brothers just wanted to buy it and up do anything they wanted with the, i would have done that. But they could not go in and change 30 years of work and my conclusions, so i just took the whole project and walked away. Norton is an employeeowned house, but that was just serendipity. You have done many shows on the decline of global media. I know you have tackled the music industry. Given the fact that you have grown up with the media, doesnt give you a sense of regret that so many of these empires are toppling, or does the expectation of new media, which cover extensively on your program, fill you with the sense that this is all for the good . In the book, i quote the lakes, great douglas adams. He says that any kind of technology that was around when you were born is right and natural. Is in the natural order of things. Anything that comes along and around the age of 35 is fascinating and exciting and brilliant. Anything that comes along after that is best to civilization and is going to destroy humanity as we know it. I think i am very lucky in having the job that i do, because i dont have the leisure to be incredibly blessed doubt it for my childhood. That was a world that i was not part of an was unlikely to ever be a part of. The kind of coverage that we get from anybody with a cell phone, all over the world, sullivan unreliable, is still astonishing and necessary. You brought up the arab spring. It brought up reallife coverage of Hurricane Sandy. It is everywhere we need to be, to paraphrase some advertisement or other. It is a great, wonderful new world. The big difference is that you as the news consumer have to do the work they did not have to do before. You have to choose your pension plan, your healthcare plan, paper or plastic. You have everything thrown in your lap, and maybe most important is the information you choose to consume. You are what you eat. If you eat nothing but chocolate pudding your entire life, then you can venture out there and very your diet. It is all there. There are so many times when i have spoken in Public Forums and people will say, why are the media not covering x . How did you find out about that . It was on page 6, but they thought it should be on page one. The media you consume are not reflecting your priorities. They are run by people. If you go straight to google news, you can have an algorithm doing that search for you. I think you just have to swallow hard, do a lot, and realize this is all up to you now. I am not startling for the world that was at all. That task of leaving it up to you can be kind of frightening. You have to find people you can trust. When you watch cbs or it read the New York Times, those were your agar gators. I talk to people those were your aggregators. It is not about here is what i had for breakfast today. It is about this person is incredible. They send me links from across the media and show me stories that i would not otherwise know. I have to say that i have my own twitter feed. I am a bit bifurcated. On the media calligraphy, i read avidly but rarely contributed to. They are the best aggregators that i have encountered of media stuff. That is just one. You find the people that you love and follow them, or website that you can subscribe to on twitter. To address another issue which is really critical, when you are talking about breaking out of your shell, in the parlance of our computer age, theres something called serendipity, which is accidental encounters with information that you would not. There are websites that are basically serendipity engines. They can connect you to stories that are fascinating, but you would never know. It is not impossible to find out this stuff. You just go there and you can create a live and rich array of information coming directly to you. You just have to build it. Do you fear for the day when inevitably the New York Times disappears . I dont think it is going to disappear. I really dont. I make this prediction before. I think that the New York Times will become a boutique item that rich people get. For instance, you subscribe to the sunday New York Times because you love the feel of newsprint on your hands and you love the magazine, the book review, and so on. You have a ritual and you pay for it. And you pay a lot for it. You already pay a lot for the New York Times. It is expensive. But ultimately, the paper will be for people who want paper, and the information will be on line and available through the various pay walz they are creating. I am a freelance journalist. You were talking about abrogating and curating. I started off as a writer reporter. The thing that strikes me is that when you talk about the New York Times, the one thing i found is that quality costs money. There is a lot of crap out there. Tell me about it. [laughter] my question to give is, where is the money going to come from to finance quality journalism . It is a combination of the heavy stuff as well as up and coming stuff. But where is the money going to come from . It is a deep question, the question that everybody asks. The New York Times has created a partial pay wall. It is actually doing pretty well now. Old and barely perhaps the New York Times and daily newspapers in general, they used to be one stop shops. You had your movie reviews. You had a whole bunch of sections that could be done elsewhere and you did not need to have the local paper do it. It could also argue, there is new york sensibility, new york movie reviewers could have a different perspective that would be different from the cincinnati movie reviewer, perhaps. If there were, which there probably are not. But ultimately, newspapers have been mulling over the idea of becoming nonprofit. The trouble is that in order to be a nonprofit, you are really cannot make a profit. They are having trouble getting around this. Like the l. A. Times got a big. Oundation grant there will little bit of consternation in public radio circles about it. The point here is that the l. A. Times can put its money in different subject. But they can get ford to come in and pay for local coverage or whatever Public Service coverage the money is going to be posturing, then it can put his money and other things. Why are you not putting your money in the stuff that really matters . I think the foundations are understanding that these are valuable institutions and they need to be supported. Partnerships, foundation grants, people talk about the project for Public Integrity in places like that that are funded by foundations or private individuals that are very public spirited. Then they go and partner with the New York Times or the Washington Post or the new yorker to get that information out. It is my understanding that the new yorker does not pay for a lot of the articles, they just provide the space. They are not just handing off their space, but there is, good reporting that is coming through these partnerships. That is part of where the money will come from. It is true that ultimately, people will have to, once again, pay for content, and publishers always prefer when their readers or consumers pay with their eyeballs. They find it the advertisers easier to deal with than consumers who want this and that. There have been magazines with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that have gone out of business because their ad rates have disappeared. Their audiences would have paid more, but they thought it was too much of a headache. There is much to be done to educate the older generation of publishers to understand that they will have to engage on every level with their audiences in the next phase. My name is jeff roberts, former broadcast journalist. Winston churchill famously said democracy is the worst possible form of government. I am curious what country you think might be doing a better job in disseminating news through the mass media where it is not as hysterical, not as pointed as our News Coverage is. Does anybody do it better, or is this just the way it is in free society . I hope you dont say Great Britain. I think this is the way it is. If you go to europe, you will find that they did not seem to go through this golden age. The big newspapers there are not owned by parties, they are affiliated with parties in their ideology. The editorial page and the news pages will Work Together to report stories, where you are we have this great fire wall between the editorial pages and the news pages. I do think this is the worst possible media except for all the others. So there is no place like home. I think danish media is probably fantastic. The german news media is not owned by the parties. The real difference is that their newspapers are family owned, they are not publicly traded. Even a familyowned newspaper still wants to make some money. The publisher wants to keep his family alive. I used to be skeptical about familyowned newspapers. It really depends on the family. German newspapers are very much falling to the right wing, left wing, center cast. We know there will be orientations to those newspapers. Most of our newspapers are pretty centrist. In terms of families, you have hearst and pulitzer, who built great dynasties but did not always do the best journalism. The familyowned papers were motivated differently, but they were not necessarily better. I am not speaking in favor of i worry about corporate owned media but as they dont care so much about the enterprise of journalism. The greatest opponent of journalism today is rupert murdoch. He blocked the wall street journal, not to be rich. His papers are the tiniest part of his media empire. The wall street journal was unlike the post. Some people said when he goes with his friends in the war room, now he does not just on the new york post, he owns the wall street journal. Rupert murdoch is a good example of somebody who really cares about the bottom line. He was perfectly willing to make deals with tony blair. He tried to make deals with hillary clinton. To extract promises from blair on regulations, and and newspapers have had a much bigger impact in Great Britain than they have here. His entertainment property, fox television, offered something the public wanted and did not get from basic television all those years ago. The simpsons, if anybody can remember when the simpson started, just created howls of anguish from the guardians of family and value people, who thought it was just a disaster. Married with children . Please. This is stuff that people wanted to consume, but it was not conservative stuff. For him in was about the bottom line for most of his properties. Family is no assurance of great journalism, but i do think it is and assurance that people care about the enterprise of producing content. You work for National Public radio. Just for the record, i worked for wnyc. Produces this show. Wnyc is a radio program. I encountered this fact with my generation of students that radio is simply not on the menu anymore as something that anybody listens to work, regrettably, has even heard of. Despite what happened with Hurricane Sandy, what do you see as the future of radio . Is radio dead . They have been saying that since at least 1950. I have about a million listeners on my boutique radio show. That is compared to colberts 3 million. The morning edition has 30 million listeners. It has begun to level of dust in the last couple of years. During the time when all other Mainstream Media was plummeting, npr was just moving up, up, up. Npr the network has had some trouble shifting to digital, although they have done a good job in recent years, because they have member stations. The numbers tell a different story from your students. It is true that we dont have the youngest audience in the world, but apparently we have Something Like 20 of every age group. However, there is going to be a migration. I think an enormous number of people in new york listen on podcast. That is where the younger audience seems to be coming from. They have not figured out how to count them in the ratings, so they do not show up. You mentioned that you want people to subscribe on itunes. We offer more material on the podcast frequently. We want people to get comfortable, to fit us into their schedule, rather than to subscribe to our schedule. If it shows up on their ipod, they will be more likely to listen to it than if they slept through one of the broadcast. We understand that our schedule is growing increasingly irrelevant. Our show is produced and goes out on a satellite on a friday night. It is on our website on friday night. The pressure is on friday night. By the time it gets to sunday, we have worked very hard to make sure nothing goes out of date. I would prefer people to get it hot off the presses. We plan to offer more material on podcast. There is a lot of competition out there, right . A more questions . Do you want to know what Nina Totenberg is really like . I have not added to the person is probably 1991. I remember that i was allowed two edits. If you are going to ask me to do that, i might as well just throw it out and start all over again. I love you, nina. You are brilliantly talented. What is the difference in your mind between journalism and the media or the press, if any . Journalism is what you do, and the media and the press are where you do it. Journalism is like cooking and the media, whatever medium you choose, is like the restaurant. It is how you serve it up. What you do changes, depending on what medium you produce it for. Some media are much better suited to different kinds of journalism. With the medium of the internet and social media, the role of journalism in regard to bloggers and blogs, how reliable can they be . I see your point. I believe, and this is my definition, that journalism is something you do according to a set of standards and with a particular focus in mind. You can convey really good information for any number of people, but a lot of people who were covering the arab spring were providing vital, important information, because they wanted the world to know, because in just this was happening before their eyes. I am not in any way impugning their information. In egypt, the Mainstream Media did a lousy job for decades before and up through the covering of tahrir square. It was bloggers and activists that offered a true picture of what was going on. It has to do with motivation and a set of standards. If you are doing journalism, you want to be accurate and fair. If you are doing propaganda, or activism, being accurate and fair could be part of it or not part of it, but you are doing because you want to assess the events in a very real way. I dont pretend that journalists dont want to have any impact. Why would you devote your life to something that is irrelevant in the way the world works . It is fussy. I feel like i was not as clear as i should have been. I need to formulate that a little better. I am a former graduate and now i work in publishing. A fordham graduate. My question is, in the beginning of the q a, you mentioned that your advice to young people was to find out what you are passionate about, go out and be an expert, and then write about that. I wonder how that relates to what you do, that if there is a niche in the media that you particularly enjoy reporting about. Is there one interview you did that stands out as your favorite . I was happy with our first interview last week. That is the one that is in my mind right now. The green revolution, people took to the streets in iran and a woman was tragically shot and killed. The video of her death went all around the world and became a symbol of revolution. It was a tremendous, mobilizing force. The world media wanted to put a face to this woman we saw dying from a distance. They picked the picture of her Facebook Page someone who looked a lot like her. The experience, she tried to correct it and was ignored by cnn and voice of america. Every news outlet around the world published the picture. The revolutionaries accused per of trying to steal the symbol of their darling, their hero, a person that was doing so much to mobilize the revolution. Then the iranian government came in and said i want you to say that you are still alive and that this never happened at the and that you would never do that. We will probably charge you with treason and kill you. She talks about how she had to live with the other in her mind. It is always with her. It is not humble, but theres no point in having people in and then talking through it. We got through in a way that any listener could understand. Every time i feel that i can take a stranger and make them familiar to the listener, i am really proud of that interview. I wish we had more individuals on the show unless discussion of trends and policies and lawsuits. Everything that goes through the media, i have to have very clear at stake so the program does not become a boring, specialist program. People understand why these issues are important, and some of them are really hard to tell. I loved doing an interview last year about this big Media Conference where during one part of it, everybody there was to write what coverage issue they wanted to talk about. One of them was, how should we cover alien invasion at the end of the world . Do we have to talk to the aliens, work is a case where we should just really this kind of thing. It was like covering 9 11. Dont you have to understand who your opponent is . It was really fun. It made it really clear as a kind of metaphor for the conundrums that media faces. You have spoken eloquently about diversity and freedom, opening up new platforms, and yet at the same time, we are facing a tragic situation where more and more journalists are being killed, and often by governments that they are reporting on. I just wonder if you can comment on why there is a corresponding terrorism directed against journalist . The committee to protect journalists has done studies on this. What they have found is that the most dangerous time for any journalism enterprise is when democracy is being fought or redefault over or is emerging. Five years ago, the place where the fewest journalists were ever killed was burma. There was not really any journalism. Interestingly, a lot of the journalists that ended up on the committee to protect journalists are killed by organized crime. Cases that are not being pursued by the government. This is serving true in russia and mexico. Deals have been cut in the case of russia, or the system of justice is struggling to be effective, as in the case of mexico and russia. There tons of deaths in iraq. Struggling democracy, war. There was a time when wearing a tshirt or a press credential would give you a status, that would enable you we have a friend who covered the trouble in northern ireland. He would run from one side to the other and know that both of them wanted to get their stories out, and that he would always be protected. When you dont care about getting your story out or when you can get it out a different way, then you have no need for a western press that may not provide the narrative that you want them to. I spoke to reporters who said the big change they found was the attitude that it just did not matter. It was chaos. The drug barons that kill people in mexico just dont care. In places where journalists think they might have a chance to report something, but there are no structures to report them, no Justice System or police to protect them, you will find many more dead journalists. This is a world in which there are a multitude of struggling democracies. We also have the example of wikileaks. I wonder if you can talk about your feelings about Julian Assange and the information coming out about how the u. S. Government, despite president obamas liberal policies, has been one of the harshest administrations toward whistle blowers. This is interesting. It is certainly true that the Obama Administration has been among the harshest on an external whistleblowers. However, the Obama Administration has been especially this new administration which managed to cram through a whistleblower protection act and expanded for government whistleblowers, is offering protections they have not had for decades. So he wants them, whistle blowers, to be able to work without retaliation within the system. He is very much opposed to information being released willynilly by people inside that just ended all over the world. We interviewed assange right after the wikileaks issue, he believes that all information should be there, regardless of the possibility of innocent victims. He is a person who believes that, no matter what the consequences are, the information should be out there. A lot of the wikileaks stuff was pretty niggly stuff, people having affairs or whatever. Some of it was big stuff, for sure. Some of it was important stuff. The stuff that made a difference when people knew about it was when he partnered with a guardian, a bunch of other newspapers, the New York Times, and had them vet and do stories on the material that he provided rather than just document things that dont seem to serve any purpose. The other is an entirely separate issue. The marines behaved inexplicably,