Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tonight From Washington 20110706

good wholesome american business. >> i don't know about pull some. i do know there are certain activities that commercial banks can do well and each mediation process and should do about and i think the market is fierce to define it that way. i don't want them using the safety net to trade on and a speculative basis to make their earnings. >> natalie at the voelker rule, we should be getting towards that. >> it's already been gained to death, so we'll see. thanks. >> hayek, i'm a reporter with the "huffington post." my question is, when you talk to policymakers in washington about the size -- excuse me, the market concentration can you point to the top ford at the top six. they say well, it's nowadays in the u.k. or in switzerland. it's not that concentrated. they are not double the size of the economy. i'm curious to know what the current level in the u.s. is dangerous? what is the counter to the argument that it's not as bad in the u.k. or switzerland? >> well, not as bad as not my standard. [laughter] the u.s. economy has been the most innovative comments that credit available at the broadest base. your distribution financial institution that was the mother to of industrial companies and you can meet the needs of either local level or national level. now we are concentrating its increasingly to read the small business in the community has to have some way to deal with this very large institute because that is soon becoming the only choice. that is the mechanism. it is not as innovative in the u.s., at least historically. so we have the strength that because europe and senate, therefore we should give up our strength. i don't did so. i really don't. when you get institutions come at the fact of life. i've talked to firms who have been pretty much told by some of the largest, most powerful institutions, words like well, why should we make this point to you? convinced me. where you have a locally owned, there's an issue again because the community different developments the institution does well. so i think that it's been our strength. we have to play choice strained, rather than see it go away because it's not as bad as europe. i mean, it's just not a good region. honestly shame, as she's not a good reason. >> thank you all very much. >> in the senate today, members talked about negotiations ever reason the federal debt limit. the white house that it needsrad more power and authority before august 2nd to avoid ato defaultg we begin with comments by majority leader, harry reid. 2 this is about 35 minutes. >> in one of his poems, t. s. eliot wrote, hurry up, please. it's time. he could have been writing about is here in united states senates yesterday this great nation celebratedsh its 235th birth day. in this 235 years we've accomplished many afro things and we've done it together. we've landed on the moon, sandy. waste to save lives, five to ged freedom all around the world. s now we stand poised to make abrn different kind of hkistory. our for the first time, the united states of america stands up to bring it to saltine or financiao obligations. the chief economist for the united states chamber of commerce has said allowingd american would be tantamount to writing a bad check, and of f course. but unless we take action, punishing this reputation will be the least of our concerns.lat we also visited the state of this world's economy with it. we last time this country if was plunged into a major recession l just three short years ago. we took the world with us.he and wall street, create cost dio collapse and americans across the country lost theirpl jobs, . homes people across the globe. but this country is only beginning w to recover as the worldtion t witnessed. but the crisis we face now is one of even greater proportion. without a business lines of our conseque times it is set america default will have the dire consequences catastrophe, the same u.s. chamber of commerce chamber ofhd commerce said affiliate to avert this he says quote not a conce possibility, and quote. he could not even conceived thea republican congress would shiftl their duty. defaulting on our tablet with millions of american jobs, could halt tax refunds, social security checks, medicare obe. payments and even paychecks where troops.gett and thein depression would cause here at home would ripple around the globe. some have suggested that in thel ites social security checks, social security recipients would get an iou from the federal lger government. the m steel crisis has been arod for a month and we no longer da. have months or even weeks to a avert this catastrophe.lose we have days. at my republican colleagues have walked away from the negotiatint table when you're in a solution is so close to disaster.s, why? to protect oil companies andovee yachts incorporate chat, toall protect millionaires and ear billionaires from paying their fair share. 20% above the income earned ini. this nation is under less thanly 1% of cities.ile the the republicans are determined to protect. republicans walked away from negotiations to protect p them. meanwhile, the rich are gettingc richer and the poor are gettingk poorer. the middle classs democrats over to make stronger disappearing. middle-class families are struggling to make ends meet. that is why brought to the floo. legislation demanding millionaires and billionaires contribute their faiutr share tn struggle. when republicans talk aboutcrate shared sacrifice, they need to sack her face could be shared by those who can at least affordic it.el democrats believe it should be shared by the richest, the richest as well. they've all sacrifice too much a already. as we debate this in the nicest in the next week in the catas negotiations with the vice president and president shouldtr continue.he it invites republicans to prevent a catastrophic default, to become part of solution rather than part of the probleml all republicans have to do is accept your invitation. the time is here for my republican colleagues to puteg politics aside. simply put, we are out of time.s we democrats can't negotiate with themselves. deb once i comes to the table anatd the other refuses, it'st impossible to negotiate. i said this week we'll debate the solution of this crisis, whether republicans like it or not. democrats will be clear about what's atco stake. avert really the fate of our country in the global economy will be clear about our priority to avert a catastrophic defaultle d protector recovery.oucal ho to be clear about the middleground referred he found n him and would ask cut the to gep her house in order. democrats willing tout compromi, but compromise is not mean allowing republican colleagues to put the wants of a few millionaires and billionairesp, added the need for this nation nation and the world. our repeat the words t.s. eliot. hurry up, please. it's time. speakeron the >> mr. president. >> the republican leader. >> in morning business i asked if speakers on the republican side be p limited to 210 minutes each. o >> mr. president, washington is engaged in a debate right now nl over the kind of country want to be. the specific issueon these days at some point of the next several weeks, the federal government will no longer be needs to cover the cost oft promises authority made. so the president wants congress to raise the statutory debt limit that the congress.is thate he wants us to raise the limits wi now what republicans have said is the only way weua'll do it ig if democrats agreed to changeank sheir ways we don't end up with the kind of situation were witnessing over in greece.do and make no mistake, that'st exactly where we are headed if we don't do something significant and do it now. democrats so far have refused. agree is a instead, they're making that cay only be described as a bizarre request under the circumstances in the middle but we all agree is a debt crisis, they would like to spend even more. they want a second stimulus, more deficit spending.en e in the middle of the jobs tax wd crisis, they want to raise taxes that we know will kill even more jobs when even the president hae said raising taxes with the jobl creators with possibility to higher. these are their solutions. this is what the president cannot the campaign trail tois t defend months thursday. and this is what republicans oppose. our view is th debt crisis is to go ono a diet, not a shopping spree. our view is the way to create jobs is to make it easier for businessese to higher, not harbor. and frankly, we don't think thee voters sent a wave of republicans to washington last november because they wanted us to raise taxes. they sent us here to restore.n but the president and his democratic allies in congress don't seem to get it m just yet. right now they are calling for attacks on aircraft attem manufacturers because they thine it's good politics. it is their cheap attempt at trying to make anyone who hposes it look bad. eect it but they forgot as many of them voted to repeal a similar tax os the same industry during the clinton administration because of the devastating effect it had on jobs. goods to get more money and it olmos tens of thousands of jobsy and our democratic colleagues that.ther than tber butry apparently they'd rather have spent trying to character their political opponents thanbo they would work in a bipartisan solution that would actually enable us to balance the books.a here's the point. washington needs to find a way to randomize. taxing more is the easy way out. never i'll start with aircraft industry manufacturers. then when that's enough, and it ever is, as some other industryr then another. and before you know it, you'red going after absolutely everybody. why? because it's easier to findit'se villains and excuses than it is to make tough choices. to most americans know what it's like to make such choices than they want to know if they have do it, why can't washington? rp that if i invited the president here last thursday to talk withg republicans. i hope i make clear is that het would relisten to republicans ta and seey, why raising taxes anda weak economy is a bad idea and with the realities are evere. here. of course i said on thursday was to get together and talk about what is actually possible. congr the obama administration said it wasn't a conversation worthficit having. secure footing is a conversation worth having. so today i would thraoeubg reextend the offer. i think the best way to solve this impasse is for the president to hear what needs to be done and how we can do it. hear what can actually pass here in congress. he needs to understand the principles at stake here from our point of view. it's not about rich and peer, not about -- rich and poor, it's about having washington make some tough choices for a change. americans want to see accountability here in washington. they've seen democrats spending trillions of dollars we don't have, and they've seen the economic situation get worse in many respects than it was several years ago, and the facts speak for themselves. since the president took the oath of office, nearly two million more people are unemployed. unemployed. >> that's a 17% increase in the unemployment rate under president obama. gas prices have nearly doubled up 86% since january of 2009. in the past two years, the federal debt increased 35%. debt per person increased by over 11,000 -- $11,000. health insurance premiums for working families shot up 19% and while values across the country declined by 12%. they have clearly made the economy worse. americans get this. they think, why shouldn't we pay the bills or scale back commitments just like everybody in the country does? americans have made enough sacrifices the past few years, and it's time for washington to learn to make some sacrifice of its own. hopefully the president agrees that reducing the debt is indeed a conversation worth having. i think we can do it, but i think you need to understand what the legislative realities are and why, and we're committed to a result to restore the people's confidence, not only in our economy, but in our government. mr. president, i yield the floor. >> now i would just briefly like to say that the matter of the miters of the libyan resolution that the leader wants to move to is not something i'm addressing at this point. it's a significant issue and good senators can disagree about that, but the reason we're here this week is because 46 -- i believe it was -- senators from the republican side objected to the memorial day recess because we've done nothing on the budget and it's clear we're going to october again when it came to the 4th of july because we got the debt ceiling that we're told creates an emergency by august 2nd. we have not passed a budget in 797 days. the democratic majority has not even brought one up to the floor in that long, and the country is spinning itself into decline, and damaging the future of our nation. we know that. it's been talked about for months. we've had no discussion in the budget committee of which i'm ranking member, marking up any kind of budget this year. the budget act, the united states code, says we should pass a budget by april 15th, so the objection that i had and others had to going home and recessing this week was not to discuss the libyan resolution. it was to get to work now to confront the financial situation that we're in, and we are not going to be receiverring our constituents well if some sort of secret agreements reach fruition and a bill is plopped down on the senate floor august 1st and asked to be and demanded to be passed by august 2nd. that's not responsible. it's not acceptable. even the president understands that and last week he said this, and so there's no point in procrastinating. there's no point in putting it off. we got to get this done, and if by the end of the week we have not seen substantial progress, and i think members of congress need to understand we're going to start having to cancel things and stay here until we get it done, and he's talking about spending debt, the debt ceiling, the limit on the amount of money the united states government can borrow. that's what he said last week. that's what we've been saying for over a month, so regardless of how one feels about the libyan resolution, that's not what we need to be doing this week. the letter we wrote to senator reid concerning the memorial day recess said this. this was is month ago. "until a budget plan is made public and that plan is scheduled for committee action, on what basis can the senate justify returning home for a one-week vacation and recess when our spending and debt continue to spiral dangerously out of control?" that's what we said then, that remains true now. this congress is agenting in an irresponsible manner, and it's not healthy your us. i'm beginning to wonder if the united states senate is, in fact, beginning to lose its reason for being. are we just sit here and wait for two or three or four or five people to meet in secret and then tell us in the last 11th hour that we got to pass a bill? is that legislating? is that what congress should do? we certainly are in violation of the budget act. it says a budget should be commenced to be marked up in the budget committee by april 1st and passed by april 15th. vice president even called one up or had one in 797 days. mr. president, i would just recall as we make the decision on our vote today what the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff admiral mullen has said recently, and that is that the greatest threat to our national security is the debt. that's what he said. the president has not asked for the libyan resolution, not something he cares about apparently. didn't ask for it, didn't consider it important. one thing we got to do is fulfill our responsibility as congress as the people who control the purse. that's our ultimate constitutional responsibility. we're not fulfilling it, and therefore i would urge my colleagues not to move to the libyan resolution, but send them a message to our democratic leadership that we intend to insist that we move towards considering the financial crisis this nation faces. i thank the chair. i yield the floor and note the ab sense of a quorum. >> mr. president, as of now, we are scheduled to vote on a motion to proceed to senate joint resolution 20 regarding libya. mr. president, we have been called in to session having made plans to spend this week in our states meeting with constituents as we try to do at least once a month, but we've been called back in because there is a budget crisis in this country because we have a debt ceiling of over $14 trillion that is getting ready to be hit, and we need to focus on that and that alone during this week. we've been talking about it. we've been talking around it, and honestly, mr. president, we don't seem to be making much progress. if we're going to do anything this week, we need to be talking about how we are going to address this issue. this is what is on the mind of the people of our country today. i have been home over the weekend, just got back, and everyone i talked to is scared to death about this debt, about what is going to happen. people think there does need to be significant change, reform, a different way of doing business than just borrowing and borrowing and borrowing, but they are also concerned about hitting the debt ceiling and not lifting it. they are # wondering what in the heck are you going to do? now we're back hear in session -- now we're back here in session because of that crisis, and somehow we're talking about libya. now, libya is important. it's important because there are american troops, part of a coalition that has been put there by the president without really consulting congress, and now there is a resolution which frankly i could not support. i will not give the president authority to continue this. i think we need a full and fair debate on that. now is not the time to be doing that when we are four weeks away from a potential debt crisis that could affect our -- people in our country right now, people who depend on our government to function, as well as our global standing so let's talk about what we could do. what we could do is produce a budget. it has been 797 days or so since the senate has passed a budget resolution so we haven't set the level of spending and the priorities for spending that congress which is our constitutional responsibility. it is congress' to pass the budget. we haven't passed a budget in almost two years, almost two years. now, we have got to do that because we're coming on about three months from the end of the fiscal year. we should be passing appropriations bills that are based on a budget, but we don't have a budget, and i would say let's go back to basics. when you have a big problem, you go back to the basics where you have to start to solve a problem, and the basics are a budget. if we can agree on a budget, and, heck, i think we all agree that if we get one on the floor, there's going to be a lot of amendments. there's going to be a lot of amendments to a budget resolution. let's get started. let's use this week to produce a budget resolution, and let's start having the amendments about spending levels, about spending priority. that will be a way that we can start the process of determining if we can, in fact, lift the debt ceiling because there are significant cuts in the spending in this country that would show the rest of the world that is holding our debt as well as the american people who are living with this government and holding part of the debt that we're serious, that we are going to get our financial house in order, and we're going to do it with a budget resolution that cuts spending and sets priorities like every family and every business in this country are required to do, and most states, by the way, are required to do it as well. if you don't, and we see them sort of ambling over toward the "b" word, bankruptcy, and that's not a possibility. that is not a possibility for this country, and we need to take the range right now to assure that the world knows we are not going to handle our fiscal responsibilities by continue to borrow when we know we don't have the revenue coming in to pay for all of these programs so mr. president, i'm going to vote against cloture today. i'm going to vote against cloture with i know many people for different reasons. some voting against cloture because they don't think we ought to be giving the president the authority to continue going into another country's civil war when we have such commitments in afghanistan and iraq. when we are overdeploying our troops, when we are spending money that we are having to borrow, when we are taking the lion's share of this responsibility for our allies. many of us think that we shouldn't be adding another country where it's supposed to be a support function, but we all know that that is what leads to something more and then something more, and i thought senator lugar said it very well; then you have the aftermath of the end of a civil war and the responsibilities for that so this is not the time, in my opinion, to be giving that kind of authority to the president, but above that, above that, we are here because there is a crisis pop which i think -- upon which i think we have a united view of the goal, and that is to put our fiscal house in order so we're not united in the united states senate about how to do it so let's have that debate this week. let's have that debate that says we should be spending more or we should be spending less, that we should be taxing more or taxes less because we have real disagreements on that. i'm the spend less, tax less group, but there are views that are differing. let's put it out there and start the debate because if we have a budget resolution, then everything can be solved from there. if we have a budget resolution that we can agree is the right amount of spending or the debt crisis we're in, then we will know the way forward to dealing with the debt crisis. that's a real possibility, and that's what we ought to be talking about. i will not support cloture on a motion to proceed to a libya agreement that the president can continue the united states' involvement. i think we need to deal with the crisis that congress has a say in doing. certainly, congress had a say in producing it, and we are the ones responsible to the american people for solving the problem that has been created, so, mr. president, i urge my colleagues not to vote for cloture on the motion to proceed, on the libya resolution, and instead turn to the budget, put a budget resolution out, and for the first time in almost two years, we can begin the walk together to solve this problem by tossing a budget resolution that will lower spending, hopefully keep taxes low so our framing jill economy -- framing jill economy can continue towards the path of improvement rather than putting obstacles in place that would have businesses feel exe tent to hire people and get this unemployment rate of over 9% off the books. that would be the answer for this week in my opinion, and i hope that the majority leader will turn to the budget, let's solve the crisis at hand. i think that's why we're in session this week. thank you, mr. president, and i yield the floor. >> madam president, it's pretty obvious that the senate feels its priorities, and i think they are well placed particularly in light of the fact that the 4th of july recess was canceled because of the issue of the debt limit and the deficit and our lack of action and need for action on the issue, and i understand that and have suggested and agreed that this resolution on libya be delayed. however, i would point out that the senate does need to have a debate about united states policy and military action in libya. whether my colleagues are supportive of what we are doing in libya or not i think is an issue that needs to be dated on the floor of the senate. i believe the senate does play a constitutional role and maybe even more unique one than the other body so i think it's time that we did have a debate discussion of this issue and app opinion reppedderred in -- rendered in keeping with the war powers agent. unfortunately, the administration made it far more difficult than it otherwise might have been if we carried out our responsibilities and the president carried out his responsibilities some months ago. the fact is that this conflict would have been over if we had taken a leadership role and declared a no-fly zone when the rebel forces were on their way to ben -- benghazi. the issue is if they used the full weight of their assets, this conflict would be gone now. gadhafi will go, he will go, and the question is when, and what role did the united states of america play in supporting these people who are fighting for freedom? what role did the united states of america play in trying to free up gadhafi's ill-gotten gains and have them given to the transition national counsel? what role did the united states play in leading from behind in libya? the united states of america leads, not nato. we lead nato. when someone says nato is leading on this conflict, e would remind my colleagues that the 28 members of nato, only eight members are actually in the fight, and one of our major allies, germany, has taken a hike, so if we had used the ac-30 gun ships, the a-10 wart hog closed air support capability, gadhafi would be gone now, but the fact is he will go, and it's up to us in my view to express our support of people who are seeking the saim rights and freedoms that are guaranteed to us, so -- and i would remind my colleagues who said we never should have been involved in any way. it is a fact that gadhafi hen as forces were on the gates -- at the gates of benghazi, a city of 7,000 people, and gadhafi said he would go house to house and kill whoever they thought had resisted them. now, we say that we should never have allowed where 8,000 people were massacred. we say we showch never allowed rwanda to happen or allowed the holocaust to happen. the united states did the right thing by stopping gadhafi's forces at the gates of benghazi and preventing the massacre of i don't know how many thousands of innocent civilians, and there is no doubt what gadhafi promised if he's able to remain in power, a man who has the blood of americans on his hands because of the bombing of pan-am 103, because of terrorist agents he supported in africa, and he will do so again and has pledged to do so. when my colleagues asked what american national security interests are at stake, look at the man's past actions and look what he has promised to do if he is able to stay in power, and that is to pose a direct threat to the united states of america's vital national security interests. we are involved in libya. we're providing my colleague from scars will testify, we're providing refueling, providing intelligence. we are providing all kinds of assistance so -- and we are including using predators which are killing the bad guys, and so to somehow allege that the united states is not engaged in hostility which would trigger the war powers act is simply soft free. the senate has been silent on this issue for too long in my view. i also want to caution my colleagues in prevents united states action as well as authorizing. the last time the united states of america, the congress of the united states of america engaminged in cutting off funding at the end of the vietnam war, and whether historians or people happen to acknowledge it, a lot of bad things happen after we cut off funding in vietnam, and amongst them was millions of vietnamese putting in reeducation camps and thousands slaughtered so i would caution my colleagues about actions of congress which prohibit certain actions on the part of the administration, but most of all, american -- america should lead. we should use our air as sets, not our ground assets to get rid of this brutal dictator and his regime. every day that goes by, innocent civilians in libya are wounded and kill, so i'd ask my colleague from south carolina if he had a few words, but also to address the issue of how much u.s. involvement actually is there which would then by most objective observers trigger the united states congresses' requirement to act in keeping with the war powers act and in keeping our constitutional obligations. >> well, i thank the senator, and i'll give my thoughts as briefly as i can. my first thought is we live in an incredibly dangerous time, exciting and dangerous. what is the arab spring about? what are people asking for in libya? they're asking to replace gadhafi and form a new government where they will have a say. i don't think that's too much to ask. all i can say is that america's freedom is best secured when she, america, is assisting others to obtain theirs, and the one thing history tells us free people settle their differences without resorting to the evils of war. to those in this body and throughout the country, i know we're broke. we're here today to be supposedly to talk about the budget. well, we're not doing anything but talking. we're $14.3 trillion in debt. there's all kind of ideas between republicans and democrats on how to get the country's fiscal house in order. it's the 5th of july, and we're here looking at each other doing nothing, but there's another part of the world as the senate and the house basically talks about america being in debt, there's people dying as i speak trying to change their government for the better, and what should we do? i'll tell you what we should do. we should help where we can, and senator mccain experienced war unlike very few people in this body, and he knows that when you go to war, bad things happen to good people, and to the idea that he or myself or anybody else relishes trying to go to war or being in war is just offensive quite frankly because he knows better than i, and i have a pretty good understanding of what happens when you go to war. here's what happens when you don't sometimes. bad people are able to do incredible things that you wind up having to confront later and it costs everybody more to have waited so what are we doing in libya? we're following rather than leading. now, to senator mccain's question. they toe bombing activities are done without american air power. we spend more money than all nato nations combined on defense. i know a lot of americans don't like that. i don't like it either, but it's the way it is. we are the arsenal of democracy. when america doesn't fly, wars go on longer, more people get raped, more people get killed, and let me tell you if gadhafi survives, this is the end of nato. if you don't want america to go alone in this dangerous world, count me in, but who are we going to partner with if the u.n. is seen by the american people as unreliable group to deal with dictators, and it is, what if nato is no longer an organization that people throughout the world respect on the side of good and the evil side of the ledger duped care if -- doesn't care if nato gets involved because they don't have the will to do anything about it so we should be involved with our nato partners. our nato partners depend on libya more than we do. they came to afghanistan not because they were attacked, but because we were attacked. they were our friends. they are our allies. they've been with us making sure afghanistan never goes back into the darkness, a place to attack us or them again, so when they need us, i'll tell president obama now is not the time to sit on the sidelines. i know we're a war-weary nation, but there's no upside to gadhafi staying in power. that is a national security nightmare for this country. here's a recent headline, "gadhafi threatens to attack european over air shakes and carry out attacks against homes, offices, families in europe unless nato stops its campaign of air strikes against his regime in libya." he actually means it. hitler meant it. he actually means it. we should be talking about the debt. we're not. we should be taking a stand against gadhafi in an effective way, and as you said, senator mccain, we're leading from behind, and i just cannot tell you how upset i am with policies coming from this administration that are sending a signal to our allies that we're not as reliable as we should be and to our enemies that we don't have the same amount of will to protect our freedom for them to take it away from us. >> isn't it true we're providing tanker support, logistic support, predator strikes, intelligence, and all kinds of assets to those eight nations involved in the fight, and when you are using predators and killing people, that pretty well fits the definition of hostilities, and yet for reasons which are still not clear to me, the administration fails to acknowledge that. >> well, perhaps -- could i also say one thing that is very concerning as well is this recognition of the transition national counsel. i know my colleague because we were just in turkey noticed that another country, turkey, one of the most important nations in the middle east, just recognized the transition national counsel, froze the assets that gadhafi has, and yet this administration refuses to do so. there's some $30 billion i am told of gadhafi as seats that -- assets that we could freeze and make available to the transitional national com, it could require legislative action but requires leadership, and they could then pay people to provide arms and weapons to their own people as well as subsidies for the government. again, an example of leading from behind. the french, the italians, the turks, and other nations have all now recognizes the transition national counsel, and yet the united states has failed to do so. >> if i could try to answer the hostility question -- when you're using predator drones to bring down military targets, that, to me, is an senble situation -- acceptable situation in libya. i don't want ground forces in libya, the people in libya don't want ground forces. they want our help. we can provide intelligence gathering. these platforms gathering information about targets, senator mccain, are unique to america of the the target packages put together are being done mostly by americans and we're turning these target packages over to nato countries. some of the aircraft that are flying, and god bless our allies for this risk, are 30 years old. no one has the ability like the american air force and naval forces to carry on aerocampaigns, but some people in this body have a right to have their say like we do. we should be debating this, but the administration's position that a predator drone attack is dangerous because yemen, the administration with my full support is taking the fight to yemen today. they are using predator drone attacks against al-qaeda groups in yemen. we just had special forces involved in killing al-qaeda operatives and ?ol ya. we have -- somalia. we have to be on the offensive and hitting these people over there before they can re-organize and hit us over here. i support the administration ability and constitutional right to take the fight to the eenmy, but for them, senator mccain, to tell the body these are not hostile acts is the ultimate confusion. it's confusing to the enemy. it's confusing to our allies. it's confusing to the american people, and i reject this definition being offered by this administration that using predator drones to attack targets is not a hostile act. i believe that the war powers act is unconstitutional. there's two things we can do in this body as a member of congress. we can declare war and we can cut off funding when we don't like things the way they're going. we seldom declare a war in this nation from a congressional point of view for a reason, but constantly engaged forces that wish to attack us and allies without deeing lar ration -- declaration of war. if you don't like what is going on in libya, cut off funding. $30 billion is available to the libyan people is money frozen stolen by gadhafi, the turkish government, british, and french in some sense recognized this continue. if we do that, they have access to the $30 billion, and senator mccain, you met with the leadership of this counsel. i have too. they would gladly pay us back for any staps we can provide if they get their hands on the money, do you agree with that? >> i've been assured personally, one with a doctorate from the university of pittsburgh. let's dispel any illusions about we don't know who they are. they are good and decent people who have risen up against a repressive dictator and murder that they want to reimburse the united states for our expenses the way the kuwaits and saudis did after desert storms. again, i say to my colleague anybody who believes it is not in america's national security interest to see gadhafi gone has paid no attention to his words and his actions, and history will record how the united states stood on people who were struggling both peacefully and where necessitated use force of arms is where the united states of america was. >> if i may, we have a good colleague naval intelligence officer, senator kirk from illinois. we'll yield to him now, but last thought, we have to get the fiscal house in order, balance the budget, and decide among ourselves how important is national security. to me, it's the number one thing to do in congress. if we don't get that right, nothing else matters. there's never going to be economic prosperity in america if the world is in the hands of evil people who make it very difficult for us to travel and trade and do business, and the other thing we need to do after we balance our budget is to have a clear vision of who we are and what we believe. i believe that we're destined to lead the free world. i don't consider it a burden. i consider it the birthright of all americans, not only to maintain our freedom, but to help others secure theirs, and a word of warning -- the day that america rejects that leadership role is a day we'll eventually lose our freedom and more damage will be done to this country if we disengage than if we do engage. >> coming up next, former supreme court justice sandra day o'connor talk about political issues that divide americans. a discussion about how the media covers the judicial system, and later, democratic national committee chairman debbie at the net roots conference. >> the center for social cohesion hosted this conversation looking at issues that divide the country. sandra day o'connor gave a talk on the theme and they'll talk american isolation. this is a joint project of the arizona state university and the new america found dation. this is three hours. >> a joint project of arizona state university and in partnership with the new america foundation in washington, d.c.. we are a new think tank dedicated to studying the forces that shape our sense of social unity. to kick things off, i'm pleased to introduce mr. michael crowe, the president of arizona state university. [applause] >> so thank you, gregory, and what i'd like to say today before i have the opportunity to introduce justice o'connor is just the fact that even from arizona of all places and southern california where there's tremendous forces for social change and tremendous stresses that are manifested every day in the behavior of politicians and citizens, the one thing that we think is absent from this mix is intellectually rigorous focused, thoughtful debate, and so what we have been working toward with the launching of this center and through other things we do is to help within that complex mix of forces that are out there to make certain that at the end of the day, we have a part of the debate and a part of the discussion about the future of the united states, the future of our social fabric being something that's actually guided in a way where it's more thoughtful than some of the discussions that have gone on. to do that, one has to have a purpose or a direction, and we believe very much that this notion of cohesion, social cohesion lanking and connection is a high order purpose, an objective we've worked toward add various points in american history. we've had various levels of success or failure along the way, and it's certainly a work in progress, and it's something we think is worthy of time and attention. today, what we thought what we'd do is continue this discussion, if you will, by focusing on this notion of the united states itself, its structure, its design, its orientation, its evolution, and we thought that related to that as we've gone through history and a number of dynamic forces, who better than sandra day o'connor to talk about the complexities about the design of our country. we were just chatting briefly, you know, to some extent you hear people talking about how might we divide the country up, the governor of texas reminding people that texas can somehow leave the union with some condition of its adds mission to the union, and i could have swore there were two decisions made along the way, one was the manifest replacement of the articles of confederation of the constitution, and the other was the civil war that basically said somehow along the way this was a united states of america and always would be, and so it's with that that arizona justice sandra day o'connor agreed to offer her thinking today. i won't walk her through her resumé and asked me to be certain that i didn't. [laughter] what i'll do is make certain that everybody remembers she grew up on a ranch long ago, went to stanford law school and the first woman appointed to the supreme court of the united states, and in her life after having left the supreme court as an active justice, apparently remains active throughout the country still hearing cases and moving forward, but let me say to you that back in arizona, how many of you are from arizona? i suspect not many, a few, yes, back in arizona, she is continuing to work for solutions and problem solving through what is now called o connor house, a place where people gather. he original home in metro phoenix with her husband and family has been moved to a separate location to solve problems rather than just argue about problems. it's this notion to raise the level of discourse even from a place like arizona which at least in the national eye appeared to have had something other than civil discourse the last couple of years. we still strive for that, so justice o'connor will offer her thinking with us, and she has a small issue today where she'd prefer to sit, so -- >> [inaudible] >> i wish it were. that would be a lot simpler, and i apologize. >> justice o'connor. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> dr. michael crow as most of you know is president of the arizona state university, and he's doing a wonderful job under very difficult circumstances because the state has run out of money they say, and so it makes it a little hard if you're trying to run a good university to be told you need money, and somehow he's working things out, but he's a miracle worker, and i'm sure he'll have good thoughts today, and i'm very glad to be here. this is an interesting topic, and a good topic for discussion, and i look forward to listening and learning something too. can the united states remain united? well, i hope so. i'm sure you do too. now many nation states around the world are united by blood or ethnicity or religion or historic territorial identity or some other immuneble characteristics, and the united states is different from most of those places because its united based on none of those things and all of them -- what do i mean? we have a unique conception of our role and ourselves and our con cement of citizenship is one that is open and voluntary. .. are not clear if race and religion and so we put those aside and reach for something else and it's the relationship between the american identity and the various sub identities american citizens also cold hold the bring you here to talk about it and the sub identities in our u.s. population capture only a part of what we are coming and i guess the question we are going to talk about today is whether the overlying identity as americans, as citizens of this country, developed as it is, are sufficiently strong to overcome the division that we see based on the other issues that surround us today and certainly we have them and i hope the answer is yes we said the strength is founded on the strength of of the immigrants that came to this country. they brought diverse backgrounds and they brought expertise from various parts of the world. they made our melting pot in our country and we have a history that's shown failures and our ideals. the idea we would have had slavery for as long as we did is rather amazing considering what we thought we were doing but i guess we got over that. we had a lot of discrimination as an outgrowth for along with the slavery. we have all kinds of things like literacy tests for voting and all sorts of other things, and many of the things we've experimented with are not designed to make people feel welcome and include it. some of these problems to continue today because of economic disadvantage, because of language issues and ethnicity. i live in the southwest, and we have a great number of hispanics in the southwest in some areas more than non-hispanic. certainly it's true in southern california, so how do we address that and what is the dynamic today, and how do we handle what? i think we have had major issues in the country based on some of these concerns of language and ethnicity and class. so we are going to hear from a number of experts today to talk to us about these different aspects and see what we do. i had a very simple solution when i was in the legislature in arizona and had a leadership position how do we reach accord in that group and i will tell you what i did. it was pretty simple. i get everybody together and cook mexican food, and we would sit around outside and eat mexican food and drink from the year and make friends with each other. that worked. so how's the nation can we sit around and eat mexican food and drink beer and make friends? puts the question. if we can do that on a broad scale i think we will come out of it all right, but i look forward to hearing other ideas that are not quite as off-center as my own, and i will welcome the discussion and take notes and see if we can come up with some better solutions. thanks for letting me be here. [applause] >> now the first panel it's entitled what is dividing us? and i am pleased to introduce today's moderator for the panel mr. martinez direct the new america foundation's bernard schwartz fellows program. he was the editorial page of the charter of the "los angeles times" from 2004 to 2007 and served as assistant editorial page editor at "the new york times" and was a member of the board from 2000 to 2004. he was a 2004 pulitzer prize finalist for editorials on the impact of subsidies on the developing world. a native of mexico, mr. martinez earned a b.a. in history at yale and russian history at stanford university and jd at columbia university law school where he was a member of the review. please welcome mr. martinez. [applause] >> thank you a very much. am i on? >> it doesn't sound like it. >> is it working? thank you all. it's a pleasure and an honor to be year, and i wanted to first of all say that our partnership with arizona state university has been fantastic my déjà is with the new america's foundation think tank here in washington and we have a growing and a very enriching partnership and i commend the president on his leadership and it is an honor to be here with justice o'connor. today's my fourth day and it's the first time i've been able to celebrate it with the supreme court justice. [laughter] i want to very quickly introduce our panel. gregory has introduced himself as the founding director of the center for social cohesion. a senior fellow at the new america foundation as well and the exit of a director of the public square which is based in l.a.. gregory writes a column, weekly column for "the los angeles times" and is the author of mongrels, bastards, orphans and that the bombs. he likes to say this is a memoir about his family, but the subtitle is actually mexican immigration, the future of race in america which "the washington post" listed as one of the best books of 2007. gregory is now at work on a book on the american hope. to his left is bill bishop who lives in austin texas and is the author of the big sword which he co-authored with the university of texas sociologist robert bishop. bishop has also worked as a journalist. he and his wife owned and operated the county times, a weekly newspaper in smith phill, texas, and the now coedited the daily ponder, a publication covering of rural america. we also have mike, a colleague of mine at the new america's foundation. mike was actually one of the founders of new america, and now he is the co-director of the economic growth program and the next social contract initiative. michael was a very accomplished journalist as well. he's been east africa to new yorker, harper's and national interest and is the author of numerous books including the next american nation, the american way of strategy and he writes frequently for the financial times, "the new york times" and so on where he has a weekly column. immediately to my right is james, professor of government at the university of maryland where he's been on the faculty since 1992. his research includes areas of political behavior, political geography and u.s. immigration policy and he is top notch. i know from firsthand experience some round tables be served on together. his most recent book which is relevant to today's conversation is the patchwork nation the 12 community types that make up the nation which he co-authored with dante in 2010. so, having dispensed with introductions, i want to open with you, gregory, to tell us why are we here under this -- >> to celebrate your birthday. >> thank you very much. turning the 31 is really dramatic. [laughter] but this issue of social cohesion, on the one hand i think that justice o'connor said the table nicely in terms of talking about and i loved the prescription we should all go out and eat mexican food but you've chosen in conjunction with asu and new america to approach the topic that is timely that is under the social cohesion and should start by having had you describe why you seized upon that as a free market and what are you trying to accomplish? >> i backed into it. i spent a lot of time looking at issues of integration and assimilation and the culture and mostly why my concern was how the newcomers became a part of the whole. ten years into it i said what's the whole? and who is supporting it and how to be articulate it and what's the vision of the country and everyone on the panel felt about these things and what is the multicultural business a time with multiculturalism for instance in 1970 only of the percentage of foreign residents, now we're 13% foreign-born. do we need another vision that is more about, that talks more about the court and the periphery, and can we always take cohesion for granted? one of my friends on the second panel i will stealing from her she spends a lot of time as to why in germany talking about the difference between european and u.s. approaches to integration and we can across the same thing but she coined the phrase which is the germans talk so incredibly well about integration but do it poorly and we've done it well and talk about it poorly so i hope we can talk about it in a way that's responsible and as michael said if anything for social cohesion will be to one, get americans to think about what it is that keeps us together and perhaps no longer assume that it will happen without our great efforts to keep it together. >> so is part of your assumption bringing us here to get there that we are more divided than we used to be? see 40, 50 years ago? >> it's less. i feel i have to answer that where i live, live in the middle of los angeles, one of the few people whose native born, live in a city 50% foreign-born and in a state where 50% of its residents are either first or second generation americans so i am not in essentially concerned and the superlatives this is the most divided. i'm concerned about how in the increasingly diversified nation where we have the election of president obama whether it was or wasn't i think it was symbolically taken to sacrifice some sort of fundamental shift in the racial efik composition of the country, and i think my sense is as we tetris a fi we need a sense of who we are, who we want to be and how we are going to achieve them. >> to the rest of you i encourage you to use superlatives. we have members of the media. [laughter] you and i talked about this, and help us put this in a bit of the context in terms of your sense of how to fight we are today as a society. >> i think that there is a paradox but the political level we've divided to the to the partisan polarization at any point since the civil war reconstruction. at the social level with the we are more integrated outside of immigrant enclaves than we've ever been in our entire history so i'm going to phrase it this way. i think american society is less divided the and in the past. american politics is more divisive than it was in the past. so we have less division in one sense and more division and other. let's go back 50 years to 1961 which was close to my birth date. at that point, you had years of war going on in the south of the racial integration, federal troops being deployed, assassination bombing terrorism, you had restrictive covenants in much of the united states preventing not only african-americans and latinos but also jews and catholics from buying homes in suburbs and you had wall street firms and elite clubs that discriminate on the basis of white ethnicity, not simply on the matter of race. all of that changed dramatically, and it's true we have a new wave of immigrants beginning in the 1970's, and that causes tension has always immigration does but if you look at the largest group of plenty platoons majority of latinos marry outside of their group, which is the major index of assimilation you can come up with. as gregory pointed out in his book in the next generation or so, first or second generation will become a majority again within the community and that shifts the dynamic the week ended after world war i and the european ethnics native-born and assimilated so what accounts for the fact even though objectively we are in my opinion there's more division and rancor and partisanship. my colleagues have their own ideas about this. i would like to throw out two factors which may not be discussed. there's internal and external. the internal factors 1961 there was an establishment that repressed the expression of a lot of the division that did exist. we didn't have 900 channels with the john birch society channel, and black panther channel. the media were controlled by most the northeastern elite white males and certain things could be expressed. so, william f. buckley jr. and george will and expressed the right but you didn't have the equivalence -- you did at the local level. there was the county radio show who was the demagogue say you have an artificial homogeneity that was policed by this establishment, which is broken down for the most part a thing to be welcomed. it existed by excluding people, but it means there's a kind of chaos now so things which always existed are now being expressed in a way that they were not in the past, and the other idea that i would like to float before wrapping up this the end of the cold war may have dyncorp to a certain amount of rancor in american politics. if you go back to the period facing the foreign threat after the end of the napoleonic war, after the end of world war i, the country would literally tear itself apart in the civil war in a time of great power and peace. .. which would suggest you are onto something. how do you square, politicians flourished by being divisive and we live in a representative government. and according to your view, the public at large is is not that divided. why the disconnect? how can washington, the people in washington get ahead by being more divisive when their constituents are divided. >> we have electric and we also have the selectric, the people who select the candidates, and all the way up until the 1970s the parties chose the candidates and they wanted people who could win in a general election. the reforms followed by the republicans created a modern primary -- and again this was a democratic reform. but what it meant was that instead of the party elders choosing center-right centerleft candidates you had candidates chosen by the often single-digit percentages of the electric, the activists of the left and the right to vote in the primaries so i think that is a major factor. every politician now and you will see this in the 2012 presidential race. you have to veer over to one site to get the nomination and then you go running back towards the center. that was not the case when you had 30 of the votes that the national convention and the state delegations. >> i want to bring a bill to the discussion because you know this is a good segue. michael is talking about the fact that the parties themselved themselves out and political scientist talk about the sorting out that occurred that you no longer have this significant overlap between republicans and democrats. we can all recall the time when even those of us who are -- when you had republicans that were considerably more liberal than conservative democrats and vice versa and now there has been this great sorting out that overlap no longer exists as people like bill nelson and others have written about. and also you build that your book, the big sword, goes beyond that and doesn't just talk about the sorting out that occurred at the political class level but you go much deeper and talk about sorting out that has occurred among americans and how they live and who they choose to an gauge and give us a sort of overview of how you came into this. >> we came into it because we were interested in -- i came from kentucky and move to austin texas i came from a poor place to a rich one and we wanted to know why some places were getting richer and some were getting poorer. what we found was that over time laces in the united states are getting increasingly different from one another in a fundamental way. for instance, up until the early 1970s most cities were getting closer together in terms of the percentage of people who live to their, percentage of adults with b.a. degrees. since that time until the last figures from 09, most places are falling away from the main. people with college degrees are clustering in some places in abandoning others. the same is true with patent productions. so economic production began to differ increasingly from place to place. income differentials again increased from place to place and as we begin to look at all these things every time we could find a factor that we could take down to the county level we saw increasing divergence within the 3100 counties in the united states. so suicide rates would differentiate between rural and urban places. two-thirds of u.s. counties either republicans or democrats are increasing so that counties are becoming increasingly republican or democratic. the first time ever in the united states history beginning in the early 1980s, the longevity rates in about 1000 u.s. counties has either stopped or started going backwards as the economic differences replaced them. eventually what we are seeing is this weird event, where we lived. it is becoming more homogenous. in my precinct in austin texas, it is like 99%. it is unbelievable but from place to place within the united states we are seeing greater diversity. so we lived and increasing conformity in a country that from community to community has become increasingly different in fundamental ways. how we form our families and whether we spank their kids are not spank them. just every way you can measure. >> maybe you get tired of being asked this because i've seen a lot of the coverage around your book zeroed in on the statistic about the number of, the percentage of counties that were landslide counties in 1976 versus someone asked you to repeat that because i think that is a startling illustration. >> we tried to figure out ways of describing and finally we just looked at those at the percentage of voters who lived in counties where an and close presidential elections, the election locally wasn't close at all. so in 1976 a close election, but a quarter of the people lived in counties where either ford or carter won by 20 percentage points or more. in 2008, about half the people lived in a county where either obama or mccain won by 20% or greater. and, you can see some of the stairstep pattern. the trend increases i think on the 2010 as you saw those rural counties and rural congressional districts that flops democratic and went back to their normal republican groups. >> so is this people opting into like-minded communities or are preexisting communities just altering as a whole in one direction or the other or is this occurring because people are picking up and moving to be with people like themselves? >> i mean, and can can chime in on this because he has rescinded research. i think people are moving to be around those that are like themselves, not necessary -- necessary -- necessarily politically. ways of life tell you more about a person's politics than policy or demographics. and so as bigger institutions in the country dissolve and people are having to create their own identities they have to choose their own gods and they have to change choose their own sex in their own family-style. it is easier to do that if you are in a community where your choices are being reinforced. every four years that results in communities that vote increasingly alike this is really a lifestyle choice that is a result of a society that has big institutions that are falling apart. >> jim, you have added to the canon of literature of how this country is divided. i should parenthetically make a pitch for one of our new america fellows and a faculty member at asu who is one of the early pioneers in this field. in 1981 he wrote this book, the nine nations of north america. now you have identified 12 separate america's, separate america's and why do you talk a little bit about what what you found? >> well i think our -- some overlap with bill cushing's work but one important concept is the idea of party extension, parties of extension, the idea in political science that partisanship has been extended to ever more disparate parts of our lives. at one point, partisanship was about economics, socioeconomic status, but class status and that pretty much defined republicans from democrats in large part. and it seems like in the 60s and 70s, as bill bishop and bob christian point out in the book, the economic foundations of the party system, they remained there but overlaid on top of that came these cultural issues and divisions as partisanship became extended into these other areas that bill has talked about. and so now, you know republican endemic rat doesn't just mean lower income versus higher income but it means all these other things as well. to the point where you know, we can look at the kind of preference that you have and some psychologists have done this already. and predict your partisanship on that basis. you know we could look at your food preferences and your snack preferences. this is of course what microtargeting is all about and i don't think they are as good at it yet as they want to be or if they claim to be but they are moving in that direction and what makes it possible is that partisanship has extended to these other noneconomic references. you know i think that those are things that contribute to division. >> for those of you who are not familiar with jim's book i will give you a sense of some of these 12 americas, which do feel, sound very much like marketing categories and you have got people who work in counties. is that by congressional district or county? >> by county that could be referred to rather prosaically as service worker centers or military bastions, immigration nation, evangelical epicenters and emptiness and so forth so it is really -- you can go to the web site, patrick nation.org and plug in your zip code and you will find out which one of these americas you live in and which is kind of fun. >> and i would add, that is not just about immigrants and natives. for one thing, ruppel and go provisions are not about immigrant and native because so many immigrants aren't involved. they don't participate much. they don't have high levels of political knowledge so it isn't just about immigrant and native although that is starkly something we are talking about. the political divisions are more about rifle native groups and how they are defining themselves. >> you right. this is very interesting because we are very familiar with this debate around media and people self-selecting now, where they seek their information and we are in this trend in the media and publishing and cable tv news where you can pretty much tailor the kind of information you want to be exposed to as opposed to the old model of broadcasting, where we would all sit down and listen to walter cronkite and be exposed to whatever information the editors at "the washington post" or "the new york times" wanted to impart to us. we all know our own filters and in fact there is a recent book out by eli paris or who is the founder of moveon.org and his book is on this topic called the filter bubble. and it is about the dangers of us being sheltered from anything that challenges our own beliefs. this is coming from the founder of moveon.org, which i find interesting. jake weisberg writing about this on slate today. i thought he had a very apt metaphor for he says it is now possible to imagine a world in which every person creates his own mental fortress and africans the outside world through digital arrows. so michael, you posited at the beginning though that we are actually not or divided than we used to be. bill and jim are telling us that people are actually living in parts of america that look more different from each other than they might have not too long ago. >> i think there is a way to reconcile these two narratives which is we have gone from involuntary balkanization to voluntary balkanization. in voluntary balkanization, if you were irish catholic you could not get into the ivy league school or you could not get into the neighborhood and so on. voluntary balkanization is, if you want to live a pedestrian lifestyle you can move to portland. if you want to have to reverse you can move to houston. and it doesn't matter what your race, ethnicity or sexual orientation is necessarily. these are kind of lifestyle communities. are there problems with that? doesn't threaten social provision? it certainly does in some degrees. is it the kind of absolute dystopian nightmarish threat that these descriptive hierarchies of race and ethnicity and gender were? i don't think so so in a sense just looking at the broad world in perspective this is a nice problem to have. it is a good album to have if people have the choice to get into these different clubs as opposed to being slotted into something by fake. >> if everybody can choose their own gated community and there are no restricted restrictive governments as you mentioned earlier that is still a good problem to have? >> there is the class to mention. a few of the one class society and some people decide to be bohemians and others decide to be puritans, that is one thing. s. we have seen we have an increasingly stratified class system in this country for various reasons. and the allocation of people by race and ethnicity is not even through the class system. so, you do have the problem that the older descriptive caste system even though it is gone now, it can be perpetuated by just the dynamics of class because people tend to inherit the class of their parents. so i think it is particularly a problem, the lifestyle amenities don't bother me that much. the gated communities where all of the suburbs in the metro area are strictly white -- ranked by degrees of $20,000 within each one, the incomes are pretty much the same. >> and their school performance tracks that. >> exactly but i wouldn't necessarily lump that problem of class segregation in with the lifestyle of diversity. >> what is the buy-in? >> i am less hopeful about a nation that -- i am trying not to be nostalgic for walter cronkite. however and it is not really about the choosing of clubs. it is the minority consciousness that often comes with the choosing of that club. again earlier in my work i did a lot of things on california and ethnicity and again, i essentially traced and predicted early on that the latino population as it gained a majority status demographically but began politically to gain a majority consciousness, and therefore a sense that they are responsible for the whole. what i fear now and i've written about it several times including for "time" magazine is what we are seeing is the emergence of a white minority consciousness, the sense of an aggrieved minority. i am wondering whether the election of barack obama won't one day we will look back on it as the point at which all americans became members of aggrieved minorities. three weeks ago "wall street journal" had a headlined, antiwhite bias seems to be on increase. you look at that study closely. not only is the survey finding that whites are seeing antiwhite bias on the rise, but actually according to the survey, these respondents actually saw antiwhite bias as a worse social problem than anti-black dais. and i don't know if we can objectively say that is true. so i'm really concerned at this notion of the country and to go back to arthur schlesinger's junior famous book of the disunited of america and this is exactly what he worried about. he thought it was going to come from blacks or latinos but i think what we are seeing is a submergence of the white minority consciousness in the united states and to me that is the biggest fear that i have and i'm wondering to what extent will whites become a more effective aggrieved minority than any other minority we have had in our history. >> is interesting you bring that up and i know that this is a subject you write often about for the "l.a. times" and elsewhere particularly when you want to boost the number of commentators on her column. every time he right about angry whites to get about 500 people chiming in. and they are all very pleasant and well thought out comments. but ronald braunstein with their national journal wrote me last week and said he really wanted to be here in this look like a great event and had a conflict but he said you know he wanted me to reference a poll that the "national journal" did that actually to gregory's point, found that whites are ominously -- this is the way ron characterized that -- whites are more pessimistic than minorities about the prospects for their children. so we have reached a point where blacks and latinos are more optimistic about the future of their kids bend whites, to your point about the sense of grievance. i should also say ron's book the second civil war fits very well into this canon of books that are examining what divides us. and i think you would second michael lind's sense that washington now is more divided than the rest of the country and it used to be the other way around. jim, you mentioned also this notion of rival native segments of our population being more a source of tension and division then perhaps what we pretend to think of the frictions around immigrants. do you want to build on what gregory was saying? >> well, i think that obviously different groups of natives can have very different attitudes about immigration, which of course can be a source of division. that helps to define the party system too. but you know i am not sure that immigrants themselves are necessarily the largest component of any kind of pro-immigration activist community. i think the evidence suggests that too many immigrants are nonparticipants even when naturalized. they don't tend to have very high levels of clinical knowledge or very high levels of -- they are nietzsche the country and they are learning their oaths. obviously they are the exception. just a social science general asian. i think immigration politics, the discussion that we could have in this forum or elsewhere about whether we should have a more generous and open policy or close down the border certainly is something that natives again again -- with some intensity. >> do you feel as gregory does that whites are becoming an aggrieved minority? >> i think that is very interesting point and it is certainly worth monitoring and it is worth further study. i certainly think that there are quite a few whites out there i think as manifest in certain elements of the tea party movement that are concerned about immigration. the tea party groups particularly in the southwest i think. i don't think all of the tea party is by any means but i think there are elements of it that are concerned about those issues and the idea that you know, they could effectively become an aggrieved minority with some political influence and power. it is definitely worth watching. >> i am actually skeptical. feedback to the 1960s you had daniel bell and richard hofstetter and they were saying america is on the verge of becoming a fascist state because of the working class whites and barry goldwater. and and a new hat i remember, every headline in "newsweek" in the 1970s and 1980s was the evil angry white male. and so in my opinion, the white working class became the scapegoat for the white liberal elites and libertarian elites. and they are saying oh this country would work vertically well if it weren't for these reactionary working-class whites. i just don't see this in the white working-class. you know the story is half a century old. the ku klux klan, white supremacy and all that stuff is weaker than ever. as i pointed out if you look at white latino asian intermarriage african and white intermarriage has grown significantly from a low level. it is just increasing with generation after generation on social issues. the white working class is more liberal than its parents in its grandparents so i am just skeptical about this. you know it is a matter of time. if we are back in 1914, you might have a bunch of anglo-saxon protestants sitting up here, wondering if the country is broken down now with all of these germans and irish in greeks and jewish and italians. one of the points i would like to make is the only reason we can sit here and talk about whites is because all of those european ethnic identities collapsed. by the 1970s, most so-called european americans, italian americans and polish americans in swedish americans had multiple european and anglo-american ancestors. the 70s bone, that was said of little sweden and little poland in little italy. so my guess would be that we are going to see particularly with what will be by far the largest minority latinos that we are 20 or 30 years away from that kind of collapse. now right now, it is kind of where we were with let's say the new immigrants in 1914. or the germans in the irish in 1840 where they read these distinct groups. >> i want to get back to bill and a second and broaden out the discussion but before that greg i know you have thought a lot about the changing definition of what it means to be right for michael's.. >> this poll was not a survey of white's response to immigration. it was simply a poll of whites and blacks only. so it wasn't vis-à-vis immigration per se that they were being discriminated against. secondly i think actually this is another discussion i went into. the extent to which the collapse of the ethnicities as part of essential his overall bigger problem which is the collapse of white -- mary waters at harvard did a book ethnic options in the sense that the loss of individual rootedness and ethnic rootedness and the sense of specialness as one becomes white can also create great feelings of loneliness. the emergence of whiteness sort of post ethnic whiteness in itself i would argue is hardly a social problem and it does lead to this -- this notion of people having to create what they are. the burden of what did you say? they have to create their own gods. that it's a tremendous individual burden which i think we haven't really faced what that really means. what ultimate freedom? that is ultimate freedom, choosing who are gods aren't i think that is a problem we are increasingly going to have to face. >> and two results of this that i think are interesting. one is, one out of 10 of everybody over the age of 60 in the united states is on some sort of antidepressant. and the burden of having to make those choices all the time, depression is essentially a disease of an action and inaction in a society where you have to make choices all the time winds up in depression. the second thing is as her big groups break down, politics becomes more individual. public issues are only thought of in terms of individual solutions. so when we think of environmental issues, you know we want -- what can i do as an individual? so is the groups break down, more burden is put on the person to create his or her own world, winds up in depression and the politics of that kind of society is what is all individual and so the group movement of class and. >> and it is all zero-sum. there is a sense that you know there is the cliché about all government spending is wasteful unless -- i am getting part of it. >> the big policy since 1980 have been tax policies, earned income tax credit on the low income and tax cuts on the high-end. >> where'd you come in on this issue that michael raised about the idea that perhaps washington, people here are more divided and more divisive than back home where you are and where real people live. do you see some credence to that? >> elites are always more divided than voters. but i tell you, when i go from congress in austin texas to fayette county, hsu lindberg texas where in front of the kc hall there are the largest pieces of steel fetuses hanging from an antiabortion display. there is a hell of a big difference. .. this is all good, there was nothing intrinsically sound about having backend the good old days the democratic party that encompassed both pros segregation southerners and of northeast liberals. we submit the overlap and the cohesiveness but he said this was nonsense and we have a more educated electorate we have less crosscutting relationships where we fight during the day about one issue and have bureau of might and our friends on other issues and this is something jim talked about every issue becomes left and right and predictable we are less likely to hover locations where our enemies become friends. there's a saying that they are enemies, we marry them and nothing of those sort of crosscutting relationships are the essential to keep those societies together and now, you know, they've got match.com, one of the things the match people on mr. politics and there's few locations in d.c. where enemies are friends and the sites get mixed up. >> it's a tolerance issue i think the competition part intensity has been participation as a political participation levels because of vigorous competition tends to stir a motion and the impetus, stipulate the impetus to grout and vote casseaux participation levels are up and from that perspective it's good, so it depends on how you evaluate and are coming out, but from the perspective of tolerance, it could well be that intolerance is extended to play these kind of divisions to the values, so it's not just a race anymore. it's a church or not, lifestyle, cultural dimensions. i do think if there is hope anywhere there's hope in the suburbs people continue to mix. most of the red and blue division and people continue to mix in suburban communities of they continue to be purple. there are lots of different kind of suburbs, but still from a geographic standpoint with those now boring culture less suburbs seem to be the place there's still hope for mixing integration. >> a question for my fellow panelist. if you look at the thought pre-world war one period in the 1880s, 1900's and so long because it occurs to me the period from the new deal until fairly recently you had this transition with the conservative southern democrats leading the democratic party, the rockefeller republican northern liberals entering the democratic party a switch of constituencies. by eva election of barack obama, pretty much your at the pattern you had before world war i, that is the southern and western party which is the republicans coming in to you had the more liberal and midwestern party it just seems to me if you go back to that period you get the same kind of polarization and homogeneity in the cultural issues from the civil war up until the depression, prohibition. this was a huge thing and sunday shopping and all these issues today. so in other words, is our idea of the american past being one with inclusive parties, is that a new deal phenomenon? >> 25 years ago a lot of social science was wringing its hands about the decline of partisanship and absence of polarization and now we are wringing our hands about the opposite so maybe the lesson the social scientists simply like to wring their hands. [laughter] that could well be and i won't contest there's been other times in our past polarized if not more so than this. >> in the early days, too. >> i have to say as a former editorial board member i was struck by something jim said about the tenor of our times now you can tell people the kind of music you like and trust to her now the list of possessions you can ascribe to a person in the ballpark, but one of the things that's changed a fleet is even being in from the position of the newspaper i think nowadays there's this expectation that if you take a side on one issue, your readers and politicians should be able to infer where you're going to come down on every other issue. it's sort of to have to be in one trench or another. it's getting increasingly difficult. by a understand why it would be difficult for people who are practicing politics but even for people who try to set themselves up as arbiters on the sidelines to judge separate issues on their own merit because there's this notion that if you take one side on the debate about trade it must mean you take this issue over here on the issue left place and things that are completely unrelated but you're supposed to be on one team or the every end bill got angry and confused if you start mixing and matching and trying to plot an independent course and that is something very frustrating about the media environment but it's informed by the sort of political culture. one last thought and question before we shift and take some comments and questions from dewaal and michael landon anybody else that has the thought i just have to ask we are living in a time of economic anxiety, high unemployment to you think would be possible to go back and correlate whether the way we talk about politics and fees sort of acrimony and cultural debates tracks with how the economy is doing is this unease or are we talking about something that is brought? >> if you look back to the beginning of the industrial period you don't have them before factories and things like that. you have the long depression of the 1890's. you had the great depression and this plays on the persian whatever we call it and its troubling to look back at the political response in the united states and europe for the most part you've got claws on civil war politics and both sides of the atlantic, the rise of the radical right, the late 19th century it was authoritarianism, racism, eugenics, imperialism and outside of france and the united states and britain and a couple of constitutional monarchies and scandinavia you've got rise of authoritarianism three terrapin in the depression obviously in hitler's terminally and miscellany italy but elsewhere, and i do think there is a link that is when you have slow growth you might think everyone will say let's pitch in together and save the nation, but it's not just here, it's most democracies we've had the experience. the horizons contract and the group's, whatever they may be you want to hang on to what you have and the fear that someone else will do better than you and shrinking the economy tends to power politics and its very frightening. >> it's a sort of zero some mentality. bill, to one to that anything? >> we didn't like one another when things were going good. [laughter] and that's because politics now is not based on class trips, it's lifestyle groups and so those relationships have broken. >> i would say the lack of cohesion that i think about is not a function of the economy as much as tomography, and when it became a minority in the largest state of the union, that forces us all to recalibrating to the majority no more minority and that's a profound discussion we haven't had what it means to be a member of the minority and what obligations and responsibilities and they have to the whole so it's going to happen i don't think that economic times helped, but i think it was for instance in california the polls on immigration was very good right now but it's too long overdue and we talk about the same way we did 40 years ago. >> let's open up to all of you and take questions. i assume -- please wait for the microphone and identify yourself to read why don't we start in the back? >> you express' we don't agree other things going to the wrong regime divided it's not because people want to be divided but they're forced to be divided or misled and when the people try to be torn that you shouldn't communicate with lower income, those lower income have been robbed or social security robbed. they don't want anybody to communicate. in guantanamo bay, those are the people to communicate, not lawyers, not families. my question is can you put all those informations which are not variable because the processing and the coercion and its oppression can you try your effort to reach out to those people who are minorities that they are not to have their voice heard maybe you can take into the judicial system the had a lot of cases that had been suppressed and they are not allowed to talk or fire campaigns. so could deutsch -- >> thank you. >> i share my experience and identify a problem. >> thank you. it's interesting question about whether more voices are being suppressed them were in the past and a lot of people talk about the democratization of the public square and the media and michael eluted to this. you made the claim of 40 or 50 years ago we were more united because a lot more voices were being suppressed them today, but how would you amplify that or address this concern that even today there are people whose voices aren't being heard and what can we do about that? >> in all democracies access to have your opinion broadcast the number of access is falling but it makes a big difference if you're a billionaire and fund media outlets and so on, but if you are an average citizen even in the age of the internet. but again, i think this a good problem to have that is to have too many, raucous debates of rather than too few. in particular what we see in the space world now is like the arab spurring except you can call with the western spring. you have movements in the united states and japan. people rebelling against the political class this which presided over this 30 year bundle of the disaster. the last thing i think we would want at this stage would be to have the three networks, edward r. murrow, walter cronkite, juneau, notable as they were say this is the consensus opinion. there's a time for distances. >> okay. in the back. >> thank you to read my name is dr. caroline. i'm a physician and a baby boomer, 64. and you haven't really talked about the enormous rightward shift i've seen over my lifetime to read in the 50's and 60's we were all proceeding on the new deal terms. there wasn't nearly the enormous difference between rich and poor that there is now. i've always wondered why it is most people, the working class, white or black, middle class are voting for candidates whose interests were promoting policies that don't serve their interests. they don't pay high income tax. they are not affected by the deficit. the economy ran a much better when the demand was higher, when the inequality was lower but this has no attraction with the majority of people today and i don't understand why not. >> the question is what's the matter with kansas? [laughter] >> for a lot of these folks the metaphorical, the obscene the administration's, the blue administration's and economic circumstances haven't changed for them so if you see the myriad administrations of the various parties, and go and come and go and economic circumstances don't change matter which party is in power, pretty soon you figure out a doesn't make sense to vote on the basis of economic issues because that's going to be pretty much the same because you're on the periphery of the economy, you're not in the core to reassess what do you decide to vote on? you decided to vote on those things that you imagine possibly could change by you've never seen the economic change in the power. so that's what's going on in kansas. >> the new deal period, this country was what liberal socially. franklin roosevelt's new deal coalition was southern segregationists who believed every word of the bible was true. .. or franklin roosevelt with a felt about gay marriage or censorship of the disease. those were bitterly contested, but not the federal level. >> i should just clarify the reference to kansas is of course tom frank wrote this book called what's the matter were either due to the question of flying his view, so many people in red states vote against economic entries and jim's answer is a provocative one and also build mentioned earlier that there might eus class and cultural issues and depending, you could argue perhaps the political classes stir up some other issues to get people more riled up. end of, people disagree about the right economic prescriptions. >> primark rutenberg. the title of this whole session is comic in the united states stay united? i am from illinois, god for date. we grew up and i'm going to ask the question, given the positions, should stay united quick >> gregory, mr. social cohesion. should this country say united? >> justice o'connor started the session i will assume we agree with her that absolutely. but to be the general point. perhaps you believe otherwise. [inaudible] >> anybody else won a? i mean, i suppose, you know, your work and also jim, your work has suggested that people are opting to not stay united in many ways. we have a big tent of the united states, but if you live in a community where 99% of the people voted the way you did and have the same sensibilities come in a way we are kind of succeeding, right? from some common space. >> the question is, can we develop a new institutions that make diversity is strength? because the old institutions that make diversity is strength have lost their hold and that's the political question. >> the church. people used to belong to mainline churches in the churches were tired or clay. people rotary clubs and now, people don't see themselves as members of groups. they see themselves as sovereign individuals. >> over here in your life. >> my name is satin. i didn't hear anything about education. some of us did not come here as immigrants. another is native american, my dad thought. so some of our voices are getting left out. social media there is a way. the problem is everybody does not broadband. i didn't hear or see any discussion of the inequity of access to the conversations going on, other than price. what do you think? how can we change for education for teachers, people working with kids. how come he is social media to change? ynez sandra day o'connor has some ideas. what about the rest of you? >> i know we talked a little bit about the fact that we can present those who are in a society where everybody has the right access to make the same type of choices for talking about gated communities, bringing an education as a valuable point in sham, and you have ideas? >> political literacy is very uneven across individuals. of course you can predict where political literacy its lowest. these are poor communities in the minority computer use. that's very clear. i think that it's probably helpful to think of other institutions aside from just schools, however, a civic educators. you know, political parties play a role as advocacy groups. so there other institutions that can play a role in elevating the level of political knowledge than just public schools. of course, public schools -- the civic literacy at a price they are so highly politicized that possibly the way to approach the knowledge and political knowledge. >> i actually like your point about camino, raising broadband because i ain't increasingly coming in now, not long ago it seemed like i was a luxury condo bandwidth you had to access the information superhighway coming to date myself. you know, that's an important measure of how one can participate in civic life in the new america we have a team of people thinking about, shouldn't this be a public right? how do we transform thinking about that? because you're right, the penetration of bribe beyond is not uniform across the country. >> another question over here to your right. >> thank you. any micheli weinstein and i'd like to come back to what our professors are basing on the rationale and the reason why we have this great divide at the local community and were citizens aren't living. there is a statement made that it would take to challenge somewhat on which came first, the chicken or the egg. people do not make a decision for where they live, having anything to do with politics. in part, that may be true, but it leaves out the entire supreme court decision about one man, one vote. and since the 70s, what we've seen happen in our local communities, at the state level, the county level, one man, one vote for every district in the leadership of this country that is there to represent the people, tincher redressed or your strip where they think they're going to get the majority votes. people have moved into this community because of their culture or a job or school and the leadership says my goodness, we would like to win the state office and we're going to around these people who have the same feeling sand lake is probably not true and are politically the same. i like to ask you how you can make these social decisions without looking not redistricting and the lack of leadership and what technology has played in their role about gerrymandering redistricting. >> here's a short story in redistricting, which is when you look at stuff we look at it that the county level so that districts over time have gotten more partisan. they did not become more partisan at the time to forget her scene. he became more partisan between redistrict enough people begin to either move or change their view appeared so retraced to treat not overall, political scientists can tell me if i'm wrong. it has not increased partisanship in congress. >> i have a slightly different take on her question. i'll try to answer from this recent survey data. recent survey data from knowledge networks suggest that as many as 30% of movers will take into account the part of the composition of the destination, when they can do to remove. now it's not the primary consideration. it's not usually first on the list. first on the list has always been job and family and friends. but i do something about the human friends, maybe not so much shots. maintain ceiling fans are co-parties. if you're making your decision on a destination, on the basis of family and friends, and they often be a decision that's the ceiling directly. i think that's quite interesting that even if you do not explicitly take into account the partisan composition of alternative destinations when you're plotting a move, you can still wind up sorting yourself inadvertently by looking closer to family and friends or by select in a destination based on other cultural preferences that bill discusses in his book. church, for example, you mentioned church as the destination criteria are not only more likely to be republican, but more likely to settle republicans when you relocate. [inaudible] >> debonair making decisions, they're the one man one though, whether that is minority or majority, whatever the culture is and not to liberty gerrymandering to make sure that the voices of people are so separated and divided we have had the situation. >> right, okay. i have an answer for that, too. the kind of sorting that occurring certainly makes kind of one-party and lopsided districts much more likely. i think the important obligation possibly of the courts and the court system with each move towards mandating to the extent possible, trying a competitive distance. that may involve moving the redistricting process into the nonpartisan commissions the way iowa and other states have gone on, perhaps in above some other kinds of solutions. but you know, that would be one thing ugly to hear certainly advocate for because we need competitive election. >> there's a very rich, and very contentious literature on this question of the extent to which redistricting is exacerbating the senate. it seems like they're strong disagreements on that. i think there's a lot of incumbent protection that occurs in redistricting in some unfortunate cases of minority packing in texas and elsewhere. but i think the problem is that his favorite subject we can have a whole bunch around and probably should. >> at this point will have to take her last question. we asked you join us for late refreshments back over there and then we'll continue with the program shortly thereafter. >> 90 misty mcelroy. and are interested in pulling a string on an intriguing insight to build it and it's about lifestyle set of class and applying it to this idea of wife as a disgruntled minority. so we sort of arugula eating liberals are not disgruntled, but there's steak and potatoes eating, high income professionals elsewhere who are are -- >> aware what quick >> disgruntled. >> i don't know who's disgruntled and who isn't. i just know that they are different and that those differences are extending across the political boundary. so they are not only different about what are they used lawn chemicals are not coming to different about which kind of car they drive, all the things that notion upon the use to identify the people. the demographics becomes less of an issue. lifestyle becomes bigger issue. >> you want to talk about whether disgruntled? well, this has been a terrific panel. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> thank you all. we are very very pleased to have professor randall kennedy with us today. he will be giving a keynote address entitled what is america's deepest fault lines? randall kennedy is merkel are a kind professor at the harvard law school where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law and regulation of race relations. served as a law clerk for jay kelley rae for a court of appeals and justice thurgood marshall of the united states supreme court. his most recent books are the strange career of a troublesome word, interracial agencies, sex, adoption and sellout. elaborate the american law institute coming american academy of arts and sciences and the american philosophical association, mr. kennedy is also a charter trustee princeton university. he holds degrees from princeton, oxford university emile law school. please welcome mr. randolph kennedy. [applause] >> i haven't deeply grateful to gregory rodriguez said his colleagues at the center social cohesion for inviting me to participate in a symposium. implicit epicenters title is the idea that social cohesion is good. i suppose that it is under certain conditions. there are polities however characterized a dictatorial social cohesion. that is not the sort which the sender wishes to foster through research, study and debate. the cohesion of the center seeks to foster is a democratic, pluralistic cohesion that frames the decent society. there are now, there have long been a number of fault lines in america that attract a social cohesion. i think a religious bias, particularly nowadays prejudice against muslims. gender bias, particularly mistreatment of women, bias against gay. wipro is america's deepest fault line? that is the boundary that separates those with sufficient resources to undergird the relatively secured dignify, hopeful skill enhancing existing from those, the impoverished who work nine to insecurity, humiliation, isolation and other helpful conditions. the resources to which i referred manifold. they include parents, nutrition, health care, housing, education and employment. but in the background of each of these resources, nourishing them inconspicuously, but essentially just like water is money. that is where the boundary between adequate financing in severe financial want marks the most far-reaching mystify division in american life. those at a decent financial minimum are much more vulnerable than does the decent man-to-man to the terrors of nature, dale black and communal failure. as the journalist david shipley puts a comment being poor means being in. as i use the term the poorer, as i use the term, the poor are those at or beneath the federal government's poverty line. the poverty threshold for an individual under 65 and 2009 to $11,000, 161. for an adult with one child, it is $17,268. for twiddles her three children, is $25,603 so on and so forth. the format for determining poverty threshold has to track yours. the formula has not been substantially revised in over half a century. it does not take into account regional differences. it does not take into account certain non-cash forms of income and by the same token, does not take into account certain expenses. sound economy and the liberals contend poverty line is too low and thus underinclusive. while others, mainly conservatives maintain its too high and that's overinclusive. i agree with the farmer, but my purpose here is not to explore, much less subtly complicated theological dispute. my purpose is to highlight a highly toxic condition that receives all too little attention and 50, the condition of severe financial deprivation. for that purpose, federal poverty line, flawed as it is, work satisfactorily. minor concern is not with inequality per se, rather my direct concern is the preview shown. i am not so much alarmed by the state of the socioeconomic feeling, more particularly its absence which favors the the. rather i am alarmed about the status is your economic score, more particularly, its sagging, inadequacy. how many people in america are poor? the number is or should be to the bureau of census in 2009, 14.3% of all persons in america lived in poverty. that represents some 43.5 million people. 10 million more than the entire population of canada. 35% of the population of the american impoverished her children. what does that mean concretely to be poor? poverty can have many meanings. the poor are by no means monolithic. most impoverished only intermittently, but then there are the hard-core poor, the underclass, truly disadvantaged to remain mired beneath the poverty line for long stretches of time. regardless of whether they are short-term or long-term poverty, the poor face hairless, painful and worst of all, crippling circumstances. among the consolation of things poverty may mean are the following: been dependent upon financial institutions such as payday loan outlets, the charge of serious fees to service those unable to afford ink accounts. living in housing that with the mold is a strapping, roaches in nearby toxic dumps exacerbates your child's asthma. the man able to pay an ambulance or an emergency room bill and then having one's credit downgraded on account of delinquency. living in neighborhoods that are simultaneous criminals and police who have been dealing with the poor still all too outfitted that their job is to protect and serve, not harass and intimidate. growing up in homes in which an educated adults fail to prepare children for school and their most impressionable years. welcoming gao or even prison as a respite from the utter destitution of the street, for after all in the joint, when at least received shelter, health care and meals, even if these items are delivered line bars with the accompaniment of handcuffs and the debilitating effects of a criminal record. being unable to flee a floating city for lack of transportation or alternative housing, impoverishment means for many living apart from the so-called mainstream of american society, the sectors of society to which politicians pay some heed. it means being hidden in plain sight behind an odd curtain of invisibility. it means residing in what michael harrington turned, the other america. it means being unable even to enter bankruptcy. this puts me in mind of a case decided by the supreme court in 1973. the united states versus crass. krause was an indigent to challenge the constitutionality of a law that conditioned his eligibility to apply for bankruptcy protection on the payment of $50 fee. reversing the holding of a lower court from a closely divided supreme court upheld the constitutionality of the fee requirement. writing for the court justice harry blackmun evidence the skepticism that often creates protest about the predicament of the poor. quote, if the $50 filing fee for paid in installments as the law allowed, the average weekly payment is $1.28. this is a sum less than the payments krasny xns coach of negligible value storage device this is the movie about a war than the cost of a pack or two of cigarettes. afs press alleges a discharge in bankruptcy will afford him a new start he so desires and if you really need to desires at discharge, this much available revenue should read within his able-bodied reach, and the quote. my old eyes, justice thurgood marshall had different, better view. quote, i cannot agree with the majority he declared that dissent, that it is so easy for the desperately poor to save each week -- that it is so easy for the desperately poor to save each week over the course of six months. the 1970s census found that over 800,000 families in the nation had in your incomes of less than $1000 or $19.23 a week. i see no reason to require that families that such streets were sacrificed over 5% of their annual income is a prerequisite to getting it discharge in bankruptcy. and maybe easy for some people to think that weekly savings of less than $2 are no burdens, but no one who has had close contact with poor people fail to understand how close the margin of survival many of them are. a pack or two of cigarettes may be for them not a routine purchase, but a luxury and old should only rarely. the desperately poor almost never go to see a movie, which the majority seems to believe is an almost weekly dignity. they have more important things to do with what little money they have, like attempting to provide some comforts for gravely ill child as crass must you. it is perfectly proper for judges to disagree about what the constitution requires, but it is disgraceful for an interpretation of the constitution to be premised upon unfounded assumptions about how people live. poverty and its alleviation occupies a lowly standing among the priorities the nation's most influential, political leaders. for a brief moment after hurricane katrina, the higher circles paid some attention to the plight of the impoverished. on september 15, 2005 in jackson square in new orleans, president george w. bush recognized quote comment deep persistent poverty in the gulf region and that we have a duty to confront this poverty with old action. that sent the panic attack mess with sms and peered in a cover story in 2005 for "newsweek," jonathan alter remarked that it takes catastrophe like are trained not to strip away the old evasions, hypocrisies and not so benign neglect. it takes the side of the united states with a big black eye, visible around the world to help the rest of us begin to see again. does this mean in the war on poverty he asked? know he answered, but this disaster may offer a chance to start a skirmish or at least make washington think harder about why part of the richest country on earth looks like a third world. a year later alter complained, justifiably, that president which i dropped the ball entirely. the congress had failed to perform much better and that the american public as a whole seemed disinclined to grab a late poverty seriously. to the extent that the port to make it onto center stage, they typically do so is target for vilification. as has recently shown before it enacted the temporary assistance for needy families act, which requires citizens of the sunshine state to pass a drug test in order to be eligible for state welfare payment. absence of personal responsibility has long been seen in some quarters as the principal cause of impoverishment. proponents of this view and once number in the early part of the 20th century, charles murray and the latter part of the 20th century. this day is the attributes property mainly to the defects of the poor. they're supposed to laziness, stupidity, and provenance, promiscuity, lack of foresight, lack of discipline, and pension for the generosity of others. the hectoring of the poor, which should solve governing arrangement is profoundly erroneous. poverty should be seen as a communal problem. your personal feelings play a role in the predicament of the poor? of horse you do, just like personal failings of slick documents no matter what their class. that decisions to drop out of school, to have unprotected back, and to a jolting addictive drugs often tighten the binds of the poor. but there are multitudes of poor people who conduct them selves with exemplary discipline and fortitude and pluck who nonetheless find themselves stuck in a cage of impoverishment, unable to turn their way out. one of the many virtues of herbert ion writes classic nickel and dime them not getting by in america is his visit portrayal of how hard poor people work, only to remain poor through no fault of their own. our leading politicians, including our current president talus incessantly that america is a magical place where anything is possible for those who work hard and play by the rules. left unsaid, but stated implicitly as the notion that financial distress must be an indication that one sale to work hard enough or play by the rules sufficiently. this belief occupies the sealing a place on the emotional and imaginative land scape of america. many poor people embrace it as they lacerate themselves. it is, however, an idea that is deeply misleading. what we think of as personal failings are typically more than personal. they usually derive sources outside of what can reasonably be considered a person self-control. for instance, a depressed economy. and what is going to say about the 35 of the poor who were children? is their situation there fault? no, it is not unless it is one of to be born to certain mothers or fathers. but as far as said nothing about an important chat or of the poverty story. the chapter that involves race relations. i shall conclude with three points about that subject. first, racial minorities, particularly blacks and latinos are disproportionally present in the ranks of the impoverished. in 2009, the poverty rate for white americans is 9.4%. for asian americans, 12.5%. latino americans, 25.3%. and for black americans, 25 tiny%. second, although blacks and latinos are disproportionally represented in the brig for the poor, they remain minorities among the impoverished. most poor people in the united states are white. yet the portrayal of poverty in popular culture nourishes ministers action that most poor people in the united states are people of color. several careful analyses of photographs and news magazines, film footage on television news shows and depictions in tax books reveal that african americans in particular are pictured in stories about poverty, far in excess of their actual representation amongst the impoverished. this is a point well made by professor martin gill and in why americans hate welfare. when the face of poverty is black and brown, two things happening. blackness and brown is to stigmatize poverty and poverty is stigmatize what mrs. brownness. the latter is a likely factor in the exceptional tenderness of the american welfare regime. third point, race relations is a major chat your in the poverty story because racial conflict has contributed significantly to join the coalition that helped bring about the major antipoverty reforms of the 20th century. many whites who once supported the new deal coalition defected from and in part because of fears that its leaders had begun to give away too much to colored people. a consequence has been a political environment that over the past several decades has become increasingly indeed dramatically indifferent if not hostile to the poor. this is a baleful trajectory to which alas both of the major parties is contributing. a decent social cohesion requires protect and the most vulnerable amongst us, from the cruel, miserable and remedial circumstances sacred millions of americans who find themselves mired in the poverty line. the united states is often lauded for what some see as a positive exceptionalism, distinctive commitments to traditions such as civilian rule, checks and balance is, constitutionalism, private enterprise and individualism. in its treatment of the poor, the united states can rightly be criticized for negative exceptionalism. as timothy's meeting and others have observed, nowhere is the united states more exceptional than in it policy towards the impoverished. america's child poverty rate is higher than that of any other wealthy industrialized country. that should not be surprising. american antipoverty policies such as it is just less to compensate low-wage workers and assist them in escape being impoverishment than any other in the nation. president george w. bush was correct when he asserted that we have a duty to respond to the predicament of the poor, especially the 35% who were children. sadly, it is a two d. paint america as a whole is failing to honor. thank you very much for your attention. [applause] [applause] >> now i'm pleased to introduce the moderator for the next panel entitled, what are we loyal to? thomas jiminez is professor of sociology at stanford university. his research and writing focuses on assimilation, social mobility and ethnic and racial identity. he's the author of replenished at the city, mexican-americans integration identity. his research and focus on how immigration is transforming the u.s. society and to which immigrants and children of. mr. mns has a bachelor's degree from santa clara university and a phd in sociology from harvard university. please welcome mr. tomas jimenez. [applause] >> thank you, gregory for being here, what are we loyal to. most of us still identify with certain places, certain beliefs and communities. these groupings may not have amicable relations among one another. within these groups, the bonds are often strong. americans find communities and political action, religious faith, ethnicity, neighborhood, but there is a paradox here. the notion that we are bound together, that we see each other as one of us, almost necessarily entail that we see some other group of people is not one of those, as one of them. so in many respects, the things that unite us are the things that divide us. what are the attitudes calling upon the royalty of americans and how do these sound loyalties affect the way to the nation as a whole. here to help us answer that and other questions is a distinguished group of panelists and i'd like to which reduce them to you now. so to my immediate right is jennifer lee, an associate professor of sociology at the university of california at irvine. she is author of the diversity paradox, immigration and the power light of the 21st century america. she's also bothered stability also author of stability in the city, blacks, and koreans in urban america. she received her ba and phd at columbia university. she has received numerous awards and honors for her scholarship, including american sociological association for her recent book, the diversity paradox. this coming year shall be a visiting scholar at the russell sage foundation in new york city. >> at the end is tamar jacoby, immigration works u.s.a., national federation looking to advance better immigration law. a national of a journalist she was a regular guest on national television and radio. she's a tour of someone else's house: america's unfinished struggle for integration and editor of reinventing the melting pot, the new immigrants and what it means to be american and i use to mars chapter. she's also a senior fellow at the manhattan institute and senior writer for "newsweek." she was also the deputy editor of "the new york times" op-ed page. finally we have luis lugo, director of the pew's research forum on public life. prior to joining the pew forum, he was director of the religious program at the trust and philadelphia appear before that, professor political science for more than 12 years, teaching courses on international relations, latin american politics, religion and politics. he holds a ba from the university met us and an m.a. from villanova and a phd in political science from the university of chicago. please join me in welcoming our panel. [applause] will proceed much like the first panel didn't spend the better part of an hour talking amongst ourselves and then will invite all of you to weigh in with questions and comments. and i'd like to take it off by asking her panelists to respond briefly to the briefing that headlines are panel. from the perspective of her on the ebony restate the question once again. what are primary entities calling upon loyalties of americans and how did the sub loyalties affect the way we review -- affect the way we view our relationship to the nation as a whole. i know we asked jennifer lee to start us off. >> i think it's really terrific that we have this opportunity to discuss what is uniting us, what is dividing us and let tomas had earlier is really quite thought provoking as the same things that seem to be dividing us also seem to be uniting us. what i want to talk about today were three things that i thought were important, which is immigration, language and race. these things are inextricably tied to you for many of you who may or may not know, immigrants and children currently account for 23% of the u.s. population and about 85% are coming from latin america asia. if you think about how that immigrants stream is very different from the european immigrant stream, clearly the united states is more racial and ethically diverse than any point in our history and more diverse the origins at any point in our history. one of this years that i think a lot of americans have is given diversity of the new immigrants, are we becoming a more fragmented society along the lines of language clinics are we becoming society with multiple languages by samuel p. huntington have noted, are we becoming a society of spanish and english? there a lot of americans who are right they have to push one to speak english when you make a telephone call. if you look at the figures for the children of immigrants, what is remarkable is a pattern of english liberalism, that the children of immigrant uniformly speak english well or very well and what is actually sad is the fact that many of them are not maintaining their parents language, that were becoming an english monolingual society at the cost of bilingualism. the other thing i want to talk about besides ntt. and i think a lot of people appear that we are seeing each other identify along racial lines, ethnic lines and one of the things were finding in our studies is the adult children of immigrants is that sure, people identify as mexican. people identify as chinese, koreans, vietnamese, but it does not mean that they don't also feel and claim an american identity. so we have to be careful about how we think about that when we think about people who are irish descent or german descent or a tie and defend. they are claiming an ethnic identity, but it doesn't mean that they don't also claim an american identity. said to be cognizant of that. the other thing i want to talk about a little bit was raised. we see each other as a distinct racial group and a lot of people fear that the united states is becoming an increasingly minority country, fragmented along the lines of race. one of the things that presupposes a category of whiteness will remain fixed and will remain static. as some of the panelists had noted in the earlier panel, groups that were not white at the turn of the 20th century are now considered white. irish, italians, were not considered white anglo-saxons. today, i don't think anyone would argue that anyone of irish descent or italian descent for someone who is of polish descent is not white. the boundaries, these racial categories are continuing to change and shift and it's not clear yet how that will change. but again, with what i think people see is dividing lines aren't as divisive as we look at the children of immigrants. >> luis lugo, what about you? how does this affect how we view ourselves connect it to a larger goal? >> well, after a baltimore oriole fan, you latch onto, in the last few years. but, the first thing i did to keep in mind on the issue of religion is how unique the united states is, compared to countries that are also part of the advanced industrial world. we have country in which 60% of the population talus religion is very important in their lives. an additional 25% would say it is somewhat important. so you're talking about 85% of americans who take religion pretty seriously review of the country in which nine out of 10 will identify with one religious condition or another. again, i would challenge you to look at the statistics on any other country, including our neighbors to the north, to see if you find anything like that. that is point number one. we are indeed the most religious country within the advanced industrial world. secondly, were also a very diverse country from the standpoint of religion. in fact, becoming increasingly diverse from the same kind flanked by immigration experts because immigration has always driven american religious diversity and is doing so even more now in this latest way of migration. the question of course is, given the recipe from high degree of religiosity, diversity, why don't we see the conflict in this country that we see elsewhere? if we doubt the proposition , go to our website or republish a report and religious objections by any means normal in the sense of tensions. why was that the case? you know, this takes a longer conversation or we could just put a marker down here and return to thomas. but i think it had to do with diversity. i think those two things are related, the fact we remained highly religious while europe has become very, very secular. at the same time have not had conflict. the founders faced a very practical problem and that is how to accommodate at the national level the kind of diversity within protestant that they confronted and for reasons of principle and pragmatism, they settled on what we know there's a first amendment in the u.s. constitution, which first of all said they would be no established church at the national level. this is very an european. does the typical european model. in fact, it does some highly secularized european country. but the second part of that was a strong commitment to the free exercise, to the free expression of religion in the public sphere. and in that way, it seems to me they went against what in europe became the counter model to establish, that is the module embodied in the french revolution, which we see exported elsewhere, this is as diverse as turkey remix coke, from which i came back to the mexican revolution is very anticlerical. so we avoided both of those models thalamus is something different. lacuna enter data is the american public religious groups have really internalized the norms embodied in the free exercise. strong aversion to institutional unity of church and state, so very much a supportive separation, but on the other hand, very much supported by and large of religious expression in public life. and somehow that combination has made for religious americans that they became even more connected to the country into its legal norms, precisely because so that the public space, where all religious traditions, including their own could play themselves out freely without government putting its fingers that were on the scale. i can't have one minute more for the example today the senate. all data on the factor of all the colors of the pew research center data rs. i've got to give you some data. take a look at our surveys. we do this every year, but they're particularly interested around presidential election years. you will see consistently seven out of 10 americans as when a president with strong religious beliefs. even after several cycles of religion saturated residential election, vast majorities tell us they either think that is the right amount for significant numbers tell us it's not enough tension of religion in campaign they want even more. so that's on the one hand. that's in the free exercise. then we ask questions, i could be just one about endorsing candidates, whether they're priests are eating nonpoor rabbis, strong aversion to that, the balance of opinion shifts and the other direction. what is interesting is when you break it down, the respondents think is where most religious the secular are right in line. it's virtually identical strong this. so it is an interesting way to think about it, how religious diversity and the need to accommodate it legally in our system of government is actually result in a religious people being boring deeply committed to the country as a whole and democratic norms precisely because the way the diversity has been handled. >> how do you see things? >> i'm going to pick up some of the things that jennifer said. i've been thinking a lot about the meteors of the past century from the 40s, 50s, 60s. there's no question that the new diversity has made it harder to have the kind of cohesion we had in the states and and been looking at that cohesion asking what is it and why did it seem so easy? basically afro-americans were outside in those days and there were no immigrants. gregory mentioned the numbers earlier today. in 1970, only 5% of the population. we're now up in the 12, 13-inch, close to what it was in the ellis island dave. because he had been shot from 1825 to 1965, very few immigrants came in those days. we got to a low point in our history of more and more population of immigrants. the fact of the matter that made social cohesion a lot easier. the numbers are pretty startling now. read a high point in our history as we were in the ellis island way of people coming in. in the 50s, 60s, couple hundred thousand were interviewed. i worked to 1.5 million above of immigrants coming in every year. it's true with the fear mongers and naysayers say, we're sure you let of foreign languages that we just didn't hear in the 40s, 50s, 60s and there's one language, particularly spanish. and whole industries and marketing, the whole marketing site during america now devoted to marketing and languages and marketing ethnic products and working to cars and beer is beer scummy mean, tens of millions of dollars that go back into the sectors and obviously spanish tv spanish radio, always to read newspapers, but there's a kind of president and here's where we get to a divide, the cleavage of the cosmopolitan east coast and west coast. we're not so troubled by it. people in new york and l.a. take it for granted. i spent time in the heartland and if you live in a town in the midwest but didn't have any immigrants until 20 years ago and now is whether a democrat because they built a meatpacking plant there in the third of time this immigrant release or in church or where they were not immigrants and suddenly because there's a agriculture it's now those places -- people's heads are exploding and we don't like it and we think it's backwards, but it's true. it's happening. i think even though it's an old-fashioned problem, in a way that many lighters before we worry about some kind is written by the change and that a cultural difference. on the other hand, pay next to that a whole different set of numbers that have to be laid out on the table in here and really channeling some of thomas's very good newer. if you look at how will today's immigrants are integrating, they are integrating very, very well. everett has become a tuna had a grandmother that english overnight in today's press two for spanish or press two for english and enact integrating. if anything, they are integrating faster now than they were in the past. thomas is a great set of numbers and has new study of the literature. compared to the ellis island is how people learn english. about half of learn some reasonable english. in the first five years, two thirds have learned some usable english. people are living english faster today than they learned in the past. by every other measure you can look at, whether it's language, whether it's education, whether it's level of your child, but they are below the poverty line. again, one great set of numbers. when you look at first-generation latinos by the time the second-generation kids of the same age, 85% of high school degrees. in many cases on many measures, immigrants are catching up to the native lauren. so there's a few out there in the reality of the integration numbers are that i think people don't know enough that whatever jobs are to be getting that information out to the majority. but the other piece of it i think is kind of complicates her interesting discussion here, picking up on what is kind of the description of the panel also something jennifer said, often the things that seem to divide us are the things that ultimately divide us. this has been true all for the history of the u.s. immigration, basically the ethnic group, the immigrant group come immigrant organizations, church, parrish, voluntary organizations in your ethnic neighborhood economy your vehicle into the mainstream. and that's been true since the old immigrant neighborhoods in boston and new york and chicago and it's true again today. in the old neighborhoods of us who came to a big place for all your people from their hometown in your cousins in whatever had moved to chicago or new york and he found there are all kinds of plugs and settlement houses and insurance companies in schools and saturday schools and you name it. he took part in most programs that may help you first of all function and survive, learn the

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