Transcripts For HLN HLN News 20091114

>> of the five individuals accused of conspireing to commit the 9/11 attacks. after eight years of delay, those allegedly responsibly for attack will finally face justice. they will be brought to new york, to new york to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood. >> that was the announcement made yesterday by attorney general eric holder that the alleged september 11th co-conspirators will face trial in a civilian federal court in new york. we want to get your thoughts on that as we begin this he had decision of the washington journal for today, november 14th. we want to talk to you about the civilian trials coming up for the alleged 9/11 plotters. the numbers 202-737-00 host: the front page on this morning's news, evil returns." >> in the new york post, "well tom to new york now die. next stop is hell." civilian court in lower manhattan. manhattan. host: david on our line for republicans. good morning. caller: how are you doing? host: what do you think of this decision? caller: i think it's terrible for our country to go down this road. host: why so? caller: for a person not even a citizen of our country to be tried for federal court and given the same rights as a citizen of the united states is just appalling. i think eric holder should have left them in guantanamo bay and be tried there. i lived in new york in 2000 and 2001. it was just terrible. for them to be tried in a federal court, it just speaks to this country to give people that do not ware uniforms, do not apply to the geneva convention to come to our country and then be given rights like a citizen. host: david, in this newspaper article, attorney general holder elected to proceed with the first u.s. criminal prosecution alleged to have been directly involved in the plot eight years ago that targeted the world trade center and pent he gone because of his full confidence in the successful outcome. tell us why you are not as convinced of the outcome? caller: i'm not confident because i believe that in our country, people are innocent until proven guilty. when you use water boarding and all these things they are trying to use against ournqq governmen why should a terrorist be given rights in our country. host: let's go to the democratic line. caller: i think they should be tried here. those guys in guantanamo had anything to do with 9/11. they need evidence. i think the bush administration should be tried for treason. they should be tried also in a civilian court. i don't understand the running behind these so-called terrorists. i can't see these guys being terrorists without any evidence. water boarding is a form of terrorism. host: david on the independent line out of market heights. caller: i think they want a regular public court so the world pursues them as having a more fair trial. i don't know why they are doing this. it's not going to look that way in the end at all. >> is there any where these men could be tried where a jury has not heard their crimes and formed an opinion in one way or another? caller: not really. not with the media that we have. i don't see how they could get a fair trial. host: on the front page of the "new york times," this article for both sides. host: good morning. where are you calling from? caller: i'm calling from augusta, georgia. what better place to try these men. if somebody from another country ran no your car or something, we would have to try the case here. we have to try this case. host: on the front page of the times, they show two sets of defendants. the first row are the alleged 9/11 co-conspirators. the second row are the men accused in the koel bombing. do you see a difference between the two cases? caller: absolutely. we have to actually try the case on the facts, on its merit and let the justice system work. host: fullerton, california on the republican line. thank you for waiting. caller: we have to practice what we preach. we take our prisoners and torture them and leave them off in cuba. this is a democracy. we have trials. we have to try these people to get rid of conspiracies. host: what elements of the truth are you afraid wouldn't be revealed if this case were tried in a military court? ok. let's move onto the independent line. go ahead. answer your question, what won't be covered. the deep state here. the federal reserve is not federal and doesn't have a reserve. this interest is to keep a country in debt. by making war or financial crisis. that was their plan. the interest wants to keep america in debt. you keep america in dead by having a financial crisis or make war. this is why the media is controlled by war mongeres. host: we're going to leave it there. on the twitter board. we have this tweet. "this is great. hopefully there is a lot of dirt on bush and cheney and this can come out and bush can be sent to trial as a war criminal." >> another post says "wake up, mr. president, we are at war here." host: back to the phone. on the line for democrats go ahead? caller: that last caller is probably still talking, huh? host: might be. what are your thoughts? caller: i have one sentence to sum up my feelings -- host: let's move on to the line for republicans in massachusetts. caller: good morning. i wanted to comment on the logistics of actually prosecuting these people in the south district of new york. we are not using the full inspect rum of legal options available to us. evidence was gathered and this was in civilian setings. now we are talking about prosecuting people we captured on a=nñ battlefield engaged in s against war and gain evidence gained through means used for what you would normally use in civilian investigation. i'm not sure whether this is a good idea whatsoever. why are we even bothering bringing them to the united states in the first place? the only thing we need is what they have. once they are done, we need to put them down to the wire. host: let me get your response to this. on the front page of the "new york times." caller: i'm not concerned about the sentence. i'm sure jurors will return death sentences against some of them. my concern is their ongoing usefulness as information. when we are talking about khalid mohammad probably has understanding of people affiliated with the organization. that's an intelligence gold mine we can't give up. >> from "washington post" here we take a closer look. >> back to the phones. your thoughts about the civilian trials? caller: first of all, i'd like to tell all these gentleman that called in earlier that number one, we are not at war. the congress only gave president bush authority to use force against them. we went over there to attack these people until we caught the people that brought down the towers. i think it is appropriate they we brought to new york and be punished there because that's where the crime was committed that they caused. host: let me read you something. this is an office worker in new york. she goes on to say it makes sense to her that it would be tried in new york. she said, i would rather try them in guantanamo. bringing them here may cause other radicals in to protest. what is your response to this new yorker? caller: my response to that is whenever we put them on trial, if it's covered at all, we are going to have radicals come out anyway. to me, being one of the 9/11 victims, i would want them to be tried there. it would give me the gladness to know they were punished completely. host: we'll go to the democratic line. caller: i think they should be tried here. bring them on in here. 9/11 was a fairy tale. maybe we can try george bush and dik cheney. try them wherever you want to. take them to a circus and try them. it's all a joke. host: in the new york post, caller: i think it's important to know that these people are not u.s. citizens. whenever our citizens are captured by another country and tried, we call it a mockery. that's what is going to happen here. these people don't deserve our country. all this is going to do is further weaken our country and the opinion of the world against our country. host: mike, what about critics that say the crime was committed here, why shouldn't the trial be convicted here? caller: whenever there's a war, war crime, they form these war tribunals. it's the best method of handling this. we need to move forward. these people should be tried in a military tribunal. give these guys the justice and move forward. >> i want to get your thoughts on this lead editorial. caller: there's no reason we should offer these mad men the beauty of our constitutional system. host: thank you for your call. next up from minnesota on the independent line. caller: i think they should bring them here. number one, the trial being open to the media will hopefully put an end to these idiots that kept saying it was bush and cheney behind the downing of the twin towers, which is utterly mad. it will bring out the crazies in the united states and the jihadis like we were witness to in fort hood. they will come out of the woodwork and possibly bring about the first suicide bombing in the united states and maybe we can put mr. obama on try forgetting those people killed. host: in the financial times, there is a quote from the senate majority leader. he feels like this is a step backwards and puts americans unnecessarily at risk. caller: i agree. i believe we are returning to apre 9/11 meant at. it's a proven fact that by holding these trials in open court, we are going to be giving the enemy combatants and terrorists information that they don't have at the present time. before it is over, we'll give away military, security secrets that they are not aware of. host: thanks for your call. next is martin in new port rhode island. caller: that's new port, pennsylvania. host: sorry about that. caller: that's all right. this is my third time to call about the trade center bombing. i can prove that sheik mohammad was not the leader. it was all the same convenience store in pennsylvania which was owned and operated by a holey man brought over from pakistan. i reported this to the f.b.i., ç homeland security, >> what happened to this man in pennsylvania? >> after masoui's trial was over in virginia. they all left the convenience store. host: let's move on to california on the independent line. caller: it's not the sort of thing we go around telling people about. i am a republican and i voted for obama. they should have a military trial for obvious reasons. how many of our men and women have to be killed? i am originally from maryland. it's not the sort of thing i tell anybody. i listen to the people that called there today. maybe we could just hang them right down there where the twin towers were because we can't have them tried here in our country. thank you for your time. host: another article here titled "ksm hits manhattan." host: next up is christopher on the independent line from new jersey. turn down your television for me. caller: thank you. is that ok? host: that's fine. what are your thoughts on the civilian trial that's been announced by the attorney general for the alleged 9/11 plotters? caller: thank you for taking my call. i personally think it is the right decision. my thoughts on the issue that the proceedings being held here, the rest of the world will be able to follow through and see what's going on. these people were terrorists. not military. as much as i believe it was work here to have a military tribunal, some amount. we should let the rest of the world, especially the middle eastern countries see this. then they will understand that the system works and we'll be able to show ourselves as people who are normal and ready to work with the muslim world. thank you. host: thank you for your call. next up from tennessee for the democrats. caller: thank you. i would like to say i'm a little perplexed at why so many people are viewing a civilian trial as a great gift. i think the attorney general's decision is the only one that could have possibly been made. it's a wonderful way to left the rest of the world see how we dispense justice in america. on 9/11, the goal was to engage us in a war. i think it will be the ultimate slap in the face of terrorism to try the people that organized the attacks as any other criminal or thief and not elevate them to a high level, bring them to new york, unafraid, without being terrorized and dispense justice. host: to the republican line. caller: thank you. normally, i would say let the army do it. but by the fact that we have become a nation that's fix ated on humiliated on torture. the trial should be here to bring this out. there have been 20 or 30 torture murders confirmed. i don't know why. i've read this two or three times. in the press releases. i don't understand why this is. i believe all this talk of water boarding is a smoke screen for much, much worse things that have gone on. this needs to be brought out. host: in the lead editorial of the new york daily news, they right the following -- caller: i think that's true. they are war criminals. unfortunately, we have turned torture -- we are teaching females to humiliate naked men. we learned this from our local prisons here. this has been going on the last 40 years. host: sorry to cut you off. we are going to leave it there. >> we have a guest here with us today. senator judd gregg from new hampshire. >> in the senate, they need 60 votes. the president has basically put his future on this. it is his number one item. i think the bill will pass. i don't know what it is going to end up beingd. we'll hear more from senator gregg sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. host: your thoughts on the announcement of the civilian trial. caller: first off, i would like to say i don't claim democratic or republic. i am for the people by the people like the constitution says. if these guys are going to claim that they are behind it, then why not judge them in new york? why not judge them in time square where the world can see it? that's pretty much where the world looks at sh -- host: let's move on to harlem on the line for democrats. caller: hello? host: turn your television down. caller: ok. excuse. my thought is as an american and as a new yorker, when i heard the announcement yesterday that the trial was going to be here in new york, without knowing the politics of it all, i supported it. i feel like justice is way, way, way long overdue -- the republicans had eight years to get this together and get this right. i don't disagree with military tribunals. i just feel like the republicans had eight years to get it together. now the president has made the right decision. as a new yorker, i support the trials coming here. i'm confident they will do a good job and get a conviction. i'm confident our jails can hold these terrorists. host: were you in new york during the attack? caller: i was. it was a day i'll never forget. i had worked in the trade center maybe a year and a half before the attacks. i was working in new york that day. i was working mid down. i wasn't too close but i was close enough where the impact -- i was a security guard. i seen -- i'm getting a little emotional now. host: are you concerned that bringing the military trial to new york will make new york a target again? caller: no, no. thank you for asking me that. i feel like the terrorists in 9/11 shot their load. they caught us. they got us. it was devastating. i don't feel like they'll ever do anything close to that. host: i'll leave it there. in the "new york times," they write about security. the united states marshal also be in charge of security and the transportation. they will be held in a high floor in the metropolitan correctionnal center and the pretrial home to almost every notorious defendant that has been prosecuted in manhattan. our the republican line. go ahead. caller: first, i believe that this is an outstanding decision. it allows the american people the chance to hear exactly what these terrorists are shouting about. in a normal situation in court, you have your witnesses. you have people there. if the media has gathered proof of this. it is almost 99.9% they will be convicted. i'm just worried about the taxpayers having to pay for all of this. host: thank you for your call. two folks interviewed in the new york post. next upon the independent line calling out of louisiana. caller: that article you read said the gitmo trials are fair and balanced. i would like to see that. don't cut me off or reach for the button. i have something to say. when you look at the 9/11, the investigation on your own is like falling down a rabbit hole where everything is backwards. the 9/11 plotters, i ask people to go investigate and look at a group of intelligence agents called the vulcans. what the united states government has told us is a complete lie. i would like to see a complete independent investigation. charlie sheen. get him on your program. nobody has challenged him. nobody. he has to go on larry king live. no one person that probes the government's version would get on tv and debate charlie sheen. host: rusty on the republican line from miami. caller: to try someone in the light of our country. i say bring it on. host: thanks for your call. we'll take a short break. when we come back, we'll continue our discussion. the possible trial in new york ci city. first -- >> today i am announcing that the department of justice will pursue prosecution in federal court of those who conspired to commit the 9/11 attacks. the five defendants will face military commission trials including the detainee that was previously charged in the u uss cole bombings. it will be broughtw2 in manhat in the south district of new york. after eight years of delay, those allegedly responsibly for the attacks of september 11th will finally face justice. they will be brought to new york, to new york to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood. i am confident in the ability of our court to provide a fair trial just as they have for 200 years. they will stand trial with a partial jury under long-established rules and procedures. we will prosecute vig rowsly and pursue the maximum punishment available. federal rules allow us to seek the death penalty for capitol offenses. we will review the evidence and circumstances, ifully expect to direct prosecutors to seek the death penalty against each of the alleged 9/11 conspirators. host: sir, your thoughts about the attorney general's announcement yesterday guest: i think it's a profound mistake. i don't understand why anybody would think it's in the best interest of the people of the united states to bring these people on to our soil, into our courts and potentially into our prisons there after. i'm not sure whose interest the administration thought it was serving. as far as i'm concerned, the military commissions down in guantanamo are more adequate for these trials. guest: i'm going to have to disagree with brad. it's clear our civilian courts are the proper courts to try these cases. if you look at the regular federal courts, they have proven they are up to this challenge. since september 11th, they have secured 195 convictions. the federal courts are the place to seek justice in these cases. the victims of 9/11 will see justice done in our regular federal courts. host: why do you think moving this process to a civilian court will move this along? guest: our courts have proven they have the tools to deal with these cases and sensitive and classified information. they have the classified information procedures act which they've used successfully. the case also be tried in a manner that will allow the american public to have far greater access. host: why weren't these men, brad, brought to trial sooner under the bush administration? guest: most of the time under the bush administration, they were being regarded as terror information as opposed to prisoners. these folks were being interrogated. intelligence was being brought out rather than meeting out justice. that was a second act. host: was there not enough information coming out to put a case together and bring them to trial? they were in cussed toy for better than six or seven years? guest: there's plenty of evidence against them separate and apart from what was taken from them during the investigation, which many people are critical of because of water boarding and the like. the issue was obtaining intelligence. they made very good use of the intelligence during the time they were being held. once mossoui's intelligence value ended, they moved him on to be tried. host: here with our two guests. if you want to get involved in our conference call us. can these gentlemen get a fair trial in new york, devon? guest: i think they can. it is a unique situation where you have a high profile case. the courts are used to dealing with these types of cases and securing a fair jury pool. not only will they get a fair trial but the world will know that the result is credible. the american people will know the result is credible. the victims of 9/11 will know justice was done. host: why do you believe that the result also be more credible than in a military tribunal? guest: we have taken three shots at the military commissions first when they were established in 2001, they westbound knocked down. then they tried again in 2006. they are taking another stab in 2009. the american justice system is tried and proven. host: how do you feel about the validity in a trial in a military tribunal versus the american justice system. guest: i will agree with devon. the american justice system is the gold standard. the real problem is that what we have done by taking these people out of the military system and into the military system is we have to bring them into the united states and outfit them with a set of legal rights that they did not have until this decision, constitutional rights, statutory rights. how are we going to protect the judge and jury? the judge that sat on the first world trade center bombing trial had to have a personal security detail for more than a decade after that trial. are we going to impose that on another civilian judge and what about the jurors? host: let's go to the callers. our first call comes from tom on the line for republicans out of illinois. good morning. caller: thank you. first, for the gentleman you have there, when the first 9/11 or the first bombing of the towers happened, we put them on trial, that enraged the terrorist community and actually led to 9/11. how are you going to try these guys. you haven't read them their miranda rights. you've got his computer without getting a search warrant. how are you going to keep any of that evidence in court if you are going to try them like a citizen. i think this is purely political on obama and holder to try to get to george bush and dik cheney when they kept us safe. this is going to be a circus. they will stand up every other day yelling "alla akbar." it's going to be a circus. host: devon, why don't you react? guest: it's a valid concern. our courts have dealt with these issues. they will deal with these issues in this case. as far as the defendants to get more or less rights in a federal courts, i'm not sure how true that will be. the courts have clearly establishes that the constitution does apply to detainees in guantanamo. it's clear the military decision will be subject to appeal. i'm not sure that it is right that detainee also get more in the realm of rights if you bring them to try in regular federal court than if you bring them to trial in a military commission. host: do we know at any point if these detainees have been mirandized? could this become a technicality they are released on? guest: it's true that they were detained for intelligence purposes which is allowable. the evidence obtained under torture is not admitable. there are other ways of finding evidence. we know for some, there was evidence before he was even taken into cussed toy. he was in fact indicted in the united states before he was even taken to guantanamo. . . . now you're telling us you can't bring these people to justice in the very state, the very city where they killed almost 3,000 people. we can't bring them to trial in the american way in the place they did their dirty deed. and you're saying we can't do it because the terrorists are going to come and get us, that it's too dangerous. and you staid it's just a way to get to bush and change eafplt sir, what are you afraid of? iveragetsdz guest: is the point that the threat for milton islam, from al qaeda, for people like mohammed is not real? that there isn't a reason to fear these people? we've had what appears to be another intans of mass murder in fort tood committed by someone who shared the agenda of these people. it is not fear mongering to take a look at the threats we face, to take those threats seriously and to meet them. so i object to the notion that any time anybody talks about al qaeda, talks about security concerns, talks about risks to the american public, that that's somehow manufacturerd, politicized, and mere fear mongering, rather than a mere effort to keep people safe. i know the people i worked with in the bush administration when i was served were genuinely concerned about protecting our citizens. they may have made some mistakes, but it was perfectly honest. and i am not saying to take the caller's other point that we cannot try these people in an american court. i have great confidence in the system. the prosecutors are some of the best trial lawyers in the country. i think we can have a trial. i think the trial probably will result in a conviction. that's not my objection. the real question you have to ask yourself is whether the costs and burdens and problems associated with a trial of that kind are worth it, whether that's a superior option to the option that had previously been select ford these folks in the military commission. and i think the military system is the right system in which to try these folks. both systems are good. host: next up, robert out of indiana. caller: good morning. let's see here. people i think in this country are beginning to get a little wiser about this topic. terrorism has been around for a long time. it's been around pretty much forever. and people like you and other people on your side want to change this country fundamentally just because of what happened, i don't want to say just because. of what happened on 9/11. and people aren't willing to give up human rights. every human on this earth has. just because -- i keep same just because. because of what happened on 9/11. which was a terrible thing. and people just don't want to -- you seem to pick and choose and we know about the industrial terror complex and we just want to be wise about this, and you have to give humans the rights. guest: i think it's not right that republicans or the bush administration or people who take a relatively hawkish view of how to deal with the threat of international terrorism stemming from militant islam want to fundamentally change the country. my motivations at least are exactly the opposite. i want to preserve the country, preserve its liberties and freedoms, and these folks, people like ca lead shake mohammed are one of the greatest threats. we have to reduce that threat and meet it and tackle it. and something like military commissions, these are time tested tools for dealing with war criminals, which is exactly what he is. he was waging an illegal war against the united states, he targeted civilians, took thousands of civilian lives. she a war criminal. ever since the -- he is a war criminal. ever since the lincoln wars on to world war ii, that's a system for dealing with war criminals. i don't want to see anybody's human rights or civil rights reduced or eliminated. but it's also important to keep in mind the human rights that were extinguished for all of the victims of 9/11 on that day. there were thousands of americans whose most basic right, the right to life, was taken away from them. guest: well, i think it's right that our values and the civil liberties that we enjoy in the united states and our emphasis on human rights make us stronger as a country and they in fact enhance our security. and part of that is in fact in trusting in our system of justice, which have been dealing with the issue of terrorism for some time, as the caller recognized, and have been developing mechanisms to handle these types of cases. i don't think it's correct to say that war criminals only belong in a military commission. in fact, congress has expressly given our federal criminal courts jurisdiction over war crimes in the war crimes act that was established in 19 96. so i believe that the federal courts are the right place, the right forum to handle these cases, and they have the ability to do so in a manner that's fair and competent. host: it says that you have ob served military commission proceedings in guantanamo bay. correct? guest: that's correct. host: tell us what you saw and why you think that that would not have been the place to try these five alleged co-conspirtors. guest: i think perhaps one of the most startling exampleles is just how difficult it is to get down to guantanamo to observe these cases. human rights first, the organization i work for, has to have a special observer status, we have to coordinate with the military in order to get a military flight in order to get into the facility. it's very difficult for reporters to get down there. often they have to spend days longer than they would have to normally because of the travel barriers getting into the base. and by bringing the detainees into new york for trial will open up those trials to the american public to truly see that justice is done. these will be a much more transparent process that they're actually held in new york, as opposed to guantanamo bay. host: back to the phones. we're talking about the future of guantanamo bay detainees and also the trial of the alleged 9/11 co-conspirtors. naples, florida. tom on our line for republicans. go ahead. caller: good morning. i think this is, this basically makes a mockry and a sham of the 9/11 commissions, the major finding out of the 9/11 commission was a demple nation that, hey, -- determination that we were on the wrong footing as a nation. e we were treating these criminal terrorists as basic criminals instead of treating them as a foreign power, a foreign source of power at war with us. if we were on the wrong footing. and this decision by obama is basically a victory for the terrorists and their supporters in the aclu and the human rights groups. they were wanting this thrown into the brire patch of the court system since day one. in fact, when ksm was captain turd, he says, i'll talk to you when i get my lawyer. it's crazy. we are at war. that's the lesson of 9/11. you know, they were at war against us, we weren't at war against them. the reason why this is a sham is during the first world trade center bombing the blind sheik's aclu lawyer was basically passing along secret information to the terrorists. and this can happen again whether or not we have another spy in our midsts. the whole idea of allowing these martors the opportunity to look at the new york skyline from the air and then down on the ground to see their handywork is a slap at the constitution, it's a slap at every american who witnessed that horror. and it just is a surrender in the war. host: we're going to leave it there. brad, tom brought up the blind sheik who was tried in new york. what would be the difference between this trial that the attorney general announced yesterday and the trial of the blind sheik in new york? guest: i think the caller makes a very important point in recognizing that this is a big step back toward the criminal law model which was really the only model in use at the time of the blind sheik trial. and one thing that's important to realize is that some of the most prominent participants in that trial, in that prosess, including the judge, who was our most recent past attorney general, and the lead prosecutor both are of the view that even though civilian courts are capable of dealing with problems of this kind, that it is a very big mistake to look at them as the primary means of doing so, and that you really do need a military adjunct. both who come out of the civilian system favor the use of military commissions. and there is a really good book called willful blindness explaining just what some of the problems were with the criminal law model rather than the law of war model and some of the disabilities and problems that we faced as a country by failing to recognize that we were in fact at war with these people. host: now that the obama administration wants to put these guys on trial in new york and the co-conspirtors in the uss coal bombing in front of a military commission what does that say about the future of the rest of the guys in guantanamo bay? guest: we haven't mentioned yet this morning the fact that the obama administration for better or worse has not turned its back on the military commission process. it's continuing to use the military commissions for other very important cases including the cole bombing. the line that seems to be drawn is that people who commit acts of terrorism here on u.s. soil will be put into civilian court and people who attack our targets abroad like the embassies or the u.s. cole will be kept in the military system and tried in guantanamo under commissions. the problem with that is it creates an extraordinarily per verse incentive. if you can just come here and commit your terrorist act which is their fondest wish anyway, then you get a civilian trial with all the rights pertinent to a civilian trial and you get what the criltics say is a second class form of justice and you're stuck in guantanamo if you're only successful in hitting us abroad. host: your thoughts on the way it seems how the administration is going to split the prosecution of the folks in guantanamo bay guest: well, i'd like to respond to the point of whether or not what is it that the defendants want in this case, and what are they seeking. i think what you have seen from a number of those statements and from the transcripts of the combatant status tribunal of some of the defendants is in fact what they're seeking is a combatant status which is exactly what the use of a military commissions gives them. it elevates them to the level of warrior. and what you have seen in the criminal justice system in the regular federal criminal courts in cases such as reed, the convicted shoe bomber case, you see the judge after that case telling reed, you are not a warrior. i'm not going to elevate you to the status of warrior that you seek. you are not on the level with the warrior such as the warriors that fight in defense of the united states, you're just a criminal. and it denies those defendants the warrior status that they in fact seek by bringing them into the criminal justice system, which admittedly is only one of the many counter terrorism tools that the united states needs to employ. there are instances this which the use of the military are appropriate, in which the intelligence agencies are appropriate. we learned a lot of lessons after 9/11 about the need for better communication and cooperation between law enforcement and the intelligence community. but the use of the criminal justice system is in fact a very important counter terrorism tool that the administration should be employing to the extent that it can in order to combat terrorist threats. host: what about the other detainees in guantanamo bay? does the announcement of the trials for the 9/11 co-conspirtors and the cole co-conspirtors, does that signal to you that the administration is trying to move this process forward, get these detainees through some sort of judicial process so that they can ultimately close down guantanamo bay? guest: yes. i do think the administration is making progress towards the closure of the guantanamo bay facility. remember that there are approximately 90 detainees that in fact have been cleared for release in guantanamo and the administration needs to continue to work with our allies in order to ensure that those individuals can be repate traited or transferred for resettlement. so there are a number of obstacles beyond simply the rile aspects to closing the facility and ensuring that detainees either face their day in court if they have committed a crime of terrorism or that they're transferred for resettlement or repate traited elsewhere. host: you have a law degree from the georgetown university law center. and brad is a former associate white house counsel with the bush administration from 2001 to 2003. he is currently a partner in the dc office of sidney austin and has his law degree from harvard. back to the phones. stanford, florida. caller: yes. how are you doing, sir? host: go ahead. caller: i'd just like to state that obama administration is showing the world that america won't back down off of no situation. by bringing these guys to trial he is showing the american people that we are a strong nation and we can take care of our own. i think it's great that he is doing that. that way it will show the american public and the people around new york that it would be a fair trial and so what that they are flying over seeing where they bombed and their handiework. a lot of people have killed in this nation and got off with it in a couple of years and went back. so that's not no big issue there. the issue is getting them to trial and taking them out. that's the issue. host: thank for your call. guest: i think one of the first thing that is the defense lawyers are going to do is to try to get the trial moved out of lower manhattan precisely for the reasons we've all been discussing. it's so close and so many people in the jury pool will be affected by it. it's impossible to predict how the judge is going to rule. but when people talk about the circus that this will become is in the first ring is the fight whether this trial can take place in southern manhattan or whether, despite attorney general holder's carefully considered decision to venue the trial there it's going to get moved by a judge somewhere else. i don't think that this is going to be perceived by our terrorist adversaries around the world as an act of strength by the obama administration. quite the opposite. i think it's going to be perceived as an act of weakness and a reversion to the approach that we took prior to 9/11. it's obviously impossible for any of us to know for sure how mohammed feels this morning. but i suspect that rather than feeling disappointed, i suspect thee is elated at going to manhattan and having a huge and visible forum for his outbursts and rantings and performances during the course of what he will regard as a trial that is mostly designed prior to his inevitable martyrhood to show the world what he is all about and advertise his cause. host: next up, brian on our line for independents. caller: i had a couple quick question force you. what exactly is it that why are we going to bestow to these people the rights that we fight for under our constitution, the very thing that makes us the beautiful country and beautiful people we are that they so much seek to destroy? and how is it that they are possibly going to get this fair trial like you were saying in lower manhattan? who in their right mind is going to sit on a jury in new york and give these guys a fair shake? guest: i think that, and i think to refer to the previous caller's discussion about why this decision to bring these defendants to trial in the united states is a demen stration of strength and confidence in our justice system and what the american people stand for, what our values are. this is really about the american people and the types of due process we require because we believe in a fair justice system. and it's what our criminal justice is based on. and i think that's what we're going to see vetd in these trials. we're going to see the 9/11 defendants brought to justice in a system that stands true to american values and the american criminal justice tradition that we should be so proud of and that we do in fact defend and why our military and our troops are deployed abroad is in fact to defend these very principles and the systems of justice into which we're going to see the 9/11 defendants brought host: we've got a tweet from who knew too addressed to you, brad. it says you said earlier you didn't know whose interest the administration had in mind. what are the possibilities in your mind? guest: well, i think that the administration has shown itself to be very, very sensitive to the demands and interests of groups that i consider to be on the far left of the american political spectrum as well as internationally. our critics abroad. this is an administration, if the bush administration can be faulted for being not sensitive enough to its crityickeds here and abroad, -- critics, i think the obama administration can be faulted for being too sensitive to the points of view that our international and domestic critics aspouse. and i think believe a lot of this is about appeasing the left as much about trying to make the right desession for the american people, the one best calculated to produce a just verdict and keep us safe. i generally consider president obama and the people serving him to be honorable people. but this does have the whiff of politics about it. host: explain how the hamdan decision handed down by the supreme court has some sort of bearing in the situation that we find ourselves in now. guest: the history of military commissions is a long and tortrd one. it's been up to the supreme court three times. the hamdan decision was the very first decision which struck down aspects of president bush's effort to authorize military commissions by executive order. that is, without legislation by congress. and it was really the hamdan decision that forced congress to go to work and pass a law that authorized the use of military commissions that provided for the commission's procedures and the like. i think overall from a macro political perspective that was not a bad thing. i think it was wise at a certain point in time for the administration to engage with the congress and have both political branches come together on an answer to this problem. indeed, i think there should be further legislation to deal with situations like this and recently the obama administration oddly enough decided it was not going to seek any further legislation creating a regime of preventive detention for terrorists but instead do what bush had done and continue to rely on the president's commander in chief powers. but hamdan was really the first time that the supreme court stepped in and forced the two political branches to get together and work on problems. host: did the hamdan decision ham string the bush administration in trying to move some of these military tribunals forward? guest: there's no question that all of the legal challenges against the military commissions and military commission trials ham strung the bush administration in trying to move this process forward. had there not been all of those challenges, obviously the trials would have proceeded much sooner and much faster. that's not to say that it was wrong to bring the legal challenges. many of the challenges succeeded. and so if the supreme dourt said there was a legal defect with the original commissions, i think all of us have to accept that and to move forward. but as you evaluate the history of military commissions in the modern era now, you do have to take account of the fact that the extraordinary legal support that the imprisoned terrorists at guantanamo have received from the bar and from public interest groups here in the united states really were quite successful in grinding this effort to innovate in effect by reverting back to a previous model and adapting it. they were quite successful in halting that and impeding it. host: develop. guest: if we can go back and think about why we're in this mess about why we have detainees in guantanamo that the administration is trying to resolve their cases. and i believe the reason why we're here is because guantanamo was seen as a way to take these detainees out of the rule of law and to escape the jurisdiction of the courts and to put them into what has been characterized as a legal black hole. and i think what you saw in the hamdan doosigses and other decisions were the u.s. courts saying you can't do that. you can't escape the rule of law by bringing the detainees into an offshore facilities off the shores of the united states. and if the obama administration is in fact motivated in part by wanting to demonstrate both to the american public and to the world that the -- that he is renewing u.s. commitment to the rule of law, i think that's an important motivation. i think that's a correct motivation. that's an important step to take because it's important to our relationships with our allies which are also essential to our national security and to the suck says of our efforts in both -- success and in iraq and afghanistan. host: go ahead. caller: good morning. a scenario nobody seems to be talking about. in the united states, our court system, it's very possible these people go free. now, if that happens what do you think the mood of the count vi is going to be against terrorists and do you think these advocassies with their so-called justice for everybody, human rights, do you think it's going to cause some bitterness in this country? and do you think that our enemies are going to be emboldened by this? guest: i think what you will see with the detainees that are brought into the united states and face trial for terrorism crimes is not what you've seen over the past number of decades where we do in fact extradict vidgets who we suspect of terrorist crimes into the united states to face justice because u.s. courts because we believe that is the proper place for them to face justice and we believe that our courts will be able to handle cases host: give me an example. guest: of a case where? i know we have a number host: where we brought somebody in from overseas where we try them for a crime against americans either here in the united states or abroad. guest: i'm not sure i can give you a specific case off the top of my head, but i know there are a number of examples of individuals that have been brought, not only for crimes. i mean, we extradict people all the time for any given number of crimes, crimes of piracy or other crimes unrelated to terrorism. but we have extradicted those who are accused of crimes against the united states. and what happens in those cases if some of those individuals are acquitted they are put into removal proceedings and removed from the united states. it's not unusual. that's how contradictions in this country. host: told on our libe. caller: you've got nor yageo from pan ma, brought him back. went over there and got those drug cartels and brought them back over here. so we can bring them over here and put them on trial. but what my concern is, is these scary republicans, man, they are scared to death. barack obama did something they never what he said criminals, oh, man, they really got scared. but let me tell you something, you republicans is out of power. we control everything and we're going do do it our way. we win wars. you all start wars. and we're going to get to the bottom of why you all are so scared of bringing these little terrorists over here because we're going to try them, we're going to hang them, and we're going to get it over with. guest: you know, the caller is absolutely right, the democrats are in total control of things now both houses of congress and the white house. they are going to do it their way. i genuinely sincerely hope the call ser right that that works out well, that their way works. but hearkening back to the previous caller, i think the ultimate niremare for president obama and the democrats in congress is either an acquital of one of these trials or one of the other four co-conspirtors that are going to be indicted with him, or another terrorist attack that is associated with having these trials in lower manhattan. if either of those things happens, i think it's going to be a political blood bath for the administration and its democratic allies in congress, and in that sense i have to applaud the administration for in essence putting its money where its mouth is. they are taking a big risk because if one of those bad outcomes occurs, and i think they're unlikely to ocur and i hope neither does occur. but if one does occur, it's just politically awful for the obama administration and the democrats. host: unfortunately we've run out of time. brad and devon, thank you for being on the program. we are going to continue the washington journal in just a few minutes and coming up later in the program carol lennog of the "washington post" to talk about investigations in the house of representatives. and also ron haskance of the brookings institution is going to be here as well. now we'll look at the past week through the ice of cartoonists -- eyes of cartoonists. host: recently, a document came to light and you wrote about it, about the house ethics committee and its investigation of at least 19 law makers. tell us how that information came out. and what wha did it show? guest: well, how it came about was almost a fluke but also a sign of the times, technology. i didn't know anything about peer to peer sharing, file sharing until this story broke right in our news room. we learned that a staffer on the house ethics committee had essentially brought this document home, an industrious worker, took it home in a laptop, e-mailed it to herself, but was working on the document in an area where it was accessible to the public because of file sharing net works. so that's how we got it. but to your more substantive question, how did what did this show, it showed that 30 plus law makers were under review or investigation either by the office of congressional ethics, which is a smaller office, sort of the grand jury of the house, or by the more formal and more powerful how's ethics committee. host: how us the difference between these two groups. guest: it's hard to get used to because it is very new. a lot of public sort of watch dog groups have been agitating for years that the house ethics committee made up of law makers can't police law makers. it can't punish appropriately house members it's reviewing because it's too painful. and it's too political a world in which they operate for law makers to pick on other people for their misdeeds. so those folks have been agitating for this office and it was just formed last year. it's been operating for about nine months. and its roll is really to do sort of the preliminary fact finding in an investigation. kit decide on its own to initiate these investigations. it looks nite it and then makes a referral or recommendation for a more full fledged investigation. host: and in the office of congressional ethics created in march 2008, their chairman is david scags, co-chairman porter goss, eovonburk, jay eeg agains, karen english, bill, and others, who all serve in this office of congressional ethics. generally, who are these folks and how did they get appointed to this office? >> they've gotten a lot of what i would call positive p.r. for the sort of heralded positions that some of them have. a former federal judge and chicago law professor. then there's folks who are former law makers. they were slightly removed from sort of the political pell mel of working and living in the house but they're also very well respected. so they have a lot of credibility on the street, at least those members. host: and then looking at the makeup of the house ethics committee, the official title the committee on standards of official conduct. the share zow love gren, democrat of california. the ranking member joe bonner of alabama, and then the rest of the members, ben chandler, butterfield of north carolina, kathy castor. charles dent, greg harper and mike mccall. what's the charge? what's the official responsibility of this ethics committee? >> the ethics committee is not the justice dmt, it's not the police. what it is supposed to do is investigate and if necessary punish members who violated house rules. and that's a broad charge and indeed they have looked at things as small, you might say, as a failure to turn in reports on time to allegations of profit yearing from official house action. so it's a huge swath. and what we at the "washington post" at the documents to us, what we found was that they cover the gamut. or at least theaf long list in their do do list of members that they're looking at and the reasons that they're looking at them. host: give us an example of some of the members who were on this list and why they were. what it was that they did or allegedly did that got them in front of the attention of the ethics committee. guest: well, let's take one that i wrote the most about up until this period, and that would be a group of seven law makers nearly half of the members the house defense appropriations subcommittee, very powerful committee, controls about $6 36 billion in defense funding. and so they're the last pen or one of the last pens on that spending. they can direct hundreds of millions of dollars in a year's time to specific contractors in their home district or if they choose contractors not in their home district. and these sen members, a mixture of five democrats and two republicans, are under investigation by the house ethics committee because there are allegations that they were so close to a defense lobbying firm that they may have taken some benefits in the form of contributions or other gifts. again, it's alleged that they may have taken these things in exchange for steering these contracts to the lobbying firms' clients. and this group is called the p.m.a. group. host: so these members come to the attention of the committee and the committee does their investigation. what would be the next step? guest: well, unfortunately, and this is a crityim i hear -- criticism i hear all the time from groups like common cause and others, they are unfortunately the ethics committee doesn't take its next step very frequently. it's so secretive you don't know what it's doing. and then when you do learn that it's done something it's potentially years after the investigation was begun. let's take, for example, charlie rangel. a powerful chairman. many people questioning many different things he has done, disclosure, income earned, how some gifts he received were received. trips he took with a group of congressional black caucus members. if i understand correctly, he's been under review for two years. another example. if you want me to skip to another, molhan, the first news that broke that he was under investigation was in 2006. it's 2009. he's already stood for reelection in that time. there are many people raising the question if the ethics committee is going to take a next step, it would be good for the public if it took it quickly. host: we want to open up the discussion of congressional ethics investigations with carol lenok of the "washington post." the numbers are on the screen. you can also send us e-mails or messages via twitter. our first call comes from gains, florida on our line for democrats. go ahead. caller: i have two questions and a late comment. the late comment, i think that the fear that's going to be created with the cases that are going to be brought is great. you can give all of the veterans and the wounded people and disabled people jobs. they can be doing security. my question, one is the reporter or the person who exposed the information. you think that person was conscious before they put that on their computer. that they were on a network. the second one is, are thange go to begin to -- what type of energy are they going to use? the energy that they used to go after acorn or the energy that they used to go after black water? guest: on your first question about the staffer. this was not a reporter, by the way, that was working on this document. it was a house ethics committee staffer. a fairly low level staffer and we've done a lot of reporter that how this happened. this was not a leak and i can assure you of that. and every bit of reporting that we've done to this date indicates this was just a simple mistake. literally, a person deciding i want to take my work home with me, i'm going to brick it home fro -- bring it home from the office and i'm going to keep our sort of weekly log of all our house investigation, i'm going to make edits and refinements. and while she's saving a document in a section of her computer, i myself have probably done a version of this. while she's saving the document again, she saves it with a new name and it gets saved on to this area that is shared and publicly accessible. host: almost as simple as you get an e-mail, you want to forward it to someone else with comments and instead of forwarding it you actually reply to the original person that sent it to you. guest: yes. and there's been a lot of interesting and unexpected sympathy for this particular person on both sides of the aisle, republican and democratic folks saying, ok, this is embarrassing, it's a big mistake. this is a panel that borks in the up-- works in the upmost secrecy. but is it really the worst crime in the world to not be tech logically savvy. host: and the prosecution she talked about a little bit. she asked a little bit about what's going to happen? what's the level of prosecution for these alleged misdeeds? guest: well, as i said before, there are really serious quess about how rapid maybe isn't the right adjective but how aggressive. again, i go back to the substance of one of the panel's most significant work and that is investigating the defense appropriations subcommittee panel members and whether or not they were on the take. that's a really strong phrase. but were they getting of something of benefit in exchange for steering federal money to specific people? that's the allegation. many of the house ethics committee members have received earmarks themselves from this panel, meaning they have gone hat in hand to the house appropriations subcommittee and asked could you provide a defense earmark for my company in my district. not the personal members' company but a company of a constituent. so how do you police an entity to which you are asking a favor? host: our next call from ohio. victor on our line for republicans. caller: good morning. i want to ask a question. what is going to happen with this congressional ethics committee in terms of investigating people like barney frank and christopher d.o.d. and all of those who have brought down this nation's economy? last september you guys had a congressman on from pennsylvania who talked about 500 or $50 billion in money market accounts being wits drawn from those money market accounts that eventually led to a lot of the crisis in our economy. and i know the republicans are guilty of a lot of things but the one thing that i've learned about some of these republicans is that when they get caught in scandals, they will step down. democrats don't do it. and it's part of the -- and it's a reason why i stopped voting for democrats because they don't have -- it seems like these people have absolutely no a -- i listened to this last lady on here talking about these trials that's going to take place here in new york and i'm wondering, what is the best way to get information from these? what are they going to do, tie these people down and tickle their feet? i mean. host: we'll leave it there. guest: on your question about frank and dodd, their names are not on the ethics committee roster for investigations. i understand there is a lot of interest and concern about the large es of financial service industries had sort of showrd on both of these members and you mentioned their responsibility for the fall of the economy. i think a lot of people agree that was a pretty big bipartisan mistake in many ways. although there were a lot of pieces of legislation that were enacted as far back as the late 80's that helped open the door for more and more secretive derivative trading that was uninsured and brought down essentially the fall of a.i.g. so that's a pretty big basket of blame to pass around, not just those two members. host: james on our line for independents calling out of detroit. caller: thank you for c-span. i find it the most educational program for me on television. as a law student, i follow things as closely as i can and i think that the case against william jefferson, you know, the congressman from louisiana who was just sentenced to 13 years, that they found the money in his freezer. and i understood his case. but then we get to scooter libby and karl rove who thumbed his nose at the senate, and it's just a mix that i find it hard to understand why justice for some and not for others. recently they set up acorn. you know, this phony thing where people went in and the halloween costumes and whatever they were using to try to set up a few people to give acorn a bad name. it was all sponsored by another -- well, you know what i'm trying to say. why is it that in lieberman's case, we know that their wives have these big lucrative jobs at the insurance company, they sit on the executive branch, they -- executive board. and it's transparent. lieberman runs in the primary. people said we don't want this guy any more. host: thanks for your call. kind of all over the place on that one. is there any indication that the house members under investigation right now, that their misdeeds will rise to the level of congressman william jefferson who was sentenced yesterday? guest: excellent question. and there are a lot of indications of that in the document. for example, we spoke about mr. molhan. there's a reference to a july time period in that document when the house ethics committee contacted the department of justice and asked about their progress and they were told essentially to stand down by the justice department because of their ongoing investigation of the member. so that's pretty striking. there are a couple others that fit into that realm, to harp back on the seven members. in that document there's also a reference to an effort by the committee to reach out to justice to find out if their interviews will interfere with the justice department's ongoing probe of pma. and as you all probably know, it's subpoenaed the documents this may of the office of congressman vissclosski and specifically his then chief of staff who has since resigned. host: is it the responsibility of the office of congressional ethics to then hold the ethics committee's feet to the fire, so to speak, to get them to be proactive in their investigations? >> that was the goal of, i think there were a few procedural -- the people who agitated for its creation were hoping that by having the office of congressional ethics you would have somebody initiating and getting the ball rolling who didn't have an investment in giving people political cover who were friends or of the same party, or just an inertia. that's one of the complaints about the house ethics committee. so the goal was get the ball down the field and then let's see. there are some procedural ways in which the house ethics committee can kind of stall and avoid taking the recommendation of the office of congressional ethics, but that's probably too boring to get into. host: back to the phones. jim on our line for democrats. caller: good morning, c-span. and thank you so much for letting america voice its opinion. i would like to make a comment that this is the voice of american middle class. the only way that you're going to get people to return to have any faith in politicians is to sponsor a government run program on tv that runs on all tv channels that is an independent board which announces these investigations of these politicians which gives them equal air time and also allows the outcome of whatever the proceeding is. right now, the reason that the voter turnout in america is so low is not because people don't want to vote. it's because most times they have a choice between a snake and a lizrd. and it's just ridiculous and it's disgusting to me as a decorated disabled veteran that i fought for my country to have what we have, what we call people running for political office. thank you. guest: i was intreed by one thing you said. of course your nake verse us a liz yard comment was one i've heard a couple different ways. but the openness, the transparency idea. when we obtained this document, i was quite struck reading through it about some of the members who were listed being under investigation because members of their staff had furiously told me they weren't under investigation in the months prior when we were looking at those particular members. so this sort of put the lie to that. and remember that this panel operates in the utmost secrecy. the reason would be that allegations should be looked into without casting aspersions without on a member. the house set up this committee. and politically it's quite damaging when you have members who are known to be under investigation for potential ethics violations and a lot of members are feeling that pain right now. host: brian, go ahead. let's move on to jackie in florida. caller: yes. you know, i'm not too thrilled with the fact that it's secret. i think that a member should be treated like everyone else in the population. i understand, you know, that allegations. but allegations fly all the time in newspapers, on the news, and everywhere. you know. so i think the secret part is not so good. and then they don't really bring them up against any real criminal charges. just periodically when they've been caught literally with their hand in the cookie jar. and barney frank and dodd should absolutely be there. there's so much going on with those guys, especially dodd. he actually got all these loans and stuff from countrywide. and everybody says they don't know what's going on in their own lives and businesses ar and they're not involved in anything. and they are. so they can sweep whatever they want under the carpet. and i happen to agree with the other gentleman who called earlier. if you've got a republican that's doing wrong things at least they step down. and democrats they just flaunt it and stay with it and just don't seem to care anything about it at all. and i'm pretty much appalled about the whole thing. i think they should be held to the same standards as every other american and have no special privileges or anything. if the allegations are false and if they are found not guilty, then that should also take press dense as opposed to just keeping everything swept under the carpet. they could do whatever they want with it. host: you had addressed barney frank before. but there was another name among those on the list of those being investigated, that of representative laura richardson, democrat of california. what's her story? guest: you know, congresswoman richardson is an interesting case because what she's being looked at is did she engage in something that violated house rules. if i grasp it correctly, she is less under d.o.j. purview than under the house ethics committee because did she break the rules in a way that helped her. host: back to the phones. mark on our line for democrats from detroit. go ahead. caller: thanks, c-span. you do a great job. i watch you most of the time, 2 and 3. what about this fellow, pete hoekstra from the house intelligence committee? i've got three names really. and what about the, this co burn fellow from oklahoma who was, gave money to john ensign's family or negotiated money, excuse me, to john ensign's family? and i wonder if there's anything about the blackwater militant group that's over there fighting and killing people. if you have any answers or any information about them. host: thanks toor your question. guest: i used to cover federal court in washington, d.c. about three blocks from here. and so i know blackwater was under investigation for a long time and there were significant indictments in the shooting, if you recall that shooting which most of the witnesses at the time said was a completely unprovoked kind of slaughter in a square by blackwater agents. with regard to hoekstra, he is not on our list so i really couldn't comment. but you -- i'm sorry, there was another member that you mentioned. host: senator co burn. guest: he is not under investigation, but congressman ensign is. you know, in a federal, a more significant law enforcement probe based in his district. host: next up is brian in michigan. caller: thank you. i've often wondered, give you an example. senator levin, say g.m. wanted to lobby senator levin. is there any paper trail for that? in other words, would they have to go to his office, log in, speak their business and leave? and in turn, if senator levin wanted to go to one of their factories or whatever, would he have to put that to paper? in other words, log that so that reporters could actually have a trail to start with and then actually follow the money? i think we do have a lot of problem with lobbyists and the problem is it's not out in the open. i don't understand why the american people have to put wup secrecy as far as this goes. i believe that if you want to talk business, you have to do it in their office. if you need to go out in the field, it all needs to be logged either way. what do you think about that? turn that information over to the reporters every month. guest: i'm a big fan of transparency for obvious reasons. i think a democracy operates best when the public and reporters have all the information at their finger tips. it is complicated, frankly, to get to the bottom of how lobbyists interacts with a particular member or their staff which is sometimes just as important and crucial. it's complicated but it's possible. and a lot of our reporting in the last several weeks literally last several weeks has focused on a nice website run by the center for responsive politics called open secrets. and you can see because of the way they sort the data how and when lobbyists are registering to represent particular companies and who or which committee they are trying to obtain some sort of goodie or favor or help from. and it doesn't specify, sat down with senator levin today. but it does give you a clue as to who are they representing what do the companies want? which committees and committee members does this company need to reach out to or this interest. and sometimes it feels a little bit like a business tin path but you can figure it out. host: sort of being outed by the reporting of the "washington post," how do members find out they're being investigated by the ethics committee? guest: i liked one of the callers who said these allegations sort of leak out. a lot of these members knew that they were and some didn't but the truth is that the office of congressional ethics contacts members and we had some quotes from, for example, our local virginia congressman jim moran. he said he had sat down with the office. he knew very well that that preliminary fact finding office was looking into him and his earmarks to pma group clients. however, the house ethics committee, because it moves in a little more of a syrupy pace ant it doesn't initially contact the members, so it's possible. . . >> caller: he is not in congress. however, it's similar to what's going on in congress as far as, like, joe lieberman and ben nelson voting against the health care plan or thinking about voting against the health care plan. host: your concerns are valid, but you're running this train way off the rail, so we're going to let it go there. carol leonnig, was there anything you wanted to say to wrap this up? guest: sure. i think something bill said was striking in the beginning. that was the idea of focusing on whether or not the members are ever going to get punished. that is of keen interest to us. you can't have members violating the rules and then be under investigation, or allegedly violating the rules and then be under investigation for three to five years. it doesn't serve the public very well, and if they haven't broken the rules, then clear them and do it quickly because that hurts the members as well and it hurts their constituents. host: carol leonnig of "the washington post." thank you for being on the program this morning. guest: thank you. host: in just a few minutes, we're going to have a conversation about america being the land of opportunity with ron haskins of the brookings institution. first, we want to tell you a little bit more about "world news" this -- about "newsmakers" with judd gregg. he was asked what's the long-term affair of the health care issue and the rising deficits overall could be. this is what he had to say. >> well, i see the cost issue is at the essence of the biggest issue our problem has after the terrorist and weapons of mass destruction tactics, and that is the impending fiscal meltdown of our nation. we're taking ourselves out of the third class status as a nation. you cannot grow the government from 20% to 26% of our g.d.p. all the debt that's going to generate, because no matter how much you raise tax, you can't chase your tail when you get that big, because they can't pay for those debts. when the public debt goes from 38% of g.d.p. to 80% of g.d.p., that essentially means that the debt -- the financing of that debt is going to exceed the cost of anything else in the government, including military expenditures. national defense. and, in fact, if we tried to get into the european union, for example, which we're trying to do, but that's a group of industrialized groups, we could not get in beginning about 2013 because our public debt would be too high. it would be over their 60% threshold. and we're seeing already international statements from china, from other places, that they're worried about our debt and they're the ones who buy the debt. if they start to worry about our debt, what does that mean? well, we're going to have to raise the price. in other words, we're going to have to raise the interest that we pay on that debt in order to get those folks to buy our debt. we're also seeing these agencies saying, gee, we don't know, if you stay on this path which is unsustainable, we may have to downgrade your debt. all of this leads to instability in our nation. there's only two things you can do when debt gets so high you can't afford to play it. you basically have to inflate the economy, you devalue the dollar and put in place one of the cruelest taxes which is inflation. or you raise tax levels so high that you reduce the productivity of the nation and it becomes a downward spiral, where basically productivity drops, your revenues drop again. we're on an unsustainable path, it's that simple. you shouldn'ting a revate that by add -- you shouldn't aggravate that by adding another three trillion dollars program on top of it. >> you can see senator judd gregg tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. on c-span and again at 6:00 p.m. on c-span. you can also stream it on our website c-span.org. joining us now at the c-span table is ron haskins of the brookings institution. he's an economic studies senior fellow and co-author of the book "creating an opportunity in society." he's here to talk to us about america still being a land of opportunity. tell us a little bit about the book. guest: the book is -- bill and i, my colleague for almost a decade, we have been studying opportunity and poverty, and inequality for a decade or more. in both cases we studied -- well, we worked together. and so we decided that we would write a book about it because we think that creating opportunity is wait more important than fighting poverty or almost any other domestication. traditionally, a key american value is opportunity, and so we wanted to look at opportunity very carefully, with poverty as well. but the main idea is can you get ahead in america? i think we made a lot of discoveries. i'll just mention two. the first one is that despite our belief, and if you do polls, americans believe there's more opportunity in america than anywhere else. there are a number of other countries that would make more money than their parents. than in america on average. america has huge, fabulous fortunes, and you can become a millionaire or a billionaire in america more than other countries, but on average, there's more mobility in other countries than there is in america. host: is that because there's a greater distance between where someone might start out in another country and how far they can rise as opposed to here in the united states where our standard of living is already that much higher than it is all around the world? guest: most european countries have standards of living that are roughly comparable to ours, but they do not have the huge distance between the top and the bottom. that is really a fairly distinctive part about america. especially at the top. and the most notable thing that's happened, a lot of people think that the poor are falling behind and middle class is falling apart. generally, that's not true. the middle class has done fairly well. the bottom in distribution has not done well, but it has advanced very slowly. but the top has completely broken away. the complaints about the declining middle class to, the extent that they're in the middle class, they primarily come because people move from the middle further up. if you take 75,000 and say high income is above 75,000, a lot more people are above 75,000. not since the recession, but up until the recession, more and more were above 75,000. so really, the most distinctive part about america i would say is the abundance at the top and the increase at the top. but up until 2007-2008, huge progress at the top of the income distribution, and the further goal, 95th percentile, the bigger the gap becomes and the bigger the increase in income over any recent period for, say, the last 25 or 30 years. host: now, you are referring to what you recently co-authored in "the washington post" about the five myths about our land of opportunity. and you just talked about the first one. americans enjoy more economic opportunity than people in other countries. the second myth, in the united states, each generation does better than the past one. is that just a recent development? because it seems if you look at history, it does seem that a cursory glance of history shows that each generation seems to be a little bit better than the last one. guest: on average, the middle class is doing better and low income earners are doing better, since 1979. now, there are a lot of periods of ups and downs. what has really changes is the income of the average male worker. the average male worker is not doing better than his father from 35 or 40 years ago. but households are still better off because so many women work, and women are doing very well. and further, people of high indication tend to marry each other so that means people with higher incomes tend to marry each other. so this further develops the spread. but the remarkable thing is male earnings are not doing well. they are not better off than male earnings from previous generations. but households are because of women's income. host: so one more myth, myth number three, immigrant workers, and the offshoring of jobs drive poverty and inequality in the united states. guest: right. to some extent, immigration does -- i would say it increases poverty by maybe a half percentage point, maybe less. because our immigration has shifted quite remarkably since the end of world war ii. and it has shifted in the sense that we have both a lot more highly qualified workers, doctors, lawyers, scientists, but we also have a lot more very low income and low educated workers. the result is on average a bigger increase at the bottom and poorly educated workers, and they tend to work in service industries and industries where they have low income. so immigration does contribute, but not nearly as much as people think it does. plus, if we do pass immigration legislation and try to affect who comes into the country, we have to remember we get a very, very -- our economy gets a terrific boost by people who come from other countries at the top of the distribution, become doctors, lawyers, scientists, and especially computer programmers. so i think we have to be very cautious when we think about immigration legislation. i do think if we narrowed intake at the bottom and controlled -- did something like some european countries do in which they had something like a points system, and highly educated, experienced people are more likely to get in. in our immigration system, disregarding the -- the legal entrants tend to be -- the illegal entrants tend to be very poorly educated. but people that are already low income and poorly educated, their other family members tend to be the same and we bring them in. we could make soom changes -- some changes in how we admit people into the country. i personally think we should do that. not radically, but gradually over a period of years, admit fewer people who are poorly educated. host: is america still the land of opportunity? here to discuss that with us is ron haskins of the brookings institution. if you want to get involved in the conversation, the numbers are: host: if you've called us within the last 30 days, send us an e-mail or twitter today and let somebody else have the chance to speak to us by the phone. our first call, joe from scranton on our line for independents. caller: one of my concerns is how long can we maintain a healthy economy fighting two wars, policing the world, illegal immigration, and being swamped with imports? i mean, at some point, there has to be a breaking point. agree? caller: first of all, on imports, i think net on average, we certainly do have a lot of imports. but i think net contributes to the size of our gross nation or product and contributes to employment in the united states. it's highly obvious when a plant closes down and the evening news tends to feature it and americans see it and they say -- let's see a textile my in south carolina and they say, isn't that horrible? years ago used to be steel mills in pittsburgh. and it is horrible. it's very difficult for the people involved. but don't forget, weir making a lot of products that we expomplet we're exporting even more than we import in most months now. and we would lose jobs if we didn't have those exports. further more, if we started a trade war, and a lot of countries start imposing barriers on trade, should be the most straight forward way to reduce the number of imports into the country, then that would have a direct impact on us overall. i think on average we're better off with the situation the way it is now, and as long as we are so advanced technologically and have sufficient efficiency in many of our industries, we will continue to profit on average from trade, even though it does that voluntarily. and the people that are subjected to that really suffer a hard time. i think unbalanced trade is good for the country. host: the president is in the far east this week. while he's over there, what should he be saying to the leaders in japan and china about maintaining some sort of balance and helping to make sure that both that area of the world and the united states continue to be quote unquote lands of opportunity? guest: it's very controversial in the united states. we passed nafta back in the 1990's when clinton was president and that was really an operation -- i was working in the congress then, i was a little bit involved in that. it was really a bargain struck between republicans and democrats. it was still not a very pretty debate. a lot of emotional involvement. but the president's main message in the far east should be to further lower trade barriers. i think we should be a confident nation. we have great technological damages. we used to have more of an educational damage. that was really our number. we don't have as much anymore. but we should all lower trade barriers. the most important thing he should do, though, is be nice to the chinese so they don't stop lending us money, because we really have a huge problem. both the chinese and the japanese, to a completely unprecedented degree, we would go bankrupt without them. that's another factor we can't really go to either country and say change your policy because we're depending on them financially. host: "america, the land of opportunity." youngstown, arizona. dave on our republicans line, go ahead. caller: i'm totally outraged that president obama is spending so much time on this health care thing, and in my opinion, a major problem is outsourcing work. but you're just talking about right now. for example, my niece grew up in poverty in san berdee know, california. they start making jet skis and they had 160 employees. now they make those jet skis in china. and so they went from 160 employees to about 30 people now. and this outsourcing, the united states became a great country by making things and products for our people and exporting and now the whole situation is reversed and people are importing things and our people are unemployed. i think there has to be some kind of -- if the president spent as much time trying to reverse outsourcing instead of trying to get hillary's health care program enforced, maybe our people would be employed. and i don't really know how to reverse outsourcing, but i think it needs to be done. host: thank you for your call. guest: i'm very sorry about his niece, of course. this is compare to believe the situation i talked about earlier in south carolina with mills closing and pittsburgh steel plants closing many years ago. it's volatile. a capless economy is volatile. and as long as the gates are open and you have innovation and you have new products and old products die out because the new products replace them and some of those are made in other countries, but for every jet ski that's exported to china or the job is exported to china, we have chemicals and other products that are made here and that increase. so on average, we're better off as a country, even though the caller's niece is not better off and the other 150-some employees. but that's the nature of a capitalist economy. you can't stop it. a very famous economist called capitalism creative destruction. that's exactly what it is. half the products that we had 50 years ago, we don't have anymore. probably even more than half. so it is a dynamic economy that's created by capitalism and it's so great in america it's probably not going to reverse. what we need to do is make sure our people are well educated and make sure we have as few regulations and restrixes on business and business can go where the new products are and can innovate. that's the real key to keeping employment up in the united states. host: ron haskins co-authored in the "washington post" called "five myths about our land of opportunity." myth number four, if we want to increase opportunities for children, we should give their families more income. guest: this is an old fight in the united states. a lot of people think we should have a guaranteed annual income. but it doesn't necessarily create independence. the united states, i think, will not in the foreseeable future give families enough money that they could even get out of poverty. they're going to have to earn part of the money. and we have actually tried this. we passed a very important legislation in the mid 1990's in which we basically said, you have to work. we're going to help you, but you have to work. and they did. i would say a million and a half or so mothers actually entered the labor market and got jobs and they were employed. it's true that they weren't good jobs in the sense that americans think of $15 an hour with benefits. they were $8, $9 an hour. but we also created a system where we supplemented their income. this seems to be much more popular among voters and among the american public that if people work and try, especially single mothers, and they're working close to full-time, we would supplement their income. we provide health care, food stamps. so this system has worked much better than the old system where we had over five million families on welfare. now we're under two. it's because most of those mothers were working and we're supplementing their income. taxpayers are better off and the country is better off. host: let's take this call from george, democrat from atlanta. caller: are there any social consequences for income inequality? and health care greatness inequality. is there any connection between violence and high inequality that we have in america? guest: that's a lot of questions. let me start with health care. it is an amazing fact that in most of the data that we study, completely ignore health benefits. and if you think of it in percentage terms, not necessarily dollars, but in percentage terms, the supplements to income through health care that are given to low income families and even middle class families are much higher, not in actual dollars, but in percentage terms. to think of it this way, if you count it as income, it boosts their income, and it will have a tremendous impact if we included this in the calculation. so we really do have quite good programs for the poor, especially children. virtually every child under 200% poverty in the united states is covered by health insurance. sometimes their parents don't take them, but we've done a very good job of covering these kids. if you look at what happened during the recession, you will see that a lot of kids went up. vie and poverty, -- violence and poverty. a huge relation. i'm not sure what to say about it. it's always been the case. one of the factors is undoubtedly so many kids that live in poverty also live in families apart from their father. obama's background, he has raised this many times himself and is focusing a lot of his time on resource on fatherhood issues in the united states and we're going to see this more and more, especially next year because there will be some legislation along these lines, and presumably health care one way or the other will be off the board. but the absence of fathers, especially when people live in communities and when children are reared in communities that have so little male presence, that undoubtedly contributes to violence. so there is a connection between poverty and violence, yes. host: our next call for ron haskins comes from john in houston, texas. good morning, john. caller: good morning, thank you very much. one of the questions by your screener prompted me to rather than ask a question, make a comment, offer compliments. i was asked whether or not i had called in -- or the last time i called in, and it made me realize that part of the deterioration of the american economy is because too few managers in america understand and implement the control that your moderate ors have on c-span's -- the interaction for television. it's the best one in the country. thank you very much. host: you've made our screener feel a lot better. did you have a question for ron haskins? john is gone. let's go to san diego on our line for republicans. charles, go ahead. caller: hi. thank you for taking my call. i wanted to ask a question about federal reserve policy. it seems like small business is under attack, especially out here in california. but the federal reserve policy seems to be pushing us into expecting hyperinflation and high interest rates, which further scares people and makes it impossible for small business in the future. i was wondering if your analysis of this would qualify the current federal -- the current monetary policy, and is it just a tactic to really push people to spend their money now than try to help the economy. guest: this is not an issue that we address in the article or in our book, but i will just say one thing about this. washington and the federal reserve and the board of governors federal reserve are extremely conscious, because of the history of the federal reserve, that increasing interest rates, which now are essentially zero, and that's the most powerful instrument the federal reserve has. they are going to have to increase those interest rates, but it has to be timed perfectly. if they wait too long, we're going to have hyperinflation. if they start too early, they could shut off a recovery, as this happened during the great depression, for example. so this is a key issue. it's not a mathematically precise thing. there's a lot of guessing involved. and, of course, the federal reserve will have a lot of advice, but this is really a delicate operation. interest rates will have to go up to avoid inflation, but we can't do it too soon, because if we do, it could put the economy in the tank again. host: myth number five about the five myths of our land of opportunity focuses on government to a certain extent, saying we can fund new programs to boost opportunity by cutting waste and abuse in the federal budget. really? guest: no, we can't. to a certain extent, there is waste in the federal budget, of course. but try to cut it -- host: by cutting back on that waste and abuse -- can't find the money -- guest: we've been trying to do this for 30 years. all of these programs -- i mean, your waste could be my favorite program. it's something that my constituents love. i'm a senator or a member of the house of representatives, i'm going to protect the program even if it doesn't work. obama has said, to his credit, and the head of office and budget, says they are going to focus a lot more on results and accountability, and what a great idea that is. they say they're going to kill programs that don't work. that would be an example of waste. if we did that, we could really save a lot of money. but again, try to kill those programs, congress is not going to kill a program. congress loves the spending money. but when it comes to cutting money, they don't do a great job. further more, here's the biggest and most important point. our deficit is so enormous, a trillion dollars now, and then it's going to go up as the baby boomers retire and health care continues to cost more. the magnitude of the we squeezed every -- under any broad definition of waste we squeezed every penny out, it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the level of deficit that we have now. we don't have any choice except to increase taxes and to cut spending. we have to do both of those things. eventually i think we'll do it. but we might wait too long and the chinese will stop giving us the money to keep the government running. host: brookhaven, mississippi. jason on our line for democrats. caller: hi. thank you for taking my call. i had one question. is the opportunity one has in america a function of one's wealth? well, where wealth is defined in this manner. the amount one earns? the amount of one's equity and the size of one's estate? i'll take my question off the air. thank you. guest: the answer is that both earnings and wealth are considered in calculations of inequality and mobility. earnings and income are counted much more than wealth, but there are many good scholars who study wealth. if anything, wealth is even more unequal in its distribution than income. but we know way more about income and earnings than we do wealth. we have a loot more inequality in the united states and it's growing. during normal times, it's growing. host: beyond incomes and earnings for the sake of this discussion, define wealth. guest: basically property. not just physical property, but most wealth is in financial holders. now, savings, bonds, stocks, real property, real estate and so forth. there's a very important distinction to make here, though. for people who are wealthy, a much higher proportion of their wealth tends to be, even though they have glorious houses and lots of junk, nonetheless, most of their money is in financial holdings. whereas for low income families, and even middle class families, almost all of the wealth is in their house. so that's why the crisis in the housing market and foreclosures have really, really had an impact. we don't know the full extent of it yet, but two years from now when we can really look at it carefully, we'll find that families under $50,000 a year in income, their wealth has been devastated because so many of them lost their homes. host: round lake, illinois. philip on our line for independents. go ahead. caller: good morning. thank you for c-span. mr. haskins? guest: yes. caller: i'm really in a quandary, sir. i'm listening to you and i hear the same rhetoric i've heard for 30 years now of laissez faire economics, we're going to have to accommodate all these different countries because manufacturing is going out and it's not going to come back in. we got to do more schooling. i just went back to school at 50 years old. and ended up getting disabled in the process. so now i've got $50,000 worth of student loans i've got to pay off on disability pay. so it's not always the way it works. as an economic professor or fellow, a thinker, you've got to look at it -- at the point that you might be wrong, sir. i mean, greenspan said he was wrong. and that this idea that changing will pull us out, it would if we had a manufacturing base to work with it. when the states are putting all their money into, like, cops and forest service, that all comes out of tax money. so if the manufacturing base isn't there to make the tax money up, well, then, you're just going to dig yourself a bigger hole. and i know you guys aren't that stupid not to realize this, so what are you trying to do to lower everybody's wages so we can compete in the world market and make $57 an hour? what's going on here? guest: i have frequently had the experience in being wrong. at least half the times i admit it. so i'm prepared to be wrong. and i'm extremely sympathetic with your situation, and i've indicated here that i'm very sympathetic with people who live in communities that have plant closings and generally anybody who loses their job due to trade. but if you examine the facts, the facts are really straight forward. america is an enormously wealthy country. we have continued to be an enormously wealthy country. but if the past is any guide, we'll come out of this recession, we'll have even more employment, the middle class will continue to grow, the rich will grow even faster, and we do have a manufacturing base. we do lose a lot of jobs because of international competition. but what you want to do, pull up the gates and stop trade? for one thing, as i've already mentioned, we're completely dependent financially because americans lack self-discipline and they want benefits, benefits, benefits, but they don't want to pay for the benefits so they pass it on to their kids, so as a result of that we have to borrow flun the chinese and japanese to make up the difference. if we disrupted trade between japan and the united states or china and the united states, there would be serious retaliation and we would pay a deep price. we have no choice except to go forward and the way we go forward is to have an educated populous and there are going to be a lot of 50-year-olds who do have to go back and get additional education. and, you know, nobody said it's going to be a rose garden. but there are opportunities and there will continue to be opportunities and people will work hard and sometimes go back to school at age 507, they -- 50, they will do well. host: james sends us this tweet, and it says we need to focus on buying capital equipment and not home. the home buying push really hurt our competitiveness. guest: i completely agree. that has been an amazing thing about america throughout its history, we do invest a lot in capital. i think it probably under some analysis would also be correct if we spent less of our money on homes and more of it on education and on tools and on things that would help individuals, but most importantly, that would help companies grow and companies be more effective and efficient, then we would be better off as a nation. as a general proposition, that's certainly true. host: next up, canyon city, colorado. steve on our line for republicans. you're on "washington journal." caller: good morning. how are you guys doing? this is a really interesting topic you've got going today. what really struck me to call in this morning is when you were talking about the federal government not being able to find any of the cuts or anything like that. i can tell you exactly where it is. it's all the corruption in our government and the special interest groups. if we could get some people that would just go in there and run on one simple thing, and weed out all the corruption and make it a really heavy duty, and any kind of corruption, because that's against the american people. and i tell you what, if we get rid of the corruption and get rid of these special interest groups, i tell you what, we could make this country great again. but with these special interest groups and all the corruption that we've got in our government right now, all we're doing is going to hell. we're going to hell and real quick. people better start thinking, because the hyperinflation is going to happen here really quick because of all of the trillions of dollars that the obama administration is printing. guest: poll after poll says americans think we do have a great country. i think they're correctly, we still have a great country. and we're improving in many areas all the time. we're very a religious country. we're a country devoted to families. average americans pay their taxes and pay their bills. crime is down. so under a lot of majors, we are doing quite well. there is corruption. there's no question about that. but we have a fairly good record, especially at the federal level of dealing with corruption. right now, i think you had a previous guest even this morning that got into this issue of the number of members of congress who are now under ethics investigations for infractions that could are corruption. and we should deal with those exactly as the caller saysing we should have clear laws and we should deal with corruption, including in the federal government. but i think there's a lot of money -- i think the amount of money we would save by getting rid of corruption would be tiny compared to size of the federal debts. it would be very modest. host: rosemary on our line for democrats coming to us from louisiana. go ahead. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call, c-span. good morning to you, mr. haskins. guest: good morning. caller: i have a -- you were talking about education, yes. education is key. and i don't think that america is wealthy. when we print money, i think that is the worst thing that we can do. i think we need to have another form. this is just a tender. it tells y'all it's a note. as long as we're printing money, we will always be in debt. thank you very much. guest: well, there may be some truth in that, but let me tell you that the reason we're in debt is quite straight forward. we spend more -- the federal government spends more than it receives. most states do not do this. most states have constitutions that require them to balance their budgets, and so as a result of that, they go through some very hard times. many states right now are going through very difficult times. why? because they are cutting spending. during a recession, of course, it's the worst time to raise taxes. even when the economy is doing very well, we still spend more than we take in. and we're going to have deficits of a trillion dollars. so printing money, you know, may be -- i don't know the way we do it. but the fact is that we have a debt, not because of anything having to do with our monetary -- printing money, it's because we spend more than we take "in depth" taxes. it's simple. host: "five myths about our land of opportunity ." the book is "creating an opportunity in society." ron haskins of the brookings institution. thank you very much for being on the program. guest: i enjoyed it. thank you for having me. host: in "the new york post" this morning, they have an article under the headline "moon river: nasa rockets make a splash." policy excerpts say it makes the moon more attractive for exploration again. having an abundance of water would be a key ingredient for rocket fuel. we're going to talk more about that and take your calls on that topic when we come back. >> live coverage today of the memorial service for jack nelson, pullser prize winning author for the "los angeles times." he passed away in october at the age of 80. special speakers include you gene roberts, former editor of "the philadelphia inquirer" and the "new york times," georgia congressman john lewis. our live coverage today starts at 1:00 p.m. eastern today on c-span. ar al gore, taylor branch, tracy kitter, and raffle nader. follow the authors and panel discussions and join in with your calls, e-mails, and tweets, live this weekend on c-span 2. >> no one has ever been elected to the senate for nine terms. >> in just a few days, robert byrd will become the longest serving member of congress in history. this sunday, ray smock, on the continuing legacy of senator byrd on c-span's q&a. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we're going to be talking for about the next 15 minutes, the duration of the show, about water on the moon and whether or not it's a reason to return. we showed you before the break the article in "the new york post," nasa rockets make a splash. this talks about the rocket that was fired into the moon. and alicia cheng writes, suddenly the moon looks exciting again and has lots of water, scientists said yesterday, a thrilling discovery that sent a ripple of hope for a future astronaut outpost in a place that has always seemed baron and inhospitable. experts have long suspected that there was water on the moon. confirmation came from data from two nasa spacecraft that intention fallly slammed into a lunar crater last month. indeed, yes, we found water, and we didn't find just a little bit. we found a significant amount, holding up a white-gallon water buckets for emma sis. so we want to find out what you think about that. water on the moon, a reason to return to the moon? if you've called us in the last 30 days, send us an e-mail instead or a message via twitter. marquette, michigan. tom, you say yes, water on the moon is a reason to go back. caller: absolutely. we have a long investment in space exploration, and a little history is in order because water allows us to set up space stations linking us out to the moon. because we are in a space race with the soviets, we scrap that idea and sent those guys off on that flight. well, now we found out they're lucky they've made it. it's just logical that we go up there and i think that we should do it in stages and use -- not shoot off to the moon againing but it was recommended back in the 1950's links, weigh station, if you will, to the moon, and then out to the planets. host: thank you for your call. to wilson, north carolina. richard says no. caller: good morning. host: good morning, richard. caller: how are you doing today? host: why do you say no to going back to the moon? caller: well, my personal opinion is i think we have effectively almost destroyed this planet with the problems that we have here. i have a brain injury, so i apologize for my speech problems. we basically destroyed this planet. i live in wilson, north carolina, and we're in horrible draught conditions. it makes sense to me, invest the money, and we've got tons of formers here in carolina -- foreigners here in carolina that advocate this. our polar icecaps are melting and you can't build a pipeline from the moon to america, but you can along the east coast and bring fresh water in. host: thank you for your call. in "the new york post" article, having an abundance of water would make it easier to set up a base camp for astronauts supplying drinking water and a key ingredient for rocket fuel. even so, members of a blue ribbon panel reviewing nasa's future plans said it doesn't change their conclusion that the program needs more money to get beyond near earth orbit. this new and terrific result reassures us about lunar resources, but the challenges currently facing the human space flight program remain, says a princeton astro physicist who is on the blue ribbon panel. atlanta, robert, you say yes, water on the moon, let's go. caller: i feel like if they had continued their exploration 40 years ago, we would have already noticed that and we could have already had some station set up and been already to mars and all that. i just feel like if they had done it, you know, just kept going, they would have been there already. that's my opinion. i'm all for exploration. host: walter in little river, south carolina. you say no. caller: yes. my name is walter. i think because we're going to be hit with an economic asteroid, the space program should be actually put aside. the money that we would save by delaying this exploration would go to pay for national health care and other issues. i think that's a legitimate thing and that's all i have to say. thank you. host: thanks for your call. in an article on the same topic in "the baltimore sun," talks a little bit more about the cost. says that the $79 million lunar mission was launched in june to try and uncover the source of lanch quantity -- a larch source of hydrogen, at the polls the north and south poles on the moon. if there was water, it would be in these craters that haven't seen sunlight in billions of years. read more about that in "the baltimore sun" this morning. our next call comes from dustin, who says yes. go ahead. caller: i think that if we're not moving forward, we're going to be moving back ward. it's obvious that a lot of astro physicists have said over the years that there's potential for something to -- something catastrophic to happen to our planet, and in order for us to prepare for something like that, i think the moon would be a good place to take it. i know stephen hawking had said that before. if we're not exportugal, we're not learning anything. if we don't learn, we don't know where we're going to be going. so i think it's a good idea. i think it's moot to say we have things to spend domestically because if we only worry about spending things co-mestically, then what are we going to learn about science? what are we going to learn about exploration? thank you. host: next up is roberta. she says no. she's out of clear lake, texas. why do you say no? caller: i say we cannot afford it. it's a luxury we can't afford right now. we need to balance our budget, which is going to require many, many sacrifices. this is one of the many sacrifices that, unfortunately, needs to be made. the dollar is losing 1% per month in value because of our terrible debt situation. so i say no. and my father said many times to us, no, we can't afford it. host: some items in the news from the times pick union the front page this morning, jefferson gets six years in jail, congressman receives longest sentence ever as he enters district court idea for sentencing in his bribery case. he's accompanied by his wife andrea jefferson. jefferson was convicted on charges including bribery and racket tearing. prosecutors said he took in nearly half a million dollars in exchange for business deals in africa. back to the phones. todd says yes. you're in petersburg, virginia. go ahead. caller: i say yes for space travel to the moon because they use technologies to create, you know, water, you know, water to drink. and the same water that they need to drink, they use to make, you know, hydrogen, to use for fuel. now, these same technologies that their using to make fuel on the moon can be used to make fuel on earth. and i think that's very important to the problems that we have on energy right now. this water is a critical factor for making -- producing energy. and we have plenty of water on earth, and these same technologies that are used in the space program can definitely be used on earth to solve our energy problems and we're not using them. host: thanks for your call. more from "the baltimore sun" this morning, the president is overseas in asia for the next week, and they've outlined his y -- itinerary. tomorrow he'll be in singapore meeting with the prime minister there. he's also got meetings with the asia-pacific economic cooperation summit with russian president medvedev. monday he goes to china and is there for three days. and thursday he goes to south korea. you can read more about the president's entire asian itinerary in "the baltimore sun." next up is lakewood, colorado. that is buzz, you say no. caller: i definitely say no because we need to put our money where we can stimulate our economy at this point. we don't need to export money basically to the moon. before, it was, well, the moon rocks are going to do wonderful things. well, now we're looking for water on the moon. i think we need to be more productive here at home. spend our money more wisely. host: newark, delaware. david, you say yes. water on the moon, let's go. caller: yes. i think, somehow it's part of the american psyche to need a frontier. i think having something to reach out for like that is an avenue toward continuing our role as a great culture. i do have only one concern. i haven't heard anybody mention. it seems like water that's been exposed to hard vacuum in space for a billion years or more, it's likely that the lighter water is more likely to have evaporated into space and it mike make it unsuitable for drinking, but it would still be useful for all the other things we need water for. host: so the water on the moon you think would be good for use -- i guess part of the rocket fuel process? caller: well, sure. whatever industrial type processes you need. if it is not heavy -- if it's not -- it would be good for drinking too and would be a great basic recycleable resource. nobody has mentioned the question of whether it might have a much higher concentration than water on earth because lighter water would be more likely to evaporate into space. host: david, you seem to be someone with some serious knowledge of water. how does this detear yum factor work in with using water as part of rocket fuel beyond the moon? caller: i don't think it would make a serious difference at all. i think there's something about the -- i think there's something about the -- i'm trying to think. this is not a question i was expecting. the weight of things used -- the light of the weight of the parols used in propulsion, the greater the delta v you could get for changing velocity over a period that you're running your rocket. but i don't know that that would make any difference. in the wild blue sky type speculation, it would be more useful if we could develop a nuclear fusion power source. that's much further in the future. host: thanks for the science lesson. in "the new york times" this morning, f.d.a. threats to ban caffeinated alcoholic drinks. one of them called juice, made by united brands and marketed through social networking tools. the drinks, which combine malt liquor and others with caffeine and fruit juice at alcohol concentrations at up to about 10% have become increasingly popular among college students. in a news conference, the agency's principal deputy commissioner said their consumption was associated with increased risks of increased injury, drunken driving, sexual assault and other dangerous behavior. back to the phones. john, you say no. why is that? caller: good morning. host ho good morning, john. caller: i think these people that are behind the states program, trying to get ahead of obama, because my feeling is that the obama administration is leaning against expanding the space program. and rightly so. i think they have justly prioritizing federal expenses and going through space may be a low priority item right now. host: the associated press reports this morning out of pakistan, 10 are now reported dead after a suicide car bombing on the outskirts of the north western pakistani city. police say a suicide car bomber was cargetting a security force check point, but four children and a woman are among the dead. two dozen people are said to have been wounded. back to the phones. gaithersburg, maryland. stewart, you say yes. caller: one of the reasons is going about the history of the dark ages where we didn't do what's right. there's thousands and thousands of people that are working in the space program. a lot of technology from the space program. i'm trying to have a discussion with someone who doesn't believe . where does that technology come from? we need space even now when economically people want to separate, say first take care one of thing and don't take care of anything in space. but you've got to do everything combined. space adds to our success. business has to grow. as well as the type of country we are in, one of the strongest countries in the world. if you take that out, we drop way back. people have to realize that it is -- that people are working -- hundreds of thousands of people are working, and also you have a full commercial aspects of space, not just nasa, but the full commercial. the things people are very interested in exploration. so yes, yes, yes. host: thank you for your call, stewart. sorry to cut you off, but we're running out of time. "the financial times" this morning, government officials rebuff banks' supervisory powers. to strip the federal reserve of its banks' supervision powers. met with two senior obama administration officials. a white house economist and the deputy treasury secretary both pushed back against the plan yesterday as the administration adopted a more active approach to shaping regulatory reform. our last call for the morning comes from hawaii. you say no. and you say no why? caller: because i think that -- i understand that we do need technology and we do need to go forward, but i also feel that we need to pull in and realize that we have as a country an obligation to bring ourselves together to be able to tackle the economic situation we spend trillions of dollars on. we have people starving all over the world, things we can address. we achieve that, we know we can go to the moon. but we have a problem right in front of us that we don't even know if we can handle that and we're running around looking somewhere else. we need to stay home and water our own. host: thank you very much for your call and thanks for everybody who participated in this edition of "washington journal." let's take a look at who's going to be on the program tomorrow. daniel lyons, news week senior editor will be in here to talk to us about a sue vary about the u.s.'s ability to be innovative and competitive in the current economic climate. pat buchanan and peter fenn will be here to talk about this week's news events including health care legislation, the war in afghanistan. we'll also be talking with chouchou namegabe and she is the 2009 journalism award recipient and with wrap up with di mittry simes. he'll be here to talk to us about the parallels between russian's invasion of afghanistan in the 1980's and the u.s.'s efforts in the region today. thank you again for watching the "washington journal" today. we'll see you tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] . >> on monday, the supreme court heard oral argument on two cases, whether it's constitutional to sentence juveniles to life in prison. and today, attorneys for both sides talk about the case. >> no one has ever been elected to the senate for nine terms. byrd. >> now, a discussion on redistribution of wealth. >> a great convention. we are beginning this convention with a very narrow topic, called the redistribution of wealth. convention with a very narrow topic called of the redistribution of wealth. [laughter] the panelists are going to have to sort of self define it. and we've also, allows you recognize from reading just a little bit about the panel's biography that we have assembled a panel who we expect will be in perfect harmony and agreement. [laughter] if you believe that you haven't entirely woken up this morning. i am very pleased to be moderating such a distinguished group of panelists here. we were discussing this panel my friend richard epstein said we want real short introductions, and the other thing he said was we want to have the professor go first because when andy and steve get into eight all nuance will be lost. [laughter] so with that in mind the introduction i gave you shows my respect and admiration for all you've accomplished. it's impossible to reduce it to 15 seconds, but our first speaker is going to be professor rubenfeld from yale university. he's written we are so lucky to have professor will you kick u kick it off for us? [applause] that's the argument that i'm going to be, being an acdem 86. what kind of argument do you expect me to make? so let me begin with a quoteation. wherever the right of private property exists, there must and will be inequality of fortunes. it is impossible to uphold freedom of contract without recognizing the legitimate those inequalities of for tune that are the necessary result of the exercise of those rights. since the states may not strike those down directly, it may not do so indirectly by declaring in effect the public good requires the removal of those inequalities that are the normal result of those exercise. inequalities that are but the moral and inevitable result of their exercise. so those are the words of the united states supreme court in 1915 from a case called kaj versus kansas, and in all american constitutional history there has never been a more clear authority of state met over the anti-redistribution principle. of course there has also an american constitutional history never been a supreme court as discredited as the court that issued this pronouncement. so, what are we to make of this passage today? well, i'm going to offer four observations about it. in ascending order of difficulty and controversy. okay, so number one. any attempt to revive judicial anti-redistribution is directly and indirectly attempt to read five faulkner. this was the bochner era and so that means for conservatives the subject of redistribution creates a kind of conflict, and our conflict. on the one hand because redistribution is definitive of the liberal tax and transfer entitlement, social welfare agenda there is going to be a strong temptation to oppose it and decry it as a violation of fundamental principles as the supreme court did in 1915. on the other hand, lost nearly a year ago was activist and committee conservatives are supposed to be against judicial activism as well. so, we've got to profound commitments against redistribution on the one hand and against judicial activism on the other and they might in this case va war and it might be difficult to choose between them. point number two, the fact that the lockner court said something doesn't mean it's wrong. since i'm not a committed conservative i mercifully free of this inner conflict i just described. [laughter] on the contrary as a liberal and actually get to believe the constitution means anything i want it to believe. [laughter] okay, that. [laughter] he doesn't think so. [laughter] you can put that on tape and i'm going to hear about it later i know. seriously, there's a perfectly cogent argument that the anti-redistributionist era existed in the lockner era and didn't live with it and the argument is simple colin to from their beginning of the public our courts have said the government may not simply take from a and give to be. in 1795 what was arguably the very first case of judicial review in this country struck down a government will transfer on just that basis in 7098 justice chase said the prohibition against law that takes property from a and gives it to b was against the provisions among that law was the first principles although justice chase conceded that that provision was aware set forth in the constitution. courts continued to hold for what the 19th century including united states supreme court in 1986 before everyone had ever heard of the lochner your contract and they kept saying so into the 20th century. well, what is redistribution of of the taking from a and giving to b? on a massive scale there are those who think that if you do something a whole lot of times that somehow makes it better, like if you apply a strain against one newspaper that would be unconstitutional but if you put a retreat against the whole country suddenly it is fine. well, that doesn't seem to make too much sense. so maybe redistribution programs are unconstitutional a couple of hundred times over. now, to be sure its esteemed taking the of jurisprudence, the supreme court today has held that no government can take from a and give to b. yes, it can. but these modern cases could be wrong and they are wrong virtually all redistribution measures including taxation and most entitlement programs might be said to be unconstitutional from the get go. perhaps it is being made this argument at one quite like it almost 25 years ago in his excellent book. so free distribution was a hallmark most aggressively activists, supreme court in the nation's history doesn't prove it's wrong to read the argument the state can't get from a and given to b deserves it can't be taken seriously. point number three, progressive taxation and a standard liberal social, welfare entitlement programs do not take property from a and give to b. remember i said the arguments were going to increase in the order of controversy of the? well, i am getting to the point where that's going to happen. now on and not seeing that the three distributive law waste onto the property from a and give to b. that's what it means to redistribute. i saying rather that taxation and standard liberal entitlement programs are not free distributive. that's right. to a considerable extent i will be arguing redistribution just doesn't exist. there is no such thing. it is a figment of the imagination you can be opposed to it, but it's like being opposed to witchcraft. [laughter] now the argument i am going to make for this is not tricky or fancy. it's very begin with a very simple hypothetical. suppose government is digging out rights to harvest trees from some public land and there is an auction process and the government awards the contract company, a logging company but the award of rights to a includes express stipulation for every five trees one goes to the government. to be sold off and devoted to some entitlement program. this term is not all parties before hand. it was part of the auction process, part of the terms of which a made its bid. now, a goes in there and it drops down its first 500 trees, and the government says okay, we are taking our hundred and the company refuses, claiming to be shocked and outraged saying such redistribution taking from a and given to b is on just and a legitimate, so what are you going to say to a? i assume most of us will not agree with a. there is redistribution here. redistribution of trees, but not when the government goes and takes the 100 trees but not the redistribution of wealth in the sense in which the antiredistributionist has in mind because a never had the right. never had a right to the trees. only had the right to 80% of the trees. pretty clear, light? no redistribution. will you grant me that? i hope you will. of course might make this hypothetical seem real and distinguished from other cases of redistribution is we are starting with trees that are on public property. i said the trees were on public land. that's what makes an easy case. of course the government can reserve the right to the trees and in the auction process why not? someone will say it's got to be different when the government is reaching in and taking property let's say from privately owned land and redistributing it. well, maybe that the targets of classic and anti-redistribution like liberal entitlement programs and taxation are i'm afraid is very little different, very little different from the case of these trees. why is that true? let's take an intermediate case between the public land and private land let's take intellectual property. let's say someone has written a novel called "harry potter and of the philosopher's stone," or whatever it was. it turns out to do well. the offer -- author makes money into the sea breeze happen to be worth over $1 billion. just one question, who has the right to produce these sequels in the movies? is a the author or can anyone white. tauter sequels and make movies? the answer under the law is the exclusive right to produce the sequels and the movies belongs to the author come exclusive right. anybody else tries to write an authorized sequel she, j.k. rowling, could stop. anyone tries to make an one of the best movie she can have it stopped. she has the right to do all of that. but we, how did she get the right? the right is created by positive law. quite recently at that. it used to be quite reasonably that anyone could write a followup novel or sequel using the same characters but in a new story. henry fielding did just that. it used to be anyone could transpose an existing story into a new medium such as stage or screen. william shakespeare did that all the time. it is the state that gives these lucrative, director for rights to the author for a limited time to be sure durham always been those that said authors have all these rights as a natural law we matter. mr. herbert spencer in a book called "social status" made just that are doing. you remember justice hall said the constitution did not enact in the lochner case. but i'm prepared to grant that authors have natural law rights to their work. i will grant that. i like the idea of what as a matter of fact being in author myself. sadly, nobody has told me where the address is of the natural course it's going to enforce these natural rights. i only seem to be defined real courts and real courts enforce real law, positive law, and that is what makes the authors derivative rights valuable. that a real court will enforce them. it is the positive law that gives authors their billion dollar capri rights and it does so with a purpose of the usual story creating incentives for the production of creative work for the benefit of us all. now, if that's right let's say the state, when giving this very lucrative positive right to the author includes expressed stipulation saying 20% of the income goes to us, 20% of the trees. 20% of the income goes to us to spend on whatever programs we like, including food stamps, the during entitlement program, whatever it is. and now let's say when the author starts making money from these derivative rights and the government demands its share, the author says this is an outrage it is taking from a and getting to b. what do you say at that point? can we change our answer this time and say no to sign even though it wasn't in the lochner case? i don't see quite how we can. surely it can't make a difference the government has put its tax code in one statute book and the copyrights and another statute book is that's a problem it's going to be pretty easy one to solve. the author never had a right to all of the income from the derivative rights, just never had a right to it. not from the beginning. and that's why there is no redistribution in that case. now at this point some of you in the audience may be starting to get a little nervous, but at least you will say it can't apply to real property, real land, real tangible property, this argument. well, i would say that your right to start to get nervous but yes, it can apply to real property. it applies to all property. it's child's play extended. let's say you're buying a condominium in new york city. you know what taxes are going to be on that. you are well aware of them when you buy it, it is factored into the price if you're looking at a unit one reason or another is exempt from the taxes. i'm talking about taxes when you resell, transfer, taxes on your income if you rent out. you know they are and that factors your price. you'll pay higher premiums if you're looking at a unit that is sent. [inaudible conversations] [laughter] i know why he wants me to wind up. [laughter] so you factor those taxes into your price, and we need you by that condominium and the government comes and asks for its share of the tax can you at that point say is an arm donner unjust act of diligently distribution? if the argument so far was right. i don't think you can. i never think you have a right to the income. you are just like logging company. now that's right. then there is no redistribution. there is no redistribution in the cases of standard progressive taxation, liberal tax and transfer. the only thing remaining would be midstream changes, increases in tax after rights are required, and since there's a gentleman standing just to my left i think i'm going to hold off what i would want to say about that. [laughter] but of course happy to take questions as any academic would be. [laughter] >> i'm going to try to limit the time of some of these opening statements so that we can really get into it, and the panelists can become pugilists. [laughter] richard epstein is a visiting professor at nyu. he's a distinguished professor of law we at the university chicago, where he has taught since 1972. he's a senior fellow at the hoover institution and i will go through all the different things he has done, but i can't resist this, as this is my standard introduction of professor epstein. he has taught courses sensible procedure, communications, constitutional law, contracts, corporations, criminal law, health law and policy, a legal history, little law, property real estate development and finance, jurisprudence, labor law become a land use planning, patents, individual estate and corporate taxation, roman law, tort and workers' compensation. and richard, if you want a short introduction next time you are going to have to list the courses you haven't talked. [laughter] rather than as the ones you had. come on up here. [applause] >> in just the antitrust and a couple of others but no one much cares about any of that. when i listen to jed i can sinful i'm not a member of the yale law school faculty. [laughter] let me just sort of start with one point about the analysis and then try to go on to what i think is the topic, on the redistribution, which is the same that kansas came down which has and eastern's favorite case because what it held was that collective bargaining agreements forced upon employers was an unconstitutional taking of property. the supreme court cited a case called brush hopper which essentially validated the progressive taxation. so, the basic theory that the old court had was not one that was crudely anti-redistribution for better or for worse, it is one that felt that redistribution should take place to the tax system rather than the alteration of the rules of property contract and tort and the way in which they viewed the accord was different from jed rubenfeld. they've all these came from below and walking in fashion and the state would then have some power to protect them rather than from coming about because if they come from above, redistribution is in fact only an artifact of state power. but the reason why the problem is so difficult is that people actually don't believe that. to some extent we are all and we think it is a we require external things and you don't have to do anything particular in order to require the right to use your own leader. so the case is given this particular theory why is it the people think that redistribution is an interesting topic in the heart topic? and the way i think you set up the discussion is to say far from the fact that we don't know what the term means is that we all know in moral terms exactly why is that there is a case for redistribution and in the issue is whether or not the moral case can survive the practical difficulties that stand in the path of its implementation. now what is the moral case? essentially we assume people acquire property through a, their occupation or purchase. the differentials referred to by justice pitney are properly observed. it's the direct correlate and anticipation of the pherae for a stable and the victors did i dare say. so you have all of that going on. and then when you do is look around and ask is there a way in which we can make a social the improvement on this people are way down at the bottom and away at the top. the moderns i think underestimate the course to the cookies for redistribution by treating it simply as a rhythmic function and wealth. the poor folk old times back say that redistribution is important because i have a lot and you have very little. very little may be low and you can start and we can see a very powerful kind of social improvement that takes place if we transfer some wealth from those that have it and can lift, give it to somebody else who will die, and the hope is through that kind of improvement we could make the world a better off in a more powerful place. and i have never seen anybody come forward and say this whole idea of redistributed wealth is terrible that we ought to ban it from our political discourse. i have heard on zero occasions people make the economic argument that there are no interpersonal comparisons of utility. it can figure out what's going on. and so therefore you can never be sure when you have a transfer of wealth from one party to another then you've made some kind of a social improvement. but that argument to my mind actually proves too much because if you go around and look at irregularities in human behavior what you discover consistently and persistently is the height of was a fair you also had an extremely strong tradition of voluntary redistribution from those who had wealth to those that needed it and this wasn't regarded generally speaking as simply a kind of naked preference like i prefer strawberry to pistachio ice cream. it was regarded as a moral obligation are in perfect legal obligation enforced by social sanctions and support by conscience. so it wasn't thought to be one of these simple operational optional things. and i think the reason why the redistribution question turns out to be as difficult as it is is if people accept this particular frame work they are then going to ask the question if we can do this voluntarily and we understand why it is going to be done should we do it politically to the event we think that voluntary transfers are going to be insufficient in order to carry the day and get us to the point where we would want to be. so the next question you will have to ask is can we take in more knowledge of russian and transfer it into a set of legal obligations. and this i think is where the problems start to begin but i'm going to treat them as problems rather than as knockout blows. i want to express with the difficulties are and how i think you ought to organize this and so on will come up with what i regard as a farsighted program which i sometimes put under the label of redistribution last. what i mean by that is the first task in trying to create a social order is to handle the problem of poverty through production in the increase in wealth. once you do that there may be those who are lacquers but if you can increase the size of the policy you can increase the probability of voluntary contributions will solve the issue or if they will not if you can increase the size of the part you will put less strain on the system when it comes to the question of how you do redistribution. so what are the problems with respect to redistribution, which means you can't take it off the table but sort of have to put it at the back of the table. i think the first one that you always have to ask is what is the optimal level of redistribution that you want to deal with and what is the metric that you are going to use to solve it? when people are in favor of a progressive taxation there is always one look to inaki in the argument that needs to be filled how much progress are there to be? flat tax, i won't even talk about that here because i've got steve to do this but if you're trying to figure out progress of the disease like provision that doesn't get too much, it is a steep provision that may result in flat minister of difficulties on the one hand and a general bolling of incentives on the other. to put the thing even further, the moment you let the tilt of the statute going to play negative there will be a fast political force is trying to either increase or reduce it and you run the danger the dissipation of wealth in order to create a tax structure that you like will in fact negate most of the games you help produce from it. and you also have of course the instant it affects that take place if redistribution does take place there will be less incentive to produce by those who are going to be forced to make the redistribution and less incentives to produce by those who are going to get it. each side preferring to devote its resources to conflict between the party instead of trying to move things up. these are in balance things we would rather avoid and the general view that i have is a certain level that is a strong social con@@@@@@@ on one of the statements by the president is that people defined as rich, $250,000. well, that may be rich in kansas. it doesn't get you very far if you're in new york city. in addition to that, when you start looking at wealth, it's a bad measure of what it is that somebody has because of all the difficulties with the permanent income. so there are doctors and lawyers who earn a quarter of million dollars but have twice that amount of debt because they deferred their income earlier and are going to pay it back with their future earnings. redistribution snapshots you miss all those kind of variances, and that's going to mean that tax is going to hit those people were it not to take place. trying to run income averaging against this stuff is not now, the roblem of indebtedness. you've got a lot of technical issues on this thing, which i think slow you down. .. i think whenever you look at whole variety of social programs which are adopted for other reasons, it turns out that many of them have very profound and very bad kind of redistributive tendencies that one ought to be able to deal with. that one ought to be able to deal with so for example whenever you start dealing with a monopoly type situation from a competitive industry there is a huge transfer of wealth which takes place from the consumer's interest to the producers and a reduction in consumer surplus and there's an overall reduction in social losses by the creation of a dead loss, this is a standard digram of monopoly in the things about it that's true it is this one simple and to correct serious start looking at programs engaged in redistribution oftentimes a weld destructive and transferring wealth to the wrong people so i live part of the time in new york city as are looking at the way in which the rent control works in that particular place and it turns out there is a huge transfer of wealth that takes place and often goes to people of great privilege review cannot cry out of their province on central park south even though they're paying the land or $2,500 a month to live with them and if you don't like that particular sample we can continue to will supply them. the second one i like to think of is the program of agricultural subsidies in the u.s. which can be proceeded as a profound and horrible mistake and what is its use our programs of income redistribution designed to protect farmers against world price markets and the happens is people remain in the business too long and become politically entrenched and they raise prices to the point where it causes genuine inconvenience. there have been studies about the way in which the price controls work. in the 1930's when the roosevelt administration announced the only reason we have them is the people know exactly the way to allocate their goods and every single increase in price you get to these cartels it turned out you had a decline in the standard of living in the urban poor. if you want to try this with respect to minimum wage is a mass of a redistribution going on in that case and is not only from workers to employers. a lot of is from those who can meet the minimum wage so therefore knocked out of jobs in favor of those who are above the standard in question. so if you look at the recent considered increases in the minimum wage that have taken place over the last three years or so, then that affect that one regrettably sees is a very high rate of increase in the amount of teenage unemployment particularly among members of minority groups so what the particular concern that you have here? for simply this -- you start running these kinds of redistribution programs and then in the been the sort of a yale university professor rubenfeld were you don't know where property rights are and you can figure out redistribution and that opens the way for all sorts of horrific things that he would never defend on principle and the only way you can oppose them in my judgment is to start to put together a kind of coherent program which goes on exactly the opposite direction. you don't want to start with an illustration of how the government doles out things, you want to ask the question of how the government got those things to go out and the press plays and when to understand those are coming from tax revenues, all of a sudden the low of constraints to put on what it is the state can do is vastly different so essentially when you start looking at this whole problem of going to summarize in one sentence now is of the difficulty you have with respect to redistribution quite simply is the moral case is quite compelling but the level of erosion and that the principle has when you try to do it through legal enforcement turns out to be enormously great for a variety of technical and political problems. smart people when they realize how difficult this thing is don't want to make the centerpiece of the program, they want to see the rest of the house and order and of return to redistribution so i will end on this note -- redistribution last the way in which i thank you ought to organize the social order. thank you. [applause] >> our third do speaker is in the steering who is the international president of the two million-member service employees international union which is the fastest-growing union in north america. mr. stern is -- has been held as a daring kind of labor chief and a missionary leader whose charter and a bold new course for american unionism. in eastern began working as a social service worker and member of seiu local 668 in 1973 and then he rose through the ranks until he was elected president in 1996. mr. stern and lived at of the afl-cio and about a change to win which is a new six member -- 6 million member of federation of seven major unions dedicating as he puts into giving workers a voice have their jobs. indeed,, we are delighted to have you here and look for to hearing to have to say. [applause] >> good morning. were agenda gave you a legal perspective in the richard k. you historical and richard gave legal and moral when i anderson and why didn't go to law school which is interesting to say in front of this group. [laughter] let me try to get my version of a real-life contemporary american discussion about the issue of redistribution. let me start by saying i love this country. i happen to think america, it's a gift. and its greatest gift is that people like my grandfather, louis, came here from all over the world. all they ever expected is never going to work hard. all they ever hope for is their work would be rewarded. but with beijing about was their children and their grandchildren, we're going to lead a better life than they did and that is the unique and wonderful and a special american dream. and despite a civil war, to world wars, natural disasters, 44 different presidents, the american dream has endured. up until frank luntz said the other day that 70 percent of americans now believe that their children and grandchildren will not lead a better life than they have. that is not the america i want. that's not the america we need. and that's the discussion i think we are failing to have in our country right now. this is not our fathers or grandfathers economy and i appreciate the legal history involved in this room. and for those in my party who are longingly looking for the return to the days of the new deal, it's important to appreciate that spared today from the new deal as the new deal was from the civil war and am sure franklin roosevelt admired abraham lincoln, he did not build an industrial economy around 1865 and we will not build a global economy around 1935. and the basic point i want to make today is our country and the rest of the world is living through the most profound the most significant and most importantly transformative economic revolution in the history of the world. there have only been in three economic revolutions, the agricultural revolution -- it took 3,000 years. the industrial revolution, it took 300 years. this revolution and this is the third economic revolution as we change from a national two international economy, from in ragin in the u.s. to service knowledge of green economy, this is only going to take 30 years. this revolution is televised, digitized and on your screen having your face 24/7. is relentless, it is on ending in los imploringly it is part from over. and we now can see some of the implications that apply to redistribution and all of those changes. the world as thomas friedman says is basically flat. we now live in a global more integrated economy where we compete not nationally and internationally. in success in the third and economic revolution is really not about the competition and when i grew up between states and the north and the south or between business and labor or democrats and republicans. this is not even about competition about the old competitors in europe forced out of the border, this is about a competition with growing in the south china sea. china has surpassed japan as the second-largest economy in the world and sooner be the largest economy in the world and as an aside and want to say i am not a finance major in don't know much about global international finance but when why baker has a trillion dollars of my dad and foreign-policy an ideology i get nervous about the future of our country. the other result of all this change has been the whole question about the redistribution of wealth. if we do believe the old model was capitalism and despite what glenn the back says i am a capitalist not a socialist, communist or anything else is calling in the last two weeks, capitalism did. american prosperity and government. legal and social and run and in which prosperity could be broadly shared. unions were actually created to share prosperity not across sectors or across nations but within a firm and then the markets were seen as the best way we have to redistribute wealth. and the result of that formula was agreed is no class in the history, the envy of every other country and deprive a bad track history and then what happened? in the last 30 years we replace that ideology where one where we sent in many people on the states may have said government in union activities should be restrained or add to the even ultimately replaced by pierre market forces. we involved into a more market worshiping privatizing deregulating trickle than union busting i got mine and so long sector economy which was a perfectly acceptable theory, there was nothing wrong with that theory. if that is how people thought we can maintain and expand well or we could retain the american dream, it had only one significant problem actually a little flock, it did not work. it has not worked, it did not work in out america is in peril because of that problem. americans have been growing apart not growing together, goldman sachs said in 2006 profits were a record high in wages record low, since his. reported american workers haven't got raises and along this time of economic stagnation in our country's history and don't be mistaken, i want to make it clear i therefore do not actually support in fact, and to condemn the redistribution of wealth all the of the average economic well-being has increased considerably as ben bernanke said overtime is the degree of inequality and economic outcomes has increased as well. so let me show you three quick and graphs. the first graph is looking between 1979 and in 2006 about after in, real tax for the top 1 percent of the households we can see rose 256% of the top 1 percent average it has assisted 2000 and increases in that time, they got 14% year raised and they saw the tax rate of the wealthiest 1 percent well to its lowest level in 18 years. that was not a bad deal if you could get it. the rest of the graph in the middle second third and fourth quintiles which we might call the middle class in america at tucson the raises borrow between one and less than 2%. this year the average working weekly raises have fallen 1.4% through september and if the trends hold it will mark the biggest annual decline since 91. graf to is a quick glance of income levels in the -- we have shown a we have returned it back to the days of the roaring '20s. i'm not sure anyone was here for the f# , t between 1947 and 197 product tivity doubled. we grew together. america was a much more equal place because we all shared in the welts lt and then beginning in the reagan eras and onward we see it has grown apart. so rather than a rising tide raising all boats, which we saw, now the rising tide only raises the luxury liners and the rest of the boats are in pretty rocky waters. we attacked various issues and of course unions. and the results have been spending. real wages decoupled and american workers no longer getting a raise and 70% of all americans don't think their kids are going to lead a better life than they do. 70 percent of all americans don't think their kids are going to lead a better life than they do. which is why in case you missed the last election the idea of helping change had an enormous sense of opportunity and possibilities, americans agree that economic opportunity should be widely distributed and is equal as possible but they also understand that economic outcomes want people bridges somehow believed to the contributions of people. the old adage that hard work in america actually should pay like a different 1947 to 1973 and that for people better dislocated, whose hard work doesn't pay we need to find as richard epstein said the sound basis and minimal level may be as redistribution but not let those folks think in the richest country on earth and whether it's a basic level of health care our retirement or minimum wage for adjustment for dislocation because the economic revolution taser job incentive to china we can do better in america. and we need to right now. so let me end by saying for those of you care more about this country than a particular company which is not true to many of our ceos today, i want you to join me to gather to make this a place where the dreams of our children and our grandchildren still can come true. that's in the america i want. that's the america we need in the america we have and that's the america we need to return to but we are not going to drive to the future and looking to the rear view mirror, team usa using a 20% to plant that's more just and fair and more decent and the rewards everyone is hard work. thank you very much. [applause] >> our fourth speaker in is someone who is well known to you, steve forbes, and he is chairman and chief executive officer of forbes media. he's also the editor-in-chief of forbes magazine. and his company's flagship publication and, forbes, is the nation's leading business magazine with a circulation of more than 900,000. ford's combined with forbes asia and the company's 10 licensees positions together reach a worldwide audience of more than 5.5 million readers. many of you know that from 1996 and 2000 mr. forbes raised this. and campaign for the republican nomination for the presidency and critical to his platform with the advocacy of a flat tax, the medical savings account, new social security system for working americans and preventive choices for schools for their children. so we have a very creative and inventive and thinker with us today and rounding out our panel i would like steve forbes to come forward. [applause] >> thank you, judge, and thank you. no small part of my free breakfast this morning from a tough economic times but not quite a free lunch, but in terms of redistribution i think richard put in a very well. the key thing is before you can get redistribution, the key thing is how do you create wealth, how you create opportunity? and right now let me spell something a little bit every and -- red meat out there. the greatest mechanism for a trading opportunity for as abraham lincoln put it improving one's lot in life is on japan in the real capitalism. the moral basis of capitalism is very simple. meeting the needs and wants of other people. you can think of yourself if you were an object in your as in it for yourself, just what the money, but if you're not providing a product or service that meets the needs and wants of others you will not succeed unless the government helps to sell whenever your motives are all transactions in a free market are mutually beneficial and adam smith put it very well, you want the dinner give the money to the baker in the baker wants germany and give to your dinner. mutually advantageous transaction. entrepreneurial capitalism works with proper rules of the rolled. james madison, father of the constitution, said if we're angels we would not need government in not need laws. manifestly most of us are not angels and so we do. the key thing is what kind of rules and laws? are they going to be telling us what to do in terms of micromanaging as or be like rules of the road speed limits, have to turn on the indicator when you want to turn but the government doesn't tell you where you can tell, which you must drive, when you can go and that's sort of thing. the blunt truth is that every major economic disaster in the past hundred years has its origins in government policy. it's not flaws in the free market. the great depression, for example was followed the very innovative decade of the 1920's had as its cause the smoot-hawley tariff which destroyed local trade, the states by the federal reserve, massive tax increases including excise taxes wasn't just on in town. the great inflation of the 1970's, excess money creation by the federal reserve and other central banks. this disaster has its origins again one of the most boring subjects in the world monetary policy. it is boring and i hope to have some coffee, i will just give you a good travel tip. if any of you find yourself in an airplane in coach in the middle seat on the runway watching your life pass away want a little elbow room dr. c. bates about monetary policy and you have all the room you want. [laughter] what it boils down to is the prevalence of an automobile. you can have a magnificent vehicle but if you don't have sufficient fuel and going to stall it too much to flood the engine you have a chance to move ahead. the same is true of monetary policy -- you can have basic strength in your economy but if you don't have sufficient money credit you got a problem and will stall. two much get the economic the privilege of flooding the engine and the right amount a chance to move ahead. this economic crisis and it is a financial one, finance and a modern economy is the prevalent of a heart, you can have great muscles and a great brain but if your heart is in trouble you are in trouble. the problem with the federal reserve was it printed too much money. starting in 2003 and onward. kept interest rates artificially low. the blunt truth is you couldn't have had a housing doubled certainly not of the magnitude we did if all the excess money having been printed. , having was another government creation -- fannie mae and freddie mac. by early 2008 a guaranteed $1.6 trillion of mortgages. then you have more to market accounting, another utterly boring subject which destroyed -- richard gets it --. [laughter] gratuitously the striping capital, turn it the equivalent of a flood into a tsunami and other mistakes like cartel licensing, credit rating agencies and not enforcing short-selling and allied. but all this happens after the disasters which has origins and massive government mistakes is the free markets get the rap for it. in a normal economy people have a chance and to move upward. the irs to a survey of tax returns for example, a couple years ago and looked at people's tax returns from the mid-1990s to the middle part of this decade. to see what actually happened. this assumption and in decapolis society everything static, it fluctuates and his mobile a person down words. between 1995 and 2004 the tax returns found that people who began in the lowest quintile, most of them went up in that tenures. a handful even moved up to the top quintile. and so it is not static. it is mobile. and when you also find in this country is receiving immigrants at least until this economic crisis put aside the issue of illegal, we have tracked millions to this country over time. most of them come here with very little. most of them some of the bottom and come here precisely because they know they have an opportunity to move up or at least provide an opportunity for their kids to move appearance of the pessimism have today is not new, usada in the late '70s and malaise. use some profound -- in the late '30's when people thought we were climbing at of the depression and then it got smashed again and oppression of 37 in 1938 so we have had times for our morale has been before and we've also had times where reforms were put in as happened in the early 1980's and that's why they stopped in 1973 and began with ronald reagan forgetting the disasters of the 1970's and then we move upward and onward and to provide that kind of opportunity. if you look to the crises of today when people talk about what we do about health care, social security. people forget that the essence of economics and this is where economist should be shocked when they say economics is about the redistribution with the allocation of scarce resources. allocation of scarce resources -- my god, that's exciting. it's really about turning face scarcities into tomorrow's abundances. take for example of the automobile -- 110 years ago cost the equivalent of 150,000 for the rich and henry ford comes along moving assembly line a toy to the rich becomes affordable to every working person. cellphones, with a 20 years ago, there were bigger than a shoebox, expensive things. now today small, they are everything. and you look around the world, for a billion people now have a cellphones, even in he d, poverty area of india now have these things and during scarcities into abundances. kennedy then in health care? of course,. what is more basic than health care? without food you don't have health. do we have a food crisis in this country price ceiling prices we have some of us each to match and farmers grow too much. richard talked about the progression of subsidies but if people don't have food we have programs to make sure they do like food stamps. why can't you do the same thing in health care? we don't have real free enterprise in health care. the proof is if you go to a doctor you go to a hospital or clinic and ask what is going to cost, either you or crazy or you don't have insurance? what else would you want to know what it costs were as anything else to do first thing you want to know is what it will cost and when i get for it so in health care you get real entrepreneur and barriers. we can get into that in cuba and a few wished. you can do too have done with cellphones and ipod and food and that is stirring scarcity into abundances and provide more health care and more affordable cost. social security, my generation is hopeless. it's a song costs, we did not finance a right but for younger people allow them to have personal accounts of properly regulate in terms of their versification and the like of that to accumulate capital and that way as stars even on minimum-wage you start to accumulate capital you choose your own retirement age in if you want to do it and 6198 he made the choice and also create more wealth theory, real world, in dallas in texas they pulled out social security in the '80s were allowed to do that and didn't want any into the equity markets. the guaranteed insurance contracts, cd's and the like in the results today the benefits are higher than they would have had with social security. low as $17,000 a year will get a little over $600 with a couple of social security, over $1,100 with what they did in those three counties. so in terms of where we're at and how we create more opportunity, yes, we can get into the theology of helping those who need help but i think basically people understand it if people have genuine needs we find a way to help them weather acute emergency or something else but in terms of treating an opportunity where people start with little for the drive to get ahead in the did we make these positive reforms and we can move ahead. we've done a before and no reason why we can't overcome this malaise and show once again what a free and. people can achieve. thank you. [applause] >> before too long we are going to turn this over two questions for the audience but i want the palace to talk a little bit among@@@@@ @ )r and then the bottom 10% or 20% for and the question i have to you is, why should he quality of the income be the measuring rod in this whole area? does the quality adult the senses? abraham lincoln said that some should be rich and shows that others can become rich. that is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. from the standpoint of fluidity and the standpoint of maintaining incentives, why have equality be the lens through which we look at this whole situation? >> it is probably very unusual for a labor leader to call steve forbes a very 20th-century. the things that were once true are now not true. you begin to look at a growing body of belief and evidence that people are no longer moving proposed quintiles like the use today. -- moving through those quintiles like they used to. i don't think we are talking about equality outcomes. i declare talking about equality of opportunities. i think this country has always believed in the equality of opportunities whether it be education, access to onto power opportunities, whether is it -- whether it is the right to vote. i do not believe we will ever have the equality of outcome. what do we do in situations where people take responsibility for the families and work hard and their job gets sent overseas and steve might say that they show up a hospital and give them some food and i say there's a different minimum standard we should have america. what has made this country great is we have discarded -- we decided that our work should pay and the rules of equal opportunity should exist and when they don't exist, we are americans and we do not let people suffer. >>andy is making two points. the market in america no longer exists and equality of opportunity has been severely restricted and stunted. i would like to hear what you would say in response to those two points. >> in terms of the fluidity, the irs study goes to the middle of this decade, two years before the crisis hit in the middle of 2007. i think that still holds up. that is especially when you consider, unlike other developed country, we taken a lot immigrants. put aside little legal or illegal, most of these people come here with little but the ge. given a chance to most of them end up doing it and their kids end up doing it. in terms of equality of opportunity in a global economy, that sits on a couple of things. one is that the key thing for competing in this global economy today is a basis of knowledge. our schools are not doing the jobs they showed courage that is in large part because they do not have competition and have lack of accountability. i am involved properly with several charter schools in new york where they are able to do what is right for the kids. within three years, those kids, in terms of test scores, they come in and if you have room they are here. within three years, they are best way outpacing their peers in public schools in terms of math and english and writing capabilities. if our schools get their act together, we have a 75% dropout rate in cities. that is hurting us because we do not have the schools working correctly. in terms of jobs, most jobs are destroyed even though some do go overseas, most job destruction is within this country. each week, amazingly, in a normal economy, have fought million jobs are destroyed and 540,000 jobs are created one example is the railroad industry. after world war two, the root industry was one of the biggest employers in the country, 1.2 million workers. today, even though warren buffett got involved the other day, the railroads today carry about six times as much freight as they did back then with 180,000 workers. those million jobs lost in the road industry did not go to other countries. they just disappeared. you saw the same thing in agriculture. the key thing is that you have a dynamic economy that is creating new industries and jobs and the like period in terms of people who get displaced, most find jobs for it if they do not, we are not doing it in this recession. the reason is because the credit system is not working because of small businesses having a hard time, especially new businesses, getting a normal flow of credit. i don't want to get into the monetary situation but the federal reserve has done a half a job in terms of getting the credit system working again. in terms of the distribution of wealth, one of the worst distribution of wealth is precisely what happened in the bush administration and their weak dollar policy it was a disaster when a trash the dollar. i am surprised the u.s. administration has continued that disastrous policy. bill clinton never allow that. ronald reagan never allow that. john kennedy did not allow a separate when you allow the dollar to go down the toilet, you get inflation in commodities which brings 0 q is redistribution of wealth to nice people like venezuela and the middle east, russia and elsewhere. it hurts our standard of living when the dollar becomes cheaper. that hits the standard of living just as we saw the 1970's. if you get back to basic principles in terms of starting with sounds cooling, in terms of removing barriers, getting the government to get its act together, we will surprise the world with what we do in terms of innovation. if we continue to put up barriers, we will end up like western europe, a nice standard of living as long as you're not young, a height youthful unemployment even before the crisis, and innovation goes elsewhere. cisco is a great technological powerhouse. john chambers has done a great job. his biggest competitor today is waway, a chinese company, $30 billion. others are learning about technology. we need to move barriers, not putting barriers. how did wall street get so rich in the last four or five years? is it because of the cheap dollar policy and what the fed did? that was a mal-distribution. if the government had got its act together, that would not have happened. you cannot make money trading currencies very much a commodity volatility goes down if the dollar is stable. if you do not like wall street, go to ben bernanke and alan greenspan and say, "what the h-e double l were you doing?" >> >> jed and then richard i will give you a shot. jed, and you want to enter the conversations steve is talking about if we all grande that equality of opportunity is something that we want to enhance we want to start concentrating on competitiveness and schools and promoting school choice and we need to eliminate barriers to incentives and the rest that we need to incentivize the economy rather than redistribute, and what is your general reaction to the conversation that steve and andy have been having? >> here's what i would like to say. there are two different reasons you can be against distribution and we are talking at progressive redistribution. that is the kind that goes from the relatively well-off to the relatively worse off. two different reasons. one, you can believe it doesn't work to help its ostensible beneficiaries. it will create disincentives. it will create an entrenched class of dependent people who do not have the right incentives and do not become better off as a result. you know what? that's the best argument. that's the best argument against redistribution. it is a question of fact and it's one that deserves to be taken seriously. you've got to look at your programs and see what they are actually doing. then there's a different argument against redistribution that says there's something fishy about the idea of addressing inequality and the way that argument is usually made today is it inconsistent with the market. it's inconsistent with the market and that is what the supreme court said in 1915. that is addressing inequalities a way of attacking the market, contract and property. well, it is a good time to think about that kind of argument given the period we're looking for today. it's a good time to think about it. there is a kind of faith based economics, a kind face based mentality. if we get rich it's the market making us rich. if we have economic problems it is the government. it's just the case of a single two greatest economic catastrophes we've ever had in this country followed directly on periods where we had in the first case before the great depression the period closest to the laissez-faire that this country has ever had we get the depression afterwards and the current economic crisis is the purpose of the greatest, one of the greatest period of inequality in the country's history, the coefficient was way up there. now, it may be that the depression was all about the smoot-hawley. maybe that's what did it. and maybe in today's economic crisis because of fannie mae. but, you know, i wouldn't just take that as a starting point. i wouldn't take that as a starting point that the idea is redistribution is what's causing the problem. i mean, it's funny. we have people like professor epstein who, you know, you can begin with one kind of your a libertarian, against redistribution on rights and then you develop into a welfare economic, you're looking for maximized utility and guess what? your outcome always remains the same, redistribution last. you shouldn't begin with the premise that already pre-concludes the conclusion. >> richard? >> gee, i didn't recognize my position in that last account of it. [laughter] >> i'm not surprised. >> let me see if i can say but i think. i'm going to start with george santayana, those that do not understand the past are condemned to relive it and that is why think about what andy and jed have said. i do not think the problem is looking in their rearview mirror. when i hear and eastern's policy i see him riding backward to the 1930's. i had a date sometime ago tenet sunnistan before obama was elected president and vice i thought he was the most retrograde intellectual ever to run for public office. and the explanation for that was the policies he favored had the following components. the first thing you do this tariff barriers. we don't do that from smoot-hawley. we just don't allow the bilateral agreements. second thing we try to do is run high tax policies, which is what hoover did with the 1932 revenue. the third thing we try to do is strengthen the loveless union monopolies which is of course what happens with the employee free choice act so i am going to make a gift to andy of my book trying to explain one side or the other. [laughter] >> tonight i will be actively reading -- [laughter] >> it will be the most productive thing that he's done in years. [laughter] [applause] >> but if you actually do the history, it is the difference between coolidge and hoover is enormous. coolidge was a great president on these issues, hoover was a progressive president to become president and that on these issues. if you're trying to go forward with george bush he was largely clueless on some of these things but the point i think is most instructive is you have to look at these tables. 1973 is the point. it's really the right point to choose. essentially the post war era there were no major new new deal reforms so they were able to a source of the cost associated with them because they slowly eroded. starting around 1964, 1965 there is the greatest burst of legislative and discussion that takes place in the united states under to progress. one is lyndon johnson, the other is richard nixon and if you're trying to figure out what the source of the difficulty is start with medicare, start with the civil rights act, start with osha, the environmental protection act, endangered species act -- you can go through is of legislative initiatives which turnout in the end not to be concerned with the serious issues of government regulation, which is to control nuisances and externalities' of monopoly. but with all sorts of other fancy stuff. you put those things into place, and what happens is@@@@@@@@ go the 21st century is a greater elevation of the wisdom of adam smith and not a reduction. you can get rid of international barriers to trade and illogic of comparative advantage and can operate in a larger stage for the problem we have is when we start gerrymandering rules to the 20 percent for, we act as though somehow as we go from agriculture to industry to information technology, that this requires a change in legal structure. that is an inexcusable index -- intellectual error for the great genius of torque is that they are veritable in terms of their content. you can run a contract in the information age which is very different terms but as the identical rules for acceptance and interpretation. ent terms but has the identical rules of acceptance and interpretation, damages, third party beneficiaries and the like. so until you get back to fundamentals this is just an illusion. we are not looking in the rearview mirror. we have at this point and administration which is so determined to engage an act of willful destruction that the long-term prediction is in my judgment unemployment is going to go up even higher. if you want to stop it you've got to get that kind of a health care bill, the carbon tax and the leader's statue of the table. but right now if you look at firms for example and see which ones hire and which ones don't, the difference in the growth of the non-union firms relative to the union firms are in order of magnitude. if you really want to create jobs, you want to shut down every act. he wants to repeal the national labor relations act. you want to go -- [applause] -- you want to go back to the -- >> richard is a good thing that you and and you're sitting in office -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> -- and want to go back to an openly durham market. everything you do to tighten the noose will strangle the people you wish to help. [applause] >> all right, andy, you have some response to that. >> i will just say there, you know, where america did work. there was a time in 1973 where there was more inequality. i appreciate richard's libertarian free market ideas and very illustrative. they just don't work. and i think we have seen what is caused by when we destroy the forces in society that actually helps distribute wealth. the absolute free market and now the globalization actually does have consequences, and i think that he also makes the case why it is better when engineers run countries than lawyers because the act we try to make a plan that actually tries to produce results, and america's plan right now is producing inequality. and we can blame the federal reserve. we can have a 2020 high in sight. the market does not work in a global economy. america needs to be a team, and the team needs rules that are fair that allow everybody to share. >> i want to get questions from the audience. and when you do, why don't you start by directing your question to a particular panelist and please keep the questions short. don't give a speech. yes, sir. >> [inaudible] -- i'm not sure it is directed at any particular member a member of the panel. i apologize for something like a girl asking why the [inaudible] the greatest equality between any top percentage in the bottom existed when it got to jamestown. and if you come in for period that you could measure you double the income or the wealth by definition you would double the separation in absolute terms and consequently we should celebrate increased inequality of wealth unless the median income or income of that bottom quintile or other quartile, whatever, the point. it's my understanding in the history of the country and simple mathematical terms -- >> all right, what is the question? >> why is this the date when it addresses what seems a fairly mathematical simple concept doesn't seem to get there i don't mean here but in the public debate and the second part is to keep addressing what appears to me to be cultural poverty and sometimes the debate in cultural poverty which is in men's and growing -- >> i'm going to have to ask you to wind up. does anybody have a comment, richard? >> there is to definitions of social welfare and you have to keep them separate. one is a standard definition that says so long as somebody's made better off and nobody is made worse this count as an improvement in under that theory if one person gets rich and nobody else gets poor you are doing fine. if you allow market forces to happen it's not going to be one against many because competition will lead to some kind of distribution. the egalitarian view of improvement is if you increase the spread even if it is a parade improvement that is a defect. so if i go from ten to 11 and you go from ten to 20 somehow or other the gap of mine is more important in the overall increase of wealth in the levin and the question between the two things is the battle we are facing and and eastern is and egalitarian. richard epstein is a parisian improvement with a little bit of correction at the end not by regulating the market process despite having once and for all redistribution through the tax system, and you have to decide what your social measure of wealth is going to be. and i am quite clear that in the and the dynamics you get from following the operation policy will simply swamp any distributional policies you want to take in the static short-term analysis. >> i went to the other side of the room, sir, and try to make the question short and direct to a particular panelist if you would. >> my question is for mr. sturm and that is on your other assumptions why do you assume after-tax income is the appropriate measure of economic well-being as opposed to consumption level or accumulated wealth? with me give you three brief examples. the person below the poverty line gets assistance with what we used to call food stamps is now link car in chicago where i live, people 65 and over can ride public transportation including in the suburbs for free regardless of income and wealth level and feared that federal judges who have a relatively modest salary but who have lifetime guaranteed salary and benefits and therefore in the long term high standard of living. why do you assume after-tax income is the appropriate measure of inequality or inequality? >> i don't perce and other than to say that i think in the end people want to urge a living by their work that allows them to make choices, and after-tax income is a good way to look what choices people really have. will the government or society decides to do for all people over 65 writing transportation is one issue. what i look at is there is a productivity increase, wages, and is there some semblance of distribution, you know, that rewards everyone for their hard work or rewards now distributed which i don't think america is about. >> i would put the point in a slightly different fashion. those were engaged in an enormous amount of in, redistribution by the way in which they spend their money within families, charity and so forth so if you are looking at consumption patterns they are always going to be flatter than income patterns. the second .1 wants to make is when you look at income of the wealth of the wealthy but he must always take into account is the consumer surplus that they created. bob is a very nice piece on this sometime ago in which he says the $50 billion bill gates may give to charity is chicken feed compared to the amount consumers surplus he created when people value their products in a high price were able to pay a lower price for them and one of the things you are worried about when you go off to the rich as you are also telling the consumer surplus they create for everybody else. >> yes, sir? >> my question is for professor rubenfeld. if i understand correctly he seems to say there is no concern with redistribution because the government can put whatever conditions it wants on its protection of rights. but he nevertheless seems to acknowledge to exist in nature of the prior government. but this seems to exist between natural and positive all because the ideas these rights do exist prior to government the whole point of the positive law is to anybody to define them, not make rules the government likes independent of them. so could he explain why this isn't -- why the idea that government can put whatever conditions it wants in its protection of rights, why that doesn't destroy the concept of rights at all. >> well, that is a big question. of course i didn't say the government can put whatever positions at once. about the natural law and positive law just very briefly you have your consumption of natural law and other people will have theirs. yours might be property law, others have egalitarian natural law, that is they will think that the natural right is an equality right. so, which natural rights or the positive will be going to enforce? well, we have a long mechanism to decide it is called democracy. that's how we decide whose view of the of rights get put into the law and that is why actual positive laws so important like the derivative rights of copyright grants offered. we don't have them because natural rights says we have them. we have them because the laws as we have them. i just want to say that on this egalitarian front, this idea that some people are saying inequality is the problem and we must equalize because our conception of social welfare is that any inequality is bad and makes us worse off sweet to equalize, nobody's saying that. mr. stern is not seeing that. this is and 40 quality of outcomes. everyone in this room i believe is pre-market. we are all pro-market. and the question is with let regulations? with what attention to the people who come out with very, very little from the market. the question is with what attention to children who don't happen to have parents who can send them to the very best schools. it's not -- nobody here is seeing get rid of all inequality. that is just a strong man. >> yes, sir? >> this is a follow-up question to what was just asked. and this is for professor rubenfeld to be addressed were the national court is and i'm going to describe and ask if you agree. suppose one society with a large land mass and north asia decides to have its government to let citizens that whenever you do something productive the government is going to take 100% of it and redistribute equally to all of its citizens so everybody benefits and then suppose another society with a very large land mass and natural resources and north america says we are going to let you work and keep almost everything of what you have created, 70 some odd years later the berlin wall false. isn't that the natural court deciding which societies are better? [applause] >> number one, my vote would be for that country in north america. that is where i would rather live. i don't think any argument i made was for the totalitarian regime. it's this kind of strange move people sometimes make. they think that people that have attention to the least well-off are totalitarian. i mean, where -- think about that, where is that coming from? no, that's not the natural course, that's not the natural course that made that decision to st. and politics and thank god history and politics came out the way it did and that the wall fell. >> steve, do you and richard have any thoughts on a comment that professor rubenfeld was making that there really are -- there is no one conception of natural rights some people have a natural right, natural property right and other people have a natural equality rights and that democracy is the arbiter of different conceptions of natural rights and that we have to in court have to -- [laughter] -- that courts have to accept whatever the democratic arbiter decides because natural might conceptions or so in reconcilable and so different. now is that a compelling point to you, richard? >> knott if you know any legal history. i have spent my life, my favorite subject is teaching roman law and medieval english law. i want to show just how pragmatic i am. but is utterly stunning about the variations in legal rules with respect to the origin of property of course agent cultures, medieval, modern and so forth is that the first possession of rule was a matter of pride that law theory, has always been the dominant role for the acquisition of property. there is no variation between dahlias and justinian on the other hand and john locke except he was more socialist because of the lochner and so forth. the reason you have to have that is if you start talking top-down which is the way that jed describes it it not only works great in a democracy where if the votes of some one else but it's also the conception was a body and to oppose the define rights and power where the king received from of a word and then devoted as well. so there is no variation with respect to this. and when you start dealing with intellectual property we are having another panel later, but the whole theory of intellectual property is that the state has can you been double cross people and take back what to have given ta? there are differences in the origin of intellectual property but nobody has ever been denied. when you look at the patton clauses in the competition -- in the constitution, they have a clear conception of how this is supposed to be done the natural rights conception has the quality. anybody can acquire property but the quality conception does not have a composite of property rights and is consistent with the most totalitarian and arbitrary -- is. >> when you don't have an argument, you bring up the name of the yellow school. [laughter] >> you need to be cautious about arguments of nature. when men kept women out of jobs, they said that was natural law. fundamentalist islam thinks their laws natural law. islam says sharia, they think their law is natural law and they will have history with professor epstein and say rss natural law and what he believes is, really. is that argument going to be the one that determines what our law and our country is going to be? know, we determine what our law is through self-government and democracy check by the constitution which itself was a democratic product. it's not done the arguments about democratic -- >> it was a republic. every time you know he has made another mistake. [laughter] >> i want to bring steve into the conversation here. [laughter] in switch around a little bit there is steve, i'm interested in your view about the judicial system today as it relates to what you have been talking about in terms of incentives. from a business bands perspective do you think the courts today are really enhancing the operation of incentives and choices by providing a stable system where business expectations or a new roof of the way the court is operating today a real impediment to allowing a system of incentive in choice to work to a maximum of fact -- is it possible to make a generalization from a business perspective as to the contribution courts are not making to this whole area? >> well, as you know, often in the court's exhibit no more understanding of to economics, a troop entrepreneurial capitalism and then some people in this room today. [laughter] you are excepted. [laughter] but to look at things like the kilo decision shows they have to sometimes of an improved understanding of the basic property rights and takings. the 1930's after they got browbeaten by the new deal started to make decisions that went against in terms of the enabling markets to true the function. the last great decision was throwing out the nra in 1935 which was the most we got to corporate estate in our history, all done with the best of intentions. and in recent times the courts have not stood up to abrogation of contract law there is certainly with gm and chrysler bankruptcy is there are established procedures on what to do with companies that get in trouble. every major airline in the country has gone through except american has gone through reorganization and it doesn't mean you cease to exist but by law you make those adjustments and you try to go out into again. but that has been abrogated and one of the things that's hurting the housing market is the treasury department has been allowed to get away with my being where you stand of something goes wrong with the house with a first mortgage, a second mortgage home equity loans and the banks are compromised on that and so was going to buy the than the federal reserve and mortgage-backed security, no private investor bill because you don't know where you stand in terms of a ranking in terms of being a creditor. so the courts i think, i'm not an activist in certain areas where the politicians have gone too far, the courts and the economic side of learn to push back but so far i have not seen signs of it. maybe richard would. >> let's have a question over here. >> this is for interest and, you made an analysis based about the relationship where we are going economically in terms of your productivity and diversions between that and in light of that could you comment on which you think happened with regard to unions in the automobile industry during the same time? >> i would say that unions missed the most basic fundamental economic world that they have to apply which is to take wages out of competition and what happened is when they had a monopoly or took wages that competition for the big three, people competed in much more in efficiency and quality not very good but that was was a the basis of competition and when the transplants came in the market changed the competition really changed and the union didn't do its job which was an anchor to its employers in the competitive field as opposed two any help and giving unions like i would say some people on this panel kind of missed the basic role of the unions should do it in a perfect world and i guess which is to try to find a non-governmental way to share in success. as much as people might say is the best anti-poverty program that never worked in america that didn't cost of the government a dime and clearly when the world change to be global economy is based its new role, you have to be, but if you find a janitor in new york city and any of steve forbes buildings to make a good salary and good wages and the competition is about quality and efficiency. >> mr. stern, i would just like to point out that recent wage gains have in the fact gone to covering the increasing cost of health care and so if you to implement the kind of free-market reforms that would constrain the cost of health care you could resume in the coupling of productivity and wage growth, and would that not take much of the steam out of your argument? >> no, because there are actually less people covered percentage wise buy health care and then when things couple and not decoupled and more people with pensions when things were a couple that as opposed two now in their decoupled so yes, the price of health care has affecting people's wage increases but the truth is in the quality is still growing, the rising tide of raising the luxury liners and the rest of the boat's not seen a raise in choppy waters. >> can i exercise just for a minute to a private of of the moderator going very short on time and i see that someone who is waiting to ask a question is a matter of the federalist society. let's give her a hand. [applause] >> i don't want to -- >> i just want to be sure you answer your question and. >> well, thank you. [laughter] thank you, judge. this is a question for the professor. in -- and this is actually something i am genuinely curious about. how do people who believe ensure we argued that it is derived from natural law? i had a student who was in a class i was teaching and i actually thought that sharia law was supposed to be decreed and i somehow derived from an argument of human nature, but i just don't know. >> you are, right. >> i don't know how any arguments from natural law are really going to work because you can never derive -- you can never derived from an is. so arguments from nature -- nature is such-and-such a way and from that it follows that such-and-such as a right. well, horrible things happen in nature. it's a very -- it's a very weak and strange argument to say that something ought to be so because major has itself, but, yes, i can -- all i can do is report to the exact same experience that you have had that is people will make whatever argument in a strongly believe and in terms of natural law and say nature dictates that leaving the rest of us to scratch our heads asking, i'm sorry, i just don't quite understand how nature is going to get two there. i think we read -- we need real loss. >> this is preposterous. [laughter] the deepest and most profound level. natural law has never been the proposition that what ever you see happening is what is appropriate. the rationale is behind natural law says we start with the world in which nobody has any particular rights to any thing and then what we've tried to do is figure out how we organize a society in a way which essentially will start to improve what goes on and so what to do the quote about is an odd comes from a david hume and this is the part where he said there is no necessary truth and then in the next portion of the same tree as he explains that the basic rules of nature which will on average proven human welfare and what he tries to do is explain why is it you have a mutual renunciation of force by all individuals which should not be by voluntary means you approve the overall status of human beings so it's essentially utilitarianism addition done by people before utilitarianism was formalized and the whole point of the natural law system was not to simply observe, to try to figure out those papers to which to condemn rather than those used to flavor. when you start talking about for example, the subordination of women, if you read it bradshaw there allows natural law opinion because what it says is coercion, that correct answer is if you're right about natural differences it will emerge through voluntary transactions and don't need to have any coercion doing it. in what i find so hard is somebody who has for so hard in the natural law tradition to see it so utterly basically staggering the mine. if you listen to this kind of skepticism you'll never understand anything. you must try to figure out why systems work, not try to throw a series of shots at them in a desperate hope you can make them fail. democracy is designed to organize collective or during an independent and autonomous individuals, not designed to create a free-for-all in which you can insert anything, however wise and polish and then basically announced publicly natural law means which everyone says and so forth. if you have that kind of economic intelligence and law of positivism, you are surely doomed to fail. >> one last question. [applause] >> thank you in this is for mr. stern. as i understand it, your union represents primarily service workers i thank you mentioned janitors and representing them. do you have a view and this is a supply demand wage issue i think, do you have a few on immigration perhaps distinguishing illegal immigration and the impact any that may have had on your constituents? >> i'm not in economist and i think it's fair to say that oversupply of labor has the effect on wages. >> increase in supply. >> increase in supply and some cancer play say oversupply, and talking about whether enough jobs and to many people and actually pay less for the people that do the work wherever they come from and so we are for immigration. we believe it should be a thoughtful process, the countries have a right to control their borders and america needs new immigrants that come into society in many then on to burn your ship that our grandparents brought to this country. i think it is just as -- it needs a more national -- rational approach. >> i'm going to ask you to give a big hand to our panelists. [applause] >> we are going to break for lunch and some other programs and if you just console's your schedule you will see where the various luncheons and panels are taking place for the next couple hours and we will convene later in the afternoon in the main room for other plenary sessions. thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> coming up on c-span, president barack obama's remarks at the port would memorial service. also at the veterans day service at the tomb of the unknown. live coverage today of the memorial service for jack nelson, the pulitzer prize- winning reporter and washington bureau chief for "the los angeles times." the scheduled speakers -- our live coverage starts at 1:00 p.m. eastern today on c-span. earlier this week, president barack obama paid tribute to the victims of the fort hood shootings. he praised them for their service. this lasts about one hour. [bagpipe music] >> ladies and gentleman, please stand for the playing of our national anthem. ♪ national anthem ♪ national anthem ♪ national anthem >> let us pray -- lord god almighty, we commend ourselves to you this day and ask for your eternal wisdom and divine strength to empower us individually and as a nation to face this tragedy with confident hope and a willingness to carry on as we support one another in great and in healing. we call to mind those whom we honor in this sacred time and space. jaunaita, gold, john, francesca, jason, amy. eoiin, russell, justice and, michael,cam, and frederick. xddross to you o lord as we draw close to one another. sustain us in our great and carry us and our sorrow and in time, restore to us, a spirit of joy and hope, a man. please be seated. >> ladies and gentleman, the commander -- the commanding general. >> president and mrs. obama, governor perry, secretary gates, general shinsecki, governor doyle, members of congress, admiral and mrs. mullen, general and mrs. casey, a sergeant major of the army preston, a distinguished this address from our nation's capital and a state cap -- texas, soldiers, civilians, and most of all families and friends, thank you for being with us today. today, we gathered to mourn the loss of 13 american heroes drawn from 11 different states across this nation, they answered the call of service to others. çóñithey range in age from 19 t. three were women and 10 were men. among them, they had 19 children and one of them had a child on the way. they had hobbies that raged from playing the guitar and drums to snowboarding. each of them brought joy to their friends and families. the biggest trade they have in common was to volunteer to be part of something bigger than themselves. they serve our great nation. in doing so, they became members of our extended army family. our hearts and prayers go out to those families who have mourned the loss of this terrible tragedy. no words can fully address your grief and sadness. is important to know that you are not alone. others share some part of the tremendous sense of loss you feel. i want every family member to know that our armory family deeply mourned the loss of your loved ones. the fort hood community shares or sorrel as we move forward together in the spirit of resiliency. fort hood in central texas is home to one of the largest concentration of soldiers in our family. we have tremendous pride in our soldiers exceptional character, competence, and commitment. we will never be accustomed to losing one of our own we can more easily accepted when it happens on foreign soil against a known enemy. fort hood has lost 545 permits formations in iraq and afghanistan but never did we expect to pay such a high price at home. this is a place where the soldiers feel secure. even so, soldiers do what soldiers do best -- they take care of each other in time of need. at the incident scene, there were many acts of courage and bravery. by soldiers remembering their training, lives were saved. were it not for their remarkable abilities, this incident could have been far worse. some soldiers, many wounded, formed first-aid on their battle bodies before worrying about receiving treatment for themselves. many had never met fire that day but became forever linked by this tragic for they all came together at a place in time on november 5, doing their duty for the army, for their families, and for the american people. our soldiers live, work, sir, and fight as teens. the currency of our profession is a bond of trust and a deep sense of caring about each other. the nature of our business demands that we rise above the fear and doubt generated by this horrific event. in times like these, our army family and surrounding community pulled together in selfless service. there were council's incidences of our steadfastness showing its support in the hours that followed this incident. we will always remember the brave and committed action of the first responders at the crime scene. the medical professionals from our area hospitals treated the wounded with the utmost care and concern. there were donations of food and lodging to family traveling from out of state. the community after the call when there was a need for blood to help the wounded. these were a few examples of the generosity of our friends and neighbors. nothing can erase our grief over the loss of beloved ones we honor here today. our commitment to our country, our army, and their families, will help us move forward together. from this day on, we must we know our resolve and commitment to our mission. this army and a fine men and women who are our army, remained firmly committed to fight and win our nation's wars. they, along with the families who love and care for them, are determined to provide enduring service to our nation. as we remember the victims who died here at fort hood, made our service be a continuing tribute to each of them. may god bless you. may god bless our soldiers, families, and the united states of america. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, the chief of staff of the army, general george casey. >> good afternoon. president and mrs. obama,. governor perry, governor doyle, secretary gates, secretary shinsecki, and many other distinguished visitors, secretary of the army john mchugh, admiral and mrs. mcmullen, families and friends -- it is a tradition in one of our special operations units to go to the book of isaiah when they are eulogizing fallen comrades. "proud of their willingness to accept any challenge for this country at the funeral they read," and i heard the course of lord saying,' whom shall i send that will go for us? ' then i said, here am i. send me. " this pasha's -- this passes conveys the sentiment of every soldier. this was and every soldier. it is a spirit we saw in the 13 soldiers who gave their lives here. men and women who believe in the values and ideals this country stands for and men and women who willingly served those ideals. newlyweds, single moms, immigrants, teenagers, and 50- some things, all bound together by the common desire to find meaning in something greater than themselves. the violence that led to the deaths of these 30 americans and a woman of dozens of others was unimaginable. it was a kick in the gut. the men and women who were killed at more than a century of service to this country. their loss left 19 children, spouses, parents, and on told loved ones. what happened this past thursday will impact the families, the fort hood community, and their army for a long time to come. the shock and selflessness of the truck -- of the tragedy, can the courageous most of the first responders, caregivers, the selflessness of fellow soldiers who risked their lives to help one another, become leadership of command and the overwhelming outpouring of support from the community. these responses in the aftermath of tragedy have been uplifting, if not heroic. that we saw countless examples of heroism inaction is a great source of pride. soldiers and armed civilians lived as our soldiers and civilians live it every day in afghanistan, iraq, and around the world. i will always place the mission first. i will never accept defeat. i will never quit. and i will never leave a fallen comrade. our egos and our values are woven into the very fabric of our army. our soldiers are cut from the cloth of this that great country. this is a country they love and serve any time of war. we all serve at a time when the stakes for our country and way of life are high. yet, in every generation, when faced with difficult challenges, americans have risen to the occasion. ñrtoday, our soldiers answered e call to serve with the same pride and professionalism that is marked the united states army service for the past 234 years. ñiyes, our soldiers, civilians, and their families carry a heavy burden in this war. yet, they are willing to sacrifice to preserve our way of life and to build a better future for others is a great strength for this nation. they, as do the 13 soldiers that we honor today, he epitomized the best of america. the army at fort hood are no strangers to pain and tragedy and loss.

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