Transcripts For KQED PBS NewsHour 20131002

Tonights pbs newshour. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by thats health in numbers. United healthcare. Catherine t. Macarthur foundation. Committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. And. This program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Woodruff our lead story tonight the nations political leaders convened for a lateday meeting at the white house, but there was no sign of a deal to get Government Operations back on track. Newshour Congressional Correspondent kwame holman begins our coverage. Reporter with signs of the shutdown evident everywhere the president called in the house and Senate Leaders to talk over the stalemate. Going in, republicans said they assume hes ready to negotiate. But, in an interview with cnbc before the meeting the president insisted that first, congress has to pass a bill to fund the government, with no strings attached. Until we get that done, until we make sure that Congress Allows treasury to pay for things that congress itself already authorized. We are not going to engage in a series of negotiations. Reporter here at the other end of pennsylvania avenue, House Republicans forged ahead with five spending bills designed to reopen parts of the government, despite warnings that Senate Democrats will reject them. The list included National Parks, veterans programs, the d. C. Government, medical research and salaries for members of the national guard. Outside the capitol, protesters greeted house g. O. P. Leaders as they held a news conference. But majority leader eric cantor said they mean to keep up their strategy. We ought to be working as hard as we can to open up thenr government in all the areas that we agree on. No one disagrees that these memorials should be open. No one disagrees that we shouldnt be funding the n. I. H. No one, no one disagrees that we should be helping our veterans and the kinds of services that they need. Reporter inside, on the house floor, democrats, including californias barbara lee, dismissed that approach. Instead of working on a serious option to reopen the government, republicans latest strategy now and this is really cynical, thats to exploit our veterans and to exploit the people of the District Of Columbia by voting on piecemeal bills that will not end impacts of a shutdown that extend across the country. Reporter meanwhile, in the senate, democratic majority leader harry reid telephoned House Speaker john boehner, appealing for a vote on a government funding bill, free of provisions aimed at the president S Health Care law. Hes sitting on a bill that would reopen the government right now. This bill would pass in a matter of minutes if he just let democrats and republicans vote. He doesnt even have to vote for it. Let him vote against it, but let the house work its will. Reporter if that happens, reid promised, the senate will negotiate a longterm budget deal. A spokesman for boehner brushed aside the pitch, calling it not much of an offer. Amid the sparring, National Parks and major monuments were shuttered for a second day, a number of social Services Also were cut off, including head start programs for lowincome children. And nutritional food programs, such as wic for women with infant children. Douglas greenaway is head of the national wic association, based in washington. With the Government Shutdown, theres a level of uncertainty that not only Program Administrators are experiencing, but certainly the women who participate in the program. Reporter the National Institutes of health, meanwhile, turned away patients seeking to enroll in experimental treatments. And there were warnings at a Senate Hearing about national security, from james clapper, director of national intelligence. Ive been in the intelligence business for about 50 years. Id never seen anything like that were already taking, that this seriously damages our ability to protect the safety and security of this nation and its citizens. Reporter with no end in sight, the odds also were growing that the shutdown stalemate will merge with an expected fight over raising the debt ceiling. Leaders of major Financial Firms met with the president today to discuss the potential economic harm. As things stand, the federal government will default on its obligations unless Congress Lifts the Borrowing Limit by october 17. Woodruff well have more on all of this, after the news summary. Ifill wall street spent the day trying to figure out how long the Government Shutdown will last. Defense company stocks, in particular, took a hit. Overall, the Dow Jones Industrial average lost 58 points to close at 15,133. The nasdaq fell about three points to close at 3,815. This was day two of enrollment for the new governmentrun Health Insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care act. Yesterdays start was a rocky one, as websites and phone lines were overwhelmed by high demand. There was no word on how many people actually managed to sign up. More on this, later in the program. In iran, the Parliament Today endorsed president Hassan Rouhanis diplomatic outreach to the west. At the u. N. Last week, rouhani signaled hes open to new dialogue on irans disputed nuclear program. In a statement today, 230 out of 290 iranian lawmakers backed that effort. Rouhani rejected sharp criticism from israeli Prime Minister benjamin netanyahu, who told the u. N. That iran is not to be trusted. translated the israelis, when they see that their sword has become blunt, when they see that lodge inand reason is dominating the world, they certainly get upset. This is absolutely normal. We shouldnt expect anything other than this of the israelis. I think netanyahus comments show us we are on the right and precise path. Ifill separately, diplomats reported little progress in the latest meetings between iran and the u. N. s nuclear watchdog. There may have been fewer attackers involved in last months kenyan mall massacre than first believed. A senior official said today, closed Circuit Television footage actually shows just four men carrying automatic weapons, not the ten to 15 authorities initially claimed. The Somali Militant Group al shabab claimed responsibility for the attack that killed at least 67 people. Eight people died in an accident it shut down part of interstate chrysler is recalling an estimated 132,000 Sport Utility vehicles, mostly in the u. S. The Company Announced today that its 2014 jeep grand cherokees may have a Software Problem that blacks out the dashboard display. Chrysler said it has not received any reports of accidents related to the glitch. Tom clancy, the author who virtually invented hightech military thrillers, has died. He passed away yesterday, in baltimore. Clancy first climbed to the top of the bestseller lists in 1984 with the hunt for red october. That book and several others featuring c. I. A. Hero jack ryan were later made into movies. Tom clancy was 66 years old. Well have more on him at the end of the program. Ifill also ahead, the price tag for the shutdown; the opening rush and snags for the health care law; the shortage of brides in india; a massive online drug bust. Plus, whats changed and what hasnt for american women. Woodruff and we return to the shutdown of most of the federal government with a closer look at the economic fallout. For that, we turn to a pair of economists who have been watching and writing on this. Diane swonk of Mesirow Financial in chicago and mark zandi of moodysanalytics. Com welcome to the program. Mark zandi, do you first, is there an affect on the economy . Were only in the second day of this. Yeah. Federal employees arent going to work. I was in d. C. Today talking to a taxicab driver who said he had to work 14 hours yesterday and couldnt get the money he normally gets. Tourist destinations are being affected. Independence hall in philadelphia, my hometown, is shut down and thats affecting people. Pretty soon its going to be tougher to get an f. H. A. Mortgage loan, a Small Business Administration Loan for a Small Business, student loans. Its more of a nuisance so far, but its starting to have economic consequence. Woodruff diane swonk, who are you seeing in terms of impact so far . I agree mark. Theres the nearterm impact thats more of an inconvenience but is certainly still a cost to the economy. But as the shutdown gets longer the costs of it tend to compound over time. They get more into the private sector, more spillover effects. We also dont know for sure whether or not these federal employees who are furloughed not by any choice of their own would be paid retroactively. That would be the first time they werent paid retro actively but if theyre not theyll be down that money that they could have been earning if they had been working and the government had been open. Soz we start to see this effect cast cade and the important issue the spillover to the private sector cab drivers, restaurants i know about a case in kentucky where 4,000 i. R. S. Agents didnt show up for work. Usually people dont worry about the i. R. S. But they do now. The president of the chamber of commerce in that little town in kentucky said none of the restaurants, they were all dead and all of the retail establishments were all dead. And each week that this goes on you could see starting to shave real growth off of g. D. P. We could see as much as three tenths with a twoweek is shutdown and up to a percent or more. I know mark has had similar estimates as you go into a month of a shutdown. Woodruff exact sector by sector, mark . As you look at this, is there one sector in particular . We reported the Defense Industry has already taken a hit in investment. What do you look for . Yeah, i think obviously Defense Sector is hit hard. The travel, tourism, leisure, Hospitality Industries are getting hit hard. People dont place much emphasis on this but these are a sector of the economy that creates a lot of jobs. If you look since the recovery began, this is the one sector thats added the most jobs to the economy. Woodruff you mean the so travel destinations, all of the restaurants, everything that caters to people who just go see the liberty bell or see the washington monument. Woodruff what other sectors, diane, would you look at . And geographically how would you look at this . One thinks of washington, weve mentioned that. What about military bases in the area around those . Absolutely. Yes, we also see these workers, census workers all across the country, 85 of federal workers workout side of washington, d. C. So as bad as it is in washington, these are workers that vote all across the country which believe me its having an impact. Like i mentioned, the 4,000 workers in kentucky. We have workers here in illinois that clearly arent working at this stage of the game. The roads are not as clogged and the retailers that get the fallout. But the Auto Industry is concerned. Ive gotten several calls from detroit concerned about the uncertainty created by this, people not knowing what this means. As the events continue fall out as we approach the debt ceiling, that can rock Financial Markets and that causes hesitation. Hesitation in an economy thats already weak is our greatest enemy. When consumers are uncertain they dont buy big ticket items or luxury items. They dont spend on the extra meal out. On the flip side, we also see more importantly businesses not willing to pull the trigger and hire, which is something mark was talking about. Weve seen the largest hiring in the leisure and Hospitality Industries but you wont see much of that at all, that pullback as we enter into the Holiday Season is really critical. Woodruff i think some of the people looking at this, mark zandi, are wondering whats the affect on ordinary people. And, again, this assumes this is a shutdown that continues and we have no way of knowing how long it will last. The effect on ordinary people versus the affect on markets, wall street, investors. Well, you know, as this drags on it will affect people more directly in terms of getting loans, in terms of getting passports. But the key thing here is if this extends for another week the concerns about the debt limit are going to come into play and thats much more significant than the shutdown. The shutdown is no big deal if its few days. But the we get to the debt limit, thats a huge issue. Woodruff now what sectors are we talking about then . Where does the worry show up . Its everybody then. If we hit the debt limit what that means is that the treasury can only pay the bills for which it has enough cash. So it wont have enough cash to pay all the bills and there are a lot of bills. Now theyre going to make their payments to the debt holders, the people owning treasury bonds, that leaves less for everyone else so that means medicare and medicaid recipients. If we dont settle this by november 1 Social Security recipients wont get their check on times. Woodruff diane, how do you distinguish about the worry about what might happens and what happens if the country actually does not meet the debt limit . If we dont raise the debt limit, youre talking about a selfinflicted financial disaster and we already had one five years ago and one may argue it was selfinflicted. However it was Collateral Damage that came from that, came from many areas of the country. This is purely selfinflicted by washingtons own inability to act if we dont raise the debt limit and it has reverberations that go around the world. Its a shot that will be heard around the world again and again because we wont be able to value what many people see as a riskless asset, the riskfree asset which is the treasury bond. When you cant value that, you cant value any other asset in the world. And thats destabilizing to global Financial Markets as well as the u. S. And we saw as in 2008 this was an unprecedented event. This would be another unprecedented event. I dont think we need to go there at this stage of the game. Pelley the cash shortfall is so significant. It is huge. And the bills that wont get paid are so large it will send our economy into immediate recession and investors will know this right away so stock prices are going to decline, Interest Rates will rise. That hurts everybody rapidly. Woodruff again, this assumes the debt limit is not raised. But this scenario is so dark that its hard for me to imagine the policymakers wont come to terms before we actually hit this debt limit because its catastrophic to the economy and you would though their own political futures that they would get this together. Woodruff you both have mentioned consumers but its been pointed out to me that the country has now been in the last few years been through several of these blows where congress has come right up to the brink, has been through the kind of thing that were going through now even though the government hasnt completely shut down. Does there come a point though, diane swonk, when consumers get used to it . Is it possible they could get so accustomed to washington hitting one of these moments when we know its going to take days or weeks to figure it out . Well, you know, weve seen washington turn a deaf ear to capitol hill and they didnt really sorry, wall street already turned a deaf ear to capitol hill where they didnt react initial they much to the Government Shutdown. But i think marks very correct. Its unimaginable what would happen because the recession would be immediate and you would feel it very quickly. And i dont think consumers can ignore it forever. I think theres an inconvenience and if youre in one of these places you feel it right away and those consumers are workers who feel it right away, as the cab driver mark mentioned at the beginning of the show. So i dont think its something you can completely turn a deaf ear to. That said, we are getting wary of this and i think everyone sort of feels that washingtons cried wolf too many times. Look, you know, if all were talking about is a Government Shutdown, this isnt going to affect many consumers. But if we get to the debt limit theyll know it because everything will be going south pretty quickly and theyll be pulling back very rapidly because theyll be scared like everybody else. If they even sense that a Social Security payment is not going to be made on time, can you imagine the bedlam that will l create among people . Theyll stop spending. So theres no doubt in my mind they will pull back. Right. Woodruff we hear you both. Mark zandi, diane swonk, thank you. Thanks, judy. Woodruff we have more about the impact of the shutdown online including patients who have been turned away at the National Institutes of health. Thats on our rundown blog. Ifill as the new healthcare exchanges began their second day in operation, interest remained high and the problems remained, too. Officials say there were 4. 7 million unique visitors to the federal website healthcare. Gov in the first 24 hours. But there were still often long waits for those trying to get information or to enroll. The opening rollout has generated talk from both sides about what that suggests about the scope and ambition of the law. We break some of that down now ourselves. Sabrina corlette is with the center on Health Insurance reform at georgetown university. And joe antos is with the American Enterprise institute. Ill start by asking both of you as you watched yesterdays launch, joe antos, what did you make of it . Well, i know a lot of people are very interested in the exchanges. You saw millions of people trying to get on you. Saw plenty of problems. Some of those problems are, frankly, routine. The sorts of things that we all live with in our daily life. Things that will eventually be fixed. Hire a new programmer ifill error messages, basically. Yeah, error messages, that sort of thing. The crowding the first day, i think a lot of those people werent looking for insurance, they wanted to see what was this thing anyway. They wanted to see how it worked. But theres other issues that are going to emerge that i think are beginning to emerge that are more fundamental that are much harder to solve. Ifill lets get to those in a minute but let me ask Sabrina Corlette. Was this a bigger set of glitches than we saw with Medicare Part d, the Prescription Drug benefit when that rolled out . Well, youre right, we did see a lot of glitches early on with Medicare Part d and i think what we saw back then is likely to be what were going to see today which is the administration back then which was at that time the Bush Administration it was a big domestic policy priority for them and they had a Rapid Response team that when they found problems they reacted quickly, they built up more capacity, they added staff to the call center, they made sure that those glitches were fixed. And i think thats the same exact thing that were seeing even just today. H. H. S. Announced theyve added more capacity to the web site. Ifill lets talk about the things we discovered for those able to get on to the site and able to see price tags for instance attached to what they were being asked to sign up for. Is has this plan this thats been rolled out, does it really make health care more affordable for most people . Well, it makes it more accessible for a lot of people. The rules related to preexisting conditions. If you have an existing condition that requires medical treatment now you cant be refused and the coverage will also cover those treatments. So in that sense its a little bit easier. The question is and dont have the answer to this is the price what people expect to pay . There was an awful lot of talk about how it was going to be almost free and, of course, its not going to be almost free. But certainly for those people who most need insurance this is a real benefit. The question is what about the people who dont feel they need insurance . Will they buy it . Will the young people buy this coverage . Ifill thats an interesting point because a lot of the push and the p. R. Has been around getting young people relatively healthy young people to sign up and carry the weight for those who are older and more ill. Is that has that balanced been worked out yet, Sabrina Corlette . No one has a crystal ball so we dont know who will enroll in these exchanges and whether they will be older or younger. Certainly for people who are trying to buy Health Insurance on the marketplace today or before these reforms go into effect theyre going to get a better deal, a better value on these exchanges than they can possibly get in the individual market today. And thats because theyll be able to access subsidies and theyll be able toking a sense comprehensive coverage that covers things like maternity care, Prescription Drugs, mental health, hospitalizations, things that you cant know with confidence are covered in the individual market today. Ifill you dont agree with that . Well, heres the problem remember that it isnt just the premium and the premium subsidy. Its also the deductible and the copayments that you have to make. And in particular my favorite example, 2yearold guy, perfectly healthy or at least so he thinks not that interested in Health Insurance and if hes looking at something with, you know, tremendous subsidies, hes only paying 100 a month, but the deductible is 5,000, hes not going to break the 5,000. Hes not going to get anything for it. And when he thinks about it, hes going to think twice about whether having a little bit of extra mental security is worth 1,200 a year to him. Ifill isnt that the decision people make everyday now the tradeoff. Right. And now theyre going to be faced with the option to actually make that tradeoff. But certainly the mandate is doesnt have any teeth in it. So theres no really effective penalty for not buying insurance and knowing that you can buy insurance next year in the next open enroll. Period the means that youre basically only making a bet this time only for nine months. Ifill is the mandate not tough enough, sabrina . Well, the Congressional Budget Office says if the mandate isnt put into place this year there will be 11 fewer 11 million fewer people getting Health Insurance coverage without the mandate. And so certainly most analysts who look at this question say that the mandate does have an impact. And its a critically important piece of the law and its sort of a like a threelegged stool and if you knock the mandate out the law will fall of its own weight. Ifill let many ask about another tradeoff. If youre a Small Business person and you have provided by insurance for your employees, is there a disincentive now to continue to do that if they can get it on their own on this exchange . For a Small Business, it may not even have made sense to have offered coverage. There just wasnt another alternative. So, in fact, i think we will see Small Businesses drop their coverage because their employees will probably be able to get a better deal than they could get. I mean, if youre a shawl business, youre being charged a pretty high premium. Ifill whats that to whats to stop that from creeping up to larger businesses if that were to happen . Well, look, Health Insurance has been a voluntary benefit employers have provided to their employees for generations because they want to attract and retain a healthy works for. That dynamic doesnt change because of the Affordable Care act but employers have been struggling for years against Rising Health care costs and one thing that has been true since the a. C. A. Was passd is that those Cost Increases year to year have improved and have sort of started to flatten out because of some of the costcontainment measures in the bill. Ifill we only have a short period of time left so i want you to both give me a sense of when will you begin to measure, to gauge accurately whether this rollout is a success or not . How much time would you give it. I think were not going to know until february or march. Partly because its hard to get the data but partly because its not just people signing up. Its also will people continue to pay the premiums once they experience the coverage . That doesnt start until january. And if they dont like the coverage, theyre going to stop and drop out. Ifill what do you think about that . Im taking the long view as well. I think we dont start to measure success until people start to access their benefits, seek health care and get the financial protection that insurance is supposed to provide. Ifill Sabrina Corlette and joe antos, thank you both very much. Woodruff next, to india, for a story about marriages, but not necessarily with a living happily ever after ending. With far more men than women, brides are in demand. Special correspondent fred de sam lazaro reports as part of our agents for change series. Reporter gudia and babitha are sisters and they share a lot more in common. Each is a mother of two young sons, both live in the same extended family home and theyre even married to brothers. With their husbands, they have far less in common the young women come from hundreds of miles away, where dialect and diet are very different. How young . Thats a sensitive question. translated im 28 and she is 25 or 26. Reporter neither woman went to school and may not know their actual age. But yudhvir singh, a phd student who has studied the growing number of marriages like theirs, says womens ages are exaggerated because its illegal to marry before age 18. translated i would say in that case that both of them were under 18 at the time of marriage. And in such cases the husbands are often twice, sometimes three times their age. Reporter their husbands told me they were 40 and 35. Theyre caught in what demographers call a marriage squeeze. There are no local women to marry, they said, and those who are eligible are taken by people of more means. translated we have no steady work here and we dont own any land, so it is reporter the northern farm so in the 80s when ultrasound scanners became available, many doctors even in rural areas invested in them. Offering to tell peck tonight parents the sex of their fetus and if they were female to terminate the pregnancy. These sex determination scans are illegal but hard to police. In some regions of the northern farm states of punjab there are as few as 650 female births for every one thousand males. A generation later thats lead to a shortage of brides in a culture where everyone is expected to marry says this sociologists. 98 to 99 of indian men and women do get married. So it is considered to be the socially honorable thing to do. It gives people social adulthood because there is no courting, there is no cohabiting before marriage and so how do you move on to the next stage of life . Reporter men like these lower on the socioeconomic ladder find brides like babitha and gudia. For their part, these women say their own marital prospects were dim in eastern bihar state, where they grew up. Marriage has, literally, been a meal ticket, they say. translated i know hes much older but then we were so poor, there was not enough food, not enough for simple clothing. Here we eat, we have lots of things in the house, like a fridge, television. Reporter but marriage is not always what women from other impoverished regions are led to believe. The northern farm states, where indias green revolution began in the 70s, have a reputation in other parts of the country for abundant food and prosperity. So 20yearold beena says it was not hard to convince her parents to consent to a marriage that would take her a thousand miles away. translated they said it would be like life in a hindi film, big houses, things like that. Reporter and what did she find . Well, you can see for yourself, she said. Beenas parents also had a financial incentive they didnt my parents received no money but they also gave nothing. The middleman got about 30,000 to 35,000 rupees and the grooms family paid for that. Reporter life can be lonesome at times, says beena, who was married at 15 and now has two children. No one speaks her native bengali and it took her time to adjust to the local diet and customs but she says she become reconciled to it. translated im married now, this is the way it is. Reporter visit any village here in the eastern state of bengal and youll hear stories of missing young women, many of them minors. translated i prayed for my daughter in the mosque and i gave sacrificial offerings and i keep praying so i can find her. Reporter its been ten years since saleha bibi heard from her daughter, manuara. She and husband mazlum momin were approached by a stranger proposing marriage to their daughter. They say she was 18 then. Momin says the supposed groom quickly slipped away with their daughter and was never heard from again. translated i went to the police but they said theyd need to have a picture of the girl before they could launch any kind of search. And i didnt have any pictures of her. Reporter in any event, many people here say, the police are indifferent or worse in such cases. translated theres no use in going to the police, they would simply accuse us of selling our daughter. Reporter in fact some people, like jabani roy, here with her son bimal, admit the family received money. 2,000 rupees. Thats about 40. Its been years, she says, and theyve never heard from their daughter. translated if she would have returned at least once, we would feel better, that she was okay. Reporter kailash satyarti, one of indias best known anti trafficking activists, says boys are typically forced into some form of servitude. As for girls, marriage is but one form of abuse theyll likely face. They are abducted, they are kidnapped, they are stolen, they are sold and resold and resold at different prices and eventually they end up as child prostitute, child slave, many of they are found being married to old man in punjab and haryana and sometimes in delhi. A 14yearold girl could have been married to a 40 year old man. Reporter back in haryana, elders in the village we visited say the root cause of the so called imported bride phenomenon, the illegal practice of sex selective abortion, continues translated it goes on underground. It continues to go on. In our society, the status of women is still low. Its in the mindset of people that needs to change, otherwise how do we sustain a society . Reporter sociologist kaur says everyone knows its a problem for the larger society. The challenge is to bring change to individual families. They dont connect the dots. Theyre not seeing that you know eliminating their own daughters is leading to this bride shortage. So if, as long as they can get somebody from somewhere else, they think thats okay. Reporter but ironically, the young sons of gudia and babitha may well face less of a bride shortage. Grad student yudhvir says its for unlikely reasons. translated the reason is these wives who are brought in from outside, they make them pregnant as quickly as possible and produce many children so that they wont run away. Reporter that means fewer abortions of female fetuses and more local girls to marry local boys. Woodruff a version of freds story aired on the pbs Program Religion and ethics newsweekly. His reporting is a partnership with the undertold stories project at Saint Marys University in minnesota. Ifill now to a very different kind of shutdown of a massive, anonymous, online marketplace for Illegal Drugs. Ray suarez has the story. Suarez federal authorities closed down a website known as silk road today and arrested its alleged master mind, Ross Ulbricht of san francisco, who called himself Dread Pirate Roberts. Independent Television News investigated the world of online drug sales recently. We begin with this account from correspondent cordelia lynch. Reporter we decided to see just how easy it is to buy drugs on a site called silk road. Well, on here i can see everything from heroin, crack, ecstasy pills. The heroin here goes from 225 u. S. Dollars up to 5,000. You can even rate people. This is a system based on trust. Here the seller says two grams of the best afghan brown heroin. Satisfaction guaranteed it promises. We bought three and a half grams of m. D. M. A. , a key ingredient in ecstasy and one gram of opium. Well, the envelopes have arrived. It took just three days and now were going to find out whats inside. Were at a governmentlicensed laboratory and theyre going to test the contents for us. John ramsey is a toxicologist who spent nearly three decades analyzing drugs for the police. So weve gotten a almost Perfect Match for crystal. Reporter next he tested the opium we ordered. So weve got one small package which could be opium. Reporter it, too, tested positive. Are you surprised these things are so readily available on the internet . Yes, i am. We know theres a ready market in legal highs but these are illegal compounds and im surprised that its relatively straightforward to buy them over the internet. Suarez those transactions were among more than a million others. Silk road brokered more than one billion dollars in sales and its site listed nearly 13,000 offerings of Illegal Drugs and services. Those were paid for using a Digital Currency known as bitcoins. For more on silk road and todays bust, we turn to glenn chapman, Technology Correspondent for Agence France press. How does the f. B. I. Say silk road worked . Well, silk road was essentially a speakeasy for the internet age combined with ebay. So you had to sort of be able to tap on the door and know the password, youd get to the web site, it would be a blank page except for your password and user name. Didnt even hint at what it was so you haded to nowhere you were going in order to get there. Once youre inside it was anybody who visited ebay would know that thats what you were looking at once inside except what they were offering were, as you noted, Illegal Drugs, forged i. D. S, even ten countries supposedly had offerings of hit men. Suarez its one thing to go on a web site and give your name and address and some information about how to charge you money to a place that wants to sell you shoes. Its all together a different thing to go on and tell people who want to sell you heroin or ecstasy where to find you. This stuff would come in the mail, wouldnt it . But the beauty of this in the eyes of the Dread Pirate Roberts was that the anonymity layers on it. It exploited two mechanisms out there that one of which was designed for Online Privacy and in this age of internet snooping thats become a very high priority for legitimate purposes. But it used tor networks which is an acronym for the onion router. Because what it did was take data in this case, your transaction, whatever youre doing it on line wrap in the these encripped layers like an onion and bounce it off servers all over the world, volunteer servers and each server would pull back one little layer, just what it needed to throw it to the next server so by the time it got where it was going it was hard to figure out where it came from. So the silk road depended on that tor network. Then the currency referred to earlier, bit coins is like an internet version of cash. You spend cash, youre hard to trace. So that money spent at that web site unlike buying shoes you were probably harder to find if you bought heroin at silk road then if you went to a web site and bought shoes. Suarez now that this place has been raided, is it possible that the f. B. I. Now has in its possession ways to find tens of thousands of people who were buying Illegal Drugs over the web . It is possible. Investigatively its possible. It just depends on a level of encryption that was being used. If you go to chat farms popular chat forums at prices lick reddit. Com where they have a silk road foulout chat forum, some people are very, very worried. But theyre relying on the fact that the silk road in their servers used heavyduty encryption. Silk road used a special bit of software. We talked about bit coins earlier. There are ways to track them. But it used something called a tumbler to jug that will around so it was even harder to track the bit coins than if the original design. So the people are very worried out tr t there that theyll be tracked but theyre also nervous because when the feds seized assets from silk road, they seized a big cache of these bit coin which is theoretically could be used to go out in the future and basically have agents posing as buyers or sellers and engage and do undercover operations. Suarez that caught my eye. How do you seize a Virtual Currency is . If it doesnt exist in any tangible physical way how do you seize in the a raid . Well, bit coins if you think of cash as paper, you could think of a bit coin as like a string of code, right . And then those strings of code and youd buy it. Its like currency if you were traveling to another country and you go to exchange and buy the local currency. There are exchanges for bit coins and you get that local internet currency. And then its stored on something they call a bit coin wallet and then to get to that wallet you do need the you do need access to the password. So they would seize physical servers, physical hard drives from silk road and they, along with these physical hard drives they would squeeze the other assets, they would either have to hack or convince mr. Ulbricht to cooperate to get access to the bit coins. Suarez it seems kind of unbelievable that you could actually just go on the web and buy a certain amount of heroin or opium. But there must have been such confidence in this Encryption Technology that silk road felt it could hide in plain sight. People have known about the existence of this place for years, havent they . They have. Its been its the investigation started about january of 2011. It was described in the criminal complaint as the largest internet bazaar for illicit goods ever. It does seem bizarre. Silk road even put a buyer and seller guide offering advice on how not to get caught. If you when youre shipping your drugs put in the a sealed plastic container to avoid scent detection. They would advise sellers and buyers to enscript data. They gave user seller buyer guides the same way a legitimate ecommerce site might to help you. And they added a stealth mode about a year ago for users who felt they were at high risk of Law Enforcement investigation. Suarez glenn, quickly before we go, tell us a little bit about the alleged mastermind of this whole thing, mr. Ulbricht. What do we know about him . Quick description. Quick description, 29yearold, studied undergraduate study in texas and then did some graduate work in engineering and materials over in pennsylvania. He atpraoerz posts that we found at linked in and google plus he appears to have said he he describes what he was doing as this experiment that people can experience what its like to live without being under the oppressive violent regime of a government control. So you can expect that as if this goes forward, if theres not a deal, if there is a prosecution, part of his defense will be he was just making this farm for freedom in a way. And much the way 4 chan made a farm for freedom of speech by offering absolute anonymity on line. Suarez glenn chapman, thanks for joining us. Thank you, ray. Woodruff a big question to think about are american women living up to their own expectations . Jeffrey brown has our book conversation. So rights debora spar in her new book wonder women sex, power and the quest for perfection. Spar is the president of Barnard College in new york and former professor at the Harvard Business school and welcome to you. Thank you. Brown explain that quote i just read. What did you and others get wrong about feminism . I think women of my generation who were born right after the height of the feminist movement somehow thought that because the feminists had fought to give women these wonderful opportunities and possibilities that we could just kind of go out there and be whatever we wanted to be nuclear scientists, heads of corporations, and still still have the babies and the wonderful marriages and the clothes and the money. And i think we somehow forgot that or we lost sight of the fact that it was going to be much harder than we imagined it would be. Brown you describe yourself as someone who really wasnt even particularly interested in feminism per say. Didnt study it, didnt even think about it as a young person, even into adulthood. Right. And i think maybe part of that is just me. But i think i wasnt totally atypical for women my age because feminism happened when i was sort of eight and ten and 12. Brown as a movement. It happened as a movement. And if youre a kid watching that, you dont get caught up in the struggle, it just becomes your reality. So rather than being politically involved i got feminism filtered through the media which was much more of this sort of myth of women having it all rather than actually understanding kind of the nittygritty that was going to be involved. Pelley you use that expression having it all. So is is the argument now that women cant have it all and shouldnt even try . I think the argument is that having it all is a bad phrase. No one has it all. No woman has it all. No man has it all. Brown weve made a mistake to focus on that. Exactly. If women set as a goal for themselves having it all, by definition theyre going to fail and i think what im seeing in women my age now is if they feel like they dont have it all they feel as if its a personal failing on their part. And thats a real problem. Brown are you talking about you say up front that youre riding as someone you come from youre white, upper middleclass background. When you say women do you mean certain women . All women . Well, its a really good question and im trying to be very clear in the book that i am writing from my personal experience so i am who i am. But one of the things thats really struck she that i see women of all socioeconomic backgrounds, all races dealing with this problem of juggling and dealing with these feelings of guilt and frustration. And i think those are feelings that cut across socioeconomic category. Although clearly the juggling that women that poor women, workingclass women are doing is much more difficult than what im doing. Brown you go through in the book youre talking about everywhere. Youre talking about workplace, home life, young women and their attitudes about sexual practices. You see this everywhere . Yeah. And the book follows the course of a womans life. So i talk about how we raise girls and how girls think about bodies and body image and what i am arguing is that ironically and unfortunately women and girls today face a much higher set of expectations than their grandmothers did. And that wasnt the point of feminism. It certainly wasnt what the feminists were trying to do. But the effect of a lot of the wellintentioned social movements is that at every stage of a womans life i think she feels really shackledded by expectations rather than liberated. Brown so you use this word and promote it satisficing. Explain what that means . Well, its a very interesting economics term that plays a long role in negotiation theory. Its the idea that if you cant get your first best option maybe settle for your secondbest. And i think its a useful term to bring into these debates around womens or peoples lives because we cant always get exactly what we want. And i want to make clear that satisficing isnt about giving up or failing. Brown so what is it . Its about maybe not getting everything but getting a lot of stuff. And im trying to argue that because no one can have it all, if women really want to have highpowered careers something will have to give on the home front. Brown well, so what . You say its not about giving up but somethings got to give. So what do you tell people . Its about realizing, you know, if youre going to be working a 50 or 60 hour a week job youre not going to make it to every one of your kids flute recitals or basketball games and if you want to make it to every flute recital or basketball game youre probably not going to be able to work a 60 hour a week job or your spouse is going to have to make career sacrifices or youll have v to move in kwr w your in laws but something has to give. Its just the math of how many hours there are in a week. Brown you focus a lot on your own story. So let me ask you have you given up you dont want to use that word. Tradeoff. Brown youre a college president. You just wrote a book so you found the time to do that. You describe yourself youre a mother of three, a longstanding happy marriage. Is that not having it all . What have you giving up . Thats having a heck of a lot. If i look back at choices ive made i wasnt as involved in my kids lives as i might have been. As my kids will be quick to tell you, i didnt serve on the p. T. A. , i didnt sew their halloween costumes. I didnt spend as much time with friends as i might have. That was something particularly when my kids were little. I didnt have a social life. I didnt go to conferences. I turned down additional work assignments. Certainly not sacrifices, but i think its important to underscore you have to make choices. The good news is that women now have this candy store of options, but the hard news is we cant have all the candy all the time. Brown we cant have all the candy. On that note lets stop and well continue this online, okay . For now, debora spar, the new book is wonder women thanks so much. Thank you. Ifill again, the major developments of the day president obama met with congressional leaders late this afternoon, but there was no sign of a deal to end the twoday old, partial Government Shutdown. And iranian president rouhani won support from his parliament for his diplomatic opening to the u. S. And other western powers. And before we go, an appreciation of bestselling author tom clancy, whose books about spies, terrorism, the cold war and the military sold more than 100 million copies and spawned at least thee blockbuster movies. Author and novelist alan cheuse joins us. Hes an english professor at George Mason University and a book commentator for npr. Welcome. Thanks. Ifill what was it about tom clancy that captured the poplar imagination . Thats an amazing number of books to sell. I think he created a character particularly in jack ryan that people could associate themselves with. We were in this mess after the cold war. Were fighting small wars all around the world. And ryan is the kind of guy that people would like to think they might be if they were in those situations. Ifill except that he didnt just create a character. He took you inside. He was a military an intelligence expert but he was really just an insurance salesman. He has a wonderful imagination and he created a world that well, he brought together the old hero, the draw traditional hero, a good guy who wants to help make the world work better. He wants to set things right. And he also buy doing all this research and becoming friends with all these technological wonders and military hardware people he made that old heroic world familiar and contemporary and showed an ancient hero fighting a new on a new front. Ifill a series of new threats. A series, yes. Theres a jack ryan family saga. His son is now in the last novel that came out a couple years ago the son is fighting battles the father used to fight and the fathers running for president again. Ifill so it seems like authenticity, however, having those details right, they were the coin of his realm. Well, he didnt have a lot of critics as far as i know from inside these agencies. They loved his work. He made them known as much as they could be known because a lot of the work is secret. Ifill what did his success do for the Publishing Industry . Were there a lot of copycats . Well, he did spawn a whole series of would be novelists like himself. Some okay, some not so okay. He created a school like rembrandt within his own industry because he if he had written as much as the publishers wanted him to write he wouldnt be alive as long as he did live. He would have died. He would have been typing until midnight every night so he had people come in and work on books with him. Ifill kind of like the tom clancy factory . I think of it as a rembrandt studio. Hes a wonderful artist in his own right. Ifill and imitation was the sincerest form of flattery in this case . And theres a new generation of writers, too, people who learned from him and learned that theres a tremendous Public Appeal to writing about military in a serious way. Ifill alan cheuse, thank you for filling us in. Pleasure. Woodruff online, how the long lifespans of naked mole rats may give us clues to living longer, healthier lives. Read more about the tenacious rodents on our science page. All that and more is on our website newshour. Pbs. Org. Ifill and thats the newshour for tonight. On thursday, well examine the deadly consequences of addictive painkillers prescribed for veterans of the iraq and afghanistan wars. Im gwen ifill. Woodruff and im judy woodruff. Well see you online and again here tomorrow evening. On behalf of all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by moving our economy for 160 years. Bnsf, the engine that connects us. Support also comes from Carnegie Corporation of new york, a foundation created to do what Andrew Carnegie called real and permanent good. Celebrating 100 years of philanthropy at carnegie. Org. And with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. And. 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