Laurence it is a stupid thing to do. I should choose an area and keep at it, but i wanted to do something much different. Experience different lives. When you write a nonfiction book, you are thinking back in somebodys life. I want to piggyback on as many lives as i can. Brian of the 15 books, which one sold the most . Laurence the kennedy women, by a longshot. A multigenerational book about women. Nobody had ever written a multigenerational book about women. To put women at the forefront just totally changed things. Brian what about the kennedy women do you most remember and what did the audience want to hear when you talked to them . Laurence it was a book i suggested that you do not have to be a woman to love the kennedy women. It was a book read by women. Women of that generation read that book and they just loved that it was their story and they could all identify one way and another with the evolution of women in america. Brian you did a trilogy on the kennedys. Which one came fi
Includes the manner in which subsidized payments on the national debt. Congress is appropriation law is standing conflict with the debt ceiling log which caps the amount of debt the federal government can go at any one particular time. Since enacting a statute in 1917 congress has routinely prescribed budgets mandating spending that so plainly exceeds projected revenues that they will inevitably require the treasury to borrow funds in excess of the debt ceiling to make good on our obligations. And for Decades Congress has improved approved home virtually every time we have crept close to the Borrowing Limit and all in all this is a very good thing because it is the largest borrow in the world a default by the United States government would in all likelihood trigger a worldwide economic depression. All that changed in the summer of 2011 when the republican majority elected elected to optimize the debt ceiling. And use the threat of the federal default in the resulting and the resulting
Line up were ready to take some questions. Hi, my name is sean, and im from the university of san diego. So speaking about incentives for Congress People to take the long view, take the hard vote, what do you think in your opinion is the best solution to incentivizing individual Congress People to take the long view . Well, first of all, nobodys going to do something that deliberately and intentionally causes their loss. That wou defy the laws of nature. So im from kansas so if i went up and i said wheat programs are bad for this country, im going to vote against them my constituents would think i was nuts. Okay. Because im sent there to represent their views, their perspectives on as much as i can. But im also sent up this to use my own up there to use my own judgment with as well. And, you know, my judgment is that philosophically these jobs were not meant to be permanent jobs. There was meant to be turnover. It doesnt mean i believe in term limits but it means that people have to ha
And here too i will refer to my fathers 1959 address. He worried then about californias dangerously overcrowded prisons. A he talked about identifying those prisoners who should never be released to prey again on an innocent public, but he also said, we should also determine whether some prisoners are now kept confined after punishment has served its purpose. We face these same questions today what purposes should punishment serve and for how long should a person be confined to jail or prison, for a few days a few years or for life . In response to a large increase in crimes beginning in the 1970s, the legislature and the people, through ballot initiatives, dramatically lengthened sentences and added a host of new crimes and penalty enhancements. Today, californias legal codes contain more than 5,000 separate criminal provisions and over 400 penalty enhancements, an arcane and complex mix that only the most exquisitely trained specialist can fathom. And funding has grown proportionatel
Indian country but also an issue for all of rural america. Its why i included in my opening remarks the fact that we in 2014 established nearly 10 million of contribution toward expanded Broadband Access. We have completed the rule making process to institute and implement the new farm bill provisions you referred to. Thats now putting us in a position to begin making decisions about where resources go. We announced today the project in mexico which is the first project under the substantially Underserved Trust Area provisions of a previous farm bill. Thats 5. 5 million that will be committed to expanded Broadband Access in new mexico. We are very much committed to this. I would say that there are two specific ways that you can address the issue. One is through our normal program, Distance Learning telemedicine program. Now with the new farm bill rules well certainly be prioritizing areas that are most in need. Working with the fcc to make sure that they put pressure on Telecommunicati