A new minor at the University of Maryland teaches art students how to advance the public dialogue on topics including social justice and climate change.
of african-americans and recommend to congress policy remedies based on the study s findings. representative john conyers joins me now from detroit. also at the table here in studio are ira katz nelson and the author of when affirmative action was white. also professor at the university of pennsylvania and author of sites of slavery, citizenship and racial democracy in the post civil rights imagination. congressman, i want to start with you. tell us what hr-40 is. mr. coates in the atlantic piece comes to at a minimum what we must do is take up hr-40. so tell us what it is. well, it s a bill that would set up a commission of seven people that would study the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery on
spending, 29%, doing both if you can, magically, 8%. creating jobs, jonathan, 62%. the president today says he s looking forward getting to work on this when they come back to work, but they are not coming to work for five weeks. it sounds so hollow if you know he means in september, he means we re going to sit here, we re going to do nothing for the month of august on something that has this kind of urgency in the polls. that s right, and very possibly nothing until the election if the record of this republican house is any indication, but there are some other policy remedies, for instance, a proposal to essentially eliminate the payroll tax for a considerable period of time, which would add to the deficit, of course, but the problem right now is not cutting spending.
he s talking about being president of all the people and basically writing off people he doesn t think about or care about. he is saying i only care about i guess the segment of voters he thinks will be the swing voters and is openly saying i don t really care about them. he says it s an odd thing when he says we hear from the democrat party, the plight of the poor. there is no question it s not good being poor. there is no question it s not good being poor. what does he mean by that? well, i certainly agree with you, chris, he has a pretty bad case of foot in mouth disease with the way he put that quote in. it seemed like he was given a chance to clean it up in the interview and didn t take advantage of that. i mean, i can t pretend that i don t know what he was trying to say and said inartfully which is the focus of his policy proposals is aimed at the middle class. the focus of what his specific policy remedies are trying to achieve. so i don t think he was saying what you said an