Hello, everybody. Thank you for coming. I am Jerry Franklin. I am the Communications Director of the Economic Policy Institute. And for several reasons, it is my great pleasure to introduce Dan Greenberg. First, I've known Stan for a very long time, I think, since 1989. Second, I had the privilege of working with Stan on Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. I watched him talk and outtalk cajole and mailed that multi-headed monster to victory, which was a pleasure. For each and every time I talk with Stan, I walk away from the conversation thinking about whatever we've discussed in a new way. He just gives me something else to think about that I hadn't already, which really makes him extremely smart or maybe not so very. Fourth and most important, he is married to one of my absolutely most favorite people in the world, someone who I would lay down in front of a moving train for and who, coincidentally, is also a really good friend to EPI, Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa Dolora. But Stan has accomplishments in addition to his marriage to Rosa. Stan Greenberg has served as polling advisor to presidents and prime ministers, CEOs, and dozens of candidates in the US and around the world, including Al Gore, Tony Blair, Nelson Mandela, as well as national leaders in Israel, Europe, and Latin America. Stan conducts polls for the Israel Project in the US, Europe, and the Arab world, as well as the Nobel Prize winning campaign to ban landmines and for NGOs dealing with climate change, aging, women's advocacy, and political reform. He conducts the bipartisan polls for NPR, the Los Angeles Times, and the Bipartisan Policy Center. Stan and James Carville founded Democracy Corp, a leading organization providing in-depth research and strategic advice to progressive organizations, inmates, and elected officials. When emails arrive from what those in the know call Decor, they get opened right away because the recipients know that they'll be sending useful and informative within them. Stan is here to talk about his new book with James Carville. It's the middle class student. The book is a spirited and serious appeal to the country to put the middle class at the center of our national agenda. And it happens to use a number of EPI charts, which is another reason why we are happy to be speaking here today. Last week, EPI released the electronic version of the State of Working America 12th edition, our 400 plus page, 200 plus chart book. Stan used about maybe 15 charts to make his case, and I suspect that many more people will read his book than ours. But they both made the same case, that incoming wealth had been moving to the very richest among us at an increasing rate, and most Americans should care about this because it is this upper movement of income and wealth that is causing no one income families to struggle so mightily. So the next one is that Stan will talk for a bit, take questions, and then sign books. So Stan, welcome. I'm trying to decide where I'll be comfortable, so I'm excited to stand and wander. Can you hear me? Is the mic on? Yes. Okay. And I also have some slide back, but that's kind of like wallpaper for the presentation because you have the book and a chance, some may have run it already, and may have pointed to some things that are important to all of it now. In fact, J.D. from Lifetime have worked together as well as EPI. I used to read from cover to cover, believe it or not, the State of Working America each year just like I'm in my room, you know, like I'm doing what's happening to America. I'm not, you know, I'm not a Michelle. There's just a bit of work. And one of the things I did, James and I did during the course of this, was at the beginning of it, because we know where we were going, and we, you know, constantly, you know, at the heart of this was, you know, a realization that the two of us, you know, spent a lifetime, obviously radically different, we speak differently, we look differently, we have different vocabulary, you know, we have different scale of audience, but I want this book shipped more on the first day. That's how we change that. Costco, that's no more confidence in this book, than all my books, all my eight books together. So just different, well. So I recommend it. But we, you know, two of us started, I started, you know, an early missionary for my work on making Democrats and trying to figure out how the Democratic Party, you know, he claims to be working class voters, and that's been my mission when it doesn't change. The problem, the struggle, you know, continued. And James, you know, started in his book of Louisiana on taxes and allegedly forgot about Casey, he told him to hone his both skills in campaigning, but also the sense that working people and leaders who want to see working people, are ones that had the Democratic Party back to win the majority party. And we both came together, we worked together for Bill Clinton, who then under the banner of forgotten Bill class. And that was kind of, you know, like the campaign that, you know, the clear statement about how we want to change the country, we put working people in their values with the center of the country, the kind of work the DPI does. And then, you know, as you carry on, as it turns out, decade after decade, and then you look back on these charts, when you look at 1992, we didn't know that 1980, you know, when we did 92, and we were a critique of what happened under, what happened in the decade of the 80s and trickle down. But we didn't know what we know now, that it was a three decade process. Now, Bill Clinton's presidency made a big difference, and they're in a different, so a whole range of, you know, indicators. But it's almost like a lip on the scale of what we've looked at in terms of what's happened to the country, the changing character of the country, what's happened to the middle path, what's happening to the inequality, what's happened to productivity theft, as workers not matched with rising incomes, what's happened to people's families, or a wreck, an increasingly, a wreck, and driven above all by what's happened for working class, in the middle of the country. And so that, when we started this, we got together, while I enjoy the rest of them, just to say, sure, it's like your 15 best graphs that capture what's going on in the country. There's a whole chapter of Just Graphs, in which we'll just talk about it. And this book is, while it has a lot of data and a lot of poem information, it's also an exchange between James and I over the building, over how we react and do events and contemplating these terms in real life and also as we learn and develop, if we're reacting to events, but also react to these charts as in different hotels and I'm spreading these charts, if I'm printing them out and spreading across the bed and looking at all at once and trying to get a sense of the country. But just the symbolism of the fact that you get that line, which is, in 1988, everybody rises together. I mean, it's nothing, you know, I'm more powerful than that. Everybody rises together in the post-World War II period. We're all defined, we all, I don't know who we, I won't be the rage, but James and I, and we look back on our family with our parents, we're defined by that experience and it's a presumption. Why do you rise? Will I rise together? How work is paid off? Kids get education and they rise in the next generation. And then the story begins in, from 1981, in which, you know, and I just go charge you on marriage and this is marriage rates that has to, the bottom line is essentially the median income, what's happened to marriage rates with the median income versus those at the top. Because at the top, now we have more money, they also have more stability of marriage and a whole range of things. That I don't know, that I take in place and I just, on the bottom line, this is life expectancy. If you go, you know, from 1972 to 2001 and look at the bottom half of the earnings distribution, you know, that shift is almost no gain, it's a minimal gain in the life expectancy for those people at the bottom, you know, half, that's the very top. There's a massive gain in life expectancy, so that the totality of what's going on infusing the country with the well-being of those at the top is advancing normalcy while those in the middle are widely behind. We had almost no gap in life expectancy since we looked into the bottom half. Well, if you look at where they were, you know, in 1972 there was barely a gap in the bottom half, but there was like an enormous gap.  The, I don't expect that I won't go through this again, a lot of time, you know, the understanding how people experienced the crisis, the financial crisis, and the great recession, and then the lack of recovery during that period. And we've had a good fortune of being funded from Democracy Code, where we've been doing since one year into the financial crisis, every year, we've been doing in-depth interviews with people, as well as focus groups and major surveys and message tests. And we began to discover, and this is the real divide in the country and the very, very experienced and understood the crisis. So real people, as they saw the crisis, they knew in their countries that before the financial crisis, they thought they were deep problems. There was decline in the class income, there were also American jobs, the country, and themselves and the country went deeper into debt. They also thought the country was increasingly corrupt. That was the power of the Wall Street and Washington were intertwined in ways that made sure the government reinforced the problems of middle-class decline rather than solve them. And they had quite a deep analysis of the long-term problems facing the country. The economic elites, the progenitor states, the Congress, normal people, look at the financial crisis and say, we'll have to have a recovery from the crisis, and we'll even prove, we've got to, is it a pressure, we'll have to lift up this economy, we'll have recovery moving faster, we'll have to spend in a way that would get up to a different plateau, makes total good economic sense. Except for these, though, is what they think is that by talking about the recovery and throwing money at the problem, and doing it through the same political system that doesn't look out for ordinary people, I mean, look at the bullets, the bullets for them to find economic policy out of rations in the Russian. The blood out of the Russian, the big banks, the blood out of the auto industry, which is way unpopular, and it's still not that popular except in Ohio and Michigan, which may be all the betters. You know, in the Carolina. But for them, it defined the way the system worked. You know, rally, take care of the people who are the most irresponsible, do nothing about foreclosures, do nothing about the major problems facing the country. And the further we got down, you know, away from the crisis, until the elites began feeling better about the recovery, the recording jobs, and all those other jobs, there was a positive growth rate compared to, it's very compared to what we were. What's wrong with these people? Well, how about they get that, when we did the focus groups, there's two things that we could not break through on. Spending, and the short term spending, why, you know, short term spending, because they do think that some people that do that are gonna decide where the spending goes. And they just, and they watched the health care bill, which is very, you know, which I think is a great, it's extremely important, one of the most important things, progressives have done it also. We take ownership of it as a chapter, we look on, you know, what we do on health care. But what they watched with health care was all the stakeholders, all the special interests, you know, getting a lot of table, each getting a piece of the reaction, they watched the special deals, you know, combatant, cutting the silent, you know, the passive, the value is like, just health care is like, part of the same political system that screws the middle class. And so that was, you know, that was, you know, very fine. We would, in focus groups, we would show video of the president going on to be very good and saying, you've created 200,000 jobs, or chief, you know, the head of the council of economic advisors, and last up on that, chief economic advisor, talking about the number of jobs created, the 4.6 million jobs, or 200,000 jobs, but particularly 200,000, when they were talking positively about that, I mean, they thought that the monthly job numbers would look good. Okay. Everyone's attacked the moderators in the first instance, okay?  And as the data of the real data began coming in, you began to see that the new jobs, in fact, created post the crisis, 12% less than I've built, showed the jobs that people were after they were employed paid 20% less than the jobs that they had before. We never lost 3% of their wealth from before. And if you were right now in Ohio, and talk to people about how the economy's going, they're still living with this unbelievable wreckage of people having, you know, they've moved in with parents or kids have moved in with them, they've moved back in with a X because they're as awake as they could afford it, change jobs, they'll try to change jobs because they can't afford the gas. They have an overhang of debt, you know, from, they're still living in the middle of this thing. Plus they see these long-term problems. And so when the biggest problem the President Obama had was trying to convince people about this election, that we should judge him based on his performance on Hang-Lung Repetition. And there's a long period here, a painful, at least two-year period. The 2010 election was disastrous in part because the President kept going up and saying, he says, you know, we, you know, he's using the metaphor that they drove the car to the ditch.   God, do they hate that? I mean, they're in the ditch. And they don't, I mean, they're in the middle of it, thank you. And also, they don't think you're dealing with the long-term problems. They don't think you're dealing with the serious stuff. You are dealing with the pace of recovery. And I even got nervous that the Democrat would mention that the, you know, except for the President's speech, that they were mainly making the case, give me more time. I understand them, but they might not be able to do it. But there's nothing on the table that addresses the long-term problems. The only thing on the table, you know, and I see the jobs there are, I know the jobs, there was a good thing, and if you had probably supported it and all that. But the answer was nothing. I mean, in terms of the scale of the problem we're talking about, and that's what they're looking for. So, you know, there are, there are bits that are in many short-term, they try to do in good schools, you know, in a hurry across the country. But if you say you have a five-year or ten-year, you know, two-true in-dollar infrastructure plan, that's for that, overwhelmingly. And they want you to do long-term stuff. You know, if it doesn't look like it's going through the political process, if it's merely throwing money on that, you know, it's just trying to stem that.  So, we talk through the outcome and understand how people look at the economy and are looking for long-term solutions in this. But the bigger inclusion that we drew for ourselves, which we haven't advanced, was once we got through the data that we recently brought us happening to the country and the pain of that. And appreciation for how much they understand the long-term problem of how much they're demanding leaders that face up to the problems. Our single conclusion, James, you know, kind of subjective, simple conclusion, is that we're going to have nothing else.  That's the only thing that's important. Because other people are talking about the deficit system, you know, the way the country is weighed down by deficit, and other people who think there are other problems that are central to the country. You cannot look at the country, you cannot read this book without saying, there's nothing that matters here, other than how is there a future in the middle class? That's gotta be the central problem.  You know, campaigns define what the fight's about. And when they're successful in defining what the fight's about, they'll also impact, you know, the work that's felt out of the election, and the way that it advantages them, usually, but also creates the mandate when the election's done. So in 1992, we ran on its economy system. We had Bill Clinton when he did his first Judd sessions that stated union address. You know, we went and said, I'm not going to talk about the state of the union. I mean, I'm going to talk about only one thing, my economic plans. So if you run an economy, I'm going to put out my economic plan, that's what we're going to focus on in the past, I don't know if they could probably have a very beneficial effect for that decade. The question is, can we have an election? That's about the future of the middle class. What's happened, you know, in this, I'll put this up because we, this is the jobs matter, the muscle jobs matter. No, we have it in the book. We also test it in groups that people throw tomatoes at. We tested the, you know, we tested the president when he started this campaign. Well, I don't have, you know, with that chart. Okay. I can't tell you how well the rating was. Actually, it was almost the point of the breaking point with the Obama government when we released the memo, saying, no, how voters reacted to the ad in this chart.  And, you know, and this is just some of the dire middle reactions to what happens when the president talks about progress, you know, and how they're on the progress. The voters just, you know, are gone.  Not about the economy. It's just everything virtually, it's something about health, but everything about the money and affordability, having enough money to pay for things. People in grocery stores become like this. Consume with the choices that I have to make to get through a shopping at a grocery store, because people are changing their behavior in grocery stores, kind of deal with this ongoing, which is not changing. Income's are still falling, right now. August dropped, well, 0.8% fewer terms. I mean, income is going down right now.  And I recognize that when people look at the problems, I just put this here, that we asked this last month in a poll on whether economic problems are best, you know, jobs are the top, the government and deficits, you know, almost as big. You know, that's one of the, I argue that people, you know, people who look at Greece, they look at Europe, they look at, you know, they look at California, they think that we're talking about it. They think when you have debt, that's when you're going to be in the country long term, that it's going to lead to not keeping your commitments on pensions, in this case, social security, that means that they're going to have war-offs, but they think the consulance of debt, well, then it's through a personal failure, but they also have both countries and states that in fact respond to having big debts with, you know, actions that they, it's not, they don't, they don't think they're, you know, they're going to the, you know, entitlement reform that's where they address it. I mean, they really don't address it, there's raised taxes on the wealthy, they don't get rid of, you know, special interest breaks for all of them, you know, they're for a progressive solution to their problem, but they think it's a problem. And if you don't recognize it in some way, you know, you don't have to deal with it. And then you get income wealth and equality. I'm not going to dwell on that data, but I'll put this up here because we will repeat, because this is the president from the convention, in which we tested, and we tested it very well, but just so you should give a sense that the president has moved to this place in what we're talking about. So recovery from the crisis has already been the first and most urgent order of business, but it's not enough. Economies won't be sure to help me to be reversed that much longer and more profound erosion of middle-class jobs and middle-class income, but makes our economy weak, so fewer and fewer people can afford to buy the goods and services our businesses sell. Businesses don't have customers if folks are having such a hard time. What drives this environment is an economy when there's an ever-wide new gap between the few folks who have been struggling around and growing a number of people and no matter how hard they work and barely make ends meet. But that's from the convention. So that the president is going to affirm of saying the problem is, we're going to recover that time, but let's serious this. And if you look at what he says in the speech about the building forum, he says, don't work for me because of what I do in recovery. So most of it is what we're going to do to bring back America as a country of middle-class income, and people aspire to be the middle-class income thrive. So that the president's move to a position where you address him the right problem. Okay, for middle-class, still good with the very, very, very, for my, for my argument. Just for those who are active in the convention and show, they give paper to the whole hall of middle class first and so we view this as kind of a personal success in getting the country focused on the main problem. The limited clays with a lot of policy, you know, because if you get back to the future, for us, the future of politics and the future of policy is middle-class. And the beauty of clear that when you exchange your message in a context in your class and it's focused on the future, it's focused on long term, it's the best political outcome, our message dominates theirs. And then in the past, the Republican, I'm pretty amazing, the Republican convention saying, all right, what this election is about is your disappointment with the last four years. They didn't deliver the jobs that were on the hope that they promised. We have how many months of, you know, for unemployment by eight percent, you know, it's okay to fire. So it's a vote based on performance of the last four years. The president, and the whole last day, was about the future, you know, who's gonna, under which of these candidates is the future gonna be better? Which one is gonna make the right choices for the middle class going forward? So it's a future, if you've watched, it's post-settled out, Obama moved in with a bigger lead, and the Romney had been moved into this interposition of, we're gonna now talk about the future rather than just the past. If you look at the ads right now, in Washington, DC earlier, and with Virginia, the Romney ad is an economic ad of what he's gonna do in the future. But they didn't make a chance, because like the way I've tested it, so they moved into, you know, that debate. So what we said is first we need a politics, a centers in the middle class, that is our best place to wage this battle, to have an election with the best results. But we also said it's the best politics in order to get the best policy. So if you focus on the middle class and I use this health care as a factor, if you have, if you think the main problem of the country is the federal deficit, and since we have rising health care costs, and since a high level of government continuing to pay in more and more of their health care, that it makes sense to take action to reduce the amount that the federal government spends on health care. And it's okay to move that on procedures, which is what, you know, by all of the premiums, by all of the changes that they propose and make here, all of that is about locking in the spending levels at inflation, or essentially at inflation, at close to inflation, for general inflation, not health care inflation. And so it's a systematic, you know, when we were cut in health care spending with the federal government, addressing the government, that is shifting those costs, the seniors may be with them, but in a competitive market, as they structurally will be, you know, cost a good earn, but who are we with them? So they shift, they're going to shift those costs. If you think the main problems that's happening in the middle class, that's the main problem that's in the country. Then it's unthinkable, it's absurd. You have to address health care costs. Well, that's the problem, is rising health care costs. And that's, you know, there's many, it's a national crisis, it's health care costs. And that affects the middle class, you know, what they make, their income also affects the, you know, the ability to sustain federal health care programs, which are central to middle class life and retirement. And we go, in the book, we essentially say, we try progressives, because I have lots of clients who wanted single payers or who want to make effort on.  Okay. This is going to weigh a lot, 2014, and it's going to weigh a lot after that. There's no more important progressive project than making the health care reform work. Because that's it, there we go then. And there are things within it, there are things that did not happen in the bill because of special interest lobbying, what it would be the first thing to do to address, go back, put in, you know, get back the public option into it, we're going through with the politics of it. We're running with people who are involved in the writing of it.   But we've got failure and this was a real challenge and I challenged all our union funds on this. Insolvent-based health care has failed. We have one of the graphs out here on high school graduates and the percentage of them that get jobs with health care. It's 20% get jobs with health care. How can we carry on? If you're saying maybe they're working with them, you know, carry on with a system in which people, the overwhelming majority don't get jobs with health care. So we have to make the health insurance. My, my view is we'll have to make the most of the individual mandate and I would move away from employer-based health care to an individual base but that will require much more money in the system. It requires a higher minimum wage because employers will shift for those who provide it. You know, we don't trust, we don't trust in the wages, you know, people's wages to compensate for the fact that they are now covering the health insurance themselves. So we dedicate the foliage of transaction backs to pay for the substance. It was a much bigger substance being paid off than it had been. Most people are getting their health out and changing. That states compete amongst themselves to, you know, to get costs down and universality. But that's the hardest thing. And we've been alluding to the end of the health care chapter. We're out there. And because we gotta be, if it's, we gotta say what has to happen here. We're failing and employer-based health care is failing. And so we have an evolving system.  Um, let me, um, let me talk about it. We, um, um, we just put out, I was in good copy of these graphs. We just put out a copy of pointers for economists. We're talking about the economy and the kind of economy and dealing with the long-term problem, the structure of problems and what kinds of investment are we going to make in this period.  This book was, you know, it came out. It was amazingly published within like two and a half months. I finished showing the writing. And so the pretty up-to-date, you know, the data and the slides up, you know, updates some of the tests that we have on the, you know, messages with a, you know, position to do well because the program has changed. And with that, we're in a position to do well in this election, I think, as the president has moved. How do you study where it was? Criterion wins people, the department will move in order. We're not 60% of the country if they turn around track economically.  We have a number of track monthly, you know, first economic metrics. But they're still going down. Okay, so the thing that makes the election hard is people are in pain.  They won't think things will be better. I think that making a decision around me doesn't get them, you know, better.  And had the president run on, you know, let us finish the job of moving the election and no bigger agenda for long term, I think, I think, well, we would have won. I think we're in a position to win. The issue is, and our challenge is, can we make it big enough in the middle class and the policy option, big enough that they can re-adjust the problem? Because it's not clear to me that we have on this table. Other than that, you know, policies that can advance but they're not really addressing any quality which kind of income and the corruption of the democratic process. There would be things that, you know, need to be addressed and the more we push it to that, the better chance we actually have of doing it come January 1, or the long term. So thank you, and I'm happy to answer questions. Thank you very much. We're gonna move into a little further conversation to get into some of the issues of the book. There's one question before I take questions from the audience and I'd like to ask you because it's a major feature of the book where you and James talk about education and your own educational experiences and kind of how your family's valued it. But there is one line where I think it was yours, where you said, you know, the class of education continued to go up and the value of education continues to decline at some point. Soon we may be facing the point where it's no longer worth it for people to get college degrees. For example, so can you just talk a little bit more about what you think that does to the middle class effort and really how people view the American dream? It was James who said that. Sorry. Well, sometimes the other, you know, you can usually tell when it's, you know, when I got wrong, this guy went for it. But I was told that, and he said that, and was struck by that. I'm actually struck by how amazingly non-national and non-capable people are about the education stuff. Because I'll describe this for the sure of the people where things are a wreck. And there are, you know, a significant number of them, particularly women, significant number of them are off getting training or in community colleges or trying to find something. And looking for something to give them advice on what's to read or what doesn't make sense to do. I mean, I do this in Europe. I pull the word of party in Britain. In Israel and other places. But I do groups in Britain now. And there, we have higher unemployment rising now. People are totally inert. There's not this sense of, you know, this can be better, there's structural forces, there's a larger kind of political change that will affect it. And so they're more politicized. But here, people are very into personal strategies, you know. And I think they will react to an economic, debate on education. There's actually almost nothing, and our tests, you know, this month, we tested the different agonist messages, the present, the educational ones as a start. Both the critique of their cards, their 20% card. Because people, this is the only strategy they got. You know, so they're not, I think at other levels, you know, whether we're going to full college and more expensive colleges to community college, people think this is the only way. It's the only thing we got. And so everybody's still investing in it. And so we have an obligation to get the cost under control and affordability. And our language on it, politics is not that great. I mean, the president talks about how much the program changes and made a difference. And it's true, but it's really hard when it's being overwhelmed by the inflation of, you know, college costs to say, you know, it's been better. If you want to identify, you know, the two groups that are most problematic in this election, it's young people, in terms of level of support and willingness to vote, and working class, I suppose. I don't know, the two groups that right now are performing significantly worse than 2008. But education is a piece of it, but they want it to happen. So it's, well, it kind of is like, I expect disengagement in some ways more than, you know, going around. And there's no increase in number of people calling themselves Republicans.  But it doesn't necessarily do its votes for us. And there's certainly a lot of confidence that we have a strategy and no other plan or, you know, they really want to know what's the plan. And if education, and if you list the pieces that they wanted to plan, education is the number one. Okay, we got a question from the audience, yes, sir? Yes. Yes, thank you. Whenever I go to real quick politics, believe it or not, I always suppose, I'm always struck by the fact that there's one sort of that is different from all the others. I mean, there are two groups that's right. Which always shows, or usually always shows, running with a small lead. And all the others show Obama will believe, and it's the same thing in the Senate races, by the way. The public can always come down very rascally than the Democratic candidate in all of those other races. So what is it about what's Rasmussen doing? Is it something that's the way, is he constructing his questions to get a particular response? What is it? I know one of the explanations, but there's probably others. And we do know that after the last election, there was an evaluation of the polls and Rasmussen was consistently two points. There's a moving average of all the polls. It's consistently two points more than the moving average. So it's a, some polls have fluctuations. They go above and below. If they're both methodology, that's not a biased methodology, they're like a small sample. It'll just fluctuate a lot on both sides of this moving average. Rasmussen is always on the same side. The biggest thing is that it is a auto dial in a poll. And so it's, which means legally, there can be no sufferings. And right now our polls, our national polls are one-third sufferings. And so it's more expensive to do it, but their methodology doesn't allow them to do it legally. And so there's no compensation for it. I suspect the other piece is race. And that's, probably Gallup is also consistently off because they refuse to make a judgment about what proportion of the electorate will be minority in this election. Now, no pollster would do that, because we know, we have exobolves, we have the census that does a sort of right after the elections. We know what the racial composition of the 2008 electorate is. We know the population trends. We know that the minority portion has never gone down. Now it's growing. It's all, so it's, so we have kept it the same. So it was 20, you know, 6% in the last election 2008. We've kept it that because we thought the African American vote would not be as high as it was, but we may be wrong. There are others that have the 28% because of the Hispanic, you know, rather than it may be that African American voters protect Obama, and so it'll be 26 to 28, okay? So Gallup has it at 24. If you look at, they say, I'll set a quota, so they'll allow just the sample to come in. Their number is actually 24. So they're making, and Gallup is making an assumption that the minority portion will be lower in this election that it was in 2008. And no one else believes that. I mean, I do a lot of bipartisan posts for MPR and for, you know, the early times.  And we have the same, we have the same racial projection. So that's why Gallup is systematically more favorable to the, to Obama. You're saying Rasmussen does an autodial? Yes. So they're fair by themselves. And so what is the consequence of doing an autodial in terms of the results that they get? Do they get less completed data? So it just was. So yeah, it's actually better than you would think.  It's, there are lots of problems, you know, in terms of seniors, seniors lost their word to do a lot of quotas with it. They have to have stuff, they're weird. And you should not believe any of their state posts. By the way, you know, maybe some of the other things just look at comparing the polls that have cell phones and the average lead for Obama for non-cell, 2.9, the average lead with cell is 4.1.  Could you just talk a little bit about cell phones and representative samples and why they're important? Well, just, you know, I've been with young people, and me. I don't know why I've been that, you know, I don't answer my, you know, house phone rather. I don't know, the, two things. One, you have to, that's where people are. And so you have to reach them. There's just gotten more and more people that are either, you know, 50-50 on cell or cell phone only. I mean, the cell phone only may be pushing toward 20%. I mean, it's moving, unbelievable way. Now, on the other hand, it's also saved us because the optimization load is higher with cell phone because we, it's not as cluttered.  Because we can do it, because we're not, you know, it's a human, it's a human, a lot isn't allowed you to do auto stuff.  So it's important. Now, we're also, you know, we used to pull, like Sunday, start Sunday, that's when most people are at home. You know, so you start Sunday and you like to call over to the next day. Now, you start yourself on Saturday morning and go through the weekend on cell because people are more willing to do a cell phone interview. Not at work, but rather do it. You know, so it's changing. Why didn't we call? But it actually pulls you probably a little better now. A little more representative, if you know the cost of the cells. It's not in the end of the opinion as to why, as you said, I mean, clearly, they probably know this information as well. Why would they not opt to do something? I understand.  For the purposes. And then, you know, they check which times pass the standard and so it does not have the check that it meets the standard. I understand why it's in the average. You know, I tried, I tried this way, but it's so clearly biased and structured to be fine. That it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be the average that it shouldn't be published.  We have an average which we leave out the rest of this. Thank you. All right. Come back, Mr. Harrison. Oh, thank you. I'm happy to have you here, sir. We're a part of a coalition called Faith Hypology. Not Faith Hypology, but Faithful, but. I know there's a bar mix in here. Yeah. And one of the things that we talk about a lot is the coalition of Christian and Muslim. And a lot of things that we talk about are like, and when I hear this, I can't ask, well, where are the people like this? And I mean, because if the party's in the class, we're going to hold one, so I have to, and I notice that politicians, and I like to talk with them about it. It's a big part of it, by the way, not that I'm on commission or anything, but it's also a big part of the book. Help! We do address it, but everyone is a chapter in which we talk about who's middle class in terms of, I'm sorry, definitely.  Because we start with, and we also, in the end, we believe it's not defined by income or by self-identity, it's defined by values. And that aspiration is the way we define it. But we do do the exercise. First of all, let's go about income.  Obama is under, you know, under two, you know, two 50. You know, we go to this, and we say, we've read an article in New York Times about the servant, the workers, and working in the food industry, and the hotel industry in New York. And one of them has health benefits, and they get, you know, just barely on a minimum wage, you know, with no benefits, multiple jobs, clearly unfollowing the poverty level. You know, we say, why aren't they middle class?  And we have an inclusive view of it. We always say middle class, and people aspire to be middle class. And so it's people who believe in hard work and who believe in education, you know, should, you know, move up each generation. It's kind of the central, you know, piece of it. I'll go a further than the bit, because we did a study in which we had the president saying in his method, we had to do a message, some phrases that said, you know, I'm sad about the Ryan budget and what it does, particularly what it does, it's the most vulnerable. Just to put something in the face, the most vulnerable, you know, to it. And we included in the critique, we had all the, you know, we had cuts, 20% cut in education, the Medicare, 6,000 transfer of costs to seniors. And we added raises taxes under working poor, pushing two million children into poverty. I was like, got the highest? I was critiqued because of the Ryan budget. Now, I've been trying to make the case, and then we showed that moved. When moved, we're unmarried, we're the one, you know, we're the changing country, the majority of country, majority of both are minority, you know? A majority of families are unmarried. Okay, we're unmarried with a country that's increasingly unmarried. Unmarried women could be a quarter of the record. Okay, they are heavily democratic in their voting. Turnouts to be an issue. But they are one quarter of the elector. Could probably close to half of the vote of Democrats. I mean, is, you know. So I'm not even going to like a critical piece of it. They were really, they were really hard. They were much less incumbent, much more vulnerable, you know, into what's happened as a economy. They all had security of having a second person, you know, spending, you know, money frequently left give. And all really, really hit hard by this crisis. In fact, the bill that came out initially on the first job losses were male.  But unmarried women, like at the very beginning and just as bad as men. So they were hit hard, they were big Obama supporters, hit hard by this economy. Very struggling to come back. They were late, you know, coming back on vote. So what it felt was when the president says, you know, I care about how this affects them as vulnerable, unmarried women are like, well, their vote shifted at 10 points in this exercise.  And I think for you, what Obama has done up to 47 million, I think sets up an algorithm about to push back and say, let's remember here, our coalition here is, you know, wants to be recognized and how much they're on the edge. And so recognizing the poor, recognizing the vulnerable, I think should be part of what we do. Mr. Pollack, I want to answer the question. Yeah. Paul, okay, we're kind of on physical issues here at EPI. And one thing that I was interested in was, because I do a lot of budget stuff, was kind of your point that on the one hand, voters really do respond to this notion that we're going to spend, you know, two trillion or something, they've got over five years and you know, this very large public investment. And on the other hand, they really don't like spending, which of course is contradictory. I, one of the difficulties that I kind of have is, again, making that connection, trying to take like budget issues and try to make them, I guess, applicable for kind of the middle class. And I know that the Obama campaign had kind of tried to do this with the life of Julia in photographic, I'm not sure if you saw that or not, but it shows kind of at each stage in someone's life, you know, how budget decisions actually impact them. So I'm wondering what you thought about that and what, you know, some of the ideas you have about taking the budget debates and actually making them relevant to the middle class. Okay, in the book, there's a chart, this is actually updated there, which it provides over the list of economic problems you want to come through the face. So we have this basic chart here, but you see that we're saying, what's the problems to advance? We have high government spending and budget upsets and high taxes and government regulation, like the top two together. And one third, you know, the responses they can get you with taxes, but there's one third of the responses, but there's no doubt, you know, just, when people are looking at the long-term problems raised in the country, debt and spending in debt is like serious for them. So you've got to, we'll have to have that, you're recognizing it, and I will talk about it. And then we have, you know, lack of jobs and the dispute evenly between, you know, between lack of new industries, the great jobs and China and trade practices, you know, impacting jobs.  So there was kind of a measure of the scale of it, but, you know, people don't think you're serious. If you don't have debt as part of what you're doing, you know, they think you're not serious about the long-term problems. And so they're probably the least for a while, look like they're serious, because at least they want to cut spending. You know, like you said, there's one problem you're going to address, not enough, you know. So we are struggling with how to do this. And those, you know, in the book I, you know, paid for the way out, you know, after I lost this, I didn't have a back and forth with a partially fictitious and not totally, I was championing them because each one defiled it, but that's not because we didn't argue that, you know, on austerity, that we're still going to argue about it. But you know, we've got a, you know, the metrics I track right now on, this is on spending on austerity that we asked this month, in which we're, you know, we're asking, if drastic cuts in government spending will weaken the economy and cost jobs, mean more payouts and lost tax revenue that makes the deficit worse. Now we know it's true, we're watching Britain, that's exactly what's happening. Or, no matter the way that we're still prosperity and market confidence, is dramatically reduced government spending and long-term deficit. It was two to one, this is like, nah, this is a political, we just, you know. And we don't have to be gunned to win this, you know, win this, you know, I don't know. However, what we have found is that, and it's an experimental exercise, that when we make the argument that the crudely argument that it's actually like a, you know, worse and that we'll have to have this money and we'll be able to burst an investment. It actually, even though it doesn't scroll, when we cast a rein on whether we're winning the overall economic argument and the political debate, it has a significant impact. In fact, more impact than any other message.  The strong, much rather, you know, the strongest message that we tested, I think I have it here in the, that says that while we were addressing Denver, the most important thing now is investing, building our American strong financial advantages and growing the economy in the low class. You know, our perched economy says it will prove stronger, grow and share prosperity when we start with the middle. But it's, the starting point is that, you know, we will address it, you know, why we will address it better, but we acknowledge it's important. And I think of the only message we tested, you know, it says that we actually will do better in reaching the deficit by going for growth. And so it was one of the most impactful messages we had so that there is a way of doing it and we'd have to address it. And I think that would be explicit, I don't know if it comes to be subtle, don't work. But you do have to say, you know, you get it, you recognize it's important. And you have to say at the end of your message that this message of getting growth will, in fact, bring down the deficit faster. And so it looks like it's part of your burden, but what you're really making the case for. And that one message, I'm not sure if it says it, why we, it needs to be in progress with the sounds like you're doing your investments in this long term. So, you know, we should be investing in our infrastructure to modernize the country, we should invest in our energy, that's gonna make us energy in the building, great job.  And so we can, you know, we have found that we can advance the argument if we get in that context. I'm doing it anyway on Britain because we're in the middle of that, you know, debate against, it's moving in our favor, but you still have the plurality in Britain who say, despite the contraction, well, it may be painful in the short term, well, by the way, so they don't make things better in the long term. There's no plurality that says that, but when we started the poll, we had like two thirds, you know, saying it would be a dramatic drop and people thinking it would pay the long term in Britain where you've lived with it. You know, but this is, this is the central debate. Okay, let's do the camera and then talk about the other one. Hi, I'm Dr. Carroll. I'm Poplin. I'm a primary care physician. As of April, I've been, I've been turning. As of April, I became a senior and I'm originally from Massachusetts. So I have three questions. We'll see how many we get. Oh, okay, I'll get those first. Give me a question, I'll ask. Elizabeth Warren, if what you say is true, Elizabeth Warren should be running away with this from Massachusetts.  I know the latest poll, but it was a struggle. And who knows if it will, if it will stay in her position about big banks and all that is unequivocal. Second thing, Medicare and Social Security, seniors were big, for seniors, it's,


We now welcome you to a CN Live special, a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Consortium News. I'm Joe Laurier, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News. And I'm Elizabeth Loss. On this day in 1995, Robert Parry, one of the country's leading investigative reporters, started a website on something called the Internet that was like no other that had existed before. A quarter of a century later, it is still going. For the Associated Press and Newsweek, Bob had uncovered major stories. He blew the cover on Iran Contra, one of the greatest scandals in US history. He first reported on the CIA's relationship with the Nicaraguan Contras and their narcotics shipments to the United States. And he put the spotlight on the first October surprise in the 1980 presidential election. By revealing crimes and malfeasance by the US government, that did not sit well with his mainstream editors. They tried spiking his stories. They set up absurd demands like asking Oliver North to confess. And at one point told him to stop asking too many questions for the good of the country. After working on an October surprise documentary for PBS's frontline, Bob left established from journalism behind so that he could simply do his job unhindered. He found a like-minded consortium of journalists whose stories had also been suppressed to begin Consortium News. It started on paper as a newsletter mailed to subscribers' homes. But on November 15, 1995, 25 years ago today, Bob launched the world's first independent news site. He beat salon.com online by five days and established outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal by several weeks. More importantly though, Bob Perry was at the forefront of alternative online news that questioned establishment narratives and Washington congressional wisdom. He covered stories the mainstream media wouldn't and took angles on stories that were being ignored with virtually no staff besides the help of his sons and longtime assistant Chelsea Gilmore. Bob built a following and enough readers to fund the operation. Thousands came to depend on Bob's take from the news. A TV presenter once told Joe that he would wait to see what Bob had written that day before deciding what his show should be about. While Consortium News has never come close to being mass media, its audience attracted influential people in Washington and elsewhere. Bob wrote, quote, the point of Consortium News, which I founded in 1995, was to use the new medium of the modern internet to allow the old principles of journalism to have a new home, i.e. a place to pursue important facts and give everyone a fair shake. But he added, more and more, I would encounter policy makers, activists, and yes, journalists who cared less about a careful evaluation of the facts and logic and more about achieving a preordained geopolitical result. And this loss of objective standards reached deeply into the most prestigious holes of American media. This perversion of principles, twisting information to fit a desired conclusion he went on, became the modus favendi of American politics and journalism. And those of us who insisted on defending the journalistic principles of skepticism and even-handedness were increasingly shunned by our colleagues, a hostility that first emerged on the right and among near-conservatives, but eventually sucked in the progressive world as well. Everything became information warfare. Bob continued to break stories about the Reagan era into the 1990s, including the existence of a secret perception management program run by the CIA from within the White House. With the 2003 invasion of Iraq, consortium news became the home of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals Facility, a consortium of former intel officers who exposed the faulty intelligence leading to the war. Like honest reporters just trying to do their jobs, Bob said, there were also honest intelligence officers trying to do the same. Bob wrote that Republicans started this downward trend in politics and in journalism by first weaponizing information to de-legitimize their opponents. He wrote, quote, rather than accept the reality of Nixon's guilt, many Republicans simply built up their capability to wage informational warfare. He continued, the idea had developed that the way to defeat your political opponent was not just to make a better argument or rouse popular support or to dredge up some crime that could be pinned on him or her. Soon the Democrats would be using the same tactics. He wrote, the trend of using journalism as just another front, and no holds barred political warfare continued with Democrats and liberals adapting to the successful techniques pioneered mostly by Republicans. Thus Bob in just trying to do his job as a reporter became increasingly critical of the Democrats too. He wrote groundbreaking stories on the Obama administration's wards in Syria and Libya and especially on the US engineered coup in Ukraine. He was especially fierce about Democrats who lost their skepticism and embraced the intelligence agencies. He wrote, quote, ironically many liberals who cut their teeth on skepticism about the Cold War and the bogus justifications to the Vietnam War now insist that we must all accept whatever the US intelligence community feeds us even if we're told to accept the assertions on faith. Perhaps consortium news and Bob's biggest story in 25 years was being in the forefront of skepticism on the now thoroughly debunked Russia Gate story which was taken on faith from unnamed intelligence sources. Bob also defended Julian Assange's earliest 2010 against government designs to arrest and imprison him which did not please many Democrats especially after the 2016 election. For taking an independent stand based on where the facts led him, Bob upset both Republican and Democratic partisans. That's because he left a legacy of strict non-partisan journalism, really the only kind of journalism that there is which this site has endeavored to continue. It led to personal attacks on Bob from Republicans and Democrats, oblivious to the fact he was critiquing their political enemies too. The attacks on this site for the same reasons have continued. So joining us today to help celebrate Bob Perry's and consortium news is 25 years of achievement are Diane Dustin, Bob's wife who lived through it all, filmmaker and journalist John Pilger, Ray McGovern a former CIA analyst, a close associate of Bob and an important contributor to the website. Nat Perry, one of Bob's sons who made major contributions to the development of the site. Spence Oliver, one of Bob's anonymous sources on the Iran Contra story and Gareth Porter a long time contributed to consortium news. To start the program, we will hear from a supporter and friend of consortium news and to Bob film director, Oliver Stone. And we'll have Oliver chat about consortium news with his co-author of the untold history of the United States American University historian, Peter Kuznick, Oliver and Peter, welcome. Oliver, before we drill down to the questions, why don't you just briefly say how you met Bob and how you first got introduced to consortium news? Yeah, I meant your dinner party, Peter, when we hadn't started until history was just as a guest and we talked about what was going on in Washington in the 90s, which seems like such ancient history now. But I got to know Bob basically through consortium news because I started to read it. And the stories were, I heard of him with Newsweek and I knew Maynard Parker who was his boss. He criticized Maynard Parker among others at Newsweek for being chicken and not going with his stories. And I know those people. I sense what kind of propriety exists around them. So I know where this Washington sense of you don't cross this line. And I felt that my whole life and all my work, it's gotten worse. As you know, I went through the JFK case and it's impossible sometimes to argue with these people. Bob, I never discussed JFK with him but it was clear that he was onto something with this Iran Contra because we were talking to some of the same people. And it's a dirty, dirty story. It went deeper than ever got out and Bob knew that. And I mean, obviously it seems to me that Reagan was impeachable for treason at that point. And certainly George H.W. Bush, the father should have gone down that road and been prosecuted or at least accused and brought into this thing because Bob makes a big deal about how he found evidence later after the case was closed and they weren't let off but he made the point that the CIA brought out a IG report and it was clear that the Russian documents had not been examined. And the Russians knew quite a bit about the case. So it gets very complicated that Bob was always with that case. He never gave it up. He was like a Sherlock Holmes and nothing could stop him. I admired that tenacity and that's when I got involved with him and I contributed to the organization, continue to love this, love the writers for this consortium news. He started something that should continue in the tradition of, from my, from one of my knowledges of I.F. Stone, I'd say early in the 50s. And although I was a conservative I certainly read some of his stuff and was shocked. And later Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson who that you may criticize them for certain things but they did a hell of a job of waking me up. And we need those journalists without the John Pilger who's sitting here today is another one. We need these people to wake, to go in, to go in and people don't do that. And it's stunning to me that's, well, I guess I have to understand why it's scary. I mean, we know a lot of investigative reporters who do get lost, who really get lost. I mean, I know a guy, and I respect him, Tom O'Neill. Some people say he's crazy, but he's been going after the Manson case since the 1980s, 90s and he's still in there. It's a rabbit hole and that happens. Bob, thank God, got out of the rabbit hole. And as angry as he was, he was, he never gave up insisting that he had the truth. And I'd like, even he went back to Iran, Contra as late as a few weeks before he died. Oliver, you started with talking about Bob's work in Central America and exposing what was happening with the Contras and the drug running. It's interesting to me that in so many of your films, you also are very critical of mainstream media. Beginning with your first major feature film, Salvador, the Valerie Wildman character, you really pillory there. But we go through some of your other movies like Wall Street, JFK, Talk Radio, Natural Born Killers and especially Snowden. And you've got this ongoing critique of the media and the lies that the media keeps foisting upon us. On the other hand, you talked about the truth tellers. And you and I both consider Bob in the tradition of the truth tellers that also runs throughout all your movies, whether it's Garrison or maybe we can go through all these characters who ended with Snowden. And you and I talk about Henry Wallace and others who speak truth to power. And but, and it's interesting to me that you began that critique of the mainstream media before JFK came out. Because you got attacked viciously for JFK, but you were going after these folks as early as Salvador and movies before JFK came out, also to some extent in Born on the Fourth of July. So how do you see Bob in that tradition of truth tellers, people who stand up to the power establishment and are willing to risk and actually pay a huge price often as you did for speaking truth to power? That's a big question. I mean, Bob was at the forefront. He's one of the best I would consider him right up there with, you know, with Pearson, as I said, Stone Anderson. I mean, he sacrificed a lot. He was never into the money. He never was into the position when I met him in Washington. He was quite, he was quite content to have a subscription service supporting his work and his, a base of people who read his stuff. There was no bigger ambition than to tell the truth is what I think of Bob. And in that regard, you have to respect him enormously. He's a treasure. He was a national treasure. The bear in mind that I was against the establishment with Salvador, what I saw in Central America in those countries was, I felt very strongly that Ronald Reagan's was intending to go into Nicaragua and actually get rid of him. I mean, destabilize a place completely, try to, but if necessary, send troops because I saw a lot of troops in Honduras and in Salvador they were devoting themselves to the Honduras, to the Nicaragua situation. So it was clear that I thought that we were into another early Vietnam. It felt like, it just felt like the best thing that ever happened for that cause, of course, was the crash. The CIA as usual screwed up, screwed up in a big way because this fellow, the contractor who got shot down over Nicaragua spilled the beans and he was working for the CIA. And that was somehow, that snap, that was enough. And Bob covered that case too. And the thing unraveled and Reagan's last two years from 88 to, from 86 to 88 were lame and he couldn't get things, he couldn't get legislation through. Very important that that happened. So truth tellers do work even if they don't understand their position in the big picture. Certainly, we know that case is so crucial now. I mean, what's going on with not only Snowden but more importantly, Assange. Assange is at the key of this, all this mess that's been going on for two years it seems to me, and he's never been allowed to, he doesn't wanna talk or whatever. I don't know the details like maybe John Pilger could tell us but he knows things that are invaluable about this and I'm surprised that one or more candidates doesn't take an advantage of it by seeking to pardon him but that would cause a fewer. I understand, but it's an interesting, crucial case. I wish Bob were around to explain it in great detail like he would. I'm not anti-media, I was anti-establishment and then when I did the JFK case I did it out of anti very strong feelings that we had been assassinated for political purposes and he was a very dangerous man to them because he would be reelected and after him came Bobby and after him possibly Teddy. It was a dynasty in the making, it was serious they had to end this thing. But that came out, that is what brought the press down on me. It was not before that, they were not attacking me. Yeah, Salvador they ignored but still it got out and then the other films did well, Wall Street was respected so was born on the 4th of July but then and the doors too but then JFK was the end of that honeymoon or whatever the parole that I had it never changed after 1992.  Oliver, Bob spent much of the last five years of his life exposing the demonization of Russia and Putin talking about Russophobia and Russiagate and a different perspective on what happened in Ukraine and he saw that as so crucial. You've also been very much involved in that. You got attacked again for your four part interview with Putin, one of the things that Bob understood was the importance of seeing how the world looks explain how the world looks through the eyes of our adversaries which you've made an attempt to do also but now beginning in January, 2018 Secretary of Defense Mattis said that international terrorism is no longer the main threat to American national security. It's Russia and China. I was hearing on the television today for Ezekaria talking again about Russia's effort to discredit American democracy. That's what they're trying to do to sow seeds of dissent in America. Talk about a little bit about Russia and how that played such an important part in your thinking in recent years. First of all, I just wanna say Bob got it right away. He saw the Nazi, the neo-Nazi influence in Ukraine and he filled in the history of Ukraine back to World War II, which is you have to go there. You have to understand the tensions in Ukrainian society that came out in 2014. And it's heartbreaking story. It's a heartbreaking story because I've never seen the new, it feels like 1946 Cold War again. It's just, the Russians never did anything good in their life. They didn't even talk about the space shuttle anymore. But nothing, and I'm talking mainstream, like New York Times to me has completely lost its credibility. I never, maybe I was wrong to believe in them anyway. Yeah, a lot of people say that because they did support the Vietnam War for a long time. But what they said about Ukraine was always, it wasn't even journalism. It was editorial writing in the first paragraph. The Russians being described in an objective story as sinister or it's always about Putin. It's who Putin is, he's always Russia. I don't know how you can conflate it to, but they never used to call Khrushchev Russia. They'd say Russia with Putin, it's Putin's Russia. Putin's Russia, like he has complete control of this gigantic place. It's not that simple. And I'm glad I was able to go to the source several times and get my four hours with Mr. I had four hours, about 20 hours with Mr. Putin. And he just got a lot, nobody watches it, except you can see it on Amazon, thank God. Thank God for Amazon, even though much criticized, but you can at least see what he is saying. And he speaks in his own voice, not with some dubbed Thug translator, which the American News Networks always put on his case. The Putin speaks for himself. He's a quiet, brilliant thinking man. He's not at all the picture that is presented to the American public. I've been attacked by that for that interview as a stooge, as an apologist, as a commie and all that. It goes on and on and on and it'll never go away. I love dictators. I bow down to dictators, Chavez, Castro. You know, all these three people I admire because they stood up to a sovereign empire of our own, our American empire, which is trying to end their sovereignty. And they just won't go along with it. And they're independent, very independent. They bristle when you talk to them about would you have observers look at this because they feel the observers will never be straight and they're gonna be crooked. But it's just, the reason I admire them is they were rebels and they're all strong men.  It's a lonely road to travel and some of you know that road. And I guess I've always looked rooted for the underdog as a movie maker. And that's what the movies used to be. It used to be the underdog, right? The guy you never expected would come through. Matt Perry wrote, quote, ultimately Bob was motivated by a concern over the future of life on earth. As someone who grew up at the height of the Cold War, he understood the dangers of allowing tensions in hysteria to spiral out of control, especially in a world such as ours with enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on the planet many times over. I think those powerful words apply to you or me. And I just, would you reflect on that and talk about how Bob saw his purpose in life and how you see yours in that same vein? Well, Bob was very upset, I think, because this Cold War that we've created is even more dangerous. And it's useless, it's unnecessary because there's been no significant threat from any other source than us. Most of the conflict and the tension in the world comes from us because we like to create things to a boil, it's to our advantage. We take advantage of color revolutions that we often are very deeply involved with to change governments regimes that we don't like all around the world. The power of the United States is extraordinary. I'm still amazed that we're able to finance this thing although we're in debt and all that, but it seems like an impossible grasp that we have to keep our fingers everywhere, everywhere literally, whether it's Burkina Faso or Ukraine, the North Pole, all the countries, all the space surrounding China and Russia. It's an enormous empire and it's without precedent in the world because of communications and because of cyber warfare, which we've wholly used again, we've used cyber warfare on the offensive again and again, starting as far as I know with the Israelis back in 2007, eight and nine when we were attacking Israel, I mean attacking Iran. So cyber warfare plus all the money, all the propaganda, the advertising, it's a huge proposition Peter, it's a monster beyond belief. It's a prize, I think that the best summation of it was given actually by Harold Tinter back in his Nobel Peace Prize, his Nobel Writers Prize in 2007 or so, just before he died, he said, it's a miracle, it's a miracle this thing happened. It's an act of hypnotism that has never been seen in the world before, that you have convinced the world, America has convinced the world that they are the good guys. Tinter and a lot of people see it, but not enough. So the job of journalism is to spread that truth, like the ancient Christian missionaries spread the truth about their religion. That's one of the things that you and I go after in our untold history books and documentaries is this notion of American exceptionalism. Bob, we reread his articles, he always understood the importance of putting things in historical context. It made him present to the historical background over and over again for the different topics that he was writing about. And you and I appreciate that importance of history. And you probably more than anybody else in Hollywood have done historical films on historical topics and realizing that Americans have very little understanding of history and much of what they do think they know is wrong. Much of what you've done in terms of truth telling what Bob did in terms of truth telling is based on a certain faith that the public will appreciate the truth and see the light, understand and act differently to change things and make a better world, which is what our goal has been. But there's some things that have happened recently that make that more questionable. The fact that half of Trump's supporters believe the QAnon conspiracy theory, half of them, the fact that where 35% of Republican voters before the election believe the election was fixed, 70% after the election believe the election was fixed, we've run into this problem with the public having no critical analytical capabilities or at least part of the public having that. And we're in a situation now where you look at the Republican party is a multi-part question. But Gorvidal was asked a few years back why Obama when he was being so viciously attacked by the Republicans did not respond in kind with an equal outrage. And Gorvidal said, Obama believes the Republican party is a political party when in fact it's a mindset like Hitler Youth based on hatred, religious hatred, racial hatred, when you foreigners hear the word conservative, you think of kindly old men hunting foxes, they're not, they're fascists. So we're up against the Republican party that's turned into a fascist death cult of sorts where the public goes along with some of this and so how do you see our role collectively, all of us, John and Ray and Joe and everybody as truth tellers up against a world in which people are not really, and some people at least that aren't open to or capable of understanding differentiating between truth and falsehood. This is a question I also would like you to take up after I leave because I think I would love to hear the recorded answers of all these gentlemen and participants. I don't quite agree with you, Peter, you know that I came from a Republican background, strong one, and you have come from the FDR side and you converted me in many ways to your thinking. I understand it.  I think that's going a little bit too far. Sure there's people like that in it and they make themselves very loud and generally speaking they can't spell and they write horrible letters to people and all make a lot of noise but there's a lot of intelligent people and I think they can be reached. And I think you're barking after the wrong issue to suddenly declare that the election count is absolutely correct because all the mainstream media says it is, it doesn't work that way. I think it's very strange that the 2016 election is so quickly forgotten and where the Russians manipulated the vote. Always will. So what happened to the Russians? Didn't they manipulate some voting? I mean, it's apparently dismissed as an issue right away. It's very convenient for them. And I think a lot of Republicans doubt that and they doubt the, they wonder about the mail-in balloting because it's an old technique that's been used for a century. I mean, people would do that. They stuffed the ballot box back in the 1870s in New York and who knows what's there. I mean, I believe that Biden won because of the numerics but again, I was surprised that Trump came so close, you see? So I think that's not an issue that you can easily pinpoint. Don't forget that in Bob's case, one of the great things Bob did was for me, he revised the 1968 election completely. I had to rethink it because when I did my Nixon movie, I was thinking that the Bay of Pigs had something. I really was what Nixon was hiding in his, in those tapes, that 19 and a half minute missing gap. I do believe after reading Bob and seriously thinking about how Nixon pulled off that Vietnamese withdrawal from the peace process. And that was very effective. And I think that might have made the difference against Hubert Humphrey. So in that case, I do think that was what was Nixon may well have been hiding during Watergate was his involvement in that call it conspiracy or call it, it was really a pernicious. It was treason. It was what Reagan did in the 1980 election. If indeed, I do believe the October surprise that was reported on. I think Bob did too, that Reagan held the hostages back through by talking directly to the Iranians and then paying them off with arms to fight the Iraqi war. And the Iranians paying them in cash of half of which he gave to the Contras. So I think there's a dirty deal around the 1980 election and the 1968 election. I think our country has been back and forth. I think the 2000 election was stolen. I do. I think that's the Supreme court did a very bad thing. Said a terrible precedent and we're in a hole ever since that moment, certainly because of the policies of George W. Bush. So there's been a lot of chicanery through all these elections except maybe I think Obama was pretty clean in 2008. I think so. And so forth and so on. Let me just follow up a little. We talked about all of those incidents in untold history in some depth as Bob did a lot of his writings. But when we look at this election, Oliver, you probably spend more time with Vladimir Putin than any other American. Yeah. And we look at this election and there's been very little discussion about Russian interference. There's a lot of warning in the beginning that it was gonna happen. Then there's been nothing about that, basically. And I, but I saw opportunities where Putin really wanted to help Trump. He could have done so. He could have accepted American terms on the New START Treaty, which Putin rejected. And that would have given Trump his ability to brag about a big foreign policy victory. He could have supported Trump when it came to Hunter Biden, but he didn't contradict the Trump on Hunter Biden. I mean, I'll just look at the fact that I was on mainstream Russian television a couple of times a day for the past several weeks during the election and they knew that I was so strongly anti-Trump and accepting of Biden, even though he's not my kind of guy. But so how do you see Russia positioning itself now in terms of the United States and the possibility of a Biden presidency or the reality of a Biden presidency and the kind of tense world we have in which U.S.-Russian relations are at a very, very dangerous point now with the hands of the doomsday clock at a hundred seconds before midnight?  A useful idea. What, what do they call it? A useful idea. Usefully, I know I'm a useful idiot, but I will repeat what Mr. Putin said in his interview, very clearly, time and again. And I asked him time and again, it is not in Russia's interest to go into the American presidential election. First of all, it would be a disaster if something were found out and it would be a major issue, which it didn't become, thank God, but almost. But he said, we don't, that our problem with the United States, we try to deal with every president, but Democrat or Republican, we're willing to negotiate. And, but we have a problem. There is a system in America that is heavier than any president. And whether it's Obama in the White House or Trump or Bush or Clinton, it doesn't matter to the Russians at this point. They see where the, they see the writing on the wall, as they say. And Clinton who had no beef with Russia, suddenly he loves Yeltsin. And of course he helps him, he helps him fraudulently to win that election in 96. But even Clinton, I mean, it doesn't make a difference. So they have to deal with, they know the United States is hostile. They know there's, now they have 13 NATO countries around the, in the proximity to Russia against them. And probably, and who knows what's coming up in Belarus, who knows what's gonna happen in Ukraine. It's not easy, but they're on their guard and they keep, for a very little amount of money, they build a huge nuclear force that is equivalent to our trillion dollar, our trillion dollar effort every year if you prepare for war. The Russians have a what, $60 billion budget. I mean, think about, they're very smart. And thank God, because if not, there'd be even more problems. If we could run over them, as we think some people think, we'd really be in the, into a hot spot, I think. I would never underestimate the Russians. I never, never, never. They're as strong against the Nazis. They were strong against the French. And they're gonna be strong against anybody trying to take over or to beat them or to take something from them. I think we're very lucky that Mr. Putin is a very sensible man and he listens.  Every, I guess he thinks every American resident has to trash us. He once said to me, you know, I probably sound outrageous, but we feel like Jews in World War II. Always Russia. Yeah, you would think that Biden is making such an effort to reach out to the Republicans, who have been so vicious toward him. He could make an effort to reach out to Putin now and try to have a real reset and ease some of these problems and work together on some of the problems that confront us. He's offered again and again, listen, I do have to run now, but please sound, I'd love to get the rest of this tape, whenever it's, I'd love to see what the panel is. We'll make it available to you, Oliver. Thank you so much. I'm sure everyone else has a question for you, but you don't have time, if like John Poser wants to ask you something. Thank you, John. Thank you, Ray. Thank you, Oliver. And Gary. I'm going to just leave. I'll learn now, there's a badge of honor. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye.


Sometimes, you just have to look at something a little bit differently and you can double or triple the results you get in your life. Now one of the ways that's dramatically changed the results I've gotten is the way I think through using the lens of traditional Chinese medicine. Now in this video, I want to share three of the habits that I started implementing in my life based on traditional Chinese medical theory that can dramatically, and for me, did dramatically change the way I think about problems in my life, not just related to health and wellness. What's up guys? Alex Hine, author of the book, Mass to the Day. So the first link below is for a free PDF on five daily rituals that can possibly add 10 years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. So you can check it out right there, the first link in the description. So the first habit here is to look for patterns and not symptoms. It's crazy because so often when we have two symptoms, let's say we get reflux and we get insomnia. For so many of us, we treat them as separate things, but what if they aren't separate things? So this pattern has helped me quite a lot because it's tempting to think, okay, insomnia, I'm using my phone, I'm working too hard, drinking coffee, okay, reflux, you know, I'm eating too much spicy food and fried food. But when you look at the commonality, you say, what's the relationship between the two things? Then you look at that and you realize, wow, you know, three of the nights last week where I had reflux from eating at 8.30 at night, I actually had insomnia and really weird sleep and vivid dreaming and I didn't feel well the next day. That was really interesting. What's that all about? Because the thing is, when you look at the commonalities, you really begin to see the patterns. It would be like trying to understand all the random things in nature, like why is there a tiger in this specific biome and these other animals in this biome and these trees and this kind of weather pattern, looking at those individually makes no sense. But when you look at them, the relationship, you realize, oh, now I see there's this plant which is why there's so much of this animal that eats this plant and oh this plant is here because of this weather pattern, local to this part of the earth. That makes a lot of sense. It produces a really deep understanding. The second habit is to look what's behind the symptoms of your life. Now in Chinese medicine there's this theory that behind manifestation of symptoms is a non-material, some people call it energetic pattern, but there's a physiological pattern that's been changed in a negative way that precedes the development of physical illness. So either structural illness, you know, whether that is like a tumor, dramatic example or something else that's just functional like insomnia, indigestion, etc. But behind it, there's some kind of physiological pattern that's disrupted for often a long time before it becomes a structural issue. So looking at the pattern we talked about and now looking at what's behind the scenes, you could look at this as anything in your life. You could look at this from the lens of dating. You know, we say, oh, I always date the wrong person. I always date like messed up people or always date men who don't treat me well or I always date that unavailable person that's working too many hours or I always date the person who's just like I just they're an addict and they just need to get their life together and they're just struggling perpetually. We look at the external, but we need to look at what's behind the scenes. What's behind the scenes? Why am I going after that? Or why am I tolerating that? Or why am I not getting those internal red flags that something is off here? What is it internally? Now maybe that's psychological. Maybe it's something with trauma and childhood modeling your parents' relationship that wasn't healthy, whatever it is. Look at behind the scenes to see what has been creating this pattern in your life. Now it could be health, it could be relationships, it could be finances or something else. So the third habit is when things aren't working in your life, stop pushing and step back. When I first got one of my acupuncture appointments, it was interesting because I had one some of the muscles in my body were really, really tense and I was afraid that you know when the acupuncturist was needling it, they were just going to keep like drilling at it to try to get it to release or something. But they didn't. This acupuncturist put the needle in and then felt that tension and just stopped. Sometimes he would leave it and come back. Sometimes he would just gently stimulate it until it loosened and sometimes he just left it. Well TCM is based on theory around observing the natural laws of the universe and what that means is that just like in nature, you know animals are really aware of conserving their energy. Animals do not expend excessive energy because energy is absolutely vital to survival. If you're exhausted and another animal could come eat you. So in that sense, animals when they're tired, they just rest, when they're hungry, they eat. When they need to pee, they pee. They're very, very simple but they're strongly aligned with the base principles of evolution which is conserve your energy. They don't force things repeatedly over and over if it's not working. They do what they need to survive. Sometimes that's giving every last ounce of energy, sometimes that's conserving every last ounce of energy. And so in life in the same way, sometimes there are problems that we push, push, but we're not getting any results. Maybe it is fitness in our weight, maybe it is trying to build a business and things aren't happening. Maybe it's trying to make leeway in our career or maybe it's trying to fix our love life. And sometimes we push, push, push, pedal to the metal, we're pounding away, but we're not getting the results we want. And it's in those times where we have to step back and observe and see is there another way to go about reaching the same result because pushing in the sense only will damage us further. There are so many things that cannot be fixed by harder work and pushing and I think that makes human beings very uncomfortable because that means there are other things out of our control or that we need more flexibility in figuring out how to reach that same goal. So I hope that helps.  Now, of course, if you want to stay in touch, grab the free download there below, five daily rituals that can add 10 years to your life with Chinese medicine and then come check out my last related video right there and right there.


Good evening, everyone. It is Monday April 28th at 715 and I will call this Board of Selections meeting to order to start out. We are being filmed so Please smile widely if you're on the camera Start out number one consent agenda Minutes of meetings April 7th 2014 April 14th 2014 Requests one day all alcohol license May 9th 2014 that Arlington Catholic High School for a $10,000 drawing We have a motion a second any discussion No discussion all those in favor, please say I oppose For nothing wrong next Number two traffic rules and orders and other business or approval Charles Lyons hearing room Second any discussion Sure I just wanted to say I'm sure that Kevin will want to weigh in on this in a future time and he'll have an opportunity to do so He was a sponsor of this and I'm sure he was very excited to see that it was approved by the public memorials committee But they the committee sites, you know what we all know about the work that Charlie Lyons did for Arlington and we will hereby rename the hearing room right over across the hall as the Charlie Lyons hearing room, so I'm Kevin will have to enjoy it from the Japanese celebration where it's at right now That exactly same thing and that night it's all our understanding that mr. Grilly will take the lead on Yes, and um, you know, I've gotten to know Charlie pretty well over the past several years, and this is very much deserved That being said we have a motion a second all those in favor, please say aye. I opposed Next a vote authorized town manager to execute agreement in principle Venor Road, Mr. Number three, I'm sorry. I checked it off before we discuss it Discussion and vote Minuteman regional agreement Minuteman school district composition mr. Don So talked about this briefly at the end of last meeting and to put it on the agenda here There are a number of towns the number of the 16 towns in the Minuteman agreement who are Small numbers and who want to leave the Minuteman agreement and are concerned that they won't be allowed to and therefore are threatening to Block the regional agreement for being approved At the meeting that Adam and Joe and I were at at the Westin Town Hall Dover excited that if they in the under the new regional agreement Their costs would go up 82% and they say, you know, we we understand we only send one student But we don't want this to happen and then on Thursday of last week Adam and I and a number of people who have been involved in the Minuteman process including Superintendent Kathy Bodie and our representative to the Minuteman school committee Laura more set Set down we talked about this motion further and it was our collective wisdom that indeed we should support it And one of the things that no one really talks about but is in the language here is that Arlington could Choose to take up this opportunity in the future if it wanted to But the window specified But the motion which I will now read and make Resolved that in the event of ratification of the revised Minuteman regional vocational school district agreement as proved by the regional school committee on March 11th 2014 in the event of notice of desire to withdraw by one or more of the members of the district given within one year of the effective date of the revised agreement The Board of Select and we will not place a warrant article disapproving such withdrawal in a town meeting warrant Unless required by law and will oppose such a disapproval article a motion or motion in any event Second miss my just one question Does this have any bearing whatsoever in terms of the Minuteman regional district warrant article? It does in that We're doing this so that other towns will vote yes on the warrant article I continue to support that warrant like we as a board voted it I continue to support it and this is just trying to advance other towns to agree as well Is this something that we should or that will be conveyed to town meeting when that particular article comes up? Or that's what I'm just wondering only because when I was at the precinct meeting yesterday for 12 14 17 21 Minuteman did come up and then this facet of it came up Yeah, so and that can be answered and perhaps with the chairman and town council because I unless we're really ambitious We won't get to the Minuteman warrant article tonight But I'm just wondering if in some way maybe it's just having the chairman get up at the beginning of the Minuteman warrant article and just make a statement of this vote and then if there are any questions that follow and or It may be worthwhile to have And I know that chair and I are still Discussing who would really be the lead speaker on the Minuteman revised agreement But whoever that speaker be under the withdrawal provision that's allowed under the revised agreement Mention this resolution in the effort that's going on within the district I think that would be the appropriate time to mention that this board and other boards have taken that action for the reasons that Mr. Dunn has laid out just as long as it can fade in some form, so I'll leave it to the chairman and town manager Thank you. I agree. I mean I was at this original meeting as Mr. Dunn mentioned and I think that this is an important step to take is just another Carrot to try to incent districts to sign on do we have a sense right now as to how many other towns might have adopted this already Yeah, I spoke with Kate Fitzpatrick the town manager in Needham and right now the count is at five five She expects by mid next week if everybody who has said that they will adopt that at least eight will have adopted by next week Great and most of the town meetings start next week the key town meetings, so this is it's all happening on time We'd be at 50% Which is what you really you need 50% to say yes, and then the ninth who wants to get out you got your majority right there Yeah, great Any further discussion? No, we have a motion and a second all those in favor, please say aye. Aye For nothing And I'm moving forward now number four a vote to authorize town manager to execute agreement in principle Then our road mr. Chaplain, so what the board has before them tonight? Is an agreement in writing as was described to the board at a prior meeting about the negotiations with the owners of 55 Venner Road So drafted by town council and then worked between the property owners attorney and town council. We have this final agreement It's been executed by Denise long the names trustee from the property owners it has all of the Areas of the financial concern that we discussed and you'll notice that it is Only or it's subject to the approval of town meetings So there's no commitment on the part of the town or the board here to do anything without the approval of town meeting So tonight what I'm asking the board is for formal approval for me to execute this document When it's executed then there'll be a formal vote before the board and the next agenda item And we'll distribute that to town meeting for potential action And I'm possibly Wednesday night or a future night of town meeting so moved Second we have a motion and a second any discussion type of Principle I think we got the wrong principle. I think it's le we've got at least The case like we can double-check it but pending We'll be checked. All right, good great Any further discussion? No, we have a motion in a second all those in favor I I opposed How yeah, how are we gonna share this Are we gonna issue a supplemental report or we're just gonna put this on everyone's chair Oh, I'm sorry, did I might jump again? Oh, I apologize. I was jumping ahead No, but fair question if you yeah, please if the board so votes on article 16 on the final vote and comment along with the agreement There'll be a supplemental report placed in the chairs before town meeting tonight Next final votes and comments we're taking away that rubber stamp Adam Article 16 by law amendment 55 been a road removal of easement restriction Move approval Second again with them under the comments section 1 2 3 4th line down principle Le and it's to mr. Dunn's question This will be is this what we will be placing before town meeting if we if the possibility of being addressed on Wednesday night Is something that people want to have happened and this will be what's placed before town We have a motion and a second all those in favor. Hi opposed Moving forward correspondence receive David Carroll the sports complex traffic light Richard Greco election officer appointed and Mary Harrison and Bruce E. Moulton co-chair job description of a vision 2020 standing committee move or see Motion in a second all those in favor actually just a brief discussion in particularly vision 2020 The correspondents here is that they are bringing in new co-chairs and they wanted us our help in disseminating that and so I guess For everyone who is not yet at town meeting and is watching at home If you're interested in being active in vision 2020 that they are very actively looking for new members and new leadership And that's what the the point of this particular piece of correspondence was Thank you Just briefly I want to extend our congratulations to mr. Greco Richard Greco on his unanimous appointment I know he's been invaluable to myself as Not only is Selectment elected official town meeting member and otherwise and I think it's a testament to the fact that the board put him through and put Him through unanimously, so congratulations to rich Thank you So we have motion in a second all those in favor I opposed Yes, I would like to move to adjourn and that the water sorry is there new business? Oh, I'm sorry. Yes We will do Let's check the time before we agree. Yeah, great. Yeah, just very quickly I believe the board has seen the memo of that town council Doug Heim drafted in regards to miss Lawton's Concerns raised about the relationship between the town and high rock church the board has that in miss Lawton I believe in forward that memorandum as well. So I just want to bring that Thank you No, no no no new business. I'm sorry there was today for this afternoon raised a question about the Community Preservation Act and the specific Version of it that we want to enact the opinion I respect you on us To look at changing which that one that is but I only I literally read though So that the board may you know, I may have called you up and say let's schedule a quick meeting And to I mean obviously we informed the board and share and all that stuff But I just wanted to tell put that out there Yes, I I'd be remiss if I didn't mention our lovely weekend with Nagokio our sister city due to Need to get sent to town meeting we will discuss that further at length at another time So that being said, thank you. Do we have a motion? I'd like to move to adjourn and that the Board of Selections shall reconvene at the annual town meeting for the purpose of town meeting business only and that the Board of Selections shall remain in session concurrent with the annual town meeting and that the Board of Selections Adjournment will coincide with the annual town meeting to solution Second We have a motion to second all those in favor, please say aye. Aye Thank you everyone