My great pleasure to introduce Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Candy Crowley, anchor for CNN State of the Union. Governor Patrick is going to start and give us remarks, and Candy Crowley will interview him before he was elected to his current job. Governor Patrick was the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights under President Bill Clinton and worked as a senior executive for Texco and Coca-Cola. He was working hard in the private sector, as he has as governor, to promote the values of fairness and equality. And today he's going to talk to us about jobs, unemployment and equality. That's actually been one of the themes of the last two days.  She covers presidential, congressional and gubernatorial elections, and also major legislative developments on Capitol Hill. So it is my pleasure to introduce Governor Patrick. Thank you for inviting me to join you this afternoon. I know that you've had a very full agenda these couple of days, so I'll keep my opening remarks as brief as possible so we can spend more of our time together in conversation. With thanks again to Ann Marie, perhaps a little more introduction is in order at the outset. I am called a liberal Democrat from a reliably blue state, so-called, in which, by the way, there are more unenrolled independence than there are registered Republicans and registered Democrats combined. I am a capitalist who believes we need to grow the economy, not just to create wealth, but also and mainly to create opportunity. And I have spent most of my professional life in and around private companies, including as you heard as a senior executive in two Fortune 50 companies, but I don't hate government or the other party, though I do believe most political labels and much political orthodoxy is stale. Because I am suspicious of conventional wisdom, perhaps none more than that which says that you grow a modern market economy by cutting taxes, shrinking government, crushing unions, and waiting to see what happens next. A version of that in a nutshell was the approach taken in Massachusetts under 16 years of Republican governors. When I took office in 2006, Massachusetts was 47th in the nation in job creation. Real wages were declining in our state while rising across the nation. In a state where education is our calling card, our students had just experienced one of the largest per pupil spending cuts anywhere in America. Our infrastructure was crumbling, roads, rails, and bridges in a state of neglect, so much so that they presented imminent risks to public safety. Healthcare reform had been enacted, but not yet implemented. In fact, from 2000 to 2006, Massachusetts seriously underperformed the nation in both GDP growth and job growth, and by the way, young people and families were leaving the state. Then not long after I took office, the global economy collapsed, adding a new level of misery and challenge. Today, I am happy to report nearly eight years later, Massachusetts outperforms the country on both GDP and job growth. Over the last seven years, our economy grew at about twice the national rate. Last year alone, we added the most jobs in a single year than in any year since the tech boom in 2000, the fourth straight year of strong job gains. Young people and families are moving back into Massachusetts again as well. We are first in the nation in student achievement at or near the top in the world in math and science. We are also first in healthcare coverage with over 98 percent of our residents insured today in economic competitiveness, in entrepreneurial activity, in venture funding per capita, in energy efficiency, and much more. And we've done it responsibly, balancing our budgets, replenishing our rainy day fund, one of the strongest in the country, and achieving the highest bond rating in Massachusetts history. We have our challenges and our setbacks, of course. The recovery has by no means reached everyone. But by many, many measures, Massachusetts is a more prosperous, more open, and more just state today for many people than it was in 2006. So how did we get Massachusetts back in the leadership business? We shifted the paradigm, first and foremost, to a long-term strategy. This was very intentional. In my business life, I was struck by how much pressure there was to manage for the next quarter to get the short-term results, sometimes sacrificing the long-term interests of the enterprise in doing so. I see more and more of that behavior creeping into the way we govern in America today, where we govern for the next election cycle or the next news cycle instead of for the next generation. That's, in fact, why I ran for office in the first place, to try to turn that around. Specifically, our strategy has been to invest in education, in innovation, and in infrastructure. Education because with some 300 universities, research institutions, and teaching hospitals within 90 minutes of downtown Boston, and the world in the midst of a knowledge explosion, education is our competitive edge. Innovation because there are a handful of industries, like the life sciences and biotech, clean tech, the whole range of digital technologies, and even financial services, which is more and more a tech company or a tech business. Those are the kinds of industries that depend on the kind of concentration of brainpower that we have. And finally, infrastructure, which I always describe as the unglamorous work of government, because it supports everything else. That means roads, rails, and bridges, of course, but it also means public and affordable housing, labs, and startup space at our public universities, broadband, and even healthcare, all the things the public builds as a platform for private sector investment and personal ambition. We didn't ignore all the conventions, I have to admit, but we approached them in a more balanced way. We cut business taxes three times so that we would be more competitive, but we also closed a number of loopholes that had outlived their usefulness. We eliminated scores of old regulations, but we streamlined many others that still mattered and improved the processes of review and enforcement so that state permitting moves at the speed of business. We reformed the transportation bureaucracy, our public pension and benefits systems, and underperforming schools, but in each case we did so with labor at the table. We reduced government headcounts significantly and raised sales and gas taxes modestly, but only after engaging a reluctant public in a real conversation about the responsibility each one of us has to leave our commonwealth better and stronger than we found it. My point is not simply to brag about Massachusetts, although I'm loving doing so, can I go on? But rather to show that a strategy of investing in education, in innovation, and in infrastructure works, and to challenge the calcified conventional wisdom that says economic prosperity comes when government's taxes little as possible, spend as little as possible, and regulate as little as possible. The evidence is on our side. I want to point out a couple of other features of our success. The first is the importance we place on investing strategically. Now I know some believe that government investment, that term, is just a clever way of describing government spending. In Massachusetts, we really are tracking and judging the return on our spending. For example, we launched a 10-year, $1 billion initiative to strengthen our life sciences and biotech sector, a natural outgrowth of that concentration of university and medical brain power that I mentioned earlier. We are now halfway through that effort. We've invested about $500 million of public money in grants, tax credits, and capital improvements, which has leveraged more than $1.5 billion in private investment and created thousands of jobs. Similarly, we joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, used the proceeds of the carbon emissions auctions to subsidize energy efficiency measures and surged to the top rank nationally in energy efficiency, by the by annual average job growth in our clean tech sector is over 24 percent. I want to add that the benefits of emphasizing innovation don't only accrue to PhDs. 60 percent of the new jobs in the life sciences are for people with less than a four-year bachelor's degree. Manufacturing, which in our state is now largely so-called precision or advanced manufacturing, is growing 50 percent faster than the national growth rate and seven times the rate it did in the previous administration. A second noteworthy feature of our approach is the importance we place on collaboration. We recognize that no state government can presume to substitute for the private capital markets. But more than philosophy, the practical reality for us has been that our public investment has been most successful where the programs have been designed in collaboration with business and academia and where individual investment decisions have been made with input from scientific and technical experts as well as experienced business leaders. Indeed in one signature project in western Massachusetts, a green high-performance computing center, our partners include five universities, both public and private, and four high-tech companies. The first time many of these institutions have worked with each other, let alone partnered with state government. The point is that we try to target our public infrastructure investments where they will catalyze private investment and the job growth that follows from it and where private sector experts actively collaborate in that. Third, we have had within reason to raise our risk tolerance. We gave generous tax credits to one solar company and it did not work out. Meanwhile, the solar industry, indeed the whole clean tech sector, as I've described, has grown exponentially under the same programs. It is certain that the failure of any particular public investment will be the subject of intense public scrutiny. I get that. And yet we will not be able to make any meaningful investments in education, innovation, or infrastructure if each and every investment must carry a guarantee of successful short-term return. Just as a private investment advisor should not be judged a failure if one stock in the portfolio loses value, so two public investments should be judged on the entirety of the results and not merely on the outcome of any one project. Some fear that government investing will only serve to crowd out private funding of projects and will thus have no net positive effect. With the exception of most, though not all, transportation spending, our investments of state dollars are frequently and purposefully only five or 10 percent of the total capital invested. At those levels and with the determination to seek out opportunities to co-invest with private parties, we have seen no evidence of such crowding out. To the contrary, as I've said, we can show that our disciplined investment strategy has drawn additional private capital into the Massachusetts economy from around the country and around the world. Our experience over the last seven and a half years suggests an important role for government in fostering a robust 20-verse century innovation economy. By any measures, Massachusetts already reflects such an economy. And in that new economic reality, Massachusetts shows the powerful impact that government can have by making strategic long-term public investments in education, innovation, and infrastructure. And yet in another sense, our approach is not at all new. In the 1950s and 60s, before conventional economic wisdom became conventional, significant public investment in education, innovation, and infrastructure was a driving force behind America's economic success. Whether it was President Truman's support for the GI bill, President Kennedy's call for a man on the moon, or President Eisenhower's vision for a national highway system, public investment in education, innovation, and infrastructure was once a good idea whose time, I believe, has come again. Now, I admitted at the outset that I am a capitalist who believes we must have economic growth. But though I have been blessed to have made a little money myself along the way, I do think creating opportunity is the more profound reason why economic growth matters, especially in America. And I will close with a brief reflection on that. America is the only nation in human history not organized the way countries are normally organized. We're not organized around a common religion, or language, or even culture geography doesn't explain America. We're the only nation in human history organized around a handful of civic ideas. And we've defined those ideals over time and through struggle as equality, freedom, fair play, and opportunity. That, I maintain, when all is done is the reason we remain the envy of the world. Indeed, as Israel's President Shimon Peres says, we are the only superpower whose power comes not from taking, but from giving. At a time when the chasm between the haves and the have-nots in America is growing, and the impact of not just inequality but immobility is a reality confronting millions, we have to do what works to make opportunity real. I think that will include disenthralling ourselves of some of our political conventions. And you brought up the infamous blue cards. That's the blue cards, right? You never know what's on the six. Well, first of all, thank you for taking the time. So let's talk, let's, Massachusetts sounds like a lovely place to live. So let's talk about applying what you just talked about to the country as a whole. So let me get a situational from you, as we call it. How do you think the American economy is doing? Well, so first of all, yes, Massachusetts is a great place to live. And we have a lot of things going for us. January and February are not two of them. But I do think that the, I think the economy is recovering. It's not recovering as strongly or as fast as I think anybody would like. And you have to worry about the numbers of people in the country who are not, for very understandable reasons, feeling that sense of mobility, that sense of, not just that circumstances are hopeful, but that their own, is it not working? Like that? Is it as better? OK. But that they're, should I repeat everything I just said? OK. Really? We don't have time. I think we do have to worry about, and more and more people are worrying about, including public leaders, the fact that millions and millions of people in America are not feeling hopeful, not just about the general circumstances, but their own ability to move forward. And I do think some of that is psychological, because I think there is a psychological element in economies generally, but some of that is about the real issues around immobility. And I do think that there are things we can do about that. And by immobility, you mean the inability to move from this job, which has gone away, to a different job? Well, not just that. I grew up on the south side of Chicago on welfare. I'm not supposed to be sitting here, given how much is happening today that's seen. Is this as spotty for you? As it is? This is better. OK. Who are having a practically difficult time imagining how they move from the circumstances they're in, not just the job, but the whole life circumstances to another place? And that has a whole lot to do, I believe, or can be improved by access, not just to more schooling, but a better quality of education, and the things we do to expand the economy out to the marginalized, not just up to the well connected. And on a, it's one thing to do something about that for Massachusetts. It's another thing to look at the United States, put yourself in the president's seat, which I know you don't do ever. And tell me, what's the first thing you do? Because I think what happens with people who worry about their child's education or who worry about their ability to change jobs or their ability to change class, the ability of their children to do better, I think that they look at and think, in my lifetime, this will never happen, because government can't move that fast. Well, so I think part of it is government, not all of it. I'll talk about the part that is government. And I would give great shout-outs to the Obama administration, to the president personally. I think in education, the raising of stakes and standards is enormously important. And through that, the expectations of our young people from their teachers and of themselves. I think that's incredibly important. And we have some nearly 20 years experience with that in Massachusetts. It fits and starts, but we've got the results to show for it. I do think some of the work, and I don't mean to jump from policy to sort of themes, but some of the work is hordatory. As I said, there's a confidence that we look to our leaders to show in the future. And when you see the kind of sclerosis that exists in terms of legislation in this town, not so much policy, but legislation, that casts a pall on the private economy as well, all apart from the substance of the legislation that's not getting passed. So one of the pieces of legislation that isn't getting passed and is not likely to pass this year is minimum wage. We saw it stymied in the Senate. We're unlikely to see it in the House. There are, certainly on the Senate side, enough Republicans that some people have spoken that I've spoken with and Democrats who say, OK, maybe we can't get it to $10.50 an hour. What about if we raised it $1? And yet you have the folks on the Democratic side, the majority leader, Harry Reid, certainly Senator Harkin, who have said no. No, it has to be the 1050, where the president has also agreed to. Is it better to just stick to that, or isn't $1 more an hour worth trying? Well, it's a negotiation. I mean that, you know, there's a business. Negotiation, I guess that's sort of my angle. Well, I guess what I would say is that the only negotiation there is is public, which is to say nobody's taught. No, you certainly don't get the impression that people are talking to each other outside the glare of the clear lights. You know, we haven't raised our minimum wage yet. We're still debating it. We're moving it. We're moving it. And we might have done it a long time. You know, we're $0.50 apart between the House and the Senate. But they've been at loggerheads for months because they have other stuff they're fussing about. We'll get it done before they finish. Where the right number is between 1050 and 11, which is on the table at home? I don't know. But it's not that big a difference. They'll find a common ground. And I think we ought to have a similar kind of approach at the national level. And yours would actually go. Is that responsive? Is that what you were looking for? Yeah, I was wondering how you would move Washington. I mean, again, we find that governors are really. I don't have that job. I know. But just in case you would ever think about it, I was kind of going for how do you, honestly, since I would say, boy, the late 80s, we have heard early 90s. We've heard candidate after candidate. I'm going to change. I'm going to change the way Washington does business. You heard your friend, Barack Obama, say that millions of times on the campaign trail. And guess what? Hasn't changed. So I'm just wondering if you've got some antidote for what ails it. No, I don't have an antidote for that. I know you get governors who believe they have an antidote for everything and an opinion on everything. I do feel like the origins of the Obama movement and of the Tea Party movement have a lot in common. Don't laugh, because in both cases, people were hungry for a different way of doing things in Washington. They weren't satisfied with the way things are done in Washington. I think the Tea Party has evolved in a harsher direction, in my view. But to the point where compromise is thought of as a sign of weakness or the failure of principle, and that's a problem. But what happens in Washington, and this is the point I want to make, is up to us as voters. It's not up to our representatives. We get the government we deserve. And if people keep sitting it out and leaving it to the pundits and the experts and the money people, instead of working it at the grassroots, which, by the way, is how the president won in the first place, then we will continue to get what we have. Let me ask you about what you touched on in your remarks. I think we found out in April that the American middle class used to be the wealthiest middle class compared to their colleagues or their peers in other nations. Now we see that Canada has probably overtaken us. And that many other countries, their middle class, is growing as ours seems to be shrinking. Why is that? Well, I follow the reporting and the commentary about that. I think a whole lot of it has to do, as I was saying earlier, is this business of mobility. The latter, for me, from poverty on the south side of Chicago to the middle class, was education. And I don't think you have to go to an independent boarding school and Harvard College. In fact, I'm certain you don't. But that avenue is not as well traveled today. Let me give you another example. I told you we've been doing very well in terms of job growth at home. But there are 220,000 people looking for work in Massachusetts right now and 150,000 vacancies. And what those employers are telling us is that they can't find the people with the skills they need to do the jobs they have. So what does that tell us about what our schools are doing and what our training programs are doing? And how do we take that learning at the point where policy touches people and make the changes to make those connections so people can move forward with their lives? And we've been working on that, but we haven't nailed it yet. And one of the things that I also find really interesting is that the parents of millennials, so the new generation of parents, do not believe that their children are going to do better than they do. And it's the first generation that comes that way. It speaks to a, with all apologies to Jimmy Carter, MLAs, it seems to me, that people look at how we're ranking in education, in science, in math, and all of those things compared to other countries. What are middle classes doing? Are poor getting poorer? Middle classes shrinking? The rich are getting richer? And there is this feeling that America, and I know no politician ever says this, but there is a feeling out there that America has seen better days. You know what? We have the National Governors Association, as you know, gets together a couple times a year, one time here in Washington. I was at an NGA meeting, Candy, a few years ago when someone, one of the presenters, asked that question of all the governors sitting around in the room, and everybody was there. And he said, how many of you are better off than your parents were, and lots of hands went up? In fact, I think everybody's hand went up. And then he asked, how many of you think that your children will be better off than you? And very few hands went up. So it's not that politicians won't say it, or maybe they'll just say it silently. They try not to campaign on it. No, of course not, of course not. But you know, I feel like our greatest lurches forward in history in this country have been when we have set goals for ourselves as a nation. And one of the great tensions I see right now, and I see it coming mainly from the Tea Party, is that they raise real questions about whether we want a nation rather than a loose association of states. And there's a difference. Seems to me we ought to have, and it's not that the federal government should set all goals, but there are certain fundamental goals around global competition in particular, and around those American ideals I talked about, particularly opportunity, that we should reach, and I believe can in time, reach consensus again at the federal level. You know, Governor, I grew up in the Midwest actually in Missouri, so I even know where Chicago is. And I find that I hear some urgency when you talk to what we like to call the normal people in their voices when they talk about their children or when they talk about their jobs. And a real feeling that government is always talking about let's set goals. Yeah, let's buy 2030, make sure that our kids all score well in this, that it's too late for their kids in 2030. It's too late for their job in 2030. And so there seems to be nothing simple, and I understand that. But just on the right road, if you ask how many people, whether they think the country's going in the right direction, oh, well, I think it's in the 60% I'll say it's the wrong direction. And honestly, we're kind of in a recovery. So I just wonder about those people who right now look at their lives and think, it's blowing up here. So I see that we get that at home. In fact, you heard me talk about it, and I often do the importance of governing for the long term. And I want you to know I'm very clear that that is not the sensibility of the people I serve at home necessary. It's not the first place they go, because it's not how we think about policymaking or problem solving for that matter in this country. So many of the goals we set were not about things that we were going to accomplish in my first or second terms. But once we got on that path, things started to happen. A lot of these results I talked about were not results we expected to be able to brag about before I left office. But we still, but they began to accrue, and the pace picks up, because we're very focused on a few things that we know will make a difference. One of the things we also read, and not to be Debbie Dahmer, is that I'm very unlike you, Candy. No, is that China, by the end of the year, is likely to become the world's largest economy. Should that worry us? Well, I'm competitive, so it worries me. But I think it doesn't have to be so. I mean, China is a, I've been to China a number of times. I did business in China when I was at Coca-Cola, of course. And I've been there two times on missions as governor. And they have a lot of, I was going to say advantages, a lot of differences. But you're going to say a lot of people. They got a lot of people, that's for sure. I remember, have you ever ridden that maglev that goes, the train that goes from the airport to downtown Shanghai? It's incredible, and it's there in a few minutes. I think that's the distance of 12 or 15 miles. Now, they put that up really quickly. It's a straight line, and they told everybody who was in the way to get out of the way. They didn't ask. They told everybody to get out of the way. There are some trade-offs, I think, we make in a democracy that I think are trade-offs we ought to make because we're a democracy, and I celebrate. But at the same time, I will say that while we had, when I was there the first time as governor, we visited a number of life sciences companies that were doing their manufacturing, Massachusetts Life Sciences companies that were doing their manufacturing in China. Since that first visit, and that was in 2007, many of those companies are bringing their manufacturing home to Massachusetts. And we've been thinking about and working on how to make that environment work for them, and that's one of the reasons why they're coming home. Will the environment work better for the US and bring more US companies home if there were no corporate tax rate? I don't know about no, but we certainly have to have a, we have to fix a corporate tax system that encourages, let me put it differently, makes it harder to repatriate overseas earnings. And by the way, there's a consensus, I think, among business people across the political spectrum on that, I think you're looking out here because maybe there's somebody who's going to disagree with me. I actually was looking at the clock. OK, I'm sorry. But no, no, we have time. I'm sorry. No, no, I was just getting my bearings, that's all. Look, when I was working in companies or serving on company boards, I can't think of a single decision we made based on the tax rate. Not a single investment decision we made based on the tax rate. The tax rate or tax? Is it possible that there are decisions not being discussed, that there are things not being discussed because of the tax rate? Because we know that, comparatively speaking, the corporate tax rate here is really high. Well, let me just, where I was going with that is, first of all, they better not have been having those discussions without me in the room in those roles, the ones I was referring to. But what I meant where I was going was, the tax rate or the tax benefit was a closer. It's not where you started the conversation, but it might have been how you resolved the conversation at the end. And a combination of tax simplification and rate change and a harmonization with the economies where we compete and want to compete is very, very good, in my view, in a globally competitive marketplace, if we really mean to have a globally competitive marketplace. And by the way, I think revenue is not going to be jeopardized if we get that right. If by bringing down corporate tax rate. But not just the rate, but also simplifying the systems, eliminating a lot of these loopholes, particularly ones that can't be shown to be current in how they encourage investment and enabling the free flow of capital and the return on that capital across national lines. When I talked to you a little bit about health care, I think probably everybody here knows that it was compared to the President's Affordable Care Act who Mitt Romney was in Massachusetts as governor when it went into effect. Tell me now, looking at the Massachusetts health care system, is there anything you'd change about it? Is it working perfectly, or are there things you need to change? Let's see, we are 98, I think today, 98.5% insured, 99.5% of children, I don't think there's another state in America that can touch that. 90% of our residents report that they have access to a primary care physician and have seen their physician in the last six months. We're healthier on a whole host of levels, measures. We are, it's added 1% of state spending to the budget so it hasn't been a budget buster. And by the way, it's popular. Health care reform in Massachusetts polls in the sort of 70% approval range. The ACA in Massachusetts polls 50-50. They're the same thing, right? They're the same thing. I do think we have been selling it harder and longer and more deliberately. They've been in place longer as well. Well, some of those numbers go back a while. Now, our website has given us heartburn. I wish that weren't so, especially after having engaged. It turns out the same vendor who built the federal website to build ours, and that's enormously frustrating. But can I just say, I know I'm going on, but that we had an advantage, have an advantage at home that the president hasn't had at the national level. In our case, we had a very broad coalition of business, labor, medical professionals, advocates, and so on, policymakers who came together to invent health care reform and then they stuck together to revise it as we went along because we were learning as we went. And there have been four or five major pieces of legislation to refine it. And the president doesn't have that kind of set of circumstances. What's wrong with Obamacare? Well, there's a lot to like about it. I think the one frustration that we have in Massachusetts is that the reimbursement rate, although pretty good, is really good for the states that weren't doing anything around health care reform before the ACA went into effect, and less good for those of us who were out in front. And I'll get over that, but I wish it weren't so. It's complicated, maybe more than necessary, in terms of the numbers of different kinds of subsidies, the different sources of subsidies.  So I get that. There'd be ways to make it simpler. And we will learn about those and others as we go along. But as I say, if you don't have a coalition that's willing to come back to Congress and say, now it's time to fix this without the debate being whether to repeal it entirely, that's a very difficult conversation to have. So if you had to wave a magic wand in terms of how it affects Massachusetts, which is probably minimal compared to other states since you're already highly insured there, what do you think is the most problematic, either in, quote, bending the cost curve or in getting everybody covered or what? So one big difference between the health reform that Governor Romney signed, we don't call it Romney Care anymore, because it went into effect the day I took office. I think we should start calling it Patrick Care, as long as it's working as well as it is. Seriously, one big difference is that the bill the governor signed was just about access. They put the question of cost off to another day. We did cost as one of those follow-on pieces of legislation. There's much more around cost containment in the ACA, and that's a good thing. So that's helped us. That together with our own legislation has meant that what were double digit annual base premium increases are down to less than 3% year over year for the last couple of years. That's been really great. Well, back to simplicity, we have not done our subsidies by tax rebates, which is the ace centerpiece of the ACA.  I like it our way. And a final question as our minutes run out here. Tomorrow, 10th anniversary of the top court in Massachusetts saying that it was unconstitutional to ban same-sex marriage. So you were the first state to allow a legal same-sex marriage. So in those 10 years, can you look at it and say, this benefit has come to Massachusetts because of this, or this negative has happened as a result of that? So the sky hasn't fallen, the ground didn't open, and swallow us all up. Somebody somewhere has done a study about the numbers of same-sex weddings that happened in Massachusetts while we cornered the market on that. I don't know what that number is. I don't really care. The main point is that we affirmed an ancient principle, which is that people come before their government as equals. And that makes us proud. There have been a lot of people that have referred to this movement for lesbians and gays as this year's civil rights movement. Do you see it that way? I think it is. I know the sensitivity among some civil rights leaders that you can't sort of equate that with the struggle of African-Americans to break free of Jim Crow. And I get that point, too. But civil rights is a relay race for justice, as one friend of mine describes it. You do everything you can in your time, and then you hand the baton to others. And it's not that I'm declaring we have one of the civil rights questions around race, by any means. But there is a common American interest in the expansion of justice. It goes back to who we are. So yeah, I think it is a civil rights question. There's been a remarkable amount of progress, both in terms of laws and the changing of people's attitudes in the decades since that first decision. And when you look at it in the same light as civil rights, will this take a federal ruling or a federal law of some sort? Or do you think this will be a kind of a state by state?  How do you see this? I don't know the answer to that. The court's DOMA decision was pretty huge. And I do think all the national polling indicates attitudes are changing. And I think people will, I guess I would say justice, I believe, tends to win in the end, in the same way as Dr. King much more eloquently said that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. I do think it takes people to bend that arc. And I think that as people realize, even those who, maybe especially those who don't approve or are uncomfortable with same-sex marriage, that they don't have to go to a same-sex wedding, even though one may be happening somewhere in their village or town or state, that some of the same kind of progress that we have made around race will happen around the LGBTQ community. Governor DeVon Patrick, Massachusetts. Thanks for stopping by. We ran out the clock. I really appreciate your time. Thank you.


Responsibility means that you're seizing power, that you've given collectively and individually a way to the media, politics, whatever it is out there. Sports, if you watch an ESPN all day, well then you're probably not taking a whole lot of responsibility for your own life. And it's not really a vision and a purpose either. Neither is security, by the way. In Germany, the number one thing always on the questionnaires that I send out, like among the top three is always security, safety, being taken care of.   Nothing wrong with getting married and getting kids, but why are you doing it? Are you doing it because you want that safety, that security? And Thomas Jefferson, our third president, is credited with having said, and they say it was somebody else who said it, but it doesn't matter, he said, those who are willing to give up freedom to gain security will lose both and didn't deserve either. I'm paraphrasing. But what that means is, when whoever said it is not important, but what is important is, if you're seeking security, getting a good job, getting a good education, it's like that song, like 50 grand a year will buy a lot of beer.  That's a really interesting eye-opener. Forget playing it safe. And in Germany, this is like an epidemic. I mean, guys are like just going after safety because I guess the war kind of like shook the country so hard, all they know, the only vision they can even think of is like, I wanna make sure that everything's by the book and I got money. And I never have to, you know, fear. Well, that's a real quick way to lose it all. And why I like, I tell these guys, well, why do you like America?  I'm very proud to be American, even though my dad was German. Why am I proud? Not because we have all these big aircraft carriers and big governments and any of that stuff, but because our founding fathers. And I was trying to tell these guys about our founding fathers.  They're like, what do you mean? Like the guys on the Mayflower and said, no, no, no, you're missing something here. The founding fathers, Jefferson, Washington, all these guys, Hamilton, all the guys that signed the Declaration of Independence. Remember that piece of paper? They were declaring the independence from oppression. They were declaring their independence as a nation to be free. So you guys, all that freedom that you guys are enjoying today, you owe it to these guys. 240 years later, the Constitution and all that stuff is still holding up pretty well, even though a lot of people tried to chip away at it. A lot of American Taliban and American Nazis and other Nazis were trying to chip away at it. I'm not calling names, but I'm just telling you what I think of them. And they can't understand what that is.  Now, hope you understand what the heritage means.  That's not what it's about. But it's about these guys stood for something greater than themselves. Do you think that the 4th of July, you think when they were done with that, that was just, okay, gentlemen, okay, the next point on the agenda is whatever? No, these guys were getting the hell out of there because they realized if the British were catching them, they would treat them like we would treat whatever, Osama. They were terrorists to them. Okay, cool, thank you. So that's, these guys could have died. They would have been shot or hung on site for many years. So they stood for something. And you still, all your freedom to these guys 240 years later, wherever you stand politically is irrelevant. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just saying, get something that is compelling to you.


My check my check What's good Josh, but Ross back again with another video. So we're gonna check out WWE needs to cancel raw in 2021 it's so bad by none other than WrestleMania I saw he dropped this in the sub box the sub feed and I knew I wanted to check this out So I'm gonna check this out with you guys. I already know this is gonna be a good video It has over 4.8 K likes like I think we can all agree Raw is not good. I have not watched raw in so long. I barely even watched the YouTube clips on raw It's it's not even really worth watching When I stream you guys will come in the streaming and tell me How bad raw is or you guys won't even like y'all y'all make little jokes Like this is way better than Monday night raw and I believe you guys because the show is just it's a shell of its Former self, you know, I remember watching raw like around the 2011 2012 2013 Era and it wasn't all perfect. I do think the three-hour format format has really like It creates wrestling fatigue because at the end of the day You don't want to be watching the show for three hours every week to be watching rematches So, you know, there were some interesting things on raw During that era 2010 through like maybe 2015, you know, there was some interesting stuff that you wanted to catch but Now lately, it's just it's not there's not many interesting story lines. You want to catch I believe Drew McIntyre is supposed to be going against Bobby Lashley at Hell in a Cell for the WWE Championship Again, like like they I don't know what's going on I was like are there any other main eventers that could possibly go against Bobby Lashley like what's going on here? I don't know but raw is not good smackdown is leagues better and that's only because Roman Reigns is Make that the must-see show in there They have better mid card fused from what I can tell but right now raw is the bottom of the barrel So we're gonna check this out. Appreciate all the love and support. Let's see what WrestleMania has to say about this To Monday night raw remember when those words were so exciting when Facebook man used to scream them in the late 90s Well lately raw hasn't been fun. In fact every week it becomes more and more grueling to watch This week's episode of raw literally had fans groaning as Alexa bliss seemingly killed Shayna Baszler in a backstage segment Fans and critics alike discussed how this was one of the worst endings ever on raw and the overall show was a little better As we've seen there seems to be no end to what's going on with that I heard something Somebody was mentioning that in my stream about Alexa bliss with the little doll now I don't know what's going on with that and honestly, I don't want to check it out to be honest with you I just think it's a little bit cringe now now. She has the powers of the fiend. I don't know. Don't care How bad raw can get or how low the ratings can go? However, at some point the WWE is gonna have to face the facts that raw has gone as far as it can go Join us now as WrestleMania looks at why raw needs to be cancelled Sure and subscribe and hit that notification bell for daily wrestling videos and follow us on Facebook for exclusive Now before we look at the reasons why raw needs to be put out of its misery like taking it behind the barn and giving it that good Or goodbye It's crucial to establish some facts and dispell myths about the red brand's relationship with the USA Network Firstly the ratings are a concern I don't let the WWE or anyone else fool you raw's ratings are dropping and not due to the ever-growing number of Alternative programming competing for viewers while raw's ratings continue to go downhill WWE supporters argue that raw's ratings are still competitive with other cable programming Often coming in first on cable in terms of viewers and the ever-important 18 to 49 age demographic WWE enthusiasts argue that raw's dropping viewership is consistent with all television programming as more programming whether it's on Traditional television streaming or YouTube's splinter the audience But that doesn't seem to be true though as the decrease in raw's ratings have been greater than other programming on the USA Network While we aren't gonna break down things statistically raw is losing its audience faster than other us That that that makes sense that that makes sense I get how some people are they'll try to you know say oh well people check out the YouTube clip So that's why people don't check out raw as much I mean you could say that but at the end of the day for those who don't check out the clips I think people are just tuning out to it because they're just not finding the product entertaining So you know it they find it if it's more digestible for them to check out YouTube clips Then watching a three-hour show of a bunch of rematches Then sure people will do that and then eventually if they just see the same clips they saw last week Nothing interesting guess what they'll stop watching that too, you know, so Gramming which shows fans are tuning out for reasons other than there are more alternatives USA has been tolerant of raw's decreased ratings But they have made requests for changes to boost the ratings Which means they're less likely to pay the same rates as they currently do if they even decide to stick with the WWE programming in the future if you don't think things are quite bad Well, Brian Alvarez recently reported that raw did an average of 1.64 million viewers Remember when 2 million was bad if another form of programming begins eating into raw's ratings such as a hip reality show Things will only get bleaker number two the party's over now We hate to break it to the WWE but the pandemic party is over while Vince McMahon and the WWE deserve accolades for turning the corona apocalypse into a corporate cash cow things are getting back to normal as a WWE looks to bring back fans With the WWE returning to live events including the questionable revival of house shows the company's expenses are going to offset the savings It made in 2020 and 2021 by not running live events The WWE was able to bring in its greatest profits ever But the company is in for a serious reality check as it adds the cost of touring promoting house shows and doing more with less Thanks to the drastic cuts in the wrestling roster and personnel now It's highly likely the WWE will initially do well as people are eager to do anything to get out of the house after a year of being Stuck at home however once things settle down to normal the WWE is gonna face the same problems It had before the pandemic poor attendance at house shows paper I That's an accurate prediction I can see that happening people are gonna be very excited to come back So those first couple of shows where fans are allowed all they're gonna be packed A lot of people are gonna be there cuz they haven't been to a wrestling show But after those first couple of shows like maybe their first few weeks It's gonna start dying out and let's say keep it they keep the momentum going and they put on Interesting matches and good storylines Outside of that is gonna die out like it was before the pandemic where there's gonna be a lot of people That's not showing up. You know I'm saying like they're not gonna be selling as many tickets as you would think they should be Views and raw broadcasts The pandemic showed what happens when superstars were out of action such as when wrestlers had to quarantine while recovering from Covid and it wasn't pretty the WWE had to run multiple matches with the same superstars and scrambled to salvage storylines With wrestlers working multiple days a week expect more injuries and unlike the past where absences on the roster led to wrestlers Getting the chance to set up the WWE will likely continue its policy of putting things into a holding pattern Knowing Roy is in as bulletproof as WWE loyalists believe Let's look at reasons why it needs to be cancelled a bear in mind We aren't saying that WWE should cancel Roy and leave Mondays empty We're saying it's time to retire or and create a new show number one Raw is irreparably broken the red brand is a three-hour horror show that has gone through numerous revamps and other pitiful attempts to fix The sagging ratings none of which have been successful Whether it's raw underground the WWE Superstar exchange or repeated claims tell Who remembers raw underground? I remember they they tried to get that off the ground no pun intended and that went literally Nowhere like they stopped doing it after a few weeks like raw underground was supposed to be like this underground Raw uncut just guys fighting each other like it was just It didn't last it didn't work. They it they tried they gave it their best effort I guess but it didn't work So yeah, our underground was not a success like people probably wanted it to be Mints sell the rest as faults as Roy has a fantastic array of superstars They do a broken tag division weak women's roster and an underwhelming undercard are nothing new and they've shown No sign of fixing these problems Simply put the WWE needs to start over and find a way to create a captivating show for the 21st century Number two Raw's reputation is ruined The WWE can claim that Monday Night Raw is the longest-running weekly episodic program in the U.S Reputation today among fans is a television show that is a pale shell of its former self Many fans would argue that the WWE has been living off its reputation for years and raw Epitomizes this the red brand is a bloated mess that rarely can keep fans around for its second and third hours Which shows just how poorly the WWE books its so-called flagship show if they can't keep some of its core audience tuned in How does it expect to bring in new viewers? Well, the answer is simply it can't number three the WWE faces a major embarrassment Is the USA Network going to cancel Raw? Well probably not because the show continues to bring in enough ratings But at some point the WWE is gonna face the reality that the USA Network won't pay for Raw anymore Or at least pay far less than what it does now and we've discussed this briefly before But it's important to remind fans that networks cable and traditional networks are being charged more and more for content And it's not gonna change Number four Monday nights need a fresh start. There's nothing wrong with Monday night wrestling In fact, the WWE has been running wrestling on Monday night since the days when the Madison Square Garden Network broadcast live matches from the MECA professional wrestling followed by prime-time wrestling's debut on USA in Yeah, I'm I'm I'm okay with them having you know, Monday night wrestling I'm all for that, you know keeping that but they gotta it has to be a big change with What they're doing now. It's not helping. It's not working clearly. You know, it's it's Stale and you can't blame it on the pandemic now because smackdown is still much more digestible to watch I do think they need to go back to the two-hour format. I think You put on the most important story lines granted Not everybody's gonna get the shine that they need or deserve at the time But you can rotate people put that two-hour format I miss raw being at two hours it it made it, you know saying like What you saw in there was important and urgent these three-hour rematch fest Nobody wants to see that nobody wants to sit through on their Monday night I have to work in all day come home to watch raw for three hours to see the same thing They saw last week to see the same thing. They saw the week before like nobody wants to see that It's not the tradition of tuning in on Monday nights, but the product itself people can point to the WWE Struggling against Monday night football, but during the attitude era this wasn't a problem because the product was must-see television They should build off Monday night's legacy as a night to watch wrestling by creating a new program built to appeal to today's fans as well as legacy fans The WWE's fan base is an older fan base, but unlike past generations They've done a poor job bringing in new fans at least enough to grow the business I'm always ain't gonna become dynamite But it might want to consider some of what makes NXT appealing to younger fans while also keeping the current Raw roster Number five Mondays need a break and Monday nights might benefit from a short no more than a month pause while the WWE builds up its new program Raw's replacement will need more than a new set It will need a new approach to booking including a focus on building new stars and long-term story lines Smackdown has shown that the WWE can do this although the blue brand is by no means perfect The short break is a good way to build up interest in the news show And the first week will likely draw a number of curious fans The challenge of course is to make the show exciting enough to bring them back the next week While a break may seem like a bad idea The reality is that WWE did just that when it adjusted between running shows in front of fans and running empty arena shows at the Performance Center keep fans interested by running pay-per-view matches hype videos on wrestlers and interviews with wrestlers to Spotlight which wrestlers the WWE intends to focus on during their new program and sadly right now Raw can't get much worse WWE's current financial situation makes it likely the company's unwilling to make the changes necessary to improve or start over No matter how bad it gets Unfortunately, it might not get the chance to do so on its own and as we mentioned the WWE could take a financial hit if the USA Network were to cancel it or refuse to pick it back up But there you have it guys. Why raw needs to be canceled. What do you guys think? Yeah, man, not gonna lie to you It's one of those type of situations where The product is just for all at least it's It's so stale and lifeless like it's It's one of those things where it's like even though AEW Dynamite, they don't get as many ratings as You know WWE Monday Night Raw, you know, but from what I can tell people just genuinely like watching that program more than Monday Night Raw and It's it's gotten to this point where Honestly, if you want to be honest here if I had to rank the shows I would give NXT I Would probably I Would probably give NXT a Slight edge over Smackdown just a little bit only because NXT to me has the better in ring wrestling So I like the in-ring wrestling, but I give them a slight edge over Smackdown The saving grace for Smackdown is Roman Reigns. He's one of the reasons why people even watch Smackdown to be honest with you So, you know, and it has to be more than just one thing or one major thing that's bringing people to the show So, you know, even though the in-ring wrestling is not back there I think it's much better in NXT So I would give Smackdown a second and then of course Raw is at the bottom barrel bottom of the bottom Raw is awful. It's not watchable and they have to do something to fix it I don't know what they're gonna do. Maybe WrestleMania is right, man Maybe they do need to take like a couple weeks off to do a revamp and we're not just time I'm making the stage look fancy There needs to be different ways people are booked story lines need to be more focused on Interesting story lines not cringe stuff, but I doubt they're gonna do that. Honestly I is one of those type of things where the only way things will change and Vince will actually you know request a change within management and everything else that goes on is Their money got stick their pockets got to get hurt. USA has to say, bro If you don't change this around we're dropping you after our contracts up We're canceling you. We're dropping you something like that major will have to happen before I think we get a major change on Monday night Raw. So comment down below. Let me know Are any of you guys still watching Monday night Raw? Let me know I would like to get your thoughts and opinions on it And if you are I'm sorry. Why are you punishing yourself like that? But appreciate all love and support row 250k appreciate y'all kicking it with me and I'll see y'all on the next one. Peace