SUMMARY: Seventeen-year-old American snowboarder Chloe Kim dazzled the 2018 Winter Olympics with her aerial acrobatics and athletic spins, winning a gold medal on Monday. Jeffrey Brown talks with Eddie Pells of the Associated Press about Kim, the daughter of South Korean immigrants, as well as several other snowboarding standouts in Pyeongchang.
SUMMARY: Dubbed the "Oracle of Omaha," Warren Buffett is an investment rock star. What's his take on the state of the economy? He recently sat down with Judy Woodruff for a wide-ranging, two-part interview on inequality, the Paris Climate Agreement, health care reform, and much more.
SUMMARY: What does billionaire Warren Buffett think of Republican health care bills that would roll back taxes for wealthy Americans like him? Buffett discusses everything from how he's giving away billions in philanthropy to how much sleep he gets to what's on his personal income taxes in the second part of Judy Woodruff's exclusive interview.
SUMMARY: The nation's infrastructure received an overall grade of D-plus in a report card published this week by the American Civil Society of Engineers, the same poor grade it issued in 2013. With 16 categories graded, bridges, roads and dams were among those that received a low score. The group's managing director, Casey Dinges, joined Hari Sreenivasan from Washington to explain why.
HARI SREENIVASAN, NEWSHOUR WEEKEND ANCHOR: The nation's infrastructure received an overall grade of “D- plus” in a report card published this week by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the same grade the group issued in 2013. Among the 16 categories graded: bridges received a “C-plus”; roads, dams and airports, a “D”; while mass transit came in with a “D-minus.”
The group's senior managing director, Casey Dinges, joins me now from Washington to explain these very low grades.
Mr. Dinges, these are not grades that we would want to see on any child's report card. Yet, I guess we tolerate them at such crucial things as the roads and bridges we drive on and the water that we drink.
CASEY DINGES, SENIOR MANAGING DIRECTOR, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS: I think the way the issue may play out is that the degradation is maybe so imperceptible to the public users, the traveling public you know, the water main break, even though it happens every 2 1/2 minutes in the United States, people my say, “Well, it's just not happening in my neighborhood, so I'm not thinking about it.” Traffic congestion is a huge issue in major metropolitan areas. Pavement issues you'll find in regions all across the country affect people, but maybe not enough to make it a top-of-mind issue.
So, at this point, we are somewhat encouraged to see presidential leadership being exerted on the infrastructure issue. But funding is the key thing. That would be the heavy lift for the Congress.
SUMMARY: Why have middle aged, white Americans experienced a stunning rise in premature deaths due to alcoholism, suicide and drug abuse? Economists who have documented the dramatic decrease in life expectancy say an obvious place to look is the loss of work and economic status for the working class. But economics correspondent Paul Solman finds that's not the whole story.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): But first, the second of a two-part look at the declining life expectancy for some middle-aged white Americans.
Last week, economics correspondent Paul Solman examined the role prescription painkillers and alcohol may play in the trend.
Tonight, he explores how the economy and the job market may be involved.
Its part of our weekly series Making Sen$e, which airs Thursdays.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): The Hardee's in Maysville, Kentucky, a popular hangout for the senior set.
Martin Sauer used to work for the sheriff's department, where he says he saw his share of Saturday night drunks, but nothing like the current opioid drug epidemic.
MARTIN SAUER, Kentucky: People get hooked on it and can't get off of it, or don't want to, causing a lot of younger generation to lose their lives.
PAUL SOLMAN: And by younger generation, Sauer means his middle-aged neighbors, who, as we reported last week, are experiencing a stunning rise in premature deaths due to alcoholism, suicide and drug abuse. But why?
ANGUS DEATON, Economist: The health crisis here is particularly among white working-class or white people with a high school and no more. For those people, the economy's been very hard for a very long time.
PAUL SOLMAN: Predictably, Angus Deaton and Anne Case, economists who have documented the dramatic decrease in life expectancy, say an obvious place to look for a cause is the economy.
ANNE CASE, Economist: It used to be, with a high school degree, you could get a job, that actually could provide for your family. And the disappearance of those may lead people to feel a lot more stressed.
SUMMARY: In recent decades, American productivity growth has slowed. Yale University's Jacob Hacker has a possible explanation: the country's outdated and deteriorating infrastructure. Hacker, co-author of “American Amnesia,” argues the U.S. has forgotten the role government plays in engineering prosperity, and that public investment got us where we are today. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.
ANNOUNCER: Attention, please, this is the last call.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): Mid-morning at New York's Penn Station. Throngs rush to the 10:00 a.m. Acela to Washington, D.C. ridership is up and these highish-speed trains are at or near capacity as business travelers chug up and down the Northeast Corridor.
WOMAN: Amtrak conductor 2153 to the heading. All stations are cleared.
PAUL SOLMAN: But they're hurrying up in an America of slowed-down productivity, the amount of output per hour of work rising at just 1.3 percent a year since 2007, compared to more than double that rate from 1947 to 1973.
One cause, America's crumbling infrastructure, like our passenger rail system, some of which dates to the Civil War, causing delays that hamstring the economy.
Wick Moorman worked his way to the top of the Norfolk Southern Freight Railroad, before retiring last year, returning to work recently, at a dollar a year, to steer and revive Amtrak. Riding the Acela back to New York, he insisted it's not just our railroads that need work.
WICK MOORMAN, CEO, Amtrak: When you look at the state of our highway system today, which we all get out and drive on every day, in terms of congestion, in terms of the surface conditions, in terms of the fact that we're seeing that more and more bridges have to be closed to rehabilitate, it has to be an economic drag, right? Highway congestion alone costs this country an enormous amount of productivity.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, why aren't we investing in infrastructure of the kind that made America great in the '40s, '50s, '60s, government investments that hiked our economy to unheard-of heights of productivity?
So asks Yale's Jacob Hacker. His answer?
JACOB HACKER, Co-Author, American Amnesia: We have forgotten the incredibly important role that government plays in our prosperity.
PAUL SOLMAN: And thus the term “American Amnesia,” Hacker's new book, subtitled “How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper,” because, in the 19th and 20th centuries, prosper, we did.
JACOB HACKER: We went from being from a relatively poor, relatively under-educated and relatively unhealthy society, to being the richest, the most well-educated and the healthiest society that the world had ever seen.
After World War II, we see the blossoming of this really active investing state that's investing on both non-defense and defense technology and really sowing the seeds for the productivity revolution that occurs during this period.
PAUL SOLMAN: Government outlays of land for railroads, say, subsidies for airports and waterways that helped make the country one market, speed goods and labor from coast to coast. Think of Republican President Eisenhower's interstate highway system.
JACOB HACKER: The estimates are that it accounted for something like a third of productivity growth in the U.S. economy in the late 1950s, and around a quarter in the 1960s.
PAUL SOLMAN: And what's true of hard infrastructure is true of what were once America's greatest soft productivity advantages: health and education.
JACOB HACKER: If you look at older Americans in the United States, they're the most educated older citizens in the world. But if you look at younger Americans, we have fallen to the high teens in terms of college completion rates.
So, in a new economy that's based much more on knowledge and technology, we're not investing adequately or correctly to get kids through college the way other countries are.
SUMMARY: As we approach the 15th anniversary of 9/11, we ponder the question: Is America safer now from terrorism than it was on that fateful day? Steven Brill spent the last year evaluating what has changed, including tightened airline security policies, but also how the country returned to "politics as usual." He speaks with Judy Woodruff about his findings -- and his recommendations.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): And now a look at the current state of security inside the U.S.
As we approach the 15th anniversary of 9/11, journalist Steven Brill spent the past year looking into how the country has changed since that terrible day, what's been spent and what gaps still exist. His article, “Are We Any Safer?”, appears in the latest issue of “The Atlantic.”
And I recently sat down with him and asked him what he learned.
STEVEN BRILL, Contributor, The Atlantic: In a nutshell, what I concluded was, the way we have responded to the terrorist attacks, to 9/11, which, you know, changed everything, is sort of a microcosm of what we are as a country today.
A lot of it was heroic, ingenious, people going beyond the cause of duty, doing really great things. And then a lot of it was actually quite the opposite, a lot of Beltway boondoggles, billions of dollars wasted because government contractors promised technology and solutions that they couldn't produce.
And we have struggled as a country with dealing with the notion of this new kind of risk. The idea, as President Bush explained, after 9/11, of never again, we're never going to have a terrorist attack again, that's just unrealistic in today's world.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You clearly give the government — and it spans several administrations, two administrations — credit for getting some things right, as you just said, but…
STEVEN BRILL: A lot of things right, and a lot of unsung people, tens of thousands of people going to work every day at the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, places like TSA, the Border Patrol, really obsessed with the job of keeping us safe.
And the only time we notice them is when something goes wrong. And that makes it a tough job. On the other hand, a lot of it went back to politics as usual. Every small town that you can think of made a request for government grants for homeland security, for everything ranging from routine fire trucks to fish tanks in a police station.
So, there are a lot of abuses.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I was struck because, early on in the piece, you say, yes, we are safer than we were on 9/11, safer against the kind of threat we faced on 9/11.
STEVEN BRILL: Right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But the threat has changed.
STEVEN BRILL: Right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And that's what the government is — all of us are grappling with right now.
STEVEN BRILL: We have done a lot to batten down the hatches, to make us safer, at the airports, at the ports, all over the place.
But the threats have multiplied, the threats around the world. Our defenses are much stronger. The offense has multiplied and is much stronger. And it's more difficult because, unlike the kind of coordinated, orchestrated attack that we faced on 9/11, where people were communicating, money was exchanging hands, that kind of stuff which we can now track, if some lone wolf in his basement is online…
-----
JUDY WOODRUFF: What would you say to the next leader of this country, the next president about what most needs to be done to make this country…
(CROSSTALK)
STEVEN BRILL: Well, the first thing that needs not to be done is to declare war on Muslims or Islam, because that’s exactly what those terrorists want.
They want this to be the apocalyptic, end-of-all-worlds war between them and us. And President Bush didn’t take the bait, and President Obama has resisted taking that bait.
Donald Trump campaigns on that. And it almost makes you think — in fact, it makes me think that ISIS would love to have someone like Trump be President, because they would get the fulfillment of their dream, which is to have the great confrontation with Western civilization.
The second thing is to keep educating the country. While doing everything we can to prevent terrorism, keep educating the country to the reality that there are going to be some attacks, and that doesn’t mean it’s the apocalypse. It doesn’t mean we’re weak.
Saying there are going to be attacks doesn’t mean you’re throwing in the towel, but it means we have to be realistic.
SUMMARY: Gender dysphoria is a difficult situation for a teenager to manage; nearly half of all transgender teens around the country report having suicidal thoughts. Some schools are taking steps to address the issue, such as Atherton High School in Louisville, which became Kentucky's first to adopt an official policy for transgender students. Yasmeen Qureshi of Education Week reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Public schools are caught in the middle of a political debate over bathrooms. The Obama administration says restricting a transgender student's access to restrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex is discrimination and can be grounds for withholding funding.
But that directive has set off some angry reaction. Kentucky is one state where many leaders don't agree with the President. And we look at how one school in Louisville decided to act proactively before the bigger debate began.
Special correspondent Yasmeen Qureshi of Education Week has the story. It's part of our weekly education series, Making the Grade.
YASMEEN QURESHI (Education Week): What's it like to question your gender?
MADDIE DALTON, Student, Atherton High School: It's a little bit scary in the very beginning, I suppose, because you know that you're going to have to face a lot of discrimination.
Like, go through the YouTube comments on any video about trans people, and you will see, like, just how many people are still, like, openly hostile to this idea.
YASMEEN QURESHI: Seventeen-year-old Maddie Dalton is transgender. She says she's always been a girl, but didn't know it.
CASSANDRA KASEY, Parent: Forever, she had that little widow's peak.
YASMEEN QURESHI: She came out to her parents when she was 15 years old.
CASSANDRA KASEY: It was chaotic at first.
And the way I felt it in the very beginning, when I was still coming to terms with it, was, if I had a friend who came to me and said that their child had come out to them as transgender, I would have thought, hooray. You know, your — this young person is becoming who they are.
So, why would I not afford my own child that same — that same blessing? So, even though it was difficult, it was the only right thing to do.
SUMMARY: “Kill ‘Em and Leave” -- that was James Brown’s philosophy on stage, and it’s also the title of a new biography. Author James McBride joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss the godfather of soul’s inner life and his under-appreciated influence on American music.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): He was the Godfather of Soul, an incredible entertainer, by any measure one of the most important and influential American musicians of the 20th century.
But who was James Brown, the man, and what shaped him? Those questions are taken up by musician and writer James McBride, best known for his memoir “The Color of Water” and his National Book Award-winning novel “The Good Lord Bird.”
McBride’s new book is “Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul.”
We talked recently at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C., a historic hall where James Brown regularly performed.
And I asked first about the power of Brown’s music.
JAMES MCBRIDE, Author, “Kill ‘Em and Leave”: Well, there’s no music in America that you can listen to that doesn’t have some James Brown in it.
I mean, the whole creation of the synthesizers and these guitar parts and the beat, that was James Brown. Elvis Presley shook America up, and James Brown shook the world up, because his whole persona was that of someone whose consumed by this music, this sound.
So, he was a phenomena. And he was really seen as a kind of a scream at the end of the dial, where black radio lived.
JEFFREY BROWN: A scream at the end of the dial? Yes.
JAMES MCBRIDE: Yes, he was this — he was — because everyone knows, “Wo, I feel good.”
JEFFREY BROWN: Yes. Yes.
JAMES MCBRIDE: But, musically, he was very sophisticated. There is a lot of counterpoint in James Brown’s music.
SUMMARY: Teenagers today have never known a world without smartphones and social media. But how is this technology influencing the way they view themselves and the world? That’s the question journalist and author Nancy Jo Sales set out to answer in her new book, “American Girls.” Sales joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the intersection of puberty, pornography and peer pressure in the Internet age.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Joining me now is author Nancy Jo Sales.
So, what are the challenges that American girls are facing today that are different from the ones they have always faced?
NANCY JO SALES, Author, “American Girls”: Girls use social media lot. They’re on their phones a lot. And I think most parents are aware of that.
So, really, the question is, what is happening there, and how are these kind of — some regrettable trends that we have seen happening for some time, such as the sexualization of girls, bullying, how are these moving on to phones and on to screens? And what is this environment doing to the life of girls and boys?
HARI SREENIVASAN: You paint a picture almost of these young girls at this kind of intersection of the existing angst that a teenage girl has, combined with this technological leap that we’re all taking together, combined with pornography.
NANCY JO SALES: Yes, I think the kind of elephant, maybe dinosaur in the room right now is pornography. Pornography has been available online for some time.
But I don’t think we have really begun to have a conversation about what that is doing to kids. And we know that they’re watching it. They’re teenagers. They’re going through puberty. They’re curious. They’re watching pornography.
But this tends to be more and more violent pornography that is also, one could I think reasonably say, very degrading to women. And this is where a lot of teenagers now find their sex-ed. And porn is also — the porn aesthetic is also really engulfing social media. And social media is just full of really explicit sexual content.
And whether or not your child wants to see it or intends to see it, they are likely to see it.
SUMMARY: Why have both Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders taken the country by storm this year? One cause might be fear for the future. Many Americans today are living paycheck to paycheck, worrying that their children won’t be any better off. Those anxieties are driving them into the arms of antiestablishment populists. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.
AUDIENCE: We love Trump! We love Trump!
DONALD TRUMP (R), Republican Presidential Candidate: Oh, we love you, we love you!
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): Not again, you may be thinking.
DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to build a big, beautiful wall.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (VT-I), Democratic Presidential Candidate: There is nothing we cannot accomplish.
PAUL SOLMAN: Another story on Trump and Sanders as political outliers defining this year’s presidential campaign?
DONALD TRUMP: We’re in first place everywhere.
PAUL SOLMAN: But why have they taken America by storm? We put that question to longtime liberal thinker Robert Reich, friend of Hillary Clinton since college, secretary of labor under her husband, Bill, but now a Bernie Sanders supporter.
Are you surprised by the turn America has taken politically in the last half-year?
ROBERT REICH, University of California, Berkeley: I’m surprised at how fast it happened. I predicted in my book “Saving Capitalism” that the biggest political contest in the future would be between, not Democrats and Republicans, but between the anti-establishment populists and the establishment, because I saw the increase in this degree of anxious class, I call it, anger and frustration that the economy and society are no longer working for them.
PAUL SOLMAN: Covering economic developments in America since the 1970s, I too have been chronicling this growing anxiety my entire career.
I met security guard Bobby Hicks five years ago.
BOBBY HICKS, Security Guard: I am the most insecure security officer you will meet, because I’m worried. Right now, I live paycheck to paycheck.
PAUL SOLMAN: Cookie Sheers is an administrative assistant at a Boston nonprofit.
COOKIE SHEERS, Administrative Assistant: We all feel stuck, like you’re just at that edge of water where you can come up for air every few minutes, but never long enough to feel that you have accomplished something. You always have to go back down.
SUMMARY: While the U.S. is still an overwhelmingly Christian country, since 2007 there has been a notable drop in the number of Americans who call themselves such, and the number of people who don’t identify as any religion has risen dramatically. Jeffrey Brown talks to Alan Cooperman of the Pew Research Center, which conducted the latest survey, and Rev. Serene Jones of the Union Theological Seminary.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): The U.S. remains an overwhelmingly Christian country. That hasn’t changed, but a new survey shows a significant drop in the number of Americans who identify as Christian.
The survey was done by the Pew Research Center. It showed that, in 2007, 78 percent of Americans identified as Christian. By last year, the percentage had dropped to under 71 percent. Those years have seen a dramatic rise in the number of Americans who say they are religiously unaffiliated, from 16 to nearly 23 percent.
The largest drop was in mainline Protestant denominations, but the number of Catholics also fell. Several non-Christian religions, Islam and Hinduism, saw modest gains.
Alan Cooperman is here. She’s the director of religious research at Pew. Also with us is Reverend Serene Jones, president of the Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
And welcome to both of you.
And, Alan Cooperman, let me start with you.
One aspect of this that might surprise people is just how widespread this drop is. Did that strike you?
ALAN COOPERMAN, Pew Research Center: Absolutely, Jeff.
I mean, I think the important thing for people the realize is, this is really widespread, broad-based social change. It’s taking place not just in the big cities or in the Northeast. It’s taking place in every region of the country, including in the Bible Belt, among men and women, among blacks, Latinos and whites, among older people and younger people, and among people with college degrees and those with only high school degrees.
JEFFREY BROWN: And, Dr. Jones, what — does it jibe with what you see happening around you? Are you surprised at all?
REV. SERENE JONES, President, Union Theological Seminary: Yes, it’s surprising to see the statistics lay it out so clearly, but, on another level, it’s not surprising at all. It’s exactly what we all look around when what we see in New York City or — I’m from Oklahoma — when I walk through the fields of the small town I grew up in. It’s the reality of the U.S. we live in today.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Is the traditional taxicab becoming an endangered species? In the age of the smartphone, it’s more and more likely, as consumers trying to get from here to there opt for technology-driven ride-sharing.
Economics correspondent Paul Solman takes us along on the ride as part of his ongoing reporting Making Sense of financial news.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): The long-regulated taxi industry and its drivers are under siege.
AMILCAR PEREIRA, DeSoto Cab Driver: These guys just jump in their car, go out there and providing the same service that we are, totally unregulated, totally unsafe. It’s not fair.
MAN: OK. You got it. We’re on the way.
PAUL SOLMAN: It’s a classic fight between regulatory tradition and technological disruption. And drivers like these, who work for San Francisco’s oldest cab company, are caught in the crossfire.
MUAFFAQ MUSTAFA, DeSoto Cab Driver: I feel like I’m — just been betrayed. I have been a driver for 20 years. I give up half my life for this industry.
PAUL SOLMAN: The Uber system allows riders to request drivers at any time. You have probably heard of this tech threat, even if you haven’t used it yet. Uber, a mobile phone app which connects passengers with non-cabbie drivers for hire, a new surge of competition on the road, unregulated.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): In the 13 years since the 9/11 attacks, not every question about that day has been answered. Potentially explosive revelations that may implicate a key U.S. ally in the attacks remain hidden from public view, classified and stored beneath the U.S. Capitol Building.
Jeffrey Brown has our story.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): Twenty-eight pages of a joint congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks were classified by the George W. Bush administration, which claimed they contained information that would hurt the war on terror.
But some lawmakers argue the pages reveal little about national security and a great deal about the government of Saudi Arabia’s role in the attacks. They say that the pages tell the story of Saudi officials meeting with and even funding two of the 9/11 hijackers when they first arrived in the U.S.
It’s all in a story by Lawrence Wright in this week’s “New Yorker” magazine. Wright is author of “The Looming Tower” about events leading to the 9/11 attack. His new book is “Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David.”
And he joins me now.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): That report by the nonprofit group Feeding America found that roughly one in seven people in the country, 46 million people, rely on food banks or other charitable organizations for basic nutrition. They included some 620,000 military households and an increased number of adult college students.
Food bank clients come from all demographic groups, in suburbs, as well as urban areas. And many report facing the choice between buying food and paying for utilities, rent, medicine and other necessities.
Joining us is Deborah Flateman. She’s the executive director of the MARYLAND FOOD BANK and a board member of Feeding America.
Welcome to you.
DEBORAH FLATEMAN, President & CEO, Maryland Food Bank: Thank you.
JEFFREY BROWN: On a general level first, what do we learn from this report about who is hungry in America?
DEBORAH FLATEMAN: You know, honestly, from my point of view, it verifies what we have been seeing trending over the past few years. I think one of the most significant pieces of data tells us that more than half of the people who are accessing food through the emergency feeding system, including food banks and food shelves, are people who are working.
"The public be damned!"
— William H. Vanderbilt, railroad magnate, 1882
A shattering new study by two political science professors has found that ordinary Americans have virtually no impact whatsoever on the making of national policy in our country. The analysts found that rich individuals and business-controlled interest groups largely shape policy outcomes in the United States.
This study should be a loud wake-up call to the vast majority of Americans who are bypassed by their government. To reclaim the promise of American democracy, ordinary citizens must act positively to change the relationship between the people and our government
The new study, with the jaw-clenching title of "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," is forthcoming in the fall 2014 edition of Perspectives on Politics. Its authors, Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, examined survey data on 1,779 national policy issues for which they could gauge the preferences of average citizens, economic elites, mass-based interest groups and business-dominated interest groups. They used statistical methods to determine the influence of each of these four groups on policy outcomes, including both policies that are adopted and rejected.
The analysts found that when controlling for the power of economic elites and organized interest groups, the influence of ordinary Americans registers at a "non-significant, near-zero level." The analysts further discovered that rich individuals and business-dominated interest groups dominate the policymaking process. The mass-based interest groups had minimal influence compared to the business-based interest groups.
The study also debunks the notion that the policy preferences of business and the rich reflect the views of common citizens. They found to the contrary that such preferences often sharply diverge and when they do, the economic elites and business interests almost always win and the ordinary Americans lose.
The authors also say that given limitations to tapping into the full power elite in America and their policy preferences, "the real world impact of elites upon public policy may be still greater" than their findings indicate.
Ultimately, Gilens and Page conclude from their work, "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
Rich individuals and business interests have the capacity to hire the lobbyists that shadow legislators in Washington and to fill the campaign coffers of political candidates. Ordinary citizens are themselves partly to blame, however, because they do not choose to vote.
America's turnout rate places us near the bottom of industrialized democracies. More than 90 million eligible Americans did not vote in the presidential election of 2012 and more than 120 million did not vote in the midterm elections of 2010.
Electoral turnout in the United States is highly correlated with economic standing: The more affluent Americans vote in much higher proportion than the less affluent. A study by Ellen Shearer of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern found that 59 percent of 2012 voters earned $50,000 or more per year, compared to 39 percent of non-voters. Only 12 percent of non-voters earned more than $75,000, compared to 31 percent of voters.
Ordinary citizens in recent decades have largely abandoned their participation in grassroots movements. Politicians respond to the mass mobilization of everyday Americans as proven by the civil rights and women's movements of the 1960s and 1970s. But no comparable movements exist today. Without a substantial presence on the ground, people-oriented interest groups cannot compete against their wealthy adversaries.
Average Americans also have failed to deploy the political techniques used by elites. Political Action Committees (PACs) and super-PACs, for example, raise large sums of money to sway the outcome of any election in the United States. Although average Americans cannot match the economic power of the rich, large numbers of modest contributions can still finance PACs and super-PACs that advance our common interests.
If only they vote and organize, ordinary Americans can reclaim American democracy and challenge the politicians who still echo the view of old Vanderbilt that the public should be damned.
Lichtman is distinguished professor of history at American University in Washington.
RICK KARR (NewsHour): Angela Day’s landline kept going dead in 2012. She didn’t have a cell phone she could use instead because cell coverage is spotty in the Appalachian region of Ohio where she lives. And at the house where she was living with her daughter and her parents, there’s no cell signal at all. So whenever she had to be away from home, she worried. Especially about her father.
ANGELA DAY: He had a heart condition and he had had several open-heart surgeries. He had triple-bypass surgery.
RICK KARR: A few days after Christmas, he said he wasn’t feeling well.
ANGELA DAY: He called over to talk to a nurse. And he was having problems with the phone.
RICK KARR: His condition deteriorated, and finally he said he needed an ambulance. The family called 911, but the line was so bad that they finally gave up and Day’s brother rushed their father to doctors. But it was too late. He died that evening.
ANGELA DAY: It was really frustrating close to the whole week afterwards we couldn’t even call out to plan the funeral. We couldn’t even call and tell family that he had passed. I had to go to my workplace to use the phone to even call the funeral home.
RICK KARR: Angela Day’s phone didn’t work because thieves were stealing telephone wires all over the county. It’s one of the poorest in Ohio, and the copper in the lines was valuable.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Back in 1989, a little more than a million fathers stayed at home with their children for a variety of reasons. More than two decades later, that number has doubled. In a recent report, the Pew Research Center said it grew to its highest point, 2.2 million in the U.S. in 2010, just after the official end of the great recession.
The number has dipped since then, but there are still more dads at home than has traditionally been the case. In fact, fathers now account for 16 percent of all stay-at-home parents.
The reasons for this are a complex mix.
We explore that with two people, Kim Parker who is with the Pew Research Center, and Scott Coltrane, a provost at the University of Oregon who has long studied this very subject. He recently spoke at a recent White House summit on working dads.
So, Kim, let me start with you. What’s the reason behind this surge in the last 20 years?
KIM PARKER, Pew Research Center: Well, there’s a variety of reasons.
You alluded to the end of the recession and how we saw that number spike to 2.2 million in 2010, and clearly what was going on there in part was increases in unemployment, and men having difficulty, fathers having difficulty finding jobs.
But the biggest factor in the long-term growth in the number of stay-at-home dads is the growing share of dads who say that they’re at home primarily to care for their family and for their children. And so that’s what’s been driving this long-term trend from 1989 to the present.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): A huge new Pew Research Center study of 10,000 American adults finds us more divided than ever, with personal and political polarization at a 20-year high.
The number of people identifying themselves as either consistently liberal or consistently conservative has doubled in the last decade. They are less likely to compromise and often decide where to live, who to marry, and who their friends should be based on what they already believe.
Joining us now to talk about the new American extremes are Michael Dimock, vice president of research at Pew and the lead author on the survey, and Amy Walter, national editor at The Cook Political Report.
Let’s start with the self-labeling question, Michael Dimock, 10 percent in 1994, 2004 — 11 percent in 2004, 21 in 2014. People said they were either consistently liberal or consistently conservative.
MICHAEL DIMOCK, Pew Research Center: Right, and we’re not even going by what people call themselves.
We’re actually asking you a series of questions about major political values, the role of government, social issues, are immigrants a benefit to our society or a harm to our society, and what we’re finding is more and more people consistently answering all of those questions in a liberal or a conservative direction, still a minority, at 21 percent, but doubling over the last 20 years.
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GWEN IFILL: Is it that people choose to live among people like themselves and therefore they become like that, or because they decide that they believe — have this set of beliefs and they choose to only associate with people like themselves?
AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Well, so I think there’s probably a little bit of both. Right?
And that — technology has only helped to exacerbate this. So, there was a time in which it’s not just that you choose to live in communities where people think a lot like you. And this study definitely showed that, that people who are more liberal live in urban areas. People who are more conservative live in rural areas.
They cite things like diversity, if you’re liberal, as the most important value for them. Out in the rural areas, where Republicans are, they cite religious issues, having an ability to connect on religious issues, as their most important value.
And then it gets exacerbated by the fact that you can literally isolate yourself now in a bubble thanks to our technology. On the Internet, on cable television, you never, ever now have to see or hear anything that disagrees with your world view or your ideological point of view.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): High atop Central Virginia’s Shenandoah Mountains, these students are continuing work begun 75 years ago.
They have been renovating the Skyland Stables, which for generations have provided national park visitors with horses to ride along 200 miles of equestrian trails. This is the pilot project of the Hands-On Preservation Experience, or HOPE Crew, a new nationwide initiative from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Monica Rhodes is its volunteer coordinator.
MONICA RHODES, National Trust for Historic Preservation: What the National Trust hopes to bring to this — through this new initiative is an opportunity for a younger, more diverse audience to get involved with these buildings, to really interact with their environment and contribute to their country.
JEFFREY BROWN: The Trust is partnering with the National Park Service, the Corps Network and other groups to bring a new generation into the preservation fold across the country.
A lot of gray area surrounds the political rhetoric about the White House’s decision to swap Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban figures detained at Guantanamo.
Did the administration violate a decades-old policy of “not negotiating with terrorists?” Was it a simple swap of prisoners of war? And did President Obama violate the law by failing to notify appropriate congressional leaders of the deal 30 days in advance?
We set out to fact-check some of these issues and found the reality isn’t as clear as the rhetoric would lead you to believe. We’ll lay out some of the facts and let you draw your own conclusions.
Negotiating with Terrorists?
In a Sunday show appearance, Sen. Ted Cruz said the Obama administration violated a decades-old policy of “not negotiating with terrorists” in the swap for Bergdahl. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, meanwhile, said that “we didn’t negotiate with terrorists,” describing the deal as a “normal process” for getting POWs home.
Here’s Cruz’s version on ABC’s “This Week”:
Cruz, June 1: You know, Ambassador Rice basically said to you, yes, U.S. policy has changed. Now we make deals with terrorists. And the question going forward is, have we just put a price on other U.S. soldiers? What does this tell terrorists, that if you capture a U.S. soldier, you can trade that soldier for five terrorists we’ve gone after. … And the idea that we’re now making trades, what does that do for every single soldier stationed abroad? It says the reason why the U.S. has had the policy for decades of not negotiating with terrorists is because once you start doing it, every other terrorist has an incentive to capture more soldiers.
Cruz was one of a number of Republicans who accused the White House of negotiating with terrorists. Others included Rep. Jason Chaffetz and former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Hagel refuted that characterization on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He said, “Well, first of all, we didn’t negotiate with terrorists.”
The question of whether the U.S. negotiated with terrorists begins, of course, with whether the Taliban is a terrorist organization. All five of the detainees in the exchange were members of the Afghan Taliban. And the Afghan Taliban is not on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.
In fact, the U.S. government had been trying for years to include the Afghan Taliban as part of the political reconciliation plan for Afghanistan. So if members of the Afghan Taliban are terrorists, the U.S. government had been negotiating with them for years. Last year, the U.S. made a diplomatic push to include the Afghan Taliban in the reconciliation process by encouraging the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar, but the effort quickly unraveled. The Afghan Taliban suspended direct talks with the U.S. in 2012, and according to the State Department, direct communication has not resumed since.
But while the Afghan Taliban is not on the list of foreign terrorist organizations, the Pakistani Taliban, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), is.
In 2010, the State Department added the Pakistani Taliban to the list, saying the group of Islamist militants has a “symbiotic relationship” with al Qaeda, providing mutual cooperation and a “safe haven” to al Qaeda along the Afghan-Pakistani border. According to the State Department, TTP is responsible for a 2009 suicide attack on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, which killed seven U.S. citizens, and an April 2010 suicide bombing against the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, which killed six Pakistani citizens. The group also was behind the failed attempt to detonate an explosive in Times Square in 2010, the State Department says. The TTP, which emerged in 2007, has been a frequent target of the American drone campaign.
The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban share a common ideology and worldview, but they are distinct groups with different leadership and priorities.
As a result, Mark Denbeaux, director of Seton Hall Law’s Center for Policy & Research, argues to us in an email, “negotiating a prisoner exchange with the Afghani Taliban does not constitute ‘negotiating with terrorists’ under current U.S. policy.”
But while the Afghan Taliban is not on the United States’ official list of terrorist groups, it has been accused of at least aiding and abetting terrorists.
In 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, a Bush administration State official described the Taliban as a group that financed terrorists with drug money. Testifying before a House subcommittee, William Bach of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, stated the drug trade brought in at least $40 million to the Taliban. He went on to cite a United Nations report that said “funds raised from the production and trade of opium and heroin are used by the Taliban to buy arms and war materials and to finance the training of terrorists and support the operation of extremists in neighboring countries and beyond. … And the Taliban, we know, has given aid, training, and sanctuary to various Islamic terrorist and separatist groups in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden’s al Qa’ida group.”
And in 2014, the Obama administration’s State Department added an Afghan Taliban deputy governor to the list of terrorists:
Press release, U.S. Department of State, Jan. 7: The Department of State has designated Qari Saifullah as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, which targets terrorists and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism. Qari Saifullah is the Taliban shadow deputy governor and an operational commander in Zabul Province, Afghanistan. As an operational commander, Qari Saifullah has used Taliban fighters to organize terrorist activities against the Government of Afghanistan and Coalition Forces in eastern Zabul Province.
Asked last June if the Taliban was a terrorist group, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki admitted, “Well, I’m not sure how they’re defined at this particular moment.”
Further complicating the issue is the fact that when Bergdahl left his post in Afghanistan’s Paktika province in June 2009 and fell into Taliban hands, the New York Times reports, “he was then moved across the border into the tribal areas of Pakistan, where he was held by the Haqqani network.” The Defense Department says Bergdahl was held there by the Haqqani Network for almost five years. The Haqqani Network was added to the State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations in September 2012.
So, even if one argues that the swap was arranged with the Afghan Taliban, the group has been clearly identified as financing terrorism and at least one of its leaders is on the terrorist list. Nonetheless, as we noted earlier, the Afghan Taliban itself is not on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. And in that June press conference, Psaki noted that the Afghan Taliban was a “key part” of the reconciliation process and “moving towards a more stable Afghanistan.” To be clear, the negotiated swap — performed with the government of Qatar acting as intermediary — was not a negotiation with al Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.
Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, says Hagel’s comment had little to do with State Department designations of terrorist groups, and rather was based on the fact that the U.S. conducted all of its negotiations directly with the government of Qatar, which acted as an intermediary. The Qatari government made the necessary security assurances that any threat the detainees might pose could be handled, Breasseale said.
White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice made a similar distinction when she was asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” on June 1 whether the U.S. had negotiated with terrorists.
“We actually negotiated with the government of Qatar, to whom we owe a great debt,” Rice said.
Despite this parsing, the deal had to satisfy both the U.S. and the Afghan Taliban, which was the chief negotiator of the swap.
Negotiating with Terrorists: It Happens
In his comments, Cruz also claimed “the U.S. has had the policy for decades of not negotiating with terrorists.” Bruce Hoffman, director of Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, told USA Today that was “repeated as mantra more than fact. … We have long negotiated with terrorists. Virtually every other country in the world has negotiated with terrorists despite pledges never to.”
Consider, in 1981 in order to facilitate the release of dozens of Americans held hostage in Iran, President Jimmy Carter issued a series of executive orders (12276 to 12284) releasing Iranian assets that had been frozen in U.S. banks, as well as one indemnifying Iran from potential lawsuits arising out of the hostage-taking. Previously, in his 1980 State of the Union address, Carter referred to the Americans being held as “innocent victims of terrorism.”
And then there’s the Iran-Contra affair, in which President Ronald Reagan approved the covert sale of arms to Iran in an attempt to free seven hostages being held in Lebanon by a group with Iranian ties.
For what it’s worth, State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf said in a press conference on June 4 that the State Department doesn’t claim that it won’t “negotiate” with terrorists, but rather that it does not make “concessions” to terrorists. She said the swap was not a concession to terrorists, but rather was part of a longstanding, historical precedent of exchanging prisoners “during a time of war.”
Harf added that the five detainees transferred to Qatar were “unlikely” to be added to the group of detainees who have been referred for prosecution. “So it is quite likely that eventually, in line with our commitment to close Guantanamo Bay, they would be transferred,” Harf said. “So let’s say it was important for us to get Sergeant Bergdahl home. Let’s say these guys may have eventually been transferred somewhere anyways. I think many of us would make the argument – I would make it – that we should get something for them.”
A ‘Normal’ Swap of POWs?
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Hagel not only flatly denied that the U.S. negotiated with terrorists, but called the swap part of “a normal process in getting your prisoners [of war] back.”
Hagel, June 1: Well, first of all, we didn’t negotiate with terrorists. As I said and explained before, Sergeant Bergdahl is a prisoner of war. That’s a normal process in getting your prisoners back.
The U.S. has certainly done prisoner exchanges with more traditional war foes. However, Hagel’s comment suggests a clean swap of prisoners of war, but the situation is more complicated than that.
For starters, the U.S. does not consider detainees held at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba to be prisoners of war. The State Department calls the detainees “enemy combatants.” In fact, the U.S. specifically declared in 2002 that “Taliban detainees are not entitled to POW status. … The Taliban have not effectively distinguished themselves from the civilian population of Afghanistan. Moreover, they have not conducted their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.”
That complicates any assertion that this was a simple swap of prisoners of war.
According to Denbeaux, the Seton Hall law professor who has represented Guantanamo prisoners, the five detainees have “admitted to aiding or commanding troops on behalf of the Taliban in the Afghani Civil War prior to the U.S. military’s arrival in the region,” but “at no point have they been accused of terrorist activities against American civilians or other American non-military targets.”
Denbeaux, June 3: The five released detainees are or were high-ranking members of the Taliban, and have admitted to such. At no point have they been accused of terrorist activities against American civilians or other American non-military targets. They have been accused and have admitted to aiding or commanding troops on behalf of the Taliban in the Afghani Civil War prior to the U.S. military’s arrival in the region. Two of the five do not deny participation in religious wars in which the Taliban was responsible for massacring “thousands” of Shiites. The massacres, which the United Nations determined constituted war crimes, apparently occurred prior to the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. All five were determined by military personnel to have a high intelligence value regarding Taliban activities. Their intelligence value would presumably be exhausted at this point since all five were captured over a decade ago.
While Hagel’s comment may be technically accurate in that the U.S. says it did not directly negotiate with terrorists, that claim and his assertion that the swap was part of a “normal process in getting your prisoners back” gloss over the complicated nature of the conflict in Afghanistan.
Was the Swap Legal?
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 (NDAA) makes clear that the secretary of defense must notify appropriate committees of Congress no less than 30 days before the transfer of a Guantanamo detainee. See Sec. 1035 (d).
When Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, discussed the possibility of a swap for Bergdahl in a press conference in June 2013, she said the White House would “make any such decisions in consultation with Congress and according to U.S. law.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said conversations with appropriate congressional members about a potential swap were held 18 months ago, but, she told the New York Times, “there were very strong views, and they were virtually unanimous against the trade.”
This time, Feinstein and other appropriate congressional leaders did not get notification about transfer of the detainees — which was necessary to complete the deal — until it was already taking place. And so some Republican leaders have accused the Obama administration of violating the notification law.
But that’s not entirely clear.
In a statement released when he signed the NDAA on Dec. 26, Obama foreshadowed his arguments for not needing to notify Congress in some cases.
Obama, Dec. 26, 2013: Section 1035 does not, however, eliminate all of the unwarranted limitations on foreign transfers and, in certain circumstances, would violate constitutional separation of powers principles. The executive branch must have the flexibility, among other things, to act swiftly in conducting negotiations with foreign countries regarding the circumstances of detainee transfers.
In a statement released on June 3, Caitlin Hayden, the National Security Council spokeswoman, argued that it was lawful within the president’s executive powers for the swap to move forward without congressional notification because of a “unique set of circumstances” — namely that Bergdahl’s deteriorating health was such that a delay could “endanger the soldier’s life” (a claim that some have disputed).
That same day, during a press conference while traveling in Poland, Obama was asked whether he had broken the law regarding the 30-day advance notice.
Obama, June 3: We have consulted with Congress for quite some time about the possibility that we might need to execute a prisoner exchange in order to recover Sergeant Bergdahl. We saw an opportunity. We were concerned about Sergeant Bergdahl’s health. We had the cooperation of the Qataris to execute an exchange, and we seized that opportunity. And the process was truncated because we wanted to make sure that we did not miss that window.
Whether the White House’s interpretation is correct remains a matter of debate in the legal community.
