Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode The Unquiet Mind.
About Elyn Saks' TED Talk
"Is it OK if I totally trash your office?" It's a question Elyn Saks once asked her doctor, and it wasn't a joke. A legal scholar, Saks came forward in 2007 with her own story of schizophrenia, controlled by drugs and therapy but ever-present. In this powerful talk, she asks us to see people with mental illness clearly, honestly and compassionately.
John Nagl, retired Army officer and Minerva professor at the U.S. Naval Academy
Gen. Mike Davidson, former assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the National Guard
Capt. Rosemary Mariner, scholar-in-residence, Center for the Study of War and Society
A shrinking Pentagon budget, a changing role for women in combat, and the planned 2014 exit from Afghanistan are just some of the factors that will shape the future of military life. As part of TOTN's "Looking Ahead" series, guests discuss what's ahead for men and women in uniform.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.NEAL CONAN, HOST:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan. After the war in Vietnam, the U.S. military changed in profound ways. A conscript force became all volunteer. Congress changed the rules to force much more extensive use of the National Guard in any future conflict. Training and equipment emphasized fighting at night. And technology made blunt instruments like aerial bombing far more precise.
Scarred by the experience of a war lost in the jungles of Indochina, U.S. military focused on conventional combat. Then, many of the lessons of counterinsurgency had to be re-learned these past 11 years in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now two years after departure from Iraq and as the U.S. combat role diminishes in Afghanistan, what changes now?
We want to hear from those of you in uniform and from veterans, as well. Tell us what's changed in your branch, 800-989-8255 is our phone number, email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.
Joining us here in Studio 42 Are Major General Mike Davidson, retired, former assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the National Guard; and John Nagl, non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the Minerva research fellow at the U.S. Naval Academy. Also with us from member station WOUT in Knoxville, Tennessee, is retired Captain Rosemary Mariner, former naval aviator, resident scholar at the Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. And welcome to you all. Good to see you all again.
JOHN NAGL: Good to be back.
ROSEMARY MARINER: Good to be back, Neal.
CONAN: General Mike, let me start with you. Do you see change now on the same scale as post-Vietnam?
MIKE DAVIDSON: Yes, mostly change for the better, I think, much higher-quality force. Let me back into that. Seventy-five percent of the 18- to 22-year-olds in America are not eligible to join the United States Army, 75 percent: obesity, lack of education, brushes with the law. The flip side of that is we're recruiting from and getting soldiers from only the top 25 percent. It's an expensive force, but it's a very high-quality force.
CONAN: John Nagl, on that question of counterinsurgency, you were one of those instrumental in reviving that policy in Iraq. Is that going to be another lesson thrown away? Is the U.S. military going to say, well, we're never going to do that again?
NAGL: Boy, we've paid such a high price in blood and treasure to re-learn the lessons of counterinsurgency that General Davidson's generation learned in the jungles of Vietnam that it will be over my dead body that we forget those lessons again. And - but I do think that the budget pressures the military is under now with the sequester, downsizing force as always happens, correctly happens in the wake of wars, I think that there is enormous pressure to focus again on what the organization knows best and loves most dearly: conventional combat against mirror-image enemies, even if it's pretty hard to find those in the world today.
CONAN: And Rosemary Mariner, I wonder what you foresee, Change on the level of post-Vietnam?
MARINER: Yes, I think so, although I think the size of the forces will get smaller. The size of the force during Vietnam was much larger than what has been the case in the last 10 years. It's certainly a more diverse or shall we say representative force of American people. We have more women, more recently gays have been allowed to serve openly, and those parts of the American society bring these kinds of skills that General Davidson was talking about and certainly in terms of intellectual capacity and being able to deal with what is now the computerization of the armed forces.
CONAN: And Mike Davidson, that raises a question: Are the changes going to be primarily technological, tactical as we apply things like computerization, or are they going to be cultural, as Rosemary Mariner was suggesting we now have women in combat, we're going to have gays in the military incorporated as part of the structure, and there's going to be great emphasis, as we've been seeing in the past several months, on sexual assaults and on the problem of suicides?
DAVIDSON: Setting aside for the moment the last two issues, sexual assault and suicides, which are kind of a separate issue, I don't think the change is going to be that difficult because we draw our military forces from our citizens. And as women or gays or any other group become more powerful, more mainstream, less ostracized, the army reflects our citizenry, which I think is a good thing.
CONAN: John Nagl?
NAGL: Neal, last year as part of my Naval Academy training and preparation, I got to go underway aboard the USS Mississippi, a Virginia-class attack submarine, a phenomenal product filled with extraordinary sailors. And the skipper told me that the Navy had announced three changes in the same weekend for the submarine force.
They were going to allow women aboard submarines, they were going to allow openly homosexual people to serve aboard submarines, and they were going to ban smoking.
(LAUGHTER)
NAGL: And he said one of those, one of those the crew had a real problem with, and it was smoking.
CONAN: That's smoking. I was going to say - Rosemary Mariner, you were at the - one of the people at the cutting edge of these cultural changes that we're talking about. What do you anticipate there?
MARINER: Well, I think this is actually a very important part of American military history. My role models were African-American men who had led the vanguard in integration in the armed forces and studied many of the lessons that they had to pass on. So I think it's overall going to be not as controversial as many people seem to think.
We've been doing this for a long time. I - we're talking my generation some 40 years ago. So this, in the case of the Navy, is getting - bringing women into the last remaining components of the service. But there are other areas here that I think are important, and one of them has to do with issues similar to the end of the Vietnam War, and that has to do with the breakdown of good order, morale and discipline, which is I think where the sexual assault and other criminal activities really properly fall under and going back to this strict idea of vertical accountability of senior officers in all things under their command.
CONAN: Post-Vietnam, the problem much more was drug use. That was relatively simply addressed with testing and universal testing, and if you use, you're out, or you have a serious problem. John Nagl, it's going to be a much more serious issue to address the cultural issues of sexual assault.
NAGL: I think that's exactly right, and this is a deplorable feature of the greatest armed forces in the world. It's something we absolutely have to fix. And I agree with Rosemary: This is something that the chain of command has to be held accountable for. And if you hold those senior general officers accountable, if we first some of them, if we don't promote some of them, this problem - the news will get down the lines real quick.
And I just want to say in follow on to Rosemary's leadership of gender integration of the military, is that the all-volunteer force that was instituted in the wake of Vietnam absolutely could not have made it through this decade of war without women in uniform. They are about 15 percent of the force; they are some of the best people in the force. And without them, we would have to return to some degree or selective service over this last decade of war.
CONAN: We want to hear from those of you in uniform, and from veterans, too. Tell us what's changed in your branch, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. Let's start with Tim(ph), and Tim's with us from Hillsboro in New Jersey.
TIM: Hi, good afternoon. I'm a Naval Academy graduate, retired Navy captain, did eight years of active duty and been in the reserve 22 years. One of the things that makes this military that we have today much different than in previous generations is that we go to war today with many, many more contractors than we have ever in our history.
For example when - I've been in Afghanistan twice and Iraq once, and the first time I was in Afghanistan was in 2006. At that time there were only about 30,000 troops there. But we also had 30,000 contractors. The reason why I know that is that I'm a retired supply corps officer, and I was responsible for making sure everybody has enough to eat.
So that's one of the things that makes this military much different than in previous generations.
CONAN: And that reliance on contractors, John Nagl, has caused again profound differences, changes.
NAGL: Absolutely. I just said a moment ago that we couldn't have made it through this decade of war without women in uniform. We also couldn't have made it without the contractors. And at times in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we were one for one, one contractor for one person in uniform.
The system I think has not adapted particularly well to that. We had accountability problems with the contractors. We had some training problems with some of the contractors. But overall...
CONAN: So did the NSA, but that's...
(LAUGHTER)
NAGL: And that's a good illustration of some of the kind of problems we faced. But just as with the women in uniform, without the contractors we simply couldn't have made it through without reverting to a draft again, which brings huge problems with it.
CONAN: General Davidson, is this cost-efficient? Does this save money?
DAVIDSON: Enormously cost-efficient. It makes no sense to recruit, train and equip an infantry soldier and then have him build a latrine in Bosnia. And Brown & Root started building latrines for us. They do it extremely well. Most of those contractors are local, indigenous folks that are getting paid on the local wage scale.
CONAN: It's not Halliburton people at great expense?
DAVIDSON: There are a few Halliburtons, but most of the people that do the work are locals.
MARINER: I like to be something of a contrarian here because I think we need to know that one of the things that is different is that these are armed contractors. We've always had combat support contractors in issues of war profiteering. But this time around, we're talking about armed forces that can look like mercenaries. And without that accountability or the fact that they are getting paid a lot more than their military counterparts, we've had some very serious morale and discipline issues.
CONAN: And this came up, John Nagl, especially in Iraq.
NAGL: That's right. Rosemary is absolutely correct. Actually, I did a study on this at CNAS. The armed contractors are a very small percentage of the total. And I think there are real questions about whether they are doing inherently governmental work that should really be the purview of uniformed government personnel. So I agree with Rosemary. I have some questions about arming contractors, but I think that for the vast majority, the logistical support roles, like the ones that General Davidson talked about, they are a very cost-effective answer, and they've done a phenomenal job. We were better supplied in Iraq and Afghanistan than any soldiers have ever been in the history of combat.
CONAN: Tim, thanks very much for the phone call.
TIM: Sure. Thank you.
CONAN: As we look ahead, there tends to be focus on big-ticket items. Right now, it's the F-35, the multiservice fighter. Rosemary Mariner, as a former naval aviator, this approach was tied once before, and the F-4 was a success in some roles and not in others. The F-35 is costing a whole lot of money. Is it an appropriate kind of adaptation to the situation we face now?
MARINER: Let me fly one and I'll give you a better opinion.
(LAUGHTER)
MARINER: I don't know the particulars on this airplane. I just know that back in the day when I was on the joint staff this was a very controversial aircraft then. And there was those who said that it would be the last manned or womanned aircraft flown. So big-ticket items like this are going to be faced with more scrutiny, plus we have the other controversy here with the drones and other robotic kinds of surrogate forces that supposedly would cost less but don't have that human judgment and conscience integrated into them as well.
CONAN: John Nagl, we just saw an unmanned aircraft take off and land on an aircraft carrier for the first time out in the Pacific. A message sent definitely to the Chinese.
NAGL: A message sent to the whole world, I think. I think Rosemary is right. The rise of remotely piloted vehicles, it's important to note that they're not really unmanned or unwomanned. There's a crew behind them that currently still makes the shoot-no shoot decision. The interesting legal, moral, ethical questions, international relations questions are the next phase of these systems when the decisions are going to have to be made autonomously by the system, and it's going to have to be programmed to have kill-no-kill authority on its own, or simply not those unmanned systems simply aren't going to be able to survive in conflict against manned fighter aircraft. We've been flying them over Iraq and Afghanistan where there's been no air-to-air threat. That's probably going to change in the next war.
CONAN: Well, let's see - we go next to Michael(ph). Michael with us from Gum Springs in Arkansas.
MICHAEL: Yes, Sir.
CONAN: Go ahead.
MICHAEL: Thank you for taking the call. I'm a retired reservist. I've noticed that the increased use of National Guard and Army reserve units is greatly increased since I retired out of the reserves back '93. Our unit that I was in at that time was supposed to be called up and from what I understand some politics got in and another unit was in. But the - I don't - during my tenure in the reserves, I didn't feel like the reserves and the National Guard units were utilized as much as they could have been. And now, I think they're being overutilized.
CONAN: General Mike?
DAVIDSON: Interesting comment, Michael, on the politics. You may or may not know that for Vietnam, the Guard and reserve were not used at all, less than 10,000 soldiers out of two and a half million for politics. Lyndon Johnson could not face the political cost of calling up Guard and reserve units. It's one thing to call up an 18-year-old and draft him. It's a whole different thing to take the leadership of a small town, which you have in a Guard or reserve unit and sent them off to war. Now, the politics that you're talking about are units and soldiers politicking to get to the war, and I think that's a testament to the soldiers that we have in the Army, both active Guard and reserve.
CONAN: We're talking about looking ahead to the future of the U.S. military. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. And let me reintroduce our guests. You just heard retired Major General Mike Davidson. Retired naval Captain Rosemary Mariner is also with us. And retired Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl - I didn't give you your rank before - also with us in the studio here in Washington, D.C. And as we - General Davidson, you were talking about the uses of the Guard and the reserves. We talked about a military that now draws from a tiny fraction of the American public. Because it is an all-volunteer force, there is a homogenization there that did not exist with a conscript force. It had other weaknesses but not that.
DAVIDSON: The isolation is a very disturbing trend. Less than 1 percent of Americans have any connection with the military, not just they're not in it, they're not married to someone in the military, their children are not in the military. That's a disturbing trend, and I think the way to fix it is to engender some form of national service, it doesn't have to be full-time military, that takes that other 75 percent of the Americans that can't get in America's army gives them a civilian conservation corps-type opportunity to serve in and something approaching a military setting.
CONAN: John Nagl, the people you teach at the Naval Academy, do they see themselves as people apart?
NAGL: They see themselves - it is a such a joy to teach these young people at the U.S. Naval Academy who, unlike my generation - I signed up in 1984, in a time of peace - these young people have signed up in a time of war, fully expecting that they will be called upon to serve their nation under fire. And it is inspiring to see the patriotism, the dedication, the hard work that they exhibit on a daily basis. They are comforted, I think, by the fact that although very few members of the American population today serve or related to someone who serves, as General Davidson noted, the American people support this generation of soldiers, sailors and airmen and Marine in a way that the Vietnam veterans deserved but didn't get. And it is a tribute to the American public the support that they've given to their sons and their daughters who go in harm's way on their behalf.
CONAN: But do they see themselves as apart from the American public?
NAGL: They are still so closely connected to their high school experiences, to their local communities, not yet. It's really at the lieutenant colonel, colonel level where you've been in the military for longer than you've been out of it. You live on military communities that you do see some of the separation coming.
CONAN: More with John Nagl, Rosemary Mariner and Mike Davidson after a short break. We want to hear from those of you currently serving in the military and from veterans as well. What's changed in your branch? 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CONAN: Right now, we're talking with retired General Mike Davidson, retired Captain Rosemary Mariner and retired Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl in the next of our Looking Ahead conversations, this about the future of the U.S. military. If you're currently serving, if you're now a veteran, call, tell us what's changed in your branch over the past 10 years. 800-989-8255. Send us an email: talk@npr.org. You can also leave your observations on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. And let's go to - I don't know if I can push the button properly. Kevin(ph) is with us from Norfolk in Virginia.
KEVIN: Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call.
CONAN: Sure.
KEVIN: My question is regarding maintaining capability, and it's directed more towards Colonel Nagl. I'm one of those phase zero stability operation guys, and I was a junior officer in Iraq in 2004, suffering through the lack of planning and experience of our senior officers who were trained...
NAGL: You and me both, Kevin.
KEVIN: And you're a hero of us and the troops in the trenches. But after, you know, we swore that we wouldn't make the same mistakes. And we trained our cadre and got through it and got our people home alive. Now that we're turning away from COIN and stability operations, as we did after Vietnam, how are we going to maintain that core competency now that we've removed COIN and stability operations from our doctrine, and we're losing funding, and I'm losing units, I'm losing my senior NCOs? As a senior officer now, how do I maintain that capability when this comes back again and we don't, you know, we prevent repeating the errors of post-Vietnam?
CONAN: Forty-one minutes in before we get our first acronym, COIN, counterinsurgency, John Nagl.
NAGL: Kevin, it's a great question. As you may know, I've been a longtime advocate of building specialized advice and assist units inside the U.S. Army. I think the Army story of adaptation to the demands of counterinsurgency having burned the books after Vietnam, it had to relearn those lessons. Our friends paid for those lessons in blood, and now, we've got to hold on to them somehow. I believe we should build specialized advise-and-assist units that will be enormously useful for situations like the one we're seeing in Syria now that are repositories of cultural knowledge, of training and advising expertise that I think are going to be the most often used forces in the U.S. Army. In a commendable example of battlefield innovation over the last decade, the one thing, I think, the Army has failed at is building that kind of unit to hold that hard-purchased knowledge.
KEVIN: And I agree, and I think your efforts and General Petraeus' efforts have been heroic. And I know you guys and in particular in your doctoral studies you had to, you know, reach out and find those books again and develop those libraries. And we haven't lost those. If you're new, the Army's doctrine, I appreciate all that, but it doesn't change the fact that our core competencies have to be embedded in our senior NCOs for our people to stay alive in combat.
NAGL: Absolutely right.
CONAN: Kevin, thank you very much for the phone call.
KEVIN: OK. Thank you.
CONAN: Rosemary Mariner, earlier you mentioned the shift to unmanned aircraft, to drones. Another shift that has occurred very much over the past several years has been the increase use of Special Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Is that going to continue, or are we going to go back to the more usual units?
MARINER: I think it will increase. But there's one important difference was Special Operations Forces is that under the Special Operations Command as a unified combatant commander, they have their own budget lines, which the other combatant commands don't, so you have to watch that in terms of oversight of the military. Another point I'd like to make about the citizen army side of this, an earlier question, is that there have been almost 500,000 Army and Air National Guard troops that have rotated through Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 10 years. That is our citizen army. That's the traditional citizen army of state-raised forces, and they represent the American people in a way that the regular armed forces historically have not done.
If you look at how the Army and the Navy were viewed in the 19th century, they were very much apart from the mainstream. People looked at their volunteer service especially during civil war as what was civic virtue in military obligation. And I would disagree with General Davidson that national service, which is another way of saying conscripted labor is part of citizenship. That's not an American tradition whatsoever.
DAVIDSON: Rosemary, let me jump to my own defense here. This (unintelligible) on my mind and I didn't go through it all. In World War II, you probably know, we went from 160,000 soldiers to eight and a third million soldiers in the Army and the Army Air Corps. We did that very quickly in just two or three years. The way we did it doesn't get a lot of attention. Three million destitute young men served in the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1932 to 1940, three million. It's tough to find a number, but you can see estimates as high as 90 percent of those CCC graduates who joined or were drafted into the Army.
So they gave us a jumpstart that we really needed. So I don't think of it quite like indentured servitude. I think it more as an opportunity. And my experience has been we have just as many destitute young men and women in poverty now as we did during the 1930s.
MARINER: Well, the difference is coercion. I live in a town that was built by the CCC Corps, so I'm familiar with that. But they were volunteers. And it's not until we have to raise a very large army rapidly that you - we turned to selective service. So there is a difference here. Now, there are volunteer opportunities for national service, and I strongly encourage folks to get in to those positions if they can qualify.
CONAN: And here's an email we have from Alan(ph): As a seven-year army veteran -2006-2013 - with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has changed for the better. It is a higher quality, more independent and critically thinking force. Junior soldiers have a voice and strategy, and small unit tactics are encouraged. Hopefully the changes stay and do not revert to a bureaucratic and hierarchy-focused organization.
And that's - when you're dealing with situations and small units out in - left on their own to a great degree in places like Afghanistan, John Nagl, that is (unintelligible) kind a small unit independent.
NAGL: And the individual leadership skills that those young leaders have developed. I agree completely with Allan on that. And there's a real concern among those veterans who I talked to as they look at returning to Fort Hood, Texas where I spent some time myself where the big questions are going to be whether the tanks are parked in straight lines, particularly as - which is hard to do with a 70-ton toy, particularly as sequester eliminates training funds.
And it's really important. I really want to take this opportunity to let the American people know that if their armed forces are called upon right now, they will be less ready than they should be.
They will lose more of America's sons and daughters than they need to because we have grounded fighter squadrons and we have turned off National Training Center rotations for our Army because of the sequester. And this is a crime against the armed forces of the United States of America. And I'm here in Washington. We're on North Capital. We're right next door to Capitol Hill where those decisions were made. Those need to be overturned. We are wasting our military capabilities at a very dangerous time in our military's history.
CONAN: I want to return to something we mentioned earlier in the broadcast, and that was - we spoke, to some degree, about the difficult problem of sexual assault in the military. Mike Davidson, suicide, unprecedented rates in the military.
DAVIDSON: It's a huge challenge. Let me jump to the Army's defense, which I don't normally do. The coin of the realm in the Navy is carrier battle groups. I think we may have 10 of them now. The coin of the realm in the Air Force are fighter wing equivalents. The coin of the realm in the Army is active-component divisions. How many divisions do we have? Well, our Army has dedicated one division's worth of faces and spaces. Those are people and resources to the suicide issue. We've been doing it for three or four years. The situation is awful, but it would be worse if we hadn't started on that early.
CONAN: John Nagl.
NAGL: I agree with General Davidson that we are starting to work on this problem. We have devoted resources to this problem of suicide, which is one of the costs of this all-volunteer forces. We've sent people back for four and five and six combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the combat stress is cumulative. But a lot of those people we've assigned to work this problem are civilians.
They're being furloughed as a result of the sequester. And a number of them, people I know, have lost their jobs as counselors to soldiers because of the sequester. And I'm going to say again, American citizens - Americans veterans are going to die because of the sequester, people who served their country in combat. Some survived physical wounds. Some survived emotional wounds. They are all real wounds. But they are - the resources required to keep them alive are being taken away by decisions made here in Washington.
CONAN: Rosemary Mariner, let me ask you. Sometimes civilians have the impression that leaders of the military give lip service to addressing issues like sexual assault, like suicide, but don't actually do much about it.
MARINER: Well, I think they're doing what they can right now without addressing what is perhaps the elephant in the living room, and that's what people have done at these anti-guerrilla wars. Coin is the term we use today with counterinsurgency-type things. There is a new book out by a man named Sean Harissa(ph) that talks about what people have experienced in terms of post-traumatic stress and, of course, suicide.
Well, the title of the book is "We Weren't Like This Before." So I think we have to do a lot of introspection about what kinds of things people did overseas that led to some of these problems and perhaps more soul searching than anti-psychotic medications are called for.
CONAN: Retired Captain Rosemary Mariner, who's with us member station WUOT in Knoxville, Tennessee. She's a lecturer in the history department at the University of Tennessee, scholar-in-residence, Center for the Study of War and Society. Retired General Mike Davidson is with us here in Studio 42, former assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the National Guard and John Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel is with us also in Studio 42, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for New American Security, currently teaching, at least for a little bit more, at the United States Naval Academy. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Katherine's(ph) on the line calling us from Sacramento.
KATHERINE: Hello.
CONAN: Hi. You're on the air. Go ahead, please.
KATHERINE: I just wanted to comment. When I joined - I'm a retired Marine - I joined in '77 and retired in '97, and in boot camp women Marines were not allowed to carry weapons. But when I went through boot camp in December of '77, I was in the second (unintelligible) and was allowed to train with M16s and qualify. And from then on, they implemented them throughout the Marine Corps. Another thing people probably don't know is that women Marines wear different uniforms than the male Marines. And now, it's more uniform.
CONAN: And those - that might sound superficial, but it isn't. It's really important.
KATHERINE: It is. And if the United States want to save a lot of money, we'd all be in the same uniform, wouldn't we?
CONAN: Well, then you get into purple suits. So that's another issue. I'm not sure we're seeing the change go that far.
KATHERINE: Right. I'm glad to see it in the media about sexual harassment in the military. That was rampant throughout my 20 years, and I'm glad to see that it's being investigated and prosecuted and maybe go away.
CONAN: Rosemary Mariner, you have to have had some of those similar experiences.
MARINER: We could be here all day telling sea stories. But, no. This is - the Marine Corps is going to be probably the service we have to watch closely in the terms of integration into the infantry because it's a very small service, less than 200,000 on the active side and just under 7 percent women. So this will be the biggest change for them. That being said, the Marines have a success - good - young, good success in other areas.
But we're not talking harassment here that in the recent news stories. We're talking criminal assaults. And that is really serious, criminal activity that falls along the same lines of other command accountability in issues such as criminal actions, atrocities, torture, drug abuse, those kinds of things that also came up during the Vietnam era. So I think a lot of civilian oversight both on the executive as well as the congressional side is called for here.
CONAN: Thanks very much for the call, Katherine(ph).
KATHERINE: You bet. Thank you.
CONAN: Let's see if we go next to - this Robert, and Robert on the line with us from Fort Bragg.
ROBERT: Hi. How are you?
CONAN: Very well. Thanks.
ROBERT: Army civil affairs, captain stationed down at Fort Bragg and I want to say thanks to retired Lieutenant Colonel Nagl. Read all his stuff growing up in Army. I've been in for about nine years now.
NAGL: I'd heard somebody read it. So thanks.
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERT: And I kind of wanted to - kind of wanted to highlight one of the articles that you had written in Atlantic Monthly a couple of years ago regarding promotion systems for officers. And I kind of see the relevance of that article certainly now as we go into sequestration, particularly for captains, the promotion rate and for lieutenants as well. The promotion rate is so low, lower than it's been in, I believe, a decade that we're starting to see a lot of people passed over for their promotions to captain or to major.
And one of the particular frustrations in the Army is combat arms officers, which you all know is infantry, field artillery, armor, civil affairs, PSYOPS and Special Forces because of the promotions, they're all blocked together. So a captain, regardless of the branch in the Army, is promoted at the same level as infantry. So across the board, we're seeing sequestration. It doesn't matter what specialty you're in in the military, within the Army, in particular. I kind of wanted to hear your points on that.
CONAN: And in the past, if you were past over, it's opt or out.
NAGL: That's exactly right. And, Robert, the book you're talking about, it was actually - the first article in the book was written by Tim Kane, a friend of mine, Air Force Academy graduate. He published a trendy article into a book titled "Bleeding Talent," which is just the problem you're talking about.
CONAN: And we had them on this program to talk about it.
NAGL: And so the military recruits the best young people in America, the young men and women I'm teaching at the Naval Academy. It inspires them. It educates them with enormous resources from the American public. And then all too many of them leave the service dispirited by bureaucratic promotion systems by an inability to exercise their natural creativity and leadership. And we've got to do a better a job of keeping more of them in uniform.
James Kitfield wrote a wonderful book about the generation - General Davidson's generation that stayed in after Vietnam and rebuilds the military that I'm proud to have been a part of a few years ago. That book is called "Prodigal Soldiers," and we're looking for some prodigal soldiers now. Tim Kane's initial Atlantic Monthly article is title "Why Our Best Officers Are Leaving." I think our best officers are staying, and they've got their work cut out for them in this environment with all the problems we're talking about, all the changes that Neal has talked about. But we need the best of America to remain in uniform to continue to keep the American military the best in the world.
CONAN: Robert, thanks very much for the phone call.
ROBERT: Thank you.
CONAN: I'm afraid we're going to leave it there. We could go on and talk all day. But that's all the time we have. Captain Mariner, thank you very much.
MARINER: Thank you, and fair winds and following seas, Neal.
CONAN: Thank you very much. Rosemary Mariner, with us from Tennessee. Our thanks to John Nagl. Good luck at the - at Haverford. And he joined us here in Studio 42. Mike Davidson, as always, it's been a lot times over the years. Thank you very much for joining us.
DAVIDSON: Thank you for all you've done for the country for our Army over the last 12 or 13 years, Neal.
CONAN: It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.David Savage, Supreme Court correspondent, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune
The Supreme Court issued its decision Monday in Fisher v. the University of Texas, which challenged the constitutionality of the use of affirmative action in college admissions. The court sent the case back to the lower court to apply "strict scrutiny" to the University's admissions policy.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.NEAL CONAN, HOST:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. We're going to focus most of this hour on the United States military and look ahead at what kind of changes to anticipate after Iraq and Afghanistan, but first to the Supreme Court. Earlier today, the justices chose not to issue a sweeping opinion on affirmative action. In a closely watched case, Fisher versus the University of Texas, the court ruled seven to one to send the case back to a lower court, but on the way it also made it clear that any use of racial preference will come under a more skeptical eye from now on.
In a case that centered on admissions policies at the University of Texas, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority, quote, "the reviewing court must ultimately be satisfied that no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity."
Some analysts call the decision a compromise rather than a punt, but the ruling leaves open many questions about what's next for affirmative action. We're joined now, as we often are, by David Savage, Supreme Court correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune newspapers. He joins us by phone from his office here in Washington. David, always good to have you with us.
DAVID SAVAGE: Hi Neal.
CONAN: Waiting a long time for this decision on a case the justices seemed to have picked to issue a sweeping ruling on affirmative action.
SAVAGE: Yes, this is one that the most surprising aspect of it is what they didn't do. When this case came up for argument in October, it sure looked like the case that the conservatives had wanted to basically say no to affirmative action. Five of them are very familiar with this subject and have in the past been very skeptical of the idea of using race.
So the first surprise is why it took so long, and then the second surprise is sort of what they finally came up with, which is - you described it as sort of a skeptical tone to - sends it back to a lower court and says the university must show that affirmative action is really necessary, there's no other so-called race-neutral alternative that would bring about diversity on campus.
But I think from the larger perspective is most colleges and universities would sort of view this with sort of a sigh of relief and say, well, this will not force us to change anything.
CONAN: So what happens when it goes back to a lower court?
SAVAGE: My guess is that the lower court will - I think there's a good chance they will reject the Texas plan, but it's because of something specific to Texas. Texas has this so-called top 10 law that says that if you are a - in the top 10 percent of your high school graduation class, you can get into the University of Texas. And that law, over time, has led to a steady influx of Hispanic and to some degree African-American students.
So as each year goes on, it's sort of harder to argue that the university really needs affirmative action in order to bring about diversity on campus.
CONAN: So in that case, would it be appealed back up to the Supreme Court?
SAVAGE: It could be, but I think it would no longer be, you know, a national case that we're all watching. In other words, it's something that's particularly - Texas has this law that seems to have worked in a way that not many other states could do the same thing.
I will say there's sort of a moderate, liberal view is that a lot of universities, state universities in other - Florida, North Carolina, whatever, ought to try something like this, that is recruit or admit the very best students in some of the, you know, poorer, lower-income high schools in the state.
And that's a way to - you're rewarding students for good performance. You're bringing about diversity, and you're not having so much weigh on SAT scores and test scores.
CONAN: Some people would say you're setting a lot of those kids up for failure, though. They'll be admitted, but they won't make it past the freshman or maybe the sophomore year.
SAVAGE: That's actually what people thought in Texas, Neal, eight or 10 years ago, in the late '90s when this was really getting underway. People said a lot of these students won't do well. But in fact the graduation rate at the University of Texas has been going up steadily, and when I went down there in the fall, and a lot of these admissions people admitted that they were pleasantly surprised that those students who were good students in high school, did well in high school, may not have great test scores, nonetheless did just fine at the University of Texas.
CONAN: Now is this truly a compromise, seven to one?
SAVAGE: Yes, I think the interesting backstory here is Chief Justice Roberts. I've been writing about this a little bit, that in the last couple years, John Roberts has had a choice, as do - he's a conservative guy. Do you join the conservatives for big, sweeping rulings, Citizens United is one that you and everyone remembers, a very broad ruling, five to four, allowing corporate - that ruling set off a real backlash.
And Roberts has really wanted to avoid fractured, five-to-four rulings that go very far. He's been very interested in finding sort of the middle ground, and this is a classic example of they found a middle ground that the conservative justices and the liberal justices could agree with, and, you know, decide something in a way that is not an earthquake in either way.
CONAN: People will look at that number, seven to one, and realize it does not add up to nine. Justice Kagan did not participate in the case. Do we know why?
SAVAGE: Yes, she was in the - she was the solicitor general the first year of the Obama administration. This case was under appeal. And her rule has been that if she had played any part in approving appeals or doing anything on a case, she will not sit on it when it reaches the Supreme Court. So that's why she stayed out of this one.
CONAN: And the one who dissented and why?
SAVAGE: Ruth Ginsburg dissented, and her view was that the top 10 plan is a race-conscious plan after all. It was done to improve diversity on campus. And her view was that we ought to just go ahead and approve the use of race in situations like this, and she would have just flat out upheld the University of Texas policy.
I thought it was quite interesting that Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Stephen Breyer joined sort of, you know, this moderate conservative bloc to say let's send this back for another close look by the lower court.
CONAN: And is this going to encourage changes at other state universities? Is this going to encourage more lawsuits?
SAVAGE: I think it's hard to gauge. If you were one of the conservatives who wanted to challenge affirmative action, I would think this is a little depressing. You spent years trying to get a case at the Supreme Court, and you don't - you know, it's not much of an incentive to do it again.
I think it may encourage a few big states, as I mentioned, to try to move away a little bit from weighing race and trying to find a way, like this top 10 law, rewarding top graduates, find a way to bring in more minority students but without giving an explicit preference in the admissions policy.
CONAN: Now some will remember there was another case I think from the University of Michigan that was also broadly about affirmative action. Does the Texas case supplant that, or are we awaiting a decision on the Michigan case, as well?
SAVAGE: We're waiting a decision on the Michigan case, as well. That will be argued in the fall. The lower court decided that on a different basis, basically said that they threw out - the lower court threw out a state proposition, a ballot measure that prohibited affirmative action in Michigan. And so that's a different legal issue, and the court's going to hear that case and decide it next year.
CONAN: Well, a couple of other interesting cases they picked up for next year announced today, one of them McCullen v. Coakley, which takes on the issue of protestors at abortion clinics. And as I understand it, their case argues that the law in Massachusetts that prohibits them from barring entry to - they have to be a certain distance away from entries to abortion clinics, that violates their right to free speech.
SAVAGE: Yes, this is sort of an old issue that the court dealt with about 10 or 12 years ago and sort of settled on a - and that sort of seemed like a compromised position, which was to say you could have a buffer zone around the entrance to an abortion clinic, so patients and doctors could go in and out, but the protestors could stand on the sidewalk and hold signs or protest.
And now the court's going to revisit a Massachusetts law that does something like that, and my impression - my sense of it is is that the conservative justices think this is a little bit unfair to abortion protestors, that they should be able to walk up to somebody on the sidewalk and say here's a pamphlet, or you should reconsider your decision. They're going to allow, I think, a little more leeway for sidewalk protestors to speak to patients.
CONAN: Another case that will be also closely watched, NLRB versus Noel Canning, and that's about the president's power to so-called recess appointments.
SAVAGE: Yes, that's a big sort of a political - in a sense, Washington political story. It's a big deal for the Obama administration because the House Republicans have used their minority and the filibuster rule to block a vote on a lot of Obama nominees for agencies like the National Labor Relations Board and this Consumer Financial Protection Board.
Obama turned around and made a recess appointment when the Senate was out for three weeks early January of 2012. A lower court ruled that you can - really narrowed the president's recess power and said only when the Senate has formally adjourned after two years can the president make a recess appointment. So President Obama's lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court, said you should reverse that decision. So that's what they're going to take up in the fall.
CONAN: And it's a sticky case because the administration uses this frequently, and the previous administration did, as well, this ability to make recess appointments over the objections of a faction in one of the opposite party in the United States Senate. But nevertheless, without this power, it's going to be extremely difficult to fill some of those jobs.
SAVAGE: Absolutely. This - as you said, for a long time, presidents have done this as sort of an emergency way to get around a recalcitrant Senate. The situation is particularly bad now because, as I say, the Republican minority has blocked a lot of people not because there's anything wrong with the nominees, it's they just don't like the agencies. They don't like the NLRB, and they don't like this Consumer Protection Bureau.
So the president has no way to get somebody appointed to those offices, and if the court says you can't do it as a recess appointee, then the president can't put any one of his appointees sort of in charge of the agency.
CONAN: Well, they're still awaiting, we are still awaiting, decisions in three other big cases, on the Voting Rights Act, on gay marriage in California and on the Defense of Marriage Act. And the court announced today that they are adding tomorrow as another decision day.
SAVAGE: Yes, that's right. They'll have decisions tomorrow, and I assume, and maybe I hope, Wednesday or Thursday. There must be five or six to go, and as you said, there's at least three big decisions. So they'll have decisions tomorrow and then I assume one other day this week.
CONAN: David Savage, we'll talk to you then.
SAVAGE: Thanks, Neal.
CONAN: David Savage, Supreme Court correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. He joined us from his office here in Washington. After a short break, we'll switch gears and look ahead to what's coming for the U.S. military with retired General Mike Davidson, retired Captain Rosemary Mariner and John Nagl. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.In the final broadcast of TOTN, NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving, senior business editor Marilyn Geewax and science correspondent Richard Harris discuss the big stories they're covering. Callers talk about the issues that have their communities and social circles abuzz.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.NEAL CONAN, HOST:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. Every day on this program, we try to address the talk of the nation, the most important, the most compelling stories, like landmark Supreme Court decisions, civil war in Syria, climate change, politics and tough times.
On our last day, we think it's appropriate for you to set the agenda. Call, tell us: What's the talk of the nation? It might be a big international story you've been following for weeks, or a local news event that has your neighborhood abuzz. We've also invited a few of our favorites here at NPR to join us. And later in the program: What is the best goodbye card you ever got? You can email us on that now: talk@npr.org.
And if you want to tell us what's the talk of the nation, our phone number is 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org, and click on TALK OF THE NATION.
And let's see if we can get Heather on the line. Heather's with us from Tampa.
HEATHER: Hi, yes. I think one of the most important things that's going on right now is actually the special session in Texas to try to push through abortion restrictions.
CONAN: And the filibuster the other day by State Senator Wendy Davis.
HEATHER: Right, which is absolutely incredible. She deserves incredible support and just recognition for that effort. I think that was a really wonderful stand for women's rights.
CONAN: And you know that the governor plans to call another session, I think, as soon as next week, to bring back the bill. And I think the great expectation is that it's going to pass quite easily.
HEATHER: I do know that, and I'm incredibly disappointed in Governor Perry's decision to do that.
CONAN: I wonder also, there's been some allegations of hypocrisy. Democrats and people on the left have sometimes been impatient with Republican filibusters, particularly in the United States Senate.
HEATHER: Right, and I can understand that, but I think there's a distinction to be made. It's one thing to stand up and actually talk for 11 hours. It's another thing to put through sort of a procedural filibuster that doesn't in any way take any courage. It's essentially a way to just sort of weasel out of having to have a discussion on the topics of debate.
CONAN: Heather, thanks very much for the call.
HEATHER: Thank you.
CONAN: And as it happens, we have NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving with us here in Studio 42. And Ron, nice to have you back, as always.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Neal. You're one of my favorites.
(LAUGHTER)
CONAN: Oh, well, thank you very much for that. And Heather's point, the procedural filibuster, this has become an institution in the United States Senate, where somebody merely has to threaten a filibuster, then all of a sudden you need 60 votes to get anything passed.
ELVING: Heather makes a sophisticated distinction here about different kinds of filibusters - sophisticated, but one I think we can all relate to, and that is the difference between actually getting up Jimmy Stewart-style and holding the floor for extended periods of time. Wendy Davis did this for, I believe, 11 hours, without the benefit of being able to touch a piece of furniture to lean on, because that was forbidden by the rules, denied a back brace and so on, and forced to make her stand on her feet.
And that kind of physical courage I think people do respect. They also see that there's a certain physical limit to it, whereas the kind of virtual filibuster that we have today in the United States Senate is an excuse, really, for people to just put the kibosh on anything that they don't like and put such an incredible penalty in terms of time on trying to deal with it that the Senate will back off. And we see that all the time.
CONAN: Do we think Rand Paul is going to wear pink sneakers the next time he tries it?
ELVING: And I should say Rand Paul is the last guy we've seen get up and do a multi-hour filibuster in the style that Wendy Davis did down in Austin, Texas. He did it as a Republican senator opposed to some of the uses we're seeing of automated equipment, drone, NSA sort of surveillance and issues that have become really quite salient since he did it.
CONAN: And I have to ask you, the talk of the nation today in Washington, D.C. seems to be in the United States Senate, where it looks as if the immigration bill could pass as soon as today.
ELVING: This is a week of historic days. And the historic day in the Senate, with respect to immigration, already today they have invoked cloture, ending a filibuster attempt - or at least the threat of a filibuster - with 68 votes, more than the 60 that are required to cut off debate. So that makes it quite clear the bill is going to pass.
And later on today, the Senate will have its final vote on its immigration overhaul. This is something more or less that's been in the works for a decade or more, back to the last bill of its kind in 1986. It is quite momentous. It could mean a great deal to a great number of Americans and potential, prospective Americans. And it's also going to be a huge controversy when it gets to the House.
CONAN: Where one of the House members of the leadership, the Republican leadership, said today this bill is dead on arrival.
ELVING: As written by the Senate it is, at this stage of the process. The question is: Will the House pass anything at all? If the House passes some kind of an immigration bill of its own, something it likes better, that the Republican majority likes better since the speaker says he won't bring anything else to the floor, then can that bill go to a conference with the Senate? That would produce a conference report. That could come back to the Senate and - excuse me, come back to both the Senate and the House and conceivably be passed in a bipartisan fashion by both chambers.
CONAN: In the meantime, there is no way to avoid those other historic days, where the Voting Rights Act was essentially gutted by the United States Supreme Court, and then yesterday, momentous decisions on gay marriage.
ELVING: That's correct. And interestingly, for all those people who watch the Supreme Court - particularly those who watch it with some jaundiced eye - we heard much the same objection to each of those decisions by those whose ox had been gored.
We saw the conservative bloc of justices - that is to say Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy - all together in voting on the Voting Rights Act. And we saw them all together opposing the move on gay marriage, except for Justice Kennedy, who just 10 years earlier, on the very same day - this was the 10th anniversary - had written the historic Lawrence case opinion, in which he struck down laws that banned gay sex.
That was a big, watershed moment, and at that time, Justice Scalia said that was an overreach and that in 10 years, we'd be looking at legalizing gay marriage. People thought at the time Scalia was being hyperbolic. He was not only being predictive, he was precisely predictive, to the day.
CONAN: And it's interesting: He also predicted in yesterday's dissent on the Defense of Marriage Act that this is a false front, and we're just setting up for the other shoe to drop and for this majority on the court to ban - ban bans on gay marriage, to legalize gay marriage across the board.
ELVING: Well, David Boies - who was one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs in this case, who were trying to establish a right to marriage for gay couples - has said that this really does give them the opportunity to judge laws against gay marriage in those states that have them. I believe it's 31 states have passed bans on gay marriage.
CONAN: Thirty-eight, I think.
ELVING: Well, the different...
CONAN: Different levels of ban.
ELVING: ...different definitions of what's a ban, but an outright ban in 31. And look at those, and put them against the principles that were laid out by the court in this decision yesterday and say, gee, this doesn't seem to pass constitutional muster, according to Justice Kennedy and his other four voters on the liberal side.
CONAN: And let's get Bambi(ph) on the line, Bambi with us from Charleston.
BAMBI: Hi. Thanks so much for taking my call on the air. So many things in the news. I love the show, will really miss and wish I had - weren't so many important things, so we could express sentiments along those lines. But I did want to raise the issue of the change in Voters Rights Act. As a born and raised Southerner, I've had the opportunity to live all over the United States, and thus I garnered my liberal tendencies.
I have to say that until these justices stand in a voting line in states such as South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, they are obviously clueless. I have seen voters denied instructions on casting provisional ballots. I've seen African-American voters turned away and told they have to drive to headquarters in the evening - which is obviously closed - in other to get those provisional instructions.
And I have stood forward many times, given instructions myself or reprimanded people who are not allowing valid IDs. It's unreal, just blows my mind. Until they stand in those lines and see black voters turned away, they are clueless as to what's going to happen with this new deal.
CONAN: Ron, it's interesting: To go back to the opinion there - and this was, again, Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority, saying it's not a question, of course there is still racial discrimination on voting. He said that is a fact. The other question, though, is whether the basis on which this law is being held - and he talked about the areas that had been selected for enforcement, that had not been updated for 40 years. And he said this is simply no longer the case if you look at turnout figures, if you look at the number of African-American and minority officials who have been elected.
ELVING: That's right. There has been change. No question that there has been change. The question is: Does that mean that the mechanism by which much of that change has been achieved should be removed? Or does it mean that that mechanism should be, in some sense or another, altered? What does it mean? If the change that we have seen in the last 40 years is something that the court approves and Congress approves - and Congress reauthorized this law back in 2006, unanimously in the Senate, and almost unanimously in the Senate, 90 percent of the Senate voted...
CONAN: In the House, you mean.
ELVING: In the House, they voted 90 percent for this. So there does seem to be some approval of the change that's taken place, largely because of the Voting Rights Act. So does that mean that we should not need the Voting Rights Act anymore, or does it mean that it's done a good job and it should be retained? That's, I think, an argument that's going to go forward.
The other question is: Is it fair to just look at the nine states that were entirely under this particular onus of having to take all their voting laws to the Justice Department? Parts of several other states had to do it, as well. Is it fair to only put them in the penalty box? Or would it make more sense to devise a broader formula? Or possibly just say that all 50 states need to have their voting rights pre-cleared by some authority that keeps the Constitution of the United States in mind?
CONAN: It was interesting, also, to hear John Lewis - of course, the member of Congress from Georgia and the civil rights pioneer - to talk about what makes us think that rights given cannot be taken away, take a walk in my shoes. Bambi, thanks very much for the call.
BAMBI: Thank you. I appreciate you addressing it.
CONAN: And a couple of emails on that subject. This is from Scott: Today, I can't help thinking about the Supreme Court, which overturned key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - unspeakably sad. And this is from Maroila(ph) - Mavoila(ph), excuse me. It is amazing to me the Supreme Court could feel race is no longer important in voting issues the same week that TV food icon Paula Deen is under a microscope for being a Southern belle who used racial slurs. How could there be such different views of the state of affairs?
We get the point. It's not quite what the court ruled, but we get the point. It's interesting, Ron, as we go ahead, it seems to me the court has already decided it's not going to take up another gay marriage case. It today ruled there were two possibilities on the docket, not next year.
ELVING: Not next year, although we will be looking at affirmative action again next year because of a case coming from the state of Michigan. That might give the court an opportunity to weigh in again on an issue that it also ruled on this week, sending an affirmative action plan from the state of Texas back down to an appellate court for another review.
There's still some roiling on the court with respect to their attitude towards affirmative action.
CONAN: Ron Elving, as always, thank you very much.
ELVING: And Neal, let me just say the moments I've spent speaking with you on your show have been some of the happiest moments of my working life.
CONAN: Thank you for that, Ron. We appreciate it.
ELVING: Going to miss it.
CONAN: Senior Washington editor Ron Elving, here with us in Studio 42. When we come back, well, we'll check in with two more NPR reporters, but more of your calls, as well. What's the talk of the nation today? 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan. Today, for the last time on the program, we're doing - well, we're doing what we do. We're talking about you're talking about around your dinner table, in the car with the kids, as you stand in line at the grocery store or check in on Twitter. You may not realize it, but you've always helped set out agenda every day. When we fill up our planning board with the topics we'll cover at 2 PM Eastern Time, your voices rang in our ears.
So tell us, one more time, what's the talk of the nation? 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also find us on Twitter. That's @totn. And let's go to Bob, Bob with us from Gainesville.
BOB: Thank you, Neal. I find that the Edward Snowden case has certainly been the talk of the nation. But the underlying issues behind this are very much interesting to me and many others, the idea as to whether or not - what the government is doing encroaching on our civil liberties and reading into our phone lines and whatnot. Whether or not that is done in the name of security is a very interesting discussion.
I feel that we should not trade our liberties for security, and, of course, the precedent for this was 9/11. Many might fear that we might have another 9/11 attack, and 9/11 being the falsified attack that it was, with Building Seven being a building 47 stories tall that fell in freefall speed in a matter of seconds, was not hit by any other airplane...
CONAN: Ah, I see we have a truther with us.
BOB: Yes, well I think that's a very derogatory term, and perhaps on your last show...
CONAN: It's derogatory because you're talking scientific nonsense. I have to - I'm sorry I have to upbraid you - I'm sorry to upbraid you. I am sorry to upbraid you. Please, I try to listen with respect to callers, except when they have their facts flat wrong.
BOB: Do you think Building Seven is not a very telling incident, sir?
CONAN: I think it fell for different reasons, and the scientific community agrees with me. Well, more to the point, I agree with them. What do I know about Building Seven? The fact is...
BOB: Well, actually, the architects and engineers all are in a consensus of...
CONAN: No they are not, Bob, and I'm sorry...
BOB: Yes, there's a group called Architects and Engineers...
CONAN: Bob, I'm hanging up on you, because this is nonsense. Thank you. Let's move right along. Paula's on the line with us from Tucson.
PAULA: Hi. I'm glad to be on the air today. We'll miss you very much. Wendy Johnson is certainly one of my new heroines, but living down here near the border, I wanted to talk a little bit about immigration.
CONAN: And you're right on the frontline there.
PAULA: Right on the frontline, and, you know, living around and among many Mexican immigrants and immigrants from Latin America, you get a very different perspective than people in other parts of the country. One of the things that has really surprised me about this whole discussion is no one seems to see how backwards we have it. Even our own senators, McCain and some of our representatives, seem to think that the first thing you need to is quote-unquote "secure the border," when in fact, if we establish a guest-worker program, if we establish a way for people to come here legally, it erodes the very need for any type of resistance to people coming here illegally
CONAN: I hear what you're saying, but there is an aspect of this in which at least some - and perhaps I'm reading between the lines here - on the Republican side say in order to get Republican votes, we have to have this element in the bill, otherwise it's not going to get passed. And that important element that many progressives want, the path to citizenship for the 11 million or so already here, that's not going to go anywhere.
PAULA: Well, I understand that, and I - to me, that just points to the dysfunction of our system and the way we do leadership in this country. To put 20,000 more people down here where our border patrol can barely maintain the needs that it has already, and then to build a fence that, quite frankly, you know, I don't think you can build a wall high enough to keep desperate people out of this country. And I think it's time we realized that.
And we're also - what happens with the border fence? Besides creating an atmosphere of militarization and hostility and suspicion among people, it is destroying a lot of very essential parts of our environment down here. And this is a very delicate ecosystem in the Southwest.
So there are so many reasons to not go that direction and so many reasons to start looking at how we can start welcoming people into this country who want to be here, who are contributing, who want to work. And I guess my last point would be to all those well-meaning people in my camp who point to the fact that Mexican laborers are willing to do jobs no one else wants to do, why should a person have to agree to do slave labor to be welcomed into this great country? So that's what I have to say. Thank you.
CONAN: Thanks very much for the call, Paula. Marilyn Geewax, our senior business editor for NPR, is here. And we always love a chance to talk with her. She joins us one last time in Studio 42. Nice to have you with us, Marilyn.
MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: Hi, Neal, it's great to be with you.
CONAN: And this time last week, there was something akin to panic setting in, as it was Ben Bernanke saying, well, maybe by even the end of the year, we might be able to start winding down that quantitative easing, stop buying so many bonds and wean the system off those injections of federal money that we've been using for so long.
And all of a sudden, the bond market and the stock market went (makes noises).
GEEWAX: And that big bomb is hitting on a lot of people who are trying to buy homes right now. Interest rates, the long-term rates, the ones that you use to buy a home with, 30-year mortgages, they've really risen a lot in the past month. We've seen interest rates on those home mortgages go from about something in the range of three and a - three-and-three-quarters of a percent up, to about four-and-a-half percent, even beyond that. Now it's starting to look like it could get up to 5 percent.
So if you were thinking about buying a home, maybe all of a sudden, knowing that your monthly mortgage payment is going to be $100 more, maybe $200 more, that's really causing a lot of people to either rush into buying a home before rates go even higher, or maybe start to change their mind and think maybe renting a while longer isn't such a bad idea.
So this issue of home affordability is becoming a little bit more of a problem after all this time with low interest rates. So I think that's really been the big fallout from the higher interest rates. Whether or not that's a temporary phenomenon, and maybe it'll just sort of die down, but it could start to derail some of this housing recovery we've seen this year.
CONAN: And interesting, Mr. Bernanke made this announcement because he said, well, you know, the economy, it's getting better. And I think today, we're even seeing some encouraging employment numbers.
GEEWAX: Oh, it's always so complicated with the economy, because here's the thing: He's saying yes, the reason interest rates are going to start to drift higher is because the economy is actually getting stronger, and that's good. We'd love a stronger economy. But, you know, a big part of the reason why the economy is getting stronger is because the housing market has been gaining.
When people buy homes, they also get landscaping services, and they buy furniture, and they do things that create jobs for other people. So how do you manage to start to raise interest rates to keep the economy on more normal footing, to get rates back to something that seems more historically in line? And that is a little bit higher. Five percent is more in line with what's normal for mortgage rates.
But if the housing market gets weaker, and maybe we start to backslide again, and the job growth that we've seen in construction starts to ease off, do we get right back into the soup? Do we slide back? You know, Neal, it's been four years exactly. It was in June of 2009 that the economy turned around and began to grow after the big plunge for the recession.
So we've had four years of growth, but it's still very weak, and a lot of it is tied to that housing market coming back. So this is a precarious moment.
CONAN: Are you encouraged broadly about the U.S. economy? Do you think this is - steady growth is going to be able to continue?
GEEWAX: It's such a complicated time right now. When I look out across it, there are so many things that are so encouraging in the energy sector, and my goodness, the new technologies that we're coming out with, the new ways of manufacturing, there are just so many exciting things out there, whether it's agricultural or just things that are coming out of the high-tech sector. There's so much to think, boy, this is - this could be a real turning point. The economy might really take off.
But then I look the other direction, and there's still - we've got almost 12 million people long-term unemployed, and the - is about half of that, almost. So it's - we've got a lot of people looking for work and a lot of baby boomers who lost income and lost wealth during this. People are moving towards retirement, a very large cohort of Americans.
CONAN: I wish you wouldn't mention that.
GEEWAX: Yeah, right about - something like 75, 78 million Americans are steaming towards retirement. And their homes are maybe not back to where they once were in terms of the value. Their retirement savings, after you adjust for inflation, are still depressed. A lot of people lost jobs and took jobs for lower pay. So you've got a big chunk of the population moving towards retirement, not in the kind of shape that they had hoped to be in.
And you still have an awful lot of people with no jobs at all, or underemployed, or these long-term unemployed folks. It's - it remains a very uneven and very tough economy, and I feel like I wouldn't be surprised if two years from now, the economy's back in a bad recession. And I wouldn't be surprised if two years from now, growth is 4 or 5 percent. It, either way, seems entirely plausible to me.
CONAN: Marilyn Geewax, as always, thank you very much for your time today. We really do appreciate the time you've spent with us.
GEEWAX: Oh, thank you, Neal. It's always just been a pleasure and an honor to be with you.
CONAN: NPR's senior business editor Marilyn Geewax, with us here in Studio 42. Here's a couple of emails. The congressional gridlock and animosity is my vote for important topic. That from Joyce. And this is from Corey(ph): I'm looking forward to the nation's strategy to talk about tax reform. It might not be as interesting as immigration reform, yet it might be just as important.
And this is from Victor Singing Eagle(ph): Here's something we should be talking about, seeing how native issues frequently get overshadowed by larger issues. I'm not sure precisely what went down, but I read that the Supreme Court made an important ruling on the ICWA, Indian Child Welfare Act. Can help - somebody help me understand, as I made - I would go out in a limb. This was an adoption case where a child was put up for adoption by an Indian woman. Her father had renounced any interest. The Indian woman put the child up for adoption. She was adopted by a Caucasian couple, I think, in North Carolina, and then her father put in his claim under the ICWA, the Indian Child Welfare Act.
He was given custody. The adoptive parents sued. Their case was upheld by the Supreme Court. They can now try to get their custody back. It got sent back to the courts in North Carolina. It's not certain that they will get custody, but as I understand it, it was decided more or less on a technical basis and not on a broad basis. But I will stand corrected if I'm wrong. In the meantime, let's get Claudia on the line, Claudia with us from Denver.
CLAUDIA: Hi. Neal, first of all, I want to say that I think this is the best show on NPR, and I am going to miss you so much every day.
CONAN: Thank you.
CLAUDIA: And you're just an extraordinary host. So - but I was calling about the wildfires in Colorado, and, I mean, they're just devastating the state, and not only this state, but everything around us. The wildfires have been caused, to such a great extent, by beetle kill, which is caused by the fact that we haven't had cold enough winters to kill off the beetles.
CONAN: These are bark beetles, and as you suggest, in previous periods, they were killed off by extreme cold during the wintertime. That cold is not as cold as it used to be, and those beetles are killing large swaths of trees, not just in Colorado, but across the West.
CLAUDIA: That's absolutely true. And it's - I mean, this part of the country is so beautiful and has so many lovely ecosystems. And what we're seeing is so much being burned to the ground. One of the other problems is that people have decided to live, for instance, in the Black Forest area in Colorado Springs. They've decided to build homes there. They really don't understand the environment here, and so they don't do anything to mitigate the chance of fire. You know, they keep all these huge, old trees around their homes...
CONAN: Because they're beautiful, but they're also tinder.
CLAUDIA: Exactly.
CONAN: Claudia, I can see you're having a little problem with your throat, so we'll let you go.
CLAUDIA: Sorry.
CONAN: Thank you very much for the kind words, and thanks very much for the call.
CLAUDIA: Thank you for the show. Bye.
CONAN: We're talking about, well, what's the talk of the nation? This is TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. And NPR science correspondent Richard Harris is with us. A perfect introduction, Richard.
RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: Hello, Neal. Yes.
CONAN: And it is on a week where we have seen the president of the United States come up with an ambitious policy to reduce carbon emissions. That would, in turn, reduce, we hope, global warming, or at least the speed at which the Earth is warming.
HARRIS: Yes. Even maybe to a small extent. Obviously, it is a global problem. And if the U.S. gets on board and is very serious about it, it can make some difference. But obviously, you need cooperation from around the world, because we are no longer the leading culprit in emissions of carbon dioxide, but we certainly produce still a huge amount of it, and we're responsible for a lot of the carbon dioxide that's in the air. So it was interesting to see this sort of scattershot approach that the president took to try to sort of say what - where can I make an effort?
And it is scattershot, because the Congress has basically decided they're not going to act on this. And so the president and his team decided to say: Well, where can we make a difference without needing new laws, without needing Congress to be involved? And so you end up with a sort of spectrum of ideas that he put out.
CONAN: And a lot of them involved emissions from coal-fired plants, either new ones - and those regulations, I think, are now accepted, and it's - as we keep hearing, it makes it virtually impossible to build a new coal-fired plant using present technology.
HARRIS: Right. And those regulations are still in the works. They were proposed and brought back - pulled back a little bit, but he called for them to move forward again and be finalized later this year, and then to apply that same standard to power plants that are existing...
CONAN: Existing, yeah.
HARRIS: ...power plants. And that's a tricky one, because he didn't specify how much they need to be reined in, but it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, in most cases, to take carbon dioxide from a power plant and reduce it in any significant way. There are some really dirty power plants that you could improve somewhat, but you can't make them as clean as natural gas unless you do something tremendously dramatic, like capture the carbon dioxide and bury it underground. And that's extremely expensive, also.
CONAN: And then there was the mention of the Keystone XL pipeline, which a lot of people didn't expect. He said we're not going to approve this unless it proves to not have a significant effect on carbon emissions. And some people say, well, it depends on how you look at it.
HARRIS: Absolutely. That's going to be a very interesting discussion, because that - it was - the words were ambiguous, and, of course, the Canadians immediately argued, oh, well, this is not going to substantially exacerbate climate change. People who are opposed to the pipeline said: What are you talking about? You'd be tapping into this huge resource of fossil fuels that really ought to stay underground forever. And if you start - if you find a way to bring it to the market, you'll inevitably going to affect climate change. So that's going to be very interesting to see how that rhetorical twist gets - plays out in the coming weeks and months.
CONAN: It's so interesting. Richard, thank you for being with us. Often, we have Richard when there's some real disaster going on in the world to explain to us about the oil leaks in the Gulf of Mexico and such things. And this is only a slow-motion crisis, only a slow-motion train wreck. So it's always good to have you on the program.
HARRIS: It's always a pleasure, Neal.
CONAN: Let's see, one more email, this from Alicia in Madisonville, Kentucky: I've heard NPR talk about raising minimum wage and the effects that might make. I, along with so many of my peers, are working in minimum wage or slightly above minimum wage jobs. We have bachelor degrees, or higher. We're having such difficulty finding full-time work where we can make a living. Most of us have to take out student loans to get this education. Now we're unable to pay it back. What are we to do?
And this from Darren(ph): I can't believe the hunger strike in Guantanamo Bay has been going on since February. The majority of Americans don't seem to know or care that many of the people we are detaining have been cleared of any wrongdoing, yet are being held indefinitely. The recent use of metal-tip feeding tubes for striking detainees to demoralize them makes me ashamed of my country and my president.
There are so many people who wrote. There are so many we called. I'm sorry we're not going to be able to get to more of your calls today. And thank you so much for carrying enough to contact us. When we come back after a short break, we're going to be talking with David Ellis Dickerson from Greeting Card Emergency, so email us. What's the best goodbye card you ever got? That's at talk@npr.org, or give us a call: 800-989-8255. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.
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