so i was in seattle a few years ago and it's always nice to be back as marty said i'm from boston and we have a lot of back and forth that we actually have free speech for people our first office is here in seattle and our first board member pamela eeks a founding member of free speech for people board and back with a wonderful family so thank you to pam who does so much for us not only here in seattle but all over the country  and while i'm on seattle connections we will hear about some of the work we're doing to overturn citizens united both with constitutional amendment campaign work in the courts and among the work in the courts  seattle's defense of the minimum wage legislation that seattle recently passed that has been sued has been challenged by corporations claiming a constitutional right to invalidate that minimum wage including speech and equal protection grounds and i think it may be the maybe the first time since the lochner era in the last gilded age that minimum wage has been attacked as a violation of a corporate constitutional oddly enough went to law school after a career and now is working closely with us all over the country in these cases and on the amendment work that is so necessary in my view to tonight for a couple of propositions that come out of the citizens united decision citizens united vs the federal election commission which i think probably most everyone here knows about is the whole country knows about for striking down the mccain feingold law and the longstanding restrictions both at the state level and federal level on both corporations and unions spending money on elections and my  after the first one and and that goes to the heart of the first proposition i'd offer tonight is that now with almost five years of living under the citizens united regime i think it is accurate sadly to say we are faced with something of a constitutional of urgency a crisis of democracy and there's a reason why serious sober people from bill moyers to jim leach a thirty year republican congressman from iowa are using words like to talk christie to describe our system now so i want to you know it's a serious proposition and that's a dire one in some ways so i want to offer some facts to back that up  since there are some lawyers in the room who will no doubt look for the evidence and cross examine me i want to offer some facts for that one and then number two i want to offer some facts about why all the enough i think it's actually just what we needed in america it's the wake up call it's going to be like a lot of times in our history when it took something like this to bring us together as a country to get back on track for a democracy and that's the subtitle reclaiming democracy from big money and global corporations it's how we can renew this democracy and the new edition is really about you know the first edition was sort of like a rally cry let's try to do this this one was more fun in some ways because it's actually i get so much inspiration because now i can describe what so many americans actually are doing have done great here in washington all over the country to try to do something which is the new chapter at the end and there's many different ways to do something and so much has been done so i'll share some some some evidence about that so i hope that it's not just happy talk but there's actually  a lot of work for all of us to do so let me jivin first with the bleakness sorry for that sort of dreary first part but i think it's necessary because that's the reality and if we if we can recognize that i think we can do something so citizens united now five years since we have been stripped really of our power as citizens and people to decide and debate amongst ourselves and then decide on what the right level of fair campaign participation of powerful entities are by dinah designed aggregations of of wealth and power which are good in the economy but not good in the political sphere five years of that what do what what what do we have to show for it and is it really as bad as i say well let me let me start with the numbers we have twenty five billion or so that has been spent since local state and federal since citizens united and you know in some ways that number is almost doesn't matter once you're into the bill you know what's another billion here and there but i think the real story of citizens united the mccutcheon case the striking down of arizona's public funding elections a series of these five to four decisions which have stripped almost any ability to get a handle on this problem other than i write bribery i think we can still have a law that says a contract to deliver cash in a bag in return for a law that might still be  power to prevent but other than that it's pretty much open season but the problem isn't the number of aggregate amount it's where it comes from and i don't mean in an ideological sounds like oh it comes from you know corporations or comes from you know the right or the left i mean how few sources it comes from and that's why the government of the wealthy few is actually a description accurate  description not as an inflammatory kind of charge or something but just a political science kind of description so how few sources of this money well there's different ways to look at it partly we don't know because of the dark money problem but there are some things we do know in general about eighty percent of the money comes from one half of one percent of the population so it eighty percent coming from less than one percent and you know the super pac phenomenon had only just begun when the first edition came out the beginning of two thousand and twelve we had the election the presidential election would now have some data on the super pacs that we didn't have thirty two super pac donors contributed as much as all of the small donors to both the  campaigns combined so by small donors i mean those who gave two hundred dollars or less and there's about three point seven million people who did that all of that was exceeded by thirty two donors to super the millions of people and you know think about it three point seven million that's one percent of our population that's the small donors that's that's another chilling fact is that almost all americans don't actually give any political money they're completely outside of the system either because they can't afford it which is a real issue or they feel so alienated by you know why make a twenty five dollars contribution if shell the natal since going to make a ninety three million dollars contribution right and so people are rationally kind of checking out of that kind of system so it's that concentration of very few people and sources corporations some unions that are making up most of the money that is so damaging i think to democracy and to you know i said so over serious people are saying things like this i hope i hope i'm honest sober and serious but i'm trying to say this is not just an argument from one perspective justice stephen breyer there in a dissent is talking about the grave question of democratic legitimacy that's from a supreme court justice and worried about corporations because after two thousand and twelve there was talk about well you know corporations didn't actually give that much target made some contributions and they got and you know people didn't like that they got some trouble from their customers there's a boycott people don't to you know places they like to shop to be playing politics in our elections and so there is sort of this conventional wisdom that took hold in the media that well citizens united it's all been overstated there really hasn't been much reports or anywhere else coding error at the republican national governor's association caused a series of documents to be visible on the web which weren't supposed to and i'm not going to pick on the republican governors association because i guarantee the same thing is happening in the democratic governors association but they have better coders i guess the documents showed microsoft pfizer wal mart comcast shel importantly in regular intervals so this is we're talking millions and millions of dollars being run through these associations which then go out and spend it in the election so you can read all the time or hear about oh the republican national governors association is coming into washington with  in and it's coming in very large amounts so that's something we now know that you know that wasn't clear there was some talk after citizens united corporations w really do this right that that's not that's not true that's happening so what about the a few more numbers for you and you know my call they get that essentially almost all americans literally were up to about ninety something percent who don't participate in this wealth primary they're excluded from what is currently the most crucial phase of defining who the candidates are going to be what the issues we're going to talk about more importantly what we're not going to talk about what the issues that are going to be debated that wealth primary and he compares it to the old texas white unconstitutional it's not just wrong it's not just damaging it's a violation of the fundamental principle of political equality in this country so i mentioned shel my last sort of talk about the money problem but he gave ninety three million dollars through super pacs in the last election so he's back getting ready for twenty sixteen and he's auditioning presidential candidates they're all coming to see him and perform and because he has ninety three million he has a lot more actually so if they haven't come by your house to talk about what they plan on and twenty sixteen you just need ninety three million said state federal and local races and i think that's the other thing that now we know we live under after citizens united is this happens even in local races and chevron corporation just  example spend one point three million dollars in a city council race in a community of one hundred thousand people in richmond california where they have a refinery and had some problems because the refinery blew up and send fifteen thousand richmond citizens to the hospital for breathing problems and so they couldn't fix the refinery or they couldn't fix the council they chose the latter and spent one point three million dollars to do that i talked to the mayor and she tells me they're back this year two million dollars in a city council race and a community of one hundred thousand people that's disenfranchisement that's the citizens united problem is that it's disenfranchising ordinary and almost all american citizens now and that's really the heart of the problem it's as if the court has injected a new proposition into the constitution that's really counter to the fundamental proposition that we have in that we started with as a country and that we're going to finish with and keep going which is that we actually are all created equal that we do have equal political rights even if we don't have the same economic resources or anything like that we come to the ballot box or we come through being represented with equality and that's what citizens united is up ended and so i want to emphasize  how intentional that actually hit so many tell the story of citizens united started but this diff it's almost now explicit that yes of course political equality is dead and  assertion essentially that political equality in america is not a basis for our election laws and so they say in the mccutcheon case i don't know if you all follow the sean m o of a coal and engineering firm and he was feeling like his free speech rights were violated because the federal law still even after citizens united said you can't give more than one hundred twenty three thousand dollars to aggregate campaigns of federal candidates you know they're still contribution limits so far what happens in the next case but so you give twenty six hundred dollars to federal candidates for congress or what have you but there's a law that said no i want to do unlimited contributions all across the country to every race i don't care if they don't represent me i want to have my influence across with the board with my money he won the case that law was struck down there is no more aggregate limit and bear in mind one hundred twenty three thousand is about five times the mean the media and americans you know we often hear fifty thousand dollars as median household income that's actually double to two earners in the household it's about twenty six thousand dollars for a median income this is five times the median income struck down as a violation of free speech rights in the argument was it was the following so so i should find it first before i say i'm going to read it to you  so we have this quote from the mccutcheon brief contribution limits may not be upheld as a means of limiting disparities in the extent to which people of different economic  participate in the political process and exercise the first amendment rights so you know one of the tasks of a lawyer is to translate legal sure that one needs any translation and it's they're saying that we can't have laws to allow people of different economic backgrounds to participate in the political process in other words if you don't have the money to play too bad you're out that's what they argued and they won based on that argument  so this is the kind of explicit theory that citizens united is now offering us and they were living on day which is you know we are government of the wealthy few and that's how it should be they don't deny that they say that's the way it is and it's too bad you may have heard recently about the benjamin page martin dillon study at princeton northwestern they did a comprehensive study of the influence of affluence as they called it and it's basically about how does policy actually get determined in washington who has influence and it was a big rich data source they looked at and their conclusion is the following and then i won't be so bleak for so long but just a little bit more if you can stand the estimated impact of average citizens preferences is non significant near zero ordinary citizens quote in the study have little or no independent influence on policy at all economic elites in organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on u s government policy while mass based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence so that i would think would be a wake up call we'd all rush to say we don't want can't be a government of the wealthy few that look what's happening in the manhattan institute  which is well funded it's the reply responded and said no story here this isn't a problem they essentially argued that rich people are better informed vote more often and generally reflect the views of the middle class anyway so we don't really have a problem there this is what we're now doing is sort of justified in and saying yeah it's not so bad this is the way it should be wealthy people are funding politics but what's the problem well the problem is a it's not america and that's not what our constitution is about and b it's how republics and countries and societ fail you know we we see it over and over again we've seen in our own country the last time the court went down this road of money rights and corporate rights was between one thousand nine hundred six and about one thousand nine hundred eighty and it was a social constitutional and economic catastrophe which we didn't recover from until a new judiciary got back on track with where the courts belong and where the people belong and then that was the last gilded age and i think what we're having now is citizens united stan for our second even stronger gilded age where we have to respond that is it is a crisis democracy is on the line and the money isn't even the least of it as i mentioned a tax on the minimum wage is an equal protection right violation attacks on the right of employees to even talk about workplace conditions and whether to organize struck down the notice that they were supposed to be given of that right struck down as a violation of a corporate right not to speak the country of origin labels for meat so you could decide if you want to support american farmers struck down by a lation of corporate speech rights the seattle case i mentioned the s louis really had a case in st louis where thirty thousand people in st louis signed to have a minnesota ballot about whether their tax dollars we continue to be used by the city to be taken by the tax from the taxpayers and given directly to peabody energy which is headquartered in st louis they're going to tax subsidy there is a campaign called take back st louis to say we need a more resilient local economy we can't be tin you mean to pour more and more of our tax money hoping that company fossil fuel company will stay we have to build our economy from the ground up the middle out we want to different way we're going to vote on whether to continue this well that vote was blocked so not only did the policy not change they weren't allowed vote on it they were sued it was taken off the ballot violation of equal protection rights of the corporation because it chose fossil fuel companies and picked poor people out of energy  issues so that was sort of the one two punch of in the courts and the money influence in the legislature essentially strip people of even the right to vote on whether their tax dollars are going to be spent so that's the kind of problem we have so what do we do about it the beauty of it is i think the beauty if you can call it the inspiration i find is people get it across the political spectrum this isn't the last issue or wright issue and people are doing something so  let me tell you how that's working and the way i see it is we have a choice we're sort of in this vicious circle of our political voice we lose our political equality we don't get to participate because it's now money again we get attacked by the cynical attack ads i mean overwhelmed by the arc our government doesn't function very well and we check out you know voters don't vote people don't do the things that citizenship requires of all of us as much and that's sort of the vicious circle of how we can fail that there's a virtuous circle i think that is that is going to where people are trying something they introduce a resolution calling for a twenty eight amendment they actually do a protester call a  councilor a congress person and they start to do something and then they find out other people are doing it and they might win a resolution there or get a disclosure laws make a little progress and you start to see a virtuous circle where we can actually turn this around and not only turn the policy around the constitutional law around but actually reengage americans across the partisan lines to believe again that we can be a government of the people and so i want to just share with you the constitutional amendment story because it's in some ways the hardest the people that tell you all the twenty eighth amendment you know we can't do constitutional amendments how long will it take it you know that's impossible and so when i had the book first came out  there was one state that had passed a constitutional amendment resolution calling for the twenty eighth amendment to overturn citizens united and restore the power of the people to decide for ourselves on the right campaign finance laws to ensure fair and free elections and the human rights of people not corporations in our constitution once they there was a handful of towns and cities that had passed resolutions i think we had pam i remember one or two senators who would talk to us about a constitutional amendment a couple of congress people so where are we now three years later thirty six months later sixteen states have passed resolutions calling for a twenty eighth amendment six hundred cities and  sometimes it's endless three days three nights school budgets and everything else well we had one on the citizens united twenty eighth amendment and debate of the issue and town meeting voted and it was about eighty percent and i looked around people i knew were conservatives liberals everyone in between were standing together on this that happened over and over again all over new england forty seven town meetings in one week in new hampshire  conservative towns in new hampshire did this all over new england people were doing this and all over the country people have done this whether through city councils where the town meetings and that is the transformative sort of virtuous circle that can happen when people are actually acting like we are citizens and are a public taking responsibility standing up and you know i quote some folks in the book who've never done anything political and they were nervous and scared you know how do you stand up in front of a city council when you maybe haven't even gone to a city council meeting before and introduce a resolution or demand a resolution to change constitutional law i mean that can be intimidating but people do it and i talked about some of them in the book and they say i was scared but i did i stood up and i was so powerful to see the peace support people i didn't know would support me in a past by eighty percent whatever and they are empowered and that is what the amendment  so sixteen states six hundred cities and towns is congress listening and you bet we now have fifty five senators who co sponsor in the twenty said twenty eighth amendment the democracy for all amendment which overturns the big money part of citizens united and says we can actually distinguish between corporations and people on campaign finance laws fifty five senators co sponsored it we did something in two thousand and fourteen the people said when it happened in  lifetimes you got through the senate judiciary committee with a vote of approval went to the senate floor had a debate one fifty five forty two which of course you know you don't win anymore in washington with fifty five votes and we will need sixty seven votes it takes two thirds that's twelve more and so we're going to keep doing what we've been doing and we're going to get those twelve it gets harder i think we have to believe we can do this and we will on the house side we're probably at about one hundred  montana because i think that's where people really saw with the power you know we've got a legal program where in the courts as i mentioned we went to montana and worked with the attorney general there steve bullock to defend nine hundred twelve montana ball initiative that had said no corporate money in our elections because in one thousand twelve the last gilded age montana took a stand to protect their democracy after citizens united of course it was attacked we help defend it the supreme court as you probably know said ten of the back of the hand all the other states and said now citizens united applies you can't do that anymore and five before two supreme court justices actually said we should overturn citizens united  today bader ginsburg and justice breyer that's remarkable first supreme court justices that soon after case to say we're not standing together with the court we should overturn that decision but that wasn't the end of the story people in montana said no we're not just going home because the supreme court told us to within a few weeks forty four thousand people in montana signed a ballot initiative signed a petition to put this on the ballot not only called for the twenty eighth amendment to condemn citizens united it went into details about the policy montana's based on the equality in our politics of all americans a level playing field and that corporations do not have the human rights of people in our constitution and then did i guess maybe you do in seattle to folks out west do they didn't ask or demand it instructed their representatives to get the twenty eighth amendment out of congress and to the states for ratification so that i was on the ballot in november two thousand and twelve montana ten points went for mitt romney easily mitt romney won the state easily this ballot initiative passed seventy five percent to twenty five percent in montana the same day ballot initiative passed in colorado seventy five percent twenty five percent that's how we got to sixteen states hard work of ordinary americans who just aren't going to sit back and watch our democracy die i think we can win these in any state in the country i don't think this is red state blue state and if we carry it to the country both keep that virtuous circle going so the amendment isn't the only thing there's a lot of really important reform but the amendment is a vehicle to pull us together as a country to stand on the basic principles the country is built on and to build the rationale and the momentum and the our elections to get corporate law reform so that we actually can hardwire effective corporations and many you know all of us work or invest and have family members work corporations it's not that they're bad people but we know that it's whether we are organizing actively not only in election laws but in corporate laws so that we can do what we want to do with corporations which is bring together capital and labor and ideas to to  that forward and so i know we can do this we are doing it i hope you'll check out the book and find out how you can plug in if you're not already involved i know there are some folks here in the room who have been involved in this here in washington and across the country but there's a lot of different ways you can get involved different organizations they're all in the book to try to do something and bring this country together in a way that move overturn citizens united moves us forward and  i like to look at history and i'll just close with that because we've been here before you know we gone through these kind of crisis and we come out the other side with a vibrant healthy democracy and it's not easy but we do it and i think we have to  ask ourselves if if we can't do it we know what's wrong with our generation because previous generations did it you know when i don't think there's anything wrong with our generation which is why we're seeing this happening where we're doing it so you know winston churchill said  loved america his mother was american and he said americans always do the right thing after exhausting all the other possibilities so we've exhausted the other possibilities we're going to do the right thing and closer they w lincoln who called for the thirteenth amendment and slavery in one thousand nine hundred sixty two a year before he did the emancipation proclamation and he knew that the forces against him were huge and it was it was difficult it was challenging it was change you know taking on immense power but that it was right and what he said it's really telling i think he he said it's not enough to imagine better it's not enough to think anew he said we have to act better we have to act a new you say we for abraham lincoln that we must not only imagine what a democracy looks like but do it to make it happen and so what gives me hope is not just the words that was the thirteenth amendment twenty eight we've done fourteen since then seven of them overturned supreme court decisions the supreme court said women had no right to vote the supreme court said we're not allowed to have a federal income tax the supreme court said eight hundred one thousand and twenty year olds find to go up to vietnam and no right to vote the supreme court said taxes the poor vote or african americans get to the polls in the south nothing wrong with that constitutional amendment overturn that over and over and over again we use this tool when the chips are down and i think we can do it too so thank you very much great to be here with you in seattle maybe there's some questions and conversation we can ha  you know the powell memo where he sort of outlined the game plan for the chamber it wasn't plutocracy but it was you know wealthy interests and corporations have a need for stability in order and you know we can have a bit that by spending a whole lot of money and changing our record in our democracy but i think there's i don't i want to be take the spirit of the question not just make it easy and say no those plutocrats these are hard cases human cases don't get to the supreme court unless they're very complicated and difficult you know five to four smart supreme court justices disagree and they're not malevolent they're evil i don't think they're they difficult questions that are driven by the precedent they kind of focuses in on in a particular time and i think what happened in citizens united was the facts are difficult and there's an old saying among lawyers that hard facts make bad law hard cases make bad law and that's what happened i think is in citizens united you head citizens who were organized and used a nonprofit vehicle to criticize through a movie hillary clinton who was going to run for president so all those facts that sounds like everything i hoped we would all want to make sure happens is that people can criticize powerful senators who are running for president and so the majority would say look there's just no way to get the right amount of money it's going to suppress speech you're not going to let people  criticize powerful politicians and that's wrong that's the first amendment says we have a right to do that so i think that is what their argument is is that you know if we try to limit money in politics and do this constitutional amendment ted cruz on the senate floor and mention the senate date he said saturday night live actors would go off to jail people like tina tina fey because she made fun of sarah palin that's the kind of  you know carnival extreme of the argument and you know saturday night live hastened to say no we want it and we don't we're not worried about that but you know there's a concern that somehow if we let congress regulate spending elections they're going to come for all of us so that sort of the the main defense is and but to me i think it's really a a preference for deregulation that we could decide in my view we after the amendment we could actually say oh yeah this is have unlimited money in elections i would the amendment doesn't prevent that but i don't think for a second that americans are actually think that's a good way to save a democracy and i think it's up to the we the people to decide that right level where you're not choosing like one side or the other they're just even handed regulations but it gets tricky and i think that the you know to be fair to the other side there are their arguments would say well that you're going to suppress freedom of speech if you limit spending in elections they probably would do a more robust defense than that but that's the line   we helped in montana we worked with common cause free speech for people to get this and we were ready because we did the case we knew the court was going to go the direction they did the day the decision was announced we had a video of  governor he's a republican they stood together in the video and said the supreme court has just eviscerated our law in montana we need a constitutional amendment we don't agree on politics but we agree on this that set the tone we had business support ranchers farmers you know business people all across montana that i wasn't like us coming in from boston to say oh you must let us tell you what you need in montana  papers across the country said this isn't a partisan issue it's a justice issue it's a face issue and you had that kind of dialogue where people across the spectrum of politics were given a means of expressing themselves about the problem money and corporate power in our society and we didn't have you know we were trying to like wordsmith it for them and i think that's the power of the amendment if you don't get into the weeds on policy differences instead it's a conversation about who we are as a country do we defend the principle of political equality or not do we mean when we said all are created equal or not in politics  i think most americans say yeah we mean it and if we give them the vehicle like amendment resolutions or other means to come to together and have the debate in the conversation then it that's the virtuous circle then they realize that person i've been screaming at about  and it's actually is a fellow citizen who cares as much about the country as i do maybe there's something here so i think that there's no shortcut it's it's hard i think it's government is hard democracy is hard citizenship hard but if we give these opportunities for americans to participate in this national debate national conversation we'll see how they do it and they did it in montana that way and i've seen it in other places where have meaningful distinction there and it's well grounded in history and our constitution and so you know we can learn from each other and we have a lot of shared basic principle actually i think our coming out that's the path forward i see and if we try to jump too far ahead and say i found the perfect law i found the perfect campaign finance reform let me convince you that it's right that's hard to do until you've had that ground conversation that shows why you actually both might see why that particular legislation might be good or that we can tweak it to make it make it work for everybody you know let me go here because he had to go that way yes great question and it's a fascinating story so he's referring  practices in the trial courts and they were going up on appeal to the supreme court of west virginia and the c e o of massey a gentleman named don blankenship created a group quote unquote i think he was the group  called for our kids sake and put three million i think into it and they ran attack ads they elect their justices in west virginia they like the supreme court they ran attack ads against the judges that he thought would be a problem for massey on appeal in this fifty million dollars case saying that they were essentially soft on child molesters and other criminals and for the sake of our kids we have to get these bad judges out attack ads judicial election unfortunately since citizens united become sadly common but they were unusual then he didn't just do that he got a friend to run against  so he would have a friend who would be a supreme court justice any funded that campaign to lo and behold the distinguished jurist on the west virginia supreme court got to as a child hater and criminal lover  and it was by one vote massey's friend cast the vote that overturn the verdict so the strategy worked spent three million say fifty million forty seven million this finally the courts there was just too much even for the supreme court and the fascinating thing that this massive the supreme court said west virginia that that kind of spending elections  violate the due process clause send it back to the judge should have recused himself the legal where the judge who was massa's friend should not have cast that last vote and let the rest of the justices decide so i went back to west virginia here's the really interesting thing is that decision was written by justice kennedy the same judge who wrote citizens united and so it did make a lot of people including us a free speech for people who see this as well maybe there's an in when it's not just this is but all of us is trying to manage self government i don't think it will get that i don't think that we tried with montana which was actually after justice kennedy had a chance to say maybe i made a mistake and he chose not to but the strategies we're looking at now are in the states where there are judicial elections which is to bring a challenge based on caper ten to the spending which has gone up through the roof states to like judges here in washington  so there are some cases coming in the next term they will consider this and we're going to do a brief in the case and try to you know basically caperton and citizens united a kind of at odds a bit of tension there and that's a opportunity to potentially value in driving that debate i think we're having increasingly a debate about the court and what the amendment movement does is invite americans to participate in that they can't you know f d r didn't do that in isolation i mentioned the last gilded age of corporate power and corporate rights in the cause of the reason the supreme court was striking down the new deal legislation was based on the precedent of the gone back to eight hundred eighty six and so that was at the tail end there were amendment rights the supreme court had struck down child labor laws that struck down worker safety laws there was a child labor amendment movement they did for amendments in that era before the new deal to overturn the supreme court's decision on the progressive income tax to overturn the supreme court's decision that said women can vote and to elect senators for the first time and then those prohibition we won't talk about that one so the my view isn't that the amendment is the cure all of the magic and or that we shouldn't talk about the supreme court  you're absolutely right that's a very good strategy but the context of that strategy i think fits with the nation that is engaged whether it's the amendment movement whether it's corporate law reform but  stop vetoing essentially small d democratic laws so i think the nine hundred thirty seven court packing battle was didn't need an amendment by the time that was done but that didn't just sent out some day when the supreme court came back first monday in october poll came out the same day that said seventy percent of americans want term limits on the supreme court so i think the debate is on and i think we should drive it forward as much as we slogans and that's i think really hopeful and it's disruptive to use the cliche especially in seattle and he's that i guess that's probably was invented it's so old fashioned now for a little they say disruptive but it's disruptive in and i think you're seeing good things coming out of that you're seeing an interesting libertarian kind of conversation happening on the right among millennial seen on the left some interest in the effort to reach out isn't a millennial but she was supported by a lot of challenges cuomo governor of new york who had zillions of dollars and high poll ratings but who turned his back on campaign finance reform by got in what was called the morehead commission is no reverence for the democratic party we can't do a primary against governor they did it so i think i think the answer is up to you in the end but what gives me hope in both my own kids and others i see is the fact you're here thank you and i know you won't take anything i say he's got the answer great let's go do that check it out and find your own way because you check out of certain things and find engagement in other ways i think in the political process hasn't exactly been a welcoming place to participate for a lot of younger people but i think i would find your way to cohort and again has no reference for the old ways of doing things are they trying different ideas made a pac and different things they're trying things and i think that's something as you know you don't give up when something doesn't work reconfigure and try again happen in the whole sharing economy thing i think it's very hopeful that you know you guys just seem to get plugged in and it works and so there's a lot of different ways i think we'll see positive change come out of your generation that together as a nation and that have affected a nation like commerce and the supreme court came up with a little innovation well the congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce but then sort of like penumbras and emanations that they talk about sometimes they came up with something called the dormant commerce clause which is sort of a doctrine that says even though congress hasn't regulated anything we sort of on the court have a good idea about you know a state or local regulation that somehow has violated the dormant just sort of like the double secret co clause and says states and communities can't do that because it infringes the sort of national commerce idea there's some basis for that some instances but it gets out of control i think sometimes to disempower states sometimes they don't so there's a lot of constitutional issue i think a lot of this comes down to sort of the role of the courts and how much are we actually to experiment with democracy try different things have different states  have the laboratories of democracy without sort of a judicial enforcement of a particular point of view or policy and the danger of the commerce clause is it sometimes becomes a tool for that particular vision of kind of global capitalism even though many americans have different ideas they want to try thank you everybody thank you mar