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April 17, 2025 18:15-19:00 - CSPAN
44:52
Washington Journal Andre Perry
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john mcardle
cspan 04:05
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Today, Pennsylvania Democratic Representative Madeline Dean hosts a town hall meeting with constituents.
She's expected to take questions and address their concerns.
Watch Congresswoman Dean's Town Hall live at 7 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2.
C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org.
Today, a debate between party leaders to be the next Canadian prime minister ahead of the country's federal election on April 28th.
Among those taking part is current Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader Mark Carney.
Watch it live tonight at 7 Eastern on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Joining us now is Andre Perry.
He's a Brookings Institution Senior Fellow and author of this book, Black Power Scorecard, Measuring the Racial Gap and What We Can Do to Close It.
Mr. Perry, what is the racial gap?
unidentified
Well, I measured power, my attempt to measure power in years of life.
What this book does is look at the most significant factors on life expectancy.
And what we find is that there are several factors that are very significant.
The goal, the title scorecard suggests that we should have metrics that we can hold people accountable to so that they can achieve certain goals.
And longevity and well-being is the ultimate goal.
And so for me, it was my attempt to give politicians, community members, activists, clear goals that clearly impact the most important things, and that's life.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
So what are those metrics you use?
What are those tools that you can give to politicians as they seek to address this matter?
unidentified
Yeah, my colleague and I, Jonathan Rothwell Gallup, used a machine learning algorithm, lasso regression for those who are interested in statistics.
We ran dozens of databases, everything from IRS data, Federal Reserve data, health data, and it allowed us to find the most important factors, and some of them are common sense issues.
Income, education, home ownership, business ownership were all positive correlates, and this is a correlational study.
And I want to emphasize that we compared black cities to other black cities.
The reason being, if you compare black to white, it often masks the very real differences that are occurring at the local level.
And there were some negative correlates.
One surprising one, religious affiliation.
The places that had higher levels of religious membership, they also had lower life expectancy.
Now, before people jump to conclusions, going to church doesn't make you sick, what it says is probably people are going into church suffering.
That church communities have less assets, less homeownership, less income in those neighborhoods.
And it appears in the data.
Air pollution was another correlate, the negative correlate.
Places with high air pollution, lower life expectancy.
And so there are several factors where we could see places where black people are thriving.
Montgomery County, Maryland, the average life expectancy is 83.
Right up the road in Baltimore City, it's around 67.
And so what we want to do is point activists and politicians to the areas where there's strength in these cities.
For instance, Baltimore has one of the highest rates of business ownership.
So you can build upon those high rates of business ownership to address other lower performing metrics.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
You talk about life expectancy in specific areas.
What is it overall for African Americans in this country and how does that compare to other racial groups right now?
unidentified
Yeah, African Americans are about 74.
The average life expectancy is about six years less than whites.
Asians are to have the highest life expectancy.
Latinos are between African Americans and whites.
Actually, Native Americans have the lowest life expectancy, but that varies from tribe to tribe.
So there is that range, but I want to emphasize what we did.
We did not compare a lot between black and other races because there's a different historical context.
We know that wealth is a strong predictor of health outcomes.
And so that historic prohibition of not being able to have wealth transfers through homeownership, business ownership, and the like really shifted the conversation and life expectancy.
So we don't compare.
And what we found is when you don't compare, you can see the strength in different cities that some cities are doing well combating or addressing racism and others are struggling.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
I want to stay on this point for a second.
This is from the first few pages of your book.
The quest to secure black power is not and should not be understood as a mission to emulate white power or simply to gain access to white institutions.
In their attempt to spotlight inequality, people often cite comparisons to white society in ways that tacitly reinforce white norms and standards.
unidentified
Yeah, you know, whenever you hear things about gaining power, you say, well, let's do what white people do.
And some of that may not be savory.
The gains in terms of white growth in many times came at the exclusion of other groups.
We don't want to emulate that.
And white power in general is based on a hierarchy of norms and values based on race.
And so what you don't want to replicate that, what you do want to do is really enforce what black power has always been about, is about gaining equal access under the law since the fight for reparations to MLK, Fannie Lou Hamer.
It is to say that policy should work for us.
And one of the things I do say in the book, and this is in the current context, I say that DEI and affirmative action have never been the goals.
They have been intermediary steps to the goal.
That was the hope.
They were tactics to get to the goal.
Black Americans always sought mainstream access to capital markets, to home ownership, to job creation, all these different things.
And these other tactics have been used, sometimes not to our success.
And so we should always keep the focus on legislation and policy.
There's a lot of back and forth between around executive order and its use.
In the meantime, Congress has not done its job in enacting policy that works for all Americans.
So this book basically says, hey, here are the criteria that we should have policies around.
And we have to be disciplined in saying, hey, we still need policy around home ownership, clean air, higher incomes.
And we must work on safety, strong families, and the like.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
This book is titled Black Power Scorecard, Measuring the Racial Gap and What We Can Do to Close It.
The author Andre Perry with us for about the next 35 minutes this morning for you to call in.
It's 202748-8000 for Republicans to call in.
202-748-8001, we'll put the lines on the screen, split by political parties, so you can dial in on the lines that best fit you.
You're talking about comparing apples to apples here.
How would you describe the state of black power today in America compared to just a few years ago before the Black Lives Matter movement?
unidentified
Well, that's interesting.
I'll pick one sector, and that's business development.
In 2017, when we started looking at the share of employer firms, that's the share of businesses with more than one employee.
It was about 2.3 percent.
It has increased 50 percent since 2017.
So, we're seeing growth in a lot of areas.
Now, mind you, that's still a small number.
Black people represent about 14 percent of the overall population, but only 2.7 percent of employer firms.
But those employer firms have increased.
And certainly, since the killing of George Floyd, we've seen some investments, but that should that should not have us think about that one event as influencing all of our outcomes.
When we're looking at these outcomes, it goes well beyond what happened in a year.
So, we're seeing growth.
We're actually seeing growth in wealth among African Americans, largely because most of our wealth is in housing.
And when housing prices go up, black wealth goes up.
But the difference in disparity is white wealth is growing at a much faster rate because they could use their past wealth that we, African Americans, could not get to invest in the stock market.
And so, you're just seeing greater returns overall.
But there's black progress going on all over the country, and we just need to acknowledge it.
One of the things that I'm very interested in the story around immigration: where there are a higher percentage of black immigrants, you see higher life expectancy.
Now, there's a compositional effect, meaning black immigrants generally come into the country wealthier and healthier.
But there is something phenomenal going on in places that are uplifting communities.
And so, with the story of immigration, oftentimes we focus on crime and gangs.
But when you're talking about the story of black immigrants and their impact on overall well-being and health, it's a positive story for America.
And that's what we need to focus on.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
In the modern era, when was the period in which we saw the greatest growth in life expectancy for African Americans in this country?
unidentified
Well, certainly between 1930 to now, we've seen years of life expectancy increases.
But we also see some places almost looking like it is in the 30s in terms of life expectancy.
So, again, like if you're looking at, I'll pick on a few cities a little bit.
Selma, Alabama, there's a lot of good things going on there.
I actually focus on Selma, Alabama as a place where we should develop because if we develop Selma, it will be a sort of test case of what we can do in other micropolitan places.
But life expectancy is lower there, you know, and life expectancy is lower in Baltimore, lower than it should be.
It's almost as if we're 50 years behind in those places.
But it's not about geography.
I want to be clear: while people will look at life expectancy in the South and see general lower outcomes, it's not about being in the South.
It's about the policies in the South that propel life expectancy.
Certainly, I talk about history, I talk about redlining, I talk about discrimination.
You can do away with those policies, but if you have other policies that still produce the same outcomes, we need to look at those policies and change them.
And we can do that today.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Let me take you to a city in the South.
This is New Orleans.
Frank is calling on our line for Democrats.
Andre Perry is the author of the book.
Go ahead, Frank.
unidentified
Thank you so much.
It's a pleasure to be speaking with Mr. Perry and you this morning.
Mr. Perry would frequent a coffee shop in New Orleans, First Cup with Mo, and I would see him.
Yeah, that's right.
I lived in New Orleans 14 years.
Thanks for remembering me.
Yes.
Anyway, down me being, I heard him last speak about bourgeois.
Bourgeoisie, that's what I see.
But anyway, me being a proletarian low class out of the night ward, who's now middle class.
But my concerns are with poverty and lifting yourself out of poverty.
There's so many things now that a deterrent look like to me with DEI, the president's coming after it and CRT and anything else that seems like they want you to learn about your past.
Me being incarcerated at 16 and 17 years old as a high school student with a full-time job as a vagrant.
So these are the things that contribute to that type of thing where you're always in trouble, having difficulties.
But now I'm a first-class citizen, Vietnam veteran, personal heart recipient.
That's how you, if you invest in people, you can have them come around and be something.
But if you're constantly doing things to debilitate, can I speak on that?
Go ahead.
Let me speak on that because in New Orleans, we know that it has been historically one of the, had the highest rates of incarceration throughout the country.
And we know in terms of incarceration, it actually extracts people, extracts income, which mitigates what you can do in terms of uplifting community because income is one of the strongest predictors of life expectancy.
So what the trick is, is it's not a trick.
What you have to do is invest, as you stated, in people and jobs and education.
It's just harder for the public to swallow when they hear, hey, why are we investing in communities when we have criminals?
But in fact, when you improve the overall conditions in a community, you really improve the life expectancy and outcomes.
And you mentioned education.
One of the things that I want to emphasize in this book, education doesn't predict for wealth.
Wealth predicts for education.
And so explain.
So most people think when you go to school, college, you get better jobs.
And that's true.
Education is an equalizer in that sense.
You get the skills.
You can acquire different services, different job markets, you name it.
But along the way, if you do not have home ownership that's robust, if wages are suppressed, you can find what we see, Wall Street Journal had an interesting report that showed that when white families graduate from college, their wealth increases a much higher rate than when black families graduate from college.
And the Fed Reserve did a study that showed when black people graduate from college, they have to give up money to families as opposed to white families who receive an intergenerational wealth transfer.
They'll get down payment for a car, down payment for a house.
Black people, and I know this well, I had to give up the money I got for graduation to an auntie whose roof was struggling.
And so that wealth inequality that is present really impacts black Americans regardless of your educational status.
But the point is, hey, when you have wealth, you have access to better schools.
You have access to opportunities that other people do not have.
And so we need to think about it in that way because what happens is, particularly in reform and other initiatives, people will say, if we could only fix the school, everything will be all right.
And they ignore housing, transportation, jobs.
And by the way, most people know me through my work on housing devaluation where we found homes in black neighborhoods are underpriced.
But guess how schools are funded?
Through the property taxes.
And so if black home or homes in black neighborhoods, I should say, are either overtaxed or underappraised, it'll impact the revenue that schools receive.
So we should not look at education as this panacea for everything, the great equalizer we like to call it.
But it's limited in what it can do.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Might be a good time to explain what you do at the Brookings Institution and your idea originally for writing this book.
unidentified
Yeah, I work at a center called the Center for Community Uplift at the Brookings Institution, and we try to measure well-being and economic security across race and place.
Well-being is how you perceive yourself in the world doing, and generally economic security is wealth.
Our goal is to figure out how to improve well-being and economic security.
The reason why the book is not titled Measuring the Wealth Gap, because my beliefs are the wealth gap is something that's going to take multiple generations to close over time, significant period of time.
However, we can expect people to have the resources needed to thrive so that they can live to 80, that they can pass on some wealth to their children.
You shouldn't have to wait 100 years for those things.
So what I try to do in communities is find real solutions that can happen in communities to improve the quality of life so folks can live to 80, 81, 82, 83.
And that's the purpose of this center.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Let me take you to Norfolk, Virginia.
This is John Colling, Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I believe one of the solutions to closing the racial gap is through black unity.
Well, I should say making a better day is through black unity.
As far as closing the racial wealth gap, I think, especially here in America, I think that's almost impossible.
Then that the government, I believe, is on the white people's side.
And prime example is with this whole.
I'm sorry.
No, I want to address just a couple things while you're there.
We can address racial wealth gaps.
Remember, tax policy is a major driver of how wealth is ultimately redistributed.
Certainly, we've had the most wealthiest people influencing policy in that way.
But I want to talk about black unity in this regard.
What color are those people?
They're white people.
Okay, I'll just say this.
In my book, I address the whole billionaire class.
There are lots of a growing number of black people in the billionaire class.
And in the book, I do quote Jay-Z just to make the point you're getting at.
When he asked in the album 444, he asked in a song, what's better than one billionaire, one black billionaire, two, especially if they're the same hue as you.
And when I heard that, I said, wow, that doesn't make much sense because it's all about the means of production.
If you make a billion by suppressing wages, by not providing health care, and in the music industry, where Jay-Z is very familiar, by issuing contracts that really keep you in debt, one billionaire is not, two billionaires are not better than one.
And so what I but the point of it is there has always been an effort to push black capitalism, what Nixon called black capitalism, where we sort of adopt being better capitalists.
And what I say in the book, no, we still need a sort of a collective approach, community land trust, figuring out ways to do shared equity projects.
I'll mention one of the folks I've mentioned in the book, Lanier Richardson.
He's a developer in Baltimore, developing the Edmondson Village shopping mall.
He's developing a shopping mall, but through the SEC new crowdfunding mechanisms, enabling new accredited investors, people with as low as $1,000 can actually own the property.
So he has more than 200 new owners of this property.
And that is what, when I hear collective, any kind of collective action of black unity, we need those kind of collective apparatuses.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
The book again is Black Power Scorecard, Measuring the Racial Gap and What We Can Do to Close It.
Andre Perry is our guest this morning on the Washington Journal, taking your phone calls onlines for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents as usual.
This is Rich in Hickory Hills, Illinois, Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thanks for taking that call.
I was wondering about, as you're speaking, about this closing the racial wealth gap and wondering if race is the like the measuring stick.
Is there certain particular problems that are racial that because the racial the financial gap should it shouldn't be about there shouldn't be a race.
It should be that the issue of wealth in any group the the, the issue should be the same.
Yeah, and you know, and you're right we should.
Race should not be a predictor for outcomes.
Um unfortunately, we've had policies that were predicated on race, that um shifted the wealth or limited wealth um accumulation among black Americans.
I mean, a lot of people point to redlining um as uh as um a major cause for the racial wealth gap.
I mean, let's not forget slavery, Jim Crow, racism and the like.
Um, but what that those sets of policies did would would not allow black people to essentially pass on equity that would would have been accrued in your home to their children and to their children and and over time that accumulates.
And in current day, where people are investing um heavily in the stock market, if you did not, if you do not have that discretionary income to do, You're going to have less wealth.
And wealth, again, is a major predictor of everything from health, education, and all these positive things.
So, yes, you're right.
The caller is right.
Race should not be a predictor, but policies have been predicated on race.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Let me follow up on that, on wealth accumulation being one of those indicators of more life expectancy in this country.
Marriage is often seen as a path to more benefits from more wealth accumulation.
You address this in your book.
It's page 132 of your book.
You write, any conversation about marriage rates and the associated benefits must be contextualized within a framework of past and present day racism and sexism, which has deprived black men and women of the wealth crucial for supporting families and diminished the likelihood that they will get married in the first place.
It is impossible to improve marriage rates without addressing the policies that make marriage less likely and less advantageous for black people.
Explain.
unidentified
Yeah, you know, you go to any podcast or popular blog, and they're talking about marriage, particularly black marriage.
It is an interpersonal, it's about the interpersonal failures that are occurring.
Black women aren't bringing anything to the table.
Black men are too busy philandering and all this other stuff.
What those conversations miss horribly are the policies that establish the conditions for marriage, the preconditions of marriage.
So if you live in wealthier communities, guess what?
The marriage rates are better.
Feneba Ado, a researcher at UNC Chapel Hill, has done a phenomenal job studying this, controlling for various factors.
So in essence, healthier communities build healthier relationships.
We're not going to marriage our way out of poverty.
We're not going to marry our way out of a broken criminal justice system, broken educational system.
But it is incumbent upon people of both genders, all genders, to say, let's work on these preconditions.
And when we do that, you get better outcomes.
So in many ways, fighting discrimination, sexism, racism, and the like is a romantic act that you can build community partnerships when you work on the preconditions.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Andre Perry, with us for about the next 15 minutes.
Just a note for viewers, the House is going to come in for a brief pro forma session, and we will, of course, go there for gapital gavel coverage when they do.
Until then, your phone calls on this book, Black Power Scorecard, Measuring the Racial Gap and What We Can Do to Close It.
This is Sarah in Florida, Republican.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi, Andreas.
I have a question regarding racial segregation on Long Island.
So I had read this book, Color of Law.
It's a wonderful book, variating but wonderful.
And it mentions the school district zones that kind of like follow those racial geographic lines.
Yes.
And I'm wondering if, you know, that racial wealth gap obviously has to do with education.
Like, did that lead to increased wealth gap for blacks on Long Island?
What are politicians doing about it?
And then I also had a question about, I do believe New York has for its residents free tuition.
Is that helping that racial gap for blacks?
Thank you.
Yeah, you know, education has a long, sordid history of discriminating.
And certainly the lack of access to quality schools, education reduces the human capital that people can receive to better their own lives.
But I also wanted to focus on how zoning in general has allowed people to hoard wealth.
And in a more perfect world, you would have systems in place that would allow resources to go to the places and to the people who need it most.
But we see in current day efforts in Louisiana, other places, where there are school districts literally trying to succeed from the area so that they can hoard some of the revenue generation in the shopping malls or whatever, the high-income districts so they can keep that revenue because essentially they don't want to pour money into other kids.
And so when we heard all this talk about CRT, critical race theory and the like, of course there was not any CRT being taught in schools.
But what you see there is a prelude to attack funding mechanisms that really have a bearing on school districts.
And certainly the current administration dismantling the Department of Education can have a negative impact on that funding.
Because let's be clear, the Department of Education is really a check distribution department.
It gives money to districts.
It gives money for the financial aid.
And so if those systems are not in place to protect the district that need those checks most, you can see less revenue in those places.
But I want to also address your issue of free college.
Free college, the most part, at the two-year level, is happening.
You see either through the Pell Grant can cover a lot of it or states taking it upon themselves to offer free tuition for the most part.
What we really do, and that has a tremendous impact on people's pockets.
Look, I was a college dean at one point.
I never saw a tuition hike a president didn't like.
If something happened in biology, I don't care.
I was in the College of Education, you would increase tuition.
If you wanted to create a new dorm, you would increase tuition.
Now, why they can do that is largely they can use federal financial aid to get that revenue back.
But the burden falls on low-income students who need to take on that debt.
A fascinating phenomenon during the pandemic was when we froze student loans.
Guess what happens?
Black students, millennials in particular, started to buy homes.
Why?
Because their debt to income ratio improved and they used that cushion to actually gain access, to gain assets.
So yes, we need a free college option at the four-year level.
That will enable, I mean, and we already do this at the K-12 level.
You do have a public option that you can go to your public school.
It's tax supported through their taxes.
We need that at the four-year level as well, because we know that college tuition is just burdening so many.
And you hear across the generations, you'll hear somebody who went to college in the 70s said, we shouldn't cancel student loans.
I paid for college.
I went, well, college tuition has increased three times that since in the last 30 years.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
What does the public option of a four-year college look like?
Is that a commuter school program?
unidentified
No, it looks like the University of Alabama, the University of Pittsburgh, LSU, Grambling State University, South Carolina University.
really do believe our public schools should you know be subsidized and you should have that option to go there just like if you how do you pay for that will be the question that you'll get Yeah, how do you pay for it?
But we do know at the publics, the four-year publics, their tuitions have been maintained.
Why?
Because state legislators have said, no, you're not going to raise a tuition.
We see the big spikes in tuition at the privates and certainly the proprietary schools that are certainly taking advantage.
But we can create a system which maintains a tuition cost for consumers and we can create a system of paying for that.
But the caller's point is right on.
College tuition is now a burden.
It's actually discouraging people from going in to college.
And so we've got to figure out a new way to do it because, you know, it's just like healthcare.
This is eventually not sustainable.
Like, you know, in some cases, and we tell in terms of black children, go to the best schools, get the best education.
But if you're going to literally take on $400,000 in debt, $600,000, you're mitigating your wealth.
That's why I say wealth predicts for education.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
The caller brought up a book, and it sounded like he recognized it.
The color of law, A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.
unidentified
Yeah, and why housing is so important in this.
Housing is really the most common way people build wealth.
And so if you have housing discrimination, which we have a history of, remember, we have a longer history of legally saying black people could not own assets.
We have a much longer history of that than we have of black people being able to own.
But during the 30s, when we expanded mortgages for Americans, we limited that among African Americans.
And that really reduced wealth.
It shaped the way we look at ourselves as a community, and it had negative effects all across the board.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Let me take you to Texas City, Texas.
This is James Independent.
You're on with Andre Perry.
unidentified
Mr. Perry.
Yes.
How does diet contribute to longevity of black Americans?
The medical bills and the cost of medical, how does that play into it?
Yeah.
So my research looks at the social determinants of health.
So we sort of eliminate the medical genetic factors from the research.
But certainly diet, exercise, all of those things matter.
But know that life expectancy is more impacted by the social determinants.
So when you have wealth, when you have clean air, when you have all these different things, you make better choices, it looks like.
And so a lot of my research focused on the social determinants because what ends up happening, if you say, what about diet?
You end up getting out of a policy conversation.
You start getting into a blaming conversation.
You start saying that, hey, you just need to do this.
And in some cases, I don't care how you eat.
If you live in toxic areas next to industry, like in Cancer Alley in Louisiana, for instance, and we certainly know the governor is pushing back on making sure that we can clean these areas.
It doesn't matter what you eat.
You're going to have higher cancer rates.
So this book is much more focused on the policy conversation because that, in effect, has more influence on the overall health.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Couldn't you also live in the cleanest area in the country too, but eat horribly?
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
And that certainly impacts as well.
unidentified
I want to be clear.
I like to think I eat well.
I like to think I exercise on a regular basis.
I do regular exercise.
So it's absolutely important, and all communities need to focus on their health.
What I am saying, though, is that wealth, environmental factors, social factors, education has a big bearing on our behaviors.
If you're not getting a great education, it's less likely you'll do the kind of behaviors that increase life expectancy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Just about 10 minutes left.
What are some of the policy prescriptions then that you propose that we haven't talked about yet?
unidentified
Yeah, you know, I'm very high on special purpose credit programs.
Special purpose credit programs are programs that allow banks to change their underwriting practices in ways that meets consumers where they are.
In many cities all across the country, from the DMV to Atlanta to Baltimore, you have thousands of people who've done everything right in terms of you have their credit score, they're earning a decent wage, good wage, but they just can't save enough for the down payment.
And how discrimination shows up is a lack of down payment.
And this is true for a lot of communities and rural communities.
You have people doing everything right, and they're paying rents that often exceed what a mortgage payment would be.
What special purpose credit programs allow for is to say, hey, let's give you a mortgage, which a much lower down payment.
And then you can get into a home.
I'm high on this because if we're going to combat wealth disparities, you have to meet people where they are.
What I argue in the book is that we need to say what are these local solutions that can be scaled and developed.
Remember that redlining, for instance, did not come from D.C.
It started in Baltimore.
It eventually was resourced and codified by the federal government.
But just like redlining can come from local governments and proliferate, positive solutions can come from local areas.
So we're seeing special purpose credit programs.
I'll mention one program I love in New Orleans.
The caller mentioned New Orleans.
A guy by the name of Calvin Mackey, he has this organization called STEM NOLA, where they're actually doing science programs outside of schools.
So on the weekends, after school projects, in the superdome, in stadiums.
And what's important about that, if we're going to improve education, there's no question kids need more at-bats, particularly in STEM and in the STEM field, science, technology, education, and math.
But what else Calvin Mackey does, and by the way, he's the older brother of Captain America, Anthony Mackey.
He's also purchasing property in the area, developing energy technologies.
So he's enriching the neighborhood, making it wealthier, and providing kids with more hands-on science activities.
That's what we want to see.
So in terms of policy solution, instead of vouchers going out to K-12 institutions, we do need vouchers for after-school programs, for summer programs, so kids can get more out-of-school time on academics.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
I'm trying to get one or two more calls.
And this is Perry in Montgomery, Alabama.
Democrat, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
Mr. Perry.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Yes.
unidentified
You mentioned something about salmon.
And I noticed in certain of these black cities where there's a transition to a black mayor and businesses moves out.
So are you familiar with how businesses can get back into these places?
Can the mayor go out and bring business on their own?
Or do they have to go through the state government to get those businesses to come to those cities?
Yeah, I'm actually working.
I actually wrote an op-ed for Alabama.com on this very issue on Selma.
And in that article, I talked about how we should be investing in that airport in Selma.
It could increase the number of distribution centers and the like.
It's a wonderful asset you can build upon.
We should also see some development of that commercial corridor right off the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Every year we commemorate Bloody Sunday through Jubilee.
And every year, hundreds of thousands of people come to the city and they don't have the hotels to stay in.
They don't have the restaurant to go to.
And we need to facilitate more economic growth by investing in the downtown areas in ways that make sense.
But Selma represents small-town micropolitan cities all across the country.
They are worthy of investment as well.
And if the country can't be just a city of superstar cities, we need to invest in these smaller places to see economic growth bubble up.
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C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
Today, a debate between party leaders to be the next Canadian Prime Minister ahead of the country's federal election on April 28th.
Among those taking part is current Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader Mark Carney.
Watch it live tonight at 7 Eastern on C-SPAN.
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A Reuters article dateline Ottawa, Canada.
Prime Minister Mark Carney faced off with his chief rival for the first time during Canada's election campaign on Wednesday in a French-language debate that could help determine who wins the April 28th vote and then deals with U.S. tariffs.
And joining us now from Ottawa is the reporter on that story, David Jungren, Reuters Canadian correspondent.
Thanks so much for being with us.
How much are tariffs and relations with the U.S. the focus of this election?
Oh, 100%.
This is a very unusual election in Canada.
Votes here are normally dominated by domestic topics, healthcare, finances, security.
But this election, it's been 100% Donald Trump and tariffs.
It's remarkable.
So, how would each party handle the tariff issue?
Well, it's a race between two parties, the ruling Liberal Party of Mark Kearney and the largest opposition party, the Conservatives.
There is quite a bit of difference.
So, the Liberals have imposed counter-tariffs on about $60 billion worth of imports from the states, and they say that those tariffs will stay in place until the Americans drop fares.
Now, the Conservatives are calling for a truce.
The Conservatives want both countries to drop their tariffs at the same time so that they can have talks on how to kind of restructure future economic ties.
What do the polls say about the likely election outcome at this point?
The polls right now have the Liberals slightly ahead, but that's a bit misleading because traditionally, Liberal support is concentrated in areas of the country where there are a lot of legislators, whereas Conservative support is focused in parts of the country where there are not that many parliamentary constituencies.
So, although the polls show the Liberals slightly ahead by about three or four percentage points, and if that is the result on Election Day, the Liberals then win a comfortable majority.
An absolute majority.
They won't have to deal with a minority government.
That's right.
When the election started, the Liberals only had a minority government.
And in the Canadian system, that means you have to kind of strike all sorts of deals with various opposition parties, and it just makes the administration much less stable.
Whereas if you get a majority in the Canadian system, you can do an awful lot.
The Liberals have been in power for almost a decade, but now this issue of tariffs comes along.
Does that change the dynamic?
Is it easier, tougher to win the next election?
It makes it much easier.
I mean, the Liberals have been in power almost 10 years, which in the Canadian system is about the lifespan of a government.
Very few governments in Canada last more than 10 years because people just get fed up.
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