encouragement julie's encouragement and others, here i am today telling you about a book that i started writing a manuscript in august of 2011. where in your life's experience have you ever come across an entity an institution a financial institution that can boast a 95% success rate? think about that. even in your lives, do you ever succeed 95 percent of the time? >> ted williams in his best year failed six out of ten times when he went to the plate with a.400 battle average. i never knew one existed until i was federally indicted by the united states department of justice and began doing some research and found that they have a -- depending on year they boast a 95-96% conviction rate. so if you're a defendant in federal court, you are facing

goliath. it is a david and goliath battle that identify been fortunate enough now to be out on the other side and talk a little bit about. that was the reality i stepped into on december 9 2008, when at 6:21 in the morning the doorbell would not stop ringing where i was staying. i was fund raising for my brother. i'd committed to doing it at least for four months. the doorbell continued to ring. i thought it was just someone playing pranks. got dressed very quickly, went downstairs and saw two men flashing fbi badges and subpoenas requesting entrance many to friends of blagojevich. you can imagine that was a shocking occurrence for me, and it forever changed my life and took me in a direction i never expected. later that morning the then-u.s. attorney patrick fitzgerald in a press conference announcing

that my brother had been arrested said that lincoln would roll over in his grave if he knew that rod was attempting to sell barack obama's senate seat to highest bidder. as i was listening to that, it was a -- many of the surreal moments that i lived through it was a complete opposite of what i experienced working with my brother. i had no, i had no basis to understand what he was talking about. while he spoke he referred to fundraiser a several times, and we also later on read the criminal complaint where fundraiser a was mentioned almost more than 30 timings. and as i listened and read i realized he was talking about me. and that was clearly what set the course of my life into a direction that brings me here today. i got a call from a very good, beloved family friend sheldon, who suggested that anytime

you're mentioned in a criminal complaint, a federal criminal complaint, you better get a lawyer. and so he had given me the names of a number of them and i quickly began to think through what my next steps were. the man who i ultimately chose to defend me, michael etingier, and i get at chappy's in skokie on december 17th at 5:30. mike had told me his wife maureen was not cooking dinner, so he was going to eat his dipper, and asked -- dinner, and asked me if i wanted to eat something. by that time i had lost what robust appetite i used to have and only drank coffee. i consider myself a fairly sophisticated guy. i served in the military, i was an executive in the financial services industry and had dealt with corporate attorneys

regularly in nashville and other places in the country who were buttoned up, never swore, always polite. and as i sat talking to mike, as i'll now refer to him he began to school me on what it was like to be in the bull's eye of the federal government. and he quickly changed. any naive impression that i thought that i could just go in and try to clean up and explain this absolutely humongous misunderstanding that had been announced days before. and i was prepared to proffer that is to submit to a an interview with the fbi and turn over all the subpoenaed documents. and he stared at me and looked at me with the intensity that i came to know and almost love

saying that, if i defend you you're not going to plead. you're going to the plead the fifth. which, when i heard that, it, again how naive i was i responded to him to say that only guilty people plead. that was what i thought. only people, guilty people pled. and he convinced me very strongly not to do that. he also told me that the government the federal government was not seeking truth, they were out to win. and that i should be prepared for them to to use any means possible if i was indicted to try to convict me, discredit me, do whatever they could to emotionally or physically wear me down -- not to mention legally. while mike was schooling me on the federal system, he was eating scrambled eggs, sausage

and hash browns. i'll never forget this. so here's this very intense very energetic passionate man telling me that the government is not my friend eating scrambled eggs. and while he was talking to me, a little yellow piece of scrambled egg was hanging on his lip that i couldn't stop staring at -- [laughter] and i'm wondering, what who is this guy? i mean he's nothing like the lawyers i'd dealt with. and had to quickly conclude that maybe criminal defense is a completely different professional approach to things. and that was, that was without a doubt the most important decision of my life to choose michael ettinger as my attorney. mike is here today with us. he's been acknowledged. cheryl schroeder our second chair, is here.

cheryl would you raise your hand? [applause] our third chair is here -- [applause] and let me tell you, they are toughest women i have ever met who have the greatest compassion a defendant could ever want to have. and they all became personal friends of mine and i considered them throughout this thing my guardian angels. because without them, it would be hard for me to give you this talk today. i was indicted in april of 2008 on a very vague 28-word statute that alleged that i had violated, in conspiring with my brother, their right to his honest services. the law was so vague that there were three cases that were heard during our prep for trial and during trial that the supreme

court agreed the hear them. in an attempt and there are so many ways that i can explain to you how the government i believe played with my life, one of the things that was done by the u.s. attorney patrick fitzgerald to hedge his bets in the event honest services was deemed unconstitutional, he added three more charges to our challenges; conspiracy to extort conspiracy to bribe and extortion. and the only question i have to ask is if i had done all those things why wasn't i charged to begin with, andpj

>> an array of prosecutors, irs fbi and any resource available from the united states government against the defendant. it is an absolute unfair fight. and i can get into a lot more detail on that but i won't to give you my view of why it is so lopsided in favor of the government. i remember standing there in front of the judge next to my brother, both of us pleading not guilty to our chargings

thinking about our -- our charges, thinking about our parents who would have probably been shocked, of course and overwhelmed by what was happening to her sons to their sons. and we'll never forget -- will never forget that moment for as long as i live as well. let me just give you a little insight into how these arraignments go. i was finger printed and mug shotted twice. u.s. marshals and the fbi. and right after the arraignment, i went to visit my pretrial case officer who i went to see after i was arraigned and turned over my passport, had to surrender my passport and my weapons that i owned, which i didn't so it was an easy thing to produce for him and give them financial data that i thought was private and

personal, but mike suggested that i tell them everything that i had. you have no idea again how it feels to have to tell strangers all the personal details of your life, especially financial believing that they might use it all against you. but that's kind of how it goes in federal court. as we were wrapping up i thought i could go on and get back with my attorneys, and he handed me this plastic cup. and that plastic cup he said, i need a sample. we're not done yet i need a sample. so we went to the men's room. ands this would have been the more -- and this is one of the more absurd memories i had, and i had to laugh. when i walked into the men's room -- now i was in the army. we did what we called piss tests all the time, and i had to do it myself. it was really no big deal. but you walk boo there the commode's in the corner and there are floor to ceiling mirrors around the commode to make sure that you don't slip a

false sample in there. well, the case officer in a true show of humanity to me turned his back so that i could give my sample. and after the trial i called him, and he was, i think, very surprised to hear from me and thanked him for that very kind gesture that, you know, after all these years i have to laugh about, and i'm, you know, i share with you now as one of absurdities of my experience. a few days after that arraignment mike d michael ettinger, got a call from the lead prosecutor, reid shar. he was offering a global solution. he said, we've got the governor. your guy can win have brothers talk. and, of course having never been federally indicted and used to things being fairly black and white in my life, i asked mike very angrily why did they, expletive, indict me if they thought i could win?

he said, forget about that, that's not the issue now. what -- i said, what does it mean? they want you to talk to your brother and discuss a solution between the two of you to come back to the prosecutors with a family commitment to possibly -- this is possibly -- work out a plea agreement. and that was just so appalling to me that i quickly told mike no we're going to go to trial. i'm not going to plead. i didn't do anything wrong. and my brother and i never, i never brought it up to my brother never asked him to do anything. and, you know, if he ever reads book he'll find a lot of the things that i had to deal with that the government threw my way trying to use me to get him. all along way i felt that the government was playing with my life. very cynically keeping me

involved throughout the entire process. months late arer i asked mike -- later i asked mike to file a severance on my behalf. it was forecasted the trial was going the take six months and the thought of being away from them home for six months and having to be on trial for six months was going to be a major hardship personal and financial, that it was just as a businessman a fairly reasonable request to say sever me. mike said my trial alone would have probably taken two weeks a substantial reduction in cost. and that, to me, was the cleanest most logical thing that, to me, made sense. mike reluctantly submitted that severance request because he felt i would be in better legal shape if i were on trial with my brother as opposed to opposed to him, as not. i thought a shorter two week trial would save me a lot of money, and we submitted it to

the prosecutors and the judge. the prosecutors opposed it, the judge denied it and we went on to trial. our trial actually did last two and a half months not six. but nonetheless, it was a major financial hardship. let me give you some facts. i can't -- i've fundraised for my brother four months. i never not one time, conditioned a contribution in exchange for a government favor or contract. one of my favorite phrases was i don't do that, no. you have no idea how i was -- how people nibble around you as a fundraiser trying to get things in return, and i never came even close to accepting anything and i'll get into a little bit more detail on that shortly. so we were wiretapped for 50 days. 400 hours. roughly 4,000 intercepts 1500

on my personal cell phone and 284 personal conversations i had with my wife and son. let me give you an embarrassing example of one of those wiretap conversations that involved my son, alex. and i told him i was going to tell today and it's also in the book. but with i think it illustrates how sloppy our federal government is in protecting our civil liberties. so alex called me this particular day. we were being wiretapped. and we were just talking about father and son stuff. it was not a conspiratorial conversation, and the fbi is supposed to follow minimization rules when they're eavesdropping. which is what i call it as opposed to intercepting or surveilling. and they didn't do it in this conversation. and to this day, after hearing many of them, there were so many of them that they sloppily did not minimize. but you could hear alex

urinating in the toilet. and if that wasn't a signal to the agent who was surveilling us to minimize and turn off the tap, flushing of the toilet would have made it very clear to him or her what was going on. and i share that with you now because i can laugh about it, and it's funny. but the first time julie heard our voices, because she she dutifully did a lot of the transcribing, listening to those conversations and writing them down so our legal team could have that, as did robin did a lot of heavy lifting transcribing these conversations she broke down emotionally, and it took her a couple of weeks to recover from the shock and horror of hearing her voice talking with her husband and her son about stuff that no one has any business to listen to. but fortunately she's recovered

enough that she's resumed her life but not strong enough to be here while i'm promoting a book. she's still a little bit spooked. at heart of everything that happened to me was what i call the approach. i was approached by two men that were representing congressman jesse jackson jr.. they were in the indian community, the south asian community. very unsophisticated guys, i thought. and came to me saying that they would, in order to assist congressman jackson to be considered and awarded the senate seat, one guy offered $1.5 million, and the other man offered $6 million. each time i told them rod is going to do the right thing for the people of illinois. it's not about money and i seriously doubt that he'd ever appoint congressman jesse jackson to anything. a third conversation that i had

with the gentleman from that community was one that was wiretapped and surveilled. he had come to me to speak to me at the friends of blagojevich campaign office where i hung out fundraising and he alerted me to what these two gentlemen were talking about in the indian community, and he was concerned about bad things happening. and he was right. i had told him and you could hear it on wiretap -- and the fbi and the department of justice heard me telling him -- that rod was again going to do the right thing for the people of illinois and it wasn't about money. i stressed it wasn't about money twice so he understood it. and i can tell you, if you went through all the wiretaps, all through the discovery of the 302s that were the reports of the investigations of witnesses and centers of influence that the government interviewed, there's no one who ever said anything that was harmful to me many any way.

if anything, it was quite the opposite. which even to this day i keep asking, and you be the judge why was i indicted? what we did learn from discovery, and discovery is a dump of information the prosecution has gathered that is required by law to provide to the defense. we learned in reading the fbi 302 reports that i remember, we've turned all of this stuff back in to the u.s. attorney's office. i read the 302 reports on roger nyack and -- [inaudible] roger nyack in particular was particularly interesting to me because he said under oath to the fbi that he had met with congressman jackson early in october of 2008. these gentlemen approached me on october 28th and 31st of that same year. that he had had a conversation

with congressman jackson and congressman jackson was encouraging him to come talk to us about money in and the senate seat. and he believed that if he were in the senate -- because it was you know, possibilities of rod being, you know, indicted on something at some point. i think rod lived with that daily. that he would be very close to the future president and help rod get a pardon which was, to me one of the most absurd and many absurd things i read many those 302s. but it was very clear to me that congressman jackson was the man who empowered these two emissaries to come talk to us about the united states senate seat. and it is my view that congressman jackson was allowed to get away with a federal crime because the u.s. attorney and the fbi knew all of this from their interviews of witnesses and the people in the center of this.

there was one other thing that i recall from the 302s that i found very interesting. there was a -- and this was out of roger nyack's report where he told the agent that congressman jackson was concerned about the conversations that they had and he had called nyack asking nyack if he'd talked to them about money. well, he had, and he said he did, and jackson told him -- according to nyack -- don't talk about money anymore. i hear that blagojevich is being investigated okay? so what can i conclude logically from that is congressman jackson was tipped off by someone that there was an investigation going on of my brother and protected him. quick highlight from the trial because i know i'm running out of time, and we're going to have a q&a period here. >> [inaudible] >> okay.

[laughter] as a defendant you're -- it's a david and goliath battle. you are up against a superpower. the united states of america. and every time i went into that courtroom, i always felt outnumbered except for my guardian angels who i knew were there to help me through it all. but it was just the four of us, basically. during the trial the government still never stopped investigating. i got a call from my nashville cpa two weeks into the trial giving me a heads up that, rob, the irs has just subpoenaed all your tax records from 2003 to 2008 and just wanted you to know that. so not only am i indicted, not only did they add on three more felony charges that put me in further legal jeopardy and facing a penalty of who knows how many additional more years if i was convicted they're still chasing me, looking at my tax returns.

and what we learned during that trial, that they had contacted all organizations that we had made charitable contributions to; vanderbilt university, the ymca nashville, the red cross university of tampa. they all got calls verifying that what i had contributed was accurate. they could not find anything in my tax returns to discredit me because that's all they had. and i discovered that even during the trial while i was being cross-examined by the prosecutor that all he had was to try to catch me in logic loops and get me to say something that i didn't intend to say and wear me down. and -- because they had nothing of legal substance other than trying to connect dots from these wiretaps that they had on us. and they could again do whatever they wanted to do and they indicted me.

while i was testifying, i testified for two days. two of the most challenging days of my life. mike cheryl robin prepared me as well as anyone could be prepared to testify. you sit up there in this courtroom. it was packed. strangers. no -- very few friends mostly strangers and the enemy lined up staring at you waiting for you to screw up. united states government, of all things, my enemy. the whole process of testifying wears you down. that would have been a tragic had i not disciplined myself to listen to the question and try to understand where the prosecutor was coming from with

his questions. two days into the second day that i testified, during a break i was feeling tired, so i ate a protein bar. for energy. so that i could kind of power through the rest of the afternoon. at the same time, i wrote a note to myself on a little sticky pad: stay folked exclamation point. and i took it up to the stand before the judge returned to reconvene and i saw that i was still being surveilled in court. when i saw special agent cain in the back of the room get up and walk over to the prosecutor's table and demonstrate to them what i had done. the prosecutor who was cross-examining me came up to mike. i watched the interaction. mike came over, very abruptly and rudely mike -- [laughter] said to me what do you have up there? you're not supposed to have anything. so i showed him my sticky note. it says, stay focused,

exclamation point. gimme that. you can't have that. so he goes straight to the prosecutor's table, slapped it on his forehead and said, this is what he had up there. [laughter] well needless to say, that fueled the rest of my afternoon. [laughter] and i had no need for any other supplemental energy to get me through. again they do anything. playground tactics and antics to try to defeat you in any way that they can. after three weeks of deliberation our jury came back hung for me on all my counts. rod was hung on all count except for one. for the first time that night, we listened to the news. i had a media ban for a year and a half because i could not afford to allow myself to be brought down by negative thoughts.

i made sure that every day before trial i got up and got up at 5:30 and ran and worked out because i thought it gave me a mental edge over those prosecutors. and any little thing you can do to gain the edge, i tried to do. and i tried to explain it in the book. i go into some detail to explain that. but we listened to this juror who looked like he was maybe 20 years old talking about the verdict, and he said it was 11-1 in favor of guilt. we were shocked. needless to say, we spent a very sleepless night. the next morning i called mike, said, you know, what went wrong? what are we going to do to fix this mike? he goes, are you going to fire me rob? because i was a little agitated. i said, no, no, but you know we've got to figure the this out. he called me later, and from a reliable source said that the jury came back 9-3 in favor of acquittal for me. now, the odds, as i've explained, are completely against a defendant.

so if you're the average guy, if you can afford to pay for good counsel, even if you're innocent and even if you can articulate your innocence on the stand doesn't mean you're going to be acquitted. because the government has every advantage as they bring in witnesses, get the judge to determine and select what is allowable in court and many many other advantages that i will spare you here today. but i do have a certain opinion. and i would kind of synthesize it into justice at the federal level is a crap shoot with loaded dice in favor of the house. now, i'm not saying that every prosecutor every u.s. attorney is what i experienced here, because there are a lot of good people in the justice department. but there should be accountability and people held

responsible for overreaching and doing things to american citizens that i thought our founding fathers tried to protect us against. august 26th was the next hearing that was going to determine when our retrial would be. and so mike and cheryl were going to go to court and since i didn't have to be in court, there's no extra credit for going down there so chose to stay at home. [laughter] that day. however the day before on the theme of playing with your life, mike got a call from the lead prosecutor, reed shaw, offering us something we requested months ago -- months before, a severance from my brother's next trial. and i mike and i went back and forth. mike why are they being nice to me all of a sudden? what's this about? and mike, in his own very

animated and passionate way, told me, rob we don't want what the government wants. they have an ageneral da. agenda. [laughter] i heard those words and i had him on the speaker for julie to hear, and robin was on the line on the speakerphone, and cheryl came in a little bit later as i was going back and forth with mike trying to understand the system because it defies logic. it totally defies logic. and the entire time it's a game with your life. and if it's you it's bothersome. [laughter] so we finally went back and forth. i asked mike to go speak to a friend of his ed jensen to see what his opinion was and just try to slow it down. because it was out of nowhere and surprised us. while we waited for mike to get back to us, julie and i spoke and my comment to her was look, i've never been through this before, i don't know what the right answer is.

we're going to do what mike suggests. and let me tell you, that was -- and i've spoken to a lot of attorneys and legal scholars who have said mike's call was one of the more brilliant legal calls that they are aware of representing me as his client. so we said, no. next day i am -- the hearing is scheduled for 11:00. one thing that i will touch on very quickly is the judge was never on time. i did the math after calculating very irritatedly and putting it in my court journal he was on average late 40 minutes for trial whether it be in the morning, after lunch, after break, it added up to 40 minutes, and i think he can cost me $15,000 in legal fees that to this day irritate me because i thought a federal judge would know better.

and we were always there on time and we were properly ready to do our best. so i didn't expect to hear back from mike until much later. so while we were staying at the place that we were at, there was a slow drain in the sink the whole time. it irritated me but i just couldn't focus on fixing it. so i was under the sink fidgeting with it, and i never did fix it. [laughter] and i heard the message, text message beep going off on my phone. i had it up on the counter. got up, not expecting to hear from mike, and it was mike. at 11:01 saying that it's done, it's over they've dropped the chargings. you're a free man. [applause] right there. thank you. and i called julie over and told her what had happened and she

broke down in tears and we hugged and it was just an incredible feeling of joy and relief that i hope none of you ever have to experience the way we did. and lost many all of that happiness was the fact that judd saving was on time for this -- [laughter] for this hearing. so if there's one thing that i may have said to you today it is be careful what you say on the telephone -- [laughter] be careful what you write in e-mails. watch what you text, because you never know who's watching you. and unfortunately, it might be the united states government. thanks so much for this beautiful reception and your attention. [applause]

>> there probably aren't a lot of questions that you want to ask, i'm sure. [laughter] oh there's a question. we always start -- remember this organization doesn't separate church and state. this is father ryan. from father ryan. what do you say about jesse jackson jr. who spent less than two years in jail and your brother who stole zero money and is in jail for 14 years? >> the question is clarifying in and of itself. as i mentioned, i thought congressman former congressman jesse jackson got away with a federal crime. i've been asked that question many times and my brother's sentence was disproportionately harsh and unfair. and when jesse jackson jr. pled in federal court in washington, d.c. he spoke to the media very briefly where he said i'm now

taking responsibility, and i'm manning up for what i did. and i have said repeatedly in response to that, well jesse when are you going to man up more trying to buy the senate seat? and i don't expect that that will ever happen. but it speaks father, to the unfairness of the system. i believe this prosecution was an agenda-driven prosecution to bring down another sitting illinois governor and they used anyone that they could to bring him down including his brother who they knew had done nothing wrong. >> all right. next question, graham grady, member of the city club. what do you think is the real reason the appellate court is taking so long to rule on your brother's appeal? >> you know, one thing i've learned about our justice system it's not linear, it's not logical. everyone has an opinion how something might result. i've heard all kinds of opinions from a lot of smart experienced

people in this business, and they all have different conclusions. and i don't know. i hope they're being very deliberate, and i hope they're trying to figure out how to write a -- to right a wrong that my brother is still having to live with in federal prison. and i sure hope they do the right thing. >> is that john legg? okay. professor john marshall law school. they say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. how has your experience made you stronger? >> you know that's a great question. and that advice was given to me by my son, alex, who if you read the book put together on my request a kind of business plan to kind of get through this whole ordeal can. and there were a lot of components to it and i religiously followed it, and it gave me structure and focus during a time i had lost all

control. and one of the things that he put in there was -- which was so centering and grounding for me -- was try to look at this as part of your life experience to learn, grow benefit and be smarter from. and that's what i tried to do, because my son told me to. [laughter] >> okay. third question from tony. given the notoriety of the whole situation, did you find it challenging to obtain a publisher for the book? some of us, you know, look for publishers. >> that's a great question, and i'm glad whoever asked that asked that because i failed to acknowledge my publisher, northern illinois university press, linda manning and lori prophet are here today. they have taken a chance to allow me to publish and tell my story in a way that was, to me very very liberating. getting a book published, if you'd like to talk about it later on, is very much like going through the federal justice system.

[laughter] there's no logical direction. in my case, i think i got very lucky, and i'm very grateful for you guys helping me out with that. >> i could concur with that part. [laughter] all right. we have one question dealing with the family, i think he answered it. we have two questions left. i always leave the kind of not gotcha questions, but bring your a game. nothing dealing with the title of the book either. here we go. christine svenson. where are you, christine? >> right back there. >> good place. [laughter] do you draw parallels to fitzgerald's scooter libby prosecution and do you feel some vindication from judith miller's book? >> very insightful. very timely. judith miller whom you may not be familiar with, new york times writer, just came out with a memoir slamming, in many ways, patrick fitzgerald on how he manipulated her and her

testimony to the grand jury in an attempt to use scooter libby to get at dick cheney. and that failed to happen, and i hope someday to meet judith miller, because she and i are kindred spirits in many ways and share some of the same disrespect for former prosecutor and u.s. attorney patrick fitzgerald. >> got that, natasha? all right. [laughter] the last question the home run question. mrs. george johnson. where are you? okay. all right robert, here we go. ing as highest ranking official at the time, what percentage of accountability do you believe your brother had in his indiscretions without comparison to former congressman jesse jackson jr.? >> i don't think i understand that question, i'm sorry. >> in other words ms. johnson wants to know do you think your brother had any accountability to what happened to you as

opposed to jesse jackson jr.? >> i don't blame my brother for what happened to me. i blame patrick fitzgerald. he overreached he knew who i was. the fbi knew who i was. they knew wiz an honorable, honest guy, and they chose to harness me into, to me an overreaching prosecution. so i blame fitzgerald and not my brother. >> how about a round of applause? [applause] >> robert, a one-year membership to the city club. it's a short trip from nashville. and when you put this on your desk, this mug no u.s. prosecutor will dare come near you. [laughter] the city club mug. >> thank you. >> we're not done yet, one more. [applause] don't worry, we have to give out a big prize -- this is a cheater. here we go. and it goes to graham gradety!

grady. there you go. we're adjourned! >> hey, thank you for having me, i really do appreciate it. [inaudible conversations] ..

provides commentary on the ac a advantage questions from audience members. >> i just wanted to make some brief opening comments to frame today's discussion. when it comes to health care those on the right are often defined more by what they are against that what they are for but the truth is there have been a lot of plans that have been offered on the right as alternatives to obamacare but there hasn't been any agreement on any single proposal. that may be about to change. a combination of the republican takeover of the senate limning supreme court decision and the

white house race of putting more pressure than ever before on republicans to offer some alternative to obamacare but before they could get to agreement there are fundamental philosophical disagreements that need to be how to move into a free-market direction. and that is why i wrote my book overcoming obamacare is what i try to do is look at the flurry of plans that have been offered as alternatives to obamacare and i sorted them into three basic approaches or schools of thought. the first school of thought i call the reform school and this is comprised of people who say that at this point it might be unrealistic to fool the repeal obamacare and holding out for full repeal shouldn't be a barrier to instituting reforms

to the overall system that will move in a more market-oriented direction. the second approach i described as the school is comprised of people who think obamacare needs to be repealed but the only beat done that way if opponents offer a credible alternative that grapples with the changes obamacare has made and the beneficiaries it has created. the last but not least is what i call the restart school and this is comprised of people who think obamacare needs to be repealed and full be wiped off the books and the only way you can create a true free-market alternative is starting from scratch and focusing on lowering costs rather than just figuring out a way to expand coverage. so we are fortunate today to be joined by three advocates for

these various approaches. i want to start with what of the man and an institute who has authored his own plan as an alternative to obamacare and he was recently named as a policy adviser to rick perry. next we have jeff anderson, the director of the 2017 project, he is also offered obamacare alternative that very close to some of the plans that have been offered on capitol hill with some changes we can talk about. and michael cannon of the cato institute has been described as obamacare at single most relentless antagonists and he has gained notoriety recently as one of the intellectual architects of the supreme court challenge to obamacare's