that point their staff has been kind of changing the bill and talkg to stakeholders. there is, there was one section of the bill that people worried would essentially give the president the authority in a cyber emergency to flip the off switch on the internet. and that scared a lot of people. i know that rockefeller's staff didn't have the intention to convey that message, so they've definitely been finessing the language there. the latest draft of what we've seen over the august recess is a bill that's restructured in a way that puts work force issues -- insuring thawe have a cybersecurity work force in the private and public sectors that can really thwart increasingly complex and dangerous attacks on our critical infrastructure and networks. so they're definitely massaging

the bill. they've taken out quite a bit, they've added in a little bit, so we'll see where that goes, but that's definitely a hot topic and something that the administration has been, has said is a priority. >> host: kim hart, do you see the administration being interested in telecommunications issues? >> guest: oh, absoluty. i think that it's something that the administration is watching very carefully, and, you know, it's choosing carefully, of course, where it will intervene if it does at all or where it will throw its suppo for a particular issue or particular stance. on the cybersecurity bill that andrew was just talking about, you know, creating a better-developed national cybersecurity plan and a responsive plan to how they would cope with a severe threat has been something that president obama has been out in front about ever since his campaign. he has pledged to create a

cybersurity bar position in the white house which is still empty, and i think that is a bit of a cause of anxiety f people saying, well, we need to get on this and start making some fixes in our systems which we know are awed and need more secure safeguards. and that's where when some of these bills come out, and there were a couple others from the homeland security committee also looking at ways to strengthen how the ancies look at their networks and the type of standards they have to live up to as well as the workers who are in charge of securing them, i think that's when, you know, everyone's looking for some movement towards making our internet networks safer and more immune to the attacks that we're all hearing so much about these days. >> host: we've only got about 2 minutes left. health care and the economy are sucking the oxygen out of the room in so many quarters here in washington d.c. [laughter] where do you see telecom policy in the next couple months?

do you see something actually happening on the fcc and the congressional level? plus, there are three unkno new players on the fcc, robert mcdowell and michael copps are pretty well known commodities, i guess, but you've got clyburn, atwell-baker and the new chair, julius genachowski. fawn johnson. >> guest: well, i don't see a whole lot of concrete action happening at the fcc until later this year. and when we see that, that's probably going to be about the national broadband plan. and what you're going to see is indicators, we're not actually going to see a hard core decision. it's just too new, the agency's too new. the place i would put my money on seeing action is in congress on the cybersecurity bill. i'm seeing maybe in the senate, my bet, before the end of the year. >> host: andrew noyes. >> guest: i'd also like to place

a bet on the satellite home viewer act which portions of which are expiring at the end of the year. so it's essentially a statute that lets, that lets people get out of, that lets people in one community see via satellite content from another, from outside their area. and it's an issue that both chambers are looking at and bills are moving forward, and they could punt this and just kind of extend the statute that we have on the books, but i think both the senate and house commerce committees have indicated that they want to get, push ts forward. so reauthorization of the satellite home viewer is where i think a lot of the action's going to be on capitol hill. >> guest: and i have heard there is quite a bit of lobbying going on in that space right now, so that probably will heat up once

ssion begins. another thing that i don't necessarily see action on in the near future but is going to be an interesting battle to watch is on online privacy. and some of the, a lot of the consumer groups and privacy groups have just called on congress this week actually, some of the key players in the house, waxman and barton and boucher, to take a hard look at how internet companies like google and yahoo! and facebook do collect your data or information about you as you're surfing the web and how that information is then used to serve ads that you presumably are interested in. and i think that's going to b an interesting discussion going forward as the internet companies bring out their heavy weights to prove that, no, we're doing everything right to preserve privacynd what congress does on that front. >> host: kim hart is with the hill, andrew noyes is with

congressdaily, and fawn johnson is with dow jones. thank you all for being on "the communicators." >> guest: thanks. >> now c-span2 rejoins booktv with bonus holiday programming. >> in her book, culture of corruption: obama and his team of tax cheats, crooks and cronies, michelle mkin asserts that the era of hope and change died within six months of obama taking office because the people behind it are corrupt. she calls the first lady and vice president biden the largest beneficiaries of nepotism and discusses secrets officials are hiding. she appeared on c-span's washington journal. this is half an hour. >> host: glad to have you here on c-span this morning. >> guest: thanks for having me, steve. >> host: you say obama's team, the best of washington insiders as did brooks called it, is a

dysfunctional and dangerous conglomerate of business as usual cronies. barack obama owns this cabinet of tax cheats, crooks and cronies. it is his and his alone, judge him by the company he keeps. >> guest: yeah, that's exactly right. i have to thank david brooks for helping inspire this book. the introduction to culture of corruption opens up with a column that he had written not long after the election day and to sort of foretell this clique of achietrons he called them and how phenomenally he was pressed that obama had brought with him the best of the washington insiders. he praised their ivy league pedigrees and really this is sort of a repeat of, you know, this idea that somehow these smarty pants were going to come in and change washington. well, it didn't take long before the obama administration sabused us of that notion in a

very big way. and i go through all of the botched nominations and then a lot of the nominationshat actually went through barely by the skin of their teeth. obviously tim geithner comes to mie.d everybody knows about him, but there are many, manythers that i document, and i think one of the most imptant and relevant chapters that i hav't taled about yet -- and if you look at the front page of the new york times you can see how relevant this is -- is a chapter i did on the wall street money men. a lot of treasury officials tied to goldman sachs and citi who are now reaping enormous benefits from the government bailouts that tim geithner and henry paulson preceding him helped engineer. >> host: and you write with regard to the media, few janitors and newsrooms worked overtime after barack obama won the presidency. it wasn't easy cleaning the drool off the laptops and floors

in the offices of journalists covering the greatest transition in world history. and at "the new york times" you say this new york times which exalted that the financially troubled fish wrap of record had sold $2 million worth of obama-themed merchandise. the times has a vested financial interest in propping up the obama administratio >> guest: i certainly think so. and that also helped me fuel, gave me fuel to write this book. you know, i did it in a very concentrated time period, and, you know, while i was digging up all of these stories and documenting conflicts of interest and cronyism, my colleagues in be much of the rest of the mainstream media were slathering over the greatest transition in world history. [laughter] but even there that was quite amiss because the speed at which the obama administration put people into place waso etter than the reagan administration, and there was a lot of hype

about unprecedented this and unprecedented that. and in the end wha i conclude is was that what was unprecedented were the amount of failures and lapses and business as usual that actually came back to office under the guise of hope and change. >> host: let's read some of the tweet comments, this is one from a viewer who says, ms. malkin, your president had a record low approval, and your side lost. get over it, get aife, and get a real job. >> guest: well, change the subject, change the subject. if anyone's really familiar with my work, particularly writing about bush in the last several months of the admistration, they would know how hard -- probably harder on bush than obama -- ias. especially when it came to being architects of these failed financial bailouts. and i think there's quite an irony that ought to be appreciated by this particular tweeter ofbama who promised not to continue the old, tired,

failed policies of the bush administration and yet has many of the treasury officials who helped initiate those policies now in his own administration. >> host: do you tweet? >> guest: i certainly do. you can find me at at michelle malkin, and before i came on i let everybody kw that i would be here, and i follow at c-span and at c-span wj. >> host: we're glad to have you. give us a call or send us an e-mail. journal at c-span.org. you mentioned some of the individualsn the administration that you take aim at. first of all, you called the cia directer leon by net that, quote, the perfect illustration of the beltway swamp creature. you refer to vice president biden, when it comes to ethically self-policing that puts taxpayers' interests above lek central and special interests, joe biden doesn't have a serious bone in his body, and you refer to the attorney general, eric holder, as a

crime-coddling corporate lawyer. >> guest: i do, and i provide all the evidence for people to judge for themselves. i think that the theme that runs throughout culture of corruption is that there is a massive gap between the obama administration's rhetoric and the reality. i'm not arguing that influence, peddlers and power brokers should be outlawed somehow. everybody's got to make a living. but the point is that team obama came here on high, as high a horse as we've ever seen into washingtono change the way that they do business, nd yet they have people like leon panetta who parlayed an entire career as a government servant into massive private wealth. you've got people who came from the hedge fund industries who were fundlers, i mean, the were all the prototypes that barack obama condemned and michelle obama for that matter, and yet

they've fully embraced them in their administrion and don't seem to acknowledge the hypocrisy there. >> host: you've moved from the east coast to colorado springs, how does that affect the way you view this town? >> guest: you know, i've always had sort of a mental and ideological attachment from the beltway, that's just an outgrowth of my own political views as a conservative, but i think it's much easier to view it from the outside, to have my ear to the ground if in the grassroots in the mountain west. i feel really liberated. out there. and the air is literally nd figuratively fresher [laughter] >> host: molly is joining us very early from oakland, california, good morning. >> caller: goodorning. god bless you, dear michelle, for putting up with the incredible abuse. one quick thing. i just bought your book, i vice president had a chance to --

haven't had a chance to read it, but what drives me crazy is -- i want to cite obama saying you get to keep your private insurance. i'm in the business. i read the bill, and under an orwellian title of grandfathering private health care insurance, it goes on to explain how within one year of the legalizing of this bill, private companies will not be able to sell new company, people will not be able to go and get their own insurance within one year of this bill passing and becoming law. and yet the president gets up there and bald-faced lies continually about it. we, you can keep your private insurance. well, privacy hurt? isn't going -- private insurance isn't going to be in business if we can't write new business. and another note, these congress people haven't even read this bill. and they and they feel perfectly justified in not having read this bill. i put them there. they're my servant. and yet this wonderful plan,

none of them are going to even take this plan. >> host: your response? >> guest: yeah. a couple of things. it is galling, t contempt and the derision with which members of congress inarticular have responded to members of the public about this question of reading the bill. and the story of stenyer, the democrat leader, essentially laughing when the question was posed to him tells you all you need to know about washington's commitment to deliberative democracy and transparency for that matter. i know that a lot of people who call into the republican line are as upset as i am that this president essentially admitted that he hadn't read the bill eith when he was asked specifically about a provision first pointed out by investors business daily. >> host: it was on a conference call. >> guest: that's right. the individual market would basically be destroyed, he

admitted that he hadn't even heard of thatrovision. and i think that this mirrors the outrage, a we saw it during the stimulus debate, of these massive programs getting rammed through, and then the american people oy discovering after they're passed and signed into a law that they're not getting what they were promised and that, in fact, every single one of the has turne out to be a slush fund for special interests. i think that's another reason why it was important to write the book because when these things come and when they're rammed through, we do have the power to say stop and to ask and demand to know who benefits. i have a section in my chapter on czars about the health care czar, nancy deparle. this is somebody who if she had had an r by her name would have been roundly condemned by team obama as a profiteer in the

health care industry. in the last couple of years, she madepwards of $6 million lobbying and working for various health care companies, hospital companies. and there haseen very little disclosure of her activities in the white house because she's a czar, she's beyond congressional accountability. she works in the dark. we kw thanks to a left-leaning watchdog group, crew, here in washington that the white house was meeting with these hospital executives and only under threat of lawsuit did the white house finally disclose the list of executives. they have not, however, told us which white house administration offials were in those meetings. but guess what? nancy deparle has financial ties to some of those executives who were in the meetings. i'd like to know, the public should know was nancy deparle in those meetings, and if she was, why didn't she recuse herself? >> host: d is joining us democrats' line.

good morning. >> caller: good morning. i couldn't wait. this is what makes politics -- i don't even know why i listen. i don't know why c-span h this young lady here. i'm wondering where ms. malkin, where you were when bush spent all those billions? you know, there's nothing you know about it. what about the energy industry? what about a the gop in jail? what about all the scandals? where were you when these other things happened? >> guest: well, you can just google my name, you can look at my blog, and you'll see that i was one of the loudest voices criticizing cronyism and nepotism in the bush administration. you can find many left wing blogs saying even michelle malkin's criticizing michael brown at fema, a lot of dhs nepotism which i investigated

and coverednd uncovered myself. and also, you know, you can take a look at my files and see even most recently all of the work that i've done criticizing the porkacrats in alaska, don young and ted stephens. i think my critics suffer from a moral equivalency when they can't take a look at the book i've written and their immediate response is where were you without informing themselves where exactly i was. guess what? bush is not in office anymore, barack obama is, and that's why i wrote the book. >> host: let me ask you specificly about a couple of the photographs, first this with the former governor of illinois, the mayor of chicago, and president obama. >> guest: yeah. i think it was important to set the stage for the atmosphere, the culture, the political

machine that barack obama grew out of, and there is a section in the book specifically on the episode involving barack obama, valerie jarrett, his senior white house adviser and con ciglyier from chicago, and the connections to the rod blagojevich scandal. and i go into great detail, also, about the service employees international union which was involved somehow, was roped into blagojevich's ploy to try and trade favors for that senate seat. >> host: you also write about michelle obama, quote, beneath the cultured pearls, sleeveless designer dresses, false eyelashes applied by her full-time makeup artist, michelle robinson obama is a hardball chicago politico. the first lady long ago shows a willingness to employ accusations of racial op presentation as a defense against criticism.

>> guest: apparently this seems to be raising hackles among my critics because i very tough on her, and she deserves it. i've been extremely annoyed at the softball kid gloves treatment that she has gotten. i think that people are cowed. they don't want to be criticized as rist or female bashing or somehow mean to this glamorous first lady, but she was steeped in the politics of patronage. her father was a patronage appointee of the daley administration, and she herself floated to a cozy job at the university of chicago medical center. i have a very interesting chart that a blogger compiled that i put on page 65 of the book that shows the skyrocketing of her salary at this cozy job at the university of chicago between the time that she was appointed and the time that barack obama won his senate seat. and t salary nearly tripled. and of course they say, oh,

that's just a mere coincidence. well, after barack obama won the white house, she left that job, and they thought it was not important to fill again after she left. [laughter] i also talk about, i think, an interesting episode that happened while she was serving at the university of chicago medical center because it has relevance to the health care ba now. she engineered what many consider a patient-dumping scheme that busts poor and minority patients out of the university of chicago emergency rooms to community health centers that supposedly would offer them better care. well, a lot of local activists didn't think so and neither did the emergency physicians association which did condemn it as illegal patient dumping. the person she hired to sell the plan wasone other than david axlerod. her chief of staff at the east

wing was also involved as was valerie jarrett, the senior white house adviser, who at the time of this incident was on the university of chicago board of directors. >> host: this is an e-mail, and i know you get a lot of attention because you're a contributor to the fox news channel, but this says, cough, cough, fox. fox news has been very create calf of this -- critical of this president. generally your sense about the role played here in this town. >> guest: well, there are many different parts of fox, and i think people confuse that. we keep saying it until we're blue in the face and people don't appreciate that, yes, in prime time you have hosts who have very strong opinions, sean hannity, glenn beck, bill o'reilly, but even among those three there are very diverse opinions on basic policy matters and on how hard or how soft to treat barack obama. and then, of course, there's the news side which, i think, is

unfailingly fair and balanced. so again, just to level an ad hominem attack, fox that discredits a 400-page book? that's ridiculous. >> host: the book is called culture of corruption,ric is joining us from lake park, iowa, dependent line. good morning. >> caller: yeah, i just found out who wrote your paycheck, and i wanted to know if this book, what is your answer to all these questions you have? what is the answer to the corruption in washington? you've got a book out but you don't have any ideas? >> guest: well, i think that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and i think that disclosure will help breed disclosure. and i also think very simply that knowledge is power. i think that the american people have not been fuhly informed about just how much an illusion hope and be change, the era of hope and change has been.

so i think the book is part of the solution. >> host: another quote from the book, this with regard to secretary of sta hillary clinton and former president bill clinton, the clintons have always had a knack for attracng the dregs of society to their doughnut rls and even a greater talentor avoiding the kind of sustained immediate ca scrutiny that would ensue for they republicans. >> guest: oh, yeah. double standard in the media. and, two, the antithesis of hope and change. and i understand the political strategy that went on in trying to neutralize hillary clinton by giving her the secretary of state position. but the lack of transparency of both of the clintons throughout thr political lifetime really should give pause to honest progressives out there who thought that barack obama was going to do differently. and i don't -- it's not a retread. the chapter that i wrote about

the clintons is not a retread of all of the past scandals, you know, travel gait, watergate, the secret health care task force, etc., etc. what it really does is go through the massive amount of conflicts of enter between bill clinton and his charitable foundations, many of their still-undisclosed donors. we know about some of them. foreign/state governments, very shady businessmen, in some cases convicted criminals, and the kind of work that hillary clinton does now. you know, the administration tells us, and hillary hillary clinton told us after she went through the nomination, that she would recuse herself when there were conflicts of interests. it's difficult to say when there wouldn't be. and basically their recausal policy is just, trust us. >> host: georgia is joining us, welcome to the program. >> caller: good morning. how are you, michelle?

i read your blog all the time, and i think it's great. especially ed morris, he's a great writer. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: i'd like to know, what happened to the car czar, mr. abner? he seems to have left abruptly, and i don't know why. they got somebody else to replace him, did they find something wrong there? i do believe your book's going to be an ongoing project because of all these changes in the administration with all these crooks leaving it. >> host: thanks for the cal these photographs that we're looking at all from the book that michelle malkin has just completed. what about stephen ratner? >> guest: yeah, he did just leave over the last week, and i think that's proof of my thesis that if there's enough sunligh you can have accountability. he was under a cloud from the minute that barack obama appointed him the car czar because his former company, quadrangle, has been involved in a long-standing now sec investigation of financial shenanigans. there's also a very strange

incident involving the production of a movie called chooch and a potential pay-for-play scheme in which rattner apparently had some dealings and promises with the directers relative involved with the movie. i did dedicate an entire chapter to the czars because i think this is one of the most troubling aspects of the administration. every republican and democrat administration of recent memory has had czars. we had a drug czar, homeland security czar, etc. but iteally is unprecedented the scope and the breadth of the czars that barack obama has appointed. and by the blogosphere's count there may be up to 44 of them now who have been installed by presidential authority. and in many cases they're completely superfluous. we have a secretary o housing anurban development, why do we

need an urban czar? a lot of people don't even know we have him. we have a secretary of health and human services, why do we have a health care czar, nancy deparle, who i recently mentioned? and i think one of the reasons is that the obama vetters got into so much trouble during the formal nomination process that they just threw up their hands or somebody cleverly thought of the idea of completely circumventing it and creating this shadow cabinet. >> host: this e-mail, the problem is hannity and o'reilly don't check facts and promote lies. >> guest: they're as cannibal as anybody else an they know the rest of the fox bashers are going to be on them like white on rice and a lot of these left wing blog organizations that dedicate their entire lives to combing through every sentence that is said on fox news are going to be those kind of reports are then