it before they, you know, agree to give their information to a marketer, and so you just have to -- i mean, sort of not like on antitrust laws which have served us so well for more than a hundred years, you know, the rules and the approaches in this case, the guidance i think works well across platforms, but it has to be thought of slightly differently with respect to each technology platform we're looking at. >> finally, is there any protection of all of the personal and private information that's already out there? >> well, there is a sort of worse, out of the bar notion. the protection is this. is a company has inadequate data security, and we've brought, i think, 20-30 data cases in the last decade, we, you know, we will hopefully find out about

that before there is harm done in data security that's within our statutes for the most part, but no, there's a lot of information out there including social security numbers that is personally identifiable or could be aggregated to make a personal identification, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be involved with this to make sure the companies have better protection # policies and ensure the going forward companies to straik the right balance, and some of them already do between using, acquiring useful data data and using and giving consumers more choice and transparency. >> jon, chairman of the federal trade commission, tony romm tech reporter with the "politico". thank you for being on the "communicators". >> thank you for having me.

>> the u.s. senate agreed to move forward on a bill extending tax cuts for all income levels for two years, and extending

unemployment benefits for a little more than a year. this half hour portion of the debate begins with finance committee chairman max baucus. >> before i speak on taxes, i want to talk about bob bennett. we all are deeply impressed with his since of integrity and comiement in working for, you know, basic sound principles, and one i might say that made a big impression on me is he came to my office, i think, on his own or was appointed to help find a way to make the senate more relevant way to change the senate rules to address some of the frustration that a lot of senators have. now, people watching you might wonder gosh, why are senators not very relevant? it's because a lot of senators want to get something done

quickly and frustrated by actions that another senator has. i was very impressed with bob's attitude. he talked to me, what can be done, max, what ideas do you have, max? it was refreshing. i remember thinking at the time this is going to be difficult, but i didn't tell him how difficult i thought it would be, but i was very impressed with his desire to help adjust the senate rules. mr. president, i ask the following be lobbied in the senate floor of the tax bill. it's microgrant came, jack called marchman, daniel, mary baker, greg sullivan, andrew fishburn,. >> without objection. >> two years ago our economy was

only brink, so we what we do was enact the investment act to jump start the economy, african-american we did -- and we did so to create jobs. in the two years sense, we created and sustained more than 3.5 million jobs, 3.5 million jobs available if we had not taken that action. the economy is now starting to move in the right direction, but we have a long way to go. the positive momentum in the economy is fragile, so we need to work tire leslie to protect us, and our first priority is to create jobs, more jobs. in 2003 along with other tax provisions are set to expire at the end of this year. if we do not act, taxes will go up. in addition, last month the emergency federal unemployment

insurance program expired, and if we don't act there, but the end of the next month, 2 million americans will be out critical sources they need. that's help they need to put food on the table and a roof over their head. the tax cuts and unemployment insurance both have the critical effect that we must have on middle class families and our jobs. little more than a week ago, we volted on tax cuts to extend these for the middle class and unemployment insurance. that would have focused extensions on the most effective ways to create jobs. the amendments we voted on that saturday with giving relief to middle class families to provide unemployment ?uns to millions of americans who lost their jobs through no fault of their own. these two amendments, the box amendments and the schumer

amendments, would have extended taxes cuts to benefit all taxpayers. those amendments with critical college tax cuts like the college tuition tax deduction would have made the child tax credit permanent and cut taxes for employers freeing cash for them to spend on new workers. those amendments focused on middle class families. they focus on creating jobs the economy needs, and they focus on creating those jobs. cutting taxes for middle class families and extending insurance stimulate our economy. they do so because the families who benefit from the policies are the families most likely to spend that money. that injects it directly into our economy, in fact, helps the economy to grow and create jobs. the best way to extend these expiring tax provisions is to

focus on middle class, and that's what they amendment did, and that remains my strong presence. there are some in the body, however, who want to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest as well. these folks held tax cuts for the middle class hostage. tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires are not the best way to create jobs. the nation'swettiest, -- wealthiest are likely to save their money than spend it, and permanently extending tax cuts to rich americans costs us $700 billion over the next few years. that's too much loss. despite this disagreement, creating jobs needs to remain our first priority. if we do not extend unemployment insurance, then by the end of the next month, 2 million americans who lost jobs through no fault of their own would lose

their unemployment benefits. if we allow those benefits to expire, families who currently receive them will lose much of their income. emergency unemployment insurance benefited 47 people that includes 10.5 million children. benefits help middle class families. middle class families received 70% of total benefits. these are folks with a work history. they lost their jobs through no fault of their own. unemployment benefits is the last line many people have left in this tough economy. this supports americans who have worked, looking for work, and who want work again. if we do not extend unemployment insurance, we take some of the most stimlative dollars out of the economy. that would just hurt the

economy's ability to create jobs. the nonpartisan congressional budget office says the unemployment benefits have one of the largest out put of any policy. in the department of labor reports for every collar spent on unemployment insurance, $2 are reinvested in the economy. the counsel for economic advisors estimates as of september, emergency unemployment insurance benefits increased the level of employment by nearly 800,000 jobs. that's just september. unemployment insurance goes to people who have extended immediately that increases demand. it's critical to extend unemployment insurance to support our fragile economic recovery, and to help create jobs. if we don't extend the lower tax rates enacted in 2001 and 2003 and the other tax provisions expire at the end of this year,

millions of middle class families will pay higher taxes next year. middle class families are the backbone of our economy, and this recession has hit middle class families hardest. two million middle class folks who worked hard all their lives have been knocked off their feet by this great recession. too many middle class families are still struggling. if we don't act, individual taxes will go up. if we don't act, the child tax credit will shrink and the college tuition tax reduction ends, and so will the state and local property tax reduction, and the property tax reduction itself and a host of other tax breaks critical to middle class families. now is certainly not the time to raise taxes on middle class families. if we don't act, taxes will go up on employers.

taxes will go up on employers engaged in critical research and development. that's r and d that our economy needs to stay competitive in the global market to grow and create jobs. if we don't act, taxes will go up on employers working to sustain new types of energy resources like wind power. sustainable energy is the industry that could create hundreds of thousands of jobs. now is not the time to raise taxes on a employer's potential to create the jobs that we need. we must act because if we fail, that is we fail to extend these critical provisions, we place our economy at risk. if we fail to act, we place middle class families at risk. while i prefer acting on the middle class that focuses on creating jobs and gets us the most bang for our buck, inaction

is clearly not an option. i will support the bipartisan compromise that the president has proposed. plain and simple. this bipartisan compromise is about creating jobs. extending middle class tax cuts will help create jobs. not extending them would cost jobs, and we just cannot afford to lose jobs. job creation needs to be our number one priority. our economy has come a long way in the few years, but the growth is fragile. let's keep the focus on creating jobs. let us keep moving our economy forward. let us pass this important legislation. >> mr. president? >> senator from iowa. >> the senior senator from arizona. >> mr. president, i think it's very clear that the vote today

will result in a significant majority vote for the pending legislation,s sowled tax extend tenders, and i would be one of those voting as well, but i must say in the brief time that i have, i must say that there's almost an experience here on the floor of the united states senate as compared with the rest of america. here we are about to pass the quote -- "tax extenders" -- that are nose to give some ternty to -- certainty to businesses small and large across america to give to people in those most difficult times including my home state of arizona. what did we do rather than just extend the tax breaks which is what a lot of americans want? we engaged in the continuing

practice that alienated the american people of loading up with unneeded, unnecessary, unwanted sweeteners in order to, i guess, get votes or satisfy special interests. i quote from the "wall street journal" this morning entitled "the haw chi handouts" "the tax bill is starting with ethanol, and it goes on to talk about the ethanol extension is the bipartisan handy work of people who direct subsidies and force consumers to buy ethanol. this is a trifecta of government support and fall and industry that is 30 years old and that even al gore now admitted serves none of its advertised environmental purposes. i'd like to point out for my colleagues on this side of the aisle that the greater political

risk here is for republicans that should ware that the tax bill is turning into a special interest spectacle. one gallon of biodiesel and there's $200 million for incentives of alternate fuel and railroad tracks on so on. these credits are a form of special interest spending, via the tax code, which is precisely the business as usual believer that republicans told tea party voters they would not engage in. these business sub simplified subsidies are creased for the deal, and the only chance to remove them is the kind of public outcry that protected the corn husker kickback, another obamacare fiasco.

i say to my colleagues, i'll vote for it, but it's not what the people said they wanted done on november 2. now, i understand that less online game playing comes up, we would probably go to an omnibus bill. that omnibus bill is loaded down with earmark and pork barrel spending which is a direct, a direct betrayal of the majority of the voters on november 2 who said stop the earmarking. stop the spending. stop the outrageous pork barrel projects. this omnibus bill comes up loaded down with pork barrel spending. we owe it to the american people to stop it. we owe the american people a clean and continuing resolution with no additional spending on it that would be good for 45 days so that the new congress in response to the american people

will act in a responsible fashion. mr. president, this bill we're going to pass is contributing to the debt and deficits. contributes to the porching of our children's futures. we should rise up against any omnibus appropriations bill and only enact a continuing resolution, and i say that to my colleagues on this side of the aisle that may not have gotten the message of november 2. vote to have a clean continuing resolution. that's what the american people want. the american people deserve that and to be heard. let's reconnect washington and the american people. i thank the senator from iowa for giving me the floor. i yield whatever remaining time i have. >> mr. president? >> senator from colorado.

>> mr. president, i rise to speak in opposition of the bill in front of us today. i just want to start out by saying in addition to the many challenges facing our nation, a massive budget deficit in a crippling debt may prove to be the most difficult challenge we face as a country. a steep structural debt the one our government accumulated because of the long term economic stability, it darkens the horizon in investment that we need to spur american jobs today. more over, our apparent inability to squarely address the problem is a signal to the american people as if they needed more proof that our democracy is not working, and that is as dangerous as any attack on our country. it is a time ball in our midst, the ticking of which we cannot ignore unless we are comfortable knowing that it will eventually

and inevitably blow up on our children. last week a bipartisan group oi appointed by the president faced a serious metaphor. the president's fiscal commission called the debt a cancer that is threatening our country from within. whether a time bomb or a cancer, the threat is real, and the commission confirmed it in the starkest terms. the chairman's recommendations to respond were sobering, but they were like a strong cup of coffee after a drinking binge. americans listened. after a few days of the commission's report and a vote on the following friday, it looks like we can set aside the differences and actually address this problem. it looked like we can follow the old adage of when you are in a hole, stop digging.

however, the next week the president announced a plan with republican leaders to extend the bush tax cuts across the board, a plan that would add $900 billion to the national debt over the next two years. what's staggering to me, mr. president, just four days to switch the conversation from reducing the debt to adding to it. just four days after the most substantive conversation we've had about addressing the debt, we start arguing about the wisdom of extending tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, that alone will cost $700 billion over the next decade. that's $700 billion additional debt that the people of the united states owe to china and other creditors around the world. to par phrase one of my colleagues, i feel we're operating in some parallel universe. mr. president, several of these questions on tax policies to develop mechanisms to get the

total debt under control. despite disagreements here and in the other house, i believe we owe it not american people and to one another to be pragmatic and truthful about the challenges confronting us. i republic and even applaud the president's effort to reach a compromise based on political pragmatism, but what i disagree with is the tbhoation that that compromise is based on anything approaching fiscal reality or truth in accounting which is the point i believe that the chairman of the president's fiscal commission were making. mr. president, i'd like to remind my colleagues of the bush tax cuts for the wealthiest americans. those were passed after we experienced one of the strongest economic environments in our history. those who supported tax cuts for the wealthy believed because we have begun to reduce our long term debt, we could afford

them. they believed those tax cuts would stimulate the economy further and create millions of new jobs, and in the words of then vice president cheney, it was a time when "deficits don't matter." i did not support the tax cuts for the wealthy in 2001 or 2003 for much the same reason i don't support them today. i voted against them as a member of the house of representatives. now, i sincerely wish that those tax cuts had affectively spurred and sustained job growth. i do, but unfortunately the next decade saw a decline in our economy that we vice president -- haven't seen the great depression. banks closed, had to bailout financial institutions, insurance giants, and the automobile industry to keep the economy from crashing further. during that time, the average household decrease and the unemployment rate nearly

doubled. if tax cuts for the wealthy among us spurred innovation and investment, i have to believe economists would tell us to continue them, but here is what economists of all stripes are saying that extending tax cuts for the wealthy is one of the least effective ways to create jobs and build the economy. even some of america's most successful businessmen, bill gates and warren buffet will gain dramatically from the bill have urged us to prioritize seniors, long term staibt, and job creation instead. they know what recent history has shown that tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires don't help our economy, and it certainly doesn't help our national debt. just over one week ago, i stood here with all of my colleagues and voted to support a proposal that would follow the advice of an economiest, bill gates, and

warren buffet to extend tax cuts to middle class families. an $800 tax cut means the difference of paying for day care, health insurance, or a second car so that both parents could work. as more and more americans become the first to stand in an unemployment line, i find it hard to explain last week's filibuster to prevent tax relief so that millionaires and billion billionaires can get a six figure check from the federal government. we've heard all kinds of arguments for extending tax cuts, and we're told this bill represents the best deal we could get in order to bring further tax relief to middle class americans, but again, mr. president, those arguments are based on prague mytism, not a truthful measured analysis of the actual impact on our budget deficit. that's why the co-chair of the

president's deficit commission, a university president who knows the effect of the budget crisis has had on our states on education and on families have spoken out against this deal against wealthy americans. >> your time has expired. >> mr. president, we should be voting on a plan that's a compromise in good faith based on the realities of our economy and not a date on the calendar, and that's what i wish we were doing, but i feel the bad choices made in the last decade will haunt us into the next decade for these reasons the legislation before us today is a step too far, and that is why i oppose it. i yield the floor. >> mr. president? >> senator from iowa. >> how much time is on our side? >> 12.5 minutes. >> this bill is about stopping the biggest tax increase in the

history of the country that'll happen if we don't pass something between now and the end of the year, and that happens because the 2001 tax law, the present tax policy, was only good for ten years and in some sense so you go back to the big tax policy that we had, the high tax policy that we had in the year 2000. you should not increase taxes during an economic recession. and with nearly 10% unemployment, we're still obviously in a recession. some on the other side supported the president's earlier proposal when he wanted to maintain the existing tax policy just for those below a $200,000-a-year

income. the senate did not support that proposal, and it's clear that that proposal could not pass. i know that can be a difficult thing. over the years i've seen proposals that i thought were proposals that i thought were and then i cared who patientlyie about defeated here in the senate.t but you just move on and so that is what our president has done. he has moved on and in a put f pragmatic spirit. he's put forward another proposal to prevent the biggestn tax increase in the history of the countrye from happening. he doesn't feel with it as i do and if you on my side of the ogle do as well. for all of us, it is a balancine act. we want to stay true to our yields and deliver practicaltit. results for constituents, and ii support that this bill, i submin

this bill doesn't increase doest taxes, doesn't cut anybody's taxes, and that that happens tot be the right balance for the vast majority of us, but itt's h happens to be what's right for n the economy now that we are in s recession. just ten days ago the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.8%.it was since july, it was at 9.5.he so the trend is in the wrongcti. direction.we'r we are in a fragile situation. the economy is clearly telling w congress handled withit extreme care.- the maj economists, a majority ofs economists surveyed by cnn money says preventing the 2011 tax hikes is the number one thing to helpess the economy in thenoa

survey results are here on a chart showing 60% of the economists said preventing tax t hikes on every american was the best course of action to take t this particular time that the economy is in a fragilen situation. nonpaisan we have the nonpartisan congressional budget officerowth will saying that gdp growth will be far less if we let the biggest e tax increases in the history of the country have been without congress intervening. if the tax relief doesn't maintain that the present levelo of the economy would grow three tenths of a percent less than if we do it the way the president originally wanted to do just for those people under $200,000 a year in come. in other words, the economy will

grow at 1.4%. l we leave tax policy the last ten years in place as a post to ta doing it before taxing people that make over $200,000 a year at a higher level, in the wou economy would only grow at 1.1%. so given the recession, given the high unemployment rate, r given business reluctance to invest and grow, we need to beve especially sensitive to gdpgrow. growth in. matter o if it were just a fmatter ofer e tther the government got the money or the private sector, that would be one thing.ve a as the government does have a t deficit problem, but in this case it's a matter of money simply not being there because of the hit to the gross domestic product. we are t dalking about deadweigt loss. for those of you that think

taxing people more will bring and more revenue, i would put up your a chart that expresses tax policy and the result of it ove5 the last 50 years.e you can see the red line here ae says that an average of aboutf 18.2% of all the wealth is 12.5d i'm sorinry. i thought you were talking to sy me. you can see the t red line shows for a 50ho year average, about 18.2% of the gross national pdut to stand regardless of the high marginal tax rates were going back to 93 in the eisenhower 93n administration, going down to 7n and the kennedy administration going down to 50 and the reagann

administration going down to 26r in the reagan administration back up to almost 40% in the h. w. bush administration. and then down to the 35% where they are now, and they could go% back up to the 40% if we don't intervene right now. to what is all to tell everybody t here is that marginal tax rates don't a difference, a big difnce difference on how much money comes into the federal treasuryt the people of this country are decided about how much they aree to spend a out of the entire national income and it's about s 18.2 per cent regardless of where the marginal tax ratese are.

they don't want to work, if they do w don't want to earn or they want to hire taxes meant in, they are going to do it and we are only going to get so much, secures theation nonpartisan joint committee on taxation says about this."we we anticipate, quote, wedespondo anticipate tax payers would incs respond to the increased by marginal rates by utilizing tax planning and tax avoidance strategies that will decrease the amount of income subject toa taxation, and that charge proves exactly with the nonpartisanteen joint committee has said.bout we have known about these tax a hikes for a decade now.ed we should have acted many years ago. now we have only 19 days before. the tax hikes take effect. we we are down to the lawyer and wd need to act. we need to act because if whatot it takes to turn this economy tr around, the time is over, the

national federation of independent business had this ty say recently, because of no becn action on expiring tax rates, r thereat is a cloud of uncertainy loud and darker in response to consumer sentiment and ownerowne optimism remained anchored solid in recession territory. in thus spending stayed in maintenance mode, deteriorationi of jobs continued, and the capitol spending remains at historically low rates. owners won't make spending sales commitments when sales prospects remain weak and important decisions such as tax rates and labor costs remain high or so on en certain, and of quote come from small business.ainty uncertainty is the issue we have to dealeal with here.

g this bill also the biggest tax hike in the history of the country won't happen is one thing that will bring someo certainty and meaty the committee more certainty thanso anything else in our economy, so i asked my colleagues at the bottom line as evidenced by thix chart is stop the tax hikes. it's time to leave the tax policy the last ten years in att place so for a pleased the nextn two years people know that theys can hire and expand this econom. and expand theirs. bal i reserve the balance of my time. >> two and half 2 minutes.minute >> is. think, mr. chairman, i'm going to take two and a half to minutes to address the issue of

what the senator from arizona said about some of the provisions in this bill.ill. we keep having ethanol referreds ellas aub subsidy. t well, let me tell you about somb of the subsidies in this bill, because you might think thatthik ethanol is the only one. think in terms of the research and development tax credit. that subsidy for big business has been around for 30 years. meink about the indianemploy employment tax credit, the for subsidy for new market tax credits, the subsidy for railroad track m maintenance credit, mine rescue team credit, the subsidy for an employer wagn credit, for employees who are od active duty in the services. the subsidy for the 15 year

strickland cost recovery for lse the seven year recovery period for the motorsports entertainment complex. when i don't quite understand whensi there is 72 provisions in this bill that expired on and december 21st, 2009, and they are just being continued as some have been for 30 years, howy i somebody today is going to say that that is bad tax policy and di they didn't see it over the last 30 years. to and particularly when it comes to a time when we know that we need a balanced alternative energy program.hatever balanced for whatever can be alternative energy because dhaka only need so much fossil fuell. obviously we ought to be using pe petroleum, buttr should we impot

more petroleum from the 10% of the fuel use in motor vehicles coming from a fellow? oughto you believe we ought to have a good national security program that's based upon the requirements of imported oil. to i think we ought to look at thee balanced as being one of fossild fuels, one of alternative energt and one of conservation. and ethanol and by you diesel and wind and solar is part of af balanced program and they all have tax incentives. i yield the floor. >> the senate then voted to move forward on extending tax cuts for all income levels for two years and extending unemployment benefits for a little more than a year. later in the day, president obama spoke about the bill.

>> [inaudible conversations] >> hello, everybody. i am pleased to announce at this hour the united states senate is moving forward on a package of tax cuts that has strong bipartisan support. this proves that both parties can in fact work together to grow our economy and look out for the american people. once the senate completes action on this bill it will move over to the house of representatives for its consideration. i've been talking with several members of that body. i recognize that folks on both sides of the political spectrum are unhappy with certain parts of the package and buying

understand those concerns. i share some of them but that's the nature of compromise, sacrificing something that each of us cares about to move forward on what matters to all of us. right now and growing the economy and creating jobs, and nearly every economist agrees that that is what this package will do. taken as a whole, the build up the senate will allowed to proceed's economy and the american people. first and foremost is a substantial victory for middle class families across the country who would no longer have to worry about the massive tax hikes come january 1st. it would offer hope to millions of americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own by making sure that they won't suddenly find themselves out in the cold without the unemployment insurance benefits that they were counting on, and it would offer a real tax relief for americans who are paying for college, parents raising their

children and business owners looking to invest in the businesses and propel the economy forward. so, i urge the house of representatives to act quickly on this important matter, because if there's one thing we could agree on its the urgent work of protecting the request for families, moving on the certainty, for america's businesses and giving our economy a boost as we head into the new year. thanks very much, everybody. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> senators will continue debate on the tax cuts and unemployment insurance when they come back in session tomorrow morning.

>> and her first interview since joining the supreme court, justice elena kagan spoke about her reaction with judge roberts and the tour she gave her after she was sworn in. >> hour, talking about the argument and listening to some of the recordings of last year's cases, it's interesting to hear your colloquies i guess is the right word with the chief. i'm wondering about your intellectual relationship with chief justice roberts because often your questions were, and answers were not hit high gear, and i am wondering what you think of the intellectual relationship between the two of you. >> i have extraordinary respect for him. he was the great supreme court advocate of his time before he became a judge, and so i always felt as though he could do better what all of us has lawyers were trying to do, and he did it as well as anybody had ever done was to be at that

podium and make an argument to the supreme court, and that's a little bit intimidating to know the person questioning you has also stood in your shoes and has done the job better than anybody else ever has. i've listened to the chiefs arguments and talked to a lot of people who have sought the chief's argument, and he was fabulous. also a great question are up there on the bench, and he'd really challenges you as he should. he doesn't let you get away with anything, doesn't let you -- if there is something that you want to hide your argument, he is probably pretty certain to find it. so he was -- i tremendously in july arguing in front of him because you had to be at the top of your game and you should have to be at the top of your game. here's a little bit of the story is when i walked in for my swearing-in, this was in the

summer before my bigot grand public investor, so the swearing in that was necessary in order to start during the summer to do the work of the court and was met by the chief justice and he gave me a little bit of a tour of the rooms that the justices go to, the conference room the justices meet in the room where the justices take on and off the road and the dining room upstairs and on the tour where he showed me the robing room and i looked and there was these would lockers that go from the chief justice and then it just said justice stephen and dennett carried on down, and the last locker was justice sotomayor and we walked around and he showed me some other rooms. we took media about 15 minutes and ended up back in the groome

again and in that time would have happened is that justice stevens had come off and each had gone over one and now there was a justice elena kagan and he sort of showed the the new locker with the justice kagan named fleet commander was a very effective way to say to me well, you are here now, you are part of the community, your part of the institution, and it was a very powerful thing to say. >> supreme court justice elena kagan first interview since joining the court hears on c-span this sunday at 6:30 and 9:40 p.m. eastern time.

ayaan education program specialist here at c-span classroom. each year we conduct our video documentary competition called studentcam. the competition asks students great 6-12 to think about issues affecting the nation. this year's theme is washington, d.c. through my lens. we chose this topic because you we would like you to explain how the federal government has affected an issue or even in your life for community. select a topic that interests you. once you have your topic to compete in your research. the goal was for you to develop and research your topic, provide different points of view and include c-span footage that supports ruffini five to eight minute documentary. for more information you can visit the web site at studentcam.org or e-mail us any questions you have at educate@c-span.org. go get started. we can't wait to see what you

can do. >> now a discussion on advertising and spending in the midterm elections. you'll hear from directors and consultants who created some of the largest independent spending campaigns and hear how the citizens united supreme court ruling affected the campaigns. this is three hours. [inaudible conversations] >> i think we are ready. welcome. thank you for coming through the snow and metro five years and various emergencies. i am brooks jackson, the director of factcheck.org. we are a project of the university of pennsylvania annenberg public policy center. some of you may be familiar with our website where we try to hold politicians accountable for the factual accuracy of their campaign ads and other statements, something we have

been doing now for the past seven years. our conference this morning recalling cash attack 2010, political by advertising in a post citizens united world. let me explain what that means. what we hope to accomplish today. cash attack is the main gate to a special project at factcheck.org puna was made possible by a grant from the carnegie corporation of new york, a charitable foundation. we made a special effort to track the factual accuracy of ads paid for with corporate and union money freed up by the citizens united decision. the word attacked the is there because in our experience the ads by outside groups tend to be ads attacking a foe and not praising a friend. and citizens united, of course, is the supreme court decision that lifted many of the legal restrictions on the use of money

from business corporations and labour unions and federal elections. now, we will never know how much money might have been spent in the midterm elections of 2010 had a bad decision not been issued or how the money would have been spent. but here are some clues. according to the wesley and media project, spending on advertising and congressional and gubernatorial races, this is on advertising alone, topped $1 billion this year, a figure of the project, the wesleyan project called historic and house races ad spending was 50% greater than it was in 2008. and in the senate races, ad spending nearly doubled. there was a surge in spending by groups that don't disclose the identities of the donors. according to a report issued just last week by the new york city office of public advocate outside groups that don't

disclose work report spending $132 million including 85 million on senate races. several of these groups are represented here today. the groups are far more likely to run attack ads than positive ads according to the advocate's office, and that confirms our own casual and informal observations at fact check -- factcheck.org. what we saw in 2010 we can expect to see more of in 2012. yesterday the "los angeles times" reported that there is now a financial arms race under way in washington with politicians racing to form a new independent spending committees and to raise even larger sums of money for next time. according to the l.a. times command line in quoting, lawmakers say they fear the unrestricted independent spending is creating a congress even more indebted to special-interest and prone to gridlock a and not likely to

find compromise. now will vautrinot to be true? i don't know. i have learned over the years that sometimes predictions like that make good copy but for prophecy. it's just not given to us to be able to see the future but we can try to examine the recent past and learn more about exactly what happened in the 2010 elections which for the first be held in the post citizens united world. how was this used? what did it accomplish? what was the strategy behind those attack ads from the right and the left and what exactly did that spending in the unprecedented flood of political let for rising accomplish? what is the evidence show? is there polling data or other solid information that will tell the difference if any at all that new money made? to explore the questions today we have assembled to panels one on the democrat or liberal side, one of the republican or conservative side to be we've

asked our panelists to give a presentation discussing the campaign strategy, the results ho they take credit for and the evidence that leads them to believe they were accomplished. i'm happy to say panelists to the include representatives of three out of the five groups the reported the most, at least at the federal level, excuse me, the reported spending the most pleased with the federal level, as reflected by the reports of the federal election commission. by the way those are incomplete. we know some groups take the position they don't have to report, even though their ads were quite obviously in layman's terms campaign ads. on the liberal side we will hear from representatives of the service employees international union at least i hope our representative has been delayed but assures us that he's making his way here. the was the fourth highest spending group of all of the federal level.

we will also hear from the representative of moveon.org which among other things called for, early for a boycott of the target corporation after it was disclosed to have given money to a minnesota group that advertised in support of a republican candidate for governor. and we will hear from the head of the california labor federation which bucked the republican tide with a successful outside campaign in support of the democratic candidate for governor, jerry brown who faced a republican who spent $160 million of her own money, give or take. that is more than any other self funded candidate in history. on the conservative side after a short break, a leader this morning we will hear from the political director of the biggest spending growth of all, the american crossroads gps group. together the groups reported spending nearly $39 million on ads budget from donors not identified.

the action network the third this biggest spender according to the sec reports. it from immediate consultant and adviser to the national republican congressional committee which of course claims credit for demoting nancy pelosi to the minority leader status and elevating john boehner to be the next speaker of the house next month. we've asked our panelists to keep their presentations tight and give time for questions from moderator's. from the audience and from factcheck.org subscribers some of whom have some questions by e-mail. as you may notice, c-span is here in the conference is being carried live on c-span3. we are also reporting the conference on video for our own purposes and we will post that video on our web site as soon after the conference as we can. we are also producing a written transcript of the proceedings which we will post on the site when it becomes available. i'd like to introduce now dr. kenneth of the annenberg

policy center who will introduce our first panel and moderate. >> thank you. our first panel as mentioned is the democratic liberal panel, and our first speaker to my right will be the iyse hogue from moveon.org for political advocacy for moveon.org where she has worked for almost five years. contributed to moveon.org's campaign efforts in 2006 and 2008 and the most recent election cycle. she's focused on the debate about health care, policy, healthcare reform legislation and the reform bill and she will be telling us today about her efforts in the 2010 midterm. colleen pitts who is blocks away from neely this e-mail will be here.

he's the service employees international union directing is the strategic campaign stricter and he will be talking about sciu efforts in midterm elections and finally to my far right is arch pulaski of the afl-cio. they represent to plead 1 million members of 1200 manufacturing transportation construction service and public sector unions and does book mentioned, his union federation worked hard for the deck candidates in the statewide california e elections. so to begin with, let's hear from iyse hogue from moveon.org. >> thank you. it's great to be with you today. it's a little odd to be the one

to kick this off because moveon.org is in a slightly different categories and you have to integrate sort of everything that you hear. we are a pack which means we are engined by our members for small donors. our average donation is $42 everybody over $200 is disclosed through the fec by federal law. why this is important is because disclosure and the amount of individual contributions given in this election cycle became incredibly contentious elements of the debate about are for democracy moving forward. the other thing that makes us different than some of the groups you are going to hear on the republican panelists citizens united didn't actually affect us. citizens united brought the plea infield and that didn't affect us, so when you will see and what's interesting about our

experience in 2010, visa de 2010 or 2006, is because we take small donors, because we are operating under the same set of rules as we had in the previous five elections we've only been around since 1998, we had to think differently about how we spend our money because we were going to get about the same amount of money since we are fuelled by the small donors in a larger context of a financial arms race and advertising arms race. so that is to lay a little bit of context. it's always really interesting when i hear people say representatives of the groups that spent in the top five because moveon.org spent 1.13 million about on advertising in this cycle and that is true, that puts us on the top five outside groups of spending on the democratic side compare that to some of the folks you're going to hear on the other side who spent 75,

80 million. so the top five on the republican side and the top five on the democratic side, there is the enormous gaps and that is a part of what we want to talk about today. so i went to the field of context. i moscow and to spend too much time on this because brooks covered a lot of it but what was new about this election citizens united, citizens united allowed on president levels of expenditures. the other thing it encouraged is the formation of brand new groups that could appear and then disappear as opposed to moveon or sciu that are groups that will be around before and after the election. some of their groups that will feed into the citizens united world will come up and into the background from a strictly for electoral purposes. republican coordination, i will of the guys on the other side talk about this.

it was widely reported the reason that i think it is interesting that people noted the difference of coordination on the republican side, the democratic side on message, is what facilitates that level of coordination is a very small number of decision makers that come from a more concentrated number of donors to the ads if that makes sense. we have got 5 million members who are funding our ads. lieber is very beholden to their constituency, their members. but when you have individual donors who can deduct your campaign strategy, it is facilitated much tighter coordination for the party. on this expenditure this is something i want to touch on and encourage you to look at it more deeply. i think everyone is trying to figure out what to make of what happened in the last cycle. there are things that have popped for me to read with the pro citizens united decision, the flying between advocates and

electoral adds has gotten very thin. so when you see a the accounting of the outside spending, that does not actually include millions and millions of dollars spent by the chamber of commerce post the energy bill for a simple, in july of 2009. because that, by law, was advocacy advertising. but what that means is we are still facing a dominant national narrative that is set by large corporations coming in and legislative fights and setting the narrative. the time span does the same thing. i usually see the last year accounting and really this started right when president obama started to pass his budget and the outside money started coming and then inside and outside a lot has been made and i will spend time on this because it is focused on al-sayyid spending but a lot has been made about how democrats close the gap at the end and if you just look at the final

aggregative numbers, in fact, democrats by some accounting did better. but what that negates is the party committees are only able to raise towards the end of the cycle so when you have lots of large donors and corporate money to have deep pockets you can start spending it the very beginning of the cycle and set the narrative and then the other side is going to be on the beach towns. impact media trend is very quickly. media is in disarray. everyone knows that. print journalism is trying to figure out how to read out television is as one could argue in a race for the bottom to be more sensational and all of it is in a grab for advertising revenue because the model is changing so much. the only reason i bring that up is that it's had an impact on our standards of accuracy, which is think of this we have got people like factcheck.org actually checking accuracy. but what that means coming and i will get to an extent of this a

little bit later, is there is less incentive for television stations to care about accuracy because they care about where their next dollar is coming and these are not legal decisions being made, this is discretionary decisions made by each television company. and then the ability to place at a which i will get to in the target campaign. so, we did a poll right after the citizens united decision. people don't like it. there is a lot, and i have the to go i don't want to spend much time on it. the reason i put our results of here because we took this in march after the decision what jumped out at us is the feeling of the supreme court and citizens united decision was indicative of a drift towards defending corporate rights over individual ordinary american rights this did not break down across partisan lines.

republicans believe is as well as democrats and so this gave us the sense one of the things we might see the cycle was a deep skepticism towards the corporate funding of citizens united allowed. our target campaign is what allowed us to take the citizens united frustration we were seeing from the intellectual to the actual oriented. that's what we do. we are action oriented. because minnesota state law still requires disclosure even though federal law does not it can draw attention early in august that target had given what was a very modest amount of money in the grand scheme of things to announce an outside group in minnesota to support a right-wing candidate for a republican governor who just ended up conceding like three days ago. and we started hearing about this from our minnesota members and so we said we should test this. we should see what people are feeling about it. the response is overwhelming.

this was the first test case of a corporation that is dependent on a broad diversity of americans to shop in their stores being caught were exposed meddling in the political system. it's hard to separate peoples attitudes towards that versus what they were madly on behalf of in this case it was a lot of incendiary issues. it was a republican governor who had a long history of the anti-immigrant, anti-gang, all of that combined means we saw this explosion of rage. we saw 500,000 people find a petition to boycott target at the next three days after a result will hundred protests at target stores and around the country and a lot of defense and backpedaling from the country even though they didn't ultimately end up taking that money. the reason i put this up there is because it's often jury hard

to measure advocacy impact on corporations. it's hard to affect the bottom line. they are huge, protest is fleeting but what brand data is to chart the impact on target brand values through the course of the campaign and this we know made the rounds at lots of other corporations so the domino impact was actually quite large. if you got your communications people passing this around in corporate headquarters seeing everything twice about whether we get involved in this even in places where the disclosures are mandatory because lots of people at this point were doing research about which corporations were donating, it needed an impact and someone in the introduction mentioned the new york city public advocates, worthy of this continuing organizing of the other side and right after this came out goldman sachs committed to not spend under citizens united because they understood the impact on their brand.

all right. i'm going to show you -- it won't show -- ♪ >> target and other big corporations are trying to buy a doherty elections. >> no way. ♪ boycott target. our democracy is not for sale. >> the reason i show that we need this to add and we thought it was fun we are going to spend a very modest amount of money to get the word about the boycott out. msnbc refused to run this ad. nobody was trading the the city of the claim. there wasn't much in there that is not true. they did come to the money. we are promoting a boycott.

they absolutely refused to run the ad and when we asked why our lawyers that can we see why they said we have a company provision against attacking corporations. it's interesting because we don't have a company prohibition against corporations attacking politicians. and we are still in the middle of this debate, but i really wanted to show this ad because first of all a pretty went ballistic. devotees like lagat moveon is attacking targets, putting a knife to their throat and i like this is an animated had the ad with people saying we don't like that but the alarm fire itself was stunning, and i feel there are two things to take from this. one is this is where the vulnerability is. this is the basic principle that if people knew that there consumer money was being spent to metal on the elections that actually promoted causes that were not consistent with their

values they would choose to do something else and that is so scary to them that they are going to fight this exposure to and mail. the second thing is this is another excellent part of why i can only offer a guest, our conversations with msnbc target has a lot more run of rising with model the msnbc but all of the constellation of press associated with them. they were trying to spend $50 million this was a deeply disturbing element of this campaign for us because of citizens have less and less avenue to actually make their voice heard the story dangerous for democracy. >> there we go. so i put this up because this is actually the fact check did this one too. this is the impact on accuracy.

this is a tad from american action network that he will hear my colleague i think who is here talk about, i don't know if he will talk about this end, nobody was saying that this was fair or accurate. this is an ad that basically said that people had voted in the house and the senate to give viagra to sex offenders in prison. you have to stretch the truth about 8 million different ways to even believe this is a possibility. why won't break down the fight for you but nobody agreed that this was accurate. we had made a decision going into the election cycle that since we couldn't compete dollar for dollar one of the things we were absolutely going to do is things like this. we don't have money, we have the people power better going to call the local stations, get out and protest when ads like this go out on the air. well, we did a lot of that. this was in a lot of different places in the house and senate races. we had thousands of people, tens

of thousands call the stations and show up at the stations. these are absolutely discretionary decisions made by the station managers. we didn't get this and everybody agreed was inaccurate, totally outrageous, completely damaging, taking down again because american action network spent 80 million we were spending 1.1. so it's just something to think about in terms of the impact on democracy as we move forward. >> this is a poll that we did in august, again will spend much time on it but you will see i have got three summaries of here and you will see what is consistent is when you get away from leadership of the republican party, rank-and-file republican and independent agree with all these attitudes about the fact that the corporations have too much influence already over the legislation and our elections. so the one i do want to pull out, there is a couple that were critical and they are actually the bottom to. one is that we were in a fight

for our life on the economy. everybody will agree this election at the end of the was about the economy even though the corporate money fight was for a prominent. one of the things we saw in august was people were starting to say that there is no way for america to fix this economy unless we get corporate lobbyists out of the system and that was like an ah-ha moment. and second is republican, independent and democrats, self identified, believed that corporate spending and elections, this was the fight, is a free-speech? no, most americans believe it is political bribery for the corporations to be able to extend unlimited amounts in the elections and this is when we started to see the shift and then narrative of people saying this is important. it's good political strategy if people believe it is primary and they already feel like we can't fix the economy if the corporations are meddling that it's actually a fundamental principle that makes the

american democracy is that there is the opportunity for an equal voice that democracy is not for sale to the highest bidder. so one of the things we did it again, didn't have the money that had the people, was we did about 150 report releases and senate and house races that broke this down. we started thinking money is pouring in we can't compete but what we can do is make the connection for people that we know people don't like this so we do these report releases that show how much money is coming from these groups and we can help to sway the voters what a contrast candidate is being supported by the outside groups. the reports actually got an enormous amount of press, the local reports are always like i don't know how it's going to go. he's gotten and the enormous amount of press showing the pitch the issue is being

debated. last poll the public wants to know, we did this in october, this is when everybody was like the beating 23 of the 24 hour news cycle whether people care about if the onerous to reverse or in the atty wanted to get to the bottom of that. we filled 84% of people, 84% of the voters believe they have a right to know who is buying the ads in the election because it goes to motive and notice goes to the candidates are responsible for after elections. 53 -- 53% of dependence know what it's like to vote for candidate of the new ads supporting the market for bye anonymous corporations and while the donors so this was key right where we get into moving forward if they know. we have groups like america action network or american crossroads. they don't always actually know that those are groups that were

just formed in this cycle that take anonymously so it was critical for us to try to make that connection. this one, so this is an unstable. it's just another 32nd ad. i was trying to make that connection. let me just say we spend again $64,000 to get this message out. crossroads, gps spent 4.4 million to win this race for mark kirk. >> mark wanted to reward tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. now the chamber of commerce is spending over $75 million to help republicans like mark get elected. where has the chamber been getting some of their money lately? from the corporations in countries like china, russia, india, the same companies that threaten american jobs. it's time to connect the dots. who is mark kirk working for? it sure is not illinois.

>> the reason i shall this ad is that we can't purchase the arms race. i said that the beginning. we were fuelled by our members many of whom are infected by the economic conditions, our average is 42 million. we spent about, you know, just over 1 million on ads more on the field. so what we can do is spend our ad money wisely so we took all that knowledge from all the polls and all of the trends and put it together to make this ad which was with the intent to expose the fact that there was corporate money behind our kirk's campaign. we didn't win. we just didn't win and i'm going to wrap up because i know my time is up but i show this at the end because we came very close. julie is which is one of the artist needs to announce in politics was a virtual unknown very young guy who went into one of the most high-profile senate races. he came very close to upsetting the race, and i want to end by

saying the couple of things. because the republicans took back the house, because they one -- and i will let it in many cases they want an dominant there have which is easy for the party to do. we did it in 2006, it is easy to make the mistake and say people don't actually care about the arms race. people don't care corporations and the donors are hijacking the electoral process and democracy. that is a fundamentally flawed conclusion to make. everything that we saw actually showed two things. one, people care. it makes them angry and if we do a better job of actually connecting the dots, to allow that ad, for the american voters there will be a backlash. the second thing is superior to me than a backlash. as a group that represents 5 million middle class working americans worried about their homes, worried about their jobs, i am much less worried about a

backlash than about everyday voters looking at the arms race, looking at the money, looking at the anonymous donors and saying i don't matter to the shouldn't participate. i can't be to them because i can't pay as much. i protested, i knocked on doors, it didn't matter in light of the air war and that is fundamentally dangerous for our democracy. so we will continue to push forward. we will work to overcome citizens united in the next election, we are going to see that if we all don't get together and make these connections for the voters, we are going to see and disenfranchised electorate and a democracy that is increasingly for sale to the highest bid and that is not america. >> [inaudible] >> you do when you want to do. >> thank you very much. normally i would hold questions on till the end, but our second panelist just arrived and i need

to get his presentation loaded up into the laptop. so why all khalid comes up, we will put his presentation in. if there are any questions from the floor for ilyse, i welcome them now. >> [inaudible] [laughter] -- c2 >> wait, wait. >> do you foresee in the 2012 elections what amount of money do you foresee being spent on the ads? >> is this on? okay. you know, i think it is anyone's guess. we saw the other side berkhout threat and 400 million. they didn't. the top cycle because they didn't need to. we just weren't keeping up in a

way they're required them to spend everything they had in their arsenal. i receive starting now no break from the elections. right? campaigning starts now, ads will start now. what i perceive is certainly we are seeing on the democratic side more of a push towards big money fund raising. there has been one independent expenditure already announced. this is a divergence from what we did in 2006 and 2010 and in fact -- i'm sorry, 2008 president obama and asked asked no outside groups run ads but i think the voters sort of on obra side started to feel like the disarmament may have been a mistake. so i think we are going to see a lot more of everything from of the wall and our side fighting for disclosure, fighting for the fighting against those that are inaccurate and really taking the

fight to the tv stations themselves, sebastian where the voices can be equalized and we are going to see more money raised on our side. i believe in maintaining a the end of the day we will not raise as much money at the next panel. we just won't. the republicans have fundamentally carried the water for corporations and legislation and individuals and legislation that will -- there is not as much money on our side so while we cannot compete dollar for dollar i think we will see a lot more of everything in the 2012 act. it's all scary. it is. >> this will be the last question and then we will precede. >> i was wondering if there has been a lot of conflict over the tax agreement obama meet with republicans. you guys have been fighting that pretty hard. how much are you going to be working with the democrats in the next two years and spread

them to do what you want to do rather than working to protect their to campaigns and where is the balance between fighting democrats you may not believe with versus making sure republicans don't agree with. stick a little off topic but the tax fight we fundamentally our whole panel we work for our members. we make decisions all the time it to the extent our members believed that many of the democratic campaigns are not representing them in a genuine way we just can't support those campaigns. we sought out with the primary in arkansas this year so i think we are going to see a lot more assertion in the fact that much of the democratic base does not believe all the candidates are created equal, there is a large concern about the corporatist democrats and so, to the extent

you're asking specifically about the president to campaign you know, our members are frustrated. the things the republicans are dominating too much of the eight really think it is too soon to see how that is going to play out and so much to do with who is on the other side. certainly president obama has done more to help this country than president bush did in the last eight years so we will see how that plays out >> thank you very much, ilyse. now i am pleased to introduce thank you to pitts from the service international union to proceed with his presentation. >> thank you. it's an honor to be here on the panel. i want to apologize i am a first time that they have a first time nervous mother. i apologize for being late. it's great to be here talking with elections even though they

didn't turn out from this perspective how we wanted them to be. now we want to give a brief description of things sciu did in this season as well as an analysis of the gift business from our perspective and as well as kind of how we look forward to 2012 again looking at from our perspective what worked and what didn't work and lessons we kind of word that you third each cycle to do better the next election cycle. so i kind of don't this the good, the bad and the ugly. so first off were the goals for sciu? it's not just about electing democrats and you will see as you see in this presentation, we have internal goals and external. one of them can direct in engagement and is talking to the candidates making sure that we are trying to endorse and elect the worker candidates with a be democrat or in some degree

republican engaging. we wanted to engage the surge base voters in this election from the typical election to those that would elect majorities 2008 as well as president obama. we wanted to build the capacity of our members from their ability to talk about issues, educate about issues and we have members who actually run for office and wanted to enhance that and engage in a political discourse which we do every day whether it is talking about elections, talking about organizing, talking about a legislative issues like the tax cuts and then internally as everyone does we want to strengthen and expand our political infrastructures we can get better and more efficiently engage our members and the general electorate in that order. so, we are here talking about media ads, so when we talk about the message influence getting

across and try to become a broad heading the ten minutes to talk about. so, you know, we think about the elections we wanted to frame of the election in the sense that as a choice for those who voted for change in 2008 and continue that change going forward. we also want some of the contract between those again who are on the side of interest of the middle class and the onshore, and on corporate interests, and so in doing that we want to show there is at least kind of talked about both whether it is a crossroads or others there are some -- one, even thinking about some element of the tea party activists, there are some extreme conservative trusts that were backed by corporate money and shadow groups like a crossroads

and the feeling of the corporate interests take control of congress, you know, on economic issues we are going to see a return, you saw in some of those paul crotty and policies that were being pushed by republican members are in for congress, returned to the bush era policies and economic policies that got us in this mess in the first place that we are slowly digging our way out of. reefers on some major reforms that we have worked very hard on both in and labor and outside labor and moveon.org, and there will be a push for a policy that will continue the inequities that both her income for job creation and middle class and in looking at the senior policies the back to the issue of paul ryan poster child of the hurt seniors, the that is there's a

feeling on our and it is in deep jeopardy if the policies enacted by many of the republicans elected in this cycle go forward .. it's tough luck with sharing angle. for retirement and social

security, phased out. every stage would be worse for her, worse for all of us. sharon angle, too dangerous to have real power over real people. >> okay, but to the next one. before you go to the next one, you'll see the tab you will see after you cope. that is pac. you have lots of report about unions expending their members dollars and they don't have a say. our cope, are pac dollars order for a solitary by members. members to give an average of $7 out of their paycheck. and you think of a janitor in houston who is making about $5.25 an hour. that's $7 really mean something, so we try to be judicious in very good steward of the money our members voluntary kids for

election communication. next, we're going to go with tom ganley. i think this is a radio as i believe. >> car salesman tonkin is one for congress, but how much do we know about tom ganley quite winnow ganley was sanctioned for advertisement is used correctly scop ensued repeatedly for illegal employment practices. cantley also sent a pledge to support the republican agenda 100% in washington. what will that mean for ohio? one vote against unemployment benefits for workers who lost their jobs. one more vote to protect tax breaks for companies who ship jobs overseas. one more vote to allow insurance companies to deny coverage to children with preexisting conditions and one more vote to allow wall street banks to continue taking advantage of ordinary americans. tom ganley will be one more republican votes against ohio's middle-class families.

tom ganley is wrong for ohio. seiu.org not authorized any candidate or candidate committee. >> all right, tom ganley ran unsuccessfully against shelley berkley in ohio seven. again, try to pick out races that were either a big highlighted race on a national stage with senator reid. tim burns ran in virginia 12. john burks old seat. >> of timber thinks it's washington, who will work for? he's a tax loophole to make his company do for attacks on foreign earnings and while burns said he would never ship jobs overseas, now we find out he took tens of thousands in campaign contributions from those who think u.s. jobs

overseas. and support free trade deals in mexico and special trade status for china. temperance, good for corporations and special interests, that for us. seiu cope is responsible for this advertising. >> and finally, the big senate race in california, barbara boxer under harleston arena. not this was different in the sense that it was -- does not have seiu as a tagline. like many organizations, when elections have been wee while lost in the building with a site that actually put the candidates and text for members and then we have a site that actually does what we call the independent expenditure. those two sites do not talk, have no knowledge of what goes on. i am actually with the coordinated site, so i actually did not see this out until it actually ran. i know the details of dissent in

terms of where my how big it was until this actually disclosed to the general public. ♪ carlie c. arena laid off 33,000 employees, ship 9300 of our jobs overseas, while you walked away with $45 million in golden parachutes. carly fiorina, it's time to face the music. ♪ >> site you saw a different kind of -- some kind of start hitting contract as well as something more lighthearted. they said we come -- people have different things. with a red site about blue site. as the blue site at bad work with coalition partners, pull

them together. again, elise talked about the enormous amount of resources that were on the other side. forcing a lot of organizations to pull the resource together. and so, we did not spend as much money as you saw from corporate interests and individuals. we still just don't even know. so each of those ads was different in the way. they showed a contrast between the two candidates on issues that were important to attend middle-class, two women, it dbase orders come in to independent and swing voters, whether talking about choice and the angle at, talking about temperance that, talking about, you know, voting and supporting jobs overseas, pointing out she was a corporate ceo, putting that connection within the voter's mind. in the ganley and again, talking about shipping jobs overseas,

you know, talking about some unsavory employment practices of him as an employer. again, ohio being a tad state facing tough economic times. but as well, talk about wholeheartedly at the republican agenda, unemployment sharon is kind of. talking about giving blank checks to insurance companies. and again, and shipping jobs overseas and letting corporate interest kind of run things. and in the carly fiorina ad, it laid out the issue of the mass layoffs that she had hair of 33,000 that's our company engaged in. 9300 shipped overseas. again, she worked with $45 million golden parachute. again, showing that, you know, the average joe in america are not good or getting the shaft,

while those at the very top work and still living high life. so what are the results? of course, you kind of know the results. but again, i'm going to show from that perspective, a house in the senate are very important. but equally important to union particularly and to individuals or governors. and so, we targeted -- again, want to focus solely targeted at. that's where we spent money, we endorse, we engage her members. they walked out and volunteered, made phone calls. in those races we had about 19 races that we endorsed. we won 11 of his 19 races i believe. you see the purple state of their. we all have forgotten our geography. that's the state of wyoming. it was perfect because it was a republican governor we actually endorsed bair.

so let that be said that unions do not endorse republicans who support republicans. and in fact, i mentioned earlier that we had members who run for political office. we actually a site to members who ran for state office in new hampshire, both republicans and both a father and son team. for that kind of wraps at my perspective from the state level. we saw some major ones in california and new york and illinois, but some tough losses in michigan and pennsylvania and ohio. very, very close races in ohio and florida as well. again, folks remember we spent money, where we endorsed, where we focus our attention. i have to say before i came to seiu, i worked many years in the gun-control movement and the nra used to cut off the scorecards and an 85%, oftentimes they'll

endorse them and races on the house side that were noncompetitive and we endorse or influence, but we actually do very, very small level is where we spent the money in it in of either paid media are paid mail. so again, you see some big wins. we saw california for the add. new york is purple lifecare because we actually had two seats open. both senator gillibrand and senator schumer were up. so we had some, you know, some big ones out there. colorado is a big win. again, with some tough losses in a sense. illinois was a tough loss. wisconsin was a top five. let go when a two-term senator for someone who sat on the campaign trail that he didn't know enough about some of the

issues to speak about them. so sometimes so much for experience. it was a very volatile electorate. were talking about a little bit more here. briefly in the house, i didn't want to go to "the new york times" or "the wall street journal" or the "washington post" who have a big media design team and put their little craft together. but on the house side, where we saw the biggest volatility, we went about 38% of the races you're engaged in. fifty if or governors, 50% for state. again, taking the whole state and on the district level, where we know districts had been cut sometimes to protect incumbents, sometimes to create a swing district. we saw claudius, races and swing districts in those districts that kind of trend republicans, trent democratic case to go to a

national trend. a lot of democrats picked up in 2006 and 2008 were lost. a lot of seats were held for a long period of time, long-term incumbents were defeated or decided to retire the rope and three, which side. but what worked for us is again direct candidate engagement. more people participate in these issues. but we do for the most part, particularly in a national level, you've got what we ask is a candidate walking in the shoes, and in the life of one of our members so they can feel what it's like to be home care worker come a janitor, to be a service worker, to be a nurse. seiu is more engaged. more people volunteered. more members were engaged in cope. but there's a good engagement as surgeon base voters, african-americans are critical in illinois, particular governor races.

potatoes are critical in california and nevada and senator reid's race. and they continue to move any race. i just want to click on again one issue that may be an ad for some of the work, but i'll talk about the message with a messenger lets say. >> my daughter has special needs. she faces a lot of health problems, so i worry about health insurance. that's why i'm so upset that senator blanche lincoln voted to allow them to deny people of existing conditions. i guess blanche lincoln decided to big insurance companies that they could afford being campaign contributions. we need a senator that's going to truly stand up for what the working people need. >> transfer cope is responsible for the content of this advertising. >> i shall decide because that is actually brought in doing thunder primary race, with bill

halter. you know, in retrospect, i don't think -- you talk about a race that we should have gone into, but it was the race that i think we were the wrong messenger. a great message, but the wrong messenger. we don't have the members and to some degree we were the wrong messengers because it allowed lincoln to damage, but also allowed her to say that corporate interests are coming into -- specials were coming into arkansas and trying to something we want to represent. we respond to represent what our members actually want to do. so a quick analysis. retention of the senate control. with key governors races, some key ballot initiatives that really affect how state

governors are funded, how elections are run, how many things happen in the state level because the gop gained 64 seats. we lost a lot of state legislators. and the governor on the senate side. i think we lost a message around the economy. i think from our perspective, some of the reasons why i'm in claimant security, no clear national jobs program. it's a failure to take action. i think in the correction the middle-class tax cuts are having right now to failure to connect with the general public on jobs. corporate contributions are through the roof because of the united decision. we can see continuation of that. we saw intense attacks on our public union members out there. the new speaker of the house is very much anti-public against unions. redistricting battles can be tough because the governor races and chamber races be amongst.

on the governor side, you know, lawson stays that were important to obama three-legged and from pennsylvania's michigan, ohio, wisconsin. it's much easier when the governors of the party to work for a party apparatus. and then some disturbing trend in some of the exit polling. the one thing you want to point out is the very end, although you see union house is still strongly supporting democrats as they have before coming union house is really about 17% of the electorate. in the past they've been about 22% electorate. we saw a decrease in terms of union participation, but also what is happening with the labor movement and something we'll address. and finally, i want to look towards 2012. i just want to say two things. one, it's sometimes easy to be right-wing. you know, people to come and escape problems. my issues differ from your

issue. no kind of collective body. america was founded based on freedoms. you know, leave me alone. its government get out of my life. and so, i see two dozen 12 looking forward to a lib dems are going to be doing. i think you're going to see redefining, reasserting. i think you'll see it reasserting the democratic core principles readers who missed on the battle of the tax cut. and you know, kind of the opportunity and equality, not sort of a mythic past the gc many of the conservative side pushing in terms of the pass of the green path of america were not going back to. but what i see on the democratic side is i think you're winning the battle document exit poll. song about ethnic and generational politics. again, this country is turning brown or it's going to continue to turn browner. those constituencies are supporting progressive policies. again, you're seeing the young

turning out to support progressive politicians. when you talk about some of developing a retain come you didn't see that continue on to their lives. so this was a tough election and we need to we were going to see it again from a perspective of our union, it's time to get back to work. we serve core values about progressivism is about an family and equality. so, thanks. >> thank you very much, khalid. i'm going to return back to my original format of pulled the question until after the session and i would like to introduce pawlowski from the california federation. and i am going to hope with his media. >> where were you when we needed

you? >> i'm going to talk to you and so i appreciate the invite and especially want to thank the annenberg public policy center and fact check for doing this and also inviting me to participate in it. i'd like to say from the beginning that even though unions in california are independent expenditure operations probably spend $30 million. imports and i say that we believe that big money is a bad thing for american politics and that in particular citizens united is a travesty that it encourages encourages more of that. now we see more shadowy organizations with an unlimited amount of honey and often with anonymous contributions, really

been destructive to the future of our democracy. and if there should be allowed, there could be a lot i would say he should be our politics must be grassroots politics and public expenditures. given not, we had a stay competitive and how we are engaged for this year. we have several challenges that we face unions, as we face elections in california. not the least of which is the fact that we were dealing with meg whitman, who had bragged that she was going to spend $150 million of her own money and the way she ended up spending $170 million or of course as ken said earlier that any candidate has ever spent on a statewide race in the history of america. as opposed to jerry brown, would you walk into his office's

campaign headquarters, you would find a sparse, small almost abandoned warehouse, the center of which was a picnic table with wooden benches, where they had their meetings. so is really quite a dramatic difference when you compare the well-funded army of campaign consultants for meg whitman as opposed to the way jerry brown has more people in this campaign headquarters. so, our priority in our campaign were always his first our members. and how do we engage our members and grassroots politics? we have 2.1 million members. as a result, our members graded right it worked than two to one in the governor's race here but we had to do with the enormous analysis and resource is. so we had to do much more this year than engage our members and get them out though. we put together a blueprint that

we shared with all of our unions in california because we had to have some way to represent the different independent expenditure and member communications programs that we were engaged in. so to show that many dimensions of our campaigns, we have this blueprint, which showed the various sub campaigns that we were doing. the first of course as i mentioned was the member communications program. the second is the independent expenditure operations are unification anchor unified and coordinated way. the third is something i'll talk about a minute and that is because a million more voters. and finally, our earned media efforts. but let me take you back to an important piece of this campaign in terms of timing and that was back in the spring. to understand the challenges we face, we needed to let back at

the previous gubernatorial election in 2006. and there we had a similar -- we had a number of similarities. and the first was that we had a well-funded campaign by arnold schwarzenegger against angeli deese. selegiline use did not have the resource to be with them arnold schwarzenegger. but the other thing was that in early spring of 2006, arnold schwarzenegger let it fill angeli deese by 40 points. an early spring of 2010 culminate with and lead chariot drawn by four points. so there were similarities in both of those cases that were important to us. as soon as -- before the final vote was counted in the primary 2006, arnold schwarzenegger engaged in a project advertising that not phil angelides off of his feet. phil angelides could not counter those that until labor day because he did have the money.

but by labor day, the election was done and decided then there was no way that phil angelides could recover. so, we were determined that we were not going to allow the same thing to happen again. and that was important for us that we maintain during the summertime a competitive advantage that our candidate remain competitive with meg whitman, so that he would not be knocked out of his seat and therefore be unable to recover. and the fact is that during the summer, meg whitman had 112 days of advertising without any response from the brown campaign, conserving its resources until after labor day. so the key brown competitive during that critical time of the summer, labor stepped up in a number of ways. the biggest engagement we

involved in was what we called california working families for jerry brown, who is an independent expenditure campaigns, which launched a number of ads hitting meg whitman where we knew she was vulnerable. those ads were paid for primarily by -- actually pay many of our unions, but especially by seiu, the building trades unions and the state firefighters. we have several unions who are also supporting similar independent expenditure campaigns, including the nurses union and a series of radio ads and asked me which related tv advertisement. that really it's spent about $9 million. the asked me campaign on tv spent about $2 million. they had a hundred million dollars during the summer and advertising to have meg whitman.

i want to show you one of those sad and if you can hunger with this, we're going to show you and not the california working families put forward, which was called crumble. crumble. maybe we can start it again and pick up the sound. >> over six years coming huge losses from failed -- for 28 years, she didn't bother to go. no government experience at all. but then says ebay qualifies her to be governor. what is the record as ceo? overhead standing up 2000%. fees hiked six times in six years. huge losses from failed vergers and after she resigned, the new ceo cope with men's spending and lowered fees.

california is in crisis under meg whitman, it could crumble. >> so in addition to the paid media, they said, it's very important for us to engage in grassroots candidate tbd. there are a couple of things having simultaneous and one was a programmer put together that was called wall street written. and that was -- we actually have been negotiations with "the wall street journal" because apparently our program -- our ad programs on the internet looked an awful lot like a "wall street journal." the mastermind behind the two-day affair to litigation director steve smith. and so, we engage in some earned media and the online media that supplement and the paid media activity. and also, there was a brilliant program put together by the california nurses association called queen made. and though the street theater kind of thing for a woman made

to look like meg whitman, but more like a queen followed her everywhere. it was the.whitman campaign committee smoker up until the truth about what she really was and is a really brilliant program going on. and that can grassroots stuff is what we try to do the most of. the result of all these combined efforts is pretty profound. and over the summer, photos and to question meg whitman. her negative roles and importantly, the more money she spent, the more her negatives at that point begin to go up. in spite of the fact that over those 114 days she was engaged in a nonstop saturation bombing of radio and tv ads without any response from the brown campaign. that's why we think it was so crucial for us to keep them competitive during the summertime. as we headed into labor day, the race is a dead heat. in the fall, we were also

dealing with the likelihood that they dampened turnout by democrats. and so, we had to calculate how to engage in making sure not that we advanced persuasion, but also how we make sure that we also turn voters out. this is where the next i.e. and what i think it's probably ultimately our most important i.e. came to play. this is the million more voters program. for years earlier we had to put together some micro-targeting efforts with people like larry christiano and can stress not, who hope to find -- was originally intended to find a million voters in the excerpt and areas of the state. that is, the traditional strength of our labor movement of courses in the major cities on the coast. but there is a population growing of voters in the inland areas of the state, the more

conservative areas of the state, the saint areas the state. so we engaged in this process of micro-targeting to begin to find people who work labor simply, agreed with us on our issues, but were not union members in the more conservative areas of the state. and unlike the traditional independent expenditure operations, we again wanted to think of ways that we would reach out to voters on a very personal basis. i do this, by the way, they said to a couple folks back home, the micro-targeting that we engage in to create many more voters were started as a million voters, became a million five, 2 million is now 2,000,008 and growing. it's a very significant population portion of california. it's a good versus evil of micro-targeting. meg whitman's micro-targeting was going into committing afterwardstogether and bring the

meal pieces she sent to them. you would find mail pieces of people next door to each other, competing with the mail piece that she sent to another neighbor. contradicting herself. that's the evil portion i think of micro-targeting. for us, our purpose was to engage people as assured values to give them a voice, let them know they're not alone and i think that the good part of micro-targeting. the million more voters impact was engaged on that. and we did extensive field and i might targeting between voters as well. for example, the california school employees association had a program called paws for education improvements. they trained 8000 liters to recruit 10,000 activists, just within the 200,000 member union, to go knock on doors in their neighborhoods, to begin to talk

to people. so they found the micro-targeting technology that we put together. and so, we have this really an attempt to move this back down to the grassroots, the personal contacts of engaging people together to give them a voice and commonly shared issues. this is the exciting part of what we think about in terms of independent expenditure operations, not tv ads. although, we had to engage in us to stay competitive as well. another example of how we used the micro-targeting of million more voters. this is what the asian-american -- asian pacific api community. we found that there was unusually high percentage of undecided voters among the api community and they were getting little information on the governor's race. it would targeting truncation of 200,000 api community folks, where we found them for

micro-targeting universe. we then communicate with them in four languages mandarin, cantonese, korean and pekingese. we found by talking to those people around these issues when they voted for years earlier, there is a 25-point margin in favor of arnold schwarzenegger by the apa community. as a result of our two indications with these folks, it completely turned around from a 25-point advantage to republicans to a 17-point advantage for jerry brown. he was the most renick turnaround we have seen in any community in terms of the election of the governor's election in california this year. so we think the republicans really took the api community for granted this time and we actually moved the program. the latino project was also very germanic. and seiu was the primary theater in california, the latino

project. they're a couple others in los angeles and california but at the federation does well. but as a result of that, the percentage of voters in the governor's race among latinos rose from 12% to 22%. in other words, 22% of all voters in california this time were latino voters and that is a growing thing. and so, does it for sure crucial i.e. when they the revelations about whitman's housekeeper, nikki diez and how that affected latino voters and seiu's program took full advantage of that in terms of indicating to those voters. so then we go to geo tv. and the final several weeks of his that brown was in a pretty

good position. he's a few points up, but we've got a. using million more voters technology again to reach out to do a blitz of voters through media, through field and through mail. we found that among those coming to million voters via targeted 3 million more voters and technology, about 750,000 donated persuasion and about 1.55 million of them needed just to get out to go. so we figure out how to communicate most of those votes. and again, we ended up reaching out to people, not just by mail, not just ip gods, but by the community of people and volunteers we have developed over the six-month period. and we probably not on the doors of voters in 1500 precincts plus 800 precincts, so 2200 precincts out of some 30,000 precincts in

california. so significant number of precincts we had appeared beyond what our normal membership would do in the grassroots political action of our union members but of course we do precinct operations as well. so, the results of all of those was the historic sweep of statewide candidates for the first time ever in california's history from a statewide constitutional officers. in a number marginal and rational districts, there were probably four or five marginal congressional districts that we protected, that we saw major money coming from conservatives, especially in the fresno area. we moved resources around and saw that happening. a million more voters was we did 10 days out among a statewide candidates, just to see how they were positioned. are candidates for attorney general, tom paris was behind. and so, we moved an extra million dollars over two in i.e.

in the los angeles basin on tv ads for pamela harris. as a result she went by the thing that took us two weeks to figure out the final vote count that she'd want. but the million more voters technology applied for that base also come amid the difference in the election in a very clear way. so we probably, they said said, labor spent $30 million on independent expenditure programs. for serbia to do that. we hope someday what let's do that. we think we need public financing. but for a service to the we have done. we see that the way for the future for us and that is union members gently and plus can latino voters, to me and plus, a million more voters to million plus. african-american voters about 900,000. asian-american at 800,000. put that together they comprise the most of the 5% of all voters in california in the last election.

and so we're onto something in terms of the communities for interests were playing together and type needs to pull them together in a such a speed media tv. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. and we are a little bit behind schedule, so i'm going to go right to questions from the floor if anybody has a question. >> thanks. ken vogel, "politico." i wanted to follow up with a lease for move on. you guys obviously have your route in large anonymous contributions. i understand that now your part and are intended to make this a sort of big issue. i am wondering though, given president obama's really aggressive statement and policy preferences on this issue if there's any risk that democrats come if they do in fact engage in this kind of politically committee, whether it be anonymous or not is kind of big

money, outside group advertising in 2012, if there's a risk of them sort of looking hypocritical. i guess as a preface to laugh too, how much of an effect do you think president obama's data policy preference is on this pad? >> so two parts to that question. first of all, move on broussard of the pack. we were in 1988 by 200 those individuals who give small donors. we did open a fee for those called the voter fund and to purchase 2004 elections. and i'm only going into this because we were at eight transfix. every time your territories, he gained a one-time donation of

2003 and was never taken money from him again. never used the c-4 for electoral purposes beyond the 2004 election. so every election repurchase has been a part driven. we could experiment a large donation. we figured out it actually did work for a comment that our strength came from our members direct ownership over campaign. that was part model of organizing. that is what provided strength, not only during election, but in the legislative site tracks to make a difference in policies the country. for that is one. the second question is a figure of two more at ms, but i'm thinking about the last one which is about upon this data policy had a lot of impact in 2008, a lot. some in 2010. i can't quantify it, but i think to the extent and impact of this because democrats and certainly move on and i heard art say

this. we believe in the principle that democracy should not be for sale at the highest bidder. so when obama had the platform and said let's do this the right way, let's give every american the chance to have an equal voice in who governs them. we wind up right behind him. you think that is the best way to govern our country. now, unilateral disarmament that this time we left the house. well, you can't actually govern your country if you're going to not have the representation in there. so there is this dynamic tension. i think that was part of your backlashcometh us pray for. >> like the potential -- >> absolutely. you know, people like to believe the left is a lot more ideological than it is. the caller members pragmatic progressive. i think the american people are sophisticated enough to recognize that we've got a fight on a couple different fronts.

i mean, it's no good to actually look the principle that every american child an equal voice of you are not going to ever have any chance of implementing a touring of the three branches of government. so you know, that's like i heard this man saying i think we going to see a lot of things thrown at the low. i think to the extent that we are supporting candidates whose stated preference is to actually level the playing field for every voter to have a say will make strides. but yeah, it's an ongoing struggle and on a sequential one. >> would move on consider -- and i don't know, i think he still actually have the 501 although not active as was the 527, would move on consider shifting its activity to those groups which could be funded by a large contributor if there was the appetite among donors? >> we no longer of a 527. we do have a c-4. i don't think we will consider shifting our life toros work

there. there's other stuff we've done to their corporate advocacy and stuff like that. i don't think warships are electoral vote. you know, it's both a principle and pragmatic take you to work best when her members actually have ownership of our work. >> and khalid would like to add to train a's response. >> as a longtime move on member was given small duchenne for many years, this is about an issue of giving. the about-face talked about on the left, to continue this political discourse or until we can get money out of the election, i think we have to understand that many will serve a purpose in election ticketing way some of other issues for candidates. there were just want a level playing field. i think what you're seeing -- what you saw in 2010 is a

representation of corporate interests have decided as part of their business motto is to give to conservatives and create conservative institutions in vehicles with a can funnel money in. it's good for business to elect conservatives. you see this issue right now on the tax debate going on break now. chronic tax credits to the wealthy come expansion of the estate tax as opposed to continuing unemployment insurance and 82 more needy -- needy families. so i do think you'll see over the next two years because the elections are kind of retrospect. what worked last time and what can i do the next time to improve upon what the next new thing in spirit that you think you will see a tension and debate about interest in terms of more progressive side going into institutions. for one thing, i think it goes

both on a corporate level and both of large individual donors has to be of the mind that because i'm giving for immoral cause or he could do. and i'm giving because there is a voice that is representative of their and i need in my people like me need to be engaged in that discourse. and part of the way to be a geisha discourses on institutions that could help amplify voices at move on and members of the other labor organizations. >> other questions? >> yeah, this is jill lawrence and this is for kelley. how much did seiu spend in 2010 and do you think you're going to be able to keep up with the corporate level of contributions in 2012? and my other question is, is it important to you that people realize that these contributions are voluntary for union members? right now it seems like you're losing that irritates.

>> so 2010, we are still trying to kind of gather that. kind of two things. we both do things on the national level and then we have states. with the locals in states who actually engage in political discourse, both on the state level. there were so giving some of that information back, but we spend upwards of over $40 million in the selection. nowhere can close even, you know, abrogated all of the labor community did not compare to what was falling into some of these newly formed, you know, see three/c-4 communications. in looking up, i think as i said some of the things were to give our members more engaged. part of that engagement is again voluntarily raising funds against her members to speak at

electoral discourse. we saw a dramatic increase in this election cycle. we have a strong political program in a number of programs talking to members of why it's important to be engaged in elections in both from your feet and your voice, but also with your pocketbook. and it's extremely important for us to get the message out there that these are voluntary contributions. in fact, if you look back in october, there was a series of letters to the editor from our former national political director that actually spoke to this issue, try to clear distortions made on the right about union contributions about money we spend. we spend money. money make it very clear. we spend money occasioning two

different conversations. conversations with our members internally in speaking to the general public. the money we used speaking to the general public is money better members voluntarily give every year. in fact in fact in the state lake michigan, we actually have to go back to his members every single year and ask him again to sign off that we could use the money to speak to the general public. but i feel good about it as you go forward, i took at about where are you guys positioned in terms of resources? and think it will fight again as i talk about is what this congress, current republican congress that the republicans are very antiunion sentiment and you will see republicans going after making public employees

the bogeyman and the reasons why we have the fast and coming up the that they want to get tax cuts to a millionaire and not be a janitor making 525 an hour and trying to feed his family. >> hi, john worked on a daily color. two things, khalid, if you could expand on ken's question and whether it's hypocritical for the last to allow more money to come and perhaps anonymously or not. and then, when you just said that business is giving conservatives because it's good for business, is that about an? president obama himself has said the private sector is the main engine for job growth. >> know, give me think it's a business model. what small businesses out there is for them a decision. you know, the money they spend, their shareholders or the employees have no say in how they spend the money.

so it was interesting how the right likes to point that, try to indicate that union members who for the most part you see more than two to one support progressives and progressive policies and seem to not have an issue with how the units of the money. of course you're going to have outliers up there, but again for americanization, for an individual to get money from our union, particularly a conventional governor or senate, it has to be endorsed it has to be endorsed by the local unit within that state. he got five local unions that of a process for endorsing. that's how we go out and decide who we can support. in terms and back to ken's question, again, this is a debate that's going on. you know, we can take the moral high ground and turn the other cheek. it's the only time that cheek is going to get slapped.

and you can't -- the battle of issues and ideas come you can't go into it with your arms tied behind your back. it is a question that the rest is going to have because the labor movement cannot continue to bankroll the entire progressive side of political discourse. it's very difficult to an sec, what trends are happening in terms of the percentage of union household trinket income is going to be increasingly harder to do. >> we have time for one final question this session. >> i'm playing the prerogative -- [inaudible] i have to know, two of the as we saw here presented by our panelists were asked that we chart out being false or misleading. the move on, art scene corporations with finance the ads attacking democrats,

congress says that's not true. there's no evidence did use money to finance those ads. they say they don't. do plenty of money from domestic corporations, which now as they go to finance that sort of thing. and the service employees accuse blanche lincoln of voting against requiring insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions. we thought it has she cast a key vote in favor of that. i'm going to go to a question to one of our subscribers and i'll frees you to turn on some of the rather strong language. does it bother you are conscious that all or do you believe that the end justifies the means and his win, win, win the only end? >> we stand by that ad. and as did every television

station without the proper mode of the given what we were spending. to the specific, the chamber of commerce is taking donations into a general fund and paying for ads out of the general fund. money is fungible and the greater point that was being made that we thought resonated actually across the rates across the national discourse was that when you've got multinational corporations who interest actually transcend that of the american voter, who have far more money then the american voter, playing in these races, if it here to point that out so that the voter can discern for his or herself whether that candidate being backed will hold their interests at heart? absolutely. not only does my conscious not bother me, i feral a moral imperative to point out on behalf of our members because a

more informed like it, where every voter has an equal voice is a stronger democracy. and at the end of the day, that's what we're about. >> thanks, just in the blanche lincoln not, i think we can go back and look at a procedural vote in what we use for characterization description of her vote, but she did make those that actually were wrong on that issue as we pointed out. we did several ads, pointing out where we thought blanche lincoln was out of step with progressives and constituents. at least all democrats are late. if you look at seiu's book, when we make our final seiu, you can see where we got our money from, we center money. we don't see in cases of the chamber of commerce over there getting their money from, how the fungibility of the money internally is being used in going back to blanche lincoln.

i'm glad you brought it back because in a "politico" is turn other organizations. i want to make it extremely clear that seiu does not believe it was wrong. it was right to go into that primary election with blanche lincoln and bill halter. i want to make clear that we felt like it was possibly the wrong messenger. the message was right. she was, you know, her years in the senate, she was trending and continuing not supporting issues on wall street or accountability, whether on health care insurance companies. and as we said, all democrats -- all progressives come all democrats are delayed. as we go forward, organization will continue to support those progressives and those candidates to support pro-worker issues and families and not supported those ones who don't. >> okay, thank you. please join in thanking this panel. we are going to take a short 10

minute break to set up for the republican and conservative panel, who i'm sure will have a response to some of the things that were said earlier. so we will be back around 11:00. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> thank you. we are now resuming our

conference, cash attacked 2010 with a republican conservative panel. we'll be agreeing first from the carl forti, director for american crossroads with grassroots gps and affiliate organization and is reported according to figures, nearly $39 million about five spending in the 2010 elections, making it the largest outside spinning group by that measure. ..

obviously our goal is to help candidates meet federal office. we think we did a successful job of that this cycle. our sister group is a vital 1c4 it is the tension how many times earlier today does not disclose donors and the primary mission is more conservative issues and engage in the issue debate. secondarily, thanks to citizens united we are able to conduct efficacy in certain campaigns around the country. we raise and spend over $70 million. we had a