goal is to double the trade between turkey and iran. how do you assess these indian goals in terms of isolation overran in the context he described earlier? >> well, we've seen announcements primarily from the iranian side of the results of this visit.legation.

this id a half hours. >> may i have your attention? thank you and good evening. by name is michael powers. i'm a marketing and customer relations manager for the northeast air as the united states postal service. thank you very much. great input already. i appreciate that. i will be serving as tonight's moderator for the town -- for the community meeting for anp process. a couple housekeeping issues if i made before we begin. in the unlikely event that we need to vacate this space, the emergency exit is to my left, to my right, in front, two doors in

the back. mentzer mideastern are located at the far end of the hall. for those of you who currently have a cell phone or an electronic device, a kindly ask you turn it to me at. and for any hearing-impaired people here tonight, we have signed service is available, seats available reserved as well to my last. let me begin by thanking the american legion post 26 and specifically commanded deanne reid for allowing us to be here tonight to user space. commander, where are you, please? thank you, commander. [applause] i would like to introduce a number of folks with us tonight. i would say to first introduce senator that he is a test.

[applause] senator sanders. [applause] congressman welch. [applause] governor shumlin. [applause] i'd also like to introduce a representative from senator shaheen, bethany urich. [applause] with us also are the representative from congressman bowser's office, chris collins. [applause] also representing the u.s. senator from new hampshire, mica skylight. [applause]

also with us, jim condos for and secretary of state. [applause] new commissioner from department of labor. [applause] also, vincent losey, vermont state senator. also with us are a number of folks in the united states postal service. district manager, and a bass essler. delete plant manager for the northern new england district, michael breed. [applause] be acting plant manager for the white river junction, mary woodward, also known as woody. [applause] and from our postal unions,

jonker ziskin a regional coordinator for the northeast region of the american postal leaders union. [applause] wayne martin, local president at local 520 for the av debut. [applause] frank rogerio on agents for the american postal workers union. [applause] representing the national association of postal supervisors in vice president, i do mouse. from vermont state president of the national association of postal supervisors, rayfield. [applause] and randy sharon, the burlington national association of postal supervisors. [applause]

from our mail handlers union, local 301, new england president of the mail handlers union, tim dwyer. [cheers and applause] and the branch president of the white river junction, bill kramer. and i'd also like to recognize a number of current postal employees that are here in the audience tonight as well as and i would ask for a lot of applause for every tire postal employees. [applause] as information come with two cameras located >> in the back of the room and i would like to invite c-span being here tonight and they will be filming throughout the night. i very much appreciate you to take your time to come to white river junction tonight.

into my rate, the two women will be recording all that is said tonight and making it as a matter of the record. just briefly, why are we are here, the purpose is to get input from postal service is looking for input relative to a current study that is being conducted with the white river junction plant processing facility. the reason that this study is being conduct did this the postal service fans ourselves in a financial difficult situation. and that is no new news to anybody. as information since the year 2006, our urbanization has seen a loss of 43 billion pieces of mail per year. because of that, it is requiring us to take actions to ensure the greater efficiencies are the efficiencies of the postal service on a national basis

maintained. we find ourselves in a situation it will have a presentation by deb that will clearly articulate the enormous challenges we us americanization face. we thank you for being here tonight. we look forward to the input. any comments or questions you may have, understand, no decision has been made relative to the white river junction plant as we speak today. this is a process again that we have instituted on a national basis. this is a segment that is very important to us. what you have to say is that they will take forward and consider as we begin to create the postal service said the future. so again, welcome. with that, i would like to introduce to everybody the district manager of the northern new england district. the northern new england district covers the state, deb

essler covers new hampshire vermont and maine. [applause] >> okay. we will speak real loud and i invite -- i encourage others that will be speaking tonight are the problem with the room as the speaker system and halfway through the room. so what we have done is put a temporary speaker here and we'll try to extend as far as we can. but we will definitely speak out. these continue to let us know if it's difficult to hear in the back. all right? thank you. >> thank you very much, mike. welcome, everyone. this is a very important part of the process. as mike pointed out, it is preliminary information we will share with you in terms of the area the processing study. one of two out of 52 studies currently going on across the united states. as you know, the postal service has recently announced it

intends to see some significant changes. in the mail processing network among other things. i've given you some background tonight on these changes and why we believe they are necessary. i will associate the proposed changes for mail processing operations located at white river junction, vermont. i have a lot to cover tonight and as many questions and hopefully a lot will be answered as we go through the presentation. i'm going to have to sit or questions, comments and concerns until we're finished with their presentation tonight. we are here tonight to hear from the community and we hope you focus your questions and comments and concerns on service and cost and customer issues. potential employee impacts are summarized in the presentation as well in labor issues are handled internally within the postal service with the appropriate personnel. let's begin tonight with just a short video that will help illustrate the process mail

today. ♪ first-class mail is declining at a rapid pace because people are mailing last, with less mail to process and deliver, postal service has to make smart business decisions that are critical to preserving his future. the postal service has undertaken area mail processing. these studies are one part of the overall strategy to get the postal service on the path to profitability, strengthen its financial future for those customers and employees. right now, the postal service has saved vast network of mail processing facilities here at the facilities were established many years ago to process increasing mail volumes. as a nation group, so did the postal service. but now it's so many web-based

communications available, people and businesses are moving away from the postal service for sending those, statement and other documents that were once held exclusively through first-class mail. the simple fact is that the postal service must adjust its mail processing network to evolve as our nation's mailing habits change. most mail processing occurs during overnight hours, with the majority of the processing occurring between midnight and 6:00 a.m. during the day, however, there is little processing that actually occurs. most people our mail and accepted meanings. for a significant part of the day, the plant is largely idle. here's the problem. but there's a lot of capacity to process an ever dwindling volume of mail, how can the current system of mail processing be changed with little or no impact to the customer? the answer has to do is something called mail service

standards, what most customers may not realize is first-class mail currently receives overnight service in metropolitan areas. because of this standard, the nationwide processing operations has been set up to handle this need. the sobering reality is that first-class mail volumes will not return to the levels in the past and changing service standards to match reality is one way of keeping the postal service bible. viable. ..

we just have to get our financial house in order right now. >> have these changes would bring huge changes but also lay the foundation for the financially stable service will but we continue to serve our customers for many years to come

were 64. before i go forward with the presentation i just want to make a couple of comments. i think it's really important that we all understand while there are 252 sightings going on currently across the united states there were no facilities selected based on any criteria that was specific to performance. the junction performance is outstanding the employees are outstanding this was a network realignment of the social service. [applause] and it's based on looking at the network changes we are going through right now and where we

want to be between now and 2020 to really be successful and support a very large industry as well so in no way is this an indication that our employees again are not doing an outstanding job because they are. the postal service is responding to a changing marketplace. the reality is the value of the mali process annually has declined more than 43 billion pieces in the past five years and we know it will continue to decline. as a result the mail processing network is not much larger than we can afford. looking ahead the declining volumes dictate that we must make radical changes to the mail processing network and so this evening we will provide you information around two very important topics. first that we intend to rely on the mail processing network in the next two years based on the to to treat a standard for local

delivery of first-class mail and a second the initial results of the area processing site of preliminary information on the reduction from last. to bolster the case for change let me start with this graph. it shows the trends in the production through 2020 it shows our first-class product which includes both traditional cards and letters that you put a postage stamp on and the standard mail also known as advertising mail. 2006 was the high water mark. since then first-class mail has declined 20% deutsch electronics and version and the economic slowdown. the sobering reality is first-class mail will not returned to the previous levels. more and more people are continuing to use electronic means to communicate to pay their bills.

experts predict the continued decline in the volume of the first-class mail which is the product that drives the network requirements and pays our bills and the postal service contributes the most to the bottom line. during part of the businesses advertising mail which we expect to show some growth in the out years but even significant growth and continued growth of that we are experiencing in the volume is not enough to make out for the ongoing decline in the first-class mail this change in the makeup of the male for first cost of advertising mail therefore has significant institutions for the postal service infrastructure for two major reasons. one is the volume of declining with less revenue to cover the cost of the infrastructure and number two we also have excess capacity through the network. simply put to process less kneal

we need to look at your facilities. i'd like to mention the word capacity a few times tonight. it relates to the devotee to process mail and packages. our mail processing network footprint involved for many years in response to the volume fluctuation for the improvement technology between 1970 and 2006 our focus was on expanding to handle on the then current volume from 1970 to 2006 we increased the used to the greater efficiency. we build a large new facilities to house the advanced processing equipment it was the purpose of growth and a significant capital investment to the postal service. we build facilities with the confidence at that time the the population and the economy make rules that the volumes will also

increase. since 2006 the confidence in the perpetual volume growth has evaporated. prior to 2006 our operational goal was to stay ahead of the growth curve to ensure that we had the capacity to support the larger volumes. now our operational goal in this cost curve is to ensure that we have just enough capacity to meet the lower volumes. and to operate at a lower cost than our revenue can support in the future. so now we are going from the expanding environment and to a contracting environment. we have to reduce the mail processing infrastructure to get ahead of the declining volume. this activity is at the core of our ability to the profitability. reducing our infrastructure in response to the volume decline is really nothing new.

since 2006 the mail volume dropped 20% and we reduced our network buy nearly 200 mail processing facilities. we did this successfully without any impact on our customers. in fact we delivered record service during this period. these reductions were accomplished without laying off any of our employees. how did we do that? in part through the process involving area mehl processing studies which we are here for to discuss tonight eventually had been using this process for a decade and has served us very well. using the study data and objective criteria we determined whether the business takes for the consolidation. and there are opportunities built into the process opportunities including the input meetings such as the one here tonight. and also a written comment period that extends 15 days beyond tonight. these are times for the committee members and any stakeholders to comment ask

questions and provide concerns to the postal service and many times from these meetings suggestions as well as how we go forward and looking at the right thing to do. we will continue to follow the process with the study data the public input and objective criteria in making our decisions. by 2013 the network makes up fewer than the 200 mail processing facilities which would put at the head of the cost curve for the remainder of the decade. we know this has been a plan with of the operating network that would need to be to meet the needs of the nation the next 30 years. here is what our mail processing footprint looks like today. you can see we have facilities throughout the country, facilities in varying sizes that employee anywhere from 50 to 2,000 employees. what happens in these facilities is relatively simple.

first the mail is brought in almost always accommodation of the mail collected from post offices and drop off directly by business customers. then it is sort of almost all of it during an automated process and either shipped back for local delivery or shipped to another mail processing facility depending on its ultimate destination. to support our overnight service commitment, most of this processing takes place in the middle of the night. in fact our entire network was designed based on a requirement that we maintain the capability to deliver first-class mail on the next business day. this requirement presents us from being able to sort the mail until all the mail that needs to be sorted gets to the delivery order for the last year and a right to the facility. this has enormous implications because it constrains our operating window to process mail in the middle of the night and

enforce us to make a large number of mail processing locations. >> this represents all of the mail processing facilities for possible consolidation. the blue stars and i realize they are hard to see from the audience here, the blue stars represent facilities for which studies are already underway and the rest represent the 252 additional mail processing facilities that are on the list would be released by the postal service on september 15th. as you can see -- >> why don't we just talk about -- new hampshire >> we will be getting to that. appreciate that. >> [inaudible] [applause]

[inaudible] [applause] the study's will have the overall financial impact of closing and consolidation and significant stakeholder input. this is what the mail processing network might look like in the future if after consolidation all of the studies were approved the standard is the stated goal for the service achievement for each class of mail the postal network is built to meet the existing goals. that means that even though the dramatic decline in mail volume is resulted in excess and a network it will reduce the network to address the excess capacity problems we would not be able to consistently achieve the existing service standards. that's why we intend to propose

to rebuild the network based on the two to three days standards for the local delivery of first-class mail. the operational would be tremendous. and even though the change would go relatively unnoticed by the average customer this would allow us to design and much more efficient lower-cost mail processing network to the facility. [inaudible] here we get a sense of what the changes would represent. let me show you how we meet the current overnight first-class mail delivery requirement. the circle represents 24 hours. on the left you see that the overnight first-class mail delivery requirement in the mail processing time into a small window of activity. beginning roughly at midnight and continuing the next four to six hours. i did meet last night and earlier this morning with some of the employees at the junction post office at the plant and

they wanted to be sure that you knew that in white river junction you process more than the four to six hours, significantly more. even with that, we are going to show you a little further along in the presentations there are strong business case is but this represents the national the average of mail processing and it is a little bit longer window in the junction. deutsch the overnight first-class mail service to her to have to maintain its capacity even though it's not especially efficient. given the time and distance associated with getting mail to and from each facility it also means we have to maintain numerous facilities. the proposal operating model would be based on changing to the two to three day first-class service range. this would allow meal to be processed during much longer stand in the 24-hour slide.

we anticipate that this kind of future network would support a two to 31st class standard. what include revised time for dropping of first-class mail or what we call entry time for first-class mail. we would also expect the consolidations would result in an estimated 50% reduction in the mail processing equipment and significant reduction in our physical footprint eliminating the capacity many times when the equipment is not running in our network. but also enabled of us and our customers to optimize transportation. the question about these changes is how does it attract the customer? there are two major areas of change that would attract the commercial customer. first the local footprint. literally where business customers would need to drop off meal. customers can drop me off at

most any accepting facility. however estimating the scum that some currently receive may not be entered where it is processed the team is available to discuss the specific concern to the mailers we did meet to discover an ongoing dialogue with them. shouldn't this be a study that goes forward we would want to problem solve with them on a regular basis to make sure that this is not impacted. we also think our commercial customers would be able to really accommodate the new schedule. many of our largest customers and have told us this is something we need to consider. we know the proposed changes would have a significant impact on the mailing industry and local mailers. we outlined the proposal to both the major industrial groups and successful basis and generally have been pleased with the response. we have a good track record of

working with the industry and global mailers and are committed to making sure the transition would be as smooth as possible, again if this were a sight that were to go forward. list speak for a moment about our employees. the business decisions were not made lightly and these changes would affect many of our employees. we've dedicated and committed work force not only in white river junction but across northern new england and across the united states. postal employees to a phenomenal job and they deserve tremendous credit for achieving record service and efficiency means over the past few years. even in very challenging times. [applause] nearly every employee in the mail processing facility can be helped by these changes. changes even the possibility of

change is very unsettling. change becomes reality we would make every effort to accommodate employees and provide positions where we can. we also worked closely with our unions to reposition the affected employees. over the past 12 years the work force has been reduced by 250,000 positions mostly through attrition which largely involves requirement. we've never had to lay off employees as part of the culture for a responsible employer and that won't change. now that i shared a little bit about the general information on the processing, let's talk a little bit more about this study. again, let me make it clear that we have great employees at the river junction.

this slide shows the extent of the white river junction of the manchester location at approximately 82 miles apart. this gives you a little geographic information here. the next slide shows 91 miles between the white river plant and the burlington vermont plant processing center. if the consolidation of operations at these facilities is approved, there is an expected annual savings of almost $8 million. the business case shows the data that the mail processing work hours savings are estimated to be $3.3 million annually. the mail processing management savings are estimated to be $487,000 the maintenance savings $3.2 million annually and the transportation savings of

490,000. there are other miscellaneous savings you will notice the slide doesn't add up to the bottom line. these are the major categories the we keep you here tonight. in most consolations employees are impacted the often change jobs, hours and over rotation. reassignment will be made in accordance with the agreement that we have with the union in this time to go forward. the study shows that projected net reductions under 51 employees. every event will be made to place employees in a job with a number district. so you understand what that net impact is. it's taking the number of positions in the three plants involved, manchester, new hampshire, white river junction, vermont and burlington vermont which is an ethics junction. and after the study if we were to close white river junction there would be a net increase of

the 51 positions for the three facilities. the proposed consolidation would support a two or freed a service standard for first-class mail. other local customer considerations include retail services currently available at the river junction processing distribution center. those would remain to be a business meal acceptance units that are currently at the white river junction processing facility will also remain. the collection by the time could be adjusted slightly if it went through. in local postmarks continue to be available for first-class mail to take that to retail and delivery times to the residences customers would be unchanged and unaffected so the mail delivery would be the same time each day that it is now. for the commercial mailers who presort the mail continue to receive appropriate postage discounts.

mailers who dropped shift the section also devotee discount can expect that there could be changes if it is approved. we did discuss some of these changes this afternoon with some of our larger mailers and they are giving us some very detailed information on the impact would have so we can start looking should this go forward on how we invest and support each of them. >> can i ask a question? >> if you can wait until when finished would appreciate that. thank you. as i stated earlier this evening it's currently under review at the area headquarters there may be changes to the study made. we will continue to take comments through january 19th so that we can take all of those comments for work to the area in the headquarters office that the at&t proposal can be considered at that time. we take very seriously our obligation for the entire

industry. it's a trillion dollar industry that employs more than 8 million people across the united states. we are soliciting your input to night so that we can make sure we make good business decisions that you heard your comments questions and suggestions are heard and we continue to make the male strong for us, for you and the industry for many years to come. we will leave this up there to remind you that you do have 15 days after tonight and want to be sure that in addition to the information that's been written down here for questions and comments tonight that you also are encouraged to mail in any of those to us as well to read >> [inaudible] before we get into the question and comment section -- >> [inaudible]

>> thank you. before we get into the general question and comment part of the presentation, we have some very distinguished guests i would like to invite up to speak and i'd like to begin with governor shumlin, please. [applause] estimates before. i'm honored to be here and i will be very brief because i want to hear -- i know we want to hear the obligation wants to hear from the hard working employees of the u.s. postal service that do such an extraordinary job delivering in our mail on time in vermont. so my hat goes off to you. thank you for being here tonight. i want to thank so much all of you for being here and our congressional delegation for helping to organize this forum tonight. i feel blessed as your governor to serve in the state that has the best congressional delegation in america, senator

leahy. [applause] they don't get any better than senator leahy. senator sanders and congressman welch our hometown boys a thank you very much. [applause] before i say a few words about the sheer idiocy of shutting down the white river junction processing facility -- [cheering] i want to thank our congressional delegation for the announcement that just came through from washington where they with their extraordinary power rests convince the congress who does almost nothing to send hundreds of millions of dollars back to the state of vermont to help us rebuild from the worst flood in our history.

thank you, bernie, patrick, peter. we are proud of you. [applause] a couple of quick words. i was born and raised in windham county and we understand what closing the white river junction processing facility would mean to vermont. we are a rural state the and we require mail to get to us not only to communicate with our loved ones, but to run our businesses, create jobs and economic opportunities. it is critical for the to wondered 50 hard working people who process the male right here and do a great job of it. it's critical as we slowly crawl out of the worst recession in american history and start building jobs in vermont that we have a postal service that delivers mail when we send it not to the four or five days later that we send.

[applause] i say this to the u.s. postal service you do a great job. it doesn't get a better. in my other life in the private sector i run a small business just south of here called put me student travel. we rely on the white river junction facility to get our product to the market that allows us to employ vermont, and they don't do it any better than here. but we happen to do in that business is sent community projects with high school students all over the world to developing countries and the one thing that helps us is that the u.s. postal service gets mail reliably to people when you need to get their. we dread sending mail to the third world developing countries that we are dealing with because their postal services don't.

this proposal will join that in having a backwater postal service that costs us jobs and economic opportunity. [applause] i will close by saying this. we in rural vermont are an internet service is spotty, cellphone service is at times nonexistent needed the postal service more than anyone else in america, keep it open, keep it strong, keep our hard-working postal employees working and go somewhere else to find pretend savings. what i find extraordinary about this is -- [applause] and i ask this one question. if the studies on the madison

avenue videos intact suggest that there are going to be savings to through employees but are somehow not going to lose any jobs i ask what kind of math you are using. [applause] so i will be standing together with our congressional delegation to do everything we can to bring sense to the u.s. postal service could keep the white river junction postal center open and keep us a growing jobs and economic opportunities in vermont. thank you. [applause] >> okay, thank you come governor.

[cheering] [applause] thank you, governor. at this time i would invite senator leahy, please, senator [applause] >> does this sound better? okay normally i would go first but i'm not going to. as senator sanders who has worked so hard on this along with the congressman and myself to speak first and i will speak after but i want to read just one thing. we got a lot of christmas cards this year, a lot. one that we saved especially is

from chris richardson. is he here? [applause] there he goes to get my family and i just want to take a second and thank you for all you've done for the post office, its employees, their families, their customers, we appreciate everything you've done. i want you and your families to know senator sanders, congressman, governor shumlin and i will not stop one moment. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] let me begin by thanking all of you not only for being here this is a phenomenal turnout, that think you for the extraordinary work you do every single day.

sometimes we take for granted. we shouldn't. you are doing a great job and think you for that. [applause] i also want to thank the post office. this meeting was originally scheduled for december 18th. there was a very bad time. i appreciate your rescheduling the meeting to a more convenient inappropriate time. now let me begin by taking up on a point that the governor and senator leahy had already made. we are in the midst of the worst recession since the great depression triet 25 million americans are either unemployed or underemployed. on the floor of the senate and the house senator leahy, congressman welch and i and many others are doing everything we can to try and i have to tell you again very strong opposition to try to create millions of

jobs our economy needs. we are also trying to make sure that our veterans get the jobs that they are entitled to. in the midst of all of that it is in san to be talking about throwing 100,000 americans out of work. [applause] the post office has made a case which is certainly true. this is the 21st century. many of us use e-mail. we know that there must be changes in the postal service. but in my view if the postal service does the right thing and in congress senator leahy, congressmen welch and i are working on legislation to do that, there are business models available to grow the postal

service rather than cutting and cutting. [applause] , this is the business model of the postmaster general in the postal service right now. they want to eliminate 252 processing plants, or they are looking at that concluding the one here in white river junction. they want to shut down thousands of the rural post offices which in many parts of our country and our state are the centers in town if we have people come together including 15 in the state of vermont. [applause] they want to eliminate saturday mail delivery. now when the you do all of that in my view when you do as the

post office indicated slow down the mail delivery so when i put a piece in the mailbox if they get to the destination in today's, three days, maybe even five days, when all the people will be delayed in getting their prescription drugs, when you begin to do that, you are the sort of way that cycle, a death spiral for the post office. [applause] because who is going to use the post office at its strongest attribute of the speedy delivery the longer exists? now one of the things that senator leahy, a congressman welch and i have worked on with some success is that i had a very strong feel that with the post office wanted to do is ramrod these cuts against congress could act. so no matter what legislation may be out there doesn't matter if congress doesn't have the

time to deliberate and deal with country inns of legislation. we met with postmaster general donahue a few weeks ago and had a very long meeting. i wanted a six month moratorium on the cuts. we agreed to a five month moratorium. the importance of that is that when we return from washington in january, the end of january, one of the first orders of business up in the senate will be comprehensive postal reform. [applause] now what is disappointing about the postal presentation i really have a hard time understanding it to the it is absolutely true the first-class mail system. no one knows that, but one of the great financial problems facing the post office in addition to the decline of the first-class mail is in addition to the recession is absolutely

unfair and onerous financial requirements be made on the postal service. [applause] and it's very hard to understand and presentation how this is dealt with. the postal service as a result, not their fault, as a result of congressional action some years ago is required to come up with about $5.5 billion every single year for future health care retirees. there is no other agency or government that comes close to having this requirement, and its best as we can understand there is no company in america that has to do that. [applause] now i talked briefly to the gentleman who was the head of the office of personnel management and he agreed that

this is an onerous and unnecessary requirements. there is already enough money in the future retiree health benefit program to pay off benefits for the next 20 years. the post office does not need to come up with 5 billion. that number can be very significantly reduced and that is part of the legislation that senator leahy, congressman welch and i are working on. will that solve all the problems? no, but it's a good start. [applause] second of all, the postal service has overpaid the federal employees retirement system and is now agreed upon over $11 billion. if the post office can report that money plus the cuts in what they have to pay to retiree health benefits, that will come

close to giving the postal service the $20 billion they need in the first four or five years to reach the kind of solvency that they are talking about. [applause] in addition to that of the house side, congressman welch is on board legislation, which would provide that $55 billion in overpayment made to the civil service retirement system be returned to the post office as well. [applause] so the point is does the postal service have to change? the answer is yes. but we also have to be fair to the postal service and not place burdens on them that no other agency of the government has or no other private sector company has. so we have to short-term focus on these accounting issues to give the postal service the

three, four, five years that it needs to begin the kind of reorganization. now, the business models that the post office is talking about now is basically cut, cut, cut. i disagree on that approach. we do need a new approach, but the new approach must be an entrepreneurial approach, an approach of growth, an approach of being aggressors in the business community. for example, right now, giving some examples of this, right now i walk into a post office, and i say to the clerk you know who writes this letter for you know the clerk says, it is against a law for me to notarize that letter. it's against the law. if i say to the clerk by the we can you give me ten copies of this letter, i can't do it. post office does not allow to do that. it's not doing that today. if i'd been a rural post office

and i see by the way, can you sell the fishing license orie hunton when simms, can't do that, it's against the law. i think if we get some smart people together to understand that we have a letter carriers knocking on 60,000, 160, every single day we have infrastructure all over this country if we sit down and say how can the post office work with other government agencies, how can the post office be more with the private sector generating for business i think we can come up with solutions that is a lot more positive than the cuts that the post office is now bringing. [applause] for the last several months i've been working with some of her leaky on these issues now let me reintroduce senator patrick

leahy. [applause] faugh >> thank you, bernie. deborah told me the hearing back in the back and i said don't be unusual and shaw, speak up so we can hear you. thank you. [applause] serious for a moment. one of the hats that i wear representing all of you is as the chairman of the senate judiciary committee you may wonder why i bring that up. i want to remind when people talk about post office is being run in the business and so on, there is only one business it's referring to in the constitution of the united states. an article 1, section 8 of the constitution it gives congress

the right to establish the postal service. that has been that way since this country was founded and all of you people work for the post office be proud of that. you are in the constitution. [applause] if it isn't subtle, if it isn't too subtle color that means congress needs to be consulted before the postal service implements reforms that threaten to destroy itself. [applause] every day i wear this pin this was given to me when i was first sworn into the united states senate. among other things i took an

oath to uphold the constitution. part of the constitution is how we established the postal service. i am not one iota on my oath to uphold the constitution and neither will senator sanders or congressmen welch and i know the governor is with us on that. and you can count on that, too. [applause] you have not been shy letting us know how you think. i appreciate that. the mail handlers union, the others that have spoken up, thank you for doing that. you know, all of us worked together in 2006 to successfully reason the closure of a similar facility essex. now they are glad they didn't close it. senator sanders and i am congressman walsh feel that way. we haven't changed our mind

about closing this facility or any of the processing facilities. it's not a case of us trying to hang on to something that's outdated and gone. making it work, and make the constitution work and keep the postal service running. it is part of america let's not forget that. [applause] now, we do not have the testing moving -- fastest moving congress these days. we did have a lot of gridlock, but we are all going to work hard and we are going to see him to leave to seek help from republicans and democrats alike to make sure that we can to protect vermont and the service they expect from their postal service. i don't believe this is not the issue here tonight we are talking about processing but i don't believe the postal service

should be balancing its budget on the backs of the rural post offices. and the door on the service standards the mail processing facilities. we are a special state, but we work only if everything does work. so let's not -- i don't need to tell you all the things i have here what you should know them. but stop and think for a moment if you're going to do cuts that slope the service, that slow of their abilities, doesn't harm the future competitiveness of the post office? [applause] how in heaven's name is that helping? i'm just a small town lawyer born in mount the earlier and i can't figure that out i can't figure out anything. they want to survive and thrive the postal service has to find

new markets. the postal service will not cut its way to greatness. it can grow its way to greatness and we are going to stand and help. [applause] thank you, senator. the third member of the delegation, and again i just want to make no every member of the delegation is with us this evening and we are proud and thankful that you are all here. i would like to ask congressman welch to please come forward. [applause] >> thank you. we are going to be hearing from you very soon, but i have to tell you my office was literally went on the road used to stop in at the processing facility to come three come sometimes four

times a week after a few years i actually got the tours in the back where all the magic happens. i really want to thank each and every one of you for the work that you've done for us. the four corners, the street corners, norwich, you got everyone here. when i walked in and i shook hands saying how long have you worked here? 33 years, 28 years, 37 years, this has been your life and your life have been serving us and i want to tell you we appreciate it, we notice it. we know that you have been an anchor in the communities and each and every one of us and governor shumlin want to say thank you for your service we are going to keep doing it we won't get out of it that easy no matter what they say over their. [applause]

if you on the job you've got to have that job and folks the 25 million people that are not in a job that want a job sometimes wonder why anyone should protect someone else's job when they don't have it. and you know, at the moment when we have to remember that we are all in this together it's something that our country is in danger of forgetting. the pressure israel on you. but you see folks coming in on christmas time trying to figure out whether they can afford the stance to send the package to a grandchild. you've been seeing that. it's tough for lots of folks. as we've got to be generous a spirit and we've got to be smart. you know, the postal service has

been with us for 237 years. now we are talking about e-mail, electronic processing. but you think that there were not huge changes that have to occur in those 237 years? from 1775 when benjamin franklin got this operation going up until now of course there were but of course the postal service adjusted it and why? yes, your jobs are worth saving but the united states postal service is worth saving. [applause] in our goal has to be how what do we save it, and altogether dewey save it, we do make the changes but when we have a plan it's not in the plan that we are going to exempt or take up this excessive burden of billions and billions of dollars of funding

and over funding this isn't to avoid meeting your obligation, it's too over fund the retiree benefits and health care oncoming to impose and inflict its financial burden and make it impossible for us to be successful and to make the slow and gradual change that needs to be made not just so that you can have your job which is extremely important but so that this community and white river junction, the state of vermont that we all know, this country in the united states of america, rural and urban will have a postal service for another 237 years and counting. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. at this point, i will invite anybody who would like to ask a question, make a comment i would

ask that the line and from the podium back because the significant number of folks here tonight it's important that we recognize the time. i will be instituting a two minute limit on those who wish to speak if you have an additional question beyond the when you ask i would ask that you go back to ensure that everybody has an opportunity to make a comment or ask a question also as part of the article i would ask that you identify yourself so that people recording your comments will have an accurate record. so please come in your name? >> i am bill kramer the local branch president for the union in white river junction vermont. [applause] and also a vermonter and i want

to keep my job. keep the postal service in vermont. my question to you is what examples do you have of any business that to get away with their service that survived? how do you think by cutting your service and delivery standards in the age where everyone wants something now that's going to save the postal service? i think the senators and congressmen and the governors were correct if you go from the one to three days service and if you go from five days to whenever on the third class service people are going to leave us. we are not going to have a postal service anymore and that is unfortunate. [applause] >> we appreciate your concerns on the service. is there a question, comment? >> let me rephrase that. how do you expect to save the service by cutting service? [applause]

that's the reason we are here tonight we appreciate the comments as well only from the but from the delegation over here and that is what will happen to make some decisions going forward is if we do consider exactly that one point will insure it is part of the record. >> let me ask all of the vermonter in the room tonight to what your postal service degraded? de watch as service? yes or no? >> no. >> thank you. [applause] thank you. >> next, please. >> in the northeast regional coordinator for the postal workers union. [applause] i'm in the microphone. >> [inaudible] >> i have the distinct pleasure and honor to represent the postal workers at the white

river junction vermont and every time i come with the great centers sanders we have a great crowd. we get a program about 40 days ago we had 100 people in the public meeting and the message was very loud and very clear, keep the service in the united states postal service the was the message. but as the senator said, we are here today because we are not being honest, we are your because we have to pay $5.5 billion every year before we start the year off. no company can survive that, not even the postal service. as i said, this isn't my first public meeting i come from maine and down to jersey and to the virgin islands and puerto rico so i've been through a lot of these. when you came up with a flat rate box that was a good idea. closing down these amts isn't a good idea. let's talk a service standards. the service standard is what predicates this entire process. it hasn't even been approved yet. yet we are predicting all of

this information. we are predicting all of these moves, 252 studies all predicated on the standard that has not yet been approved. i think that this criminal. in addition to that -- [applause] let's talk up the number of jobs new york city that's what this is is a shell game. this is a shell game. 46 jobs being lost because it looks good to the stakeholders and it looks good to the congressional people. but the real impact is the 200 jobs. one of my jobs as the union official of the region is to find jobs for other impacted employees. that's what i do. and i can assure you that we do not have 200 jobs available. in addition to that, we don't have 35,000 jobs available for

all of these impacts the fate all of these that they could in fact cause. so i ask you please read into this. i thank the congressional delegation from vermont coming up with that piece of legislation i think it helps you as much as it helps us. gives you more time to rethink. let's put a stop to this madness. let's put a stop to the madness and the change in the service standard as we say what other company says we are going to do a tv commercial and rather and say we will get the pizza to door house in 30 minutes you say we will get the pizza to your house and three to five days. it's nonsense, it's stupid, i know you are only the messenger is here tonight but we have to make sure that you listen to the public and we have to stop this madness. let's stop it right here in vermont. [applause] >> next, please. >> my name is amy and i am not a

postal office person. i am a general person. i citizen of west hartford car and i came to speak because i had a small reservations i wanted to make available. the state of vermont is now the most rural state in the nation. unlike other states, however, our population is almost evenly spread across the whole state. not like montana or idaho whether delete where there are hundreds of miles of land in the larger city. the state of vermont also has a total population smaller than the city of new york. forget the suburbs. in new york the distance between the processing centers is only a few minutes. the distance between burlington, white river and manchester is five hours. apart from the population exactly who is here? vermont is also one of the

fastest aging states in the country and the poverty level is high meaning the ability to move around is more limited than the other states. even compared to new hampshire are massachusetts we don't have easy accsess toopping centers or other conveniences. even the internet is so outside of many people's reach here. for some, the male is the only way to pay bills come contact friends or relatives or make purchases like medications as our leaders have said. for some it has dared lifetime to the world outside, and that contact needs to be timely and assured. another consideration is the companies that people do business with. i happen to know that many utilities charge extra to make payments on the phone or online and how many of us in vermont can afford that?

with the loss of processing in white river junction male becomes unreliable a raging at a company on time as it is companies tell customers they didn't receive a payment on time when in fact it arrived, the company processing could be the culprit and in vermont is known as the mail arrives in the state after one or maybe two days of the loss of the plant would make the mail so unreliable as to allow all kinds of the fiscal to cannery to occur with various companies who can claim it didn't get there on time. ..

this affects our entire state. thank you. [applause] ! enemas lawrence miller, secretary of the agency of commerce and community development for the state of vermont. one frame in question and then a couple of comments. the $8 million in savings, what is that of the total operating expense related to the effect to its facilities? >> i don't have that. the >> $89.7 not. mayor may not be allowed. it's hard to understand that the relative impact intelligence of your saving is that it doesn't seem like a lot. i appreciate your talking alert shippers. i come from is not manufacturing

background. i've had to compete with overseas manufacturers and may not facilities and i know what that looks like and i understand the challenges you're facing. i understand looking with our shippers. we have thousands of thousands of small business and home-based businesses that rely on the post office is for a meaningful portion of their income. the service change is not minor. i watch you think about what changing the cash cycle of businesses by a couple days implies. it implies moving our cash position is 7.5% to 10%. that's a meaningful financing component. this is not money that's going to come out of nowhere. a couple days of receivables in the state of your mind as they pack a lot more than 8 million bucks, probably 10 or 15 times that. and that is the result you're going to have. i think understanding the total system costs for all the users as well as for the service is important in judging where you ought to be cutting services or

where'd you may need to reflect appropriately in charges. having lived a whole bunch of small business shipping, small packages to the postal service because they did such a great job, you take away that delivery service. we're going to have to go back to the competition. it does not work. thank you. [applause] >> by name as mary ann will send. i work for a nonprofit organization here in labor junction. i'm also a resident of white river junction. the process of payroll under contract to a state of vermont for over 13,000 employees in the state of vermont to provide home care for individuals with disability. the delay -- the change of the standard to two to three or four days delivery will have an

immediate and direct impact on all of those employees. those employees currently mail their timesheet into their solutions and expect to be paid within seven days. without the ability to receive those timesheet on time, to put them in the mail on time and turn them around so employees can have their pay one week later on friday can be devastating for those of a 13,000 individuals and their families. in addition the delay of pay to those employees can have an adverse effect on individuals at risk in the state. they depend upon the care that their employees provide for them. those employees must be paid so that they can continue to provide that care and safeguard those vermonters who were oppressed. we process a number of 12,000 at 13,000 paychecks eat lunch.

i was disappointed to learn that we were not included as part of the larger shipper conversation earlier today. we mail out over 30,000 pieces of mail, 36,000 pieces of mail from the white river junction post office. the white river junction post office has done a valuable action fabulous job of prostheses in the mail and making sure -- [applause] at employees across the state of vermont are paid the wages that they are due. without the ability to have overnight or two day delivery, we will leave many vermonters that risk and many more who are at risk of losing their jobs. thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> yes, hi, affects floyd, a resident here in the town of hartford.

i came tonight to speak to the fact that i do not believe that the business case has completely analyzed the geography situation that we have here in vermont in the same way that previous speakers have spoken about on the rural character of vermont and its needs. you also understand and don't take enough into account the value of the local employees who understand that the delivery area as the chosen point area zip codes than just the p.o. box is are so often the mail is misaddressed by people, but they look and no where people are trying to get to. they deal with it right away. now, if you have people doing that work down in andover, massachusetts, i'm sorry. they're not going to know the local geography. the business case probably inherently misstates the value

of local employees appear. i would also point out that this area is the sixth-largest micro-metropolitan area in the united states. in order to be a micro-metropolitan area, you have to basically be more than an hours drive away from any other senses to find metropolitan area. for more than an hour from burlington and manchester. we are more than an hour from springfield, massachusetts and therefore this area contains a pretty significant population, which if you mapped against the list of cities in the united states comes out to right around 200. now, can you pull up the potential network site, please and zoom in on the northeast? the fact of the matter is if you look at the potential network side, you'll see that the

potential network has zero facilities in vermont and new hampshire. zero. could you enlarge the upper right corner. so clearly, if you have mapped out the post office is better in massachusetts and andover and framingham and we share an springfield and made that on a map of vermont, that would be like brattleboro, springfield, windsor come away richard junction. the travel time between those places is relatively insignificant. the speaker earlier was talking about how difficult the travel time is around here and importance of the local delivery and so forth. i don't believe the business case has been correctly analyzed by the post office. finally what i want to say is that i went on to your website to understand how these business

cases are put together. you can get all of the documents that show what needs to be filled out in order to prepare one of these business cases. but you know what, you cannot download the filled out forms for this study that's been done around white river junction. in fact, you can download and read what has been sold out for any of the post offices here. and another thing is they are is no evidence that there is any investigation of consolidating into white river junction as opposed to eliminating white river junction and consolidating elsewhere. so, i say this material should be made available. we all should be able to understand your business case because right now it just is not up for me. and i thank you first time. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> my name is liz blom, an

elected blister in the town of norwich. and just so you understand in maine and anywhere else, vermont was hit terribly hard by hurricane or tropical storm irene. we have not recovered and we will work for years to recover. many of our towns have to add over $100,000 to our town budgets for town meeting in march to recover every year in spite of the great hope is gotten from our congressional delegation. so this is putting -- making the situation worse. you asked when you give your presentation what is the right thing to do. the right thing to do is to get rid of the requirement for the post office to prepay and

overpaid benefits for 75 years and to work to pass reform legislation sponsored by vermont entire delegation and other congresspeople and get other people, other congresspeople to sign onto the delegation. that should be the first order of congress this year would make it back to washington. many people have asked what kind of business plan is it to succeed by reducing services? it can't succeed this way. you need to expand services and change services to the united states postal service has been doing this for 237 years and it needs to continue to do so. >> thank you. >> i just want to say to me and many other people this is an undisguised plan to destroy our

postal service guaranteed by the constitution and to privatize it. and i urge you to rethink your plan. [cheers and applause] >> i am kilkenny, a resident of new hampshire and a clergy person with the south danbury new hampshire united church of christ come a small rural congregation. my congregation is like many small rural congregations all over the northeast and frankly the entire country in the rural parts of this country. our congregants depend on the u.s. postal service. many of our congregants depend on a postal service with reliable next day delivery in the areas where it is now being delivered. and in addition to i also run a

small business or home based business, which as mentioned before. i absolutely depend on the u.s. postal service. my milk is processed in white river junction and if anybody wants to know how people like me, depend in white river junction and the distribution, i know based on what is it because because i mail it what is going to get there the next day or the day after or the day after that. right now i can calculate what might mail is going out. from 7:30 to 7:59 at night, the people who depend on the next day delivery and what they can do. but i can see here today that we are talking about the wrong thing. if we are pinning wayfarer junction and arguing over who gets cut, lucas closed, it's the wrong argument. the argument should be the mail processing standards should not be reduced and i implore our

congressional delegation. [applause] to say, this shall not stand. this is clearly -- there is no question if you reduce service standards, what you are doing is someone that should me, attempting to destroy the service from within so it becomes a shadow of his former self. you are privatize it, privatize it and no longer is the u.s. postal service. as a clergy person, one of the things i learned to try to remember on a daily basis is bowsher are not bear false witness. i'm not saying anyone here is purposely lying. using talking points that have been given to you, but somebody is witnessing falsely when they say you can reduce service standard and you are going to come up with those numbers on there about all you'll say i'm trying to save and how you'll

thrive. you cannot reduce standards and drive. it is a road to destruction of the u.s. postal service as we know it and it cannot stand. [cheers and applause] the mac my name is susan clark and i live in a very per hampshire. have a strong connection to vermont. my former husband as a full-time employee at the plant and first of all he want to say that you can see that maybe they were a little harder working than your figures show from 46 hours or whatever it is. i know he's for different tours. they were very hard 24 hours a day. so i don't know where those figures came from. i just want to add that. i cannot care because i have a home-based business. half of the last 16 years and i have delivered sent to new london, new hampshire come a company called flash photo. i have to say and always

praising the post office and telling them that they need to do more publicity about priority mail. first of all, yes, we are losing people doing e-mail, but on the other hand we are gaining because all those orders being placed on the internet have to be shipped. so wise in the post office doing more with? i have to tell you my experiences i have a delivery sent to flash photo. the reason why an essential po boxes i look to a liar just sugar in greensboro north carolina and employ a lot of people that i know when it's shipped on thursday, i will have that in my hands on saturday. if it goes to ups, it is a week. the other side is this. our company sends out checks on friday afternoons. we have a small rural post office in newbury. i have my hand monday, tuesday.

if this goes into effect on us when i'll see it and i'll be back the pain all my bills. the last thing is because i have a small connection to my children, what to vermont for college and make him appear that, all you need to do is right around and see the devastation for the flight and how in the world can the post office at more insult to injury by doing this to all the employees they are quite >> thank you. [applause] my name is david breaks. i'm a volunteer chairman of the hartford development corporation. we'll deal with economic development by citizen involvement and are supported by the town of hartford. we are is an protective of the economics of the town, especially when it comes to jobs. whenever new developments of any kind is proposed, the concept of the multiplier effect is always the main fact year. jobs lead to a very deep impacts that touches all.

once in place, the loss of jobs has a deep impact to the entire community and none of it as possible. reducing jobs is not viable for community. if you have a productivity efficiency problem, don't move the jobs come and find another way. my input to you tonight if you have an entrepreneurial challenge and entrepreneurial opportunity. don't take it down on the community by slashing jobs in bailing out. [applause] >> animists try them a shot and a mobilization coordinator for the vermont afl-cio. welcome to vermont. >> thank you. >> my understanding is that the postal service retiree health benefits fund now has over $42 billion it. that is enough to cover future retiree health premiums for the

next 20 years. also, audits show that the postal service overpaid by 50 billion, maybe 80 billion into the civil service retirement system. further the postal service overpaid at more than 10 billion into federal employee retirement system. also my understand is nearly a quarter of the postal workers are veterans in the postal service is paying the entirety of the veterans pensions. despite the fact that many of their workers service is divided by the postal service and the military, just despite the fact the department of defense pays this proportional pension shared for every federal tea except the postal service. given these factscome over tonight to hear you respond to, why is the postmaster general making the case that we need to close thousands of post offices and mail processing facilities, they have employees integrate service due to alleged insolvency? but you see here in this room is just the tip of the iceberg.

i would suggest that you tell the postmaster general that if he intends to go ahead and try to impose this plan, he's going to meet his waterloo and vermont. thank you. [applause] >> next, please. >> and jesse davis, officer of the vermont post office and i cannot ask for a better stuff or better group of customers there. [applause] we keep hearing out of washington cut, cut is our congressional delegation so aptly put it. one word we haven't heard of innovation. for the last several years i've been saying that e-mail is killing us. i have one simple question. why are we not having an e-mail server that rivals gmail or hotmail? why are we not a web hosting server that rivals go daddy? i don't know how much money you

can make off of that. [applause] >> my name is bob reid. my name is barb reid, a resident of white river junction, vermont. they think it's real interesting that in 2006 when they started seeing declines and it's also the same year that this blog a pass that said that the post office had to pay 5.5 billion a year for 10 years to fund current and future postal workers to the year 2075. i'm not sure everybody knows that. that is kind of ridiculous. i have to wonder why that came into effect. i heard somebody say about the privatization of the postal service. i am here representing myself and not my company, but i have to say that i am in the post office every day and i get

excellent customer service they are from the front window to the people who pick up our mail. i would be lost without paying business mail entry unit. the other thing i want to say is i never have to worry about the mail getting into my mailbox at home when there is now. as opposed to my paper getting into the news tube. so, thank you all. >> appreciate you coming, thank you. [applause] >> good evening. by michelle charbonneau, charbonneau, i'm a member of an alc bridge 521. i have been delivering parcels for the postal service at christmas time since 1983. this year i noticed i was delivering parcel postmarked -- priority postmark december 12 on december 19, which i consider to be serious erosion of service.

parcels postmarked december 19, delivered on december 27 i think is a shame that was not delivered by the 24th. and i understand you are from maine? that's correct. are you familiar with l.l. bean? i believe they are a very service oriented business and that is really the kingpin of their success. i see the internet as a coal mine for the postal service. an absolute gold mine. and if the postal service would put some energy into that cometh in the energy they put into disrupting service enclosing the post office into growing the business, we would be an incredible, successful story. i absolutely ask the postal service to support the postal service protection act. the postmaster general should be leading the charge with senator sanders and senator leahy and congressman welch. we should be working together

with them to preserve the post office, not dismantle it. thank you. [applause] >> not sure which ones we can do. my name is again to me malia and i'm a resident of white river junction for the past nine years. having a name like mine, you can imagine my letters get addressed wrong all the time. but i know my postal carrier branding. her name is janet. i know she's out there, hi. she's wonderful. my kids love her. you know, she's very personable and does the job well. i am not postal or military affiliated, but i have someone's little girl and i'm a follower of the golden rule. so i feel for those in mice that had men and women out of the country, some of them killed by a roadside bomb, what if a

little girl nailed her letter under these new circumstances you have here in that letter made it too late for her daddy was killed? and he never got to see that letter? i mean, that would be terrible for that little girl to grow up knowing that. i have one question at the end of this. i live on disability and i am also an employee of areas that the woman spoke about earlier. i make less than $2000 a month for myself, my husband and five children imail etched country manage to balance my budget with that. you guys should figure out how to deal with what you have. [applause] now, my disability comes in on the third. my mortgage is due on the first. i can mail it out and make my 10 day grace period now. if you screw that up, then i

don't make my 10 day grace period and i am charged a late fee or am charged a fee to do it over the phone or do a bike computer, which i don't own. i don't own a car that runs right now so i can't get somewhere to a computer to mail out or pay those bills. i don't want a credit card. if i did, how they pay the credit card bill if they couldn't it out? doesn't make sense to me. sorry, i lost my point here. i guess my last thing i want to say is i have a question for ms. essler. the billions of dollars you plan on saving when you get rid of all these employees, is that going to be lining the pockets of somebody who's already lined pockets of somebody like yours or is it going to go someone else in our community? [applause] i actually do want you to answer that question. and don't tell me you don't know. >> clearly, they are not going

to line my pockets if that's your question. i'm not going to be reimbursed or compensated in any way from any of the antique packages across the united states, nor will any other district manager. >> where will the money go? >> towards the bottom line they are past our business at the time. >> you don't look too starved to me. >> i name is chuck gregory from springfield, vermont. i'm a volunteer but the vermont workers center. i think i have an answer to the question the last that he posed. the author thomas frank wrote a book called the wrecking crew. and that, he talks about how for the last 40 years republican operatives have been destroying significant portions of the american infrastructure. i'm a leader have just described her problem is the sort of person who is affected most by the destruction of this particular feed and

infrastructure. i've a question for the new hampshire representatives of their congressional delegation and that is considered republican operatives are still trying to destroy parts of the american infrastructure, where does the new hampshire delegation stand in the republican approach to this piece of the american infrastructure? thank you. [applause] >> good evening. i'm glad everyone is here. make me believe in democracy again. my name is tim berio. i work in the real estate industry and i've been a teacher and pretty much worked in about every industry and vermont taking. and i am here to state a few of the points that have been brought up already. the issue of economic vitality, unique services and products to make businesses thrive. you cannot grow without services. to grow and sustain the

must-have business support services in this economy. this is a huge loss, not just in the jobs, which i care about all of you dearly, but in the confidence we are ready to deliver. been in real estate, i've tried several significant companies to downtown white river and as you heard tonight depend on the postal service as part of their business models. we can't cut that and i think the best metaphor i can come up with is the concept of perhaps public transit. we know public transit is not a profitable entity, but a service we need as a society to function and thrive. so yes, the postal service may not have a bottom line due to lack of invasion are changed, however, if you cut these public components come you kill the dirt in the areas would be the public sector or need to work together in a cooperative model to make that work. finally, i also had the joy of writing out the last.com fallout

and has been touched on tonight also, i'd like to leave you with this final five. change or die or cut inside. you can't find your way out of any economic malaise attending. you have to change and innovate and i know you guys can do it. you have to believe in all these people speaking tonight. thank you. [applause] >> my name is wayne martin. i am the president of the american postal workers union in white river junction. [applause] the consolidation plans at the postal services, put are all predicated on changing the service standards. i think you've come out in the back. alas, this is a rhetorical question because you haven't answered it when anyone else has asked it. how does a decrease in service increase their business? want to just drive people to her

competitors? part of the presentation you expect to the service standards to be virtually unnoticed. i think just the netflix customers that have dared service cut in half by the standard change will generate an uprising. [applause] we have a va hospital here in time it ships their medications. i know i have to get my medication through the mail, based on my insurance. how many people is that going to affect when their medication takes three to five to seven days longer to get to them? and vermont -- in white river junction, we process mail 17 to 19 hours or more a day. we are centralized location at

the crossing of two interstates. we affirmed the best product to reduce numbers in the district. we stared to follow and vermont in the montpelier areas. we serve western new hampshire from pittsburgh in the north to acworth in the south. the projection is to know white river junction, the processing into burlington and manchester. one thing somebody brought up earlier, the potential network doesn't show burlington or manchester. so how is that going to affect the service? is it going to continue to degrade? the last thing -- i do have an actual question. last night at the postal service

presentation to the employees, somebody asked, what do you think the public would say to the change in the service standards? mr. the free, delete plant manager said studies show that the public doesn't care. so my question is, what do you think now? [cheers and applause] >> well done. [applause] >> thank you, wayne. next, please. >> i name is cindy was the and i live in wave river junction. i have a family here in my work in the upper valley. what im is a customer of the postal service. i think what needs to be made very clear is that the closing of white river or as six or manchester is strictly phase one

of this postal plan of consolidation. i am standing here before you today as simply a customer, a customer that is angry, a customer that is unsatisfied and a customer that is not going to stand for this. not only to an unexpected phase one, but i do not accept phase two or three. i grew up in retail and various service industries. and when i was a new employee, the first ring i was taught was that the customer is always right. i want my voice to be heard and i want people to know that i am right. this is wrong and i will not stand for it. [applause] >> my name is ron of order. i am the executive board member to the local 31 national postmasters union and i work up in white river.

it is just suspicious to myself and a lot of fellow employees and friends that you're doing the studies that depend on the whole delivery day standard been changed. israel suspicious to us as to why are you putting the cart before the horse? you should be doing it -- is there going to change a standard, change those into your studies. talk people worked up over something else that may not even happen or do know is going to happen or not telling us. [applause] my second statement that i like to make is ms. essler come you said you have plans to process mail 20 hours a day. white river junction processes 17.5 hours. wouldn't be economical to move to a half-hour's worth of mail to white river junction then between 17 and a half hours of mail to burlington or to manchester? can you answer that? [applause]

>> thank you for your question. >> essentially what it does it takes a lot more into consideration than just that. it takes into consideration the size of the facility and which ones can consolidate easier -- >> are not asking you to consolidate. and same at two and half hours worth nanometer criteria. >> we'll put that into record is one of the things they want to look at going forward. >> thank you. [applause] >> my name is catherine harwood. my foreign mailing address is p.o. box 94, north stepford, vermont. a very small post office. it is open for approximately an hour and a half a day. and i have a very big dog in this fight. i am computer literate. i easily send e-mail messages all around the world, received

them as well. so why do i maintain a post office talks for my farm in north stanton? i do so because i have learned very recently that electronic communications, e-mails and others are not reliable. they are not universally available when i send them or when i received them for many of the folks that i need to be in contact with. but mostly, and above all, they are neither secure nor private. [applause] i know when i take a properly addressed, properly sealed envelope to the north stepford post office, i can expect an account times seemed united its

flag flying because the post office is open. i expect and always find postmaster holli towle at the window, wearing her usps i.d. and she is able to sell me post office that i need. she is able to take in the mail that i need to post. and i know that i can go and not post office and find the full, fair -- full faith and credit of the united states post office at my disposal. i know that i can count on seeing that flag in being those ideas wherever i go, wherever iem in these united states. this is a fundamental and

extremely critical function of our government to make sure that these communication lines remained open. i know that if i print out her hand write hard copy of whatever it is i need to send an properly address it and pay for that stand and it receives that postmark with the originating post office, i know that it will get where it needs to go safely, speedily and securely. i urge you all to stand behind these excellent post office employees and figure out a way to keep us all in contact with each other's security, privately and reliably. >> thank you very much. [applause]

>> just a quick question if i may make a commitment to allow everybody that wants to contribute tonight to do so. i'm looking at the back of the line. their five-minute short of two hours to be scheduled. however, to the folks who are going to speak, a two-minute limit and will be sure to get everybody's. >> and in this area from plainfield, vermont. and i am here because i'm really tired of talking about the postal service is if we only care about it to make money. the postal service is a public good in the something or committees care. so just like the fire department, we should pay the fire department does not make enough money. we are going to downsize services of our fire department. the point of the fire department is to put out fires when they happen in our community. same with the road crews. we ever occurs because we want good roads. where the postal service not to

make any, but because we care about mail being delivered in communities and care about how much people in our communities depend on that delivery. so i think that we need to reframe this conversation about not just a bottom line in making money, but about the things that are communities need. our public good. i'm from the vermont workers center and i just want to say me and the rest of the folks are going to keep fighting for this public goods. for not going to let this happen. we will fight from everything else like housing and jobs, mail delivery, all of the things that are communities depend on. we are not going to let this get cut. [applause] >> my name is leslie mathews. i live in northfield, vermont. i am a state employee and member of the vermont state employees association. i happen to work in the department of environmental conservation and one of the things they do in my job is identified plant samples that volunteers around the state are concerned about water quality.

so i'm probably one of many people who is depends on the postal service to ship perishable are done for me timely fashion or my work to operate effectively. so i will notice it the standards are degraded. and i fail to understand why if you are going to do a study you don't start with the premise that you are not going to do great services and look at how the post office can operate under that starting premise, instead of trying to look at degrading services at the same time as you are looking in all of other business properties of the postal service. i just want to also say that i think the solidarity with the other public employees that i work with, including postal workers. i think what is really going on is this is part of the attack on public employees that we've seen

in this country in the last couple of years. clap [applause] public employees have been escaped goes for bad decisions made by ceos and some politician that it's gotten us into a financial crisis and into a recession. and i think that we need to protect those public jobs. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> i name is peter quite attack. i am processing clerk in white river junction, but i live in claremont, new hampshire had been a lifelong dedicated postal customer. one of the things that i haven't heard mentioned today's yesterday when we had our mission at the plant, we talked a fair amount of time about transportation and changes to transformation and consolidation of trips. and this was presented as a means of saving money.

but i have to ask you, if you are going to reduce the number of troops coming into a river and if you are going to reduce the number of trips going for white river to the larger processing centers that remain and that those processing centers then have that much for volume of mail, isn't this a question of more than just first class mail? are you going to have to drop your express standards for mala quality mail also? you take all the mail at the same time and processing the same distance, only fewer pickup some longer distances. how does that not affect all of your other classes of mail, including your most profitable classes? >> there is no thing to change the service standards. this is strictly for going to two to three day, were to add a date to it. there's a pretty comprehensive plans the postal service is looking at going forward to make sure we don't change -- >> so you do have plans in place but there is a first-class letter and express mail piece is

picked up at the same rural office at the same time, sent to white river, put on a trip to manchester and there is a plan in place to process that express mail in a timely fashion? >> we have in our addition to keeping those on place must it come up with something different. there haven't been any plans looking forward to change the service on any other class of mail. >> thank you. appreciate it. >> next, please. >> my name is bob and i respectfully request that i withhold my last name. i'm going to be doing a press release before the new hampshire primary, which is coming up next week. i was born in this area. my dad was involved in the administration of this the hospital for 30 some years. from the time of a child i was taught to develop a great credit, worth that could, et cetera. i worked 10 years doing engineering. peter welch was sitting here. i've done work in reference to

powerlines on some land he subdivided in heartland and i've known him. after i left cv, it was because of lack of ability of customers to go on the front door and order anything. it's all like the phone company has been for years. i hit the ground running, building residentially, commercially, had met construction business. by 92 i had an issue with a divorce yet my ex-wife happened to be come -- with the u.s. postmaster of our community. two years later i found she had diverted by irs mail and multiple other pieces of mail and i requested of a u.s. federal postal are assigned to my issue out of manchester, new hampshire, to get me at a given general store to pick up i.d. numbers of two certified trackable items that i desperately needed him to go see because it was attested to in a legal environment that i signed

for, which i never did. he sat in his chrome office overlooking the manchester airport and wrote to me quote on postal team letterhead and signed in ink that i did not have an issue at the u.s. post office, but i have a problem that should be handled in the new hampshire court divorce court and if i have a problem with a ex-wife, i should get my mail on saturday is the rather times in which she was not working. congress vass became instrumental in his first time as a congressman pushiness through to the top congressional liaison. i believe his name is tony leonard. this is so fragile and so revealing of the death sybarite that the devastation done me, had at least enough decency to tell me he was told not to help me anymore. the amount of mortification of what i earned and what i had for a credit rating and assets is

nonrecoverable. now i don't want to splash water on this environment here and i know there's a lot of good basic people who work the average of. i would not be given food chain of our u.s. post office in the right manner, asked for the right steps. if you have someone holding you up to your home with a gun, you expect to dial 9-1-1 to get the right response. if you have a fire as it's been said, you respected the the fire department showed as efficiently as they help you. what happened in my case is this one of the foodchain of the postal service. they dug in. i have a number of attorneys that ropes and the issues to try to take the matter in a different direction and quite honestly, i have been destroyed by the u.s. postal service. and i have nothing good to say about it. and i respect the people locally, but you know what, i am an employer of people in this area and i have been.

and i just want you to realize that has been devastating. and not one person never apologized either from the irs for the postal service. >> thank you. please, please, next. >> my name is prevent trembling and i am from wilder. i've always understood the post office to be a service of the united states government until the recent depression, it has been -- i've always understood it as a service. it is now considered a business. this is only given the opportunity to make what would normally be a rational decision into the sixth sophie's choice about laying off workers and repealing a bill intended to privatize the u.s. postal service. a release that is what i've understood tonight. so my question to you is since we are short on time, whitey jamaica is watch propaganda film instead of letting this comment

about the post office, which is what we are here to do. thank you. >> thank you. >> i appreciate the input. our commitment is to out everybody who has something to say to do that tonight. the presentation is part and informational session if you offer those folks up to date with postal ways perhaps as you are. so that was the purpose. next, please. >> my name is heather, a volunteer with the vermont workers center and for the past several months we been having these people put people first meetings. there'll be one heartland on january 25th -- hartford, i'm sorry. hartford on january 25th. you know, we had one for another several months ago and what we find there is that we are living in communities, where wages have been stagnant for many, many

years. unfortunately, we have had many waves of public workers being laid off in our communities. and the suffering that's going on as a result is heartbreaking. and the effects of iran have only compounded that suffering for many, many people across the state. and it seems to me like many hundreds of thousands of dollars have been put into studies. my question for you is whether or not the postmaster general has conducted a study about what the impact of closing this processing center and many of our rural post offices under which would lay off hundreds smart people in vermont, what would be the company multiplier effect on our communities? because we know that as more and more vermonters lose their job, that has an effect across many towns. we have seen that you and water very after a rain.

so has there been a study done on that? >> be in the states are reviewing this. we don't do much offer an actual economic impact, but we are very interested in going forward and looking at that. >> next question, please. >> it's not a question. anton urgo from packard center. the post office was created under the constitution was amended in 1970 by the postal lack and then there was that 2006 postal accountability act. it seems -- it seems that the idea of the post office is to foster communication in america. that seems to be the idea in the to to shame. so why doesn't the post office embrace the internet? and instead of hiring people, why don't they hire people so that vermont can be the first

e.u. states as was promised in 2006 and perhaps we cannot people putting up high-speed internet lines so that more people could use the internet, order goods and services, have been delivered by the post office and the post office could increase its profitability instead of destroying the lives and incomes of other citizens. and the only thing i have to do with the post office is by stance. that's it. >> we appreciate that. thank you. >> thank you. >> and edward english from woodstock. i am a customer of the post office and to begin with, i was sitting about three quarters of the way back.

i could hear people, but i couldn't hear you, mr. moderator. but that's beside the point. but when it came to this projection that you put on, i couldn't even see it because there is too many people in front of me. and where'd you come come up with your eight something dollars that you are cutting when it wasn't even on that as far as i can see. i couldn't come up with anything on these papers are in your presentation. besides, i don't have a computer. and so i depend on the mail or else i won't have any. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> my name is david kranzler, a member of the vermont workers center.

i believe that the postal service is a public good. a public good is something that should serve the needs of our communities, not destroy our communities by shrinking itself in a death spiral. my first question and i apologize because i think it's a rhetorical question is, are you accountable to our communities as the public good should eat? my second question -- i came here and watched her presentation i have to admit i am not a business person, but i am not that time either. [laughter] you said people are so name or e-mail. i sent e-mail because i want the people and communicating with to get the message quicker. and your response to your customers wanting the people they are communicating with to get the message quicker is to slow down how fast you deliver the mail.

[applause] so i look at this presentation and i think, who put together this business plan that the postmaster general or the ceo of fedex? because if i were the ceo of fedex -- [applause] i would say wow, they are letting me put together a business plan for the postal service. the first thing that i would do is figure out the best way to put it into a death spiral. why don't i respond to their customers needs for better service by starting off with a study that predicates were service. [applause] >> hello, my name is david catrin and i work about the food

co-op. i'm a vermonter. i went to school in new york city and i am one of the few who have consciously come back to vermont to live here because i love it so much. when i was in new york, one of the first places i went with the james fairly postal center at sixth avenue. above that is an inscription and it says neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from their appointed rounds. how much are you going to cut and so we can't say that anymore? eventually you will cut yourself out of a job. [applause] >> good evening. my name is jim wynberg. i find myself in a very difficult position. again, i find myself in a very difficult position. i am a proud retiree at the postal service for over 30 years. what i'd like to say is that in this planet just like to recognize or have someone recognize the fact that currently the state of vermont

is serviced out of the white river junction post office. that post office was established actually in the status as mentioned earlier between two major enters dates as well as the east to west carders in the state. we currently go from white river all the way down to spending 10, brattleboro, up to and reduced to go into montpelier as well as into burlington. and we do have one acr that does traveling to maine. all of this right now being centrally located at one time use the facilities at the railroad. we also used the airport out of west lebanon. we are in the middle of the state. i hope that this has been taken into consideration when we are looking at moving, transferring or doing away with the plant. i know this. i was a transportation manager and white river for many years. i've lived through 5:00 a.m.

tease, where we try to get the mail to the rest of our current processing area. it just wasn't possible. the old saying is you just can't get there from here. the other thing is the post office is like into a big back-to-back games. all of the processing plants are the dots, a very, very old friend of ours told us this one and the only way to make that total picture, to give you a vital postal service is to connect those dots. the connection of the stats is a transportation. i think we should keep the white river junction plant open. >> thank you. [applause] >> minus four assignment. i am from wild vermont and i have a couple prongs to my question. first, i want to inform you that i been a social worker and teacher for 36 years and few communities within the area of

this plant. and i think i can speak on behalf of the hundreds of other people who do my job in the thousands that we serve. they are among the more vulnerable people in our communities. so one product to my question is, can you assure that their needs can be met as they are now at this new plan that you have? my next part of my question at a point to you is from what you see here tonight and what you're hearing about people doing this all over the country, do you think we are going to back down? i can answer that. we will not back down. and then, i think this will take a little bit more calculation on your part, but in a few areas of cost but i'm hoping you could get back to me and explain. the salary of the workers that will be displaced, will there be any change their? what about the mileage as they are displaced to another post office and impact on the environment of the further

traveling? .. bargaining agreement and to always supports that. next, please. >> the center for sustainable medicine in vermont i run a small sliding scale clinics serving mostly working-class and poor people for almost 20 years and then i rely on being able to

walk across the street to my local post office and put medicine in the mail and have it get they're the next day. but i'm actually not here to talk about that. i am here to talk about something that you should be using so much in this fight which is the power of the love letter. i started writing letters to friends starting at age nine and route three or four letters every week. my friends all over the world and pen pals and the thrill of opening a letter where you see the person's handwriting is something that e-mail and text messaging cannot even begin to match. you can't cut out a little peter hart or put sprinkles in or put a little perfume on the letter to get a text message. you could be capitalizing on this. i don't really like that word. [laughter] the reason i moved to vermont is

because i married a man who lived here when i was living in seattle and we rode 50 letters back-and-forth in a five month period before he sent me an engagement ring through the mail and i knew it was coming and asked the postman to wait a minute while i opened it and had him put it in my hand. >> that's wonderful. [applause] next, please? >> i'm back. in many businesses in this country there's a steadfast rule that if it isn't in hard copy on paper, it never happened if we get rid of the mail system or slow it down, you know, that's going to destroy mortgage documents and things like that. it just can't have been and it has to be reliable in fact and i

know for certain i personally can't afford the 8-dollar fedex one to three day service or the 20 dollar ups service the u.s. postal service will get there in the same amount of time for 44 cents. >> thank you. >> it's also a federal offense to mess with the male if we don't supply any federal funding into the system and that doesn't make sense to me. i would like to know why we don't do that. sorry you said we could come back to the other one and go again and i am. spec i also limit you to one question and i've already heard three. >> sorry. there was an article in the paper saying 35% of the service is done on line and a country where the majority rules that

would mean 65% is not done on line so i think we need to keep that in mind. >> thank you. >> i guarantee when i send that letter as it stands today my letter will get there safely before the january 19th date. >> appreciate that. thank you very much. [applause] >> i'm a school teacher been teaching for 32 years. i find that i agree with almost every person that came up here tonight and said the post office is a service, not a business and the fact that this is timed at about the same time that we probably have double-digit employment in our country i find it incredibly tone deaf that this is happening right now, right here.

our representatives from vermont i'm proud to say represent real people like myself. but there is an increasing tone deafness in washington to the play of real life people and this feels to me like one more attack on working people, period. >> appreciate that. thank you. [applause] >> i'm usually her pretty well. i'm going to have to talk awfully quick to get this and in two minutes. first of all, some of the most visible employees the postal service has are the carriers and the city carriers and these people are genuine heroes. there isn't a day that passed in the history of the postal service and i assure you know they haven't rescue people that are falling, they haven't helped people with heart attacks, they've rescued people from fire, it's just an everyday occurrence and they are truly heroes. my second thing is the question

ms. kessler. i assume you also did this for burlington and manchester. the process all of the male in the state of vermont else told you and it did a very economically and it did it on a one day service standard. well worth the benefits and closing burlington and keeping white river junction open? where are the figures for that? >> we haven't concluded that study at this point. >> will we have another meeting when you get those figures to get your? >> if we go forward with in the of the other studies that are around the manchester. >> when you are saying is you've already decided is if it is going to close it is going to be white river rather than burlington. my apologies by the way. >> i think that is the point is there has been the decision made and after the china we also

agree not to make any determination by any of these consolidations to allow sufficient time for them to also continue the dialogue that they have on the service. >> thank you. [applause] >> i have a home-based business in heartland. i grow in my own organic garden seeds of heirloom vegetables that are specifically suited for growing in the new england area that is my service area. this time of year i go to my heart and a post office almost daily and find the postmistress i know very well and even though she knows i'm not a mystery shopper she asks me anything liquid, perishable, fragile or hazardous?

of course my seeds are time sensitive so i am very invested in the surface not been reduced but some thoughts on this, the post office could be if it were free of the onerous burden of the 5 billion annual the required to prepay towards the pension fund perishable embedded in the very name of the united states postal service. fragile the lives of the people who would lose their jobs in the midst of this fragile barely recovering economy. and hazardous, the kind of short-term thinking that has led to the consideration of this consolidation plan. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. >> my name is steven. i new hampshire resident with

but i've worked in the white river plant for many years. i pay federal taxes and vermont taxes even as a new hampshire citizen. about a decade ago the postal service which a lot of the volume of mail to the manchester facility and it was an abomination. the overnight mail took nearly a week to receive. the roads are not conducive to manchester or burlington for the on-time delivery for much of vermont. i'm a decorated veteran and i have served in several capacities as a federal employee most of which is with the united states postal service today i am currently listed as an employee but was an early victim of one of your studies.

to responsible employers discriminate against disabled employees? again as an early victim in your last study i wonder what's going to happen next to my brothers, my union brothers within the postal service and how any of these things are going to impact the continued value of the united states postal service. >> thank you. appreciate you coming. [applause] >> i've brought media which is a company that produces documentary films, and i am here tonight because i am very concerned about the changes that are being proposed for the postal service for a variety of reasons. our business is very dependent because we live in a rural area to be able to have access to a service that is overnight that

is the reliable. i use the postal service often to mail out film and also mailing out tapes that have been filmed editors in new york and that kind of thing. the changes will affect my company, and as we've heard from other people here, it will probably affect their company as well. and i think it is shameful at a time that we are in the middle of an economic downturn that these sorts of proposals are being made to actually cut jobs. we are in a part in history when we need to be looking at job creation, and this kind of program that you are proposing will wind up having a ripple effect and affect other businesses in our area as well, so i hope he will take into consideration. and i've done a documentary that actually looks at liberalism and privatization and i see what you are doing as a form of that. you are leading towards that because you are no longer going to be competing and providing

the services as well as places like fedex and that will eventually end up causing the privatization i believe of the postal service and i think that that will be quite a horrible thing to have happen. >> thank you. [applause] >> my name is joyce and i live in lebanon new hampshire. my name is joyce and i live in west lebanon and hampshire. i've been listening to all the comments but wasn't going to say anything because i share so many of the thoughts such as the problems degrading the postal system to try to keep things going. but the main reason i decided to say something is it occurred to me no one has mentioned all the people on the other side of the river in the upper valley that rely on the white river

distribution center for their mail. i have a post office box in white river and i also have one in hanover. the hospital was there. no one has mentioned all the people in new hampshire that are going to be affected by cutting down the distribution. [applause] >> thank you. >> good evening. local 301. thank you very much for all of your patients tonight. appreciate it. i just wanted to add one thing that i haven't heard and i've heard a lot of great things tonight. the postal service for the 28 years i've been employed as a mail handler in manchester new hampshire and elsewhere has been hand-wringing of the degradation of the first-class mail as a product for the usps and in those 28 years i've seen a lot

of great commercials on priority mail. i think they've been very successful in restoring priority mail service but i get to see the postal service in those 28 years spend 1 penny on trying to reinvigorate first-class mail service. i don't believe first class mail service is a dead product. i think the postal service has done an awful lot to encourage the first class mail, but my comment would be this. perhaps some of this money would be better spent advertising first-class mail as a benefit on fraga for customer fraud or identity theft or a thousand other reasons why first-class letter for 45 cents is a whole lot better deal than paying for your your bills on the internet and i would appreciate being added to the record as a recommendation on the way to reinvigorate the postal service.

>> thank you. [applause] >> the final question, comment of the night. >> my name is michael coming and with my wife and my two sons operating in vermont i'm going to come at this in a little bit of a different way. i was here this afternoon for the mailers meeting and made some comments and would be willing to speak to people more. as a major i know a lot of the nuances on the structure in light seen where things might be tweaked which i would be glad to share. but i realize it's a business. it's a business to be without the vitality of the post office cease to exist. we provide a service to a lot of small companies, businesses, organizations, that type of thing. we are doing things for them to earn them the maximum amount of discounts they can to invite

them to continue to the best benefits. for our congressional delegation, you're the ones that are going to be able to get some of the hard answers to the many questions that exist. we can read things. we can't discern how true they are. you will be able to ask the hard questions to get the hard answers back and act on them appropriately on our behalf. this is a publication in the united states post office that we receive as a meal entity. one of the first stories and hear the postal service in fiscal year 2011 with $5.1 billion loss. this is set to be after the pre-funding requirements. it also goes on to say the total 2011 mail volume decline by the 20 billion pieces of mail.

as 3 billion pieces less, $5 billion lost are we losing $2 for every piece of mail that we send? again, some of the questions that need to be answered. where are the numbers and what do they really mean? okay. i'm going to just leave you with one last thing. we've got to lighten up here now. how much paper does it take to buy one postage stamp? >> if you don't know, this is your receipt for one stamp it costs 44 cents. >> let me say to everybody that came up this evening -- i'm sorry. one more person here. your name?

>> [inaudible] i was born in switzerland and i came to this country i was 18 and spent some time in canada. we've got the best system there is in the whole wide world. i know because i was at the bahamas for five years. we sent packages to my grandson that was in the marines, and within a week -- so please don't lock it up. [laughter] [applause] if i may as we close out tonight, thank you to everybody who's thoughtful, professionally presented comments and questions were very much appreciated. it's a common theme i heard this evening. a common theme i heard is the regard with which our postal people are held within the community and continues to do

that to the postal employees as we feel might well feel that doing the remarkable job thank you for all that he do and continue to the great job. everybody safe travels, thank you. [inaudible conversations] issue.

ann coulter's books include god less, guilty, and her latest, "demonic." >> host: ann coulter, in your book "how to talk to a liberal if you must," you have ten rules of engaging a liberal. here are some of them.

>> host: never compliment, never show graciousness? >> guest: it seems like there's a little overlap in those, but i wanted to be absolutely clear. [laughter] and, of course, the first one would not be necessary if you didn't have some elected republicans who are constantly trying to fall in the good graces of "the new york times" and, i mean, i don't, i haven't read the book recently, but i do have a rule of thumb. it is never a good sign when you hear a republican saying my good friend teddy kennedy. at least we don't have to hear that anymore. [laughter] >> host: what about outrage the enemy? why is that an important rule? >> guest: um, i've just noticed over time that whenever the

spittle starts coming from liberals' mouths, you know you have struck gold. [laughter] >> host: here are some more of your rules. >> host: what are liberals in transition? >> guest: ooh, lots of 'em. ron silver, now david ma'am mutt, james woods. we've got a lot of 9/11 converts. who else? you've got the gist of it. [laughter] >> host: and as a conservative what's your role when you talk with them? >> guest: um, they're like often the, um, newly conservatives are like that, remember that? who was he, remember the german guy who had all the children he was having and he kept them all in the basement for 20 years, and slowly they come up and they

see the light for the first time. that's liberals discovering conservativism. so you speak gently to them. when they tell you that, actually, when reagan cut taxes, more revenue came into the treasury and things that most conservatives have known since we were 10. >> host: your most recent book, "demonic," who is gustav lebeau? >> guest: amazing french philosopher from 100 years ago. and i had the idea for this book, it took me longer than my other books because my other books, "treason," for example. i mean, that's the cold war and joe mccarthy, that was something i'd been interested in since college, so it required less original research for me to do anyway. i just could go back to books i'd read, i knew where the information was, i knew what my point was. with "demonic" i wasn't even sure if it would pan out. sorry, this is a long way to answer your question, but i started reading books on group

think, financial panics, mobs, riots, that sort of thing. and i'd actually started writing "demonic" when i bought the book, "the crowd" but gustav who wrote 100 years ago and curiously and importantly, i think, 100 years after the french revolution he's deemed the father of group think. and it's a slim little book which, by the way, has shot up on amazon since my book came out. and there it was, it was so beautifully laid out page after page, it rings true, and it describes mob behavior and, i think, liberal behavior as i describe in my book in a way that you cannot say, well, both sides do this. very distinctively liberal behavior. and i, i was, like, whomever the first person was who discovered oil in texas. eureka. here it is. i was right. this is the book i've been waiting for.

>> host: what's an example of group think? >> guest: creating messiahs. as i say, it is distinctively liberal behavior, and i go through it in my book. that's one of my favorite chapters because i quote liberals a lot and the way they talk about their presidents, fdr, jfk, clinton, obama, they're all having sex dreams about their presidents. and can just the over the top adoration that really seems to be coming from someone who does not have a real messiah because they are so desperate to find a human messiah. and, you know, i thought about, well, how -- is there anyone we behave that way toward? obviously, the one -- we, being right-wingers, the closest would be ronald reagan. and that's why i went back because people have very sugar-coated memories of reagan. part of the reason reagan gets invoked so often these days is to contrast him with certain, um, contemporary republicans who we don't think are meeting the grade.

um, but if you look at the way reagan was treated when he was president, he wasn't even the most popular conservative. it was, i have it in my book, it was jerry falwell, william f. buckley and then third, ronald reagan. my newspaper, human events, was constantly attacking him, famously attacking him to the point -- and that was his favorite newspaper. he went to a party at human events and said i'm enjoying it a lot less. >> host: you write, democrats are always the party of the mob. the only thing that changes is which mob they're supporting. >> guest: yes. >> host: what does that mean? >> >> guest: it means, for example, i describe one more fully in the civil rights chapter which is the true telling of civil rights. so it's my revisionist history to their revisionist history. democrats were the party of the klan, the party of the discriminators, the segregationists. and then, and from -- forget

this war being fought for a republican, for the next 100 years republicans keep introducing bills, anti-lynching bills, voting rights bills, and democrats keep shooting them down. finally thanks to republican efforts, blacks start voting in the large enough numbers for democrats to care. but then it just becomes another racket. then they just take on blacks as their special friends to push through huge, bloated government, a welfare state. but back, you know, we could have used them when we were fighting the klan. >> host: you also write, and this is how you conclude in the book: the same mob mentality that leads otherwise law-abiding people to hurl rocks at cops also leads otherwise intelligent people to refuse to believe anything they haven't heard on npr. >> guest: yes. elaborate? >> host: yeah, please.

[laughter] >> guest: um, for example, global warming, evolution, um, what i wrote in my column about this week, the famous alleged rape case of a halliburton subsidiary, and be hall burrton, ah, associated with it once. you know, the emanuel goldstein of the mainstream media. and there was this huge story a few years ago, and, i mean, anyone with a cable connection saw it about a woman who was allegedly gang raped by this defense contractor in if iraq just a few days after getting there and then kbr, the halliburton subsidiary, her bosses put her in a tiny shipping container and no food or water for 24 hours, guarded the shipping container with a machine gun, and it turns out the whole thing was a hoax. a jury just ruled a couple of weeks ago -- and by the time she got, for one thing, there was no criminal case because prosecutors having investigated,

they ended up not bringing a prosecution. she sued civilly, but when she sued civilly, suddenly a gang rape case goes away because there was only the dna of one man on her, and he says it was consensual. so it was your standard he said/she said date rape case. the jury acquitted after one day of deliberations. the female military doctor who examine bed her the next day didn't find any date rape drug in her as she had claimed, she did not find she had been mangled. the whole story was a cock and bull story from the beginning, and it should have been recognized as such. that is on the front page of "the new york times," 1500-word piece. the story on the jury acquitting the guy she ultimately sued for date rape was in a saturday new york times on page, i think, a13. it was one paragraph. [laughter] so that's the sort of thing that people will passionately assert to be that day's purveyor of hate, and, you know, you never

get the follow-up story. >> host: why did you open "demonic" with, from the book of mark, chapter five, verses 2-9 that ends, "my name is legion for we are many"? >> guest: well, that really is the whole theme of the book, that the mob is demonic. there is something dangerous and destructive when people get together in this a group, something that i e will be rated and demonstrated, i think, in my book. that an individual is very different than when he is in a crowd. and in a crowd crazy things happen and exaggeration, a crowd goes instantly to extremes of emotion. um, and there's just passion and rumors are grabbed hold of, and there are messiahs and passionate hates and passionate loves. but you get a man away from the crowd, and you can talk directly to him. that's seen in the bible as where jesus approaches the

possessed man who's running around naked scaring everyone, and they have a little exchange, and at the end jesus says to him, what is your name, speaking to the demon. the demon says, my name is legion. we are many. so there it is. [laughter] right in the holy bible that the mob is demonic and the demon is a mob. >> host: you also talk talk abo, ann coulter, the importance of slogans for liberals. >> guest: yes. >> host: you list some of these. bush died, our kids lied. no justice, no peace. save the whales, love your mother earth. ban the bomb, make love, not war. diversity is our strength. save the planet, pro-choice, pro-child, etc., etc. >> guest: those are just on my neighbors' car. [laughter] >> host: why do you put those in your book? why is it important? is. >> guest: well, because it is an element of group think as identified by the philosopher of the french revolution who said

crowds can't understand words, speak in images, keep it simple, speak to the heart not to the head. um, and it is striking how many slogans liberals have and how pathetic conservatives are at even coming up with slogans because we're always trying to explain things. i mean, it's become kind of a pathetic joke among republicans how their guys are out screaming bush lied, kids died, and our guys are standing with the powerpoint demonstration. [laughter] and the pointers and trying to explain our point here. one of my friends during, i guess it was when gore was trying to steal the 2000 election, participate inside if a republican protest, and she had been a person on the left. and she said the guy with the bull horn, the conservative -- this is a conservative approach -- she said, he couldn't get the idea, the concept of the chant where you chant something, and the crowd chants back. and so he's up there with a bull horn, and he's going on and on. we oppose the recount was it

violates -- because it violates section blah, blah, blah, and be everybody's just looking, what are we supposed to chant back? many we don't get the hang of it. [laughter] >> host: you mentioned the french revolution, i want to read this e-mail that came many from steve of the hollywood conservative forum. he writes about "demonic": >> guest: i am so happy to hear that. thank you, mr. steve whatever his name -- i agree. i love those chapters. and what was interesting when i was writing about the friend of rev -- french revolution was that i have a lot of smart friends, certainly better

educated -- i went to public schools -- and so many of them who can tell me detail about, you know, every king of england and russian czars and be what colonial america was like knew almost nothing about the french revolution. and i, therefore, concluded they're hiding it from us. it's a very important contrast, the french revolution, and the american revolution. in fact, i wanted to start with the french revolution chapters and, consistent coincidentally,y hollywood producer friends told me, no, he'd read some of the chapters for him. i can't thank him. i'm the only person who has to check with people so i don't ruin their careers. he said, no, you've got to start with the basics. i understand, you understand, but you need to get the basics out there first, then go into the history of it. so that's the way i rearranged it. i do think those chapters are so important and so interesting, how bloody and barbaric and anti-christian the french revolution was, and be as i

point out in this my book, it is lied about in, for example, "the new york times" chirpily comparing the american revolution to the french revolution. well, no, they were complete opposites. our founders were opposed to the french revolution. um, the -- lafayette who was a great eau of -- hero of the american revolution ended up fleeing the country, running for his life one step ahead of the guillotine. but it is, it was the beginning of every totalitarian revolution. i think 200 years ago is where you see the division between conservative political thought and liberal political thought, and the french revolution was copied in russia, to some extent in nazi germany, cuba, vietnam. it is the idea from russo that a group of elites would be in possession of the general will, and they would impose it on the country, on the nation for the good of mankind. well, it's always ended up, always, in a bloody tyranny.

>> host: you mentioned that you have friends in the hollywood. that may surprise some people. >> guest: yeah. because i'm never allowed to thank them. [laughter] >> host: is there a secret cabal out there? >> guest: well, one great thing about being a very recognizable conservative is that i meet conservatives wherever i go. you know, it used to be conservatives all know this thing where we go to a cocktail party and you would find, it would take forever to meet your fellow conservatives because each person would say something slightly more conservatives and slightly more and, oh. we're like gays trying to recognize one another. ah, a fellow conservative. no, not with me anymore. i walk into a restaurant, every conservative in the room bounds up to me. >> host: you also mentioned you went to public schools. in "goodless" you wrote:

>> guest: right. right. and their religion is recycling, global warming, al gore's inconvenient truth, heather has two mommies, absolutely appallingly vulgar sex education. um, lots of condom demonstrations, apparently. and yet very little math, science, reading. i don't know if you saw it, but just recently california, jerry brown, it was like three weeks ago signed a law requiring all public schools to when they teach history, they must teach about the contributions of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered individuals. and i must say as someone who reads history liberals are the only people who could make history boring. these modern history -- real history is interesting. but when you start having to, um, let's find out what the contributions were of mrs. paul revere. [laughter] no, because we need to describe

the women's contributions to the american revolution. look, i'm sorry, i'm a woman. it doesn't hurt my feelings. the american revolution was fought, was won, was argued by white male christians. that is a fact. we don't need to have a full chapter on how betty crocker started her own company so that women are covered as much as, say, paul revere. >> host: why'd you go to law school? >> guest: inertia. [laughter] >> host: what do you mean? >> guest: well, who thought you could make a living doing what i do? had i known that -- [laughter] i would not have wasted, oh, probably seven years of my life. >> host: seven years? is. >> guest: well, i practiced. >> host: what kind of law did you practice? >> guest: i clerked for a federal judge on reagan's short list for the supreme court, that was out in kansas city. and then new york, big corporate law litigation. then i came to work for the

senate judiciary committee in '95 right after the republicans took congress for the first time. in 40 years. and i so didn't want to leave new york. i had to come down like that. i got the offer, like, thursday, friday, and they said you have to start monday. and i cried all weekend. but i just thought this is an historic change. and if people like me don't go to washington now, you're just going to have, you know, the nancy cassel balm staffers switching over to our new, you know, right-wick senators. so i did go there and work there. i guess since it was '95, it was really just about a year and a half because as you know but many may not, starting around ther? of an election -- starting around the summer of an election year nothing gets done in washington because you have shot only a potential new president coming in, but one-third of the senate is going to be different. so everybody else is going on white water rafting trips, and i'd go up and do msnbc and stay

this my beloved new york. >> host: you went to the university of michigan. why'd you choose that school? [laughter] >> guest: like i say, i always thought i was going to be a lawyer. my father's a lawyer, my brother's a lawyer. but then i was at college, and i didn't really want to go to law school. so i didn't apply in time, and my brother called me up and made me apply to law school. he would not hang up the phone until he heard my pencil hitting the paper on the desk. i had to, you know, pay the late admission fees or whatever it was. and then, and i was very conservative. i was, obviously, i was very conservative in kindergarten. [laughter] but university of chicago, as you probably know, is famous for their law and economics school. so i wanted to go to university of chicago. my father wanted me to go to columbia, and he kept wheeling in the old cardiologiers to tell -- codgers to tell me, columbia, number three law school. i stormed off to the library of congress to prove to my father

that columbia was no longer the number three law school and all the reports put michigan number one or two. and i figured, okay, we'll compromise on michigan. >> host: earlier you mentioned that you have to ask people before you thank them in your books. >> guest: i'm the only one. >> host: well, there are two people you thank in nearly all of your books, and that's ned rice and joni evans. who are they? >> guest: my agent for life, i call her. she became my agent -- i didn't have an agent for high screams and -- high crimes and demeanors. regnery came to me, i wrote the book, and then joni became my agent. and the line on bestsellers is you don't make money on your first bestseller, you make money on the advance to the next book. whether it sells or not, you always get an advance. well, not if you're a conservative author. that's what happened to me. i had a publisher for slander, harpercollins, robert jones, to whom he was my specific

editor. he had been calling joni, my agent. i really want ann coulter's next book. he was a convert to conservativism, he said he's tried every kind of radical behavior. [laughter] and he finally realized being in the publishing industry in new york city to be a real radical you had to be a conservative. anyway, he was my beloved editor. he never actually read "slander" because he died right before i was going to send him the manuscript. that's why the book is dedicated to him. harpercollins instantly killed "slander," and poor joni, bless her heart -- and she was a very powerful publishing agent with william morris, she couldn't get any other publisher to pick it up. for two months i couldn't even tell my parents, it was so embarrassing. she just keeps sending me out and keeps telling me about the rejections. and then god bless steve ross at crown. he noticed that the original title for "slander" was "liberals unhinged." and it was on amazon even though

the actual book had not been seen by my editor yet. it only existed on my computer. and steve ross noticed, your book is already selling on amazon. but no one would publish it. [laughter] so he published it, and i've been with crown ever since. >> host: when did you start writing? >> guest: um, probably in kindergarten. i was very upset about the top marginal tax rate. [laughter] >> host: seriously, or are you just making that up? >> guest: no, that i'm joking. [laughter] >> host: all right. did you start writing for a school newspaper, college? >> guest: no, i was never on the journalist path, though i always liked writing. and even when i was a lawyer, i would write, i'd take, you know, a weekend off and write, like, for the human life review or maybe a law review. i was an articles editor at michigan, so i wrote my law review note, and i just always liked the research and writing better than anything else i was doing. and i was, um, one of the -- i

don't think i was technically a founding editor, but on the masthead of the cornell review, the conservative newspaper. but a lot of these conservative newspapers were started by people who were working for the main campus tube and then couldn't get something published and stormed off and started their own conservative newspaper. not us. none of us knew anything about putting a newspaper out. we were just right-wingers. so the first, like, ten issues the layout is insane, huge chunks of articles are missing. [laughter] there are errors throughout the paper, but we were very enthusiastic. >> host: who's jeremy? >> guest: my mentor from cornell. he is so fabulous. and he was the one i talked to about the french revolution. he was the only one of my friends -- he knows about everything though. and he was a professor of mine at cornell. he's inspired generations of right-wingers. he's now at george mason. um, so he has someone he can talk to, i guess. [laughter]

really is fun to rap with people now and then. but one great thing he helped me with with this book which i'm almost embarrassed to admit -- >> host: with "demonic." >> guest: with "demonic," he told me i should read "citizens" which is a massive work on the friend of revolution. i'd seen it, it had come up in everything else i'd read. obviously, i know that he is an historian. i'd written, i forget the details, but some years earlier i had written a column attacking simon for a snippy piece he wrote in the new yorker making fun of patriotic americans with their little flag pins. and in the course of this new yorker article he cited, i don't know, i think it was a norwegian, but it was a norwegian who happened to support nazi germany. so he's citing a nazi in order to attack our little parades. yes, i suppose they're not as stirring as the furor's rally. so i had this prejudice against simon. but, i mean, it's one of the things i've noticed about the

good historians which is why, please, politically-correct bureaucrats, stop making the schools include references to, you know, the american indians' contributions to the telephone and women's contribution to the revolution. you know, just let historians write history. and the good historians whatever their politics, even simon who is obviously a liberal is a fantastic historian, and it's a fantastic book. >> host: "godless." you write that the stupidest students become journalists, and it's one of the easiest jobs in the world. >> guest: yes. [laughter] yes. and i also claim that journalists cannot be, they can commit any crime they want to. they can never be executed since the supreme court has ruled we cannot execute the retarded. and it's very frustrating for someone who's trying to influence public debate and to get your message out there as i do. and i have to work through these retarded people. and it's just amazing how they

can just take one category of how they can screw things up. um, i call them the joke bomb squad because they can dewire any joke in ten seconds. [laughter] >> host: now, on your web page, ann coulter, and we're going to get to phone calls in just a minute. this is c-span's booktv's "in depth" program where on the first sunday of every month we invite one author to look at his or her body of work and to talk about what they write about. 202 is the area code, 624-111 in the east and central time zones, 20 2-624-1115 for those in the pacific and mountain time zones. twitter.com/booktv or send an e-mail, booktv@cspan.org. and i've got so much paper, but -- and i think i've lost it, but you have a list on your web site of journalists who are allowed to interview ann coulter again for a second time.

why do you -- >> guest: pretty short list, isn't it? >> host: it is about seven names, and i'll find it here in a minute. why do you have -- oh, here it is. you've got on that list: >> host: why are those chosen few allowed to interview you again? >> guest: well, there are originally only three, and i chose them specifically because they ran a tape recorder when i talked and then, apparently, played the tape recorder back before typing what i said. and i promise you that is shockingly rare. >> host: do you get misquoted a lot? [laughter] >> guest: somehow i say we need to reduce the capital gains rate, and it comes out as i support hitler and all his works. [laughter] no, it's insane the misquotes. and, i mean, often, you know,

the maoist in my statement is there, but vim and vigor of the quote is completely vacuumed out. like i say, the joke bomb squad, that's always gone. so originally it was simply the ones -- and by the way, they were all liberals who do not agree with my politics, and yet they quoted me accurately. so i don't care what they say in the body of the piece. i don't care what they say about me. just quote me accurately. and three of them did. and then a few got added who did quote me accurately. but after that it started to become a kind of special request, somebody would interview me and say i want to be on that list which is a good incentive for them to have louisiana. [laughter] >> host: we've got to find out who ned rice is, who you thank in all your books. oops, i think we're having a problem, maybe, with the hair here? >> guest: oh, it's on my mic? thank you. [laughter] sorry about that. oh, yeah, ned rice. he's a brilliant, brilliant comedy writer.

and i know a fair number of comedy writers. among the hollywood right-wingers i believe there is a disproportionate number of comedy writers because, a, they're smart. to be funny is hard, to have a political opinion not so hard. they're smart and also, i mean, a lot of humor is politically incorrect. and they're used to -- well, anyway, that's my guess. a lot of them are comedy writers. but ned more than pretty much anyone i know you can, you can give him, you know, i don't know, i need a joke on the mac book air and he'll send you, like, seven jokes. when he's free. i mean, he's very busy. [laughter] >> host: um, when you -- why'd you go to public schools? >> guest: well, because i was too young to object, i suppose. [laughter] i mean, people move to new

canaan, allegedly, for the schools. and, yes, kids from new canaan high school go to good colleges, but i maintain if you moved the exact same population -- we still have our married parents at home, and we still have our parents with magazines and newspapers and books around -- move the exact same population to the worst public school in new york city, we would all have gone to the exact same colleges because it wasn't from what we learned in the school. i mean, there were a few, but they were shockingly few. good teachers. and for most of them it's just a good gig. my, anyone who's, i think, my year from connecticut or around it was like a five, ten-year period, um, in sixth grade the state had decided we would study baboons all year. that would teach us about everything; history, sociology and, ooh, how the baboons relate to each other. could i learn to diagram a sentence, please? please? be i've never learned hem

roization which is why google is so handy for somebody like me. how about spaik spear? shakespeare? >> host: ann coulter is our guest for the next two and a half hours. now it's your turn. john from cincinnati, ohio, please go ahead with your question for ann coulter. >> caller: hi, ann. very nice to speak to you. i wonder if you've ever considered that if you were to contrast the environmental protection agency with some of the other federal agencies, particularly, say, with cdc or fda or even doe, it's really an agency dominated by lawyers rather than by scientists, and that's undermining both to the credibility and the substance of what the agency can do. but it, it does allow for certain things to happen, and a lot of the things that have been criticized. do you have any thoughts on that? >> guest: yeah, i think that's a great point. it's striking how most of the experts promoting something like

the global warming fantasy, they're all lawyers, they're not scientists. and similarly, another agency that, um, i think it's even a little more important than the epa that has been destroyed by lawyers is the cia. after watergate liberals decided, oh, this never would have happened if only we could defang the cia. um, you had democrats vowing to dismantle the cia, and they did. and now, now we don't have any human intelligence. we have a bunch of lawyers sitting around reading the pakistani, you know, daily tattler. >> host: jim in if white plains, new york. good afternoon to you. >> caller: yes, good afternoon. hello, ann. >> guest: hello. >> caller: i have a three-part question, i'd like to end with a quote from the philosopher. the question is, first, how important do you believe is consumerism to capitalism. then how important is mop mentality to consumerism, and thirdly, how important is demonic passion towards bringing about bestsellers?

and the flosser which is a little elitist when he said bestsellers are ill smellers as they have the sticky feel of small people. thank you. >> guest: i don't know what you mean by consumerism. i don't think that's the beauty part of capitalism. the beauty part of captain limb is freedom. people do what they want with their own money. um, and if people are willing to buy enough tickets so that, um, as is often said some guy who can just hit a ball like alex rodriguez can earn multimillions of dollars, i think that's fantastic. that is what people are willing to pay for. we're not of our own volition going out and buying toilets that only have 1.7 gallons of water in them and are incapable of actually being a functioning toilet. as for, as for bestsellers, i

just read -- i think it was in whitaker chambers' journalism before he wrote "witness." there's a book, "ghosts on the roof," and i haven't been reading much of anything. i've been promoting my book and going out with my friends, but there were a few books i was reading casually, and one of them was "ghosts on the roof." and i think it was in one of his columns attacking various intellectuals for having finally come around on the danger of stalin only after stalin allied with hitler. and one of the points he made which rings so true today was that he says, you know, american journalists and intellectuals greeted the depression welation because journalists themselves being maladjusted, depressed, miserable people they were so happy when the rest of the populace became that way too. and also under more of a socialist regime the writers and thinkers would have so much more

power whereas in a system of capitalism they have to sit around denouncing bestsellers as, forget what he said, something like bestsellers are hacks and, and what else would it be? and, i guess, and i guess journalists are unread. >> host: um, from "treason" you mentioned whitaker chambers. even after chambers produced the equivalent of monica's dna-stained dress, they still wouldn't give up on their darling his. of

>> guest: that's a stunning story, and that's exactly what gave rise to joe mccarthy. the country was stunned by this. we've had this huge battle over whether or not his was a soviet spy. now we know as of 1995 -- thank you, daniel patrick moynihan -- for declassifying the papers. we know hiss is in the soviet archives, he's in the decrypted telegrams. but at the time liberals were denying it the same way they denied that bill clinton was fooling around with the interns. it was a very similar battle. and after all this finally you get the jury conviction, and you have this prominent democrat saying i will not turn my back on hiss. the country erupted in rage, and joe mccarthy was one of those americans who erupted in rage and would not let democrats get away with having sheltering spies, associates for a regime as evil at the nazis. and that is the democratic party. and they had been doing it for

years and years with prominent, with prominent democrat officials being soviet spies. working for the democratic administrations of fdr and truman. and mccarthy would not let americans forget it, and that's why they had to blacken his name. >> host: again from "treason," two quotes from your book about joe mccarthy. here's a story of joe mccarthy you won't read in history books. this version will be unfamiliar to most americans inasmuch as it includes facts. joe mccarthy was an extraordinarily bright irish farm boy who rose from humble origins in wisconsin to become one of the most admired politicians of his day. he skipped high school to start his own egg business which thrived for several years until he caught the flu one winter and the chickens died. he went back to high school at age 20 saying he planned to graduate in two years. the principal laughed at him and told him it couldn't be done, and then mccarthy made headlines when he graduated nine months later.

then this: bobby kennedy worked for mccarthy and held him in such high esteem that he asked mccarthy to to be the godfather to his first child born on the fourth of july, 1951. this was 17 months after mccarthy's famous wheeling, west virginia, speech, well into mccarthy's reign of terror. >> guest: you know, um, there are more nuanced descriptions of, um, you know, comrade stalin, of adolf hitler than there are of joe mccarthy. and one of my friends who's living in this japan when "treason" came out told me he knew a lot of publishers, and he said one of his friends who was a publisher and published lots of history books said he'd read "treason" which was published in japanese and said, you know, this version of mccarthy is exactly the opposite of everything i've always read, but i believe this one because it has facts. and that is what, i mean, i

didn't -- i wrote what you just read before he could have read my book and said that. but that is what is striking about all of the descriptions of mccarthy. it's always in high school textbooks they say he was a liar and not just a regular liar, a big liar. i mean, it's just every epithet under the book without any actual facts. and the actual facts are quite striking and what you will find out is that he was exposing the democratic party for collaborating with a regime as evil as the nazis. and it was devastating to the democratic party. and so they had to fight back. they had to smash him, they had to make his name mud. and that's what they've spent a half a century doing. >> host: ann coulter is the author of eight bestsellers. high crimes and misdemeanors came out in 1998. slander in 2002. treason, 2003. how to talk to a liberal if you must in 2004. god less in 2006. if democrats had any brains came

out in 2007. guilty in 2008 and demonic is her most recent. and you can see from the covers that we were just showing you that most of ann coulter's books have her picture on the cover save for the first one and the last one, "demonic." but on the back of "demonic" which, of course, i don't have right now in front of me is a picture of you not dressed in black. >> guest: i have it. >> host: i've got it right here. i've got to hold it up for the camera. not dressed in black, but a picture of you on the back dressed in white for the first time. >> guest: right. >> host: what's the purpose of this? >> guest: well, as i said at the beginning of the interview when you quoted from one of my books, once you see liberals sputtering and spittle coming from their mouths, you do it over and over and over again. and for some reason me appearing on the cover of my books smiling, wearing a black cocktail dress really drove them crazy. so i kept doing it. [laughter]

and then, i don't know, my publisher wanted this book to look different. also we were thinking of trying to put the back cover picture on the front because i do appear on tv, and if you can get point .1% more book sales because those people say, oh, i've seen her on tv, let's see what this book is. but in the end we decided to noo put me on the cover. >> host: do you enjoy book tours? >> >> guest: um, i'd put it a different way. [laughter] i so prefer the research and writing. so prefer it. which is a part of the reason i haven't been reading anything this summer. i have to sweeten the horror of a book tour. [laughter] by going out with my friends. constantly, every night as soon as the first two weeks are over. and then i just take as much of a vacation as i can. >> host: what is it about a book tour that drags you down? >> guest: getting up in the morning, having to get on an airplane, having to stay in a hotel.

that's the main thing. i mean, i like talking about my books. um, and this book tour i must say has been unlike almost every other book tour, maybe unlike all but the first one, um, in that people have actually talked to me about my book. for all of the rest of them, some small line, often a joke, has been ripped out of context, the humor vacuumed out, presented to the american people as if said in angry earnestness, and all i do is answer the same question and explain the same joke for two months. and i think, um, contrary to my, to my position that liberals can't learn, i think they finally have learned. on the eighth book, they're not going to turn me into david duke, and they always come out looking worse after these campaigns of hate against me. so this time it's more of a pretend she doesn't exist approach which has allowed we to talk about the book, and that's fun be. i didn't realize you had to promote a book. so i took a two month leave of

absence to write my first book from my law firm. and be suddenly my publisher kept setting up all these radio interviews, and i couldn't get my legal work done. and i complained to george will about it. and he said, ann, what would you be doing if you weren't on radio talking about your book? you'd be on the phone talking about your book with your friends. so just do it so more than one person can hear you. and he was right, so it is fun for the -- it is fun to talk about a book you've just written. but getting up in the morning, not fun. having to get on an airplane, not fun. having hair and makeup, totally great. [laughter] >> host: this is from the huffington post media on your recent book tour: ann coulter and piers morgan have awkward conversation, is the headline. [laughter] >> guest: well, it sounds like he's going to be gone by the end of the year based on this hacking scandal. no, i -- >> host: what was awkward about

it for you? >> guest: that i couldn't answer a question. [laughter] i mean, he seems like a nice fellow, but, um, i also think he has, um, -- look, this is the problem with that one interview. he asked me three questions. i answered three questions. it was a half an hour interview. that will indicate how many times he interrupted me. so i start to answer, and i just power through, power through, power through. i'm getting this through. so eventually i got all three answers out for the three questions i was able to answer in a 30-minute interview. and i -- you can never punch down, you can only punch up. a little rule for public figures. >> host: what does that mean? it means you cannot attack people who are beneath you, and he has very low ratings, and i just am getting a very strong sense that he's trying to make a name for himself by get anything a tiff with me. but, you know, i'm at a

disadvantage because it's not an advantage for me to get in a fight with some little-watched cable news host. no, please, let me get in a fight with katie couric. i'll do that. you punch up, you don't punch down. >> host: erie, pennsylvania, go ahead, laura. you're on with ann coulter on booktv's "in depth" program. >> caller: hi, ann. i want to thank you for your conservative sharing especially on liberal campuses. why aren't we touting the the benefits of not only fiscal conservative policy which, like balancing the budget is good for every family, every state, but also the social ones? you just mentioned the graphic sex education and how much harm it's doing. there are so many social ills linked to sexual behavior, especially amongst our youth, that harm -- especially black and minority populations like the number one cause of poverty

is, um, single female-headed households. blacks have 70% of out-of-wedlock births, so they're going to as a percentage of the population have more trapped in poverty. the std stuff, we hear of hiv day and blacks, sadly, have many more of all stds link today that sexual behavior. abortion rates, we know that blacks account for 14%, but they have over a third. planned parenthood is killing over a third black babies. and fatherless youth are involved in criminal behaviors at higher rates. so all of this stuff is linked to intact families, why wouldn't the first black president and his wife who have an intact, traditional marriage not be funding things like abstinence education, fatherhood initiatives and, um, you know, why aren't we making that case? i think michele bachmann is the only one that has tied the social issues to the fiscal

ones. >> guest: um, thank you. no, i think a lot of conservatives do, but we certainly don't have any, any great presence in the mainstream media. i mean, i write a lot about single mother hollywood in my last book, "guilty," that caused a little bit of a stir, but all i did was cite facts, cite the statistics on it. and, yeah, i mean, that's what i was referring to earlier when i said, um, democrats will take any mob, they'll switch from, um, from being the patrons of the racist kkk mob the being the patron -- to being the patron of welfare-receiving blacks. and it just becomes another racket and look at what the democrats have done to the black family. it's a lovely thing. that is more on the theme of my last book, "guilty," about people wanting to be victims in america and how it takes a lot of clout to be a victim. but the last thing you want to become is the essential charge.

but i think it's always going to be fought against because democrats, the democratic party needs people who need the government to vote them into office. >> host: michelle in gardenerville, nevada. good afternoon. >> caller: hi. i am a longtime booktv/c-span watcher. thank you guys for your, for what you do. and be i just would like to ask ann a question. and more of a comment, kind of. i am curious to know how she feels about any quote-unquote liberal legislation that's ever been passed, ever, that she might be willing to admit that she supports. and that her hair is fine, and she could probably leave it alone now. [laughter] thank you. >> guest: oh. i'm going to be throwing my hair back constantly now, following

my own lesson from how to talk to a liberal if you must. she probably really hates the black dress and me smiling on the cover of my books too. thanks for your call, michelle. no, obviously not. you might want to give an example, by the way. well, didn't you support? i don't know, what? >> host: well, she asked about liberal legislation. >> guest: what liberal legislation do i support? none. if i supported it, it probably wasn't liberal. >> host: who's your favorite liberal? >> guest: um, you know, the last time i answered this question, um, it was during -- [laughter] it was during my "slander" book tour. and i went out to dinner with one of my favorite liberals afterwards, and i said, oh, i cited you on tv today. somebody asked me for my favorite liberals, and i named you, mickey couse, and at the time andrew sullivan. and he said, ann, are you aware

you just cited all liberals that liberals consider conservatives? [laughter] so a lot of them seem to have begun to make the transition. okay, lawrence o'donnell. juan williams. smart liberals. bill maher. he's funny. he'd be smarter if he read, bill. >> host: what's your professional relationship with bill maher? >> guest: well, he introduces me as his first wife and, apparently, a lot of people believe that. [laughter] i think he's verified i was his most frequent guest when i was on politically incorrect, and i do think he's very quick and funny, but he brags about how he doesn't read books. and if you're going to get all your politics from rolling stone magazine, i'm sorry, you'd be so much funnier if you read more. >> host: you mentioned that you enjoy the research and writing part of a book. 594 footnotes or end notes are at the end of "demonic." >> guest: we call them footnotes

cloak callly. >> host: how do you do your research, where do you write? >> guest: um, i read and read and read. i tend not to take notes, um, which is why i'm really looking forward to doing all of my research on kindle books because it's going to be so far faster to -- so much faster to find facts. i do use post-it notes. we could be at a formal gathering, and we will have post-it notes. so my notes tend to be full, but that doesn't help when you're trying to find a specific quote. but i do lots and lots of reading. i probably don't use, end up using 0 or 90% of the books i read. but that's what gets you to the good books. just for a small example, the books i read on group think and riots and financial panics and so on and so forth.

i read all or part of probably a dozen such books. um, but gust to have he -- gustav he bonn was really, there it is. it rings true, it is stated so clearly. it was, i mean, fried, hitler and mussolini acknowledged gustav as the father and the expert on group think. and so why bother quoting the other ones? if toward the end i was actually cutting some quotes out of some of the other books because i sort of felt like, well, maybe i should put in some other authors on this. but then i realized you're just stuffing them in pointlessly. gustav says it all. so you have to read a lot of books to know which ones you're going to end up needing or using or even what the direction of the book is. but it's so much fun, and you learn so much. and especially when you can talk to your friends about your theories on things and argue with them about it and then, and then write the case out. and i wasn't always sure what i preferred, the book tour or the

writing, and i've been asked that a lot. and i was thinking it when i was writing this last book, i'm asked that question a lot, and i am so happy right now to just keep reading. >> host: is the book tour over? >> guest: well, i'll spend the rest of the summer be. i mean, it basically is. i have a big book signing coming up in san francisco, the san francisco young republicans august 27th, we're meeting in a phone booth. [laughter] it's so exciting. and so there are a few things like that. it isn't the intensity of those very early morning tv shows anymore. but, i mean, i like talking about public affairs and having an effect on the public debate. but it more tends to be now they're interviewing me on something else, and we'll flash up a picture of the book. this will probably be the last in-depth interview i will have on the book. >> host: when you go to a place like san francisco or canada, do you worry about security?

>> guest: um, we didn't. [laughter] i'm a little oblivious. my friends used to come to college speeches with me, and for years they would tell me, well, for one thing they wanted to come because the conservative girls are always the best looking girls in the audience, and that's why they'd come. but for years they were warning me, you can't just go out in crowds and sign books like that. it's like a mosh pit. so they had been warning me for years and can then however many years ago, it was like eight years ago at the university of arizona, the two boys ran at me from the audience. they missed because they throw like girls, liberals, and they got their faces smashed, by the way, because we did have an audience out there, and i said get them, and one of them ended up with a broken collarbone. i found this out from an fbi agent who had ran back there. and from that moment on for college speeches, for big public events i'll have a bodyguard with me. most of the time i don't, and, i mean, you never know.

but this is what gave me the idea for this book. most people don't know unless they personally know me what it is like to be a publicly recognizable conservative. and we never want to talk about it because, number one, you don't want to inspire copy cats. number two, you don't want to sound like a pussy like paul krugman whining about his hate mail. oh, boohoo. no conservative's ever going to physically attack a conservative. it happens to conservative public figures all the time. so, yeah, it does change your behavior a little, but not most of the time. i have a bodyguard sitting there right now keeping an eye on you, by the way. [laughter] just kidding. >> host: what do you do your writing? >> guest: in my bed. >> host: longhand, computer? >> guest: oh, computer, computer, computer. in fact, i use my computer so much, you know, at the end when you're getting a copy at its back and you're writing in the changes toward the end, i don't know why, but the last two versions you're writing in this changes, i was so used to

writing on my computer, and i had written a lot. i cut half of this book. this is half of what i wrote because i wanted in "demonic" i wanted to get it down to the really crucial parts. anyway, i'm writing my copy edits in if by hand, and i'm so used to spell check i'm expecting for it to automatically change on the piece of paper. it was very frustrating that i had to look up how to spell words. >> host: what about your columns? do you write those every day? >> guest: once a week. there's a lot of research that goes into those columns. >> host: mike, new york city. you're on with ann coulter. >> caller: yeah, hi, ann. good afternoon. i was wondering, if obama gets tossed into the garbage where he belongs, what do you think that would do for our credit rating, and also what would it do for our 14 trillion in debt? and by the way, your pictures on your books are outstanding. >> guest: thank you. the last three, i think, were particularly good. that's the same photographer, so i'm sticking with her.

though they're all fine. no, i mean, repealing obamacare for one thing, i think it would help the jobs situation. anyone who knows anyone who runs a small business, and i know many, they're not hiring, they're downsizing, they're often going out of business. you keep hearing this cliche about how, well, businessmen just want certainty. it's the uncertainty that makes everyone afraid to act. there's some element of truth, but, no, obamacare is certain. you're going to have to pay an enormous amount for every employee you hire. will that help jobs? no, that is certain, and it is very bad. what you need is less government. what you need are fewer regulations. what