at this time i'd like to welcome penny who is a tenth grade biology teacher and she's an incredibly strong woman who's husband was one of these brave officers. her husband tragically died in a high-speed chase in july. penny's loving wife and the mother of their children, andy who's 5 and jessica who is 2 joins us here today. penny, we're extremely grateful to you and your husband and his great sacrifice for our state. [applause]

[applause] >> so when i had the opportunity to go meet penny, andy, her little boy was 4 at the time. and so we got down to get a picture, got down to his height and so instead of me trying to make him feel better, he was rubbing my back so he's the cutest -- he's a beautiful boy. so thank you very much for this and god bless you and god bless your children good luck. [applause] >> now i want to express, you know, our gratitude for everybody that serves, you know, whether it's in law enforcement or in the military to defend and

protect our state and our country. and, you know, your heart goes out to the families that lose their loved ones like this whether it's interstate or iraq or afghanistan. your heart goes out to them. so in closing, i want to again thank you for the consideration you have given me today and the courtesy you extended to a new governor last year. since redistricting has been added to the already packed agenda in 2012, consideration and courtesy will command a special premium over the next several weeks. know that i'm open to any idea from whatever source is likely to improve the lives of floridians. over the past year, i've experienced the benefit of listening to floridians. i've listened to each of you and, yes, i've even listened to my very close personal friends from the media. [laughter]

[applause] >> i get asked all the time what's the biggest difference between this and running a company? and if you run a company, you don't have -- you don't have media with you all the time but i've gotten to know everybody and meet their families and so i've enjoyed that, so -- [laughter] >> could you tell? no person, profession or party has a monopoly on all the good ideas. the commitment i make to those here today is to keep open clear lines of communication so that together our time in the capital can best be spent in the service of those sent us here. that is my pledge to each of you. now, my pledge to the people of florida is to continue to give this job my all. to help build the framework for an enduring prosperity that is grounded in the intellect and ambition of our citizens. while the great recession has taken a lot out of us, it's also

revealed the strength and resilience that's deeply ingrained in the industryious people who call florida home. other states have had their chance. this is our time. this is absolutely -- if you just think about it, this is the time where florida should be the job creator. there's no reason we cannot be the number 1 creator of jobs in the country. it will be the biggest thing we do to change people's lives. it's our time to show the nation and the world that in this century, florida will be the safe haven, the safe haven for individuals to want to live their individual version of the american dream. as each of us know, none of us can do this alone. so let's get to work together. god bless you, god bless the great state of florida. thank you very much. [applause]

>> the response from the democrats is offered in two parts. in just a moment senate minority leader nan rich offers her perspective on the state of the state. >> we'll be live again at 3:30 eastern as the head of the agency that sets internet domain names talks about the decision to expand names beyond their traditional dot.com and dot net. the centers for strategic and international studies will talk with rod beckstrom of internet corporation for assigned names and numbers. today it's primary day in new hampshire.

>> i think one of the most frightening responsibilities i've ever experienced was to have some substantial responsibility for communicating responsibly to the electorate in the current media. you all know the basic statistics to communicate any kind of message to the public. slogans need details. to me this is one of the truths i've learned in recent politics. that you cannot communicate details. if you can be on the slogan side of an issue, you can win. if you're on the details side of the issue, you're going to lose.

>> tony blankly died this past weekend at the age of 63. he was press secretary to then house speaker newt gingrich as republicans took control of congress in 1994. and later worked as a conservative commentator, author, and editorial page editor in the "washington times." his more than 40 c-span appearances are all archived and searchable online at the c-span video library. >> the u.s. postal service has proposed closing up to 3700 postal facilities throughout the country by the year 2015 in order to save $20 billion. one of those facilities is a processing plant in white river junction, vermont with 245 workers. about 500 people recently filled an american legion hall in white river junction for a public meeting on the postal service plan. this is about 2.5 hours. >> okay, may i have your attention please.

may i have your attention? thank you. good evening. my name is michael powers. i'm the marketing customer relations manager for the northeast area of the united states postal service. thank you very much. great input already. i appreciate that. i'll be serving as tonight's moderator for the -- for the community meeting for our a&p process. a couple housekeeping issues if i may before we begin, in the unlikely event that we need to vacate this space, the emergency exits to my left, to my right, in front, two doors in the back. men's room and ladies room are located at the far end of the hall. for those of you who currently have a cell phone or an electronic device, i'd kindly ask that you turn it to mute.

and for any hearing-impaired people here tonight, we have sign services available and seats available that are referred as well to my left. let me begin by thanking the american legion post 26 and specifically commander dan reed for allowing us to be here tonight to use his space. commander, where are you, please? thank you, commander. [applause] >> i would like to introduce the number of folks that are with us tonight. i'd like to first introduce senator leahy who is with us. [applause] >> senator sanders. [applause] >> congressman welch. [applause]

>> the governor. [applause] >> i'd also like to introduce a representative from senator shaheen, bethany uhrich. [applause] >> with us also a representative for congress beth's office congressman collins. [applause] >> also a representative for u.s. senator from new hampshire, michael scalia. [applause] >> also with us, jim condos, vermont, secretary of state. [applause] >> annie nunn vermont's

commissioner department of labor. [applause] >> also vince, a vermont state senator. [applause] >> also with us are a number of folks from the united states postal service, the district manager of northern new england district, deb essler. applause >> the lead plant manager for the northern new england district, michael bree. [applause] >> the acting plant manager from the white river junction plant, mayor woodward, also known as woody. [applause] >> and from our postal union, the regional coordinator for the northeast region of the american postal union. [applause] >> wayne martin, local president of local 520 for the abwu.

[applause] >> frank ruggerio, a northeast bank for the american postal union. [applause] >> representing the national association of postal supervisors in new england area vice president cy dumas. [applause] >> the vermont state president for the national association of postal supervisors ray fields. [applause] >> and randy sharon, the burlington national association of postal supervisors, branch president. [applause] >> from our mail handlers union, local 301, new england president of the mail handler's union, tim dwyer. [applause] >> and the branch president of the white river junction mail

handlers, bill kramer. [applause] >> and i'd also like to recognize the number of current postal employees that are here in the audience tonight as well as i'd ask for a loud applause for our retired postal employees who are also here tonight. thank you for being here. [applause] >> we have two cameras located to my left in the back of the room and i'd like to invite c-span being here tonight and they will be filming throughout the night. very much appreciate your taking time to our white river junction tonight. and also to my right, two women will be recording all that is said tonight and making it a matter of the record. just briefly why are we here? the purpose is to get input that

the postal service is looking for input relative to a -- current study that's being conducted with the white river junction plant processing facility. the reason that this study is being conducted is the postal service finds -- we find ourselves in a financial difficult situation and that's no new news to anybody. as information since the year 2006, our organization 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 or the efficiencies of the postal service on a national basis are maintained. we find ourselves in a situation and we'll have a presentation by deb who will clearly articulate the enormous challenges we as an organization face. we thank you for being here

tonight. we look forward to the input, comments and/or questions that you may have. understand, no decision has been made relative to the white river junction plant as we speak today. this is a process that again that we have instituted on a national basis. this is a segment that is very important to us. when you have a to say is something that we'll take forward and consider as we begin to create postal services of 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 states. deb is responsible for the states of vermont, new hampshire and maine. deb? [applause] >> we'll speak real loud and i

invite -- and i encourage others that are going to be speaking tonight. the problem with the room is the speaker system ends halfway through the room. so what we have done is we put a temporary speaker here and we'll try to extend it as far as we can, but we will definitely speak up. and please continue to let us know if it's difficult to hear in the back, all right? thank you. >> thank you very much, mike. and welcome, everyone. we appreciate you coming tonight. it's a very important part of the process. this is -- as mike pointed out, preliminary information that we're going to share with you in terms of an area mail processing study, one of 152 studies going on currently across the united states. as you know, the postal service has recently announced it intends to seek some significant changes. in the mail processing network, among other things. i'll be giving you some background tonight on these changes and why we believe they are necessary. we'll also share the proposed changes for mail processing operations located at white

river junction, vermont. i have a lot to cover tonight. and there are many questions that hopefully a lot of those will be answered as we go through the presentation so i'm going to ask that you save your questions, comments and concerns until we're finished with our presentation tonight. we're here tonight to hear from the community. and we're hoping that you'll focus your questions and your comments and your concerns on service and cost and customer issues. potential employee impacts are summarized during the presentation as well, and 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 how we process mail today. ♪ >> first class mail is declining at a rapid pace because people

are mailing less. with less mail to process and deliver, the postal service has to make some smart business decisions that are critical to preserving its future. the postal service has undertaken area mail processing studies, these studies are one part of the overall strategy to get the postal service on the path to profitablebly for both its customers and its employees. right now the postal service has a vast network of mail processing facilities. these facilities were established many years ago to process increasing mail volume. as the nation grew, so did the postal service. but now with so many mobile and web-based communications options available people in businesses are moving away from using the postal service for sending bills, statements and other documents that were once mailed 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 am. during the day, however, there is little processing that actually occurs. most of the work during these hours involve business mail acceptance and maintenance. so for a significant part of the day, the plant is largely idle. here's the problem, when there is 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 on the customer? the answer has to do with something called mail service standards. what most customers may not realize is that 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 seen in the past. and changing service standards to match reality is one way of keeping the postal service viable. what the postal service proposes is changing that overnight service to a two to three-day service. if this change were made, usps would have about two days to process and deliver first class mail. this will allow a plant that processes mail only six hours a day to process mail for 20 hours a day, effectively doing the work of three plants at one plant and increasing overall efficiency. this lengthened mail processing mail will allow us to transport further distance to more centralized locations. by simply making a small adjustment in service standards, the postal service could reduce the number of mail processing facilities from about 500 to fewer than 200 and realize billions of dollars in annual

savings. >> the postal service is very vital to the american economy and american society. we realize that. people realize that. we have to say profitable in order to provide service to the american public as we consolidate plants we'll be moving people from one place to another. some cases we'll be moving employees from one job to another. in that same time frame we have a lot of people who can retire who want to work with the people who can retire in order for them to go. we'll be here a long, long time we have to get our financial household in order. >> these changes would bring huge cost-savings but also lay the foundation for a financially stable future postal service that will continue to serve our customers for many years to come. ♪ >> okay.

thank you. before i go forward with the presentation i just wanted to make a couple of comments. i think it's really important that we all understand while there are 252 studies going on currently across the united states, there was no facility selected based on any criteria that was specific to performance. the white river junction performance is outstanding. the employees in white river junction are outstanding. this was a network realignment of the postal service. [applause] >> and it's based on looking at the networks, the changes that we're going through right now and looking at where we want to be between now and 2020 to really be successful and support a very large mailing industry as well, so no way is this an indication that our employees, again, are not doing an

outstanding job 'cause they are. the postal service is responding to a changing marketplace. the reality is that the volume of mail we process annually has declined more than 43 billion pieces in the past five years. and we know that it will continue to decline. as a result, our mail processing network is now much larger than we can afford. looking ahead, declining volumes dictate we must make radical changes to our mail processing network and so this evening, we'll provide you information around two very important topics. first, that we intend to radically realign our mail processing network in the next two years based on a two to three-day standard for local delivery of first class mail and second, the initial results of the area mail processing study, the preliminary information on white river junction, vermont.

to illustrate the business change, let me start with this graph. it shows mail volume transit projections through 2020. it shows our first class mail product which includes those traditional cards and letters that you put a postage stamp on, and our standard mail also known as advertising mail. 2006 was our high watermark. since then, first class mail has declined 20% due to electronic diversions and the economic slowdown. the sobering reality is that first class mail volumes will not return to previous levels. more and more people are continuing to use electronic means to communicate and to pay their bills. experts predict the continued decline in the volume of first class mail which is the product that drives our network requirement and pays our bills at the postal service

contributes the most to the bottom line. the enduring part of our business is advertising mail, which we expect to show some growth in the outyears. but even significant growth and continued growth that we're experiencing in the package volume is not enough to make up for the ongoing decline in first class mail. this change in the makeup of the mail from first class to advertising mail, therefore, has significant ramifications for the postal service infrastructure for two major reasons. one is the volume decline means we have less revenue to cover the cost of our infrastructure. and two, we also have excess capacity through our networks. simply put, to process less mail we need to look at fewer facilities. i'm going to mention the word "capacity" quite a few times tonight. it relates to our ability to

process mail and packages. our mail processing input evolved over many years. and to take advantage of improvements in technology, between 1970 and 2006, our focus was on expanding, to handle our then current volume. from 1970 to 2006, we increased our use of automation to create efficiencies, we built large new facilities to house advanced mail processing equipment. it was a period of growth and significant capital investment to social service. we built facilities with the confidence at that time that the population and the economy if they grew, that mail volumes would also increase. since 2006, the confidence in that perpetual volume growth has evaporated. prior to 2006, our operational goal was to stay ahead of the

growth curve to ensure that we have the capacity to support larger volumes. now our operational goal is to stay ahead of the cost curve, to ensure we have just enough capacity to meet lower volumes. and to operate at a lower cost than our revenues can support in the future. so now we're going to from that expanding environment into a contracting environment. we have to reduce our mail processing infrastructure to get ahead of declining volumes. this activity is at the core of our ability to return the postal service to profitability. reducing our infrastructure in response to volume decline is really nothing new. since 2006, mail volume dropped 20% and we reduced our net worth by nearly 200 mail processing facilities. we did this successfully without any appreciable impact on our customers. in fact, we delivered record service during this period. ..t 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 righ we'll continue to follow the process and use study data,

the public input and objective criteria in making our decisions. by 2013 the network may consist of fewer than 200 mail processing facilities which would put us ahead of the cost curve for the remainder of the decade. i know this is an aggressive plan. the results would be a core operating network that would meet the needs of the nation for the next 30 years. here's what our mail processing footprint looks like today. you can see we have facilities throughout the country, facilities of varying sizes that employ 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 mail collected from post offices and mail dropped off directly by business customers. then the mail is sorted, almost all of it through an

automated process before shipped back to 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 prevents us from being able to sort the mail until all the mail that needs to be sorted into delivery order for the local letter carrier has arrived at the facility. this has enormous implications because it constrains our operating window, forcing us to process mail in the middle of the night and it forces us to maintain a large number of mail processing locationses. the dots on this map represent all the mail processing facilities being reviewed for possible

consolidation. the blue stars, i realize they're a little hard to see from the audience here. the blue stars represent facilities for which studies are underway and the red stars represent the 252 additional mail processing facilities that were on the list that was released by the postal service on september 15th. as you can see we are -- >> why don't we just talk about the things relate here, vermont and new hampshire. >> we'll get to that. i appreciate that. [applause] >> [inaudible]. >> we will move it along, thank you. >> trust me, these people know how to process mail. doing it for years. [applause] >> the studies will consider the overall financial impact of closure and consolidation and will include significant

stake-holder input. this is what the mail processing network might look like in the future if after consolidation all of the studies were approved. [booing] a service standard is a stated goal for service achievement for each class of mail. the postal network is built to meet the existing goal. that means that even though the dramatic decline in mail volume has resulted in excess capacity in the network, it will reduce the size of the network to address the excess capacity problems or would not be able to consistently achieve the existing service standards. that is why we intend to propose to rebuild the network based on a two to three-day standard of local deliverry for first class mail. the operational benefit would be tremendous. [booing] even though the change would go relatively unnoticed by the average customer. this would allow us to

design a much more efficient, lower cost, mail processing network with far fewer facilities. [shouting] >> not the right thing to do. >> here we can get a sense of what the change would represent. let me show you how we meet the current overnight first class class mail delivery requirement. the circles represent 24 hour clocks. on the left you see the overnight first class mail delivery requirement compresses our mail processing time into a small window of activity. beginning roughly at midnight continuing for the next four to six hours. now i did meet last night and earlier this morning with some of the employees at the wet river junction post office and plant they wanted to be sure that you knew in whiteriver junction they process more than the four to six hours, significantly more. even with that, we're going to show you a little further along in the presentation, there is still a pretty strong business case of savings but, this represents

a national average of mail processing and it is a little bit longer river than whiteriver junction. due to the overnight first class mail service standards we have to maintain this capacity even though it is not especially efficient. and give the time and distance associated with getting mail to and from each facility, it also means that we have to maintain numerous facilities. the proposal operating model would be based on changing again to a two to three-day first class mail service standard range. this would allow mail to be processed during a much longer span during a 24 hour clock. we intend to this kind of future network would support a two to three-day first class standard t would include times dropping off first class mail or what we call entry times for first class mail. we would expect these

consolidations would result in an estimated 50% reduction in mail processing equipment, and a significant reduction in our physical footprint, eliminating latent capacity, meaning time when the equipment is not running in our network t would also enable both us and our customers to optimize transportation. one obvious question about these changes is, how does this impact the customer? there are really two major areas of change that would affect our commercial customers. first the local footprint. literally where business customers would need to drop off mail. customers can drop mail off at most any accepting facility. however to get a desnating discount that some mailers currently receive, mail must be entered where it is process. our local management team is available to discuss the specific mailing concerns with our mailers. we did meet with a number of

our larger mailers this afternoon to start an ongoing dialogue with them should this be a study that goes forward we would want to problem solve with them on a regular basis to make sure their businesses are not impacted. we also think our commercial customers would be able to really accommodate the new schedule. many of our largest customers and mailing industry associations have actually told us this is something we need to consider. that being said we know that proposed changes would have a significant impact on the mailing industry and local mailers. we have outlined the proposal to most of the major industry groups on a conceptual basis. generally they have been pleased with the response. the we have a good track record of working with the industry and with local mailers and are committed to making sure that the transition would be a as smooth as possible, again if this were a study that were to go forward. let's speak for a moment

about our employees. these business decisions weren't made lightly and these changes would affect many of our employees. we have dedicated and committed workforce, not only in whiteriver junction but across northern new england and across the united states. postal employees do a phenomenal job and they deserve tremendous credit for achieving record service and efficiency gains over the past few years, even if very challenging times. [applause] nearly every employee at our mail processing facilities could be touched by these changes, changes even the possibility of changes is very unsettling. should these changes become a reality we would make every effort to accommodate employees and provide positions where we can. we would also work closely with our unions to reposition affected employees. over the past 12 years the size of our workforce has

been reduced by 250,000 positions, mostly through attrition, which largely involves retirements. we have never had to lay off employees. it is part of our culture to be responsible and responsible employer and that won't change. now that i shared a little bit about the general information on area mail processing let's talk a little bit about more about this anp study. let me make it clear that we have great employees at whiteriver junction. they are about 80 miles apart. give you a little geographic information here. and the next slide shows

approximately 91 miles between the whiteriver 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 that preliminary data that the mail processing work hour 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 dollars, annually and the transportation savings of 490,000. there are other miscellaneous savings in there. you notice that the slide doesn't add up to the bottom line. these are the major categories that we gave you here tonight.

in most consolidations employees are impacted and often times they have to change jobs, hours, and rotations. all three assignments would be made in accordance with the agreements we have with our unions if this study were to go forward. the study shows a projected net reduction of 51 employees. every attempt will be made to place our employees within jobs within our district. so you understand what that net impact is, it is taking the number of positions in the three plants involved, manchester, new hampshire, white river junction, vermont and burlington, vermont which is in excess junction. after the study, if we were to close white river junction, there would be a net decrease of 51 positions for the three facilities. the proposed consolidation would support a two to three day service standard for first class mail. other local customers considerations include

retail services currently available at the white river junction processing and distribution center. those would remain. this is mail acceptance unit that is currently at the white river junction processing facility would also remain. the local collection box times could be adjusted slightly if the anp went through. local postmarks, continue to be available for first class mail for anyone who wants to take that to retail. and delivery times to our residentses our customers, would be unchange and unaffected by an amp study. mail delivery would be same time as it is now. >> presort mail will continue to receive appropriate postage discounts. mailers who drop ship to designated sectional facilities with the discount suspect there could be changes if the amp is approved. we'll discuss some of changes this afternoon with some of our larger mailers. they're giving us detailed

information on the impact this would have to them so we could start looking should this go forward how we can best support each of them invest and support each of them. >> can i ask a question? >> can i ask a question? >> woe you appreciate that. >> that is currently under review of area headquarters. there may be change to the study based on these reviews. we'll continue to take public comments. through january 19th. so that we can take all those comments and send they will for war to the area office and headquarters process to the amp proposal can be considered at that point. we take seriously our obligation to the entire mailing industry. it is a trillion dollar industry that employs more than 8 million people across the united states. we're soliciting your input tonight so we can make sure we make good business decisions that you are heard,

your comments, your questions, your suggestions are heard. rand that we continue to make the mail strong for us, for you and the mailing industry for many years to come. we're going to leave this slide up there for you just to remind you do have 15 days after tonight and we want to be sure, in addition to the information that is being written down here from your questions and comments tonight that you also are encouraged to mail in any of those to us as well with. >> [inaudible]. >> so, frank, i'm going to turn it back to you. >> thank you very much, debbie. appreciate it. before we get into the question and comment section from the -- >> hold your microphone. >> thank you. before we get into the general question and comment part of the presentation, we have some very distinguished guests that i would like to invite up to speak. i would like to begin with the governor. please. [applause]

>> thank you. i'm hon ford to be here. i will be very brief. we want to hear, congressional delegation wants to hear from the hard-working employees of u.s. postal service that do such an extraordinary job delivering our mail on time in vermont some my hat is 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 hoping to organize this forum tonight. i feel blessed as your governor to serve in a 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 boy.

so thank you very much. [applause] and before i say a few words about the sheer idiocy of shutting down the white river junction processing facility -- [cheers and applause] i want to thank our congressional delegation for the announcement that just came through from washington, where they, with their extraordinary powers convinced 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, thank you, patrick, thank you, peter. we're proud of you. [applause] couple of quick words. i was born and raised in wyndham county. we understand what closing the white river junction

processing facility would mean to vermont. we're a rural state. 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 250 hard-working people who process the mail right here and do a great job of it. it is 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 three or four or five days later than we send it. [cheers and applause] i say this to the u.s. postal service. you do a great job. it doesn't get any better. in my other life in the private sector, i run a

small business just south of here called putney student travel. we rely on this white river junction facility to get our product to the market that allows us to employ very monthers and they don't do it any better than here. what we happen to do in that business, is send community service projects with high school students all over the world to developing countries. the one thing that helps us is that the u.s. postal service gets mail reliably to people when you need to get it there. we dread sending mail to the third world, developing countries that we're dealing with because their postal services don't. this proposal will join that in having a back water postal service that costs us jobs and costs us economic opportunity. [applause]

so i'll close by saying this. we in rural vermont, where internet service is spotty, where cell service is at times, nonexistent, need 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 the savings -- [cheers and applause] and i ask this one question. if the studies and the mad san -- madison avenue videos in fact suggest that there are going to be savings through employees, but we're somehow not going to lose any jobs, i ask what kind of math you're using?

[applause] so i'll be standing together with our congressional delegation to do everything we can to bring sense to the u.s. postal service, keep the whitewater, white river junction postal center open, and keep us growing jobs and economic opportunities in vermont. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, governor. [cheers and applause]

thank you, governor. at this time i would invite senator leahy, please. senator. [applause] >> does this sound better? normally i would go first but i'm not going to tonight. i'm going to, as senator sanders, who has worked so hard on this on the senate floor and our caucuses with congressman and myself i will speak first. i want to read just one thing. marcel and i got a lot of christmas cards this year, a lot. but one we saved especially. it is from chris richardson. is here? [applause] chris, there you go. he said, my family and i just want to take a second and thank you for all you've done for the post office, its employees, the families

and customers. we appreciate everything you've done. chris, i want you and your families to know senator sanders, congressman welch, governor shumlin, and i, we will not stop one moment standing up for you. bernie. [applause] >> thank you. let me begin by thanking all of you, not only for being here tonight. this is phenomenal turnout but thank you for the ex-trord -- extraordinary work you do every single day. sometimes we take you for granted. we shouldn't. you're doing a great job and thank you for that. [applause] i also want to thank the post office. this meeting was originally scheduled for december 18th.

that was a very bad time. i appreciate you're rescheduling the meeting to a more convenient and appropriate time. now, let me begin by picking up on a point that the governor and senator leahy have already made. we are in the midst of the worst recession since the great depression. 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, i got to tell you, again get very strong opposition, to try to create the 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 ispat tently insane to be talking about throwing

100,000 americans out of work. [cheers and applause] the post office is making 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 things and in congress, senator leahy, congressman, welch and i are working on legislation to do that, there are business models available to grow the postal service rather than cutting, cutting, and cutting. [applause] now, this is the business model of mr. donahue, postmaster general donahue

and the postal service right now. they want to eliminate 252 processing plants, or they're looking at that, including the one here in white river junction. they want to shut down thousands of rural post offices which in many parts of our country, and our state, are the centers of town. it is where people come together, including 15 in the state of vermont. [applause] they want to eliminate saturday mail delivery. now when you do all of that in my view, when you do, as the post office indicated, slow down mail delivery, so when i put a piece in the mail box, it may get to the destination in two days, three days, maybe even five days when older people will be delayed in getting their prescription drugs. when you begin to do that,

you are on the start of a death cycle, a death spiral for the post office. [applause] who is going to use the post office if its strongest attribute of speedy delivery no longer exists?. now one of the things senator leahy, congressman welch and i worked on with some success i had a very strong fear what the post office wanted to do is ramrod these cuts before 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 comprehensive legislation. we met with postmaster general donahue a few weeks ago. we had a very long meeting. i wanted a six-month moratorium on cuts. we agreed to a five-month moratorium.

the importance of that is that when we return to washington, in january, end of january, one of the first orders of business up in the senate will be comprehensive postal reform. [applause] reform. [applause] now, what is disappointing about the postal presentation, and i have really hard time understanding it, it is absolutely true that first class mail service is down. no one denies that. but one of the great financial problems facing the post office in addition to the decline in first class mail, in addition to the recession, is the absolutely unfair and onerous financial requirements being made on the postal service. [applause]postal service. [applause] and it is hard, very hard for me to understand how in the presentation this is not

dealt with. the postal service as a result, not their fault, as a result of congressional actions some years ago, is required to come up with billion $5.5 billion every single year for future health care retirees. there is no other agency of government that comes close to having this requirement. and as best we can understand, there is no corporation or company in america that has to do that. [applause] now i talked recently to the gentleman who is head of the office of personnel management and he agrees. . .ersonnel 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 second of all, the p service has overpaid the employee retirement system and it's mow agreed upon over $11 billion. if the post office can recoup the money plus they have to pay to retiree health benefits, that will come close to giving the postal service the $20 billion they need in the next four to five years to reach the kind of solvency that they're talking about.

in addition on the house side congressman welch is on board for legislation that would provide $55 billion in overpayment made to the civil service retirement system be returned to the post office as well. [applause] >> so the point is, there is a point, 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 government has or no one in the private sector company has. so we have to short-term focus on these accounting issues to give the postal service the 3, 4, 5 years that it needs to begin the kind of reorganization. now, the business model that the post office is talking about now is basically cut, cut, cut.

i disagree with 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 aggressive in the business community. for example, right now -- i'll give you some examples of this. right now, i walk into a post office and i say to the clerk, do you notarize the letter. the clerk says it's against the law for me to notarize that letter. against the law, i say to the clerk, oh, by the way can you give me 10 copies of this letter. can't do it. the post office is not allowed to do that. it's not doing that today. if i'm in a rural post office and i go and i say, oh, by the way, can you sell me a fishing license or a hunting license, can't do that. it's against the law. so i think if we get some smart people together to understand

that we have letter carriers knocking on 160 -- 160 million doors every single day, that 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 aggressive with the private sector in generating more business? i think we can come up with solutions that is a lot more positive than the cut, cut, cut that the post office is now bringing forth. [applause] >> for the last several months i've been working very closely with senator leahy with some of these issues. let me now reintroduce senator patrick leahy. [applause] >> thank you, bernie.

i was told that you have some trouble hearing in the back, and i said to bernie before he got here, i said bernie don't be your usual shy self. speak up so they can hear you so thank you. [laughter] >> you know, one of the hats i wear representing all of you is as chairman of the senate judiciary committee and you may wonder why i bring that up. people talk about post offices being run as a business and so on, there's only one business that's preferred to in the constitution of the united states, in article 1, section 8 of the constitution, it gives congress the right to establish the postal system. that has been that way since this country was founded, and all you people work for the post office be part of it.

you're in the constitution. mra[applause] >> if it's not too subtle, if it's not too subtle, then that means that congress needs to be consulted before the postal service implements reforms that threatens to destroy itself. [applause] >> every day i wear this pin. this was given too me when i was first sworn into the united states senate. among other things i took an oath to uphold the constitution. part of that constitution is how we establish the postal service. i am not yielding one iota on my

oath of the constitution and neither will senator sanders and congressman welch and you can count on that too. [applause] >> now, you have not been shy in letting us know how you think. i appreciate that. bill kramer, the mail handlers union, the others who have spoken up thank you for doing that. you know, all of us worked in 2006 to successfully prevent the closure of a similar facility in essex. now i'm glad they didn't close it and senate sanders and congressman welch feel the same way. we don't want to close this facility or other processing facilities. it's not us to try to hang on to something that's outdated and gone. make 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 fastest-moving congress. [laughter] >> we seem to have a lot of gridlock. but we're all going to work hard and we're going to seek help from republicans and democrats alike to make sure that we can protect vermonters in the service they expect from their postal service. i don't believe, and this is not the issue here tonight, we're talking about processing, but i don't believe the postal service should be balancing its budget on the backs of rural post offices. but neither are service standards and mail processing facilities. we are a special state. we work only, if everything does

work, so let's not -- i don't need to tell you all the things that you know here but stop and think for a moment if you're going to do cuts, then slow up the service, then slow up their abilities, doesn't that harm future competitiveness of the post office? [applause] >> how in heaven's name does that help us? i'm just a small town lawyer, i can't figure out how that helps anything. they want to survive and thrive and the post office has to find new markets. the postal service will not cut its way to greatness. it can grow its way to greatness and we're going to stand here and help. [applause] >> and with that, my time is up.

thank you. >> thank you, senator. and the third member of the vermont delegation again i just want to make note that every member of the vermont delegation is with us this evening and we're proud and thankful that you're all here. i'd also like -- i'd like to ask congressman welch to please step forward. [applause] >> thank you. we're going to be hearing from you very soon but i got to tell you, you know, my office was literally right down the road. i used to stop into the white river processing facility two, three, sometimes four times a week. after a few years, i actually got the door 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. you know, we're here, you're concerned about your jobs and

rightly so. but your jobs are about our community. every single one of them. the heartland four corners, the heartland three corners, norwich, you got thompson. everyone here. when i walked in and i shook hands, saying, folks, how long have you worked here? 33 years, 28 years, 37 years. this has been your life and your life has been serving us and i got to tell you, we appreciate it, we notice it. we know that you have been an anchor in our communities and each and every one of us, patrick and bernie, we want to say from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for your service and you're going to keep doing it. you're not going to get out of it that easy. no matter what they say over there. [applause] >> now, look, you know, sometimes in tough times if it's your 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, it's a moment when we have to remember that we are all in this together. it's something that our country in danger of forgetting. the pressure is really. on you, but you see folks coming in at christmastime trying to figure out whether they can afford the stamps to send a package to a grandchild. you've been seeing that. it's tough for lots of folks. so we've got to be generous in spirit and we got to be smart. you know, the postal service has been with us for 237 years. and, you know, now we're talking about email, electronic processing, but you think that

there weren't huge changes that had to your in those 237 years? from 1775 when benjamin franklin got this operation going up until now? of course there were. but the postal service adjusted. and why? yes, your jobs are worth saving. but the united states postal service is worth saving. [applause] >> and our plan and our goal has to be how do we save it? how together do we save it? we do make the changes, but when we have a plan, and it's not in the plan that we're going to exempt -- we're going to take off this excessive burden of billions and billions of dollars in funding, overfunding -- this is not to avoid meeting your obligation. it's to overfund retiree benefits in health care, to impose and inflict this financial burden that makes it impossible for us to be

successful and to make that 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 -- this state of vermont that we all love, this country of the united states of america, rural and urban, will have a postal service for another 237 years and counting. thank you. hang in! [applause] >> okay. thank you very much. at this point, i'll invite anybody who would like to ask a question, make a comment. i'd ask that the line form from the podium back. because of the significant number of folks that are out here tonight, it's important

that we recognize the time. i will be instituting a 2-minute limit on those who wish to speak. if you have an additional question beyond the one you ask, i ask that you go back in line to ensure that everybody has an opportunity to make a comment or ask a question. also as part of the protocol i ask that you identify yourself, so that people recording the hearing will have an accurate record. >> i'm bill kramer, a local branch president at pndc in white river junction, vermont. [applause] >> i'm also a vermonter. and i want to keep my job here and i want to keep the postal service in vermont. my question to you is, what examples do you folks have of any business that did away with their service that survived? how do you think by cutting your

service and your delivery standards in an age where everyone wants something now, that it's going to save the postal service? i think the senator and the congressman and the governor were correct, excuse me. if you cut the service, if you go from 1 to 3-day service and if you go from 5-day to whenever on third class service, people are going to leave us. we're not going to have a postal service anymore and that's unfortunat unfortunate. >> i appreciate your concerns around service. is there a question or comment. i'm sorry, let me rephrase that. >> okay. >> how do you expect to save the service by cutting service? [applause] >> the bigger picture here is that's the reason why we are here that. we appreciate the comments as well not only from you but from our esteemed delegation over here and i think that's what

will help us to make some good decisions going forward. and if we do consider exactly that one point, we'll make sure it's part of the record. >> let me ask all the vermonters in the room tonight, you guys want your postal service degraded? do you want to lose service, yes or no? >> no! >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you. next, please. >> my name is john dirges. i'm the northeast coordinator for the american postal service. i'm in the microphone and -- [inaudible] >> i have the distinct pleasure and the honor to represent postal workers at the white river junction, vermont, facility and every time i come to vermont with the great senator sanders, we have a great crowd. we did a program about 30 days ago and we had 300 people at a public meeting and the message was very loud and very clear. keep the service in the united

states postal service. that was the message. but as the senator said, we're here today because -- we're not being honest. we're being here 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 is not my first public meeting. i cover from maine down to mid-jersey and all the way to virgin islands and puerto rico. so i've been a lot of these. when you came up with the flat rate box, that was a good idea. closing down these a&p's is not a good idea. let's talk the service standards. the service standard is what pred indicates this entire a&p process. it hasn't even been approved yet. yet, we're predicating all of this information, we're predicating all of these moves, 252 a&p studies all predicated on a standard that has not yet

been approved. i think that is criminal. in addition to that, let's talk about the number of jobs. that is the greatest -- i come and i work in new york city. but we do a three-card monty. this is what this is. this is a shell game. you show 46 jobs being lost because it looks good to the stakeholders and it looks good to the congressional people, but the real impact is 200 jobs. one of my jobs as the union official in 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 -- these impacts that all of these a&p's in fact cause. so i'm asking you, please, revisit this. i thank the congressional delegation from vermont coming

up with that piece of litigat n legislation. let's put a stop to this madness. let's put a stop to the madness in this change in service standards. as we say, what other company says, hey, we're going to do tv commercial and rather than saying we'll get to the pizza to your house in 30 minutes, we say we'll get the pizza to your house in three to five days. it's nonsense. it's stupid. i know you guys are only the messengers tonight but we've got to make sure you listen to the public and we've got to stop this madness. let's stop it right here in vermont. thank you. [applause] >> next, please. >> my name is alene gillette, and i am not a postal office person. i am a general person. i'm a citizen of west hartford and i came to speak because i had some observations i wanted

to make available. the state of vermont is now the most rural state in the nation. unlike other rural states, however, our population is almost evenly spread across the whole state, not like montana or idaho, where there are hundreds of miles of uninhabited land between larger cities. the state of vermont also has a total population that's smaller than the city of new york. forget the suburbs, in new york, the distance between processing centers is only a few minutes. the distance between burlington, white river and manchester is five hours. apart from the population, exactly who lives 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 other states. even compared to new hampshire or massachusetts, we don't have

easy access to public transportation, dropping centers or even conveniences. even the internet is so outside of many people's reach here. for some, the mail is the only way to pay bills, contact friends or relatives or make purchases like medication as our esteemed leaders have said. for some, the mail is their 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, mail becomes unreliable, arriving at a company on time as it is, companies tell customers they didn't receive a payment on time, when, in fact, it arrived

but company processing could be the culprit. in vermont, little known that the mail arrives in the state after one maybe two days but the loss of the plant will make mail so unreliable as to allow all fiscal chicanery who can occur that companies can claim it didn't get there on time? so we look to be a small area on the map so that losing one facility doesn't seem to mean much, in fact, it is the opposite. we will lose too much. each facility covers far more area physically than a facility in a major city and, therefore, it's much more essential to the citizens of vermont. please, please take time to reconsider the proposal. it affects far more than one city or one borough. this affects our entire state. thank you. [applause] >> thank you.

>> thank you very much. next please. >> i'm warren miller in community development for the state of vermont. i got one framing question and then a couple of comments. the $8 million in saves what is that of the total operating expense in the total facilities? >> i don't have that data. >> so it's $8 million of some amount. it may or may not be a lot. that's hard for me to understand where the relative impact on this of the total system in terms of your savings benefit, it doesn't seem like a lot. what i want you to understand -- i appreciate that you're talking to large shippers. i come from a small manufacturing background. i've had to compete with overseas manufacturers and weed out facilities and i know what it looks like and i understand the challenges you're facing. and i understand working with large shippers, what i want you to understand is we have thousands and thousands of small

businesses and home-based businesses that rely on the post office for a meaningful portion of their income. and this service change is not minor. i want you to think about changing the cash cycle of businesses by a couple days implies. it implies moving your cash position up by 7.5 to 10%. that's a meaningful financing component. this isn't money that's going to come out of nowhere. a couple days of receivable just in the state of vermont is a heck a lot more than 8 million bucks. probably 10 or 15 times that. and that's the result that 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 you may need to reflect off the appropriately and pass through charges. and i will also tell you that having moved a whole bunch of small business shipping and

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 doesn't work. thank you. [applause] >> my name is mary ann wilson. i work for a nonprofit organization here in white river junction. i'm also a resident of white river junction. i work for air solutions. we're a nonprofit payroll service who processes payroll under contract with the state of vermont for over 13,000 employees in the state of vermont who provide home care for individuals with disabilities. the delay -- the change in the standard two to three or four days delivery will have an immediate and direct impact on all of those employees. those employees currently mail their time sheets into air solutions and expect to be paid within seven days.

without the ability to receive those time sheets on time, to put them in the mail on time and turn them around so that employees can have their pay one week later on friday can be devastating for those over 13,000 individuals and their families. in addition, the delay of the pay to those employees can have an adverse effect on the individuals who are at risk in this 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 are at risk. we process the number 12,000 to 13,000 paychecks each month. i was disappointed to learn that we were not included as part of a larger shipper conversation. earlier today we mail out over

36,000 pieces of mail every month from the white river junction post office. the white river junction post office has done a fabulous job of processing the mail and making sure -- [applause] >> that 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 at risk and many more vermonters who are at risk of losing their jobs. thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> next, please. your name? >> yes, hi, fx glenn. i'm a resident here in the town of hartford. i came tonight to speak 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 the rural character of vermont and its needs. i think that you also understand and don't take enough into account the value of the local employees who understand that the delivery area zip codes and the point area zip codes with just the p.o. boxes -- it's so often the mail is misaddressed by people, but they look at it and they know where people are trying to get to. so when it kicks out, 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. so i think that the business case probably inherently misstates the value of the local employees up here. i would also point out that -- that this area is the sixth largest micrometropolitan area

in the united states. in order to be a micrometropolitan area, you have to basically be more than an hour's drive away from any other census to find a metropolitan area. you're more than an hour from burlington. we're more than an hour from manchester. we're more than an hour from springfield, massachusetts, and, therefore, this area contains a pretty significant population which if you map it up against the list of cities in the united states, it comes out to right around 200. now, can you pull up the potential network slide, please, and zoom in on the northeast. the fact of the matter is, that if you look at the potential network slides, you'll see that the potential network has zero facilities in vermont and new hampshire. zero, okay? [applause] >> can you enlarge the upper right corner, please?

okay. so clearly, if you mapped out the post office that are in massachusetts in andover and framingham, and worcester you lay that on a map in vermont, that would be bradle boro, springfield, white river junction, the speaker earlier was talking about how difficult the travel time is around here and the importance of the local delivery and so forth. i don't believe the business case has been correctly analyzed by the post office. and finally, what i want to say is that -- is that i went on to your website. i understand how these business cases are put together and 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 the study that's been done around white river junction. in fact, you can't download and read what's been filled out for any of the post offices here. and another thing is, there's no evidence that there was any investigation of consolidating into white river junction as opposed to eliminating white river junction and consolidating it 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 doesn't add up for me. and i thank you for the time. >> thank you. [applause] >> my name is liz blum. an elected lister 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 or town meeting in march to recover. every year in spite of the great help that we've gotten from our congressional delegation. so this is putting the -- making the situation worse. you ask -- when you gave your presentation, what the right thing to do is. the right thing to do is to get rid of the requirement of for the post office to prepay and overpay benefits for 75 years. and to work to pass reform legislation sponsored by vermont's entire congressional delegation and other congress

people and to get other people, other congress people to sign on to that delegation. that should be the first order of congress this year, when they get 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. the united states postal service has been doing this for 237 years and it needs to continue to do so. >> thank you. >> wait, i have one more. i just want to say to me and to 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. [applause] >> next, please.

>> for my maim a gail mckin. i'm a clergy person with the south danbury, new hampshire, united church of christ, which is 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 that -- in addition to being a minister and a rural congregation, i also run a small business, a home-based business which was mentioned before. i absolutely depend on the u.s. postal service. my mail gets processed in white river junction, and if anybody

wants to know how people like me depend on white river junction and depend on the distribution, i know by based what zip codes i'm mailing to, when it's going to get there, the next day or the day after or the day after that. right now i can calculate exactly when my mail is going out. and if you can sit in the parking lot of the white river junction postal service from 7:30 to 7:59 at night you know the people around here who depend on that next day delivery and know what they can do. but i'm concerned here today that we're talking about the wrong thing. if we're kind of pitting white river junction against some other distribution facility and arguing who gets cut who gets closed it's the wrong argument. the argument should be, the mail processing standard 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 the service standards, what your doing is you have somebody mentioned before me attempting to destroy this service from within. so that it becomes a shadow of its former self. you will privatize it and it's no longer the u.s. postal service. as a clergy person one of the things i learn and i try to remember on a daily basis is thou shall bear false witness and i'm not saying that anybody here purposely is lying. you're using talking points that have been given to you, but somebody is witnessing falsely when they say you can reduce the service standard and you're going to come up with those numbers on there about all that you're going to save and how you're going to thrive. you cannot reduce service standards and thrive. it is a road to destruction of the u.s. postal service as we know it. and it cannot stand. [applause] >> thank you very much.

>> thank you, your name please? >> my name is susan clark. i live in nubury, connecticut. my husband is a full-time employee at the white river junction plant. and first of all, i want to say that you conceded maybe they were a little harder worker to four to six for us. i know he's worked different tours. they work very hard, 24 hours a day. so i don't know where those figures came from. i just had to add that. i came up because have a home-based business, the last 15, 16 years. and i have deliveries sent to new london, new hampshire, a new company called flash photoand i'm praising the post office say they need to do more publicity about priority mail. first of all, yes, we're losing people doing emails and so forth. but on the other hand, we're gaining because all those orders that are being placed on the

internet have to be shipped. so why isn't the post office doing more with that? i have to tell you, my experience is, i have a deliberately sent to flash photo and i have the 13 years i lived up here and the reason why a p.o. box -- when it's sent from my company which is in north carolina, which is the largest shipper in greensboro, north carolina, employ a lot of people i know if it's shipped on thursday i will have that in my hands on thursday. now if it goes to ups it's a week. >> who are they? [laughter] >> why don't they do something about this. the other side about this -- our company sends out our checks on friday afternoon. we have a small rural post office in newbury, i have it in my hands, monday, tuesday at the latest. if this goes in effect god knows when i'll see it. i'm backed up paying my bills and all that. the last thing i want to say because i have a strong connection to my children went to vermont for colleges and i'm up here a lot i come up here a

lot, all you have to do is ride around and see the devastation from the flood and how in the world can the post office add more insult to injury by doing this to all the employees here in white river junction. >> hey, susan. thank you. [applause] >> next, please. >> my name is david briggs. i'm a volunteer chairman of the hartford development corporation. we deal with the economic development by citizen involvement and we're supported by the town of hartford. we're proactive in and protective of the economics of our town especially when it comes to jobs. whenever new development of any kind is proposed, the concept of the multiplier effect is always the main factor, jobs lead to a variety of impacts that touch us all. once in place, the loss of jobs has a deep impact to the entire community and none of it is positive. reducing jobs is not viable for our community.

if you have a productivity efficiency problem, don't move the jobs, find another way. my input to you tonight is, you have an entrepreneurial challenge. and an entrepreneurial opportunity. don't take it out on the community by slashing jobs and bailing out. [applause] >> thank you. name please. >> i'm a mobilization coordinator for the vermont aflvcio. welcome to vermont. [applause] >> thank you. my understanding is that the postal service retiree health benefits fund now has over $42 billion in it. that's enough to cover future retiree health premiums for the next 20 years. also, that audits show that the postal service overpaid by 50 billion. maybe 80 billion into the civil service retirement system. further, that the postal service overpaid by more than 10 billion

into the federal employees retirement system. also, my understanding is nearly -- nearly a quarter of the postal service is veterans and they are paying the entirety of the veterans' pensions despite the fact that their worker service is divided between the postal service and the military, this despite the fact that the department of the defense pays its proportional pension share for every federal agency except the postal service. given these facts, which i'd like 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, lay off employees and degrade service due to alleged insolvency. what you see here in this room is just the tip of the iceberg. i would suggest that you tell postmaster general that if he intends to go ahead and try to impose this plan, he's going to meet his waterloo in vermont. thank you.

[applause] >> thank you. >> next, please. >> my name is jesse davis. i'm the officer in charge of the vermont post office. i could not ask for a better staff or a better group of customers there. [applause] >> we keep hearing out of washington, cut, cut, cut as our congressional delegation so aptly put. one word we haven't heard is innovation. for the last several years we've been saying email is killing us. i have one simple question, why are we not having an email server that rattles gmail or hot mail? why are we not a web server that rivals go daddy. i don't know how much money you can make off of that. [applause] >> thank you. >> my name is barb reed. >> i'm sorry. >> my name is barb reed.

i'm a resident of white river junction, vermont. i think it's real interesting that in 2006 when the post office started seeing declines in service that it's also the same year that this law got passed that said that the post office had to pay 5.5 billion a year for 10 years to fund current and future postal workers for the year 2075. i'm not sure everybody knows that. that's kind of ridiculous. i have to wonder why that came into effect. i heard somebody say something about privatization of the postal service. maybe that's it. and i'm here representing myself and not my company, but i have to say that i'm in the post office every day, and i get excellent customer service there from the front window, to the people that pick up our mail. i would be lost without peggy and business mail.

and the other thing i want to say is that i never have to worry about the mail getting into my mailbox at home, when there is mail, as opposed to my paper getting into the news tube. so thank you all. >> i appreciate you coming. thank you. [applause] >> good evening. my name is jill, i've been delivering parcels for the postal service at christmastime since 1983. this year i noticed our delivering parcels postmarked, priority parcels postmarked december 12th on december 19th which i considered to be a serious erosion of service. parcels postmarked december 19th delivered on december 27th i think that's 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 that they are a very service-oriented business and that is really the kingpin of their success. i see the internet as a gold mine for the postal service. an absolute gold mine. and if the postal services would put some energy into that, the same kind of energy that they put into disrupting service and closing post office into growing the business, we would be an incredible successful story. i absolutely ask the postal service to support postal service protection act. 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. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> i'm not sure which one to

speak into. okay. here it is. i'm yendi, 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 by name. her name is janet and if she's here, ha-la. she's wonderful, my kids love her. she's very personable and she does the job well. i am not postal or military-affiliated but i'm someone's little girl. and i'm a follower of the golden rule, so i feel -- for those families that had men and women out of the country, some of them killed by roadside bombs, what if a little girl mailed her letter under these new circumstances you have here and that letter made it too late before her daddy was killed and he never got to see that letter. i mean, that would be terrible

for that little girl growing up knowing that. i have one question at the end of this, i live on disability and i'm also an employee of aris, that the woman spoke earlier about. i make less than $2,000 a month for myself, my husband and five children, and i manage to balance my budget with that. you guys should be able to figure out how to do with what you have. [laughter] [applause] >> my disability comes in on the 3rd. my mortgage is due on the 1st. i can mail it out and make my ten-day grace period now. you screw that up, then i don't make my ten-day grace period and then i'm charged a late fee or i'm charged a fee to do it over the phone or do it by 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 those -- pay those bills. i don't own a credit card. and then if i did, how would i pay that credit card bill if i couldn't mail it out? it doesn't make sense. hmmm, i lost my point here. i guess my last thing i want to say is -- i have a question for miss essler these billions of dollars when you get rid of these employees, is that going to lined somebody's lined pockets like yours or is it going to go somewhere else like in our community? [applause] >> and i actually do want you to answer that question. [applause] >> and don't tell me you don't know. >> clearly, they're 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 packages across the united states nor any other --

>> where will the money go? >> towards the bottom line. our cash starved business at the time. >> you don't looked too starved. >> thank you very much. next, please. >> my name is chuck gregory from springfield, vermont. i'm a volunteer with the vermont worker center. i think i have an answer to that question the last lady posed. the author thomas frank wrote a book called "the wrecking crew." in it, he talks about how for the last 40 years republican operatives have been destroying significant portions of the american infrastructure. and the lady who just described her problem is the sort of person who get affected most by the destruction of this particular piece of infrastructure. i have a question for the new hampshire representatives of their congressional delegation, and that is considering that republican operatives are still trying to destroy significant 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] >> thank you. >> good evening, i'm glad everybody is here. it's great to see this kind of turnout. it makes me believe in democracy. i've been a teacher and i pretty much worked about in every industry in vermont, i think. and i'm here to state a few of the points that have been brought up already. the issue of economic vitality. you need services and products to make businesses thrive. you cannot grow without services. to grow and sustain we 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 that we are ready to deliver. in being in real estate i've brought several significant

companies to downtown white river that 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 perhaps of public transit. we know public transit is not a profitable entity. but it's a service we need as a society to allow society to function and thrive. so, yes, the postal service may not have the best bottom line right now perhaps due to lack of innovation or change. however, if you cut these public components, you kill the private sector. and the private sector is what feeds the public sector and we need to work together in a cooperative model to make that work. finally, i also had the joy of riding out the last dot.com fallout. and as has been touched tonight also, i'd like to leave you with this sort of final thought. change or die or cut and die, you can't find your way out of any economic malaise by cutting.

you have to change and innovate and i know you guys can do it and you have to believe in all these people speaking tonight. thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> my name is wayne martin. i'm the president of the american postal workers union in white river junction. [applause] >> the consolidation plans that the postal service has come up with are all predicated on changing the service standards. i think you've come out and said that. i'll ask -- this is a rhetorical question because you haven't answered it when anybody has asked it. how does a decrease in service increase our business? won't it just drive people to our competitors? part of the presentation you expected the service standard change to be virtually

unnoticed. i think just the netflix customers of their service cut in half will generate an uprising. but -- [applause] >> we have a va hospital here in town that 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? in vermont, in white river junction, we process mail 17 to 19 hours or more a day. we're a centralized location at the crossing of two interstates. we have some of the best productivity numbers in the district. we serve all of vermont with the

exception of the burlington and montpelier areas. we serve western new hampshire from pittsburgh in the north to acworth in the south. the projection is to move 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? the lead plant manager said,

studies show that the public doesn't care. so my question is, what do you think now? [applause] >> well done! >> thank you, wayne. thank you, wayne. next, please, name. >> my name is cindy, and i live in white river junction. i have a family here. and i work in the upper valley. what i am is a customer of the postal service. i think what needs to be made very clear is that the closing of white river or essex or manchester is strictly phase 1 of this postal plan of consolidation. i'm 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 do i not accept phase 1, but i do not accept phase 2 or 3. i grew up in retail, in various service industries. and when i was a new employee, the first thing 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. i will not stand for it. [applause] >> my name is ron. i'm the vermont state executive board member to the local 301 on national postal mail handlers union and i work up in white river. and it's just suspicious to myself and a lot of my fellow employees and friends that you're doing these studies that depend on the whole delivery day standard being changed. it's real suspicious to us as

why are you putting the cart before the horse? you should be doing -- if they're going to change the standard, change those, then do your studies. not get people all worked up and everything else over something that may not even happen. or you know what's going to happen but you're not telling us. [applause] >> my second statement that i would like to make is, ms. essler you said you wanted plants to process mail 20 hours a day. white river junction processes 17.5 hours. wouldn't it be more economical to move 2.5 hours worth of mail into white river junction instead of moving 17.5 hours of mail to burlington or to manchester? could you answer that? [applause] >> the study -- what it does it takes a lot more into consideration than just that. it takes into consideration the size of the facility and direct which ones can consolidate

easier -- >> i'm not asking you to consolidate. >> we'll certainly put that on record as one of the things we want to look as going forward. >> thank you. [applause] >> my name is catherine harwood. my firm's mailing address is post office box 94 north vermont. it's a very small post office. it's 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 email messages all around the world, receive them as well. so why do i maintain a post office box in vermont?

i do so because i have learned very painfully that electronic communications, emails they are not reliable. when i send them or i receive them with the folks that i need to be in contact with, and they are neither secure nor private. .. 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? ..

with all our labor unions in sacramento to supportn that. please. >> the center for sustainable madison in vermont. i run a small sliding scale clinics serving mostly working-class and poor peoplepo for almost 20 years, and i relye on being able to walk across the street to my local post officelp and put medicine in the mail an have it get there the nextm day. i am actually not here to talktl about that.ta i am here to talk about something that you could be using to your benefit some much,

which is the power of the letter 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] [inaudible conversations] >> coming up at 330 eastern here on c-span2, we will be live as the head of the agency that sets internet domain names talks about the decision to expand names beyond the traditional. the center for strategic and international studies will talk with the ceo of the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers. again, live coverage at 330 eastern here on c-span2. republican presidential candidates are making their last campaign stops in new hampshire today as voters are going to the

polls for the first in the nation primary. jon huntsman was in manchester as was mitt romney, centaur. rick perry. we talked with some of the new joining as is the assistant city clerk. tell us the role of the clerk's office on primary day? >> the city clerk is the chief election official, and we end up turning all of the election officials to work throughout the city. we do that a few weeks before the election. we are also responsible for compiling all of the data at the end of the night, taking all of the paper work and reporting to the secretary state's office. >> what type of training do you do for the official as a moderator, those folks who are trying to keep the voting process going smoothly?

>> we have over 200 election officials in the city. we break the training of into their individual roles. a lot of the election officials have done this for years, but we keep them up-to-date with the new election laws and refresh their memories. it could be months between elections, so we do a really good job here. >> what is the role of the moderator? >> the chief election official at the word. they run the election here at the polling center. >> you talked about the ballot. the polls opened this morning here at the mcdonough school at 6:00 a.m. what kind of a close, and what happens next? >> the polling place closes at 7:00 p.m. at that time it will take the ballots from the ballot box, count them, steal them, and takn to the city hall where they are put into a vault. in paper work is done showing the results of the votes on the ballot. >> is there a second or third look at the ballots before they are sealed? >> here at the ward the election

officials go through the count twice. >> is a digital? >> it is all on paper. it is all done by hand and put on paper. >> all done by hand and put on paper and at the end of the night that the report goes to the secretary of state's office. >> once the ballots are sealed, then what? >> they are transported to city hall where they're put into a vault. >> and then you said all of the 12 c-span2 here in manchester, all that info is collected at city hall and then what does the city clerk's office to? >> at the end of the night all of the reporting awards will report to the city clerk's office and will show the -- display on the screen of all of the ward reporting so it rolls into a city total. the bill that you just heard is the school bell here at the mcdonough school. no school in manchester today. >> talk about the undeclared

voters, not the independent voter. you don't call them back here in new hampshire. why not? and talk about how they can go from voting in the democratic party to the republican primary. >> mothers have choices when they register. they can be a registered republican or democrat. if a voter does not wish to register with either party we call them on declared. they can vote in either the democratic or republican primary. if a voter has previously voted in a primary, either democrat or republican, they have the opportunity to go back to the undeclared any time up to the next primary. then they can come into today's primary in choose which valid the want to vote on. >> tonight when all the ballots are counted where is it announced an by who? >> the secretary of state is responsible for announcing the new hampshire primary results. >> and what are we expecting?

>> predicted a 42 percent turnout here in the state of new hampshire. >> joann ferruolo, thank you very much. >> a reminder that c-span will have live coverage of the results as they come in tonight and reaction from the candid it's at 8:00 eastern. you can also follow the results online at c-span.org and find coverage of the last candid it's speeches before the primary and reaction to the results tonight. that is live on c-span.org. >> chris matthews on the attempted political maneuvering. >> second debate here in washington, nbc studios. nixon gets control. he brings the temperature of the rundown the 40 degrees, a meat locker when kennedy arrives. my source is tv guide. wilson goes racing down to the basement.

there is a nixon died down there standing guard on the thermostat he said, if you don't get out of the way and let me turn that thing up to 65 or 70, i'm calling the police. they had another standoff and end up compromising. they get back up. the whole idea was that did not want nixon to sweat. the nixon people have seen him sweat profusely, and they said we are not calling to the let this happen again. this is about who will rule america. >> this weekend chris matthews is interviewed on his new book, jack kennedy saturday night c-span2 book tv. >> one of the most frightening responsibilities i have ever experienced was to have some substantial responsibility for communicating politically to national electorate in the current media. you all know the basic statistics. network broadcast television has

gone down from 50 million viewers to about 25, 26 million today. is down. it is remarkably difficult to communicate any kind of message to the public. slogans the details. this is one of the truth is that i have learned in recent politics. you cannot communicate details. if you can be on the slogan side, you can win. if you're on the detail side, you are going to lose. >> tony blankley died this last weekend at the age of 63, press secretary to then house speaker newt gingrich as republicans took control of congress and later worked as a conservative commentator, author, and editorial page editor at the washington times. more than 40 c-span appearances are all archived and search of online. >> this year marks the 45th anniversary of the formation of the black panthers.

in 1966 at a one and huey newton created the black panthers party in oakland, california to promote self awareness. the national alumni association organized a dinner in october and you will hear the keynote address by bobby seale. this is about 35 minutes. >> too bad brothers standout. across this country. we were in philadelphia. seattle, north carolina. ohio, detroit, new york, all across this country. you name a place. we were young people, but we were drawn to the message, 810-point platform of programs, drawn to a mission, and we were drawn to responsibility. i can say a lot of things about bobby seale, but i will let him do most of the talking. i have had a couple of great honors in being with bobby.

when i was first called to come to california they told me to pack enough clothes to stay for two weeks and ended up staying for five years. the only time we came back was to a close the chapter in bring everyone to california. that is how it went, but we followed those orders. sometimes we questioned, sometimes we fought, sometimes we tried to figure, but we just got the job done. and that is what it was all about. and bobby seale, the chairman was the person that after he we came up with our creative ideas, bobby could take this stuff and massage it and put it into a practical way to get it to the comrades, put it in a practical way to implement the programs, but it any practical way to show a structure of support. when bobby seale ran for mayor of oakland that was one of the most exciting things i had the opportunity to be a part of. they hit my candid it from me for a week. they said i worked him to hard,

so they took him and hit him for a week. he was down at jack london square and would not tell me where he was. where we could not find the candid, the message kept going. he hit the projects, the malls, the neighborhoods. we went door-to-door. we took over conventions. we shook oakland of. this place was shut up because you had eight more men mayor and a black panther running to take his job. can you imagine that? can you imagine that? when bobby announced he was going to run for mayor he had the biggest announcement where we registered 8,000 people in one place at one time with 10,000 bags of groceries with a 5-pound chicken, great a chicken in every back, every single back. there were so many other things that have been done. this man was incarcerated.

he was gagged. he kept fighting. he did not stop. political prisoners today, bobby was a political prisoner, and he never stopped dealing with the issues we have to deal with about our other comrades who are incarcerated. we have struggled along way, but we have also had good. many of us look at bobby in different ways because one thing, he will come around the comrades and make you feel good. he would talky to death. he would get into you with such a love and understanding. we talked about a marie, it's about time, some of the other founding members. big man, edward howard. these were all comrades in the open area that drew many of us from across the country. without further ado, i want to bring my leader, my friend, my

comrade, my brother, bobby seale. [applause] [applause] >> as we used to say in all of our sloganizing, right on. >> right on. >> power to the people. down with the racist, fascist pig. no more patients in our community. party members, they blew my mind. they said, i'm telling you, just the way it all happened, you know what i mean.

i look back and say, while, i was a young engineer on the gym and nine missile program right outside of oakland. and i worked at night and took nine credit hours as a man in college. i majored as an engineer design major. one day i got interested in all this civil rights stuff. i walked across the streets. the afro-american association. tell it like it is. i walked over and started listening to him and saw a guy i knew called william run field. i walked up to william and said, you part of this group? he said, yes. i said, what is this?

some kind of communist of? what is that? you have to imagine, this is 1962. phrases and references to black folks as african-americans did not exist. they still call themselves colored. colored and colored, you know what i mean. and saying, there i was listening to these guys. asked william, what do you mean communist of? your socialist. your brother told me you were a socialist. i said, height of the fbi was going to arrest you one day. and so elected me and knew something about my history. he says, bobbie, the name is not a pseudonym. it's a french word. it has nothing to do with our american indian brothers. something i knew at age 16 because his brother and i

identified with the lakota people. identified with custer and his battle and the native americans. this is a time when we didn't know anything, i didn't know really anything about my people african american history. they did not teach it. it was not around. growing up. the point is that those guys that day on that street corner caused me to buy a book called facing my kingdom. i took it to work with me. in between inspecting engine frames i sat down at my desk and began to read this book by this man. he came to america, got a degree, went to england in got a degree and came back and was instrumental in organizing his people of from under the yoke of english colonialism.

that blew my mind because here i was. i get a's in math classes in english, but a's in math. i knew nothing about my african-american people's history whatsoever, and that is what caused me to begin to research and know my african american people's history. the next thing i know and digested in the black reconstruction. works in public education. one dealt with documentation of all the wars we have fought, including the first colonial war. this is just blowing my mind. another book of 250 slave revolts from the year 1800-1859. in 1210 or more slaves, and i was flabbergasted that black people had resisted because prior to that date just taught me that black folks was nice and docile and sit on the bench and

stooped and played the banjo and was basically happy. it was just the opposite. so i'm shocked. .. >> we're going to boycott them so consistently and so profoundly we're going to make wonder bed wonder where their money went? went. [laughter] that caused a standing ovation in that auditorium, 7000 people. and i'm one of young students in

the year 1962. he was the first person that truly inspired me. the next one was none other than nelson mandela and his plight and the need to end apartheid. the next thing i know, 1963, i'm in a situation in a period where, where i'm in a situation in a period where martin, no. john f. kennedy is killed, and malcolm x leaves the nation of islam and decreased the only issue. and that i'm trying to get myself to new york to some point. john malcolm x organization. to push the story on of malcolm x was killed in 1965. i had a one man riot. nobody else on the street rioting. i'm talking about on the coming down the street from a house with crocodile tears running

down, i'm so upset that malcolm x has been killed. as far as i'm concerned the racist power had killed malcolm x. i'm taking in windows, throwing bricks. finally, my friends came up and coming as it may come you got it coming. i went back to the house, got my books out, i simply to find my friend huey, in said man, you got to go there. i segment, you guys are bunch of armchair revolution. i need to do so, you know what any? anyway, what happened to me is that's exactly what i did. i found richard aoki, a japanese brother was the first one from one of the first i said where does he live. i found where he lives. i went over to huey's house with a copy of wretched of the earth. i digested, written, rewrote, underlined and re- highlighted and over highlighted that book, that metro, you know what any?

but i'm saying this was me. i needed to do something. really do something. and i was telling huey, you need to help me start a new organization because we've got to get something going. huey said i huey said i don't know, man. it's hard to organize black folks but they don't know enough about the black history, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. so the next week or so i'm up at merritt college organizing people, put black history into the curriculum at merritt college where you and i both went to at this time huey had already graduated and he was in night law school. that's what happened to i created that organization. my house, some 16 of its young black folks, students and brothers, with me coaching and others helping, wrote for different courses, two courses on black american history go to courses on african-american history. so this is the background of where i was coming from, you know? it was another part a year later in 63, somewhere in there, no,

another point in their that i got huey to come to class with me and argue with my anthropology teacher, you know what any? every time she made reference to black folks should take negroid. should make reference to asian people, native americans she would take mongoloid. should make reference to white folks she would say caucasian. and i say i'm tired of this negroid stuff. anyway, make a long story short i came back and got another meeting. i got huey gum in class and richard aoki to come to class, and i'm arguing against some of the other black students. every time we tournament, man, he running around in our class, man, with his afro blacktop and i try to get educated. anyway, huey gets up in the back of the room and says, i'd like to make a suggestion that for correct and social science reference, who are you? the teachers as. i'm here to support bobby's argument and i want to suggest

africanoid as opposed to negroid. and when he said that he sat down. i stood up i said that's it. sit down, bobby seale. okay. wait a minute wait a minute. we have to equalize this terminology. she said what are you talking about? you've been arguing for two weeks. i accepted. no, no, no. you don't understand what's happening. now we accept act for benoit. national africanoid. there is a mongoloid our africanoid. so all people of color are a bunch of noise. when you get up to the white folks they are caucasian. what are you trying to say, i said from now on to equalize this terminology africanoid, mongoloid and caucasoid your. [laughter] [applause] so this will give you some psychology of what's happening in development, understanding, trying to expand basic argument.

well, i took black history once i get into class, turned it into the counter, organized a giant rally, 750 people against being drafted into the war of vietnam. and with that, huey came at the tail end of the rally. articles and he called me and huey saw the 750 people and i came out the door and he says did you organize all these people? i said yeah, i keep telling you, we can organize all across country like this. i don't believe this. you got this many people? yet, huey and with 250 people signed up. you should come on into our new organization. yeah, i'm with you. so from that day on, that's what huey and i were running together, making things, working things out. wound up, wound up fighting the police.

stood up in front of a judge, judge gave his probation, one year probation because huey was in law school. he said will get one to 10 years. we did a no contest plea. anyway, the judge gave his one year probation. we got downstairs, many at the poverty office to pick by this time i'm working with the city government of oakland, california, department of human resources. i'm a community leader. i says kiwi, neatly their, and that night october the 10th, i wrote it in jail under pressure. i just forgot the date. it was october the 10th because i went back and looked up the court date. huey and i wrote the first draft of the 10-point program. we had no name for it. the 10-point platform and program, we want full employment for people, we want shelter for human beings. we want education. we want to in the robert roper

black community. what was it? six, military service. change that later on to free preventative medical health care. number seven, and of police brutality. right to have jurors allowed of all black men and women. and some the program up for the first two paragraphs up. win in the course, i just thought it was great. i sent huey come downstairs. look at this, man. i said we can change this a little bit and can appear fries, et cetera. we're in the course of human events, becomes necessary for anyone people to dissolve the political bondage connected with one another and assume among the powers of the earth and equal station for which the laws of nature and have them come a decent respect of humankind, dictate, declare the causes

which impelled him to dissolve the political bondage. a long train of abuses, pursues, to reduce people under absolute, and it is the right of the people to also change that and provide new future security and happiness. the declaration of independence. [applause] >> used to say just a white man's knowledge. no, that's my knowledge. how can you consider? one plus one equals to the white man's knowledge? that's just a fact. then, of course, in dialect as i always talk, we is dialectic. we don't use mythical. we like to do research. quantitative increase, quantitative decrease. you have to know and understand that. you came around me and organize in the community. the increased amount of time you saw a black panther party

newspaper in the disney area where you sell and over and over and over you sell it, you're talking to brothers and sisters, you are decreasing the apathy and increasing the consciousness. so that's what it was about. how do you educate the people about programs, about organizing and unify the people? and we came up with all these programs, beginning with free breakfast children program, free preventative medical health care clinics. that's what we started. we are party members from seal washington to winston-salem, north carolina, to boston with the sister ran that chapter up there, to chicago, they got creative with the whole concept of grassroots committee programs. i looked up and winston-salem got a free anglers program but i said i didn't thought about but right on. boston and sister archie jones got a free policy program.

sister virginia got a free pass control program. the next thing you know we are 22, 24 and expanded after. programs in the committee. the organizing unified people around. all going out of the foundation of the 10-point platform and program of our black panther party. at 10-point platform and program. [applause] probably coming to come even when we wrote that program, i sent huey, we don't want to write some long dissertation kind of stuff. is a what he talked about? i said you know some brothers and sisters, they're educated as the but to try to talk to the grassroots rather than people and they say the basic socioeconomic structure of the adverse subjected to and consider particular sociological and psychological facts, and you know, boom, boom, boom. the little brother, brother bobby, which are talking about man? jetplane with brothers and

sisters but then they understand you. that's why we wrote a 10-point program and try to stay away from that dissertation kind of language. but that program as has been said tonight already, is just as relevant today as it was then. and i need that in a more profound way. this, this, this particular movement -- [applause] >> this particular occupy wall street movement and in my last speaking engagement, i me, i walked in and the first thing i say to these five or six or 700 students were on speaking at, occupy wall street, and the whole crowd says right on. and it's the same. and then finally on the internet, they put out the first what, 40 some odd points of what they were issuing about? and a wrote tasha i read them all. what these guys are talking a, every point is in the 10-point platform and program fits right into everything they talking about.

unemployment, housing, et cetera and so on. it's right there. so, you know, our party if all to have a broader class analysis, rather than a race only analysis. we understood how to look at the broader class analysis of what was happening. so that became literally a steppingstone point for to really begin to understand the great characteristics of black panther party was so great, when we got coalitions going, other organizations, the red guard, young chinese asians, and asian student alliance, richard aoki started up, another organization of the young lords, political party, and then aim, american indian movement, all wrote their own 10, 12, 14-point program modeling after what we had written but more specifically to their intercultural, their community and what was

happening. and so that 10-point platform and program is basic. i mean, it's really no different from a lot of civil rights organizations and other organizations, except that we as a black panther party really says we believe in the right to self-defense. and i guess that's what captured the imagination, not only of a lot of people, i captured the imagination of the white races process. these negroes talk about defending themselves. well, i'll be darned. [laughter] you know what i mean? they call me when they over to the television show in san francisco, race relations in america, and i took my 10-point platform and program, but also took 500 of the 3000 racist letters that had been sent to us as a black panther party. i gave it a directive somewhere back in, all racist letters, all chapters have got to be sent into we can do to our lawyers so that would be evident in the

courtroom for our rights to defend herself, know what i mean? selected these letters and the done thing out out their niece is why you don't be misled? i said you were the one who has the program called race relations in america. this is a bunch of races, ku klux klan, nazis, pocket killing and murdering black men. they're going to hang is, do this, blah, blah, blah. and i says boom, i says no, what you need, i tell the host, look at these letters. i said there ain't no return addresses on none of them. no return addresses on none of them. i says now, all you peaceloving people, black, white, blue, red, polkadot, i'm getting rid to say something. to you peaceloving people i ain't talking about you. i'm talking about these hardcourt races. every racist who sent it, first of my home address is eight '09 57th street. you don't got no address. headquarters address is so-and-so. i gave about 10 addresses for the black panther party. i said now, when you come to

shoot, kill and murder us, when you come, remember, we have shotguns, we have pistols, will exercise the right to defend ourselves so when you start shooting at us, we shoot back. [applause] my point is, we have to stand up to defend ourselves. we were talking to defending our constitution democratic civil human rights to organize our people to raise the concept of our people, to unified, that's where talk about. this wasn't no macho stuff up there, no. you have to be disciplined or even when we took the first guns out industries, we just told them how you cannot point the gun, you cannot point a loaded weapon and all this kind of stuff. i mean, this is the kind of stuff we talk about it i'll never forget that day when my first one out there and got that first real disciplined organize patrol together. that cop says you have no right to observe me. 50, 60 people sent on the sidewalk and no, california state supreme court says every

citizen has the right to stand as long as it's within a readable distance away. eight to 10 feet, i'm standing up-20 from you and we will observe you whether you like it or not. go head on and tell it, brother. [applause] the cop says, the cop says, is backend loaded? i don't know if it's allowed or not. step back, you have the right. such and such supreme court, somebody versus also. private property, you cannot remove my private property. step back, you cannot touch my weapon. tall brother standing by me sick man, what kind of negroes is this? [laughter] that was that night, i have never forgotten that. but we organize, educate them brothers. they had to know the 10-point program prevent another weapons. myself, richard aoki, elbert "big man" howard was the only

one ex-military. we train huey enabled else about the weapons, how to break down the weapons and so on. this is the kind of message. you had to know your p/e. went body, we got him into malcolm x's autobiography and underlined with a highlighter in addiction and we taught him how to read. top that brother have to recruit the next thing you know in a year little body was digesting. have you ever tried to read that? that stuff the trio to read. but let me say some more here about our 10-point platform and program and its relevance. our new organizational framework, here at the national association of black panther party, with brother billy x. and all the other brothers, it's about time dtp program, and the programs they are doing, and all the other brothers and sisters, all businesses our brother bobby rush, congressman united states

of america, deputy minister of defense illinois chapter, he and fred hampton found and put it together. you know, it's very important, the black panther party and its political electoral politics, that characteristic was important because he ran for political office without names on about. coalition, we was coalition for 38, 30 and different organizations. but by running for political office what were we talking about? well, we were trying to implement huey and i have discussed about the need to change the laws. huey was in law school, too, so we were looking at the law, beginning to understand and see that the crux, the foundation of institutionalized racism in america was metaphase envelope if you read a book now today, leon higginbotham wrote called shadows of freedom, others about

10, 12, 14 years ago, it gives you a rundown, a history of racist laws in america, the precept of white along with the precept of so-called black inferiority. and that's important to read because you understand the history of institutionalized racism manifests into law. our idea, my idea was to organize all across the united states of america. we evolved to a point by the end of 1969, in 69, what we have? 49 chapters and branches of black panther party, twentysomething chapters and branches around the coach. that 60 different offices and operations. it was nothing but an extension framework of the black panther party because we create, we did conference with it et cetera and so on. that was important because what we were talking about is getting some elected offices, and city council and you got racist

aspects of law in the city council charter. if we got seats in their we could wipe those laws on the book. or the races, mentality is another thing. but get the laws off the book, that was key. so nowadays all these years has passed, we did a lot of things, all of us. you know, programs, party members, this is where i come out here, working on their goods campaign. i dove right in to help him out. and wound up running the philadelphia, that's in gaza. bobby rush was done in all kinds of brothers and sisters all across the country in politics, and government, in the frameworks. i used to dream of having multi, multi-thousands more so than we even have now of black folks, people of color folks, of the young progressive white folks

all in these political institutions, and often they change the system. but it's still some work to be done. it's some unfinished and uncompleted business that's got to be done. [applause] so every organizational framework and any kind of progressive mode and move has got, we have got to help out and we have to help young folks, young folks, take these political seats, if all. i talk about in a multi-thousands all across the united states. there are 500,000 political seats that one can be elected to in the united states of america. all the states, all the counties, legislative seats, city council seats, part-time, full-time, what have you, consider. think about that. when we started in the 1960s, you know what i mean? i don't know if we attend black folks elected to public office anywhere in the united states of

america at that time. a lot of them have been, and i'm not saying all of them are perfect, et cetera, but we need more and more progressive folks. that's the real term, the word, the meaning of what we've got to do in the future. and we are going to take this 10-point platform and program and add it to any and all points of protests, points of the day, points of trying to organize and unify people. and we're going to have to work, and that's what the naacp is helping to do with our unfinished business. this is where we're going to go, it's about our future world, cooperation of human lives and. economically, social justice lies. that's what it's about. getting to that future world, cooperation, 6 billion living human beings on the earth rapidly getting ready to be 7 billion, living human beings on the face of our earth.

and that's important. african and african-american people and of the peoples of color and other peoples have to work together and ultimately really totally change and push the corporate monopolist back to capitalism will be here for a mile a 10 while -- be here for a while. get into cut down, we will be step-by-step on our way. so this 10-point platform and program of the black panther party, that found the documentation of our organization, is alive and it's going, we have to make it alive with our youth, panther cubs and other panther people and youth people to understand that we want to get to the future world of cooperation. power to the people, thank you very much. [applause]

>> good job, good job. >> give him another big hand, and y'all. [applause] >> coming up in about five minutes, 3:30 p.m. easter would be they live on c-span2 as ahead of the agency that sets it internet domain names talks about the decision to expand names beyond the traditional dot com and dot net and dot org. the strategic for initial studies we'll talk with rod beckstrom, the ceo of the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers. that getting underway in about five minutes here on c-span2.

today of course primary day in new hampshire. voters are heading to the polls in the first in the nation primary. select a republican president of nominee. c-span want live coverage asked the results come in tonight and reaction from the candidate. coverage starts at 8 p.m. eastern. "washington journal" talk to some of the new hampshire voters. >> the secretary of state is expecting here in asher about a 42% voter turnout. we are at war demo for where the voters have been coming in since 6 a.m. this morning. one of them is roger davies who just voted this point who to did you vote for? >> a fellow from texas. in congressman ron paul. why did you choose and? >> he is a straight shooter. didn't have anything bad to say about anybody else. he stood on its own hind legs and deliver his message with clarity. i have a lot of respect for a man back when did you decide to vote for ron paul? >> a few months ago.

his fliers were good, straight to the teeth and i liked his approach, are a? i'm going to do this. not some hollow promiscuous nonsense, we're going to look into, he had a definite purpose. states the purpose. >> what have you been paying attention to during, leading up to today's primary? debates? downfalls? what do you listen to to make your decisions? >> i rea read the newspaper, all right? i read political magazines. i read everybody's fliers, and i listen to them on tv. >> what about the debates, in mpeg? >> not at all. >> why not? >> it got to be, i don't like people telling other people, cutting them down. i just don't go for that. that's not a way to make your position. >> what about the so-called front-runner here in new

hampshire? we will see what happens today, but the former massachusetts governor, mitt romney been up well, i think he is working hard. i think he should steal. i don't know about him, all right? i think there's some strikes against him. his governorship in massachusetts didn't seem to affect us in new hampshire at all. >> what about jon huntsman? he spent a lot of time in this state. >> i want to listen to john in concord about two months ago, he impressed me as a very straightforward, honest, dedicated politician. >> but you still decided not to vote for in? >> i didn't think he had a swell of the public to support him. >> that you think ron paul doesn't? >> i think that ron paul has a lot more metal. what about the former speaker, newt gingrich to? i don't like them in. >> why not? >> he is two-faced.

>> what about his leadership skills? he was the speaker of the house been and when he was there he did a lot to impede the progress of the president, so i can't abide that at all. >> roger, thank you very much for your time this morning. >> my pleasure. >> again, life primary coverage tonight on c-span starts at 8 p.m. eastern did you can follow results online at c-span.org/campaign2012. find our coverage of the less candidate speeches before the primary and the reaction to the results. again, c-span.org c-span.org/ca. >> if we begin now, demand our policies with our ideas, then i believe that it is yet possible that we will come to admire this country, not simply because we were born here, but because of the kind of great and good lands that you and i want it to be,

and that together we have made. that is my hope, that is my reason for seeking the presidency of the united states. >> as candidates campaign for president this year, we look back at 14 and he ran for the office and lost. go to our website at c-span.org/thecontenders to see video of the contenders who had a lasting impact on american politics. >> the leadership of this nation has a clear and immediate challenge to go to work effectively and go to work immediately to restore proper respect for law and order in this land, and not just prior to election day either. >> these young people when they get out of this wonderful university will have difficulty finding a job. we've got to clean this mess up, we this country in good shape and pass on the american dream to them to go to our website, c-span.org/thecontenders. >> we are live this afternoon

for the sin of strategic and international studies here in washington for discussion with rod beckstrom, he's the ceo of internet corporation for assigned names and numbers. if the opposition in charge of registering internet domains, and he is planning to talk about the plan to expand domains beyond dot com, dot net and dot org. the proposal takes effect on thursday. >> [inaudible conversations] >> thank you very much for coming out today. my name is jim lewis. welcome to csis. it's been a busy year for icann but it's been a year -- is a year and a busy week for rod beckstrom. so we are a special place to take a look out to come and talk to us on a topic that is something close to my heart, probably close to his. but with that, let me turn it over to rod.

[applause] >> thank you, jim, and thank you csis. the center for strategic international studies have been doing such important work for decades to promote greater international understanding and around the world, and particularly honor to address all of you today. i checked the list of attendees and i say we have all five regions of the world represented here. that is the icann internet region, north america, south america, europe, africa, and also asia. so very honored to be here. we also, i want to acknowledge the attended. white house, state department, oecd, government of australia and other governments around the world, truly honored to be with you. and all of you from the private sector as well as other nonprofit organizations. i had a great appreciation for the work that jim haslett year,

when he led particularly the csis commission on cyber security for the 44th presidency. i think is very important seminal work that has made a contribution globally to better international understanding on the internet. and commend particularly the report that was written on securing cyberspace 4044th presidency that is still often referred to. and that has contributed much to the global dialogue that's going on about the internet and about the future of the internet and how it is used by mankind and used by all the different aspects of society. we are here this week to make an announcement or because of a significant change in our world of technology, and what is happening this week heralds a new era for the domain name system. and accomplishes a new milestone in the history of the internet. and that is namely the opening up of the new generic top level domain system of the internet and the third round and the most significant opening in the

history of the domain name system. so what's changing? and who besides what's changing? well, the first context that would let and i think applies well to this institution is that the internet as we know was initially developed in the united states of america, and the internet was 100% american, and it is becoming 100% global. and what is happening this week facilitates that continue to transition in change which is for the betterment of the world and the betterment of mankind. whether globalization is just one aspect of the program, but it's a critical aspect because when the domain name system was made, initially there were some top names that were limited only to this national geography. top level domains such as.gov and .mil come to my. the other ones that were established were operated by

operators in this geography. and, of course, icann has opened up the domain name system before so that there now are some other registries being operated around the world like dot asia that is operated out of hong kong in china. and so this is part of that continued move. now, how was this developed? okay? who decides? this change of the domain name system was developed by the global multi-stakeholder community of icann, and it follows on the historical trajectory that was established in the late 1990s when the first policy concepts were developed for the formation of icann, and for the transferring of the coordination of the global domain name system. from the united states to the world. in a multi-stakeholder multinational body. headquartered in the united states, mainly icann. and i know original policy

documents it stated that this new body, icann, should open up the top local domain name space to provide consumers with more choice and to ensure that there is more competition in the domain name market space. how has that worked out? we estimate that average prices of domain names into generic top level domains have dropped 70% since icann's founding. 70% drop. it's a very significant will transfer to the benefit of the consumers and end users of the internet around the world. this multi-stakeholder body has different formalize components. there's three policy organs, there's a group called the country code names supporting organization. so country codes are the operators like .uk or .au or .de

for kenya. these are the country code registries of the internet. that community has over 100 members, called -- one of the founder of the committee and a former chairman, peter, is here with us today. we also have the generic names supporting organization, and that is a group of participants of domain name registries and registrars into generic space. so when you think of dot com or dot net ord dot org those are generic. they don't pertain to countries. and so there's a whole policy develop a body that includes registries, registrars, also civil society, organizations, intellectual property constituency, which is very strong views, and interest on the topic of new generic top domain names. and that is the policy group out of the three that initiated the new generic top level domain name program. the third policy development organ is called the asl, or

address supporting organization. that is for all the internet addresses in the world. there are five regions of the world, each one has a regional internet registry which is the community coordination policy body that allocates internet addresses. so the aso is also involve. so i'll icann policies start or are born in one of those three vehicles. this policy that is being implemented this week was developed in the gms oh, started in 2005, approved in paris in 2008, and a policy perspective and approved by the board of icann to go into operations in june of last year, 2011 in singapore. and that's how we develop our policy by the way which is around the world. every year we have three big meetings. we call them public meetings. to rotate around the five regions of the world, and so they cycle systematically

through north america, south america, europe, asia and africa. so, policy was developed and when the board approved this program in june of last year it was decided that the launch date would be two days from today, january 12. 12 '01 to be precise, which is equal to 7:01 a.m. in d.c. vista program open. would talk about an ethic about the internet and in the context of this solution within it, you know, we usually refer to the internet as the internet. but why do we call it the internet? that suggest one thing. we think of it as one thing. we refer to it as one thing. but if you think about what comprises the internet it's actually millions of private networks, and billions of privately owned devices, sometimes by governments as well such as cell phones, ipads or

tablets, pcs. and we have approximate 2 billion years on the internet today, and that's growing quite rapidly, particularly with the advent and acceleration of smart phones and tablets. we are very likely to add several billion users to that number over the next 20 years. and surveys around the globe show that 75% of people in the world have very strong opinions about how access to the internet should be handled, which suggests a level of utilization is much higher than the number of devices and accounts might suggest, which makes sense. so the internet has become a very pervasive. but why do we refer to the internet as one place? it's really millions of private networks. and the answer is that there are three things that unify the internet. and those three things have to be code needed globally for the internet to operate as a unified global hole. and those three things i am

referring to impart our domain names, network addresses or ip addresses, and the protocol and parameter registries which are like technical settings and standards for the internet. those three things. domain names, addresses, and the protocol and priam are registries are the only three things in the world that make the internet look like one place. the icann community, and all the hundreds of organizations, and more than 100 governments that are formally involved in icann -- icann to for par -- are the stewards of those three resources that we called unique identifiers of the internet. to keep the internet whole and not fractured, cannot have multiple routes, do not have a fractured or blocked or filtered internet, requires an enormous ongoing effort and collaboration of all those parties globally to keep the system working. and to keep that system evolving

so that it can meet the needs of mankind. and our commerce and our society and our individuals. so that's what the multi-stakeholder model does. this program, a new program than is an example of what that policy develop process produces. and in the case of the new generic top level domain program as a mission, the start of 2005-2006, there were 45 public comment periods. when anyone and overcome anyone in this room and anyone in the world, could share their opinions, their thoughts, write papers, post them online, submit the on this program. there were more than 2000 submissions over the period of time to help shape this program. the summary analysis of those suggestions is 1400 pages long, to give you an idea. the icann meetings around the

world now are attracting, on average, probably around 12-13-1400 people from around the world that each policy development, the big meetings that we have, the public meetings. and there's many more people. you can participate. at those meetings by the way, the microphone is open. so there's many formalized sessions, many concurrent sessions going on, whether cybersecurity issues or law enforcement issues or intellectual property issues or addressing issues, there are many concurrent sessions but at many of the sessions, the microphone is open. uniquely for anyone in the world to come up and speak and share their views. and that's been the case for six years in the defilement of this program, the new program. so icann is an international consensus driven organization, and it's committed to a secure and stable global unified internet. so we've talked a bit about the organization. now let's talk a little bit more about this program.

first let's talk about globalization. so where are the users of the internet today? half of them, a billion, are in asia. approximately 500 million alone, 25%, are in china. and yet today in the at it, there's not a single generic top level domain in chinese characters. or in demagoguery characters for the hindu language or in arabic characters. there's nothing in the generic area. they are our country codes and we entered is internationalized domain names in country codes successfully starting in 2009. we have more than 20 countries represented, with more than 30 internationalized domain name extensions. and that was a critical move in the internationalization of icann end of the internet domain name system. but this move is critical because it is the first time in history that an organization in china or in beijing, i, new

delhi, or qatar or the uae or in other country can't apply for a top level domain name in their own language script. so it's absolutely vital, and i personally traveled through 27 countries in the last four months, and stopped and met with the internet community, met with companies, nonprofits, governments in 16 of those, and probably well over, i don't know, probably close to 200 meetings, over the past four months to talk about this program. and i can say that there are definite parties that are interested in beijing, in new delhi, in qatar, in united arab immigrants, and around the world, and in all five geographies. i was also in são paulo, brazil. there's interest around the world, and there's a sense from these users around the world that this is there and this is right, that they should have this access to the internet.

and i remember meeting with a minister in france last year, and she asked me the question, she says, why is this taking so long? when are you finally going to open a new program. and i say that because we know there's a lot of controversy and does a lot of parties that are opposed to the program or aspects of the program but they want to see change. and that is a sign of a healthy multistate model, the debate never stop. it's just like congress, or politics here in the united states or anywhere else in the world. it goes on and on and on. and certainly icann has been in the limelight in the last, over the whole period of its program there's been a lot of interest in serving over the last few months, intensive interest, lobbying notice of dollars being spent in the city bipartisan want to share their views. parties incidentally who played very viable roles in the defilement of this program, because this program has extensive intellectual property protections. with intellectual property

protections, experts on our board. we have great experts in our community, not on the intellectual property constituency itself but across the community in other areas that have been deeply involved. and i say the greatest reason it has taken so long to develop this program was actually attention to intellectual property issues. secondarily i would say probably a tension the government issues, governments have been concerned about many geographic naming issues, what's the treatment of cities, what's the treatment of capital cities, once the treatment of nation names, national names, what's the treatment of state and. and all these issues are very complex and difficult because they involve different treaties and different bodies of law around the world. governments have also been duly concerned about law enforcement issues and how to increase the standards of information and support for law enforcement in the domain name system, and particularly in new trend once.

and this program clearly has more intellectual property protections by far than any previous gtld program in icann's history. and also, better care in handling i think on, on law enforcement issues. and again of course there's different constituencies out there but you also have privacy constituency and civil rights and civil liberties that have different views and different sets of needs and interests than law enforcement might. and that's a healthy issue, much of which works through the icann community to grind out policies. now, are those policies perfect? know. no policies are perfect. but for the sake of the global public interest you have to decide when consensus policies are developed and they are well thought through and considered an key issues have been address, there comes a time to make the decision and to move forward. and the icann board made the

decision to move ahead with this program formally in june of last year in singapore and charge of the organization with gearing up to and all the technology needs, processing needs, contracting, arbitration processes, et cetera, to be prepared for a launch on thursday of this week. so let's talk about some of the enhanced provisions in this program to address intellectual property's using so-called defense registrations and other things. the first is, in this program we're doing criminal background checks on the officers of applying organizations. and, in fact, we have communicated with interpol and are taking some other suggestions in how we identify the right to work globally to engage those services. so we do background checks. we are also taking the list of all the drinks that are applied for, so any top level domain name that is applied for around the world we will take all those

applications can we close the window on april 12, in early may we will publish the entire list, and anyone in the world can anyone in this room and anyone in the world can go into any single application and state your opinions. stake your support, state your difference, state your concerns, whatever it might be. whatever your set of issues might be. in addition and that period is up for 60 days. also for 60 days we have a special window for our governmental advisory committee, those are the more than 100 governments that formally advised icann, including i think all the governments in the room today, and they have 60 days to give us early warning. and we have different advisory committees but when the advice comes from the governmental advisory committee, the board is compelled to either accept that advice or if it rejects it, the state, explained the rationale why is being rejected is a very

high standard of expectation and care that has to be given to all those what we call gac recommendation. so the gac has 60 days to issue a preliminary opinion in all those, and like any that they're concerned about. base to reserve the right to come back at anytime in the future and express an objection but it's part of the process that we established a formal is government involvement in review of the strengths. then for a seven month period of time, anyone in the world who has an objection to one of those can actually file a formal objection but you have to pay for that. there will be a loser pay structure and there's four different types of objections that can be filed, that can be found on the base and lecture property issues so someone applies for a game that looks like your trademark and they don't own the trademark, file an objection. there's a formal process. and will be independent experts that are independent of icann and all these mechanisms are defined in the applicant

guidebook, 300 page rulebook for the program. those experts will determine the winner and loser in that objection process. if an applicant loses, they are gone, they have lost the application fee, that out of the process. the application fee is $185,000. that sounds like a lot of money but that's priced out to cover criminal background checks, supporting the technology processes here, the public comment process is, that outsource processing of the applications, to develop an of application processing system, and many other checks that we have to do. it's, one-third is a risk contingency because icann does face litigation and other risks. and if there's any surplus after the program is completed, the community will decide what is done with those funds because they are managed a separate fund. they don't go into the icann general fund. this is run on a pure breakeven basis for the benefit of the world. so coming back to the protections, there's those objection. so for seven much of an

opportunity file and start an objection and then they will run different courses of time depending on the nature of the objection and the timeframe set by this panel experts and the processes that are defined. the next thing, it's very significant, is a global trademark clearinghouse. so one of the problems is if you're a trademark holder, it's kind of hard to watch what's happening across 300 top level domains in the world as if anyone might be registering your domain name. and so that requires human effort work. so the committee and intellectual property experts said we can do better than this. let's build a global database and allow any party that can provide the documentation that have the right to a trademark or service mark to register that and then get alerted if anyone in the world registers that at the second level, for all of these new top level domains but let's say hypothetically we have five, you register 10 trademarks in this system once. if anyone and will try to register one of your trademarks and those 500 level, you'll get

notified. whinger notified you can either communicate to the party direct and say cease-and-desist, plead. and if they don't listen to you can file a complaint, a formal arbitration complaint under either what we call the ud are becoming uniform dispute resolution process which is the basic arbitration process for domain name disputes. issues roughly 5000 times a year today and incidentally, and more than 80% of the cases, the party that applies wins and controls of the domain name change. because she's a partial only applied if every trademark or service or any other party does. but the process works, and it's much less expensive than litigation or other options like it. so udrp is available, but some parties were concerned that's not fast enough. because it could take quite some number of weeks to resolve these issues. so we develop a uniform rapid suspension system for a very

clear-cut cases, and those will be resolved in a 21 day time period. i believe is how we structured that. so that's another protection. the further protection is what we call sunrise registration rights. so what is sunrise? think of a new top level domain of hearing, you know, on the horizon. as it is rising there is a period of time during which trademark holders have the right to register domain names before other parties do. so it's a period of time when only trademark and service mark holders will have the right to register. and that's just another protection mechanism by the intellectual property interest and communities. and then finally, there is something that we can think of as the nuclear option. okay? and that is called pdd erp or post delegation dispute resolution procedure. what that means is it a new registry operator is demonstrated over time to allow our engage in abusive behavior

that's not in the global public interest and that is not respecting the contrast and the policies of icann and the global internet community can we actually have the right to shut down or take back that registry. now, we would hope to never do that, and as you can imagine that was a very, you know, hard-fought battle by members of the community. but it exist, it will provide an incentive for good behavior. because we don't want to see malicious conduct and behavior out there that is not good for use of internet. so let's talk about some of the positive. it's easy to focus on the negatives. unique policy discussion. that's an important part of the policy in shaping the process, but what are some of the positive reasons that this program is moving forward besides globalization? another reason is just innovation. you know, whenever you create new standards in the internet, whether you open up any key new technology, you create a standard.

there tends to be innovation. now, what is and innovation going to look like and what is going to go? none of us know. that's why it's called innovation because it is uncertain. it's about creativity, and we certainly have the impression there's a lot of creative ideas that parties have out there and around the world that they will want to bring forward in this expansion of new domain name system space that we haven't seen in the past. and i think that's what makes the future so interesting. it's also what makes the internet so exciting. so he you were to design all the proper protections you can in a program, but you also have to remember, there's very creative people out there who are not sharing their plans yet. there's a number that event bubbling up in the last few days if you read a "wall street journal" article from yesterday, and other articles that are appearing, parties are going to talk about some of their plans for ending top level domains that will be creating that were not speaking before. and by the way, talking about, in numbers, karen and if i cover

this, but we don't have a specific forecast of how big this round will be. we planted on 500 applications. having traveled around the world i heard numbers as low as several hundred applications being forecasted by others. the highest number ever heard was 4000. i don't know what is going to come out, and icann doesn't care. article is not too great a number of applications. our goal is to serve the global public interest and to administer this program fairly and professionally for the benefit of global internet users. while ensuring the security and stability of the global internet that has become so vital to so many aspects of our lives. we also think that very clearly this innovation will create new jobs. we don't know how many. we can look in the mayor of few years from now and see, but clearly new businesses are being formed, new companies are being formed, new service providers, new top level domain registries, new registrars. so it is creating new opportunities of business and

new jobs. and you know, the reality is that great i just don't last forever so if you think of a domain name system it may seem very familiar. we think dot com, dot net, dot org but the reality is that's what was created in the past. and it's important to open up to the world and to users around the world to see what they wish to create for the next generation of the internet domain name system. the third benefit is competition. .. >> can be filed by different

companies in different sectors. now, take that issue and roll it around the world to all of your countries and all countries around the world, probably more than 150 have these regimes, and you're talking about well over 5,000 entities that could have the right to exactly the same trademark or term. the domain name system, on the other hand o, has integrity and is unique. every domain name is unique. so if you take example.com, there's only one example.com in the spire world. in the entire world. and that's why the ican policies and the work of our community is critical in coordinating the internet to maintain that integrity so when someone sends you an e-mail to your account, it gets to you and doesn't go to five other people in the world who have chosen to use the same name that you have in a system that would lack integrity. so the domain name is unique, and it has naming integrity just like the addressing system, address is unique, and there's address integrity.

and that's what keeps the global internet unified and keeps it working and scaling for the benefit of mankind. so there's always going to be a pressure between the trademark system which is divided, again, by categories and geographies trying to fit into a system where each term or string is unique, so you can imagine the competition for some of those strings. whether's financial competition or policy competition or whatever it might be, there's a lot of heat, and that's some of the heat that you're hearing, i think, here in d.c. and other place in the last few weeks. the fourth primary benefit is that relates to competition is consumer choice. so maybe you didn't get the doe neighbor -- domain name that you wanted because someone else with your family name grabbed by by 1993 or '94. most family names were grabbed by 1995in the western world. so you're going to have another bite at that apple.

maybe you're part of a different city or geography where you can actually get the name that you want to have whether you're an individual or business. so that provides more consumer choices. now, some people ask us, and they say, well, are these new tlds going to be successful, or how many are going to fail? well, of course, how do you define success, and how do you define failure? and, certainly, who will decide? users of the world will decide. organizations will decide what succeeds and what's not successful. ican's concern is not about the individual business, marketing or organizational usage success of a top-level domain, it's that the global internet domain name system be secure and stable and reliable, and that's what the checks are for the system. and the community cares about protecting rights holders such as trademarks that we discussed. so we'll see some successes, we'll see some failures, we'll

probably see some innovations that we find it very hard to even think about today. certainly, some things are predictable. having spent a week in beijing about a month ago and hearing that a number of parties will be applying for generic top-level domains for their equivalent of things like.gov and dot.com and dot.org, we'll see. i have no opinion about any's concept for a tld. we will take the applications, and we'll process them fairly according to the rules, and the final decider on these will be the board of directors of icann, but they do not spend to weigh in on -- intend to weigh in on individual decisions. they intend to accept the process, and i should mention our chairman, dr. steve crocker, is here with us today. um, who leads the board. so, again f we look at icann,

icann in a summary is consensus driven, focused on stability and focused on the unified global internet. and this program has been developed to support all three of those. it was developed through a consensus, policy development process through many hard-fought ballots over many years. it has an entire set of protections for additional security and stability that previous gtld rounds did not have such as support for centralized zone file backups and other things, i won't geek out and get into too many technical details, but there's additional security protections. and, clearly, it should serve to support the unified global internet by helping to meet the needs of internet users around the world who would like to have some of the same choices that people who live in this geography enjoy today. so how is this internet going to look in five to ten years and

the domain name system? i think we can say it's going to be more ubiquitous, there will be more domain names, more devices, more network addresses, it's going to be more global. the highest growth rate in the world of internet users is in asia. very significant growth. it's going to be more diverse. you're going to see more different tools, applications, devices, more different domain names. you're going to see more different languages in domain names, and you're going to see less latin as a portion of that mix, i would predict. and so it's going to look more like the world. and it's going to look less like one individual country. and i think that that's a good thing for the internet. so i also think if we meet together here at cis in two years and have this discussion and then we look back on this program, you know, today many people ask the question why are you doing this program, okay? and i think in two years' time,

a lot of people look back and say how could you not have done this, how could you not have opened up the internet to this innovation and to this international participation? but that summarizes my comments. i'm thrilled to be here with you today, and maybe we can move to question and answer. thank you very much. [applause] >> it occurs to me that i didn't introduce rod when i came in, but i just assumed everyone knew who he was. i mean, he is a global internet leader, and if you don't know who he is, see me afterwards. [laughter] with that, i think what we'd like to do is, if you have time, take a few questions. there are microphones, so if you could, please, wait for them and, please, introduce yourself when you want to ask a question. do we want to start? we've got one. oh, hi. [inaudible conversations] >> okay, thank you. >> hi, this is juliana gruenwald with national journal. now, you say the process came

about through consensus and the bottoms-up, you know, consensus driven process that icann is supposed to make decisions by, but can you respond to your critics who say you didn't follow this process given how many trademark holders have cried foul? can you just respond to that? >> sure. the policies were supported by the gnsl, and it took three years of hard work of that group , multistakeholder model's gone through two significant revolutions in two years, so our design is organic and evolving. it was reviewed in depth by our board which is a multistakeholder consensus body itself. the board members are elected by those policy development organs that i mentioned. they're also appointed from the advisory committee such as the root server advisory committee that engaged in these policies,

the security and stability advisory committee which is security experts from around the world, the at-large advisory committee which includes more than 150 civil society groups around the world. um, and, of course, the governmental advisory committee, the gac. thank you. and so all those bodies weighed in. in fact, look at our engagement with the gac on this policy development alone. we, for the first time in icann's history, did a formal demonstration in brussels with more than 40 countries represented, and i think we had 18 out of 22 icann board members and liaisons, and we worked through 80 requested changes that came from the governments of the world through the gac, and we were able to accommodate well over 70 of those. which is just another touchstone example. now, that does not mean in a multistakeholder model reaching consensus is not unanimity.

and this program was not approved with a unanimous vote of the icann board. i know round one was in 2000. the fist round of new gtlds has a unanimous board vote. this one had a dominant majority, but -- so there's every, you know, and it's all online, it's all documented, it's all transparent. and the reality is, is, you know, some of the parties that are issuing complaints right now issued letters as a part of this program, and their changes were accommodated, okay? so if you find a place where a change was not accommodated, you're probably going to find there was a group of parties that had a different view. so, clearly, a rich consensus process. again, no process is perfect. and, by the way, this process can still change or the program can still change because the board of icann, and icann as an organization reserves the right to change this program in the future. and every applicant that applies for a top-level domain has to

understand that. and we need to do that for the security and the stability of the internet because we don't know what set of issues could develop tomorrow. >> was there any reason why you had to stick by this particular date? you had key members of congress also saying, hey, slow this down, why not delay it, answer some more of these questions? >> there was a date approved by the icann board. the global internet community, many participants, feel they've waited for many years already, and there was no reasons given for the delay. um, there's no new information that's come in in the last few months. it's the same set of arguments, most of which have been heard for up to five and six years. so same set of issues. again, it's all a balancing of equations. it's just like congress finally enacts legislation or any other legislative body, that doesn't stop the lobbying of special interests to say that wasn't fair, you should change it, you should reinterpret it. i think it's the same thing here. >> [inaudible]

>> i won't stand up so i don't block your shot here. you said this debate has been healthy. i'm wondering if you want to qualify that in any way, or is there any way in which the debate has not been healthy? i ask that because, of course, the internet and icann in particular is too dominated by the united states, by the u.s. government. and here the way that you explained the evolution of this program, it appears to have a lot of international support but has run into a lot of criticism in the u.s. congress even from the federal trade commission. you've got members of congress saying that the department of commerce should order you, basically, to slow down. does criticism coming from within washington like this make it more difficult for you to say that icann is not dominated by washington? >> yes. i mean, you know, icann is a global institution, and it says that in our bylaws, and it says it even in the white paper and green papers that were

developed, a joint effort, by the department of commerce and the white house that helped shape us initially, that we must be a global institution. so, yes, there's a natural tension. and that's why it's all the more important that we be true to the global public interest and not the interests in this any one national geography. having said that, i want to recognize there have been concerns expressed from trademark and business interests from around the world and different trade associations and other geographies. hasn't been limited to north america or d.c., it's certainly been focused here, i'd say over the last month we've received a lot of attention. but i think even that's healthy because even the debating and engaging in these issues is leading to a lot better understanding of icann. icann is a complex organism. we have all these interlocking parts that work together, and how do you develop consensus on the internet. but the same thing is true of the internet engineering task force, the critical internet organization that defines most

of the standards of the internet and the ones that we seek to follow as an organization. so a lot of pressure, a lot of tension, and it forces a challenge for icann to grow up and decide what it is. is icann a global organization, or is icann going to be a national organization with global outreach? and i can tell you under my leadership, certainly, and under steve's leadership and the board, icann is a global organization that also respects its understanding and agreements with the united states government. >> in the back there. >> randy bachmann of the fcc. jeff moss addressed the ftc letter and said most of the things that they said were either unfounded or addressed by some of your remediation process. um, one of the things that i didn't see, um, even though you mentioned the trusted trademark route is no mention of the trusted route for domain names

and ip addresses. are you planning on including that in as well or not? >> sure, let me, first -- >> and that's in reference to rpki. >> i'm not familiar with the comments you've made about jeff positive, so i'm not going to comment on those right now. i will say we're examining the ftc letter in depth -- >> well, i think you've addressed most of them. the one that i haven't seen was on a trusted route of ip addresses. >> oh. um, that is certainly not part of the new gtld program. >> not. >> and so i think that would have to work through a different policy -- >> i did hear that you were going to include, um, encouraging people to be part of the -- [inaudible] >> it's required. >> it is required. >> it's required for the registries to support dns-sec. so if you're at top-level domain, you have dot example, and anyone who registers at the second level should have the choice to turn on dns-sec

because you will have signed what we -- >> you've selected the names, not the numbers? >> >> um, correct. this is a change to the domain name aspect of the system. we have also specified in the program that all the rebel city -- registries have to support internet protocol 4 and 6. the, i think that the discussion about the block of internet addresses, the route of addresses and how that's secured, that is an ongoing, technical discussion as you know in other bodies. once the ietf comes up and the internet architecture board with their set of guidelines for doing that, the next step becomes how does icann look at those standards and policies to support them. so it's an important effort, and we appreciate your support for that. thank you. >> we have one more, right there. >> hi, rob jemmer, i'm a trademark and copyright attorney, and i'm in the business of protecting clients'

trademarks and brand names. we recently did one of the first xxx rapid evaluation service takedowns, and probably in the world, and it went very fast. like you said, 21-day process even through the holidays. is the process for the gtld going to be set up similarly, and is this eventually maybe going to be rolled out to other top-level domains? i thought it was a very effective process as an alternative to a udrp. >> i'm glad to hear it worked. jamie, are you in the room? vp of government affairs and intellectual property expert. are the mechanisms the same? >> we're not going to comment about whether or not they are the same. the urf was developed -- >> okay. there's a mic coming, jamie. >> sorry. so icm, which runs .xxx has their own policies, and we, and they develop those independently from the new gtld program. the urs was under the

implementation of the new gtld program. um, and applies to top-level domains that are approved through the program. whether it -- and so it doesn't apply to existing top-level domains. whether that is to happen in the future will depend on the community moving toward, um, toward that objective. >> thank you. >> [inaudible] >> no, you can point to it. you don't need my help. [laughter] >> hi, i'm dan jaffey from the association of national advertisers. i was just wondering, you seem to be glossing over some of the level of criticism that has been coming out. the ftc didn't just say there were some problems, they said that the chairman said rolling this out this way would create a potential disaster for business and consumers.

it also in that report talked about the icann commission who his review team stated the very real truth that the current system is broken and needs to be repaired. the igo also stated that their names, the u.n., these are international organizations, the u.n., the who, nato and more than 28 other organizations also thought that this rollout was premature. the gac which provided 12 proposals to protect the system from internet crime said that only three of those proposals had even been looked at, and none of them had been carried out. these sound like very serious concerns when you're rolling something out that is going to fundamentally change the running of the internet. what are you going to do to try to meet some of these concerns, or are these concerns old stories that don't really need any real concern now? >> sure. thank you for sharing that.

um, in fact, i'm very proud of the work that the review team has done, the team was formed as a result of the affirmation of commitment that we sign with the the department of commerce on september 30th of 2009 that changed the oversight and reviews of icann from the u.s. department of commerce to being done by the world and groups that are comprised of different stakeholders from around the world, and i'm the co-selector for all those teams, and i really appreciate their hard work. and i think there is a lot more work to be done on who is. who is is a really tough problem, you've got law enforcement constituencies with issues, and you've got civil society groups and privacy parties that have very different views as well. and trying to find the right middle ground, i think, is one of the great and important challenges we have as an organization. and more work has to be done there. and a lot of work is being done right now as we discussed in our most recent meeting in senegal when we met with the

governmental advisory committee, and they shared their view that i think three of the concerns that were in the process of being addressed, they were concerned about other concerns they'd identified that we've initiated a review of our fundamental contracts with the registrars. the registrars are parties like go daddy or anyone that you register a domain name with, you go through a registrar to register in a registry for generickics. the -- generics. the countries are different. but we are seeking, at this time we're in the process of detailed contract negotiations with the registrar constituency to change and amend those contracts to provide better who is protections. and we're very much hopeful, and i know it's something that dr. steve crocker as our chairman cares strongly about and has shared his support for the evolution of. and i've been very concerned about it since i came in with my own background in law

enforcement and cybersecurity. so i think we'll see some progress there, hopefully, by the costa rica public policy meeting. it's our next meeting in march, we invite all of you to join in costa rica, and i think that's probably when there'll be in-depth, next-level debate discussion, so a lot more work needs to be done. so i think there's other parties now that are proposing new ideas. they want to consider defensive, to prevent defensive registrations. so icann's an open, community-driven process, and we seek to follow that process. thank you. >> i think we have four questions, could we get the one in the front here? >> and i'll try to answer with brevity as well. thank you. >> gravity or brevity? [laughter] >> i'll strive for both. >> my name's martin apple, i'm with the council of scientific society presidents. um, because of your background i would like to know how you have seen the filling of the holes of

the swiss cheese of security and what you think the current state is and how much it has changed from what you're doing. >> sure. i think that -- well, that is the, you know, mother of all questions. that's a huge question. security's so complex. as i say sometime, who's an internet security expert when it's almost truly impossible to secure anything that's attached to the internet. security's a great challenge of our time, and it's something we all have to work on together. the role that icann plays that's really important is that icann is a bit like switzerland in terms of neutrality. we are the neutral grounds where every single country and territory in the world link and have some level of work together to keep the domain name system going. everyone from the oecd countries to northern korea, syria, iran, these countries in many cases are members of our governmental advisory committee. we welcome them, all of them we

have operating contacts with because we have to coordinate the operations of the route zone of the internet through our functions. so we work with everyone in the world, we maintain that neutrality. you might read some interesting stories in the conficker case of the role that icann played to help link together 100 countries around the world for collaborative efforts to combat an extremely pernicious bot net. and we were able to do that because of our newt central position -- neutral position. there's other things you can't do, and that's fine. i'm not going to pine overall on whether the internet's getting more secure or less secure. we've enhanced the technology by crypt graphically signing the route of the internet. we have more than 60 or 70 top-level domains signed with dns-sec now. those signings are going well. adoption's slow though. at the second level, adoption's slow. so we really need the help of

everyone in this room, people in government and private industry, to advocate dns-sec which prevents man in the middle attacks, basically, so when you click on a name in your browser you actually get to that site and someone else can't intercept your request and fool you and dupe you out of information and defraud you or steal your money. it's one critical piece of infrastructure. what the gentleman mentioned from the ftc and adding security to the addressing system is another key component that must be done. and it's the, the work is underway, but working these through standards bodies and through building international consensus takes time. so more work to be done. we hope that we're contributing. >> well, we've got three here and a guy there, so why don't we do those three, and diane said okay. and, please, remember to introduce yourself. >> yes, i'm judy harris with reid smith. i'm a lawyer and, unfortunately, i think like one, so forgive me

for that. i believe, mr. beckstrom, you were an official of the united states government before you joined icann, and here in the united states as you know we have a rulemaking process and an agency that's going to make policy has a very specific process they follow. and they solicit comments, and then they make decisions based on those comments. and there is a recourse to the court of appeals if there's a belief that the decisions that were made, the policies that were put in place were, quote, arbitrary and capricious and not in keeping with the comments that were filed. so my question is, and forgive my ignorance on the point, but you've talked a lot about the ability to write letters, you've talked about the open process you had for people submitting comments. you've talked about the ability that people are going to have to submit reactions when the applications are -- um, does icann have any obligation to,

um, do more than listen? is there any obligation to demonstrate that your decisions were, in fact, based on the preponderance of the evidence in the record, and if so, is there any recourse to anyone anywhere in the world to challenge that finding? >> sure. thank you. if i simplify your question, it has two key pieces. is there a formalized policy development process, i think that's one question, and secondly, are there review processes and procedures to appeal decisions even by the board of icann, and the answer is yes on both. structures are a little different than the government, of course they differ in some of the departments and agencies and under different authorities and titles. in icann there is a formal policy development process. it was recently revised, and new revisions were just approved by the board of directors of ica insurancenn.

as i mentioned there were 45 different formal open public comment processes. now, let's say what happens if icann board makes a decision someone thinks is wrong. this has happened, and there's an independent process called an independent review panel that can, that are arbitrators that can review any decision by the icann board. and we had this case with xxx. so the icann board volted down xxx -- voted down xxxi because they felt it did not meet some of the criterion. the party that applied for that top-level domain disputed it and filed the first formal complaint under an independent review panel. and that took a considerable period of time to work through, i want to say a year. some people know exactly how many months or years, we certainly spent millions of dollars on that effort, and we lost. all right? when we lost, by the way, and my general counsel called me on a friday afternoon or evening in california and said i can't believe, i cannot believe this, we just lost the independent

review panel decision. i said, good, help me tweet it right now. can we publish this document? and he said, wow, i hadn't thought of that. i said, i want it published. he said, we've got to redact it first. i said put your team on retaxing it, my tweet went out within minutes of me learning of that decision. and we lost it. then the board reconsidered the decision, laid out the process for reevaluating the decision with the community, took public comment on the process for reconsidering the decision, public comment and some, i believe, in some different steps. and in the end we ended up approving it. the board did not have to change the decision, by the way. the independent review panel forced a reconsideration. the reason for that is, in part, a legal reason. the board of icann is the fiduciary for making diss for the organization. -- for making decisions for the organization. and it's not possible to have those reverted by an outside

body, i believe, under california law. >> [inaudible] nobody has the power to -- [inaudible] to reverse their decision. >> that's for the board overall. >> but my first question was does icann have an obligation not only to take in comment, but to make decisions based on the preponderance of the -- i understand you're never going to have perfect consensus, or can you, could you choose to make your own decisions and ignore all those -- >> the icann board as fiduciaries of the organization has the responsibility to make decisions in the global public interest. and we reaffirmed that responsibility when we signed the affirmation of commitments with the department of commerce. that means at the end the board must do what they believe is for the highest good of the global public interest. and that was certainly the litmus test on this program and the reasoning and the debate and

discussions that we went through as a board in reaching the decision. >> i think we have one -- do you have time for two more, rod? >> absolutely, yeah. >> okay. we have one -- well, we have three more. go ahead. >> certainly. this will be very brief. um -- >> and could you introduce yourself? >> of course. i'm amy with reid smith. just a moment ago you were talking about the complexities of security, and i quite appreciate the discussion of dns-sec, and i think that is one item that will help. but going back to the who is problem, that's a problem that's not very complicated, and it's byrne around since 2002 when oecd had issued warnings about the fact that the who is system was woefully inaccurate and contained a myriad of errors, and in 2009 when law enforcement had recommendations, there have been many intermediary, many intermediary decisions and issues regarding who is.

currently, we have all of this talk, none of the law enforcement recommendations developed, and we still on a thick who is registries have registries to mickey mouse, donald duck, god, you name it. so specifically for those types of registry errors that could be easily screened out by a simple database query, i mean, is this even something that you propose to do -- >> sure. let me say i invite you to step into the room of icann, and maybe you do in the community, pull in the privacy groups, civil rights and civil liberties, law enforcement, registries, registrars and come out and tell me this is easy and there's a set of recommendations everyone can agree upon was i haven't -- because i haven't seen it, okay? by the way, i don't develop policy. i contribute -- i support the policy development process as a ceo, and it's very important. one of the key things i focus on as ceo is not trying to steer

policies of icann, but in trying to tune up the policy development process and support organizations so we don't have an organizational skew. >> but going back to the stakeholders that you had named, the first amendment constituency, the privacy constituency would be worried about prophesy registrations, were they anonymous. law enforcement would be worried about screening out these types of -- >> if you're going to start reasoning this out, come, please, do it. please, help get to a -- the community get to a consensus position because i think progress does need to be made. by the way, i agree with you that progress can be made, there's some middle ground that can be found. i've got to say having watched the battles go on and the positioning and the lobbying and the different aspects, i've never seen a group merge out of the room and say, we've got it, it's really simple, you know? it's all right here. they come out with different versions and say i don't like that or i'll never live with that. there's some pretty strongly held opinions. i do think that, you know, what does icann live on?

icann lives on the trust of the parties that we work with on the internet globally, and we have on to be fair, and we have to be respected, and we have to act in a trustworthy fashion. and that means that we've got to keep pushing on these kinds of issues to enhance things like who is even when it's easy for everything to get ground down and stuck. and i think that is part of the value that, clearly, the board of ica, this n adds, and as ceo i've tried to add value in, basically, unsticking things at times. i don't think it's simple. but if you think it's simple, get onboard, write it up. >> we have one right behind you. by the way, i'm not so sure the god one is fake -- [laughter] >> hi, i'm -- >> george burns. you know, he's got to register something. [laughter] >> i'm joe marks, government executive magazine. you talked about national governments being one of the biggest, likeliest purchaser of these new top-level domains, and there are also many, the

dot.governor and a number national governments are trying to pare down and rationalize their web presences right now. i wonder if you can talk about how you expect this expansion of top-level domains to change the way governments manage their web presences. >> sure. first, i mentioned some geographies where there seems to be an interest in creating local equivalents and local language scripts for things like dot.gov, dot.com, we'll see what happens. a lot of governments are looking at the issue of how do they create higher security zones or security networks or multiple different security zones and how they do that. some of those are relating to this. most of the government interests we're seeing in the program that i've heard about on the global road show we've done are by cities, very strong interest by a lot of cities around the world, and all five geographies. and also by states in some geographies, not in all geographies. but interest by states.

so i think you'll certainly see cities, you'll certainly see states, and i know some of the city cios are struggling with the issues of figuring out, okay, how do we manage this new top-level domain, who do we let in, do we want it to be open to everyone, or do we want some quality control, but as soon as you da that, you raise a lot of very difficult issues. so it's going to be -- this is an area of innovation, i think, will be quite interesting. >> um, one more. last call? no? well, then, let me ask you to join me in thanking rod. >> thank you all very much. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> a few hours remain for voters in if new hampshire to go to the polls to select a republican presidential nominee. c-span will have live coverage as the results come in tonight

and reaction from the candidates. our coverage begins at 8 eastern. you can also follow the election results online live at c-span.org. >> you're watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs, weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senator. on weeknights, watch key public policy events and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our schedules at our web site, and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. >> last month president obama issued an executive order to establish the nation's first-ever plan promoting women's rights, protecting them from violence and conflict and making sure they're part of the peace-building efforts. secretary of state hillary clinton explained the initiative during a speech at georgetown university. this is 50 minutes.

>> thank you very much, carol. and it is my pleasure to welcome all of you here this afternoon. it's truly an honor to have with us so many distinguished guests and national leaders, especially the united states secretary of state, hillary rodham clinton, who will discuss the u.s. action plan on women, peace and security. i want to join carol in expressing what a privilege it is to welcome the president of kosovo. it's an honor for us to have you with us today. your leadership exemplifies a deep commitment to establishing peaceful solutions to conflict. it's an honor for us to have you with us. secretary clinton's presence here today follows more than a decade of international dialogue on the role of women in peace building and development. in 2000 the united states' security council passed resolution 1325 to formally recognize the importance of promoting gender equality and the 'em powerment of --

empowerment of women to presvelte, manage and resolve conflict and to protect the rights of women and girls. since then countries around the world have adopted the resolution sporting more -- supporting more equitable approaches to peace and security. for nearly four decades and in various or roles, secretary clinton has championed these efforts. she has long been a voice for the disempowered and disenfranchised. most recently through her remarks in geneva which addressed the dignity and equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. [applause] secretary clinton's speech advanced and extended the work begun in beijing in 1995 where she declared that human rights are women's rights, and women's

rights are human rights. this is a legacy. this is the legacy that brings us together today. it is also a tradition that resonates profoundly with our work here at georgetown. guided by the university's catholic and jesuit identity, we are a community animated by a deep commitment to social justice. we recognize our responsibility to prepare our young women and men to address the new kinds of challenges emerge anything this time of global -- emerging in this time of globalization. as a result, the university has developed new academic programs and initiatives such as our degree and conflict resolution and our women's law and public policy fellowship program to broaden our students' engagement with issues of peace building and the global status of women. we've also launched an initiative on women, peace, security and development animated by the vision embedded

in the new national action plan that was released today. this initiative will focus on convening leaders, scholars and practitioners dedicated to studying the role of women in conflicts, transitions and humanitarian emergencies. its primary purpose will be to contribute rigorous research to the wider dialogue on these issues. with all of this work, we're deeply honored to be a part of an international community of leaders, scholars and advocates committed to insuring that women's voices are heard. and there are few more inspiring leaders shaping these efforts than secretary clinton. hillary rodham clinton now serves as the 67th secretary of state. it appointed its first-ever

ambassador to focus on the status of women worldwide who we're proud to include as a distinguished member of our alumni commitment. before being appointed to her current position by president obama, secretary clinton served as the united states senator from new york where she was a strong advocate for the expansion of economic opportunity and access to health care. prior to that as first lady, for eight years she worked on many issues relating to children and families. including leading a successful bipartisan effort to provide care to millions of children through the children's health insurance program. representing america abroad, she has traveled to more than 80 countries promoting human rights, democracy, the values of law and liberty and the welfare of women. it is now my pleasure to introduce the united states secretary of state, the honorable hillary hillary rodham clinton. [applause]

>> thank you. [applause] thank you all very much. thank you. [applause] well, it is wonderful to be back at georgetown to give all of the students an excuse not to keep studying for their last finals. [laughter] that's what accounts for the enthusiastic response here. [laughter] but thank you so much, president degioia. this great university has such a long history of nurturing diplomats and peacemakers and at least one former president who still bleeds blue and gray -- [cheers and applause] and the little known secret which i'll spill today is that

my husband and melanne and her husband were all at georgetown at the same time, so who knows what might happen in decades from now with all of you and your colleagues. [laughter] i also want to act among the two members -- acknowledge two members of congress who are here, carnahan and conyers, thank you very much, as well as members of the dip 40matic corps -- diplomatic corps. and i personally wish to welcome the president of kosovo who has been a champion for peace and reconciliation and also for women in her country and beyond. she has been a strong voice and someone who we are very proud of and impressed by. i'm also pleased to be joined, as you've already heard, from a great group of colleagues from across our government; undersecretary michelle

flournoy, admiral sandy

. >> this is a time when we are called upon to think more deeply about peace and what more we can do to try to achieve it. and we also think about security and what kind of a gift we can give to future generations so that they, too, have the opportunities that all of us enjoy. today i want to focus on one aspect of peacemaking that too often goes overlooked, the role of women in ending conflict and building lasting security. some of you may have watched a week ago saturday as three remarkable women -- two from liberia, one from yemen -- accepted the nobel peace prize in oslo. for years many of us have tried to show the world that women are not just victims of war, they

are agents of peace. and that was the wisdom behind the historic u.n. security council resolution 1325 which was adopted a decade ago but whose promise remains largely unfulfilled. so it was deeply heartening to see those three women command the global spotlight and urge the international community to adopt an approach to making peace that includes women as full and equal partners. and that call was underscored this past thursday when hundreds of leaders and activists gathered at the state department to launch a new partnership with america's top women's colleges to train and support women and girls going in to public service around the world. and, of course, those women were incredibly impressive, and some were quite courageous. one took me aside and said that

she hadn't gotten permission from her government to come, but she came anyway. they are so eager to pour their talents and energy into their commitments and to make their countries even better. they are ready to work for peace, enter politics, serve in the military, lead civil society, live up to their own god given potential. they just need the opportunity. and that is why in a speech that i delivered in new york on friday night i highlighted the growing body of evidence that shows how women around the world contribute to making and keeping peace. and that these contributions lead to better outcomes for entire societies. from northern ireland to liberia to nepal and many places in between, we have seen that when women participate in peace processes, they focus discussion on issues like human rights,

justice, national reconciliation and economic renewal that are critical to making peace but often are overlooked in formal negotiations. they build coalitions across ethnic and sectarian lines, and they speak up for other marginalized groups. they act as mediators and help to foster compromise. and when women organize in large numbers, they galvanize opinion and help change the course of history. think of those remarkable women in liberia who marched and sang and prayed until their country's warring factions finally agreed to end their conflict and move toward democracy. if you have seen the movie, and if you haven't, i highly recommend it, it's called "pray the devil back to hell." you know that these brave women literally laid siege to the

negotiations until the men inside the rooms signed a deal. now, i know some of you may be thinking to yourself, well, there she goes again. hillary clinton always talks about women. and why should i or anyone else really care? well, you should care because this is not just a woman's issue, it cannot be relegated to the margins of international affairs. it truly does cut to heart of our national security and the security of people everywhere. because the sad fact is that the way the international community tries to build peace and security today just isn't getting the job done. dozens of active conflicts are raging around the world, undermining regional and global stability and ravaging entire

populations. and more than half of all peace agreements fail within five years. at the same time, women are too often excluded from both the negotiations that make peace and the institutions that maintain it. now, of course, some women wield weapons of war, that's true, and many more are victims of it. but too few are empowered to be instruments of peace and security. that is an unacceptable waste of talent. and of opportunity for the rest of us as well. across the middle east and north africa, nations are emerging from revolution and beginning the transition to democracy. and here, too, women are being excluded and increasingly even targeted. recent events in egypt have been particularly shocking. women are being beaten and

humiliated in the same streets where they risked their lives for the revolution only a few short months ago. and this is part of a deeply troubling pattern. egyptian women have been largely shut out of decision making in the transition by both the military authorities and the major political parties. at the same time, they have been specifically targeted both by security forces and by extremists. marchers celebrating international women's day were harassed and abused. women protesters have been rounded up and subjected to horrific abuse. journalists have been sexually assaulted. and now women are being attacked, stripped and beaten in the streets. this systematic degradation of

egyptian women dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform and is not worthy of a great people. now, some egyptian politicians and commentators have themselves noted a new democracy cannot be built on the persecution of women. nor can any stable society. whether it's ending conflict, managing a transition or rebuilding a country, the world cannot afford to continue ignoring half the population. not only can we do better, we have to do better, and now we have a path forward as to how we will do better. that is why this morning president obama signed an executive order launching the first-ever u.s. national action plan on women, peace and security, a comprehensive road

map for accelerating and institutionalizing efforts across the united states government to advance women's participation in making and keeping peace. this plan builds on the president's national security strategy, and it was jointly developed by the departments of state and defense, usaid and others with guidance from the white house. i also want to take a moment to recognize all our partners in civil society and the private sector who contributed, many of whom are here today. without your on-the-ground experience, your passionate commitment and your tireless effort, this plan would not exist. and we look forward to working just as closely together with you on implementing it. let me describe briefly how we will do that. the plan lays out five areas in which we will redouble our efforts. first, we will partner with

women in vulnerable areas to prevent conflicts from breaking out in the first place. women are bellwethers of society, and, in fact, sometimes they do play the role of canary in the coal mine. they know when communities are fraying and when citizens fear for their safety. studies suggest that women's physical security and higher levels of gender equality correlate with security and peacefulness of entire countries. but political leaders too often overlook women's knowledge and experience until it's too late to stop violence from spiraling out of control. so the united states will invest in early warning systems that incorporate gender analysis and monitor increases in violence and discrimination against women which can be indicators of future conflict. we will also support grassroots

women's organizations that work to stop violence and promote peace. and because women's economic empowerment leads to greater prosperity for their societies, we are putting women and girls at the center of our global efforts on food security, health and entrepreneurship. we are working to lower barriers to their economic participation so more women in more places have the opportunity to own their land, start their businesses, access markets; steps that will ultimately lift up not only their families, but entire economies and societies. but what if despite our best efforts conflict does flare? a second focus of our national action plan is strengthening protection for women and girls during and after conflict. we will work with partners on the ground to crack down on rape as a tactic of war, hold

perpetrators of violence accountable and support survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. now, one place to start is with the poorly-trained soldiers and police who contribute to a culture of lawlessness, of violence and impunity and often are fueled by discrimination against any woman outside their family. the united states will help build the capacity of foreign militaries, police forces and justice systems to strengthen the rule of law and insure that protecting civilians and stopping sexual and gender-based violence in particular is a shared priority. we are also working with the u.n. to recruit more female peace keepers to better train all peace keepers to prevent, predict and react to violence against zimm yangs -- civilians, and to address the political

dynamic that drives sexual violence in conflict areas. because it's not just soldiers. political leaders, local influentials set the tone for these abuses, and they must be held accountable as well. the united states will support survivors of violence and help give them new tools to report crimes and access shelters, rehabilitation centers, legal support and other services. we will also back advocacy organizations that reach out to men and boys, including religious and tribal leaders, to reduce sexual and gender-based violence in homes and communities. i worked some years ago with citizens in senegal to end the practice of female circumcision, and we made the case on the basis that it was bad for the health of the future mothers of senegal. and we were able to convince tribal and religious leaders to join our cause.

and it's that kind of programmatic approach that we want to see more of. now, ultimately, the best way to protect citizens is to end the conflict itself, so a third focus of the national action plan is expanding women's participation in peace processes and decision making institutions before, during and after conflicts. as i explained in my speech on friday in new york, women bring critical perspectives and concerns to the peace table and can help shape stronger and more durable agreements. take just one example. during 2006 peace negotiations in darfur, male negotiators deadlocked over the control of a particular river until local women who have the experience of fetching water and washing clothes pointed out that the river had already dried up. [laughter] yeah, i know,