congress are elected and ultimately have the president will be elected our constitutional matters. .. >> they will have no say and, in fact, at least a half of them -- that is 25% to get to that three-quarters of the state -- should have been asked to consent to this move about how the president will be elected. so it seems to me that at least the other half of the states

that are not in the compact have a real complaint here which they have been excluded from, what essentially is a constitutional matter of how the president's elected. two other quick points. one of the -- >> with you need to wrap it up. >> one of the major points is that states are sometimes ignored by candidates. in fact, there's been one study that has looked at direct election of the president and has looked backward and forwards about how people have voted and how they will vote, and it concluded that 40% of the states would get more attention from presidential candidates, 40% would get less attention from presidential candidates, and 20% would be about the same. so, in fact, there's no reason to think from the study we have of in the direct election would, in fact, lead to a majority of the states getting more attention from presidents, presidential candidates. and finally, on the question of every vote being equal, remember, that is a principle

for the house of representatives in the united states. but it is not the american principle. the senate itself is not elected on the basis of equally-weighted votes. and neither, now, is the president. so the question is we should not move and change the presidency with the notion that every vote being equal is the only principle. we have in the senate a weighting that favors the states because of federalism, and this is a move away from that. >> thank you. >> thank you, i have a question for senator thompson. you have run campaigns, you have served in the congress. the argument's been made by those opposed to this multistate compact that the adoption of the popular vote simply shifts a disproportionate focus to large cities, that is, i guess, an urban-centric view and that rural areas, smaller, mid-sized towns will cease to have the importance that they presently

have in the electoral process. what do you think about that? you've been there, done that. >> no, i don't think that that's true at all. one of the common be -- common responses to this is that it will give the large cities all the power and take away from, take away from the smaller states. what needs to be kept in mind, and as we go along i hope i can talk about this as a republican, as a conservative, as someone who believes that what we're talking about here, though, is in the middle of a very partisan process which i'm very much a part of that we can talk about this as something that i believe is nonpartisan because i don't think there's political advantage one way or the other. and i can talk about how i came to this opinion, that i had some to have knee jerk reactions that a lot of people have when this idea was first presented to me. but in hooking at it, i -- in looking at it, i came to a

totally different conclusion. this is not centralization, this is not taking away anything from states' rights, this is not unconstitutional. we can talk about all of those, all of those things. but what the smaller states need to realize is that it doesn't matter how many electoral votes they have -- and the electoral college does present every state with two votes, and they get a weighted advantage, the smaller states do, because of that -- but it doesn't matter whether you have five, ten or twenty electoral votes, if you're a smaller state -- theoretically, it wouldn't -- if you're a smaller state and you're not a battleground state, nobody is going to pay any attention to you. now, i'm not saying that they don't, you know, put the airplane down like some of us do when we're campaign anything the state and say we've been to every county and all of that.

but in terms of, as tom mentioned, in terms of the attention, the resources, the money spent, the organizational efforts and, more important hi to me -- more importantly to me, after the person has been elected or, and is running for re-election, the policy decisions that are made with regard to these states. we had steel imports and steel tariffs by a president who is a free trader. we can see what's going on now in the obama administration. how many practically living in ohio and new hampshire, i mean, ohio and pennsylvania. look at some of the policy that are coming out there because they are the handful of battleground states. if you're a smaller state, it doesn't make any difference how many electoral votes you have. if you say it diminishes your

power, your power to do what? you're not having any influence. because, because your vote is taken for granted. in this country we ought to, a lot of statements are made, but fortunately the answer to them based on history and reality and things that have happened in elections and statistics, and the reality is that these smaller states -- there are about 13 of them that are listed, and seven of them are red and six of them are blue. and they, nobody pays any attention to them. same thing with the larger states. everybody knows that texas is going to be a red state. everybody knows that california is going to be a blue state. over a period of time, the target states do change. that's an argument for

considering what we're proposing here today. because if you're a target state today, you may not be a target state tomorrow. and, of course, under our system if things are not working out fairly, you know, you can change it as you go along without having to change the constitution. so, no, it's no -- whether you're a big state or a small state, it doesn't make any difference under our current system unless you are a target state. and we've just gotten to the position now, and the president has started running advertisement in those target states. say you're not terribly hurt if you don't get advertisement in your area, but like i say, it has policy implications, it has various implications. i simply and, you know, we've seen 2000, but the john kerry situation. a change of 60,000 votes could have elected john kerry president.

i have back in my room a chart that has been worked up that has a very plausible, very plausible scenario where president obama loses the popular vote but is elected president of the united states. by targeting those handful of votes and targeting those big cities, targeting the billion dollars he plans to run, the resources in order to cobble together an electoral college victory. so let's don't look at this thing as a partisan thing. let's don't look at it as a centralization. how can when you're diffusing power and you can say you're taking power out of the hands of the electors in the state, in my home state of tennessee the electors are not even on the ballot. they're irrelevant. the founding fathers didn't unanimously do anything. it's like everything else. the way they set it up was a

compromise, and they said, you know, we're going to leave it up to the states to decide what they want to do about this. the states could -- the state legislature could take it all away from you as a citizen altogether if they wanted to, and it would still be constitutional. and certainly giving, saying that as a country that we're going to take the power out of the hands of the intermediaries, the unknown intermediaries who back in the olden days were expected to know the candidates and to know how to cast their votes and use their own judgment and give it to the people. you know, i just, i don't see the, i don't see the conservativism -- >> roger wants to respond to you, senator, if i may.

>> i don't agree at all with you, and i think you're making some accusations that are just not right. i think this is the national popular vote compact. it's a solution for a problem that we just don't have, and it will lead to new problems. we're going to have unelected bureaucrats on this compact making decisions on who won the majority vote. you're going to have the balance of power shifting from all states to just large metropolitan areas. you know, the six largest metro areas have about 20% of the total population. so you talk about fly-by or flyover states, you're going to have candidates going to just the largest metropolitan areas, spending the money in those areas and promoting, and they'll just completely gore small states and small areas, so i don't agree at all. >> los angeles cannot even control the outcome of california elections. much less the elections of the nation.

in fact, we have somebody from california here who might address that. >> i, honestly, i know senator thompson and i have both won elections in our various areas, we know how people vote. i always like my district because my largest urban area in my district was the city of riverside. it was 40% of the vote in my district. i always lost riverside. i always lost riverside, but i won my election. i won my election because san diego county voted for me 86%. southwestern riverside county voted for me 78 president. that's how you win elections. you win elections by piecing together coalitions in various areas. today in presidential elections the way they put together the coalitions is they go to miami-dade county, or they go to cuyahoga county in ohio and florida, and they forget about riverside county in california, and they forget about all the counties in wyoming, and they forget about all the counties in delaware, they forget about

everywhere except florida and ohio and wisconsin and piece together their votes that way. the reality of an election, quite frankly, is such that when you count the votes on a popular vote, that means you have to go to every single voter and talk to every single voter. when you do votes by regions, you go to the pieces of the regions that term the outcome -- that determine the outcome. and the bottom line is the compact basically says to the presidents that instead of worrying about price supports in wisconsin and steel tariffs in pennsylvania and every child left behind in ohio and medicare part d in florida, you want to campaign to go get votes in california, campaign on illegal immigration. arizona, illegal immigration. you want to get votes out of wyoming, campaign on protecting the resource industries in those states. right now if you want to protect mining in wisconsin or, excuse me, mining in wyoming, nobody

cares because wyoming's not determinative. this would make wyoming voters more important. farming in oklahoma, today they don't care. if they need the votes out of oklahoma, they will care. and the national popular vote compact will make sure they need the votes out of those states. >> actually, if i might say -- >> with briefly. >> ladies and gentlemen, that is simply not true, and there's a very easy way to calculate this that john samples killed. you want to know how much influence your state has, very easy. take the number of electoral college votes your state has and compare it to the national total. so if you have three electoral college votes, you know, it's a fraction, three out of the total number. if you want to know what your influence is going to be under the national popular vote plan, well, then take your population and compare it to the national population. john actually did that, and that's where he was able to show

that 29 states would actually lose influence under the national popular vote plan if you compare those two numbers. it's very straight out, you know, quantitative analysis -- >> with all due respect, and i do mean this with all due respect, that's not the reality of an election. i can tell you san diego county in my district was 12% of my vote. 12% of my vote. but for, they voted for me 86% of that 12% voted for me. that was a determination of how whether or not i would win an election. when 12% of my population votes 86% for me, that means in the other part of the district which was 40% of my population, if it was 55-45 which is what it was, that 86% in the 12% voted more for me, and i overcame the 55-45% in the riverside county. that's how you run elections. you don't count by saying, okay, there are 20 voters over here and 10 voters over here.

you don't care about how many voters, you care about how the percentage of the voters vote for you. if 70% of the voters in oklahoma vote for the republican, then they're going to pay attention to what's going on, the republican candidate's going to be paying attention to what's going on in the oklahoma because they'll want to move that 70% to 75% so they can overcome the 55-45 in new york and the 55-45 in l.a., and you start piecing it together by counting those percentages and how they vote for you in each of the various states. you can't just compare percentage of voters in a rural percentage of voters in an urban. you've got to really look specifically at how each of those, the voting trends in each of those specific areas. and the candidates will focus on how they do it and how they campaign to make sure they maximize the number of votes that come out of the areas where they are strongest. >> let me suggest -- we're, obviously, having a spirited debate here. but i'd like to move on and

catch one or two more topics before we run out of time. stop me when we do run out of time, by the way, because i have no idea when we're supposed to end. election fraud. what effect are the relative merits or demerits of the new multicompact system in terms of controlling or limiting the damage of election fraud as opposed to the existing system? and i'll start with you folks. yeah, tom? >> i'd like to talk about the election fraud issue. let's assume we have a presidential election where the candidates are each sitting on 250 electoral votes, they needed another 20 electoral votes to win, and there's a state out there that has 20 electoral votes. if i wanted to defraud an election, i think the easiest way to do it and the only way you could do it, basically, is to go into one small geographic area that has a disproportionate amount of impact on the election. and in this case it would be one of our larger states or medium-sized states even, and

you would try to create fraud within that local state election. to try to do fraud on a national basis, to me, is ridiculous because i don't know when you would have enough information to start your fraud and, secondly, it is so much easier to conduct the fraud in a very small geographic area. and -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah. when you have 135 million votes, how do you fraud that total amount? but when you only have a couple thousand or 10,000 or 20,000 votes of a small geographic area in our country, it's much more easier to do that. so i think it is a much stronger improvement in the election system as far as voter fraud is concerned. >> i'm sorry, but that is just not the case. you know, the easiest place to commit fraud in the united states isn't a one-party, geographic area, one-party state because the other party isn't

there to observe what's happening and to report on it. and you might be able to steal enough votes perhaps in a big city machine to maybe throw the electoral college votes of that state, but it's not going to be that -- it's not that often in our history where the electoral college votes of one state make the difference in a national election. but if in a state that's a one-party state you know that even though that state's going to go for the candidate, every vote you throw into the ballot box could change the national results, you're going to do it. and you say, well, oh, you really can't do it? well, i wrote a case study about voter fraud case, it was a largest voter fraud prosecution ever conducted by the department of justice in the 1980s in chicago. let's remember now that the, there was a 500,000-vote difference in the 2000 election.

the grand jury, federal grand jury that investigated that case and the u.s. attorney at the time estimated that there had been 100,000 bogus votes cast in the ballot boxes in chicago in that election. that's already one-fifth of what it would have taken to make the difference in the 2000 election. and, you know, that is not something that, hopefully, happens that often in american elections, but this mpv would provide the incentive for more of that to happen. >> wait a minute. the idea, the idea here is that, the argument real simple is can you pull off 500,000 fraudulent votes nationwide and change the outcome of a presidential election or 10,000 fraudulent votes in madison, wisconsin, or 5,000 fraudulent votes in cuyahoga county, cleveland, ohio, or 20,000 fraudulent votes in miami-dade?

which is easier to pull off? and change the outcome of a presidential election? right now fraud, 20,000 votes in miami-dade, heck, in 2000 3,000 fraudulent votes would have changed the presidential election. 0,000 votes in -- 10,000 votes many madison, wisconsin, 10 or 15,000 votes in clearland, ohio, have change the election. if you want to pull off fraudulent votes on a national election you're going to have to get 500, 700, 800,000 votes to change it. it also assumes that those who are already committing the fraud aren't maximizing the amount of fraud they're doing. trust me, those who are committing the frauds have more of an interest in electing city councils and school boards today than they do in electing the president. and they're already maximizing their fraud. there's not much more they can do in order to change the outcome of local elections. >> well, there's a lot more they

could do because they're concentrated in these large cities, and if they know they have an incentive to take over the presidency, i think you'll see fraud increase on a proportionate basis that we haven't seen in this country in our history. we have over 200 years of history that has worked, we have a system that has worked. and if it's such a great system that needs to be changed, why don't we go through and do a constitutional change? why are we doing something as few as 123 states could -- 12 states could put together a compact like this? who's going to be in the charge of it? who's going to assign these bureaucrats and what are we going to have to do? i think this is very, very worrying, and our rnc, we passed a resolution with over a hundred people as co-sponsors, and it passed without a dissenting vote to the rnc because we feel like this is something we shouldn't do. and i think there's something we really need to look very hard

at, and i don't agree with your premise at all. >> senator, do you have a comment? >> richard nixon didn't think the system worked too well in 1960 when mayor daley allegedly manipulated enough votes in chicago to give the election to john f. kennedy. t just a simple question -- it's just a simple question of whether or not it's easy. you're going to have fraud anywhere you go. whether or not it's easier to throw an election by a few votes in swing states that could go either way to affect all of the electors of that state or an entire nation of 135 million votes, i think that answers itself. a lot of fright and fright and generalities in big cities and all that kind of stuff, you break it down, it's just not there. but i'll leave the experts to

those. i've looked at it, and i'm of the firm conclusion that there's no inherent advantage with either party. here's where i come from on it as someone who is interested in our system, always has been. chairman of the governmental affairs committee, spent a lot of time on thinking about stuff like this. i don't think that with all of the challenges our country has, i think we're in a lot more trouble than most people think we are in. i think we're going to need a lot more substantial change than most people think. i think we're going to have to have a change of thinking among the american people. not just leadership. about what we're doing in this country and what we're going to have to do to keep from doing like any other great

civilization has ever done in the history of the world and going down the other side. i think we're at a tipping point. but i think we're going to have to have strong leadership, and we're going to have to have leaders and presidents with credibility to do the things that need to be done. i think we can hamstringing ourselves when we put somebody in the oval office nowadays or in the future when somebody else got more votes. and i'm telling you, it almost happened with john kerry if my republican friends, it could very well happen with barack obama, but it doesn't matter. what happened with george w. bush too. there's no inherent. i'm just saying a lot of the animosity, a lot of the difficulty, a lot of the anger that i'd never seen before in politics, it came during the bush administration. nobody's talking about the election anymore, but it came from that election. and i think next time it'd be worse, and next time it'd be even worse than that. as we get into harder times and we get more angry and people get

more upset and so forth. put anything somebody in the white house -- putting in somebody in the white house because some state legislator somewhere doesn't want to give up the power to select an elector that means nothing versus having someone who won most of the votes fair and square? that is of concern to me as an american citizen. >> let me get a response from you. >> the response to that, i wanted to make a point that hasn't been touched on and, i think, should be and should be in people's minds as state legislators decide about this issue over the next few years. a lot of people think along the lines of the discussion we had in here that, basically, the electoral college is just a scam, or it's something that benefits small states because if you did change out of it, they would lose whatever influence they have. it would be a worse situation for them, and it doesn't benefit big states, larger population

states. but that's just not true. this issue has been studied, it's, again, in my paper at cato.org. and, basically, big states are more likely to be battleground states, more likely over time to be that and, therefore, more likely to make the decision about presidential, the presidential decision. and that, i think, is something that big state legislators have to consider. the other thing to consider here, too, is this we're talking about things that have happened in the last three to four years. if this decision is made as far as we can tell, it is forever. right? it's going to be a century from now or 50 years. in the course of that time, we're acting as if only people that are battleground states are the ones that are now. over the course of those years, other states there will be changes, there have been changes in the past. so i think at the end of the day the real question that i have big doubts about is, is this

change even in the benefit, for the benefit and in the interest of a majority of the states, let alone the three-quarters you need for a kind of change about the way of electing the president. i think the electoral college is politically stable for the reason that it serves the benefits of both big and small states. >> thanks. let me throw a question out to both sides. let's assume that the multistate compact achieves the requisite 270 electoral votes, that is enough i think it's in the bill or bills that when you achieve enough states that total 270 or more, then i don't know if this is the right term, it becomes the law, or it becomes the practice of how electors are appointed. but does congress still need to pass legislation to enshrine this into the law? would you need a constitutional amendment? >> no, you don't need a constitutional amendment, but article i, section 10 does say you need congressional approval to compact when it becomes

effective from being approved by enough states, the compact will go to congress who will then vote up or down on whether or not it has actually been approved according to article i, section 10 of the constitution. that's the bottom line. you don't do it ahead of time. no compact gets approved by congress before it becomes effective, it gets approved by congress after it becomes effective, and this one will have the same impact. >> yemen? >> well, -- >> gentlemen? >> well, that's interesting to hear because this is being pushed by a group called national popular voting, the head is a former al gore/bill clinton elector, and they have taken the position in the past that this compact does not need congressional approval. and that is not what they have said that the -- in fact, they have said that states can do this without having to comply with that particular provision. and that is simply not the case,

particularly because this is, basically, a virtual constitutional amendment, and it would, it would force states that haven't approved it into the system. one other just quick thing that roger mentioned earlier. when he said, well, who's going to administer this, there isn't anybody to administer this. and do you know what the compact says? it says once a state approves it, there's a certain period of time, i think it was six month before the election where they can't pull out. well, that's unenforceable. what happens if a particular state right at the election or before the election realizes that it's a really close election, and they could make the difference in the election, and they decide to pull out, violating the compact and throwing the results of the presidential election into question and complete disarray? how in the world are you going to resolve that particular issue with this unenforceable, unadministerred only compact? >> well, let's kind of -- all

right, ray, go ahead briefly. >> the good news is the supreme court's already decided all of those issues, they've already been resolved. the compact itself is enforceable, and that provision according to the supreme court is inforcible was the supreme court's already resolved that issue. you can't change the rules after they've been set. that's the essence of -- >> let me throw out another issue. for some reason going back many, many years to my high school civics class, i recollect that in the current system there is no law, or at least there's no known enforceable law at the federal level requiring an elector to vote as he's pledged to vote. and there have been, i think, some minor instances where the -- and i think there's the term faithless elector or rogue elector -- that's a possibility, and i think that in 2001 of the electors -- in 2000 one of the electors for al gore refused to

cast her vote. she did not vote contrary to her pledge, but she did not vote. that seems to me a hugely important issue in a close election potentially, and my first question is how is that being handled, and is that not a part of your problem, and secondly, your response. >> that is not a problem. that's happened, i believe there's only been two instances in the entire history of the united states. that is not, that is not a problem. it's something that's completely insignificant and has virtually never, never happened. >> if i didn't vote as pledged, what could they do to me? say? and would my vote count contrary to my pledge? >> actually, if you were elected as an elector, you have the ability to vote as you see fit. but if you're committed to vote and you're pledged to vote for someone, you have your honor and your pledge to vote. but we have over 200 years of history where this just hasn't happened. so i think you have to look at a

stable system, and you have to say we have something that works, our form of government is working. why would we change it for something we don't know we're getting? >> let me ask these folks over here they say it's not a problem. is it a problem, and would your multistate compact solve the problem? >> relative to the electorals or to the whole process? >> relative to the individual electors and their obligations. >> no, i think they said it very clearly. just a couple of times in their history, and we don't see it as a problem either way, okay? >> yeah, it seems to me very unlikely if it was a crucial vote that the enormous pressure, i mean, the ones we've talked about here, the gore and somebody voted for lloyd benson instead of the actual top of the ticket which was michael dukakis f there were crucial -- if there were crucial, i mean, i think the pressure would be so enormous that this one person could change the vote in a way they weren't supposed to. it's very unlikely it would happen. to be fair, i don't think they emphasize overcoming the

faithless elector as being a major argument for national popular vote. >> so it's not something that we need to worry about east -- either way. >> no. >> but i would like to comment on a couple of statements that i think were very, very misleading. first of all, the states that join this compact and put this compact into place are not electing the the president of the united states. the people of the 50 states of the united states of america, all of them, are electing the president of the united states. not just these states that sign the compact. although they are the majority of the electoral vote states. i don't know how a candidate or a political office holder could stand up in front of their cob stitch wents -- constituents and say, you know, we don't have a problem. the candidate with the least number of votes can win, and it's happened four times in history, that's not a problem? the fact that we have 36 to 38 states that are totally ignored in the election process, and that's not a problem?

and the fact that state -- that voters in california don't have the same status as voters in ohio? that's not a problem? i beg your pardon. i think it's a serious problem. i think we have the ability to change it, we have the public will to change it. what are we afraid of, change? we can't be afraid of change today. let me tell you about three things that's happened in this country in the last three years; occupy wall street, the ipad ipad -- there's one with other one. >> tea party. >> and the tea party. [laughter] okay, those three things. talk about change. and we're talking here like this has been a great system for 200 years? four candidates won the presidency with the least number of votes? >> well -- >> let me, let me get control of this. >> let me finish. >> allow for a response. >> that's not a problem? >> well, i mean, two things.

mr.golisano's slightly misspeaking when he says the least number of votes. he's not asserting that the third and fourth party candidates win the election. what he's asserting is the person who finishes second as in the case of george w. bush wins. so it's a lesser than the first person usually has the plurality. that's the first thing. the second thing is that your concern about, to come back to what i said, you know, you're also saying that there's a big problem because wyoming and west virginia and so on, delaware have two senators, and california only has two senators because that's a huge difference in the weighting of the vote. the argument you're making is also an argument against the united states senate as well. so it's not the case that this is the accepted -- >> i'm sorry, i don't remember making that argument at all. >> well, you -- the implication is that, in fact, if you're against one person, one vote

that's somehow not the principle that is underlined -- >> i'm sorry, we're not talking about the congress of the united states, we're talking about the presidency of the united states. >> and my point is that the constitution allows for other principles for weighting votes than just one person, one vote. >> yeah, that's just one of the many anti-majoritarian materials. i don't want to devolve into a historical argument, but i just want to point something out. they keep saying there have been four candidates in american history who became president even though they didn't get the most popular vote. 1824 john quincy adams/andrew jackson. that is a false analogy because at that time there were a number of states where electors were not popularly elected, they were still appointed by legislatures, so we don't know who actually won the popular vote. two other elections, 1876, 1888. well, in 1876, um, there was rampant voter fraud and suppression of the black vote in

southern states. so we don't actually know who really won the popular vote. in 1888 grover cleveland, who was the national popular vote winner, lost out to the republican, benjamin harrison. harrison carried 20 of the 25 states and once again because of the implementation of jim crow, the black vote was suppressed in the southern states where grover cleveland won. so, again, there was only 100,000-vote difference between the two, and if black vote had not been suppressed, it is, in fact, i think in my mind pretty sure that the person who was elected president, rutherford b. hayes, wouldn't have been elected president. so finally let's get to the 2000 elections. there were 105 million votes cast in the united states. the margin of difference in the popular vote was a little over 500,000 votes. now, i can tell you and any

expert on voting equipment can tell you, and i know about this because i happen to be an election official, county election official down in georgia in the 2000 election when they were still using punch card equipment. and i'm an election official in virginia today. that 50,000-vote difference is within the margin of error of the voting equipment that was in use in the united states. what does that mean? that means that if a recount had been done nationally, it actually might have changed the national popular vote difference. so this constant reference to these four elections is really an inaccurate reflection that doesn't, doesn't reflect historical, historically what happened in those elections. >> does the 547 votes in florida in 2000 make it much more exact? >> of course not. >> and that determined the

presidency of the united states. >> and, of course, there have been six additional instances where the change of 1% of the vote in a couple of states, we would have had another situation. >> yeah, in fact, since 1880 we have had elections close enough that if national popular vote plan had been in place, we would have had to have done six national recounts, one out of every six elections which, actually, brings me to the point that if we have a national popular vote plan, we will have more recounts in our presidential elections, not less. >> well, i think we are about out of time. we might have one more question or one more comment. let me ask both sides, is there anything that this debate has been nothing, if not spirited, i want to thank you all very much. is there any topics involved in this thing that we haven't hashed out? >> yeah finish. >> i wonder what the president

is that y'all are so upset about that you want to do this? >> senator. >> the issue of constitutionality in the beginning, it's pretty clear that this is not unconstitutional. there's no provision they can point to that is unconstitutional. under article iii, section 2 -- article ii, section 1 actually, the congress gave the states the right to select their electors basically any way they wanted to. supreme court's upheld that time and time again. individuals in the state don't even have a constitutional right to vote for president. that authority with the states is so strong. and in times past they, the legislature in the beginning some of them said, we'll do it, we, the legislature, will decide

on how to choose these electors. then they moved more or toward a winner take all. in the meantime, they broke it down, some states by congressional district and we'll vote that way and all that. the states got total authority in this regard. and the only relevant constitutional provision there. that deals with presidential elections. you know, the constitution's much more specific about what the states can and cannot do with regard to congressional elections, and united states senators, of course, are elected by majority vote. so they have that authority. and what this compact does is gives and says to the state, look, for the benefit of the country, um, we think it's best that we have a majority vote in this country to elect our president the way we do you, the way we do you fellas. and if you don't want to join

the compact, you don't have to. you've still got total authority. so those advocates of states' rights, i think, need to keep that in mind. we're asking the states to consider it and say, yeah, we will, we will, we will exercise our plenary, total authority as to how to select these electors by saying that we will select these electors according to who gets the most votes in the country for president. and so that's essentially what this -- it's not unconstitutional, it doesn't require a constitutional amendment. it's a voluntary interstate pact. doesn't violate states' rights, doesn't centralize anything. so i think that's the part that i'd like to -- >> thank you. gentlemen, your response and

then we'll close. >> well, matter of fact, we've gone through all of this. we have, indeed, had a spirited debate, so i want today say something. i've had debates about this many times over the last two or three years, and what i've always been struck by is, yeah, there's a lot of differences here and, yeah, i'm not persuaded that this is a good idea or something we ought to be doing. but what i do think is a good idea that the people on the other side of the issue saw fit to produce the book they've produced, do all the research and make this effort. and in doing so what they've done is brought this issue, and i think americans at the end of the day -- and i hope they will retain the status quo -- but at the end of the day, they'll have a better idea about what the presidential system is, what the constitutional system is and why it's a good thing. and so in that regard i think it's a good thing that there was a public spirit, there was people behind this who were willing to fund and to follow up on these issues, and we've had these spirited debates. i think a good thing, so i'm very happy to once again debate

the people from national popular vote, and we'll see how the debate goes forward. >> i'm being told it's time to close. i want to thank our panelists. this has been a great debate, i know it's been educational for me. thank you all for being here and very much appreciate your participation. [applause] ♪ ♪ flsh. ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

>> so, we continue our lye coverage here from charleston, south carolina. you can see we're going to be back very shortly with the second panel today. we have three to look for, the panel discussion a few minutes ago ending on the electoral college versus the popular vote, the next panel talking about what it moons to be a conservative -- means to be a conservative in 2012, and finally we understand there'll be a panel discussion on social media a bit later this afternoon. so we continue our live coverage right here on c-span2. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> so it's obvious they're not going to get this panel started right now, and as we wait for that panel discussion to get under way live from charleston, south carolina, we'll show you some of what took place yesterday with remarks from

former candidate herman cain. [applause] [cheers and applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. wonderful to see you here today. thank you for being here and thank you for that very warm welcome. if we go back in our history, our founding fathers, they got it right; not once, but several times. and in the preamble to the constitution it says, we, the people. we, the people of the united states of america. we, the people of the united states of america in order to form a more perfect union.

the union is in trouble. the union is in trouble because we have become a nation of crises. an economic crisis, an energy crisis, national security crisis, illegal immigration crisis. the union's in trouble. all we have to do is look at the facts. and there's one thing that i warn you about facts, liberals hate the facts. [applause] it drives them crazy. fact: our national debt is now bigger than our gross domestic product. fact: the national debt increased 50% since president obama has been in office, and now he's asking for another $1.2

trillion. fact: 1999, that happens to be the year 1-9-9-9. [laughter] [applause] >> my first grandchild was born. my first grandchild was born in 1-9-9-9. and when she was born, the national debt for every man, woman and child in the united states of america was $20,700. that's a fact. at the beginning of 2012, new year's day, my fourth grandchild was born. he was born with $48,800 in debt

before he took his first breath. that is a fact. and if president obama spends another $1.2 trillion, every man, woman and child in this country will be looking at $53,000 per person in debt, and it's still climbing. this economy is not in recovery despite what you're being told. you're not being told the truth about this economy. our gdp grew last year less than 2% for the whole year. they call that a recovery. china had a bad year last year, they only grew at 8%. and we grew less than 2%.

that's a fact. this economy's still on life support. the union is in trouble. you may as well get ready to say hello to $5 a gallon gasoline again because of what's going on in the strait of hormuz. ahmadinejad is rattling his sabers again, making threats because he knows that uncertainty drives up the cost of oil which drives up the cost of gasoline. and if he does not drive up the cost of oil, he will not have the currency to fund his nuclear aspirations. that's a fact. it's also a fact that this administration is probably not going to do anything about it.

fact: washington is broken! [applause] and america is broke. what part of "broke" don't they understand? >> amen! [applause] >> broke! in 1773 the colonists were so fed up with old king george, that they showed their defiance by dumping tea in the boston harbor. at the boston tea party. two years later we had the american revolution to begin. eight years after that we won the american revolution.

as the old preacher would say, i stopped by here to tell y'all today we need another revolution! we need a solutions revolution! [cheers and applause] this time it won't be about bombs and bullets. we're not going to fight it with bombs and bullets. we are going to fight this solutions revolution with brains and balance at the ballot box. that's how we gonna fight the revolution. [applause] and i have been asked repeatedly for the last several weeks and couple of months who am i going to endorse? and i've said consistently, the unconventional candidate that ran an unconventional campaign and achieved surprising results.

gonna make an unconventional candidate endorsement. the people say, well, what does that mean? that means that many people in the media are not gone that like it -- are not gonna like it, but the american people are gonna love it. [applause] the people are gonna love it. here is my unconventional endorsement. not a candidate seeking the nomination, not someone that's not running. my unconventional endorsement is the people! we, the people of this nation are still in charge! that's who i'm endorsing. because we are the ones that are going to have to lead this revolution. [applause] we are the ones who are going to be able to take our power back. i'm endorsing the people. it was the people who started this country.

we have allowed the politicians to take it away from us. and the message is real simple. this revolution is gonna have to be driven from the bottoms up. we're going to have an energy independence revolution with a solution. we're gonna have a regulatory reform revolution with a solution. we're gonna have a sound money solution as part of this revolution. and the lead revolution that we are gonna use in order to take our power pack is the 9-9-9 revolution here in this country. [applause] one of the comments that i got most often after i ended my quest for the position of president, mr. cain, please,

keep 9-9-9 alive. we will. with the 9-9-9 revolution. and when you go to cainconnections.com, you can become a member of this army. i like the way that someone described it to me, i think it was john fund of "the wall street journal." john fund said now that you're out of the race, you know, you were a david up against goliath. that's right. well, now that has forced me since i'm out of the race to create a whole army of davids, and that's y'all. that's us. that's what this revolution is gone that be about -- gonna be about, an army of davids. and, yes, we are going to focus on all of the solutions you heard we talk about, but the first one we want to focus on is the 9-9-9 revolution. here's how you can help and be a

part of this army. first, sign up at cainconnections.com. secondly, encourage your representative or your favorite candidate running for congress and your senators to adopt the 9-9-9 plan. you see, we need solutions, not more rhetoric. encourage them to adopt the 9-9-9 plan. now, when they say to you, well, i've got to study it, you know what that means. that means that they're too lazy to go to the web site and watch a five-minute movie that explains it. don't take, well, we got to study it as a response. that's how we're going to launch this revolution. you adopt 9-9-9. that durant mean they're signing on to the legislation. the legislation is being drafted as we speak. after we get the legislation drafted, we're going to send it to those that you have helped to recruit to adopt it and ask them to read it.

what a novel idea. and then they'll have an opportunity to fully commit to it. i happen to believe that we can win this, folks. change is not gonna come from inside washington d.c. we know that. we're going to have to make it happen from the bottom up, from the outside with an army of davids. it was of the irish philosopher, edmund burke, who made the statement: the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. ..

>> but to the skeptics and those who don't believe we can do this, i am reminded of something that my grandfather said, who was a small farmer in georgia,

all of his life. on saturdays when a dozen grandkids were running around in the yard, and my grandfather had loaded up the wagon to go into town in order to be able to sell the produce that he had grown. and as a treat to the grandkids, my grandfather would announce to all of us running around wildly, around that wagon with two mules hitched to it, but those want to go into town he would say then that's going, get on the wagon. them that ain't, get out of the way. i have a message for washington, d.c. we want our power back. them that's going, get on the solution wagon. them that ain't, get out of our way. we the people, still in charge of this country.

[applause] go. >> alive again back to charleston, south carolina, the southern republican leadership conference. we are told about three minutes from now is the start time of the second panel discussion today. what it means to be a conservative in 2012 year a few minutes ago we saw some of the panelists, grover norquist among them. we believe they will get started very soon. and after the panel, and about an hour we are told the third panel of the day on social media will get underway and we will continue our live coverage right here on c-span2. coming up tonight, state of the state addresses. over the last month dollars have gathered in a state capitals deliver remarks on the condition of their states but tonight we'll show you five speeches beginning with south carolina republican governor nikki haley at 8:00 eastern. remarks on andrew cuomo, new jersey cover chris christie, and we head out west to hear

comments from washington's governor and idaho. state of the state addresses here tonight on c-span2. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> we continue to play for this panel discussion to get underway. a quick program of note, mitt

romney holding a campaign rally in south carolina. you'll talk about job creation in the u.s. economy. the south carolina primary tomorrow, and today virginia governor bob mcdonald is expected to endorse the former massachusetts governor. he currently serves them mr. macdonald him as the chairman of the republican governors association. our coverage of candidate mitt romney begins life at 3:45 p.m. eastern on our companion network, c-span. ♪ ♪

>> good afternoon. welcome back from lunch. i hope you had a good lunch and we will have a good afternoon with some additional panels. i'd like to introduce our panelists for this afternoon. we'll be talking about what it means to be conservative in 2012. first of all, we have grover norquist, president of the americans for tax reform right down here. we have karen floyd, former chairman of the south carolina republican party, and also she is publisher of palladian view, and that is plaguing the few.com, especially for the ladies out there who would like to check that out. and we have to my left in the kramer, the chairman of the tea party express. then we have chuck u.s. joined us from the nra. i believe grover is going to start for us this afternoon. >> well, there are two teams in american politics, and in the past you know, there were two

parties and if someone told you they were republican 100 just go, or 50 years ago, all you knew about them was that they were born north of the mason-dixon line. the tea party for regional. they were not ideological. they were not based on principles. some of you met a republican democrat you didn't know if they were for higher taxes or lower taxes or more spending or listing are what the foreign policy was. you simply knew where they were born, and that was about it. but it was during the lifetime of ronald reagan that the two political parties in the conservative movement around the republican party and the liberal progressive movement around the democratic party, the two parties separated themselves out in a coherent way. people who wanted more government, more government control, more taxes, more regulations, more spending, became democrats. people who wanted more limited government, more individual liberty, became republicans. we separated out and we stopped

having the situation with a little old lady from mississippi who agreed with ronald reagan on everything but voted for george mcgovern because sherman had been mean to atlanta recently. but as people decided to divide up into two teams based on whether they wanted more government, less government, more individual liberty, or more state control of people's lives, it became easier for the two parties to work together, the two political movements. and i think to answer the question, what is a conservative, what is a reagan republican, if you were to have the modern conservative movement, the modern reagan republican movement sit around the table, you can tell who's at the table. taxpayers don't raise my taxes. the small business community, don't regulate or tax might ability to run my business,

being self-employed, independent contractor, my professional life. homeschooled from people just want to be left alone to educate their own children and maintain control of their children's upbringing. the second amendment community, i serve on the board of directors of the national rifle association. chuck cunningham with the nra will be talking later, but again, the second amendment, community does not go knocking on doors insisting that you be a hunter or that we have guns stamped on every fourth degree child in public school in america be taught books entitled heather has 200. all they ask is to be left alone with their second amendment rights. inhabit various communities to thank the people from the most important thing in their life is practicing their faith, transmitting it to the children, again they are not insisting that the government go and make everybody be a baptist, or not

be a baptist. they simply wish to be left alone so that they have religious liberty, and that's why the center-right, conservative movement, is very ecumenical movement to evangelical protestants, conservative catholics, orthodox max, people who don't agree at all on who gets to have or how or why, but to agree that everybody should be free to practice their own religion so that they can go to heaven anybody else to completely misunderstand scripture can go to haitis. so a round the center-right table for reagan republican cable, everybody is in on different issues, wildly different issues in some cases, that they are all there for the same reason. because on the issue that moves their vote, they want one thing. they wish to be left alone. leave my guns alone, my kids

alone, my faith alone for my money on, my business alone, my property alone. everybody is there because they want a limited government to protect property. and again, the center-right, concert movement is not anti-government. anymore than cancer doctors are anti-self. cancer doctors don't like those cells that grow so rapidly and mess with everybody else that make people sick. we don't want a government that gets so big that it becomes intrusive in our lives and destructive of human liberty did we want a government the right size which focuses on protecting people's property rights, making sure and knowing people don't steal your stuff, that has a national defense that can keep the canadians on their side of the border. but otherwise leave us alone to run our lives and organize our affairs as we see fit. so the proper role of government, people in the army,

the police force, judiciary are all cheerfully members of the leave us alone coalition, and fit comfortably into the reagan republican conservative movement. by contrast, the other team, if they were to sit around, hillary clinton or barack obama's table on the left or on the progressive side, who would be around their table? competition, the other team. that's a takings coalition, the barges to leave us alone coalition. the left has a takings coalition and they do the proper role of government as taking things from some people and giving into other people. often money, and often them. so around the table, the trial lawyers, big city political machines, the organized labor, particularly in the public sector, the two links of the dependency movement of people who are locked into welfare

dependency, and people who make $90,000 a year managing the dependency of others making sure none of them get jobs and become republicans. then you have all of the course of utopias, the people who get government grants to push the rest of us around, the people are better than we are and know better than we do how to run our lives and organize ourselves. these are the people who mandated cars too small to put your entire family into, the people who developed and then required -- the invention of the light bulbs that don't create enough light so you think you have glaucoma. and then the people who organized that on the sabbath the of two separate the white class from the green glass from the brown glass for the recycling priests. our friends on the left, the progressives, have a whole list of things that you have to do an whole list of things that you are not allowed to do.

and their list is slightly longer and more tedious than leviticus. goes on and on and on and on. so around the left table, they can get along as long as we are stupid enough to keep throwing taxpayer dollars into the center of the table. then everyone around the left table, each one wants different things but as long as we're foolish enough to keep throwing cash into the center of the table they can get along just as they do in the movies after the bank robbery one for you, one for you, one for you, that everybody on the left can be happy. but if we do our job properly can if we say no new taxes, and mean it, if we put our foot on the air hose and stop the flow of cash into the center of that table, the pile of cash begins to dwindle. then our friends on the left begin to look at each other a little bit more like the second to last seen in in those lifeboat movies.

now they're beginning to wonder about who do we eat or did we go overboard? the left is not made up of friends and allies. the left is made up of competing parasites. and if we do not allow them to know on taxpayers, they will cheerfully knock on the guy sitting next to them at the table. our job is to not raise taxes, not to cash in the center of the table so that when we meet the left in elections, into and four years, they are both shorter and there are fewer of them. so those are the two competing coalitions in american politics, the collection of those of us who view the proper role of government as facilitating liberty and otherwise leaving us alone, and those of you who view the proper role, as taking things from some people and giving them to others. and so that explains everything about what republicans and conservatives will do when they

come into power. it explains what happens when the left gets into power, and it certainly explains the stimulus spending program which was the first order of business when obama, harry reid, yet it was pelosi got control of the federal government. that was they took $800 million he threw in the center of the table. one for you, one for you, one for you. and they actually had a theory called keynesian economics that explained why they did this to you took a dollar from somebody who aren't it, either through debt or through taxes, and gave it to somebody who is politically connected, then somehow there would be more money at the end of the day. okay? take a dollar from you, give a talk to him and there are now $2. that was their 30. that if obama, reid, pelosi stood on one side of a lake and get three buckets into the lake and walked all the way around to

the lake in front of msnbc cameras toward the water back into the lake, that they could announce that they were stimulating the lake to great depths, okay? and you may wonder whether this would work, but the plan was to do at 800 million times after which it would be a very deep lake. it's nonsense on the face of it, but that was the argument they used. what they really wanted was access to the cache of people who earned it so they pay off their friends who did precinct work but they really need a slightly better articulation of the plan of that so they came up with keynesian economics and the idea that if the government takes your dollar and spends it, we're all richer. that is their argument. it was nonsense, didn't work out a million more people not working in america today than when they wasted $800 million of your money. but they will keep coming back to do that because they're not trying to govern, then not

trying to create jobs. they are trying to feed all the hungry mouths around the last table. and on the right, the properly organize conservative movement, ronald reagan republican party, with a year out how to make more and more americans free, independent, self-reliant so that they joined the leave us alone coalition and focus their political activity on being left alone. so those are the two structures in american politics. we do have the possibility of third parties, but it's not like you're. in europe if you get 1% of the vote, your account important that everyone talks to. here if you get 1% of the vote you are officially not. you don't get to fly in air force one but you might get a radio talk show. thank you. [applause] >> good afternoon. i'm karen floyd and i have to

tell you, grover gave you a macrocosm of what the conservative republican looks like. i'm going to ask you now to do the exact opposite and look at a micro focus. i want to talk to you a little bit about the conservative republican woman, and i want to do so from to vantage point. i want to share with you a little bit about myself and want to talk to you about palladium view and about some of the finding that we have learned literally over 100 k. i am a wife. i'm a mother of two, 15 euros. i am an attorney by profession and i have three businesses. and i am as most women in the 21st century, multitasking at any given time. what we decided literally 100 days ago was to take an idea of women, empowering women to see their voice. so through technology, we created something called the

palladian view, and the palladian view has 100 women from across the united states that right in at any given day to a series of topics that are timely. and we have learned that these women are very, very diverse, but they can be segmented into three different areas. they are either value voters. they are drawn to the republican party through value centric ideas, ideology. typically faith-based. they are drawn to the republican party as traditional republicans, and these women much like myself and as grover mentioned, are more of the ronald reagan, and these women tended ideological but have more of a financial backing and pushing them and we're the ones incidentally, grover, that watch your show and attend your wednesday meetings. the third is a group that really is kind of coin at the libertarian movement, and we have seen probably the most growth in the third area of the

two previous areas. and yet these women are all collectively drawn to one themeto add that one thing is, and grover said it well, get government out of our way. give us the ability to make decisions in our personal lives, in our business, give us the ability to do what our founding fathers gave us the privilege to do. now, the palladian view, or the last 60 days has begun a process to a parisian widget going to events like that srlc and the myrtle beach debate with fox news, sitting down with groups of women and asking them very, very specific questions about why they vote, they vote for, how they self defined when the vote, and perhaps most importantly, where they see their push where do they see their purpose and pushed into future years. and this is what we have learned. women can forecast trends.

on october 4, we watched the palladian view in kansas city, missouri, and we pulled about six -- more than that. about 80% of 1300 women that participated in the convention. and during that process we learned that there was a general and by the of herman cain that had great traction. the monday after which we did a little bit of national television shows that we are asked does herman cain legitimately have an opportuni opportunity, and we suggest. the next day he did very well. he did well in florida and then he did well in chicago, and he started literally creating a pathway to the presidency. likewise we were asked about michele bachmann. we were asked about many of the presidential candidates that have come and gone. but each time this core group of activist republican women were able to predict the next step.

the question today that edward asks is how do these conservative republican women fare here in the state of south carolina one day before the actual election? this is what i would tell you. it is unknown. we know in the state of south carolina right now that speaker gingrich's numbers are searching. we know right now that senator santorum's numbers are stabilizing, and we know right now that is a dynamics with the ascent or the leaving of governor perry, that there's a shift and a very, very fluid next 24 hours. so it's our core group of conservative women at these three segments that can predict what's going to happen on a national scope because these women are informed, they are engaged, and, obviously, they understand the import of what's going to happen next. the conservative republican woman, if you ask me to give one word to what captures this

person, i would say she is passionate. she is passionate about her children, about her family, and about politics because she inherently understands that its politics that will drive the health and well being of her family. and so, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for allowing us to be a part of today as we share a little bit about palladian view with our 100 women that write on a daily basis. and with 30,000 followers, with just a website in over 100 days, and we ask you to join us and learn more about the conservative republican woman. thank you. [applause] >> hello. i'm independent, chairman of tea party express and excited to be here today. i love charleston the i'm a southern belle and i think charles is one of the prizes of the south but is it really

exciting. we are right in the center of the political universe. everything is everyone's eyes are upon south joins with real exciting to be here. i'm also excited to be here because three years ago i was just a mom who is not engaged in politics at all. and i got involved because i was concerned about my country. and i was one of the ones. there were a large number of us that started the modern day tea party movement, so i am a tea party mom. and what it means to me today to be conservative in 2012 is essentially the same thing that got me involved in this movement, and that is fiscal responsibly, limited government, free markets. those are the principles and values of the tea party movement was founded upon. this movement was started because everyday average people were fed up with washington, and the out of control spending in washington. washington needs to live within

their means. they need to have a balanced budget, just like families and businesses to all across this country. but instead washington is spending, spending, spending. and all they can do is blame it on each other and there's no accountability for we the people, the people that they work for, the people that hired them. and so what we have done over the past three years has been nothing short of amazing, to look at what we did in the election cycle 2010, and now here we are going into 2012, and we need to make a difference. the movement was actually started because people were frustrated and angry and fed up with both political parties. they were tired of this, this bickering between the democrats and the republicans, and so people started focusing on the issues. and that's what.

did come and we focus only on those fiscal issues because when you get into the social issues or foreign policy, it divides us. we are never all going to agree on that stuff. but everybody can agree that washington needs to live within their means. and so we've all come together. we had a tremendous impact in 2010, and now here we are in the 2012 election cycle and the media wants to write a narrative that the tea party movement is dead and they were not having an impact. and it's simply not true. what happened is the movement has grown and matured. i call it t. party 2.0. were no longer standing out on the steps of the capital or at your state capitals. holding a big round with the science which is a sensational sexy journalism that the media likes to take pictures of and show or its visual. people get there. instead people are engaged on a local and state level.

they are sitting at home behind their computer on your keyboard, you know, maybe with their phone to their gear calling their representative, calling their center, engaging on the issues that really matter to them. even down to the school board level and city council. that's what people are working on. but it's hard for the media to go in and take a picture of an individual in their home and then air and across national airwaves because that's not sensational. that's not sexy journalism so they're not going to do that. but we are engaged, and we are focused and we're having a huge impact. in 2010 not only to have a huge impact on the federal level, but we had a huge impact on local and state level. and that was the untold story of 2010. the one thing that galvanized this movement more than anything else was obamacare. people came out of their houses, their homes, and they engaged on

obamacare because there's nothing more personal than health care. not everyone of us are a doctor but everyone of us are a patient. and i know that all of you, just like myself and the people sitting at the with me, we don't want the government involved in decisions that should be between myself and my doctor, or your self and your doctor. we don't need washington making those decisions. it yet that legislation was crammed down our throats. and we are not going to take it. we have an opportunity to repeal obamacare, and we have one opportunity to repeal it. and that is if we take back the u.s. senate and if we vote barack obama out of office and put in a new president. otherwise, we're going to have socialized medicine. and that's not what america is about. that's not what i have grown up with. i don't want my children to grow up with that or my

grandchildren, and msha most of you don't. so here we are. we have an opportunity to affect change at the highest level of american government. after all we fought to push back on obamacare, and after washington is still spending, grover i'm sure can probably speak to this later but i think is congress will spend more than nancy pelosi is congress last cycle to this spending is out of control. it's simply out of control and we cannot continue down this path. washington is not the answer. washington is the problem. washington needs to get out of the way, and the government needs to be put back into the hands of the american people. they work for us. and that's what, what i'm here trying to do. that's what the organization, tea party express is about. we have come we're done five national bus tours across the

county. we did a mini tour up in wisconsin to support governor, well actually did a mini tour last summer to support the republicans that were being recalled. now governor walker and the lieutenant governor are up for recall and a number of senators come and we're going to support them as well. we also did the first ever tea party presidential debate last september with cnn in which is a testament to the power of the movement. they keep talking about us being dead, but, you know, what? we are a threat. we are threat to that liberal leftist agenda and that's why they continue to talk about us. they wouldn't talk about is if we were not a threat. and if we work the relevant. they wouldn't even mention us. so we did the cnn debate, but the most important thing we have done is we've engaged in a election activity because tea party express believes, tea

party express believes that if you truly want to affect change, you have to change the players. and that's what we want to do. we want to send conservatives to washington. we need to send more conservatives to stand with senator demint and rand paul and mike lee in the united states senate. we need to take that cattle out of harry reid's hands. we need to send more conservatives to the house so that the conservatives and the house can push back on leadership and show them who's really in charge, and that's we the people. we simply cannot continue down this path. and that's what we are focused on. that's what the tea party movement focused on. you're going to see is engaged in this election cycle because it's the first time we can actually have an impact as i said at the highest level of the american government. and it's our only opportunity to repeal obamacare, and that's

what galvanized this movement, and polls show that over 60% of americans today still one that legislation repealed. we cannot just sit back and pray that the supreme court ruled it unconstitutional because we have seen what judicial activism has done to this country. a bottom line is, after what happened two weeks ago, i said all along that we needed to focus on the senate. no matter if barack obama is reelected or not. but after two weeks ago i realized just how important it is that we defeat them. because this man has proven that he cannot push the stuff down our throats through the legislative process, he will do it through the regulatory process. and if he can't do it to the regulatory, a law-abiding process, he will do a power grab and totally usurp the congress,

the senate and the constitution and we the people. and he proved that two weeks ago with his recess appointment. we cannot let this happen. we cannot sit here so i encourage every right now to get engaged. we have the field of candidates we have. no one else is going to get in the race. i know people are undecided, but you sure candidate, go work for your candidate, donate money to them but i don't care if it's $3 or $5, volunteer your time. because we have to make him a one-term president. and that's what it means to mean -- to me to be conservative in 2012 and am looking forward to the great things we would do in this election cycle. and you. [applause] >> grover did a great job about talking in the broader sense of what a conservative is in 2012.

i'm going to focus more on the second amendment aspect. i'm checking in with the national rifle association. can service our freedom lovers and that's what the second mm is all about. the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. it's very clear they come except to some supreme court justice and those who disagree with the. up in recent decisions, landmark cases, the last for five years, the heller case, the mcdonald cases relating to the second mm. the heller case is the second amendment and individual fundamental right as compared to the collective right of exercise supposedly by militias since the first clause of the second amendment mentioned militia but it doesn't say the right of the militia to keep and bear arms. it's is the right of the people, the people used, of the bill of rights. but the mcdonald case, and

what the hell a decision was about, the d.c. gun ban and whether or not law-abiding citizens could own guns in their own home, which d.c. prohibits unless you're of course a criminal. and in the mcdonald case it was got your right to keep and bear arms affirmed by the heller case apply to the states, not just the federal enclave of the nation's capital. and both of those were 5-4 decision to give your freedom of you need to be involved in the political process because that majority can easily be reversed through the appointment of more supreme court justices who disagree with the second amended. and just because it's affirmed once doesn't mean the court will not reverse their generally president is not do that but it wouldn't put it past the people at the ends justify the means in every case. so it's the right to keep and bear arms, not just keep passing you get to keep it in your house

your ticket to a shooting range or use it for hunting. but you have an opportunity to own and possess and bear arms for self-defense or and so it's a broad right than just the ability to purchase again. and since 1998 there's been a national check system to screen people are prohibited under federal law from purchasing and owning and receiving a firearm. in conservatives should never problem with that unless it's expanded to people who are undesirables. in fact, there's a bill that would allow the attorney general to you in the latter decade who's on a terrorist watch list. welcome we know what janet reno would've done. we sorely probably know what eric holder would do, the fast price went in space would all be on the terrorist watch list and they would be automatically prohibited from purchasing a firearm. so we are freedom lovers that

think that the constitution means what it says. we don't support our own government forcing gun dealers to make transactions to illegal people or illegal purchasers or purchasers who are going to transfer those firearms to drug cartels, it is in the past entries program. the most invidious part of it is a simply based on the sheer number of volume of the firearms they transferred it just wasn't a law-enforcement routine. you could do that with a couple dozen and just trade them, i don't how you trace them want to get across the mexican border when the mexican it doesn't even know about it but you can trace at least until that point. but when you do this with thousands of firearms it raises the suspicion that there is something more devious and sinister at stake. and the fact that's what's come out in the congressional oversight hearing. is this was a means of trying to

prove, exacerbate a problem so that the liberals and governments could use this to justify or gun control but even though laws were violated in order to make this happen. this was our government, the government that is here to help you doing that. and so conservatives should oppose efforts. but went instead to it on the second a minute, while it may be that your competitor or recreational shooter or a hunter, it also really gets down to the core of it which is ownership of firearms for self-defense. and we've been very active over the years in changing laws as it relates to the right to carry, conceal, and kerry, reform, self-defense laws, whatever the terminology is. stay underground, castle doctor. we do things that people should have the ability to own firearms. have the ability of their law abiding citizens to carry firearms, and use those firearms

for self-defense whether they are attacked in the home or outside of their home. it may be on the way to work. it may be on the way to the store. it may be in a parking lot somewhere. but the police can't always be there. there's not enough of them. we can't afford to be enough of them after. they are usually there at the crime scene after it occurs. and so people need to have the means for self-defense. and then more importantly they need to be able, through statutes to be protected from liability, not to be sued, if they use a firearm for self-defense where is a criminal breaks into home or attacks them in public, that they're not going to be the one that goes to jail because they chose to defend themselves. there was a case about a quarter-century ago, a subway up in new york city and so many of the cases of self-defense that are lesser known, but in many

cases people end up going to jail because they had used a firearm for self-defense. and that's just wrong and certainly our constitutional, and that's the liberal way of doing things, certainly not conservatives. what we're also trying to do is identify many of the laws that have passed over the years to our history composed the federal level but particularly the state level and repeal those. in many cases it's because they are no longer, their antiquated and no longer but irrelevant, duplicative, like purchase and regulation statute in michigan because there's a national check now that applies to every gun sold by every dealer in every state. so something like that that is onerous, expensive, ridiculous needs to be repealed. also in this state, south carolina actually has made that step. in the '70s i believe it was passed will be called a gun rationing law limiting

law-abiding citizens to one handgun per month. and you might say well, why would someone want more than one, one a month? is not the role of the government to date date how many, i mean it's arbitrary period of time, arbitrary number, and criminals are not going to obey the law. one of those that south carolina enacted it, unfortunate virginia and a couple other states passed it, copy it from the south till i came back about five or six year's ago and repealed that law and hopefully we'll be able to do that in richmond this year. what conservatives really want is to separate not inanimate objects because guns are incapable of committing crimes on their own. you can load it, you can it, if it's a pistol, or revolver. you can set it on the table and it's not going to commit any crime. it takes an evil person with evil intent to misuse a firearm.

and that's what we should focus on is the criminals, not the firearms. and that's where there's a separation between gun-control advocates and second commitment supporters. criminals as we know through experience by definition violate laws, particularly gun control laws. but what we also know is they like their victims to be unarmed. and so those gun free school zones, the signs, the invisible signs the potomac river for years about law-abiding citizens not able to own brick and transport firearms have never stopped the criminals because i guess to paraphrase bill clinton, it's the criminals, stupid. they don't decide -- there's not a conscious decision by drug dealers that when they have a deal tonight that the government has been this one guy with his other what is legal so i'm going to use the legal one tonight in this drug deal. they don't apply for concealed

carry permits and say i've got to carry this concealed but i don't have a purpose i guess i'm not going to build taken at crime tonight. it's just ridiculous to believe. it defies common sense that gun control is crime control. and we know from experience that's not the case. what we also are excited about and conservatives should all be excited about is that both the federal and state level not only have lost generally with exception of perhaps california, gotten less restrictive, but they've been more friendly to law-abiding citizens. in the process of violent crime rates are now at record low levels. so that what that means is the argument by debris bunch and mayor bloomberg in new york city that more guns, more people with firearms equals more crime is not the case. at all. so, what it means to be a conservative in 2012 is you love

freedom, that you support individual liberty, and, in fact, that you're a civil libertarian. that the liberals like to capture that, that mantra to aclu and others, but when it comes to individual freedom and individual rights, the conservatives is a civil libertarian, not the liberals. thank you. [applause] >> to further the discussion, let's go to the different panel members and let you ask questions of the other individuals on stage. okay. your table mic should be on. >> who wants to start? >> before we get to questions let me put one more thing on the table, maybe that will generate a question. and that is, the central, one of the central differences between liberals and conservatives is where they stand on the tax issue. because if the government is going to get bigger it has have

higher taxes to pay for the more spending, obama certainly increased in and that is trying to raise taxes to justify it, make the higher level of spending to be the new normal. in the united states. we have about 35% of the economies swallowed up by government, federal, state and local but in europe its 50, 55% and he is trying to get us to cross over and become instead of the traditional american liberty focused society, more european welfare state where the state takes an increasingly large chunk of people's lives and control over their lives. one of the things we've done is offered all candidates who run for federal or state office a pledge, a written pledge. if you like to against, the to come any and all efforts to raise net taxes.

and what's interesting is that over the last 25 years that we have made this public pledge available to all candidates, we are getting almost all the republican candidates for house, senate to take the pledge. all but six minutes of the u.s. house of representatives who are republicans have signed a pledge. off of seven republicans. and that's a public commitment, not to americans for tax reform but to the american people that as long as they're in the congress or in the senate or president or governor they will oppose all efforts to raise taxes. and this more than any other issue separates republicans and democrats because there have been democrats who are pro-guns. there aren't democrats are prolific or even some democrats who vote sometimes against the interests of the trial lawyers, the labor union bosses. but what you get is this incredible divide on the tax issue between republicans and democrats because of the one democrat in the u.s. senate who made a commitment not to raise

taxes, ben nelson big tease leading figure only two democrats in the house who have made that commitment, and each of them have broken that commitment. so where as on the republican side the republicans have not only made that commitment but have kept it. to the point where the modern republican party is actually branded itself as the parties that will never raise your taxes in the same way coca-cola brands that sell. so if you go into a store to you can pick up a coke easily. you know what's there. you know what's inside the ghetto had asked people what they think if you don't have to taste it. take it home exactly to the coca-cola because coke as quality control, and they brand their products. however, if you buy a bottle of coke and to get home and you are two-thirds the way through your bottle of coke and there's a rat had left in your coat pocket you don't just take yourself, i'm thinking i may not finish all the rest of this bottle of coke

tonight, you wonder whether you will buy a coke in the future. it damages the brand for everyone else. you going twitter into to everybody about the coke bottle and you go on the local tv and youtube and you show them the cool redhead. and coke has a problem. republican elected officials who vote for tax increases, a rat is is in the coke bottle. they damage the brand. for everybody else. in the good news is they don't do that anymore. that's bad examples in the past, republican or to have fun for tax increase. they have had trouble getting reelected. others have learned from that and said if you want to run as a republican, and oppose taxes, you take a pledge and you keep it. if you want to raise taxes, run as a democrat. so that the distinction between the two parties i think has really solidified over the last decade, two decades, but it also

explains why, when people in washington, d.c. said why don't we compromise and why do we all get together and do something, why don't we just have a compromise. with his people are telling you is how old they are. because they are so old they remember when everything in washington, d.c. in the '50s was on one side, a liberal republicans and liberal democrats would fight a conservative republican, a conservative democrats. and everything was bipartisan because the two parties didn't mean anything. but today when the liberals have all gone into one corner and conservatives have all gone to the other corner, all the political fights are now partisan. so the people go the old days when it was nonpartisan, no, two teams didn't tell you anything. the two parties didn't to anything back then. now they do. and when somebody says the republicans should compromise on taxes, meaning raise taxes, somebody wants to raise taxes

and someone wants to cut them, what's to come from eyes? if someone wants to go west and somebody wants to go peace, what's the compromise? there's not a cover my see people try to go in opposite direction. i think the clarity in modern american politics on taxes up or down, spending up or down, is very, very helpful in making it easier for people to vote intelligently and hold elected officials responsible. so i will raise my voice at the end of that, turn it into a harvard question, so what do you think? >> this is what i can play. if you think about branding, in its choose since it is always based in reality. found with republican conservative women, when we asked them very specifically to prioritize issues that are highest, least important in the 21st century or more specifically in 2012, they always say the economy, number one, and taxes and spending never too. so to be honest it is an

absolute come to come if you talk about the three-legged stool, it is the third leg making certain that taxes are not raised at the end of the day government is out of the way so that americans can do with the need to do. the republican conservative woman understands it so much that before every large function, the same question is posed and we always rank between number one economy, number two taxes and spending, and over 80%. so it is a tremendous finding consistently over this period of time. >> i agree with everything that both of them have said. i mean, i'm asked often, i do a lot of me and i'm asked often, you know, do i think that the wealthy should pay more taxes? and at the end of the day, raising taxes is an excuse to spend more money. at some point you have to stop the spending.

you cannot raise enough taxes to pay for this out of control spending. and i think that's the narrative that we just need, that we need to just keep putting out there, that you cannot raise enough taxes for this out of control spending. $16 trillion in debt, i can't, i cannot even imagine, i truly can't imagine. and i don't think most americans can imagine how much money that is. it's not tangible. i mean, it's, it's bigger than anything. and these people in washington are with this little critter, our credit card and they just keep charging and charging and charging. and barack obama and harry reid and gain want to raise taxes and we have to keep pushing back on them and say no, stop the spending. >> chuck, can i ask a question? how many in terms of the second amendment, how many americans have a concealed carry permit? how many americans hud? how many americans have a gun at

home for self protection? when we talk about these, what are the rough numbers of? >> well, the good news is in many cases like gun ownership that number is not precise and well known because our government doesn't have a registration list and no. and you have to depend on people being honest with pollsters and others to determine that, and i know someone called my home and asked me anonymously if i owned a firearm what my answer would be. but the estimates are around 65 million-75 million gun owners, about 20 million hunters. i'm not quite sure what the number is on carry permit holders. wisconsin has just added a huge batch with their new law, but it's several million. >> the last number i saw was 7 million. it may be an old number. it was a pre-wisconsin number. >> and other states, iowa's statute is now a year and have old soviet picked up as well.

and we hope to pick off the last frontier, illinois, sometimes this year. then there would be 50 states where there is some type of process for law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm for self-defense. but i didn't have really an issue to speak with about the previous question come but i think also one issue that separates conservatives and liberals is this phenomenon that really has happened, maybe for the last 50 years, but that's government now being involved, most people didn't care about the comment one way or another because it didn't affect them. but now government is in the business of picking winners and losers. whether it's tax policy and take your money and give it to somebody else, the regulatory policy, we are going regulate you and not regulate you. people have gotten involved in politics, many for the most part because they have been forced to to defend their ability to keep government out of their lives,

or their businesses lives, or their industry in the bigger picture. so between that and nanny state were, is trying to our lives because they think we're too stupid to run our own lives and make her own decisions about whether or not we own a gun or whether or not we have health insurance and whether or not we get it this lightbulb without light bulb, they, i think that's been a big emerging issue is, as much as been taking money from us every paycheck. >> i would like to ask amy a question that we chatted a little beforehand but for the tea party expressed to endorse, what is the cataclysmic element that causes that to happen quits or is it something that going to? on this kind of curious about how that process works of? >> is an internal process, and we have discussed it. we thought that we would have endorsed by now. we only focus on federal races,

other than wisconsin, and we think wisconsin is probably the most important election that's going to happen this year. but we don't, we need to know that we are working with the movement. we don't want to go out there and endorsed and working against the movement. and honestly, and those of you who are in here, you may have heard me say before, i mean, i'll tell you right now, i'm a huge sarah palin fan and i think sarah palin is the female ronald reagan of our time. and there's no other person like sarah palin who brings the energy and excitement and relief rallies the base like she does. and i think that the tea party movement and conservatives were waiting on that candidate is going to rally the base and bring everybody together, and it hasn't happened. and so, everybody sits across the board -- >> as we showed you we'll bring

you back to washington for just a moment of breakaway from charleston, south carolina, and take you inside the u.s. senate where they are just about to gavel in for a pro forma session. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c., january 20, 2012. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable carl m. levin, a senator from the state of michigan, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: daniel k. inouye,

president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until 2:00 p.m. stands adjourned until 2:00 p.m. >> the senate has wrapped up that very brief pro forma session today. senators return for legislative business on monday and later this month the senate intelligence committee will hold its annual hearing on global threats to the united states. let's take a back life to south carolina, charleston south carolina, the republican -- what

we are going to do instead of bringing back to life republican leadership conference we will take you back to earlier today as republican leader cons -- leadership conference with remarks from congressman ron paul. [cheers and applause] ♪ ♪ >> thank you very much. thank you, thank you. thank you for coming out. so early in the morning. i am delighted to be here. i don't want to introduce my wife who came in and is sitting over here, my wife, carol. [applause] she and i will be celebrating our 55th anniversary within a week or so, february 1. so, delighted. [applause] but i appreciate the opportunity to come and visit with you.

the campaign has certainly heated up. the debates last night were very interesting, and sometimes distracting but overall i thought the debate went quite well and people asked me quite frequently how did the debate go? and i said compared to what? it always can be better and it could be worse as well. basically, over the years literally of being involved in the debates, debates have always been very helpful in promoting what i have been talking about on sound economic policy and foreign policy and an emphasis on monetary policy which was mentioned in the introduction. so this tammy has always been encouraging because we get so many new supporters once we present our case on what we need to do. generally speaking, my views are different in reality than the other candidates because although the rhetoric might not be extremely different, in

reality it is different because so often we have candidates that will talk about some changes but basically still support the status quo. my position is that we have to do a lot more. the status quo today is too much ignoring the constitution. people ask me, how did we get into this and what do we have to do? i don't think that question is difficult to answer. we have gotten into this trouble because we have avoided following the constitution. it shouldn't be difficult to be get out of trouble by having people in washington who will be the constitution. that is what i think we ought to do. [applause] but it's across the board come as a general lackadaisical attitude about following the constitution. but it also reflects an educational system that over many many decades have taught

generations of americans that the constitution is not to be a rigid document. that is sort of like saying the bill of rights is not a rigid document or the 10 commandments are not a rigid set of rules. so, since we got careless with this the document doesn't mean a whole lot. so when it comes to monetary policy, the founders of this country were explicit about protecting against inflation because they have suffered through the inflation of the continental dollar so they put it in there that the only gold and silver that could be legal tender, you could have central banking and you couldn't trade money but look at where we are. we didn't change the constitution so if events have changed and they think central banking creating money out of thin air is a good sound economic system, to do it, the people of this country should i have changed the constitution. if we as a people wanted the federal government to takeover and control education, then the

constitution should have changed because there is no authority to the federal government to be running education and therefore we don't need the department of education. [applause] and you can continue to go down the list. for instance the executive branch of government. have you ever notice they write a lot of regulations and actually they shouldn't write any regulations. congress pass laws like they do with dealing with the environment and the epa and then they write regulations and they go way off on tangents and the congress never rains them and. when you write a regulation you are writing a law and that is the executive branch doing what only the legislative ranch is supposed to be doing. we need to challenge this some day. we don't need the federal government or the executive branch in writing legislation but we shouldn't be allowing them to write legislation through executive orders or signing statements or following the laws written by the united

nations. we need to adhere to the rules. [applause] so we have gotten careless in another area that i think is so important because it has contributed so much to our financial crisis in the ongoing activities overseas and the overseas spending. the founders, one of the reasons we thought the revolution was the encroachment of the military on the privacy of the colonists where the military would come into the homes and occupied the homes and tax the people for fighting wars and they resented the fact that the king could take the people to war as well as tax the people to fight these wars. so it was explicit in the constitution that the president just can't up and go to war. we have lost that just about completely and both pair -- parties have been derelict in that. we go to war now at the president's insistence. does he come to the congress,

especially with this recent administration? does he come to the congress to get involved in libya and these various countries and now in syria and thinking about going into iran? if we have to go to war does he come and get a declaration of war? no, they just go and do it. i don't think that's right. i think we should declare war if we have to go to war. [applause] this means we would go to war more rarely and if we did go toward we would win them in stead of stagnating in being involved for 10 years. [applause] but another insult, should be an insult at least to all americans is hailing our president's going to war under a u.n. banner from nato and not even consult with the congress. we need to change that, obviously. [applause]

a lot of times our debates will be designed to either talk about economic policy or social policy or foreign policy. obviously last night it was was no emphasis on foreign-policy but if you are truly interested in economic policy you can't not talk about foreign-policy. the last 10 years our foreign wars have contributed $4 trillion in debt and that is money out of our economy. war, even when it's necessary is always a drain on the economy, but war especially when they linger and you spend money, it's a real insult to the economy here at home. so this $4 trillion that was spent running up debt which had nothing to do with our national security and as a matter of fact i believe it undermined our national security and defense by getting involved. [applause]

by $4 trillion is a great burden, and the crisis we are facing economically is a debt crisis. they talk, they talk about what kind of programs we are going to designed to stimulate the economy and take care of the unemployed, but very rarely are they addressing the subject in a serious manner about real problems and that is the debt burden. all of our productivity now can barely pay to finance our debt. if you think of all that we owe, we owe the $16 trillion this week the national debt was raised by $1.2 trillion it was done by the president and the congress see bully tries to prevent that from happening. but it still happens because we are on autopilot now. and our country is an even productive enough to finance the debt. how do we how do we get away with it? we still live with this, this fiction that the world will forever trust us to print the

right amount of dollars and the dollar will always maintain value and that we can print our way out of financial debt. already we are suffering severely from that, even though it is still being propped up and people are still taking our dollars. but since 1971, when we lost the last link to gold, our dollar has lost 85% of its value so we happen to be an old-fashioned person and you think that, don't want to speculate in the stock market, savings, saving money and being frugal with that one time thought to be a good thing. so if a person follows that it wanted to play it safe and had a cd, they can't even keep up with the depreciation of the money. what if they wanted to start saving in 1971 and now they want to retire? they have lost, depending on how much money they put in each ear, theoretically if you put all your money away in 1971 and you put $100,000 a way he would have

$15,000 of purchasing power so the system we have is very destructive to the very positive things that we need in the economy. our problem basically is that we don't follow the rules of the marketplace. true capital comes from saving but we don't save and we substitute savings with the printing press run by the federal reserve. they just create money out of thin air and as long -- [applause] as long as people except the dollars we will continue to do that but they are going to accept it a lot less. the problems we face economically our international. the dollar is the -- we are getting away with exporting our dollars. that is her biggest export and we get goods and services at a cheaper rate but eventually the world will reject the paper money because you can't -- our credit has been downgraded. france's credit has been downgraded. europe is in a mess.

the spanish are in a mass. the greeks are in a mess and all we are doing is scurrying around every single day with another plan on how we are going to take care of the greek debt. when they debt gets this big there is only one way you resolve it. you get back to growth again in the debt has to be liquidated. instead of liquidating, what they do is the debt of the sovereign nations and the banks run down, they take the debt and transferred to us. the people at the end of owning this debt. this is why wall street still thrives. they get the bailouts for the people who made the money while the -- productivity is shrinking and people are losing their jobs and losing their houses. we have to change the whole attitude. the debt has to be liquidated and the investment has to be removed. for four years we have been propping it up and that is why we are not having true economic growth again. [applause] but there is nothing, there is

nothing we can do in politics even a president who promotes these views. the people have to understand a very important issue which is the role of government and this is what the founders fought the revolution about. they decided the role of the king was wrong. they wrote a document and the role of the federal government was designed to protect our liberties. it's no more complicated than that. is the purpose of the government to provide for strong liberal defense and protect our -- that is what we are supposed to do. [applause] today that has evolved and john adams warned, if it ever revolves from a pub -- republic to a pure democracy eventually society would murder itself. in many ways we are murdering ourselves by her spending and our their extension of our troops around the world and now,

we still accept this notion which has to be challenged. entitlements are not right. you have a right to your life and liberty and property but not entitlement. [applause] nobody is entitled to somebody else's efforts. as long as that exist, a token change in washington won't make the difference. the government that we have in washington is a reflection of the people's attitudes but the good news is, the people's attitude is now changing significantly. [applause] even those who are on the receiving end of the entitlement system are very frightened because they know that the treasury is there in the people who have been paying the bills are sick and tired of paying the bills and this is why we are going to have change. [applause] >> we are going to leave his

recorded portion of the event from earlier today and take you back live to south carolina, charleston south carolina getting underway now on social media. live coverage on c-span2. >> all telling you the easiest and most defensive way to reach your constituent and even those undecided followers. you can't go wrong with our social media panel. so now i'm going to start to my right and we will have our panelists introduced themselves. >> hi, i'm adam kravitz with e. voter.com. we are a voter information site launched in 2010 in six states and we are growing nationally. for six days wherein we got between five and 10% visitors which is 10% of the actual voter turnout. >> my name is katie harvest. i work at facebook and i'm the liaison for the republican candidates and elected officials to better use our platform.

previous to this i was at the republican senatorial committee the rudy giuliani campaign and the republican national committee. >> hi, i'm mandy and i am with twitter. i have strategic partnerships out of our d.c. office working with campaigns, committees, trade associations and public affairs and pr firms etc.. previously worked with official media for campaigning committees for about 10 years, ran digital for mitt romney's campaign in 2008. ran digital for rick santorum's campaign. >> been my name is bob. i run google's advertising sales to republican political campaigns and conservative issue advocacy groups. prior to joining google four months ago i was in business school but before that i did a number of different roles in the bush of administration and that included working with katie and mindy at the republican national committee so glad to be reunited with you on the stage today. >> great. we will start with our first

question. we will go and answer from the left side and move over. our first question for the panel is this. how do you believe social media has changed the landscape of campaigning, you know just within the last 10 or so years? >> i see does fundamentally redefining the landscape of campaigning because what we have seen is a shift in how voters get their information. voters not getting their information through the internet in ways they weren't before and that that is change how campaigns go about attempting to reach voters, how they go about attempting to raise money for them, how they go about attempting to persuade them, to support them and getting the voters out to the polls on election night. google commissioned a poll along with public opinion strategies of likely republican voters from south carolina over the course of the last week and we found that 70% of likely voters from saturday's primary have gone on line to find out information about the election.

south carolina is one of the least wired states in the country and in fact six from last in terms of the a lot of people in general who have the internet access. even in a state that is six from last in internet penetration we found that 70% of likely voters about the same number of people statewide that have internet access have gone on line to learn about the election. 62% of likely voters in the primary on saturday have gone on and use the search engine to check information that they found elsewhere. what that does is present opportunity for campaigns to reach voters at the exact moment that voters expressed an interest in learning more about what is going on with the election. so the fundamental way social media has changed the political landscape is that it has allowed campaigns to reach voters immediately and should reach voters where they are. there is no more targeted way to reach a specific type of voter than through the internet and so they are taking, the campaign is taking advantage of tools that

facebook offers to do that in a way that they have fundamentally not before. >> i agree with bob. it is change the way people get information about campaigns and because of that it has changed almost every single aspect of campaigning whether that be advertising, whether that we media relations and the press, whether that be get out the vote, political organizing or fundraising. it has changed all aspects of the campaign and now starting to change polling in terms of impacting the way that we can measure public opinion. and specifically, i think too two major, major trends in terms of how the internet has impacted campaigns because people have such access to information the first is more power is now in the hands of voters and individual organizers and they tend to drive the process more so than the institution. we are seeing that across all institutions but in politics

it's very much the case. if we come to a place like iowa is important for people to meet voters face-to-face, but if the voters are no longer reliant on say a physical office to get the information from the campaigns or get marching orders they are getting them on line so a lot more of the powers in the hands of voters and organizers and activists and they are using social media sites and the web to organize. the second major change and transition and bob touched on this a little bit is how quickly everything moves. clearly we see this reflected in the poll swings that have happened in the election. there will be one debate and all of a sudden someone raises 10 or 15 points and a poll because information travels so quickly. this puts a burden on campaigns to no longer engaging in rapid response but important that it's engaging and instant response and we see on a platform like twitter for example where the

narratives are being set in real time around major political events because the conversation is happening in real time among influential activists and those engaged in the process. the two biggest changes, guess the people, the way people are getting information and the information is spreading has drastically changed because of the internet but what this has caused is a dynamic whereby the actual voters and activists have more power over the process. number two that this budha with campaigns has accelerated significantly. >> i completely agree with everything mindy and bob said and what we are really starting to see is everything that you would do in campaigns can now have a social aspect to it so you are moving from the wisdom of crowds and people you might not know to where everything you do on a campaign can be influenced by your friends whether you are in twitter and seeing news articles that your friends are sharing, seeing that your friends are at a rally or

event and that they are talking about it. we found basically it holds a lot more weight and you are much more likely to pay attention to it if a friend has recommended it to you than if it's a stranger looking at it. that is not just for news you are reading. if you look at some of the things campaigns are building with on line phone banks if you walk in with facebook you don't just see all the people making phonecalls. you see your friends who are making phonecalls so every aspect of the campaign can have this social word-of-mouth to it. that is really really powerful and the other thing i love is that campaigns now, a commercial comes out in a candidate wants to respond to it. they don't have to stop the bus and let the media get all the cameras out and get everybody set up so they can do a prep. they can live stream right from their bus on facebook, twitter, u-stream and google. your platform can be promoted on all three in very quickly get their side of the story i was ever having to go through the

media in which to do that and i think we are going to see the changes during the cycle but i think it will really be sort of of -- where we will see that happen even more. >> i agree with everything bob and mindy and katie have said so i think we are all in agreement. the only thing that i would add to that because i don't think there is too much more to add to that, how but could but also who it applies to. one of the things he want to bring out is that the internet has changed everybody's lives and changed everybody's lives up and down the age scale. there are a lot of studies out, the pew internet study that i like to quote that says not only are voters getting information from the internet but it's not just young people although obviously young people in greater numbers. it's a majority of every single age group up to age 65, and majority people, answers that they get their political

information from the internet. they should be no surprise to anybody because when i talk to groups of people i say well how many people looked for movie times in and the newspaper lately? you just google it on your way home or as you were sitting there at the office. i think that is one of the central facts of american life now is that everybody, not just young people that most people who work spend eight hours a day sitting in front of the computer screen. they aren't anything like the people that work with me. you have to figure out that is how they are going to engage and they are engaging politics the same way and at the same time. i think the second thing is why, because they are in control of the flow of information towards them. you know, i was speaking with somebody actually last night he said maybe there is no independent voters left in america, which i don't agree with. i can see the thing there but whether that is true or not most people think they are a dependent and they like having control over that search and what kind of information they

are going to get whether it's through their friends on facebook or who they are following on twitter, whether what they are searching for on google. what we do is we are trying to have a platform where people can find all of that information in one place. but that i think allows campaigns to contact people who have made a decision that they are looking for this information now. >> we have you know, when it comes to social media, it tends to be most utilized by the youth but how do you think that not only can it help the youth vote but also that you can reach out to voters of every age through the social media network and platform that is available now? >> i think one interesting fact that i love to use all the time that nielsen found earlier this year is that it is actually people who are driving social media by mobile phone. iphones ipads or any sort of

touch phone have become so easy to use that they are gravitating towards that versus eyeing a laptop or a computer. so i think while social media for youth is very important and the youth are more likely to share their opinions and all of that, i always like to use my parents as an example. people growing up, had no idea if they were republican or democrat. it wasn't something he talked about. the two things you weren't supposed to talk about at thanksgiving dinner where politics and religion but now with social media, the mere fact that you check in or say something about a certain candidate your neighbor down the street often knows hey they believe the same thing i do and it's okay to approach the conversation and i think we are starting to see a lot more sense of all generations using facebook, twitter and google and the internet not only to get their news but to reconnect with people that maybe they haven't seen in a long time but also get involved in political movements in the way we have not seen

before. >> one of the fundamental shifts we are seeing in the cycle is campaigns making greater use of mobile as katie was talking about. what this means to deliver video to people when you're watching a video on your phone. it's more intimate than watching a tv commercial. you are literally paying more attention than you would as you're watching the evening news while you are making dinner so i think it's more intimate way for campaigns to go on line and it provides opportunities for campaigns to reach people in unconventional ways because of the targeting capabilities. the rick perry campaign was sophisticated and use of mobile in iowa and south carolina and targeting for example people on christian college campuses in iowa. and another example we saw this election cycle was the congress campaign in texas running mobile ads that were directed to when someone opened an app that was at one of these texas rangers world series game at the ballpark in arlington, they saw a banner ad on their app that

invited them to click on it to win a baseball autographed by nolan ryan so it's a campaign to harvest e-mail address is of likely supporters and also a way for them to get out the message to people who are texas ranger fans that nolan ryan was -- so i think we will see campaigns looking for ways to reach voters in a more targeted way throughout whether it is reaching people at home in a more targeted way but also breaching people based on what they're doing at a specific moment. mobile gives people so many more opportunities to do that. spew one thing that i would add is the nielsen and pew data show the fastest growing groups in terms of demographics tend to be -- so i agree with what kadyhrob said i don't think we can look at the internet any longer and say this is the way to turn out the youth vote. it clearly maps to the overall comment maps to the demographic breakdown of the u.s. population

as a voting population exactly at this point. that being said i think we have seen four, there are many reasons it's always hard to inspire youth voters to get involved and to turn out and it's mostly there is the chicken and egg argument because you know they are apathetic. are they apathetic because people don't reach out to them and indicate that they are important voters? and so, what is really fascinating is the generation now that has grown up in the internet era, does this mean that they will be more involved in politics because they are using social media, they are on line and it's part of their daily life. will this actually make them more active than they think the obama campaign, we saw young voters were inspired in active and we kind of see it with i guess you could say the ron paul campaign now. this will be an interesting trend to watch how it plays out in 2012 and if there is a greater increase and interest in

youth activity then there was in 2008 and how much of that can we attribute to the internet. >> the only thing i would add to that is that it's not just a question of reaching out to people. is a question of also reaching out to people with the right message. i think in a sense, there is no point you know obviously they were going to be texas rangers fans which is a model of the good idea but at the end, obama or are ron paul are going to youth voters with a message. they are not just reaching them. the internet is a medium but a way to reach people. as a way to have people reach you but at the end of the day the campaigns have to pay attention not just of how the reach you and it's not enough to have a facebook page and not enough just to sweet but you also have to pay attention to actually what your audience is and what your messages so they can't just say occo we are going to be on facebook and this will attract voters and attract

the youth vote. >> what the internet does enable campaigns to do is reach people at a specific moment whether it's reaching rangers fans based on the fact that they are at the baseball game or whether it's reaching someone who has searched for a term that relates to campaign whether they have search for specific candidate or we also in the presidential race have seen campaigns very aggressively find search ads on the names of their opponents so the rick perry campaign might've seen value in reaching someone who searches for information about rick santorum and for example what they did was create a microweb site called santorum your marks.com and if someone searched for rick santorum in iowa, they were directed, there was an ad that said learn more about rick santorum's support for earmarks almost looking as though it were a positive ad for rick sore top -- santorum. the advantage in reaching people who searches you are reaching them at the very moment they

expressed interest in the campaign rather when they are doing something else. >> overall what we are talking about is the internet gives you the ability to target so forget the whole organic side of people going on line to get permission but you have the ability to target on line by demographics by key words, by device. you can target the mobile device or target the web which allows you to reach the audiences you are looking to reach. one of the things that we like to emphasize with twitter is that you learn a lot about people and what they are adjusted and based on who they follow and you have the interest grassley based on you know what very are interested in and that is how you target them. you don't have the ability through any other mediums. obviously through the course of campaigns people have started to get more sophisticated in targeting but never have had the sophistication we now have on line by looking at the people's friends are and what they have searched for and what they are interested in so that we can capture the target audience. >> and having them taken

additional -- take a small step and take progressively larger steps. for for example in iowa mitt romney was close -- running global search ads. if someone clicks on it they were attracted to a sophisticated web site where the top of a web the web site theree instructions for finding or congress location how the caucus process work. there was an ability again very easily to sign up by giving their name, their e-mail address in their zip code and then there were boxes people could check to indicate what kind of action they were going to take. so again it's not just reaching down but reaching them on line to get them to take an off-line step then goal is to get them to do something off-line to show a phone bag or do an off-line interview. >> you want to act in that moment of passion which they are able to do there anything on line that you wouldn't be able to otherwise. >> the interesting to if you take a step back before that

where we are seeing a lot of campaigns do is use three platforms to do method testing so you can put up pictures of photos on facebook and you can put up certain messages and tweet out certain things, and start to get a feel for which phrases are going to get the most points in the most engagement before you put a lot of money behind it so they can be really great ways for folks who maybe aren't at a presidential campaign level and don't have a lot of money for you to easily focus people in your area to decide which messages in which phrases work best for you before putting a lot of money or effort behind them. >> you can also do that with feature videos with your tv advertising. one of the new additions youtube has is something called the true view add-in that is where the first part of the ever thiessen and shows, say someone is watching the "national geographic" youtube. five seconds into that

advertisement the viewer has the opportunity to click on an icon to skip the ever tightening go directly to the video. the advertiser only pays when the viewer watches that ad and so the campaign is getting very direct very concrete data about how many people are watching a certain ad versus another ad and instantaneous feedback as to which adds more effective and which ads people are most interested in watching. >> high, since so many people do spend a tremendous amount of time on the internet every day at work and in beasher, how do you keep the message from becoming too inundated in their lives that they feel almost alienated by being over powered by it. where'd you find a balance in the message in the targeting and the things along those lines? >> i was watching tv in south carolina this morning and felt pretty inundated watching one of the older mediums for political

advertising. >> the that is kind of where i was going to go with that. one of the beauties of that is that people can self-select what they consume and if they are tired or something that click away and go somewhere else so there's a lot of competition. what really should put the onus on campaigns to get more creative than to have relevant messages to their particular target and not to inundate, to bob's point i turned on the tv last night too late at night which is something i don't often do at home. it was a lecture i guess, in charleston kicking back and every single ad in the commercial break was a political ad. there were seven in a row one for each of the candidates plus some attack ads and even a rick perry ad. so we want to talk about lack of targeting through tv media versus digital media. you have to run a so we are talking about a candidate who is no longer in the race in the tv ad was running.

at least the digital advertising number one you are much more efficient because you are targeting does he care about your topic are interested in what you have to say or in your target group but also you can start and stop at any point. >> it's also the ability to target people and geographical area that is more distinct than they market. if you want to reach people in the state of delaware you have to advertise in the media market but to reach those same people on line you can target it just at delaware which will be much more efficient but it's also who you are reaching perdue want to reach people who are interested in your message or able to support use of that is why on the tv for example reaching someone who could support you even if they wanted to. i campaigns can do on line through the google display network is they can advertise to people who visited their web site so you see this presently with travel companies, where if you look at a airline web site you will see ads for that

company elsewhere on the internet and what campaigns can do if someone visits a web site they advertise to people on other web sites as they are going about their day-to-day lives. you are inundating the right people and the people you want to reach because they breached your web site and you know a bit about them to the extent that they went to maybe the value section of the web site or they went to the national security section of your web site so you have some sense of what they might be interested in. is particularly useful as someone goes to the donate page of the campaign web site that doesn't choose to give a donation. >> i think you can inundate people as much as you want, but people are people and when they want to tune and they will tune in and not before then. i think that is what we have seen so i have said and when we started what we were doing, there were a few surprises because i adhere to the conventional wisdom that people come of age two weeks before an

election. we have 1.2 million visitors in six states in the states where we have over 10% of the people we saw almost 80% of that traffic coming in the last three days of the election and i think a lot of, used to work in campaigns and direct mail and it was kind of, there was this prototypical little old lady who would sit there and collect all the slate cards in california are all the mail brochures and then decide one day, three days before the election that she was going to read through all of that stuff. i think really what got me was that if people are coming to our site to find out the polling place and find out who their candidates are and they are coming there because they are searching for these things, because we are just top -- coming to the top of these relevant searches and because of the data we have we are getting that traffic. there's a huge mass of people out there looking for this information at the time that they decide they are going to look for it. when they decide they are going to become engaged, so i think

everything rabin said is true and everything we are saying is true, that people are very very self-selected. a lot more than campaigns are giving them credit for and there is this kind of saying that 83% of all advertising just figuring out which 83% and i think on line, people are actually raising their hands in telling you, okay we are ready to be engaged, where you know you can inundate the as much as you want, but i have now decided election day is tomorrow or two days away, now is when i want to pay attention to this and now i'm going to start searching for stuff and candidates you had better be there when i'm actually looking. >> the a question goes back to i think underscoring the value of search advertising because as much as people are inundated you want to reach a method him at the beaumont where they are reaching out to you and someone is starting the conversation with the campaign. at the point that someone is searching for a candidates name

they are calling an 800 number so the campaign should be there to drive their message whether that message is fund-raising, whether it's persuasion are telling people where their home location is and in south carolina which again sixth from last in terms of internet penetration 62% of likely votere primary and saturday have at some point during the campaign gone on line to check something and they saw from a tv commercial or direct mail piece or something they heard in a phonecall that came to their home. so that is the exact opportunity campaign should be looking to to reach voters. >> just one thing. one point that hasn't been made yet is important for everyone is that there is a huge listening component to knowing what folks want to hear, and we have moved away from one-way communication of campaigns to putting a bunch of points on television and

pushing it down. it's not only targeted messaging but also taking a moment to monitor and see what people are talking about and addressing those concerns that they have and then a lot of it is engaging as well. you don't have to respond to everybody who is asking you questions but the fact that people know they can go to a site and ask questions and get answers and it may not be from the campaign directly, it may be from their friends who support them but they want to sort of have that two-way communication. i think the campaigns that do that really well see more people spending a lot more time on their site and the only other part as well is it's not just your standard campaign commercial for direct mail business better what people like to see. they like to to see behind-the-scenes photos and behind-the-scenes video. they like to see the little things that go on behind the campaign and it is stuff that "the new york times" did a study earlier this year where they were looking at what causes

people to share information. and what they found was people like to share information that makes them look awesome. so something their friends may have not seen before, piece of information, a factoid, it doesn't matter. campaigns have huge binders full of research information on every single candidate and small bullet points. though should be the bullet points that are being shared not only over facebook and twitter but google campaign ads. whatever it might be, you were starting to see that a lot more shared around rather than just having a 32nd commercial on television. >> i think that is a fantastic point, katie and going to what adam was saying, campaigns know that voters want to engage. i think campaigns are starting to realize that voters are reaching out to content and it scares the wits out of them.

because they are used to being able to control everything and now it is flipped on its head where voters and activists are more in control of the process. they are controlling it by what is in their pocket or their laptop and that is a fundamental shift i talked about from the beginning. given that though rather than campaigns trying to run away from that and to blast everybody with the ways that they can do the one-way messaging, the one to many tv advertising and mail etc. when they embrace the fact that voters feel empowered, that they are looking to kind of have their will be acknowledged in the power they have, they are much more successful and they do that by peeling away and showing what is behind, behind-the-scenes videos by pulling the supporters into the campaign and making them play more of a row by empowering them to organize and to self-organize and they can do that through these platforms. the campaign that realizes that hey voters are empowered now,

they are going to engage when they want to engage in self-selected and embrace that and start to mold and shape their campaigns around it, the more successful they are going to be. i think we are in the middle of that shift and katie said at the beginning we are not quite there. some campaigns do that are having a lot of success. we certainly have in the last two, three or four years, the obama campaign and the marco rubio campaign in the scott brown campaign etc. where they acknowledge the power of the voter and the power of the activists, think we are going to start to see more of those campaigns and finally and hopefully in the next two to four years, six years, we will see kind of the whole idea of how you campaign can change around the construct. >> all the social networks work together. about 400 links to youtube videos are tweeted every minute i believe. an astounding number of video

youtube's shared on facebook so it's not focusing on one of the other but getting it out there and using all of the social networks to share then make it go viral. >> it's an integrated campaign. you take the debate last night for example. so you would have had in real-time people tweeting about the debate and talking about in real time. people might've heard something about mitt romney's tax returns or something and they may have searched for it and then a clip about how he responded to the question at the beginning. somebody may have put on facebook and started sharing with their friends and immediately there are three different points. somewhere along the line they probably did a candidates web site or a couple of other news organizations as well so bob is completely right in that the successful campaigns on line are the ones that integrate each of these platforms in a very good way to work well together.

i have got a twitter account and i'm going to win the election but that is not going to happen. >> is worth adding to -- are not necessarily the ones with the highest dollar amount. i think they add that people were member of the most is a routine video with his campaign manager with a cigarette at the end. he put no money behind getting that out there and 10 years ago that would not have been possible for the video moment of the campaign to be something that there wasn't a lot of money behind it so i think what the internet does and youtube especially as tell campaigns to get the message out there without having to spend a significant amount of money on tv advertising. >> one thing i would like to add to go back to the innovation thing because there is a study out there that you mention which is the politico article that

basically found something like 30 some odd percent, 33% of likely voters between 18 and 44 have not watched live television in the previous week. and that statistic was much higher and they separated out florida and ohio and ohio was 38%. i don't think they separated out south carolina but we can assume that it was in the high 20s or low 30s around most states, which means that 33% or 30% or somewhere in that neighborhood of likely voters are actually not watching any of these ads at all because they are not watching live tv over the last week. before saturday's election day. i think this is 70% probably are watching tv although the people

sitting on her ipads and sitting on facebook during the commercial breaks which is what most people do nowadays. you have to really wonder how much of this last-minute ad spending is wasted and could be more effectively targeted on line and for much less cost which scares the wits out of lyrical media consultants. >> i think the one thing, because i don't think television advertising is going way anytime soon but a lot of people are watching television while they are on their computer so they are seeing a television ad and they might be searching on facebook, commenting about it or what we have seen studies done with nielsen on facebook is that people are much more likely to remember an ad if they saw a maybe -- it also the ad on facebook and then they see a better friend of theirs likes that candidate and so then they would be much more likely to watch that ad in full if they know that two or three

of those friends like that candidate than what it shows up on the television screen because right now when you are watching tv, they say hey here is this added five-year friends who approved the use of this product anna brings endorsements to an entirely new level. we haven't ad called future stories where a candidate shares content, their friends not only seat in the new. >> but a campaign contributes to those friends is an advertisement just to make sure their friends see it and it adds a completely new level of endorsement by word-of-mouth and helps get information out that he didn't have in previous election cycles. >> the media that voters see on line is more compelling because it's a more intimate media and the tv screens are leaning forward, paying closer attention as opposed to leaning back in having the tv on the background as you're watching it. so i think the campaigns will and should continue to advertise on tv because it is a good way

to reach a lot of people but a lot of people who are not watching tv it makes sense to watch a video ad on line. >> i think social tv and multiplatform consumption definitely has to be looked at and it's fascinating in a couple of ways. first of all i would like to just mention the bleed and the burn rate with tv, how the delaware example that rob brought up is a really apt one because it really gets dramatic that if your candidate is running in delaware, your biggest media is the philadelphia media market that 98 cents out of every dollar when you advertise and philadelphia is a delaware candidate 98 cents on every dollar goes to somebody who doesn't even have the opportunity to vote for you because they don't live in delaware so 98 cents of the dollar and of the two since you are actually spending that gets whittled down when you consider who is actually registered to vote, like you to vote and who actually votes for you and your

particular party so we are talking about probably some more of less than 1 cent per dollar is going to read somebody which is just obscene. of course now that is an extreme example of delaware is unique and doesn't have a big media market of its own but every campaign needs to think critically about how they are spending those dollars and they don't. they'll try to follow this model of putting 80% of their total budget into tv ads, and don't really evaluate after-the-fact how much those were a factor in whether they won or lost. they don't do any scientific analysis to figure that out. we are seeing though that tv usage does continue to go up. it still is a very powerful medium. the rate of tv watching is not going up as fast as internet usage and what we see is more than 50% of americans timeshift which means they don't watch tv in real time. the dvr it or watch hulu or youtube etc. etc. so because of that we should think about

how tv consumption has change. a lot of people are watching tv while they are on line. this is something that has been really interesting in terms of twitter because tv loves twitter because they feel for a live event specifically it legitimizes watching in real-time, watching live and if you were to search for the information or you go on facebook, there are lots of spoilers. there is no better experience now to the consumer than to watch a debate, a presidential debate or watch the primary results than to have the tv on but also be on line on different platform sharing information and consuming information, conversing with friends etc. and i think that is going to be, that is one of the biggest changes. we definitely won't see tv go away because people are consuming both at the same time which means integrated campaigns where you kind of include calls to action that drive people on line with tv ads is the smart way to go.

some organizations are doing this but certainly not enough. many more could be having an impact. of when i watch those tv ads last night in charleston none of them had calls for on line. they may have had that you all at the end that they didn't have a call to action and that is a missed opportunity. >> if you're running a promoted video on youtube or youtube ad you can put a banner at the bottom of the ad that the viewer can click on it will that will take you to the web site where you can make a donation to the campaign. so it, get if you want people to take the smallest up of watching the video and then the largest of that going to the web site and the larger step of signing up and it sort of a way you can start a chain of events that is pretty beneficial to the campaign. is also, you know people are searching out videos about candidates. the most searched for youtube video after terry's oops moment was people looking for that video on youtube. what campaigns can do is run

their promoted video that will adhere alongside the youtube search results. youtube is the largest search engine in the world behind google. a video that they want people to see out there which campaigns aren't able to influence so it's another compelling thing to see campaigns taking advantage of it. >> i was going to say, the joke all of this notice is that politics is usually about 10 years, five to 10 years behind where the brands are. if you look on television, the next time if you're watching commercials after the primary after saturday when they go to florida, see the giro commercials back. listening to the visa super bowl once, you'll notice a lot of these commercials they don't say go to our web site here. they say go join the discussion at facebook.com/viva or

facebook/m&ms.com. you are given the opportunity to share your story and talk with people who feel the same way or it will be like follow us on twitter. watch this youtube video. it will be any of those three but they are asking people to go take that action to go continue the conversation and it's a big piece of the puzzle that we haven't seen any campaigns capitalize on yet but i really hope if we were having this conversation at the end of november, we would have a lot of examples of campaigns to help, to help bring people into the campaign, get them educated and then get them started to take the steps in volunteering and donating. >> i'm glad katie mentioned that because another good, if you want to kind of learn how to get ahead, is watch the super bowl ads that we always talk about what the super bowl and the mega-events for tv advertising. granted there have been so many

who have said we are not going to put all of our money care anymore. it's not worth it. we are going to put it on line. pepsi was one of those brands but a lot of brands are investing in the super bowl because you can often get more aren't media just for the fact that you ran an ad and the ad itself, a lot of times they will release those on line through the different platforms but you will see those calls to action at the end. we see a lot in terms of the kind of cross bought integration with twitter that people use like a hashtag at the event to continue the conversation have a hashtag and search to see what is the conversation what are people saying around that particular topic or they will ask them to finish the story or put a caption to the ad or something like that but they will actually integrated and make it more of a game, and experience for the person who consumes the ad is supposed to let firebomb 30 seconds at you and maybe you will remember it and maybe you won't.

they wanted continue the conversation with katie mentioned which makes it more powerful than the actual 30 seconds of cell. >> people are saying they want to see what people in their social networks, who their friends with their food they look to as influencers are thinking in that will continue to be a credible value when people are searching for something. they will see someone who they know that is as one of their circles is on the web site and that will make that more likely to go to a campaign web site if someone they know has a plus one web site. >> we talked about or think we all agree that an integrated campaign that make sure that you are reaching out and you're communicating and engaging people through the platforms is important but also one thing that is really fascinating about on line campaigning and additional campaigning that also scares a lot of traditional

operatives is the fact that you can't stick it into one particular silo. campaigns are kind of used to saying here is our fundraising strategy and we know how to do fundraising and these are our fund-raisers. here is our communications people and we have a research people and when it comes to the internet, you have all of these things happening at once so rob talked about having the call to action at the point of intent so that the critical moment. ..

>> recruiting people as a supporter, having, you know, encouraging them to donate, and then ultimately empowering them to turn out the vote and obviously turning out the vote for you. it's magical in that way, but it can be a challenge because traditional campaigners like to put things in silos. >> that's true. i think they will find ways to overcome, but the campaigns smartest at this will have an integrated strategy where they use this. mitt romney is one of the first republican presidential candidates with a digital director who is on the same level as the communications director and political director of the campaign and able to integrate the digital strategy

with the holistic view. the outline needs to be tied to the political strategy. mitt romney used the digital strategy in the efforts to get enough signatures to be on the ballot in virginia. that played an integral roll in the election. campaigns can run ads or banner ads tied to key words to appear in a news article. there's a huge rapid response value to that. if you know there's a story that might be negative, it's opportunity for the campaign to have a display ad to go to their website with their side of the story out there, not just to raise money. >> just to correct one thing. it's not the first time there's a digital director on senior staff; however, i think the difference is at least in the past, they didn't have enough budget to make the impact they can now, and must money talks. now there's more money going

into digital efforts. not as much as i think the medium really requires frankly if you take a look at the beginning, rob, how people get news and information and how that's changing. they have not caught up, but they are getting closer. >> uh-huh. >> one thing to add and i think goes in is you are kind of focusing also on the top of the ballot, and i think the digital and who your friends support are more important as you go down the ballot. okay, with 14 presidential debates and wall-to-wall newspaper coverage, how much your friend or wife's impact or husband's impact on you as to who you vote for for president is less than what you get down the ballot and if you friend says this is a good person for school board, and you never heard anything about them, that's the sole motivating driver. one of the things is although the larger campaigns are donates more towards -- or giving more

resources to digital media, it's actually more effective and takes up a bigger pen sen taj of the budget going down the ballot because they are not able to get the tv coverage. the social aspect is much more important because like i said, it may be the only thing that you ever hear about a local candidate is that your next door neighbor will vote for them, and, you know, that these smaller candidates and more local candidates needs to have a place, you know, whether it's profile on our site or facebook page or any combination of them because there shouldn't be a limit to the plat tomorrows, and to them, it's an effective thing, and they have to think about how they get on there and not just focus on top of the ballot. >> how do you measure all of this? a big thing as long as being on the platforms is testing and data, and when i was at the

senate committee last cycle, we tocked -- and the obama campaign did this in 2008 and even now, testing layouts of a donation page, colors on the headers that work, text on the top and a two column form, well, doing ab testing, i figured out having straight two columns raised 294 #% more money than the other way. that's a very large chunk of change, and most of the data too lates, just -- tools, just basic internet analytics are free to see how people interact with your page, what topics matter, and twitter has insights too. the campaigns will have the real edge, not just ones throwing everything up there and seeing what sticks. they are really looking at the data helping that to make decisions and also to -- i think to everyone's point, you need a digital directer, and they need

to be at senior staff. it's why i was successful at the senate committee as well is i was on senior staff, but every member of the campaign needs to know how to use these. the communications directer, press secretary, political director, they need twitter accounts, facebook profiles, sharing information that way as well because if they don't understand the tools, it will be really hard for the digital person to explain to them and work with them to integrate them into everything in the campaign. >> absolutely agree with that, and back to adam's point. i was talking to someone about this earlier with the fact that everyone asks the question of what percentage of the budget do we put to digital? drill deeper into the question. when you say what percentage of the budget, do you mean everything online, digital advertising? you know, there's differences there, but regardless, as much as i want to give them a hard answer because people want something tangible, it does very much vary by campaign, both on

level of campaign, both on who the competition is, both geographically, what is internet use, internet penetration in your particular area -- rob talked about south carolina being at the bottom of that -- all of those factors matter, and to adam's point, i actually started to argue that for kind of the presidential level or the statewide that in terms of paid media, they might put a smaller percentage into digital than a local campaign because a campaign that's well funded which is going to be a presidential campaign or senate campaign, they are going to want to be everywhere. they will put a lot on tv and have the money to do so, and there's not going to be the bleed because they are trying to target specific dnas and they are trying to target the whole state. for a congressional campaign, the majority are in the situation that we talked about that delaware's in, which is sometimes 90% or more of the money they would put into

television tiding -- advertising goes to voters who can't vote for them. congressional campaign struggles to raise a million dollars, some don't even raise that much, the well funded raise $2 # million and a million and a half of that goes into television advertising and doesn't penetrate the media market, but certainly the voters they need to reach, and there's so much bleed. when they could put 80% or even 100% of the budget into digital and dome enate on every single platform in the geographical area. then you talk state legislative and state senate races, that impact is more dramatic. beyond paid media, if they invest in hiring a consultant and someone on the ground to help them navigate all of this,

they could get the most value out of google, out of facebook, out of twitter, out of every platform that there is online and have much more impact than trying to struggle for a year and a half to raise a million dollars that's going to go away into, you know, 90% of it goes to voters who can't vote for them, so i absolutely agree with adam. i want an exclamation point on it that it the internet is certainly important for the most publicized races which is the presidential races and our state wides and senate races and gubernatorial races, but the impact can be more dramatic at the congressional level races or below. >> back to katie's point about the sophisticated analytics, that you know your return on investment immediately in a way you don't with any other paid media. because of that, it's a low risk for a cap pain and scalable. campaigns can experiment and figure out with google,

facebook, twitter, what works and what doesn't, and put money behind what works quickly. because the risk is minimized, no reason why campaigns shouldn't attempt to do all of these things and see what works best for them and do more whaf works. >> [inaudible] loving it. we've been discussing about, you know, a lot of things targeting and integration and like the down ballot races and how to best do all of this. i mean, you know, how are you going to be able -- you mentioned earlier you use this as a stepping point to get them to take the first point of contact. how do you keep them moving so they turn out events for you, take that step where nay want to be more involved in the campaign and in doing it. how do you get your social media to be that jumping point for them? >> i think first step is not

asking them for money right away. if a stranger asked for $25, would you give it to them? no, you'd keep walking. that's the first thing when they see your facebooking the when -- facebook account when is says donate $da 25* when they don't know your issues. you can take them every step of the way, and giving them something of value is throughout the process. it might be knowledge, might be information, a shared experience they have with their friends, but a campaign that pays attention to the funnel of working with people rather than give me money, i think in the long run, will be much more successful.

integration is key here. it's one thing for a digital directer or department, but if you don't have the people leading aspects of the campaign who understand how to use the tools, you miss opportunities, and so you have to ensure that the people planning events have to recognize you can better turn out people to the event and organize them in social media. the two work hand-in-hand. it's important for events. online is not a substitute for events, although, you can have people frankly being organizing and discussing and conversing and campaigning on an ongoing basis in little virtual events along the way. don't think that doesn't count as well. yeah, you want to ensure you can turn the people out to an event. you need to two working hand in hand, and w4r you turn people out to an event is an indication to how many people turn out at

the polls on integration dai. there's not digital over here and offline campaigning over here. they have to work to the. >> the tools are changing quickly becoming more sophisticated enabling campaigns to target and get feedback. it's also important for campaigns to have someone who is able to understand new developments coming out and take advantage of them quickly. a year ago, twitter didn't have many working on it for the political side, and now nay are aggressive on the political side which is great, but campaigns have to be attune for political developments. google plus didn't exist before. there's a lot of new things that are out there. >> given that each of you have a different site, you know, that you represent, what do you think is the most utilized side of the campaign? do you think there's one thing people are just missing overall?

>> okay. i think it's actually -- so a lot of activity happens not on facebook, but how to integrate social plug-ins into the website. one under utilized it social as pelgts on a candidate's website to see what friends read, phone banking tools, logging into facebook, see what friends made phone calls. i want to see more of that social integration of helping people to know what their friends are going on candidate websites, news websites, ect., and then sharing that information back on to facebook. >> twitter is extremely simple and purposely so. there's not a lot of features that are undiscovered that people are not using. they are using most of them, but something that's new so you don't -- just starting to see a lot of campaigns using it is the promoted products platform allowing people to get premium

placement in areas that -- in the way that people are already using twitter. twitter gives who to follow recommendations to help you find the people and organizations and causes 245 you'd be interested in. the promoted accounts just give you the ability to kind of have premium placement to grow your followers more quickly, promoted tweets give you premium placement on the messages and actual tweets and same in the trends. it's baked into the ways people use twitter. 24 is extremely new to politics, just ruled out months ago. it's not so much that it's under utilized, just that it's new, and education is just happening, but i'm actually pretty impressed and pleased with a number of campaigns using it. almost every single g.o.p. presidential primary candidate used promoted tweets, statewide candidates, advocacy organizations, and something that's just a few months old is incredible. to rob's point, though, it's encouraging that it used to take

a long time for campaigns to adopt something new, skiddish to adopt anything new, but because they realize the power of google and facebook and they have come to that, now they are scared of missing the boat. they are much more willing to jump on something they see to be effective and not turn it away because it is new. the promoted product platform for sure is i wouldn't say under utilized, but not fully utilized yet because it is so new. >> i think every campaign should use google apps. google e-mail is free, gook -- google documents, spread sheets, if there's a phone bank, they are incredibly useful tools that come from having a spread sheet to be shared and viewed by people who are online. google voice is incredibly value to any field representative in the campaign allowing someone to

create a phone number, then direct whether that number rings your desk phone or cell phone or both, and it then transcribes voice mails and e-mails, then, to the person who has the google voice account. even, i think, voice mail transcription alone can save field directers an incredible amount of type, not that it's always perfect, but nobody's busier on the campaign than the field directer and staff, and it gives them the ability to know if faye have to return a if any call right away or just wait and get the general gist of the message. going the apps a tools that every campaign should be using. >> i think that, for us, it's, you know, mostly people ask how much traffic we're getting, and, you know, seeing we're actually getting the traffic. i think that we were actually born kind of as an online slate card, and what we give is tools to organizations that we can be the backbone of a g.o.p.

campaign, giving them the ability and giving theming the tools when they sign up with us so actually create a national or statewide slate card to cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars to do for a very well price, and then format it, and it talks to you about the whole integration aspect and use that as the backbone as a campaign or ads or e-mails, whether it's tweets that go viral, that, you know, if, you know, i'm at a republican conference, so for a conservative organization, if it's, you know, pro-life group or something like, that and they go to the members saying, look, pass this on to your friends and family, that they can do that, retweet those, drive it back to a wimght to type in their address and get completely endorsed sample ballot correct for their district, and the point is, you know, if you're talking about the chamber of

commerce group or something like that, and it's e-mailedded around, and these candidates are good for business in our neighborhood, we don't know where the store owner next to you lives, okay. they know where they live, and that input that, and then is creates a viral effect. that's what we are trying to promote. >> we've talked about, you know, how you use social media for campaigns, but we have not talked about how you use them for if you're already in the elected position to keep the passenger moving forward so come the next cycle, you don't feel like you fell off the face of the planet with your constituents, and now you're moving forward into the next cycle. what do you think they request move from a campaign seam leslie into an elected position to keep the passenger moving to the constituents? >> glad you asked that question. we focus a lot on campaigning, and you can see it's disappointing when somebody who, you know, was very savvy in

digital media gets legislated, into office, and they let it fall, you know, aside. katie talked about politics tends to be ten years behind so look at the commercial world to get tips on how to do things. one thing i emphasize is there's are a lot of companies using, you know, twitter, facebook, and other places for their customer service, and they run about all the customer service on there. there's a company like comcast, there's a lot of complaints, and it's important to do this, but many other companies whether it's airlines or others who have channels now -- i know through twitter specifically where you tweet at them, and they are listening. they are listening. it's something that katie rightly emphasized earlier that's important, and i'm sure there's still, you know, a phone line people can call, some of them don't, but just by listening online to what people say either because they directly

call them out online, so they directly call out comcast or southwest airlines or whatever or because they just mentioned something that's either most likely something negative about that company, these companies are listening, and then using that for customer service. i think this is 5 really good -- a really good set up for kind of elected officials to look at out getting into the tack tigs -- tactics which is they have to listen online. they have the platforms set up whether it's the youtube channel or twitter account or facebook page where people can actually communicate with them, they are communicating with constituents, but they also use the internet as a listening hub to see what others say about them and ensure that they are doing constituent service on an ongoing basis online. particularly members of congress are there. a big part of their job is not just votes, but constituent service, needs, seeing their opinions, and the internet is a powerful tool for them to do

that. there's examples of members doing that, but there's a lot of room for improvement. >> wednesday is a great example of looking at how elected officials use the internet to help share where they stand on an issue. this is when a lot of internet sites were speaking out against sopa and pipa in the senate and house. marco rubio and other elected officials of all stripes, they were posting on -- they were posting their statements on their facebook pages, putting them out over twitter, and because there was reports of websites moving slow, their phones were melting down with people contacting them. social media was the place people were going to look to share and contact their member and to get information, and it was actually the way that reporters were getting information too. you look at -- there was one story -- may have been in the "wall street journal" where on

his facebook senator john cor cornine said this. they are already going to the sites. they don't think, oh, i should go to the elected official's website to find information, but they are on places like facebook and twitter or they might search for it if they want more information, so i think doing more things like that and sharing people about how you vote and why will definitely help keep the conversation going in between election cycles. >> i think youtube is important for that. again, another example of how all the tools work together. a member of congress should have a youtube page, facebook page, and a twitter handle. youtube enables members of congress to post speeches and events and constituencies can interact with them in a way they can't do by paid tv commercials because the campaign is not going on. i think that youtube is of all the tools that google offers, probably the best way for elected officials to remain

a presence in the lives of their constituents. >> to summarize what we all said so far, it's back to the first question, which is how is this changing things? we talked campaigning, but how is it changing politics in general is people are making and breaking news online first, not going through a media filter or taking time to craft a press release. they know what the statement is, and they can deliver it extremely quickly, and at a minimum, sure, we encourage them to engage in a two-way conversation. we talked about how to do that, but at a minimum, they should be using this platform as 5 -- a vehicle to communicate instantly to get the information out, and katie is right, the sopa and pipa how that played out wednesday is the most dramatic example of that happening on a bill. >> back to the campaign -- >> sorry, guys, we have to end here. it's been great. thank you, all, for joining us, and have a great rest of your

day. >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] ♪ >> the south carolina

presidential primary is tomorrow. mitt romney will be at the charleston convention center in south carolina, at four o'clock eastern live on c-span. some news from the romney campaign, virginia governor, bob mechanic donald endorsed mr. mitt romney. they hold their primary on march 6th. two candidates on the ballot in virginia, mitt romney and ron paul. we, of course, will have results and candidate speeches tomorrow night on c-span.

>> we senate majority leader harry reid today postponed a volt on legislation to target online piracy. the bill is called the protect ip act allowing legal action against websites involved in copyright infringement and intellectual property theft.

>> as we were saying, the senate majority leader postponing vote on online piracy. yesterday, 5 group called net coalition held a briefing on the legislation, which they oppose, and this is an hour and 20 minutes. >> good morning, everybody. is everybody in the back ready to go with the equipment? cool to start in okay. thank you. good morning, everybody. i'm an attorney and serve as the net executive of net netcoalition.com. it's made of the big internet

brands that have been engaged in the pipa and sopa debates, been involved with every piece of legislation with intellectual property and internet and technology since the beginning of the commercial internet incoming the copyright act. we have a great panel here, and i think what we'll do is give sort of a brief background of where i think we are and what the top level of concerns are, and then i'll ask the panelists to introduce themself, and we'll just go down the line and have them spend a couple minutes talking their perspectives on this issue if that's okay. we have casey ray hunter. want to raise your hand? talking about the impact of these bills on the artists in the creative community. michael from consumer electronics association. we'll talk about how this impacts the innovation community, christian dawson to provide a perspective from small businesses, and mike who will

provide a view from the valley on all of this. i think we've had a pretty amazing couple of weeks on this. i think four months ago i would say that the hollywood community thought this piece of education, both pipa and sopa for cooked, fully backed, and were going to be rammed through the legislative process. we tried to engage policymakers for about two years to give them our serious concerns what we thought what was being proposed would really change the way the internet works and how users interact with the internet. the reason for that is since the beginning of the commercial internet, congress has very intentionally passed laws that allowed for the innovation without permission atmosphere where two people in a garage can design a compelling technology, get it to market with very vu barriers to entry, and they don't have to team up a set of

lawyers to ensure they're not going to be sued out of existence, and the reason they don't have to do that is that our laws in the united states basically say that internet platforms, companies serving as conduits for the communications of third parties are not responsible or libel for the content of those communications. they are not treated like publishers, not liable for defamation, not liable for a host of issues. they receiver as conduits and platforms. that policy decision made in the mid-1990s is the reason that the u.s. internet and technology industries lead the world. most of the rest of the world regulates speech. they don't have first amendment. they have government censorship of certain kinds of speech, and the fact that the united states doesn't do those things is why the u.s. internet industry has dominated the world in exporting those kinds of technologies and why the interpret is fundamental

in our lives because of the very fact we can use it in every aspect of our lives. these bills change those federal policies by requiring for the first time internet companies to be responsible for the content of third parties using their systems. it imposes a liability on those companies and subjects those companies to potential technology mandates from judges who would have the authority to redesign internet technologies to require them to develop a system to filter and block content that is being directed to a site that has been determined to be illegal. parts of the bill, especially in the house, also allow for self-help that upon mere allegation, internet sites can be removed from the internet without any notice whatsoever to the internet site that's being accused and without any ability of the accused website to defend itself and confront its accuser.

the other portion of the bill that is very problematic for us is that it imposes for the first time in the u.s. code a private right of action whereby one industry gets to sue another industry whose not doing anything unlawful and no one is alleging they are unlawful, just service providers, but it authorizes a private right of action to allow that industry to sue our industry to get us to take action to help the industry that is suing us. there's no place in the federal code that allows one industry to sue a company to take action on their behalf. finally, we have very serious concerns with the expressed technology mandates in the bilge. you heard about the blocking provision, and we'll get into that if people have questions about that, but the bill's continue to have a search engine remedy that would require search engines based on a government action to, quote, "disappear"

unquote, a website from the internet. for our government to impose censorship requirements on search engines the way china does, these remedies won't work. you cannot literally disappear an internet site from the internet unless you go to the server a and take down the site. all that solution does is encourage people to use foreign based search engines not subject to the order or if you delete the primary link to a site, a secondary link moves to the top spot. from a technology stand point, these solutions don't work. in any kind of legislative proposal to regulate an industry, you have to balance the effectiveness of the remedy and against the scope of the problem, and what's really

curious here is when congress began the debate, they jumped over an analysis of what the scope of the problem is. we have not been able to get any answer from the motion picture association or their allies about how many websites we're talking about. the mpa's website sayst there's 19 sites they are concerned about. i heard some say there's 10 or 100 sites we're talking about. they also say nine out of ten pirated movies happen because they are stolen with a cam corder in a movie theater. if nine of the ten movies are stolen from a movie theater, then why not bulk up the security in the theaters rather than on the industry? i think they have a legitimate response to that, but there's never been a debate about why -- what the scope of the problem is, where the problem occurs, and how we can work with them as partners to address illegal activity on the internet. i hope we've had the chance based on what's happened this week to reset the debate.

harry reid still has a cloture vote on this when the senate returns. that's very unfortunate. we have a clear sense from the meetings here in the senate that offices do not understand the bills. they are very complex, and the majority leaders' asking them to take a vote as the first thing they do when they come back. we hope that changes. i'm going to now move on and who wants -- shall we just go down the line? i'd give a brief introduction, but just give your background and we'll spend a couple minutes of each person and then open up to questions. >> sure. >> feel free to come up here -- >> does it matter? >> why don't you come up. >> all right. i am from the internet, i guess is my role here, and also silicone valley, but i think

actually sad point that representing the view from silicone valley, but also representing the view of the interpret users at the same time is important because the way the valley works is very much user focused and it's very much about actually providing services to users that they like, and i think that there's been a lot of talk in the debate how this is a debate, and i think that's unfair in a lot of ways as we saw yesterday. many millions of people, most of whom have no connection to the technology industry and that's important to recognize because what the internet is is much bigger than just a bunch of companies in silicone valley; however, one of the things that i think has been very interesting about this situation

is the fact that the startup community and silicone valley has a wider ecosystem has actually got involved in this debate and this discussion. silicone valley 1 notoriously non-political on any issue. for the most part that's because we are heads down working, hopefully innovating, hopefully doing stuff, and generally hoping that government stays out of the way, but i think that there was a recognition, a very widespread recognition that on this particular issue, it was something that the start up community and wider ecosystem could be on. very quickly and organically, a very large portion of silicone valley was able to come together, speak out, and make their users aware of the issue, which i think was an important part of this because it, you know, again, it's not just sort of a silicone valley company

issue, but very much an issue that we think would impact our users in terms of how we grow and how we build new innovations. three other points before moving on to christian. we all recognize again that piracy and infringement is an issue, impacts all of us, many companies at silicone valley producing intellectual property in many different ways whether it is content itself, software, physical products that have trademarks, and these all impact us as well, and what i think to recognize to understand what kind of problem it is, and this is something we sort of jumped into or congress jumped into perhaps without taking the time to understand what kind of

problem and solutions are necessary. what we've seen if you look throughout history is that law enforcement and regulation tends not to work when dealing with infringement problems. infringement is generally a service issue. it is -- it comes about when companies don't provide the service that users really want. the thicks that do work against infringement are new innovations providing services that people ment, and we see that with netflix and spotify that provide features that users want. laws like that actually work against that kind of solution because we need that innovation, because we need those new services in order to take on this issue. any regulation that creates over bearing compliance costs and regulatory issues and the idea that the two founders in the

garage suddenly need six or a dozen lawyers with them becomes a serious issue that actually holds back preventing the ability to create services that we need. the second point is the size of the problem and the estimates put out there. part of the issue is that this bill is so broad or both of the bills are so broad and in some cases ill-defined, that it trying to tackle a few problems and lump them all together. in particular, concerned about the fact that is lumps together both trademark issues and copyright issues despite them being very, very dissent. the challenge to tackle each of the problems, we think, involves very different solutions, and the why -- idea you mixed them together is dangerous. the third concern is how this impacts overall innovation and

jobs in particular. as i mentioned, already, just the idea of having to think about the legal issues and how much extra costs that would be means that a lot of new startups probably never get started. there's been talk about the bigger companies in silicone valley, but a lot of the fear -- especially among entrepreneurs who are the groups of incubators and start ups in silicone valley and the wider ecosystem is the idea that the next generation of start ups doesn't get started. the next twitter, the next facebook, the next youtube, these are all wonderful companies today, but ten years ago they didn't exist. ten years from now, we want the next generation of each of those, but the fear is with excess regulation like this, they won't get started in the u.s., but they find other locations around the globe where

countries are already reaching out to entrepreneurs saying they have better regulatory environments for things like that, so those are sort of the really big concern, and i think because the connection between this technology startup community and their users and the fact this became such a serious issue culminated in yesterday's very widespread actions online. >> thank you, mike. >> i'm christian dawson, clef operating of servant and a co-founder of a group called save hosting coalition. i talk about the internet infrastructure industry. they say they are unfounded, but with all do respect, we read the text many times in an its incars

nations. after reading the bills and our problems with the bills are still to be found stated in that text. let me take a few moments to discuss the concerns. first, it's hard to start and run a small business in this economy. my company, serious concernsvint uses internet now-how to make it easy as possible for people to launch and manage their business online. we've been there at the start of the largest online enterprised growing them to levels of greatness none of us could have foreseen. the reason they grew to collectively employee thousands of americans and make millions of dollars a year is not base of my company's hosting services, u be the internet itself is a dynamic constantly involving environment allowing businesses to provide access to goods and levels of service that consumers never dreamed possible. the internet has allowed to $2 trillion online economy to grow and thrive and enable the internet industry to create

thousands of high paying jobs, and it's no exaggeration to say it's the internet itself that's in danger because of the bills. how will they do that? one word? "lawsuits," lots and lots of lawsuits, baseless lawsuits, lawsuits that will stop speech and commerce dead in their tracks. the authors of sopa and pipa say that's not the purpose. they say they need private rights to action because the courts are not fast enough, need provisions, and they say they need to make the definitions loose and open in order to give law enforcement the right tools to catch pirates because those guys are slippery. the problem is that once their words are law, these words are set free from the world of good intentions and cast into the world of enforcement, thanes -- that's where they stop working. companies like mine are

responsible for enforcing today 's laws. we now how this stuff works. these bills will open up a new hellish world of copyright lawsuit profiteering like we saw in the patent industry. they will intimidate the competitors out of business. law firms specializing in copyright shake downs will spring up. our broken system cost innovators $500 billion over two decades. do we want to be responsible for smothering online innovation under a pillow of good copyright intentions? supporters asked us to point to provisions that make this happen. i will. under pipa, hosts are considered operators of websites. it allows injured parties to bring suits against operators of websites. the entities who support pipa used these terms in other laws to bring suits against web host, and they will again, we read the bill and what's in it and that

will expose us and customers to untold litigation. i represent domestic web host companies. we are allies in the fight against piracy fighting it every day. we endorsed the copyright act, and give us further tools to use, and we'll use them. if they didn't do the job, we wouldn't stand here, but they don't work and are not close. they won't work because we read them and maybe because we understand the internet at a nuts and bolts level, we understand the damage these bills do better than most. we appeal to congress to just start over. when they are ready, call on companies like mine and others in the coalition, companies who understand the internet works to help. we are your allies in the fight against pie ri silicone -- piracy and happy to craft a bill that will keep american businesses safe.

thanks. >> that's a lot of exercise i just got walking to the podium. i'm casey ray hunter, deputy director for future of music coalition, an education, research, and add advocacy grour musicians. we're mew musicians, label owners, and internet owners. we work with musicians, song writers, label, and many more on a range of issues that impact artists. we exist to give musicians a voice in the policy debates that affect their livelihood. we care about a couple things. access and compensation for artists. access is their ability to reach audiences without the middlemen and gate keepers into the music industry. in the digital realm, they participate directly in the innovations so that new business models arise to reflect their

contributions. i have four points to make about the currently proposed legislation. one, and this is perhaps the most important -- the trade organizations representing the content industry do not represent all creators. everyday we hear from musicians and music managers who have questions about what it means and the concerns. there's the broader arts sector. yesterday, a number of organizations remitting tens of thousands of arts groups and individuals in disciplines from music, film, dance, and more, sent a letter to congress outlining concerns. these are major groups, all copyright holders talking about the association of performing arts presenters, dance usa, fractured atlas, the national alliance for musical theater, national performance network, opera america, and theater communications group. even the writers guild of america west, the folks who

write your movies and tv shows expressed concerns. all of these groups are huge contributors to the cultural sector and american economy, and yet they felt compelled to weigh in. why? because they know the bills have problems. individual artists are also weighing in including musicians, comedians, authors, and tv stars like "parks and re c" trent resnor, zeoy is kedig, and mgmt, amanda palmer, adam savage from "myth busters," and maybe he'll do a special episode busting the myths in these bills, and look, the bottom line is artists have

every right to be weary when powerful entertainment companies push for policies that underminds free expression. my second point is about the marketplace, which is still evolving. digital sales are up a thousand percent increase over the past six years. that only tells part of the story. we're only starting to see what the legitimate digital place looks like because of the innovations that have come from the open internet. increased consumer interests in legal license services is something to be enormously proud of in an industry with a difficult time transitioning to digital. it's this system that could be threatened by poorly crafted legislation. the original definitions in sopa, for example, were so broad to include sites and services that artists and millions of other americans use every day. you, we're glad that some of the most egregious aspect of the

house bill have been toned down, but there's still tremendous problems, and we need to remember that despite the trial balloons we've seen. the senate bill has not been amended in any significant way. like i said, a future music, hear from managers every single day. many of these musicians are okay with the fan tweeting a link to a song, and some of them get mad when they see foreign sites selling their music without paying them. now, if we can agree that the latter is unhelpful, then maybe we need to hit pause and deal with the bad guys without compromising all that's great about the internet. moreover, if congress really wants to do something positive, they should look at how artists themselves use technology and pipa more attention -- pay more tension to how they can tilt the marketplace in their favor. chris dodd just this morning commented in the "new york times" article about how the massive outcry to the bills is changing washington. i agree with that.

he thinks it's for the worse. i disagree with that. many of the thousands of who weighed in are copyright holders entering the market place and selling on cd baby, reverb nation, their voices have to be heard too. the last point is that some would say we're simply giving the attorney general powers to do things that are already, you know, happening under u.s. law enforcement. well, it's true that the u.s. is already seizing web properties through the department of homeland securities, immigrations, and customs enforcement division, but it's not a smashing success. when ice removed one popular hip hop blog, turned out they returned it after holding it for a year admitting it was improperly seized, but the material on that site was coming from major labels even though the rara is the organization that initiated the initial take down request.

now, lawmakers may be trying to solve a problem without a perfect understanding of how today's music marketplace functions. our worry is that these bills could codify this lack of process, lack of transparency, expand the scope, and potentially allow these abuses to become more systematic in common place. we want to stop piracy, we want a legitimate music marketplace awarding creators and fans alike, we just need to hit pause and take the time to figure out how to do it the right way, and currently, sopa and pipa are not the solution. >> hi, good morning. consumer electronics association. when casey mentioned the various artists and celebrities that came out against sopa and pipa, he forgot to mention kim kardashian that came out on twitter. that could be the tipping point.

>> that was selective, michael. >> i represent the consumer electronics association, represent 200 odd some companies, and we had the electronics show last week, big success in las vegas. there's a couple of take aways. you used to walk around seeing stand alone electronics products; right? now you see net books and smart phones and tablets and smart tvs. all of which derive value from the ability of consumers to get information anywhere, all of which derive value from an open interpret. basically, even hardware manufacturers now rely on the internet and the power of the internet. that's why this issue with these bills is so important to us and key to us. number two -- the other thing you see when you walk the halls of ces, of the world's top 1,000 brand names, you see about $500

of them. protecting trademarks and intellectual property is important to us. the members have huge issues with infringement and counterfeiting, and the question is how do you deal and go after it? the there are smart targeted ways of going after the foreign sites. you know, so often there's two choices. you can either have these over broad damaging laws or let the pirates run amuck, and that's a false choice. there's the open act now introduced in the senate and house which, again, provides a smart, strategic targeted way to go after the targets without doing collateral damage to the innovators or internet ecosystem. it's very clear now these extreme solutions to the issue are not politically viable. i think we've seen that, so now i think it's time to look at reasonable solutions and the open act is certainly a good

place to start. number three, yesterday was an extraordinary day in terms of citizen engagement, and i think it will change the way intellectual property policy is made going into the future. it used to be that you would kind of gather a few people in a back room someplace, a few stake holders, not all of them, just mostly the big companies, and cut some kind of a deal, and it was non-transparent, the issue was complicated, and noticed, but on the internet, there's no longer any back rooms, and what people protested yesterday was not just the content of the bills, but also the process, and the fact of the matter is that all of these people, the hundreds of thousands of people who contacted congress yesterday were stake holderrings, and not just stake holder because they love and use the internet, but also because under the love, they are also creators and intellectual property holders, and we are now, because of the internet and technology, we are

now a population of creators, so we all have a major take in this, and i think that as this issue goes forwards, the stake holders want to make sure their interests are being taken into account, and that, again, 1 one of the virtues of the open act developed and commented on publicly. with that, i would like to introduce one more guest, michael, a late guest to the panel, who is a silicone valley venture capitalist with a group and part of a new silicone valley venture capitalist group called engine advocacy group. 23 you have not -- if you have not checked that out, do, they are doing extraordinary stuff. some on the other side of the issue tried to frame this as an issue pertaining to one or two big companies, and the one or two big companies are ginning up all of this stuff which is a

bizarre interpretation begin what we've seen, but the fact of the matter is that big companies, they are big, and they have a lot of money and resources, can hire a lot of lawyers, and no matter what kind of regulatory is put up, honestly, they'll be fine. they'll be okay, because they have the resources. who really gets hit with the regulatory burdens are the small businesses and startups. rather than the two guys in the garage, you now you need two guys, garage, and ten lawyers, and small companies don't have the resources for that. michael will speak at out the startup community is impacted by these laws, so come on up. >> well, thank you, michael. i'm a strategist with hattery labs in san fransisco. i'm also one of the co-founders and directors of engine advocacy as michael mentioned.

the reason we're here in washington rather than san fransisco spending time to create companies that fuel the american economy this week is because the bills are dangerous to the long term health of our sector, a sector which, i'll remind you, created all the net job growth in america since 1980, high-tech entrepreneurial companies create jobs. ..

not just cannot go down and other legal cesspool to be thought out in court and drag out to maybe one day come to fruition. sofa and table will cause great damage to the factory. we need to facilitate the ability for small businesses to thrive and flourish in america because talent is going overseas. we think programs in countries like chile, and the netherlands where they study programs called aster dam, and it sounds interesting but i'd rather people stay in america quite frankly. at a time when job growth comes at a premium and we are fighting

in washington every day and saying, where the jobs? why are we fighting about a bill that will kill innovation, start job growth and creation of wealth in this country. we would welcome the opportunity to sit down and find a better way forward on online piracy the great no one on this panel or in this town supports online piracy is an idea milligram that. they don't solve the problem and may cause as i keep saying grave damage that seals the economy. we wait to see and the manager's amendment we all think it might be today on the senate side. they are talking about some modifications to it though, but the fact of the matter is the underpinnings of the bill are the problem

>> we would welcome the opportunity for a better way forward, we'd love to talk about how start-ups can innovate to solve this problem. we haven't been given that opportunity. this bill's going through way too fast and way too soon. this is something that needs thoughtful, reasoned debate with interjections from all sides and all parties with a take in the fight. we would welcome that opportunity, and i mope the mpaa, the other members of the entertainment industry who are backing this bill and their proponents in the united states

senate and the house of representatives, give us a call, come to our web site, engine advocacy.org. yeah, you can call yourself in the senate, that's who you'll get this week. find us on there, read our artists' letter that casey and mike pointed out. we want to talk to you. we're not just sitting here and saying we don't like this and trying to walk away. we want to work for a better way forward and for a new solution. we're waiting for the call. i think, with that, we're open for questions? okay. >> thanks, mark. >> um, mike was a last minute addition. he did that off the cuff, so well done, mike, thank you for joining us. for those of you joining us, it's michael mcgeary, engine advocacy.com? >> dot.organize. >> i don't think we need the microphone, it's a small enough

room. juliana? [inaudible conversations] >> i love when there's tech problems. [laughter] >> [inaudible] perhaps we can innovate out of this problem. >> hi, i'm juliana gruenwald with national journal. assuming you don't get harry reid not to hold the cloture vote, how confident are you you can get 41 seats to block cloture? >> yesterday was, i think, the beginning of a pretty remarkable grassroots phenomenon. i don't know exactly how many members of congress pulled off their support yesterday. i think it was in the tens, it was a big number. so i'm -- but i will say this, i think that senator leahy is committed to this, and my guess

is he's going to introduce a last minute manager's amendment that he drops on everybody. and just to give you a sort of prewarning, i think at this point he would drop a ham sandwich into the process and try to pass that if he thought it could pass just to restart the momentum and get to a conference with the house where a conference is a back room deal, closed door process, to pass something. so i'd be very suspicious of any efforts to try to launch or introduce upon the community some sort of, quote, deal. >> one comment i have on that is yesterday was the beginning of something, it wasn't the end of something or the culmination of something. we have seen new activists come to us and say what can we do, so between now and the cloture vote, there's going to be lots of stuff going on. it's not just the blackout, blackout doesn't end things. it's the beginning of a whole series of pushes, um, to really try and make a difference. >> if i could just add, you know, clearly this is very

complex stuff. and, clearly, there is a will, i think on both sides, to come to some kind of a solution. you know, when viacom testified before the house judiciary committee, they said that 80% of their problems come from ten sites, as i recall. so it should be possible to get a bunch of reasonable people together and figure out how to -- i'm sorry, 80% of the -- that's a fairly small universe. but the way to do it is we need to have a process. we need to have a process, we need to have discussions, we need to have hearings like has been done pretty much with every other large intellectual property bill. you know, a situation where a bill is dropped, and then it's brought to the floor 48 hours or p 2 hours -- 72 hours later kind of puts us right back in the situation where we were that you started this whole problem. so what i would suggest is everybody just step back, and we bring the stakeholders together, and we have a reasoned, rational, deliberate process so

this time we can get it right. >> and just two quick things in addition to that. the first is the, you know, a lot of the protests yesterday and a lot of what happened online, um, it was really about two things. it wasn't just about the content of this bill, but it was very much about the process by which all of this happened and the fact that the sense was that this was very much a back room deal e. -- deal. so i think that anything that suddenly pops out, you know, today or tomorrow with this idea that suddenly all the problems with fixed, that some new back room deal has been struck to deal with this, you know, is not going to appease or calm the folks online. you know, this was, this was not just about this bill. this was about the way that a lot of things happen in this town, and i think that people speaking up about that, you

know, are not going to, um, they're not going to trust or appreciate, um, a bill that comes out of that same process. um, you know, i think they really want something that is, um, a much more open and involved process that involves everyone. um, the second comment is if they do go forward with the vote next week, there is, the cloture process itself, i think that, you know, there's some talk about whether or not that is a vote on process or substance. and be i think it's important to recognize and that vote very much will be a vote about the substance of what is in the bill. and if it is a bill that suddenly pops up today that people have very little time to read or understand on such a big issue, um, that is going to be a huge problem as well. because it's moving forward on something that people just simply have not had enough time to understand on something that

will have such a large impact. >> i think you had a question. >> [inaudible] lynn stanton, telecommunications reports. you keep referring to things moving too fast, but the senate judiciary committee marked up the bill last may, senator widen has taken credit for having opposed this concept for a year and a half. what took you so long to get here and to be protesting and making your points? >> well, i think just speaking for our industry, when this bill was introduced, we raised very serious concerns s and we were told that there would be a process to work out a, a process to try to get to some sort of understanding and work out the problems. in the senate, and this starts getting very inside washington, but the manager's amendment was introduced, and ten days later

it was marked up not in a public forum, but off the senate floor where there's no public view of the markup. that manager's amendment included a search-blocking provision. when we expressed our concerns at that point, the managers of the bill said, well, don't or worry, the house is going to fix all of the issues, and then we tried to engage in the house, and we saw that process unfold where it became very difficult to work out any sort of issues. and i think that the chairman of that house decided that he could ram it through his committee. and when that failed, it moved back over here to the senate when majority leader reid decided to schedule the cloture vote. and, again, so we never had an opportunity at any point to actually sit down with stakeholders and see if we could actually work out issues and look at what the scope of the problem was. so that's all a very inside washington thing, and it's hard to make that understandable to people. but we didn't want to have to raise the volume on this like we

did, or, but because as mike said, the process was so flawed. it really left us with very little opportunity but to try to reach outside of washington to get people to pay attention. >> i think, also, i mean, a lot of people certainly within the start-up community raised issues with the bill that came out in may. you know, it certainly wasn't as loud, but there were, you know, a group of about, um, 40 or 50 venture capitalists who sent a letter, a group of over 200 entrepreneurs who sent a letter e over 100 play professors -- law professors who sent a letter, and many of us expressed interest in, you know, engaging with congress and being involved in the process. and we were assured repeatedly, um, on the house side that the house bill would address these problems. um, bob goodlatte came out to silicon valley over the summer, and there was a meeting where the issue was raised, and he

promised that he had heard the concerns of the community and that the bill would address those problems. and then when the bill actually did drop in october, it was, um, it appears to not hear any of those concerns and actually went very much in the other direction. so i think that kind of accelerated -- >> christian, i think you had something. >> i've got a different perspective on this because i have no political background whatsoever, and i represent small to medium businesses that just happen to make up the backbone of the internet's nuts and bolts as we know it. the vast majority of the companies in that space are companies that make between, that generate between 1-100 million a year in revenue, we don't have lobbyists, we aren't out there on the hill advocating for our position, and up until this point we've been so focused on our business that we haven't had time to get engaged politically. this has actually been a bit of a watershed moment for us. i've got to say we'd rather be

focused on innovation and on driving our business forward. what took us so long? well, we've been trying to build up this economy be, and we'd rather get back to it. >> i have maybe something to add to this about the process as well. um, you know, we are in washington, we're not a lobbying group by any means, we're an education group largely. we've been tracking these issues since pipa was called coy ca and when protect ip was first issued, you know, we went through it and tried to kick the tires and talked about what seemed unworkable and what might not possibly be the worst thing in the world, you know, as an educational benefit to artists. keep in mind that artists want to believe that their congressional representatives have their best interests at heart when they're talking about protecting their intellectual property and copyrights. it takes a long time for people to recognize that, you know, wow, maybe, you know, it's not the greatest idea in the world to let the riaa and the mpaa drive this train?

we'd like to think we have productive relationships with all kinds of offices on the hill because who doesn't like music, right? but the ideas that, you know, the process was flawed from the outset, i can definitely concur with mike's assessment about the introduction of sopa. we were under the impression that maybe sopa would represent a kind of more sane approach to some of the issues that protect ip was trying to solve. that turned out to absolutely not be the case. keep in mind, again, we're talking about a stakeholder community that is much broader than anyone in washington has probably ever considered before. i mentioned tune corp. in my initial remarks. tune corp. is a platform that allows artists to contribute their music to digital music stores like itunes, amazon, mp3 and all the streaming services. their executive just told me that they distribute more music in one month than all the major record labels do combined in 100 years. these are all copyright holders.

the fact that these folks have to understand that they have rights as well and those may not be reflected perfectly in if proposed legislation is something that's not going to happen overnight. and when you have a very small nonprofit like future of music coalition versus, and i don't want to necessarily use the word versus, but for our intents and purposes, an enormously well-established, well-lawyered-up, big money trade industry like riaa or mpa, then you can see how the deck is stacked. >> one other point on that process. we provided three redline drafts to the communities of jurisdiction over these last two years, and if they weren't totally ignored, they were substantially ignored in the process. >> [inaudible] >> both the house and the senate judiciary committees. >> grant? >> hi, i'm grant gross with idg news service. a couple of you have allude today this already, but can you

talk about the importance of the protest yesterday, and was that a tipping point do you see in this debate? >> um, i'll say that i don't want to call it like the great awakening of the internet because i think that a lot of us here and most of our friends and people we know online and off line have been involved in these issues for a long time, but what we saw yesterday was concentrated action that had immediate results. we couldn't keep up with twitter yesterday because so many united states senators were taking to, um, the service to announce that they were no longer supportive of the bill. and, i mean, we're running around town trying to figure out, you know, what's up and down as this is all going on. you saw the people gather in new york and in san francisco, i think even in seattle in the snowstorm or whatever was going on up there and wherever else, and it was heartening to see people coming out. and it was a great day.

but it was not the first day and not the last day. we're here for the duration, and we're here to make sure that we find that better way forward. and i think all of us here and all the people that came out yesterday would echo those comments. >> i think that what's really interesting about what happened yesterday is like most things, you're going to see, you know, 95, 98% of the people that took in the information that day, they're going to end up doing nothing with it. a lot of people aren't going to fully understand the extremely nuanced subject. the people that are pro and the people that are against, you know, they're all providing arguments that are sometimes too simplistic. and people aren't going to really be able to grasp them. but we reached such a wide audience yesterday with what was going on, an audience of all ages, that there is going to be a core group. and we're already seeing it. it comes out and says i get this, this is important to me. the internet does wonderful, great, good things in this

world, and we want to do what we can to protect it, and we created advocates yesterday, we created activists yesterday, and that's going to mean great things for this movement and the next one and the next one. >> i think that's a great point. as much as yesterday was tactically against sew pa and pippa, yesterday in a much broader and lasting way was for the internet. >> i also think we have -- there's an opportunity for the mpaa to learn something here, and chris dodd yesterday said he has a steep learning curve in this industry, and i think their approach to this bill demonstrates that. but the mpa and their studios tried to outlaw cable television, they tried to outlaw the vcr, they try today outlaw the ipod, they tried to outlaw the dvr. the common theme between all those, they failed, but they are also technologies that are now the biggest revenue sources for hollywood. in some sense, they're trying to

outlaw the internet, and they're scared of the internet, and we understand that. but i think they have an opportunity to reset on their side and 'em l brace the internet's potential where the internet can actually become their largest revenue source too. i think that's inevitable. but they're going to have to go through that cycle, and i'm hoping that this last couple of weeks will accelerate the timetable for the studios as they think through their business models and their legislative and regulatory plans. >> i'd love to think that were true, markham, but judging from the original canary in the coal mine which is the music industry waiting more than a decade for business models to be contoured to consumptive behavior, i don't have a lot of high hopes that the motion picture industry is going to wake up to that understanding anytime soon. >> let's take some other questions. katie? >> hi, katie bachmann, ad week. you all were talking about that this isn't the last push, um, it seems when, markham, from your

comments that you sort of think that that amendment and that bill's going to zip through the floor on the senate. so my question is, what does that mean? does that mean that you continue your advertising campaign that you all talked about this week? you know, what are you all going to do? other than walk the halls of congress? >> i think it should be clear that i don't think the bill will zip through on the senate. i think they'll try to by introducing some sort of ham sandwich, if you will, that they think can pass. but i think that what you've seen yesterday with members jumping off this is i don't think that tactic's going to work, and if they decide to have a protracted debate on the floor, i think members will step up and have a protracted debate on the floor. i hope it doesn't get to that point. >> i -- >> sorry. >> i think it's important to recognize that even if, um, let's just say in some bizarre world that, um, the senate comes up with some bill that say

everyone at this table actually even agrees with, i'm not sure that that would even work given the process and what's happened and what happened online yesterday. you know, that was the internet speaking out. and, you know, that was not, you know, a group of people represented directly by us. that was a very, very large group of people who are extremely concerned about the overall process that we certainly don't control in any way, shape or form. and i think that, you know, it's not even so much about what we do. even if, you know, everyone at this table said, wow, this is some wonderful bill that magically comes out of no -- i, obviously, don't think that's likely -- but, you know, there's a larger concern about the overall process and how this was, this was done. and i don't think that the internet is just going to go away quietly and accept the bill. >> i also think while some proponents may try to tweak the existing bill, the whole pipa

and sopa approaches are radioactive at this point. look, you have a situation where congress' approval rating is very low. i think there is a perception among the left and the right, among tea partiers and occupiers that somehow there are a few large, well connected interests that are trying to gain the system to detriment of everybody else. and, number three, people love the internet. they use it. they think they own i. -- it. and when people get the sense that congress is about to harm the internet at the behest of a handful of well connected interests, they get very angry. and i think what we've seen is extraordinary. there were 1500 people protesting in the streets of new york yesterday on a copyright issue. this issue is coming up, you know, this is coming up in primaries and congressional races, a copyright issue. it's coming up in town halls and in new hampshire and south carolina. and this is, this is extraordinary.

and i don't think it's going away. so i think the notion that somehow you can kind of make a few minor tweaks and kind of it's business as usual and nobody will really notice is unrealistic. i think there are a lot of members at this point who will want nothing to do with the sopa and pipa approach going forward. i think it's time to step back and reset. >> i need to make an important comment about that. yesterday the first draft of the open act was released, and that was actually up until around midnight reading through that bill with a couple of representatives from two of the larger companies in our industry. we were, so we were up until around midnight looking through this bill talking, and one of the largest companies in our industry, they said, listen, we got one of our largest clients came to us today. they're a foreign company. and they said if sopa or pipa

pass, we've got to go and host offshores. doesn't matter what amendments come, these bills are toxic enough that if it happens, the companies won't wait to see whether the laws apply to them. they're just gonna leave our shores, and they're going to take american jobs with them as our industry declines and offshore industries increase. going to happen. >> i think a simple, a different way to answer that question is not what we're going to do, but what is congress going to do? you know, after yesterday the internet has spoken, what are you going too do about -- to do about it? >> i think also it's interesting to note with all of the statements from people in congress yesterday how most of those statements came out and how they communicate with the the public which was that they used the very tools that people, that people were using to speak out as well. you know, it was twitter and facebook and youtube with some of them. that's how they got the message out. and i think that was very much a statement as well that some

members of congress are recognizing that, you know, engaging via the internet is a really, really important part of being an elected official and representing constituents. um, and so, you know, i think that, you know, we need more of that, and i think that, you know, going back to the previous question as well, you know, what happened yesterday was definitely the beginning of something that's important not just in this particular process, but in getting congress much more engaged with the people that they actually represent. >> over there on the end. >> yes, hi. jason. what percentage of your business do you feel is international, and how many jobs, how much revenue have you lost by this bill? >> well, actually, i represent a company that we see about 60% of our business is international. what's interesting about, you know, about 20% of the world's

bandwidth goes through the united states. but when it comes to the actual infrastructure, the nut and bolts of the internet, we are a very -- we still lead the industry, we still lead the world, um, when it comes to our infrastructure. and people from all over the world gravitate towards, um, the united states because our bandwidth access and our reliability and our power grids are still the best in the world. but, boy, is that changing every day. and the more we give people, um, chances -- reasons to go offshore with their infrastructure to bypass the united states, a huge economy out there. so i can only speak for myself in saying that, actually, 60% of ours is foreign business, um, that has a real possibility of leaving and affecting u.s. jobs in my particular company. but as a whole we're seeing, um, the internet infrastructure economy representing about 4.2

billion is, i think, the number that we represent in overall revenue, and a lot of that could easily just move offshore. >> i think the 60% number is consistent with what the larger internet companies do for some of the big internet brands. i think they've gone over the 50% mark where revenue from the offshore is exceeding domestic revenue. the internet represents 23% of net growth gdp worldwide, and much of that is driven by u.s. internet companies promoting their services overseas. i think the bigger concern for many of our companies is not the rev -- revenue loss of a president that starts to allow governments to censor and determine what speech will be allowed on the internet. these aren't just countries like china or iran, they are liberal democracies that would love to see regulating speech as an

excuse because they don't have a first amendment, and they are use this precedent as an excuse to begin doing that, and and our companies as they try to promote their services worldwide are very much concerned about the international retaliation from foreign countries. >> other questions. >> and i think that, i'll just add a venture piece here as well. those numbers, i think, definitely bear out, and it is about the companies that are being created now, but it's the ones in the future -- and i keep going back to this point. the next wave of innovation won't happen in america, so you'll see a lot more of that money going offshore, and we won't, you know, companies and firms like ours will not want to just subsidize litigation, we're looking to give you venture money so you create jobs and grow wealth. so we'll be looking for more international investment, you know? that being the case, it's a simple fact of the matter. and i fervently agree as well

with markham's point about we don't want to be on the list of the countries that do this, and we don't want to add to it. we don't want to align ourselves with china and iran and allow, like he says, liberal western democracies to line up and do the same thing. it would -- paul vixey who's an internet innovator said this a while back. it's not that the internet won't survive this debate, it's that we won't like what it will become. and that, i think, the larger point here about moving offshore and revenue growth and all of those things is that we just, we don't know what it'll be, but we know we won't like it. >> other questions. jen? >> hi. , so i have two questions. the first one i want to hit on, so, i mean, i'm still getting press releases from different members in both the house and senate saying that they're coming out against the bills.

there was, i think, about six co-sponsors of protect ip who are saying they no longer support it, and you also having the speaker yesterday saying he wasn't going to move forward unless there was some sort of compromise, and it didn't look like that was happening anytime soon. so given that, do you still think the bills are going to go forward, or is the turkey dead? the second thing i wanted to ask about was, is the intention to just kill the bills and start from scratch, or are there areas of compromise where you guys would be open to possibly supporting something if things were tweaked? ..

look at what the scope of the problem is, when we don't even know how many web sites we are talking about from the other side. that is kind of a problem. we don't know what the scope of the piracy problem is. that is kind of an issue and we don't know how some of these proposals would be an impact they would have an internet. much of this has been driven by grassroots advocacy from engineers who aren't lobbyist who said, you know here is the real data about how much traffic is going to the sites or the cybersecurity effects so i think the issue is that instead of having to negotiate with a gun to our heads so to speak let's sit down and have a data-driven

process with a wide array of stakeholders and large businesses, small business copyright owners of all stripes and try to figure out a more intelligent solution. >> and also to have that process be public. we can emphasize that enough. again, no matter what comes out, if an adjusted bill comes out and if everyone here agreed with it, the people are not going to accept that process. i think that was clear from the statements that were being made and what you saw being said yesterday. so it's not so much what we would accept. i mean i think it's really what the public needs to see at this point and that is a much more open and involved process. >> our coalition is looking for something to support. we are fears have a chance against piracy and we want to be able to support something. we think these bills have the complete wrong focus and it would be really tough to get there. we have had less than 24 hours to delve into the open act that

is looking, it's looking promising. >> i would add that you know, i can definitely agree with pretty much everything that markham said and even double down on the data aspect because what has been very interesting for our organization is to try to figure out how musicians are making a living in this marketplace and whether we can bring constructive information about that into the policymaking process. we actually are finishing a research project on revenue streams that hopefully will have that impact on these kinds of conversations. the other thing to remember is that you know, the folks who introduced soap are so keen to bring up the stakeholders now and the supporters of those bills are so keen to compromise where were they when when you know alternative approaches were described over the last six months? is it possible that we can get a situation where we could figure out who the bad actors are and perhaps legislation that is

appropriately tailored and avoid the collateral harms? sure but the fact of the matter is doing it at the 11th hour back in the field like mike said is probably not going to be the way forward. >> a couple of points. the first question, is it dead? no, despite the american people, the majority leader as we speak will bring this bill to the florida senate on tuesday so it is not dead at all. number two, what is extraordinary to me is the manufactured urgency. we have all kinds of very smart and trees who are bringing up very substantive potential problems with the bill and saying it would harm our standing overseas and raising real issues. why can't we step back and get it right? the patriot act, the country is not going to blow up if we don't act next week so i don't understand the rush.

>> and number three, we are interested in is a goal and coming up with some solution that addresses these rogue pirate web sites while preserving innovation. we believe the open act as a narrow targeted and strategically to do that. luck everybody agrees that piracy is a problem and from there you have it philosophical bifurcation. some people believe the way to address that is to hobble it together. others believe the open act approach that the way to do it is to simply cut off the money, cut off the funds to the sites. they are in it to do business and ended to make money so you cut off the money. that is what the open act does. it has worked with other context with the offshore gambling bills and it has the added advantage of not doing collateral damage to innovation or create a windfall for trial lawyers. so to the extent that you are going to do something, something

needs to be done, that certainly seems a reasonable way to approach the issue. >> i want to briefly uncle michael's comments and say the bill is not dead and it's very much alike. there's a votes council on tuesday. we want people to make phonecalls into the united states scented and keep the pressure on. more than that, intellectual property law is some might say a little boring but it is also very complicated and it's not the kind of thing that you want to rush through. it's not the kind of thing you don't want to go through with a fine tooth comb and find every little minute detail so it's not being fought out in courts for decades. we want to get it right. we want to get it right the first time. help us help you. we want to sit down and talk to you. the open act as everybody as it is a great counterproposal. we would love to see both of these judged on their merits. we would love to talk about any and all avenues to combat piracy and we are sitting and waiting but no, the bill is very much alive. it is still on schedule.

keep calling and keep the pressure on. >> the intellectual property law when coupled with a complex and changing infrastructure of the internet, we have got to have foresight and see where are we going going to be in 10 years, 20 years. >> on top of that in terms of building on all of what was just said, you know, copyright law in particular over the last 35 years has been adjusted. there have been new copyright laws or changes to copyright law 16 times in the last 35 years and it feels like every two years or so there is a complains haven't necessarily addressed the problem which is why they keep coming back that none of the potential problems that have been caused by some of the earlier changes, there is never a process to go back and look at the problems with the existing law and to essentially fix them

so the idea that maybe we should sit down and think through what the impact of these particular changes are before they go into effect is kind of an important thing. >> one or two more questions before we get kicked out. len and then jen and then we will wrap up. >> genstat and telecommunications report. you emphasize a lot of this opposition is not necessarily from organized groups. is disparate people on the internet and the process is seen as illegitimate in the way these bills have been made. is it possible the whole process and the whole issue is tainted to a large group of people that something you ball did like the open act and it seems people that it was a good approach that even that could not get past because not everyone necessarily would understand that. they would say here's another way that bathroom is trying to

push forward something onto the internet and we are not willing to listen to what it is and how distinguished. >> i really think is the process becomes -- the people will throw their support behind something that works. we talk about the backroom deals and i love here line mark them but we talk about all of these inside baseball washington things and the innovative and entrepreneurial community the reason that we haven't gotten involved is because we don't care about the issues. you look at it and say two things, just let me do my job and i don't understand that process and i don't want to be part of it because it's not open and honest. the more open and honest and make it the better the proposal is the more support you will find. they will come out in support something. >> transparency matters tremendous that. the open act has been transparent from the beginning. they have reached out to the public to criticize and attempt

to amend the bill. and i think from what i have just looked at in very preliminary stages it's a bill that if sopa did not exist the media industries would be thrilled to have and we don't see major public outcry about it yet. i think it's because of the transparency and the approach that has been taken to a. >> i think you know the setup with that particular bill, whether or not people agree with it, is really an important step that i think even people who don't necessarily like that particular bill, they were very impressed and liked the fact that it was presented not just an open fashion which the original text and bill before months before it was introduced, actually introduced in the house and senate was put out in people could comment. it was put up on a platform that let people actually do no make

language suggestions and comments and give their thoughts and the bills that actually were introduced from that are very different than what you know, so whether or not those bills are acceptable i don't no, i can't say. but the process itself was a lot more open and i think that people definitely recognize that and really appreciate that and i think there was definitely a sense that if more are all legislation worked with that kind of process, people would be a lot more engaged and a lot are comfortable with it. >> i think one more point on that. we have a representative government and there are members of congress and representatives who establish a track record and build some goodwill as experts on looking after the best interest of a constituency in a particular feel. we have this broken caucus in washington d.c. where senator leahy and lobbed goodlatte are the chairs of internet caucus and are supposed to be looking out for the internet and they

are the two of the primary movers behind this legislation. we have seen an new generation of members of congress that are stepping up to be a new internet caucus, people like jerry polis and zoe lofgren and darrell issa and ron white and i think congressman chaffetz and others and then i'm leaving many others out. and senator moran. and i think as they become, is the sort of fill those shoes and becoming a new generation of an internet caucus, they will build up some goodwill and credibility with the constituency when they say look we are trying to move in a constructive way to balance the interest of the internet community with the interest of the copyright community, i think that will certainly help. there is a distrust right now with members of congress and what their intentions are but i think that is beginning to change. >> even if you want to give leadership the benefit of the doubt and i have no problem doing that because we have a consistent in our message about

how folks with interest in the creative communities can interact productively with lawmakers. in fact the lawmakers need to hear from this community and again it's a question of how the argument is wasted. if it's just mpaa and r. a. a, the leadership is hearing from them that is a problem. we are going to take every opportunity and i think this is underscoring the need to hit cause right now because it is becoming increasingly clear that you know it's the tech communities that needs to be represented in the entrepreneurial community whose needs to be represented and a whole cadre of copyright owners who have never had an opportunity to introduce their side of the story into these kinds of debates. so although all the more reason to hit pause and see if we can bring more stakeholders to the table. >> if i can also add, there was a time not so long ago where was considered somehow charming that the members of congress didn't

know very much about technology. now i think we have come to the point where it's no longer funny. if you are going to be making the rules in governing the internet you have to have some familiarity. most of you are watching the house market on sopa and in some ways it was frustrating because there were a lot of members who clearly did not have anything close to that level. on the other hand it was also exciting because there were a lot of members that marcum mentioned and others who were clearly tech people and were quite familiar with how technology worked and how the network worked and what the innovation community needed and i think those members are in the -- but i think the insurance of how congress deals with these issues, i think it will get better because there are a lot of very young, very articulate members who are engaged in this issue.

and they have an understanding of how it works and what the smart policy is so i think that is very optimistic or goes to the the let's end it there. we will take your question off-line before they never let us uses from again because we are over. this is great. the panel, and going to speak for them, will stay. we just need to get out of the room so he have additional questions we will just chat out in the hall. thanks very much for coming. >> thank you. >> thank you. [inaudible conversations]

>> huber argued a couple of things. he argued that americans policy towards japan in 1940 and 41 was rather provocative and perhaps in a juvenile way, he said we are putting pins in a rattlesnake and eventually the rattlesnake will strike back. >> for nearly a half-century herbert hoover's freedom betrayed remained in storage unseen.

earlier this week former national security adviser james jones said 2012 was the year that the u.s. will have to deal with iran. those remarks came during a discussion on international hotline security cooperation with dhs secretary janet napolitano and former acting cia director's john mclaughlin. held by the aspen institute, this is an hour and a half. >> good morning everyone and welcome to the wilson center. i am jane harman, the not so new president and ceo and as i like to say an escapee from the united states congress.

i would like to especially to acknowledge the presence of the chairman of the board of the wilson center, joe, and his wife, who is a member of the wilson council and in a moment i will introduce many dear friends who are members of the aspen homeland security advisory group. i like the lincoln memorial or the washington monument, the wilson center is a living memorial to art 28th president and provides an essential link between the world of scholarship and policy making. that is essentially what the homeland security advisory group the aspen institute, which i cochair with my very good friend former secretary of homeland security michael chertoff, aims to do. we are a bipartisan group with extensive expertise and strong opinions, no surprise, whom he peer out of clay to discuss counterterrorism issues and make recommendations to policy members.

many of this group are with us and i can't be sure everyone is sitting in front of me but i see many of you. let me just list you alphabetically, charlie allen, is charlie allen here? zoe baird who i know is here. stewart baker, richard bena vista, p.j. crowley, steve hadley. brian jenkins all the way from california. michael lighter who was a marvelous at at that the national counterterrorism center and papa to be. stewart levy. is stewart here? jim lloyd, phil mudd, eric olson, guys won, juan zarate,

evan wolf, gary hart, former senator gary hart a new member of the group. you are from colorado and the indefatigable director of homeland security, inspector general clark ervin. the wilson center is pleased to partner with the aspen institute to host this event. the second public discussion we have held with secretary, home and secretary janet napolitano. today, we are examining the international dimension of homeland security. most people don't recognize what an important role the department of homeland security actually plays internationally. as a recovering politician, as i mentioned, who sat on the house homeland security committee and chaired its subcommittee on intelligence for many years, i do know about this. representing two of america's largest courts of entry and

terror targets lax and the port of los angeles i spent a lot of time thinking about the best ways to vet the people aware and terror country without slow ring tourism or commerce or compromising individual rights but it's not just about securing borders. as a co-author actually the original author of the safe port act of 2006, i urge that we needed to push out america's borders, because we don't want to discover a container ship with highly enriched uranium at the port of los angeles. we don't ever want to discover it but surely if that is the situation we want to discover that the point of embarkation. we want to discovered when the container is penetrated on the high seas and that is why we not only need state-of-the-art intelligence but we need the homeland security department charged with detecting our homeland to be on the case. it doesn't help to screen air passengers with cutting-edge body scanners at lax if ape

passenger from bangkok waltzes through with a weapon. the department of homeland security needs to and does maintain healthy relationships with their international partners so we can share information about individuals who may pose security threat so we can identify those who might have so-called clean records but nefarious intent. these are all appropriate applications of u.s. homeland security. this morning, our panel will explore these issues and we have an extraordinary experience group of people, including secretary napolitano, a former national security adviser and a former deputy director of the cia. moderated by an excellent homeland security recorder who just happens to be a woman. before we hear from this panel secretary napolitano will say a

few words. everyone knows she is the former governor of arizona and our third secretary of homeland security, our second is sitting right in front of me. she was the first woman to chair the national governors association and was the first female attorney general of arizona. we do need to know however that i knew her, she says, a new one i knew her when she was a young lawyer in phoenix. she says she had a perm. that is somewhat unimaginable. [laughter] somewhat unimaginable by date even than it was clear that janet napolitano was someone to watch and i think she is not only someone to watch in this job but someone to watch in the future. she is a dear friend and is protecting our homeland as we stand here and sit here. please welcome secretary janet napolitano. [applause]

>> thank you very much jane for that introduction. thank you to the wilson center for hosting us today and to the aspen institute as well. and i really want to thank the aspen's institute and the committee and the committee cochaired by jane harman and michael chertoff and a number of the members are here today. it is part of our ever maturing process of homeland security to really think strategically about his role domestically in this world and how we serve the people of our country in the best possible way. i am also glad to be here with my friends, jim jones, and i think we will have a very interesting discussion about homeland security and its role in the international sphere. and let me if i might talk briefly to that, to kind of set the stage for our discussion. we have personnel now stationed

in 75 countries around the world. we have the third-largest international footprint of any agency of the federal government. our work in the international set there is increasingly substantial. it is essential and innovative and it recognizes that in today's world, domestic security and international security are inextricably intertwined. a security decision made in one part of the globe can rapidly impact security half a world away. and that means that we have to look at our physical borders as our last line of defense and not as our first. our international engagement, dhs, is focused on the set of core approaches and goals. these include improving information sharing, better operational alignment and joint activities and ensuring better

law enforcement coordination with other nations. since i became secretary almost three years ago to the day, we have now executed 118 major international agreements that go to many of these goals, with a number of other important initiatives currently under negotiation right now. i will start for example in the aviation sector. we have now negotiated a new passenger name record agreement with the european union, the post lisbon to improve information sharing and ensure dhs personnel have the information that they need to identify threats before someone embarks on a plane to the united states, that we have greater tools and we have greater awareness. the agreement has been accepted by the european commission. it has been approved by the council of ministers and we are

now awaiting a ratification vote in the european parliament. it is, and i will apologize in advance for the alphabet soup. i will try to explain some of these as we move forward but the passenger name record is a critical tool to assess the passengers risk before he or she boards a flight to the united states. it allows us to better identify passengers to whom we should pay more attention. it also by the way, as we move forward, will help us also identify passengers who are low risk and can be expedited through the line. the new agreement incorporates all of our commitments in a single document and it does anything to help ensure the safety and security of the traveling public. and i mentioned that to start with because this is a major agreement for which dhs was actually named as the negotiator on behalf of the united states

but that is not the only one. moving onto cargo we are working hand-in-hand with their international partners bilaterally and through multinational organizations like the customs organization, the international civil aviation organization and the international maritime organization to secure agreements to improve security while promoting the movement of cargo around the world. with respect to cargo security, we work with wcl, imo and iycao. i told you there would be an alphabet presentation, and with their partner to share information, to build resilience and move travel and trade. a good example of this is a program known as global shield. global shield protects the supply chain by repenting the fast of the cursor chemicals that could be used to make improvised explosive devices. bomb-making materials and as of december