it by ourselves all of the time and particularly in the last decade when we were so occupied in south asia and the middle east. we are guard to israel, we remain a staunch ally of the state of israel. we have a vital national interest in ensuring their security and their existence long-term. we have an extreme ly close relationship and dialogue with them. it is candid and we talk frankly about the peace process and we talk frankly about the dimensions of the security dimensions of the region and the trends and events and so forth. and we -- there's a lot that we agree on and where we disagree we have very frank dialogue with them. but the u.s. commitment to israel has been something that

has been sustained across many administrations republican and democrat alike since the country's founding, and that is no different today. sorry, running out of the north korea was the next one? >> korea -- keep at it. iran. >> yeah. i mean, obviously, and in regards to north korea, our prin principle concern has been the potential for -- has been the proliferation of nuclear weapons to that country, and the potential that they could spread the technology to others whether they be rogue states or terrorist organizations. we have sought working with others, china, russia, south korea, and so forth to engage the north koreans in six-party talks to try to get them back into compliance with their

treaty obligations, to denuclearize and so forth, but in the absence of progress there, we have with u.n. sanction imposed along with the international community, some pretty severe sanctions on many of the activities. we have just witnessed a leadership transition or we are witnessing a transition under way with the passing of power from the father to the son, and it remains to be seen how things will move forward. wf ve sought to let north korea know that we want to see them come back to the negotiating table and sanctions will remain in place until that happens, and we do not want to see any further provocations on the peninsula, and the commitment to the stability on the peninsula and the south korean allies is rock solid, and it really the

ball is in their court. to see the fact that it is in their interests with the international community to try to resolve this situation. >> shall we conclude our world tour? >> yes. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. by 2016, according to the imf, the world's leading economy will be a communist dictatorship. that is in five years' time, and think about that if the imf is right, the guy that you elect next november will be the last president of the united states to preside over to the world's leading economy. >> columnist and author mark stein has published nine books, and he also writes "the happy warrior" column for "the national review," and also guest hosts for rush limbaugh.

now is your time to tweet your questions live on book tv on c-span 2. with talk of the possibility legislation to improve the nation's cyber defense, former cia director deals with national aware, of the cyber threats from an aspen homeland security group discussion. >> in some ways, cyber mirrors a little bit the discussion that we used to have about terrorism in the '80s and the '90s and a great deal of difficulty coming to the national consensus about what to do about it, until we had 9/11 which crystallized everything, and then when the nation moved forward we haven't had that event in cyber yet. we image ine it, and in the attk of stratmore where i lost my credit card, the only good thing that comes out of it is that a few more of those, the public

awareness that it is a serious vulnerability that will overcome some of the private sector reservations about working with the government on this. >> watch the rest of the discussion and more about homeland security online at the c-span video library, archive and searchable at cspan.org/video library. two federal communications commissioners recently discussed the fdc's priorities for the coming year hosted by the minority media and telecommunications council. they talked about the broadband spectrum capacity and the h fcc's broadband plan. this is 1:15. would everybody like to come in and have a seat this morning. everybody out in the lobby, because the commissioners are here bright and early, and we

would like to use their time efficiently while they are here so we can get to your questions. as well as a few from me. thank you all so much. yesterday and last night was re really terrific. i'm thrilled to be part of the mmtc board and as you can tell, i'm not henry rivera. i am debra taylor tate, and i'm thrilled to be here with my former colleagues and see so many friends back in d.c. last night we talked a lot about the healthy and diverse media, so i have the pleasure of having the microphone, so i am putting a plug in for the healthy media commission, and many of you are already involved in the mmtc is a partner in that, so i welcome you all, too, and i have left some materials out on the table,

and i actually have an award-winning psa that is watch what you watch. it won a gracey last year in l.a. so for those who are broadcasters, i would love for you to take the psa and show it or play it as you all are able to. so thanks so much for all of yurs a sis and the with thyur s a s -- your assistance about that and you will be hearing about the healthy media commission, and this is the one i am honored to co-chair with gena davis, the award winning actress, and she will be back in washington in a couple of months and wants to thanks the commissioners as well. let me reiterate a couple of things that david honig started us off with the state of the state that we need to act with more vision, and more

inclusiveness and more participation and skills and jobs and i want to add more civil digital citizenship to that, which is something that you all know that i work on a lot regarding the children's issues, so i am honored the have the privilege to host this dialogue with the two esteemed fcc commissioners who do act with purpose and vision every single day, and we will hear about some of that. commissioner robert mcdowell and commissioner clyburn, and their full bios are in the booklets, of course, but commissioner clyburn and i have served together for yearse, first at te state level and then on naruc and then at the fcc she followed me there, and she brings a unique perspective of federalism and the challenges that we have regarding states rights and federal policy, and then also was a small business entrepreneur and i'm especially thankful that she has been

sloved wislo involved with the healthy media commission, and commissioner mcdowell, a little bit jet lagged, but we are thrilled that he flew across the pond to be with us. i hope you all realize that. in addition to the long service and some of the longest at the fcc. >> a senior. >> right. and having been nominated by two different presidents from two different parties, also brings us a strong private sector and market-based principled approach to the job which is likewise greatly appreciated by many of us, and while a lot of people have taken credit for regulatory reform lately, i think that it all started with you and might have been right here when you talked to them about the dead letters still on the books and what needed to be done to reform the fcc, so we are very fortunate to have you all. and obvious ly, i want to thank them both for the efforts they have had as commissioners where

they have undertaken and championed social justice in the world in our digital world whether it was low income assistance during the dtv transition which we worked on or enhancing the community access through e rate programs the at schools and nonbroadcasting discrimination rules for advertising and the connect programs and the diverse committee re-established and i hope you all are going to move it to be reenergized. we are waiting for that energy to get started. and then of course the possible use of lifeline link up for low income americans to have access to broad banband. there are many examples and i invite you all to share those along with the incredible possibilities that the digital age prings us and opportunities for the women and minoritieses that have not been possible before because of truly the capital investment, but today with fewer barriers and more

platforms we look forward to hearing both of your visions. so, i believe that sunshine may be out regarding the lifeline link up order. but i think that we should open up and have a little discussion about it. maybe you all should ask me questions, and then i can respond to them, but obviously, you all know that this is something that i have worked on for many years at the state level and then at the federal level, and i want to applaud you all both, and i think that everyone in the room should applaud you all for taking this step to actually reform usf. so thank you all. i they we should give them a round of applause. [ applause ] but obviously, you are not finished yet. so with lifeline and link up, it has also grown and obviously, being in the worst recession, and joblessness continues at high percentages to everywhere and i know it is in tennessee and we have seen that some of

the waste, fraud, abuse was somewhat overblown and some of your own data at the fcc is 7% regarding the duplicates, so we, too, everyone, wants the fund to be more efficient and more effective. so, perhaps you all can share a little bit about either your philosophy in looking at lifeline link up if you can't talk about the specifics whether it is about allowing the providers to come up with some of the solutions, maybe giving them a deadline, how we, how all of us in mmtc can work with you all to accomplish the goals set by congress, and so, i will just ask both of you all to give us your thoughts on the lifeline link up. >> i will yield right now. >> i do have more gray hair though. >> barely, barely. >> and first of all thank you. it is wonderful to see you all again and great to be here with the gentle lady from south carolina as well, my colleague,

and wonderful to be back at mmtc which we try to do as often as possible and multiple times a year if possible. you are doing some great work. and no, you are not henry rivera, and i noticed that right off of the bat when i came up on the dias, so i flew back from geneva where i was attending the world rating conference in geneva that the worldwide telecommunications union has and the 93 countries represented there and came back early, because they got a new draft on the lifeline link up order tuesday night, so i came back early to work on that and read through it. and we are in the sunshine period and for those who don't know what that means, it actually is the name reversed. it is really a blackout period where we are not supposed to be talking about it, and the details of it with folks from the outside. so usually a week before every

monthly meeting at the stc, the curtain comes down where we are not supposed to have outside contact regarding what is on the meeting agenda for that upcoming meeting a week later, but i am happy to talk in principle. congress codified the program in 19966 with the 1996 telecommunications act and it is a program that it dad back to the 1980s through the fcc, but congress thought it was a good idea that the 1986 telecommunications act passed overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis and very few members of congress voted against it, and i don't remember how long ago, and the vote count, because i am so old i have forgotten those things, and signed into law by president clinton. and so, it is absolutely important for congress said for low income people to have lifeline access to telecommunications services, and

the proceeding before us right now does speak to weed out waste, fraud and abuse and to make the program more e fesffic. it is a fluid situation, and we are right now in the time period where commissioners are suggesting edits and things like that, so it is very fluid. and probably will be for the next day or so or two. and so, we want to make sure that we remain true to the principles of the fund, but it is important for people to understand that it is not a taxpayer subsidy, and dit was not come out of the u.s. treasury in other words, it is one type of consumer subsidizing another type of consumer, so it is all fund consumers in this case subsidizing low income consumers those who qualify for the programs, and we, if we take more, if we spend more in one part of the fun and means we are taking more from consumers elsewhere, so when we talk about helping consumers keep in mind

that we are taking from some consumers and it is not means tested to take from the wealthy consumers to give to the poor consumers, but taking from all consumers to help the poor consumers in this particular fund and similar with the rural support that we voted on in october. so we want to be making sure that we are true to the spirit and the principles of the fund as laid out by congress in 1986, and fiscally responsible as well, and i will probably leave it at that because we are in sunshine. >> thank you. the commissioner was comprehensive as always. commissioner, it is a -- commissioner meredith, it is good to see you and we all really appreciate and continue to benefit from your expertise and commitment. a lot of your colleagues in the room may know, but the commissioner has been quite engaged with our office and with the commission as it relates to

the she like all of us i guess technically from southern states that have beautiful states, but have chals. a -- challenges. and not only a rural/urban divide, but a significant economic divide within the borders that we have to address. so rightfully so the american people and congress stated as a goal in part of the goals and objectives to have universally affordable communication service, and that is why this program came into be, because it is beneficial to all of us to be connected with each other regardless of where we live, and regardless of the economic circumstances. so we have a prograp that speaks to level the playing field from the communications standpoint and this is where we find ourselves, and we also find

ourselves in the continual transition and the fund, the program has to move with it so that the way we communicate, i don't have to tell anybody in the room is ever changing. we are moving to ip platforms. we with the plain old telephone service, 30% of us have divided to cut the cord, so that the way in which we communicate is different. there were some instances of waste, fraud, abuse and i don't like to say it much, because the instances where you mentioned a percentage and we are dealing with that. but what we are also, and i keep in front of mine is that the consumers that could and should benefit from the programs, particularly the lifeline link up part. in terms of the lifeline, we have is a challenge. we see these economic indices,

but in terms of this program, only -- well, upwards of 40% now, and it has gotten a little bit better with some of the product, especially on the mobile sides, udwards to 40% of those eligible participate which means clearly well more than half of those who are eligible and needy could qualify and do not participate for various reasons. so when i look at this particular item which of course we cannot talk about the specifics, one of the things that, one of the things that i will keep in mind is, you know, i will not embrace anything that uld wo make that number harder that will increase the barriers to sign up for service, so i t better yield at that, and i wanted to put principally forth what would bother me, but we have an incredible opportunity to modernize this, and then the

potential for pilots. so there are a lot of things going on if you would, that would behoove all of us to keep up with. the potential for pilots to what is working and what can work to move forward, and there are a lot of things going on in the item that i know that would probably segue into some of the entrepreneurial pursuits that i am sure you will address soon. >> wonderful. thank you all so much for your thoughts on that. so you heard a couple more days of fluidity and i suggest that everybody get up there as soon as you can. another point of personal privilege, i need to thank verizon who is one of the sill is v -- silver sponsors. i thought i saw howard ethier. front row. thank you so much. we appreciate your support so much. i think that you saw that c-span is here today and we are

thrilled to have them with us and it is live streaming so will you all please come up to the microphones when we start the q&a time because that would be great so you can be heard on c-span and write home and tell all of the family that you are on. so, i guess that almost every single day, and this is something that obviously commissioner mcdowell is just back from hearing a lot about is the spectrum crunch. so i guess that i would love for you all to share some of your thoughts, you know, a lot of the broadcasters are in the room, but the other side of the spectrum crunch is that spectrum is also going to give a lot more people a lot more opportunities to many more platforms. so how do you all, what is your vision for the perhaps rules regarding the spectrum's options, and whether that may evolve over time, and how do we develop the policies so that those policies can be fluid and keep up with the technology as

it changes. so i would just love for you all to share what you all think about the spectrum crunch ands a i mentioned commissioner mcdowell is just back from the wharf, and give us your global thoughts on that. >> well, it is a huge problem for anybody who owns a smartphone and you have connective ti that is not as fast as you would like it and as more technology gobbles up the spectrum, it is a frustrating part on consumers and they are demanding for the spectrum and faster-working phones so the government needs to do something. so i have applauded the obama a administration several times for working several times to get more spectrum out to the auction and we have to advance the advanced wire services rules for those of you watching on c-span

to pair up one band of spectrum with another chunk of spectrum so that we can have an auction as soon as possible in those bands and i know that the department of commerce is working very hard on that, and we need to keep moving on that. in the national broadband plan it sets a goal of having 500 megahertz worth of spectrum to come to market as soon as possible. that is ambitious, and in reali reality, it is going to be very hard to get there. i do support the concept of the instead of auction legislation that will help to give tv broadcasters an incentive to relinquish all or part of the spectru speck for use to be auctioned off for advanced communications services, but where the government makes mistakes is by not adopting flexible use policies regarding how the spectrum should be used. so time and time again in

history, the government has adopted rules trying to guess where technology is going to be say ten years down the road and say that this particular frequency is going to be used for x-purpose only, and then ends up by the time that you have an action and the checks clears and the spectrum clears and the fa ill is cilities are out, and better part of the consumers it can be a better pat of the decade so from the time you start working on the auction to the time it is in the consumers' hands can be six to ten years. and a lot happens in terms of the technology changesing in that period of time. so if you have flexible use policies and you don't dictate that band is going to be used for x and to just try to stick with very diligently to the concept of making sure that whatever uses there are in that spectrum, it is not causing harm hful interference to others, then i think that you are in a better spot, and the markplace

will be able to develop more quickly and consumers will be satisfied more quickly. we have seen it pop up in a number of contexts. in 2007, in july of 2007, we voted on the rules for the 700 megahertz auction and those are the tv bands that were claimed after the digital television transition, and we were setting up the auction plans for that and small businesses were harmed by the requirement of the speed block in that band, and that was with all of the best of intentions about device portability, and this is the first dissent of the commissioner was on the c-block conditions ark fnd you think of spectrum as being like land and you have different, you know, lots next to one another and they are all equally valuable at the start, and when you put a zoning requirement, and heavy zoning requirements on one of the lots, that is going to probably deter people from

bidding on it. there is uncertainty of what the zoning requirements are and what they mean and it is going to devalue that piece of property, and then also what that means is that the bidders will bid on the other lots that don't have as many encumbrance on them, so what we saw happen in the auk shn is that the zoning requirement on what we called the c-block drove up prices for the, and the b block by triple so that the c block went for 77 cents per megahertz pop which is how we value spectrum and the b and c went for 70 cle 70 cents block, and that prohibited minorities and women to be eligible. it gave one home for large and medium carriers and another for small businesses which is another way to go, but i lost

that fight. any case with the best of intense in intentions, the goal there was to bring in a new market player and a lot of of talk in early 2007 about google becoming perhaps a new national wireless carrier which was the design so that the government sort of created this goldberg scheme to make that happen, and guess what, it did not happen. google did not bet more than 77 cents per megahertz lot, and verizon did, and they saw the risk and the bargain compared to the a and b blocks and google did not buy it and you did not end up with the new nationwide carrier, and at the same time when we tried to overengineer the marketplace, it failed in other regards. so when you talk about the spectrum caps in excluding some people from the marketplace in hopes that another company will come into the game plan as a rescue, that does not always happen either as we saw with the

actions in 2006. spectrum coalition which is aie bought the spectrum, but they could not figure out how the build it out and use it and they are now selling that spectrum to verizon. again, government was hoping to engineer and get outcome a and it ends up outcome they could not envision and with the best of intentions sometimes and a long-winded way of saying flexible use and standards and lighten couple brans light encumbrances, and you want to make sure it is built out in a relatively short time frame to be used and those are the core requirements that should be on every piece of spectrum that should be auctioned, but don't try to overengineer it, because those are two examples that i gave you of how it does not work. >> thank you for -- i don't get, right. no, it is positive, because i

don't even know if i have anything left to say other than, no, no, that is a positive, because you travel internationally and i got up early and i'm not an early morning person and i got uphan miles and feels like 500, so, but -- no, you hear a lot of there's some audible indicators of in the audience of how things have evolved an all of the smart devices that you have literally at your fingertips and you are pretending they are listening to us, but we won't take offense, right. all of that is gobbling up, you know, the spectrum that we are talking about and all of the devices compared to your flip phone technology. in terms of the amount of spectrum that it uses and it pales in comparison so those are thele challenges that we are dealing with. you have on the one hand in terms of the broadcast ofhe