>> where would you put ann marie slaughter? >> what do you mean where would i put her? minerva, a roman goddess akin to athena. i did a lot of work. i think every woman is that. >> we are grading everybody. >> so male and so uncompassionate. >> minerva, she is a warrior and a peacemaker and she knows when to put the helmet on and when to take it off and when to go to the bar and when to call it a day. [laughter] [applause] >> don't go to the bar yet. >> download the shriver report for free. shriverreport.org. >> for a special treat, a performance by garrison star. >> her music is the one under

the trailer that we started the day called the one and she is incredible singer, has a great story and i'm so thrilled that she's here today. >> and she's going to perform everything you are is beautiful. so do not leave. if anybody leaves, no drink. [laughter] >> great to see you. thank you so much. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen please welcome to the stage singer song writer garrison star. >> i just want to say thank you for having me. i feel so honored to be a part of this conversation that is so empowering and beautiful. thank you guys so much for including me. i've had a really special day today so thank you. ♪

♪ everything you are is beautiful ♪ ♪

pure ♪ent and ♪ so wise beyond your years ♪ i wish i could keep you safe ♪ from all this noise remember not to change ♪ voice ♪ou find your ♪ everything you are is beautiful ♪ ♪ everything you are is beautiful ♪ ♪ oh

♪ everything you are is beautiful ♪ everything you are is beautiful ♪ are isthing you beautiful ♪ areerything, everything you ♪ ♪ is beautiful ♪ you're beautiful ♪ ♪ your're beautiful ♪ [applause] >> that was beautiful. thank you so much.

[applause] please take a moment and stop and look at the images again. we have copies of the shriver report outside or you can download it at amazon.com. it was a privilege to be here with you and your team and others. you've done terrific work and we are honored to be a part of this. thanks to the center of progress for their work and partnership and underwriters who presented today's program. -- supported today's program. the federation of american teachers and abbott and thompson writers, we appreciate their support. we hope to see you all again. please fill out the comment cards. thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014]

>> and a look at the daily caller here, the republican national committee held a meeting recently in washington, d.c. chris christie one of the topics of conversation at the meeting. the daily caller reports some say the party activists defended governor christie's leadership and a senior adviser to the government says he has overcome the worst of his challenges. this is after federal prosecutors subpoenaed his reelection campaign and the new jersey republican party as part of a preliminary inquiry into accusations of lyrical retribution. governor christie is seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2016. governor christie was sworn in for a second term as new jersey governor. you can watch the swearing in an inauguration speech tomorrow morning at 10:35 eastern on c- span. more about the allegations against governor christie's administration and the mcdonnell, whoob

is accused of accepting gifts from a local business while he was in office. they're part of a discussion we held today on "washington journal" talking about rating states on the level of corruption in their government. with yesterday being the day when the virginia governor was arraigned on charges. where did for jenny a fall on your integrity index as we show our viewers the front page of dispatchichmond times with governor bob mcdonnell appearing in court in this corruption case? guest: virginia ranked 47th out of the 50 states. we found that virginia lacked a lot of the systems and many other states had to ferret out

corruption. of nine states without any sort of ethics commission. disclosure was poor for legislators and the freedom of information laws in virginia were week. host: were the headline surprising for you? guest: not really. as you might expect, we got some pushback from those states that got an f. in virginia, so that pushback had to do with the so-called virginia way. bipartisanship and smooth relations and a relative dearth of formal corruption cases.

we were looking back at corruption risk to ferret out corruption or malfeasance or ethical absence. then you are unlikely to find a lot of cases. host: for viewers who want to follow along with the state integrity project, they can go to stateintegrity.org. his group did this project. there was no a's given out in the ranking system, but there were five b's. california, connecticut, new jersey, and washington. eight f's.

what were the standards you used to judge the states against each other? guest: the first part of the project was we interviewed about 75 experts in state government and then developed criteria we wanted to look at. the criteria ended up being 330 specific questions. then we hired a statehouse reporter in each of the 50 states to do that research for us. we looked at things like disclosure requirements. we look at the strength of ethics commissions. we looked at the budgeting rss, how open it was. we looked at freedom of information laws.

we look at things like disclosure requirements. we looked at freedom of information laws. we looked at disclosure rules for legislators. we look at state insurance commissions and how transparent they were. 330 separate questions in 14 categories and then we crunched those numbers and did the rankings. what we found was in some states that did well, they did well because they had serious corruption problems in the past that essentially shamed their governments into making changes. host: still a lot to learn in this george washington bridge traffic jam incident. does that case highlight any of the issues you brought up in your report? guest: i think this case is a little bit different. i would make a distinction between the corruption and corruption risk we are looking at. actual bribery and explicit

actions in return for money with the nature of new jersey, which i would term as hardball politics rather than corruption. much remains to be seen. federal authorities are throwing this around. what we know to date would come under the heading of political muscling rather than outright corruption. we were shocked that new jersey came in high. the scandals that new jersey had suffered under the administration essentially served as a spur for some major reforms there. it was a substantive thing up of

-- beefing up of the state commission. in particular, really stringent disclosure requirements. host: we are talking about the state integrity project. democrats can call at -- while folks are calling in, tell us about the center for public activity.

what is your group and how is it funded? guest: we are a nonprofit group that focuses on investigative journalism. we are funded by hundreds of individuals and all the donors are listed on our main website, which is www.public integrity.org -- which is www.publicintegrity.org. we do a lot on money in politics, housing, health care policy, education, energy and environment and state government and juvenile justice as well. host: is there a perception that state government, state capitals have less corruption than washington dc than the federal government? guest: i think that perception is out there and i think people

feel a little bit warmer about the government's they are closer to. there is a warmer and fuzzier feeling about state government and state legislators than the federal government. certainly ratings are at rock bottom these days. based on our reporting i warned that there are a lot of built-in problems in state government. we are proud in our country that many of our state legislatures are citizen legislatures that serve only a few months a year. the fact the other -- the fact they have other full-time jobs builds other conflicts of interest. we found a lot of ethical and disclosure issues. it may be a little bit misplaced to think that it is always

better done in the states. host: you are on with gordon witkin. caller: it is clear the purpose of the media is to handle the public. it is demonstrated by the -- the third tower to fall on 9/11, which wasn't hit by a plane, had to have been -- host: we are going to move along. we are talking about the state integrity investigation process. let's go to richard waiting in fairmount city pennsylvania. good morning. caller: good morning. i am thankful i got through. i have a couple of questions if you permit me to get them in. if i take a dollar bill from

you, is that stealing? or does it have to be i go to a store and take a hundred dollars out of your cash register? which one is stealing money? in old days of ownership they kept a barrel of apples and they constantly took out the rotten ones so did not spoil the whole barrel. when our officials take it upon themselves that they are above us that they can take what they want, how much of that to we permit before we get rid of them? host: mr. witkin? guest: i think you touched upon a number of important issues. the existence of systems that

require disclosure, require transparency and accountability, and that arm an ethics commission provide some checks and balances on these. there are also more complicated issues in state government. many of the legislators only serve a few months per year. they have other full-time jobs. the commitments they make is extensive in terms of hours, their overall time, and the amount of constituent service they provide. pay for state legislators is generally pretty poor. some of our legislatures serve once every two years. an awful lot of business is

jammed into not much time. there are those that feel that those sorts of conditions make state houses and state legislators ripe for the sort of problems. different categories that you judge states on. what is an example of one of the more robust state ethics commissions in the country? guest: we found that states like washington and connecticut had strong state ethics commissions. host: what is strong? guest: what that usually boils down to is they have full-time staff and enough full-time staff to deal with the problems that are brought to them. they are transparent in that you know what they're doing. they have investigators who may have an auditting or law enforcement background. and they will have subpoena power. and they're able to operate independently without having

exclusive oversight coming from the legislators themselves who are, after all, the subject of the work that they're doing. host: on twitter. guest: what we looked at were various disclosure rules for legislators, governors, and members of their offices and family. generally, because legislators are part-time you want to know what the job is, the full-time job of your legislator, what their other assets are, where they're getting their income from, and what the jobs may be of their spouses and what their investments are. because transparency goes the

cliche can be the best disinfectant. and obviously anyone with a myriad of income sources and investment opportunities that creates the potential for conflict of interest if those companies or those sectors are seeking action from the legislature. >> we're talking with gordon witkin, the manager at the center for government integrity. caller: good morning. first of all, i would like to state on behalf of the democratic party that i think the republicans -- because they have extorted this country and put us in debt, leaders -- host: we're talking about the state integrity project. do you want to stay on that subject? caller: talk about ethics. you show me the ethics of our

politicians and now they're investigated in question and drilled on a state level. we have a missouri ethics committee here in this state. they get fined. they rarely get removed from office. of course they can be united if you have a strong federal government that has a strong checks and balances. and i strongly believe it's time we did this with some of our elected officials who have served with the enemies. -- sold out to the enemies. people begging for food stamps, children going hungry, this is not the america i grew up. i grew up with a very good government. my uncle worked for a government program which gave jobs, opportunity and education to the people. i don't see that happening right now. host: she brings up some of the ways that lawmakers can be punished for specific violations.

which state has the most stringent penalties for lawmakers who actually violate some of these rules? guest: again, that usually sort of went in lockstep with states that have a tough ethics commission. i mean, states like connecticut, state of washington we found had a good system. even new jersey as a result of the scandals they've had have had a fairly stringent system and real power in the state ethics commissions to exact real penalties. host: on twitter. guest: i think the answer is all of the above. i think there is also a real issue in pay for state legislators, which can be very low and which can create

temptations for other sorts of malfeasance and also may create some resentment in terms of the amount of work required. but there are other kinds of rules that didn't exist and don't exist in virginia, for instance, that have to do with disclosure, a gift, disclosure of gifts to the governor, to the governor's family. one of the issues that's come up from one of the questions raised as in the case of virginia, if both governor mcdonnell and his wife had had to disclose right at the moment it happened the range of gifts from mr. williams, would that have changed their behavior? i mean, i think there's a reasonable argument that it might have if this all had to be out there step by step, gift by gift. host: and what is the virginia disclosure rule? guest: really, there isn't much of any. there are some fairly bland

rules for the governor. there are no requirements for any member of the governor's family. campaign limits in virginia are virtually nonexistent, easy to get around. the freedom of information regime in virginia is weak. and it's one of just a handful of states with no ethics commission, no watchdog whatsoever. host: is there any move to change any of that in the wake of the headlines that have been coming out? guest: sure. again, in the pattern we've talked about where sometimes in the past it has taken scandal to move state legislatures, particularly in a state like new jersey which we talked about earlier. i think it's clear that that effect will take place in virginia. the new governor understanding the political environment he's entering has proposed a package of ethics reforms.

folks who are in sort of advocacy good government community don't think those proposals are nearly tough enough. but i think it's clear something will happen on the ethics front as a result of the mcdonnell scandal. host: writing in. roger in virginia. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i had a question. in terms of comparing the disclosure rules and the gifts that the mcdonnells received, how can we go back in history and learn of previous gifts if there was no reporting rule in order to compare current behavior to past behavior? and even on a presidential level, how do we know who gave jelly beans to reagan or who gave the cell phones that

president obama gave away? guest: that's a good question. in the state of virginia and in many states, unfortunately, there's probably no way to go back and make comparisons because very few rules or requirements existed. on the federal level, the rules are generally much tougher. i'm not an expert on that, but i think that any gift given, for instance, by a foreign government or a foreign dignitary to the the president have got to be recorded. and most of those are given away. host: virginia ranked 47th out of 50 states in the state integrity project ranking back in 2012 when they did the rankings below them only wyoming, south dakota, and georgia. again, the website stateintegrity.org if you want

to check out the project. let's go to florida. good morning. caller: i really have never seen any evidence of the ethics program here in florida. before rick scott became governor, he owned a home health care service that ripped off the government for the largest medicare fraud in history. but since he's been in office, he tried to make welfare recipients take a drug test but it came out that he owned the diagnostic lab where the drug test would occur. so he signed over his interest in that company to his wife. a year ago his lieutenant nant governor resigned because of her involvement with an online gambling parlor scam over where the proceeds were supposed to go to veterans and they were being skimmed off. i really don't think we have an ethics committee because there's never any focus on this. do you know anything about this?

guest: well, florida actually did not rank too badly. it ranked 18th in our survey. i don't recall the details of florida's ranking and its components. they have some ethics rules there and an ethics regime, an ethics commission. but your point is certainly relevant. governor scott has been a controversial figure in florida. his previous firm hca was in a lot of trouble. none of that directly touched governor scott. host: if you want to read up on each state's rankings and how they did in specific categories, you can also do that through the stateintegrity.org website. a question from ohio. guest: i think this has been the whole privatization movement has been controversial for a number of reasons.

there's a component of that that has to do with political philosophy. republicans, conservatives generally believe that privatizing government services make them more efficient. democrats have generally resists that in part because of the support of labor unions. i think the results there are mixed. it's not a panacea and there needs to be some scrutiny of whether the privatization in toto is a benefit. in ohio, for instance, i'm aware that state economic development functions have essentially been privatized and that has become very controversial and there have been accusations rightly or wrongly that essentially the

state's economic development functions were being handed to private corporations who may have an interest in what that government agency does. host: we're talking to the managing editor at the center for public integrity. how did you get into this line of work? guest: i've been a journalist since i got out of school, started at the morning paper at indianapolis, was there for 3-1/2 years. then spent 26 years at u.s. news and world report first as a bureau reporter in detroit, then a bureau chief in denver. then was the criminal justice writer in headquarters here in d.c. for about 11 years. and followed up by being chief of correspondents. and then spent my last five years as the national affairs editor. spent about a year as is the social policy editor at congressional quarterly and been at the center for public integrity for a little over five years now. host: when is the next update to the rankings? guest: we are not sure. we are actually seeking funding to try to replicate the whole project because it was very involved. we had to hire freelance

reporters in each of the 50 states. we had to put together a methodology. we had to crunch the numbers. we're hoping to do it again. in the meantime, what we've been able to do is keep on one full-time reporter who has taken the initial results and tried to look at ethical issues and dilemmas that have cut across state lines, problems we saw in a number of states. we looked at open records laws and the weaknesses in open records laws, for instance. we looked at the problems and the lack of teeth in state ethics commissions. we looked at the so-called revolving door in state legislatures where legislators often move directly into lobbying jobs. things like that. and we've also looked at state economic development functions and who they're actually serving. host: let's go to james waiting in michigan on our line for democrats. caller: good morning indeed. thank you very much.

i meant to -- yes. at the outset mentioned campaign finance transparency as well as insurance reform. i want to ask two quick questions. here in michigan, the republican-led legislature and governor snider signed into law an increase in campaign donations as well as a decrease in what many would consider the transparency. we have the no fault insurance here with the catastrophic claims association which has been accused of transparency in the past. guest: well, i'm not an expert on either subject specifically. but what i can say is that but what i can say is that michigan has been a bit of a laboratory for different philosophies of how you govern. obviously, michigan is a state that traditionally has had a very strong union movement, a very strong democratic core, governor snider is a republican who has looked to try to

privatize some services. michigan also has been very controversial in its regime of state takeovers of municipal governments that are in bankruptcy or close to bankruptcy. detroit being the prime example. so it will generally depend on your political philosophy as to whether you think it is going well in michigan or not. in one of the things we found is that in states like virginia but also a number of states in the plains and out west, there was a feeling that specific laws, rules, and have lots of new statutes on the books related to transparency and accountability, was perhaps less effective than the sort of informal we all know each other here systems. that you find in states with a little more of a libertarian philosophy, states with a little

more of a limited government view. so some of those states ranked low in our survey but there was also a lot of disagreement in those states about whether the sorts of systems we were looking at were more effective than more informal if something was wrong we would know it regulatory sort of regimes in those states. my favorite anecdote from our survey was wyoming ranked low for those sorts of reasons, a limited government state, a libertarian state. our reporter asked the state senator there some questions about this and the state senator said -- somewhat facetiously. do you know why you don't have to use your turn signals? wyoming? because it's nobody's damned business where you're going. so we find a lot of different philosophies around the country that ended up informing on some of the results we got here in our work.

>> talk about state ethics commissions. virginia actually does not have a state ethics commission? guest: virginia is one of about ten states that has none whatsoever. host: let's go to bill in pennsylvania. caller: good morning. i would like to say something. i just came back from europe and i have had 30 years in politics. i call them the scum bag of this earth because they destroy the whole country. finance, campaign finance, you've got to start -- [inaudible] you've got to get rid of the lobbyists number one. they've got to be destroyed, dump them in the garbage. the second part is when you take an oath to the united states of this country to become a politician, to take an oath in the

office when you take that oath and you break that oath there's only one solution in my book and i'm 69 years old and i've been with politics for many, many years. next week i'm going to be with one. execution. excute them. you're never going to have no problem no more. host: bill calling in with his suggestions from pennsylvania. the "new york times" last year did a ranking of the number of guilty o officials, state officials, who have pleaded guilty convicted of public officials. they looked at numbers from 1998 to 2007. you can see on the chart pennsylvania ranking in the top five with 555 convicted. public officials state officials from 1998 to 2007 that "new

york times" number crunching that happened i believe last year. let's go to bob in pennsylvania on our line for independents. good morning. caller: good morning. i was just wondering, when it comes to ethics, is there a group out there, you or maybe someone else torks do ethics in journalism reporting? like, for example, look at the time spent on the bridge for christie versus the time spent on hillary with benghazi. it's not the same. so is there such a group that does ethics for journalism so they report fairly? because do you agree with me that there's a biased towards the left? guest: no, i would not agree. although certainly this is a controversial figure, a controversial subject. it's argued about endlessly. i'm not sure i would agree there's been any gaps or lack of

reporting about benghazi. i think that subject has been pretty well covered. i think there's certainly more to be done. the christie situation has certainly gotten saturation coverage, maybe a little too much. but i think the situation there was -- or the coverage of the situation there was enhanced by a couple factors. one, it occurred in the new york market, which is our nation's biggest media market. it also as a controversy was sort of fun. it was subject to comedy, sattire, things like the daily show. and finally, governor christie, rightly or wrongly, has been something of a darling among republicans looking for a candidate who can win in 2016. and so the fact that he is a figure with presidential aspirations i think enhanced the coverage.

host: and i should note the "new york times" story that has the number of convicted officials from 98-2007, the hoil, illinois is trying but the most corrupt state is actually -- and then it goes into the different states around the country. that came in 2008 and crunched the numbers. if you want to look it up in the "new york times" archives. let's go to anthony waiting in new york on our line for democrats. caller: good morning. thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to speak. i would just like to maybe connect some dots for you. and everything i'm saying can be verified if you go to the "new york times" newspaper articles. in -- between the years 1998, 1999, there's been a developer who embezzled over 30-something million dollars from the housing and urban development bank. it was basically a housing

scheme to basically funnel money to the republican party through those -- that possibility of home ownership. and there had been a class action lawsuit brought by eliot spitzer as well as a few others who just basic governmental fraud. i believe he invoked the law against these gentlemen as well as at the time it was the county executive out on the eastern end of long island. by 9/11 they had stated that the files were lost in the world trade center and so that they threw out the whole case, the $30 million suit was defeated and the judge put it aside. eliot spitzer had brought the case and he was brought down by the same gentleman through tax malfeasance. and then ultimately the gentleman involved was granted a pardon by the president.

and then the president quickly revoked the pardon because it brought it back to his administration. host: talking about a federal investigation, we're talking about the state integrity project that's run by the center for public integrity. did you have a question on that? caller: this was a pardon that was granted through the attorney fred fielding who sat on the 9/11 commission. he had been replaced harriett meyers as the president's personal secretary. host: do you know about this? guest: i'm not familiar with the case. but i think the caller also touches on a larger point, which is new york is one of the states that has had all sorts of problems with corruption particularly in the state legislature. the state -- there have been any number of state legislators who have gotten in serious trouble in the last few years and this has become a big controversy in albany. right now, governor cuomo is

proposing a stiffer ethics regime in new york. but whether the reforms that come about in albany are as tough as some of the reform groups would like remains to be seen. in new york, there's been a particular problem with state legislatures who then have nonprofit groups that they found or they are heavily involved in, and then because of their position as legislatures they are able to steer public money to those nonprofit groups that then employ a lot of their friends and relatives. that's been a particular problem in the empire state. host: let's stay in new york. diane on our line for republicans. caller: good morning, gentlemen. you touched on my question a couple of times while i was on hold. i was wondering, in your research the states that were graded the highest did the leadership of those states tend to be republican, democrat?

what was the political breakdown for the states that really had the highest ethical standards? and i know john just read something about illinois because my other question was going to be where does illinois come in on your chart? guest: i have to say that the leaders -- the political leadership in the states that ranked high was as you might expect a mix of republicans and democrats. it may have weighed a little more heavily democratic in part because as i alluded to before, the democratic philosophy is a little more activist in terms of rules, statutes, et cetera. and in a number of states there was a feeling that informal processes worked better. illinois ranked higher than you might think. illinois ranked 11th. and of course to many folks that

was a surprise because they've had so many corruption problems in illinois and so many of their recent governors ended up going to prison. but again, this is one reason why we didn't simply do our work by ranking cases. because we found that in some cases states that had problems, had been shamed by those problems and moved very forcefully to increase their transparency. and the other factor there is that in states that had a lot of corruption cases, we felt that could be evidence that there were systems that were working to ferret out that mall feesance as opposed to some other states who might have said we have not had any corruption cases it may have been because they don't have a strong ethics regime or real investigative capability. host: did it make a difference in your rankings on whether states had one party control

versus a split control of the state legislatures? guest: no. not really. we found sort of a hodgepodge there. and then i would add just to throw one other astrisk in there. a high-ranking state was nebraska with a one house unicameral legislature. host: let's go to ted in tennessee. good morning. caller: good morning. [inaudible] how are you all doing? great. i'm down here in tennessee. this corruption thing in our state and federal government is something that we the people have to address. eventually. because if we allow the states

and the federal level to dictate to us what's going to go on, then we as the people are lost. it comes back. it's reciprocal. it comes back to us as the people of this country. and we the people have to stand up and say, no mas. we have to say, you know, it doesn't matter if you go to church, it doesn't matter if you go to schools or whatever. when you go back to your house every day and you sit there and go who am i? and what have i done for this society? that is the bottom line. and what are we doing to address that? that's my question. guest: well, i would say in relationship to the question there

are a couple of specific cross-currents going on that relate to state government specifically. one of the encouraging trends we found is that there's a ways to go but more and more states are putting more and more of their proceedings and documents on line. which is making it a lot easier for citizens to provide some level of their own oversight in some states the entire budget, the entire budget proposal is now on line. in some states all or many legislative hearings are now being broadcast around the state by public television. it has become a lot easier should a citizen want to, to become involved and to provide some informal oversight of what's going on in state government. conversely, one of the troubling trends because of the problems that my business, journalism, is experiencing economically, one of the really troubling sort of

bedrocks for why we did this project was that state house coverage by newspapers has really been decimated in the last ten years in state after state in state capital after state capital you find that the number of reporters who are working full time to cover state government and the state legislature has been dropping dramatically. host: let's go to ben in nebraska on our line for republicans. >> the latest on governors and house and senate races in 2014. followed by a look at income inequality with a manhattan institute fellow. and we will talk about security concerns ahead of the winter olympics in russia. plus, your calls, tweets and facebook comments live beginning

at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. i did not see myself as a prophet who has a message for my world, but i do see myself as a person trying to understand, and trying to situate myself. the book came to me when i was giving some lectures at the u.s. air force academy in colorado springs. one of the very nice, very well-educated, broad-minded, deputedadmirals who was to look after me had a lot of chats with me. he told me he was a liberal. mindnted to correct in my any impression i might've adopted from the media that the u.s. air force academy is very right wing and full of strange, radical sentimentalists. he told me that he was in favor

of immigration, which i think was very big of him. when people come to this country they should learn the latest language. -- the native language. yes, i quite agree. everyone should learn spanish -- >> our america. tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern and sunday at 9:00 p.m. on "afterwords." and online at booktv's book club, you have time to weigh in on the " l iberty amendments." >> no matter what party they belong to, i bet most americans are thinking the same thing right about n oow 0---

nothing will get done in washington this year or next year or maybe even the year after that because washington is broken. them for feeling a little cynical? the greatest low to our confidence in our economy last year did not come from the events beyond our control. it came from a debate in washington over the united states -- whether the united states would pay its bills are not. who benefited from that fiasco? i've talked tonight about the deficit of trust between main street and wall street, but the divide between the city and the rest of the country is at least as bad. and it seems to get worse every year. obamach president delivers this year address. our preview program starts live tuesday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern with the president at 9:00 p.m., followed by the response from republican conference chair cathy mcmorris rodgers, and your reaction by

phone, facebook, and twitter. the state of the union, tuesday night, live on c-span, c-span radio and c-span.org. next, a look at the impact on relations on self-driving cars as well as connecting cars, those equipped with internet assets. we hear from representatives of toyota, verizon, and the global automakers association. first, remarks from david strickland, nhtsa administrator. this hour-long event was part of the consumer electronics summit in las vegas. >> good afternoon, everybody. i hope you are enjoying the first day of ces. i will be the moderator for today's panel, but before we start the brief introductions and the full discussion, we have some opening remarks, and i want to introduce the next speaker. he has been -- over four years, and a couple of weeks left.

it has been a very interesting four years. it promises to be a revolution in what is going on in the automobile industry. i would like to please welcome david strickland. [applause] >> thank you so much, and wow, this is a superstar panel. i need to be staying to learn a little something here. as a number of you may be aware, i will be stepping down at my post as nhtsa administrator in a couple of weeks, but i wanted to share a couple of perspectives. i was told five minutes, and i will keep it to five. we first begin our work during my tenure on distraction starting in earnest in 2009, 2010, and i remember my decision to make sure that i came to ces as part of the regular auto show