does the f.c.c. even care? i don't know. but the agency certainly has not provided any evidence that it took any of this information into consideration. what we see today is an agency that is completely unaccountable and unanswerable to 99.6% of the congress and by extension, the american public. this is simply wrong and i will continue to hold the f.c.c.'s nominees until this attitude changes. i yield the floor. mr. reed: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island is recognized. mr. reed: mr. president, i have eight unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders. i ask unanimous consent that these requests be agreed to and that these requests be printed in the recordmen record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reed: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i rise today to urge my colleagues to immediately extend the payroll tax cut and to fully continue jobless benefits to millions of ame

admit or deny any wrongdoing they were getting away with that we've seen that also report on how the f.c.c. had a policy where unless a full blown investigation was launched they got to just throw away the paper trail so that there never was a trail created you could never connect all the dots i think that there's a lot of people that would see problems with that so if you had to in your personal opinion tell me one reason why you think we haven't seen these prosecutions of the executives of the highest levels what would it be. alone i like how you're cornered me to how to make an opinion here i don't let me tell you that i don't like loaded with i'll give you mine ok you think no political well i think it has a lot to do with the money wall street and has a lot of money and political contributions you know five billion dollars over a decade we see their influence we see the revolving door we see the guys at goldman they go on to run the treasury run central banks i mean all over is the footprint so i think there's a revolving door i think there's a boys' club i think there's the money in

goodies so who's really the blame here the addict or the dealer and of course i look at it that the f.c.c. started in again you could actually in the thirty's the o.c.c. started implementing provisions on bank control in terms of what assets they could hold with the rating agencies so again the regulators have been bedded rating so into the system i do think we need to get to a world war financial markets are far less dependent on rating agencies and that means we need to add in my opinion the n r s r o system we need to make these ratings stand for themselves and of course there are several regencies and even jones as well an agency that still uses a subscriber model and oddly enough even judges been more aggressive than the other agencies in terms of downgrading sovereign debt and of course you can judge was also one of the agencies the court won't comment enron so again these agencies have had a horrible track record but at the end of the day i think what we need to do is remove the regulatory reliance on them and treat them as what they truly are simply somebodies opinion ok you know

can hand out stricter fines is really is the problem really is that there's legislation blocking the f.c.c. from handing out straight fines or it is that they don't have the will to usually do that. i you know it's a good question certainly this is a reaction to what judge judge rakoff did and said this is just a slap on the rise this is ridiculous and and you're not forcing the entity in this case citi group to even admit wrongdoing for the crime that they committed in this case i think what is going on here is maybe a little bit more insidious that's its effort on the part of the f.c.c. to come up with settlements that are big enough so that judges like rakoff will not question them as much and that allows sort of the same gravy train to keep rolling where nobody admits wrongdoing they pay basically a pittance maybe it's a little larger now and they don't have to get exposed to all of the investors coming up with lawsuits because if if citi group for example in minutes to actually defrauding investors them obviously there's a host of lawsuits and punitive damages that they would be liabl

know some multiple of the wiis that they received and i don't think it would be that difficult for the f.c.c. to institute a fairly simple. system of fines and i think under dodd frank they already have the power to do so but i haven't seen any movement from their quarter to do that one of the issues one of the problems with trying to make the ratings better through issuing from having fines or having a system of penalties is that people like richard just say well we should just get rid of ratings altogether because they're obviously conflicted and stupid let's get rid of them but you know what that just plays in that plays into the lives of the radiative sees in a sense because we don't get stronger and then you say let's get to relate the ranges themselves because you have these voices saying let's get rid of richard go ahead jump in jump in well that's mischaracterizing my position a little because i didn't say let's get rid of ratings of course we need ratings i said let's get you know let's not tinker with this system that's so broken in terms of its incentives let's take these these or

cases because we've heard as he say they're starved of resources we just heard it this week from the f.c.c. chairwoman who said it in a hearing about dodd frank and implementation saying if we don't have more resources we're not going to be able to enforce this effect of lee we've seen people say that it's not being funded because republicans don't really want dodd frank to be enforced so there's all sorts of issues and not even to mention the fact that many say that the f.c.c. doesn't force regulations evenly that it may have forced them if you're a small fry that doesn't matter politically a small firm but if you're goldman sachs they're not going to go after you they're hugely politically powerful and that's you know exactly we saw with this recent case against citi group it was citigroup of the f.c.c. were coming to we're coming to an agreement here and the federal judge just threw it out because they didn't even have to admit or deny any wrongdoing they were getting away with that we've seen that also report on how the i.c.c. how the policy where unless a full blown investigation was

>> well, they would have been required to meet the f.c.c. public limit, even back then. >> i guess what i'm getting at is the fact that you have to, even the low level that you're having now, you have to also factor in and subtract whatever that level was because you're taking away what was there before. >> yes, i understand your question. the calculations have to take into account any other existing two-way antenna, cellular, whatever, it's the aggregate of the exposure. however, since it follows a square law, typically once you get more than a few hundred feet, you're down to thousands or tens of thousands of time below the public limit. commissioner antonini: so what we did also in addition to moving the antennas, there is a decrease in the number of antennas, is that what you're saying at this site? are there still six proposed or fewer now, down to four? >> yeah. commissioner antonini: down to four. you're netting a net increase of two antennas in a location that's quite a ways further from the school. ok, i just wanted to establish that

and the f.c.c. for appropriate reasons but this was you know you have to remember the role politics this was the house controlled by republicans seeking to go after democrats largely. but most of the regulation the lead regulation in these cases. is actually. by the industry itself this is so for a delusion believing regulator of m.f. global was an acronym for c m e nobody outside the traders even know exists ok so that's i mean that's a whole can of worms so can regulators even do their jobs and there's what is really the issue because we hear about them being underfunded we hear about cronyism with a kind of goldman sachs for eternity we hear about cases where they have indications of there was a report from the f.c.c. watchdog of of fraud on the account of a hedge fund that was just never pursued so so why aren't they able to do their jobs. well you know they are able to do their jobs their own willing to do their jobs it's quite true that you can never have adequate resources as a regulator it's

we received through a waiver through the f.c.c. some 700 mega hertz spectrum that was actually freed up as part of the digital tv transition a few years ago and was dedicated by congress specifically for public safety broadband uses. san francisco, oakland and san owe day applied to the f.c.c. to begin work building on this spectrum early and we received that waiver last year. funding and regional collaboration are two more pieces to it. i mentioned motorola got a $50 million grant under the broadband technology opportunities program and they're also contributing a match of $21 million to build the network. regional collaboration, you can cannot build the network without sites to put your radio so we have to have regions contribute to locations, to sites, the space to put radio transmitters out there to build a network. finally, governance, i mentioned the bay area authority and joint power authority, that had to be in place to govern everything. now, the only other thing i will say about this is we started with the spectrum and we

the challenge for the f.c.c. is identified how to inspire the best in communications in a world where change is a constant and innovation can invert what we think we know. in approaching this challenge, i believe that a little humility helps. at the same time, it's absolutely essential that the f.c.c. honor the values that are at the core of the communications act. that means the safety of our people is paramount. new communications technologies should facilitate our security and protect life and property. that means universal service, no matter who you are or where you live in this country, you should have access to first-rate communication service. to prosper in the 21st century, all of our communities, urban, rural, and everything in-between need this access. our communications networks and the access they provide should be the envy of the world. this means competitive markets, they're the most effective means of facilitating innovation and insuring the public reaps its benefits. this means a fierce commitment

to shut off web sites here at home and censor them from american users so yeah you know not just the f.c.c. but actually the u.s. congress is planning to vote on this bill and despite a million people around the world trying to get hillary clinton speak out against it she's remained silent and we're actually going to be mentioning a few more details than that. we've been talking all the time on the show and we have more about it coming up in our tool time too and i also just want to get your take on this week over secrecy kind of thing and we saw the exact same thing with the pentagon papers right they just got declassified about forty years after the pentagon papers are out there and the papers are writing about them so what do you think it is where does the thought process come from that even though papers are out there are documents are out there on the internet for everyone to see you still keep them classified technically i think your point is right it's really revealing to see what they withhold you know what the pentagon papers just this year they were finally released and even then

files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals the f.c.c. created a policy spelled out on its own internal website that for any m u i's which stands for matters of inquiry for those that don't develop into full blown investigations all the documents be destroyed which is exactly what was done thousands of times and it makes me wonder if there had been a paper trail if investigators could have seen patterns emerging if the financial collapse could have been seen before it hit but also shows the continuous revolving door between top level officials of the government's regulation agency and the very banks and wall street firms that they were supposed to hold accountable why else would an investigative agency want to get rid of potential evidence so how do you place the story into the larger context of corruption and hypocrisy that we see that from our government earlier i caught up with host of the young turks and i first asked him if unfortunately left enough after everything that we've learned since the crash in two thousand and eight if this

whistleblowers are now guaranteed legal protection and paid cash rewards for tips made directly to the f.c.c. regarding illegal activity so as you can imagine the big banks now they're not really fans but it turns out that they found a few allies in their fight against these reforms g.o.p. lawmakers and fox news take for example new york republican congressman michael grimm he introduced a bill that would repeal the whistleblower protection part of doc frank and his plan would reduce rewards for rewarding on fraud but also force employees to report any possible crimes to their supervisors first before notifying the f.c.c. think we all know what happens when your reports of them your supervisors ignore it they tell you to ignore it or the worst case scenario they punish you for reporting it so consumer groups say this is just an attempt to silence whistle blowers and congressman grimm is three other g.o.p. lawmakers helping push the repeal of this bill and a nice little tidbit as think progress noted today grimm is a favorite of big banks when it comes to campaign cash according to the sunlig

spending millions on advertising and lobbying antitrust officials at the department of justice and the f.c.c. a locked purchase saying that it would hurt consumers and lead to less competition had the merger gone through then a do awfully of two companies verizon would own eighty percent of the national wireless market so what does this victory for consumers mean and might it trigger a new wave of trust busting even break up the transnational corporate giants that have come to dominate our markets joining me now is jennifer posner media critic founder and executive director of women in media news and author of the book reality bites back jennifer welcome thank you it's nice to be here thanks for joining us isn't to try awfully almost as bad as a do up away we have now three big companies controlling eighty percent of the wireless market. well you know at this point we need every big major media justice victory we can take so while it is absolutely true that we have a very monopolistic media market that doesn't serve the people very well today we need to be cheering for the fact that instead

welcome back so we have now seen that the f.c.c. is going after former executives at fannie mae and freddie backed the g.s.t. that u.s. taxpayers have bailed out so it's going after six executives former executives suing them this includes the former c.e.o.'s of both now this is over misleading investors over the risk that these seas have taken on in the subprime mortgage crisis now i want to bring in tad to haven he's budget analyst for the cato institute to talk about congress and former administrations role in this risk and perhaps if they should be getting off the hook so easy because of what they were encouraging so thank you for being on the show it's nice to see you as always so we know now the f.c.c. is suing these former fannie and freddie execs and i'm not weighing in on whether or not they were misleading investors or are weighing in on whether they're corrupt or not but what i want to talk about is maybe why they made some of these risky investments and if congress and former administrations were responsible for some of t

millions of americans yesterday the board members of the bay area rapid transit bart with the help of the f.c.c. voted unanimously to give themselves the power to turn off cell phone service in their transit stations whenever they see fit the policy limits temporary limit temporary shutdowns for the quote most extraordinary circumstances and i think extraordinary can be interpreted in any way you want they say that anything that poses a danger to public safety destruction of our property or a quote substantial disruption of service now this vote came after bart already did this before back on august eleventh you may remember in response to a planned protest on bart organized by people angry and wanting to speak out against the fatal shooting of an unarmed man oscar grant a transit police officer your highness' mess really the protests never materialized in part because the switch was flipped and cell phone service was blocked just like that and i seem to recall that happened somewhere else egypt i think so let us know what president obama said when when president then president hosni mubarak bl

wrote a great piece about whether the f.c.c. is covering up crimes for wall street and i would have used the same title without the question mark i really respect that i think you did not see any heat but when the f.c.c. starts investigating one of these crimes then the goldman sachs like hire the investing. then they take the initial motion to investigate they just destroy the documents and that's illegal so my opinion it's not only corporate crime it's corporate capture of our government and if we really believe in democracy we can allow b.p. to buy in the government then just as responsible for you know the actors in the i remember allowing themselves to be corrupted and to be bribed it is i told the agree i think we need feature in the finance reform i think we need a major restructuring of the us our political system i also think at the same time that i don't want to deflect away from the real culprit here which is wall street you know it's almost like if you got paid by someone to rob a bank who is guilty or a person who ac

so stating that the measurements show that there is only one field of the f.c.c. limit, of course. either he knew what he was doing or he didn't know at all what he was doing. there were similar affidavits of safety sore cellular antennas. they provide the similar calculations. i have looked over many of them. after the antennas are installed and become operational, the radiation density can be measured, but no one has provided any evidence of such measurements have been done. may i finish the paragraph? vice president miguel: thank you. >> thank you. and the rest is in the paperwork you already have. vice president miguel: correct. vice president miguel: rabbi, laura, peter keene, elsa, hirsch. as was mentioned before, there is a one-minute time limit, that is not unusual in the second hearing of an item. >> sir, as a person of the church across the street, he has been waiting for three hours. vice president miguel: and we have been working for three hours. if he wishes to come up first as well. >> i would like to give him an opportunity to say a aye few words. >> the same amount o

and so they were there wreck threats at the members of the f.c.c. particularly the leader. that was a scary time because we they were just outside we didn't know whether they would come in and we asked there are interview are you scared he said you only die once. so the syrians are very i felt hospitable people but when when it comes to political talk when it comes to expressing a political view in a crowd it can really get heated they would. jostle at the rally that we went to it got pretty rough. our camera was procured and so forth. and they're do you know but that is your job you go in there he try to get you try to do what you can to try to film as much as you can try to put it in as much context and we had to tell sometimes. to tell people please calm down otherwise you can't get anything on film where you're listening to the period after the. show their support for the government is the far cry from the images we've been seeing in other cities around the country where there have been reporting of security forces and government protests those elaborate one think about

this costly suit defiant they were made in a press release today eighteen to do their best to blame the f.c.c. and the part of justice for the failure of the merger saying that they do not understand the realities of the u.s. wireless industry oh all poor eighty and see the big bad government ruined your attempt at screwing over consumers too bad now they even have the nerve to say that ultimately the customers will lose out in the collapse of this deal so that customers will be harmed and needed the investment will be stifled. somehow i kind of doubt that so for once i actually congratulate the u.s. regulators for doing their job and if you remember correctly eight hundred he pulled out all the stops to make sure that they did it promising lots and lots of american jobs. when you believe in the future you're always looking to what's next to which possible confident the taking out. is the way to create a better tomorrow that's why we're announcing that with the plan merger with team eighteen people begin bringing five thousand jobs to america from overseas we will invest eight billion dollars