>> nothing passes the senate. they are so out of touch. the point is, it didn't pass. it wasn't passed because of the union deal where the union was not considered to be a corporation. i just think it should be across the board that union can be made up of members, but a corporation, they make the money and they can spend $1 billion. >> i'll tell you my position on this, which i think is logical. i am only for voluntary contributions from individuals, but that means that if you're going to legislate and say the corporation isn't going to make the contribution, then you have to make the -- you have to allow the individual members of the union to decide whether or not to make contributions. in other words, we take corporations off the table. they can't contribute in the future. if we're going to do that, then what has to happen in the future is the union members get to decide where they're going to make the contribution and if they're going to make the contribution. but that would require implementation of the beck decision and would require a situation where you move from the union leadership deciding that they're going to take and make the contribution on behalf of the members. you see what i mean? that brings equity to the system. they can advise the members to make the contribution, but it would have to be voluntary. and you bring it down to individuals, all right and corporations don't make a contribution and a union leadership doesn't directly make the contribution, individual union members make contributions. if you do that, you have equity in the system. and that would be the way to go. >> so far, we aren't getting close to that. the other thing, they talk about pension plans and things like that, if they get away from a defined benefit program where you could be a police chief for a year and your income jumps up $100,000 in your retirement and we are spending billions of current tax dollars just to pad up the reserves that were never put there in the first place. >> it's not sustainable and coming in for new guys, there has to be some adjustment on this. there has to be at the state level and at the federal level. >> lastly, i'm going to say, wall street has admitted to $600 trillion in derivatives. now, we know that those derivatives are probably only worth $300 trillion. i don't care how much we do right here on main street. we can't get any money on main street because we aren't an emerging market but a suck market, because it's all overseas. we have a big elephant in the room that's called the military. it's not a $600 billion organization but $1.2 trillion organization. if you take the money that's hidden in the department of energy and homeland security and all this and the patriot act, i mean, we are like living under a facsist state. >> with respect to the question on derivatives, one of the things we are trying to do is create transparency there by creating exchanges where the government will be looking at both sides of the transaction and all of that will surface and the economist argues it was lack of transparency in derivatives that helped create this crisis. hopefully that step of having an exchange where all of that is now now before the fed and s.e.c. and so forth will be helpful. yes, sir, your question. >> my subject is about something we all hear about constantly and that's about high school kids quiting high school before they graduate. and there is a solution to it which i have written to you about it twice, the solution is, you pass a law saying you cannot get a driver's license without a high school diploma and as much as they like to drive, they would go to school. [laughter] >> well, that is actually an issue for the state government in california. so your state senator and state assembly man -- >> you can push it, can't you? >> actually, i respect the bounds between the state and federal government. i'll give you the phone number of the state assembly man here. >> i bet it would work. >> good afternoon, mr. royce. you recently voted against the bill to help the states who are broke due to this financial meltdown to keep thousands of teachers and firefighters on the job and educating our students instead of on the unemployment lines -- >> what makes you think that if we go out and borrow all of this new money, which right now is threatening to downgrade our status for treasuries from aaa status. the fed said this is unsustainable if we keep borrowing. we are going to have a crisis in terms of what happens -- it's going to compound the problem. at what point do some members of the house have to stand up and say we can't borrow anymore? [applause] >> if you can't pay for it all -- if you can't pay for it all by cutting other parts of the budget, then what logic is there for us to go out and borrow more and then we are going to give that money to state governments, i just don't see how it's sustainable. >> there are two answers to this. >> my back grouped is financing, accounting and economics. i'm telling you what logic. >> logicically, if they are on the unemployment line, they aren't paying taxes and second of all, they are taking unemployment, which is going to cost the government even more money. i guess it would be the state government in this case. the other thing is if we let these tax cuts for the rich fade into the past -- [crowd booing] >> there is two ways to balance the budget, get more income or spend less. and if the people -- the teachers and the firefighters and the policemen are not on the job, we are all losing, our kids are losing and they are taking unemployment, which is costicing the government even more money. >> we are losing and it is important that state governments develop sustainable plans in which they're not setting up pension schemes that work against the long-term interests of being able to govern the state. if you set up pension schemes where people retire at close to 100% of their salary at age 50 and age 55, and then you can't fund the ongoing operations of the state, it's time for the state to step up and say, we better look at the new plans coming forward for new people coming into the work force and adjust this. instead what we're doing, what we have done, what we have done is to send more money to the states under i guess the presumption in the future they are going to take some of these steps. i don't see how we can continue a methodology where we ever expand the public sector at every level and it becomes, you know, grows from -- grows from 20% to 25% and takes out of the economy, which is happening, and expect the private sector to be able to create enough economic activity because the taxes come out of the private sector. and i have shared with you earlier my concern that, it might look like you could just run taxes up to the moon. you know, 70%. i guarantee you if you do, if you do, you will see less economic activity, fewer people will decide, you know, to keep working and they'll say, well, i have run this business and i'm going to retire and close it down. i mean, this is why you have to look at the total picture of what you're doing. and looking at only one half of the equation, the public sector, which is taking more and more resources and developing lavish programs and i shared with you what happened at the federal level, without considering the impact on the private sector, which is shrinking won't get you where you want to be long-term. anyway. thanks for your question. [applause] >> mike chandler from buena park. we have economic stresses on our society and that's sobering and real. my concern is that those dynamics are causing people to overlook or diminish another area that is critically important and that is defense. when i hear people like barney frank proposing a 25% reduction in the defense budget, when i hear people in the navy saying we should reduce the size of the fleet from what it is now to 230 when the navy chiefs are trying to get it to 313, i think taking our economic stresses out on the military is not good. my niece is an army officer and tells me some of the burdens that run through her realms and it is sobering to me because i don't want to see our guys get shortchanged in this budgetary problem and if there's no budget from the congress and slice money off from where they can sneak it off from, then somebody's father, uncle or brother are going to be dangled because fighting al qaeda and islamists around the world and if we are going to fight, we can't afford to cut the military and lose on the back end. [applause] >> thanks, mike. i want to make sure that our men and women in the military have the best equipment in the world, at the same time, there are probably efficiencies we can find in any bureaucracy. there is a balance in that. thanks very much for your point. i appreciate it. [applause] >> the question i have to ask is if there is anything on the books at all for a bill that would suggest that only one item be put on the agenda rather than having four, five, six items that might not go along with the original bill. that's a big problem because you as a congressman, perhaps the major bill that's being passed is good for the people, but the smaller ones that are with that are not good, so therefore, you have to defeat it. that's my first question. second one and i'll sit down, i have not heard anything about obamacare and one of the items in that that h has nothing to d whatsoever with health care has to do with senior citizens and that's the 3.8% tax if we sell our homes. many of us have purchased our homes a long time ago and therefore, we are going to come under that $250,000, if you are single, which i am, if i decide to sell my home, i will not only have to pay capital gains, but i will have to pay that 3.8% tax. and with that and with social security going up, i do not even get social security and that's another thing, my husband had it, but i couldn't get it, but with the medicare going up, gasoline tax going up and possibly a value tax and i hope that does not tax, all these things going up, when november comes and we have a different demographic in the congress, will you be able to set up a situation where that 3.8% tax will not come to fruition? >> i will try to do that and let me add that your original suggestion, original point on this omnibus legislation, this was something that was not envisioned in the constitution. you know, there wasn't thought given to the fact that members of the house might figure out a way to roll items, especially in conference committee, into a bill which were never heard on the house floor or that something might be written in conference behind closed doors where it's posted after midnight and the press and the public and members of the house and senate don't get to read about it in advance of the vote and there's a vote the next day and there is no way really to go through it. this needs to be changed. we should have transparency laws both in terms of how long -- [applause] >> -- procedures should be followed. the senate procedures were originally written by thomas jefferson and should be followed in which every issue is vetted in the committee before it ever comes to the house floor and debated and there shouldn't be items stuck in in conference afterwards. and omnibus legislation should be phased out. so i concur with you. let's go to -- ok. that's time and let me thank you all for attending and let me thank c-span for being with us today. i appreciate it very much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> turnout for another town hall meeting on monday with democratic representative mike ross on monday at 2:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 3. coming up another town hall meeting with illinois democratic representative danny davis. after that, a look at the political and economic impact of the recent floods in pakistan. also, nasa's information technology conference with remark from google vice president. >> one of the things i regret about politico and rhetorical life in washington is that every major figure from the president on down is merely reading what somebody else in some committee has produced. speech writer for secretary of state and wrote about presidents in a book and he'll share insights on washington on c-span. >> next, another town hall meeting with representative danny davis in chicago. he talks about the financial services industry, unemployment and education. this is just under two hours. >> let me thank both of you who are already here. as a matter of fact, i grew up in an environment, my father was the most punctual guy i have ever known. he was so punctual and we would go places and nobody would be there but us. growing up in the rural south as i did, we went to church a great deal and oftentimes we would be there in the morning. i will never forget this one sunday, my father and i got there and after about 30 minutes, a young minister came in. he had just come out of the seminary and chatted and 30 minutes later no one was there but the three of us. so he looked at my father and said brother davis, nobody is here right now, but me, you and your son. what do you think i ought to do? and my daddy said, well, son, let me tell you, because i'm a farmer. i ain't no preacher. he said when i get ready to feed my cows, i load the wagon full of hair and go on down to -- hay and go on down to the pasture. he took that as his cue. he opened up with a congregational song "jesus keep me near the cross." and then he had a hymn, read the scripture, had a prayer and had another congregs asal -- congregsational song and offering for the poor and proceeded to give his sermon and finished the sermon and took up an offering and took up a special offering, took up a building fund offering, still nobody was there, but the three of us, so he looked out at my daddy as he got ready to do the prayer and he said brother davis, how did i do? and my father said, like i told you, i'm a farmer, not a preach preacher. i admit when i get ready to feed my cows i fill the wagon full of hay and go on down to the pasture. i don't give them the whole wagon load. and i think we are going to have a wagon load this evening because i think you have a wagon load of thoughts, of ideas, of questions, of interests and concern and i want to thank you for coming out to share those with the rest of us with your neighbors, with your friends. and i also appreciate the fact that this is one of a about 15 town hall meetings that i have scheduled for the month of august, which is supposed to be our recess, our district work period. and it is, in fact, all of that. it is every bit of that. we have already had four, five already. and i must confess that most of those, we have the most fascinating piece of geography in all of america called a congressional district. it starts downtown chicago at the lake, right at lake michigan, goes as far as 2400 north, as far as 4500 south along the lake and then it comes out to king drive, 5700 south, over to halsted street, out to 22nd and out to dupage county and out to the end of cook county and includes oak park, maywood, westchester, berkeley, north riverside, forest park, so it's a mixture of every kind of individual that you will find pretty much in america, except people who are engaged in farming. we don't have many of those except people who have gardens in the back yard. but we have the futures industry, we are the gold coast, greek town, china town, old town, downtown, bronzeville, we are soulville. we have the best restaurants in america and the greatest assortment of restaurants. we have little italy, the community is called. great italian restaurants. and of course we have food, the 7th congressional district is the place. i want to thank the chicago park district, general superintendent, tim mitchell. i want to thank the staff of this area and of this park. derek wilson and greg mason for letting us make use of the park district facilities and i want to commend them because they have an outstanding youth program. when you came up, you may have seen the windy city dawsons, a bunch of young individuals out practicing and getting ready and playing football with tremendous parental involvement and participation. and we know that we have experienced a great deal of violence, not only in our community, but in places throughout the country. and one of the reasons that i think that we do is we don't have enough parental engagement and involvement in the lives of children. and if we could duplicate what they got going here thousand fold across the country, then i think we would certainly create and generate for ourselves a better environment in which to live. of course i'm going to go right into issues and problems because that's why we come. we know that we have had a great deal of concern about the flooding that occurred in our community a few weeks ago. as a matter of fact, i thought it was going to rain 40 days and 40 nights, but it rained maybe 10 or 12 hours. i remember we used to say it rained 40 days and 40 nights without stopping. and noah was glad when the water stopped dropping. it didn't reach those proportions, but certainly my basement had a great deal of water and many people throughout the area had water in their basements. and so we have been working on that issue now ever since it started. we have had several meetings. we have had all kinds of discussion. and i'm pleased to tell you that on this afternoon, the governor submitted to the region five office of fema the information that we had gathered when you asked to fill out assessment forms of -- because part of the process is to make sure that the damage reaches the threshold that would then cause fema to kick in and of course, the governor, by submitting to fema, is actually asking the president of the united states that he would declare all of these areas that have been affected as federal disaster areas. i would like to spend just a little time with mr. jimmy thompson, who is the regional coordinator for region four operations of what is called iema, the illinois emergency management agency and they are our state agency that deals with the flood. and i would like for jimmy to tell you what the process is. we would entertain a few questions because we basically reached the point where we know what we were doing with that issue and then we'll move on and open the floor for other kinds of discussion, other kinds of questions. and again, thank you so much for coming. jimmy. [applause] >> thank, congressman davis. and thank you on behalf of illinois emergency management agency for having me here this evening. as far as the flooding incident that occurred, it started out as congressman davis stated, it was a rain that started about 6:00 p.m. on friday, 23 of july and continued through the 24 of july. so that was the incident period. and we all was affected by it. congressman, each and every one of you and 10 other counties were affected. once that occurred, now we start with how do we fix this. and now we are at that point. we start -- every disaster starts locally and starts with each and every community. so the process started with the mayors making a proclamation that their area was inundated enough that they needed assistance from outside the community. so several communities immediately declared their area a disaster, which once that was declared, it started to move the ball forward to the county. so cook county was called in for assistance and it wasn't long before it was noted that cook county's capabilities was exceeded because there were so many areas that were affected by the water. we are talking about flash floodwater, over 5.8 inches of rain that came in 12 hours and some areas of dupage, seven inches or more. how do we fix this and how do we get assistance in as quick as possible. cook county made a proclamation that they needed assistance from the state. with that, it came through my office, the regional four office which covers lake, dupage and cook county. i called and made a call to our state emergency operations center. and on the 26 of july, my interim director, joe klinger, he made a request that the state enforce. at that particular time, that started the ball moving to get outside assistance or federal assistance. just recently as last week, august 4, we started with the preliminary damage assistance. those preliminary damage assistance was a combination of team members from fema, which is federal emergency management agency, iema and the local municipalities and the governmental bodies. we also at that particular time, there were two joint programs going on. we needed to do a preliminary assessment of the major infrastructures that were affected, those are your government alpha silts, those are the police -- facilities, those are the police and rescue units, the fire. we need to make sure we assess as far as expenses and bringing things back to a normal operating condition. along with that, we had the individual assistance program and that's where we each as an individual got a chance to put in our form as far as how we were damaged -- affected by the rain storm. so a lot of homes were affected by the flash floods as well as the sewage backup. so we are talking minor and major damage to homes and facilities. there was over 590 homes that was either major or minor damaged, but not only that, there are a lot of homes that may have had a small amount of water that has mold and mildew. so that has to be eradicated and that has to be eradicated through certain means. the preliminary assessment which was preceded by each municipality getting the information out to the residents saying fill out these forms. the good thing i can say, everyone did a great job in getting the forms filled out and getting them back to the governmental bodies to get the process moving for the preliminary damage assessment. and they started last monday, monday afternoon. they opened with a town hall meeting in westchester and the team immediately went out into the field. they concluded their preliminary assessment on saturday. so they did our area in less than six days. and again, the amount of data that was collected, the amount of information collected from the individual assistance and the assistance for the infrastructure, it meets what we look at it and say there are certain indicators that need to be met. and i can say the numbers that was met by the governmental bodies in getting everything together, it's a strong indication that there will be a federal disaster declaration. as congressman davis stated, the governor this afternoon sent that declaration forward to fema five, and that is also being requested through the president. so now, it's a matter of we have done our part and we have to wait for fema to do its part. now again, is there a time limit on it? could it happen today? could it happen tomorrow? there's no time limit. and that's the downside. but we do know that we provided them enough data that it shouldn't take them that long in making a decision. again, one of the things that is a strong indicator in this is the economy. if you look at the individuals, the homes, the businesses, small businesses that were affected, they are all involved individuals that are going through economic downturns. so that is another thing that's in the favor of helping getting federal assistance. so, again, now we just have to wait for fema five to respond back and move the paperwork forward to the president. and that's where we are at this particular time. so hopefully, it happens sooner than later. if anyone has any questions, i will be glad to answer. >> they had people come out and make an assessment of the area? >> that is correct. the assessment teams that go out . we sent them out to the most severely affected areas. they have may have gone into some of the houses but not all of the houses. they don't need to go into each individual residence because if they go into one or two houses and there was five feet of water, you can determine there was five feet of water in the other residences. >> how are you doing, danny? i haven't seen you since march. >> how do i know if i'm in that count that you have just given? >> did you fill out a form and turn it into -- >> yes. it's not a home, it's a building. if you filled out the information and turned it into your municipality, it was counted in. what township are you from? >> 24th ward. >> the office was a recipient of those forms. >> i know i got a lot of forms. i got over 6,000 forms from the city of chicago. and i know -- and they have filled out the spreadsheet with the damaged and affected homes and they have the addresses and names of those residences who filled out those forms, whether it was a business or individual residence. >> how would i know if my form was sent in, you know? >> if you filled it out -- i know they went to where they were supposed to. they delivered them to downtown office of emergency management. >> i didn't go through with my alderman. we went downtown. >> you went to the system directly. and that's fine, too. if you were not included right now. this was a preliminary damage assessment, if we get the federal declaration, you will still have an opportunity to fill that information out and be included in the count because there will be other people that knt have the opportunity to get the paperwork filled out that will have an opportunity to do that. >> is notification going to go out to the community when this happens? >> when it happens, if there is a federal declaration, you'll know it, because it will be announced. >> ok. >> thank you very much. >> president obama? >> that is correct. >> thank you. >> is there a deadline to complete the forms? >> the damage assessment team that was here, they completed their work as of saturday, so they have gone out to the western part of illinois right now to do damage assessments out there. however, again, if you did not have the opportunity to fill your forms out, if we get the federal declaration, you will have the opportunity at that particular time to fill that out. >> ok, thank you. >> all right. thank you very much. and you will actually need to do that in order to have a claim. see, there are two steps. step one was to have enough information for the declaration to be made. that is the president now has the information that he needs and we are pretty confident that it will reach and exceed the threshold because the loss was pretty severe. and in many places, it was seriously severe. so we don't have much fear as to whether or not we're going to reach the threshold. now, once the declaration is made, you've got to try and receive some compensation for what you lost in order for them to know that, you've got to have some form, some documentation, some assessment must be made. and so you've got to do like i'll have to do, say that i had, you know, two feet of water in my basement and only thing i could do when i looked at it was turn around and go back upstairs. but i am confident that the process has moved extremely well . all of the different entities have done exactly what they were supposed to do. the county government, the state government, the local government and now it's left up to the people to look at the information and go from there. so let me shift and move on to some other areas. first of all, congress operates on a two-year cycle. we have a session of congress, which is for two years. and so this year is, you know, just about to wind down, which means that we will have had this session for two years. and i serve on the ways and means committee, a committee that was very intimately involved in writing the health bill. and i'm so excited and elated and delighted about what that bill does for all of americans, but especially am i excited about what it does for the 7th congressional district in illinois, because we are so uniquely positioned to benefit from that legislation. why do i say that? we have more hospitals than any other congressional district in america. we have four top flight medical schools. we have more community health center clinics than any other area. we have tremendous research. we have tremendous expertise. we train more doctors and more nurses and more other kinds of health personnel. and we just don't train them for illinois or for chicago. we train them for its world. as a matter of fact, university of illinois trains more african americans to become physicians than any other universities in the country or medical schools with the exception of howard, the two traditional black medical schools that have existed over an extended period of time. and so we're very proud of what our health care delivery system does. plus if you noticed, i passed out a little piece of paper that gave you some very direct information about what it does for the 7th congressional district in terms of the numbers of people who will benefit. and so i think it's the greatest thing that's happened to health care since medicare and medicaid , which was passed in the 1960's. obviously, there are people who disagree with that. but everybody in america has a right, even people have a right to be wrong. and there are people who disagree, and i think they are wrong, because i think it is a tremendous advancement for people in america. higher education. we have two of the best years for higher education that we have had i guess since the pell grant . we increased the pell grant. in terms of individuals being able to get more money from it. we cut out the middle man in the student loan business. we put more money into historically black colleges and universities, in hispanic-serving institutions, in asian-pacific institutions. all of the minority institutions. we created and funded a new category of colleges and universities. and we have eight of them in chicago places like malcolm x is now called a p.b.i., which means it is a predominantly black institution. so is kennedy king, so is olive harvey, so is harold washington, so is robert morris college. all of these institutions, south suburban college, east-west university, all of them are eligible now for monies that they have never been eligible for before. and so we think all of those are just great movements. and of course, we had the economic stimulus activity. so people say it's not going to work. i say that it just needs a little more time, that it is beginning to work, that it is helping to stabilize the economy . the best way to judge the impact of something may be to look at what would have happened if it didn't exist. i am confident that had we not passed the economic stimulus, we would have seen the closure of far more banks than what we have seen. we would have seen more businesses going out of business. we would have seen more home foreclosures. we would have seen more individuals wondering what do they do next. and so i just set the stage a little bit in terms of my analysis of what we have done. and during this two years, we may not have solved and have not solved and don't claim to have solved all of the problems, but i can tell you if you look at what existed when president barack obama when you say name the president when president barack obama took office, i think pound for pound, you have to give the man a tremendous amount of credit for the leadership he has provided. america was almost in a state of panic. [applause] >> almost in a state of panic. and that panic now has subsided some, but we got to keep working to make it real. so if you have some comments or questions, expressions, please, go right ahead. yes, sir. you want to wait until we get the microphone. i want to thank c-span. the news outlet that i watch. when i get a chance for being here and helping us to express our thoughts to the rest of the nation. >> my question is about the modification. i have been trying to get my mortgage modified for the last year and a half and i'm wondering why it is taking so long. >> well, i think it has taking long perhaps for a number of reasons. we have had some difficulty and we had to put certain kinds of pressure, if you will, on some of the institutions that received economic stimulus money, because even though they received the money and the purpose was to stabilize them and then put that money into circulation, some of them kind of held onto the money because i think they were afraid. but i hope that now and after we have put some other pressure, that they will begin to lighten up. and there are modifications that are taking place. there are good outfits doing great work and maybe we could end up suggesting some others that you might look at if you are not getting the kind of response that you would expect to get from whoever it is you are dealing with in terms of your particular mortgage. >> just keep on applying? >> he was just trying to follow up. why don't we get the gentleman -- the person in the back and then come up to you. the lady in the back. well, either way. >> you were saying that the banks, shouldn't they have been held accountable since they received this money and this money should have been distributed to the people that was in need. so there should have been some type of stipulation in in place like the gentleman said he was trying to get his loan modified. i thought there would be a stipulation in place to hold them accountable. you said they are holding onto the money and you have to put some type of pressure. what type of pressure, what type of stipulation has been in place? >> part of the pressure is that the president had a immediating with the banks and we called that taking somebody to the wood shed a little bit in terms of laying on them what the expectations are. in addition to that, we have actually had financial industry reform since then. that will legally press those institutions to do better and to make sure that the money ultimately will get where it was intended to go. i mean, it wasn't the idea of just creating any kind of boondoggle for the financial institutions, but we knew that if we did not stabilize those institutions, then our financial system would be in absolute chaos. i mean, it would just be untenable. so the idea was to help stabilize those institutions so that they were as solid as we could help them to be and then they'd do the right thing and help put the money in the lands of the people. and so they needed to get some nudging. and in some instances, it hasn't been nudging. they had to get a little kick. they had to get some more stipulations that will force them to operate according to the new guidelines, new procedures and will not be able to just hold onto the money and not let it go and not get it into the hands of consumers who need it. in addition to that, there are other kinds of activity that have been developed and designed to assist in the stableation -- stablization of communities and neighborhoods. for example, chicago got $55 million in the neighborhood stablization effort and that is to make sure that those homes that may have been foreclosed that are now boarded up, that they can be rehabilitated and put back on the market so that a neighborhood is not plagued with boarded-up properties that will take down the value of the property of other individuals. and so that money is actually done -- i mean it's in chicago. it's here for chicago. the city has designated someone to handle it. it's mercy housing and people are beginning to make use of it. and it's beginning to have some impact and take effect. it has taken a little bit of time, but i think we've got some movement. and i'm very pleased to see it. i think there was someone over here. why don't we shift over to this side. so there's equal opportunity. [laughter] >> thank you for coming. congressman dennis kucinich is going to hold field hearings in chicago about the fact that there are so many foreclosed homes and that the banks are not giving these modifications. and i'm sorry, i don't remember the name of the committee, but congressman quigley is on the committee and congressman kucinich has said that he is going to invite the other area congressmen to participate in this hearing. have you been invited yet? >> dennis kucinich is one of my very dear friends and quite frankly, i served on his subcommittee on the committee of government oversight and reform until this past year when i went on ways and means and i had to do some realignment of my committee assignments. but in government oversight and reform, i wanted to remain on the committee on the postal service district of columbia, what used to be called the old civil service committee which has oversight over the employment over the employees. i had to give up being on dennis' subcommittee and i have attended some of them already although i'm not a member of that subcommittee any longer and his committee is domestic policy and deals with issues affecting the country. not only does he do those kinds of hearings, but it also deals with drug use and substance abuse, what our drug policy is and how do we do something to get rid of the plague that drugs have on our society in america. but i will definitely be at dennis' hearing in chicago. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. we have on the other side -- >> congressman davis, i think i represent a huge area of america, middle-aged, unemployed after 34 years on the job and the employment situation is not looking the greatest for those of us who are too young for social security, but not old enough for social security. and so now, a lot of the promises the president made was looking at these companies that have been taking these jobs offshore, which has been devastating the middle class. what is going to go on with employment to get this country moving back so even those houses that are stabilized can have people afford to live there and repurchase the homes. >> let me talk about those tax loopholes that existed that got dealt with to some degree last week when we were called back into washington to pass the jobs bill. and i might, you know, mention the fact that for the state of illinois, that meant that we were going to be able to save the jobs of over 5,000 teachers, that we were going to be able to allow some of our school districts not to increase class size. so that was a very meaningful piece of legislation that the president signed immediately that afternoon after it had been passed. it passed in the senate and then we got called back so we could vote on it, and of course, it passed in the house and it gets rid of some of the loopholes where companies will actually exist offshore. they will, you know, indicate that, you know, our company is in different islands. our company is someplace outside the united states of america to escape paying taxes. and i agreed with the president that something had to be done about that. and something was done about it last week when we passed the jobs bill. not enough. not everything that we need to do about it, but we will continue to pursue that until we can make sure to the best of our ability that those companies do not receive the benefits of being american, but not paying taxes to support the government and its efforts. yes, ma'am. >> i pay my mortgage company $2,900 for a modification. yeoh -- i'm wondering how is the government involved with me paying $2,900 to have my mortgage reduced? >> you paid $2,900 in order to get the modification? >> yes. >> that seems to be some terrible -- in terms of that transaction, i would love to have someone in my office or even myself kind of look at it and explore it a little bit with you. you're saying you got a modification. you were paying a certain amount for the mortgage and then you were able to get the mortgage payment reduced. >> only after i paid -- i have all of my resets, i paid $900 one time and paid $870 one time and about two months ago, i paid $2,900. >> in fees? >> i paid $2,900. >> in fees. >> more than $4,000 and didn't get it the first two times but they said if i paid the $2,900, i would get it. >> would you please call us and come in and see us and let us take a look at that? and we would be pleased and delighted to do it. . . >> we will make sure that is given to legal authorities so they can look at it. >> helping people that have helped -- >> you mean mortgage counseling people? there are a lot of different ones that are doing things. i must confess that we spend a lot of time and a great deal of interaction with an outfit, the southwest coalition community council that i think is one of the best outfits in the country. we also have the west side health authority. the neighborhood housing service is one of the real experts. there are a number of different ones. we can give you a list directly -- i don't want to make it appear i'm advocating or promoting one group, -- >> we just need a list. >> they may not be good, some of them. [laughter] but we will give you a list. there's a gentleman in the back. >> i applied it three times and i was either denied because i didn't have a date on it or my phone number and one of the forms was supposed to have been made -- so we were denied a third time. >> he has been off work for 18 months already. >> some of these different business entities -- we serve as a bridge in terms of bridging the gap between people interacting with different business entities. that is not our primary responsibility, but we do it and you can always call us for a suggestion, a recommendation court or even in some instances, we will give you an assessment of what we think based upon our interaction with other people. for example, if i know somebody who has used a certain company or certain business and we have really explored what their experiences were, we may suggest that you want to find somebody else. we are not opposed to taking an individual looked, even at transactions people may have had. we are not necessarily experts on all of this, but if there is a need to get you to expert advocate, we can certainly do that. they are tough. many of them are real tough. some of them do not display the kind of sensitivity i think they ought to be displaying. some operate right on that edge of law. the best way to deal with those types is not to use them. if word gets out that they are not good people to do business with, they will not continue to exist because if nobody is doing business with them, they cannot exist. please let us know who they are and we will try to work through with you what we are able to do. >> when the bill was first introduced, help for homeowners, there were provisions in that bill for not only reducing the interest or moving the interest to the back of the loan, but there were provisions for forgiveness of the principal. i've talked to several institutions trying to find out what banks or institutions what banks might be entertaining the idea of forgiving part of the principal. i have not gotten a favorable response from anyone. >> let me suggest that when the crisis first developed, we were part of a coalition made up of push, woodstock institute, lawyers for better housing, south boston coalition, and many of the recommendations that ultimately surfaced as national recommendations, we recommended many of those off the bat. they were things that we knew. for example, we know that in many instances, it makes sense not to foreclose on a property because if you foreclose on it, in all likelihood, everybody loses. the mortgage holder, they're likely to lose because if people move out this week, two-thirds of everything in the property is gone next week. no matter what it may have been worth at that moment, we know that once it is vandalized, it's not worth anything. so, the mortgage holder loses, the neighbors lose because it's an undesirable property on their block and of course, the people who own the plot -- the people who own the property lose whatever equity they may have had in it. we pushed that concept, very few financial institutions have been willing to take that route. quite frankly, not an awful lot of elective officials have been willing to actually support that kind of concept. so you have to be able to get enough support for whatever your ideas are before they could ever become law or even before they would become practice. >> but that was actually passed as part of the bill and i don't know why no one has accepted it. are there any avenues or tools available to put pressure on the lending institutions to make them stop concentrating on the interest and start giving principle? >> let me suggest that a bill is not passed until it has been signed. it may have partial movement. you may have a subcommittee that will vote for something. then you get to the full committee and the full committee may reject it or some parts of it. the house may pass something, but what gets to the senate, the senate may take some parts out or both the house and senate may pass something and the president may say i'm going to veto this, i'm not going to sign it. then it doesn't really become law until all those entities have agreed. in some instances, it requires much more than even a simple majority. in some instances, in the senate, you have to be able to get 60 votes. a lot of negotiating will take place before you arrive at 60 members of the set who were willing to vote for a provision that might be in a piece of legislation or in the bill. so it requires much more than what we call a simple majority. we have always been taught that the majority rules, but sometimes, it takes a supermajority in order to rule. >> what do you project -- another moratorium on foreclosures? when barack obama became president, part of the original bill was a moratorium. it sounds like people might need another moratorium, and other 60, 90, 120 days. >> i'm not optimistic about a moratorium. on people not having to pay whatever it is that is owed. frederick douglass used to say something and that i concur with what he says -- in this world, he do when they defeated know anything else, that is you may not get everything that you pay for, but you most certainly will pay for everything that you get. pushing moratorium's -- not opposed to pushing them and i do push them and we have pushed them, but the reality is if you are in the house, you have to get 217 other people to agree with you. in the senate, in some instances, you have to get at least 50 people to agree with you. in some instances, you have to get 59. so i'm not all that optimistic. one of the things i've learned in this business if i don't know anything else about it is that change is not easy to come about. good ideas were great ideas, you have to get enough support from the people in order to make it happen. you don't only have to get support in illinois, you have to get support in south dakota and in wyoming and in mississippi and in texas and in all over the place. but i do believe people should continue to advocate for what they believe in. then, if you don't get exactly what you are shooting for, sometimes you get fairly close to it. get to thedon't moon, you might reach the stars. keep working toward it, advocating for it, but i'm not all that optimistic about a whole lot of moratoriums. not on money. americans like it too much. >> a few years ago, we had the same problem with the abandoned properties that belonged to hud. we have all of these buildings that were wide open. as i recall, at 810 north milwaukee, with all the agencies you mentioned, they met and at that time, we were able to get that director to go to washington and the straight out this problem. i think that's what these people are asking for and i think it can be done again. even though the people who end up with properties, the hispanic housing corporation has the insurance to cover and all, and none of our people in our community was able to get up -- was able to participate in that particular program. i think we are at the same level where we were when we had that problem in our community with these houses were left over. they claimed they didn't have no money to close up. they came up with money. when this bill was passed, those safeguards, the experience we had in the past should have been put in so -- think perhaps your office could sit up with those people and the department of housing and see if we can rectify this particular situation. >> we do have money. as i mentioned earlier, the $55 million -- >> [inaudible] >> that shouldn't happen. if the money is available, people should be able to make use of it, should be able to get contracts to rehab buildings that have been foreclosed and are sitting vacant. >> every bank you gave money to, they repossessed it. why did that happen? >> the banks have repossessed lot property. some of the banks have been much worse than other banks. as a matter of fact, we have lost some of the very best banks. >> they have got a up. >> we have lost some of the very best banks. we lost the bank rate in the midst of ballpark. >> the only bank that a lone black people money. >> and of course with activity in many other places around the country, we have had a real struggle with shore bank, which has been one of the most sensitive banks i know anything about in terms of neighborhood lending, and terms of looking at distressed areas, and with people to did not necessarily have a lot of money. but i can tell you the banking industry continues to lobby, the financial industry continues to lobby. we havehe industry's -- to keep lobbying as the people so that we can end up with the kind of provisions that will protect and promote the interests of the people, realizing we are capitalistic country. we eat our country that bases its economics on capitalism. i don't expect that to change too soon. we have to find ways to make systems work and work for the people. the stabilization program i think is certainly one avenue to getting rid of some of the foreclosed and boarded up properties we see in the neighborhood. >> chicago is becoming the the murder capital, especially among young men between ages of 14 and under 30. we are having murders every weekend. what is the federal government doing other than gun-control, because we have millions of guns out here. that is not realistic situation. what is the federal government's response to the murders occurring daily, hourly, every minute here in the city of chicago. >> let me tell you that it's a realistic proposal for may. i believe if you can reduce the number of guns in circulation in our society, you reduce the likelihood and the possibility that individuals who will use those guns in a negative way would have access to them. i believe guns are made to kill people with and if you can keep them out of circulation, you reduce the number of people who are gobbling to be killed. i think gun-control is a very desirable activity. i am 100% in favor of it and will continue to be 100% in favor of it. but that is not the only avenue. that's not the solution. there are many solutions and there are no simple solutions to very complex problems. the federal government, when you say the federal government, you mean what kinds of laws are we passing in congress. if we pass laws to increase the likelihood that individuals would get a higher level of education, that's one way of helping to reduce violence. if you pass bills like my anti bully on legislation that helps to teach individuals that bullying is not the best approach to living and certainly is not the best approach to problem-solving. if young people in the schools were taught as a regular part of their curriculum conflict resolution the way to resolve conflict does not have to be i will not the chip off your shoulder or you will knock the chip off my shoulder, i think that education means the great deal in humanizing people and the more you educate people, the more humanistic many of them have a tendency to become. there are programs that are being passed like my second chance back. that is designed to help individuals that may have been arrested and convicted of a crime and incarcerated, but need avenues to try to wean and work their way back into society and become normal citizens. we are the most imprisoned nation on the face of the earth. there is no country in the world that has more of its people in prison in actual numbers or in proportion of the population than my country to is of the, the united states of america. one of the reasons as those individuals come out and keep going back in. >> these -- we just had a 17- year-old sheet a 7-year-old in the head. this young man doesn't have a record of going back for imprisonment. we are having major social issues that the federal government should and can address and they are occurring daily in the black community, especially. all of our lives are being put at risk because these young people are shooting wildly and shooting at anything. there seems to be a need for something to occur. i wish i had the answer, but for something to occur to begin to address the absolute disregard for the law that is starting at such a young age. when you have 17-year-old sticking automatic weapons and and being a 40 clip, there's something wrong. >> you make my point. if there were no 70 murals without automatic weapons, -- if there were not 17-year-old without automatic weapons, they could not empty the weapons. >> these children are angry. >> conflict resolution. we have to teach them how to battle -- how to better handle anger. for example, much of any program to help people try to reintegrate, anchor management is a part of what individuals need to learn. but i see a lot of people were not incarcerated that need anger management. i come into contact with people every day who need some anger management. i come into contact with people who need a community mental health center almost on every other block. if we never change our approach to certain kinds of things and certain kinds of behavior, that behavior will continue to manifest itself and will continue going around in circles. am thinking we have to put stop to it and education is the absolute key. we have to put all the resources into it that we can. the gentleman all the way in the back. >> its ironic that you bring up the story and i'm a teacher and i taught at the school where the young lady was murdered. we talk about putting a stop to it and there is no easy solution or answer to a complicated situation, yet sometimes the need to reflect on what could be a possible cause of these problems and how can we solve it. instead of being reactive, we need to be proactive. i taught all boys in the third grade and i heard terrible stories about them. but it's not the fact that it is in made for them to want to shoot somebody had to be dangerous and become a credible. nobody wakes up in the morning and says i want to go to jail today. -- become a criminal. we do not incorporate young people into a form where they will feel comfortable and participate in a forum like this and we don't have any activities that are of their interests. we may do it from our point of view and our interest of what we think they should or not be doing. we have a community meeting here and huge complaint was we have kids that keep playing basketball in the alley. i would prefer them to play basketball in the alley then to rob somebody on the corner. rather than going to our congressmen and saying how can we implement something for you, have something to do immediately after school that maintains there attention and supports them academically as well. i was fortunate to come from a school right here where three of the students in my class were able to go to college. i was blessed that i have tenacity and i have been blessed beyond belief. but i'm thinking how can i go back because i see there's a huge disconnect between our elders and those who are in my age group. you don't understand us and we don't understand you, how can we incorporate use in our community and get the more involved instead of shutting them and telling them what they should do. >> i'm not certain i believe there's such a great disconnect. i think for example, there are many individuals who do not get involved in terms of what they can do. i was not all with the congressman. as a matter of fact, i was chairman of the boy scouts for 13 years. ivied more chicken wings and then to more blue and gold dinners, but we always had trouble finding enough men to become scout leaders. sometimes we would have to press women into being, in violation of the rules, because they could be done others but they were not supposed the scout leaders. i see people learned to do some different things -- what i see a guy used to be little league baseball coach but has also gotten at least 20 people elected to public office that i know about. some people do lots of different things. the things my folks taught me, i never thought much to be wrong with any of it, like going to sunday school or going to church. saying yes ma'am and yes sir, helping people across the street, trying to lift people up rather than pulling them down, trying to help people understand that if you are positive, that's different than being negative. i always tell people that you have an ugly person trying to make a pretty person ugly does not make an ugly person pretty. we're not teaching certain concepts enough. sometimes there is not the disconnect people think exists and talk about. i have never read anywhere historical where children ran the society. i believe you listen, and interact with, and you try to help motivate, stimulate and activate. that she tried to teach them to read and write and understand and know that life rewards you based upon what you do any decent living and taking. i think that involvement and participation will go a long way. i think how fortunate those little boys are had you as a teacher. guess what? most african-american boys in this country, by the time they're in third grade have not at an african-american male teacher. many of them begin to think at that age that education is for girls and females. i've been to some schools that went to the sixth grade and i saw one african-american male in the whole school. >> i thought i was a great asset to the school. i lost my job week before school started. my principal did not know -- you talk about education being an important part, when they had did, and i don't know how this affects all other schools, but my classroom was extremely hot all year. and when we got to our job, we did not want to sit in an office that was burning up. how do you expect 20 kids in the classroom, third graders will of energy to sit still in the classroom that's 120 degrees while you go into an administrator's office and its the one air-conditioned room in the entire building. how would you feel as an employee when you go to your boss's office and its air conditioned and cool and you go to europe and it's not? it's an environment that they should not want to be there. -- and you could you yours and it's not. how do you motivate the use starting at such a young age in conditions that are almost like being in prison? >> it should not have existed, but the only way i know to bring about change is for people to be fully in gauged and involved at every level of life. in chicago, we are fortunate because we have local school councils for schools local school councils should have a tremendous amount of influence of what goes on in their local school. i go to local school council meetings and may have 500 pupils and their maybe six or seven parents at the meeting. what happened to the other 475? i think the concept of democracy means you are engaged, you are involved, you make the greatest and most effective use of yourself to create the world you think we ought to live in. i think everyone of us ought to have an opportunity to do this. part of the greatness of america. we have the only guarantee i know that we have in this country is the guarantee of the right to struggle. and the extent to which we are willing to struggle is the extent to which we are willing and able to bring about change. >> i would like for you to shed light -- i read in the chicago tribune of moneys passing for the unemployed people better getting foreclosure and i was wondering if you could shed light on the that and to has the funds, who gets the funds, and when did they get the funds? it was in the "tribune" last week that the legislature passed funds for the employed people in foreclosure. >> one of the things that none of the legislation has actually done is say that if you are being foreclosed on, we are going to give you $5,000 to help pay off your mortgage. here is $5,000. pay your,000 to go mortgage that might be in arrears. what the programs do and are designed to do is to create opportunities or whoever the lenders are. to reach some kind of agreement with the individuals who were the are of course so that they can try -- who are a the borrowers, so they could try to come up with a plan that would allow those individuals to be able to retain their property but will also allow the individuals who were the lenders to recoup what they have loaned out. so when you talk about loan modifications and we talk about all these different approaches, that's what the money is supposed to do. some people have been successful and many people have not been successful. so we have to always keep looking at programs and legislation to try to figure out ways for them to become more useful and effective than what they have been. there are moneys, not enough there never is. there never is. we have to keep working to make the program more effective than it has been. wait until the microphone gets there. >> @ do you think we as a community have gotten comfortable with teen pregnancy and it's having an impact on the violence that is occurring in our community. >> -- >> in reference to the violence taking place, do you think the community has gotten comfortable with teen pregnancy and teen pregnancy is helping to have an impact on the day -- because the violin are not geared toward raising children? >> let me say this. i believe children thrive much better in a two-parent environment where both parents are in the same place. we still have a large number of children who are being born to to parents, but they are not in the same place. they are not really single- parent because you cannot have a single parent child. it takes two to tango. the institution we call marriage and family has lost a tremendous amount of ground. that influences and impact social behavior. the more organized society is, alas chaos you will find. marriage to me is the first form of organization because it obviously you have two people have organized. if nobody was married, you have far more chaos i think and yet far more organization in society than we currently have. how much value i will put on the question in terms of 50% or will it be 25% lower? i don't know how much lower it would be, but i know one thing. if two people are paying rent in two different places, in all likelihood, they're going to have less money for other kinds of things. i think there is value to marriage, to family, the social organization and all of these things will help reduce violence and create the kind of environment we would prefer to live in. >> in addition to that, do you think the community is looking to what we could do if we organize and help elect officials? >> i think of organization is most powerful instrument known to humankind. if you want to have power, the new organize. we sing a song of the church sometimes attend that says give me 10 men, give me 10 stout hearted men who are willing to fight for the things they adore. give me 10 men and i will give you 10,000 more. if you can organize 10 people to do something, you are going to be far more successful at doing it than if it's only one. or two. so social organization is the creator of power. so i believe if you organize, that gives you a sense of power and you would not have in any other way. the lady all the way in the back. >> we look for a different organization to take care of things that starts in the home. the word of god says charity begins at home. i say in our culture, we have always been stigmatized to deal with mental help us. we have a lot of children out there who are bipolar, schizophrenic and mac depressive. we have not covered at as african-american people. when we look at these kids out here, we assume they just pick up a pistol and shot somebody but we never look at the mental capability because of the school what they did was stigmatized and rather than actually send them somewhere so they could actually find out what's wrong with them. then we have parents that are struggling with addiction that are not involved with their kids, so the kids and that raising themselves and i deal with the father and mother still struggling with addiction and these kids are out there and angry. i agree with conflict resolution. to serve and protect -- they can take that off their car. and some people have been caught up because of things there did because there quiet and silent. you must be an example because kids model our behavior. and if we're not going to set an example, we can shut it down. [applause] >> we cannot find any disagreement with that. what we take the lady over here. >> you said a subdued as controlling $55 million for stabilization. >> the city of chicago pre >> how are they allocating the money? who is teaching us how to fill out the forms correctly? like the gentleman said, if you don't cross your t's and dot your eyes, they rejected his application. >> they have a housing organization they have contracted with to basically run the program. that organization is mercy housing. there are individuals and some small entities who might be contractors or may have the expertise to fix up a house. they are able to acquire these and then as a matter of fact, there is one gentleman who is so proud -- his name is nelson bailey. he's an ex offender. -- his name is melvin bailey. he decided he would not be a next offender, he would become a contractor. so he has become a contractor and he was telling me just the other day he had three of these homes he has repaired and they have -- and they are ready for the market. you may have read about him in the column in the "sometimes" the other day because -- in the "son *" the other day. he was able to go out into one of the suburban communities because they were not going to hire a group of young fellows from the city because they were ex offenders. he and a group went out there and protested because -- at least they made the column. i don't know that people are going to necessarily hire them, but they did in fact do that. the gentleman right here is next. >> i would like to thank you, congressman danny davis. i've been an advocate for you for years and years. want to take my hat off to you for what your doing for the people trying to get the expunged and off their record. i appreciate you for that. but to reiterate on what the sister was talking about with black on black crime. i was looking at president of the added states. he came intel for his birthday. he had to haggle with those people for his -- to come to chicago. all the issues pertaining to black on black crime plays in the lap of the state, which is illinois. the mayor didn't do nothing for the kids. that's blow in smoke up in them little kids. these kids going back to school, all these millions of millions of dollars of the summertime, they didn't get no money, no jobs, i didn't see no busloads of them cleaning up the elderly backyard and cleaning the gutters out. organization is the most powerful tool we have. i'm the chair -- i am determined to make that outrage center. i am the sole proprietor and all the money i get in the male goes toward the facility. i don't get no money from nobody. i pride myself on letting and people know that drugs, alcohol and smoking cigarettes is a dilemma in their life. i've got seven years claim. i did not put no patch on. i did not go into no room. the bible say if you worship god, he will reward you openly. he been rewarding me. that's why i let people know. if we don't go down there and tell them to start taking all the money, y'all know the people downstate have a lot to do with what goes on in the city. what they do, y'all don't know that. y'all haggle one at each other about how nothing ain't gonna let it change until we get that thing change down in springfield. we've got to give him and him disassociated. he the one who gave us a free bus ride. i don't want him to go to jail. i want him to come out there and we've got another governor that's going to help the people. these young kids ain't got nothing -- when they go to school, the summertime is over with. that's a shame. then we are going to get mad at the kids. them all bad kids. then stop the guns -- how are you going to stop the guns when the arabs have all these stores and that's where you can go buy a machine gun from the arab stores. they the ones given these kids all these guns. how they get in the guns? the get them some jobs -- these kids need love. these kids ain't bad as everybody think they are. they ain't got no opportunity. i was looking at nbc news -- you know that thing come on. they got in the juvenile court one judge had 3056 people, kids that she deal with annually. just one -- that's judge. i love everybody, but we got to organize. >> you won't get any argument from here. >> [inaudible] >> i think we should all commend the hon. danny davis, u.s. house of representatives, seventh congressional district because he's the greatest congressman and the world. not just the united states. [applause] i'm going to run down his record before i asked my question. if you look on the u.s. congress website, when you find out how much money was brought back to the state of illinois, congressman dave this brought more money back -- congressman davis brought more money back than all the congressman in this state combined. [applause] when anybody has something to say about congressman davis, he's a magnanimous statesmen. my concern is that we need to get black business owners back on the map. recently, i applied for an sba guaranteed loan. these idiots have to mitigate -- have the unmitigated audacity not to give me alone. i held five degrees, including a law degree. i have a dynamite business plan. but because i'm a black female -- i've been married to the same man for 38 years. they refuse to give me alone because i did not have a job and my credit score was below 790. that is the reason why i'm behind congressman davis and i don't even live in this district. i want the nation to know -- i advocate everybody backed congressman danny davis and help small business owners be able to master mind, to convince these banks not to be scared just because we are black. to be sure that this money that obama -- he did not say united states, he did not forsake chicago, illinois. he implemented the act so we could get this money and these banks will not release the money. so small business owners could help people sustain their lives. and take care of their children and deal with the violence and educational disparity happening in this city. thank you, your honor. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> of the gentleman right here. >> the young man in the back talked about 100 degrees temperature in the school -- you think it would have brains to know in august to have 100 degrees temperature. if you're going to start schools, do like they used to do and start them in september. >> you are saying that you think not as much thinking may have gone on -- a >> i think the thinking makes a lot of difference. i took 10 hours of german in school -- not on have much -- you know what i mean. i think they should have been taking 10 hours of spanish, but my advisers wanted me to take german, so i had to do what the advisers recommended or said, especially at that time. sometimes, not enough thinking actually goes into decision making. sometimes you have to back up and say this was not the best decision that you have to rethink what you have already thought and come back with another direction and another conclusion. i think we have had some problems. i don't think it was the best to have them in that kind of temperature. it's difficult to even be outside, not to mention inside. we are going to try our best to end at the appointed time. you have a question? >> not exactly a question. i have a suggestion. have been working with the police department -- before i leave, i'm going to give you a strategy. it costs more money to keep to prisoners in jail for year than to hire police officers. i was trained in the army as a combat soldier. i have a suggestion to cut down crime. one police per precinct. hire people in the neighborhood where they live and they have to live there and work there and live there. one squad car -- one squad cars in in one spot. we tried at. i have a solution. hire policemen in the community. guaranteed to work in the community where they live. >> you won't get an argument from me. i think neighborhoods where law enforcement personnel live and people know they're there and there is enough of them, i think crime rate is in fact lower, if even though i have not done any studies or anything to prove that, i think it certainly is and i would agree with you. if you get the community involved with the police, -- i must tell you that a few weeks ago, we have roll-call with the superintendent of police and the deputy chief on a block where there is crime and drugs. we have roll-call right there. the next day, we played the police basketball and we beat them badly. but there can be greater relationships between communities and the police and people who know me know that i'm the guy who has held all kinds of hearings against police, law enforcement misconduct all of the country. it's not a matter of being soft on the police. there are good ones, there are some that are not so good. we have to keep working with them and with the system to get the best we can possibly get and i think that becomes the solution. time for maybe two more questions. >> yes, sir. every town hall meeting i have attended, the same thing comes up, the same comment. congressman dave this is the best congressman in the united states. every town hall meeting, and i've gone to many, many meetings. my question is how can we get more people involved in the wonderful advisory committee structure that you have very few of the other congressman -- i can't think of too many others, have this wonderful advisory committee structure. we have talked a lot about organization, about getting people stimulated and involved. maybe you could make some suggestions how the community gets involved in this wonderful structure that have 430 different advisory committees >> let me tell you, i have the greatest constituents in the united states of america. that is where it begins. we do have more than 30 advisory committees. we meet with more than 500 people in these kinds of discussions, and i do not mean town hall meetings, i mean discussions about legislation, about issues, about things to do, about needs. our education group just had a great scholarship luncheon last thursday where we were able to give kids more than 50 scholarships to go to colleges and university and those kinds of things. and we do have every kind of group meetings. we have doctors -- both of the johnson and there are psychiatrists. they are not doctors -- both of the gentleman there are psychiatrists. and, you know, they teach the psychiatrist and they practice, and we have schoolteachers, we have principles, we have people who are unemployed, everybody can do something. and we just simply try to provide an opportunity for people to express themselves. then we take that expression and try and transform it into action. i can usually vote on an issue with the assurance of that more than 1/2 of the people in my congressional district are in favor or against it because i listen. it might seem like i do a lot of talking, but i really do more listening than i do talking. and the young people are often surprised when they asked me, what does it take to become an elected official, what should i do? and i tell them, if you learn to listen, you will be in position to be a good representative because you have heard what the people are saying. and so i did not know any answer better than that. and i appreciate your comments, but we just simply have to keep getting people involved. maybe this will be our last question, last two questions. >> congressman, with what we have heard it -- there are a number of comments and concerns about foreclosures, unemployment, economics, of violence. one of the things we have not elaborated on the is the issue of health care. you have then a leader in health care, and the development of federally qualified community health centers. one of the things that i think people been so engaged in the core economic issues, and one of the issues of this economic crisis is people lose their health care, lose their insurance. could you tell us how you think this will go in the next couple years? >> i think there are so many great features of the health reform legislation that we passed. obviously, the tremendous expansion of community health centers, the neighborhood clinics, something that we were intimately involved with and in and have been for a long period of time. i mean, we are obviously excited when some of our centers were able to get $10 million each off the economic stimulus of last year. we had two in our community, pcc wellness care, they got $10 million. and the christian reform center got $10 million. all the centers, though, got square,ear north, mile circle christian of whole bunch of them. there should not be any reason for a person in our community not oto have access to ambulatory health care. i mean, there is a neighborhood or community health center almost anyplace that you look, no matter which side of the district you are on. we want to see those expanded. they will continue to expand. we have home visitation programs that we were very much involved in making sure were included in the legislation. as a matter of fact, we are meeting with health and human service officials tomorrow to discuss debt. that. plus, there is a tremendous help project emerging in the austin community, and gayle wood, in gaylewood and austin are like twin communities where there is a great effort to create a healthy community. with everybody involved that can get involved, with people coming to the gym, with people exercising, with people forming walking clubs, with people learning to eat a certain kind of way and not to do as much barbecue and other stuff that people like. you know, all the good stuff, but just to do it in moderation. so the community is involved, engaged. we will take the gentleman right here. that will be our last question. >> -- looking at the unemployment. as an average, that it takes at $45,000 a year just to incarcerate young men. even first offenders, give them an alternative instead of spending $40,000 to incarcerate them. spend $40,000 as an incentive. >> let me agree with you wholeheartedly. i think in terms of the economy, there are lots of things that we need to do and we must do. the economy did not get where it is in any one way. for example, if one segment of the population is getting too many breaks, too much opportunity and the money is not circulating at the way it should, it is kind of like the blood in the body. if too much of the blood is on one side of the body, you are subject to get sick. even though you have blood, but you just have too much of it in one place. so it has to circulate. we call it "going dead" and you cannot go to sleep. if you take your leg and shake it and work it around, then the theling comes back and circulation starts. if we can find a way to divide up the money, and make sure that the money circulates beyond the very rich, where a few people own too much of what is in our country, because if they do, then the circulation does not occur aand certain communities and neighborhoods get sick. certain communities and neighborhoods have a stroke. or they have diabetes or they get cardiovascular problems. so we have to keep the circulation going. and i think that is how we really change the economy. so, again, let me thank the chicago district, all the staff from the central management down to the director and supervisor. we thank them all for letting us make use of the building. we want to again thank all of you for coming. i thank c-span for deciding to come and share this evening with us. i am delighted that they have chosen to do this. and we all go home with the understanding -- i like to close at meetings this way. go home, but did you get your question in? >> i was wanted to talk about -- we have people coming into our office. i was the deputy chief of staff. we have had over 300 young people come into our office as intern's over the last two years. i have to tell you, they have expressed some of very serious concerns of some of them need to see a need to work because they do not have money to get there. they do not have food to eat or housing, or the basic fundamentals. they are not born that way. he think they want to kill somebody or they want to get on drugs or anything like that. things happen to them. their parents go to jail or they get on drugs. something happens to them in their lives. the youth committee wants to work to help young people get their lives back on track, which is what we do every day. that is one of the things i wanted to say. i also wanted to address the question about teenage pregnancy. it is a serious concern, but i do not think it is the main reason or one of the major reasons why there is violence. i had a baby when i was a teenager, and i do not have a bazooka or an automatic weapon and i have not killed anybody today. there is always hope. i do not want anybody to think that is because they had a teenage baby or something happened that there is no hope for them and that they are destined for something bad. i think our young people are destined for good things. if we nurture them and give them an opportunity. that is what they do not have a lot of the time is an opportunity. that is all i really wanted to express. >> thank you very much. i, again, want to thank all of you. i like to attend meetings with a benediction. and the benediction that i use we can repeat together. i am not all people but i am one. i cannot do all things but i can do some. >> -- but i can do some. >> and that which i can do. i will do. and you should, too. thank you, all, who very much. has been a wonderful evening. thanks so much for coming. hi. >> how are you doing? >> i'm good. how are you doing? all right. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> join us for another town hall meeting on monday with arkansas democratic rep mike ross. he talks about immigration, taxes, and unemployment on monday at 2:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 3. >> matthew murray with "roll call" newspaper is traveling in ohio covering the races in the 13th and 16th districts. starting with the 13th district, betty sutton is in her second term. she won in 2008 with 65 percent of the vote. why is this competitive? >> it has a lot to do with the economy right now. there is a fairly high unemployment rate in this part of the state. it is upwards of 10% or so. and there is not a lot of confidence right now that even in a district like this that a lot of democrats will turn out in november. >> so who is challenging her in this race, and how is it shaping up? >> the individual challenging her is a man by the name of tom ganly. he is the largest car salesman in the state. he has dumped a significant amount of money in this race that otherwise would not be competitive. i could not find any polling the republicans have done in in this district, going months back, which is the typical threshold at which they might decide to challenge in the incumbent. it is really the economy and the fact he is willing to spend so much money. >> what kinds of voters are in this district and what are they telling you about the candidates? >> it once was a heavily manufacturing-based economy are around here. and there still is quite a bit of that. i think folks, light and a lot of places, are quite concerned right out of pocketbook issues. that is what they are talking to the canada it's about. >> will these two candidates get help from their party leaders, president obama or john boehner? >> that remains to be seen. what he will see a lot of is that betty sutton is one of the champions of the labor movement in the house of representatives. you will undoubtedly see, because of the cash disparity between her and her opponent, you will see a lot of eds been bought by a union group. >> the 16th district. >> i am in that district right now. there is a freshman rep john boccierthe and another one-time automobile owner. it is a little more difficult the district for democrats because mccain actually won by a few thousand votes here. you did actually see some bad polling for democrats here late in the spring that provided an opportunity. the nrcc has bought up a bit of ad time here. >> what about national leaders campaigning for these candidates? >> you can almost say for certain that you will not see a lot of past democratic leaders coming to john boccierthe's district. i went to an event the other opponentsd his said, if you want to vote to re- elect our representative, that representative is a nancy pelosi. >> they are upset with an ad being run. >> he cheated on his income taxes. he had a $13 million and was forced to pay $1.4 million in back taxes and penalties. what do you think? >> that is ridiculous. that is outrageous occurred >> she wants to raise taxes but not pay them. >> it is hypocritical when you want to pay them and you did not want to pay your own. >> there should be no reason why he should not pay his taxes. >> matthey mary, what has been the response from jim renice. >> he filed a defamation lawsuit in canton. what i think is really interesting about that ad, however, if there's any question after the citizens united decision last winter about how much money unions or corporations or nonprofit groups will spend and how hard hitting those ads will be, it is my understanding that these ads came out of general treasury funds for the union. i think there is no question it has provided an opening for a lot of these groups. >> matthew murray with "roll call" newspaper. for more information, go to our website, cspan.org. >> on "newsmakers", massachusetts congressman ed markey, chairman of the subcommittee on energy and the environment and the select committee on energy independence. he discusses the gulf oil spill, u.s. energy policy, and other energy issues. "newsmakers" today at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> one of the things i regret about political and rhetorical life in washington is that every major figure from the president on down is merely reading what somebody else in some committee has produced. >> philip terzian wrote speeches for cyrus vance, wrote about presidents and architects of power, and is literary editor of the ""weekly standard". he will share his insights on washington on c-span's "q&a". >> the coast guard and zeroth of energy and ocean management continues their hearings this week. we will show you live testimony from bp, halliburton, and transocean employees. each day this week, starting at 9:00 a.m. eastern, on c-span 2. >> from today's "washington journal", a look at an economic and political impact of the recent floods in pakistan. greg mortenson, is the co-founder of the central asia institute and th e author of "three cups of tea". what is the philosophy behind your book? guest: i have been working for 17 years in pakistan and afghanistan. when i started out, i had a lot of problems because i was micromanaging. an old a villager told me that if you want to which your, you need three cups of tea, the first cup you're a stranger, second is friend and the third is family. and he will do anything for family. so much intensity in pakistan. we are hearing about the flooding there. experts warn that pakistan could collapse. this story says the economic disaster caused by the worst flood in their history could spark political unrest that could destabilize and the government, to the obama administration's efforts to fight islamic extremism. let's talk about what is happening in pakistan. can you give us a sense of the devastation there? guest: i have worked there for 17 years, and this is the worst tragedy in the countries history. 20 million people have been displaced. this crisis, if you add up the tsunami and the earthquake in 2005, the devastation, the total sum of that -- now what is happening is people need food and shelter. the second issue is that notice are cropping up, typhoid and diphtheria. people do not have crops for six months or year. the scale of it is just very tragic. it is happening at a critical time. the concern in the media and on capitol hill is the terrorism issue, but i feel, being that iw humanitarian work, that the country needs a tremendous support right now. we need to reach out to the people there. host: we have this piece from the a p. the un secretary general said he never saw anything like the flood disaster in pakistan. he urged donors to speed up assistance to the 20 million people affected. "this is been a heart wrenching day for me. i will never forget the destruction and suffering are witnessed today. i have witnessed many natural disasters, but nothing like this." does that put it in perspective for you? guest: i was in pakistan. i was there in 2005 after the earthquake, and there's no-- in these areas impacted, there is no shelter, nor communication. the government is washed away or non existent. in pakistan, the military was able to respond very quickly. the government is overwhelmed. the military has 80,000 troops working on the disaster. to the u.s.'s credit, there are already about two dozen helicopters sent over there. hillary clinton has made a second pledge of $50 million, but the cost is in the billions to help the people out. host: the work that you've done, you have been instrumental in getting schools set up there. what is happening to the infrastructure and to the schools there? guest: all our schools are fine. we focus on girls' schools. during disasters, we focus on refugee camps. in those areas, people have down time, in 2005, during military operations, a lot of people go into refugee camps and are subject to exploitation or different groups come in and recruit militants. i think education is imperative, not only food and shelter and medicine, but education is a very important. host: in washington. and a lot on our democrats line -- angela on our democrats line. caller: i wonder what he thought about obama's new mission to reach out to the muslim world. i think we made muslim a bad word and that is unfortunate. the new york mosque thing. obama has reached out to the muslim world, and i find it tragic and the sense that we have turned it on its head and made it backwards. guest: it's been good to see that there are a lot of u.s. efforts to reach out to the islamic community. obviously, much more could be done. having worked in tribal areas, part of tribal culture is that you dialogue, and build relationships. if there are to build factions that do not get along, but they will get together in a jurga, like a meeting of elders, and they should not leave that discussion until they come to a resolve. in the u.s., if we disagree, we hire an attorney or quit talking to each other. but i have learned that it is important that we dialogue with each other. i think the same thing with iran or other situations where it is tense. it is imperative. we do not have to agree or even like each other. but it is imperative that we have a dialogue. it is the pillar of tribal society. host: this is from "the new york times" to date -- experience is in no match for breaches in the flood plain. half of a school for girls was shorn off in the flood. within 20 hours, 20 feet of water surged into the village. a canal breached its walls. local police raised the alarm and most people got out, waiting for water, but three people died when their house collapsed on them. the story goes on to detail the devastation happening in pakistan right now. what international aid is needed there? guest: the first thing in any disaster is obviously food, shelter, medicine. the other thing is that the pakistan government itself, the infrastructure in the impacted areas at the district level, has been very effective. there needs to be organization. for example, like in haiti, many, many charities reach the out, thousands of people coming to help, but until there was some semblance of organization -- in pakistan, the military got involved very quickly in the earthquake in 2005. that also helped them. there needs to be some way to get the help to the people who are most deserving and needy. host: how does the u.s. and pakistan's relationships and with the international community affect aid going in? guest: pakistan has gone to some tragic events -- the earthquake, the economy, different governments there. the u.s. and pakistan -- i look at things historically. pakistan has helped out the u.s. is significantly in the last 60 years. the iraq pact back in the 1950's, were they brokered between the saudis and the u.s. for all. -- for oil. pakistan provided secret bases in the 1960's said the u.s. could spy on the soviet union. during the 1980's, pakistan was the conduit for the were jardine afghanistan. when the u.s. wants something, but we try to work pakistan as a on the other but hand, we have an adverse relationship. it is the largest country in that area, and it is so important that we have relationships with the pakistani people. host: not that a tragedy is anything to capitalize on, but is there an opportunity for the international community to make more political inroads in pakistan through aid and building relationships and helping people? guest: i hope so. when obama first got into his presidency, he declared afghanistan his top international party, but unfortunately, for while there were not any gestures. it is only recently. now it is exciting because senator kerry and senator lugar have been over several times, military commanders have made several trips to the area. hillary clinton has just come back from her third trip. it is far more important that you show up than rhetoric and talk. ont: let's talk to william our independent line. he calls from virginia. caller: how are you this morning? since the gentleman has lived in that area for so long, for someone who lives in the shadow of the blue ridge mountains and has watched the area grow, the pictures i see of iraq, pakistan, and those areas, can he shed some light on is there a possibility of these people that you see who live so poorly ever becoming more productive and have a better life, or is it just not possible? guest: i had the privilege to be in the blue ridge ones. i'm from montana, so i share that affinity for the mountains. i think one of the top global problems is overpopulation. the number one way to reduce overpopulation is female literacy. pakistan will double in population in the next 27 years to 350 million people, and the female literacy rate is about 38%. the government says it is 55%, but it is actually much lower. if you compare to bangladesh, also an islamic country, in 1970, the female literacy rate was less than 20%. today, it has tripled. if you look at a population graph, you can see that in bangladesh they have reached an apex. the average woman has 2.8 in live births. four years ago, it was eight or nine births. they have put their money into education. in the last couple years, the country has finally realized it is imperative for their children to go to school. i think population is not something we look at very often, but it is tied in with security and alleviating and your book t- up to "three cups of tea" -- you write in it that "studies from the world bank indicate that just one year of primary school can result in an income bump of 20% for women later in life. an extra year of secondary school may raise their lifetime wages to 25%." infant mortality dropped significantly after a single generation. it also correlates with lower, more sustainable population growth." guest: my whole work is devoted to trying to help girls go to school. there are some issues we talk about and worry about, but i think -- we can build roads, drop bombs, or put in computers, but if we do not educate the girls, nothing will change in a society. not only socio-economic factors, but when women are educated, they are less likely to condoned a son to get into violence or terrorism. i've seen happen in the taliban, their primary recruiting grounds are illiterate. . . host: let's go to allentown, pennsylvania, were james and joins us on the republican line. caller: good morning. i am concerned with the first caller about the mosque in new york. i can see a little bit of reciprocation on their part. the imam that the state department is sending over there to promote this moscow, i think he should ask this audience if we could have baptist build a christian community center from alabama just a few blocks from the great mosque in mecca. you know there will not allow that. they do not believe in diversity in that culture. only we do in the west. it is a one-way street when it comes to tolerance and diversity. talking about treatment of women in pakistan, i have heard stories of many of them living in britain, and human-rights organizations helping them, defending them from honor killings, and the stories of how they had their faces disfigured by their men if they betrayed him or do something to bring dishonor to the family. we talk about peace all over the world, and religion of peace and mercy, and we do not hear about darfur anymore or the sudan were black christians were butchered by muslims. in nigeria, i hear of newspaper reports of women and children being hacked to death by muslims. in saudi arabia, a judge has 's spine bean b severed -- host: let's get a response t. guest: it is true that there is atrocities against women. my wife is a psychologist in the u.s. and she has volunteered in shelters. in the u.s., we have a lot of domestic violence. that is the great beauty of the u.s., that we have separation of church and state and a country where we can worship as we please. again, going back to the women, they bring life into the world, really it is women who are the promoters of education in society. from my perspective i know a lot of abuse and mistreatment of women in my 17 years and i have never had anyone proselytize to me. in islam there is a word referring to the holy book and anyone in it is to be given respect. there is tolerance for all people. all people of the book. host: the last caller talked about atrocities all over the world, talked less about what is happening in afghanistan. guest: i grew up in tanzania, to my background is growing up in a third world country. my father always insisted that africans be in charge. often that was a great adversity for westerners. my father gave a speech in which he predicted that all the department would have in the hospital would come from tanzania. basically he was fired for having the audacity that he believed africans could run the hospital. unfortunately he died in his 40's, but 10 years later we got the annual report in all of the department heads were from tanzania. any type of development, a charity aid, mission aid, any type of aid, what is much more important is to empower people. to empower people means to get people to have local by. we provide the skilled labour and materials but the community must give free labor and materials like a significant amount of community input. what happens is the community becomes invested in the endeavor. not one of our schools has been shut down by the taliban because of the community support. many several and tragic things have happened in that part of afghanistan, but the most exciting thing that has happened, there must be good news on capitol hill a little bit. 2000 -- in 2000 there were 8000 children going to school in afghanistan, now we are looking at 8 million. there are only 5 million more children that need to get to school to reach 100% literacy. it will take a few generations, but there are some wonderful things happening. host: greg mortenson is a co- founder of the central asia institute and pennies for peace. his book, "three types of tea," has sold over 40 million copies. david, good morning. caller: this is an interesting discussion that we are having, but the gentleman has said that the administration needs to have hopes for a better tomorrow and that we need to focus on female literacy, but these people have voted in support of sharia law, which means that women do not get educated and that they do not want to work with our government and that they do not want to just to a free world. guest: in some areas, sharia law is imposed. pakistan has a dual system. there's also a big differentiation between the sharia law that groups like the taliban say is the law, which has nothing to do with islam. the true sharia law, i myself have received two fatwas in pakistan vanishingly from the country. i did not fight them, but i told the community that you could take up to a higher feel and over the course of three years in 2003 i was banished because i helped to educate corporal's education and it was extended by the sharia courts. they said i was supporting the highest principles of islam, reaffirming that education is the right of all people. basically in the koran and the revelation to ma, the profit is an arabic word meaning to read. the real enemy is ignorance that breeds hatred. that is the way that they control society. there is a fierce desire for kids and girls to go to school. some females have stones thrown at them and the girls are banished, continuing their studies at home. there is an influence in some areas to keep girls from going to school, but the reality is that things have skyrocketed over the decades. >> we are talking about the floods in pakistan right now, we have a piece saying that john kerry, who visited the areas with at the pakistani president, said that action must be taken to prevent the exploitation of frustration and that people were exploiting that impatience. he said this in a clear reference to the taliban, "one- third of pakistan has been hit by the floods, with water stretching tens of kilometers from rivers." what is the danger in people using the government frustration over international health? guest: disasters like this, often the militant groups are the first in the area. they are very mobile. it happened in the earthquake. they were providing important aid, but they also did it to displace their own agenda, another reason why it is critical in the beginning of a crisis that the international community respond to that. after the earthquake, most of the aid groups, they left very soon in three to six months. you could manage the militant groups but the problem is that the people will not evade -- will not get pai aid. there has been criticism of the u.s. response, but they were the first in the country to respond. we have already done significant work there in pakistan, leaving the international community. the u.s. military has sent over about two dozen helicopters to help people out. host: hillary clinton is encouraging people to tax donations to flood relief efforts. what is your response when people ask what they can do to help in pakistan? guest: one thing, we worry about things based on fighting terrorism. just fighting terrorism is based in fear. what hillary clinton is doing, pulling in a swat team -- typing in swat, we have to have patience. we cannot just do things to get a reciprocal response to chase the taliban around. we have to back out in all crisis and not putting conditional agreements on to the tenants of all faith in humanity that we help each other out in severe crises. host: the number that the secretary is asking people to text is 5505. in a severe crisis, is it the time to be working on schools and things like that, or is there just a basic need to survive? guest: there is a need to survive, but generally very little aid is put into education during a crisis. as i mentioned before, refugee camps are the best place, lots of down time and people sitting around with kids, providing a catalyst with people that cannot go back to their communities, it is very easy to facilitate refugee camps that schools. probably the least costly thing we even do. during floods, obviously we make appeals with food and shelter and medicine, but we keep the primary focus on contagious -- continuing education for those kids. host: caller from los angeles, good morning. caller: am i on? host: you are, good morning. caller: i wanted to mention a few things in the housing development project. i am a great admirer of mr. martinsons work. i had a few questions, concerning his being able to do so much with these resources, pennies for peace open dialogue between school children in the u.s. and those in pakistan, that way they understand what is going on there with the situation over there for the children. a major thing that even some of the callers today that have misconceptions of what muslims do, not wanting to teach their daughters and all of these things, and i think that what mr. mortensen has done with these resources in that area, one question that i have, so much aid has gone to education but so many of the public schools are very rundown. i have heard stories where families do not send their girls to school because they think there is no female bathroom. how was it that they're able to build these elaborate mosques that are recruiting grounds for militant groups but not actually support the public? so few able to do so much with so little, where is that money going and how does that help the chain just? -- change us? >guest: we build schools for roughly 25 to 50 or $60,000. we get free land, sweat equity, free labor from the community. if it was a world bank school it probably cost having million dollars without subcontractors. there's also a tremendous need, not only in primary education, but secondary education. if you want kids in school, the need teachers. i was at a conference to assess the state of education in norway last year. we spent three days talking about the need to get these children in school. one features the of -- one of the teachers stood up and said they needed directed aid for scholarships, especially women. we were very blessed a few years ago to have a woman passed the bar exam and become the first female attorney out of 4 million people. very focused on land ownership, in the u.s. we are far too busy in the world flood wall in democracy and fighting terrorism. but to not plugged in democracy, you have to build democracy. one of the key ingredients is land ownership. these are feudal societies. in our own history, like japan, the right of land ownership, when women have legal advocacy, it is much easier for them to have the right of land ownership. one of the main reasons that led to the women's suffrage back in 1920 was not this demonstration, but it had to do with the right of land ownership. the first women to vote in this country were in wyoming and montana. not only educated, but landholders. that is another great thing happening in afghanistan and pakistan. go into the district court and you see that the number of women filing land titles is skyrocketing. a key part of helping to build a more civil society. host: why do so many americans seem to care so deeply the people that live in a place that is so far away? happened, what is it about the promise of educating children, especially girls? let's go to chattanooga, tennessee. barry? caller: i am really concerned about u.s. aid we gave the government for pakistan where they were diverse -- diverting some of the money to islamic radicals. this form of aid that we are sending, what insurance do we have that it will not wind up in the radical hands when passed around i do not have a problem with islam, i do not have a problem with following of islam with historical fox in turkey -- historical thinking like the greeks in turkey. host: thank you for your call. guest: the aid going to pakistan, he is exactly right. a lot of the funding going to pakistan, even the military aid, is being diverted over indian fronts where it was initially focus on humanitarian education or health care. the recent bill is an appropriation to send over $7 billion over the next five years. there is a part of the agreement that is exciting where the contingency is built in where there needs to be reciprocal participation from the province in pakistan. the money is also going to claim nonprofit groups doing good work with much more strict criteria. the other thing that is important, the store with the u.s. tends to throw money at problems and if you look back in history, the marshall plan was a brilliant plan that was set up as a provincial, decentralized process in afghanistan and pakistan. recently we set up a -- decentralize provision within the focus on working at the provincial level where there will be still explication, probably, of some of the funds. but we still have a long ways to go. host: robert, ohio. caller: very interesting discussion. two quick questions. number one, mr. mortensen, you mentioned how inclined they were to meet these tribal warriors and work out their problems. what about having some kind of vacate -- camp david approach? especially between pakistan and india. i remember under the bush administration, the billions of dollars that we sent to our frontier force, that is what they called them to fight the taliban and al qaeda in the northwest province -- host: sorry, we lost that call. but i think we got the gist of the question. guest: we started giving pakistan billions of dollars to basically fight terrorism. for some time they were diverting it to the front. about two years ago it happened when the the part of the defense to fit over, pushing the initiative on training the frontier for in tribal areas in western pakistan. they're going to double the amount of local 4. the first time this happened was 2004, where they gave contingencies for elections, sending 70,000 troops into tribal areas. the 70,000 troops that went in, there were garrison to flush out ok that and the taliban. they did not have the train to do these military operations. where was a military operation last year, significantly in area to be much more effective. i think that if we want to help their military, which could help the people in the frontier for. the problem in afghanistan is that there are 30,000 trained troops and increasing the goal, the police force is even higher where we pay for college. with the soldiers that are eager to learn how to read in the right to give incentives based on learning how to read and write and getting their education. thank you, robert. caller: thank you so much for your work. through your guidance and direction, may be our government will understand and through understanding we will have love and peace, thank you. guest: thank you. host: martha, republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my question. every book i have seen, it seems like your book comes back three times. going into schools, it seems that you emphasize. i thought that your reasons were wonderful. the themes seem to be spending time with the people, like he said a few moments ago. i have noticed that in american journalism there have been photos of soldiers sitting with the people in the villages. could you be a rate more your emphasis on how it is influencing our military and our american approach? which might be more your approach. guest: i was a medic in germany. in my initial book, i was fairly critical of the military. i went into the pentagon flights after 9/11, calling them all laptop for years with no boots on the ground. having watched the military, i think that maybe our government entities, the military really gets it. the military has been on the ground a few times. last year when general mcchrystal was pointed commander, the first thing that he did was ask myself and other people to facilitate meetings in afghanistan. we helped to facilitate about three dozen meetings. it was very informative and it was going on for four years now. great credit going to our military commanders to put a huge emphasis on working with the people. the recent military operation in canada are, moving through southern afghanistan, called off by general mcchrystal one week before he resigned. it had to do with the fact that the elders said that they could not have a relationship, so do not do this operation right now. i think it is great that general petraeus is in the same line. they're working very hard to work with local leaders and communities to gain support and trust before they do anything. host: reported by laura came in afghanistan, "has another soldier emerged from the home of a village elder, troops spent time crowd on a plastic tarp on this third floor in afghanistan. the phrase, "3 cups of tea," has entered as the lexicon for shorthand for any leisurely, trust building chats with locals. take off your sunglasses and drink lots of t." collado, a welcome. caller: thank you. the cultural center in new york, comparing it to saudi arabia. is it valid to even bring that up in the conversation? and with the images on pakistan, my professor is a pakistani national. the images that she shows are usually quite different from what you see on television. she says that many women do not cover their hair and that many upper-class women own their own businesses. guest: thank you. things are very different in different areas. in rural areas, people tend to be more conservative, but it does not mean that there are radical. in urban areas a majority of women might not have their heads covered. we have not gotten far in some categories. and if you talk to these women in get to know them, they will tell you that their no. 1 desire is not whether or not they have the ability to avail themselves, but more that they have peace, have a job, take care of their kids. most of all they say they want the best for their children. whether or not they wear a veil for a birth of, that is probably number five on the list. what they care about is like any woman in the u.s., food, shelter, your children are ok. host: "the world has been millions of dollars to help pakistan cope with flooding. guest: i am weary of pledges, but often what happens is less than 50% of the money materializes. people need to come with checkbooks. do not put money, but give money. i would rather see $50 million given today rather than $800 million as historic we pledged in any crisis. ledges rarely materialize. i hate to say it. 22 countries got together to decide how rebuild the country. only 28% of those pledges actually materialize. it is exciting, but need to see the checks. >> coming up on "newsmakers," representative edward markey on c-span. >> one of the things i regret about political and rhetorical life in washington is that every major figure from the president on down is merely reading what somebody else from some committee has produced. >> secretary of state cyrus vance, and literary editor of "the weekly standard." tonight, he would share his insides on c-span's "q&a." >> the bureau of ocean energy management continues hearings this week. we will show you live coverage, with testimony from b.p., halliburton, and transocean employees, each day this week starting at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span2. >> nasa held its first-ever information technology conference this week just outside of washington, d.c. among the speakers, internet pioneer vince -- this is about 45 minutes. he has also been called one of the fathers of the internet. president clinton presented him and his colleague with the u.s. national medal of technology for founding and developing the internet. they were recipients of a reward, which is sometimes called the nobel prize of computer science. president bush awarded mr. cerf the presidential medal of freedom. please help me welcome vince cerf. [applause] >> good morning. well, this computer seems to be closed tightly and does not want to open. how many engineers does it take to open this little bugger? last have misty's year. it does not look too good. i will let you guys figure it out. meanwhile, i a couple of comments to make. is this microphone working ok? the standard question is, "can you hear me back there in the where?" and the standard answer is, "no, we are not built that way." [laughter] sorry about that. how many engineers does it take to turn on a microphone? if i get that kind of reaction, i should just sit down. it is not going to get any better than that. i actually want to react to what missy said before i get to my prepared remarks. i am sure the average age of google went up by one year when i joined them. on the other hand, one of the joys of working with a young company, i do not know what the average age is now, because it got started in 1998, et and -- and the two were just graduating from stanford, and they were hiring people who had advanced degrees or bachelor's degrees, so the average age was in the mid twenties, so that was 10 years ago, 12 years ago, so the average age has probably crept up some, but from my point of view, there are still young people, and one of the great thing about young people is that they go 900 miles an hour, and that is because they are too young to know that you cannot do that, and the result is they are extremely stimulating, and it is really, really vital. one of the most important things from google is that i learned a lot from these people. people would say, "why do we not do x?" x 25i would say, "we did not years ago, and it did not work," and there was a reason why it did not work 25 years ago, and that may have changed. the other thing i want to mention to you is that it is a term of art, and, in fact, from the context of the i.t. organization, it is a very tricky possibly even dangerous term, so let me try to explain why i feel that way. nasa has been very successful precisely because its scientific missions have been ignition- centric -- mition-centric managed. however, in the i.t. department, one of the missions of i.t. is to support all of those scientific missions. you are an infrastructureist, and that means in many cases, building and designing systems that are multi missions in nature, and one of the key things i hope you take away from a presentation is that information architectures must be viewed from a multi emission point of view, -- mission point of view, because your systems have to work over many missions, so to get into the substance of why do ithis morning, not not have -- oh, thank you. one of the reasons i wanted to talk a little bit about the internet is you live in the middle of advanced and growing public network environment. the internet look like this in 1999 and like this in 2010, just bigger and more colorful. what is important though about the pictures, it was generated automatically, the colors represent different autonomous systems in the network. there are literally hundreds of thousands of networks all connected together. they are not run top down. this is a collaboration of global proportions, so this is a cooperative opportunity. this is an unusual kind of thing. it is not centrally managed at all. the only reason it works is that there are standards which everyone voluntarily adopt in order to run this complex system. the number of machines on the internet used to be doubling every year. now, the growth rate is rather slower. on the other hand, you cannot see all of the computers that on the net. these are the ones that you can see. however, there are many that you cannot see that are hidden behind firewalls on networks. this is what we can see publicly. the number of people on the network is getting close to 1.8 billion. i might also add that the number of mobiles has gotten up in the 1.5 billion range. many of those are internet enables, and so for those of us at google, we have to make sure that our things work on the laptop and desktop and the mobile wha. there is probably not a person in the room that doesn't have a least one mobile, many of which is a smart device. i have watched this grow over the 35 or 40 years, and the asian bloc commission is now the largest in absolute numbers. half of the people are in china, about 400 million of them, and that is only at about 20% penetration, so you can imagine that many, many more people on the net will be from asia, and, therefore, their languages and interest will color the style of the internet. the data is as d.c. it. i stopped making any predictions about europe, because they keep adding countries -- the data is as you see it. this is not the stock market. at least, i hope not. --as youthe number or can see, it is dropping rapidly. we have almost completely wasted this. -- used to this. that is my fault, i ended. when i was running internet program for the defense department, i had to decide how much space is needed. remember, this started in 1973 when we wrote the first papers, probably in 1974, so by 1977, this is very much an experiment. we do not know it is going to work, and after a argument among the engineers with no one coming to any agreement with how much choice we needed, there was a variable length or different best -- bits. the experiment never ended. so here we are. we are still running the experiment. we need to do something about allowing the network to continue to expand, and the solution is a version 6. by the way, for those of you who do not know, dr. seuss made sculptures as well as drawing cartoons and things. it seemed perfect for this. if you are not prepared to run six in your i.t. system, get ready, because you are going to need it. in addition to that, you are finding a number of various changes. one is the addition of non latin characters to the domain name system. they have already been released in chinese, in arabic, and so on, so if you have systems that do not know about unicode and are not prepared to deal with non latin sets, you will need to correct the deficiency. security is an increasingly important issue, and the digital signing of domain names is not a reality. many domains are digitally signing them. finally, in july of this year note -- this year. finally, the writing system has vulnerabilities. there is space that you do not know -- the routing system has vulnerabilities. there are efforts pick to digitally assign the allocation -- efforts to digitally assignee allocation, to see whether or not the announcer at -- is authorized to be routed to the particular ip address. in principle, what is happening here is an attempt to put in digital signatures, cryptography, and other technologies in order to improve the security of the network. in addition to that, we are seeing other network showing up. there should be no surprise to you at nasa, because most of what you do when you talk about the mission is to collect data, but we're starting to see the same thing happening now in the private sector, and i will give you an example note. the smart grid is another program which is underway in order to make equipment, appliances and that much more intelligent, so they cannot allow us to decide under what conditions we want to consume power, especially if we are at peak load. you may not want to keep the water in your water heater or run the washing machine until the peak load happens, or accept the idea of the power systems says we are running at peak demand. it is 105 degrees out there. everyone is running your air conditioners. would you mind turning yours off, or would you mind of starting yours off so we can get through this? these are examples, and they may be an eye chart, of what it means when they are not written in error -- in latin characters. the egyptians were the first to be non latin arabic domain names, and others followed. one thing which i have gotten quite excited about is that we are starting to see capability in computing that allows us to put machines into the same environment that you and are living in, so, the best example i have of this is there was a wonderful demonstration at a conference. this guy had a projection unit that the strapped to his chest, and a television camera, plus a handsome and a microphone. this put his computer into the same environment that he was in. so instead of carrying a laptop around or a mobile, he simply projecting an image as he needed to see on a wall or a piece of paper. at one point, he wanted to make a phone call, so the projected the keypad on his hand and then touched the numbers that he wanted to dial. now, why would that work? the television was attached to his computer, and it was looking at what he was doing, and it figured out it wanted to make a phone call -- he wanted to make a phone call. we begin to bring computer power into the same sense an environment that human beings are in. we start to create partners -- into the same sensing the environment that humans are in. this is supposed to our having to adapt with keyboards and so on to the computers needs, -- computers' need. ingle's a big investment speech recognition, and there is another that allows you to send something to go and say, "what is it? we are pretty good book covers and famous landmarks, like the eiffel tower and so on, and it will get better. i do not have time to tell you about my wife's call clear implants -- cochlear impla nts. she also has a speech processor, which is an external system. it turns sound into electronic pulses. i had the opportunity -- the idea that i couldn't reprogram impact, and then what i could do, because she has a microphone which is picking up sound, she could ask a question, and we could turn that into digital packets and send it to a speech recognition machine, like the ones we have an google, and it would go straight to her auditory nerve, so i was essentially putting my wife on the internet. we have not done that yet. [laughter] that leads, more generally, to the idea that we're entering into a period where it is just not an engine of people but in internet of things. more and more are going to be on the internet. communicating with each other. they will communicate with us and with third-party monitoring services. it is going to become increasingly important to introduce strong authentication in such an environment because you do not want the 16-year-old next door to program your house while you are away. [laughter] we need to access and control things. there are strong authentication mechanisms. i think you should anticipate that there will be a very much larger number of devices on the net, and the need for ipv6. there are things i did not anticipate, like picture frames. the first picture frames came in and that will plug into the internet, and someone came in and asked me about them. it turns out they are really nice. you do not have to put up windows or log in or anything. it just runs -- you do not have to boot up windows. if your family members to take digital pictures, uploading them to a website, you get an idea of what is going on when you get up in the morning with the nieces and nephews. if the website that the picture is downloading from, then the grandparents may see something that is not the grandchildren. [laughter] there are other things that look like telephones but which are really voice-over ip systems. i was wondering what you would do with a voice activated refrigerator. a family communication system, which consisted of until now of paper and pen. now, you can send tweets or email or web pages. if we did this with what was inside the refrigerator, we could maybe find out what was in there. when you get home, you could see a list of things that you could have for dinner. you can extrapolate this. your on vacation, and you get an email, and it is from your refrigerator. [laughter] you put something in there three weeks ago, and it is going to crawl out, or you are shopping, and your mobile goes off, and is your refrigerator and gain. "do not forget the narron era -- and it is a refrigerator again. >> do not forget the marina sauce." becoming part of your medical records, it could be ok that your refrigerator is on the same network. maybe it just refuses to open because it knows you are on a diet. the guy who invented this is great. he invented it internet-enabled surfboard. he put this laptop in the surfboard, and now he sells this as a service, so if you're interested in serving the water while you are surfing the web, this is a product for you. this is an i.p.v6. this is not be in the garage with a soldering gun. -- not me. i know your first reaction is only a decoy do that, but, in fact, on any purpose in mind -- only a ddot -- a geek would do this, so i now have one year of this information. i have good data that we can do some serious engineering with. now, if one of the rooms in the house is the wine cellar, this is important, because of both dickerson's and humidity and temperature, the corks dry out -- because over 50% humidity. as i am walking in the door for a three-day visit, the wine cellar is on the mobile. for the next few days, i kept getting emissions shapiro -- a message that was saying, "your wine is heated up." -- heated up." -- heating up." i told and that they needed actuators -- i told them. i can tell if the lights of gone on in the wine cellar. i know somebody went in, but i do not know what they did. when chip per bottle, then i can do an inventory to see if anyone has left the wine cellar without my permission while i was away. you could go into the wine cellar and drink the wine and leave the bottle, so -- [laughter] you have to put a sensor in the core, and if you were going to do that, we might as well sample them to see if the wine is good or not, so then you check feet the -- check the cork, and there is the bottle that you give to somebody who does not know the difference. so i mention this margaret. really, the idea of paying attention to how we use a local resources and how we can be smarter about using them is just the beginning. in fact, more generally, we should be doing this and our cars and homes and so on to keep track of our use of resources. especially those that are not renewable, so that we can get smarter about how we use those resources. that has not been available to us. you get a bill for however many kilowatt hours you use, but you do not know why. we're going to have a number of devices that are going to have to communicate with each other. special capabilities. we will be more like that as time goes on. this get into some of what you are responsible for. nasa is a very large organization and has a lot of parts. part of your job is to help keep the organization functioning, but in addition, the primary purpose is space exploration and observation, and part of your mission is to help those missions succeed. there is what was built back in the 1960's which is called the deep space network. these are used to communicate with spacecraft that are in orbit around. it is a pretty primitive type of network. we have done amazing things with this capability. i believe that it is time to expand the functionality to be more like the internet. so we were motivated in part by missions to mars. what was interesting is the regional plan to the rovers was to transmit information director earth at 20 kilobits and when the radios were turned on, it is my understanding that the overheated, and this was a design problem because it showed up in both rovers. so the cycle had to be reduced, and the scientists were already unhappy with 28 kilobits per second, let alone a reduced cycle, so it was noticed that there was a radio on board both rovers' which could do 128 kilobits per second. it could not go all the way back to earth, but it could reach the order -- orbiter. take the data, wait until an orbiter gets into range, and it was actually 128 kilobits per second because it was out of the atmosphere and have more power, so the result is -- i do not need to remind you that this is the way the internet works. so this is an example of a sort of networking, even as trivial as a three-node system, so all of the data that is coming up from mars is going that way. they used this other method in order to get the data back, as well, so my colleagues and i started in 1998 started working on design for the interplanetary communications network. we started out using cc ip, and that did not work up is the distance between the planets is literally astronomical. between earth and mars, depending where we are in orbit, it could be double for roundtripper. tcp does not do well with that. what if it is 20 minutes? all of this data is coming back. there is another problem called celeste real motion. the planets are moving, and we have not figured out how to stop that. [laughter] orbiters have the same problem. it is a very disruptive environment. a new kind of protocol was required, much more tolerant. we call a bundle protocol. we have been working on this for quite awhile. the protocols have been put on the international space station. they have been put on the spacecraft which is on its way out by the end of the year. we hope it will put on board the internet router in space, the cisco router, and cisco and nasa have been working together to try to get this on board. and, of course, we have a number of ground-based implementations. there are books that have been written. it is being standardized. so we are very well along. we have done some interesting civilian and military testing. the reindeer herds in the northern part of sweden have actually tested protocols because they have such terrible communications. they are 65 degrees north. they try to get through the atmosphere. we put wifi servers in a couple of villages, and we do things with vehicles, and they pick up the data and wander off again. we did it with the reindeer and one. to see what what happened. -- at one point. we funded the interplanetary architecture. we went back and said that it really works well in disrupted the environment. we think it might be useful to you in tactical military communications. they said, "preuitt." they gave the contract, -- "proves it." -- prove it." not because it is more efficient in the sense of bandwidth or anything. it was hopping from one node to another, which is not what the internet does. storage, which is now cheaper than it used to be 30 years ago, can be used in the communications environment, so it actually worked very well for the military, as well. so we are looking forward to a whole series of improvements in the technology at this level. in the certainly hope that the consultation of community was standardized -- consultation of communityatitive will standardize. i have 20 minutes, so i will keep this terse. when conductivity is normal, you have to keep reminding yourself that in a destructive environment, some normal things do not work begins you do not know when you are going to hear back from something that may be many hops away, where maybe you will not hear anything. so we had to rethink an awful lot of the architecture, including things like network management, in order to have a network system. kettani becomes important, especially when your hours away. astronauts around saturn, and something goes wrong. it really is more like email or voicemail, so there is a lot of rethinking that has to happen. the thing i want to encourage you to do, those of you who are ultimately the recipients of the data coming back from these missions, become the curators in some sense of a lot of the data, and it is incredibly important that we be able to keep this information over a long period of time and keep it in a useful form. there are stories about the seven-track tapes that are probably not any good anymore with the material coming off on the very first read, if you can find them anymore. the calibration, the information, what conditions are obtained at the time we are gathering the data, and we could frequently we process that data as we know more about how the universe works. we also love to recognize that this is not just a deep-space st.thing. as missions korea their primary purpose and then are reused for other functions, we may accumulate more and more equipment, and we need to have a local communications to coordinate, so we need networking, not just to give back to work -- earth but to also make this inter-work in a more effective way, so i am deeply concerned that we do not know how to do many of these things, so your problem in part is to help think through how we capture that information and making a useful. i also wanted to mention that one of the things that we were get at google, as i am sure you are aware of, is clouds omputing. -- is cloud cove we like the idea of being able to do this as needed. i think clould-like environments will turn out to be important. there are a lot of things that we can do. it is still in its very early days in terms of design and implementation. one area which is quite nation -- nascent is how to get them to talk to each other. some of you may remember a protocol which standardized a way that computers talk to two terminals which was on other machines. we had to networked virtual terminal ideas. they did not exist. it was just a concept, and everyone on the net you have to work this. i think you need a network coverage will clout condition -- definition -- clouds of definitioncl -- oucloud definition. we are not planning to build this and hoping people will come. while we are hoping to do is to standardize these protocols as they are adopted around the world, and if they use them, it will render the spacecraft potentially interoperable if they choose to communicate with each other. this will allow us to create an interplanetary back barone -- backbone. so i think you very much for your time this morning, and i will be happy to answer any questions you may have -- so i think youthan -- k you. -- than nk you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] if you do not mind using a microphone, that would help. >> good morning. >> hang on. >> you are going to come down and see me? >> i cannot see you at all. i am sorry to the camera guys, too bad. ok. >> hearing about arpanet and all of that, it is a pleasure to me. i am concerned about the problem in your wine cellar. [laughter] darrielle question i had was sort of a two-fold one. this idea of this asyncronous situation. had he found that younger people of war a proclivity to use this and that some of the more senior folks do not? -- have more of the proclivity to use this? >> it is true, it is definitely synchronous. we're finding that the young folks think email is old style. so they are not as interested in email as they are about more instantaneous communications. a lot of young people, especially junior high and high school are near geographically their friends ", meaning they are near their friends, is a real time information makes sense. as they get older, their friends and disperse, and they find out that they do not want to have a sweet -- tweet at 3:00 in the morning, so these tools will become more natural. that is my prediction. we will have to see as we watch this ford as twits -- forwards as twits -- twitters age. [laughter] >> do you think at some time there will be toll roads on the internet? now, all of these things you're talking about, more and more bandwidth, do you think there will be providers who say," if you connect with me, you will be guaranteed x amount of bandwidth"? >> be honest answer is it is not clear. but -- the honest answer. there are some places in the world, what australia, which are committed to putting fiber in every home and making that the infrastructure. the french, of all places, have a very strong regulatory and market which requires the telecoms to be very transparent. we have an interesting situation because there is less competition than one might like in the broadband sector. usually, a telephone company in a cable company, if you have competing at all. on either hand, there is the struggle for a business model, and one of the tensions that is unresolved right now is whether you can make a business model work by having a very open infrastructure and building note with services you could charge for it on top of those. we would need to find a way to monetize capacity in use that as your primary business model. i think there is a fair amount of variation european certainly, i do not find it objectionable to pay more for more capacity. it is the data rates that are the real issue -- i think there is a fair amount of variation here. certainly, i do not find it objectionable to pay more for more capacity. for a moment, i said, "you know, i invented this stuff. you should give it to me." and then i thought, well, no. i got things for my service. but i am paid more for that because of the higher bandwidth available to me. i do not mind that at all. there is a possibility that you use control of the underlying capacity to perform an anticompetitive play, and there are ways that we could ameliorate the problem. let me dig this one over year. yes? -- let me take this one over here. >> the implications, you mentioned the cochlear implants. there has been a lot of fiction which speculates what this would look like. part of the brain, and if they turn it off, you would go into, .ike, autistic moade thinking about it, paraplegics, moving a mouse, so there are several things. >> the cochlear implant -- i will have to talk to people through my back, as it were. the cochlear implants demonstrate how well we understand this. we know enough of it to fake it. the possibility of sensorimotor implants, that is further away in time, but i understand there have been some experiments along those lines. but i want to come back to -- the way you asked the question made me think you worried about people not reacting much any more because of them being on the online environment. is that what you are worried about? >> the potential for a human to have another human, but whenever you are so connected for such a long period of time, it might be a case where it would be in an autistic mota. >> this could clearly be an all- day discussion. there was something written around 1909 or something like that. what happens when people are disconnected from something they were dependent on. google is my solution to alzheimer's right now. [laughter] if i could have a to terabyte brain implants, i would go for that. -- a two terabyte brain implant. some of this will be 3 in plants. -- through implants. let me go over here. i do not have time? ok, that is it, folks. >> let's have another round of applause. [applause] thank you. >> thank you very much. thank you. >> thanks again. we will now have a 15-minute break, after which the track sessions will begin, and as a reminder, we will gather back here 1:34 a presentation -- at 1:34 a presentationat 1:30 for a presentation from jaack blitch also speaking was the chief information officer at nasa and he talked about the obama administration initiatives designed to address those. this is 15 minutes. >> of good afternoon. if you could please take your seats, we would like to get started. public outrage in the office of communication at nasa headquarters. i get to be your host for the awards ceremony. being somewhat i.t. challenge, it was a thrill it to be asked to be the emcee. some of the may remember my wife from her days as chief of staff at headquarters. when i told her i was going to participate in the awards ceremony, she assumed it was to receive the booby prize for most call to the help desk. under the heading of administrative details, i've been asked to remind you that the general sessions are being strained live and will be available on the nasa website for later viewing. also, out of respect for the speakers, sweet -- please switch your cell phones to mute or stun. we of a slight change in the sequence due to another commitment. you will hear from our first speaker before you have your complete lunch and that speaker is the chief information officer of the united states government. it is his job to manage and oversees the i.t. operations of the entire federal government, making them more efficient and enabling more information to be available on-line. located within the office of management and budget, he oversees a budget $76 million. i don't suppose you would lend us $3 billion for nasa? that's another story. his domain encompasses 71,000 federal i.t. workers and more than 10,000 i.t. systems. he also chaired the federal cio conference, comprised of b.c. i those of federal departments and agencies. if you think it's hard getting the i.t. offices of nasa on the same page, imagine what his job is like. it's amazing he didn't walk in with his eyes going counterclockwise. this is not his first appearance before a mass audience. he rolled out the new federal cloud computing portal at the research center in california. in the summit program booklet, you can read more about his background of how he became the nation's first see i know. he is a certified computer and i bet he's also a closet space cadet. we're glad he was able to join us today. please give him a big welcome. [applause] >> midafternoon. thank you very much for having me. i want to thank and recognize the cio of nasa for pulling together this event focusing on the positive side of i.t.. in terms of how do we move from an environment where we have had a history of colossal failures when it comes to i.t. systems to making federal it stellar. to convene a summit of view to have a battle of ideas of how we move forward and take things to the next level is exactly what we need to be doing more of in this administration. i still remember my first day in office. i recall being handed a stack of documents and i was told, congratulations, welcome to the federal government. here are over $26 billion worth of i.t. projects that are way over budget and way behind schedule. when i say way behind schedule and way over budget, let me give a couple of examples. at the veterans administration, in 1998, the va tried to modernize its financial system. after spending $250 million in 2004, that project failed. it was restarted again in 2005 and it was just terminated again last month because of the inability to execute. at the department of defense, after spending 12 years and approximately $1 billion, the department of defense canceled its integrated human-resources them. i wish those for the only examples of failures in federal i.t., unfortunately, there are many more projects like this. that is why in the obama administration, we focus on a number of things to make sure we could turn around how we're spending money on information technology to make sure it is producing dividends for the american people. the first thing we did, consistent with the president's philosophy of an open, transparent and participatory government is that we lodged the i.t. dashboard within 60 days as a reflect on the last 18 months. there are a number of accomplishments that move us closer to making sure we have a higher statistical likelihood that when we invest in i.t. projects of their actually going to liver -- going to deliver. the-board was a huge shift in terms of culture. we move from an environment which was closed, opaque, and a secretive to an environment that became transparent, open and participatory. the challenge there was shining a light on $76 billion worth of i.t. investment. we also started putting up pictures. the idea was we did not want a culture of faceless accountability. we want to make sure we're holding each other accountable for these investments. shortly after we launched the dashboard, thanks in part due to the dashboard at the v.a., we reviewed 45 i.t. projects which we ended up holding out of which it terminated 12 of its investments. we were also able to look at trends across the government, recognizing the challenges in federal i.t.. we launched in january this year accountability sessions which are dated chat -- dated- driven sessions, focused on some of the most difficult problems in the federal government. the first session week ending was on the financial system that the epa. this was a project that was over one year behind schedule. $30 million over budget. when we look at that project, we thought maybe this would be a project across the board. we discovered financial systems across the federal government that are way behind schedule, way over budget, scope to the point where it was unrealistic to expect there would actually deliver on time and on budget. that's why the obama administration took on some of these really tough problems by issuing a policy that halted across the board future task orders on 30 major financial systems across the federal government. we had to say enough. we have spent money on these information technologies that have not produced dividends. the va example, or at has failed twice already -- where it has failed twice already. we also are going through a process where we are putting some of these really troubled i.t. projects on a high risk list that will be released shortly. over the last month, i sat down with every major agency within the council and reviewed with its agencies collectively, projects that may be behind schedule, over budget or off course when it comes to the mission objective to figure out how we actually turn them around as part of the budget process. it is imperative that every dollar we him there -- every dollar we invest in this fiscal environments, where there is a freeze-defense, and on top of that, the 5% cuts when it comes to budget guidance, that the investments we are making in technology don't and becoming wasteful. but we also recognize we are operating in a system where procurements take far too long. as the department -- at the department of interior, the secretary wanted to spend -- wanted to send an e-mail department-wide and could not because all of the systems are cy load. there are over 200 data centers -- all the systems are siloed. achieving a simple task of sending an e-mail department- wide could not be done. those are some of the challenges we need to confront. that's why we're sitting down with every department to make sure as we go into the 2012 budget process that we are looking at the infrastructure, an area easy to ignore but where we would spend approximately $20 billion annually. that's why we drove a zero- growth policy -- as we grew the centers from 432 to over 1100, it's important for us to stop the madness of proliferating these data centers with our recognizing we need to take an enterprise view, government- wide, let alone at the department level. that's what's happening today with nasa as you are looking at your infrastructure investments. i recall launching our cloud computing initiative last year at the ames research center. a part of that was to look at nasa as a leader in the space, investing in breakthrough technologies, rethinking the way we deploy technology through initiatives like the nebula platform. that's why when we crack down on waste, we to find an innovative -- an innovative path that moves us away from spending billions of dollars on commodity i.t. that frankly could be better spent and focus on architecture and actually think about i.t. investment and how the impact every day americans. what i mean by that is, when the irs and the department of education that together, they were able to solve a problem around student aid applications. it used to take dozens of questions and, because the applications are so complicated and because some of would have to file all their tax information and all the education information and asking the same question multiple times because the government was organized in the context of a was convenient to the government rather than the american people -- but when the irs and are and have an education that together, they were able to share data collaborative leonid to making it a lot easier and it is a customer for in. we were able to simplify the process by asking a simple question -- why is it that in our personal lives, we can go on line and track our package whether we are on fedex or ups, yet when it comes to figuring out where our application is, we have no idea and we have to hire a lawyer and pay thousands of dollars to figure out where the government is in processing the applications. shift we want to drive across the federal government -- to get innovators like you in this room to live up abstract from this approach, where we invest billions of dollars annually, to make sure the investments we're making actually produce dividends for the american people. the only way the project and this would becomes a bad headline or story, but we are proactively managing our portfolios, cracking down on waste, making sure they're not going to perform and we actually halt or terminate them. through that process, remove -- we move toward focusing on these projects. we looked at 50 years worth of history and there are a number of great ideas, policies and legislation. if you think about countless memos from the office of management budget, these ideas are the right answers, making sure we have the right government structures, making sure have the appropriate oversight. yet, we continue to fail when it comes to execution. that is my charge to you today, to think through how can we apply this game changing technology and approach it as far as making sure the next set of dollars we invest in information technology are spent wisely and produce the results we're looking for. thank you very much for having me and i look forward to working with everybody here as we try to take information technology to the next level and, as they seem of the conference, how do we take the best practices at nasa and scale them government-wide. thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> thank you very much. we appreciate you coming to give your remarks. i think we will remember this was a very successful summit, largely in part because of your remarks and your commitment to i.t. in the federal government. thank you very much. [applause] >> on "newsmakers" massachusetts congressman, edward markey, on the energy and environment and the gulf oil spill, its impact on u.s. energy policy and other energy issues. "newsmakers" today at 6:00 eastern on c-span. >> one of the things i regretted about political and rhetorical life in washington is that every major figure from the president on down is merely reading what somebody else in some committee has produced. >> he wrote speeches for the carter administration secretary and rode about presidents and architects of power. he is the literary editor at the "weekly standard." tonight, he will share his insights on washington on c- span's "q &a." >> now the results of teen attitudes toward drug use. columbia university hosted the event. opening remarks from their founder. this is 30 minutes. guest: [captioning performed by naonal captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> good morning, this 15th annual back-to-school survey continues theeed effort of the national center of addiction and substance abuse at columbus university, properly -- popularly known as casa, to talk to teenagers and parents. throughhe survey, we have an benefactors that increase or decrease the likelihood that a teenager will the blues -- abuse substances, smoke, drink, or use illegal drugs. armed with this knowledge, we believe parents, teachers, clergy, coaches come other responsible adults, are better able to help our children grow up and drug free. we regard this as a work in progress as we try each year to identify those situations and characteristics that influences that they willaens drink, smoke, were abused drugs. over the past 16 years, we have surveyed thousands of american teenagers and their parents. we have learned how teenagers' attitudes and how their parents attitude impacts teenager behavior. we ask questions such as, if you wanted to buy marijuana right now, how fast could you get it? how many parties that you go to it is alcohol or drugs available? through those questions, we gain insight into american teenager culture. perhaps the most imptant finding from surveying so many teenagers and from other researchers at casa is this, a child that reaches age 21 without smoking, abusing all the hall, without using illegal drugs, is virtually certain to be home free for the rest of his or her life. and for better or worse, no one has greater power to influence a teen-ager's decision whether to drink or use drugs, to choose not to use, and then that teenagers' parents. this year, we conducted two nationally representative surveys. the first time, we did one over the internet. as we have done in past years, we did the other one by telephone bill to create the internet service temple has -- was generated using address- based gambling which is likely to pick up individuals in cell phone-only household. in the telephone survey, we asked trend questions. questions that we have used to measure trends over time. for the first time this year, we asked teens about gangs in their schools. we sought to assess the relationship of gangs in schools to the presence of drugs in schools, and the use of drugs by students in schools where there are gangs. the results are deeply troubling. our nation's public schools are riddled with gangs and drugs, and schools where there are gangs are likely to be schools where there are drugs. six out of 10 schools with gangs or drug-infected, meaning drugs are kept, use, or sold on school grounds, compared to three of of 10 without gangs. 27% of public-school students 12 to 17-year-old public students report that their school this drug and gang-infected. that means 5.7 students -- 5.7 million public students go to school everyday where they face the menace of gangs and where drugs are sold and available. the consequences are enough to terror find any parent with a child in a drug-infected school. if you want to know one of the reasons why so many public schools are failing our children, consider the difference our survey reveals between public schools and private and religious schools. 46% of teenagers in public schools say there are gangs at their schools, compared to only 2% of teenagers at private and religious schools. think abo this. compared to private and religious schools, 23 times likelier to be gang-infected. the telephone survey reveals that drug-free school gap between public and private and religious schools is up sharply from its narrowest point in a decade. in the 2001 casa back-to-school survey, 62% of public-school students, 79% of private and religious school students said they attended drug-free schools. in this year's survey, 43% of public-school students and 70% of private and religious school students say they attend drug- free schools. why the drug-free school caps from 17.235? -- 17 points to 35? sending a 12 year old to 17- year-old to a school with drugs and hoping that he or she will not smoke, drink, or use drugs, it is like handing the child a chichi before the test in asking them not to use it. or serving cheeseburgers and fries and ice cream and asking them not to take a bite. [inaudible] i assure you, adults face the most disturbing finding of our trend analysis is this -- the percent of children in drug- infected middle schools -- usually kids 12, 13-year-old or younger, is up sharply. placing our youngest teens and preteens in an environment where drinking and drugging our common is street -- a state- sanctioned -- a state-shanked and child abuse. the steady increase in the number of 12-70 year-old attending drug-infected schools is a trajectory to tragedy for many millions of children and their parents. states require parents to send their children to school. in some states, it's a crime that parents fail to do so. these states have an obligation to provide safe, drug-free schools. think about this -- if there is asbestos in a school, parents raise hell and will not send their child to that school until all of this is taken out of the ceilings and the walls and everything else. but there sending kids to drug and gang infested schools day after day. the parents have got to raise hell about this problem. we are not going to subject our children to that school until you get squared away. the combination of gangs and drugs is a malignant cancer. it must be eliminated. requiring parents to send 12-17 year-old kids and even younger children to drug and gang infected school is an outrageous misuse of government power and a mandate no parent should expect. attending a drug-infected school th gangs in it, the parents have a right to demand school authorities get their act gether before requiring those parents to send their child there. for ther, we've begun first time, an effort to measure the impact of the bond between parent and teenagers, what we call family ties, related to substance abuse. we found teenagers with strong family ties are far less likely to smoke, drink, used marijuana, far less likely to move within circles of friends who smoke, drink, the abuse illegal and prescription drugs. before i go to the power point, i want to express appreciation to steve widener, the president of the company administering the survey, especially for his insightful work in looking at all the data. on casa staff, emily feinstein, steve widener, working to analyze the data. let me go to the power point and then i will take your questions. this is our 15th survey. weave a group of survey advisors, an extraordinary experts in the field of surveying, and we have them review our survey and results every year as well as the report the right. -- we write. the telephone survey was the trends survey, about 1000 teenagers. the knowledge network survey was the internet 1, cellphone-only homes. that was half again about 1000 teenagers. and then about 5000 parents of those teenagers. every year, we ask them what their top concern is. they can say whatever ty want. every year, and drugs is their number-one concern. close behind is social pressures, including the pressure to trim, used drugs. drugs is clearly the number one problem for our teenagers. gangs and drugs in schools. what happened here was come every year before we do the survey, we do focus groups. we want to be sure the question we ask are the questions the kids will hear. wang which can change quickly. in the focus group in nashville, kids raised questions and discussion about drugs. i was in providence, rhode island doing a presentation on my book on how to raise a drug- free kid before a group of several hundred pubc school parents, and the decaying question was repeatedly asked. this year, wdecide to ask questions about it for the first time. here is what we found. about half of high school students, one-third of middle school students say that there are gangs in their schools. as you can see, schools that have gangs are twice as likely to be drug-infected, schools where drugs are used, kept, sold, compared to schools with no drugs. this is the difference between public and private schools. 46% of public-school kids say there are gangs in their schools. 2% of private and religious school, combined we do not have enough to break them out separately. 47% of public-school kids say there are drugs in their schools compared to only 6% of private and religious school. this is one of the headlines in the survey. more than a quarter of public school students, 5.7 million, attend schools that are drug and gang infected. here is the impact of that. the be bar, drug-free schools with no gangs. yellow is drug infected but no gangs. rennet is drug infected with gangs. as you can see with respe to usage, it is much higher in schools where there are both gangs and drugs. for example, five times likelier to smokeot, 10 times likely to smoke, three or four times more likely to drink alcohol. their ability to get marijuana. every year, we ask their ability how fast they can get marijuana. in the past, we have been asking how fast can you buy them? now we are asking, how fast can you get them? as you can see, in a school with gangs and drugs, 42% within one day, 16% within one hour or less. what are the kids like? what are their friends like? look at this. in a school with gangs and drugs, someone is likely to have a friend to drink regularly, smoke pot, abuse progression -- prescription drugs, and to have classmate to use drugs like cocaine, heroin, math, ecstasy. 5 tons likely -- five times more likely than in a drug and gang infected school. this is the trend i mentioned. we had that blood in 2002, but basically, the spread has been roughly the same from 2003 through 2009. then we have the sharp difference where only 43% of public-school students said their school was drug-free. 70% of private and parochial school students and their school was drug-free. this is a middle school mess, but it is also affecting 12, 13- year-old children and younger. although the survey goes down to just 12, 13-year-old. i should mention here -- i should have mentioned in earlier. whenever you are asking questions to kids about prescribed conduct, you or gore to get lower levels of involvement than you otherwise would. research shows that consistently. so all levels of prescribed conduct will be lower than the reality. secondly, because we get federal money, we have to follow them, we have to get parental consent before we question kids. that will also tend to get your kids who are likely to be less involved. here, there is a significant increase of 232% in 2010, middle schools where drugs are kept, used, sold. again, what is the impact on these teenagers? look up the difference. the most dramatic is with respect to marijuana. not 112, 13-year-old survey in a drug-free school said he smoked marijuana, compared to 10% of the 12, 13-year-old survey where drugs were kept, used, or sold. and their ability to get alcohol. 40% can get all the hall in -- alcohol and one day or less. 20% in one hour or less. marijuana, remarkable. a quarter of our 12, 13-year-old where they are available can die within - buy within one hour. 2%. you can see the big difference in the friends that these kids have. a much larger group of friends who use marijuana, at a much larger group of friends in these middle schools who drink regularly. a much larger group who abuse prescription drugs. in these schools, incidentally, from otheresearch, prescription drugs most likely to be abused our aderol and d ridalyn. almost four out of 10 of them in drug infected schools have friends and classmates who use drugs like cocaine, heroin. i mention family ties. we tried this year to identify factors that give a measure of a bond, strength of a family. here, we took several characteristics. we asked the kids what is your relationship with your mother, your relationship with your father, we asked them if their parents argued in front of them frequently, how often, if they thought their parents were good at listening to them, if they went to religious services with their parents at least once a month, if they had dinner five nights a week. we divided them up one-third, one-third, one-third. strong, average, weak ties. kids with strong family ties, the blue bar, average is yellow, week, the red part. again, the importance of family to raising drug-free kids and reducing the risk that they will smoke, drink, or use drugs. again, the impact on those kids and the kinds of friends that they will have, who they will be going around with. again, much less likely to have friends who drink regularly or smoke pot then kids with week family ties. -- weak family ties. we have always said to parents, know your teenager's friends. this gave us some insight into how important that is. we asked kids,here do you get marijuana? three-fourths of them get it from a friend for a classmate. they are not going to some awful neighborhood or some guy in a trench coat or a dealer to buy their marijuana. they are buying it from someone sitting next to them in their classroom or during recess. and then one-third of those teenagers said that there person knows the person applying the marijuana for them. parent may not know that they are supplying the marijuana, but they know that friend of their son. it is important of parents to know them. also, is a friend uses marijuana -- if a friend uses marijuana, the red bar, the percentage of kids who themselves are likely to do drugs, smoke pot, tobacco, you can see much higher. and again, if they have friends that are drinking, the increased likelihood that they themselves will be drinking, smoking, smoking pot the point is, parents should get to know their friends, have them over, get to know them. if they think a lot of their friends are held their drinking every weekend, or smoking pot, they better start worrying about whether their own child is smoking pot or drinking every weekend. there were some other notable findings. we asked parents -- in juan island, new york, and along the connecticut coast, more communities are passing laws that make it a crime for parents to ser alcohol tonderage kids, other than in their own home. we get lots of questions from parents, what do i do? my 16-ar-old wants to go to a party where they are serving all gaul. not let them go, do i call? wesked them, would you support something in your community which would make it a crime for parents to serve under age kids? nine out of 10 parents said, yes, they would. as many of you know, certainly, parents in westchester and long island have gone to jail for doing this. it also reflects the tremendous concern parents have with drinking among their schools. alcohol is by far and away the most abused drugs by kids. this is the point about high schools. we now have a steady rise in the percentage of kids that say drugs are used, kept, or sold at their school, now for a five- year period. for those that can get marijuana, how do you t in touch with the person you are going to buy it from? text messaging, cell phones have come to the mayor won a world. face-to-face. 14% on social networking sites. that is basically the way kids get it. we asked teenagers whether the teenager is a note that drink, do drugs, are likely to engage in sex. three-quarters said yes. this was quite interesting. year ago, we learn from our surveys that kids whose first smoke was a joint, were much less likely to have a second one than those kids who were smoking and nicotine cigarettes. we noticed kid to have never tried tobacco, only 5% had tried marijuana, compared to 61% of kids who hav tried tobacco. this has been consistent every year. kids to go to religious services more frequently are much likel to smoke and use drugs. we're talking about teenagers 15 and 16 years old. they are not likely to be going to church without their parents, so does suggest some parental engagement. family dinners. again, we discovered in 1996, that family dinners were a protective factor. this has been consistent now for many years. more often kids have dinner with their parent the less likely they are to smoke, drink, or use drugs. that is why we creed something called family day. it is a day to have dinner with your children. this is the 10th anniversary. it is always the fourth monday in a september. we expect governors to proclaim this across the nation. it is like the great american smokeout. it is a reminder. this is an important time and a convenient way to communicate, listen to your kids, and get to ow them. i am happy to take questions. >> [inaudible] most of the kids are going to get marijuana from people they know, obviously. somebody has to manufacture this stuff and make the initial contact. not necessarily related to the survey, from your research as you have done in the past, this is being manufactured locally, by the stereotype drug dealer that we see in south america? >> the federal government points out there is a lot of marijuana being grown in the country and there is a lot comininto the country. the point is, the marijuana that is now being grown, it is much stronger, 10 times stronger than the marijuana in the 1970's. it is a much different drug. the federal datshows that we have more teenagers in treatment for marijuana than for any other substance. i should note, probably any kid in treatment for mayor won independence is all flow abuse and alcohol. -- marijuana dependence is probably abusing alcohol. >> but i noticed you mentioned a second focus group consisting of high-school graduates 18-20- year os. what more have you learned about this second focus group? particularly those going to college or university? how would you compare drug and alcohol usage and the views currently with the recent past, how do the older teenagers compare with their younger student counterparts? >> the questions were about their activity in high school. in terms what is happening in college, we had a report comes out two years ago on substance abuse on american college campuses, which lays out in great detail the activities on college campuses. >> do you expect information from two years ago would be equivalent to today? >> i do not think there have been many changes. you are talking about colleges? take a look at that report. i think it is probably prett solid. it is on the website. >> would you equate towar is, sort is, education groups, with gangs? >> i have never been in a sword or fraternity or social group. i only went to a just what college. jesuit college. any other questions? ok, thank you all very much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> coming up on "newsmakers" -- representative ed markey on the -- on the cleanup of the oil spill. also, vice-president joe biden's remarks. later, discussion on a proposed whistle blower protection bill. >> one of the things i regretted about political and rhetorical life in washington is that every major figure from the president on down is merely reading what somebody else in some committee has produced. >> he wrote speeches for the carter administration's secretary state and wrote about president in -- presidents and architects of power and is editor at "weekly standard." tonight, he will share his insights on washington on c- span's "q &a." >> all this week, we will have events on the deepwater horizon. >> he that indicated there was a high level of gas while you're on the phone from your wife. >> the alarm came over the intercom system. [unintelligible] >> at 200 units of gas, that is where [unintelligible] >> then you started hearing some local panel alarms. what panel were you referring to? >> the operator stations for the vessel control system. those are the local panels that they've -- that is where they get all of their data and that is how to control all the functions on the rig. >> did you at any time here any alarm that would indicate -- >> never. >> are you familiar with the alarm i'm referring to? >> yes. >> can you explain to me how that is set up and your and all -- your knowledge as to how the alarm is set up? >> the general alarm is set up to inform the entire rig of any of three conditions -- number one, fire. number two, combustible gas. number three, toxic gas. each one of those conditions as a distinct tone and distinctive visual light. we have white columns throughout the rig -- one is red, a yellow, and a blue. the red is fire, yellow being toxic, blue be incombustible. you get an audio town and a visual tone with every general alarm. >> did you get either one of those alarms on april 20th? >> no, sir. >> do you know why? >> yes. there were bypassed. >> how do you know they were bypassed? >> because i physically seen it on the screen. actually, what is considered inhibited, not bypassed. >> can you explain what inhibited means? >> you have four states of alarms -- a normal operating conditions, and inhibited condition, which simply means the sensor is active, sensing, and will alarm, give the information to the computer, but the computer will not trigger an alarm. it will give you the indication but will not trigger the actual alarm. then there is an override condition which means the computer will not consider that censors for any purpose. >> whether any alarms in the override position? >> none that i'm aware of. >> i'm not familiar with the deepwater horizon's alarm system. if you get too high gas alarms, say in the engine room, hypothetically, with that shot in the engines and would it shut in the air intakes for the rig favors? >> that would be a bad analogy. there are no gas sensors in the engine room. how the system works is there are several toxic and combustible gases located in key areas. mainly around the drilling package. the drilling package being the key, a secondary is all the air intakes. the air intakes could be anything of the accommodation to the engine room to the spaces, and where fresh air flows. all spaces are controlled with a positive fan, forced air in and an exhaust so that you continuously have air circulating through the spaces. when you get to detectors to go into a high state in one zone, what is supposed to happen is the esd for that zone should trip. that's the emergency shutdown and then you should sound the general alarm. >> do you know why this was inhibited on the deepwater horizon system? >> what i discovered it was inhabited about one year ago, i inquired as to why it was inhibited. the explanation i got was that from the oim down, they did not want people will could add due to false alarms. >> did you boys a concern to anyone about the possible safety issues? >> yes, i did. >> who did you voice those two? >> to the senior on watch that day and my supervisor. >> who are they? >> one was tom feels -- the super fiat -- the supervisor is the longer employed by transocean. the other was steve -- i would have to look in my notes to remember his last name. he is also no longer employed with transocean. >> would mr. bertoni know the alarms were inhibited? >> in his normal custody, he would not see that. -- in his normal course of duty, he would not see that. >> who on the rig was in charge of that system? >> the operators, the bp operators were the first level. the second level would have been and it the third level would have been the chief made and the next level would be the captain and ultimately the oim. >> where they all aware of the systems were inhibited? >> yes, sir. >> yes, sir. >> if these systems were not inhibited, would it have prevented the initial explosions in your mind? i know that your opinion. i'm not trying to put you knowing because of the incident. but these systems were in place and actively running, would allow personnel to get into an area that was safe and would it have caused an explosion on the engines? >> objection. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> let him state what vaccine knows about how the system configured and all that. >> when you get to detectors to go high in one zone, the affected zone should trip. the esd will control your fire dampers, power, and switchboards. all those things should trip -- air supplies, dampers, all of those things should trip. also, you are going to sound the general alarm. that's how the system is designed. >> do you know from your position of either the coast guard or [inaudible] had given the approval to have the systems inhibited? >> i do not know. >> on going to move onto another subject. yesterday, we had [inaudible] here and she referred to this as the well from hell. have your -- have you heard that before? >> yes. >> why it -- what is that being pulled from? >> on a prior

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