[general chatter] [laughter] democratic president ial candidate hillary clinton. You can find her remarks in our video library. It look at tweets from some of the republican president ial candidates. Dr. Ben carson said he had a great time at blakes Family Restaurant in manchester, new hampshire. Ted cruz will be in iowa fundraising for the Republican Party appearing with steve king. Today in washington dc, a discussion on oil prices and their impact on racking. That will be hosted by the Atlantic Council. We will have that live at 3 00 eastern time. The u. S. Senate is meeting this afternoon. The house returns tomorrow. We spoke this morning with a capitol Hill Reporter to get a look at the week ahead in congress. Their district work period. What is on tap for today and the rest of the week . Guest a big issue in the senate this week is going to be trade. All eyes are on president obama. One of his Top Priorities for a second term is to get some of these International Trade deals done
And this week on the communicators we talk to members of congress about the legislation they are proposing. First up senator al franken. Senator senator al franken, you hailed a failure of the comcasttime warner merger as a win for consumers. Why . Guest because i firmly believe if comcast were allowed to buy time warner they would have been to go big anticompetitive, led to higher prices for consumers, less choice and if it is even possible they would surface. Host is it because of the size . Guest the size and parts of different markets. They have 30 of cable between them and 57 of internet broadband, highspeed internet broadband, that is just too big. I had a lot of content providers, networks come to me and say they were opposed to this deal but this gives you some idea of what happens when you get this big, they were afraid to say so to be public because they feared retrobution. Host did comcast come to you and try to influence your opinion guest they did not. I have been against
Warner merger as a win for consumers. Why . Guest well because i firmly believe that if comcast were allowed to buy Time Warner Cable, that they would have been too big a company, they would have been anticompetitive, not in the public interests. It would have led to higher prices for consumers less choice. And if its even possible with these two companies, worse service. Host is it because of the size of the company . Guest yeah. Well size and what parts of the market they have, they have about 30 of cable between them and about 57 of internet broadband, highspeed internet broadband. Thats just too big. And i had a lot of content providers, networks come to me and say they were opposed to this deal, but they were itll just give you some idea of what happens when you get this big, they were afraid to say so, to be public, because they feared retribution. Host did comcast come to you . Did they try to influence your opinion . Guest they did not. But i think they see ive been against the
Besides, they do have substantially different responsibilities. We need a small numbers with highly trained and experienced people. When you think about the heroes of our profession, Charles Bolin were people from that era after world war ii georgia, these were individuals whose careers were assiduously cultivated and studied russian and get critical assignments and were advisers to roosevelt and atkinson and george washington. We we didnt create these people by the hundreds. They were created by the dozens. I think that is still true. I i mean, i could name for you even now i had a i had a pretty good idea of who the best psychologists were in a state department and you the best russian experts were in the best latin america experts. You get to know who they are in the intelligence community, who the best analysts are because there analysis bubbles up to the pres. And the pres. s daily brief brief and they get to sometimes come in brief the president themselves. There is somewhat of a
PARKERSBURG The Parkersburg Municipal Planning Commission passed an ordinance establishing a Private Outdoor Designated Area (PODA) along Market Street. bet