Individual of 123,000 all the way up to about 3. 5 million if you look at the amounts an individual can contribute to and party,didates committees, combined. A major influx of big money into the political process. Our organization has estimated about 1 billion to political spending in the next election. And is that a good thing, a bad thing, a neutral thing . Think its i think its disaster for our democracy. Why . We already had a system in which the wealthiest few are able to exert so much more elected systemr and our elected representatives than the rest of us and a like this just makes a bad situation worse. Donald mcgahn, do you agree opinion . No, i dont. Why . Upon a fewed assumption that i dont think are necessarily true. First, the idea that theres going to automatically be 1 billion of new money in elections is frankly, with all respect, ridiculous. People in this country can spend on their owney independent of candidates already. This has been the case for years going back to
Spectrum and local broadcast stations has risen perhaps ahead of the incentive auction next year. So for a variety of reasons, weve seen a number of companies consolidate their positions in the broadcast tv market. Theyve fought stations across the country bought stations across the country. Weve seen Certain Companies really being aggressive in terms of snapping up smaller broadcasts. Host so with a company like sinclair, how Many Television stations does it own across the country . Guest i believe i dont know the number off the top of my head, i believe they own something in excess of a hundred stations. They have a number of these joint Sales Agreements in place. Theyre one of the companies that will likely be with impacked by this. Impacted by this. In some cases broadcasters can get waivers if they can prove these joint Sales Agreements are necessary to keep the smaller station afloat or so they can provide local or news programming. However, in most cases it appears theyre going
And still be eligible for these programs. I think that is a mistake. Thank you. Mr. Mcclintok. Did some states not follow the welfare reform requirements . I know back in california, the state excused people, the fiveyear time limit slightly reduced their benefits. The states Unemployment Rate which had been running well below the National Average had been running well above it. The reduction was miniscule to those experienced by other states. Did you study such comparisons . I have not done a fullfledged study of all the states and their approaches. There was flexibility but supposed to be strong Strings Attached that would be enforced by penalties should they fail to comply. Mr. Turner, any observations . The observation i have has to do with a growth of disability. Its taking over a lot of the low wage employment marketplace. 13 of philadelphia, working aged adults are, are either receiving ssi or ssdi. A lot of them came on when the rules were relaxed and allowed people with im loo
I think the v. A. Tries very hard to bring in counselors and psychologists who have that service. I will tell you that in vermont we initiated a program, an Outreach Program that is the people who do the outreach are all veterans. They are knocking on doors and talking to fellow veterans. That works well because they have a shared experience. They both know what they are talking about. I agree, everything being equal you want to get folks to do counseling who know what veterans have gone through. Host just to show you what took place at the hearing you can watch the whole thing on cspan. Org. The acting v. A. Attorney general Richard Griffin talking about issues at the v. A. [video clip] today, we have ongoing or scheduled work at 69 v. A. Medical facilities and have identified instances of manipulation of v. A. Data that distort the legitimacy of reported waiting times. When sufficient, credible evidence is identified supporting a potential violation of criminal law we are coordinatin
Its not readily available. Finally, does the hesitancy on the part of the dod stand anyway from, is there concern about, about what we see Going Forward . Since 60 of the 103 billion of dod funding, and we are not in a position to identify the total amount of waste, is there concern Going Forward theres going to be some of which are described, mr. Johnson, i would suspect that our friends at dod would do differently than the way you described it in terms of changing standards and why the standards were changed. What do we do to help convince them that this is ultimately necessary . And again i would go back to where i started. I would really urge you, for all of the analysis thats been done, it would be immensely helpful for us to the conversation not just about Going Forward, but if we cant acknowledge that we spent 100 billion we know billions have been wasted, but we cant really even identified some ballpark range of what that is and whether it comes from, then it makes it even hard