The mississippi runoff is being described as a fight within the gop between Establishment Republicans and the tea party. Quoting from the story the race has the feel of an alamo moment while the establishment has poured money in and outside groups raised money for mcdaniel. We will bring you the result and the Election Night speeches as they come in. First, todays hearing on the merger between at t and directv that would create a 48. 5 billion merger. The chair of the house subcommittee on antitrust law. Good morning. The hearing will come to morning. Without objection the chairs authorized to declare recess of the committee at any time. Now i recognize myself for my Opening Statement. We are hear today to examine the proposed merger between at t and directv. As i reminded witnesses during the recent comcasttime warner hearing, todays procedure will m not determine if the merger is approved but this form will allow us to discuss the potential of the motherinleme allow us to ask questio
At t brings and we think directv has talent as well. I think worldclass enbenefit programs for employees will be a good thing. Thank you, sir. All right. Mr. Stephenson and mr. White, id like to ask you both to talk a little about the companys commitment to diversity, the merged Companies Commitment to diversity in a number of different contexts. I know everyone will agree having a Diverse Group of individuals as Real Partners both inside and outside of the country is important. At ts Public Interest statement pledges at ts diversity best practices will be applied to directv. Such action would be laudable given at turkeys his with supplier diversity and inclusion. Mr. Stephenson, please describe the best practices referenced in the Public Interest statement. Yes. First ill start with employees we have a strong belief our employees reflect the market they serve. I dont think you can be successful in the marketplace employees, executive all the way up to the board that reflects the peopl
Bergmaier to comment about anything hes heard during the questioning period so far with our two distinguished witnesses. Yes. Thank you. I think when it comes to the investment promises that at ts making, i would urge the subcommittee to basically put them in context. I think a lot of at ts numbers consist of upgrades, adding a fixed wireless product to a fixed wireless coverage area. That might be some amount of investment, but it is less than an initial buildout. I think its important to put it in context that way and also put it into the context of at ts existing upgrade plans. At t already has a fairly ambitious buildout plan that has something called project v. I. P. Which talks about a lot of the new buildout and coverage that at t plans to do. At t has an initiative where it wants to upgrade a number of cities to gigabit wired broadband, however, its not exactly clear the scope of at ts existing plans. We know that theyre ambitious based on at ts statements but its hard to quant
Walmart, lowes, and soon to be home depot are doing. There is much to do, and those are just the most immediate steps. Importantly, this is a place that texas and fema will be involved in for a long, long time. We will be here until we can restore this region. As back to normal as possible. For as we discussed in our meeting earlier, we need to recognize it will be a new normal. A new and different normal for this entire region. But we will not stop until we get as far as we can. I want to provide some important details, and then passed the mic to senator cornyn and the national fema administrator. I want to explain a couple of details to the citizens that they need to know about. As governor, i have made a state disaster declaration for 54 counties across the state of texas. In order for a disaster declaration to be made a federal disaster declaration, it requires certain financial thresholds to be met. Those financial thresholds have been met in 18 counties. There are 18 counties in
Houston. How are people bracing there . What are you experiencing . Reporter well, here in houston, the problem is flooding. Like you mentioned, this is the bayou city. Bayous meander through houston and flush into the gulf of mexico. Its a drainage system. These bayous tend to swell. I want to show you what we are experiencing right now because you can see that this walkway which is normally used by runners to run through the downtown area, is completely submerged in water. Now, we havent even seen heavy rains yet here in houston. We have had some rain, as you can see, but these bayous are already swelling. I want to show you, want to measure here very quickly to give you a sense. We havent seen the heavy rains yet. You can see, though, that the swelling of this particular bayou where we are is at about 25, 26 inches. You can see that it is running right now in that direction which is actually good news, because this means that its actually rushing towards the gulf of mexico. During m