Transcripts For CSPAN2 Interview With Representative Tom Col

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Interview With Representative Tom Cole 20160705

Verizon have in place to protect the information you get from consumers and customers and how is that information used . Guest that is a good question. We have a Privacy Policy in place that covers how we use customer information. The whole list of different issues. And a whole gamut especially. The line drawing at the fcc is exercising is trying to figure out where do we give customers notice and opt out. We have had to make those calls over the years. We spend a lot of time on privacy. A chief privacy officer reports to me. We spend a lot of time on that. Very important to the company. We have a lot of different consumers and we have a policy we post on our website. We give customers separate notices. When they change the policy. There is a lot of information we are providing to customers and trying to make clear how their information is used, how it is collected and what we do with it. Host do customers read the long, privacy forms . Guest they do. We spend a lot of time explaining our Privacy Policy in a way that is understandable by people. We work with outside experts sometimes to make sure to your point when customers get that information it isnt something they just disspell and dont Pay Attention to. Dispel. That is important. It is not just we want to, you know, post this because the regulators ask us but it is because it is important to them and it is a trust between us and them and a trust that goes on there. If they get this big, long, 20page document they dont understand that is not good from our perspective either. Host you were a litigator with williams and connelly before joining verizon, from long island and went have uva und undergrad and grad school. Another thing flowing from the Net Neutrality decision is what the fcc will do about zero rating and that is who charges and doesnt charge for which kind of data. Talk about how you think that should play out. Guest these are products being rolled out by various companies in different ways. The customers have been responding to them pretty positively. Right . People like free data and free things. The real issue in our respect is it isnt what we are charging for it but it is who pays for the access to the content. Is it the customers or the Third Party Creator . Somebody who wants a new product and in front of customers. So we hope that what the fcc does is kind of let these products roll out to see what customer reaction is to them. And make a case by case determination as to whether or nut there are concerns there. Customer feedback is very positive right now. Ctia has done surveys, particularly millennials like these kind of product and the idea of these products. Isnt it unlevelled Playing Field when you can give your data to customers for free and they have to pay for the data from lets say netflix . No, because the way we structured our program is anybody can have access. Anybody can participate in the program and sponsor the content for the customers. The terms we offer are available to any other provider that wants to doit. It is really up to the third party whether it is something they think makes sense from a business perspective. It is actually a very leveled Playing Field. Which products talk about which products are involved . Guest if is essentially a way a third party can sponsor content for customers. They pay for the data usage rather than that data usage counting against the customers data plan. Is this the wave of the future . Are there going to be a lot of these products and become poplar . It is hard to say. That is one of the exciting things about the time we are in. It is hard to know where the market is going. And all of us trying to figure it out. If they think they need to step in, we will assist, it looks positive. Host is there regulation between the line and wireless . Guest the Wireless Industry is extremely competitive. It has always been but when you look at the industry now it is more so than ever. I dont know if there is a clear answer to that in every case if that makes sense. In general, it is good to apply regulation in a way that is Technology Neutral or provider neutral. But it is hard in our space. Things are so complicated. There are so much nuance and change that it is hard to say yes or no to that kind of question. Is there going to be wired Telephone Service in 1015 years . Guest probably. There are some people who, you know, like it. That will be a challenge, though, because the smaller the pool of people that use it the expenses dont change in terms of how much it cost to keep the network running. We offer a Voice Service over fiber in our territories. That is much better, frankly, than what you can get from a copper line. Fiber is always better, it is cheaper to maintain, you know, it doesnt cost anymore to the customer than a regular Traditional Land line would. So it is hard to say exactly. If you look at what customers have doing and what customers think, they are moving away from landlines in droves. It will be interesting, if you talk to someone in their 20s, some dont know what a land line even is. So, that is something, i think, for policymakers in the industry need to think through. This goes back to 5g. Does the world move toward wireless, particularly hard to serve areas . Do they become more and more served by wireless and not by any kind of red line . That line makes sense in a lot of places. Especially as Wireless Service develops, becomes more resilient that might make more sense. Maybe fiber. Some people in the because of the economics in the industry and pace of change, you know, i think companies have to have the flexibility to make those decisions in a way that is good for customers and always economics in terms of business. Over six year there is an investment and this isnt about fios. We call it a fiber approach. We looked at it in a particular area and they look at the Business Case for vios. This is for a small group of people in the country that will have a state of the art system and they will be ready for deployment for 5g. When you think about it that way, the project involved, you can see how important that is. And finally, the fcc recently came out with a new plan for set top boxes. Where is verizon on that . We have stayed out of the lobby battle for the most part. We filled comments and have concerns about the proposal that the fcc initially rolled out but we also understood the goals of it. So we understand that customers want to move away from set top boxes. That is a pain point for customers in many ways. We see the industry evolving. The set top boxes are going to go away. We understand the goals we they are trying to accomplish and we have concerns. The Cable Companies have proposed an alternative proposal which we thought was a positive step. I think the chairman felt that way, too and google made similar comments. We will have to say how that develops. At 10 00 pm and sunday at 9 00 pm eastern. When im making a point at a town hall meeting so we decided wed turn it into a regular feature and. Surprised about how much attention it got. Lets go you change it every month or so. Guest we do. We find the right way and itll be a series of books on a particular topic. But its usually the easiest way is literally what we are reading now and we keep one up about a month and sometimes maybe i will have two or three books that ie reading and okay take a picture in this month and next month or whatever. Host do you ever post reviews . Guest ive never done much of that. I dont have a lot of time to write reviews. If i put the book up there it means im reading a pretty good but that. Host what are you reading right now . Ou guest i thought i would take a low break and this is one of those classic cases where you see the movies they want to reaa the book, the martian and i think its andy weir and i got intrigued by this new netflix thing with a man in the high castle which is an old book, 62. Days to read Science Fiction when i was a kid and for whatever reason i didnt. That one and a guy named philip who is now dead, so those are the things. I just finished up about your faith of roger shindos book but its long. Host you read mostly nonfiction. Guest i do it mostly heavyly biography, history. I used to be a historian so thats what i enjoy but we will have some things like, and if i read fiction its quite often. This is like im going back to being 12, two Science Fiction books basically but i read quite a bit of historical fiction lima call as wonderful series on Julius Caesar first manner from and things like that lets mostly heavy history heavy biography. Host you mentioned you have your ph. D. Where did you teach . Guest actually taught as a graduate assistant and an adjunct professor at the university of oklahoma, oklahoma baptist university. That was a semester gig, todd and grenell colleges london program. That was a fun one that i got my undergraduate degree from there and then i did a stint teaching a class. I taught with don faller Democratic National committee chairman. A class and National Parties and campaigns at gw appeared in d. C. And i taught a campaign course at the university of central oklahoma. Host are there any historians that will make him out with a book or entire series you have. Guest i like everything that Steven Ambrose wrote. And a lot of range in his writing. Very good obviously John Mccullough is an excellent, excellent historian but probably it was heavily focused on british history and these are not all histories but churchill was always worth reading whether his just memoirs or whether it was his he had a wonderful little book called great contemporaries back in the 20s which later on nixon actually did a sort of follow on kind of book himself. I like to read Richard Nixon stuff. I like to read about Richard Nixon. I think hes most fascinating politician of my lifetime and i thought the things that he wrote were really quite good. Host did you read did your reading help you in your work as a congressman . Guest it does, history particular provides a lot of context, a lot of analogies. Frankly a lot of just understanding because most people when they get to congress if they arent careful they think history begins with them but you are really stepping into the flow of something, an institution and if you read history a lot of interesting now it parallels but that ground quite frankly to whats going on. John barry wrote a wonderful book years ago called the ambition of power which barry is a substandard freighter. Substantially of writer. He did a great look on the 1927 or flood called the rising tide or something. But he got cut up with speaker ryan before he realized, he was in his last year basically and he wrote a book about congress and it turned into the rise and fall of speaker wright and there are a lot of characters. In that case a lot of people i know, Newt Gingrich ascended Mickey Edwards i worked for many years ago, west or consequential figures in the sense that they were close to ryan that you read about. So those kinds of things i think are extraordinarily helpful and sometimes older members or morek senior members are telling stories. You know something about the context of the story that it really comes out of. Montel rogers the chairman of the appropriations has been here since 1980 and when he starts telling stories about the guys when he got here had been here since the 50s, its fabulous. Its fabulous. Host besides john barrys book are there other books you could recommend about congress or that you read before you take your seat . Guest you know, one of the more interesting books, its not about congress per se. Its a biography but Lynne Cheneys recent biography of madison is a good buck because heres a guy that in many ways shape the system so to speak both in terms of the constitution and serving in the body and its very first term. I think its always good. I like these things, again nixon is good. The johnson series. Host robert caro . Guest gosar spectacular because nobody who thiss institution the senate the presidency obviously the breadth of american politics like you did. I had the opportunity to meet him on several occasions. He really really knew this. I would also say the biography of gerald ford obviously because he was as president very much a creature of the house. I cant remember maybe joe cannon i cant remember. But i think it was time and chance or Something Like that a but it was a wonderful book and again you are lost in the politics of the era because this guy comes in the 40s and his minority leader when he was elevated to vice president. Thats an awful lot of history. And years ago i worked for a guy , not enough people remember that should guide vander check it was the creator of the modern Political Campaign or the nrcc. He arrived in 1966 and lost thee republican primary in 92 but you talk about a guy that understood the institution because he was involved in campaigns all across the country. It was a very consequential you know, legislator delivered the nomination speech for Ronald Reagan at the 80 convention. A pretty cool guy and his ability to tell stories, his observations, i used to call him poses because he got his right to the edge of the Promised Land and had he not lost his 92 primary he would have been reelected and rcc chairman and would have had the opportunity to be in the creation of the moderate republican majority. Re. Probably he did more to bring it on that any single guy guy but yeah just pick up some month listening members and some other reading. Host when you read some of these older biographies, Lyndon Johnson or gerald ford, do you ever say to yourself the house is a work that way any more . E . Guest occasionally you do. Obviously the house changes with the times although there are lots of elements that are the same and i like to think honestly of the Appropriations Committee is a Little Island that actually pretty much functions the way was supposed to. That wasnt always true. It went through a rough time but rogers who very much is in the best sense of the word and institutionalized and a creature of the house so to speak has really done a lot i think to restore that in the hopes that it can spread more broadly across congress. E in a we live in a very divided and very ideological time to where you know the ability to rise to consensus or make a deal or literally i have a lot of good friends on the other side but theyre not as as many issues that you can work on together in a way that clearly some of our predecessors managed to do. Host given your oat la houma rootsy ever. Books on Andrew Jackson . Guest my grandmother we are chickasaw so my great great grandfather was forcibly removed from mississippi and some of the last chickasaw to come out so we were raised and days a satel people when i was five years old i wasnt sure who Andrew Jackson was but i knew he was a very bad man and had done evil things. My grandma wouldnt carry a 20dollar bill. I have read when Robert Remini was the historian of the house o and wrote it book on congress. E i should have mentioned him but he is a big reader. You should talk to lloyd sometime. Lloyd and i were having the chief whip and rodney freilinghuysen, having lunch with dr. Remini and he presents me with a copy of jacksons indian wars and he present rodney with a copy of henry clay biography because rodney think it was his great, great grandfather theodore who actually ran on the ticket with henry clay. He also held the floor against indian removal for three days so we were both sort of jackson and amazed by dissent and that it was wonderful. I remember him handing me the book and saying now you probably wont agree with my thesis in this book but i want you to read it and think about it and come back. Not that he meant to do it but in some way the removal of the five great tribes of the southeast cherokee and choctaw chickasaw save them because of push them further out and kept them from being totally overrun. Thats a unique explanation for violating treaty rights and what was effectively ethnic cleansing of the southeast part of the country. So, i said i dont agree with you in some ways that i will say this i remember having gone ati the same timeframe i read this, we have a great chickasaw festival in tishomingo which is at the site of the old chickasaw capital. Had a great grandfather who was the dash of the chickasaw nation and there were thousands who came to this thing. It is amazing but that might not have been the case we might not have survived quite the same way that we did because we were a large tribe. We were a 60,000 person tried and you dont have anything anywhere near that size on the east coast in the areas where you obviously have europeans and americans in conflict and contact. Host what about books on native American History . H guest oh gosh a lot of them Charles Manns book is not really so much native american but its 1491 which is the state of the indigenous population in the north and south america on the eve of the european arrival. And what happened and how devastating that contact was. Man mann makes a case that the disease alone was much greater in terms of people and the indians whether north or south American Allies had contact with whites long before they saw them because disease traveled ahead and decimated a lot of these populations. A i love empire to summer men. The comanche nation is in my district and its a great biography on Quanah Parker th

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