this is just over an hour. >> thanks to everyone. welcome. great to see so many people here. today's panel is entitled tale of two agencies. the overlapping jurisdiction of the fcc and ftc. my name is kelly donahue. i'm a partner at a firm based here in washington d.c. and i'm also a member of the federalist society telecommunication and electronic media practice group. before i get started i would like to make some brief introductions. from the federal communications commissioner, we have ajid. he was sworn in in 2012. and during his tenure he has focused on a regulatory environment that fosters competition and sought to remove uncertainty by creating clear modernized rules for the road. previously the commissioner was a partner at the law firm of general and block and held positions in the general council's office. from the federal trade commission we have commissioner maurine olhausen. she has been a strong advocate of government transparency and consumer protection. prior to joining the commission, commissioner olhaussen was a partner at my law firm and served at the ftc in various positions in various capacities. and moderating today we have alex. before joining the firm, alex was a legal advisor to commissioner olhaussen at the ftc so today is a reunion of sorts. we definitely have an all star cast today and a lot to discuss. >> thanks for that introduction. welcome everyone and thank you to the federalist society for organizing and hosting this lunch on such an important topic. it is a pleasure for me to moderate and apparently separate you two. please don't lung at one another. we are living in an era of connected devices and increasing personal and commercial reliance on the internet and on related services. i don't think it's an overstatement to say that and perhaps that at no other time in our history have we as a nation been reliant and dependent on our infrastructure than we are today. it is of paramown importance that we have efficient, effective and forward-looking governess of this sector of the economy. this has several practical implications, including potentially allowing the fcc to step into areas of oversite that have been traditionally monitored by the ftc. these issues include things like privacy, which affects all of us, larger consumer protection issues like deception, fraud, data security, has implications for competition policy including the development of competition policy with respect to broadband providers and other content developers on the internet who need access to the broadband system to actually get to their customers. you know, and other broader technology issues are at play here in terms of what kind of a vision do we have for developing the internet to promote innovation but also at the same time promote consumer welfare and consumers online. i am excited to begin the discussion whether the agencies actions can compliment one another and if we might see regulatory tension here. and if there is a turf war, so to speak, who will ultimately decide how to remedy this issue and what form will that remedy take? is it something that the agencies can work out or is it something where congress might need to step in and act? so the way that we will proceed is we will begin a discussion at the table with our two experts and after that we will take questions from the audience. both of the commissioners are very excited about getting into a robust dialogue. please as we move through some of the discussion initially, save up your questions and we will have a microphone circulating later and you will be able to ask your questions at that time. so i think at this opponent, i would like to begin, again, by saying welcome and thank you both for being here. commissioner, if you wouldn't mind, i think that what we can do, potentially, is to set the stage here. a lot of people may be unfamiliar -- they might be familiar with network neutrality as an issue but they might be unfamiliar with more of the specifics about the open internet order, what title two reclassification means. would you mind please walking through some of the issues and telling us what the issue is? >> i would be happy to do so, if i could first extend thanks to the society and press club for hosting. and of course, thanks to my good friend and counter part of the federal trade commission, it's always a privilege to see you in any capacity, especially one like this. so, i guess i would start by backing up two decades. at the dawn of the commercial internet as we now know it, congress and the president faced a question, how should we govern this dynamic new space. and a bipartisan decision was reached that the internet would be, as they put it in section 230, unfettered from federal and state regulation. how the internet was governed. there were intermittent attempts to revisit that decision. they were struck down. the agency took a third bite at the apple. he wanted the fcc to adopt a very strong net neutrality of regulations. in february 6, that's exactly what the agency did. it adopted three bright line rules. first no blocking by isps of otherwise lawful content. no throttling, no degre dags of traffic to customers and no heat prioritization. internet service vo pproviders d not deliver traffic in exchange for a fee or compensation. in addition to that the agency adopted an internet conduct standard. in case there was any conduct that was not here to fordescribed, we would lay out seven non-exhaustive fact toks. relationship with content providers in terms of interconnection. any of that could be on the chopping block under this internet standard. this was a controversial decision. it was a 3-2 partisan split and i was one of the two, happily though. i think this decision ultimately is going to be bad for the american consumer. we are already seeing evidence of that. and the second time was in 2009 in the wake of the great recession. so, you know, i warned that that would be the case previous to the adoption of the order and we are unfortunately seeing some of that take place now. >> we have really articulated some issues. >> if same court that heard the previous two challenges. the briefing schedule has been set or large has been set at some point for december 4. at some point the court could renter a decision. they would be likely to seek rehearing on a bond from a dc circuit. and so judging from previous preerns experience, we might be in for a long haul. so, for better or worse, people are going to have to wait for quite a while to have to get firm resolution on this issue. >> but the order today, is it effective at this point? >> it is in effect. the fcc is now doing a number of subsidiary rule makings. for example, it is going to start on talking about privacy.k bearance. >> the core of title ii apply. it opened the door of privacy. i fore bore from the application from the section 22 rules that currently apply to telephone companies. pole attachment, you name it. there is a whole host of ones that could apply during the future. it's going to be difficult for us at the agency to sort through how the regulation ace ply and i certainly wish the communications well as they advise the multiple clients they have on how the regulations are likely to apply. >> this reclassification will be treated as common carriers. does that mean they are effectively treated as utilities? and cannon falls, minnesota, which has four customers is using a sledge hammer to attack this problem. you would search in vain to identify market failure. it would be predicated on extensive findings that the marketplace has completely failed. we are leading the way in terms of innovation and investment. that's something that undermines the entire foundation which as i said previously are a solution that won't work to a problem that simply doesn't exist. >> if the agency can now treat broadband services as a utility, give us a sense of how details give us a sense of how details dictating terms? >> let me give an example. if you're a wireless customer of t mobile and you have a data cab you might think i want to be careful how to consume data pu they have music freedom which exempts certain programs from those data caps. if you listen to songs, that content does not count against your data cap. generally speaking, free content seems to be a good thing but the the question is where do we go from here. the best indication of that -- sorry about that. the best indication of that is the fcc's own admission on february 26 following the adoption of the order when as d asked. i can't put it any better than that. >> thank you. commissioner, you have been waiting patiently. and i appreciate that. thank you commissioner for your remarks. commissioner, many people similarly may be unfamiliar with the ftc's enforcement authority. and its actions on the internet more generally. could you please give us a quick summary as commissioner did for the fcc of the commission's, the ftc's legal authority here and highlight some of the agency's processes, how they work and maybe give us examples of recent enforcement actions. >> thank you. and thank you for moderating the panel. it is always a pleasure to appear on a panel with you. >> at the core, the ftc's authority comes from section five of the ftc act. so that is our consumer protection authority. particularly in this space, we have done quite a bit of enforcement using our traditional consumer protection authority. so we have challenged companies, for example, we have brought challenges against snap chat, you know, lots of online companies, lots of apps, lots of new technologies. so we brought a case against snap chat alleging deceptive practices involving their ver vis, their promises that you take a picture and it goes away. it was easily captured. we brought against, technologies which was a flashlight app which worked fine but it didn't tell you it was collecting your realtime location data and sharing that. internet enabled devices, cameras. trend net, that offered an internet enabled camera to allow you to monitor your children or for home security but what they didn't do is take care of a very obvious software flaw which allowed anyone with your ip address to also monitor your children or your home. one of the other really important things that the ftc has, or primarily the laumpl. we have a few rules that we enforce. children's privacy protection act is one that plays a fair role. but one of the other tools that the ftc brings to bear is our policymakers. research and development option. kelly mentioned my previous life and one of the things that i did there is i was the head of office of policy planning. we looked at the issues that had been raised. all of the chethings that he ha identified as possible problems with the fcc's move to reclassify and impose the strict net neutrality rules, we considered these types of issues and we looked for what is the harm that's happening in if market. what are the tools that we already have to address those kinds of problems. and we did a bipartisan report that came out in 2007 that said are there possibly some harms? yes. do they seem to be occurring a lot in the market? is the market moving towards greater competition? seems to be. if there is a problem, what tools can we bring? we can bring anti-trust laws and consumer protection laws. so going back to the consumer protection issue, one of the things that we have been able to do in the broadband space that i think is being put at risk is for companies that made -- so we have brought a case in active litigation so i will say what we mentioned in the complaint. what we alleged in the complaint is that a company made a promise for unlimited wireless broadband for consumers. we allege that they didn't fulfill that promise and we brought an enforcement action against them. and i think this is a particularly interesting case because the part of the previous open internet order that had been upheld by the dc circuit was the transparency requirement and the idea that companies who are providing these crucial broadband services should tell customers how they are going to engage in their traffic and data management and then adhere to those promises. if they don't adhere to them that's something that the ftc can reach. well now that the fcc has reclassified broadband as a common carrier service, that creates a problem. the ftc does not have authority over common carriers providing common carrier service. we were able to bring this enforcement action against at&t and our authority to bring it -- the decision not yet been rendered on the merits but the authority to challenge this behavior was upheld by the district court that said, you know, the common carrier exemption prevents the ftc from exercising the authority over a common carrier. but not everything a common carrier does is a common carrier service. and so at the time, broadband was not considered a common carrier service. the fcc had gone all the way up to the supreme court in the brand x to say we don't think it's a common carrier service but an information service and they were upheld. fast forward to now, the challenge that i see is as the fcc has reclassified this large set of activities as a common carrier service, when the ftc tries to exercise its traditional consumer protection tho authority and say you made a promise. you collected people's information and didn't tell them about it or used it in a way that harmed them, when with bring the challenges, a fair number of people will say wait a minute, we don't have that authority. we are part of the type of common carrier service that the ftc is trying to reach in its rule. ultimately i think the ability to act in this space could be greatly impinged by the fcc's very broad reclassification. and one other issue i think comes to mind here is that, you know, the ftc does have a wide authority outside of the common carrier situation. we have brought over, you know, 50 data security cases -- i think privacy cases of an equal number. and, you know, we have been pretty active in this case. what you're creating and commissioner has already referred to this, this is a very dynamic area. there's so much competition happening between players who didn't previously compete. everybody is getting in everyone else's face here. you will be aurnd stricter set of rules. and does that really make sense? and ultimately will that really be the best thing for markets and consumers? when you have similarly situated provided. different regulatory structures. >> so you mentioned that the ftc brought at&t for some kungt related to the. also bring in an action. do you sense of whether or not there are facts with the ftc? >> we did. so called throttling. the fcc's rule is quite different. part of the reason why the factual predicate was lacking. the and, the actual contact, suggested to me that there was not a violation there. the fcc's rule was very broad adopted in 2008. it allowed flexibility. the fcc specifically blessed comcast's then practice of regulating network entrench. s among other ways by reducing speeds of other customers who are high band width users. notices over the point of sale, through e-mails, through sales. and fined at&t $100 million. this is a topic that is an evergreen issue. they are going have a perverse incentive to overleak the facts. the claim of being the preimminent agency. i suspect that it is an example of that. >> i would like to get both of your reactions to this. could this point to continued activity that maybe could lead to some confusion down the road. >> without question. i think that the sec's rules in this area are very much in flux especially when it comes to privacy or in our case customer proprietary network information. >> the agency said jurisdiction over the much broader category and it said that we have the discretion to fine this company $9 billion with a b. we will limit that to $10 million. now, you know, look, i obviously disagree with the jurisdiction over something that we don't have authority to do but in addition the fact that the numbers are essentially plucked from thin air raises enforcement li lin liability. >> what's your reaction to that? is there a possibility for this to develop into confusion down the road? >> i think there is the potential for that. the ftc and the fcc have had concurrent jurisdiction in a lot of areas. we have had memorandum of understanding. we have brought enforcement actions from time to time. -- sometimes we have debates on how do you calculate that accurately. and we have a whole bureau of economists to help us do that. but, we don't have that authority. so i think for companies it maybe gives them a little more regulatory certainty of some limits on what their liability may be. they have really with stood the test of time to have these ideas, to have these principles of how do we decide if something is deseceptivdeceptive. i think there is a little mr certainty, there. just recently, for example, our authority to bring data kurt cases to say that if a company fails to take reasonable precautions to protect consumers' sensitive information that we can challenge them under various variant deception. our authority was recently challenged in the third circuit and upheld in a case called w e wyndham. the question of whether they had the authority has been upheld. we are sort of trying to say what the consumer harm is. >> if i could add something, i agree with everything she said and in addition to that, it's not just the ftc and the fcc and the consumer protection bureau ams sometimes wants a bite at the apple. opens the door to state regulators and also looking at common carriers and applying the rules and encolluding the enforcement. the opportunity is for confus n confusion. >> i definitely want to manage the update. very quickly, you mentioned guide posts. how does the ftc's definition or the course definition of what a common carrier is line up with maybe the fcc's definition of what kbhon carriage is. >> it's one we had to litigate. i think it's an unresolved question. does the fcc's definition of what a common carrier is. i think that's not settled. but one of my big concerns is the way this will be run. right? the way this will be figured out in the courts creates a lot of challenges and uncertainty. to know this is an activities based standard. therefore everything i do is common carrier. we have been able to challenge advertising and billing and things like that. but i do think that the challenge will be as everybody who is a defendant comes in and says here's my new argument why your definition of what's a common carrier isn't right. it struck me at an event. suggested that this is not how it will come up. it will be challenged court by court, challenge by challenge. >> do you have any reactions. >> so not with standing what the fcc may say. there is a bar there that has to be surmounted and that itself will have to be litigated. certainly i would imagine that if i'm a wireless provider, i would raise that as well. look under 322, they don't have the opportunity to reclassify us. stay tuned. >> may or may not be the common carrier. >> targeted. >> to jump in, it also seems to me that the fcc left itself a lot of flexibility to broaden the definition beyond isps, right? again, yes. >> absolutely. maybe if you believe some net neutrality gives the authority to regulate everybody. >> and commissioner, very quickly, do you know whether if there were any prohibition on common carriage with respect to broadband services under the ftc act would that apply to what the ftc has already done in the space? >> according to the district court in california. it posts reclassification by the fcc. so we don't have to -- >> so any existing consent orders? >> would continue to run. when we do investigations of conduct, we can look back and say okay, how long has this been going on. i think for the fcc you have a stricter statute of limitations. we could look back several years and see continuing practice. >> it depends, though. for example, in the open internet, the agency plucked out examples. it depends on which hammer is needed to pound the nail in in some cases. >> i noticed a proposed rule making coming up. what principles might be guiding the agency's actions in that regard? one of the sections that will apply to isps raises the question of privacy. so section 222 imposes a duty on any telecommunications carrier to protect customer proprietary netwo network. i love the acronyms. so cpni involves things like what kinds of services does a customer buy from a common carrier? what telephone number does that customer call? who calls that customer? things like that. carriers have long had a duty to protect cpni. those have never previously applied to internet service providers. so, along the cpni rules don't currently apply to isps. we now have a duty to apply to certain regulations. okay. we will put out guidance. here's the guidance that came out three months ago. the enforcement intends to focus on whether broadband providers. . then it goes on to show protection in line with the privacy policies and four tenants of basic protections. i have no idea what this means. it makes absolutely no sense. in the interim between today and the day the agency ultimately adopts privacy regulations under section 222, it's completely unclear how on earth the agency is going to consider these regulations, how it's going to go after companies for the violation of what it considers core tenants. and if anything, recent enforcement actions like the att and all suggest that the agency is going to be extremely aggressive. it's going to go after conduct that previously had not been sanctioned. but, one thing that is for sur., >> the commissioner spoke eloquently about this. the agency has been wrestling for a long time with all of these privacy issues since they arise in a number of different contexts. that's a very narrow subset of all of the information that a customer might consider to be private. it's essentially the wild west. i have seen no indication that we will import wholesale. i certainly hope that we do. we have foundational expertise. >> how do you view the potential for rules that may be coming out to overlap with what the ftc has been doing? >> there is tremendous potential for it to be due politictive. that is a danger for a couple of reasons. we don't necessarily have expertise in this area so i think we might not apply those rules as the ftc might have done. secondly we might have a different take on a particular issue if we're applying the same rulesment conduct that might be blessed by the frowned upon by ftc or vice versa. i think there is some risk, duplicative and/or distinct regulatory approaches. >> commissioner, do you have any reaction to commissioner pi's views on the privacy rules coming down from the fcc? >> i certainly vertebrae with all the points he made. it's embarrassing how much we agree with each other. you come here looking for conflict. one of the things i think is a fundamental miss perception in this area that is driving a lot of this is the idea that your isp is a unique window into a consumer compared to other parts of the internet eco system. so i'm not sure that's right. so the idea that -- say i'm going -- for example, facebook. i get on in the morning before i go to work from my internet access. i check in at the stop light over my wireless. and then i'm at work. and i check in on my desktop. that's from my employers. in the late afternoon i get a coffee. i check in again from the coffee shop over wi-fi. so the idea that any one isp is getting this uniquely complete picture of my activities versus the website, the platform that i'm going to. i just don't think the idea that the isp really holds up. because it may be that platform has a much fuller picture. maybe the ad network that followed me around may have a better picture. maybe it wassen crypted so the isp is isn't getting much insight. i think that really raises kind of the fundamental question again about what it really makes sense to have more stringent rules for isps versus everybody else in this eco system. i also think that as just kind of a basic idea of regulation and good government is, again, are we taking companies that may be collecting sort of similar information and doing similar things with it and treating them differently? does that make sense? is it going to affect investment down the road and innovation down the road. we are doing a workshop later -- i think it's in the winter. i don't remember if it's this year or early next year. but anyway, in the winter. on the idea of cross device tracking. and looking at the bits and pieces that we are sharing as we are moving from all the multiple -- multitude the of devices we use on any given day. and i think that is a more appropriate and holistic way to look at it. i'm much more focused on how our consumers are consuming these services and what are the possible harms, what are the possible benefits. and looking at it in the real world way rather than coming down with the artificial siloed approaches of the ci is sp versus everybody else. >> well, thank you very much, both of you. you know, i think that we have definitely explored and established there is regulatory overlap here. there is certainly a potential for considerable overlap. there is the potential for doctrinal confusion or at least tension going forward. maybe we can shift gears and talk about agency design and also a bit about best practices and think about ways you might be able to harmonize the two agencies. i will start with you. you said that in the past that the ftc has an agency design that makes it a bit of -- potentially a superior enforcer or agencies. would you mind please elaborating on that position for a few minutes? >> sure. as i mentioned, we are primarily a law enforcement agency bringing law enforcement actions. we don't promulgate a lot of rules, obligations. i think one of the benefits of that acting in a space that's fast moving, what we are looking at is harm. harm to competition. harm to consumers. and trying to target those problems and address those types of issues rather than trying to have sort of a very wide-ranging prescriptive rules that are trying to predict the future. and saying, oh, i think this is how technology is is going to develop. and let me get ahead of that with a bunch of rules and say this is under that silo, and this is under that silo. all of our expectations have been upset in a good way for the past, you know, 34 years at this point. so i think having sort of the case by case approach that the ftc brings, it has been focused on harm and has been very useful in this area. being a law enforcement agency means we have the investigative staff and invest in the tools to bring these kinds of actions to identify them, to investigate them. and it's very fact specific and case-by-case approach. we also have a policy that i mentioned. the fcc has one as well. that helps to inform our enforcement approaches. i think the ftc act is -- except for the common carrier exemption -- is is very flexible and adaptable to changing technologies. i mentioned our bureau of economics. it's a very important part of our analysis both on the policy side and enforcement side. i think that's really been a useful institutional feature of the ftc that has helped us. i hope that the economic reaction in law enforcement decisions. there's a lot of similarities between the ftc and fcc. we are a bipartisan agency. we have, you know, a similar structure. some of our enforcement tools are different. we get consumer redress. i think primarily the fcc gets fines. we have different overnight by our commissioners on settlements and policies. everything has to be voted out by the ftc. we have to approve everything that commissioners do. so i think that helps keep sort of a political check and a little more tight reign on what some of the staff level decisions can be. >> thank you. so as the fcc takes on a bit more of an enforcement rule, would you have any sort of general advice for our colleagues in terms of how to approach that type of role as an enforcer. >> i think two things are, first of all, to focus on real harms that are occur in the marketplace. it is very hard to predict the future. it is very hard to speculate. not only to predict harm in the future but also to predict the market developments, maybe new products, maybe, you know, some sort of new business people that will ameliorate that model. so to get in and sort of solve everything now for the future when you don't understand it i think is is very difficult. and i think an enforcement approach that focuses on harms and looks at our additional tool that says maybe we don't need a new rule if we can sue for deception. so i would say those to things. focus on real harms and see what tools you already have in your toolbox. >> thank you. commissioner, do you have any reactions to the comments and her guidance? >> well, i certainly expect her deep experience at the agency. and she knows better than most the consumer protection function is something that served american consumers well for the better part of a century. a as we embark approximate in this new space, regulatory humanity is is critical. the fcc has enjoyed for many years respect as an expert independent agency. when we make decisions that are based more on political calculations as opposed to what the law is and what the facts are. that reduces popular support, judicial support for some of the decisions we make. obviously i would prefer in terms of policy making, prefer to stay within our lanes and doing what we do best. more broadband deployment across the country. and in those cases where the law permits it and the facts warrant it, taking targeted action to promote competition. in those cases where enforcement is appropriate under those rules, i think we have to embrace what more is said. regulatory restraint is important. we can't know the future. i off talk about the case. i remember from 2000, 2001, i wish i had brought it. it warrants about the consolation of the aol/time warner transaction. critics said it would be an unbreakable monopoly over instant messaging and that warranted the government coming in and blocking that transaction. i remember an article in 2006 or so talking about how myspace had a monopoly in the social media marketplace. if the agency didn't come in and try to investigate or otherwise regulate it we would see a cramped online marketplace to describe these examples now is to smirk at them. but the question of the agency, when we are taking enforcement action, not just the justice in this particular case but what is the decision going forward? it can send a chilling signal to move away from certain business plans. instead, focus on what is is safe. it might be legal. the bills you have to pay to the united states treasury and the fcc's case and the ftc's case. but it might not be what is right for the long-term health of the marketplace. that is certainly the approach i'll talk to any enforcement actions forward. >> it sounds like you have real competitive implications depending how the fcc proceeds. >> i think it could. especially to the extent they are selectively supplied. they are overinclusive and under inclusive. they sweep in virtually every isp process. and those that don't have anything to do with privacy or cpn. and their huge economy that depends on the moneyization of privatation. is that a bad thing? is that a good thing? the fact that the fcc is focusing on isps you could have the potential to create distortions. >> so do you see room for improvements from a process or reform perspective that might be able to address some of these issues? if you could make changes, give us your top view. >> i would ask congress to change the laws and give me three instead of one. this is something we get bipartisan support. >> you get my vote. >> thank you. more seriously, i think the agency needs to focus on getting concrete guidance to the private sector, whether rules that are very specific, whether it's in the form of guidance that gives examples what is going to be forbidden and not. whether it's enforcement action that sticks within the letter of the law and says what is prohibited and what is not. that is important. additionally, we need to be quicker and more responsive. that means setting more internal deadlines for ourselves. things like applications for review consider for a decade without even addressing it. a lot of times a party will say we don't care if you tell us yes or no, tell us something so we can go to court. we should have more sunset clauses. some date from analog era simply because we don't have an obligation to revisit from time to time. one of the first votes i cast in 2012 was elimination first adopted by the telegraph decision in 1936. no one ever said, well, is this really necessary? among other things, we have a congressional mandate to engage in a biy an yell review. historically it has been an exercise in staff make work. part of my job is to collect all of these which we knew would go nowhere. we should make it a meaningful exertion and update for the digital age. and finally, be more transpar t transparent. they cannot know unless they subpoena for how the agency is is doing across ava right of metrics. consumer complaints are pending. what was the disposition at any given consumer complaint. i created an fcc dashboard similar to what state governments have. anybody can see how the scc is is doing. the mere fact that the online spotlight is being shined on us. those are a few ideas. regardless of partisan affiliation, it would make the agency more responsive and more productive. >> thank you very much. and while we're talking about agency design, to both of you, are there things you might consider changing about the ftc. the fcc has been our focus in terms of design and changes. the are there things you might change and lessons that could be imported. >> i think you have much better. >> that is one area in which we will disagree. so a couple of things. i think that -- well, certainly getting rid of the common carrier would be at the top of my list for the ftc. that is something congress will have to do. i think, you know, commissioner pie mentioned this. alex is something we have talked about a lot. for good government how much you need transparency, predictability and fairness. and i think the ftc has been transparent in a lot of things that it does. but there's been recent action they have taken on unfair methods of policy statement that i dissented on. it had to do with process. for something so important we should have put it out for public comment. we should have gotten morin put on that. we should have had a better process internally as well as well. so i know the frc has scheduled monthly meetings. i think the ftc could do something like that. i think that would be beneficial. for both agencies, one of the challenges -- this is a law that was put into effect for all good reasons but had dill tear us effects. i see a fellow commissioner here nodding. so what happens is you end up as your staff talks to each other. they are a all fine and wonderful people. but it can sometimes be a game of telephone. where the message gets a little garbled as it goes through a series of different advisers. so i would suggest that some changes to the sunshine act might be beneficial for all commissions across the area. >> what specifically does the sunshine act impart? >> so the sunshine act prohibits basically a quorum of commissioners of getting together and discussing a policy, issue, or enforcement doing. so we can say how is is the commission doing. people's retirement parties. but also we have a formal meeting that may lead to a decision by the agency, we can't have informal discussions. we have to get-together. there are minutes. the secretary is there. there's all kinds of careful administrative pairiers set up around that. so what happens is it ultimately makes it much more difficult to discuss some of these very important issues with your colleagues. you can do it one on one as well as there is not -- i mean, if there was a matter that only three commissioners would be voting, two would be sufficient. so generally we can do one on one, just discussions. but we can't all get around a table and work something out, unless it's formal meeting. which is why i suggest it would be better to have more of those formal meetings. >> commissioner pie, this sunshine issue cuts across agencies. it affects the fcc as well. do you have any thoughts on design changes? >> it is a design problem with the fcc. i think it makes agency decision making so much poorer. can you imagine just bringing it into popular culture. imagine if nicki minaj and miley cyrus couldn't converge. >> where are you in that analysis? >> yeah. it's a lose-lose situation. i do think it makes the agency's decisions -- and it impedes them to be more collegial. three or more of us get-together. over a long run it tends to minimize the ability to reach across the partisan divide and forge alliances. can you imagine if members of congress had to labor under similar restrictions. things are bad enough. they would be even worse if they couldn't talk to each other person to person. that is something i would hope to change. there are a number of ideas that i have endorsed previously. in other words, reducing the reporting requirements that we have. the agency spends a tremendous time mandating by congress that nobody reads. for example, i put out a statement with respect to the orbit act. 15 years ago we were told scc needed to privatize it. and we need to report annually whether you have privatized it. we privatized it back in 2001. we are reporting 16 years later how we privatized it. complete waste of time and resources. just imagine all those reports if we could shrink them down. it is fact-finding mission and legislative function. congress is now considering the consolidated reporting act to sale through the house of representatives twice. that would help a lot in terms of streamlining our resources. again, a lot of these process rethat i have proposed, these are not partisan ideas. whenever i meet with senators and remits of both parties they nod their heads and go, yes, that makes sense. i should do something like that. i certainly hope that bringing a lot of these agencies more up to date in terms of how they operate. >> well, thank you very much. thank you for your comments on this. we're running a little bit short on time. i think with what i'll do is i have one additional question. and then we're going to turn it over to the audience for questions. so my final question is is a number of people -- some people have criticized industry-specific or industry-focused agencies, regulatory bodies as ripe for regulatory capture by the covered industries. so other people push back and note that you need expertise and understanding of industry to be able to efficiently regulate it. generally, what would your reactions be to that? do you think there is a possibility that having two agencies in a particular space could have some affect? >> that's a good question. obviously this is theoretical problem. in my experience, our agency is not so much regulatory capture that is the issue as the government preempting how they want it covered and actions in order to make it so. some saying if we merge, we will require this list of conditions. we're going to adopt these industry-wide rules in order to make sure companies x, y, z, have a fair chance to compete. that is much more of an issue than regulatory capture. none of them has been captured by any segment of the industry. speaking for myself and the only things i'm captured by are my kids, the chiefs, and on occasion a karaoke machine. that is it. nothing else other than the public interest. >> any reactions or thoughts? >> well, i do one have. one of the things that i've seen is when you have government playing such an in-depth role in structuring and deciding who is allowed, who is not allowed and these rules, it is really a ripe opportunity for raising the rival's costs. you get in and you say, hey, boy, there is really a big problem here. and you better have rules be really strict on this part of the market. i'm in that other part of the market so don't put those rules on me. i think the more the government is an orchestrator of the market, the morin sent if's there are for companies to get in and to try to skew the rules or to raise their rivals's costs and minimize their own costs. or what we saw are the players who come in and say, yeah, the rules should be really strict here because i can meet those. i have the money to do that. but it keeps out the little guys. that's the problem we see in a lot of industries. it seems to be professional licensing and other areas like that. i think the more in-depth role that the government plays the more opportunity, the more payoff there is for companies to do this. and i also do want to say i appreciate commissioner pie. i'm talking about regulatory humility. it is something we should keep in mind as we grapple with these important issues. we have to be really careful about our ability to predict things. >> quickly, i can't tell you how many meetings we have had where a party will say i'm in favor of a free market. in this case, though, all of these things that will happen. or conversely the flip side, you need to set aside x, y, and z. people will lose jobs. consumers will be worse off. the sky will fall. a as somebody who hears the pitch on a repeated basis each and every day, coming in with a consistent philosophy or segment of the industry, that ohms the door to special bleeding and arbitrage. i think that's one of the reasons not to be too hyperbolic about it. they will get regulatory favors to benefit them while the consumers at large is kind of left in the cold. that is something we have to guard against on every agency. >> well, thank you both for such insightful remarks. at this point we will turn it over to the audience for questions. we will have microphones. wait until it reaches you before asking your question and identify your name and affiliation. thank you. >> no nicki minaj questions, though. yes, please, in the corner. >> phillip corwin, principal at virtual op. president obama indicated he wanted the commission to act. the commission did cross the rubicon. we're going to have another presidential election in 14 months. there's a possibility controlling the white house could change to the other party. if there was a president with a different point of view and chairman with a different point of view, can-can the commission good back across the rubicon and say we made a mistake or something that can only happen legislatively? if it didn't, either can't or decides it's not a good idea. would the best way to be not acting or not push the level and provide guidance so the impact is minimal and clarifications are made as to what the rules are in the present scheme. >> that's a good question. there are a number of ways these could be reversed. one is to in validate them. the congressman passed legislation. operative language or language to get rid of these rules. and third, i suppose the agency could revisit the question. so as to the third, as long as they have requirements of the administrative procedure act, there is no reason procedurally why they couldn't come back and say, okay, for these reasons we think we made a decision. the supreme court opened the door to future decisions or agencies making a determination as long as there is a reasonable explanation for changing its mind. as to whether the agency would do that, we can't predict. one of the problems, however, is you have a tremendous amount of capital, sitting on the sidelines. the fact that the regulations are in place now. the companies are restructuring for business plans now. they have to because the regulations are in place. even if the agency were to come back at this issue, you just have to wonder how much capital has been diverted, how much effort has been wasted, how many consumers were worse off as a result. you know, long and short is we have to see. >> american media institute. i'm wondering about could you elaborate a little bit on the potential court challenges you just mentioned, particularly with the idea of the fcc's existence itself to manage scarce airwaves and scarcity doesn't really seem to be an issue here. >> correct. so there are two basic categories of arguments. they are challenging the order. the argument is that the agency never formally teed up as to its appropriate. the agency adopted rule making in may of 2014. the lead proposal was for something very different. it was only after the president made its announcement in 2014 that the agency was reportedly considering title two. the agency never did anything to the announcement to make title two, all the issues raised by virtue of title two for public comment. from a rule making perspective, i think, and a lot of other people think there are ava issues that the court would have to wrestle with. substantively, everything from section 332, which was the certain mobile providers could not be classified as common carriers. some of the core title two questions. for example, when i click on a link on my screen, whether or not the traps mission to the core of the network is something that meets the statutory definition of telecom. there are a bunch of substantive issues that the court is going to have to wrestle with. >> right here, please. >> i'm sharon in voice of the moderate. quick question. i talked to small business owners with the overlap. you have companies that can't afford these simple questions that affect day to day business. tsa comes up with the regulations. you create a regulation, it's hard to change it. i just spent 10 minutes with the tsa about bringing my watermelon on a plane. it turns out once the regulations are in place, it is hard to pull them back. they came up with a scrub act to come up with people's laws. both of you have to get but you can't because you can't because of the sunshine act. so it is fascinating. if you can comment about what you're doing about interacting with the small business community of all industries. as people say, one regulator scares them. two tear phis them. thank you. >> you raise a very good point. one of the things we have tried to do is reach out to small businesses, small startups. i try to go to developer conferences. a lot of times when they start these great new innovative products, they are not thinking about how does this all work together. so it is important for us to get out and give them the information. we're there gathering information. we have consumer education materials on the ftc's website. but it does bring to mind an area where i recently did dissent from my colleagues at the ftc in a case called know me. it offered a service to retailers about tracking consumer cell phones to just show where consumers went within stores. but it didn't say who it was. you just wanted to know they came in, spend 10 minutes in the men's department, 5 minutes in the ladies's department and then left. it holds them to a higher standard of liability when they hadn't harmed any consumers. they could opt out if the consumer didn't want this to happen. they could opt out. or they said you could go to retailers. it turned out the retailers weren't offering an opt out. there wasn't any indication that there was any consumer harm. so not only do we need small business guidance, we don't need to come down on a ton of bricks. if we make a mistake we didn't rectify because there was no consumer harm. it was just to benefit themselves. it was just were an oversight. we are discouraging them from even trying to make promises to even try to give consumers extra choices. i think it is a dual approach. get out, give them information. but also in our enforcement action use our prosecute oral discretion and not hold a company who didn't hold to a draconian standard. >> there are 4,462 providers in the united states. the vast majority of them are relatively small. when you talk to people who support net neutrality, what they are concerned about is blocking content or throttling content. it's the fact they want more choices. they want more competition, better prices and favorite speeds. that's part of the reason i have been so perplexed by title two regulations. they ironically enough squeeze out competitors who would provide an alternative. one of them championed my last three years has been the wireless internet providers. they provide an alternative to your cable company, telephone company. sometimes literally mom and pop stream together infrastructure to provide an alternative where there otherwise might not be one. under the penalty of perjury we have seen a lot of these smaller isps are holding pack in area because of the rules. it is reducing its investment and slowing down network upgrades from three to 20 megabits per second. we don't have the money to hire an attorney to comply with the rules. so we are not going to expand beyond our coverage area. i think it is really unfortunate that instead focusing on broadband, the market is competitive. we are going to slap regulations on everybody. which as the commissioner said, only the big players will be able to comply with. mark my words. five years from now we will be back at the table. people who told us about the rules will be complaining. we to the floor enough choices where we are. we only have the big table company. we have to ask them, well, where were you? sir? >> thanks. from phoenix center. first off, on behalf of the federal communications law journal i want to thank the two of you for coming out and reading it. >> in terms of privacy, i want to thank you for coming to our event a couple weeks ago. it seems two policy problems are coming out. on the one hand, we have this massive symmetry where you are going to have ex anti regulation or one segment of the eco system at the fcc. and then ex post regulation on everybody else. even though the functional equivalent, it is all functioning equivalent. that raises two policies that i like to see. first, as we start thinking about the internet of things, we're still on a very early stage of developing the privacy. just generally. it would seem you would want a flexible and industry-wide solution to do that. how to you develop an industry-wide solution when one segment is is under the heavy hand of government. it seems a bit difficult. the second thing is is, as you just mentioned is that the internet is becoming more commodityized. a lot of it is coming with market forces and net neutrality rules where are not allowed to differentiate yourself. the price competition goes up. it seems to me that this policy, the privacy policy, along with amount of other things represents another example of trying to transfer profit tprts core to the edge. so as a result of this regime, i was wondering if you two could comment on it, please. >> sure. why don't i take the first part and you take the second part. >> sure. >> talking about the privacy approach. as we are moving into this new area of the internet of things, everything sort of being connected, the ftc did an internet of things report earlier this year that i concurred in. i had a few concerns about a few things. one of the good things i thought we did there is is we didn't come up with an internet of things specifically legislative recommendation. we said let's see what happens. let's see how it develops. one of the things on which i deferred with my colleagues is what i recommended is that we start taking a hard look at the previous fair information practice principles approach. notice, choice, access, security. that was moving much more towards a user harm's based approach. and i think that is a way forward to really focus on harms to consumers. that's where we should be bringing more energies. that's where we should bring our regulatory focus. again, consistent with regulatory humanity. it is hard to predict the future. let's focus on what the harms are. i would say that that could be a unifying approach across the two agencies. if we had a similar approach at least that would help minimize some of the disparities you have identified. if we had a strict regime and you're not allowed to use this and others, it will affect the types of services that people that the business model can support. we think about moving towards what information is is being used in a way that harms consumers and put our energies there. >> i would add on top of that, the potential is great. and i would analogyize, we will see certain segment office that market on the exclusion of others. anybody who remembers rabbit ears, we do live in the golden age in video. you can watch big screen, smartphone, ipad. a new company that will provide an alternative to my pay tv company. now they will start regulating certain parts of the online video marketplace. that creates a tremendous disparate. people are talking about cord cutters being the future. the tip of the spear. if that's true, why should they be regulating legacy parts of online video marketplace and leaving everybody else alone. that's going to massively disrupt how capital decisions are made and so forth. anyway, all of which is to say i agree. obviously the old regimes have dill teary in the marketplace. different regimes would have a bad effect. especially when i pointed out earlier, there are a lot of companies where it is predicated and considered quite private by consumers. >> well, it looks like we are unfortunately out of time. we could continue discussing this all afternoon. let's give a round of applause for our guests. [ applause ]. >> on his visit to washington, d.c., pope francis visited capitol hill today to meet with legislators and address a joint meeting of congress. the first time a pope has done that. find his full speech and all of our coverage of on pope francis's trip to washington, d.c. online at c-span.org. join us later today when u.s. cyber command commander will talk about cybersecurity threats to the nation. the nsa director will testify. you can catch it live here on c-span3 at 2:30 p.m. eastern time. this tweet from bloomberg politics that obama will hold a rare in-person meeting with putin next week at the you know general assembly. president barack obama will hold a rare in-person meeting with russian president vladimir putin at the general essentially next week for new york. a white house official says putin requested the discussion which also was announced in moscow by a kremlin spokesman. we will continue to follow that story and bring you updates as warranted. now, representatives from wisconsin and michigan discuss how new right-to-work laws have beenismed in their states. the heritage found aation hosts this one-hour debate. we will show you as much as we can before white house secretary josh earnest begins his scheduled meeting which is scheduled for noon. >> good morning. a hot topic of debate across america is right-to-work laws. these laws prevent workers from being required to pay union dues as a condition of employment. this is something wisconsin recently passed. a few years early, michigan, my home state. very historical value. there is a lot of controversy. i published new research out today that i will be discussing in a minute. analyzing right-to-work laws and wages. to discuss this, we have crystal, a state senator in the wisconsin legislature, recently elected, former in the state assembly. was the author of wisconsin right-to-work law. and the director of labor policy for mackinac, michigan. i will be presenting this research and the senator and mr. vunnuccio will talk about how right to work has affected the two states who enacted it. . this is a popular position nationwide across all partisan and ideological splits. we have polling from the gallop organization. they did this last summer. this is historic with their political polling. back in the 50s you will find numbers similar to this. americans believe in free association. whether it's the nra, kiwanis, americans believe if you want to join you have that right. you would be hard pressed to find many nra members who think they ought to be forced to join and pay dues. when it comes to unions, don't most americans agree with this principle? many do not. this is how it affects on public policy. despite the fact that almost three-quarters of americans think it ought to be voluntary, half the country, 25 states, only half the country has this. so a democracy, enter mediated through their elected representatives. why do legislators and half the country aren't going with what their constituents are reporting. in maine, it just voted down right to work law. others say this is about idea. the or argument is that basically right-to-work laws, lower wages. this is a figure put out by the economic policy institute. it is a left wing think tank. most people don't know it is a union-backed think tank. richard trunca is on the board of direct as well. but the economic institute has put out a of number of studies showing what this shows. in states where union density dropped the most. and they also put out studies like this. they are very quick to acknowledge. you can't just jump. you can't immediately say there are right to work states you have different demographics, educational makeups and different cost office living. as a comparison, you have to control this. they are basically doing just that. this is evidence they submitted before congress, testimony, they have submitted it before basically this study before state legislators. there were considerable numbers in wisconsin. what they basically show is you can more or less interpret these numbers. what it shows in the first column is is don't account for anything. 13% more wages in right to work states. it accounts for labor market variables like education, your age, things like that. which we would expect younger workers to make less a. more educated workers tend to make more. the gap falls down to 9%. and throw in that third and fourth column two different measures of state of living costs. it seems even controlling for that, and the unions made this point time and time again, they claim wages are 3% more than right to work states. and this to many legislators and policymakers has been a persuasive argument. that's why we have -- a major reason half the country hasn't passed the right to work. generally we agree with free association. they pass right to work, there will be fewer union members. free association will put an asterisk next to it and say we will force you to pay union dues. i find it very strange. graduate school for economics. labor and economics. and all the papers unions as labor monopoly. the way unions try to operate is as a monopoly essentially who controls the local labor market. they gained control of the labor, get everything into their union. they can drive up its price. but that higher price gets passed on to consumers. and the higher wages, consumers pay for it. pause consumers are paying higher prices. b, they are selling goods and services. and the economic research is fairly conclusive that you might have gains on the inside of the union. so the claim you are lowering average wages is is dissident to my ears as a labor columnist. on top of that, union membership has been not doing the best. union membership is down fairly consistently. so they don't even have that many labor markets where they have a monopoly. how do you find these states with right to work laws. and generally a decline in union membership have wages. the next two slides i'm going to credit adam wozniak. this is not just the change in union membership in 1979 but just 1979 union membership. which lo and behold it seems like the states with largest membership since the 70s were the states with the largest membership in the 70s. they have the lowest wage. that doesn't necessarily fit in. so why would states with higher union membership have lower wage growth? it turns out they have a lot lower employment. so the simplistic story before actually turns out to be a lot more nuanced and less favorable to the unions than the economic policy put out. we set out the heritage foundation to replication their research. interestingly, surprisingly, i thought they wouldn't share their data with me. i couldn't replicate what they did. i repeatedly have been asked and have traditional correspondence. it is like, well, would you share your data and stop responding to me. i used the same underlying data source. you can remember from the map pretty much the entire south is retro. and the entire northeast is not. it costs a lot more to live in new york city or boston than it does to live in shreveport, louisiana orville, tennessee. a dollar will buy you more in a lot of these right-to-work states. the gray bar in the middle is average. what we have done is ranked states from the lowest living costs to the highest living costs. on the other side, you can see which are the right to work and which are not right to work. there is only one right-to-work state above the national average, virginia. all other 24 are below average. and conversely, a as you can see, new york, california, massachusetts, hawaii, the states with above average are the states with the forced union dues. one of the findings congress has made is once you have any local amen anies like really pleasant weather that wants people to live near you or the beach, wages one for one. they are making the same as the established. new york city is really, really, really high. so this turns out to be a major effect on the analysis. so what we can do here, i will summarize these. i won't ask you to strain your eyes. and we more or less got close to what they did. they wouldn't share their data losing the publicly available data, we got close to what they were had he finding. not quite negative effect. but fairly close. and then we -- you have to look at their appendix. their cost of living variable only accounts for three-quarters of the difference in living costs. it doesn't account for the entire difference in living costs. if living goes up 10% in a state, wages are only 7.5% higher, not the 10% that economists have found. they put it as a control variable. the guts of the model only explains about three-quarters of this difference. now, tphoerplly when you have differences in purchasing power across time, over states, what economists will do adjust for the different in purchasing power and then run their analysis. usually you run on inflation adjusted dollars rather than the same dollars every time. that's what we did. that one change makes their entire results go away. i used the exact same model they used. i only adjusted for wages and living costs. all of a sudden, the results disappear. so this claim that right-to-work laws do awful things for workers that you hear from unions and the economic policy institute, this is a more accurate reflection. and it goes away. the next two columns, i broke it down between praoeufpivate sect. in the government, you elect political allies. in the private sector, you affect wages by using the union monopoly, strength, and power. so in the private sector, what we see is there's nothing. negative .1%. polling insignificant. but 5% more in right-to-work states. normally i would argue that is a benefit. in almost all states, they make more equivalent. but private sector, there's nothing. there's just nothing there. and the final specification is steps is and commissions. again, no affect. and so all these arguments against right-to-work law wages evaporate when you look under the hood of the studies. what about the benefits of right to work? besides just the free association of it. well, what we have here is a nice little national experiment. kentucky has a number of counties passing right to work. how has this affected their job situation? this county, warren county, was the first county in kentucky to pass it. they passed this december 2014. for the next three months, 3,600 jobs contacted them and told them, hey, we're kind of interesting. now that you have right to work, we're interested. since then, as of may of this year, i've heard from the bowling green chamber of commerce. it has been reported -- that number went up to 47 companies representing 5,000 potential jobs. these projects represent an increase in overall employment. projects they were not eligible for. the businesses just didn't want to deal with that strive. maybe it was something in the weather or in the water or something. so we did the wages. and what it shows is when you don't account, the unemployment rates are half a percentage point. when you account for everything, it is over -- so you are accounting for the age, education and other factors it would expect to affect, unemployment rates are a percentage point lower. the economic policy institute didn't attempt to replicate this chart. so that means they probably didn't, didn't want to talk about it. what we see is the scare stories about wages falling is a lot of smokemirrors. you big under the hood of the model, they're not falling. but we do see both anecdotally and empirically, strong evidence for job creation. on top of that you have the free association benefits. if i don't support an organization why should i be forced to subsidize their operations? i think that's a powerful case for right to work. i'll turn the mike over to two speakers to talk about the experiences they've had. then we'll take q&a from the audience. >> thank you, james. it's a pleasure to be here at the heritage. good grief, we spend a ton of time looking at the research these guys do. so thanks for doing what you do. thanks for inviting me to a swamp in the middle of summer. i appreciate that. i went for a run last night and before i stepped out of the door i sweat through my jogging outfit. the right to work thing is a big deal. it's been a big deal in wisconsin for a long time. i think what i want to do is walk you through a couple of reasons, why right to work in wisconsin. i want to walk you through too what we ran into with objections, because that plays into what james has been doing with numbers. just so you know, i am a policy wonk type of guy. i'm a cpa by trade, spent eight years in public accounting, the last several with arthur andersen. i owned a couple of companies, i still have that. but i jumped into politics probably in actually 2009, i started running for office, was elected in 2011 when governor walker came in. as you've seen in wisconsin, we've had some interesting things going on for the last several years. to right to work is something that we actually looked at right away when we came into office back in 2010, 2011. and really what we're doing is looking at kind of an overall blueprint for how do we take wisconsin, which as you know, if you look at the history of our state, progressive is -- you know, we brought into existence the state income tax, unemployment insurance, heavy things like that that are very progressive. so we looked at it, and we've got a new crop of i'll call citizen legislators who said, what we need to do is we slowly need to take away the concept of government is the provider, to government is limited. and that's the heritage foundation at its core, that's what you guys are about. but so we looked at it. and right to work was in the recipe for that. as you know, we started out with act 10, which was essentially right to work for the public sector. and we fought that battle. and i think have led the charge in the united states for what states are doing now. and that was a huge, huge battle for us. but we know it had to be done. we've done some income tax reform over the last couple of sessions. coming up in this session we saw right to work, that's the elephant in the room, we have to deal with it. we started before the session even started. okay, what is our message going to be, what things are we going to encounter? we looked at a bunch of stuff that james has done. and the big driver is, again, back to our blueprint, over 70% of our budget really relates to dependency on government versus dependency on the individual. so we knew that we had to take care of this issue. here are the things that we ran into. and this is the interesting part about, you know, what these gentlemen do is huge for us, because we knew the numbers, but what we have to do is effectively communicate that to get the message across. so we have to take the numbers and we have to translate it into people. and we don't have a ton of time, and i would have loved to stand up in committee and on the floor with my colleagues and go through this type of thing, because the analysis is fascinating. we ran into the same studies. but what we had to do was we had to take this and make it real for people. so warninhat we did is, the fir issue we ran into, the opposition came at this from a different perspective. we said this is about workers' freedom. this is personal to me because back when i was 19 years old, i worked for an electrical contractor. and i wasn't aware of right to work or unionization. it was just -- i took my job, went in, the guy said here's your offer, i took it with him and went to work. and the first paycheck, i had these deductions. i couldn't figure out, what is this? i went to the payroll person and said, i think there's mistake here. the payroll person said, no, these are your union dues. i said, i didn't ask to be in the union. she said well, you have two options. you can either take the deduction or you can go find another job, because the state law actually says that of this way it's going to be. and that just, as a 19-year-old, a very unpolitical 19-year-old, it never sat right with me. it always bothered me. when i came into office my first piece of lit was right to work. it's about worker freedom. it was interesting to see, as we went through this, the first debate i had actually on npr, and i think most of us know where they lean, it wasn't with me, but they actually tried to come at me, the democrat who was arguing against me, came at me with worker freedom and said, you're getting government involved in an employer-employee relationship. i kind of laughed and said, i think that's already in place. i said, if we had a true free market here, the employer would have just as much of a right to say, no, i'm not going to have a union in my business as the employees do to unionize, but that doesn't exist, and why is that? it's because government is already involved. so the worker freedom thing, what it really ended upcoming down to, and we used this in debate too, it's really not a struggle with workers. it's the union bosses. that's what our colleagues on the opposite side were upset about, because guess who funds campaigns. and we have the statistics for a lot of our debate opponents sitting there ready if they pulled out that card, because we always hear about, you know, they always pull out the koch brothers and all these foundations that always obviously are from the right. so we had it laid out how much of their campaign contributions came from the unions, in case we had to pull that card out. i think they found out about it because then brought it up in the debate. that was interesting. so the workers' freedom, that was the angle we came in at. workers will make less. we used your statistics, your statistics. this was an interesting one. so to take all these numbers, and again, bring it back to people, here's how we approached it. so they brought up the argument. they said, you know what, in non-right-to-work states, people make more money. i said, you know what, they absolutely do. they would kind of sit and look at me. we agree on something. great. so what i did, i brought in cost of ling adjustment. if you start throwing c.o.l.a. out, the average person's eyes glaze over and they fall asleep. have you been to chicago? have you been to a starbucks in chicago? have you seen their latte is way more expensive there than in milwaukee and madison? everybody is like, totally, i don't even go there, it's so responsive. i said, do you think the average worker in chicago makes mother money? they're like, they have to. i said, okay, at the end of the day do you understand you have to have both pieces here? you can't just say they make more. you have to look at what their expenses are. i said, they may have a bigger paycheck, but right to work states, people have a bigger bank account. so that's what we kept coming back to. average family, $2,000. bigger bank account at the end of the every year. that helped us win the argument. we didn't get too much into the details of the stats because we didn't have the time, but again, it was very helpful. the loss of workforce, because workers will move to other states to get paid more. this was interesting because it was a study commissioned by the unions from a local professor at a university. he used the study you referenced as his support. as i read through, he made assumptions based on a couple of facts. he didn't back up his assumptions with facts. he just assumed people would buy into his analysis. and a lot of the public did. obviously the media was constantly quoting him, saying you've got a pretty smart guy here who is quoting all these facts, and he thinks this is going to drive workers out. what we did is said, okay, let's look at how many of you -- okay, what kind of engine is on the law mower? most people, it's brig briggs&stratton. we could find a very prominent local company that we said, here's what happens. this is not good. right to work states actually gain jobs. then we can bring in some statistics that these guys put together for us that showed that that's actually not the fact. but this professor tried to use this assumption thate