I attended the annual South Dakota Technology Summit in Sioux Falls yesterday, an event sponsored by Tom Daschle. There were a couple of interesting items, one involving E-Trade CEO Mitch Caplan and the other involving FCC Commissioner Jonathon Adelstein.
Tom Daschle introduced Mitch Caplan, and while doing so mentioned Betsy Barclay, E-Trade's lobbyist, who Daschle said was a friend of his and his wife, Linda. Linda Daschle, of course, is a powerful DC lobbyist. Mitch Caplan praised Barclay's ability to "pull together" members of congress whenever a piece of legislation affecting E-Trade arises. Caplan even talked about treating congressional members to a Rolling Stones concert in DC (lamenting the fact that he was extremely late to a lobbying meeting with congressional members prefacing the Stones concert, which incensed Betsy, who had worked hard to "pull people together" in DC, presumably including Tom Daschle). It was remarkable how candid Daschle and Caplan were about these lobbying activities.
The picture below is of Caplan and Daschle during the "Q & A session," which strangely seemed to be questions written by Daschle staffers, as we in the audience were never offered the opportunity to ask questions, or write them down to give to someone.
During the "breakout sessions," the audience was allowed to ask questions at the conclusion of the speaker's remarks. I attended the session hosted by FCC Commissioner and South Dakota native Jonathon Adelstein. A remarkable comment made by Adelstein was his criticism of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which he said often "acts as a mini-FCC." "They're obsessed with telecommunications issues," said Adelstein. "They think they know better than us, but they're just judges." A questioner also asked Adelstein to talk about the hurdles to his appointment, giving Adelstein the opportunity to talk about how hard Tom Daschle is fighting to keep him on the FCC. Adelstein is a pawn in the battle over judicial nominations. Below is a photo of Adelstein taking questions from the audience yesterday.
Also, here's a picture of Daschle introducing Bill Gates, who made a speech by satellite from Redmond, Washington.
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