>> certainly, senator. in terms of my experience, i've been involved in this work for a long time and a season-ending number of programs that have been successful, such as our drug court programs over the last 20 years time it seems very often the beginnings of those programs, testing and demonstration projects that give rise to these programs are

usually funded in some cases by private dollars, but often through the interest of the federal government and providing funding, seed money if you will so these programs can get traction. that is what has happened with drug courts and law drug courts are primarily funded through state and local resources, it is definitely in the best interest of the federal government to continue to support through funding for technical assistance and operational support so that our drug courts can continue to thrive. we have, in the country, based on what we know about the success of drug courts, the opportunity to change the paradigm. that is to say continuing to arrest offenders who have drug problems is not going to be very good. the notion that we can divert these folks and get them out of the system, focus on public health and improve public safety at the same time as we save

funds for every dollar spent on drug court, we yield $2 for savings for the criminal justice, you know, for the criminal justice system. it makes sense financially. it makes sense in terms of the comment made earlier about the fact we have the opportunity to give people their lives back. so for all of those reasons, the federal investment in the assistance to sustain drug court centric role model that we know has merit is the way to go. >> thank you, mr. tucker. let me add that there is also an addition to your testimony, there's also a statement coming in from the united states department of justice, which will be put into the record, but was not ready in time for this hearing. so the hearing record will remain open for seven days, not only for them, but anyone who would like to submit an additional statement. i now turn to my distinguished

colleague, senator kohl. >> thank you, senator whitehouse for holding this hearing today. before getting to my question, neck to see say a few words about the excellent work wisconsin is doing in this field. wisconsin has been a model for creating and using treatment courts to strike the right balance between holding nonviolent offenders accountable for their current, but also helping them break the cycle in and out of the justice system. our adult and juvenile drug courts come in dui courts and veterans courts enjoy broad support back home from democrats and republicans, law enforcement judges and local communities. wisconsin's 41 treatment courts draw such broad support because they have proven successful at reducing recidivism while saving state and local government millions of dollars every year. for example, drug court and were awarded connie hesiod county taxpayers $400,000 since it began in 2007.

wisconsin has been a leader in creation of treatment courts to focus on drunk drivers. waukesha county dui court works with people who have been convicted of their third dui. under this program in addition to serving their sentence, did mental health counselors work with repeat offenders to stay sober and get their lives back on track. this program's success has been a model for similar course throughout the country and most recently in date county, wisconsin republicans and democrats are raking together to implement the dui court. finally, i'm proud of our state's veterans courts. in 2008, the state public defender's office in wisconsin department of veterans affairs led an initiative to bring veterans courts to wisconsin. now wisconsin ethics veteran sports and most recently brown county is establishing its own veterans courts to serve the green bay area.

these efforts ensure that our vets are treated for the unique challenges they face after honorably serving our nation and i applaud them. mr. tucker, we know treatment courts are highly effective at saving taxpayer dollars by helping low-level offenders stay out of jail and overcome addictions. state and local officials want to expand their treatment court programs and get new programs off the ground. in light of severe budget constraints at the federal, state and local levels, how can we work together to maintain the courts we have and also start new ones? >> it's really critical, senator, for the collaboration that are really the foundation of the drug courts to continue to function and operate. and you are correct that the tight budget times i think what passed, i think the mettle of

our drug court professionals in every respect. the advantage though is because drug courts in the model bring together law enforcement social services, veterans admin traded courts, bring a number of people, probation offices altogether to work on these issues. i think having all these folks are together in a way that they -- where they can focus and keep their own identity in terms of the work they do, but the fact they can come together and collaborate for the purpose of expressed late improving the public safety in the public health by keeping the drug courts vibrant, alive and focused on keeping people out of the system as opposed to putting people in our criminal justice process will be very is. it will no question be challenging. i think my experience has been

from law-enforcement, when $90 k. type, i think people figure out how to come together when they know how to have a program in process that works and they have to struggle to produce results. and though, i think that is the challenge we face, no question that exists, but we know that our treatment providers are going to be streamed. nevertheless they need remains and i think we need to be focused on how we allow that to continue. >> mr. tucker, as you no dui courses a relatively relatively new effort. what is the 01 dcp using an dui courts, like in waukesha county, wisconsin. more broadly throughout the country? >> as you may be aware, senator, the office of national drug control policy and drug control strategy, one of its focus in

the 20 sten strategy has been on driving. so drunk driving has been recognized as a serious problem across the country. if it neatly into the connection and an excess of driving under the influence. and so, we are doing a number of things to sort of move the bar in the area of drunk driving, in terms of educating drivers, in terms of working with organizations to get the word out to be the bully pulpit and sort of work with law enforcement agencies or drug recognition enforcement agency offices to ensure that we put the resources where they should be on the roads and focused on individuals identifying individuals who may be driving while under the influence. so we provide resources to

improve better ways to do roadside testing and provide resources to educate more police officers, both state law enforcement officers as well as local officers to be aware of him to be able to identify those who might be driving while under the influence, if not about all, then be able to identify those who might be under the influence of some other controlled substance. >> thank you very much. senator whitehouse. senator klobuchar has joined us and senator kearns has joined us. the order on our site is senator franken, blumenthal and koons. senator franken. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i noticed that her former congressman, jim landsat is here. i would like to recognize him, too for his leadership and

mental health. he and any parity for treatment of addiction. minnesota has been a leader in addiction treatment and we are very proud of that. in minnesota, we have seen drug courts do pretty good -- do very good things. we talked to you return on investment, both in your opening statement in response to senator kohl. and part of this is recidivism. we found a minnesota that drug cards are less likely to be arrested for another client has offenders prosecuted in traditional court and this of course with an equivalent kind

of arrest senator. i want to after seeing that trend nationwide in terms of recidivism. >> with respect to recidivism. one of the primary things that make them affect what is the impact on me or just depends. and so 84% of graduate school of counter the program remained drug-free. after graduating after the first graduation. with respect to the two-year mark, two years after 73% of those participants have not had not been rearrested are charged with any serious crimes. so this is true consistently with respect to the research on the data we see. so that is just another

indicator of why this becomes so critical. the notion of not just taking someone who's committed a crime, but getting into treatment and recovery and giving them the opportunity to get the support they need to stay in recovery in the market to citizens is what we are after. and so, they do this just that we have -- we are in a position to have an repeat that success going forward. >> well, let's talk about the return on investment and where it comes from. because to me, as we are in this judge it crisis in the deficit crisis and we have all recognized that we have to find ways in which to bring about cost to society and cost of the government. if you reduce recidivism, here

also reducing the crime, the cost of society. her changing minds. people now who might be in prison have jobs. our paying taxes. i want to talk about fun things, which is selling. for me, one of the huge navy overlooked aspect of addiction is the toll on families. and we have found a satisfying result in drug court in minnesota that more families are staying together or being reunited. in fact, in dakota county, they found that children of drug court recipients are being placed in foster homes far less often than children of other offenders. so, to me that is a wonderful

result. what impact do you think this has on families, those immediately and in the long-term? >> well, immediately, i can speak at it from personal with respect to the role that i played when i was a police officer. it is no different today. i spent times going into people's homes who had its domestic violence and a variety of other behavior does regimental to the core of the family. one of the things that i think the drug courts do and we focus on to the national drug control strategy as we treat this as a public health issue assault of the safety issue to focus on ways in which we can give and provide services and treatment folks need. the challenge is that someone who is a drug problem and do if an offender to the rest of the family, we know is significant. i go to a lot of drug court graduation. i travel around.

i went to a drug court graduation several months back in charlotte, virginia and that next to the wife -- the mother of one of the sole graduate of that graduation. she was clearly enamored about the fact that he was successful in meeting conditions as being in the drug court and participating in getting himself on the right track to being clean. but at the same time, you can see she was apprehensive. she clearly had been through a lot. but it really makes a huge difference and if you haven't attended a graduation, a drug court graduation, i recommend you do because you lack a feeling help of an renewed about the fact that the work we've do with drug courts really matters for sure. with respect to the courts come in terms of course at the state

and local level, when we compare traditional process seen in drug court, we are a long way in regular courts, processing or core processing, we are saving a serious amount of money per individual and because of the sum of issues you raised. some of the research tell us each drug court participants we have saving summer in the area of $1400. we have an additional savings that may range $6700 tiered so we are roughly in the area of $8000 in savings for folks, participants who go through the program and remove from the criminal justice system and any associated outcomes for the yield from the associated outcomes than all the other respects and turned to getting them back to work and making them productive does have financial benefits overall.

>> let me stop you there so we can go to senator blumenthal. >> just let me say one last thing. i won't be here for the second round. you talk about the whole of these families feel. i hope was a fear that set us prayers. these are inspiring names. this is not -- treatment doesn't always work. but i want to say as we get past this current budget crisis right now, this debt crisis, this budget crisis from a move on to start addressing our problems and start addressing long-term debt problems, this is a bipartisan thing. i wrote a letter to make sure we keep funding for this.

this is what is great about this if this is something where we can address and there is a return on investment and it saves money, but also saves lives. i think everybody and i have to go. senator blumenthal is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i went to the somewhat abbreviated in my questions because we do have another panel and there's other senators waiting to ask questions. but not to indicate any brevity or shortness and my interest in this area, but to follow up with you afterward on the very good work you are doing, not only on drug courts, but most particularly on deference courts. and as you know, many many coming back from service and sacrifice abroad in combat

return with wounds and her invisible, posthypnotic stress, which in turn made. in some ways, predictably to alcohol for domestic violence, all kinds of very serious and sometimes physically harmful activity. and for me, one of the most telling statistics as a member of the armed service committee that i have heard is that about 30% of those incidences of posttraumatic or traumatic brain injuries are undiagnosed. and so, many of these young men and women go back into society and are candidates for the kind of violence that very recently was documented. you may have seen it in "the new york times" article over the weekend by erica goode about

staff sergeant brad i. first and his struggle with the back way these problems and the way that he was, in a sense, rescued from suicide by cop three veterans court, or at least treatment doesn't matter. so my question to you is, where would we look for the best models that these veterans court's, whether they are separate cores or dockets for a specific schedules or calendars for veteran issues. because i think the more we can do to spread the word, spread the best practices better off states like connecticut will be in our country. >> yes, senator. i did see that article and was actually going to reference in my remarks as well. i think it is a classic example that repeats his love over and over again.

i think with respect to your question, we have to look at all the courts. i think when we have the drug courts and how they function, each one is something different to offer, perhaps in terms of his success. the research and you may hear more about this from doug marlowe when he testifies, but my sense is that we have to continuously evaluate to look at and examine those programs that are working and take from them the best part is says, support those and replicate those where we think it makes sense. it is also helpful as we look at these. we learned about what doesn't work so well. but i think with respect to the examples i have seen with respect to the veteran's courts in particular, at the coming together of the core personnel, and the military services personnel, law enforcement personnel, the judges and the

veterans organizations, both at the state and federal level is the way to go. so to the extent that we can keep that bottle, keep everyone informed, then i think we can continue to be affect it in terms of service provided. >> i appreciate your answer. what i would like to do this for you, if you would, to provide me with maybe five at the best says, what you regard personally if the five best examples of how the veteran's courts are working in the country, perhaps on a confidential basis and may be some of the best part is this as well, so that we can perhaps use them as models in connecticut and elsewhere around the country. >> senator klobuchar. >> thank you very much, senator whitehouse for holding this

hearing. thank you, mr. tucker for being here. what a great event to celebrate the work of drug courts and a note in number of republican senators they are and i think aj shows bipartisan bipartisan support for moving forward with drug courts. it's in my former congressman out there, jim branstad, former congressman for the state of minnesota, republican and i know patrick kennedy was splashed on the front page of the paper, with his addiction problem, as jim branstad, to stand by his side. i think it shows that his mentor and his friend throughout his experience and throughout his experience in getting sober and going on to get married this last month. it shows again this is in a democratic problem or republican could solve our problems and the numbers are astounding 75% of graduates will not be arrested again. some of the people who grow in

this state. i was a prosecutor for eight years in our biggest county, first recorded in our state we now have dirty drug courts in our state. and i think that we don't know the dollars and cents that are saved in the number here to support the concept of stroke courts is not necessarily those numbers. it's a teenager that can get their life back again. as a family that can send their kids in a street corner without having to work with drug crimes. and as the addicts who have a chance for another life. so i went to thank you for the good work you are doing. i did have a question that the dollar and cents because the time we have this celebration and a lot of money colleagues and i are very focused on that right now and i think this actually can be a big part of it as we look at how we can save money and do good at the same time.

could you explain why drug court saves money and what do you think is the most accurate estimate of the potential savings? >> first of all, senator, it is good to see you again. >> it took me a lot of words to get you to that point, the thank you. >> some of the answer to your question is raised to my earlier comment in response to senator blumenthal's question. and that has to do with sort of what we see them based on research in terms of the general savings. obviously, when we take someone out of the system, just the fact that we incarcerate as we do in this country, more than anywhere else on the road and we have 7 million people in the system, 5 million on probation as some sort of community supervision. but having those folks out, rapid than in the system saves

us money. to the extent that we can shut down their return to the system, obviously also saves us money. the figures i gave, 1400 per participant and a $6700 in outcomes, associated outcomes as a result of an individual, not remaining in our jails or prisons is where we see the savings on a regular basis. >> that one number i heard the cost and participation is less than $7000 incarceration over 22,000. would that be per year? >> i'd have to get back to you i'm not sure. i think it is a range actually. i am not sure whether it is annually. i would expect in terms of how to measure it. but i can get a response for you on that to be more specific. >> thank you. just one last question about the synthetic drugs and what you're seeing with those. would a young man died in minnesota, ordered off the

internet and the others died as well. senator grassley and schumer and i have been working on bills to include these types of substances on the list of illegal drugs. what are you saying? i can tell you in our state, we have seen a number of kids. you never heard of these things before and they are to emergency rooms doubling, tripling what we have seen. "the new york times" reported just this weekend that they had 34 -- 3470 calls about that felt in the first 600 months of the poison control centers compared to 303 calls in 2010. >> well, we see a dramatic rise in such stimulant and incense products sold that way. the drug enforcement administration, as you may know, is focused on not and has begun to regulate some of the ingredients in some of those projects. but the challenge in some cases knowing what is there. but we are, as you know, from the drug policy is and with our

strategy continuously trying to focus on the prevention side of this as much as we possibly can. >> accomack education and other sinners needs to needs to needs to more important in these bills are coming off on the docket for next week. >> thank you for convening this hearing. i will briefly say i am from 94 statewide since 97. like senator blumenthal, i'm interested in the progress of our veterans courts, which her attorney general launched in the last year. i will ask for a brief answer to question about what sort of constructive role can interview nationally, has police participation in drug court, has veteran's participation as mentors like veterans courts? and how was nbci training practices that help engage state

and local government? >> well, just simply put, collaboration is the name of the game, senator. i can tell you that we have wide support from national police groups when it comes to drug court participation, probation departments as well. and so, the notion that i think people is finally come to the realization that this model works. and so anywhere in which we can support it is what i think people are choosing to do. it has been i think one of the reasons it has been so successful. one person across the board's >> i to thank you that addiction affects every family, every community across this country we need to have a balanced approach, balancing line for sewage treatment. i think the drug courts and your leadership have been critical to achieving that balance. thank you.

>> thank you. .. >> this panel is about an hour. [inaudible conversations]

>> the hearing will come back to order. i'm delighted to welcome our second panel of witnesses, and we'll just go right across the table, left to right, from my side of the aisle here. our first witness is martin sheen who appeared in more than 50 feature films including "apocalypse now" and starred in numerous television shows and performance on the "west wing" earning him six emmy nominations. he's been around the country and here in congress and he's taken the time to offer his testimony here today. mr. sheen? >> thank you, chairman whitehouse and distinguished members of the smub committee. it is a very rare privilege to be here today to advocate on the

behalf the drug courts. i'd like to emphasize, however, i'm not a drug court professional nor an addiction specialist. i make the distinction because we know celebrity to a greater or lesser degree is so often confused for credibility. for instance, i'm not a former president of the united states -- [laughter] though i played one on tv. [laughter] my first exposure to drug court began nearly 20 years ago and opened my eyes to the incredible capacity of human beings to change. i've seen individuals mired in the depths of addiction transformed by drug courts, families reunited after years of estrangement due to a love one's substance abuse. while i prepped my opening remarks, i was, however, directly responsible for helping create a drug court system in berkeley, california in 1996 along with father bill o'donald and an addiction specialist.

we called it options, and our chief focus was the homeless and street pop population. with the help the drug court judge and berkeley police chief, bobby miller, we began a treatment center in one sober living house. today, there's six sober living houses all run by drug court graduates and nearly 6,000 people have gone through them and returned to their health, boyd, mind, and spirit. these miracles happen everyday in drug court, and i believe this country's greatest untapped resource is our addicted population. every year, drug court help saves over 120,000 seriously addicted people bringing them from darkness to light and setting them towards a course on fulfillment, freedom, and enviable joy. imagine, for a moment, the impact we could have if drug courts were available to all 1.2

million addicted individuals who would be best served by drug courts if one were available. imagine the impact of 1.2 million people making up for lost time in their community and serving their families and their country. this is the purpose of drug courts, and this is why it's critical that congress funds drug courts at a cost of $88.7 million for fiscal year 2012. it's no doubt that our system provides little return on investment. we spend over $70 billion on correction, and it's done little to stem the tide of drugs and crime. instead, addicted people cycle through the system at expensive cost to the public. drug court stops the cycle. we have a proven budget solution that we count on to cut drug abuse and crime. every citizen benefits when one addicted person gets clean and

sober. i would like to take a moment now to talk about drug court serving veterans and the emergence of veteran's treatment courts. i spent valuable time yesterday with judge robert russell of buffalo, new york, and this renowned jurist is among drug court's hall of fame. two years ago, judge russell created the first nation's veteran treatment center to restore the honor of these heros. we asked so much of our men and women in uniform, and they ask so little in return. in fact, they are often the last to ask for counseling or treatment. it is our duty to care for our veterans when they suffer as a direct result from their service to our country. today, there's 80 veterans' treatment courts with over 100 planned. drug courts and veteran's treatment courts are on the front lines of ensuring when our veterans suffer from substance abuse or mental health disorders and get in trouble with the law, they have the opportunity for

treatment and restoration. by helping restore their health, we give honor to their service. our criminal justice system has been transformed over the last two decades by dedicated drug court professionals who believe that a blend of accountability and compassion can and should be the foundation for which we handle our addicted, offended population. now these same professionals are forever changing the way this nation treats veterans when their invisible wounds of war lead them astray. frankly, there's no better investment this congress can make than drug courts and veteran's courts. the time has come to reap the benefits of expanding this proven budget solution. thank you for the honor of appearing before you today. i appreciate your time and service to our country. >> thank you, mr. sheen. our next witness comes as a personal favorite, the honorable

gene e. lafazia, chief judge of rhode island district court and prior to to her appointment to the bench, she was an active civil litigator in private practice and a leader in the rhode island community serving on the parole board, junior discipline, and chair of the national association of defense counsel. as chief judge of the rhode island district court, she introduced the pilot program for the state's first veteran's court and convened an extraordinary round table for attorney general holder on his recent visit. she graduated from boston university and law school, and we welcome her here today. welcome, your honor. >> thank you, mr. whitehouse and other distinguished members of the subcommittee. thank you for the opportunity to discuss something i feel so

passionate about. immediately prior to becoming chief of the rhode island district court, i spent three years on the arraignment collar in -- calendar in kent county. i noticed the numbers were increasing. sometimes individuals were immediately recognizable by their stance and occasionally by uniform. other times, they would actually hide their status in attempt to quickly resolve the charge without further attention. i was also hearing from victims in domestic matters saying this defendant's behavior would not have occurred prior to deployment or prior to multiple tours of duty which is a phenomena that we are seeing more of in this war than ever before. it became apparent that some of the men and women were returning from combat with injuries that were real, but not visible to the naked eye. i i also realized a sentence imposed on the member of the military could have a harsher

result than those imposed on a private citizen. they offer a filing on a first offense with the intent to give the defendant a chance to start over with a clean slate. on domestic charges, the court imposes a no contact order prohibiting that defendant from carrying a firearm. there's an exception to this prohibition for law enforcement, but no such exception for military. active military must be qualified to carry a firearm so this military defendant stands to lose his or her job, future, and perhaps the benefits. hardly what he intended when we sent him to a filing. recent statistics indicate 1.7 million americans served in iraq or afghanistan. while in is a most significant number, nationwide this presents less than one-half of 1% of the national population. rhode island, however, gave more than its fair share to the statistics. the call back of rhode island's national guard is the second

highest in the entire united states. as of september 30, 2010, the number of veterans living in rhode island who served in the gulf wars is three times the national per capita average. they return home and successfully reintegrate into the fabric of society, but what about the small percentage unable to do so? studies indicate that one in five returning military exhibit some symptoms of mental illness, not all of them will become involved in the criminal justice system. no soldier left behind is a code which americans have always been proud to live by. we do not desert soldiers on the battlefield. shouldn't this be true on the home front? do we not owe them a similar duty when they come home injured or affected in a way that altered who they are and what they do, and especially if that injury causes or fuels behavior putting them into the criminal justice system? these men and women were not drafted. they volunteered for this

service. they put on a uniform, and they followed the american flag into combat to fight and protect for the fundamental rights and privileges that we, as americans, enjoy every singling day. most people agree that we have a duty, but what does that mean? how does it translate to the criminal justice system and the role of the judiciary in this case? in response, the rhode island district court under grant is now a partner in implementing the first jail diversion program in rhode island for veterans. this grant has allowed rhode island to begin this important process, but it is only a beginning. let me emphasize what this program or these programs does not mean. it does not mean that anyone will not be held accountable for their actions because of military status or even medical diagnosis alone. this is not a free pass. what this duty does mean is that we need to increase our focus on this group of people, we need to recognize them, we need to implement programs that will address their unique challenges

and which provides them with tools and up sight needed to become whole again to reintegrate into society. rhode island is in a kwr50u neck position because it is a small state. we have tremendous collaboration with law enforcement, community mental health providers, and other state departments. the rhode island national guard has been actively involved and fully supportive. as we anticipate future draw downs the returning personnel requiring the services will undoubtedly grow substantially. the expansion of the program allows us to fully address the various needs of these individuals, and it allows us to include all individuals who enter the judicial system because of service-related injury. we're ready and positioned to take on the responsibility of the a statewide veteran's calendar with the resources and networks to make it successful and sustainable, an important word today, i think. i hope we see this in the relatively near future, and we look to you, our leaders in

washington, and i'm proud to have the rhode island district court play a leading role on the issue, and i thank you for the opportunity to discuss this today. i will happily answer any questions that you may have. >> thank you, your honor. our next witness is douglass b. marlow, the director of the division on law and ethics research at the research stiewt as well as an adjunct professor of sigh psychiatry at the pennsylvania school of medicine. he's published over 80 articles and chapters on the crime and drug abuse and on the drug court review board and criminal justice and behavior, a member of the national association of drug court professionals serving as chair of the research committee and the drug policy reform committee, and we're delighted to have him here for his testimony. >> thank you, chairman whitehouse, members of the committee, a great honor to be here. i know you've all been waiting for martin sheen and the chief justice to be finished speaking to hear from the scientist in

the room about the -- [laughter] facts and data related to drug courts, but that is my job as the chief also of science and policy in the drug court professionals is stay on top of this scientific research which is no easy task because the last time i did a search on drug courts, i found well over a thousand published studies of drug courtings. drug courts are studied more intensely than any other criminal justice program. there's people in the room taking medications for cancer, diabetes, and other medical conditions that have less evidence of success than drug courts. according to the leading national universities research organizations on average all else being equal, drug courts reduce crime anywhere from 10%-26%, that's on average. the best drug courts will cut crime rates in half, which is unheard of in the criminal justice system. as a matter of cost

effectiveness, on average all else being equal for every one dollar invested in drug court, you'll get $2.21 back on your investment. how many of you get a 221% return on your 401(k)s at the moment? for every dollar invested, and the best drug courts return $27 for every $1 dollar invested. the u.s. government accountability office in 2005 concluded that drug courts reduce crime, but they wanted to know what else drug courts do besides reducing crime, so they launched the multisite adult drug evaluation, and the results have been released. every region in the country over 1200 participants in drug courts, 23 drug courts included finding not only did drug courts

reduce crime, but they reduced drug abuse, family conflict, they improved family functioning, and those are associated with domestic violence and child abuse. they improve employment. they improve annual income. we now have as good as you're going to get research on the effects of drug courts. if anybody tells you they looked at the research on drug courts and they don't accept it, they have to reach the same conclusion about every other substance abuse program in existence because there's no other program with e qif legend evidence of -- equivalent evidence of the success of drug courts. some say there's controlled studies. according to the fda, you need two randomized controlled studies for medication to be considered evidence-based and a proven practice. drug courts have many times that degree of ethics. it's a highly, proven

intervention. now why a federal role? most crime is interstate. most crime is person on person, person on property. it occurs at a single point in time in a single place. drug courts are interstate commerce. everything that occurs in drug court, trption, procurement, manufacturing, use, the effects of that are interstate, if not international. that is why we launched the federal government launch the war on drugs over roughly four decades ago, and before that in the nixon administration, there was an increase in demand reduction efforts. it is a national event. it's a national impact, and therefore, it needs a national level response. as far as veterans treatments courts, veterans have always been a national priority, and they are the biggest movement currently in the drug court movement is to treat veterans, who, as you heard, have 80% of the veterans coming in contact

with the criminal justice system are addicted and/or are mentally ill driving their involvement in the criminal justice system. i'm happy to answer any questions issue and i'm happy to provide you with proof and the scientific evidence for any facts i've asserted. thank you. >> thank you very much, doctor. the final witness is david molhausen studying at the seasonal center and he served on the staff for this senate judiciary committee. welcome back. prior to that, he was a manager at a juvenile correctional facility in baltimore, holds a dock rat in -- doctorate and a bachelor's degree in political science and justice studies. welcome, doctor. >> thank you. i'm a research fellow and empirical policy analysis in the

center of david analysis at the heritage foundation. i thank the committee for the opportunity to testify today on drug and veterans' treatment courts. the views i express in the testimony are my own and should not be construed as representing any official position of the heritage foundation. my spoken testimony focuses on three points. first, without a control spending and surging public debt threatening the nation's stability, increased federal spending of state and local courts should not be a priority by the end of this year, the office warns the federal debt reaches approximately 70% of gross domestic product, the highest percentage since world war ii. it's hardly a good time to increase funding for programs that subsidize the routine practices of state and local

governments, but instead reform the programs that focus on reimbursing drug courts for the cost of serving recently returned combat veterans with abuse problems. this gets the government out of subsidizing routine operations and save taxpayer federal dollars as well. second, while a large number of drug court evaluations have been formed, many of the studies have significant shortcomings in scientific rigor. before we can judge a drug court program to be effective, we have to first understand the importance of selection. it can be astoundingly difficult to distinguish between what is working and what is not. in no way is this truer than when it comes to the criminal justice system trying to change human behavior. for example, individuals volunteering for a drug court program may be more motivated than individuals not seeking entry. such motivational dpak tores are

often invisible to those seeking effectiveness. failure to account for the factors produce misleading associations between drug participation and outcomes. experimental evaluations, the gold standard of research designs are the most capable of handling the problem of selection. in my review of the scientific literature, i was only able to obtain three experimental evaluations of drug courts. clearly, more evaluations are needed. the need for more evaluations to transcend political party lines both democrats and republicans should agree on this issue. third, while under some circumstances in particular locations, drug courts may be more effective than traditional responses, carefully review the claims of effectiveness coming from drug courts. three experiments in the written

testimony provide a mixed bag about effectiveness. obviously, some are effective while others are not. effective drug courts produce cost savings and some may produce more benefits than costs. however, this rule is not universal for all drug courts. a relative example is the cost findings of the newly released multisite adult drug court evaluation performed by the urban institute. after comparing 23 drug courts to six other types of court interventions, the quasi experimental evaluation found it produced an average net benefit of over $2,000. however, this estimate is not significant. in other words, policymakers cannot be sure the drug courts participating in this evaluation produced more benefits than cost. the costs may outweigh the benefits. it's too precise to draw strong policy conclusions.

more details orchlt result of this evaluation and other evaluations are in my testimony and available to you. thank you for inviting me. >> thank you. i'm going to be here as chair here until the end of the meeting so i'll wait until the end, and i yield to senator bloomenthal and whoever else is next. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you for bringing together this really very, very impressive panel, not only for star power, but intellectual and persuasive power, and i want to suggest that there is a danger here which is to conflate veterans' problems and drug problems. to see a drug court as also

potentially a veteran's courts, and what is impressive about the work you've done is that you have started to address not only the invisible wounds of post-traumatic stress and the traumatic brain injury that causes many of the addicted behaviors that result in criminal activity, but also to address the problems that are unique to veterans, and they can become addicted, but they also have other problems, and so i'd like to invite you and others on the panel to perhaps talk about why we need to address separately the issues that affect veterans opposed to simply opening drug courts that may deal with veterans' treatment issues.

>> [inaudible] i think there certainly is a lot of overlap, and that will involve both the cost factor and there's a huge overlap on the successes that we're able to celebrate. that being said, veterans have a number of unique issues that have to be dealt with, and i think some of the standard counseling that we provide for substance abuse issues and alcohol issues and other issues are not always able to address some of the underlying issues that veterans have to deal with. we've had tremendous collaboration in our project in rhode island. it's a small state and lends itself to that in addition to collaboration with law enforcement and our mental health providers, collections, and other agencies, and we've

had great support from our legislature and our governor this year, and we had a law signed into effect a allowed us for court ordered counseling on dui cases and domestic violence counseling. we now are able to do that counseling through the veteran's association, and i think that makes a huge difference because they have a unique set of circumstances that most of us don't even have a point of reference for, and i think that you need to have people involved in the projects who have that background, have that insight, that understanding and know how to get to those specific firing issues. >> and making use of veterans' themselves in providing that counseling and aid? >> yes, and on two fronts. one of the other elements of the veterans' courts that i think is critical for success is the use of mentors in the review process, and we are in our beginning stages in rhode island

and now developing our mentor group, but i think not only from the professional counselors with the mill taser background and insight, you also need the support from a marine who can speak marine talk to a fellow marine, whatever the branch may be, you need people who have been there, walk the walk, talk the talk, have come back, and can talk you through. >> i'd like to invite any member of the panel what i thought that "new york times" piece did so well which is to give a face and voice to the veterans' issues, specific instances of a veterans' court working for a veteran i think is very powerful as the "new york times" piece was in depicting how a specific together or calendar or channel for providing justice to a veteran can help address the specific and unique problem that

veterans may face. >> can i take a stab at that? >> sure. >> it takes a tremendous amount of conditions to get somebody ready for war. our natural inclination is not to put ourselves in danger. our natural inclination is not to harm other people or not to follow rigid authority, our natural inclination is not to be constantly vigilant for threats everywhere we go. we have to be taught and conditioned to do that over months and months, if not years in the military. we've known that since the beginning of war. what we have not known is that you then must be deconditioned or prepared not to be hypervigilant, not to be overly obedient to authority when you return to society where those are undesirable traits. mix that with trauma and substance abuse, you conflate those problems. it is very much a new syndrome. it is not a drug court. it is not a mental health

court. it is a re-entry program for people returning to civilian life who have been woulded and damaged. that is what veteran courts understand by using veteran peers and veteran mentors, the veteran administration services, these are people who have been through that process, and they either had difficulty and learned through their dysfunction or have been trained, come from that world, and they understand. it's a fundamentally different animal than the other programs, and i'm hear to tell you, we have always seen huge numbers of of home less vets and veretts in the criminal justice system after war, and we see is now like we've seen it every time before, and we have multiple war. they need to ramp up and be ready quickly for a lanch influx. >> mr. sheen, i want to thank you for following in the footsteps of many former presidents when they leave the

oval office or the set to pursue very important causes, and i just wondered why you have many things you could have pursued as your cause and why you chose drug courts 1234 >> well, thank you, senator. i would just say it's an extension of my work with the peace and justice community. social justice is, i think, incumbent on all of us to participate in to bring healing where we can and bring understanding, to bring some light in areas where there's great darkness, and this was just a natural progression in my work in the peace and justice era. you know, the description is quite extraordinary, and gets to the point of what the senator was talking about. i read that times article yesterday, and as i mentioned, i was with judge russell yesterday

who initiated that first court, and he's quoted in the article about that gentleman, and the parameters surrounding the horrible situation out in the woods in michigan with a gun, and there's officers surrounding the area felt they were being shot at, and their lives were in danger, and this veteran, this fellow 1 alive and is getting help now and those officers dropped their charges as well. it's an extraordinary level of compassion and understanding about what that guy in the woods alone with a gun was going through. he was in iraq for three tours living with that extraordinary anxiety, tension, and adrenaline. we have no idea, no comprehension at all what that's like in a combat zone, and, you know, we're in three countries now where it's just every day normal life, and a lot of these men and women are serving

multiple tours. we have to be aware of that, and, you know, it's going to cost us, but anything of great value is going to be costly, otherwise you have to question its value. you know, when i think of the work we're doing, i'm reminded about the guy who came to the gates of heaven and asked to be let in, and st. peter said, of course, show us your scars. he said, i have no scars. st. peter said, what a pity? was there nothing worth fighting for? i can't think of anything in the social justice and peace era today more worth fighting for than drug court. it just goes to the central -- center of the issue in a deeply compassionate and humane way, and it's the only way out frankly. >> thank you very much.

>> thank you, senator. >> dr. marlowe, do you want to respond to things pointed out with the cost effectiveness issue as we engage in a process right now in washington where we have to bring the debt down, and we're looking at smarter solutions in the criminal justice areas, and i found people can be surprised that there's ways to spend less money, but actually get better results. could you talk about that? >> yeah. the research on the cost effectiveness of drug court is actually pretty powerful research conducted by independent organizations, and they found, as i said earlier, for every dollar invested, the average, if i don't know anything else, if i have to guess how much i get back for every dollar that i put in, i'm going to get $2.21 back, and if it's a particularly good drug court, i could get $3-$27 back. as for the multisite drug court evaluation just published. they found the average net

benefit for drug court was just short of $6,000 per participant. if drug courts treat 120,000 apartments with an average return on investment of $6,000 per participant, might need a calculator, but if we hit the $1.2 million people -- 1.2 million people we are serving, i really need a calculator to see how much money we're saving. we use incarceration now as the primary response. it has no effect, but it's the saving grace of being enormously expensive. we have drug courts a tenth of the cost of incarceration and many times better, so i would suggest to you that it's pretty common that doing too much tends to make people worse and also tends to cost too much money. if you bring a sledge hammer to knock in a thumb tack, you'll do more damage than you need to and

picking a better hammer and tool and doing a better job is less expensive, saves you money. these are not speculative cost savings. these cost savings occur in the same budget year or the immediately ensuing budget. you get your money back within 24 months. that's money to the criminal justice system. i'm not talking about, you know, foster care saving children, you know, from losing their family. i'm not talking about those costs. i'm talking about money back to the criminal justice system because he's not in jail, the police are not arresting him, i don't have to have probation hearings, don't have to waste the prosecutor and defense in the courtroom. i'm saving audiotape of that money right -- all of that money right away. that's why drug courts expanded as much as they have. the federal government sees a program, it's rare for the federal government to see the program and the state or locality doesn't pick it up after the funding. they don't do it from inertia,

but because they save money. >> uh-huh. i just wanted to have one more question when we come back with to talk about the drug court graduations, and i've been to a number of them. when we first started our drug court, there was issues with the police not supporting it, and we made changes with taking some of the drug crimes out, and some of the i things i know prison was appropriate. over the years, we gained the support of the police for that court making a big difference because they realized there was actual follow-up and what was perceived as a minor crime, it was not for those kids trying to go to school and get people on drugs and getting in the way of their path and potentially getting them on drugs, and what happened was that they started to see that with the drug court there's actual follow-up. they have to come in. they have to have the drug test. there's a stick at the end if they didn't come --

comply, and it's interesting to see the evolution with law enforcement during that time. thank you very much. >> one point about that. i said some drug courts cut crime rates in half, the best ones have law enforcement on their team. that's one of the biggest findings is law enforcement on the team increases the out generals multifold and for the reasons you suggested. >> thank you. >> the dark cloud of budget and debt concerns that lies over washington right now is a very real thing, and it's very important, but i would like mr. sheen and judge lafazia with the most personal experience with these courts to talk a little bit about the intangible and non-monetary value you see in what happens in a drug court

and what we hope also happens in the veteran's court as the individual involved has to come to the difficult recognition and reconciliation of the wreckage that they've often made of their own lives, realized that a transformation is necessary and start the hard and courageous path of recovery. that is a rather special human accomplishment, and i'd like you to put that in the context of what you see every day in the drug courts. >> thank you, senator. my own personal experience with drug court besides lobbying here in washington on occasion is confined to the state of california which is no small spot on the map, but i have been

a participant in compton drug court south of los angeles as well as the downtown drug court in los angeles and the bay area courts including judge steven -- who is here now -- i'm sorry -- steven manly, he will never forgive me, sorry. judge steven. i've been a great supporter of his court as well as the berkeley and oakland situations. what i see siewfn are the drug courts focus on low income homeless fixed income, people on the short end of the ladder. very often, they have public

defenders. across the board rule is they are barely rarely represented by a lawyer that they have to pay. they're generally all wards of the state at that point, so when they stand in front of a compassionate, understanding judge and they're offered a very fundamental choice, mister, i'm going to put you in the state penitentiary for three years, you you'll have the opportunity to turn your life around in treatment that you can start today. what is your choice? 99% of those defendants say give me the treatment. when you see them come in, i mean, they are right off their mug shots, you know. when they come dragging into courts, they wear the orange jumper and generally in chains. then you come back over a period of months, and you witness this

gradual extraordinary change where a human being is emerging from this chaos, this baggage, that's been discarded, thrown away, where you see they had no self-motivation, that they were totally dependent on the next hit or the next shot or the next drink. to see that development of a human being flower and reach its potential and then turn to the community after graduation which usually takes a year, a very hard, intense rehabilitation and 12-stepping, and begin to serve those people coming out of the cages in the orange jumpers and in the shackles, it's that turn towards the brother, the sister that is just coming out of the cage, and the look that they have with each other, it's like

what veterans have that dr. marlowe talked about. there is a jailhouse dialogue. there is an understanding of street die -- dialogue. there is a drug culture. when that's broken, it has a mere rack cuous effect. there's a saying all you need for an aa meeting is two drunks, a pot of coffee, and a lot of resentment. that has not changed. it's a deemly personal contact with one drug addict talking to another one that's come out of the same cell and that same uniform, and the hope, the possibility of returning to their humanity, and then the service back to the community. the 12-step -- the last step in all 12-step programs is we reach out to those still out there u and it is the only way to keep

anything of real value is to give it away with love, and that is the basic fundamental work of drug court. >> hold that thought, and i'll come back to you, but my time is up. that'll be my question in the second round to you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. you know, i'd like to follow-up on some of the answers given, especially the description of the training and preparation that goes into preparing a warrier to go into modern day battle where people come back from explosive situations that they may not have survived in past wars and comes back with wounds undiagnosed and therefore untreated, and therefore, i

think my question is how do we prepare the courts, the law enforcement professionalsing and others involved in the system for dealing with those individuals who may be within their jurisdiction and they may not fully understand. >> the armed services have training, curricular, and intervention specifically for this purpose. training law law enforcement, training judges, and first of all, how do you recognize a visible wound or post-traumatic stress disorder? what are the symptoms? what do you identify? you have to ask the right questions in three to five minutes you'll know, but if you don't ask the questions, you'll absolutely never know. >> and what are the right questions? >> asking somebody if they get startled. do you find you're startled? anything make you like, all the

sudden you turn quickly? if there's a slight movement in the courtroom, watch the veteran when that's movement in the back of the room, they turn to the movement because if they didn't turn in afghanistan or iraq, they could be dead. in the courtroom, what they may well have done is set up an altercation or a negative situation so you're looking for that startled response, the hypervigilance, and you are looking for that hollowness. when you're that damaged, when you're that broken, when you feel that bad, you're not sure anybody can help you. in fact, you're pretty sure nobody can. yoir pretty sure -- you're pretty sure you're going to die, and you're not entirely sure you care. looking for that broken empty thing in people, almost the apathy, the whatever happens what happenses kind of thing when you push on it. those are not hard to diagnosis. they are not hard to detect, and we can train reliable law enforcement, judges, and police

to do it, but if they are not trained, they don't see it, and they just think the guy is address depressive, but he's not, he's just startled or being a wise guy when, in fact, they are being obedient. they need to be trained and sense sensitized to it. there's a guy in the nay vive who does -- navy who does it. we have to get it out, and we can do that. >> judge, did you have anything to add? >> the -- i don't want to repeat what he said, but in rhode island, our law enforcement for a couple years now have been participating in something we call a first responder program which was originally initiated to allow them to address mental health issues right at the beginning of the scene, and they are trained to diffuse dangerous situations, and we now have into that program, we have put a component on reck noising

veterans in the veterans' issues in order to deescalate it at the very beginning. i think the training is critical for every stake holder involved in this process, but in addition to the training, i think that public education is also important, particularly from a court's point of view on some of the cases. there is a ripeness for negative public perception. there is a -- an issue out there or potential for people to think this is a free pass, for people to think they are not going to be held accountable, and there's a safety aspect part of it. it was mentioned before as to the duis that play a big role in the courts that driving under the influence, and rhode island, we call them duis, they are right for public scrutiny when they bring somebody through this, and they are getting a lesser sentence. if that person re-offends, and

that possibility is always there, and god forbid somebody is injured, that comes back to us on the front page of the paper. you have to have public understanding as well as training for the stake holders. >> and probably training for the state legislators and congressmen as well. >> and that also, i suppose, yes. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman, and i'd like to submit for the record later a copy of the "new york times" article that's been referenced a couple of times by mr. sheen and dr. marlowe and a previous witness if i may. >> without objection, it's included in the record. let me go back to judge if you wanted to add anything to mr. sheen's remarks and let me also ask you how has it been dealing with the veterans' administration in terms of the coordination with this particular means of serving veterans? >> the veterans' administration has played a critical role in this project in rhode island

from the beginning. they have been supportive in every step of the process including con -- confirming identification from veterans if they get a call from the police department to the roles they play in the court, the services they are providing. they have been excellent on emergency care, on getting people in very, very quickly for assessment, so they have been a wonderful partner in this project. >> they get it? >> they get it. they absolutely get it. >> and they play well with others? >> they do play well with others, and they have been cooperative and supportive and have had some good initiatives that they, themselves, brought to the table for us. the one thing that i would add to what mr. sheen said is that when these veterans defendants come into the court, one of our biggest challenges has been to identify them because many of them do not want to be identified as military or veterans. there is a shame element that

accompanies them, and they have come from a background of rules and regulations and living and respecting those rules and regulations, and now they found themselves in a very different situation, so that has been one of the challenges that we've had to deal with. they have, however, been very, very motivated. most of them have remembered what their family lives were like beforehand, what their lives in general were like beforehand, and they have been very, very motivated to get into the programs. they've welcomed the treatment that's been given. there's nothing, perhaps, that motivates people like finding themselves in the criminal justice system, and when that option is given, it motivated, and it works, and i will be happy to celebrate any motivation and in success story that is there. >> senator klobuchar? >> just one question.

we have significant native american populations in our state, and i wondered to what extent drug courts are serving native american populations, and p it's not very high, how that could change? anyone? >> there's a number of what are called tribal courts, and they use what is called healing to wellness principles so it's a lot of community elders, a lot of community based interventions, a lot of use of spiritual alty and our history and how, you know, what happened to us in history contributed to the lot and to the devastation of the community. there's a lot of every sis on giving back, a lot of restitution. we do training for them. we do technical assistance, members on the board, are at conferences, and they are very k active -- very active parts of the drug court world.

now, do we need more of them? absolutely. we're in the probably in the tribal community hitting 5%-10% of the problem, but we have the resources, the knowledge, and the skills to do so. >> nip -- anyone else? all right, thank you. >> let my call the hearing to a conclusion. i want to thank each of the witnesses for their testimony here today and for their contribution to our common effort to pursue the types of efficiencies to put it coldly and transformations to put it a little bit more alivedly that the drug court mechanism can provide, and to expand that mechanism of community support and finding alternatives to direct veterans back out of the criminal justice system in an effective way, so i really appreciate the testimony of

everyone and the presence of so many people who worked so hard on this issue in the room as well, so as i said earlier, the record of the hearing will stay open for an additional week, and if anybody wishes to add to it, they just simply need to send in their materials, but subject to that, the hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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>> up next, aol ceo talking about the merger and how the interpret impacted the future -- internet impacted the future of journalism held by the national press club here in washington, d.c., this is about an hour. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, and welcome to the national press club. i'm mark hamrick, the 104th president of the national press club. we're the world's leading organization for journalists, committed to the profession's future through programs like this while working to foster a free press worldwide. for more information about the national press club, visit our website at www.press.org and to donate to programs offered to the public through the national

journalism library, please visit www.press.org/library. i want to welcome the speakers today as well as those attending today's events. the head table includes guests of the speaker as well as working journalists who are club members. if you hear applause in the audience today, members of the general public are are attending so it's not necessarily a lack of journal objectivity you're seeing. i'd like to welcome chiropractic-span and public radio -- c-span and public radio audiences today. the podcasts are available for free download on itunes. follow the action on twitter using the hash tag pound np lunch. now it's time to introduce the head table gusts, and i'd like to ask you here to stand up briefly as your name is announced from your right. we begin with brian doyle, a web

producer at "politico". [applause] vanessa fox, ceo of nine by blue. [applause] eric morath, reporter with dow jones news wires. [applause] a guest of the speaker who have remarks today is walter issacson, ceo of the aspen institute. [applause] marilyn wax is senior editor at npr. skipping over the speaker, and melissa with news hook media, the speaker chair, and for that, we are grateful. skipping over the second speaker, bob keith, press secretary with the natural resources defense counsel, also the organizer of today's event, and we thank you for that, bob. [applause] we are told there is a vote, and we're awaiting another guest of the speaker, congressman brad miller of north carolina, so that'll add to the drama today

whether he makes it to the head table. andrea stone, senior correspondent for "huffington post." [applause] .. it marked not just yet another reshaping of the aol by the redefinition of the on line use business. less than six months after then, 350 million-dollar deal, aol poses a staff were partly as large as "the new york times."

as if to add in times of the time century "huffington post" as last month surpassed the times is the most visited new site on the internet. just last week, "huffington post" made his boldest attempt to show some of its successive head overseas opening a u.k. edition of london's interesting journalism scene. [laughter] just as one of its oldest pictures the 168-year-old news of the world was by spreading its final edition and given all that's happening there one can imagine there's an opportunity for a new player on the scene. "huffington post" is the biggest and most doxil part of aol media empire but it's not the only part. aol's tax division is a watch experiment and journalism today while sites such as techcrunch, aol energy, aol defense, a overall government new sites are helping to shape a new type of highly specialized journalism. this of course reshaping in defining and restructuring has

come with some anxiety. along with hired some the biggest names in journalism and building out of large new staff aol has had to let go of more than 700 workers since its purchase and squelch the careers of some budding writers and editors. while it reportedly pays huge salaries to some of its top journalists it also pays bloggers the opportunity of being on line. some of its contributors also get relatively low money. "huffington post" tendency towards dramatic presentation will also sometimes blur the lines between opinion and fact has run -- from some traditional journalist. let's get to our speakers now. as chairman and ceo of aol, tim armstrong made via new media mogul buddy got his start in an old school style running a newspaper. fresh out of college and a friend started the tabloid called bib in boston in the early '90s. is aimed at new graduates entering the workplace. years later tim was tapped to take over and run another boston paper called the square deal.

yet tim realize the future of both his and that of media during one day's visit to the computer lab at m.i.t. where researchers were working on the mosaic web browser that was to become the foundation for searching for content and fledgling internet. he had a realization and immediately began working out ways to build a major on line news operation and sell advertising on line. he is now doing that. prior to joining aol he served as president of america's operations for google and also worked at disney's abc, espn internet venture. besides her namesake web site orion is probably best known for sometime sharply worded political, let's say comments. she straddles the worlds of politics, media and hollywood like few others but as if to prove wrong those who might try to define her for all time. she ran for governor of california as an independent at one point teaming up with the green party candidate in an attempt to beat another out-of-the-box candidate, arnold

schwarzenegger. she is the author of more than 13 books including best-selling biographies of public picasso, opera star maria callous, self-help books based on their own personal experiences and political commentaries, the most recent of which is called third world america published last year. her first book called the female woman was published by random house back in 1974 not long after she graduated from cambridge with a masters in economics and interestingly enough she served as president of the university's famed debating society. perhaps what is most intriguing is that her life so far or one might say there may be more surprises in store down the line coming from arianna. finally we have a special guest here who will help to put all this in perspective, walter isaacson, the former chairman and ceo of cnn and managing editor of "time" magazine who cut his journalistic teeth on "the sunday times" of london and "the times picayune" in new orleans. is also a fair number of books including biographies about

albert einstein come benjamin franklin and henry kissinger. trousers as chairman of the broadcasting board of governors which runs the voice of america and other broadcasting operations for the federal government. he is present ceo of the aspen institute and nonpartisan public policy organization. i thought i had trouble balancing two jobs. so we are looking forward to hearing from all of these individuals before we get to q&a roughly the bottom of the hour and tim, you will lead us off. [applause] >> first and foremost i think it's a very special institute and we are honored to be here today especially thanks to walter for coming with us. i just want to say one thing quickly about arianna. i think that she is a very special person and place a very special -- today's a special day and thanks for spending the day with us. she came from calgary candidate down here for so this will be a memorable day for arianna and both of us. so generally whenever i follow

tim armstrong i have to do a tremendous amount of cleanup but that's not the case. everything is perfectly set up when i got here so that was nice. i'm kidding. tim is a very good friend of mine and has been one of my mentors and i know he was here yesterday and one of the key people that led aol to a global success and was a big part of this community. i was grateful to see him here today before he turned it over to arianna who is the expert on journalism. i wanted to go through a few points of the real big things that we are betting on as a company and not talk about aol to talk about the things we see in the future and why we are putting such a big investment in journalism. the number one question i get from wall street all the time is why journalism? why are you choosing when the rest of the world seems to be going away from journalism, why are you opening up 1000 patches? why did you go to "huffington post" and why are you hiring

people in the journalism field? i think the thing i'm about to talk about is the core essence of what we believe in. the first is really a bet on the human need state which is, if you woke up today and today was your first day on planet earth what would you notice in what would you see? i think there are some stark things that you would come to the realization of. one there are four or 5 billion phones in peoples pockets and a lot of smartphone growth across the world, which means people are going to be connected full-time to information all the time and i think five, six, seven or eight years ago that was the big difference. information is probably one of the most powerful things that allows people to live their lives properly, to drive the economy and those things so the first that we are making as consumers are going to want more and better information and they are going going to want it from people who know about the information that they need. i will talk more about that in one minute. the second piece is that the

human need state is really about connecting off-line if as the new on line and really, technology has put a bug change -- change across many the things we do but at the end of the day we are really pointed at what is going to make physical changes in people's lives and make their lives better, often more open and a panel last week somebody said something that i probably won't forget for the rest of my life. they said social media is really really important and social media and the things that are happening today are very important but bullet 8.0 is more important. with the person meant was that things have happened in the middle east, the other things happening in this country right now is that you know, without really valuable information and clear information about what's happening, the thing start to become more important. the physical state of how people

live their lives off-line is the most important state of human beings and information is the thing that people share the most to try to improve their lives. the second main area we are really betting big on is local and why we are betting big on local is because that is where people live their lives and one of the investments we are we are making is around patch. 86% of commerce gets done locally by 100% of people's lives live locally and their families are local and there has been a giant i would say white space created by the changes that have happened from the media landscape and i think local is something that's important. is important to "the huffington post" was -- "huffington post" but most important it's a key aspect for the future. the third thing is brands matter a lot and coming from silicon valley give no working in

technology and doing that for the last 15 or 20 years, one of the reasons google was, i did not believe that everything was going to be user-generated and the rams aren't going to matter in the information space and i saw people retreating from some of the major brands around information and decreasing investments. i think brands are going to be more important in the future. i think brands are the way the people navigate their lives and the research that we have looked at recently points to the fact that the majority of users on the internet today use less than 30 sites and about 50% of people use around 10 to 14 sites. if you think about that from a macrostandpoint, as the internet is exploding people are starting to use brands to navigate where they give information and how they get information and i get this question from investors a lot. what is the big focus on brand and it seems like everyone is

going away from information brands. i think it's just the opposite. consumers are going to demand the best highest-quality brands and information in journalism space and the companies that do that the best will be the most successful. that is the opposite of what a lot of the investment community thinks. that is where things are going and arianna believes in it as well. i just wanted to close with a few important points about the future of journalism from where we sit in our chairs. one is that journalists need technology and i think there is a big fear from the journalism community around technology and i think it's incorrect. we have a bunch of investments we have made as a company in technology and i think if you look at where the journalist sits versus all the other people in the media food chain, everybody else and after the change has desktop and technology and data. we were just talking about this

earlier. journalist need to understand technology and how technology can help them do a better job and we need journalists desktops as an industry and i think that is one of the things we are working on. the second bullet point for the future is transparency and one of the experiments we did at patch when we found the patch was to have all of the journalist put up their transparency of what they believed, who they voted for, what religion they are and those things and i think in the journalism space right now, there is a lot of stories looking for data and i think one of the things that comes from is people aren't transparent about what they believe in before they write things and that is something that we would like to see the future is more transparency around journalism and what they believed in before stories get written. they may be controversial but that is something we have talked to consumers about and they like. and then the business model going forward. there's a giant debate about the business models and the content

space and i think the business models and the content space in in the long-haul are probably going to look at the current business models where free is going to be very big. there's room for paid which will probably be big and i think as an industry, that debate is important but what is more important is the business model and what we deliver. what is the product we put out every day and i think maniacal focus on the product of journalism is really important and defining what that journalism is. what is journalism to 4 billion people with smartphones? when you get up in the morning and we get up in the morning do we think about creating journalism for that space or do we think about it the way these to think about it? i think that's a really important piece. and i would just blindly and by a lot of journalists ask us also why are you investing in journalism when they have lost self-confidence and what journalism is? i always say one thing to people, the journalist is not a

single entity. a journalist is a network and every time i meet a journalist who has a big phone -- egg fan of working together my guess is stone has a convening power and there are certain people in the world and the journalism field who are able to convene the most important information of a society and they're able to synthesize it and get it out to people in a way that is very manageable and focus. i think journalists cannot lose confidence in the value they bring to the world and i think you have to separate business models and technology and those things because the most important thing we have in this country and other countries have and some countries need is journalist who care, who go for the truth and to focus on that. that is the secret sauce of why we are investing in content it comes down to simply great content for great people and i want to turn it over to arianna. is a pleasure to be here and i look forward to hearing comments

and questions as we move forward. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. it is actually great to be here. i can't think of a better place to be on my birthday and i'm delighted to be sharing the stage with tim and walter and tim i work with every day and with walter i have known him epperson's the 70s, when he was working for the -- pre-rupert murdoch. i was in london dreaming of one day becoming a blogger in america. [laughter] i must say that i can't wait to read walter's new book on steve jobs. it is safe to say that right now, walter is probably the only man in washington who is making jobs a priority.

[laughter] [applause] and i also love his autobiography on henry kissinger. partly because henry kissinger was the first man to reassure me when i moved to new york that having an accent was not a problem. [laughter] and he said to me, you can never underestimate in american public life the complete advantages of either incomprehensibility. [laughter] there is no question that, not just at this time but particularly this week, the media is an incredible time of transition. i happen to be in london and we were launching the -- when the phone-hacking scandal started and it was amazing to see two things. first of all, how incredibly irrelevant the debates between

the old media and new media is. there's an institution of old media. not an abstract blogger, not having that supervision but it incredible institution on the british press that was acting in a way that would have been utterly disgusting coming from anywhere in the media universe and it was new media that played a huge part in bringing the news of the world down so fast. it was amazing watching what was happening on twitter. the hashtag and anode tw within moments started getting thousands of tweets and pressure on advertisers to leave and literally i was watching as advertiser after advertiser was leaving. i stopped counting at number 39 because i knew that was probably going to be enough and it was. and at the same time, to see

that story was broken by another major, and almost 200 year institution, the guardian and it was broke and at the time when the guardian had announced that it was going to embrace its first-round g.. this was an institution a completely embrace new media and they broke the story by doing what new media does best which is obsessively staying on a story. this story is years old. most publications had moved on. most politicians had moved on. but the unique ability of new media is to stay on the story and doggedly stay on the story until we have an impact and until it rakes through. that is what the guardian did. demonstrating which i have always believed that the future belongs to those who bring together the best of all media, fact-checking, accuracy, transparency, and the best of new media, which is engagement

with the reader and real-time provision of information. that was all demonstrated. over the last week and the story is still unfolding, one more thing that was demonstrated was the social media and accountability. that is ultimately while -- wide rupert murdoch had to -- is because the entire parliament and all three leaders of major parties urged him to do so. they did not ask him to do so because they suddenly had an epiphany. they seem to do so because of the pressures they were getting from social media and their constituencies and every one. all of it happened so fast which is the other thing. everything is accelerated in the brave new world of media. and this is really wide i am so excited about the fact that social media and new media are all about engagement.

tim mentioned patch and i was in love with patch even before i became part of the "huffington post" media group. it's really about -- we are now at almost 850 patches and primary states. to be able to cover even more obsessively the 2012 election and together with patch, we launched a citizen journalists initiative last week with who within 48 hours had 600 people signed up to be citizen journalists, ringing the news to all of you, bringing the local voices into the national dialogue which is one of the things we are so excited about, being able to have now a target of over 1300 professional journalist working with us. while at the same time, being a

platform that provides a distribution channel to thousands of people, including -- i'm glad to say to blog about anything that they care about. so that is really the future that we are betting on. professional journalist, ultimately could be thousands of them, who are the best at understanding how to break a story, how to stay on the story, often mentoring younger journalists and a platform with tens of thousands of people blogging and commenting. and it's really that universe that sometimes people in the mainstream media have trouble understanding because they don't quite see what has happened which is the self-expression has for many people now become the new entertainment and a major source of fulfillment. so you know come in the past, nobody ever wondered, why are people watching television, often bad television for hours on and it not being paid?

did anybody ever asked that question? [laughter] that people are constantly asking the question, why are people updating wikipedia entries are riding on "the huffington post," or writing on their facebook profiles without being paid? and that really misses what drives human beings to do certain things and it really messes how much people now want to be part of the story of their times. they want to really bear witness and that is what brings me to my last point, which is ever since i was at cambridge, even before he met walter i read of books by benjamin disraeli who ended up becoming prime minister of england. it was a novel. he wrote it because he believed that before he ran for prime minister, he needed to capture the imagination of the people in his country, to help them understand the social injustices and he was a tory which is part

of the beyond left and right editorial position of "the huffington post." you don't have to be on the left to care about social injustice. you don't have to be in the left to care about what's happening to the middle-class. so benjamin disraeli and the 19th century in 1845 used a novel to attach peoples hearts and minds and bear witness to what was happening in his time. today, new media are arming tens of thousands of people around the world to bear witness to what is happening in their countries to what is happening in their time. and ultimately, bearing witness is the highest responsibility we have as journalist. bearing witness is actually the highest responsibility we have as citizens. and we have never had more and better tools and greater opportunities to bear witness at a time of multiple crises and at a time when millions of people are leaving -- living lives of

extreme deprivation. so we should be grateful that we are living during these extraordinary times of transition when all of us have the opportunity to bear witness. thank you. [applause] >> i was wondering why i was chosen to put in perspective as i was told, arianna and then i realized i'd written about ben franklin, albert einstein and now steve jobs and i guess that is a perspective we just view arianna and in that pantheon. one of the things about the hybrid old media, new media that i think we have to remember is that old media isn't really that old. it's only about 60 or 70 years old in this country. at the beginning of this country there was a social vibrant media in which there was some mainstream publication. when ben franklin arrived in philadelphia as a 17-year-old runaway, there were 11 newspapers, one for each faction b. of anglicans in the proprietors or the quakers or

you know, the different groups and he started at -- the 12th representing the market street middle class. and he also relied on contributions, social media, people for his paper were basically writing is arianna said because they wanted to bear witness to the struggle that was happening in the 1700's in america. they also occasionally as on the internet wrote anonymously and franklin famously used the pseudonym silence do good but as they were doing it, they had a hybrid as arianna and tim have created at aol and "the huffington post" of the values of journalism that were then emerging as well as the value of social media and contributing and being part of a broad team that would come out each day so they would slip sometimes their contributions there are contributions under the door anonymously but others were reporters and had big names. they also though, and this is

what tim is trying to do at aol now, had a hybrid of the business model as well. one of the things benjamin franklin did is he always made sure he charged that for the newspaper and had great advertisers in the newspaper. he said if you are totally bowled on advertisers the freedom of expression he would have would sometimes be cramped. he said it would hurt to be in advertising only model and the start of the model in america of having a brady of revenue streams. i think we are feeling our way back to that position now. when i was, i was president and the creation of many aol milestones there at time magazine went in the early 1990s, aol was coming up and just getting started. was the fifth-largest service at the time. i am old enough to remember prodigy and delphi and compuserve and many others, and

i made a deal because i was the deputy editor of "time" magazine, that we would try this out. we would to put time magazine on line and made the deal with steve case. the final deal point, they only had 200,000 users but i still couldn't get my name so i finally said -- and steve casey was there. the final deal point is and what my name@aol.com and i still have it. some poor guy got kicked off her head's e-mail account now directly sent to rupert murdoch or whatever his e-mail account is. but, part of that arrangement that we made was great for "time" magazine because as i said, for 60 years it had been this monopoly type of mainstream media where information was handed down. it happened because the rise of the broadcast media where any 17-year-old could start a press in philadelphia but was hard to start a tv network or even a

radio network and metropolitan newspapers for a variety of economic reasons would go into consolidated so they would generally be just one or two newspapers so it became a mainstream and people in the media handed down the words and they never got much feedback. the most interesting that happened when we went on aol was in the early 1990s, the feedback, the discussion, the challenging, the correcting of our facts, the people who added information and that whole wonderful bulletin board culture called back then. but the other thing we had back then was the deal we made, which is when you went on aol in the early 1990s, you paid a certain amount per hour. i can't remember exactly what it was but you were charged by the hour for being on an aol was in competition with five or six other major internet service provider so they wanted to have our content and they wouldn't pay us for the amount people stayed on line.

if we kept people's eyeballs stuck to aol for another hour we got a percentage of that revenue. it was a small thing but it was a dual weapon on -- dual revenue model that worked. that was undermined when the web came along and everybody could basically put up their content on the web. many people started creating things and the on the internet service providers realized, not aol, but the people that were then getting you on line to go to the web site, didn't make any difference to them whether they pay big content creators at all, because they would get more money if all the content were out there for free and you weren't paying your phone company or cable company to get you on line. that was alright because we started pathfinder, time.com and we moved away from aol and compuserve and others to be on line for free. we thought eventually we would start charging that people from madison avenue came with large baskets of money to seo company we want those banner ads so we kept it for free. the problem is, that business

model is not totally sustainable in the long run. you need the hybrid business model that we have hurt a heard a little bit about today. most stuff is free but if you want a special type of information, it would be good to find some way to have consumer revenues instead of having it e. advertising only. ..

we look back over 60 years in which authoritarian regimes control their people by controlling the free flow of information. radio free europe was invented to break through the censorship so it was voice of america. we just had a meeting today, yesterday of all of our boards and entities and we have a new strategic plan in which we are shifting large amounts of our resources into social media and breaking down the fire walls in iran, china and other places, so that many people around the world can have the same freedoms we have in this country freedom to share information and accelerate the free flow of ideas. and if you look this is a noble cause whether or not we figure out the business model this decade or next decade the move towards digital media and more

people having access and less control and fewer gatekeeper's as we have the past 50 years is a great thing whether it is in iran or even the united states. and if you look at the long market history from guttenberg to arianna huffington, the free flow of information and ideas has always tended to bed the artistry towards democracy and towards freedom and you are seeing that with the wifi that is coming out, seeing it with the borders throughout the middle east. you're seeing that by the fact in iran it is the sense of the largest per capita of the internet and cannot control a free flow of information cannot control their people. i in 1989 covered the fall of the berlin wall. i was in a hotel and one of the people working there where they said can you open up the room in

the afternoons of the kids come in to be the only place the currency satellite tv and the like watching music videos. they were not watching the music video. they were watching what was happening in the shipyards. more recently -- it was in the recently it was about ten years ago in which terry laverne and steve case started talking about emerging aol and time-warner, but i was watching in the internet cafe in these tiny parts of china how people were using the internet to a i would go up to them and type in which wifi wartime and one of them elbowed me and said and cnn popped up. what did you do? we know how to go through the proxy services the networks are clueless about. anyway, this is what you are watching in america as people get to be part of the discourse and around the world and that's

why i want to congratulate arianna and tim. [applause] >> i have the ability to dance up and down the stage here. and continuing that analogy with benjamin franklin he didn't exactly set the bar to hi now you need only make a scientific discovery on the part with electricity and the democracy that can be sustained for more than 200 years to begin with questions that we've had either given to us over the internet or from our audience here today and the first you can discuss among yourself because many of these are pre-to both of you related to the murdoch's candor and journalism practices and i think this question stands alone without that, but this is how does the huffingtonpost.com stand on the entire year and

scaap? to align the to the interest of the public and the public interest. >> the interest of the public well i suppose with the questioner means here is the fact of the highbrow and lowbrow. the fact that as we are finding the public wants to click on the charlie sheen which you may conclude are not in the public interest but in the interest of the public and we are unabashedly both highbrow and lowbrow. we basically see that that's human nature, and in fact we discovered when we made a deal with facebook it would make it possible for our leaders to be able to see with their friends were reading and commenting on. but they often did not like their friends to know that they were clicking on charlie sheen. [laughter] so these people could go and

click on the streets while their friends assume they are only clicking on stories. [laughter] >> you want to pick up on that? >> let me ask you to refine the dancer little that how much of the highbrow stuff is right and where do you cut the line off the bottom on the lowbrows fight? >> we feel the mix of the moment go on any of our sanctions in the combined first media union over 50 that covered everything from politics to books, style and a tournament, celebrity. this week alone we launched three receptions we are doing a lot of regional sites around san francisco for example 24 patches so the stories can surfaced from

the hyper local level to the regional level and then to the national level. so by covering the entire waterfront by having the splash which is a very familiar figure for those of you that come to the huffingtonpost.com site and you basically immediately write what you consider important and then under that you have the blog and the middle you have the serious in the public interest stories and the inside the lowbrow story you can't ignore that. >> how do you decide whether something is too lowbrow? >> we have some pretty strict standards in terms of nudity for example. spirit is that a good thing on a bad thing. [laughter] not entirely good thing for online publications like ours.

it's in the eye of the beholder but we regularly review our standards. speed this is a question for both of you. with the recent acquisition how you plan to -- is it unreasonable to expect one of them gets essentially phased out? >> i think from -- we spend a lot of time basically on the grants the company had 50 and we announced we were going to be continuing to go down to two more powerful. so i think right now what we basically program for the site audience attractions are very different across very properties, hid crunch and gadgets come huffingtonpost.com aol.com. we are working on that and one of the things beneficial though is to use the really skilled technology platforms and also really skilled journalists to basically populate all these different sites chris trustees

the helicopter in new jersey at his son's baseball game was an amazing example of how we can combine programs which were the patch reporter on the field actually and chris christie have landed a helicopter within a couple of minutes on the huffington boost to the coast. i ran into crisscross the last week actually and i asked him about it and i said patch and he's unfamiliar with patch. the second thing he said was, you know, i read patch every morning i get a patch report every morning in new jersey is the powerful way to connect with the local communities and i think from the standpoint of how we program the brands i think we are actually just at the beginning of how all these brands are going to be in the future and how we are going to use these platforms in journalism to meet consumer

needs. >> this is one of the most exciting things for me to see how we now have at our disposal about professionalism of journalism on the ground and tim o'brien who came to us from "the new york times" and other reporting is leading this integration from our end, which means heartily surfaced the story is whether it is a story about governor christie or a story about the unemployed. when for example the latest unemployment numbers came out we had amazing stories on the data from the patch editors and patch reporters which then would surface and bring them together connect the dots and right national stories. it's really an incredible opportunity for journalists. and now you bring in the bloggers and we have 7,000 of

the local level that can range from the mayor to the high school kids. plus the platform we are about to hit 100 million. and that for me is what we are betting on. it's really about engagement, that sense that people increasingly want to be part of the conversation, part of the story of the times and not just consume news passively. >> do you feel like you want to control its engagement at a higher rate than you are getting now or do you feel like that's pretty good with that number you have? >> we are incredibly happy with the engagement we are getting but we always want more. i feel in fact there is going to be more and more engagement because it is addictive. those of you that called and comment no health really exciting it is to be part of the conversation. and we are finding that in the finding new ways and introducing new tools to make our content

more engaging. we collect more addictive and a good sense. >> one more comment walter brought it up, which is when i spent time coming to aol and the had been helpful one of the things they said one of the big interests in the huffingtonpost.com walter mentioned it was a time on aol one of the first things people said to me was aol lost its way not just because the business model. they lost because the community and the ability for people to actually comment on what was happening. i travel around and have traveled around aol whether it is people commenting on articles they saw or things they did i think one of the most disappointing things that happened to the community base was not having the ability to comment on stories. when i got to aol basically all the comments on the technology were stripped off of the company and the wind from the most engaged community in the world to the least engaged community in the world and i think that

she's brought that back to a company and i would say also some of the other successful internet companies win aol to cut down the looked at a lot of the features on facebook and they were things he grew up using on aol. i think it is a really important part. >> to go back to the question i had a few minutes ago, for those of as the old enough we can remember the time that we would fly all in to aol and we would hear that iconic sound and then the you've got mail and you were house essentially within that and to go back into the piece that in some ways you have the start of incubator within a large corporation. is it important for the user to know that the gadget is part of aol.com? >> we did a brandt study last year and to the huffingtonpost.com at most major brands in the world have three attributes if you look at it in

the big, aol only has to this point and they are trust and brand awareness and when the brand people came back in the studies that said we've never seen anything like this before. you have over 95% trust with consumers coming and you have 95 plus% awareness with consumers and no other attribute. so the secret for us they said is if you can connect a third attribute to that experience, you will go back to being one of the most powerful brands on the planet. and i think what we are hoping with of the third attribute on aol will be is content and the voice are not content and medium like disney where you don't necessarily know disney owns espn or adc or some of those brands overall we are hoping aol will stand for magic and the information communications base

and entertainment space and i think one thing arianna personally i like the obsessive focused nature of the huffingtonpost.com and the voice it has, so i think to a large degree that the attribute is going to come from a voice from the content brand and i think it is a really key experience for all of our users. >> in fact that's how my conversations seem before the acquisition started because i remember listening at the conference in new york making this point on the identity and the next day he and i met and talked for hours and that began the conversation that went on for a couple of months. no conversation about bullying just the conversation about what mattered in the space that we are occupying, what would be the future of media etc., etc., and

it is amazing how his vision for where you want to do and my vision for what i want to do and unbelievably aligned. and then just after christmas i had an e-mail from him saying i would like to come to l.a. and meet with you and discuss something and i invited him to lunch and he said can i bring a cfo. >> she likes launch a lot. [laughter] >> there were no mushrooms and before we even started eating he said to me i want to buy the huffingtonpost.com and bring the huffingtonpost.com and aol content together and it's happened unbelievably fast and for those of you who may be read the story of our announcement would close the deal at the super bowl at halftime. [laughter]

spec we had the first super bowl together. we had corporate video conferencing, we did the first video conference. we did the first analyst call and today is the first day we are having a birthday together. [laughter] >> so i want to talk about something you are here at the national press club and we are extremely grateful you came here today. a lot of members sort of came to me before this event and wanted me to sort of ask the question about the value of the professional journalist versus the one who recently participates for no financial benefit to them. how do you balance that? how do you decide where the value comes from having a professional? and for those who seem like me professional journalists who worry about the people who can work for free might push them aside are you okay with that? how do you preserve the added value that only we like to think

a professional can bring to the table? >> as i said earlier, we are very committed to professional journalism. we have 1300 of them on the table. that is an indication of our commitment. since the merger, we have added 160 professional journalists to the team. the fact that we are a journalistic enterprise does not in any way meet the gate. the fact that we are a platform that is simply a distribution mechanism for people with something to say to be able to use it some of them are journalists crossed parting the they are already passing on their own personal blog. i would say the majority of them they are politicians, people who want to publicize that their high school kids who have a very robust section in partnership with 100 colleges with many academics and many students and

we have every possible precaution you can imagine represented. i would like to invite all of you here to block the. we have a quarter of bloggers and we love having people's voices. whenever they want for as long as they want. if you decide to blog for us know what is going to bug you and ask you why didn't you. again, we have here some of our reporters as the white house correspondent who had an interesting conversation the other day and john and josh here who have an incredibly incredible team of professional journalists, and that is in tandem with our platform and we are kind of unapologetically knott luft capito --

>> that cannot of both sides of my mouth. >> someone asked what competitive threats are you most concerned about right now? >> i think probably the biggest one is internal. and i don't mean that from having issue is internally. i mean that from i don't think anyone is putting as big of an investment in the area as we are investing in right now and i think it is our opportunity to lose, and i think that when we take a step back and look at the competitive landscape which is a high level u.s. silicon valley in absolute war with each other and the data getting more commodities and i think the future of that war is quick to be about content they are going to need content platforms to how aol need content of the early days to attract users. facebook, google, those kind things to read the secondary underlining thing in that which i don't think has been appreciated as the relief of their index focus heavily on the real time quality and i think

you are going to start to see that they have done a focus on quality in real time that is going to force all the other platforms to do that. so we believe by having premium brands and quality content we will grow there and i think the second piece of the competition is instead of focused on each other on the properties that human needs state which is how do we fulfill real needs with real people with real content everyday, and i will give you one thing that keeps me awake at night right now is if the phone in my pocket -- i used to be connected to journalism content once a day or twice a day and on the internet multiple times a day. my relationship with journalists that i follow not just on our properties but other properties and with them all day and they are with me all day and i just i'm a competitive landscape if you can be the person who is connected with somebody all day and next to them all day i think that is the real significant

opportunity. >> can you reaffirm that when i'm on my laptop. >> when he's on the blood peery he has a relationship with somebody. [laughter] >> not that type of relationship. information relationship. >> i agree with everything said except the part about him being kept awake at night because we have a major commitment, editorial commitment. this is one of the things we write about constantly and one of the first things when i moved a decree to be fabulous news room to come and visit is installed the too rooms and because leona that quest we call them that question one and two. and the point is actually editorial. the way we cover obsessively the questions of work balance, the questions of being able to get

enough and take care of yourself is very important right now. at the aspen institute this summer there was a fantastic track around the pursuit of happiness. what is caviness? it goes back to the founding fathers and every day at the aspen institute interesting psychologies, doctors, scientists who are debating that issue so we are also debating and discussing it and covering it and every day in all of our different sites of healthy living and we believe that increasingly this is going to be a very important conversation that people want to engage in as they are trying to redefine success and happiness. >> quick question for you and then we will have a little announcement and asked arianna the last question which tends to be on the lighter side although i won't make any guarantees. as you know last night to google reported earnings and we look this morning.

it has a market capitalization of about $190 billion as of this morning thinks to a 10% bond. aol was once the leader in the space and its market cap and we understand these things to fluctuate over time. less than what google earned in that quarter. my question is is google getting too big? >> i don't know whether or not google is too big or too small but i think we should make a market cap bigger. [laughter] i think the reality is google's market and others at the top of the space reflect real consumer interest and revenue behind them and i think the secret, you know, to our success is that same -- there's three things that really matter. number of consumers to have on your property and to those consumers are. number two was with the revenue is to generate per consumer and number three is what does your plan stand for. i think that google has done a nice job and they are very focused on those three things.

i think their earnings are spectacular. we are still in the midst of doing our turnaround and hopefully things won't be done before ever but we have a clear vision of where we are going and i think we large degree in the content we think will be multiple content players. google is kind of a winner-take-all at this point on the market share but we have a very clear vision of what we are doing and i think our vision much is very clearly to the consumer group advertising growth and revenue growth and a great brand, happy people close that at some point. crème said mcnall is the point that we present our guest with a token appreciation of your presence here today so i will have one for both of you and that is the coffee mug. if you don't have any coffee before you take a nap. [laughter] >> you can plug that certainly. >> i have my last question for

arianna and that is you were so gracious and appearing here today for your birthday and the camera didn't necessarily see the audience saying happy birthday to you, so again, happy birthday. my question is did you have a wish and if you can't share with us what that was, can you share another wish? [laughter] >> well first of all as everybody here knows your first risch is always about your children and they say that you are only as heavy as your least happy child, and i have two daughters in college and they went to like most kids up and downs in their adolescence and so i'm very happy to say my first wish on my birthday was about them and about their life. and as you know, you know matter

how old they are one of them is going to graduate next year they never stopped being your babies and i have pictures of them on my phone when they were babies and less problematic. [laughter] so ask for -- as of renault's i love my work and i don't make a separation between my work and my life but my first focus. [applause] >> how about a round of applause for our guest today. [applause] >> tim, walter chorionic, thank you very much. i would like to aol.com the national press club staff for helping organize today's event, thank you to all of you and we are adjourned.

>> because i didn't speak and i didn't kiss a window into my life i had become a kind of an evil khartoum and i didn't help myself with wearing a hat coming out of my plea in court but i had become kind of a villain and i wanted to show people i'm not an evil person. i'm a regular person. i did things that were wrong but i don't have a tail with horns. i grew up like everybody else.

up next supreme court justice clarence thomas returns to his hometown of pinpoint georgia to deliver the keynote address at the unveiling ceremony for the historical marker. he was joined by family and friends of this event that took place in november. it's about half an hour. >> now we will get to the meat of the program. we have a historical marker yesterday morning which we were unveiled at the services but this next guy is pretty much responsible for helping us obtain the marker. so he will come and give us a

greetings on behalf of the historical marker foundation. [applause] 64 and thank you mr. haines. i found out in looking at the program today in fact i just remembered the name i would note most of the people who were on the program appear. [laughter] on behalf of the georgia historical society, but we welcome you and thank you for being here today and also say congratulations to the penpoint association on receiving this historical marker and on the great work that you have done to help preserve and tell the story of this community. i'm delighted to be in this church. i wanted to come here for a long time but there's another reason i'm thrilled to be here today. my greatest fear was not that i would get up here and find that the marker was sent here or that justice thomas hadn't got him here on time. or that it was raining. my greatest fear is i would be standing outside.

[laughter] so i'm thrilled to be inside this church. the georgia historical society is the independent statewide institution that is responsible for electing and examining and teaching georgia history and we go about doing that through a whole variety of ways. but one of the most important ways we do that is through the historical marker program which we have operated since 1998 and its privatized by the state of georgia and turned over to us to begin putting of the markers on behalf of the state of georgia and this is one of the great ones we are thrilled to be able to put up today. it's one of the best that we have because if you are ambulatory it can drive a car and you can read you can get up to the historical markers you can learn georgia history. you don't have to come to a lecture, you don't have to hear

a speaker, you can learn history any time and in meeting of the week. we have the program in 1998 and this marker is a great example of what we have been trying to do. the history was not represented in the historical marker program and we have worked very, very hard to tell the story of all the people of georgia. we have put up over 200 workers in the past dozen years. they are all over the state of georgia. they represent the stories of all the people of georgia and one of the things we try to operate in our programs are something that a wise man once told me. he said how would the future ever be as it ought to be if we don't tell the past as it really was? [applause] >> with that i want to see again congratulations to the georgia historical society. delighted to be a part of this and to approve this program and thank you all again for being

here today. [applause] >> we are down to a part of the program that is pretty special to me personally. we have presence of the honorable clarence thomas, supreme court justice. [applause] and lamar haines. [applause]

so, without further ado, we will have them in that order. [applause] >> thank you. probably half the people here. first it is an honor to be here. i have never actually spoken from this pulpit, never had any reason to. but i appreciate you all been here. when i left it's hard for people to believe, but we all like contemporaries we all grew up

just reminiscing the platform within months of each other in 1948, and a lot of us -- [laughter] some said when we talked about are we saying he got on your nerves or did he have a lot of nerve. [laughter] i just wish samuel langhorne clemens has been here. mark twain has been here instead of writing about the adventures of the kids on the missouri river. you could ever turn-of-the-century. [laughter] nothing prepares to beat compares to this. [laughter] i was just passing those cans out there. we could make some really good out of those. really interesting.

at any rate i would like to thank you all for being here, i wife, my sister, my cousins, there are just so many of you. when i left, and gannett was serendipity, and we went into savannah. not far actually from where we were last night over on west devotee which are replaced by frazier holmes which is i don't know what is happening with that. i always hoped when i left here as you go through life is a long and slow process even the process of learning standard english. someone asked me recently when i had gotten comfortable with english what i think of standard english i would make it to the 1980's. it took that long.

it's a long, slow process. but doing the right things including the right way i would bring honor to those who have been such an important part of my life. i always hoped to bring honor to pinpoint when i got my driver's license. i used to make a beaten path here at pinpoint when i was at st. john's. i would get over to help tutor and didn't realize that a lot of those kids were my blood relatives and the irony is interesting that the offspring's also worked at the supreme court. and it's their great-grandson were great, great grandson, i don't know but she came over here to bring me into the world,

1948. so, and you talk about that, you haven't seen that. [laughter] there are no nats compared to what they used to be. i tell you, they wouldn't be air-conditioned and pest control a lot of people wouldn't be living down here. somehow we figured out how to make some smoke out of old rags. [laughter] they were looking for help. [laughter] but in any case, i would like to thank all of you again for being here. i'd like to thank the georgia historical society for today, and i particularly also like to thank the penpoint there and association and everyone who actually kept talking about saving

pin point. i was never in the position and anything i had said was to live my life to bring honor but today is a long way away from the reception pin point received when i told someone years ago when i was nominated that i was from pin point, and the response was that i was lying because there was no such place as pin point. [laughter] and to think that we all thought there was such a place as pin point. those of us who were born here. for us pin point will always be home. i've been all over the country and in some other places in the world, but pin point is always home. i am a son of wifi. i played on pin point road, was undeveloped and unpaid back then

and we thought that was a big thrill when it came down because of the sand was gone and you couldn't really run. use all the pieces of the snake, too, didn't know the fascination was better than it made it easier for the old-timers on the road and the little trays that we used pulldown. then we walked down the road to catch the school bus and i only did that for half a year but she went with the big kids, they would hold your hand and run in the puddles and things like that and we all went to the haydon home-schooled. that was wonderful.

when they went to school. [laughter] my memories of being out here were just wonderful, wonderful memories. but when we moved to savannah in 1954 there was quite different. i had no cousins there. it was a far different life. and my own memories of living over there on the west side is that was just horrible quite lonely. but here it was so different. adults were hard working people, good people coming and i always, back to that word, just good people. they made do with what they had. you really heard anybody complain in the evenings they were knitting or working in a garden or working on an old house or motor that was

repairing something. they lived off the water and off the land. so what we saw here in this world was self-sufficiency and decency and good news and the only thing i saw it and remember in the outside were the blimps and going over by the old planes would be going against the air force space in the landing pattern. for us as children, and we probably remember this, heaven was hearing that up the ice cream man coming down pinpoint road. there was another memory i had and that was cleaning the dasher. and then other people who haven't would try to inflict themselves. all that ice cream --

[laughter] then we have those adventures of walking along the beach on the creek, dimond causeway wasn't there so we could walk along the beach out of sight of our route to factories or in the oyster house and that was always interesting. but we would go down to the creek and catch minnows in cans or jars. but i've often wondered coming back here over the years who came before us. who was here? what did those trees seat seat? where did they come from? but there were no stories.

people would tell you what they knew but no one had recorded it, no one had written it down. a few years ago i had an opportunity to visit the office with the wonderful assistance of the foundation. that then connected the dots for me. if you ever have a chance, go over there. it is where we began in the 17 sixties and lived for over a century until we came over here. i would encourage you to do that. it was the beginning for me. i now knew where but that's true of the people who used to be down in paris we have the

history, and not many at taking goes back here not many have taken notes about history. it's not a part of the great battle. it's not some great book of philosophy or metaphysics or mathematics. it's just awesome. and like people at this level, you come and go. and look at the people who were over there that day forgotten. so those of us who go over their our hearts bleed because we know what we have in common with them, the same thing. you go down to jekyll island or down to the beach. we all know. but those matter to us though. there were few others who either knew or cared about this place. in fact, there are very few who knew about as i indicated

earlier. and i watched painfully as the places like hilton head simply disappeared or evaporated into the progress and as soon as i said forgotten. but some work to make sure this hadn't happened here. and as i mentioned before, it is to pinpoint settlement association that's dedicated itself to preserving the best at what has happened on pinpoint so that it is not forgotten and my hat goes off to them. again, as i said to them and i felt tired when they asked me what could i do and my answer was uniformly there's nothing i could do but pray and hope that someone comes along. and as my cousin says hope that there would be a miracle one day doctor i would like to thank you

because you have devoted much of your life and your professional career to reporting the history and the culture. [applause] i can talk to you because when it seemed that no one else cared about or cared about getting it right and you devoted yourself to just recording and listening to the people here. you were not trying to put it into a preconceived narrative. you were not trying to make us victims of anything. as you said to me, this is quintessentially. you were here before the revolutionary war. you were here before the civil war. we have seen all the ups and downs of this country and you've

tried not to give it but leave it as it was, pure and unchanged, culture of penpoint. i think you for that. [applause] i deeply appreciate georgia historical society for recognizing and commemorating what the community has meant to so many of us and to accept it and recognize it as part of the state of georgia and the united states of america which is something we all worked to be part of. i would like to thank emily and also wish you a happy birthday. [applause] family is from texas but she has understood almost from the beginning as the doctor has it

has to remain as it is, not as others would want it to be. and she is the one who has worked diligently and emphatically on the pinpoint heritage museum and it is wonderful. again, i feel almost guilty even talking about it since you all did the work and were involved. i would like to thank my good friend, my son karlan, who against my better advice insisted that he would preserve the heart of this community from the bulldozers. doctor, you remember meeting him, and i've told you what i said about so many of the people here. if i were him i wouldn't have done it because people insist on ulterior motives and they come up with their own imperatives.

people can't do things for goodness. my grandfather used to often make us drop vegetables off to people's houses when we had too much. for no other reason than it was the right thing to do. how many people have dropped fish off to our houses? how many have said schrempp, who wants some? how many have said i have an extra court of oysters? or i killed a deer but i can only use half. everyone of us it's the same thing. it's a different thing. finally, i would like to thank again all who have lived such remarkable lives here at the edge of the water, the edge of society and the edge of savannah. many of them rest right out

here. many of them are an unmarked in some places. many of them have moved away and drifted into the oblivion of anonymity. the cult kids running down this road how to work. [laughter] >> you couldn't have done that without potbellied. [laughter] but they showed us all how to work and survive when they're seemed to be little hope and little reason to do so. it is what happens here and in so many places like pin point that shows the best about people and some of the worst conditions offered life and they did some of the best things in those worst conditions and they lived

in the conditions do not determine the character of the people who live there. [applause] >> the events of today armor to less. you said in the video somebody had to work commerical. somebody had to work a miracle. somebody. and we expected nobody. somebody has to work. so how there has been a miracle. this is the part of that to commemorate and remember the

spirits, the values and the legacies of those who once lived here with dignity. that's what i remember. dignity. condition. i need remembered as a study thin, which people tried to make it seem as though a house was the clothes he wore or the money you made or the degree you received determine whether or not you lived with dignity. dignity did not come with those things. dignity preceded those things. or as we say it is an innocent antecedent. this is a dignified place. perhaps by remembering that we can merit a second merkel and restore those values in the spirit to pinpoint elsewhere that kept us going.

you all know and i know those of you who live here that we have lost something. that people talk about what we don't have. i think about what we once did have. [applause] so is my hope and perhaps the hope of those that are here we restore some of those values and some of those principles that have made it possible for us to survive in some very difficult times and perhaps the same values would allow others to prosper in a different time. but for today let us just savor this miracle. unlike so many similar communities that were gone and forgotten, pin point has a chance to survive and to be remembered as a part of the history of the state of georgia

and of the united states of america. and that is the way it should be. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] calling all the ancestors. can you feel them? they are here. they are not in the ground anymore. they are over us. we feel them lifting us of everyday in the days of africa. bring them here today as we honor them. as we honor them we cannot honor ourselves without those ancestors.

keep calling them. call them in your heart, called them back and forth across the middle as they came from africa. calling all the ancestors. calling all the ancestors. calling all the ancestors. thank them for being here for us, be here for them. thank you. [applause]

>> as we honor our elders and ancestors we also honor the young. we will come forward to read the marker. >> former slaves -- founded in pin point in 1897 -- and also served as a community [inaudible] construction promised and

remains a focal point of the community. it is the site of several industries including shrimp and oysters. operations among these people [inaudible] opened and operated from 1936 to 1985 and the birthplace of the u.s. supreme court justice clarence thomas. [applause] by the georgia historical

society. [applause] >> that concludes the dedication ceremony. we are going to call to officially give the dedication from this side and we are going to move down to the pin point museum. yes, there is a wreath. this is in memory and dedication of our ancestors. [applause] [applause] by the grace of god and the holy spirit me we abide with each and every one of us until we meet again and we ask in jesus'