museum. [applause] i had a quick education about the museum and you know, you're going to have famous african-americans come you're going to have people who come in to see jackie robinson come and they are going to really rock 'n roll with chuck berry, and there is a candy apple red cadillac. it's fantastic. but they are going to see some really sad things like the holocaust museum is a sad place. there is there's going to be sadness at the african-american museum. >> there's no doubt he will come into this museum and you will maybe crying as you ponder the pain of slavery and segregation but the other side is to show the tension that comes from the joy in the community. so we expect people to say this is not a place of sadness. it's a place of possibility and resilience. it's a place that really speaks

to america. >> one more thing. when you go to the holocaust museum, it was hitler and germans doing bad things to choose and this is americans doing bad things to other americans, which makes it i think a hire hurdle for visitors and for you. >> absolutely. the notion of americans as bad guys -- >> it's hard to sell. >> part of the notion is to look at this and say i have confidence in america's ability to look at themselves and to look at their country as a work in progress and to recognize that there've been horrible moments but there've also been moments where people have crossed racial lines and blurred boundaries and worked to make it to live up to its stated ideals. >> you have a stunning achievement. you found the only slave ship that carried slaves. half of them were lost in half and half of them survived and

you brought it to the museum. how did you find it and get it here ex- >> the notion was as i begin to think about what this museum should be i realized even if we made it the most technologically sophisticated it would fail because the smithsonian you've you go to see the greensboro lunch counter and i thought what is it that people haven't seen and seen and i thought of a slave ship. so i thought it was going to be easy. i didn't realize that almost all -- we had to create a problem to be project with scholars all around the world to map the ocean floor and we thought we had a slave ship that went to cuba. i can tell you for hours of negotiating getting to the slave ships and cuba but the reality was that we found one from scholars that left mozambican 1794, was on its way to brazil with 412 people and think of the coast of cape town and as a result of the research, we

actually found it and what we did is we realized i didn't want to bring up an entire ship. i just wanted to have a few almost religious relics that would allow people to not think of the slave trade as something for 15 or 29 people million people were involved but it's also something i wanted to humanize and say here were 400 people touched by this so my goal was to humanize history and make it accessible to people. >> in a similar experience, to having a hard time finding officers and a love of artifacts from different periods of time and harriet tubman was a very difficult one to be at how did you find her treasure? spigot wasn't raising money or for hiring staff or even getting a space on the mall. >> you have an easy time with?

>> let's just say now i can say it is an easy time but the reality was i was more worried about the fact we didn't have artifacts because unlike any other national museum in the world is funded and have a collection, it didn't have the staff or a benefactor had to start from scratch. so we went around the country with the assumption that almost all of the 20th century and most of the 19th century is still in basements, drunks and addicts so bring out your stuff and share it with the smithsonian. i got a call after doing that from a collector in philadelphia and he said i have material. tubman and -- how did he know? >> people heard us looking for things in the newspapers and he knew me over the years and when he called he said you don't have anything on. tubman, no one does. why don't you come to philadelphia and see. so i thought at least i will get a philadelphia cheesesteak out

of the deal so i will go and i went out and he took us into the room at temple university and started pulling out things i didn't know existed. he put up pictures. it is a sort of shawl. tubman was wrapped in three days before she died there is a famous picture of that and there it was in front of me then he pulled out a handle and all of the spirituals that. tubman used to saying sing when she would go to help the enslaved same low sweet chariot command there was a personal anthem. by this time everybody is crying. >> they didn't care about the cheesesteak anymore. >> and the the collectors said i will give this to the smithsonian because the public needs to see that great and that's been the joy of the process. >> he gave it to you while he was still alive. >> i wouldn't let him go anywhere without it.

>> congratulations on that. so, there's another exhibit we have a picture of which is is it ira aldrich? >> part of what we want to do is introduce the public to stories they think they knew in new ways but also find stories that are really important. ..

just before he thought he could come back, unfortunately he died in 1867. while we have is this playbill that announces his performance as a fellow in a theater in the uk. very rarely t get a chance to do things like that. >> so you have an obama exhibit at the museum? >> we have, of course we deal. [laughter] >> i guess that was a dumb question. i'm from washington and i'm not. >> i think what we realized is that the election of obama was a

historic moment. we thought it was crucially important to tell the story of the election. what we did, we went and collected an entire campaign headquarters of obama that he had in northern virginia. in the way the goal was not necessarily to simply celebrate president obama to talk about what this means as we enter into the early days of the 21st century. so that's what we've been trying to do, because for me the goal of this descent is on the one and this will be the first green museum on the mall and that's great. i'm really proud of that. it's going to artifacts that people have never imagined they could see, but the goal of the new theme so people realize that history is as much about today and tomorrow as it is about yesterday. ultimately, the job of the national smithsonian is to make america better. >> that's a good goal because many museums stop hard at someplace. >> about 1952.

>> you don't get the up-to-date. so what surprised you? what are you including that you would not have thought of before? what are you proudest of? >> i really think that i'm proudest of the things that average people have shared with us. one day a woman came into my office and said her grandfather had been a black soldier in world war i, and should stuff. she dumped his bag on my table. as i looked at this depth it turned out whose -- her grandfather was a black soldier in world war i who fought for the harlem health fighters. a famous unit. they initially thought in french uniforms and they were so good they had the french version of the metal of honor. they are on my table was this medal from 1919. that's what makes this -- >> so people found you? >> people realize in some ways they have been waiting for this. it's the trust of the smithsonian by the recognition that the story of the

african-american have really been left out of so much, and to be able to now reach into their basements, share the stories of the families makes it very special into some ways very humbling for us. >> do you ever cried? >> all the time. >> you are making me cry a little bit. >> not with regularity. >> you and john boehner. you could be speaker of the house. [laughter] [applause] >> i'll stick to being a museum director. >> you arrived in 2005. you've done what many people thought wasn't going to happen in a decade, and you opened, when? >> we hope to open by the end of september, a year from now. >> the anniversary of your opening. >> it's been, i've never done anything for 10 years other than stay married. it's just been --

>> your wife is thrilled. >> she will be thrilled when they cut the ribbon. >> do you then, your child is born. do you stay another 10? >> you stay long enough to do two things. one, candidly, to take a victory lap. write the book. but no matter what would you people would be critical. you talk too much about religion, not enough of the religion. he didn't talk this. i want to stay around long enough to fight the fight. >> i hope i'm there, congratulations. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> that was great. >> that was fun, thank you. ♪ >> and now jonathan bush with felix salmon. >> hi, there. so i'm felix salmon. i'm from fusion, and this is

jonathan bush who is the ceo of athena health, and he is a very outspoken, you, revolution in health care. you've got amazing software as a service company for doctors which will talk about a little bit. i want to know about this health care revolution. my first question is, who is going to be first against the wall when the revolution comes? >> i was going to start my answer by saying that revolutions are supposed to begin very quietly, and you're saying that in a micro forum info thousands of people on the record. i think the revolution or rotation that we aspire to at athena health and i aspire to a

life is to just coax the fragile demand curve out from underneath the sofa where daddy has been beating you down for so long. as a result there's no innovation. innovation comes when many buyers and sellers, out in the carpet and have freedom to move about. they are very for little definition of that. the definition is mandated by the leader until. this is what health insurance means. you can of bronze, silver and gold that they are all exactly the same but with different amounts of coinsurance like exactly, that wendy's commercial, remember? david? same outfit with a -- same outfit with a flashlight. we think the way to do is to connect all the players in the food chain, and present the doctrine the moment of care with overture for options available electronically in kind of a king lear, and its working. >> with prices in such. >> anything. at this time there's little demand curve, any decision

rights at all with the sort of shockwave to the system. just shopping for availability, shopping for the frequency with which given choice actually follows through and as the tests and gives you the results. shopping certainly by cost. we can also do fully loaded downstream costs. some cardiologists are cheap but they never met a guy who didn't need a stent. we can do all that math but right now at this stage of the revolution it's just getting a disconnect, breaking down the hall areas of sort of almost monty python disconnect between the first station of health care supply chain. >> you say you want this revolution, you're on a shopping revolution and -- >> or dislike a shopping day. >> the educated consumers who need. these are mainly the primary care physicians. >> i would love to be the

consumer but all of us look at our health bill, it's just white noise. dr. stern understand it. we have 70,000 doctors on our own network. big network. bigger than your network, but it's about five kaisers i saw the other day which i thought was pretty cool. but just getting those guys to be able to understand, where are their mammograms? i usually send mammograms to place x. turns out there are for other places to that alone is interesting information that an 80% creation and cost among those were places usually new information. recently the possibility that they could keep some of the savings by choosing the cheapest place in convincing you to go there, that's really exciting. those are just beginning right now. it's sort of mason stage. the people who end up on the wall are the ones who don't get chosen anymore because they are too expensive and too hard to access.

>> the thing that you don't like and -- >> there's so many things. >> so many things you don't like. one of the things you don't like is called the triple aim. what is the triple aim speak with it's where we're going to do everything for everyone so it's all better and no one is going to do anything hard. so we're going to be, triple aim says were going to do everything with a very narrow focus of being good for, high service for patients at high quality according to some temple that defines quality to fully every year but can't measure it, and cost, right, and we can't measure that. so we have three almost totally unmeasurable goals that wait equal amounts. i can't run anything with that many goals that are that hard to measure. and that in the example files the lack of real mission, the lack of real actual dedication to make impact that you run into in health care. it's not that anyone doesn't care. they care factor, the superego

ratio amongst health care people is very high. we get great value. they work late, they care. but the willingness to take out a villager to save the village is very low. the triple aim can is the quintessential icon about. >> so you have a single aim, which is -- >> yeah. make doctors more money by getting rid of their shit work that they hate and suck at. it's that simple. [laughter] all the things would like to talk about, we are earning the right to the cool bit of chat about it because we got this extraordinary network but really all we're really doing, the job of athena health is to find off-season papers that make doctors not been ill and say i will do the paper for you. i will do building. i will send all your orders and find what happened to the. 55% of doctors orders, they don't know what happened. they don't get anything back. 55% of the time. it's again a bad sort of george

orwell comedy sketch about a bad future actually happening. >> and now not getting anything back to you. >> like you said that the people who are disappear upon the wall and say hey, you don't maintain, you \facts/fax your results back. you will not let us connect into your server. who faxes in 2015? begin with average number of faxes at doctor gets in 2015? well, i know 2014. 1154 faxes a month. a month. so they get their tm are from obama, the maximum leaders says 30 billion, all of the emr's have fax servers which received faxes and put them in pdfs and giant piles. what? that was at? it was one -- who is likely to my son to see big bird on ice. that's not to be. it's that incredible letdown.

so right now all we are really focusing on is creating a business model. it's really humble in just getting this stuff to go away. the basic, talk about quality. the basic non-seasons and disputes of work, starting with outcome will create an environment where demand curve could wake up. up. >> talking about demand curve and villains, the big villain images for the past couple of weeks was martin's chiarelli and a $750 pill. pieces funding to market pressures and a currently rational way. you see not such a villain? >> no. i mean, it's hard because with these orphan drugs and diseases you get these hilarious examples that take it so far. but meanwhile, just as an example on the other end of the spectrum, we all can trade stocks and the cause, a series of kickbacks of commissions between our iphone of our

fidelity fund and the very people between then and the depository trust corporation and loser certificate and those kickbacks aligned electronically through, generate about a half a cent what the commission. when i started at the net that commission $7. they had a forklift nothing certificate around in the basement. but as the competition for trades improved, the automation and supply chain integration approved and the price went away. in health care is a hospital is a doctor five bucks for enrolling that patient of hers electronically in a hospital system so that enacted shall beginning to clipboard as an author, they both go to jail. that's a jail time sentence. you go to jail. it's an anti-kickback your look at it. we still see with islands of

isolated information. that's an example on the other end of the spectrum. i'm sorry there's orphan drugs and because everybody is guaranteed everything you do these elders examples but we do need to demand curve. if we have to suck it up, i think it's worth it. >> we can get competition quite easy despite enforcing the exact same pills from europe. >> i'm from that. to look over there. that's not exactly the demand curve either. >> so what is the biggest barrier to achieving this lovely utopia that you think of anyone being able to all the information they need at their fingertips? >> this is not health care conference, but if you go to in the health care coverage as you point it's about the barriers. so just have the barriers. there's a lot of barriers, so what. there's also pass through the barriers. what we found is when doctors get risk contracts they now have

an incentive to see where the patients go and they can make money if they follow them so they're willing to invest in the connection. when retail clinics and urgent care to venture back and go up, hospitals go from wanting to block access to eagerly try to connect because guests were although newly sick people are showing up? at urgent care and retail clinics. that are these little shifts that are creating life for the market all over the place in health care. the aco thing, a new thing in the paper, not perfect but it grates this opportunity where a doctor that shops with the right input when replacing a hip can do better than the doctrine doesn't shot. that's all happening right now. a lot of barriers. most of them are federal laws that made a lot of sense at the time but the cool thing is this internet thing is going to be big and is finally making its way to health care. >> you know what else is big, $3 trillion a year to health care economy.

and when an economy is that big there are lots of infringements. when you come in with the revolutionary fervor and there's going to be pushed back. who is pushing back the most? >> it's a fair point and that's why i like the quiet revolution. you start with the villagers. machiavellian didn't say take down the castle wall. he said let's go give the villagers to printing press. that's all markets stop. they start at the outset -- house i come at the louis. steve jobs dignity to the microsoft i'm making a better laptop. he found the subterranean creatures called teenagers and took the computing out of the laptop and put it in the walkman. venues able to go up from there. there. we are doing the same thing. those are the places i think, those movements are the ones that will work. >> primary care physicians for

the teenage would be -- >> isolated nearly going out of business literally choosing between death and dishonor, isolated doctors are, in fact, the teenagers of the health care of the revolution. >> ask you very quickly, finally, about individual consumers. i personally would love to give up any semblance if i thought it would make me healthier. i hate to feel that this is, i kind of want to make that choice. you are taking choice away. and set up to me anymore for everyone in this room if we went to your utopia would be forced to give up that privacy whether they like it or not. >> you are mostly right. interest every patient who shows up at a theme in that front desk, -- athena, they have a choice but it is defaulted to yes, yes, yes. you have to dig into its i know know i want it to be no. okay, we have to painful because we are not going to be allowed

to look into claims when the insurance company denies it. if you want to painful you can. we have professional athletes and others who say i am unchecking and militancy this. we blanked out the field and militancy. it's not in any of our research but it's less than half of 1% or less than that. one-tenth of a%. we are going to get swept up, lose a little bit of personal power but we will gain so much on the other side. >> okay. with that, jonathan bush, thank you very much. >> thank you, guys. [applause] ♪ then it. >> virginia serve mark warner is up next with derek thompson. >> good afternoon. senator and i had to talk about huber and left and airbnb and the future of the on demand

economy which is made possible almost exclusively because of te invention of the smartphone and mobile technology. the senator as a prop of the mobile technology that he helped to develop as a tech ceo before he became senator. >> since i was the cofounder i'm the only speaker today this is even when i'm speaking from leader cell phones on. doesn't bother me at all. i did have a prop thinking who would've thought this would have turned into this? and the fact of the matter is we think about the on demand economy and without this, gps, there would be no on demand. in this issue it raises a host of policy issues which will get you. >> the california labor commission had a ruling this

summer that said people who work for uber, they are not contractors, they are employers. this has helped kick off a pretty feisty political debate between republicans and democrats about how should we classify these people working for this new breed of company? help us frame the question. >> first of all i don't think, anyone who thinks about this in the 20th century construct is kind of behind the times. the idea that as we change the notion of work as people might drive 10, 15 hours a month for uber, lift arm another apartment for airbnb and do some work making stuff and sell it online, but a classic employee? any of those constructs? no. but the notion that there simply all 1099 doesn't fit as well. we have who 21st century definitions. what i found from coming back

from the valve is because of that decision many of the platforms who were potentially reluctant to get engage in a policy debate are now actually anxious to be involved. what i found time and again is they've got regulatory constraints on try out different models of social insurance. one of the things that i hope to bring to the table is the idea could we get a regulatory time out so that those companies who want to think of social insurance, unemployed, workman scott, disability, other attributes could try them without trying to fall back in the 20th century reclassification debate. end of the day i think we will end up with a third classification. i don't think as policymakers we are ready to get by with a third classification will look like. >> some benefits that are not as able to a contractor what are often inherent to a 20th century stop employ, health care, unemployment insurance, tension, 401(k).

how does public policy or technological platforms replaced these things that seem to be going away on their own? >> this is not something that's happened overnight. my dad is 90 this weekend, world war ii veteran, worked for years and the company. never made a lot of money but he had attention. he had a defined set of benefits. if we move for this generation to the baby boomers we move from through for jobs, 401(k), some package benefits. the millennials although many of the people are not just millennials. they are frankly a lot of boomers and others who participated and have not come back into the established workforce. they are operating on this high wire, maybe doing well, with nasty -- with nothing to catch it between. none of these programs have moved into the 21st century. my premise is when i could replicate the 20th century model. they may not be government

driven. they may be independent third party that will offer some of these but the idea you can go from here down to win the stuff hits the fan as it always does, commutinto hear being back on te government dime in terms of social responsibility, that's a free rider problem on all taxpayers. i think we can frame this debate in a conservative way that says we've got to try some kind of joint contribution models in between. what does it look like this could be an exchange model? and by the way, most of us on demand economy would not have happened had there not been the aca because the severance of health care, health insurance and employment has allowed a lot of people to take this plunge into the on demand economy. i should quickly add as well that seem to think that w-2 employee doesn't guarantee success anymore because with modeling there's a lot of folks to get back 20 or 20 hours but never get the full benefit of being and employ because i can add that the technology. could there be an exchange model

where you shop for your benefits of? could would look at and our bank model which was the old building trade unions, you were a carpenter and you work for 10 different firms and each time you work for a firm, both sides would join the contribute into a social welfare fund. it wasn't run by the coveted it was run by unions. may be run by a trusted third party that might be an association, something different in the 21st century. one of the things we teased out on that last week in december says is could you have a consumer driven model? when you're hosted by someone at airbnb or do some work as a task rather, could you actually give a gratuity that may be matched by the platform will go into social insurance fund that would take your folks? i don't think we know yet but what the court decision drove in california was the threat that this innovation could be squashed by a top down

regulatory ruling has made all of these entities willing to try out new policy ideas. that's good. we've got to find a regulatory timeout to allow some of these platforms to try some of these models before we end up with a one size fits all legislative solution. >> let's talk about part-time work specifically. there was a study done of uber drivers and it was done by an economist. it found that people were driving for the company, 80% had a full-time job before they joined uber and then working for uber only 31% had a full-time job. which would suggest, a twin study, but suggests to me that a lot of people who are willingly trading full-time work for the flexibility of piecing together the eggs, part-time work, although that a freelance. do you think this could be a future model for work? >> i think it very much could be

a future model for first of all we don't have good data. last time the bureau of labor statistics look at the workforce in a major way with 2005. that was as much value as if it'd been in 1985. word has so dramatically changed. second, got to get all of these platforms under sequestration, challenges, the notion will get the coveted will get the government defeated the storm out, we have to get these platforms to share data. one thing we do know, it's going back fully, and whether it's in a low of 3 million or as mckinsey said 53 million, that's a big delta, we got to figure out. second is about the art and number of folks who are cobbling together a variety of different revenue streams to create a full workforce. what i found and i've been a series of these roundtables around virginia, and this is not just millennials. i think about the profession i had in roanoke were folks sitting around the table were my age rather than millennials. to a person, they would not go

back to a traditional nine to five for their same revenue stream. i would test them and every time, it took 35-40% increase in pay for somebody to be willing to trade back into a normal job. as policymakers we've never been able to put a real value from a policy perspective of flexibility. we all complain about the current nature of today's world that a lot of people i think are trading in for this flexibility. what we want to do, what i want to do is allow this innovation to take place, allow the flexibly and freedom to take place but not create such a free rider problem that people who are doing well again if they hit a bump in that back upon government benefits only because we created no social insurance jointly intriguing in the interim. >> i want to talk about the relationship between obamacare and the onto the economy.

i think it's interesting because on one hand you have all these accusations this is love, your socializing medicine, socializing health care. this is bad for capitalism. there's a couple of studies that seem to suggest that universal health care encourages entrepreneurs to start off on the because when health care isn't taken to work, they need to do something english or job do something and it doesn't work out, you are not losing health care. >> i know there's a lot of folks in my day job who are still trying to relitigate this, but this -- [laughter] this issue is yesterdays news. we got to fix it. we should never close like a 30 hour cliff. we have a cheaper plan. i've got, actually called, what was it, copper plan, in terms of a lower value, and lower

actuarial value. but this ability to detach benefits from employment which lets face it all started post-world war ii, has allowed enormous growth and entrepreneurship are now we have to think about the next. your piece on work and where it's headed can when the challenges, i sit here as a proud capitalist but we've got to recognize as well in modern american capitalism focus on short-termism, i would argue is just one capitalism, destroying the ability to create long-term value and in many ways it is not working for holes slew of love and moderate income americans. we have to rethink battling the social contract in the nature of work, i hope idealistically we can find a way that capitalism cannot solve some of his problems we don't end up with simply a government redistribution model, for that matter the old adam smith, fix

it all. both of these issues, if we do them right, don't have to fit into the left versus right, republican versus democratic model. if we can make them a future pack, what a way to spur up an otherwise stale political debate. >> thank you, senator. >> thank you. [applause] >> former president bill clinton's first campaign trip for his wife takes him to new hampshire today for a series of grassroots events. the former president will be in new hampshire starting at 5:15 p.m. eastern talking about famine and economic issues. live coverage on c-span starting at 5:15 p.m. eastern followed by your phone calls and comments. we are asking on facebook and twitter what you think about the former president campaigning for his wife. new hampshire holds its presidential primary on februa

february 20. >> c-span takes on the road to the white house and into the classroom. this year our studentcam documentary contest ask students to tell us what issues they wanted from the presidential candidates. policy stance row to the white house coverage and get all the details about our studentcam contest at c-span.org. >> tonight on the committee caters consumer technology association president gary shapiro of the major technology issues he expects in 2016 and why they changed its name this past fall to consumer technology association. use joined by 20 wrong, technology reporter. >> over 3600 exhibiting companies andover 2.4 million exhibit space. that's up from 2.24 million in 2015. it's going to be spectacular. more innovation, more exciting,

more different categories than ever before. it's the future. that's a show where solving problems, real-life problems for the world, not just entertainment, education information. it's about health care, transportation, clean food and water, greater food production. we are solving problems with technology or. >> and we have more now from this washington ideas forum. over the next hour we have some senators cory booker and mike lee and attorney general loretta lynch. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> thank you, guys for being here. me make sure i have this right. you're a republican and you're a democrat? spin i'm sure our opponents would accuse of being the opposite. >> you guys have been working together a long time on what

always use the hot button issue that deeply divided democrats and republicans, the whole question of sentencing reform and criminal justice. and by the will you are not just in republican. you tend to be a little bit to the right in, i mean, i don't know if there's anybody further to the right in the senate. there might be a couple further to the left in the senate but not many. how did you end up working together? >> first of all i want to correct you. the rush to increase mandatory minimums was a bipartisan rush. bill clinton crime bill. even congressional black caucus was on board with a lot of the changes that drove up our federal incarceration rate 800%. understand this is something that happened because we all participate in it. with obvious exceptions. in terms of senator lee to say that we were working together diminishes him and elevates me in the sense that he was working on this issue far before i came into the senate, he became about

it with a bond of peace but not many centers has. he was a prosecutor and got to witness many of these cases. he brought and authenticity, and understanding to this. by the time i joined the senate almost two years ago at the end of this month, some of the earliest conversations were with him to really join that emerging group and the senate to try to push for what we announced today more merely which was a comprehensive criminal justice bill, some of the core pillars of which he has been advocating for for years. >> i'm going even before clinton. republicans for years would run against democrats by saying soft on crime. look at the 88 presidential race, dukakis-bush. and here you come out, senator lee and you say maybe we smoked a little bit too far in the other direction. >> what we see is we can be tough on crime i being smart on

crime. it's not always the answer to just ratchet up the senses. >> once dry, maybe two strikes. >> that's not always the best way to fight crime and comes at a tremendous cost to a lot of republicans approach this from the standpoint of looking at the financial cost of incarcerating that many people. i look at it more from the human cost. we've got a whole lot of people, husbands, fathers and uncles and nephews and brothers who were are locked up sometimes for decades at a time longer than they need to be. >> for nonviolent crimes. >> yes. as cory said, i came at this as a former federal prosecutor. i witnessed the case handled by the u.s. attorney's office in utah where i worked with as a young man in his mid '20s, a father of two young children. he makes a mistake. he sold marijuana of revocation over a 72 hour period. he had a firearm on his person. the way that federal sentencing laws were produced a 55 year

minimum mandatory sentence. he will be in prison until he is 80 without some kind of meaningful reform. i remember when the case was handled. the sentencing judge issued an opinion saying this is awful. i feel like a monster. yet the law ties my hands. >> mandatory your. >> exactly. there's no reason we should lock him up until he is 80. >> i want to take a step back to you too, okay? we are living through this era where political divide is as deep as it has ever been. the anger, i even heard some of it in your windows trying to talk to kathy morris rogers. the two sides don't even want to tolerate listening to what the other member of congress boycott the pope's speech. what do you guys do when you

hang out? what do your colleagues to say about this? [laughter] >> that part of it is quite easy. that part occurred a lot more common than people think it's true, the parties disagree on a lot of issues but there's a lot of other issues where we don't. i see this as one of many issues in which we can attack problems that we agree upon as republicans and democrats. this is a problem with an available solution for neither conservatives nor liberals, neither republican or democratic. it's an american issue. it comes naturally to people like me and like senator booker who are concerned about this issue and want to make it better. >> why should almost never happened in? >> i'm new to the senate and my experience as a mayor, which is you just have to fix things. there's no republican or democratic way to fix a pothole. for me the urgency of being a big city mayor him everyday made me, i don't care what your party

is, your house is on fire, you don't stop and ask the firefight if they're republican or democrat. we have some emergencies, the government of my state is republican. the biggest in. the biggest weakness to each other partnership with an with him and he and i talked about that separate the 95% of the things we disagree with the let's find the five things and work hard on those areas. as result of that the work going through is the biggest economic development them since the 1960s and has a lot of, the population is going for the first time in six years. when i got to this end i knew the strategy had to be, to do the only thing you can do to get things done which is work with people on the other side. i'm sorry, the senate will never move forward in a democratic with all republican way. there has to be a copper must. so from the get-go out of the blocks, i was a the old maggiore legislation on it its budget for for space its budget for first the legislation with tim scott about workforce apprenticeships,

other countries are leaving us behind a per printer workforce for the jobs that exist, to the criminal justice work i've done with mike lee. i'm trying to find those areas where there is bipartisan support so we can move the ball forward. >> you've been very critical of the republican leadership. independent force in the senate. what is your sense on the democratic leadership, do you think that you look back at harry reid's leadership of the senate, did he not do enough to try to find some common ground with republicans? >> look you know, i'm really not one of those guys who wants to get stuck casting stones. the best example of this, here's for stone casting, all right. [laughter] you know, chairman grassley, the chairman of the few jewish community, my biggest issue in

many ways when i come to the senate after i saw the destructive impact of the criminal justice system on a city like newark that is over 80% minute. we have a criminal justice system that is so biased, influenced by the wealthy and privileged, experienced by the poor. in fact, you get treated better if you're wealthy and guilty that if you're poor and innocent at times. so i came to get something accomplished. now, chuck grassley with giving speeches on the senate floor that i radically disagreed with his leadership i felt was a block to reform. i could've started out by getting on the senate floor and attacking them. but instead i sat with him and begin conversation with him and worked over a period of time to a point where we are today, which we were all praising each other in a press conference we just came from. maybe i need to get to this point but these party shenanigans of this leadership

is doing this, this leadership is not do that. i'm trying to work, all that noise because i don't think it's productive and safe pay, we know that's a country, we know that debt issues in the country are going to be severe if we don't start dealing with things like social security, things like that medical expenses for this country where we are paying much more than our competitor nations and having less, good health outcomes. i poke around trying to find were other people -- take a center like flight for zelda. one of my first votes against the president was the farm bill. i don't understand that we as a country subsidizing their very things are making us sick. i don't understand that and i found -- [applause] i found allies on the republican side, let's start -- let's stop the corporate welfare and forget ways to work on these problems. that is the way to get done. i know we are in a town that loves to sit back. i always say democracy is not a

spectator sport but this guy needs to thank him often it is, what they consider eating the popcorn rooting for red or blue e-braking in the process of it all. this has got to become a place where we let the politics go and get back to the governing. our nation come in our generation we are about the same page, this is what stresses me, we are both passionate about it. america used to be number one on -- percentage of population graduate from college. the most r&d investment. i go through all the worldly form, all these indices of competitiveness of an economy. if you look at the rankings we have falling and everything. what are the things they attack us for is a dysfunctional political system they can't get even most obvious things done at times. the question is, in life never chose to make every single moment of your existence, to accept things as they are or take responsibility for changing the.

i'm proud to find colleagues that are more interesting taking responsibility to see the change they want innocent and that's why i become such a fan of senator lee who i disagree with on a lot of things but we found some common ground to date as result of that. [applause] >> can you find common ground on those tougher issues? you guys are fundamentally agree on this issue of criminal justice reform, but it's something like social security, spending priorities. that are a lot of lines in the sand that are drawn on both sides. on your side never agreed to any revenue increased. you know, obamacare must be repealed, absolutely not a dime for planned parenthood. how do you find common ground on those big issues? >> we are not always going to agree on all the big issues.

experiences like this with working on criminal justice reform, can be a confidence building exercise where we were able to come together and i was, in fact, i was overlapping agreement between republicans and democrats. we didn't have the same purse but we can identify, priorities. depending on which level of abstraction start at you can find some common principle. the well being of the american people were something much more specific like let's reform this particular minimum mandatory penalty. i think there's potential. >> let's try to get to one tough on. we could pick money. guantánamo bay. president desperately wants to see guantánamo bay shut down before the end of his term. where are you on that? the one issue i could race is that you have fewer and fewer detainees at guantánamo bay. the cost, the cost is becoming overwhelming. is their cost on common ground?

>> i don't know. i can imagine there would be but it's difficult to see. look, if we were to move in addressing unwanted no one filter did come with a solution is, with those producers there now would go. if i heard a reasonable proposal i would be happy to consider it. >> so you are not completely opposed to the idea of shutting down that? >> i wouldn't call the existence of guantánamo bay sort of prime directive from which i can't deport. it's not an article of faith that it's not something that is written into the constitution that we have to adhere to. spent some people talk about you might get the sense it is. >> perhaps it is for some. i would want to know what the plan is. >> what is your sense on this? >> my sense that i've traveled the state of new jersey more than most new jerseyans up and down north and south. i've met with the wealthiest suburbs, the poorest inner-city. i met with orthodox. i'm telling you i've never heard

anybody from my state talk to me about guantánamo. [laughter] and so i have strong beliefs, but yo you know what? i've heard people talk to me about salsa city. that's a tough problem. i for people talking about it tax system. what i scanned the horizon for is things that matter to my state. i'm not saying it doesn't matter giunta saying in the limited most viable resource a human being has come families have in the bank, it's that time to give every single day. for me i'm scanning the horizon to do with things of monumental imports. i'm from jersey, not texas but oil exports, controversial issue. i also a passionate belief that if we stay on the current trajectory we are on right now people with obama's controversial energy plan, we will still only have by 2030 about 20% renewable in our

country. if we are able to renew the production tax credit, investment tax credit, we could get to 40% or more renewable in our total package. in a city that has come other than newark. in a city that has four times the asthma rate of, i'm writing a book right now about a kid that died from asthma that has the particulate matter in the air is costing so much to opportunity, to our children's benefit at school, doctor visits. this is an important issue for me. so is a common ground by saying we can allow more oil exports if we can find a way to make, if this is what they need which we don't do in congress very well. just kidding businesses reliable expectations for what the tax pictures would look like for a while but social security. there's only four or five dials you can turn up social 30. we just did a bill or we might

agree more that are chairman, chairman grassley and others but there's only a certain number of dials. you reduced mandatory minutes from 10 to five years? that makes for a discussion. i might enter the social security discussion with my number one issue might be there still of the roughly 5 million american seniors living below the poverty line. i may come into that discussion site that's what i want to deal with, the problem. >> you want more? >> i know what the dials are. when he people like chris christie saying things like should we means test visit? should somebody that is donald trump or michael bloomberg who's collecting social security but these are dials we can turn. i'm not going to negotiate that right now. >> why isn't that discussion happening? john boehner tried that that discussion. >> who says it's not happening? i met with a group of democrats the other day, not the other

day, weeks, but another conversation about can we open a dialogue? you are a lot of people innocent that i know what captures the headline. i know what people want to write about but there's a lot of my colleagues are not there to waste the time or make really good speeches that go nowhere. they're looking to solve urgent problems. i've only been in the senate to use the people asked me, i can look up and see a vacant lot and say we'll build a park. in a matter of months built a part. timtimeout, it's been a really d experience because in a short two years we been able to get real -- look, roger wicker for example, somebody, you know, we have states that are very similar, of course. >> mississippi and new jersey spewing peas in a pod. [laughter]

>> but we came together in a way that the house didn't and over passenger rail and got a compromise on a pretty good bill that will fund positive train control which would get more resources to an area of the country that is the busiest in retrospect nation, the northeast corridor, that was a good compromise and moved the ball for. it made no headlines. >> this is a shockingly optimistic discussion. i'm a little concerned. [laughter] >> we are almost out of time but i've got to get a little boy 16 presidential politics spirit we will not run on the same ticket. this is not an announcement

play out? >> look, a friend of mine recently said trying to discern every decision made by presidential candidate is like trying to smelt the number seven. sometime presidential candidates, the requested of any endorsement of any president could is i've got several friends went at the same time. i want to be the referee between them to make sure they don't beat each other up. >> could you see yourself supporting a donald trump as the republican presidential nominee speak with i see myself

supporting the eventual nominee spirit even if it's donald trump? >> we will see. [laughter] >> democracy is a spectator sport. >> i saw somebody float a while back the idea of a biden-booker ticket. >> is that like we go t like we movies together? i think that's a possibility. i am not tied with a biden. he did not call me up. you know, i do not know if joe biden one or not. i do not know what they also, whom he also jumped in the race. i cannot supporting hillary clinton and i'm looking forward to working on her campaign. [applause] >> would you prefer it if biden did not been? >> no. actually i think it helps the democratic process for there to be vibrant debates o on the isss but i think it's great that my

colleague bernie sanders is in the race because he's bringing up very important ideas, viewpoints. in the senate has been what a my more trusted allies on a lot of issues. i don't think this is a bad thing to have a lot of people on the republican and democratic side. this is one of the more vibrant elections we've seen. more people are paying attention. i'm grateful for trump not just because it's made my watching of late-night tv much more fun, but seriously i think he's been additive in terms of awakening more people to the process. when you get 20 plus million people watching a presidential debate that cannot be bad for democracy. we have challenges, problems, but what we have prepared for is the bad people but the silence and differences of the good people. our nation's pick a spot s. not the engagement of folks. it's the lack of engagement. i celebrate the political process that gets more people in the game. >> great point.

senator lee, senator booker, thank you. thanks a lot. [applause] >> good afternoon. i am attorney general, we put you on the couch. we always want to put elected officials at administrative officials on the couch, so here we go. >> i'm happy to tell you how i'm feeling today. >> not that any of you need to learn a little bit more about, isn't fair to call you our new attorney general? do you feel new? >> no. >> the only one in america who is battle mobsters, druglords and can charm people. so there you go. let me start disputed item on the couch today. >> you guys have a big announcement today from the justice department advocate has been right. right now about a new grant program to help communities deal with recidivism rates.

if you want to take it away. >> i am delighted to announce that today the department of justice is working $53 million in what are called second chance points. this is an important part of the department work in making sure people coming out of prisons have the opportunity to rebuild their lives and that their communities also stay safe. these grants will be aimed at organizations in 45 different jurisdictions. they focus on things as varied as father and son interaction, job training, education. but many, many barriers that we have seen the way people come out of our prisons to becoming productive citizens again. that's the goal. we are very involved at the department of justice and fundamental fairness an individual account of the and making sure that people do in fact serve time when they need to. but then there comes a time when we have to make a decision as how we're going to reintegrate those individuals back into our society in a way that benefits

them as well as keep our communities safe. >> it's a grant program which means, that always has the we expect the with of experiment to me, meaning not every community who need it is going to get it come is that they're? >> unfortunately, we still have limited dollars. but jurisdiction and organizations can apply. we try and look at organizations track record in this field. we look at their experience not just anecdotal but where we can fight it, actual records of success in reintegrating individuals. the application process is all on our website. our office is the main body will be managing these grants. >> gave me an example of the committee that has been doing well. >> i can't predict who will get a grip but all i can take is when i was a u.s. attorney in brooklyn, a district that i was proud to lead, we have within our district, i five counties, brooklyn, queens, long island,

staten island, and a lot of tremendous progress, crime reduction and safety. we have some interest pocket to go in brooklyn and queens. one neighborhood was brownsville about a mile square today many of its residents our young people who literally never leave that neighborhood. unfortunately, except when the young men go to jail. so we solve this cycle over and over again. we were involved very directly and reentry programs in that community in conjunction with the das office where it wasn't just the attorneys office, the das office talking to returning offenders about the cost of reoffending because also providing them with educational services come with family management services and information on how is it that things of such bearish because of the programs were looking to support. >> during the katrina 10 year anniversary there's a ton of studies released in one of those plastic ones dealt with recidivism rates. the prisoners that went back in

the ninth ward, the recidivism rate was higher than going back to the old neighborhood, versus if they had nowhere to go and while they were in prison their family relocated to houston or atlanta, the recidivism rate dropped almost half i believe. that to me sounds like the answer is almost, that was the best evidence i've seen anywhere that the best way to deal with recidivism rate is relocated folks out of neighborhoods. is that one of the goals of this program? ..

>> so our goal is not to move peope from their neighborhoods. our goal is to strengthen neighborhoods to support people coming back into them. >> all right, i want to shift gears -- [applause] i think that deserves, absolutely. i want to shift gears here to criminal justice reform. >> surely. >> you heard me focus on this just today and, in fact, there's going to be some talk, it's going to happen or already happened, i apologize, you have the senators who have their criminal justice reform legislation they're introducing today. life sentences under the three strikes and you're out law would be dropped to 25 years.

20-year mandatory sentences reduced to 15. for crimes that require 10-year sentences, judges would have more discretion. includes prison programs for rehabilitation, new limits on placing juveniles in solitary confinement. in general, you supportive of the goals of this legislation? >> this legislation, i think, representsç an important opportunity for all of us to look at how we administer criminal justice in this country. it's the goal of the department of justice to protect the american people, but in a way that is efficient, transparent and fair. sentencing reform has been a topic of great bipartisan discussion. i think today's announcement, prankly, is a great step forward -- frankly, is a great step forward. we thank senators booker, senator lee, also the other senators who crossed the aisle to começó together with differet ideas on how to improve our system. certainly, as a longtime prosecutor, i remember prosecuting cases where we

looked at people who were being cycled through a system, nonviolent drug offenders who were facing severe mandatory minimums, either being deported or going back home, and you really couldn't see the utility in it. whereas we really needed to focus our resources on the kingpins, the true leaders and organizers of the narcotics organization. so it's something that the department of justice has been focused on for a long time. my predecessor, eric holder, as you recall, introduced the smart on crime initiative which did redirect our resources in the narcotics area for nonviolent offenders into an area where judges and prosecutors had more discretion. a lot of that's mirrored in this bill, so we're incredibly grateful to see that. and a i'm looking forward to working with all the senators. >> what's not in here that you hope some folks get in there yet, or do you not -- is there anything in here yet that you'd like to see in the bill? >> well, first, we're looking at the bill, and i think there's going to be a number of people who are going to have comments

on it. we've had a very positive working relationship across the aisle with senators from both parties on all their thoughts on reform, so we're looking forward to continuing those discussions. >> let's talk about what this year has been about when it comes to the relationship particularly between african-americans and the police. you've been going on a multi-city tour. >> yes. >> on this. i think you've gone to different places, and i was struck by one anecdote. you went to birmingham, and a 15-year-old comes up to you and says i was raised to hate the police. and how did you react to that? >> you know, it's painful to hear that. you're right, i have been on a six-city community policing tour. we chose these six cities, birmingham, cincinnati, pittsburgh, east haven, i just got back from seattle and rich monday. -- richmond. they have all had a challenged relationship between the police and law enforcement, shootings, negative interactions, department of justice

intervention, lawsuits, pattern and practice investigations. and exactly the kind of relationship that you outlined there. where residents talk about a deeply-ingrained sense of lack of trust, but a larger issue, a lack of connection really to the forces that should be protecting them. and i was able to to speak, i've been able to speak with young people in every city in which i have visited. and birmingham was particularly rewarding, because that young person was involved in a program where high school students worked directly with police. we are looking for cities that have had, as i said, a challenging relationship with law enforcement but yet have found a way to rebuild a relationship, to sort of claw themselves back from the brink. and not create a perfect situation, because that doesn't exist. but to find a way many which when problems -- in which when problems develop, there is a mechanism for discussion, there's a process for transparency and where residents and law enforcement have a working relationship.

so one of the ways in which birmingham's been doing that is the program that you were referring to. having police officers talk directly to young people through an exercise with the birmingham police department. they're involved in these role-playing exercises. and it is a way of breaking down the barriers that are created by uniform, whether your uniform is dress blues or baggy pants. people will look at you from either side of where they stand and make a judgment often times about what you mean, what you want to do, you know, your views about them. so by building those connections and letting young people work directly with law enforcement, prankly, that young person -- frankly, that young person came to know that police officers were just like them. they had families, they had concerns, they cared about what was happening to the people they were working with. and i think, quite frankly, the most successful exercise was the one in which they do a role reversal, and the young people play the role of the police officers, and the police

officers play the role of rowdy teenagers who won't get out of a park. and watching the young people deal with that, first of all, the officers' enjoyment. if you've been a parent, you know what that's like. [laughter] but watching the young people deal with that and having them come to understand just how hard a job it is to be a police officer, how many things you have to think about and balance every time you interact with someone, whether they're a young person or an older member of the community. and how easy it can be to let a situation escalate. and the importance of working to build those connections. >> well, we do have a trust deficit also with statistics. for instance, you know, we keep track of violent crime rates, but we don't, we don't have -- and you tell me if the justice department, if you're going to try to fix this, but there doesn't seem to be a uniform way to keep track of when a uniformed officer discharges his weapon. the best statistic is done by a

news organization that's based in europe. i mean, "the guardian" is doing this. that's kind of atrocious, isn't it? >> yes. i'm not going to comment on news organizations keeping numbers. you know, you raise an important point about keeping track of what happens. i think one of the things that we have seen, however, with the recent incidents that have been captured on videotape, i think people have been able to see -- people in the larger community have been able to see what members of minority communities have talked about really for decades, be not generations -- if not generations, about the different types of interactions that people can have with law enforcement. and also how whether or not an officer is trained in calming a situation down or let's the situation escalate, they have seen the difference that that makes. that's been hard for people to understand if they haven't experienced it, if they haven't had that sense that there's a bit of a divide and a disconnect there. so while we don't have actual numbers and, frankly -- >> why? why can't we do this?

why can't this become, i mean, is this just something that congress has to pass a law to sort of make it mandatory that all police -- you tell me. how would, what would it take for you to be able to have these statistic this is. >> well, one of the ways in which we're looking to gather information exactly on this front is through our work with local law enforcement. we do a lot of work with local law enforcement in a very collaborative manner. they reach out to the department for training, technical assistance, and sometimes we also, as you know, have police jurisdictions, police departments, i should say, you should our -- >> ferguson, for instance, now is. >> one of the things -- >> correct? am i right about that with fergusonsome. >> well, we issued a report on ferguson's practices that were not just about policing, but about the larger relationship of the municipality with the residents. which i will tell you, if you have the opportunity to read that -- >> it was a stunning -- read it. >> yes. >> it was really sad. frustrating, angry, you name it.

>> the root causes of a lot of the feeling of the disconnect that many members of minorityies face. so very often the police get the brunt of a lot of the frustration and the anger and confusion and dissatisfaction over municipal policies such as we saw in ferguson. this exacerbates this divide and mistrust, one of the things we're working on. when we have a consent decree or collaborative reform, we do keep records on police departments. and what i will say is no one likes extra paperwork. i hear that all the time. but they find it extremely helpful to, as you pointed out, chuck, to be able to to indicate how many times a police officer simply interacts with a member of the community. how many times has that interaction resulted in a ticket? how many times does it result in the officer having to draw their weapon? how many times does it result many shot being fired?

and there actually some police departments out there that do an excellent job recording how many times a shot is fired. >> but you just said some police departments do a good job. we don't have a national system on this. >> we don't. >> should we? >> we don't. you know, i think one of things we're focusing on with the d. of justice is not trying -- the department of justice is not trying to reach down from washington and dictate to every local department how they should handle the minutiae of recordkeeping. but we are stressing to them that these records must be kept. a lot of times it's a resource issue for small departments. you know, the average size of a police department in this country is around 55 people. >> right. >> you know, a lot of them are very small. and municipalities are a challenge. this is not to say, not to excuse not doing this, because it is, in fact, a very important tool for tracking these interactions. so we encourage it. and we also are looking to encourage consistency of standards. as you've pointed out, you can get information from one department, but if you can't

match it up or marry it up to other information, it may not give you a true picture. the real issues here, chug, i mean -- chuck, i mean, the statistics are important, but the real issues are what steps are we all taking to connect communities that feel disenfranchised with the police and back with government? >> all right. let's talk about the rising crime rate. we've seen it here, you know, a select number of cities where it's just up significantly including right here in washington. milwaukee, 76%, st. louis -- these are murder rates. washington, 44%. have you found a trend yet? i know you're doing a summit in a week on this, so i know that part of your answer's going to be about this summit that you're holding. but have we come up, is this -- do you think it's statistical noise, or is there something happening out there? >> every loss of life is a tragedy, and i don't think we can consign anyone's death to statistical noise, to be frank. we're looking at this issue. we're looking to see if we can identify the root causes of it. crime overall is down.

violent crime overall is down, but we have these persistent pockets where we see at times a resurgence in the violet crime rate and the -- violent crime rate and the homicide rate, as you noted. we are having a summit, thank you for the lead-in, chuck, much appreciated. we are inviting not just the mayors and police chiefs, but also the federal prosecutors of some of the cities affected by this cotom to washington and -- to come to washington and sit down and talk about the trends they have seen. i previously directed all the u.s. attorneys in jurisdictions where this was an issue to convene a local gathering and talk with their local law enforcement about what they were seeing on ground. on the ground. is it, for example, a meth problem. is there an increase in certain types of activity. >> there's a huge heroin problem. right now the presidential candidates are hearing about it front and center because new england in general and new hampshire specifically has this huge heroin issue. >> absolutely. heroin and, frankly, opioids in general, the prescription drug epidemic of a few years ago is really still with us.

so i've asked the u.s. attorneys to talk to their local law enforcement. is that the issue? is it an issue, you know, arising out of gang violence? you know, it's going to be different for every jurisdiction. >> -- >> another theory out there has to do with if police have gotten a bad rap this year. do some criminals feel empowered. >> well, i can tell you that when i've gone out and talked to police departments, specifically the six departments i've been to, and they've all talked about the increase in community policing, the steps that they are taking for deescalation, they are all in cities where crime has gone down. so i think that, frankly, police involvement is a helpful thing overall. that's what we're seeing. >> one of the things, i want to go back to criminal justice reform, because a lot of the focus has always been about nonviolent drug offenders. >> yes. >> one of the easiest ways you could clean this up is if the government rescheduled marijuana. marijuana is a schedule i drug,

the equivalent of heroin and all this stuff versus, for instance, it's considered a more lethal drug, essentially, than vicodin. should -- would it be easier to deal with this sentencing issue if marijuana were reclassified, and would you support the reclassification of marijuana? >> i think if you want to look at the population of people who have been subject to overincarceration, particularly at the federal level, we look at the situation from, as i mentioned before, the societal costs as well as the financial cost and the cost in terms of human productivity. the majority of those individuals usually were victims of the cocaine-crack imbalance several years ago which has been corrected significantly but still exists. and so for us at the federal level, we're looking at individuals, nonviolent offenders. not the kingpins, again, not the large scale importers of heroin and cocaine, but that's been the focus of the federal government and prescription drugs -- >> you've been a u.s. attorney. if the reclassification of

marijuana, would that make your, would that make it easier for you to focus on the real offenders? >> well, in term of as a federal prosecutor and, certainly, we do continue to do marijuana on large scales. unfortunately, there is still a lot of violation associated with large scale importation of marijuana. there's a lot of firearms involved. and, frankly, because wherever there's a lot of money changing hands, you will find that occurring. so the federal level for us, we focus on larger scale dealers. i think in terms of your question about rescheduling of marijuana, we're looking at the nonviolet drug offenders who have been swept up primarily in the crack and the cocaine wars. a vital tool, i was a prosecutor in the '90s, i remember those days, i remember the violence, i remember the fear in many minority communities. but we're looking now at the collateral consequences of those policies and trying to, essentially, find a way to

mitigate -- >> you comfortable that the federal government is allowing the states, washington, oregon, i believe started today selling marijuana legally, washington state and, obviously, the federal government's made a decision to not overrule those laws. you comfortable with that decision? >> well, i think states have to make those decisions on their own. they listen to their citizens, and they take actions. what we have said and what we continue to say is that states have to also have a system designed to, number one, mitigate violence associated with the marijuana industries and number two and perhaps most importantly, keep young people, children away from the products. the concern that we have, we're seeing a number of situations where children gain access to products that look like candy or cookies or cakes. the purity is different, and they're becoming very, very ill. we also have concerns and states have expressed this to me where a tate that is not legalized -- a state that has not legalized

this particular substance sees people traveling across state lines to obtain it. we will still intervene in that. >> i know we're at the zero. federal government need to regulate a little bit? if the states are going to do this, you just mentioned the candy issue. >> well, we -- >> is that something you think congress -- >> we still have a very strong enforcement policy there, and states need to have a regime in place to deal with these issues. the federal government is still intervening and looking at situations and cases where those are the issues. our overall goal is the protection of the american people. >> all right. madam attorney general, i will leave it there. >> thanks. >> thank you. [applause] >> goodowow morning. so bill clinton, from what we've read, has stood on the sidelines or at least behind the scenes so far, but here he comes campaigning directly from hillary clinton. how was the decision made tow bring him out at this point to campaign for his wife?

>> guest: well, look, i think he always planned on coming out to campaign for his wife. he certainly did in 2008, and he remains very popular. i think the interesting thing here isd that he's going to stt off doing this in new hampshire. you know, this is the only earls primary state where there's even remotely a contest between bernie sanders and hillary clinton. sanders is the front runner in newto hampshire. strategically, hillary clinton understands if she still has a double-digit lead in iowa, if she's somehow able to win new hampshire, the nomination is basically over at that point, winning iowa and new hampshire. particularly when she would head into nevada and south carolina where she has very large leads over bernie sanders. so what the clinton campaign is trying to do is make a very big push here, not conceding new hampshire at all. in fact, they act like this is where the campaign is at.

so they're going to bring in bill clinton who's a very popular figure in state. fortunately for hillary, she's able to get bill clinton on the phone -- [laughter] or talk to him at the house and bring him back. what's interesting is, you know, new hampshire has been clinton country over the years. it was the case where bill clinton became the comeback kid in 1992. it was the place where hillary clinton, she said, found her voice in 2008 when she pulled off a remarkable comeback victory in the 2008 new hampshire primary that led, of course, to that protracted primary season. without new hampshire, that would not have happened. but with bernie sanders' lead now in the state, we're actually asking the question whether it is still clinton country. >> host: so what's his specific assignment? what kind of events, what kind of venues, and how about this message? is bill clinton more or less on his own? >> guest: yeah, these are

campaign events. these are run by the campaign. i'm not sure anyone can tell bill clinton what to say, except for maybe hillary clinton. and he's, obviously, one of best politicians in a generation. republicans concede this in terms of how good he is on the stump. he's going to be exeter today, a really key area in the democratic primary. it's got a core of democrats and or particularly blue collar types of democrats, and then exeter is a different type of democrat. it's more white collar. both of these events are aimed at rallying the grassroots. i mean, the one major advantage bernie sanders has over hillary clinton in the state is enthusiasm among his supporters. they love him, they want to volunteer for him, they feel passionate, and they feel like they're part of a cause. hillary clinton has all of the establishment. she has the best well-oiled

machine. but what shellacs is that passion -- she lacks is that passion. what they're trying to do with bill clinton and with hillary clinton herself who is in the state twice in the last week including a bunch of stops yesterday in new hampshire, is to try to reignite the passion among her supporters as we get to the final week before the new hampshire primary. >> host: okay. here's a headline that reminds to us of an emerging theme, washington times. donald trump says clinton's family past is fair game in the campaign. how do you see this playing out? >> guest: well, this is going to play out in a huge way if you want to quote donald trump. donald trump is going to be in lowell, massachusetts, which is 20 miles away from where bill clinton will be in nashua. this is sort of a pairing off that's meant to bring a lot of headlines as they've been going back and forth, you know, other the last week or so -- over the last week or so about how much donald trump wants to make this an issue. of course, this all started with hillary clinton, she started it

in an interview with the dom register saying -- des moines register saying donald trump has said some sexist things. you know, the clintons ever since donald trump began to flip them back on them have remained silent. people were waiting for her to respond in new hampshire on the campaign trail on, and she has not. i don't expect bill clinton to be bringing this up, though you know reporters want to ask him about it. >> host: what else should we will looking out for, mr. pindell, here? >> guest: chris christie's still in the state, john kasich's returning back to the state. you know, we have a number of campaign events occurring with five weeks to go. i think the interesting dynamic is that new hampshire may once again go for the maverick candidate. we head into the new year, five weeks before the new hampshire primary, and our two front runners are bernie sanders, as we talked about, and donald trump. i think the interesting thing is going to be whether or not that continues, whether new hampshire

will continue with the maverick-style campaign, or if not, will the campaign make this flip as it traditionally does when we get closer to election day about electability? will republicans say, look, i get donald trump, i get his anger, but we need someone who's electable, and i'm that person. or will donald trump say, look, every single poll shows i am more likable -- not likable, i am more electable in terms of what republicans say, so you need to pick me. and then on the democratic side, i think that may be what we're going to hear from hillary clinton as well, that she's the electable candidate. as we get down to it, that may be the theme along with the fact that the base in both parties are very angry right now. >> host: james pindell is a political reporter for the boston globe. thanks a lot for your time and insight on this story of bill clinton out campaigning. >> guest: thanks for having me. >> former president bill clinton's first campaign trip for his wife hillary takes him

to new hampshire today for a series of grassroots events. the former president will be in exeter starting at 5:15 eastern. we'll have live coverage on c-span starting, again, at 5:15 even, and that'll be followed by your phone calls and comments. also we're asking on facebook and twitter what you think about former president campaigning for his wife. and new hampshire holds its presidential primary on february 20th. >> i'm donald trump, and i approved this message. >> the politicians can pretend it's something else, but donald trump calls it radical islamic terrorism. that's why he's calling for a temporary shutdown of muslims entering the united states until we can figure out what's going on. he'll quickly cut the head off isis and take their oil, and he'll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that mexico will pay for. >> we will make america great again! [cheers and applause]

>> c-span takes you on the road to the white house and into the classroom. this year our student cam documentary contest asks students to tell us what issues they want to hear from the presidential candidates. follow c-span's road to the white house coverage and get all the details about our student cam contest at c-span.org. >> tonight on the "the communicators," gary shapiro on the major technology issues he expects in 2016. and why the cta changed its name this past fall to consumer technology association. he's joined by tony romm, politico's technology reporter. >> over 3600 exhibiting companies and over 2.4 million net square feet of exhibit space. that's up from 2.24 million in 20 15. so it's going to be spectacular. more innovation, more excitement, more different

categories than ever before, and it's the future. it's a show where solving problems, real-life problems for the world -- not just entertainment, education information. it's about health care, it's about transportation, clean food, clean water, greater food production. we're solving big problems with technology. >> tonight at eight eastern on "the communicators" on c-span2. >> a father/son venture capitalist team, the ceo of dropbox cloud service, a panel on the future of bitcoin and the inventer of drones and the roomba vacuum are coming up next at the techcrunch san francisco meeting that took place in september. >> once a year they drag me out of wherever they keep me and bring me up here on stage to say stuff. [laughter] so here i am. dancing monkey. juan and topher, thank you so

much. you guys are two of the main guys behind sv angel. thank you so much for coming to talk with me and share whatever you're going to share with audience. >> thank you. >> a pleasure. >> so i know there are some things you'd like to talk about, but i'd like to start with something else. >> you usually do want to talk about something else. >> well, it's -- i mean, look, i'm a venture capitalist, you're a venture capitalist, and it's not an easy job, but it's also not the hardest in terms of stress or hours worked or things like that. a lot of vcs that i see out there really seem like, you know, they've martyred themselves. there's a couple tweets, and i'm not going to say who this is, but these are fairly well known vcs talking about their need for support groups because of how stressful their jobs are. venture capital is very stressful, wish there was a forum for vcs to share ideas and advice. these weren't ironic. i mean, these were sort of meant

very seriously. do you guys find the same thing, that it's just really hard to be a vc and that you wish you had it a little easier? >> well, we really do nothing compared to entrepreneurs. we're a very -- we play a very small role in the success of the company, and it's really up to entrepreneurs to drive their own success. and so, you know, i don't think it's that stressful. it's one of the best jobs out there. we get to talk to entrepreneurs all day and see the future. it's a lot of fun, actually. >> i'm not sure what the intention of those tweets are. >> do you feel -- >> i find them embarrassing. i find them embarrassing. >> you're embarrassed. >> i am, i'm embarrassed that a vc would think that their job is stressful when starting a company is the most stressful thing ever, and vcs and investors are bystanders who get

to witness creation of these companies, and we should be thankful for that, not stressed out. and just help 'em out. >> i know what a vc does all day -- [applause] that was fairly weak. it was, like -- [laughter] it started and then -- >> it's early. [cheers and applause] >> now i think they've forgotten what you said, they're just clapping to clap. [laughter] >> mahalo. >> if i was an outsider looking at what vcs do, it looks like they just sort of tweet all day, you know? two or three tweets an hour, humble brags. i call them ego selfies. is that what you need to do, just regurgitate on twitter all day? >> not at all. we're here to accomplish something. and as technology becomes more important in people's everyday

lives, every company in the world needs to be a technology company now. silicon valley is under a microscope more than it ever has been. >> yeah. the world's watching us. >> exactly. >> they're watching these idiots talk about, you know, how great they are on twitter all day, and that that's -- anyway. >> exactly. we need to be setting an example and showing the world what silicon valley's all about, hard work, perseverance and changing the world through technology. vcs don't need to to be philosophers in 140 characters, they need to be helping their companies and supporting the entrepreneurs they invested in. >> it doesn't need to be all about you. since i've left techcrunch, the amount of face time with just the general public has dropped significantly, because i think there are other ways to help companies. >> vcs should be in the background. it's not our job to be in the limelight, and, you know, taking all the credit, because we really deserve almost no credit. >> yeah. >> we need to understand that tech founders today are leading

the next industrial revolution x. investors should be honored that they get to be a part of that and knuckle down and help these companies be successful. >> yeah. so on that note, how isç sv doing? >> we're doing great. [laughter] we continue to invest in about one company a week. we've seen great success over last, you know, six years. currently, we're investors in 26 companies that are valued over a billion dollars, so we're pretty excited about that, companies like air bnb,w3 pinterest -- >> these are what people call unicorns. >> people do call them that. >> you're in 26 of them? how many unicorns are there now? >> just over 100 companies that are valued over a billion dollars. >> so what happened to the other

70% that you didn't invest? count them as miss, i guess. >> that's still a great number. >> we're investors in about a third, and we actually looked, we actually knew, at least knew about the other third atç founding. >> yeah. >> so we understand the landscape. >> so what's happened, i mean, you recently -- david lee has retired. he was one of partners in your fund. he was the partner for a while. what happened, what happened there? why did he leave? >> two years ago david decided to move to l.a. to spend more time with his family and his two young daughters. and at that point internally we started transitioning a lot of the day-to-day responsibilities from david to other members of the fund. and that was just a function of david being in l.a. more. we needed our partners to be more involved in every day-to-day decision. so now we are 11 people strong,

our partners have -- >> whoa, whoa, whoa. when david moved, you didn't tell the world that this was a slow retirement for him, right? but you're saying that as he moved you sort of began to transition him out? >> exactly. so to the outside world it was very abrupt, and we understand that, but internally it was really a seamless transition. and the rest of our team members have really stepped up and taken on those responsibilities. >> is there any bad blood between you and david lee? >> none. [laughter] >> huh. i feel like there's more to talk about there. your last fund, up until the last fund, your funds were in the 40 range, right? $40 million. your last fund was 75 million, the one you're investing now or just finishing. how that experiment -- tell us why you raised, you almost doubled the size and and how it's worked out and what the next fund will look like. >> exactly. so we raised a $75 million fund

last summer as prices were increasing, you know, rounds were getting bigger. seed rounds went from a million dollars to call it two to three million dollars, so we needed to have more capital to invest just to keep our ownership percentage up. and that's gone incredibly well. you know, we have some amazing companies in our portfolio, people like zenefits that we're really excited about. and while we're not currently raising a fund, our next fund will be a little smaller, probably like our last fund, you know, more in the 40 range. >> so you're saying it's an experiment that went well, but you're going back to the old size fund. there must be a reason. >> exactly. we want to go back to basics. as we've observed the market getting a little more crazy -- in a good way, lots more angel investors, a lot more companies being started, we think that's all very positive for the ecosystem -- we want to take sv angel to a seed-focused fund. and to be a seed fund, you need to be nimble, you need to be

quick and be very decisive and trust your gut. seed investing is all about investing in great people, and that comes down to trusting your gut. as your fund size grows, you start to think more like a portfolio manager than an angel investor. so we want to get a little bit more of that angel investor dna back and focus on that. >> when you go to -- >> the other thing about a smaller fund, it's practical and obvious, but with a smaller fund you pay your investors back quicker. and investors love that. >> yeah. no, investors definitely love getting paid back. are you, will you make less investments or smaller investments or both? with the smaller fund? >> we'll make the same number of investments. the investment size will probably be a little bit smaller. >> yeah. >> but we'll really focus on helping entrepreneurs at the seed stage and not just being a fund that's buying an option to invest more in the a or b rounds. where i think, you know, funds

get larger and they start to do that where they're buying options, you start to, you know, you misaligned with the entrepreneur. and being a true seed fund, you can be 100% aligned with entrepreneurs and what they're trying to accomplish. >> but you're currently not aligned with entrepreneurs. >> we are, we're just comfortable investing a little bit less. [laughter] >> back to our roots. >> so to summarize, raising the size of your fund to $75 million was the best decision you ever made, and trumped only by the even better decision to decrease the fund size back to $40-$45 million. >> i think very few people would ever make that decision. [laughter] you know, i think almost every other fund around has gotten bigger, and i think we'll probably be one of the only ones that decides, hey, a smaller fund is better. >> we never raised our fund size, and we freaked out when you guys did, because you were p the last ones, and we didn't. and, you know --

>> a new trend. >> yeah. oh, wait, there's something else here. oh, okay. so the trend -- what's the trend in the seed ecosystem you're seeing right now? overvaluation? too many companies? just the right amount? what because it look like -- what does it look like for you? >> prices have definitely gone up. >> yes. >> most opportunities that we see. but for us that's not a negative. we're still searching for the company that will be valued over a billion dollars one day. we're not optimized for companies that are going to be smaller. and i think, you know, more than ever you see the number of companies that are valued over a billion dollars have gone up pretty much in proportion with the number of companies being started. so, you know, while valuations have gone up, we're still seeing companies making it to the stage where, you know, they're high value, generating revenue and real businesses. >> so you're pretty comfortable with the market right now.

>> very. >> yeah. how important is -- [inaudible] to your business? in terms of the company that they spin off that you informs in? >> -- invest in? >> extremely important. they still attract some of the interest entrepreneurs in the world, and it's one of the best companies to companies and invest in. >> they've perfected the system that, you know, even their application everyone copies because it's so well thought through. and then their screening process where they have the alumni evaluate all, you know, the thousands of companies, and then they winnow it down. and that's why you end up with the best of breed, and that's why we call them the stanford of accelerators. >> you know, paul graham recently said -- and i won't get it exactly right, people can look it up -- that ron conway is

the most important and best investor, you know, in silicon valley right now. and that's great. and then you come up on stage and you talk about -- and i ask, you know, how often he is. do you guys, like, go to dinner and smoke cigars and say, hey, listen, you say i'm the best, and i'll say you the best? [laughter] how does that all work out? because you are called the godfather of silicon valley. i don't know, is this payback for him saying you're the most important investor? i don't know. >> i think it's about who adds value for founders. >> yeah. >> and who helps at those inflection points. >> okay. >> when a founder needs to accomplishing accomplish something. >> so you're saying, yes. >> and cigars give me indigestion, so -- [laughter] so does cognac. >> seed investing is all about reputation. and i think paul has realized that. we have a great reputation because we are all about helping entrepreneurs. we have one customer. we're a service fund. we have one customer, and that

customer is entrepreneurs. so our entire firm is set up to help that one customer. >> right. okay. are we in a bubble right now? and i don't want to take this into, like, the same path that everyone does, but let's talk about valuations. you've said you're very comfortable in the market right now. do you see any problems on horizon? >> i don't. like i said, valuations have gone up, but the opportunity has also never been larger, you know? just the amount of mobile phones in the ecosystem today is going to continue to grow and accelerate. so that creates more and more opportunity for the companies -- >> how old are yousome. >> 29. >> have you ever been in a down urn? >> i have. >> what were you, like, 5 in -- [laughter] seriously, there's these young guys today that have never seen anything but, like, the perfect world that we live in now. you realize that stuff goes down sometimes too, right? >> i was there. i believe i was in eighth grade or -- [laughter] a freshman in high school. i made my first angel investment

in napster when i was in eighth grade, and i actually started attending meeting at angel investors when i was 13. >> so it was really rough on you when the economy fell apart -- [laughter] >> very rough. >> stock certificate -- >> i still have it. makes a great conversation piece. but it was really interesting seeing the down turn. i mean, all hell broke loose overnight. and i remember -- >> nothing, nothing concerns you right now on the horizon about the overall economy and the technology economy? interest rates rising? does that worry you at all? deflation? >> the thing is, the companies that are great companies and great businesses will survive, will weather the storm. the companies that, you know, probably aren't the best businesses don't have a thought-out business model or maybe haven't found product market fit. they'll go away. but i would say that, and if we were having the bubble talk or not, i would say that no matter what. >> i will say this, i

actually -- i am very concerned about the global economy. but, honestly, our lps don't pay us to be. our lps pay us to go invest in start-ups. they worry at a macro level about how much money they want many venture capital, how much they want in treasuries, in whatever. so to some extent it doesn't matter, right? if things get really crazy, it does. they want us investing in venture capital because that's how they hedge their risks. so, you know, your optimism is awesome. [laughter] >> we're eternal optimists. >> speaking of paul graham -- [laughter] i did have a dinner with him recently without cigars, a little bit of wine -- >> do you guys hold hands? >> we were -- no, no, our wives come with us. [laughter] and, you know, we were talking about all the obsession over private company valuations today. >> oh, yeah. >> and paul said something that really strucking me.

he said, hey, there's multiple categories of investments in the united states. you have nasdaq, you have the nyse, and then you have private companies. and private companies, it's just another category. it's companies that have investors. and in this case most of the investors in private companies are probably more knowledgeable than a lot of the investors in the public companies. so it's actually probably a more qualified marketplace to have investments. and the private company category happens to have founders who don't want the scrutiny of quarterly earnings announcements, and they want to build out their business. but it's just another category. let's not, let's not obsess other it. over it. i think people are obsessing over one of the investment categories. let's obsess over nasdaq and

nyse as well. >> all right. so let's talk about all the do-good stuff you're up to right now. are you finally addressing the plague of bicyclists in the city and how to get rid of them? is that one of the things you're working on? >> well, we're not going to get rid of bicyclists. >> you agree it would be for the best -- >> but we need to accommodate, we need to accommodate them and make the city safer. >> right. >> because there are pedestrian/bicyclist collisions every day, and the mayor is trying to to address that. >> wasn't your wife hit by a bicycle recently? >> she was. >> yeah. >> she was. but there's other priorities in san francisco. bicyclists is one if we're going alphabetically. [laughter] let's go -- >> but you do agree that bicyclists are a problem that needs to be addressed. >> well, they're an opportunity.

[laughter] it's a great mode of transportation because the people in cars know that there's too many cars. but let's fast forward to the letter h. housing. san francisco has a huge housing problem. it's -- and the tech industry has a lot to do with the housing issue. since 2011 101,000 tech jobs have been created in the city of san francisco. give yourselves a round of applause. [applause] >> yeah. >> san francisco's unemployment in 2011 was approaching 10 percent. today it's less than 4 percent. and the biggest problem that ed lee had on his agenda in 2011 was unemployment. that problem is solved. >> right.

>> now, a by-product of that is housing. and ed lee has put on ballot a housing initiative called prop a. we have a lift of the ballot initiatives -- a list of the ballot initiatives that are coming on the ballot in november, and i can't stress enough that the tech i have has got to register -- >> wait, is this you telling people how to vote? >> well, it's recommending, it's recommending. [laughter] recommendations, although it's -- >> you allowed to tell people -- >> maybe it is. is it on your screen? oh, great. >> is this legal? can you tell people to rebellinger the to vote at the same time you tell hem how to vote? -- tell them how to vote? i swear to god there's some major election committee -- >> well, we and we recommend. we and we recommend. so we ask the tech industry if we're going to solve these issues, we've got to register to vote, and then we have to vote. so grab your pencils and write down this url --

[laughter] weupvote.us. you register to vote in three minutes, and then on november 3rd you vote. and we can make change. and sf city, over a thousand tech companies in sf are members. sf city has this, we call this a slate card where we recommend how to vote to make san francisco a better place. >> now, how many times should people register to vote? >> usually just once. >> because -- >> unless you have a spouse, and then -- >> register them to vote as well. >> yeah. >> okay, all right. well, listen, thank you so much for bringing us this update. >> well, i want to talk about philanthropy for one second. over 400 companies have signed the 1% pledge. >> and what is that? >> i talk about this every year at the crunchys, i give an update on philanthropy.

and the 1% pledge is where companies pledge 1% of their equity, 1% of their time and 1% of their product for philanthropy. when yelp went public, they did the 1% pledge. their 1% of their stock when they were a start-up turned into $50 million. yelp is now donating to the community $50 million. salesforce was the -- >> does that money go exactly? >> 400 have signed up. thank you. >> where does that money go exactly? >> it goes to wherever the company who signs up for the 1% pledge. >> okay. >> what's awesome is most of the companies have a group of employees and team members decide where that money should get donated. >> all right. >> so sf is giving back. >> all right. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> it's a pleasure. [applause]

♪ >> what's up, guys? so about two and a half years ago we had our ballotfield at the new york disrupt, and a little company called zenefits got up on our stage and launched. secretly or maybe totally explicitly. battlefield companies kind of always hope to come back as speakers. that's exactly what's happening today. please welcome to the stage zenefits founder and ceo parker conrad, and our moderator, matthew lindley. ♪ ♪ >> how's it going? >> pretty good. >> it's been, what, two and a half years since you were at disrupt? >> two and a half years, yeah. we were a finalist in start-up battlefield. it's where we launched our product. >> yeah. so it's been kind of a crazy two and a half years more you.

so, like, how do we get here, man? it's been a crazy ride for you guys. >> yeah, it has been. we've been really fortunate that there's just been a lot of growth and, you know, it kind of started right, well, not right here, it was at the new york event, but just been consistently growing since then. >> and so i imagine that your growth is probably the envy of, like, a lot of people in this room, right? what would you say is one of the most important ingredients of that growth so far? >> i think probably the most important thing that people can do is to set really aggressive goals. so there were a couple of times where, you know, we as a company sort of sat down and set goals that we thought were just ridiculously unachievable. sometimes because, you know, our board member, lars, really big personality, he kind of came in, and we told him we thought from one year we were going to go from one million to ten million,

and he looked at us, we were pretty proud of that, and he looked at us and said, why aren't you going to do 20? why not something much, much larger than that? we sort of asked ourselves, well, you know, what would it take? i mean, it sounds impossible, but what would it take for us to get there? and we kind of thought, well, we'd have to split our sales teams in two and hire a little more aggressively on the sell side. but we kind of said, well, let's try that tough and see what happens. and -- that stuff and see what happens. and it was working. so we would just sort of, like, increase our targets and try and get there. >> yeah. and how big are you guys now? >> we're about 1600 people. >> wow. >> and you guys use that impetus internally, right? what's it like as you continue to scale that product up? >> well, it drives a lot of product development. internally we say zenefits runs

on zenefits which means we only do things that are sported by -- supported by the product and suffer if it's not. we're our own largest customer at this point. it's pushing the envelope in terms of what the product can do and how it works for companies of a larger size. >> and do you have any crazy stories from the past two and a half years? >> gosh, trying to think. i'm sure there are. i think, you know, i think craziest stories have just been about, you know, how quickly we had to grow and, you know, the number of people coming on board, and, you know, preparing for, you know, a lot of that, you know, the growth in customers. it really, it sort of focuses you. because if you, you know, at one point i remember we were, we're not growing quite this quickly anymore, but we were doubling in size every eight weeks for a

long period of time -- >> [inaudible] >> it's a little bit, i mean, that would be rough, but the scale that we're operating at, but we were for a long period of time. and it kind of means that every problem that you encounter related to to scale is going to be twice as bad many two months' time. and so you don't have a lot of time to fix it and address it. but it's very exciting, and it focuses the company, it focuses everyone on, you know, what's really important. and, of course, it also helps attract and retain a lot of talent. so the only thing worse than growing really quickly is not growing very quickly. for a start-up, it's a lot worse the other way around. because growth, you know, it kind of feeds on itself. it's, growth is how start-ups kind of put a stake in the ground about their vision of the future. it's how you say, listen, we are right. this is the shape of things to