commission, most telemarketers have been diligent in their efforts to scrub their lists to meet the registry's requirements. encouraging more people to register will help fight telemarketing fraud. the u.s. the securities and exchange commission has found that an estimated 5 million senior citizens become victims it's they attribute this high weight -- it to be this high rate to the fact that older investors hold a higher amount of wealth, and are between the ages of 50 and 64. contrary to popular belief, the financial industry regulatory authority to fines of the most frequent victim of investment fraud is a college-educated male age 55-265, who is an active investor. access to the data base

maintained by the sec indicate stepped identity theft was the number-one complaint. these complaints totaled $1.8 billion in financial asa -- losses. consumers over the age of 50 accounted for 30% of all complaints in the data base, and 26% of all identity theft complaints. according to the 2008 data, more than three out of five consumers complained that they had been contacted by the fraudulent company by e-mail or through the internet. with the growth in social networking, use of the internet is anticipated to be a growing that the of perpetrating financial fraud. h.r. 3040 is a cost-effective, targeted approach to prevent financial exploitation, and

promote economic security and financial education among those approaching retirement. the senior financial empowerment act would make improvements that strengthen and cord make the efforts of nonprofits and government entities to educate older americans about abusive schemes. h.r. 3040 promotes stability of older americans to live independently and maintain financial security to provisions that would centralize a monetary service in the federal trade commission. it would authorize the attorney general to make local grants to prevent telemarketing fraud, and establish a fraud awareness week in may of each year to expand education and public awareness. we commend the subcommittee for holding this hearing today to focus more attention on the critical problem of financial

abuse. we hope this is just beginning, and we urge the committee to take action to address this growing national problem. i'm happy to take any questions print >> thank you -- questions. thank you. i felt to remind you of the timing device before you. most of the witnesses are aware that it is -- it starts yellow, goes green, and those red. >> it is an honor to appear with you. again, mr. chairman, i commend in your leadership. in the last congress, the same subcommittee held a hearing on the elder abuse, and the house in 2008 and 2009 pass this legislation. we remain hopeful the senate will also pass this bill this

year. your leadership and dedication to this issue of elder abuse prevention is commendable. it is a pleasure to testify in support of h.r. 3040, in support of rep tammy baldwin. she was one of the leaders in the house that helped to pass the elder justice act, which is part of the health reform the discussion signed into watch this past march. -- signed into law this past march. of review -- a review of the section of this bill is so boring -- several points -- several points are worth emphasizing. the population is aging. we know the numbers. 34 million people above the age of 65 by that time the first wave of boomers turn 65, will

have a doubling of our elder population. that could be as many as 5 million cases of other views each year in this nation. financial abuse has been one of the fastest rising forms of abuse. the mature market study referenced, and i would ask that it be included in the record, in addition to the $2.6 billion finding, identified internet scams that were particularly prevalent going for, increasing social network, e-mail, anti- aging remedies, and property and information solicitation all done through the internet. another justice department study released earlier indicated that with respect to the internet fraud data, the study shows the people 60 and over lost more money per incident than any other age group. the sad reality is that the wonders of modern technology can be offset by the uses and horror

of elder abuse. the web is a fountain of information, a busy marketplace, a thriving social scene, and a den for criminal activity. the baldwin bill is comprehensive and proactive in its approach. it will help stop abusive fraud targeting seniors. it will emphasize the need to educate individuals, families, and care givers and how to detect, report, and combat financial elder abuse. we need to involve the federal trade commission. the bald one bill would have them be the centralized service -- the tammy baldwin bill would have them be the centralized service. hear, technology is it will help, as the bill calls for a centralized web site. we support the creation of a new

grant program to state and local organizations to be built on -- to do locally-focused campaigns. in many instances, committees are already doing this, and these grants will help make them stronger, and become more national models. in designating a week in may, it would be helpful to the overall public awareness raising efforts. some law enforcement training that was done in upstate new york and could tips such as if a salesman will not meet with you if your family is present, that is a red flag. when a postcard claims you are a sweepstakes winner lands in your mailbox, do your research. just because you see an ad in a newspaper or on television, it is lending it is legitimate. the reality is financial abuse and exploitation of seniors is as close as a family member, or as far away as an international phone call. the victim is never the same.

they're in many cases never able to recoup what they lose financially, and if you add the psychological harm, it is it will form of that position. if there is any doubt this is only a national problem, there are local, and state have lines that come to us every day, such as sweepstakes thriving despite police misgivings. nigerian scam steinmetz that -- still >> victim's -- you can run through a gamut of articles of point, mr. appreciate your leadership on behalf of the justice issues. and again, i >> miss latifa ring. >> chairman, [unintelligible] the opportunity to address the committee on this critical issue. i am excited to see legislation addressing financial exploitation of the elderly.

i thank you on behalf of over 1000 people that have signed the petition that is attached to my written testimony to and abuse and exploitation of the elderly. financial exploitation and abuse is an epidemic, and it has gone largely unaddressed of the last 20 years. as escalated into what some call the crime of the 21st century. often, all the live victims did not report these crimes for free -- for fear of being declared mentally incompetent. this fear is exported. the senior financial empowerment act can go far too encouraging seniors to report these crimes. many elderly people are alleged to be incompetent just because they're old, and need a helping hand. ageism is a prejudice in our society, more deeply rooted in racism which is more deeply rooted than racism.

mistakes the united u.s. casual, in an elderly person, can be viewed as decline. this prejudiced is stressing out of the people into a necessary guardianships, where they are stripped of civil rights and property. we must ensure that as we work to combat fraud against the elderly, we also have a system in place to protect those who come forward that will be alleged to be incapacitated when they report that fraud. as it stands today, many of them will fall into garden regarding chips that will deepen the mystery, to increase their fear, and deny them the constitutional rights to due process, further exposing them to exploitation that is far worse than the original crime bill reported. -- they reported. guardianships should be protecting the incapacitated people, but they are not doing so. instead, they are being used as an instrument to rob them of all

of their property, using long, drawn-out litigation tactics and billing schemes for services that rarely benefit. to understand this fear, you must understand what happens to the elderly person who has been declared incapacitated. we must address this year if h.r. 3040 is going to be successful in helping citizens feel comfortable coming forward and reporting fraud. this pernicious crime of financial exploitation against the elderly that is occurring under the guise of protection occurs with impunity. it occurs because judges routinely rubber stamp the excessive fee applications, sometimes just to clear the docket, but sometimes just because we know medicaid is out there, and they're more concerned about making sure the attorneys and guardians get paid, knowing that the taxpayer

will step up to the plate with federal and state tax dollars. my written testimony includes a petition signed by close to 1000 people asking for help to address this issue. many of them have told their own story of how a system designed to protect the elderly has, in fact, impacted them and their loved ones. please take a minute to look at their bid to -- at this petition. my passion to work for reform stems from my own effort to help an elderly woman who raised me as a orphan in north africa. when i went to adult protective services, they set me to the guardianship seven -- systems that cost her all of her $20,000 in her -- in less than nine months. it cost me more than $70,000. i've traveled from texas to delaware for five years

struggling through this system. i then became her guardian when her money was gone, and was actually sued for the attorney fees. i could not afford to fight anymore. i lost my job, the home-equity loan on the house, and today i take care of mary, was 95 years old. she lives in texas. it should have never cost anyone to want thousand dollars to get help when they are a victim of abuse. it should never cost a good samaritan $70,000 to come to their aid. glazer had a hearing that took 34 days. it cost arrested nearly $10 million. my friend is from pennsylvania, where they have two

guardianships in florida. the lawyers are making a killing, while he is under an all out assault by a couple of attorneys and guardians. money is here from florida. she works with court watch. her mother was in temporary emergency guardianship, and she lost for the thousand dollars in only four months. she was put into hospice, and with a false diagnoses she was put on morphine, and passed away shortly after. the elderly fear the system. h.r. 3040 is no important bill. we need the of the bid to come forth and report fraud. we need to stop fraud. if the perpetrators know this fraud -- no the sphere. they will exploit this year -- this fear. they will exploit this until we have a fair system that will

protect them, and not further exploit them and destroy not only their lives, but the lives of their families. how could we ask them to come forward? the stripping of civil and constitutional guaranteed rights and the was the state and federal tax dollars, should be concerned enough for us to get involved. as a congressman said in 1989, guardianship is in many ways the most severe form of deprivation of civil rights that can be imposed upon a citizen of the united states. an individual under the guardianship is typically if stripped of his personal rights, such as the right to vote, the right to marry, and the right to have the money. these people end up in a system where they could lose everything -- all of their liberties, and end up with less liberties than a citizen on death row. i am just about done. attached to my testimony i have

included two papers on guardianship, when by my organization, and one by another organization. we have gone into a lot more detail about what the problems are, and what some of the recommendations could be. the senior financial empowerment act can go far toward addressing exploitation of the elderly, and stopping perpetrators of fraud, but it can go further. mr. chairman, members of this committee, if this bill goes to mark up, i ask you to consider adding language to address abuse in the guardianship system, and put the and safeguards to protect the vulnerable elderly who will come forward as a result of this bill at report that they have been victims of fraud. if we do not act today, tomorrow, we will pay for our inaction, when anyone of us will be old, and become a victim of crime. thank you. >> thank you.

mr. robert blancato asked for a report to be entered into the record. that will be entered. miss rein in asked for a report. that too will be entered. i will now begin questions under the five-minute rule miss latifa ring, you mentioned guardianships, and you had some suggestions on fixing it. obviously, when you have attorneys involved, the meter starts running, and people start losing money. what do you suggest as an alternative? >> first, i think we need to do a complete study of the problem. some of the recommendations that we have made -- when you go into probate after someone is deceased, i understand there are some limits on how much can be billed to an estate for legal fees, and since guardianship is

sometimes also known as living probate, maybe we could come up with something like that, to limit the amount of fees that can be charged to the state. furthermore, there is an important issue here -- often, the large amount of sums that are billed for legal fees and guardianships are spent on a wild goose chases after alleged allegations of criminal conduct that could be under the victim's of rights act pursuit under the criminal justice system. if there are allegations of criminal conduct, that somebody stole money, that that victim, they should still have the right to have that allegation investigated to the criminal justice system, where they did not have to pay the price for the investigation. >> thank you. mr. lee hammond, how often are the elder abuse financial crimes not reported?

>> mr. chairman, i think probably more are not reported than are reported, for a number of reasons. it is an embarrassment to the elderly to feel that they have then scanned. they did not want to admit that. they are concerned, as was mentioned before, that they might be found in capable of making their own decisions -- incapable of making their own decisions. we have found in many cases that the efforts that we have made to educate our members has been effective, and that they are actually using some of the methods that we have been working with over the years in teaching them how to recognize fraud and abuse, both

telephonic, and not through the internet, but it is -- and now through the internet, but it is increasingly difficult, especially through the internet. our members are becoming more and more users of the internet. exponentially, they are increasing over the last two or three years. they're getting into an area where they do not have much expertise, and they're very vulnerable to the kinds of things that we see on the internet. they do not want to report. they do not want to feel like they are incapable of handling their own affairs. in many cases, it is quite an embarrassment for them to actually acknowledge the to have lost money. -- that they have lost money. >> once it is reported, how often are the crimes actually investigated and prosecuted? >> unfortunately, not nearly as

often as we would like. >> is there anything other than just taking information down? is there any investigation? >> there are, in some cases investigations. in the state of maryland, which i'm familiar with, we work with the attorney general's office to help train financial institutions to recognize this kind of abuse as it appears to them, and, then, unfortunately, that is passed on in maryland to the social services agencies, which have their own budgetary constraints and problems. a few get investigated. >> and not the criminal justice, mr. robert blancato? there are instances where they

have specialized units like in san diego, california. they have had a dedicated person does a prosecutor, investigating cases. where they have been able to target resources for that purpose, they have a very good track record of prosecuting these cases, and enhancing public awareness about it. the larger question is adult protective services as a primary for mind source of investigations of other these cases. one of the main features of the other justice act which to give it a dedicated funding source, so they could actually go out and do the kind of work necessary to help report these cases, so they can be reduced. and is to be more resources dedicated, or reallocated, depending on the nature of things, for these prosecutions been there is more work being done in this area. we are in a position or more

local governments can do this, and be effective. >> mr. chairman, i would like to add that this is the case in maryland where there is a person who is dedicated, but it is a person. one person. many of these crimes can be solved, but it takes a lot of legwork, a lot of investigation. what usually happens if you report a credit card stolen, with some charges on that, they just cut off the card, and restore the credit, rather than going through and try to catch the guy. i reported a card stolen ones, and while i was going through, step-by-step, the charges that were made, crossing off the ones that i did not make, i was asked am i at a gas station?

i said i was at home, and my card was being used right then. it looks as if they let the thing run until they catch them in the act. if they go to get a big screen television, and go to pick up the television, well, maybe, in between the police can be there so that with the pickup, he will be packed up. -- picked up. it seems to me that with a lot more resources, we could solve a lot of these crimes. most of them can be solved. a lot of unused hard to have something mailed to the house. these things can be sought, but it takes money. in the last and defect build we put a little money, but not enough, -- the last identity sect bill, we put a little money, but not enough. that is one of the things as frustrating to me. these things are just not even

investigating -- investigated. the people perpetrating crimes know these are low-risk crimes. >> one other point i want to make is the case in new york. i think it was an interesting example of where you put a dedicated prosecutor and a case, and they pursue, even though it is a family matter, they did a tremendous public education job. the grandfather -- the grandson sued the father, charging the father with other financial abuse against the grandmother. it was an important case because of the with the prosecutor brought that issue to the forefront. >> you had asked about the attorney fees and the cost of pursuing these crimes, i think a lot of them -- i am not a lawyer, ok? from looking at 250 cases and

talking to hundreds of victims, it seems to me the name of the game is fine, and the opportunity to build, and bill and bill. people have a two-hour conference call to find out if someone can go to lunch. it is ridiculous. because you and i, everyday citizens, when someone is pursuing a $100 fact, -- fact, we could call the police. the incapacitated person cannot stay stop. their voices taken from them. it is a never ending meter. it runs and runs until the person passes away. you can basically built for whatever. i want to mention that. a lot of this litigation with these enormous amounts of money

are unnecessary, and they do not benefit. >> i would like to address the issue of guardianship in terms of the federal aspect. guardianship is an abrogation of constitutional rights. that is where the feds come in. we have all kind of protection, but there is no protection about this abrogation. it is a difficult job for you folks, but one of the biggest vehicles is emergency guardianship. without burdening the federal system, to find a simple protection, we have a pacer online system. if we could restrict the states, in terms of limiting what lawyers could go -- could go

into process, and have a detailed federal form that would go into any state emergency guardianship, and have it within 48 hours posted on the federal pacer system, with all communication and all transcripts, and possibly some other federal registries of who filed emergency guardianship, and finance, and fines for lying. if it were not stop at all, but it could be done simply, -- it would not stop at all, but it could be done simply. there are professionals that use the system. the fact that someone reports something, and they go into guardianship is not an accident -- not an accident it is targeting. we should limit the amount of judges that can do it.

we should have it that the state, the county and the court, if there is a federal review of what is filed, the state has to pay to proceed. that would help limit emergency guardianships if they are necessary. thank you. >> thank you. the gentleman from texas. >> thank you, chairman scott. it poses a typical question which a difficult question when you're talking about guardianships. -- a difficult question when you're talking about guardianships. you're talking about a state vehicle, and i do not know when want to federalize the state and local procedure to have decisions made on a national scale instead of a judge that is locally, with the people involved. it seems that there are abuses, at least a couple of different

ways, in areas you are talking about. one in which there is a family member that tries to take advantage of a senior, and might even push them into a guardianship that should not be taking place. on the other hand, there are some incredible -- incredibly smooth criminals who make an amazing living by finding seniors, getting between the family and that senior, convincing them that they are the ones that will help them against the family that does not really care, and ending up bleeding the estate in that matter -- in that manner. one of the reasons i appreciated so much tammy baldwin pursuing this, some of these people -- this is an interstate issue. in some of the cases, they go from state-to-state, taking it

ventages of seniors, making sure they are somewhere where they would not be recognized for what they have done to seniors before. it would seem that we would be well served to make sure that there is a federal data base that people can go to and make sure, whether this is somebody who has done this before, where they cannot keep hopping state- to-state, depriving seniors and families of what should be theirs. i had an interesting family situation not long ago, where a senior family member was contacted by a gentleman. this person was confused as to whether she had over-paid her taxes, or under-paper taxes. somebody from the government had

to come by and visit her at her house, after 5:00 p.m.. there were other family members there to make sure what the situation was. it turns out he pulled up in his lexus, but he was there to sell aarp madcap -- medi-gap insurance. so many seniors are not aware, since there was so much debate about pre-existing conditions, that a r p was able to get no -- aarp was able to get an exemption so that the did tisch pre-existing condition may not be addressed -- so that the

existing pre-existing condition might not be addressed. also, of course, others that sell this insurance are limited in the amount they can claim as a business expense, in the way of payment to executives, at $500,000. aarp got an exemption there, so they can claim the full amount, for what ever is paid. at one energy and commerce hearing, he said he made a wrong $100,000. mr. lee hammond, i know you are in a position with the board, and not an executive with a rp, but i think it would do seniors -- aarp, but i think it would do

seniors a good deal of good if they exposed what they were able to get in the way of exemptions for seniors, as opposed to what everyone else will need to do. i welcome your comments. >> well, at this point, i really do not have a comment. i am not aware of any exemptions that we have gotten. i will be glad to look into that, and will get back to you with that answer. >> given your background, i have no doubt you will. >> i would like to know, who this is and was, who they talked to, so that we can check that information out. >> all right. i do not want to announce that publicly. i have no problem letting you know who that is, getting that information for you. because of your position, and

the positions you have held in the past, i have no doubt you will make an inquiry, and i feel like there will be a lot of people surprised at the special treatment aarp was able to get in return for their endorsement of the health-care bill. i see my time has run out. the problems are so varied, and the seniors so vulnerable, and it is so widespread across state lines. it will take a lot of work from a lot of different entities, including working with the states, maybe with a model law they could pursue with regard to the types of guardianships. obviously, as health care has gotten so good in keeping bodies alive, and not quite as good in keeping minds alert, it is a bigger problem than it has ever been reaching seniors being

taken advantage of, and it is -- seniors been taken advantage of, and it is heartbreaking to watch. >> thank you. the gentleman from texas, mr. ted poe. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank all of you for being here today, and all this information you give us. there are thousands of more stores besides the 1000 cases you have it here. it seems to me that we, as a society, have to be especially sensitive to the most gullible among us. it has always been -- the most voluble among the. is always been the children and elderly. they are the most vulnerable to

these and all the scams we have heard about. i think we are doing a better job of taking care of children, especially with violent crime, but all this will be seniors, or take care of seniors, and maybe both. it seems to me that we just kind of let them fade into the sunset. that is my opinion. the thieves know they can, in many cases, just outlive the victim. that is why they offer them pray. i think, also, our society allows them to be easy prey. when a senior, an elderly person is scam, they do not want to report the crime because, all of a sudden, a judge forces a guardian over them, and they do not have any decision power. many times, it appears that due

process does not occur on that decision. if you go before a judge, and a family member says they are not competent, make me the guardian, then the state pays for everything, but the elderly person becomes a victim, not just of loss of money, but loss of dignity, and loss of everything. the scam artist knows that. that is why they prey on them. i am not sure what we can do, but you being here raise the awareness of this problem, because we all are going to be elderly, at least we hope, and we hope to be able to take care of our loved ones without somebody coming in and trying to rip them off. whether it is criminals, lawyers, or the courts, or anybody else, legitimate salesman -- what do you think we could discuss now, on the

federal level, this latifa ring? >> first off, i think guardianship is also a national issue because of the civil rights issue. also, federal dollars are at stake. these guardians are taking social security dollars. they are taking the federal medicaid dollars. some of that money is coming from the federal government. i have a couple of suggestions. they might be considered radical, but they are my suggestions. there are thousands and thousands of people that no one knows where there are, or who they are. you go to the court, and they're not sure who is in guardianship. where are they? that might sound far-fetched, but you could turn this into a sophisticated form of identity theft.

they did not have any rights. they cannot say anything. you spend their money, and you not even know where they are. i am a technologist, so my suggestion is a technological solution. i think we might be able to help the states do monitoring. we could have what is called the office of the national guardian, not to run guardianships, but to have a data base. when someone goes to a guardianship, if your boy to take away their federal and cut -- if you are going to take away their federal and constitutional rights, put them in the garbage, and make a record of what they're -- put them in the guardianship, and make the record of that. we want to know, quarterly, or every six months, what your inventory looks like. we are not asking for details. the beauty of this solution is

that it can help the states prepared -- states. it would be very cheap to put together. but can put this man, and what this data base to do is red flag report, and you can see what is coming down the pipe with all of the baby boomers. on top of that, the states that can not seem to figure out where these people are that lost all of these rights, we could help them have access to this system, where the state can get the automated tools. this is just one of my ideas. is in my report. i am sure it takes a lot more thought, but i bet that when things start kicking out, that any state that has that many

guardians, red flags might go up. we can also help to ensure protection. that is one suggestion. the other one is i think we have to take the money out. you follow the money, crime finds itself. a person becoming incompetent should not become a money-making business for anybody. we should be able to lend a helping hand, and be good samaritans, helping the fellow next door. we need to make it affordable for people like me, and people like you to help your mom or your dad. they're telling me i have to hire a lawyer, after i am already broke and have lost everything. i am try to take care of her, but i have to hire a lawyer to be represented to go and follow my accounting? we need to make it easier to get a helping hand. when we make it easier, and take the bureaucracy and money out of

it, people will help each other. they're not all that out there. the suggests some of my thoughts occurred >> -- some of my thoughts. >> i knew i would only get one question, mr. chairman. i yield back my time. >> mr. lee hammond, i had a couple of questions. you have a $1.3 billion budget with aarp, is that correct? how much of that money percentage wise is spent on elder abuse information being disseminated to your members? >> i do not have that exact number, but i can certainly get it for you. >> it is not very much, is it? >> i really do not know, sir. >> let me ask you this. aarp is also in the insurance selling business. >> that is not quite correct. >> we both know you sell supplemental insurance. >> pardon me, congressman, we

cannot sell any insurance >> you do not broker insurance? >> did not sign with aarp, they set up with insurance providers. we endorse insurance because of the value it is our members. >> to me, that seems like a way of hiding the truth, that you provide supplemental insurance, but it is not really in your name, but their name. do you not think that is a conflict of interest to have a rp, advocating on behalf of the elderly, and all of a sudden, they are getting endorsed insurance solicitations through the mail, through aarp-endorse, even though they're not aarp insurance companies. this does seem like a conflict of interest? >> can you see how it might seem

like a conflict of interest to some seniors? both my parents think to sell insurance progress we try very hard to disabuse them of that thought. >> you solicit insurance through your mailing list of -- mailing list. it seems to me as a conflict of interest. if you want to take care of the elderly, just take care of the elderly, and be an advocate for the elderly. down here, that congress, rather than being an advocate for health care reform. how much did you spend on lobbying for health care? >> i have no idea, sir. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. chairman, i was under the impression today that we are here testifying the elderly. >> we are, and she's you divest

herself of insurance, you will help the in -- the ultimate. >> miss latifa ring, you mentioned the importance of doing something about guardianship. some states have what is called a durable powers of attorney, i know virginia does. would that not solve a lot of the problems of people would sign those before they get ill? >> you raise a valid point. there are a lot of the durable powers of attorney that got pretty much thrown like confetti to the wind in the guardian courts. they ignore them. i will give you one example. a woman whose niece lives in massachusetts, and it is in my petition here, i spoke to her husband. she wanted to do everything right she signed?

her niece should be her power the 30 -- power of attorney pitch everything lined up in a nice little book. the family stayed in touch. last memorial day, she was put into guarding chicken the state of florida. they had the book, right there in the courtroom, whom she wanted the guardian to become who she wanted the power of attorney to be, and i never even called her. in emergency hearing, and but the lady in guarding cit, putting a paid guardian in place. this is what is going on. i mentioned that earlier. be advanced directions of senior citizens are being ignored. >> the state law differs from state-to-state. are there any states that did not have durable powers of attorney? i know the laws in virginia used to be that once you became

incompetent, the power of attorney terminated at that point. we now have the ability to sign that power of maternity -- power of attorney, if you specifically say if it expands into incompetence. a person with power of attorney can continue to act on your behalf. i suspect some states do not have that. >> most of them have something like that, and i also have the ability to designate a guardian. i have a suggestion for that. again, you guys are the experts, so i will defer to you, but i know at one time in our lives, when the federal government has our undivided attention, and that is when you sign up for medicare benefits. if you know who you want your guardian to be at that time, just the thought, and you know who you want your power of

attorney to be, and we will play the game in the court, maybe, says that as the person that will handle your social security benefits if you get incapacitated, get people the option to mention it then. that is just the thought. that will cut all of this chase of plane around -- of playing around. that is just the thought. we have got to stop -- start honoring people's well. -- will. an alleged incapacitated person has every single right that president obama has, right? yet, all of their due process rights are being denied. their rights to their liberty and their properties are being deprived. they do not have attorneys representing them. he did not even get notified

your suppose to have an attorney, where is it criminal it least gets miranda rights read to them. >> in virginia, i think you need to get some kind of notice. mr. lee hammond, does aarp have a position on this issue? >> on guardianship issues? yes, sir. >> based on the testimony we have heard, it is obviously an area, along with identity theft that we're going to need to look into. are there any other questions or comments? i would like to thank our witnesses for their testimony today. there might be additional written questions that we will forward to you and ask if you answer as promptly as you can to make sure they are made part of the record. without objection, the

intermission that as previously been referenced will remain part of the record which the information that as previously been referenced will remain part of the record. the gentleman from north carolina will have his statement entered into the record. without objectives which without objection, the hearing will -- without objection, the hearing will remain open for one week. without objection, the subcommittee stands adjourned. >> funeral services for former alaska senator ted stevens will be held in anchorage. he died in a plane crash on the way to a fishing trip. eulogists include joe biden and mitch mcconnell. we will have live coverage beginning at 6:00 p.m. eastern,

here, and c-span. booktv continues tonight in prime time, with a look at president obama. david remnick writes "the bridge. booktv in prime-time, all of this week on c-span2. >> "washington journal" is looking into the impact of new financial really -- regulations. tomorrow, we look at investors, and on friday, preventing a future crisis. the congressional budget office releases as 2010 budget update tomorrow, and its economic outlook for the rest of the year. you can see live coverage and

11:00 a.m. eastern on c-span2. at 11:30 a.m. here, on c-span, a subcommittee to investigate the scientific differences on how much oil remains in the gulf of mexico, and whether fishing there is safe. we will have live coverage. >> and nasa is holding its first ever information technology conference this week, just outside of washington, d.c.. yesterday, they heard from the vice-president of google about the possible creation of an interplanetary network. it is about 45 minutes. >> this is the first time i have ever introduced an evangelist

pat and i t summit. in this role, he is responsible for identifying new, enabling technologies to support the development of internet-based products and services, and is an active, public face for google. he has also been called one of the fathers of the internet. president clinton presented him and a colleague the u.s. national medal of technology for founding and developing the internet. he and mr. kahn were recipients of what is called the nobel prize of computer science. president bush awarded the presidential medal of freedom for their work. this is the highest civilian award given up by the united states to its citizens please help me welcome -- to its

citizens. [applause] >> good morning. this computer seems to be closed tightly, and does not want to ( how many engineers does it take to open this little bugger? let's see. have -- i have missed the's last slide. it does not look too good. i will let you guys figure this out. meanwhile, i have a couple of comments to make. is this microphone working ok? the standard question is can you hear me back in the rear, and the standard answer is, no, we cannot we -- we are not built that way. [laughter] >> sorry about that.

how many engineers does it take to turn on a microphone? much better. if i get that kind of reaction, i should sit down. it is not going to get any better than that. i want to react to what was said before i get into the substance of my prepared remarks. i joined google in 2005. i'm sure the average age of google went up by about a year when i joined them. on the other hand, when of the joys of working with a young company, and i do not know what average age is now, the company started in 1998, by two graduate students at stanford university, they hired an awful lot of people that had just graduated from college. the average age was in the mid 20's. that was 10 or 12 years ago. the average age has probably come up some. the thing that is interesting is

there is still, from my point of view, young people. one of the great things about young people is that they go 900 miles an hour, because they're too young to know you cannot do that. the results are stimulating. the comment about learning is very vital. one of the things i enjoy the most about being at google is that i learned a great deals from these young people. when the lessons i have learned is people will come up and say "why don't we do this?" i say that we tried it 25 years ago, and i have to remind myself why it did not work then, and that my -- and that reason might not be valid now. the other thing that i wanted to suggest to you is that the term "mission" at nasa is an art, and

it is a tricky, possibly even dangerous term. let me explain why i might feel that way. nasa has been very successful precisely because its scientific missions have been mission-centric -- managed in a mission-centric way, focused on the mission, however, in the i department is to support all of those missions, which means building systems that are multi-mission in nature. one of the key points i hope you take away from my presentation is that designing information architectures must be viewed from a multi-millis ignition point of view because you need

to assist over many -- persist over many missions. to get into the substance, -- why do i not have? thank you. one of the reasons i wanted to talk about the internet, is because you live in the middle of a desk, and growing public network environment. internet looked like this in 1999, and it looks like this in 2010, just bigger and more colorful. the picture was generated automatically. there are literally hundreds of thousands of networks that are all interconnected. they are not run top-down. this is a collaboration of global proportions. this is a cooperative activity. this is an -- this is an unusual thing. it is not centrally managed at

all. it is very distributed. the only reason it works is that there are standards everyone voluntarily adopt in order to allow this complex system to work. the number of machines on the internet used to be doubling every year. now, the growth rate is slower. on the other and here is a picture of all the machines that are publicly visible. there are lots hiding behind firewalls in networks -- some of which belong to nestle or google. the reason the number on -- the number of machines may be larger than what we can see publicly. the number of people on the network is hitting close to 1.8 billion. i might add the number of mobile's in the world has gone up into the 4.5 billion range. the reason that is relevant to the internet is many of them are internet enabled. for those of us at google, we

have to make sure our products and services work on mobile's as well as laptops and desktops. this is an important part of our world, and probably yours as well. you probably have at least one, probably more than 1 mobile, many of which are smart phones with internet capability. here is where the users are, another surprising statistic. i watched the system grow over the last 35 or 40 years. the asian population is now the largest in absolute numbers. half of the asians on the internet are in china, about 400 million. that is only a 20% penetration. you can imagine over the course of the next decade that many people on the net will be from asia, and therefore their languages, cultures, and interests will color the culture and style of the internet.

i stopped making predictions about europe because the keep adding countries to europe. this is not the stock-market. at least i hope not. if this is the amount that is available on the internet. it is dropping rapidly. we have almost completely exhausted it. there is about 5% of it yet. that is my fault, i have to admit. in 1977, when i was running the internet program for the defense department, and had to decide how much address space internet needed. this started in 1973, when bob cohen and i wrote the first papers, published in 1974. this is an experiment. we do not know whether it is going to work. there were three choices.

i thought 32-bit -- 4.3 billion determinations, was enough to do an experiment. the problem was the experiment never ended. we are still in the experimental phase. we need to do something about allowing the network to continue to expand. the solution is ip version 6. for those of you who do not know, theodor geisel, dr. seuss, made sculptures as well as drawing cartoons. i acquired this and it seemed perfect for ip version 6. if you are not prepared to run ipv6, get ready, because you're going to need it. in addition, finding a number of major changes happening in the internet and burma -- one is the addition of non- characters to the domain name system. we have all ready released

cyrillic, chinese, arabic, and so on. if you have systems that do not know about unit code and are not prepared to deal with non-latin characters in your web environment, you need to correct the deficiency. security is an increasingly important issue. that is because of the scope and things we depend upon it for. the digital signing of domain names is now a reality. a number of names are individually signing their zone files. in addition to that, the routing system has vulnerabilities. you can announce routing space to do not know or has not been assigned to you and cause people to route traffic to the wrong place. there are efforts are regional registries to digitally signed the allocations of addresses so when the border gateway protocol

updates occur you can check to see whether or not the announcer is in fact authorized to announce routing to that particular ip address. it is a little more complicated than that, but in principle it is an attempt to put in digital signatures and other technology in order to improve the security of the network. in addition to that, we are seeing sentry number starting to show up. the should be no surprise to nasa, because most of what you do when you talk about the scientific method is to collect data and deliver it back to earth. we're starting to see the same thing happening in the private sector. i will give you an example. the smart grid is another program which is under way in order to make appliances and things a lot more intelligent silicon report their electricity

and allow us to decide under what conditions we want to consume power, especially if we are at peak load. we might not want to run the washing machine or the water heater. we may accept the idea that the power systems as we're running at peak load. do you mind turning yours off, or can returners offer a little while so we can get past his peak load? finally, mobile's are giving us internet in our pockets. these are examples of what domain names look like when they are not written in latin characters. the egyptians were the first to get these non-latin, arabic top- level the names. others followed. one thing which i am quite excited about is we are seeing capability in computing that allows us to put machines into

the same environment you and i are living in. the best example i have of this is at mit. one of the ted conferences, a wonderful demonstration was given. this guy had a projection unit he strapped to his chest -- a television camera and a microphone. this put his computer into the same environment he was in. instead of carrying a laptop around, he simply projected and the images he needed to see on the wall or a piece of paper. he wanted to make a phone call, so he held out his hand and projected the keypad on his hand and touched the numbers you wanted to dial. why would that work? the telephone camera was looking to see what he was doing. it made the phone call for him using voice over ip. as you begin to bring computer power into the same sensing and

varmint human beings are in, we start to create partners for ourselves, as the software and harbor becomes embedded in our space and our communications and vermont, as opposed to our having to adapt to the computer. i see that as a very interesting evolution. google has a big investment in speech understanding and a recent development called google goggles allows you to take an image, send it to google, and say what is this. we are pretty good with book covers and when labels and famous landmarks like the eiffel tower. as time goes on, it will get better. i do not have time to tell you about cochlear implants this morning, but the short story is

that a person with a cochlear implant has electronics embedded in their head and into the auditory nerve, and she has a speech processor, which is an external computing system that turns sound into electronic pulses that are directly stimulating the cochlea. i had the idea that i could reprogram her speech processor to put cpi peek into it. -- to put ccp ip into it. she to ask a question. we could turn that into digital packets and send it to a speech understanding machine like we have a google. the answers could come back by voice-over ip and go straight into her auditory nerve. i would essentially put my wife on the internet. we have not done that yet, but i think it is a really great idea. [laughter] that leaves more generally to

the idea that we are entering into a period where it is not just internet people, but an internet thing. more and more things are going to be on the internet. there will communicate with each other. the will communicate with us. the communicate with third-party monitoring services and things like that. it is going to become increasingly important to introduce strong authentication in such an environment, because we do not want the 15 year-old next door to reprogram your house where you are away. all these devices that are communicating and on which we may rely lead to have access control or other kinds of strong authentication mechanisms. i think you should anticipate that there will be a very much larger number of devices on the net, also motivating the need for ipv6.

i saw things turn up i did not anticipate, like picture frames. when the first picture from skim along the were plugged into the internet, somebody ran into my office. i remember thinking that sounds as useful as an electric fork. [laughter] i was wrong. it turned up the are nice. you plug them in. do not have to log in. it just runs. every 24 hours, it goes to the website, downloads an image. if you're like me and have family members who take pictures with their digital cameras and a plug them to the website, picture frames, the pictures and you get up in the morning and get an idea of what is going on with nieces and nephews and grandchildren. you will appreciate the dnieper security here, because if the website gets hacked, grandparents may see pictures of what they hope is not the grandchildren. [laughter]

there are other things that look like telephones which are really voice-over ip computers. there are refrigerators that are on line. what would you do with an internet enabled refrigerator? they have such sensitive displays. it augments our family communication system, which consisted of paper and magnets on the refrigerator. now we can send tweets or do e- mail or go to web pages. if we had detectors inside the refrigerator, we might figure out what is inside. now the refrigerator knows what is inside, and what you are working it is looking for recipes it can make. when you get home, you see the things you could have for dinner. you can extrapolate this. if you are on vacation and get an e-mail from your refrigerator -- i do not know how much milk is left, but you

put it in there three weeks ago. maybe you are shopping and your mobile goes off. it is your refrigerator again. do not forget the marinara sauce. the japanese a ruined the whole picture. they have an internet enabled bathroom scale. it figures out which family member you are based on your weight, since that information to your doctor, and it becomes part of your medical record. the problem is if the refrigerator is on the same network. [laughter] if i get diet recipes coming up -- maybe it refuses to open. the guy in the middle invented the internet enabled surfboard. i do not know him. he is dutch. i imagine he is sitting on the water, waiting for the next wave, thinking that if he had a laptop on his surfboard -- he

put the laptop and wi-fi service. if you are interested in serving the internet while out on the water, this is the product for you. i mentioned the center network. this is an ipv6 wireless sensor network running in the house. this is not meet in the garage with a soldering gun. this is a product you can buy. this is sampling temperature, humidity, and light levels in the house every five minutes and recording it on a server in the basement. i know your first reaction is only a geek would do that. i had a purpose in mind, because i wanted data on how the heating and ventilation system works in the house. i have a year's worth of disinformation. when does come to figure out how well the heating and cooling is doing, i have real data we can do serious engineering with. one of the things in the house is the wine cellar. this is important.

i have to keep it below 60 degrees fahrenheit and above 60% humidity. the temperature goes through the 60 degree barrier. i have a message in my mobile. i was visiting argon national laboratory last year. as i was walking in, the mobile went off. it was the wine cellar calling. every five minutes for the next three days, i got a note that my one was warming up. unfortunately, my wife was away, so by the time i got home it was 70 degrees. i called and said, "do you guys make actuators?" one of my project is to put in the remote actuator so that if i get that signal i can put a button and turn the cooling system back on. the requires strong authentication so the 15 year- old next door -- [laughter] i can tell if the lights have gone on in the wine cellar

because of the sampling. i know somebody went in, but i do not know what they did. back to the are friday chips, one per bottle. then i can do an inventory to see if anyone has left the wine cellar without my permission while i am away. an engineer friend was debugging the design and said, "you could go into the wine cellar, drink the wine, and leave the bottle." [applause] now we're going to have to put a sensor in the cork. we might as well simple to make sure whether the wine is good to drink. you interrogate the cork. if that is the bottle the reached 90 degrees during the summer outage, that is the bottle you give to somebody that does not know the difference. [laughter] i mentioned the smart grid. really, the idea of paying attention to how we use electrical resources and how we can be smarter about using them is just beginning.

more generally, we should be instrumental in our offices, homes, and cars to keep track of our use of resources, especially those that are not renewable, so that we can get smarter about how we use those resources. that feedback loop has not been available to us. by the end of the month, you get a bill, but you do not know why. you have to explain what it is you did with the changes in your choices would make a difference. we are going to have a lot of devices that need to communicate with each other. those of you who enjoy the star wars movies and see three p.o. -- and c3po will see we need more like him as time goes on. this gets in a way to some of what you are responsible for. net asset is a very large organization with a lot of moving parts. part of your job is to help keep

the organization functioning. the primary purpose of the organization is space exploration and observation. part of your mission is to help those missions succeed. one piece of infrastructure that was built back in the 19 sixties is called the deep space network. it is a very impressive piece of work. there are seven major dishes used to communicate with spacecraft in orbit around planets, or flying past an asterisk. it is a point to point radio link. that is a primitive network. we've done amazing things using the capability, but my colleagues and i believe it is time to expand the functionality of the networking to be more like the internet. we were motivated in part by the missions to mars -- the

pathfinder and the two rovers, and the phoenix lender in 2008. what is interesting about these particular motions is that the original plan was to transmit data direct to earth at 28 kilobits per second. when the long-distance radio was turned on, my understanding is they overheated, and this turned out to be a design problem. it showed up in both rovers. the scientists for already unhappy with 28 kilobits a second, let alone a reduced duty cycle. it was noted that there was x band radio which could go at 128 kilobits a second to reach the orbit. it could not go back to earth, but it could reach the orbiters. the were reprogrammed to do

store and hold -- take the data, wait until an orbiter gets into view, transmit the data, have the orbiter hold onto the data until it gets to the right place so we can transmit the data back on earth. the data transmission rate was 128 kilobits a second because there were out of the atmosphere and had more power. the result was more data coming back through this method. i do not need to remind you that is the way the network -- the internet works. it is a store and forward network. and the order even as trivial as a 3 node system can make a huge difference in capacity and capability. all the data coming back from mars is going away. the phoenix lender is up on the north pole. they used the store and forward method in order to get the data back from there as well. my colleagues and i started working on the design of

interplanetary communications. we started thinking we could use ccp ip and quickly realized it was not going to work. the difference between the planets is literally astronomical. [laughter] the speed of light is very slow. between earth and mars, depending where we are in orbit, it is anywhere from 3.5 to 20 minutes at the speed of light. if the other guy hears you in a fuse -- in a few milliseconds, it works great. if it is a few hours, it is too late. there is this other problem, celesta motion. the planets are rotating. we've not figured out how to stop that. [laughter] the planet rotates and you cannot talk to it until it comes back around again.

it is a variably delayed and very disrupted environment. the consequence is that a new kind of protocol was required, much more tolerant of delay and disruption. we called it the bundle protocol. we've been working on this for quite a while. the protocols of been put on the international space station. they are on the the spacecraft that is to rendezvous with hartley. we hope it will be put on board the internet router in space, the cisco router. cisco and nasa have been working together to try to get that protocol on board. we have a number of ground-based implementations. it is publicly available and open source. there are books that have been written about it and its

architecture. it is being standardized by a committee. we have done some interesting military and civilian testing of these experimental protocols. in the northern part of sweden, they have actually tested the bpm protocols because they have terrible communications. there are 65 degrees north. satellite antennas are on the horizon. during the winter, they are disconnected. we put wi-fi servers in a couple of villages and put the protocols on laptops on the backs of altering vehicles. the wonder in light data mules, dump the data, pick up the data, and wander off again. we put these on reindeer to see what would happen. that worked pretty well. we went to dorval -- to darpa,

which funded the interplanetary architecture. we went back to them and said that this btm stuff might be useful in critical military operations. miter did a series of demonstrations with the marine corps to find this gave more data -- five times more than standard ccp ip. it is not bandwidth. it is that it used broken up communication by hopping from one node to the other with the notes storing the data, which is not what the internet does. internet nodes get rid of it as fast as possible. storage is cheaper than it used to be 30 years ago. it can be used to overcome these kinds of broken this in the communications environment. it works very well for the military. we are looking forward to a

series of improvements in the technology readiness level. we certainly hope the consultative committee will standardize so that all space during countries can make use of these particles. how am i doing on time? i have 10 minutes. i will try and keep this terse. one thing i have to tell you is that if you have grown up in an internet environment with low delay and good connectivity, you have to keep reminding yourself that in a destructive environment some of the normal thinking like "ping" does not work. you do not know when you hear back from something that might be many hops away. we had to rethink an awful lot of the architecture, including things like network management, in order to make a robust system.

when you are hours away -- you have seen in science fiction films where the astronauts are around saturn and something goes wrong and they have a real time communication with houston [laughter] . we have to forgive them because it would be a boring film if it took several hours to get the interchange to happen. but in real life you do not have real time communication anymore. it is more like e-mail or voicemail or digital video mail. there is a lot of rethinking and has to happen. the thing i want to encourage you to do, those of you who are ultimately the recipients of the data coming back from these missions -- become the characters in some sense of a lot of this data. it is incredibly important that we be able to keep this information over a long time and keep it in useful form. there are stories about seven track tapes that probably read

once at this point. if you can still find a seven track tape reader at all. we really need to have more meta data for the information coming back. the instruments have to tell us about their calibration, have to tell us about the information -- what was obtained during the time there were gathering the data -- so it will still be understandable. we can frequently reprocess the data as we have better theories about how the universe works. we also need to recognize that not working is not just a deep space thing. as we send more missions out with more equipment, more censer networks on the surface or mobile devices, or as missions complete their primary function and become reused for other functions, we may have greater

equipment to incorporate. we need to have local communications to coordinate. we need not working not just to get back to earth but also to make maned and robotic missions in your work locally in a more effective way. so i am deeply concerned that we do not know exactly how to do many of these things. your problem in part is to think through how we capture that information and make it useful over decades of time. i also wanted to mention that one of the things we work on at google is cloud computing. the idea here is to have large amounts of data and large amounts of communing capability that can be applied at need and then applied to other functions after the primary purpose has been achieved. we like the idea of being able to dynamically allocate our capacity and to run applications

as needed. i think cloud-like environments, whether it is google or others, will turn out to be important to nasa as well, given the amount of and permission to accumulate and a number of people around the world to want to interact with that data and each other. there are a lot of things we can do in the cloud world. it is still early days in terms of design and implementation. one area which is quite nascent is how to get different clouds to interact with each other. we do not have standards for that. those of you who go far enough back to remember arpanet will remember a telnet protocol, which allowed machines to talk to other machines. it was a network virtual terminal idea. they did not exist. it was a concept. everyone on the net knew how to interact with this virtual terminal as well as real ones.

i think we need a network virtual cloud definition that will help clouds and direct with each other in some standard way. let me finish up by simply saying that we are not planning to build this interplanetary network and then hope somebody will come. that is not the architecture. what we are hoping to do is standardize these particles, have them adopted by all the nations around the world, and if they use them on the spacecraft it will render them potentially interoperable if they choose to communicate with each other. that will allow us to accrete over the course of many decades as these missions are launched for scientific reasons and complete their primary missions and become part of the interplanetary backbone. thank you for your time this morning. i would be happy to answer any questions you might have. [applause]

>> [unintelligible] >> if you do not mind using the mike, that will help. it is impossible to see out here. >> good morning. >> i cannot see you at all. i am sorry to the camera guys. too bad. [laughter] how are you? >> it is a pleasure to meet you. i am worried about your issue in your wine cellar. that is disturbing to me. i work for a consulting company. i just thought you might think about maybe a camera with a motion sensor, assuming you do not have nudists living with you. >> that is not a bad idea.

>> the real question i had was twofold. being at google, this idea of asynchronous communication -- have you found the younger folks tend to have more of a proclivity to use asynchronous communication, and sometimes more senior folks do not? i am in the office, and want to talk to you? >> the answer is no. if by asynchronous you are thinking of instant messaging and treating, it is technically a synchronous, but very much used as if it is real time. we are finding the young folks are impatient, thinking e-mail is old stuff. there are less interested in e- mail than more instantaneous interactions. my theory is that a lot of those young people, especially junior

high, high school, and college, are geographically near their friends. they are in the same time zone. real time interaction makes sense. as they get older, their friends disperse and the discover they do not want to have a tweet at 3:00 in the morning. some of these asynchronous messaging and communication tools will become more natural for them. that is my prediction. we will have to see and watch this cohort of twits. [laughter] as they age, will see how the change. >> the other question has to do with -- do you believe at some point there will be toll roads on the internet? our road system was originally put together like the internet. now, with the increasing -- all these things you're talking

about, more and more bandwidth, to you think there'll be providers who will say, "i will put the major providers on, and if you connect to me, you're guaranteed a lot of band width?" >> the honest answer to this is it is not clear. first of all, i would have to say that there are different answers depending on where you are in the world. there are places like australia which have committed to putting fiber in every home in the country and making that open infrastructure. new zealand is following that path. the french have a very strong regulatory system which is requiring france telecom to be very open in terms of who gets access to the underlying facilities. here in the u.s., we have an interesting situation. there is less competition than one might like in the broadband sector. it is usually a telecom company and cable company, if you have competition at all. on the other hand, there is the

struggle for a business model. one of the tensions that is unresolved right now is whether you can make a business model by having a very open infrastructure and then building value-added services you could charge for on top of those, or whether you need to find a way to monetize the capacity and use that as your primary business. i think there is room for variation. i do not find it objectionable to pay more for more capacity. it is not the total number of bytes i send. it is the data rate that is the real issue. i use horizon -- verizon fios. i needed an ip address the was fixed as opposed to dynamic. for a moment i said, i invented this stuff. you should give it to me. [laughter]

then i thought no. i would pick from a service. i am paying more for that partly because there is high bandwidth available to me. i don't find that wrong. what i would find is something google and verizon have talked about is that one would use control of the underlying capacity in a competitive way. we have proposed ways we think would ameliorate the problem. let me take this question over here. >> have you thought about the implications of the co clear impact? getting rid of the human- internet interface. there has been a lot of fiction that speculates on what that would be like.

you might go into autistic mode. i'm wondering if you have any more thoughts. there has not been a lot of research into paraplegics being able to move their mouse. >> there are several things. the coca implants -- i am going to back up so i do not have to talk to people through my back, as it were. first of all, the cochlear implants are examples of how well we understand the sensory neural system well enough to fake it, in effect. we can anticipate ocular it impacts -- ocular implants as well. that is reasonable. i think the possibility of sensorimotor implants is also conceivable. that is farther away in time. i understand there have been some experiments along those lines. i am going to come back to the way you ask the question.

it made me think you were worried about people becoming isolated and not interacting directly with each other because of the online environment. is that we were worried about? >> i was worried about security issues when you connect humans directly to the internet -- the potential for a human to hurt another human. whenever you are so connected for such a long time, it might eventually mean that a disconnection from the internet would be an autistic mode. please read e.m. forster's "the machine stops." double and for you a little bit about what happens when people are disconnected from something there were dependent upon. as for hacking people's brains,

google is my solution to alzheimer's right now. [laughter] if i could have 82 terabytes crate implant, i would go for that. i accept there are risks, but i think we are going to explore ways in which we can expand our sensory systems. some of that will be through implants. but but night vision, for example, is an extension of our own systems. i do not have time for another question. that is it, folks. [applause] >> thank you, vint. let us have another round of applause for both our speakers this morning. [applause] >> thank you. >> thanks again. we will have a 15 minute break, after which drags sessions will begin. we will gather back here at 1:34

a presentation from jack blitch from walt disney imagineering. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> thesis been networks. we provide coverage of politics, public affairs, non- fiction books, and american history. it is available on television, on-line, and on social media sites. find our content any time to the video library. we take it on the road with our local content vehicle, bringing our resources to your community. it is washington your way. now available to over 100 billion homes, provided as a public service. >> to continue with nasa's first information technology

conference. it is under way this week just outside of washington. yesterday, jack blitch from disney imagineering talked about his company's plans for the future. >> please quickly take your seat so we can proceed to the next hour of presentation. so that i do not steal the thunder from whitney hagens, i am going to ask her to come right up and introduce our next speaker. get ready for an exciting our with jack blitch from

disneyland. >> good afternoon and welcome to the second afternoon of the ip summit. i work at the jet propulsion laboratory in the office of the cio. i am going to ask you to take a moment to silence yourself phones and pagers. we are gathered here this afternoon for a special presentation from jack blitch, vice-president and general manager of walt disney imagineering, florida. as a 22-year imagineering veteran, he is managed to develop a process.

from concept to installation, a disney attraction process. he served as the project executive for the animal kingdom theme park and was responsible for the development of disney's largest theme park, star tours, and the twilight zone tower of terror, the new tomorrow land, the blizzard beach water park, and epcot. in addition, jack and his florida organization have been the nasa partners for many years, starting with the design of space center houston at the johnson space center and hosting numerous innovations summits for our teams at walt disney world, along with collaboration on the mission space attraction at network. infinitely science center board for the

is helping to design this world-class facility currently under construction. i had the privilege of attending the open house in california last month, and it was an exciting and memorable experience. to venture behind the scenes and see how imagineers go about creating a special blend of magic that has entertained and enthralled millions around the globe is something i will never forget. i am thrilled that you will experience how walt disney imagineering makes the magic. now, please join me in welcoming jack blitch. [applause] >> thank you very much. good afternoon. an impressive group here. i am going to lay this down. think you all very much for

inviting me to come today and make this presentation. you will find by the end of my presentation this is stuff are really enjoy talking about -- how we develop projects and how we do what we do. a very exciting place to work. i have been there 22 years, almost 23. what i thought we would do is take you through how walt disney created the theme park business and taking through a story line of how we did that, and then take you through some of the technologies we used and the current process we are working on, and show you things are working on right now that not a lot of people get to see. in order to talk about disney, we need to talk a little bit about the man himself. walt disney was one of the world's greatest storytellers. what created the idea of the theme park business. up until then, parker called

amusement parks. it was a place he could bring his kids and adults could also join in the entertainment. as we hear what walt had to say in his earliest days -- >> where did you originally get the first motion? >> it came about when my daughters were young. saturday was always daddy's stay with the two daughters. i would try to go someplace with different things. i would take them to the mary around in different places. as i would sit there as the road the meridor round and did all of those things, i sat on the bench, eating peanuts. i felt there should be something built, some kind of amusement enterprise where the parents and the children get to have fun together. >> that is how disneyland started. it took many years -- maybe 15 years -- to develop it. we started with many ideas,

threw them away, and started over again. it eventually involved into disneyland. it started from a daddy with two daughters who wondered where he could take them to have a little fun with them. >> in 1952, after a tremendous amount of success in the animation business, making cartoons and feature for shorts, and ultimately movies, walt decided to take his successful animators down the street from the burbank studios to a town named glendale, the current home office of disney imagineering. these became the very first imagineers. on a weekend in 1953, walt pull one of those imagineers off on a weekend trip, herb ryan. walt is describing what he thought disneyland could be.

over that weekend, the cree to this plan. those of you who have been visiting some of our parks around the world notice how remarkably similar our current parks are to this idea that came out of walt's head over a short weekend. that idea was them attached to a piece of property in anaheim, 100 acres will purchased, totally undeveloped land. if anybody has been to disneyland today, you know that is different. what learned his lesson from how much land to buy when we moved to walt disney world. while walt was crating the ideas, his brother, roy, was trying to raise the money to pull it off. there are a lot of great stories about how they had to put up their own insurance policies and such. as we all know, tremendous success, as it is today. the first imagineers took this

piece of land. over one year, the cree to disneyland. open almost exactly one day after construction started. in 1955, this is opening day at disneyland. 55 million people look at this over the weekend. there was a tv special a couple of months later. tremendous success on opening day. one of the very first attractions was the autopia attraction. kids and adults for having a great time. the only problem was by the end of the day every single ride vehicle had broken down. [laughter] this taught the early imagineers a very important lesson. we needed to design our parks to run at 365 days a year, sometimes 18 hours a day. this is where we learned our biggest lesson about how to keep

things going. there were also some other high- tech attractions on opening day. who could forget the pack mules in frontier land. and what would disney world or disneyland be without the lovable characters? these characters did not belong to walter, these particular costumes. he realized before opening day he had forgotten about putting together characters. he had licensed these characters to the i escapades and borrowed the i escapades' mickey and minnie to open his the park. as we know, characters in the theme parks around the world are a major attraction that kids and adults like to see. based on the success of disneyland, in 1964 what was invited to the new york world's fair. he created the small world, a carousel of progress, the magic

skyway, and great moments with mr. lincoln. those turned out to be the most popular attractions at the world's fair. it was here the week unveiled the very first human figure and a track. this was mr. lincoln. walt was very concerned at the time that there may be a public outcry against the display of the president in this format, and that it could be made a mockery of the presidency. in fact, it was the opposite. the guests fully embraced it. as you know today, down at walt disney world we have the hall of presidents, where every president of united states has his display in an atomic fashion. it is an interesting story about the creation of small world. if you look carefully at this photograph, you see it looks like somebody is down in the ride trough where water normally is. this is actually a mockup.

we still today do this, where we actually put people on mock vehicles and push them through, so we are designing the actual line of sight the guests will see. this is the very early stages of the creation of the small world attraction. as we all know, the small world tune is probably known and, by more people than any other in the united states or the world. again, based on the world's fair success, walt decided right after the world's fair closed that he needed to set his sights on something bigger. that is when he started looking up and down the east coast of the united states. he was offered free land in many locations, but he chose this particular site just outside of orlando, 25 miles outside of orlando, because of the intersection of some major roadways. as we know it today, this is the

crossroads where walt disney world was created. in 1967, just after they had cleared about 100 acres of land for the magic the first part we built in walt disney world, the gentleman in this picture -- the man on the left was the creative chairman until two years ago. in the middle is one of the architects of the original park. on the right is one of the staff senior executives of walt disney company at the time. the x marks the spot where the castle was built. sadly, in 1967, walt passed away. he did not get to see the magic kingdom open. but his brother roy was there and dedicated the magic kingdom. to this day, it is still a very exciting thing park.

that brings us to how will credit the business. as he passed away, the legacy of walt continued on. i thought i would spend a little bit of time talking about what is in engineering and what we do. we have about 1200 employees worldwide. you can see the geographical locations around the world where we are located come up from anaheim to paris to hong kong and tokyo. this is some of our imagineers. >> it may seem impossible now, but it will become reality tomorrow. >> this is not santa's workshop. >> what critic imagineering to reflect new types of

entertainment for disneyland. today, we work around the world in 140 different businesses. >> pioneering new forms of entertainment and taking you to magical lands. >> this innovation will allow our guests to see many of our attractions in a new light. >> he picks up the beat of the music and starts dancing to music. >> guests at home are playing a virtual version at the same time as the guests at the park. >> it is a mix of science and thrills. >> blending creative imagination with technical help. >> would like our zero animatronics figures to interact with the guest. this is a way to rapidly prototype. >> are bringing our characters to life, we have a very powerful effect on our guests. >> they are taking real questions and talking back to kids in real time.

>> the real challenge was to have a performance that would make it look like the wall-e robot was responding. >> his eyes can zoom in and out on the lenses so it looks like he is focusing. >> the closer you look at something, the more you see. we hide the technology behind the show. at the end, people are going to be entertained. >> it is not just an assembly of little people. it tells won a sweeping story. >> the things we do are so complex, and our goal is to make them look like magic. >> it is amazing. you envision something in your mind, and you see guests enjoying it. >> our greatest challenge and greatest delight is to tell stories. >> magical things can happen. this is where this is possible.

>> that is a very quick snapshot of what imagineering is, what we do. we'll take a little bit deeper dive into that. you got a quick look at a lot of the current technologies we are working on now. since this is a technology summit, i am going to try to bring some of those facts into this presentation. bear with me. you are probably asking yourself how did they create all of that. the start in a process called blue sky. as the name implies, the sky is the limit. they do not allow people like me into the room, because we will tell them what people can afford. project managers are typically kept out of this process to really allow the creative juices and creative ideas to continue to move. this is where sketches are

created and thrown in the trash can and pull back out and reused. storyboards are created. ec storyboards in the background. this is where the story line runs through all of our attractions. you heard me say at the outset what was one of the great storytellers in the world. everything we do today, everything park, resort, and cruise ship disney touches, there is a story line that runs through it. this is where that story line occurs. assuming this is an idea that looks like it is going to stick, we start moving into concept development. we work with models. we start carving foam. we start molding clay. you saw one cardboard model on the table in the previous shot. this is where we start developing the idea into reality. again, this is where the project managers will start getting involved to help the credit team understand what it is they can

do within the limits. we do have limits on what we do, all you -- although you would think going into our parks that the sky was the limit on cost and schedule. that is not true. out of concept development comes the idea which goes to the project team. at this point in our process, we have started recently looking at innovative delivery projects. i am not sure if anybody has heard of them. integrated project development is an emerging technology that we started about five or six years ago. we have now mastered it. the industry is now using it as a standard. i will talk a little bit about what that is. essentially, it is 3d design. we are using it on our fantasyland expansion now. this is the working rendering of the work we're doing right now in florida, under construction over the next couple of years. will double the size of

fantasyland. we are using this technology. what is ipd? it is a strategy, in collaboration. for many years, we have partnered with >> the industry has now come up with definitions of what it is. it is really more the technical side for bim. this is worthy 3-d up to 6-d, and everybody is wondering about how we can do that, this is where all of the attractions are entered into computers. we will take a quick look at some slides on how we use it. the reason we do this is to maintain target values. i am sure that nasa fights this every day in the creation of what you do. if some of these are familiar to

you. we bring in subcontractors early to help us design instead of having designers design something that we may be cannot afford or does not a sense. we have the people that are going to build it sitting at the design to the with us. we obviously want to use it as a construct ability tool. we use it to determine clashes inside the building. we want to determine all this early so we did not discover them on sight. reduced personnel and shop drawings. i am sure that you do shop drawings extensively. it is an absolute waste of time in our industry because the designers spend all their time creating the design only to have the subcontracting community redesign it again. bim process allows them to come out of the model with the subcontractors and vendors to not have to recreate and we want

to reduce the request for information. we are seeing some positive benefits. this does show ipd strategy from the concept feasibility all the way for construction documents how each of the various groups interact because we have the show and the ride components or and normal design would only have mechanical, electrical and plumbing. as we continue the bim process and we bring the various sub contractors and vendors into the process, which are typically -- typically, none of those people would have been involved until the got the construction documents. all of the subcontractors would then get involved and these were the people that would come on board and say what were you thinking? let me show you how to redo would and save you money. when want to save the money

during the design process. they are involved much earlier in the process. some of the communication tools we use in the creation of the bim model, you can look through some of these. some of them are technologies that we use and we use a lot of the autocad suite of projects. it depends on what the designers are comfortable with and what platform they're comfortable with. we use all of these all the way through to the bottom to our own project management control system we created several years ago which is a total electronic the medication on a project where we are not handling paper handlingfri's or change orders. tremendous savings in time, dollars, and personnel. some of the work that we have

done on the expedition everest project i will show you pictures of created a tremendous amount of data. we actually had 20,000, you would normally have about 20,000 sheets of drawings. all that is now done in the model. you did not have that tremendous amount of paper on the project. there are several benefits of this process. one is clashed detection. the computer will tell you where you have a clash. i would not go into great detail but this is a mountain we are creating in fantasyland. the red line on the right is saying that the piece of steel is sticking out side of the building so we obviously have to fix that. deprogram tells us early on so we get out in the field we have

to fix the structural steel. we are detecting as many as 10 to 15 clashes per day during this design process. these are all things you would discover in the field, shot down the projects, wait for information and architect to redesign. we are doing all that in the model so when we go to the field, presumably, if we would have taken care of these clashes. he other big benefit is j4d4d construction. this is by day. every day ec with the slight will look like so you can project through the model over time on the 108th day was to this project will look like. we use that as a scheduling tool throughout the development of the project. we also use 5d which is bringing in the cost of the project.

you can use different techniques to understand and manage the cost of the project. that is the fifth dimension. some of the biggest benefits to our operator, and we do have one, just like you do. we have operators that we turn over the parts to design suit and they have to operate it. they see this as an enormously great tool. that is what we call the sixth dimension. we turn over to the operator all of the project data. here is an example of one of the sheets printed the big red box represents an air handling unit on the roof. once we turn over the model, our partners use a maintenance program called maximo which we interface with. once we give them the model, they can go into an click on the

instruction manual so you did not have to crawl into a file cabinet or go to document control. everything they need is right to bear. this is what we call the fifth dimension. all of that then results the control. this is not only a constructive guilty and design told but it allows our creative team to go and and understand exactly what the point of view is going to be from the guests. we will fly right into the building so you can actually ride the little mermaid ride two years before we open it. we are now entering the building. we get to use this for visual intrusion studies and clash detection. you can see the show sets being

laid into the model. we are actually riding along the right track going through the building. in one second, we will go into a big room and it will rise up into the rafters and to the catwalk. fair is the big room that you see. we are out on the catwalk. this is where we start finding a lot of clashes. you will see one here and a second. that vertical red line going to the blue ductwork, we have reroute to that and have fixed it before we went into the field so that when the duct work die or electrician or whatever trade runs that line, they know there are running their line precisely the way it was designed. it is a much more efficient way of doing business. we are now incorporating this process and every part attraction we are working on, we really and truly believe this is the future and we will continue

to do this on all the disney project. if we do not use bim, if we do, we would go into a facility ride and show design. a big difference with imagineering is we do not just build facilities but rebuild facilities with show sets, special effects, audio, video, all of the special things you would expect in a disney attraction. all of that work has to continue on. everything is done on a computer. all the show sets are designed on a computer in the three the fashion. everything that we do, especially when we do our ride system, this predates the bim. we were you prebiz. i know nasa uses that to. o. they bim model now does essentially what this does. we can actually now put on 3 d

glasses and experience they attraction just as a guest would. and we have extensions previz labs. the president of the company can come in and ride the ride and experience and sends the ride because you do experience the up and down notion although you are not physically moving that is a really large piece of what we do especially now. then the fun starts. the go out into the field to start building. we are building shows sets, ride the systems, some of them rebuild ourselves and some we go out to subcontractors. here you see on the upper right- hand corner, the tree of life structure. we were talking earlier with a group from louisiana. this is actually an oil rig structure that was built in houston, texas, and shipped to the site because we had to

create a free standing space to put a 450 seat theater inside and build an enormous tree on top. given my new orleans routes, we pulled in some oil field engineers and designed this oil rig which you can of course not say. it is now covered up. bottom left-hand corner of this our new lodge, the newest hotel vacation project going up in hawaii. we are the largest builder of mount made -- man-made mountain and the world. we build mounds all of the the u.s. and the world. i have to get some statistics on that. we do that through a process where we create -- that we created 15 years ago. it has been greatly enhanced. we take the model the designer created -- we will do that on

expedition of arrest. we created the mountain. we are now in to show installation. this young lady is a mechanical engineer and she had no idea she would be hanging jellyfish. it just shows the diversity of the product that we create. this is and nemo attraction. once the ride system is installed, we have to do extensive testing of the ride system to make sure that it is going to run and do what it is intended to do it throughout the life cycle of the project. this is what you saw and the video that was created. that was created over the weekend by one of our imagineers listening to the creative team as to what they want this theater to do. decorated this out of an erector set. to this day, that model still exists. it is precisely what we ended up building.

after we turn over the attraction, we stick with it there a process called show quality standards. we stay with the attraction to make share it is always being presented the way we designed it so we do not leave in some of the designs we need to repaint the haunted mansion. they cannot do that because we stick with it to make sure our original intent is met. this is a team of animatronics engineers checking out the figures and we do that to make sure that some of these figures are very complex and they may have 50 functions. you could lose five of those and unless somebody on the imagineering team knew they weren't working, it would not be a good show. we are constantly making sure this is being taken care of. let's look at the process

through the lens of the expedition everest project. we started with a blue sky idea. this was the rendering the credit team made. the story line was we were going to go into the himalayas to do an expedition. the next step is to create sketches and pull out the concept designers ideas of what they want to do. this is where the story starts flowing through. of course, they then start conceptualizing what the right track might do. it is much easier to do here than in the field. this is with these ideas come from. what great disney attraction this something not go wrong? along the way.ti yeti

as we come out of the process, we start to do a tremendous amount of research. our teams went to the himalayas several times to get a local flavor. we actually talked to some of the mountain people and found out what it yeti meant to them. we wanted to present it in a factual and historical way. it is not an idea that we created. if you have been to the little museum, there is a tremendous amount of history and folklore a yeti. we also work with trying to look it local forms of transportation. and this is where the idea of the ride vehicle came from. here is a small-scale model. you know that this is precisely what it looks like. it comes out of the model like this and goes straight through design and production which is what the imagineers get.

here is where we create the mountain. we built the small model sitting on the table. from that, we go to a half inch model. the designers then start carving precisely what they want this month to look like. we take the mountain and digitize it with computers. we then slice it up into what we call ships. each one of these colored high chip.d squares is a there were 3000 of these on expansion everest. we have computers that been ribar. as a sop that artist create that ridge in that mountain, -- as you saw that artist creed that ridge and the mountain, the computer program will spend the

metal bar exactly healthy creative team carved the model. there were 20,000 pieces ribar that were banned. this is the mountain going up. you see this sort of greyish look. that is the actual surface of the mountain before we add plaster to it. at the same time, we are developing the 3d model. a very complex model to create with all of the intersections of the ride systems and the show sets and other things. this is a view you will never get to see. and this is inside of the mountain. here is where you see all of the different colors of steel used.

facility steel, ride a steel, and show steel. this all came out of the model and in some cases, we moved some things around. the yeti ec and the attraction is one of the largest animatronics figures we have ever created. there is the finished product. it looks remarkably similar to the model and to this day, we can pull off renderings from this attraction and this is exactly what they look like. we take them from the rendering stage to reality. us talk a little bit about what is new and our world. what i will do is run through some attractions that recently opened and some that we are working on. toy story midway media

represents an attraction we did concurrently on multiple coasts. on the left-hand side deuced the entrance to midwaymania and said the entrance on the east coast on the right. one of the unit things we do is create a story line. this one was based on the carnival midway games idea where you would go through and pop the balloons or squirt water or throw darts. how do you visually create that in a virtual world? we pulled it off with this attraction. here was the idea and here is the actual working ride a vehicle. it is done under black light conditions. very exciting and repeatable attraction. one of the biggest benefits is because it is done in video, which can update it.

this is the new update we did based on toys story 3. we actually brought characters from it into the attraction so we are very timely and guests recognize that we are keeping them fresh. these come directly from toy story 3. that movie has now become the highest grossing animated feature ever. just to show the breadth of what we do outside of attractions for and attractions and outside of buildings and facilities, we created this water based parade at disney tokyo. some of these floats actually ride out onto the ground. the visitors love to get wet. in this case, they get a very wet. some of them just stand in front of the hoses that are sprayed

off of the attraction. you go -- you see the tremendous amount of detail we go into. police story been a great product from our subsidiary, it creates great opportunities for us to create new ideas. one not take it to the musical level? it was not written as a musical but we have written -- created one for the cruise ships. here are some of the shots of the actual show. being a broadly-level play, the characters have to talk so we had to create different faces and looks for them. the tower of terror, my favorite attraction. tower of terror is my all-time favorite because it was something that we had never done before and has never been recreated or imitated anywhere in the world by anybody. we now have four of these.

this is the one that just opened in paris. a different theme in tokyo because the japanese did not understand what twilight zone is. we have to change the theme but it is essentially the same attraction. we just opened up our fifth small world. it is that everything park around the world. we put some asian and polynesian themes throughout it and we have recorded the song that we all love and four different languages. for the first time, we have brought some of the disney characters and to our attractions. as you look closely, you can actually see some of the disney characters brought into puppetry format. for the first time, we have done

that in hong kong. in the bottom right, you can see pinocchio. pixar play parade, we curried parades' they're our entertainment group. we created this parade based on pixar characters. another technology-ridden attraction filled with cell phone based technology were guests are given kim-unicator. the little boy is holding this device and is chartering things to happen to out world showcase at epcot. the normal test walks past the window and just things it is a window into a normal merchandise shop. this child walks up with a communicator and actually does the toy soldier to give him the clue to the next window he will

find somewhere in the world showcase. a very popular attraction. we will be looking to expand this idea throughout the theme parks. american idol, we have partnered with the american idol producers and have created our own american idol experience. we have seven shows per day. the first six are to pick one winner. these are guests out of the park that walk-in, audition, they are picked, six of them go to the seventh show and the winner then gets a golden ticket which allows him or her to go to the front of the line to a real audition in front of the role judges wherever they are appearing in the world. the disney world monorail. walt disney created the first monorail that in the 1950's. we are really excited that we have replaced those with more

modern monorails and went back to the retro look that walt disney created. the guests are excited about that. you saw the crash character in the video talking to the guests. use all those in the video. and these are all part of our living character experience. r sawemy -- you saw remy. this is the muppet mobile lab. this is another incredible technology where these characters interact with the guests. here is a guest proposing to his

fiancee. wall-e, we were asked to create this. we did this very quickly so it could travel around the world and introduce the movie. at had to functions just like the character has in the movie. it was a big crowd pleaser. we had it at our open house. monsters incorporated is an attraction we just opened in tokyo. you go around with a flashlight and with it, you trigger windows and the upper doors and characters come out of those windows. very interactive experience that the guests laughed. but you have seen the movie, this is exactly what the lab looks like. that is exactly how we have created the attraction. space mountain refresh at magic

kingdom. we took advantage of a reef that the operations team to make it darker and add special effects. this is something we do in the normal course to always constantly be updating our attractions so that when you come visit us again, there will be new things for you to say. we have darkened the inside even more to make it more exciting as you ride the coaster through the darkness. espn wide world of sports. we just recently reprinted it using our esp and some brand -- espn brand. the most exciting thing about this is not just the graphics change but it is also a place where we would actually have labs for espn with develop technologies ec on television right now. for instance, the 10-yard line

first down marker you see on the field, those are created in these kinds of environments. and we are really excited about that. we also do resorts around the world. the animal kingdom lodge was just opened. attention to detail. this is the main lobby. that is the savannah is in the animals in the distance. this is a restaurant that is a fantastic place to aid. it is a hidden restaurant people did not find. at the contemporary, which just added the bay light towers at the contemporary hotel. fantastic location as you can say. it overlooks the magic kingdom and the fireworks. this is part of our vacation

club product. that opened about one year ago. treehouse wellesz. these have been at walt disney world since they opened. they needed to be upgraded. the problem was we had beautiful landscape around it so we actually had these modular early and built and brought in in pieces and dropped through the trees so we would not disturb the trees. a very exciting project to see happening. it literally makes you feel like you are in the trees because we did not touch any of them and bringing in these new tree houses. this is the interior of the treehouse. this is part of the vacation club product. and why a, the first regional resort. very rich and hawaiian folklore. the attention to detail we have gone through to make sure that we are respecting the hawaiian

culture is incredible. this is 8 artist rendering of what it will look like. this is it under construction. it is moving toward completion in the next 18 months. the combination of vacation club, hotel, and conventional hotel product. this is looking out toward the ocean. it would have a hotel, vacation club component, and an attached famed park. in this case it is a water park. if we also do cruise ships. of the ships in the upper right- hand corner are the disney magic and disney wonder. they have been sailing for the past 11 years.

in the foreground, the disney dream and the disney fantasy. they are under construction right now. i had the pleasure of going over there to see the construction and i will show you a picture in a second. this is a three story atrium lobby rendering. for the first time in the cruise industry, we are putting in a water roller-coaster. at one point, the clear to does go off the side of the ship. it is a water rollercoaster. most water slides to climb to the top and slide to the bottom. this one keeps pushing the backup is a roller-coaster would do. another first, if anybody has ever granted an interior cabin on a cruise ship, it is the cheapest room you can buy but it also has no view. we created this porthole, a virtual porthole.

there are cameras on the side of the ship that you will actually be looking at exactly what you would see if you had a window to the outside. [applause] you also notice that there is steamboat willie chugging across. we will have some fun with this and put some of the disney animated characters in there. with thisry ab isuzis abuzz idea. it is being billed. -- built. it is called hundred feet long planne. they built these enormous ocean liners inside of a building if

you can imagine how big that building is. they build it in blocks. the bridge is being lifted into place and put into place. this was the final block. they put to this and when i took my visit. this is the nose cone of the ship. they start with the keel and build it up the sides. here, they build them and blocks. there were 80 blocks that were flown in, dropped into place and welded into position. they built this in just over one year. it is an enormously exciting addition to our product line and the cruise industry. capt. captain eo if anybody remembers. we brought him back for a short

stint for a year or so. a lot of nostalgia and many people coming back to see it. it is much older film technology showing it in the context of everything we're doing now. people love it because it is so nostalgic. castaway key is the disney private island where all of the cruise ships stop on their excursions. because of the larger ships, we have to increase the size of the island. we created a water play island out in the water. we added private cabanas so when you get off, you can rent a cabana and stay in your private cabanas and it concierge service. future projects. we will wrap up here. star tours, i was involved in the original attraction at walt disney world. we are now creating with of the

lucas team, it- uca is between two of the trilogy's that exists. it is not recreating what exists today but crating of new footage and new experiences. all of the star wars fans are very excited about this opportunity. both attractions are now down. we have taken one to disneyland and the one in florida and we are we having them to create this new experience. all new film and special effects. it will literally be a brand new attraction using all of the existing technology. california adventure in anaheim. and we are totally redoing the california adventure and making it much more exciting. for the first time, we created a preview center.

we have seldom told people to much about what we are doing. we created a preview center where you can go and and look at how we create a lot of what we talk about today. if you can go in and see renderings of the old theater where snow white debuted. you can see the imagineer working on the actual model. we also just opened about three weeks ago the new world of color. this rivals anything you see in las vegas. these pictures do not do it justice. it is an enormous water show with special effects, sound, light, water, an incredible experience with california adventure being the backup. a great opportunity to entertain

the guests in the evening. we typically -- disneyland has not typically been a great place to stay late at night, this is an opportunity to fill up the entertainment experience when spending time in the park. we are doing the little mermaid and doing that at fantasyland. we are creating and attraction around the little mermaid product. this is a 12 acre radiator brings recreation from date cars movie. that is currently under construction. it is literally recreating the town if you have seen the movie. near and dear to my heart is the fantasy land expansion, we are doubling the size. it is the largest single magic kingdom project since it opened. we are taking the fantasyland

and doubling it in size. you can see in the foreground that cinderella's castle and looking into the distance, we are creating a fantasy forest, a be our guest restaurant, the mermaid attraction, just a whole bunch of new exciting offerings. -- enchanted tales with belle. we're actually spend 10 or 12 minutes with the character. here is one of the models of the restaurant. these are early renderings. the journey with the libyan -- little mermaid. for the very first time, we will be doubling the size of dumbo. two dumbos.

we call it double dumbo. we felt it was time to give more capacity. here is an aerial shot of the fantasy land. you can get an idea of the immense size of that development in the context of the entire magic kingdom which is represented in this picture. that is what we do imagineering. [applause] we are contumely inventing and are working on things right now that nobody knows about and i cannot tell you about them so don't ask [laughter] . it is an enormously great place to work. we are constantly creating the

future of entertainment. we appreciate the time you have given me and i think you all for joining me today. [applause] i think i say we have time for a few questions. do not ask any hard ones. don't be shy. >> in the mid 1990's, i worked for jack lang quist after he retired as president of disney. he mentioned to me that walt disney had a plan to dig a canal from the bay into the anaheim park at the cost of about $2 billion to put her ships and. he was a visionary to have that sort of model that long ago. >> i do not know if he thought of that in a blue sky process

but that is a pretty big undertaking. i think the better point of the question is it points out the way we think. the sky is the limit. let's look at it. if it is feasible, we will do it. that could very well have been. that was before my time with the company but it very well could have been a thought. >> did frank gary, imagineering to help put the design with disney hall? >> not with disney hall. that hall was donated by the disney family directly, not the walt disney company. there is no doubt that the company, at the time, michael eisner, a probableim askedagineers to do creative

oversight. that was the first time 3d modeling was used. it arguably became a the beginningbim design. >> i had a quick question. you mentioned your im have theagineers stay with the programs. how you make sure you cannot become stale and you update the projects if you have the person that designed it on at the whole time. how do you balance those things out? the original concept but being able to add and update? >> that is a great question. two schools of thought. they should stick with it because it is his or her vision much the way walt disney stock with his attractions. in terms of does the designer

get stale? i think by what you get -- what you just saw, it is impossible to get bored with what we do because every single day is a new day. even with construction, we will be out doing conventional construction techniques and learn something new that was on the model. it is an exciting place to work. as you can tell, i love what i do. i have never seen it happen imagineering but we do a lot of care and feeding a imagineers. we do a lot of after hours things to keep people fresh and excited and entertained. at animal kingdom, we had a process where we took mandatory field trips every friday. e would go off to azoo zoo

somewhere. it was mandatory because everybody was too busy to go. that is another way we keep people challenged. >> is there any truth to the rumor that the moon landing was staged at this a world? [laughter] silence is golden. i will take that as a maybe. 3dyou do and a thing with3 printing? >> i am not sure i understand what it is. i know recreate we -- we create models out of foam. access carding

machine. >> that answers my question. >> thank you for the talk. i was at a museum that gave a lot of detail on walt's utopian ideas. i was wondering if those ideas are still discussed. this is the idea of these micro cities and optimization of city planning and that type of stuff that bolt did a lot of thinking about. >> i do not think that we take his original ideas and develop them. i think the imagineers by nature

are as inquisitive at -- as inquisitive as he was. epcot came out of his thinking about the community of tomorrow. i think we are constantly challenged to keep doing that. i do not think we actually pull out his ideas and say what did you think of this idea? technology has come so far. >> we had a very robust discussion about tools. i noticed you have the standard set of tools. to what extent does that hamper or enhance creativity? >> the tools i showed are just a small sampling of the ones we use. bim ipd as a tool is an emerging technology that we have embraced. if there is another one out there, we will grab it. we are looking for ways to do

higher quality at less cost and using innovative methods. if there is a new process or new pool out there, we will find it and try to use it. t -- new tool out there, we will find it and try to use it. thank you very much. i appreciate [applause] it. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> funeral services for ted stevens will be held today in anchorage. he died last week in a plane crash on the way to a fishing trip. speakers will include vice- president joe biden and mitch

mcconnell. it will begin at 6:00 eastern. we will have live coverage. book tv continues tonight and prime time with a look at president obama. that is followed by a panel discussion about the book and author. all this week on c-span to. -- 2 c-span. how are new financial regulations going to impact investors? washington journal will try to answer that question tomorrow morning. part of the series this week on a new law going into effect. tomorrow, provisions aimed at preventing a future financial crisis. on c-span2, the congressional budget office updates to their

2010 projections and the economic outlook for the rest of the year. you can see live coverage at 11:00 a.m. at 1:00 eastern, the new orleans mayor talks about how new orleans is fairing five years after hurricane katrina. you can see live coverage of2 census -- you can see live coverage on c-span2. >> president obama answered questions on a number of topics during and after gathering in columbus, ohio. they asked about the future of social security, housing, and health care. this is about one hour. [applause]

>> everybody, please have a seat. i am thrilled to be here. i want to thank the entire family for being such great hosts. i want to thank all of you for taking time to be here. i see the mayor of columbus is here. somebody who is going to be running and i hope winning for the u.s. senate. we have one of the best senators in the united states senate and one of the finest governors in the country. give those people a big round of applause. [applause]

should we tell them to take off their jackets? take off your jackets from the white and up a little bit. -- take off your jacket and a little bit.. this is going to be informal. i want to listen to you and answer your questions. what we tried to do whenever we are in a setting like this is to talk about the things that people are going through did today. i will be honest with you, when you are in washington, you get caught up with particular legislative battles or the media spin on certain issues. sometimes you lose touch in terms of what people are talking about around the kitchen table. one of the ways that i stay in

touch is through event like this as well as writing letters from constituents and voters all across the country tonight. obviously, the economy is on a lot of people's minds. we went to the worst recession since the great depression. when i was sworn in 18 months ago, we had already lost several million jobs and we were about to lose several million more. we lost 600,000 jobs the month i was sworn in. we had to act fast and take some emergency steps to prevent the economy from going back into what could have been a great depression. we were successful in doing so. the stabilized the financial system and did not have a complete meltdown. we were losing jobs in the private sector when i was sworn

in, we are now gaining jobs. the economy was shrinking at 6%. it is now growing. we have made progress but let's face it, it has not been fast enough. we were just talking about the challenges that they have had to go through when she was laid off. in addition to trying to stop the crisis, we want to make sure we can help people get back on their feet. something that i am pleased is that wrong that was able to use some of the provisions we had to help her get cobra so that she had health insurance and could keep her health insurance when her family was very much in

need. millions of people across the country have been able to keep their health care insurance. we're also able to help our state and local governments so they cannot have to lay off as many firefighters, police officers, and teachers. i think the mayor and governor would it knowledge that the help we provided them has helped plug big budget holes. in addition, we have been trying to build infrastructure that puts people back to work and also improves the quality of life in communities like columbus. joe is an architect. he is now working on a new police station that was funded in part with recovery act funds. all of these things have made a difference. we still have a long way to go. a couple of things we are focused on right now is making

sure that small businesses are getting help because small businesses are really the key to our economy. they create two out of every three jobs. we want to make sure they are getting financing and make sure we are cutting taxes in key areas. one thing we have done for example is to eliminate capital gains taxes on small businesses so when they starting -- when they're starting up, that is when they should get a break. and we're focusing on trying to figure out if we can build more infrastructure in ohio and across the country to put people back to work. not just roads and bridges but broadband lines that can connect communities and give people access to the internet at a time when that is critical. we are also going to have to

look at how we get control of our deficit. that is obviously something many people have on their minds. the key is to make sure that we do so in a way that does not impede recovery but rather gives people confidence over the medium and long term. i will be happy to talk about what we are doing in terms of spending. overall, the main message i want to deliver before i take questions, slowly but surely, we are moving in the right direction. we are on the right track. the economy is getting stronger but we suffered a big trauma. it is going to take time. businesses are still trying to get more confidence out there before they start hiring.

consumers are not going to start spending until they feel more confident that the economy is getting stronger. what we are trying to do is create a virtuous cycle where people feel better and better about the economy. you get a bit stronger each day. that is where the economy is right now. what we cannot afford to do is to start going backwards. and doing some of the things that got us into trouble in the first place. this is why it has been so important for things like wall street reform. we do not want to create the same types of financial troubles with the rest lit -- reckless risks that helped create this problem in the first place. i am proud that we head -- we

worked hard to make sure we did not have a situation where we have to bail out banks that have taken reckless risks. we are monitoring what is happening in the financial system much more carefully and making sure people aren't cheated when it comes to their mortgages. we cannot go back some doing things the way we were doing them before. we have to go forward. hopefully, as we continue over the next several months and years, we will see a columbus and ohio and united states of america that is going to be stronger than it was before this crisis struck. i am absolutely confident of that. but we have more work to do. what i want to do is to open it up and you can ask me questions

about anything. ignore all of these cameras. pretend they are not there. the only thing i ask is to introduce yourselves so i get a chance to know you or if there is a chance you have not met for neighbors, here is the chance. we have some microphones. the main reason we are using microphones is that these people behind us can hear. >> i hope i cannot pass out while i am asking this question. my question is about health care. my brother is a disabled. he is one of the working poor. he will not mature any more pass the mindset of a 12 year old. he works washing dishes at a

local restaurant. unfortunately, because the employer does not offer health care insurance, one whole check which is two weeks worth of work has to actually go toward him paying for cobra witches obviously way -- will out of this budget. >> how will that help them? and i think you're doing a wonderful job. >> thank you. here is how specifically health

reform should help your brother. number one, it gives an incentive to his employer to provide health insurance, because one of the key components of health care reform was providing employers a 35% tax break on the premiums they pay for their employees. basically it is cutting his potential costs -- the employers potential costs for providing your brother -- your brother with health insurance, it is cutting it by a third. that step number one. and they're going to be companies that say they want to provide health insurance but they could not afford to do it, but now it is costing at -- costing us up to a third less, saving us thousands of dollars, maybe we should go ahead and provide coverage for that. step number two is if the employer still does not provide coverage, over the next couple of years your brother is going to be able to call a couple --

what we're calling an exchange -- where he can basically buy the same kind of insurance that these members of congress are buying. the advantage he is going and have is that now he is part of a pool of millions of people who are buying it all at the same time, which means that they have leverage the same way big companies are able to lower their costs per employee because the insurance company really wants their business. now your brother could be part of the same pool that these guys are and that is going to give leverage which will lower his rates. and the final part of it is, even with these lower rates, this better deal, its peak still cannot afford it, then we're. to provide some subsidies to help him. all of those things combined should help make sure that your brother is getting health insurance. one of the things that people may not be aware of is that although this exchange is not going to be set up until 2014 --

it takes a while, we have got to set it up right -- there are some immediate things that are helping right now. if your child has a preexisting condition, insurance companies starting this year will not be able to deny those children coverage. and that is a big deal for a lot of folks. their children may have diabetes or some other illness and right now they cannot get insurance. insurance companies are. have to provide them insurance. that's number one. number two, how many people here it to work college-age, about to go to college? one of the things that you're going to be able to do is when those kids get out of college, if they do not get insurance right away, they are going to be able to stay on your insurance until they're 26 years old. if that is a big deal because a lot of times that first job or those first couple of jobs out

of college or the ones that do not provide health insurance. there are a number of changes being made right now that will make those of you who have health insurance more secure with the insurance that you have. we are eliminating lifetime limits. there is a bunch of fine print on the insurance forms that sometimes have ended up creating real problems for people. your insurance company decides to drop you right when you get sick, just when you need it most. those kinds of practices are over now. the final aspect of health reform that is important is that by changing the incentives for how doctors get paid under medicare and under medicaid, we are actually encouraging doctors to become more efficient so that over time health care costs start leveling out a little bit instead of skyrocketing each and every years. everyone here who has health insurance, what has been

happening? your premiums have been going up, co-payments, deductibles, all that stuff has been going up. so we have to try to control the costs of that, and part of that is just making sure that we get a better bang for our health care dollar. for example, when you go to a doctor, we're still filling out forms in triplicate on paper. it is the only business there is where you still have to do that. itre trying to encourage permission technologies so that when you go into a doctor, they can already pull down your medical records electronically. it detects a test, then it is sent to all the specialists who are involved so that you do not have that pay for four or five tests when all you needed was just one. those of the kinds of things that will take a little bit longer to actually take into effect, but over time they are going to lower costs. i'm going to go boy, girl here

to make sure it is fair. >> mr. president, i am concerned about the furor lately that is similar to the past but it is reemerging from the republican party, but some democrats, that social security needs to be privatized because it is losing money and we're all going to -- it is going broke and that sort of thing. how would you comment on that? >> i have been adamant in saying that social security should not be privatized and it will not be privatized as long as i'm president. and here is the reason. [applause] i was opposed to it before the financial crisis and what i said was that the purpose of social security is to have that floor, that solid, rock-solid security so that no matter what ever else happens you always have its --

some income to support you in your retirement. an act and the problem with people investing in their 401(k), and we want to encourage people to invest in private savings accounts. but social security has to be separate from that. imagine if social security had been in some pop -- in the stock market back in 2006 and 2007. you saw what happened with your 20%, 30%,- you lost 40% of it. now we have recovered in part because of the policies that we put into place to stabilize the situation, and the stock market has recovered 60%-70% of its value from its peak. but if you were really in lead -- in need last year or the year before and you see your assets drop by 40% and that is all you're relying on? it would've been a disaster.

social security is not in crisis. what is happening is that the population is getting older, which means we have got more retirees per worker than we used to. we're going have to make some modest adjustments in order to strengthen it. there are some fairly modest changes that could be made without resorting to any newfangled schemes that would continue security for another 75 years, where everybody would get the benefits that they deserve. and what we have done is create up fiscal commission of democrats and republicans to come up with what would be the best combination to help stabilize social security or not just this generation, but the next generation. i am absolutely convinced it can be done. and as i said, i want to encourage people to save more on their own, but i do not want them taking money out of social security so that people are

putting that into the stock market. there are other ways of doing this. for example, it turns out that if you set up a system with your employer where the employer automatically deducts some of your paycheck and puts it into your 401(k) account, unless you say you do not want it done, it turns out people save more just naturally. it is a psychological ploy. if they take it out of your paycheck and a automatically take it out, unless you affirmatively say, do not take it out, you will save more than if they ask you, do you want to say, and you say, i am one to keep the money. and then you save less. it is a small change. it is voluntary, but that in and of itself could end up boosting savings rates significantly.

there are a bunch of ways to make sure that retirement is more secure, but we have got to make sure that social security is there not just for this generation but for the next one. all right, gentleman sturm. and i know that some folks may be hot, and if they are, and you can always move into the shade. >> mr. president, i was born and raised in a good blue-collar town in toledo, ohio. i grew up in a union family and i work now for a significant number of pension assets in the labor union market with an investment firm. what bothers me most is what is important to the people out there that i talk to, and those things are, what is when happen with their pensions, especially those in the red and yellow. the ppa has not been that favorable to them. in the pbgc is not a very good option. but other had to take early retirement. he is not receiving the maximum out -- amount after decades of

hard work and service that he had anticipated. the second part is, i am not naive to think that just the pensions alone can help save workers. we got 9.5% unemployment. it's larger for the manufacturing industry and us in the rust belt. we've got put those guys back to work. they need man-hours out there. how can we create a sustainable competitive product at an advantage to make us another leader in the manufacturing and labor force industry going forward, not just to get them back to work for your to, but to get them back to work for the long term so that they can grow the market on their own with their own product and their own work? >> this is a great question and it goes to the heart of what our economic strategy has to be. and senator brown and congresswoman kilroy and others, i know this is their number one concern each and every day. how do we make sure that we're. -- we are creating a competitive america in which we are not just buying things from other countries, we're selling things to other countries, and we're

selling -- making things here in the united states of america. let me give you a couple of examples of areas that i think have enormous promise. all whole clean industry -- clean energy industry -- and toledo actually is a leader in this, creating good jobs, in areas like solar, band -- building solar panels, wind turbines, advanced battery manufacturing. there is a whole series of huge potential manufacturing industries in which we end up being world leaders and as a bonus, end up creating a more energy-efficient economy that is also good for the environment. now we made at the beginning of my term the largest investment in clean energy in our history. and so there are plants opening up all across the country, creating products made in america that are now being

shipped overseas and i will give you one example. the advanced battery manufacturing industry is a the batteries that go into electric cars, or the batteries that are ending up helping to make sure that if you get solar power or wind power that it can be transmitted in an efficient way. we up to% of the entire market -- 2%. by 2015, in five years, we're going to have 40% of that market because of the investments that we made. one of the advanced battery manufacturing plants that we helped get going with some key loans and support and tax breaks, they are now putting those batteries into the chevy vault. volt.evy

and you combine that than what the entire new u.s. auto industry that is cleaner and smarter and has better designs and is making better products -- those are potentially thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, and the midwest is really poised to get a lot those jobs. in a town like toledo where you have still got a lot of skilled workers, they are poised to be able to take off on that. but we have got to continue to support it. the other area that i have already mentioned is infrastructure. we of it got about -- we have got about $2 trillion worth of infrastructure improvements that need to be made all across the country. it is crumbling. the previous generation made all these investments that not only put people to work right away but also laid the foundation then for economic growth in the future. and we used to always have the best infrastructure worldwide.

now, if it comes to rail, we certainly do not have the best rail system and world. our roads in a lot of places are not the best. our airports are not the best. somebody is laughing, they obviously just went through an airport. so we've got a lot of work to do on infrastructure. and this is an area where i hope we can get some bipartisan agreement. it is hard to get bipartisan agreement these days. but i think the notion that we can put people to work rebuilding america, investing in making stuff here in the united states -- by the way, every time you build a road, that's not just putting people to work on the actual construction. all of those supplies that go into road building, all those supplies that go into a bridge, all those supplies that go into rail, that is creating a ripple effect all throughout the

economy. i think that as a second area of great potential. the last point you made was -- had to do with pensions. truth be told, the way we were handling pensions in both private companies and among public employees, a lot of it was not that different from some of the stuff that was going on in wall street, because what happened was -- is that these pensions were not adequately funded. some of these companies would underfund it, and then say, well, we're going to get an 8% return or 10% return on our pension funds, to make it look like they were adequately funded when they were not. that contributed to pension funds chasing a lot of risky investments that promised these high returns that in fact were built on a house of cards. see a numberng to of pensions in a number of

companies that are underfunded. thee got a mechanism at federal level that provides a certain percentage backup or guarantee for these pension funds if they fail. but we're going to have to work with these private sector companies so that -- right now, they have become very profitable. companies are making money right now. we were talking earlier about the economy and how it is moving slow. corporate profits are doing just fine. they are holding onto a whole bunch of cash. they are sitting on it, waiting to see if they can make more money and more opportunity, but they have not started hiring yet. one of the things they need to do with this cash is shoring up their pension funds that are currently under funded. it is a girl's third. -- turn. yes, right there. >> mr. president, tied and with the jobs situation, i think, is

the education system. it seems to be in a crisis right now. and people are not being educated to take these jobs that are going to be created. i wondered what sort of plans you might have for that. >> that is a great question. are you in education? >> no. >> know? that is important, too. thanks for the care you give to people all day long. i am a big fan of nurses. the thing that will probably most determine our success in the 20 for centuries corn to be our education system. i will give you a quick statistic. a generation ago, we ranked number one in the number of college graduates. we've now slipped to number 12 in the number of college graduates. that is just in one generation. that is putting us at a huge competitive disadvantage.

because companies these days, they can locate anywhere. you have got an internet line, you can set your company up in india, if you can set up your company in the czech republic -- it does are really matter where you are. -- it does not really matter where you are. so companies are looking for where they can find the best workforce. and we need to make sure that that is in columbus, ohio. if we've got to make sure that that is in toledo. but at to make sure that that is in the united states of america. -- we have got to make sure that that is in toledo. we have got to make sure that that is in the united states of america. we still have the best universities and the best colleges on earth. but there are a couple problems that,. our education starts at k-12. and we're not doing a good enough job at the k-12 level making sure that all our kids are proficient in math, in

science, in reading and writing. we've set up something called the race to the top, where although a lot of federal money still flows to schools just based on a formula and based on need, we've taken a certain amount of money and said you have to compete for this money. you have to show was a plan that you have a plan to improve the education system, to fix low- performing schools, to improve how you train teachers -- because teachers of the single most important ingredient in the education system -- to collect data to show that you are improving how these kids are learning. what has happened is that states all across the country have responded really well, and we've seen the majority of states change their laws to start doing this bottom-up, grassroots reform of the k-12 system. that is critical. that is number one. the second thing that we've got to solve is that college became unaffordable for a lot of people. and joe and rhonda, we were just talking -- we are about the same

age and we got married the same year. our kids are about the same age. we've gone through the same stock. michelle and i, i do not know about you guys, but michelle and 9, we had a lot of debt when we finished school. it was really expensive. and neither of us came from wealthy families so we just had to take out a bunch of student loans. it took us about 10 years to pay off our student loans. it was actually higher than our mortgage for most of the time. i do not want that burden to be placed on kids right now because a lot of them, as a consequence, maybe they decide not to go to college, or if they did, they end of getting to a -- getting off to a really tough start because their pay is not one to support the amount of debt that they have got. so this is what we did, working ,ith chirac's -- sherrod

working with mary jo, democrats in congress, this did not get a lot of attention but we actually transformed how the government student loan program works. all those undergoing for banks and financial intermediaries. even though the loans were guaranteed by the government so the banks were taking a risk, they were skimming off billions of dollars in profits. if we set that does not make any sense. if we are guaranteeing it, why don't we just give the loans directly to the students, and we will take all those extra billions of dollars that were going to the banks as profits, and we will give more loans. we have been able to provide millions more students additional loans and make college more affordable over time. that is the second thing. the third thing we have to do is focus on community colleges, which are a wonderful asset. not everybody is going to go to a four-year college. and you may need to go back and retrain for europe to, even what

you're working, to keep up the pace with new technologies and new developments in your industry. what we have tried to do is partner with community colleges, figure out how we can strengthen them, put more resources into them, and link them up to businesses actually hiring so that they are training people for the jobs that exist as opposes the jobs that do not. one of the problems we have had for a lot of young people is that they go to college training for a job, thinking that there is a job out there, and the economy has moved on. what we need to do is tailor people's education so that they are linked up with businesses who say, we need this many engineers, or we need this kind of technical training, and we will help design what that training is, so that when that person goes to college and they are taking out some of those loans to go to college, they know that at the end of the road there is going to be a job available to them.

math, science, we have to emphasize those. that is an area where we are really falling behind, and our technological competitiveness will depend on how well we do in math and science. yes, sir. >> mr. president, my name is joe richard, and i am a proud firefighter for the great city of columbus here in ohio. [applause] >> did you use to play for ohio state? >> house actually part of the national can predict national championship for eastern kentucky university. >> ok, all right. >> for the national champion. >> there you go. you look like we could put you on the line right now. >> i wanted to talk about a couple of things as it pertains

to the safety and security of our firefighters. i wanted to share with you some good news as it pertains to the stimulus and the safer act for which you championed and signed off on. locally and from the state standpoint, we had some firefighter jobs that were in jeopardy, up in the hundreds. i know the state was strapped with its commitment and what it had to do with the stimulus package. some of those areas we were not a deal -- we were not able to be supported in. but because of your administration signing off on the save iraq, which is staffing adequate fire in a merger response, you provided over $300 million last year and upped that to over 4 $9 million this year, that allowed for the jobs in ohio to come back -- the firefighters who had jobs to come back and get their jobs back. in addition to that, it has provided safer equipment for us. cliche,want to sound but i m just your average joe.

what we do as firefighters, we want to make a significant difference to our citizens here in our community as well as our lives. that safer act and that fire act has provided us significant equipment -- money, funding rather for significant equipment -- face pieces, self-contained breathing apparatus, things of that nature. we come to say how proud we are to be able to afford that opportunity to secure our firefighters. the international president has sent a appreciative thank you and we would hope that you would find -- i know your busy schedule, but somewhere around this country, cincinnati, akron, elyria, niles, they have brought back firefighters because of the cigarette. schedule you have an opportunity as a symbolic gesture of support to stop in and thank those firefighters, we would greatly appreciate that. >> thank you. you guys put your lives on the

line each and every day. we wanted to make sure the public sector was not being threatened as a consequence of the recession. we have done that. we've helped to support not just firefighters but also some police officers teachers, other vital services. we're grateful for everything you do. and if this is your lovely wife here, we're grateful to her because she has got to put up with you. [laughter] running off into fires and putting yourself in danger. i'm sure that makes her a little stressed once in awhile but i'm sure she for a proud of you. ok, anybody else? go ahead. here, we've got a microphone. >> my name is pam cowen and i was laid off that position working at our local community

college, helping dislocated workers getting back and getting retrained. but the position was funded on workforce investment dollars and the funding ended. as a look for new position in social services, i am having trouble finding a position that pays enough so that i can pay my bills and also send my daughter to quality childcare. i was wondering if there was anything that has been done to reduce childcare costs. >> we have a childcare credit in place. we would like to make it stronger. this is one of those back-and- forths we have been having with republicans, because we think it is a good idea and they don't. but i think that giving families support who have to work each and every day is absolutely critical. now there are some companies that are starting to get smart about providing top here on site for their employees, which makes

a huge difference. it is a huge relief. but those are usually bigger companies. some smaller companies or small businesses do not have that capacity. got to make-- we've sure that we're providing you more support primarily to a type -- a tax credit mechanism. this is something that we have incorporated in the past in our budget. we have not gotten everything that we would like done on it. it will be something that would continue to try to work on a bipartisan basis to get the cost of childcare down. there is another component of this, and that is also boosting the quality of child care. kids learn more from the age of zero to three than they do probably for the rest of their lives, and this goes into the earlier question about education. we want to get them off to a good start knowing their colors and their numbers and their letters and just knowing how to sit still.

and high quality childcare environment can help on that front. but that means that childcare workers, for example, have to be paid a decent wage and get decent training. and we have been working -- we set up actually a task force that is trying to lift up the best practices, who is really doing a great job in creating high quality health care -- or childcare at an affordable rate, and then trying to teach other states and other cities and other communities of -- how to replicate some of that great progress that has been made. they're terrific programs out there, but they are still too far and too few between. at that time for two more questions. right here. >> by name is michael riley and i work for a company who is benefiting from some stimulus money here in columbus. it is keeping me and my crews afloat for a while. but what we really need is a

stronger housing market here in columbus. we need to be building new roads and making houses affordable for people. they need to get out there buying. they need to be able to get along. and what is up with that? >> remember i told you that it is when it takes some time for this economy to come back. one of the reasons it will take time is the housing market is still a big drag on the economy as a whole. and the reason the housing market is still a big drag on the economy as a whole is we built a lot of homes of the previous five, seven, 10 years. every year, about 1.4 million families are formed that are ready to buy a new house or need

some place to live. and what happened over the previous years during this housing bubble, we were building 2 million homes a year when only 1.4 million were being absorber. -- absorbed. and then the bubble burst and now we're only building 400,000. all that inventory that happened during the housing bubble, it is still out there. some states are worse than others. you go to places like nevada or arizona or florida, california, their inventory of unsold homes was so high it is going to take a whole bunch of years to absorb all that housing stock. what we can do is help people who are currently in their homes stay in their homes.

we can strengthen the economy overall so that new family that just formed, they feel confident enough to say, it is time, honey, for us to go out and take the plunge and start looking. right now they are holding back, the way a lot of people are, because there is uncertainty in the market. and we of initiated through the treasury department and number of programs like that to help support the housing market generally. but i want to be honest with you. it is going to take some time for us to absorb this inventory that was just too high. and there's no really quick way to do it, because we're talking about up by dollar trillion market. -- we're talking about $5 trillion market. we cannot plug the hole in terms of all the housing that needs to

be absorbed. we're not going to be able to subsidize all that over-capacity right now. what we can do is stabilize it and then improve the economy overall. well we're going to do is get back to the point where we're building 1.4 million homes a year instead of 400,000, and that is a huge difference. the industry is going to come back. can we now to a little bit more? the most important thing we can do now is improve the economy overall so that people feel more confidence. all right? i got time for one more? you've got a question? here, you can use mine. >> i'm the practice manager at an ophthalmology practice at the ice center of columbus, downtown. it is a great facility that the city of columbus helped us get into place. if they're over 30 ophthalmologists providing specialty care in separate practices, a state-of-the-art ambulatory surgery center. busy tens of thousand patients a

year. i think we do a very efficient job of providing quality care, over 300 people employed. i'm on both sides of health care. when i started working for this practice 25 years ago, we're not getting reimbursed one-third of what we got paid for -- i'm going to pick cataract surgeries -- yet our operating costs continue to go up. my boss is kind enough to provide health care cost entirely for all of his employees. how does he continue to do that when medicare continues to reduce what they are paying, and there's the threat of more cuts coming and the private insurance companies follow suit? >> is a great question. -- it is a great question. let me talk about medicare generally. medicare, i think, is one of the cornerstones of our social safety net. the basic idea is -- you have been working all your life, and to retire. just like you have got social

security that you can on, you've got health care that you can count on and you are not going bankrupt just because you get sick. in the same light as a security has to be tweaked -- in the same way that social security has to be tweaked because the population is getting older, we have to renew medicare to make sure that it is going to be there for the next generation as well. the key problems are not just that more people as they retire are going to be part of medicare. the big problem is just health care inflation generally, but costs keep on skyrocketing. the wrong way to deal with it is under-reimbursing our providers. the right way to deal with it is to work with the providers to figure out how to make the system less wasteful, more efficient overall. that way we are paying -- your boss, if the s spending a dollar

on care, he is getting reimbursed a dollar. but we're making sure that the care he is providing is exactly what the person needs, and high quality for a better price. that is part of what health care reform was all about. i will give you a couple of examples. one of the things we were doing in medicare was giving tens of billions of dollars to insurance -- have been -- of subsidies to insurance companies under the medicare advantage plan, even though that plan was not showing it was making seniors any healthier than regular old medicare. so we said, we're not going to end medicare advantage, but we're or have some competitive bids and show -- and force the insurance companies to show us, how you are you adding? how would you helping to make these seniors healthier? if you're not helping, then you should not be getting paid. we should be getting big giving that money to the doctors and the nurse and the other people

who are actually providing care not the insurance company. there was a lot of hue and cry about this, but it was absolutely the right thing to do, because the actuaries for medicare said the changes we have already made have extended the life of the medicare trust fund for another 12 years, which is the longest it has ever been extended as a consequence of a reform effort. some of the changes we have already made. but we have to keep making these changes to continue to making a stronger. and now will affect not just medicare, but the entire health care system. there is no doctor out there who does not see medicare as the 800 pound gorilla. if medicare is saying you have got to improve your quality and efficiency, then they will because they have got a lot of medicare patients. but they also got a lot of regular patients. doctors and hospitals -- everybody starts getting more efficient as medicare gets more efficient. the key is making sure that we're not just cutting benefits.

and this is an argument that i have with my friends in the republican party sometimes. one big change that some of them have advocated is to voucherize the medicare system. instead of, what you have medicare, you knowing that you can take that and go get care anywhere you want, we would just give you -- all right, here is whatever it is, $6,000 or $7,000 or whatever. you go shop and figure out what is the best kind of deal you can get. but it health care costs keep going up but your voucher does not keep going up, you are going to be in trouble. and did you find seniors who find themselves way short of what they need in terms of providing care. we get to change how the health care system actually operates. that means more preventive care, it means that we reimburse people for checkups. it means we reimburse doctors when they are consulting with

people on things like smoking cessation and weight control and exercise. there are a whole bunch of things that can make us healthier, reduce our costs overall, but the system does not incentivize them right now. we need to change that. anybody have any last burning question? that was technically the last question, but this has to be one that you really need an answer for. ok, go ahead. chin a very general question here. i work on wall street. i was wondering what kind of changes we can expect to see in the reform in the next couple of years. >> here is the essential components of wall street reform that we have set up. number one, we had a system in which there were huge amounts of leverage that banks could take. what leverage means is, if they

have got a dollar in deposits, they were making a $40 bet using that $1 -- which when times are good, means you're making a lot of money, right? you're putting $1 down of your run money, and you get $40, and when the market is going up, you are making out like a bandit. but when the market goes down, you are in trouble. and that is basically what happened with lehman and a lot of these other countries -- companies. for big firms that are what we call "systemic," that if they go down, the whole system could go down with them -- we have that have a better check and they have to control a little bit how they work in terms of leverage. you have got have enough capital, actual money, to cover the bets that you are placing so that you are not putting the whole system at risk. that is number one. number two, there is a whole derivatives market out there

which, frankly, even the bankers don't completely understand. but you've got trillions of dollars -- and if you work on wall street, you're familiar with the derivatives market. you've got trillions of dollars that are basically outside of the regulated banking system, and people did not know who is banking on what. and what we said was that derivatives market, but it has got to be in an open, transparent marketplace so that everybody knows who is betting on what. about whovery clear the various parties are in these complex derivatives transactions. that means the regulators can follow it a little more closely. that is number two. the third thing that we did, we made sure that we do not have taxpayer bailouts again. we set up a system whereby if a

big firm gets into trouble, we are able to quarantine it, separate it out from the rest of the pack, liquidate it without it spilling over into the system as a whole. that is the third thing. and the fourth thing is having a consumer financial protection agency that is really going to do a good job making sure that consumers know what they're getting when it comes to financial products. when you buy a toaster, there has been some assurance provided that that toaster will not explode in your face, right? there are a whole bunch of laws in there, people have to do tests on the toasters to make sure that nothing happens. but if you buy a mortgage that explodes in your face because you did not know what was going on, everybody acts like, well, that is your problem.

it is actually all of our problem, because part of the reason we had this financial crisis was because people did not always understand the financial instruments that they were purchasing. a lot of these subprime loans that were being given out, a lot of these no-interest -- you can buy your house, you don't put any money down, you don't pay any interest, you got this beautiful house --. but they were not looking at a balloon payment five years down. this is only going to work if the value of your house keeps on appreciating. and that it stops appreciating, it is not going to work anymore. people had not thought through all those ramifications. and that had an effect on the whole system. what we've said is that we're going to have a strong consumer finance it protection agency whose only job is to look after you when it comes to financial products.

and joe and rhonda and i were just talking about it was only seven or eight years ago when michelle and i were trying to figure out our student loans, how we were going to invest for the kids college education. at the end of the month, i would be getting my credit card bills, and i am a pretty smart guy, but you open up some of those credit card bills -- you do not know what is going on. you do not read all that fine print. you just look at the statement. as an example of the kinds of things that this new agency is going to be enforcing, we have already passed a law -- thanks again to mary jo and sherrod -- we've already passed a law that says a credit card company cannot raise the interest rates on existing balances. so it cannot attract you with a 0% interest, you run up at $3,000 balance, and then suddenly they send you your next eight men and it says, your interest went up to 29%. you cannot do that.

they will still be a mistake, we're. raise your interest rate to 29%, but that can only be on the balances at going forward. it cannot be on the money that you borrowed where you thought it was at 0%. that is an example of straightforward, honest dealing that we're going to be expecting. we think the financial markets will still make money, the banks can still make money, but they have to make money the old- fashioned way, which is loan money to small businesses who are providing services to the community. loan money to joe for is architectural firm, and he is going to make sure you pay him back. loan people for mortgages, but make sure you have done the due diligence so that your tracking -- you're not tricking them into something that they cannot afford. make sure it is something that you can afford, right? basic, common-sense reforms that we're putting into place that will allow the market to function. the free-market is the best

system ever devised for creating wealth, but there has to be some rules of the road so that you are making money not by gaming the system, but by providing a better product or a better service. i want to thank all of you for spending the time. i know it got a little warm, and you hung in there like troopers. i want to make sure that i thank, once again, ted strickland, sherrod brown, mayor michael coleman, your lieutenant governor, and i believe the next united states senator, lee fisher, and mary jo kilroy for being here. and i'm up want to thank joe and rhonda weithman in the whole weithman family for sharing their backyard. we're going have to make sure that we help their lawn here. i hope you are not stepping in the corn. michelle would be very proud to see that you have the vegetable garden working. all right? give them a bad round of applause, everybody. thank you very much.

thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> i wanted you to know that the weithmans made me be the o in o-h-i-o. [applause] it is on tape. it is on tape somewhere. >> funeral services for former alaska senator ted stevens will be held today in anchorage. he died last week in a plane

crash on the wake what fishing trip in alaska. joe biden and mitch mcconnell will be there. we will have live coverage here on c-span. book tv continues tonight with a look at president obama. the like and political career of the president in "the bridge," started -- followed by a panel discussion. raham as well. all this week on c-span2. >> how are new financial regulations going to impact investor? we will try and answer that at 9:15 a.m. eastern. tomorrow, provisions aimed at preventing the future financial crisis here on c-span. and on c-span2 to mark, the

congressional budget office updates its 2010 budget projections and economic outlook for the rest of that year. you can see live coverage at 11:00 a.m. at 1:00 p.m. eastern, the new orleans mayor talks about how new orleans is bearing five years after hurricane katrina. you can see live coverage on c- span2. >> an update now on the trial of former illinois gov. rod blagojevich. from today's local washington journal," this is just under 10 minutes.

calls in just a couple of minutes. in the meantime, we have jim warren on the phone. he is a columnist and we want to focus on this jury action yesterday in the trial of the former illinois governor, rod blagoevich. "the defiant blagojevich bows to appeal. explain what happened in the courtroom yesterday. >> the found out why they had spent two weeks deliberating, mainly that they could not come to the unanimous decision on a single count. in some ways, the most ancillary of account, false statements. allegedly lying to fbi agent in 2005 as to whether or not he had

a fire wall between his political contributions side of his professional life and the government side. that is the only one that went 12-0 on. in terms of selling the senate seat of barack obama after he was elected, they apparently came very close. there was one woman holding out, simply refusing to change her opinion. that is how close on some counts that he came to an insured track to a federal prison. when headline talks about appealing, more important is the government quickly announced the attempt to try them again, so we will do this all over again. host: think to that, here is the

headline, if you go to "the sun times," they talk more about the numbers in all of this. "some of the numbers were split, but the most explosive of these charges came to the holdout vote, and one woman felt she had just not tten a clear-cut evidence that she needed to convict. -- convict." move this forward, what are we likely to see? caller: will likely to see this whole thing done over and the federal government is going to push back in court in august, formally indicating their plan to retry, and knowing the federal governmenthey will say that they are ready to go.

there will be representation for both of the blagojevich costs, not just a former governor but also his brother were on trial. they have spent substantial sums of money and got a fair amount of free legal work from the lawyers i also think it is interesting that both sides will certainly be studying each and evy comment from the jurors as to how they perceive the case. particularly how they received the weaknesses in the government's case. some of the comments suggest that the jurors felt the case was confusing, which i think i might agree with. the timeline and chronology of the misdeeds became uncertain and you can bet that the

government will stand back and say, ok, if there is committed the to this, we will come at it again next time. >>host: "yes, another trial woud be worth at," according to these e-mails this morning. wh is the public's mood on all of this? caller: i have assumed that one of the factors that might play into jury deliberations, as you know, as your audience on those, the general a very critical state of americans for the politicians these days, i certainly thought that that would not help blagojevich, who was clearly caught plotting and

scheming potential quid pro quo. not just for allegedly trying to sell the senate seat, but there are other matters where he was caught in a conspiratorial fashion with aids, who i should parenthetically note to the audience, they are in prison, going to prison, or testify for the government as a result of the same evidence. nevertheless, it is clear that it is possible with the jury went in and saw that it was as straight as possible. they were confused and a few folks were never convced. there was not much poland in the chicago area. the former governor has been somewhat effective in portraying himself all over the country in

various high-profile media forums. he has been somewhat effective in rtraying himself as a victim, turning his back -- turning away from the one count that they got him on. there might be that of a backlash from folks sending my gosh -- saying -- my gosh, are we spending more money on a trial for a man that was already in pete? no longer have this is resolved, his political career is in the dumps. host: following up on all of this yesterday, dick durbin seeking distance the illinois

democrat from blagojevich, " another trial could hurt the democratic fall campaign." what about that on the national level? caller: it is possible. there is a critical impact if they try to retain the governorship. remember, he was impeached and his successor is facing off against a very conservative downstate republicans named bill brady, guaranteed to be in the headlines for another few months, amnting to political advertising for free for republicans in ill., insurer in the us a spectacle -- insuring of us expect to call -- a spectacle.

i would even suggest that our good friend, brian lamb, should sign him up for some night q&a. he would be there in 10 minutes, even though ryan would have trouble getting in the wake that help and the democrats, certainly >> they are up 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors every weekend on book tv. every weekend on book tv. space and technology --