incredible economic opportunity and efficiency gains that the project will bring and bring that a project to fruition. i think an infrastructure bank could play a big part in that and potentially be a big piece to it and a grant peace as well. >> our friends on the other side of the capital have proposed slashing funds for surface transportation projects by 35%. what >> i have learned over the course of my life is that there's one basic thing in economics and that is the supply and demand principle. i see a significant supply of

labor out there for which there is no demand. this particular bill presents an opportunity to satisfy that and put this supply and demand back. as a principal, eliminating or declining to utilize this opportunity is a bad idea for the american economy and i think it would be hurtful to ignore an opportunity such as this. infrastructure investment is a proven job creator. back in the '50s and after world war two, we develop the state highway system and it worked very well putting people to work and genocide -- jump-start the economy. this is an opportunity, though as non grand scale, to start the economy in that direction. >> if there is no action in the house and the senate, we are looking at a major, major

dislocation in the construction industry and every segment, the number of 600 + thousand jobs has been cited by several senators this morning. those are legitimate numbers and potential losses that could occur in the coming years if there is no action. it is not just a house proposal. i don't believe they're making such proposals out of hostility in investing in transportation as they say, but the same thing can happen that the senate is unable to move legislation in the coming days. the construction industry has a 16.3% unemployment rate right now as compared to 9.2% nationally for the whole country. there is excess labor out here. the imperative here is to get timely action on this bill,

because the consequence, given the flow of money into the highway trust fund, we are going to see cuts if congress does not find a way to keep the program steady. it is inevitable. >> in my state, our governor chose to decline money to build a tunnel that would have created 44,000 jobs immediately, gets 22,000 cars off the road every day, and a very short-sighted way decided against the possibility of overruns that could have been taken care of through low-cost loan programs. they're sitting on their hands, waiting to go to work,, -- of

delayed schedules -- there is a lot of short-sighted as going around and we have to get busy. thank you very much. >> thank you, senator lautenberg. you have put more time and energy into transportation than anybody. >> thank you, chairman. you said this would supplement the bulk of the formula funds. i may have missed this in the analysis of the bills, but what size infrastructure banker we talking about here? >> the administration's proposal that we have in the fiscal year 12 budget is $5 billion a year over six years, a total of $30 billion. that was based on proposing a

very large six-year proposal in the area of 500 to the billion dollars. negotiations in congress, it's not clear we will get to a number that big. >> was that your anticipated shortfall the highway trust fund would produce? >> we came up with that number by taking it with the pipeline of projects based on our own experience and that was the number we thought captured the pipeline and could reasonably be run through a program and handled. >> the states do not have the capacity to do this through state bonding authority or the percentage that would pay would be -- explain that to me a little bit? >> states are dealing very much with their own budget deficits

and the projections for the next fiscal year are the same for the deficits they had to deal with over the last fiscal year. they are very much focused on trying to close that gap and, as a result, issued of were bonds is -- >> i don't understand why they could not retire bonds that the issue. >> i was thinking of net issuance of new bonds to support new project and what it might mean as credit pressure to the ratings agencies. >> but they would not have that from the rating agencies if they committed to pay back these bonds? >> that depends on how to structure. the way i thought about it is like private activity bonds where the government entity, a comes down to repay debt obligations, it is the private

sector that is responsible for that. >> the other term that you mentioned, availability payments. would you define that? >> availability payments is a payment -- the florida department transportation used it to fund a couple of their projects. the idea is they would make certain annual payments that would make up for an estimated shortfall in revenue and there are ways that could be phased out over time in ways that there are more predictable cash flows. traditional bank loans for infrastructure for commercial banks around the world -- >> it sounds to me like the florida transportation authority would be more like an intermediary paying the bonds

off. >> in that case, it is an obligation. >> are there other examples? i understand totals i'm not sure i get the and the ability of the payment concept. >> i will give you one example of sight of transportation. the long beach courthouse was a project in california built with the idea that the private sector could build it at a lower-cost and operated at a lower cost. but in return for building the courthouse and operating it and being responsible for all of the on going liabilities, shifting the rest to the private sector, the private-sector would be able to get certain guaranteed payments backed by the credit of the city of long beach. it is an obligation for the city

on going, but those payments are less than it would have been this they were to finance it on their own and cover the operating cost. deals outside of the u.s., especially in canada, something getting billed were it would not be built otherwise and having efficiencies -- >> are there examples in canada of someone building a transportation system? i understand the depreciation and i think there is some real merit to that, whether it is a college campus dormitory courthouse or anything else, i don't see how it transitions into a non-toll bridge or expressway of some kind and i guess i about of time. either one of you want to explain that how a non revenue- producing helps this?

>> i used this structure and for the london underground, the metro system in london where there was a decision made by the u.k. government to hand over the capital projects, upgrading the signal, new trains, refurbishing stations to the private sector. in return, government would make these availability payments on a fisk -- on a fixed and a regular basis. so long as the private sector complied with the documents which was to deliver the upgrades in time and refurbish the station and provide an environment for the public which met standards for the contract, then the government would make these availability payments and what the private sector took on was the risk of delivering those projects on time and on budget. if there was a cost overrun,

that was taken by the private sector. if it was not delivered in time, the availability payment would not be made. that is the structure and what it's doing is risk from the probe -- from the public sector to the private sector in partnership with the public sector and the partnership is key to making it work. >> that was an excellent question. >> thank you very much. first, let me ask if i can, as senator kerrey talked about the infrastructure proposal, but can you tell me from an infrastructure standpoint how you treat royal? from my perspective and alaska, have small projects that can compete against these large projects that we will lose every

time. >> some of the lessons we learned, in our proposal, we proposed both loans and grants because we think there are certain projects that clearly have social benefits that make them worth investigating and that is particularly true what we have small populations where collecting tolls may not be feasible. one of the things we discovered -- and another has been a lot of concern in rural areas, we wind up investing a lot of funds in rural freight projects. there's a big need in rural parts of the country to get projects and products to population centers and there is huge economic power to be unlocked thereby investing in freight projects. something like an and the structure bank can have a lot of value in rural areas. speaking of roads, we did a

highway 10 project. not enough people use it, but it's the kind of things infrastructure banks invest in. >> is your style of infrastructure bank or a grant program development -- to use as an example, would that have to compete in this bigger pile with all of these larger projects? my concern is not that you have some for rural, but it gets a very intense -- we need to the cost-benefit analysis, we lose. >> we require that there be a geographic balance and we have a lower dollar threshold for rural areas. i know there is a rural set aside in tiger and we have found it has been very useful and has helped us find terrific projects around the country. it is a decision and you can do

it to make sure rural projects can compete. >> let me ask some general questions -- i come from the background of being a former mayor. we build more roads and in the structure in the last two decades, you name it, we built it. we love building stuff. i love driving to work every day and seeing collins on the road because that tells me something is happening. because of that infrastructure we built, it prepares the city for the great recession we went into. business week rent -- rated the city is one of the most likely cities to recover quickest and forbes rated it as one of the cities with the best opportunities for jobs because of the opportunity for investment. a two-part question -- in the process of private financing and

partnerships, how will you handle -- i will take the city as mayor of. a solid mate -- solid rating, platinum claims -- how do you determined to make sure the fee structures are fair for a client of that nature when you do these large projects? it is good money on your end. how do you manage that? >> i'm being very blunt with you. >> when people came to see me, i loved doing business with them. we were the platinum clients that we wanted the best deal. >> you would want a competitive process. that would insure you were getting them are -- the best market available terms for

project. what i am emphasizing is maybe the bigger project is the user fees or the tolls is not sufficient on a stand-alone basis to make that work. the development of the airport or whatever it needs to be needed level of capital that could make that project work and make it more attractive. that is why i am enthusiastic about a national infrastructure bank as the provider of that level of capital for whatever the project is. at the end of the day, it will be a competitive process and everyone recognizes that. >> the last question -- based on the situation we're facing in the federal government, can you give me two seconds on of we are unable to resolve this in a meaningful way, the debt crisis and how that affects the markets

you have to tap into in order to partner with a government sector who wants to build infrastructure? >> everything is priced of treasury. it would be determined on what the market feels the risk for u.s. treasury and there would be expected to be a small premium for any funding by national infrastructure bank. i hope that answers your question. @y our transportation infrastructure is in desperate need of a facelift and i

appreciate the opportunity to get at some of these issues and i appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us because that part of the problem is a lack of a long-term funding source that we can make available to pay for a lot of these needed transportation infrastructure improvements. there are a couple of questions i want to ask. it wasn't that long ago in front of the budget committee that we had secretary lahood and asked him about thoughts of long term funding plans. at the time, he did not have anything specific in terms of ideas about how the ad is rationed intended to raise revenue to fund our transportation and the structure improvements. has the administration developed any specific ideas or plans on how we might raise the revenue in some of these infrastructure improvements? >> there has been a lot of

debate and discussion within the administration. i would say that it has been caught up in the larger debate with the debt ceiling in dealing with the issues we have there. be ablewe're hopeful to to put police ideas on the table and find some bipartisan solutions. >> so there is not anything specific? >> not that i am going to put on the table today. >> could you give us an assurance that some of those ideas on the table but not ready to be made public, that to generate revenue for transportation and for structure projects would be used exclusively for that? one of the concerns some of us have had was that they were not used more for infrastructure and

got involved in financing other things. some of these things which may include organisms -- mechanisms to finance of the structure projects as opposed to other purposes. >> i want to be careful what prognosticating how the administration and congress will tackle lot of spending and debt issues we have. we understand the desire to have dedicated revenue for transportation and we all agree there are big infrastructure needs in the country. lot to talk about the proposed creation of a national infrastructure bank. i am concerned that type of fund would primarily benefit larger metropolitan areas while ignoring the needs of rural states. in my own state, we have people

who travel on the roadways as part of their daily livelihood's. they would be looking at paying a large amount in toll fees or other dedicated revenue sources so as to help repay the national infrastructure alone. perhaps you could cut -- you could comment on national infrastructure bank and what if anything congress can do to ensure world states are not penalized due to their smaller population size. >> we did have that in mind when we were designing our infrastructure bank and its part of the reason we chose to grants and loans. the ones you reference would have a lot of public benefits but we are not able to generate toll revenue and make payments to cover the cost of the

projects but there is still things we to do. there are projects that would work well in the infrastructure projects. under the tighter grants, we discovered when we look for projects of the country, there were some in south dakota and threat the plains states. there is a lot of agricultural and energy projects and lowering the cost of getting goods to the ports and population centers can have a tremendous economic impact in rural america. i think they can be monetize of the private sector can help work on those. if you see an economic development project, you'll probably want to use grants. you can design and infrastructure bank and a number of ways. you can lower the requirement saw and what the match might be. there are a bunch of different proposals on the table to ensure rural states in rural areas can benefit from an infrastructure bank. >> if either of you would care to comment on that? >> the importance of having air

world set aside so if the proposals are $100 million for a national infrastructure alone, having smaller for that is the way to approach steps each one should be self-sufficient on its own and should be repaid by the funds generated by that project. >> want to look at this from a bird's-eye view. it makes sense to do that and the structure bank for two reasons -- to their shift at risk or access capital. does anybody disagree with those two reasons? is there another reason that i am missing besides access to

capital or risk shifting? it gives us some opportunity to do analysis. they have been doing it for a long time. until recently, the trust fund was adequately funded but this gives us a chance to improve our analytics skills and to a better job of projects election and projects that will get the most for the money. >> i would echo that because the expertise of the private sector, they have been especially helpful in the large, complex projects, bringing in the financial sector to the table. that has been made great benefit --

>> that seems to imply bringing in other people's capital allows us to have a more rigorous analytical process as to how we decide what projects to build. why wouldn't we be doing that with all the money we spend on our infrastructure? >> our traditional fund is traditionally at a lot -- traditionally allocated -- >> and the analytical thing in my state is incredibly intense. we are required hearings and input and all kinds of bid processes. makingt as if the states the decision on this money are doing it by some formula. they are doing it based on priorities and cost-benefit analysis. >> it varies greatly from state to state and some states are not so far ahead and have been used

to getting formula funds and not doing be analytics that would benefit at the state level. it's not to say we aren't doing it, but an infrastructure bank gives us a chance to do it better and running the tigard grant program, we require cost analysis and i would say the state of the art was you've got some who have done a phenomenal job made a good case and some barely knew how to do it all. we have been helping them get to speed but it's an ongoing process. >> if there is something we can do as we begin debate and consider the infrastructure bank that i'm not saying i am supportive of, all of the things you're talking about we should be doing anyway. there is nothing about a analytical process with public

dollars -- what ever we need to be doing, if it is all over the map, maybe we need to make that requirement on all the money. >> the reauthorization proposals we're looking at, we're trying to help states and transit agencies provide a better planning process, but there's a real learning curve going on and some parts of the country are further along. we are taking a harder look at how we spend our dollars. if states and transit agencies are going to improve their game even more, we want to help with that. >> from the government's standpoint, you think it will challenge -- there is only one reason to do that and that is profit, correct? >> correct. >> i have to make a return for

my investors. >> the reason the private sector is interested is not because they want to become part of government but because they see an opportunity to return investors' to the point of profit. as i look at this, the way they make profit is going to be off of the governments that hire them to do this and it is going to be off the taxpayers that access the projects, correct? >> if i may, i would suggest there is an opportunity between the private sector and government side to address and the structure problem and a different way whereby the capitalists spent and deployed and the rest of that spending is shifted in return for a share revenues going forward.

isi don't quarrel that there something to the partnership. the profit cannily come from one of two places. it will either come from payments from the government or the fact that the project is managed well so there's a profit margin or it is going to be revenue-generated from the people using the project, what ever is, what does it is built. it is important to keep that in mind because taxpayers will be paying one way or another. they will either be paying through the money we pay to these companies or they will be paying by tolls. sometimes we get caught up in this new idea which is great, but i don't want us to get away from the bottom line which is the folks are going to pay one way or another. this is not going to be a magic bullet that will take away from

the need for the public to pay for public infrastructure. it's just going to shift how they pay for it in a nontraditional way. >> point made. >> thank you. we care a lot about infrastructure in our state. that was brought home to us when we had our bridge collapse, these things matter, so i want to thank you for focusing on this today. first, i want to thank you for coming to minnesota and speaking to our transportation not alliance. i heard that was a good conversation.

i share some of the concerns of my colleagues about how megaprojects could dominate over smaller projects and how do we ensure the funding of projects of different sizes across the country wealth and showing the return goes to earning its national economy? >> it is very important that you achieve a rural and urban balance of a project like this. you will want to make sure you craft legislation and get the balance right. as we discovered through the tiger program and our railroad assistance program, we have made some big loans and some small ones. you can do both. there are slightly competing visions. it is funding projects of

national significance. it would be very hard for individual states to tap into existing funds but there are great ideas and very local needs. we funded through tiger some very small -- tiger was a very popular part of that and i was wondering -- there are efforts to personally authorize those grants. are there ways tiger can be improved as we look separately authorizing the program? >> just going on our experience and some of the feedback we've gotten around the country and for members of congress, clarifying and sharpening in a consensual way with the goals of the program are, that gets exactly of what you're saying. how much is geographic balance our economic return and how much as achieving social benefits and

how much we want to do in grants or loans. we have run the program for two years and we're starting the third and we're trying to find all the processes and to make them transparent. >> [unintelligible] i believe part of that is we placed a big important on multi- modal transportation, the way we run buses and bike paths around the lakes and it's incredible, the way it all works together. you talk about how the national and the structure bank could fit into streamlining the federal funding silos that currently exist. >> one of the examples i talked about was the denver union

station project, a transportation livability project that has all kinds of different elements to it and it wound up drawing from four different pots at the department of transportation. you could encompass all those different elements. we could structure the best possible deal and hopefully in the process to a lot of streamlining and cut down on the time and money it takes for an applicant to successfully compete. >> otherwise, you run the risk of just putting in new programs. >> we would be merging some of our existing programs and to that infrastructure banks. the goal would be streamlining and making it easier for states and communities who want to come out there and apply. >> thank you very much. i will talk to you about the rail spur later.

>> you have 20 seconds more. >> i was brief, chairman rockefeller. i have another hearing to get too. >> this has been an amazing hearing. it may not appear that way to you because we deal with these things all the time. we have not and i have dealt with wretched transportation problems when there wasn't any thing. laying off 10,000 high workers because we didn't have projects to pay for them. all of the sudden, in you walked to my embarrassment, the

fact we had not called you three or four years ago, talking that the interest of the private sector to participate in this -- it is something that you actively done and that's a large statement. that is an extraordinary statement. this has been very heartening and a bracing hearing. we have a number of bills and i don't see why they cannot be worked out and put together. i know see anything that would prevent us from passing the bill. we have a very large turnout. we don't have that many so that people came in at various

committee meetings, but they really care about what you are talking about and so do i.. let me just ask one final question. having a group inside the department of transportation as opposed to independence and outside the department, the group inside would not have woke up with the people, but i think is fair that having that would open and up to politics. anti-israel rapidly spreading concept that people don't like. on the other hand, if it was done on the outside and there were not a lot of government

people, but people who were doing this wonderfully for the good of the country but also to make sure it was a return, what is my question? sometimes some projects are more important than others. they may be cost-effective. in your projects, you have always finished up on time and on budget, it has been a very effective process. you want to make sure you get the projects that are in the relative priority of the national needs. if you just for a moment discuss -- that may be a vote.

inside the politicization or inside the department and having a nationwide look at what needs to be done next -- people applying to the department of transportation does not necessarily make get political. they could do this same with an independent group outside. i want to know your views -- i have a question for you but i will not get time to ask it so i apologize to you. is that a bit of a scare tactic? does it have truth to it in your judgments? if you are independent, would you be inclined to look at

things that might make a return on investment and be careful about that because you have to be and therefore may become up with projects that are very good because of the project is very good but not because in the order of the national priority list. i think we are dealing with that kind of discipline, simply because of the lack of money even with the participating. >> we had a very genuine debate about this within the administration. there were people on both sides of whether made more sense to of a separate independent entity or within the department transportation. we are not dogmatic about it. a couple of things in our thinking -- can you create that truly independent entity that is somehow completely detached from all political and geographic considerations? it is a question if you look at some of our efforts cause some

have worked out better than others. there was a pragmatic consideration -- we've been running the program since 1999 and we have a number of career experts and financial experts and project delivery experts and experts in all our offices around the country. in terms of technical capacity and getting the program up and running, it made sense to house it is an agency with a lot of expertise on the ground to help do the analysis. it does not mean at some point -- we structured in such a way that we have members of our counsel from other cabinet agencies with the notion that perhaps we would ultimately expand it to other types of the infrastructure and spin it off at some point, but pragmatically speaking, we thought it made sense to start within the department of transportation to get it up and running and we feel we've done a good job as starting projects and not being overtly political. you have to make the judgment

whether we've done right or not in that regard. >> the key thing is the department of determination is very transparent. there is a view that because the project fills -- because it is viewed as part of the national infrastructure perspective for fits into a bucket to say certain projects allocated to rural areas -- this would qualify, so there's no questioning why it was chosen so to take the politics alive knows all the decisions of people can feel it was merit-based is going to be very important because inevitably there will be more projects that are interested in using resources from a national infrastructure bank then there will be funds going to those projects. so it is just a matter of making it transparent and taking politics out of the equation as much as possible. >> i don't think you will be

surprised to hear at the get should be independent because it gives much more credibility to the private sector, by investors who are going to make the actual equity investments in the transaction, to know it is an independent organization that has looked at the loan and determined this is a credit- worthy loans and will grant it a long-term low-interest rate loans. i, as an equity investor, and more attracted to it. it is important that any national infrastructure bank has some sort of congressional oversight in as much as it would have to be reporting to a committee on an annual basis about what sort of loans it has done to establish this idea that it's going across the country. it is also critical to understand this is a supplement to other forms of financing. this is not replacing grants. this is a supplement to.

certain projects will not pass the credit were the test but it would be ones that other departments would do and merrill worth the of a grant. >> -- merrett worthy of a grant. >> i don't really have an opinion. i'm not an expert in this field. if i have an opportunity to remind everyone that i have heard significant comments about the risk of the money associated with this project, but there are other risks involved, particularly the human risk and safety issues associated with these projects and by what ask the senator to ensure whatever type of investment situation we settle upon maintains that the primary interest of the american people and the responsibility of the government is to ensure the people use these projects when they are eventually completed do not suffer the consequences of cost-cutting because profit is threatened.

we of seeing this in great britain with their projects. their cost overruns caused the private entity to cut back on some of the maintenance and the significant safety problem -- any time that occurs, it's a failure of the government in my opinion to not properly protect the people there represent and i would urge you to consider that keep that for most in your mind during the final development of this legislation. >> mr. chairman, i would echo the need for absolute transparency, no matter which vehicle was chosen to house the bank. that is crucial to the success of this. >> you say the office of management and budget should not do this? >> it would have to be involved, but to the outside world, this applies to the actual contracts reached between the entities -- it all has to be out in the open. the problems that have experienced direct country is where people have not had access

to the details and a lot of rumors take place as to what the real deal and the margins are. but if it is transparent and open to the public, i think you can solve a lot of that. i would like to add a footnote to the discussion the center initiated a moment ago. one of the other benefits i see from and for structure bank that has come out of the wholeppp experience is there has been a tremendous amount of information in the delivery systems, on budget, on time, and i have seen the freight intermodal connector projects being interrupted for these funding situations. that will be an additional benefit besides the profit and access to capital that the nation would gain by doing this whole idea. >> i cannot thank you enough.

i'm shocked we did not have this 10 years ago, but i can't help that. you have been introduced to a fundamentally important concept, to additional ways to deal with our national infrastructure. one of my observations about the congress as a whole is that in spite of theological statements, since people back home really care about and the structure -- i'm thinking about when i drive my farm -- drive to my former west virginia 30 years ago as opposed to not of them now and what that means now and that to be paid for by somebody and you magnify that by a large projects and small projects throughout the country. you have made a very, very important contribution in this, our first ever hearing on this subject.

so i thank you and this hearing is adjourned. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> former minnesota governor, tim pawlenty, has dropped out of the race for the white house after finishing a distant third in the iowa republican straw poll yesterday. here are looks at his remarks from "abc's this week." >> governor, a disappointing finish for you. what went wrong? >> it was disappointing. but let me say this is an incredible process. it has been agreed to convey our message of trying to get this country back on track. bringing my record of forward as a to term governor, getting

spending under control, doing health care for the right way and much more, that message did not get the kind of attraction or lift that we needed more help for coming into and out of the straw poll. we need to get some lift to have a pathway ford and that did not happen, so i am announcing this morning on your show that i'm going to be ending my campaign for president. but i am grateful for the people of iowa and the people of this country who i had a chance to make my case to and i really appreciate them. i wish it would have been different, but the pathway for word for me does not really exist so we're going to end the campaign. >> what do you think what wrong? if you are a popular to term governor, you have a lot of organization and some money. why couldn't you sell the dog food here? >> i hope it's better than dog food. there are a lot of factors that go into a successful campaign. we had some success raising money but we needed to continue

that and the poll was a benchmark for that. if we did not do well, we would not have the fuel to keep the car going down the road. there are a lot of choices in the race at what i brought ford was a rational, established, credible, strong record of results, based on governing two terms in a blue state, but the audience was looking for something different. >> the former governor of minnesota finished third in yesterday's straw poll behind michele bachmann and texas representative ron paul. in other presidential race news, a gop candidate and former louisiana governor will hold a press conference at the national press club tomorrow. he is expected to talk about campaign fund-raising efforts by his republican opponent. we'll have that live at o'clock eastern on c-span. at 12:45 to live coverage of president obama as he begins his midwest bus tour, started to

leave minnesota, talking about u.s. jobs and the economy. you can see those remarks here on c-span. >> what's more video of the candidates, see what reporters are saying, and track campaign contributions with c-span's website for campaign 2012. it helps you navigate the political landscape with twitter feed and facebook updates from the candidate's pages. it has links to early and primary caucus states. >> william bromfield, the assistant secretary of state for international law critics and law enforcement affairs ambassador said on thursday that more than 95% of all illicit drugs that enter the u.s. from south america come through central america. in june of this year, he traveled to guatemala with secretary of state clinton to develop a strategy for this issue.

the americas society and council of america is hosted this hour- long event. >> we are delighted that you are here with us instead of on the golf course. that speaks well of all of you end of the speaker that we have today. privileged to head the washington office of the americas society and the council for americas and to be your co- host this morning for what promises to be very important and timely program on security and democracy in central america. to address these issues, we are honored to have with us the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, ambassador william brown field. we're honored to have somebody

hemispheric ambassadors and dignitaries in the audience with us today. as you know, the combined edition of the americas society and council of america's is to unite leaders throughout the western hemisphere for the exchange of ideas and develop policies that build opportunities in the region and promote solutions to ongoing challenges. we believe strongly in this tent anniversary year of the democratic charter that help the democracies are critical to regional well-being and we seek to promote democratic institutions through markets, social inclusion, and the rule of law. we are joined in our program this morning by three other top institutions of study and learning of a hemispheric issues in washington. the center for strategic and international studies represented by the director of their americas program, stephen johnson. the institute for national strategic studies at the national defense university, represented by kerneled jake

hope. and this address for studies are represented by dr. richard dawning. thank you for your collaboration with us this morning as well. ladies and gentleman, central america was once the lens through which washington views of latin america. many of us in this room, including me, were first introduced to the region through the conflicted 1980's and the democratic consolidation of the 1990's. the gains for the region toward dramatic and real. what nobody counted on however was the significant increase in drug-fueled violence that has begun to challenge government and undermine those same democratic gains. for example, central america bonds homicide rate is now more than four times the global average. corruption and impunity are rabbit. the police and security forces in some cases have been penetrated by drug gangs which have also cowed the press and to

self-censorship. it must be said that the united states is not blameless latest scenario. it is primarily our appetite for illegal narcotics and preventing weapons travel across the border to mexico that is quietly feeling the crisis. but the region itself must do more. working together in a new way of some of the most fundamentally interested issues, i including security and raising the revenue to pay for it, even showing themselves willing perhaps to see a bit of sovereignty to each other so as not to lose even more sovereignty to the drug gangs instead. this was part of the message that secretary of state hillary clinton took with her to guatemala in june. her presence at the well was timely and important, showing the seriousness with which the government is taking these issues. much of the credit to this attention and a new comprehensive strategy enunciated during those meetings

must go to our speaker this morning. who was on the trip with the secretary and is charged by her with implementing the broad vision laid out. in my view, bill brown field is a superb person for the job. he's one of the most talented officers there's and his leadership is driving u.s. policy toward the region. prior to taking his duties, he was an ambassador to 3 let's american countries -- chile, venezuela, and columbia. he served in argentina, el salvador, geneva and elsewhere. he has been a deputy assistant secretary of state twice and a member of the secretaries policy planning staff. a native of texas, he actually began his career in the oil patch as a roughneck. it's not the sort of training one expects for the foreign service. then again, he's not your typical foreign service officer. i first met him 20 years ago

when i was a desk officer in the office of central american affairs and he was the inter- american bureau's executive assistant. i have been impressed as he took on some of the more complicated issues on behalf of the united states and dems as successfully. perhaps the oil patch training where you have to roll up your sleeves and find a way just to get the job done was more valuable training that we know. ladies and gentlemen, would you please join me in welcoming ambassador william r. brownfield. [applause] >> dr. farnsworth, trying to make me feel old by referring to those agent, ancient years gone by. ladies and gentlemen, it is quite clear that we are in the

month of august in washington, where many people have a lot of time on their hands. nevertheless, i'm delighted to see all of you here this morning. i hope the time you dedicate to this conversation will not be time poorly spent. dr. farnsworth, many, many thanks with some degree of seriousness, and may i thank as well the council of the americas as the principal host, the national defense university institute for national strategic studies, and the center for atmospheric defense studies, without whose support, ladies and gentlemen and co-sponsor ship, we would not be here. that may or may not be a good thing, depending on how the next hour plays out. ladies and gentlemen, distinguished ambassadors, members of the diplomatic

communities, distinguished members of the media, ladies and gentleman, i would like to begin with a story. a make-believe story. let us call it a fable, if you will. once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived two kingdoms. away, there were two kingdoms. one of the kingdoms was in the south. this is my story, i will say it the way that i wish. they had a rich culture, history, and tradition, but the desire to make money was large. people in the southern mountain kingdom produced several substances that cause harm to people.

nevertheless, some people liked to eat it. to the north is a large kingdom. in that kingdom there are many people, millions perhaps, who have an appetite for this. they are willing to pay money for it and have some degree of sacrifice in order to use this stuff. as it is inevitable in a sad story like this, as you can well imagine, over time, the people that eventually took over the process by which this product was produced and transported, and sold in the northern kingdom, were criminals. what happened, ladies and gentlemen? i would like to offer you my only three visual aids in my presentation this morning, if i

may. maestro, might i have the first met? what happened -- now you can see that i have given away the surprise, but most of you probably had figured out where i was talking about in my story. if you had asked me, ladies and gentlemen, 21 years ago, in 1990, but my calculation would have been in terms of how illicit drugs are moving from south america to north america, i would have said to you that the overwhelming majority is moving through the caribbean. sometimes the western caribbean. sometimes the eastern caribbean. sometimes by sea. sometimes by air. that would be the dominant

route. what happens, as you can well imagine, those in south america, north america, and the caribbean took steps, countermeasures to shut down this route of transportation. how would things look 10 years later? i would suggest that it would have looked more like this. notice several things. the thicker aero has moved to the west and is moving up the eastern pacific. there is a new era of the two are beginning to see in the year 2000. an arrow that symbolically represents the movement of the product across the atlantic to new markets in europe and elsewhere are around the world. please make note that the other arrows have not disappeared.

i am not suggesting that no products moved through central america, but they were no longer the dominant route. i know this as well, because i see the distinguished defense member from the republic of colombia today. the fact that i start their, it is not my assertion that all of the product comes from colombia. but i do not have a matte big enough to show all of the points of origin from which the product is moving. by 2000 we were confronting a different situation. the response was -- in the year 2000, a colombian plan, strongly supported by several other governments, including my own, to address, stop, reduce, and eventually eliminate the flow of the product from columbia.

a number of governments attempted to interrupt the flow of narcotics through the eastern pacific. what do we see, 10 years later? something, ladies and gentlemen, that looks very much like this. as a result of those efforts, you know see the overwhelming majority of the flow of narcotics products through central america, on its way to the north american market. i might add, beginning in 2007, you see it being squeezed about tens. not just the efforts in colombia, but the beginnings of an impact of the effort to put

the squeeze on the route to the north, in mexico under the [unintelligible] initiative. ladies and gentlemen, i will attempt to shut off. here is what i would do. not to show you how skillful i am with maps and power plant, but to give you some understanding of how what we got to where we are today. and where are we, today? let's ask ourselves that question. how real is this threat that is affecting the very real core institutions of central america today. first, we calculate that more than 95% -- let me repeat --

more than 95% of illicit drugs that entered north america from south america have 95% transmitted america. here is that statistics from 2010. in 2010, the homicide rate in honduras was 82 for every 100,000 in the population. el salvador was 65%. to put that in perspective, in the united states, a society not known for its pacifism and lack of violence, our homicide rate is somewhat below 5%. more than 70,000 youths in the

seven countries of central america are overwhelmingly focused on the no. 3 . they are calculated to be members of gangs. i use the word calculated because gangs do not participate in official census or register their members. the calculation is about 70,000. if you play the statistical game in the united states, it would be half of a million gang members on the streets of the united states. ladies and gentlemen, central

america in a very real sense, is a victim. is a victim of geography. will be located between the large continents of south america and north america. it is a victim of the fact that there is a large demand for a particular and the list of products and a large capability to supply that demand in a progress elsewhere in the region. progress in colombia, where thanks to the heroic, the

problem has been squeezed down substantially over the last 11 years. the process that b.c. beginning is mexico with of the mexican government's efforts to retake control of its own community, streets, and borders. central america has done to a very real state as a victim to those factors which it cannot control. it is also a victim of some internal factors which, in fact, it does share responsibility for. more on that, in a moment. several members of the media are

far too brilliant to make this assertion, but others are suggesting that we have discovered the crisis and the problems afflicting central america today. we have not discovered them did is not as though we were oblivious to what was happening. and i suggest to you that this is a natural and inevitable progression. we knew what was happening, we knew what was going to happen. if i can use the metaphor of three houses, side by side on the streets. one erupts in flames and the community, because of resource and budgetary issues, have only one fire truck. where does it go? to the house that is burning. sure enough, sports go over to the third house and it starts to

burn as well. the fire truck goes to the third house. it knows perfectly well that the house in between is eventually going to burn, but you have only got the one fire truck. you are going to focus on the house that is actually burning. and it is burning today, ladies and gentlemen. i suggest that what we will talk about for the remainder of the morning is where to put the fire truck, how many people can be put on that, and how we can get maximum value from that. i have assess this problem, essentially, as a pyramid. at the top are the threats that are concrete and active.

attacking the institutions of central america. one threat are the international drug trafficking organizations. the other threat of the gangs. i am fully aware that there is a great deal of overlap there, but all gangs do not traffic drugs and all trafficking organizations do not use gangs as their employer mentors. -- implementing operators. the next level of my pyramid are the vulnerabilities. what do these organizations use in order to accomplish their business? if we had 20 hours, we could

probably come up with a 500 page book. i will offer six or seven that come to mind. the acceptance of violence as a matter of history over the last 35 years. second, operating in such a way as to allow for the recycling of people that go into the prison system for the offenses and crimes they have committed. builders that provide opportunity as opposed to obstacles from the people that wish to move product along the land route, if you will. fourth, widespread corruption. corruption in institutions, government, and businesses. a system can be week if it is poorly educated and trained.

six is did -- disaffected youth. hundreds of thousands of young men and women that do not see a prosperous future for themselves and are therefore looking for other opportunities. finally, poverty and unemployment, which frequently go hand in hand. and the fact that a community and society does not offer economic opportunities and has to assume that their people are going to try to take care of themselves and their families through some other means. that is the second level of my pyramid. the third and final level, therefore, would be the programs, the activities that the international community,

writ large, government organizations, can try to support, that will reduce and eventually eliminate those vulnerabilities. once they are removed, the bad guys at the top of the pyramid have no basis upon which to operate if they do not have lots of poverty and unemployment, we institutions with a lot of corruption, prison systems that do not work, they will find it far more difficult to operate either as a gang or a trafficking organization. that is the comment. who endorse that concept ladies and gentlemen -- a concept, ladies and gentlemen? the president of the united states, a very wise men, stood with the president of bell

salvador and said -- there is a threat that is affecting central america. it affects all of us. we need a new partnership. he calls it a partnership forces and security in central america. ladies and gentlemen, i endorse, applaud, and then prepared to do everything within my power to follow up on the president's commitment to move this partnership forward. i do so with all other parts of my government, based upon two very central principles. some of them are difficult principles. for example, number one, we have limited resources to work with. on the 27th of june, the secretary of state committed

$290 million from the united states government to support this effort in the course of this year. and $290 million. i have to be honest with you, ladies and gentlemen. to get to this number i had to offer for all of the old money, a bit of new money, and creative thinking about how we can recycle existing funds. unless you think i am missing something, i do not see the likelihood of a vast infusion of new funds coming from that element of the united states government that is constitutionally required to fund click in appropriate the taxpayers' money in the united states. my first principle is that we

need to accept the reality that we have limited resources. the second principle, if you have limited resources, how can you expand that base? build on the number of donors prepared to support this effort? some of them are already very much and heroically engaged in this effort. in no particular order, i would mention the governments of canada, colombia, spain, the european union. this is a core group that has already, along with the government that i represent, committed its resources and its efforts to address this threat. the challenge to principal no. 2 is, how can we build upon that government base? no. 3 -- where we have fewer

resources, sequencing in a different way to expand the impact of the liver and did it resources that we have. complicated stuff because it is let's throw money at it. we have a very different set of reality that we must deal with in this complicated i am undone -- >> forgive me to suggest the opinion, ngo + there for the

solution must be regional. if it becomes complicated, i will explain in a moment aha aware that the government worked with governments be e f to solve the problem with this in time. principal -- principle number of fines. threats emanating from central america and they cannot be

admit these researchers base. and established by the government themselves in this call -- and it is called -- gracis [laughter] it represents all seven governments of central america, including the laws of international community's. i am fairly excited about the next part. two partners that must be partners in this effort.

for geographical reasons, political reasons, and law enforcement reasons, we talk about this as the central american initiative. we should probably talk about it as the mesoamerica and tradition. it cannot be addressed without incorporating the governments of colombia, mexico, into the solution. two countries that were in very different traditions. >> you have to acknowledge that you cannot solve, the world -- a word they wish to use in this

is one note. >> i suppose we are all alone. but we had better be met -- remembered today. there is no silver bullet and had he had an operation like that. it took many years to get into this mess. it will take many years to get out of it. we have learned, over time, starting in the 1970's, that as you address these drug-related threats, you have to have an approach that addresses all elements of the problem. from education and rehabilitation on the one and, demanding all of the way through

each contradiction. on the supply side, you cannot focus on only one element. if you do, criminal organizations have proven to be masters of developing a look around and using your focus and priority as the means by which they facilitate -- they facilitate and improve the road network operations. what is the solution? in various outlines, i will give you my view and what it is.

and here are the five that i suggest constitute this strategy. for want of a better term, safety. certification the children are allowed to play outside the home. obviously, you have a community security problem. how can you get a small society confident in their security to the extent that they feel comfortable playing, living, working in their own living room and community. and i had suggested, to the institutions, the states of central america with trafficking organizations. there must be an element that

attacks them directly. whether it is eliminating or reducing their ability to launder money, there must them -- there must be as the in the say, he is enchanting. institutions are not just law enforcement. they are also corrections, prosecutors, coke's, giving all of the institutions that constitute the world of wall continuing in any country, and the society, a community around the world. in essence each of those institutions was and those

societies that they serve. fourth is strong communities. if moving us into the traditional, economic, and social developments and they support education and health care systems. you do not do well by your friends and families in that community. the fifth, acquired by the syrup

producer and instead seek and the government of central america, off the road institutions and capabilities to work amongst themselves, but also cooperating in the air external sense, along potential donors and government organizations, ngo's, to support the strategy, the policy, the initiative, the effort in central america. we have thought, for the last 11 years or so, but the big initiative that we have been working in this chemistry, of

which i used, compared to 1999, were regarded now to be hot potatoes and models. how to cooperate despite the fact that we are doing with states that have more in concern considering geography, central america is actually more complicated. because we have several different governments, and societies and communities.

amongst themselves, between themselves, and that their neighbors, only -- ,, we make in a way that brings this >> please, surely you have that on record. >> we knowledge when we make mistakes and it would not as prius me if i were to awoke and found you in the bowl, on a fish's head but the one mistake that we do not need to make, we do the need to learn a lesson. we cannot hear in the united

states of america. if you are what is happening in central america today. ladies and gentlemen, the decision is very simple. if we ignore these threats, these problems in central america, today, we will address them on our front porch is tomorrow. with that sobering thought, thank you. doctor, i turn this back over to you. thank you very much. [applause] >> that you.

as promised, those were terrific remarks. thank you for taking the time to make them to us today. the audience can be lively and provocative. thank you for joining us. we have 50 minutes for follow-up questions. microphones are circulating around you. bill, you've laid out a comprehensive strategy, which makes a lot of sense. you touched on the above points. it is a complicated issue. commitment at the highest level. this is a strategy that will take time to implement. the question is, the situation on the ground is pretty bad. there might be a disconnect in terms of getting at the door --

organization and gangs or causing trouble right now, as well as the disconnect in allowing those to take effect. in the interim, who keeps the peace? specifically referring to the idea of regional security forces. there are ideas out there all along those lines. who keeps the peace today? >> in the interest of time, i suppose i board of the audience by going through a point by point program. i want to make it clear to you, and to everyone in the room, we are not starting at 0. we have a program, a bilateral

program between the united states, of salvador, costa rica, nicaragua, panama, and belize. those programs have not disappeared. they give us a starting point. the simplest answer, what are we doing as this takes form, we have a bilateral approach that continues. they are continuing to offer up a zeroth approach of thousands of personnel in central america. as does canada. as does the european union. the president has obviously made -- i would call them more ideas that he has thrown out for

consideration. that is how you develop, improve, and fine tune and approach. my own view, my own belief, is what we will have to do. but challenge within the southern government of central america, as well as the international community that chooses to support them, is to reach common agreement and understanding on the basic elements of the strategy. i would suggest that we are pretty close to being there. in two weeks, most of the major donors will meet. we will try to take this set of objectives, divide it into more or less individual, by size puzzles and how we will sequence

it. you cannot do all of the things, all of the time. in a sense, that is what we will have to address. what is our thinking in terms of how this sequences. but also means within the central american 7 as well. if i can close with a baseball metaphor, do not hold him responsible for not having all of the details of the fall plan.

we hope that it is only nine innings and does not go into extra innings. we are still sorting out the flow of the game. >> let's take one round of questions. >> every time that i have gone to one of these events, we start in the front. and let's go to the back. >> thank you for calling on a young woman. i have three questions. >> please turn up the microphone. is it on? >> hello? >> much better. >> this strategy, is it the same thing as the central american regional security initiative?

i have been working, also, and my second point is, the partnership for growth in el salvador is something that we have been working on for quite a bit. much of that has to do with security and crime. my point is, there is a need in government, in the united states, for a strategy to deal with central america. could we get the greater share of ideas between the groups to address these ideas? cuff your group and other organizations, -- your group and other organizations. >> we need to get other people into the conversation. there was a question right here

on the i/o. already from this gentleman here. >> richard, this committee. you briefly mentioned the problems of the courts and prosecutors. it is one thing to train the police, but when the courts do not work, how do you expect the police to work? added to that, when the government has a demonstrated inability to protect those who have taken a stand to dispense justice, how can you expect the courts to work? how can we deal with these issues? >> this gentleman here, on the i/o, then perhaps we can take more? >> could you identify yourself?

>> william, a retired foreign service officer, u.s. domestic demand. they consider a problem that you have made no though, i would like to know what is being done, what can be done, and what coordination exists to deal with domestic demand. >> very good. >> usually i will try to respond in the order in which the questions came forward. and i actually and wrote them down. first, farsi verses the central american security partnership. there is complete interrelation. what the president was proposing in march of this year, in san salvador, was a collective, multilateral community effort that was the

citizens of security partnership. carsi would be the u.s. component from the security and law enforcement side. by answered your question is, of the citizen security partnership is the large that covers the international community that is attempting to address these issues. carsi is the u.s. law- enforcement rule of law side and the contradiction to that effort. the partnership for growth. you are correct in noting that there is a danger in the proliferation of initiatives and partnership for growth, as i am fully aware that for much of this week members of the

department of congress were and are, in some cases, working this economic business. commercial trade. prosperity. agenda. initiative. there is obvious overlap between that and a citizen security partnership. so brilliantly articulated a few minutes ago, the corps has to be strong and resilience communities. there must be economic growth. there must three jobs. there must be business opportunities. there has to be cross communication between both sets of people. there always will be different communities and institutions in terms of those responsible for

law enforcement, rule of law, and citizens security on the one hand, and those responsible for fiscal policies and budgetary policies on the other. that does not mean that the two groups do not talk to each other. closing this question with something so obvious that it is a cliche, you will not have security if you do not have economic growth. you will not have economic growth without security. we have learned that lesson over the last 2000 to 3000 years. next, a very valid point about the difference between training police, which is almost a numerical issue -- how many candidates can you run through a more sophisticated course, to get their skill level to the

point where they can do their job well, at which is something we have got much better at, we, the international community, over the last 20 years, or the rule of law separating prosecutors in court? on that front we have learned, something we have been attempting to learn for the last 25 to 30 years, in some ways prosecutors in accordance are more complicated in the sense that there is kind of a common global standard by which police are supposed to operate. judicial systems and legal systems are inherently different. for example, we have a common- law system in the united states of america that has certain traditions in terms of how our laws, courts, prosecutions are

done. six of the seven have a co-based system. it is kind of difficult to get it all into one category. by way of response, i will offer my own observations about doing this in el salvador when i was a very, very young man between 1981 and 1983. it is easier, actually, to work with prosecutors that it is to work with judges and courts. when you move in to the judicial front, you are moving into a nation's sovereign territory. there is just an instinctive resistance to any other governmental institutions. not just the u.s.. coming in, essentially trying to tell them how to run the

judicial system. prosecutors are easier by and that there are skills and talents that should be applicable anywhere. the process by which an individual attempts to convince adjudication, call them judge, jury, fred, it does not matter. this individual has committed this crime and should be sanctioned, therefore. we have learned, over the last 30 years, that there are certain common themes or threads that you can bring to bear on prosecutors almost anywhere. you are correct in your underlying assumption. if that element of the will love all is not also addressed, this initiative will not succeed. finally, u.s. demand. you can wrap up this question as well as you like, as you know.

1955, 1965, the fundamentals of the question have not changed. the simple answer is, we have not yet solved the problem of demand in the united states of america. i do not want to over-simplify the notion. i would suggest that demand in the united states for cocaine has probably drop as much as 50% over the last 10 years. cocaine production has not dropped. it has gone to other markets. mostly in europe. increasingly in south america, latin america. demand is elastic, in terms of how much or how little, and there is cooperation between elements of the federal.

clean -- please remember, state, municipal, and local governments will almost always give you a facetious answer. in some places it works, i and others it does not. i am not the right one to give you a detailed answer. i am the assistant secretary of international narcotics enforcement affairs. sometimes referred to as the drug czar. that position which, for the last 40 years, has had the responsibility of linking all of these elements together into a common strategy and approach. i am a great admirer of the director of the national drug control policy.

having most recently served as the chief of police in seattle, he brings to this job a commitment that demand has to be an essential and perhaps the most important element to the long-term solution. if you attack the problem that way, i am optimistic that you will eventually see results. >> a terrific note to end on. we are at a time. i know that we have many more questions, but regardless. i would like to thank the center for strategic and international studies. i would particularly ask you to join me in thanking the doctor for his outstanding comments this morning. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> as an aspiring journalist, i am already preparing myself for my very small salary. >> you have to put aside your bias. >> the reason that people love fox news and movies, it is an experience. >> from the media conference at george mason university, aspiring journalists on where they get their news and information. tonight, on "q&a." >> see what political reporters are saying and track the latest contributions with at the c- span website for campaign 2012. easy to use. facebook updates from the

campaign and the latest polling data. c-span.org/campaign2012. >> severe drought in africa is threatening more than 12 million people with starvation and secretary of state hillary clinton spoke when at the food policy research institute about the ongoing international humanitarian response efforts. the secretary announced that the u.s. was providing another $17 million to the region, bringing total u.s. assistance to $580 million for this year. this is just over half of an hour. [laughter]

>> good morning, everyone. thank you for coming. did is my honor and pleasure to welcome the secretary of state, hillary rodham clinton. what brings her here is the grave and urgent concern of the humanitarian crisis on the horn of africa. more importantly, short-term responses and long-term solutions. our mission is to research successful ways to alleviate

hunger and malnutrition and reduce poverty worldwide. we have studied agriculture, production, drought, and east africa. we are deeply concerned about the slow transmission of research into policy action on a local, national, and international scale. the information coming from there is nothing short of shocking. in ethiopia [unintelligible] 29,000 children, just two to three months ago. it is projected that crop

yields will continue to be week later this year. food prices harm the region. the price of eggs rose by more than 125%. during the first half of 2011 alone, six to seven months, food prices went up. then there is the political conflict in somalia. a crisis was born. the best food emergencies were possible. what was missing, however, was

action and political will. putting this to use, strategic plans needed to be developed with notifications systems, such as early-warning systems. triggering specific actions to be carried out by specific organizations. so, what must be done? in the short term, the must scale contributions to humanitarian efforts. much of this money goes for needed food, water, and medical aid. it should also be used to protect your remaining assets.

protection must focus on one of the groups. in the medium term, policy makers and national governments have refrained from imposing new ones. these restrictions lead to tighter markets. in addition, efforts to establish strategic regional reserve for humanitarian purposes must be considered. the relief on this reserve in emergency has rates to ensure that the food actually reaches the pork. poor.

small farmers and herder's need to build up their resistance. the african government must meet their pledges to allocate 10% of the national budget. under the comprehensive act, we also need access to a wide range of risk management tools, including drug resistant crop varieties and weather-based insurance that protects against floods and aftershocks. within the group for international agricultural research, it can provide the evidence leading to a guide for programs and policies in africa.

we need a dedicated, engaged policy makers. with that, i turn things over to the secretary of state, hillary rodham clinton, whose efforts require no formal introduction. madam secretary, the floor is yours. >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you so much, director general. for not only those remarks, but for the work that is done every day here at this premier organization designed to come forward with sustainable solutions for ending hunger and poverty. i want to thank the international food policy research institute for hosting me today and for the leadership

that you show in a key area of global development. helping government's design and implement successful policies for reducing hunger and under- nutrition. this is anthis is an issue on yd every day. it is now on the minds of other people because of the crisis raging in the horn of africa. it is a severe food crisis. a severe drought has put more than 12 million people in danger of starvation. it is also a refugee crisis. at this point, hundreds of thousands of people have left their homes in search of food and safety. some are walking more than 100 miles with their children in their arms to reach refugee camps that are so overcrowded

that thousands wait outside of the fences and more arrive every minute, many close to death. what is happening in the horn of africa is the most severe humanitarian emergency in the world today. it is the worst that east africa has seen in several decades. the united states and our partners in the region including the world food program, the high commissioner for refugees, unicef, ngo's, and donor governments are racing to save as many lives as possible. >> the early warning system monitors droughts and

situations. it alerts aid groups and governments when crises are coming. this network along with the analysis from the u.n. organizations enabled us to begin pre-positioning food in key locations throughout the region starting last year. a great deal more must be done. it must be done fast. famine conditions in somalia are likely to get worse before they level off. while we hurry to deliver a life-saving assistance, we must also maintain our focus on the future by continuing to invest in long-term security in countries susceptible to drought and food shortages. it is this connection between food emergencies and food security that i would like to speak to today. our goal is not only to help the region come through this crisis.

working with organizations like ifpri, we want to do all we can to prevent it from happening again. food security is the key. let me briefly summarize our emergency response to date. the united states is the largest single country contributor of food and humanitarian assistance to the horn of africa. on monday, president obama announced that in light of the current crisis, we're making available an additional $105 million in emergency funding. today i am announcing another $17 million on top of that with $12 million designed specifically for helping the people of somalia. that brings the total u.s. humanitarian assistance to the region to more than $580 million this year.

we're reaching more than 4.6 million people with this aid. it helped to pay for food distribution, therapeutic feeding for those who are severely malnourished, clean water, health care, sanitation, and other services for those in need. let me say how grateful i am to the aid workers delivering this assistance swiftly and effectively in extremely difficult and often dangerous circumstances. over the course of the crisis, u.s. officials have made multiple trips to the region. just this last weekend, a delegation led by dr. joe biden -- jill biden and others went to kenya.

they saw the best and worst of what is happening on the ground. they visited the king in agricultural research institute -- kenyan of agricultural research institute. i had a chance to visit it on my trip to the years ago. i was very impressed by the work i saw there by scientists who are cultivating crops that can thrive in drought and are enriched with the essential nutrients. these breakthroughs have already saved lives and will save many more in the future. the delegation also visited the refugee complex in eastern kenya. even before this emergency, it was the largest refugee camp in the world. some people have been living there for 20 years now. it was originally built for 90,000 people. 20 years later, more than 420,000 live there.

that includes thousands of third-generation residents. the current refugee crisis is taking place against the backdrop of a prolonged refugee crisis. the united nations is working as fast as it can to build new facilities. but well over 1000 people ride every day. the vast majority of those arriving are somalians because somalia is the epicenter of this emergency. unlike ethiopia and kenya, somalia has no effective national governance. the terrorist group has prevented humanitarian assistance from coming in. it has killed and threatened a workers -- aid workers.

there are also credible reports that they are preventing desperate somalis from leaving the country under its control. nevertheless, thousands are managing to flee to the north or leave the country altogether. they are poring over the borders into ethiopia, kenya, and djibouti. that severely strains the capacity of those local communities and countries. the united states is now providing $92 million in emergency humanitarian assistance inside somalia. to facilitate aid in the central and southern region, we have issued new guidelines about the use of u.s. funds to help aid groups try to save more lives. a great deal depends on whether al-shabab is willing to let

international assistance be delivered. i urge them to heed the call of the international community and the cries of their own people and allow the secure delivery of relief to all of those afflicted. the united states will continue to work with somalis and the international community to bring the hope of peace and stability to somalia. we joined all somalis in hoping that there will be a future with a functioning government that can protect the somali people against famine and help to build a sustainable agricultural sector. these are the steps we're taking to address the immediate crisis. we must not forget that we have seen crises like this before. first comes a severe drought, in the crops fail, livestock

perish, food prices soar, thousands of people die from starvation, most of them children, and thousands more pick up and move. every few decades, the cycle repeats. it would be easy to blame at all on forces beyond our control -- blame it all on forces beyond our control. but this cycle is not inevitable. food shortages may be triggered by drought but they are not caused by drought. they're caused by weak or non existent -- non-existent agricultural systems that fail to produce and marketing of food during good times and break down completely in bad times. a hunger crisis is not solely an act of god. it is a complex problem of infrastructure, governance, markets, and education. these are things that we can shape and strengthen. this is a problem that we can

solve if we have the will and put to work the expertise that organizations like ifpri possess. we have the resources and the will to make a chronic food shortages in memory for the millions worldwide renown vulnerable. some might say this is a conversation for another time and that we should worry about preventing food crises only after this one has passed. i respectfully disagree. right now when the effects of food security are the most extreme, we must rededicate ourselves to breaking the cycle of food shortages, suffering, and dislocation that we see playing now once again in the horn of africa. we must support countries working to achieve through security. we owe it to the people whose lives we're trying to save and

we owe it to the donors and taxpayers to make our work possible. investing now decreases the chances that americans or others will be called upon in the future to save -- face these same challenges tenor 20 years from now. i argue we will be investing in our own security by supporting economic stability and growth worldwide. for the past two and a half years, have traveled the world from kenya to italy talking to everyone from farmers and agricultural scientists to aid workers and heads of state about the the future, the u.s. food security initiative and a centerpiece of the obama administration's foreign policy. the united states has pledged $ 3.5 billion to support rigorously developed plans to fortify the entire agricultural chain of our partner countries

from the fields and grazing areas where the crops are grown and the livestock are raised to the markets where the farmers sell their wares, to the tables where people receive the nutrition they need to stay healthy. to name just a few of the things we're doing through our feed the future initiative, we are helping farmers gain access to fertilizers and improved seed. we're setting up extension services to teach methods of conservation agriculture. we are supporting the creation of cooperatives so that farmers can gain more purchasing power and a greater political voice. we are spreading the tools for reducing post-harvest losses so that after months of hard work and good harvests farmers do not lose 60% of their crops and the nutrition and income that they offer because of inadequate or poor storage.

we have also helped to create a global partnership called 1000 days to improve nutrition during the critical time from the start of pregnancy through a child's second birthday. nutritional deficits during these 1000 days lead to permanent stunting, reduced , to function, and a greater susceptibility to disease that cannot be reversed by improved nutrition later in life. two of our partner countries are ethiopia and kenya. even amid this crisis, they have proved that progress is possible. the last time a drop of this magnitude struck ethiopia in 2002 and 2003, more than 13 million people faced starvation. today, fewer than 5 million do. that is still an unacceptably large number, but it is also an

astonishing improvement in the short amount of time. it is evidence that investment into security can pay off powerfully. in 2005, the ethiopian government established the safety net program with support from international donors, including the united states. it helps small farmers diversify their crops, create local markets, better manage water resources, and increase the dodgers and content of their own diets and those of their children. more than 7.6 million farmers and herders have not been helped by this program. their people not among those in need of emergency aid today. in kenya as well, people who were greatly affected by the last severe drought are now safe and even thriving. paul from usaid shared a story

with me about a woman he met last month from the northern part of kenya. it has been hardest hit by the current drought. she lives on a communal farm made up of hertders whose livestock die during the last drop. today, they raise vegetables and fruits. her crop is so abundant that she is not only selling them locally but also exporting them to the middle east. in both ethiopia and kenya, the united states is helping to carry out comprehensive strategies designed by the countries themselves. the suit their distinct needs and strengths. in ethiopia, a top priority is strengthening the value chain to help small farmers sell their products at local and regional

markets. in kenya, supporting herders is a leading concern. we're working to connect them to markets, improve animal health and services, and lobby for better livestock trade policies. both governments have developed investment plans. both have committed to invest at least 10% of their national budget on agriculture. kenya is nearly there. ethiopia has exceeded that goal. in both countries, we're paying special attention to gender to insure that the women who do a significant amount of the planting, harvesting, selling, and cooking are effectively supported. we are also paying attention to the environmental impact of our programs to protect the water and land for future generations and help farmers in doubt to the effects of climate change. our goals are ambitious.

in the next five years, the united states aims to help more than half a million people in ethiopia permanently escape poverty and hunger. more than 430,000 children benefit from improved nutrition. in kenya, we aim to raise incomes and nutrition for 800,000 people. there are still millions of people in these countries and throughout the world who need emergency help. they need it now. we're trying as hard as we can to reach them. it is important to recognize that there must be a concerted effort by governments and people to help themselves. there's no question that ethiopia and kenya are moving in the right direction. we must help them to continue that progress. that is a job for all of us. the primary responsibility naturalize with government and

the people of countries like ethiopia and kenya. i have reached out the leaders of these countries. they know the kind of changes they still need to make. they need to move towards free trade in grain imports and exports. they need to improve credit and land-use policies to support farmers. they need to ensure that public grain reserves are available when shortages loom. they need to welcome new technology. these can be challenging policies to get right, but they are essential for insuring wise stewardship of the land and sustainable economic opportunities for the people. the countries that pledged their support for food security at the g-8 summit in 2009 must make good on their commitments. i understand the difficult

budget times we're living through. we have to rededicate ourselves to doing development differently, as we said we would. new donor countries have got involved in the -- to end the current emergency. i urge them to join with us to create lasting food security. we have established an innovative program at the world bank call the global agricultural and food security program. by pooling resources and efforts, we can reach more farmers and villages and will apply our impact. this fund shares many characteristics of our own feed the future initiative. in includes a strong voice for civil society and rigorous systems for monitoring and evaluating results to make sure

contributions are making a real difference in people's lives. with support from seven donors, australia, canada, ireland, the republic of korea, spain, the united states, and the bill and melinda gates foundation, the fund has already awarded nearly $500 million to countries including a grant to ethiopia. we're also looking to the private sector to contribute, especially in coming up with innovative ideas for reducing hunger and food insecurity. we're working with a tech company on the ground in africa to text life-saving information to people across the region so that they know where relief can be found nearby. we are supporting a partnership among general mills, carl bildt, and a dutch company who are

assisting through processors in kenya and other countries to improve their ability to produce high-quality and safe food. this will benefit local consumers and. . local producers to compete in regional markets. -- this will benefit local consumers and local producers to compete in regional markets. africa must trade barriers so that african people can trade with each other. sub-saharan africa has more trade various -- barriers and are more limited in trade opportunities than any area in the world. we need the contributions of caring individuals around the world. we have seen this in previous crises from the indian ocean tsunami in 2004 to the earthquake in haiti. individual donations to have a tremendous impact. just a few dollars can save lives.

the rogue organizations operating in the horn of africa right now need all the support we can offer. -- the heroic organizations operating in the one of africa right now need all the support we can offer. just to visit usaid.gov. another way to help us through mobile giving. another effort is the united nations world food program. you can give $10 by texting aid to 27722. humanitarian assistance is in the american dna. it is one of our core values. the american people have shown that we will give to help people in dire circumstances. we are inspired to see the outpouring that has already begun.

we hope it will continue and grow. the state department is working with the american refugee committee and a design firm on the neighbors campaign to engage the somali diaspora in the united states and around the world to raise awareness and funds for the relief effort. we're working with the white house to mobilize churches, mosques, and synagogues to support the effort. we must remember that time is not on our side. every minute, more people, mostly women and children, are dying. they are becoming sick. they are fleeing their homes. we must respond. we need to rise to the level of this emergency by acting smarter and faster than we have before to achieve short-term relief and long term progress.

think of what it would mean if we succeed. millions of people would be saved from this current calamity. millions more would no longer , alwaysuous existence as prepared to pick up and move to find food if drought, conflict, or other crises occur. parents would no longer have to endure the agony of losing their children when the food runs out. food aid from countries like the united states would be needed much less frequently because we're now supporting agricultural self-sufficiency. this could be a transformational shift for the people of our partner countries. it would be a new era of security, stability, health, and economic opportunity, peace, and stability. it would signal a new chapter in the world's relationship with

the people of these countries. they would become able to care for their families themselves. they will become real models and examples of prosperity and stability. they will become partners to do even more to help people live up to their own god-given potential. if we can achieve that future, we will have done something truly remarkable. just as the green revolution made such a difference, what we're trying to do now is get back to what works best. focus on the basics. focus on the work that is done by ifpri. i had a chance to meet the directors. they're working on how to enhance the nutritional substance with micro-nutrients. they're working on how to provide better feeds for crops, on how to help herders.

all of this is in the tradition of the green revolution which made such a difference. then the world moved away thinking that our work was done. in fact, it was not. we got very good and delivering emergency assistance -- we got very good at delivering emergency assistance, but we lost our way. we have to do both. that way we can see progress in tangible ways. history will record that as being a significant accomplishment for all, including those of you in this room who played her part. we have a lot of work ahead of us. i came today to make sure that

in my own country and beyond people know we have a crisis and we must respond. we must try to save those lives being lost in those brutal marches to try to get to safety. we must support the refugee camps and do everything we can to provide immediate help that is needed. let's not just do that. opportunity to make very clear what more we need to do together to try to avoid this happening again. i could think of no better place to come to issue that challenge than to the international food policy research institute. thank you all very much. [applause]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> the vermont senator discusses the role and mission of the super committee. he will also talk about the budget and deficit issues, job creation, and campaign 2012. that is today at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> as an aspiring journalist, i

am already preparing myself for the very small salary and that i will be starting out with. >> you have to be disciplined enough to put aside your bias and report the truth. >> people love fox news and movies because it is an experience. >> from the washington journalism and media conference, aspiring high school journalists on ethics, the role of opinion in commentary, and where they get their news and information. that is tonight on a "q&a." >> readers in the digital media field discuss how consumers and brands are connecting through platforms. this discussion ranges from cloud computing to regulating the use of social media. this is about an hour-and-a- half.

>> we want lots of questions and participation. we're excited to chat about the things we see from a consumer perspective, what is happening in the marketplace, and how things are evolving. starting at the very end, please meet christine cook. she is the senior vice president of advertising for "the daily." it was put into the markets february 2. she has had many senior sales marketing roles in digital. we are delighted to have you here today. [applause]

clap, clap. right next to her is anthony risicato. he has been a digital marketers since digital marking -- marketing began. i have known him for quite some time. he has held many different roles in a number of great companies including double click. we're delighted to have you as well today. [applause] next to anthony is michael kelley, the chief marketing executive of adgenesis. it is a transformative advertising business focusing on a paradigm shift in how advertising is delivered to consumers. michael has had a great career with pwc.

he was the chief marketing officer of pwc and worked with some of the biggest brands in the world. he was also very instrumental in launching hulul. welcome. [applause] last but certainly not least is david steward. i have known david for a very long time. we were colleagues many years ago. he has built many consumer brands working on things like "people" magazine and "tv guide." he has an art business now. christine is going to be our

a.v. person today as well as one of the panelists. hopefully you can see that. >> i am going to stand up. it is great to see you all here today. thank you for being inside on what is probably one of the most beautiful days of the summer. i hail from an interesting intersection, the intersection of art and the internet. those words have been pretty separate for a long time. the company is 20 x 200. our premise is that art does not have to be expensive to be good. that does not mean that there is not expensive art that is good because we all know there is, but they are not mutually exclusive. we think there are a lot of

people out there that love art but are not able to find work that they really like. part of the problem is the wonderful, warm reception most of the get -- most of us get when we go to a gallery. [laughter] the woman not only starts in that position, she stays in that position. the gallery world is designed to intimidate more than it is to really bring people to an understanding and appreciation of art. our founder set out to try to fix that. this is the baggage. a lot of us have baggage around art because of the way we have been treated in the past.

we often think of art as the high holies. we do not understand it. we're told it is important, but we are not supposed to get it ourselves. she opened a gallery in 2003. the gallery business is an interesting business. we work really hard at making people welcome at the gallery and educating them about the work that we sell. the reach of a physical gallery is quite limited. what we do is remove from the world of the gallery -- is move from the world of the gallery to bringing together of the world of artists and the world of consumers through the internet. we use the power of the internet to amass large audiences of consumers and connect them to large numbers of

artists. this is a great photo. one thing that happens when you have a lot of content or choices is it becomes overwhelming. it is very hard to pick what you want. isding art that you like difficult because you are seeing a lot of bad things or finding a lot of what you do not like. if you look at a lot of it, after a while it all kind of looks the same. some people default to the familiar. [laughter] there have probably been 1 million copies of the poker

poster sold. i do not think everybody that bought this really wanted it. if they had been able to find better examples, they would have bought them. atch.ave to find your mou what do we do to turn customers into connoisseurs? if your entry point is an amazing oil painting, there are only a few people who will be able to participate. that is the hard part. we start with what we call the gateway drug to the art world. for those of you who do not recognize it, that is a marijuana leaf. [laughter] we work with an amazing array of

artists from emerging artists to very established conceptual artists. we start each addition at a $20 price point. that is why we call it the gateway drug of the art world. we offer them in a broad away -- array of sizes. unlike a lot of sites that deal in art, we give people entry points that they are familiar with. thank you. were you in a.v. club in high school? we try to bring these audiences of artists and collectors together. one example of that is being

able to browse by color. a lot of people that like ouart buy it based on the court. that is heresy for a lot of people, but there is a number of people who find it helpful. we do give them the ability to buy by color. the other piece of the puzzle is that there are different kinds of shopping. sometimes you know exactly what you want. i have run out of toothpaste. i want to get another 6 ounce tube of crest ultra-whitening. most people do not know exactly what they want in a category like art.

it is a hard thing to search for. we find it important to build a relationship with our customers and create an experience rather than just a transaction. one way we do that is by having a newsletter. we have over 50,000 newsletter subscribers. each newsletter helps people understand a bit more about the artists and the work. people are getting educated so they develop an appreciation for the work and the person creating the work. we sell a fair amount of works by this artist. it comes with a certificate of authenticity and an artist's statement. this is a great designer and

artist. some of you may have seen a lithograph of this at union square cafe. that is a gorgeous, large piece of work. we worked with paula and were able to offer this starting at $50 so that people could experience her work in their own home even though she would otherwise be beyond their reach. this we all know. happy customers are great marketing. when we get wonderful comments from our customers -- here is one that we got. that makes us feel really good. i do not know how it makes them feel.

for us, it is really wonderful. we all know one of the great ways to build the business is by having really happy customers. this is basically how we feel. live with art. it is good for you. [applause] >> i want to go around fast. what is the trend right now really getting your attention? >> free music services and depending apple clouds storage, the whole concept of cloud-based computing for media you have created or bought is really

getting my attention right now. >> does everyone know what a cloud is? icloud launched recently. it allows you to store everything so that you can access it from different devices instead of having to be tethered to a computer. >> with apple computers, there is an option to store your pictures from the data files, videos -- to store your pictures, data files, videos so that you can log in with a url from other locations and have access to your specific information. you are logging into a website to access information in this particular to you.

google and g-mail that started as more personal usage functionality, i hear that more businesses are using google docs. it allows people in multiple locations to access those without having them stored. storage is reduced for the company. google is paying to run the computers storing the information. with that baseline, you overlay entertainment services like music or kindle. you can put a kindle app on your iphone and it will synch. it is using that same type of underlying functionality for

entertainment. the presence of entertainment through the cloud is really interesting. >> are you storing your music on the cloud? >> i have about 4000 vinyls and probably 2000 cd's. i have not bought anything visible in probably the last five years. i buy a few things from time to time via itunes. i have a subscription service that is about $10 a month. they have an amazing catalog of music. i access it via my phone, ipad. i haven't hooked up to my sound system. i can be traveling, turn it on, and have all of my music with me.

>> i think our virtual lives are a mess. [laughter] i have 4000 photos from the last year on my iphone. i have music on six different devices. ic two fundamental trends. one is education centers will literally start popping up for people like me who have no idea what they are talking about. i think i have no time. i probably could get more time if i had it organized. i said to myself that we need technology schools like cooking schools. we need things to help people learn. i think the most horrible interfaces' in the world right now created by the very brands

we just talked about. steve jobs is a unique blend of chromosomes that can really get in touch with how the real person uses technology. hollywood is in trouble economically. 3-d movies are not doing well right now. many households make less than $54,000 a year. they cannot afford 3-d. it would be interesting to bring it back if sony teamed up with google or disney or a content company that knows how to entertain and use navigation. i cannot find half of the things i hear about and i am in the

business. i think those are the trends we will see. better experience and teaching people how to do it. >> we all touched on this a little bit. i do work in the video space. this may be a little self- serving. the concept of how we are consuming content, i am a voracious consumer of media. how we are all watching and consuming has changed without us noticing how quickly that has happened. i have not bought a newspaper in probably three years. i read probably five newspapers a day. i have not watched a television ad live in probably two or three years, but i know every marketing campaign that is happening because i am consuming

the content in different places. the future is how we are consuming the content and how we are being affected by the messaging and marketing. i may be watching television on my ipad or on a billboard. that is the fascinating piece, the social fabric of how we consume media is changing. we're not hold around our -- huddled around our tv's as family and friends anymore. i am hoping it is a positive thing. the next 10 years, that is a sea change that i have no way of predicting what it will look like. >> i did a fair amount of research at hearst when we

launched a mobile product that allows you to track the things that matter to you with high content -- high-quality content sources. it was like an addiction. we're never unplugged. on a bus, at the gymnasium, we are checking all of these things. i want to ask the audience because i am curious. what is the first thing you do in the morning when you wake up? brush your teeth and get freshened up? check your e-mail before brushing your teeth? facebook profile? how about saying good morning to the one you love next to you? [laughter] one, two.

how many of you have a mobile phone and a land line? you do? [laughter] >> i really wanted to have both, but the land line was a battery- operated device. my whole rationale for having got went away because if the power went out, it would not be working. i just have a cell phone now. >>, a battery-operated device is do you have on your right now -- how many battery-operated devices do you have on you right now? how many of you subscribe to newspapers? local or national?

both. my last question, how many of you have facebook profiles? how many of you go on to facebook once a week? once a day? twice a day? how many of you have not bought something online? everybody has. the next thing i want to talk about is facebook and social media in general. a person feel like social media gets a bad rap. it is not just about sending pictures and tweets. it is also about connecting with business professionals

through linkedin and things like that. how will our brands and consumers using social media -- how are the brands and consumers using social media in interesting ways? >> i think there are a lot of tool sets that have come into play. they are making social and media more accessible. pulse news is one that i use. it pulls in from social media to make sense of what journalists and others that i respect are saying.

it puts it together in one place that is easy. any kind of news i am interested in, all of these thieves -- feeds are coming in from twitter and presenting its in an interesting way. whenever i am interested in is presented in an interesting way. this is a whole another aspect of social media. it is the twitter feed your accustomed to but in a way i was accustomed to with a magazine.

with better filtration and tools, it is pretty fantastic. tools allow us to filter out and bring the best of journalism and respected sources or entertainment together that is available. >> facebook has 750 million users. it was a country, it would be the third largest country in the world. that is pretty amazing. 50% of the user's going to facebook every day. there are over 700 billion minutes spent on facebook every month. that kind of boggles my mind. >> it would be a very noisy country.

[laughter] >> any other thoughts about facebook? >> i have been in the digital side of business since 1995. i had a company i was running a couple of years ago. one of the developers came up to me and was kind of nervous. he said he did not understand how i was not on facebook. i said i was on facebook. he said he could not find me. i had made my facebook profile private. that concept was so alien to this person who was 20 years to under the knee. -- that concept was so alien to this person who was 20 years

younger than me. i did not want everyone who meets me to have my phone number. i use facebook with a weight -- as a way to interact with people i want to interact with. i am the last of that. that does not exist for the people coming in. >> linkedin is a great tool for recruiting and connecting. i tried to restrict facebook from colleagues and business associates. i totally agree with you. >> we really like using facebook x 200 as a way to get responses from customers. we do quizzes and contests from time to time.

it is an easy way to get interactive with your customers. >> i have noticed a broad spectrum of behavior on facebook. i have a large group of friends and family members who use it on a regular basis. i have some that are really afraid to share information. then i have my nephew who is sharing everything about his life every hour of the day, every thought that passes through his mind. it scares me a little bit. i have hired many people over the years. employers looked at your facebook profile and what you are sharing as part of the process. how do we deal with this? how do we start to educate people on what to do with social media? >> i became a prolific social .etworker in my 40's

we were well into adulthood and learned what appropriate behavior was. we learned what liablble and bullying were. we face a dire fiscal situation in this country. we have a new wave of technology. when it started, it provided surpluses to our country. how do we leverage what is happening for that? i have my own children and i watch what they post. i am friends with them. i follow them. they follow me. we have conversations about what they post. we have conversations about appropriate behavior and apologizing to people you may

have offended. this is happening in my household. my teen son and i wrote our congressman about creating a family protection act to license social networking so that we teach people how to become an >> my son is currently 16. he got a driver's license were taken only drive with his parents. when you are twelver 13, you can go one networks, but only if parents approve what you are posting. they have to help them understand what is appropriate behavior as we do from driving, to shopping, to spending, to communicating. we have to think about what can this mean to help protect our

people as well, so that free speech can proliferate. people are not afraid to post. old laws are being broken in new ways, and we have to think about how we allow freedom of speech and our constitutional right to happiness to proliferate while we protect our people, but also create a new revenue stream. just like the department of motor vehicles became a very big revenue stream for every state in this country, we have a platform that we could also leverage to start insuring that we are teaching our people, we are certifying them, we are penalizing them as we do with driving, and we are taking away their licenses if they break certain laws like herman children are harming anyone else. -- like harming children or harming anyone else. the popular quarters are those that tend to control the beltway

and don't like to see this proliferation. 750 million people are now on facebook alone, and we have the opportunity to think about, where is this going to take our great democracy? we have seen democracy is being tested, and ones that are not democracies be tested by turning on and off switches and things. that is an interesting thing to observe and bring back. >> i think a lot of consumers do not even realize how often facebook changes its policies, which has been a big issue. many of you may not know this, but if you don't watch the privacy policies on facebook, they have rights to do things like use your pictures that you post in advertising across facebook to friends and other people who demographically look like you. other ball people, exactly. -- bald people.

>> clutter owns 100% of your image when you post. -- twitter owns 100% of your image. i am talking about the financial aspect, the consumer aspect. >> any other thoughts on facebook? are you sure? >> only that facebook has a big, new competitor that has just entered the marketplace, so it will be interesting to see with google's approach into social networking, they are moving forward with the ability to do what you have found it easy to segment out your profile and to associate only with people that you want to associate with. that seems to be the big thrust behind their product differentiator. while it might not have the elegance of an apple product

yet, but they seem to do really well with technology underpinnings. it will be interesting to see what happens a year from now, where facebook stands, if googles attempt takes off. >> i think what the new offering from google really does is reflect much more the way we live, which is, there are certain things we talk about with people in office. other things we talk about with our families and friends. one of the tricks with facebook is that we are talking to everybody the same way. that just does not really mirror the way because we behave as people. i think that is a point of exposure for facebook comic-con and one that, to your point,

michael, people say, i had an amazing night last night and show all the pictures from the party, and two days later they are interviewing for jobs and someone checks out their facebook profile -- i don't think so. >> one of my favorite was a college kid who posted that he met a girl at a bar and his mom hit the like button. >> there is some interesting technology i have seen. it has to do with approval. i just heard about this on thursday a lunch. you have to approve to have it posted. >> a lot of these things we are

all learning and tripping and stabbing our toes a little bit. the companies that are creating it and participants along the way and it is all happening so quickly. did the operator used to listen when she put your call for the switchboard? we have gone from that to the ability to have a three-way calling when i was in high school. someone was always secretly listening. now he moved to the speed with which something can go out through e-mail. there are all the beautiful attributes of a, which are great, but unfortunately there are all of the stumbling blocks for the companies and being up front, which i do not think enough are being poured about the privacy implications, with all these delightful devices that provide gps, that is great if you are trying to figure out

where guild hall is. it's things if someone is surreptitiously tracking year and you did not give them that information. if you tell a retailer that if you are driving within 5 miles and you can have 50% off, that is great. if they decide to do it on their own, that is not so great. it is the same technology that we love, but with everything moving so quickly, there is some room for regulation and some social responsibility that we as citizens need to take part in. >> there is this very interesting thing with advertising, which is when you are in the market for something are interested in something and you get a marketing message, it is really service. it is like, i am in the market for a sweater, and now i can get

one for one-third less that was going to pay. fantastic. on the other hand, when you get those messages at the wrong time or when you are not interested, they are totally obnoxious. so one of the tricks of technology is figuring out how we do get those messages to our customers when they want them, and when they are excited to get them, because then they loved it. every time you get one when you don't, it moves away from that company. >> it is interesting, there is company i am investing an operating with and we work with publishers. just like an airline gives you points for buying a seat or american express gives you membership points for using their car, we are going to help publishers and broadcasters online give rewards for viewing.

we allow the partners will work with to create video rewards. it makes advertising not annoying anymore, but rewarding, so you pay attention. we started with asking the consumer, what do you want to buy? amazon does a lot of what you bought, like romantic novels. if you are in the market for phone or a car or computer, you want to take as many seven- passenger ads as you can get. you give up information about your life that we never share, sell, cavic, hunt, market, or any of that. we only use it to match youtube brands that would be of most relevance to you. right now, the little better ads you see on your web screens when you are all checking your e-mail

only generates about 0.5% click through rate. that means 99.5% of those ads are not getting click on. when you do the asking, what are you in the market for? what is your favorite genre of movie? and deliver video from those brands, we average 11% and click through rate. we have to save the new york times and the financial times. we have to save all journalism. these are great things we need to start evolving so that we can find these forms of communication that are vital. -- fund these forms of communication that are bottle. >> we have to eve of our advertising because we really have not evolved it. how do we start to match it to

people? >> talking about relevance, i want to talk about duration, the age of digital duration -- curation. those who can separate the quality from all the job that you get in your search results and use a combination of automation and human intervention, and many are using both. it is a really interesting area of growth opportunity, to whittle it down to the most relevant marketing messaging, or information from the most authoritative quality source is delivered to you. anybody on -- any thoughts on curation? >> we have been exploding world look options and choices. i find it completely bewildering.

from the moment i wake up in the morning, from monday to friday, to the minute i put my head on the pillow, it is an information fire hose coming at me from work, friends, twitter, facebook, from news, from everywhere, and it is unmanageable. it is hugely important to be able to find the outlets, whether it is polls news, which i am a huge fan of because i can whittle down the topics i am interested in learning about and haven't pushed it to me in a reasonable fashion. i am 100% not on twitter. 140 characters is not enough to even say good morning. it is not enough information to have meaningful interaction with a piece of content. around the curation piece,

whoever nails that is going to have it. i have a beautiful house in montauk that i come back to every weekend and i did hold some however we can. i return back to that digital live on monday and i have such an increased ability to absorb content in a meaningful manner. i have a white bird but friends that i will sit down to dinner, and everyone's phones are out -- i have a wide it group of friends. >> i just want to challenge one thing you are saying. i think you are right, the touch points and working life, you wake up and you have a blackberry or iphone and you are expected to read the e-mail on the way to office before you sit

in front of a computer all day. on the weekends, the digital transformation of information versus the masses of information are two different things. your saying you don't want to be digital on the weekend. i think the reason for existence of the daily is to be the future of newspaper publishing, magazine publishing for the future. the trees, s to drive and have to distribute what were the old forms of delivery mechanisms. i think there are delivery mechanisms that can transport to us and deliver to us the kind of journalism and/or entertainment we are accustomed to when we want to consume them. that does not mean there is an absolutely anti-digital world. what the delivery mechanisms look like in the future -- does

the tablet become the remote control for the television? we talked about cloud based storage of information. i think we are going to have an increasingly digital world and reduce the need for paper and trucks to deliver and the delivery mechanism. >> for the record, i did fix might tractor this morning with my ipad with that exploded parts diagram next to it. >> my wife takes the ipad into the kitchen and is dumping cake batter all over it. i am trying to get her to realize is a $1,000 computer and maybe a piece of paper would be better. >> the cover is magnetic. if you put an ipad with the cover on your refrigerator, it will hold it up. you might have less cake batter on it that way.

i am the more the steward of technology. -- martha stewart of technology. >> i am not a huge twitter user. i use it for tracking people that matter to me, to stay on top of different people in our business and things like that, but the numbers are just astounding. it took three years, two months, and one day for twitter to reach 1 billion tweets, and today there are 1 billion tweets been sent out each week. you also look at how twitter was used in egypt during the political uprisings, and that was like a main form of communication to the outside world during that process. i think there is some real value that it provides, but it is just astounding to me. >> you may have to log in,.

i like to watch broadcast news, but i am not broadcast news correspondent. if you want to tweet and put stuff out there, but twitter provides a lot of perspective and content into the world without you having to do anything. >> i love things like clipboard --flipboard that puts it into more familiar context and makes it more engaging. the way i typically used witter is very much like, there are a number different people that i follow, many in the digital arena but others in the arch or marketing or design our arenas. it really allows me to sort of customized my news source, and i

have to say i have found that i really do not tweet much. >> i can across a great company cold -- called blurts. i do not really tweet a lot. it is like a constant, overwhelming, i cannot keep up with that. i think it is also about bringing people together and live, and anthony, you touched on that. renaissance is defined by it bridging and linking people together with common thoughts

and experiences. if we can correct this code, how do you help people -- the greatest information comes from the circles that google has touched on. >> i think what we are finding, i was talking a little earlier, and the gay marriage boat was going on in the new york sen. i was watching twitter feeds live, i was watching it streaming on the web, but at the same time, i was having conversations with people viet twitter and facebook, my friends, about what was going on. it was allowing us to sort of share the experience, even though we were not all in the same physical place. we are having a shared experience. when you talk about the humanity, we were using technology to bring us together and have a group experience, even though we were physically in very different locations.

but then once it passed, what was on the news that night? >> it contributed to our evolution as being part of this new wave across of communication on the kendall -- lindle app that we have up here. the backlash against that is that people seek some of the things from the old world to add to and bring along into the world that we have right now. we were talking about marshall mcluhan earlier, the medium is the message. i don't know that any of us would have imagined it the portability of what digital books look like now. we are doing it seemingly fine with reading a lot of books. you can read more books now more

easily than you could have before because you can have one device and have 10 books with you. audio is really interesting, too. we produce up to 120 pages of original journalism every day. we take the best from all media. we have broadcast journalism pieces, full screen photography, and along form, written content, and we invite people to comment. you can either tied or leave and audio comment. it is fascinating to listen to someone articulating verbally a comment that normally they would have talked, and you can hear the tv in the background or the dog barking or the kids running by. it is the community because we both read "the daily" and not because we both are on facebook.

>> have you seen the dramatic differences in behavior or have your colleagues seem dramatic differences, other than what you have just described in user behavior? >> we see that our readers are primarily aggressive news consumers. they are reading is about five days a week. they are coming in regularly. the difference up from a regular newspaper is you can actually see when people are coming and reading and throughout the day. with the real newspaper, you read some in the morning and then you put it in your bag and then pull it back out later. we are seeing those same behaviors. outside of that, the ability to share more easily. it gives us a sense of what their experience looks like.

i think the only other thing that is different here is that it is a big mixture of news and entertainment. people are coming in throughout the day for all different things. did you guys know that j-lo is getting a divorce? >> she and marc anthony? [laughter] >> david, you told us a great story before. >> i was on a plane flying back from san francisco, and we had actually seen something on cnn that was on the plane about osama bin laden. but then the woman next to me was on her laptop, on twitter,

and that is how we actually learned she -- that he had been killed. we are in an airplane, 30,000 feet above the ground, following a story real-time in twitter as it is evolving from rumor to confirmation, all in this stream of 140 characters, burst of information. it was amazing. it is like a crazy thing i would have never imagined. [laughter] >> and when you landed, you came out to the east end and dug a hole in the ground. >> the other thing that is pretty amazing, just watching chris dean work -- washing christine work with the ipad.

do you remember "minority report" with tom cruise, and just the way he moved his hands. here we are, information, up and down. it is fantastic. >> i think we should shift gears and leven it not time for questions believe enough time for questions. don't be bashful, just are yelling them out. let's talk about mobile and tablets and platforms. mobil is just exploding. there are 50 million smart phones in the united states, like the iphone and android. >> blackberries are still around, sort of. >> 37% of the market is now made up of the android plat form, and apple is 27% and blackberry is 22%. if you went backwards 24 months, blackberry was the king, and it

is losing share very dramatically. there are four hundred thousand apps in the iphone store. >> the interesting one to keep your eye on is hd, which will be a completely different operating system. >> and amazon is launching a tablet product in october, i believe. >> my prediction there is we are going to see a lot of crappy tablets that are not apple based, in about a year, you are going to start seeing $49 platform tablets. that is when we are going to start seeing critical adoptions in the space. >> tablets and mobile often get clustered together. mobile really is smart phones. the way people are using tablets

is fundamentally different than the way they are using their smart phones. a lot of us in urban areas and commuters are toting around, but the primary usage pattern tends to be at home, on the couch, in tandem with the television or in bed. it is the mental state of the person that is really different than the smart phone. therefore, the kind of content we present is really different, and creates some pretty great opportunities, i think. >> so mobile internet access from your phone, and from the ipad as well, has tripled in the past three years each year. they are saying in the next four years is going to increase 26 old. you think about people like cisco and at&t and you think about the network challenges they are going to have, but we are not going down that path right now. >> we had the same challenges

with dial-up. how many years did it take us to get where we are right now with the kind of speech that we have? >> it doubles every 18 months. the processing power doubles every 18 months. our band witt has been increasing, doubling every two years from a network architecture standpoint -- our bandwidth. how many people use netflix streaming? that is fantastic. that did not exist two years ago. of all the internet usage across the entire united states, half of it in prime time is netflix being strained. it is just incredible, the data being used there. >> the other thing that is amazing about that, think about

the economics of that. netflix has built a business where the primary cost of delivering that product, that bandwidth, netflix is pay nothing for. >> it is a great business. >> think about that. think of foreign selling and a car or they did not have to pay to build -- think of ford selling a car where they did not have to pay to build a car. somebody has to have bought the device to watch it on, and somebody has to have paid for that band with. >> bandwidth is the new oil, let's face it. all three carriers have announced, if you have not checked your data plan, check it. it is going to be that new precious commodity.

you will be watching a meter, just like when you fill up your gas tank. we have to evolve as an industry, how we are making money. tv was very expensive in the 1930's, and no one could afford it. that is when we got mutual of omaha wild kingdom. >> i miss marlin perkins. i actually watched lawrence welk the other night. >> brands are going to start supplement and a lot of the content you consume. that is the new form of paying with your attention. >> there are a lot of people that are in content related businesses of one form or another. we have seen this incredible transfer of revenue from content creators to bandwidth providers and technology providers. it rallied -- it really began to

gather steam with apple and the ipod, where instead of me going to bite us the be, and that money going to the record company -- of me going to buy a cd, all of a sudden i am paying for bandwidth, i am paying for an ipod, and a lot less was going to the record companies and the artists. now we are seeing it happen again with things like magazines and newspapers. people are paying less directly for content and instead, we are paying for bandwidth and devices. it is a really fundamental change. >> it is a little scary and troubling, but it is exciting at the same time. someone just mentioned books. someone in my family works for a large publisher. she has been working with prints and books forever, and three years ago, she said, i think we

are done. it was just boring to take off. more books were sold last year than any other year ever. three years from now, they believe more books will be sold in a year than the previous 10 years combined. that is because of the access. >> but are publishers making more money? nope. >> that is the challenge to them. >> it all depends on how you envision what the delivery mechanism is. if you continue to do things with a pre-existing framework but everyone else is telling you is going beverly, you are not going to win. -- is going differently, you are not going to win.

what are new ways you can bring things to the table? i was a literature major. i studied a lot of t.s. eliot, and i thought this was fascinating. it has poems, you can hear him reading the poems. the point is, this is a complete revision visioning -- reenvisioning of the way this is going. i paid $14 for this app. i bought it through the itunes store. it is not the most expensive app i have bought.

i am happy to pay for this. think about this from a learning perspective. people talk about how their children flocked to tablets and we increasingly hear that tablets are making a place in the schoolroom. it is more rigid than any of the textbooks that we had before. while i am on this point, if we don't do that, we will not get anywhere. for the last 10 or 15 years we have had playstation and x box. we have had cable-tv with 700 to 800 channels. we have had high quality imagery, animation, and things they controlled and play. socially, with games over the web with their friends. if we do not adjust the is going

to look very boring. it would be the equivalent of saying for us, who were accustomed to high speed access on the internet, and for all of your entertainment you can have high-speed, but when you go to school, i want you to dial up through aol. of course they are going to be sitting there waiting for the page to come down and carving in the desk. you have to give them the equivalent of what they have been brought to consume in to their education. i thought this was pretty fascinating. >> i want to shift gears and quickly talk about our favorite apps here. this is a thing called chip finder. >> i got the free one.

>> scroll up a little. this is really cool. i love to sail, and we take this on the sailboat with us when we are sailing on long island sound. click on any one of those. press the blue arrow. course and ship's heading, speed, and the size of the vessel. when you are out on long island sound and a little boat and you see these lights coming at you, you can tell if it is a little boat or a container ship that is about to run over. it is a really great little application. we used it a couple of weeks ago. we were sailing back from block

island and it was very body. we were able to see where the ferries were. that is one of my favorite apps. >> how expensive is that? >> anthony, what is one of your favorites? >> i am completely obsessed with home automation. from my at phone, my tablets, a travelogue from work. i can know what is going on in my house, if my father-in-law is showing up at my house, i can unlock the doors for him. >> you can lock the doors, too. >> all over the internet, there is motion detectors, what the temperature is. this is not content and media, but it is a way to incorporate

some digital things that just made my life easier. it is both iphone and ipad. >> david, what about you? what do you like? >> i have a lot of favorites. one of the things i end up using a lot is four square. when i first heard about it, i thought it was really kind of silly, but for those of you that don't know, it is all about checking in at locations. for instance, when i came here today, i checked into guild hall. i uploaded the picture.

why is it not there yet? it is connected to my social networks like twitter and facebook, so when i check again, my friends know where i am and what i am doing. >> anthony, let you do not use this because you are too paranoid. you are monitoring your house. >> linney ask this question of the audience. how many of you land in a city when you travel without hotel reservations? a couple of you. you would be surprised, 40% of all travelers do this. 80% of those under the age of 30 do not have a hotel room when

they land. you can go to the city, and i have been doing this for six months, and i pay no more than $100 for a hotel room. i am talking about four seasons in atlanta. the deals come out at noon local time. you have the thompson beverly hills, and you have a boutique on sunset which is a nice hotel. you can get these for a fraction of the cost. i am going to do that in atlanta on thursday and see what i get. >> it is in the middle with a light bulb.

>> that only do it on a daily basis, three categories, and is at noon, local time, where every year traveling. >> let's open it up to questions. >> i am an interior designer. someone suggested using an online magazine to use my work. i went on the online magazine and i find by the time you get to the work, rather than the advertising, you lose patience. what do you find the cell through is of that concept?

>> i have to speak to that from the point of view of "the daily." [unintelligible] >> i would say that you saysync -- i would say that you should sync your iphone with your ipad. i spent the last two years of my career working with advertising. the templates that you were given to communicate content were very limited and the screen size is small. the challenge was that the placement for advertising have been pre defined for so long, based on the smaller screen and availability that they are relegated to these headers.

people were pushed into situations to have to put multiple ads on a page, and the ads started to become offensive and people were put off by it. the philosophy of having an experience, digital experience where you have a full page ad like a magazine, i think the future is were advertising will have the space it needs to communicate and be a place that does not compete with the content but complement's the content. some of the magazines for the tablet to follow this model. if you see some of the replica magazines, some are going full page. unfortunately, it is all still so new that a lot of people are feeling it out.

what you are trying to get at may be obscured. >> what other questions? [inaudible] >> you keep telling "telling " the daily receipt you keep telling us about -- you keep telling us about "the daily." my question is whether you are content is original, because you mentioned pulling from all other locations, and i wondered how you do that with copyright. my second question goes back to your comment about twitter owning the photographs that people post. you mentioned something about facebook having the right to use photographs in advertising.

the people posting to facebook lose their copyright, or is it simply a shared licensing? >> are you getting any money from twitter photos at this moment? >> reusing your own copyright once you put it on twitter? -- are you losing your own copy write? >> if you took a picture of a birthday party iraq last week and you upload it to twitter, and there are some very well- known people in it and the like to put it in some magazines or newspapers, there are companies that buy them all the time. it obviously own id because it is still sitting on your camera or your computer. that is your image. >> but only get physically does not mean you on the copyright. >> but twitter can go sell that image and not have to share any money with you. >> so it is shared licensing. they have the right but is not

exclusive. >> of course not, you could often sell it on your own. >> does facebook have the same as twitter? >> it changes about as often as the tide changes. >> i think he may have misinterpreted something i was saying before. the development of "the daily" was meant to take the best of what we all love from the web and from grant. all the journalist on staff or 100% creating content for "the daily." we are not collecting it from other places. we actually cherished journalism. we think people should be trained to collect and present and tell the stories across all these categories, life and a

sports and news. what you see in those examples, this piece is 100% video piece that we have staff that have created. you get the experience like you are watching tv. >> you said something about whether you are abrogating content and information and copyright and things. there are a fair number of people out there who are following the fair use guidelines and posting a headline with 150 characters, and then linking to the original content provider. the services provide value to quality content, making it more search engine friendly, hopefully driving more traffic to those sites. there are people out there who andbasically rewriting ait

taking the content. there is some aggregation out there that i would submit makes quality content discoverable, and it is playing by the rules and the right way. >> i invest in consumer oriented companies. they are driving the ball to their original source content. -- driving people to their original source content. those are the waves we need to get on and follow. they are encouraging people to do professional quality journalism and writing and content creation. but doing it in a way that makes people find it and personalize it for me, so i can make my own application based on things i care about. cracks in all these mediums --

>> the creative destruction that is happening in digital, what it is doing to printing press companies, to box companies -- win was the last time someone used a pay phone? there is an entire industry of companies who managed payphones and made money off those things. we have not yet from media standpoint caught up yet to that destruction. folks like you who are content creators, there is a lot of fear, well based beer, about how you are going to be compensated for the journalism your doing. i think what is going to happen, this consumption of media and content and what i read and watch and by is all going to be down to those individual pieces that i watch

and read and by. i think this concept of a large media companies being able to sell me a subscription to something is very quickly going to start to go away. i like to read content about these sort of topics, and there will be a way to do micro payments are around that. i will read an article in my count will get charged 83 cents. [inaudible] >> for books, i am really interested in this idea, because right now, with previews on amazon and google books, i can actually get into various books and get as much as i need without buying the book, which is very bad for the publisher.

the good thing about it is they will destroy the is put market because there is no way to sell a used e-book. someone is going to invent that. >> another question in the back. >> this has really been a fascinating conference. all of us in this room have seen in the lastx years, the miracle of this technology we are talking about and the benefits we get from it, and there is no question that it has changed the world recently with all the things you have discussed in the middle east and everything else. there are three losses we get from this technology. the first loss is the relationship with the itself. as long as i am connected digitally to some technology, i am disconnected from myself. i am disconnected from solitude,

from thinking with nothing but my own mind. if i am walking by the pond and i am talking on my iphone, i am not going to notice the swans. then there is a loss of relationship with other human beings. if i go out to lunch with six other people that i love, i am not connected if everyone is on their iphone. this is really important in the development of the human species, for young people and for children. i just picked up a book called "nature deficit disorder." is based on the concept that in order to be a full human being, we have to have a very profound connection to our world and the nature in it. living things, the outside world, animals, and all of this fantastic technology dissipates

that and takes young people away from that. we lose the balance, i think. i just wonder, does that conversation ever come up at all in your world? >> i agree with you on every level and worry about it for my children. i think again, digital will be helpful to us as a human species. it is no different than the printing press and other forms of technology that allow people to link on common interests, bought, ideas, ways to help. we have to think about ways to bring it back to people, bring people together like, touch each other. i had kids last night, not my own, my best friend's kid, and they are all gone, but 70% of them are overweight or obese

from sitting behind a device of some type. they have to learn to move 60 minutes a day. i told them after they had a big piece of cake, go outside and run away from the mosquitos. these are fundamentals, by the way. >> it does come up. the example i will give you is that i taught high school before i got into this business, so i try to stay close to education. i hear increasingly that students in high school and college now have a really hard time writing papers because they cannot sit down, they have not had the grooming to sit and focus on one thing. we have so much information thrown at us, we are used to

consuming things in micro bids. in southern korea, they got much earlier this whole cell phone and portable media concept that has finally proliferated in america. this generation of kids is incredibly antisocial. they are only comfortable communicate with each other through electronic devices. it is ugly and unfortunate. i don't think the media is creating these things as much as our own lack of discipline. we are lucky to have access to so much food, and kids snacking with fast food, and all this that is right there at your fingertips. as society, these things have become more clear and we will self impose more discipline. just because there is a fast- food restaurant does not mean you drive through and get french

fries between meals. just because you and your friends are all sitting there does not mean everyone has to pull out your phone just because you have one. we are not there yet. hopefully over time we will superimposed more discipline around things like food and use of your cellphone at dinner and it will not be as much a problem. >> but we cannot be luddites either. we have to find ways to embrace it and incorporate it, rather than be incorporated into its. check out leaf snap. i can take a picture of a tree, a leaf, 0 wheat, flour, and it will tell me everything about it. it will tell me everything about it. >> there is an application for

fruit trees in new york city. >> the 14 new york city which won the big prize two years ago is called trees nyc. >> these are the kind of things i am constantly trying to find because i am not going to get away from the digital world. >> this is a really long arc. it used to be that to listen to music, you had to be a wealthy person who had an orchestra played in your drawing room. that was great for the 10 people that got to listen to it, but everybody else was left out. what technology has done over time is democratize content,

entertainment, news, but it has also introduced a bit of a barrier. think about when television came around. everyone thought, what is going to happen to our kids? over time, there is still no substitute for really good parenting, and parents need to pay attention to what their kids are doing and make sure there is a good balance in their lives. while we are taking it and technology, they are also running around and playing hide and seek in making mud pies and whatever. it is about balance, like everything else. let's take advantage of what technology is bringing. it can create communities where otherwise you would not have communities. if you are a disabled person who has trouble leaving home, all of

a sudden you can have a great community for something like facebook or twitter, and being plugged into the world. it works both ways. >> we are getting the virtual hookup. hook.e virtual looke there is a cocktail reception immediately following and we will be hanging out there. we would love to chat with you. we are delighted we are here with you today, and thank you for having us. [applause] >> i just wanted to be sure that you did know you are invited tomorrow morning at 11:00. >> i am already preparing myself for the very small salary i will be starting out with. >> to be a good journalist, you have to be disciplined enough to put aside your