MODERATOR: We now come to the promised surprise
guest part of the program.
Some you may have heard of or from the speaker we're going
to be hearing from next.
I've talked with him over the years, and I think you'll find
him to be a surprisingly effective communicator.
He's an officially retired man, but still quite
active in public affairs.
He's spent a lot of time thinking about the issues that
have been on the table through our whole first day of
Zeitgeist this year: issues of corporate growth, of
technological responsibility, and connectedness
around the world.
Ladies and gentlemen of Zeitgeist 2007, I'd like you to
turn your attention to the screen, because from New York,
we have joining us the 42nd President of the United States,
William Jefferson Clinton.
[APPLAUSE]
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON: Thank you.
Thank you very much.
MODERATOR: Mr. President, thanks for joining us.
Here is the way this will work.
We have two microphones in the room, and there's a roving
microphone who can come to you if you can't get to
the microphone.
I'm going to ask one question to start this session.
President Clinton has said that he'd like to
take our questions.
I'll ask one initial question just to give you time to
move the microphones.
From that time onward, I'll just call on you.
Here is my initial question for President Clinton: the people
in this room have largely built the latest industrial
revolution for the United States, and for the world.
Most of them are not ready to quit their day jobs yet, but
many of them are in position where they know they can
leave a mark on the world.
There are past models of how people did this well, or not
so well: the Rockefellers or the Carnegies are an
inspiring example.
You, President Clinton, have been thinking a lot recently
about the right modern models for people to make a mark in
the world in a positive way.
People in this room are still affecting the world through
their work, but are beginning to think about how they
can leave their mark.
What would you like them to bear in mind about the conduct
of their lives in that regard?
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON: First of all, thank you, Jim.
I want to thank Larry, Sergey, and Eric Schmidt.
I think Al Gore's in the audience.
I called him a couple nights ago, and got another updated
seminar on climate change.
If I say anything at all about this that you like, I have
to get him partial credit.
If I screw it up, I hope you'll correct me after
I get off the screen.
Let me say first of all Bill McDonough gave you a terrific
presentation, and I'm very grateful to him for the work
he's doing, particularly in New Orleans, a place where
my foundation still works.
I think that taking the work Google does now, and the
presentation Bill made, gives me a chance to ask you to think
about how you would spend the rest of your life solving the
world's problems, or easing the world's ills, or giving the
next generations a chance to survive climate change, or
giving poor kids more equal chances in the world.
The way I think about it is as follows: number one, what are
the major challenges to the world as we would like to be?
The first is persistent inequality in incomes,
education, health care, and organized systems which enable
people to be rewarded for the efforts they exert.
The second is the unsustainability looming over
us because of climate change, and the related problems of
resource depletion and population explosion.
Don't forget, even though it's not much discussed, it is
projected that the world will grow from it's current level of
six and a half billion to nine billion within only 43 years.
It took us 150,000 years, give or take, to grow from 1 billion
to 6.5 billion, and unless we do something quick to put all
the girls in the world in school, and give all the women
in the world equal access to the job market, we're going
to have nine billion people in 43 years.
It makes all these problems even more urgent to solve.
So the question is: what can you do about it, and is there
an inevitable conflict between trying to ease the inequality
problems in income, education, and health care-- particularly
in economics-- and in trying to do something about climate
change, resource depletion and aggravation by
population explosion?
My answer is no, not if we do it right.
If you just look at the previous presentation-- the
stunning presentation by Mr. McDonough, you see why.
Companies may have spent a little more money doing
whatever they were doing to save the planet, and he
explained how in terms of concrete benefits to employees,
they got their investment back.
They also created a lot of jobs manufacturing all those
products: putting them up, designing them, and imagining
the next generation of them.
I think you should ask yourselves three questions, if
you want to think about how to spend the rest of your life as
a citizen, and not just as a worker: number one, am I
maximizing my potential and my company's potential to advance
the public interest in a cooperative way?
By what we're doing now, and how we're doing it.
Number two: what cannot be dealt with that the world
faces, and my country faces, unless there is a significant
change in government policy?
How can I best, as a citizen, contribute to bringing
about that change?
Number three: what is the role of civil society, the
non-governmental sector?
What can I do to strengthen it?
Google helps me to make the Clinton Global Initiative more
effective by making available opportunities for smaller NGOs
to reach other people and build collaborations and partnerships
around the world.
We know that even with optimum government policy, and strong,
enlightened business leadership, there will be a gap
between where we are and where we ought to be, especially in
the developing world.
That has to be filled by non-governmental organizations
working together with others in the developing world
with governments.
That's basically what I do.
We sell the world's cheapest AIDS medicine, and account for
about 30% percent of all those people in the world getting
medicine, even though we spent a tiny fraction of what
anybody else does.
we're working with 40 cities on five continents to help them
maximize the transition to reduce their greenhouse gas
emissions in a way that makes their workplaces more
productive and their living spaces more habitable, and
generates economic growth, rather than reduces it.
I think you just need to ask yourself those three questions.
In the 21st century, we will have to exist as workers, as
political actors, and as I believe citizen givers.
Are you doing all you can at work?
What should your politics be, and how can you bring about
the changes you want?
In the meanwhile, while we're waiting for all the political
changes we want, what can you do in the non-governmental
sectors as a citizen servant that will help move
things along?
We need a major, major paradigm shift in order to get through
this climate change crisis, and in order to deal with the
rising pressures of population growth and resource depletion,
and simultaneously to reduce all these inequalities
in the world.
If we don't do it, then the identity conflicts occasioned
by our global interdependence as manifested in roadside bombs
set by terrorists, the refusal of the Russians to allow
the Kosovars to become independent by U.N.
mandate, and the continued conflicts between the Hindu
Tamils and the Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka, and
any number of other things.
The rise of ideological politics in America, and the
war on science-- which, it occasioned, was the subject
of Al Gore's latest book.
All these things are going to get worse.
If we do it right, they'll all get better.
One thing is sure: you've got the right title for this
meeting, because there is almost no problem that any
individual, any business, or any nation can solve alone.
MODERATOR: Why don't we go to a question?
Yes, sir.
Please identify yourself for President Clinton.
TIM CARTER: President Clinton, I'm Tim Carter
from askthebuilder.com.
About eight years ago, I got a phone call in my office one
day from a gentleman you probably know.
He's one of the senators in Arizona.
I helped him save $6000 by cutting a countertop
the right way.
At the end of me helping him, he said, is there anything I
can do for you to repay you?
I said, well, I do have a question.
At the time I was very interested in the flat tax
initiative here in the United States to try to get some kind
of equalization of taxation.
He said, Tim, the best way to do that is to get a grassroots
movement going, because politicians listen to
grassroots movements.
So my question to you is-- as one of our former Presidents,
and being so deeply involved in the political process all your
life-- can we effectively use a grassroots movement to
do some of this work?
More importantly, what is the best way and the shortest
pathway that the current politicians will listen to us?
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON: Well, first of all, to answer
your first question, is yes-- grassroots politics works.
It works for good or ill.
For example, in the recent debate on immigration in
Washington, I actually supported President
Bush's position.
At least, I supported the position of the administration
and most of the Democrats in Congress that there ought to be
a path to citizenship for people who are here illegally,
as long as they didn't get ahead of those who
waited in line legally.
So that we can identify everyone that 's in our
country, acquire better control over our borders, I thought we
ought to lift the quotas for more skilled workers
in the short run.
I thought that this ought to happen.
It was defeated by a grassroots movements by people who
basically frightened the Republicans and members of
Congress in the House and Senate into voting against it.
Grassroots movements tend to have more power when there's a
lot of emotion in an issue, I suppose, like that.
The reason that grassroots movements are important in
terms of building a clean energy future, for example, is
that we need more of our members of Congress to know the
facts, and then we need more people to make this
a voting issue.
Many of the things that we need to do is a country today, for
example, are set a price on carbon, make a commitment to
reduce our greenhouse gases significantly, and become a
part of the international agreement.
You talked about the flat tax.
I'm not so sure about the flat tax because America is so
unequal now, but the idea behind the flat tax, you see
in Europe with the VAT tax.
What they're trying to do there is to-- and Al Gore pointed out
this to me in our conversation a couple days ago-- they're
trying to rely less on employer specific tax burdens, and more
on broadly spreading the tax burden, so our businesses
would be more competitive.
In order to get those kinds of changes, people need to number
one, make sure their representatives and senators
know what the facts are; number two, they need to make sure
they know they will not be defeated for public office if
they support these kinds of changes; number three, they
need to know that it's a voting issue for you.
One of the problems we've got with climate change right now
is I think there are big majorities in America that
would support very significant changes necessary to put
america back in the forefront of reducing greenhouse gas
emissions, and to give us some chance of persuading the
Indians, the Chinese, and others to go along with us and
to try to save the planet, and to do it in an environmentally
and economically sensible way.
I'm not sure there are many people in the Congress
who believe it's a deep voting issue for people.
Only a grassroots movement can change that, barring some
natural calamity that everybody will clearly associate
with climate change.
I think grassroots movements are important.
There at the Google meeting, technology gives you a chance
create virtual communities, and mass grassroots movements
in next to no time.
The interesting thing is it also gives you a chance to do
it without having to provoke the kind of hysteria that was
provoked in the recent immigration debate, because
you have a way to widely disseminate relevant
information in a short time.
So, yes, it's important, yes, you should do it, and it's
being done as never before.
In the big critical issues to our survival, number one:
people have to have the facts in Washington, number two, they
have to know that they will be supported, and number three,
they have to know not only that they won't be defeated if they
take action, but they might be in trouble if they don't,
because it is a voting issue for the American people,
whether it's tax reform or reducing greenhouse gases.
MODERATOR: We know that you had certain things you wanted to be
sure everybody has audience had heard, even if we didn't
happen to ask them questions.
Is there any other particular message that has not come up in
a question that you want to be sure we hear before we go
to further questions?
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON: No, I'd rather talk about whatever
the audience wants to talk about.
I just want to say that, again, you cannot afford to be
satisfied with your life in the 21st in a wealthy country at
the cusp of technological change only in your work life.
you've got to be a political citizen, and care about what
government has to do in both your national government,
your local government, and international cooperation.
Beyond that, you need to be involved in some sort of
non-governmental work, because there's a big gap between where
we are and where we ought to be, and it's not going to be
filled tomorrow just by the marketplace and government.
Civil society is needed there.
It's exploding.
We've got twice as many foundations in America as we
had at the beginning of the decade, so there are more and
more people involved in this, but because of technology, we
can have an exponentially larger positive impact: not as
a substitute for proper government action, or a
substitute for responsible business action, but
a supplement to it.
It's basically your citizenship will have to unfold in three
parts in the 21st century.
MODERATOR: Thank you.
Yes, over here.
Yes.
CHRIS EDLEY: Boss, this is Chris Edley, asking your
question respectfully.
There's one problem--
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON: That means it won't be.
[LAUGHTER]
CHRIS EDLEY: There's one problem which is engineering
the right kind of interventions, both public and
private sector interventions to do something about global
poverty and similar challenges The other question is the
parallel challenges of building enough of a sense of connection
between people who view themselves as different, so
that you can have a moral consensus to actually
take action.
I know you share that view.
My question is, what are some of the most exciting or
effective strategies that you've experienced that helped
build that sense of connection?
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON: Let me just give you one example.
I think that one of the most interesting ones is a little
website called kiva.org, which allows individuals of very
modest means to become directly involved in extending
microcredit to people in Africa, Central Asia, Latin
America, and all kinds of developing countries by
actually selecting and contributing to them, knowing
that a local non-governmental organization is managing this
and getting reports on it, and then becoming ongoing
in their involvement.
Kiva had a [? lies ?]
of all kinds of business people who need credit all over the
world, and after I talked about them, and they were featured on
the Oprah Winfrey Show when my book came out for the first
time in their brief history, they had no more customers and
they had more credit than they knew what to do with.
I think we've only scratched the surface of having people
see that people in other countries with different skin
colors, different perspectives, and different fates actually
have a lot in common with them.
There are lots of other strategies that I think have to
be pursued, but to go back to your point: if you really think
about the source of most of the world's problems, they're
rooted in the conviction that cooperation is not as an
important value is conflict, because our differences
are more important than our common humanity.
My general answer to you is anything that brings people in
positive contact with one another, and reaffirms
their common humanity is a good thing.
I have long supported an organization called Seeds of
Peace in the Middle East that began as a partnership between
Palestinian Muslim kids and Jewish Israeli kids, and also
some Arab Israeli kids.
It now encompasses people throughout the Middle East.
Now they're trying to do it in the Balkans and Northern
Ireland, and in other places.
I think that we have to find a way for people to have
consistent, constructive contact with each other when
they're young to affect the way people think about
their differences.
I think that we have to find a way for people to appreciate
what's unique about themselves without being drunk about
it in their arrogance.
That is, we think that God ordained all of us with Ivy
League educations like you and me too up occupy the superior
positions we do, or, in a total other context, that Allah
really does want to the Al Qaeda to send all those young
kids to an early death so they can be immediately go to heaven
and get a medal pinned on for killing a lot of other
non-combatants.
All of these things are basically heresies of
arrogance: the idea that our differences matter more than
what we have in common.
In a way, that's also keeping us from making the right
decisions on climate change.
If we really believe that our common humanity was more
important than our interesting differences, we could not live
with ourselves if we ran any risk that was avoidable that
our children and grandchildren wouldn't have the same or
better life chances that we have.
Almost every one of the world's problems requires a cooperative
solution, and requires people to give up the notion that
their identity requires them to have somebody to look down on
just because of the categories which they find themselves.
I think we've got a big job to do in teaching, and arguing
about that, and also giving young people contradictory
experiences.
It's not enough just to live together.
Th big problem with the British, for example: at least
in 9/11, Americans could say, well, we were invaded, and the
whole world-- briefly, before we diverted to Iraq-- was
supporting United States.
Among other things, we had 200
Muslims killed-- innocent Muslims killed in
the United States.
We had 230 something British citizens, people from all over
the world, from 70 countries killed by an invading force.
Look what happened in Britain.
In the bus bombings and the subway bombings, you had
British citizens affecting that.
What happened?
These people didn't think they belonged.
Their whole reality was different from those with whom
they worked, their kids went to school with, their kids played
with, who went to sporting events, and movies together.
They were not there.
Look at the recent car bombings, which thank
God, failed in the U.K.
You had two doctors who would've killed, had they
succeeded, more people on one day than the number of lives
they saved in their entire careers.
That's a humongous identity crisis.
I think that the next civil rights expert like you needs to
think about going to beyond the notion of civil rights
to civil community.
Do you know what the major debate in biology is today?
This is interesting.
When Al and I were in our last year in the White House, there
was an international consortium of scientists that finally
finished sequencing the human genome.
As a lay person, the most important finding was that we
were all genetically 99.9% the same, so if you look around
that room today, every difference you can see among
people, including gender, and race, is rooted in 1/10 of 1%
of our genetic makeup.
Craig Venner-- who was one of the competitors, and then
became a cooperator with the International Consortium to
sequence the genome-- has done a lot of work since then, and
he has come up with new findings that say that that's
wrong, and that we are in fact 99.5% the same, not 99.9%.
This does have huge implications for scientific
research, whether our differences are in half of 1%
of our genetic makeup, or a tenth of 1%, but for politics,
it is a stunning reaffirmation that it is nuts for us to go
around killing each other, and killing off our children's
futures, and thinking that our differences are all that
matter, since the whole range of them is somewhere between
1/10 and one half percent of our biological make up.
I think somehow we have to get that across.
That has infuse the way we teach our children about our
religious faith, about their family and community
obligations, about how they imagine themselves going up and
having meaning in their lives.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Mr. President.
Yes, over here?
JIM KOLOTOUROS: Good evening, Mr. President.
My name is Jim Kolotouros, and I am a Googler.
I have a quick question for you: I think what a lot of
these global attendees would ask with regard to the biggest
issues they face domestically, which are potentially energy,
health care, and education.
The first question would be are we looking at these issues by
qualifying them specifically as domestic, and two: are these
three issues in particular to big for any one governmental
branch, or even the government to handle on its own without
internationally for a solution?
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON: Let's take them each
in turn, shall we?
The answer to the energy question is that we clearly
can't do what we need to do about climate change or global
resource depletion alone.
On the other hand, that argument has been used by
people who didn't really want us to do anything.
When Al Gore went to Kyoto to finish the negotiations there,
the U.S. Senate voted against the Kyoto Treaty almost
before Al got off the plane.
I know it was the only bill I ever lost in the Congress
before I ever sent it to them.
When President Bush got elected, he just
withdrew from it.
One of the big arguments was well, we can't solve this
alone, because India and China and the other developing
nations to have to be part of it.
It's true that we can't do it, but it's also true that as the
richest of the countries, and the biggest greenhouse gas
emitter, we will never get them to be a part of it unless we
strike out alone, and do as much as we can by is setting a
ceiling on carbon, pricing carbon, making a commitment to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and proving that the
Bill McDonoughs of the world make it possible for us to make
this good economics, not bad economics.
If I had more time, I could give you another 30 examples of
things we could do that would spark an enormous economic boom
in this country if we did it right.
I think that we are making a terrible mistake by thinking
that because we can't whip the climate change problem without
international cooperation, we don't really need to do
much between now and then.
I think every day we lose is a tragic day, moving us closer to
biofeedback in a calamitous situation, and giving up
opportunities we have to create new businesses, new jobs, and
greater democracy and economic opportunity within
the United States.
Setting an example that others would then be more likely to
follow increases the chances that we can get a
new international climate agreement.
That's what I think about that.
On health care: that really is something we can deal with
on our own for Americans.
We have three huge problems: we spent $700 billion dollars more
than we would spend if we had any other country's health
system, and a lot of them have better health
outcomes than we do.
We insure 16% fewer of our people than we would insure
if we had any other advanced country's health system.
The third problem is we do a good job of treating people
when they're really, really sick, and a bad job of keeping
more of them well and healthy in the first place.
It has led us to the verge of an epidemic in childhood
obesity, and alarming rates of type two diabetes in young
people, which will collapse our health care system within a
decade even if we reorganize it so that we save money and
have universal coverage.
We just need to take the best lessons we've learned from the
American systems, from what works here, and from other
countries, and deal with this in a way that is good for
health care, and good for the economy.
We have a consensus to do it now.
Globally, we cannot achieve a healthy planet unless we
contribute more money to, among other things, HTV and malaria,
and infections related to dirty water-- cholera, dysentery, and
diarrhea-- those things claim 25% of all lives on earth.
We need to invest more in public health and
waste management.
A billion people have no access to clean water, and 2.6 billion
people have no access to sanitation.
There are lots of problems that have to be handled globally.
They're much, much cheaper than going to war, I might add.
It wouldn't cost us very much money to do this.
I could give you the annual cost of all these things for us
to pay our fair share, and they would all be a pittance of
what we spent in Iraq.
Now, on education: I think there's a national issue,
and international issue.
We have the best system of higher education in the world
still, in terms of the number of quality institutions,
although we're not winning many international competitions any
more, like the International Computing Competition that
occurs every year among global universities.
I think we need to do more to make college
universally available.
We need to do more to give at least two years of post high
school education and training to people who don't go.
We need to loosen the rules again to let more foreign
students come here to study if they want, not just to get
H-1b visas, but to study.
In other words, we need to keep our competitive advantage.
We need to invest more in research of all kinds through
the university networks, and the national institutes.
Pre high school, we have a different problem, which is
that a lot of our schools are doing a good job, but the
system as it works never replicates excellence very
well, because it's neither a top down system, nor a bottom
up fully competitive system.
We know what works.
I don't think Leave No Child Behind is the
best way to do this.
I think there too many tests that are too meaningless.
I think that we know that high levels of performance come
largely from school cultures that have defined goals, where
there is a general assumption that all children can learn,
and then appropriate supports to maximize the chances that
they do: get parents into the school system, make the
benefits of the school system available to parents whose
first language is English.
There are lots of things that can be done.
We have huge numbers of examples, but we do not
replicate excellence.
That needs to be done in America.
Then there is an international agenda: a 130 million
kids don't go to school.
Tens of millions more go to school without learning
materials and basic texts, so it's cheap to put
them all in school.
We spent just $300 million dollars in my last year as
President to give kids in the developing world one good meal
that they come to school to get.
It's just $300 million dollars, and enrollment
went up 6 million.
That's $50 a kid a year.
We spent $2.5 billion a week in Iraq, so that's about
a day-- less than a day.
So should we spend more money to put all the world's
children in school?
Yes.
Should we spend more for learning materials?
Yes.
Could technology make a difference?
If you had the right access to the to the Internet, and a
printer-- a solar power printer-- in most remote
villages in the world, you wouldn't need
textbooks anymore.
There are lots of things you guys can do about this that
ought to be thought through.
There's John Wood, a former Microsoft executive, has
done a lot of work on this.
Greg Mortenson, with the Central Asia Institute, has
done a lot of work on this.
How do you bring educational materials, and meaningful
education, to people in poor parts of the world?
In the rest of the world, and in a developing country, every
year of schooling is 10% to income per year for
life, on average.
We have work to do in America, and work to do in the world.
Again, it's a lot cheaper than going to war,
and we should do it.
We can never overcome all this inequality unless we build
systems of education and health care around the world.
We need international money, but NGOs can
have a big role here.
That's what I do.
We we sell AIDS medicine to 71 countries.
It's the least expensive high quality AIDS medicine in the
world, and we've tried to put up health systems
in 25 of those.
Every day we work, we see that intelligence, creativity, and
willingness to work hard is evenly distributed
throughout the world.
What is not evenly distributed is investment, education,
organization, and systems.
That's what we need to think about.
I don't mean systems in a bureaucratic way.
I mean systems like the systems that all of you access.
If you sit down in front of a computer, and you Google
somebody, you think there is a connection between the keys you
push, and the information you get back.
The fundamental problem in really poor places is that
there's almost no systems where no matter how smart people are
there is a predictable consequence to the
effort they make.
That's what we have to do in education, that's what we have
to do in health care, and that's what we have to do in
economic empowerment in those countries.
MODERATOR: Thank you.
We have just about nine minutes left with the President.
How about a question here?
JIM STEYER: Hi, President Clinton.
I'm Jim Steyer for Common Sense Media.
We've been talking a lot today about environment, world
poverty, and a lot of really key global issues, but we are
at Google in the center of technology universe.
I wanted to ask you how you think companies like Google and
the other major media technology companies here have
done in terms of looking at the impact of media and technology
here in the U.S., and around the globe, and what they ought
to be doing about that.
Also, what is the role of the private sector versus the
public sector in looking at media and technology and its
impact on the world, and also kids in particular?
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON: You can answer that question a lot
better than I can, and you already have in your career,
and I thank you for it.
Let me just make a couple of observations which may seem
superficial compared to the work that you've done, but I
think in terms of the media-- the news media-- and the way
people communicate information, I think we are going through a
period of transformation that started probably before we
took office back in 1993.
It's not yet finished.
I was thinking about the difference in the coverage of
the Iraq war the coverage the Vietnam War, and the
coverage of World War II.
When I was a young man, and Vietnam was raging, we had
three television networks, and they had enough competition to
keep each other honest, and enough guaranteed market share
to send seasoned reporters in their fifties to be on-site for
an extended period of time, and say what they thought.
The newspapers: every city had at least one daily, and you
could afford to have two daily papers.
It was a much more orderly process.
Then, it all got blurred with cable, satellite television,
and entertainment networks.
You don't have to watch the news at all anymore.
Your friend, my daughter, tells me that as many of her
generation get their news from Jon Stewart's comedy hour as
they do from network news.
Increasing numbers of young people don't read newspapers
at all, but they do read the newspapers' websites.
Look at what Al Gore has done with his television network.
What I think is happening is we're going through a period
where we were moving toward more and more and more discreet
sources of news, where if you're willing to exert the
effort, you can use technology to have access to the same sort
of in-depth information, and maybe even more than you used
to be able to find in the narrow channels of the 1960s.
I think that the period we had where the news could be
politicized, or in effect, where the compulsions on people
producing it-- because the competition was so stiff-- are
to turn three dimensional people and issues into two
dimensional cartoons.
That's something that Vice President Gore and I both have
a little experience with.
That is going to abate.
I think that over the long run the democratization of
disseminating information and opinion will give us a more
literate citizenry, if we have an absolute principle of
universal access to technology, including training and how to
use it-- how to make it affordable, and how to use it.
We did a lot of work in the administration in trying to
make sure all the schools, hospitals, and rural
libraries were connected.
We had an [? E-Rate ?]
which saved the schools $2 billion a year in charges
they otherwise would have had to pay.
I'm a little out of the loop now, but somebody's needs
to do an update on that.
How are we doing in community learning centers?
How many schools are open at night?
How universal is access to the latest technology?
How much do people know about what they can find?
I like the direction of this.
I find myself now, for example, every day when I read my news
clips, I also read as many as a dozen different blog sites,
because I know that these are the people that may only have
to write one article a day.
I like the direction this is going in.
I'm still concerned that not everybody's going
to be able to go.
I think we need a lot of focus on access.
MODERATOR: President Clinton, there many, many more people
here who would like to ask you questions.
Our time with you has come to an end.
If you had a microphone of the whole audience, you would have
heard applause and laughter at all the appropriate places.
We're very, very grateful for your spending
this time with us.
Thank you very much for this interview.
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON: Thank you all very much.
Thanks for having me.
[APPLAUSE]