TrueMajority and Business Leaders for Sensible Prioriti… — Transcript

Good afternoon. Welcome to Authors at Google. My name is Larry Brilliant, and I work with Google.org. I suppose we should really not call this Authors at Google. We should probably call it Icons at Google as we begin to think about all the wonderful people we've had here. I don't think we've had anybody as warm and wonderful as the person that you're going to meet today. Ben Cohen. Cheryl Samberg was to do this introduction, but she asked me to do it. I think it's because she wanted aging white men of a certain age to stand together. But I have to tell you, in this case, it's true because Ben and I have been friends for more than two decades, and we've been part of some of the most wonderful organizations: the Social Venture Network, Camp Winnarainbow, and he's helped us also with the SAA Foundation. In fact, he's made ice cream for two of my best friends, Jerry Garcia and Wavy Gravy, and he's going to talk a little bit about that because one of the two things he's going to touch on is how to use the product of your company and the meaning of your company to be socially responsible. When he made an ice cream for Wavy Gravy, the profits from that ice cream went to Wavy Gravy's Camp Winnarainbow to create a scholarship fund, and I think that gives you an insight into the way he ran Ben and Jerry's ice cream. But he's also here today because he's going to be talking about what he's touring the country, which are two organizations: True Majority and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities. Ben is an advocate for government and corporate responsibility, and we brought him here for the Global Philanthropy Forum, which we had two months ago. I don't know how many of you got a chance to see him then. Were there? Oh, that's good. Well, he stunned us with his presentation on Oreo cookies. You know, I think that being in the ice cream business, he just automatically retreats to desserts, and I can see some Oreo cookies paraphernalia back there, so I suspect you're in for a real treat because he's going to be talking about how we change U.S. budget priorities to reflect what is really genuinely something we all feel should be a national commitment to education, healthcare, energy independence, job training, and deficit reduction. In fact, what he's going to talk about are values that are shared by two-thirds of Americans, but we don't know we share those values because we don't have a place and a way to talk about it. He's going to talk about that today. Please join me in welcoming an icon at Google, Ben Cohen. Beautiful dude. Thank you.

Well, thanks very much. It is an honor to be here at the center of the digital universe. It's a new world coming, and it's good to see that you, the guys that are going to make it happen. A lot of times, people like to know how it is exactly I got to be where I am today. I can tell you that it all started in seventh grade gym class. Jerry and I were the two slowest, fattest kids in the class, and you know, you get to be good friends with whoever you can find at the back of the pack running around the track. We made it through junior high and high school together, and then came time to go to college. I didn't want to go to college, and my father and sister applied for me, and I ended up going to Colgate and dropped out. Then I went to Skidmore, dropped out, went to NYU, dropped out, and finally got into the most unstructured college program at the time, which was the University Without Walls, where the whole world is your campus. There are no teachers, there are no classrooms. The idea is to go out into the world, learn whatever you want to learn, come back, prove that you learned it, and they give you a degree. I dropped out of there too. Then, you know, I tried to make a living as a potter, making bowls out of clay, and nobody would buy my pottery. Jerry, on the other hand, went through four years straight of college, applied to 30 medical schools, and they all rejected him. So there we were, two failures, and we said, well, we're not going to get anywhere. I guess we're going to have to start our own business, and the only thing we really liked doing was eating, so it had to be a food business. We ended up picking homemade ice cream. We didn't know how to make ice cream, so we found this correspondence course called Ice Cream. It's still available from Penn State University. It was $5 for the course. We didn't have much money, so we split one between the two of us. We took the tests; they were all open book tests. You sent them into your teacher, they marked it, and sent it back. We got hundreds on every test, and we thought this was a good sign. So we opened a homemade ice cream parlor in Burlington, Vermont, in a dilapidated old gas station on an investment of $88,000, $4,000 apiece. We renovated the place ourselves, bought all this used restaurant equipment, got a loan from the bank for another $122,000, and started as a homemade ice cream parlor, and that's all we ever planned on doing and being. Then, you know, the winter rolled around, and it gets pretty cold in Burlington, Vermont, and nobody would buy our ice cream. We decided we would try wholesaling it, and I became the delivery driver. We would sell our ice cream in tubs, two and two gallons, to the restaurants, and then after a while, we sold them in pints to grocery stores, and that started really taking off. That began the Ben and Jerry's that we know today. It started in Vermont, went into New Hampshire, not very highly populated states, and then eventually went into the biggest market that we had ever been in at the time, which was Boston. In order to make sure our ice cream was sold off the supermarket shelves and bought, we decided to do our first ever TV advertising, and we could only afford late, late, late night TV and 10-cent ads. The ad was me and Jerry live inside of a pint container, and here's how it went: "Hi, I'm Ben. I'm Jerry. We may not have the money for a 30-second TV ad, but we sure do make some of the best ice cream you ever tasted." That was it, and it worked. The ice cream sold, and things were going well. The business was growing, got to a level of about $3 million, and we turned around and looked at ourselves one day and said, you know, what's going on here? I mean, we're not being ice cream anymore. We're not spending our time making ice cream and scooping ice cream to our friends and neighbors over the counter. We became administrators and bosses, and we were hiring and firing, dealing with accountants and lawyers, writing memos, and that wasn't exactly what we had in mind. Also, we felt like the business was becoming just another cog in the economic machine that tends to oppress a lot of people. Our first inclination was to sell the business, and then we decided to keep it and see if it was possible that business is really just a tool, a neutral tool like a hammer that can either be used to destroy things or to build things. We decided to see if it was possible to use our business as a force for progressive social change in order to heal some of the problems in society that business in general really had been creating. At that stage in our life, in the business's life, we were growing very rapidly, and it was the stage when normally businesses take in venture capital. Instead of going that route, we decided to see if we could use that need for cash as an opportunity to make the community the owners of the business so that as the business prospered, the community would automatically prosper. We were able to have what became the first ever in-state public stock offering, so we sold stock in Ben and Jerry's just to Vermonters, and we del—

think it's cuz she wanted aging white men of a certain age to stand together but I have to tell you in this case it's true because Ben and I have been friends for more than two decades and we've been

part of some of the most wonderful organizations the social Venture Network Camp winner rainbow and he's helped us also with the the SAA foundation in fact he's made ice cream for two of my best friends Jerry Garcia and Wavy Gravy and

he's going to talk a little bit about that cuz one of the two things he's going to touch on is how to use the product of your company and the meaning of your company to be socially responsible and when he made an ice

cream for Wavy Gravy the profits from that ice cream went to Wavy gravy's Camp win a rainbow to create a scholarship fund and I think that gives you an insight into the way he ran Ben and Jerry's ice cream but he's also here

today because he's going to be talking about what he's touring the country um which are two organizations true majority and Business Leaders for sensible responsibilities Ben is an advocate for government and corporate responsibility and we brought him here

for uh the global philanthropy Forum which we had two months ago I don't know how many of you got a chance to see him then were there oh that's good well he stunned us with his presentation on Oreo

cookies you know I think that being in the ice cream business he just automatically retreats to desserts and I can see some Oro cookies paraphernalia back there so I suspect you're in for a real treat because he's going to be talking about how we change

us budget priorities to reflect what is really genuinely something we all feel should be a national commitment to education healthc care energy Independence job training and deficit reduction in fact what he's going to talk about are values that are shared by 2/3 of Americans but

we don't know we share those values because we don't have a place and a way to talk about it he's going to talk about that today please join me in welcoming an icon at Google Ben Cohen beautiful dude thank you

well thanks very much uh it is uh an honor to be here at the center of the Digital Universe um it's uh it's a new world coming and it's good to see that you the guys that are going to make it

happen um a lot of times people like to know how it is exactly I got to be where I am today uh I can tell you that it all started in seventh grade gym class uh Jerry and I were the two slowest fattest

kids in the class and uh you know you get to be good friends with whoever you can find at the back of the pack running around the track and um you know we made it through Junior High and high school together and

then uh came time to go to college I didn't want to go to college and uh my uh father and sister applied for me and I ended up going to Colgate and dropped out and then I went to

skidor dropped out went to NYU dropped out and uh finally got into the most unstructured college program at the time which was the University Without Walls where the whole world is your campus there are no teachers there are no there is no classrooms the idea

is to go out into the world learn whatever you want to learn come back prove that you learned it and they give you a degree and I dropped that out of there too uh and then uh you know I tried to uh

make a living as uh a Potter making uh bowls out of clay and nobody would buy my Pottery uh Jerry on the other hand uh went through four years straight of college uh applied to 30 medical schools they all rejected him and uh so there we

were two failures and uh we said well we're going to get get anywhere I guess we're going to have to start our own business and you know the only thing we really liked doing was eating so uh it

had to be a food business and uh we ended up picking uh homemade ice cream we didn't know how to make ice cream uh so we found this correspondence course called ice cream it's uh still available from uh Penn State University uh it was

$5 for the course we didn't have much money we split one between the two of us and uh you know it took the tests they were all open book tests you sent them into your teacher they mark it and send

it back we got hundreds on every test and uh we thought this was a good sign and uh so we opened a homemade ice cream parlor in uh Burlington Vermont in a dilapidated old gas station uh on an

investment of $88,000 $4,000 a piece and uh we renovated the place ourselves bought all this used restaurant equipment got a loan from the bank for another $122,000 and started as a homemade ice cream paror and that's all we ever planned on doing and being uh

and then you know the winter rolled around and you know it gets pretty cold in berly and Vermont and uh nobody would buy our ice cream and uh we decided uh we would try wholesaling it and I became

the uh delivery driver and uh we would sell our ice cream in tubs 2 and2 gallons to the restaurants and then after a while we sold them in pints to grocery stores and that started really taking off and that that began uh you

know the Ben and jurries that we know today um you know started in Vermont went into New Hampshire not very highly populated states and then eventually went into uh the biggest Market that we had ever been in at the time which was

Boston and uh in order to make sure our ice cream is sold uh off the supermarket shelves and bought and we decided to do our first ever TV advertising and we could only afford uh late late late night TV and uh 10c ads

and uh you know the ad was uh me and Jerry live inside of a pint container and uh uh here's here's how it went hi I'm Ben I'm Jerry we may not have the money for a 30second TV ad but we sure

do make some of the best ice cream you ever tasted and that was it uh and uh it worked uh you know the ice cream sold and um things were things were going well the business was growing got to be to a level of about $3 million

and uh we turned around and looked at ourselves one day and we said you know what's going on here I mean uh we're not being ice cream in anymore we're not spending our time making ice cream and and scooping ice cream to to our friends

and neighbors over the counter we we become uh you know administrators and bosses and we are hiring and firing and uh you know dealing with accountants and lawyers and uh writing memos and you know that wasn't exactly what we had in

mind and uh you know and also we felt like uh you know the business was becoming just like another Cog in the economic machine that uh tends to oppress a lot of people and uh our first inclination was to sell the business and

then we decided to keep it and see if it was possible that business is really just a tool uh a neutral tool like a hammer that can either be used to to destroy things or or to build things and

we decided to see if it was possible to use our business as a force for Progressive social change in order to heal some of the problems in the society that business in general really had been creating and at that stage in our life

uh we the in the business's life uh we were growing very rapidly and it was the stage when normally businesses take in venture capital and instead of going that route we decided to see if we could use that need for cash as an opportunity

to make the community the owners of the business so that as the business prospered the community would automatically prosper and we were able to have what became the first ever instate public stock offering so we sold stock and Ben

and& jerri's just to ver vermers and we deliberately had a very low minimum buy uh of $126 so that people from virtually all economic strata could get in on this ground floor opportunity this IPO actually which is usually reserved for

Fairly sophisticated investors that have you know a fair amount of money and uh after that offering we ended up selling it out and one out of every hundred Vermont families uh became a shareholder in Ben and& jer's um well a few years later uh we

had a national public stock offering and our feeling at the time was that essentially business is a machine for for making money and that if we want to be of as much service to the community as possible what we need to do is give

away as much of our profits as possible and so we started the Ben and& Jerry's Foundation that got 75% of our pre-tax profits um and it wasn't before long that the foundation was totally overrun with requests uh dealing with really

important issues like uh hunger uh domestic use uh people who didn't have any homes uh people who couldn't get health care and we can only fund about 5% of the requests that were coming in and we realized that you know pretty

much every foundation in the country was really in the same position and we said you know just giving away money ain't going to do the trick isn't there something else that we could do as a business that would help

to address these issues and we started by uh looking at the definition of business you know the the usual definition of business is that business is an entity that provides a product uh or a service uh what we did at Ben and

Jerry's is that we came up with a different definition of business and we said that business is a combination of organized human energy plus money which equals power and I would go so far as to say that that becomes the most powerful

force in the world and business is pretty much recognized as the most powerful force in the world today but it's something that only really happened in my own lifetime you know originally the most powerful force in the world was

religion and then the most powerful force in the world came to be government nation states and today it's business and you can see that reality echoed in the major buildings in cities around the world if you go to Europe and you you go

to a city and you look at the buildings there you see that the oldest big ornate building is a religious institution the second oldest big orate building is a governmental institution and today the big orate buildings that are being built

are commercial well as that most powerful force business contr controls our society it controls our media through ownership it controls our legislation through lobbying it controls our elections through campaign contributions and it controls our everyday lives as individuals as customers and

employees and all of that is done in the narrow self-interest of Business Without a concern for the effect that it has on the society as a whole and that's the big difference between today's most big most powerful force business and those

other former most powerful forces because at least religion and government had as their purpose to improve the common welfare of the of the country um what we began to realize at Ben & Jerry's is that there's a spiritual aspect to business just as

there is to the lives of individuals as you give you receive as you help others you're helped in return as your business help helps the community the community supports your business well you know this is a universal spiritual

law and you know the fact of the matter is that most people involved in running businesses are good people and they care about uh social concerns they care about people living in poverty uh and yet uh most businesses aren't

doing anything about it so how is it that most businesses are not integrating these social concerns and I think the reality and the reason is essentially twofold first is the compartmentalization of Our Lives you know we live in a society where you deal

with your spiritual concerns on Saturday or Sunday in church or Temple or mosque uh you deal with your social concerns by volunteering or donating some money to some social service organization and you deal with your financial needs in the

world of business but the reality is that we will never accomplish our spiritual desires or our social desires until we integrate those two components into business where we spend the majority of time and where our labor is organized and we have the money

to be at our most powerful and I think the other reason why business has not been addressing these issues is because of the bottom line you know the only way most businesses measure success is by profit how much money is left over at the end

of the year and uh at Ben and& Jerry's what we said was that well if the problem is how we measure our success why don't we just change how we measure our success and that's what we did at Ben and Jerry's we

redefined the bottom line and so the bottom line became two parts how much have we helped to improve the quality of life in the community and how much profit is left over and if we failed at either one we failed and by doing that

and having a social audit at the end of each year next to our financial audit we were able to organize the country uh the the the company uh and focus on those social needs at the same time that we

made a profit and so I want to emphasize that you know philanthropy is great but the most powerful force the most powerful opportunity is not giving money away the most powerful opportunity is integrating social concerns into day-to-day business activities because

the ways to do that are Limitless at Ben and Jerry's it became part of our uh flavor decisions it became part of our sourcing decisions it became part of our finance decisions uh it became part of our retailing decisions and we actually

wrote a book about it what is that the book that's here Ben and Jerry's double dip how to lead with your values and make money too I'll bet it is well or I don't know maybe it's the next one but

if you want to find out more about it that's the place to read about it um at the end of the book uh it concludes with the idea that perhaps the most powerful uh tool that business has at

its command is its voice that when business talks politicians listen the media listens the public listens you know the problems facing our country can seem overwhelming we live in the richest country in the world and yet we have the

highest child poverty rate in the industrialized World our schools are strapped for money uh people can't get the health care they need we have a dependence on oil that's getting us into Wars and causing a whole lot of

pollution uh there's millions of kids around the world each year that are dying of hunger it seems like I was brought up to believe that these problems are insurmountable that they've always been here they always will be here that there's not enough money in

the world to take care of these problems well I'm here to tell you that it's not it's not insurmountable and we can take care of those problems and business can do its part and it can help but it's

going to take hundreds of billions of dollars to solve those problems and there's really only one place you can get that and that's the federal budget I'm the president of the priorities Campaign which is a project of Business

Leaders for sensible priorities a group of 700 business people around the country and true majority uh a Grassroots political action uh online organization of about 600,000 people the priorities campaign asks how is it possible that in the richest

country in the world we have so many of these unmet human needs well as business people we started by following the money and uh we decided to look look at the federal discretionary budget now this is the amount of money

that uh Congress has available each year to allocate as it sees fit there's another part of the budget called the mandatory budget uh and that's interest on the national debt Social Security and other mandatory expenses but this is the amount of money

and it's about $900 billion a year that Congress has available to to allocate and when you hear them talking about the budget in the news and on TV this is the budget they're talking about as you can see the Pentagon has about 50% of it and

things like education the environment Health Care world hunger get all these little slices now what we said at Business Leaders for sensible priorities is you know the Pentagon only grew to be 50% of the discretionary budget during the C War when we were in this

neck-and-neck race with another superpower but today the United States is the world's only superpower and we spend as much money as the entire rest of the world combined on the Pentagon and so isn't it possible that we don't

have to still spend quite as much as we were spending before we said but what do we know we're just a bunch of business people let's ask uh milit milary people and so we formed a board of military

advisers that includes uh Admiral Stansfield Turner former the head of the CIA Admiral Jack Shanahan uh Larry Corb former assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan and uh they said well yeah you're correct uh we are today spending $60 billion a year and that's what this

little wedge represents on weapons that were designed during the Cold War to defeat the former Soviet Union that have no use uh protecting us from terrorism or with today's uh military threats and so uh you know the question

is you know if there's $60 billion of waste there in the Pentagon uh what can you do with it and uh that comes to the the heart of uh the priorities campaign now as said you know I'm pretty much a dessert guy and when I

am faced with a difficult problem I tend to think about dessert in this case Oreo cookies and so what I have here is essentially a bar chart where each Oreo cookie equals $10 billion and so what I've got here is

with the addition of this little stack on top I think I can vaguely do this uh uh the amount that we spend on the so-called peacetime Pentagon budget 50 Oreos $500 billion a year and that doesn't include another 12 Oreos that we

spend another $120 billion a year on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan now in comparison to that what I'd like to do is show you how much we spend on some of these other areas on education k to2 at the federal level we

spend four Oreos $40 billion on world hunger we spend one Oreo 10 billion on children's health care we spend five Oreos 50 billion on energy Independence we spend that's a quarter of an Oreo on job training we spend 3/4 of an

Oreo and on deficit reduction we spend zero uh now all we're saying at the priorities campaign is let's take one Oreo off the top here put it on education and at $ 10 billion a year over a period of 12 years that would be

enough money to repair and rebuild every school in the United States that needs it take another Oreo off the top put it on world hunger take one more split it in half you've all done this before put half of it on world hunger

that's an Oreo and a half $15 billion do a year believe it or not for $15 billion a year we could provide food self-sufficiency for all of the 6 million kids a year around the world that are dying of

starvation take another Oreo off the top put it on children's health care and that's enough money to provide health care for every kid in the United States that currently doesn't have access take another cookie put it on energy

Independence and that would be enough over a period of 10 years to reduce our need for imported oil by 50% through energy conservation and financial incentives to drive hybrid cars and take one more off put it on deficit

reduction and that's at least 10 billion a year to start to pay down the debt and take that last half a cookie put it on job training and that's enough to provide job training for another 250,000 laid off workers per

year now some people see this demonstration and they say well what does that prove Ben can move around a bunch of Oreos but isn't that going to leave us vulnerable to our potential adversaries well here's the way it

looks the country that spends the most that we consider to be a potential adversary even though they're our major trading partner is China and they spend 10 billion 10 or hundred billion do 10 Oreos a year the country that spends the

next most is pretty much an ally these days and that's Russia they spend six Oreos 60 billion a year and the countries we're really concerned about that would be Iran Libya Syria North Korea all together between them all

combined they spend one Oreo so as you can see even after we took off enough Oreos to take care of all those social needs there's still more than enough to go around to take care of these guys well

still some people feel like uh you know but we've been hearing that our troops uh you know don't have enough armor and they they don't have enough armored vehicles and isn't this going to hurt our troops well I want to give you just

one example of the Cold War era mentality that we are still following through on today and give you just one example of the Cold War era weapon systems we're talking about uh cancelling you know what I've got here

is uh a container uh and what I've got here is a bunch of BB's and what I want to do is I want to use this to illustrate the size of our nuclear Arsenal so I'm going to put one BB in

here that represents the equivalent of of 15 nuclear bombs the size of what blew up Hiroshima and now I'm going to put in six BBS that would be enough to blow up all of Russia and now I'm going to put in the

amount of BBS that represents the total US nuclear Arsenal [Music] [Music] that was 10,000 BBS the equivalent of 150,000 here Hiroshima siiz bombs now some people hear that demonstration and they're a little depressed however we at the priorities

campaign see this as an opportunity because we are currently spending $20 billion a year on that nuclear Arsenal and our Board of military advisors tells us that we could cut the amount of money we're spending in half and save 10

billion dollar a year and still have enough of a deterrent nuclear force to protect the vital interests of the United States you know uh so what are we doing about this that would be a good question to ask uh we're very active right now in

Iowa and New Hampshire and I've got uh a little illustration of exactly what we're doing that uh I can get by doing this uh oh that's the end of the show what is this this is the pre-show slide for Bloomberg

Ben how do you do that oh wait this laptop we have on here do we have my slides on here yes oh what do I do where do you have them on a laptop or they oh this is your laptop right sheez

I don't know I gave my laptop to [Laughter] Josh what's that you want me to wing it what yeah keep winging it keep well you know we're we're very active in Iowa and New Hampshire to make this an issue in the presidential uh

primaries and caucuses that are uh operating right now uh so we use kind of unusual methods of getting this uh of getting this information across to uh the people of Iowa and New Hampshire we've been bird doing the candidates and you'll see uh

you'll start to see in uh late August and uh and in September the national media will be starting to report on this and the candidates are starting to shift their positions uh in favor of reducing uh Cold War era

weapons um you know it was uh we need essentially we need your help uh we'd like you to become members of Business Leaders for sensible priorities uh you can join as an individual uh we need your ideas your

technical expertise in terms of helping our online efforts and we need you to to help us spread this campaign to the other early primary States and across the country it's a big hairy audacious goal uh but it's certainly something

that we've got to do because there's no other way to address the problems of our country you know it was Martin Luther King who said that a country that continues year after year to spend more money on military

defense ense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death our country the last remaining superpower on earth needs to learn to measure its strength not in terms of how many people we can kill but in terms of

how many people we can feed clothe house and care for well I know that I've given you a whole lot of information today and might think well geez I can't remember all that stuff that's okay CU I'm also

providing for you this incredible pen that with within its Barrel contains everything that I've just said and you can use it to refer to and uh those of you that were watching the cbear show a few months ago

might have seen uh this little disc that I presented I've got it right here and uh you know I thought that some of you might might enjoy it uh as well so you know there's uh there's uh some of these at the front

table and uh what there's ice cream outside and uh there's pens outside and um what have you good talking with you thanks so much for coming oh there's questions there's questions don't forget there's questions yes sir yes sir uh I

really want to thank you for being here use the mic thank you please use the microphone not for the camera yeah I'd like to thank you for being here and for this fantastic presentation frankly uh I thought you'd be

larger thank you very much I I have some concerns about the fungibility of Oreos what do you say to people who say no matter how much you take off that stack and put into world hunger there's no evidence that it's

actually making an impact on World Hunger because people eat the cookies along the way and that kind of concern with this very linear presentation people might say yeah they're not spending many Oreos on defense but even with all that we're spending we're we're

really getting our asses kicked and so we need to still spend more uh how do you talk about the the actual use of the money and whether it will really have the effect that you say it will well for

for world hunger uh you know the the information that we rely on comes from uh the UN Millennial goals and uh Jeff Sachs uh at Columbia University um and in terms of the uh Pentagon budget uh we rely on a report by Larry Corb the

former assistant secretary that uh you can find online and it details exactly which weapon systems aren't needed and you know I mean just uh just in terms of common sense I mean uh you know the threat today is is Terrorism there's no

other superpower that comes close uh replacing say our current uh generation of jet fighters that is today the most powerful uh in the world and totally unmatched with another higher Tech version that cost five times as much uh doesn't really make sense I mean

you know to protect ourselves from who yeah um afraid I have to be a little bit more pragmatic about this um I tend to agree with you that we are spending way too much relative to the situation currently in defense but on the other

hand we've got a lot of Defense contractors we've got a lot of contractors in various districts so if you say well we're cutting out this program you promptly get uh contributions from the contractors to the relevant congressmen and Senators

you get protests from the people in the district who are going to be shut out and lose jobs how do you actually plan to overcome these difficulties in moving the budget around well that's that's exactly right I mean that that's the

reason why we have the situation that we have today but once the people of the United States are aware of how the Federal budget is sliced up uh 2third of them want it shifted uh and uh you know

there was just a a poll out by you know someone totally unrelated to us a national poll that showed that 82% of the American public wants to get W rid of this Pentagon waste uh so you know what we're doing is we're fighting the

uh the issue with information that we're giving people information about how the federal budget is sliced up and allowing people to make choices between what they want their money to to go to and once they have the information they make the

choices that we're talking about and yes we have to overcome uh the resistance of Defense contractors no doubt about it I think there's also a problem of I to call a number of surveys where people say um pulling numbers out of my hat

here 70% of people don't like what Congress Congress is doing but 80% love their Congress person so when you get down to the local of I want you to cut defense spending as an abstract you get the support but if it's I want to get

rid of this particular military contracting company in my district that's paying taxes I think you end up with more personal U opposition uh you know it's not a matter of getting rid of uh getting rid of Defense Contracting companies it's a

matter of not making weapon systems that are no longer needed and in terms of uh the jobs issue and the and the taxes issue we're just shifting money so instead of money going into defense contractors it's going into school

construction and that creates jobs and uh instead of money going into again defense contractors and uh it it instead goes into providing more health care for people so it does not the economic effect is uh wash that it it creates as

many jobs as it uh as it cuts oh yes a question from somewhere else Ben and Jerry's parent company Unilever has been criticized on many fronts including for making use of child labor and polluting what do you think

about Ben and& Jerry's being owned by a company who seems to maintain a low level of corporate responsibility well uh you know you know in terms of the sale of Ben and& jerries uh I tried to prevent it uh I didn't

want the company sold I wanted it to stay independent uh you know now that it is part of Unilever uh you know Unilever is not uh a company that uh has the same values as Ben injurious uh but you know

that's that's who owns it now and uh there's there's nothing I can do about it um but in terms of Ben and& Jerry's itself uh that company is continuing to Source its brownies from uh a nonprofit Bakery in inner city New York that's

providing jobs and job training for formerly unemployable people and you know it just took a stand and against uh nuclear weapons and favoring shifting that 10 billion to education so you know it's still doing some good stuff but

there's no doubt that the profits uh end up at un labor another one uh fish food is my favorite Ben and& Jerry's ice cream but if there was a Google branded Ben & jer's that would be my favorite can you

help us Lobby for a let's say gooey Google then in Jerry's Pine you know it's a good name and uh you know a lot of our uh bestselling flavors were suggestions from customer customers uh chunky monkey was that way Cherry Garcia

was that way Chubby Hubby was that way and uh you know gooey Google uh I can see it and uh you know uh you know most you know most of those flavors that we now come up with you know like we came

out with a flavor for Steve colar you know there's the the the royalty that he would get ends up going to uh a particular nonprofit organization and and uh you know I don't know what uh Google would want but uh you know I you

know talk about it it's uh it's it's it's it's within the realm of possibility we have never partnered uh in a flavor name with a company before but you know there's never been a company like Google before and who the

heck knows hi I can't believe I'm actually doing this um so basically it seems my own view is what you've done um in terms of coming up with this idea of a you know socially conscious company is very remarkable um

actually I just read a book recently by this guy who I guess founded this company in Bangladesh called the gine bank which made lots of micr financing loans and it seems like he had his own path through life and he sort of ended

up at a similar destination I mean to me this is just truly remarkable and I can't help but you know view that perhaps in the future you know just changing our Collective notion of what actually a business means um you know

away from just this vehicle for making as much money as possible um might as you hinted earlier have ramifications across Society I guess my question is in order to get there and change you know our Collective view of what a business

is like what like do you think we can do this I mean what what steps do you see possibly is leading down the road to that I think it's definitely possible to do it I think uh Ben and Cherry's is a a

great example of it uh Stonyfield Farm yogurt is another great example Patagonia is another great example um more you know uh interface carpets uh another major corporation uh the I I think the key to making the change happen is number one

putting that social mission that social purpose into the mission statement of the company that it needs to be at the very top of of where things flow from and once you have that as a mission uh co-equal with making profits

uh and making a highquality product then when you when you make decisions about what direction should the company go in what opportunities should it decide to take advantage of and which ones should it pass up you integrate uh the the

issue of of the effect on the society with that uh corporate Direction um and you know so that's at the very top and then at the very bottom at the bottom line you need to measure the effect uh that you're having on the

quality of life in the society and if and if if you do both those things all the stuff in the middle uh happens it the the the notion of measuring is is so important and you know sometimes people

say well you know you can't quantify social stuff as well as easily as you can quantify dollars and cents and you know that's true uh you know so maybe you can maybe you can't quantify it to the last penny maybe you can quantify it

to the last quarter or 50 cents but you can you can still measure uh the effect that you're having on the society and you know you can do it uh we've got you know we wrote a book about it and uh

it's just a matter of Will and and at Ben and Jerry's uh you know people were always saying that uh you know this social mission is going to be the undoing of your company that you know you can't possibly address social issues

and make money at the same time and it became clear to us that it was really the social mission that was driving the success of Ben and jer's and driving the profitability thank you very much I see I'm being

upstaged thanks to Ben for being here this is a very important message and a great event um thanks to all of you for coming um Ben has agreed to stay around and sign books and we have pece pop

served by our founders hey all righty