The second time addressing the members of the press club was in support of the documentary film brothers at war. And a third time as john said four years ago, when we first launched the foundation. So i guess i havent burned any bridges at the press club yet. You keep asking me back. I would like to speak today about how far the foundation has come in those four years with the work the foundation is doing and what the future looks like as we continue to grow and i would like to emphasize how important it is to have nonprofits in the military support space as the military men and women continue to confront the dark forces of this world on many fun with long and many fronts with long and very tough deployment. At first i would like to acknowledge a few people here today, one of our board members. Thank you for coming. I appreciate you being here. [applause] i have a very distinguished guest that john introduced, a friend of mine that is here today, general livingston was awarded the Unit
It is out there. I will not discuss that today. I would like to but i will not. The point is, it is hard now, it is much more fun and i am a big the lever although we have sean and so many people who have done so well and have built really and industries in brilliant businesses doing network radio. My has always been live in local and immediate. I have always liked this small city here as my home turf. I think of it as my home. My point is that it has changed. It is not going to change back. We know that it is going to be owned most of the time, most stations will be owned by people who have a lot of stations managers who have more than one station to run. Salespeople involved in more than one type of programming all that stuff. It does not change the dynamic of the business. Live in local, it has to go back to that no matter what part of the business you are running because eventually, it is about a guy who has a show room to sell cars or a storefront he wants people to walk into or a
Welcome to the National Press club. My name is john hughes. I am an editor for our breaking news desk in washington, and i am the president of the National Press club. Our guest today is actor humanitarian given sunnis gary sinise. He will discuss challenges facing americas servicemen and women and what can be done to improve their lives and support their loved ones. But first, i want to introduce our distinguished head table. This Group Includes press club members and guests of our speaker. From the audiences wright, president of d. C. Media connections publisher of stars and stripes, defense reporter for politico and cochair of the National Press clubs young members committee. Amy fickling, editor with one communications news, the staff writer for marine corps times. Jim livingston, a medal of honor recipient and guest of the speaker. [applause] john hughes the chairman of the press Club Speakers Committee the Washington Bureau chief for the buffalo news, and former National Press cl
Leader that for very long time could not even get accredited to the United Nations but we fought for that and had that up she would not even have to read aloud into the meeting that now shes sharers systematic data and analysis of this problem all over the world. We have never before five years ago had a resolution to even acknowledge lgbt rights as human rights that was passed in 2011 there has been the second and now a report was issued in june of this year chair document the faith and the plights of the lgbt around the world this is getting into the dna of the United Nations but until today the Security Council had never approached the topic so it is a small but historic step and with that i will open for questions. Ambassador how will they address this issue especially in the middle east and a more formal way . Especially with the Security Council . To read today was an important step as an informal meeting but but in 70 years no such meeting had happened before and we heard most o
An alternate they are foye pair with their cessation of opiates. I would like you to respond to something that weve heard the secretary say and read about in the press that he has 28,000 positions to fill in the vha. Its something it was reiterated in the hearing here. Then when the Ranking Member and i and some other members of congress in the senate were in your command and control center on the eighth floor a few weeks back, weve heard that number was not 28,000, that it was 50,000 positions to be filled at the vha. Could you confirm that number and could you tell me how youre prioritizing those hires . And obviously im getting to if we have a crisis in Mental Health and were treating all hires the same, we have a problem. If youre prioritizing Mental Health, heres a chance to tell this committee and the public at large. So i did not hear the number 50,000. Ill have to check on that and get back to you drekly. I think that would probably be the easiest way to say that. With 300,000