Okay, the hour of 5-8 arriving. Why don't we go to work? Shall we do that? Let's do that and we'll cover a lot of ground. Thank you so very, very much for coming out. I am delighted to see so many coats showing significant raindrops on them. My coat back here is its share of raindrops. That's wonderful. It's wonderful to get wet coming here tonight, isn't it? The option was not at all good. Two days ago, we were still not out of the drought. Don't think this thing's over. If it rains hard for the next week, we're still going to be in a serious situation. We're thankful for what we get. Every drop counts. I noticed out in the parking lot there were several cars that said, stop the tunnels, save the delta. Yes, stop the tunnels. Don't build that thing. Don't spend $25 billion on a boondoggle that doesn't work. And if there was water, and if that tunnel was built, and the legislation that passed Congress last week, excuse me, four days ago, and became law, they could take whatever water was in the Sacramento River. The tunnels are big enough to take all of the water out of the Sacramento River six months out of the year. So forget about the delta, San Francisco Bay, Salmon, on and on and on. Bad, bad, bad. Don't ever allow something so destructive to be built. And in the meantime, pray for rain. So we need our share of it here, a major issue. It was very, very interesting this week. I don't know how many of you followed the episodes of Congress, but two years ago, the Southern representatives, that's the San Joaquin Valley representatives, put it through a piece of legislation that basically gutted the environmental laws, pushed aside the state of the California Constitution, took all kinds of water contracts and tossed them in the garbage, and said, just give us the water, or we're going to take the water. That was two years ago. That bill died in the Senate. We thank Feinstein and Boxer for killing it. Now, four days ago, actually, you'll see today, Saturday, eight days ago, the same bunch, the San Joaquin Valley Republicans, introduced another piece of legislation that was exactly the same, but it wasn't exactly the same. It was worse. And it had all kinds of issues in it. Again, pushing aside the California Constitution, the Public Trust Doctrine. The Public Trust Doctrine is in the California Constitution from the very, very first days of the state, and it said this, the waters of the state of California are held in public trust for the people of California. It's not a property right for anybody. It belongs to all the people. All the waters of the state belong to all the people of the state, and to be used wisely for beneficial use. In recent years, beneficial use has come to mean environmental, water in the streams as well as water in the fields and water in the houses and industry. So we've added over the years this very, very important element, which was not there when the Central Valley Project was approved in the 1930s, late 1930s. So they built the dam on the San Joaquin River and literally dried up the San Joaquin River. And so the Public Trust Doctrine came into play about two decades ago and questioned whether that was a proper use for the waters of the state. The result was the San Joaquin River settlement four years ago, Feinstein introduced legislation, lawsuit. So what did they do last week? Introduced a bill that took that settlement and tossed it in the garbage can and said, no, no, no, we're not going to allow the water to return to the river. And by the way, we're going to take all the environmental water and ship it south. It passed, passed the House of Representatives. So you can imagine if the tunnels were there today and they were able to get the votes in the Senate, what would happen to the waters of Northern California. They'd be in the tunnel, they wouldn't be in the bay, they wouldn't be in San Francisco or the Delta, and this large estuary, the largest estuary on the west coast of the Western Hemisphere would be destroyed. The nursery, the nursery for aquatic species in the rivers, the nursery for the aquatic species out in the ocean. Salmon from San Luis Obispo all the way to the Columbia River depend upon the sacramental system, gone. Terrible, terrible legislation. So don't ever, ever build something that can destroy one of the most precious environmental pieces of geography that the west coast of the Western Hemisphere has. So we got a water problem, right? Even, you know, the tunnels are supposed to solve the water problem. They don't, that, those $25 billion do not create a gallon of new water. Not one gallon of new water, but just spending $25 billion for half of that amount of money. Using, using the plans that have already been laid out by the State of California Department of Water Resources. Go back 20 years into the documents that they have written about how to solve California water problems, and you will see plans in proposed and federal laws in place that can, if we ever put the money up, and the will power behind it, create up to 5 million acre feet of new water for California. Most of that new water comes from conservation. My office isn't too far from here. I was there about a month ago. Three scientists and researchers out of UC Davis here, and the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, not that other bunch, came in and they said, hey, we know a technology that's readily available that virtually no cost to agriculture that can save somewhere between 15 and 30% of the water that's used on row crops in California, and about 10 to 15% on orchards. Using satellite technology, infrared, radar, ground sensing devices, and, I don't know, one of these things, smartphone. Where's my smartphone in the car? You can save that amount of money. This is at least 2 million acre feet of water. Every gallon of water you save is a new gallon of water to be used by somebody else or to be saved for the environment. Storage. The Department of Water Resources had been talking about storage since I arrived in 1974. Aquifers. The Central Valley Project was south of the Delta, put in place for some of those districts for the purpose of recharging the aquifers, which had over the years been depleted. Recharging the aquifers. So they went ahead. This is the Westlands Water District. It's in their contract. That was the purpose for the San Luis unit was to recharge the aquifers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Not done. And now we've got to drought and guess what? No aquifers, no water from the canal. Oh, my God. What are we going to do? Well, we're going to pass a bill of steel water. Recharge the aquifers. Southern California has more aquifer storage than Shasta Reservoir. You take the Southern California aquifers. Orange County, San Gabriel Valley, San Fernando Valley, the West Valley out near the airport, and on into San Bernardino and Riverside, all of those aquifers have a greater storage capacity. And guess what's happened in Southern California? Now, I don't like to talk nice about metropolitan water district. I've been fighting with them for 40 years. But what they've done in the last three or four years is to fill their reservoirs anticipating a drought. And you've probably heard, probably in the newspapers, should be reported that they've got two years of storage available for them in Los Angeles in the metropolitan service area. Why? Because they did what is smart. When there's water, you store it. You don't expand your agriculture. You store it. You replenish your aquifers. You refill your dams. Because you know next year, next year, it may be dry. Wonderful quote. I wish I could remember every word. East of Eden quote about how quickly we forget the good times and the bad times. When the good times are there, we think they're going to last forever. When the bad times are there, they're going to be over tomorrow. Great quote. Don't build that tunnel. Fifth largest river on the west coast to the western hemisphere. What is it? Think about it. McKinsey? No. Colorado? No, Colorado doesn't even flow to the ocean anymore. I'm serious. Colorado basically doesn't get to the ocean most of the time. Sacramento? No, those are all big rivers. Those would be probably three, four or five. Four. Fifth biggest river on the west coast to the western hemisphere from Alaska to Chile is the sanitation plants in Southern California. Think about it. You're taking water 500 miles from the delta, pump it 5,000 feet in the air, take it into Los Angeles, 200 miles from the Colorado. Clean it. Use it once and dump it in the ocean. I missed something. Clean it. Use it once. Clean it to a higher standard than the day it arrives in Southern California. Then dump it in the ocean. Recycling. Recycling across California, Southern California, Northern California. Recycling is in the California water plan for the last three decades. Two decades. So why are they building these tunnels? Why are they not going to their own plan and doing the things that we know create new water? There's a million acre feet of new water in Southern California by recycling. Clean it. Put it back in the aquifers. Take it out. Clean it. Recycle it over and over and over again. Orange County. Most of us like to put Orange County down as that conservative backwater place. Orange County is far ahead of the rest of the nation on recycling. They've almost been able to develop all of the water that they need by recycling. Why don't the rest of this, why doesn't the rest of the state do this? The water plan for California calls for regional, this is the law, regional self-sufficiency. What's a region? San Joaquin Valley. Sacramento Valley. Smaller regions within it. By the way, you've got a really good water conservation program here in Yellow County. And you're doing all of that. So stop the tunnels. Spend the money on things that create new water and give us a future where we will have supplies that we need, good times and bad times. There are other elements to this. We'll go into it. I don't know. Why'd we talk about water? I guess because all of us came in with raindrops, huh? Let's go. Whatever questions you have, I'll cover any cup. But thank you. Thank you so very much for coming. I really appreciate it. And we'll go around whatever questions you have. Okay. I'm going to go there. I'm going to start on this side. Oh, listen, I'm going to pay attention to you. I see you're going to discipline me, are you, with that ruler? Okay. We'll start here. We'll work our way across the room. We've got to take the microphone. Otherwise, you won't be on public access. You could hear me. Now you can hear me. Now I can hear you. John, what's your take on the potential for off-site reservoirs, especially the site's reservoir in the Sacramento Valley? I'm not sure whether that's in the governor's plan, but it has been proposed over the years. Yeah. Off-stream reservoirs are a very, very important part of this thing. Let me talk about the foolishness of the governor's twin tunnels. $25 billion and no place to put the water south of the delta. I think there's no place to store it. You have Los Volqueros, which is totally consumed now, and you have the San Luis Reservoir, which has some capacity sometimes. But there's no other storage capacity. If they actually built that and put 9,000 cubic feet of water through that per second, they'd have to dump it back in the delta at the other end because there's no place to put it south of the delta. So you need storage. Off-stream storage is very, very important. Two kinds, aquifers. Replenisher aquifers. Some are gone because they collapse. That is, the aquifer is no longer able to take water to be recharged. The other is re-take Los Volqueros, which is in the hills above Brentwood, and raise it a third time. They've already raised it once. Raise it a third time. That's a good storage. San Luis Reservoir at Los Bonos needs to be rebuilt because of earthquake concerns, make it bigger, and there are other places along the canal. Everywhere, there's a stream coming out of the coastal mountains. That stream once recharged the aquifers on the west side. And so there's an opportunity to build small reservoirs and some large ones, like Los Bonos Grandes, which is south of San Luis, that you could use for storage and possibly for recharge. So there's a whole series of them. North of the delta, we have what I believe to be a very important opportunity at Sites Reservoir, which is west of Williams. Up in the hills, west of Williams, it's off-stream. You're not dealing with the live river. You're dealing with off-stream storage, and so you don't have the environmental problems that you have in stream. That particular reservoir is a big one, and it gives operational flexibility to the other reservoirs so that you can coordinate the flows in the Sacramento River with Oroville, Yuba River, and Trinity and Shasta so that you actually are able to generate even more water by having the Sites Reservoir in place because that allows you to have operational flexibility. Finally, since it's raining, I'm going to put this one on the table. The reservoirs are operated based upon a 50-year, 60-year history of stream flows. And so the Corps of Engineers and the Department of Water Resources and the Bureau of Reclamation study what's happened on the river system. For example, the American River. What has been the stream flow on the American River on December 1st, December 31st, and so on, given the snowpack, what's the stream flow? So they do this hydrological study of the river, and then they take the average and operate the reservoirs. That is, allow them to fill or evacuate the reservoirs based upon what the average is over the years. It's serendipity if the average happens to happen that year. We now have technology available to us, and this is being tested on the American River system to understand what is happening in real time in the watershed. What is the snowpack? Anybody here know about the snow survey in California? How many do they do? I think there's five. You've got 400 miles of the Sierras and you're testing the snow in five places. Now, you know, we've been in the mountains a little bit. There's a difference between the southern side of the mountain and the northern side of the mountain. You know, the sun shines on the southern side. There's less snow. There's more side on the northern side. Why are all the ski slopes on the north side of the mountain? Five. For the entire Sierras, we have really no good idea what's happening. But with that technology, we can study the entire watershed and you can know exactly what's happening with the snow depth, the temperature of the snow, the water content of the snow, the soil moisture content, and we now have the ability to know precisely where the storm is going. We have these unmanned aerial vehicles. Okay, we use them for military purposes, but they can be used just as easily to figure out where that storm is. This storm coming in, what's the temperature at 2,000 feet? What's the temperature at 4,000 feet? And so forth. Where would the snow fall? Is it going to be in the American, the Yuba, the Feather River system? Where is that storm going? They don't go, rarely do they go to more than one river system. Then we can operate the reservoirs on real time and do two things. We can create greater storage capacity and simultaneously greater flood capacity. We see a major storm coming in. The ground is saturated. Snow at the lower levels. It's a warm snow, a warm storm, no snow. Bring that reservoir down ahead of the storm. Bring it down. Increase the safety. The opposite, leave the reservoir up, but right now we don't do that. There's so many things we can do. And 25 billion dollars, half of that can do all of this. You can do all of this, 5 million acre feet for half the cost of the 25 billion. It's fool's errand. Yes, ma'am. Wait a minute. You're going to need a microphone, otherwise you will not be on TV. Good evening. I'm urgently concerned about many environmental issues from fracking in earthquake prone California, the railroad trains going right by your office, carrying volatile crude by rail through our town, accidents at our oil refineries like the one in Chevron that sent 15,000 to hospitals, Keystone XL pipeline in the fast track for TPP. But I feel that as a citizen, my voice is just such a mere whisper. Recently, compared to all the lobbyists from all the rogue industries and corporations, recently 300 of us staged a protest on when Governor Brown gave his State of the Union, and we represented 100 organizations. But I mean, we didn't get one mention in media or anything. Bring him around and talk into the camera. And meanwhile, I have three grandchildren in Bay Area who in spite of privilege and healthy parents and healthy activities in Stanford medical care have life-threatening asthma, something the generations before did not have. I'm thinking that the only way to get our government back is with the constitutional amendment, or how can we get back a voice? I feel very impotent as a citizen who does speak out and write and so forth. How can we get a voice? You do not sound impotent. Do what you're doing, town halls. You've made it pretty clear to me that you don't like the Keystone pipeline, you don't like the rail cars coming through town near my office or other people's places. And on and on. That's what you should do. Write letters, demonstrate, make your voice heard. One voice is good, a thousand voices is louder. I think I used the wrong verb. A thousand voices are louder. So you need to do that. There are environmental groups here, right here for one. So that's how you do it, but there's a problem. There's a very, very real problem in our political system today, and that problem is the Supreme Court decision, Citizens United. And it opened the whole political process to unlimited amounts of secret money. And it's flooding in. Most of it is conservative money. There's progressive and liberal money, but not nearly as the same amount. And it is skewing the body politics and essentially pushing the Republicans and to some extent Democrats further and further away from the environmental concerns that you've just talked about. It's a very real issue. We're talking about tens, in fact there'll be over hundreds, I don't know, probably in this election $200 to $300 million, maybe even more will be spent by these secret super PACs. 501C4 is to be precise. A couple of things can be done about it. First of all, there are three things that can be done with regard to the Citizens United. One, a constitutional amendment. Don't hold your breath. Very unlikely to happen. You have to have not only the Congress, but then the states approve it, and that's very difficult. For example, the Equal Rights Amendment has been out there for almost 50 years and not yet approved by the requisite number of states. So don't wait on that one. Number two, it was a five to four decision in the Supreme Court. Five to four. One justice changed their mind and the issue returns, it can be four to five. And the whole Citizens United could flip the other direction. The justices, and this is Justice Kennedy, a sacrament, said that he thought that the third element would suffice to control the issue. The third element is disclosure. There's some doubt that that would suffice. So maybe he's rethinking his position and maybe this issue will come back to the Supreme Court and maybe they'll flip and go the other way. That's a possibility. But disclosure is a very real, a very real thing. Here in California, there are disclosure rules and the legislature attempted to pass a more robust disclosure for campaigns in California. It was defeated. And excuse me, my erstwhile opponent in the upcoming elections voted against disclosure. I think disclosure is a very, very important thing. I've been for it forever. And it can help. Anybody, I think all of you remember this. This is Davis, after all. Elections ago, there was a ballot proposition put forth by PG&E to make it impossible for communities to form their own municipal utility and run their own electrical system. It went down to defeat by about 60%. PG&E spent like $40 million supporting it. The opposition spent something like, I don't know, $50,000. It went down to defeat at about 60% vote against it because I think on every advertisement that PG&E put out, they had to put approved and supported by Pacific Gas and Electric Company. And people go, hmm, I wonder what they're up to now. I'm a no vote. Disclosure really works. So I'd recommend that we push the disclosure. We've been trying to push legislation in Congress that would require disclosure immediately on the internet of any campaign contribution, from 501C3 or to me or to the Democratic or Republican Party, whomever, immediate disclosure of that contribution. Right now it's a three month thing unless it's three weeks before the election. And the same on the expenditure side. Anybody that makes a campaign, makes a expenditure for political purposes, immediate disclosure. It's been blocked by the Republicans in Congress. I wish to. Okay, moving along, I'm going to just come back. Environment, here we go again. Here we go. First of all, I'd like to thank you for being here and letting all of us get to meet you in person. But as I mentioned, I'm president of Environmental Voices out of Davis here. And there's two serious environmental issues going on right now. And the first one is Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering. Say that again. It's called Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering. And what this is, it's... I know what it is. Okay, so... You can explain it to everybody if you like. Well, basically, they're spraying aerosols of toxic chemicals which include aluminum, barium, strontium, and other metals in the air. So what we're trying to do is make people aware of this and see if we can get these programs stopped. Now there's evidence that the metals have changed the soil pH. And as we know, the crops in California are a main source of revenue here. And there's evidence that there's been a major crop reduction. I've got a lot of questions, so... And also with the U.S. Navy Warfare testing and training programs where there's millions of mammals and fish that are being killed, both in the Pacific and Atlantic. Are there any things being done in the capital to try to stop these programs or reduce them? With regard to the program that... In some instances, it's known as cloud seeding. And then there's another high atmospheric program that's being studied. With cloud seeding, it's been going on a long time. Different studies have been taking place. And for the most part, they figure it's not worth it. And it has a problem. You seed the clouds in California, they get really dry in Nevada. And so you've got regional problems. You're taking my water because you're squeezing the water out of the clouds before they would otherwise arrive in your neighbor. Cloud seeding really hasn't been working very, very well, even when in the 1880s, when they thought they could put a lot of smoke into the air and get... The other is an issue dealing with climate change. And that is high atmospheric changing the ability of the sun to shine strongly on the world. If you follow some of this in the very big volcanic eruptions that spew various kinds of emissions into the high atmosphere when Karakata blew up in Indonesia in the late 1800s, it started a three-year winter throughout the world, at least in the northern hemisphere, because that dust was in the high atmosphere. It took three years for it to settle out. And it got really, really cold. And so people are looking at global climate change and global warming as a ultimate defense. And that's being studied. I suspect there's somebody around here at this university that's looking at that. It would be if all else fails and it has a problem. Once you do it, you got to keep doing it. You become addicted to it. So the answer lies in reducing emissions now. If that is someday off in the future and we have a catastrophe and we... Anyway, the studies are going on. It's not happening, but the studies are there and there is atmospheric history from volcanic eruptions. They indicate that it will create a cold climate, but it has a lot of problems associated with it. I'm going to continue on along the front row then I'm coming back second and third rows. Yes, your turn, sir. Hi, thanks for coming. I wanted to talk in a little bit more detail about the oil tankers, if that's okay. I understand here in Davis we don't have the right to stop trains coming through our town because it's federal law. So what I'm wondering, I have two things that I'm hoping that you can try to make happen in Washington. One is the oil tank cars that are coming through now with the oil, the Dot-111As, they weren't designed for oil tankers. And I'm sure you know this and that's why Kaboom has been happening. And so I'm wondering, is there a way for the federal government to pass legislation, insist that the oil tankers that are coming through, you know, all over the country be of a higher quality, the Dot-111As. So that's the first... My first thing, the second one is it seems like really what we need to do is get that carbon tax. And what are we doing in Washington to make that happen? Thanks. Okay, with regard to the tank cars, the federal government does have the authority and the ability to set the standards for the tank cars. I'm not sure you need a federal law. It may be that the Department of Transportation has the regulatory authority to do it. And they are moving forward with the new ones that are manufactured. They are more robust in the protection that they have. The front and back are stronger, which normally that's where the brake occurs. They don't yet have bladders inside, although that would be, in my view, a cheap and good idea. Just put a bladder in there. And that would significantly... You did it, Donald. I didn't do that. That would significantly help it. But the new tank cars are... The problem is you got, I don't know, several thousand tank cars that are old. I've talked to UP about this already, and they said they want to have the very best and the highest standard on their trains. But they don't control that. The tank cars are owned by others. Energy companies, others. And they have to take those cars. We're moving forward.  It's a national issue and it's on a lot of minds. And it's on a lot of congressional minds. For me, go to the high standards right now and make them in America. I mean, this is an opportunity for us to enhance the American manufacturing sector. Build those cars here with American steel. So we can do that, which is part of my Make It in America agenda. We'll come to that in a few moments. With regard to the carbon tax, it isn't going to happen. We'll see where the next election takes us. But right now the Republicans control the House of Representatives and no, it's not going to happen. It's an elegant system. Net neutral. You raise the money. You're obviously taxing carbon. And you plow that money back into the society. But it's not going to happen. Interestingly, there is significant support for it, even among the energy industry. So we'll see, but it's, no, not this year. We do have to do a transportation bill this year. And the present transportation bill ends at the end of the fiscal year in October. So we need to do a new one. First, excuse me, end of September, first of October. And we have to do a new bill. And the funding is going to be a piece of that puzzle. How do we fund it? Okay, I said I'd come back along. I'm going to go there and there and there. That's three of you. And we'll continue on and we'll pick up over here. Yes, sir. You need the microphone. Yes. I have read that fracking uses a great deal of water. Is there some way to do the fracking without depleting our water resources? Well, fracking does use a great deal of water. It also uses various kinds of chemicals. One of the things about the fracking issue is that the regulations, fracking has been known for a long time. It's been going on for a long time, probably two decades. Fracking has occurred across the nation in various places. But it's really come into its heavy role now in the last four or five years. There's no, across the nation, nationally, there is no good regulatory system to regulate what the chemicals are, to let the communities know what's going on, to deal with aquifers and the like. California is moving in that direction. There's a lot of controversy about it. People feel that it's not strong enough. And that's probably true. But with a good solid regulatory system in place, what are the chemicals? Where are they going? What are the aquifers? How much water are you using and so forth? Those are all really important questions. I'm curious, and I don't know if there's anybody from the university here, any geologist, anybody from USGS, US Geological Survey. The US Geological Survey helped to develop fracking. That was US government figuring out how to do this. Now, could that fracking technology be used to recharge those aquifers that have collapsed? Interesting question. Think about it. If we can do fracking, now the chemicals are a bit of a problem here. But if we can put high pressure water into a shale formation to open the shale formation so that gas will flow through it, could you go to an aquifer that has collapsed and no longer can be recharged in the normal rainfall and use some of the fracking technology to recharge that aquifer? We're thinking about it. I'm going to ask the USGS about it, and if any of you are connected, you can get ahead of me and ask them. Is it possible? I don't know. Anyway, the fracking, it needs to be heavily regulated. The amount of water to be used, that's another question. Where is it coming from? What kind of water is it? Brackish water, freshwater, all those major questions. And obviously, we have a shortage of water. Moving along, you had the next question, and then here. Behind you is a microphone. A lot of people here are concerned about global warming and carbon release. The United States is exporting coal, the worst carbon polluter to both China and Europe. Is there anything we can do to reduce it? If we quit exporting coal, coal prices worldwide would go up. Global warming would go down. I'm just thinking about a constitutional restriction on export. I have to think about that. The question of exporting of the use of coal is a major, major political battle in Washington. That's domestically. And it used to be king coal ruled the land. They've lost a lot of their political power, although we may very well lose some Democratic members of Congress in coal country over the issue of repowering power plants moving away from coal to natural gas. And that's happening. The EPA is proposing very stringent regulations on the coal emissions, on emissions from coal power plants. I think they're doing the right thing. But the coal, if those regulations hold, and I hope they do, then many of the coal-fired power plants will have to switch to natural gas or shut down. That's already happening, even without the regulations being finalized. Now the export of coal is another matter. I'm not sure if there's any way to stop the export of coal. It's, maybe I just don't know. Yes? I don't mean to answer my own question, but... If you know the answer, go ahead. We're transporting coal by train. We're talking about building export facilities in Washington, Washington State, and on the East Coast. Those are all federally regulated. The facilities are, yes. And the tax money from the... And some federal tax money is going into building those facilities in the Puget Sound area. That's correct. Can you stop that? The Washington delegation and the Wyoming delegation say no. Right now, some very powerful folks in those delegations. But yes, that could be stopped. That could be stopped, yes. Okay, sir? Right here, Donald. Yes, Mr. Gearham-Mendy, back to trains. How do you stand on the California High Speed Rail project? California High Speed Rail project. I think they're making a very serious mistake in the development of the project. I've been a long, long-time supporter of that project, but I'm very concerned about what they're doing now. Why they want to start building this thing in the middle of the Central Valley, where it'll be decades before anybody's really going to use it, makes no sense to me. They, in my view, should have used the money that's available to build connections in the urban area. That would be the first stage of a project. For example, San Diego to Los Angeles. Even if you want to go up to Apple Valley, you can do that and provide services to millions of people. Those lines need to be upgraded. They're talking about, and I think this will ultimately happen, San Francisco to San Jose. Electrifying it, doing the overpasses and all the rest. Those are the early stages of a high speed rail project that would serve people soon. In the Central Valley, it's going to be forever before the people of California, most of them are going to get any real benefit out of it. You have the capital corridor, which is authorized under the bond legislation. You could upgrade the capital corridor, which probably would help with the train issues here by improving the line or building an alternate line for the commuter transport. You've got, and why they chose, I'll never understand this, why they chose to go to San Jose and then over the Pacheco Pass, rather than over the 580 at Livermore, I don't know. There's 3 million people that would use the Livermore Pass and there's already a line there that needs to be upgraded. So these are immediate projects that could have been done rather than going off into the middle of Madera County and building there. So I'm very concerned about the choices that have been made. I think the result of this is going to be the high speed rail isn't going to go anywhere.  The judge has already said you're not following the law, folks. A judge has said that. It's back for another hearing and we'll see what ultimately happens. But there were so many things that could be done that would set the stage step by step and the first step, helping urban people today. Capital corridor. The ace route from Mantica to San Jose. San Francisco to San Jose. San Diego to Los Angeles. A million people could use those, but they chose not to do it.  So there you go, sir. I'll get back to row 4 in a minute. I'll be with you. Hang on. Good evening. My name is Darryl Rutherford. I am a Davis resident and new executive director at Sacramento Housing Alliance where regional affordable housing advocacy policy and advocates. I guess really what I want to talk about is the lack of federal leadership we've seen around this housing crisis, starting with all the foreclosure issues that we had then coming down to where we're at now with the housing market itself. Unfortunately, local governments were seeing taking the lead or following the lead of what the federal government has done around housing and really starting to pull back. They're attacking all these local housing ordinances. There's lots of issues around all of that as well. Really what we're in need of now is Fannie and Freddie reform. I'm afraid the direction that that's headed is the wrong direction. We definitely need... What would you want to reward? Well, let's keep Fannie and Freddie as some sort of that alive and then also open up the funding that's supposed to be directed to the National Housing Trust fund back. During the crisis, that was suspended and we could be raising millions of dollars a year through Fannie and Freddie on that. So there's also a bill out there that's HR 1213, which is to fully fund the National Housing Trust fund itself. So we'd really like to see you come out in support of that as well and do your best at making sure that Fannie and Freddie stay alive or some semblance of it. We need government in housing, especially as far as it relates to hitting the neediest of our communities, folks that are homeless, folks that are near homeless, and those that are the lower income, low wage earners in our community. Thank you. Very good explanation. Freddie and Fannie are very, very important in my view. They got out of line. They forgot their mission.  But they're absolutely essential. There has to be some government backstop guarantee to this system in order for it to work well. There are those that a year ago wanted to do away with Freddie and Fannie. For the most part, Congress wants to reform Freddie and Fannie and keep it because now they realize there really is no other option for the loan guarantees and for that mechanism of financing. So I think Freddie and Fannie are going to go on. Hopefully the reforms will eliminate the excesses that they got into. They are a quasi-government corporation and it's not about the bottom line profit. It's about their purpose in the American economy, which you described very well. With regard to the federal assistance for housing, yes, it should happen. But you need to understand what's going on in Congress. The anti-government forces really control the House of Representatives. And the government role in housing is not something they want to see. And so they are cutting the budgets for the housing programs, the federal housing programs, almost all of them, and those kind of tax subsidies that have assisted in the development of low-income housing. It's very, very difficult to get money for any project. And right now the control of the Congress is in the hands of folks that don't believe that there is a role for government in much of anything. And so it's going to be very difficult, very, very difficult to do. I appreciate that and I know that. There's another piece of this puzzle that disturbs me and that is that Wall Street's back in the housing game. And they purchased, they bought up many of the foreclosed houses throughout this area and then they lease, rent them out, usually at a higher price. And then on the back end, that is the mortgage, they then slice and dice that mortgage and do exactly what they did with the collateral obligations, bond obligations. And so they're right back into what they did earlier, a little different way of accomplishing it, but right back what they did before. And so they take all of these houses, buy them, float a bond and then slice that bond into various tranches of risk. And that's exactly how we got in problems before. And so they're going right back at it. The other problem, that's on the national financing and the stability of the financial system in America. But on the other side of it is that they've taken those homes off the market and raised the rental rates along the way, none of which are good policy. So this is an ongoing problem. It seems to have settled down a little bit, but this was going on all across my district. And in some communities they just simply soaked up the entire inventory of homes that had been repossessed and created a big problem. Okay, we're going to continue on. The two of you seem to be together. So I'm going to skip you. And I'm going to go over here to some students. Vote no on 23. You need a microphone. Hi, my name's Donna. I'm the state executive board chair for CalPURG students. And one thing that we're working on this year and into the future is trying to get a constitutional amendment on Citizens United. And I know that you mentioned earlier that disclosure acts are a very good first step in trying to increase exposure. But I was wondering whether or not you would support a constitutional amendment. And if you did, what you would recommend to expedite the process? So it didn't take 50 years. Well, you're likely to be very, very old before this actually becomes a constitutional amendment. It's highly, highly unlikely. Would I support it? Yes. I think this financing business is just out of hand. It is clearly harming our democracy. And it's just skewing the entire political process. There's a new verb in the American lexicon. Brand new verb. It's called primaried. So a candidate is primaried. Meaning that in the primary election, if you are not conservative enough, the super PACs will come in and drop a million, two million, five million dollars into your opponent's campaign. That has two effects. One, you lose. Or two, you become even more conservative to avoid the primary. Now, some of this much, much smaller happens on the Democratic side also. There's a couple of super PACs out there that think all Democrats should be super liberal. If they're not liberal enough, they'll be primaried. And all of this comes because of Citizens United and the extraordinary amount of money that's out. The Koch brothers, 100 million dollars or more in the coming election. So it's a real problem. Yeah, if there was a constitutional amendment, yes, I would support it. I think I probably signed on one already, but it isn't going to happen. You've got to get it through Congress, two-thirds, you've got to go to all the states. Better, if I might suggest, you work on disclosure. I think you're going to have a better shot at disclosure. And if you have robust disclosure, it really will dampen the enthusiasm of the super PACs. They don't want to be known. They don't want people to know what they're up to. That spotlight of disclosure is really, really important. No, you two are together. I'm going to skip. Fair is fair, guys. I'm not going to... Just a little different.  I'd like to know your thoughts about mass surveillance, both globally and domestically. And I'm also concerned about the use of drones. You know, the ethics of it. And also just about our privacy. A couple of things. The national security agencies out of control. And we absolutely have to rein it in. There is... I've been in numerous meetings. Some of them classified. And it's very interesting that what we talked about seven, eight months ago has been one of the primary recommendations of the commission that the president put together on the national security agency. And one of the... That one recommendation was that the government not collect the metadata. That's everybody's phone calls. You don't need to do... The government doesn't need to do that. I can't tell you the conversation, but I would refer you to the conversation that I had with Mr. Clapper about this. Because it was classified. And I can't tell you. But read the newspapers. It's all there. The proposal put forth by the president's commission is that those records be held by someone other than government. And who's someone? AT&T, Comcast, so forth. The government, in order to get those records, would have to go to a court and get a subpoena. Now, this has been reported. That... Well, let's put it this way. There's enough time for the government in virtually every case to go to a court, get a subpoena to get the records. It's a little more difficult. I mean, you've got to go to maybe one or two or three different phone companies, but that can be done. And you get the phone records and you trace out, okay, here's the problem guy, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, it can be done. That's how it ought to be. And I think that's what's going to happen. There are many of us in Congress. Sensenbrenner, a radical conservative Republican from Stanford of all places, is pushing this with a radical Democrat, Mr. Leahy, on the Senate side. And, you know, you've got the far right and the far left working together on this issue. And they want to move to something like I described. There's all kinds of other stuff involved, but that's the principal one. And whatever we need in the way of security issues and finding out the bad guys, it can be done that way. There are other issues. Drones surveillance domestically cannot be done by the military. Constitution and laws prohibit the military from doing it. However, the city of Davis can do it. So drones could be part of your life if the city council decides to allow drones. It caused a problem at the university, I suspect, because I know what university students do. I've had six of them go through the University of California and Davis, three of them at Davis. When they get to be 43, they'll tell you what they did in school. Before that, they won't tell you. Anyway, oh, you too. Anyway, those issues are out there. And the surveillance thing is, it's a concern. It really is. There's very, very little privacy left in our lives anymore. I haven't had privacy since I got into politics and I'm just accustomed to that. But the rest of the community, this is something we need to be concerned about. There's another issue with drones having to do with the military and we'll maybe come back to that. Okay, I went all the way back there and I got the front row here. Here, take this. All right, thank you. You're funnier than I thought you'd be. I wanted to speak to the fact that a lot of times when federal laws are passed to benefit people with disabilities and elderly people like the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 49-year-old Rehabilitation Act of 1973, those laws, everyone thinks everything is hunky-dory for us, but they're not because when those laws get passed, there are a lot of people see ways to exploit those laws and to make money and to sell products that are not necessary or to convince city governments to buy things that they don't need. And one of the things that I'm concerned about is that many of us who use the paratransit buses across the nation, these are the buses that, they're huge buses, they are, the wheelchairs get on a foot from the ground, I mean a yard from the ground, I measured it when I came over today, and they load wheelchairs, they also can seat 14 seniors. The theory behind it is, hey, we can save lots of money because we can pick up one person, pick up another, pick up a whole bunch here, we're going to save gas, we're going to save driver time, and the reality is, I've been riding paratransit here in Davis for eight years and there's never been more than four people on the bus with me at any one time. And last year, the city of Davis had the opportunity to buy minivan, but instead chose to buy another one of those vehicles. So they extended their fleet from three of those huge vehicles and they have three people on them, gas hoggers to four. And the reason I'm bringing this to you is because 80% of the money comes from the feds and something is happening at the federal level and this is happening in cities, I travel a lot, and it's happening in cities all across the nation, that cities are being convinced to buy these vans by somebody who is selling these vans to the city and people are not riding them and people who do ride them, some of them are getting injured because the vans are not right for people. Some disabled, the elderly people have to climb three steps to get into them because they're scared to ride the lifts. The vans don't kneel and the lifts are scary and only two wheelchairs at a time, so something's happening at the federal level. I'm not exactly sure what's happening at the federal level, but I said to a question over here, this year we will rewrite the federal transportation plan and this issue is part of that plan. That is support for the disabled, transportation support for the disabled. It will be part of the plan. I think generally the federal government is not interested in setting, determining what kind of bus or van a city wants to buy, but clearly the federal government provides some money, as you said, and there are, I suspect, certain regulations about what they can buy, probably having to do with the lift and maybe other things. Well, let me just try to finish up here. The general thing at the federal government is to provide the money so that these vehicles can be purchased by local transit agencies. The question of whether it should be a big van or a little van is a decision, as you say, going to be made by the local entity, in this case Davis or wherever it happens to be. We can look at the federal regulations, but I will bet that it doesn't say you must buy a van that serves four people or three people. That's a decision that will be made locally. The federal government will provide the money and it undoubtedly would say in the regulations that the money must be used to purchase accessible vehicles for the disabled. I would recommend you do the following. I am going, I am on the Transportation Committee. Well, the answer is yes, I will look into it. And I've got, let me just take this opportunity, I'll be right with you. To focus on is that people such as myself and herself, I'm post polio. I don't have the muscle strength and I prefer to get on the city bus because it is not as hard on my body. I have to stop them from going on the highway. I cannot sit in my chair. And so she got injured. She didn't mention she got injured. One thing that will help to change this that you can do is sue them. This country only knows how to move if the money goes, whatever way the money goes. I'll look into the question about the regulations from the federal government. I hear what you're saying, but I will tell you this decision is made locally. This is decision, I suspect it's made right here. And if you haven't been here before when the city council takes it up, I recommend that you do with regard to the safety issues and the lift of the van, the three feet and so forth. That may very well be a federal regulation. It may not be. We'll find out. In the back of the room are a couple of my staff folks. Ellie Faircloth is right there. Our office is over on the other side next to the federal building, right next to the theater. Brandon Minto is there. Donald Lathbury. I think you may know Ellie. I think most everybody in the community knows. Okay. All right, we'll take up the issue and go from there and try to get an answer to your question about the federal regulations. Moving along. Your turn, ma'am. I'm sorry, there's somebody ahead of. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Congressman. I'd like to have a voice for coming from such an educated area at Davis. A lot of us are very interested in educating the next generation. I have a situation with Sally May. We obviously have subsidized and unsubsidized loans for a student. The problem is when I go to pay that back and everything, what happens is I am not allowed to pay my loans back. I have a situation where I have five loans. I have the payoff amount for four of those loans, wanting to pay obviously the 6.8 first, the unsubsidized, for a later time. When I have three times been in contact with them, have the payoff amount, wrote separate checks, one-to-one correspondence, loan one, this amount, loan two, this amount, as instructed by their office. Did that for four loans? Do you know that for a third time now, they have taken all of the money that was paid and spread it across five loans? Something is very wrong. And maybe they'll make a little extra money off of me for whatever interest. But if you look at students across the whole nation, that's millions and millions of dollars. I don't think that I could go to a bank or to a mortgage if I had three or four properties tried to pay off one or two of those, that they would spread it to all that I actually owned. We chatted before we started the town hall about this. I don't know the answer to the question. I understand the problem that you've described. It sounds to me as though it is, maybe contrary to their contracts. We'll look at it. I'll put you in touch with, I think, Ellie before we started. Do you see where this would be? Millions of dollars extra? The entire student loan program was a monumental ripoff. The federal government took it back in 2009. Not all of it, but took back many of those programs and saved billions of dollars by having a lower interest rate and a much better administration. There's still a lot of problems out there. You've described one that I was unaware of. Doesn't surprise me, but I'm unaware. We'll look at it, try to get an answer to you and see what's going on. Thank you very much. That's exactly what I wanted to do, is have a voice for that. We'll do the best we can to figure out what's going on. That's what we write letters to Sally May and others for. Moving on down, you're not partners, so I think we can take your questions. Otherwise, the partners over here are going to get angry with me and I wouldn't be one. We can do that later. My two questions have to do with the Department of Defense. The first thing I'd like to say is that I think the Department of Defense is the only agency with a budget that cannot be audited. It is so out of control. So I'd like to hear what you think about that, whether I'm right or wrong. And do you see any opening to bring the Department of Defense monies that are being wasted, and that's a phenomenal amount of waste under control? Well, that's my daily work. I am on the Armed Services Committee, and we do this literally every day of the week, not only in Washington but when I'm out here in California or wherever I happen to be. It is an ongoing issue about the way in which the Department of Defense operates and spends money. The auditing system is not yet in place. They've been talking about it for a long time. There are certain projects and programs that are audited, but the overall Department of Defense doesn't know it hasn't yet been done. Will it be done? I think we're going to go at this organization by organization. The Air Force, certain elements of the Air Force, deal with those acquisition of materials, platform acquisitions and the like. The Department of Defense is, I don't know, $400, almost $500 billion a year, and it is very, very complex. Audited of the whole thing been added for at least 15 years that I'm aware of, and it hasn't yet been able to develop a system that would allow for the audit of the entire thing. Improvements are being made, and it's coming together very slowly. As I say, specific programs and projects are audited, and that goes on. How do you save money? Well, first of all, you make very sure that you are buying what you need. We are clearly downsizing the military. The war in Iraq is over. The war in Afghanistan is on the way to being over, and so the downsizing is taking place, and it's happening. I was listening to one of my colleagues on one of these issues on the personnel. We had a hearing on personnel, and she was really into the issue where we have so many two-star generals, like maybe 10 times more than we need. It went on and on, and I just go, well, that's very interesting. Why do we have, well, organizations tend to build hierarchies, and the military is no different, so there's going to be serious terminations among the general corps. It's coming, and there will be a lot of generals who are going to be working for defense companies, which is a problem, which is a problem. So, you know, that's coming down. The war in Afghanistan is probably spending $90 billion this year. This year, as the downsizing takes place, the amount of money spent this year is the same as the previous year. It doesn't make any sense to me. I have been on this issue for the last, well, a year now, saying why are we spending the same amount of money as we spent last year when we had 30,000 more soldiers? Why? And I don't get a good answer. Why are we providing all this money for the Karzai government when we know it's going to wind up in Bahrain? And it's a mess. It is a mess, and not going to be easy. Obviously, if you read the press, you know that we're having a lot of trouble negotiating the status of forces. That is, if we're going to stick around, we need to have some sort of a treaty between the two countries as to where the American government and military role is. That has not gone well, so we'll see what happens. Another thing that really bothers me about this is in Afghanistan three months ago, two months ago now, they had what they called a lawyer, Jirga, in which they had a thousand leaders from all over the country come together in Kabul and listen to a three-day discussion of the status of force document. So in Afghanistan, they had this huge meeting of people from all over the country discussing what the American role would be, what the relationship would be with the two countries this year, after 2014. In the House of Representatives, the Republicans have not done one hearing on the status of forces, not one. So in Afghanistan, that closed society, they've had a big discussion about it, and they decided that they would go with the status of forces. But the Republicans and the House of Representatives and the Armed Services Committees have not allowed one hearing on the status of forces. It's not a secret. I mean, my God, you've got a thousand people in Afghanistan that know what it is, but we've not discussed it, and I think this just drives me crazy. Okay, moving on. Right there. Do you guys know what grandchildren are? Grandchildren are little Petri dishes filled with various kinds of germs.  And so I'm curious how long my voice is going to last here. Go ahead, I've got two of these most marvelous little girls, and one of them is eight months old now, and it's wintertime, and she is the finest Petri dish in the House. Greetings. My name is Derek Adonado. It's a tremendous relief to see that your water conservation plan recognizes the water crisis facing California. Your conservation plan states that California's population will continue to grow, quote-unquote, and that we're once again, quote, embroiled in a water war. Now, I recognize that we're not quite at the level of violent conflict as in Africa, and I hope we don't get there. My three-year-old doesn't get to see that before he's an adult, but I think California's population is on a collision course with our water supplies. So while it's admirable that you recognize that conservation is a key part, key component of water management, it seems, however, that you're erasing any of those gains by promoting the acceleration of our population growth. How can you advocate more immigration, more worker immigration, while simultaneously claiming a water crisis? You're looking at a document, apparently. I think that's my water plan for all California. Yes. It's just that. It's a water plan for all California, and there are many elements, including conservation, but we've covered some of the recycling stories and so forth. We need more water. Whatever the population may be, we need more water. And we're going to see, because of climate change, greater variation, and in all probability, the biggest reservoir in the state is going to get smaller. The biggest reservoir being the snowpack. So we need to address the concerns whether or not the population grows at all. We need to address this concern, and if you only need to look at the current situation to understand the necessity for every single proposal that I have in that paper, which, incidentally, isn't something that I dreamed up. It's just a compilation of the California Department of Water Resources ideas about what needs to be done to develop the water supply for California's future. The Colorado River is in serious drought, and likely, and could very well be, on a five or six hundred year cycle, which about six hundred years ago wiped out the Anasazis, cliff dwellers. So we need to address this issue, and that's what the paper does. With regard to immigration, we absolutely have to have a rational immigration program. The present one doesn't work. The present one has ten million people, ten to twelve million people out there that are here without papers, without documentation. They need to be brought into our society. We need border issues. We do need agricultural labor. We also need to address the STEM issue, which all of which depends upon a labor market study, which is a study that we've done for seventy years in America about are there workers available for these various kinds of businesses and economic sectors? Where there is no special immigration. Where there isn't, for example, agricultural workers, we should have an agricultural guest worker program. So that immigration reform, all of the pieces of the puzzle need to be put in place right away. And there has to be a path to citizenship. There has to be a penalty for those that broke the law. And they have to get in line. All of those things need to be done.  We don't need to spend billions and billions. We've already done that. But there are some things that need to be done with regard to the border and so forth. So yes, I'm a very strong advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. And every single thing in that paper we should be doing. Whether we grow the population or not, we're going to have to do all of those things. And I'm going to get a little bit of a correction at the back of the room. I'll get to you next. Well, that's good. You get a microphone in just a second. I have a very specific question for you. And that is, you mentioned the sites reservoir. It's been on the table for years and years and years. That my question to you is, precisely what are you going to do to push for it? If we don't have storage, and I was up at Chastadam not terribly long ago, it is low. We went to the Colorado River and it's a dribble going into Lake Mead. And Lake Mead has lots of ground showing. We have an opportunity up there. It's been up there. Why is it not being pushed and pushed and pushed? Instead of it just keeps getting thrown off the table. Yeah. Sites reservoir has been around for a long, long time, as has Raising Shasta. The Bureau of Reclamation did a study on Raising Shasta and they calculated that a 17-foot increase in the dam would hit what is known as a sweet spot. You don't inundate I-5 or the railroads, but you do inundate a large part of the McLeod River. And now you've got an environmental issue and Indian issues in that canyon. So it has its set of issues also. Sites reservoir has been around for a long time. I strongly support it. We're working on this piece of legislation on Wednesday that steals water from the north. It authorized the federal government to work with the Joint Powers Authority for Sites Reservoir and then prohibited the federal government from spending any money. You go, wait a minute. What are you doing here? What are you doing? You say in one hand, one sentence, federal government go work on this project with the Joint Powers Authority and the next sentence, you can't spend any money, which means no federal employee can work on it.  Anyway, we need to move that forward. I think you're going to see a piece of legislation very shortly to move that whole process forward and that'll be a fine-sign legislation on the Senate side and on the House side and other piece. Pardon? Yes. That's correct. That's correct. And I've not met with them, but I'm aware of that. Right there, ma'am, your turn. Thank you very much. I know you've had a long day. You've been at several of these meetings and I'm very glad to hear your opinions on the topics that have been asked of you. So thank you. I got a very nice letter from you about the Trade Promotion Authority fast track and so it looks like after huge amounts of mobilization that the Bacchus Hatch camp bill is sort of dying, has died. But Senator Wyden in Oregon of Oregon is working hard on bringing up a sort of better, kinder, nicer fast track bill. Not so fast, fast track. Not so fast, fast track. But fast track is fast track. And the TPP is terrible. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is terrible. And so I know you're for Buy America, Buy Local. You're for other things that the TPP would impact. So what I'm asking you is would you, first of all, resist the Wyden effort to have a slower fast track? And would you also be able to commit to working with Sherode Brown, Senator Sherode Brown, to work across the aisle with people who really want to create a fair trade bill and not a free trade bill so that we really can reform trade here and talk about social, economic, environmental justice as a foundation for trade and not fast track and not the TPP? I do not support fast track. I do not know what is in the TPP, but what I've heard from rumors, I would not support the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I think it has some very, very serious flaws. You use the word fair trade. We haven't had much of that. We certainly had free, which has been basically free to harm the American economy. And I'm very, very concerned about it. Wyden's legislation is being talked about, but as of I think yesterday, we didn't know what he had in mind. We'll see. I think the Congress of the United States has the constitutional response. Let me change that. I know the Congress of the United States, Senate House, has the constitutional responsibility to regulate trade. It's right there in the Constitution. And the President has the power to propose, but when you fast track, the Congress's authority is basically eviscerated. And that's a problem. You're quite correct about what I have heard about fast track. Excuse me about the Trans-Pacific Partnership. There are very serious concerns about labor, or the lack of labor laws in countries that are part of this. There are serious concerns about the environment. And I'm very concerned about giving away our power to enforce our own environmental laws within this nation. It may very well be that depending on how this thing is written and some of the early versions we are told gave the power for environmental regulation to the World Trade Organization. Now, I got to tell you, there are a whole bunch of real conservative Tea Party Republicans in the House that are all for fast track. All for this TPP. On the right hand, on the left hand, they hate the UN because it's taking away our power, and I'm going guys, open your eyes. If you're mad about the UN somehow thinking it's a world government, then you better be very much aware of what fast track could do through the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Now, that may not be the version that comes forward, but that's the problem. We're near the end of this process, and Congress has been kept in the dark. Treated pretty much like a mushroom, and that's not the way it should be. So I'm a little exercised about it. We were at the White House on Wednesday, and the President spoke to this. He wants fast track authority, a big, big pushback from the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives, and it was a significant debate. So we're getting close, now we're not close to the end, but I'm getting close to the end of my voice. Let's move on here, moving along. Where'd your partner go? Wait a minute, if you're going to say something positive, give him the microphone. So they were going to extend thanks for the support on a affordable housing project here in Davis. Yes, you did, you missed a great one there. And then also want to extend an opportunity to see if you're aware of SB 391 here in California. It's the California Homes and Jobs Act. It is the California's move towards a statewide housing trust fund. We'd like your support out on that, as well as seeing if you can help your colleagues at the state legislature and Governor Brown to show support of that as well. Thank you. Ellie's right behind you. Make sure we get some paper on it. How's that for a quick response? Out of the way, Ellie. Okay. Is that Hollister on that shirt? Yeah, it's a brand. The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended copyright from the life of the author plus 70 years, or rather it extended it to that. That, to me, seems an excessive length. I don't see how that, as the Constitution puts it, promotes the useful arts and sciences, specifically not for, and again, a quick constitution, limited times. I'm wondering, do you think that that is an appropriate amount of time? And what, if anything, is Congress doing to change copyright law and would you perhaps be in favor of reducing it to 20 years? Thank you. I'll bet you've written a paper on this. I don't know. I mean, this is a new issue. I'm aware that the issue of intellectual property is a huge issue throughout America and certainly in our relationships with China and a few other countries. The copyright is a piece of that puzzle. I don't know about 70 years or 50 years or whatever. And does that copyright apply to an app, which I think you may have had on your phone as you pulled it up a moment ago. These are issues that the technology and the advancement of the technology is so changing so rapidly that the patent laws, the intellectual rights laws and the copyright laws are out of date very quickly. And so there's a constant review going on and I know that one of our colleagues from San Mateo County is deeply involved in all of these issues. I don't know about 70 years or not, but if you have a paper, I'd be happy to read it. I've got 11 hours of library time every week. Four hours and 45 minutes to Washington and five hours and 35 minutes coming back the other direction. Send me your papers and that's when I read all this stuff. What are you signaling me for? Another question over here? I have no idea what you said, Donald. Oh, you've got papers back there. Oh, Covered California. Thank you, Donald. We really haven't talked about the Affordable Care Act, but we asked the Covered California organization to join us. And if any of you have any questions about coverage for yourself or your kids or whomever, they're back there. They've been with us all day and they're probably tired right now, but they've been very, very helpful along the way with certain questions. So for that whole issue about getting insurance through the exchange, Covered California really has done a good job with a new system, multiple insurance companies involved, and so they're back there. And thank you very, very much and hang on. You may be inundated when we wrap this thing up. Okay, moving on, ma'am, you had the next question. I'm not sure if I want to be on television or not. We are not from Davis. We are from Clarksburg. Fine place. Thank you. A little conservative enclave down. I think you'll know it well. I know it well. Two kids graduated from Delta High School, but I also have the honor of being the managing director of the California Off-Road Vehicle Association, and we've spoken before in the past briefly. Yes, we have. I'm very concerned about the state of our public lands, as you can well imagine. Seven million Californians engage in some sort of off-road transport if it's to non-motorized or motorized activities. It doesn't really matter if you're going to put a kayak in a river, if you're going to hike a trail, you're going off a paved road. Forest Service and BLM have seen drastic decreases in their budgets, which is really hurting the conditions of our public lands. And it's, I know it's a political issue. What I'm looking for is common sense, reach and cross the aisle. I specialize in off-highway roads and trails that are done in environmentally sustainable manner. It is possible. But we need the cooperation of everybody who cares about public land to do this. We also, I was involved a lot in the rimfire, as you may be aware of. A huge fire, really a shame, did not have to happen, but it was the legacy of a lot of policies of forbidding logging or having lawsuits against logging, too much fuel on the ground, too many trees, which is also hurting our water supply. And because of this, there's a report that's going to come out soon that rather than our forests in California sequestering carbon, they're actually carbon emitters. And that's because of catastrophic wildfire and it's only for the last couple of years, but still, who wants it that way? So we need common sense. I think you have it. I think you could do this. But for example, the salvage logging bill that Congressman McClintock, I don't agree with everything Congressman McClintock does, but in this case, salvage logging is needed in that area to take the deadwood out so we can move forward and repair the forest. Let me pick up on this. There are really two different issues that are tied together for sure. The first about access to public lands, off-the-road vehicles, I guess even horses, whatever, the right place, the right way. And we figure that out. And take a look at the map, take a look at the geology, the topography. And do we need a new road? Maybe yes, maybe no. Probably in most cases no. There's probably something already there that can be used. The point that you made is absolutely accurate. The budgets for the federal agencies, Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service have been declining. And this era of little or no funding is really taking hold in Washington. You've seen the budgets continually decline over the last several years for virtually every operation of government, including the military. And so the effect of that makes it difficult for the maintenance for roads, off-the-road. And there's got to be maintenance. California has an off-the-road vehicle fee and has off-the-road vehicle parks. There's controversy surrounding some of those, but those do provide many, many opportunities. That money is not available for the National Force. Could be. Pardon? So, funding problem. Need to address that. And then you need to apply wisdom, which trail, where, ones that are being used. It's easy to cause a environmental destruction in an area if it's not managed properly with off-the-road vehicles. But that's a management issue. And that requires attention, requires money. We're not going to find much money in the near term. And that's just the reality of Congress as it is today. It's just tight. I can find $80 billion in Afghanistan or maybe half of $80 billion in Afghanistan and bring that home and spend it on things of this sort. With regard to the rimfire, this is something that, Salvi's logging is something that's been on my mind since I was the Deputy Secretary at the Department of Interior. And it's been very, very difficult for the federal agencies, Bureau of Land Management where they are involved or the Forest Service where they're involved. National Parks is a different issue. So just leave the National Parks out of this for now. But it's been an ongoing problem trying to do the Salvi's logging in a timely way. The process is such that it's virtually impossible to do the logging the year after the fire. The second year after the fire, the timber is mostly worthless. And so if you're going to do anything, you need to do it within a year of the fire. The rimfire was October, November. So it needs to be done this spring, summer, and fall. Tom McClintock does have a bill in, and if he would listen to me on this, it could be done. The problem that he has with this bill is he pushes aside all of the environmental laws and just say, go log. And I'm going, don't do that. There's a way of doing this to shorten the period of time. And I've been working with them for, I don't know, for three months, four months now on this thing. And I said, there's a way, my experience with this, there's a way to shorten the period of time for environmental review and still give all of the interested parties the loggers, the environmentals, the wackos, whomever an opportunity to be at the table and to be heard. And in the rimfire, the Forest Service has identified about 30,000 acres in which there's a lot of timber in which there are very few environmental issues and they're suggesting that in that there is more timber than can be used, logged, and acquired by the logging industry. It's a full bucket. Their appetite is completely filled with that 30,000 acres. My take on it is, listen, we know, I don't know if any of you are into logging, but we know that you stay out of streams, stay away from the stream zones, don't go build new roads, so you're logging in areas where there are already roads, you use low impact techniques on those areas that are sensitive, sensitive soils, steep, and so forth. You just do that and you leave a certain number of trees behind. This is standard operating procedure. So you do all of that and then you allow the public an opportunity to have his voice heard in a quick process and then you allow an arbitration procedure so that if there's a major concern, you still have an opportunity to go to a court proceeding. Not a long drawn out court proceeding, but an arbitration procedure that's quick. Here's the issues, yes or no, or in the middle, whatever the answer is, get it done and get on with it. Right now, the procedures that Bill that he has actually passed Congress Thursday, it's going to die in the Senate unless he amends it.  We can do this. We can make this work. Feinstein, Boxer's going to have a major role in this and we're already working with her on trying to get a fast track procedure. Wrong word, sorry. An expedited procedure. It can be done. The other thing is this, under the federal law today, whatever revenues come from the salvage logging do not go back to the community. Do not go back to the forest that burned. And so the second piece of this, and Tom has picked this piece up and it's in his bill, that that money, whatever it happens to be, is used for rehabilitating the forest, the forest roads, and so on and so forth. So that's where it is. No questions there. Okay, your question, and then I think I'm going to cut it off because I'm not going to last with my voices about had it. Go ahead, sir. Where do you get your campaign money from? I'm sorry, where do I think? Where do you get your campaign money from? Just about everywhere, except oil companies and tobacco. They don't like me. Insurance companies don't like me either. Over the years I've got quite a few folks that won't give me money. A lot of it comes locally from a wide, wide variety. All of it's reported that most recent report has just come out, and it's all in the public. That report came out four or five days ago. You can look it up on the website and you can see for yourself. But there's a wide, wide variety. Wall Street, they don't like me either. That's fine, I don't like them. So a lot of it's local money, various kinds of local money. Yes, sir? Not much. Very little. Actually, very little period. Okay, last question. Back to Davis on March 10th to talk at the synagogue about Israel and Palestine. Yes, I am coming back to Davis on March 10th. Thank you for reminding me of the day. It'll be about the Middle East. It'll be about what's going on in the Middle East. One of the things that I have the opportunity to do as a member of Congress is to travel, not on a governmental tax, what's known as a CODEL, Congressional Delegation. But with organizations, most recently the Aspen Institute, which is funded by the Gates Foundation, took, I think, 13 of us to Turkey. And we had a four-day seminar from experts on the Middle East, Palestine, Israel, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, all of that. It was so important to me. I'm on the Armed Services Committee. That was in, I think it was early summer, late spring that we were there. In September, the whole issue of chemical weapons comes up. And I'm listening to the President saying, you've crossed the red line and we're going to bomb. And I'm going no way, no how. First of all, I'm on the Armed Services Committee and a Republican out of New York and I have been working for three years to enforce the Constitution. You don't go to war without a Congressional Declaration of War. Don't do that. And so we're looking on modifying the law that's been in effect since the Tonkin Gulf to limit the authority of the President to engage in war. And the President said, this is not an imminent situation. But because I had that knowledge and that information, I was able to speak very specifically about what it would mean if we were to bomb. The kind of results that would be happening politically in the Middle East. And so I stepped way up front and said, Mr. President, you do not have the authority under the Constitution to do this. That's an act of war. That requires congressional authorization. Therefore, you must come to Congress and explain why it's a wise thing to do. This went on for about 10 days and at the end of the 10 days, it built up and built up and I was all over the national news on this. And finally, after about the 10th day, he did something that I thought was very, very important and frankly courageous. He said, this is an issue that must go to Congress for Congress to speak on the issue. And a diplomatic process began that resulted within three weeks of Assad agreeing to dispose of his chemical weapons and that is now in process. Not complete, but it is moving along very rapidly. So the end result of this, and this is probably another four or five months, the end result is there won't be chemical weapons and the United States to not engage in another war. That's what those conferences can do. I also had the opportunity, the CARE organization, C-A-R-E, the International Humanitarian Organization. They phoned up one day last, I think it was late spring, and they said, we want you to join a delegation of three members, four members of Congress to go to South Sudan, to go to Juba, South Sudan and meet with the government to discuss humanitarian issues in the South Sudan. Now my wife and I are Peace Corps volunteers in Ethiopia and we've remained very deeply involved in the issues of the Horn of Africa. And I said, you know, who's funding it? Where's the money coming from? Is it coming from all the donations? He said, no, no. The money for this is coming from the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and one other foundation. So we're not going to use the normal contributions that CARE collects perhaps from some of you. And I said, let me see what the thing is. So we're going to go to Juba, stop in Addis Ababa, go to Juba and then from Juba do a tour, basically finding out what the Lord's Liberation Army's doing, CORE, which is one of the violent extreme organizations, and then go on to Tanzania and meet with the President of Tanzania about food aid, economic development and a project that I was working on, and that is the poaching of elephants and rhinoceroses for the ivory trade. I said, okay, we'll go. You know, our accommodations in Juba was literally a bunker at the embassy. This is not a very safe place. So anyway, we did that. We met with the Vice President who is now at war with the President in a tribal conflict. The two main tribes in the South are now fighting each other rather than the Arabs of the North. And so it's a terrible situation. We were there, we met with him, and we could see at that time where this thing was going, and it's happened, much to the dismay of everybody around. In Tanzania, we had an audience with the President of Tanzania, and I asked him, I said, Mr. President, are you aware that from Dar es Salaam, it's the main export point for illegal ivory and rhinoceros horns? And he said, I'll look into it. And three months later, they made a raid in Dar es Salaam on some warehouses and at least temporarily shut down that export location for ivory and rhinoceros tusks. We also did a lot of work on what is known as the Public Law 480, PL 480, the Food for Peace Program. Now my wife, when she ran that program at the Department of Agriculture, she was the Assistant Director of the Foreign Agricultural Service and she was responsible for refugee and humanitarian relief around the world and spent a lot of time in the South Sudan. Some of you may have watched 60 Minutes as they talked about the lost boys of the Sudan. That was her project. That's what she was doing in the late 90s and so we were involved in looking at that whole issue of refugee relief and the like. The Horn of Africa is a major, major problem. Somalia pirates, the issue of Somalia, the role of Ethiopia in assisting the United States in dealing with violent extreme organizations, Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the Somalia area and it goes on and on. And I remain deeply involved in what's going on in the Horn of Africa. It's an extremely important trip. Later, following all of this, I persuaded the Aspen Institute to take 23 members of Congress, the Latin Republican, to Ethiopia to learn about the Horn of Africa and we had experts from several countries and ACAM Editions and the like talk to us about the Horn of Africa, the role of America and as a member of the Armed Services Committee, this is something I'm dealing with every single week. The role of AFRICOM, which is the African Command, the Violent Extreme Organizations, the Ivory Trade, what's going on in Central Africa, Republic and Somalia and so forth. This is one of the things that a member of Congress can do. And you can kind of see from the sweep of issues that we've talked about here that we cover a lot of ground. And if you're interested, if you're intellectually curious and willing to spend time, it is the best university in the world. Now, I understand how sensitive you are here in Davis, but I got to tell you, I can get the Nobel laureates from every school in California to come and talk to me for hours about an issue. The best researchers aren't any issue. And so to gather that information, to be able to apply that information in a way that addresses the problems of America and the world is an enormous joy. And I love this work. I love this work. I love to be able to try to figure out how to solve problems. How can we find the political ground to advance salvage logging? It's possible. It's possible. How can we deal with water? How can we deal with these humanitarian issues around the world? There's one thing I need in order to do my job. Now, there's an election. I need to win an election, but that's another matter. But what I need from each and every one of you is knowledge and information. And several of you have talked about projects, housing, for example, roadless issues, whatever. And you have knowledge, you have information. Please share it with us. Our office is right here in Davis. Our team is in the back of the room. Ellie heads up the office here. Brandon, those two are here every day. Jeannie up in Yuba City. And so we cover a large swell. This district is 200 miles of the Sacramento River from mile zero at the 680 Bridge, where San Francisco Bay begins, all the way to Chico. I don't represent Chico, but I go to mile 199 plus of the Sacramento River. 200 miles of the Sacramento, the most beautiful district in the, I think, in the entire nation. But it's complex. It's got military bases, the universities. It has $3 billion of agriculture and virtually every kind of agriculture you can imagine is in this district. And so in order for me to do my job, I need knowledge and information. Town halls such as this are very, very important information that you've given me. I'm going to use that directly as we develop the next transportation, surface transportation bill. So you owe me some more information. Oh, I figure you'll get it for me. So please, all of you share us the office is open. Thank you so very, very much.  Is that it? I just wanted to see if you would challenge Governor Brown to a debate on the Delta Tunnels. I would love the opportunity simply to talk to the governor. Forget about a public debate. Thank you all very much. Thank you, everyone, to find out when this is being rebroadcast. You can go to davismediaaccess.org. And as a friendly reminder, Covered California is over there. So if you have any questions about what options are available to you under the California Exchange, head over there. Thank you. Have a good night.


I've been busy over the month of June because they've been in Anguinin theatre for the most part because they're Anguinin artists in residence and they've been working on a new production called On a House Like a Fire and it's a mother-daughter story and it's told through glimpses of memorabilia and the fragments of memory and there's a great score as well performed live and let us know that Michelle rejoins the slave on the show and we're streaming as well Michelle. Good afternoon to you. Good afternoon John, thanks very much for having me on. It's good to talk about this production so the last month has been productive. It's been really productive yeah we've had a fantastic time it's wonderful to be supported by Anguinin and all the amazing staff there so Patricia McBride the director and Niall Cranny the technical manager and Jude Barrascale's been our stage manager so we've had fantastic support to put this show together. But it's not just in Anguinin or it's not just about the show because she's been doing a couple of things beyond that as well. Yeah I've been working with through the Donegal libraries so doing some creative writing so I worked it was actually the Diamond Writers Group who hosted us in Raffault and a few other people came along to that session and that's that sort of creative writing was I suppose drawing on the process from which I wrote this piece because this piece is a sort of memoir and a kind of elegy as a piece of performance because it's about my experience of my mom trying to remember my mom through the things that I've kept so we were kind of looking at that in the creative writing process and everybody brought along an object that for them carried memories significant memories of somebody often somebody they'd lost because often it's not the expensive things you know like we have the things we keep like the good china but maybe the good china doesn't hold the memories I mean sometimes it does but often it's that wooden spoon you know I mean I remember I do a workshop in Dublin with a lady who talked about a wooden spoon and how she remembered her mom in a baby's bath doing the Christmas puddings and mixing all the ingredients and everybody getting to have a stir with the spoon and she's kept that spoon because it just triggers all those memories so that's kind of what we were doing we were looking at objects and we were writing a little bit about our experiences of those objects and what they contain for us what they carry and the wooden spoon is a great example because it's just so personal and the way the scribe is there about you know the memories of everybody taking the turn at the mixing whereas other things can be just a little bit more maybe contrived whether it's a you know a diary or photographs or something or something this and there's other examples within the production of of things that you know remind you of your mom and and then there's the I suppose a little bit of film and writing and so on that that you would expect to see in production with this yes I suppose it becomes narrative there becomes a story in it so but I was working with the idea of sort of fragments and the different ways those come to you so through objects and I do I do mention objects also through photographs so we see sort of glimpses of photographs and of course now we all have photographs on our phones so that idea of the physical object and keeping the physical object and sometimes when I'm doing work in work with young people I think young people are quite interested in objects again now because they don't have as many so that idea of vinyl coming back or physical photos wanting to print them out so it's interesting about instrumented cameras making a comeback because you know we were also shaking those pictures so I do think it's interesting about our connection to object so it's that with the photos as well I think also then with the writing is how do you try and recreate a sense of memory because memory isn't like a film you know it's you can't just replay it it's not like that that home video you sort of you remember things and you remember in a sort of fragmentary way I think sometimes and then and then things like smell can we all know that you know so there's a there's a bit of sensory reflection in the piece as well I'm you know if I smell hairspray it reminds me of my mom so yeah I think all of those trying to put all of those things into the piece so to talk about my own personal experience but to make it universal that other people would understand that and I think that's also where the music came in and kind of working with Brian early on in the process I had never worked with music before and I think when I was saying I'm sort of struggling with how to write this I want it to be very kind of broken down little fragments of memory and he started playing me a score or a piece of music that he'd been working on that was about echoes and it was really beautiful and I said oh well will you develop this music for the show so he started developing that music specifically for this show and when we first developed the show for age and opportunity and the Bealtana festival last year we had to do the show online obviously because of covid so this is our first opportunity this is the live premiere and what's even more special for us is getting to work with a live string quartet and Brian's been working with the string quartet so to have that music played live is is really magical yeah and with the conductor Victor Yolamo and it you know it sounds like it sounds like a great mix and it'll all come together when you know and it'll all with all make sense as well when there's a live audience there totally yes and then you feed off the reactions and you also touched when you were chatting there about memory you touched on the subject of living with Alzheimer's that's right my mom lived with Alzheimer's at the end of her life I mean she was very she coped with it really well and she managed very well and she had support in that yeah but it's it's interesting as well about how when memory disappears and how it and how people living with dementia or with Alzheimer's often hold on to longer term memories and how how important they are but that the holes in the memory can come at different places you know somebody might I think music works really well as well for memory we remember songs they stay with us but I think also just that the story of people's stories are really important for carers or for families to be able to for families to be able to share with carers to understand who a person is because of their their story and who they were you might meet a person when they're older and maybe when they're suffering from Alzheimer's or experiencing that but of course they have been all these other people in their life they've been that five-year-old on the trike they've been the young person dancing on the dance floor they've been all these people so I think looking back at my mom's life again after she passed away it was really interesting to remember all I mean and I obviously I didn't know her before I was born but as I was a child remembering the person she was throughout her life um was a really a really helpful process really interesting process was a sort of deep dive after the grief of losing my mom so I started to make this show quite a while afterwards where I could really kind of process all these um little pieces of memory the photographs the objects the things that I'd saved and the things I wished I'd saved from the house it's when you're clearing a space and you're just sort of not sure what you should keep it's very interesting because you know those things like the wooden spoon you maybe let go of and you keep the china and you wished you'd done it the other way around and and just watch you get me may trigger memories for people or the items that you use may may trigger off memories for people and they only then realize that oh yeah I'll actually read one of those and I'm kind of thinking about you know that used to you know use it all the time or whatever so it's a such a you know on one level of such a simple premise from the most common items found in in any house um emerald o kelly and the sunday independent that's described that has a beautifully crafted piece of writing and performance and we can see it for ourselves tomorrow night and on saturday nights for two nights only in a greening theater in there the kelly on a house like a fire and Michelle read the best look with thank you for joining us thank you so much john serving the northwest for over 40 years explore our showroom with