My fellow Americans, last Wednesday night I spoke to you about the great days that lie ahead for America. If we do what we must to continue our economic expansion, creating new freedom and opportunities for people, and uniting across party lines to keep bringing government spending growth down. Since the beginning of 1983, when all the elements of our tax program were finally in place, our economy has burst ahead with two straight years of economic growth, leaving inflation and all the experts' pessimistic predictions in the dust. America did not win such a dramatic victory just to declare defeat. Today we're poised in the launching pad of the future. We can make these next four years the greatest victories for growth, opportunity, and freedom America has ever known. Let me repeat what you know in your hearts and what has been the great guiding force of our philosophy from the very beginning. There are no limits to growth, no constraints on how strong America could become if all of you are set free. You elected us to get results, and we as leaders must show courage and imagination worthy of you. Leadership for a growth economy that provides new and greater incentives and keeps inflation and interest rates heading down. Leadership to bring forth economic opportunity in the inner cities, resurgence in our industrial heartland, new productivity and technological breakthroughs and help for farmers in distress from past government failures in this time of transition to a market-oriented economy. Already, we're hearing old familiar voices telling us to slow down, prepare to slash the defense budget and raise taxes, all in the name of reducing projected budget deficits. Well, those arguments were rejected on November 6th. The single best deficit program is an all-out push for economic growth. As I said Wednesday night, each added percentage point per year of real gross national product growth will lead to a cumulative reduction in deficits of nearly $200 billion over five years. So let's make one thing plain at the outset of the new term. We're raring to go. We have no intention of sitting at the starting gate. We're going to begin working now and pushing hard in the Congress and across the country for initiatives like tax simplification, enterprise zones and the youth employment opportunity wage to help America reach her full potential. As we lift America onto a stronger growth path with more businesses starting up, more investments made and more people employed and paying taxes, we will reduce the need for government spending on many of today's support programs. But we must do more. We must also face up to the legacy of some 50 years of overspending born of a deliberate policy that told us planned deficits and inflation would be good for us. The budget I've sent to the Congress this year calls for an absolute freeze on overall government program spending at the fiscal 85 level of approximately $804 billion excluding debt service costs. Now I know that there will be differences of opinion on how to achieve this freeze, but if the Congress will work with us in a spirit of cooperation and compromise, then together we can bring our budget under control without damaging the economy or endangering national security. I urge the Congress to move quickly on a spending cut package that will reduce overall government spending growth. I hope our energies will be spent finding ways that we can reduce spending rather than finding reasons why we cannot. Other reforms are needed. I've often mentioned a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget and a line item veto to cut individual items in overall appropriation bills. But elsewhere, our efforts to reduce bureaucracy through efficiencies and reductions in unnecessary personnel have been thwarted by congressionally mandated employment levels for certain programs. Our managers could get the job done just as well with fewer employees, but their hands are tied. The executive branch has also been thwarted by legislative restraints from having its commercial type activities, cafeterias and the like, handled by private businesses which can run them less expensively than government. And a president's power to limit spending himself is also restricted by the Congress. Once an appropriations bill has been signed into law, the president must spend all that money even if he believes certain items are unnecessary. I continue to urge the Congress to give me the authority for line item vetoes. This week we've begun a new journey. If Congress works with us, we can accomplish great things for America, but the time to act is now. Until next week, thanks for listening. God bless you.


No mistake is permanent, nothing is going to blow up, everything isn't going to fall down. You're going to have little mishaps. You're going to go in the wrong direction occasionally, but you can fix that and you can change that. What can serve you right now? What can get you to that next level with your people, with your technology, with what you're producing, with the relationships that you're forging? Get on it now and don't procrastinate out of fear of doing it wrong because we're all doing it wrong all the time. But there's enough right in there that we're meeting our goals and we're moving ahead and that's the fun part, so just get in there, dive in.


Hello everyone. Welcome to the 2021 Heart Topics and Environmental Law Summer Lecture Series. I'm Jenny Rushlow, Associate Dean for Environmental Programs at Vermont Law School. We're very pleased to welcome you. If you are looking to get a Vermont CLE credit, this talk is worth one credit, and you'll need to keep track for your records. We'll have time for Q&A at the end of the presentation, and if you'd like to put in a question, you can do that at any time during the chat, so you don't forget and at the end of the talk, I'll moderate a Q&A and we'll get to as many questions as we can. Today, we're very pleased to welcome Claire Brown. Claire is a senior staff writer for the Counter, which is an independent nonprofit newsroom that covers the forces shaping how and what we eat. Her work has also appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, and The Intercept. Her work has prompted congressional investigations, led to a major corporation increasing its wages, and inspired legislation introduced into the Senate. Claire is one of our 2021 Summer Media Fellows, selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants, and she is our first ASPCA-sponsored animal law media fellow. Today, her lectures titled Algal Blooms in Animal Ag. Please join me in welcoming Claire Brown. Thank you so much, Jenny. As Jenny said, my name is Claire. I am a senior staff writer for the Counter. We used to be called the New Food Economy until January 2020. We changed our name last year, right before the world shut down. We cover all aspects of the food system, from immigration to labor, to climate change, and the industries that touch all three. I'll be talking about one of those industries, the meat industry, in detail today. I'm going to start sharing my screen. The best way to follow the Counter and get updates on all of our reporting is to subscribe to our newsletter. That's available at thecounter.org. It's called Thinly Sliced. It's free, and it comes out on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Here we go. Great. So just a note on the structure of this presentation. I will start by going over what Algal Blooms actually are, how they form, when they're harmful, major contributing ecological factors, human influence factors that may be accelerating the rise of harmful Algal Blooms. Then I'll move into a discussion of how animal agriculture has contributed to the formation of these phenomena. They are increasingly prevalent, and they are exacerbated by climate change. We will focus on CAFOS in this talk. That's concentrated or confined animal feeding operations. Those are large animal ag facilities, many of which can find animals in small spaces. Those are cows, pigs, and chickens, generally. They're certainly not the only type of livestock farms that contribute to the formation of Algal Blooms and farm runoff, but they are so large that they are a major contributing factor. Then we'll touch on the regulatory framework that does, and as we'll see, sometimes doesn't, regulate CAFO runoff and discharge of manure. And finally, we will look at two recent political battles that reveal some possible password word, absent of a meaningful federal action in the space. One of those will be in Ohio, and the other one will be in Iowa. Great. So I just wanted to start by looking at Algal Bloom News from the last couple of weeks. This phenomena peaks in the summer, so it's a little bit of a skewed data set, but if you look, the top left is a screenshot of a storm lake Iowa. Some photos from there, the Twitter user is saying that none of that was there yesterday. It kind of appeared overnight. Iowa actually did not have huge Algal Bloom problems in the past, and someone, a hydrologist I was following on Twitter was speculating that the introduction of invasive zebra mussels, the zebra mussels consumed organisms that would compete with algae and kind of paved the way for Algal Blooms to become a bigger problem in Iowa. We'll talk about other kind of obscure human factors that contribute to the formation of Algal Blooms a little bit later. The top right is a picture of 600 tons of marine life that has passed away because of a red tide in Florida this week. I included Florida because Algal Blooms there are increasingly becoming a political issue. Governor DeSantis got a lot of flak this week, particularly from business operators in the tourism industry. Tourists do not like seeing huge swaths of dead animals because he was in Texas while the Algal Blooms happening and COVID cases in Florida are also increasing. And then the last one is right here in Vermont. It says one week ago on the screenshot, but I took this a few days ago, so it's probably 10 or 12 days old at this point. This closed beaches in Burlington just last week, and the the deck says a little bit about why it was harmful. But I just goes to show this is happening all over the place in all corners of the country and it's all happening right right this minute. So what is an Algal Bloom? This is an aerial photo of one. The Oxford English Dictionary definition is rapid growth of microscopic algae or cyanobacteria and water often resulting in a colored scum on the surface. So not all Algal Blooms are harmful and not all Algal Blooms are caused by human activity, but we are going to talk about the ways these two phenomena are connected. The EPA definition of a harmful Algal Bloom is even simpler than the Oxford Dictionary definition. It's just five words long overgrowth of algae in water. So you can have Algal Blooms without agriculture and you can have agricultural runoff without Algal Blooms, but the two are connected. Algal Blooms are generally seasonal. They're mainly cyanobacteria, blue, green algae, and red tides are composed of dinoflagellates. So there's it's very difficult to get an accurate sense of just how much the prevalence of Algal Blooms has increased over the last decade or so. The Environmental Working Group tracks news reports of Algal Blooms as a proxy for actual Algal Blooms. NOAA does some interesting work forecasting some of the bigger blooms. We'll talk about that in a minute. That's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but they do not capture, you know, some of the smaller ones that hit smaller freshwater bodies. Again, it's possible that this graph is slightly skewed because the news media may be more aware of Algal Blooms than they were in the past, but this gives you a vague sense of, you know, how many news reports we're getting each year. It's a useful data point in that way. You can see this is current as of 2019. So how do Algal Blooms impact humans and wildlife? Probably the most well-known impact is fish kills. Like I said in Florida, the red tide there has killed 600 tons of wildlife this past week or two. It can make the water unsafe for swimming. It also closes beaches for people who have pets. I don't know if you've ever walked near a pond with a dog, but they love to drink the water. Algae in the water can be unsafe for pets, and that's why a lot of local ordinances have a mandated testing of water. They just do not want people to swim or people's pets to swim when there is a harmful level of algae in the water. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is basically a giant Algal Bloom. It vacillates in size. I looked it up for this year. It's about 5,400 square miles. That's roughly the size of Connecticut. That is the result of nutrients washing from farms, lawns, treatment plants, et cetera, from the Mississippi River all the way into the Gulf. That triggers the growth of algae, which creates a low oxygen zone and marine wildlife cannot survive. Lots of fish can just swim out of it, but others cannot. This has been an issue for a long time. It happens every summer, and it's been fluctuating in size. According to NOAA, agriculture is the biggest contributing factor to the continued dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Lastly, when there is algae in the water or harmful levels of algae in the water, water treatment plants have to spend more money to clean that up. We will talk about an emergency situation or two, but it can mean that treatment just gets more expensive over time if algae blooms consistently impact drinking water sources. These phenomena also have ripple effects, no pun intended. A few years ago, I want to say it was 2016, the Dungeonist crab fishery in California had to be closed because there was a risk that the crabs had consumed algae that could then make humans who ate them very sick. There's been a die-off of bottled-nose dolphins in Florida who ate Minhaedon that had consumed algae. The algae did not hurt the fish, but it bio-accumulated, and I think it was 107 dolphins that died one year. These phenomena can impact much further upstream than just the specific pond or specific part of the ocean that they are in. As I said, there are a million different factors that contribute to the formation of algal blooms, sunlight, water temperature, turbidity of the water, as well as other hidden factors like other plants in the water, but there are certain human influence factors that can exacerbate algal blooms. The biggest one, which I'll spend most of my time on today, is agricultural runoff. The two nutrients of major concern are phosphorus and nitrogen. Those can run into the water and quote unquote feed the algae, which can then very quickly grow very quickly. Sewage effluent is also an issue, runoff from factories as well. These were all bigger issues when the Clean Water Act was first implemented, but they are continuing factors. Lastly, climate change, warmer waters, hotter summers, it all creates more favorable conditions for these phenomena to occur. Lastly, as I mentioned earlier, there are subtler human activities that impact the formation of algal blooms that scientists that suspected the invasive zebra mussels had eaten the plants that could would have otherwise competed with algae in Iowa. That's a great example. Those zebra mussels probably hitched a ride on ships and were introduced into U.S. waters where they had no natural predators. Eventually, they made it in Linn to Storm Lake, Iowa. I think it was just a couple of years ago that that happened. You can see that's already having an impact on the ecosystem there. Now I'm going to talk a little bit about how nutrient pollution happens. This is an EPA infographic. I think it's pretty recent. I wanted to flash this up on the screen because if you look on the right hand side, it starts to quantify some of the agricultural impact. If you look, it says livestock production generates close to 1 billion tons of manure every single year that increased by 25 percent between 1964 and 2008. That's fertilizer use that increased. If you look, urban sources flowing into the Gulf of Mexico are just about 10 percent of the nutrients. Fossil fuels put more than 7 million tons of nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere. Again, it's not a direct comparison because it's comparing oxides with manure, but the animal agriculture amount of waste dwarfs some of these other sources. How does animal agriculture actually produce all of these nutrients? Animals produce a lot of manure. A single cow can produce 14 gallons of manure and urine in a single day. To give that a better sense of scale, that means 200 cows, which is still a small and medium-sized dairy, produce the same amount of waste in a day as a community of 5,000 to 10,000 people. An annual litter from a typical broiler house is as much phosphorus as the sewage from a community of 6,000 people. Quantities and proportions of these nutrients vary from species to species, but those two key nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus, both exist and they can both feed alkyl blooms. There's kind of two main ways that manure from animal agriculture enters the water supply. It can happen via leaks from confined animal feeding operations, which can sometimes hold manure in a lagoon-style setting. It also can happen via runoff from farms that have been sprayed with manure. A lot of the manure produced in animal agriculture operations is sprayed in the form of fertilizer on nearby farms. The issue is that that also winds up in the water supply. I included this graphic just to give a sense of the mismatch between what crops require and what manure offers. In some cases, there's excess. In some cases, there's a bit of a deficit. That is one contributing factor to excess of one of these nutrients in the soil. I just thought this was an interesting map of the transfer of nutrients from some parts of the country to another. You can see corn is produced kind of in the Midwest here and the animals that eat the corn are more spread out. The phosphorus that comes from the corn is also transformed or transferred when the crop is transferred and that comes out the other end and the animals deposit an excess of phosphorus in the soil. Great. This is a visualization, again, from that environmental working group study that I cited earlier. You can see the black dots are CAFOs and the orange fields, which you can see kind of filling in as the simulation runs, that's where the manure is sprayed. You can see some of these counties are almost entirely covered in sprayed manure. When those fields are overloaded, that's what contributes to the runoff into the water. When the manure is sprayed when the field is frozen or when a rainstorm comes right after the manure is sprayed that can contribute to runoff, the excess nutrients can also leach through the soil into the groundwater. One other point I wanted to make based on this graphic is that in addition to the manure, farms also purchase synthetic fertilizers with some of the same nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus. Even if the manure itself is not contributing to too many nutrients in the water, it is functioning in addition to the fertilizer to act as kind of a double whammy. I'll show that in a minute. Great. This is a graph that is also from that same environmental working group study. They basically cross-referenced the amount of manure that was sold in the areas where they were studying with the amount of manure that was applied to the ground. What they found was that if you combine those two, and that's in the third column here, you see a nutrient overload. They don't have any way to prove that all of the fertilizer sold was applied to the land, and so the numbers in column three are probably a little bit exaggerated, but I did find it remarkable that none of these were less than 150 percent of the nutrients that the crops could use. And you can see in the last column, assuming that all of the fertilizer was purchased was actually used in the area in that year, they estimated the tons of nutrient overload, and you can see those numbers on the right-hand side. Great. So all of this contributes to water pollution, which then contributes to the formation of algal blooms. I included an EPA quote here. The National Water Quality Assessment shows that agricultural runoff is the leading cause of water quality impacts to rivers and streams. The third leading source for lakes, and the second largest source of impairment to wetlands. This is a dated graphic, but it shows a 1997 survey of excess phosphorus in soils. This is phosphorus buildup. The red states have more phosphorus than is needed, or more than half of the soils tested have more phosphorus than is needed. So you can see the scope of the problem. It's not just states on the Mississippi. It's kind of all over the place. So how is farm pollution regulated? I'm only going to talk about water in this presentation. There's a lot to look at in terms of farming and air pollution as well. It's a little bit outside the scope of this presentation, but I encourage you to look into it on your own. Some would argue that it's even worse than water regulation or lack thereof. Okay, so the 1972 Clean Water Act administered by the EPA was created during a time of emergency in terms of the help of the water systems in the United States. It is meant to establish some regulations in terms of what sources are allowed to discharge into the water. Importantly, the Clean Water Act separates regulated entities into point sources and non-point sources. So this is Environmental Studies 101. A point source is something with a pipe or something with a very concrete source. An example would be a single factory or a single pipe coming out of a factory. A non-point source is how most farmland is classified. It's not a single identifiable source of solution. This will become important later when we look at Iowa's attempts to classify CAFOs as classify drainage districts around farmland as point sources, and there will be an interesting rationale there. So this creates already a little bit of interesting tension. CAFOs are explicitly defined as point sources. Farms are not. So you can have a situation, and I was reading this in an NRDC report from 2019, you can have a situation where the CAFO itself is regulated, but if the manure is transferred to a farm that's a separate business entity or that's a few miles down the road and that manure is sprayed and then runs off, it is not regulated. And so it's kind of an interesting distinction that has been made here. So how do those regulations actually work? I flashed out this GAO report from 2008 that shows some of the challenges EPA is facing, has faced when trying to go through the rulemaking process to regulate water pollutants discharged by CAFOs. One of the top line findings from this report was that the EPA doesn't actually even know where all the CAFOs are. We'll look at that in more in a second. But two federal court decisions at that time had affected EPA and some states' abilities to regulate CAFO water pollutants. As you can see, the court decision affected EPA's ability to regulate CAFOs. States' reactions varied, and that patchwork of regulations are something that we will look at in addition. Again, in 2006, there was a jurisdiction question, also very interesting. There's another interesting wrinkle here. In 2013, a district court decision exempted stormwater runoff. I think I have a slide about that later, so maybe we'll save that for a minute. Okay, so because of this framework, permitting and discharge enforcement are generally left to states. EPA retains its permitting authority in a handful of states that don't have much animal agriculture. I know New Hampshire was one of them, but big ag states like North Carolina and Iowa kind of run their own ship. That means that permitting and enforcement is a pretty spotty process. I don't know if you can read these quotes, but the North Carolina one says, poultry CAFOs are not even required to submit waste management plans. Environmental regulators don't even know how much manure is applied on fields. There's been a lot of work by advocacy groups simply to fly over the state of North Carolina and identify poultry CAFOs because the reporting requirements do not even map those facilities. Permitting and enforcement has also been spotty in Iowa. I think you can see here this quote says, one of the most shocking results from the work plan is the number of confinements that were found that were not complying with the rules of filing manure management plans or having state construction permits. So the Iowa's own Department of Natural Resources found 12 animal feeding operations that did not have any permits. I'm going to look at these in a minute. So where we've landed, EPA rules require CAFOs that plan to discharge. I think I have the terminology right to obtain permits. And what that means is that CAFOs who say they are not discharging do not always have EPA discharge permits. I highlighted Iowa here because there's the largest gap between the total number of CAFOs and the total number of permits. You can see in some states the gap is much smaller. Michigan has 282 CAFOs and 267 of them have permits. So some states actually have followed through with guidance that requires every single state to get permits and some have not. So the agricultural stormwater exemption originally applied just to as interpreted by the courts applied only to manure that was sprayed on fields offsite. I think it was a 2013 decision that said CAFOs themselves are also exempt. So that means that runoff that results from storms is not regulated under the Clean Water Act. This is a picture of some North Carolina poultry farms during Hurricane Florence. This Waterkeeper Alliance has done a lot of work, like I said, just identifying where these farms are. Another interesting thing that they have done is fly above kind of manure lagoons in North Carolina during times of floods to show where when they breach. Breach means leak. So I can remember, I think it was 2018, Hurricane Florence landed. They were taking daily satellite imagery and sharing that with the media to show what it looked like when these lagoons had breached and the effluent was just kind of flowing into the into the water. Okay, so absent these federal standards that would prevent runoff that causes the formation of algal blooms. There have been a couple of recent emergency type situations. So in 2014, Toledo, this the town of Toledo had a drinking water crisis. There was an algal bloom in Lake Eury that prompted the declaration of a state of emergency. Residents were urged to avoid drinking tap water for 2.5 days. The water was deemed safe a couple of days later, but there was widespread consistent that farming and climate change were both contributing factors. So what happened? Toledo citizens started organizing. They have an origin story where they met in a bar and decided to do something about the quality of Lake Eury. They got this Lake Eury Bill of Rights, which is so-called Rights of Nature law. I don't know how many of you were watching the Tuesday presentation, but you probably learned way more than I know from that. So the Lake Eury Bill of Rights was a ballot question in Ohio. They organized for about five years before it was put to a vote. It was kind of a coalition of several environmental groups. There's a national group and an international group that support Rights of Nature legislation, so they got some help writing it from them. The ballot question granted Lake Eury the right to quote exist, flourish, and naturally evolve. It's kind of an interesting legal framework that some environmental advocates hope will be meaningful in the future when it comes to advocating on behalf of impaired waterways and other natural features. And the Bill work concretely would have allowed people and environmental groups to file a suit against polluters on behalf of the lake. So that basically meant that the citizens of Lake Eury, or an environmental group representing Lake Eury, could have sued upstream farmers for polluting the lake. And so obviously was challenged in court the very next day by a farmer. So this is some reporting that I did around that time. There was a lot of politics involved with this. What I learned based on a FOIA dump from one of the interest groups involved with this. Basically what happened is that the Senate or the state legislature passed a budget bill that included preemption language. I will read that sentence here. The specific language was nature or any ecosystem does not have standing to participate in or bring action in any court of common please. No person on behalf of or representing nature and an ecosystem shall bring an action in any court of common please. So this is preemption language that just kind of appeared in the budget bill. My reporting was to figure out how it got there. What was revealed through the FOIA request from this interest group was that the Ohio Chamber of Commerce enlisted a key Republican lawmaker. Kind of at the 11th hour the bill was already written. It was a budget amendment. The chamber of commerce which represents business interests in Ohio got in touch with him. I want to say the day before the vote or even the night before the vote. It was after the period to add amendments that actually closed. The lawmaker agreed to meet with him immediately and that preemption language made it into the bill. So this I think surprised a lot of advocates in Ohio. You know I think they knew that there would be a significant court challenge but I don't think they realized preemption legislation would be passed so quickly. This happened in July after the ballot question passed in February. And then in February 2020 the results of that lawsuit I mentioned came down and the federal judge ruled the legislation invalid. He called it unconstitutionally vague and exceeds the power of municipal government in Ohio. So the city of Toledo appealed this decision but they wound up dropping the appeal in May of 2020 citing budgetary constraints. There was a lot happening in the world in May of 2020 that could have also been a contributing factor. I should also add that I forgot to mention the proportion of voters who voted in favor of the bill of rights. It was 61 percent in favor 39 percent imposed in this election. It was actually only 9,955 votes in favor so it was a very small election and actually a relatively small number of voters who voted this legislation in. They were very determined and very organized. Okay so the Lake Erie bill of rights is kind of dead. The appeal is dropped. There is not much else that can happen here. Let's look at the aftermath. So on the plus side the episode did spur some government action. The governor rolled out an initiative called H2 Ohio. The legislature set the goal of reducing runoff by 40 percent by 2025 which is not insignificant and they also appropriated 172 million dollars for the first two years. However this is still a voluntary and incentive-based approach to reducing agricultural runoff. It's only focused on road crops and not on animal agriculture but it does give farmers between $2 and $60 per acre for conservation practices like planting buffer strips, preserving wetlands that can serve to filter out the water, etc. I should also add that these incentives mirror existing federal incentives and farmers were not able to kind of double up on money from both the federal and the state. It's also actually less money than a previous governor appropriated to clean up Lake Erie so it's not quite as huge as I think some of the folks playing claiming victory would would like us to believe. On the other hand it is some money and the farm groups including the Ohio Farm Bureau did kind of get together and start meeting and talking about reducing runoff because I think the Lake Erie bill of rights began to spur them into action so I don't think we've heard the last of it out of Toledo. I wanted to end on this part on a quote from an advocate there. She said the ag industry is still focused on growth. There are no rules saying no more permits for CAFOs in the area so I think some of the lee board Lake Erie bill of rights proponents would really have liked to have seen a CAFO moratorium or more stringent rules on how close to the watershed these farms can spray or build and that did not make it into H2 Ohio as far as I'm aware. All right moving on to the state of Iowa so Iowa as you probably know is a major major ag state mostly hogs also chickens or male is located there and nitrogen runoff has become an increasing concern in Iowa. The the runoff from the farms has begun to cause problems in the drinking water so we are going to look at the public utilities approach to limiting the pollution from upstream farms. So the rivers and questions are the Raccoon and the Des Moines River upstream and groundwater tests in 2013 and 2014 this last day was about in 2015. Some of them were up to four times the EPA's recommended maximum contaminant level. Des Moines Water Works, the public water utility said that they had spent more than $900,000 during periods where high nature levels meant that they had to run machinery that could remove nitrates. They also said that they would have to spend $76 million or more on denitrification technology in the future. Now I did look at 2020 numbers and they ultimately spent about $18 million so the numbers were not nearly as high as they had worried but there may be a more more expensive solutions on the horizon which I will talk about in a minute. Okay so the board of supervisors for the Des Moines Water Works again the public utility voted unanimously to file this clean water act complaint. The complaint was against three county boards of supervisors which were collectively responsible for 10 drayton inch districts alleging a clean water act violation and again these were the counties where the water works had measured the water and the nitrates were four times the maximum allowable amount so they said you know they had a pretty good idea that this is where the bulk of the pollution was coming from. Now you might remember I was talking about point and non point sources of pollution what Detroit Des Moines Water Works wanted to do was name those drainage districts as point sources and their rationale was that you know the the water filters from pipe to pipe and it comes out of one pipe and therefore it is a point source. I thought that was a little bit of an interesting argument and here's the exact quote because drainage districts transport nitrate pollution through a system of channels and pipes they should be recognized and held accountable like every other point source contributor that's an FAQ that they put out to their constituents or the drinking the drinking water users of Des Moines Iowa in 2015 and then just to bring it back to Algal Blooms one more time not long after about 18 months later they did detect blue green algae in one of their water sources again so it's not just the nutrients pollution that is a problem it is also the concern about the formation of algae and we looked at storm lake that has certainly become front of mind in the last week or two that ended up being an isolated incident and they were able to switch from one river to another just for a few days we will talk in a minute about what has happened to the quality of water since then okay so the case was dismissed two years later the federal court said that the drainage districts lack the ability to redress the injury the point source issue is not something that they weighed in on Des Moines water work decided not to appeal the anecdotally I think there was a whole lot of political backlash for this lawsuit there was an agricultural center at called the Leopold Center at Iowa State that was defunded a little bit after the suit drew to a close there was never any clear connection made but I spoke with leaders of the center which was a very progressive sustainable agriculture center at the time who said they suspected there was a connection between the lawsuit and the defunding of their organization I also did some reporting where I spoke to someone who had testified a state university employee who had testified on behalf of the plaintiff and seen his position eliminated only to be reinstated reinstated after the suit was thrown out okay so Des Moines water work did not appeal and today we have a problem that's actually gotten worse you see this AP headline from earlier this month Des Moines faces extreme measures to find clean water what they're actually considering doing is drilling wells which is quite uncommon for for a city to have to do especially one adjacent to as much water as Des Moines but basically they are considering drilling wells to have a source of clean water during the summer when nutrient runoff is a such a major problem again it's kind of an astounding consideration I'm not sure how much it would cost or whether they will actually do it but that was a data point account interesting there's one more interesting data point environmental group also earlier this month was saying that Iowa's current waterway cleanup plan could take 22 000 years to put into action I had a look at that report a progress report between 1992 1996 and 2006 to 2010 and it showed very very little progress made to reduce to reduce nutrient pollution in waterways the legislature in Iowa continues to to favor a voluntary approach to runoff regulation great so a couple of summary thoughts water pollution from CAFOS both through leaks which we didn't talk about much and through farm runoff which we know is not regulated under the clean clean water act continue to contribute to the formation of harmful algal blooms as well as other negative environmental and human health impacts so far these two efforts find alternate ways of forcing the federal government or finding other ways to regulate ag runoff have not been successful and lastly I wanted to end on a few farming practices that do seem to work again they are not to be all an end all by any means but some of them are very simple planting buffer strips between places where fertilizer is sprayed and waterways putting cover crops onto soil to reduce all runoff and erosion scheduling fertilizer application to avoid times of rain or times when the ground is frozen maintaining wetlands and many of these practices are already incentivized under existing federal programs but again just like some of the state programs those are currently all volunteer in all incentive space so that is all I have to say about animal ag and algal blooms this is one last picture of a red tide and I will take questions thank you so much Claire that was a really striking and beautiful but disturbing photograph at the end there so for our listeners we have a few minutes to ask questions from the audience and if you if you post your question I will I will pose it to Claire and if you want to do that if you're watching on our website live stream just click on the icon at the bottom of the video to bring up the chat box where you can log in and add your question or if you're watching on Facebook live stream just add your question in the comment box below okay we have a couple questions to start what are resources for regular citizens to find out if an algae bloom is toxic so I think local authorities test quite frequently I was at Lake Champlain earlier this week and there were signs posted everywhere about the frequency with which they test the water I think there do exist some testing kits that you can use as well I know a lot of the activism in Toledo was around individualized citizen testing when they were trying to maintain some energy around the issue after that 2014 algal bloom so there are testing kits you know a lot of people have also seemed to succeed in convincing their city or convincing volunteer organizations to test on a schedule in the summer I think those tests are pretty reliable okay great thank you next question in the examples you gave including Toledo and Des Moines actions seem to focus on remediating the algae bloom pollution have you come across any examples of towns or cities taking up preventative measure against this pollution yeah you know I think because of the it's it's it's specific to kind of the geography of the place right when it's when you are regulating an upstream farm I think that's when you have to take the kind of action that I outlined here but I do know you know Lake Erie was very very in really tough place I want to say 30 or 40 years ago just because of runoff from the city of Toledo and so they spent a lot of money to treat their water and to make sure that the the runoff from the sewers was filtered a little bit better and that did a lot I'm not sure if that answers your question great thank you in the example you gave about Ohio why was it that the the legislation applied only to row crops and not to animals do you think yeah so I should be clear that was an initiative it's not binding legislation I think it's because it's an incentive space and they were seeing row crops as the main source of runoff again you know leaks I think are less of a concern in Ohio so I think the idea was if they pay the farmers who are spreading the manure to prevent the runoff then you know that will have a greater impact than key foes who I think you know in many cases are not directly discharging into the water except in a case of emergency so you know I think advocates in many many places would like to see KFO moratoria simply so that less manure is produced and ends up on land in their area but so far I think efforts to incentivize change has focused on row crop cover farmers because that's where a lot of the runoff comes from okay one of the challenges with regulating water pollution from agriculture is that it's not it's not so clearly a point source as compared to effluent from a pipe coming out of a you know a water treatment plant or something like that and so it can be difficult to address those pollution issues and tie them to a specific farm or or portion of a farm have you in your research come across examples of collaborative efforts regional efforts county efforts to address algae pollution from animal ag as opposed to you know one municipality at a time I would be very interested to learn more about efforts like that I think at the federal level there's a lot of interest in making you know the the very simple you know buffer strips wetland conservation mandatory instead of optional that's been kind of the biggest idea you know make it less about measuring what's running off and more about preventing runoff in the first place but I would be very curious to learn more about successful efforts by you know regions watersheds in particular coming together have you noticed any themes in the the locations that you've observed where you've noticed that they've been more or less successful in being able to regulate this runoff are there are there any anything you've noticed that kind of shows continuity across locations about why they may or may not be able to address this problem yeah you know I think state laws and state regulating authorities have a lot of power they are in charge of both the permitting process and in the enforcement of the permits and so states that have you know really strong permit requirements and really follow up on it I think are able to better prevent some of the runoff we're looking at in many cases the advocacy concerns are as simple as people simply are not following the rules about not spring nor when the ground is frozen so I think you know some of that is ecological right in North Carolina the ground isn't frozen all that often but some of that is also you know the strength of the local regulators great and maybe last question you know you're talking to an audience of many lawyers and law students and we kind of have our own methods of collecting information when we want to build a case around something like water pollution you know the clean water act has citizen suit provisions and so sometimes people other than the government are involved in trying to enforce water pollution as a journalist how do you go about gathering information on something like this and how might it do you think be different from the way lawyers go about it if you have a sense yeah and so FOIA is great for you know figuring out what kinds of backdoor meetings or or invisible factors might be at play right so that story we did with the intercept about the Chamber of Commerce trying to block the Lake Erie Bill of Rights in a way that was you know invisible to advocates I think is probably a prime example to be totally frank we get a lot of help from these independent monitoring groups like Waterkeeper and North Carolina you know they'll reach out after a hurricane and say you know publish these photos of the breach that we have just taken from our helicopter and so that I'm in New York I can't be everywhere at once especially now and so we do get a lot of help from environmental groups who are doing kind of their own independent monitoring their homes citizen advocacy do you ever this is just me because I'm curious you know you hear sometimes about from an NGO saying that that they sometimes will get a tip from someone on the inside at an agency that something that something is not being enforced the way it should and you know you didn't hear it from me kind of thing is that ever something that you've experienced in this area I think I've actually probably only published like two or three pieces on Alba Bloom specifically but it is something that you know we have an anonymous tip like we love tips you know we can often bet them and sometimes they really do play out in a really interesting way so you know just as a sometimes it's as simple as saying you know look at this municipality when you're thinking about this rule and that's something that we really appreciate from our readers that's great okay well we've got it we've got to wrap up so that our students can transition to their their next class thank you Claire for that really interesting presentation and discussion and thank you to everybody who joined us today our next hot topic talk will be on July 27th at noon eastern time right here and we hope that you'll join us then thank you everybody thank you


I am Dr. Vathiraj, HOD and consultant radiation oncologist, Manipal Hospital's old depot route Bangalore. Department of Radiation Oncology was started in the year 1992. Since then we have upgraded our technology constantly and currently we have Electra Infinity Linear Accelerator which is capable of 3D conformal radiation, IMRT, V-MAT, stereotactic radiotherapy, stereotactic radio surgery and ABC Respiratory Treatments. And we also have a 4D big board CT simulator, Varian Gamma Met Brachytherapy System, Varian Eclipse Treatment Contouring Workstations and ADAC Pinnacle Treatment Planning Workstation. And we are a part of this multi-speciality hospital where we have ancillary supportive department and our department is closely associated with the radiology department where we use PET CT scan, MRI and other imaging modalities for treatment planning. Hi, I am Dr. Zahid, consultant radiation oncology, Manipal Hospital's Bangalore. Our department is equipped with Electra Infinity Linear which is among the latest machines in the department. And we can do 3D CRTs, IMRTs, V-MAT, IGRTs and stereotactic radiation. We are also equipped with total body irradiation capacity and our machine has onboard cone beam CT for the image guidance checking mechanisms. I am Dr. Zahid Kaurthalapur. I am a consultant radiation oncologist in Manipal Hospital Bangalore. Our department has updated its radiation technology over time to time and are currently offering a wide range of radiation therapy facilities. First is 3D CRT or 3-dimensional conformal radiation therapy. 3D CRT uses 3-dimensional imaging modalities with highly sophisticated computer software to generate 3-dimensional representation of the tumor and the surrounding normal critical structures. This enables the radiation oncologist to tailor the size and shape of the radiation beam precisely to the target thereby reducing the radiation dose to surrounding critical normal structures. This technique is mainly used for the treatment of cancer of uterine cervix, cancer of uterus, cancer of motion passage or cancer of breakdown and breast cancer. I am Marti, intensity modulated radiation therapy. This is one of the advanced form of 3D CRT. In I am Marti, each radiation beam is divided into multiple small beams or beamlets. The strength or intensity of each of these beamlets can be modified by using some sort of beam modification devices which is attached to the radiation machine. This technique is mainly useful if you have to treat with a very high dose to the tumor as in prostate cancer and when the target is very close to radio-sensitive critical structures like head and neck cancer where spinal cord is coming into the world. IGF is a technique which is usually coupled with high MRPs and various other ability treatments like SBRPs and SRS. Image guidance IGF makes use of imaging technology while doing the radiation delivery to improve the accuracy and precision of radiation treatment. So usually the radiation machine or linear accelerator will be equipped with imaging modalities from specific imaging techniques like convient CTs or X-rays. So just before the treatment or during the delivery we will acquire an image. This image is compared with the reference image, reference CT-simulative image. Then necessary corrections are applied to the patient position. Volumetric modulated arc therapy or rematch. This is a routine thing which we use in our department for treating many of the cancers. This is actually the technique is intensity modulation only but the help of linear accelerator we are able to do arc treatment. So this is mainly used for the treatment of various head and neck cancers prostate cancer, lung cancer, pancreas cancer, like so. Hi, I am Dr. Melvin. I am a physician called just at Manipal Hospital in Bangalore. So what you see now is a 4D CT simulator machine which is dedicated to our department from Philips. And it's a big board CT as you can see, meant for immobilization devices which is used for treatment planning process. And the advantage of big board CT is that the immobilization devices can easily go in without any problems. And also we use the CT for a 4D CT which is meant for tumors that move with respiration like kashnama lungs and tumors of the liver. I am Dr. Sanjeev Sharma. I am a senior consultant at Manipal Hospital in Bangalore. I have nearly 30 years of experience. I have been associated with this hospital for close to 28 years. I have a long experience in all the modern techniques of radiation. So I have a large experience on doing radiotherapy and all kinds of modern, confirmable forms of radiation like IMRT, IGRT, you know, radiosurgery and image-gathered radiotherapy and stereotactic body radiotherapy. Department of Radiation Oncology is a part of Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Centre and we discuss our cases, all the difficult cases in multi-disciplinary tumor pool for the best treatment for a patient.


I think the first three to five years in this business is just the honeymoon phase. You're still believing this whole euphoria. Welcome to Access a Trader, the number one community for those who are committed to taking control of their trading in order to achieve success, profitability, and longevity. Thank you for joining us. Here's Dan Shapiro to help you find your edge, master your process, and own your future. Hey guys, good evening everybody. Welcome to another edition of theAxisTrader.com. Nightly wrap up show, hope everybody is doing well. Hope everybody had a good day. So let's talk about the tape. So prior to today's session, if you look at the spies, right? The spies up to today, and today was just a little bit better, but up till today had the last two days or the first two days of the week, had its lowest two volume days for the whole year, right? If you look all the way to the bottom here, you'll see the last two days had incredibly light volume, very, very just not committing an action. We talked about this on the previous video on Monday night that there was just absolutely no option flow whatsoever. It felt like institutional money kind of just left the building and just has no deal and no desire to come back. And we kept on just going sideways. You see this whole sideways action, up one day, down one day, up one day, down one day and all these channels are getting tighter and tighter. Again, tell me if you've heard this before and the same thing pretty much on the NASDAQ composite. So the only difference between today's session and the last two sessions, is yeah, we had some pretty decent pivots yesterday, but today it finally felt a little bit normal. I think that's the best way of saying it. And despite what the scoreboard said and despite that, it was just a smaller tick in volume today versus yesterday. And you can see the NASDAQ composite actually had smaller volume than yesterday. At least we saw something today that resembled pretty organic trading. We saw option flow, that's number one. We saw pretty aggressive moves in the morning. And that's a very, very big deal because again, when you have that open window, you literally have a window to go through and that's the first three hours of the day.  Again, it's not anything new that we talked about, but the most important part was at least we got a window, right? And that was the most important thing. And it was some pretty good moves again. We'll get to the pivots in a second, but the question is, right, and excuse me, the answer is after the lunch, you saw a very lethargic end to the day and the market just kind of faded really not a lot, you know, really not a lot of emphasis. Again, the volume kind of speaks for itself. And the question is again, how long is this gonna last? Now, if we have a continuation of today's action for tomorrow, nobody's gonna complain, right? We're still gonna turn around after lunch and go, wow, it's kind of dead here after lunch, but that's okay. After lunch is a completely different game in the morning, but the most important thing is, can the market at least continue to show us a resemblance of what we saw today, right? Compared to the first two days of the week, that we're just very, very painfully slow.  Now, again, if you trade $2 stocks, small cap stocks, again, there's been some pretty good moves in that sector, no denying that, right? Yesterday there was that AERC, today was this HTCR, right?  So again, if you traded these things, hey, top congratulations, that's a really, really big deal. But for the most part, again, I trade technology, right? That I don't know what the rest of the market is because that's kind of my thing. So technology is the most important thing for me. And again, the most important sectors right now for the last couple of days of speculation money has been the oil and energy smaller cap names. And now you're seeing smaller cap names just in general kind of fire up a little bit desire. And again, for those people who are making money, those things are fantastic. But for the rest of us, the majority of market participants who are looking for institutional money flow, we're still getting this long, long case and tomorrow is going to be day nine, right? So now we're talking about almost two full weeks of sideways action. Now, again, you can talk about, well, the market is just waiting on CPI. That's cool, right? That's cool. But why is this CPI more important? Think about it. Why is this CPI more important than the last data, the last fed conversation, the last fed testimony? Like, why is it different? Like, I feel like it's almost like an excuse, an apologetic statement of why the market has been less than aggressive. That's the best way of saying it, less aggressive the last few days. But we'll see again, the hardest part for a newer trader is to kind of sit, okay? Today was a little bit different. Today we had some pretty good pivots. But for the majority of traders, the hardest part is to sit. Because again, they see markets flying all over the place, stocks flying all over the place. It's so easy once you start, once you get to that seven, 10, 12, 15 years, not until about 20, but seven, 10, 15 years, it's much easier to kind of sit back and relax and kind of analyze and take into data than to just sit there. Again, I think the first three to five years in this business is just the honeymoon phase.  You learn, right? You'll quickly learn. That desire to trade is quickly gonna go away because you finally gonna realize what this business is and what it's not, right? The emotional and romanticism of this business in your mind is completely different than what it is. The only question is, can we find value every single day, right? And that's the most important part. The market is just not going higher. The market is not going lower. At least what it did yesterday was, give us at least a line in the sand to the downside because yesterday it snapped this area here, went down to the 10 day moving average, remounted very, very quickly and rallied. And a move like that should have taken this, the stock market really, really high today and it just couldn't, it absolutely could not. It kind of rolled over. So here we are, right? That's kind of where we are. That's just the reality.  You're looking at the same charts as everybody else. Yeah, I mean, look, are there things to do for tomorrow? Yeah, I kind of like the CRM, right? CRM is kind of going, is kind of putting in a nice flag after its earnings. That looks pretty good. A stock like wind resorts, right? First close over the 50 day moving average. You look at the Las Vegas names, right? Las Vegas Sands, kind of the same thing. So yeah, I mean, there's definitely things to look at but when you look at the stocks that we trade, right? I mean, look at Tesla right in the middle of the range. It's right now, it's 35 points away from the bottom range and 25 points away from the top of the range, right? That's in the middle of the range. You look at a name like Facebook. Again, Facebook got a really nice move today, right? Facebook is right in the middle of the range. Apple that looked really great for about three hours today had a nice move, not huge, but a nice move. You know, had some 52 and a half weeklies, 155 weeklies and just can't just died on a vine here. So the market as of right now for the technology names only just absolutely, absolutely no just gusto, right? One way or another. And if you look at tonight's email and for all you guys who don't get the email, you're not gonna see it. But if you look at tonight's email for all you guys in the webinar, you'll see there's like two smaller cap stocks on there. You'll never, you know what the chance is for me to put two small cap stocks to watch for tomorrow, right? Probably not, but that's kind of where the hot money is right now. And for all you guys in the webinar who caught that HTCR today, you kind of see where the money flow is right now and where it's not. So it's nice little blend going into tomorrow. So I think the most important part is kind of accept that we're back in the range and unfortunately that's exactly where we are. But again, as we know every single day, you don't need to look for value, right? It's gonna fall into your lap or it's not. And the greatest part about it is there's always the next day and that's the most important part. That is the discipline of being an aspiring trader, a professional trader or anything in between. So let's talk about today, not bad at all. Not bad at all today. Finally, things started waking up here. You know, MDB thinner trader 299-300 needs to build for a possible move to 310. Not a big move, you know, not a big move at all. But again, you know, here's your 399 trade and it went to 308, right? Here's your 299-300 and just missed 310 went to 308. Not a bad move at all. Not a bad move at all. Apple 149 needs to build only went up about 70 cents. But it looked so good, didn't it, right? It looked so good for like the first three hours of the day. It looked good, like it was about to go and then just kind of died on a vine, which kind of sucks, but it is what it is. Facebook was definitely one of the nicer cleaner moves today. Basically just went straight up. 197 needs to build. Here was Facebook. It traded right to the $200 and 55 cent area that we talked about here is the whole pivot here took out the 197 and traded all the way up to that $200 and 50 cent area. Really nice smooth trade, wasn't it? Wasn't any down ticks. AERC, that was the one from yesterday. 1185-12 needs to build. You know, had an initial spike here. Had an initial spike here. Went to this 12, what was it? Went to 1270s and then just died, like you know, like a lot of these other names do. CRM I still like for tomorrow. GameStop, nothing, Marvel, nothing. TTD only ran up about 60 cents, nothing big there. Tesla, again, it's Tesla, right? It's Tesla. 735 needs to build. That's the 60 minute supply for a move to 746. Initially, here's Tesla. Again, Tesla, I mean, if you could just catch Tesla, what else do you need, right? So here's the 735. It went to 750, but then, right? Got rejected off the 50 day moving average. Excuse me, the 20 day moving average got rejected. Now it's literally in the middle of the range from the bottom and the middle of the range from the top. So it is what it is. In this market, guys, you gotta just continue taking cash flow. Just keep on taking on the way up, take on the way down. We've been kind of beating that point to the, and to everybody's head. Don't treat this as, you know, don't treat it more, anything more than a rental, right? It's just literally just a rental. As soon as you get cash flow, if it goes to your measured potential, that's great. But if not, you know, use break even as you stop on all runners. But again, that's kind of the formula until we kind of get out of this range. So Tesla, again, Tesla is good. V-E-R-U never got to the 642 area. So that's it. You know, that's it. I'm kind of watching, you know, I'm kind of watching everything tomorrow. Amazon, you know, looks interesting as well. You know, looks interesting after the split here. I'm gonna watch the bottom channel here in the next couple of days. It probably doesn't get there tomorrow, but I am gonna watch this thing for the next couple of days and kind of just see where everything is. I think that's the best way of saying it. Again, I don't have a great vibe for tomorrow because if you go through all the channels today, after your research after the close, you'll see exactly what I'm seeing. Just everything stuck in the middle. But eventually, here's the good news. Something has to give. It always does. The question is, what? Right? That's the question. So, you know, pretty solid day. Pretty solid day. Well, we'll see what happens tomorrow, right? We'll see what happens tomorrow. Guys, have a great night. God bless. And I will see you on the field tomorrow.


Welcome folks, we have the Dow Industries trading up $707, Nasdaq up $303, S&Ps up $97, Gold, Gold Contract flat $18.30 an ounce, you get Silver up $12 cents, $21.21 cents an ounce, Light Sweet Crude up $3 bucks, $107.41, Platinum up $1.50 at $9.05, notes and bonds, you get the 10-year note, trading down 10 ticks right now, $1.17, $10.30 a full point plus three ticks at $136 flat and $King dollar, $King dollar right now down $243 trading at $104.188, Euro out here trading at $105, yen $135.23 and a British pound $122 to $1 US dollar. Well you know when we take a look at the S&P folks, you got a good bounce going, you got a contraction of volume at the bottom line, this is just setting up the next leg down, what I do expect because next week is July 4th, this will probably run right into July 4th, you can see today the spy, the spy right now has got 56 million shares, yesterday we had a contraction it was 79, the day before was 80, was 90, you're going into 132 and you're going to probably end up doing about 66 million shares, that being said I suspect this is going to get up to basically the first gap when we come down, the first gap inside the spy is 401, the bottom of that gap is 401, right now you're at 387, NDX 100, we take a look at the NDX 100, same type of setup inside the NDX, you're going up, you get the contraction of volume happening, it's pretty large, if we go back yesterday, yesterday they had 57 million, we're not going to do that today, you're at 38, the prior day you had 67 and you're going into 85, we're going to do about 45 million shares, gold, gold contract still not getting any love out here, we have the gold contract, it got down to a price point today of the 1817, it rejected lower price, had lighter volume, bottom line is that it's actually setting up pretty good, you can get frustrated, there's no doubt that it keeps rejecting lower price, has lighter volume, I've seen this picture before, you've only seen it a few times actually, that you keep trying to go lower, it keeps rejecting price and we keep getting lighter volume, once the baby gets some action behind it, it's showing that there's no sellers, that's the real bottom line, we're going to take a look at the good old Kingdala, now you can see Kingdala just backs down a little and gives the market some relief here, you know, because it's really a sideways move out here today, Kingdala is trading at 104.195, stay right there folks, come right back.


Tonight briefly I want to speak to you on the message called a changed hearts a change of heart a Change of hearts You know how many of you here said I'll never do this to raise your hands Yes, yes Such a dangerous word I'm telling you was it called What's the guy say never say never Justin Bieber said never say never he was right. You know, it's one of the things he got right I remember when I was when I was still back in high school You know growing up in the Russian culture for me was like marrying a different race. I Remember myself saying I'll I'll I'll not marry a different race now for me was like and I remember saying I'll never do it Today lo and behold, you know, I'm married to her to to my beautiful wife, Sylvia Who's who's Hispanic and remember?   That's cool. I'm like, you know, I want to propose to them. Doug What? My mom like check my head.  I'll never be that I'll never be on stage. I'll never be, you know, this Christian I'll just live my life that but you never know the purpose and the destiny that God has for your life And that's something that I want to speak about tonight change of heart There's certain things, you know, like we feel like this is the direction of going whereas God says this is the direction I want you to go This is where where what and you feel like, you know, I'll never do this.  I'm standing here doing it The will of God for your life might be one thing you might be heading a different direction But there will be a time where a change of heart will begin to take place You know Remember guys before they get married. They're like, man, my wife is gonna do this. He's gonna cook for me He's gonna clean, you know, and Later on they're the ones cooking clean and doing everything Don't ever say those things The will of God for your life might be a little different And sometimes kids are though are the people who are saying, you know, I'll never you know I'll never raise my kids this way, you know I'm not I'm never gonna be like my dad yet They growing up to be just like their parents and change of heart begins to take place I want to read the scripture in Exodus 4 verse 10 in a new living translation If you don't have your Bible, I want to read it off the screen and it said this It's funny that Jacob read read this earlier, but the same topic my talk about Moses pleaded with the Lord Oh Lord, I'm not very good with words. I never had have been and I am not now Even though you have spoken to me. I get tongue-tied and my words get tangled Moses grows up in this area of runs away from from Egypt runs away from from this area And he becomes a shepherd says, you know what? I'm never going to do this You know, I'm never even think in his mind. He's going to be a great deliverer But a plan of God for his life was different I'm not saying tonight each one of you gonna stand here and do this, you know preach each one of you this thing Oh, but you know gonna do this or or that no, but I'm saying is this God's will for your life Might be much different than what you think it'll be The things that you think that you hate right now will later on become your obsession Will become something that you that you burn in your heart with Moses did the same God that said the same guy that said God sent somebody else God I don't I don't like these people.  Change of hearts and I want to bring few points from this story that we can that we can learn and apply for our lives That we can take on because we have to understand not everybody's called to be a pastor Not everybody is called to be a worship But not everybody is called to be this or that by each one of us We're called to be witnesses of the good news of the gospel We are called to be able to share what God has done in our life The great commission that God gave to each one of us is to go into the whole world Win souls and make disciples You may be a businessman You may be a worship leader. You may be a janitor. You may be NBA player You may be soccer player. You may be person who just makes videos on YouTube You may be just a stay-home mom But the commission of Lord Jesus Christ go into the whole world win souls and make disciples Does not give labels to anybody.  No remember what Jesus said Yet when you were sinners he died for you When we were lost when we were when we were even maybe in in material world Everything was okay, but deep down inside when we were lost when we were destroyed when we were depression Jesus Christ came and he saved us out of that situation Never ever forget where you coming from Some of you that are sitting in this place been delivered from drugs Some of you sit in this place been delivered from depression some you've been healed from diseases the doctor said There's no way that you can heal This is how many months you have to live some of you were healed from from from taking out from a terrible self-esteem You know living a life that was lost that was alone that was confused those depressed and God has Rescued you from that place Do not forget where you came from because if you do forget you become very indifferent to people Become indifferent to people's pains you become indifferent to people's when they're going through through the hardest time of the life And you just begin to pass by like the one the the the man who was on the side of the road and you know the Levi the All those people that they've been passing by him But the Good Samaritan remembered where he came from and also picked a person up from the side of the road That always has to be are on the top of her mind What has God sent me free from that makes you to appreciate What you have right now and that makes you not to forget the people that you were with once Many people like well, I don't I don't want to bring people to church You know, I'm too busy. I'm too tired to have this going on this this this if you look for a reason not to bring people to church You always find one if you look for a reason to bring them to church You will also find one. It's just what are you looking for if you're looking for a reason not to do it You'll find it if you're looking for a reason to do it. You will also find it. I've for for my life I've always understood always understood One principle the moment you surround yourself with people who are hurting that's the day your heart will begin to change If you surround yourself with people who are doing good, your your heart will actually grow dull to people's pain That's how that's our house. Remember in one person one gentleman that we grew up that we grew up and In high school we go to high school He kept coming to our church and one time I was picking him up to come to church and I remember picked pulled up to his house and you know call this person hey come out you know I'm here outside relate to church and Nothing's happening. Nobody's coming out and I know he just called me five minutes ago. So as I begin to walk into inside the house I'm like dude this guy's problems phone is off or whatever. I open the door and I begin to see Right in front of my eyes I open the door his dad beating his mom right in front of my eyes was just dramatic scene that that I begin to see that and and at the same spot I begin to be paralyzed to see the the the devil's work and not family I remember I closed the door around the way God on my car drove off and I was as I was driving to church I was weeping I was crying. I said God, how can you allow this to happen? How can you how can you? These things happen and God's like that's not me. That's the devil And and God was clearly speaking to me that night is that I want you to see this So your heart becomes soft for the people who are hurting And it's the people that you rub shoulders with every day It's the people that we come sometimes in contact. Hey, how are you? Oh, I'm doing fine We're as deep down inside the same can somebody see my pain Can somebody see my hurt the things that I'm going through there right around you?  He's doing everything. You know, he's living the good life and God comes to says I've heard the cry of my people lower my mic I've heard the cry the crying out to me daily and it's coming to remembrance of me Just cuz you can't hear their their pain doesn't mean God doesn't Just cuz you you begin to shout yourself out say God has set me free goddess, you know Delivered you from drugs goddess delivered you from this this and we begin to forget where we come from And that's a day when we forget we become a different to the people that are around us They're they're everywhere. They're the malls when you go to the gym They're there when you're in your workplace when you go drinking coffee at Starbucks at roasters. They're all around you and The thing that always always makes me to understand is when you begin to understand the hurt and the pain your heart begins to change Moses will never be a great deliverer if he never encountered people's pain Moses will never be a person of influence a person that God begin to use until he begin to come into the people's midst With there were torture that were there were beaten there were abused there was pain and there was hurt No, it's crying and when he begin to experience that pain Their hurt became his heart that he begin to come to God as a God deliver my people He begin to come in front of fair and begin to say let my people go you don't deserve it They begin to they belong to God and that is where Moses's life begins to change Just in in moments just in just few moments Moses becomes from the lowest point of his life somebody that was forgotten Somebody that was rejected somebody that was looked at as a murder becomes into great deliver. Why? It began to encounter people's hurt When you begin to make other people's needs become your needs You begin to see how God will begin to change your life When you begin to understand that look these people, you know, just cuz there's they look good Just cuz you know everything in the last seems to be great does not mean they are doing good Said Jesus was a friend of sinners the Bible always begin to understand and many many times I'm like, man, what is what is Jesus me? He should go like to the temple to to Pharisees and Sadducees and start like this revival moment Inside the church yet Jesus spent more time outside of church than inside the church and begins to make me to understand Where Jesus's heart was Jesus said I did not come for the righteous, but I came those who are lost I did not come as a doctor for those who are doing good, but I came to those who are in pain I'm here concerned about them and and this Pharisee see them like why are you chilling with the sinners and he's like This is where God's heart is This is where where God's heart beats. He's with the crowd.  When your needs become people's needs you begin to understand God's heart and your life will begin to change a man church number two Your weakness qualifies you for extra ordinary service your weakness Qualifies you for extra ordinary service You have to understand that what disqualified Moses to be a leader deliver actually qualified him to be a great leader and deliver I Mean looking back into our lives Looking back into our lives our pastor When he first came to America and he said first thing then when he came to America He said one thing so we want to see revival in tri-cities. We had only three families. We did not speak English There was nothing happening his greatest weakness became his strength for God to bring a revival that's happening right now What this quote the weakness that this qualifies you to to think that God cannot use me How can I go and bring a message of hope somebody else?  It's like right now just a current example It's like our president elect to become like not being able to speak would you vote for him?  Of course, you're not boyfriend, but that's who Moses was He was a murderer and he did not know how to speak and yet. He's like I'm gonna deliver this Generation from slavery from activity. It did not make sense. It doesn't fit into your mind right now It happened it took place and in it and Moses did it But just to show us that your weakness is actually the thing that qualifies you to become a great deliverer You will you will begin to succeed in your life when you understand that you were sent for Hundreds and thousands and they will only hear the gospel when you go to them Your life will begin to change when you understand that there is hundreds and thousands of people waiting to hear the message Of hope from your mouth the people that I can that I can reach you can't reach the people that you can reach I cannot reach There's always somebody's out there. The only will listen to you not to me There's some people out there though only listen to me and not you There's this fear that God has sent you to there's this there's this Egypt that God has sent you to and says Go and deliver my nation. Maybe it's your family. Maybe nobody in your family has you know It's coming from a different culture coming from a different background Maybe they do not believe in Jesus and God is like I want to send you to them And you might think who am I to to deliver them, but don't ever listen to me Don't ever just don't you know if if I begin to tell them the God God wants to save them They're gonna be like well, I remember you stealing well, I remember you used to cuss remember used to be drunk I remember you were getting wasted all these things and devil might use that by your group Your greatest weakness becomes your greatest qualification to become a deliverer for your people come on Let us put our hands together for Jesus Christ I remember Remember when we were when we were first beginning our church It was like I don't know if you would want to remember me I was like this ill and Vlad and there's a few other people that were that were it is when we're starting out the church Vladimir was our pastor Vlad was least qualified to be a youth pastor literally least qualified You know what you know what Vladimir used to do we I don't know if you guys still remember those projectors like these These shines a light into this thing and then the projector shines you're there What are they called overheads over there you go existed back in the few old enough you don't understand what it is So Vladimir used to take the the thing and he used to be the one that's flipping the the pages for worship team So whatever our people doing on the computer now Pastor a lot back in a day used to be the one that's doing that He was the least if you hear his testimony He said his self-image the way he saw himself He was the least qualified to do what God is using him to do today today He's traveling all over the world to preach the message of hope But yet he was the most disqualified to be for the job yet got qualified him because of that Whatever you might think that you're going through in your life today You might think these are the things that you know, how can I speak? How can I do this much track? I have criminal history. I have a you know bank robberies. God, I beg you don't have those You know, I you know, I have all these things, you know on your record But you think that nobody will listen nobody on to understand but God's like these are the same reasons I'm qualifying you to rescue your family your friends the people that you are around and God's like if you Do not do it. I'll raise somebody else Esther was in that position Esther was you know You know, she was delivered. She was an orphan.  She could be like well I'm an orphan. What if people find out who I really was they'll also take me out But I was like I put you in this position for a reason to save your generation You will begin to succeed in your life when you understand that there's thousands of people out there waiting For you to speak to them. That's when you'll begin to succeed. Oh, I'm telling you guys the truth for me right now What got me to where I am right now?  I sacrifice time. I sacrifice money cars You know a time patience prayer and it's one things in my heart is I want to help certain people to succeed in life Well, I want to get them closer and closer to Jesus Christ when you put yourself in a position where God can't afford to lose you God will begin to elevate you Come on put your hands together for Jesus Christ I remember a prophet to be Josh are always saying this and he says you always would tell I said I put myself in a Position where God can't afford to lose me and I'm like, well, that's rightful What do you want to say that stuff? He says, you know, there's thousands of widows depending on my income to feed them There's thousands of sick people waiting for me to stretch my hand so God could heal through me there's thousands of people waiting for me to preach the message of hope and They are the ones praying for me that God would bless me because once he blesses me I bless them Wow, that is a secret to success guys That is a secret is the more if you want to succeed in life make other people's needs your needs Make other people's pain your pain because when when you don't have enough God's like well I cannot afford to do not to bless Eric because father bless Eric Jacob is not gonna be blessed if I don't bless Victoria then her friend Rosie's not gonna be blessed if I don't bless Alex then his friend Bryson is not gonna be not not gonna be out so I can't afford to lose him I can't afford not to bless him. I need to elevate them That's when the reasons God begin to raise Moses when he was a murderer when he couldn't speak because God says if I can't raise Moses then millions of my people will be died and and they're gonna suffer in slavery Put yourself in a position where God cannot afford to lose you in your family You know in your family tree you might be the only one that's that that's trying to change channel trying to become different God is behind you God wants to support you because the one that wants to let you know that your weakness actually Qualifies you to become great to deliver your people. They will listen even though they might laugh now. They'll listen God did not rescue you from from the pain from the hurts from the drugs for for just so you can feel good No, he rescued you so you can rescue others There was a change of heart that begins to place take place with Moses because he begin to understand And you put myself in the area where other people are hurting. I Can't be indifferent can't be just here in this this land, you know Pastor and sheep where my own people are dying and that's when God begin to take him out God will begin to even his weaknesses He begins to turn him to strength and and I truly and truly believe the area that you are lacking now Right now, there's maybe new financial Maybe you're healing maybe it's is it delivers that you need the moment you begin to care for people the moment begin You begin to take other people's needs your needs.   Oh, I'm not done this. I'm not done this, you know I don't have a hard background They're like, you know, my life is my life is good and as many times what God wants to use them It is so hard for God to use them because they're not broken down They have not tasted darkness enough to be able to appreciate the light that the God has had for them You know, so sometimes we feel like, you know, my life is perfect And and that is when when when it's so hard for God to use us because God wants to see a person that that came out Of that mess God's like, I want to use you and the same the mess that I'm taking you out from and to send You back to those who are hurting and my last point is this It's fighting for God's people empowers you for greatness fighting for God's people Empowers you for greatness. I said this quote many times is that the greatest investment in life is help to people The greatest investment in life is Help to other people and let me explain what how that works is is I remember when my When my dad back back in Russia You know, he opened an orphan and I or he opened a rehab center to help people who are in drugs and I remember not after that many times you take him in at your own house and At night as we were locked in a room, you know, they would have withdraw also to be breaking things They will they'll be tearing things apart and and and to me. I'm like dad. Why are you doing this?  They're just nobody and back in my mind. I'm like you're you're threatening our family What if they and many times they would rob us the many times, you know They'll steal from us many times are coming in the middle of the night threaten my dad all these things, you know It was a scary situation But my dad's my dad's heart was like man. I want to see these guys say I want to be rescued You know, and he always said if I don't help him who else will help him if I'm not the one who will begin To rescue them out of this who else will help him, you know, they'll be destroyed. They'll die They'll not be able to live till tomorrow who else would help him Years went by and many times and I felt like it was forgotten Until a few years back my my brother David begins to get on drugs And and his life goes just downhill to the point where it's like it's like we tried everything We call all the men of God. We did everything fasting whatever you may think of even beating him put in the jail Nothing is working the same time. God's like what you've done to other people Way back when maybe people don't understand now. I'm gonna do for you They're happy to be prophet to be Joshua who all the way in Africa Begins to take David into his house not church his house Begins to counselor begin to pray from delivers and does the same thing my dad used to do to the drug addicts long long time ago the greatest help in the greatest investment in life is Help to other people.  Why I'm I'm not just giving it just because you know, oh, I have so many no I'm giving it because I want to secure my own future I know though with their common time if I'm lacking God's like I remember the time where you gave now That's my trick to give you back Maybe not on money.  This is a time where where I begin to give back So you have to understand our generation is is dying is sick. It's everywhere around you Moses was so far away from from his people yet. God's like the cry is coming in my remembrance I hear it every day.   Maybe things are are going good, but don't forget where you come from Don't forget where the times where you were suicidal where you were depressed when nobody Wanted to help you and God by miraculously rescued your life It's not so you can say, you know, I'm good. No My life is good. No, I'm God says now I want you to go back Now I want you to remember your friend Now I want you to remember that the person that's right now drinking and smoking has nothing to do with God And maybe even when you come to him, they'll say you used to be like me No, no the same weakness that this qualifies you qualifies you to deliver them One thing that Moses really understood and that's something I really really love The moment Moses began to fight For his people the supernatural began to follow him it's like He's not looking for supernatural yet. God's power begins to support him Now he begins to instead of dreaming of deliverance The deliverance begins to take place through his hand Healing begins to take to place because he puts him in a position where God's like, hey, you know what? You do what I love. I love my people and you are helping them out.  I'm not saying each one of you becoming pastor No, you can be a a doctor You can be a lawyer You can be a just a normal housewife or or a husband But your mission that God has given you To deliver your own people where you came from never changes never changes What Moses hated the most became his obsession When Moses says I'll never do this forget. I'm out of here. I'm out of Egypt. I don't even remember anything God choose somebody else comes to a point where Moses stands before God and he says God if you Destroy these people destroy my own life, too I have to understand that People who begin to make God's heart their priority Which is the people that are all the way around us Will begin to achieve great heights You know, we are sitting today in a church that was based with only one vision to see tri-city saved 15 years ago when we were when we were in in the house when we were when we were there and trust me We did not speak English didn't have no money sitting on welfare eating from food bank. We were disqualified But today we have these things why because of division God Send us to our generation. We want to rescue that generation And God begins to say you know what I'll support you with power You know what you need a building I'll give you a building when you can't even afford it and I'll pay for it with my own money Then God began to support with supernatural God will begin to support with salvation with healing deliverance more people begin to come aboard and God's like do not forget Where you come from because I've sent you for such a time as this to deliver your people I'm not saying you go to Africa. Maybe God's calling you for that's fine saying to your own people where you are coming from Where you are coming from Continuously every day I begin to reach out to those people where I came from begin to some hey Not trying to pressure not to judge him or whatever they but hey God loves you. God wants to rescue. He rescued me Every day Even today there shouldn't be but I came came across gave me a call. They're like hey, how things going with you You know, I said man you make it God has a plan for you will get out of this Keep your head up come on and always offering the message of hope because that's what God did to me when I was on my lowest A change of heart My prayer tonight is that we'll be able to be the people that will not forget where we came from


All right, so let's see um I clean up the walking more interested in transition from part two to three Goes through the chair last part. I worked on a bit. So it wasn't as fast, but I may be too slow. All right. Let's check it out Hello, hello That's cool. It's a bit faster Right there. It's good. Good pause and then whoa and then suddenly the momentum goes up. It's too fast In your curves, it's only going instead of going. Whoa, like you know, he's got a push the legs got a push the momentum the muscles and everything It's a bit fast And then the stop is too quick as well. It feels a bit more like a ice skating move With that long stride. I think this might also be a bit too long but definitely the speed and you're still back to kind of the parallel Placement of feet so either he's out or you make him kind of feel awkward and he has his toes in That's all cool This is a tricky thing. This is always very very hard to do but since he's not moving very fast And it's kind of tiptoeing his way forward. I feel right now in your TY you have a bit too much up and down It's a bit bouncy in the root for something where he barely moves. You might Get movement out of this by going more left and right Translating in terms of towards us and away from us. So he's swinging a bit more left and right Instead of this this gliding motion But the steps at the end are much better. Again, this feels a bit too parallel on the feet there Spread out a bit more angled out. I mean Look is great Much out for continuity. His hand is on there But then it's not so you're gonna have to Make that work across the cut there, but overall makes work so much better You have to be super picky. I would take that window and move it over here So there's no overlapping shapes with white and white. I'm being super picky here But just in case you get a clear clean silhouette Watch out for extended arms. It's like you're overextending and it pops and then that root-wise feels like Like he coming to a certain point that kind of stops and goes not straight down But it's still pretty in a straight line in terms of arc in terms of arcs, but it's also There's something a bit mechanical So he moves over it feels like almost you want to go over here It has a bit of a weight shift comes back and then sits down a bit of an arc Whoa, and that's too fast there boom So that is so yeah, that would be a lot slower And then a lot slower like he would be almost there and then slow down and then kind of plop down this feels a bit too clean mechanical terms of arcs and The easing and out is a bit too fast And if there's no on the sit down, there's no impact on chest and head Not that it's plopping that really hard and there's a huge drag overlap But you still want to feel something in there some breakup Watch out when you do something like this. It all feels like it's just one axis just grabbing all the controls and rotating backwards versus a little bit of a twist a bit of Wire rotation a bit of a sideways tilt just a tiny bit to activate all those channels But overall it does feel better Like the intention feels better. It's just a bit mechanical and simple and like these stops and are just It harsh and there's in their stops and the timing of this arm going up is a bit even But I think as a whole I think you're good to go with you know Let's take this to the next level and then all the nice easings and now it's just proper timing for everything to get a really nice finished Pass on this is what I want to you know, this is kind of these are the acting choices That's the speed hesitation on the sit down the hesitation or whatever move of the arm coming up all that kind of finalized And then we can get into You know advanced blocking like first polished everything Yeah, that's it. Thank you All right, there's an email you can sign up you can start whenever you want you can submit whatever you want You get 16 submissions either way a like and subscribe would be awesome. All right. Thank you


The one thing that is incredibly important is the power of human connection. Leadership right now is particularly important. You know, people are working from home. People are feeling insecure. Many of us have become caretakers. And so there's a lot of stress. There's a lot of pressure, which is why communication is so critical right now. One of the things that I discovered is not communicating is definitely not an option. In the absence of communication, people allow their own stories to form or they start to form their own version of reality. It's important to be transparent. It's important to be open. It's also important to share what you know now, knowing that it may change. Part of communication is also listening. What I love is seeing how a lot of small businesses still preserve that Friday afternoon kind of show and tell session, making sure that we continue to have this human connection, one to one, one to small groups, one to many is really, really critical. I would ever be experiencing what we're experiencing today. But I will say this, this has been one of the greatest leadership challenges for me, but also one of the best. Because I think what I've discovered is that employees, customers, partners, gravitate towards people who show up authentically are true to themselves through all of this.