כן, אני שואל את זה. אז תודה רבה for the introduction. This work was done with Adia Kavya and Dan Feldman all from Haifa University. So I think this work is interesting for infinitely many number of reasons, but I will point out two. One is that we show a useful building block that can be used by other applications or other MPC applications. And the other one it shows a link between Corset and Secure Computation, which are two different areas. So let me explain what I mean. So many algorithms follow more or less these lines. They have n input some things, let's call it d1 to dn, and we want to find a subset of these some things by a filter given by the user, maybe by query, and then we want to report something that we found. So for example the input can be the list of all children in the world and we want to report all those who are good this year. Or the input can be all your email in your email box and we want to report all the emails that are not spam. Or the input can be all the restaurants in the world and we want to report all the bigger restaurants that are less than one mile away from you. So in this talk we are going to assume that there is some e-match functionality that can tell us if an input item is relevant or not, should be reported or not. We are going to assume that an e-match function exists. It gets two parameters, di, the input item, and q, the query. And it returns xi, a binary, either one if the input item should be reported or zero if it should not reported. We are going to assume this exists. We are not going to consider this in Auto. Instead we are going to focus on the last step how to report these items efficiently. And efficiently of course with respect to communication. We don't want to report the entire database. So let us consider a slightly easier problem. Instead of reporting the input item, we are going to report the indices of the items that have passed the filter. So two notes. One, once we have solved the easier question, solving the other question is easy. It can be extended easily. We are not going to discuss how it can be extended. The details are in the paper. And the second note is that the problem becomes not interesting if there are too many indices to report. Because if there are almost any indices to report, then just report. You can just report everything with the same, simplatically, time. So we are going to assume that there are at most s indices to report and s is going to be significantly smaller than n. Ideally we would like the communication complexity to be a function of s. So spoiler alert, it's going to be a function of s and log n. You can't escape the log n. So as the title suggested, we are going to use homomorphic encryption. So we are going to show how our algorithm lives in a homomorphically encrypted scenario. We are not going to discuss how homomorphic encryption works, what is the internal. We are going to treat homomorphic encryption as a black box. So still just some notations and quick overview of what homomorphic encryption is. So it's a public key encryption scheme. So that means that we have an encryption function that given a message x, we can encrypt it and get a cycle text of x. The cycle text we denote with x in brackets. And we have a function called decrypt that gets a cycle text and returns the message inside. In homomorphic encryption, in fully homomorphic encryption we have two more functions. We have ed that gets x and y and returns a cycle text such that when we decrypt it we get x plus y and the function mul that gets to cycle text x and y and returns a cycle text that when decrypted gives us x times y. So just for short notation we are going to denote x in brackets plus y in brackets that is going to mean calling the ed function with x and y, the cycle text x and y and x in brackets plus y, not in brackets that is going to mean encoding or encrypting y and then calling ed with x the cycle text and the cycle text of y. Similarly we have mul, so x in brackets times y in brackets that mean calling the multiplier function with x and y and x in brackets times y not in brackets well that is not a multiplication actually because we can treat it as x plus x plus xy times so this is basically an addition, addition operations. So as you can clearly see with addition and multiplication we can actually evaluate any polynomial on cycle text and we already know that every algorithm can be implemented, can be expressed as a polynomial of its inputs so that leads to an easy conclusion that any algorithm can be evaluated using FHE. The only problem is that the efficiency, the running time deteriorates as the degree of the polynomial gets higher. So we want to keep the degree of the polynomial as small as possible. So let's just brief over our results before we explain how we did it. So the direct approach what was previously known on how to report a sparse vector was a degree of proportional to d times n where we reduce the degree of the polynomial to d. Here d is the degree of the ease match functionality. So we have to have d, we cannot escape d if we want to apply the ease match functionality. In our solution the communication complexity is a little worse s squared times log squared n as opposed to s log n and the client needs to work a little bit harder to decode the output. So let's have an example in mind, suppose that Dunkin Donuts wants to have a service where you give them your location and they report to you what are the restaurant, Dunkin Donuts restaurants that are less than one mile away from you but of course we want to keep our privacy so we don't want to tell Dunkin Donuts where we are but we still want to know where the nearest restaurants are. Obviously downloading the entire Dunkin Donuts database is not feasible especially not when you are in another country and data is very expensive. So here in this example the input is going to be location of all the Dunkin Donuts restaurants in the world that is going to be d1 to dn hdi is the location given as a pair of gps coordinates we will also have a query which is our location encrypted so Dunkin Donuts does not know where we are what is our location it is kept encrypted during the entire protocol the ease match function in this case is going to compute the distance between a gps coordinate of a Dunkin Donuts restaurant and our location and of course this computation is done homomorphically the distance is computed homomorphically and then it is compared to one mile again homomorphically which gives us a binary value xy such that xi equals 1 if the i restaurant is closer than 1 mile to where we are 0 otherwise and we are left with the problem of reporting all the i's such that xi equals 1 so clearly in this example n is very large so I checked yesterday Dunkin Donuts have gazillion restaurants but still in a radius of 1 mile there are not too many restaurants 10 restaurants so here the input is going to be a binary x1 to xn after we have applied ease match and we know that there are at most s ones so the output is going to be s numbers s let's say a vector of dimension s where the first slot in the vector is going to indicate the index of the first one in xi the second slot is going to indicate the index of the second one etc each of these slots is going to be given by a different polynomial so this is the direct approach what was known before our work so let's see what is such a polynomial for the teeth slot in the output vector so it's not super important to understand why this is the polynomial for completeness I will just breeze over it it's not super important so it's a sum for j goes from 1 to n multiplying j by xj by ease equal where ease equal a and b is actually an equality test it returns 1 if a equals 1 and if a equals b sorry and 0 otherwise so the last term in this product ease equal actually tests if there are occurrences of 1 in x1 to xj-1 and if xj is also 1 then that means that j is the index of the teeth occurrence of 1 in the vector so actually this sum actually is eliminated into j star where j star is the occurrence of the j1 so how is equal implemented it can be implemented for example using so ease equal a and b is 1-a-b to the power of p-1 so this leads to and since p is more than n it leads to a degree that is at least n so we are going to borrow a concept from computational geometry which is corset so corset is we say c is a corset of p if c has a shorter representation than p and you can get p from c by decoding c in an efficient way and what we are going to do we are going to compute a corset of x1 to xn the corset is going to be computed more morphically so it is going to be a ciphertext an encrypted corset we are going to send this encrypted corset to the user the user is going to decrypt it with his secret key and then the corset to get back the x1 to the xn so the corset we are going to use is a sketch by Indyk Nego and Rudra they show that there is a sketch matrix an sn sketch matrix that can transform a long vector an n-dimensional vector into a shorter vector we will say what k is in a minute such that x the original vector can be decoded from y the sketch so the sketch is y the s multiplied by x and we can get x back from y by some decoding algorithm so here is an example of a 17 sketch matrix you can see that each column here decodes the binary representation of the index of the column and why is this a 17 sketch matrix because if we multiply it by a seven-dimensional vector that has at most one occurrence of one then all the columns are going to be eliminated and the only column that is going to survive is the column that is multiplied by the one of the vector and that will give us a three-dimensional vector that encodes the index of the one in the seven-dimensional vector the decoding here is easy just parse the binary representation into a number so indignago and rudra extended this idea and they showed that for any s and n there exists an sn sketch matrix of size k times n where k equals an order of s squared log n and the decoding time is polynomial in k so just to wrap it up what our approach is we have the x vector which is the result of applying the isMatch functionality we are going to multiply it by a sketch matrix x we are going to get a core set an encrypted core set we are going to send the core set we know what are the indices of the restaurants that are near him or here so what is the degree analysis so since we multiply x an encrypted vector by s a sketch matrix that is in clear text then the degree of our polynomial is actually one this is actually a linear polynomial that means that for this step of the bigger algorithm for this step we can even do with additive or morphic encryption so we implemented our our algorithm and compared it to the direct approach so not surprisingly our algorithm is linear our algorithm is given by the blue line and the direct approach is given by the red line our algorithm is linear and the direct approach is not linear still we are slower than the direct approach for small vectors that is because of the overhead produced by the sketch so to conclude we saw that we can use core sets to improve performance of MPC multi-party computation protocols and FHE more specifically we saw that we can report an s sparse vector of size n using only additive morphic encryption and I would like to see more applications using core sets to improve MPC or other protocols and specifically for this application we want to improve the constants that is already work in progress we suspect that we can improve the constants by using a better sketch and by having a tighter analysis of the algorithm thank you any question for Saoul? since you used the asian lib I wonder is the open source library you have available sometime I couldn't find it yes you can email us we will send it to you we are not on github yet but we are planning for this also about the security parameters you are using in the asian lib yes we chose the security parameter to be 80 which is standard about the morphic parameters like a ring degree modular size are those in the full paper? you can see all the details in the full paper yes so when you compare so the modular size that depends for example for the direct approach the modular size should be at least n because you are generating a number that might be n so you have to use a modular size at least n for our case the modular size should be at least s because the number that are generated are almost s smaller okay we can talk about it we can talk about it in detail later yes it's more than thank you other questions for Saul? I do have one quick question we are speaking about more application do you have already the next application in mind or is just a generic more application? so we are we are we are fans of corsets we think that corsets should be everywhere we we do have some ideas there are no more questions let's thank Saul and all the speakers of the session


Sut mor hwnnw i'n gynnau'n meddwl cymdeithasol yma, o ran hamp ac yna mewn cydwysrewi yn gweithio.  Dyna rhywbeth i chi'n digwydd. Fel yng Nghymru yn y gweithio yma, a cyfryd 다시ch yn ymwneud. Ond am eu part strengthenant y rhaid, rhai o'r cynhyrchu i'r atitud i ddesuniant ar gyflym y dyma ac yn sicr i'r cyfrifio i chweithio i'r cyfrifio. Mae'r cyfrifio o'ch cyfrifio yma wedi ble yn該tio ar y visi, mae'r cyfrifio dyma'r cwrwm. mae'r cyfrifio i'r cyfrifio i'r cyfrifio i'r cyfrifio, mae'n arweinio i chi ein cyfrifio i chi, er mwyn ei wneud i gyrddion y bobl,amous youth and then it would need need the midfield players to fall in defenders as well. All the areas of the team need to be ready to work on it. I hope we see it going through. On the first part initially it has little to do with tactical, it has more to do with making sure they are aware of the jobs. If you don't have the ball, your forward players need to be up the pitch your midfield players need to be up behind. Fyddo rhywbeth sy'n ei tîm gyda'r mewn LfeIR ac nad oedd e reconnaidwch willai erîm kap�onitatech I featured ond bydd i chi wedi c bait dryn i dydw i roi sciences, ac mae'n clywed yn went Brytyigffasu i ei tynnu a roelwch ein spudol angen i iechyd yn eiyson a phobl rolls o'r wych yn ddisnyddio eu skeleton ac mae chyfl i aleuogau pa i ei ddysgu ac rydw i hynny'n ddiddordech digwydd oes sut diddidwf yn dod d kaflu oedd o'r flu, ac mae hynny lledwy'n Prefer y gallennum o gerddorol a we're going to work on both teams, so we're not working on any one team at the moment, we're working on the two teams in this, the opening games, okay? Right, okay boys, right, here we go. Goalkeeper, would you have a ball in your hand? Okay, goalkeeper, would you have a ball in your hand? So what are you going to do if I shout it's the green goalkeeper? What are you going to do if I shout it's the green goalkeeper? Okay. So what are you going to do if I shout it's the blue goalkeeper? Okay, so you've got the idea. Now I'm just going to, I'm doing this before we set up. If you wouldn't mind just give this player the ball. I don't, sorry, I don't, stay there, stay there youngster just now. Giving the ball, lads I'm really sorry, I don't know your name so you just need to, to bide with me what I'm saying. If he gets the ball, who would be the nearest man? So you would go to the ball first, wouldn't you? Okay. So always the nearest man up to the ball, get, and that's the starting point. Nearest man up, if you can't play short goalies, if you have to go somewhere else you do so. Okay, back with the goalie. Green ball, friendly green goalkeeper, there you go, up, round the ball, up, good, good, well done, good. Well done to blue team, well done, good. You, you're first, well done, up, can't play forward, well done. Good, keep yourself going, well done, you're doing a good job, well done. Don't let them get round, no go, blue ball, quick ball, play. Good, up again, good, well done, good, in again, don't let them get away, you've got to block it, you've got to block, up, up, too far off them, you're too far off them, up, up, better, well done, good. Now the blues, don't let them out, well done, good, play. Good, you're first, go on, in, in, get in, tighter, tighter, better, well done.


Welcome to CBS 2018 in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic where I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Dr. Marco Serrata who is from Montserray Tech in Mexico. Dr. Serrata, thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you so much for having me. Now when I just start off by talking a little bit about this symposium, it's all about capacity building, what do you think are the skills required for digital transformation? Well I think this is a key question and in order to answer it I think that such skills should be classified in two main veins. The first one is what is usually defined as the hardest skills where when we speak about artificial intelligence, new technologies, virtual reality, big data, etc. All of these new technologies require new skills that allow individuals and organizations not only to use these technologies but to develop new applications and new things that empowers them and organizations to work further on them. And the second thing is not only hard but soft skills and I think these are the most important ones because technology is changing so fast that in order to be able to take advantage of such technologies it's not only about the hardest skills but what is defined as the soft skill? Creative thinking, collaboration, resilience, just to mention a few. Such soft skills are crucial to face the different challenges that we have as individuals, as organizations and as a society as a whole. And how do you think we can work together in order to prepare tomorrow's workforce? Well I think that it's a work that has to be developed not only by individuals but we have this the triangle in between academic institutions, higher education and at lower levels as well but there's also private firms, organizations and the government. You cannot think about any of these three edges by themselves. We need collaboration in between all of them and while thinking about them I think that we must think about four different dimensions for such skills as individuals, personal development, creating more awareness on the context, also on improving the kind of relationship that we have with others, cultural intelligence, being able to network with other individuals not only in your geographical context but worldwide and also in terms of processes among organizations. Now I know you remember one of the panels today. I wanted to find out from you what have been some of the key takeaways that you've heard from the conversations here? Well for me one of the main takeaways I would mention two actually. The first one is this triangle in between, on the collaboration in between the different parties. I think that we have to be able to create a society this kind of crowd working in between the different parties. It will not happen if you just have academic institutions, organizations or government. You must have a strategy. Any of these parties may start but if you don't have the other parties on the ship it's not going to work at all. And the second takeaway that I will also mention is that given this pace of change, this uncertainty that is taking place in our context, we must be aware that first of all, yes it is about lifelong learning, learning throughout life but we already know that the other edge is about life-wide learning. What we mean by that is it's important to be learning throughout your life but not only through the things that you learn at higher education institutions, at school but also what you learn throughout life out of the classroom and how to keep track of that especially for the softer skills. I think that is crucial. I know there's been a lot of exchange information here but I wanted to ask you why do you think it's important like this is important? Well this important is crucial and I think it's a key initiative to help again not only individual organizations but society as a whole because it's not only about thinking, reflecting, sharing ideas but the most important thing is about placing seats for action on what has to happen in every different country. Regardless you are an emerging economy, you are a developed country, all of us are into this new digital economy and society so we'd better act on that and this kind of event allows us to present these seats for action that are most nowadays. Well thanks for taking the time to be here and and thanks again as well for being here at the symposium. No thank you so much for having me here it's my pleasure.


Recently I was introduced to a coaching tool known as the balance wheel and I tried out myself, I tried it together with my girlfriend and we both enjoyed the exercise, the tool very much, so I decided to not only go through whatever I discovered personally in the process, but also just my insights and thoughts of why I feel it's a great tool to suggest you to try it out as well. So the balance wheel, it's a wheel actually, well this is how it looks. This is my girlfriend and me, we did it together. I'm obviously using editing magic, you're seeing the scores and everything on the screen. So it's basically a wheel, a circle where there are different sections, career, money, health, family and friends, etc. and you ask yourself how satisfied are you in that particular field and you give a number and based on that number you create, you put a line or kind of a circle of line and then at the end of the exercise you, first of all you see how bumpy, I think the one of the questions whoever introduces the exercise asks how bumpy would it be to use that type of wheel, you know if it's really out of balance and then different shapes, but what it also does wonderfully and it definitely did for me and my girlfriend, it's made me become more conscious about you know what aspects am I actually not as satisfied about and to naturally ponder and ask myself the question of what would make the difference, like what could be the solution, the step, the action which would take and level up the number, why am I not satisfied, like it's just creates so much consciousness, so much awareness that helps you navigate on your life and maybe understand better what am I not so happy about and where can I, again what can I do about it to make it better and also I read a bit more about the balance wheel and there was a good question posed as well that it makes you ask so what number would actually satisfy me and why is that enough, so there's so many questions that naturally pop up and it just gives you such a great chance to basically just know yourself better, understand yourself better and potentially lead to action, so that's kind of the setup of the balance wheel but I always, whenever I share something, it's always important for me to share from personal experience, so to not be like oh I will tell you what's right and what's wrong, but instead to do this together, like we're sitting here together drinking coffee by this tree and exploring my answers, so you would be encouraged to explore yours, so let's do this. So if we take a look at the wheel, starting off with, let's start with career, I don't know why I'm starting with career but I guess that's the first one I filled up to or that's the one which caught my eye and both me and my girlfriend we chose pretty much the same number, she wrote three and a half which is even less, I wrote four and that's if you're following this channel, if you're following this journey currently, you're not living in the future, you're not like in 2022 looking back and saying oh that's how Rokas was and now he's awesome but you know that I am in a challenging life situation where I'm not happy with what's happening and it's really fascinating, this part is fascinating because, actually checking the sound, okay, so this part is really fascinating because technically my career is actually doing quite good, like the Mars Large Journey YouTube channel has 100, my main channel, my main YouTube channel has 100, 3,500,000 subscribers, it keeps getting regular reviews without any effort put in, I receive a good amount of money from it and it's just like you know on that level, like I am creating influence, I am having positive influence in people's kind of Mars Large Journey so there's so much good stuff there but that's what I want more, that's not what I want now, it was satisfying before but now I'm in a space where again you may know that already I want to create positive change outside of Martial Arts and I'm not happy with the capacity of what I am capable of giving and that's why I'm so focused on learning right now and exploring and finding better tools, finding better answers and I feel like I'm not delivering the value that I want on the level that I want, this journey is still just building up and I really am happy with the connection we have, you and me as we're sitting here together and the number of views I'm getting, they're satisfying but my earning is so much more bigger and I feel like I'm incapable of giving as much as I want so all of that just makes me put a four and if I talk about my girlfriend, she's a professional singer, she just finished her master's degree and she's actually in my eyes she's successful but again on her standards that's the same thing, the same thing I guess it shows how much perception plays, how big of a part perception plays a role in this is, you know she doesn't feel successful and she doesn't, she's not having as many concerts as she would like to, she's not reaching as many people as she'd like to so we're kind of in a similar situation here, so if we move on to money, money for me seven, I don't feel like I need a lot of money, I keep saying that I'm not a big spender, I earn a decent amount which is enough for me but I didn't write, I didn't go for eight so eight would be ideal for me, I don't need a nine or a ten in my finances, I'm fine with an eight but I chose seven because as you see my girlfriend's number is free, you know she's having a harder time with money and so I want to have more money at the moment to support both, to be able to support myself and her which she doesn't want but I want to have more money just in case so that's why I want to earn a little bit more, I will focus a little bit on earning more money and that's why it's seven not an eight and for her it's a free because again as I said she's not earning by far as much as she wants and not because she wants a lot and she's not earning much but instead she doesn't have like a like a like a source of income which is there all the time let's say if she's having professional concerts, music concerts, they're irregular you sometimes you get them sometimes you don't so that creates a level of uncertainty so oh that I don't want to speak too much for her so I won't I won't go there too much but that's kind of the setup if we look at health I'm happy that we're both I'm nine she's eight I think she probably wrote eight because she feels like she she wants to become more sportive I wrote nine because I don't know why not attend like I'm not like I'm not like all the time energetic probably that's the reason but but I haven't been sick for a long time I feel good so it's nine I'm happy to to be able to see that family and friends I again we were quite similar here so I'm seven she's six for me family and friends I was close to writing eight I guess I felt seven because I haven't seen my parents for a little bit and actually I did this circle at my parents place so I felt actually great and I have a great relationship with my parents I love my parents but I didn't see them as often as I wanted to these last few months so I guess maybe that lowered the number and friends I don't like I would be satisfied with an eight entirely this is again friends is not like an important part of my life I appreciate friends and so on but I don't feel that sense of oh I need to surround myself with friends and all the time meet them up and so on I I just feel like occasionally I like to hang out with friends but that's like again not a big priority in my life and I don't like these days I'm doing goods I live in business capital 20 I have a bunch of my old friends from old times and we meet up and this and that so I feel fine but again like I don't know maybe an eight would be you know maybe having some friends which we we would have more like we would meet up more constantly and maybe those friends would be someone who I would be really like you know looking forward to me I and I don't know maybe maybe that's why it's a seven for my girlfriend it's a six because she's not from around she's from a different city and most of her friends are there family as well and again I don't want to talk too much about for her but basically you know she doesn't hang out with her friends as much as you'd like to there's some family stuff as well so it's a six love and romance again happy wasn't like five and ten I'm like hey I feel our relationship is awesome and she's like it's terrible that'd be a red flag but no actually where I'm 10 she's nine she was actually considering 10 as well I was actually kind of for a moment I was thinking like you know I thought about writing nine but I thought that's kind of more out of humility like like I asked myself so why why shouldn't be why it should not be a 10 and I just couldn't find a reason our relationship is doing really well it's been a year that we're together really wonderful lady that that I'm spending time with we we barely have you know we very rarely we have like like clashes and we work both hard on our relationship so it's just like I have no complaints I mean you know there's always like if I would like to complain about something there's always something I would find but there's nothing which is like deeply in me where I'm like upset so yeah it's a 10 I'm really happy about that and for her it's a nine because it's a discussion we have sometimes I keep telling her we're actually you don't realize that we actually have conflicts very rarely compared to most couples but she had less relationships than I had she has less relationship experience so sometimes she thinks that like if we if we have a clash once per month she thinks that's a lot she thinks that's significant I'm telling you this is nothing so I think just because of that doubt hesitation she wrote nine now personal growth I am at a solid nine because as you may know I'm really focused on learning these days I'm all about going mad and nuts with learning and reading books and writing journals exploring and and I'm enlisted on a eight month coaching course so there's so much happening there's so much I'm investing in personal growth so so yeah it's like I have no trouble with it it's not a 10 just because I recognize that there's ways to go still and I wanted to respect that but but that's the only reason for her it's a six she feels like she wants to learn more like she wants to spend more time developing her singing skills and so on and she feels like she didn't do that as much as she wants to so that's why it's a six fun and recreation we both wrote seven and we actually kind of both I think we both feel fine at seven like eight would be like over the board for me at least because I don't focus I do feel like sometimes I do I do appreciate fun and recreation because then I realized that you know I I spend so much time so much time working and learning especially these days that it's important to sometimes counter it and balance it but we actually both spend most of our fun and recreation together with my girlfriend so I think that's why it's a seven seven we like watch TV shows together we you know go out and have like like like a glass of wine somewhere or some nice lunch or or just you know we do some stuff together and it's both satisfying for for both of us and we feel good at it so it's like seven is actually enough because I also realized that I also maintain a philosophy that if you want to achieve a great amount a great deal of things it's important to sacrifice a little bit of of of stuff too and I'm okay at sacrificing a little bit of friends I'm okay with sacrificing a little bit of fun and recreation so it's like I'm I'm set for that you know I'm like okay with a seven both in there and there and physical environment again very similar I just realized man we have very similar circles besides money so physical environment for me it's a four for her it's a four and a half and that's because we live in an apartment for me it's because we share our apartment so there's like there's free rooms in the apartment and there's two other people living in in the two other rooms our room is quite tiny it's an old house it's it's lovely and it's it's not less than four because it's in the middle of the city center which is amazing to have that luxury but it's an old house not a lot of space we don't have enough space for all our stuff so there's things like that where it's like it's not like this this apartment where you come back and you're like oh it feels so good to be here it's more like it's cozy it's cute artistic but it's not ideal so we're both kind of recognizing that but at the same time we discussed about our circles together and for both of us we realized that we actually at the same time we pay an absurdly low amount of money for for our rent considering that we live in a city center of capital and so we really appreciate that aspect and we both want to make sure we are not spending too much money right now and it's the city center so there's so much good stuff there that that it's a four but we're none of us neither of us is complaining about that or neither of us is upset about that we're not rushing to change that we're much more focused on we want to invest our energy into improving our careers you know she's she's focused on improving her monetary situation her personal growth we want to invest our energy and focus on on those things which matter and for us the physical for me the physical environment was never really that important i lived in a bunch of weird crazy places i slept once in india in a public public bathroom i spent the night there and it was fine for me i guess i do feel like i'm getting older i actually just turned 31 yesterday as i'm recording this video congratulations happy birthday locus so uh having yeah so i do feel like i am getting a bit older and a bit more picky like like part of me does want to move to a place which would be not a shared space which would be more kind of nice space but at the same time it's not a big priority so if that opportunity happens i'll be like okay let's do this but i'm not in a rush so that's how the wheel of the bounce wheel looks on my end uh try it out i'm going to leave a link below on where to find this example explanation uh check it out do it let me know in the comments you know how how it goes through you i found it to be a really nice tool and i hope also to just just hearing me you know sharing an honest exploration of my wheel may be encouraging for you to try it out as well so that's the most i can help for hope for so let's connect up in the comments and i'll see you next time


Thank you everybody for being here. Thank you for wider for this chance. This is a rather very introductory talk that I'm making here today. It's closer to a conceptual note than proper to result with resulting findings and so forth. But I do hope that it has still some value or it makes it still some sense to be here talking to you today. First of all because we are trying to shed some light into Proscevana which is nowadays one of the most controversial development cooperation programs in northern Mozambique that is taking place in northern Mozambique and it's maybe one of the most controversial development cooperation programs in Africa nowadays. And second because we are trying to establish or re-establish do a review of the literature and re-establish some critical elements that we believe that exist between contract farming and inclusive growth in Africa. Contract farming as many of you know has re-emerged as a popular solution given by different donor communities and by different multilateral institutions especially as a response to the claims against land grabbing. Well for those who have been following Mozambique recent development path this is quite very obvious and familiar. Mozambique has been experiencing very high levels of GDP growth average eight percent a year from the past 20 years rates have been especially stable in the past decade. It has been what we call donor darling has received more aid per capita than equivalent countries in terms of human development index. It has experienced a recent oppressive boom in times of FDI here. For the first time the levels of FDI they have surpassed the levels of official development assistance but extreme poverty has not been declining anymore in one of the poorest countries of the world of course especially coming from a session where we are discussing the quality of these status and in case of Mozambique the last data that we have available the last survey that we have available is from 2008 2009 which was especially a bad year in terms of agricultural production and for sure that affects the comparison base that we had before but it's still other indicators like child malnutrition both chronic and and an acute they haven't shown much progress in recent in the recent years. What we know is that growth has been linked to a few foreign invested MAGA projects they're quite important in the case of the Mozambican development path especially in gas and mineral sector they're capital intensive they rely a lot on they export most of their production they have very few linkages to the national economy and also very few linkages to the national budget during because of widespread fiscal extensions and what we also know it's quite clear from the recent development path picture of Mozambique agriculture has clearly been lacking behind productivity has stagnated food production per capita has also been quite quite disappointing a technical progress is totally has has also stagnated if you check the number of extensionists available it has also stagnated in this context there was the emergency of Rosavana which proposes a solution to this investment problem in the in Mozambican agriculture and it proposes to bring in a new framework or a new development model for the agricultural sector in Mozambique and to lift up agricultural sector there it's a trilateral development cooperation program it involves the government of japan brazil and and Mozambique uh in the Nakala corridor involves three provinces and 19 districts and should affect the life of 4.3 million people and a colleague of mine was just saying that it represents also something around nine percent of the uh cultivated area in the country it has three components one is technological transfer that's the company that is the component that is quite well advanced it's being carried out by a brazilian uh research agricultural research institution state owned and which has an office in in in Mozambique for quite a long time the general idea is that Brazil has developed tropical agricultural technology that could be replicated in Africa and the more people using it more value it would have so a brazilian government is is supporting that quite quite strongly the second component uh this first company has started in 2011 and should last for at least six years then there is a second component of elaboration of a master plan that is going to give the general guide guidelines for agricultural development in the region it was supposed to be finished in this year in uh uh now in august it was delayed to next year because of a lot of pressure and a lot of criticism to the program so far and a new development models and extension that has just started it it's in its formulation phase now so in total it's a long term project it's 20 years program 20 years and it's inserted in a large web of private infrastructure projects public as well that are taking place uh in the region and a number of land deals that are also taking place in the same region these investments well there's a number of them here but two key actors one of them is valley which is the second biggest mining company in the world it's brazilian owned and it operates a coal mine uh in the lock land province of tet and it's also responsible for operating the railroad that crosses the Nakala corridor and it's investing on the rehabilitation it's building a new path that it's going to cross Malawi and it's working on the rehabilitation of of the whole of the whole way it's over 900 kilometers also a number of roads are being are being um either constructed or renewed this this one is is quite advanced and um it's financed with the with the japanese financing lines also linked to to to process the valley uh another important thing is a uh a phosphate mine that is also owned by valley and that they hope that once agricultural projects are doing well in the region they will be able to supply uh fertilizers to the farmers in the region well and a number of other ones uh and also some land investments that are taking place with more and more pace in the region there is a project that is in its elaboration phase and it's being carried out by FGV projectus with the same brazilian consulting company that is working for the master plan of pro savanna and they're building what they call the Nakala fund it's supposed to be it hopes to raise two billion dollars in 10 years to finance agri-business investors interesting in investing in the corridor it has promoted a couple of road shows in brazil it has taken a couple of investors to actually not a couple but 70 brazilian agri-business investors to to mosambique and it has uh it started the process of um of uh of uh of road show so uh however the program has been highly contested so far by national mosambican civil society as well with links with some international and brazilian social movements including the most recent one there is a number of different uh uh open letters or but the most recent one it's a common open letter written by 13 different national organizations in even which they call for the immediate uh suspension and revision of of the program it's addressed to the presidents of brazil mosambique and the prime minister of of japan um well we i say this is extremely preliminary because uh the first our first the first phase of our research it took us about two months to do some qualitative work in terms of data collection and interviews uh we were doing another thing more related to political science to compare the discourse of south south development cooperation to its actual practice in the field and uh we came out with uh some critical aspects in the formulation of the program some previous researchers have already highlighted some of the points that we confirm uh first of all it's the very low level of transparency it's very hard to get any material from the project um for example the last version that we got of the master plan it was leaked through by by civil society uh there is a big difficulty in coordination between brazilian and uh and japanese teams uh now that the program is facing a number of difficulties it became popular that one team is blaming the other for the for for the problems but also we found in the process of elaboration of the programs a lot of inconsistencies between what would be the desirable targets elemental targets in terms of land concentration or land systems that would they would like to promote and a high degree of incoherence is in the project documents and discourse for example a typical one that's that in the beginning they were arguing that a prosavana would be a replica of protocere which was a program for the development of sehado in brazil in the seventies that was financed by the japanese government uh once it's about the same latitude the conditions technically in the beginning they thought would be the same and blah blah blah later on they were highly criticized for this because it's an area with very high land concentration in brazil so they understood that okay so we are going to replicate the huge plantations to to to mosambic and they came back and said no no no no it's not a replica of protocere they rebute all the all the discourse and now all the effort it's it's trying to to to disconnect prosavana from protocere we also found that there is a huge lack of a participatory approach actually this is not at all a consideration from the program the master plan had so far being elaborated by the japanese and the brazilian consulting teams with very limited participation from local communities and civil societies uh there started to be some presentations to the local communities and beginning of this year we followed some of them uh but the methodology has been mainly spreading information and the consultings they speak openly that they are they are resistant resisting to the to the criticism and trying to explain the program but nothing close to to to a proper participatory methodology there has been a marginal involvement of the of the mosambican government in the in the elaboration of the master plan this is confirmed by the three parts involved and from the brazilian perspective there has been an important space given to private actors in both uh or in in in policy formulation or personalization and in terms of south regulation uh well what does then what's the development strategy that is proposed by by this prosavana they follow a value chain approach so it's the establishment of clusters based on their cultural potential land use environmental constraints of different zones they do very carefully careful zoning of the area they have very interesting maps available uh and they aim to give it to the mosambican government so they can guide investors new investors that are coming according to land occupation and land availability availability so each cluster is to be set in motion by a punier corp project that the private company should develop and these calls these clusters usually they propose a combination of different land use systems from large-scale corporate agriculture business to family farming there are two exceptions that don't propose these combinations one is the cluster that is exclusively for family food production and another cluster that is exclusively for a large-scale plantation they're suggesting they design a cluster for 60 000 acutals for the production of maize, soybean, some flowers and poultry that would be a single investor which is huge for for a mosambican uh uh basis uh personally i don't believe that this will stay in the program it is one of the the the most criticized elements but the solution most often proposed by the program to couple these uh large-scale foreign investors without dispossessing automatically the small ones is contract farming so contract farming is the the the the the mainstream solution that they propose contract farming is a business model in which you have the central processing unit that established the network of out growers who supply a certain commodity according to conditions, privileges defined in a contract it can take various forms we have a vast list of experiences both in mosambican everywhere in south southeast asia and other parts of africa and in in in latin america sometimes the central unit has its own farm which it also produces and buys from the others from suppliers other times it's only a processor or only an exporter unit that doesn't doesn't produce or doesn't doesn't plant uh the expected advantages is that first of all the small producers would have a short market they would have access to inputs and technological assistance and higher stability of income or or in many cases higher income quite easily uh guaranteed the terms of such schemes they very considerably and these schemes have gained momentum again as part of the response of the wave of criticism against land grabbing large-scale as i said before there are large-scale for fdi are now presented as part of this response to low agricultural productivity in africa if coupled with schemes that allow the integration of small-scale farmers into this value chain however uh there are a number of uh intrinsic risks associated to contract farming that have been uh uh totally ignored by prosavana so far and i would say by most of the programs that uh propose these types of uh of schemes and our argument is that if the purpose is to have inclusive growth these schemes they need from right from the beginning to have a very careful modeling in a way that they can promote and can help to promote this type of uh uh pro poor results um our first uh uh risk and later on we will we're planning uh several uh different uh uh investigations to to to evaluate to a degree this is happening or not in the contract farming schemes that are happening in this in this zone in mosambic the first risk is related to food insecurity the risk of reduced marked food supplies affecting the regional food availability and prices this is especially concerning for people who are out of schemes once poorer farmers tend to be uh uh out of these schemes if the net availability of food decreases prices could go up and they would be the first one affected by by food insecurity so as i said given that non-participants are like to include the very poorest the scenario is quite quite especially concerning the exclusion of poorer farmers in the absence of this proper regulation support poorer farmers are often not not selected to become a contractor dependency and indebtedness the problem with debt is a quite important one one this once this inputs are typically advanced by the firm on credit to be repaid but with interest by the out grower the risk of in debt and indebtedness it's it's quite relevant you already know this is happening in some soya uh contract farming in in the corridor of nakala um disruption of cultivation methods it can be argued that this is not the case in mosambic once methods being used are extremely basic still but patterns that have emerged from optimal utilization of local available resources might be might be lost once the company leaves and the inherent power imbalance of contract farming that needs to be addressed in these schemes engendered various degrees of risk depending on farmers relative bargaining power also gender problems are often a result of these schemes uh in a context where poverty prevails no other commercial activities are given to local farmers uh and no mediator is brought in the dominant agent in the agri-food chain may be able to structure the operation it's on advantage so uh prasavana we are always a fitting example of this trend of this prescription of contract for farming as being a solution as a way to allow the interest of foreign direct investments without just possessing local farmers however if not designed with specifically proper growth contract farming can be a powerful mechanism leading to exclusive or excluding growth um prasavana has been marked by these three critical factors we have highlighted in in its formulating process and these uh um critical aspects they tend to aggravate these uh uh risks that are inherent to contract farming we can see some impacts already the dead demand side of agricultural policies which has been a very important demand from local civil society is totally missing from from prasavana the same happens with some agricultural methods especially related to native seeds that is something that brazil has quite advanced technology on that and the transmission is not happening though it's also demanding from from civil society muslim beacon civil society there has been no discussion over taxes over land used by foreigners although local academics in muslim big have been stressing the need to avoid fiscal incentives that mark the mega projects and in general terms the challenging task for designing schemes that set conditionality to foreign investors is strengthen the bargaining power of growers and define favorable terms for poor farmers are unlikely to materialize under the current planning and implementation practices of prasavana thank you


Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name is Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Vanderstien. And as you know, every month we try to cover one of our 22 departments, and today we're very pleased to have with us our District Attorney, Joe DiCecco. Well, thank you for having me. Thanks for joining us. Joe is a tremendously busy department head. In fact, we don't have him on here every year. But I think since 2006, since we've had the pleasure of him joining us, you certainly follow him perhaps in the press and the very important work he does. And today Joe is going to talk a little bit about the roles and responsibilities of the District Attorney's office. So, Joe, please start sharing with our viewers a little bit about yourself and when you became the District Attorney. Well, I'm from New England. As many people can tell from my accent, I went to UW Madison Law School. And once I was about to graduate there, I found out about the reciprocal agreement where, if you stayed in the State of Wisconsin Practice Law, you wouldn't have to take a bar exam. I thought, well, that sounds pretty good. And so, and I always wanted to be a prosecutor. I didn't want to do any other type of law. And I was fortunate to find a job in Sheboyne County and began here as an Assistant District Attorney on September 5th of 1989. I've been here ever since. In 2002, I ran and was elected as District Attorney. And I've been District Attorney up to this time. When you started in the District Attorney's office in 1989, what made you decide to run?  How often do you need to run? How long is the term, a little bit of background? Well, the term for a long time has been two years. And this is the first four-year term. I believe almost all the state constitutional officers, which I'm one of, now have four-year terms. Which makes it better because even no longer, you know, sooner when the election begin your term, it's time to think about running for a reelection, whether or not you have an opponent. And so I think the four-year term is a good idea. And I believe it also is translated to the sheriff's a four-year term. These, I believe the county clerk, the county truck, they're all four-year terms, now they were two-year terms. So that's good. I just decided that things need to be changed in the office in Iran. And the DA at the time, Bob Wells, decided he wanted to do something else. And so I was elected DA in 2002 and began serving in 2003. Very good. And how would you describe your roles and responsibilities? Well, our office is responsible for prosecuting all crimes that occur in the county of Sheboygan. And we also have other responsibilities. For example, there are statutes that require us to prosecute non-criminal violations, traffic tickets and things of that nature for the Sheboygan County Sheriff's Department, for the Wisconsin State Patrol, and for the Department of Natural Resources. So we do a lot of the typical things that Municipal Court might do for municipal agencies. We do that for the Sheriff's Department, for the State Patrol, and for the DNR. We're also required to perform a number of actions in the juvenile court. Juveniles who are alleged to have committed a crime, obviously we don't call it a crime, we call it a delinquent act, but have violated a criminal statute. They're called delinquents. We prosecute them. We do children in need of protection of services. Children have been abused. We do juveniles in need of protection of services, mostly truancies. We do termination of parental rights when a situation gets to the point where the human services is looking for a person's rights as a parent to be terminated so the child can be adopted by a family. We do those two as well. So we have quite a serving on our plate of the requirements that we have to do. And with the vast responsibilities that you have, how many employees do you have? How do you get this all done? Well, we have eight prosecutors, including myself, seven to full time, one is halftime. We have 15 county employees, two of whom are the check fraud people, which I think we'll talk about in a little bit. And the rest of them are professional support staff, paralegals, legal secretaries, persons who assist us in all the paperwork generated by our duties. And again, one of 22 departments in Sheboygan County, though you're an elected department head, elected official, you have both, you have 15, as you said, county employees in the office. That's correct. But you have a budget that's comprised of county property tax levy and state funding. That's correct. All the prosecutors' salaries and benefits are paid for by the state. But everything else, including the county employees' salaries and benefits and the infrastructure, the actual building, the place where we have in the courthouse, the day-to-day operating costs are all part of a county budget. And so I'm fond of saying that when times get tough, we not only get restrictions from the county, but we also get it from the state as well. So it's kind of a double-edged sword that we have to really look at both of them and make some type of compromise to efficiently do our work. Right. And as you and I, and certainly Chairman Van Der Stee knows, when time gets tough, generally your workload increases because more crime is going on in the community. And that's true to some degree. But what really is going on in the community now, and I think this last trial we had, the homicide trial highlighted some of that, is the influx of drug dealers in Sheboygan County. And not only the drugs they bring in here, which wouldn't be possible if people didn't buy them and help them out here, but also as in that last case, the type of violence they bring up here as well. So that is probably my main concern now is this influx from other areas of some people that are potentially very violent. So as you described the relationship of your office with the county and with the state, where does the state attorney general fit in? The state attorney general does a number of things for us. They don't directly supervise us, but they do have some statutory requirements. One is that any appeal concerning constitutional law must be okayed by them. So if we go into court and we get a statement of a defendant suppressed for Miranda violation, I think most people know what Miranda is, and we want to appeal that to a higher court than court of appeals, we can't do that on our own. We have to apply to the attorney general's office so that there's a statewide level of cases, that is so that the attorney general can keep an eye on these type of cases on a statewide level and pursue those cases which I think are important and not pursue those which they think are not either winnable or they don't think believe it should be appealed. And also the attorney general gives opinions. He'll give opinions which are binding on us as far as what our law may mean. For example, a little while ago he gave an opinion on what the second amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution meant as far as the right to bear arms. His opinion was concerning the practice in other counties, not in this county, of people being charged with disorderly conduct for openly carrying a firearm. His opinion was that that is absent any other problem that's not appropriate. It violates the Wisconsin Constitution. District attorneys would be obligated to follow that opinion given by whatever attorney general happens to be in this case is J.B. Van Hollen. So we have that type of relationship, also the great resource for us. We don't ask for them to prosecute our cases. That's a possibility. In some counties, particularly up north where there's only the district attorney, that's all there is, and they may get a homicide case. In fact, there was a shooting a few years ago. The attorney general's office criminal division prosecuted that. They assist in those type of things and they also do all the sexual offender laws.  They're not on the supervision anymore, whatever they had, and now the state is seeking to keep them civilly committed because of the dangerousness to either children or to other people, and they do that as well. So they help us out in some things. We don't have a direct supervisory relationship with them, except in the appellate process, and they're a great resource for us as well. So to summarize, you're elected by the people, a four-year constitutional office. You have 15 county employees and five... Eight prosecutors. Eight prosecutors. Including myself. County funded, state funded. Right. You have a state legislature and a governor that's responsible for providing state funds. You have a district attorney or a state attorney general that has some oversight responsibilities, some constitutional responsibilities. And then you report to a Sheboygan County Board Law Committee or a liaison committee. Correct. And that's the final piece here. What is your relationship then with the county board and the law committee? How does that work? Well, you know, I know quite a few of the county board members, but my direct relationship is with the law committee. That's our liaison committee between the county board and our office. And over the years, I've always had a good relationship with them. I think they understand what we do. They understand the problems we have. They're very supportive and assisting us in finding answers to things. The check diversion program originated in the law committee. We brought that to the law committee and discussed that. We were encouraged by them to go forward with that, which eventually became a county ordinance, which is bringing in revenue into the county, as well as returning a lot of money to merchants who have been the victim of bounce checks. So I have a good relationship, I think, certainly with the law committee. And then I have individual relationship, because I know people on the county board. I'm not really directly, except for finance, I suppose, to some degree, but the finance committee. But I don't really have that type of relationship with anyone else on the county board that I have with the law committee, which is our liaison committee, which in my opinion, a very good relationship. And that's a role that every department has where they have a specific liaison committee that they report to. We have nine. The law committee is not Joe's boss. Joe answers to the people as a constitutional officer, but the law committee has a lot of say in how the budget's developed, and how much resources that the district attorney's office may receive, ultimately, approved by the full county board. Nice overview. I'll turn it over to Mike. Thank you, Adam. As was mentioned before, Joe, the caseload that you're carrying is going up. Could you give us a little idea of the number of cases you're taking care of and some of the trends you've seen in the type of individuals that are coming through the system? Absolutely. Last year, we prosecuted about 6,400 cases. Roughly half of those, 3,200 were actual criminal cases. The rest were juvenile cases and the non-criminal things that we talked about about my duties with the sheriff's department and other agencies in Interpoint County. There are actually eight law enforcement agencies in Sheboygan County, including the DNR in Wisconsin State Patrol. We've seen an almost steady increase in the number of cases over the last several years. Last year, there was a slight decline, but it was really insignificant. We've seen an increase in the amount of resources we have to put into drug investigations. And that culminated last year with a roughly 18-month investigation, 18-month long investigation in which we used resources of the federal government of the state division of criminal investigation and our own people here in crippling, in my opinion, crippling a massive cocaine delivery ring that was out of Chicago into Sheboygan and other parts of to Appleton and to Green Bay. We've seen an increase in those type of cases. It's prompted by the fact that, and we're seeing people who don't live here come into the community to distribute this stuff. That's mostly cocaine or crack cocaine. And what we're seeing is that we have to get more and more sophisticated and use resources that we can supply on our own. For example, in this last case, we had two wiretaps in place. We've never done that before in Sheboygan County, at least to my knowledge. And because the wiretap statute is based on the federal statute of the Wisconsin wiretap statute, you have reams and reams of paperwork to do to legally get a wiretap order. The amount of documents needed to get these two wiretaps is about four inches thick. And that's because the federal requirements, because the states adopted that. In addition, we needed expertise to run these 24 hours a day. Wiretap is where someone's actually listening into a conversation. The call wiretaps is that we don't tap them anymore. It's all electronic now, so it's really just getting a computer or a number of computers with a feed-in from the phone companies because it's all digitized now. It's not actually clipping those two little allocated clips into a line and listening there. And there are restrictions with that. We need help with that. We need 24 hours a day. So we had help from not only agencies here in Sheboygan County, but from the state and from the feds as well. And financial support, unfortunately, for the feds. The wiretaps cost us about $10,000. That money was funded by the federal government by DEA, so we're very grateful for that. We're trying to help recover some of that for them, but we never would have had those kind of resources. And that's the kind of investigation we're seeing now. We're not just stopping at the county border. We're going beyond the county border to see how far back it goes. And it's ending up in Chicago. Ultimately, it goes down to Milwaukee. And that's a kind of thing that could not exist up here without, unfortunately, Sheboygan County residents participating in it, purchasing it, and actually helping to distribute it. So that's what we see a growth in. We had, in addition to the 100 or so search warrants that were issued last year, about 94 of them were drug related. We also issued 24 additional warrants that were specifically drug related. These were sophisticated electronic warrants, and I won't go into detail, but technology is changing. We have to keep up with the change. And then, of course, we had the two wire taps, two, which was just an incredible amount of work. And so what we're trying to do is to provide the people of Sheboygan County with, one, the knowledge of what's going on here. And, two, in using every available resource we can to try to break up these drug warnings, and you know as well as I do, as soon as we break up one, there's another one that'll take its place. It's an ongoing thing. And when I talk about marijuana, we're talking about cocaine and crack cocaine, which is extremely addictive. And so that's the trend I see right now. And it's a frustrating and concerning trend to see this type of drug activity, not only on occasion to end here in Sheboygan, but to come into Sheboygan where it uses the transit route to go out to other communities in the state of Wisconsin. I-43, we routinely refer to it as a drug highway because of all the drugs moving through this area on the interstate. So that's a big concern for us. I agree it's a disturbing trend, and I'm glad that you're adjusting your offices to meet that demand and take care of those crimes that are occurring. Recently in the last about two years, we've seen a municipal court grow in Sheboygan and Kohler. How has that affected the number of cases or the type of cases that you're seeing? Well, it really only affects the... Well, it does affect us. It does help us out. About 400 cases last year, and at least in the city Sheboygan and the Kohler, I believe they're together in the municipal court, of first-defense drunk drivings. They're about 400 cases. And we're not for the municipal courts. We'd have to prosecute those. So that's 400 cases that we didn't have to do because the municipal courts were doing it, and that's not even including some of the other municipal courts in the county, just Sheboygan and Kohler. So it does help us out. It not only helps the municipalities out because they get to keep a portion of the court costs for their own programs, but it helps us out because it lessens our workload. When the legislation was talking about making drunk driving a first-defense or criminal offense, the first thing I looked at were the numbers from municipal courts trying to figure out, okay, how would that affect us? And just in the Sheboygan municipal court alone, that's 400 more cases. That would be a 30% increase in our traffic crimes. That would be a devastating effect if it weren't for the fact that municipalities are handling me. So they're a great boon to us. They help with generating funds for the municipalities that they work out of. So it's all around. I think it's a pretty good deal. That's good to hear that it's a positive development for you in assisting you. As you know, Sheboygan seems to get a fair amount of, maybe bashing a little bit. And some people have cited that some of the press releases or emails that you send out to the local media bring some of this on. Obviously, you're reporting the facts, but could you explain a little bit about the process you go through in publicizing the court cases you have and why you're doing that? Sure. The process is this.  In most cases, the court commissioner, who works for the judges, the very next day. Sometimes it's two days, but the very next day. In order for them to do that initial appearance, we have to have a criminal complaint ready. We have to file a criminal complaint, which is a written document, states them, the charge, that kind of stuff. Every day, once those are filed with the clicker courts and they public public record, I email them out to the local media. That includes the press, it includes HBL, it includes a Plymouth review, it includes a sounder. That's really the core group. And the reason I do that is twofold. One is if I don't, they call me every day and ask me what's going on, what's new, can you give us a copy of the thing? Secondly, and the most, the more important to me is I think people in this county deserve to know what's going on in this county as far as crime is concerned. And we used to have, and this is not a criticism, but the press used to have, and HBL too, used to have people assigned just to the courts. And they would report on all the stuff in the courts. That was their beat, the courts. We don't have that anymore. And so without that type of coverage, when I became DA, I thought it would one, help me by not getting these calls every single day about who's locked up and what they're dealing with. And it would help people in the county realize that I think they have the right to know what's going on and what kind of crimes are being committed, you know, what the number of crimes are being committed. And yeah, occasionally an outside Sherboygan news agency will get a hold of that and ask for a copy. It's a public record, I send it to them. Occasionally I'll make comments on camera if I think it's appropriate. But I think it's an educational process. I think one of the things we emphasized during this last trial, the homicide trial, to that jury and to the public in general, was that you're going to see some things here that you don't know exist in this county, that you have no idea what's going on. And because you live in this county, I think you should know about this. You should know about how drug dealing is done here. You should know about where it's coming from. You should know about crimes. You should know about people that sexually assault children, not just from the sexual registry, but when they're brought in, when the process begins. It's an informational type of thing with me. I think a forewarned public is a forearm public, that they, knowing that these types of things are possible, perhaps it'll aid them in some way in prevention. I still think Sherboygan County is one of the best places to live. We really don't have the type of crime problems that cities of our size are beginning to have. We certainly don't have the crime problems that larger cities have. We're not as Milwaukee as the homicide capital of the state of Wisconsin. But I think that's because people need to know what's going on, what kind of crimes are being charged in this county, and who's doing them. And that's just my opinion. I appreciate it and thanks for that explanation so we understand how your office functions in that area. You've been squeezed a lot on by the state now and they're trying to give you even more budget constraints to deal with. Could you give us a little idea how this is affecting your office and what you're planning on for the near future at least? Well, we have an immediate crisis and we have a long-term crisis. The long-term crisis is that the state has consistently underfunded prosecutors' offices around the state. In 1990, the state became responsible for the salaries and benefits of prosecutors. Prior to that, it was county by county. The reason the state did that was to provide a level of salary and benefits that would be the same across the state and to give persons who wanted to do a prosecutor's job an opportunity to perform in a career and to not just use it as a stepping off point to get a better job with a private attorney, a private defense attorney thing. And that meant regular raises and incentives and things of that nature. Almost from the get-go, the state did not comply with that. We're now at the point where the state's own independent bipartisan agency, Legislative Audit Bureau, developed a system of comparing the number of prosecutors to their caseloads for a decade now, since we did the beginning. And what they have shown is that statewide we're about 117 prosecutors shy and in Shepoint County we have five full-time prosecutors short of what we're supposed to have. The critical thing is that the state is now trying to institute the permanent layoff of prosecutors. If we were to lose one prosecutor, we're already five now, we lose one, we're going to be in a situation where we have to not prosecute some relatively minor misdemeanors. And as I indicated previously publicly, that's about 1,200 misdemeanors that we have to stop prosecuting if we lose a prosecutor. We have five courts that all do criminal stuff here. I have to sign one prosecutor to each court on a 100% basis. One person, the deputy DA does all the juvenile stuff. We have at least a half-time person to take care of the odds and ends and me to do the more complicated or more lengthy cases. That's it. And so, yeah, I hope that they don't come to that permanent layoff. It's not like everyone has to share this equally across the state. There are some jobs that you don't want to cut and I think prosecutors are one of them. I think people sometimes don't understand that if the police, you know, it's all well and good that police do an investigation and arrest someone. If we don't wish them to charge and prosecute them to court, that's the end of it. It's done. It doesn't matter what the police do. And so, we're an integral part of the police process. We're an integral part of the criminal justice system and the prosecuting of people. And I wish some state legislates would learn that and apparently, well, we're getting some publicity now, so apparently that word is heightening. Well, thanks for letting us know about those challenges you're facing with that. It's like a broken record. Anything with the state, whether it was promised or implemented 10, 20 years ago, it just seems like it's not being carried through. I'll tell you, Adam, it's worse than that. It's got to the point where, not to the point where this has been going on for a while. For example, there was, in the last, not this budget, but the previous budget, there was a utility fee increase on utility bills attacks that was supposed to go to prosecutors' things. And that was great. That passed. And then what happens? They switch it. It goes to the general fund, and they use it for anything they want. So they say, well, I voted in favor of prosecutors or I voted in favor of this, and they switch around. I don't know how many people know that. When we were first created as state employees in 1990, our funding came from the state lottery. From the state lottery. And all of a sudden, it was gone. It wasn't the state lottery anymore. It was somewhere else. So it's this bait and switch thing, this shell game that goes on all the time, where in the beginning, it looks like, oh, that's great. They're doing a great thing. And then when something else, they want to divert it somewhere else, they do it. And that's, you're right. That's the problem. And it's been around for a while. It's been around for decades. We have the same issue in our clerk of courts, which is obviously a support department in the judicial system. And the funding will be raised. And it doesn't keep it in our court system.  We only have a couple more minutes. But this is obviously a critical, critical area of concern, as you said, not only today, but in the future. This has got to get fixed. In the meantime, you have a state legislature that wants to, you know, keep people in jail longer and get tougher on crime. And all that sounds good when you're on the soapbox. And we certainly want to have effective law enforcement. But if we don't have effective prosecution, if we don't have the prosecutors in place, the job doesn't get done. These folks are put back out on the street or we just can't effectively complete the cycle. That's true. And unfortunately, you know where the blame's going to land on that? It's going to land on the individual DAs when I do their job. And it's kind of frustrating because we do the, you know, we're all working 50 to 60 hours a week. All the prosecutors were trying, we don't get paid overtime. We don't get a job. And there's just too many cases to do it. And the legislature keeps, in the last three sessions alone, they've either created or increased the penalties on 60 crimes. Now, one nickel to go to prosecutors' salaries to help ease to help ease the caseload by providing more prosecutors. The only exception was the drunk driving bill that recently passed in which the joint finance committee did grant $700,000 to have more prosecutors, but to offset a deficit that the DOA created itself by messing around with the budget. So you're right. I mean, I don't know where it's going to end. It can't go on like this. It just can't. Yeah, it continues to go on. And as you can see, the passion can start coming out right away when you start talking about rules and responsibilities of whether it's prosecution or anything at county government level where there's a reliance on state government. It has not been meeting its obligations and it's coming home. And I can't say enough about the fine work that Joe DeCecco has done as their district attorney. He works so hard. He's highly dedicated, extremely conscientious, and I'm glad that he's been willing to beat the drum a little bit and try to raise awareness to this problem. Unfortunately, it seems as though it is a broken record or groundhog day because it just continues and continues. And sadly, I hope it doesn't take a crisis to get it fixed. But I'm starting to think that might be the case. Joe, thanks for your time today and joining us and shedding a little light on the important work that you do. Well, thank you, the chairman, for having me. I appreciate it and I enjoyed it very much. And until next time, thank you for joining us. Don't ever hesitate to contact any of us at the county level if you have suggestions or concerns or want more questions answered on what you may have heard today. Next month, we're going to have someone from the UW Extension Office, and we'll either be Dave Such, our director, or one of his staff. So until then, thanks for joining us.


Good morning, welcome to the Radiant City Center. Those of you joining online, welcome. And those of you in the room, no better place to be in than the house of the Lord. His house of prayer this morning. And I just, this morning I might drive in, I have about a 30 minute drive and it's kind of nice I can wake up a little bit, talk to the Lord and I just really sense the Lord just wanting to be blessed this morning. Wanting to just receive what we have, bring the offering to the altar and just allow a broken, contrite heart, a tired heart, maybe a weary heart or maybe an excited, exuberant, morning person heart to the Lord. In Psalm 34, verse one through three, it says, I will bless the Lord at all times. Said I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul will make its boast in the Lord. The humble will hear it and rejoice. O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. I'm gonna jump to verse eight. O taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. O fear the Lord, you his saints. For to those who fear him, there is no want. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing. Come, you children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. So Father, this morning we come before you. We just, we open our hands to you. And Lord, we just even command our soul this morning that we will bless the Lord at all times. The high praise of God will be in our mouth that our mouth will be the utter of our hearts. And we tell our mouth to bless the Lord. We command our soul, bless the Lord. He is worthy of praise this morning. And every season and every moment and every circumstance, whether it's a bad report from a doctor or a mountaintop experience, God, we say you are worthy to be blessed this morning. Can you just say that with me? We bless you, Lord. We bless you, Lord. Oh my soul, wake up and see the Lord is worthy of blessing this morning. Father, we dedicate this morning hour to you and we say, be blessed from our heart to yours, from your saints to your heart, God. We say, wake us up to see that you are worthy of blessing. Oh, we bless you, Lord. We magnify your holy name this morning in Jesus' name. The grace of God will be in my mouth. Oh, magnify the Lord with me. Bless his holy name. He's on him, all eyes on the king.  We bless your name. Let's just begin to magnify the Lord, just even in your own words. As we were singing, I just remember the broken young boy that I used to be. Even the last year, two years ago or five, 10 years ago, I just feel a grace from the Holy Spirit to remember the depth of saving that was needed for a wretched soul. Lord, I pray right now that you would bring remembrance of what life was like without you. What life was like without you in the driver's seat, steering the way, cleansing my sin, my self-righteousness, my striving, my legalistic tendencies, or Lord, even my apathy. And we just magnify you, Lord. We exalt you. We pray that prayer of David return to us the joy of our salvation. May we never grow out of the joy of the salvation that you purchased at Calvary. So let's just begin to press into thanksgiving towards the Lord. Just begin to thank Him in your own words, in your own song. Let's just begin to lift up our voices in one accord all across the room. Just begin to sing your love song back to the Lord. Scripture says, we love Him because He first loved us. So may we be reflectors of His love. May we receive and reciprocate back to you. Oh, we love you, Lord. We're here to give a love song to you this morning. A thank you, a bless your heart. Let's just begin to lift our voices. Press in, even if you're watching online or you're in the room, but just begin to press in.  But when I bless the Lord, things change. When I bless the Lord, I see the delight in His eyes. I see the fire in His eyes. You are for us, Lord. You are for us. Your love, it cannot be measured. We just say thank you, Lord.  You're like the Holy Spirit's really gonna speak, speak to some of us in the room. So we just open our ears, Lord. We ask Holy Spirit that Spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of your Son be open and available for our topic today. And I just began to see a picture of the Holy Spirit coming, strengthening, feeble knees and weak hearts and infusing strength. And we're gonna begin to intercede for the church in the last 15 minutes we're together. And I was just reminded of Matthew 11, Jesus said in verse 25, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this was well pleasing in your sight. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. And no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son. And anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Verse 28, come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Lord, we ask right now, we intercede on behalf of your church, your saints, God, we ask for an infusion of strength and infusion of grace, God. Lord, I pray that you would strengthen the feeble knees, Lord, that you would infuse might into the heart. Lord, I pray strength where there is great weakness, Lord, weariness and heaviness and depression and anxiety upon your saints, God, we pray that that rest, that peace that passes, understanding would come and dwell in your people.  God, I pray that your glory would transfer God and that hope would arise.  God, right now we're asking that you would infuse the church, that they would arise, that they would shine, that they would be radiant because of the great hope, because they've been saved, because they've been redeemed, because they've been set free from bondage and oppression, God, I pray, a liberation over your body, God, that would draw all men to yourself. Holy Spirit, we pray a revelation of your goodness, of your grace, of your steadfast love. And Holy Spirit, we just pray hope. Would you infuse hope? Would you infuse hope for today, hope for tomorrow, hope for the future, hope for the families, hope for a city, hope for a nation, God, we pray hope in Jesus' name. We say yes to this, the inside Lord, not our power, not our own fleshly strength, but Holy Spirit, strength from the inside, open to your strength, increase our dependency on you, Lord. From the inside out, Lord, let your river flow. Lord, what is a church without your presence? Who are we without you, Lord? Our identity, our placement, everything about our being is found in you. You're the source, you're the master, you're the creator, the sustainer, you're Alpha, Omega, beginning, end, you're in the middle, you're in the past, you're in between, you're in the future, you're the wonderful counselor, you're the mighty God, everlasting Father. Can we just begin to magnify the names of the Lord? Jehovah Rafa, Jehovah Jaira, Jehovah Nisium. Oh, magnify the Lord with me. Oh, magnify the Lord, he is not small, he is not too short, he is not too close, he is here, he is ready, he is willing, and he is able. Holy Spirit, I pray for revelation to your body, to your church, that you are available and you have more than just one name. You have many aspects, you have many characteristics. And Holy Spirit, I pray for a revelation of those beautiful names, that minister, that save, that deliver, that heal, that set free, that counsel, and that lead. We come under your master, your mastering Lord, your hand, we say, we submit and say, you are the source, you are the potter, we are the clay, make what you wish, do what you please, we are willing, Lord, we ask that you come and move. We magnify you Lord, you are the master, you are the one, wonderful counselor, mighty God, we magnify your name, Lord, make us up to this reality, you are seated Lord, think every principality is under your feet, oh my soul, why are you so worried, he is highly exalted, the church of the living God, he is highly exalted, open our eyes Lord, open the eyes of your bride, he is the living God, put your hope in the Lord, there is hope in God, put your hope in God, put your hope in God. Lord, I pray your church right now, can we out loud, let's just all begin to intercede for the church. Holy spirit, we ask that you would come minister in your churches, in your house, God, may it be your house, Lord. God, we ask that you would begin to move, you would begin to stir up your bride to want you. Lord, I pray for a love-sick overtaking of your church that says, Lord, we want you and nothing else, we're going all in, we're going all in, we're re-upping, we're counting the costs. And Lord, you are highly exalted, worthy of all honor and blessing and glory and power.  Lord, just like Moses, you said, I'll send an angel with you to take the promised land, but I will not go with you, what Moses said, Lord, if you're not going with us, we don't want to go. So Lord, we even repent for wanting accolades or numbers or status or different things in your own house. And we say, Lord, we want you above all else, we want you, we want your presence, we want your glory, we want you, King Jesus, we want you to walk in the room, we want your robe, we want the train of your robe to fill the temple of your house. Lord, you take first place, you take preeminence, you're in the center, Lord. Center stage, we ask, Lord, revive your church. Wake us up to the exalting your due, wake us up to the blessing your due. Wake us up to the heavenly reality that angels and elders are casting their crowns before your throne, even as we speak right now. Wake us up to the reality that heaven is surrounded by you and they're exalting the worthy lamb who is slain, the perfect and spotless lamb who purchased salvation.  And take up residence, Lord, hold you stand. And if anyone opens the door, you'll come in and dine with them and be with them. Come take first place in your church and your bride. Lord, we just say we love you, we bless you, we thank you and every season you're good and every season you're faithful. What we see with our natural eyes is not the true story of your goodness. And Lord, we say, come take preeminence, come take first place on an individual level and a corporate level. We say first place, take the throne, take the seat. I just even just felt the Lord say, watch what I'll do. Watch what I'll do when I have first place on an individual basis in a corporate level and even in a nation, watch what I'll do when I take first place. We love you, Lord, we bless you. It's in your mighty name, we pray. Jesus' name, amen, amen. Awesome, we just wanna say thank you for joining us, those online, those in the room. During this time, we're gonna transition to a divo set and so if you have any conversations or you're gonna be leaving during this hour time, we ask you just take your conversations outside. The room head down to match head, get some coffee, but we're gonna transition into devotional time. If you need to linger and spend time with the Lord, just encourage you to do that, grab your Bible, your journal and Olivia will be leading us, awesome. Well, we hope you have a great day. We will see you at the noon hour and 6.30 tonight, blessings.


Meanwhile, Oxfam says it is bitterly disappointed with the G7 communique, which included pledges for 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses and to boost climate finance. But the charity organization said that more could have been done. Ahead of inequality policy at Oxfam, Max Lawson said that 11 billion doses of vaccine, a lot more climate finance and pledges for much more dramatic cuts in carbon were needed. And we're bitterly disappointed to see the lack of action that's needed. These are seven of the most powerful countries in the world. You know, what they do matters. And when they decide to do very little and look at spin instead of substance, to cook the books, to cook the planet, then that's just not good enough. So yes, we're really disappointed they could have gone a lot more and they failed. I think never before in the history of the G7 has there been such a big failure in contrast to what needs to be done. You know, we have a once in a century pandemic, absolutely unprecedented. We have nine years to save the planet. It's really hard to exaggerate the scale of what needs to be done. So if you look at what they've done in the last few days and compare it to that, then you really can't call it anything more than an abject failure. Updates