Welcome everybody. You are on the Stand Out Earth in 2017 and beyond webinar. Thank you so much for being with us. I'm Ann Pernick. I'm with Stand Out Earth, and we have our Executive Director Todd Paulia and Karen Mahon, our Canadian Director with us. Thank you so much, Todd and Karen. Thanks Ann. Thanks Karen for being here as well, and thanks all to all of our attendees for joining us today. This is an incredibly tumultuous time, I think, for all of us who care about the climate, care about forests, care about what happens to people on the front lines. And I wish I could say we have not been here before, but those of you who have been around for a while have seen this sort of cycle before. I'm talking about the U.S. elections, of course, and it is very troubling. A lot of people in our movement have had a really, really tough time, I think, over the last few weeks trying to absorb the surprising outcome and sort of then dealing with the news each day of the cabinet picks on the U.S. side and what's happening there. So I think this is, you know, for Stand. This is a time really for taking it back to the basics. Our theory of change is really a little bit different than a lot of the bigger national groups. And I think there's a real synergy between what we do and what some of the more inside the beltway groups do. And while inside the beltway is going to be a lot about defense in the coming years, we really need to seize the initiative and go on the offense where we can. And I think changing corporate behavior and local work against fossil fuels for alternative energy is where a lot of the progress is going to be made. I wanted to actually take you back to the beginning of Stand. You know, we started in the forest. We now work on climate change and forest issues. We started in the forest, one of the last all-growth river valleys in Vancouver Island back in the mid-1990s. And this became the war in the woods. It was what we were founded on to work on. And it was an incredible, incredibly tumultuous period, incredible conflict, the biggest civil disobedience in Canadian history. And there were people on both sides of the border working on this issue. It became a cause celeb in ways I think that were even surprising to a lot of the original organizers, Karen Mahon, joining us on this webinar today being one of those organizers. And it was an incredible sort of outpouring of opposing forces, citizen activists and progressive people of all different types against company and government who wanted to turn this older through valley into magazines and newsprint and toilet paper, which was incredible. Part of this story that is the most amazing to me is that despite hundreds of people getting arrested, massive news coverage, celebrities getting involved, local politicians, first nations, the initial push, although it exceeded all of our goals in so many ways, it actually failed. The logging company kept logging. The government stood behind them. And it was actually from that defeat that this organization was really born. And the idea that people came up with was, well, if all that didn't work, we're still not giving up. And we're going to go to the marketplace. We're going to see who's buying the wood, paper and pulp from this logging company. And we're going to see if they want to sign up to destroy this rainforest. And that began to the birth of the modern marketplace campaigns. And it was that next initiative after the failure that got the attention of government, got the attention of the logging companies when the customers started calling and saying, hey, we don't want to be part of destroying this place. It's not in accordance with our values. It's not kind of sustainability or unsustainable practices we want to be affiliated with. That's the first time that the logging companies were put on the defensive. And that many of those, that forest in Clackett Sound, later the Great Bear Rainforest, are still standing. And I bring that up because this is where we were born. It's the work we were born to do in this organization. And it didn't matter who the prime minister was, it didn't matter who the president was. It didn't matter who was the premier of British Columbia. And that, I think, those kind of strategies, the things we're going to need to emphasize in the coming years with Trump taking office in a matter of weeks. Karen, you were there on the ground. I just wanted to turn it over to you for any thoughts you have on that. Well, I think it's interesting. So the Clackett Sound protests, for those that don't know, we had over a thousand people arrested. It was the biggest protest, as Todd said, in Canadian history, the biggest source of evidence. And I think it took it up to a point. I mean, it brought the issue to a head, but it didn't tip it over. It was bringing in the international pressure and the marketplace that actually tipped it over. So it's quite interesting now that we're at, you know, in the U.S., we're looking outside of the Beltway for change. So, you know, where we really need to focus on state, municipal, and corporations, which is exactly where STAND has always focused. And here in Canada, it's very interesting because we have arguably progressive governments that has just introduced a climate plan, which is quite good. I would call it historic yet insufficient. It's a good plan to meet a weak target, which is the target established by the previous Stephen Harper government. But that plan is coming into play, so now we need to go back to the kind of public pressure to really get the plan implemented in the right way and stop the infrastructure projects that would counteract the gains that we made by the plan. So, again, it takes us back to organizing protests. We, you know, in this organization, we definitely talk a lot about that we span from the boardrooms to the blockades. And those are the two places you will find us in 2017. Absolutely. And I think this is, you know, what we're seeing in Canada and what we're seeing in the U.S. is that the local is global. And in some ways, that's a very good thing. So in 2016, on our extreme oil campaigns, we have been able, by working with local citizens, progressive politicians, incredible people up and down the West Coast, and spanning, you know, really the whole continent, we've been able to shut down a number of oil-train terminal expansions that really add up to, in total, millions of barrels per day of oil. We're talking about Venetia and California, Antichrist in Washington, and we have an interim win in San Luis Obispo, where, you know, against all odds, huge oil companies promoting expansions of oil by rail, very unsafe, not only locally, but for our climate. And in all of those cases, despite being outspent and, you know, outgunned politically in some ways, we were able to win. And we, I don't mean Stan, I mean, Stan and our allies and local politicians and all the people that weigh in on these huge flights. And that's, you know, we also are working in Whatcom County here in the northwest corner of the U.S. on expanding a moratorium that limits the further expansion of fossil fuels. And this is in an oil-refining area. So really some unprecedented, and I think world-leading efforts are happening on a local level that really means constraining oil, use constraining oil shipments, preventing further expansion, and really these are the pieces of the puzzle that globally we think need to happen at an even greater rate in 2017 to add up to a climate-safe world. Karen, I know you, you know, local being global is perhaps even more the case in Vancouver these days. Well, it really is true because, as I said, our federal government has introduced a pan-Canadian climate framework, which will take us a large distance to meeting our 2030 targets. But at the same time, they have approved a number of new fossil fuel projects, a gigantic LNG plant, liquid natural gas fracking plant in northern British Columbia. And they just announced two pipelines, Line 3, which would travel from Alberta down through the Great Lakes to Minnesota. And the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which would travel again from the oil sands in northern Alberta down through the lower mainland of British Columbia to the west coast, where the bitumen would be this sort of dirty sandy oil that comes from the oil sands, would be loaded onto tankers, which would then go through the Georgia strait across the top of Puget Sound. And to a mythical Asian market, the moment they seem to be going to California markets, one of the big drivers is that they want to get this oil to Asia. But the fact is that this kind of heavy crude, they call it, gets a lower price in Asia currently than it gets in California. So we'll see. But there's all kinds of issues with this pipeline. And we are really on the front lines of that struggle. Well, it's exactly one of those instances where we span from blockades to boardrooms. We are on the front lines of that struggle, working with the local first nations, the slave to Squamish, the Musqueam, as well as the municipalities. There are every single municipality that the pipeline travels through in Southern British Columbia is opposed to the pipeline. Over 100 first nations are opposed to the pipeline, and yet it's been approved. So we're going to see a huge on the ground struggle here against that pipeline. I expect you're going to see some kind of civil disobedience. We're working with the Indian and B.C. Indian chiefs that has put up the pledge that you can see on your screen. They put it up about two weeks ago, and already 20,000 people have pledged to do whatever it takes to stop the pipeline. So it's really looking like this will become the next kind of no Dakota access type protest, led by first nations who are totally opposed, and they are already putting out the call to ourselves, stand as an organization, and many other allies to come and stand with them to defend their territory. So you're going to see that kind of local on the blockades, there will be blockades. And in the boardrooms, we also have been appointed, we were appointed, stand last year to the Alberta Oil Sands Advisory Group. So while we are working on the front lines, we are also working with government and industry. This is a picture of Rachel Notley, the premier of Alberta, who introduced the first ever climate plan for Alberta, which is Canada's oil jurisdiction. And so this was quite an achievement. It's an oil dependent jurisdiction, and they have placed a cap on their carbon emissions, which is really fantastic. And we work with a group of oil companies, first nations and community leaders, and governments to try and move that climate plan, implement that climate plan forward. So we are in the boardrooms there, and if there are blockades, we will be there doing everything we can to make sure that they are effective, impactful, and people's energies are being channeled in a productive way. But from those two sides, this Kinder Morgan pipeline that will see these tankers go through Washington State waters, through BC waters, is going to become one of the big definitional climate struggles in North America in 2017. And Karen, for folks on the US side of the border, I think we are a little more familiar in cases like Keystone, for example, where the fight is about whether or not a permit gets issued. And in Canada, what we have been saying for years is governments give permits, but people give permission, and the people have said no. So talk just a little bit, because it's not like Kinder Morgan and the idea of beating this is crazy, given the Enbridge pipeline. No, not at all. So the other pipeline that we've been campaigning on since the proposal came into being, which was proposed by Enbridge, to go through the Great Bear Rainforest, so again from the oil sands, through the coastal temperate rainforest of British Columbia, to be loaded onto tankers. So we have worked with our First Nations and other environmental allies on that campaign for seven or eight years, since it started. And at the same time as the Canadian Prime Minister announced these two pipelines that were going to go ahead, he announced that that third pipeline would not be going ahead. So that was a great victory for coastal communities. It would have been a travesty, and when they actually issued the permit for that pipeline, it looked like a done deal. So several years ago, they actually said, yes, this pipeline is going to go ahead, and basically the movement just refused to accept it. We just said this pipeline shall never be built. And fast forward a few years, and now that pipeline isn't being built. So it's the same moment that we're at with Kendra Morgan. Just because the permit has been issued, in no way does this mean it will be built. This means now the debate begins in earnest, and I think we have a very good chance of stopping this pipeline. Yeah, and this is not just a Canadian issue, though. The border does have a strange effect on people. You know, this is going to be potentially even got built, and we're going to work to make sure it doesn't get built. But 400 oil supertankers coming not just through Canada, but through Puget Sound, likely going to Washington State refineries, California refineries, as Karen mentioned. And there's actually a lot of leverage on the U.S. side of the border that I think the Northwest groups and Northwest foundations really need to begin taking a harder look at. Just for example, as people in the Northwest well know, we were all able to beat the North America's largest coal export terminal. And that was an unprecedented resistance, much like we saw at the Enbridge. The local groups all up and down Washington State fighting against this coal export facility, working with the Lummi Native American tribe, whose fishing rights were at issue if this terminal got built. Ultimately, the Corps of Engineers under enormous pressure politically from the grassroots level from the Lummi Nation, sided with the Lummi Nation, and denied that permit. Well, those same fishing rights are in jeopardy with the kind of work pipeline. The same issues around the concern for salmon, concern for orcas, for the very survival of orcas, are at stake on the U.S. side of the border. And so far we haven't seen very little action on the U.S. side of the border. And I think that's one of our goals in 2017 is to be able to coalesce more of a pushback from this side of the border to add to the enormous pushback that's happening on the Canadian side of the border. And I would just add it's very interesting because under the Canadian Endangered Species Act essentially, the government is required to restore the habitat for endangered species. So these whales are endangered species on both sides of the border. So does the Canadian government have a right to threaten a population of endangered species? Under Canadian law they don't. We're looking at the question of can a Canadian government make a decision to negatively to impair a U.S. Endangered Species, a species that's listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. These are all really interesting questions that we are going to see play out of the courts. Yeah, absolutely. So Karen, should we switch pages here to forest a little bit? Sure. Let me start off by saying one of our great successes of the year was the final protection of the Great Bear Rainforest. So we mentioned earlier that this Enbridge Pipeline was threatened into the Great Bear Rainforest. The Great Bear Rainforest is super close to my heart and many people in the organization have worked on the campaign since its inception. In fact, it's really interesting to see how the one minute anatomy of a campaign is that when we looked at this area, it was originally back in 1997. It was originally called the mid-coast timber supply area because basically it was just all the forest that was left in the mid-coast that the industry hadn't gotten to yet. It was their last chunk of coastal temperate rainforest and that was its only designation. And we looked at it and realized given the state of global temperate rainforests, this last piece was critically, globally, ecologically important.  The values we see are the wilderness and biodiversity values and cultural values, and thus we put this board in the Great Bear Rainforest. But at the time it was a radical vision. We basically said, you have logged 75% of the rest of the coastal temperate rainforest on the planet. We have this little chunk, so we want all of it. We want every valley that's left. And people said, you're crazy.  You're trying to take away jobs. These are all familiar mantras. But it was quite, I mean, we were the premier of British Columbia, Glenn Clark, at the time called us enemies of V.C., So that's how unpopular it was when it started.  We have a conservation economy in place. The First Nations and non-native communities who live there are managing funds to build the economy in a way that is consistent with conserving the ecological values. And on Earth, I think probably one of the most conservative being Buckingham Palace sent their emissaries, the Prince and Princess here this year, up to the Great Bear Rainforest to acknowledge it as one of the global treasures in the global Commonwealth Forest. And in fact, Princess Kate and Prince William unveiled the plaque in the middle of the rainforest, thanking the local First Nations as well as STAND and one or two other organizations for our work in this area. So I think it's just when we say no fossil fuel projects and when we say we will stop a pipeline, sometimes we say, is that realistic? Can that really be done? But when we started this area 20 years ago, people said we were crazy. It would never happen. And now it's lauded as one of the international jewels of forest protection. We can do the same thing on pipelines. We can do the same thing on fossil fuels. We just have to believe we can and keep at it. Yeah, and being unreasonable is part of our job description. But in hindsight, it doesn't look that unreasonable. And one of the things that I love about the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement is that 85% of the forest is protected. First Nations have more rights to their traditional territories, more sustainable economy happening there than ever before. And also it isn't as if there was no room for traditional industry who also hires First Nations, at least part of the time, to continue to operate mills. But they were able to operate mills in a way that actually really shrunk their impact on the landscape. But they were able to stay alive and continue to offer more sustainable jobs and more sustainable timber supply than they had ever dreamed possible. 20 years ago. So it's a success both on environment, culturally, and economically. So that's really the kind of solution that stands for and doesn't get any better than the Great Bear Rainforest. So on new initiatives, one of the things that we have always been looking at, you know, we worked years ago to begin reforming the office supply sector, which didn't use hardly any recycled fiber back when we started our campaigns against staples, office devolves, max, and others, cattle-lung industry. And we were always kind of looking for what's an industry that just needs reform that has really stuck in the last century, that is wasteful, that destroys forests, that has negative impacts in a variety of ways. And earlier this year we started our campaign to take on throwaway coffee cups, starting with Starbucks. And Starbucks actually does a lot of things that we think are pretty good. We don't see them as an evil company. That's sort of our philosophy, which we try to live as much as possible, is that we don't see the people at these companies or these companies as evil more that they need to wake up and start making different kinds of decisions. So we're in the process of trying to wake up Starbucks. And the reason why is that they go through 4 billion, that's with a B, 4 billion cups per year. They all are used once and thrown away. They're non-recyclable almost everywhere. And so every single year between a million and 1.5 million trees get logged again to make more of those cups. And Starbucks is just the tip of the iceberg. They are the biggest player, but the world throwaway cup market is 52 billion, which I can't even understand that number so big. And that represents over 10 million trees per year, every single year being logged to make throwaway cups. And their solutions already exist. You can see we actually, on the screen here, we came up with our own version of the holiday cup, which strangely gets a lot of press every year. But this year, a lot of the press was about how unsustainable that cup is. The photo on the lower left of the screen is our cup wall. That's 8,180 cups that we put up outside of the Starbucks headquarters. 8,180 cups is how many cups they go through in a minute, every single day, all year long. So this is the kind of thing, again, as we started off this call. It doesn't depend on anybody being president or anybody being prime minister. This is about confronting this company with a horrific practice that is really out of step, even with our own values. And I'm confident that they will eventually do the right thing on this. And that's going to be the beginning of transforming this entire industry to make cups that are more ethical, that are recyclable, that use a lot of non-void and recycled content to be made that spares forests and all the impacts on the people that depend upon those forests. And also really pushing people to make the choice to use their own cups. And Starbucks could do a whole lot more to promote that. All that I think is going to happen, it's just a matter of time. And they're a big company, perhaps the biggest brand that we've ever taken on, but we're starting to get some traction and it's very exciting. And I would, you know, the link to forest is quite direct. So we took the strategies that we developed in the Great Bear Rainforest, which are now being written up in various journals and other organizations are studying, and applied those to the boreal forest across Canada. And it's that huge vast area, of course, the northern, Canada's part of the northern forest belt that goes around the northern hemisphere. And there are some significant interesting opportunities coming up there. There is a requirement that the Canadian government has signed on to to protect 17% of different kinds of forest ecosystems. And we are not at that in most places. We're somewhere between 8 to 10 or 12. So we are engaging with the governments of Alberta in particular, Manitoba as well to look at what conservation can happen there in the boreal forest. And of course, that's important now from a biodiversity and forest preservation point of view as it always was. Now it's doubly important from a carbon reservoir point of view. So our forest work is, you know, both climate change work and forest work for its own inherent value. So there are, there's some areas in northern Alberta that we're looking at. There's some areas in northern British Columbia that we're looking at that are under threat from fracking. In Alberta, the threat would be logging. In British Columbia, the threat would be fracking. And if our current Premier has her way, she would see a massive expansion in fracking in northern British Columbia. But in fact, there is a whole area that the industry could move into in the next five years or equally that we could try and get protected. It's endangered caribou habitat and it would meet all of our goals of protecting 17%. So we're going to be active in the boreal forest in those areas in 2017 on the land-based side. Of course, that links to the consumption side with the cops and the marketplace work from the US. Absolutely. In case, first of all, we're going to be shifting to your questions soon. So if you could begin typing in your questions and Pernick will get to those in just a couple of minutes. But a couple of quick updates. In case you were wondering, does any of this work ever get us into trouble with being sued? We've already talked about being called enemies of the state back at our founding. We were considered an enemy of the state during the thick of our tar sands campaign by the Prime Minister, then Stephen Harper of Canada. And we have been expecting to be sued for a long time and it turns out being sued for $300 million is not as fun as it sounds like. So we got sued speaking of the boreal forest. This is a place that we have been working for many years to protect. We're nowhere close to stopping that work. In fact, we expect to increase our push to protect the boreal in 2017. And very powerful interests, no surprise, are against protecting the boreal. That includes Resolute Forest Products, the largest logging company in Canada who sued us in the U.S. in Federal Court, Southern District of Georgia. Perhaps the most inconvenient place possible to sue us. That was no accident in a place I've never even been to. But they are suing us, I think, in effort to take us off of focus, to take us out of the boreal agreement, to really try to reduce our effectiveness. Fortunately, 2016 is one of our best years ever. They have failed to dilute our focus or to take us off of our game plan. But they're trying. And they're a $3 billion company. In fact, we ran the numbers on this, talking about David versus Goliath. In the first eight hours of 2015, they had more revenue than Stan does all year long. Those are some big odds financially. The weird thing about the case, and I think it's sort of like so weird it could end up being dangerous, is that they are attempting to use the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, also known as RICO, which was built to take down the mafia and organize crime. And they are actually claiming that we and Greenpeace are a criminal network because we have criticized their unsustainable, destructive logging practices. Now, the long term of this is I don't think they really believe they can win legally. My sense is that they're hoping they can just outspend us and drag us into court and drag us out of our campaigns. We're not going to let that happen. We have begun to push back already. You're seeing right here on your screen. This is an advertisement, full page ad, which you're only seeing part of it. Anybody interested in the ad will send to you. We ran it in the New York Times. 80 social justice environmental and labor groups signed on agreeing with us that free speech is not a crime and that they're going to be working with us to push back against a company that is not only attacking us, but attacking the First Amendment. That is very quickly. They can't really take criticism. Sounds a lot like President-elect Trump. And there are a lot of parallels between Donald Trump and this lawsuit, which really tries to silence critics and bully critics into compliance. And we're not very compliant. So you're going to hear more and see more about that battle as it moves on in 2017. Last quick update, Karen, you might have something to add to that. I did want to add that I mentioned that we do quite a bit of work with the oil sands companies themselves, Shell, Suncore, etc., trying to help them think about what the worsening climate crisis will mean for them as an industry and how they plan towards what will inevitably be a decline in oil supply and what that really means. But in those same conversations, they have let us know that the oil industry also is watching the resolute lawsuit. And it really, it's made it clear to us that this is a test case. This lawsuit is a test case around public interest groups speaking on behalf of the public and our ability to do that. And the whole oil industry is watching it. The whole forest industry is watching it. So it's high stakes and we will win. We'll probably need your help to do it. But it is one of those moments that is a litmus test and we just absolutely cannot afford to lose. We need to win. Yeah, and I think the story that needs to be told here, which we're going to begin telling and hopefully with your help and the help of our allies and our supporters in 2017 is that let's look at the end of 2017 or 2018. I think the story needs to be that Stan got stronger, did even better work, didn't give up on protecting the boreal or give up on any of its campaigns, financially did well, improved, beat them in the court and beat them in the court of college. That's what needs to happen and it will take those oil companies, those mining companies, those other logging companies that are looking at this approach and it will tell them this was a really bad idea. Let's not do that. So that's the story that we're going to tell. We're going to begin telling that in 2017 and hopefully making that happen. Another quick update. Not one to rest on our laurels. We launched a new campaign today to take on the shipping industry. One of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, almost completely unregulated. The days of the pirates have not passed. I think many of these companies, especially the cruise line companies, really think of themselves as beyond the law, have done very little to improve their greenhouse gas emissions for forever. Just a couple of weeks ago, Carnival Cruise Line, one of our primary targets, was fined $40 million for dumping over an eight-year period, oily waste, bilge water, all kinds of junk into the ocean.  So I think these companies really represent sort of a criminal network in many ways. And they've had very little transparency and very little accountability. We're going to bring that to this sector. On the screen is our report, which came out today, Sinking the Climate. These companies, the shipping industry itself represents 3 to 5% of global emissions. It's projected, if it's left unchecked, to rise to 17% of global emissions by 2050, and we can't let that happen. So our challenge of the shipping industry starts today. There's going to be lots of social media and information on our website about that. And I think that's enough for updates. We should probably turn to your questions. Ann, are we ready for some questions? We are. We are. Give me just a minute. We have one. The person said they'd like that. They just want me to read it. If the question is to stand only work in BC and Canada, and if not, would Stan be willing to try and stop the Line 9 pipeline? We absolutely do not just work in BC and Canada. The reason we talk about Canada a lot is we are one of the only cross-border organizations working in the U.S. and in Canada and on cross-border issues. And a lot of the wood, for example, our forest work is really focused on Canada as the source for the wood, paper, and pulp. But it is being used in many cases by U.S. corporations. So the way that we get leverage is by going to those companies, asking them if they want to be part of the destruction of the boreal or the Great Bear Rainforest. They usually have no idea where they're buying from. And then we can then work with them to get them to help insist that their suppliers behave differently, protect key areas. And we are looking at several cross-border issues. Line 9 pipeline coming into Vancouver is cross-border because it's going to have big impacts on Washington State. Line 3 pipeline we're now taking a look at, which is coming into, projected to come into Minnesota. And we think there's a strong case that we can beat that pipeline locally. So we're taking a hard look at that right now. And Karen, Line 9, do you have thoughts on that? Line 9 is mostly a reversal, as I understand it. And we actually did do a lot of work on Line 9 when it seemed like we had a greater chance of winning. I'm not sure that we have that much of a chance anymore. But certainly we work with local groups across the country, in particular the First Nations, who are trying to stop all new pipelines and expansions. So certainly in that way we'd lend support. And Line 3 we've just been ourselves, which is the big new one that was just approved in Central Canada to the Central US. We're definitely looking at strategies there. We have another question, another person who's feeling shy. So I'll go ahead and do it. Just to talk a little bit more about the shipping campaign and some of the key parts of the report that came out today. Sure. So the shipping campaign, as I mentioned before, is going to focus first on the cruise line companies. This is an industry that uses some of the worst fuel really in the world. Some of the fuel that they use, marker fuel, isn't even liquid at room temperature. It is sort of the bottom of the barrel, literally, of what comes out of refineries. Huge emissions. Some of what we looked at that we talked about in the report, the shipping sector has such outsized emissions. It sort of bottles the mind.  So these engines in these huge cruise lines, same thing with the shipping containers. Those ships are, in some cases, five or six stories high. Almost zero emission controls, very little advance around efficiency or emissions reductions over the last many years. So it's what happens when an industry gets to treat our atmosphere as an ashtray. So they have taken zero care, zero effort to curb their bad habits. And we're going to help change that. We think that there's a real potential to go beyond cruise lines. Many of the same technology, same engines, same scrubbers, a lot of the solutions that we're proposing apply equally to cruise lines as well as to shipping lines, container ships. And the amazing thing about the shipping sectors, they've done so little for so long that even doing simple things like slowing down and making sure they polish the propellers so that they are free of particles and other debris, they can cut 20 to 30% of their emissions just by doing that. There's not a sector in the world really that has done so little that they can reduce their emissions by such large amounts by doing really cost-effective changes. So we feel like there's a lot of possibility. This is one of those areas where they have been intransigent. In fact, the International Maritime Organization met a month ago and in the face of a climate crisis decided they need to gather more data. And we're going to change that. Great. We're going to call on Bill B. next. Bill, let me see if we can open your line. Let's see if we can hear you. Hi, Bill Buckholtz here with the Sierra Club, the Forest Certification Committee. What's the status on the Stop SFI campaign? Great, great question. Nice to hear your voice, Bill. We continue to work on that effort. Our primary effort has been sort of two-fold. One is to continue to stop them from becoming sort of a household name. We've been able to pull them off of 37 major corporate brands. So they were on, for example, a Hewlett Packard copy paper, one of the biggest brands of copy paper in the world. And they were on there as a sort of green endorsement. The SFI is an industry-funded, industry-founded and industry-governed attempt to look like an eco-label. And so we've been able to stop them from becoming a major brand. We have 37 companies that dropped the use of that fake eco-label. The other effort, the network continues and has been strong in this last year. The other area of focus is on trying to make sure that the Green Building Council, the organization behind the LEED Green Building Standard, keeps SFI out of that standard. And, you know, in the last several months, a pilot credit for SFI has been proposed. It was done without a vote by the members. It was completely against democratic principles, and we believe it was illegal. And so we are pursuing getting that pilot credit removed, and they can start that process over and do a real vote. And like the last two votes, I think they'll lose. So we continue to push on both those areas around SFI, a lesser well-known but very important forest issue. Okay, thanks. We have a question from Sarah. She was thinking that maybe the last question answered a little bit, Bill's question. So I'm going to modify it a little bit to say for folks on the line who aren't as aware of this, how well is the actually good sustainable forestry certification going as opposed to SFI? How are the people who are actually doing good work doing with that label? This is my kind of crowd, two SFI questions in one session. So for folks who don't know, so SFI, as I was talking about, is the industry Spain's sponsored, funded, fake eco-level label for forest products. They were created just a little bit after the Forest Stewardship Council, which is an imperfect but the best indicator of whether a piece of wood or paper is sustainable. And that program continues against all odds. I mean, they're a fraction of the size of SFI in the U.S. And against all odds, they continue to expand their market. They've had some really important initiatives with companies like Home Depot. We have helped push some of the biggest brands in the world to adopt the FSC, in addition to getting many companies to drop the SFI, because the FSC is real. It's a real system that takes environment and economy and human health and well-being into account. And it's hard, and they make mistakes at times, but it's a real system with real rigor, and they continue to gain traction. SFI is the biggest threat, because if you get SFI certified, you don't have to change practically anything. So it's very inexpensive. Meanwhile, FSC, and we work directly with big brands who have gotten FSC certified. You know, sometimes you have to leave 10 or 20 or more percent of the forest standing. Stay away from streams, especially fish-bearing streams. It's real work and real commitment and sacrifice to be sustainable, and that's why FSC, I think, continues, despite being outspent in the U.S. to grow. Let me just add that for people that don't follow this as closely as some of, and I say with love, some of the geeks in forest ethics that love this stuff, essentially we have decided as a society that we want greener wood and paper. Well, who decides what is green? That's what's at issue here. Who actually gets to say, yes, this is better. So it's again, other industries going through the same thing, but of course forest being close to our heart. Is green marketing just as green-wash? Is it fake when you buy your toilet paper with your ecological line, or is it real? And so the struggle to actually make that real is a super important struggle that will affect large land bases all over the globe. Okay, great. A little bit more shyness. This is Anne. But how about a talk a little bit more about the oil train campaigns and how the successes, the recent successes, are affecting the work in 2017? Erin, do you want to take that? No, you go. This has actually been one of the most important campaigns we've ever run. It is not an overstatement at all to say that it has changed who we are. It's helped change our name. Working in urban communities, fence line communities, under our previous name, which we changed this spring, we were forest ethics for 15 years, and forest ethics kept sounding more and more last century, and a lot of people we were working with against these oil trains and the pipelines. It just was not a name that represented the work we were really doing anymore, and it was feeling past prime. So the oil train campaign is one of the things that led us to change our name, and we became stand just in the past spring. The oil train work has been so exciting and fun and interesting. We started three years ago with 13 people in a room down in Seattle who were interested in beginning to address this issue. And today our oil train group is 250 organizations strong, and what I think makes us most proud of this effort is not only do we want, and that's one of the things at stand that is key, is we really try to get campaigns where we can make a difference, where we can win and prevent the expansion of oil trains as a new way of transporting oil in massive quantities, and we've really stood the way of that expansion. But this oil trains group is everything from people working at kitchen tables in communities that are under threat from a new oil train terminal to groups like the NRDC and Sierra Club and others. So it has been incredibly powerful, very effective, far more diverse coalition effort than anything we've ever taken on really. And I think it's four of all those reasons. It's one of the most powerful things we've done. And beating at one point we had three oil train terminals get defeated. We've worked on them for several years, but they were all defeated within a couple of weeks period. Another oil train, and those were all West Coast also in Baltimore, a major oil train terminal defeated there by our allies. And the first health intact study of oil trains moving forward in Baltimore. So this is about environmental justice. This is about climate change. And it's really about, I think, people coming together to push back against corporations and governments making decisions that we're bad for them. As to how that looks in 2017, I think that work continues. Pipelines and oil trains are two sides at the same point. So I think the work that Karen's focused on on Kinder Morgan, if they can't move their oil by pipeline, they're going to try and move by oil train. They can't move by oil train, they're going to try and move by pipeline. We need to beat them in both places. So we are out of questions on the question board. Maybe we'll just invite Karen and Todd to just say some closing remarks. Karen, go ahead. I think there we go. Can you hear me now? We lost you for just a second. Karen, do you mind starting at the beginning? No, not at all. Sorry about that. I was just saying thank you to everyone who took the time to dial in today. It's really great to be able to just have the chance to have something of a conversation, albeit slightly one-way, not moderated by media with their own intentions and their own outcomes in mind. So thank you so much for that. I would say it's been a hard year between climate change and Trump. It has been a hard year, but I think it's really focusing. There's no illusion anymore. There's no room for complacency. We know exactly what we need to do, and we are more focused than ever, and we are determined to do with every breath in our body. And so it's so great that we have supporters and allies like folks on the phone. And 2017 is going to be pivotal, and we're going to have fun doing it because this is how we spend our lives. So we're going to win, and we're going to bring some more love and joy to the work in the world as we do so. Great. Thanks, Karen. And Anne sounds like we have another question. We do. And Jody, I'm going to bring you in. Let's see if we can hear you. Hello. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Thanks for doing this webinar. It's great to hear from people on the top working so hard to fight against all this stuff. So yeah, I'm definitely very passionate about sustainability and environmental protection, all that. I live in Prince George, D.C., so Central British Columbia. Seeing the Great Bear Rainforest Victory is just awesome. And I can't believe, like, 15 years it took to actually do that. It's great to see that this prolonged effort actually pay off. And so hopefully that sticks. And yeah, so great to see that. And everything else you guys are fighting for. So thank you very much for your efforts. And then, yeah, just to question, a lot of stuff comes up, and you guys probably heard this before. But like I think, first of all, it's important to have solutions. So it's not really good just to protest things and say, oh, we can't do this, we can't do that. In fact, the environment, obviously, we all know that. I mean, not everyone knows that. But yeah, so a lot of people say, oh, you're protesting this thing, you're losing jobs, and the economy will suffer. So kind of what solutions, alternative solutions, can we kind of explain to people like, I know we need to transition to a green economy, but a lot of people don't really even understand what that would look like. And what are the options? Like I know for producing electricity, we have options, wind power, and small hydro projects, and solar, and geothermal and stuff like that. But for things like replacing oil, for example, to transition out of the fossil fuel economy into a more green economy, that's going to take a lot of work and a lot of new technology and implementing the technology. Thank you, Judy. Sorry to interrupt you. Just so our folks will have a couple minutes to answer, I'm going to just have you leave it right there. It's a great question. Yeah. Mary, why don't you handle that? Well, it is a great question. And I actually, it's one of the places where I am most hopeful, because I feel like the innovation that we're starting to see now is really taking off. So there are more jobs now in the global solar economy than there are in the global oil economy. That just happened in 2016. So that is really, truly happening. And you're really right, though, that oil for aviation and shipping in particular are some of the last, hardest things to replace. But we are looking at that as well. Believe it or not, the shipping industry is talking about going back to sales, like these hyper-electronic kinds of sales that would be highly efficient. So that work is underway. We do everything we can to kind of bring that work in front of decision makers and in front of industry to show that there are the alternatives. But I think actually we're in a very good place with the alternatives, and there is an unstoppable tidal wave of innovation that is coming. And we just need to get out of its way and do everything we can to stop why infrastructure fights are so important. And I agree, you can't just fight everything. But if we can stop new infrastructure, new fossil fuel projects now, while these things come on board, we'll be in much better shape than if the new innovation comes and is swamped by existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Yeah, absolutely. And in closing, I have to agree 100%. We are at really a perfect time from rooftop solar to electric cars to shipping containers and actually using sales as a way to cut their emissions is happening. Not only that, the first hybrid electric ships were launched in the last month. That can operate both on traditional fuel and can do fully electric for 30 minutes. And that's just the beginning. So I think there's so many solutions coming. I would just say this about 2017. First of all, if you like what you hear and you're already with us, dive in deeper. Join us if you're new to us. This is your first time hearing about our work. We need you. Join us, support us both financially with your time, with your activism. We will see in 2017 how much we can accomplish together. 2016 has been one of our best years ever. Finding some of the biggest industries in the world. We're going to do a lot more of the same in 2017. And I think really corporate change and local change is where it's going to happen in the next four years. And we are ready to go. So come and join us. And thanks so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Karen. And we look forward to continuing the conversation. Thanks, everybody.


Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony. And this is Words and Numbers. So at this week we're talking about life on college campuses, what with the semester winding down and the end of the year upon us. It does us well to reflect a little bit on the state of higher education in these United States. Yes, some of the students are going squirrely this spring. Yeah, no, that seems to be right. And it seems always to be this notion of college as a safe space which makes them so violent and hotheaded. And that astounds me because at the same time we're talking about the value of a college education, we've got some students who are attacking the very thing that makes a college education valuable. And that's that it isn't a safe space, not intellectually. It's gotten actually quite absurd lately. Any rational person, I think, would agree if you just step back and take a look at some of the assertions being made by college students across the country. I mean, the one that comes to mind immediately, or how shall we put this, Ant, medium-sized Catholic institution of higher learning at the gates of the Midwest, the students have become quite agitated because of all things a Chick-fil-A is opening on campus. A Chick-fil-A is opening on campus. The students are upset about this, particularly students who are interested quite rightly so in LGBT rights. They're concerned because this Chick-fil-A's owners are associated with anti-gay stances. But the odd thing is, they're suggesting that this creates, the presence of Chick-fil-A creates an unsafe space, but this is on a Catholic college campus.  Probably 2,000 years or so now if my off the cuff math is any good. Right, right. So the claim that all of a sudden this campus has become an unsafe space just doesn't ring true. Well, no, that's exactly right. Not only does it not ring true, I mean, ultimately we have to take seriously, I guess, and I don't know how to do this, the belief, the apparently honestly held belief that in a restaurant that specializes in making chicken sandwiches makes you unsafe.  And of course it's the association, right, with the anti-gay position. But the interesting thing is, if you really want to make a point about, you know, being pro-LGBT, the way to go about it is not to shut them down, but to be out there every day that they're open protesting. Because this is a beautiful backdrop against which you can make your pro-LGBT message known.    We actually see speakers being shouted down, physical violence in the name of protest. It's gotten absolutely out of hand. Yeah, and I think here there are some people at least who miss the point of protest. The point of the protest should be to bring the conversation to the fore and to encourage us to come to some solution on this question. And that's not what protests are being used for on college campuses largely. They're being used to stop conversation entirely. And that's not a path to finding truth. In fact, the reverse, it's a path to obfuscating truth. Right, but if you really take a look at college students across the country and we do this on a regular basis, right, given our line of work, it's become painfully clear to me at least, and I'm happy to make this assertion, that college students show up to college ready to teach, not ready to learn. They already think they know, they think they already know every single thing that they have to know, and they're absolutely dogmatic in their point of view, right? There is no room for conversation with any of them. Yeah, and I'd back off that statement a little bit because I think there are plenty of students who actually do arrive in a state of intellectual humility, of wanting to learn. But interestingly, they tend not to be the vocal ones. The vocal ones are the ones that have decided that they already know what they know and they're going to now educate the rest of us. Yeah, so maybe the case that we often make when we talk about how the news media pollutes our national discourse, right? Maybe it's the case that we only see one type of student in the media, and as we wander through campuses, right, the most vocal, the most out-to-launch, right, the craziest of the bunch. Those are the ones everybody pays attention to, but maybe we'd do better if we paid attention to nearly everyone else. Yeah, I think that's true.  I think one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that to an extent, the faculty themselves have some blame in this, because for a long time now, faculties have tended not to engage, if you picture the standard dichotomy of the left versus the right on college campus. Faculty have tended to be less apt to engage each other than to shout each other down or to silent each other through denying tenure or denying grant monies or whatever it may be. So to that extent, the students may have been picking up some of these techniques from their elders. Well, it does seem to be the case actually, and the more you appeal away the veneer on some of the incidents that have occurred in the past few months, the more you realize that faculty are involved in a rather hip, deep fashion, right? And we can we can rattle off a few of the unfortunate things that have occurred over the past few months, right? We had, was it Charles Murray at Middlebury College, right, and shouted down. And then there was an incident at Claremont McKenna College out in California, and most recently, Larry Reed, president of Fee, right, the good people who post this video was shouted down to some extent at the University of Colorado in Denver. Well, he was only shouted down. The other two actually were done in physical violence, as I recall. Yeah, there was there was some unpleasantness, enhanced unpleasantness with the other two. And the sad thing in my mind is that not only are we not shocked by this, we've come to expect it, right? We hear that there'll be a speaker on campus. And we just say up here we go again. I guess there's going to be a riot in Berkeley, right? Of course, there's going to be. And that's the saddest thing of all. Because when it comes right down to it, a college campus is the place for the free exchange of ideas. And we don't get that. The college campus, the college campus of all places should not be intellectually safe. That's exactly where you're supposed to grapple with ideas. And I think the thing is this, if, if you believe, and not all people do, but if you believe that truth is objective, that doesn't necessarily mean it's knowable, but that there is some truth out there. The way we approach it, even if we can't attain it, the way we approach it, is by engaging with each other. And so, and so debate becomes not a matter of me versus you, but you and I together versus ignorance. And so we become, it becomes a process of mutual error correction rather than beating each other down. And that's the point that we've lost. This debate on college campuses largely now has ceased to be mutual error correction. And it's become a contest in which there are winners and losers. Yeah, no, and for those of you keeping score at home, Anthony Davies just became a Platonist. So mark your calendar. This is the day it finally came to pass that you embraced Plato fully. But I think you're absolutely right, right? The truth to the extent that we can find it will be found in the dialectic, right, in the argument that we have with each other on the best of terms. Right. Right? Not as staunch partisans, but as what Aristotle might have called friends of the truth. Yes, yes. And yet we just don't seem inclined to do this anymore. And I think you're right to some degree to lay this at the feet of faculty. I think that over time, the university has become politicized. Faculty are partisans. And we get the equivalent of Fox News shouting heads. They're not even talking heads, they're just shouting heads. And I would imagine that some of that comes from, well, it comes ultimately, it has its root in a lack of intellectual humility. But if you honestly believe you are right on a certain point, you'll naturally, because we're human beings, you'll naturally push that. And it's something that faculty of all people need to guard against, right? These are highly, highly educated people. And of course, you get that level of education. And the natural human thing is to start thinking that you have all the answers. And we could all take a page from Socrates here and be the first to admit that we actually don't know anything. How did this happen? How did you come to be a Platonist? I've been hanging out with you too long, James. Well, you probably have been. That's right. But you know, the way these things start to shake out is it's a little bit odd when you think about it, right? Because you're right, faculty, ourselves included, we go through a process of education where we explore things very deeply. And then we think we know something. And to some degree, of course, we do. But if that's true and we are, in fact, right in our opinions, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to give reasons for those opinions, right? And the giving of reasons is part and parcel of what we're supposed to be doing. Make your assertion and then give your reasons. And then we'll all reason together. But really, what it's come to lately, and I don't know exactly when this came to pass. But what it's come to is simply now making assertions. Right. Yeah, yeah. And the louder you can make them and the greater the faculty rank you have when you're making them, apparently, that's what it takes to win. And we're doing the Academy and the world in general a disservice because we're raising a group of, and this will be the next generation of intellectuals, the students who are there now. We're raising them to think not in a humble way, but rather to treat knowledge somehow as a weapon, that you beat the other guy over the head with it. And when he's finally silent, well, you must be right. Yeah, no, that's right. And to put it in platonic terms, this is Thrasymachus' argument in the Republic might makes right. As long as you're more powerful than your opponent, you're by definition correct. And I and you apparently don't think for one second that that's anywhere even close to right. No, that's absolutely right. And that's not to say that either one of us is sure of our own rightness either. But I think it's always important to take a step back and ask yourself when you when you encounter someone with whom you disagree, look for what it is the person saying that is right, because there's something in there. You might have to dig, but there's something in what the person is saying that has a grain of truth. And if you can find that, you'll find common ground with the other person. And that's the first step to actually the two of you moving together toward finding the truth rather than beating each other over the head. Yeah, no, and I think it does us well to admit or to at least acknowledge that this is a lifelong process, right? It never stops, right? And how do I how do I know that all of my opinions are not correct right now? Well, I can look back over the course of my life and see just how many of them have changed and changed significantly over time. I don't believe many of the things that I believed very firmly even 20 years ago. Yeah, the scary thing there, James, is how many of the things that we believe now are we not going to believe 20 years from now? I suspect the answer to that question is quite a few, but probably not as many as from 20 years ago from this point, right? Because you learn more over time and you become more discerning and you just simply get better at these things. But I don't for one second think I'm right about every. Well, I do think I'm right about everything. But in my in my more honest moments, I know that's not true, right? And I wonder, I wonder what I've gotten wrong. And I actually embrace the opportunity to talk to people with whom I disagree significantly. And I wish they would embrace the opportunity to talk to me, too. And that seems not to be happening so much. So, you know, we're about out of time. I'll throw it back to you for a last take on the matter if you've got one. Well, we started off talking about this this university out on the gateway to the Midwest, that's Catholic school and which people are having difficulty with the Chick-fil-A being on campus. And and it being a Catholic institution, perhaps perhaps there's a lesson there.   He says, who am I to say who's a sinner? And you see the same kind of process, albeit in slower motion than we'd like, perhaps, but the same sort of process of discovery and engaging the truth there that we would hope to to see on college campuses. That's all the time we've got this week on Words and Numbers. But stop on by next week, Wednesdays at about noon, when a new episode will come up. Until then, check out fee.org for all kinds of fascinating content. See you next week. Take it easy and see you next week. See you next week, James.


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Income tax 2022-2023, business expenses, insurance and payroll expenses, software example, let's do some wealth preservation with some tax preparation. Support Accounting Instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category, further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Here we are in our example Form 1040 populated using LASERT tax software. You don't need tax software to follow along but it's a great tool to run scenarios with. You can also get access to the Form 1040 related forms and schedules at the IRS website irs.gov, irs.gov. Starting Point, Single Filer, Mr. Anderson, Living in Beverly Hills 90210, No W-2 income, we've got the business income. Let's look at the flow through of the business income. It comes from the Schedule C, Profiter Laws from Business Income Statement Format, the net income in essence, rolling then in to the Schedule 1. That's not Schedule 1. Schedule 1 and then that rolls into the Form 1040 line number 8. We know there's going to be self-employment tax calculated. That's done by taking the Schedule C once again. Schedule C net income flowing into Schedule SE self-employment tax, calculating the self-employment tax 14129, which is on Schedule 2, flows into Schedule 2. And that flows into the Form 1040 page 2. And there's the 14129. Half of that is deductible, which we can see on page 1 above the line deduction adjustment to income there. That is going to be calculated Schedule C net income used to calculate the self-employment tax of the 14129. Half of that, 7065 deductible, it flowing then to Schedule 1 page number 2. There it is, that flows due to the 1040 right there. So now we've got the 100,000 minus the 7065 is 92935, 12,950 standard deduction, 15,997. That's the Qualified Business Income. And then we've got the net income 63,988, page 2 calculating the tax, the tax, federal income tax, and the Social Security and Medicare self-employment tax. It comes to the 23,829, 30,000 was withheld. That gets us to the 6,179. Back to page 1, we're focused on the Schedule C. So if I go back on over to the Schedule C, we're looking at deductions related to insurance. Now most of the time, the insurance deduction is going to be fairly straightforward, although you do have to be careful with regards to the accounting side of things. So as a tax preparer side of things, you want to be thinking, am I doing a lot of work to help out with the bookkeeping? Or am I have a system set up that the income statement they give me is basically good to go? And I'm just going to basically do the data input. So in other words, if they already have their insurance basically set up and they give you the income statement formatted properly, then the insurance that's deductible should be already in place. And you can enter that just as an expense as you do the data input into the system. But you also might have questions in terms of when to deduct the insurance on a cash basis versus a cruel-based method, because the insurance is something that we usually prepay. We pay it before we actually get the coverage. That's something that you want to keep in mind kind of from a bookkeeping side of things. Note that most of the insurance that we think of that is business-related would be something that would be deductible, like liability insurance, health insurance if it's for the employees and so on. And then we might have the insurance that's deductible for health insurance that's personal for us in special kind of situations, which wouldn't be on the Schedule C but possibly rather on the above-the-line deduction, which we'll take a look at. So I've added the insurance. So insurance right here, again, if I've accounted for it properly and it's business-related, ordinary and necessary type insurance like liability insurance, for example, it would be here. Note you might have car insurance. We talked about the automobile deduction in a prior presentation, which gets a little bit more complicated because you have to choose as to whether you're going to be using the direct method or the percentage method oftentimes and the insurance would be included in something if you're using the direct method. So you can go back there if you want to take a look at the deduction related to the automobile in more detail. Note that if you're looking at the bookkeeping or an income statement provided from a client to you, then you have the question oftentimes if they just have one line item on their income statement that says insurance, then you're going to have to ask and say, well, what is this insurance? Is this business insurance possibly or is it going to be insurance for something else? Do we need to break out the car insurance so that I can then determine whether or not the car insurance should be deductible or not? So that's often kind of a bookkeeping issue. If there's just one line item for insurance, you might have to break that out to make sure that they are ordinary and necessary insurance deductions and not personal insurance and that you've broken out the car insurance properly. So it's just from a logistical standpoint that is important. Now then we have the health insurance for ourselves. Now remember if you had health insurance for the employees, you would expect that to be an ordinary and necessary type of business because you're basically paying the employees in that format. But what about our own self health insurance? Because remember, we're not employees of ourselves in that we don't issue ourselves a W2. But remember that we are employees in a sense because the net income here is being subject to the self employment tax, which as we saw in a prior presentation is basically the payroll taxes both employee and employee are a portion of it. So if we were in a situation where we were an employee of a corporation, they would get a deduction for the health insurance. So you would think that we should get a similar kind of benefit. So for example, in other words, if I was like a corporation with a separate legal entity, then I might have to pay myself in that situation because I would have to issue myself basically a W2 income because the corporation is a separate legal entity and then the corporation would get the deduction for health insurance if that's going to be a deduction. If you're going to treat me like an employee of myself by subjecting me to self employment tax, which is similar to employee and employer payroll taxes, you should think I should get a benefit for my own health insurance. Okay, so you generally do, but it's not going to be here on the schedule C and it could be you want to look at limitations to it as well. Because for example, if you have access to health insurance through another job, so say you have your schedule C income and you have W2 income, then you might have access to the health insurance through as an employee or you might have a spouse that has access to the health insurance. And generally the IRS kind of likes people to be taking advantage of the health insurance policy from an employee or employee kind of situation. So you want to make sure if you have any restrictions there. But if you don't have any health insurance available to you through other means, then you think you may be able to deduct an above the line deduction for the health insurance. So that's going to be over here. So we're going to say health insurance page number two schedule one. So we have it here for the health insurance. Line 17 let's jump to the data input. I'm going to say health insurance and let's say it was 7000 let's say on the health insurance and I pull that on over. And there it is. So that's going to be included here if I add that up and then move that on over to the form 1040 then it flows in through to the 1040 as an above the line deduction or just adjustment to income. So there it is right there. Now you might say well why isn't it on the schedule we'll see and there could be a couple of reasons but one one one thing with the health insurance is that usually it can't allow you to go below zero. So if you didn't have income you're going to be limited to how much the insurance can be and if they put it here it would cause like a circle reference. So it's a little bit easier to calculate for that reason is one reason that it's going to that it might be over there. So for example if I brought the income down let's bring our income down on my business income income for the schedule C and let's say that this was let's say this was 100000 and then boom. So now I had 10000 let's make it a little bit higher. Let's make it 115000 and then we'll bring that over. So now it's well if I did that it's going to eliminate. So now I have a loss right. So the loss now I don't have the health insurance that's being it's being picked up on page two. I'm not on page two there it's gone. So then if I go back on over let's make it let's make it 110000 and bring that over. And so now I've got my schedule C where I have exactly zero. Let's make it a little bit higher than let's make this 105. So now I have 5000 of income and you can see in schedule to the I'm not schedule to schedule one page to I've it's limited the the self employed health insurance now. And so here's a worksheet showing the limited amount. So so it's going to be subject to having income basically shouldn't be taking you below the income threshold is the general idea. So when you when you're doing your your taxes then you want to do a couple of things with the health insurance. You want to be thinking OK is the health insurance being included on my my income statement for the for the individual. And if it is then I need to take it out of the schedule C here because I need to possibly deduct it somewhere else. And if there is no health insurance that's being deducted for the individual then the question is well why is that is that because they're being covered for health insurance in some other way through through another like a W2 job or something like that or spouses job or do they have a self employment health insurance that possibly could be a deductible that's not on the income statement wouldn't be on the schedule C but possibly an above the line deduction. So you want to kind of keep that in mind. That's always a question you want to be thinking and make sure you've got straight with regards to the health insurance of a taxpayer that has a schedule C business. All right. So now let's look at the payroll. So notice over here the payroll is another one of those items where you have to be thinking am I just going to assume that payroll is done correctly. And my job is just to do the data input into the schedule C with a payroll that is properly formatted or are you going to take on the bookkeeping of actually helping them process the payroll kind of situation. Remembering that payroll can be quite complex because you got to deal with the quarterly taxes and the withholdings and all that kind of stuff as well. You might want to be working with a bookkeeper as a tax preparer and or a payroll professional to help clients out with and be working in a network type of situation. If you're just doing the data input for the payroll you may still want to do a double check on the payroll items because notice that the wages here which aren't going to be including the wages of the owner because they're going to be paying self employment tax. So remember on the net income. So this is a deduction that we paid to employees not contractors but employees that we have here. And we also have reporting the the the taxpayer would also have to have reported generally 941s on a quarterly basis reporting the self employment tax social security Medicare and federal income tax that was withheld. As well as a form 940 at the end of the year for for FUTA federal unemployment tax and they would they would have the W2s and the W3 which which would summarize the payroll that has been paid. So you would think that you would want to look at those forms that have been given to the government and see if they match the deduction that we have here because if they don't match that could be like a red flag you would think. Because the IRS has everything to to see that the fact that those two things don't match. The other thing that you might want to kind of just keep in mind people always get messed up on payroll is the amount that should be on wages versus the amount that should be payroll taxes. Sometimes people include those two things on one line item. It's more clear if you break those two things out into two separate line items for the for the wages and the payroll taxes because that's you know that's how often it's going to be formatted. And the payroll taxes though do not include the the employee taxes because the employee taxes were withheld from their wages and therefore therefore those are actually their taxes. The amount of taxes that we had to pay over and above the the taxpayer had to pay the employees over and above Social Security and Medicare and some food for example possibly state taxes. Those are the taxes that should be broken out over here. So you might want to get the W3 of the 941s and just double check that these numbers line up as just a is just a standard kind of process to give a verification that everything's everything's lined up appropriately.


Republicans claim they love America. We love America. We love America. I have faith in America. I believe in America. I love our country. But they sure don't seem to like the American people. If you're not happy here, then you can leave. They consistently oppose reforms that a majority of Americans believe would make their lives better. Like raising the minimum wage, paid family leave, and student debt relief. And these supposedly America-loving Republicans also seem to hate American cities, which is where 80% of Americans live. Crime-infested rat holes. Disgusting. They're a disaster. I can't comprehend how people live there. So they must love rural America, right? Uh, not so much. Republicans have historically tried to block Medicaid expansion and cut its funding, which rural Americans have especially benefited from. They've sided with big ag over independent farmers, and they're continually trying to cut food stamps, which rural Americans depend on even more than those in cities. So maybe it's the land itself they love. Except that while in office, Donald Trump ruled back more than a hundred environmental regulations, making it easier to pollute America's air, water, and land. Addie opened about two million acres of federally protected and culturally significant land to oil drilling. So what's left? I know. The brave men and women who defend this country. I'm really grasping at straws here. Sadly, Republicans are increasingly rejecting America's core principles. They're attacking freedom of speech with book bans. The attempted banning of books here in America. They're attacking freedom of assembly. With laws restricting protests. And they're rejecting the separation of church and state. We should be Christian nationalists. And I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk. Put on the full armor of God. Let's pray together, may we? Republicans are even shunning democracy itself, denying election results, passing laws that make it harder to vote, and kicking out legitimately elected lawmakers they disagree with. It's time to stop letting Republicans claim the mantle of patriotism without actually being patriots. Patriotism means loving freedom. The freedom to make your own health care choices. The freedom to choose who and how you love. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to unionize. We are still here and we will never quit. Patriotism also means wanting Americans to be free from the fear of gun violence and free from crushing student debt. Above all, patriotism involves strengthening our democracy. True patriots don't put loyalty to their political party above their love of America. True patriots don't support an attempted coup. Now is the time for the rest of us to reclaim patriotism and affirm its true meaning.


Live from Las Vegas, Nevada. Extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering IBM Edge 2015, brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to Las Vegas. Stu Minim and I are here to wrap up. It's been a good show, Stu. Two days, nonstop. I think, I don't know if we broke any records, but boy, we came close.  We had, I mean, all the topics, I always love, you look at the keynote and you look at theCUBE and we get to dig in with those guys, get them past the scripts that they're doing on stage, had a lot of great business partners on, and the customers. I mean, I always love, Dave, when you founded Wikibon, it was allowing IT practitioners to share with their peers. So when we can come out here and talk to, I mean, we had Walmart on. We had Centerpoint Energy talked about how they're doing a terabyte of data per day and had a genomics company talking about how they have a terabyte of data per patient. I mean, massive amounts of data, middleware, power, Z. It was a cool show. I mean, fellow, all the GMs, a ton of customers. The line of the week that I heard was, gentlemen from Walmart quoting Sam Walton, we turned inventory into information. Very powerful, and you go back to the late 1980s, early 1990s, it was Walmart talking about putting beer next to diapers, right? Data-driven, way back then. Yeah, so it's funny, Dave. I've been having this debate with friends of mine lately and said, okay, which one's more open? VMware or Microsoft? And after it came out of this week, it's like, wow, what's more open? IBM. The mainframe, or x86, I mean. Yeah, it's so true. You know, it's kind of hilarious. Docker, right? Linux, quarter of the workloads are Linux on Z. If John Furrier was here, he's down the road, his quote from yesterday, we talked about it in the wrap-up, was that IBM's doing Linux like it's never been done before. So it's like, Linux on Z, Linux on power, we've got open power, so there's so much going on there with the Linux space that it really is transformed the industry. So let's talk about the different lines of business that were represented here. Edge has been historically a storage show. This year it's clearly broadened. Z, power, middleware, we heard from Marie Week, and of course, storage, at Jamie Thomas on, she's driving the software-defined agenda. And essentially what they've done is they've taken the piece parts, you know, Tivoli's in there and they've extracted XIV, they're driving a software-led infrastructure agenda. The parts are coming together, right? There's still a lot of work that has to be done to integrate those piece parts and deliver on that full software-defined vision, but that's where the investments are going. Very clearly combined that with Flash, IBM's talking about how they're number one in units and terabytes, not number one in revenue, okay? They didn't say it, Gartner said it, but that says to me, Stu, there's a lot of upside there because if you're leading in volume and you know IBM is pricing profitably, so that says to me that that's a good business model for IBM. Dave, absolutely. Talk to some of the analysts that are here for the sessions and you know, Jamie Thomas getting good reception from what's happening there. I like what I'm seeing with IBM is how they're tying these businesses together. Some of the consolidation of shows, it was like straight scratching on our head, I don't understand how some pieces, but it was real clear today, you know, how power, you know, Z storage and the middleware all fit together and talk about like how analytics is driving storage. I mean, one of the biggest workloads that we've looked at the last couple of years and IBM has a great story on the analytics side and is to pulling more and more storage into that.   So power was interesting and I mean, I was, I have to say, I was a skeptic when IBM jettisoned its x86 business. Floor in particular was concerned. Power, I thought was going to struggle to attract people but what I missed was the desire to have an alternative to Intel. Number one, number two, the potential for innovation with an open ecosystem. I don't know how I missed that. But yeah, I mean Dave, you know, we've been saying for years, it was always AMD is the natural alternative but in, you know, IBM's a big partner with IBM. So, I guess what I missed was IBM's track record and open source and they're using the playbook.  I mean, it works. Their web sphere playbook applied to Bluemix, the soft layer acquisition with regard to what's happening in cloud.  So, Jenny's making some big bets, IBM's making some big bets, they've reorganized, aligning Watson, didn't hear a ton about Watson this week but it's another secret. So Dave, I got a question for you. So we've spent a lot of time talking about kind of the marginal economics and the shift of services to software. When I think back to when IBM first got into Linux, it was open source and, you know, Linux and everything is going to drive more services. The question I have is, is IBM doing enough to pivot to be able to handle, you know, put together the solutions, have it be baked in the software rather than just driving more services? I think that's a great question and I think it's an open question. I think IBM, I think about this a lot and I say I go back and forth because in the one hand I'm saying, okay, IBM's such a huge services led organization. Complexity of product has never slowed IBM down because you got to integrate it with services. I think the answer is to the extent that IBM can develop products, whether it's software defined or other, you know, products like Watson, analytics, Watson as a service, analytics as a service, to the extent that they can develop those solutions that will scale, I think services remains a strategic advantage for IBM. Here's why. I think their messaging is right on. Customers are trying to transform into the digital economy. Every retail company has an Amazon war room. Every healthcare company is spending like crazy to try to, you know, improve the mess that is the healthcare industry. Government, you know, we know has mandates and are driving financial services has always been on the forefront of technology change and this is no different. And so IBM is the right messages. It's complicated stuff and IBM can come, still come in with services with products that are more suited for that digital world. And so that's where I think they've got a winning formula with that regard. I was really concerned about what you're talking about. The marginal economics of services are, you know, negative at scale. But it's still a very sticky business.  And I think has unique capabilities globally and by industry. Yeah, and I mean Dave, like all the companies we're talking about, it's a shift of where the focus is.  They're moving up the stack, they're in the analytics, they're helping with, you know, they build an open ecosystem to kind of be the foundation and they can move their services up to do line of business things and, you know, helping more strategic areas. Yeah, like I said, I think IBM is competitive with those companies that I just mentioned who are world-class, you know, innovators and leaders in their particular spaces and their, you know, Accenture's not going away. They're adjusting to the market shifts. I like IBM services business better than, I like it better than CSCs, I like it better than HPs. I mean, CSCs may be an unfair comparison but I still like IBM's better. I like it better than HP's, you know, EMC really not a services company.  So for the big whales, IBM's got a competitive service business that is a, I think it remains an advantage to the extent that they can show customers that they can lead them on the journey. Kind of circling back to Edge, mainframe cycle, good news for IBM. You know, mainframe R&D cycles take a long time. It's not, you know, a 12 month cycle, the Z13 announcement in January. People will buy this stuff site on scene that just kicking into that cycle. I would predict that IBM is going to have a very, very strong end to 2015. I think that momentum carries into 2016. Question is, do the other parts of the business, sort of have they bottomed, you know, IBM's talking about 2% growth in storage in constant currency terms. It's hard to get excited about 2% growth in constant currency when, you know, Amazon's growing and how much, what's the Amazon's numbers looking like? Oh, it's, you know, over 40%. 40% growth, you're talking about potentially a $6 billion business and a 17% operating profit. That's pretty good. And so that's what's exciting me from an industry growth standpoint. I think that what, whether it's IBM, you know, HP, EMC, I put Cisco in this category. You know, Oracle. Oracle, you know, same thing. They've got to, you know, stabilize the managed decline business and get the new stuff pumping, invest in that enough so that it can be a growth engine. Now, here's the thing about these companies. They're very large and they know a 2%, why is IBM excited about 2% growth? The reason they're excited about 2% growth is because if they move the top line a little bit, it trickles right down to the bottom line and throws off free cash flow and allows them to invest and grow and acquire companies and, you know, invest in organic R&D. And you're seeing, it's interesting. You're seeing, at edge, you're seeing some interesting ecosystem partners. Talk to Mike Kuhn, you know, off camera. He's loving these little ecosystem partners.  Small little technology companies could be tuck-ins for IBM. Yeah, and Dave, you bring up a great point.  When I first heard the word co-opetition, you know, IBM was the one that was super glued to that. And IBM really knows how to build ecosystems and I really love the transformation on the open side. You know, IBM has great credibility and open source. You know, we all go back to that kind of billion dollars in Linux, but as, you know, we have the CUBE tour. I kind of talk about the open source, you know, tour that we're doing as part of this. Next week, I'm going to be at OpenStack. IBM's going to have a huge presence there. Going to be, you and I are going to be at Red Hat Summit back in Boston in about a month. And of course, another, you know, big IBM partner there. There's so much, you know, growth in the open source piece. And, you know, everywhere you go, IBM's part of that. Cloud Foundry Summit was going on in San Francisco. Angel Diaz and his team have a huge presence. Big piece of what BlueMix is doing, tied to Cloud Foundry. So, you know, really impressive to see IBM showing, you know, industry leadership in that space. All right, Stu, I think we're a wrap. Good job. This is a hedge 2015. Matthew, thanks a lot. Andrew, great job. Sam, Mick, ingested back in Dallas. Dave, Sam had his first live segment on theCUBE. Sam, live segment of theCUBE, did a great job. John, Kristen, Bert, really appreciate the help and social media. Yeah, Floyer. John Furrier yesterday. Furrier, I mean, Floyer was on as well today. We had another crew over at Informatica World. Jeff Frick, George Gilbert was there. So, pick your channel. We love Edge, you know, fourth year. Great show. That's a wrap. Thanks for watching, everybody. Next week, we're at another two-show week. IBM Vision down in Orlando, former, you know, the BI show, analytics, compliance, GRC, financial management, sales management, sales compensation management, kind of an interesting small little group down in Orlando. And of course, you're in Vancouver, OpenStack Summit. Yeah, Furrier and I will be there, exciting stuff. All right, thanks for watching, everybody. This is theCUBE. This is a wrap from IBM Edge 2015. We'll see you next time.