Now we're back right here with the ballot 2023, it's a great Wednesday morning, this is some people and to orders, you probably might not say it's great. However, on Saturday the 25th of February, millions of Nigerians tripped out to elect the next president and national assembly members. Earlier this morning the presidential candidate of the old Progressive Congress, APC, has been declared the winner of the just concluded elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission. We'll be discussing, you know, the alleged inconsistencies that are called priority elections on the show this morning. My name is Messi Ibupo and welcome too much. And indeed my name is Kofi Bartels, it's great to be here with you at beautiful, beautiful morning and of course we won't waste time at all to inform you that the, of course the old Progressive Congress, Bola Metinwu has been declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission, the national returning officer of INAIC right there in Abuja, who is also incidentally the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INAIC, Professor Mamudyakubu announcing that result. And of course it's signalling renewed hope for Nigeria and of course a new dawn for the country if you want to look at the fact that this is the first, a new president and it's not going to be a returning officer or returning president, then of course you know that this is a new time. After two to three hours ago, for those who are still awake, I have to close my eyes a bit because I couldn't keep up with what they were doing there at INAIC, I mean they were just counting their thing and we were just waiting. But of course Bola Metinwu declared winner, former governor of Lagos State, he polled 8,794,726 votes to win the 2023 presidential election. All right, and of course the other Satiko worker came in second with, okay, Obie Pitobi, the candidate of Labour Party coming in third. Apart from Tinbu, Atikui and Obie, other candidates that were on the ballot included the Rebecca Chiku of the ADC, the AACs, Omoe Ureshiore, Kola Biola of the People's Redemption Party, Adewole Adebayo of the Social Democratic Party. That one, we didn't know where he was again because I think at some point he began to make me laugh. Yeah, to call for people to, the candidates Atikui and Obie to give Bola Metinwu a call and congratulate him. So I think he and the ACP candidate may have aligned with the APC candidate, which is his right. Malik Adoibbrahim of the Young Progressive Party, Christopher Imumelen of Accord Party, Professor Peter Umiade of the All Progressive Grants Alliance and Yusuf Maman Dan Thali of the Allied People's Movement. There are lists of other people out there that we wouldn't want to go into. Maybe as time goes on we will look at that. The last one, the last stage to bring the results in, this morning actually was River State. If you want to talk about River State, we won't go. I'm a journalist, we are all journalists, and most times we just report what we see. And I can report that what happened in River State was pure daylight robbery. Coffee, you know. I saw you. It was daylight robbery. I saw your Twitter. I would say Twitter, but I also saw your post on Facebook. I saw all of that. I saw the drama surrounding the officer. I saw everything that I saw. She's talking about the Labour Party's state agent, who instead is the chairman of the Labour Party in River State. And basically what happened in River State? Because River State in 2019 also was the last state to send in its result. So there's a wonder why River State, which is just in the southern part of the country, not far from Lagos, will send its result in before other states. Even Kanu State that has more voters and is up north. Have you been to Kanu before? Have you been to Kanu before? But the reason I'm asking if you've been to Kanu before, sorry, is that for you to move from one local government to another, even by road, okay? It's like you're travelling to another country. So, I mean, which would be the crux of our conversation? And that says as to whether people really needed to be available, you know, travel. Because originally the conversation that we have had over time with the electoral act and what have you and INEC, was that results will be transmitted from the polling unit. So as people are casting their votes, the result will be, you know, uploaded. So I really don't know how to explain all that had happened. And so when you bring the question of distance and what have you, are we even supposed to be talking about the distance? Is it that we have to travel to be... Let me just quickly, quickly before bringing to the call. That's what we're talking about, you know. Let me quickly bring into the call. Before I do that, just to give, because if I don't give in detail of this thing I'm saying, it might not be sit well with our viewers. But what I said in the river safe was daylight trauma.  He told me that it was daylight trauma because when we announced the result for the remaining local government area, that was the last local government area, and I think it took them three days to bring the results. Now, the INEC state coalition center is in Port Hacott. This is OBIAPO local government area, which is still in Port Hacott. It took three days for the results from a local government area in Port Hacott to arrive in Port Hacott. Just like it took about three days for the ABUJA result to arrive in ABUJA. The reporters I reported there told me that they didn't know the whereabouts of the local government coalition officer. He was nowhere to be found. Even the political parties who tried to track him down after the voting on Saturday and were chased away by my thugs, political thugs who whisked away the INEC officials, they didn't know where he was. Now, if you're doing the four levels of coalition that the INEC chairman talked about, local government level, state level, national level, at each level of coalition, there should be a party agent. If they have to raise objections, they raise objections. And of course, even from the polling unit level, they are allowed to recount the vote once, the ballot paper once, another time, recount for any party that has issues with the result. Now, the man, this Professor Cleave is his name, arrived the INEC state coalition center in a tinted vehicle with no number plate. And our reporter says that he feels the belief that that is a government vehicle. He was also with a company of heavily armed police escorts and DSS details. Now, from our reporter in Puhakot, they say that INEC never gave the man such heavy escorts. He was also accompanied by, I'm sorry, he was also accompanied by the government House press call who followed him into the building, the premises yesterday night. Now, the state coalition officer in the river state had to say he wasn't going to announce any result anymore because of threats to his life. And he made the resident electoral commissioner in the river state come out to address the press there at the state coalition center to tell them that he, the state coalition officer, is not in charge of how the results are written there. He's only there to tell you the results. That was only when... Sorry, let me just make this passing information. That was when the state coalition officer now agreed to come continue because he made it the point to say, see, I'm not in charge of what results are written. I'm only in charge of how the election is conducted. I'm only in charge of, you know, receiving the results and announcing what we had. We call it. He even had to edit his Facebook post about four times to say, may I know day or a hair so that people will stop threatening him now. He also made sure that the local government coalition officer who came in with those results which turned the votes in river state in favor of the APC, he made sure that he said he agreed that he was responsible for those results and that those results, if anything happens, he should be held accountable, you know. So these are some of the things going on in river state. And my reporter said, as far as the results were announced, PDP had about 360-something votes in the entire Obia political government area. He told me yesterday that when that was announced, that everybody in the hall laughed, started laughing. That even the state coalition chairman started laughing. It was laughing because it is impossible from what they saw on the field on Saturday messy for the PDP to have 306-8 votes in the presidential elections river state. So the reporter concluded based on the preponderance of evidence before them that it was daylight robbery. But this is the same result that Professor Bamudia Kubu has accepted and said there is nothing he can do about it. In other words, he says his hands are tied. Kofi, which is the crux of the conversation? Which is the reason why you have a lot of people who are protesting? And at the end of the day, the conversation is if you have the electoral act, which stipulates how elections should be conducted and the constitution, the big question here is the 2023 elections, whether conducted in accordance with the 2022 electoral act as amended and the constitution, did we follow the law to the latter? There's been a lot of complaints. These are not just mere speculations, but you have evidence to all of this fact. I mean, if you look at the polls of the people and you go out there to fill the polls of the people, because it's mostly the people. So the fact that whether the results for reverse state is very close to the FCT and all of that, should we even be talking about that because what was the mode of transmitting the results from the elections? It was supposed to be from the polling unit, but the reports across almost every part of the Federation is that results were not uploaded. And when you wake up and say you couldn't find the electoral, I mean the agent at the time for polling unit for how many days and all of a sudden he resurfaced but this results uploaded. It was very explicit. It was really explicit. I mean, there's a lot of evidence and conversation to that. It's not even rocket science. It wasn't written in Swahili. I'm sure that the electoral act was not written in Swahili. But this is when we joined Tinde Kolauli, a legal practitioner to share his thoughts on the entire electoral process. The fact that the former governor of Liga State Shuadri Bola, Tundebou has been declared the winner by the Empire, that's Einig. Tunde Kolauli, it's good to have you join us this morning. It's a beautiful Wednesday morning and it's the festive match. Good morning. Tunde, it's good to have you join us this morning. It's a very festive match. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. I quite didn't get to you but that's okay. Let's head straight to the conversation. Really, how do you feel with the declaration of Ashwaju Bola Atma Tundebou who was the, or who was, you know, the presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress? He was declared just a why men slept as the winner of this elections. How are you reacting to the results of Ashwaju Bola Atma Tundebou? How are you? Yes, please, if you can hear me. Well, any disclaimers that would have seen it coming, all the structures, the machinery of states and all those things that makes people want to be less in Nigeria, when it's stable. It's part of the APCs at the center. It's the ruling party, the party at the federal level. It also has its internal governance behind it. Furthermore, most times, people only need their own money to fight and win in Lecce in Nigeria. It is the safety resources that are deployed in what are left and right.  But notwithstanding that we should give credit to him, to the extent that he is a massive politician, he is also a man, he's very good in strategy and tactics. Furthermore, the position that we are already in the game scene was one, just the only look at the legal parties is not a poetic party. It's a party that was originally co-posed together by young people of Nigeria as a kind of demonstration of the anger and displeasure with the Nigeria state and out of my town, the state is in their money. The PPP has an internal scene, a kind of internal war that was ravaged in their structure until the very last minute of the election to start it. I suspect that all these things are for the world to be able for the world to be able to make a new book. But in that case, we must be alive, we must be low. Now this election has the two devices. It has polarized the country or divided those 50 countries into three parts. Even though evenly, you have the south-western now and it's only you have the south-western now and then you also have the north and then the south-western. It's been a highly penalizing election. If I could be said that Nigeria is not like a broken egg. That's what we all are missing. We're going to put the eggs back together. We require a lot of tasks, a lot of wisdom and a lot of diplomacy. But it is in our collective interest that the country is put together the way it should be. Anybody watching what is happening in Ukraine today will not wish for view that you and others should bring down in Nigeria. So as loyal as to you believe in the deep process of the law, whoever feels a bit about it can make sure about the APT in one year. So in the interest of peace approach the court for the capital of the law, let's hear the anger and grievances and whatever decision that the court arrives at the end of the day, we should abide by each. That is our injunction to them. For INAIC, I think INAIC has done a very good job and we can also give INAIC too much in the sense that I can say that in your situation of the electronic election day until the very last minute INAIC was still going cap in hand to beg the Central Bank of Nigeria to release funds for her to be able to conduct the elections. Furthermore, there was a scarcity of fuel. Secondly, some of the machinery is really designed to do that or whatever they call it that's what we saw it. It didn't function optimally that we saw it functionally because it could be that INAIC never had any profit from time to train those who would use those gadgets and devices to conduct the elections. Then another issue that this election has raised is divisors. What the material who says is that the paper was that might be conducted with the attack and that is the technology that we are going to rely more on. As soon as the elections are conducted votes are cast and then recorded the driver will use to transmit the election results to the INAIC further in the future and then automatically be calculating and collecting and transmitting those results. But you know why but you see that has failed all very well fully. So what has happened we change the use of drivers in our city, INAIC and then it used as a machinery could it be that is the cost of the large landmines that INAIC have to cover could it be the lack of money could it be lack of fuel could it be the inability of the service provider the empties of these walls the air cares and then the glow truck comes that failed the INAIC that you know gets it as big as mine and the situation of both grass and lake will begin to get people what's really happening during this election. But the trick of the matter is actually whatever you do is whatever politicians, whatever shop promoters can solve this election we are things that we forget and assert we were certain we forget the interest which not also has happened. This is in Condosa Investments in 1999 and then there are almost 30 years but in now it should be 30 years. It should be coming the masters of the election. But again, Nigerian politicians are incorrigible elements as soon as you take one step to beat them against another they would take 10, 20 steps and make sure that whatever plan to put in place doesn't work I'm beginning to fear that we might not know if there's an election in Nigeria again when there's no going time to come. Your attention to the statement of the report released by the EU Observer Group who came to cover the election it was a damning report total opposite of this is what was put out by the EU and the EU but we'll leave the EU and the EU because if they knew any better Africa wouldn't be where it is so let's see those reports for now but the EU mission election observation mission to Nigeria released its first preliminary statement they said the election was held on shadow but lack of transparency and operational failures reduced trust in the process to challenge the right of many to vote if you read the details it's more damning than what even this one I read said and is Bola Mettinbu can he claim to be the legitimate president of Nigeria looking at what these observers are saying that people had their right to vote challenged and I mean there was lack of transparency and operational failures as well I didn't quite get that can you summarize it? looking at the report the first preliminary report put out by the EU mission to Nigeria which said that the elections held on shadow but lack of transparency and operational failures reduced trust in the process and challenged the right to vote is what they're saying and they criticize the stages of the election up until the tabulation of results basically saying that people could not express their will and that election cannot be said to be valid that's basically what they're saying so looking at this report by the EU which has put a big question mark on the results of the presidential election can the winner as declared by Anik can he say he's legitimately the president of Nigeria your lawyer so tell us what you think about this and to a legitimacy now based on the I haven't said I have not already pulled me up of the EU but the preliminary report that is not the elimination of the three things and war as well and also says that on this by and large more than there are many opportunities of choice but the truth of the matter is that I'm not to enamble that Adelaide wants to kind of play too much premium on whatever any of these elections of that day most of them are diplomats presented their respective countries and others and here I now know that diplomats Adelaide will come out to talk in a very short time and speak what is called a diplomacy when they tell you the truth is they can be sure that you attended the Black Great who attended towards more Black than the great like I said further money more importantly too most of these elections are there in the city capital you are there the local government they are left with gold in Italy because of insidious so if you say the case like Lagos and then and then in Osaka and you begin to use that to rationalize you begin to make concept and to reach conclusions with regards to modern local government that we have in the country and modern things thousands and tens of thousands let's talk about the call by the opposition party we have seen the Labour Party, the PDP the NMPP calling for the cancellation of this result because it was not conducted in accordance with the law Kola Wale can you hear me well we're just hoping that we have a reconnection with Tunde Kola Wale and then we'll continue with our thoughts but some of the developments from the 2023 election presidential and national assembly but mostly is that a lot of persons are calling for not just those in the opposition party I mean you have the PDP, you have the Labour Party you have the NMPP but a lot of Nigerians have taken out some improtest asking that these elections be cancelled and this call was made while the National Collision Centre was very very open active putting out the results has been brought out by different starter but we will continue to have this conversation despite the outcome because there's several instances I mean a lot of consents that have been raised and people say that if you have the electoral act there's also another part of this conversation Kofi where we haven't talked about if you remember Mike he made reference to whoever becomes elected, part of the electoral act that you have to meet you know to a third of it saying you have to have 25% in 24 states I'm told we have to recall it back on the line so we'll go back to him can you hear us please Kola Wale can you hear us I'm hearing you alright to the police can you hear us because we would like to just listen to the acceptance speech of the President-elect of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Shiwaju Bola Ahmed of the All Progressive Congress when we come back we'll talk some more with you please stay they hear us they hear you first let me repeat that I hear you loud and clear loud and clear what do I say than clear whatever the cops we're going to charge the path together we're going to embark on this journey together united no one is too small to be creative it shall allow when we walk together we pay attention on the funded attention to your education be creative credit will be available 4 years court will be 4 years court cannot be to be able to upgrade your slumber position be creative no more selling of hand out false the most right and grateful the nation I know we are in pains and believe me you will see the reward of your election this is a serious mandate I hereby accept it to serve you be your servant and not be your leader to work with you and make Nigeria a great country take this opportunity or so again to appeal to my fellow contestants let us team up together it is the only nation we have it is one country and we must build together we work together to put broken pieces together we must work for the unity happiness and harmony we must not act like that orchestra that has no direction of a conductor we we and we have a elected a conductor named president elect let's collaborate to create a symphony that we made the rhythm of music and prosperity and history for our country we have what it takes we have what is needed knowledge creativity the mind determination we are the same country performing wonders in other countries we can do it here I promise I work with you to make Nigeria the destination of returning home to contribute to the development and that's the speech of the president elect of the all progressive congress with his wife with his wife president elect of the federal of Nigeria with his wife if you can still hear us before we get to that speech and you know get your thoughts on it really I like you to quickly respond to the thoughts of Mr. President President Mohammed asked to the he said that the election that produced to Nibwa's president is flawed and he's also encouraged the parties those who are involved the PDP the Liberal Party and other parties you know to support and challenge the process as long as they have the as long as they have the evidence can you put my right down again so I like you to share your thoughts on Mr. President's position he's admitted that the process that brought the president elect to Nibwa is flawed and he's also encouraged those in the opposition to approach the court to seek and challenge the process as long as they have the evidence the speech of Mr. President elect is a beautiful word that's not what I'm asking I'm asking you to react to the thoughts of the president who's very incumbent president Mohammed I'm saying before we get to the speech of the president elect let's talk about the thoughts of Mr. President where he communicated that via his aid and he's accepted that the process that produced the president elect is flawed he's encouraged the PDP the Liberal Party and others to approach the court of law and challenge the irregularities and the shortcomings of this election the lack of transparency I know you've been wearing what you could expect from President Bawali I guess you're right this is what we've been saying this morning that there is no abiding PDP and no other issues not in quality to resort to self-help whoever has his facts and figures certain things have not been done properly but there is no compliance with the electoral with the constitution and then I make regulations they should go to court and then the election whatever project the presidential tribunal comes out with the government in power will have no option other than to improve the position of the presidential tribunal but because otherwise and I must say we require to praise President Bawali for what we are saying with this election to the person when on a list why not in any old bad actions any apparently old bad actions on the part of the president to influence the outcome of the election say for example someone who defeated the president in his own state of casino in the past that wouldn't have happened also look at giving the man who won the presidency in Lagos in the past that wouldn't have been possible and also look at what's happening in Cardinal where as far as the important with the leader Cardinal to the FPC it was badly one of those places without the transparency without the commitment of the president to at least a substantially free election those things that we have seen some of these places that I have mentioned would have been very critical the president is a good guy so we call it those who are disagreeing with the top of this election we've lost to Nicola Walea I was going to go on to ask him what a bulletin with presidency will be like and what he should expect I mean the presidential candidate of the Uprogressive Congress President-elect of Nigeria gave some mixed interesting points and I think commendable points in his speech he said that he's profoundly humbled that he's been elected to serve as the 16th president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria where we can just roll that aside and he says it's a shining moment in the life of any man in affirmation of a democratic experience from my heart I say thank you I forget he said this has been a lifelong dream to be the president of Nigeria I think the positive from this is that he's shown that if you have a dream you can achieve it if you want to be the president you can get there how? how you're asking me it depends on you he says something very interesting he says whether you are batified whether you are articulated whether you are obedient or conquistier or have any other political affiliation you voted for a better, more hopeful nation I thank you for your participation and dedication to our democracy so he's even reaching out thanking obedience he's thanking articulated thanking conquistiers and indeed his base the batified which is a quite hard one he's making some promises he says you decided to place your trust in the democratic vision of a Nigeria founded on shared prosperity and one nurtured by the ideals of justice, peace, and tolerance he says this is a promise he made renewed hope has dawned in Nigeria a message what he said quite interesting our thoughts but he also had some words for the electoral empire, INEC, I think also the way of bringing credibility to the process through this speech he says we commend INEC for running a free and fair election he says the lapses, he analogies that there were some lapses that did occur were relatively few in number and were immaterial to the final outcome you see these are certain speeches that the politicians make most times they used to give legitimacy to their victory you know doesn't do anything to take away that they won but we have to Nikola Oli back of the line I mean Nikola Oli if you're there let's look at the speech of the winner, the third winner of the election he said that he's reaching out to those who voted for his opponents and thanking them as well, what do you think this means you know for the country moving forward hello Mr. Kola Oli can you hear me please are you hearing me yeah loud and clear, nice to have you back I don't know if you are using B-Vas to call us are you hearing me yes I hope it's not a B-Vas our control is using to reach out to you because then who will be surprised that these situations are happening so I'm saying that second speech of the president-elect as declared this morning by INEC yes, yes, yes, can you hear me sir yes so he's made some statements the first I'd like you to talk about is he's reaching out his thanking BARTIFIEDS that's his supporters but also thanking articulated, obedience Kwa Kwa Sihez and those who voted for other parties what do you think this means for the country moving forward well what I would not say is that kind of adumbration in that the speech of the president-elect in my humble opinion it should be when you are the mother's president you require to begin to make speeches like a statement like a diplomat and then you also have to be very humble and victory so as not to bother in feeling a passion when to be able to fight for a position it's elementary not that only one person in cases and the other people would have to speak their words and lead to fight another day as you are used to when you look at it politically I think it's called the entry and it is written and it's also the kind of speech that one would respect from him furthermore he's beginning to make some promises I hope he's able to work the talk when he gets in there remember that when Kwa Kwa also came in he said to be for everybody and will not be for nobody and we had them we had them to that and not but the performance of the president in so many areas tend to negate the speech that he made when I was this one as the president which is our prayer and hope that that you would be different or that you don't behave or be different from what we have seen because the president he left in the past the gratifying thing about that he as a way gives it to him whether you like it safe or you don't like it and all that at least we have the way of assembling some of the best brain and then put it into task and then the structure that he has put in place in Lagos when you compare Lagos it's still working the Lagos that are assembling the most proactive assembly in Lagos the executive arm of government in Lagos the most proactive executive arm of government in Nigeria you could say this is because they have money to spend but I tell you that they are out of state that also have money to spend who are not performing a legal thing take Riba state for example take Faisal for example take Dessa for example they also have a lot more in their hands but the kind of results you get in those places they are not compared to the land that they also have you can compare to what you are getting so if I see what he is able to assemble the kind of things and same time that he was able to assemble in Lagos when he was governor and which is seen that are working to today Nigeria may be better for it the problem he will have seriously speaking is that the country with due respect to the managers of the country that the country is now legit in debt the country can be set to the bankrupt how he is going to take the country out of debt of debt it will take a miracle to be able to do that of course they also have a security which is leading the country not just in terms of women in terms of life that has been done but also in terms of material resources the quantity of money that we are spending for security to keep the soldiers to provide ammunition to keep them on the fields and to keep them at water here there are so many of them to import machineries, arms and ammunitions all these things are leading the country it is my prayer that we will find solutions to some of these things so that he is able to free some of these resources to be able to provide them with education into health, into infrastructure and into overall development of the country and one other area I think he has to pay attention to is the house of school children on the way to solve that problem we will help shop that all the children that are born in Nigeria whether in Paris, out in Sokoto and Kazina and other we agree have education up to second school level university could be optional but primary school to second school should be not negotiable for all children of Nigeria and could be back to go to university at any time in your life but it will not go at all it is not possible to let it turn out to be some of the best some of the best in Sokoto and some of the best even in Nigeria that you have all over the place we have all these things together trust to be able to get a good result for the country I wish him the best of luck and I congratulate him that is very fantastic of you thank you so much for being part of we do appreciate your thoughts and your time we look forward to have you thank you yes he is still here alright thank you so much we appreciate your time and congratulations to you as well thank you yes indeed alright we have to go, merci it is one of those days where there will be a lot of celebration and of course jubilation in town and we will definitely send our reporters out there to see what the pulse of the people is and what the reaction if what if they report that there is no jubilation then there is on my timeline as early as this morning I saw some boys jubilating they were already taking cigarettes and they were chanting I think we would jubilate more than any other state our CC boy is now president ok I will make my way to the house this morning to see if I can join any party and any of my APC viewers who wants to invite me to eat maybe amala I will be rejected we have to go we need to join the news room in the next 4 minutes thank you so much we will be right back to talk some more and when we return it will be time for us to talk sports and speak with us, good morning


Good morning and welcome back to my House Judiciary Committee. We're going to be looking at two bills. We're going to finish up S184, which is justifiable homicide. And we do have Judge Zone here to testify on that. And then we will be turning to S224 actually relating to juvenile proceedings. So your honor, good morning, welcome. Good morning and I apologize, Tom Zone, Chief Superior Judge. I apologize for not being here earlier. I was in Senate Judiciary this morning. So thank you for your patience and courtesy. That's fine. No, it's always good to see you. Thank you. On S184, the short is we support it. I listened yesterday to Senator Benning and I concurred with his analysis that when he introduced it, I also listened to the discussion that this committee had with respect to it. We do support this. The bill, I believe, as was indicated, simply fixes what was unintended from a prior change to this very statute. And it brings it in line with common law principles and also indicates that it's not intended to change common law to the extent there may be other rights out there as a result of common law. And I would note that Representative LaLonde had a question yesterday. I believe he said, what would be just and necessary? Well, in a case called State v. Wheelock, the Vermont Supreme Court said that, quote, our case law requires that self-defense is just and necessary. When a defendants' belief of imminent peril and of the need to repel that peril with deadly force is reasonable. And so that is how the Supreme Court has seen that, and that's the law in Vermont. And beyond that, I don't have anything further. I would certainly address any questions. Members of the committee, how many? Thank you. Thank you very much. Any questions? Good. Martin, do you have a question? Are you good? I'm good. Eric did provide me some further information. And I think that's one of the cases that he cited, in addition to a 1928 and 1932 case, actually. And I'm hoping to get something on our website that lays that out, just so we have that built into the record. And my concern was whether one could read from the case law that, in essence, we are a standard ground state as opposed to a duty to retreat state, kind of using that as a broad category for each of those. And at least Eric's input was that it doesn't come out and say that we're a duty to retreat state, but certainly the case law would not suggest that one gets the right to stand their ground if there's another less than lethal use of force as an option to avoid a situation. But anyway, I'm hoping to get a little bit more information on just that we have that in the record. And it's our understanding that that's what the justifiable homicide statute means and requires. I suspect you may have also indicated a case called state v. Hatcher, H-A-T-C-H-E-R, 167 Vermont, 338. You might want to take a look at it. Great, thanks. Great, thank you. OK, thank you. Eron, while we have you, do you want to testify on S-224? Sure, I can do that. I told in a meeting yesterday I spoke, and I said that Mr. Paul was going ahead of me, so he was going to make my job easier. I said, as long as he's everything I agreed with, it would just say, whatever it is. We can try that. I don't mind addressing it. This was a bill that we spent quite a bit of time with different justice partners working on before the Senate. I would point out that the one significant area that changes what we're doing in the courts has to do with youthful offender and the factors that the court has to consider. And the factors were changed. The factors were ones that were discussed. And in fact, several of these came directly from input of trial judges who are currently in the juvenile division. We do support the bill as it is currently drafted, I believe. There's another section that talked about what's called the Yazi screening that has to take place. And that's in section 15 on page 21. Previously, there had been an issue about who notified the youth that he or she had to appear for this. And there had been confusion. And so what we said was the best place to have that come from is the court. And so we agreed that we put a change in there to make it clear that it's the court's obligation to notify the youth of that screening to take that step to go forward, because it is a necessary part of the process. And I believe on page 22, section 16, you may be hearing from DCF under the psychosexual that it wanted to add language that said that they wanted the psychosexual only if it was clinically recommended. And I can tell you that we would support that addition also, that we think that's an appropriate addition. But beyond that, we are generally in support with the bill. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any questions? I have one for whoever can answer it or whoever does. What's a psychosexual evaluation? I wonder if our social worker can answer that. I'm happy to, but I judge Zone also probably. It is a specialized evaluation of individuals who have been convicted of or found to have engaged in acts involving sexual activity that is against the law. And so it's not something that is necessary in every case.  Sexual crimes against children it would be given every time, I would assume. I can't think of a case where it's not, and I believe by statute in the criminal division it is required. OK, thank you. OK, thank you. Anything else? Thank you, appreciate it. Thank you very much. OK, Marshall. Morning, good to see you. Morning, can everybody hear me all right? Yes, thank you. All right, I've been moving between microphone and camera setup, so I have to keep asking that. So thank you. As indicated, I'm going to start by agreeing with just about everything that Judge Zone said. And in fact, I think I'll agree with everything he said. We support this bill. This has been a product of a real lot of work, beginning actually really last summer with work in front of Joint Justice Oversight and then throughout the fall in Senate Judiciary. So this is actually a what I would call a bill that came to the legislature in a very complete form. I mean, we had been working with Ledge Council and with the Senate throughout the fall. And so this really reflects a pretty incredible amount of consensus from a pretty diverse group of stakeholders. And so we're not only supporting the bill, but I just wanted to make a point that we are expressing our appreciation for the process and for the extent to which a bunch of people who work on different sides of the same issues have been able to come together and identify a bunch of ways that we can all agree to improve the system. And that's what we believe that this bill does. So I'll say that our office absolutely supports the bill as it's written. We would agree with the change that was discussed at the meeting the other day and that I think we'll be hearing from DCF about that Judge Zone mentioned about including some language in the section on psychosexuals to say that they should only be ordered if they're clinically indicated. That's really important because psychosexual evaluations they're very intrusive and in fact, we have psychologists who when they are asked to perform a psychosexual evaluation will refuse if they do not believe that it's appropriate because they say that it is in fact damaging to even do the evaluation on someone for whom it is not clinically necessary that just simply exposing and asking the questions that they ask is traumatic and causes people lasting damage. And so we think it's important to have the language in there that says if we're gonna be ordering psychosexuals let's make sure that that is only ordered when it's clinically indicated which as the judge said would be in pretty much any case of a child sexual crime but we like to have that language in there that says the clinical indication that this is necessary is important to that order. Other than that, I would say we agree with the bill as written and I can go through and quickly address the points that DCF had made several sort of asks outside of the bill and I can address those quickly. So first I'd like to just point out that those asks came from one memo that is now on this committee's website from last Thursday and that was a memo that DCF had prepared early in this process and you'll see that a number of the things that DCF requested are actually in the bill now. So in that memo, they requested for example, the pause in implementation of raise the age and that's included in the bill. In that memo, they also requested who I've forgotten there was a couple other things that were included but there was a few that are not included and I just wanted to address those because these were issues that were raised in the Senate and we had testified there about why we felt that those asks were inappropriate and I just wanted to sort of reiterate that testimony here. So that would be specifically to start with DCF's proposal to include aggravated domestic assault and wrestle reckless endangerment in the Big 12. We oppose that because for the first offense, aggravated domestic assault, we feel it's just not necessary because every aggravated domestic assault can be charged as an aggravated assault. An aggravated domestic assault is simply an aggravated assault where the victim is a household or family member or current or former romantic partner. Can I just ask a, I'm actually trying to figure out how to follow along with this memo from DCF because I missed some of the earlier testimony on this bill and I'm not readily finding it on the House Judiciary. Paige, was that something they just submitted on the Senate side or did they? No, it was on the House side. Excuse me, I looked it up, it was on the House side submitted on last Thursday and it's called ST-24 Macy Rebel Kidwell. Thank you. I got it. Thank you. Thank you, Marshall. Sorry to interrupt you. No problem. So for that one, excuse me, we would oppose adding aggravated domestic assault because we don't feel that's necessary because every aggravated domestic can also be charged as an aggravated assault, which is already in the Big 12. An aggravated domestic assault is simply an aggravated assault where the victim is a household member, family member or a former or current romantic partner. And so really that one is already included in the Big 12. It's included as aggravated assault. Reckless endangerment, we're very concerned about the idea of adding that to the Big 12. That really has no place on the Big 12. It's completely unlike the other Big 12 offenses. The Big 12 offenses are the most serious felonies in the state of Vermont, it's murder, manslaughter, arson causing death, sexual assault, no consent, which is what we would call rape. So we're talking about very, very high level felonies. Reckless endangerment is not a high level felony. In fact, it's not a felony at all. It's a misdemeanor. And all it means is that someone recklessly, meaning not intentionally put another person at risk. This is something that is charged for things like minor traffic offenses. People get charged with careless and negligent, reckless endangerment for driving in a manner that endangers another person. I've had children charged with reckless endangerment who were, they were cliff jumping at a lake and one kid who was hesitating to jump off the cliff. Another kid pushed that kid off the edge of the cliff. It was certainly dangerous behavior, not good behavior, possibly even warranting a legal intervention, but is that the same as equating that completely reckless unintentional type of conduct with murder, manslaughter, arson causing death, aggravated assault, those types of offenses. It would be wildly disproportionate and wildly incongruous to include reckless endangerment, you know, a misdemeanor that's not even a misdemeanor that requires intent in among the list of the 12 most serious intentional felonies in Vermont. So we would oppose both of those proposals. There's also a proposal to create a system where children who are on youthful offender status can be immediately revoked from youthful offender status if there's additional charges. That proposal we wouldn't support and in fact, we think it's unconstitutional. The idea of holding hearings within 48 hours deny defendants the opportunity to defend themselves. It certainly takes more than 48 hours to muster evidence in your own defense to investigate the evidence that the state puts forward in support of its request. And frankly, it's just unconstitutional to require people to defend themselves in such a short period of time. There's times when it takes me 48 hours just to make contact with my clients. When I'm notified that I have a client who has been arrested, it can take me three days even just to figure out where they are and arrange a phone call at their location and make that phone call happen. So we would certainly not support that. And if that was included in the bill, we would anticipate that being the subject of a lot of litigation. There's also a proposal in that to go backwards and go back to the old youthful offender system which required that children plead guilty in criminal court before they're entitled to youthful offender status. We would see that as a huge step backwards that essentially what we've moved from is we've moved from that system where there's not even an acknowledgement that children might not be guilty of the offense. I mean, just as an initial point, I've represented many, many children who were not guilty of the offenses they were charged with. Just factually, the state was incorrect in their charges. And when we say that you must plead guilty in order to be treated as a child and you're not even going to be given the option of making your case of being treated like a child and then being given the chance to convince the court that you didn't do whatever the state says it is that you did, I think we're moving really dramatically backwards. So we would not support that. And we also think that youthful offender has been a really, really, the changes to youthful offender have been very successful. We have hundreds of petitions being filed every year. We have plenty of evidence that judges are doing a very careful job of determining who gets youthful offender status and who doesn't. About 50% of the youthful offender petitions that are filed are actually granted. So half of those petitions are being withdrawn or rejected presumably because we're looking at kids who do not belong in the system. So we have a system that even though we've seen it increase the number of cases that it is taking in, it hasn't done that by simply accepting everybody. It's really clearly being very careful about who gets youthful offender status and who doesn't. And this would undo all that work. This would put us back to where we were before. Before we had the new system, there was between 11 and 30 youthful offender cases a year. Now we're doing several hundred youthful offender cases a year. And that really is an improvement. We've seen a real lot of success, a real lot of kids who would be subject to the adult system, who would be put on adult probation or even serving adult incarcerated sentences, who instead are finding success in the juvenile system and are able to do it without a record and without by using the sort of rehabilitative functions of the juvenile system while they are still young. And we're seeing kids who are graduating out of that system and being very successful, not committing further offenses, going on to kids who are going on to college who we never would have imagined would have been going on to college had they been going through the adult system, stuff like that. It's really been very powerful. So we would very much oppose going backwards to the old system of criminal pleas. We think that the system as it is has been working really well. Finally, DCF requested something that would require kids have their youthful offender status revoked if they commit a new youthful offender eligible offense. And I think that comes up because there are certainly cases where kids commit a new offense and it's apparent from their new offense that they shouldn't remain on youthful offender status. Our opposition to this is not that we think that every kid who's on youthful offender status should stay on youthful offender status forever. Even if they commit new offenses, it's not that. It's that we don't think it should be automatic. We think it should be an individualized determination. And I'll give you an example of why that is. For example, if you had a kid who went on youthful offender status at 16 years old for, I don't know, let's say a serious offense. Let's say an aggravated assault. So someone who did real serious bodily damage, serious physical injury to another person in the course of an assault. Dangerous behavior, behavior that really needs to be addressed. And let's imagine that person gets youthful offender status and they are being very successful on youthful offender status. They're in treatment and they are, you know, doing everything that everybody would want of them. And then they get charged with negligent operation at age 19 for crashing their car into a guardrail. No other vehicles involved. Accidental, negligent, bad driving, but not reflective of some sort of intentional criminal conduct. That is nonetheless a youthful offender eligible charge. Should we really be taking kids who are in the process of achieving success as youthful offenders and kick them off, kick them out of treatment and kick them out of that process and send them up for adult sentencing. Not because they've done anything that's demonstrated that they are not engaging in treatment or that they are slipping backwards towards committing new offenses or anything like that. But just because they committed another offense that may have been completely reckless and had nothing to do with their prior offense and then no reflection on their progression through treatment, that would just be, I mean, that would be a real travesty of justice. It would be a real shame to see that happening automatically. And that's why we oppose that. And I think, when it comes to all of the things that I've said about youthful offender status and our objections to some of DCF's concerns, some of DCF's proposals, it all sort of lumps into this sort of one framework of individualized determinations. What we're opposed to is making determinations on presumption. We don't wanna see situations where we're saying kids have to be removed from youthful offender status just because they've committed a certain offense or done a certain act without any consideration of their individual circumstances. We're not here trying to say that every kid who gets youthful offender should be on youthful offender forever or that kids should not be removed from youthful offender. We just want those determinations to be made on an individual basis, case by case, because frankly, these youthful offender cases in particular are so idiosyncratic and we see so many different kinds of kids, so many different types of, I mean, even when we're talking about kids who are on supervision and go on to commit new offenses while they're on supervision, that ranges from kids who really are engaging in the type of conduct that should get them kicked off supervision and sent up to the adult court for sentencing, just further criminal conduct. And then it ranges all the way down to kids who are really just at the mercy of their environment and who don't have control over essentially what acts they're taking and what acts they're not. And it would really be inappropriate for us to be kicking kids off youthful offender or punishing them for stuff that is really outside of their control. And that's why we need these individualized determinations because these cases are just so, they're so different.  We don't have run-of-the-mill youthful offender cases the way that we do have, what I would call run-of-the-mill DUI cases or things like that in adult court, fairly typical fact patterns that we see repeated over and over again. In juvenile court, what we see is a million different things, a million different ways in every case is different. And that's why our theme throughout sort of our response to DCF's proposals has been to say, we understand those concerns, but we just don't support making this automatic. We want this to be individualized. Thank you. Actually, three hands, we need them. Tenderos, Selena, Kate and Barbara. I was wondering if you could, thank you, Marshall. This has been all really helpful. And I was wondering if you could could just talk us through, Eric, I think you need to mute. I was wondering if you could, sorry, are you able to, I was wondering, there we go, sorry, bad multi-tasker. I am. I was wondering if you could just talk us through how those more individualized revocations work in current law, like when someone, just what are the factors that can be considered and how is your, thanks. So revocation is, it's pretty broad in terms of the judicial discretion. And it's basically a two-step process. First, the defendant, the kid has to be charged with a violation of their probation, which means there has to be some condition of their probation that they violated, which in the cases we've been discussing, like this, what I've been talking about are cases where kids have actually committed a new offense. And that's always a violation because the first condition of probation is always don't commit any further offenses. Once there's been a violation, then the question is, should the kid's status be revoked? And the, there was actually a case on this and it was my case and I lost it. So I can explain it in great detail. The standard, there is no standard written into law into our statutes for, this is what a court should consider when it revokes. And so the Supreme Court was left to address that question itself. And they did what I didn't want them to do in that case, but it is now the law, which is they said that the standard for revoking youthful offender probation should be the same standard that's used for granting youthful offender probation. And so those questions are essentially, if the person remains on youthful offender probation, will public safety be protected? Will the youth engage in treatment? Are they amenable to treatment? And is treatment available for them? And so those are the three questions that determine whether or not someone gets their youthful offender status revoked or not. And one thing that this bill does that is a change to current law, is this bill sets out criteria that say, what does that public safety problem mean? Because the prior bill just simply said, will public safety be protected if the youth is given youthful offender status? The new language that's in this bill says, will public safety be protected? And when considering public safety, the court shall consider the following factors and then has a list of factors. I only have one screen so I can't tell you exactly which page that's on right now. But so that is a change to this bill that will affect revocations. But probably it won't affect revocations really substantively. Those factors really are the factors that we all sort of agreed. Those are what judges are currently using to make revocation determinations when it comes to public safety. And so I don't, you know, that was all, those are all sort of factors that we all agree is essentially what's happening already. Thank you. That is was extremely helpful. Kate, Barbara and the coach. Thank you. So I'm just getting like used to the language of this bill. And so and hearing your testimony and also looking at the DCF document. So excuse me if my question is like already been answered in some way about just going back to your testimony in terms of, I'm looking at number four of like the document from DCF which is talking about ensure that you take responsibility for the actions that led to the change. You spoke to one of their proposed solutions which was the guilty plea. They offer a second solution which is that the statute be amended to provide that youthful offender cases are filed as sealed and then essentially that they be unsealed. It looks like if they were transferred. I don't know if you have thoughts about that at all. And I also don't, I guess I don't understand how it works currently in terms of sealing and unsealing in this department. So I'm not really sure where that recommendation fits and current, well I'll tell you my answer is I don't understand that recommendation myself and it's not even though that is, I agree in the memo it's not something that our group has discussed in any detail nor my recollection. Has that particular that second proposal been discussed in any committees that I remember? And frankly, and just reading it quickly I'm not quite sure I understand what it amounts to. So I don't actually have an answer for you on that one. I think you'd have to ask TCF. Can you tell me a little bit more about like are youthful offender files or whatever we might call them? Are they currently sealed? Like what's the, how does it work currently? So youthful in order to get youthful offender status the case has to be either eligible for criminal court it has to be eligible for criminal court. And it can either come in because a prosecutor direct filed the case as youthful offender that's very infrequent. I think it happens in Chittenden County sometimes but for the most part really doesn't happen anywhere else if it does happen elsewhere it's single digits number of cases. Most the 90 something percent of youthful offender cases come in because someone is in adult court they are arraigned in adult court and they move for youthful offender status. So the entire first part of their case which happens in adult court is public it is not sealed that takes place in open court. They go through a normal arraignment and then at some point after that their attorney files a motion for youthful offender and the case is transferred down. When it's down in the juvenile court it is confidential but not sealed or and that means that it is available to the parties in the case which in this case would be the child and the state but it's not available to anything else. Not actually sure what value filing it as sealed would have in this case. We file things as sealed in juvenile court only if we don't want the other party to see it. So for example, I've seen things filed as sealed in the juvenile court if we have a document that has particularly sensitive information. Let's say in a child welfare case this would come up more often where I might be representing a child and there might be a document that I need to file with the court but it might have some sensitive information that I don't want one of the parents to know just because of the relationship between the parents and the child I might file that as sealed. In criminal court we use it for things like when we have a defendant who's entitled who we're arguing about whether they're entitled to a public defender that is a I've seen people file that stuff as sealed because they say it's none of the state's business between the court and the individual not between the individual and the state and so they'll file that stuff as sealed though I don't know if courts really actually accept those as sealed files or not. My only point is that I don't quite understand the whole file it as sealed thing because really in juvenile court stuff is only available to the parties anyway because it's already confidential and so I'm just not quite sure what that proposal is trying to achieve by sealing. Thank you. So Marshall you touched on this very, very briefly and it's something that I'm concerned about and I feel like you're in a unique position because you see where your clients are but DCF requests to cause the taking on additional ages in raise the age and where those young people are now. We support that change because frankly the way that we're looking at it the system is overtaxed at the moment and we do not wanna see this be a failure. We do not wanna see raise the age. We don't wanna see 19 year olds be brought into the system when we don't have the resources to support them and then have that turn into essentially a failed justice system which would then result almost certainly in rolling back some of these changes that have been made and so from our perspective it's much more important to get this done right than to get it done fast and we would agree that right now just during the pandemic there has been a real contraction of services available that's not just there's a lot of focus on placement which I think is it's the most visible problem but it's not the biggest problem. It's actually relatively few kids are actually placed in out of home placements. Most of the stuff we do with kids while they are in the home and they receive treatment while they're in the home and everything else. But we're even seeing just finding counseling and treatment for kids is very difficult right now. We have people who are not accepting new patients who are not accepting who are only doing virtual stuff and that can be really hard to engage with kids in particular. So we're looking at it and seeing just that all the resources we depend on placement resources, treatment resources they're all being stressed right now we're having trouble getting access to them and we don't wanna see sort of more stress put on the system right now. DCF did request that the pause be essentially open ended that it be something that's like until the administration decides that the resources are there. We don't support that. We want there to be a timeframe on it. What we have supported is delaying it by one year. We actually, I anticipate that will even be probably we think one year is a good number to put in statute. I don't doubt that there'll be a request for even further delay beyond that because frankly the problem with the resources that the justice system uses right now is pretty profound and it's not just here in Vermont it's all across the country that placements and treatment providers that provide services to adolescents are completely overtaxed and understaffed and I just don't see it as a problem that we're gonna crawl out of very quickly. Marshall, so how many- So we support that. I want it to be clear we support it reluctantly. We wish we weren't saying yeah pause implementation but we also don't wanna see it fail. How many of those kids? So a lot of them they're saying are placed in home. Yep. They're not receiving out of home services. Some of them I'm assuming are in custody of DFC. They would be in custody of DCF if they're. Not if we didn't raise the age. So if it's somebody who's, I'm trying to remember what age we're up to right now. We're up to 19. Yeah up to 19. So we include 18 year olds but not 19 year olds. So up to the 19th birthday. So we, because I remember when we met with the DFC commissioner a couple of years ago it sounded like young adults or young youthful offenders. I don't think we're calling the people under 21 in their custody were frequently sort of in isolation as a way of removing them from sight and sound from adults. So how many, like are you working with clients that are in that situation right now? Right now I don't believe so I don't believe we've got trying to think if we have anybody in right now if we do there might be one. I don't think there is though. I think that could get moved out to Sonia. So I think we're at zero right now. But here's what I would say about that is that's a different situation than we're talking about because what we're talking about here are kids who are in the juvenile or youthful offender system. And what DFC was talking about there was kids who for one reason or another are still attached to the adult system even if they have a pending youthful offender or something like that. There's some reason they get attached to the adult system. So I can give you a few examples of how that happens. One is most obviously when a child is arrested for a serious offense. They're going to be treated at initial arrest as an adult because the presumption at least from the outset is that they'll be treated as an adult if it's one of those big 12 offenses. So those kids are treated as an adult from the very beginning unless and until some court orders them into juvenile or youthful offender court. Up till that point, they're an adult. If it's not a big 12 offense, but it's a kid who is over the age of 18, so they're charged in adult court, it's the same thing. They would be treated as an adult up until the point that a judge orders them into youthful offender or juvenile court. If a kid's in youthful offender or juvenile court, there are ways that they can be pulled into DOC, but like I said, it's sort of, it's always some kind of collateral thing. So for example, if a kid is a youthful offender and they violate their probation and they are over the age of 19, then they can be detained at DOC. So that doesn't mean that they have been like sentenced to DOC, it's more that when they're arrested, that's where they are put because we don't actually have another place for them to go because we don't have a juvenile lockup facility. And even if we did, it wouldn't touch those kids over that age. So kids who are between the age of juvenile jurisdiction and the age of youthful offender jurisdiction, if they get detained, they would be DOC detainees, not DCF detainees. So there's a few ways that kids come into DOC custody like that, but for the most part, when kids come into DOC custody, it's because they are being treated as adults. So those situations would be completely divorced from this bill. So I'm just having a little bit of a hard time, not believing, but if they're placed at home, they're the first category and they can't get services and we're saying to DCF, we're pausing. So who's then coordinate? Like, I still am missing what's happening to the kids if DCF is pausing and off the hook. Who's coordinating those services? They're being, so what you're saying is if we don't take, so right now, under the current lock or under the proposed bill, like today, there would be no change because currently 18 years old is as far as the system expands. The idea is that coming up this July, it would expand up to include 19 year olds and we would be proposing to pause that. So we wouldn't be taking anybody who currently would be entitled to treatment in the juvenile system out of the juvenile system. We would just be saying, we're not going to expand when we said we were going to expand and that would mean that those kids who were 19 would be dealt with in the adult system rather than in the juvenile system. Is that adult system just as stressed at the juvenile system and like, what's the advantage? They don't provide the same treatment that the juvenile system does. So they don't think it's not as stressed because they're not providing that kind of treatment and they're not doing, especially the type of, you know, community based services that DCF provides. Why do we think that's good? Why do we think that's better? Well, I'm not saying that it's good. I think that it's better to have 19 year olds in the adult system than to have them in a juvenile system that can't accommodate them at all because that'll just result in the juvenile system failing. Not only for them, but for the 18 year olds and 17 year olds and 16 year olds and everybody else. Okay. Coach, before I get to you, I just want to make sure I'm looking at the effective dates. And I, because the first one is sections 17 through 19, she'll take effect on the bill says July 1, 2023. And so that would be the one year pause. Yeah. And DCF has asked for 2024 when they were, when they were here. So I wanted to get your thoughts on that. Gotcha. So what I would say, what we were saying that we support was the one year pause, we support the pause that's in the bill, which is a one year pause. Okay. We're not supporting, if there was a larger ask, we're not supporting that. Okay. All right. Okay. I appreciate it. It also says section 17 through 19. And I don't see 19 on the copy that I have, but we'll, I'll note that for Eric. So, okay. So you post that. Okay. And then the next effective date in section two, and that's the other hasn't been asked on that one. So that's July 1, 2023. And I, so, okay. All right. Well, thank you for clarifying that that's first one. Coach. Good morning, Marshall. How are you? I'm all right. I just wanted to add a comment and I think it might help representative Rachel's question as well. In another one of my lives, I worked for NFI who was a contract provider for DCF. And in that role, we worked with that very small group of clients that Marshall's referring to to give you an idea as a caseworker most social workers could have a case load of up to 20, 25, 30 youth on their case load. My average case load was six to eight. I got those people that Marshall's talking about. And so the experience of working, you know, with that particular population, I think Marshall did a very good job attesting to the adaptability of the system at its present time to accommodate them in a fair and equitable way. And each one of those cases was pretty unique and individual. And so too would I support that continued approach to working with them in that sense. It's just thinking about some of those young folks over that six year period that I did that work. It was pretty impactful, you know, on me, you know, because I think that what it's done is given me that sense of I think we're landing in a good space with this bill and even the timing, you know, of it.  And so either we get it right or we lose that opportunity and if we lose that opportunity, we lose a person, you know, and I think that's, you know, the simplest way to put what Marshall's been referring to and I really appreciate the work of you and the group that put this bill before us because I think that it's a good response to the situation we're in. So I just wanted to share that, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Anything else? Okay, great. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. And I think that is it for this bill. All right. So we will adjourn.


So I had a congenital condition, and it made the bone on my pelvis on both sides grow, like a little extra, and they hit the labrums and towards the labrums, so they had to shave down the bone and then reattach the labrum. So that is Alejandro. He wasn't raised in a good household, like a really not good household. And as weird as it sounds, that's part of the reason why I love him so much. By every stretch of the imagination, this kid was destined to fail. From where he was raised, how he was raised, his friend group, and a ton of other factors, he was pretty much set up to fail. I used to work at a children's foundation where I came into contact with Alejandro a few years ago, and after hearing his story, I was really surprised at how willing he was to change. He was a little overweight, he was angry, and he didn't work very hard. And because of that, what I expected from him is what I expected from a lot of the other kids there, which was any time you came to them with advice, it would be met with resistance. The goal of the foundation was to help empower these kids to try and change their life for the better, and let's be real. When have you ever gone to someone with advice and they just listened and all of the problems were solved? I don't know why, but Alejandro was very different. If you told him to do things, he would do them. It's not like he was perfect, but if I told him something would make things better for himself, he would at least try. Today, Alejandro is on a full scholarship attending Dartmouth University. Kids in situations like his don't make it, and they definitely don't make it to Ivy League schools. So, here's the bad news. He texted me a week ago telling me what his budget was asking if I could build him a gaming PC and get him a good monitor, which I thought was kind of weird because a couple years ago I actually got him a laptop which was good enough to do the job. And since he won't be able to move for a while, he wanted to have a good computer while he heals. That 960 GPU from back then is definitely not going to get the job done. And with the new 3000 series cards out, I think now is the perfect time to surprise him again. But why just surprise him? Why don't we surprise you guys too? If you watched till the end of the video, I might have something for you guys. And while you're here, let's be sure to thank the people who made this video possible for Alejandro as well as for you. This video is sponsored by Honey. Honey is a browser extension that applies coupon codes to your cart when you're about to check out. The best part is, it's free. Let me show you something. You see those nanolipses back there? That was supposed to cost me $1200. But because I had Honey installed, it dropped the price by $200. I don't think I need to explain this to you, but having Honey installed should be a no-brainer. They have over 17 million users, have saved people over $2 billion and support over 30,000 stores online. By not having Honey installed, you are passing up on a lot of free money. Imagine every time you check out and it saves you a dollar or two, or in my case, a whole lot more. You're going to have a lot of extra money saved up that you can do whatever you want with. So if you want to start saving money for yourself, go to joinhoney.com slash Christopher Yee right now and install it. It takes literally a couple clicks. Anyways, thanks again to Honey for sponsoring this video. Now let's get back to the rest of it. This is the RTX 3080. It is Nvidia's newest graphics card. At this point, pretty much every tech YouTuber has gone over the performance and FPS of this card. And in case you haven't seen a Good Benchmarks video, I'm not going to do one here, but I'll direct you over to Jay's 2 cents video. He did an excellent job showing the performance of this thing. But in case you don't have the time for that, I'll quickly explain this graphics card, the RTX 3080. If you compared it to last series best card, the RTX 2080 Ti, it gets the same exact FPS of that card an entire resolution higher. And that's the fact that the 2080 Ti at 1080p was roughly the same FPS as the 3080 at 1440. In English, that means this card is amazing. But enough about the card, let's talk about Alejandro's system. So last week when he did text me asking about a computer, I pretty much ordered parts right away that I knew would suit him and his needs. On top of that, we were also able to keep everything under the budget that he asked for of $700. Not that it matters, because his dumbass won't be paying for it. But for his system, this is what we're putting inside. We have a Ryzen 5 2600X, which is a 6 core, 12 thread processor. But instead of using the stock cooler, I wanted to make it look a little bit nicer. So we're actually using an AMD Wraith Prism, the RGB cooler. For the motherboard, we're putting it inside of an ASRock B450M is a micro ATX motherboard. And it might look a little bit goofy inside the case that we're going to be using, but I still think it's going to look nice. For the SSD, we're using a Crucial M.2 with 500 gigabytes of space. And for the RAM, we are using Corsair Vengeance 16 gigs 2 by 8 clocked at 3200 megahertz speed. For the power supply, we are using a Thermaltake 500 watt power supply. We want to use something a little bit nicer. But unfortunately, getting power supplies and then also getting good power supplies in America is pretty difficult right now. For the case, we are actually using a Lian Legual 215. It's a beautiful case. It doesn't show that way right now, but we still have to unpack it. But when it's all said and done, this thing will look amazing. For the graphics card of this computer, we're actually going to be using a GTX 1080. This is one of the best deals that I've ever gotten off of Craigslist a year ago. I picked this up almost brand new for $200. Whoa, what? But Chris, you just introduced the RTX 3080. Why are we going back to Generate? Listen, I am aware of what Alejandro wants to use the computer for. Fortnite and Warzone don't need something so amazing that we need to go beyond a GTX 1080. With that being said, I still might have some plans to make sure that this RTX 3080 does surprise a stranger. But we're not going to talk about that right now. Dude, check out this front panel. Lian Lee is actually killing it. This is so sick. We got our death squad facing out. That only took like 45 minutes. I'm going to install Windows and then we got one thing left. The best part. Okay, so we finally finished the PC. It's packed up. It's ready to go. It's got Windows, the drivers. I'm going to let him install the games because I don't know what he wants to do with that. And we also hooked him up with a monitor. We got this Sceptre monitor on Amazon's address. It's 25 inch monitor and it gets up to 165 Hertz. So he'll definitely have the FPS to game on this system. And we're going to go take it over to him right now.  I wonder if one day like when it's all done, I would be like, you know what? Maybe I spent too much time on the PC. Probably not this year. Hey, we're here. Okay. Let's do it. Motherf... Yeah. Hello.  How are you? Good. How are your hips? No, he's... I think he's fighting with his girlfriend. That's a lot. We just did video stuff and he's been at my place for the last few days. Do you want to see the computer repo for someone? Sure. So, do you know who Lily Pichu is? No. Okay. Well, that's just rude. Who? It was funny. It was actually like Hadrian.  Pretty much everybody. And then what happened was is when I was having like a really bad week, like thoughts at like an all-time high, I randomly reached out to her on Facebook. I said, will you play a game with me? It's my birthday. And she said like, you know, no. But then she eventually said yes. And then now, 10 years later, I'm trying to surprise her with this PC. And the surprise is that it's actually not her PC. It's yours. We built it. We built it under the budget. Do you want to see? Check it out. You undo it. I'm not going to undo it. You're not going to peel it either. Yeah, I mean you are. And on top of it, we got this for a pretty good tool. This is a 165 Hertz monitor. So you're probably bad at video games and it won't matter. But at least you'll be able to see yourself die in 165 frames per second. It was under the $700 you asked for. So it's all good. It's pity. It's done. Oh.  Strokes aside, I wanted to... I felt bad because I know one of the things that was like emphasized with you, like what, 16 through 20? How old are you now? I'm going to turn 20 next week. 16 through you, 20 years old in the future. It's like tennis, tennis, tennis, tennis. And then it got to a certain point where it was just emphasized nothing but tennis.  And the good news is that it doesn't... Life doesn't only need to be about tennis, even though probably at 20, I wanted the same thing that you did, it was just tennis. And then life has a funny way of taking things away from you. But I feel like also at the same time, it gives things to you, too. Not like hands it out like a computer. But it kind of gives you like a little crack of an open door where it's just like, hey, you can do this, too. And like whatever you do with it is up to you. Like you could throw your soul away for twitching YouTube content and see how that turns out. Or you could do something else. But in the meantime, while you're healing and stuff, I wanted to make sure that you had a nice thing to kind of kill time while you do that. Because I can imagine after the second hit is cut open that you're just going to be sitting a lot. But yeah, I'll see you at the barbecue. Thanks. See you. Don't be late to your meeting. All right. See you guys. Thanks. He paid us in green tea. What a spoiled bit. That was cute. That was cute.  But yeah. Well, so here's the thing. We actually didn't surprise him with an RTX 3080. Chris, that's kind of a move. I showed off this nice graphics card and you're not going to give it to him. Yeah, no, I'm a really bad guy and I lied about the clickbait. But you know what? Let's justify it. Let's actually make it work. So here's the deal. I could keep it and trust me, I really, really, really want to. But I'm not going to. I am going to put this card up to someone who wants it, to someone who needs it. Couple rules. Subscribe to this YouTube channel. I know a lot of the people that watch it actually are not subbed, which is fine. Free content. Do whatever you want to do. But if you want the card, sub this channel and then head over to my Twitter. I'm going to post and pin a tweet at the top where you know, you either retweet it or like it or blah, blah, blah. I'll make up the rules there. Sub the YouTube channel. Go to the Twitter. All the rules will be self-explanatory. We'll do first week of October. We're going to give it away. I know no one is able to get these cards right now because people are trying to buy them up. They're trying to make bots and just snag everything. We'll give it away first week of October. So I'll post all the rules and stuff, and you'll be able to see it will be really self-explanatory. Anyways, I hope you guys found the video creative, entertaining or informative in any way, shape or form. Me and Will are melting. It's like 500 degrees in this car. I'm going to get going. I hope you have a great day.


Income tax 2022-2023 self-employed. What do you need to know? 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 then 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. Most of this information comes from the tax guide for small business for individuals who use Schedule C Publication 334 tax year 2022. You can find on the IRS website irs.gov irs.gov. Looking at the income tax formula we're focused on line one that being income remember in the first half of the income tax formula is in essence and income statement however it's just an outline just the scaffolding many other schedules and forms flowing into these line items for example with the income line we're focusing in on a schedule C often used for sole proprietorship which in essence is its own income statement having income minus expenses which are basically business deductions the net income of the schedule C flowing into the income line item here of our income tax formula which in essence represents page one of the form 1040 so when we look at the form 1040 we're focused on line eight other income from schedule one meaning the schedule C net income will flow through to the schedule one which will flow through to the first page of the form 1040 here's an example of the schedule C profit or loss from business where we have income minus the expenses the net income in essence the income minus the expenses is what flows through to the schedule one then to the first page of the form 1040 now we're going to go through basically an outline of different topics that we will be looking at as we go through and think about a sole proprietorship that is going to be reported on a schedule C remember that a lot of us there's a lot of different components of the income taxes or the income statement that are affected from a schedule C such as the schedule C the schedule one the self-employment tax we have other deductions that could be impacted and so when we talk about these different items there will often be changes or interrelationships between them so there's not really an easy way that we can just go through one topic to the next topic because they're interrelated in some ways so we will try to lay them out so we can talk about one thing at a time and every time we do so we're gonna have to take a step back and think about the interrelationships between these items as each of them change you've changed man you've changed so what you need to know so table a provides a list of questions you need to answer to help you meet your federal tax obligations after each question is the location in this publication where you will find the related discussion so these are going to be some of the concepts that often come up when people think about reporting their sole proprietor business and we will be touching on many of them and you can also of course go through the publication if you want to jump to more information about any one of them so the following is a list of questions you may need to answer so you can fill out your federal income tax return chapters are given to help you find the related discussion in this publication okay so first question what kind of federal taxes do I have to pay how do I pay them so obviously when we're thinking about the income tax system we have the income tax that we're dealing with but they also kind of sneak in there the Social Security and Medicare taxes which are the self-employment taxes that's the other big one that we have to basically take into consideration oftentimes one often ignored because when we think about a W2 employment situation the employer takes care of the withholdings of Social Security and Medicare and when we think of the form 1040 we don't really think about anything other than the income tax we don't really think about payroll taxes or Social Security and Medicare but when you're doing a sole proprietorship it becomes a big factor so what forms must I file so we're going to go through some of the forms obviously we touched on this in a prior presentation we looked at all the different changes that happen to the tax return when we just add a schedule C right we got the schedule C that's going to be on there and then we also have the self-employment tax we've got the schedule one and so on and so forth worksheets that are going to be included we'll try to touch on those as we go through some of the other options with relation to a sole proprietorship and of course if you want to look at this and jump to these questions in the publication you could see chapter one and the other question what kind of federal taxes that's in chapter one so what must I do if I have employees note that as a sole proprietorship you're saying that you have one owner one one owner generally owns a sole proprietorship there could be an exception if you're a married couple and you're in a community property state and so on and so forth but generally when you're filing a schedule C you've got one owner of the business if you start a hot dog stand you don't incorporate it you just start earning money uncle Sam wants his percent of it you're going to be a sole proprietorship at that point note that when you grow then you have some options you're saying I need help here how am I going to have that help am I going to hire employees am I going to pay contractors or am I going to take on partners and those are some questions that you've got to think about and what are they going to be the consequences of those decisions if you take on a partner then you're not generally a sole proprietorship anymore but a partnership and you're gonna have to file a partnership return from a tax perspective and it also takes on more liability you want to make sure your partnership agreement is worked out well between the partners if you have a contractor you want to make sure that they qualify as a contractor and not as an employee otherwise the iris could get upset and call them an employee and then get gets you in trouble that way you have less control over a contractor but it's an easier system to set up and then payroll if they're an employee then you don't have the situation where they have revenue splitting and you still have control a lot more control and that situation but the iris is going to require other stuff of you such as the reporting of the W2's the withholding of the payroll taxes and all that kind of stuff which is quite burdensome so you want to make sure that you consider that it's also a little bit confusing to think about the difference between paying other employees as a sole proprietorship and the fact that the government kind of treats you as a sole proprietorship as an employee of your own business not because you have to issue yourself a W2 but because the net income that you have from the business is being subject to the equivalent of payroll taxes that being social security and Medicare and the form of self-employment taxes so that kind of confuses what it means to be an employee sometimes when we're thinking about a sole proprietorship we'll talk more about that in chapter one do I have to or you can look it up in chapter one we'll discuss it more as we go through our presentations do I have to start my tax year in January or I can can I start it in any other month now note when you're starting a business oftentimes the calendar years is the default that people think of what their business cycle is going to be obviously for individual tax returns they are typically due by April 15th but sometimes you might want a different year that will be lined up to your natural year when your business cycle ends basically and that could be easier for just logistic purposes oftentimes but because you're a sole proprietorship and you're reporting on a schedule C you might have some limitations in terms of can I have some calendar year that's going to be or a fiscal year for taxes that's different than the calendar year so we'll talk a little bit more about that in chapter two where you can look it up in chapter two we'll probably touch on it in our discussions as well what method can I use to account for my income and expenses so now we're thinking about the method which most methods that come to mind of the two that come to mind usually is a cash-based or a cruel based method oftentimes we think about those methods as completely opposite from each other they're not however because you could have a system that's kind of a hybrid of the two many small businesses for example are going to be in a cash-based system for their expenses because they pay all their expenses with electronic transfers for example and you could sit up that easily but they might be on the cruel basis basically for the revenue because they're in the type of business where they happen to have to invoice the client for work that was done and so then the question is can I can I be in like a hybrid type of method what kind of accounting method maybe there's some method or some accounting trick you could you know you can I use does inventory force me for example to use an accrual method versus a cash based method which is if you have inventory kind of puts a complexity in terms of your decisions on what method to use sometimes this one also gets a little get confusing because when we think about taxes in general we're usually on a cash-based system right when we're thinking about our schedule a items when can I deduct my property taxes or when can I deduct my mortgage interest usually it's when you paid it but on the business side of things normally for large companies an accrual basis is more accurate than a cash-based system oftentimes but we might have the option for a cash-based system which sometimes is easier to account for but it's easier to manipulate a cash-based system as well so so that's the pros and cons we'll dive into that a little bit more later you can see more about it if you want to go to the publication for chapter 2 so what must I do if I disposed of business property during the year now business property we're not talking about inventory if you're selling inventory or services or something that's what happens during the normal course of business but what if I sold a piece of machinery a forklift or something like that business property what then then you've got to deal with the that kind of sale transaction of a fixed asset or something like that and we may look at that later and if you want to jump to that you can look at chapter 3 what kind of business income do I have to report on my tax return so obviously income is basically bad for taxes right so the IRS wants to say that you have to report all income unless there's an exception provided by the IRS so are there any exceptions that we don't have to include an income and then which kind of things do I have to include an income on the Schedule C versus income possibly elsewhere on the tax return are there any benefits to have it reported on the Schedule C versus some somewhere else and so on and so forth you can jump to chapter 5 if you want to read up on that we might discuss that more later what kinds of business expense do I deduct on my tax return this is obviously the big one because we have in essence an income statement for the Schedule C income is bad for taxes expenses business deductions are good for taxes what kind of things can I deduct many of them are going to be straightforward obviously the things that you consumed in order to generate revenue are the things you would naturally expect to be deductible in an income tax type system and the Schedule C makes a lot more sense from that perspective than all the other deductions like Schedule A weird why do I get to deduct mortgage interest I don't know that's what the law says why that's just what the law says why do I get to deduct why do I get to deduct property taxes and stuff these are not business expenses that I needed to expend to generate revenue these are personal expenses so there's personal reasons the government's trying to influence our behavior for whatever reason they want or lobbyists did something or something to change the tax code but the business this when you talk about the Schedule C it actually makes sense that you would tax people on the net income what people had to expend in order to generate the revenue shouldn't be something you know you should not tax people on their gross income you should tax them on the net income so then the question is what kind of those expenses can we include in which can't we include which is a huge topic in and of themselves and we'll go into that in more detail you can jump to chapter eight if you want to dive into that what kinds of expenses are not deductible as business expenses so then of course the inverse what kind of expenses can't I deduct and it obviously personal expenses start to get things you can't deduct it gets messy when things are personal and business what if you traveled for business but the business happened to be at Disneyland or something like that then you've got that's where the muddy situation comes in again we'll talk about that later if you want to jump to it now in the publication which you can find on the IRS website and read up on it you can check that out on chapter eight what happens if I have a business of a business loss can I deduct it now note the IRS is saying hey did you start a hot dog stand did you start a business of any kind I saw you start that hot dog if you made any money remember that we want part of it but obviously if you lost money if you had more expenses than revenue then the iris doesn't want any part of your business right you would think that's their general standpoint they don't they want to they want to take on the the gains that you're going to have they don't want to be responsible for the losses the risk in the business so can you deduct losses well you could deduct them depends it kind of depends right do you have income to deduct them against and then there's certain limitations and so on and so forth the general idea would be that if you have a loss you can understand the objective or the perception of the IRS would be we're skeptical of your losses we want income because we want to take part of your money we don't want to subsidize you for your losses unless you're like a giant like a like a natural natural energy company or something like that then they'll throw money at you like right but again for most people they they don't want to subsidize the losses so losses become messy then so we'll dive into losses more and future presentations you can take a look at chapter nine if you so choose if you do have losses of course don't be afraid to take them as long as it's a legitimate business and then and then you do could get benefits from the losses many small businesses have losses when they first start nothing to be ashamed of but just realize that the iris might be skeptical of losses and taking the losses so you want to make sure you have the evidence for it what are my rights as a taxpayer so we're not going to we may not dive too much into the into this this topic in our presentations but if you want to jump into it more detail chapter 11 on the publication and then where do i go if i need help with with federal tax matters i get you have some more resources that you could take a look at in the publication we might not dive into it so much on the presentations here but if you want to take a look at the publication that's in uh chapter 12