For almost 40 years, Star Wars has been captivating audiences both young and old. Today, I'm feuding three of the movies that started new chapters in the Star Wars saga to see which generation did it best. It's A New Hope vs. The Phantom Menace vs. The Force Awakens on movie feuds. A New Hope introduced us to some of the most recognizable characters in film history. Relatively unknown television actor Mark Hamill fronts the picture as our hero in the making Luke Skywalker. He's a bit on the whiny side, which is understandable. I mean, really, who'd want to be cleaning up some dirty old droids when you could be taking a riveting ride over to Tashi Station to pick up some power converters? I sympathize. On his adventure, he will come across a string of fantastic and memorable characters who will continue to be part of the saga for the next couple films. Harrison Ford is Han Solo as a fan favorite for sure with his Devil May Care attitude and pension vergating himself into trouble. Then there's Chewbacca, R2-D2, C3-PL, Princess Leia, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and many more. Each of these cast members brings a different flavor to the picture. Why it's so puzzling, why the writer, director, midichlorian creator George Lucas forgot all of that when he made episode one? Qui-Gon Jinn played by Liam Neeson is interesting but never given a proper chance to grow. Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala, aka Padme, is about as interesting as a plank of driftwood. I don't blame the actress as I've seen her put out great performances elsewhere. The real pain of this prequel comes from Jake Lloyd and Jar Jar Binks. I understand having a lot of comic relief to lighten the mood, but holy hell, Lucas.  Then there's Jake Lloyd, whose acting performance is better suited for something like Full House. The highlight of the entire prequel lineup comes from our young Obi-Wan. He's a bit of a rebel, but mainly he's likable, something I can't say about the rest of the sorry bunch. Then we have episode seven, The Force Awakens, bringing back fan favorites along with adding a new lineup of heroes. A female Jedi named Rey is fantastic and a rapport with washed out Stormtrooper Finn is on point. Oscar Isaac also does a terrific job in the smaller role he's given as a pilot named Poe. Bottom line, all the new cast members are great, especially the charming robot BB-8. Will he be the unsung hero R2-D2 was and still appears to be? Only time will tell. The villains are an interesting bunch indeed.  Then there's the silent but deadly Darth Maul, a guy who should have been around for all three films. Such wasted potential, I'll never understand. Then there's Kylo Ren, who I think is probably the weakest so far.  He's got that Anakin in him, which I don't really care for. The first half he's really strong, but then there's a lot of like light saber hissy fits going on. I don't want it. Obi-Wan is holding me back. It's not that bad, but I mean, it could be interesting if we see him start to train and harness the dark side and get rid of that, but right now it's just kind of, it's not threatening. He definitely has that menacing voice down though. At least the Stormtroopers get a bit of personality this time around. In fact, a couple of my favorite moments come from these guys. One that really stands out is when the Stormtrooper yells out, Trader! And then he busts out that electric baton thing that can block a light saber.  It's just awesome.  You picking up what I'm throwing down? Just nodding and give me a Roger Roger if you do. A new hope is the tale of a young Jedi in training, hoping to bring balance to the world around him. He learns the force by his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi. He travels the stars of the ragtag group of individuals set out to stop the evils of the dark side. The final destination? A newly built floating weapon in space known simply as the Death Star. It's in the name. This is a tale of hope, of heroism, of courage and a small amount of incest to keep you coming back, to keep you interested. The Force Awakens knows this. It acknowledges this. It doesn't even bother reinventing the wheel. In fact, I think it uses the exact same wheel, hooks it in. It uses the same doors too and window and hood and it makes up the whole car. Is this metaphor lost on you yet? Because it's lost on me.  She plunders old broken down ship scrap for food. Just as R2-D2 leads Luke on his journey, BB8 finds Rey. Neither intentional, but both crucial to the plot outline. Rey will then come into contact with the band of brothers she will learn to trust, care for, possibly love? We'll find out in Chapter 8. Hell, some of these people are the same ones her father. I'm sorry Luke Skywalker fought with. This ends with an exciting ship battle to take down a larger threat. But what could possibly be more threatening than a Death Star you ask? A second Death Star, but since that was already done in Return of the Jedi, a Death Planet. There's a lot more parallels to the original trilogy, some ideas lifted from Empire as well, but I'm gonna leave it here. As much as I don't like the prequel films, at least they attempted to be different in terms of story structure. That's as far as my praise reaches. The Phantom Menace decided we needed to start this epic fantasy sci-fi tale with an unlikable shithead who can't be bothered with nuance.  The plot of Episode 1 almost has no reason to exist. It focuses on tax trading or some nonsense I can't be bothered with. There are some battles that are not particularly good until the end, one of which features a young Darth Vader piloting a plane accidentally setting the cruise control to some mothership station where he also accidentally kills a whole bunch of droids and blows the whole goddamn thing up.   Is there a technical term for those blue balls? I'm just gonna call them blue balls. I basically just watched the Duel of Fates battle at the end via YouTube and walk away. Can we get Darth Maul back somehow in Episode 8 or 9?   I don't know, just get him in the next movie. I'm not sure what's worse in this department, having very aged practical effects or having slightly aged cartoonish effects. A new hope is almost 40 years old and time has not been kind. It's still very watchable, but when you compare it to its new shiny version, there's just no win. I mentioned cartoonish effects, so let me get back to Episode 1. When everything is fake, nothing seems real. It's the Nicki Minaj effect. I mean, it's nice to look at kind of, but it's also very weird and obtuse. You lose connection with the impact of what's going on. I'm not worried baby Anakin is gonna get hurt during his pod racing scene because I can tell he's just chilling in front of a green screen the whole time. It still looks and especially sounds cool, but the emotions don't even get skin deep. There is a heavy amount of polish and silliness in this thing which makes the transition to a new hope very jarring. The Force Awakens nails the tone, giving everything a little bit of grit, muting things just enough to stay somewhat close to the original's appearance. It's very pleasing on the eyes. I'm pretty positive there's a heavy amount of CGI in the Force Awakens as well. I don't believe for a second that they built a full two scale working model of a Millennium Falcon flew it through the innards of a Star Destroyer. I mean, it would be cool if they did. I wouldn't put it past Disney, but I don't think so. It's just that it's done so seamlessly. It all looks real as real as that can look and it transitions nicely from Return of the Jedi. The action is intense as hell too. J.J. Abrams and his team filmed the lightsaber battles in a very organic way that I wasn't entirely sure was choreographed. As great as the Darth Maul fight was, there was definitely a level of fake window dressing taking place. That's really a nice term for all the prequels. It's very nice window dressing. There's definitely something to be said about the superficial pretty looking girl. She doesn't have a lot going on upstairs, but she's very nice to look at from a distance. That sound creepy? Yeah, like, that sounded creepy. That's alright. Fortunately a new hope has a ton going on, so the less than stellar effects can coast by on story and characters alone. The music is fantastic across the board with the weakest of the bunch for me being in Episode 7. John Williams still gives us a very well done score, but it doesn't have that breakout hit the other movies have. I never was really hit with that booming orchestrational number like I was when Luke looked upon the remains of his relatives home on Tatooine. Nor did it give me that sense of rush that Phantom Menace did when the duel of fates kicked in. I guess the final minutes of the film definitely had that, but it still didn't stand out like those other movies did. A new hope takes the music here. I waited in line for the Phantom Menace for ten hours. Ten hours! Needless to say I was very led down with the final product. It's just an overabundance of CGI orgyed all over the screen. So it might be nice for some, but for me I needed more. And here we are now on the cusp of 2016. And a brand spanking new Star Wars franchise has birthed out of the vaginal canal of Disney. I know. I know. Poetry in motion. I couldn't be much happier with the results. Does it have the same level of creativity the original does? No. It builds upon that same foundation. Does it have the level of scope the prequels do? Not yet and I'm not sure it ever needs to. The Force Awakens is the winner here for me personally. The Phantom Menace is dead last. Dead in the corner somewhere with Jar Jar Binks' severed penis. Yes, the story is not as good, but the effects are top notch. The music still delivers. And there is a promise for more potential down the road. I think it sets a better stage for more to come. I want to hear from you now. Put a comment below. Let me know what you think, what your pick is for the best of these three. And remember, this is more than just reviews. This is Movie Feuds. Thanks for watching. That's a wrap for the year. That's a wrap.


Gaffa, oes yn yr hyn o'r ddweud o'r dweud yma, byddai'r ysgol yng Nghymru? Fe ym mwyaf o'r ddweud. Bwyddi'n gofyn yn y rym ni'n cael gydag'u ddweud o'r ddweud, felly mae'n ddigon i'r hyn o'r ddweud, yn yr oedd yn oedd yng ngheil, oedd oedd y ddweud o'r ddweud. Mae'n ddweud o'r ddweud, mae'n ddweud o'r ddweud. Dwi'n meddwl i'r gol i'r lleidio. Mae'n gweld i fod i'r gwneudio, maen nhw'n meddwl, ac mae'n meddwl arbennwyd cynnig ar gyfer. Mae'n meddwl fydd o'n meddwl, ac yn ei ddweud, felly mae'n meddwl ag y fyrdd. Fyddwn i fod yn gweld, wedi gweld yn gweld, mae'n gweld i'n meddwl. Mae'n meddwl, mae'n meddwl ar gyfer y 1-1 o'r lineen, ond nid yn ymddir i'n mynd i'r ymddir i'r cyfeirio, dyna'n meddwl i'n meddwl i'n meddwl i'r cyfeirio, Ac mae genna'n credu chi'n gwybod ar gyfer y cael glweinig mai'n gweithio. Mae gennym eich ddadig mae'n ddaig awr, ac mae gennym'n ddod awr, fel wnaeth a'r twf, yn y ffordd o'r ysgol iawn. Mae'n ennill, mae'r dŵl yn mynd i dd でidio'r chowerio. Ond os yw y nid i ddim yn gwneud cael ei wneud y ffawr wedi dipษngركau, a'i ffordd obi ffawr ond wedi ffwrdd tŷl iawn. Mae'n gweithio ar ôl i'r mwynhau. Is it hard to come into a game against a team like Salford, a new manager coming in, hard to maybe know what to expect, know what they're going to bring and how we plan our game around that, anything? No, well, they played exactly the same against Crawley in their previous game. They were very aggressive, very direct, put it up to Smith and in behind. The backliner Crawley did the same to us, so it was difficult for us to manage it. But first, they tended to get down the side of us quite easily, but after the first 20 minutes we created it and that wasn't a problem anymore, but we just can get a foothold in there, final third as in pressure and consistent pressure, which we've managed to do in most of the games that we've played, certainly here, but in a way where we've had big spells of domination in territory. We didn't ever have that. It was quite counter-attacking from both teams. No one really had a spell of pressure at the other goal, so it was the performance or from the opposition that we expected and got. I just didn't think in the first half that we handled it at all physically and on a competitive level once we did that, then I didn't feel we were in trouble in the second half, but we just needed to have the extra quality to win the game. Do you view it as a positive that, on a lot of occasions, that's maybe all that's missing, that finishing touch where you mentioned could have had two or three goals and put the game to bed, like you say, a culture still last week. We had periods of domination where we could have finished the game either. Is that the frustration that there is just that part of it missing, and that's the difference between us turning out these results and pushing them to... Yeah, it's a frustration. It's definitely a frustration because there's a process into going into winning games for one, stopping the opposition, not giving opportunities away, creating pressure on the opponent, creating chances for your team. So you have to go for all these to obviously score more than the opponent, and we're doing all those things up until today really well, but we're just not getting to that clinical touch in the final third. I thought there was a couple of opportunities in the second half. There wasn't a lot, but in other games there has been, and we haven't been getting the final end product, but we've touched on it in the last few days when we've been able to train and sort of give the players a little bit of a direction about where we can improve on that end product, but it doesn't get fixed overnight. I've just said that to the players, you know, we can't go have two training sessions trying to focus on one specific point. We'll do a little bit of analysis work and then think we're going to go from scoring one goal to five or six. It doesn't happen like that, but you have to repeat, you have to create good habits, you have to believe in the work. I'll see a team that's honest, that works hard, that commits to it, maybe not in the first half as much as we should have, but certainly in the second half we did in all the other games. It's not about luck, we're getting the opportunities, we've got to understand that it's about our quality in those moments, and we're in control of that. We have to get better with our technique, we have to get better with our composure, with our mindset, and put it to bed. That's the simple fact. We're going to Saturday's game looking to improve on the performance because it wasn't, I didn't think a top performance today. It wasn't one that deserved to win the game, it wasn't one that we deserved to get beat either. Finally, I guess more generally after a period of disruption on the training field, in the action in terms of performance, to get back out there alone tonight, good, and approaching a period now where we've got Saturday Tuesday games coming up for your side to build a rhythm, that must be a positive for you.  It's a second game for Kev coming home tonight to give us that composure in midfield. Chappy gave us a little bit of a threat on the right-hand side as well. We had to change the shape just to get more of a threat on the opponent and deal with what they were throwing at us. But we go into the next game looking to win the game. There's still loads of games, loads of points to make this a positive season. We have to believe that. We're not the dying embers of a season and there's still plenty to play for so we have to make sure that we show that we still believe that we've got somewhere to play for this season and it will start with us as a team.


All right, welcome back to the General Housing and Military Affairs and we are here right now on JRH2 and this is a bill that we worked on quite a bit last year. It's a resolution and Michael will explain the differences between the two. And that balance between saying, no, this is not celebrating our high school basketball team as we do with a lot of resolutions. So this is a little bit different. This is being treated as a bill, but it's a resolution. So, Michael will give us the details for that. So for committee that wasn't on the committee last year we worked on this quite a bit in at this time last year actually. And it was brought forward by some of the same sponsors that are bringing this forward and it was a, it was, we're going to have a, we're going to have an interesting time with this is a very difficult subject matter. And we were forced to put it aside with COVID it was just it just proved to be inappropriate to deal with this issue in the middle of a pandemic. Due to the subject matter that you'll hear about and the emotions that are behind it. So it is something that we nearly got to the finish line but did not get there and this will also be done in our committee this year in, in conjunction with H 96 which was, which is a proposal to do a truth and reconciliation commission which in the committee last year was a committee was in the process of being a committee bill, which a committee bill is something that we decide that we want to do that wasn't introduced by anybody else. And there are separate rules that that exists with that but then once the biennium passed it's now a bill. With that I want to turn the microphone over to john and let him, let him tell us the story of this bill from his perspective and why he chose to sponsor it this year. john thank you. Well great thank you and I don't know how many of us have read the book that we all got, but I did we read it this weekend, and it's. Pretty startling. When we look at what happened and Henry Perkins was a UVM zoo zoology professor, and he came up with eugenics survey. And what this was in 1925. And the survey worked with the social service agencies and the state, and they shared confidential information to profile families. Some families that were living in the poor farms or the poor houses. It resulted in children being taken away removed incarcerated, and you'll see in the bill language that some people could be returned if they agreed to be sterilized. And so the 1931 we passed a bill, and it was called an act for human betterment by voluntary sterilization. And henceforth, it shall be the policy of the state to prevent procreation of idiots.  So that's voluntary sterile sterilization, as Aaron provided. So that's, that's a statute that Mr Perkins in the book here was talking about that they wanted to preserve what he called old pioneer stock. They wanted to target families and they had work delinquents were dependent on the state or had mental deficiencies. And so what we see from this is that it really over time targeted our abinac bands, people who are mixed race, French Canadians, the poor and people with disabilities. And there's on page 172 in our book here that profiles one family in Ponville, and the neighbors complained, the true office complained the state, and there were seven kids. And they said that they were pretty truant. So they came in in the state came into the household and the oldest woman Helena she was 17 she was taking care of the kids because her mother couldn't. She was sent to the Vermont industrial school and the Brandon school for the feeble minded, as were all the siblings. Three of the four oldest children including her and it were subsequently sterilized prior to discharge. And the three youngest of Brandon high, high grade morons were soon to graduate with high marks and excellent characters. And the family help Helena after she was sterilized was released, and she did marry, and three of the other kids got farm assistance and they did very productive. The parents were destroyed when all the kids were taken away of course. Here's here's the quote had the community and authorities offered a helping hand, the report concluded, in state of eight years of incarceration, seven years of parole, and dozens of evaluations by doctors social workers and public officials. The state may have saved money and spared the family suffering. So, why we're looking at this now is in 2019 UVM actually apologized, because this research was based at UVM. Mr Perkins was a, and it as it was his father or scholars there, and UVM apologize for its unethical and regrettable eugenics role, and they also took Mr Perkins his name off the building. He seemed right and I'm bringing this forward from our kidney we did this last year, but this has been a topic in the house for a long time about to do this. Representative Donna Hugh told me she's been working on this issue for 10 years. So, I think that that sort of the introduction, and Michael if you could, I first it's a pleasure to work with you on this again. If you can walk us through it I guess. Thank you very much. Can all of you hear me. Yes, very good. My name is Michael Churnick. I'm from the staff of legislative council, and I first worked on a version of this resolution as representative black he was indicating representative Donnie you now over a decade ago. The resolution which I believe most of you should have either digitally or in hard copy has a number of sponsors and its first clause at the bottom of page one in the hard copy version begins as follows. And it goes over much of the history that represented colloquy was and the points was just mace mentioning. Whereas in 1925 University of Vermont zoology professor, Henry F. Perkins established the discredited eugenics survey of Vermont to measure evidence of alleged delinquency dependency and mental defectiveness. This survey targeted members of abinac bands, Vermont is a mixed racial or French Canadian heritage, the poor and persons with disabilities. And whereas the General Assembly adopted 1931 acts and resolves number 174 act 174 and act for human betterment by voluntary sterilization for the purpose of eliminating from the future of Vermont genetic pool persons deemed mentally unfit to procreate. Whereas act 174 resulted in the sterilization of Vermonters, and whether these individuals provided informed consent can be questioned. And whereas this state sanctioned eugenics policy was not an isolated example of oppression, but reflected the historic marginalization discriminatory treatment and displacement of these targeted groups in Vermont. And whereas eugenics advocates promoted sterilization for the protection of Vermont's old stock, and to preserve the physical and social environment of Vermont for their children. And whereas the eugenics survey advocated for assistance from state and municipal officials, and the resulting sterilization intruded on the lives of its victims and had devastating and irreversible impacts on the directly affected individuals and their families. And whereas in conducting the eugenics survey, the surveyors were granted access to case files from state agencies and institutions, and the files remain available to police departments, social workers, educators and talent officials. And whereas as a result of the opening of these files, children removed from families, individuals were institutionalized or incarcerated, family connections were severed, and the sense of kinship and community was lost. On June 21, 2019, the University of Vermont issued a formal statement of sincere apology for its unethical and regrettable eugenics role. And the General Assembly on behalf of the State of Vermont should issue a similar apology. Now therefore be it resolved by the Senate House of Representatives, that the General Assembly sincerely apologizes and expresses its sorrow and regret to all individual monitors and their families and descendants who have were harmed as a result of state sanctioned eugenics policies and practices and be further resolved that the General Assembly recognizes that further legislative action should be taken to address the continuing impact of state sanctioned eugenics policies and related practices of disenfranchisement and ethnicide, leading to genocide. Just one final point if I may represent Stephen was indicating from a procedural perspective, the resolution is stating an expression of opinion of the legislature, it doesn't have a binding sense of law, as a resolution cannot very limited exception But that said, this, this resolution, if passed by the House and Senate would appear in what we call our white books on the record is that correct. But it would be part of the action would be part of the permanent action resolves and would appear in the set as part of the session law says you're referring to miss the white books. Right. All right, john, do you want to have a do you have a final comment at all. Well, for those that weren't with us we've heard, we heard a lot of testimony. You know, and by this point it was stories of their grandparents that people were sharing that they wouldn't answer the door because they were afraid if they open the door the kids would be taken away and some of their descendants were taken away so it's, it has left a really a scarring legacy for people as we heard. Yeah, it's um, there's a there's a lot to say about it and again this is an introduction and so we'll feel free to ask questions without any kind of any kind of commentary that we might have about the bill today will be fairly broad. Um, because of the, you know what we will treat this as a bill. Again, it's, it's not uncommon for resolutions to go to committees it's not, it's not frequent, because it's rarely resolutions are rarely asked to be written that have this kind of depth to them. But we can, again, we can open up the floor for some questions to Michael.  Thank you. Last year this was Jerry seven and I was looking back in my notes and I, I would like to know if there's anything different because I remember and I see. I see a date of the beginning of March, which I think was just prior to town meeting. Now actually is when we came back from town meeting so the last week we were actually in person in the legislature. That we were discussing the final paragraph the final clause, the final resolved clause, excuse me. And I don't remember whether that actually was in jrh seven or we were just talking about it and the author has put it into jrh to you. Well, Michael and I worked on this resolution over the summer, or not summer. The fall and we looked at what we did last time and then Michael went back to make sure it was all according to statutes and things. And this is the conversation our committee was having and this was one version and we, there were two different versions but we put this version and this, this one. Yeah, representative angle just to reaffirm what representative Kalaki just said, you would be correct to state that last resolve clause was not in the introduce jrh seven, but this was one of the two potential, if you remember I had a version with two final clauses. This was one of the two potential clauses where the committee was when the committee left at the beginning of the pandemic. Thank you so much for confirming that. Yeah, so. Again, this is a difficult piece of our history. It's something that we're going to, I guess, and discuss and determine if this is the right language that we want to put across our research. Last year in in this and like the concept of an apology I think Michael. I determined last year also through testimony anyway and research that the state has never apologized for actions it's taken quite like this before is that accurate to your knowledge. The best in my knowledge the only official apology with respect to the eugenics movement was the apology issued by the University of Vermont a couple years ago. And in areas where there have been apologies now the Canadian government has apologized twice for treatment of First Nations individuals. Two different times because the first one was viewed as not sufficient. And the second one was primarily about the taking of children from from their homes to to send them to schools that would be in the in them or whatever you know however you want to phrase it. And one of the things that we learned that we talked about last year was that there is to make an apology like this especially to this population. Isn't enough, which is why h96 has been put forward which is a which is a bill to the proposes to form a committee that would determine what a Truth and Reconciliation Commission would look like and that's something that I feel like like needs an incredible amount of inclusivity in determining what that means in research. And so there's a lot of Truth and Reconciliation Commission out in the world but there are a small number of them. Before we move forward with other things that have been discussed in the social equity caucus such as reparations. So that's that would be a proposal to do the thing that one does after one apologizes to make sure that what we're apologizing for is sincere representative Triana. Yes, thank you. Michael, I'm curious was, did any of your research or john. We know if there was an opposition to this movement when it reached the House of Representatives here. Well, yes, there was. Mr Perkins did try to get legislation in 1925 past and the Senate passed it and that house rejected it. The bill came back in 1931. So, on the House side it was rejected. If I may, Mr Chair, there were efforts in 27 that did not come to fruition. Yeah. And that's in the history. And that's why I recommended this if the homework for people to read the, the Breeding Better Vermonters book and to look at JRH seven from last biennium. Look at some of the witnesses that testified and provided hard copies or electronic copies of material we will hear from them or invite them back. There was an essay that was done for the Vermont Historical Society by a woman named Mercedes the Guardiola, which provides a slightly different view on the history. It's a different facet of it's a more political facet of the history rather than what Breeding Better Vermonters really concentrates on on the academic side and quite a bit. And then there's a whole section in the book cast. I haven't read it all, but I read chapter eight, which talks about the role of eugenics and the differential between what it meant in the 20s, 30s to be talking about it and who took it as science who took it as junk science. You know, how it had been regarded even back then. But the thing that's in Mercedes the Guardiola's essay that's in our record is that this conversation actually started in Vermont as early as 1912. According to her records. So, it's it's a it's an interesting conversation. We'll probably hear testimony that says wow that's just what they were thinking back then, or, you know, they were just trusting the science. I mean, which are those are phrases that we hear today. It's going to be, you know, a real, a real workout to just really look at the kind of work that we do it and how we do it, and how we make decisions and how they made decisions in 1931 to finally pass this bill, which started up a couple of different generations of real terror for some people. Representative Hango. When we do hear from witnesses, my notes indicate that we were going to try to look harder to find testimony from French Canadians, whether it be in person or written. And we had a hard time finding that so putting everybody on notice now that if you know French Canadians who are affected who have been affected by this that we would love to hear from them. Because we certainly heard from a number of abnaki. And we've heard from the disabled population we've heard from people who are mental health advocates. So it would be good to hear from another segment of the population that was affected. And, you know, just in terms of the interesting things that are brought up by looking at this one year later. And there are so many things that have changed for us in terms of the virus. We've been hearing about science, and even you know back in the in the 20s and 30s, birth control and sterilization were were things that the general public did not embrace that. If anything people wanted to have more and more children to work on the farms and whatnot, and birth control was really quite a no no for many many decades. And the fact that this prominent scientist was advocating for birth control for certain aspect or certain populations is quite interesting and it's almost a little disturbing to me that to look at this one year later and be able to read things into this book, then maybe what I had read into it a year ago. So I definitely encourage people to look at it through the lens of what we're we're going through now. And, you know, just thinking about how attitudes can change over time sometimes in a very short time. Thank you representative Murphy you had your hand up. I did thank you but I don't need to speak. Okay. All right, I, does anybody have any preliminary questions on this again to the question about the French Canadians representative we have been trying to track down representatives from the French Canadian society. Ron did some research and put a call out through the historical society I've talked to one woman who I believe is the passes I mean it's a volunteer organization and they do primarily genealogical work. And for one of the witnesses that we did have last year Judy Dow, did a presentation on eugenics to their organization over 10 years ago maybe 12 years ago now, and I think that some of that was shared. Some of that testimony was shared with us by Judy last year. And so this person is seeking out. A call out to her organization to see if anyone is willing to testify to this. Because that was clearly, you know, it was kind of kind of like, oh, we need to, we do need to address this if we can find folks from from this affected community and, and we also took testimony from from folks in the, in the our indigenous organization that, yes, there was some cross marriage between the Abinaki and the French Canadians because of course the Abinaki from the Missus Koi area went to Quebec in the 1600s, and became associated with the old neck and before they came back to do to. Well, what happened, you know, with the with the Abinaki with the indigenous population was, you know, was they lost 90% of their population. So very difficult, very difficult to find folks who aren't intermarried. But we are seeking with the French Canadian society to get to find people who might testify to their experience if they have if they choose to talk about it. And that's really what we found. The sensitivity we found with the both the indigenous and the disabled community was, was there was a real sensitivity and fear. Still, that they might be targeted for some kind of retribution for who they are. Not the palette cleanser I was hoping to get to first after h81 but but it is a priorities was a priority for this committee last year. And we're going to see if we can fulfill that priority this year. Michael one last piece of clarity from you. Resolutions of this kind are not subject to crossover. The rules on crossover are not applicable to resolutions be they the concurrence, the typical ones that all of you think of the congratulating the sports team, or the more serious policy resolutions. It's not a factor. The one thing that would be a factor of course is depending on if and when the committee were to vote the resolution out, how much time is left for the Senate to deal with it this year. And of course it remains alive for both years the biennium should one house pass it and the other not. To be honest in my conversations with leadership I think that they, you know, I feel comfortable starting work on this bill in this zoom atmosphere. However, if we do get to the point where we are able to pass this now Michael if I'm not again correct me if I'm mistaken on process here. When this is presented on the floor. We are not. We're, we're the house would be voting on a resolution that contains an apology within it. Correct. But it's not complete until the Senate has also passed it through their body and then the pro tem and the, and the speaker sign it and it becomes official. That is correct unless that is correct, unless you opted which I know this is not what you've chosen to do, unless the committee were to opt to do a house only resolution. Right pressing and of course those, if you were to do a house only resolution, it would not appear in the acts and results in the white books, only in the journals and on the website. And so that and and the executive branch is not a party to this resolution because of course this is the legislature. In this case making an apology through this resolution so that is correct we are office the legislative console, stop sending resolutions to the governor to be signed about 40 years ago. After an unrelated incident. So the governor does as no involvement, since this is not binding law, as I said, this is merely the expression of an opinion on the part of the general assembly. Right. And so just to keep that in mind that some. I mean I think that that's as we approach crossover just as we did last year. There are still negotiations that would have to happen between the speaker and the in the Senate pro tem obviously to pick it up if the Senate founded a priority as well. That's that's their prerogative, but I just this is this is, as in most bills this is our half of the of the story. And the idea here is that if we were to pass this through the House and the Senate. That it would be what would be inappropriate at least in some respects would be speaking a speech of apology over zoom to an affected pop to the affected populations you know it just this is what we miss from not being in person. So, I mean, but given the way that we work and given the fact that we'll still be at this in May, it's, you know, like, again, I would, I would hope that we would if this passes that we would be able to do an apology. That coincided with some ability to meet, at least in a socially distant way. In person. It seems a little one dimensional to me to try to do it through a computer screen. But that's, that's for consideration that's a leadership consideration and that's something that we don't have to worry about in our immediate work here so. All right.  I appreciate everybody hearing this and hearing the material that we heard all day this today was a. I don't know. I had one of those general housing and military affairs days with all the different subjects that we handle today so let's take off a little bit early and see you tomorrow morning Ron we're at nine tomorrow or 915. We are at nine tomorrow. Continue with budget presentations will start at nine o'clock with the military department followed by liquor and lottery followed by housing and development. And so I think at that time to, we should have time to finish up our conversation again, the decision, the need to write a full on memo to the joint committee joint fiscal committee has been relaxed but and Josh will Commissioner Hanford will be here on Friday to go through their take on it but I think we can just touch base with them but please feel free to read the other material that we shared today, especially from Wendy Morgan and I think that there's a proposal from the Landlord's Association as well just read through it and see what they're planning and know that that that those programs will be handled through the and that $18 million or 20% the 10% for services and for administration and that the administration's proposal includes all of those organizations so far in their recommendations so with that, I have a good night.


Hi, I'm Zufan Tajudin from the University of Western Sydney, and this is a collaborative work with many people from Smeru Research Institute in Jakarta, Indonesia. Okay, this study is more on country study rather than a specific study on inequality. So to locate the issue in the broader theme of the conference, if you want to see two effects of inequality, one is on the economic side, on the efficiency, growth, economic performance, and then you can think of the effects of inequality on the social side. So on the social side, that's what we mean by the stability here. So stability, we mean the societal stability. When it comes to stability, we don't have the direct measurement of what we mean by social stability. So here we reduce our attention to violent conflict and violent crime as the proxy to measure social stability. Okay, so this is roughly the structure of my presentations. I'll talk briefly what we mean by social stability, and then I'll discuss the issue of the link between inequality and violent conflict, which is quite, which is relatively new, only growing in the past 10, 15 years, not before. I mean the empirical study on inequality and conflict. And then after that, I show you the empirical strategy, results, and conclusions. And if I have time, I'll discuss the implications of the findings. Okay, to situate the, to know more, to be precise about the country that we are talking about. So this is a country study of Indonesia. And Indonesia is a very large country, the fourth most populous country in the world, 20, 250 million people. And my study is not about the whole country, but only selected provinces in the country where the data is available. So the study will cover 12 provinces out of 33 provinces in Indonesia. So the empirical data is in the form of panel data across district in 12 provinces during 2005 and 2012. So eight years of timeframe. Okay, short background of the study. The first one is what happened in Indonesia was since the past 15 years, since the start of democratic transitions and the decentralizations, what we have seen was the increase in inequality. Roughly speaking, from 33 Gini, the Gini index of 33, and now reaching the record high of 41. So from 33 to 41, you can say that around 25% increase in the level of inequality. The starting point was a stable level of inequality during three decades of the authoritarian government of Suharto between mid-60s till late 90s. And after that, after the democratic transitions, what we have seen was that the continuous increase in the level of inequality measured in the Gini coefficients from 33 to 41. That's the first one. The second one is, as I already mentioned before, we need to differentiate between, this is more on policy issue, to differentiate clearly between tackling inequality and poverty reductions. You know that 15 years ago, tackling inequality was not in the mainstream. Inequality has been reduced to simply poverty reductions because in poverty reductions, easy to press the button. Just look at the bottom part of the letter. Because it is hard to look at every segment in the letter. So this was the, but now we have to clearly differentiate those two. The next one is, we need to understand the two effects of inequality. The one has been widely examined on the effect of inequality on economic performance. And this paper is about the effect of inequality on the social stability, just to clearly locate the study. And then why we need to look at the effect of inequality on the social stability, because what we have seen in, during the democratic transitions in Indonesia, the process of democratic transitions was successful. You can say that one in Asia now is the most stable democracy in Southeast Asia, and has been referred as the most, I mean, a case of success story of democratic transitions. When you are referring to the democratization in the Arab world, for example, in Myanmar, or in Thailand, in the, in Philippine. So from that perspective, democratic transition in Asia has been very successful, but the process was quite destabilizing. What I mean by destabilizing was the democratic transitions was accompanied by the outbreak of violent conflict. Okay, I'll show you the data in a moment. So what do we mean by social stability? In the large country and very diverse society like Indonesia, the importance of social stability cannot be overlooked. It has to be monitored. And what we understand was, the two types of collective violence in the forms of separatist violence, some of them reached the level of civil war, and the series of ethnic violence were there, accompanying the process of democratic transitions. Not as bad as a democratic transition in other countries, but I'll show you how significant was the outbreak of violent conflict during the democratic transitions. So I'm referring to the data. Okay, this is the data showing you how the significant increase in violent conflict during the democratic transition between 1998 to say 2002, 2003. But this is not the object of the study. My study is the data on collective violence in Indonesia after the, the chaotic transition has passed. So we are now talking about the data between 2005 and 2012. So the main difference was here, the dominant violence data in Indonesia was dominated by the so-called episodic violence. Ecclesiotic violence means the quality violence in form of separatist violence and ethnic violence concentrated in term of time and in term of locations. We call it episodic. But the dominant pattern of collective violence in Indonesia after 2005, okay, after the dust of democratic transition, the destabilizing effect of transitions has passed. We can see that the one that most dominant is the routine kinds of violence or is routine violence. Routine violence is something routine. You can't really identify the time concentrations and also there is no regional concentration. Spread everywhere and over time. So that's why we call it routine, to differentiate routine and episodic. So this differentiation is really important because we will relate the different types of collective violence and different types of inequality and we have to match the correct type of inequality and the correct type of collective violence. Otherwise we'll get messy results. This is the death data and this is the incidence but you can see the clear pattern. Now, what about the link between inequality and violent conflict? The main contributions of the paper is to clarify between the two types of inequality and two types of violent conflict. So the important things here is, vertical inequality is the type of inequality that is more important with the small scale routine violence while the horizontal inequality is the type of inequality that can explain the episodic violence such as civil war and ethnic conflict. So that's the first main contributions of the paper to clarify the correct type of inequality that can explain the correct types of collective violence. So this is a very short literature review about the link between inequality and conflict. So this is basically the main findings. The first shocking findings about the link between civil war and inequality. So the role of vertical inequality in civil war was dismissed. There is no effect of inequality on civil war and this is based on two most influential cross-country study on civil war. But one by James Farron and David Layton and the other one is from Paul Collier. The role of inequality in civil war is dismissed and significant. So that's, and it was in early 2000s, roughly 10 years ago. But on the other side of the equation, we have Francis Stewart arguing that, or advocating the concept of horizontal inequality. So what matters not vertical inequality but horizontal inequality? And later on, that kind of hypothesis has been systematically supported by cross-country evidence by more recent book by Sederman, Gledisch and Buhauk in 2013, Linking, Horizontal Inequality and Civil War at Cross-Country Level. The book was published by Cambridge University Paris, if I'm not mistaken. So the question now is, what about vertical inequality? Shall we just ignore vertical inequality, okay? Because vertical inequality is the most well-known measure of inequality, not horizontal inequality. There are a lot of disputes about how to measure horizontal inequality, but how to measure vertical inequality is much more advanced. So now we are looking at the role of vertical inequality and the small-scale sporadic routine violence. So the best way to do this kind of taxonomy, you know, to link the correct type of inequality and the correct type of collective violence is not doing the study at cross-country level. But we have to go down into within-country level. So you can clearly differentiate two types of inequality using the same source of data. And the second one is you can clearly differentiate between the episodic violence and the routine violence from the same source of the data. So methodologically speaking, going, moving from cross-country study into within-country study will give you much better results. So this is the empirical strategy. Okay, this is very simple. Violence is functions of inequality and then you put everything you want, okay? So the everything you want is basically one thing. To frame the violence from the opportunity hypothesis. So what kind of opportunity in the society from the socioeconomic terms, that will increase the likelihood of violence. So that's what kind of conditions that will increase the opportunity of collective violence to take place. So that's the basic idea of the opportunity hypothesis. So the other variables is about opportunity hypothesis of collective violence. But our main concern is about the inequality and collective violence. So the coverage of the study is 12th province in Indonesia, but the observation is across districts, between 2005 and 2012. 2005 and 2012. And then the data. This is something that needs to be explained in a bit detail, but I don't have time to go into the detail. But what I can say is this is the best data on collective violence available in Indonesia. So the origins of the data. So the data is developed by the World Bank, now fully absorbed by the Indonesian government into the Indonesian national violence monitoring system. So the system was developed by the World Bank and the World Bank developed a database based on the UNDP sponsored database of collective violence introduced in early 2000s, roughly 10 years ago. So the data that I'm using now between 2005 and 2012 is the World Bank data. The data that I showed you about the collective violence during the democratic transitions was the data from the UNDP sponsored data collections. So the World Bank data is based on the on-sphere data, the UNDP data, but expanded and more sophisticated. So of course there's a kind of improvements in terms of data collections. Yes, I still have plenty of time, okay, no problem. So this is the coverage of the study. 12th province out of 33 provinces in Indonesia. So you can see the spread of the red dots. So what is important about the 12th province? So the 12th province that we are studying now between 2005 and 2012, they are considered as a high conflict areas during the democratic transitions. But the type of violence now in the previously high conflict areas is not about the episodic violence in terms of the serious violence or ethnic violence, but more on the routine violence. So we'll be looking at the effect of vertical inequality on routine violence, mainly that's the main focus of the study. So this is the results, very simple results. The finding is the violence increasing effect of higher inequality. So inequality is bad for social harmony. Inequality is bad for social stability, if you like. That's the first key findings. The second one. This is about considering the multicollinearity and the possible relationship between the independent variables. So the effect of inequality on violence has considered the possible systematic relationship between inequality and income, as postulated by Kusnets. So the Kusnets equation is embedded in the violence regressions, so in the forms of two stage regressions. I'll show you the regressions later on. And the third main finding was, when we find the Kusnets type relationship between income and inequality, we also find the same kind of relationship between violence and income. And this is something new. Because usually in terms of income, the finding was income always has violence reducing effect on violence. So the violence reducing effect of higher income, but in this case we have the infertile U-curve relationships. So this is the summary of the findings. So this is my main regression. But here, Gini is the functions of income. So the Kusnets equations is embedded here. This kind of relationship comes later. Previously we have this kind of relationship, but the problem was, if you don't have this one, hard to connect this two. So how to connect this, the first U-infertile U-curve and the second infertile U-curve. Before this findings was there, we just have the best guess that we can say about how to link those two Kusnets types of relationships. So when we bring the inequality into the picture, we can clearly see. So the process of the upswing of violence when the income goes up, and then the decline of violence when income continues to increase, it's about the inequality. And you have this kind of relationship between inequality and income that create this kind of relationship. So that's roughly the findings. And the findings is detailed in this kind of regression. So I'm not going into detail of this one. So the controls are about the opportunity hypothesis for violence. And we control for the fractionalization based on ethnic fractionalization or religious fractionalizations. And we have the main variables here, Gini coefficient. So here we try the direct relationship between Gini and routine violence, incidence of routine violence without considering the Kusnets types relationship between income and inequality. And you see the funny results. And then the result is more intuitive if you put the functions of the Kusnets relationship here instead of the Gini. So you have here the predict Gini. So here Gini is the functions of income and income squared. And then here we test the Kusnets type relationship between income and violence and where we have the three findings. So this is about routine violence. Now we try to look at ethnic violence, the less dominant type of collective violence. Okay, let me stop. This is the main findings of my digressions. And the findings is more or less consistent if you check with the ethnic violence and also if you use the violent crack. Okay, I'll stop here. Thank you very much.