Love is a universal concept that unites people. Bored panda blog puts it more aptly. Love is pure. Love is painful. Love is sweet. And love is dreadful. True love is overwhelming. Our lives depend on it. And it often seems like our planet would stop spinning if love didn't exist. Endless love is something we strive for and something we mourn the loss of. In today's video, I'm going to share with you 17 interesting facts about love. If you're new here, consider subscribing to our blog for more awesome videos such as this one. 1. It only takes about 4 minutes to decide if you like someone or not. According to BBC, it takes between 90 seconds and 4 minutes to decide if we fancy someone. Love gradually takes root from there. If you don't fancy a person, you are highly not likely to want any further dealings with them after the first meeting. 2. Monogamous relationships exist in the animal kingdom. According to the National Science Foundation, scientists currently estimate that only about 3-5% of the mammal species in earth practice monogamy, whether for the short term or the long term. Very few birds, fish or amphibians practice monogamy. Believe it or not, some insects are monogamous. Humans and some animals practice monogamous nature. Some humans do not practice monogamy, but a majority of them do. Love appears better expressed between two people than three or more. 3. Falling in love has neurological effects similar to the effects of cocaine. Love can be addictive. According to medical need today, falling in love affects intellectual areas of the brain and triggers the same sensation of euphoria experienced by people when they take cocaine. Have you ever been in love? What did it feel like? Some people describe it as electricity. In my opinion, love is not good for young people pursuing their careers, attempts to disrupt your activities. 4. Heartbreak is real. Have you experienced love at a young age? You may have experienced heartbreak too. It is not always easy to maintain love, as much as two people love each other that may have irreconcilable differences that make it impossible to remain together.  5. People who are too similar to each other are not likely to last.  The two of you will think in the same way, and this will lead to confrontation on whose ideas are superior. Ideally, couples should have some things in common but remain fundamentally different. If the two of you are different, there won't be clashes. Think twice before you date anyone. Your peace is too precious to be sacrificed for short-term love. 6. The picture of a loved one can relieve pain. Have you ever been in the hospital before? If there was no one to stay with you, even if it's just a picture of your parents and siblings on your bedside, you will find comfort in the beautiful memories you have with each other. Even holding a loved one's hand while they are sick can relieve the pains they are going through. According to the New York Times, a research from Stanford studying the link between love and pain showed that people who have issues representing their loved ones while on the pain experience a significant increase in the pain. Cherish your loved ones. They are all you truly have. 7. Cuddling releases natural pain killers. While cuddling, a hormone called oxytocin is produced. According to a life science blog, a dose of oxytocin decreases headaches significantly, and for some, it even makes the pain go away completely after four hours. Cuddling can actually be a stress-relieving activity as well. It is very personal, and doing it with someone you are not romantically involved with can be frowned at. There are other ways oxytocin is released, besides cuddling. One of the most popular ways is by hogging. A warm embrace can be very comforting. 8. People in love have chemical similarities with people with OCD. According to Boardpanda, people at an early age of love have lower levels of serotonin, which is associated with fillings of happiness and well-being, and higher levels of cortisol associated with stress. This is strikingly similar to those who have obsessive-compulsive disorder. This may explain why people act fancy when they are in love. Do you recall doing something funny? I remember writing poems and singing at midnight for the person I was in love with. Did you do anything crazy? Let us know in the comment below. No judgement, guys. 9. An attractive face is preferable to an attractive buddy for long-term relationships. While a lot of men go for attractive buddies in a long-term relationship, it is better if she has a very comforting and happy face than a beautiful buddy. Age happens over time. Her body will not look the same as she ages. Yours too will not. Her face and her smile, however, may endure through time. The face of someone or their body is very secondary considerations. However, in the largest scheme of things, the person's personality and outlook will play a bigger role. Have you ever been in love with anyone? Can you remember why? Are you still in love with that person? Let us know in the comments below. 10. Being with loved ones can make one happy. If you think you are currently happy, what until you are with your loved ones? There is a certain type of joy that it brings that cannot be replicated. Spend as much time as you can with your loved ones. You may not end up living in the same city with them as you advance in your career. You may move to New York or Boston, whichever it is. Stay in touch and try to come home for Christmas. Work is fun. But being with your family and loved ones is better. 11. Dilated pupils show that someone is attracted to you. If you meet someone and they make eye contact and their pupils are dilated, it may instead are interested in you. This is actually not always easy to detect if you meet the person in the evening, but during the day, it is more apparent. If you look into their eyes, they may also look away out of nervousness. If you like someone, talk to them though. Don't stare. It's actually a bit rude to stare. Have you ever met someone you liked? What was it like? Did you talk to them first, or did they talk to you first? Are you guys still together? 12. Looking into each other's eyes can make strangers fall in love. A study conducted in 1989 assures that simple eye contact could make a person fall in love with you. Have you ever fallen in love with anyone at first sight? Frankly, I don't think it's true. But then, what do I know? I am not a scientist. Perhaps love is beyond science. Maybe it's all in our head, or perhaps some biochemical process can explain it, but making eye contact with someone does actually make the person interested in you, whether or not they will fall in love with you is another thing entirely. 13. Love goes hand in hand with stress. People at an early age of love have lower levels of serotonin, which is associated with fillings of happiness and well-being and higher levels of cortisol associated with stress. Have you ever felt frustrated while in love because you felt misunderstood? Love makes one vulnerable. It makes you susceptible to hurt if you were previously immune from it. Love makes you emotional, and when you are emotional, you do things based on emotion and not logic. When you are logical, you are more calculated and weigh the odds before making decisions. Love doesn't always let people do that. This may explain why couples fight a lot. 14. Love makes life appear more bright and interesting. When people are in love, fruits taste better, colors appear brighter, and they feel at peace. According to Thought Catalog, researchers looked at a group of people and found out those who were thinking about love said a specific kind of food was sweeter than those thinking about jealousy or something neutral. Love does have its advantages. When you are this way, you don't let things bother you and you genuinely believe that you will figure it out. This is further strengthened if you have a strong partner. 15. Some people can't feel love. There are actually some people who can't feel love, no matter how hard they tried. It may be a disorder. They appear without emotion too. Are you one of such people? Have you ever felt love before? What did it feel like? Tell us in the comments section below. 16. Love is a journey. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. If you love someone, tell them, don't wait until it's too late. So many people have lost the people they loved because they didn't tell them on time. The chances are they love you also but don't know whether you feel the same way about them. 17. Love will literally make you grow. According to the thought catalogue, the act of falling in love is known to have a calming effect on the person's body and mind. This in turn will raise levels of nerve growth for about a year. The process of falling in love and loving someone can help you become more tolerant and patient and dealing with people. People who have been in love before are more mature and open-minded than people who have not because of experience. Falling in love can help you grow mentally and become a far better version of yourself.


Voters really think about the Constitution as different than regular laws. They think of the Constitution sort of the way they think about the U.S. Constitution, a bare bones framework for government, and not something that a lot of special interest laws ought to be included in.  And that really seemed to resonate with voters that the Constitution just is really not the place for these laws. Certainly in the case of the bridge, there have been many attempts to do all sorts of things, trying to block laws in the legislature and push laws and the governor has taken steps and so on. So there's really not an easy solution, but it's pretty clear that end running the legislative process and trying to go directly to the voters was not a successful strategy this time around. About $150 million was spent in total on all sides for the six measures that were on the ballot. Now the measure for which the most was spent by a single side was Proposal 6, which was the bridge proposal in which the proponents spent over $33 million to try to pass the measure. Of course it failed. The emergency manager law was actually a referendum on a measure that the legislature passed several years ago giving the governor's office and his team powers to replace the elected government in a city to help solve their budget crisis, to help balance their budget and reduce some of their costs. The opponents really framed this as sort of a power grab by the governor and folks in the governor's office to sort of take over city government. The supporters really framed it as an endorsement of Governor Snyder. And so I think in the voters' minds it really came down to just that. There were certainly in the media discussions about how many measures there were and all these special interests trying to put more stuff in the Constitution. So certainly the information was out there. The message was out there to voters that this is just too much. And given that none of the constitutional amendments passed, it appears that maybe there were.


Hello, and welcome to another edition of Think Tech Hawaii here on Pinoy Power, Hawaii. We come to your home live from 12 noon on Tuesdays, and it's a wonderful, special day today. We have a very special guest, he is well known in our community in the state of Hawaii for doing such a remarkable job in leading and also serving our community as a council member. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce to you Brandon Elefante. Welcome to our show, Brandon. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to have you. And I want to thank you from the heart for coming and helping us with our empowerment. We have a five-fold mission. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and empower. So today we would like to hear about Brandon Elefante. Thank you. Yes, it really truly is an honor to serve on the Honolulu City Council. And before I became a council member, I actually started off growing up in the district that I currently reside in now, and went to public schools, graduated from my high school, and went away for school at St. Mary's College of California. And it was during my time actually at St. Mary's, it's located in the Bay Area, it's a smaller part of the school, where I was able to connect and find more of my passion. So we're able to co-found a Hawaii club. I was a resident advisor. I got involved for a Catholic Institute for Lesallian Social Action, which meant that we went out and reached out to different populations of our group in terms of getting people out to vote, or people in marginalized communities, and got to know the history of the Bay Area and around that, and also working with different homeless shelters in Oakland and in San Francisco at St. Vincent de Paul, and also Dorothy Dayhouse in Berkeley. So I was able to kind of gather sort of a wide perspective on life beyond Hawaii. And I always knew that I wanted to come back home, and so I had the opportunity to come back home. I thought I actually would stay in the San Francisco Bay Area much longer than just college itself. And I look at those years as formative years for me to develop my passion for where I am today. And so I came back home. I was a high school teacher at Damien Memorial School, and then was also a coach for several years, and got involved in higher education, and I was figuring things out on my own in my life. I knew that I was called to serve and share the gifts and talents that I have with the broader based community, and not just in the classroom. While I do miss teaching, I do see some of my former students and also volunteered at my local church as well as a teacher. What I do now really brings everything in perspective in dealing with different types of issues, different concerns, challenges, as well as successes. So I'm very grateful for my experience over the years that led me to where I am today, and had it not been for those experiences of teaching and higher education, and working in the state legislature for a session, and as a staff member to my predecessor, who is now state senator, Breen Harimoto, I think that really empowered me in a way to learn the position that I'm in and learn to embrace it and learn to serve it honorably and to give back to the community that I grew up in, and that's given me a lot so that in turn that I can give back to them. Wonderful. I could sit here and just listen to all of the empowerment that you've done so far. So and you're only 21, right? We are talking about being called to serve, so early on you knew that you had those leadership ability in you to serve and to lead. How did that come about? It came about from really just the efforts of my family. I grew up in a family that my mom was a single mother. I never met my dad growing up, and so she often struggled at times to make ends meet, and she knew that she wanted the best for me, and to place me in the right environment or conditions to set me up for success and life after high school and whatnot. And so because of her and my grandparents and her siblings, they were able to really care for me and raise me as a family and being that I'm the only grandchild, even more so my grandparents felt a more way to kind of help guide me along my way. And they've come from a long background of being in the community for many years, but prior to that they immigrated from the Philippines, like many of the people that we see here that live in Hawaii from different parts of our world that have come to Hawaii, and really it's a melting pot that we live in here today. I mean, it's a paradise, and that's something we're truly grateful for. And so they taught me those values of honesty, integrity, hard work, being kind to others, treating everyone with respect and dignity. So those things that I've learned at an early age and through those different values have taught me life lessons down the road and to hold true to those from foundations. So I'm very grateful, and I love them dearly to this day and will always do.  And I'm grateful for what they saw in me to help prepare me for where I am today. So wonderful to hear about your grounded upbringing with those sound values coming from an immigrant, immigrant family. It's another success story of how someone who's really determined to make it in a foreign land or strange land can have a success story. And listening to your upbringing, Brandon, you know, you never use the fact that your mother was a single mother, never use it as a crutch and say, well, I feel sorry for myself. You know, I didn't have a father figure. In your case, it served like a strong force to not have a father figure because it looks like your grandfather and all the uncles and aunties kicked in to make up for that loss. That's correct. Yeah, you know, they all pitched in to help wherever they could with their strengths to help raise me and also support me in my dreams and goals. And look at you, a strong role model who's done very, very well at an early age and that goes to show that education really has its place. And in your case, it really brought you into this area now where you continue to serve and with the endorsement of the Honolulu Advertiser, if I may say? Yes. Yes. Tell us about that. So I'm very grateful for the Star Advertisers endorsement for me again to serve on another four years. I'm very grateful for that. And not every issue is that I may see, I know, in that sense, what I think what I'm grateful for is that I've gained their trust and confidence to be able to continue to do the work that I love and to serve the people of our city and county and the area that I grew up in, in the IAEA ProCity area. And I also represent Waipahu too in each council district as its sets of issues in different communities and we work through them. And so I'm very grateful to have that, very honored to serve and look forward to new things and new goals that we want to set. Many things that we continue to work on to continue to work hard and strive for, what I want to do is leave a positive legacy behind and know that what we got it in when I got into office is that we leave it behind in a much better condition for the next person in that sense. So I'm very grateful for that endorsement by the Star Advertiser. And so it's very good to hear that and see that positive news. Okay, well, wonderful, wonderful story.  They're really following your success story because a lot of the young ones, especially the youth, are really following you and tracking your progress. And this coming general election will, certainly, we look forward to that. And I know that there are a lot of people that are out to give you support because they want to see you continue on and also move on to bigger things. Thank you. Yeah, and I would say on that note, Emmy, is that it's important for young people to really connect and get involved in their communities and be a part of something, whether it's a club, volunteer organization, or more importantly, important for the young generation especially. I myself, you know, I'm a millennial kind of on the older side of the millennial category. What it's important for that population to get active, get connected and get involved by voting. And if they're not able to, because of their age or whatever it may be, to at least get active in a way of educating themselves so that they can share that knowledge and information with others. And so, when I go and talk to different schools or different groups, I like to plant seeds in a way of, while some of them may be young in terms of not ready to vote yet, I share my experience and what I do and impart that knowledge to them to really get them excited about how much of a difference that one person can make, you know, and one vote can make in any type of thing, or them speaking out for themselves, or them advocating for their dreams and goals, or advocating for their concerns. So those are very important, and I think a lot of that has to continue to resonate as we go forward. Because truly, it's going to be up to all of us to work out, you know, the issues in the community and strive for success in that way. So listening to you sounds like farming, you know? And that's what I do on my spare time. I like to listen to you, and you talk about planting seeds and making sure that you start with a good seed. And then the things that you need to do necessary. And you've got to continue to water it and take out all the weeds, you know, unnecessary things that are around there, yep. But those are really important steps to seeing constant progress, or at least see the fruit of your hard labor. At least for me. Thank you. As a farmer. Well, I know that you've done your rounds going to different schools and also share your story with these young children, especially, the hope of our future. What is the reaction that you get when you speak to the young ones and you talk to them about fulfilling their dreams? It's really encouraging to see on their reaction and that there are people around them, not just myself, but their teachers, their support staff, their counselors that really care about them. As a former teacher, you know, when you show a student that you care about them, no matter what state of condition that they're in, if you show them that you care and give that extra effort and believe in them, it's always a mindset in that sense. So they get encouraged by that as I talk to, whether it be student leaders or students or those coming up and want to do more and just not sure how to do that. So my message is of inspiration and hope to them so that I can inspire them so that they can go on and contribute to our society in different ways by sharing their gifts and talents and being a good steward going out there. So I think when I share with them and get feedback as well, they are really shocked because they get all this information and things that they're not aware of, of what the role of what cities do or what my role is as a city council member and how I can impact communities in positive ways and how do I address different things and how they can make a difference and how they can voice their things at their school level or clubs or even in their own home and having conversations with their parents or family members or friends, even so. And so I've seen that firsthand in working with different organizations and clubs at schools and being able to connect with them and advocate for their issues. Wonderful. It is important to continue nurturing and guiding them along the way so they will blossom into their full potential. We're going to continue our conversation with Brandon Alafonte after these short messages and we will talk about some of the bills or laws that he helped to pilot. We will be back here on Pinoy Power, Hawaii, here on Think Tech, Hawaii. Hello, my name is Stephanie Mock and I'm one of three hosts of Think Tech, Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmer series. Our other hosts are Matt Johnson and Pomai Weigert and we talk to those who are in the fields and behind the scenes of our local food system. We talk to farmers, chefs, restaurateurs and more to learn more about what goes into sustainable agriculture here in Hawaii. We are on at Thursdays at 4 p.m. and we hope we'll see you next time. Hello, everyone. I'm Yukari Kunise, host of the Japanese broadcast of Think Tech, Hawaii. I'm hosting this show on Monday. I'm hosting this show on Tuesdays at 4 p.m. and I hope you'll be able to watch it on Tuesdays at 4 p.m. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Pinoy Power, Hawaii, here on Think Tech, Hawaii. I'm your host, Emi Ortega Anderson and it is a pleasure to have with us a young, prominent leader who's making a wave, making a big difference in living and of course living legacy for others to follow. So Brandon, thank you for that wonderful story that you have shared from your immigration story and how your family has really helped to build a solid foundation to help you with your leadership and of course look at your fine young men. And I always mention in our conversation that if I had to pick a son-in-law, you would be the one. Thank you. Thank you, Emi. He's the one. He's the bomb. We are going to look deeper into some of the wonderful accomplishments that Brandon have done in his first four years serving as a council member. Please walk us through with some of what you have piloted or initiated. Thank you for that question, Emi. We've done a lot in the last four years and prior to that, eight years ago when I first started at the council as a staffer to former council member, Breen Harimoto, who's now the area state senator, we worked on a lot of things leading up to what we've accomplished today. One of the first things when I got into office back in November of 2014, seems like it was a long time ago, but I feel like that was only like a few months ago. Yes, I remember starting out with you and I was one of your biggest cheerleaders. Yes, thank you for that. Okay. And one of the first things that I was able to accomplish and collaborate and work with the administration and also a city in the Philippines was establish a sister city relationship with Kandon city Philippines and we're able to partner with them. And you know at the city we have different sister city relationships and that's where some of our first cicadas came from. I have a grand uncle who came from Kandon, came here as an engineer married into my grand aunt. And so there's a lot of history behind people from Kandon or the Philippines coming here. So we're able to establish that connection and partnership with Kandon. And so that was really awesome to see that and connect with that and accomplish that. I've also worked on numerous things with includes our refurbishing of our city parks, which includes playground equipment, our restrooms, we're able to get a key lease agreement signed with the United States Navy for the Pearl Harbor Historic Trail, which really is a gem. And if those that are watching have it in there, I would encourage you to stop by and take a look. It starts where kind of Rainbow Bay Marina is by McGrew Point and goes actually all the way as far as Nanakuli as well. But those sections are not really paved or nicely paved or constructed. But for the majority of the section in the IEA Pro City area, we're able to sign a long-term lease agreement with the Navy to clean up the efforts there, restore it. And actually this coming Saturday there's a clean up effort along the trail. So those that want to volunteer can assist in that effort as well. But so we're able to accomplish that and put funding for that. Aside from that, we're able to get key road repaving in the district, repaving our roads that were in dire need of repair. Also our sewer infrastructure, we're with a federal consent decree. So we're able to get a lot of those major repairs that were mandatory to comply with with the federal EPA consent decree that we have to do and upgrade our sewer system. And so there have been other things in focusing on seniors as well and looking at ways that we can look at visitability, which makes accessing a home with the restrictions, maybe zero entrance or how things are more friendlier for seniors as they age in place. So I was able to be a part of the age-friendly cities committee and participate and offer my comments. And as a person seeing what it's like and connecting with my grandparents and seeing what they go through, granted that they are healthy and active in their 80s, sometimes life can bring challenges too for those that may not be mobile in that sense. So we have to accommodate for that. So I feel very grateful for those district-wide accomplishments that we're able to get. And from a policy perspective, we're able to look at making areas safer. So I've been supportive and we're able to get one of the first city and counties to have a ban on banning your cell phone in a crosswalk. Yes, I'm that guy who introduced that and advocated for that. Before we get into that big technology issue, I want to commend you for doing your part in saving our INA, taking care of our land, taking care of the trail for those nature lovers that would like to preserve that trail. That's very, very important and to make sure that you have signed or made that agreement to keep it nice and clean for future generation. So that's one way of taking care of the children, especially from the parks to the equipment, and then taking care of our kupunas. Sometimes they think that they are forgotten, but you have already touched on that and appreciate the wonderful job that they've done by still caring for our kupunas. Thank you for that. And I've also gone out to different senior groups in the community and shared with them. The city does have an Office of Elderly Affairs Division that people can call. Every year they come out with a handbook on key phone numbers or information to help those that are aging in place with information and resources that are out there. So yeah, thank you for those kind words on those things that we've worked on. And some have taken a while, some we were able to do in a few months, but it's really grateful to see all the hard work that, not just myself, but really a collaborative effort with the community. So I can understand, Brandon, why you appeal is so massive and so great because you work with the young and also with the elderly, and you just have developed that following. And it's the young boy appeal or the charm. But anyway, let's move on to another important, and this has to do with technology. And we are all affected by this, whether it's safety or trying to regulate the use of it, so we don't overdose on it. Tell us about what you've done. So as I was mentioning about banning cell phones or electronic devices in a crosswalk, so currently in our city and county, you're not able to view in the direction of your cell phone or some sort of electronic device. You can still call and cross the street, but it's when you view it in, it's a form of distraction, so we're able to pass a law here, one of the first in the nation. Other cities have called us and asked us, how did you guys do it? And even across the world in terms of how we're able to accomplish it as technology has advanced. So I'm very grateful for that, and it's something that should be common sense as we focus on crossing the streets. We're all pedestrians at one point in our life and getting to places that we need to go to. But really, it's a safety measure, and so I worked with the different youth for safety clubs at Waipahu High School and the Peer Education Club at IA High School. High school areas in the district, and so they were able to share this concern because they saw their peers being distracted when we didn't have a law, so they were able to advocate and voice their concern and stand with us as being champions for this legislation. That is so wonderful to hear. It's about safety, and do you think that has a direct correlation of how many pedestrian fatalities we've had? Right. I know our number is a very high number this year. I think over 90 so far, and it's really sad to do see that. And I think there has some sort of correlation to it, not able to pinpoint the exact fact. I mean, there could be a number of factors involved for fatalities that we see in our state of Hawaii or in our city and county, whether it may be due to different circumstances of the issue, speeding or maybe not visible in certain respects, so there's a number of factors involved that go with fatalities. We certainly don't want to see that occur. We definitely want to always strive for zero fatalities every year in our city and county, and so city and county has doubled its efforts to address issues of reducing that amount and getting it to zero and making streets safer with complete streets, with vision zero, which we just had a hearing on, that areas across the globe are looking at and ways to make it more safe in our streets. Yeah. Thank you for bringing awareness and safety by just letting people know that these are the things that really affect our safety. Right. Okay, with a few minutes remaining, Brandon, I know that you talk about legacy and how you would like to make a difference. Please reiterate again, why should the people vote for you this coming general election? Thank you.  The reason why I want to commit to another four years and I'm committed to that and continue on is to continue on that legacy. I feel that my experience from being a former teacher to being a lifelong community member to a broad base of experience with serving on volunteer boards, being able to connect with nonprofits, government, federal agencies. In public office, it's about relationships and connecting with people to get things done in that sense, and communication, of course, and responding to constituents and their issues and concerns. And so I really feel that I'm capable and willing again to serve for another term because I feel that my accomplishments and my decisions on policy issues speaks for itself and where I stand as a member of this community. And this is a place that I love and call home, and I want to make sure that we have the right tools in place and policies in place so that when I do leave office that we left it in a good place and that this is something that my kids and their kids can be all proud of, you know, and going back and looking back, you know, many years from now. So I feel that my experience and my ability to lead in that effort and being a lifelong resident of the area and my background definitely makes me really capable of wanting to serve again and for the community's support. And I feel very honored to serve in this role because I really feel that I do make a difference. Every day is unique. Okay. So with the one minute remaining, when they think of Brendan Elephant Day, what are those keywords that they should be thinking of or what sticks on their mind? Well, that, you know, that I'm someone that's from here, that I've been a lifelong resident of the area, attended public schools, and that I'm committed to working hard and I'm committed to, you know, doing the right thing and standing up, even though while it may not be popular, I'm willing to take up, you know, the hard issues and make my voice heard and provide my comments or remarks and that I look not just only for the district I represent, really for our entire community, which is our whole city and county of Honolulu and our entire island and that I'm committed, that I'm approachable, that anyone can approach me and have a conversation with me and that I'm here to serve. There you go. That completes our portion with Brendan Elephant Day. Please remember his name, Elephant Day, the giant on this coming general election. You've heard what he stands for and he is certainly called to serve and that you're doing such a remarkable job. Thank you, Amy. Thank you again, Brendan Elephant Day. That brings our, another edition of Pinot Power Hawaii here on Think That Hawaii Tour Close and again, we aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain and we hope to empower. We say, Maraming Salamat Poh, Mabuhay, Mabuhay and Much Mahalo.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jatsby's casebreaks.com coming at you with with 2017-18 Panini Donner's Optic Super Value Rack Pack one pack breaking number four ranting break number four big Thanks all of these folks for getting to the action there the teams right there at the end of the break will re-randomize everybody's names And we're gonna give away four mixer spots. Let's roll it randomize it six and a four ten times one two Three and 10th and final time after ten. There's ten We've got Chris down to Greg and at ten times for the teams two Final time ten. We've got the Sixers down to the Nets. What year is this 17-18 Tatum here? So looking for Celtics Looking for Celtics and all the right group breaks looking for Celtics All right, John Celtics Let's see what happens In a value pack Super Value Rack Pack Pack break Easy guys. We haven't we haven't pulled any heat yet How many we haven't pulled any fire just yet All right, there you go We'll re-randomize that list at the end Oh damn out of bio right out of the gate All right nice bam out of bio for the Miami Heat that goes to Matthew Shearer got randomized the heat We've got Dwight Howard on the bench right now and Dennis Smith Jr. And Paul George, okay C edition All right, there you go And so now I'm gonna re-randomize this list right here and see who's gonna win those Four mixer spots. Did I say in the beginning? Yeah four mixer spots John down to Brad and Everybody in between. Let's roll it. Let's randomize it nine times top four after nine. Good luck one two three four six seven Eight and ninth and final time after nine times We got five down to 30. Thank you. Appreciate you guys getting in And congrats to Aaron John Frankie and Matthew There you go. Congrats to the top four right there. You're in the basketball mix. I'll see you for that next time. Bye. Bye


What we learned about was different types of engineering. We go to the labs with these engineers, work and study. I like doing the hands-on things to learn more about different types of engineering. I liked visiting the biomedical engineering lab and learning more about how engineering works with the human body systems. Something we did this week was learning the basics to coding. Something we did this week was learn more about solar power and how solar panels work. We put together a solar-powered charging station for the people in Shailakam, Guatemala, which uses energy from the sun to charge a battery that, in turn, can be used to charge phones and power lights. Something that I like doing was finding out more about the community that the solar suitcase is going to. One thing we did this week was visit the foundry to experiment with casting. Today, we learned how to make a mold of our choosing. We put black sand into a mold. We just used the mallet to pack down all the sides. I thought it was really interesting that we used a funnel to create a hole for the metal to go into, and then we poured the metal into it. One of my favorite parts of EnQuest was visiting the Connective Systems Institute. Here we got to learn about industrial engineering and computer science. I thought it was fun to see how a machine made of old technology was connected to new technology with a virtual twin. I absolutely love the different engineering perspectives because I didn't know there were so many types of engineering out there. EnQuest was a really good learning experience. EnQuest is really fun and educational. EnQuest is creative. EnQuest is discovery. EnQuest is intriguing, innovative. It's enlightening and educational.


Welcome again. All right, everyone, please turn off your cell phones. And I want to give you a little heads up about the luncheon that is on the last Friday of November. It is a luncheon that we hold in Brand Hall. It's a winter luncheon. It's going to be a delicious dinner. It costs $15 for members. And if you are not a member but want to stay for the lecture, it will cost you $20, $5 for the lecture. The lecture will start as usual at two o'clock after the luncheon. So please sign up today. If you want to come tomorrow, I mean next Friday is the last day to pay. So you can come and enjoy the luncheon, but you really have to pay for it. We charge that amount because we have to pay extra for the kitchen. And after this lecture, I'm going to learn how to use the dishwasher. Glory be. So it's not a money raiser, it's a break-even, and it's a lot of fun. So now, Michael, if you would introduce our speaker, who must have been very busy since Tuesday. Please an honor to welcome Peter Hirschfeld back to Tripoli. As many of you know, Peter has been a political reporter for Vermont Public Radio for the past seven years, covering state government and the Vermont legislature. He's based in VPR's Capital Bureau in Montpelier, just conveniently across the street from the State House. Before coming to VPR, Peter covered state government for the Rutland Herald and the Barry Montpelier Times Argus. He began his journalistic career in 2003 as a local sports reporter and copy editor at the Times Argus. Peter grew up in nearby Jericho, Vermont, and he's a graduate of Colby College in Waterville, Maine. The extremely timely topic of today's talk is Election Day Post Mortem. How the politics of 2018 could shape Vermont's policies of the future. Please join me in very warmly welcoming Peter Hirschfeld. Thanks so much. And thank you all for having me. And the reason this is so timely is because the person that works so hard to put these events on, Beth Wood has such a fine sense of when to schedule these. And I just want to thank Beth in absentia for all the work that she does to put these talks on. I'm really grateful for her work for all of this. I know you all are too, and we're all wishing her a speedy, if long recovery, I know. So we have an election on Tuesday, and there were a lot of people in my business who were writing this particular election in Vermont off as not a terribly big deal, not something that people were getting too excited about. I had a colleague that wrote a story in August who wrote, quote, this campaign is remarkable for how sleepy it is. And that wasn't true as it turned out. More than 55% of registered voters cast ballots this year, and that might not sound like a lot compared to turnout in other countries, but here in Vermont, believe it or not, that is the highest percent turnout in the history of Vermont for a non-presidential year. So people were watching, people were interested, and people cared a lot as it turns out about the candidates that were running, the platforms they were running on. But when you look at the results of this election, it's frankly a little bit difficult to understand exactly what they cared about when they cast those ballots and what it is they want their elected officials to do and why is that so difficult? It's difficult because voters sent two very contradictory messages on Tuesday. On the one hand, they gave Republican Governor Phil Scott another term in office and they didn't just re-elect Phil Scott, they gave him a decisive 15-point victory over his Democratic challenger, Christine Hallquist. On the other hand, they saw fit to give Democrats and progressives a supermajority in both chambers of the Vermont legislature. Republicans lost 10 seats in the Vermont House. Nobody saw that coming, frankly. We expected there might be a little bit of a shift, but nothing on the order of that. We saw Democrats pick up 12 seats in the Vermont House. That's a 22-seat swing from what we saw in this past session to what we're going to see in January and it is going to alter the dynamic in some potentially fundamental ways in Montpelier. I spent my Tuesday night at the Vermont Democratic Party's election night event in Burlington. I don't know if you've ever been to one of these events. They're quite the spectacle. I encourage you to check it out sometime if you don't have anything better to do on an election night. They hold it in a giant conference room at Hilton Hotel in downtown Burlington. There's a stage for candidates to give their speeches. There's a cash bar.  I ran into a Democratic legislator there and I was talking to him about these results. I've been talking to a lot of people just to help me reconcile what we saw on Tuesday.  Now, I can assure you there were people over at the Republican election night headquarters event just a few miles away who were saying the exact same thing. How could they be so smart to elect Phil Scott and so dumb to put these Democrats in office? But, you know, that's a thread, sort of the psychology of the voter in making these decisions. It's something I want to revisit later in this talk because it's really a fascinating case in voter psychology and I think there's something for us to learn from that. But the title of this talk, of course, is how politics of 2018 could shape Vermont's policies of the future. And so that's where I want to start. And the answer to that question, of course, is very complicated. There are a number of big issues that elected officials are going to be dealing with in Montpelier over the next two years. Education spending is a big one, of course, and it's a big one because that's the place where Phil Scott has really tried to make his mark on Vermont policy during his first term in office. Specifically, he wants to curb the rate of growth in spending in the kindergarten through 12th grade portion of the public education system, and then he wants to use savings from that to make new investments in things like childcare subsidies, things like early education, and also on the other end of the spectrum, higher education. He wants there to be subsidies available for people who want to go to college, for people who want to learn a trade after high school. Another major issue heading into 2019 is going to be funding for water quality. We have serious water quality issues in this state. We're in Chittenden County right now. I imagine most of you are from right around here, and so you're pretty well familiar with some of the pollution issues that major water bodies are seeing in this state. It's going to cost Vermont $2 billion over the next 20 years to take care of those problems. Under the existing revenue structure we have now, only about $1 billion is going to be coming in. That means we're going to have to figure out some way to come up with another $50 million. Every year, over the next 20 years, to accomplish the task, and that is a lot of money by any measure, and certainly so in Vermont. Two other major issues that you no doubt have heard a lot about of late. One, $15 minimum wage. The other, paid family leave. The $15 minimum wage concept is relatively straightforward. Democrats want to pass a law that would require all employers in the state to pay their workers at least $15 an hour. This would affect somewhere on the order of 60,000 people in the state of Vermont, and it would have the effect of increasing payroll costs in the state for the private sector, somewhere in the vicinity of $280 million a year. It's a big number. It actually turns out to be only about $4,500 a year for each of those 60,000 workers. We'll make a big difference for them, but we're not talking about huge amounts of new money coming into people's personal lives. The paid family leave legislation would require every worker in the state to pay a new payroll tax. It's about $70 a year on average per worker, and all that money goes into a statewide pool, and if you have a baby or you get seriously ill or injured or you have a family member that you need to tend to, you could take six to 12 weeks of work off and still get 70% of your pay, and that money would come from this pool that's funded by the payroll tax. So how do the elections that just happen affect these policy issues? Well, let's begin with minimum wage and paid family leave, because I think these two issues in some way exemplify the ideological differences between the Republican governor and the Democratic lawmakers that now so control the House and the Senate in Vermont. Democrats very generally believe that government should be used as a force to improve the lives of the people it represents, right? That government should intervene in very direct and palpable ways that will resolve the financial struggle that low and even middle-class workers face. They say, hey, what better way to intervene than to simply say to businesses, look, guys, you're gonna have to start paying your employees more. We're gonna require you to. And during this past session, that is exactly what Democrats did in both the House and the Senate. They passed a bill that would gradually increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. It wasn't going to be an overnight thing. The minimum wage right now is $10.50 an hour. The bill that they passed would increase it to $15 an hour by 2024, so it would give us six years to get there. The House and the Senate also passed a paid family leave bill, and this would have accessed a payroll tax on workers somewhere on the order of one, one-half of 1%, I think I have that right, and the money would be used to fund the paid family leave program. As most of you probably know by now, the governor vetoed both of those bills. Phil Scott says, look, it's not that I don't want people to get $15 an hour. I do. It's not that I don't want new mothers to be able to take time at home with their newborns while being paid. He says I do want that. But he says we can't just will these things into existence by forcing employers to pay more or by forcing employees to pay a payroll tax that the vast majority of workers, frankly, probably wouldn't see any direct benefit from. What not surprisingly takes the view that we need to empower the free market to deliver these outcomes on their own and that we can encourage that to happen by relieving regulatory burdens on them, for instance, by easing the amount of taxes that they have to pay, where you create an environment where wages rise naturally, where businesses are compelled to give more generous benefits packages because they have more money to work with. So Phil Scott vetoes these bills. And during the last session, that was absolutely the end of the road. No chance for these bills to get passed under a Phil Scott veto. And why? Because Republicans had 53 seats in the House of Representatives and they were in the minority for sure. But 53 is a very important number because you only need 50 votes in the Vermont House to be able to sustain a governor's veto. That's a super minority. And that's the threshold. And that means Republican lawmakers served as this kind of, you know, backstop that Democrats were going to be unable to break through. And it gave Phil Scott this inescapable power over the fate of a lot of legislation that Democrats wanted to pass. And the use of that veto pen is a power that Phil Scott exploited quite a bit. He issued 14 vetoes during his first term in office. The most since Governor Howard Dean. Next year is going to be a very different story because of what happened on Tuesday. Now there are only 43 Republicans in the Vermont House of Representatives. If you take Democrats and progressives combined, they have 102 seats in the Vermont House of Representatives. And that is a veto-proof majority. I should just note here as an aside that we have the Senate too, right? They're an important body in this. But the dynamic there hasn't really shifted all that much after Tuesday. Democrats had 23 seats. Last year they're going to have 24 this year. So basically the same fundamental dynamic is playing out there. And so the initial thought is, hey, looks like Democrats might be able to use their ability to override this veto to push forward all these things they weren't able to move forward with because of Phil Scott's veto power. Not so fast. It is true that Democrats by and large favor $15 minimum wage. It's also true that Democrats by and large favor paid family leave. But Democrats are not a monolith. They do not vote in a reliably unified block. And I've talked to quite a few Democratic legislators since Tuesday, and I put this question to them. Now that you have 102 votes, does it mean that minimum wage and paid family leave are a done deal in 2019? And the answer from them is far from it. And in fact, I don't know that even many of them think that that's the likely outcome next year. And to understand why it's useful to take a look at the numbers in the votes for both of those bills during the last session. The minimum wage bill passed. It passed by a count of 77 to 69. Extremely close. Democrats really had to work to get that over the finish line. And remember, there were only 53 Republicans in the House then. That means that 16 Democrats and independents voted against the minimum wage bill. The paid leave vote was a little more comfortable for Democrats. I think they got 84 yes votes on that. But under any circumstance, they're going to need 100 to override the governor's veto. And I haven't talked to anyone that's confident that the Democrats are going to be able to muster those votes. A lot can change between April and May, which is when we would see an attempt at a veto ride, assuming that Democrats decide to move those bills again next year. And as of now though, notwithstanding this change in the partisan dynamic in Montpelier, it looks like this election is going to deliver to us the same result in 2019 that we saw in 2018, which is where you have Democratic majorities looking to push through these sort of socially progressive labor bills. A Republican governor that is going to veto them and just not enough people in the State House to overturn that veto power. Status quo, in the other words. And you know, elections matter and we say this and it's a cliche, but it really is so true. And I feel like this is one glaring example of that. Had Christine Hallquist won the race for governor, I can guarantee you, Vermont would in very short order, I can't guarantee anything actually, but I can say with a high degree of confidence that Vermont would in very short order be, I believe the first state in the country to have both a $15 minimum wage and a mandatory paid family leave program for its workers. Two controversial economic policies, two incredibly substantial and impactful economic policies. No matter where you stand on those policies, I think we can all agree they would have a big impact on the state for better or for worse. And because Christine Hallquist did not win, we will not see that happening or we aren't as likely to see that happen. So I just gave you two examples where Phil Scott's veto power will remain very relevant going into 2019. A place where he still has the ability to kind of unilaterally impose his will on the policy direction of this state. But there are going to be areas over the next year, over the next two years where this new legislative dynamic really does undercut the governor's power over the state purse strings and over budget policies specifically. And that is going to come most notably in the area of the state budget and specifically the area of the state budget that relates to education spending. I mentioned earlier that Phil Scott spent his first two years in office focusing primarily on ways to reduce costs in the kindergarten through 12th grade education system. And let's just go back so we can all remind ourselves just how aggressively Phil Scott has attempted to do that. Phil Scott delivered his first budget address in January of 2017, just a few months after he was elected. And he had kind of mentioned the idea of school spending during his campaign, but hadn't thrown out any super specific plans for how he was going to go about reducing those expenditures. So it's an understatement to say that he caught a lot of people off guard when he said during this budget address that, you know how we're going to reduce costs? We are going to mandate from on high here in Montpelier that school budgets, local school budgets cannot be any bigger next year than they were this year. Easy. Done. We passed this law here in Montpelier. Tell local boards to make it so and we've solved our spending problem virtually overnight. There was of course one problem with that plan, which is that school boards had already approved the budgets that were going to go to local voters, not just approve them, but they'd been printed out. Budget vote meetings had been warned and those school budgets as it turned out were going up on average by 3% and Phil Scott just wanted them to go back to the drawing board, figure out a way to reduce costs and come back to voters with 0% increases in those budgets. Democratic lawmakers were appalled by this proposal. You could see the looks on their faces as he was making his speech, announcing this proposal and they dismissed it out of hand. They said, no way. Phil Scott's gone crazy. They said, yes, and it didn't happen. But it set the stage and the tone for the two sessions that would follow. Phil Scott comes to the table with a big proposal that Democrats haven't heard much about until the moment that he shows it to them and generally the media at the same time and angry Democrats would kind of yell them out of the room and say, this is a non-starter. We can't compromise with you even because we don't know where to begin with this. This past session, Phil Scott threw out a different idea that was about as popular in the state house as his plan for budget caps and this time he said, let's just tell schools they can't have as many teachers and other staff as they have right now. Staff is expensive. It's true. Payroll costs account for about 80% of all education spending and Phil Scott said, let's do this. Let's set a staff to student ratio that we say schools can't exceed and then we'll force them to reduce the number of people working there. Presto change, Joe. We say $500 million a year in education costs. We use a bunch of that money to invest in other important areas of state government and we're all the better for it. Democrats, as you remember, said nothing doing. This isn't going to happen. We're not going to go along with your plan. But Phil Scott had an ace in the hole and this was his veto power. So instead of trying to cajole democratic lawmakers into going along with his education spending plan he said if you don't move in my direction don't give me a significant portion of what I want I'm going to veto the state budget you send me. It wasn't that Phil Scott had a problem with the state budget per se but it was a fine and powerful piece of leverage for him to be able to use. And he said I'm going to use this leverage I'm going to exploit it to try to force Democrats to concede ground on some of these education spending reforms that they wouldn't otherwise have even considered doing. And that's exactly what Phil Scott did and you all remember this, I'm sure he vetoed the first budget lawmakers sent him, this past session and then he vetoed the second one they sent him and we saw quite a game of brinksmanship as June wore on and we came very close to the beginning of a new fiscal year without having a budget in place and so Vermont for the first time anybody could remember faced this unprecedented prospect of a government shutdown which was something a lot of people just didn't think could ever happen in a place like Vermont where we have a reputation rightly or wrongly as having elected officials who are willing to work across the aisle no matter the party they belong to and Phil Scott was able to extract some pretty significant concessions from Democrats as a result of this he convinced them to use surplus and one time money to lower property tax rates, it's something that a lot of Democrats were very viscerally opposed to but they felt like they had no other option because if they continued to say no and they called Phil Scott's bluff then Vermont was going to find itself on July 1 without a state budget state parks about to open road projects needing to get done and there wouldn't be any money to pay for any of it now Republicans only have 43 seats and unlike the issues I was talking about earlier minimum wage, paid family leave Democrats and progressives really did have a united front on this budget standoff with Phil Scott and Republicans needed every one of those 53 votes to be able to sustain the governor's veto so that means now with Democrats and progressives holding 102 seats instead of the 93 they had last year they can override his veto when it comes to disagreements over the budget what does that mean it probably means that Phil Scott is going to have to take a more collaborative approach with the Democrat-controlled legislature he can no longer say it's my way or the highway he can't use the veto threat credibly under a lot of circumstances because Democrats are going to be able to form very interesting coalitions within their own caucus within the independent caucus within the progressive caucus make sure that they have enough votes to thwart Phil Scott I can assure you that if Democratic leadership in the House had last session had the option of either compromising with fellow Democrats to get them to override the budget instead of having to figure out a compromise with Phil Scott they certainly would have chosen the former and you know it's interesting I feel like Democrats have to respect the fact that Phil Scott won his election by 15 points it's a significant victory for him and voters are pretty clearly saying that in broad terms and very generally they support the fiscal vision that Phil Scott brings to the table in Vermont Phil Scott conversely has to respect I think the fact that voters have also seen the wisdom of giving Democrats a veto-proof majority in both chambers of the legislature and when I listened to Phil Scott's victory speech on Tuesday I was struck by the tone you would think a guy who just won his reelection bid by 15 points would be triumphant boisterous, excited enjoying the thrill of victory but Phil Scott honestly sounded more chastened than anything he was really lamenting the Republican losses in the House I know that his political team thought that Vermonters by and large favored the ideas he was putting forward in the State House and that voters would see Democrats as an impediment to Phil Scott having his way and that they would as a result vote out a lot of the Democrats put more Republicans in the House to increase the likelihood that Phil Scott's vision for reducing education spending could finally be realized just the opposite happened right this idea that voters were going to be angry at liberal lawmakers for thwarting Phil Scott did not turn out to be the case Phil Scott had a line in his speech on Tuesday where he said and this is a direct quote here in electing the governor of one party in a legislature of another and I think what he meant to us tonight is clear work together so as of right now those are just words in a speech politicians say a lot of words and a lot of speeches and they don't necessarily always mean anything but I think Phil Scott actually does mean what he said on Tuesday I think the relationship between Phil Scott and Democratic lawmakers has been extraordinarily strained no matter which side you talk to and I think Phil Scott really does understand based on the outcome of Tuesday's election that his administration is going to have to make a much stronger effort to collaborate with Democratic lawmakers in a way that they either haven't been able to or willing to during these first two years and I think on the other side I think there are a lot of Democratic lawmakers maybe we overshot our bounds as well maybe there's ways in which we could change our approach to working with the administration that would foster a more collaborative working relationship I've talked off the record with a number of key legislators who have said that their dislike of Scott's team has really kind of gotten visceral, you know it's almost personal and that the well has been poisoned and I think the poisoning of that well is in some ways the result of this political dynamic in Montpelier that has encouraged each party to decide we're going to try to go our own way Scott can issue a veto because he knows he has the Republicans who will sustain the votes and Democrats get so upset by this veto threat that their ability to work with the governor is hampered in a lot of ways so they both end up hating each other so much that they just can't find a way to work together it's amazing to me how much ego and hubris figure into what happens in Montpelier and you think these are elected officials these people level headed big thinkers to get into a room set aside their own personal feelings and personal pride and come to an agreement that works best for most Vermonters and I'll tell you it's amazing how much pride gets in the way of people working together up there and that's I guess just part of what it means to be human those vices get in the way of us working well together we have this new environment now though it's amazing how much pride can really force the other to do what it wants them to do and when you can't force somebody to do something you have to coax them into doing it and you have to make accommodations and maybe I'm being polyannish about this but I think there's a scenario where Phil Scott and Democrats are able to work together in ways that have eluded them during their first two years since Phil Scott has been elected the last time a legislature overrode a governor's budget veto was in 2009 and that was actually the first time a governor ever had vetoed a budget Jim Douglas was the governor he was a Republican of course Shapp Smith was the new Speaker of the House Peter Shumlin was the president of the Senate at that time and I've talked to a number of people who were a part of that process on both sides people that were part of the Republican team that issued the veto people that were in the legislature and were Democrats who worked to override that veto and to a person they say it was one of the most unpleasant experiences in their careers as elected officials the politics weren't good for either side I don't think any Vermonters were looking at that thinking boy you know this is exactly what I was hoping for when I elected all these people into office the constitution does allow for a governor to issue a veto and gives the legislature the power to override that veto the consensus among the elected officials that I've talked to say that when that happens it really is a breakdown in the system it means that something isn't working the way it's supposed to and it's certainly not the way most people outside the Montpelier bubble want to see their state government working for them voters for the most part want their elected officials to come together make compromises figure out a way to get the work of the state done and do it as fast as possible and get out of dodge and there is some optimism right now maybe it's misplaced among a lot of people in Montpelier that this new legislative dynamic will lend itself to that outcome to people just getting together getting along better so before I wrap up here and throw it to you all for questions I want to revisit this idea that I mentioned earlier and that is how to reconcile the results of this election how to hold in one hand this idea that voters really love their Republican governor and on the other they want to put the super majority of Democrats and progressives into the state house and as it turns out the phenomenon of divided government is something that political scientists have been ruminating over for decades now and despite all the study they have done on it even they can't seem to agree on the underlying factors for what at face value seems like an irrational outcome you know from an electoral standpoint let's I think a great real life example that we can use to sort of exemplify what we're talking about is a district like North Euro voters there chose Phil Scott by a 2 to 1 margin over Christine Hallquist that was 360 people voting for Phil Scott 180 people voting for Christine Hallquist it's a massive win for Phil Scott he has a big divide there and yet those same voters voted for a Democrat for the house and it wasn't just any Democrat it was House Speaker Mitzi Johnson this is the person who probably was the most important driver behind the paid family leave legislation and was one of the critical drivers behind paid family leave so the voters in this district voted for the person that was the driving force behind the things that Phil Scott vetoed and then they also voted for the person that vetoed the things that Mitzi Johnson was trying to push through so what's going on here how do you explain this it doesn't seem like an intuitive outcome I don't think and one popular theory among political scientists is that voters are consciously choosing divided government as a way of restoring balance to their political universe this idea stems from the thinking that most voters are somewhere in the center or at least a plurality of voters consider themselves to be centrists and those voters are afraid of extremists on either side they're afraid of Republicans who are extremely conservative they're afraid of Democrats who are extremely liberal and so they the theory goes that they feel like by splitting their tickets they can check the power of both ideologies they give power over one branch to one party power over another branch to a different party and in doing so feel like they can bring government on the whole somewhere in the middle other political scientists say there's no evidence to suggest that voters are thinking about things that consciously or that deeply when they show up to the ballot box and they say you know it's really more conventional factors that explain this phenomenon factors like the power of incumbency and they would say well I can explain this outcome to you Phil Scott is a popular incumbent Mitzi Johnson is a powerful incumbent and they held those seats going into this election and so of course they hold those seats out of them that's the expected outcome we would have they also cite factors like the general quality of a candidate Phil Scott is a popular guy people like him the same can be said of Mitzi Johnson as a politician she's an effective speaker has solid rhetorical skills both of them have this kind of magnetism and charisma that people like in their politicians and there's a ton of research that does tell us people care more about a candidate's temperament and character than the specific aspects of their partisan platform that also would help explain why people are voting for Phil Scott and for Mitzi Johnson and another factor in the outcome of these races is money, money matters now maybe more than it ever has and Phil Scott had more money and a much more sprawling campaign apparatus than Christine Alquist did his own campaign raised more money than she did and he had a Republican super PAC at his back that spent more than a half million dollars on his behalf to run TV ads send postcards to voters at the local level the Vermont Democratic Party had a much bigger campaign apparatus than the Vermont GOP and they used a lot of those resources on local races for the House and Senate the Democratic Party was fascinating enough didn't spend all that much money at all on the race for governor maybe they didn't think Phil Scott could be beat who knows but they did invest very heavily in local races they sent postcards they did Facebook advertising and that could help explain as well this outcome where we have a Republican governor and Democratic House candidates both having extremely successful days on election day so the point is what's at work here but I find it a fascinating thing to think about and then the thought I'll leave you on is kind of the so what of divided government and what does it mean for what we're going to get from the government that we just elected and political scientists have also spent a lot of time thinking about this studying the effect of divided government on the legislative policy that emerges from that government and again the data are not conclusive but by and large the research does point to one thing and that is that important legislation and this can be defined as major policy reforms that are going to have immediate and concrete impacts on the lives of citizens is less likely to be passed into law under divided government than it is under a unified government and some researchers say the important legislation that does pass under a divided government is much different than it would be under a unified government one outcome of divided government is institutional conflict right the executive branch going at it with the legislative branch in a way they might not if they were being run by people from the same party and when you have institutional conflict the major legislation that does pass is part of a very long bargaining process that can really lead to the delusion of some of the key elements of the policy at hand so what does that mean for us in 2019 it means you're not going to get a new deal type legislation under divided government these grand sprawling historic and generational laws generally happen under a unified government because that's the only context in which you have the will to get them through a proposal like single payer health care for instance that peter shellman came to the table with had he had a legislature controlled by republicans we wouldn't even have been talking about it right but because he had democrats controlling both the house and senate it was a possibility now he wasn't able to realize that outcome but when you have unified government with things like that actually can happen and it means that major shifts in spending policy like phil scott's proposal of the cap education spending or to mandate reductions in school staff that also probably cannot happen under a divided government there's just not the room there for it which means we have all these major policy questions right now in vermont right whether it's how much we're going to spend on public education how we're going to pay to clean up vermont's waterways how to improve affordability for everyday vermoners and so long as we have an executive branch controlled by one party and a legislative branch controlled by another we're exceedingly unlikely to see any seismic shifts in policy to deal with these issues and for better or worse so long as we have a republican governor and a democratic legislature the evolution of policy is going to be slow and it's going to be incremental and perhaps what vermonters were saying in this election is that's exactly how they want it so thank you all for being here and I'm happy to answer any questions and if anybody has any questions about what might be other issues that might be coming up in 2019 legislative session happy to answer those as well my name is Jane Van Landingham I'm a grandmother I live in Richmond, Vermont and if you listen to me talk you'll know I'm from away I grew up in North Carolina I retired here 10 years ago and I'm very grateful to be in general warmly welcomed in Vermont I came home from the polls on election day where I'm a JP and had been working the election and still had to go back that night and count for several hours to discover that someone had removed one of the political signs from my yard I'm a Democrat my father started out as a Southern Democrat which probably won't surprise people but I have my own reasons now for being a Democrat and I had five signs on my yard when I got home four of the Democratic signs remained on my yard but someone had come onto my property and removed my Christine for Governor's sign I would like to think that the wind blew it over but I went and looked in the gutters and in the ditch and it wasn't there in general and I happen to be a gay person I feel loved and welcomed by my neighbors and so forth and I don't think it was one of my next door or nearby neighbors who stole that sign but I wish you would comment a little bit about the effect of having someone who is most people will say now that they know a gay person but most people don't know a trans person or they don't know if they do and I wonder if you would comment on the effect of that whole issue on the Governor's race and I'm mad about my sign if it makes you feel any better the practice of stealing political signs I believe is old as politics itself so you weren't the first and you won't be the last which isn't to say that it's an excusable offense right I spend a lot of time thinking about what impact Christine Hawquist's gender identity had on the way the electorate perceived her as a candidate had on to consider voting for her and I live in Worcester, Vermont and it's a pretty rural place and it's got a lot of old boy Vermonters in it people that have been there whose families have been there for generations and there are a lot of salty Republicans who I kind of get they're sort of the I use them as my finger on the pulse of the conservative Republican community and it was disheartening for me when I would get coffee there in the morning sometimes to listen to the way they would talk about Christine Hawquist and it was illuminating for me as well because sometimes we find ourselves in our little social bubbles that we think are a microcosm of the world we live in and then when you get outside of them you realize that that's not the case at all there's no question in my mind that there were people who might have otherwise considered Christine Hawquist in their voting decision who wrote her off before they even got to that consideration point because she was a transgender woman I was shadowing her for a day when she was on the campaign trail and that included a stop at a parade where Christine was running through the streets and there were people that turned their backs on her now whether or not that was the decisive factor I don't think we can say that she was facing a lot of other hurdles she was not a perfect candidate first time candidate I think it showed in some ways in terms of her rhetorical presentation her ability to connect with people on that level but I think it had an effect she necessarily would have won had she not been a transgender woman but I think it was there were some people that speculated that was an advantage for her because it gave her so much attention I don't think that's necessarily the case for each of the two legislative sessions that Phil Scott has served so far he has sprung a pretty significant piece of proposed legislation on the legislature late in the session and I really can't figure out why he would do that he was a legislator himself and I think he would have been upset had a prior governor done that to him and to other legislators so I want to get your thoughts on why he's done that in the past two sessions and whether you think he might do that again much as I wish I could I'm unable to get inside the head of Phil Scott and his political advisors but here's one thought I've had on that you want to as a politician create an environment in which the things you want to happen are most likely to thrive and I think that one of the calculations was that legislative chaos might be a pretty useful environment for moving things forward that we want to see happen now was there any part of Phil Scott that thought legislators will go right along with this idea to cap school budgets I don't think there was was there any part of Phil Scott that thought legislators are going to go along with mandatory reductions to school staff I don't think there was but I think that the thinking was in shooting for the stars maybe we'll end up landing on the moon which is a lot further than we are right now and I don't think that it worked to their benefit I mean I think that there's a scenario where Democratic lawmakers are under extraordinary pressure on the issue of property taxes themselves they would love to find a way to deal with that issue in a productive way but Phil Scott has not sort of built up the will with legislators sort of you know off the record behind the scenes conversations well before the session starts to kind of grease the wheels for something everybody can agree on that's not the approach they've chosen and so I think they just really thought they could will their way to this happening by throwing out these these giant ideas and maybe getting halfway there and thinking that would be better than nothing at all so that's the question is, is he chastened or not has he seen the you know, recognized what Democrats think or the error of his ways and will he change his approach in 2019 and I think we'll get a really good sense of whether or not he's going to in the next few weeks here can you say a little bit about climate change and the possible legislation I was invited yesterday to an off the record conversation with some advocates of the Vermont Natural Resources Council I wasn't able to make it but I know that they're working on some climate legislation I imagine it will be something approximating the Essex plan I don't know if you're familiar with that but it was a version of a carbon pollution tax where you would raise taxes on carbon emitting fuels like diesel, unleaded, heating oil but then you would figure out some way to return to low and middle income Vermonters via some dividend or something the extra money that they would be spending on these fossil fuels and I know that those advocates are incredibly happy with what happened on Tuesday would they have liked to see Christine Hallquist win? Of course they would but the Vermont Conservation Voters Action Fund which is a super pack a local super pack, a Vermont grown super pack it's all in state money raised $120,000 this cycle I don't think they spent a dollar on Christine Hallquist maybe they spent a few dollars on her but not much, where did they put that money? for the House and Senate key races where they had candidates that they thought would be supportive of something like a carbon pollution tax and it's my sense that Democrats for whom climate change is a singular issue are starting to reach the critical mass of numbers that they need in the State House to really begin moving those concepts beyond the midi level which is where they've been stuck at to date leadership is very scared of the idea of a carbon tax they don't think it plays well in the campaign trail but I think pressure is building in the ranks to really have a more meaningful debate in the State House about the carbon tax issue and it's possible that we could see that begin to happen in 2019 I don't think they're going to be passing it but I think a lot of these advocates have their eye on the long horizon and see this as more of a 5-10 year fight than a 1-2 year fight this is probably a pathetically naive question but do you envision any way in which we might ultimately switch school funding from property based to income based I had a conversation with Phil Scott not too long ago where he signaled a real willingness to that concept he said in Democrats for the most part are already there I think it's a concept that's really taken hold in the Democratic mainstream here are the caveats that Phil Scott puts on that the burden can't be too overwhelming on really wealthy people and it needs to be coupled with a real and meaningful plan to reduce the rate of growth in education spending given the governor's approach to education spending issues over the past two years and given the chasm between that approach and what Democrats would like to see it would be a really it would be quite a change of events to see them somehow coming together to push forward a major education formula education funding formula reform keep in mind it's been 20 years since the education funding formula we had was put in place and generally these things take years to come up with in terms of getting the willpower and buy in for a replacement so I think it's a possibility I don't think it's a likelihood I think it's inevitable that we're moving in that direction the question is what will it look like and how long will it take to get there healthcare on the national level seems to be a big issue this year but it's very quiet in Vermont is the comment on that yes and I just heard one request to repeat the question so I will the question was healthcare seems to have been a big issue at the national level during this election cycle but seems to be a little bit quieter not as controversial in Vermont and I think the reason that that's the case is because when it comes to healthcare democrats and republicans are pretty much on the same page right now in Vermont you'll recall the downfall of Peter Shumlin single payer healthcare plan what that merged into though was this concept of accountable care organizations and a Medicaid expansion where we were taking advantage of the Affordable Care Act to bring all this new federal money into the state of Vermont to be able to pay for healthcare for lower income residents and when Phil Scott inherited state government from Peter Shumlin there was a lot of speculation around what he would do in terms of the path that Vermont is on for healthcare reform Phil Scott had had some pretty critical things to say about what Peter Shumlin had done before he became governor once he was governor though and had an opportunity to get briefed on everything that was going on at the agency of human services and everything that was going on in the healthcare system Phil Scott said you know what this actually looks like a pretty good idea you've got going here the problem with healthcare is that the amount of money that you're talking about means that we are so constrictively tied to what happens at the federal level that it really is difficult to change things substantially by using the relatively small levers that you have in state government to control healthcare costs so I think this payment reform path that we're on right now where the idea is to reward providers for the quality of care that they're giving as opposed to the number of procedures they happen to perform I think by and large most everybody in Montpelier is in agreement that that's the way we ought to move forward and I don't see any major shifts in that path over the next two years for sure I mean to dominate but I have another good question I bet it is good it's also a theory we talked about the 2-1 margin in North Hero for Phil Scott and then those voters turned right around and supported the current speaker and I could see the writing on the wall in terms of Hallquist not being elected governor the polls seem to indicate that she was not that strong a candidate and I also appreciated the fact that Phil Scott reversed his position on gun safety and supported three different pieces of important legislation and I wanted to reward him for that and I wanted to kind of send a message to the NRA and the state franchise of the NRA to say that I support the governor that will do the right thing as far as gun safety goes and I'm thinking that that may have been what we were to some extent in North Hero as well yeah I think you're right and just kind of riffing on this idea of what was you know we were all speculating what is the impact of Phil Scott's evolving stance on gun laws going to mean for him at the ballot box and I think most people at this point have come to the conclusion that it was a net positive for him that he was able to endear himself to Democrats through those bypassing those bills into law in a way that wanted more votes from the left than he lost on the right I think another noteworthy dynamic in Vermont over the past two years that may have had the same effect for Phil Scott is the words that he has had for Donald Trump and some of the positions that he's taken at the state level specific actionable legislation that cast him as part of the resistance against President Donald Trump whether that was on immigration policy where Phil Scott came out in a press conference shortly after Donald Trump issued an executive order saying he wanted to enlist state and federal law enforcement agencies in enforcing federal immigration law Phil Scott said no we're not going to do that in Vermont or in other areas where Phil Scott has really gone out of his way to criticize and chastise Donald Trump I think I think Rich Clark he's a professor of political science at Castleton University put it best when he said to me Democrats choose as a hero those who those Republicans who resist Donald Trump and I think there's something to that and I think it had an effect in our VPR Vermont PBS poll Phil Scott won 26% of Democrats 26% it's a big number and I think that the gun issue and Donald Trump issue might have played into that Did the NRA support Phil Scott as much as they had before? You know interestingly the NRA has not invested a lot of money in Vermont elections almost ever they would give a few hundred dollars here and there to some candidates but have not tried to exert influence by virtue of money in politics they used other strategies though so thank you one more okay sorry for the late handrails I wonder how votes are counted so we still hear Georgia and Florida are counting their absentee ballots but 40% of Vermont voted pre-election day is there a great reg about how they get counted and when? You know it's funny I was listening to an interview on the way here where on NPR where they were talking to a Tampa Bay Times reporter in Florida and this guy is covering this right now and Phil Rick Scott has filed some kind of lawsuit against Broward County elections officials because they haven't delivered their vote totals yet and they were naturally put the question to this reporter that's covering it there on the ground why is it taking so long for them to count the votes and he said we keep we don't know we've been trying to get the answer to that and we can't seem to figure it out there you go so you know the complexities of the vote counting process seems to differ from precinct to precinct it's really confusing as to why some come up with the counts sooner than others Thank you so very much Thank you all so much great to be here