This is Puro Pelka with Michael Pelka only on the blaze radio network all right you're listening to your own book filling in for Michael Pelka I'll be here through Thursday he'll be back on Friday and you know we ended up we ended up the last hour talking about immigration look there are a lot of other issues to talk about in immigration which I'm not talking about right what about mass migration what about migration of Muslims if you want if you're interested in any of that call in<PHONE_NUMBER>-888-900-3393 happy to talk about any of that or any of your other objections to immigration but I want to shift topics and I'm sorry Max's disappeared again he keeps calling and dropping and calling and dropping come on Max stick with it Max wanted to talk about the rise and fall of America and and and I do too I want to talk about why we have this idea which I think is real that that America's in decline and I can tell you you know the difference between America as I imagined it when I first decided to come to America and between America I found when I came was significant and then the difference between America that I found when I came and America that exists today the America of the last 30 years I came to America exactly 30 years ago is significant in my view America is in decline it's not gone yet there's still America here but America's in decline and we have to define what we mean by America and this will connect a little bit to to the president's comments from yesterday particularly early on we have to define what America is to really talk about rise and fall and luckily for us Max called back all right so so max you want to you want to lead us off here on this topic with a with some comments or question yes I just had a question sure yeah how how long do you think till it actually gets to like another world war because the way US is looking now it's kind of like how Germany was used to be all you know it used to be a religious place and a lot of good stuff there then you know it fell down to Hitler yeah but you know really didn't do anything wrong what's that did you just say Hitler didn't do anything wrong yeah he really didn't oh Hitler was one of those evil people in human history he did everything he did was wrong everything he did was evil and he is is certainly one of the nastiest characters in in human history but as to how long before we have a world war something like yeah I don't know I'm not in the business of predicting and putting timetables on things I will tell you we're in decline thanks max for calling although I didn't think you would be a supportive Hitler that I wouldn't have taken a call if I know that I even I have my my my my limits and being a supportive Hitler and being a supportive Stalin that's where you hit my limits in terms of in terms of tolerance but look America is in decline whether it ends up in a world war whether it ends up in just slow decline or whether we just go into a massive depression or whether we start killing each other who knows what it looks like and I'm not even sure it has to end that way I'm an optimist I think that the client can be reversed I think we can save this country and I think there's certain signs in the culture that suggest that this country is is still able to save itself but I want to first try to understand what America is what America represents what America when we say America do we just mean this particular geography do we just mean the particular people who live here I understand why people are hostile to immigrants if you believe it's just the people who happen to live within these borders right now oh they're not Americans to me America is much more than that to me America is an idea an idea there was codified in this particular geographic area an idea there was manifest in reality in this particular geographic area and not by accident but because of the existence of men of genius like the founding fathers who created this country this is their country or at least the country I love the America I love is their country and it's their ideas their ideas about what a country should be like that is slipping away that is disappearing that is under constant attack here's is a an example this is from Donald Trump's speech last night right and this is this is I think very telling on what the right today has to offer Americans now he talks about this you know too often we forget that a wound inflicted upon a single member of our community is a wound inflicted upon us all when one part of America hoods we all hoods and when one when one citizen suffers an injustice we all suffer together really is that true I mean I know that there are people hooding right now in America I don't feel it and I can't say necessarily I care I mean if they're good people I care if they're not so good people I don't care just because they're Americans doesn't make me care is that what makes us American is the fact that we all have some some kind of communal pain threshold that we all feel for each other we have some kind of collective consciousness and we all share in each other's experiences really is that America loyalty to our nation he goes on demands loyalty to one another love for America requires love for all of its people really when we open our hearts to patriotism there is no room for prejudice no place for bigotry and no tolerance for hate now I agree that they should never be room for prejudice and never be room for bigotry I'm not so big on this everybody hates hate I'd like to hate that some people who deserve my hatred hate is not a bad thing it's so politically correct to say we must eradicate hate from our world really I hate lots of people I hate Norm Chomsky some of you might not know he is but he's a is the most cited I think intellectual in America today I leftist nihilist really bad guy I hate him I hate Hitler I hate Stalin I hate a lot of people out there who advocates really bad idea yeah I hate them don't be don't be don't be embarrassed by your hate don't be ashamed of your hate if you hate people for good reason if you hate people for rational reason then hatred is not a bad thing so I hate this politically correct nonsense about we must eradicate hate from America no I I hate I hate Islamic terrorists I hate that guy who drove his truck into a group of tourists and and and locals just trying to enjoy their lives in in Barcelona the other day and I will always hate people like that I have no tolerance for them I have no sympathy for them I will not turn the other cheek for them and I will not love my enemy I will not love my enemy I will hate my enemy so I don't buy this tolerance you know that that we should we should have no tolerance for hate some people need to be hated though those people who marched in Charlottesville with Nazi slogans let me tell you I hate you guys and Antifa the the the leftist group that goes around the country attacking people who they disagree with and beating them up and using pepper spray on them I hate you guys and it's when we when we have the the the stomach and the and the spine to identify people we hate and rationally defend our position that is all that is when we will resurrect America I mean the founding fathers hated the king and they offended him and they were vaulted against him and they shot people I don't buy this I guess this Christian idea of turning the other cheek and loving your enemy I don't love my enemy never will never have you know I've been in a war and in Israel I know what it's like to see you know to see people you know die in a war I hate people who attack my values I hate people who want to destroy my country I hate people who want to destroy my values I'm not I'm not a turn the other cheek kind of guy and I'm not a patriot if patriotism just means opening my heart so loving America because it's this geography I'm a patriot only to the extent that this country lives up to its founding principle only to the extent that this country protects individual rights only to the extent that this country is a country that you know that is individualist that protects the individual that values the individual but this collectivist garbage coming out of the president of the United States mouth does not does not encourage me to be patriotic really I'm supposed to feel anytime an American is feeling pain no I'm not I love this country I am a greater to this country because I love this country because this country represents freedom it represents individualism it represents individual rights and it was founded to protect those rights that's the extent to which I love it to the extent this country becomes socialist to the extent this country becomes status to the extent this country become collectivist I will fight it all right we come back we'll talk more about why we're losing this battle for America why America slipping away or at least this idea of America is slipping away slipping away so much that our president doesn't even advocate for it and the people who support the president don't advocate for it and very few people out there know what America really is all right you're listening to your own book filling in for Palka on the blaze radio network we'll be back right after this pure opulka with Michael Palka you're listening your own book filling in for Michael Palka today through Thursday and just to make it clear guys I don't walk around hating everybody all the time but hate is appropriate hate is appropriate I actually am a big believer in love loving yourself first and foremost loving your own life and then figuring out what are the most important values that are make your life the best life that it can be living so you can live the best that you can live and and loving those values loving those things and I love this country and I love this country because it is the best country from my life it's a country where I can still make the most of my life it's the country where I've chosen to fight the battle for freedom because I think it's a country with the most upside potential we were free we come from a history of great fighters for freedom we come we come from from from the founders of this country who really believed and understood what freedom stands for and I still believe that we can resurrect we can resurrect and in a century invent those ideas and make them even more solid now than before so now life is about loving but not your enemies then I still hate all right I want to talk about you know we're talking about this false sense of patriotism that I think the president projects this false sense of collectivism that I think now is embedded in our culture and more and more we get a sense of it so much statism around and all of this I think is a consequence of the fact that the statists have been winning against the founders against the individualists in American history for the last for the last hundred plus years and and to put it in a perspective of left and right basically the left is winning and you can think about it this way when FDR passed all of his agenda right the new deal the new deal that FDR passed regulation of finance complete regulation every aspect of the financial industry regulation of employment labor laws social security the establishment for the first time in American history at the federal level of a welfare state massive massive intervention in the economy the building of a big projects by the government and on a scale that the government had never done before Republicans fought him Republicans stood up against him and fought every single thing that he did indeed the Supreme Court fought him until he basically threatened to to wipe them out to stack the court and then they basically folded and accepted his view of the Constitution and and Republicans always said during the 30s when we get into power we will reverse everything that FDR did and then they got into power and they didn't they embraced everything FDR did they're the biggest supporters of public projects look at the infrastructure bill that Trump wants to foist upon us so security they don't want to do away with so security they're the big proponents of security we want to defend so security say the Republicans deregulation away maybe sometimes you know once in a while they'll deregulate a little bit but nothing systematic nothing on principle no Republicans today are basically have accepted FDR as a hero most Republicans today consider FDR a great American president not like Republicans at the time who are opposed to him or fought against him who thought he was anti-American a disaster no today's considered a hero among Republicans when Johnson then in 1960s two minutes passed the great society the massive expansion of the welfare state war on poverty Medicare Medicaid Republicans opposed it argued against it you should listen to Ronald Reagan speech from 1964 we attacks Medicare and a they said as soon as we get into power we can undo all this did they know no soon as they got into power they reinforced all of it and today nobody challenges the great society Republicans are way to the left of where they used to be throughout in terms of everything with regard to to to economic issues to the role of government Republicans they believe in a robust role for government we've got a president who wants to regulate control trade wants to tell seos who to high-end who to fire and went to high-end way to fire where to locate their plans Republicans are not as I mentioned earlier a capitalist party they have drifted way to the left on all those issues and the question is why why does the left keep winning why is the left dominating the intellectual discussion the intellectual landscape why do Republicans they look like Democrats of the past and so we're gonna take a break in a few seconds and that's really what we're gonna talk about in in the next part of the show why is the right the right of old keep losing to the left and why are the right and left today indistinguish in many respects all right we're coming up to a break you listening to your on my three two one pure Opelka with Mike Opelka right this is your own book filling in for Mike Opelka you can follow me in Facebook follow me in Twitter just put in my name you're on Y a R O N Brooke be our okay Twitter Facebook YouTube you know I'm I'm there and lots more content I was have a show here on the blaze every Sunday from 2 to 4 Eastern time I hope you start listening there as well hopefully you're intrigued all right we're talking about why the left is winning and I mean let me clarify it's not that I think the left is winning because they gain the most votes so they obviously they don't they they win the elections obviously they don't it's because they dictate the terms of debate they have moved the entire political spectrum to the left today's Republicans are Democrats of the past there is no capitalist party in America today everything is to the left everything has shifted and the only response Republicans have had recently to the left's agenda is to adopt the collectivism to adopt their identity politics and some have gone out to the fringe right and and and to the alt-right and adopted the same kind of racist identity politics that the left the radical the the fringe left is embraced right so no everything we talk about today is on the left's terms I mean think about it for yourself how many of you think that the financial crisis was caused by Wall Street I mean a majority an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that that is a leftist story that is not reality how many of you we think in America today that race is really really important that racial characteristics are really really important to who you are that is a leftist idea and an alt-right idea but the alt-right and the alt-left not much difference there in in in so many respects you know if we leave business alone they will you know they will poison us and they will destroy us and we have to regulate drug companies and now now we're getting more and more this idea we have to regulate the internet and we have to we have to control Google and those are all those are not ideas of a pro-capitalist party and yet they are prevalent everything the whole political map a shift at the left there's no discussion of actually establishing freedom freedom in America all right before I go on on their discussion we have Malachi I think Malachi and pronouncing that right from Chicago hi Malachi what's up I'm enjoying with the question your honor I wanted to know how how do you respond to the criticism about being a globalist and and that you know as a critique of many I suppose on the right now I mean especially when it comes to not only issues about immigration but also trade and isn't this something that the right kind of has going for it now is that you know it's been so passive and now the right is kind of getting tough and cracking down on neocons and globalist such as yourself yeah well let's let's unpack that let's let's identify what globalism is and it doesn't really mean anything would be my start-off point right what does globalism actually mean it means for some people a world government control over the United States from other nations loss of sovereignty the placing of the world people all over the world as the thing to be to be loyal to versus your own state it also means free trade and and relatively open immigration but that is a package deal the two have nothing to do with one another I for example and offer free trade and I'm for much more immigration than we have today and I'm against the world government and I'm against other countries telling our government what they can and cannot do I'm against of looking at the world from the perspective of countries and world government and so on my whole approach is to look at the world from the individual up not from the state down so globalism is used it's thrown about left and right all over the place to describe what to describe people want to control my life in the name of the planet or something then it's a bad thing to describe people who believe in free trade and allowing individuals to pursue their own life and their own happiness without coercion I'm all for people like that so it's a meaningless term I hate the term it's meaningless and I suddenly am not a globalist but I am for free trade and I am for for immigration all right so thanks Malachi great name by the way I don't know how you came up with that one thanks for calling I appreciate it we've got Douglas from Chicago wants to talk about Jerry Lewis I'm gonna hold off on that while I keep the discussion going Jerry Lewis is a little and out of out of out of the topics I wanted to cover today all right so why is it drifting left constantly and I would say it's because the left has had the ideological high ground the left is intellectual the left is philosophical the left has ideas the right does not the right has nothing to counter the ideas of the left and let's let's talk a little bit about what some of those ideas are great the idea of you know fundamentally that much of the left much of philosophy today many of their philosophers out there many of the teachers teaching your kids are teaching them to reality reality is not real there is no actual reality it's you shape reality it's it's it's it's your imagination it's your emotions it's it's there's no actual solid thing out there think about the consequences of that how do we know what truth is well the left tells us today we're in a post-truth era you can't even debate ideas with people like that but what does the right offer in response to that to this post-modern you know leftist ideas that are driving the social justice warriors and are driving so much of the antifa and but so much of the university professor so many of the classes that your kids are taking in college advocating that reality doesn't really exist it's not really real that you're just making it up that your reality is guided by your nature as a black person or white person and therefore if you're white you should have immediate guilt because you've been oppressing black people I mean all this garbage that is a complete rejection a fact a complete rejection of reality because they don't believe in facts in reality the world is completely subjective reality is completely subjective it's up to you now what is the right response to that does the right have a theory of explaining how to understand the world where truth comes from when knowledge comes from no most people on the right do not most intellectuals on the right either default to religion as the source of knowledge and by the way religion will never beat out philosophy it has no ground to stand on it it relies on revelation and revelation are not facts of reality are not proof of anything because you can't share a revelation you can't you know revelations are just because you said so that's not facts that's not argument that's not logic that's not reason or pragmatism the right is very fond of pragmatism we'll do whatever works whatever works no principles no ideas and no actual argument about the nature of reality in that sense pragmatism is just like the left the left also do whatever works so you basically have no argument for reality no argument for reason no argument for facts given by the right and if you can't make that argument too many people attempt it by this idea of hey we'll just we'll just adopt and you can see it on American campuses today we'll just adopt this identity politics we'll just adopt this idea that whatever happens in my head whatever my emotions are whatever my leader tells me because I don't trust my emotions that's what the truth is going to be and what you get is mindless brutish young people which is what we're seeing we're seeing so much of on American universities today all right we're gonna take a quick break here and we'll come back and talk about why the left has a moral high ground not only an epistemological philosophical high ground but they'll have the moral high ground and until we challenge that we will continue to lose you're listening to you're listening to your own book on the Michael Pellke show you're listening to pure opalca with Michael Pellke part of the next generation of talk radio on the blaze radio network so this is your own book filling in Michael Pellke today I'll be doing this through Thursday and you know to understand what America is I think it's valuable to understand where it came from what was the founding of America really about which is just a bunch of some people would like to describe a bunch of white guys who are fed up with a king what was the ideas that made America possible America is an ideological revolution America at its founding is the implementation of an idea in politics in reality it's not just you know defining a new country America was a different country than any other country that it existed before America is the first country in human history founded on a moral principle that principle is individual rights the idea that every one of us as an individual has a right therefore is free to pursue our own life to live our lives as we see fit in pursuit of the rational values necessary to live and rational is important America is a country that comes at the pinnacle of the age of reason it's not an accident reason the founders admired reason they understood that reason was our means for knowing the world that reason was our means of gaining knowledge and that if human beings were going to survive and thrive they needed to be free to use their reason in order to achieve their values but to the founders reason was at the core of what it meant to be human this country is a country of the enlightenment of the age of reason of the idea of science discovery knowledge reality the idea that we can know the world that we discover truth and therefore as individuals as we discover truth as individuals we must be free to express that truth we must be left alone to apply that truth to build businesses to create stuff and once you create it it's yours because you created it it's not the states it's not the groups it's not the collectives it's not societies it's not the kings it's not the tribes it's yours starting with your life and the things that you produce they are yours nobody else has a claim against them that is the genius of America the idea of individual rights the idea that individuals must use their reason freely to pursue the things necessary for them to live so when you start a business and create something you that is yours and the only way to live is by producing creating building so America is the idea of individualism combined with the idea that reason is our means of survival our basic means of survival is reason to think to identify truth in reality to identify the facts of reality to integrate them into new knowledge and to apply that knowledge to our lives as individuals America was the rejection of collectivism in all its different forms all its different forms from monarchy to tribalism to even to absolute democracy where the majority gets to decide everything that's why the founders established a constitutional public to protect the smallest of all minorities to protect the individual so that is what America is those are the ideas that made it great and yet do you see anybody defending reason do you see anybody defending individualism no right or left that's where the left has won today the right and the left are both collectivists just the quote I gave you from Trump speech is a great illustration of that the right and left today are both anti-reason there is no party that defends science and technology and and and human knowledge and in the ability of the individual to use his own reason uses own mind to create a life for himself no the left believes you as an individual cannot make a life for yourself you're completely dependent on government you need government's help the collective must support you and you are part of this collective there's a wholesale rejection both on the left and on the right of the ideas of the founding the ideas of individualism and the idea that we must use and can use and have the ability to use their minds in order to make the most of our own lives that's why I don't consider myself on the right anymore right left you're all collectivists you're all anti-reason I consider myself an individualist and in that sense 10 I'm opposed to both political parties today five four three two one


The next thirty days, I am on the road covering thousands of kilometers. I want you to stay awake with me. You have to keep this on till I reach Delhi, second of October. This enthusiasm, this liveliness towards a cause which will take many years to yield results. The Tamil people must show the nation that we are serious about this. Serious does not mean you must be depressed. We want to make this rally happen in a celebratory way, in a joyful way. Kerala is called God's own country only because of its greenery and its water bodies. My intent is you should not say God's own country just about Kerala. We must be able to say this about the entire nation.  You must promise me that Karnataka will stray grain and beautiful and rivers of this country and rivers of this state will flow forever. The chief minister was telling me that he's driving towards fifty percent of the land into horticulture. This is the thing to do in the country. For democratically elected governments, if they have to take a long-term policy which has a huge gestation period, people of this nation have to stand up and say one big yes. Please get that yes from Telangana for me. That Swami Vivekananda once said, give me one hundred youths who are truly committed. I will change the face of this nation. Mumbai is a large city, nearly two crores. I ask for two hundred youths to stand up for next three years to make this happen. You must make this happen, Mumbai. And the mothers of Gujarat given us a Mahatma and Sardar Patel and a past prime minister and a present prime minister, I'm asking you now, will Gujarat give me one hundred youths? Only one qualification. You must get rid of one thought in your mind. What about me? Puttavmata Pradesh, you must do your own rally. Walk for the rivers, cycle for the rivers, motorcycle for the rivers, do whatever. Make sure how I saw the rivers fifty years ago, the glorious, clean, wonderful rivers of our nation. In the next twenty-five years, we want to offer that kind of river to our children. Uttar Pradesh is the largest state. This is a nation by itself. Ganga to Bhanj, Raju me jalta hai, ish me Uttarakhand aur Uttar Pradesh, both important hand. In India me kuch phark padna hai toh, ye dono state, ekhi state ke jaise kaam karna hai. Rajasthan is the eleventh state. Very, very happy to be here because Rajasthan is doing pioneering work in water conservation. Probably never before on the scale that it's been taken up in this part of the country. We are here in Punjab and Haryana. The depletion of the soil is very bad. The number of cereals, the number of pulses, the number of legumes, the number of vegetables, this many variety of things are grown. But we will lose this completely because no farmer wants his child to go into farming. In Adiya Byaan, Kanya Kumari se veke aap Ganga Maya ki goat me aagai. This is the twenty-ninth day. We've been in over hundred and twenty-five meetings like this. So for a old man I'm holding up pretty good. Why this journey? It may not happen in our lifetime, but we have to set the direction now for a solution. Till October 30th, we want as many calls as possible because actual tabulation will start at that time. This past midnight, October 2nd, Mathmas Jayanthi, we just crossed 9,300 kilometers at India Gate. This is the culmination of the rally in terms of driving, tomorrow is a conclusive event. Rally for Rivers, the fun part is over, now it's a lot of work. This is fantastic to see that across the country, all sorts of people, from school children to celebrities, from simple farmers to tall leaders, everybody standing up for one cause, beyond religion, beyond caste, beyond gender, beyond political affiliations, everybody standing up for this cause. This is truly fantastic to witness this.


What is a contract? Like there's a lot of confusion around what is a contract. Let's take a simple example to explain the concept of the difference between a contract and something else. So let's imagine I wanna evaluate that expression. So I'd basically first evaluate these two things, get a response back, then I'd evaluate the 22 by seven, get a response back, take the results of those two, then send it to the server and get a result back, right? So there are basically three calls that I'm making. Let's just convert this into a little bit more API type looking thing. So now what kinds of API tests can you think of that you would write on this? When you look at this, you can imagine like, hey, I would want to test some of these things individually, right? You might want to basically maybe test, like when I post to slash calculator with this, this I want to get this result back, right? I want to test this particular thing in isolation. I don't care about the full thing, I just want to test each of these operations in isolation. I might have some negative values over there which also I want to make sure works fine. I might give some invalid values and I want to make sure that works fine. I want to give some junk operations, want to make sure that I get a valid 400 response back and so forth. This is a mix of what I would say API tests and contract tests. These two here at the bottom is trying to play around with the data types of the signature of your API and want to verify if the signature, if I send something wrong, does it work or not? And generally these are kind of captured in something like this, an open API specification. So that's the calculator's open API specification that you have. Now if you had this open API specification, some of you might be using postman or some other things, right? So you could actually take postman and generate an open API specification out of it, right? It's all just readily available. So assuming you're able to generate an open API specification, then what I could do is I could basically give the open API specification and generate all of these tests for free without having to write a single line of code. Now you'll notice compared to the past one here, I'm not sending actual values, they are now just representing the data types because I don't really care about the values. I'm not asserting a specific value. I'm asserting whether the signature is being met. The value is not important in that case. Value is only important as long as the data type is matching, as long as the schema is matching, as long as the protocol, what I'm supposed to expect that is matching. So this is an example of contract tests. So the contract is the signature of your API that includes the protocol that it's using and the data type and the schema and things like that. So think of it as a method signature for an API. So it's a signature, and I want to validate that it adheres to the signature. And a lot of generally people, the kinds of tests that they do in API tests can actually be just now generated out of a specification without you writing any line of code. The only other thing I want to explain is what we call as the API workflow test, which means it's a series of interaction. And at the end, I'm going to assert whether I got a certain result. So if I'm doing a sequence of calls, it's a workflow. I want to verify at the end of it whether I got something back or not. So those are the three different types of tests that I explained earlier now with an example, API tests, contract tests, and workflow tests.


Hello, I'm Nicolas from Siatec and I'm here to present Commend. Who never wished he had superpowers? Just imagine, controlling your whole environment with just one motion. With Commend, you'll be able to control your whole environment, be it at work, in your home or during your leisure time, with just a wave of the hand. To start our product, we focused on the industrial field with the control of lifting machine, for example overhead crane. How does it work? It's quite simple. The user must press the button to wake up the device, then he will move his hand in the wanted direction, and the device will follow his hand. Once he wants to stop the device, he just have to release the button. For the tonight's show, we bring and created the lighting box, because it's difficult to bring an overhead crane in the Pali Garnier, because it's costly and very expensive. So how it works? I put all my rings, the whole direction can be detected in back, up, down. In all the positions, I can have two speeds, the low speed and the high speed, in function of my pressure on the ring. So it's very easy to control every direction of the crane. In spite of freeing his hand for his application, we increased his productivity and his security at work, and we tried this product on the field already, and people love it.


Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name's Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Vanderstien. And whether you're purchasing a car, a land, home, need a birth certificate and the list goes on and on, you're gonna need the assistance of our Register of Deeds Office, one of 22 departments in Sheboygan County. And today we're very pleased to have Ellen Schleicher with us, our Register of Deeds. Ellen, thanks for joining us. Well, thank you for having me. Ellen has a tremendous staff and a lot of responsibilities. She started as Register of Deeds, I think it was in 2005. January 6th, 2006. January 6th, 2006. And how the time goes. Fast. Ellen, why don't you begin by sharing with our viewers a little bit about yourself and how it was that you became the Register of Deeds for Sheboygan County? Well, I live in Tonalima with my husband, Mike. We have four children and my last one is graduating this year. I'm kind of excited about that. She'll be going on to Oshkosh. So, but along with that, we have our, what the children were involved with was 4-H and FFA. So I was involved a lot with them. I also am involved with Rebuilding Together, Sheboygan, which is an organization that goes into low-income homes and helps fix them up. Kind of like Habitat for Humanity, but not quite a whole new home. It's just going in and painting and replacing windows and doors and stuff like that. That explains why nearly every day you're walking in with car hearts and the tool belt up. I never quite put two and two together there. Excellent.  Outstanding. That's nice though. I didn't know you were going in. Yeah, that's a good project. I also serve on the Media Animal Sale Committee, which is involved with the Sheboygan County Fair, Fairgrounds and work there for the weekend of Labor Day. I became Register of Deeds when the Darlene Novice retired. And the governor, they put out an application for Register of Deeds and I applied and was appointed. Subsequently, had to run for, or did that for a year and then ran. And then again ran again and won my second term in 2008. And from my standpoint, I've been doing a wonderful job. I've been a breath of fresh air for the department in the county and I know you're very busy. Please touch on some of the roles and responsibilities that a Register of Deeds has. Well, the Register of Deeds office records all less pendants, foreclosures, mortgages, deeds, tax liens, name changes, whatever pretty much anything that goes on in the county that goes through the Register of Deeds office as far as land records. We record them, we file them, we have them in computer and we help the public when they need to have help to find those records. It seems to me in the administration building, your office has more contact with the public than anyone that I've noticed other than the treasurer when it's tax time. I was gonna say probably during tax time the treasurer has much more, but we have more constant public. We have genealogists that come in. We have, if you need a vital record, your birth, marriage or death records, we also issue those and keep them in safekeeping. So our office is usually pretty busy. How many staff work in your department and about what is your annual budget? Our staff consists of me and my office supervisor, Nyla Born, and then we have six other staff members. And our annual budget is right around $700,000 right this year. However, most of our, we do not use any tax levy. So far, we have been able to generate enough income that it covers our expenses plus we give money back to the tax levy. And I hope everyone noticed how you kinda smiled when you shared that. And it is something to smile about. And I don't want any of our viewers to think that this is the norm. Ellen's department, Register of Deeds, is the only one that doesn't rely on any property tax levy. They do have enough fees to cover the cost of operating. And as you said, we hope that we're able to maintain that. We wish that more of our other departments like Clerk of Courts and others could operate like that, but it certainly helps the property taxpayer that you're able to operate without relying on tax levy to do so. Ellen, you mentioned earlier, a lot of different folks come into your office looking for assistance. And I know a number of people from the business community come in and look for documents. What is their main focus? What type of folks are you seeing from the business community coming in? What are they looking for? Well, the banks and it's usually the banks and credit unions, attorneys, title people. The title people do the searches for whenever you buy a home you have and you take out a mortgage, they do a title search to make sure that you're protected. As a buyer to make sure there's no leans on that property or anything like that. So mostly it's title companies that are hired by banks and a lot of attorneys come in also and do their own title search. Genealogists come in to try and find where their family lived. And it gets kind of interesting when you start talking to the genealogist about how they start with one name and go down back through. But we do have a lot of interest in genealogy in our office also. How far back can someone go if they're looking to research their family tree? We do have some that can, they can go back. We have records back to 1848. Our birth records and some of those records are a little bit sketchy. The land records are more consistent. But they can go back that far. We do have some genealogists that have gone back to the old country back to Germany or back to their families back there. So they interact a lot with the European countries also. I think just the name itself implies register of deeds. You're recording a lot of documents. And there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes. It's not as just as simple as coming up to the front counter and dropping it off and saying, please record this. There's a lot that happens. Please walk through some of the general steps involved with recording a deed if someone purchases a property. Generally a person will go to a lawyer and have an attorney and have their document, their deeds made up or their mortgages or the bank does mortgages. But they come into our office and by statutes, everything that comes in gets a number assigned to it. And they're recorded per that number. That's a way that is fair for the businesses coming in and the person walking off the street for a deed or mortgage. It gets a number, it gets, we look it over, record it. Then it gets scanned, indexed, re-looked at, verified and then we mail it back, generally back to the customer. Birth, death and marriage records. You can come in, fill out a form. And we can get those records for you within five, five, 10 minutes. So we're streamlining that a lot. So you can get the document pretty quickly but to actually go through the recording process, how long does that take? Right now our turnaround time is about five to six days. Outstanding. I know at 1.7, 8, 10 years ago it was a couple of months. Right, in the peak there's times when, but that is they rely, the banks and stuff rely on us to get those records recorded and scanned and in the computer as quickly as possible because the title companies for sure don't like that dead zone in between a time when a mortgage is taken out and another mortgage is satisfied or they like to have that recorded because then that's showing that there's not time in between there that a buyer or someone else could come in and sneak some, I don't know, something. They always say what can they do? I don't know, I never could figure it out. But we do hear about fraud coming through from other states. So we are very leery about letting anything sit around too long. Very good, thank you, Ellen. Ellen, we've talked a little bit about mortgages and things that convey ownership. Can we talk a little bit about some of the other services that you provide in your office? We also, again, as I said before, we do keep track of the deeds or the, excuse me, birth records, birth, marriage and death records. Also name changes come through our office and veterans, the veterans, we have the veterans records in our office and we issue those records to the veteran or the veteran services as requested. We do not charge the veterans for that copy that we feel is due to them. Some of the other records that we have are certified survey maps. We have subdivision plaques. We have transportation plaques. We have many, many maps and plaques that you can look at. That's great. If somebody wants to obtain a copy of their birth certificate, a certified copy, what's the process that they have to go through? They can, there's a couple ways that they, there's a couple things that they can do. They can come into the office. We're there from eight o'clock till five. We have forms available for them to fill out. They fill out the form, show us the proper ID and we look up the record and we make the copies and give them to them. Like I said, it's probably about five to 10 minutes depending upon how hard the record is to find. They also, if they don't want to come down to the office, especially with our construction, we do take applications through the mail and you can get those applications off our website. Okay, and what kind of reasons would people need a birth certificate or a certified copy of their birth certificate? If they want to open up a social security number, they need a certified copy of their birth certificate. If they want to get a passport, they need that. Schools use, schools use this for sort of verification of age for sports or anything like that. Pretty much it's a kind of a document that is required for identity. Okay, earlier you mentioned something about genealogists and people coming in to search their family tree. What kind of services do you offer to assist these people in those searches? They come in and we give them some instruction on how to get started, checking the indexes. They cannot do birth state rules, laws. They cannot page through the books but they can check through the indexes. We have them fill out a form and they only have to do it once a year. We have them fill out a form and then after that they can just sign in, come in. They have any questions if they wanna view the birth or death or marriage records. They can do anything prior. I think it's like 20 to 30 years. They can view that without assistance but if they wanna view any of the later more current ones, there is some confidential information that they cannot see so we assist them with them. Okay, we've been using our website more and more in the county. What kind of information do you keep on the website and the register of deeds portion of that site? We have, you can get applications for to get your vital records. We have real estate documents or real estate, the rules or e-return instructions on how to fill out documents. We have, we have, I'm losing it here. We have, Annual report information. Annual report information. We have a picture of the staff. That's just very important because there it is. Anyways, we use that quite frequently. Also we have, I'm trying to think of the word and I can't. It's, you know, the little other places you can go to. All the links. Links, links there. I'm sorry, I apologize for that. No, no, no. It's an excellent question. If anybody wants more information that they're not picking up today, it's a great resource to learn more about registered deeds or any of the other departments for that matter. And you're also linked then to probably other related professional organizations. The Department of Revenue, the Department of Financial Institutions. The, there's the Children's Services is on their C-CAP. So, yep. What about if somebody wants to chip in and help build a house or, you know, assist your team? Well, I didn't, you know, I didn't put that, you didn't put that on there. No, that's terrible. Okay, that's probably a good thing. Can't quite. I don't know how I could get away with that one. Ellen, one of their access that you also have is a remote access. Could you explain how that works and why that's a little different from the normal website? Mm-hmm. We have actually two remote accesses. One is called Laredo, and it is for title companies or businesses that don't come into the office and they do a lot of researching. And what they do there is we have a sliding scale that they can purchase minutes per month, for a certain amount per month. And they also get copies at a reduced price, that is our Laredo. And we have, like I said, most of the time it's our attorneys or title companies. We have probably about 18 customers that do that now. And it's convenient for them because they don't have to drive into the office or they can work 24 hours a day if they want to. Our other website is not, it's not really ours, it actually does. They just have our information and that's called tapestry. And that would be for like, sometimes we have assessors use them if they just are looking up something, it's a 499, 599 fee. We get some credit for that when people use that, but it's more like for the casual of someone who's looking up just certain property and they have the legal description and so on. So it's 495 per search? It's 495 or 4995, I think it went up actually. And then with the Laredo program, what kind of fees are involved with the heavier users there? We have, the highest is 400 minutes or $400. It goes from $75 to $400 depending upon the minutes. Some of them were grandfathered in, so they have unlimited time. The other ones that aren't grandfathered in, anything over there a lot at time is extra fee. So that's- Does that generate a substantial amount of the revenue that your office brings in or is that just a minor part of it? Oh, it does a pretty good job. Okay. It does a pretty good job. We pay a certain amount to the software company for and generally between the two, we've actually been doing very well. In fact, that's been going steady this year for sure. Okay, excellent. With that, I'll turn it back over to Adam. Thanks, Mike. Earlier, we talked a little bit about that you're the only department that doesn't have to rely on property tax, levy, and you charge fees for making copies or gathering documents. Please touch on that a little bit more. I imagine some of our viewers may be wondering, well, if they can do it, why can't more departments do it? Where do you get your authority to charge fees and what's the range? Well, most of that was all put in place before I, and I'm sure it's been there for a long time, but the Register of Deeds Association is the pretty strong association. And they worked diligently to get legislation for their product, get legislation for dollars for their products. Everything that we charge is statutorily done. It's by statute, so there's no leeway. Even if I wanted to say, okay, I'll give you a copy, I couldn't do that. It's really technically not, but they are consistent throughout the state. Everybody charges, every county charges the same thing for records and so there is no give and take on that. Great explanation. I was hoping you were gonna say statutorily required as county government being an animal of the state, certainly the Register of Deeds is and what you charge is what the state allows you to charge. And fortunately, in your case, it's been sufficient to cover operations so far, so that's obviously a good thing. What's the range of charges? So if someone comes in for a birth certificate versus a copy of a deed, what are some different? Birth, marriage, and death certificates are $20 a piece with any additional copies are $3. So if you wanted two copies, it would be $23. To record a document, it's $11 for the first page and any additional pages, it's $2. So if you want a certified copy, if you want copies of your document, say you have a deed or you can't find your deed and you want it, it's a $2 fee for it to get that in a dollar for any additional copies. Mortgage is the same thing. The first page is $2, additional pages are $1. And generally, most of your documents, if they're one pages, it's gonna be $11. So it was between $11 and $13 to record a deed. And you mentioned earlier you have about a $700,000 budget, so a lot going on in that office. And no matter what register of deeds office you go to across the state, you're gonna get charged the same for copies or recording birth certificate consistent statewide. Correct. Very good, very good. So it's been since 2006 that I can't believe how the time flies. It doesn't feel like it's been that long since you've been on the program. It has been a while and what are your impressions? I mean, prior to becoming the register of deeds, I don't think you worked for county government in another capacity or am I wrong? No, I did not. I was not in politics at all. Well, I was, but I guess sometimes you just don't really think that. I enjoy what I do. I like helping people, like seeing people. It's fun to have them come up to the counter and chat a while. So we try and have a friendly relationship in our office that people can come in and they can feel free to ask questions and talk silly once in a while. But I think we have a really good office. My staff is really good. They know what they're doing. They're very, very knowledgeable. And on the most part, the people are pretty good coming in. Before putting your application into the governor and then obviously deciding you liked it and were good at it and wanted to continue, did you ever envision yourself being an elected department head working for county government? No, I was working in the factory or factory office but no, it probably was not something that I had aspirations for but it's good come in and work with wonderful people and that's the way you gotta do it. We appreciate the great job you're doing and glad you're there. Thank you. As certainly all three of us know very well and hopefully most of our viewers have begun to appreciate the state budget situation, the states in a world of hurt financially, 6.5 billion or more deficit, not new to county government. We've been dealing with these types of operational deficits at the state level since 1995. We're used to being asked to do more with less. We're used to cost shifts and frankly just more of the tough decisions being placed on the shoulders of county government and people like Mike, county board supervisors. You mentioned earlier you have a state association that's been pretty effective in the past and obviously lobbies state legislators for statutory changes. Anything on the horizon or frankly anything currently in play with the governor's budget that you're concerned with or that you or your association have been weighing in on? Yes, actually there is the, in August of 2007 the governor increased the fees for birth records, birth, death and marriage actually from $12 to 20 and from $7 to 20 respectively. Birth records were 12 and they went to 20 and death and marriage went from seven to 20. And the dollars that were used for that is for a good cause. It actually, that's kind of why the association supported it. The state is implementing an online system and that's federally mandated that they get an online system for security purposes. So the dollars were supposed to be used for that. The sunset on that was supposed to be July 1st of 2010. They figured they would have enough revenue generated to pay for that. The governor now is proposing to raise fees again on the birth marriage and death to $24, $23 I think, or $23 or $24. And that we are opposed to because the dollars that they want to use for that is not for the registered deeds or it's not for the programs that it should be for. We feel that the $20 is even too high. The association just thinks that that is a lot of money. The people that need those records are sometimes the very same people that they're trying to raise the fees for to help. So they're kind of paying for it themselves. It's really not quite fair. So we are opposed to that. And what was it when it went from 12 to 20 and your association supported it? What specifically was the money used for? It specifically was supposed to be set aside for online system statewide. An online registered deed system. Online vital record system. I'm sorry. Directly related. Directly related to that. And that's the way the association feels that if the dollars are used directly or for the office, for the programs that they're supposed to be used for, then they would, but they are opposed to anything that goes to other services. Just goes into the general fund, nothing related. And that's another good distinction for our viewers is that when you have to pass on those increases, whether it's from 12 to 20 or 20 to 24, that isn't necessarily for your operations in the service that you're providing directly. That's being forwarded on to the state for the state to use for its purposes. Is that right? Right, correct. And it would be, you know, actually in my feeling, if it would even benefit the county, it would be our counties, it would be beneficial, but it's not, it isn't going to, I mean, they have promised that, that some of the dollars would stay here, but eventually they're just gonna take it anyways.  And you're not alone. The example that Chairman Van Der Stien and I often use is the clerk of courts office, Nan Todd, you know, one of your peers. The clerk of courts does a lot of important work, although they're dealing with individuals who are paying fines and working with the court system, but they've raised their fines and forfeitures over time based on state law, but unfortunately they don't get to keep that revenue. They pass that all onto the state and the property taxpayers in Sheboygan County are paying more and more and more to support that department, when if the state allowed them to keep more of that revenue that we're collecting based on the fines and forfeitures of county taxpayers, then they wouldn't essentially be double-dipped. We're passing on taxes or revenue to the state and they're paying it for it with their property tax. So all those opportunities for improvement. Well, it certainly has been a pleasure to have you with us today. I hope that our viewers got a quick snapshot of the register of deeds, very important work, a wonderful staff, a wonderful leader, and we appreciate what you do for Sheboygan County and we hope you're gonna be in this chair for some time to come. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. Thanks. Next month we'll have another very important department head with us, our corporation council, Carl Bissing. Carl hasn't been with us for some time as well. As you know, we try to get through the 22 departments. Some have more fires than others, but Carl is certainly one who has his fingers in all the fires because he's helping provide legal support and counsel to all the department heads, the county board, and we'll get a flavor for his rules and responsibilities. So until then, on behalf of Mike Van der Steen and Sheboygan County Board, thanks for joining us.