Yeah, we went that one. Whole week day in January to express your support for urgent climate action. I'm Pash and I'm a senior at Regents Union High School, and it is very important to me to be here with you all today, so thank you very much. In today's program, we first need to acknowledge that we are meeting on the traditional lands of the western Abhinaki peoples. We have an obligation living on these lands to do what we can do to end the continued destruction caused by the climate and environmental crisis we have brought about. Before we get started with today's program, we want you to be alert. We want to alert representatives of climate and social justice organizations in attendance that towards the end of today's address, we will be inviting you to come up and give a one minute synopsis of your organization. Please be prepared to come up when we alert you at this moment. Pandemonium information for the rest of the day will be given at the end of this address. You can use your pots and bangers for applause during this address's practice, and let's shove them out right now to let the governor to give the people state of the state address. Here on the State House steps, we will tell the truth about the climate and ecological emergency and demand that our elected officials join us in this declaration. Our goal today is to join together to continue to build a people-powered movement for just transition. The United States and right here in Vermont, we are seeing daily evidence of this crisis. Most recently, we have seen flooding in Jakarta, Indonesia with people suffering and dying as the country makes plans to move their capital city to higher ground. We have seen apocalyptic brush fires in Australia and record temperatures with homes destroyed, people displaced and half a billion animals dead. We have seen enormous fires in the Amazon rainforest. We have seen hurricane Dorian stalling over the Bahamas for 40 hours. We have seen record thawing of our glaciers, including in the Arctic and Antarctic. Right here in the United States, we have seen catastrophic California wildfires followed by torrential rains and mudslides. We have seen record-setting floods in the Upper Midwest and devastating hurricanes in Puerto Rico, Houston and Florida. In Vermont, we have regular flash flooding, frequent high wind events, skyrocketing tick populations, increased mold and algae problems, and much warmer and variable winters. The list of climate-related disasters is very long. In November 2018, the IPCC reported that to avoid the worst effects of the rapidly accelerating climate crisis, we require rapid, far-reaching unprecedented changes in all aspects of society. In 2019, numerous peer-reviewed papers published findings that suggest the models that were used to make recommendations in the IPCC report were significantly underestimating the pace of climate change. Despite these grave warnings and the endless stream of climate disasters, it would appear that Governor Scott thinks all we need to do is get a few more Vermonters to switch to driving electric cars. Governor Scott claims to support the Paris Climate Agreement. He boasts about his creation of the Vermont Climate Action Commission and his collaboration with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and other regional partners. But his actions speak louder than his words. These past three years, his actions have been severely lacking. And all evidence suggests that Governor Scott's lack of urgent action will continue through the 2020 Legislature Session. And so today, we demand that Governor Scott and the Vermont Legislature, number one, stand behind universally accepted climate science and tell the truth at every opportunity about our state of climate emergency. Number two, support the Vermont Youth Climate Congress's demand for significantly more aggressive targets than what is stated in the Paris Climate Agreement. Number three, ban a new fossil fuel infrastructure projects. Number four, provide a mechanism for direct public empowerment so that policies and responses to a changing climate can be developed and implemented locally. And number five, support a just transition which focuses on frontline communities and prioritizes racial justice, economic justice, environmental justice, regenerative agriculture, indigenous rights. We've invited a number of speakers today to address different aspects of the crisis we are in. But before we move on to the speakers, let's observe a moment of silence to acknowledge the victims of the climate disaster. All living things on earth, but especially those that have died or lost their homes and habitats. Thank you. Today's first speaker is Sam Peterson, a student at Hanover High School and member of Rise Up, Rise Upper Valley. All for coming out on this absolutely freezing day. It's a very important movement, so I'm really glad to see you guys all out here. So one of the biggest things that we need to focus on is that this is a youth driven action and this movement needs to recognize that 13 years ago legislation was passed for 75% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by 2028. This past year, we were told by Peter Wock that we will not be meeting that goal. That is because there is no enforcement in that policy that guaranteed that we will be making these changes. We are tired of these empty promises that we are constantly hearing about and being told. This is not a bipartisan issue. This is an issue. The only question in front of us is whether we get serious now and pass real legislation with real enforcement, with real change in our society, or stand by as we watch toothless legislation be passed just so that legislators can pat themselves on the back while our world is falling apart. Our legislators from protecting our economy and the economic gains of a few over our environment out here to make a choice, a choice of where we are going to stand in this history. Your choice is to be a passive observer in this world of crisis where we let these legislators continue to just to put us down or to fight to preserve the one thing that we all share. Which includes people of color. And these are the people in our communities who are constantly being overlooked. Rachel Smokay is a biologist and a lifelong activist. She is currently co-director of BioFuel Watch, an international organization focused on land use, biodiversity, energy and climate. She has been active over the past several years in opposing Vermont's gas, ANGP, Fract Gas Pipeline as a member of Protect Geprags Park. Here she is. Buddy, it is really great to see all these people and it's great to have extinction rebellion organizing in our state and to see the youth movements that are rising up and people really starting to mobilize around climate change. Some of us who have been doing this for a few decades have been saddened by the lack of action. We just had our 25th cop, right? And nothing has happened in 25 years of meeting in the UN. It's time for us to give up on that process and start focusing on our communities and within our state, right? We can make progress. We need to work where we can be effective. And this is one of the places that we can do that. Let's do it. So I have sort of three points that I feel I have to keep saying. One is, you know, we're getting better and better at declaring this emergency because it's becoming very obvious to everyone that we are faced with an emergency. And we've seen catastrophes right, left and center in front of us. But to solve this crisis, we have to do a magic trick, which is basically sort of like climbing four mountains at once, both front words and backwards. Because we have people in our country and our community who still think that climate change is a hoax. There's one mountain we've got to climb up and over and around, and we have to make it clear that we are not going to let them stand in the way. So we need to declare that it's an emergency, but then we need to realize that declaring an emergency opens up doors and opportunities to people who would use this emergency for their own profiteering, right? As co-director of biofuel watch, I'm really familiar with that because we've been fighting what was put forward as a climate solution, right? Biofuels. Let's burn corn in our car engines.  We fought it from the get-go. And it was always awkward to be standing there amongst people who recognized that climate changes was a problem, but didn't think critically about what the solutions should be. And there are so many purveyors of false solutions all over the place. And one of the ones in our state right now that we're facing is Vermont Gas. Calling their reckless, shoddy, unbelievably dangerous pipeline through our state, taking people's lands, they are now have the gall to say that they are going to become carbon neutral. Tell me how do you make methane carbon neutral? We need to fight and climb that mountain, frontwards, backwards, center every which way we possibly can. We cannot be misled, misinformed, distracted. We need effective actions and we need them now. We don't have time to wait. We're not going to get a second chance. We need to recognize in Vermont, for example, that we have a lot of our energy coming from Quebec, where they have been damning rivers and taking over indigenous peoples' territories and poisoning their food scapes with mercury and muskrat falls and elsewhere. And another large portion of our energy, anyway, we've got a lot of dirty energy coming into our state. The thing is, energy is not the only issue, right? We've got transportation. We've got heating. We've got everything, right? Naomi Klein said it. Climate change is about everything. It's about human rights, right? Declaration of human rights that recognizes our right to basic, basic rights, right? It does not say that you can get filthy rich at the expense of life on this planet and drive everyone and everything into extinction so that you can get more and more rich. That is not a right. Slaters may tell us that it's too costly and it won't pass and we can't possibly get this legislation through. Well, we have plenty of very wealthy people in this state who have not paid their share in taxes. And some of them probably would even be okay without idea if they have any heart for Vermont and for Vermonters and if they don't move out of the state if you don't like it. Full of good people, community-minded and capable of taking care of ourselves. We need to let our legislators know we are going to be here, right? It's not enough for us to stand up here and say, hey, it's an emergency. Do something. We have to stand behind them. We have to support them. We have to go to our communities. We have to be bold and demand bold steps and play our part in making these things happen. We can't just ask them to do it because we will get a plate full of false solutions and we will find ourselves rolling back down all of those mountains that we've been trying to climb. Let's get that ban on fossil fuel infrastructure into the forefront, right? Legislators, we're here. We're watching. We're holding you accountable. We're here. We're watching. We're holding you accountable. We're here. We're watching. We're holding you accountable. We're here. We're watching. We're holding you accountable. We're here. We're watching. The Venduzan is president of the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO. So what I want to talk to you about today is a Green New Deal. But while we're talking about a Green New Deal, right, that's not only about creating new good green renewable energy. That is also about good paying union jobs. It is about a generation of blue collar working people who are going to find good meaningful work through this social process of recreating our economy. And as we strive to create environmental sustainability, we also need to create economic stability. Is that these are not, these cannot be allowed, anything being called a Green New Deal cannot be allowed to be called such if it does not also include project labor agreements with union labor and folks being able to get us family sustaining benefits and pay during this process. And the Green New Deal also not must be progressively funded. It must be paid for by those corporations that have created this crop climate crisis. And as such, this project, this historic project will not and cannot be something that is anything less than than in support of working class people in Vermont and beyond. So the 10,000 members of the Vermont AFL-CIO recognize that we are stronger as a movement together because the corporations want us to be divided. We stand together. And if you stand with us in our demand that these be good union jobs that are created out of this project. And if you stand with us when we demand that the funding for such projects be progressive and be not on the backs of working people, then we will stand with you as you fight a good fight for a sustainable, good, economic and environmental future for Vermont and everybody. So let me hear you say you're going to be reading his speech for us. But Stephen Leslie has been farming for more than 25 years. He is especially fond of draft horses and does all the horsepower work on the farm. He is the author of many books and magazine articles on draft power and sustainable agriculture. So introducing Glenn in place of him. Thank you. So my name is Gwendolyn Hall-Smith. And I'm from Extinction Rebellion Northeast Kingdom in the Headwaters Garden and Learning Center in Cabot, Vermont, which was modeled after my friend and mentor, Danela Meadows Cobb Hill in Heartland. And Stephen is the farmer at Cobb Hill. So it's an honor to read that letter. Farmers everywhere are on the front line of climate change. I began farming in the Upper Valley in 1996. As a dairy and vegetable farmer, I've seen my crops and livestock subject to the increasing stressors of a changing climate. We experience more extreme droughts and precipitation events and less predictable growing seasons. New insects and plant diseases are proliferating in our region. We can salute the current legislature for bringing forward climate initiatives such as the TCI and Vermont Green New Deal. But we must point out that their focus on transportation and energy efficiency is short-sighted. For a rural state like Vermont, land management represents a huge opportunity to mitigate and heal the environmental crisis. The agricultural and forestry sectors are crucial to the solution and must be included in any comprehensive legislation addressing climate change. Yay, Stephen. We can improve farm income and help save the planet by leveraging the state to pay incentives to land managers who use best practices to sequester carbon, protect air and water quality, reduce pesticide use, and transition from fossil fuels. The dairy sector occupies the majority of agricultural land in the state of Vermont and is by far the most important sector in economic terms. The working landscape is also a major asset of the tourism sector, which is the leading economic driver of our state's economy. Dairy farmers should be given viable options to diversify, reduce the number of cows and grow crops, such as hemp, medicinal, and culinary herbs and commodity foods, such as grain and legumes, for humans instead of livestock. The aim of all these incentives should be to re-establish a regional food system. Consumers should be able to buy a full diet of food grown within 100 miles of where they live. No more California lettuce coming to us on jet planes, but rather healthy, organic, and bioregionally produced food eaten with the season. All greenhouse gas emissions today, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will continue to rise for centuries because of how much has already been absorbed by the oceans. As we slow down emissions, the oceans will release CO2 in a process of equilibration. We must halt emissions, but of equal importance is the restoration of our soil reserves worldwide. The most prevalent greenhouse gas is water vapor. There is a fixed amount of water on this planet. Through 10,000 years of soil degradation, we have desertified half of the planet's terrestrial surface and hugely diminished the soil's capacity to hold water. The only way to safely draw down and cool the planet is to rebuild the soil carbon storage. Building the sponge not only sequesters three to 10 tons of carbon per acre, it also naturally cools the environment by stabilizing the Earth's hydrologic systems, by which she has maintained a livable habitat for increasingly complex life forms for 130 million years. Building the sponge creates resilience for our food systems and also mitigates the damage of flooding and drought. It is the single most important task we can undertake to save humanity and all other species from the ravages of abrupt climate disruptions. The USDA land grant colleges and NGOs should promote the concept of the soil carbon sponge as a pivotal component to draw down and restoration of the Earth's natural cooling hydrologic capacities. Teaching the theory and practice of these concepts to all land managers is crucial. The very best way to sequester carbon and establish food security is to promote regenerative farming practices among every society around the globe. If every individual human being and every village, town, municipality, and city on this planet were dedicated to creating more topsoil through the promotion of small scale sustainable agriculture, we could sequester all the carbon we need to cool and heal the environment, provide meaningful employment and feed all the Earth's people. Agriculture has been part and parcel of the destruction of the natural world, but it doesn't have to be so. Vermonters can lead the way by embracing regenerative restorative practices. It's really important to emphasize that we're not just talking about farmland and woodlots. Every citizen, everyone here, everyone in that legislature relies on soil, and so every one of us should be incentivized to become caretakers of the land.  We need full citizen participation to create food security and restore biodiversity. I'm almost done. The key leverage points for a just transition in agriculture are to reward farmers for ecological services. This isn't only cleaner air, water, and carbon sequestration in soil, it's the production of nutrient-dense food is an ecological service. Establish price parity for farm products to ensure that every farmer and farm worker can earn a living wage. Institute regional supply management of farm products to keep pricing fair and to prevent industry from forcing out small producers. Divert funds that the state currently pays to subsidize tourism to build worker-owned milk bottling plants, artisanal value-added creameries, distilleries, hemp processing, community food processing centers, and more enterprises tied to local food, fiber, and forest harvests. Five more points. There's five more leverage points. Institute land reform for resettling of climate refugees, many of whom are farmers, and ensure young farmers have access to arable land. Establish cooperative markets and food marketing hubs. Establish biofuel farms to supply regional needs for transitioning tractors off gas and diesel. Yeah. Biofuel farms will serve as energy hubs for each reason to supply regional farms with fuel for converted tractors. Only biofuels that can be grown to balance out as carbon neutral will be used. Create incentives for electric tractors. Create incentives for electric tractors to be shared between farms. And, Steven's final point. Promote draft animal technology. Draft animal power can play a significant role again on farms in the forest and in the local transport of goods and services. Thank you, Steven, from Bob Hill. Thank you, Steven and Gwen. Next, we have Carmen Richardson Skinder, who goes to Montpelier High School and is part of Extinction Rebellion Youth. And the youth lobby. Two years ago, our government had a choice. They knew what the development of fossil fuel industry would do. They accurately predicted the increase of emissions and their impact on the climate. They had a choice between short-term economic growth and ensuring our generation had a livable future. They chose unsustainable growth. They chose profit and corporations over people. For the last 40 years, the federal government has been given this choice. Again and again, they chose economical growth. Frankly, I am terrified of what is going to happen. Of the food shortages, extreme weather, and disease my generation will face. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how many kids ask for a livable future, because we have no legal representation. I am part of a generation that's future is decided by other people. But I can't stand up here and talk only about my generation's fears. The climate crisis is here. Millions of people are already facing the effects of climate change. This is not tomorrow's problem.  The government refuses to take bold actions. They tell us that climate legislation cannot be passed if it costs us. They tell us that they don't have the political willpower. What they don't say is then 7 in 10 voters believe that the U.S. should prioritize environmental protection over economic growth. This is not an issue of politics. This is an issue of a government that does not represent its people. Government, Governor Phil Scott says environmental legislation will not be linear. He is correct. The government's complacency has put us back on the brink of causing irreversible damage. Unless there is unprecedented action at all levels of our government, we will have no chance of mitigating the worst effects of climate change. Once again, our government is faced with a choice. We have 10 years to take responsibility and recognize that those least responsible for the climate collapse are and will be facing the worst effects.  We have even less time to enact the legislation necessary to do this. Or we can continue down the path of complacent and incremental change. The choice is up to them. The people most affected have no vote. I ask Phil Scott along with the rest of our legislature to choose to act. I don't trust them to do this themselves. It's time to fight back. We cannot let our... let our legislative session go by without any substantial action. We are beginning to see climate and ecological collapse. So please, starting today, let our legislature know in every way possible that we aren't going anywhere until they start to represent us. Next, we have Asma Alhouni, who is an organizer for the Upper Valley. Growing up as a person of color in the U.S. and an immigrant, she has organized around these important issues to become who she is today. We are old, but we are here by saying As-salamu alaykum as you heard in Africa. We can't... thank you. We can't talk about climate change if we're not talking about promoting peace. And we can't talk about promoting peace if we don't talk about the United States of America, which is the antithesis of peace. It's its inception against brown and black bodies and those who disagree with it. Politicians making machine. When we talk about the climate, we can't for educational system. The Department of Defense is one of the largest energy in the world. Its votes, its tanks consumes 50 nations. And it continues today. This has recently come out. The military bases, and they're finding a lot of anomalies in the birth defect. This is a quote from a doctor that is in Iraq. And we talked about how we have bases everywhere around the world. And she said doctors are regularly encountering anomalies in babies that are so gruesome, they cannot even find precedence for them. So I'm going to end, but before I do, let's just say we need to get out of everywhere. We need to leave... The Democracy Collaborative and the Telus Institute. During the Carter administration, he served as a member and chairman of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality. Gus has a long career of working at the intersection of government and environmental protection, including providing leadership to many task forces and committees whose roles have been to combat environmental degradation, including the President's Task Force on Global Resources and Environment, the Western Hemisphere Dialogue on Environment and Development, and the National Commission on the Environment. Here he is. It's good to see everybody. After that introduction, I know you're thinking this is going to be very boring. I'm bureaucratic. The mic up. Like that? You better? Okay. Pick it up. All right. All right. I'm so proud of what the young people have done in this past year. What distinction rebellion has done. The growth has been phenomenal. And I think there's a deep appreciation in both communities, so to speak, that our climate problem is deeply rooted in the priorities of our current political economy. Here's one example of how deeply it's rooted. You're familiar with the children's climate lawsuit, 21 grade school children, some in college now, because the suit was filed several years ago, but they tried to force the federal government to come up with a decent plan, the comprehensive plan. And they asked me to do a history of all the administration from LBJ to Trump. And so, and what they did and didn't do about the climate issue. And the fact is that we knew enough way back 40 years ago in the Carter administration to suggest that we should stop emitting greenhouse gases, put a limit on the buildup of greenhouse gases in the hours of 40 years ago, what we've had in those four decades is the greatest dereliction of civic responsibility in the history of the Republic. Governor Scott, I can imagine on this road to Damascus out here as he's walking from his office over here to give his State of the Union, State of the State of Dress, they have the conversion experience out there. And I wish for it, but I do doubt it, and I think that we need a new governor. That's a frankly political comment, but it's important that we become a political movement. Last thing I want to say is a bit more about we need all the things that people have been talking about up here. We need the Global Warming Solutions Act, an improved version of it past. We need other concrete things done. But I believe at the end of a long life of working on these issues that those are at the fringe of what we really need. We need to get them. We need to walk across that fringe and cooperate all those great initiatives that people have been talking about here and the Reggie Transportation Initiative and the Global Solutions Initiative. Those are going to be good things to get done and Vermont gets to do it. And we need to get beyond this shame of being behind our neighboring states. Good Lord! Who could have imagined but when we get across that fringe we're at the getting to the heart of the problem. We're getting deeper. And at that heart what we find is that the systemic priorities of our current political economy war against effective long-term effective climate solutions. So here's my conclusion. The United States will never go fast enough or far enough or do the right things on climate as long as our systemic priorities are ramping up GDP growing corporate profits increasing the incomes of the already well-to-do neglecting the half of America that's just getting by feeding a runaway consumerism focusing only on the present moment facilitating these great bastions of corporate power and helping abroad only modestly or not at all or being downright harmful. So we need a two-pronged approach fast rapid deployment of technology and the policy measures to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt and prepare for the changes we can't forestall now because we neglected so much for so long but the second part is just as important and too often neglected we've got to begin now to seriously change the system of political economy in which we live and work and Green New Deal absolutely which is the closest approximation to what I just went through as a response to the problems I just went through. The system change, not climate change. Thank you. Thank you guys. Our next speaker is David Papierski who is speaking as a veteran opposing climate change and global warming especially as we are on the brink of war. I wrote this essay a couple years ago and it explains very well the evil connection between racism, poverty, global warming and war. Hello everyone, my name is David Papierski I am a member of the Vermont Worker Center and the Vermont Poor People's Campaign I have been asked to speak today about American militarism and its war economy as I am a homeless vet who presently resides at the Canal Street Veterans Homeless Shelter in Winooski, Vermont. On January 8th of 1977 I turned 18 years of age I was in my final year of high school and I had joined the Marine Corps. I thought it was a good idea at the time as I wanted to learn some valuable job skills and gain work experience to arise from poverty. At least this is what the Marine Corps recruiter and my society's culture had told me anyway. In retrospect it became the worst mistake of my life that I compared to jumping out of the frying pan then into the fire. I should have joined the Peace Corps instead of the Marine Corps. What I found in my six years of service were either vets that had just returned home from Vietnam or new recruits like myself from unhealthy home and school environments who were misled to believe that they would escape from living in poverty by joining the military. Now 59 years of age I find myself homeless for the fourth time needless to say I have never been able to break free from living in poverty. One out of every four homeless people are vets. About 400,000 vets experience homelessness every year. On any given night there are over 40,000 vets on the streets. Every month 1,000 vets attempt suicide.  That's almost one per hour. Far more than are dying in our endless, senseless, costly, unsuccessful, damaging and traumatizing wars. Countries never went at war. Both sides always lose. Always. Vets typically suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, alcohol and drug addiction. Some of these drugs, the VA itself administers self-blame for mission failure, depression, anger, survivor guilt and other mental illnesses, physical injury and a high number of both women and men are victims of sexual violence by other military personnel. Poverty, high cost of housing and inadequate healthcare. Rarely is it ever discussed as to what the individual loses in war, nor is it discussed where our country truly loses. Let's discuss the financial cost of war first. In 2017, the military budget was about $773.5 billion. It is expected to soon climb to over a trillion dollars unless we do something to stop it. This cost does not include foreign aid and externalities such as rebuilding a country we have just destroyed utilizing multiple government contractors. These funds include arming and training, a new foreign army to buy our political will. America spends more on our military than the next nine countries combined. Despite having only 5% of the world's population, we spend over 50% of the world's total military expenditure. Also understand that all of our tax money that is spent on war is profit upon by the rich. Burlington simply does not need 24 nuclear capable F-35s at well over 100 million dollars each. This money could be better spent on healthcare, childcare, teachers and nurses salaries supporting this disabled affordable housing, higher wages refugee resettlement and war refugees increasing increasing the SNAP program ending racism, ending poverty ending environmental destruction and provide affordable access to college and job training. America could work to heal itself and become a respected leader worldwide instead of perpetually being at war and both hated and attacked by most other countries. I just happened to serve between 77 and 83 one of the few periods in our country's history when America's military had been at peace. Most feds have not been as lucky and are much worse off than myself. They live in the woods or commit suicide. Being a homeless that is a direct reflection of America's unhealthy culture and war economy. The twist of culture that encourages an 18 year old to join the military and what amounts to killing other poor people like ourselves in a foreign country because there are no better alternatives here in our country. The most difficult hurdle for homeless feds to overcome when seeking help from an inadequate system is to trust the very same unhealthy culture that made them homeless in the first place. They are rewarded by being reintegrated into an unhealthy society and living in poverty where our country perpetuates a cycle by enlisting new recruits for a never ending war. Well that's never really returned home from war. Some never return from living in the woods while they hope and pray that someone will listen and finally put an end to our war economy. Thank you. Thank you David. Now the following is an unsolicited letter of encouragement received from a veteran. We have edited this letter for later. I am a military veteran 23 years of service. I'm writing for this for someone to read if you wish so you can learn that there are people allied with you whom you may not suspect would be. The ecology of the planet is not a liberal or conservative issue. It is a life issue. Human life and all other life forms. Did you know that the first time the US military did a study on the impact of climate change on national defense was in 1990? You don't have to agree with everything about the military. I sure as hell don't always but you do need to know more than many other big institutions in our country. The military takes living by the law seriously. Yes we screw up, we all do but we are your neighbors and your family members. So reach out to us active and veterans. Find allies everywhere. Not just among the usual suspects. If we do not expand our allies to every part of our society we will fail and we can't fail because this is an existential fight now. In 2011 I co-founded a climate symposium that ran for three years in Stratford. We brought keynote speakers like Bill McKibbin, Tim DeChristopher and Starhawk but more importantly we focused on organizing people on care for our children's future and we looked to spiritual and religious communities to do the work. Thanks to Greta Thunberg we now see this crisis globally through their young eyes. I want you to also know that Vermont was on that cutting edge a while ago. Vermont must stay on the leading edge of the fight. Every military member every business person every church lady every politician has family has children. This is what we must remind them of every minute. We are here not for ourselves we are here for the children. We are here for their future. That is what We are here for their future. Thank you. We've got it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm writing to you for my son and my daughter. We must let our children lead, I am speaking to you governor Scott. We have all means to make the green mountain State no excuses All of us here, all of us here have the will to do this. Do you? We are not your enemies. Join us. And this is from RB Breeze Major U.S. Forest Reserve who is retired. So we've now reached the time for the one-minute elevator pitches from climate and social justice groups. For those who are looking to get involved in bringing about the much needed change, we are all looking for there are many organizations that could use your help. We hope you'll find a group that's a good fit with what you feel most passionate about. Extinction Rebellion, if you could come up here first. You bet. Extinction Rebellion is an apolitical international climate movement that was founded in the United Kingdom a little over a year ago. It's now international. It's rooted firmly here in Vermont.  Our demands are tell the truth. Cut carbon emissions by 2025. Form a people's assembly that holds the government accountable. And in all of our, this transition, it must be just. We must especially pay attention to frontline communities. Ed Brigade who are making their debut here in Montpelier. Extinction Rebellion. Extinction Rebellion has a huge emphasis on nonviolent direct action on regenerative culture. If you want to have a good time making a ruckus, come see us. Check us out on Facebook, XRVT. I'd like to introduce 350.org. He is here. Come give a pitch now. The F-35 group. How many of you here have heard the F-35s? We're going to be getting 20 of them. They each burn 1,500 gallons of fuel an hour. Vermont will be adding 2 to 3 million gallons of fuel every year from them. They're the biggest polluter in the state now. They're not included in any of the state's carbon plans, Burlington's plans. They're totally off. We give the military a pass when it comes to global warming. Too many environments. Not everybody does. I see signs here, but the big environmental groups give the military a pass. We can no longer do that. We can no longer give our elected representatives a pass. Sanders, Leahy and Welch are all welcoming them. We need to let them know they're not welcome. Thank you. And lastly, we're organizing a boycott of Burlington International Airport. Please do not use it as long as they host F-35s. Thank you.  I'm doll-forcing from South Hero. There's a take action group in the islands. As I'm listening to this, it's all great, but as we deservely cast blame on our government and polluters and things, let's remember what we can do individually to have our own green environment in our lives. Walk to places, take public transportation, drive a fuel-fishing car, carpool for food. Raise your own garden, compost. Have a cold cellar, freeze and can. Stop using plastic. Stop using plastic. You know, buy your Asian garden. I don't use plastic in my garden for your home-eating needs. And electricity, use as much as you can solar. You all know this, but I'm just saying what we can do while we're waiting for the world to change around. Thus, you can model this for everybody. Solar, wind, hydro, as you will. If you're carnivore, you could raise your own sheep, make a hat. Pigs, you know, stuff like that. So let's not forget what we can do and model for our town. We can't see the grass roots right now, but they're here. So thank you. Hi, just, I'm from 350 Vermont, Rowland County. I want to thank everyone who came out here today and for everyone who organized this event. Thank you. I wanted to mention also, some group of 350 Vermont is called Mother Up. And it's a group specifically for parents and with young children who are coming together to fight climate change. We meet on the fourth Tuesdays of the month at 5.30 at the Unitarian Church in Montpelier. Thank you. A lot of community media here today. Great to see the coverage. My name's Todd Tyson. I'm the station manager of Free Vermont Radio down in South Royalton. We carry an environmental show called Green Zine. I'm from Green Zine, but you may be familiar to me at the M. A, I know that it's interesting to see a lot of you by the way. I just need to listen in just remember Free Vermont Radio W. F. V. R. An important thing about the literature, the climate caucus has been meeting at the exact same time as this rally. They couldn't change the schedule to be at this rally. I noticed someone has just joined us here from the government and possibly even the next governor of Vermont. eye on them we are watching we are listening and if you want to get in touch with me or other folks that are going to come up to the legislature on a regular basis sit in on important committees and make sure that the people's voices are heard join me great great day here my name is Susan Hodges I live in South Stratford and I just wanted to say there's a lot of very small communities in Vermont just because you're small doesn't mean you're off the hook we have a small group in Stratford we've had signs out climate change signs out on the main road through town every Friday since September 20th and we're they've got a climate emergency resolution up in our town meeting coming up and we're doing things to help spread the word in our community and anyone else that wants to come so you can do that in your community even if it's really small we only have a thousand people in all of Stratford thank you I'm jenny sassman I am with indivisible callous and lean left Vermont there's certainly a lot of work to be done here in Vermont and at the same time we're all going to be subject to what happens in Washington DC and lean left Vermont and indivisible callous and many other groups in the state are working hard at helping change the makeup of congress and state houses in other states because they really affect what's happening so this year we have to take back the white house we have to take the senate we have to keep the house and we have to affect change at the state level where there's a massive effort to suppress the vote and elect a disproportionate number of republicans nationally based on gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression so you can check us out at leanleftvermod.org indivisiblecallous.org and uh and we can help you direct direct you to another local group if that's what you want to do thank you uh Montpelier and i want to encourage you all to get uh an eye on your local government many of them are changing zoning not prevent for protecting our waterways and our slopes encouraging development where there shouldn't be any right here in Montpelier that's happening they're changing the zoning please keep an eye on what they're doing in your local representation thank you thank you so it sounds like we're saying where we're from i'm david zuckerman i'm from heinsberg and who we're with and i'm with all of you and i'm not going to speak any longer than anyone else i just want to say that i know people here have been advocates and fighting for the environment and for climate change for many many decades and i'm so excited to have both longtime fighters and all of the new fighters who are with us working to change the discussion because we have no time we have to take action and we have to be big in our action we need to make policies that are moving forward on reducing co2 emissions and making sure people can live in their homes and have decent standards of living because the two are not opposed to each other and we're often like put in this place where you can either have you know houses and money and wealth and glorious whateverness or you can have a planet um well first of all without a planet we're kind of in trouble and as a farmer i felt it last year we were down 35 000 pounds of food on our farm because of the drought last summer and we're seeing it in australia and we're seeing it in paradise california and all over california we're seeing in Nebraska this spring without a planet and a sane environment we don't have food i mean this is pretty fundamental and we have to do our part here and so thank you for being here and being loud i i also have to tell you that i'm the parliamentarian in there in half an hour and i have to be mean if you're loud in there so i'm sorry but that's i do respect the system tremendously so well i'm sorry i think that's okay you don't have to respect the system but i have to do my job and um but i what i will urge you and i know many of you are dedicated to being here day in and day out and talking to your legislators even our good ones to remind them that this can't be let go for another year and let go for another year so thank you for being here i really appreciate it okay so for those who are saying for the pandemonium event please find a pandemonium wrangler uh with a red armband they will provide further instructions about the pandemonium accompaniment to governor scott at two o'clock between now and then we are able to warm up in state house room 11 and we also have food provided from the redhead bakery extinction rebellion vermont and capo grounds uh right up there thank you everyone so much for coming room 11 is not available okay room 11 is not available it was reserved for tomorrow so but okay here's hot coffee pastries blankets and warm socks right under the christmas tree please avail yourself of them yes thank you guys so much from glenn right here so yes legislature later today and every friday so i'd encourage you if you're willing to come a little bit later and bang some pots and pans let's get in touch with the people here and we'll give you further instructions but we've been working in this legislature and it's time they started listening to us so we're gonna make some more noise


One of the things that keeps people from creating content consistently is the fear of judgment. And maybe you can relate to this. You might get the facts wrong. You might change your opinion later. What if you're writing? What if you have typos and grammatical errors that embarrass yourself? What if your videos are not as entertaining or as eloquent as you want it to be? Maybe you have some stumbles and you lose people. Of course, those are all, the problem with these judgments is that and the reason why they're so tricky is they have a ring of truth to it. It's true that those things could happen. But let me hopefully with my years of experience creating content and building an audience now give you something that will soothe you and inspire you to get going anyway. Here's what I've learned. You will always, no matter how good you are, no matter how eloquent you are, no matter how perfectly picked the topic is, no matter how great your facts are, it doesn't matter. You will always lose some people. It's true. It's the strangest thing. I might write the best newsletters in the world and then I send it out and still I get some unsubscribed. It's like, and then of course newsletters are not as good, make it a few more unsubscribed. Doesn't matter what we do. We will always lose some people. Fans will leave. People will stop watching. People won't like or comment. Someone who's like supposed to be the perfect ideal client doesn't choose to work with you. Maybe they get offended by something you wrote or said, oh my God, that's our biggest fear, right? Ideal client because of our content decided not to work with us. That happens to me all the time probably. Well, I don't know because I don't hear from them, but I do know that some of my content is controversial and I'm sure it turns some people off. So point one, you will always lose some people. So what do we do? If that is the reality for every content creator, we'll always lose some people. So what do we do? Do we then stop and not do it? Because if you stop and not do it, you're just continually losing people because people don't hear from you and they forget about you. And so you're losing people anyway by default. The decay is happening anyway. The audience decay is happening all the time. So what is the solution? The solution is to do more. The solution is to create and share because by doing so, the audience growth will outpace the audience decay. This is very important. So you've got to get over yourself. You've got to get over yourself judgments. The way I do it, if you've seen my other videos before, I do what I call the energy reboot. I do it many times a day, like twice at every hour. It only takes me 10 to 20 seconds, but it's basically an intentional breathing exercise. I breathe in love.  I breathe in love again. I breathe out joy and playfulness. That's basically how it goes. I have a few more breaths, but my practice isn't like the way you should do it, but it's what works for me. What works for you to soothe your inner critic or to ignore it or however you need to work with the inner critic to not let it control you? What works for you? You probably have something that works for you. For some people it's some kind of meditation, some kind of, maybe it's even listening to music or affirmations or prayer or whatever. What works for you? And more importantly, are you doing that practice consistently? If you do that practice consistently that helps you to have a bigger perspective, have more courage, then you will be able to create consistently without the control of the inner critic. So that's up to you. So number one, we will always lose people no matter how smart we are, blah, blah, blah. And the fact is, there are plenty of people who are popular, well-loved, have a huge audience who are continually making factual errors and who don't sound eloquent and lots of mistakes that they... Come on, think about this. Who runs my country, United States? One of the biggest, you know, Democrats would say he's one of the biggest pathological liars to ever hold office, public office, Republicans will say, well, he's just loosey-goosey with the facts. Whatever it is, Trump is clearly, doesn't care as much about facts as probably you do and yet he has, you know, and he sometimes rambles and doesn't have, you know, just says weird stuff, whatever, not eloquent, not always, but look, he's the most powerful man in the world, okay? So now that's probably a terrible example, but I want to give you an extreme example. So what are you afraid of? Why are you so worried about facts? And now, of course, I care about truth, obviously, now, two biggest things for me is love and truth. But truth, here's the thing about it. You think you know what the truth is? You think you can get to a point where, yes, now I know the truth and now I will speak it perfectly, now I'll write it perfectly. If that's true, that means you've stopped learning. I'll give you an example. In the nutrition field, you know, I sometimes follow nutrition, oh, now we should be taking this, now we should be eating that, now we should be avoiding this, now we should be doing this kind of exercise. If you follow the nutrition and exercise field, it's like every couple years, something that used to be like the best thing you should ever eat, it's like, well, now it's dangerous to eat it. Kale, the best thing in the world, but don't eat too much of a raw kale because that's bad for your thyroid. I mean, it's like, well, God, how do we keep up with all these rules? And these rules that keep changing. Even nutrition that is based on science keeps changing. It's like people scientists discover, well, what we thought used to be the smallest particle, no, that's not the smallest. We have a smaller one. Are you serious about facts now and truth? No, when it comes to creating content, all you know, all you can do is what you understand to be the truth now, okay? And you simply share out of love for exploration, for expression, and out of love for your audience. That's all you can do.  If you don't do that, your audience will just keep decaying. Your network will just keep disappearing, okay? You have got to get over yourself, realizing that even Donald Trump can rise to the biggest fame and power. God, why can't you?  Come on, give me a break. Just get out there already, okay?  I do it all the time. Hey, I used to think that this and this, but now I think this. And you're still with me. You're still watching, okay? Basically, you will always lose people and some of the people you lose will come back to you years later. It's true. I've been around for 10 years. I know that to be the fact. Just keep growing your audience. Just keep sharing, exploring what you understand to be the truth, doing it out of love, and you will become more confident. You'll become more powerful in expression. You'll become smarter and wiser. And you'll be helping more people because whatever you understand now is going to help somebody else, all right? Go for it. Let go of the inner critic. Just go for it because no one else is judging you except for yourself. Just let it go. Know that you're going to help someone just by speaking whatever you already know. Do it.


From the Sands Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada. Extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering AWS re-event 2015. Now your host, Stu Miniman and Brian Graceley. Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman with Wikibon, joined with my co-host Brian Graceley, and this is theCUBE. Happy to have back to the program, repeat guest, Bill Saltis, VP of Operations at App Associates. Bill, good to see another New Englander here. Thanks for joining us back on the program. Great to be here. All right, so you guys work on Oracle solutions and of course, actually yesterday in the keynote, I mean, Andy for the first time gave a direct punch at the competitor with, you know, there was Oracle logo redacted, picture Larry redacted. Sure.  What's the update on your side? Well, first of all, let's define Oracle, which is so broad, as you know, applications and technology side. So the announcement yesterday was a direct hit at the database, if you will. And there's a lot of good options around there. Aurora being announced recently is an option that customers are looking for, but is it a real threat to the SQL servers and Oracle's? They're going to have momentum in the market, container market share, they're robust, feature rich. They'll be okay, but the customers are looking at viable options to commercial databases where they can start scaling, where they can start using the power of cloud computing. And those are, that's a nice sweet spot to look at those options for those customers and help them transform their business. And I think AWS has done a nice job with that. Yeah, one of our favorite practitioner interviews we did last year was Royal Philips who talked about how I want to buy everything by the drink. And that meant from an Oracle standpoint, I needed to work with partners that could help me buy it on-demand elastic and all of that. So it sounds like that fits into what you're saying. How prevalent is that in the customers you're talking to that they're pushing for that new consumption model? Well, the consumption model around cloud computing and the core utility computing is there. I mean, it's mainstream now. So the companies that aren't looking at are far and few between. The thing that in the Oracle world or any of the enterprise class applications are doing is it's holding them back, is they're sitting on long-term contracts with their hosted providers. There's a lot of friction, mission critical applications. It's not something you're going to do right out of the box. So initially when I was here a couple of years ago, we talked about that friction. We talked with Dave and brought up the fact that the first workloads were the DRs, the backups and so forth. Now, since that time and we had talked about forecasting, are they going to actually move their mission critical applications to AWS? The clear answer is absolutely yes. Apps Associates has been doing that for the last couple of years. We have lots of those customers, but it's not a conflict. We even have Oracle acknowledging, promoting their applications on a platform that A&M is where if you don't have their cloud solution or SaaS solution, it's not an option because maybe the applications aren't released yet. You can take your current applications and move them into a cloud environment, start getting out of your data center. It's a win-win for everyone actually. Yeah, so obviously we're here. We're all watching how fast AWS is growing, big database focus this week. Oracle has their own cloud play that's been evolving just maybe for the last 12, 18 months. As you talk to your customers, your clients, how much do they understand the difference between those clouds, what their options are?  Well, certainly if you look at the way the customers are organized, I'm talking about the upper-mid market into enterprise. Organizatially with the Neit, they'll have the infrastructure and cloud teams anyway, and they're very knowledgeable about what's going on. Again, the friction of what they can do and the pace that they can move things has to be a roadmap for that, so that's the only thing that's holding them back, but they're very knowledgeable. The thing that they're less knowledgeable about is the how and what should go first, and can I move my business applications over to the cloud, and what would that do, and if we think about it, it's usually a complex heterogeneous environment we're talking about. It's a subway map when you look at the connectivity between all of the different moving parts in the workflow and processes that they have. So when we go in there, you have to break that apart, and you have to go after the ones that are logical. That's the part that they're not that knowledgeable about, and there's industry expertise that's overlaid on top of that, where we try to help them that, and we say that foundation layer that AWS provides is actually a nice fit. So Bill, you brought up the word friction, and we talk about licensing, you talk about contracts. Big theme here at the show has been frictionless. Amazon's making it frictionless when you talk about how easy it is to work on things. Can you walk us through, how does App Associates help the typical practitioner, what does that look like to help them with their journey to the cloud, your partnerships with both Oracle and Amazon? Well, maybe the way I could answer that is, first of all, we've been doing AWS since 2011. In the context of that is, we didn't jump right in, we had a very viable, robust business that was growing 25, 30% a year. We were very happy within the Oracle ecosystem in doing lots of things. Certainly we recognize that cloud computing, the whole smack, was an area for a professional services organization. We needed to be there for our customers, but the thing that was driving it was business transformation. Our customers needed to be nimble. They needed to transform their businesses, and that's where the discussion triggered. What was happening is internally within App Associates, we were innovating. Our teams were already using AWS across the board for training, for POCs, for concept proofs and engagement with the customers to show them things fast. So we just moved that to the customers. If you rethink about it, they were first coming to us, how do I shrink the time to evaluate transforming my business? Whether it be in a line of business or it be, and then how do I shrink my deployment? And ultimately what they're really trying to do is how do I shrink my time to market so my customers can benefit from my new products and so forth. We packaged that all up into, hey, let's look at how AWS can support you. So let's go to the story in 2011 when my phone rang and one of our customers who was actually doing nothing with the cloud, but with Oracle applications, knew that we were in Oracle Business Intelligence, had expertise in Oracle Business Intelligence. They had a situation, the scenario was their HR department was on the latest revision of Oracle HR. The rest of the global organization was on an older version of their business applications. They had incompatibility. As they licensed the brand new HR applications, they were given a pile of seats for BI. How do they evaluate that? They would have to go through in a procurement cycle. There's a proverbial catch 22, that friction that you asked about. Go to IT, we don't have the servers and we can't bring this up so you could evaluate it. Well, let's do a demo. Let's call apps associates, they're experts in this. Let's just, we don't want to see a demo, we want to see our data. So, you know, it was a typical story. Yeah, agility of the cloud. The agility of the on demand resources, absolutely. We were all doing it, so that's the first story we just said, within two weeks, our cloud team had their business applications, BI applications running in the cloud, in AWS.  They would never be able to do that. That I think is a good example of how we got pulled in, how we transformed those companies, and I think that's what companies really need to do. You summed it up perfectly, and I think we'll leave that as the bumper sticker for the interview. So, Bill Saltis, thank you for coming back and seeing us. Hope to see you in San Francisco in a few weeks at the Big Oracle Show too, and we'll be right back with our next guest here right after this quick break. Thanks for watching.


Hello, my name is Martin. I have a question to Andreas. What's your personal view on Halloween this year, and its impact to accentuate and difficulty? Sorry, what was the Halloween accentuation? The halving, yes. The great halving of 2016. So to explain, for those of you who are not quite familiar with this every four years, the amount of subsidy in each block decreases by 50%. So we started with 50 bitcoin per block. We are now in the era of 25. We are going to enter the 12.5 era, approximately on July 22nd, 2016. One of the interesting things about bitcoin is that we know what the monetary policy will be in 2140. With the Federal Reserve, we don't know what the monetary policy will be this Friday, or with any of the other central banks. Although I have a premonition that will probably involve more stimulus and more printing money. That hasn't worked a hundred times, but a hundred and first, it probably will. So what happens in the halving? As I said, miners prepay electricity in many parts of the mining ecosystem. Not universal, but it is one of the characteristics of the mining community. It actually has some really serious implications on their decision-making process, because it is sunk capital. Secondly, we have now achieved a situation in mining where we have seen from the CPU, to the GPU, to the FPGA, to the ASIC, of 100 or 1,000-fold performance increases, until we accelerated straight into Moore's law. That is a wall, because 16 nanometers are done. Now where do we go? We slow down to 2x increases every 18 months. Everyone can get the same chip, and there is no advantage in preordering. You no longer have to switch chips every three to six months. Therefore, capital, connections to silicon fabrication, centralization of purchasing, no longer matter. This has started happening at the beginning of this year. We will go into the halving with a situation... where there will be the halves and the half-nots, those who have 16 nanometers and those who don't. Those who do not have 16 nanometers will find themselves unprofitable very quickly, and the rest will not. We will see. I predict the price will go up and down. Then it will probably go up and down again, because the primary driver of price is still, by a great extent, sentiment. If the halving is coming, I think Bitcoin will go up. Bye-bye-bye-bye. Everybody else sees it. They are like, bye-bye-bye-bye. Everybody buy. It is great. I am not too sure. I am a bit worried. Up and down we go. It is going to be a roller coaster. Volatility will probably increase. We are in a period of pretty low volatility. We have been for at least a year now. The volatility of 2011 and 2013 is in our past. We have been relatively stable for a tiny $6 billion global currency. We are going to see increased volatility. My suggestion is, take a deep breath and relax. Don't try to play the casino unless you are an experienced stock gambler, in which case, good luck to you. Sit back, relax, watch the fireworks, read the news about how Bitcoin is dead or about to die because of the halving. Wait until right after when Bitcoin is not yet dead.


Good morning everyone. Welcome back to another vlog. Sorry the sliding is you know my hair is really crazy, too Okay, so it is 9 30. I have been waking up so late during quarantine like between like honestly 8 30 and like 9 30 But I have also I've also really been off my routine So today I'm gonna try to have like a more productive day I need to get some stuff done Honestly the past week has been hard. This quarantine is like very difficult I basically have been reading like non-stop, but I am really excited for today. I'm going to do my morning routine Which will be nice. Um, honestly during this quarantine. I'm extending my reading time by like four hours a day So that's really what I've been doing. Um, but I want to film a lounge wear collection video I really hate filming those types of videos because I hate like the mess that it makes when you set up to film But I really want to film one and I really want to have one for you guys So I'm gonna do that today and then I have So much homework to do because we I'd like to make some for the semester So we have a lot of homework that I need to do I have like one 15-page paper like it's just like ungodly seriously also today's Brooks birthday So obviously we made that video or Daniel made that video just super cute And then I like posted everything and talked to her and it's been great, but anyways, I'm gonna head out Yeah, I'm just gonna listen to a podcast bring my water. I've been trying to drink like a full glass of water like honestly hydrofascin water before I even drink coffee and I kind of crave it and I feel like it's been better for me So that's what we're gonna be doing if you guys are new here subscribe follow my Instagram all that stuff I love you guys. I'm like weirdly not in a good mood, but I am in a good mood I'm always in a good mood when I vlog so yeah All right guys, so I've just been in my little reading nook for the past probably like two hours feels great I'm really hungry. I still haven't had breakfast or had coffee and I really need both of those I'm kind of considering filming tomorrow instead because I kind of feel like I want to like buckle down and do some homework Which is not a normal feeling So if I can just get all that stuff done now, I think I would almost rather do that and then Maybe film tomorrow. I haven't decided yet, but I need to go make breakfast also guys. I need to go grocery shopping So bad so like if I don't go film this video today I'm making myself a grocery shopping like I have no food I literally have no food like it is pitiful what I've been surviving off of because I just do not want to go to the store at all So anyways, I'm gonna go upstairs make some breakfast Work out Guys, it's just a really real quarantine vlog This is why I really don't like taking breaks working out because if I get out of my routine It's so hard to go back, but like also the breakage of my hair like what the heck um anyways, I Really don't want it to work out at all like I literally have no desire And I have to eat breakfast and drink coffee and like I can't go right after that Also, this is too close to the wall and it keeps you know, whatever So it's just my really real quarantine day in the life. It is a struggle to do anything around here people So I actually did have oatmeal left so I made a packet of oatmeal and I'm just making my coffee. Oh My gosh guys. I was just thinking I'm really pale today So I think that I should just self tan and then film tomorrow Also, I don't know if you guys do this like right now. This is such a weird obviously such a weird time Guys, there's literally a compilation of how many times I say in vlogs. This is just such a weird time um anyways, I Literally doesn't say so I think that it just makes sense for me to not film this video today and just self tan But I'm working on my papers and doing all that stuff I really really don't want to go to the grocery store at all And so I'm seeing if Instacart is like delivering. I haven't had groceries delivered to this house So I'm doing that and then I'm working on homework I'm actually watching one tree hill on my TV. So I Love one tree hill if you guys love one tree help comment down below if you're a Lucas or a Nathan Scott Kind of girl, but I love one tree hill. So I watched it my junior year of high school. No my sophomore year of high school Literally my best friend Saf and I we watched the entire series in What is the month of AP exams at May? I think it's May Literally, I think there's like nine seasons all in one month during school during AP exams I actually somehow think I got like a three on that exam. So I think it may be transferred. I don't really know but No, maybe I didn't I don't even remember honestly, whatever anyways sad the point We should have been studying my is what I'm saying and all we did was watch one tree hill But it's really taking me back because I'm like writing a paper and I'm watching one tree hill So it's really taking it back to high school Which also reminds me of like orange valentine refreshers like I'm really going back if anyone remembers those I Turned 16. I was driving a Hyundai Tiburon, which is like a little like old sporty kind of car. It was like cute We would go my best friends and I would go to Starbucks like still my best friends to this day actually and we would get orange valentine refreshers, which they ended up discontinuing and So many of you guys I was vlogging at three this time Like also got them and whatever it was this whole thing on the channel because we were so upset about these drinks and So now I'm craving one of those like it's so weird. I don't even know why I'm talking. I just feel like I Literally don't know guys. I just I literally don't know.  It's really annoying And then I have like a current topic essay which I always just use like a Forbes article or something And then I have the consulting project which is like 15 page paper But I've kind of outlined it so I think hopefully I'll be able to get everything done today And I'll feel really good about it So that's what I'm doing. Awesome. A lot of you guys asked what these months are from They're from William Sonoma. If you guys just download the like to know it app And you follow me every single thing that I ever talk about even like products and stuff are all on there So you guys can just follow me on like to know it's actually Addicting and you find so many things that you love and also really good deals and really good sales Obviously not sponsored, but like I'm just obsessed with the app and I literally spend so much time on there Also, if you guys have good people to follow on like to know it, please let me know But anyways, you just follow me on there and I have everything like my beddings linked there my products are linked there Everything is linked there. So all right guys. This is a very exciting time I am about to save and submit my 15-page paper Consulting project final Wow, what a good feeling this truly is this has been like not something I What a good feeling everyone now I kind of feel like I want to film so I might end up filming the video But I would actually in all seriousness like to you tan so I don't know what to do I'm definitely gonna try to grocery shop through Instacart because I just like literally cannot go to the grocery store like I Don't know about you guys that when I go it's like so scary to me And for some reason I like start breathing weird because I like Forget how to breathe and then I'm convinced that something's wrong, and I'm probably anxious I'm like Like I can't breathe like normal and I'm like paying so much attention to it And I'm so overly aware and I just like really don't want to leave my house even though I actually do you know what I'm saying So hopefully I'll be able to film this we will see All right guys. I'm in a much better mood since finishing this 16-page paper I think that school is just you know the death of me So I have decided I am going to film today because I would love tomorrow to just finally my cleaning day like I've been saying I'm gonna do it for so long.  All right guys. I actually just got ready. I'm watching Danielle's new video I made some mac and cheese my very nutritious lunch. All right guys. I just finished filming my Um laundry collection video, but I have to film the try-on portion which is like my least favorite thing So I think I'm gonna actually put Nashville on which I've been avoiding watching because I don't want to finish it And I don't want to cry I think I'm just gonna do that for now and edit some of this. I'm actually so glad I filmed I just haven't filmed like a normal sit-down video and so long and I've actually really missed them I for some reason was like putting it off for so long But when I actually sat down to film I was like, oh my gosh I want such a good mood because I'm doing this and like I love doing this stuff But yeah, I'm gonna put on some TV as I do my little Like try-on portion.  I can't believe I got that much done already I thought for sure I'll be doing homework all night But I am gonna go work out part of me wants to like go to run. I'm not a runner So that's how you know like quarantine's really hitting but I'm pretty sure gonna do a Melissa would help work out. We'll see what I end up doing Who knows but I literally just put on makeup just to end up taking it off. So that's awesome I might even edit this lounge where hall. We'll see who really freaking knows guys. Okay. I'm going to sit on my bed It's a nice afternoon Probably open my balcony door and edit this video and just got my laptop and stuff I am so pleasantly surprised by How quick it actually took to get everything done today That's really the best feeling when you think you're gonna have to do like so much stuff like especially school work And it just doesn't take as long as you anticipated. So anyways, um, yeah, I'm just gonna chill I'll eventually I will work out. I promise. We'll see when that happens. Um, yeah, that's the plan as of right now I've even considered going on a run. I don't know who I am. All right guys It's now or never for this workout.  I'm gonna take my hoop.  So we're gonna go do a nice and Melissa would help work out Okay, guys, so I just finished my workout feeling good. I'm glad I did it. I only did like 30 minutes Honestly when I'm home to get me to do an over 30 minute workout.  So tan I'm really out of breath kind of What does that even mean? I'm really out of breath kind of I can't Okay. All right guys, so I'm dealt that workout But I have five packages to unbox really quick. So I thought I would just do a little unboxing for the vlog I've made some orders on amazon So those won't be exciting. Oh, okay, cool This is really exciting. So this is from organifi. This is a new podcast sponsor So we have the glow collagen that support green juice um Super food powder and then we have the gold gently dried super food tea, which I'm really excited for these Oh my gosh, okay fun There are three cleanser. So they have the goat muck cleanser gentle daily wash and then the um foaming cleanser So these are really cute. It's not going to be exciting. It's gonna be like a Wow My series truth. I'm a subscription member. So I get like a new book every month, which is cute cute Oh cute, there's two Promises of god and then ecclesiastes. So these are really cute. Always like so impressed. So Love these. I'm always hoping that these are pr and not like boring Oh, wait, these are candles stuff. So cute guys. I am so excited I'm so excited. So basically this is from siblings This is my candle holder. Basically you pour yourself a premium candle better for you better for the planet plant-based packaging natural coconut blend wax premium fragrance and essential oils since to Find your presence or escape reduce and reuse. It's like really easy. I don't know if I'm gonna make this tonight These candles tonight. I don't really feel like it. Um, but basically you prep melt thread in center pour You guys see this set trim and enjoy, but these are super cute. So I got the eucalyptus evergreen and wild berries scent and then I also got The bergamot white rose oak moss. I always get bergamot in my um, I use this my essential oil for my Oh my gosh, look at her.  Oh my gosh I look at her and I like cannot believe that she's my dog and she is as cute as she is I'm out of the shower. I've changed this into pajamas. Um, I showered. I feel so good Oh, I forgot to put my hair oil on we have to go back. Like I said, I self tan. Sorry. This is so weird Um, I have my way of hair oil. I'm not going to keep showing you guys the same steps in every video. Don't worry, but um This hair oil is just amazing Really just is my holy grail hair product. I'm so excited. Oh my gosh. I don't even think I vlog this guys So I've been really wanting to dice my hair. Oh my gosh. What am I doing?  It's originally like 600. I think for the set I have the hair dryer. I wish I would have got the air out. I want the air wrap so bad I think about it all the time and how much it would just benefit my life And I was like, okay if it goes on sale, which Dyson never goes on sale Then I'll buy it. Um, it would be like my splurging presence myself because um, well I did just buy the outdoor furniture, but I'm not like traveling and spending excess money on other things Anyways, it's definitely an investment. It's definitely expensive. It was on sale for 400. I know that's so ridiculous But there's so many things Dyson's expensive. It'll last me like literally forever Um, but on Nordstrom rack refurbish. It was available. I'll have it linked down below if it's still available But I was just like this is the best day ever So I ordered that um that should be here within like the next two weeks probably But I'm gonna drink some water and maybe find a new book to read because I haven't read I think I'm finally gonna watch Nashville tonight I have been like trying to not watch it because I don't want to finish it and I don't want to cry But I think I just have to face my fears. I'm watching Lauren's vlog and I realized that I think we got the same Like beanbag chairs without even realizing it and are just in my garage, but um, I went downstairs I made myself some dinner. I was just reading Haven't purchased a new book yet because I've been reading so much that I think I should just watch some shows So we'll see how that goes, but I hope you guys enjoyed today's vlog Um, I'm really excited because hopefully the next vlog will be me cleaning and it's going to be a very Like organizational cleaning type vlog whatever you guys always love those I love you guys so much. Hope you guys enjoyed today's vlog and I'll see you soon


So a couple of weeks ago on the program, we talked about Elizabeth Warren's financing plan for Medicare for all And I think that you all know by now that I'm not too happy with it I think that her head tax as a means of financing Medicare for all is incredibly regressive I think that the best way to do it is through a 7.5 percent payroll tax because if you're doing Medicare for all Then you have to do it right you have to make sure that it's solvent You have to make sure that we can fully fund it for generations to come because if it's not fully funded then what's gonna happen? Well, you're going to have to strip away benefits There's going to be calls for privatization and there's already going to be calls for privatization So you have to basically construct a Medicare for all system that is fail-proof, right? It can't fail but with Elizabeth Warren's plan I don't think that she's worried so much about creating a robust health care system as she is about appeasing her critics however, I can put that criticism aside and just accept that She still was seemingly at that point in time committed to single-payer Although now she released a Medicare for all transition plan that should once and for all put to rest this notion that she's serious about Medicare for all Because she's not serious about Medicare for all now when I think about a transition plan for Medicare for all I'm thinking about after it's already passed once it's signed into law What the implementation will look like but what she rolls out here essentially is a roadmap as to how she's going to get Medicare for all Past now she tweeted about this saying today. I'm sharing my plan to transition to Medicare for all in my first term We will reverse Trump's sabotage of the ACA Lower drug prices lower the Medicare age to 50 and create a true Medicare for all option and fully transition to Medicare for all As president I'll reverse Donald Trump's efforts to sabotage the affordable care act and will protect people with pre-existing Conditions and in my first 100 days I'll take executive and legislative action to reduce health care costs and improve coverage First I'll act immediately as president to lower the costs of critical drugs Including specific drugs that millions of Americans currently rely on like insulin and EpiPens and I'll crack down on corruption To rein in health insurers and drug companies next in my first 100 days I'll use the same process Mitch McConnell used to try and kill the ACA to bypass the filibuster and create a true Medicare for all Option more generous than one proposed by any other campaign to begin the transition to Medicare for all This Medicare for all option will be open to everyone and includes all the healthcare benefits of Medicare for all It will be immediately free for nearly half of all Americans Including all children under 18 and anyone with income at or below 200% of the federal poverty level I'll also let anyone over the age of 50 join the existing Medicare program And I'll improve its benefits and reduce its costs for everyone We will continue to move forward on health care throughout my term Including by investing 100 billion dollars in new breakthrough medical research and by creating a new drug development institute At the NIH and now here's the kicker by the end of my third year I'll fight to pass legislation to complete the transition to Medicare for all once millions have experienced the full benefits of a Medicare for all Option and compared it to the corrupt and wasteful system. We have today. The people will demand it now If this were just one policy proposal where you pass Medicare for all and it starts out with a public option that you Can buy into and then towards the end of the third year Everyone's enrolled in Medicare for all that would be one thing But what she's doing is she's taking the health care battle and she's dividing it She's saying first we are going to prioritize a public option We're going to have a means test the public option Medicare for all who wants it if you will and we're gonna pass that and Once I've finished fighting for that once I spent all my political capital fighting on that After the first midterm of my presidency assuming I'll be able to hold on to the House and the Senate Which Obama and Trump were both not able to do but she's gonna be different Assuming she'll still have the House and Senate in her third year of her first term Well, then that's when we're going to fight for another piece of major health care legislation Medicare for all and I'm gonna get all this accomplished While not having a real grassroots movement behind me fighting with me for this This should tell you that she's not serious about Medicare for all her priorities are laid out right here She's prioritizing a public option and Medicare for all. She's not prioritizing that She's willing to wait until the third year of her presidency when she probably will lose popularity like most presidents do and not have Congress behind her and That's when she's going to fight for Medicare for all so that way when it inevitably fails She can throw her hands up and say well look I tried she is not serious about Medicare for all Now the thing that irritates me I think the most is that actual well-meaning people proponents of Medicare for all like Pramila Jayapal and Adi Barkin They're touting this as a brilliant move by Elizabeth Warren to get Medicare for all passed But this is not Elizabeth Warren playing 40 chess This is Elizabeth Warren Communicating to you in a pseudo wonkish Unnecessarily convoluted way that she in fact is not serious about Medicare for all and what she's trying to do is appease progressives and centrists at the same time by adopting both of their plans and really if you think about it She's adopting one plan a public option because if you are prioritizing one plan over the other Then you're not serious about the other plan, right? Because if you want Medicare for all we all know there's no reason to disaggregate this fight to divide up health care reform You just pass Medicare for all with all the issues that we have to address Climate change campaign finance reform student loan debt cancellation. Why on earth would you choose? To create another obstacle for yourself when you already know that This is going to be a massive battle a public option will be a gigantic battle But now she's saying I don't want to just wage that massive battle. I want a second massive battle to deal with I Mean look she's not serious about Medicare for all now I think that Carl Beiger of Jacobin Perfectly illustrated how this is actually going to play out during the first legislative push Republicans would argue that Warren's first bill is a radical communist government power grab doomed to dysfunction and failure and Single-payer activists would be backed into either abandoning the project or insisting that yes The public-private plan is actually quite reasonable and good This would one split the movement along entirely predictable lines that are completely familiar to left organizers Let's work with Democrats versus we must hold the line to undermine the commitment and investment of Activists who have reluctantly decided to support a bill that is at odds with what they think really needs to happen with healthcare in the u.s Three center warrants first plan as the reasonable compromise and the second plan as an unnecessarily radical instance of Democrats pressing their advantage and for exhaust everyone before picking the second fight There is no way the fight for single-payer would survive warrants plan It is practically tailor-made to divide depress Marginalize and exhaust any political will for single-payer before we've even begun the final fight That is exactly how this will play out now the crux of warrants argument Is that the reason why it's going to be easier to pass Medicare for all in year three once? We already established a public option is because once people get a taste of a government run healthcare plan Well, they're going to demand it, but what do you think is the more likely scenario? Let's assume she's successful and she passes a public option in year one Do you think that Americans will just become complacent and Want to move on to the next issue or do you think they'll still be energized to fight for Medicare for all? There's a lot of issues healthcare isn't the only thing people want her to focus on I think that people would probably just settle for a public option and be temporarily satisfied with it and think look We got the public option. Let's move on to something else We don't need to wage this Medicare for all battle right now Although 10 years later, you know once she fails to deliver Medicare for all after getting a public option While the public option will inevitably fail because it will become overburdened and underfunded and when we start talking about healthcare reform again centrists and Republicans will point to Elizabeth Warren's public option as proof that government run healthcare just doesn't work and then actually Codifying Medicare for all into law will be that much more difficult to achieve So what she's trying to do cleverly? So I think is she's hiding the fact that she's triangulating by cloaking her plan and Technocratic language, but when you remove all the fluff away What remains is the fact that she's not prioritizing Medicare for all she's prioritizing a public option She's telling you Medicare for all is not a priority for me a public option is Now the real tell is what Wall Street thinks about this plan and as Doug Henwood of Jack been explains Wall Street doesn't believe Elizabeth Warren is serious about Medicare for all and he asks is Elizabeth Warren's Medicare for all phase-in plan a shrewd realistic tactical move to win a public health system or a Baton switch to play to Medicare for all's popularity without actually fighting for it Wall Street things It's the latter now he goes on to explain how a report from Barclays analyst Stephen Valiquette Views her plan as a significant change in tone and he writes Healthcare stocks rallied on the release of warrants plan meaning that Wall Street, which isn't always right But does have some skill in decoding political bullshit sees her plan as Political bullshit Additionally Barclays estimates a Warren style buy-in would boost humanity's earnings per share EPS by 50 cents That's not a massive windfall given current EPS of just under $19 But it is a step in the wrong direction since companies like Humana need to be put out of business as a serious Medicare for all plan Would do so Wall Street who has the most lose from a single-payer system Isn't worried about Elizabeth Warren That should tell you a lot that should tell you everything you need to know because candidates who support a public option They're doing it because they want to make sure that we can Keep that a private insurance system intact Which means that you don't believe that health care should be about the delivery of health care You think that there should be a profit motive which means that you're not serious about the decommodification of health care Now I want to share another argument This is from Ryan Cooper of the week who explains how it's really important to not compromise before Negotiations even begin he writes instead of worrying about the McKinsey mayor more not to worry more about alienating Sanders supporters and dedicated health care activists who have sunk enormous political capital into Medicare for all as a rallying point And I've been repeatedly betrayed by the Democratic establishment It may be necessary to accept half a loaf in the negotiation stage But only then and only because moderates wouldn't accept anything better Retreat and hesitation before a single primary election has been held signals a lack of commitment Warren should have stuck to her guns, but she didn't She didn't stick to her guns But someone who is going to stick to their guns is Bernie Sanders who tweeted this out after she released her so-called Transition plan to Medicare for all in my first week as president. We will introduce Medicare for all Legislation and there you have it if you support Medicare for all then you pass Medicare for all You don't pass a public option first you pass Medicare for all There's no path to Medicare for all other than passing it and signing it into law Bernie Sanders stands alone here in being the only candidate who actually wants to fully Decommodify health care in the United States of America So the false equivalencies between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders need to stop He's the one candidate who is serious about Medicare for all she can support it in a rhetoric She can be a phenomenal ally on the debate stage when she's teaming up with Bernie Sanders to argue about single-payer versus You know a multi-payer system with centrists But let's be real Elizabeth Warren is not serious about Medicare for all and in the event. She becomes president I don't believe we are going to get Medicare for all I would be surprised if she even fought for Medicare for all Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who's proposing a true single-payer system that I know will fight for it Other people are not serious about it. You can get Tulsi Gabbard's single-payer plus I guess the plus signifies plus private which means it's multi-payer Where she's basically Creating a plan that sounds like a two-tiered system, which is garbage You need to take the profit motive out or Elizabeth Warren who will pay you lip service and say she supports Medicare for all But she's not going to prioritize it I mean look if you truly believe in Medicare for all if you want people to stop dying and going bankrupt if you want a Healthcare system that strips out that profit motive and gets rid of private insurance. There's one candidate who has made it crystal clear They're going to fight for it. It's Bernie Sanders And if you're not going to prioritize that on day one, then you're going to put it on the back burner And it's not going to pass so Elizabeth Warren is no Bernie Sanders And I think to call Elizabeth Warren diet Bernie Sanders. I think that's giving her too much credit as well She's not even diet Bernie Sanders, right? She is a fairly left-leaning Democrat in the Senate comparatively, but she's nowhere near Bernie Sanders domestically and on foreign affairs on domestic policy She doesn't believe in 100% student loan debt cancellation. She doesn't believe in medical debt cancellation on foreign policy She's atrocious. It's Bernie Sanders rally behind Bernie Sanders if you actually want someone who will bring about Structural change in this country because Elizabeth Warren Isn't going to do it and I think she's made that clear throughout the course of this primary You could support the humanist report at patreon.com Slashed humanist report But trust me, I'd have way more supporters at patreon if that was my podcast said