Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for another episode of condo insider. My name is Jane Sugimura and I'm your host for the show today. And my guest today is Dana Bergman from Bergman group. Hi, Dana. Aloha. How are you today, Jane? Thank you for joining us. And we're going to be talking about, you know, something that's been in the news for the last couple of weeks. And that's the surf side condo collapse. And thank you for being with us and sharing your expertise with us. Sure. First of all, tell us about Bergman Group. So Bergman Group, we're a consulting firm, construction management consulting firm. We specialize in restoration work and in particular, our team specializes in repair work on association projects, kind of many of projects and the like. So we're a multidisciplinary firm. My personal background is in construction management, but we've got people on our team here that are different engineers and architects, construction managers, project managers and the like. But we focus on repair of older buildings and heavy focus on association projects. OK, well, good to know. And you're also a condo owner, right? We do own a condo. My wife and I do own a condo. Yes, we do. And you did tell me in previous conversations that you have served on board. I have I have served on boards many a day in the past. They don't currently, but I certainly have in the past. So you can speak from the position of board members because a lot of board members are watching this. Absolutely, I know how it feels to sit on both sides of that table, both as a consultant trying to help boards and as a board member trying to make decisions. OK, good, because we I think we I think for this show, we need that perspective because, you know, the audience, at least I the way I contemplate is that the people who are listening to the show, you know, are board members or unit owners.  You know, when it comes to repair and maintenance of the building, I think that, you know, after what happened in Florida, I mean, that's what people are concerned about. They want to know if their building is safe and if not, what can they do about it? And and well, why don't we talk about the Florida building collapse? Are there any similarities between what happened in Florida and what happened and can it happen here in Hawaii? Well, a couple of things are that, first of all, you know, it's too soon to to tell, you know, we have to wait for the engineering experts and forensic experts that they're going to bring in to to analyze that scenario to arrive at a conclusion and a judgment as to what they think happened. So it's a little too soon to know for sure what happened. You know, there are some some theories and some kind of leading indicators that we can talk about, but, you know, we all need to just kind of let the engineers and the forensic folks do their work and and they will come up with with what they think happened, you know, could it happen here in Hawaii? Sure, it's it definitely could. The good news is that that kind of an event is so extraordinarily rare that it is highly unlikely. That said, you know, when we when we look at the deferred maintenance aspects of some of the theories of why that building collapsed in Florida, we do see deferred maintenance here in Hawaii with regularity, sometimes quite severe. So although the event in Florida is a kind of a doomsday worst case scenario that's extraordinarily remote in terms of its possibility, smaller accidents and smaller events are actually a lot more likely because of deferred maintenance here and in many other places. When you talk about deferred maintenance to a layperson, can you explain to them what what you mean by deferred maintenance? Sure. So, you know, I'm very fond of analogies and expressions. And, you know, I think sometimes people need to think about buildings like people, you know, as people age, and I know you've heard me say this in the past, you know, as people age, we we all have more health care needs and things creak and don't work as well as they used to. And buildings are the same way.  And that's not necessarily the case. So what we see is that there is either a lack of understanding or a lack of will to tackle difficult, expensive issues because they can be, you know, politically toxic within the community. So, you know, what are some of the things that we see here at home that that we deal with on a regular basis? One of the first ones we see with regularity is concrete spalling that has not been repaired and has been deferred. And spalling can can lead to significant safety concerns and risks.  Those are, you know, those are some of the things we see with regularity in terms of kind of the exterior of the building. Another big one we see here locally is is, you know, swimming pool recreation decks and parking structure decks with some sort of, you know, tennis courts or rec deck on the surface of the parking structure. You know, we see deferred maintenance on those kinds of things all the time. So those are just kind of some of the things we see with more regularity that answers the question. Right. Well, let's talk about spalling because, you know, until I served on the board, I, you know, and I know one of the first things that happened maybe after I was on the board for about five or six years is they talked about spalling. I didn't know what it was. You know, tell the people what spalling is. Sure. So concrete spalling is is essentially concrete pieces of concrete that come loose from the building and they spall. They spall off of the building. Sometimes they can be rather flat, like a delamination. Sometimes they can be big chunks. They're largely driven by damage to the concrete through exposure to the elements, you know, our hot, salty air here carries a lot of chlorides and moisture. And, you know, the UV index here in Hawaii is very high. And these these elements are just relentlessly, you know, buffeting and pummeling our buildings day after day after day. So what happens sometimes with age and exposure is that you'll get cracks in the concrete and water get in the cracks and causes steel components inside the concrete to rust. And once that corrosion process starts, it advances itself rather rather handily like cancer. And so what what happens is until that damage is is treated, it's going to continue to advance itself. So the sooner that concrete damages is addressed and repaired, the less the chance that the corrosion will spread and the worse it will get. OK, let me tell you how it was explained to me because I've seen it. I've seen some pretty bad spalling in our building when we had to get it repaired years ago. And they told me, well, concrete is porous. And so you've got this salt air that comes in through the concrete and it goes after the the the the the the rebars, the steel that holds the building together. Correct, that salt air hits that that's that that the metal it rusts. And when it gets all rusted and corroded, like you say, the concrete starts to fall off the building. Is that what happens? That's correct. So what happens is salty, wet air gets into the concrete and even liquid water gets into cracks and crevices. And it gets down to the steel just as you used as you describe. And the steel of the reinforcing bars or the rebar for short can it causes it to rust. What happens is, you know, metal rebar as it rusts, it expands. So it's actually getting bigger in size and it puts pressure on the concrete, which causes the concrete to crack and fall off. That's that's what causes spalling. And it can it can happen with, you know, big pieces of rebar. It can happen with small pieces of steel that are holding railing pockets or railing posts into place. So it can happen on large, large components and small alike. But you're exactly correct. It's essentially where metal components inside are corroding. It causes the concrete to fall and spalling eventually is dangerous enough that it can fall off the building or cause a major collapse like they saw in Florida. And with with with spalling, it's not if it happens. It's when it happens, right? Absolutely. Every concrete building in Hawaii is going to fall. Absolutely. I'm fond of saying that, you know, concrete buildings will fall forever. The severity and the frequency with which you have to address the spalling depend on how well you take care of your building.  That's true. Yes. So the first time we did it, it ran us over a million dollars. Yeah, it's 23 story building and it can be expensive.  I'm again, back to analogies. It's kind of like cancer. The the longer that you let that concrete damage and that that corrosion continue to advance, the worse it's going to be, the worse it gets, the more expensive it is to fix. So the the better thing to do is be proactive about treating and repairing concrete damage and spa repair and keeping your buildings painted and keeping your pool decks and your wreck decks waterproofed properly. All those things will help reduce the severity and the frequency of spalling. But the longer you let it go, the more it's going to cost to fix. And you just answered my question, too. Once you do the spa repair, that doesn't mean it's you're finished. It means that you just you're finished for now. But that means that maybe 10 years from now, you're going to have more spalling, right? That's absolutely true. So again, a concrete building is going to fall forever. You're going to do it on a certain interval. And the better job you do of taking care of your building and protecting it, the less frequently you're going to have to do spa repair and the less severe it's going to be. So, you know, people think about paint as something that's just pretty. Well, it's not just pretty. You know, paint is actually there for a reason. You know, many of these paints and waterproof coatings and other things protect the building from the elements. So some of those things are just as important as the underlying concrete and steel inside. And for for for painting the building, I think most of us know who live in high rise buildings. You paint your building about every 10 to 15 years. It depends on the paint. You know, paint last anywhere between five and 20 years, depending on what kind of paint you use. But yeah, a good a good interval is every, you know, we have five to 10 years, 15 on the outside, you're probably repainting your building. Right. And so before you paint your building, you've got to make sure you have no spalling. Well, that is true. It would be it would be advantageous to do the spalling in the painting at the same time. It's an interesting point, Jane, and maybe a good pivot. Frequently, when we look at reserve studies, we'll see spalling in one year and painting in another. And it makes a lot more sense to put those together because if you do spall repair and don't paint your building, it's going to look like it's got some sort of disease. And you also don't want to be wasting the money on painting your building if you're going to turn right around a year or two later and do spall repair. So it's better off to do those two those two things in concert with with each other, not just for economic purposes, but also because they really do belong together because they work together. Right. And right now, you know, in Florida, they had, you know, we learned that they have this sort of building certification every 40 years. Yes. Right. We do we have similar legislation here in Hawaii? We do not. We do not have any building inspection laws like that. The one thing we have here in Hawaii that some other states don't have are really more on the economic side of things where associations are supposed to be reserving funds following the reserve study laws that I think were championed by Bayesian Hirono back, you know, a number of years ago. But on the inspection side or the more construction and engineering side of things. No, we do not really have any any laws here in Hawaii like they do in other parts of the country, including in Florida. OK, well, let's talk about the reserve study because the reserve laws because, you know, and you did mention, you know, Congressman Macy Hirono. And back then, she was chair of the state. She was a representative and she was chair of the consulate section. And she was the one and I can remember her calling me and griping that, you know, she was getting these calls from her constituents about getting specially assessed for a roof when they just bought into the building. Right. And she she she complained that it wasn't just one or two calls. I mean, she was getting several of these calls every year. And she told me one year she says, you know, if you guys don't educate your people to set up mandatory reserves, I'm going to pass the law. And she did. I think it was 1992, she passed the law. And so since 1999 and then even after she passed it, it took us maybe four or five years to get it implemented because I think it was the Board of Realtors Association, the Realtors Association. But we went in there every year because they wanted to delay the implementation of the budget and reserves because the way the law was written in the beginning, you had to be 100 percent funded, which is kind of hard to do. Right. So so the legislature said fine. And then but I think the first one was they wanted only 10 percent and the legislature said no. And I think they went back and forth. I think it ended up with 50, but it took like three or four years. And we would be back in the legislature every year before they finally hit on a number and then they implemented the bill. So what the bill does is it requires buildings when they do their budget to determine what they have to do for the operating to run the operations for a year. Plus, they have to set aside some amount for deferred maintenance. Right. And each building is different, right, because they have different components. Can you explain to the the the the listers what the components of a of a reserve study would include? Sure. So just one point of clarification. The reserve study is not for deferred maintenance. It's actually for ongoing capital improvements and and regularly scheduled maintenance. What happens is associations don't do the maintenance. They defer it for for whatever reason, usually economic. And then they end up with a bigger problem, just like we were talking about the concrete fair. You know, they they kick that down the road and kick that down the road either because they don't have the money or don't want to have to face the pain and difficulty of swallowing that that really big pill to swallow. And so the damage gets worse and worse and worse because it was either not in the reserve study or not funded. So, you know, your reserve study is going to have if you look at them, they they will have frequently everything you can possibly think of that you may need to replace or service on a regular interval. So your major things like roofing concrete, spa repair, repainting the building, replacing your pool pumps. You know, those kinds of things are are all things that you see in reserve studies with regularity. A really, really good example of what's happened here in Hawaii. And I will say in a strange way, we're leading the nation in in this category. And that is with re piping. You know, when we looked at reserve studies 10 years ago, nobody had re piping of the building in their reserve studies. You know, everybody why pipes were supposed to last more than 20 exactly. Exactly. So it's just going to say everybody assumed that pipes were going to last forever and they don't. So now fast forward 10 years and we now see re piping of a building in the reserve study. But there's a lot of other things that people don't think about that need to be included. You know, a good one that we see omitted with regularity is repairing the waterproofing on parking structures or redoing your pool deck. You know, you look out on your pool deck and you've got that nice tile and it looks great and the swimming pools off in the far corner. But people don't realize that the waterproofing assemblies and the and the things that protect the structure underneath, they don't last forever. And so things like that still need to get budgeted and they still need to be written into reserve studies. So your reserve study should have everything in it from soup to nuts that you think you're going to need to replace. And the reserve study specialists will help you assign a value in terms of frequency. So maybe it's in your example, Jane, maybe, you know, you've got spa repair every 10 years and roof replacement every 20. Maybe you need to have your pipes replaced every 40. All these things need to go in a reserve study. The second thing that has to happen is you have to make sure you put the correct dollar amounts. And that's the other thing that we see all the time is maybe concrete, spa repair, excuse me, maybe concrete, spa repair or roofing or whatever else are in there. But the dollar amounts assigned are just woefully inadequate for where the market sits today. So that's the other variable. And what I see more often than not is either it's a big ticket item like redoing the entire pool deck that was never thought about and it's not in the reserve study or, you know, let's take concrete, spa repair. It's often in the reserve study, but it's just woefully underfunded and therefore it just gets deferred. And, you know, one other thing, too, this reserve study that we all have to do in order to show us how much money to sell, it's a tool that the board of directors of an association are supposed to have available to them so that they can make their decisions, right? Absolutely. And I would encourage everybody listening to update your reserve study annually. You know, too often we see where reserve studies don't get updated, you know, every five, six, seven, eight years or longer, and that doesn't serve you well because the needs of the building may have changed and you need to make sure that you're adjusting your reserve study accordingly and certainly market conditions change. And so if you put something in your reserve study ten years ago and you then look at today's construction costs, you might be in trouble. So I would definitely encourage everybody listening and watching today to, you know, use that tool to your advantage. Jane, you're absolutely right. It's a tool to be used. It's a living and breathing document to be updated regularly, not just be done and put on a shelf. Right. And especially now with the pandemic, the pandemic created a lot of supply disruptions, right?  And so so the supply chain has been severely disrupted because of the pandemic. And so what that does is it makes everything more expensive. Absolutely. So a sheet of plywood that a year ago costs $20 today costs $120, you know, prices are stabilizing and coming down, but I don't think they're ever going to come down to where they were. You know, steel and pipe is, you know, 20 to 50 percent more expensive today than it was a year ago, depending on what kind of materials you're trying to get and get shipped in. And we are still having shortages. The supply chain is starting to stabilize and we are seeing prices start to stabilize some, but it's still inflated and we're still having trouble getting some products. And so, you know, so I guess a word to the the board members and the owners who probably don't know that the board what what what information the board has. This is all relevant information. This is information that is in their hands. It's not something that they have to go out and get. They are mandated to have a reserve study. So every association should have a reserve study if they don't have it, they're not in compliance with Hawaii law and they need to update it regularly. And I agree with you that it should be done annually, especially now, you know, where where the market conditions are changing and it was severely impacted by the pandemic that affected all phases of our economy and our and our lives. And, you know, we need to take that into consideration. Now, what happens? And you and I'm going to now let's let put on your board board hat. You were you used to sit on the board. So now you're sitting on the board and you're looking at this reserve study and your property manager says, you know, based on your reserve study, you've got to raise maintenance fees 15 percent. What is how are the other other board members going to react to that? Look, I will tell you, I feel for a lot of these boards, you know, construction costs have been climbing, climbing, climbing and in recent years, you know, in the last decade alone, we've seen, you know, huge increases in construction costs and the state bird is back, you know, the tower cranes are out and about and this influences the market. The shortage of labor and the cost of materials is a real factor. You know, it's difficult. It's really difficult to look your your fellow owners and constituents in the eye and tell them that you're going to have to raise their dues or you need to borrow money for for major projects. And the thing I would say to to the board members and and and owners that are out there is to the boards, I would say tell them the truth. I would say, you know, shoot straight with your owners and tell them where you really stand. The worst situations that we encounter are when things have been pushed off and kicked down the road for so long that you've just got a horrific repair that could have been hundreds of thousands or millions even millions of dollars less had it been addressed in a more timely manner. So don't put it off. Don't put it off. You know, have the courage to really look your constituents in the eye and tell them the truth. And to the condo owners that aren't on the board, I would I would tell them, you know, please don't crucify your boards for telling you the truth. You know, we see all too often where boards get recalled because that the the owners don't like the message that they're receiving.  There was no big shenanigans. The building really did need these repairs and repairs ultimately went forward. They just went forward a year later and were even more expensive. So, you know, to the owners, I would say, don't, you know, don't, you know, don't crucify your boards if they're being forthright about what the building really needs. That's kind of where these inspection laws come into, Jane. OK, and, you know, in Florida, we know from the news reports that the previous board had recommended some changes and, I guess, out of frustration and they don't tell us why, but the entire board quit. And so this board that was in place when the building collapsed, they went out and they had they did a special assessment.  Yep. So, you know, a couple of things happen there. One is, you know, it's it's never an easy subject to talk about and people don't want to have to pay the funds. But the boards need to remember, you know, your job as board members is an elected body is not to keep dues as low as possible. Your your job is to to maintain the value of your asset and preserve your property values. And if you stop and think about it, you think about a building there or all the buildings here at home in Hawaii, you know, we have a board of late people in charge of an asset that's worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars when you add up the value of all the condominiums and you have to keep that in perspective. Nobody likes that hundred dollar or two hundred dollar months of assessments or increase in dues. But, you know, the difference between that and having an accident or someone getting hurt or killed, it's you know, you'll pay that out in insurance or other things. So, you know, my advice is, again, to the boards, shoot straight with your owners and tell them where they really stand and to the owners, you have to be part of the community and understand that the boards have very, very difficult decisions to make. You know, we reference these inspection laws. That's where some of these inspection laws come from. You mentioned the 40 year law in Florida. There's some others, you know, New York City has many residential high rises, much like here at home in Honolulu. And, you know, they have what they call local law 11 where association buildings have to be inspected every so many years to make sure that there's not things that are dangerous to the occupants or to the public. Just last year in 2020, the state of California passed a statewide ordinance. It's called Senate Bill 326 where all lanais on association properties and in particular woodfame structures in this entire state of California have to be inspected. These laws come out of accidents because deferred maintenance resulted in things not being repaired in the timely basis. So, you know, we don't have those ordinances here in Hawaii. So it really is on the boards to be sure that you are proactive in maintaining your building because there are no ordinances to to really make sure that that happens. And also, I mean, they have to be diligent in in their obligation to make sure that the building is being cared for. And also it would probably be easier if they if they raise their maintenance fees a little bit every year so that they don't have to go back to their owners with a big chunk, a double digit increase. Absolutely. Back when I served as a board member, you know, what we used, we used to do a couple of things, you know, one thing. And of course, I have to be, you know, confessed that our board had the benefit of the benefit of having me on the board because I know a lot about buildings. But, you know, we put things in our reserve study that I knew were going to need be necessary. And we started saving for it. So when we, you know, an example from from our building when I was on the board, I knew we needed a new fire alarm. And so we put it in there. We put it in the reserve study and we saved for, you know, four or five, six years. And then when it came time to put it in, we had the funds. We didn't have to borrow money. And that's how it's supposed to work, right? That's exactly how it's that's exactly how it's supposed to work. So that when it comes time, you have the money and you don't have to do a special assessment. Absolutely. The other thing that we did as a board back when I was serving is we had an automatic dues increase every year of a very low percentage. And I can't remember the exact percentage off the top of my head, but it was, you know, three or four percent that we automatically increased every year because no matter what you do, your cost of operations goes up, your payroll costs go up, your insurance costs go up. So even if you're doing nothing more than trying to offset those basic operational costs, you still face an increase in costs every year, whether you'd like it or not.  Right. And you have to set us, especially as buildings get older, you need to set aside money or, you know, or, you know, for these repairs that are going to, you know, and it's not if it happens, it's when it happens because the building's age, it will they will need repairs and they will cost money and people need to recognize that. That's right. You know, your roof will need to be replaced. Your windows will need to be replaced. Your railings will need to be replaced. The waterproofing on your parking structure will need to be replaced. The way you avoid these economic calamities for your owners is by making sure that all of these things, number one, go in your reserve study and number two, that you're honest with yourselves about what kind of money it's going to take to fix those items because if you have, if you have concrete spa repair as an example in your, in your reserve study and in your budget, but you only put $10,000 on a line item that needed half a million, you, you, maybe it's in your reserve study but you still have shot yourself in the foot. Yeah. And you know, we're running out of time, but thank you so much, you know, for, for joining us on Condo Insider and we'll probably, you know, have to go back and, and talk more about this subject after they finish your evaluation of what happened through the, the condominium at the insurfrider Florida. I'm sure we'll have more discussions on this at that time. And thank you very much for joining us today. My pleasure. I'm happy to come back anytime. Thank you, Dana. And thank you to our viewers for joining us and please tune in next week. Raylene Tennell will be here and she will be your host for the next episode of Condo Insider Mahalo and Aloha. Thank you.


students, now this module is, in this we will discuss about another very great library of python, I will give you a brief overview of its features and its visualization, when you will see the graphs, you will realize that after some time you will be able to differentiate by looking at the graph and seeing the picture, you will know that most probably 100% obviously, some things overlap, some similarities, but with the experience you will be able to understand that this chart is made from matplotlib, this is made from fusion chart, this is made from high chart, or this is made from seaborn, but again there are pros and cons, so I think I should not use this term, pros and cons, just that which thing is more useful in some particular environment, this matters in this you will see that these, and these actual graphs which are created from seaborn python library, and again they were kept a little so that they can be understood easily, this is also one of your, now one of its back end matplotlib is also being used, but they have done it in a different way, but the difference is that I had told you that the data in matplotlib is in data frames, but this library, this data is maintained within itself, whatever you have, real time data, or any frequency, it maintains the data inside itself, this is common to understand and explore the data, data frames and arrays, this is a little difference that it operates on that, that the data frames and arrays that you have, it operates on that, like in matplotlib, it keeps the data inside the numpy, this data, it keeps the arrays and the data frames in it, this is the library, and then you will see that the different charts of it, all of its own explanation, you can use it, the real thing is that you have these very smart tools available, very smart type of libraries available, and then you can use it, and it happens that the things that you start using, you get used to it so much, then it becomes your second nature and then you keep using the library, in this, if you look at it, it is a very big data set, it is very useful for them, if you have to show multiple variables, or multiple dimensions of the same data, or multiple aspects of the same data, in that, it is very useful as compared to other libraries, in this, you can see that it is giving detailed analysis, it is also doing visualization, and it is also getting data from multiple sources, this is a distinction, or a difference from matplotlib, or from some other libraries, that this library can be used for you in any way, when you design the solution, as a data scientist, you do not have to design the solution in such a way that it will have a front-end or a back-end, in fact, when you design the pipeline, then it is easy for you to make a decision that you have to use the data source, if I have multiple sources, and then after the data wrangling, instead of keeping it in a separate data frame, then I will keep it in the same data frame, that will be at your discretion, and with experience, you will understand and learn this, what I have to do, after that, obviously, when you have to make it a dashboard, or a chart, or multiple charts, then it is also very useful, and you will learn this, that some libraries are like this, in this, you will have to reduce the coding as compared to matplotlib, this is just, it may not have to be done, but normally in general circumstances, you will have to do more coding in it, because you are handling the NAMPAI, you are handling the data frames in it, and then you do other things, whereas in this, these things have been designed in a different way, and may be your one step, may be you have to reduce the coding, that is how you will be able to understand these small distinctions between different libraries, and again, as I said, your entire data pipeline, when you understand it, then it will be easy for you to decide, when you have to use any library, you can use more than one library, if you do not want to visualize it on the front-end, you just have to work for yourself, then you might have a different choice, or when you are doing your ad hoc analysis before handing over to the business, this is a different requirement, so here may be you decide that this is better for me, when you have to give your business, then you have to give it another aspect, that is the time required to process and display the data, so there is a different consideration in that, that I try to make those things, in which my time is at least, so if you have 5 steps of data pipeline, 6 or 5 or 6 steps of data wrangling, then accordingly you will decide, and then when you do ad hoc analysis, then you also get to know that if I did it on sample data, then it took me so much time, now if I do it on the complete data set, then how much processing time can be, or how much my audience has to wait, or how quick it can be, these are some other graphs, there is a little bit of the code attached to it, that you will be able to see how the coding is, now first of all you have to do this, that you import different libraries in it, this is your first step, you have to say import C-Bone as SNS, you can keep something else as SNS, you can keep CNS, ABC, these are some conventions that become a standard, so it is not really technically a standard, but generally it becomes a convention of something, that it becomes a buzzword of something, it becomes a convert, so in this way it is, that I tell Plotlib to do PLT, Plotlib to do PLY, Numpy to do NY, so in this way these are different conventions that have been developed, technically speaking you can change, but because when you have developed a software, it is advisable that you use more and more of the convention, the code that you have written can be used by someone else, it is different, or you work in an environment where your responsibility, your scope is the first two or three steps, someone else has to work ahead, after that someone else has to use that code, so if you use your conventional things in coding, then that will be more appropriate, and it is easier for everyone to understand a common language, this is not, you will not get any syntax error, you can keep anything, but for your other colleague may be they will not appreciate, that is why it is better that you keep this kind of convention, if they say that you keep SNS, then you keep SNS only, so it is better, it is better programming than writing your own, you know this kind of name, you keep it yourself, now we have plotted the time series in this, in this also you see that this is its style, SNS.set, this is its grid style, it has loaded the dataset from the example, and this is long form data, these are different forms of data that you will understand, then you have loaded the dataset, then you have plotted the response different event and regions, then you have loaded it according to the regions, and here you are telling the legend, that what is your region, what is the event, so these are both, and this is your timeline, because we talked that we are plotting the time series, so this is basically your time series, and these are the different values or events, similarly if you have a bi-variate of 2 variables, then how you have to plot it, this is its example, if you look at the code, in this I have tried different versions of the code, if you have different versions of the code, then I have used it as an example, so that you have maximum variety as an example, or as a starting point you have, then you use these things, so similarly you see this, and when you have all the code written, when you have the environment, you will use this code as it is, so if you write this code, then this is what you will get,


My name is Krista Hartzuck and I am the Iowa SARE coordinator. As part of SARE, we have a lot of different grant programs and one of those is a graduate student grant, which our speaker was able to receive. So today we have Sharon Adea-Araez here, who is a PhD student, excuse me, at Iowa State University. As she received her undergraduate degrees from the University of Costa Rica, her interests are in integrated pest management and biocontrol. And her PhD research focuses on studying mesotunnel systems. So please help me welcome Sharon. Sharon, thanks for being here. Okay, my presentation is called Managing Tep as a Living Mulch for Organic Acron Squash and Mosmelon in Mesotunnel Systems. I was introduced kindly. My name is Sharon Balilla-Arias, and the co-outors of this research were Kefas Mande, which is a PhD student. He was in charge of the Mosmelon part. Sorry, and Mark Lieson, who was the PI that helped us with this research along the use. This was possible because of a grant that Mark received from the USDA in NIFA and for the grant that we received from North Central SARE. So thanks a lot. Okay. As some people might be familiar with, some of the most important pest and diseases complexes of corbids in the Midwest. We have the cumber beetles, which transmit bacterial yields, and squash bog, which transmit the corbid yellow vine disease. This last disease is an emerging disease. It might not be that important at the time, but we have observed a increase over the years. So that might be important, hopefully not, but might be important in the future. More important at least. And the bacterial yield is a disease is most importantly in Mosmelon and cucumbers, and the corbid yellow vine disease is mostly seen in squash and complex. The management of these diseases is through the vectors. So spraying insecticides is a management option that a lot of people uses. Rotating from corbids meaning using or planting different crops, which are not a host or this insect. We use perimeter trap cropping, which is basically planting a different crop around the main crop, which is going to attract the pest and spray those mainly. That is tragedy. I think there are there is different results, some more positive, some less. But it's a option and use barrier strategies. That is another option in which I'm going to elaborate. For organic management, we, the insecticides that are allowed are sadly are less effective than the other insecticides. Therefore, the barriers are barriers are one option. And as examples of barriers, we have low tunnels and mesotunnels. So this is a picture showing low tunnel and mess so means middle size.  To expand on this, these here I'm showing two more pictures and a picture of low tunnels and a picture of mesotunnels. This is kepas installing one of our mesotunnels. So low tunnels, the cover of these tunnels are found on polypropylene. They are usually 18 inches high tunnels. They are wire supported. They are installed from transplant on the bloom. And they do have some limitations like the short term protection that they provide because they can be installed when they at transplant, but they need to be removed at bloom. To allow the pollination to happen. Another limitation is that they can overheat the cubic seedlings, especially in very hot days. The mesotunnels, by the other hand, are covered by this nylon mesh fabric. They are bigger. They are 3.5 feet high tunnels. They are also wire supported. And they can be installed during this whole season. They do not overheat. That is one of the reasons they can be installed for the whole season. They can be sprayed through them. We can spray through them. And they are tougher than the spawn bound. This picture shows that because of the size of the mesh, they stop the test. But they allow the wind and the liquid from the spray bomb to pass through them. However, mesotunnels also have some limitations. Such as they exclude the pollinators, as I am trying to show in this picture. Because of the mesh. And they also hinder the weed control. Because they are these physical barriers that must be removed in order to control the weeds. To come up with some solutions or possible solutions, we perform field trials. Do in 2020, 2021, and 2022. We performed some trials to come up with a pollination strategy.  We did these for two different crops. The most melon, variety atina, and acorn squash variety table ace. So I am not going to expand on the pollination trials. But I want to share with you and mention what we have done during those three years. We installed these three row mesotunnels of 150 long mesotunnels. They were this big in order to try to make a commercial size field. So we could have a better sense of what could happen with the pollination. We compared three different treatments. One was a full season mesotunnel. In which we installed a bumblebee hive in the middle of the mesotunnel. In the second row. We had an on-off-on treatment in which we installed the mesotunnels at transplanting. We waited until bloom. We removed the nets for two weeks to allow the pollination to happen. And then we reinstalled the nets. And then we also had open ends in which we only opened the ends for those two same two weeks. And then we resealed. I'm not going to expand on this. I want to mention that we had different results depending on the crops. And if at the end anyone is interested I could explain a little bit of this and expand. But I want to share with you what is the team of the talk for today. Which is weed control trials. So for the weed control trials we also performed it for the three years that I mentioned. We also had three rows but in this case 30 feet long mesotunnels. Which you can observe in here. And we tested living mulch to control weeds. Also we did this for moss melon, varietina, and acorn squash, varietin, pavoace. To control weeds in organic production we don't have that many options. So that's why we decided to use a living mulch or test it. Some of the advantages of using a living mulch is that they can protect the soil against erosion. For instance in this picture you can observe how the soil can get eroded after a rain event. The living mulches also build organic soil, organic matter. Because all of this land material and the roots that we cannot observe in this picture for instance gets into the soil and helps to build this organic matter. And they also suppress weeds and weed weeds. I will expand on this with all results. So for 2020 we tested four different treatments in the soil for rows between the plastic rows. We had a weed fabric treatment in which we installed the weed fabric in here. Then we tested Teph, a non-coated Teph at two different densities because we didn't know which density was the best for our system. So we tested Teph at four pounds per acre and Teph at eight pounds per acre both non-coated and bare ground. The Teph we planted it with a Gandhi seeder. Here you can see a picture of Kefas just like planting it just before starting the transplantation the very same day. For the markable yield of moss melon in here in the x-axis you can observe the different treatments and in the y-axis you can observe the pounds per acre of moss melon. You can observe in here that the Teph reduced the yield in comparison to the weed fabric. If we move to the acre and squash results I am also showing here the pounds per acre of acre and squash and the different treatments. And in here you can observe that Teph at four pounds per acre reduced the least being yield was similar to using the weed fabric. And was less and reduced the yield less than the eight pounds per acre. So that part of the changes that we made for 2021 and 2022 is that we planted the Teph or we decided to plant the Teph at four pounds per acre. And we decided to mold the alleys in this treatment at four inches height at a bloom. In this picture I want to point out that this is Teph and you can observe only few different weeds around there because the Teph is when established properly it competes very well against the weeds. This one is a picture of one of the early workers mowing the weeds. You can observe how many weeds we had in the alleys. And in this picture this is how the Teph looks like just after very close to harvest. All this organic matter gets incorporated into the soil and the root system that they produce it's very big I am going to show you a picture. So all that goes into the soil. Teph do not overwinter do not survive I was winter. So that is a very good option to control weeds. So in 2021 and 2022 we tested five different treatments. One steel was the weed fabric installed in between the alleys. We had a non-mode Teph planted at four pounds per acre. A mold Teph planted at also four pounds per acre. A mold bare ground and a non-mode bare ground. Here I am showing the multiple yield of the mows melon for 2021 and 2022. In the Y axis you can see the pounds per acre and in the X axis you can see the different treatments. For mows melon in both the years we observed that the mold Teph had a similar yield in comparison to the weed fabric which is very promising. So mowing Teph at bloom eliminates yield drag. Also here I am showing you the weed growth in between the alleys for the mows melon trials. And in here you also can observe that the mold Teph reduced the weed significantly. Here I am showing the grams of wheat drive wheat weight inside a 6 square feet quadra. So mowing Teph at bloom reduce the weeds. However in 2021 well acre and squash looms at a different time in comparison to the mows melon. So you show mows melon takes around 21 days to bloom. A acre and squash takes around 35 days to bloom. So in 2021 because we decided to mow at bloom because it's when we were moving the mesotoneal steenets we decided to mow at 35 days after transplanting this for the acre and squash. But you can observe that the markable yield was significantly lower than the weed fabric. So in 2022 we decided to mow earlier the Teph between the acre and squash and also the bare ground for the mowed seedlings. So in here you can observe what happens when we mow 21 days after transplanting. So mowing Teph and bare ground 21 days after transplanting reduce the yield drag in acre and squash. For the weed growth for the acre and squash. When we mowed 35 days after transplanting we observed a reduction of the weeds in comparison to the other treatments. But when we used Teph and mow it 21 days after transplanting that reduction was very similar to the weed fabric. So mowing Teph 21 days after transplanting reduce weeds. We also performed an A economic analysis. So we made a partial budget to compare between treatments. We used the cost of materials and labor that were different between treatments. And the yield resulted from the different treatments. As I show you before the same yield. So we made this use this formula which is the cost efficiency. It basically is taking the yield of a given treatment let's call it treatment A between the cost of that treatment. And we divided that between the yield and the cost of a second treatment that give us the cost efficiency. So for instance if the cost efficiency exceeds one that means that the treatment A is more cost efficient efficient than the treatment B. So this is a comparison between one treatment and the other treatment what it gives in yield in comparison to the cost. So the economic analysis for the mowing here in the Y axis you can see the relative cost efficiency rating. This baseline is at one and in the different in in the X axis you can see the comparison between the different treatments. So for instance NMB means non-mode background. MB means mode background. LF means landscape fabric. NMT non-mode depth and MT mode depth. So here we are showing different comparisons and we have three different graphs in each comparison. The one that has bricks that one is for 2021. The one that is that is pointed that is for 2022. And the one that has lines that is for the two year average. And remember the baseline is at one. So for the muskmelon basically the landscape fabric and the mold depth gives a very similar result. Meaning those two treatments are compared in the economic analysis. The cost efficiency of mowing depth was similar to use with fabric. And those were the treatments with the higher yield. If we jump to the acorn squash here I'm showing the same graph, the relative cost efficiency baseline and beam two years and the two year average. And the same treatment. For the acorn squash I want to point out that these two in 2021 and 2022 the mowing was done at different times. So I want to comment on the 2022. That is what is very similar between the mode depth and mode background in comparison to the landscape fabric. So the cost efficiency of mowing depth and background 21 days after transplanting was similar to using using with fabric. So in terms of how much is invested and how much is returned those two are similar. However, the labor requirements are different. And I think for this presentation in that that is important so farmers can make decisions based on what they have available. So in here I'm showing the labor time in hours that we spent in our 30 feet mesotlunas that in the Y axis and in the X axis we have the different weeks that we had or experiments on place. The yellow lining here is with fabric. The red one is more tough and the green one is mode background. So I want to point out that with fabric had to fix on labor. One is the installation which was higher than the other treatments. And mode background didn't have any installation is basically having or with the which that were in place, which might be different in comparison to other places. But well, that is not the point. And mowing test or the mode test treatments we had to land the test as I mentioned before. So that had some labor involved, but not as much as installing the fabric. Then we had some labor here to mold the mode treatment, but here to remove the landscape fabric, I think that is the most significant fix on labor because we couldn't let those on place during the winter we have to remove it. So the labor for mowing test or background was much less than the weight of fabric. So has a summary. Mowing test three weeks after planting eliminated the yield draft in most melon and reduce it in acorn squash. Meaning that using tech and managing this step might be a good option to control weeds under the system and even not necessarily with the mesotonyms by themselves to control weeds. The most cost efficient treatments were the landscape fabric, followed by motive in most melon and motive and mode background in acorn squash. And leaving mulches reduce erosion builds soil organic matter and have no disposal disposal problems, unlike the wheat fabric. So some of the considerations that might be important to, well, some of the things that might be important to consider are these other services that using a living mulch represents and the amount of labor and so many other factors that you might want to consider. This is the picture of the tech, the tech roots under the plastic mulch. In 2020, I think he has moved the plastic and he observed all these roots from the tech going and under the plastic mulch. So all these roots, first, they can compete against the crop because they are very massive. But that is one of the reasons why I think by mowing it, you are also controlling the whole plant, meaning also the roots, and then that might be one of the reasons why they are not that aggressive with mulch. And I also want to mention on this picture, these naked soil line, like alleys that you observe in here are the ones in which we removed the landscape fabric. So I want to point out that in that treatment that soil was going to be naked for the whole winter. In comparison or in contrast with using the other treatments, which were TEF and the mowed burial, that those treatments are going to be protecting the soil in order. Some take home messages, TEF has promised has a living mulch for organic food production, and TEF has also been used for pumpkins. That is, we found this information from Rhode Island University and we use this to come up with this possible for this research. So if you want to continue reading about TEF and some of the considerations that you want to consider, that work might be of your interest. Mesotunals showed profit potential for organic must-mown production in the upper Midwest, but less or less so for the apron squash. I know that I'm not showing this information in here, but I invite you to read some of the publications that we have so thus far, because that might be something to consider. Basically, the must-mown, the pressure of the cucumber beetles and the disease that they carry is very high in Iowa, and it's not that high for the apron squash or the squash box and the... it could be yellow vine disease. This might change, this might not change, but it's part of the research that we have done. Mesotunals results can vary with geographic region. That is something that we observe, because part of this research was done... or this research was done in Iowa, that is the results that I am presenting, but we have some colleagues that made the same experiments or similar experiments in New York and in Kentucky. So you might see differences with the mesotunals, with the pollination, with control, everything. So that is something that you might be interested in checking. For future research, we think that... or we have here from farmers that extend mesotunals to other crops might be something interesting. I remember one farmer using or trying to use mesotunals for broccoli. So if someone incorporates mesotunals on their theory toolbox, using it in different crops might be something interesting. And grow multiple mesotunal crops in the same years, in the same year. That might be something interesting too. I invite you to check on the tips for using mesotunals. This is a growers manual that was put in place for more group. This is the link to get to the growers manual. I'm sure that you are going to have access to this presentation, and you also can Google current COVID and you will find that information. Some test recommendations. Seed and water at crop transplants. Watering is especially important if the days are too hot, if the soil is too dry, you might want to water a little bit. We have water with the mesotunals in place. We have water just about with a hose. So that is something that you can try if you have it. Something that I haven't mentioned that I think is very important too, is we tried to plant a head, like one week ahead, transplanting the main crop, and that didn't work that well.  So after we came up with this option in which the soil was prepared, the plastic rows were put in place. At that point, the same day we transplanted the head, and then just after that the tractor came and transplanted the main crop, and then we closed the mesotunals. If it didn't rain in the coming days and the soil was too dry, then we watered. So something to mention, we have tested different options and that was the best one. We also recommend mowing two to four inches 21 days after transplanting for both of the crops, the muskmelon and the acorn squash, and we recommend using a clay mower on a busy start. Some acknowledgments that I want to give Dr. Wendon and Dr. Nian Chen, they were the researchers in charge of the economic analysis. These economic analysis gave us a better idea on what to recommend. So we want to acknowledge their contribution and to Jose Gonzalez, which was the lab manager at the time. He made it possible, a lot of the research, he was a very important person to make this possible. And he also held all the groups to coordinate like Iowa's group with the Kentucky and New York group, which was a very rich research. Here, a picture of some of the early workers that helped us from 2019, in which we had made some mesotunals in research to 2022. Here, you can see it. And we want to thank our funding resources, which were a USDA NIFA and North Central SAR. And thank you for inviting me to give this presentation. I will be happy to answer any questions right now or you can reach to my Iowa State email. I will be very happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon. Appreciate that information. It's always fascinating to me to be able to see how well the TEF did in growing and I know I especially enjoy visiting when I'm out at the farm. So a couple of quick questions. One was if you were planning to continue this same type of research or transition to something else or is your project, your portion of the project complete? My portion of the project is complete. Right now I'm working, or I will continue working for my PhD in biocontrol of Erwinia trachefila, which is the causal agent of bacterial wilt in moss melon. But if someone is interested on the TEF research, I am aware that some people will continue doing research on this area. So, I think he will continue researching on this. And I am aware that the Iowa State Horticulture Farm, they incorporated the TEF in many different areas of theory. Like to manage weeds, I remember that they were using it in areas that were not being used for crops. So, I think TEF at least is being used and people will continue doing research on it. Thank you. One other question was did anything really surprise you in your research? Thank you for that question. Yeah, the picture that I showed of the root system for the TEF, it didn't occur to me to check on the roots. And Kefos was the one that out of curiosity he moved the plastic and we observed that massive root system. So, that is something that surprised me. But after talking and after thinking about it was like, okay, this TEF comes from an African country. I think it was Ethiopia and it's very resistant to dry conditions. So, it makes sense that it makes these massive roots to survive these conditions. So, yeah, that is one of the things that surprised me a lot. And, well, something else is, I am an agronomist, so I am used to be in work in the field. But it surprised me also how much effort we need to put in order to grow things and the pressure that that is. So, that is something else I want to point out that I admire all that effort that people put in their house. Thank you Sharon. I really appreciate that and appreciate the questions that we had. And I really appreciate your flexibility and willingness to present this remotely.


Can you flip back to the slide on speed? Sure. Can I provide a comment? Yes, please do. Yeah, definitely. Oops, sorry. That one? Yeah, that's perfect. So one of the pit traps I see, because I do have to do as well, I want to provide a little context for speed. Because speed itself is a very small search factor. It's usability, it's a huge thing. But like in this case right here, where you see low time, 2.2 seconds, that's great. But people get kind of hung up on the seed, on the performance rate, right? People start freaking out about that. That's when I provide a little context to it. Look, if your site's loading in two seconds, that's kind of screaming compared to like what the page speed ranking factor is kind of aim for. Like if you're loading around 10 seconds to 20 seconds, that's a big deal, right? So like, seeing page speed times around 3 or 2 or 3 seconds, you're doing really great. And that performance rate, you don't need to get hung up on this so much.  Where am I going to allocate that time? And so I can put my website into some kind of site scanning tool, whether it's for speed or on-page optimization. And I'm typically given things like a scorecard or red flags and orange flags and green dots. And so there are all of these metrics out there, and it can be quite overwhelming. And the takeaway from that feeling of overwhelming tends to be people either saying, I'm just not even going to go there, so taking no action or occasionally going down the wrong path and not being able to weigh out where am I going to actually be able to have the most impact. And so I think a lot of the topics we talked about today are some of those areas where you can have the most impact and then kind of really trying to think through what you're getting back. And if you see a page load time that's in the good range and a performance range that's maybe just in the average range, yes, there is some incremental improvement in that performance grade that you can go after, but your time may be better spent on developing really great content through your website or something like that, so you need to weigh the pluses and minuses of your actions. Go ahead. Go ahead. They do. So Google collects information about your business here at your website. You can kind of think about that as the hub of your SEO efforts, and I can say I am the best artist in Maui all day long on my website. And until they hear that echo elsewhere on the web, they're not going to have as much trust about that. And part of that echo comes from the local search space in this case. So when you talk about something like yellowpages.com, the strategy I recommend within local search is start with Google My Business and Google Maps as sort of the hub of your SEO local efforts, get that listing created, and then actually use automation, use ongoing subscription-based services to try to push that information out across the broader web. And so if you can get your local business information, your name, your address, your phone number, your hours of operation consistent on the 100 plus different local websites that are out there kind of directory oriented, Google is going to trust, that's going to be a ranking signal for your organic search listing, but also a ranking signal for your Google Maps listing because they're going to say, okay, I have pretty good trust that this is the right address and the right information, but if I see that in 100 different places exactly as I understand it, I'm going to have a lot of trust. And if I see that mixed up, different brands, even like just, you know, one has limited at the end or like LCC at the end of the name and the brand in one place it doesn't, that's going to provide that just little bit of question for the search engines. And with that question mark is an incremental area of opportunity in SEO. Go ahead. Sorry, I think we have time for both. Thanks. I work with clients in the travel and tourism industry as well. And where I'm struggling is that many of them they are small hotels or they are investors in Airbnb and the Airbnb properties, but their own websites with the spot on domain names and the robust content are being pushed way down the results by Airbnb's own results for their properties, TripAdvisor and a variety of other massive conglomerate sites that still differ in a certain amount of traffic to them but we're missing out on the opportunity to leverage those click-throughs through like our meta descriptions and that kind of thing. Is there any way to compete when you're the real deal? That's a really good question and Lee, I work with a lot of people in the travel and tourism space as well and we've seen the same trend.  And that's where that local pack, I put a lot of emphasis for those clients in trying to direct right really well in the local search results because it's actually in many cases displayed even above organic. And we're not actually trying to, we use Airbnb for books. Exactly. It's another way to get at it. It's so much closer to those links it's awesome but we're trying to help people gain more insight into the property itself and give people that, okay that sounds like something I really want to click through to explore when the listings from the others aside from breakings really don't give you that much. Exactly. And so the downside to the local pack, those three local search results is you don't get a lot of that brand value. You get like very concrete information since the name and the business and the hours that you can click through the website or the directions. You don't really get to control that brand voice messaging. And so this is that concept of holistic SEO trying to get sort of your listing there and getting your organic listing to appear. And typically if people see your business in two to three spaces on that search results page maybe they've been into AdWords, they're in the local pack and even if they're pretty far down in the organic search results on that page below the VRBOs, they get a ton of great brand voice coming through where I may read the meta description down here but click through via the ad. But together I created a lot of trust that my business is perfectly well matched to be in that organic space. Yes. Yeah, I can go back to those. A little bit of it depends on budget. So some tools are free and some tools are paid. So that might be an influencer. What I would do is be consistent. So don't research one keyword in one tool and another keyword in another tool and then compare those two numbers. We need Apple's recommendations. The Google AdWords keyword planner is free. You have to have a Google account. It's more associated with AdWords though than it is with SEO. So yes, it's good free data. But do take it with a grain of salt powered by the data that they're giving to advertisers that are going to go and fit into that keyword space. My favorite free tool is probably the Moz keyword explorer. I think they do a really great job. I struggle with it for small keyword space businesses. So if you're a small local business and there are only 100 searches per month potentially related to your business, in Moz I typically see them giving me the zeros. And I know their search volume. You see a keyword appear in the Google search suggest. Somebody out there is looking for that phrase. That's how Google powers the Google search suggest is actually by user behavior. And then you see the zero in the tool. You kind of have a mismatch and you might need to go and use a bigger keyword research tool to try to get at that data. SEMrush, SpyFu, these are great tools.  And then WPSEO has an immigrated keyword research tool. But Dan wants to add keywords to lists and start instantly tracking performance over time. Sure. What are your thoughts on all those multiple platforms that provide sometimes different results for your site? So you have Moz, you have SEMrush, you have SIRbook, you have Majestic. Do you pick one and go? Do you compare them all on a multiple basis? That's a really good question. The SEO software space right now is really crowded with a lot of great, powerful tools. And it's really hard to separate sort of great data from the noise and then take action. So do you think it depends what tool is best for you? Depends on sort of what you're trying to get at it out of that tool.  You may be able to use either free tools or things that are built a little bit more for local business. If you're an SEO agency, depending on what kind of data or if you're a developer and you're trying to get after that, you just have to kind of try the free trials and really just like analytics, Google Analytics, which is free, sort of say, okay, all this data is free, but it's what I extract out of it, what action I take, that's actually what matters and trying to kind of evaluate the tools based on that concept of all the tools in the world aren't going to influence your SEO rankings if you don't actually take steps after based on the data. Probably have time for one question and then I'll let you guys go. Go ahead. When you have a search result like one for your company that creates the nested relationship of pages, sub-pages to the home page, and then for other sites you see all of those pages that are still in the same domain listed individually, what influences whether it's played one way or the other? Yes, that's a really good question. So this is sort of what, you know, from a brand result you're looking for in a search result. We have a paid ad and then we have the seven site links, that's all free, and then the brand box over on the side. And so the question is, how do you get your brand listing to kind of look like this? And there's no one trick to doing it. You don't check the box in the Google Search Console that says, yes, I'd like site links. Please, you know, lay it out and here's what I'd like to show. But rather, the really solid site architecture is one of the influences so that they understand the hierarchy of pages, solid URLs, things like that. The on-page optimization and quality of the content, these are all things that you can do to influence trying to get this type of a result. And then they take user behavior. So they start to see, like, what people are actually looking for. You know, I probably wouldn't have this in our search result if I had the choice, but apparently that's getting clicked through quite a bit. And so Google is keeping that in what their minds are. The seven most likely first-page visits are for our website. You can't request something get removed, but you can't request that it gets added. And so that's definitely a factor. And typically, you only get the site results if they're so confident that the search query matches your website that closely that they're going to give you that much real estate. Otherwise, they want to kind of keep it open and maybe let some of your competitors or like your Facebook page or something rise higher on the page. No problem. All right, I'm going to pass the mic. I'd like to thank Lindsay and all of you for stating and making it through to become a great work camp in San Diego.


So Joe Biden and his people they've got to be afraid because more and more people as time goes by are Realizing that this individual is a real threat to social security In fact, there's a video on Twitter that now has more than a million views where it shows him in the 90s Not just admitting that he suggested cuts to social security, but basically bragging about it So he knows that he's got to do damage control. He's got to come up with some type of response in just this Saturday I had a video where we played a clip of Joe Biden saying on numerous occasions that we either have to cut social security Or make adjustments to social security, which is code for cuts and we'll get to that but he did finally respond to people becoming aware of the fact that he is a threat to social security and He responded informally at an event when he was asked about it and rather than just like owning it and saying Yeah, I said that but I don't necessarily agree with it now He is choosing to play the blame game and he is trying to counterpunch by lying Brazenly so about Bernie Sanders and his people rather than owning the fact that he has said multiple times that we should cut social security he's now accusing Sanders of doctoring a video of him where he agrees with Paul Ryan that we should in fact cut social security take a look Joe's dance about what's going to happen to social security. So I'm going to ask you Well, my stance in social security is let's get the record straight. I'm not going to blame anybody but well Let me just say the facts there. There's a little doctored video going around Saying that put out by Should I just anyway put out by one one of Bernie's people No, I'm serious and I don't know my staff has that video here But saying that I agreed with Paul Ryan the former vice presidential candidate about wanting to privatize social security it is and political facts looked at it and they Doctored the photo they doctored the piece and this acknowledged that it's a fake And so what we're doing is we're putting out with the actual exchange between Paul Ryan and I were and I have been a gigantic supporter of social security from the beginning that was embarrassing and He's brazenly lying like this is a Trump level lie We have you on video saying that you want to cut social security and he only cites that one video that he claims was doctored and First and foremost it was not doctored and you can't even really argue that it was taken out of context Because we have the full context. It's just that Joe Biden isn't the clearest speaker So if you watch that video, it seems like he's agreeing with Paul Ryan I think you can make that case since he has previously advocated that he wants to cut social security But the idea was that well, you know, he doesn't actually believe what Paul Ryan says when he says we should cut social security He was mocking Paul Ryan essentially however in that same video that he claims was doctored He still says we need to adjust social security Now the political fact article that he referenced doesn't actually say that the video was doctored So he's being disingenuous about that But they also say that he wasn't necessarily agreeing with Paul Ryan so much as he was mocking Paul Ryan And look, let's just assume that that's true Let's assume that Joe Biden wasn't saying that Paul Ryan is right to float cuts to social security fine But in that same video He does suggest that we have to cut social security by adjusting it watch very closely Once again, those at the very top get the biggest breaks and what we what do we have to show for it? Even our Republican friends are now beginning to admit. There's no evidence. These these tax cuts are being put to work in the economy No new growth just more debt and that puts middle-class programs that they rely on and they've worked for At real risk Paul Ryan was correct when he did the tax code. What's the first thing he decided we had to go after? Social security and Medicare Now we need to do something about social security Medicare That's the only way you can find room to pay for it. I don't know a whole lot of people in the top one-tenth of 1% Or the top 1% are relying on social security When they retire, I don't know a lot of them. Maybe you guys do To we need a pro-growth progressive tax code that treats workers as job creators. Well, not just investors That gets rid of unprotective loopholes like stepped-up basis And it raises enough revenue to make sure that the social security Medicare can stay still needs adjustments But can stay it still needs adjustments Now maybe we can interpret that in a more charitable way and suggest He is assuming lifting the cap on taxable income when it comes to social security But if we're being realists here and we take into consideration the fact that for 40 years He has floated cuts to social security then I'm assuming he wants to do cuts to social security And if he's someone who's truly a proponent of social security and protecting it and expanding it Don't you think that more frequently he would talk about lifting the cap on taxable income? Yeah, so I'm sorry Nobody believes Joe Biden when he says that he wants to protect social security over and over again He talks about needing to make adjustments and Americans know that we have to make some hard decisions And yet he cries victim and says the Bernie Sanders doctor this video and his team doctored this video when he's busted No, actually you're busted and for those of you who are wondering why we take the word adjustment as a synonym for cuts It's because historically that is how politicians Slimely describe cutting social security as social security works put it on Twitter Politicians only use euphemisms like adjustments when they really mean cut There's no reason to use euphemisms to talk about protecting and expanding social security because that's incredibly popular And what Joe Biden is trying to do sneakily so but it's pretty transparent is hide behind that one video, right? He wants to claim that that video was doctored. He's being you know misinterpreted It's being taken out of context But that's one video of multiple videos where he talks about wanting to cut social security So he can try to hide behind that video and use it as some type of a red herring But there are other videos where he is very clear that he was in favor of cutting social security His own words are self-incriminating enough, right? Because even MSNBC played the video that is now being circulated everywhere and he wouldn't dare discredit the prestigious liberal network that is MSNBC Woody take a look He does seem to be saying and talking about specifically when it comes to targeting Biden as well is spending cuts playing a video from the 90s from 1995 of Joe Biden on the floor of The Senate they're talking about those spending cuts take a listen first When I argued that we should freeze federal spending I spent so security as well. I meant Medicare and Medicaid I meant veterans, but I meant every single solitary thing in the government And I not only tried it once I tried it twice. I tried it a third time and I tried it a fourth time All right, he's really coming after him now Gary What does the biden camp do at this point? So now the question is will he be willing to accuse MSNBC of doctoring videos as well? Again time after time after time throughout the course of his career He has been very explicit in saying we need to cut social security And when the democratic party has tried multiple times to cut social security Clinton tried this Obama and Biden tried this but Bernie Sanders thankfully stopped them We have absolutely no reason to trust Joe Biden. It's why he uses Double speak to talk about social security. Oh, well, you know, it's a great program We have to make sure that it remains for generations to come although it does need some adjustments Well, what does that mean? There's no reason to not be clear In what you mean by adjustments unless you mean cuts There's a reason why when Bernie Sanders talks about social security He is very clear in saying we need to expand social security Because this is a popular program and you're only going to get backlash when you talk about cutting it Which is why politicians both republicans and democrats know they can't just come out and say we should cut social security They have to tap dance around it because they don't want criticism Now Joe Biden is stupid enough to have gone on the record multiple times saying I floated cutting social security But the problem is that the internet exists To the chagrin of Joe Biden and um, we have the receipts You don't so you can come up with these types of Trumpian lies and say that Bernie Sanders team doctored this footage But you're lying and we know that you're lying So to make such a bombastic claim that Sanders team doctored this footage.