Good afternoon everybody. Thanks for coming out on this beautiful spring day in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. I know you'd Rather be outside. I'm sure in the great cloudy damp cold weather But I appreciate you're coming on inside to hear a little bit about a great exciting topic lobbying in the state of Wisconsin You know, I thought it was bad when we had to talk about politics in Wisconsin But we're talking about lobbying in Wisconsin But I appreciate your interest because quite honestly Lobbying and grassroots efforts on behalf of businesses and organizations and individuals are a very key part of our Legislative lawmaking process in the state of Wisconsin at the federal level and even at the local level and all of you in Many ways are lobbyists in yourself and the work that you do on behalf of the Chamber and the Organizations that you represent and work for and even for yourself as an individual when you communicate with a public official And you try to sway them in regard to a decision that you'd like them to make or to understand your position on an issue That's lobby it comes in a number of different forms, and we're going to talk about that today, but I really appreciate your interest in your Understanding that lobbying and connecting with your legislators is a very important thing as Steve mentioned I'm Joe Leipam, and I think I know most of you in the room But I'm humbled enough to understand that some of you may have forgotten to me already And that's maybe I haven't met some of you as Steve mentioned a little bit more on my background I was born and raised in Sheboygan one of 13 kids here in the Sheboygan area Worked for the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce actually my first job after graduating from UW Madison was to work for the Chamber Great experience. I was the membership director and really got to know a lot of the good businesses and organizations in Sheboygan County Decided then to go work for one of those great Sheboygan County businesses Sargento food It's foods. Excuse me. It's spent about six years in their food service division great family great company great experience It was while at the chamber that I was encouraged to at the age of 23 run to be a city council member and Had a very interesting first campaign But was successful in earning that first district assembly seat Represent our mayor van der scene also represented the first district for a while So I served on the city council for seven years and then while working at Sargento In 1998 a good part of the community came and said me Joe, you know We like what you're doing at the city council level. Had you ever thought about running for the state a legislature? The seat had opened up then represented a bomb guard was running for the state Senate and the assembly seat Which hadn't been represented by a Republican in over 46 years was open and they came to me and said Joe You should run as a Republican for the seat, you know, it's a great opportunity I quite honestly got into it not thinking I'd win But we ran a very aggressive campaign and I remember waking up on election day in 1998 thinking I think I might win tonight and I might be going to the legislature and having to leave Sargento Did that served in the assembly for four years? Enjoyed that experience, but was very frustrated as well That's when Chuck Qual and Scott Jensen were the leaders of the legislature and quite honestly. I was like, you know what? I'm better than this. I don't want to be a part of this mess And I was about ready to leave and then I thought you know what? I'm not a quitter I'm going to try to make a difference so I decided to run give up my assembly seat Which had become quite safe at that time Give up my Senate assembly seat and I ran for the Senate again incumbent senator Jim Baumgart and so Jim and I had a very intense campaign I ended up winning by 23 votes on In 2002 and with that 23 vote margin I was helped I was able to help bring in a new majority the Republicans took majority of the Senate at that time We kicked out Chuck quala as the majority leader which was one of my goals And we were able to bring kind of a new sense of leadership to the Wisconsin State Senate at the time served for 12 years in the Senate great experience a number of leadership positions served on the finance committee, which is the budget committee, which we'll talk about for Four budgets and really just had an awesome time But also knew it was time to get out after 12 years And so I ran for Congress came up in that vote 200 votes short in a primary But then had the opportunity to land this opportunity of Foley and Lardner and I've really enjoyed the transition and the experience now Serving as a government affairs lobbyist for Foley and the clients that we serve my wife Heather and our three children continue to reside in Sheboygan so we have a main office or my main office for Foley's in Madison But our headquarters is in Milwaukee, so I'm either in Milwaukee or Madison or Sheboygan on a daily basis I still I'm doing my 20-year commutes to Madison on a regular basis and Therefore I'll continue to tell you why I support the expansion of highway 23, and I'm glad that we're finally getting that done So at Foley and Lardner again, we are a nation a worldwide law firm We are the oldest and largest law firm in the state of Wisconsin We have offices across the United States and around the world, which is really exciting. I'm not an attorney I'm one of the few people that work at Foley in a leadership position. That's not an attorney But just a great group of folks that I work with At a number of our facilities, Wisconsin, Florida, Texas, you can read them there We have what are called government solutions teams So back when Mike Grebe might recognize that name a good friend of Governor Walker and the good Republican in Wisconsin He was the chair of our firm and he realized that you know, it's not always the smartest thing for a Client to fight the law Maybe we could work to change the law to try to convince legislators or lawmakers to see things differently And so they started what was called the government solutions group and again We have practices now throughout the nation I have the privilege and pleasure of leading the Wisconsin group. We are a team of three individuals Myself as the as the lead of the group or the manager of the group and then I'm joined by two great colleagues Jenny Malcore Jenny was a Member of the Walker administration She served as the deputy secretary at the Department of Health Services and then also served for numerous Republican legislators including current finance chair John Nigren and Jason Childress is the Democratic side of our team Jason grew up in Democratic politics in Wisconsin Work for Chuck Kuala used to actually run campaigns against me and try to defeat me from the Democratic side We're now good colleagues and good friends and Jason has just great Contacts he's a really good friend of Governor Evers and a lot of the leadership now in the Democratic administration So Jason Jenny and I again the government affairs team. We are three of 570 currently licensed lobbyists in the state of Wisconsin There are 570 people that on an every two-year basis have the license to be lobbyists in Wisconsin We'll talk about what that means, but we then are employed by what are called principles and there are 697 lobbying principles in the state of Wisconsin if you are an organization a business a chamber an Individual that employs a lobbyist and pays a person to lobby for them Then you have to register as a principal in Wisconsin So again, you can look at the sheet that I provided to you This is our current list of clients that we represent at Foley in Wisconsin. It's a aggressive list I'll share with you but all of those groups, you know, everybody from Aurora health care who I represent down to the boys and girls clubs of Wisconsin they pay People myself Jason or Wendy in our case and we lobby on their behalf We monitor the legislature on their behalf and therefore they have to register as a Principal lobbying organization in the state of Wisconsin. I just list for you again You can look at our list and the diversity of the clients that I represent But a lot of chambers and communities counties and towns Directly employ lobbyists as well. So whether it be, you know, the league of municipalities down to specific cities counties Economic development organizations, you know, again those 697 principles make up a great diverse group of individuals businesses and organizations in the state of Wisconsin Again, you are a lobbying principal If you're an organization which employs and pays a lobbyist and that's when you have to register to be a principal as an individual lobby as an individual you need to have a lobbying license if you attempt to influence state legislation or Administrative rule on behalf of a business that pays you so on behalf of a principal when Aurora contracts with me as a contract lobbyist I then have to register as a lobbyist because I try to influence the legislature and the state government on their behalf a Second trigger for that though is you you can work for a principal And you don't have to register for a lobbyist if you keep your communications with the state official or a legislative employee To less to five days or less So after your fifth day of communication and again, it's days So sometimes smartly clients don't want to register a lobbyist And so they'll hire us and say you guys have to get all your communication done on this issue in five days and so we book five full days of visits with legislators and that allows them to not have to register us as lobbyists Because we meet that five-day minimum in a six-month reporting period is what it is not most people don't do that But some some organizations just don't want to you know have the reputation that they got a lobbyist hired or whatever it may be Because it's so sinister But you know most most organizations will register but some do push it and try to keep all communications under that five days There are certain items that are not considered lobbying in, Wisconsin so Most of you in this room are not lobbyists. Is anybody else in the room a registered lobbyist? I don't believe you are okay. There you go Robin it is. There you go. Who do you lobby for? You know for 80 day. Great. You guys do a great job. So who was my old contact at 18, right? Yes. Yeah, no the local lady that used to be here all the time Julie Yeah, I got it had a great relationship with Julie when she when I was in the legislature and we work well with Kent too So everybody else other than myself and Robin you are allowed to do a number of things In, Wisconsin without having to register as a lobbyist if you're trying to procure work from the state of Wisconsin in a contract so you want to Build a building for the state or you want to do the cleaning services for the state of Wisconsin and getting a contract You don't have to register for a lobbyist for that as a lobbyist for that If you communicate with your own personal state representative or senator so any of us in this room can go and talk to Senator Lemmhugh, Senator Strobel, Representative Katzma, Vorpahgel, any of those guys we can talk to and it doesn't trigger lobbying laws If you communicate with the governor his office about executive appointments So the governor has to appoint Secretaries and 200 some people the new governor is appointing you can talk to him or his staff as many times as you want About individuals for executive appointments And you can contact legislators on your own on behalf of a group like the chamber or a business As long as you're not getting paid if you're an unpaid volunteer, there's no requirement to register You know you can do that as many times as you want the five-day trigger again only kicks in if you're being paid As a paid lobbyist The government tries to make a little bit of money off of lobbying And that helps to fund what's called the Wisconsin's Ethics Commission And so again there are fees associated with being a principal in Wisconsin or a lobbyist So again if you're a principal organization like Augusta Development, which employs me they pay $375 Then they would Also pay a hundred and twenty five dollars every two years to authorize Myself to lobby on their behalf so again you can see the principal registration and the principal fee to authorize a lobbyist That's the basic fee for the business every two years fully in Lardner or whoever the company is that employs the lobbyist They also have to pay a fee.  Let's jack up the lobbying fees and we can get more More general-purpose revenue into the state coffers by taking advantage of the lobbyists Lobbying in Wisconsin.  We have more Excuse me disclosure laws than any other state in the nation, which I'll detail in a little bit And again, we are overseeing and monitored very closely by the Wisconsin's ethics commission So again, whether you're a principal or a lobbyist you have to I mean, it's just quite honestly overly Detailed what we have to do So for every principal that I represent as you can see and we do this as a benefit to our as a service to our clients We do all this reporting, but every within 15 days of me talking about any issue Not even a specific bill, but if you know again I'm going to bring up another client quick trip wants me to talk to a legislator about frozen pizza I have to within 15 days of talking to that legislator about frozen pizza I have to put a A report into the ethics commission saying that joe on behalf of quick trip is talking about frozen pizza There's not even a legislative connection or legislative bill connected to it, but any topic Any bill Any administrative rule as well as soon as I have one contact Or it would be my my fifth day or sixth day of contacts, obviously But within 15 days you have to report that Every six months myself and jason and wendy and all the other lobbyists we have to submit a very detailed lobbyist time report that details Every minute basically of what we do in lobbying Before the legislature or the governor so we have to keep track of all of our what's called lobby meetings or excuse me um Yeah, lobby meetings And that's a specific entry that we have to make and then if we're doing lobby prep like if i'm prepping Before I go in to meet with the governor. I have to keep track of that time So if I spend a half hour prepping a document for talking to the governor about that has to get submitted under what's called lobby prep and that's all documented every six months and then Every principle again is required to complete a so we we submit our lobbying time reports And then the principles that employ us have to submit Lobbying activity and expenditure reports that hopefully match up with what we're reporting So i'm reporting that i'm doing so much lobbying for client a Client a then has to send in or principal a has to send in a report saying we spent $5,000 in the past six months on lobbying and It needs to match up with what I've reported So a lot of detail a lot of reporting, which is a great thing All of this information is available to the public. So if you haven't ever been to the Ion lobbying website in wisconsin really a again wisconsin I learned this in the legislature and hopefully you know this as well as a citizen I mean we make so much information available to the public in wisconsin If you just take advantage of it and look for it and it's really not even that hard to find So you can go to the ion lobby website. This is again as part of the wisconsin ethics board In there you can find out who is all lobbying in wisconsin Who's registered lobbyists you can go in and you know find out specifically what I or any other lobbyists is doing Who we're lobbying on behalf of you can go in and see our six month reports So you can go and see that you know back in december of 2018 I you know lobbied on The special session bill, you know for 30 minutes in front of senator Fitzgerald That's all documented and that's all available to the public And again while that's a lot of reporting and documentation. It's really a good thing because it keeps us all Avail all everything that we're doing to the public. There's nothing that can be secretly done You know again, there's no meeting that I can have with a legislator that isn't documented There isn't an issue that I can talk to a legislator about that isn't documented And it's important to have that because there are a lot of Lobbying activities taking place in wisconsin last year in the last two-year sessions So the legislature works in two-year sessions There were 70 million dollars spent by principled organizations in lobbying Now again, I think it's important that that's not 70 million dollars that we're giving out to legislators, you know In cash or in checks. This is what they're paying Individuals to lobby on their behalf. So whether it be the Aurora health care or the boys and girls club Accumatively all those organizations spent 70 million dollars in in lobbying activities The top efforts Oftentimes are the same throughout the years. So the wisconsin manufacturers and commerce the the statewide chamber They are the largest lobbying organization In regard to dollars spent and I think that's been consistent, you know, maybe dipped a little bit during the Doyle years But they are an active source. So they spent 1.4 million dollars on their lobbying efforts in 2017 18 The wisconsin hospital association spent 1.3. These are the three largest and then But I just wanted to show you this because the diversity last two years or the past two years You know kind of this unknown grassroots group sprung up and it was called marcie's law for wisconsin. So that is a father of an individual who Was um assaulted and was a crime victim And he invested 1.2 million dollars in wisconsin in the past two years to try to get what's called a marcie's law passed It's not connected to any business. He's not connected to any Organization he was a dad that had the resources and the ability and he's going nation or state by state Across the nation and investing in trying to get a marcie's law passed You know, so again, it can be business related issues health care education related issues down to Crimes rights victims issues that individuals employ lobbyists for Just to wrap things up here, you know, we I think do an effective job in the lobbying core Again, we are there because most of the organizations that hire us Can't and really shouldn't have a full-time individual In the capital monitoring legislation Paying attention to the issues that are before them And that's why they hire us, but i'll tell you after my 16 years of experience in the legislature and now four plus years Doing actual lobbying work. It's still really in wisconsin comes down to grassroots contact I mean, you know, some people criticize me when I went from the legislature to lobbying saying oh You've got way too much direct influence I've got friendships, but I could tell you when I was in the legislature never once did I vote On a certain issue a certain way because a lobbyist was asking me to do it in a certain way I'm never once did I change my vote. I mean a lobbyist. I didn't even share that. I don't think We maybe I forgot that Yeah, we can't give contributions to we we're our freedom of political involvement or expression has taken away from us Because we're a lobbyist so we can only give personal contributions to Legislative candidates to gubernatorial candidates in a real small window of time We're most of the two-year period. We can't write checks or Participate in the political giving process, you know, but even if that even when you can do that You know the maximum that an individual can give to a state senator is $2,000 Again, I was never going to have my principal or my view compromised for $2,000 I appreciate the $2,000 that you invested me, but my position was my credibility My philosophy was worth a lot more than $2,000 that any individual was going to be able to give to me So I just would share with you as an organization and as individuals that that's really Where it comes down to I mean one of the things that I think I've been effective in doing for our clients Is that I try to as well I do a lot of work behind the scenes for them just about everybody that I represent I say you got to get the face of your organization into the legislative offices So whether it's quick tripping and the people down from behind the counter or You know the boys and girls club. That's where I was this morning being a little bit late We are participating in the joint finance committee hearing down in jamesville today. So we've got seven different boys and girls club Administrators and three kids from clubs there to testify. That's much more effective than me That I'm never going to be able to do and again I say that both as a lobbyist and even more specifically as a former representative a former senator I valued the information and the background and the Point of view that lobbyist gave to me But my last gut check before I voted on anything was where my constituents were and because I knew I had to go home I mean I was I'm getting paid as a lot as a legislator I had to go home and explain how I was voting to the people at the Cash register at the grocery store, you know, and at the doctor's office, whatever it may be So don't lose sight of that. We have a great legislative contingent here in shaboyton county They're working hard for us Senator lenew who succeeded me in the senate. He is the senator for the ninth senate district senator strobel representing the 20th senate district representative katsuma the 26th assembly district Representative vorpah the 27th assembly district and representative ramphoon from the 59th assembly district We're well represented. They are all younger members of the legislature But that's a good thing and again, we should be really proud in shaboyton county. We have Like when I was there, we probably got the best legislative contingent in regard to committee placements and Key responsibility areas of any county in wisconsin. So right now we have three members of our contingent senator strobel senator lemmew and representative katsuma. There are members of the finance committee that is That that happened when I was there myself senator growthman and representative lemmew were on the finance committee But it's rare for one county to have that much influence on the finance committee. It's a 16 member committee 12 members from the majority four members from the minority And so when you've got three majority party members on the finance committee Quite honestly, there's nothing that is a county We shouldn't be able to get done if we work it right with them And that's I think I looked at them and a lot of people in the room We got a lot done for shaboyton county when we had this last type of representation on the finance committee So with that that's basically the background of lobbying that I wanted to share And then if I can I'll just share a little bit in regard to the clients that I work for and just some I like to Just give some case studies. So again on the front page You know again, jason jenny and I do represent a good number of individuals So it's kind of like my legislative job where you have to be able to compartmentalize things by 30 minutes and move from one issue to the next You know some great companies that I represent Alexander company in owl 8 many of you maybe know joe alexander He's done a number of investments here in shaboyton county historical building redevelopment Joe is very supportive of maintaining the historic tax credit in the state of Wisconsin Which has been threatened over the past couple of years I've worked for joe and for owl 8 for all four years now that I've been with foley You know international companies like american express and general motors. I have the privilege of representing Boys and girls club of wisconsin as you can see we've got a A great relationship with the state of wisconsin and the boys and girls club But we're trying to expand that Programming support. We really believe that we reach a great Contingent of wisconsin children that we serve after school and we've been in a very effective cost effective way been able to provide Great reading and math services to them graduation related services And so we're working on a number of legislative interests there as you can see Quicktrip a great wisconsin-based company. So I've uh have a privilege of of representing quicktrip. We work on a number of different items Johnson controls one of the largest country companies in the world We work on behalf of down to small groups. I think this is a great story the midwest association of camps on page 4 or 5 whatever it is there This is a group of about a hundred Privately owned summer camps in the state of wisconsin. So these are just really cool people They're mostly couples who met at camp when they were kids went to camp for two weeks or two months Um in wisconsin They met their spouse and now their young families that bought these camps multi million dollar properties and businesses They bring thousands of kids and families to wisconsin every summer And they are the maker break for a lot of communities across the state of wisconsin But most people don't even know about them You know, you know, there's that science saying uh birch tree camp up north on the end of the road that you drive down sometimes Well, that's a multi million dollar business and I actually worked with them when I when I was in the legislature And they came to me and said joe We just really think we need to be better understood as a part of wisconsin's economy I mean we're we're kicking in a lot of cash or you know doing a lot for the state We're employing a lot of people but no one knows about us and they're actually Regulated not like a camp. They're regulated like a daycare. That's not what they are They're a place where kids go for two weeks and you know learn about having great life outside in wisconsin So that's just been a great. They're a very small organization But they put together their resources and they've invested in us and we've gotten a lot of good stuff done for them Over the past two years And then the last company that I point out is our my former employer and a great company in wisconsin is sargento foods So Louis and uh the genteen family and I got to know each other real well And I was in the legislature and I went I worked for them They came to me back in 2015 and said joe we'd like to Continue to have you help us do work for us in the state of wisconsin And so they've engaged me now as a lobbyist for four years Key to louis as you should know this as well because I mean he really was a key investor Over the past four years in maintaining a focus on ensuring highway 23 Got to the point where it is hopefully right now And uh, we'll see it to completion. So they've invested in me for four years now and As some of you know in the room. I helped to lead a multi county coalition on behalf of sargento You know again paid for by sargento did a lot of work with the legislators to get highway 23 To the point that it is we're now it looks like it's finally going to break ground and move forward here in 2019 So those again are just some of the folks that I represent the issues that we work on And really I'd be happy to just open it up not any questions that you may have Otherwise, I can give you just a quick snapshot on what's happening in the legislature Prior to your visit with legislators in may adam So I just like to say how much I appreciate your leadership as a representative and senator You were always so good about working with us and Hopefully you may not have always agreed. You always described it To do good things with security and I appreciate that. I also appreciate that tremendous job I've done supporting eating the focus on highway 23 And much of the work you've done behind the scenes that keep that going and my question is And germ tom waker and I were just out of the same conversation last week Obviously great news looks like ground's going to break finally in may Right and many people in the community are going to believe it. I tell these you see the shovels and the blades But tell one of the questions that we kicked around a little bit is why do you think the thousand friends didn't submit a follow-up lawsuit Um, I mean I I kind of know their group their organization just decided that they were going to take a different focus and that they weren't going to Continue their investment in highway 23 when they began the lawsuit Now four years ago or whatever it is and that's because they had one or two key Board members and investors in and he kind of said I'm going to invest in you and this is going to become an issue of yours And they followed suit, but I think again as an organization. They just realized that it wasn't the right fight Um, it's an important highway. It's a safety issue that they had to focus on I mean again the coalition knows and you were part of that adam And we tried to infiltrate that a little bit as well. So we identified over the past three years four years Individuals that were members of the friends of wisconsin that were investing in that group And we went to and said do you know that's the group that's stopping highway 23 And most of them didn't know that you know again It's a it's a group that you invest in but you don't really understand or follow what they're all doing every single issue So we had a number of those individuals contact the board and contact the organization and say You know, this isn't we don't want you to fight this any longer. I think that together plus good work by d.o.t I mean they did a great job Refining the eis the environmental impacts statement and really addressed every issue that Judge Adelman had brought before the court in regard to why he thought Um highway 23 wasn't ready to go move forward. So I think it was just a good combination of everything now Like you adam, I I am not going to rest or believe it until I see actually pavement being put down Actually, we're driving on it because I would not be surprised if something else comes up along the way here An environmental issue or you know, we'll run across a Toad that we have to worry about or uh, you know something like that I was the legislator along with jim bomb guard senator bomb guard back in so I was 26 at the time We got 23 enumerated. So that was the huge first step back in 1999 spent a lot of political capital on that to tell you the truth um Never did I think that it would then take, you know 20 years to get this project actually going but it's just Been a mess. I mean it was um The rating of funds for a while from the transportation department And then the lawsuit that really just bogged this thing down to the point where it's been now 20 years Mayor van der scene When you were in the legislature your office helped us put together something called robber state in madison, right? Effort brings you going down to madison for the uh, have a celebration around our favorite product robbers And I was led by the chamber of commerce at that time Somewhere around 2004 or six They stopped having it now. You've seen many other communities come to the legislature down their date in the state capital Are we missing the bullet point giving this up? Was it an effective way for should wait to promote themselves? Not only businesses, but residents. It's a chance to meet with legislators Very comfortable atmosphere. So just a little feedback on that. Maybe you're kind of feeling as should you try to divide it or It's better leaving it go right. Yeah brought in madison is great I started doing that when I was a member an employee of the chamber And we'll go down as a staff within bar below the send and the group down there Mike you'll remember and we had a great advocacy day or afternoon Uh, the legislators will all come to john nolan park We played softball a bipartisan game of softball and then had a great brat fry and really enjoyed Kind of that relationship time with our legislators Um I'm just trying to remember why it why it all died most events like that have really kind of died in the capital Um Again, it's important to have ethics laws, but the ethics laws have gotten so Petty and specific.  It just isn't worth it um, so most events like that like, um Brat day chipua valley rally was a big thing those things have really kind of died out You know, I think it would be worth thinking about what's the way to to regenerates or Rejuvenate something like that because it was fun. You know again, that's part of the sad part of the legislature There's very little fun that happens down there You know people don't really talk or get along and it's worse now than it probably ever has been so You know, there would be a nice welcome relief But again, there's so much scrutiny and pettiness placed on you know, and again did did legislator a have two beers and all that stuff I mean it just got to be An unfortunate hassle in that regard.  Yep, happy to so I can just tell you so today's friday, right so on wednesday um general motors Is a client of mine and we spent the entire day at the state capitol having the regional government affairs representative of general motors visit I think we were in eight different senate offices in the capitol. We have a bill that We'd like to defeat That we don't we don't think would be good to us as a manufacturing company of automobiles in the state of Wisconsin and so we think our chances and this is part of what I get hired to do is I try to evaluate where do you think we can You know get something passed or where can we kill it if we have to So I try to develop that strategy and then we spent the day going into those eight different senate offices who we felt might be of of interest to our point of view on the bill and The gentleman's name is brian so brian and I go in and you know I try to at one of the one of the maybe the advantages that I have as a former member There's some members there that I worked with so in that case. I'll take the lead and just say hey, you know van good to be with you You know brian's here to talk to you about our bill and really brian the the client Does the job of telling the story again? I think it's much more important for them for the senator hear it from them then for me because they know i'm paid and You know that's that's my job, but it's much more passionate and I think poignant if it comes from the client directly So we you know spent those A whole day actually in the capital talking to those eight different senators feel good about how the meetings went And my job is to kind of follow up with those senators and monitor the bill on their behalf To make sure that it doesn't move, you know out of the committee Hopefully are the next couple months So that's maybe a little bit of what I do is every day and I did this when I was in the senator So it's kind of a nice transition, you know, I I monitor every bill that's introduced or considered for for introduction I then email out to all my clients that would have an interest in that bill saying hey Is this something that's of you know specific interest to you or what level of interest would you have And then if they say yeah, that's something that we want to support and get behind Then that where I develop a strategy for that if it's something that we want to kill Then I work to develop that strategy That's basically kind of a day in the life of and then I will say And I do on behalf of a lot of our clients go to Legislated listening sessions and stuff like that. So I kind of travel around the state today I was down in janesville like I said for the for the boys and girls club participating in the state budget hearings mark so They are learning You know friends and either you or from your colleagues or fully as a firm Say hey, we're just not that's who they see at the top of we're just we're gonna take a path Somebody else lobby. Yes, we do. Yeah, and actually so that's one of the cool things about working for foley We're a very conservative firm Even though we've hired some people in the past that people have scratched your head at and say well I'd you hire him or her but we're a very conservative firm overall. We're which I really enjoy And knock on wood when you look at my Issue list to date there hasn't been an issue that I've been asked to lobby on a lobby on that conflicts with my Principles or political philosophy and that's just been a great coincidence. I'm certain the day will come where I'm gonna have to be like I can't believe I'm lobbying for this side when quite honestly as an individual I'm against it But you have to do that this part of the job I've just been lucky that every issue that I've been involved in has been based and fully does that I mean Any client that would pay me or the revenue that we get for that isn't worth Hurting the reputation of the firm And so we have a very Specific some people that's why some people don't like to lobby or they don't want to work for big organizations like foley They'd rather be their own single shop But we do an unbelievable conflicts check not only to make sure that we don't have a conflict on an issue with another client That we might represent legally. I mean again, we've had over 2,000 Legal clients around the world and so before I can engage with anybody They have to check and make sure that my issue wouldn't be of conflict with anybody But then we also kind of determine whether or not it's in the best interest of the firm as well And again, I think our reputation has been out there, you know, we rarely do we have to turn down a client I I will share I mean, it's just you know when It worked out well when I just left the legislature A lot of groups that maybe didn't have a real good standing with the republicans Thought maybe they could have an in with me with the republicans and we turned down a lot of that work Because we're just like, you know what I'm not going to I'm not going to use my So blatantly lose use my personality or my relationships there to help a group that maybe we as a firm don't Quite honestly get along with or support So we turn that work down And that's again cool. It makes me feel good about every day when I go to work. Yes What do you decide I wait for this? Yeah I've offered that but They they employ a different group and I'm not exactly sure what their strategy has been behind that but that's fine I think they're in a bit of a mess. I mean the new evers administration and the new evers dnr is not going to Work to find a way to make that a possibility The the walker administration and the dnr They wanted to protect the environment and have a good environment in wisconsin But they always tried to find a way to have that environment work with the development or with the You know the the economic opportunity that a development would bring about that's really what their goal was Was to try to say, okay Can't this all work and I just don't know if the evers administration has that interest I think that they're going to be much more focused on just the environmental side of things And quite honestly the emotional side of things and I think it'll be hard for them to to get over that Yeah Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of um You know they're now suggesting that the dnr under the walker administration didn't use the right criteria to evaluate the environment to impact and all that stuff That's a lot illegal You know throwing up against the wall to see what will stick and unfortunately I don't know if the evers administration will challenge that that much So let me just two seconds steve today. There is a public hearing down in Janesville again, this is where if you're really interested in government you got to go sit at a joint finance hearing for a day I did it for eight years I was just going to tell you where the other hearings are I got them here somewhere because there's a couple in the area right we got one up in green bay coming up and I apologize. I lost that list, but I would uh encourage you as an organization in advance of Next month when you're having your legislators in you know, maybe get to a public hearing Devin or terry or dewey would love to see some local faces there because it's a welcome relief and they've got a big They've got a big uh issue a big budget on their hands here. So after four budgets of Not having any tax increases in the state of wisconsin while doing pretty good investments in most areas of government services and after four balanced budgets Governor evers now has taken a little bit different approach. I mean he's got a pretty aggressive tax increase plan in his budget over a billion dollars in new taxes 600 million some dollars in new fees And it's already looking like his budget will have about a two billion dollar structural deficit Going into the next budget cycle. So the legislature I don't think is going to allow that to happen I mean after all the work that they've done in getting the state in the fiscal situation that it is right now and You know that could change or there could be some changes But it's hard to argue that we're not in a good fiscal situation in wisconsin right now. I don't think the legislature is going to allow that to be Taken away in one budget cycle But that'll be a key responsibility of devin dewey and terry to try to figure out how they do that On behalf of the citizens of wisconsin. So ask them some tough questions next month And uh, i'm sure they're looking forward to coming home to tell you what's going on Is it perfect? Thanks everybody. Have a great afternoon


This is Rob Johnson, President of the Institute for New and Economic Thinking. I'm here today with a dear friend and colleague, Andrew Sheng, who helped me early on in the experience of INET, get much better acquainted with Asia and Asian philanthropy at the Feng Global Institute. He's been a securities regulator. He's been a really, really creative thinker. He's a member of our Global Commission on Economic Transformation, and it's just a delight to see you again and continue exploring. Welcome, Andrew. Thank you very much, Rob. It's a real pleasure. So I said to you at the start of our pre-discussion, what's on the platter is a splatter. We've got a world right now that is divisive across, how would I say, the tectonic plates of different philosophical systems. We've got divisiveness within countries like the United States, which has been obviously quite daunting for the world because it's considered kind of a metronome or a leader of the world system. We have environmental crisis on the horizon. We have crisis of the legitimacy of governance. It used to be people would like, want more government or less government. Now they don't even know what they want because they think both the corporate world and governments are lacking credibility. Expertise is fake news. There doesn't seem to be what you might call a focal point about anything anywhere other than the sense of anxiety that things are in disarray. How do we put Humpty Dumpty back together again in this world system? What's the picture that you would paint for me? Here we are in February of 2021. This is the existential question. We won't be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Life moves on. The issue is that we've set up Humpty Dumpty, The Shining House on the Hill, and it is fractured put it this way. And we are now seeing, this is not just in the United States. You must remember this. The society everywhere, families are split. Parents are not talking to their children and vice versa. Over many issues. The Greta Thunbergs is telling our generation, what are you doing? Why are you continuing the pollution? Why don't you deal with climate change? And then the left is demonizing the right. The right is demonizing the left. Can this continue? So this is not just in the United States. Everywhere in the world, you see this. Some societies are better at managing this. Others are now, as you have seen, engaging in military coups, or migrations, because they don't like what they see. They don't know how to handle this. But I came to the conclusion, we are in one world. We are all in the same boat. Demonizing each other won't solve anything. Co-operation, but competing at the same time. Tina, as Margaret Thatcher used to say, there is no alternative except cooperation. Because the alternative... Yeah, extermination is the alternative. Exactly. You know, Buckminster Fuller put this very well in the 80s. Mankind is on a critical path, between on the one hand nuclear Armageddon, and the other one, slow climate warming, and ultimate human extinction. So we have to tread that path, and work together on the same spaceship Earth, and steer it so that we can resolve all these problems. And what major problem did we have? In my view, the mind. The way we have looked at the world, is to look at the 21st century, with 19th century and earlier glasses. If we tell everybody that we're wearing pink glasses, the world will be pink. But the world is not pink, right? The world is not pink, because the world is both light and dark. And if you search for only solutions in the light, let's call it rational thinking. You forget that there is the other side, which is in the dark, which is our emotional side, which is our angry side. So we suppose in the scientific age, in the age of reason, and our anger is that that reason has excluded our emotional side, right? And so our anger is with reason. And this showed up on January the 6th, because suddenly I realized, my goodness, you know, after the elections, you would have thought everything is, the rules of the game is very clear. The majority has won. But then 47% says, no, we denied this. You know, this is rigged, right? So reason and anger are now polarized. Now, you know, the new president's job is to heal, because if he does not heal internally, he cannot heal externally. The world is, you know, split, right? Now, as the cliche is, you know, Trump may be gone, but not Trumpism hasn't gone, right? The issue is that since 2016, we have seen the rise of anger, you know, in rich societies. But that anger was always there, even in the poor societies. Why do people migrate?  And civil strife, and therefore they want to migrate. And if they migrate, their migration itself creates edis of political discussion in the rich countries, right? So Trump wants to build the wall, Europe doesn't know how to handle this, right? And the issue is not to say, well, I'll build a wall. How do we solve our common problems? If you do not solve the problems of the people who migrate, they will migrate, you know, to your cooler climate, where it's richer and with more food. And that's what's happening, right? The bottom line is that the elite has forgotten about the masses. You know, and a lot of these ideological fights is between plutocrats. It's the elites that are fighting each other, the other elite claiming to represent the masses, right? And the problem is that that ideology, you know, has not delivered. The problem is that that ideology has been corrupted because part of that plutocracy, the elite, has benefited themselves on the claim that they're going to go for justice, a rule of law, freedom, et cetera, et cetera. And yet the middle classes have never felt more in despair. They have become the precarious, right? They don't know where their health is going to come from. They don't know where their next job is going to come from, next income is going to come from, where they're going to feed their families. Where their children are going to find opportunity. This is one of the most haunting things.  Exactly, exactly. And so now, you know, once that is stated, then the divide that the elite is, one says less government, the other says more government, right? And we know that one says more government in terms of military spending and the other says more government in terms of spending for the poor. So, you know, so you get this very jumbled up entangled, you know, but highly emotive, okay? Demonizing of each other. And it's not that if you try to be objective, you suddenly find, my goodness, objectivity is not right because we and the community, the context is one. I, as an individual, has responsibility for the collective. We cannot pretend that every air I breathe, everything I consume, every time I drive, I am polluting the environment. And this may be so negligible, but the negligibility, externality of billions, nearly eight billion, is polluting the whole climate. Yeah, whenever time I walk into a restaurant without a mask on, I'm putting other people at risk of a coronavirus. Exactly.  There's a lot of interactive dimensions that are not, which I might call moral dilemmas because the freedom to do and the freedom from intrusion by someone else are not mutually exclusive notions. You know, Rob, you introduced me to Stephen Toman, who wrote about cosmopolitanism, right? And he was the one who said that, you know, the Cartesian-Newtonian revolution, which set the West into science, started with the division of mind and body, right? Descartes, I think, therefore I am. Yesterday afternoon, taking a walk, you know, just to get some fresh air, you know, I am reminded of that African saying. We think, therefore we are. We are a community, right? Yeah, we are. But actually, it's more than we are because I am is a moment in time. But actually, thinking and acting are one, right? This is Wang Yangming, right, who is the Ming dynasty philosopher. Knowledge and action are one. And actually, the minute you say that knowledge and action are one, we think, we act, and we become. You know, every one of us think. Either we think for ourselves or we think for the community. And then if our thinking is wrong, our actions are wrong, right? I'm not saying that it's absolutely right or wrong because what is right can be later be wrong and what is wrong is later turned out to be right, right? So the point is that, but we become because we unfold. The society unfolds. We are in the big bang, you know. The earth is evolving all the time. You know, each individual with how many trillions of neurons in our mind is firing and interacting at the same time. Each human being is an open, complex giant system. And an individual is now interacting with 7.8 billion people, you know, and with the planet, with all the species. So the whole earth is one open, giant, complex system, right? Now, we fight over fossil fuel, but 90% of the energy of the world comes from the sun. And fossil fuel is basically the sun converted into, you know, dead matter, which we now burn for our own use. If we actually use the sun for solar energy, we have a lot of plentiful of resources that we can use. So technology would enable us to work together. And so we should be working on the moonshot of converting free solar energy into the circular economy, recycling the green, right? Helping each other rather than fighting each other, right? That is the more hopeful side of technology rather than the technology of, you know, making more sophisticated nuclear bombs, right? Or greater, you know, sort of cruise missiles or drones or whatever. That, to me, has to be the way for mankind to move forward. It's a mindset issue. So let me bring us to the U.S.-China interface. You talked about elites and plutocrats fighting with each other and this and that. The story I would tell about the U.S. and China was at some level it was a beautiful thing to see over a billion people engage on a trajectory of economic development. They learned from what I call technological infusion from gaining skills, practices and so forth. At the same time, because this wasn't the island of Tonga, this was over a billion people, the ramifications for the livelihood, the wages, the opportunity of people, particularly in the manufacturing sector at the start, was threatened. The United States did not create what I will call adjustment assistance. They allowed the people to suffer and to perish. You go to the cities that were impacted by globalization. The restaurants closed up, the movie theaters closed down. The schools didn't have revenue and you went into a downward spiral. Yet we talk about free trade. Everybody can be better off and nobody worse off, provided you do the transfers. There was a thing that the U.S. Treasury has had which was the assessment each year of whether someone is, quote, a currency manipulator, keeping an undervalued currency to promote their export surplus. In the United States, the foreign direct investment companies, we can talk about Walmart or Nike or a whole bunch more, all lobbied against China being called a currency manipulator as the stressful adjustment was going on. The winners all lobbied to have tax cuts and to keep their money offshore and turn tax evasion into tax avoidance, which is the legal rather than illegal way of hiding your revenue. And then Wall Street thought they were going to get into China and help modernize and integrate the financial markets, and that didn't play out. And then America also, with its comparative advantage into what we call the tech sector, thought their cyber platforms would be pervasive, particularly as commercial platforms like Amazon.com around the world. None of these things panned out and China 2025 comes along and companies are saying, I did a foreign direct investment, I did a technology transfer and my firm and the competitor is favored by the government and we're losing market share. Even before Donald Trump, 2014, you can go to Council on Foreign Relations reports by all kinds of Kurt Campbell and Mr. Stillwell and all these people are citing these grievances. But what are they? They're the grievances of one segment of power vis-a-vis Chinese power. And what they did in what I'll call genius of Donald Trump was they went to the disadvantaged, the people who were trampled by the adjustment that I described at the outset, and said, we're going to defend you as they went to fight about pharmaceutical and movie property rights and Wall Street access. And so the whole game shifted when the American interests felt like, if you will, China wasn't adapting to our pattern of leadership and comparative advantage. And then we mobilized the anger from the previous window of time to be anti-Chinese. And when I talk to people, sometimes you were with me at the meetings in China, Chinese leaders, they would say, we had no power over this. The Americans didn't handle their domestic transformation while knowingly engaging in this large globalization, and now we're being demonized. Well, I understand there's pain there, but I don't know how to counteract it. So now we come with fights that are taking place about the powerful versus the powerful. The people who are trampled have had their emotions enlisted in this nationalistic-type politics, but they're not getting any payback or reparations or whatever you want to call it. And climate challenge that requires the cooperation, not extermination that you described at the outset, is right on center stage. How do we unravel and overcome this story that I just told that leads to dysfunction, exacerbation rather than amelioration of social inequality, and runs the risk of destroying the earth? Where do we go? How do we heal this? It takes humility from both sides. Right? That's the each-hand talking. Yeah, it is the each-hand.  Divorces is the result of a loss of love, and then it's moving to hatred or worse, you know, completely ignoring each other and talking past each other. And it's extremely painful. So, you know, the U.S.-China has been a love affair, right? I mean, in the sense that, you know, the America, you know, because of the missionary history in China, they had a very beautiful view of the poverty downtrodden China. And then, you know, but America supported the Nationalists, the communists, you know, tried to deal with some of the internal issues. Anyway, the communists won, right? And then there was this period of demonization again, you know, the bamboo curtain, the iron curtain, right? And then in the competition against the Soviet Union, China was sought out as the ally to balance. And so if you really go back to that recent history, you know, including the recent strategy towards decoupling, strategic decoupling, you know, if you really go back to that history from 78, the first priority at that time, U.S.-China relations, was not because of humanitarian issues, it was as a bulwark against the Soviet Union's rise. Right? And now, China has, instead of the Soviet Union, China has emerged as the strategic competitor. So then this demonization, you know, begins. So in the demonization that starts, you know, the Chinese on the other side has always admired America. It is, you know, in Chinese, the Chinese word for America is beautiful country, right?  Right? So the, you know, there is this idea amongst the Chinese, right?   You know, you know, I've learned American Hollywood films, students studying at the top universities. Why do they come? It is, you know, how should I say, copying is the best form of admiration. Right? They want to be like you.  And, you know, can you share, can you, can Chinese, can every Chinese enjoy the same standard of living, consuming the same resources, the same fossil fuels as the average American? Impossible, because that, you know, you reach that bottleneck. So, what is the limit to that? Can the free market solve this? And that's when you come to really existential problems, right?  Within China, there is this debate. How much of the market should be used in dealing with climate change? And the answer is, well, they will experiment with carbon markets. But will the market alone solve climate change? The answer is no. You know, climate change has to be solved by a combination of state and market. But even more than that, is a change in individual. Because if every individual decides that they're going to use less plastic, you know, pollute less, use less fossil fuels, the cumulative effect of that is enormous, right?  Now, that means individual behavioral change, partly market, partly state, because it depends on what happens in schools, education, et cetera, will have huge impact on this. But the minute you start demonizing each other, then you are cutting yourself from ideas from the other side that can help you. And the other side is also denied good ideas from your side which could help them deal with their social problems, et cetera. That doesn't mean that, you know, you're not going to compete, right?  I always say there is this, the world is facing three, not four or five, one billion population problems, right? There's 1.4 billion in China. There's 1.3 billion in India and rising, faster than, you know, population in China and GDP growth faster than China. So in a matter of 15 to 30 years, somewhere around that date, China, I mean, India may overtake, you know, is already taken Britain and it will probably overtake, you know, Germany, right? And it's catching up as number three. But then you think about it, there's 1.3 billion Muslims all the way from Indonesia down to the Middle East. And there's a billion plus in Africa and a billion plus in Latin America. If each one billion... Projection in Africa, according to the International Office of Migration, is that by 2070 it will be 5.3 billion in Africa. Exactly, exactly.  All these, if we don't handle it properly, will create massive human conflicts, right? Because, you know, we're all competing for the same water. We're all competing for the same clean air. We're all going to compete for the same energy. Technology is possible for Africa to solve their problems. But we all know behind technology is that social organization, the interplay between state and market, not one or the other, the interplay, right? In fact, there's three. It's state, market and society, right? All three will interact how you use technology positively or negatively. Yes, and in the United States, many people take that triad, let's say from the vantage point of society, and they trust neither the state or the market because they think that the large participants in the market dominate and capture the state. And how would I say? The state is used to subsidize the powerful to the detriment of the many. And that's part of where Trumpism comes from. Yeah, but if you just, you know, I mean, America has got lots of issues that is now coming to the surface. But I'm just at a point of reading. I haven't finished it yet. Arthur Kleinman's book, Deep China.  He's an anthropologist. He was the head of the Harvard Asia Center, right? And he wrote this book, you know, which is a collection of analysis of Deep China. Deep China really is saying, let's not look at the surface issues of economics or politics. Let's deep down goes into the minds of hundreds of millions of Chinese who are migrating out from the rural side to the urban area, you know, who have dealt with the problems of the Cultural Revolution, the complexities of modernity, right? Yeah, the structure of families on the farm that are disintegrating and all those things. It's like the Wizard of Oz played out in China now. That's right. But the West don't read about this because, you know, a lot of this internal discussion is in Chinese, right? Which is not accessible to non-Chinese readers. But that debate is ongoing. And that debate increasingly comes from the young who have huge aspirations about better jobs, you know, better environment, family relations, you know, and the whole Chinese New Year, you know, which is a family time, the same as Thanksgiving is a family time, is no longer possible because the grandparents cannot hug the baby. You know, even in China, there is a social distancing going on, right? So these emotions are now going on in every society. The struggle between, as you rightly put it, it's not just mine and body, but the soul. You know, we need more than just money. You know, the old days was if I give you money, I solve every problem. That's economics. But money can't buy justice. Money can't buy, you know, love. Money can't buy, you know, happiness, right? And these are conversations that are going on within every community, within every individual, okay? And so economics, you know, by going down that path of being quantitative and becoming a pseudo-science has ignored that path. Now, since 2008, you know, we're beginning to shift because it's become more complicated.  It's beginning to become more eclectic. But even that eclectic behavior, you know, boils down to a very fundamental rational man thinking that rationally we can deal with this anger, this emotion, you know, and out of all this, we've struggled with the core problem. How do we cooperate? How, you know, rather than how do we fight, right? And so basically the real danger of economics as a profession is shoveling decks on the Titanic, right?  Oh, my side of the boat is wrong, ignoring completely that we have become alphas fighting in a burning forest, right?  In fact, the forest is already burning, right? Rob, you know, you know, four million virgin forests in California has burned just this year alone, right? And how many, you know, how much money would take for us to plant new trees, right? And invest this for the long term, okay? So, you know, we're struggling with these, you know, existential issues. So I have come to the conclusion, let's not fight, let's not even criticize.  And that's why our age lacks the Leonardo da Vinci. We lack the Picasso, which in one Gernica signal the horrors of war, right? We don't have this at this point of time.  And in some respects, the arts have become a commodity and are poisoned by the disease of what I'll call neoliberalism in a way where they don't play the role they used to play. They're not entertainment rather than spiritual illumination. Right, right. So, you know, to a large extent, we have seen the corruption of the old without the rejuvenation and birth of the new. There's a regression says that, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so to a large extent, you know, we have to, with humility, allow a thousand flowers to bloom.  And he's 94, 95. And he's still active in politics, right? But the issue is that there's an old Chinese saying that below a giant tree, the grass does not grow well, right? Because it blocks the sun. Okay, it blocks the sunlight, it blocks the, etc. So a new generation of young politicians, young thinkers have not blossomed. And the result is, we are now searching, you know, after this generation of politicians, who's next, right? And so it's an open question, it's not a critique. You know, it's an admission that we have all failed, right? And that we really need to talk to each other until we have that conversation, okay? We sit down and have that conversation. Now that conversation could be done in the open, but it could be also done behind closed doors where you could actually allow that emotion to run. So that, you know, we are able to understand each other much, much better, right? This is very critical. And that's why I think, you know, the platform such as the Institute for New Economic Thinking is doing great by having these podcasts, you know, absorbing very different voices in the system. And I hope not to criticize the others because, you know, we've already reached a crescendo of this, but to open up the conversation, right? To look for the healing point for the pathway. That's right. That's right. And I think the pathway will be found because, you know, in my view, you know, there is sufficient understanding, you know, from this side of the Pacific in China that China alone cannot solve the problems. China cannot solve the global problems. China alone cannot solve China's own problems because China is so entangled in the global economy, right? And China has seen some successes, but it's also seen some failures, right?  Well, a lot of Africa's rapid growth is due to Chinese investments into Africa, right? But at the same time, there are a lot of non-performing loans also, okay? So you can't just see it as a non-performing loan because much of that money was due for infrastructure and that infrastructure is not completely altruistic because actually it improves, you know, all the extraction of natural resources from Africa, right? So the next stage of African development really has to be job-related. How do we create the jobs in Africa so that, you know, they will be contributing to global growth, you know, rather than fighting amongst themselves because they're always, you know, become a larger precarious if they're ignored, right?  And some of it is directed at language, right?  It's actually, you know, we cannot talk about Africa as one unity. You know, it is extremely diverse, population-wise, language-wise, but the society's growth got disrupted by colonialism and that we have to admit that. That's right. And some of the cynicism of the young people comes from a complete lack of faith that the elders who govern are actually stewards of the society as opposed to what you might call rent collectors who put their money in a Swiss bank account in Geneva. And there was a beautiful survey. I went to an Ivory Coast conference two years ago of the Moe Ibrahim Foundation and they talked about the confidence. First of all, they talked about the average age of the population of the continent of Africa was about 27 years old. And the average age of those in government was 63. Compare that to the United States, it was 37 average age and 53 in government. And so the distance was much greater. But the second part of the survey was that only 8% of the African population thought that the government was working towards a better future for Africa. Well, it has difficulty working because, you see, the elite have been trained in one particular model, right? In a particular model, right? And so whereas if you really look at the Indian, which is a really true post-colonial system, they adapted it to their own culture and their context, right? And then managed that. But the Chinese was never fully colonized. But the absorption, the biggest absorption of foreign influence came from number one Buddhism since the second millennium, right? And then communism. And today modern science and international global multilateralism, right? And they're still absorbing it, right? And then it's struggling with it, okay? So as China begins to internalize this, as India begins to internalize this, it's going to be extremely painful. You know, we need to understand this. In the same way that America needs to internalize, you know, can America still play the role of global policemen at huge costs, right? Okay, right? At huge costs, at huge, you know, I mean every year a trillion dollars spent on defense, you know, and in Trump's words, $7 trillion was spent in Iraq and Afghanistan and with very little results, right? In fact, you know, failed societies. If you look at the post-traumatic health disorders of the Iraq war that will involve taking care of veterans for 20 or 30 years, that's a massive underestimate. $7 trillion, it's probably double that. Well, that's exactly it. That's right. Whatever you do, you know, we must understand the long-term consequences are even greater. So, you know, so a lot of this is to do with how we look at the world.  You know, he looked at the vaccine as the silver bullet. You see, right? You know, that once we've discovered the vaccine, the economy will recover. Now we've suddenly become aware that even with multiple vaccines, we're not sure because even as we invent the vaccine, the coronavirus is mutating faster. So, as I said, you know, once Humpty Dumpty, which is before the pandemic and after the pandemic, we're no longer going to change, you know, back to what it was before. Just like once after 9-11, you know, standard checks in airports, security checks were accepted. Today, masks are accepted. Social distancing will never go back, you know, to where it was before, right?   So there are no silver bullets, okay, to solve. It is no longer one medicine to solve everything. It's about building up human immunity. But human immunity alone won't solve this because, you know, it's really life is about a combination of both, right? We have to live with it. There's a new book that has been disallowed to be released in the United States, which is a collection of essays by social activists called Capitalism on a Ventilator. It is contrasting the Asian and the American experience, Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, and China on one side, United States on the other. And talking about the, what you might call perhaps the naivety or the simplicity of focusing on individual rights when we're in societies where the effect we have on each other is so profound. And the pandemic obviously illustrates this. And it is raising the specter of the question of whether that liberty and justice for all has anything to do with justice in the American credo and that liberty, if not respectful of expertise and authority, if not, which Michael submitting to collaboration can destroy a society. And the question of whether that paradigm, and I don't know enough myself about the response of China to the pandemic other than it looks relatively more successful than the United States. But the notion of decentralized let the market do it versus deciding what's right is in play right now based on the pandemic and based on what you might call the analog to war preparation for meeting the challenge of climate change. So I do think what people will say is a good life isn't all one thing or the other. There's dilemmas. There's lots of people who criticize things in China that I would agree there's a basis for the criticism. But there's no longer that utopian vision of the United States and this book Capitalism on a Ventilator makes that vividly clear that we have to find some balance between mind, body and soul and collective action and individual rights to heal and evolve our societies in a sustainable way. Healing takes a long time. I mean if you read the Deep China you would see the Cultural Revolution was such a deep scar on memories, individual memories. And yet for a lot of young people the Cultural Revolution was a good time because they were set free. They made friendships. So it's a period that everybody has difficulty. So in good fortune there is misfortune. In misfortune there is good fortune. I mean China made the right decision to close down. It preserved the supply chain. But suddenly if you really think about this now with the mutation of the coronavirus and China bought time for the vaccine to come into being. But now the coronavirus has mutated to such a degree that the Chinese population is not immune without a vaccine to these new variants. So it's not so simple. This is who wins who loses is not an end game. When we talk about zero sum games we think that not only the rules are fixed the boundaries are fixed and the time is fixed.  The gaming and the capture and the corruption begins. So the minute you set up an ideal structure that structure the camelot begins to corrode and then eventually the round table disintegrates. So that's why we have to appreciate that life is a cycle of idealism versus pragmatism, pragmatism moving towards idealism. But it cannot deviate too much from both. When you are too realistic sometimes you sacrifice individual life or rights for the collective. When you are too idealistic you sacrifice the collective for the individual.  You are not an absolute right. It's a relative issue. It really is relative. So there is no perfection if we were to take the total rights of the collective over the individual that cannot be right also. Because it's the individual that contributes to the community. And the community contributes to the individual. So when both sides talk about absolutism it can't work. Something's got to give. And that's where we are. It is this yin yang stuff. It's the interaction of the individual and the collective that creates chance and the random. But the random itself is the beauty. Because the genius of the individual artist the scientist, the innovator which later becomes unknown because the genius of everybody builds into Wikipedia. It's individual geniuses that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And that's life. That's what life is all about. And that's what we need to nourish. I once read in the Guinness Book of World Records what was the shortest poem ever created? And the answer was a poem that was improvisationally presented by Muhammad Ali when he was at Harvard University's commencement and he got off the stage and they said hey Ali, what about a poem? And the poem that he got up he looked at the audience and he created in that moment was me, we. Me and we is what you're talking about. It's the yin yang of this conversation. It's the dilemma. It's the unresolvable but in between those two words it's the balance that we're grappling for. Yeah, yeah, absolutely right. Absolutely right. So there is no definitive solution. We just have to work at it in the relationship. Sometimes distance, sometimes time will help because everybody needs to concentrate on their own internal issues. And this conversation is ongoing. So when everybody blames everybody else and I can totally understand why they do it because if you scold me I have to scold back but does it help matters? If it worsens the relationship nothing happens, right? If you go your way, I go my way and sometimes it's necessary but sometimes often we are all loose more because the relationship is gone. So life is really about relationships. Yes, I remember at the time of 9-11 I was living in Connecticut suburb of New York and there were many parents from my children's school who died and it was quite disorienting and someone gave me a novel by an author from India whose name was Rohantan Mystery M-I-S-T-R-E-Y and the name of the book was A Fine Balance and that came from the expression life is a fine balance between hope and despair and this conversation tonight I've enjoyed tremendously because I can see that you can see the splatter that I mentioned at the outset and I can see that you're grappling with shining a light in that constructive direction so I'm going to suggest a metaphor about who you are if you look back into the 1960s there was one artistic entity that was radiant and hopeful and tonight I heard their work come out of your spirit when I heard Money Can't Buy Me Love when I heard here comes the sun and when I hear come together you're the Asian Beatles Andrew you're the Asian Beatles of the evolution of consciousness and social organization and I've really enjoyed as I always do the spirit that you bring to this audience and to me and you keep us curious you keep us searching you keep us moving forward so that we can as the Beatles sang in their last album come together and I'll tell you the last thing ever recorded by the Beatles was released afterwards the last thing recorded was a little coda at the end of Abbey Road and it said and in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make and that's the spirit in which I see you not just tonight but ever since I've known you so thanks for being that beacon no I'm not a beacon thank you for being part of my journey to discovery and sometimes one looks outward but the older I grow the more inward I look and remember this John Lennon was very much influenced by Indian philosophy that's true exactly right and George Harrison too exactly exactly so he capsulated what is the best of the east and west and the rest thank you very much indeed so we will leave here tonight and we'll each go back to our music system and we'll listen to Imagine by John Lennon and think about what we'll build next time we come on to this podcast together thank you Rob thank you we'll talk again soon bye


So, let's begin this video by looking at these organic reactions. Now you must be wondering what are these big molecules doing in a p-block element video, right? Well for starters let me tell you that as we learn more about any particular subject all of these distinctions like organic, inorganic, physical all of these start blurring out you know. They don't really make much sense after a certain point it's all just science. With less we will still figure out what these reactions or big molecules as we say are doing in this video. For now what I want you to do is pay attention to the reagents you know the catalyst that is used in these reactions. See what is happening with them. Don't worry about these big molecules you know or how this reaction is occurring. Ignore all of that and simply pay attention to what a group 13 elements are doing here. Okay. Watch the video and see if you can figure it out yourselves. So well here we are and what do we see? Well one of the first things that you will notice is that all of a group 13 elements have acquired a negative charge. For instance look at the first reaction the lone pair of electrons on nitrogen have gone to boron and nitrogen acquires a positive charge and boron gets a negative charge. In the second reaction something happens to this particular alkyl chloride such that we get a carbocation but look what's happening to our aluminum chloride. AlCl3 becomes AlCl4 and aluminum gets a negative charge and what about the third reaction? Yes it looks complicated but all we need to do is simply look at what's happening to gallium correct. Gallium again ends up getting a negative charge even though it is GCl3. So what's happening here is the triple bond or the pi electrons here have shifted to gallium and here carbon gets a positive charge and gallium gets a negative charge. So in general you can see that all of these elements are accepting a pair of electrons and what else is common between all of them? Well you can see that they are all in their trivalence state as well. So what is trivalence state? That is they are in their plus 3 oxidation state. Okay. So what exactly is going on here? Well one of the characteristic features of group 13 elements is that all of these elements form electron deficient compounds in their trivalence state and it's not just halides of group 13, hydrides like BH3, ALH3 all of these compounds are also electron deficient in nature. In other words they all act as lowest acids and that's what we will see in this video. We will see why they act as lowest acids and where can we use this particular behavior. Now as we know group 13 elements have 3 electrons in their valence shell, 2 electrons in SR battle and 1 electron in PR battle right? So that means to attain a stable electronic configuration it needs to lose 3 electrons or gain 5 electrons and what do you think it would prefer? Losing 3 electrons or gaining 5 electrons? Of course this is right. Why would any atom want to gain 5 electrons and become so unstable? That means in their group oxidation state which is plus 3 the central atom will end up having only 6 electrons around it. For instance let's assume that E is one of a group 13 elements and whether these elements lose electrons or share electrons with another atom we can see that at the end of the day the central atom has only 6 electrons around it. That means it has an incomplete octet and this inherent electron deficient nature comes in pretty handy for us and we can use these compounds as lowest acids. Now what does a typical lowest acid do? They simply accept a pair of electrons from an electron drift species or a lowest base to form a complex or an adduct right? For instance let's take BCL3 as a lowest acid and when it reacts with an electron to species or a lowest base like ammonia we know that the lone pair of electrons on the nitrogen atom goes to boron correct? So finally we end up getting BCL3 minus and NH3 plus. So this is how a typical lowest acid base reaction looks like. So let's now see how this behavior or the ability of group 13 elements to act as a lowest acid helps us in organic reactions. Ok so let's look at our first reaction here. Here we can see that BF3 is reacting with a carbonyl compound that is a compound which has C double bond O group. Now here BF3 not only acts as a lowest acid but also as an activating agent for this particular reaction. See we will not go into the details of the mechanism here but what we mean by activating is that we need more positive charge on the carbon atom here. Now that can happen if this electron density on the pi electrons get shifted upwards and that's exactly what happens as you can see here. Now the question is how does our lowest acid or BF3 help in activating this particular reaction? Well you see the lone pair of electrons on the oxygen atom acts as a lowest base and BF3 here is obviously a lowest acid right? And what happens in a typical lowest acid base reaction? Well the lone pairs go into the electron deficient boron atom but where in the boron atom does it go? We know that the electronic configuration of boron is 1 is 2, 2 is 2, 2p is 1 that is there is only one electron in the P orbital. That means we still have MTP orbitals available right? And that's exactly where the lone pair of electrons go.  So this is how BF3 or a lowest acid helps in activating this reaction. The carbon ends up getting a more positive charge and boron has a complete octet. Now something quite similar happens in this particular reaction as well but instead of oxygen it is a lone pair of electrons on the chlorine that goes into the MTP orbitals of aluminium and when that happens you get the intermediate which is CS3CO plus and aluminium becomes negatively charged that is ALCl4 minus or in other words you have your aluminium with completely satisfied octet. Now benzene reacts with this particular intermediate and gives you the final product here. So we won't get into the details of the reaction here again but what you need to know is that the driving force for this reaction is a need for aluminium to get a complete octet. Now there is another interesting thing about this reaction. You see when we carry out this reaction laboratory we make sure that there is absolutely no trace of water. Now why is that? Because if you have water you know the lone pair of electrons on the oxygen atom can go into the aluminium right? I mean as far as a group 13 element is concerned all it needs is a complete octet. It can be from the lone pair of electrons of oxygen of water or from this particular compound. So in order for water to not interfere in this reaction and generate this intermediate we have to make sure that the reaction is carried out in an anhydrous environment. Now let me ask you something. Do you think that this electron deficient nature of all of these group 13 elements is the same? Well turns out that this trend actually decreases down the group. That means BCL3 is a better Lewis acid than ALCl3 which is a better Lewis acid than GACL3 and so on. Now why do you think this happens so? Well one of the reasons is that the stability of the plus 3 oxidation state decreases down the group but more importantly electronegativity also decreases down the group. Now as we know electronegativity is a tendency of an atom to attract an electron pair. So if that goes down it means that the Lewis acid nature also decreases right? That means the compounds no longer become interested in taking up electrons or act as a good Lewis acid and that's exactly what happens here. So folks that's pretty much it about the electron deficient nature of group 13 elements. So I hope you now have a fair understanding of why group 13 elements are electron deficient and where we can use their Lewis acid nature.


Hello everybody, welcome back to another AI video and this one I'm in runway ML. This is a free to use video editor that's built around all sorts of amazing AI tools. And in this one I'm going to show you how to add subtitles to your videos in seconds. This is very, very quick to do. And I'm going to show you a final copy here of what it'll look like and then I'll show you the process step by step. Let's hit play and see what we got. Alright, the big Lebowski. Lebowski's got some information. How did I get those subtitles on? Let's just go through it step by step. It'll take a few seconds, not very long. Alright, first step runway ML.com. I will put a link in the description below. This is the software and it's browser based, which is really, really cool. Now I'm going to click on login. If you don't have an account, you can click on sign up. It is free. A very, very important point. It's free to use. Alright, now I've got a whole bunch of projects here. So you can only have three projects at once. So I'm going to delete these two just so I have some extra breathing room here. And then presto. Now on the left side you'll see here we've got create new project and we've got AI magic tools. This is a magic tool. Click on magic tools. Once you do that, you're going to get a whole row, a bunch of columns of different options. The one we're looking for is on the, it's about five columns down. And it's right here. Generate subtitles. Also, you can generate transcripts as well. But I'm going to do the subtitles here. I'm going to click on this. And when you do that, you're going to get this screen here. And if this is your first time using this software, you won't see any of these things beneath here. But what I'm going to do now is as I can drag and drop a file here. So I'm going to go into my finder and I'm going to find my big Lebowski video. And I'm going to drag and drop it right there. And in a few seconds, it'll be ready to go. And it's going to automatically generate and it's going to load up my timeline. It's a little slow today because a lot of people are using this tool. But yeah, just stick with it. It'll work. Okay, good. Now it's loading up. And here we go. We're going to go ahead and start creating our subtitles. So let's just load it down here. Where are you? Come on, I'll come back when it's ready. It might take a few seconds. All right, here we go. So now I've dragged and dropped it in and we've got our generate subtitles. Keep in mind if this if this times out on you, you may have to hit the reset button because again, it's being overwhelmed with a lot of a lot of people are on its servers. So anyway, the next step here is very, very simple. Just click generate. When you click generate, you're going to get this little flashy, dashy thingy dingy. And then once this is done loading, there's two steps to this, we can just go ahead and finish up the subtitles. I'll come back. Oh, never mind. I'm not even coming back. It's all ready to go. Now here we go. It's very, very simple. It's already done it. Let's hit spacebar and see what we got. It's done a very good job. That said, if you if it's not quite where you want it to be, keep in mind that you can go ahead in here and make some changes. So I'll tell you what I'm instead of saying blathering, let's say blabbing about, let's say that's what he said in it. I've gone ahead and made changes. And you'll see here that it's represented in the text. You can also make changes to the start and stop time. So right now it's done it automatically. But if you want to adjust it, you can you can just go in here and say instead of 2.62, I want to be 2.60. Hit spacebar or hit enter part of me and you'll see that it's adjusted it here. You can adjust these on the timeline. So if you want this to start maybe somewhere around here, or maybe it's too long. This is kind of just like standard video editor stuff. You just go in and make those appropriate changes. Also lastly, I'll show you here that you can click on them and up at the top here, you can go ahead and make some changes to the property. So if I go to the layer right here, like I've done before, go to the layer, you'll see here under preset styles, there's a triangle. Drop that down and you can make a few small changes. So if you want it with black background, or if you want it to be yellow and things like that, you can go ahead in here and make changes, including changing the font, changing the size, changing the weight, all of those things are available. Standard stuff guys. That's how you create subtitles and adjust subtitles for free using AI tools, runway ML, it's free. And then last step, click on export and click the resolution and you're on your way. Thanks for watching.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspies casebreaks.com doing random number block six. So random number of block six Splitting one spot in that hundred and ten box hit parade mix We're also giving away two extra spots as well So big thanks to this group who bought their spots straight up Chance at a buy one get one after nine times five and four top two after nine one two three four five six seven eight and nine Got mark and Eugene extra spots for you Congrats those roof top symbols next to your name now. Let's randomize you a block of numbers Let's roll it and randomize names and numbers five and a six eleven times each one two three four Got Adam down at Douglas Five and a six eleven times for the numbers one two three four six seven And 11th and final time we got four down at two All right, Adam with four Andrew with seven mark with three Eugene with eight James with zero So whatever team that gets you'll get any and all redemptions for that particular team if any or there shouldn't be because it's hip Parade anyway mark with six Chad with nine Eugene with one Adam with five and Douglas with two and Any non numbered cards for that particular team will go to Will be randomized to somebody and if this R&B number six whatever team it gets if it goes hit list then we'll randomize one person will get that hit list credit There as well. All right, so there you go gang. I'll see you for the next one. Jasper's case breaks calm


Welcome to nursing school explained and this video on chloride imbalances. So we'll look at causes, signs and symptoms, treatment as well as nursing considerations for hypo and hyperchloremia. Generally, chloride level is 98 through 106 in the serum, but keep in mind to always check the reference lab values for whatever lab you're working with to make sure that they are not just a little bit different and that you're determining whether the patient is within or not within normal range. Now chloride is a major electrolyte in the extra cellular fluid and it is regulated by anti-diuretic hormone as well as aldosterone and those two play a big role in the RAS system, the renin, angiotensin and aldosterone system that helps us regulate our blood pressure. So therefore it regulates fluid balance and blood pressure and it travels with sodium and water. So usually if sodium levels are low, chloride levels will be low. If sodium is high, chloride will be high and the chances that you see hypo or hyperchloremia are less likely than seen hypo or hypernatremia, but it is very possible, but the two usually move into the same direction and because they are regulated or they kind of attract water, so they always travel with the water, they have a big influence on our fluid balance and also blood pressure control. Causes for hypochloremia can be vomiting or diarrhea and that is mostly vomiting. So if you're losing a lot of stomach contents, hydrochloric acid will go with this so you'll use a lot of chloride that way. Also gastric suctioning for the same reasons, we're getting rid of some of those acids, burn injuries as well as SIADH with the syndrome of inappropriate anti-diarrheic hormone. So if there's a problem with the ADH that regulates our chloride, it can cause hypochloremia. Also diuretics might affect our chloride levels and then metabolic alkalosis also can cause chloride levels to drop. And then in terms of hyperchloremia, so causes here hypernatremia, like I said, they always kind of travel together and too much administration of sodium chloride, you might think, oh, sodium chloride, that's an isotonic fluid, we can never really give too much, but yes, you can give too much of sodium chloride and now the chloride levels will be too high and the patient might start to develop symptoms. And then because aldosterone is part of that RAS system and regulates blood pressure, which acts on the kidneys to help reabsorb or excrete more electrolytes to help us with the fluid balance, whenever there's something wrong with the kidneys such as an acute kidney injury or chronic kidney disease, we might also see abnormalities in chloride levels. And then dehydration, also termed fluid volume deficit, can cause hyperchloremia because in dehydration we're losing a lot of fluids, what remains are the electrolytes, so they are more concentrated and therefore the chloride levels will be high. And then in contrast to hypochloremia causing metabolic alkalosis, hyperchloremia can cause metabolic acidosis or is caused by metabolic acidosis. Signs and symptoms are very similar or pretty much the same as for sodium imbalances because we know those two go together, so always think level of consciousness, neural status when you think about sodium as well as chloride abnormalities. So for hypochloremia, blood pressure will be low because we're losing the chloride we can't keep the fluid in and the patient will have positive orthostatics. In response to low blood pressure, usually the heart rate goes up as the body is trying to compensate for the fluid loss. The patient might have those signs and symptoms of altered level of consciousness, irritable, confusion, restlessness and they might lead all the way to seizures or hallucinations. For hyperchloremia, it's the same thing, irritability, confusion, restlessness, altered level of consciousness or something is different from their usual mental status and it can also lead all the way to seizures. Treatment here for hypochloremia is isotonic IV fluids because typically we've lost some fluids, we have some signs of fluid volume deficit here and sodium chloride or normal saline contains 0.9% sodium chloride so if we replenish it, we're going to get this chloride level back up and then also a high sodium and chloride diet will help to elevate those levels. On the contrary for hyperchloremia, we still want to give the patient IV isotonic fluids because we know that most likely it's related to fluid volume deficit that these electrolytes are more concentrated, hemoconcentration but we don't want to give them sodium chloride because the chloride level is already high. So in addition, so we give them IV ringers lactate or lactated ringers because it kind of contains buffers. In addition to sodium and chloride, it contains other electrolytes as well as bicarbonate which will help counteract this metabolic acidosis here. So lactated ringers is a really good IV fluid to help with patients with metabolic acidosis. In terms of our nursing considerations, we want to keep a close eye on those vital signs, check the patient's level of consciousness because we said on both sides they can be altered in whatever way or shape or form. We want to check their lab values, sodium chloride and the serum osmolarity, all these values that give us information about the patient's fluid volume status. We want to check daily weights and eyes and nose whenever we talk about fluid balance to see how much fluid the patient is retaining, how well the kidneys are working. We want to make sure we initiate fall precautions because of their altered state as well as seizure precautions because we know that they are likely or at risk for having seizures. And then we want to check their IV side because we're going to have to make sure to administer the treatment here to make sure that they get back into the normal levels with their chloride. Please also watch the other videos about the other electrolyting balances and if you want a bigger, better review on how fluid balance is regulated with the RAS system as well as what other mechanisms we have for controlling our blood pressure, please go to my Fluid and Electrolyte playlist where I have all the videos that explain that. I'll make sure to put all the videos in the description below so that you have easy access and reference to those. Thanks so much for watching, see you soon.