And welcome to another episode of likeable science, a special today. I'm your host Ethan Allen here on the Tuesday afternoon rather than my usual Friday slot. With me today in the studio is Jay Fidel, I think Tech's own CEO. Welcome Jay. Yes sir. Glad you could join me today. I'm happy to be here. Well, that's great. And we're going to talk about an interesting asset or facet of science today. It's not actually necessarily so likeable. The show title I had proposed was Cording Catastrophe, which gives you some sense it might not be exactly likeable. But it was driven by an editorial in a recent issue of science that I saw written by Bruce Alpertz who was the former head of the National Academies and a very distinguished scientist pointing out that our educational system has fundamentally failed to teach the American public what science is all about and the value of science and the idea of science as a process. And he points out this is shown very clearly through our recent election cycle where basically people were told what they wanted to hear by people with no evidence or indeed mountains of evidence to the contrary, but they went right ahead and sort of followed this person who said what they wanted to hear. And despite the fact that you could sort of make very clean, clear, logical arguments against it. This is a very normal human emotion, human tendency to want to go with your cohort and sort of stay in sync and keep the people who are thinking like you. But you would hope and scientists hope I guess and thought that people will listen to a rational argument and go with that evidence based argument and it turns out not to be true. This leads to all kinds of problems as you might imagine, right? Oh yeah, you know my own track on it when I was a kid in high school, we all loved science. Everybody's favorite course was biology and math and physics. I mean everybody loved that stuff and a lot of them, a lot of them, a huge percentage of them went on to achieve in that area. They went to other schools in the northeast, they became PhDs, they went in that direction. But at the same time, I would say there were other places in the country that were coming in that direction and we haven't been aware of that until now about this polarization of knowledge. That's what I would call it, yeah? There's a part of the country that is relatively well educated in this area or professional scientists in this area, but as part of the country never wanted to learn any of that. They weren't good in school, they weren't good in science and so they kind of have a resentment about it and that's the bubble they live in. And when Donald Trump comes around and says why don't you guys dump on science, they're only too happy to do that because they're mad at science. They haven't been treated well by science, they haven't done well, they haven't achieved anything. And so I think we didn't know this, we didn't see it until the Trump campaign and now we see it clearly and it's very, very troubling for the future. Oh absolutely. So this is what Albert points out in his editorials, one of the things is science is not just another belief system. Science is actually an amazing human endeavor of a whole bunch of people getting together and agreeing on sort of a set of rules to try to figure out what makes the world work, how does nature actually perform, what causes the phenomenon that we see and that's very different from a faith-based system where you just, you all agree on some undefinable entity. I think you struck on something really important, I mean a lot of the anti-science sentiment these days within Trump, they may not connect it up politically but in fact it's based on religion, it's based on faith. And faith is not science, sorry it's not science and the Constitution, our founding fathers tried to make a distinction between, well it's a social science of government and religion, keep them separate because you have to have evidence-based thinking and if you don't have that it's very hard to run a country or an economy or a scientific advance. Exactly and science is really one of the sort of inarguable ways you can actually measure progress of humanity, I mean there is no doubt sort of due to science and technology, we are in a much different place today than we were ten years ago or a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago. You can't so much make that argument for art or literature or politics, right?  You know art, can you really say that we're better than Rembrandt or whoever you may choose? I mean has there really been progress? But in science and technology, of course we can move goods faster, further we can communicate better, I mean there are sort of a thousand different metrics, you can show real progress. Yeah, it's logarithmic, isn't it? In our lifetimes it's been a joy to be alive and see this progress. But sort of the downside is the consequences if you have policy making that's driven by ideology or religion or anything other than science, this policy then it can fly in the face of fact basically. I mean when you're striding down the sidewalk and your toe catches on a crack in the sidewalk and you're pitching forward, you may wish that the laws of physics didn't hold, you may wish that gravity was really only a theory that wasn't going to catch up with you in the end. But an unseen hand come down from heaven and help you, come on. But no, you're going to smack your face flat on the sidewalk and that's all there is to it. Your wants have nothing to do with it, your belief system has really nothing to do with it, it's fundamentally you're going to be caught up in it. And that's what we're sort of now in a situation where, I mean again this whole business of adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and causing the greenhouse affecting and making earth warmer, people treat this like this is some kind of new fancy theory. This was back in the 1850s that the first scientists realized that CO2 was this key regulator of the atmosphere temperature and was a powerful greenhouse gas. And it's been verified countless times since then and no reputable scientists will argue against that. And it goes back to the dichotomy. I mean there have been schools while you and I are growing up, Ethan, where they didn't study science, where they studied it in a faulty way. And as a result now, as adults, those people, those tens, hundreds of millions of people have no clue about this. And so they're vulnerable to arguments that are specious. And I think we have a lot of arguments. People would make arguments that are specious, not only playing on ignorance, but playing on their own self-interest to get people to do things, one way to use their products, even though their products are faulty, whatever it may be. And the problem is that people are vulnerable. And I mean you and I are not going to buy into that so quick, but there are hundreds of millions of people who are untrained. And the problem is that they form a large political constituency. And you can't change them overnight. You and I could have this show, Talk This Talk, for 100 years. We're not going to affect a lot of people who have been trained the other way. So what does the country do? This is really a difficult problem to re-educate people who are ignorant. Yeah, well, this is what Albert sort of was the point of his editorial was. We really need to go back and reshape the way we teach science. And not worry so much about making science a collection of facts, the way it has traditionally been taught. But help everyone, whether they're going to be a scientist, not understand what science really is. It's just a way of thinking about the world. It is a way of making decisions based on clear, observable, inarguable evidence. And really understand that this is a very powerful way to deal with the world. And it makes sense of everything. I haven't thought about this before, but you make me think one thought. And that is this, it is a philosophical thing. It is even a religious thing. On the one side, the faith, where you don't need science, you rely on faith, which is not evidence. On the other side is, we want science to improve our lives. And we are looking for evidence. We are trying to find the best that humanity, that the homo sapiens species has ever learned. We're trying to apply that to our society. Those two are really different. They're different philosophies. They're different ways of life, different ways of thinking. Very hard to bring that together. In order to make the person on this side of the equation agree with the person on that side of the equation, you have to dig it up from scratch. You have to say, wait, stop with this faith business. Let's talk about evidence. Let's talk about rationality. Let's talk about science. Right. It's not. They cannot coexist. People can't. But I think of them as being almost right angles to one another. They have almost nothing to do with each other. And it's possible to be a person of great faith and a great scientific believer, too. So you talk about the kids in school. And he talks about the kids in school. Very nice. But there's a lot of kids in school. And those kids in school are being controlled by people who are already over the hill, if you will, who are the adults who run the schools and the school boards and all that all over the country, or at least in the red states anyway. So how do you get the next generation of kids in school starting this Monday? How do you get them straight on this? You have to change the schools and the teachers and the curricular and the syllabus and all that stuff. And you're not going to do that unless the people who run the schools buy in. But the people who run the schools are already ill-trained. How are you going to do that? Do you remember Mark Twain's famous quote?  That was for practice. Then he invented school boards. That was an impossible task. And this really makes you sort of pessimistic about the future of it. Because the country cannot survive without respecting science. I'm sorry. I mean, you're just not going to get very far arguing against things like gravity. You can pretend that evolution doesn't happen. But again, evolution is going to march on and march on regardless of your belief. And the problem is that as we ignore science in our policies, it's almost like trying to turn the clock backwards, which is a really bad thing. So this march for science, hey, this weekend, Saturday. Let's talk about it. Yeah, march for science. It's a march that says science should be a part of everyone's lives. Science should be a part of all of our policy decision. All of our key community decisions should be made with the best available science in mind. And it seems to me like a no-brainer. But it's not being done. Indeed, the recent administrative administrations policies are cranking back and saying, ignore the science. We don't care how much CO2 you're pumping out. We don't care that you're releasing methane into the atmosphere, which is methane. Methane makes carbon dioxide look like a wimp gas. I mean, in terms of power, it's a greenhouse gas. It's a much more powerful environment. And there have been huge methane leaks recently. They had to evacuate that whole area around LAO and the whole neighborhood from a methane leak. Terrible. This is problematic because, is why, because you have an administration, the Donald Trump administration. You showed me another article that was in the same magazine. It's about all the things that he's doing to change the regulations that Obama put in place, or that were in place before, all the environmental regulations. And his change is a world-denying science. Thank you very much. And so little by little, we don't see it. It doesn't appear at the top 20 news articles in the New York Times. We don't see it. But you have to recognize that every day, he's pulling the wings of science out of our government. He's denying science in so many ways. He's rolling all these things back.  Jack Balkan, who is one of the leading, if not the leading constitutional law professors. He's at Yale. And he has a blog called Balkanization, very interesting. And it's all about the beat, the role, the evolution of constitutional law in this country. He was on our show. And I asked him, this is the time George Bush, W, was president, I asked him, Bush has done a lot of things to roll things back and to go the other way, faith-based, not science-based. Same issue. Can we recover when he's out of office? Can we find a way back to where we were before? Does it snap back? How does the Constitution work? Does it snap back to, for example, the establishment clause, separation of church and state? He said, no, Jay. Everything is on its own effect in history. So George Bush had an effect in history. And when he was done, things had changed on these very issues. And they're not going to go back right away. If they could ever go back, it would be evolving back slowly, maybe hopefully back. But it's much worse with Donald Trump, because he is affirmatively rolling things back hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years in terms of government and public thinking about science. And I think to get, right now, as we speak, the wings are being pulled out on this issue. When we get to the end of his administration, and I surely hope it ends soon, then we're going to find out that you can't go back. It doesn't snap back. You are in a different place. And the damage is done. Why don't we take a break and think about that very incredible. You must have been reading my mind. Just going to say the same thing. We're going to take a brief break. Jay Fidel is here with me. Ethan Allen, special edition of Likeable Science. We'll be right back. Aloha, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Pauline Shakmak-Chen. I'm the host for a new show on think tech Hawaii called Outside In. Outside In will be taking a look at how the external world can help shape Hawaii's future. And I will be starting the show hopefully next year in terms of regularly scheduled programming. And we hope to invite a wide variety of different guests ranging from history, philosophy, art and architectural fields all the way to robotics, biotech, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and the like. So we're going to have a full range of guests to cover many different areas of interest. And I hope to see you next year. Until then, Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. And I'm the host of Law Across the Sea. And Law Across the Sea is a program that brings attorneys who have traveled across the sea and live in Hawaii or are staying in Hawaii for a time to talk about their travels, where they're from, where they're going, and bring it all together because really we're all connected some way although we travel across the sea. So I hope that you'll tune in and watch our program. Thank you very much. And we're back here on likeable science. I'm your host, Ethan Allen. Jay Fidel is with me today on a special edition of likeable science. And we're talking about the calamities, the catastrophes that we caught by ignoring science at our own risk. Well, you mentioned during the break that on climate change anyway, and there's other things too, but there's a momentum effect. In other words, even if you corrected what Donald Trump has done right now today on a given Tuesday, we would have continuing bad effect for years and decades and years on climate change. We can't stop it. And so what he's doing is making it much worse, much worse. Right. I mean, it's like if you have a smokestack belching out smoke, yes, you can turn off your furnace and stop that smoke, but the rest of the smoke continues to drift around the earth time and time and time and time again, affecting everyone's lives. They're all breathing this in, getting lung trouble, and it turns out probably also getting dementia from it. There's evidence for that. Yeah, yeah. There's a little special thing right now. What's interesting though is that, you know, I talk about faith-based, and well, we both do, and talk about the trying to divide rationality from faith, but it's not just faith, that's the problem here. It's self-interest. Interest of multinational corporations, of large corporations, which are dedicated to a given product or project that is detrimental to us, and that is in violation of good science. Right. And they'll keep on doing it as long as they can. For one thing, they'll try to confuse the public. For another thing, they'll try to affect the government. If the government buys into it, then we're all affected. We're all in this morass of misinformation. That's what's happening. I mean, you look back at the tobacco companies for years, managed to keep cigarettes up and being marketed, even though there was overwhelming evidence that these things are dangerous, that they're costing all of us cigarettes. It's poison, right? But you can still buy a pack of cigarettes. But now at least they're being taxed at a pretty hefty rate, and presumably, you know... Fewer people smoke for sure. It has cut down on smoking, and the non-smokers are not quite left with such heavy tax burden for caring for the health problems of the smokers. So many examples of products and processes of businesses that shouldn't be doing business. I mean, how could he support the coal business when everyone knows how detrimental that is to the society? Right, right. The way they mine coal now by knocking off the tops of mountains is just appalling. I mean, it has huge downstream effects when they push all the rubble down into the streams, you know, as a war, and bury the streams. But it's because, I think, at least in part, that's not religion. That's not faith. No, it's money. That's money. It's money for his campaign, and he's, what did I read? He's got, oh gee, well, it's $20, $30 million already, easy, only 10 weeks after he was inaugurated for his next campaign. Oh my God. So, you know, a problem with that is what, Citizens United? The problem with that is a breach in the Constitution, if you will, to allow Citizens United to be the law. The Supreme Court failed us badly on that. There's no excuses for it. Every judge who voted for that and permitted it to happen should be held accountable for that. That was such a bad move. And it is affecting things. It is making people like Trump possible. And so, you know, what we have is special interest groups, capital concentrations, doing things that are damaging to the public and to us individually and to our world and our society, our environment, with impunity, because the government lets them do that, even when everybody knows it's the wrong thing. It's ruled by special interests. Yes, it's an appalling thing, right? There's not this recognition that we all have to step back, take sort of deep breath, say, hey, we're all in the same, same big blue marble together, right? We're all breathing the same air, we're all drinking the same water. You can just go round and around and around. They go into my lungs, they go into your lungs. And so, you know, if I foul up some air, you're gonna end up paying the consequences for it. So, I guess what this suggests to me is that this is more than just teaching kids in school. And it's more than just, it's more than teaching the kids in school and teaching the school boards. And it's more than healing, you know, this huge polarity between science and something other than science. Because I think that's very hard anyway. It's a legal problem we have. It's a constitutional problem. It's Citizens United. It's super PACs. And it's allowing these large multinationals, which with unlimited resources, to affect public opinion and tell untruths to the public. And cause public opinion to go the wrong way and government to go the wrong way. It's a recipe for disaster. We are on the wrong path. I thought Stephen Colbert had a great job setting up his own super PAC and just pointing out that the sort of absurdity of setting up how sort of easy it was to set up how the rules that guide and regulate super PACs are so sort of easy to flout that he could basically could have started pulling in huge amounts of money to this if he had wanted to do whatever he wanted to do with that happen. So if we began today and if Congress were all rational today, they would fix this, right?  There's no possibility that we'll stop super PACs right now soon. And so this is all gonna continue and that shows like a further problem. Nobody out there seems to be interested in fixing it. So how can we even approach a fix when nobody wants to fix anything? They're all interested in their selfishness. Well, that's what this march of science coming up on this weekend is all about. Zang, no, let's stop and let's demand from our leaders that they make rational, evidence-based policy decisions that are in the good of the people, not just in the good of a few people who paid a lot of money. That leads me to suggest to you, Ethan, that the march for science is much more than a march for science. Exactly. It's a march for other things. It's a march for sanity.  That's for somebody who needs to carry a sign that says march for sanity. Well, you know, it plays out in so many different ways. The young woman carrying the sign in her pre-march that says, remember Polio, I don't.  You know, it's not rocket science in many cases. It's just simple, okay, we now know this, here's a way to deal with it. Let's do it. Yeah. And instead. Easy choice. Right. And yet there are, there's a large number of people in this country, and I say in this country, I think it's a special American phenomenon that don't want to do vaccinations for their children, even though that puts their child at risk and the kid next door at risk and the whole society at risk. And they got some cockamamie reason for that. There's no good reason for that. Science tells us clearly. They have seen now in the first three months of 2017 in England now, they've seen more measles cases, I believe, in their hospitals than they did in the entire last year in 2016, now in the first three months of 2017. Because, yes, they've gotten down because of this belief that somehow vaccines are bad, that they cause autism or whatever. So it's actually getting worse. Yeah, they've dropped the vaccination rate down to a point where essentially measles can get going again now, which it was basically stopped before. You need to keep your vaccination rate at about 90 to 95% and they're down to about 85% and they're starting to see these diseases pop out. Quickly we forget the disasters of previous diseases that we thought we had excluded. So we got, and then we got on top of that, we got a world in which everybody moves around and Hawaii could be victim to this any day of the week. A world where there are vectors and viruses coming from Hither and Jan that could go into a pandemic any day of the week because this is so obvious and you can read so much about it. And yet we are exposing ourselves increasingly to the possibility of a pandemic that will kill millions, hundreds of millions of people in this world. Why do we not apply science to this? Why do we not take steps to protect ourselves? Why do we have our heads in the sand? You know why? Well, there actually are lots and lots and lots of good people working very, very hard to try to stop this. But yes, there's much more that could be done and needs to be done. There are diseases that are evolving very rapidly. Yes, if we would study, for instance, the influenza virus a little more and could figure out how is it that it keeps mutating and changing. This is evolution though. How is the time to do that? But he's pulling money out of NIH. He's pulling money out of medical research. He's pulling. We're going static or backward. And we will pay a hideous price, honestly. Right, right. The environmental regulations are cutting the EPA by 30%. What's this proposal? Or more than 30%. You're just asking for trouble. You're asking for increased pollution that's going to be much more expensive to clean up later. You're asking for exacerbation of problems that are going to be harder to stop because they have momentum. The classic example being the ocean, even if you could cut stabilized air temperature today, the ocean is going to continue to warm for about 50 more years. These things aren't going to go away. They can't be just yanked back the way you were suggesting that they have momentum. And unfortunately, we seem to be right now rolling increasingly fast down the wrong hill, as it were, in the wrong direction. You sound pessimistic, but I want to tell you we did a show yesterday with a few science and we did two shows yesterday with a half a dozen scientists. And at the end, invariably, to close, they said, but we're optimistic. It was hard to find what we call evidence-based optimism there. Well, science has all very, very, very serious problems in the world. And it's taken us, lifted us up by our bootstraps as it were, out of the dark ages, and into this present rather astounding world we have. And just as you said, within our lifetimes, we've seen advances that were just inconceivable. So we do have a reason to be optimistic, and I am actually optimistic. Tell me why. Tell me your analysis on that. Because I do think there are actually a lot of good-hearted, smart people in the world working very hard to make the world a better place. And I think, fortunately, I'm lucky. Without grants, without money, without support from the government, without support from the community. That's why this march is so important, because in the end, I hope, it's the community that determines these questions. Exactly. And there are 500, what do you call it, sympathetic marches around the country and the world on Saturday to make the same point. Again, science is not separate from society. Science lives in a culture supported by a culture and must support the culture in and of itself. And you can't straight the two there if it's impossible. And the flip side is, if you take science away from our society or with our seven billion people, it will collapse for a world. And billions of people will die. And that could include everybody we know. And on that cheering note, we'll end another episode of Likeable Science. I'm your host, Ethan Allen. Jay Fidel has been the shining light of optimism here. Happy to be with you, Ethan. Aloha, Jay. Until next week. Aloha.


2016 Common Council to order with the clerk, please read the quote for today If everyone is moving forward together then success takes care of itself Thank you. Next we'll go on to the roll call. There are 14 present Alderman Berg and Alderman Hammond will be excused Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which It stands one nation under God Indivisible with liberty and justice for all Next move on to the approval of the minutes from our last meeting Alderman Bellinger Thank you mayor move to approve. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on those minutes? Seeing none all those in favor, please signify by saying aye Opposed motion passes Are there any resignations? Okay, then we'll move on to appointments city attorney To the honorable members of the Common Council submitting the following appointments for your consideration Mark Belke to be considered for appointment to the joint review board as the Sheboygan area school district representative His term will expire on 4 30 16 Ryan Berg to be considered for appointment to the sustainable Sheboygan task force as the Sheboygan area school district Representative his term will expire on 425 16 signed by the mayor Thank you very much Alderman Bellinger. Thank you mayor. I move to suspend and confirm Is there any objection to suspension? Okay, and then the motion is to confirm and there's a second. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none will the clerk, please call the roll on appointments 14 eyes Okay Passes before we have our program up here. I'd just like to present a proclamation. That's related to that This proclamation whereas President John F. Kennedy formally proclaim may of 1963 is senior citizens month which was later renamed Older Americans Month in honor and celebration of the contributions of older adults to their communities and their nation and Whereas President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Older Americans Act in July of 1965 in order to meet the diverse needs of older persons in the United States Thus establishing the administration on aging within the Department of Health Education and welfare in calling for the creation of state units on aging the Older Americans Act provides nationwide aging Services network and funding to help older adults live with dignity in the communities of their choice for as long as possible and Whereas the administration on Community living of the US Department of Health and Human Services has established the 2015 Older Americans Month theme Get into the act by promoting and engaging in activity of wellness inclusivity More Americans than ever can get into the act And whereas the 2015 Older Americans Month will honor the 50th anniversary of Older Americans Act and focus on How older adults are taking charge of their health getting engaged in their communities and making positive impact on the lives of others and Whereas the older adults of the city of Sheboygan through and throughout the nation are growing Are a growing population with evolving needs the number of baby boomers reaching traditional retirement age continues to rise In a fact that spotlights the need for increased attention to the needs of older adults Whereas the older adults in the city of Sheboygan play a vital role within our community through their Contributions of experience knowledge wisdom and accomplishments. I'm Mike van der Steen by virtue of my authority vested me in May Are the city of Sheboygan the hereby proclaim May of 2015 to be Older Americans Month and urge everyone to take time to honor our Older adults and those who serve and support them as the powerful and vital citizens greatly contribute to our communities and With that I'd like to call up Wendy Schmitz the director of the senior activity Center for a report and also present her with this proclamation Thank you My name is Wendy Schmitz, and I'm from the senior activity I'd like to start by thanking Mary Lynn Donahue who is on our present Commission She recently led a strategic planning session, which is extremely productive and fun if it's possible to have that and We set exciting goals for the next 18 months I'd like to thank thank mr. Barron for being a member of the Commission last year and I'd very much like to welcome back Joe Heidermann Who loves being on our Commission? I'd also like to invite those of you who haven't been to the senior center before from the council to please make sure you visit But just in case you didn't or you don't I'm going to show you what it looks like President Lyndon Johnson when signing the Older Americans Act said it clearly affirmed the nation's sense of Responsibility toward the well-being of all of our older citizens back in 1965 Only 17 million Americans actually reached their 65th birthday and one-third lived in poverty 50 years later there are 43.1 million Americans over the age of 65 By the way to come to the senior center. You only need to be 55 Senior centers are more important than ever and need to plan for the ever-increasing older population Life expectancy has increased So have the problems of obesity mental health issues and rates of dementia We have our work cut out for us. I Would like to take this opportunity to tell the new council members how the senior activity center functions We do not receive any federal dollars unlike most senior centers because we do not host a senior dining site We have a unique Collaboration between the city of Sheboygan which provides funding for the staff and the operational costs of the building and the friends organization They said all I had to do was Yeah, there we go The building is free. So the total budget from the city this year was a hundred and eighty thousand five hundred and twenty four When I started ten years ago the budget. I had to work with was $230,000 How do we do it and continue to grow? The friends of the senior activity center raise all of the program funds through fundraising activities selling trips membership fees user fees and donations Despite the fact that we raise all of the money ourselves We're still able to offer 25 active activities free of charge and Fitness classes are not yet 50 cents a session a bargain when you consider that membership is voluntary and Only costs $18 a year we have five hundred and forty eight members and 22,402 Recorded visits. There's a lot of people who don't like you to know that they're there Last year the friends provided 22% of the overall budget We're only able to do this because of the generosity of the seniors Contribute their experience knowledge and wisdom to make our center as vibrant and successful as it is an Example of that generosity occurred last spring when Marion health retired as fitness coordinator after 29 years Three ladies from her classes volunteered to teach swimming line dancing and zumba classes to ensure that everyone could continue their regular exercise program Their efforts paid off recently created a new fitness Center under the direction of Kerry signs to accommodate her growing classes including hula hooping Ours is not a center where people come to receive services or expect to be entertained We have successfully created an environment that inspires seniors upon retirement To share their skills with others 21 programs are led by them including basket weaving basket coiling woodchip carving wall spinning quilting Acrylic and watercolor painting hard-making Drone pottery. I'd like to point out that the teacher here is 92 years old Tai Chi Swimming group has a lot of fun and digital camera classes Our volunteers also assisted 993 individuals from Sheboygan County in completing their taxes this season a Personal goal was reached this year after working with UW Sheboygan We have offered continuing education classes in the history of Islam Indian religions and the origins and course of World War two We're also fortunate to enjoy a close relationship with John Michael Kohler Art Center and Highlights this past year included workshops and television shows with Robert Karimi food artist and storyteller The Friends Board entered a team in the grill-off competition This was our winning dish Robert inspired us to eat locally grown food. We took it one step further My husband designed raised bed gardens and a team from Plymouth Foam built them on the day of caring We did our part by preparing the lunches for volunteers across the county We eat lots Volunteers cook and sell meals to raise funds We held an English tea shop at an art center family festival With a generous gift from the Gertrude and Olivia Anderson Trust we have developed a cooking school Marilyn Montemire teaches once a month and celebrity chefs teach the rest This is our friend Harry from Pro prohibition bistro The city department's heads heads have been especially supported this past year Sandy Roarick played piano at our ladies luncheon Many department heads have given presentations Chad Pellishek and chief Mike Romus are competing for best chef of the year We loved the cream puffs, but can't wait to try Woofenpuff, which is chief Romus's dish this coming Thursday Our seniors are interested in city development Keep abreast of local politics and our dedicated voters. We have an incredible resource in this community Not only the building which is free and the programs which are excellent But the retired people who are active engaged and making a positive impact on the lives of others Wednesday, May 27 is national senior health and fitness day We will be at Fountain Park showcasing our fitness program Including hula hoops a drum circle and dancing to the music of two cool Free and open to the public there will be food trucks there for lunch So we welcome everyone to come celebrate health and fitness with us I would like to thank you the council for your continued support and for recognizing seniors as Powerful and vital citizens who greatly contribute to this community. Thank you Who really made a difference he's a high school student who? Started something last year called take a stand Suicide awareness rally and is also making this happen again this year. I'd like to have rainy covax join me for proclamation presentation Proclamation whereas suicide is the 10th leading cause of all deaths in the United States and the third leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 15 and 24 and more than one person dies Because of suicide every 15 minutes in the United States Take a stand as a Christian based organization with strong roots in the belief that everyone is important and worth love And take it whereas take a stand is fighting the silent battle against depression bullying and most importantly suicide And whereas the purpose of take a stand is to raise awareness of bullying and depression as well as the anxiety and poverty and taking steps To direct people to help in hopes to end suicide And whereas the mission of take a stand is to show individuals that our people who care and suicide prevention is important And needs to be discussed Whereas on May 30th of 2015 the second annual take a stand suicide awareness rally Will be held at Fountain Park from four o'clock to nine o'clock. I'm Mike van der steen mayor of the city of Sheboygan to hereby proclaim May 30th as take a stand suicide awareness day and Rainy, would you like to say a few words? I Don't have anything prepared like The other wonderful woman who came up here dead, but take take a stand is a Christian based suicide prevention event It's locally held here in Sheboygan And something that recently was brought to my attention is that Sheboygan actually has the leading suicide statistics in all of Wisconsin I As well as many other people have known People in the community who have died because of suicide But as well as many people who have come forward throughout the years saying that they are suicide survivors and that is the main reason why we come together and take a stand wants everyone to know that first of all it's open to the public and it's all ages. It's very family friendly and It is a happy event. It's not sad or depressing. It's Definitely there to show that we have a sense of community and it's a really interesting event to see and Everyone who has the opportunity to come out. I would love to see you all there because it's really great Just to get to know everyone in the community. There's Definitely people around you that you may not know some really amazing things about and it gives you a sense of passion and understanding for the people in your community Thank you Thank you very much for stepping out and making this possible our thanks to you and your supporters Week set aside the first one is for first responders and that's from May 17th to 23rd I'd like to thank our paramedics and first responders for all their hard work that they do and there's also The same week is also set aside as public works week And I'd like to thank our DPW crew Dave Bibles here tonight. Thank you for all you do over the year David appreciate it We also have a delegation that's visiting us from Esslingen They're coming to Sheboygan to celebrate the 50th anniversary of people the people which will be held on Saturday evening at Blue Harbor and if you see a few German flags up on some of our flag poles in town You'll know why and then Lastly, we've got a big event coming up with the more Memorial Day Parade and program in this year The Kohler Credit Union their employees step forward to pick up the ball and put this program together for us And Jamie Schramm's here. I'd like him to give us a little update on how that project is going Jamie Thank you, Mayor Van der Steen Good evening everyone council members mayor and all the guests It's an honor and privilege just be standing here before you this evening as a member of Kohler Credit Union's team Which is coordinating our 2015 Memorial Day Parade in Fulton Park Is the mayor said it'll be on May 25th on Memorial Day, which is tradition and the parade will be starting at 9 a.m This just parade will contain over 40 entries consisting of veterans groups active duty military personnel And we really ask them and encourage them to be a part of this besides just the veterans, but the active duty people Community groups school marching bands and several of our elected officials Our parade is going to start on North 7th in Ontario It will proceed north to Superior Avenue travel west on Superior North 9th and then south on 9th Street the Fulton Park In addition to the parade the tradition of our Fulton Park ceremony will also continue There'll be multiple musical performances tributes to our service personnel and our guest speaker this year We'll be United States Marine Corps major David Godwin Major Godwin currently serves as the commanding officer for the Milwaukee recruiting office in the Marine Corps 9th district He has a distinguished military background which includes six tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan He's also trained Marine snipers at officer candidate school in Quantico, Virginia Immediately following the ceremony and something which is new We're gonna have a brat fry in Fulton Park until 1 p.m With 100% of the profits are gonna be donated to the wounded warrior project We have worked with their Chicago office and they are in full support of our efforts Our goal in leading this effort has been to honor our veterans We're reaching out to build community partnerships in order to expand the impact of our Memorial Day remembrances I want to thank all of the cities of Shabuagan apartments including the mayor's office For the guidance and support of our efforts in the police department the department of public works It has been a joy working with you In addition five local businesses have made donations of one kind or another to support our day's events Sargento festival foods johnson's bakery lakeside pepsi and fairchild equipment We thank them Most of the information i've shared here with you this evening We've sent out to our local media outlets via press release last friday And also shared with city officials the large poster you see here to my right I've handed several smaller copies the mayor of anterstein and his office So if you would like to put one up in your workplace your place of business your place to worship to help spread the news We would certainly appreciate that I would ask for all your assistance in sharing the details with our local residents We are grateful for the support and involvement of all those participating in the Memorial Day parade I enthusiastically invite you all of you to attend next monday and to honor all members of our united states armed forces Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this evening Thank you very much jaymie Okay, with that we'll move on to the consent agenda consent agenda will include items two point through through two point two one alderman bellinger Thank you, mayor I moved to accept and file all our o's accept and adopt all our c's and pass all resolutions and ordinances second Okay, there's a motion on the consent agenda other discussion alderman van akron. Thank you, mr. Mayor I'd like to pull forward in 2.9 for a separate vote and i will need to abstain Okay, 2.9 is before us. Is there any discussion just on 2.9? Seeing none will the clerk, please call the roll on just 2.9 13 eyes and one abstention motion passes Then the remaining motion before us is all the other items on the uh consent agenda. Is there any discussion on any of the other items? Hearing none will the clerk, please call the roll for passage Okay 14 eyes Motion passes Item number three includes reports of officers. That's items 3.1 through 3.6. Those will be referred to various committees Under resolutions items 4.1 and 4.2 will also be referred to various committees Under reports of committees Item 5.1 is an rc by public protection and safety Whom is referred our own number 1 of 1415 by the chief of police submitting his quarterly report for department activities for 1115 through 331 15 Alderman carlson. Thank you, mayor. I move to uh, accept the file Second thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on that? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Hi. Opposed Motion passes Item 5.2 is an rc by finance to who's who was referred resolution number 3 of 1415 By alderman boran and heiteman directing the appropriate city officials to negotiate a pilot agreement with aurora health care and recommends That the attached substitute resolution be passed Alderman kath Thank you, mayor. I move that the rc be accepted and adopted and passed the substitute resolution Thank you for that motion and support under discussion Hearing no discussion with a clerk. Please call the roll 13 ayes 1 no motion passes Item 5.3 is an rc by law and licensing to whom was referred our own number 301 of 1415 by the city clerk submitting various license Applications and recommends that beverage operator license number zero 720 be denied based on his failure to accurate reveal all relevant convictions on his application His record of violations relating to the license activity and his record is a repeat law offender alderman vander wheel Thank you, mr. Mayor move the rc be accepted and adopted Thank you for that motion and support under discussion. Is luke therman here this evening? He is here Luke did come to our law licensing meeting He did not reveal any of his convictions. However, he did have a conviction in 2014 of obstructing resisting The police department did give us a negative recommendation based on How recent that violation was as well as He had some other Incidences with the police that did not result in In an ordinance violation, but it did involve drugs and contributing to the delinquency of a minor Like I said, there was no charges. No citations, but it was a concern of the police department based on their contact with him Would you like to make any statement? Yes, may I get a drink of water first though closer to the mic? May I get a drink of water first, please? Sure Ladies and gentlemen of the city council I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to appeal the decision to deny my application for beverage operators license At the time of my application. I was under the impression that convictions prior to my 18th birthday were no longer part of my permanent record Since my becoming of the age of 18. I have been making attempts To straighten out my life, although sometimes finding myself in the wrong place at the wrong time I like to think that it is because of the mistakes I've made. I have learned and found opportunity to better myself I have participated in a dining room and beverage service course through the youth options program In an additional attempt to gain a better understanding and experience relating to my job, which I have held since october 2013 It is my understanding that the mistakes I have made do not define me, but rather define what I've learned I don't think that anybody likes making mistakes twice, let alone once and I would eagerly take any chance to correct myself Thank you very much. Is there any other discussion? Alderman bohran Thanks, mayor Sir, where will you be working with your beverage operators license? I currently work at highland house shabuigan And you said you've been there since 2013 Yes, that's correct. Thank you Is there any other discussion? Alderman van Akron Thank you, mr. Mayor sir. Can you could just elaborate on what your duties will be there? The need for the license do you intend or does the highland house intend to have you working alone? We always be there. I guess with someone else I guess just to expand on what your duties are going to be there and it kind of how that's going to work So far. Yes. I have been working alongside somebody else Every time that I've been working as a bar back That is what I've been trained as and am still training as but Should things move along smoothly? I should be trained as a bartender and eventually I assume that they would have me working by myself in the future. Yes Alderman Jose Do you care to elaborate on the past obstruction charge what the details were? Which obstructions specifically? I just one was mentioned I anyone I guess The one where you actually recede the citation um The one for obstructing and resisting arrest I pled no contest. I I paid my fines and dues And moved along as smoothly as I could I'm not sure what else to say Any other discussion? Alderman barn Thank you, mayor just in follow-up. Uh, sir. Are you doing anything else besides working at highland house? So you student anywhere or have any? any Any plans in that regard in the future? Well, I have completed my LTC course dining room at beverage service as I mentioned And I am finishing my courses at warner high school and I should be graduating this year within the next month or so Thanks Alderman. We'll start thank you, mayor Um, how old are you now? I am 18 But your obstruction charge was in 2014 That's correct. But then last year correct, right? When we were sat in committee, we received an unfavorable referral from our police department And I'm going to respect their decision in in that issue and and continue to vote to deny this license And I hope that you're supporting me Thank you for those comments Any other discussion? Okay, the motion on the floor is Is to deny this license The clerk please call the roll Eight eyes six notes motion passes Thank you very much Item 5.4 is an RC by finance who has referred number Resolution number eight of 1415 by alderman hammond authorizing a transfer of appropriations in the 2015 budget to establish revenue and Appropriations for state of wisconsin cdbg disaster Recovery funding for pennsylvania and who storm stewart and roadway projects and recommends that the resolution be passed Alderman I move that the rc be accepted and adopted and passed the resolution Thank you for that motion and support Any discussion on this motion? Seeing none will the clerk please call the roll Oh, sorry 14 eyes Motion passes Ordinances Both 6.1 and 6.2 will be referred to the public protection and safety committee On other under other matters city attorney Thank you 7.1 Is an ro from the city clerk submitting various license applications for the period ending june 30 2016 That'll be referred to the law and licensing committee 7.2 is an ro from the city clerk submitting various license applications for the period ending december 31 2015 and june 30 2017 Again referred to the law and licensing committee 7.3 is an ro from the purchasing agent submitting a summary of cost for Like a geosystems survey equipment under the like a geosystems gsa contract referred to the public works committee And 7.4 is a resolution Authorizing the appropriate city officials to enter into a contract for the purchase of digitally based survey equipment and software Also be referred to the public works committee Alderman Bellinger Thank you, mayor move to adjourn second. Thank you for that motion and support All those in favor of adjourning, please signify by saying aye. I oppose and will stand adjourned. Thank you very much for your attendance


The next talk is, let me unlock my phone first, is from Stefano Frantelo and it's PBX on a non-specialized distro. So, yeah. Give her applause. No. Okay. Hi to everyone. I'm Stefano and I'm a server developer. I'm here to talk to you about how and why we package the PBX inside NetServer. NetServer is a multipurpose distribution and the issue that we encountered when packaging it. First of all, the software we choose for the PBX was Hustry's Canfree PBX. They are both quite old but they fit very well in the environment that is in our user case. And Hustry's is very flexible and it fit well in an enterprise environment starting from small enterprises to the big carrier and providers. And that's why probably the main, a lot of choice that you do when you build Hustry's is about that and that's why its main distribution method is the source code. It's hard to find the updated packages of Hustry's. Free PBX is the web interface for Hustry's. It's a PHP web interface and it has a MySQL database or a SQLite database in some case but it's not 100% support so we choose to use Maria. And when you configure Free PBX it stores its configuration into the database and when you apply configuration it writes Hustry's configuration file then reload them. It's written in PHP, it's modular, it's also very extendable and it's easy to write your own modules. Okay, when we choose to package the PBX we start taking a look from the CIS admin point of view on why CIS admin should choose to have the PBX on a multipurpose distros instead of having a specialised one. There are a few specialised distros and the pro of having a specialised distro are that they of course are easy to install and they are cutting edge, they always have the last updates from Hustry's and Free PBX modules. They have commercial modules and this can be very important because also you have paid support. In the case of the Sangoma distros they give paid support only if you have your distros and because of this usually are installed in an enterprise environment. Usually having paid support available is mandatory. The cons of having a specialised distro is that sometimes they are bleeding edge you can't always trust the updates and you can't use your server for something else too. Sometimes in an enterprise environment it can be useful to have more application on the same server to reduce the hardware to maintain and to monitor. You have to do manual configuration when you use this kind of distros for everything and maybe your distro as a nice guy with user friendly interface but in this case you have to manually configure everything that is not configured inside the Free PBX. But you can't manually configure everything if you want because some Free PBX modules write their configuration and mess with your configuration. Now a distribution point of view. The reasons why we choose to package PBX is that first of all having more user. Having more user is part of this virtual circle that helps to make a better distro. Second, we wanted to provide the PBX for our current user and as enterprise to our customers. And also it's important for us to have the PBX on a multiple purpose server for the reason I said before. And it's also easier as enterprise to give support because when you have a support team you have to train the team only on another application instead of a whole new system. There are also the reasons that depends mainly on why you are building a distribution but I think that we can summarize that there is still a big interest in this kind of application in the enterprise environment. The distro I'm talking about is NetServer. I don't know if you already hear it. Who know NetServer? Who already know NetServer? NetServer is a CentOS-based distribution and unlike other CentOS-based distribution it doesn't rebuild the packages from CentOS but add a layer over those packages to help the configuration. And this layer of configuration has another layer that is a web guy that help the admin to have a user-friendly interface to configure everything. That's an overview of the NetServer architecture but it's quite complex and I'm not going to talk about it today. If you are interested there are a lot of documentation on the internet. Okay, let's now see what are the issues that you encounter when you try to package those applications and also the issues that you encounter when you try to package similar applications. Okay, first of all, FreePBX requires HTTPD to run as Asterisk user and this is quite simple to solve. The problem is that we need to have two instance of HTTPD because we don't want the normal instance of HTTPD to run as Asterisk user. So we create another instance by creating another configuration and creating another system D or whatever service that use this configuration. The second problem here is the PHP version. We use the upstream CentOS FreePBX PHP version. In our case it's CentOS 7 and it's 5.4. FreePBX 14 needs 5.6 but we don't want to install for everyone the 5.6 because it can brokoder application. So we installed PHP from SGL and since we already use another HTTPD instance we configured this instance to use PHPFPM from the newer version of PHP. This has a drawback. That means that the two version of PHP runs at the same time in the system. This has the drawback that is when you want to run a shell command that use the newer version of PHP maybe for using the FreePBX console you need to load before the environment. But there is also an advantage that is very easy for us to migrate to another version of PHP when it's required. It will be very easy for us to migrate to PHP 7 because only FreePBX in the system will use this version of PHP. Another issue that we encountered is that it's not easy to find the updated package for Asterisk, FreePBX and their dependencies. So when you start to build a new package you can't find, it's not easy for you to find other packages to copy from. We were lucky here because we can take SangomaSource RAPM is a very good starting point because they are very up to date. It's not very easy to take them because the repositories aren't browsable. But if you want to start now to do this, you will probably take a look to our GitHub where we have all our source RAPM and we are ready to do the best that we can from other packages. Okay, that's the worst part. Pics like many other applications use an installation script for putting file around, change permission, and configure database, start and stop service. And this is very bad because you can't use a normal RAPM to put file around and to check permissions. The solution, we don't have a solution here because you have two options. The option one is to take the installation script and use it inside your package, but it's ugly because you are using an installation script that fails, you don't have GPG check and integrity check and everything. The other option is to let the RAPM do the right thing and put file in the right places, but we choose the one because the second was too time-consuming and it took us too far from the vanilla FreePBX and would be hard to keep peace with update. Basically, it could mean to fork and we didn't want to. Okay, another issue is how to take care of backup. NetServer has some backup and FreePBX also has backup models, but we didn't want to use it because we don't want to configure another backup on the model when we have already configured the system-wide one. So we take all the databases and when we want to restore it, we just install FreePBX as a new installation, and throw away is database and install the backup one. Okay, another issue is that Hasterisk has a few kernel models that are used for timing and for internal hardware. And when you use those models, if there is a kernel update that doesn't depend on you, but in our case, we use upstream kernel so we can't know when a kernel will be updated. Substantially, the update is broken if you don't rebuild the kernel models. The solution here we adopted was to use week updates that is a nice feature of CentOS that allow you to install the kernel models in another kernel with the same major version. It's not the same solution that FreePBX used in their distro because they build the kernel too. If you are building the kernel or if you use, I don't know, maybe some Jenkins, you probably would like to build the kernel models every time. Okay, FreePBX has the capability, a model to configure the WebRTC extension, but they are still also quite difficult to use. So we added Janus Gateway that is WebRTC to CIP Gateway. It's a very cool software and if you are interested, there is a talk about it tomorrow in the real-time track. And that's all. If you want to talk about NetServer, there is a development room in this building at 16 p.m. And if you want to contact me for talking about PbX or whatever, just use my contact, I will be very glad to hear from you. Thank you. Thank you, Stefano. Does anyone have any questions for him? We still have one more minute left. Question? I guess just one comment. Mostly, Daddy, it still breaks on every major release of CentOS on every point release, but you mostly don't need it. For timing, you really don't need it on recent asterisk unless you use MeetMe instead of Contrary. Okay, yes, you're right. Daddy is not mandatory for timing. You also have a better option. In my experience, they don't always work well when you need very strict timing like for fax. So, yeah, I think that's it. A round of applause. Thank you.


Hello, everyone. Welcome. I'm James Milan and this is a talk of the town legislative update with our state representative, Dave Rogers, who covers a good portion of Arlington and Belmont and a little bit of Cambridge in his district. And we had the privilege of being able to talk to Dave regularly several times a year to get an update. Dave, first of all, thank you for joining us and happy New Year. Thanks. It's great to be here and happy New Year to you. I hope you're doing well despite these very unusual times we're living for. Yeah. Well, obviously doing well, like so many other things is, is, is, you know, just feels different in, in, in context, in the current context than it usually does. But we are here and happy to talk to you and hopeful still about what 2021 will bring for all of us. But let's ask you to kind of just briefly revisit 2020 or at least these last months since we last spoke to you, because there's been a lot going on in the legislature in our state house, despite the constraints that COVID has imposed on the way that you guys do business, you have been very productive.  Sure. Well, thanks for the opportunity. And yes, despite these kind of challenging times, the legislature has adopted and adjusted to those times we've adopted emergency rules. So we can vote. It's a skeleton crew in the state house of legislators in the House and Senate running the sessions. And then most of us are at home voting from home. And so that's very unusual because legislating is very much a type of work that involves coordination and acting in concert with others. And so it's been challenging to do so from home. But we've adopted and adjusted and so adapted, I should say. So I think some of the big things we've been able to do, one, I would say is the voting wall we passed because of social distancing protocols, obviously highly concerned about bunching at the polls, the potential for the spread of the virus. So we had to on the fly pretty quickly pass a new voting law. And we did. And it was really well thought out. It had a number of provisions for mail in ballot, which people really took advantage of prove to be very popular. We also expanded early voting both in the primary and the general election, a full 14 days of early voting, two weeks of early voting in the general election. And one thing that I push for I working with the chair of the election laws is that our town clerks could begin to tabulate the votes ahead of time before now couldn't reveal which way an election result was going for fear of creating bias in those who chose to vote on election day because we preserved election day voting. But they could begin to tabulate them. Well, why is that important? Because as we all sat on pens and needles waiting for Pennsylvania and some other states because in those states, they didn't tabulate votes early. They didn't start counting the votes until the polls closed election day. And so the whole country waited. Again, you know, with bated breath for what would be the results of the election. And we didn't do that in Massachusetts. Again, something I push for that our town clerk could tabulate votes early. Anyway, long and short of it is we had record shattering turnout in Massachusetts. I think it broke all records. So in the midst of a pandemic, we had more participatory democracy than ever before. I would say that was a resounding victory in that new law we passed. We passed sweeping police reform. Sorry, I was going to interrupt you before you move on. I did want to just say the what you just described about some of the changes to the voting procedures that were kind of pandemic imposed in a sense. And you guys were pivoted quickly. That early tabulation to me, you know, I'll just know it doesn't make any sense for me to me that we do it any other way. You know, why not get ahead at least of the count as best we can, you know, that counts started. As you said, as long as the results themselves are not, you know, or preliminary results are not at all, you know, broadcast, then, you know, that's just making the clerk's job. I'm not sure if it's easier, but the expedites the process on the other side of the official election day. So hopefully, you know, those states that don't operate that way may reconsider, you know, in the future. And kudos to you guys for for doing it here. No, it's a great point point well taken. And I'm originally my native home state is Pennsylvania. And I knew following the election closely, as I imagined many were, that Pennsylvania was going to be truly a key this year. So I went down to Pennsylvania, the final five days before the election, and campaign for Biden Harris, the Biden Harris ticket, you know, wearing a mask, going door to door, handing out literature, all sorts of things. And then on election day, I was what's called election protection, where I received a very lengthy training was like a three hour training session, and be at a poll location to. And then they had a central place with election lawyers, where if I saw any irregularities, any problems to report them in. And so the reason I mentioned that is I sort of was talking with other activists, Pennsylvania activists in the Democratic Party. And they passed their election law last year. And so the pandemic hadn't hit yet. I mean, I shouldn't say last year, 2019, now that we're in a new year, 2019, that we passed ours in 2020, Pennsylvania did theirs in 2019. And there was kind of I don't know if we want to get into all the details of that now, but they explained sort of the political tradeoffs that were going in the Pennsylvania State House and State Senate that led to the law being written the way it was. Democrats did push for early tabulation, Democratic state legislators in Pennsylvania. And so I think it's really important and hasn't been said often enough that, you know, Republicans have complained G, because, you know, there was the so-called mirage where Trump was up in Pennsylvania. But then as the mail in, I mean, excuse me, yes, as the votes were tabulated in places with heavy mail and voting, you know, Biden took the lead and the Republicans were complaining like how could this be? Well, it's because your Republican controlled state legislature set it up that way. So they're complaining. And it was both the House and Senate in Pennsylvania are controlled by Republicans. So I don't mean to go off too much on that, but I'm actually glad I was there. I'm glad I asked you the follow up question because we wouldn't have heard that about your experience going down to Pennsylvania. And I think that that's that is of interest to me, for sure. And I think to our audience as well. Yeah, it was a little fraught.  I mean, we saw what happened tragically on January 6th, the rioting at the Capitol. But I have to tell you, you know, following the news, there were concerns, there might be violence around the election itself. And going to a swing state in like Pennsylvania, where James Carville once described as Philadelphia on one end, Pittsburgh on the other and Alabama in between. You know, and they have a lot of militia groups. And to be honest, doing election protection work down there caused me, you know, I wasn't too worried about it. But it gave me a little pause. But in the end, Well, I mean, certainly, Pennsylvania was a front line, an absolute front line in for this particular election, both in terms of, you know, it's decisive impact on that election, but also just what you've just describing the fraught situation that we were all aware of, leading into the election, and obviously, on the other side of it as well. So just really interesting to get your perspective as somebody who is right there. Yeah, it's happy to play my part. And obviously, we got a big win. And happy to see my original home state of Pennsylvania come through. And, and obviously, you know, I know this is taped to be broadcast later, but you were here on January 19. And tomorrow we'll have a new president and it can't come soon enough. I wish there was a fast forward button I could push, but we'll have to wait till tomorrow at noon. And feeling that yes, feeling that many of us, you know, would have or or a, you know, a mechanism many of us would have long for, for March on fast forward police. Well, I would have, yeah, for four years, but you know, at any rate, all right, anyway, let's let us get you know, I interrupted let us move on. No, that's fine. So another big piece we did is police reform. Obviously, the Black Lives Matter movement, very powerful, the killing of George Floyd and many others and a pattern of systemic racism that's going on for a very, very long time. And we took it up. It was controversial. The to give you a sense of how controversial, I will tell you that 34 Democrats in the Massachusetts House voted against doing police reform. So it's interesting, I frequently try to explain to constituents in my more progressive district, the interplay and the dynamics politically in the Massachusetts House. And at times I kind of struggle to articulate and fully explain the different districts around the state, how the Merrimack Valley or the South Shore may send a Democrat, but a much more moderate Democrat than would come from Cambridge or Arlington or Belmont or frankly, out in Western Mass, the college areas, you know, right? It's not quite what you were saying about Pennsylvania with Alabama being between, you know, these various liberal polls. But, but, you know, what what I hear you saying, and what I've noticed myself is that that Democratic majority in our legislature in general, does span quite a bit of, you know, of the political spectrum. It really does. And that's been eyeopening to me in my time in service in the House is, you know, sort of go there. And I come from a certain part of the state and you can mistakenly assume why you've got a D after your name, you're a Democrat. So I imagine you and I probably square up on almost all the issues are, and then you get to know some of your colleagues, and you find out that they are Democrats and do vote with the Democrats on a lot of things. They're solid Democrats. But, you know, they're they're not liberal Democrats. They're not progressive Democrats. They're not. And so 34 Democrats, there's 160 of us. So all the Republicans and 34 Democrats voted against the police reform. And so what have we got it through? And it was really a landmark piece in that it for the first time establishes a truly independent certification process, a licensure, licensure process for police, they can be decertified. That agency, that new agency has sweeping powers, subpoena powers, investigatory powers. So that was a pretty dramatic piece. We put significant limitations on the use of force, chokeholds, rubber bullets, tear gas, all sorts of limitations on the way police can use force. We put limitations on so called no knock warrants. And we put in place a whole series of additional training measures. And to be fair to our police, the truth is, often now police are going on calls that involve mental health issues. And it's funny, I just did a zoom meeting, a forum with the chief of police in Belmont, another part of my district. We're really a very strong and good thoughtful police chief, Jamie MacIsaac. He put out a very strong statement after George Floyd was killed. He's very progressive in his thinking. But he made the point, you know, our officers are frequently going to homes where maybe a person is experiencing significant mental health problems, bipolar, depression, anxiety, the full range of issues. And as a consequence, that's a very challenging environment for a police officer. What he wants to do is hire social workers. I think Arlington has social workers. That's right. Police department, Belmont doesn't have him. And so he made the point that, look, we want to address these challenges. But so anyway, the police bill that we did, we'll have training on for officers on how to deal with these very difficult situations. So there really, I'm leaving out 15 other things. I mean, one piece was a part that I wrote on facial recognition to limit the use of facial recognition software. We know that it's biased against people of color and women. The police here in our state were using it by going to the RMB, the Registry of Motor Vehicles, without a warrant, and sort of rifling through their system to do facial recognition, facial recognition searches. And so we wrote a strong bill that actually originally required a full warrant. Governor Baker amended the bill. This is part of the problem. The 34 Democrats who didn't vote with us, we didn't have a veto proof majority that gave Governor Baker our Republican governor more power authority to amend the bill, unlike a US president who can only sign or veto. In most states, including ours, our governors have a third option, other than signing a veto, which is to amend. So Baker sent it back with amendments and made it very clear that if we didn't go along with substantially with his amendments, he would be telling. And then we didn't have the majority. So we agreed to sign this amendment, including one that kind of, right, exactly, including one that watered down the piece that I had brought forward on facial recognition. It's still good. There is now some limitation on how law enforcement can use the software. And it brings up both civil libertarian concerns of Fourth Amendment search and seizure without warrant, but it also brings up bias free policing or systemic racism issues in that the algorithms that the program was used to develop this software was later revealed, I think we're mostly based on Caucasian features. And so now even Amazon and big tech that helped design the software have admitted that it's flawed, that it needs to be revisited. I think Amazon announced it for it would put a moratorium on even selling their facial recognition software to law enforcement out of concern. So anyway, so the police reform bill has Yeah, so let me really, really strong bill. Yeah, before we move on. Well, I guess you just said it. I wanted, you know, with the understanding that that there was some modification of it as a result of the governor's input, etc. That as you say, 34 of your Democratic colleagues did not vote for it. In the aggregate, it does sound like you agree would agree that it is a good bill, a strong bill, one that you stand behind. Absolutely. I mean, it makes truly sweeping changes to the way law enforcement does its work. And as I said, I think some of it, I think as law enforcement gets to know the bill and what's in it, they'll like a lot of it. For instance, better training on how to deal with difficult situations. I mean, it really was I thought thoughtful, and pretty well structured. You know, the police will still be able to do their work in public safety. But it puts new teeth in sort of regulation and licensing and the ability with problematic officers to decertify them so they can't police here, or frankly, anywhere else. And so we could devote a whole hour for them to the I've left off quite a few provisions that are in there. We have, I guess, want to cover a fair amount of ground. But it is truly, I you know, choose your word landmark breakthrough whatever pretty profound shift in how our law enforcement will do its work in our state. Well, as you said, we are expecting or asking you to cover quite a bit of ground in this half hour. And we do understand that that means that unfortunately, we're not going to be able to delve as much into as much detail as we would like. Yeah, and I have a constituent newsletter I send out once a month and a website and with links where people can drill deeper if they really want to understand in a little more detail. And, you know, my personal cell phone is published, people call me and I'm always happy to talk in more depth and people do reach out. So but I think for the purposes of our discussion, we've covered a lot of the big things that are in it. You know, another major thing we did was a climate change bill. Again, really a breakthrough, a pretty sweeping bill that would get the Commonwealth to net zero emissions by 2050. And the previous bill that was in law that was in place was the Global Warming Solutions Act, GWSA. And that set a benchmark of 1990 emission levels and said that we would get bring our emissions down to a certain percentage of that below that. And so this is sort of the next generation climate legislation that goes beyond even the Global Warming Solutions Act to get us to net zero emissions. It will spur renewable energy. It has expands wind energy. For the first time ever, it has an environmental justice piece, so that low income and minority communities are not disproportionately harmed by environmental degradation and the siting of plants. And so again, another bill, it makes municipal light plants, there are 41 municipal utilities throughout the Commonwealth. They're different than the IOUs, the investor owned utilities like Eversource. And we mandated that those 41 municipal utilities meet the same standards on renewable energy that the IOUs. We increased what's called the RPS, the Renewable Portfolio Standard percentage of clean energy, renewable energy that the big utilities now all the utilities need to have as part of their energy mix. I mean, this was a huge bill. And again, I could there's 12 other provisions in that as well as a comprehensive bill. Unfortunately, as you may have heard, you may have read the Governor vetoed it. And the way that worked is the conference committee between the House and the Senate negotiated a final agreement. That took time. It's a complicated bill. Energy policy is inordinately complex. But they got it done, got it to the governor, but he was at the end of the session. And now we've started a new session. So by law, the governor has 10 days to review it. He waited till the 10th day. And he vetoed it. So the House and Senate promptly came out and said, and we couldn't override it to finish the circle of how that works, because a new session it's done. And can you write it in the new session? Well, no, that is the end of the session. Any legislation from the previous reintroduce we have to do it. Oh, but we will. Both the House and Senate leadership came out and said, right away, we will take this up. I think we'll take it up very early. I think we'll put it on his desk again. And this time, if he vetoes it, we'll be the beginning of the session, we'll override his veto. So it will happen. Right. Great. We're able to speak about it as if, you know, it's not yet passed, but you're you've outlined why we can be quite confident that highly confident that Can I can I ask you something about this, Dave? The the soundbite that all of us would have heard already, and that you have repeated is this idea of net zero by 2050. Right. That is a shorthand for a whole lot of work and a whole lot of content in that bill, I understand. Right. Can I ask you, when that is the case, when you have legislation that comes out, and that is the goal, are what's what is the point of something like that? Is it literally that we are going to marshal all our forces to getting to net zero by 2050? Or is that more an aspiration that then drives a lot of specific kind of policies that come? No, it's not aspirational. It's the law. It's a binding law. And every five years, the way the law is written, what will become the law is that there'll be measuring points. I'll let folks know if you didn't, we're lucky in Arlington and that we have the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs lives right here in Arlington. Secretary Kathleen Theoharides is actually my constituent lives in the part of Arlington I represent. She's Charlie Baker's Secretary of. Yeah. Her Twitter handle, if you want to check it out is climate cave. So she's really forward thinking about climate change and environmental issues. And they've already began to map and model emissions throughout the state from all sources in anticipation of then implementing the new law. So I think we can be hopeful and confident that we're going to have a law that strong teeth to it is binding. One of the big debates that goes on in the environmental community, and it's an honest, legitimate debate is net zero versus 100% renewable energy.  And one of the challenges that many experts and there's vigorous and honest debate about this I, you know, I want to make that clear that those who have some qualms or concerns about 100% renewable is that one, our current grid is not able to handle 100% renewable energy platform. And then two, that we don't have sufficient energy storage capacity yet to get us to 100% renewable. I'm sure you've heard this, you know, you only get solar energy when the sun is shining, you always get when you only get wind energy when the wind is blowing. And but what if what if you could store that energy? There's pioneering work going on throughout the country throughout the world. Even we all see the Tesla the cars what people may not know about Tesla is they're very deeply involved in studying and developing energy storage technology right here in Massachusetts. We have a lot of companies looking at matter of fact, another constituent of mine in Arlington, Emily Riker, who's an outstanding leader of Green Town Labs, that is the largest clean energy incubator for tech companies, small tech companies in the entirety of North America. So including Canada and Mexico. And I visited several times. It's where Ed Markey went to announce the Green New Deal. He announced it in Washington DC with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and then came to Massachusetts to do a launch. I was there with him when he did so at Green Town Labs in Somerville, again, which is led by an Arlington resident. And so but to get to 100% renewable energy, we have we face technological challenges. And that's why there are many ardent passionate advocates for for tackling climate change who think net zero is an equally effective if not more effective way to go. But again, that is a real debate in the environmental community. My point is, with the net zero approach that we took in the legislature, it's not like never the twain shall meet. I mean, again, to get to net zero, you're going to see renewable energy go way up. And we have a new incoming speaker of the House just took office. And he gave sort of a maiden speech where he set out his priorities and like number one was wind energy. Where he said there's no reason that we shouldn't try to lead the whole country on wind energy. We have many megawatts have already been authorized. So I think we're going to see a huge ramping up of wind energy in our state. That's great. You know what? We have about three minutes left. Is there anything that you can touch on in that time? And we'll we'll forgo for the moment kind of looking forward. And we'll just we'll we'll cover that next time we get to talk to you.  Well, you know, I guess one other thing I mentioned is we did pass something called the row act, obviously with Trump appointing three of the nine Supreme Court justices, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. It's unusual for a one term president to get three picks. Jimmy Carter was a one term president. I don't think he got any picks. You'll see two term presidents will get two, three, maybe four. Very unusual just the way, of course, one of them is a stolen seat from Mary Garland. Right. Looks to be coming in as our new attorney general. But what's my point? There are many advocates in Planned Parenthood and they were all people who study law and policy in this area. Believe that the new Supreme Court majority is poised to either overturn Roe versus Wade or or or limit it in traumatic ways. That's actually what I think is more likely. But whether it's overturned completely or limited severely. What the public may not know is that wouldn't automatically ban choice or abortion around the entire it would devolve it to the states. And so in anticipation of that and with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the House passed the Roe Act, which will codify the right to choose and expand it here in Massachusetts. In a couple key ways, for instance, the fatal fetal anomaly. If a woman and gets the tragic news that the child cannot survive outside the womb, she can terminate the pregnancy. And also the age at which younger people need to get consent from their parents has been lowered to 16. Below 16, they would still need either judicial bypass or consent. So that was a big breakthrough. And again, that that's a hard bill to move. Obviously choice and abortion is controversial issue, but we got it done. The governor vetoed it. But we did have the votes to override the governor on that. So that was big. And then of course, we have the coronavirus and we have done a lot in the legislature to help. A lot of the powers to address a public health emergency are with the governor. Matter of fact, as a lawyer, one thing that has struck me, and it's pretty remarkable the power the governor does have it's under the Civil Defense Act. It's been litigated. It's been tested because as you know, there are essential and non essential businesses. Some of the businesses and business groups representing businesses that were deemed non essential litigated the matter. How can the governor in a free country with free market capitalism just shut these businesses down? And so it's been litigated. And the judges have cited that during a public health emergency, the governor has these powers. So I'm thinking of that now more with the roll out of the vaccine. And we've seen extremely problematic in the early going of the rolling out of the vaccine. And that has been I've been pushing the governor working with other reps and senators. You know, I think this whole coronavirus pandemic has shown us how important it is how important government is. You know, we need a thriving private sector for innovation and the dynamism of creative, creative innovation in our economy to create jobs. But equally important. Equally important is that we have an outstanding well functioning government. And it's big picture and I know we're getting near the end of our time. And I think about this stuff a lot because I work in public policy and politics. Even laying putting the side of Trump. We have seen for 40 years now, the denigration of government that we need to cut it, we need to limit it. And if you ever needed exhibit a for the importance of a well financed, well managed, thoughtful people, outstanding public administrators, outstanding public leaders. That's I give you COVID-19.  And I see this as a larger story of not just Trump. But the last 40 years of really kind of giving government a bad name, and always wanted to cut it and limit it and limit regulations. And the truth is, we're finding out that having a good center for disease control, having a good National Institute to Health, having good state and local public health departments is so vital, I would say to, to our entire society and our economy. Because if you look at other recessions, I was an economics major and work for an economic consulting company earlier part of my career. Other recessions were caused by out of the financial sector out of Wall Street, or out of housing or go back to the 70s, the oil shock, OPEC, the oil embargo. Whereas they happen in the financial markets are the leading economic indicators are disrupted. Think of this. This is a public health recession, a public health recession. And so I don't mean to go on at too great a length about that. But it's further evidence to me that we need outstanding public leaders. You know, when people talk about what we need to raise, raise progressive revenue to invest in infrastructure and an education and reforming different systems, that's every bit as important as private sector investment. In some ways more so. And as you can tell, I get pretty passionate about that because I really, to meet the challenges of this new century we're in, we're going to we really have to learn lessons from what's happened here this last year. There's so many lessons to be learned. And I'll be trying to incorporate them into my work as a state representative. And I'm so happy a new administration is taking office tomorrow. We're going to have a long difficult road ahead. But I think we can sort of breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief. And so I'll look forward to partnering with my constituents. And the road ahead as we meet the challenges to come. I'm looking forward to meeting those challenges and in a new session that's just begun. And I look forward, you know, my, as my cell phones public, my website, there's my email. I look forward to hearing from folks and working. And I apologize, I'm at home and I don't know the angle of the camera. I don't know if it's a little weird. No problem, Dave. In fact, you know, we blew right by the 30 minute limit that I had promised you and, you know, and my producer that we would adhere to. But, you know, the reason, you know, I'll stand by the reasons for doing so, which is you have a discursive style, as I'm sure you're well aware. But through that, we get real insight into a lot, you know, much beyond the, you know, simply what is going on insight into how, you know, your own values, how you are approaching your job, what you think is most important or most dysfunctional, etc., which I think is illuminating for all of us. And also, you know, you have a lot going on in that head of yours. And it's good to hear that in, you know, as it streams out, it really is. So I appreciate you taking this time. We'll get back with you soon enough. And kind of see how these first months of the new administration go. And what effect that has, again, on Massachusetts in terms of public health, in terms of the economy, as you said, this public health recession that we are all dealing with and hopefully moving away from in the coming months. So I look forward to that. But appreciate your time with us today, really. Thank you very much. I enjoyed as always and look forward to continuing to have a dialogue on the issues that we don't care about. Appreciate it very much. I've been speaking to Dave Rogers, our state representative, one of our two state representatives here in Arlington. And this has been a legislative update and part of our Talk of the Town series. So thanks again to Dave Rogers. And thanks to you for joining us. And we will see you next time.


First question is from Todi Crudeau. Do any of you integrate different proteins such as whey, casein, plant-based for different purposes throughout the day or week? Is casein before bed just pro-science, or are there legitimate benefits to utilizing various proteins differently? Who pays this one? I did. We haven't crapped all over this in a while. Yeah, I know. So this is a context matters question. If your protein intake is low, then the type of protein you eat does matter quite a bit. So if you have low protein intake or below what would be considered ideal for performance and building muscle, which studies show is about 0.6 grams per pound of body weight all the way up to about a gram per pound of body weight. If it's below that, then you're going to want to have a protein source that is high in branched chain amino acids. Whey protein is really good. Animal sources are superior to plant sources. Studies will show that those sources build more muscle, contribute better to performance and recovery and all that stuff. If your protein is high, if you're eating a high protein diet, 0.6 to one gram per pound of body weight really doesn't make that big of a difference. In fact, it almost doesn't matter at all because when you're eating that much protein, you get a lot of amino acids and it doesn't really make a difference. Now, you might be wondering why supplement companies will tell you to eat this protein at night, this one during the day or whatever because if you're a successful protein company and you're selling a lot of whey protein, you want to sell another type of protein. Yeah, figure it out. Yeah, how can you sell another protein without getting them to stop taking the one that they already take? Well, you tell them that the one that they buy and take is great first. Yeah, exactly. That one's good for post-workout, this one's good for nighttime, this one's good for travel, this one's good for whatever. So you hear a lot of that, but this is really splitting hairs and if your protein intake is high, it really doesn't make a difference. Now, that addresses the whey and the casing, but what I will, and I don't do this like I'm not scheduled about it, right? But I'm just aware of it, right? So I do rotate and we, I think we all do this, rotate our foods and the sources of protein. So like I'm not always going to get it from chicken thighs. If I found that I had a week where I had a lot of chicken thighs and I didn't have any fish, the next week I'm trying to make sure that I implement more fish into my diet. If I'm never getting it from beans, I'm trying to get it from beans every once in a while. Like I try to just rotate my foods all the time. So I'm also picking up all the other micronutrients that you're getting from different types of foods. So I do think there's a tremendous amount of value. I think any articles that try and sell you on why this type of a protein, whether it be from food or protein shake, is better than the other, is splitting hairs so long as you're hitting your intake, right? So if you are hitting the number of grams that you should be hitting for your body to build muscle, the maximum amount, which is somewhere between 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of body weight, if you're hitting that, where it's coming from is not really going to make a difference on how you change the look of your body composition. But I think for health purposes, I think it's ideal to chase that protein number through whole foods and to rotate those whole foods as much as possible. Yeah, that's the best advice that I would say. And look, they've done studies. They compare plant proteins to animal proteins. And when protein intakes are lower than what we just said, the optimal amount, animal proteins are superior. They just are.  But then when they take a lot of protein, it doesn't matter. It's equal in terms of the results. Now, here's the deal. There's a huge individual variance between people in terms of which protein sources feel the best. And for me, I stick with the protein sources. I digest the best. So whey is a great source of protein. I don't digest whey at all, so I never have it, right? But there's also beef protein, right? Yes. So there's something else, too, that, like, I always forget about that and then egg protein. And so there's other various sources. But yeah, that's one of the big considerations is really how that's affecting your digestive system. What, you know, you can process the best, what resonates the best with you. That's something that I would lean towards. And sometimes that changes, too. Like, even if I'm inundated with dairy, I might even feel it a bit to where I'll probably, like, try some plant protein and rotate it kind of like what Adam's saying, too. But it's just important to kind of move things around so you don't get too inundated with one source. Yeah, beef, for me, is the easiest to digest. If I eat a lot of beef, I just, my gut feels good. My body feels good as a result. That's my favorite source of protein. Second would be chicken. Third would be fish. Lamb is up there, too. Other sources of protein can bother me. Plant protein's okay, but if I push that too hard, that can start to bother me. Dairy, I can't eat either. So think about that for yourself. Like, what makes you feel the best? And then hit your protein targets based off of that.