What's good, Joshua boros back again with another video, so we're gonna check out none disclosure agreement by promo Joe He just dropped this video. So, you know, I have to check this out Appreciate everyone that was sending this video to me. I knew I was gonna check this out man I love promo Joe's videos. So this should be a good one. Appreciate all love and support wrote to a honey K man And let's get right to this thing John Moxley is the third best guy in his own group This was a cool promo segment on dynamite very cool very tits say we apparently the whole Situation with him calling out Adam hangman page before this whole promo segment that wasn't scripted He went off script on that apparently there's some real backstage heat with him and Adam Page and then also he was Threatening I guess reports saying he was threatening I guess leaving or like not showing up for this show or wanting to leave AEW or some crazy stuff There's some backstage heat with him and Adam Page So when he said that and I'm page didn't come out that wasn't scripted. That was like him just going off script I don't know what's going on there Definitely gonna keep an eye on that. But yeah Crazy way to start off AEW Dynamite this week And that seems to be a recurring theme in his career But John Moxley's not willing to test himself against his best friend And let's talk about numbers his best friend is the third best Eddie. I've ever been in the ring with oh He's the second best Kingston. I've ever shared a locker room with I Forgot him and and and Kofi Kingston were tag team titles. I mean when the tag team championships The funny thing is is heading into Chicago John Moxley is not even the first John That was a good that was good little mashup Hey, man, I wish they would bring back that theme song for a raw as war or when they night raw man That was that was it and I knew I know this is like a new intro But that that theme song always got you high for Monday night raw. Well at the time raw is war Bring it back man, I wish they could Oh I like how they set this up. This is cool 1984 is a terrifying tale of people being forced to think and behave the way They're all powerful leader tells them to by the way Congratulations to Vince McMahon on his retirement. Oh A young Chris Jericho With the same gear The Lionheart gear Wow It's beat for beat Sami Zayn's whole theme music definitely definitely worked for him, bro crowd would always get into it We drank the blood of some people, but the people want drugs and now I'm a wizard What I could see it out there. Oh Like that call back and they fusion with the mysterious. I love that. That was that was nice. That was I love that He did pull that He depth man who remembers when Seth Rollins were feuding with Triple H and he took over in it Interrupting NXT takeover. Oh, that was so that was so cool. That was a cool moment Really did the same thing for some of them Classic matches Whipping her body to her left Whipping her body to her left Not this guy though What? Gold Cobra? Yeah Friend's Olympus Holding the gold is so gold is so golden, young Golden Cobra We got a match coming up at the pay-per-view, which I will soundly defeat you if I touch you now I'm afraid you're just gonna bleed all over me.  He's had John Moxley just starts bleeding profusely and now that the match is supposed to happen next week on AEW Dynamite, how much you guys are willing to bet John Moxley is going to bleed He's gonna bleed in this AEW Unification matches. He's gonna bleed the title unification matches. He's definitely dropping pints of blood Yeah, bro, and then the camera angle shows them Sorry Well, I'm sorry Deirdre, but this time Not at all right, phoenix Well for you've been backstage all day Have you been able to find out what exactly is in Montez Ford's red color? Uh, I have an idea, but I'm not willing to disclose right now. You guys did make me sign an NDA. Oh Oh, man. Oh Okay Yeah, I think you can see him cutting it He dragged my personal life into this. That's something that I would never ever do. Do you understand me?  There's two people Who aren't here today and one his name is John Moxley This is what it comes to people actually cheering. This is not an accomplishment because I could have sent you straight, man You wouldn't have drank you wouldn't have smoked you wouldn't be who you are right now You wouldn't be on this path that you're on a guy like you could never beat me I'm straight atch Alcohol has never touched my lips. It never will you're gonna fall back into the same vicious cycle.  This is cool. You'll lose to me This is so cool. You will lose to me and you will fall back into your vices. You know how many times I've been to a rehab facility They created a nice little promo package of themselves Oh I think I know what clip they're gonna show Yeah, I've been seeing this all over All over twitter bros. This was this is a good clip Oh my god, he hurt himself millions of other americans. I am fed up with their childish antics And I refuse to play along This is not the america that we grew up in And I no longer recognize. I found my thumbnail y'all God She didn't really hit What was that? She didn't really hit her at all. Is this kevin on steam music? Okay KO steam music. I love it One knee fixed one to go after the first knee injury. I came back stronger and better than ever So it's over for you all when I come back from this one. I'm sorry to let you all down Uh all done once again. I'll be back bigger more powerful more and more than a woman.  That looked so bad.  Oops How he just failed Oh, yeah, we're kevin on slip. Oh my Y'all lost into a whole other strategy. Oh, that was great. Oh man, this is great. This is fantastic Love me some promo gel man. Definitely love watching their videos. Make sure you subscribe to that channel I'm gonna go ahead and give this video a like because it deserves to like check them out promo. Joe love their video mashups of how they Get these compilations turn them into wrestling memes, but comment down below. Let me know Are you guys looking forward to cm punk versus john moxley next week on awd And what do you think is gonna happen? Do you think this gonna be a clean finish? Who do you think is gonna win? Do you think there'll be some interference? Let me know man Definitely want to get your guys thoughts and opinions on that and of course I will be live streaming that match because I gotta see what's gonna happen So appreciate all love and support roll two a hundred k appreciate y'all kicking me see y'all next one. Peace


Help his business. Boom. They don't have to be a major celebrity. It's made of advertising. It's word of mouth. Welcome to The Journey. I'm Nealey. And I'm Emma. Today we're talking about how a brand ambassador can grow your business. Can you give us the inside scoop of what a brand ambassador really is? Yeah, and they're closer than you think. It could be an employee who are here. It could be someone that already works for you. It could be just a huge fan of yours, a customer. It could also just be someone in your community that has a huge influence. Perfect. So with brand ambassadors, I've heard this term called influencer marketing. What is that and how can we leverage that with our brand ambassadors? Yeah, so there's a ton of creative ways to do that. Once you do find that brand ambassador, what you can do is you can encourage them to post about you but on their personal account. And why would you do that? Of course. Why would you do that? Girl, you're following. Because then you reach out and you have this customer. Actually, let me be a really cool example that happened to me last year. My buddy Kyle, he owns a grip tape company, Cloud9 Grip Tape over back in the Midwest. And he wanted to leverage brand ambassadors to do influencer marketing. So what he did is he sent some free grip tape out to friends of his that have a good Instagram following and just gently encourage them, hey, once you grip your deck and go out and skate, I'd love it if you could tag Cloud9GripTape. And it helped his business boom because he got in front of a targeted audience.  Right. So if maybe you're a clothing artist or whatever your business is, find people in your niche that has a decent following. They don't have to be a major celebrity. They're little micro influencers, right? A couple thousand followers, sometimes even higher and reach out to them and say, hey, I've got this free product or I have X ad that I want you to run and see if you can make some type of arrangement to get your name out there. Because we trust social reviews and people talking about another business pretty darn highly. Yeah, brand authenticity is another big reason to do it. Because again, you might be pushing your product. Like I was at a trade show, a big food show in LA and I came across this brand called Field Roast. And as a vegan, they're one of my favorite brands out there when it comes to my alternative meats. And they gave me, they sent a package of like a t-shirt and some free products to try. Do I have a huge following? No. But I went and I posted about it because I was stoked. I clicked with it. I took videos and I tagged them and that helped them to get in front of a larger audience. And then I felt so valuable. I went and bragged about them to all my meat-eating friends and kind of converted them a little bit actually now that I think back. What is it like 25% of like positive interactions? Those people go tell 10 of their friends? Yeah. So it doesn't hurt even if that person doesn't have this huge following. But make it fun. Make it into kind of a game of like, what could you send me that's related to your business or your customers or nearly, who loves free stuff? And encourage them to do something and then tag you. And another thing, because I'm thinking about what I get asked all the time from local heroes like yourself is, okay, where is the return on investment here? Super rad is you can have a discount code or a coupon that then you hook it up with your brand ambassador. Encourage them to go spread the love to their friends and then it's easy to track.  Easy to link it back. Yep. So everyone gets their own unique coupon code. So Emma, you get a code. I get a different code. So you can see cool. Emma did a lot better than I did. So probably going to focus my attention to give Emma a little bit more for content to promote and me not so much. So why this is also really effective and why you want to definitely get out there, start thinking about who would be a great brand ambassador for you. Get on board the influential marketing is because it's native advertising. It's word of mouth, right? So like back to my buddy Kyle. Shout out to Kyle Cloud9Grip, too. If he's sending out this cool grip and all these people, tons of people in California and Indiana and New York, they're putting his grip tape on their boards and they're out there shredding. That is telling the world that this grip tape is high quality.  It's actually his customers because they're so stoked on the brand. Word of mouth marketing. And it doesn't come off as salesy or pushy. It's just, hey, this person thought this was pretty cool. I might think that's pretty cool because I'm just like them. I'm just like, exactly. Very organic and very true. That's, hey, it hooked me. All right. That's a wrap. Thanks for tuning in. You learned all about brand ambassadors. What they are, who they are, and why you should go and get one. Perfect. So make sure you comment below your favorite tip from today. Like this video if you did. Subscribe to the channel and ring that bell if you want to see these videos first. That's all we have on today's episode of The Journey. Thanks for watching.


Hello, everybody, and welcome to another hobby-cheating video. Today, we are going to talk about one of the most challenging areas of the model to paint that's also one of the most important, and that is the face. This area of tiny detail is the first thing people generally look at with your miniatures, so let's get it right. So with that, let's get into it. Alright, so for our face, we need skin, and for skin, we keep a relatively simple palette. I'm going to start here with just thin layers of paint, using a brush that's pretty crappy just to get the paint down. All the paints will scroll across the top, so I'm not going to re-read them to all of you. But one note I will make is that all of these layers you see me applying, I'm applying at least two coats of it. I suppose we all honor Duncan Rhodes in our own way. The other note that I will say is that you'll see me mix yellow oxide throughout this. Skin tone, especially Caucasian skin tone, is very derivative of the color orange, and since these are so red, I want to bring some of that yellow back into it with the oxide to balance it out, make it feel warmer. This guy is a barbarian from the plains, so he should have that sun-kissed look. In addition, yellow being much more transparent means it's much easier to layer up my highlights while still keeping the transitions smooth. When we talk about painting the face, the first and most important thing is the front of the face and respecting the T-section, which this guy has extremely furrowed brows, so we're highlighting those, but it's the T-line across the top of the eyebrows, down the center of the nose to the chin, above the lips, and then across the cheeks. Think of it like a lowercase T laid over a capital T. Now how much you accentuate the eyebrows really depends on the individual's sculpt and whether or not the sculptor has their brow extremely furrowed, like this guy, he looks all angry, grr, he's an angry boy, so you know, hence we have to really push up the eyebrows. As he's bald, we'll also be pushing the same highlights onto the top of his bald head. As a fellow member of the Society of Bald People, I certainly understand reflection points on the top of your oily head. Now as I push these layer highlights, you'll notice my transitions here. Each additional layer is really barely moving the color. I worked with a lot of mixes, just slowly, slowly integrating the beige-red and then eventually the ice-yellow. Doing the paint thin and working it with at least two applications over the whole face of each paint layer. Now as per standard with layering, and from my recent video you saw this, we are with layers we cover more than we think each time. I'm doing this so that we get something pretty smooth as we build it up and we don't have to try to glaze over as we go. Because acrylic paint is translucent and because skin is also translucent, yes that's true, put a flashlight up to the back of your hand and you'll see just how translucent your skin is. We can actually simulate skin very effectively with these translucent paint layers, each time just allowing a little bit of color from the layer above show through the edges. Not only does it give us smooth transitions, but that slight tonal variation in visual confusion that's caused by having multiple, multiple, multiple thin, barely shifting paint layers very accurately captures skin. Now as his brow is furrowed a couple of times you're going to see me take thin, thin lines across the center of his furrowed brow, that's just to capture the little light lines and bring out that detail of the sculpt. Where you really see me focusing is along the furrowed brow, the tops of the cheekbones, he's sucking in his cheeks too, he has these really weird depressions on his cheeks, he has a very extreme face. But along the bottom of the jawbone where it would stick out, the tops of the cheeks, the bottom of the jawbone, the nose, both the entire ridge plus the little side nostrils, the top of the lip and the chin. Those are the areas we're going to build toward. Now often we are covering a lot more than that. That's because as we build these layers slowly, once we start integrating ice yellow it's going to jump very fast as you can see here, this is a very bright paint, it also has a much higher opacity. So we're building toward those areas. Now remember when you're painting things like skin tones and faces and using these paints here, they look much brighter when you first apply them than when they dry. This is because wet paint always looks much brighter. Once it dries and the water evaporates, the glossy reflection goes away and the paint seems to dull or dim, really it's just showing its true color. So always let your layers dry completely in between each application. You can see though I'm covering less, I still go farther and build toward those peaks that I mentioned. Now I'm going to jump in here because you might think, wow Vince, that looks pretty bad. Why does he look like a clown? Why is it so contrasted? Two reasons. One, we always over highlight because we're going to bring it back together with some glazes in a moment, but two, it actually looks so bright because I didn't paint the rest of the skin on his body. So I went ahead and did that and now let's look at what a difference that makes with no other work done. Like magic, he looks less like a clown just because the nature of having other colors around it suddenly balanced out the face and made it feel more in line. The next thing we need to do along that same line to balance colors is get the other things that aren't skin tone blocked out. I'm taking some Rhinox Hide here to get the thin line in the lip as well as covering the lip itself. So he's going to be a happy little Goth Barbarian princess for a moment. And then we're going to start smoothing everything out. Now comes the smoothing phase. We begin by glazing some of our deepest tone, smoothing out the shadows, glazing some shadow flesh. Then we go ahead and glaze our mid-tone, our beige-red plus yellow oxide over that transition. And each of these I'm working quite thin, just looking to smooth out these transitions knock back some of the highlights and make sure that everything has again layer upon layer upon layer. Because these translucent layers of paint of beige-red plus ice yellow or yellow ochre or something like that, laying on top of the red tones will still show a little bit of that red seeping through, which will feel very much like your skin, which is that, which is some kind of tone placed over bloody muscles and capillaries and things like that. So it communicates the same sort of thing. It makes you feel like you're looking at a real person with real skin tones and real layers of muscle and blood and bone underneath there. Now I glaze all the way up to my highest highlights. Going all the way to the ice yellow, slowly integrating that in, because I want to really make sure I'm building out the exact areas. And when you're glazing these final layers in, this is where we do the extreme detail work. This is where I'm picking out the ridges on his furrowed brow, the very, the tip of his nose and his nostrils, the tops of his cheekbones, the little bony protrusions from his heavily cleft square jawed chin, you know, those kinds of areas. And you can see how it forms this T shape across his face in two different places. I'm also pushing the top right portion of his forehead there you saw, because, well, I've looked at myself in the mirror and I know where light reflects off of a bald head. So there you go. But the thing you want to think about here is as you work down, you're slowly working toward tighter and tighter detail. Now we need to bring in a little color into his cheeks, his rosy cheeks. Cheeks are naturally red, whether reinforced by makeup or not. So I put a little glaze, a little red in there.  Bringing out the lips.  That I'm using a pretty burnt red plus a little brown to lay down the base and then integrating a little mid tone red and then eventually some ice yellow just for cracks in the lips. And then finally over that a glaze of a regular mid tone red just to really show those cracks and divots and texture we have on the lips. Painting the eyes. You can paint these first if you're not as confident. I will say filming this almost killed me. I apologize for the lighting change, but I had to reorient my camera and everything just to actually get this done on camera. But the key with painting eyes and I have whole videos on this is a nice well flowing paint and extremely sharp brush and a careful hand. It's just practice. With that done I also then re-lined the bottom of his eyes since I went a little too heavy with the ice yellow. With the eyes and the lips in place and showing that light reflection of the lip we can return back to finishing touches. Here we're glazing some rikelin flesh shade again adding slightly more red tone over the top of the skin tone back and forth back and forth. These multiple multiple multiple repeating translucent layers are what sells the effect of skin tone and achieves very smooth transitions all at the same time. Lastly he couldn't be a rough and tough barbarian if he didn't have a little five o'clock shadow. And five o'clock shadow is so easy. A quick glaze of Drakenhof nightshade or any similar blue-black. The lower part of male faces tends to be blue in the spectrum when you think about true color and so all we do is just glaze a little bit of that over the area and it will immediately look like five o'clock shadow. It is the easiest trick in the world that also makes your miniature look super awesome. You can do the same thing on his bald head or the back of his bald head if you want to give the impression of a shaved head there. So there we go. He's all done. I think this face came out pretty well. And as you can see, it wasn't too tricky.  But this isn't a video about painting eyes. It's about the larger face. So if you like this, give it a like. Subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future. If you've got a question I didn't answer, drop that down below. I always answer every question asked in the videos. But as always, I thank you so much for watching this one. I really hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you next time.


Mekhi, a long grind against Katrina Lahano, the kind of games you seem to enjoy. What happened? Well, I wasn't exactly enjoying it actually, but No, I mean, I think she didn't know the opening very well So I got quite a pleasant position and then I was pressing for a while I think she was right to go for this opposite Bishop position I think maybe it's a draw, but why has to be very accurate to her and in the end Well, she lost the thread of it near the end badly, and then I was able to win quite easily She also took a lot of time in the opening Yeah, I think she just didn't expect Berlin, but I'm not sure she ever went for this line before maybe maybe she just thought it's Because there are some lines which are false draws or something and maybe she thought like this, but No, I think she didn't know too much, but rookie one-check is the normal move Knight B5. I think white is White is definitely not better there and is probably struggling to equalize so it doesn't make a lot of sense Now these opposite color Bishop ending that you got it does seem like white should be able to hold What went wrong for her? Well, okay. I mean there is lots of difficult decisions I mean she could play G3 which keeps the pawn structure better But probably she was worried that I would play H3 and then there was always the danger if I get King's G2 I'm just winning but Whether I can do that or not I think her King could always kind of cover that possibility, but of course in a game It's not so easy. I'm not sure I played it that well either. I mean I Around the time control. I probably got a bit fancy. I think I should somehow have Been trying to make the past F-pawn on the King side as sooner than I did But I don't know it was very complicated. I would need to look at it more to really understand it Right, and are you pleased with the quality of your play so far? Yeah, I don't know it's a bit hard to say second game I was very unhappy, but the other games went reasonably well But perhaps not toughest resistance for my opponents. So hard to say All right. Thank you so much for joining us. We hope to have you back with us soon. Okay. Thank you. Thanks


Good afternoon, everyone. This is a joint presentation to the Senate Finance and Senate Appropriations Committee. So Senator Cummings and I are co-chairing the presentation. But most of it is going to be provided by our economist, Tom Covet, who's had a very busy day presenting our updated revenue forecast, which we've just accepted at the e-board meeting with the governor about an hour ago. About an hour ago. And some of you who are on joint fiscal also got a preview of this as well. So we are going to go through the update. And so it's encouraging. And I will turn it over to Tom Covet, who am I? I know he's here. I'm not seeing him. Yeah, he's right beside me. He just doesn't have the waves or the snow behind him this time. I can fix that if you want. No, but the bookshelves are fine. All right, so Tom, do you want to? And there is the document, I believe, is over 50 pages. It's the usual, very detailed with lots of graphs, looking at trends, property, sales, electric usage. It's quite detailed. So if you really want to get into the data behind what we're going to get today, it's available. And I think, Chrissy, you sent it out to everyone. Yes, I did. OK. All right, so why don't we get started then with Tom? Yeah, I actually think it might be best not to be too far down in the weeds, because I think most of you have heard some semblance of this at least once, and some maybe three or even four times. So I think it might be most useful just for a very quick overview, and then just do Q&A and see what things there are questions about. And then we can drill into any part of it you're interested in. We always review thousands and thousands of pieces of data. And we've created some new data just because the standard economic statistics that we use are almost all backward looking. And so much so that with a situation like this that's moving so quickly, we can't really get a read on things without better and different information. So yeah, there are some examples of some of the data that we've been able to create with the utilities in the state who've been, by the way, extraordinarily cooperative. Nobody had to go along with our request for information or anything else. And just the way people have come together in a lot of different spheres, a lot of the administration, the tax department has been absolutely phenomenal in processing enormous amounts of information that we've needed that's different than usual and done it working remotely and been incredibly productive, a group that's doing the epidemiological analysis under Commissioner Pitchak also has done a phenomenal amount of work that we've relied on heavily.  We meet regularly with them to go over the epidemiological developments because this is not a forecast that's based on economics as we've traditionally done. This is the whole path that we're looking at for revenues and economic activity is a function of the pandemic primarily and, secondarily, a function of federal government offsets and federal government fiscal and monetary policy to try to blunt the negative impacts of what's required to deal with a health crisis. So it's a very nontraditional forecast and a great deal is unknown. I mean, that's always the case that they're unknown things, but they usually fall within pretty narrow bands and you can quantify risks and look at that. Right now, they're all over the map. I mean, is anybody's guess as to how the pandemic develops? If you look back a month ago, everybody's reopening. Looks good. Then some areas really ran into trouble reopening. They've had to close back up. And you've seen a lot of metrics that are more coincident start to flatten off and even drop, not so much in Vermont, but we're not in Iowa and we're affected by the rest of the country too. So these two big areas are what are driving everything that we've got in this forecast. But just, I said a couple of times, I don't think this thing will have a shelf life of anywhere close to six months, which is the normal forecast cycle. But it's potentially already out of date if nothing happens in Washington with a next tranche of spending. And that's anybody's guess as to what's going on down there. It seems there was in everybody's interest to do something and we had baked in a pretty conservative, what we thought was conservative, maybe trillion and a half or so, compromise next round and that that would include some unrestricted state and federal government money as well. And that was an assumption that's not playing out. So that alone would have enormous impacts on what we're looking at. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal today, some of you may have seen quoting Mark Zandy of Moody's, who we work with in developing the state economic model. And his estimates are that without second round and the executive actions are a drop in the bucket compared with what was assumed in this last model run. Without that support, particularly with state local governments, that component alone, which was probably 500 billion or so, you pull that out and you've got about 4 million fewer jobs and about 3 percentage points off GDP over the next two years. That's a big move just in and of itself. They're just these cascading momentous things that are hanging out there and very uncertain. So we're standing on quicksand with this and the decisions you make that are based on these numbers are gonna be comparably uncertain. So I wouldn't surprise me if we've gotta revisit this more frequently, typically when there's a lot of uncertainty, you increase the frequency of forecasting and you start to do scenario planning so that you have different contingencies. So far the state has not done a lot of scenario forecasting, but there's just such variability and it could affect your decisions immediately. But I think there's a lot still to come. So just broad brush, that's the essence of the forecast is that there's a tremendous amount that's unknown. We're watching developments of the pandemic closely, we're watching federal responses closely and those are the things that are gonna make the difference. Not underlying economic fundamentals and not really state policy at this point. Tom, it might be helpful. I don't know if Chrissy can bring it up, but the page in your report, the bar graph that shows it all is on the left-hand side of the line now. Yeah, let's page 15, Chrissy. That summarizes sort of the revenue forecast as it relates to January. So that might be probably the first place that people would wanna say, well, what does this all mean in terms of the revenue? Yeah, so that's page 15. Okay, I'm gonna pull that right up for you. Thanks. Yeah, that's the typical chart that we've got where we have the next two fiscal years broken out by fund change relative to the last formally adopted forecast. So one page past that, I think is where we're at. Yeah. So you can see everything's to the left of the zero line. It's actually a little better than the June projections and quite a bit better than some of the, even earlier May and March potential projections. Several things have happened. I mean, at the start, the epidemiological models were suggesting that the shutdown might need to last through June. So we were conservatively saying that, that might be the parameter that we'd be assuming we'd see these impacts that in Vermont, especially developed more favorably so that reopening can happen earlier. Then also the deferred revenues for personal income and corporate income that would have been in April, May and June were higher than expected when they came in in July. It also came in very, very slowly. We were getting mail that was postmark the 15th at the end of the month, which is unusual probably shows the stress that the Montpelier post office was under in getting that deluge of returns in a stress situation, but that was really unusual too to be getting so much money so late because even early in that process, it didn't look that far out of sync. From what we know about that event too, it was very top heavy. There were a relatively small number of really large events that reverberated through a lot of tax liability channels and gave rise to extraordinary amounts of income. And I think that's been an increasing feature of both personal income and corporate tax revenues for a while, but it was really on display and fiscal 20, but that created some good news in terms of both the fiscal 20 close and also just gave us a better, a higher starting point without quite as long a shutdown. So this is what we're looking at right now that adds up to about $275 million across all those funds in fiscal 21 and about 158 million in fiscal 22. That's not chump change, but it has been worse and it still could be worse. There's a lot of things that can happen in all directions. So certainly without the enormous amount of money that's come to the state and federal transfer payments, we would not have seen the year end strength either in a couple of other categories. And that also spills over some into fiscal 21, although a lot of that assistance will just pay pretty quickly, particularly the unemployment benefits. Some of the other payments, CARES Act stuff, it's not fully spent or even fully committed. And savings rates have also gone up. I mean, this is, you really see this dichotomy in impacts and who's affected and not all this money was terribly well targeted. The idea I think was to get it out quickly, but there's a lot of it that landed in places that weren't affected by COVID and to individuals and businesses that were either minimally affected or not affected. And so what you see is on the one hand, monies that went to people that were unemployed and really high levels of impact that just kept them afloat, that kept a roof over their head and food on the table and essential basic needs covered. Then you had also people that could just bank the money. So the savings rate nationally in the quarter went from 8% to 20%. You had a lot of high end purchases, automobiles especially, but also housing real estate was really juiced by a lot of that money as well. The PPP money had a pretty low bar for qualification. It really was sort of more, if you felt at risk to be impacted, you didn't have to show actual loss. Whereas with something like unemployment, you had to lose your job before you qualified and with some of the state programs that are providing assistance to businesses, they're basing it on actual year over year losses. So if you look at the PPP money and where it went, there are a lot of sectors like the leisure and hospitality sector, which is probably the single most affected sector is about sixth on the list of where that money went. And it actually didn't make sense for a lot of people to take just the way it was structured. If you were really down and out and not necessarily expecting to come back, you didn't need a two month lifeline. You needed something different. And to take that wasn't advantageous. So the money's out there, it's showing up in a lot of places. It's certainly stimulating the economy and it certainly underpins what would be an even worse revenue forecast than if it hadn't been there. But anyway, that's what we're looking at in aggregate in the numbers. So pretty severe. Let open it up for questions. I guess when we look at this, this is relative to January. But for those of us who have been had the benefit of interim forecast, in fact, this is an improvement in terms of revenues over what we were having presented to us in June. So, although it's not on the right side of the graph, it certainly is a much better scenario than what we were projecting even in June by, I guess it was about, according to the joint fiscal chart, about $54 million on the plus side between all the funds. So at least it was moving in a good direction for, for us coming back in August. So questions of the, from any one listening? Yes, Senator Starr. Yeah, I'm waiting. So how much, how much are we projected to be behind when we put this next budget together next week? Well, this, this is an add on it, something we got to join fiscal this morning. And it's a sheet that was prepared by Stephanie Barrett that walks us through where, what we're going to be dealing with when we come back. And it's, it's really, it's manageable. I guess that's what I would say. And everybody's been concerned that it would be, have to be very substantial. And I don't know, Stephanie, are you on? Yeah, I am on. Okay. I don't know if you've got that sheet. We could put it up quickly, but maybe we can go back to Tom's projection. But what it does is take what we have from close out. It looks at the revenue. And it's, it's, it's, it's manageable. I guess that's what I would say. But it looks at the revenues that. Were received in July that ordinarily would have been paid. In the prior fiscal year. Remember, we had that delay. Those revenues turned out to be really better than we thought. So we've got between carry forward between. Those 20 revenues. We're, we're coming into the August budget process. We're coming into the August budget process. We're coming into the August budget process. With this better forecast. And then with these other sources of revenues. In a way that we think we can. That we will survive this. And there are a couple of things that we can run through very, very quickly. But I don't want to take Tom's. Time, but Stephanie, if you want to run this through very quickly. We other know that. There's a lot of ways that we can run this through. So there's going to be Medicaid that, that bump would continue. So there are ways in, if you look at the bottom, that 66.6. That there is some. Ways in which that can be. That addressed without. Without a slashing and burning, so to speak. So we'll put that sheet out for you to refer to. The general fund forecast. You can see the one 82 that Tom was talking about. Then what we had for revenues available and so forth. So I, I think it's really important to take. The revenue projections and then see what we have here. To help with that. As we. Come back in. In the third week. Fourth week, whatever week of August, August 25th. I'm sorry, Bobby, go ahead. I was just going to say that's great news. And you don't need to pull with this on my behalf any longer. We can get on back with Tom. Okay. Senator McCormick, you have a question of Tom. Yes, thanks. Apologies to people who've been doing this and enjoying fiscal and so on. I'm actually just coming back to this now after a six week. Absence from the issue. I just want to make sure I'm understanding things correctly. Tom, when you mentioned a scenario planning, I take that to mean if X happens, we'll do this. If Y happens, we'll do that. That's what scenario planning is. Right. So there, but there, there are a series of assumptions that underpin every forecast. And if you change those assumptions, you can have scenario a. Assumes that we only get the executive action. But if you change those assumptions, you can have additional money and scenario B assumes. The house bill flies through or gets through it. North of $2 trillion and here's what the two trillion looks like. And you do that or you say, we assume that a vaccine. Is widely distributed in the middle of 2021. Or a version that says the middle of 2023. Yeah. I guess they're always subject to revision, but in this case, especially so. That's massively so. I mean, any one of those things that I just mentioned. What's your guess? No, it's thank you. That was my understanding. The other thing is how are we planning? Now we come back. Are we planning a budget through the 1st of January or through the end of the fiscal year? Through the end of the fiscal year. Okay, but we'll be doing a budget adjustment act in January. I'm sure hopefully not as many as this year, but yes. Okay. That's all. Thanks. Other questions. I can see. Senator Brock center Pearson. This is the first year. Like Senator McCormack are hearing it for the first time. Any questions or. I know it's a hot day. People are probably. They're probably. It's straightforward if you have a lot of time and. Have trouble going to sleep. Then you can read that 50 page report. It has too many comics in it. The one thing is that the Ed fund is also in a much more manageable position. Then when we left. The other thing is that. Some of which may be able, depending on what each school district does, some of the ESSA funds may be used to supplant. Money that is currently being paid for with. Ed fund dollars. So that could equally. Help. The situation. I don't know. Don't forget appropriations. We had allocated a hundred million that we have not appropriated for K through 12 anticipating higher costs. Of startup. In the fall. So it, we've got the ESSA money, but we've got the, some of the Corona relief money that's out there to help us as well. Cause there's quite a lot of concern about what would be the money that we're going to be able to pay for. And so. I think that. Are not going to respond as well to remote learning or may not have the same. Opportunities in their home setting as some of the other kids.  Well, I just, my question was around the Ed fund. We've covered it, but. Am I right. That we think there was 38 in reserves. And this is about 60. So, I mean, that's a decision, that's a decision. That's a decision. That's a decision. That's $60 million shortfall. We've come a long way. Oh, absolutely. And I, I don't know. Did a copy of the latest Ed fund projections. And of course.  Sales. Sales tax and. Yeah, absolutely. The strength in the sales tax has been. I'll tell you, without the quill Wayfair money. We'd be in horrendous shape because the brick and mortar stores were hammered and the internet providers. Vendors just have been rolling in dough. And so we. We saw probably. $35 million just in. Wayfair quill. And that was really critical to this year's fiscal 20 growth. And. Internet sales when you include Amazon as a share of total sales and use. Is north of 11%. And we hadn't expected that to get there for maybe three years, four years. To be at those levels. So. That component has been really strong. As well as building. Home improvement. Start building material stores. And of course grocery stores have also. Got a lot of. Taxable sales as well as. Non-taxable. I say to people. Toilet paper is taxable. And so this big run on toilet paper. Toilet paper is taxable. So. You know, when people hoard stuff like that. That's tax revenue for the state. There's just, you know, they're spending money in different places, but it's showing up. In sales and use. So those areas were critical without the growth. Without, without the new revenue from the. No, no, no, no, no.  Yeah, Senator Westman. I just say for Chris is, um, um, Mark Perot's, um, Ed fund sheet is on the appropriations website. And, and Mark lays it out pretty. It's, it's the standard, um, Ed fund outlook. Um, um, So where we were, as you pointed out, Chris, you know, a few months ago, it's, it's so it once again, it appears manageable as opposed to overwhelming. So, um, yeah, that's important. And it's, it's out there. Um, Stephanie sheet, I think will be out there as well. So, um, put it all together and it gives you a pretty good sense of where we are right now. Yeah. So, um, other questions. Or, or, um, Brian. Um, just want to make sure if you've got a question. No, I'll see him straightforward. Okay. Um, other. High points, Tom. I know that at this point. It's not, it's hard to remember what you've said to whom, but, um, it's, um, it's just incredibly, these forecasting in this environment, it's just a whole new, uh, new, um, frontier I'm sure. So it's, um, um, it's, as Senator McCormick says, we'll probably, there's, if you're a betting person, um, you would want to bet that we're going to have a budget adjustment. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's likely. I mean, just a couple of things there, there are these charts on daily consumption of electricity by end user. Um, I think that most of the 50 pages of the document. Um, are just, you know, full page charts that were instead of embedded in the text, a few here and there. I just put that whole deck in for reference in doing these zoom sessions. And then sometimes there's a question that comes up that has to do with one. And we'll just pull that up. It's not meant to be, you know, part of some presentation, uh, uh, document. Uh, uh, uh, canvassing all the possible areas that we might get questions from, but it's really interesting because it shows on a daily basis. Um, the difference between what would be expected in a, a comparable period. Uh, and we got the utilities to pull this data and then a group in Boston called itron who does load forecasting for most of the remind utilities to normalize the data. So we're looking at apples and apples. What you see though is, uh, immediately a whole lot more residential consumption of electricity as people are staying home and, and then a reduction in small commercial and larger commercial industrial. Um, but then you see after that, you know, very low period, mostly April, early May. So late March to early May, uh, there's, there's a significant difference in, you know, five to 20% less electricity consumption, uh, in the, in the, uh, business sectors then, but, but it's coming back, um, more with a large commercial, uh, sector than the small, but, uh, still there, there's a lot more residential electricity consumption. So clearly a lot of people are continuing to work from home. And that could be the longer this goes on, the more likely that is to be a feature of work in the future. And a lot of things that, that will be affected by that. So there, there are a lot of things that are too early to say, yeah, that's definitely how it's going to work. And here's what's how it's going to affect commercial real estate prices or something else, but, but those things are all being talked about and they're all being affected in some way, shape or form. Uh, all the people that are moving to Vermont, uh, you know, because they can work, work remotely, I know I've sounded like a broken record over the years saying, you know, Internet access and broadband, uh, uh, investment for economic development is the most important things they can do. Uh, it shows at a time like this, because even some really rural, very socially distant areas that, uh, haven't gotten a lot of economic development are, are seeing, uh, uh, real estate transactions and interests from out of state buyers and things like that, that, uh, they hadn't seen for a long time. Can I just comment? Yes. Yeah, I'd be careful about your residential electricity. Um, if you look at your line goes back down in August, we just had the hottest July on record. And, um, um, you know, I'm on the board at Vermont Electric and what we saw was a lot of people with air conditioners on. You're absolutely right. So the weather adjustment is not a part of it. And we have a whole another set of, of metrics that show, uh, with different temperature levels, where some of those would be, you still have the biggest impact in differentials being, uh, uh, uh, COVID related. Um, but you also have a, a weather factor that's a big part of, of, uh, you know, you'll see these weekly fluctuations and they'll be because people are turning on air conditioners and people are buying air conditioners, you know, big ticket items like air conditioners, chest freezers. You can't buy things like that. I, it's, it's interesting. Um, all the different ways consumption's been redirected. Wired. You can't buy chicken wire in Washington County. You had it finally in Bennington County, but you're right at, we went for. We couldn't find it for a month. It's rather interesting, Tom. As you say, consumption patterns. It's like, why? I mean, how do you get any rationality off of some of this? Um, air and gardening. Yeah. I guess it's a survival. Maybe that's it. You know, yeah. Other questions of, of Tom. Senator Brock. Yes. This may be more a general question or general observation rather than something specific for Tom. But you know, we're talking at a very high level and now you're saying that, well, things aren't as severe as they appeared before. And they may be manageable. But to the citizen who's watching this. On YouTube. The question is, well, what does that mean? When we say it's manageable, does that mean that we only have to increase property taxes by 20% instead of 30%. Does it mean that we have to close some schools? Does it mean we have to cut state employee. And I think it would be useful if we just took a couple of seconds to say, well, what, when we say it's manageable. To what scale. What are we really talking about? About manageable. Is it mildly manageable? Is it serious things that we still have to do that we face? And what are the kinds of things that we may be thinking about doing when we come back to deal with this manageable situation? I guess I was referring to the sheet that Stephanie put together that would suggest that we can get to a balanced budget for the remainder of this fiscal year. With. With a. Without experiencing massive kinds of. Changes. I think it can be done. Within the revenues and as some people will remember, we do have some reserves as well to help us in this kind of environment. So. I mean, I was looking forward to the where those reserves are at the end of this period and recognizing that there's still a lot of contingencies that having reserves are critical. To be able to potentially deal with. Yes, you're absolutely right. And the other thing we know 22. This is, I'm just talking about, you know, the remain, the three quarters of 21. And so 22. Is still an uncertain future in terms of what that's going to be the extent to which we're going to see. Impact on the stock market. I know people, you know, we're talking with Tom earlier. People are like the banks, but people, if you've got cash. You know, keeping it and how that's going to affect the market. Commercial real estate. So there are a whole host of. You know, potential impacts that extend beyond the remaining nine. Months of. Of this current fiscal year. So I was, I'm much more short term in my comment on that. So thank you for. Bringing that up because I think that is. We've got to remember this. Just like the first quarter was to get us to. Some sense of what the world was going to be like. And this will get us through the year, but there are still a host of unknowns and uncertainties out there. And the issue of planning for at least some of them now and looking forward rather than narrowly within this. Particular window. I think it's critically important because we're going to be facing those contingencies sooner than, than indeed we think. Yeah. Senator McCormick has got his hand up. And then, and did you have a comment or something? Well, I just, I don't. It's probably for Tom. I don't think these forecasts. Figure in any future federal aid that can be made. There's an awful lot of other things out there that could happen. Well, well, actually they do assume that that will be available, but that's not saying that's how you'll choose to. Apply that. But it actually does assume that there'd be. About a $1.5 trillion next round. And that would include unrestricted state and local government money. So without that, this will be worse. Yep. Because, you know, there will be then these actions that. Senator Brock's talking about, you're going to shed jobs. You know, nationwide state and local governments, employ about 13% of all, all workers in Vermont. It's closer to 15%. Which is typical of smaller states where you don't have the same efficiencies across. You know, larger, larger population groups, but that's, that's a big chunk of. Income and economic activity in the state. And if there are a lot of layoffs and. You know, aside from the individuals, but the aggregate economic impacts are also. Can be enormous. So. You know, that's, that's still up in the air. So that reality, I guess we'll keep. It's going to be surrounding all of this discussion. Thanks. Understanding that we're going to make. Budgeting decisions in the coming days. That what we're doing today is just getting a sense of the terrain. But in that regard. It seems to me that despite our best efforts in May and June, we were going to find flaws because it was unknown territory. I think it's coming to everyone's attention now, various areas. Where we frankly miss the boat on just particular. I don't know if we did enough for self-employed people. I don't know if we did enough for married couples who are not sold for proprietorships or. Companies with employees, you know, that kind of, I think our chambers of commerce are in trouble financially. But I think that's a good point. And broadly, Tom, what is our capacity. Between now and, and, and. We'll say as we develop the rest of the fiscal year's budget. What is our capacity to come up with yet additional aid. For the people who we've neglected. It's entirely contingent on, on, on federal. Assistance because. You know, unless you're going to raise money by. You know, you're going to have to pay taxes or cutting spending somewhere and reallocate that money. You know, and. Any capacity you have to assist businesses. Is flowing from federal dollars. Yeah. Yeah. So, so the whole thing turns on that. So there's. You know, there. There's been a lot that's been allocated so far, but there's some that hasn't. But just these unemployment insurance. Change with the executive order. So, you know, I think that's a good point. Right now it looks like. The state would be required to chip in. A hundred dollars a week in order to get the 300 from. The White House. And if that's true, that could cost the state as much as $20 million a month. So if you. You know, if you run that out for, for.  There are a lot of needs like that. And there's. You know, there's that. Any capacity is going to stem from federal government. Transfer payments. Let's. But we did hold back. We didn't spend every. No, no. We did. We did not for this very reason. Because. Yeah. Like we, the last threshold from 75 to 50%. Was based on actual, the benefit of experience. So. We felt it was prudent to have some money. But it's as Tom's pointing out, it's because the, these are federal dollars that are available to the state. That allow us to do it. The need nevertheless is going to be. Yeah. Much greater than what we have. Unless we get another federal. Bill. And that brings more money. To the state. But we did not mention, we had money set aside to help with the K through 12 pressure. But we have. Oh, Stephanie, was it a hundred? It's over a hundred million that we have. Available. We've got this UI. It's just about 200 million. 200 million. So we've got this UI proposal. That's just come forward. I know the chamber has, you know. You know, and the single proprietorship and some of that is going to be up for discussion once we return. But that hundred million can go very, very quickly. As we know. Got the EMTs yet. Yes, we have, that was all taken care of, frankly. Okay. It's just. Which bucket they get funded out of the end out of that local. And then we have. A bucket or whether hazardous pay, depending on whether they're municipal or whether they're. Non-profit. I just, I want to make sure that when I, when I tell my constituents, I don't know, I'm making no promises, but we're on it. That I'm not putting them in a fool's paradise. It's not like the money is all spent. We. No. There might be something for these people. That's correct. Okay.  Well, I was just going to ask the question. About the money for sheriffs and local police. Well, I'm going to. That's in the local government. That's in local government. And I can explain it. And there's money for county and it's based on per capita. So if that's not enough for actual expenditures, then the towns all have an appropriation and like the sheriffs, they can build the town. So that, that gets into some of the negotiation, but the money is about $13 million. We appropriated to local aid between municipalities and counties. And there was money set aside for waste district costs as well. So that's, that's, that's a big part of the conversation. And I think that's a big part of the conversation. And I think that's a big part of the conversation. There's a lot of confusion around this because we wanted to avoid. Duplication of responses. And so. Chris, you remember these bring back a lot of conversations that we had when we're putting together that hazard pay proposal. And trying to delineate. Which groups would. Get the funding through which pod of CRF money. But I've already been in touch with Trevor Colby. If that's what you're. Tom, anything else for Tom? Otherwise. It's five 18 and we still have a lot of work to do. And a lot of unknowns ahead of us. And you have any other comments? This is my third time today. I think we're going to continue to work through. We're not in anywhere near a good position, but it's less worse. Than when we left in June. The end of June. And. You know, there's still a lot of unknowns out there. But it's the same thing. So that's what you guys are going to do until three days before the next election. So. That's going to make it difficult. But. That's the way it is with the mercy of the federal government and the virus. All right. Well, it's good seeing you, Chris, I've missed you in your. Sunflower yellow. And. and Dick, you're not in your backyard. Bobby, you're in the same place. Another rock, it looks like a spoon collection in back of you that we get to see. So Tom has his books and Senator Westman, you just seem to be very modern white back there. So good to see everyone. And unless there are further questions, yes, Chris, you had a question or comment? No, okay. Okay. Then we'll adjourn.


and female and has a third laugh. No, no, no. I forgot my lines. Hey, I only have the idea, not the concept. What was it? Concept. And. Hey, I don't have the... Why can't I get this right?  Third. They identify as anything but human. Ah. What? Sorry. And actual, if they're not male. Get ready? Mm-hmm. And action, if they're not male or female, if they're not male or female, we can't say he or she. It's character. Action. Why, if they're not male or female. Action. So now... So now we have two people that pronounce them? Yes. Can you hear me? Thank you, sir. We'll get right into it. There's a perfectly good copy copyrighted. Is it recording? Yeah, okay. And action. Thank you, sir. We'll get right into it. Stop.


It is a delight to be here and obviously we're among friends and that makes it easy and one of the things that I have advocated over the years, especially talking to young people coming in to the liberty movement is that you ought to have fun doing it because you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow You know some crazy guy might start a war someplace or the economy may collapse Which is a possibility So if you sit and pun or only that rather than thinking about what the strategy is to try to prevent it or Provide the answers to those problems when they really come forth So it is it is something to get together with like-minded people and invite new people in There's always somebody new that are being that will be introduced to these ideas, but It's it's important that we do enjoy ourselves one thing that I Often marveled at when I went to the university steering the campaign was the fact that I talked about the dire straits that we're in you know, our civil liberties being undermined perpetual war and All this all the things that were happening that were all negative for us and so often You know there was a lot of you know support for Being positive they say what we like is your optimism and I keep thinking well about 50% know about 80% of my talk was telling you what the problems were but of course when you talk about liberty and Explaining it doesn't take you a long time to give people a little bit of hope by just understanding how liberty solves our problems that we need to deal with I Remember very well when I first met Murray it was in my Congressional office Lou Rockwell as somebody you know quite well. He knew was my You know chief of staff he came to work for me in 1979 I had been in office in the early part of 80s I Was in one one term I came back in office in 78 which started in 79 but the one thing that we did share was enthusiasm and understanding about Murray's works and And we were enthusiastic about it. So one day Lou and I were sitting there. I says have you have you ever met Murray? He says yeah, I think I met him, but I don't really know him I said let's call him up and see if he might come and visit with us and He called him up and Murray was there and not too long after that and I can remember the first day You know the his one statement He says I never thought I'd see the day when I meet a congressman that quoted me in a speech and talked about fluctuating Fiat currencies so he was so amazed and he made me feel very good that I knew at least what what he was up to but Murray And Lou and I then did a lot a lot of work together not too long That was probably in 79 maybe early 80s, but in 1980 there was the gold commission report passed by the House and the Senate Which was set up to study the role of gold in both domestic and international affairs and We had no dreams about what was happening, but we did have the commission and I was on the commission But actually Murray came on board and he Worked as a researcher for us and at the time I was convinced that he didn't he did well Of course, we didn't have the internet. I was convinced he didn't need any books I think he was able to do his research right out of his head Because he was able to produce it so we got to know him real well then But I think one of the things that impressed me most Was the monetary issue because that's what got me involved in in economics politics. I I wanted to talk about economics I wasn't interested in politics, but the first time I ran for office was 1974 in a Watergate year and at that time the Republicans in Texas had a total of three seats So nobody wanted to run in a Watergate year let alone in Texas as a Republican But I did that just so I could talk about monetary issues Well, sometimes politics leads to accidents and unusual events and unintended consequences and what happened was I got elected Carol worried about that she says what are you doing this for she says you're you're allowed to get elected I says there's no way that that's going to happen But she says there's a danger of that you can't tell and you know, I remember asking her why would you think that she says people will recognize you're telling the truth and I think there's something to that that people do recognize that because you know when we did the presidential campaigns I would talk about the Constitution and living up to your promises and all the things that we take seriously But other candidates would say the same thing so they would come up and they say well, I like what you're doing like What are they doing? I said well, they essentially say the same thing. I said why don't you accept and they said we don't believe them So That's one thing is if you're talking to a Murray Rothbard or you're talking to somebody at the Mises Institute We and they were all believer Believable and I think that makes a big difference That's the big hurdle because you can listen to a lot of garbage and you get a lot of garbage from our university You see a lot of garbage on the internet But the thing of it is it's a believable and now that we live in the age of fake news There's a bigger challenge, but I still think the message of liberty is believable And it is not difficult to explain and that's why we should be excited about it. I remember very well the last time I talked to Murray and that was at the beginning of 1995 and Murray passed away on the 7th of January so it was either at the end of December the beginning of January I had just made a decision that I was going to attempt to go back to the belly of the beast and run for Congress again and He knew exactly what I was all about There was not interested in the political career or just having a platform to talk about the issues I thought were important so I called him to tell him that because it was obvious that I thought he would Welcome the news and indeed he was so that was one of my great disappointments that He he didn't get to see the results of that election because you start early on the beginning of 95 was for the election of 1996 and at that time I tried to get the support of Republicans and which was rather naive so I went to the Republican I said I want to run against this congressman. We have he's a Democrat and you know, I know you don't like Democrats and They nod and I met with our delegation. I thought I'd get some support and I because I promised them I said I can get rid of that Democrat in this office and you know in about three weeks I did I got I got rid of them They got him to convert to become a Republican So then new gang raids and the senators and all the congressmen poured the money into this history in order to to support him but the the whole the whole thing is is that The issue of politics always comes up Should I run for office to prove to promote the cause of liberty and my usual visit don't bother Unless it's done for the right reason if you're doing it to be a Politician or in office or to win or become a chairman a lot of people argue. We're on you You need to back off a little bit because you could become chairman of the banking committee And if I would have done everything I was supposed to do at the beginning and stayed in continuously I would have had the seniority and I could have become a chairman of a Department chairman of bank may think of all the good things I could do as chairman of the banking committee and The whole the whole thing is I said, yeah, that is true And then you have to raise about 20 million dollars in order to buy that chairmanship and I said Yeah, I could be but I think that in the meantime. I would have lost my soul in order to do it Well, I want to read a quote to talk a little bit more about what our challenges are and And and what we're up against because I think most of us know exactly what the answers are and they have been In so many ways provided by people like Murray and so many others in this audience that continue this tradition But I want to read a quote and I'm not going to tell you who this quote is from but I'll give you a hint He used to be mayor of the New York City And he he ran for the presidency once and didn't do all that well But this is the quote I want to read because I think it's it tells us a lot about the enemy Actually, if it tells you what I think it tells you about the enemy. They shouldn't be that hard to defeat This is the way the mayor talked What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want be anything they can be Freedom is about authority Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to see to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do that tells you where they're coming from and And he did not win the presidency, but it seems like almost anybody that ends up in the presidency Actually believes this garbage So but that's that's the enemy and that should be easy to take take care of You know, I work on the assumption that our our efforts are getting easier It's long and tedious, but I think we have done the work I think philosophically and intellectually the ground work has been laid by so many here by Lou Rockwell with a Mises Institute and when we had the spontaneous rallies during the campaign I remember one in particular very early on in 07 at the University of Michigan It was not I that became a cheerleader and you know say well, this is what we're going to do we're going to chant this and this and it started spontaneously and And that is the reason that one little booklet I wrote about the Fed They started chanting and the Fed and the Fed and burning Federal Reserve notes now that didn't come from me I might have cheered them on I might have encouraged them, but the message has already been out there It's even in a university University of Michigan liberal universities there's always a group in there and and that is the of course the group we want to talk to and Talk with and and motivate those who are leaders in the ideas of liberty because as we should remember Numbers are unimportant What numbers are important, but it isn't a numbers game only you can't wait until We have the conversion of 51% You have to have the conversion of the Philosophic leaders of a country the teachers the universities the movie theaters the newspapers and everything else talking about something else And this is where we lost out especially since the 1930s because the universities were then and they're still doing it They were teaching Socialism communism and especially Keynesian is so the Americans like Keynesian ism. They like intervention. It's softer It's not as quite as authoritarian. They don't put their guns in your face They used to not put them in our face, but they do more often now which which is a problem. So But intellectually that has happened, but now they're under under siege because of one reason it's failing Just as a Soviet system was doomed to fail though very very few said, you know what you know into 1989 1990 the Soviet system is going to come crashing down and there's going to be this Revolution going on. Well, I always marveled on that thought it was a great event because I was drafted in the military in the 1960s and we were warned about the Cold War and nuclear exchanges and that was You know, not totally unnecessary. It was a bad idea communism horrible idea It killed itself but Keynesian ism right now is killing itself and we better be there to help fulfill the replacement you know the GDP is used frequently and sometimes not accurately but Sometimes it will give us some information. There was a chart on the internet this week and showed about the GDP according to the Individual in the line throughout recorded history was a line like this because before the industrial revolution It's just what you as an individual could produce and not much more Until you know the industrial revolution and then GDP per individual goes like this skyrocketing but it was during the time of the industrial revolution that we had the recognition of the individual and understood liberty better than in the past and it was You know endorsed by the principles of the founders of this country and it had some religious connotations of the importance of the individual and so we live in very Short-order What we're witnessing the recording of true history is very very minimal And I like the analogy and don't tell me to prove this but there's been some estimates They've you took all of the history of the of the the billions of years of the presence of our solar system Then and you broke that down to 24 hours Mankind's been around for about 10 seconds You know, it's it's just amazing how quickly things move and right now We live in an era where things are moving quicker than ever. So yes the the the GDP grew miraculously and We have this communication, which is a double-edged sword It's great that we have the internet and we spread our message but we also have the collusion of big government and the internet and The companies that will be willing to provide information to our government So it's indeed a two-edged sword that is going on but I think the way I see it things are moving very very rapidly and Things can happen quickly wars can break out and the system can fall apart the bank banking system. It's very fragile and Something has to replace it now the Soviet system collapsed and there was a replacement and I figured That was a great event, but it looks like they want to sort of copy us, you know interventionism and government controls and central banks and taxing system so as Beneficial as that was it did not come up with a libertarian answer so the only way we can improve things that it's a challenge and I think it's available like never before in history is to Have the intellectual community preaching one message and that message is very simple and clear Liberty solves our problems governments do not You know the whole question is where where are the people that are going to help us? You're often they say you're optimistic wrong, but there's nobody out there We can't find anybody go to the universities. Well, I find them when I go there. Yes, their numbers are limited But you know, there's a biblical story that talks about this looking and looking for the remnant And of course Isaiah was instructed to go out and talk to the remnant and and tell him good What was going on? But God warned Isaiah. Don't worry. I mean one thing is is you're not going to find anybody I know he's going to listen to you and He's well. I will go out and do this and of course nobody could really identify Elijah tried to identify the remnant But he had difficulty telling and it was small in number but the remnant is out there and I see what's happening is that remnant I see it popping up when I go around the country and I think it's more significant than than we realize and I feel like there's a remnant and so the old right Is a remnant of the the understanding of what liberty was all about I see Murray as sort of in a transition of the of the old right and the picking up of remnant I think of Leonard Reid as part of that and the many others in the old right and and Murray identified with them and and then Murray actually introduced the new age of libertarianism Intellectually and now just look it was mentioned about how fantastic His works were and and they're living now more than they were when he was alive And you can't kill these ideas like this. You can't kill an idea whose time has come We know that and the idea of liberty the time has come So we should be very happy about what's happening, but concerned enough that we have to keep searching for those and and growing what we'll call the remnant even if we don't fully identify each and every one of them and the whole the whole purpose is the That the instruction to Isaiah was that They're they're out there and You won't be able to find them, but they'll find you So yes, the Mises Institute or anybody else involved in this you and we can't personally go out Identify them and grab them and put them to work No But if the message is allowed and clear and if it's positive it's moral and it provides practical benefits over all the authoritarianism They will come they will come and just think of the growth of the Mises Institute think of what Lou did in along with Murray, you know in 1982 started the Mises Institute and meetings like this go on constantly by the Mises Institute bringing new people in so the people will come and And that to me it has always been an encouragement You know, I spent a lot of time, you know trying to put my little program together the Ron Paul Liberty report and when I thank you But I do my a lot of my paperwork and reading and attempts at writing and things like that at my house and I have a nice office and And what I get tired of it, you know hour to I get a little restless my bones get restless And I don't sit still I know some people now Murray was one that his bones rested You know from three in the morning till one p.m. But then his bones were restless and he got up and you know and he got busy But when I get restless, I have a couple things to do First I need a little exercise and a little bit of movement So I do that I'd walk and ride bikes and swim and keep active But the other thing I do is I get involved in gardening, you know, I love with the garden For instance right now I can tell you if you don't live in the south You won't understand but my tomato plants are this high and I have blossoms on my tomato plants And I'm hoping to get my winter crop in and I'll watch those tomatoes grow and take care of them So that that to me is important But I also like to work with plants and grass mow my lawn and keep my lawn mowing So when I mow the lawn, this is the kind of thing I think about we have Bermuda grass and we have St. Augustine and St. Augustine is a great grass, you know that crawly stuff We used to call grass crabgrass, but St. Augustine is beautiful And you know what you don't need to do a heck of a lot for it what you need to do is When the weeds creep up and before they go to seed you mow them mow them down So your job to have a nice lawn is to cut down the weeds for us to have a great economy What all of us have to do is cut down the bad ideas and the weeds and the grass will grow this winter though I Have to confess. I was listening to too much of the government propaganda and they said warm miss warmth is coming Don't worry about your area won't see frosts anymore. Just don't don't worry about that and We're at the frost line and I I thought well if it's getting warm I don't have to take in my plants and I have had some very very nice plants I take care of and chivalry is beautiful chivalry is and there was one chivalry that I had there that I Grew from a stem. It was a single stem. It was about that high, but it had a nice bush and I knew that I have you know brought this plant to life and and But I left it out and I left my big chivalry was out and left a lot of other ones out and they all froze Badly and it's chivalry or especially right to the bottom You couldn't see a thing and even this the stalk was gone and so spring came and I have somebody working for me. He says why are you watering there? There's nothing there I said there's but there's a root there and I said that root may just come back I don't know but I believe it was big enough that it will have retained some a root system There's a remnant of that bush under that ground. So I kept watering and watering and I go I don't think this is gonna work work one day. We were sitting out on the patio and Carol was there She's what do you have in there? I said, oh, there's a plant. She said, what's that little green thing right there? So she discovered and I said wow I said this plant is going to make it but you know the magnificent thing about that plant It's now like this, but it's not a single plant A single stem it has Dozens of little stems and it looks very bushy so the setback with the frost Actually created a great plant But he came back and all it needed was a little TLC a little bit of water a little bit of sunshine No fancy fertilizers no digging nothing else. So I think that Sometimes that's all we need to do cut down the weeds and give them a little water and give them a little sunshine and liberty will thrive Now I want to Counter the mayor's quote with one of Murray's quotes and we want to answer that mayor Although I thought the best answer I ever got during the campaign was you know, they didn't expect me to do Well, I think I did better than they claimed but the neatest headline was after two or three primaries I was like second or third but At the early stages they were pumping pumping up Giuliani and the headline he was in Los Angeles And the headline was Ron Paul beats Giuliani for the second time so He I got a little enjoyment out of that but Murray gives us even better enjoyment about counteracting that nonsense this justification for authoritarianism and the force of government and This comes from a new liberty Murray says one liberty can achieve man's prosperity Prosperity fulfillment and happiness in short Libertarianism will win because it is true because it is correct policy for mankind and truth will eventually win out I think that is absolutely true. I really do and a lot of time I confessed when I gave my talks and I said well, you know I recognize if I listen to my talk or if you type it up I'll recognize all my errors and all my mistakes and and this could have been said better And this could have been done better. I should have paused here and that sort of thing But the one thing that nobody has been allowed to challenge me on is the authenticity of the message of liberty CS CS Lewis had a statement and he explained that We're all like a bunch of eggs an egg and he thought that just being a good a is not all that Much of the solution. He says if you're an egg and you're a viable egg And you do nothing if you don't hatch what happens You rot away it becomes a bad egg and nobody wants to know anything about it But he says mankind and individuals should be hatched and that is become something become a bird that can fly Or do whatever and I think that has been so much of our problems We have these ideas of what to do and sometimes the individuals who don't come to me like this They don't even understand that and they don't have much desire to do it, but I think that is You know the important thing so often the young people at the university would say yeah, all right Congressman Paul I agree with you that sounds good, but tell me what I should do I want to know what to do and I very I gave them a very complex answer I said do whatever you want to do because Because everybody's going to do something differently just just go out and do it and remember if it's worth anything They'll find you they'll find you somebody will somebody will use you so as far as I'm concerned the most important thing We do and something that I worked on for many many years and decades is trying to understand the message starting to understand the Importance of liberty. I'm also convinced that we're all born with a libertarian instinct But I think in a very early age, you know if the terrible to gets into trouble We have to suppress that if teenagers want to branch out well, we have to protect them But also it's an individuality, but by the time you get to the universities you have to conform you have to conform with the system and Certainly if you want to get ahead in In a political sense in Washington, you better conform or else I think the amazing thing that I personally think is how in the world did I ever get elected and how did I get Reelected, you know, but I think the truth does help and I think the district I think having a big family that would be seen throughout the district and Carol going with me. It's helpful Those are helpful things for people to see but if If if everybody has a job If there will be difference and then we and we have a responsibility and Mises talked about this and hi I talked about it that and I always put the honours on the young people who come I said if you understand this message and you feel comfortable with it I believe you have more moral responsibility To deliver the message and spread it then somebody who doesn't even know what's going on because you do know What is the truth, but we have to continue to work on refining it and delivering it why it baffles me Why is it that if we have a message of liberty, which is a moral issue? Which recognizes peace and prosperity? and No aggression. No wars What why do we do such a lousy job? Why why do we get overwhelmed and There's various reasons because one one thing that I think happens is when that GDP started going up People did like materialism. We all like materialism. We like nice things But they concentrated on the material benefits of liberty Which means better houses and cars and everything else and that was easy to do and till those who decided yes This is great. I want more. I want control I want control the banking system and the military industrial complex. We want to spread our message we want to spread American goodness and make sure everybody knows how great we are and And and then that prosperity that introduced this notion of using force to create more prosperity What did it do? It destroyed the ability to produce and if you look at the economics statistics That's one of the big problems we have and we have a lot of people that are underemployed and a production isn't as great as the government tells us and That's why a lot of people live in poverty. Misa said the middle class gets wiped out if you wipe out them a Currency and that's where we aren't but the answer is a beautiful answer because it Satisfies people of all faiths and those without faith Because it allows the individuals to make up their mind as long as they follow that rule of no aggression If you can follow that principle and live up to your promises not too complicated But why haven't they listened my explanation is they got too too greedy and forgot about how this is that how the wealth Has been created so when the crunch comes Hopefully it's not so bad that we lose all efforts to spread our message But it's a wonderful opportunity for us to spread a message and I find it's already that way a lot of people Know there's something very much wrong. They don't have the answer yet So our responsibility as individuals are very clear our responsibility in organizations and it's amazing to me How many young people I meet in the last few years that were influenced way back in 07 and 08 and they have their own Organization, I mean I have no idea where they are and who has idea whose their friends are on their you know Facebook the message is out there and spreading much more so so my Conclusion is there's a lot to be optimistic about it's a moral issue And we can't be more thankful than we are today about how well Murray was able to present this message And all the work that he has done it should inspire us all to continue to do our very best. Thank you very much