Ang faculty center isang sibulo ng democratic space at pagpapantay-pantay ng mga tao regardless of whether may PhD kaman o wala, whether ikaw yung manggagawa. Isa sa napakasaya akong memory ay ang guest speaker namin dito nung ako yun na graduate sa MA ko sa comparative literature ay isi national artist, Napoleon Abueva. At meron ako isang larawa, nakasama ko si Rohelio Sikat ng ay namayapa na isang legendary short story writer na miembro na Agus sa Desierto ng 1960s group of experimental young Filipino writers tapos si national artist Napoleon Abueva na namayapa na rin, tapos may larawa na ako kasama sila na batapa akong instructor noon. Hindi ko malilimutan yung mga pagkakataon na olawasa din, may uportunidad ka para mamiti itong mga taong ina-admire mo lang from afar. Ang faculty center conference hall ay napakahalaga sa pagkat isa itong open space para sa lahat wether you're left, right or center pantay-pantay kayo yung nagpapalita ng mga kuru-kuru tungkol sa mga issue. Napakalaganda yun ng faculty center conference hall sa pagkat kung ikaw man ay mag-aaral o alumnus kaman o hindi ng university kahit nung panahon ng marshalo isa tung democratic space kung saan ang mga tao, nung mga panahon ay malaya nagsasalita kung anong gusin na sabihin kung sa mga bagay-bagay walang censorship at hindi sila hinuhuli. It was a place to bring people together and here I wanted to move beyond beyond the grand academic experience which was important and I'm sure the others will talk about. One of the things that really got me was in times of great trial and tribulation the FC somehow caught sunsets very well. So you could go to the ablation you get the full force of the sunset but it was hot. Here you could see the splendor UP Diliman became orange in color at a certain time of the day. You would catch that orange hue here and it was so different. And then of course there was the Claro Mrecto hall or room, the auditorium which became really crucial in under martial law because it represented everything we were fighting for in terms not just of academic freedom but of freedom for the country. There was an assurance that you would never be touched there even before UP was off limits to the military there was a tacit understanding that you could not raid, you could not cut short any of the things that were going on in Claro Mrecto. It was sacred space. So it is not just the soul of the faculty center but the soul of UP Diliman. Yung memories ko of the faculty center were all very positive. We could meet in the corridor, discuss sinabi nang isang faculty na kilala ko a very close friend of mine was that we could talk about anything in the corridor. Hindi kailangan sa faculty room pero sa corridor. We could ask questions at any time on any subject and magde-discussion doon. Sometimes there would be debates, sometimes there would be arguments but it was always usually based on intellectual ability. It was a center, it was a focal point siguro of academic discussion. Yung maganda sa Lumang faculty center when I was there in the beginning was hindi siya divided into the sciences or the arts or the social sciences. It was all under one roof. Natatandaan ko yung FC, ang pinakamangalaga sa aking yung corridors niya kapag nagsasalubong yung mga professors at siyaka mga estudiante. Hintu yan it, maguusap, magkukumustahan. Yung kumusta as a general question, hindi lang siya kumusta ng araw na yung kumusta ka kahapon? Kundi kumusta ano yung ginagawa mo? Ano yung pinag-aaralan mo? So yung sagut doon, ninsan nag-bubunga siya na mas marami pang mga idea. Of course, on the part of College of Arts and Letters, wala pa rin bahay ang mga faculty ng College of Arts and Letters. Ninanais na magkaroon ng ganun klasi pa rin mga opisina na magsusulong pa rin ng corridor talks, di ba? Punsaan, mayro kang expansion na maalam mo in that given week maikita mo ito mga tao na to and you could easily knock on their doors. As a simple question, but the answers are so profound that you would, di ba? It would feed papers, it would feed creative projects, it would feed extension services na mga projects out there. The faculty center was always more than a physical office or even a home for us away from home. It was the cradle of our spirit of academic freedom and academic inquiry. It was the bastion of our resistance to tyranny, not just the tyranny of bad politicians and leaders, but the tyranny of ignorance Importante para sa akin yung claro-embrek ito yung dito sinasala yung mga idea na bago pa ma-isa-libro naging tahanan ko ito ng maigit sampong taon dahil sampong taon na kong undergrad kahit nung panahon na hindi ako nag-aarali, tambay ako ng mga kwarto, ng mga profesor ko, isang magandang ala-ala yun na kahit hindi ka estudyante sa mga panahon na yun very welcoming pa rin ng faculty center. Ang faculty center isang miniature na larangan ng digma anong mga idea. Yung mga everyday life, everyday life, kasi sa faculty center ay bawat silid may kasaisayan, bawat na tatanging pulong, silid pulungan ay may kasaisayan, bawat sulok kung nasa na mga muning ay may kasaisayan din, pati ding ding dahil ginawang gallery nina, profesor Niavesi Pistola. Ang faculty center po, kahit po ang bawat kwarto maliliit, pero ang lama na faculty center, masasaya, masasaya ang tao sa loob, marami rin naiambagsamin yung mga faculty sa mga staff, marami kami na tutunan sa faculty. Pumasok po kami ng payat, lumabas po kami ng faculty ng matabak. Sobrang sayap po sa faculty center. Student ako ng Department of Speech Communication and Theater Arts, hinanob ko yung department namin, parentin na sa third floor siya, tapos medyo nakakatakot kasi madilim talaga yung hallways, na parang wala masyadong tao, pero nandun din yung homie feels niya, na parang at the same time, pagkatapak mo sa faculty center, komportabli ka sa paglakad mo, sa kung sinuman mo ka sa lubong mo, alam mo yung safe ka, at meron kang mapagpapahingahan at pupuntahan. Yung importan siya rin mismasiguro ng faculty center is the history that it has. The faculty center has been with UP for years na kapag kuna re-gromaduate ka, meron kasan ang mababalikan. Nandito ko sa FC ng mawala ito, mga alasdos ng umaga, nakawa kong message mula sa isang kaibigan, na susunog daw ang FC, kaya dito ko, nakatira din lang sa campus, tumakbo ako dito. At nakatayo ko sa labas ng aking oficina, binapanod ko ang dutupok, hindi lang ang oficina ko, kung di yung buong, yung buong gusali, ano, sa kabilanang napakaraming mga bumberong dumating dito. At alam ko, nung oras na yun, na wala ng magagawa para sa gaping pa ang, ang gusalian mismo ng FC, makara na ilang araw, kumingiyo ko ng permiso upang pasukin ang sunog na building at naisipang kong kumuha ng video ng aking mga, na dadaan ang mga pasilyo, at dinalo ko ang oficina ko, at nakita ko na tupok na ang lahat, ang aking mga aklat ng 30 taon ng ala-ala ang biglang naglako. When I saw it burning, I came here very early in the morning of that day, April 1, kita ko na susunog yung FC and di ko alam na may sunog na, but actually pagdating ko dito, ang daming mga fire trucks, ang daming traffic dito sa area sa likod ng FC, yun pala na susunog yung FC. And I thought, vainly na sana na spare yung history department, pero in the end, umikot ako, talagang wala. And when we first went inside the building, kita namin yung mga ruins, there was nothing we could recover. Nakikita lang namin yung mga abo, ng mga libro, ng mga papeles, I could still identify some of them in my room, pero talagang hindi na mga recover. So yung secretary ng department namin, nakarecover siya ng mga pictures, so she was very excited about that. Other faculty members were able to recover mga clay pottery and others na hindi naman na sunog, but it for us, it was really a total loss. My personal wish for the new FC is that within it, we establish a true university museum that will house the physical artifacts and turn our memories into a coherent narrative that will tell all UP students and faculty members and our visitors the story of this great university. And I think that's something that the new FC can have that the old one did not. But I'm sure despite the loss of so many incredibly valuable objects and maybe even of some memories, there will be time to create new ones. Sa muling pagtatayo, sa faculty center, sabayan tayong gumugunita at tumatanaw sa hiraharap. Gumugunita dahil bilang kumunidad, lahat tayo apictado sa biglaan itong pagkasunog. Ngunit ngayon, kailangan din nating tumanaw bilang kumunidad sa muling pagkabuhay nito. Ang itata yung faculty center ay magsisilbing lunan at moog ng akademikong discurso, talastasan at pagdadawupang palad sa ating kumunidad. Sama-sama nating buuin ang diwa at katauhan ng faculty center na siyang bahagina ng buhayupi at nang ating nagdaan at inaharap.


Good day fellow investor! Now, if you have been following Buffett over the last 50 years, you know that he has always been saying how he doesn't care what the Fed is doing, what are the interest rates, because in the long term it all evens out. The Fed increases interest rates when the economy is doing well and lowers interest rates when the economy is doing not so well, so it all evens out. I would agree with such a statement, but for the past century, as things have changed and very significantly. If we take a look at what has been going on in the last 10 years, we can see how central banks' balance sheets went from about 3 billion in 2007 to the current 13 billion. We are talking the Fed, ECB and Bank of Japan. So, we have had a fourfold increase in central bank balance sheets. This means that those three central banks have been buying assets on the market in order to put more liquidity into the market, more cash, and holding assets, mostly bonds. US Treasuries, Bank of Japan and Europe, corporate bonds. So, it's a big, big, distorted impact to financial markets. And that's why it's very important to follow what the Fed is doing. It wasn't that important in the past, now it's extremely important. To put it into perspective, by adding the assets of other central banks, Bank of China, Australia and so on, we get a balance sheet of 21 trillion dollars. If we compare it to the global bond market, it's almost half of the global bond market. One third of the global GDP and also one third of the global world stock market capitalization. When you have a central bank that owns almost half of all the bonds in the world, you know that the situation is very delicate. And you better keep an eye on what's going on. So Buffett's advice was worth in the past, now it's extremely important to see what's going on. The best way to see what's going on is not so much follow the news, but read the meeting minutes. So, every meeting, every few months, the Fed meets, the ECB, European Central Bank meets, and they all discuss their ideas, see what's going on. And if you go and read those minutes, you can learn a lot about their way of thinking, operating, forecasting, and how will that impact financial markets, because the impact is very, very significant. You have seen how big are central banks' balance sheets in comparison to other markets. Just a quick look at how global central bank liquidity changes impact the SAP500 can be seen in this report from Citi. As you can see, the correlation is almost perfect, which means that really the money doesn't even go to the economy directly, but it goes into inflating asset prices. Another very important factor to watch and to really look. Credit spreads also very, very volatile in relation to what central banks are doing. So I have read the Fed minutes for you, the ECB minutes for you, and I'll just quickly summarize everything so that you know how to position your portfolio and yourself into this environment. The first change in the Fed's minutes is that they are going to start to trim their balance sheet. Now, 4.5 trillion is the Fed's balance sheet, and they're going to start trimming it by selling 6 billion of assets, not selling. So when a bond matures, they get the cash, they will not reinvest it. They're always reinvesting now, whenever a bond matures. Now, they're going to keep the cash 6 billion per month for now, and then increase that amount up to 30 billion. So they're really, really going to slowly, slowly trim their balance sheet. However, they're going to pull out some liquidity out of the markets, so the impact is expected to be negative for bonds and stocks. Important to consider is that this trimming is really minimum. It will take the Fed at maximum cap 12 years to trim its complete balance sheet. And they also say that their goal is not to trim the complete balance sheet, but to keep it significantly higher than what was the level in 2007. So plenty more money will remain into the ecosystem, and balance sheets will keep a very important role in what's going on in financial markets, unlike it was the case in the past when Buffett was advising not to care what they're doing. Apart from the trimming and slight increases in the interest rates, I find this very, very significant. So the committee says that they would be prepared to use their full range of tools, including altering the size and composition of balance sheet, thus putting more money, buying more corporate bonds, or even go to quantitative easing and helicopter money if future economic conditions were to warrant a more accommodative monetary policy. So the Fed is telling you, we're going to slowly trim in order to keep inflation in line. But if something happens, we're going to put as much money as necessary into the system. This is very important to watch and understand what it means for the investor, because the impact, as we have seen on stocks and the proportion of what we are talking here are huge. Now what's also good to look at is the Fed's projections. They see GDP grow at 2%, they see the unemployment around 5%, that's a little bit higher from the current, closely to the natural unemployment rate, and they see inflation at around 2% in the longer run. Inflation at 2%, it means that the federal funds rate should be at 4%, it means that bonds should yield treasuries 6%, so you can expect a 50-70% decline in the value of long-term bonds. And of course, stock valuations should also be lower, because it's better to invest in risk-less treasuries than into stocks. So this is if everything goes well, you can expect lower bond values and lower stocks. It's as simple as that. Just a quick note on Europe. Europe is different than the US, as Europe is still buying 60 billion euros of bonds on European markets. So 60 billion bonds per month is huge, and they're buying corporate bonds, they're buying everything. So the European market is even more distorted at the moment than the US market. It's crazy, I don't know how it will end, but it's good to keep an eye on. And if something happens in Europe or in the States, again, DCB also says we're going to do whatever it takes to help, thus print even more money. So to conclude, also what the Fed is doing now is really insignificant. It's most a facade. As you can see, the current interest rate of 1% is still very much below all interest rates in the last 60 years almost. Just for a minute it was lower in the 1950s, but that was just after a recession. So we have to see how would higher interest impact the economy. Probably lead it into a recession, but that's a different topic. Now what to do? The only thing you can do is to be prepared. We have different scenarios that might evolve, and I don't know which one will evolve, and nobody knows. Really nobody can know if a recession will come in the next six months or after 10 years. Just look at the predictions that have been made this year, last year, last five years. Nobody knows what will happen in the economy in the future. The only thing you can do is to be prepared. What can happen is that we can have a few more years of situation as is. So we have to have stocks and bonds that will do well in such an environment. The second option is that there will be a recession, slow down growth and the fat, let's say, prints more money, lower interest rates, ECB prints even more money. So you need to own bonds that will do well and that you're happy with the yield now, precious metals which will explode if there is inflation and because of the higher money printing. Commodities that will do good as a protective asset. So you have to really think what can happen. Look at the probabilities of a recession. There is a pretty good probability that it will happen in the next few years. So be prepared and really think what can go wrong, not just what can happen good because we have seen the SAP 500 drop 50% in 2002, 50% in 2009 and given the market distortions, the possible panic, the loss of faith in the currencies, anything can happen. So the focus is to be prepared. I'll discuss many stocks. We have discussed gold, copper, commodities, food commodities, growth stocks. So there will be plenty of you to create a good portfolio that will lead you through thick and thin. Thank you for watching. Be prepared. Don't forget to check my other videos and I'll see you of course in the next video.


Well, good morning. Good afternoon or good evening. Whatever you're listening. This is Davisville on KDRT LP 95.7 FM in Davis, California. We live at KDRT.org online. I'm Bill Buchanan, and I thank you for tuning in. Well, so have you heard about the book of lists? Did you even know that they exist? They do. There's one for the Greater Sacramento region as well as for other large cities and metros nationwide and they collect information about the region's economy. Not just statistics that might interest an accountant, but also lists like minority or women-owned businesses or largest employer in Yolo County or fastest growing businesses. You can learn a lot about an area by reading them. You can find a job. You can make a connection. And my guest today has helped create them for 36 years in our area, Sharon Haverneck, who is retiring as senior director of research for the Sacramento business journal at the end of 2020. The lists create a different way of looking at the region, and we'll take that different look today. Sharon, thank you for appearing on Davisville today. Oh, well, you're welcome. I'm glad to be here. And of course, we're doing this interview by Zoom like I have been since March. So people might hear odd background noises that just goes to the territory these days. I do want to mention at the start that I worked with Sharon at the journal from 1998 to 2006. I was managing editor or editor for seven of those years, although I've had no connection with the paper since then. American City Business Journals owns the Sacramento publication and it creates these lists at its outlets nationwide as part of its reports on the areas economic and business news. So that's the overall backdrop to what these things are, but now we'll get into more the story of the lists. So Sharon, could you start by just giving us an overview of the lists? How many there are, how you create them, maybe some samples of your favorite topics? Okay, well over the 36 years, I figured it out today that we covered roughly 225 topics. We don't do 225 topics each year as some of them make them and go. There are some that's what we call perennials, you know, we might have law firms, accounting firms, largest private companies, those we do every year. Now, my favorite lists are those that require that businesses have their headquarters in our local area. I think that's really important to focus on the local businesses as much as possible, the homegrown ones. And those lists are the private companies, fast to scrolling, also public companies, but there aren't very many public companies in our area. And then banks and credit unions, which those two lists have shrunk quite a bit over the years. A lot of mergers. So those are just some of my favorites. And so there's a couple things there we should mention, the public versus a private company. A public company is one where you can basically buy stock and privately means it's privately held. And I remember this from my own days at the business journal. The reason it matters if a company is headquartered here is because where the headquarters are, that's sort of where its heart is in lots of ways. That's where you get the people who make decisions. And so if you're looking to create a certain presence in the region, if you, you know, it matters if the headquarters is there because then that's where the CEO is or the other leaders. That's the gist of it, right? Right. Now, even just from that little bit you said there, you can see how these lists start to tell a story, like how there's fewer banks and such than there were before, the consolidation. And the fastest growing list, I imagine that's one that's changed a lot over the years. Back in the dot-com boom era, there would have been lots of little companies that went up like fireworks and maybe not lots, but some only only to vanish a little later along with that whole sort of enthusiasm. Well, we do have companies that appear on the list and then, you know, next year or two, you know, they're gone. But it's interesting that you bring up the dot-com and a lot of the companies being on, you know, those kinds of companies being on the list. I think that was a lot of our assumption in doing the lists earlier, but actually it's always a good variety, including companies that have been around for a long time, which was surprising. But, you know, they've been around for a long time. They obviously know how to do business and grow. These are researched lists.  But in this case, you're really looking at the statistics. You're wanting validation, not just someone says they're really growing quickly, but something that really substantiates it. Could you go into that a little bit? How do you validate? Most of the lists that are surveyed, we do have to trust the people from the companies who are providing the information. The fastest growing list, though, is one where we have an accounting firm that works with us. And they look at the information that companies base their reporting on and agree the numbers. I have to say agree the numbers because review is kind of a legal term and they don't actually do that, but they agree that the numbers that are being reported are reflected in the documents that they look at. So that's how that one's verified. And for fastest growing, that is a very popular list. And we certainly have to be on the lookout for companies that are trying to get on the list that don't belong. I've had to kind of go through the process and then all of a sudden I realize, hey, wait a minute, this company isn't really based here or it's a subsidiary of a company based elsewhere.  That happens. Maybe people can hear this in your voice, but I'll just say it. One of the things I liked working with you was your sense of humor in that you took these lists seriously. You wanted these things out of real integrity, but you also sort of laughed at some of the ways that people might try to get around you and then you did your best to not let them do it. Right, right. This makes me how are you able to keep the job for 36 years. I don't know. Right. Well, one thing I have to say is that overall I'm impressed with the honesty of a lot of the companies that report their numbers and they try to be very careful and that is very gratifying. Now there are some lists that I've had problems with where we get phone calls that so-and-so is not telling the truth or they're including, you know, an office that's based elsewhere, that sort of thing. And because most of the lists, we just look at what the local office does. Companies can have their headquarters elsewhere. I mean, the majority of the list companies have their headquarters elsewhere. And so I did have one company that I received a complaint about. They were fairly high on the list and someone called me and said, I really think that they're reporting their office in the Bay Area. They're including that information. And so I called that company three or four times and never got a response. And I said, well, if they're not going to answer my question and verify that they only reported local information, then they're off the list. And so they weren't on the list at all. So you have lists every week. The book of lists collects them at the end of the year. And in fact, some weeks, you have more than one list. Correct. So you're constantly, all year long, you and then you've had people work with you to research and chase down this data. Right. Yeah. Over the years, depending what other duties were involved in the research department, I mean, it's really changed in the beginning. I had assistants that would go out and collect business licenses and they'd have to go to each entity, like to Folsom or to Davis and write down the new business licenses. And then we'd come back and report on that. And it was pretty much done by hand, but now all that is done electronically. Less footwork involved. Right. So, sorry, go ahead. This is Zoom folks. Go ahead, Sharon. Well, I was going to say that, you know, some of these chores, the internet has just made so much easier and also have made it so they can be centralized and they can just have people who specialize in collecting this stuff. So I'm not involved with those sort of things anymore. So let me ask you, you said a minute ago that like the fastest growing list is popular. Why is it popular? Why do people want to be on that list? It's an opportunity, first of all, for them to kind of showcase what they're doing. And so many of our lists are based on size and you have to be big in order to make some of our lists. And fastest growing, you can be a fairly small company and a fairly new company and, you know, make the list. We do have some requirements, but I think it was $250,000 in revenue for the base year. And so that means if we're looking at the three years, 2017, 18 and 19, that means 2017, they had to have made at least like 250,000. And that kind of weeds out the hobbyists. This is how people establish themselves. This is how they sort of become visible in the market and to each other and to their industry. Right, right. And it's just, and I think it's to be celebrated, you know, if they are growing fast, they're doing something right as a rule. You know, and I just think that's something to be celebrated. The value of the list is salespeople use them for leads. I remember economic developers would use them to see who's emerging. Competitors use them to size up rivals. And then categories emerge as the culture changes. One list that's interesting, I think, is the women-owned businesses. Could you tell us a little bit more about that one? Maybe what it says and how it's changed over the years. Did you have that when you started in 19, right, well, 36 years ago? Well, no, we didn't. And one of the things about our women-owned and minority-owned businesses is that we require that they have that certification from a government agency or from a clearing house. I'm not always sure that we always get the largest women-owned businesses by doing it that way, because not all women-owned businesses do get certified or minority-owned businesses actually go through the certification process. Yeah, that is kind of a sign of the times when it was, well, in California, they had set-asides for minority and women-owned businesses. I'm not quite sure how that is now, but I know that a lot of businesses still get certified and we include those. It's something that we're looking at, I think, for next year. If that's the way we're going to continue to do those lists, if we're going to require that certification or just maybe require some sort of validation where they say that I declare that I'm a woman-owned business, at least for videos, that sort of thing, rather than actually going through the certification process. The certification, it's a process, but the reason you go through it is because you want to make sure that the company says it's owned by women, that it really is, that there's not just a false front with a woman who, at least on some piece of paper, is the owner but isn't really running it. Right, yeah. A lot of times what you might find is that California is, of course, community property state, and a lot of times they'll say, well, the husband and wife own it, and they'll say, yeah, it's women-owned, but mainly it's the husband running it, so those are the kinds of things that we're trying to be careful of when we first started the list, make sure that it really was women-owned. Yeah, and as people are looking to diversify the economy, in terms of ownership in this case, obviously something like this that is really useful. Of course, I'm an old journalist, but it strikes me listening to it, this is journalism, this is researching something and trying to validate it and present it in a way that stands up, not just a notion. Why did you make this your life's work? I mean, you've done this 36 years. Well, I would say that the short answer is I wanted to eat. I went to college to become a teacher, and it turned out that I graduated and had a job all lined up for the summer, but that June Proposition 13 passed, and there are a lot of your listeners that don't really know what Proposition 13 was and what it did, but let's just say it really devastated the funding for schools, and then the baby boom was over, and school enrollments were really declining, so you had the double whammy of drastic cuts in funding and declining enrollments, and I did a lot of substitute teaching. I held temporary contracts where they wanted me back the next year, but the enrollment declined, the position was eliminated, or one year there were like so many, quote, surplus teachers who had a lot more seniority than I did, and so they had to give the positions that were open to those surplus teachers. As it turned out, I just started applying for anything and everything. I did have a minor in journalism and English, so you know journalism certainly was of an interest to me, so I ended up a chance meeting at what was then Price Club, now Costco, with a friend and telling me about this company that was taking over the small paper capital business journal, and so I just said oh, okay. So this is maybe a story that says if you're blocked in one area, look someplace else, you might find something you really want to do. Absolutely, and it seems to have suited me. I've learned, I like to learn things, and I've learned a little bit about a lot of different things. I'm not an expert in any one area by any stretch of the imagination, but I do know certainly a little bit about a lot of different industries, and that's just been very interesting. Do a quick ID here. I'm talking with Sharon Havernick. She is the Senior Director of Research for the Sacramento Business Journal. She's held that job essentially for 36 years, and she's returning at the end of the year, and we're talking about the book of lists and the lists in general that the Business Journal puts together about this region. I'm Bill Buchanan, and this is Davisville and KDRT. Let's talk about Yolo County a little bit. One of the lists you do is like the largest employers in the counties, right? Correct. What can you tell us about the one for Yolo? Well, of course, you see Davis dominates the list. University of California, Davis, right? That's not unusual, right? To have the largest local employer be a public entity. Right. In a lot of the counties, that would be the case, and well, certainly for Sacramento County, the state is the largest employer, so, right. Yeah, so I like doing the lists that focus on an individual county because there aren't that many instances where we have a lot of representation from Yolo County, even though we cover it. And so it's nice to do that list. So the lists usually are 25 entries long, right? And so they probably get kind of really interesting the deeper you get in the list because you'll turn up things that otherwise you won't see. So is there anything on the Yolo list, anything else interesting on that list?  A lot of my stuff is back at the office because I'm working from home. Like all of us are these days. I wish I could just rattle it off the top of my head, but I can't. So I would say that for Yolo County, that the top three largest employers in Yolo County are all government related. We have the University of the state of California and you have the U.S. government. Cache Creek Casino Resort would be the largest private entity. And of course, statistics like this become useful when, well, like when a recession hits and people are trying to anticipate where it's headed, public employer tends to be affected in a different part of the cycle than a private employer. So if the largest employers are public, that sort of changes the nature of the economy. And that's the sort of thing that you find in these lists. You've made the point one time that I thought was interesting. You say sometimes the list says something interesting by omission, by what they don't say as opposed to what they do. Well, I'm not entirely sure what I was getting at when I said that to you, but what I may have been getting at is that sometimes there are companies that really belong on the list and I just can't get information from them. And you kind of wonder why. Because most of the information that I ask isn't real complicated. Generally, I'm not asking for their net income. I'm not asking what they pay their top CEO and that sort of thing. But you know, I'm asking for revenue and how many employees. And sometimes there are companies that just don't want to give it and you wonder why. Do I recall correctly that that Apple and Elk Grove was an example of that, that they really didn't want to talk much about what they have there? Yes, that is correct. Over the years, it's been difficult to get a number of employees from Elk Grove. But recently though, we have had a little bit more cooperation on that front. So, you know, if my memory is right on this, but I recall that one year to try to get a sense of it, you even looked at numbers of cars in their parking lot or how deli was across the street. Yeah, we were trying to see if that would give us any insight as to what we were guessing. The number, you know, was probably if it was was correct at all. So unfortunately, we don't have, I don't have as much time to do those sorts of things as I used to do. Well, I admire the ingenuity in any event. And the fact is that it's part of a nationwide company. So that when you then get those numbers and you go to Apple with it and say, look, this is what we have, we're going to run with this. There's some standing behind you, in other words. You know, it's not one person, one place. You're actually trying to, you've got an organization behind you that's going to Apple and saying, come on, tell us a little bit what you're doing here. We want to understand our economy. We need to know this. What's interesting is that I might get it for Sacramento one year and paper in another one of our cities. They won't get information, but I get it or vice versa. Some companies are just secretive, right? And maybe in some cases people get to know you and they trust you, but that they, that probably helps get information. One of the problems has been with companies that are publicly traded is that they become afraid to give any information that's not going to show up in their 10K, which is their annual report. They don't want to get in trouble with regulators. And I have to say that for some people, they may really see that as a legitimate reason for not wanting to share that information. But I don't think it really will get them in trouble to say how many employees they have in a city. Not going to move the price of the stock, which is what they're worried about there. What are some of the most important lists that you've done over the years? Well, absolutely. The largest privately held companies and the fastest growing, I really think those are very important and the largest employers. And then I would say a lot of our construction lists, those are very popular, whether it's general contractors or you know, solar contractors, you know, those tend to be very popular. And I think the list of construction projects that we publish each year, I have a list of private projects, a list of publicly funded projects. And then of course we have the downtown projects. And I think those are important as, you know, historians later on look at what was going on in Sacramento. They can see where a lot of the growth was happening, you know, the major growth and, you know, where money was being spent on projects. Well, yes. And in fact, those lists are another way to sort of read the list. If you go through that and look at the construction projects, they're the largest projects in the region, you will get a pretty clear sense of where a lot of the growth is occurring, where a lot of the economic activity is occurring. Davis does not usually make that list. Because here in Davis, Davis doesn't really want to be on a list like that actually. But there are projects at the university that do make the list. Well, that's true.  But typically, yeah, it'll be the boom towns of the Roseville's and Folsom perhaps and Rancho Cordova. Are there any lists, any ideas you've tried that just failed didn't work? Well, I will throw these two out. I wouldn't say that they were actual failures because we didn't get a list together. It was published, but maybe we shouldn't do that again. We had, we did Bingo Pollers, I think for three years back in the 80s. And then we also did a list of lottery retailers, which we thought, oh, everybody's got, you know, gonna want to know this. We did that once. It was hard to do because, you know, calling up these retailers that had sold the most tickets, you know, weren't always forthcoming with information about their establishment. But we published the list and I kind of got the idea from probably another market. And then later I found out that when they did the list and believe it was Buffalo, there was a series of robberies. And the police figured out that the robbers were going down the list because they figured that these retailers had the most money on hand.  Well, and I could see that's, that's where the information you get isn't worth the problem it's causing for these businesses. Right. Yeah, that just, yeah, that one was what we didn't do again. So is someone going to take over for you? I mean, the list aren't ending, I'm sure. Yes, somebody will. I don't know who. The job has been, the job is open. But as time goes on, the position changes and the company has been focusing more on data analytics and getting somebody who can do a lot of real, you know, crunching from various other databases. And so the position will be called a data reporter. And, and that is open. So if anybody wants to apply. Well, so there'll still be lists, but I also sense that there's a turn in the road here. It's going from collecting the data, and you were saying earlier, even back to, you know, talking to Dellys, to more about looking at databases and trying to analyze what's in there and what does that mean, things like that. I suppose that's a natural evolution. Right. And let's see. One last quick, because we're right at the end actually, but I wanted to ask, all right, do you, you're retiring any particular, I mean, are you done with things like this, or is there some way you keep going with data in retirement? Well, I really feel an obligation to sit down and gather all those family stories that my mother wrote and also told me about and to get that down as well as the family history. I never had children of my own. So it's not for me, but it's for my nieces and nephews and and it's a very interesting, I think, history, especially in California. So So Sharon, as we end, it makes me think that you're a little bit of a historian here. You've done that with the list, and now you'll do it with your own family. Right. That is correct. History. Sharon, thank you for talking with us today. Sharon Havernak, who is retiring as Senior Director of Research for the Sacramento Business Journal. You're welcome. Bye-bye. And I'm Bill Buchanan. This is Davis Phil on KDRT. Thanks for


Hello to everyone, and this is Mary B. Mateos, Director of the myeloma unit at the University Hospital of Salamanca in Spain. I hope that you will join me for myeloma patient Europe's masterclass 2021 on July 2nd and 3rd. We will discuss the latest in myeloma diagnosis and treatment and access issues across Europe. To register, visit www.mp.europa.org. Thank you very much.


A subgraph M of G is a matching if the edges in M are non-adjacent. This leads to two questions. Can we find a maximum matching where the number of edges in this maximum matching is greater than or equal to the number of edges in any other matching? And can we find a perfect matching that includes all vertices in our original graph? We'll look at the first one first. Our key tool is the following idea. An M-augmented path is a path that alternates between edges in M and edges in G minus M, beginning and ending with edges in G minus M. And remember the reason this is important is that if we have a M-augmented path, we can always find a new matching M' with more edges by selecting what we can think about as the complementary edges. But could we find an even larger matching that doesn't require a M-augmented path? In 1957 the French mathematician Claude Baerge proved a matching is maximal if and only if no M-augmented path exists. In other words, we only need to worry if we can find a M-augmented path. If we can't, then we have a maximal matching. So let's prove this. Suppose M is maximal. If a M-augmented path existed, there would be a larger matching, which we could form as we did before by replacing the edges in M in the path with the complementary edges in the path. So in the picture, the thick edges represent some original matching M. And if we combine these with the dotted edges, we get our M-augmented path. If we take the dotted edges alone, we have a larger matching with three edges instead of two. So suppose our graph has matching M, and also suppose that no M-augmented paths exist. Suppose N is a larger matching, in other words, it has more edges. We'll consider the edge-induced symmetric difference subgraph M delta N, which will consist of all edges in M that are not in N, and all edges in N that are not in M. In other words, it's all the edges in N and M together, except we're going to omit any that were common in both. Since this subgraph is limited to the originally disconnected edges of N and M, then every vertex has degree at most two. However, there's a theorem that is the maximum degree of any vertex in the graph is less than or equal to two, then our graph consists of either a path or a cycle. And consequently, every connected component of this edge-induced symmetric difference is either a path or a cycle. Since the edges from N and the edges from M are disconnected, in other words, none of the edges of N connect to each other, and none of the edges in M connect to each other, then any path or cycle in the symmetric difference has to alternate between edges in N and edges in M. And, by assumption, since N is larger, then at least one connected component will have one more edge from N than from M. But this will be an M-augmented path, which contradicts our assumption that there were not. Alternatively, we can alternate which edges are in our matching and get a larger matching. Baer's theorem provides a way to create a maximal matching as follows. Start with any matching. Attempt to augment it will use a depth-first search. Plather, rinse, repeat. With some modifications, this is the basis for Kuhn's algorithm invented in 1955 by Harold Kuhn. For example, let's try to find a maximal matching for this graph. Although the graph shown is bipartite, the algorithm works on any graph as long as we number the vertices in some order so we can implement our depth-first search. So we go to vertex one and go to the lowest numbered neighboring vertex, which is going to be seven, and this gives us our first edge, one seven. Next, we'll go to the next higher number not already included in an edge, which is going to be vertex two. The edge two seven is not in our matching. However, it takes us to an edge that is, which means two seven could be the start of an augmenting path. So we'll implement our depth-first search. So two seven takes us to seven, seven one takes us to one, and then from one to the lowest numbered vertex is eight, which is not an edge included in our matching. So the edge is two seven, seven one one eight, form a M augmenting path, and switching out the edges, we have a new matching two seven one eight. The next vertex not included is three. The lowest numbered vertex adjacent to three is nine via the edge three nine, which is not included in our matching, so we include it. The edge four seven is not in our matching, but it is adjacent to an edge that is. So again, this might be the start of a M augmented path. The edge seven two takes us to two. The edge two nine, again to the lowest number, takes us to another edge in our matching, which takes us to a new vertex. And so four seven, seven two, two nine, nine three, three ten is M augmenting. So we swap the edges out and get a larger matching set. The edge five eleven is not in our matching, so we include it. The edge six eleven is adjacent to an edge in our matching. So again, it could be the start of a M augmenting path, but we can't use it to get an augmenting path because it takes us to five and there's no edges away from five. Again, since it's a depth first search, going to eleven didn't work, so instead we'll go to thirteen and that gives us the last edge of our matching.


Well, Fox News is once again creeping on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Instagram feed and after she said something that is perfectly reasonable and irrational about climate change, they decided to construct a five-person panel to explain why everything she said is wrong. Take a look. Allowing sea levels to rise, every coastal city to go underwater, every Midwestern city or large swaths of the middle of the country experiencing drought on a level that we have not seen, that's going to be way more expensive. We need to bite the bullet on the cost because the alternative to not spending the money is A, death and B, spending even more money. Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claiming on Instagram that her $93 trillion green new deal could actually be cheap in comparison to the ultimate cost of climate change. So is Ocasio-Cortez right? David, she reminds me of Cotton Mather and some of those old fire and brimstone peaches of old. The earth is going to flood, fires are going to consume us if we don't repent.  You take the Paris Accord, you actually analyze it, it spends a lot of money with very little result. You look at wind power, 900 tons of steel in one of those windmills, 45,000 pounds of plastic, you can't recycle. But do they give cancer windmills? No. Do they give cancer? Yes, they do.  You make the heads full. Okay, I just want to make sure, at least speaking accurate on some things. Oh, wow. You know, David, she started that, she, she, let me jump in here, she started, she started that pose. Yeah, watch out Steve, watch to your right there. She started that pose talking about how she wakes up at 3.30 in the morning. It's sad she's losing sleep. Worried. I get that. I wake up at 3.30 in the morning too, worried about what cockamamie ideas AOC is going to come up with in any given day, because now it's like, okay, let me defer the attention from the crazy cost of my Green New Deal to say, well, if we don't do this, it's going to make the Green New Deal look so cheap. And to Steve's point, we have, we were supposed to run out of water by now. We were supposed to have massive floods by now. We're supposed to be out of oil by now. None of that's happened because of corporate ingenuity in a venezus that she wants to curtail because she wants to control it, not allow the corporations to make things better. I think that's really true. I mean, I think it's always depressing that people who are so worked up about climate change, and let's, let's agree that for millennials and so forth, younger people, they really are concerned about this. And I don't think it's appropriate or probably the right approach to just mock that concern. But I think you have to have a little optimism that some of these challenges are going to be met and the damage, you know, fixed by corporations and by scientists who are now working on these things. I mean, honestly, this, the problem with environmental movement is they have raised these alarms in such an over the top fashion for the last 20 years that people basically tune out. Yes, everyone agrees and they vote that this is a big concern, but then when it really comes down to wanting spending, you know, raising taxes to alleviate a problem or something like that, voters don't chime in because we're all sort of immune to this, this scare mongering. So you know, a lot to think about there. One, I appreciate Liz bringing up how younger people think because that's one of the debates I have all the time. I was not for the Green New Deal. I'm for a Green New Deal. I don't think you put the whole kitchen sink of healthcare and labor, part of climate change. I do think that young people like AOC and many others, this is at the top of her list. It's not keeping me up what AOC says like it is Scott. You know, I don't think about what she's saying every night. I actually like her passion, but I actually think that I don't think spending 93 trillion is really anything that's ever going to happen. So I think we have to put it in perspective here and it would do far more harm than good. The economy, that's not the way you treat climate change. I have watched so many Fox News segments where they dog pile on AOC and that's got to be one of the dumbest because I think the irony just flew right over their heads. And look, I already know the first thing that stood out to me is probably going to be what stood out to you as well. When that guy said that she's like one of those old fire and brimstone preachers who say the earth is going to flood, fires are going to consume us if we don't repent. The Amazon is literally on fire as we speak. Furthermore, he's saying all of this as Fox News literally tracks the progress of Hurricane Dorian on the screen and increased frequency and greater intensity of these hurricanes is in fact largely attributed to climate change.  And she's telling everyone that the sky is falling and the earth is flooding and the world is burning as it's doing just that. He is the human embodiment of that this is fine meme. As the house burns, you're sitting there telling yourself that everything is just peachy keen and you don't want to realize what's actually going on. He then says that the Green New Deal spends a lot of money with very little result. Well, what I say to that is citation needed. You don't know how effective the Green New Deal will or won't be. None of us do. We don't know if it's actually going to mitigate climate catastrophe. We don't know that. We're just hopeful. We're crossing our fingers. So to say, oh, it spends too much and doesn't do what it needs to do. You don't know that you don't have a crystal ball. You don't know what all of us don't know. You can't see into the future. All that we can do is prepare for the worst hope for the best period. Now another guy said that, you know, AOC stated that she wakes up at 3 a.m. worried about climate change. But, you know, he has to wake up at 3 a.m. to worry about what type of cockamamie ideas AOC will come up with next. To me, that just sounds like she's living in your head rent free. And that's a good thing. I hope that some of her ideas will resonate with you. I hope that her voice echoes in your head. So maybe one of those ideas will actually penetrate that thick skull, and you'll think about doing better with your life before you go on Fox News and do anti-climate change propaganda like this. Hopefully something she says will resonate. But I mean, if you're on Fox News, odds are you're already paid to not let these ideas break through because Fox News is about defending the status quo, the status quo being the Republican Party who takes millions of dollars every single year in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry.  I don't care what you have to say. I don't care if you think AOC's ideas are crazy. If you believe that climate change is not a serious issue, it's not AOC who's crazy.  Now one lady said that you have to have optimism that climate change will be solved by corporations. That's like relying on an arsonist to put out fires. Great to break it to you, but corporations, they created this problem. Just 100 corporations emit 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If you honestly believe that anything short of government intervention will get them to do better, you are horribly mistaken. I mean, some of these companies, their entire business model is based off of destroying the planet. So why on earth would they in a system where global capitalism reigns supreme do anything that would stifle their ability to increase short term profits? They won't do that and to suggest that it will shows how naive you are. There's no lack of optimism. The world is dying. The planet is becoming uninhabitable before our very eyes.  So I mean, forgive us for not being too optimistic right now. And the problem is that even the most reasonable person on this panel wasn't great. He said, you know, I'm not really for a Green New Deal. I'm more of a Paris climate accord type of guy. I'm paraphrasing, of course, but bad news for you, bud. That's not enough. The Paris climate accord is not going to stop climate catastrophe. It's not going to stop us from warming the planet to two degrees Celsius. Not gonna happen. So if you don't support the Green New Deal or something on the scale of the Green New Deal, then you absolutely are not taking this issue seriously enough. Now what's interesting is that Fox News kept bringing up this $93 trillion statistic. That's how much they say the Green New Deal would cost. Now it's interesting how they say that same number, but the Republican Party also says that same number. It's almost like Fox News and the Republican Party are in cahoots and they're not even trying to hide that fact anymore. Now this number is based off of a right wing think tank that said the cost of AOC's Green New Deal, if you account for climate specific policies, as well as climate adaptation policies like Medicare for All, which will be needed to address the new health crises that emerge if climate change is in fact as bad as we are anticipating. The number actually from that study is between 50 and 93 trillion, but of course they're going to cite the furthest on that spectrum because as they denounce AOC's quote unquote fear mongering, they're fear mongering themselves instead of it being about the climate, they're fear mongering about the debt and the deficit. But even if you only opt for the environmental portions of the Green New Deal and forego policies needed to adapt like Medicare for All, well Bernie Sanders plan, according to his own estimate, would cost 16 trillion. But here's the best part, it pays for itself within 15 years. Now, this hasn't been scored by economic or environmental groups yet. So we're just taking Bernie Sanders at his word. But the idea behind Bernie's plan, at least, is to construct a Green New Deal that is bold, it's comprehensive, but it also pays for itself because this is an investment. We're not just spending money for the sake of spending money. We're investing in the economy and we are expecting a return on that investment. So why didn't they bring up that statistic? Obviously, because that doesn't suit the narrative that they're pushing, which is we need to worry about the deficit and the debt. So if your mongering is bad, except when it comes to the debt and the deficit and immigrants and also terrorists. So we should probably invade every other country. Now, of course, they didn't say that, but that's what Fox News would tell you if you watch any other segment on Fox News. So these people are absolutely disingenuous. And at this point, I think we call Fox News what it is. They are dangerous now, not just to the country because they are attacking any and everyone that speaks out about climate change. And really, to be fair, this isn't only about climate change, the Fox News. They just see AOC as one of their biggest political opponents and they should because she is a threat to the Republican Party. But with that being said, I mean, what they say is not intellectual. They're not educating their viewers. They're just espousing pure stupidity.  And the world is kind of flooding and burning right now. I mean, maybe she's not like these fire and brimstone preachers because what she's saying is actually coming to fruition whereas with these fire and brimstone preachers, there's still not evidence that God exists.   They're a joke. But the issue is that people take them seriously. They are number one in all of cable news. And while that's still only amounts for a small portion of the country, that's still enough to where they can have a tremendous sway over politics, they can bolster the Republican Party as they do what is the agenda of the fossil fuel industry, which is antithetical to, you know, the planet and the survivability of human beings. So it's destructive. And I think that more so than ever, we have to call out this type of rhetoric.  This isn't something that just affects the left. Climate change affects all of us. And these old geezers on the panel may not be around to see the worst of what climate change has to offer. But a lot of us will, future generations, their grandchildren will.   OK, and whatever you do, folks, do not hit the notification bell either. Mike treats me so unfairly.


To Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii, my name is Kathleen Lee, owner of Kathleen Lee Consulting and I am your host for this program. Think Tech Hawaii is a platform that encourages civic engagement through conversations that educate, enlighten, and inspire. We are currently live streamed on ThinkTechHawaii.com as well as on Think Tech Hawaii's Facebook page and viewers like you have the opportunity to ask those questions by sending them to questions at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Now that I've gotten all that out of the way, I am very pleased to introduce our guest for today. He will be talking about civic engagement and business and the why of citizen participation. So we have on the show Chris Edwards, the new host of Making Democracy Work on Olelo. Hey Chris. Hi Kathleen, thank you for having me today. Of course, thank you for being on the show. So you are actually our last guest for Connecting Hawaii Business for 2020. So thank you so much for being on the show, but let's get into it. So tell us about yourself, your background, personal information, or anything you want to share with the viewers that will lead up to how you got to be the host of Making Democracy Work. Sure. So I'm Chris Edwards. I'm the recently elected president of the League of Women Voters here in Honolulu. So we have three different chapters in our state. There's the Honolulu chapter, the Big Island of Hawaii chapter, and then our state League of Women Voters. And the League of Women Voters is a 100-year-old organization that was born out of women's suffrage and making sure that all women in our nation had the right to vote. And even once on paper, it said that women had the right to vote. It still took another 56 or so years to make sure every woman in our nation had that right to vote. And so we continue to fight for democracy and fight for the right for folks to be represented and have that one vote that they deserve. And so that's kind of our continuing mission to this day. And so my background, I was a professional recruiter, and I think that's in part why I was tapped to become the president of the League, is because bringing in members is something that I really do enjoy doing. And so getting to know people, getting to know what direction they'd like to move in their civic engagement journey. Are they a beginner? Are they interested in finding new members like me? Are they interested in legislation and the opportunities at the City Council and learning more about that? Are they interested in neighborhood board meetings or boards and commissions around the county? Helping people navigate the democracy in our county is kind of my role. And being an advocate and an ambassador is something that I very much enjoy helping them get registered, helping them get to know the different levers of government. Because if we don't play a role in our government and voice ourselves, then we lose out on the opportunity to guide it in the direction that helps our families and our communities the best. Great. Let's pull up that logo for the League of Women Voters of Honolulu, just so people are able to identify which League you're chairing currently. And you talk about civic engagement and the importance of involvement. So let's go into how you ended up being the new host of making democracy work. Yeah. I was on the show making democracy work on Alelo about three months ago to discuss the charter amendments that we had going on during the general election. And it was a great joy of mine to appear on a show that, you know, has a long legacy and great host. We had Cowie Lucas was the current host until January. And then before that, we had Pearl Chang, who was formerly a president of the League of Women Voters of Honolulu as well in the 1990s. And so the show has been on air for six years or so. And they really liked my style and thought that I might be able to bring some advocacy and kind of link the show and the membership and our chapter together and move forward and bring on some really interesting guests to talk more about what they're doing to stay civically engaged and to assist our community. And so I have a really cool lineup for next year. And I hope that your guests can, you know, your viewers can also become my viewers, maybe. Okay. And so you kind of tapped into that already about, you know, your lineup, which I'm excited to learn more about. So tell us about the premise of the show, like why is it there? You know, why should people tune in? And then we can go into why people should get involved. Yeah. People should tune in to the show because it's really important that we have these long format opportunities to hear from guests. We hear a lot of news clips in local news that, you know, three, four, five minutes stories. But when you give someone the opportunity to speak for minutes on minutes, you can really learn more about what their organization is doing and really tap into an understanding, a better understanding of what they're doing and why you should play a part. You know, we want people to come in and say this is what we're working on. Politics isn't just at city council. It's not just at the state capital. It's not, it's, you know, in your community, it's in your family, it's on your block. And it's in your school and the classrooms. And so it's important that you play a role in shaping that. And so we want to bring in those folks that are a part of that process. So whether it's like a school principal type or a neighborhood board chair, a church leader that might be working on a cool project or a nonprofit leader, we want them to be able to talk about those cool projects that are helping with civic engagement and that folks can tap into and really make their own. Because no organization exists without its members. And there's so many pivotal organizations that are doing really big things to, you know, in our case at the League of Women Voters defend democracy, but in other cases, you know, feed people, work on homelessness and affordable housing, and so many other things that are gigantic parts of our community. I know we had a talk yesterday and I kind of want to reverse it. Can you speak on what would, because I talk about like why people should get involved and we can delve into that further, but like in your experience and in your opinion, what do you think happens when people don't? When we don't get involved in our democracy, it kind of gets away from us. Folks will, our representatives will go in a direction that may not help your particular community and your particular block, your cul-de-sac, your business. And when they get too far out of line with what the people need, then people get kind of upset and then they get apathetic about the whole process. But what we cannot forget is that there is no, we should not be too shy about telling our representatives what we want and when we want it and asking them to research a problem, solve a problem on our behalf, reach out to the organizations inside the public government that can help solve that problem. They might say, you need to reach out to this person at that organization and to solve the problem. Or they might say, oh, I don't know anything about that. Can you inform me more about it? And so then we have to do some research, we have to ask them for some research, but when they're not delivering what the public needs, then we can talk to our friends and get together in more of a coalition and say, we really want this and need you to do it and be able to hold folks more accountable to the needs of a neighborhood. If we don't take part in democracy, democracy won't do what we want. That's a very great point. What do you think stops people from going out there or reaching out to their representatives or their local legislators or whoever else is out there that may be able to help them in advance something that affects their lives? Sure. Folks like me like to know our representatives on a first name basis and I absolutely encourage everyone to be on first name basis with your city council member so that when you call them they kind of know who you are and go to their events and say hi and introduce yourself, but what holds people back oftentimes is the two very simple things and very natural human things, shyness and not really knowing the whole picture and then feeling like, oh, well, I don't understand the whole picture and it'll get taken care of for me so I'll just stay out of it. So those two particular very natural human features are kind of why folks don't get involved, but what I would encourage is do some research on the topic, then call and ask more questions of that representative and see what their knowledge can bring to you and then decide if you have more questions to return with those maybe in writing or in a next phone call and then take it from there. There's no reason why you should feel uncomfortable calling your elected representatives, whether it's your city council member, folks on the neighborhood board or even your state representatives and even the governor if need be. It's really cool because you can oftentimes write these people in emails if you're uncomfortable calling them on the phone, that's a really great strategy that I suggest for folks who are really looking for the answer, but maybe may not feel like they'll be able to ask all the questions concisely on the phone. Proceed in writing, proceed in the manner that helps you. If it weren't COVID, I would say proceed by knocking on their door or ringing their bell at their office and coming in and chatting with them or setting up an appointment on the phone. There's 100 different ways and now with social media you can reach them on their different social media platforms as that's really more comfortable. We have a lot of young people that want to get very involved. You don't have to go through the old formal channels necessarily. Sometimes you can use the opportunity to use social media to get into their direct messages and get your problem solved. I think we have time for one or two more questions. I think one before we go into break and then after you can connect us to why civic engagement and business tied together. Before we go on break, my question for you is what is your why and how when it comes to civic engagement and civic participation? I take part in civic engagement because I know how hard it was for the folks that came before me to take part in democracy. Whether it's the women of the League of Women Voters who had to fight like heck to get the right to vote and they couldn't give it to themselves, they had to use every power in their being to make men give them the right to vote that they heartily deserve all along. You think about African Americans who had to fight those poll taxes after they had been in prison for hundreds of years by people, by other people who felt like they were subhuman who had to fight those poll taxes and fight to get their educations and fight to get the best school books. Nothing was given. You look at our history here in Hawaii and the way that people had to fight in order to get the rights to vote when they were keeping the children of foreign-born persons from voting, when they were keeping poor people from voting, when they were keeping non-white people from voting. They're every nasty trick in the book that was used on the mainland to keep African Americans from voting and Native Americans and Chinese folks on the mainland from voting, they used here in our state in order to prevent folks from voting and it was a pretty nasty time, but we've come a long way, we've changed laws and we've made it so that those things are unacceptable to most of us and the League of Women Voters wants it to be unacceptable for any constituency to suppress votes and prevent folks from taking part in democracy and fair representation. So that's why. Those are all actually really great points and I thank you for bringing that up. I know that when we were talking yesterday you also want to expand on that when you do begin to your hosting duties for next year. So I'm very excited and looking forward to see you know what the show is going to come up with. But we are about to go on break and when we come back we'll talk about how civic engagement ties into business and even down to people receiving their paychecks. So stay tuned. Welcome back to Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Kathleen Lee, your host for this afternoon and our guest today is Chris Edwards who is the new host of making democracy work as well as the president of League of Women Voters of Honolulu. So right before we went on break we were talking about tying in how civic engagement or participation ties in with business. So let's go with that. Chris I know when we had our conversation yesterday you made a really great point about how business affects not only business owners but even people that are receiving paychecks. So let's go over that. How does civic engagement affect our businesses down to our paychecks? Yeah so when we look at the when we look at how let me start over the most important thing in our government are the laws that really are part of our government and when we when we look at our paychecks we know that it's paying for government and that government is a critical function that makes sure that the interests of everyone are taking care of and so when we pay our let's say payroll taxes we're paying for so many of the resources that we kind of need and we're also paying for the staff that help us write better laws. But sometimes there are very much times when laws do not align with the needs of the people and people need to better understand how that they can impact those laws and get things changed so that so that they're more in line with the needs of a particular family. Maybe the school has a bad software program or maybe a road needs to exist where it didn't exist before because there's communities that need to get attached together. Government may not necessarily figure that out on its own and civic engagement is that function and that role that put things in place that changes things. So we take a look at when there was bad software in the in the educational system here. When we had COVID-19 come in and everyone had to go to school from home we didn't necessarily love the software that a lot of students were given in the public school system and it was very much civic engagement in the thousands and thousands of letters and calls that went into the in this case the state house to make sure that folks knew there that it wasn't acceptable to have software that was a subpart of the standards that the parents desired and that the community desired. And we oftentimes forget that some of the things that we very much take for granted today in 2020 were were built on the functions of civic engagement of the past and making sure that things were changed to better fit the community as needed. And so it's a constant ongoing process of one topic or another where we need to improve improve improve and occasionally we need to remove laws that we find to no longer be necessary and that's great too. And the ones that are really bad for the function of for business or bad for the function of people in the community. And so it really can go both ways. You can support a law or or not like a law and you need to be able to use civic engagement on both directions. Okay and on that note let's go over what your plans are for the League of Women voters. What are you folks up to for 2021? Yeah we have big plans so we are always recruiting new members to join the organization and we always say that you don't need to come in knowing everything. We're open to everybody. We have a very inclusive diversity and inclusion policy. We're open we're a nonpartisan organization and I shouldn't have waited 15 minutes to say it. That's really at our core. One of the most probably the most important part is that we don't pick politicians. We do pick policies that we think are in the best interest of democracy but we don't pick politicians and it's very important that we maintain that that legacy and that openness and inclusion as to ideas from all sides as well as folks who have different various backgrounds. And so we are open to having new members from all different backgrounds. We're open to different projects and plans. One of the biggest things that we're doing this year is a video guidebook of the boards and commissions that we have here in the city in the county of Honolulu. And so there are all these different boards and commissions that are oftentimes appointed. The people on them are appointed by the city council or the mayor and so they range from the high profile ones like the police commission and the ethics commission to very low profile ones like the fire department commission and the parks department and a bunch of things in between. There's also a commission on the status of women here in the county and we want folks to be on these committees. We don't want it to feel like a closed group. We want it to be as big a group as the community would like to take part. We want them to know that there are these opportunities to serve the community and to serve very much in what would feel like a nonprofit type of environment but it's for our city's government and for its citizens and for its visitors because that's a very big role in so many of our so many of our parks are visitors are in them and so much of our city is really open to tourists. And so having more viewpoints on these boards and commissions will help them function better and oftentimes what they're doing is reviewing salaries and budgets personnel. The big decisions of that those directors come to them with are what they're deciding on. They're kind of like the board of directors for each board and commission and we'd like that board and commission pool to be a little bit bigger and so we want to make it really easy for people to see when do these organizations meet what time do they meet do they meet on weekdays do they meet on weekends. We want to do interviews with the directors to tell us what does your organization do why should somebody want to be on your board and commission and it's it's it's very important that these positions that are not elected but appointed are are representative of the entire community and the folks that want to be on them have the opportunity to know about them at the time when they'd like to join them and then play a role. I love how you're able to tie in your chair position with the League of Women Voters of Honolulu as well as you hosting for making democracy work I think that's great and it's it's it's really clever to do that since you know the resources are already there we just have to connect the dots right on that note and I think you've already touched upon it when you were talking about the League of Women Voters what can we expect from making democracy work for 2021 what are your tentative plans what what would you like to do with the show. Sure so we expect to have 12 episodes so one for each month we air on the third Tuesday each month and so our first upcoming episode was actually recently shot and so we're really excited to get that up let me think I've never teased a show before without giving it all away it's about helping how how private money is helping different schools across the state fund reconstruction and fund the replacement of equipment the modernization of equipment and how we can do more of that and how we can play a role as a public in encouraging more private funds to assist our schools when they're in need and so really excited about that we also have we're using a lot of theme months so we have African American History Month in February we have Asian American in Pacific Islander Month in May we are very excited about the opportunities to talk about how African Americans and Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians have contributed to our democracy here in our county and and these routes go very very deep deeper than we may initially imagine and so it's important that we sometimes bring up this old history so so young people middle-aged people and seniors can see all the different ways that folks have contributed and then they can pick out like oh that's really cool I really like what that person did you know in the 70s to change and that change has lasted all these 50 years or I really love what that person did in the 40s I didn't know that story that's super cool I'm glad that you know folks can vote from one community or another and are no longer hindered by by bad laws of the past right yeah absolutely although there are some that still exist and this is why we are talking about the importance of you know civic participation and on that note is there anything that you would like to add that we haven't covered to close out our show for today yeah please look us up online the League of Women Voters Honolulu and please join if it's something that you're passionate about please watch the show starting next month or Tuesday of the month every month we're also in reruns on Allelo you can watch our back catalog online by going to Allelo's website and looking up making democracy work we would be happy to entertain any questions you have that's kind of our big role as advocates is we field a lot of questions from the public to assist them with mundane things and very challenging questions and we we do a lot of work as a state organization at the state legislature we'd like to have volunteers that would like to help us the League of Women Voters Honolulu down at at Honolulu Halle so that we can have a closer eye on what the city council is up to so if you'd like to be that volunteer that really likes watching the city council meetings or wants to learn or if you would like to get involved with state legislation oh please give me a call let me know so that we can connect you to the right folks and you can play a major role in in shaping the democracy and making democracy work better so I hope you'll join me in 2021 yeah and how do people get in contact with you I think you sort of mentioned that already but to repeat it so it's um I'll give my personal email it's chris-edwards-hevae-edgmail.com and then I'll get you connected to whichever direction you'd like you'd like to go whether it's a research question a county question or a state question we'd love to have you we also easily search us online at League of Women Voters Honolulu or the League of Women Voters main website is lwv.org and then you can just search for our chapters out here well thank you so much chris for joining us today I am looking forward to seeing you continue your community work and seeing you host making democracy work next year as well so thank you for joining us absolutely we do want to thank jfidel and the entire staff at think tech hawaii and Eric has helped us out today for making this program possible and on that note chris and I wish everyone a happy holidays merry holidays and aloha