I think it might be time to get started because we have a very packed schedule for this forum today. Welcome everyone to the Washington Five Candidates Forum, Washington Five Vermont House District Candidates Forum. My name is Elise Dorson. I'm one of the organizers of the forum. And I really appreciate you all coming out today to be part of a fairly exciting election for our two towns, Eastmont Pealier and Middlesex. On August 9th or by early voting before, we can make the choice among three candidates on the Democratic primary ballot, Zach Sullivan, Theo Kennedy, and Ella Chapin. At this, and I think at this juncture, it's really quite important to make an informed decision about these three very exciting candidates. And I think at this point, it's time to just start moving on with the forum itself, and I'm happy to introduce our moderator and a co-organizer of this forum. Susan Clark, the town moderator of Middlesex to introduce how this is going to work. Thank you all very much for coming. Thanks Elise. Thanks very much to Kellogg Hubbard Library for hosting us, and thanks to Orca Media for streaming this event. And Orca will also make the recording available online. So if you know somebody who missed this, tell them. And we also wanna thank the League of Women Voters. The League is a non-partisan organization, and as such is not a co-host of this event, but we're really grateful to have been able to tap their expertise on the event format. A few quick notes on the process. We're gonna start by having each candidate introduce themselves, and then we'll move on to topical questions. And each of the candidates will have up to two minutes to respond to each question, and we'll rotate who goes first. We have solicited questions from voters via front porch forum, and incorporated those into the questions we'll be asking tonight. And for those of you in the room, if you want to suggest a question to our pretty packed agenda, feel free to use those index cards that are in the back, and you can pop those up to me. Just pass them forward, and we only have one hour. So I can't guarantee we will get to them all, but we will at least try. So, welcome to our candidates, let's get started. The first question, you have all actively contributed to the health and well-being of our local community. So please tell us a little about yourselves, and why you think the Vermont House is the right place for you to continue that service. So let's start with Zach. First of all, yeah, thank you so much. I'd like to thank Susan and Elise for organizing, and for the color color for hosting, and for Orca to getting this out to the folks who couldn't attend in person. So I'm Zach Sullivan, I've lived in Eastmont Palace since 2014, with my wife, Helen, and now their son, Eric, and daughter, Vera, who are five and three, and who have not been with us the whole time. I've been involved with the town since fairly early on in my tenure. First, trying to decide what to do with a piece of land, town to purchase, and now with the, as the chair of the Planning Commission. I work in healthcare, I moved to Vermont, actually, to work on single payer and now work for the UVM Health Network, and I have a background in public policy, which I think gives me some good rounding in terms of figuring out how to deal with complex questions, particularly in a legislature that doesn't have a lot of staff, and where the legislators themselves need to really serve as their own policy experts. One of the reasons I wanted to run was looking at the issues that were coming before the Planning Commission and in healthcare. I was just running into blocks of what, there was only so much we could do at the town level. We've worked to make affordable housing more viable through our zoning. You can remove barriers, you can't actually create the housing. We're now working on our energy plan, and you can encourage people to buy electric vehicles, but if they can't afford it, you can't actually get them over that hump. And so that was one of the, those are the sorts of issues that I think are much better dealt with at the state level. As I look at the types of policies I want to enact, I, you know, fairness in the work is really, you know, really key. You know, you go out and talk to voters and you have talked to people who were just over a benefit cliff, where if they'd made a little less money, they would have been eligible for benefits and now they're not, and so that's really hard. We talk, you know, we look at really significant racial discrepancies in healthcare and housing and a lot of other things that those are the sorts of things that I think we need to really, you know, try to solve. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate the Vermont League of Women Voters, even if you're not officially a sponsor and the East Democratic, the East Montpelio Democratic Committee for hosting this and the library, to all you folks here, the folks that are visiting via Zoom and to the ORCA group. You know, in thinking why it's a good fit for Theo Kennedy and the House, there are kind of four large areas. One is, and we won't have time in two minutes for everything, so I'll just lay them out, but experience in education, kind of vision to action, familiarity over 20 years in the legislative body, both on behalf of government and behalf of different private groups, and then also a real deep commitment to constituent service, compassion constituent service. And I'm gonna try to weave those into some of my other answers, but I also just want to introduce myself a little more fully. I'm married, my 25th anniversary is tomorrow. I have four children. I went to school in Middlebury College and then got a law degree at Boston University and a master's in public health and concentration environmental health at Boston University. I came in January 99 to work for the state of Vermont in the Consumer Affairs and Public Information Division of the Department of Public Service, where I did my clerkship. And then I went over to what was then BISCA, but we now think of it as DFR, and I was director of health rates and forms there for about two and a half years. And then I moved over to the Department of Children and Families to be director of planning policy and regulation, which I did for about seven and a half years. If there's anything that should ring, that rings true to me is my deep commitment to service and to other people and to helping others in need. I'm gonna emphasize constituent services as I close out because I'll weave in some of the experience and education and familiarity later. Right now as a lawyer in private practice, general civil practice, litigation practice, I spent a lot of time in Washington County low income assistant project folks who really just need an orientation to what's possible out there. I'm Ella Chapin, I live in East Montpelier with my spouse, Simeon, who's here and my 11 and 15 year old kids. I grew up in Calis, I went 232 as did my spouse Simeon and we were living in different parts of the country and moved back in 2001 knowing that when we reconnected at 25 that we were gonna settle down and have kids and where would we do that? We would do that here. So we are, I am pretty much a lifelong Vermonter, save a few years out West and just I'm really dedicated to this town and this place. My early background and career, I did my undergraduate work in environmental science and ecology and spent 10 years working in outdoor education and leadership education as an instructor with Outward Bound and running various environmental and education programs and then I received a master's in planning and policy and started working here in Vermont and have worked in the same place the last 15 years until last year at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board which is a quasi-public entity that does permanently affordable housing investments and permanently conserved lands and my role there was to run a program for the state that's set up in statute by the legislature in 2003 called the Farm and Forest Viability Program. So I spent the last 15 years managing a state program, being a key leader here in the agricultural sector and in rural economic development for our state and I worked on more than just that one program for the state. I ended up helping with a number of programs that the legislature's created, the Working Lands Enterprise Board where I sat on the board for eight years, the first eight years and the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Funds Farm to Plate Initiative, a lot of different initiatives that came out of the legislature helping design and implement those. So I have a lot of experience reporting to the legislature and different committees about that work. I'm an effective, hardworking leader. I'm known for getting things done. I'm known as a good listener and a really good problem solver and I tend to lead with integrity and empathy and I'm running because I love Vermont. I feel like I have a deep connection at the state level and really want to better connect what's happening locally with policy work at the state level and I'll stop there. Thank you. Thanks, Elena. Elise, I wonder if you want to grab a couple of chairs and just put them up here is a few more people are trickling in and we're not gonna have enough chairs. Yay, that's a good problem. It is a good problem. Yes. All right, great. So folks who don't have a seat and would like when we have a couple of extra seats up here. Thank you. We'll move on to question number two, which is housing. Housing has emerged as a central problem in an overall affordability crisis in Vermont. So what steps would you take to address housing issues? And we'll start with Theo. Okay, well, all these questions were excellent and each area is so important. In my professional life, I've been doing real property law and whether it's on lender side or helping someone purchase a home in government, dealing with homeless issues. I think that right now, due to the pandemic, we've seen an influx in our state of monies like we've never seen before and there has been a lot of money put towards refurting existing housing stock, stock helping landlords and contractors, dealing with middle income homeowners, creating new shelter space, giving dollars towards mortgage assistance and utility assistance. So there's a lot of money in the pipeline right now. When I think back to best practice, which is something you might hear me say a few times during today, I'm thinking back when another flood of money came into the state of human services during the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act when we had our recession and then Secretary or Acting Secretary Patrick Flood said, Theo, let's come up with a program that really harnesses the continuum of care of housing.  And I'd really like to see some of the monies that have been allocated and not spent to have that kind of competitive grant making process. I'd also say in housing there are like, my view of solutions is it tends to be the aggregate of discrete initiatives that actually get things done and listening to experts on things and trying to figure out how to fit the pieces together. I mean, I think we really need to look carefully at accessory unit housing. We need to look at housing first, which is very successful for folks suffering with mental illness to give them some stability and perspective and more after the red. Right? She's a taskmaster over here. Ella? Thanks. Well, I see housing as one of the most urgent, one of the most urgent issues in this moment and certainly hearing that from folks as I go around and talk with constituents. Housing is deeply interrelated with a lot of other issues, health, transportation, equity. We have historic patterns of discrimination in housing whether you're looking for a lease or a loan. So it's an essential need. I'm hearing very distinctly that housing is actually one of the leading causes of our workforce issues right now that employers are actually finding people to take jobs and offering them jobs and then they go look for housing and they can't find it. So I heard that from Cabot Creamery. I heard that from Central Vermont Medical Center. I heard that about a number of different places in our region. I spent 15 years working at Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, not in housing, but alongside our amazing housing team that brings state and federal funds together to get out for affordable housing. And I just, I'm very keenly aware of what it takes to finance and make affordable housing projects work and the need that's out there and also an amount of money that's been invested over the last five years unlike we've ever done before. So we had even pre-pandemic, we had some bond funds, a lot more funding at the state level going towards affordable housing and that's been a need, but it takes time for those investments to come to fruition. So we're hoping to see that over the next number of years. I strongly support state investments in affordable and workforce housing and we're gonna need to keep that up. I wanna mention that that really needs to take place as new construction, as rehabbing vacant units and making investments in energy efficiency around those to support the costs and affordability of those spaces for renters and tenants and owners. And just wanna mention sort of, generally I'm really supportive of smart growth, a strategy here in Vermont and there's a lot we can do, but I'm running out of time, so I'll stop there. I just wanna say we're making strong investments, we're gonna need to do more. We've been really generous with these two minute questions, a lot of people only do a minute and a half. You guys are doing great, thank you, Zach. So I think the issue with housing really is supply and even as we have people coming into the state is that we don't have the supply to meet that need. I think as we look at how do we create more, we need to look at encouraging denser housing in village centers or in town centers. This would do three things. One, it gets us, it lets us build on smaller lots, it lets us build smaller units, it lets us build multifamily dwellings. I think this is probably what Ella was starting to talk about a little bit there at the end. All of those things make the housing stock more affordable. And so when you start to talk about the people who need housing that is, let's say, affordable for a teacher, but who doesn't actually fall into the technical definition of affordable housing, there's something there for them in addition to state investments in affordable housing. This also prevents sprawl and it helps create vibrant communities that can support businesses in town that people can walk to so that we're a little less car dependent. What do we need to do to get here? A lot of our towns are really held back by infrastructure. In East Montpelier, we've looked at this and the thing that always stops us is wastewater. And so I think we need, we may need state investment in wastewater, we may also need some potential use incentives to really put that on the table to developers to say, oh, you could build a shared septic system that would allow more development with the septic system over here and the housing six or eight units over there. I think those are the sorts of creative solutions that could get us to the denser housing. We may want to look at the zoning. The state put in requirements to make towns allow accessory dwelling units and it actually made us encourage us to go forward. So we may want to look at other ways of using preempting zoning. I'm thinking particularly Massachusetts has rules where if a town doesn't have enough affordable housing, some of the zoning can be preempted to force that through. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, well, this next question is about healthcare. Of course, COVID has stressed our healthcare system from rural hospitals to drug prices to mental health. Another element of healthcare is senior care. An East Montpelier resident wrote in that she has been a full time caregiver since 2016 for her husband with dementia. He can't be left at home, but a nursing home would cost $20,000 a month. She wrote, Vermont is aging and headed for a senior care crisis. Is this on your radar? So please tell us about your healthcare priorities. And we'll start with Ella. Was gonna list them all, but it was so long and I'm getting all these red signals over here. So I'm not gonna do that. And I also wanna just say condolences to everyone who lost someone during the pandemic. I'm gonna start talking about myself in that I'm really data driven and that that's been really important during the pandemic also. I'm trained as a scientist. I look for evidence based solutions wherever possible. And I'm really, really concerned right now about the state of our healthcare system as I think a lot of us are. I will definitely advocate for one that is accessible, affordable and high quality. We know that there's a lot that needs to happen at the national level and we only have control in what we're talking about today, more at the state level. But there are a lot of things I think we can do at the state level. I think we can work on universal primary care, which is a step towards, potentially a step towards single payer also. We can work on integrating nutrition and mental health fully into primary care. I'd like to see, and I think a lot of us are thinking a lot about mental health care right now. We really need to expand access. Telehealth is a little golden nugget that came out of the pandemic that we wanna hold onto and expand and make available. We need to support our community health centers and our regional hospitals. Really, I really have a laundry list. I think I might not go through the whole thing. But to get, and so maybe to highlight some things that in particular affect the senior part of our Vermont demographic, which is a significant part of our state. Drug prices is an ongoing issue and with times of inflation like this, like we've never seen in our lifetimes and so many of our seniors on fixed incomes. And that's something I don't know how to attain it, but we've gotta keep working on that. And I also heard from a constituent who was talking about issues around caregivers access to seniors living in different facilities during the pandemic. And there's already legislation proposed for that. So that's another thing that I would be interested in working on. So, yes, there is a lot to cover in healthcare. The things that are more focused on first mental health, we did have enough mental health capacity in the system and we're not funding the outpatient system well enough before the pandemic. It's gotten significantly worse. Last summer we had, we were having adolescents in our emergency rooms for two, three, four weeks. What advocates will describe as prison light conditions because that's how you keep them from killing themselves. We desperately need to invest in adolescent mental health care. We're seeing really sharp increases proposed for commercial insurance rates right now. And part of that is that we have seen really significant inflation in healthcare costs over the past year. Part of that is that healthcare was just too expensive to begin with. But part of that is also that Medicaid is not pulling its weight. And that we have a system where there are sort of secret taxes on some people, people have commercial insurance that are picking up what we are not paying through actual taxes in Medicaid. We have what's called a global commitment waiver from the federal government that gives us some flexibility in how we use our Medicaid money. We do have the ability to increase Medicaid funding. And I think we absolutely need to do that. And then we, particularly in the hospital sector, because we can then use the hospital budget process through the Green Mountain Care Board to make sure that we are actually buying the commercial rate down with that money and not having it just be a windfall. And then finally, I think we need to look at how we transform rural care. Right now, surgery is the profit center. And so everyone is trying to do surgery because it brings in money. And people aren't doing enough volume to be high quality. We need to try to pay providers in rural areas for the care that we really need and try to move some of the higher end care into centers of excellence, but also use our regulatory structure to make sure that the places that get those centers don't just, you know, aren't able to run off with all the money from the profitable services. So healthcare, someone worked with me, called it Labyrinthine. It is so many different pieces to this. You know, I do think that having worked as a director of planning policy regulation at DCF when we oversaw Medicaid eligibility and covered services and also at the Department of Financial Regulation over rates that were submitted, I got a chance to look at the whole system and I have a couple of solutions in mind. I think also in light of what Ella said, and I'm sure Zach feels, what a sobering time to go through that pandemic with the death and illness that we experience. And yet we had our own Dr. Fauci with Dr. Levine leading the way with facts and science, helping us try to understand what we're understanding in real time, enough to make informed decisions. And I think that's a really important part of policy, generally. You know, I have a couple of specific solutions in mind. One is I'd like to revisit the public option. I have a way of funding the public option by levelizing the way in which the self-insured book of business or a lot of the good rest gets assessed equal with the fully insured book that would allow us basically to use Medicaid. We already are a single public Medicaid MCO. We're the only one in the country to allow that aperture to broaden widely over time but keeps premium stable for that time. You know, I've represented also in pharmacy. I've represented pharmacy interest for many years both in government when I led the Part D implementation but also on behalf of independent pharmacies and pharmacists. And I think we should look at kind of a liquor control board like approach to pharmaceuticals, put us in control of supply and distribution which is a real issue during the pandemic and take a lot of the middle member profit centers are out of the equation. We have about a 6.2 billion, the numbers are changing but about 20% is attributable to pharmacy.  I'm on the board in another way of having peer support as a way to help psychiatric survivors dealing with suicide prevention. You know, really trying to make sure that we, and the last thing, oh goodness, I guess I'll come back to the topic of seniors which Ginny so kindly brought up at the tail end, okay? Is about education and we have a bunch of interest in this. As you know, our towns of Middlesex and East Montpelier were part of a force merger under Act 46. We did not go willingly. A member of the audience asked, since the architect of Act 46 has now stated he was hoodwinked, what is your position on forced school consolidation? And let's force merge this question with the question, what do you see as the best tools to keep our local schools strong? So let's see, we start with Zach on this one. Okay, forced consolidation is a tough one. I do think that with Act 46, there was some, I think there was sort of a little bit being quiet about what the purpose really was and I think there was an attempt to force some of the really tough decisions from the state level to the local level that I think really wasn't fair. And I think that people weren't really aware that forced consolidation was part of the package they were getting. I do think that when we have a system that is funded at the state level, it does make some sense to have the state have some control if there is state level funding. In terms of what it takes to support the schools more generally, there are two big things. One is just the schools are dealing with a lot of workforce challenges and there are a lot of additional burdens. We have some of the workforce issues are the things that are happening everywhere, housing and childcare, but they're also real quality of life concerns for people, particularly as the schools have not been able to hire subs and as teachers are required to sub, administrators are required to sub. Teachers are saying this is the hardest, 20-year teachers are saying this is the hardest year they've ever had. I think in terms of dealing with additional burdens, because I do wanna get to some solutions, a big one is to listen to educators. We've all been to school and so we all think we know how to run a school and this is the perennial problem for schools. And so I think we do need to do some getting out of the way. There's also an element where we need to look at all of the burdens that are being placed on school and see it maybe co-locate some services, but say run mental health through the mental health care system, don't have that be all on the school. And that would help to take some of that burden to let the schools really focus on teaching. Yeah, so I mean when I looked at this question, first of all is thank you teachers. What a couple years and things changed so much and there may be golden nuggets in there of maybe some hybrid learning opportunities. I looked at the average wage and that's where I'd like to start for teachers. I think it's 1662 an hour in Vermont. That's just above the federal poverty level. It's about 138% of federal poverty level. That's not okay. I mean these are the people that we're charging to help our children learn. So I think wage is a really important thing. Obviously workforce development. I don't, I mean the word forced never really appeals to me, forced to anything really. So I don't really can't speak to what the person was saying when they felt hoodwinked or not and hoodwinked isn't a good thing either. But I do really respect local control. I think it's really important that decisions get made at the local level, at the school board level, where people and citizens who are engaging in their community have a chance to have input and be heard. So I think that's a characteristic of Vermont government generally and it's one of the places where I think we really have to respect the decisions in that context. I mean there is a whole list and I'm gonna take a stab at a few to the dual enrollment programs and continue to expand those early college programs, work-based learning so that we can really connect skills to needs in the workplace. I think involving the private sector is terribly important. Involving the licensed professions through the Office of Professional Regulations. So we can really make sure that there are pathways to employment. You know, in addition to the thanks, I think part of the economic engine that I envision connects all these pieces together. They're not, we're talking about separate areas and answering our questions, but they're really interdependent. So I think in order for teachers to, in addition to a wage, you need a paid family and medical leave, you need affordable childcare. So again, a system is only as strong as weakest links and we have to really strengthen the links. Thank you. Thanks. So I'll just start by saying, I think schools are the cornerstones of our rural communities and they are essential for giving our children their start in life and building the next generation. They're also key to attracting young professionals and families to our communities. We need to support our schools and I know that they're dealing with major workforce issues. We just, Zach already touched on that and I'm definitely hearing about that. Positions that used to attract hundreds of, you know, a hundred great resumes are now being filled with people who aren't licensed teaching professionals and it's shocking. I was already shocked and the stories I'm hearing are even more shocking. And I think some of that comes from decades of the teaching position and educators in schools getting broader and broader and doing things that used to be done in other ways in our families and our communities around social and emotional development. We need to think about fair compensation for the role of what a teacher provides and we need to honor our pension promises. I think that free meals for K through 12 is something we have to keep looking at how to fund. If it's not done at the federal level, can we do it here ongoing at the state level? It's critically important for learners to have access to the food they need and without stigma of being, you know, those who get school meals. Data demonstrates unequivocally that improvements, that results in improvements in students' health and learning outcomes. You know, we also need to be making investments in 21st century learning in the infrastructure and the programmatic and curriculum like Theo was talking about. We, you know, we really need to think about our career centers, our tech schools and think about some of the chemical issues that we're having in schools. You know, PFAS is starting to be found in schools and now EPA just drastically lowered the sort of permissible amount of PFAS in drinking water. We're gonna have infrastructure costs and I wanna see some of our state aid infrastructure funding programs come back that have not been funded for a long time. Thank you for the thanks, so it's a complex topic. You guys are doing great. I'm telling you, lots, lots coming at us and this next one is no easier. We're gonna talk about climate change and urgent problem. What are your plans for pursuing climate solutions? And Theo, we're gonna start with you. Another small topic. Right. You know, I think the climate action plan which followed the Global Warming Solutions Act that gives us a target of zero net emissions 2050. That's a high thing to climb. And again, I'm gonna emphasize local. I'm on our planning commission. I'm part of a team. I think governance is good team building. You know, we were able to pass our enhanced energy plan and I'm really glad Zach's working on it in East Montpelier. In fact, this is also a regional issue. But I think it helps and that energy plan highlights different things, but it's consistent with the Global Warming Solutions Act around transportation, around energy efficiency, around renewable energy generation, around transportation infrastructure, around. So many of the themes are similar, but the important thing I think that through the Central Monterey Regional Planning Commission that it affords our towns and other towns in the region about the state is an opportunity to join at the local level and kind of figure out what works in your community to kind of listen, not kind of, listen to those who have a passion for it, those with expertise, those with interests, an inclusive process that can really yield result that are actually gonna be sustainable. So I mean, I think renewable generation is very important, but we already have a utility in WEC that is 100% renewable so we don't wanna leave stranded assets out there. So maybe we're looking at the Green Mountain Power portfolio, but we have to be able to think about moving climate change forward. Fighting climate change and taking it very seriously. Obviously there are equity issues. I just want to see whether there's another piece. I think there are a lot of different pieces. I mean, I think payment for ecosystem services has a lot of promise. When you look whether it's phosphorus runoff or you look at trying to deal with greenhouse gases, incentivizing certain changes in behavior, I think we also need to look at this regionally. Obviously this is a priority in our world and we can't and everything comes tumbling down if we continue to disregard it. But I think as far as market forces like the regional greenhouse gas initiative, look at somehow that works. There are again many pieces to the solution. So my focus on this will be on implementing the climate action plan. We are required to meet our carbon emission reduction goals by law and if we don't, it's gonna become a different problem for the state. The climate action plan outlines numerous pathways to get there. They all need individual consideration and thinking about how to do them equitably in a way that they don't particularly impact certain groups of people in our state. And the climate action plan was put together through a diverse group of stakeholders and a public process and there's a lot of information there to start working on. Implementing that plan will help us equitably transition away from fossil fuels, create a clean energy economy and really transition. It will be extremely costly for Vermont not to do it. Our legislative joint fiscal office just released a report recently that analyzed the climate action plan and found that it will save $6 billion over 30 years for Vermonters, primarily in avoided costs. We can't afford not to develop resilience and adapt to climate change. So I'd be focused on advancing a clean heat standard, electric vehicle infrastructure, public transportation and weatherization at a greater scale, all of which will help create a new kind of economy for Vermont and our region. And as we move to electric heating and transportation, we're gonna need to look at modernizing our grid system. Climate, our climate crisis is a global issue. We are not gonna solve it in Vermont alone. We need national solutions and funding, but Vermont has a moral obligation to do what we can and we believe it will be advantageous for us economically to do so. Our state investments, we're really strong this past year in this regard. We're gonna need to do more, seek out the federal funding, work with our federal delegation and just keep working at it. Thanks. Zach? So the thing I would like to really focus on as we talk about how do we move forward to meet our, you know, our entire, is electrification. You know, a lot of really great new technologies coming on or really becoming mature now that can, you know, both are fantastic environmentally but also can save people a lot of money, I think as Ella was mentioning. They also have some really high upfront costs and I think we need to figure out how to deal with that and to help people deal with that.  You have to have, you know, you have to pay for all of that on day one and so I'd like to see us explore how we can help people to solve that problem. I think we also, you know, as we're doing that, we also need to look at some of the infrastructure problems. There are, certain things are regional. You know, the state is going to need to work with the rest of New England on some of the larger scale transmission pieces but there's also local stuff.  That can get to be very piecemeal in terms of who gets stuck with the bill and I think we need to work on that. You know, these are the sorts of things where the state budget is very sensitive to the stock market and so we have really good years and really bad years and we're not going to use that up and down to fund the school system but it does give us opportunities to look at where can we use some one time money to invest in things like infrastructure that will give us, you know, if we use infrastructure money for the grid will give us really long term benefits in terms of electrification. Okay, great. We have lots of interesting questions from our audience here so we will, I'm going to combine a couple of them. One of them would like to know what kind of Democrat are you? Meaning blue dog Democrat, progressive, we're kind and I'll combine that with this question. What committees are you interested in serving on? So essentially what are your priorities as you serve the legislature? So we will start with Ella. First time running for elected office and first time in this kind of a policy making I'm still learning about what kind of Democrat exactly I would be. I am pretty sure that I fall pretty strongly in a progressive Democrat camp but maybe fiscally sensitive and to what it takes to fund things that we want to do. So yeah, I think that I really, really care about people and individuals and I'm also passionate about things like climate change and balancing those needs is really important and can't just think about what we want to accomplish at a big level without thinking about the impact to people in our communities on the ground. And committees, sure. On the committee front I can imagine serving on committees that are very much related to what I've been doing for the last 15 years here in Vermont around agriculture, natural resources, economic development, or I could imagine doing something really different. I care a lot about our judicial system. I am really not sure yet but I will be taking more time to explore that and we get to choose several committees that we're interested in and then get assigned. So yeah, I think that I have a variety of committees where I'd feel very comfortable and be excited to work. I think that sort of in, in a similar vein to L, I think I share a lot of values with progressives. I see progressives sort of giving people a lot to believe in and I think one of my early political heroes was Harvey Milk. I don't know if any of you have read the mayor of Castro Street which goes much more into him as a politician than the movie does. But he talks about the need to give people hope and I really see that from the progressive side and so when I came to work on single payer there was a big piece of that. I think we saw place cases where a single payer didn't work, wasn't going to work practically and sort of in over time you could really see the staff of the Green Mountain Care Board shift from having a lot of people who are very gung-ho about single payers specifically to really try to figure out what other ways could we use to make, get everyone covered. The other really form of experience I had on the Green Mountain Care Board, I was there when Vermont Health Connect launched and sort of crashed and then had to be rebuilt. And it wasn't in the context of the policy issues around single payer, Vermont Health Connect was a pretty small deal. But in terms of people's trust in government it was absolutely enormous. How were we ever going to tell people we're going to take over the entire healthcare system when we can't launch a website? That went through a lot of people's minds. And so I have this very strong feeling of if you were a person who believes in using government to do big things, government has to work. And I think that informs a lot of how I approach policy and how I approach programs to try to make sure is this going to work. In terms of committees, I could easily see leadership putting me on healthcare. I would also be interested in human services. Looking out long term because they never put a first term member on it. Possibly appropriations because I think a lot of these things have to, where the money goes is really important to how your priorities are met. I think it's a great question. I mean, I think I'm an inclusive Democrat. I think I'm a Democrat Democrat. I mean, I grew up, I don't wanna date myself here but I remember my father bringing me to protest the Vietnam War. We saw big things like the Civil Rights Act and the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. And many of the things that seem to underpin Title IX that underpin our progressive values today have been in my life my whole life. And what I really want us to do, if you look at the platforms between the progressive and the Democrat, and I'm vice chair of the Washington County Democrats, by the way, it's my second go round at that, you look at the platform differences. And I think it's only around PAC funding that there's a difference. So I think I wanna bring people together and it actually matters to me less as much as I'm a Democrat, exactly what your party affiliation is, but how much interest and passion and smarts you bring to solving problems in sustainable ways. As far as committees, I'm very respectful of process. So, and I believe in process, so there's a leadership and I certainly have an interest in natural resources and energy and in healthcare, but frankly, I'm as a lawyer, general practice lawyer, I'm kinda interested in all things, that lifelong learning is I think of reality that we all live with, and so my goal will be to serve leadership where they think it would be useful. Having said that, I think I have a lot to offer in healthcare and because of my environmental health background in natural resources and energy. So yeah, that would be how I'd answer that. All right, great. Thank you. That was a question they weren't prepared to answer in. Thank you. All right, this next question is about prop five, reproductive rights. What is your stand? What do you have to say about it? Zach, we start with you. Okay, so I support prop five, I plan to vote for it, I fully expect it to pass. And I sincerely hope that the issue is moot beat by the time any of us take office. The more interesting question for me is what comes after? We're in an environment now where red states are trying to reach beyond their borders to enforce their laws. And we're looking at situations where we may be providing a lot of abortion care out of status. We don't know how much that will be yet. To get to Vermont from most red states, you have to either drive through New York or by air connect through Chicago or New York or DC. And I don't know if we will have a ton of people because of that. But I think we should be prepared for it. This is an area where a lot of other states are looking at a lot of interesting things. Connecticut in particularly has done some very interesting work where they've basically taken the Texas law, which puts a bounty on anyone having an abortion and reverse it. So if you go to Connecticut to have an abortion and someone in Texas sues you, you can counter sue them in a Connecticut court. You can take back the $10,000. You can take back the attorney's fees. You can take back all your attorney's fees, both in Texas and in Connecticut. One voter asked me, isn't that kind of a lot of money for the lawyers? But the purpose of the Texas law was never to raise money. It was to prevent abortions from happening. And so the Connecticut law would keep people from enforcing it because of what they would face in Connecticut. That's something that we can do. Connecticut is also looking at what happens if people try to enforce criminal laws here. And so saying the state can't enforce subpoenas related to this. They can't extradite people for this. We really protect both the people coming for care, but also to protect our providers. The one potential risk point would be if Missouri, for example, were to start trying to prosecute Vermont doctors. And so I think we would try to copy some of those elements that are being considered. Deal? Well, I promised my wife I wouldn't cry today, but I gotta tell you, I was, this is, I'm still reeling from the decision over term rose, not, it's not, well that's the first thing. It's something we really have to think about in a fundamental way. Obviously our personal autonomy, our most private decisions who we love, who we choose to marry, whether we use contraception, whether we carry a baby to term, whether we marry across gender or cross race, these are immensely private decisions. And the Blackman decision for me was formative as a law student. I thought this was the platform through which a whole part of our civil rights could be strengthened. And this is really going back in time in a very, very serious way. I'm President-elect of the Vermont Public Health Association, I was just at a meeting in DC where this figured largely in our conversations. How do we as red states, blue states rather help red states who are up against funding streams that are blocking the ability to provide healthcare. It's just unacceptable. Yeah, so I can't think of a more serious problem to try to rectify. So proud of Vermont. Again, we're leading the way. We had the forethought to pass this privacy provision in two consecutive biennial, which was the requirement in order to get a constitutional amendment. And I think it's gonna pass in this state. And again, the brave little stay, right? It's gonna help lead the way. That's not the solution for so many women and other folks who can bear children or for all these other issues. So I think it's something that we're gonna stay vigilant on. And if I'm in the state house, we're gonna speak loud and clear and to try to figure out ways without getting into the weeds. And some of the things you were talking about particularly, I think we need to work with our Attorney General's office. We need to work with our leadership to figure out how can Vermont provide a safe haven? How can Vermont look at its criminal laws or the regards to mail order contraception? And there's the red card. So I've been an advocate all my life for women's rights and reproductive liberty. We need to keep fighting at the national level. There is no question. I agree about sort of looking what we can do here, but this is a national fight we've had to keep on. Reproductive rights are basic human rights. US is going in the opposite direction from many countries around the world, bucking all the international trends. 61% of US adults believe that abortion should be legal all or most of the time. And one in four pregnancies end in abortion. Just pregnancies end in abortion. Laws that prohibit abortion do not statistically reduce abortion rates at all, anywhere. They only make them unsafe and taboo. So I will join the rest of the folks here. I am so grateful to our Vermont leadership for having the foresight to work over multiple legislative bienniums to get to where we are now that we have the opportunity to pass Proposition 5 in November. Vermont is gonna be a safe haven for at least some folks and maybe a lot. We need to think about how we further support women's health here in Vermont and think about those traveling here for abortions because they're gonna come. States that are interested in protecting reproductive rights are passing laws that look at insurance companies will cover abortion costs no matter what, providing compensation for folks who travel, expanding which kinds of professionals can do abortions and ensuring states that their state won't extradite individuals or disclose out-of-state medical records. So in addition to what my colleagues have mentioned, there are things that Vermont can do to continue to protect people here and that come here. So I'm interested in exploring that and seeing what else Vermont can do and working with our delegation and other kinds of nonprofit leaders around the country to keep fighting this at the national level and what's to come because this is not the first right that the Supreme Court is gonna take away. Thank you. We have time for one more question. Only one, so our has gone fast. So you can use this final question as a closing statement. You are also, these guys' websites, these guys and gals' websites are really inspiring. They show an inspiring number of other interests that we haven't dealt with tonight. So feel free to take this opportunity to address an issue that we haven't yet raised that you would most like to highlight to voters. And we will start with you. Oh my goodness. Well, so two substantive areas that we need to touch on that I want to just briefly touch on that are really important to me and they're on either ends of the temporal spectrum. Seniors and youth, you know, I really believe in gendering leadership pathways for youth, involving young people in government, listening to young people, helping them. And I'm young at heart, mind you. So, you know, that of four kids. So I think, you know, I have some substantive ideas around that, but one really inspiring moment was when we had the colleges and the high schools a couple of years ago and the well of the house for global warming issues, the place was packed. I think we had every college or close to every college and every high school represented and just to be in touch with that kind of energy. On the senior side, you know, this is a complicated demographic that we are aging and we shouldn't, I oversaw long-term care and Medicaid eligibility a little bit. Well, I should say, Mary Beth McCaffrey did, but we had, you know, it was really recognized that, you know, we're impoverishing our elders when we make them spend down, right? So I went down to impoverishment level. So I really think we began to do ways to be able to exempt certain assets for seniors so that they could gain eligibility like architectural access permission or contracts for care. And I'd like to broaden that to family members. I deal a lot in the courts with guardianship issues and elderly and it's really hard. I think there are other smaller pieces like senior tax deferrals, broadening the senior exemption, you know, intergenerational housing and learning. So like many of these multi-tentacle things there's no simple solution against the aggregate of discrete solutions building on best practices. Kind of from a closing remark perspective, you know, I think kindness and compassion matters. I think caring about each other and I think exemplified by this great group of candidates. I mean, if democracy isn't anything, it's the conversation that we have to have with one another about what's really going on. And I think unlike any other time in my lifetime anyway, this is serious. We got a Supreme Court that's run amok. You know, we have states that are trying to regulate what we say, what we teach. Just, you know, I think we have a lot of room to lead and demonstrate a level of civility in governments and content-based decision-making driven by outcomes that really exemplify Vermont at its best as a place to live and a place to stay, a place to come back to. So I hope you vote for me and I certainly appreciated being here today and really the caliber of the questions and the way you set this up and the kindness of the questions. Thank you so much. Thank you, thanks dear. Oh, and go to my website or talk to me or phone me or pull me aside, thanks very much. Right, well the topic, there's a couple topics that I'm gonna really briefly touch on, childcare. I think childcare is one of the other most pressing issues of this moment. It is crazy, the waiting lists that are several years out, the estimate that we need almost, we need 2,500 additional early childhood educators in our state and the fact that compensation for early childhood educators ranks in the bottom 2% of all occupations in our country. We're in a crisis with childcare and it's affecting our workforce and our economy and our families. So there's lots of things we can do to keep working on that at the state level. I also wanna address equity and inclusion and just say that I really have a vision of Vermont being an inclusive, welcoming and more diverse place. I'm deeply committed to racial and social and economic justice and this is something that I'd be working on. I, after the racial justice uprising or during the racial justice uprising after George Floyd was murdered, I heard stories from BIPOC Vermonters that opened my eyes to the amount of hate and harassment and bias that our fellow Vermonters are experiencing in schools and in their communities, including here in Central Vermont and we have a lot of work to do on that. We have an office of racial equity, a racial equity task force, a human rights commission and a lot of other groups that are really gathering data, looking at institutionalized racism in our state and we have other groups that need our attention. LGBTQIA Vermonters are subject to some of the highest bias motivated crimes in the country and we have students with disabilities and non-binary students that really need support and we have a lot of work to do there. So those are things that I would be really interested in working on. I would come to this with a lot of experience and leadership and strong communication skills. I build crusting relationships and I have a statewide network already within state agencies and the legislature and I would be honored to be representing our two towns and trying to maintain good connection between what's happening at our local level and our state level and please reach out if you want more information. I'm really enjoying talking to folks all around our two towns. Thank you so much and thanks to Susan and everyone and Elise for organizing. So I was actually also going to talk about childcare for the last piece. I think we need people to, we need to be able to tell the story of what's really happening. The childcare center that my kids go to just put out their annual report and information for next year. It is so hard for them to hire staff that they're cutting infant, they had had 14 infant slots, they're covering that to seven. Before the pandemic, they were open 10 and a half hours a day, now it's seven and a half. One of those infant slots costs $18,000 a year and there's a 50-person wait list. I don't know how we bring more people into this state if we say, well, don't know if you're gonna have kids if you come. That's pretty scary. And when this breaks down, I mean clearly there are a lot of different people who could take care of the kids, but let's be honest, in a straight couples it's usually the mom. And so we've got a lot of women either cutting their hours or dropping out of the workforce because childcare isn't working. We need to create more slots, we need to make it easier to open home daycares. I mean, there is a ton of regulation on home daycares which for a reason, I have a friend who's working on opening their own home daycare and one of the things they said was, if you look at any given regulation, it makes sense, but taken as a whole, the burden is just crushing. And so I think one of, actually I've heard this from housing, but I think it applies, one idea for dealing with that regulation is it really needs to be more in the form of technical assistance. It really needs to be in the form of helping people to figure out how to open new childcare is rather than handing them a book and say, hope you can read the thing that we understand having dealt with this all our lives. And the reality is it just needs more money. That this $18,000 year slot, they're paying a regular teacher 17, 50 an hour, a sub 14, 50 an hour, McDonald's on the Barry Montpelier Road is offering 14. I think in closing, I just wanna say thank you to Ella and Thea, that the fact that I've had to compete with you has made me a much better candidate. And it made me go talk to a lot more people which has been good for me. I will certainly be disappointed if I lose, but I won't feel like my values aren't being represented. And I think that's important. I think there are a lot of things nationally that feel not just feel, I think are existential. And I don't think this is one of them. I think we can have hurricanes about who would do the job better, but not on values. I certainly promise to keep an open mind and I promise to be humble and acknowledge what I don't know. So, thank you. Thank you, candidates, for these fair answers. Thank you. Thank you. Our candidates are serving our communities just by running for office. And thank you everyone for attending and folks at home as well and for becoming more informed voters and for caring about our democracy. Thanks again. Thank you too. Thank you. Thank you.


If we want to get blood to our abdomen, what's our route? We have to go through the aortic arch and into the descending thoracic aorta. And I am going to show a very thick, like all my vessels so far I haven't made them thick. And part of the reason why is it just, like we don't need them thick. The descending aorta in both thoracic and abdominal flavors is because there's lots of big branches and I'm drawing the whole thing. I'm drawing it thick so that you can see this. Before, we know that this is the descending thoracic aorta. I'm drawing a giant green anatomically incorrect diaphragm because maybe that is correct, like it actually sits, does the heart actually sit that closely on the diaphragm? Remember, it's not important. The important thing is that the thoracic aorta, as soon as it passes through the diaphragm, it becomes the descending abdominal aorta. The descending abdominal aorta, as soon as it enters into the abdominal cavity, as soon as it becomes the descending abdominal aorta, we have multiple branches that happen, that come branching right off.  The first branch, it's a single vessel, so I'm drawing it as a single guy coming off. And it actually has three big branches, but for our purposes, we're only going to name one of the branches and we're going to send that branch to the liver. And I'm making everything, in fact, I must make it purple to indicate that we've got some capillary action going on here. Okay, so let's see here. Here comes this vessel. We need to name all these guys. The first, the branch, the vessel that actually comes off of the abdominal aorta, this is my celiac trunk. And the branch of the celiac trunk that feeds the liver is called the hepatic artery. That works. So the celiac trunk branches off and becomes the hepatic artery. It also branches into a bunch of other vessels, but we're just going to go awesome. There's a bunch of named vessels that feed the following structures, the stomach, the spleen, and the pancreas. Okay, we're feeding gut structures. Bringing gut structures, fresh, delicious blood and ending up with a capillary bed in there so that we can do the gas exchange and think about this nutrient exchange. Stomach, stomach doesn't do a whole lot of absorption of materials during the digestive process, but it does some, it absorbs some things. And those things, the absorption happens in the capillary beds. That's branch number one. Branch number two, we can go back to our red color. Branch number two happens just inferior to the celiac trunk and this guy is called the superior mesenteric artery. And once again, the superior mesenteric artery is going to have lots of branches. But I'm going to draw it. I'm sort of not having very much room here, but I'm going to draw it like this and I'm going to tell you that it feeds mostly the small intestines. So far so good, like this totally works for me.  And I'm only going to, I'm going to draw it on both sides even though I'm not going to extend it on one of the sides. But it's on both sides because guess who this guy feeds. I'll tell you who it is first. Who is the renal artery? Who is that renal artery you speak of? Who does it feed? Yeah, it feeds your kidneys. So the renal arteries feed the kidneys. Now they're huge. They really are that, like they're crazy huge. Why?  All right, now watch this. My descending abdominal aorta ultimately at like level L3. So imagine this guy going down until it reaches about L3. At about that level, this guy branches into two different arteries. What now looks like a little man, a little cyclops? What do you think these giant branches are going to do? Pat your legs because they are feeding your legs and we'll talk about those guys when we get into the lower limb. We're not finished. Are there any gut structures that you feel like, dude, we can't leave this guy out? Well, I'm definitely thinking, dude, we can't leave this guy out. We have an inferior mesenteric artery, nice, and the inferior mesenteric artery is feeding the large intestine, mostly, not the LT, VLI. I think that's everything that I need to tell you at this point. All of this is feeding fresh blood to gut structures. Now we have to talk about a specific system that we go through in order to bring the blood back. So once the blood, I mean, we all know, like red arterial, purple capillaries and gas exchange, blue venous, and let's go back to the heart. Ultimately, where do you think we're going to drain? What vessel is our ultimate destination? Inferior vena cava. Eventually we want to get there. This is interesting and kind of fun, and like one of my favorite things. Everything's my favorite thing. One of my favorite things, route to get there, and it involves the hepatic portal system. So let's go check that out.


What's up everybody and welcome to another edition of the Falcons final whistle podcast I'm Scott Bayer and across the zoom meeting from me right now is Tori McElaney Ashton Edmonds is on the road back from Charlotte Road trip and yeah, Tori and I flew back We are recording this at a somewhat unusual time because the Falcons played the Panthers at a somewhat unusual time on a Thursday night The game ended late our flight back to Atlanta and then the drive-through pouring rain Ended even later. So now it's 9 19 in the morning Tori and I are on precious few hours of sleep. So let's get delirious as we break down the Panthers 25 to 15 victory over the Atlanta Falcons a game that did not go right For the dirty birds in a lot of different ways. We're gonna break all those ways down Including something that I wrote about in my column on the last night slash this morning about how the Panthers kind of played Falcons football and Kind of dominated the line of scrimmage and did a bunch stuff that the Falcons like to do We're obviously gonna talk about the quarterback situation. That's something that Tori wrote extensively about yesterday In a great job, by the way in addition to some big picture look at where the Falcons stand in the NFC South and Also kind of how the Falcons can use this minibuy this rest period to try to get right Get back on track because they're at a point now where they've got to start stacking some wins. So preamble over Tori McElaney, you have the floor and the spotlight and The microphone give me your immediate overall general takeaways from Thursday night Yeah, I thought that just Overall and maybe this isn't even like a just a Thursday night thing now that we're kind of like I don't know Less than probably what like seven eight hours removed from the game 12 hours removed from the start of the game Time is irrelevant. I don't know anymore. It's a flat circle Yeah, we're trying our best here. Um, but Essentially what I was thinking kind of as we're sitting here in After the games over and kind of thinking back is that this game against the Panthers I really felt like from start to finish offensively even if the stats like Kind of don't necessarily back this up to a certain extent. I felt like the Falcons offensively just like couldn't ever Get going from start to finish It felt like that and I and I felt like I'm not and I tweeted this after the game, too When I look at the defensive performance, I wasn't like displeased by what they did defensively like should they have stopped the run more? Yes, should they probably have caught not one not two But maybe even three Interceptions that landed in defensive back's hands also. Yes, all the all those things are true But I thought that they did a good job of keeping the Panthers out of the end zone and essentially they caused I think four three announced if I'm remembering correctly giving the ball back to the Falcons offense But I never felt like the offense could really like capitalize on any Moments or any swings in the game that you felt like okay Like maybe there's an opportunity here and that's something that I felt like over the course of the last four games In which the Falcons have only one one game and I'm gonna be honest I don't think they played can Consistently in these last four games that they have gone with one win and three losses Against the bangles the Chargers and then of course Carolina twice when you look at these last four games collectively It's like there hasn't been something clicking that I feel like was clicking During a time where you know, they beat the 49ers and they beat the Seahawks and and it and they beat the Browns And it felt kind of different often what they were doing offensively and I can't really put my finger on it But that was just kind of like where we're at and where I think the Falcons are at now Taking a look back not only at this Thursday night game, but at the last four games that they played Yeah, I think that's Interesting To put it that way and I look at the defensive performance and you know, we all know what Dean P says it You know yards don't matter points do they gave up 20 last Week they gave up 25 here I covered Charles Woodson for a long time He always said that if a defense holds the team to 24 points or less That defense deserves to win the football game Adam and about that they gave up 25 here kind of at the last minute. They were at 22 for most of the game The thing that I look at here and Carolina ran for a bunch of yards the last time that that They played Atlanta, but they ran for 232 yards they ran the ball 47 times 47 times that's an ideal Falcons football game in my opinion and What the Falcons do well is that they run the ball well I think it was kind of surprising maybe to some to hear that entering Thursday night's game the Falcons were the number eight overall run defense They got beat pretty good and Carolina made a point to run. They ran 17 at the first 23 place They were the racked up more than 130 some odd yards I don't have that number in in front of me rushing yards in the first half They won both lines of scrimmage. That's not me saying that that's Arthur Smith saying that immediately after the game And when you do those things and you don't get bailed out by a turnover and your passing game doesn't go bananas You end up with a result like this and that's ultimately Where the Falcons stand here is that they didn't play their game the Panthers played their game and did it well Because when the Falcons are at their absolute best as they were against San Francisco They stick it to you on the ground. They defend well.  They make scoring hard and That's what it was for Atlanta. They got kind of a taste of their own medicine and it doesn't taste very good It tastes like that like generic Store brand version tussin, right? It's like it's not Anything I don't know where you're going with that. I had no idea. I was like, he's going somewhere I don't know where he's going though. Yeah, I was trying to think of the name of it and then struggled mightily It's weird because some of these numbers on critical downs Dean P's would probably take one of two in the red zone six of 15 on third down They didn't pass they passed them all for 101 yards and the past defense has struggled not so much that they couldn't do It just because they didn't need to do it because they're running the brain so well The reason why those critical downs weren't good enough is it's all relative. It's all comparative, right? Arthur Smith said look it was ugly and we did pretty well on critical downs But we didn't but we did even worse and he's right three of 11 on third down One of two in the red zone. Oh one two on fourth down Four point nine yards per play they ended up with a hundred thirty eight rushing yards. They still ran the ball 25 times and my stat Lecture is now over Tori, but I guess when I look at this game. I look at a game where They wanted to be the more physical team. They wanted to do some of these things and it got done to them Sean Evans called it and called it an eye-opener That not only that they got beat but they got beat this way Do you buy into that that maybe this was kind of like a hey, whoa? That's what we do and this is where we ended up Yeah, no, I definitely do and I think that's the a really interesting kind of story to come out of Thursday what Thursday night's game was and I think just kind of looking at Offensively, you know What was really interesting and you and I both talked to Chris Lindstrom in the locker room And it was kind of funny because you talked to him and then I walked up and you finished and I was like Chris I'm so sorry. Can I please ask you like three more questions? And he definitely knows that we're from the same outlet like that's right. So he's like wait Yeah, you guys are together and then okay Yeah, he was great. He was and and he said something interesting. I don't know if he said this to you He did say it to me, but he said something along the lines of like That it just wasn't clicking for them at the very beginning of the game He was like something didn't feel right and I never for somebody to say that I felt like one is being very honest But also too like it was putting to words Exactly how I felt when that game started and now this is now the second time that the Falcons have played The Panthers and it's also the second time that offensively they've had a pretty rough start to the game if you remember Last or I this is what 12 days ago at this point the first time they played the Panthers started the the game off with the interception I Believe it was the second play of the offense their first drive and then of course to go out in the first half and to only rush for 33 yards at a clip of I can't exactly Remember, but I want to say it was like less than three yards to carry on average in the first half I haven't one of me. It's it's 2.8 yards per carry and that included that included a 12-yard run by Avery Williams in the first half Okay, so that take that with what you will but essentially I'm saying No, it wasn't clicking and Marcus even said he was like, you know Because I asked because it felt like from watching it where in the press box from our vantage point To me it felt like Carolina did a really good job of taking what they learned about the Falcons the first time that they face them and Transitioning that to coming out in the first half of this game on Thursday night and Making adjustments to where they were kind of dominating up front and and I use the example of Falcons like wanting to run the ball and not necessarily being able to and I asked a few people this if It felt like that if it felt like Carolina came in with a different plan and Marcus Mariota said that yeah, they were loading the box a bit more and they were kind of putting pressure on the Falcons to throw the ball a Bit more particularly early, which is something that we talked about in the press box how it felt like they were gonna try and make Marcus Mario to beat them through the air and then you go into this first half and essentially That's what they're doing and the Falcons don't have hardly any production Offensively through the first half at all and that's just being I mean they didn't score a touchdown Until well into the second half So because of that it really did feel like one Carolina You're talking about them playing to their game plan and being able to do what they wanted to do and being able to be the more physical front on both sides of the ball in that first half and how that kind of shaped the rest of the game and I think the Falcons can kind of use this as a A We it's kind of an eye-opener and we need to figure things out and they have a Quote mini by to do that, but it's it kind of when you look at these last two games Particularly it's kind of it's a tough pill to swallow and that's not my words. That's Marcus Mario to sports Yeah, and when you think about mini buys one thing I want fans to understand is during a normal by week you get Two or three practices on the field for to work things out after a Thursday game the players are out of there It's it's mandatory. So it's more and then you get I guess an extra practice on a Monday But this is about the extra time is for coaches to kind of maybe take a deep breath and self-scout and figure out what they're going to do I think I asked after the Cincinnati game if Cincinnati's offense designed a blueprint for how to beat the Falcons defense They did it and it's just funny because the Panthers and Bengals couldn't have done it any differently and this kind of speaks to Week to week league and match up issues and playing to your own strengths and those types of things and what what is repeated, right? and if you go back to the Cincinnati game they had a They had a unique talent in Joe Burrow that can execute a past heavy game plan in a way that Was effective and impactful and very difficult for the Falcons to stop and not just Joe Burrow But three receivers that can do what they also did Right. Absolutely electric playmakers when you look at what the Panthers did and I'm not trying to discount their talent. It's very clear Iki Ikewano is the real deal and they've got some horses up front and they've got Some big physical running backs behind them But this seems like a more executable plan to me is what I'm saying is to be able to run the football well You know time and time again and to you know to Essentially on defense is the more important thing is to force the Falcons to beat you through the air or at least be balanced if they're now the Falcons ran 40 times against the Chargers and lost which mind-blowing but if the Panthers seem very committed to Loading up the box preventing early runs getting a lead and then pressure pressure pressure, right? bring more than they got have more people then they can block and There were guys open downfield the passing game as we've said before Simply just wasn't able to execute at a consistent and high enough level to overcome the obstacles The team was having in the run game and the fact that they were down multiple scores in the first half Well, they've been down multiple scores in the first half and we've talked a lot about how much the Falcons have Scratched and clawed to get back in games and to get within one score. They never completed a full comeback They've gotten right most but when they've fallen down by multiple scores in the first half Those games include the LA Rams, Tampa Bay Bucks, Cincinnati and this one they've lost everyone despite Cutting it to one score within the last few minutes. So it's obviously not a viable strategy it's not a place that they want to be and I think that you know it when I look at this game Is it repeatable is any game like repeatable, but I definitely feel like the Panthers have a more executable game plan To assert their will over the Falcons that other teams could emulate I guess is what I'm trying to say that this may be more realistic in terms of how you're gonna go out them and the Coaches are gonna have to figure out a way to To avoid, you know the same traps I guess or they have to get the passing game right because if the past right and they start Connecting downfield again of which there were opportunities to do so then it negates all this they kind of blueprint stuff Right. Yeah, and I think too you look at the I mean the team that's coming into town If you're your time if you're kind of flipping it again, and you're going back to your original point about Like the Falcons being beaten by their brand of football You have a team that is coming in after this quote-unquote mini by That is going to run the ball I think Arthur Smith even said it in his post game presser like the Like Chicago is gonna come in here and they're gonna try and run the ball 500 times and it's like Okay, this if you're in a situation where it's like you have a Last second drive that you got to pull off and you're having to throw the ball downfield or you do get behind I mean it is there and they are running the clock out to a certain extent Do you have the offensive capability to be able to to make that type of comeback or to lead a Final game-winning drive. That's the question of kind of where the Falcons are at. I think right now offensively and there I think they do have a good opportunity to kind of When you're looking at the next slate of games, it's like, okay Can you get right in these next slate of games because right now like going back to what I was saying before it's like these last four games have not been it and Then I think they know that I think coaches know that players know that I think everybody watching knows that it's like, okay Now what do you do with this information? Moving forward. Yeah You wrote about Marcus Mariota the passing game the offense in general I Think you mentioned it in your story that Arthur Smith was asked five different questions in his post game press conference about Marcus Mariota I think the first question and it was a valid one from the athletics Josh Kendall was did you ever consider going to Desmond Ritter after Marcus Mariota Went through a day where he completed 19 of 30 passes for 186 yards all your two touchdowns and a pick that stat line Maybe looks better than how it looked He missed some opportunities. There is no doubt about that. There was one. I thought sure touchdown re overthrew Kyle Pitts Kyle Pitts targeted eight times two catches 28 yards again I'm not gonna do another stat lecture here, but nonetheless kind of take over for me here, Tori What did you learn? What did you hear about? Marcus from from Marcus Mariota about the passing game and what Arthur Smith said when Desmond Ritter's name got brought up Yeah, I think It's interesting because In a game where it felt like everyone was talking about Marcus Mariota and Desmond Ritter I felt like Arthur Smith in his post game press conference was very almost adamant that he was not going to just talk about Marcus Mariota's performance and I felt like it the line of questioning about If he was going if he ever thought about putting Desmond Ritter in and his answer was a straight up no What he kind of thought about Marcus's overall performance and he's like, you know, y'all can make this about the quarterback But what about the team like we should have protected better. We should have run the ball better. We should have Stopped the run better and he he's listing all of these things as to why the fact why it's not just quote About quarterback play and that's what he was saying And so you have your head coach that comes to the podium and is talking and in his very adamant that it was a team Loss and that he wasn't gonna point out and he wasn't going to point to Marcus Mariota in his performance in his role in the loss Now what's interesting and this is something that I wrote about was that when Marcus went to the podium Marcus was very I think not just aware of his role in the loss but knowing that it wasn't good enough and and he He's he made the comment. He was like, you know, he kept saying like it starts with me. I can't take those sacks He was sacked. I believe five times for a loss of 33 yards And so he was like, I can't take some of those sacks like those some of those things are on me Connecting with receivers. He talked about that He talked about feeling like he was forcing things because he felt like he needed to provide a spark for this offense that Let's be honest started out sparkless and and started out Kind of on a meh note Like I don't even know how else to describe it, but that's how I would describe it And so he's trying to create the spark and he has said this before and he said it again on Sunday where he was like when I start playing out of myself and when I kind of get in those moments where I'm trying to almost like Overplay and overcompensate like that's when I get myself in trouble And that was something that he was talking about and so he was very cognizant and aware of Kind of the pressure that I think not just the fan base, but we're talking about Thursday night football and In a primetime slot where it felt like the whole League and multiple fan bases are watching this game and for the Falcons offense to perform that like that with Marcus Marriota as the quarterback he's gonna take a lot of heat and He was well aware of that and he for his part. I think he was he wasn't defensive He knew that it wasn't good enough. He talked about you know, they kept they letting the Panthers play their game of football and Defend the way that they wanted to and to execute the game plan that they wanted to Because they were getting the Falcons in third and long situations and we know when the Falcons are in third and long situations They struggle Because they have to throw the ball because it's an obvious passing down so all of that to say that Arthur Smith wasn't pointing to Marcus Mario to me very much shut down any type of Conversation about potentially debt seeing Desmond Ritter on Thursday night, which I Understand if we want to talk about Desmond Ritter, I'm not putting Desmond Ritter into that game It's a game on a short week It's a game in not ideal conditions and it's a game in which your Offensive line wasn't necessarily Working at the clip that they needed to and that's something that Chris Lindstrom said that's not me saying that It's Chris Lindstrom saying that they need to be better for Marcus and for the team and for this offense and And in you don't have the balance of being able to rely on the run as much as you can So that's a long-winded explanation as to why I understood The decision not to to pull Marcus for Desmond. Am I saying that that completely takes away the possibility of seeing Desmond Ritter later? No, that's not me saying that so I want to pref I want to say all of that and add that little two-sense in because I'm sure there's a lot of people listening to this wondering why in the world What like why in the world didn't we see Desmond Ritter on Thursday night? And those I think are the reasons and I mean if you look at it like out They had a chance to tie it up in the fourth, you know that it wasn't like they were completely out of the game as I think Tough as it was at multiple points in the game to feel like the Falcons were in it at one point. They were Yeah, I I look at Marcus Mario's performance overall and I look at the struggles of the passing game and I agree with Arthur Smith in a lot of different ways that He was asked about Mario does accuracy on some balls And he said it's hard when you can't even set your feet man Which is alluding to there isn't enough protection for him to get the ball downfield and Look, I don't want to go into the popular narrative That's not what I'm trying to do and I'm not trying to lay the blame at one person's feet when clearly the entire team wasn't good enough But in this game that there's a reason why quarterbacks get paid hundreds of millions of dollars eventually Whether everything in front of you goes right or wrong the trigger man has an opportunity, right? They have an opportunity to make a miracle happen make magic happen We've seen Marcus Mario to do that a ton Tori and I talk a lot in the press conference of if that was a slower quarterback That's second and 17. There are also opportunities where you look at it and everything is right or enough is right where he has time to get the ball out to a Productive target and it's just inaccurate That can also be a thing, right? Yeah, all of these things can and are true like that's the thing is like it's not just like a one-sided I feel like Arthur Smith has just like come out of my like mouth because he he always says It's not a one-size-fits-all thing and that was about to be what I was saying, but it's true I mean, it's like with Marcus. I Mean it is a little bit of everything right now and it goes to every level of the offense and There's not a part of the offense that I don't think is touched by it but of course like you're talking about a quarterback and There are a lot of times that games are won on the back of the quarterback and That's I think that's kind of the point that we both are trying to get to right that this is a This is a layer cake, but with that quarterback position. You've seen a number of quarterbacks go out and you make And you know an important play that turns the tide in the game I used to cover the 49ers and I was at Super Bowl 51 54 I don't know chiefs 49ers right and Jimmy Grappolo played a really solid game But there was a point where a manual Sanders books at wide open downfields a Complete pass. It's a hard pass low percentage pass. I get that if he puts the ball in the right spot The 49ers went to Super Bowl That's simple. I'm sorry. It's that simple. He missed them. They didn't win He's gonna have to live at that right that's part of the quarterback position is what I'm saying Yeah, that at some point you just have to deliver a good ball And if you don't the entire team kind of has to deal with it Anyway, I would say look in term you're exactly right That was not the time to bring in a backup quarterback Who's never played a game before in the rain where the running game is slowed? That's so important He has not he does not get regular Reps with the first unit just doesn't happen. There's no way back. He runs the scout team the scout team runs. Yeah team system Okay There are kind of young guy periods and backup periods So he does get some and he's obviously in the meeting rooms And he knows what the heck is going on and Desmond is a smart guy But I think you and I both said this tour you want to bring a Young quarterback in in a position where he can succeed and that was not one of those things and to Arthur Smith's point I'm gonna channel him to they found a way to get within one score They found a way to push and Marcus has done that before So why would you assume that on this night? He couldn't do that again that he couldn't flip the script as He has done before as he did on that drive where he accumulated 82 of his 189 yards he went 1821 1825 something like that he and he took big chunks So I wouldn't are to think that Marcus could do that one more time. It didn't happen one more time I think the most important thing about this quarterback conversation is the point that you and Marcus brought up about him playing outside of himself You see some of those throws where he's kind of getting thrown to the ground And he's literally just kind of like voling it up in the air or he's throwing it into heavy traffic trying to make a great thing happen But it ends up being ill advised. I don't mind the effort But The execution of the passing game just has to be better or they're just gonna put eight I don't know nine guys up front and do whatever they can To stop the run and the Falcons have to adjust to that um And that's really what they have to do moving forward In my opinion when it comes to the nfc south standing, we're talking on a friday. There's still Some more games to be played Right nfc south. We don't know how the standings are going to work out. There's no team above 500 but I think more important than the standings, right? We've talked a lot about the standings because they were on top of them We're at a different point now, right? Yeah, we're at a different point now. This team is four and six And it needs to figure itself out before and there's still seven games left There's plenty of time to do that if this team needs to figure itself out before it starts worrying about it standing within the context of the nfc south or of the conference at large Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I think like it's It's one of those things that you do have to look inwardly at this point in time. Um, because there's so much happening elsewhere and You know, I mean, we're proponents of that too like where we were Like we've been talking about the standings and really making a point of that because it's it is important Because it is happening and the Falcons were on top of the nfc south there for for a little bit But now I I completely agree with you that It kind of shifts where it's like the Falcons just need to get wins and they need to play well consistently through four quarters and kind of To get to the point where you feel like you did after the Browns game or after the 49ers game Not after the last four games even in a win for one of those four games But even in that win it's like if that game if if If there is not one but two Game-winning field goals that are made that's a different you're talking about a completely different game. So And i'm talking about the first time the Falcons played the Panthers. So all of that to say This has not been a good four weeks for the Falcons And I think that needs To change in order for them to feel better about where this 2022 season is going Yeah, I think that's a great point. They're very very close to being oh and oh for their last four And there are issues that need to be fixed Opponents see tape and they start adjusting now the Falcons have to adjust back I don't think and I say that it's not a coaching situation. I can't Belabor that point enough. I think it's just about improved execution in run defense in past defense in previous weeks And trying to get the passing game to a point where it doesn't have to be perfect They don't have to throw the ball 62 times But when Kyle Pitts is open And he's your target And you throw it towards him. You gotta hit him. It's it's at some point. It's just that simple Yeah, with three with like three yards of separation. You got to hit him You just do And you did last week Right that We can talk about route depth and concept, but at some point you just got to hit them You just got to go make a play and that's in my opinion the the difference between The Falcons coming up on the short end of some of these close games and being on the other side That's not necessarily Scott and Tory's recipe for falcons success I think that's common sense more than anything else Just you have to execute better. The scheme is good. The game plan is good. You have to execute better You have to take advantage of the opportunities. These games are all going to be closed. That's how the falcons play That's what their kind of roster dictates And that's how the NFL is right now Exactly. Yeah, that's something that you said back in week one and I kind of raised my eyebrow at you because I was like Uh That game never should have been close against the saints and it turns out we there's so many one score games regardless of Who you who who is pretty good or bad? so none of us we've Tory and I set out To talk for 15 to 20 minutes I'm staring at my zoom Screen and they're saying we're getting ready to kick you off because Which means we've gone a lot longer than that So let's cut it off right here any final thoughts or you want me to start doing the final spiel Go ahead. I'll give you the final spiel floor All right y'all do what you do rate review subscribe to the falcons podcast network on itunes and spotify Or join us on youtube won't you that place is uh, it's a fun little community where we put tons of videos and including video podcasts where you can also see not only falcons final whistle, but also falcons audible with derrick dj and dave And falcons in focus our passion projects tory and I have where we go in depth With falcons players you get to know them on a more personal level Away from the game. It's the best part of our week. So please find a way to listen to that It in my opinion getting to know these players deserves a a A big audience And nonetheless, we have a great weekend by the way saying this to you tory and to Everyone listening and we will catch you next week In 10 days or so after the falcons play the chicago bears We'll talk to you then See ya


Okay, so this is the last segment of this lecture and what we're now going to do, we're going to take a look at trying to determine the convective heat transfer coefficient for turbulent pipe flow. And just like what we saw for the boundary layer, the laminar boundary layer, we were able to come up with analytic expressions or it is possible, well not analytic, but it would be through numerical integration and you get coefficients. For turbulent either flat plate or in this case pipe flow, it's very very difficult and so what we need to do is rely on empirical data and what we're going to do, we're going to use the Colburn analogy which is something that we saw for the boundary layer flow. Now the Colburn analogy expressed in the following manner and if you recall it relates convective heat transfer coefficient to skin friction measurements and that was for the case of a flat plate. So what we're going to do, we're going to come up with the skin friction equivalent for pipe flow. And so what we'll be doing is we'll be using the Moody friction factor and this friction factor can either be obtained from the Moody diagram or it could be obtained from something like a Colbrook white equation where you have to iterate and you would then determine the friction factor. But if you recall from the friction factor, we can relate it to pressure drop and in this expression L is the length of the pipe or the section that this pressure drop pertains to. So what we're going to do, we're going to look essentially at a force balance for a pipe flow and so what we have, we have shear stress on the wall multiplied by the outer area and the length of the pipe and that is going to be balanced by the pressure, the pressure forces within the pipe and the pressure forces are going to be acting over the area, the cross-sectional area of the pipe and if we have a pressure gradient then I'll multiply it by the same length L. And so there we have essentially what amounts to being a force balance of shear stress with pressure gradient or pressure forces. This should be d0 squared, sorry about that. And this equation then translates into the following and so what I'm going to do, I'm going to approximate this knowing our delta p so the pressure drop over a given length and we have this expression. What I'm going to do is I'm going to combine this with the expression that we had using the friction factor from back here. So combining those two equations, before I do that however I'm going to look at the definition of the skin friction coefficient and the reason why I'm doing that is because with our colburn analogy we have the skin friction coefficient. So let's take a look at the definition of the skin friction coefficient CF. That is the wall shear stress divided by the dynamic pressure evaluated using the mean velocity in the pipe and now what I can do, I can take the expression here for the wall shear stress and substitute it in for the skin friction expression. So expressing the skin friction coefficient using our value for tau w and now what I'm going to do, I'm going to take our expression for delta p that we had from the moody friction factor. So what I've done there is I'm just pulling in this expression here and now I can do a lot of cancellations so we get that. Skin friction coefficient is the friction factor divided by 4. I can then take that and put it into the colburn analogy and we obtain the following. It's just the friction factor divided by 8. So with that what we can do is we can find empirical relationships for the friction factor within pipe flow realizing that it is a function of the roughness of the pipe wall but I'll just take one of the expressions. So this is an empirical expression and with that we can then come up with an expression for the new salt number based on diameter. So using nothing but the friction factor which is measured from the pressure drop in pipe flow, we can come up with an expression for the new salt number. So this is entirely based on fluid mechanic measurements and the colburn analogy. Now what people have done is they've taken this expression and they've used it or tested it out to see how well it matches heat transfer data and it turns out that it's good but it's not perfect and so people have used that functional form and have fine tuned it to come up with a better expression for the new salt number. So taking that basic functional form for the new salt number and using direct heat transfer measurements results in the following expression for the new salt number based on diameter. This expression is referred to as being the Dittus-Bolter equation and it is a very useful equation for computing the convective heat transfer coefficient in turbulent pipe flow. Now there are other expressions that are a little bit better that cover wider ranges of temperatures and parental numbers and things like that but this one actually turns out to be quite the useful one because it's quite compact, not all that complicated. I notice we have an exponent n and n will depend on whether or not we have heating or cooling. If we have a case of heating where the walls or wall temperature is higher than that of the fluid then in that case n is 0.4 and if we have cooling where the wall temperature would be cooler then n is 0.3 and the last thing is that the properties in this equation are evaluated at tb or tm so the bulk or mean temperature. Okay so that is an expression for computing the convective heat transfer coefficient in turbulent pipe flow and what we did is we took advantage of the coal burn analogy and the wealth of information that exists in computing pressure drop in pipe flows and enabled us to come up with an expression that was close to this but then this one was fine tuned using experimental measurements and that is the Dittus-Bolter equation.


Hello and welcome to this session. Let us understand the following problem today. Solve the following pair of linear equations by reducing them to a pair of linear equations given to us 7x-2y by xy is equal to 5 and 8x-7y by xy is equal to 15. Now let us write the solution. The given equation can be written as 1x-2y is equal to 5xy and 8x-7y is equal to 15xy. Now dividing both sides equation 1 and equation 2 can be written as we get equations 5, equation 5, equation 6, 35, 49, 14, x is equal to q. On solving this we get this implies 1 by y is equal to 1 implies 1 by x is equal to 1 equal to 1 and this implies x is equal to 1. But it should be problem by an a...