The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to the Iran Brookshow on this Tuesday, August 6th. I'm confused. Yeah, hopefully everybody's having a great week and that, you know, we go, you have a fantastic rest of your week. Today we're going to cover the news, we're going to cover a song, a song. I'm going to give you a song review for free. We're going to do a song review as part of the news because the song is the news right now. Rich men north of Richmond, not powerful men north of Richmond, rich men north of Richmond. We're also going to talk about, we'll talk about Trump indictment number four. I'm going to spend a lot of time on that.  And we will talk about the climate trial in Montana, big news out of Montana in terms of what this means. You have a new constitutional right based on climate change. This is huge. We'll talk about that. And we'll see, we'll see how much time we have, we can talk about other stuff. There's, I was going to give you an update on Ukraine, we can talk a little bit about China. There's a bunch of stuff going on. But let's start with the song. You know, the song actually deserves doing a whole show on this. I will, I think probably we'll see, maybe this weekend I'll do a whole show on this. And it's really the song, it's the whole phenomena that the song represents, which I think is worth talking about and reflecting on. And it requires, it requires a lot more than just, just what we, the time we have for the newsy stuff. But I wanted to at least cover it in terms of news. And I think part of what I'll do when I talk about the song as a whole show is talk about the reactions to song. I mean, this is now, this is now being defined by Matt Walsh as the protest song of our generation. This is, you know, Oliver Anthony is now the Bob Dylan and the Joan Baez of 2010. This is, this is the defining song of our generation. Matt Walsh will know because he has so much in common with Oliver Anthony. I mean, their lives are just parallel so much.  I mean, I'm sure Matt Walsh's complaints about the world are just exactly the same as, as Oliver Anthony. He is the, is the songwriter and singer of, of the song which man, which man North of Richmond. Yeah, so we're gonna, we're gonna talk about, we'll talk a little bit about the responses, but we should devote a lot more time to that. Anyway, this song came out, I think it was six days ago was loaded up online. It has been watched on YouTube over 12 million times, which is a lot. It is the number one country music song in the country. It is become a big hit among right wing commentator, conservative commentators. This, as you heard Matt Walsh considers this the modern, the anthem, the protest song of this generation. Yeah, this is, this is every way. I listened to the song. You guys should. It's not particularly good as a song. And it's certainly not getting all this attention because of its qualities as a song. Bob Dylan does not have anything to worry about in terms of either the poetry of the lyrics or the ability of, or the melody, or the ability of the singer. I will give credit to Oliver Anthony, you know, it's a song fill of emotion. So there's anger, there's real anger in the song. And I think that resonates with people. So it's, there's a certain sense in which it's authentic. But it's not good from musical perspective, even for country, right? I can, I can enjoy a country song. And country songs often have, you know, very catchy and fun and, you know, pretty melodic lines. This one just doesn't. It's just, it's not a particularly good song. It's not particularly good music. There's no accident that Oliver Anthony has not been known, not been known in the past for his music. Let's get to the lyrics though, because I think it's a lyrics that resonate with people and the lyrics associated with anger. You know, this is a song about the alienation of American working class. This is a song about the alienation of the people who are dying deaths of despair. This is a song about the working class not making enough money. This is a song about exploitation, about the working class being exploited. I mean, if you had shown these lyrics to somebody 10 years ago, if you'd shown these lyrics to somebody 20 years ago, they would have said, yeah, this is, this is a, this is a leftist socialist song that, you know, Woody Guthrie could have gotten behind. There's nothing, nothing that would have suggested to anybody 20 years ago that this song was right wing. And this song is, I think, more than anything, a reflection of where the right is today. And the tragedy of the fact that there is nobody, nobody out there that actually represents individualism, freedom, free markets, capitalism, all those boring terms that nobody finds interesting anymore. That the right is, the right today has flipped. You've got, you know, again, this could be sung by Woody Guthrie. It could be sung in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. It doesn't really matter. It could be sung by somebody in the 1850s. It could have been sung by Dickens or Karl Marx in the 1850s. There's really nothing here that's right wing, except, you know, some complaining about welfare, but, you know, not in any kind of really serious way. There's some complaints about welfare. There's some complaint about taxes. But no complaint about taxes as they've applied to rich people, just taxes on the working class. It's a complaint, you know, there's a little bit of a complaint maybe about inflation.  But really, you know, there's a hint at pedophilia, which is like the kind of the right wing thing these days. But, I mean, thing to complain about. But really, this is just a song that is of the left. I'm going to read it to you. I'm not going to sing it to you. I'm going to read it.  All right.  A pay in manufacturing, which is what this is relating to, steadily up pretty much forever, you know, I looked at some graphs for United States manufacturing jobs, 26 bucks and 47 cents on average as of July 2023, that is significantly above 2016, which was a 20 bucks, or 2002 when it was at 15 bucks, or 1960 when it was, I don't know, three, four bucks, something like that, an hour for manufacturing jobs. They've increased. They've never paid phenomenally well. The reality is the value added of manufacturing job in the United States is very limited. And the consequence of that is that, oh God, why is this not doing that, you know, these jobs are done cheaper and as well in other countries. In many cases, these jobs are done better by robots, machines, a big chunk of the more productive parts of these jobs are done today by computers. And yeah, in spite of that wages are steadily rising. The number of people working at these jobs has declined from its peak. The peak was in 1979, 19,500,000, 19 and a half million people were working in manufacturing jobs in 1979. Today, it's about 13 million. So they've declined from 19 and a half to 13 million, but still 13 million Americans work in these kind of jobs. Were they poorer today than they were in 1979? Probably not. Purchasing power, quality of life, standard of living. Might have increased dramatically. Might have increased dramatically because again, but it was increased. You know, 1979 wages, I'm just looking at this graph, probably about seven and a half bucks an hour. Today it's 26 and a half. That seems to have outpaced inflation from 1979 to today. I'd have to run the numbers. Wait a second. I wonder if this is already inflation adjusted. Anyway, it's, no, these are not inflation adjusted. So if you look at inflation adjusted, they're making more money. So yeah, you know, manufacturing jobs have always been tough. They're hard. They're grueling. You don't make a fortune. You certainly are not going to become rich working as a manufacturing laborer. You're going to be middle class. You're going to be maybe lower middle class depending on that's an average wage. People in managerial jobs make a lot more than that within manufacturing and people just starting up make quite a bit less than that. But so they average is 26 with with a little bit of tenure and stuff. Maybe you're making 3035. And so people have been complaining about these jobs forever.   And a lot of people are complaining about their lives. Whose responsibility is it? His life. Why is he wasting his life away? Why is he sitting out here? Why is any pursuing something better? I mean, this is where the left and right completely fail, right? They completely fail. Why doesn't anybody care about personal responsibility? Why doesn't anybody challenge these people to do better? And I think that's the cause of death to despair is they're not challenged. They're not taking responsibility for their own lives. They're just okay. This is it. This is manufacturing job, 26 bucks an hour. This is what I'm going to do. I work.  I know I'm wasting my life. I do nothing about it. I don't have the balls. I don't have the guts. I don't have the ability. I don't know. I think it's the guts and the balls. I drag back home, draw my troubles away. Yeah. Alcohol, drugs, whatever.  For people like me and people like you, wish I could just wake up and it's not be true, but it is. Oh, it is. Was the world for people like him any different 30 years ago? 40 years ago? 50 years ago? In rural Virginia, wherever he's from? Was it really that different? I think it was in the sense that there was a lot less envy in American society. There was a lot less looking at what other people have, those people north of Richmond. And by the way, north of Richmond, so that's all of northern Virginia, it's wealthy people. So there's a lot less envy, a lot more satisfaction in what people had, a lot more taking responsibility for your own life and trying to do something with whatever you had. There's a lot more about building families and building communities and building a life. Today there's a lot of bitching, complaining, moaning and comparing ourselves to people north of Richmond and not matching up. Living in the new world with an old soul. Is it a new world really? Is in that sense it a new world? These rich men north of Richmond, Lord knows they all just want to have total control. Want to know what you think? Want to know what you do? And they don't think you know, but I know that you do.  Because rich men north of Richmond. So yeah, taxes are too high, way too high. Including on these working people who are, you know, he would pay probably about 20 to 25% of his income in taxes. Way too much. He probably doesn't have a lot of the deductions, a lot of the stuff to deduct. But remember that out of that 24, 25, a big chunk of that, right? A big chunk of that. What is it? Probably over 10%. So almost half is Social Security Medicare. Is anybody out there in the heartland or any of the manufacturing workers want to give up their Medicare and Social Security? Probably not. And they're going to use much more Medicare than they put in. They'll get their Social Security back if the system doesn't go bust. They'll get it, but their Medicare, they're going to use a lot more than they put in. And they want Medicare because that's what they'll pay for their healthcare after they reach 65. Are they really willing to give that up? Is that what the song is about? I want to privatize healthcare. I want to privatize Medicare. I want to privatize Social Security. No, we know that that's not what it's about.  Good reason to do that. They do want total control. I would say the powerful men north of Richmond want total control. They want to know what you think. They want to control you. Left or right, they want into your life. They want into your mind. They want into education. They want control over who you are. So it's a protest song about people who are too powerful and want to control us too much. You might tell us politicians will look out for the miners and not just miners on an island somewhere. That's reference to Epstein, right? Actually, miners, if you look at wages for coal miners, this is not far from coal mining territory. Significantly higher than manufacturing. They get a premium because of the risk they take. So it's about 20% higher than it is for miners. Now it is true that those jobs are going away because of the whole climate change, green energy stuff. So yeah, in that sense, politicians are not looking out for the miners. Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothing to eat. And the obese, milking welfare. I mean, unfortunately, yeah, some obese are probably milking welfare, but obesity is a massive problem in the United States. You know, we can talk about why it's a problem. Maybe I go back to the issue of personal responsibility. Where is that? So he's complaining about obesity in America as everybody should. It's terrible. He says, well, God, if you're five foot three and you're 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds. The empirical evidence about how much food stamps are being used to make obesity worse, not really there. But yeah, I mean, I'm against welfare. I'm against food stamps. But who's the problem? We've got a lot of people with obesity and it goes to the same thing. It goes to the same problem. Is the problem the wages? Is that why they were obese? Is the problem welfare? Is that why they were obese? In a sense, yes. Because welfare sends everybody a signal, don't take care of yourself. Don't think for yourself. Don't worry about yourself. Obesity might also be part of the epidemic of deaths of despair. Obesity might be part of the alienation and the depression and the suicide and the alcoholism. Just the fact that so many people out there feel so depressed about the world as this song reflects. But again, what's the cause? Is it really rich men north of Richmond that are causing all this? Young men are putting themselves six feet in the ground because all this damn country does is keep on kicking them around. Are young men being kicked around?  Wish I could just wake up and it'd not be true.  Same way it opened. I mean, this is a song of frustration. This is a song of angst. This is a song of anger. Embraced by people who met Welsh who I don't know if he's ever worked in a factory in his life. I don't know if he knows what a factory looks like. I don't know. Maybe he has. Maybe I'm not being fair. Picked up by intellectuals who have a strong incentive, strong incentive to promote this kind of angst, to fuel it, to fire it up, to use it for their own political means. I suspect Matt Walsh belongs more to the rich men north of Richmond than he does to the rule of Virginia that, you know, works in a manufacturing job that this song represents. Just like this angst was picked up by the left in the 1960s and 70s, this kind of angst and frustration and anger is picked up by the right today. There are no solutions. There are no answers. All these populist right wing or left wing, all they want to do is use this to enhance their power. All they want to do is tap into this. How many people who listen to the song and who support the song and have embraced the song? How many of those people are middle class kids? How many of those people wouldn't know what this kind of angst looks like? How many of those people are much more interested in the politics of this than interested in actually resolving the problem of deaths of despair, of youth suicide, of people really struggling out there? Right. Anyway, that's the song. You know, there's a lot more to talk about this, you know, the whole attitude that exists out there in the country. Nathaniel Brandon wrote a really good essay years ago in the 1960s for Ayn Rand on, I think it's in capitalism, not an ideal, on alienation and I think it so fits our time. It so fits our time in terms of the way people feel. It's not about what existentially is out there. It's not about how much money they make. It's not about the quality of life, the standard of living. It's not about any of that.  It's about how they relate to their own life. It's our educational system has so corrupted them is that they can't relate to their own life. They feel impotent in the face of the world before them. They feel that they cannot take control of their own life. And the question is, why do they feel that? And I think it has to do with the philosophy and the culture, the education and the culture and everything else. Alright, I am way behind. Let's see. Alright, quickly. You all know this. We talked about this yesterday. I said the indictment would come down yesterday and it did. Donald Trump was indicted together with 18 other people. This is the first indictment that has included significant numbers of other people, including Giuliani, including Meadows, his chief of staff. So it includes a bunch of people, which is going to be interesting because the prosecutors might be playing some of these people off of one another. They might be some deals to be made so that some people testify against other people. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.  So there is, you know, RICO comes into this and RICO, of course, is, you know, there's a sense of justice, I feel, if only because Giuliani is one of the people that has been indicted. And he, of course, pioneered RICO, primarily pioneered using RICO against financiers, against Michael Milken, Ivan Bosky, and others. Now Ivan Bosky was a real crook, but Michael Milken, of course, was not. And many of the people that Giuliani went after were not crooks and actually were ultimately, ultimately their convictions were overturned. But that's after he destroyed their lives and destroyed their businesses. RICO was passed in 1970. It's called the Racketeering Influence and Corruption Organizations Act. It's a horrible law with lots and lots of problems. It raises first amendment issues. It raises issues of due process. It raises lots of constitutional issues. I'm sure Giuliani will raise many of those issues when it's time for him to be in front of a court. Of course, he didn't raise them at the time. And yeah, all this is about the attempts of the Trump, of these people surrounding Trump, Sidney Powell and others, to reverse the election results in Georgia. Again, one of the things unique about these prosecutions, these cases against Trump is, we all know this happened. His phone call asking for 11,000, whatever, for them to find new votes and find this. That's all been documented for years now. None of that is in question. They've got witnesses. They've got witnesses who are Republicans because most of the election officials were Republicans. They've got plenty of witnesses around this. This all happened. Now, whether it rises to a conspiracy and all of that, that's what a court is there for. But is there any doubt that Trump tried to reverse the election in Georgia and did whatever he could to reverse it? This wasn't just theoretical. This was inaction. People were sent to Georgia to try to do whatever they could to figure it out how to reverse the election result. Again, they might have to prove that he knew he lost. So we'll see.  And I wish none of this happened. I wish he'd just gone into the sunset and disappeared. But there we go. There we go. We will see how all this plays out. It's going to make this coming election a complete and out of circus and could plunge this country into a real constitutional crisis, into real challenges. And I don't know how the country overcomes it because there is a certain percentage of the Republican Party, 25 to 35 percent of the Republican Party, who is just 100 percent committed to Trump.  But there's 25, 35 percent that will go do anything that he tells them to do. And that could create real mayhem if he gets convicted and if he's forced to withdraw from the race. Republicans are also very afraid that if Trump withdraws from the race, those Republicans who would have voted for Trump will not vote, will not participate in the election. And as a consequence, the Democrats will win because, you know, that 25 to 35 percent of Republicans will be so disgusted by the process, they'll just stay home. All I can say is they made this bad. They're going to have to lie in it. They're going to have to survive this. All right, here's a story that I'm sure is going to make you a date. So in Montana, young environmentalists, activists, these are young people, sued the state of Montana, sued them because the young people argued that the state agencies were violating the young people's constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment by allowing fossil fuel development. A judge yesterday ruled in their favor. He ruled that the state has an obligation, an obligation to consider or has a constitutional obligation to consider a clean and healthy environment for young people. And as a consequence, right, to reevaluate all fossil fuel permits, all fossil fuel permits. It's the first time a U.S. court has ever ruled against a government for violating a constitutional right based on climate change. And now this is a state court, not a federal court. It's based on the state constitution, not the U.S. Constitution. And, you know, this is going to be appealed and we will see what happens on appeal. And of course, you know, Montana is a major producer of coal, coal-burned electricity, has large oil and gas reserves that are being exploited.  Right, this is a big deal.  They are, their lives are going to be shortened by the use of fossil fuels and they are demanding that the states, that the state protect them. You know, the Dean of the Lucid Clark Law School in Portland says, the ruling really provides nothing beyond emotional support for the many cases seeking to establish a public trust right, human right or federal constitutional right to a healthy environment. There is no such right, not in the U.S. Constitution, not that this even our Supreme Court will accept. It's just unbelievable that a judge would rule this way undermining the entire nature of our Constitution, that we have some kind of right to these kind of outcomes. Where would these kids be? Would they even exist? How would their lives, what would their lives be like if we didn't have fossil fuels? They have no conception of that. No conception of that. I was encouraged today though to read, oh, I think I just closed that window. To read out of the U.K. like a sub-stack, this is, yeah, here it is, it's a sub-stack. It's the Cliff Fox sub-stack, it's an Academy of Ideas out of the U.K. The title is Extreme Weather, Can We Adapt to a Changing Climate? And his conclusion at the end is, should we spend trillions on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions? Given that economic losses from such events can be enormous, isn't prevention better than cure? Or would that money be better spent on making society more resilient to extreme weather? Does the narrative of climate change catastrophe get in the way of less dramatic measures that can protect people and property? And he's talking about the fires in, among other things, the fires in Hawaii. And the focus of the article is climate deaths are down.  And it's actually, and the cost of reducing fossil fuels is just astronomical when we can spend a fraction of that protecting ourselves from, you know, nature, from maybe catastrophic events or bad consequences of climate change. And it's straight out of Alex Epstein, right? I mean, the whole line of reasoning is straight out of Alex Epstein. So here you have an Academy of Ideas, which is kind of a left-of-center organization in London, in the U.K. Hard to identify left-of-center. They're very good on free speech, but Cliff Fox, I mean basically it's a Marxist organization that is good on free speech and anti-woke, but they're Marxist in a sense of class redistribution, state ownership of resources, things like that. So it's really, it's interesting kind of the combination. But here they're taking on climate change. They're taking at least this one right out there is Rob Lawyans, a Alex Epstein approach to climate change.  All right, we're about halfway to our goal. Lots of questions, but only halfway to our goal. So because we have a lot of questions, we have limited time. Please, only $20 questions from now on. Only $20 questions now on. A friend opposite, sounds like Bjorn Lombog. Yeah, it sounds like Bjorn Lombog. And of course Bjorn Lombog has been influenced by Alex Epstein. So let's not minimize Alex's. All right, Eric. So what we need is $620 questions. And we're there. We're at what we need to be. Your last show in religion made me think of where they're living. Where one of their quasi-heroes was Andre, a communist. He was drawn to Andre because he was an atheist. What are your thoughts on Andre and what were Rans? Yeah, I don't think, I don't know what Rans thoughts were. I don't know what you wrote about him, although we do have in the journals and other places that he was, but I don't have that in the top of my head. But she wasn't drawn to Andre because he was an atheist. She was drawn to Andre because he was an idealist. She was drawn to Andre because he believed in something. He was idealistic. And he was wrong about his ideals. And ultimately, he was very wrong. And ultimately when confronted with how wrong and how evil those ideals were, he had no choice but to take his life.  None of this wishy-washy, measly mouth. I mean, think of the other characters and we're delivering more communists. They were communists, but they don't really believe in communism. They try to, you know, use the system for their own advantage and sneak a little bit here and sneak a little bit there. They talk communism all day. But there wasn't this, you know, it wasn't like Andre was kind of a working-class person who had been, who has, you know, hated the old system because he was exploited on the old system as he really was and believed that communism was a solution and believed that communism was better and had a whole, you know, idea around communism. But he really bought into it completely and lived it and had, you know, and what Rand really hated were the people who had no sense of any kind of integrity. And Andre is portrayed as wrong and mistaken and mistakes have caused him to do horrific things that he can never recover from. And therefore he has to die, right? He has to. And the system of communism can't allow the real idealists to exist because the system is inherently corrupt and the people who view it as some ideal, perfect ideal cannot exist within it because the corrupt people are not going to allow them to survive and not going to allow them to be there. So those are some of my thoughts on Andre, but it's not primarily his atheism, it's idealism. See, he believes in something and he's willing to fight for that belief. He's willing to go all out for that belief that attracts her to him.  There he goes to say, Just finish the romantic manifesto. I'm having trouble understanding Rand's concepts of sense of life as a preconceptual of the evaluation of metaphysics. Would you mind fleshing this out? Yes, it's, you know, as a child, you don't have a, you don't think in terms of A is A. You don't think in terms of, I belong on this earth, I am competent, I am able, I can live in this world. But you have a sense of it. You have a sense of it.  As if existence exists. If you've accepted sentiment versus some children who complain bitterly about metaphysics, about reality. They want, demand even, the primacy of consciousness. They can't articulate it that way, but they've accepted those premises. And they have a certain emotional state, a preconceptual state, an emotional state of, I demand reality, adjust to my feelings. And this is a mentality that you develop when you're young, again, without really articulating it, of I accept reality as it is, and I deal with reality as it is. That's just one example. The same is true of a certain mentality that accepts reason as its way of dealing with reality. Most people can't articulate that and say, reason is my way of dealing with reality. But there are a lot of people out there, people who work for a living, people who deal with reality, people who are challenged by reality, people who use their reason day in, day out to deal with it. They don't have a conceptual view of it, but they have a general sense. They have a certain confidence in their mind and its ability to deal with reality without actually conceptualizing that idea. And sense of life is the sum of all that. It's the sum of your attitude towards reality and towards yourself, towards your place in reality and your ability to cope with reality. It's that sense of the world is a beautiful place and there's amazing things to do in this world and I can do them. That some people have. They're never necessarily put into words, but they have it. And then there are others who, the world is an ugly, dark place and nothing, nothing I do will ever make any difference. And that's a different sense of life.   It's a certain attitude and that attitude is all negative. That so much exists. It's the opposite sense of life because implicit philosophy. Well, but it's a particular part of philosophy. It's particularly the metaphysics.  So he says, I like the formulation of philosophy as the science of turning implicit feelings into explicit convictions. Well, that's not really right, right, because that's not what it is. I mean, yeah, I mean there's a sense in which that's true. You've got to do that. You've got to take your implicit, but your implicit might be inconsistent. They might be non-philosophical. You might have all kinds of implicit convictions. It's not obvious that they are consistent. You bring them to the forefront and then you figure out what's consistent and what is not. Okay, Andrew says, if Trump is anti-ideological, what is the cause of the fervor of his supporters? Anti-ideology. They hate ideology. They don't want ideology. They don't want consistency. The fervor is around, is a form of nihilism and anger and frustration and wanting to break things. It's wanting to tear it down. And in this case, I think the main thing they want to tear down is what they call kind of the rich man north of Richmond. It's the authorities. It's the establishment. It's the people who live, people who command the swamp, if you will. It's people who have money. It's the elites. It's people who know stuff. They're experts. It's elite and expertise and success that it's anger towards all that. It's anger towards the fact that nothing has changed in the last 30, 40 years. It's anger towards the fact that the left seems to be everywhere and they're destroying this country and the only way to deal with them is to smash them. It's the same way they deal with us. Let's see. Michael has, you noticed a few GOP candidates are unabashedly using the word capitalism instead of free enterprise. They seem like they're more ready to defend it. Maybe. The only one I'm familiar with is Nikki Haley, but maybe there's some others using capitalism. Certainly the leading candidates are not. Maybe. I don't know if Vivek uses the word capitalism. I hope he doesn't, but he might be using it. Yeah. I mean, I think there is a certain part of the Republican Party that's willing to still defend capitalism, but certainly not the party of Donald Trump and, you know, the rich men north of Richmond and DeSantis, right? That part of the party is not interested in defending capitalism. Michael says, why didn't I end up here in Philadelphia twice given how corrupt and dishonest he was. He only had her on in an attempt to discredit her and her ideas. Well, yeah, you know, but that he had her on because she was an interesting person because she evoked strong responses because it made good TV ratings. I mean, don't attribute to him motivation that you don't know, but it made good ratings. I think that's why he had her on again. On the other hand, you know, Johnny Carson was very nice to her and had a really nice, pleasant discussion. Why didn't he have her on every year for 10 years? Why did he stop having her on? You know, who knows what why producers of these shows, how they make decisions on what, but it's primarily at the end of the day ratings. She was an incredible, you know, she was an incredible guest. Michael says, do you think one of the reasons it's harder to regulate tech because much of it fail fails under First Amendment protection activity? Protected activity? No. I think it's not harder to regulate tech. They're getting to it and they will do it. I think that they didn't regulate tech for a long time because to some extent I think they realized that in order to have this goose that lays golden eggs one after the other after the other, they better not touch it. And I think politicians know what regulations do. They're not idiots.  And in, you know, California regulates tech a lot less than it regulates other businesses for exactly the same reason. The budget of California depends on tech being successful.  No.   So yeah, absolutely, you want to maintain your integrity. You want to maintain who you are. You want to maintain your own identity and not stoop to somebody who you clearly don't respect and clearly is behavior is not your behavior. Ryan says, may please make a short video with picture of this guy and everyone share. I'm sure, I'm sure that'll be done. Christian is on it would be my assumption. Gail says evasion of reality seems to dominate the culture now seems thanks again for all you do. Yes, I think evasion is dominant and but but it's more it's evasion and victimhood. And one of the things that is unique, one of the things that has changed about the right, I think, I think this is true. And you'd have to study history to find but I think certainly true over the last 40 years. One of the things that changed around the right is it used to be the left was the victimhood and now the right as matches the left in its victimhood. Everybody's a victim. Everybody's whining. Everybody's complaining. Everybody's everybody's everybody's a victim of somebody. Everybody's a victim of something. And it used to be that the right used to yell at the left, take personal responsibility. And now that's gone. Now that idea of personal responsibility is gone because the right can't look in the mirror doesn't want to look in the mirror. How many of the people who love this song are obese and on the right. And I mean the song blames kind of blames welfare and food stamps for obesity.  I mean, red America is far more obese than blue America. It's just interesting, right? Catherine says, what gale said? Thank you, Catherine. Oh, by the way, we're about $80 short if somebody wants to step in and do some stickers. Not a lot of time for questions, but if somebody wants to do a sticker, we can do that.  It's terrible. I haven't liked new country music since I realized how hedonistic it's become. However, that music is much better than whatever this was. Yeah, I mean, this is a, this is a victimhood thing. I mean, it's right in the first paragraph.  I read this left economist. He said his answer to the song was join a union. You should join a union. That will raise your wages. Give you better benefits. And that's right. That's the left's argument. And it's probably the right's argument as well. We should have more unions. They take care of those workers. Enough of this capitalism exploitation stuff. Frank says money question. Why are they no more $1,000 bills? Well, because the government doesn't want you to have $1,000. It's too easy to move large sums of money in cash if you have $1,000 bills. They want to make it very difficult for you to move large amounts of money in cash. So if you have to write a check or if you have to do an electronic transfer, then the government can monitor that. And indeed, anything over 10,000, the bank has to report it to the government. So the government is watching you. They are controlling you. That is true. That part of the song is absolutely right. But if you, anything you do over $10,000 in a bank and now with, you know, peer to peer stuff, anything you do over, I think $600 has to be reported to the government. So it's against money laundering, tax evasion. And just so the government can monitor what you do with your money. Okay, Shelley, probably the last question, but we still have time for stickers. We've got 82 people watching, a buck a person, and we make it. All right. You should really go on more, you should really go on more online shows if you get the option, like Stitchin' at Amma. It's always good fun. You know, I go on every show that asks me to pretty much, pretty much every single show that asks me to come on, I go on.  And if they invite me, I will go on. Almost every show. No, I won't go on every show, but almost every show. Jupiter Menace just did a sticker. Thank you, Juniper, and you can too, and help us get to where we need to be with the other stickers that I missed. Yeah, Stephen Hopper, thank you. Who else did I need to thank that didn't ask a question? Shali, thank you. Yeah, I think that's, I think we caught everybody. All right. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate the support. Thanks to the Super Chatters. I've got something to do, so I have to run. And I will see you all tonight. Tonight we'll have a show on the future of the dollar, the present and the future of the dollar. And what else? Yes, tomorrow there are no shows. I'm traveling tomorrow. And I'm not sure about Thursday. Might be a show on Thursday, depending on if I have time in my hotel room, but tomorrow no shows for sure. Tonight, probably after 8 p.m., it'll probably be 8.30 for the show tonight, probably 8.30. Sorry to keep you up so late, but I've got something that starts at 7, and I'm not sure when it's going to end. And maybe even 9, so we will see. We'll play it by ear as we go along tonight, but there will be a show tonight on the dollar, on a continuation of the show we did before on the dollar. This time it'll be about the future of the dollar. We'll also talk about dollarization in Argentina and so on. The other alternative is maybe to do the show at like 5.30. So I might do the show at 5.30 eastern time or at 8.30 eastern time. I'll let you know. Bye, everybody. I'll see you tonight, one way or the other.


And that's what I, that's something because when you think about it, it's just, I look at what you're saying and there has to be some kind of way something linked you to the education of understanding how not to get in a bad deal. Sometimes it's just some spirit, you know, and people may think that I can't try this with Lothan fire because if I'm finding out a problem, they think that. Because they come to me, I don't come to me at all. I want to talk about, let's get into the music because I don't know. When did you start finding your love for music? I know that because they did music, so you always heard the music because they always had the song system. But when did you say, okay, I don't want to jump in the song system thing. I want to be an artist. I want to do, I want to be a DJ. That's what I want to do. How old were you when you realized that? All right, artists of my age, we started out around sound system. We never know about going to the studio to record a song and writing a professional melody or anything. But from a band, in at the dance, I hold the mic, I sing a DJ, a chant, I say a poem, I run a joke on everything. Professional recording started out about 1994. When we got to the studio, we do audition, we meet prominent producers, who people say are big and female, they are powerful and try to sing them. If you say, oh, they might have liked or advised to record a song with us.  Until what was fine, we sell 50 in a lane and we get opportunity. And we record good songs and people like it and we start. What label you recorded with first? The first label was a label called Sapphire. Sapphire record, that was 1998. Did they treat you right on the record deal? Yeah. Did you feel good about it still to this day? Yeah, yeah. Those first people were Irish. It's like a brother, a friend of mine, father was the boss. So he treat me like a son. Did you run into a bad record deal anywhere? No, I don't know. I mostly work for me. Okay, independent? Yeah. Okay. And most of the distribution and recording companies in Jamaica, you have to be sharp to get good deals because even sometime I think they did themself, checking themself. And that's something because when you think about it, it's just, I look at what you're saying. And there has to be some kind of way, something linked you to the education of understanding how not to get in a bad deal. Sometime it's just some spirit, you know, and people may think that I can't try this with Lothan fire. Because if I'm finding out a problem, they think that. Yeah. So they come to me, I read. I don't come to me at all. I got it. I got it. And that's because you mean business. Yeah, I'm roughing. I like that. Because we need rougher people because so many people cry. They're for me and our man to deal. Because there's beer. Half a man, not the world. So you have to be masculine to the max. You have to keep the baritone, you know? That's true. I saw somewhere where it said that you recorded your first song for budget. Well, in them time, I was doing the work with Sapphire while I was at Bujo. So I don't record in that budget, but my first release was with Sapphire. OK, OK. So what was the first song that you did? You remember it? Oh, a song like that song even got played on the radio. And I said, All the HACI to me beer. Missy said I'm not here. I don't may have got you on them and they use them tears, you know? I'm going to get into it right now. Why do you get inspiration for all your songs? It's just day to day and now we think because we think country to whatever the system come with. Because we say everything where the system come with this can help.


Okay we're ready. Let us know when you're ready. Welcome to the regular meeting of the Board of Directors of Community Television of Santa Cruz County. Today is June 28th, 2012. Allie, would you like to do the roll call? President, does anybody have any oral communications to the board? Ron Holman, member of the public, also staff member. I want to talk real briefly about one of, I think, the most difficult jobs in the world, which is being Executive Director of Community Television, which I think a lot of people can testify to.  It's a really difficult job, so you can see where I'm going with this. I really want to thank Mary Ann for everything she's done. Ann. Drum roll. You're sweet. Thank you.  I hope you can hear me. Sandy Lee, Independent Producer here at Community TV. I got so much to talk about. Some of it's on the agenda. One of the most important issues I want to talk about isn't on the agenda and that's fundraising and fund development. I have some great plans and instead of being dismayed by lack of response to my things, I figured I'd do a song and dance for you. So here we go. But I'm dumb. Hey, I want to do a telethon, a Black Friday telethon. We'll make lots of money, we'll have lots of fun. We can do it right here and it won't cost anybody anything. You can all help or you don't have to. Just support my idea of a telethon. I'll have bands. I'll have music. I'll have political people and most of all we'll have sponsors who want to sell their Black Friday things on our show. We can have lots of fun. We can make lots of money. And pledge drives. Why can't we do pledge drives? Everybody else in public broadcasting does pledge drives. Why can't we do pledge drives? Two times a year. That's far less than PBS. We can make money. We can have lots of fun. At three. Board. Why don't we have a casino night and a dance and get her? And we can have lots of fun. Board.  Please, board. Let's make some money and not sit on our hands. Board, please. Thank you. Great performance. It's easy. Thank you very much for the entertainment. We appreciated it. And the thoughts. Yes. Does anyone else have anything? Okay. We're going to move on to the consent agenda. I'd like, I'd be happy to entertain a motion to approve the minutes unless we need to have a discussion of them. Okay, also with the consent agenda you just approve it all at once unless there's an item you want to pull. Oh, okay. Yeah. Fine. We can do that. I didn't know if anybody had any particular things they wanted to talk about it. Any of the items? I just wanted to comment on number five before we do it. Not to pull it, but just to make a comment. Okay. Is that within our? Yeah, I just wanted to mention that I've talked to the one contributing member to the 401K plan just to ensure that that member was comfortable with my appointment as a trustee. It's pretty much an administrative thing, but I think that just a courtesy you should do whoever's in it. And I made sure that the fund is in a financial institution that can be, you know, considered solvent and reputable, which it is. And so I will pursue it with diligence and hopefully that's be a very routine thing. But I just wanted to let the board know that I did look in this a little bit more than just sitting here because I do, when you do these things, I at least personally think they are a matter of trust and you do need to communicate with the people that have funds in it. So that's all I wanted to say. Thank you for being willing to step into that position. We appreciate it. I'd like to request that we pull the minutes of April 26th and continue them to the next meeting. Okay. Do we have to? Is that okay? We don't have to take a vote on that. Do we? I can't remember. What we do is I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda without that one particular item. Okay. All right. All those in favor? Opposed? Okay. So consent agenda is approved with the deletion of the minutes of the meeting of April 26th. And we will table that to the next meeting. Moving on to the regular agenda item number six. Keith, would you like to report on that? So at 5.30 p.m. on June 25th, Matilda and I completed counting all the ballots. And there were 103 ballots received, 89 for the measure, 14 against. And 151 votes, yes, were required for the measure to pass. Therefore, the bylaws of the corporation are not amended. I don't know if you've got a copy, but this is a copy of yours. Did anybody have any comments about that? I'd like to hear whatever public comments there are first. And then we'll go back to the board and see what they have to say. All right. Well, then we'll open up the floor for public comment. All right. Great. Well, yeah, I'm sorry I wasn't here at the board meetings when this all came up. And some of you might have received my letter stating my feelings on this. And I'm not against the merge completely. I think there's a lot of things that we need to research before we go forward with the merge. I was dismayed that with the arrogance that this is it or else we're going to dissolve the corporation. And I'm really sad that this is coming from our government appointed officials as opposed to the team as a whole. It's like, you know, we try hard as producers here to do TV shows. I'm so blessed with a great following in Santa Cruz. People love what we do here. They love what we stand for. They don't want to see us go away. The public is behind us. Now we just got to get the government behind us too. You know, I know you're all here working hard and trying to keep this afloat. But when I hear this, well, they got a vote for it or else. That really scares me. And it's hard to put my motivation behind you guys when you're not looking at the big picture. And so when it was brought up that, let's do this in stages. Let's look at the merge. Let's talk to Monterey. Then let's go to the people. That was a fabulous idea. And I really wish you would have supported that. I think this is still a good idea. Let's talk about it some more, but don't try to take our membership rights away. As an organization, we want to fight for this company, and I would hope that you guys would fight for us too, because we wanted this to stay. I hope you want us to stay too. One of the things that we discussed at our meeting on June 18th is that particularly about this vote, that it was more about allowing the board of directors to move forward with, I don't know, being more nimble in taking the organization in any certain direction. So the vote wasn't really about the merger. And I think there was some confusion about that just to clear that up. It was more about allowing the board to make decisions on behalf of the organization, not that we don't want to hear about what the members have to say. But go ahead, Joe. Yeah, I think there were some people that worked really hard on the election, and I'll wait until they have their comments on how we proceed forward and what we do next. But I just want to make one thing clear, is that there is a kind of a deadline coming as to the future of community TV, and I think that personally, that's what's motivating me. If you don't have that deadline, then you could do things in a way that are perhaps slightly different. But when you have a deadline coming up, and you see the financial implications, I think you need to move and be nimble and be able to adjust to it. Also, having been involved in a lot of fundraising, I can tell you it was an interesting set of ideas that I heard, but a lot of the groups in town are doing it. There's a lesser pool, so sometimes you have to look at different ways to do it, and that's why I thought the merger seemed to make sense, is you pool your resources because there is a smaller amount of community funds out there to support all these competing groups, and there are a lot of them. I did sit through a lot of teletons for KUSP, and they don't do them anymore. They do direct mail, and so it is going to be a change here, and how it comes through, we'll see. There may be other options. I personally think the merger is a very logical one, but we'll just see how it goes. But I just wanted to bring that one point of clarification up, and that's what personally drove me, because I don't want to be sitting here in a year from now saying, well, we should have done this, or we should have done that, because we're approaching another year of problems. Anybody else? I wanted to thank Keith and Matilda for serving as the inspectors. You guys did a lot of work, and I know that you weren't necessarily all... Forget about the staff. Well, and the staff, I mean everybody, but I know that you two were kind of like, I don't know if I want to do this, so I appreciate having done it, because I have confidence that it was handled appropriately, and that's important when we're going through things like this with the membership in the organization generally, so thank you. I remember the night before I took off on our vacation, I was sitting here stuffing in the looks. Yeah. That was my last attempt. Six of us. I was wondering, Keith, if you want to review... If you have it with you, and if you want to review what we discussed on Monday with a couple of board members about some of the new ideas, and thank you by the way for giving a great presentation at the board, and James was there too, and of course you had no choice being there, but still thank you for being there. So we had some ideas, and I was wondering if you would summarize some of those ideas. I didn't bring the minutes you sent us. Would you mind? You didn't either. I could kind of run down them. But I think Keith should do it. I think just if you discuss what we talked about, that would be good for everybody else. Dory was there too. I don't think it has to be exactly to the minutes, but just to the topics and the discussion and the ideas. Well, the main issue was making sure that we have a membership that we'll vote. As we discussed, it's not that the membership in favor of changing the bylaws is that the members didn't vote. 103 out of 300 is maybe great for an election for the city council, but it's not acceptable for what we were trying to do. So what we looked at are how can we make sure that we have a membership that's motivated and we'll vote, and how can we get that membership out to vote. And so we talked about membership meetings, dividing the membership up per board member, making sure that each one gets a personal call from their member, offering to go to their house and pick up the ballot. And I think other ways of managing the ballot, as you discussed with Tola, Denise, we are limited. The bylaws do require it to be a written ballot. I know we're the 21st century, but it has to be a written ballot. So we need to look at ways. Right now there's one ballot per person. It goes out. If it gets lost, we can't do anything about it. So I think we need to look at ways to make sure that if a ballot gets lost, we have to get it so we can still get that member's vote. Yeah. Well, I'd like to suggest that the ad hoc committee again, because if we are going to do another election, we need to kind of get the process moving forward. So I, you know, I'm not, you know, involved in scheduling that, but do you have a sense of the timing and what we need to do and when? Well, we've talked about trying to wrap up another election by the middle to end of September. Having the election ongoing when we go back to the Board of Supervisors in July, August 14th, which means we would have a date of record in July and then have about a 60-day period to close it, which brings us to having a board meeting in July to set the date of record and call for the election. Yes. Tell me if I'm wrong. No. I was there too at the meeting. And what we discussed was tonight we're making a decision about a new executive director interim person, and we need input from this person and maybe that person will have some ideas and hopefully because I understand we have a wonderful pool of three that we're choosing tonight. So I think putting this off till they have some input is very, very important. We're not putting enough. We're working side-by-side. During the interviews we did talk about the need for more members to vote because the bylaws says that we have to have 50% plus one. And they have given us already some ideas which is great. So I really thought that Dory, Joe, Keith and I was anybody else that night? And staff. And I thought we came up with some really good ideas on reaching out to the members and being more clear because even tonight there still is the understanding that the whole vote was we go for the merger and that's not in order to explore the merger that was a prerequisite but it doesn't mean that that's the only option that we will end up with and so the clarity of the information that goes out to the members to vote on I think we got more we got better at it and clearer about it. So that's what we hope will happen and that more people will review what is written because this time I think it was a little rushed we had to do it before this board meeting and also before we had to go to the board of supervisors I mean, you know, the 25th was a day that we closed the ballot box and the next day we had to go to the board of supervisors. I think this time we can time it in a way where we can catch mistakes and incorrect not incorrect just trying to clarify not clear information to the members so that's some of the things we talked about I really appreciated that evening actually. Thank you, Joe and Doreen. And I just wonder just as a technical matter and I don't know what the answer is but if we do decide to have another meeting can the chair call the meeting without us having to talk about because also we need to figure out a date that people would be available so if you want to wait till after the executive director interviews and everybody decide when you want to have a meeting because that would be a lot easier on everybody if you're all here than to try to do emails and pick out a date that would work or just set it now. We don't have to set it at this board meeting. Any two board members can call a board meeting at any time so what I would propose is that after this meeting is over let's just look at our calendars and then Karen and I can call a meeting until I that will work. I just thought everybody's here it'll be faster. We'll do it at the end but we'll do it formally. I have a question. The next time we vote is it going to be the same for the same thing basically? More clear. It was very confusing. The same amendment to the bylaws. I thought the emails were clear. It was more during the discussions when Kathy was here that it kind of was what's she doing here kind of thing but I think in the emails it would be clear. It's just like how do you find the people that aren't participating? That's the thing we have to avoid is not trying to do the same thing and expecting different results because I think that was the definition of insanity according to Albert Einstein. I can't remember who said that. We just have to be careful that somehow we change our plan a little bit or turn out. One of the things we have now that we didn't have when we started the process last time was we have this really involved group of people who showed up at the last couple of meetings that were really interested, passionate, caring, and able to work within the membership I think and that's something that I think we can really draw on and build being nice to work with membership on that. I'll make a motion to survive the second that. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carries. Next item on the agenda is the discussion regarding a potential merger with CMAP. And it seems to me that since this vote did not pass it really was of tantamount importance to enable us to carry these discussions forward. I think while we're all greatly disappointed by this it is a setback but at the same time it's just going to force us to be a little more creative in how we approach this. So I didn't know if anybody had any thoughts about this, how we want to discuss it with them at the moment but I can certainly open it up to public comment because I see a hand over there. So, Ron. I think that the idea of looking at a shared services agreement is a very viable thing that we can pursue. The board is empowered to do that. Complete merger. No, not at this time. But there might be other strategic alliances that the board is certainly empowered to look at. So I wouldn't say let's just forget about it. Let's continue to see where we can save money by pooling resources. Thank you. Hello. Yes, I... Could you state your name, please? I'm David Perez. I agree totally with Ron and my friend back here. We would like to look at merging with CMAP but we all want to look at it. We all want to make a decision with you. I haven't heard, and this is my second board meeting, I haven't heard a lot of great ideas coming out of here. I haven't heard a lot of great ideas coming from anywhere. So I'm not saying anything about the board but I feel it's very important for the people, for the membership to get themselves together because they're about to lose something whether they lose it to CMAP because it's going to be lost to CMAP or I understand or maybe I don't want to accept that we can continue as we are it will require a lot of creativity in order to raise some money but I can't... There's just too many opinions here and too many ideas that I would like to hear if the membership wants to save their station. There is a way we can do it. I don't want to give it up. I don't want to give it up. I would like to see that we do get a new director for community television. Somebody with hope, somebody with a vision, somebody creative because apparently it's kind of it's in television programs instead of creating a viable community television so I for one I don't want to give up my membership vote and I would like to look into joining with CMAP but they need to find some reason to want us as opposed to us giving all of our authority to you because as far as I'm concerned the board is ready to go with CMAP if they make us an offer. I don't see the board saving us so unless we get a new board or we get a lot of or there's a lot of creativity here or there's a lot of imagination I we might as well go down the tubes or get saved in a couple of years I don't want to give up my voting rights I don't want to give up any television I'd like to see if we can get a new director who has a vision for us to go forward that's all I'd like to say. Thank you. Thank you, David. Thank you. That was very powerful. Move me.  The other 200 people probably just didn't vote because they didn't want this to happen this way and it's a lot easier to just vote no than to go through the whole tap dance with you guys. I think you're going to waste a whole lot of time and money if you try to do this again this way. My story with Kathy Bisbee I don't know if any of you were here when Kathy was an employee for the six weeks or so that she was here. My time with her I'm sorry this isn't appropriate. We can't really Well, no, it's not. It's like there's her feelings towards the station at the time were more for herself and not for the station. I have personal issues that I won't get into until I think she's right there.  But the end result was we spent a whole lot of time and a whole lot of money creating this position that was vacated at the next best opportunity. Now I'm watching these board meetings that CMAP was here when I got out of it was they want our truck they want Ryan and Daniel okay we don't want the truck anyway I don't have a problem with that what I have a problem with is when I mentioned let's lease it to them let's have them pay us every month for the truck if they want to hire Danny and Ryan on the side they need the extra money great but why do we have to go through with a merger that they're all looking for for their side and so I said why don't we do that and I was strictly told they don't have the money to pay us for the truck well if they don't have the money to pay for the truck are they going to save us during this crisis we have a lot of good ideas on the table one let's turn this place into a learning facility let's move to the tannery let's get all brand new equipment and be a state of the art facility let's train people we have some incredible talented teachers in this area that we can draw upon and make this in a facility like no other I've seen other people do it it's very possible that we can make this a learning facility during the daytime and a public access station at night time and come out way ahead of the game it just takes a little bit of research and a little bit of insight and Keith has already touched upon this and we've had some extensive conversations about that that's just one option that can keep this station afloat during this crisis I think it's a very valuable one and I can personally talk to any of you and tell you other places that have done this and have been very very successful at it and I think that's one of the things that we can do that too other options is let's compress let's take the government stuff keep the contracts we do not want to take anything away from our county we do not want to take anything away from our city we want to provide you all the services that you've always got with the same personnel and the dedicated service we want to provide that to you none of that's going to change what happens on the public and volunteers oh god I love my volunteers they're the best people in the world you guys are volunteers Sandra we have I'm so sorry we have to keep the meeting moving but I think we can do this let's not waste any more money going down the same path let's start taking some other pursuits and I think you'll get the support of the members a lot more don't take it that that 87 votes was positive well I did take it that the votes were positive that might be useful is to really lay out a clear non-political language what the situation really will be in the next year and a half or so you know how much of our budget is really getting cut and you know is it really feasible and I'm totally into the educational part of it you know obviously as a teacher at Cabrillo but you know how much can we really pull in from those kind classes and you know what kind you know so in other words we have this huge loss that's going to happen what 80% of what our income is you know we can't really completely fill that I mean there's a lot of changes that have to be made it can't be business as usual so you know and we have been talking about other things as well but anyway I guess I don't know if people really know how dire the situation is right there's a lot of misinformation out there unfortunately about what we're trying to do and hopefully as the days go by or the weeks go by and our new ED comes on board we're hopefully going to be able to clear some of that up so I don't know we really do want to keep this meeting moving along we do have three executive director candidates to consider does anybody have any other comments about this issue so I think should we discuss this again at the next meeting does anybody feel like okay all right can we we're going to I think table this to the next meeting are you talking about to September meeting or probably the July the special meeting for July we're going to discuss we'll pick it up again because I don't I can't ask for anybody to vote there's no action item right for that okay okay regarding item number eight the potential move to the tannery I don't know Keith do you want to give an update on that any new information that we have we don't have any new information and this is the actual lease agreement is the purview of the county and the city and the city of Santa Cruz so I would say if there's public comment that's great but the board really doesn't have anything to say about it at this point and then I'd like to ask that we try and keep it to three minutes please short and sweet I promise thank you you know we did this before you know again none of you were here when we had the board of directors and we had the people from the tannery here where you Dory thank you I'm sorry and and you know what there's a lot of good there again this is a really positive thing with the tannery and I'd love to see us get into that state of the art thing and do that but the reason we didn't do it and commit to it was because of the cost involved with moving and taking all this wonderful stuff down and so my feelings is yeah let's pursue the tannery as much as we can you know and we can work it out that we can get a grant to move the stuff or even if it works into the timing when we can get all new stuff I'm I'm way behind the tannery idea that's why I want to say thank you okay that's alright I'm not real impressed with the tannery as being a sole location for community television as a satellite facility as an administrative and educational unit I think that it has a lot of potential there but moving the whole kitten caboodle to a smaller space it's kind of enclosed in a complex it doesn't there are several things but to me the bottom line that you have to look at is that the idea of saving money on rent is only good first of all for two years and there ain't no way we're going to move within even a year probably and the cost of moving this facility is going to wipe out any potential savings in rent so I'm not saying no obviously we need to look at it but I'm not that big on it we have a really good studio here we would not have as good a studio over there moving is a very daunting job and I'll be quite honest that's part of it for staff we don't have the technical expertise that we had with Craig Judson and so we're going to have to hire outside help if you want to move stuff and that's going to be expensive and there go the savings for the rent when we get to 2014 I don't think the rent here will be an issue so there's a lot of different things that have to be looked at but my personal gut feeling is what I said initially satellite facility yes sole location probably not thank you can you try and keep it to three minutes please I don't have to keep it to three minutes because I'm going to agree with Ron and there are plenty of people who agree with that they're not here I don't know where they're at why are they not involved where are the people in the program to get involved I mean I saw a few of them here for the last meeting I came to but it wasn't a board meeting and in fact there are two people more here than there were at the last board meeting I came to and that was nobody so I'm really disappointed is that the people are losing something and they need to come here and they need to I agree Ron okay so we're still discussing the tannery and I don't think we have any more public comments I was here the last time many years ago that we looked at the tannery but at that time none of us were sure it would even go you know it was just this dream that they had here in the city to do all this and we were reluctant to just dedicate ourselves to moving there so that was the main reason we didn't even consider it however a number of us were there what a month ago to tour it and look at the space and look at the ideas and I became very excited because it is a very viable going organization they have a waiting list for their places there they are doing so much if you saw in the paper today they're having open houses for their different groups it was a sculpture group that's opening a store there everything is buzzing over there and it's very exciting I was excited about it I think the reason that we would replace this I've never been in favor of a studio I taught for many many years at a college where we had a big beautiful studio about this size with everything that you have here and I like to go out and shoot so I do my program that way also a smaller space I think would be great because it would be more intimate I don't think we need to have you know the big huge things we're wasting a lot of money with this huge studio that sits here empty so much at the time that to me I think it's a waste of money and I think we could go with something smaller and still do the same kind of things that we're doing and you just need to go over and look at the space and see how exciting it is over there Anybody else? I think we're going to move on we don't have that's not an action item so thought we'd talk about the volunteer recognition luncheon we would like to set a date for that and it seems like typically in August typically when we have it July August yeah the last couple years it's been in July and August okay and does anybody have any suggestions for dates for that go ahead I think it's real important to include the new executive director and some had mentioned vacation dates and stuff when we asked when they could start so maybe setting an exact date is a little premature until you find out who you're hiring and what their schedule is like because I think it would be a great meet and greet opportunity for members to get to know the new interim executive director okay, thank you I just want to suggest that it takes time to get the food donations together and getting the talent and whatnot and so I wouldn't say August would be very preferable at this point and again the executive director shouldn't have a pulse on what's going on with this as I mentioned in my letter I'm more than welcome to take this and run with it, I did it two years ago when we were having turmoil I don't want to see this event go by the wayside it's important for the station it's important for the members it's important for the producers it's important for everybody and it's great PR and if you want to start getting the membership behind you guys doing this it's going to be a great way and you can even use it as an informational time to pass out some information other voting stuff and another cost involved with this that you might want to take into consideration is we send out ballots to everybody so they can vote for their thing and there's the cost involved with the mailing and cost involved with that and if you wanted to do some other sort of election thing and combine it into that mailing they'll save some money who knows what the results will be, I don't know but I really want to see this event happen and if I have to do it single-handedly I will but I would hope for support from the staff because I certainly need Jack and Ron's help with getting the ballots for the voting out so thanks I'm really behind this I might suggest those are some I think good points I just heard is that maybe the chair and the vice chair work with the executive director and set a date in August we'll never have a date when all of us are here in that period of time and just pick a date and do it and we won't have to do it any more this evening is everybody okay with that okay okay Bowling fundraiser let's move on to that that's the other thing we'd like to set a date for did everybody feel like that was a pretty successful fun event and they'd like to do with that again this year did it bring in as much as other years? more well that was our first year what was our second year for a fundraiser? it was the first year for the Bowling fundraiser second year for an October fundraiser but yes it did bring in the only thing that I would suggest is that you do not do it in October because women care is also doing a bulletin in October very successful make 60,000 plus dollars so I would suggest not to do it that close to towards the end of October when they do it okay September the 29th of September is a Saturday towards the end of the month that's the Bagonia isn't it like Bagonia and the end of Labor Day there's like either mine or Bagonia I think that's why we always had it in October because when I originally planned the dinner fundraiser a couple years ago I did a lot of research about annual events that happened Santa Cruz and we were trying to work around with the Bagonia Festival and a few other things that were going on my recollection was that we were actually going to have an item on this meeting to address the appointment of a committee to discuss this so that we're not doing it in the meeting and taking up time I don't know that since it wasn't agendized for that that people really had time to think about that so we might want to consider putting that on in July as well okay is everybody okay with that well you could establish a committee now it's not an agenda it says discussion action for bullying fundraiser non-appointment of a committee I think our original idea was just a tentatively set a date October 1st is a Monday the following weekend okay and we can discuss it at our July meeting that's fine but obviously there is great enthusiasm yes no I think the consensus from the board is definitely that we want to do it again we did make money it was fun people enjoyed it it's a way to get people together a way to get our local luminaries to participate but as far as the impact on the staff I mean I know how it was as far as how much did it feel about I mean is it way out for you when you were there do you think it was much easier yeah I think we have a lot of the templates I mean a lot of it was just creating it because it was our first time ever doing it so imagine how it was all being getting all the paperwork together getting all the packets like getting the system down is what we spend a lot of time doing but I mean so we have the system it's just carrying it forward I think would be a lot less work though I would recommend finding a different website because it's first giving because they took too big a percentage make sure they don't have anything else going on we need to set a committee October might be early just it would be nice to get a lot of energy going before we maybe it's good to do it when it's raining too supposing it ever rains again set a committee we'll put it on July remember the song it never rains in California it pours okay so it looks like we'll set a committee on our July meeting and also those people who are on the committee will have to be calling really and I assume that those those who are interested in it there's no nothing holding back and fighting out when there are other annual things going on that's the one thing the committee would be tasked to do anybody who's going to set a funder you have to check all the other events that are going on in the city and county that same time because we don't want to have too much of a conflict I just want to say to the public and a member that it was a fabulous event and I applaud all of you for doing such a great job and I'm way behind this event also but I think it would be better to do this in March as a spring time event again October is a great fundraising time and I'm so wholeheartedly you did a lot of research but I would think that would be a better date to do something a little more formal whereas a bowling tournament some more springtime thing and in this fun development thing that I talked about earlier this evening I see a lot of room for us to do a lot more with fund development and so I would like to see the bowling thing happen in March and maybe a more formal event happen in October okay thanks for your input do we have any other public comment regarding the bowling fundraiser no okay so we're gonna you got that um Ron has been working on an environmental policy for community television and I'm going for item 11 Ron would you like to give us a little overview of that sure um the history of this was Ali managed to get a grant from the community foundation for a thousand dollars I think to move us in the direction of becoming green certified so I took the point on this and have been working out a lot of different things moving us in that direction one of the things that they need is a policy that has been approved by the board of directors so that's why this document is in front of you tonight it's really straightforward I don't think I have to go into any lengthy explanation to this board about you know reduce reuse recycle all of those principles I do want to say there is one thing that we may have to deal with is ecology action did a energy audit of the lighting and if we stay in this building we would need to look at that it's basically a three thousand dollars retrofit everything the fluorescence are old and going to be illegal in January first well not illegal but you can't buy them anymore there would be a two thousand dollar rebate so it would still be a two thousand dollar expense it's not likely the landlord would pay for it but that's a little bit down the road so basically this is just an environmental policy I don't think there's anything in it that is controversial but if there are any questions I'd be happy to answer them I did get a chance to read it over and I do like what we're trying to do any other comment thank you for your work and for the pursuit of the grant and I'd like to make the motion to adopt the policy contained on pages fourteen fifteen of the six twenty eight twelve board packet I'll second it you'll second it I know yes okay okay it doesn't seem like there's any further discussion needed so all those in favor say aye opposed okay motion carries thanks everyone can I say one quick thing the zero waste for events is something your committee for the fundraiser is going to need to be aware of so thank you thank you for pointing that particular item out okay as far as my oral report goes I think one of the things that I've been so concerned about with this vote is that there's so much misunderstanding and I really wish we could have had more people at our two informational meetings because I think if we would have had a huge turnout for that I think there would have been a greater understanding of where we're trying to go and what we're trying to do and the decisions are really tough decisions that we are faced with as a board going forward and I really hope that people will ask more questions rather than jumping to conclusions in the future and just try and do their due diligence and understanding what really we are what task we are faced with and I just I really also want to recognize Keith and I you have just done a fabulous job trying to do a lot of research find out what's next asking questions presenting to the board of supervisors and I just wanted to say thank you personally thank you really done a great job and on behalf of everyone else who's been working week after week to brainstorm and try and come up with answers and try and figure out where do we go from here because again we haven't really been faced with this kind of situation that we are faced with now and I just really want to thank everyone for your hard work and trying to figure out what's next so does anybody else have anything that they'd like to add to that any other board members have anything that they'd like to add then we're going to go to the report of the executive director for her last time my report is short and I actually like to go off menu and to let you know that the queer youth leadership awards program that was produced last year it was one of the first things a non-sports events that we produced with the production truck has won the hometown award which is the national award for media centers nationally so real congratulations to Ryan Daniel everybody who worked on that to make it so amazing and unless there are questions about my report I would just like to say thank you so much for all the staff the volunteers and the board who have worked so hard very much appreciated and my best to all of you well thank you Mary Ann for your hard work and your diligence we really appreciate everything you've done for us very much and I wanted to since we're talking about Ryan going back to my report from the board chair we had a chance to read the report from Ryan in the back it's really great about our internship program and what he's been able to do with that so I want to personally thank him for that do you have any other comments, concerns, questions anything? I just want to say welcome back Allie Allie's decided to we went back and forth a little bit and made a decision Tess and I to bring Allie back as a reporter and it's going to be nice having some continuity during this time so thanks moving on to item 13 do we have any board member staff requests for items to appear on our next meeting agenda and it does say September but it could be July yeah this is just the regularly scheduled meeting in September that you guys approved on the calendar and just note that there is going to be a board election in November just to put that on your radar to P3 and P4 seats are expiring for a Matilda even though it's like you just got here you guys were both filling seats from people who had been previously elected so you know unless the bylaws get changed before then we're going to have to have a board election okay thank you and you'll make sure that that gets added yeah great anything? I know we've already asked for a lot of things to be placed on our next agenda so I think we've covered a lot of the things that do need to be on there from what I understand we have seven weeks from given by the Board of Supervisors to make some changes decisions is that what I understood from your meeting? they want us back on August 14th did they specifically state something they wanted for us on August 14th? I understood again on the clip that we received which was done very well by Ryan and his crew Supervisor Leopold clearly stated that he wants to see the election in process not that it has to be finished I think it was understood by them too that it would be too soon too rushed to have it completely done by August 14th but it has to be in progress and of course there's lots of other things that in the meantime we can do too I mean we're still meeting on a regular basis ad hoc and all the different committees so and I think we should clearly outline as well as follow up and record what we have been doing because that will make a difference so then maybe we can discuss that at our July meeting what we need to have together for the Board of Supervisors meeting for August 14th I think I'd want to request that we put that on the agenda for July and I forgot what we said about when is it that we're going to start on the next election for probably our July meeting I think we said we're going to get started we'll have to do that and did we say a date for the July meeting? No we're going to do that as soon as we're done with the election I knew there was something okay is there anything else before we adjourn to our closed session I'd like to thank our volunteer go ahead I wanted to address the issue that you're going into closed session I was on the search committee which I want to report it was a really good experience and everybody worked really hard the applicants were just outstanding I mean you would not believe some of the people who didn't make it to the next round and I can say without any hesitation any one of these three finalists I would love to work for you've got a really good pool to choose from and good luck because I think you're going to well maybe not maybe this final interview something will shake out but right now they you know yeah good luck and all this second I enjoyed being part of that process and thank you Ron for being part of that as well okay I think we're going to excuse our volunteers for the evening so they don't have to stick around and wait for us to come out of closed session so I would like to thank our volunteers for tonight Jenny Odell, Karen Scott David Perez and Sherry O'Neill thank you everybody we're going to adjourn to closed session thank you so let's take about a 5 minute break and we'll reconvene at 7 o'clock