I'm going to spend the next 25 minutes to share with you personal experience past 10 years with G-SAP. So I have a little story to tell later. But let's look at energy storage. This becomes very clear. But 10 years ago, it wasn't so. So we look at this, you say, well, every year we sell about a billion smartphones, each one of you carry one. And electric cars are coming in in a big wave. And California requires renewable storage. Just going from here to the car, roughly you need to double the annual production of lithium ion. And then going from the electric car to the grid, you need multiple times. So this is a huge demand right there. Then you say, I ask the question. Everybody asks, what kind of batteries do we exactly need to meet with those demands? Let's use lithium ion as the benchmark. For portable electronics, there's no question. It has to be lithium ion for transportation. Also, it looks like it needs to be lithium ion because of high energy density needed. So this is cell level and system level. Let's look at both. Cell level, we have roughly around 200 or so while per kilo. For the long term, we really like to get to 600, three times. But if we can double, that's already very, very good. But for academia research, we like to see whether three times is possible. System level, you cut by half. That's the number you are getting. So this is referred to the pouch cell. When you go to 1860, 50 cell, the cylinder cell what Tesla is using. So this number will be higher. This will be 250. Then you will say, I want to multiply three times. That's 750. This is kind of cell level cost. We are somewhere around 150 to $200 per kilowatt hour. System level somewhere between 300 to $500 per kilowatt hour, roughly this range. So we will like to get to system level 150. Cell level probably 70 or so. These two are really critical. These two for the transportation. For the Grease scale storage, of course, energy density will not matter that much because the footprint can be bigger. However, it will matter. It will affect the cost eventually. Cycle life, different people have different number right here. This calculation is based on you charge your car once per day. You want it to be 10 years. You need 3,000 cycles. For the Grease, you need a lot more. You need 30 years, perhaps. However, I have to say this number can be deceiving. If you have a car like Tesla, it runs 300 miles per charge. You only need 500 cycles. 500 times 300 gives you 150,000 miles. That's plenty. So depending on your range, how big your pack is, this number will change. Safety, this becomes more and more important. So sometimes no seven accidents, certainly really brought everything into consideration again. Can we really make our batteries very safe, fundamentally safe? That's a key question as well. So let's look at the grand challenge of the batteries right there. Giving those numbers. These are some of the questions we ask. Do we have the batteries chemistry to give us 3x of energy density compared to the current technology? How do we do that? Can we get the cost 3x lower? Can we make it safe? If this happens, these great things will also come. So past 10 years, I stand for right here after joining faculty. So we opened up a bunch of a number of research program trying to adjust those challenges. I will pick some examples based on the GSEPS research. If you look at these three grand challenges right there, one major thing is actually the energy density. Increase the range. If the manufacturing cost per battery is the same, you also reduce the cost of the batteries per kilowatt hour. That's really a key thing to do. So graphite is a material for 25 years now, used as an anode to integrate lithium to store lithium. We have new materials such as silicon and lithium metal can do 10 times higher capacity. So if you could use that, your energy density will go very high. Cathol side, this is the lithium metal oxide, no matter, it doesn't matter it's a lithium copper oxide or lithium manganese oxide or lithium myon phosphate. The family of these three different materials roughly get to somewhere close to 150 to 200 million per milligram. You also have a choice of sulfur become lithium sulfide. That gives you also 10 times. So if you can make this happen, this is a theoretical energy based on graphite, silicon and lithium metal. You have chemistry available to do three times. You even have chemistry available to do six times. So if you can make this practically working, then you are getting somewhere. So let me use silicon as an example. So silicon I show you has 10 times capacity. Silicon's a problem or also very similar to other battery materials problem. Silicon can take a lot of lithium coming in, 10 times higher capacity. However, volume expansion is four times you are facing two big problem. Number one is breaking. Number two is how do you be able to stable interface of silicon facing the liquid, organic liquid electrolyte? So this is the first of this project. I believe this is the batch of project Jesus ever funded on the batteries. So I joined the faculty 2005, starting roughly January 2007.  I'll come back to the story later. So over the years, so we developed the tool to really understand how the battery charging work. This is in situ holder, now available at Stanford University. Have a lithium-cobal oxide cathode. You can put your anode right inserted into this ion in the liquid and then you use electron beam to watch what's happening. You can deposit particle and see what happened to particles as well. So I want to show you a video. This is video of silicon nanowires. During charging, the volume expand a lot. This is 200 nanometer scale bar. So it start from 200 and expand a lot, but it doesn't break. And the surface has a copper coating. The copper is broken. So this is really powerful process. This really give the idea how silicon can break the batteries. Now let me show you another video. This is a video with a nanowire and then a number of silicon particles right there. Some are small. There's one really big one. This is 800 nanometer in diameter. Once lithium coming in, volume expand a lot. Causing silicon interface shrinking create a more of a lithium silicon phase. Eventually the stress is too big. This particle cannot hold it. And it's going to be broken, but the small one is stable. So once this is broken, you lose the material. You lose electrical contact. The batteries die. The first time you charge your battery, you find out it's already close to be dead. That's the challenging back then. So using nanomaterials engineering, we find a way to make this to work, prevent a breaking. So that's this whole thing coming in. We have a generation of one design. That's nanowires. Diameters small enough they don't break. Then that's not enough. We want it to be more stable. We have a core shell design and a hollow design. After a couple of years, it seems like breaking problem is solved. But remember we have a number two problem. What about the interface? If something keeps expanding during lithium coming in and contract when lithium goes out during discharge, you don't have a stable interface. So our generation four, I consider as another big milestone after generation one is engineer a double wall hollow structure. The interior is hollow. This blue color is silicon outer layer. The red color is a mechanically strong coating. Once lithium coming in, charge up your batteries. And the volume expansion happened by expanding towards outside, inside, not towards outside. Outside has organic electrolyte. So you build a stable surface. So we adjust this interfacial stability issue. So indeed after this paper, there's a really numerous study in the literature mimicking our idea. Now can make all type of materials to work, known as silicon, germanium, tin, many others you can name it. It's trying to create a stable interface. We have been through 11 generation now. Let me highlight just two. Another generation is even it doesn't break. You have stable interface. However, nano structure will have too high surface area to react with organic electrolyte. Consume lithium, consume electrolyte. That's not good. So we took on this challenge to design a new generation. We call this as a permagriny like structure. Basically packing this nanoparticle into secondary structure and coated outside with another materials so prevent the electrolyte to come and effectively reduce the surface area and make it stable. So it's getting much better. And also along the way, this is another later recent years project just finished supported by GSAP, is what if you do have the breaking? Can you come up with an idea and let the breaking self heal? So together with Professor Junan Bobby you sell healing polymer. Self healing polymer has this functionality. It has this chemical hydrogen bonding. Hydrogen bonding is very easy to broken. However, this polymer chain can move around and find each other and reform the hydrogen bonding. Eventually self heal the whole electrode. So this self healing can be better seen. Coating it is self healing polymer on top of a balloon and make it visible by putting conducting carbon black. You can measure its conductivity. You blow out this balloon many times by still conducting the surface.  Showing you this self healing polymer is a very strong. It actually can make a micron particles to work. The micron silicon particle, they will be broken. They are different from nano particles. However, now using self healing polymer you can start to cycle this. So now let me come to the next thing for high energy materials such as silicon. After roughly 10 years of research we understand the material design principle. What about safety? The more energy you put into the battery if there's something bad happen you are going to have more energy to burn your batteries. So can we design something that really prevent the bad things happen? We have been thinking about this for a couple of years now. Let me share with you two ideas. So you have seen all kinds of accidents. I haven't had a chance to put in the Samsung cell phone yet but everybody knows about that. So let's see if you have a battery with cathode and anode. So what happened very likely is either due to internal reason or external reason. You have some sort of shorting. Once you have shorting happening well let me mention this reason the external reason can be accidents. You know outside there is a you know you bomb into your batteries inside can be you have manufacturing defect you have over charge or you charge it in the cold weather. Once you have shorting next thing happened is very fast release of electricity through this short. And it's going to heat up the batteries to roughly about 100 degrees C. Starting at this temperature you are going to have exothermia reaction of solid electrolyte interface the interfacial coating. During the battery charging you have decomposition of the electrolyte. This release heat once it goes roughly about 180 degrees C something really bad happening. The metal oxide on the cathode will react with organic electrolyte. This will just automatically go cold thermal runover. At this moment the battery was you cannot control it will start to catch fire very quickly and or even cause explosion. So in order to make your battery safe internally you don't want your battery to short. Can you really detect the shorting? You know you have manufacturing defect you might have over charge. So we come up with an idea in the battery separator right here this is cathode this is anode. We embed it over porous very thin roughly 50 to 100 nanometer metallic coating. Once the shorting happened halfway for example danger formation you measure the potential of this intermediate layer versus your anode you can see the voltage drop to zero. At this moment you know your battery is in danger you need to stop charging. So you're still safe you still have halfway to go. So your laptop if it's your laptop it just tells you shut down your batteries within a minute if you don't do that it will just automatically do it for you so to make it safe. So we actually show this idea work. Now the question is what about external extra? You don't have a control you know your car bomb into something and then do something you know really penetrate into your batteries. So what we want to control right here is prevent very fast release of the electricity through the short. So together with Professor Junan Bao we come up with an idea is on the metallic foil this current collector we coated with very thin layer of polymer. This polymer inside embedded with this nickel nano spikes at the room temperature they are connected electronically they are conducting as a metal but once this temperature heat up due to shorting and this polymer thermally expand and once the expansion happen it's going to pull this metallic nano particle open and electrons cannot move between these particles anymore. So the reason we need these nano spikes is when this spike touches with each other electron can go through tunneling you know very close distance. Once you pull this open by an extra or two the tunneling current scare with the exponentially with the distance one over distance. So and your color will go very small so you can have very very sensitive switching phenomenon. So we take these nano spikes of nickel coated with graphene graphene is to make a nickel stable chemically and you are embedded into polyethylene or poly problem it's in the polymer very low cost. And now you test out the resistance versus the temperature. Let's look at this green curve right here with about 30% of a nano spike of nickel in there you heat up this polymer film you see at the beginning is metallic conduction at about 90, 95 degrees C this sharp transition become a complete insulator the resistance change is eight orders of magnitude become a complete insulator. Now the battery material coated onto this polymer there's no way you can transfer electron very fast to your metallic foil current collector. So you prevent a very fast release of the energy due to shorting even you do have a short but it's not shorting through your metallic current collector your current density is reduced significantly so you don't heat up your batteries. So I want to show you this is the battery we built and the room temperature you can see you can get the regular capacity out we engineer this polymer film at 70 degrees C it start to respond and it becomes this battery become basically dead there's no capacity coming out but once it come back to the room temperature the capacity recover so this is a reversible switch and the small cell this is working very well we want to do the big cell testing and your realistic cell phone batteries and also bigger one for the car and see how this idea will work. So let me come back to the GCEP story. I want to mention something about GCEP funding impact. Some of you might know many of you probably don't. Roughly about 2005 to 2008 adjoining faculty 2005 and 2005 and 2008 roughly within this range there's very little federal funding available. DOEBS just cut their electrochemistry and battery program no funding EI still have some basically nobody is funding the battery research. So for about these three years when I write proposal to outside it doesn't get funded we were very badly because nobody believe batteries problem is important. But GCEP recognized very early. So the first GCEP coming in is this number. I still remember I was so happy to receive this funding otherwise you know your tiny case will be toasted completely without funding. So I want to also show you after that what happened and about 2008 also there's a big explosion of research recognizing the importance of the battery research for the electrical car and then later for the grid. So 2008 I co-founded Amphilus I co-founded sitting in the audience right there. Up to today roughly we have 60 acts of follow on funding compared to this initial one from GCEP and then there's a huge number of battery program coming into Stanford. Roughly there's about 100 acts of return including the battery hub and also the battery 500 consortium and also these also spin out new idea. How do you make catalyst to do a few generation borrow the idea from batteries to make a new catalyst. Let me mention a few things right here. Number one is Amphilus. So after initial nanowire publication so you have went through a multiple run of funding now there's several million batteries on the market. So now we learn how to use silicon for the high energy battery. So this is happening. Just to share with you a few pictures right here. This is Amphilus Wuxi plan. This is our board of directors taking pictures roughly about a month, two months ago and Wuxi China to celebrate this manufacturing plan. I also like to mention battery 500. This is a new consortium announced several months ago by White House. Battery 500 here means 500 watt-hour per kilogram of the batteries for transportation. DOE really like to double to triple 500 watt-hour per kilogram also roughly get to if you have a Tesla for the same size of battery pack it will go to about 500 to 600 miles if you can get to this 500 watt-hour per kilogram of batteries. So after the initial investment now we have very strong team here at Stanford. Indeed we are the co-lead with PNNL National Lab to lead this $50 million consumption. We have four national lab, five universities involved. We have a Tesla IBM to serve as our advisory board or industrial advisory board. So these are some of the key people you see right there. Some familiar face, so Jernan is from here. You see John Goody now, you see Stan Wittingham. Stan a long time ago used to be a post star with Bob Harkings. So you see a number of people right here. We identify the key chemistry. How do we produce 500 watt-hour per kilogram? How much time do I have? Probably getting close. So I will skip this then. I will come to the last slide. The future of the batteries. If you look at high energy for transportation. The current graphite, nickel manganese cobalt oxide, these combination anion cathode, roughly get to 300 watt-hour per kilo. That should be okay. Silicon combination with MMC can get to 400. And lithium metal and high nickel MMC get to 500. I think this pathway is highly promising. In the next five years, we could get to somewhere 350 to 400. And 500 range is very promising, lithium metal and sulfur combination. So we have a pathway to get there. But for grid scale, the story might change slightly. Lithium ion battery cells might still play very important role in the grid scale storage. But these are the ideas coming in possible. Aqueous solution batteries, low cost and very safe and also flow batteries. There's multiple choices for the grid scale. Well, let me end my talk by thanking my whole research group and GCEP support and also DOE support over the years. And a number of collaborators working together at Stanford campus right here. The culture is fantastic. The collaboration is just very active. Thank you for your attention. And for all the great work you've done over the years, we are getting close to the time to finish, but if there are one or two very quick questions, we'll take them. So I see there's one over here. So if there is a different technology, different chemistry, different physics that can go past the 500 and possibly sooner, is that something that you would consider? I will, yes, I will. However, getting to energy density, to get the batteries to work, there's multiple parameters to consider. There's some other things, maybe one parameter is so outstanding, but the others are so bad. So it needs to be a balance. You didn't mention anything about super caps in relation to this and especially the new work in graphing super caps. Maybe you can say a little bit about that. Sure. How they compare. So super cap has very high power, but energy density is very low. Roughly, you consider that super cap is about, it's better to get to a 200 watt per kilo super cap is in order of 30. So seven times difference. So I think for very high power needs, super cap can play important role. For the usual needs, if you do transportation, super caps role is not that big. Because the cost will be very high. You have seven times reduction of energy density. So the cost per kilowatt hour will go very high. But we start saying I think this certain special application, for example, if you do a bus, bus run usually, you know, 50 miles perhaps, you can do fast charging. And so every time you go to the end, you do fast charging and then come back. It might work for the case of the bus, but for the regular car, super caps role will be not that big. Even with graphene, it doesn't increase that much. I think graphene is oversold for many cases. It's over, it's oversold. Okay, well, I'm afraid we have to stop there. So let's thank you one more time. Thanks you. Thank you. Thank you.


The mini-emulsion technique is a particular case in the family of heterophase polymerizations, which allows the formation of functionalized polymers by polymerization or modification of polymers in stable nanodroplets. We present here an overview of the different polymer syntheses within the mini-emulsion droplets as reported in the literature and of the current trends in the field. This article was authored by Daniel Crespi and Catarina Landfester.


Hello, everyone. My name is Bahid Ashrafi from the Stevens Institute of Technology and I'm presenting our paper on detecting cross-lingual information gaps in Wikipedia. By October 2022, Wikipedia had over 30 billion words in 58 million articles written in 330 separate languages and covered many areas. Many researchers utilize Wikipedia for doing various tasks such as text summarization, text classification, semantic analysis, information extraction, and likewise. With more than 6.3 million articles, the English language Wikipedia is the largest among the available language editions. But there is a huge gap between the language editions of Wikipedia. So our project aims to address two problems. First, how can we measure the information gap between different language editions of Wikipedia and what are the sources of cross-lingual information gap in Wikipedia? Our proposed approach comprises two solutions. One, a novel algorithm for detecting information disparities between paired articles from different language editions and second, a human-in-the-loop approach to identify sources of information gap in Wikipedia. There are some related works in this field. For example, Kozli and his colleagues introduced an intelligent task routing concept and accordingly described a system name such a spot that tries to help community members to find English articles that need to be edited. Beau and his colleagues described a system representing information about a concept in multiple Wikipedias to the end users. Picardian West introduced a cross-lingual topic model that can represent Wikipedia articles in any language as distributions over a shared set of language neutral topics. Johnson and Leskak found reasons for varying quality and topics in different Wikipedia editions and provided some recommendations aimed to optimize data sets for specific tasks. Our proposed approach comprises five steps. First, data retrieval or algorithm uses QID or unique identifiers to extract the articles related to a specific topic. Then using the Wikipedia as a cross-lingual topic model that works based on LDA to learn representation of Wikipedia articles as distributions over a common set of language independent topics derived from the interlinked QIDs. Then calculate similarity between paired articles using cosine similarity. And in the next step, utilizing a scale and getting feedback from human evaluators, the algorithm finds a ground truth for understanding of the potential sources of information gap between different language editions. And finally, using Google Translate as a machine translation tool and taking English as a reference language to create a comparable corpus of English and non-English article pairs. And then using traditional topic modeling method to obtain monolingual topic distributions for a selected article pairs and then calculating cosine similarity to compare pair of articles based on their topic distributions. We investigated 38 million articles in 28 Wikipedia language editions and calculated similarity scores for more than 103 million article pairs. Language editions from countries with established historical or geographical ties, such as Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Polish, and Spanish Catalan, were found to have similar contents. Bots play a significant role in reducing the information disparity among Wikipedia editions, such as Swedish, Vietnamese, and Wari. Except for English and Arabic editions, the top five articles in the other language mainly related to celebrities, locations, organizations, or scientific topics. And reducing the information gap can be viewed as a countermeasure against censorship and propaganda by observing the case of information disparity between English and Farsi Wikipedia articles on headscarf. Also a detailed examination of a sample of paired articles from the English and Farsi editions showed that mismatches between the interlinked entities is the main source of information disparity between two editions. This mismatches arises from differences in size, age, and composition of editor community, and also the editor's areas of interest. And there are additional factors that contribute to the information gap between the different language editions, including presence of outdated culturally dependent budgeted or geographically dependent content, censorship, and propaganda on availability of sources in one language, presence of controversial topics, mislabeling, and vandalism. The similarity scores generated by the proposed algorithm were significantly correlated with human judgment. Our future research are focused on improving the accuracy of the proposed algorithm by combining with statistical measures such as article length. Also automatically collecting the sources of information gap identified by human judge evaluating the proposed algorithm by applying an additional applying on additional language pairs and using machine based method such as SMT and developing a human in the loop. Crowd system and crowd based system to automatically bridge the information gap between Wikipedia language editions. Thank you so much for your attention.


The jack betty program Lucky strike means fine tobacco so round so firm so fully packed so free and easy on the draw Of course that's it right you are in a cigarette It's the tobacco that counts and lucky strike means fine tobacco It takes fine tobacco to make a fine cigarette. And year after year, at market after market, independent tobacco experts, auctioneers, buyers, and warehousemen can see the makers of Lucky Strike consistently selected by that fine, that light, that naturally mild tobacco. No doubt about it. Lucky Strike means fine tobacco. And fine tobacco means real deep down smoking enjoyment for you. So smoke that smoke of fine tobacco, Lucky Strike. So round, so firm, so fully packed, so free and easy on the draw. At the best hand of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Man American. And with Mary Livingston, Phil Harris, Rochester, Denny's Day, and yours truly, Don Wilson. Ladies and gentlemen, once again it's Sunday, and at such a beautiful day, the Jack and Mary are walking to the studio. Good gosh, Mary. It was a perfect day for a walk. It sure is. The sun is so warm and bright. I'm glad we're... Jack, what are you doing? I'm rubbing some suntan oil on me. Well, take off the sardines first. It smells terrible. Mary. And pull your shirt down.  All right, all right. I was just trying to get a little sunshine. You know, sunshine is very... Say, look, Jack, isn't that Hedy Lamar's nurse coming this way pushing that baby carriage? Where? Oh, yes. You know, Hedy's baby must be over a year old now. Yeah, and off it cues. Yeah, here they come. Hello, you cute little thing. Gucci, Gucci, Gucci. Gucci, Gucci, Gucci. Jack, leave the nurse alone and pay attention to the baby. My glasses are so thick. Say, nurse. Nurse, this is Hedy Lamar's baby, isn't it? Oui, oui, monsieur. C'est une bébé tellement bien élevée. Je n'ai pas eu la mère de la bébé depuis des années. Comment va-t-elle? Oh, elle va très bien. Merci. Elle me parle souvent de vous. Excusez-moi. Je voudrais un poitard de pomme frite. Quoi? Mary, what did I say? You asked her for an order of french fried potatoes. Oh, I meant to say she was a ripe, a nice tomato. You're so cute. Yeah, listen to that. Does the itty-bitty baby want a great big man to play with you? Game that all babies like. Now, pay attention, baby. This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had roast beef.  Wait till I put my shoe on. J'ai estré que vous n'aimaient très bien pour H2P. What was that? I cancelled the french fried potatoes. There's NBC. You have to start and get a sandwich. Okay. Wait a minute, Mary. Here's the paper. I want to look up the line-ups for today's game. Now, what do you want to know? I want to find out who is going to pitch for St. Louis and whom is going to pitch for Boston. Feeling whom didn't do so good today. Let's take those two bacon stools on the end. Here, too, right here. Oh, yes. Oh, waiter. Waiter. Yeah. Are these two stools available? No. They're reserved for Caesar and Cleopatra. Drunk store with an MC. Sit down, Mary.  Yes, ma'am. And you? No. Have you got a menu? Here. Now, let me see. Don't bend it. It's the only one we have. I'm not... And stop drooling on it. There's nothing on there that good. Any time I come in here, it's the same thing. Jack, it's your own fault. You antagonize him. I do not. You do, too. Give me a cup of coffee and some bread for these sardines. Yes, ma'am. And would you please put some lettuce on it? Yes, ma'am. One chicken sandwich with lettuce. Mary, that voice sounds familiar. Waiter, tell the chef to come out here. Yes, very well. Oh, chef, come out here. The customer wants you. The customer wants me. I know there's a meat shortage, but this is ridiculous. Aren't you the little hot dog man? Mm, pickle in the middle and the mustard on top. Just the way you like him and the roll. Yes, ma'am. Do you remember me? I bought hot dogs from you last year. Oh, sure. Sure I recognize the mustard on your lapel. Have you had that mustard on your lapel for a whole year? Well, I hated to take it off. It looks like a discharge button. Mr. Kitzel, I can't understand you working as a chef in a drug store. What happened to your hot dog stand? Oh, well, yes, and I like it. My hot dog stand is no longer under my jurisdiction. Well, how'd you lose them? What happened? Well, today I bet on Boston. Hmm. The game must be over. Well, that's a shame. Why don't you bet on St. Louis? And go against my hometown. Oh, you're from Boston? Well, where do you think I got the axion? It's nice seeing you again, Mr. Kitzel. Mutual. Hmm. Well, let's go, Mary. I want to get in a little early, because I asked Edgar Berger to meet me in the studio. I have a little business I want to talk to him about. OK. Oh, waiter, I'll take the check. Here you are. That'll be $18.65. What? One chicken sandwich can't come to $18.65. I know, but no matter what it is, I'll have to fight for it, so let's make it worthwhile. Here's 50 cents, and that's plenty. Let's go, Mary. It's the last time I ever come to this drugstore. But, Jack, if it's good enough for season for you, Patrick, certainly good enough. Mary, one MC is enough. Come on. Mustard off your lapel. Take back your samba. I, your rumba. I, your rumba. Hello, boss. Oh, hello, Rochester. What are you doing here? I gave you the day off. I know, boss, but I've got a date with my new girlfriend. Well, I thought maybe you'd let me use your car. Well, you got a new girl, huh? Well, of course, Rochester. Of course you can have my car to take her out. Gee, thanks, boss. And can I borrow that fancy gadget you use when you take your girl for a ride? Gadget? Yeah, that thing that makes you run out of gas when you reach Mulholland Drive. Oh, that thing? No, no, it isn't dependable. Twice at stop when I was driving Mary's mother to the station. Rochester. Rochester, tell me more about this new girlie, or is it? She's wonderful, boss. Just wonderful. Well, I never knew a girl could have such an effect on you. What does she look like, Rochester?  Yeah. Have you ever seen a California sunset just as Mother Nature extinguishes its last golden glow with the tranquil waters of the blue Pacific? Yes. Well, put a sweater on and you got it. So long, Rochester, have a good time, but be home by 10 o'clock. What? I said, be home by 10.  No. Rochester, being so crazy. Jack, everybody's here now. Oh, good. Oh, Phil. Just a minute, Jackson. My boys are limber enough. Well, they don't have to do it now. Pick up those dice and listen to me. OK. Hey, fellas, put away the dice. Take the money off the base drum and give Frankie's clothes back. It's your own fault, Frankie. You shouldn't play if you can't afford to lose. Don't catch me, gambling, unless it's a sure thing. Sure thing. You wouldn't bet on Life Boy against B.O. Planty. Oh, Libby, what are you waiting for? Join the throng. Get your own joke. Well, it wasn't that funny. Now, Don. Gee, I thought it was funny. Now, Dennis, when I want your opinion, I'll ask for it. Now, Don. Yes, Jack? There's something I want to talk to you about. I thought it was most amusing. Dennis, quiet. Now, Don. Yes, Jack? When you started to do your commercial. I thought it was not only humorous, but sophisticated. Dennis, I said when I want your opinion, I'll ask for it. Now, Don. He's mad because I'm alluring. A man saying he's alluring. What's wrong with that, Jackson? The doctor said I was alluring to strawberries. That's a lurking. That kind of a gag I want you to do on your own show. I want to talk to you about the commercial. Oh, it's all fixed up, Jack. I've got the quartet right here. Oh, no, you don't. Now, listen, Don. I made up my mind we're not going to have commercials with that quartet anymore and that settles. But, Jack, I worked all week on it, and the one for today is sensational. You told me the same thing last week, and look what they did. L-S-L-S-M-F-T-E, lalalala. Hee-hee-hee. A fine commercial.  Now, look, Don. I'm not going to keep paying $500 a week for this lousy quartet. Now, get them out of here. But, Jack, we worked so hard all week. This one is really high-class. Please listen to me. I don't want to hear it. Oh, Jack, give them another chance. I've... Oh, all right. But this is the last time. All right, boys. Get ready and give it all you got. Here we go. L-S-M-F-T, L-S-M-F-T. Lucky strike means fine tobacco. Yes, lucky strike means fine tobacco. So round, so firm, so fully packed, so free and easy on the draw. L-S-M-F-T. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. L-S-M-F-T. O-P. Ha-ha-ha. Robert E. Lee. Robert E. Lee. Ha-ha-ha. M-N-O-P-Q. O-P. That's what I want. Believe me. M-F-T. Lalalala. Edgar Bergen will be here pretty soon, so let's get on with the rehearsal. Say, Jackson, it must have been a lot of fun working with Bergen last week, huh? It was, Phil. I really envy that guy. Well, why envy him, Jack?  You're both very popular. I know, but look at the set up Bergen has. What a cast. No agent, no contracts, no salaries. Just a paint job once a year. Kids, when he comes, I wish he'd leave us alone. I want to talk a little business with him. What's the matter, Jackson? Didn't he mail it to you? It's not that, Billy. He's a nice guy. And I think Edgar Bergen is a great comedian. I like Fred Allen better than anybody. If you could get it these days, I'd wash out your mouth with soap. I heard Fred's opening show, and he had a very clever idea. His guest stars were Lowell Thomas and H.B. Kaltenborn. I know, I know. He was also supposed to have Gabriel Heater, but thank goodness Heater had some ethics and turned him down. What do you mean ethics? Mary, how could Gabriel Heater possibly go on a program that introduces Fred Allen and start off with, ah, yes, there's good news tonight? Some good news. All I know is that I'm out. Hello, Jack. Hello, everybody. Well, Edgar, glad you dropped it. By the way, Jack, I brought Charlie along. I hope you don't mind. Of course not. I'm always glad to see the root of all evil. Let's get out of here, Bergen. The guy's corny. Look at him, kid. Isn't he cute? Yeah, look at that little dimple chin. That turned up dull. It's a little ear. Just look me over, folks. Don't finger the merchandiser. Charlie, that's no way to talk to these folks. They're very important people. What do you mean, important people? I don't even know who they are. Oh, I'm sorry, Charlie. I'm sorry. This is my cash. I'll introduce you to them. Yeah, do. Please, do, do, do. Now, there's... Now, there's Don Wilson, my announcer. Where? Right over there. Loud. I'm in my harpoon. There's a wave off the starboard box. No, Charlie, now, you must show more respect. After all, Mr. Wilson is highly regarded in radio circles. Well, I'm curious, Bergen. Is that his stomach, or is he taking home the family wash? No. Hey, that was a good one. Jack, I wish you wouldn't encourage him. Oh, I'm sorry, Andrew, I'm sorry. Now, Charlie, this is my orchestra leader, Phil Harris. Not the Phil Harris. That's right, the one and only. Oh, gosh, Mr. Harris, I've always wanted to meet you. You have? Yeah. Take up by me, will ya?  You know, Charlie, Mr. Harris is not only a musician, he's also a singer. Yes, I recall, yes. Ham hocks and turnip greens. You know me and New Orleans. That's what I got myself, yeah. There must make things cross the field awfully insecure. There must worry the South, too, a little, huh? Hey, look, you lay off of me, bubber. I'll rub you and Mortimer snort together and start a fire.  And now, Charlie, I'd like you to meet someone I know you like very much, the singer of our show, Dennis Day. Oh, hello, Dennis. Hello, McCarthy. Are you Irish? I'm sure and that I am. It's a pleasure to meet a man in whose vein flows the water of the lake, the clarity. And I'm from the old sod, too, I'll have you know. And I still have me father, Shalely. Oh, Bergen, watch it, your Swedish accent is showing. I'm practically doing it. Now, Charlie, Charlie, I've saved this next introduction for the last. I know you're interested in the ladies, so I'd like to present Mary Livingston. Hello, Charlie. Well, well, well, well, well. Hubba, hubba, and babaloo. And the rest of you peasants can leave now. I'm about to begin Operation McCarthy. Oh, Charlie, you're the cutest thing I ever saw. Oh, Mary. Mary. What a beautiful name. Just perfect for such a beautiful girl. Oh, Charlie. You know, Mary, it isn't often one sees a girl as gorgeous as you are. Charlie. You're beautiful, soft, silky hair. You're deep brown eyes. You're kissable lips. Charlie, now, stop it. You're embarrassing Miss Livingston. Let him talk. Let him talk. Yeah, Edgar, let him talk. I'm liable to learn something. Oh, Mary. Yes, Charlie. There you come here, Mary. Let me put my arm around you. That's it. Give me your handkerchief, or my monocle's steamed up again. Here, Charlie, I'm going to give you a great big kiss. I'll be right there, baby. Charlie, now, behave yourself. Let me lose Thurgen. After all, I'm not made of wood, you know. All right, all right. Gee, I always thought that he was. Now, say, Jack, I've got to get back to my rehearsal. What was it you wanted to see me about? Well, Edgar, it's a business matter. I thought we'd talk about it in private. Now, look, all right, Jacks, and we can take a hint.  Well, Jack, what is it you want to talk about now? You know, Edgar, I've always admired you. I watched your start in radio. I watched your climb and become bigger and bigger and bigger. And each year, I was happy because of your success. Careful, Thurgen. The last guy who started out like that sold you the bikini galoon. Galoon! All right, so Thurgen ain't paying attention. Now, look, Edgar, you're at the pinnacle of your career, one of the greatest stars in radio. But I have something that will make you even greater, and I'm not going to be selfish enough to keep it from you. Well, my goodness, what are you going to give me, Jack? My new quartet. A quartet, yes. And for only $1,000 a week. What? $7.50. No, Jack, it's not the price. I'm just, uh, I'm sure they're worth $1,000, but wait a minute, you're not talking about the quartet you hired for your commercial, are you? Oh, uh, you've heard them? Yeah. $300. No, Jack. Oh, I'm really not interested at all. But, Edgar, how can you pass up such an opportunity of this? Just think of it. $300 for the best quartet in Los Angeles. Thurgen wouldn't pay $300 for Los Angeles. I wouldn't sell it to him. Now, listen, Edgar, before you say no, Stephanie, you've got to hear these boys once more. I want to show you what they can do with a commercial.  Okay, come on in, fellas. Where'd you hear this, up here? Well, what did you want, Jack? I want Edgar to hear what these boys can do with a commercial. Why, certainly, just listen to this. Take it, boys. All chasing Sanborn. Drink, drink, drink, drink. Thurgen, let's get out of here. $250. No, Jack, no. Thurgen, make me out of here. $200. No, Jack, no. I'm Thurgen, let's go. I'm sorry, Jack, I'm sorry. All right. $100. $100. And that's all. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, we're all asked to contribute to the Community Chest Campaign for 1947. All over America, local community chests are now trying to raise their largest amount of money for the health and welfare of our people. By giving generously to your local community chest, you can be sure you're supporting the friendly, neighborly service, which helps your community day after day and month after month. So please give your full support to a service that is most vital to the health and welfare of millions of Americans. Jack, we'll be back in just a minute. Before it clears, my good friend L.A. Speedway. It takes fine tobacco to make a fine cigarette. And lucky strike means fine tobacco. Yes, lucky strike means fine tobacco. Take a tip from the independent tobacco experts. Men like Mr. Sidney M. Cutt, independent tobacco auctioneer of Oxford, North Carolina, who has been in tobacco for 25 years. He said, season after season, year after year, I've seen the makers of lucky strike by fine tobacco. Good drive, prime leaf. Take it from me, that tobacco's really tobacco. I've smoked lucky to myself for 17 years. Year in, year out, at market after market, independent tobacco experts like Mr. Cutt can see the makers of lucky strike consistently selected by that fine, that light, that naturally mild tobacco. Fine, light, naturally mild tobacco. Yes, lucky strike means fine tobacco. And fine tobacco means real deep down smoking enjoyment for you. L.S.M.F.D. L.S.M.F.D. L.S.M.F.D. Yes, lucky strike means fine tobacco. So smoke that smoker, fine tobacco, lucky strike. The famous tobacco auctioneers heard on tonight's program are Mr. L.A. Speedrigs of Goldsboro, North Carolina. And Mr. F.E. Bone of Blackington, Kentucky. That's a saying and all the way to 59, American. As Will Risedale's speaking for the cigarette, that means fine tobacco. Lucky strike. You know, Mary, I'm glad we walked to the studio because this time of evening it's nice walking home. Yes.  Sometimes you have a good joke on the end of the show and you run shorter time so then they cut you off the air. You mean like it happened, that's on our opening show? Yeah. And now tonight when we've got all the time in the world, what do you want me to say? Well, I'll try for you. Well, I guess there's nothing to do but walk. Well, this is NBC, national broadcasting company. A.F.I. Los Angeles, Earl Z. Anthony, Incorporated.


Aloha and welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30 from the Pioneer Plaza in downtown Hololulu in the Think Tech studios. We are a show about positive stories of business and business owners in Hawaii. We promote the success, successes of Business in Hawaii, how they did it, how they overcame the challenges that we all are familiar with. And that's generally our theme. Today we're going to break a little bit from that theme, and we're going to go into what I'm calling a quarterly commentary program. It's every quarter or thereabouts. We're going to talk about current topics that's in the news, both national and local, and how we see, or the guests and ICs, the impact on business here in Hawaii. So today we have a returning guest, Steve Pengre, who's an attorney, but he's been in business for a long time. He's represented a lot of different clients. He's got a very broad background. He's well traveled. He's got some good experience. And so today we're going to be talking a little bit about the medical marijuana situation and how things are going to maybe change a little bit under the new President-elect Trump. At least anybody missed it. We did have an election about 10 days ago, and we do have a new President-elect that not everybody's happy with, but it should make for a pretty interesting 2017. So Steve, welcome back to the show. It's good to have you back. Thanks, Reg. It's always good to be here. Pleasure. And you've been working in the medical marijuana industry and working with the people that are trying to put something together here locally. And you've also had some regional, maybe national exposure to this, because you go to the conventions and you hear, and I'm just wondering, how are things from your perspective, what's the possibility? How are things are going to change over the next year or so under the new President-elect Trump administration? Obviously, it's speculative at this point, but there's two major things that have taken place. In the election, seven states in some way legalized marijuana. Not just medical marijuana, but five states legalized medical marijuana. I mean, regular marijuana for full legalization use. So that recreational as well as medical. Recreational, right, exactly. And then there were three states that legalized medical marijuana. That means that the states will be moving forward with their state legal programs. The real issue continues to be that marijuana is illegal under federal law. That's a complication. That's a very big complication. So basically people who are dealing with medical marijuana or marijuana in states where it's legal, they're breaking the federal law because they're handling a controlled substance. Right, and that they can't open up bank accounts or it's very difficult to have a banking relationship. But that's nothing new. That's something that's been around, I guess, for quite a while. And do you see that changing at all under Trump? Yes, more than likely because of the policy of the Department of Justice that's been in place for the last almost three years, which, according to what they call the coal memo, laid out eight criteria that if state legal marijuana businesses follow the eight criteria, basically didn't sell to minors and didn't get involved with illegal drugs. And the Department of Justice would not prosecute them under the federal law and others would not pursue enforcement of the federal law against these state legal businesses. That's great, but it's not a federal law. It's what they call Department of Justice policy that was initiated by the federal attorney general. Right, so the policy was not to prosecute, but that policy was also implemented under the previous administration. That's correct. According to new administration, will follow that policy? Two statements have been made, one by Trump himself, who basically said, we think I should leave it up to the states, whether or not, how they want to deal with marijuana, that's the state's right issue. But then he appointed Senator Sessions to be his prospective new attorney general. And Sessions is on record as opposing the legalization of marijuana and opposing the lack of federal law enforcement in states that have legalized marijuana. The danger I see, and we really are going to have to wait and see, but is that the DOJ policy of non-prosecution is just a policy, and with the stroke of a pen, the new attorney general Sessions could change that. And then we would be right back to having the federal law enforcement going into dispensaries and raiding dispensaries, confiscating inventory, arresting people for possessing marijuana, filing injunctions against businesses, seizing assets and so on. I can see where that will become a very controversial course for them to take for a couple reasons. And just for the audience to know, you and I were meeting prior to the show, enduring the show. There was a little bit of a, I don't know if it was Fox News or CNN, but some television station cable had a little update on this, and they threw some numbers out there, and some of those numbers were over 60% of the population in surveys have favored decriminalizing medical marijuana and maybe medical marijuana in general. So I think the public perception or desire is to move more towards legalization than enforcement. I believe that's correct. Well, I know it's correct, quite frankly. I mean, the majority of the population wants some form of legalization of marijuana, even if they don't particularly want to use it themselves. And the five states that just voted to legalize marijuana, the California was overwhelming, and Nevada was pretty much overwhelming, was in the 60%. So, you know, it's a trend that's moving forward now over half the states in the union, including Washington DC, have legalized some form of marijuana. Well, and to your comment about Trump's comment and leaving it up to the state, and I believe I saw that same comment, that's kind of consistent with some of the other positions he's taken. For example, with the Affordable Care Act, or a.k.a. Obamacare, he has taken the position to also go through the process of maybe backing off on that a little bit, leaving it up to the states to figure out how to do it. And so, you know, he's got, I guess, a leaning toward state rights, maybe more than we've seen in the last eight years. I think that's correct. I mean, he, during the last year and a half while he's been campaigning, he's pretty much said that. I mean, he's not come out in favor of marijuana, for example, but he basically has said, I think it's up to the states, and they've kind of always thrown it back on the states. They're right. They're privileged to govern themselves. Here's where the big action in favor of marijuana, if you will, or to support marijuana, can be, and that's in the Congress. Every, first of all, there's a budget bill that comes up for renewal every December, and part of that budget bill for the last two years has contained a prohibition or a denial of funds to the Department of Justice so that they cannot use, DEA cannot use, and the Department of Justice cannot use money to interfere with state legal business. They defunded the enforcement capabilities. That's very well put. That's exactly what I'm being a little winded there. But the point is, Congress really has it within their power to continue that defunding program. Well, and dynamics are changing there, too, because there's not the majority that the Democrats have had before, and so there's a little bit of a bias more toward the Republican side now. However, Nancy Pelosi is still the speaker of the minority and a very vocal force from California, which just recently passed overwhelmingly recreational use. And so there is an interest in Congress to move in this direction, I would think. So who knows how this is going to play out? But switching gear a little bit, the potential in this industry, economically, and this is the business sense that I'm trying to bring here, can be significant. In general, in 2014, in general, what they call the cannabis business was $3 billion to $5 billion annually, with a B, right? Exactly. Last year, it was $7 billion. By 2020, it's expected to be in the teens, billions of dollars. I mean, it's just growing and growing and growing. And it also, for the local and the state and even the federal, to some extent, it provides jobs and it provides tax revenue. Colorado last year took in some $58 million in tax revenue, specifically from marijuana. And there was an increase of almost 100,000 jobs directly related to the marijuana industry in Colorado. Just in Colorado? Just in Colorado. Wow. So, you know, because there's a lot of jobs in the dispensaries, you know, there's the ancillary support companies that support that industry. Right. There's a couple, I represent a lab, a laboratory, a testing laboratory here in Hawaii, and they are going to be, well, the establishing themselves on Maui right now, but they're going to be on all islands. They're going to be hiring people to work in the labs. You know, they're going to be inputting revenue into the economy and paying state taxes and so on. That's one small example. Well, and that's one small example for Hawaii, but that can be replicated throughout the country. Oh, absolutely. You know, and so the potential for it has become huge at a national level. But even in Hawaii, I think the potential is pretty significant here, too. I mean, we all joke about it, but we all know that Bacololo is one of our bigger cash crops in the state. And it'd be nice to make that a formal part of the economy so that we can regulate it and tax it and control it a little bit more than it is now. Right. And actually, that was done in 2015 when the legislator passed Act 241, legalizing medical marijuana and establishing, not legalizing, but establishing the dispensary system. We legalized medical marijuana in 2000, but establishing the dispensary system and rules and regulations and the dispensaries, the eight of them are now underway in various stages, but getting ready to hopefully start opening for business around May, April, May of next year. And getting back to the federal regulation, that's still a hurdle that's going to have to be addressed in one way or another. Well, it is. And especially because we live obviously on islands rather than one central land and locale, there's a real problem of the marijuana going for one island to the other. Transportation, yeah. And the state legislature recently amended Act 2041 to allow for testing purposes, the labs to transfer marijuana back and forth between the islands. But it's still illegal under federal law. Technically, you can't take it on an airplane. Or maybe even on a US flag boat. That's true. So getting it from mail or airplane or boat from one island to the next, even for testing purposes, could be a federal crime, a felony. That's correct. The whole inconsistency or hypocrisy that comes up because of the federal law and then the non-enforcement in selected areas comes into play here. Because there are a lot of anecdotal stories about people who've taken their stash of marijuana, an ounce or two, or their vape pens or whatever. They put it in a plastic bag along with their patient card saying that they're an authorized user and possessor. And they run it through the TSA at the airport. And they don't say anything.  Let's hold that thought for me, because I find that fascinating. We need to take a quick break. We'll be back in 60 seconds. This is a business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're talking on a quarterly commentary session this week. And we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back. Aloha, everybody. My name is Mark Shklav. I'd like you to join me for my program, Law Across the Sea, on thinktechhawaii.com. Aloha. Aloha, Kako. I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to navigate the journey with us. We are here every Wednesday morning at 11 AM. And we really want you to be with us where we look at the options and choices of end of life care. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Richard Emory, host of Condo Insider. More than a third of Hawaii's population live in some form of association. And our show is all about educating board members and owners about the responsibilities and obligations and providing solutions for a great association. You can watch me live on Thursdays, 3 PM to 4 PM, each week. Aloha. Aloha, and welcome back to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. This episode is a quarterly commentary on some of the popular topics at both a local and national level. And it is a commentary, so we're expressing our own views and perspective on things. This week, I have Steve Penguin, who's an attorney in town and has got a very broad base of experience with different industries and companies. And so we're chatting a little bit about the medical marijuana and recreational marijuana rules and regulations and how they might change over the next year with the new president. And we're also going to talk a little bit about the IRS and tax reform, which has also been a pretty hot topic. So Steve, we were just finishing the first half of the show, and you made the comment about people being able to put their medical marijuana in a little baggy. How novel is that? And then have their health card or their prescription card inside there, and that it gets past TSA, and they don't seem to have a problem with it. Right. That's not official, but that's what's happening. I find that fascinating. Occasionally, I've been told that the TSA officers will pull the person aside. They'll call the local police department and say, is this person registered as a medical marijuana patient? If the answer is yes, they say, go on your way. So now somebody's got a backpack full of marijuana. They're not going to make it. Well, there's limitations, right? How much you can have. That's interesting. In general, just to wrap up, it's going to be an extremely interesting experience to watch President-elect Trump and what he really wants to happen with respect to marijuana. The Attorney General's sessions as to what action he's going to take, and then watch also the Congress, because they have several bills pending to assist banking, to help out with tax reform in the marijuana industry, and just generally legalize marijuana. It's going to be an interesting year, not only for that, but also for other topics like health care and some others as that moves forward in whatever form it ends up taking. But another topic that I wanted to touch on today that I think you have some particular experience with because you've done a lot of tax defense work and criminal and civil. But we've been talking about tax reform. Trump is one of his panels of his platform, has been tax reform, which we've been through that before. I think Reagan did some of that, but that was many years ago. And now we're going to go through it again. And so the question is, how is some of the tax reform issues that he's been talking about, how is that going to influence what's going to go on with this country as far as economics and being able to pay for some of these things he wants to do like this infrastructure he's talking about doing? And there's probably going to be an impact on collection efforts that the IRS is having because of the funding issues and all that. So what's your take on all of this? Well, to address the last part first, the IRS for several years now has been underfunded. And Congress has been cutting back the IRS funding. So they have been losing employees primarily because they're not hiring replacements. A lot of employees have retired, actually. And many have just quit. But so you've got less and less people doing more and more work. And therefore, less and less work is maybe getting done. I've seen the audit rates seem to have dropped quite a bit over the last few years. They have. It used to be for an individual, for example, who was making $100,000 to $200,000. They had the odds were 2% plus% or maybe 3% of being audited. Now they're less than 1% chance of being audited.  I don't make that much money. All my clients do, but I don't. OK, OK, OK. But the audit rate is dropping and it's continued to drop. And I think the IRS, in some respects, at least from my experience, continue to move more in an automation direction to have letters that automatically triggered field type of reviews or letter reviews and that sort of thing. And I think that's caused somewhat by the lack of funding. They can't spend a lot of money on that. That's very true. The IRS has moved towards the optimization of just about every function that they do, even audits. The majority of audits now are what they call correspondence audits. And that's just kicked out by a computer. They scan the income tax returns into a computer that has certain profiles and red flags that the computer looks for. And if the red flags pop up, it automatically sends out a letter with a certain. Well, and that was one of the benefits, I think, of the mandated electronic filing requirements. Is that any, and I'm not sure what the current requirement is now, but back when I was mandated to do all of my returns on electronic filing basis, if I did more than 10 returns, I had to file electronically. And I could only not file if the client specifically requested and I got it in writing and they have a form for that. Or there was some other reason and I had to ask for the exception. So all the returns now, I think the majority returns these days are electronically filed, which allow for a much faster review process. But one of the misconceptions, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, there's not just one flag that tends to trigger an inquiry or an audit. Sometimes it's a combination of things that create suspicion that they wanna get an answer to. You're absolutely correct. And the big issue for the IRS today is identity theft. Yes, yeah. The stealing of people's identification information, interestingly enough, by a lot of unscrupulous tax preparers. Yes, they're only long enough to steal the information and they're done. Something like that. But what happens is, these false tax returns are prepared. And before a year or two ago, if one submitted a tax return, requesting that they were entitled to a refund, the automatic refund would be kicked out and they'd get a check within three weeks. Now the IRS is absolutely refusing to give refunds for anywhere from a month to three months. As a matter of fact, they've sent out notices, several notices, letting preparers know that anybody who has a childcare tax credit refund, those credits aren't gonna be issued until February. Normally, those are the first ones that get filed. The first week in January are thereabouts. All these people that have 16 kids with 16 social security numbers will come in and get five and six and $7,000 in refunds right in the first few days or week or so of January. They're not gonna allow that anymore because what they're gonna start doing, a lot of those social security numbers for those kids get reused two or three times. And so they're gonna be doing a lot better job of matching things up and making sure that they don't overpay these credits. And that's exactly what the computers can do. That's the kind of data crunching that the computers are really good at. But the Identity Theft is a huge program for the IRS. And the other one, from an audit point of view, my understanding is that they're now focusing on higher income people. If you earn, let's just say, more than $100, $150,000 a year, then you're more likely to get targeted for an audit than somebody with less. And if you're earning a half a million to a million dollars a year, you're probably gonna be more likely to go out. And that kind of makes sense because if you've got limited amount of dollars and labor that you can throw at something, you wanna get the most out of it as you can. And if you can focus those dollars and that labor at the bigger dollar tax returns, you're gonna get a better return than if you're focusing at the lower end. You can't completely ignore it, but you focus your efforts to get that return. That makes sense. That's true. And on the criminal side, from the enforcement point of view and what the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS is looking for right now, they're focusing more, believe it or not, on offshore money. They have made a ton of money. How many billions were reported in the last year or two that they didn't capture before? I was seeing some reports that because of the new filing requirements for the Offshore Bank accounts, they have increased the amount of dollars that are being reported by 100% or something in the last two or three years. Right, it's in the several billions of dollars in additional tax revenue. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 to $10 billion, they've recovered in the last couple of years. It's huge. Not only from the reporting, people voluntarily paying, but also by criminally going after people who they have discovered have offshore tax accounts. And the cooperation of some of the foreign banks too in reporting some of these accounts. Well, that's the factor they call it. It's a requirement that all banks throughout the world have to report to the US IRS the names and identifying information of their account holders who are US citizens or resident aliens. Because resident aliens, green card holders in the US are taxed just like American citizens. Not too many resident aliens know that me. They become quite surprised. Right, that's a good point. And talking about the cybersecurity issues and the identity theft of what's going on, one of the more aggressive frauds that are going on right now. And I've received this. I get an email from my tax software telling me that my update is ready and I have to download the update for my tax system. Well, it never comes in that form. It never comes. But they have a link that you're supposed to go to to download and that's a piece of software that's executable that allows an outside party to get right into my tax software and get all of the tax information that I've got for all my clients. And so this scam is being done throughout the country to tax preparers trying to get access to those tax records. And so people have to be very careful. That's very scary. It is. The other scam that we did talk about a couple of weeks ago but that's going on now is all of these calls that are coming to its citizens and it's usually older people and so on. Threatening to sue them, well, identifying themselves as the IRS and threatening to sue them and threatening to lean their bank accounts and forcing these people to send them money. I heard of one that called a grandmother who is at home and they called her and said, do you have a grandchild that's going to school? She goes, yes, I do. Well, we have her in our principal's office and we can't let her go until you pay the taxes that are due. You know, there's a school tax and that hasn't been paid so you pay it, we're gonna let her go home. And so the grandmother goes, wait a minute, this doesn't smell right. So she didn't get caught up into it but think of all the different people that could have gotten fallen into that. No, it does happen and the one thing that I can say, we can say is the IRS never, never calls people to enforce the tax law. If you're in an audit process, the IRS might call you to set an appointment or talk about something but that's specific. The IRS does not make collection telephone calls, period. You know, it's a scary world out there and people are constantly trying to get their hands into your pockets and it's become an industry. They've gotten very aggressive at it and we've always got to have our guard up and if in doubt, just hang up and call your attorney or your CPA and have them check it out and see if this makes sense. The IRS has a website, irs.gov and they have a complaint section on that website that people can get on to and can report a scam. You made a comment about, how's the tax profile going to be? Well, we gotta wrap up, we got about 10 or 15 seconds so go ahead and finish that thought real quick. The prognosis as to what President Elect Trump's gonna do with tax reform is really up in the air. He's made several statements as to what he will do, whether or not he will follow through with it and keep in mind too, Congress is the one that actually has to cooperate. That's right, it's gonna take a corporation on all sides of the aisle for something like that to happen. Right, right. But Steve, it was very good to have you on the show today. Appreciate you coming back. Pleasure. Hopefully we'll be doing this on a quarterly basis and maybe we can get another panel going and we'll have more people and we'll talk about some current affairs and what it means to the business community. What calling? But this is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday from two to two 30 from the downtown studios of Think Tech Hawaii and Pioneer Plaza. Looking forward to seeing you next week. Until then, aloha.