Um, another thing this was from listener Gary, uh, that sort of related to travel is, um, he found a, a site, uh, from it's from the go get dock people. And, uh, it is a way of creating a vaccine passport to put in your Apple wallet. There's so many places now and more announced every day that are requiring, you know, either a negative test or a proof of vaccination or something like that. And the website is, is go get Vax.com slash Vax. Yes, we'll put a link to all this in the show notes, of course. Um, it is what you do is upload your ID and, uh, a picture of your ID and a picture of your, your Vax card to the, uh, to this service and then they validate it and send you a, uh, a thing that you can add to your wallet. Now you're sending your ID, you're sending your vaccine to these people. Who are they?  Um, and they, uh, they are the ones behind well pay. So they are very much steeped in the HIPAA compliance world. They have been managing medical records and things like that for, uh, I think millions of people for a while here. So bear that in mind as you make your decision as to whether or not you choose to upload that particular information to them, but, uh, but they do make it easy. Quite frankly, the, I think the, the best way to do this right now is to just take a picture of your Vax card and either store it in a note or store it in your, um, in your photos, but make it a favorite so that you can pull it up quickly.


joining us today. My name is Deirdre Martinez. I'm the Executive Director with the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce. We are here to get to know the candidates for the Wisconsin State Assembly's 26th District. Thank you both for your willingness to participate in the conversation and certainly your willingness to serve in the 26th District. We know that elected officials have quite a bit of a tough time these days, so just your willingness is really what we need to say thank you. Thank you for everyone in the audience and thank you to everyone who sent questions in advance. I'm going to go over the rules very quickly, so rules today, I will ask a series of questions and each candidate will be given two minutes per question to respond. The timekeeper is right here up front. She will let you know when you've got 30 seconds left and when your time has expired. Once we've gone through the questions, if we have additional time, we will ask additional questions from the audience in the room and then I will give two minutes for any closing comments that you guys would like to share. So first, let's meet the candidates. Republican incumbent Teri Kotzma is joining us. He was born and raised in Sheboygan County. Graduate of Sheboygan County Christian High School and received a Bachelor's of Business Administration from Dord College and an MBA from Marquette University. He is a former president and chief executive officer of Usberg State Bank where he worked for 33 years. Teri has served the 26 districts since 2014 and currently serves on several committees. Teri and his wife Nancy reside in Usberg and share three children and six grandchildren. Welcome Teri. Thank you. Next, our Democratic candidate today is Lisa Saucato. She has worked in healthcare as a medical assistant for 30 years and has served as a frontline worker and supervisor running a medical clinic as an employee health nurse. Lisa also serves on the Ellis Historic Neighborhood Board and the Mayor's International Committee for the City of Sheboygan. Lisa has spent time volunteering at Brown County Jails Celebrate Recovery Program. St. John's homeless shelter has been a foster parent and is TEFL certified to teach English as a second language. Lisa and her husband Henry currently reside in the city of Sheboygan. Welcome Lisa. Thank you. So we will go right into it. First, we're going to talk a little bit about the current state surplus in Wisconsin. Lisa, I will ask you first, given the record balance of the state surplus, how would you suggest we manage these families going forward and why? Well, Wisconsin has a $4.3 billion surplus. This is a good problem for Wisconsin to have. Right now it's in a rainy day fund, but in many ways today it is raining. And as someone who works in many towns in our area, I really see people struggling. I would like to see a mental health counselor in every school building. I would like to head off some of the crises that we're facing before the issues occur. We also could use the money to fund our infrastructure. There's areas in our district that don't have broadband. It's really difficult to run a small business or any business and continue your education if you don't have access to internet. Also, some of the public schools such as Random Lake in my district, they need to upgrade their building. And they're looking at a referendum of $30 million this year. And some of that funding could help our small rural schools. So I believe in funding for the future of our schools and our infrastructure. Thank you. Terry, given the record balance of the state's service fund, how would you suggest we manage these funds going forward and why? Yeah, thank you, Eidra. I privileged to serve on the joint finance committee. And due to really good budgeting over the last decade or so, the state's financial condition is good. And also because we were opened during COVID, I think revenues were more than what was projected. So currently, as of June 30th, the surplus was about $4.5 billion. It's projected to be $5.5 billion. But again, that's a projection. We don't have that in the bank yet. But things are looking good. So how would I propose that we use the surplus? A couple of things. First of all, if we have too much money or more money than what we projected means that we collected more from our taxpayers than what was projected. So I would propose that we do some sort of a tax cut. And I've been working on this. And the tax cut that I would propose would be an individual tax cut right now. We have the highest marginal tax rate of 7.65. Actually, Minnesota's higher than us. Iowa's higher than us. But we are higher than Illinois. We are higher than Michigan. And so we've cut income tax the last couple of budgets. But it's really that top marginal rate that needs to come down. And so that's what I would propose. Also, we need to do something about the personal property tax. Personal property tax is an old tax that was done centuries ago based upon desks and chairs. And it's onerous. And we've chopped away a little bit at that personal property tax. But I would propose, right now it's worth about $188 million to municipalities. And I would propose that we do away with that also. We're going to need to be funding education. And so I would propose that we put some money into that also. Thank you. Thank you. Terry, I will direct this next question to you first. We're going to transition into business a little bit. Sure. The lack of available workforce has plagued our communities for many years. How would you propose we work to solve this issue going forward? Would you suggest we do anything differently? And if so, what? Yeah. Brain drain, so-called, has been occurring for decades. And often, I imagine, maybe a lot of you too. You maybe went away to college. Maybe you went to the big city to experience something else. And then when you have kids, when you have a family, you find out, hey, Sheboygan County is a pretty good place to live and a pretty good place to raise your family. So we need to provide incentives for young families to be here. I applaud the work and the recognition of SEEDC as far as more housing units that was done in the city of Sheboygan and Sheboygan County. Also, we need to do more when it comes to technical education to provide those sort of careers for folks. Also, I'm going to come talk about taxes on and on today. And one thing that we see is retired older people moving to Florida or moving to states that don't have taxes, income taxes. And so I think that we also need to continue to look at reducing the taxes to encourage people to stay here also. But it's promoting, you know, this is just a great place to live and work and to play with the lake. And there's so many features that we have around here. We just need to continue to promote those. And I apologize. I didn't mean to interrupt. Oh, yeah. Lisa, I will share the question again. The lack of available workforce has plagued our communities for many years. How would you propose we work to solve this issue going forward? Would you suggest that we do anything differently? And if so, what? Well, I'm proud to say that Sheboygan is 10th in the nation for manufacturing. However, we have between 2,000 and 3,000 jobs open at a time. And we're also facing 10,000 people leaving the workforce every day in this nation. In order to get young families to our area, we need the best schools. That's one reason that people move to certain areas so their kids can get a good education. We also need to fund our public education and local colleges. What drives the workforce is good quality people. And here we have in-state college tuition freeze since 2013. So local colleges cannot increase their budget at all, and they're forced to shut down programs and degrees right in the middle of students taking them sometimes. If we want to recruit and keep the best workers and talent, we need to use state funds to fund the freeze. This keeps college affordable for Wisconsin students and it benefits the businesses in our state, in our community. This is something that government has been failing at for the last decade. We need a living wage in Wisconsin as well. Our minimum wage is still at $7.25. That was 14 years ago. I'm here to support and raise the minimum wage. At the end of the day, we need to look at funding education and wages. And Wisconsin used to lead on this, and I think we can do this again. So thank you. Thank you, Lisa. We've also heard a number of talking about manufacturing and other industry in the state of Wisconsin, either leaving and or expanding in states other than Wisconsin. So Terry, what do you believe that the state of Wisconsin can do to encourage our businesses to stay here and expand here? Sure. I think it was maybe about a decade ago that businesses were leaving. Now we're hearing more businesses staying. And for example, I was at Masters Gallery just the other day and they did an expansion in the south side of the county and they did look at other states, but they made the decision to stay here in Wisconsin. And so, also, I would like to propose a cut to business taxes also, which would encourage businesses to stay in Wisconsin. So, in addition to the personal property tax that I talked about previously. Perfect. Thank you. And Lisa, what do you believe that the state of Wisconsin can do to encourage businesses to stay and expand here in our state? I actually agree with Terry as far as giving tax breaks to local businesses. But we also need to close the dark store loopholes. There's some big box companies that want to be taxed as if they're building with an empty warehouse. And that's putting the burden on property tax owners. Also, childcare access is an issue. I worked with a physician who after she had her baby, she couldn't find any childcare here in Sheboygan. So, she actually ended up moving out of the state. So, if we want to keep providers here and we want to keep business people here, we need access to childcare. Also, broadband. Again, there's rural areas that are trying to run a business with slow or no internet service. So, that's something here in 2022 should have been addressed a long time ago. I think Sheboygan is doing a lot of great things. We're doing youth apprenticeships into the high schools for STEM and construction, hospitality and manufacturing.  They have some type of work ethic and background already. I launched a small business here in Sheboygan through the County Economic Development Center through UWGB. It's a free service. So, if anybody has like a great idea for a business they want to start here in Sheboygan, I would offer to utilize that. So, I believe there are a lot of opportunities here in Sheboygan and that our community is doing a good job supporting small businesses. Thank you. We are going to transition our subject again. Lisa, I will direct this question to you first this time. In light of the DOB's decision and the effect of potential changes in Wisconsin related to abortion access, what would you advocate for as a suitable path going forward for Wisconsin? Well, a lot of people think that abortion is just a moral issue. But it's actually a medical and human rights issue. How can a woman call herself free if she doesn't have control over her own body? And we are living right now with an 1849 law and the only exception is to save the life of the mother. I actually had a cousin this year who was diagnosed with breast cancer during her pregnancy. And there are a lot of gray areas right now and they ended up having to take the baby early so that she could get on chemotherapy immediately to save her life. She has two small children and a husband at home. And luckily for her she was far along in her pregnancy where her child survived. But what if she was early in her pregnancy? Like there are so many gray areas. How long do we risk her life? We don't know. It's very complicated. And also we're forcing young girls now to carry a child full term. I work in the medical field. It's dangerous for teenagers and young children. Their bodies aren't developed. And it's just it's appalling really. We're also threatening to lock up doctors and nurses for doing the best job they can to care for a woman and her child. This law is going to make them hesitate and it's dangerous for women. It can cost them their life. We've had special sessions to appeal the abortion act and my opponent did not even show up. They gavel in. They gavel out. Without even discussing women's health or providing any guidelines. We wanted to put it on the ballot and they won't even let Wisconsinites vote on this issue. I'm here to protect women's health and our freedoms at all costs. Thank you. Thank you. Terry, I will restate the question in light of the DOB's decision and the effect of potential changes in Wisconsin related to abortion access. What would you advocate for as a suitable path going forward for Wisconsin? There's a leader in federalism which talks about states' rights. I applaud the DOB's decision where they put the decision into the hands of the states and the state legislatures to do that rather than the Supreme Court. So we society has made a lot of medical advances in the last 50 years. And so we now know at 40 days the heartbeat and if I could tell a personal story I had a niece that had spina bifida that was born in about the early 80s and at that point their parents had no idea that she was born with spina bifida until she was born alive. Just two years ago I had a nephew that had a baby and they did surgery in the womb to try to correct spina bifida. That's the improvements that have been made. And when I speak to the medical professionals in my family and they explain to me how at the point of conception there's new DNA that's a new life that is formed and that is so important and so valuable. So I'm proud to stand with the pro-life groups and I'm proud to look forward to the debate that we're going to have in the legislature on how this needs to be legislated and I know there's going to be it's a difficult situation but I'm confident that we're going to reach a conclusion that will be a benefit to the pre-born. Thank you. And as a follow-up I will start with you Lisa. It was suggested recently that abortion access be put to referendum and the constituents given the ability to vote. However, that opportunity was denied by the current legislature. Do you believe that the voters should have the right to vote on this topic? I absolutely believe that Wisconsinites have the right to vote. How did these majority of male legislators think that they have the right to tell a woman what to do in their medical care and they're not even working in medical backgrounds and they think that they know better for women's health compared to a woman and her doctor. This should I feel like this shouldn't even be on the table. This is a woman's health, this is her decision. This is not part of legislature. This isn't a thing. It's your own personal body. It's your own personal decision. And that's how I feel. And I will protect women's freedoms at all costs. And this is for the safety of women. Thank you Lisa. Terry, I will restate. It was suggested recently that abortion access be put to referendum and the constituents given the ability to vote. However that opportunity was denied by the current legislature. Do you believe that the voters of Wisconsin should have the right to vote on this topic? We are a representative democracy. We elect our representatives. We are not a simple majority. So the proposal that was done most recently is when we were out of session and in the legislature adjourns and goes out of session on April 15 every other year regardless of if the Republicans are in charge or the Democrats are in charge. We are never in session during election season. And the purpose of the reason for that is that the public doesn't want us making laws and cutting taxes and saying vote for me because I just cut your taxes last month. We are never in session regardless of who the governor is regardless of which parties are in charge. This is an item that we will be debating in the legislature and that is the proper place for it and so I look forward to that. Thank you. So lastly Terri, I'll direct this to you first. Where do you stand on making available birth control to aid in the prevention of unwanted pregnancies? Birth control is a legal subject. I'm in favor of that. So there were numerous bills or I should say a bill that had dispensing being done by pharmacies and that was a bill that I supported. So. Thank you. Lisa, where do you stand on making birth control available to aid in the prevention of unwanted pregnancies? Birth control must be protected at all costs. When the Affordable Care Healthcare Act passed, they made birth control free for all women and abortion rates plummeted. So if you're against abortion, you should want birth control. Birth control is also used for many other medical reasons too. It's not just you know, moral choice. Pregnancy is still dangerous for women today in this country, especially for girls and teens. And there is no good reason why we wouldn't offer birth control. So why would we regulate it by law? This must protect we must protect a woman's right to birth control. And as far as personal freedoms for women, the choice will be very clear in this election. Thank you, Lisa. We will transition and talk a little bit about climate change. Climate change has been a hot topic across the nation. And here we are on November 3rd in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and it's well into the 60s. Terry, do you believe we should be concerned about climate change? If so, what do you think we should do specifically in the state of Wisconsin? And if not, what evidence do you have to illustrate your claim? Sure. Climate change, if you look at the polling, it's down to about 7th or 8th, I believe in concern of folks compared to inflation and crime and education and other issues. There's limits to what I think we can do to control man-made climate change. The climate is always changing. We here in Wisconsin can point to the glaciers and some of that. So at that time the temperature was much colder and we warmed up since then. What is the proper temperature? Is it what it was a couple of thousands of years ago? Is that the right temperature or is it today? I applaud the work of the chamber several years ago and when there was some opposition or some concern about the ozone monitoring and some of the arbitrary indicators of that when that monitoring was right on the Lake Michigan and so it showed that a lot of that was done from a transport ozone from other states and so I so I look forward to that debate. Thank you. Lisa, do you believe that we should be concerned about climate change? If so, what do you think we should do specifically in the state of Wisconsin and if not, what evidence do you have to substantiate your claim? Well, we are experiencing climate change here in Wisconsin. Our rainfalls are getting heavier. We've gone from 2 inch rainfalls to 5 inch rainfalls and they're more frequent. We also have the highest cases of Lyme's disease in the country because we have longer, drier, hotter seasons here in Wisconsin with ticks. We rank 23rd in the nation for the worst ozone pollution. We have erosion of our shorelines and homeowners are losing their land. We need to acknowledge that climate change is happening. I know my opponent might not believe that climate change is happening and that it will probably not be on his list of priorities but as a state representative I will listen to the DNR and fund them. This department, the DNR has been cut and slashed and gagged and that was back to prior administrations. We need local control to regulate our own wetlands and rivers. We need to hold big polluting companies responsible and not have taxpayers foot the bill on this. We need to end fossil fuel subsidies and switch to green energy. The bottom line is we must protect the great lakes in our environment because it impacts everyone's life in Wisconsin. Thank you. Let's talk a little bit about education. Terry, if I can start with you. In a previous Q&A I believe it was with the Sheboygan son you shared that you meet regularly with superintendents from throughout Sheboygan County and that quote there is more money reaching the classrooms today than ever before and that parents need options for connecting their kids with education that work for them Earlier this week Sheboygan area school district the largest school district in the county shared that the levy for SASD has decreased every year since 2016 However, the levy for private schools participating in the voucher program continues to increase accounting for almost half of all private school students receiving funding through the voucher program. Do you believe that school choice should be expanded further and that private and parochial schools should be supported by taxpayer dollars? I'm in favor of options for parents because they are in the best position to know what works best for their children When I looked at the Sheboygan school budget you talked about the levy declining what we're talking about is the property tax levy is declining in the reason for that there is less money being charged or taken from the real estate taxpayers in Sheboygan it's because there is more money coming from the state of Wisconsin we have revenue caps and so I think the number was 86 million compared to 81 million in the prior budget so that's how much the state funding in Sheboygan went up in this current budget that we have so in the last budget the state didn't do as much normally there's been about a $200 per student increase over the last several budgets and it was less than that in the last budget because of all of the coronavirus and the ARFA dollars that were spent by the federal government which as we look back now is beginning to cause inflation nationwide but for example Sheboygan public schools received $21 million the city of Sheboygan received $20 million the county of Sheboygan received $20 million and then each individual government entity and each individual government school district also received money based upon the number of people that there were in those districts thank you Lisa you shared with the Sheboygan it is time to create a more equitable school funding system do you feel the current structure is not equitable if so what facts do you have to substantiate your claim and how would you suggest we move forward well our Wisconsin constitution requires a free education and the same quality no matter where you live in Wisconsin the voucher schools do not have to take every student if a child has disabilities special needs or language barriers they do not have to take them if a child goes to a voucher school and they don't get the services that they need and they go back to a public school that money does not go back with them at private schools I cannot attend their board meeting I can't have a say in their curriculum their teachers don't have to be licensed and their schools don't have to be accredited do you need to send my tax dollars there we have very few places in our society where you can meet all different kinds of people and where we can blend together as a community Wisconsin used to be known for the best schools Sheboygan public schools lost 4.3 million dollars in one year to vouchers it's not our teachers that are failing us and it's not the kids that are failing it's the legislature that has failed to invest in public schools the property taxes are having to fill the gap and it's putting the pressure on the backs of locals who are forced to ask for a referendum this is very real right now in my district with random lake they need building improvements and they're asking for a 30 million dollar referendum we need transparencies about how much these vouchers are costing us on our property bills taxpayers did not sign up to fund more than one school system it's really easy to say something is broken when you don't fund it the best schools are fully funded open to the public schools thank you so much so let's transition and talk a little bit about safety and gun control and Lisa if I can start with you we are fortunate in our area that violent crime has been on the decline nevertheless when we see all of those scary ads on tv we have to wonder is there really a problem and if so what can the legislature do to help keep our communities safe and secure first I'd like to say that I do support the second amendment I'm a multiple gun owner I live in a hunting family I have police officers and military members in my family but crime has been a money maker and a scare tactic for dog whistle politics when crime is rising it's because people are struggling we need access to mental health care we need affordable housing we need living wages we need to think of crime more holistically so I'd like to focus on the positive as a state representative I would give more resources to the local municipalities we need things to fund fire police foster care programs we're not funding our municipalities enough I've heard local leaders say that they need help dealing with our protection and our services we have to trust our local leaders to know what the needs of our community are our state representatives went missing nine months during the pandemic we had the least active legislature in the nation it was local board members and municipalities and clerks that stepped up to the place to listen to their community and give direction and services so we need to give them the respect that they deserve there's too much power and money in Madison right now and if elected I'd like to give the control back to the local government and the taxes need to come back to Sheboygan county Terry do you believe there is really a problem and if so what do you believe the legislature can do to help keep our communities safe and secure I believe there's a real problem in the urban areas and in my conversations with local law enforcement local sheriff I'm happy to see what's going on in Sheboygan county I'm a firm believer also in the second amendment I've been endorsed by the second amendment groups and we at this point I believe we have plenty of laws on our books right now I'm opposed to no cash bail we had some proposals in the legislature to do that there were numerous law enforcement proposals and bills that I supported in the legislature that unfortunately were vetoed by Governor Evers so I'm happy to be in support of law enforcement and proud of their support thank you and as a follow up Terry I will start with you what is your position on universal background checks and the banning of military assault weapons in Wisconsin universal background checks I think the issue with that is with private sales I'm opposed to universal background checks for private sales and sales within families there are background checks at gun shows with licensed gun dealers and I believe that that has been adequately addressing the issue when we find some of these crimes that are committed in urban areas a lot of those perpetrators are prior criminals that shouldn't have firearms already so we need to get tougher on those issues thank you and Lisa what is your position on universal background checks and the banning of military style assault weapons in Wisconsin it's time to put the money aside and put the guns down and really look at the data and 45% of internet gun sales did not have a background check I'm not okay with our kids having to do active shooter drills background checks are a no brainer you can lose your right to vote you can lose your right to drive your car and if you're dangerous you should not have the right to carry a gun my opponent supported a bill that would allow 18 year olds to carry and conceal a weapon on private school grounds and places of worship without a background check when we had a special session this year to discuss gun issues the Republicans gaveled in and out without any discussions when mass shootings are on the rise and domestic violence issues are occurring the people of Sheboygan know what the right thing to do is even the vast majority of hunters favor background checks no one other than the military needs assault rifles responsible gun owners everywhere want responsible gun ownership and that starts with background checks thank you very much let's talk about another hot topic marijuana Lisa I will start with you on this one the legalization of marijuana for recreational use has been passed into law in several neighboring states please share with us your position on this issue and the reasons you would either vote for or against legalization in Wisconsin I can tell you working in the healthcare field even though marijuana is illegal it's still being used in Wisconsin people are treating their anxiety they're treating depression trauma pain management in 2020 3 out of 4 overdoses were because of fentanyl if we legalize marijuana we can make sure that it's a safe quality product 90% of Americans think it should be legalized it'll free up law enforcement jails courts we can expunge past convictions we're losing out on a lot of tax revenue Wisconsinites are going to Illinois who made $443 million in one year Michigan raised $111 million we can use this tax money for mental health issues schools and infrastructure let's make marijuana safer and let's reap the tax benefits to improve our community thank you the legalization of marijuana for recreational use has been passed into law in several neighboring states please share with us your position on the issue and reasons you would vote for or against legalization in Wisconsin I've been opposed to legalization of recreational because the federal government that's also their position right now if you do deal in marijuana it has to be cash banks are prohibited from having any dealings with marijuana so it's all cash and the fact that other states have approved them is just not respecting our constitution and I think that the jury is out yet on all of the issues some of these states like Colorado that were pioneers in legalizing recreational when they look back and try to count the social costs right now you can test somebody for drunk driving but it's not possible to test somebody for drug driving we need to figure that out but some of these states that have legalized it I do believe that they are regretting what they've done thank you and as a follow up Terry I'll direct it towards you first are there any circumstances that would allow you to reconsider your position well the issue another issue is medical marijuana certainly there's anecdotal stories of folks that have had cancer treatments and the only way they got relief was from marijuana now I'm not questioning their statements the problem is that it hasn't been tested by the FDA and so until we see some testing and you look at the purity and the quality and the potency of marijuana today from where it used to be there's just no controls over that so it's going to be a lot for me to change my opinion thank you and Lisa are there any circumstances that would allow you to reconsider your position I think there's many countries that have decriminalized drug use and they use the money for drug rehab centers and it's actually lowered their drug use in the country they're holistically the community is healthier because they have less drug problems now and it has been studied so I would stay with my same opinion Lisa we're going to talk a little bit about election integrity I will start with you after the 2020 election several investigations from both the left and right turned up no substantial irregularities do you feel there was significant voter fraud in Wisconsin and what evidence do you have to substantiate that claim I do not believe that there was voter fraud in Wisconsin there were over 50 lawsuits across the nation and there was no findings of widespread voter fraud Wisconsin spent almost a million dollars researching this and investigating this and that million dollars could have actually went to our schools election security officials said the election was the most secure in American history and if you think about it if the election was stolen Wisconsin would not have had a majority of Republicans in the Wisconsin state assembly and the senate thank you so much and Terry after the 2020 election several investigations from both the left and right turned up no substantial irregularities do you feel there was significant voter fraud in Wisconsin and what evidence do you have to substantiate your claim sure the legislative audit bureau did a in depth audit on the elections we received that I don't know that there were irregularities I would say there's more uncertainties and the reason for that is we had drop boxes that were done especially again in urban areas and this was stretching the statute the statute does not allow for drop boxes you have to deal with the local clerks on that there was also an issue with private funding so called zucker bucks from Mark Zuckerberg who funded get out the vote efforts again in urban areas and again we had nothing on our books that said they couldn't do it so things were stretched when they did that there were lawsuits brought but again we tried to fix that I don't think it's proper that private companies should spend to try to influence government to influence elections like that but that was not again vetoed by the governor two days ago we had an issue in Green Bay where there was a lawsuit brought I think it was the Republican national committee that objected because poll watchers were unable to witness ballots going into the ballot box and so there's uncertainty going on and we need to be diligent I want to thank our local clerks and our county clerk and I think things are going very well here in Sheboygan but I can't feel that same way about Milwaukee area and Madison area thank you and as a follow up and Terry I'll start with you do you believe there are current present threats to our election process and if so what would you do to eliminate them again I don't know this idea of the Russian invasion and that kind of thing I think that's stretched I don't believe that some of the folks that talk about the voting machines being linked to the internet and there's fraud going on there I don't believe that but there are still bills and things that we need to do and that we've attempted to do to have election integrity and I look forward to continuing that in the next session thank you Terry Lisa I will restate do you believe there are present threats to our election process and if so what would you do to eliminate them I think in the future there could be threats to our election right now we have a Wisconsin election commission and it's a board of six people there are three Democrats and three Republicans and they verify the election results there's a movement in Wisconsin to move that power to the secretary of state and concentrate that verification process to one person I think we definitely need to preserve and safeguard the Wisconsin election commission there's also been a movement for multiple voter suppression bills in Wisconsin to take away a citizen's constitutional right to vote this year in Wisconsin people with disabilities should not have had to file a federal lawsuit in order to vote currently in Wisconsin only voters themselves can return an absentee ballot and Sheboygan clerks may have to turn away friends and neighbors delivering these ballots so I will work to ensure that Wisconsin has free and fair elections thank you Lisa and we're getting close to time so I'm going to ask another question and give opportunity for some closing remarks I will direct this question to you first Lisa it is no secret that Wisconsin has made the national spotlight for its inability to work across the aisle over the past couple of years on what three issues would you be willing to buck the party lines in order to do what you believe was right? that's a good question I think I would even for abortion we cannot keep this law the way it is it's very dangerous for women and even if we can create some type of guidelines or loosen that up if the Republicans are definitely against abortion we need guidelines I mean it's just so dangerous the way it is plus we have people running for election that want to even remove to save the life of a woman and I just can't see that happening we have to work together to iron this out we cannot leave this law intact just the way it is other topics maybe marijuana we could probably come to some type of consensus even if it's medical marijuana and maybe not recreational use but I do have to say that it's hard to work across the aisle when there's empty seats there we need both parties to show up and work together when there's special sessions called we need our representatives there to really talk about the issues we just can't leave constituents hanging and these things in balance and the other thing the other third thing would be education you know we do need to revamp the system we cannot fund two systems and it's not fair right now so I think we could come up with ways to probably equal this out and have some choice but yet still preserve the funding of public schools thank you Lisa Terry on what three issues have you as you've been in the role bucked party lines in order to do what you believe is the right thing I think that it's a little bit blown up the controversy that makes for good headlines we've seen that on the national level on the state level I can tell you that one of my good friends is democrat Evan Goike from Milwaukee and we're on the joint finance committee together he and I and our wives have gone out to eat we get along remarkably well we've done bills together when it comes to do with foreclosure issues in Milwaukee I knew about foreclosures his neighborhood was struggling like crazy and we worked together and had a bill done that improved that process for the Milwaukee area so there's more collegiality than I think than what we like to see in the media and stuff because that's what sells papers as far as where can we find compromise I would agree with Lisa probably medical marijuana is one when it comes to education democrats and republicans are all hearing from parents that they're dissatisfied with the test scores so there has to be more options that are available to parents and I gotta believe that we're gonna find some compromise in that area also great, thank you so much and to give you guys some time for closing remarks I will start with you Terry if you'd like to take three minutes to share with us any closing remarks that you'd like the voters to know thanks to the chamber thanks to you, thanks for everybody that's here today and everybody that's watching online it's a real honor and privilege for me to serve in this position and I take that very seriously it's 58,000 people that I gotta think about so one of the things that I'm proud of is a constituent contact and we send out an e-update if you don't receive that I'd urge you to go to my website and sign up for the e-update and that goes on while the session is while we're in session and it's meant to be somewhat non-political and informational but we're also proud of the efforts we did when there was unemployment issues when there's issues when it comes to licensure and such but I just wanna put it in a plug for my colleagues for Republican governor, Republican federal senator the key difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is Republicans feel that there should be more limited government, Democrats feel that the government should be more in our lives and making more decisions for us and I'm just not in favor of that I'm in favor of free markets and so but I ask for your vote and I appreciate your support and and again it's been a real honor to do this and thank you for, I just wanna ask a question, who's already voted so far?  I wanna thank Lisa and our election, it's been clean there's been no mud slinging and our budgets and I don't allow for that and our will doesn't allow for that but I wanted to thank her for running, I wanted to thank her for providing options so that people can see the difference between candidates and thank you for doing that Thank you Terry and Lisa we'll give you three minutes Well I'd like to thank the Shavuagin County Chamber for hosting today's public forum and thank all of you for being here today, the reason I'm running is because a lot of the main issues that people care about in Wisconsin are health related whether it's mental health or women's health or medication costs these things are important and I think we need more medical people in office to help navigate these things I'm a small business owner I've been a medical assistant for 30 years, I've been a supervisor I work with budgets I've worked with teams I've been an employee health nurse where I've written policies and I've been a frontline worker I'm an advocate for my community I understand the complex public health and economic challenges that we face because I see the impact every single day and I can see how healthcare policies are affecting us I'm here to serve my community and not party lines I'm a candidate who will listen to my community I work with my community every day, I work with people from all walks of life and it's something that I really enjoy doing I do feel that there is more that unites us and divides us and I think that we can find a lot of common ground we can just have common sense so I will work for you, I will show up and I'm really excited about this opportunity so please vote for me Lisa Salgado on November 8th and thank you Thank you so much Lisa and so with that we're getting close to time so again thank you to everybody who's watching this may or may not be live but we've got broadband today that sometimes our ability to put things out live stream doesn't always work in our favor so if it didn't work live I apologize and it will be made available for you to share out the recorded version with that tomorrow Friday November 4th is the last day for early voting so if you're hoping to early vote make sure you get it done by tomorrow and if not then certainly make sure that you are on Thursday November 8th and that will be all for today thanks again


We're back here live in HP Discover 2012 in Frankfurt, Germany. I'm John Furrier, this is theCUBE. This is our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise and at HP Discover, a lot of great news. HP is about big data and software led infrastructure. That is the focus here and everything wraps around that. Really beautifully, software, solutions, services, everything that the customers are building upon. HP's addressing it here and that's a real positive sign for HP and we're covering it live. I'm John Furrier, the founder of siliconengle.com. I'm joined with my co-host. I'm Dave Blomethick, and software led storage. So we'll go look at that. We're here with Paul Miller of HP. He's the vice president of Converged Application Systems. Welcome. Welcome, thank you. Great to be here. So we took a lot of buzz. We took the liberty of saying it's all about big data and software led infrastructure, which actually is our favorite areas that we report on. But I think in general, although it's not your official marketing, it pretty much summarizes where the market is. Would you agree? Yeah, I agree. And what my team does, I'm uniquely positioned in HP. I sit within the enterprise group. My team is the guys who marry the software, the big data software and the applications with all the hardware. So I think I'm in a great position with HP. Get to play in all the worlds, right? The hardware and the software world. So big data seems to be the big buzzword but that wraps around basically the application market. So when Dave Donacelli was on earlier, we talked about kind of the theme of inflection points. So you had mainframe and client server change the game significantly, then it went to best of breed. Now we are in a whole nother transformation mode that's going to look a lot like mainframe and client server kind of wrapped up really quickly. And that's really around applications and compute. Same paradigm, compute and applications. It's just that the definition of those two are changing. So I wanted to ask you on that point, what is the app side of the market and how has the big data been into it? Obviously today the low hanging fruit is analytics. Clearly no brain, everyone wants analytics. So what do you see around the big data from your perspective on those two points? Compute and computing and applications. Right, so if you look at big data and computing, right? Everyone's talking about the growth of big data and how it manifests itself. But the next big trend is going to be around the variety and then what unique applications can customers build on top of their foundation? So if you look at Hadoop, Hadoop is just merely a big data lake that you pour all your data into. And what I think the next generation is going to be is building as Hadoop and then you wrap tools around it, management tools, tools to help query, and then building the vertical applications on top of it that allow the marketing organizations, the finance organizations, the business people to actually interface with the data in a way they haven't without being a database administrator. You know in the past, that's what you had to do.  You know I asked Dave Donatelli a question. Dave, how do you market your value proposition because we're in context to software defined networking, et cetera, et cetera. And he had a great answer and this is really my question to you. We got to build the products first because you have to sell the products and wrap the services around it. So the question to you is, with Hadoop and big data, there's a huge pressure from the customer and demand from the customer base to actually have product. So can you share with the folks, what is the core products that you're developing and what are you dialing up now to be in that roadmap? Okay, great. One of the big problems with Hadoop is it's brand new. Not a lot of tools wrapped around it. So if you're used to rolling out traditional databases, all the tools you're used to don't exist in that world. So what we've done with the appliance we announced this morning is wrap it with rich tools to enable you to one, stand up in a Duke cluster really fast. And with this, what we're announcing is this new dashboard. We call it the app manager for Hadoop.  How do you manage? How do you get your arms around that?  You can do push button updates of your firmware, push button deployments, you need to scale. Gives you a view, an integrated view, looking at your cluster to understand where's the hotspots? Do I need to move workloads around? Do I need to balance off? Change my configuration. It really gives customers that one stop dashboard to manage your entire Hadoop environment. So customers don't need to be afraid of Hadoop. Now they can embrace it and deploy it and have high service levels on Hadoop like they're used to on an old traditional legacy database. And that's what's critical to environments as they move Hadoop from being a science fair project into the mainstream and into mission critical because now business leaders are going to be dependent on that data. So is that really the differentiation strategy is you don't need a thousand map-reduced programmers to deal with this, we make it easy? Make it easy, make it easy to manage the setup and then with tools like Autonomy and Vertica, you can actually probe the data in multiple different ways, right? Business intelligence used to be all about building out the map schemas, right? All the schemas, understanding the data and then what questions to ask. With Hadoop plus the combination of Vertica and Autonomy the business user can start asking the questions without having to understand what's in the data set because Hadoop and we make it easy to propagate that out. It's really a change in the marketplace of how analytics and big data are merging together like no one's seen before. All right, John, let me turn it back to you. I got my one question in. Yeah. Now you have more, I didn't know long was the question. So what you're saying is obviously there's a lot of build out and the tools are critical. You need picks and shovels to get a job done, right? So check. So my next question is Autonomy. Take us through the integration of Autonomy. Obviously we're seeing Autonomy sprinkled all around on the different announcements. David Scott yesterday did a great press announcement, press conference where there's an amazing set of technology and improvements. One of them was he had some Autonomy sprinkled in there. It was awesome. Big data storage kind of go together. Tell us about what's new with you with Autonomy specifically on the product side. Okay, so one we announced an e-discovery appliance as well. So our e-discovery product is typically bought by the legal department of compliance, it's not an IT cell. And what we wanted to do was develop a system that the IT department and the business department could deploy simply. It's a modular approach. So it can click into the Hadoop database where they store all their documents and provide almost instantaneous value to the end customer. The other thing you'll see us do is take Autonomy to the cloud. Another thing my team does is build out the cloud maps which are the best practices and the way you deploy applications in the cloud. Automated provisioning, the configuration to set up all from a single screen where you can download this and push button way and provision automatically. We're doing that with the Autonomy discovery set, e-discovery as well as some of the other Autonomy assets bringing them and making part of our N10 cloud strategy. So it's really exciting to take and I think take Autonomy into the mainstream of some of our selling motions. So what about this trend toward bringing SQL and NoSQL together, bringing real time to big data? What do you make of that? How will HP capitalize on that? What's the strategy there? Yeah, so I think what we have is with the Vertica as was the traditional SQL and Autonomy which is NoSQL, the best of both worlds. And by combining those with rich services and management across both of those, we can provide customers access to 100% of their data, be able to migrate and probe on 100% of their data that no one else can. So we really see those two worlds and the data set of the future being the mix of SQL and NoSQL. So, I mean there's a lot of talk about connectors. You guys are one of the first, I think Vertica actually was the first to do a connector to Hadoop. And I think actually initiated it on its own. Yeah. And then sort of brought it to the marketplace because nobody's really doing it then. There's a lot of talk about sort of going beyond connectors. What are your thoughts on that? Are we going to see like super connectors? Are we going to see more native integration? What's HP's angle on that? I think some of the native integration and running are native within Vertica and as well as building out arrests around the ecosystem. Integrating Vertica into Hive and Autonomy into Hive and really taking beyond just the traditional Hadoop HDFS. But now integration with the rest of the tools that are coming out within that Hadoop ecosystem, if you will. You know, Hive is one example that I think is everyone's probably familiar with. You know, there's upcoming different initiatives. You look at all the different open source initiatives that plug into Hadoop. That's to me the next holy grail, if you will, to monetize and make Hadoop real. Is that what customers are asking your help with? Are they asking your help in, well, making Hadoop more reliable? I presume that's one of them. But are they asking for other assistance and well, how do we actually make money at this? Yeah, so surprisingly. What's the answer? Every customer I've been with, they have a Hadoop instance. Sometimes the CIO doesn't even know about it, right? It's sitting, it's kind of like the early days of Linux. It's there and it's growing and it's migrating. But then you'd have a lot of customers, even some of your most high tech online customers are saying, wow, we got all this data.  So a lot of what we're doing is linking the use cases of this customer did this with their data, et cetera. And we've developed a set of practices around Hadoop and big data for customers to say, one, what's all the data you want to put into Hadoop? Where's it coming from? Both the data within your house and data external to your corporation. And then secondly, now that you have all it, what are the use cases that are going to provide value out of it? I would say most customers are at the stage that they're starting to pour data into the Hadoop cluster and only have one or two use cases that they have rolled out within an environment. But that's where I think we can add a lot of value by just sharing among the community about the things we're doing with other customers and bringing that all together. Well, it seems like you've started to get more aggressive with regard to really reaching out and integrating the ecosystem. Is that true? Is that deliberate? Is it sort of just the natural fact that HP's so big you're everywhere? Well, one, it's I think a natural fact that we're so big, but two, you start to see HP embracing open source in the community around open source and ecosystem. If you see what we're doing with cloud and our open stack, we see open stack and then the Hadoop environment built on top of that as a real great combination for customers because when we can do integrate open stack and Hadoop together as our open stack strategy rolls out next year, that means cloud and big data on premise as well as in the public cloud. And I think that's part of our core DNA to be open and drive that strategy for customers. So you mentioned open stack, but you guys are serious about open stack. And again, you were early on in that movement. Now pretty much everybody's in. But I can't tell whether they're in because they're checking the box. Hey, we're open, we're open, we're open. My question is, is open stack ready for prime time? So HP's spending a lot of time hardening open stack. So I would say it depends, right? There are multiple different versions of open stack, quite not ready for prime time. You'll see it's going to be ready for prime time very, very soon. Okay, I wonder if you could Paul, if you could clarify something else for me. I listened to Meg talk about the strategy and she talks about information optimization. Is that another term for big data? Is it a superset of big data? Can you just sort of describe it as- It's really a superset of big data, right? And you start looking at information optimization. It's optimizing not only the big data, but your traditional data, how you access the data. So we're not only trying to go after the new emerging piece, but also the classic environment of what's traditional data is all about. And then how does that data manifest itself across everything? Obviously big data's white hot today, but information optimization covers broader span. Well, it seems like the big data's the tail that's wagging the information dog right now. Do you see that mix flipping? In other words, you got sort of the traditional database world is really where a lot of the value is today. Do you see that changing over the next 10 years where the unstructured stuff actually becomes the lightning rod of the organization? Or are those two worlds going to stay separate? Are they going to collide? What do you see? I believe those two worlds are going to combine and converge, right? So I talked to folks about converged information and converged big data, right? Because today they are separate, right? And the magic comes when you can start to converge the two worlds. You know, if you start looking at unstructured data for customers talking about the medical industry, right? Everyone's had an MRI, right? X-rays, et cetera, that become part of your legacy and become part of your history. Two generations from now, if that data's not, today we throw that data away. My view is we can have the technology to keep that data and make that data context rich so that your child and your child's child can use that to prevent disease in the future. And that's where, you know, a simple example of the two worlds can collide and provide a totally radical different way that the medical community services you by not only knowing your grandmother's history by what you checked off on a piece of paper, but by actually being able to see the data and make analysis on it. Right, so we need to remember your grandmother's history, right? Exactly. Paul, I want to ask you a question about kind of the HP big data umbrella. Obviously predictive analytics, sentiment analysis.  Share with the folks out there something about HP that they might not know about around big data.  Because it just, it is what it is. It touches everything that you guys are building out into. Mobile, touching into converged infrastructure, touching into services and software, all the above, HP will be touching big data in the marketplace, whatever that is, it's everything. So, explain to the folks out there about what is big data around HP? What's the, what's going on? How do you structure it? What's the organization? What are you guys delivering? Obviously Vertica's only one element of it. Now you've got autonomy. How do you wrap that up? Yeah, so I think that's one of the big mysteries about it, right? It's so pervasive across everything we do. And for customers to have a successful big data strategy, it just can't be standing up on a dupe cluster.  But then you still need to back up and have the compliancy. So you start putting on the compliance piece of it. A lot of what my team is doing is bolting the security piece of that, understanding what we can do from a security standpoint. And then building out a set of infrastructure tools that enable people to actually deploy big data in a very, very efficient way. Right, if you look at, you know, trying to deploy a traditional database for big data, you're not going to get there financially. You need new tools. You talk to Dave Donatelli, store once. They've been able to archive off that big data today that can't be kept resident and hot in a very, very efficient way. We're talking about, you know, our new hardware system that was announced two weeks ago, the SL1450. The ability to have an optimized compute storage node that can help customers scale. You'll see us talk about, that we announced our strategy around Moonshot. You'll see us work and have cartridges designed for big data. So whether you're looking at- It's native. It's all- It's native. It's actually so, it's part of the DNA of almost everything we do from services to hardware design to the application of data sets. It can't be separated. I think that's the bumper sticker. Big data is native in all of HP's products and services going forward. Okay, Paul Miller, BP Converged Application Systems for the Enterprise Group. The Enterprise is booming. No recession in the Enterprise. A lot of buildout going on with big data. A lot of tools you guys are developing for customers. I just had Tom on earlier about the service aside. Big data opens up a conversation that expands into a lot of different things from business re-engineering to technical deployment. So congratulations.  And we're looking forward to following you. So this is siliconangle.com's theCUBE. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break.