Now, Latin American Directions, I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech, and I'm stepping in for Nicola Sissman, who is the regular host on the show, but I'm delighted to be able to talk to Juan Pablo Tello, who is an old friend through a number of shows that we had over the last year or two. So Juan, it's so nice to talk to you. Welcome to the show. Hi Jay, it's great to see you again and to be in the show again. Thanks for inviting me. So we're gonna talk today about the elections, of course, which is kind of a look through a keyhole to see all of Latin America and maybe North America just as well. But before we do that, I wanna ask you about the paintings behind you, because they're very captivating and I wanna know what they are and who did them and how you got them. Well, yeah, this is what I call the flagship of my house. It's both paintings for made by an artist in Comuna 3 in Medellin, which was a neighborhood that was really, really violent back in the 2000s. And with all the changes of the country, it became now a tourist destination. So I was maybe a year, two years ago there, met the artist, saw his work, found it fantastic because nowadays still it's so humble and working class neighborhood full of immigrants, but they decided to change. They decided to stop being the typical thing that everybody understands when they see a poor neighborhood in Latin America and they became a tourist destination, they do culture, they do dances and then they do this amazing painting. So I just think it's a symbol of the rehabilitation and change of Columbia. Yeah, we can see part of those paintings and I'm really impressed with the art, the color, the design, the passion, all that. Anyway, let's get to the subject of the elections. Nicholas Sussman has done two or three shows on the subject already and I guess it involves everybody in Columbia.  At the same time, you're very candid and you see things clearly from the point of view of where the country and where Latin America is going. So I really, I'm excited to talk to you about it. So first, give me your general impression on Petco's election and he's gonna step up in a few days and there will be changes. There will be changes that some people like and some people hate. So can you talk about how he managed to get elected and what the changes might be? So the first thing we have to understand about the political process he had in Columbia is that it's one of patients of long time. Gustavo Petro has been trying to be president of Columbia since 12 years ago. He represents what people believe is real change, I do not believe that. He got himself elected with a speech selling that Columbia was worse than 20 years before selling that Columbia is just as Venezuela that things are dramatically bad, that everything's bad selling, let's say a pessimistic perspective of the country. And then if you repeat this message for 12 years and then you check on every single mistake that the passing governments had to take advantage of it, well, that message is gonna grow on the people especially in a country and in a place like that in America that is so unequal. When you have lack of access to opportunities, lack of access to good education, someone's gonna hear this and then these sort of speeches are really populist. People like them, they promote dramatic change with no basis. If you go and see the programs they are quite nicely written, but then when you go and ask for the funding for doing all those changes, they simply say the answer is taxes and tax to the rich, tax to the corporations, tax to everybody and there's a huge fiscal issue in Columbia, but then again, I'm going back to answering your question. It's an issue of patience, time and repeating over and over and over the same, I believe lies and misinformation regarding how the country has changed in 20 years until you get elected. Well, we are in the same place from my judgment with what is going on with Trump, what has been going on with Trump and his followers that is killing comparison actually. So what's Gustavo Petro's background? Where does he come from? Where did he emerge from on the political scene? So Gustavo Petro was a former guerrilla member of the M19 guerrilla movement. He went through a priest process, he went through a judicial process. Was he involved in the FARC settlement? No, he was not. He was not at all. He comes from a, let's say an urban guerrilla that was originated in Columbia in the 80s and then they became sort of the standard of guerrilla movement in Columbia because they were an intellectual guerrilla. They were not like the FARC, which were much more Marxist, much more militaristically advanced, let's say, but rather an urban guerrilla that striped for really symbolic hits. One of the most remembered ones that they did was stealing Simone Bolivar's sword from the National Museum and saying that they claim it for the people of Columbia. So his background comes from that period and from that movement. So his background comes from violence?  That has not been judicially proven, hence I cannot affirm it. How about, is he sympathetic to the guerrilla movement? Is part of it, this is the kind of thing perhaps where the president of the country is actually sympathetic to the guerrilla faction, is this possible? No, no, no, that's a long stretch. Gustavo Petro has consistently criticized precisely the anarcho-traffic issue in the guerrilla movements. He's a rebel, but he went through a process, a judicial process to be part of the politics in the country almost 25 years ago. Hence he has been critic of the violent actions and of the drug dealing mechanisms that the guerrillas in Colombia have. So although he's not sympathetic and not openly fond of them, I do believe there's gonna be certain, let's say coincidences that might help to move forward and in peace process with the ELN and whatever remains of the FARC. So who actually support him? I get the feeling that it's people in the rural areas, people who are disadvantaged, whose education is not complete and who are fooled by the misinformation. Is this the correct statement of who voted for him? So if you ask me, I think it's a mix of everything and that's what happens in Latin America with whatever political leader gets elected. It doesn't matter if it's from the right, left, center party, it doesn't matter. So you have different kind of voters. The first ones are the ones that vote for him because they have never been represented in the government. Let's say leftist citizens that have always supported guerrilla movements that have been part of them and that are now integrating into society. Then you have people from the outskirts of the country. If you look at Colombia, you're gonna find highly developed nuclei like Medellin, Bogota, Caramanga, Barranquilla. And then if you drive four or five hours away from them, you're gonna be in a totally different country in a rural area without access to any basic needs. So he was particularly a victor in those places in Colombia especially in the places that used to be guerrilla strongholds.  Well, I mean, I'm an outsider completely but it strikes me that in the conversations I've had with both you and Nicholas Susman, you know, the FARC settlement was a good thing. Colombia has been moving in the right direction. It has a democracy going on. And I wonder if this particular result in this election, this new president is encouraging to you or maybe not? Well, if you ask me, Jay, I'm not too fond of him to be honest, he is the political candidate that I dreaded the most in the election. Mainly because I believe he's a terrible administrator. He was a major of Bogota a couple of years ago when honestly, there's a few little things to rescue from his administration. He was all about talking and politics in populist ideas that liked funding, that liked execution, that did nothing for the city. So my criticism for him comes from there. I do not believe he is the most prepared person nor the ideal person to handle Colombia in the moment as it is. It's been 20 years of advancement. It's been 20 years of changing things. I'm aware we still have a lot of challenges, especially inequality and lack of state presence precisely in the areas where he got the most votes. But that doesn't mean things are being done wrong. They have to be corrected. They have to be maintaining certain aspects. But honestly, right now, if you want my optimistic view, I don't think he might be a threat to democracy in a sense that it's been 25 years since he's been playing the political game in Colombia. One of the things I criticize the most about him is he sells himself as an outsider of the political field in Colombia and he's not. He's governing with it. Actually, right now, he's going to govern with traditional parties of Colombia. So if you are going to sell yourself as an anti-corruption candidate and then go and work with all the same parties that have been part of the control of the government for 25 years, then that thing just doesn't make sense to me. So I do not believe he's the real change. I do not believe he is a threat to democracy because, ironically, because of the corruption mechanisms that exist in Colombia. But yeah, I'm not fine. His opponent, am I right to say Hernandez was his opponent? And his opponent was a business person, a businessman, a developer, I guess. Would his opponent been more in line with where the government was, more in line with the direction of the country prior to this election? Was Hernandez somebody who would help build the country and continue the progress of the country more than Petro? Wow, that's a difficult question, Jay, because honestly, I believe the second round of the presidential elections in Colombia were just, I mean, for an elector like me or as myself, it was just choosing between the worst and the least worst, I guess. Hernandez, for me, was not the best option, clearly. But if you put me in an election where I have to choose between Gustavo Petro, who has radical change ideas regarding how the economy must be run in the country and a person that doesn't, then I'm going to pick the person that doesn't simply because as I see things as long as business keep working, as long as Colombians have jobs, as long as we keep opening opportunities, as we have done for 20 years, things are going to change eventually. But if you put a rock in the path of progress, well, that's what I'm mostly afraid of. I mean, I'm optimistic. I hope he does a good government. I want the best for my country in the end. I do not share his ideology. I do not share how he wants to run the country. I do not share his speech because I think it's lying to Colombians. Colombia has changed. Colombia is a different country. But yeah, I mean, that's my optimistic view. OK. And that is West and outside there. Well, if I'm in business, am I concerned about what happens when Petro takes over? Do I should I rush and close my deals right now before things change? What would you say to your clientele about that? So the issue, Jay, is I will say it depends. I mean, I'm optimistic. I will tell you it depends on the kind of project you have. If you're just trying to get funding for a big highway project or a big hydroelectric plant, probably it would be better to close it now. And I think there's two reasons to do that. The first one is as we all know, the economy in a macroeconomic level and globally is changing and it's going to affect Colombia. So it's going to change the interest rates in most of the people and most of the developers of projects in Colombia acquire their loans in dollars. So if you wait for the economy to get worse, well, that's just going to get more expensive. So the fastest you close your deal, the better. And the second is, although Mr. Petro and these mechanisms that he governs with can be a guarantee that things are going to be stable in Colombia, it's better to just close your deals, do it when the economics are working, and don't let anything open to randomness or to whatever happens in the country. Then again, I don't believe Gustavo Petro is going to be a dictatorial president that's going to change the game in Colombia because he can't. And that's not his speech and that's not what he has promoted for 20 years. But definitely there's going to be changes in the economic ground that might affect the development of businesses. Hopefully not that dramatically. Hopefully not as the radical opposition in Colombia wants to sell it, that this is going to become Cuba or Venezuela. I do not believe that. I hope it doesn't happen. But I think we just have to be careful. And as with any business, just calculate your risks and assess them properly. Every country has to have a foreign policy. It has to have foreign relations. Countries in Latin America have to be mindful of what's happening to the North in Mexico, in the US, maybe Canada. So where is Petro on those things? Does he think beyond the borders of Colombia? Yeah. Gustavo Petro is a person who has recalled the Latin American values all along his political career. And in this election, particularly before the first round, he was openly critic of many of the posters of Colombia in its foreign policy. Colombia has been a country that has supported this past 20 years, a lot of the liberal agenda of the OECD, and has followed many advice from European countries and the US Colombia. It's clearly the closest ally of the US in South America. So Gustavo Petro has been always really critical of that. But since he got elected, he has moderated his speech. And I believe so because of the mechanisms that he's working, the political mechanisms that got him elected depend in a matter and in a way of that economic structure. So I hope there are not big changes in many things in Colombia. He has moderated his speech dramatically because after the first round, he had to get the voters from the center political spectrum of Colombia and convince them that he was not going to be Nicolás Maduro in Colombia. He wanted to differentiate himself from that, let's say, socialism of the 21st century political agenda. So I think there's going to be changes. The US received his election with calmness, which was something really important for business persons and people that have a political perspective, such as mine. So yeah, he has an agenda. He's planning to integrate with Latin America, which I think it's great. But hopefully he does not leave behind all the good things that we have built in 20 years in the diplomatic scenario. That means good relations with the US, great relations with NATO, and great relation with the powerful economies of the continent. Colombia has been one of the powerhouses moving the continent along with Mexico, Chile, and Brazil. The past years and the Pacific Alliance is an example of that. So hopefully he does not leave that behind because it's an instrument that can be and should be used more to get our economy and move it. Well, we've talked about this before. We've talked about the huge benefits that would result if Latin America would stabilize. And it seems to me that over our discussions, Colombia has been relatively stable, that it may not be as stable in the future as it has been over the past couple of decades. But still it's a keyhole into the future of Latin America and to the extent that it is stable, to the extent that it sheds stability on other countries and becomes an economic political leader. Then that would bring Latin America into being a cohesive continent, a continent that can do big business around the world with its resources and trade possibilities and all that. But to the extent that Petro isn't really there for that, I wonder what we can learn about the political events in other countries. For example, Brazil. We're talking about Brazil before the show. And Brazil is moving to the left right now. Is this a good thing? Is this something that would work in favor of a consolidated Latin America? Honestly, yeah, I don't think so. So there's two things that we have to analyze when we see Gustavo Petro's election along with the elections in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro and Luz Ignacio Lula da Silva. And this is the result of inequality and lack of opportunities. Every time people, when the people's hungry, when people lack opportunities, when people do not see a possibility to advance to progress, to have a better life, a better quality standard, then they are going to be prone to admit extremist speeches that works for leftist and radical right speeches. I mean Bolsonaro is an example of that, right? But I do believe that if these speeches keep winning in Latin America and they keep with economic programs that just literally bleed out the finances of the countries, then nothing good is going to come out of that, right? And you can see that even in Brazil. The later years of the partidos trabalhadores in Brazil, well, things were not working quite well. Brazil had huge corruption scandals that actually splashed all over Latin America. So I do not believe that Lula winning in Brazil is a good thing. I don't think Petro is a DL candidate for Colombia, although there's a silver lining regarding stability, J. And I have to rescue this. And it is if a leftist president is elected in Colombia and then he can govern wrong or right whatever he does, while the country keeps being peaceful, then I think there's a silver lining there for Colombian democracy because it would be a proof that his speech that got him elected that Colombia was a dictatorship of 100 years of the traditional political class, it's going to be a lie because it is. So if you ask me, I do not believe they are the best option for Latin America. I clearly don't believe it. But if they do it and they govern peacefully and we can change in the next election, probably in the following years and we keep having these discussions, then that's going to say something about Latin American democracies. And it's that we are ready to finally crescent and get away from the dependence of the person that's sitting in the president's chair. What I want to mean with this is if as a country, Colombia and as a continent or subcontinent, Latin America finally gets to the point where it doesn't matter who sits on the president's chair in each country because there's going to be a state politics, then it's going to be a good thing. I'm not sure we're there yet. I hope that's the case because if that's the case, then that means Colombia has grown and changed over these 20 years and is ready to accept different political perspectives without affecting the political and the state politics. To know where we're going, to wait for something independently from which political perspective you come from. Now, if you ask me what happens between Brazil and Colombia, what are the similarities, I'm going to tell you what I believe is the biggest problem in Latin America is lack of access to opportunities. If you see Brazil and Colombia in their electoral maps, it's just a matter of understanding what happens in each region and it's going to be the same mission. If you go to the south of Brazil, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, all these places, they have huge development indexes, access to opportunities, they cover every basic needs. If you go to the north of Brazil, it's going to be a completely different country and it's exactly what happens here. If you're in the nuclei of development, it's going to be fine. You're going to have access to your opportunity. There's poverty, of course, we have to work on that. But it's a radical difference between the points of the country that are hugely developed and the ones that are not. And I think that's precisely what causes that these speeches are sold in the electors, in Latin American electors. The purple represents the Petro community, Petro voters and the yellow colors represent the Hernandez community and the Petro community one. So does this map, you know, does it work similar to the way the US map works now where you have red and blue states, where you have divisiveness, where you have two countries operating within the country? Is that a dark possibility for Colombia? Because it's happening in the US for sure. You get to television, you know what I mean. We have huge divisiveness, aside from disparity, we have that too, but we're not heading anywhere good. And so the question is whether the phenomenon is similar in the US and in Colombia and maybe other countries also in Latin America. Yes, I mean, Colombia has a long history of polarization. It's been 200 years of civil and political conflict that we have resolved bit by bit every now and then. But yes, Jay, the answer is it's totally correct. The difference is that here in Colombia, you don't get a uniformity within the states, but rather a slight majority inside each of the states. If you go or the departments that are the political divisions here in Colombia, if you go and check on the departments, it depends where you are. So you have a place like Antioquia, which is like the stronghold of the right of Colombia, where Alvaro Riveles is from, that's gonna be a department that's always gonna support the right, this part is in Colombia, right? But if you see just to the left of Antioquia, you have Choco, which is the place that is the most dark purple in the map, is one of the poorest departments in Colombia. So yes, we're living that. It happens even between departments and between and inside departments, inside cities. You can see how the electorate is divided depending on their access to opportunities and the development indexes in which every elector lives. That does not mean that someone that has access to opportunities that has been a privileged person is not going to vote for Gustavo Petro-Rol Fernandez. I mean, there's everything, a little bit of everything in each political camp, let's call it, but certainly we have polarization and we have polarization between the people that believe that something was being done properly in the past 20 years and the ones that don't. And I say this in such a general way because if you ask most of the Colombians, they do not like the candidates. They just have to choose between what's less wars or what they consider is not that bad. Well, we have a different kind of thing. We have ideological divisions. I'm sure you've seen all our ideological divisions on, for example, abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage, so many things we are divided and we are divided in that same kind of two-country division. And I wonder if you are experiencing the same thing in Colombia, whether the division that we talk about, it's not a perfect division, but it is an identifiable one, it's also on ideological grounds. I do believe it's an ideological grounds and it's an ideological grounds relating to how the country is developing and the mechanisms through which it has been developing. So if we go to social rights, Colombia is a conservative country historically. So you're gonna see that division straightforward. So young people is prone to more liberal ideas regarding social rights and individual rights. Older people might not be too fond of those ideas, right? But if you ask me, I would say the biggest division in Colombia would be the persons that supported how things were being run and the ones that don't. Because in the middle- It's government operation, government efficiency, as you said, an economic advantage rather than sort of religious motivations or ideological. And I'm sorry if I'm getting into like a lot of gray areas here, but I do believe that's the case because there's not a single answer. So many people, for example, support right political parties because of religious ideas, it happens here in Colombia too. There's a couple of congressmen that have been elected by Christian bases and evangelical ones, but it's not as influential as in the US. You have- Can I go to one more? Go ahead, sorry. Yeah, yeah. What I'm trying to explain is that political divisions in Colombia are really diverse and you get a little bit of everything. If you go to persons that supported Gustavo Petro, you're gonna find from the person that is part of the Colombian Communist Party that firmly believes that the rebels have been fighting for a just cause for 60 years to a person that might be in the center of the political spectrum that believes that the governments of the last 20 years have not addressed properly social issues, but they prefer a change instead of keep doing the same in fear than something more radical from the left comes to the country. And if you go to the right, it's the same. So you have people that firmly believe that the extreme right is the answer that we have to keep on fighting the guerrillas and the drunken wars just with weapons and bullets. And then you have people that are a little bit more prone to the center which I consider myself. I mean, I think I'm in the right political spectrum but I do believe that if we want to change violence we have to address the war on drugs from a social perspective. If we want to change the lack of opportunities we have to work on the social issues of the country by doing it with the private sector. I do not believe the public sector is going to be the answer and it's gonna be the most efficient way of solving things. So with that being said is there's a huge gray area even between the camps and the two political sites that were in the election in Colombia. It's such a diverse thing. And one thing they do have in common is they want the best for Colombia of course just as in the states both sides of the discussion. One's the best for the states. But yeah, that's how it goes. It's crazy because you get people from a religious background that vote for the left and people from other religious background that vote for the right. So there's not like a clear consensus. But I'm wondering if other countries in Latin America have the same kind of division, the same kind of like gray scale division where it's hard to find a hard boundary. Brazil is like that, maybe Venezuela. I don't know, tell me what the general direction is for Latin America on this particular issue. Yeah, so I believe there's two discussions. The first one is the economic one because of the influence of the socialism of the 21st century that Hugo Chávez campaigned all along Latin America. There's a huge discussion in Latin America between what leftist called neoliberalism and then a more central and plant economy perspective. So that's one big difference. You can put whatever kind of social perspective or angles you have there. So either you believe that private enterprises and working with the private sector works and has worked or you don't. And you believe that is the state that has to plan, that has to be a more centralized economy, such as the one that was promoted by those ideals, right? So I think that's the first division. And then you have the second one, which is a cultural one. And it goes in a way, in the discussion with individual and social rights. So that's two different things because you get people that support abortion in Colombia that are from the right and are from the left. And then you get people that do not support abortion that are from the left and from the right. So it's quite different and most of Latin America works this way. And I think this happens because of the different perspectives and opportunities people have. If you ask myself, I do believe a liberal economy is the way to keep on building the country such as we have done in the past 20 years. But I do believe that social policies and individual rights are hugely important, especially in Colombia, the right to abortion is one of the ways to escape the poverty traps. Colombia and most of Latin America is not like the states where you can have a minimum wage job and you can get a car, you can get a house, you can survive, right?  So social rights have a huge impact in economic development. So with all this being said, and sorry, Jay, I know I usually talk a lot, is what I want to say is- No, I know you're very passionate about it. And I sense in you a very strong feeling to do what you can do for the benefit of Colombia and to make it a better place. But it may not work out the way you want on. I'm sorry to tell you, it may not be a perfect result.  And I know this not only from discussion today, but every time we have talked. And the question is, what are you doing in order to move Colombia in the right direction? So I believe in work, Jay. I believe that hard work, toil and grinding, it's the answer. I believe building companies and giving employment is the most social action you can take in your life. I do not believe the state has to answer for those things. I think the state has to cover the basic things that every human person needs to decide what to do with his life. But honestly, just work, Jay.  I am not fond of the government right now. I am not fond of the ideas they have. That doesn't mean I'm gonna run away from Colombia in one or two years. I wanna keep building this country. And I would like to have that silver lining that I told you. Hopefully we do not depend so much on the person that's sitting on the presidency. And what am I doing? Working, trying to close deals, getting new clients and telling them that Colombia is now a stable country that despite the elections, our institutions have changed this past 20 years. And hopefully that's gonna keep us going on track. And the reflection I was doing after the election was if we managed to survive through almost 70 years of a bloodbath between the guerrillas and the army and then we got the drug cartels and then we have the FARC. We can survive for years of a bad government. So I don't think it's that bad. I believe Colombians are really prone to hard work. Are people that likes to earn things, not to be given to them. And yes, what am I doing? Working, believing in my country. And hopefully there's that silver lining and in four years we get to elect a better president as a show of what's Latin America's oldest democracy which is Colombia is right. Are you unique or do you know a lot of people who feel the same way you do? So I come from a business context. You know, my dad was also a businessman. Most of the people I move around are business persons that are working for the country. So they feel the same. They think until they are not giving enough evidence that their freedom and their things are not going to go south, they are going to keep on building Colombia. Because honestly, Jay, we've been through worst. Let me ask you this too. We live in a world where borders are porous. We live in a world where Vladimir Putin can and does affect American elections. And he's done that twice already and he's probably going to do it again. We live in a world where Russia and China are taking advantage of developing countries in Africa. Putin is selling his war in a variety of places in Africa. And likewise in Latin America. And I wonder if this is happening in Colombia or any of the countries we've mentioned that you know about. And whether you have any concern that Russia, China, or anyone else could come in and skew the process that you're talking about. We've been talking about mostly domestic affairs in Colombia. Are you concerned that foreign nations whose scruples, whose intentions are questionable are coming into Latin America, coming into Colombia and may affect the politics? I hope not. I mean, as we discussed earlier, Colombia is if not the most important ally of the U.S. in South America, Colombia is really close to NATO. We have been working with this organization to standardize our military forces since 10 years ago, especially because of our internal conflict. But this has an interest of the Colombian diplomacy to get linked to those experiences and to understand how those military forces work in an international context. So my first answer is I hope not. The real answer is I think they do influence Latin America in a certain way, not Colombia because of what I just told you, but it's clear that Russia has an agenda, an international one to sell. It's clearly it's aggression to Ukraine and how can it affect Latin America? I mean, I hope we don't get to the point to something similar like the 60s where we had missiles pointing to the U.S. from Cuba and causing a huge alarm in the world. But I think that's a probability. Putin is cornered. I firmly believe he's not gonna weird that war. It's wars are not just fought with soldiers on the ground and equipment, but with money and logistics. And if you ask me who's got most money and logistics, I'm gonna bet on NATO a hundred times more than I would bet in Russia and Ukraine. But I do believe this is gonna have consequences in the region. Russia has been really close to Nicaragua, which is a country that does not have the best relations with Colombia. Russia has been really close with Nicolás Maduro's government in Venezuela. Couple of years ago, a couple of bombers from Russia flew past through Colombia in airspace, which were intercepted by our Air Force. But it certainly raises concerns specifically because Latin America has been a peaceful continent regarding international relations. Although there's been a couple of historical wars, Latin American countries are not used to fight each other. It's simply not in our agendas, right? So my concern is that this campaign and the fact that Russia is being cornered in Ukraine might bring some of those preoccupations to the continent, a peaceful one, at least between countries. So hopefully doesn't. I do believe that Latin America, whether I like it or not, is controlled by the US from a security perspective. I rather have that than having Chinese and Russian interventions in Nicaragua or Russia, in Nicaragua, Venezuela, or Cuba, messing the neighborhood around, you know? Part of the things that permits Latin America to focus on social and development issues is the fact that we have this Pax Americana that doesn't let any of these international things hit us, right? I mean, it's not something I'm proud to recognize, believe me, but it's true. And I do not like Russian bombers flying over Colombia. I do not like Russian ships being stationed in Nicaragua. I think it's a threat to the region. And it certainly diverges us from where we have to focus because once Latin American countries get involved in these international controversies that hit us, but really, we're not that close to those conflicts, right? So our focus of working on building socially our countries, advancing our economies, our infrastructure is gonna change to an international conflict that has nothing to do with us. And that is simply, we are just being used like puns in a chessboard. So hopefully it doesn't happen. I hope not. Oh, God. Well, Imon Pablo Tello, it's really wonderful to talk to you again. We are for sure out of time, but I have greatly learned from this discussion and I hope we can circle back and talk some more. Maybe Nicholas Sussman will let me talk to you again, huh? Hopefully, I mean, I'm a very little Jay. I love talking to you guys. I think it's important that we build communication between the North and the South of the continent, especially in these times where we have such dramatic anti-Iranic speeches being repeated all over the world. For me, it's a tragedy. I just can't understand how these things still happen, but well, that's what dictators and autocrats cause, right? Thank you, Juan. It's wonderful to talk to you next time soon. It was a pleasure, Jay. Thanks a lot for having me again. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


This video will talk about how to grab on a Cartesian coordinate. So in a Cartesian coordinate, it's two number lines. They're called axes. This one up here is called the y-axis, and this one here is called the x-axis. The horizontal is the x-axis, and it looks like a normal number line with the positive numbers on the right and the negative numbers on the left. And a vertical axis is the y-axis, with the positive numbers up at the top, and the negative numbers down at the bottom, and then right in the middle where they cross is where the zeros are for each number line, and that's called the origin, and it's the point zero-zero. This ordered pair is what that zero-zero is called, and it's made up of this x and y that you see here. X always comes first, and then the y. So let's look at some graphs. This point A here, when you start at the origin, whenever you're graphing, you always start at the origin, and then you count how far over to the left and how far over to the right you went. But we didn't go anywhere left or right, so this would start out in the x-direction. We went zero units, and then from there we moved up one, two, three, four units in the y-direction, or up. So that point right there, A, is zero-four. Let's try B. We start at the origin again, and then we count over, and we went one, two, three, four, five to the left, and you can see the negative five right below there tells you that it's a negative five in the x-direction, but then we didn't move up or down, so that's going to be zero in the y-direction. So let's try C. This time we get to move both directions, so we go over until we're right above it, and that looks like a three. So that's the x coordinate, and then we went down one, two, three, four. You can see that we're right over from negative four because we went down. It's a negative number, so that ordered pair is three negative four. D, we go over to six, we're right below, right above the six, so the x-coordinate is the six. Always do x first, and then we go up y one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So that's the ordered pair, six, seven, and finally over here at E, we went over to negative two in the x-direction, and then we went down one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. We're straight across from negative eight, so that point is negative two, negative eight. Remember, it's always x first, and then y. So let's try plotting these points over here. Negative two, negative three means we go negative two in the x-direction, and then from there we turn the corner and go negative three, or down three in the y-direction. So negative is left, so we go one, two in the x-direction, and then from there we're going to go down one, two, three. So there, right there, is our f. That's negative two, negative three. G says four, negative one, so we go across to four, and then down one, because it's a negative one, and this point right here will be our g. H is zero, negative five, so we start at the origin again, always start at the origin. We can't go anywhere left and right, because it's a zero, and then we go down five to this point right here at negative five, that's zero, negative five, and that's my h, and then finally j is three zero, so we go three in the right direction where the positive numbers are, and then it says zero, so we don't go up or down, and we have this point right here, which would be our j. So how do we apply that? Well, if I have an equation, I can graph an equation by just picking some points. It takes two points to define a line, three points to make it even more accurate. So let's try. This says that x is negative one, so I'm going to come in here and say two times x, which I now know to be negative one, minus two. Two times negative one is negative two, minus two would be negative four, so my x was negative one, and my y was negative four. All right, try again, find another point. So I don't know y, but I know x, two times zero, which is x minus two, that's zero minus two, or negative two, and the ordered pair would be zero for the x, negative two for the y. Y is equal to two times one, when x is one, minus two, so two minus two would be zero, so we have the point one, zero, and finally, y is equal to two times two when x is two, minus two, or four minus two, which is two, so x is two, y is two. And now we want to plot those points. So negative one, and then down to negative four would be one point on my line, zero, negative two, so start at the origin, and then just go down two, because we didn't go left or right, one, go over to one, and then zero, so we just stay right there on the x-axis, and then two, two, we go over to two, and then we go up two, and it would be this point right here, and we should feel like we did it correctly, because all our points lie in a line. Didn't draw my line very well, but you can see that it's a line. All right, so let's interpret some points, some ordered pairs. So it asks us to write an ordered pair for each year, so where x is the number of years since 2000, and y is the number of victims. So this is the number of years since 2000, so it would be zero, that would actually be the year 2000, and the number of victims would be 653. X is the number of years, y is the number of victims, so one and 862, and two goes with 911, and three goes with 819 victims, and four years after 2000, there were 804 victims. It says now, interpret the first and last ordered pairs. Well, our first ordered pair was 0, 653. But remember that x is number of years since 2000, so this is my x, and it's zero, so it means the year 2000, and then y is the number of victims, and this is a y, so it means in 2000, there were 653 victims. The last ordered pair is this last one over here, that's 4 and 804. Again, this is x, and x means years since 2000, so it's going to be the year 2004, and in 2004, there were y, which is number of victims, so 804 victims, or I've missed my there were, there were 804 victims. And finally, it says plot the ordered pairs to form a scatter plot. Scatter plot just means that it's not going to probably be perfect. This is my x, and that's years since 2000, and this is my y, and that's the number of victims, and graphs don't have to be perfect. This would be zero here, and this would be 1, 2, 3, 4, and if I draw a little squiggle line here, it means that I'm going to have a gap, not starting at 1, and I'm going to start, and I'm going to call it, I'm going to say 600, and then maybe 650, and then 700, and 750, and 800, and 850, and I can just kind of guesstimate. So in the year zero, there were 653, so it's just a little bit beyond 650, and then 1 would be 862, so that's above my 850, and somewhere above it, then have to be perfect. It's just a scatter plot. 2 would be 911, oh I didn't go up high enough, this would be 900, so it would be just a little bit higher than that. Then we have 3819, so here's 800, it would be just a little bit above that, and then 4804, again here's 800, and it's even going to be less than the one before. So that's a nice little scatter plot, not perfect, but it just kind of shows you the pattern that's happening.


Aloha and welcome to Ehana Kako, who we're here every week on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Kelea Akina, president of the Grassroot Institute. Well everyone knows it's election season and whether you're following the national elections or some local elections, there's one you need to pay particular attention to. It happens to be the United States Senate race here in the state of Hawaii. We have none other than John Carroll contending against, well, against Schatz, the current senator. We're having so much fun in studio, I'm forgetting all of my lines here. But it's an interesting race because John returns to the political scene after many years having been 10 years in the state house as well as in the Senate. He's been an airline pilot, he served in the United States military and many people know him for his advocacy for changing something that has been with us for a long time called the Jones Act. We're going to talk with John a bit about why he's running, what he hopes to accomplish and what he stands for. So please welcome to the program with me John Carroll, Senator John Carroll. Good to see you. We still call you senator from your state legislature base. Well, yes, you can call me Kalilihua Kalani. There you go. How about Kalilihua Kalani? Well, your Hawaiian is just excellent. You know, tell me what do you hope to accomplish this year, 2016, now that you're throwing your hat back into the rink? First of all, I've been trying to get rid of the Jones Act and for those who do not know what it is, it's a federal law that says that if a ship isn't built, manned, maintained, flagged, and those owned by Americans or in America, it cannot operate in interstate commerce. The net effect of that is that if we have, say, major goods coming in from China, Korea, things that we can use for farming, basically they can drop things off but they cannot go from here and then do business in another state. Now, you've been an advocate for bringing some change to this federal law that goes back to the 1920s and in fact, you've got a case that has worked its way through federal court. And yes, and through this, well, up to the intermediate, I mean the appellate court. Ninth circuit court. Ninth circuit, yes. And what have you been trying to accomplish with this suit?  The whole, if you read the case law on this subject matter, that is the commerce clause, the purpose of the commerce clause in the Constitution is to ensure that every state has equal access to interstate commerce with states, nations, and Indian tribes. And you're saying that the way that Jones Act works out in practice actually harms the Hawaii's economy in terms of the interstate commerce. Not only harms it, it strangles this economy because Alaska, for instance, at least has pipelines, highway, and railroads so they have some connection to the other 48 states. But we have nothing like that. Your argument is not just an economic argument, it happens to be a constitutional one, which makes your approach rather unique. Yes, absolutely. But they have, the Intermediate Court of Appeals Justices have all said that that may be, it could be that, but the legislature, the U.S. Congress has said, oh, you know, if they want to do it, they can do it, so you have to do something different than what you're doing now. Well, let's step aside from the litigation and talk a bit about the Jones Act and what you would do if you are a United States senator. But what can the Senate do? The first thing that I can do, in which I intend to do, is the very first day I'm in the Senate, I'm going to put in a provision to abolish those provisions that relate to interstate commerce. It's got no business there. That law, the Jones Act law was primarily a semen protection law and they iced this one into it basically to help the American merchant marine building community and they've gone on to just basically almost ruin it, as you have said, I believe, one of your speeches, I believe I heard talking about that, or Kent School, and that has got to go down the chute along with it. There's a whole bunch of subsidies that are being paid to the shipowners and shipbuilders, all coming out of the taxpayers and we, and a little Hawaii here, is the most drastically hurt by this. Well, in a sense, you recognize that litigation can only go so far, so you're seeking a political position. Exactly. Not only seeking that, but what really irritates me is that the Ninth Circuit judges would come out and say that this is not something for litigation, that what one of the judges said that under certain circumstances, that San Diego gun rights law, which is a standing issue, that could be eliminated, then we could go forward because they clearly recognize the danger, I mean the harm to Hawaii, but they're unwilling to do anything about it until that standing issue's out of the way. You know, in some ways this issue is a metaphor for your political race. There is some level at which this is a David and Goliath attempt to unseat a Democrat senator from the state of Hawaii. In fact, all of our congressional representatives are in favor of the Jones Act as it is. They defend it to the hilt. Their campaign sponsors, the unions, pour big money into their campaigns. Absolutely. In order to maintain the Jones Act. When Ed Case, who's a Democrat obviously, put in an anti-Jones Act resolution, Colleen Hanabusa took his seat away from him and based, I'm sure, upon Dan Inouye and Spark, you know, telling him to get it. So here's my political question. Given all of the opposition to Jones Act reform or Jones Act repeal, how do you stand a chance, John, to mount a victorious campaign in the state? Well, first of all, what I've found is that if you can let people know, and I talked to the United Visayan Community Association, which is in Waipahu, probably 1,000 percent Democrat, when they understood what the impact of the Jones Act is on their lives and their pocketbooks and their future, they had four pages furnished, by the way, by Fermat Dayal, who is a Democrat, but will soon become a Republican along with you when you make your governor's race. So they basically really understand it, and I think when that message is out, they will vote for me regardless of my age and looks and all of that. So what you're basically saying is that putting litigation aside, putting politics aside, putting union, non-union issues aside, that the people themselves feel that there's some need of change. Absolutely. And what is it that makes people feel we need to change something that impacts the economy like the Jones Act? Well, being able to get the message out to the people here, and that brings up another major issue, is that Brother Schatz, Senator Schatz, has refused to debate with the five people running against him, and there's a young man named McConnie Christensen. Right, we had him as a guest here. He's a Democrat who ran in the primary against Mr. Schatz. Right, an Academy graduate. He's coming on board our campaign now to force Schatz into debate. I think the people of this state have a right to know the bulletin, I'm sorry, the advertiser is not getting the word out as to who's who or why they're running or anything else, and I think that's a blot on them. What do you say when the media or your political opponent says, well, there's not much mandate for a debate because John Carroll doesn't carry the number of votes that really registers on the scale to constitute a real debate between two competing viewpoints. In other words, that we don't really even have a second party of any sizeable number here. That's what the English said to the Americans, and all I'm saying is I'm George Washington on this one, so we will move forward and win. I really believe that the word is getting out right now as to what this impact has been, and I believe that the people that are already working for me, and I have this Dana Calico, and she is really doing a great job as a campaign chairman, and she's getting the word out to the Bernie Sanders people and a lot of different people that normally wouldn't be looking at me at all, and I think the reasonableness, the potential for the future for them all can be clearly stated and clearly shown in what we're putting out, and when that happens, we will get elected. That's how I see it. Well, you're clearly running as a reformer. You're running against the powers that be, which, although you are a Republican, these are themes that resonate very strongly with many Democrats and non-Republicans across the nation. Well, they should, yes, and let me say this, too, because I know I shouldn't say anything bad about Republicans, but we had a platform plank in the Republican Party that said that the Jones Act should be eliminated, and Mrs. Lingle actually got that plant removed, and then when she ran for U.S. Senate, she was in favor of the Jones Act. That's the reason I backed up Maisie Hirono. One of the things you touch upon here is that the Jones Act is not purely a political issue around which people line up on only one side of the party line. In fact, you mentioned Makani Christensen, who was running to oppose Senator Schatz in his own party. He sat exactly where you were and espoused this very same position and perspective on the Jones Act that you do. It's called truth and common sense, and that's what we bring to the table, because, for instance, we had, when I was in the House of Representatives, there was, I used to be a diver in flying, and every place I'd go, including 250 miles out to sea, you see bagasse. So my very first year in the State House, I put in a bill that forced the plantations to silt the bagasse onshore, so we had clean water. And now, even if I died today, at least I can look down as we fly, and you see clean water. And that, but from that day on, I never got a penny out of Alexander Baldwin, Kasselin Cook, or the plantation owners. But I just go basically on what I think is right, and that's why I'm doing this. And if somebody else was here to do this, I probably wouldn't be here, but I just did not see any leadership coming forward. Well, let's talk. That's why you're going to run for governor. Well, this is your show. I'm interviewing you on this show. And, John, you have to leave your crystal ball at home. But basically, you have seen this state move from a Republican-controlled political economy to a Democrat-controlled one. But basically, in both cases, it's pretty much been under one-party rule. What does Hawaii need to do to move beyond one-party rule? Well, in other words, what can be done to get a competitive two-party system? Actually, right now, if you ask me what are my leanings, I'd probably say libertarian, because I see some Republican things. I see some Democrat things. But basically, common sense, the basic benefits of being here, being able to work here to make a living here, not have to rely on the government to get the kind of support. The problems that we have with the homeless, they're always talking about where are we going to put them, but nobody's talking about how are we going to get rid of the situation that causes them to exist in the first place. So all I'm hoping is, and I really appreciate you're letting us be here, is to get that message out. And I think if we can get it out and spend even one term in the U.S. Senate, and I'll be speaking out very loud and clear, and I will work with the Democrats that are in office here, and hopefully, you know, the few more, I mean, more Republicans would get elected. But what I want to see is solid, common-sense leadership, and we don't have it. Oh, very good. We're going to come back after a short break, but you've been listening to Senator John Carroll, who believes that as a libertarian, he can run for office as a Republican and work with Democrats, because people want real issues solved. We'll be right back after this short break. Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart, Turner, host of Sustainable Hawaii. Thanks for watching Think Tech this summer. We have a lot of terrific shows of great importance, and I hope you'll watch my show too every Tuesday at noon as we address sustainability issues for Hawaii. They're really pertinent as the World Conservation Congress approaches in September, and the World Youth Congress that's focusing on sustainability next year as well. Have a great summer and tune in at noon every Tuesday. Aloha, this is Reg Baker with Business in Hawaii. We're a show that broadcasts every Thursday at 2 o'clock. We would love to hear from you, and you can reach us in several different ways. We have a hotline that you can call in at<PHONE_NUMBER>, or you can email us at thinktechhawaii.com, or you can tweet us at Think Tech H.I. Looking forward to hearing from you and seeing you on our next show. Aloha. Welcome back to Ehana Kako, here every week on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. Ehana Kako sounds like a venerable Hawaiian saying a pule kako, which means let's pray all together. That's what the kako is. At the grassroots institute we like to say ehana kako. Let's work together, because think of the terrible alternative. If we don't work together nothing gets done, but united we can do anything, and I know that's the spirit of my guest today, John Carroll, but before returning to him I want to say thank you to the good folks at Think Tech Hawaii, who produce about 35 hours of original content from downtown Honolulu that goes across the world. You can find that at thinktechhawaii.com. Now back to John Carroll running for United States Senate. He's been in politics, business, government, the military, but he's throwing his hat back into the rink. John, you must have some faith that the system can work if courageous people will get into it. Exactly, and I've seen it work, because when we were in the 70s when I was in the state legislature. The 1970s, right? No, 1870, but well, oh yeah, it was 1970. Anyway, no, when Ari Oshii was in here and we had guys like Tadal Beppu and John Oshii Jima, and well, people like Andy Anderson, Pat Psyche, we worked together, we got a lot of things done, and we had balance. And what has happened is totally out of balance now, and idiotic things are happening such as the rail. And just to give you an idea of the absurdity of Democrat leadership, you're coming to work through Pearl City.  This is a Democrat leadership at work, and I think people don't get it. I think little by little they are getting it. You've touched on a visceral issue for people. Traffic, of course, as well as paying for solutions to traffic, such as the rail. You seem to have a passion for things that affect locals here, such as the economy. Well, in what ways can you, from the perch of a U.S. senator, actually impact life here in Hawaii? Well, one of the things that I intend to do, and you're not a typical thing you'd probably talk about, but I intend to work with the local legislators here. For instance, when I was in the house, Waikiki used to flood up over the sidewalks. We did a, what do you call it, not EIS, but CIP and put in a whole new sewer system, and now, of course, they let it go. But the people that are in these seats need to know what they can do at the bottom level of their leadership in these different districts, and I think that kind of help coming from, maybe they'll see me as an outsider, maybe as their grandfather or something, but I think that can be done, and I think it can be done very effectively, and I intend to do that. I don't intend to be in an adversary position with the Democrats. What I do intend to do is to make them know, or let them know what I believe they can be doing, and then if they don't, it's going to set the stage for somebody to remove them. Now, John, you've been highly engaged in Native Hawaiian issues, and here in the state of Hawaii, there's a range of understanding from lack of knowledge to humiliation to hostility in terms of some of these issues, but for the most part, I think most people feel that the Hawaiians need to get those things that are set aside for them without government interfering, and one of those you've been monitoring has been Hawaiian homelands. Absolutely. A good number of people don't know the origin of this, but that was set aside that the state of land, the fourth largest state of land in the Hawaiian islands back in the 1920s, so that in terms of Prince Kohio's vision, Hawaiians could be as great as Americans in terms of being able to own a piece of the rock and have a private property ownership, but what's wrong with the way Hawaiian homelands has been structured and administered? Okay, historically, they've had a homesteading provision since about 18, I think 1883, somewhere in there, and in that provision that they had at that time, you had to be a citizen to get the land, and if you farmed it or did well with it for five years, you would then get it in fee simple. What I'm looking at now... Now, we've seen that all across the United States. If people go west, they stake their claim, they work the land, and then they own it and pass it on from generation to generation, and that's how you build generational wealth with fee simple real estate. Yes, but that's not how it is in Hawaii. No, it's not, and just talking about the system, there'd be somewhere between 24,000 and 44,000 qualified people on that list that are not getting land, and there's state land and federal lands all over this state that could be being used for Hawaiian homes, and one of them is Makua Valley, for instance. If they cleaned all of that ordinance out of there, that would make tremendous little farms just in that one area. But let's just go back for a moment. You mentioned tens of thousands of people who are qualified, and I believe that currently the waiting list itself is about 27,000. Okay, well, I've seen both, 24 and up to 44. That's right. There are about 24,000 waiting for residential lots, about 3,000 waiting for farming lots, but the point is people aren't getting onto that land. Precisely. And the land itself is actually available only as leasehold. What's wrong with making that land available as leasehold, rather than the Hawaiians actually being able to own it? Okay. That might be a rhetorical question, but I'd like you to spell that out for us. Well, number one is, I think, well, I've been saying for years, that the Hawaiian homelands, when they get the award of that land, it should be given to them in fee simple, not on a 99-year lease. Also, what's happening, I understand why Manalo, and I think Nanakuli, they have people where the family's had the land for 80 years or whatever, and then the descendants are below 25%. They have to get off the land. I mean, this is just absurd. And as far as I'm concerned, and what I am going to do my level best to have happen is to get the law changed so that they will have to give them that everybody on that list is going to get land in about two to three years from now, and that they will get it in fee simple, absolute, and we can do away with the Hawaiian Holmes Commission and all the oversight and nonsense that goes on, and they're leasing lands out for different things so they can make money to pay for the salaries of the commissioners and the ohas. Well, this is a radical plan to make the homestead land available at fee simple as opposed to merely lease hold. Well, yeah, but the 50% owner, I mean the 50% of Hawaiians have a right to that land. It should have been given to them a long time ago, and I have just for your information, 12 or 13 great-grandchildren who were all part of Hawaiian, not to mention grandchildren and children, so I just see them effectively being cheated because their grandmother was like three quarters Hawaiian, and she would never even think about it because she couldn't own it. She has quarter Chinese and that probably meant. Sure. John, one of your colleagues from when you were back in the state legislature gave me his impression of this proposal. He's a former legislator from a neighbor island, and he said this to the idea of providing the land fee simple. He said, and he's part Hawaiian, he said, you know, Kili, that's not good for our people because we'll only lose it. What are your thoughts about that? Well, absolutely, that's the standard argument, even some fairly intelligent people.  So you challenged that stereotype.  Well, I mean, and it's used as that stereotype is used simply politically to keep the Hawaiian homelands exactly as they are owned by the state rather than in the hands of Hawaiians. Yes, absolutely, and there's a lot of federal land that I'm looking at as a U.S. Senator and as a military guy too, by the way, that should be being returned to the state because when we have the state of Hawaii renting Dillingham Field from the federal government, there's something just intrinsically ridiculous about that, and there's a whole lot of these kinds of issues. We don't have time to get into them today, I don't think, but that's those are very high on my on my list of things to get done in the U.S. Senate. I really, can I just tell you, Yes, please. I had this aortic heart valve replacement, and most guys my age are dead, much less, you know, moving around running for anything, but the fact of the matter is with the energy that I have and the health that I have, I believe I can get these things done, and that's the reason that I am running, and also we have a website called carol4senate.com and I'm supposed to ask for money every time I get a chance, so we ask anybody who has seen this to send money either in the mail or donate by oh on the website, yeah. And John, you have many grandchildren. Yeah, not many, just 11. 11, well that's a good number. Well what kind of Hawaii do you envision for them when they grow up? Okay, that's a perfect question. I envision, well number one, Singapore has 250 square miles of land. We have about 6,000 square miles, and we've got the most beautiful fertile land in the entire world. There's no place better than Hawaii, and I've been around a lot. So anyway, that's number one. Number two, they have a gross domestic product of about 120 billion a year with this little 250 square miles. We have about 69 billion a year, the bulk of which is tourism and government spending, and then we've got homelessness, we've got joblessness, we've got a lousy education system. All of these things are things that I'm looking at. All of them I have solutions for, but what I perceive as a Hawaii where agriculture is probably our number one component, because we'll be able to get everything we need to farm, you know, and make profit. Plus we'll be able to ship our goods worldwide. I know, I think I mentioned to you one time that I bought a gift for a guy up in Sapporo, and I asked the Japanese VP, Japan Airline VP, what should I get this guy? I said get him a cantaloupe. I go to the store and the cantaloupe is $45. I can imagine what a mango would be compared to a lousy cantaloupe. I mean, it's crazy, so. And on that subject, you've drawn a connection between the Jones Act. Oh, no, absolutely, yes. And the cost of agriculture and agricultural products. What is that connection? Yes, it is. The connection is, is that if we have, well that's why I was talking about Singapore, because it'll have like 75 ships in the channel waiting to come in and offload either materials or take materials out. Everything from, you know, tennis shoes, squash rackets, and other things that I don't know about. But anyway, they, that's, that's the kind of vibrant community I see here, and we've got to get rid of the Jones Act, number one, to make that happen. So the cost of exporting as well as the lack of export ships here in Hawaii is one of the factors that keeps our agriculture down? Well, to be fair to Matson, they give very good rates for, for backflow, because they don't have anything to send out. But I know some of the guys selling cattle will put them on Matson, because there's no other way to do it. But the, but the biggest problem for the economy, if we're going to be in, if you want to call it an inter-port economy, we've got to have the ability to produce and then spread it out worldwide. And with that, I believe we can be the most solvent, most solvent enclave in the whole world. I really do believe that. What has to happen in order to restore Hawaii's greatness? Well, am I supposed to say, get me elected? There was a softball I was handing you over here. Well, I'll tell you what, if what I'm, what I'm saying should, to get done, will get done, that will restore it. And I have my kids paying attention to this race, and I'm looking at, well, fellas like you. I think you're key to the future here. Just for your audience to know, I heard this young man speaking at a, some breakfast or something, and I thought, my goodness, where's he been hiding? But he's got- You're too kind. You're too kind, John. Well, I'm not too kind, but your position on, well, number one on, on the Jones Act now, and then plus on the Hawaiian homes on education, every, every single thing that I'm concerned about, you were talking about him at a time nobody knew who you were. Well, thank you. And thank you. Talking about time, it's time for us to move on and let the folks out there, ponder the, the reasons you've given to become our next United States Senator. Okay, thank you very much. Thanks so much, John. So glad to have you. Could I say one more thing? One last thing, please. Very few people have 84 years to plan to run for office, so. There you go. And keep on running long after that. Have no fear. My guest today, Senator John Carroll, he's served Hawaii in the state legislature, and now he's put his hat into the rink for a United States Senate seat. I hope you've enjoyed learning his positions. We'll be back next week on Ehana Kako, here every week on the ThinkTack Hawaii Broadcast Network. Until then, aloh.


Today we're finally making my favorite cookie, peanut butter. Hey y'all, it's Tammy with Colored Valley Cooks and today I got out my ever trusted binder where I've saved a lot of recipes and I am making my favorite peanut butter cookie which is literally the Jeth peanut butter cookie recipe. It uses Crisco instead of butter and I do think it makes a better, chewier peanut butter cookie to use shortening. So, we are going to start this recipe and I can't wait to eat them. First thing you need to do, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Now when you're mixing up cookies, brownies, cakes, the first thing you add is your shortening or butter. So we are going to add a half cup of white shortening. Okay, so we've got a half cup of shortening in our mixer and now we're going to add one and three-quarter cups of brown sugar. Now the recipe calls for light brown sugar but I went to the store the other day and I bought darker brown sugar so I'm just going to mix the two up in here. So you need a cup and a half and you're going to pack it into your measuring cup for more of the merrier, I think. A half of brown sugar and now we're just going to turn on our mixer and start mixing that shortening and sugar together. Thun of vanilla, soda. So here's our salt. So a half and a quarter of course and I use crepe-operated milk because it's handy to grab out of the refrigerator so you can use regular milk. And just in case, there's something under there that didn't get mixed up good.  I like to do that when I make cookies no matter if it tells me to. If it says I need them or I don't need it. This is this chocolate chip minus peanut butter. Cookies, because I really like theirs, you're going to like these. I think this is the best peanut butter cookie recipe, period. Why not use the Jeff recipe if it's good? All right, so when I do peanut butter, I typically take a fork, dip it in my flour. I do peanut butter, I typically take my fork and dip it in my flour and I do a crisscross on them. And then of course, I go the opposite direction as well. You don't have to go the opposite direction. You can just do the one direction. I've seen the oven at 375 degrees for eight minutes. Now don't overdo your cookies, don't make them way too big so that you know that the cooking time's gonna work well. You want them to be crunchy around the edges and chewy on the inside and that's why you set it to 375 degrees. The rest of your cookies on a larger sheet while these are baking if you have one and clean up your mess. So we're gonna take these out, this lip on it, which keeps you from being able to just slide a pan out and it's really more trouble than it's worth.  Cheesy mothers, choose Jeff and they also choose Jeff, peanut butter cookie recipe. We are going to show you how these turned out. They are, got a little bit of a crunch on the outside rim and they're nice and chewy on the inside just like I like them. And of course you got to have a glass of milk and yes I put ice in my milk because my husband taught me how to do that. Nobody in my family ever did it, but Chris did and we've been married long enough that we're one and we do the same things. The timing on them is perfect. It's perfect. I was afraid they weren't gonna be done enough but after they cooled and got crunchy on the outside, they're absolutely delicious. I can tell I used a little bit of the dark brown sugar and I prefer the light brown sugar. So if you make this recipe and you're going to buy the ingredients and I will put on the recipe light brown sugar. They're still delicious but I would prefer the light. Thanks for watching. Collard Valley Cooks, where we cook, like mama did.


We have the Dow Industries right now up 100, you get the Nasdaq up 53, S&Ps are up 14, gold contract, gold contract flat at 1500 and $10 an ounce. We have Silver Down, a penny at $18.04 an ounce, Light Sweet Crude up 33 cents, trade in $56, 53 cents, a barrel, notes and bonds. The 10-year is down 13 ticks, $129.18, the 30 years off of 4.5 ticks at $159.16. Let's get over to that 10-year and take a look at the 10-year. So last week, folks, you went top side, you had volume behind the move top side, conviction behind the move top side. And what are you doing out here today? Guess what? You're pulling back, dramatically lighter volume. We're doing 952,000 contracts versus 2.4 million on the way up. So the bottom line is that notes as well as bonds still want higher price. Pretty amazing, but that's what they want. King Dollar, King Dollar out here right now, we are building cars to get into a lower swing point. King Dollar right now is trading at a price point. We are up, sorry about that, 332 ticks, 97, 561, the euro is at 111, the yen is out here trading at 108.64, and the pound is out here at 128 to $1.00 USD. We can get over and take a look at the spy, what you're going to be looking at the spy is this, S&Ps, NASDAQ 100, as well as the composite made a new high out here, you had 42 million shares traded. The spy actually did 71 million on Friday, and the X, however, as well as the NASDAQ composite that had a pretty good contraction of volume as you got into those highs, it got over those highs on Friday, and you got another one today. We did 22 million on Friday, you're at 14 million right now, that's saying that yeah, I can do about 17, 18 million shares. To recap out here, Dow industrials right now trading up 90 NASDAQs up 50, S&Ps are up 12 and a half, stay right there folks, coming right back with the next 60 minutes to trading.


Hello everybody. My name is Frank Quinn. I am the current OpenMama maintainer and founder of Cascadia Unlimited where we focus on bridging proprietary and open source technologies. So I'm here to talk to you today about OpenMama and about how it is useful for both market data managers and software vendors who are trying to promote their software and their market data solutions into market data managers. So we're going to start off by showing the introduction to OpenMama and what it is and where it's used and then we're going to go into some of the applications for market data managers and then we're going to move on to some discussion around the applications for market data vendors and for application vendors and then we're going to go into a quick demonstration of consuming using OpenMama from both a proprietary data source and from an open platform data source and then we're going to finish off with some questions and answers. So we will just dive in here. So we'll start off by asking the question. What is what is OpenMama? So for those of you who don't know OpenMama is effectively an abstraction layer and it is the API that your application would write to and but behind that API it interfaces with the underlying proprietary technologies and Open Technologies. So an OpenMama application doesn't need to worry about which platform it's publishing on to or which platform it's consuming from and all that OpenMama application needs to do is subscribe to market data using a configuration transport and a bridge which is usually provided by the platform API. So for example, you can use OpenMama with the exact same application to consume data from one middleware or you can use it to consume from a completely different middleware and your application doesn't actually change. It's a runtime configuration and you drop in a different library, different configuration file and then you can start consuming or publishing on to a different market data platform without any changes at all to your application. So why is this so important? Well, the main benefit is that your application no longer needs to worry about the underlying technologies, supporting lots of different technologies. It means that in terms of choice the market data manager or the business can, for whatever reason, decide to switch between different market data technology providers without significant costs and overheads associated with actually making the switch and the development overheads and the support maintenance associated with that. It has flexibility. There's the same API. You can switch between open source and proprietary technologies and all people are building their own open source-based platforms in-house at the moment. That's why we'll completely support that. The other main advantage is that it can be extended. So there's a plug-in interface for OpenMama that allows you to get events fired in whenever certain things happen like subscriptions are created or messages are received and so you can control your auto trail in a standard way as well. We have bindings currently available for C++, C-sharp and Java including recent development, which was C-sharp on .NET Core. So you can use OpenMama with C-sharp on Linux, which is a bit of a big step for us, but it seems to work pretty well. So that's effectively what OpenMama is for. It provides that abstraction layer away from underlying technologies. So you don't need to be concerned about the underlying platforms that your data is publishing to or subscribing from and that's it. That's all it is. So if you have a look around you as to where it is and where it's deployed, it was first officially published in 2012. It comes from a long line of non-open source APIs, which have been in production for decades. So it's very much a mature offering that has a lot of production miles behind it. With the nature of the client base involved though, there's not a huge amount of publicly declared people who use it, but there are some out there. The most notable ones include J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank, who are members of the Station Committee and the NYFX who have recently published a zero MQ derived API as well for OpenMama to allow OpenMama to publish and subscribe on to a completely open source platform. So there are lots of products out there that belong and integrate with it. We get support requests a lot that come in from lots of different customers as well. So and there's a much bigger world out there. The integrations that we provide, or the integrations that are provided by the community, extend into wider technologies and wider platforms. It's not uncommon to use OpenMama purely as an abstraction layer to get data into a larger platform from perhaps a more niche provider that the market data manager may not want to go to the effort of writing an API for there either. And the other thing worth doing is that it's used to cross all asset classes, FX, options, futures, derivatives, they're all in use with OpenMama to varying degrees. It traditionally comes from the equity side, but it does have an awful lot of use outside of that and in different asset classes as well. So if we take a look inside the mindset of the market data manager and the problems and challenges that are facing them, there's always new functional pressures. There's always something that somebody wants. There's a new market data provider. There's a new way that they want to access historical data and there'll always be something that comes in and EDCs for in-house feed handlers. It's a very, very busy job being a market data manager and the general biggest recurring thing is that they need to continually support the variety of different little snowflake applications and platforms which all need to play nicely with each other. Against the backdrop of this, you have all the performance constraints that go with that. So you've got low latency, but you need to also support high bandwidth. The data needs to be very well normalized. It needs to look the same across different data sources. There's usually lots of tweaks required from the third party provider to try and get it to behave like that. It's basically a constant struggle to try and get things to look in a sort of regular way that is easier to manage and easier to maintain. On top of this, it tends to be one of the biggest cost centers in where they're deployed. So you have constant cost efficiency problems. They want to reduce footprint. They want to reuse data that they've paid for once. They want to make sure that the same data is reused elsewhere if they can and if the license allows them to. On top of that, you've got the regulatory requirements that come in from the side. So the result of all this is that market data managers generally don't build everything themselves. There will be a number of open source, proprietary, quite niche in-house technologies, and they all need to play nicely with each other. And that's really the challenge that they're facing today, trying to get all those to rein in and play nicely together. So we're going to walk through, this is a very simplified version of what a platform would look like. But the main thing that you need to take away from this is that the technologies here are effectively isolated. If you've got a market data vendor either who is publishing data onto their platform, it may also be an in-house messaging platform which may have been written or may have been maintained for previous reasons and has been too costly to move away from, or it has its own advantages to a unique use case for the target deployment. And that can't disappear either. So you end up having these redistribution layers to try and attempt to make sense of them and to try to publish data onto multiple data sources or to switch data sources or data platforms. So the requirement is that the API that we have here is deployed across all applications that need to consume from that platform. And it's not just messaging either, there's entitlements, there's compliance logging, there's drop copies, there's lots of things that need to be done outside of purely the market data stream. And that's where the plugin interface that I was talking about earlier on could come into play with Oklahoma. I'm going to try to put those across in a standardized way. But the applications, because their APIs are writing to these platforms directly, they're effectively locked into the underlying vendors. And this is a very simplified diagram where we have one application trading box there. But in the real world, there could be tens, hundreds, thousands of those deployed, and each of which are locked into the underlying technology vendor directly, where they're written directly to that API. And of course the alternative to this is that the market data monitors applications abstract themselves from the underlying API. But then of course you've effectively got an API that does what OpenMama does, deployed and maintained in-house without putting resource, without everything that comes associated with OpenMama. So the main takeaway from this is that whenever new technologies come along, whenever technologies go out of fashion, the cost of migrating to a new platform is quite high, because the APIs that are being used by each of these other applications, there's just so many of them, it's very difficult to switch them. So you end up picking third parties and technologies based on, okay, what's going to not make my life a misery whenever I go to deploy this, as opposed to what is actually the best product to solve the problem that I'm facing at the minute. So that's what the market data platform will collect the moment whenever there's no OpenMama involved anywhere. So what happens whenever you do involve OpenMama? Now, the main takeaway here is that OpenMama isn't a platform. I think of a lot of things that you may have seen in the past, OpenMama has been very much portrayed as a platform. It's an abstraction there away from an underlying platform. So there's nothing to stop an OpenMama application publishing and subscribing onto one vendor messaging platform or an in-house messaging platform or an in-house entitlement tracking system or a compliance logger. There's nothing to stop any of that. OpenMama is really just an API. It's a standard way to try and handle market data events. So it doesn't need to be used everywhere. And that's why purposefully in this diagram, you see the little boxes at the bottom, you don't need to do it in all applications. You don't need to do it even everywhere in the same application. You can just be used where it's appropriate to try and reduce the overhead associated with maintaining support for each of these third-party platforms. Because the OpenMama API itself is very stable. I don't think there has been any application interface changes since its launch. So this means that the OpenMama API can be used to trigger events in certain ways. It can be used to access data in the same way. And it can be used for both subscribing and publishing. It can effectively be used in place of a traditional feed handler to try and get data from a data source, a direct data source, and get it out into another platform elsewhere. Or it can be used fairly piecemeal, and just use it for connecting to an individual platform. But the main takeaway is that the underlying technology doesn't have to change. There's no major upheaval of underlying tech that you need to change. And if you do, then please let us know because that is not the goal of OpenMama. OpenMama is supposed to be pretty passive in the underlying platforms, and it's supposed to operate alongside it as opposed to pushing its opinions onto it. So if we move away from the market data managers just for a moment to discuss the application and the market data vendors who are trying to target these platforms. There's generally the opposite problem involved there in that platform migrations for them are very difficult because every customer's target platform is different and everybody's requirements are different. And if you want to introduce a new API that's a significant cost, a significant risk associated with the market data manager whenever they look at it. So a market data vendor can't just go into a market data manager and say, we want to replace your entire platform, and they may have a platform which they may want the market data manager to use, but they don't want it to be a core entry to requirement because it just lights up red lights in the market data manager whenever they see this coming on. Because it's a dangerous thing to try and add another new platform or form as they could often get known to try and handle another market data platform provider who wants to get the data onto your platform. So what happens if a market data vendor wants to target a non-OpenMama application? So the first thing I notice is that that non-OpenMama application probably already has other APIs. They might not be for market data or they might be for market data, but they're going to be there. There's already a cost of development associated with maintaining whatever it's already doing. So without OpenMama, if I could be introducing a new one, you're expecting the client to write to your application code. I mean, it's great that you've got an API that makes it easy to consume from the market data that you're providing, or maybe you've got a protocol specification that you're providing instead, but the expectation is still going to be on the customer to understand that API and to write their application to it. And part of the difficulty with opportunity cost as it goes down the timeline is that what might seem initially as quite a compelling prospect because you're only targeting a single application during a POC phase and you're receiving the market data and it's fine. Whenever it starts to roll out to a pilot and they start to try and target a real-world application or cluster of applications, it becomes increasingly complicated and then something, whenever it's deployed across the enterprise or hundreds of applications, the adoption cost increases with time and the complexity increases with time and the expectation and the burden on the customer increases with time. And the result of that is that the net value of the proposition that you're proposing is actually reduced because the customer needs to factor in the price of migrating all these applications to the market data provider. And because of that, there's not an awful lot of volatility in terms of technology used in the application space. So what happens whenever it's switched around and then OpenMama compatible apps are targeted or as an alternative, OpenMama is the chosen API that you tell clients to use whenever they're switching market data providers. So the core takeaway is the client code doesn't change. If you're consuming from an OpenMama data source coming down from transport A and you're moving to effectively transport B, bridge B the client software doesn't change. It doesn't even recompile. It's just a different configuration and a different runtime library dropped in. So it means that it does shift a bit of the expectation on to the vendor to develop the bridge for OpenMama. But that's what we developed once and once it's developed in our experience anyway there's very little maintenance associated with it particularly compared with an in-house API where you've got client opinions to contend with. And what effectively happens is that the adoption cost for clients is reduced because it's not being duplicated across every application that they have. And in the event that they don't have OpenMama yet and you're introducing OpenMama as the core API that you're suggesting that they use that's a much more compelling story for a customer to get on board with because they know, okay, so if I consume data from you and I decide to change my mind at a later point I'm no longer stuck to your platform. I don't have to go through this massive migration cost to try and move to yet another market data provider. So the risk is much lower there as well. And as well as that the ongoing development cost which is often overlooked for this from a client's point of view is much lower as well. And the support for the API that the client is writing to comes from the community. It comes from the OpenMama community. It doesn't necessarily go straight to the vendor unless there's a bug in the underlying vendor software. So that's the main value proposition from a market data vendor and an application vendor's point of view. It's worth noting as well that we've discussed market data providers here but the same thing applies to any application that's perhaps even consuming from different market data platforms and things like tick capture platforms and technologies like that can all benefit from using OpenMama to try and abstract itself away from the underlying technology that's in use. So whenever you break it down OpenMama really is all about choice and neutrality. It's not an encompassing platform that's going to come in and expect to make massive changes in your deployment. Its main core value from the start has always been that the selection of a market data vendor or an application vendor should be based on how good it is and how high a quality it is and how low the latency is. It's based on how sticky their API is or how inconvenient it is to choose anyone other than whatever incumbent is currently present on your platform. It also breaks down the silos between the platforms. It means that you can bridge between different technologies if you want to. You can migrate slowly away from other platforms if needs be without having to worry about going big bang and using OpenMama everywhere. And if you don't want to use it everywhere that's absolutely 100% fine. That's what it's for. It will consume and produce on to different platforms as and when required and if they can be used as an abstraction there for direct exchanges should it needs be. The applications if you're a market data application provider you can just benefit from connectivity to every OpenMama supported platform simply by writing to OpenMama instead of directly to the third party platform APIs themselves. There's a reduced risk for the customer and there's nothing to stop in-house technologies from moving to OpenMama as well. The bridge API is open. The OpenMama community will support you and create new bridges should it be required. There's actually been a lot of effort made in the last year to reduce the complexity that's required in building your own bridge. So it's much easier to build an OpenMama bridge than it has ever been and because the OpenMama API is public and it's free and it's open source there's nothing to stop an application development being outsourced with a nice firm specification and the API is public there is no licensing associated with using it so there's nothing to stop external parties from writing their own software. Okay so we're going to switch over here to an OpenMama demo here and we did pre-record it because we needed to record it during market hours over here and so we're going to demonstrate the OpenMama portable demo environment and switching between open source and proprietary technologies the proprietary technology being Vela's certified product without any recompilation and a simple reconfiguration and a new library installed. Okay so we're going to show a demo here of what we call the OpenMama portable demo environment. Now we do have some documentation about this on our website and the default format that we have here is an AWS AMI you're welcome to extend this we use the official CentOS images which means that you can extend them without any licensing fears and we have instructions there for how to build your own if you want to build it with Vagrant or if you want to set up a demo environment on a bare metal box so in the instance that we have here we have an AWS AMI that is already set up with a BS image and we're just going to log into it here now so the first thing that you see is that it tells you that OpenMama is installed up OpenMama it has the Cupid Bridgeby default and the binaries are all in the path so one of the binaries with OpenMama includes MamaListenC which is a test utility that allows you to connect to an OpenMama data source and print some data out from it so we're going to just go ahead and run it here the source is OM the middleware bridge which is the plug-in bridge that we were talking about is Cupid in this instance the transport name is sub and we have a nice currency mix symbol there so if we run this up we can see the instrument starts ticking we can see some data coming out of that which is great now that is connecting to CaptureDemon which is running locally and that's the fact that we're connecting to there is no external market data source involved here now that's great but what if we did want to include an external market data source well we do have a repository that third parties are free to contribute to which will give access to optional additional bridges that people can add as and when the Cupid has OpenMama Superfeed which was contributed by Vala so if we install that and have a look after OpenMama then we can see that some of the middleware bridges that if you were familiar with Vala you would have seen before will be available on the LD Labry path there for OpenMama to use so and if we want to get the same OpenMama command that we have before on this in C that provided us with alternative source name and middleware here is their data file by middleware the transport is the data which we just copy and pasting for another window here and the symbol name is another isoncarnic which is here now that's not going to work yet because we haven't configured the configuration of our properties to point to the new data source so bridges can pull in configuration from the standard OpenMama transport list to find out how to connect to the upstream data sources so we have Vala added here so we'll add those in and try the command again and you can see some data starting to tick in from the Superfeed the led data source that they've provided us with so what's involved with getting the same application to connect to multiple different data sources without any recompilation which is opened at runtime and a different configuration so if we go in there to the every demo kit that we have has a checkout of OpenMama's code and so we'll just go into the C++ tutorials that we've got here so that's an example quick start up that we've got and in our demo we'll show you how to get acquainted with OpenMama there are versions available for C, C++, C-Sharp and Java the C-Sharp one will actually go on .NET Core as well so you can run it on Linux so if we create a build directory here as is the standard for CMake we'll do a quick build this is a brand new application which doesn't know anything about Vala or any other it was built against OpenMama and OpenMama then decides which libraries to load so we will go ahead and run this little quick start application run this little quick start application and provide the same commands as what's provided to connect to Superfeed with the data and we can see we're starting to click there in our little example application too so we'll do an introduction to OpenMama and how we can switch between different data sources without any recombination being required or any co-changes required in the app okay so that concludes our presentation on OpenMama thanks everyone for their time we've provided some resources here to let you follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn if you like you can send us an email on the mailing list if you want to get some extensive support and we're also available on Gitter if anyone wants to have a chat with us or at least have some high level discussions around and how you like to use OpenMama in your organization thanks again and we'll leave it to the Q&A