 Hi everybody. I'm Matthew Cunningham Cook, and this is Representative Tanya Vajhovsky. And we're going to start with Tanya talking about the current state of play in the legislature, and also kind of just a little bit of the history of the session and the ways in which folks coming together and advocating. And organizing really altered the direction of the proposed pension cuts. So, our way, Tanya. Awesome. Thanks, Matthew. I am representative Tanya Vajhovsky. I represent in eight one, which is Essex town primarily. And I serve on the government operations committee and one of the things we were tasked with this year was looking at the state employees and teachers pensions and I sort of came in expecting. We spent a lot of time really learning about pensions and being given this education, which seemed really reasonable to me as a new legislator, coming in not really knowing the lay of the land and sort of meanwhile what we were seeing what what was apparently happening was some some pension planning was kind of happening behind the scenes that then was presented to the committee and to the public at the same time, which was pretty shocking you know I the message sort of was like it's okay we've got this just trust us and what became pretty you know and my message out had been yes the treasurer's plan is bad and we're going to really you know it's a starting point we're going to build on it we're going to make it better and then what we were given was so much worse. And so it was a lot of times really felt like we were playing like I was playing catch up like and so I had to quickly sort of verse myself in in pensions sort of outside the process so that I felt like I had a full understanding of really what was going on and what I learned in that is that I did that I wasn't given a full picture and so the pension plan sort of we were given like these six different levers we could pull to make changes and this plan pulled all of them, and it seemed almost predetermined like here's the plan this is like the train was going and we had been left back in the station but what happened is I was able I am an activist and that is you know organizing and that work is is what I know and so I was able to connect with my friends who are teachers and my friend and my friends who are state employees and start to give that information out which allowed us all to come together really quickly and actually from that plan dropping to when it was pulled back was it took it was nine days. So very quickly the people coming together without with just huge outcry I mean I responded to hundreds of emails from teachers and state employees and I responded to every single one of them and what I started hearing back from people were the only one that responded to me you're not even my representative I live in Bennington and nobody else responded to me. And so quickly we I was able to start to connect with these individual people and start to pull these stories together, and, and bring my information and the education I was giving myself into that space and sort of that inside outside of organizing was able to kind of disrupt what was happening, which was pretty amazing and well, you know we slowed the process down pretty significantly we were able to ultimately stop anything major from happening this year and so this fight. We can chalk up as a win but it's certainly not over, because what we did get was a task force for next year, or for a summer task force to advise us for what to do next year, and what came out of the house was honestly pretty disappointing it was an unbalanced task it had. I'm trying to do the math really quick and I believe six what what we finally got was six representatives from labor it was three NEA members and three BSEA members one who was from the troopers association, and then nine representatives from various government places. And then six legislators and then two governmental appointees and someone from the treasure or governor appointees and someone from the treasurer's office. And the argument was made because there were six legislators and six people from labor that it in fact was a balanced task force, which we all know is nonsense that it was absolutely not balanced. However, anticipating this sort of bad bill coming out of the house I began organizing with with counterparts in the Senate, and what was voted out of the Senate today unanimously is a balanced task force of 10 members, five members from labor and five members from these various government bodies there's two legislators, someone from the treasurer's office and two governor governor appointees. So, and then, like I said the five labor members and this bill came out with the support of the pension investment task committee, the support of the House of Labor, and the support of the treasurer's office, whereas the House bill had none of those, the support from none of those thing, people, and the bill will in all likelihood go to conference committee that's what I'm hearing today is that as soon as the bill came out of out of the Senate that the House leadership is asking for it to go to conference committee, which means that three members from the House and three members from the Senate will come together to try to come up with a compromise bill. And from there, that gets voted up or down in the House and Senate there's no amendment no discussion whatever comes out of conference committee is just a yay or nay vote. So we're kind of at this point like we have a much better bill coming out of the Senate and the two bills will kind of will probably land somewhere in the middle. And that change pretty significantly in the Senate from the House is the mandate of the task force. So the mandate from the House really said that we needed to get the ADEC which is what the state has to pay the normal cost every year, down to what it was in the Senate. So that was really an and we had to evaluate possible revenue streams. Those were the only tasks so really from the outset what we were being asked to do was find a way to save a lot of money and without other avenues of a looking what we weren't doing, like all we were really looking to do is make cuts like that's really what that was setting us up to do and so even with a balanced task force if all we're doing is saying great Labor tell us what to cut. We're not really looking at the whole picture. And I think the important thing to do to realize is that from the onset this was painted as a crisis and there's over $5 billion in the bank of liquid assets it's not a crisis. I didn't get anyone to answer for me not the treasurer, not the various people in leadership who were trying to really push forward that we had to do something immediately. None of them would answer for me when is this fund going to become insolvent so what they would say is it's not going to be this year it's not going to be next year, we've got $5.5 billion in assets. So, for me, is there a problem. Yes, we do see that the ADEC is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and we certainly need to look at that and we need to look at the fund performance. And we need to, but we need to take, we have the time to take a full dive into what's happening, why it's happening how to make it structurally better. And that was not on the backs of our teachers and our essential state workers and so that was really one of the things for me that was this huge red flag because it was it's a crisis it's a crisis it's a crisis but nobody could tell me like where where's the crisis. And so that's that's kind of the, the frame of what we saw how it kind of traveled and where we're at now but what I think was the most, I mean it really truly as someone who's a first year legislator and has looked at the process from the outside and always sort of had this sense like a lot of it feels predetermined I was shocked for on the inside as to how predetermined it really was so much of it felt like we're going to ask for your input and then just plow ahead with what we're doing. And what changed it was that ability to organize across across that sort of like state house divide from from inside those rooms to outside with the with the teachers and the state employees that is what changed it really like I couldn't have done it myself just like all the other things we're sort of asking for and wanting to shift and change. I can't do it by myself but what we saw is that when we come together and when we get organizers into those seats that can bring those things that can bring people with them. We can change it and we did and we're going to have to keep that energy through the next year while we continue because while we continue because this fight isn't over. I'm sure I'm going to actually kick back over to Matthew because I think he's going to tell us a little bit more about kind of what is framing this fight and where it is coming from sort of larger than the Vermont State House. Thank you that was amazing Tonya. Yeah, I've covered all the really essential points I think yeah and I just wanted to say is that you know in my conversations with Tonya, it really helped me understand exactly what was happening inside of the capital with these discussions because there really was a lockout of information. Even once the plan was introduced about kind of, okay so what are the factors playing in here, who are the actors kind of moving this and what is happening even for somebody like myself has spent a lot of time looking at this stuff. It was so rushed and so quick that it was really difficult to get a handle on. So I wanted to thank Tonya so much again for her inside the dome expertise as a first year legislator, helping activists on the outside like myself get a handle about what's what's actually happening. So, yeah, you know we're going to kind of. So, yeah, you know, I'm just going to start with some kind of vocab about pensions and, you know, to kind of just start from square zero. So, yeah, what we're fighting about right now in Vermont is over a defined benefit pension and that means that it's, you know, you know what you're going to get in retirement. And basically DB pensions are really only in the public sector these days so there's a few, you know, in construction and some teamsters and maritime kind of pension funds but for the most part most Americans don't have a pension anymore. And that's been really deliberate and we're going to kind of get into that some more. But what most Americans have instead is a defined contribution plan. And there's no guaranteed payout and so they're dependent on kind of the returns of the market. And there's a lot of problems in the way that DC plans are managed. They tend to have really high fees, higher than public pension funds and those fees really do significantly eat away. The long term returns of those plans hundreds of thousands of dollars for the typical American. And, you know, an actuary is is is a professional who makes estimates that form the basis for deciding how much money is going to be put into a defined benefit plan. An actuarially required contribution isn't the annual country, which the ADAC that that Tonya was talking about is the annual contribution to a public plan from the employer and employee contributions so just wanted to get that out of the way first. So, you know, this is really, you know, Vermont is not at all unique visit this is a nationwide attack. And, you know, I wanted to say, I forgot to mention before any questions you have we're monitoring the Facebook comments so if you feel free to ask any questions of either me or Tonya and Lisa will shoot those over to us so And so the attacks this so this is kind of all post financial crisis and the attacks have included higher employee contributions reduced cost of living adjustments, higher retirement ages, new pension tiers for new employees so you know millennials and Gen Z basically get soaked into shift public employees into 401ks or DC plans. And this, this attack really does coincide with what I call mass media hysteria over the scale of long term liabilities and we really do see this in Vermont, you know this, these really big numbers that are thrown around but there's not a lot of context that these numbers are given and it's not in the context of the other components of the state budget. It's not in the context of the total wealth that our economy has, you know, so I mean, like, as I have kind of written elsewhere in Vermont has 15,000 millionaires. That's a lot of people, you know, who have over a million dollars in assets, and we're not, you know, the billions and billions of unfunded liabilities is not kind of put in the context of, you know, there's extraordinary wealth and wealth inequality in Vermont that taxes can both help to resolve whatever funding problems there are and reduce some of the inequality that we, we face. Um, so here's kind of the history, you know, is is that's my, so this might not be totally accurate because there's been some changes so I, this is my reading of it. So kind of there was legislation in 2008 that increased the percentage of salary that state employees must contribute to their pension from 3.25 to 5%. The rates were increased and extended in 2011, 2011 increase in the state employees country's contribution rate reduced the employer's cost of benefits earned each year from 4.81% to 3.99%. And it's currently as high as 8.53% in terms of state employee contributions, which is, you know, it's that's not totally out of line with other states but it is much higher than it used to be and it's not like there, and instead of kind of looking for alternative sources of revenue, like the wealthy instead we've kind of let you know wealth concentration in Vermont become even more significant and inequality grow even get greater wealth state employees that a greater and greater portion of their salaries to to fund their pension. So, who is kind of behind all this stuff, you know, so, I mean, it's really important to kind of recognize that, you know, basically, all media reporting on unfunded liabilities comes from three think tanks. Pew Brookings and Urban and the Pew Foundation, the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, all of whom have as their primary funder for their pension practices one person individually or one couple individually, in particular, who's John Arnold, and his wife, Laura Arnold. And he's not, you know, it's, it's really interesting kind of how little, you know, the media and politicians have been willing to scrutinize as, you know, somebody like this because he was the head of the trading desk at Enron that led to really significant spikes in California energy prices. There's a famous email from the Enron litigation about kind of, and I'm paraphrasing but, you know, let's, you know, let's drive grandma out of her home, you know, due to high energy prices, and that was written by one of his subordinates at Enron online. And so, you know, then he later headed his own hedge fund called Centaurus. He was betting against price swings in the natural gas market. So, you know, what we kind of see like that is, you know, I mean, if you, you know, have trouble kind of heating your home in winter, you know that, you know, people like John Arnold do kind of have a role to play in that, you know, they're basically just feeding off of price instability in the market to kind of drive up prices even further with them taking a cut. And he retired in 2012, in either his early 40s or late 30s. And he started his own foundation but he's made very clear what the, the, his motives were, he said he read a book, you know, about the power of public sector unions. And he thought that they have way too much power, and that they're making America broke and he wanted to come up with a way to reduce the political power and influence of public sector unions. And as a result, he spent over $50 million working to advance pension cuts at the local level and really kind of anywhere that you look where there's been kind of the types of pension cuts that are not done in conjunction with labor unions or you know, are really aggressive like Rhode Island or San Jose are kind of the two, two of the more prominent examples are New Jersey. You know, John Arnold's fingers are really behind it in one way or another, because the reporting and the data that is advanced all comes from these three think tanks who have the same funder. And, and again, it's all about kind of what, what, you know, pension liabilities are going to make the country go broke and very little about the investment management of the funds. So kind of the case study for this is the current Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo when she was governor of Rhode Island and before she was treasurer, she massively amped up the risk in Rhode Island's pension portfolio, hedge funds, private equity, care fees, tons of money flowing at the door to Wall Street while advancing huge cuts to retiree benefits. And he gave her campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars through super PACs. And so yeah, this is the book, you know, yeah, reading that book says the, yeah, said Arnold just made me mad. And that this other quote that I just think is totally insane is, you know, when pressed on what he does for fun, he hesitates, probably shouldn't put that in print. So again, you know, this is somebody who really deserves additional scrutiny for the types of things that he is financing, he's actually also a huge funder of kind of pre crime minority reports type stuff as well. And we predict crime. And that's also kind of got very little coverage, very little investigation in the way that he is using his funds to advance, you know, very particular private policy agendas. So I'm going to kind of specifically look at kind of Arnold and Pew's relationship. This is a great short video that was done by the National Public Pension Coalition that I used to sit on their board for a few years actually. Okay, but we're not getting sound. I don't know why that is. Oh, you know what, maybe. Okay, I have an idea. One second. I'm going to quickly, while you work on that I'm going to answer one of the questions I see the Facebook about the current breakup of the task force so the task force that came out of the house was a 15 member task force, and it was comprised of three members from the NEA, two members for or three members from the VSE a one of whom had to be from the troopers association, six legislators, three from the house and three from the Senate, the director of financial regulation, the director of government and the director of human resources so those are all admin governors administration, people will get the director of financial regulation and the director of human resources. It are both part of the governor's administration so all of those people were various parts of government so that was nine members of government and then six members from the unions. The task force is a 10 member task force with two members from the House of Representatives to from the Senate, the secretary of administration and the state treasurer, three members from the Vermont NEA, two members from the VSE a and one member from the House of Representatives Association, and now that I'm doing math I'm actually realizing this is a 12 person task force, but it is six members of those various government organizations and six members from the unions. So that's how it comes out to be more balanced. The other thing I think is really important to note in just what I'm hearing Matthew say is this idea that the pensions are draining the economy but actually here in the Senate one of the things that we saw is for every dollar that's invested into the pensions a $1.60 is is generated within the economy so the pension the investment in our pensions is not only bringing talented workforce that could work could be in the private sector in pay it's it is and it's deferred wages it's wages like I said that they would be getting if they worked in the private sector that they're not getting because they're choosing to work in the public sector, but it also is actually generating money for our economy, it is not a drain on our economy it is it is in fact the opposite. Yeah, answers. Well yeah and to build on and I'll get to this very soon but you know, there is a drain on the economy from the pensions on the investment side you know but not on the benefit side where it creates, it really helps to sustain all of the small businesses and grocery stores and you know things that we really value about our community that that that these essential average of 24 grand a year pensions help to provide. So yes, I think it was because I was wearing my headphones that we were having those sound problems. So, this video is nice and short though so is a fine organization with a sterling reputation. So why is their public sector retirement systems project campaigning to eliminate public pensions through misleading research, leaving families across the country without their hard earned retirement savings? Maybe it's because John Arnold has given almost $10 million to one small branch of Pew and hijacked their good name to help mask his attacks on public pensions. The money he's poured into Pew has gone toward flawed data and questionable studies meant to sway state legislators across the country. The research out of Pew supports cash balance and hybrid plans in states like Kentucky, Kansas, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, which wind up costing states millions. And who pays for those losses? Working Americans and their families. Don't sit by while John Arnold hijacked Pew's reputation funds misinformation and works to eliminate public pensions. Visit protect pensions.org slash pew to learn more and to take action today. Yeah, so MPBC is a is a labor union fact group that I think I said I used to sit on their board and they do really kind of great work, especially kind of on this. John Arnold question and kind of the ways in which his actions really kind of help to sabotage the communities that we really value. So, you charitable truck. So, yeah, you know. Yeah, this is, you know, so if you recall kind of this, you know, there. In 2018 there was Janice be asked me which really, which eliminated the what's called the closed shop in the public sector the requirement that you either join the union or you pay a certain fee to support the cost of representation. And, and so that the Supreme Court in alliance with with the Koch brothers and, and folks like John Arnold as well, kind of got that they did that in 2018. But they kind of realized very quickly I think that Janice was not the kill shot at public sector unions they hoped it would be. And actually in some respects has made unions stronger it's forced unions to do a lot more internal organizing. And so the, the, the, the more sophisticated step on their part is to attack pensions. And so that's because billionaires understand that pensions depend that unions sorry that unions not pensions depend on having a stable workforce in the open shop environment created by Janice So when you in a Janice type of environment unions can only survive if people are staying at their jobs. And, and when they see a problem not quitting, but organizing to fight against, you know, the bad manager, or the unsafe working conditions or the low pay. And that's the only way that unions in the public sector can survive in the long term if you have huge amounts of turnover, you know, your ability to have an effective union really decreases significantly. And there's no pensions, you know that you vest into it five years and that kind of really lock you into public service because the retirement benefits are so much better than what's offered in the private sector, even if the pay is lower. The public sector will lose qualified employees destabilizing the union, the higher turnover will help to create a downward spiral, reducing public confidence in government. So, you know, that's the other side effect is when government loses qualified employees that public trust and confidence in government in public schools is lost and so more and more people will send their children to private or parochial or charter schools, less and less people will support kind of the idea of good governance because of getting qualified governance. So the goal here is, yeah, you know, is to create this downward spiral and do really what, you know, one of the more vitriolic kind of exponents of this idea, Grover Norquist from Americans for Tax Reform said, you know, he wants to get government to the point where you can drown it in the bathtub. And that's that's really what the modus is here. You know, but they recognize, you know that that kind of an organized working class is very powerful so that's why you know in this cartoon, you know, you'll you'll see you know, capitalists are terrified of kind of unions that are frankly fairly weak not really because of how they are now but because of this potential for a real upsurge in in kind of union power. And so they want to crush it as quickly as possible because they know that working people aren't going to keep taking the low wages, the poor benefits, the escalating inequality indefinitely they know that there's going to be a point where workers are up against the wall and aren't going to take it anymore and so they want to crush what's what's left of the labor movement before that kind of recognition and realization happens. So this is, you know, just again, you know, so this is, you know, the first step I want to just say of cutting defined benefit pensions, their ultimate goal is to move everybody into the DC plan. So if you, if again if you undermine, you know, not just the public trust and government but the trust of public sector workers in their own pension plans. Ultimately, the ultimate results is a defined contribution plan and tragically, you know, I actually saw a lot of public sector workers on Facebook or, or Twitter, saying, you know, why, well, why do you know this is ridiculous if they're cutting our pension we should just move into a 401k style plan, and I want to be like, No, you define benefit pension is always going to be the best way of getting your retirement, a 401k style plan is not the answer in any way shape or form. And so, yeah, you know, this, it's, it's really a dumpster fire, you know, it's dependent on what you put in. It's a great way to goose retirements for not just highly paid university executives, you know, like UVM top top people at UVM love the idea of a DC plan because the way that their structure typically allows for, for, for highly paid executives to goose their, their salaries. And so, and I believe there is some type of version of a DC plan at UVM currently. And, you know, it creates higher turnover. I think the underlying steward structures and union stability, especially in a post Janice environment. I think the other thing about the DC plan that came up when we were having our discussion, you know, well and I never really got an answer to is so a defined benefit plan as, as Matthew said you know exactly what you're going to get on the other end and so you can really plan for that but a defined contribution plan you know what you're putting in but you really have no idea what you're going to get out on the other end. And one of the concerns that arose for me is our is what is would shifting to something like that actually be less expensive. Are we simply cross subsidizing and rather than paying the more expensive a deck, forcing our retirees on to public benefits, which actually are more expensive. So, again, as I, as I pointed out earlier because the pensions drive at the economy and what we're putting in is being invested, Treasurer Pierce reported and I won't get the number exactly right but I think she said for roughly every like a month and a half since we put in we get a dollar out on in the pension side, but on the public benefits side we pay dollar for dollar. And so it's more expensive to make that cross subsidization if someone doesn't invest their DC plan in a way that allows them to survive and and afford to live in a dignified retirement and so the other piece there is this isn't simply a look at what goes into the pension this is it's a multifaceted system, and I think that might go down but if we're suddenly forcing a lot of retirees on to our more expensive public benefits, we've created a bigger problem and a more expensive problem, plus our retirees to live without without the dignity they deserve. Yeah, and, and you know that doesn't even get into kind of the health care costs, you know again is that, you know, I mean when people are in a 401k plan. And so in retirement there's there's a lot higher levels of anxiety. There's a lot higher levels and anxiety leads to all other kinds of comorbidities, and then comorbidities leave lead to hospitalizations and hospitalizations are incredibly expensive. I mean one hospitalization can be three times the average pension of a typical person. So we want to do everything in our power to reduce the amount of hospitalizations because it is so expensive and such a drag on our finances. And in particular on Medicaid, you know, most, you know, a lot of, especially once you get past 85, you know, and you need consistent care, you know you're on Medicaid, and you know the 401k style system sets us up to have less healthy elderly people who need more health care services, draining our public budgets even more on on care that is wouldn't even be necessary in the first place, if we had a holistic idea of how we care for the people who sacrificed so much to provide our state with the services that we deserve. So, you know, this is kind of shifting gears a little bit, you know, so I mean I think that again you know that the, the connection here is, you know, john Arnold is a guy who who made his money on Wall Street, and, and he really understands this stuff on a granular on a granular level, billionaires really understand the way that public pension funds in particular are the dumbest money around and dumb money is what makes Wall Street go round. So, you know, Warren Buffett, for example, has kind of implicitly criticized treasurer pierces management of the pension funds, even if he hasn't named her by name because he's called out the public pension fund management nationwide by saying, there's too much risk, too much investment in things that ordinary people don't understand. And too much in fees, and instead, you know, the right way for a public pension fund to invest says kind of the Oracle of Omaha is is just doing as little as possible with your money, investing about 70% of it into a stock index fund and 30% of it into a bond index fund. And in the case of Vermont and in the case of most public pensions that's lower risk than the then what how they're currently investing. Marjorie Pierce has been in office since January 2011. And she so over a decade now, and she is only one of five members of the pension investment committee that's true. I'll answer that question in a second. But she supervises the investment staff that make the recommendations to the pension investment committee, and the pension investment committee almost always follows the recommendations made by the treasurer staff. So even though she's just one member of the VPIC, she has very disproportionate levels of influence over how the fund is invested. And that's why I've, you know, I have been critical of her in particular. Yeah, so over a decade, you know, you see that the there's about a what's a 3% difference in in the returns annualized over the last decade so this is each year. You know, over the last 10 years, a 7030 index fund would have returned 10.24% and a, a, the pension returned about 7.4, 7.5%. And that adds up to really significant amounts of money, a billion and a half dollars in lost returns by just by trying to beat the market by pursuing exotic investment strategies like foreign stocks, like hedge funds like private equity, like real estate that have fees that are 30,000 to 60,000% higher than for ordinary stocks and bond index funds. And, you know, most wealthy people do not invest in this stuff unless they're trying to avoid taxes. I mean this is what one billionaire told me he was like, Well, you know the only reason why invest in private equity Matthews because I'm interested in tax arbitrage. So, why exactly is treasure appears pursuing this high risk high fee investment model. I mean, to me, I think a really big contributor is, I mean, you know, I mean she was appointed to her job by Governor Shumlin and Governor Shumlin is very close to people in National Democratic Party donors, he was the chairman of the Democratic Democratic Governors Association in 2014. And, and the finance insurance in real estate sector more broadly, who really appreciates. I mean this is, you know, the mother of all subsidies. This is what this graph represents, it's welfare for Wall Street. And, and so, by pursuing this investment strategy she's been able to ingratiate herself with some very, very, very powerful people. Some of the wealthiest people in the world are private equity and hedge fund managers and some very influential Democratic Party donors as well. I mean she, you know, up to last year, for example, the Vermont pension was paying fees to a hedge fund that they had supposedly visited several years before Grosvenor capital management and Grosvenor is headed by Michael Sacks, who is one of the largest Democratic Party donors in the country who was actually the largest donor to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's reelection campaign, Rahm Emanuel who's famous for many things but most famously covering up a video of his cops murdering a black teen Laquan McDonald. So this is, you know, this is really kind of distressing, you know, that that Treasurer Pierce has gone this way, and it's very interesting to me that, you know, since, since I've started to kind of raise concerns about this performance management of hers. I haven't provided any response whatsoever. To, to just this straight simple graph, what why couldn't you meet the 7030 index fund returns. Why couldn't we have more than a billion, have a billion and a half dollars more in our pension than than we do today. But I mean frankly the a billion and a half dollars doesn't even account for reinvestment stuff so it, it's likely, I mean it's a very minimum tens of millions of dollars more than a billion and a half dollars closer to 1.6 or 1.7 billion dollars in lost returns. So this is, you know, this is something that again has gotten very, very, very little coverage. The problem is, is, is pentance, you know, people who make $24,000 a year, you know, great grandmothers and great grandpas those are those folks are the problem. And I'm here to tell you today that that's not the problem. The problem is Wall Street. The problem is a predatory industry. You know, built off of the exploitation of workers and in fact, you know, slavery, I mean, layman brothers was founded as a cotton brokerage in Montgomery Alabama. And instead, you know, that's, that's what we should that's what we should really kind of be talking about is, let's stop subsidizing Wall Street. Let's ensure that we're using the most fiduciarily appropriate investment strategy. And, and, and let's move forward away from this and let's do a full spectrum of investigation of the ways in which this money has been managed. So I wanted to answer this chat question and then I know Tonya. So, DC plans are more expensive to administer in regards to fees. So, I mean, everything that I'm saying in this graph is worse with 401ks and four or three B's. So, you know, the investment manager, I mean, in most ways, I'll say not in all ways, but in most ways it's worse where the fees are higher. There's worse ethical practices. And there's, and there's higher expenses. So, yeah, go ahead, Tonya. Absolutely. So speaking of, you know, this piece, one of the things that I found myself asking for was a full spectrum analysis and I got very little buy in for that really I was I was sort of told well that information is available go find it and really asking about this transparency and what I am now told is that a little over 50% of our pensions are now invested in index funds. And one of the primary reasons that we were told we simply must, you know, do something about this, this so-called crisis is so that we can be more risky with our investments. This is one of the things that I was told was a downside is that you know we just can't take the risks that we need to take when, when our pensions, you know, are 60% funded, and the more, and that certainly made sense. And it was using the not the very narrow knowledge that I was given but when I went out and found my own knowledge I recognize that that flew in the face of really the way that this should be invested. These are long term investments we can wait for those investments to build in a way that doesn't require big risks because they are stretched out over such a lengthy period of time. And I think the other thing that is really important to name here is, you know, all of the language around the unfunded liability, every pension has some level of unfunded liability because that is the actuarial prediction on what we will need in the future. And so when people were like, well, it's, it's astronomical it's it's, and there are a lot of numbers flying around but but the, you know, the number is, I think it's 1.9 billion on the teacher side and about 1,1 billion on the state employee side so you know, I'm trying to do math in my head really fast. So close to $4 billion. Yeah. You know $3.9 billion in unfunded liability but that is not money that we owe right now we're there's nobody saying we have this $3.9 billion debt that is a projection on what we will need to spend in the future. And so the way that is conflated into a bill that we have is inaccurate and is actually creating this stress and this need to make these risky investments that is false it's patently false. Yep, exactly. Mm hmm. Yep. Yeah, that's fascinating though I didn't even know that about we want to take on more risk. Yeah, I mean just to build off that you know I mean they there's this whole idea in Wall Street, you know that the more risk you take on the more return you get, and that is not true at all. There's somebody who invested in Bernie Mados hedge fund. You know they'll tell you you know that's not true. You know and what's really kind of true, you know there's there's two different ways of investing there's debt and there's stocks or equity and, you know, and they kind of have both had long term historical return and you're not investing in anything other than that private equity and hedge funds are just debt and equity with less transparency and more risk and more fees and and more potential for corruption. That's that's kind of what they are they're not any fun anything fundamentally different than existing kind of capital market structures like the stock market and like the bond market. And again, you know historic, I do want to kind of also say historically pension funds have invested much more conservatively than public pension funds have invested much more let more conservatively than than the current exotic style favored by treasurer Pearson, her, you know, and her other colleagues as state treasurers around the country. And the other interesting thing is what's left the private pension funds tend to be invested exclusively in index funds as well. And the part of that is due to changes in accounting. But this idea that well we have to take on more risk. Well it's interesting, you know, in the private pension fund world it doesn't seem like they're taking on any of this risk. So, I think that's a statement that can be made when you have the privilege of billions of dollars at your disposal you know I think that if we think about who's making statements like that, then, you know, it's when we're dealing with public sector employees and certainly perhaps it makes sense to to make thoughtful predictable investments. I mean that's part of the problem here you know when yes, there is a possibility when you take on a risk that there's a reward but there's also a huge possibility you lose everything. And it is completely unpredictable we don't know from moment to moment and when we're talking about building a sustainable path forward we want predictability. Yeah and that's you know I mean that's the other thing is that you know Vermont is smack dab in the middle of kind of states by public indebtedness and if the state issued the state could theoretically issue a municipal bond and deposit it into the pension funds and the pension funds would be fully funded. But like that's that's you know there's and then the state would be, you know, move from being smack dab in the middle to maybe in the top third of states in terms of public indebtedness but not in any way unreasonable amounts of debt, not in any way, overly burden some. You know are you know the cost of living in this state that's what's overly burdened some, you know, and by refusing to tax the wealthy, and refusing to tax real estate interests we're helping to enable for example the housing crisis that we see every day in our state. So, I actually read an article today that says that the cost the sort of discrepancy between housing cost and what people make is highest in Vermont we are number one for least affordable housing. So there's certainly something to be said about about where the real crisis lies in that arena. Yeah, and that's you know another thing too is that I will say is that the AFL CIO's housing investment trust, which you know, when in urban areas I would say that the hit is not always the does the best things but in Vermont. The housing investment trust making investments would be amazing. It performs and has the exact same risk as the, as the bond index fund in this portfolio, and it goes to create union constructed housing, and we could invest, you know, billions of dollars. Well, yeah, about 2 billion, or what let me say over a billion dollars into the housing investment trust, create all of these, you know union construction jobs, build all this housing that we know we need. You know, and who would lose out, you know the existing money managers who are, you know, making huge fees you know the hit doesn't charge fees or they're very, very, very modest. And so, again, you know, there's not there, it just demonstrates how there's not kind of a level of seriousness on kind of the people who make decisions in the state about kind of thinking about the interplay between pensions and finance and housing, and how we can use them together to solve our housing crisis instead of using it to exacerbate inequality by cutting pensions while giving more fees to Wall Street. I think the other thing that you're you're bringing you know these bond ratings was another thing that was really used to fuel and stoke the flames of this is a crisis and I'll have you know we went through the boundary rate rating and they didn't change. We did we did nothing presently and they weren't changed. I think that that is also you know was really used but these things are so deeply intersectional you know as you're talking about the investment in housing. I'm over here thinking about you know, we can also infuse that with with green energy and climate work. So it's everything is so deeply interconnected when we get down to the level of the people and not, you know, putting more money into into the hands of people who have more than they'll ever need. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's actually. Well, yeah, so here's kind of. Yeah so getting down dirty. You know, you know so kind of here this is I don't know if you guys can see this. I think that's a cover from Bloomberg business week that really just kind of helps to explain this but so right now kind of about 10% of the portfolio. $600 million is in alternative investments. And, you know, frankly, I mean, you know, calling these investments cow patties is the most generous descriptor possible, because these are not something that any sane person would invest their money in, unless you're trying to avoid taxes and pension funds to pay taxes. It's real estate hedge funds, private equity, private debt. The fees are 30,000 to 60,000% higher than index funds. It's a black box of non regulation, there's no independently verifiable information on how they perform. So even, even the pension funds themselves don't know how well their their investments in this strategy have performed, because there's no independent valuation of the underlying holdings of these fun of these private equity and hedge fund firms. So Vermont is in kind of fun to funds funds of funds like Harbor vest. Harbor vest is the main private equity manager and about half of the 600 million is just in this one firm Harbor vest. So Harbor vest adds another layer of fees on top of the first layer of heat so it's 30,000 60 to 60,000% higher on the first layer and then another layer of 30,000% to 60,000% higher. And we don't know what the underlying investments are in the harbor best funds. So, and there's a lot of private equity firms that should raise a lot of concerns. So Apollo global management is one of the largest private equity firms in the country. And it's pretty likely I would say that Vermont is invested in Apollo through Harbor vest, the chairman of Apollo just had to resign, because he had given hundreds of millions of dollars to Jeffrey Epstein, without any accountability ever, and couldn't explain, and couldn't explain why he gave Jeffrey Epstein hundreds of millions of dollars. And then the final thing is our foreign stocks, you know, which, you know, are included in kind of the index fund descriptors that, you know, they are an index funds. And we shouldn't be, I would say, in my estimation we should not be investing in foreign stocks either, because the US is at the bottom of many things for the organization for the OECD, which is the organization for so called advanced industrialized countries, you know the US typically is at the bottom along with Mexico and Turkey and kind of, you know the ratings on, you know, infant mortality and things like that. I would say we are the best in the world when it comes to financial regulation. It's not saying a lot, but other countries are much worse than the US, when it comes to regulating Wall Street, partly is because, you know, we're the only enough to regulate our own actors and Wall Street is all over the world. And so what you'll find is in England, in, you know, Brazil, in Germany, in Canada, in Australia, the securities regulators are much more compromised than they are in the US where they are very compromised and there's much less independently publicly verifiable information about publicly traded companies in other countries. Foreign stocks don't perform a lot worse. Foreign stocks tend to do much worse than the S&P 500 overall and that's consistent year after year after year after year after year. There's no compelling reason when there's been such consistent performing performance in issues to be investing in foreign stocks, yet, again, the treasurer, the VPIC, they make these recommendations, they do it, and that is significant investment losses, you know. And then the final piece is active management. So that's kind of, that's usually less fee, lower fee version of alternative investments. So kind of money managers trying to beat the market. And they don't. It's impossible to beat the market unless you have inside information, basically. It's very, very, very difficult. And so that's, again, several hundred million dollars in the portfolio in active management that has consistently trailed the market. And again, we pay public employees and consultants to advise us on our investments and the result has been consistently poor performance. Tony, I guess. Okay, I think the other thing that is important to think about here is that when we are hidden behind so many black boxes and walls is we don't know what we're investing in and we don't know if those investments are in line with our values as a state. We don't know if those investments are in line with our values as as people. And so I think that, you know, there's been a lot of conversation over, you know, I'm sure longer than I've been paying attention about, you know, what we put money into is is what we are funding and I know there's conversation at the UM campus and in other places about divestment from certain things because that's not where we want our money and we can't even have that conversation if the vast majority of our funds are behind a black box because we have no idea what they're invested in. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, again, you know, it's, it's, you know, this is a relatively, I mean, this is still only like about 10% of the portfolio I will say it's just the 10% that is, you know, brings the most alarm. And, yeah, you know, I mean, another major major private equity firm is Blackstone and Blackstone's head Stephen Schwartzman was the largest donor to Donald Trump's reelection campaign. Again, combined with all the other concerns that we have about about private equity on the fiduciary side. There's a lot of concerns about on the the environmental side as well. Private equity is one of the biggest. You can't separate the fracking room from private equity. For example, you know, are we, you know, our teachers in Vermont are financing politicians like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump who, you know, want to destroy public education. I mean, it's a shame that we would allow this to happen. But again, you know, because, you know, the treasurer and the BPIC have pursued an even higher risk higher fee strategy than even, you know, the baseline investments in private equity by going into this, we have no information about what we're actually doing with our money. You know, and, and, you know, I will just also say, you know, I mean, let's not, you know, I mean, again, you know this, I mean, best kind of actions in this regard really kind of testified to the need for real campaign finance reform, you know, why the treasurer should be able to get, you know, I mean $30,000 doesn't seem like a lot, but that's typically how much she spends in a single reelection campaign. Vermont is cheap, you know, to run campaigns in. So, you know, over her career, you know, as decade as treasurer $30,000 from this industry that really should not be allowed to donate to the treasurer and my personal view, you shouldn't be allowed to kind of have, you know, that industry support the next kind of keep that separate, because this is, you know, she is basically in charge of a huge pot of money that we need to be as sure as possible that there's not kind of conflicts with. And you know $7000 of that are from David Coates, who I'm actually going to be, I'm very excited. I'm going to be debating him on the radio next week. But, you know, David has really kind of been, you know, the main person consistently saying we can't afford the pensions, you know, we have to cut benefits, you know, and, you know, it's, it's frankly tragic, you know, that Beth, you know, who's really up until this year presented herself as an ally of labor, accepted so much money from this guy who clearly hates unions and, and, you know, public sector unions in particular with every bone in his body. You know, and I mean, again, you know, I mean Tom Galanca has actually, I will say has voted against some of the worst investments that that the VP has made but he hasn't rang the alarm bell at all about it. Again, he's a he's a he's a wealth manager for wealthy clients. And, you know, in my opinion, you know, the chair of the VP should have to disclose who their clients are and who their companies clients are when they, you know, when they seek out this, you know, this very important position in our state. Yeah, absolutely at one I think the importance of campaign finance reform cannot be under highlighted I remember being asked in 2018 what my top issue would be if I could like wave a wand and change something and it would shock people to know that it was campaign finance reform. And while I am strongly loudly, you know, working on things like the pension and I've been an activist in healthcare my, my whole adult life, we can't have any of the changes that we know we need. If positions like the treasure or a button paid for by the highest bidder. Yep. Yeah, and I was I do a lot of work around nursing homes as well, you know, and one of my friends, Toby Edelman who's a big, you know, pro resident nursing home lobbyist. You know, sometimes I think I should stop all my advocacy and just focus on campaign finance reform, because the nursing home lobby has bought and paid for our politicians and the result is residents who are abused. You know, so, going back to kind of this issue about unfunded liabilities, you know, um, so, again, like it, it this cartoon to me is just the perfect example of just kind of how unhinged this debate has gotten. It's like this idea that, that pensions, you know, providing security for people in their old age could be equivalent to the Hindenburg is totally insane. That's totally insane, but that's how it's presented that this is a crisis of kind of such magnitude that it results that it necessitates the state breaking its promise to teachers. I mean, how, how insane is that, you know, so only one public pension fund has ever run out of money in the tiny community of Pritchard, Alabama, right above Vermont has 4000 more people than Pritchard, Alabama. Unlike companies, states and cities have a tax base they have a permanent revenue state stream, the state has been around for 234 years. In a way that the state of Vermont can go bankrupt, it is illegal for states to go bankrupt, the state cannot default on its obligations and the state will always have enough money to pay what it owes. We are not even, we are not even a poor state, even by, by those metrics, and we have a lot of wealth here, and we're not going to stop having wealth here because we have what wealth wealthy people crave, which is clean air and water and quaint parochial towns, and, and, and, and a beautiful natural environment that's what you know active, right it's active 50 is the development law right active 50 means there's always going to be very wealthy people in Vermont. So we can thank the environmental movement for our tax base here. And, you know, so unfunded liabilities are used as a cudgel to advocate cuts to our pensions. But the inflation of obligations, you know, is in part, you know, a result of, of changes in in accounting rules for governments. And what's really important to remember is gas be is, you know, which stands for the governmental Accounting Standards Board is not a public agency, it's controlled by the private sector, it's again controlled by private sector accounting firms. And they are the ones who are setting the accounting rules for our state so again just like the ratings agencies which are really actors that are not neutral at all. They have had horrific records in the lead up to the financial crisis and have horrific records now. They are not independent actors, they're bested actors, they are anti Union, and we're seeing the results of their kind of arcane changes by kind of inflating the, the anti pension movement in our state. Some of the information here I actually I brought some of this information to some testimony from the business roundtable and, well, it was an interesting conversation but what was pointed out is that the last time a state went bankrupt was in the Great Depression. And many many many many many more private businesses have gone bankrupt in that time and so when we start applying private private business rules to public state pensions we're talking about to totally. I mean we're comparing pizza and apples, you know they're not the same thing and it's important to know that because what, again, having started out with sort of the, the education that was given to me, some some buy the business roundtable. I really was like yeah a lot of this makes sense but when I was when I went outside and got this additional information I was able to really come back and really get them to sort of admit yeah actually they're not the same thing like part of the reason that in a private pension having this level of unfunded liability would be problematic is that if that private business went bankrupt, they would not be able to pay out for their employees and public protections would never pay out at 100%. But states don't go bankrupt. And so they're not the same thing and so it isn't as big of a concern when we're talking about a state that, you know, over the next 30 or 40 years there's this unfunded liability. Absolutely. Yes, that's a great point. Yes. Yep. So, you know, and so this is kind of exactly kind of what happened, and it's funny I wrote the slides, I don't know, five years ago, just showed you kind of how you know I anticipated this continuing to be a big problem over five years ago. So, you know, this, you know, so this is the discount rate or the assumed actuarial rate of return, and this is exactly what happened here is so actuaries calculate the value of unfunded pension liabilities but by what's by using what's called an assumed rate or a discount rate. And so in Vermont, it was moved from 7.5% to 7%. I think Tony might, I believe that's what it was moved from. And so, you know, John Arnold and his people have been saying, you know, we need to lower, you know, the discount rates, even though in the long term, you know, a 70 30 index fund outperforms even 7.5%. I believe the 100 year rate of return. This number is a little old, but 100 year rate of return leading up to like 2017 was for a 70 30 index fund was 7.7 or 7.8%. So above, you know, the 7.5% where the state was before. And so you lower it to 7%. It inflates the long term value of the unfunded liabilities in turn forcing higher contributions from states and municipalities. And so it's a, it's a great double movement. It's more money in the pension for Wall Street to grit from and higher costs to states and municipalities which create and school districts, which, excuse me, which create the basis for more attacks on pensions. A little title there. I think the higher costs to the school districts is important to one of the things with the pension plan that was offered up at the beginning of this whole conversation by House leadership was asking teachers to work longer and not only was that problematic because we were asking them to pay more and get less, but asking teachers to work longer is going to cost towns and districts more, thus raising the taxpayers property taxes, because we're asking higher paid teachers who have been there longer to get the scale more to get paid for longer rather than retiring and bringing in younger teachers at a lower lower band in the pay scale. And so a lot of the conversation around the taxpayers and saving the taxpayers money. And again, what we were talking about is cross subsidization, we were going to use less general fund dollars because we've lowered the a deck and forced people to stay longer but we were going to raise your property taxes, because now the school budgets have been inflated by these teachers who have bet who are longer tenured teachers getting paid for not being allowed to retire, not to mention that teaching is hard. And, you know, when we start asking teachers to stay beyond the point when they can really be there. We are adding additional stress and burden to them, but also, I mean I certainly know that on the days that I work as a social worker which is also hard work and when I feel pretty tapped, I'm not, you know, it's hard to do my best work. And we really tapped someone and really said like, and we can get into the bigger pictures about you know about how challenging school is and what we can do about that but there are so many problems on the other end the cost to our teachers our students and our school districts and really just shifting that cost to a different tax space. Yeah, and I, you know, I also wanted to say, I mean, the, it would be, it's not in any way impossible. But it is, you have to be very, if you wanted to tax the 10 wealthiest people in our state who all have net worth, you know, 10 wealthiest property owners, let's say they're not necessary residents, you know, they all have net worth of at least $100 million. You know, you would have to do it in a very, you know, particular kind of way. But again, you know, that's, you know, there's no interest in kind of doing that, you know, in, in kind of the leadership in the legislature there is interest in, in kind of raising taxes on working people through property taxes but there's not interest in, how can we develop a tax regime tax that people who frankly have been avoiding taxes their entire professional lives and that's the place of big role in how they've been able to accumulate so much in ill gotten gains. And we saw that when we brought an amendment to the floor to the ways in means bill which is the bill that sort of says how do we pay for things you know where is our tax revenue going to come from and a small group of us brought an amendment to say actually we do want to pay for 3% marginal incomes over a certain amount and put that directly into the pension trust to help pay down this unfunded liability. I mean, 21 people voted for it and and so we saw, you know how little energy there was in, in pushing that and what we've seen I mean over the last 50 years 60 years you know trickle down economics doesn't work it's made millionaires and the working, you know the working class the working poor it's widened the economic inequality, and, and we're still seeing that the wealthier getting wealthier and the people who are not wealthy are struggling more and more and more. And the pandemic has exacerbated that I remember sitting through some of the, the early, what, what is colloquial called the doom and gloom sessions there are these before the session starts financial briefings for legislators and what we what I saw immediately, is that the pandemic has taken what we knew was already happening with the wealthy getting wealthier and the people who aren't wealthy, struggling more and more and more and just blown it up. There are very clear halves, let winners and losers from the pandemic and and it is the wealthy have capitalized on on the dangers created by the pandemic and the people who were forced out of their jobs were were in many instances lower wage workers and we are even meeting their basic needs and so we're in a point in time when the only way forward is to recapture some of that wealth that has trickled up in and has never trickled down and never will that that Reagan that fallacy of Reaganomics doesn't work. Yeah, and I also, you know, just want to say that, you know, it's. Yeah, those are all really great points, but the. Oh shoot, I totally lost my train of thoughts. So but yeah that. Oh, yes, now remember. Yeah, the joint fiscal office, you know, I just want to say, you know, it's, there is like active group thing in kind of my view in kind of the, the, you know, the, the joint fiscal office in the way that they kind of provide information to the legislature where it's not like always independent and frankly, I don't really believe in kind of so called non partisan policy making bodies, you know, so in Congress, there's two agencies, there's that independent agencies ran by Congress there's the CBO, and there's the GAO, and the CBO really only exists to undermine progressive policy goals, and that they really perform a similar function to the joint fiscal office here in the state of Vermont, where it's you know how can we kind of how is information crafted so it's, it looks like kind of finances are zero sum game and we're not taking into account things like the cost of child poverty, and the cost of poverty overall the cost of the opioid crisis, the cost of homelessness, hospitalizations, the cost of inequality overall. And, you know, it's interesting, I mean, an investigative arm, the GAO does great work for Congress because they're exclusively focused on investigations. And there's a non partisan investigative body and having that at the state level would be great if the legislature had its own non partisan investigative body. But in my view, a much better system for the state of Vermont would be to have partisan committee policy staff, where each party has their own kind of perspective, and staff who kind of bring their own perspective to to the budget because presenting it as kind of outside of the realm of politics, to me is really dangerous. I don't know. Yeah, I was kind of responding directly to you so I don't know if you have anything to add on that. No, I think that those are those are all such important things because again so frequently we talk about things in silos and it's how things happen in the building as well they happen in silos and we're not really talking about the intersection and the reality as as you point out is that poverty is expensive yet in healthcare costs we see it in and and their their healthcare costs are much bigger when we don't have access to preventive care and so these, these things are really shifted across the board and unless we start talking about these things in intersectional ways that really get to the root of the problem which is disparity. We aren't going to solve it we are simply going to keep shifting it around and the people, the vast majority of the people are just going to continue to suffer more. Yep, exactly. So yeah, you know, and so again while the media crows on about unfunded liabilities, Wall Street walks to the bank, you know, the public pensions pay out over $10 billion annually to Wall Street in fees, and that's just in fees. In terms of returns that trail the market adds up to 1020 times that amount. It's huge massive amounts of money that are walking away from pension funds into the hands of Wall Street financiers. But again, you know, because, I mean, I will say as a journalist, you know, journalism has been gutted over the last 20 years in particular. And so there's very little money supporting journalism that tells the truth about Wall Street. There's a lot of money for journalism that seeks to undercut hard one public sector benefits but there's very little money for journalism that takes the time to look at Wall Street's role in our economy and their parasitic role in particular. So, you know, I want to kind of focus on hedge funds in particular so you know this, you know, you know, we hear a lot in kind of the left about you know CEO pay. And, and, you know, I apologize for not updating this number it's very similar today where the top 10 hedge fund managers will make about an average of $1 billion annually. And this is so much more money than the highest paid CEOs, 50 to 60% higher than the highest paid CEOs. And again, you know, this is, you know, all money that are not all money but this massive amounts of this money for this, this industry is coming from public pension funds. And so again some, so some of the worst inequality telescoping inequality that we're seeing is because of public pension funds kind of making these investment decisions and I will say another kind of big contributor are our university endowments and UVM is is no exception in that regard they're also in kind of exotic investment strategies like pension funds. I guess that number is probably bigger. I know that I just was faced with the statistic that the wealthiest in our country's wealth has grown by 55% in the last year. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so, again, you know, I mean you'll hear, you know, I mean, Tonya was telling me, you know, in the legislature there was a lot like, Well, you know, it investment returns that's in the past, you know, and it's like we need to move forward, you know, and it's like, Well, number one, if the definition of insanity is, you know, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And, you know, so the poor investment returns the high fees, though, they reduce the funding level of pensions they increase the contributions from state at some municipalities and then the higher cost bolster the case of anti pension advocates for cuts to and that's why in my view, we really can't lose sight of kind of these, these decisions that really seem opaque and boring. And it's like, no, we really have to ensure that that our pensions are performing at the very least at the same level as as the market, looking at a similar risk taking taken on, because if we're not, we're letting money fly out and that money could go to other essential things that we're talking about. And, and again, you know, I'll just say that that was really what was distressing for me talking to even some people on the left. I'm not going to name names here, but, you know, some people who, you know, have pretty had prior to this had pretty strong reckon, reputations for being allies of organized labor. You know, it was like, well, you know, we're spending money on the pensions, you know, we're not going to be able to kind of spend it elsewhere and I'm like, What about the fees that are being paid out? Why can't we be talking about that first? That's money that's being paid out to people who don't need the money at all. And it's good and they're using that money to sabotage our democracy through campaign contributions to people like Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell. That seems to me to be a much more pressing matter than cutting benefits for, for people who again have sacrificed so much for our state. I think one of the hardest things for me in that realm was in the same week that we voted out the pension task force bill that was tasked with basically cutting the pensions. We also voted for $20 million in corporate tax cuts. Yeah. So I mean that that in the same breath that we're being told we can't afford the pensions. We are throwing $20 million at corporations who certainly don't need the money. And it was very craftily tucked into a bill labeled exempting feminine hygiene products from the Vermont sales and use tax. And so tucked into that. And then from the Senate and our House committee on ways and means had tucked in that had amended it to tuck in that $20 million corporate tax cut, which it's it's hard to even believe for me that we can in one breath as a legislature say we can't afford the pensions and in the very next breath say hey you know what we're going to sneak into this this tampon bill. It's for the wealthy. Like it just it's it's unfathomable and it's happening right here under our democratically led House and Senate. Um, yeah you know and I mean the you know if you could also just quickly speak to what just happened with unemployment insurance as well with the cutting the dependent pay. Absolutely so unemployment insurance is another place where we are really hoping. I mean what we should be hoping to do is lift up the people who are struggling the most and the Senate included a meager $50 a week for for dependence of people who are on unemployment so in addition to the unemployment insurance and then that came over to house commerce and that was stripped out as well as many more tax breaks and benefits for businesses and I'm not going to sit here and say that we don't have businesses that were harmed by the pandemic. I know that we do, and that we absolutely need to invest in our small business community but one way that we do that is by investing in the people. We know by looking at history and looking at other financial crises that when we put money in those who need it most they will spend it in the economy and stimulate the economy faster, allowing us to bounce back faster. And so the very last thing we should be doing is taking $50 away from an unemployed parent with a child and giving that away to two corporations we, it's really hard to watch it's heartbreaking to watch really and it's not, it's not good economics it's not good policy it's just, it's not right. Yeah. Yeah, you know and so what I will also just say is you know there's big scandal surrounding private equity and hedge funds so there's kind of numerous instances of cases. So I mean, to be clear, I haven't seen any examples of this in Vermont. You know, but there's numerous instances of cases where politicians have received campaign contributions and bribes for giving businesses business to favored private equity and hedge fund firms, including some of the largest private equity firms in the country. And because the fees are so high, you know because private equity managers can just make a ton of money by just sitting on cash and not doing it at anything with it, there's a big incentive for them to get new public pension money. And so, you know, there's been pay to play issues in New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas, Ohio, Florida, California, lots of other states. And again, you know this is, you know, if we're allowing our state to kind of invest in in high risk exotic investments, you know this is kind of an inevitable result is that decisions will be made, not for the public good but for private So yeah, you know, I mean, you know, what I will say is, you know, this is, I will say, full disclosure here, I've in my other job I've long been a critic of Leonard Green they own some hospitals around the country that I've had the misfortune of dealing with Leonard Green on, but So, you know, there's $300 million in Harbor vest. Yeah, so that's, you know, 5% of the portfolio and just one money manager. You know, and so, yeah, you know their tagline is basically even more secretive than your typical private equity firm but with double the fees. So what we do know is, you know, they, you know, what we have been able to glean is Harbor Harbour vests has invested a ton of money in helping to refinance private equity firm Leonard Green and partners bottom of the barrel assets basically taking their old stuff off off of their plate And so Harbor vests is like, here we'll buy your, you know, shitty old, you know, assets that you've already loaded up with debt and have kind of and stripped mind for, you know, and left it for dead and we'll buy it from you. And so it's just kind of worth, you know, this, this is who they're doing business with is John DeNockle and Jonathan Sokoloff or they're both billionaires, who among other things have been caught making pension fund investors pay for their private jet flights. So again, we don't know if Vermont is in Leonard Green. We have no idea. We just know this is who we're invested with and this is who they've chosen to do business with as a company like Leonard Green. And yeah, there's a the way that they've handled their hospitals is really bad. If you want to Google Leonard Green hospitals, you'll find some interesting stuff in there. So, you know, what I kind of, you know, see this about is, you know, we got to shift the narrative, you know, and Occupy Wall Street was really kind of a great example of kind of shifting the narrative away from kind of deficit hysteria to kind of inequality. And I really think that that's always the correct answer to, you know, we can't afford something, you know, is, well, let's talk about inequality, you know, let's talk about kind of the way that in which we're providing welfare for the rich. The problem is really Wall Street fees and underperformance. It's not benefits. You know, and, you know, you know, union members, you know, really need to understand, you know, that pensions are the only way you can guarantee that you'll have a sustainable income and retirement, and that there's a massive coordinated effort by billionaires to eliminate pensions all together. Yeah, you know, and so this these are kind of, you know, some talking points that I think kind of really, you know, help to put us in a different position here so kind of how can we afford public pension public sector pensions. You know, the real question is how we can afford these massive payouts to the wealthy on Wall Street. Why is the Treasurer continuing these massive giveaways to private equity with such little oversight. And then, you know, again, you know, like, doesn't everybody have to tighten their belt, you know, public sector workers have already tight, you know, going back to right in the beginning, you know, public sector workers have already tightened their belt a lot, you know, their belt a lot, you know, in 2008, 2011, now currently, you know, almost three times higher than what they were paying prior to the financial crisis. So there's been plenty of belt tightening on the, on the public sector worker end, you know, the question is really why the pension fund is sending out hundreds of millions of dollars to Wall Street. And so what I'll just say is, you know, the threat, you know, to pensions, you know, kind of again shifting gears to more summary, the threat, there is a real threat, I would say to your pensions, you know, for anybody who's in the pension is watching this or will watch this, you know, but it's political, it's not financial, you know, and so the political threat is that the state legislature would pass legislation impairing your benefits. And, you know, I will say, you know, the Kroensky Copeland has hands as proposal, you know, as an initially construed it was illegal, in my view, and unconstitutional, because there was it was an illegal impairment of benefits that were already approved, there was there's a strong constitutional argument to say that it's protected under the contracts clause. So there's there's a nation. So in addition to kind of what we already saw, you know, there's a nationwide attack on pensions because billionaires hate the public sector unions that stop them from privatizing government wholesale if you didn't have unions like the SEA and NEA and ASME and SEIU and CWA, you would have already, they would have already privatized all of government, you know, there would be no more public schools there would be no more public water companies there would be no public utilities, they would already be gone, and public sector unions have stopped that time after time after time in city, county, state, utility district, school district they've stopped it, time and time and again. And so that's, you know, I mean to me the most, I mean the most embarrassing part of this whole affair probably was when the Wall Street Journal's editorial page came out in favor of the speaker's proposal. You know, and it's like, if the Wall Street Journal does great reporting, I will say, you know, it's a great newspaper but their editorial page is vile. And so, you know, the editorial page praised the Krawinsky pension proposal because it advanced the interests of capital, as opposed to the interests of labor, and that's if there's any motivating force in the Wall Street Journal's editorial page it's how can we advance the interests of the rich against everybody's else and that's why they came out of nowhere. I mean, I don't, I need to check when was the last time the Wall Street Journal editorial page commented on things that were happening under Vermont's Golden Dome. It's probably been a while. We're a very small state, typically, you know, Wall Street Journal is talking about what's happening in California or New York. And, you know, the final pieces, you know, we can, we can choose to organize our state and our society, however we choose, you know, we will never not be able to afford $24,000 a year pensions. So, or pensions that are an average of $24,000 a year. And so that's, you know, we, we don't have to kind of be subvert ourselves to the dictates of the market that say that kind of everything is a zero sum game, you know, we're human beings, we're not, you know, homo economic us we're homo sapiens. All right. And I don't know if you want to have anything to add, Tonya. Yeah, I just, I really think it's important to drive home that we can we can organize our economy any any way we want and I think it's really time that the people stood up and asked ourselves and asked the people who we have put into positions of power. What our economy is for, and it's my view that our economy is to take care of the people. And if that is what we are looking for we need to do, we need to organize, and we need to come together and demand some changes. I think it's important to remember that those people that are sitting in office are there because you lent them your voice, and you have the power to take it back, and to give it to somebody else. And so I really think that that we need to engage and we need to organize and for people who are interested in a really easy sort of primer on economics for the rest of us there's a really great I can't remember exactly how long it is but I remember reading it in grad school it's called economics for the 99% And it really looks at a lot of what we're talking about about the wealth shifts and about corporate welfare and about how our economy is currently structured to fuel taxpayer dollars into wealthy corporations and away from the people. And to really spin this narrative that we simply can't afford to take care of the people the reality is is that this is the richest nation in the history of the world. And we absolutely can afford to take care of the people and it is my view that we can't afford not to. Yeah, well said, I agree. Yeah, and I so I'm available you can always text me at my Google Voice which is 802-490-5859 that's 802-490-5859, and then my email is m.cunningham cook one word at gmail.com. So, I'm always down to talk and hopefully you know let's let's kind of build something together I think what Tanya said was just so perfect and we you know we we really have an opportunity I think especially in want to kind of change the way that things are going. So, I, people are always welcome to reach out to me I'm pretty easy to get a hold of being a public figures and it's hard to get my last name spelled right. But you can find my contact information on the state legislatures page or on Facebook you can reach out to me on Facebook or in many, many different ways but I'm pretty easy to Google and find. Well, we'll wait, I guess, 30 more seconds for another, or maybe one minute for another question, if we have one, but otherwise. But yeah, I mean Tonya I think what you just said you know, it's just, yeah, so on point, you know, and I mean that the other thing that I'll just say is just, I just think it's, it's just so, I mean it's both amazing and tragic, you know that kind of so few of our leaders are frankly as as, as Tonya is, and as kind of the progressive leadership in the house that progressives in the house are. Alright, a question. Okay. All right. Cool. No more questions, according to Lisa. So thank you so much Tonya. And yeah, hopefully. Yeah, I mean, even if we kind of dropped off is what I will say at the end. I think I said, I, before you got on, we had a lot of folks come and watch my presentation to the Progressive Party afterwards so I think we're going to get some. Well, thank you. All right, thank you Tonya.