 Thanks for joining us at Think Take Hawaii. Today's topic is midterms. When we were much younger, that referred to days of high school and college. Unfortunately, now it refers to both national and state and local elections. And I think for the first time in quite a while, we've got a lot of close races and a very, very close margin in the US House and Senate and control in a number of state legislatures and in election control offices that are up for grabs. So we're fortunate to have with us today, Tina Patterson in Germantown, Maryland, mediator, arbitrator, business coach and consultant Louise Ng, partner at Denton's Law Firm, one of the largest in the world and one leading women's rights lawyers here, as well as very, very active in community service and the mom of a putting theatrical performer as we understand it. So David Larson also of Mitchell Hamlin School of Law and the immediate past chair of the American Bar Association section of dispute resolution, leading dispute rugs over and. So today's topic, midterms. What do you think folks, where are we headed? Louise, you wanna start us off? Oh, I was hoping you were gonna start off somebody else since I started off the last time and didn't have much to say. I picked on you. Okay, well, I'll start it off and then I'm sure we'll have some great insights as we go down the road. But I have to say they are, the midterms are uncomfortably unpredictable. And it's, you know, candidates that I just think are, and I'm looking at the national scene that I just think are very well qualified are running very tight races. And I can never tell from day to day based on the numerous campaign ads we get, you know, who, which one is ahead, but it just seems neck and neck. I hope, of course, that the Democrats can maintain a lead. But of course the economy looks like it's gonna be a big issue. I saw something disturbing an NPR headline, I think, or was it a newspaper headline about how many voters when faced with the choice of economic security and, you know, democratic principles would rather vote for economic security. And now those are who are of us who are comfortably economically secure, you know, can be worried about those views. But, you know, you can understand why people are looking for economic security. I just, we just see too many instances internationally where people are pretty much done deals with the devil, so to speak, in order to have an economically secure life. So that's my thoughts out there. Okay, and we have a pretty good historical idea over the last 40 plus years of what the Republican economic policy is like and what trickle down really means for most of us. And we started to see what at least the current democratic economic policy looks like. And they're vastly different. Tina, any thoughts on how much people really understand of the economy and the policies that are in conflict here? Chuck, thank you. And I'm going to say this for the average person, they don't know. And I think part of what's underlying this is because in some ways the policy seemed to be very close. And as Louise mentioned and I echo the sentiment, people are not looking at the overall policy that they are thinking about the day to day and they're looking at things such as the challenges in supply chain, whether it's getting groceries and the cost of groceries going up if their heating bills have risen astronomically. So they're not thinking about the differences in the economic policies. They're really looking at, we believe that there's a recession coming and how do I best safeguard myself against that recession? Well, let's ask the question, David. You've done some work and some research on this. What do you think the Republican policies really offer? The populace. Well, I think that we just saw from the UK that the policies don't offer very much. And we had a prime minister who went kind of to be extreme of cutting taxes and corporations and wealthy and the pound dropped precipitously, created a huge economic crisis and after a matter of days, her term is over. So, I mean, that's what I think the Republican policy represents. That's, it's just an ineffective political mantra. You know, you had asked what kind of get back to the first question about what we're thinking about with elections. Now, one thing I'm thinking about right now is that the road to authoritarianism is to disqualify or destroy elections. If people begin to believe that elections aren't fair, that's the gateway to authoritarianism. And for increasing number of people, they seem receptive to the idea that maybe that's not such a bad thing. And what's really distressing to me is that even if you buy in the short term to the idea that if you do get an authoritarian leader, you believe that their values and interests will line up with yours, that's just one generation. You know, what happens to that second leader and the third leader? And if you think they're gonna continue to be responsive and attentive to the constituents when they have complete power, that's just a fantasy. So this idea that maybe this is really a viable alternative is very disturbing to me. And this idea that, eh, maybe we don't have to worry about elections because elections don't create those good results anyway. Look at the chaos where elections don't work. That is frightening to me. Well, and you look at some of the individuals that are running, whether it be governor's race in Pennsylvania or Senate in Georgia or in Arizona, and kind of get a, what can people be thinking? What's going on that gives these people such a substantial support base? Well, picking up on something Tina said, I think that economics are complicated. And, you know, there's lots of factors that go into things like inflation. There's lots of things happening in the world that are entirely outside of our country's control. And I, what I'm hearing a lot is inflation, inflation, economics, economics, I'm not hearing. What I would do differently right now to change that in the immediate future. I don't hear any of that. All I hear is that inflation is terrible, so vote out the incumbent. I don't hear how I would resolve it. And again, people are, apparently that's resonating. I wish people would ask the second question, what will you do to solve it that hasn't been done already? No, and that's a great point. That's the big question mark to which no answer has been provided except a few fringe people saying, well, if we can get rid of social security and Medicare, that's gonna free up a lot of money. But it also liberates money from exactly that sector of the population that most needs that help. So, Tina, what's your thought on where we might be able to go? What would really help this economy the most? If a policymaker came to you and said, what two or three things would you most wanna see happen? That's a good question. I think we'd have to really examine and I was gonna touch upon some of our foreign policy positions have impacted our economy. How we, what is it called? QE2, which is the adjustment to our currency in light of other currencies and how we've tried to balance that and we haven't been successful but literally looking at the supply chain imports, exports but also what are we doing in terms of living wage? I think the corporate taxes need to be revisited as well. And that isn't necessarily economic but that is more a policy. And when we think about the supply of goods and services or sorry, the availability of goods and services, it's due in large part when we have a lot of our work that has gone offshore. And I think some of the people that we hear running for office bring back jobs to America. Well, folks, let's talk about if you bring back jobs to America as you're stating what does that cost and what does the living wage really mean? And there have been studies that show what a living wage actually means and most businesses, the majority of small to medium sized businesses can't afford that. So where's the middle ground? Do you have intervention at the state level, the federal level or at another level? And I'm not saying that economic policies can't help. They certainly can but I think we have to have a real realistic discussion about it and what that means. It also means sometimes the policies that we have interstate policies that we have sometimes actually do more harm than good or for the states and both states involved. How we tax. I know I have friends who live in Texas right now and the supply of housing, affordable housing is becoming an issue to the point where people are now thinking, do I stay where I am or do I move elsewhere? And again, this is back to the economics of what can you afford when the cost of living has continued to go up? And for those who are, let's say, at 20%, 30% of the AMI for a particular area, those are the individuals that need the transportation most that may need to have access to good paying jobs and are we really willing to do that? And I think if we look at our larger corporations it's having that conversation of, can you really do what we're hearing from these politicians? And if you can't, why not? That's a great question. Hey, and affordable housing is an issue. A lot of people outside of Hawaii aren't aware of it, but Louise, that's been a major, major issue for us here for decades. Hey, do you see anything happening that's gonna bring about favorable change? Chuck, I'm not sure I have the best handle on that. I think what he has always been economically challenged, but it seems to me that part of the key to affordable housing is one of the intractable problems we have had about the very slow and Byzantine permitting process we have that just adds cost and unpredictability to the ability, it makes it an economic disincentive for developers to build housing. And of course another issue we have is of course the most economically attractive housing to be built for developers is luxury and housing for second home buyers. And of course we have a lot of that. We have a few developers who are really trying to address the rental and the workforce housing market, but we need to create more incentives or maybe just get more developers that are looking to those markets as well. And then helping them, incentivizing them by just making the whole development process easier. And I'm sure that's just scratching the surface, but just my anecdotal observations. Good insight. David is affordable housing a major economic issue in Twin Cities and Minnesota as well. Yeah, it is. We have a major development going on. We had a board motor company production plant in St. Paul, huge area on the Mississippi River. And they decided to stop building ranger small pickup trucks and decided to close the factory, which opened up a huge acreage right on the shores of the banks of the Mississippi River. And they've decided to make it a kind of a mini city, a highland bridge. And they're building a tremendous number of thousands of apartments and buildings. And of course, as you go through there, there's a lot of nice apartments that are kind of on the luxury end. And initially there were proposals to make certain that they're gonna have a certain percentage of affordable housing. And as the project has been going on, that has become less of a priority. And there's a college in town that needs some athletic facilities. And there's a lot of acreage there. And they went to the developer and kind of pitched the idea of putting their collegiate softball stadium, baseball stadium, maybe their hockey right there. And they got a receptive audience. And that was where the low income housing was going to be on that part of the parcel. And the assurance was, well, if we do that, we'll move it somewhere else, but it's not clear where that would be because it's pretty much all planned out already. So that's kind of just an example of even when we go into a project with good intention sometimes, things change. And when opportunities come that sound attractive for any variety of reasons, it seems that the affordable housing maybe gets pushed to the backside. That's a great point, David, because that reminds me, Chuck and I know well that we have a very similar issue here with a stadium that has been rusting for a very long time and had great ambitions as a sports stadium to attract people. And now they're looking at redeveloping it. And the idea was to develop a sports complex with residential work play style around. But there is a group that's trying to rethink that. Do we even need a stadium? Shouldn't we be using that for affordable housing? And that certainly is an important issue that needs to be discussed and looked into more. I mean, do you need that piece, that entertainment piece to attract people or should you be looking to reallocate the usage of your land? There's other places that can be used for recreation, but here we need the housing. But yeah, it's a good point. And I think we also need developers who have a commitment to the community they are in. Oftentimes when we get outside financing, there are folks that's gonna be on making, getting an exit strategy and making profit as opposed to thinking about the communities in which they are putting their money. We're seeing that in Honolulu and I'm sure many other cities see that too. Yeah, it is a difficult issue. One thing, St. Paul, both St. Paul and Minneapolis passed enacted rent caps, rent limitations. And Minneapolis has it kind of indexed with some inflation criteria, but St. Paul said hard, fast, 3%, that's it. You know, there's only no way, no, maybe some extreme exceptions, but it's 3%. And the problem is that people that were started to build, stopped building and they stopped building and parting in this Highland Bridge development too, but other parts of the city. And then some of the people were lower income builders. And now the problem is that if you're not gonna build any apartments at all, is that going to help with the shortage of housing? So sometimes, you know, you got a paradox of trying to do the right thing and then suddenly the response is maybe unanticipated and makes the situation even worse. So now they're backing off and they're giving all kinds of exceptions. They're gonna rate the rent increases for all kinds of things. And you've identified some key areas, not only the government bureaucracy, the permitting process, things that need to happen to make government more collaborative with affordable housing development, but maybe then things like changing the economic system, the tax system to incentivize that rather than the short-term high-level profit margin. And we see that not just in housing, but in energy and virtually all industries. And we're here from the current president and from some of the Democratic Party people that change in the tax system to reallocate away from profits and into incentivizing infrastructure development and energy development. But on the other side, we saw with the former president that major tax cuts at the highest level didn't result in more jobs or more infrastructure building and development. They actually resulted in buyback of stocks and a higher degree of concentration of wealth at higher levels. How is it that people don't get that? Are our candidates getting the right message across rather than the easy sound bite? Because that's one issue. Well, yeah, check it. Go ahead, you can go ahead. I think Koleas is right. And I think David mentioned this as well. We are in the era of sound bite. Can you say it in 30 seconds or 240 characters? And this is the opportunity to put the zinger out about the other candidate. And I have said this, what Louise said earlier is that's great, you're telling me how bad the other candidate is, but tell me what you plan to do when we've got this list of issues, when we've got limited resources and we have communities that need answers to these resources and we have to do long range planning. Where are you in this? I think some of the candidates that we're hearing from are feeding into or responding to this sense of scarcity and fear. I'm going to lose something. I'm gonna miss out on something. Something is being taken away from me. And this is how I can hold on to it because this candidate is saying, we'll go back to how it was in 1970. We'll go back to how it was in 1980. And the truth of the matter is we can't go back. This is the reality that we're in. Chuck, that question just asked, I think links up with a question you asked earlier. Bob, what would you like to see a elected representative do? What policy changes you like? And I was thinking about that and thinking, well, what I would like is that somebody to focus on the proliferation of social media sites and websites and misinformation that's getting out there and try to make some effort to control the conversation so that there's not so much misinformation, ricocheting around in virtual space. So you ask, how can people not get it? Well, one reason people don't get it is because there are this myriad of websites, you got Rumble and Perler and GAV and TruthSocial that are putting out a fair amount of misinformation and some people are only paying attention to those. And they don't see what the actual consequences will be because they're not being told that, they're being told other things. So I think it's understandable why people aren't getting it anymore because they're getting so misdirected that it's difficult to figure out what's accurate and what isn't. No, and that's a great insight. And you think of the old days of radio and at least there was and still is a national public radio, it may not draw a great audience but at least it offers a much more independent, less biased sharing of information and gathering of information than certainly Fox News or those on the other side of it. There's also public TV but we don't have public social media. We don't have an alternative to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and the rest of those. Tina brings a smile. Hey, can we put you in charge of engineering, public social media, PSM? Is this gonna be a cabinet level position? I chuckled because you mentioned TikTok and I hadn't really thought of TikTok as being a reliable news source. Not that the others that you mentioned were that much more reliable but TikTok definitely wasn't on my list. But then again, I don't know if I'm their target demograph. But if you can make the social media position a cabinet level, I'm in and I know who's gonna be on my cabinet team with me. I'm looking at three of those individuals right now. I saw a recent survey and you probably find it that said that millennials get most of their news information from TikTok. That has become a new source and people are believing whatever they're seeing on TikTok. So I'm definitely not that demograph. Well, and it's a little scary because my daughter's kids are teenagers and during the pandemic, Grandparent's Day was done on Zoom. So could actually participate even though it was in Boston. And one of the first questions that the teacher who was conducting it asked was, oh, what are your news sources, your information sources? And the parents, a lot of them came out with New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ouch. But the kids unilaterally and unanimously all came out with social media as their sources. And we laugh about TikTok but it may not be an information source but it certainly can be a propaganda source and it certainly can be a message source for the kids who spend a lot of time on that. Yeah, I made reference to millennials. It's really younger than that. The generations that are following that group that are really paying the attention that the platforms like TikTok. And just to get back to one thing because I know we're gonna run out of time that I think is noteworthy is in the last few days we saw what's happening down in Texas and Harris County and predominantly Democratic County in Texas. And the state said, okay, we're gonna pick up this county or we're gonna send inspectors there to watch the election. And they announced it right before the election in response then Harris County says, let's have the Justice Department come and we need that election monitors coming to see what these inspectors are gonna do and whether they're gonna be intimidating voters. So as we move in the midterms, I think there also is a concern about voter intimidation and on the one hand, and also inconveniencing voters taking away drive through voting, taking away 24 hour voting. Those things did exist in Texas, they're gone now. And a lot of the things that were done during the pandemic to make it easier for people to cast their vote in a valid way have been taken away. So as we go to the midterms, it'll be important to see what an impact that has on voter turnout. Well, that's a good point that we've been talking on the national level but certainly our local and state races are important too and especially the races for secretary of state in a number of areas, it's not to mention legislators who are gonna be voting on voting rights issues. That's a great point, David, that we need to be mindful of, well, getting people out there to vote but also making sure that they have the ability to exercise their right, not just this election, but in future ones. Yeah, we've got here in Minnesota, we have secretary of state election and this is another one that's kind of heated. The Republican challenger is an election denier who does not believe that Trump lost the election. That's the secretary of state, that's the person that's gonna be overseeing her elections. Doesn't believe their last election in Minnesota is kind of famous for having clean elections and great voter turnout led the nation and voter turnout. So we've had really a good reputation for elections and nonetheless, we've got somebody running for that position who doesn't believe in elections. How strong candidate are they? Well, fortunately right now, they're not leading, but they're not, it's also not a landslide. Of our contested races, I think that's probably the biggest gap, but it's not so great that you can say that it's a guaranteed win. It's a solid win for Democrats, you just can't say that anymore. Well, and we know that we have quite a number of people running that are not only past election deniers, but who have already come out and said, they're not necessarily agreeing to accept the results of this coming midterm election, if they are not successful. Somehow they've all overlooked the fact that apparently the presidential election was corrupt, but not the Senate races in 2020. How did that happen? Well, probably the same way that most of the self-contradictory positions happened, right? Which is, Republicans all voted against, unanimously voted against, the passage of Biden's economic relief bills and stimulus bills. And yet all of them are grabbing for that money and taking credit for getting that money. So... Of the 12 states getting the most money, eight of them are red states. And we've got all the local officials, you've got the national officials, the Senate representatives of Congressional who voted against it are all now celebrating all the things that that money is bringing to their states. So if they didn't support it, they're getting, but they're getting in twice as much money as the blue states and they're celebrating the money, even though they tried to prevent the passage of the bill. Okay, so in our last minute or so, for each of you, one thought that you would love to see voters put high in mind as they go to the polls or cast their votes for these midterms. Tina. Go to a reliable source for your voting information. Please. I had the same thought that, you know, people should be paying attention to the news, maybe read the news for a change, reliable sources as you say, go to NPR, think critically, ask questions of your candidate, make sure that they are supporting things like voting rights and they have solutions that make sense. Don't just go for the sound bite. David. Yeah, and that's what I would say. You know, to agree that you're in a lot of criticism, you know, ask the second question, what would you have done differently and what will you do if you're elected that you believe is gonna change things significantly? And we want that second answer. You know, and I think that points us to a really good place to wrap up today, which is that maybe what's missing the most is objectively reliable information about the choices and consequences that we're facing. Thank you all for joining us. Thanks for asking the hard questions and giving us some thought-provoking perspectives and insights on all of those. Come back and join us in a couple of weeks. Thanks for joining us at Tink-Tak, Hawaii. Take care. Thanks as always, Chuck. Thank you so much for watching Tink-Tak, 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 tinktakhawaii.com. Mahalo.