 Let me thank all of you for coming. Let me thank the Green Mountain Community Chorus for their music and they're going to return in a little while. You know, before COVID, we used to do these things on an annual basis, not only here in Burlington, but all over the state. And it was very important for us to bring people together and to have a nice time. But COVID put a damper on that, obviously. So we're glad to be back again. We thank the Hilton here for their help in arranging this. What I wanted to do is just chat for a few minutes about what's going on in Washington. Then I'm going to stop and take your questions and your comments. But before I even begin, let me mention here that we have an office located here in Burlington. The 1-800 number that really does a very, very good job in helping Vermonters with their problems, whether it's social security, veterans, Medicare, Medicaid, whatever it may be, housing. We do our best and we have some really good staff. So if you or anybody you know, family, friends, has a problem, do not hesitate to give us a ring, that's what we are there for. Right now, as all of you know, our staff is focused on the terrible flooding that we experienced a number of weeks ago. It was the worst natural disaster in our state since 1927. 4,000 homes were damaged. Some of them are not going to be rebuilt. I was in Burry after the flood. It was just terrible. Just terrible what the flood did there. And in other places, Montpelier downtown, very bad, London area, such a lot of towns, we get very, very hot. So we're working right now to try to bring in the disaster relief money that the state needs working with the governor and the delegation to make that happen. So that is up and most on our minds. But obviously what we are dealing with in Washington, so all of you know, is not just the flood. I think it is fair to say that the moment in which we are living in today might be the most difficult, challenging moment in our lifetimes. You know, the 1930s, some of you may have been around men. The terrible was the depression on climate was high. Obviously the civil war back in the 1860s was terrible, etc. But this is a difficult, difficult moment in American history. And what are some of the issues that we are dealing with and what is Washington doing when not doing too often and is not doing to address them? Issue number one, anybody in this room gets hooked on Fox TV and thinks that climate change is not real. You are terribly, terribly mistaken. We are living in a moment where the last eight years have been the warmest on record. Just this last July, last month, warmest July, recorded history. July 4th was the warmest day ever recorded on Earth. And it's not just the United States. China had a temperature of 123 degrees. They had flooding which drove a million people out of the big Beijing area. Iran literally had to shut down its country. People couldn't go to work. It was so hot, Latin America, Africa, you name it. Right now the buildings probably still will be far as far as into Tibet. Remember breathing in not only air? It was really disgusting. I was in Washington at the worst of it. And this farce fire, this motor from the farce fire went all the way, many parts of the country. And it created the worst hand days that people had ever seen. We were in Washington and I went out for a walk. You were reading in this horrible, horrible air. Absolutely water. People got sick from that. And I don't have to tell anybody not only what happened in Vermont, last month or happened in a terrible death toll I was seeing in Maui, in Hawaii, which is a beautiful, beautiful island which has some devastating fires which essentially are caused by what climate change is doing. So this is a problem that has to be done. Is Congress doing much to deal with it? We're doing something. Last year in a bill called the inflation adjustment act, we put hundreds of billions of dollars into energy efficiency and sustainable energy. One of the provisions that I got in will make it easier for middle-class, working-class, low-income people to put solar panels on their rooftops. How many people here have solar rooftop? Solar panels. You're saving a lot of money in your electrical, right? So a lot of people don't know they say, well, solar is good. It's good for the climate. It cuts pollution. That's true. But you know what else it does? It saves, so in San Francisco, and Jane and I put solar on our house about seven years ago, I think, our electric bill went down by 80%, which is about average, okay? Now, the condo is that a lot of people can't afford the initial upfront investment for the solar, which depends on tax credits and how big your house is. We spent, I think, about $14,000, $15,000. So what this bill does is either provides grants or loans to people to put the solar on, and if they have to repay the loan, it will not be anyone in their current electric bill. So if you pay $100,000 to repay the loan at the end of the 79 years, that's it. You own the solar, and you have virtually free electricity. So this is what we're trying to do all over the country. And solar and energy efficiency, investing in energy efficiency, something we saw here in this city when I was mayor, we had some bond issues for people supported. I'm sure it's changed a little bit. But for a number of years in the city of Burlington, while the city grew, the city with the power of electric power was not using any more electricity because of energy efficiency. So those are the two directions we are moving into. We saw in other renewable energies and making sure that what we do is more energy efficient. So that's issue number one. Issue number two that we deal with, I am now the chairman of a committee in the Senate for the health education labor and pension committee, which is a big deal. It's a big committee. And one of the issues we are tackling is the high cost of prescription drugs. Now an issue we are taking on the pharmaceutical industry, which is the industry of incredible greed. These guys want everything. They are charging us in this country the highest prices in the world by far for prescription drugs. Some of you may recall, but a number of years ago, many years ago now, and I was at the conference actually, I took a chair from St. Louis, I went through Montreal to help women who were dealing with breast cancer and they needed a drug called Mosulet, still used. They bought that drug in Montreal for one-tenth of the price they had to pay in the line, one-tenth of the price. But a couple of years ago, I went from Detroit, Michigan to Ruseau, Ontario, to San Diego, where a lot of people find insulin drugs. Insulin, big deal, because we have major prices of diabetes. They take one-tenth of the price. So we are working hard to take on the pharmaceutical industry, loan the cost of prescription drugs. Not easy. They are a very, very powerful industry that owns a lot of medicine and commerce. Last session, we had some success. If you're on Medicare, it will kick in. You should not have to pay more than $35,000 a month for insulin. That's a step forward. More importantly, within a short period of time, I can't remember what next year, two years. And this is a big deal. No senior in America will have to pay more than $2,000 out of pocket costs. So if you have it right now, and you take on a lot of medicine, that will be a big deal. Third issue, which of course the pharmaceutical industry is running through the courts to get out of the term, is maybe the most important. The reason we pay the highest prices in the world is they have never been regulations on the industry. So they come up with a drug, or they have a drug. Maybe it's been out there for 20 years. And they say, hey, guess what, we didn't. Let's double the price. Well, no, let's triple the price. What's the difference? No one stops us. It's not against the law. And that's what they do. See, a drug's been on the market for a long period of time. They just double-chirped against what the market can best. Over the very first time, what Medicare will do in a couple of years is negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical industry. Starting off small. We pay drugs. Why do we use drugs? So in other words, the pharmaceutical industry will not be able to charge any price they want. This is something that the Veterans Administration has been doing for decades. And doing it well. Which is why the VA pays by far the lowest prices in this country. So I'm going to be introducing the bill. I don't know if it will get passed because of all the opposition from the industry and even if it will get paid by the industry. But basically, what it will say, it's kind of doing what the Canadians do. You're going to look around the world. Look at what goes on in Europe. Look at what goes on in Japan. And in the United States, we will not pay more than the average cost of those drugs fall over the world. That would lower prescription drugs by 50%. The other issue that we're working on on the committee, we're working on it, literally my staff is working on it, literally as I stand here. And that is, I don't have to tell anybody that the healthcare system in America is broken. Is that true? Okay. What does that mean? I want to go through what broken means and what I believe the alternatives are. Number one, we spend as an agent. Who wants that? Help me out here. Guess how much we spend per person? Every man will have a job in America on healthcare. What's the guess? $13,000 a year per person. You got that? Now, that includes Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, what your employer is you, what people pay out of pocket. Okay? It includes all of that. And they're all together. And divided up by the 320 million people in America. It turns out it was spending $13,000 each person. That is double what any other country ever spends. Double what our friends, 50 miles more of us spend. Why is the 30 cents function? What's the function of the current healthcare system? You got it. The function of the current healthcare system is not to provide quality care to all people. That should be the function. The function is to make as much money as possible for the insurance companies and the drug companies. And that is exactly what was happening right now. At the end of the day, in my view, and it's going to take just a massive effort to make it happen, we are moving in the direction of what Europe does, what Canada does. If you get to sit in Canada, and their system is not perfect, I'm not going to tell you it is, but if you get to sit in Canada, and you're in a hospital for four weeks, how much is the ability to do that? Anyone know? Zero. Zero. Zero. You walk into a doctor's office, how much do you pay? Zero. Okay. And they cover every man, woman, and child in that country, in our country about 85 million people who are uninsured, uninsured. They do that for a handful of us per person that we pay. Now, here's where the problem lies. When I propose what we call a Medicare for all system, there are 37 ads on television saying, Bernie Sanders wants to raise your taxes. Okay? And some degree, not sure. On the other hand, what Bernie wants to do is eliminate all of your premiums, your co-payments, your deductibles. So if you have to pay, if you have to pay, you have to pay $5,000 more a year in taxes, and you save $10,000 a year, and out of pocket and insurance costs seems to be like your $5,000 to the good. So that's the ultimate fight. But we're tenting on the drug companies, the insurance companies, a lot of powerful people to make that happen. And it's not going to happen tomorrow. But I'm trying to do something in a smaller way, at least, working really hard, trying to get high partisan support. And that is to expand primary health care in America. What does that mean? It means that other countries around the world invest 10, 15% of their non-care allies in primary health care. Primary health care means that everybody has the opportunity to walk into an opt-in office when you are sick, walk into a dental office, dental tradition, go into a dentist when you need to. Now, what is the advantage of that? Well, the obvious advantage is that when people are sick, they should be able to find a doctor. But for the system, the truth is we save money when you are able to go into an opt-in when you are sick. Why? Because if you don't have an opt-in, you're going to go to the emergency room, which is the most expensive for primary health care. And furthermore, if you don't have any money, you get really sick when you're still having it. You're not in the hospital, which is outrageous to the extent. So keeping people healthy, keeping people healthy is not only the right thing to do for the humane point of view. It saves the system money. So I'm trying to significantly increase funding for primary care so we can keep people out of the hospital. The other issue is that despite the fact that we spend so much on health care, literally speaking, we don't have enough doctors in America. We don't have enough nurses in America. We don't have enough mental health providers. Mental health is a huge issue in this country right now. We don't have enough dentists in America. We don't have pharmacists in America. So we have to grow the health care work for something that we are working very, very hard on. So those are some of the issues that I'm touching on. Let me just touch on a few others that we're looking at. I want you to be thinking about this because you're looking at probably the only member in the Congress who talks about it. But it needs to be talked about. All right. One of the things that concerns me is that you live in a nation right now where some 60% of our people are living in paycheck to paycheck. You don't know what that means. You do know what it means. Unfortunately, you do know what it means. It means that you have to pay rent. You have to buy food. You've got to go to the doctor's office. At the end of the week, you've got nothing to say. And some of those people are going to close their eyes. Why is that? Of course, the housing in America, skyrocketing, childcare, very expensive, gasoline in the pump, expensive. Doctors' appointments, very, very expensive. So you've got all those costs, but wages for the average American have not kept up with that inflation. In fact, this is an amazing fact. I want you to think about it. And that is over the last 50 years, real inflation accounted for wages. You know what that means? That means wages have taken inflation into consideration. Real wages for American workers have virtually not gone up at all. Got that? So you've got all of the technology, all of the computers. And when I was mayor of Burlington in the 80s, when I walked into the city, I was like, they don't have any computers. Cell phones does not exist. So you've got all of this new technology, and yet the average worker in America is no better off than he or she was 50 years ago. On the other hand, the people on top are doing phenomenally well. So you've got more income and wealth in the quality today than we have ever had in the history of America. Now, very few people talk about it. I talk about it. Because to me, it is not moral and it is not good economics that three people on top, Elon Musk and a few of his friends, own more wealth than a lot of half of American society. Got that? Three people. Almost all of the new income goes to the people on top. So our struggle, ultimately, is to try to create an economy that works for everybody, not just the billionaires and the 1%. The situation is more complicated. What do you think the billionaires do with their money? They invest their income. So right now is the result of a Supreme Court decision called Citizens United. You all hear that? What that decision, what the Supreme Court said, is for all of you who are billionaires, and I know we've got the billionaires in this store right now, you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars. Nobody knows it. Go to the bank, take out a couple hundred million dollars, put it into a super PAC, Citizens for Good Government. And then you run hands on television, attacking people who are trying to stand up, working people, supporting other people. You can control the political process. So we need real campaign, financed reform to make sure the billionaires don't run out of money. The issues, and they are waiting and difficult issues. There are many, many other issues on your mind. Those are some of the issues that we are dealing with right now. Let me conclude by just saying what I said in the beginning. If you have any personal issues, what is this? Haley is right here. Ryan is right here. Where is Hannah? Kate is here. Hannah is over there. We've got staff right here. Just give us your phone number, and we will get back to you if there are any personal issues who wants to do it. Okay, let's open it up. Any questions? Who has the mic? Kate, you got it? How many mics do we have? I'll take that one. Is this on? Yeah. Are you ready? Yeah. I didn't know this until last fall, but what I'm about to say is something that you can do something about because it has nothing to do with Congress. It's about Medicare. So last fall, the governor asked the state whether he could allow the impose upon retired state employees with Medicare advantage. He thought the governor, and he was trying to bypass the union, but the secretary stepped in. All things are good right now. We're bargaining for what we have. This is a non-profit, I found out that under the Trump administration, traditional Medicare, not Medicare advantage, was beginning to be privatized through the innovation program called the Red Contact. And it's continuing under the Biden administration. And according to what I gave to you, which you can read, by the Physicians National Healthcare Program group, the Biden administration, bureaucrats have managed to expand the privatization of traditional Medicare over the next two to eight years. This means they're giving money to direct contracting entities which is capitated so that Medicare employees with their providers will be... You're touching on a very important issue. And that is, Medicare traditionally has been enormously popular and enormously successful. It has its problems, but it's a very strong part. Over the last number of years, United Insurance and other big insurance companies, essentially want to privatize Medicare in the same way it's going to want to privatize Social Security and Medicaid and everything else. So you're right, and it's a very serious problem. It's not within the jurisdiction of my committee, it's another committee, but we do understand it and it's something that has to do with you. I do shit. All right, I'm here for a very long time. I've supported you over the years that you were there, and you're all after a little guy, you're all looking out for him. The thing I have a concern about is I believe it's capped at $160,000. After $160,000, you pay multiple securities. Now, meet Elon Musk at all those cronies, the billionaire, the ball player, the football player, the baseball player, the people in Hollywood, everybody, they don't pay any Social Security after $160,000. Now my suggestion is, instead of putting the cap every year on Social Security after the beginning, put it on the end, and most of you could get, let's say, $5,000, but paying Social Security on what you earn and you will never have a problem with Social Security. What do you think is correct? Correct. Well, Fred, guess what? I introduced that as a question. All right. Well, Fred is saying it's exactly right. Here's the scandal. I'm going to take two minutes on this one. You've got to trust what trust means, the money that Social Security accumulates over the inputs in the bank, so to speak. And what people say, which is true, is that in a certain period, that trust fund is going to disappear. So number one, though, when that trust fund disappears, does it mean that Social Security is going broke? It means the trust savings is going to disappear. 75%, 80% of the money it goes out comes in for work with today. I don't think it's going to work. I've had a social security that when it comes in, it goes out the whole time. That's number one. But the Social Security trust fund is shrinking. We have to deal with it. Now, what Fred said is exactly correct. Here is the scandal. The scandal is you make $160,000 a year. You pay whatever, 60% into Social Security. I don't know if that's the exact amount. If you make $160 billion a year, you pay the same amount. So our legislation does have a lot of support. Is it this one? When we're going to lift the cap, get rid of that cap at 160%, tax the people on all of their income, which will impact, not impact the bottom 98%, just the top, or the 2%, it will bring in enough money, A, to make Social Security solvent for 75 years of your kids and grandchildren. And number two, it will increase Social Security benefits. All right? Because right now, there are a lot of seniors trying to get money on $15,000 to $16,000 a year for Social Security. All right? And that's tough to do. So we want to increase benefits. So brand package 100% right. That's the bill that I introduced. We have a number of post losses on it. That is the solution for the Social Security problems. We have an issue with cost-living adjustments here. Every October 1st, when the new federal budget near starts, we get a cost-living adjustment for those of us who get staff benefits, which is probably quite a few of them. And then on January 1st, we get a total of for our Social Security. The same meeting we've recalculated our staff benefits and they went down 40% to 60%. So there goes a big chunk of our Social Security total. It vanishes. It disappears. How can we e-couple these two things? You're absolutely right. I mean, you know, with the government schools, it's local state federal government. They don't need money. But instead of going to the place where you should be going, to the people who have the money, they go to people who are struggling. That is a bad way to raise money. You're on staff. You know, you should not be forced to pay more people as you got a Social Security check. Your Social Security should not be reduced. So you're absolutely right. Now, give me another example of how that works. Same principle. Right now, you are a low income single mom. And you're getting benefits to childcare. Well, you don't want to get a decent job and make a little bit more money. You can lose a lot of childcare benefits. It's the same thing. We're penalizing poor people for trying to survive, lowering our people. And that's wrong. Okay. Katie? My name is John Sager. We're both Social Security recipients. We also pay Medicare out of Social Security. The issue that we have is that when we were employed and had health insurance, that health insurance premiums that we paid were not counted for taxes out of our income. But when you, with Medicare, taken out of Social Security, those premiums would be paid for Medicare and also for supplemental is taxed. And that's not fair to people who are on Social Security. So I don't understand why the government is taxing those premiums that we paid. Well, the answer is, it's easier to tax low income and working people than billionaires. That's the answer. All of these questions get to the same point. We're talking about tax policy. That what you're talking about? All right. Give me an example. Piece of the paper yesterday. Fall in the suit of law industry which makes huge profits. What they do is they take their profits, they put them in Europe where the tax rate is low when they pay very little taxes in the United States. Elon Musk probably plays to be lower effective tax rate than usually. So it is always when you're going to fill up your gas tank, it is a regressive form of taxation. So what we're trying to do is to fight for progressive taxation. That means if you've got a lot of money, you should be asked to pay your fair share of taxes. That does not exist right now. That touches on exactly what you're talking about. So your point is well taken. Just as this gentleman's point is well taken. You don't go after low-income or middle-income people and raise their taxes or lower the burden on that. You go after the people doing phenomenally well the large corporations who are enjoying record-breaking profits. Okay. Where are you? There you are. Yeah. I'm Senator Sanders. My name is Sal Melicham and I'm changing the subject to climate change. Okay. When you were talking about the fires in Canada, we only heard about the smoke. We never heard about the fires. And it was like, do we go help our neighbors? It seems like the only time we go to help our neighbors is with guns. Is there anything about us asking or going to help our neighbors fight these fires? Yeah. You know, I remember the President not so long ago, I raised that variation. He said there is since what, I think, but it's complicated the Canadian Fire Service is different than how it's always publicly done. But your point is very well taken. And I think as we see more and more natural disasters taking place throughout the world, the world's going to have to come together to figure out how we address them. So I think I think somebody is going to have to use part of the military to do that as well. But you're right. I mean right now I think those fires look like a public silvering and it's outside. Okay. Other questions? No, go ahead. Where's the mic? Yeah, okay. Senator, I've racked out I'm sorry, I'm going to be a 10-year-old. I've racked out a priority for a girl from Vermont. I think all this is so out of the way to our needs in health care and always with a strong support of working families. One important element of that is community. And there is a bill of Vermont that we can consider in order to speak to the value and importance of the Washington State. Look, thank you very much. Absolutely. You know, we think of ourselves as the richest country on Earth. And in some respects that's correct. We are all together we are. But as I mentioned earlier the problem with that is we have massive income throughout the economy. Also, our social programs are much weaker than many other countries. The gentleman talked about paid family and medical leave. Guess what, we are the only major country on Earth that has that guarantee paid family and medical leave. So right now there are women in America low income working class women making 12 bucks an hour 15 bucks an hour. They have a baby they got to go back to work a week after they have that baby because they have that guarantee any income to stay home. So obviously we are fighting for paid family and medical leave for the very first time getting a guarantee of at least seven days of guarantee sick leave for American workers. Anybody have any idea if you were in Norway and you had a baby what benefits do you have? Does anybody know? It depends on the country but you can get up to a year off to stay home with all pay on three quarters pay. Got that? You have a vacation time throughout Europe people are guaranteed 30 days, 40 days of paid vacation. So we are behind many of other countries and we are trying to do what we can any OK, other questions? Question here right? OK, Waldo? I just want to take this opportunity to thank you for all the good ideas and my question is what do you think we can do to restore legitimacy to our three quarters? Sad to say as you noted in the case is we are living in a very politicized country and part of that liberalization is the Supreme Court. The theory of the Supreme Court is that you can politics aside and you look at the Constitution the laws of America and you render the best decision that you can. I don't think too many Americans think that that is now the case. You have a very bright Supreme Court which has passed something terrible, terrible made some very, very terrible decisions in recent years. I mentioned earlier there's Citizens United which is going a long way under my American democracy. Recently some of all of you know that there was this Docs decision which did away with Roe v. Wade and the right for women to be able to control their own lives. There are other decisions that come down and type that are pro-corporate anti-worker and so forth. So it is a tough one but I think there are more ways to do that with Supreme. If you're on the Supreme Court you're not necessarily guaranteed a lifetime appointment on that court. You are guaranteed a lifetime judiciary according to the Constitution but there are scholars who think you can rotate people to the Supreme Court and put them into other federal courts. That is a very, very important issue. There's every single issue that we're trying to deal with if you're going to have people running to the Supreme Court and then going to turn. Hello Bernie, my name is Hank I live in the North End. I share your frustration about virtually every one of these issues and I see the absolute root to all of it as you pointed out is to overturn a sentence united. Unfortunately, we are far, far away from getting there. I have been working for several years to try and get a constitutional amendment to overturn a sentence united through the state legislature method of amending the Constitution. That has failed up to this point. I don't want our state to volunteer to do that and I'm proud of that but that together with the lack of excess profits taxes in this country that allowed millionaires to become trillionaires we've all worked hard on all these issues following a great example of leadership but what can we do today to overturn a sentence united and get an excess profits tax because we'll be there to help you and we are well it's not just me, there are other people who are working really hard on that. Another issue not on the way to what you're talking about is the use of the filibuster in the Senate where people like Senator Mercury of Oregon are working very hard on that. All right, but you should not I'm not sure what you do now is that a few years ago we brought legislation to the floor in this United you got zero Republicans support for that and we lost two, I think it was two coalition members managing the Senate and we couldn't pass it but the American it's an interesting point because I think no matter what your politics may be nobody or very few people think it is appropriate that billionaires should be able to control the democratic process so we have the support of the people behind us I think we've got to elect people to Congress who are prepared to pass legislation which essentially does away with citizens I believe I believe in some communities in the states that will be in this direction is public funding in other words what that means what that means is if I call up some billionaire and you guys are going to send me all kinds of money it's very possible to defeat me but if you have a limit on how much people can spend that's doing away with citizens of the United and then saying let's go over to the last person you don't have a lot of money you want to run for all the time you're going to get the money you need where you do public funding of elections if you have a certain threshold you're going to get help and you can run a serious campaign there are states that do that, Maine does some of that for example there's an issue of campaign financial reform, election reform gerrymandering reform enormously important I hope people stay tuned and pay attention to those issues okay a couple more questions I'll go right here okay thank you senator I got the B.A. for insurance thank god I always got Medicare I know you pushed Medicare because I can't afford the premium that's one issue the second issue is what can you do about the crime, the drug use and the homelessness in Burlington that's a very good question all I would say is you know it's an issue I'm sure the mayor and the city council are attempting to deal with I will tell you that the issue of homelessness is a huge issue in this state not not only here in Burlington but around the state I've got around the state and if you talk to police officers you talk to teachers you talk to local officials just on a wrap or the other day homelessness in a high cost of housing is a major major issue and when you have homelessness and drug addiction you're going to have crime with it so Burlington is hurting communities all over this country are hurting let me take a moment to tell you about what we did try to do what we did try to do about those things during the COVID pandemic you all remember that the economy really collapsed unemployment and I'm sorry do you remember a plan called the American Rescue Plan how many of you have checked 1400 bucks alright if you were unemployed during that time your unemployment was extended if you worked in the hospital you know the hospital had huge amounts of money because it was being flooded with people with COVID people had to deal with school systems got money childcare centers got money we expanded Medicaid because people lost their health insurance as chairman of the budget committee working with the president we helped write that $1.9 trillion dollar bill which helped get this country out of the worst economic downturn in modern history but that was not enough what we wanted to do was come back and deal with some of the systemic and structural crises facing this country including homelessness and housing and healthcare and drug addiction we put together a massive bill that was unprecedented in modern America that in fact would have dealt with hundreds of billions of dollars going into low income and affordable housing money going to help the addiction treatment we don't have enough counselors by any means we lost that vote in the senate by 2 votes so that fight has got to continue homelessness crime serious problems not only in Vermont but all over this country alright maybe one more question we're going to go from here I have all of you from in here I just want to say all of these issues that have been brought up today still to be very interconnected we have a huge humanitarian problem in this country first of all in our borders but how right now our mental issue there are not going to be costs to have to worry about because of the forest and flooding I'm generally a very optimistic person but I can't say the optimism because of complexity the amount of problems are from all experience so I can't let lessons live in Vermont but I still see of the horizon that we're going to be facing a lot more how can we get all of our seniors together to kind of solve some of these issues that could be included well look thank you very much for your question you know as I began my remarks by Tom I wish I could tell you all about this these are the most physical things in my mind that's what we call climate democracy crime the attacks on a very democratic foundation people want to literally go away from democracy alright I'll tell you this does anybody know who Bill McKibbin is does that mean anything? Bill is was a ripped it and Bill has been in the forefront of climate change for 20 years what do you know about it? what do you know about it? what do you know about it? and Bill has recently he organized the group now he'll be sewing he has a great idea he understands that many of you senior citizens you are passionately concerned about these issues that we're talking about many of you are retired you want to do meaningful things he is trying to organize seniors into a powerful political force to do just that and let me get back to you any of you get the burning buzz you ever see the burning buzz? alright we send that out on a regular basis and check it out we'll communicate with you about how you are powerful force and if we don't want billionaires to have all the power then the antidote is you people aren't going to stand up and fight back so who will work to try to do what we can to build mobilized seniors around the issues that we're talking about let me just let me just again thank all of you for being here let me thank the Green Mountain men's chorus let me thank all of them for their catering event Joe Tangway right here to his home and now I think we're going to turn the mic back to the Green Mountain men's chorus gentlemen, take order