 Okay, we're back. We're live. We're doing Monday morning. What has been now? It's wisdom, man. And you know what else we're doing? We're doing identifying and dealing with the sea changes that affect our community. What is a sea change? Imagine yourself on a ship. You know, the ocean is like this, but somewhere along the line, you've got to be like that. Okay, and it's that sea change that you don't see. You don't realize somebody has to be watching for it because it affects us. It affects the ship and it affects the community. Sometimes it happens slowly, sometimes not so slowly. The world is always changing, you know? Tim, plus a change, plus a change, the more things change, the more they change. You know, I was just saying that this morning. That's Tim Appichella. He speaks French. Not very well. So anyway, we're talking about the news today and there's some several things we want to talk about. So this is telling you what we have seen in the news and it's telling you our reaction to what we have seen in the news and why we feel these things are sea changes and why we think they affect our community and why we all want to take note of these things. So we're going to do this on Monday. We're going to do it today. So Tim, what's on the agenda for our sea changes today? Well, you know, it's what's been in the headlines for the last week. I mean, it's been you talk about sea changes. You know, if this was an airship, we would call it turbulence. And I would say that the headlines and the news articles in the last three or four days has been filled with turbulence. I agree. Bottom bottom line is we've got, you know, we have the summit about North Korea. We've had the immigration, the separation of children from parents. We've had Kilauea, literally a turbulence. And then, of course, I think one that's going to affect Hawaii quite a bit is the Supreme Court decision about taxation on internet sales. Yeah, good choice. Yeah, no, these are these are things that are in the headlines that, you know, really should catch our attention and strike a chord within us. Okay, in general, let's talk about North Korea first. You know, it's almost like after reach back that happened two weeks ago, it seems like a long time ago. And now it's been silence. We've been deluged with other distractions from Washington every day, maybe two or three times a day. So you forget what happened in North Korea. And one of the things I picked up in the interim was somebody said, somebody in the government said the North Koreans have done nothing to implement this deal. I'm not sure the, you know, the Washington administration has done anything either. So we have this deal. They met for 20 minutes. They don't speak each other's language. Lord knows what they said in those 20 minutes. The agreement is like two pages long, and it really doesn't say anything except we're going to be nice to each other along those lines, or we're going to make a deal later. That's what it says. So where are we on this? Well, let's first get past the the heaping of praise upon praise upon praise for the North Korean dictator. I was really struck by that. And I was actually cut off guard onto the accolades that were laid upon this individual. And without warrant, I felt I just didn't feel it belonged in bipolar, you know, one day he's Rocket Man and all those other, you know, nasty things that Trump used to describe him next day. It's heaping praise. Well, and he got what he wanted. He got recognition. He got some, you know, some esteem out of this. Whereas before he was a pariah. Now he's on the world stage. People are trying to, you know, meet with him and put their arms around him and be photographed with him. Why? I mean, these agreements have been broken in the Clinton administration. These agreements have been broken in the Obama administration. What makes Donald Trump, President Trump, think that this isn't going to occur again? Well, Trump's reputation when he was doing real estate business in New York was he always broke his word, always broke his word. And he's breaking his word in so many other ways. I'm not sure why we would think even for a short period of time that he's not going to break his word here. He will break his word. Well, was this a distraction or was this to go down in the books in history as something that was done monumentally by the President of the United States who has never met directly with a North Korean leader, dictator, even from the father to the grandfather ever since the Korean conflict, Korean War, you know? That's a good question. But I don't think Donald Trump is capable of making good history. So at the end of the day, bad history. It's not important to him whether he makes good history. Right. It's only a matter of distraction. You distract from other problems like the Mueller problem and so many other things. And so this was a great distraction. It took all our attention, sucked all the oxygen for a few weeks. And now it's history in the sense that nobody thinks about it anymore. Yeah. Well, I think there would be two positive things that will come out of this, Jay. And one is, if you really think about it, there is the issue of family reunification. And families for the last 50, 60 years have been separated. And only maybe now that there may be an opening of doors to let people unify with one another. I believe it when I see it. Likewise is all the promise of economic assistance and opening trade doors and making regular normalizing relations with North Korea for us and others. But I'll see that when I believe it too, because at the end of the day, I don't think Trump is going to mind. He still treats him in his heart and his mind. He still treats him as rocket man. What's interesting, though, is the real benefit or additional benefit for Kim Jong-un is that this helps him with other countries. Immediately after this deal, he took another trip to China. He's got a working relationship, an ongoing conversation with China now. That means something for him. He's in better shape with China, I think, than he was before. Well, good luck ever going back to sanctions. Good luck with that. Good luck with that. Yeah, it's not going to happen. So no matter what happens out of this deal, trying to open that door and get everyone on one side, on the same page, about sanctions, isn't going to happen easily, if at all. Yeah, I think we've seen it as good as it's going to get. All the hugging and nice statements, that's over because it's no longer necessary. And what's necessary now is they should play it out. And the likelihood is that the way this unfolds going forward is they have an argument and somebody tears up the deal. And my guess is that Trump is going to provoke the argument. Well, Kim Jong-un is doing some overtures, what I would call overtures. And the other one was the possibility of bringing back the MIAs from the Korean conflict. There was over 5,000 GIs killed in North Korea. And from 1996 to 2005, there are three recoveries which represented 229 veterans brought back in a box. So you have a lot of veterans that are on North Korean soil. And there may be the hope and promise that those bones will be returned back to the United States for internment possible. Is it 70 years ago? Yeah. How often have you thought about the unmarked, unknown soldiers of the Korean War? Well, it's an important fact for the ancestors of that great grandfather. It's an important thing. It's an important thing. In a larger sense. From a veteran standpoint. I think it falls to the bottom of the... Oh, I agree. Like I said, a small overture. Maybe some emotional overtones, but not much more. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's see what happens. But right now, I think the message is, if I was going to make a message about the sea change, sea change is the reality is setting in. And the reality is there's no deal of consequence. The reality is nobody is going to implement anything. The reality is that soon enough we'll have an argument where they'll justify and distract us with sort of undermining the deal they said they made. But we'll see. Let me ask you this. Do you think, particularly here in Hawaii and Guam, and do you think there was a sigh of relief that this summit took place? I think there was a sigh of relief around the world. Oh, there's not going to be a war with North Korea. They're going to stand down their intercontinental ballistic missiles. I'm sure everybody felt relieved. And I feel relieved now about it. Because at least somebody has said, oh, no, we're not going to blow you up. That's comforting when they say that. Yes, it is. You know, I mean, and there were times, you know, post the middle January false alarm, where I think people did think that it was a logical possibility. And more and more, a 60-minute show just a couple of weeks ago indicating that they had some between 30 and 60 active nuclear bombs, you know, it's pretty threatening. But now, knock wood, knock wood, they're not going to use the saying, they're not going to use them. And in fact, they're saying that they're going to stand down the whole nuclear effort. Let's see what happens. See what happens. Yeah, I agree. But I think it's very interesting to see how nothing has happened. You don't even hear about it. It's not on Trump's schematic right now. So what's the second topic? The second topic is immigration, one of my favorite things. Yeah, tough one. Tough one to watch, tough one to listen to the audios. You know, there was bad optics all the way around. I don't know what was to be accomplished by the methodology of this pretty hard zero tolerance policy, but there it was for all us to see. And I keep thinking, how low can we go? I mean, particularly to the world watching us, how low can we go? And that floor doesn't seem to have a floor. Just we keep sinking lower and lower what people expect of the United States, that shining city on the hill. I don't see that right now. And I'm hoping it comes back, but during the implementation of these kind of policies, I just don't see that shining city on the hill. Well, is this the real United States or is this the false United States? I mean, that question ends up for grabs right now. They elected him. A lot of people still support him. He doubles down. They double down. He doubles down on child incarceration. They double down on child incarceration. I mean, everybody I know thinks it's travesty and cruel and inhumane and immoral and all that. Well, what's the fact? So, you know, a real question is, oh, the policy business, he says, oh, it's the Democrats. They made this happen. That's really, you know, poppycock. He made it happen by himself. I don't think he, you know, he compared notes with Congress about it by himself. All right. So now we have this, you know, reversal of the policy, which he does in the stroke of a pen, but is the policy really reversed? You know, this is all for public consumption. It's all a distraction. Is the policy reversed? Well, if it's a distraction, it was one horrific distraction and the optics were terrible. In fact, I'm sure that call from President Trump's office, the Oval Office to Jeff Sessions, our Attorney General, that must have been a heck of a conversation because when this was being implemented by the Justice Department, and if I can read a quote here from Jeff Sessions, I mean, our Attorney General, the Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions, to rationalize this policy, this zero tolerance policy, he didn't talk about the merits of law. He didn't talk about history of this because it's never been done. He didn't talk about any of that. What he did to rationalize it was to cite biblical passages. And he said, and I quote, I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's really even more wow since it wasn't the laws of the government. He was making that up. Yeah. And he was, it was catering to some evangelical crowd out there who believes that stuff. And let's remind everybody that really Romans 13 was used back in the 1850s and the 1860s to rationalize the institution of slavery. This argument was used against the abolitionists to say, slavery is the law of God. Romans 13, Apostle Paul. That's what you get from Jeff Sessions, our Attorney General. I hate to say it. I was dumbfounded when this was, you know, this was his primary way to kind of put this in place. Yeah. I've always had a problem with Jeff Sessions. I mean, I think he's a racist, but it goes beyond that. He lied in his time of confirmation hearing about his involvement with the Russian affair. And when all that was done, when he got caught at it, he said, oh, yeah, oh, I lied. So I'm going to recuse myself from, you know, any participation in the Russian affair. That doesn't solve the problem. His confirmation as Attorney General of the United States was based on a material lie. So, you know, is the confirmation good? Probably not. But he avoided that and Trump avoided it. The fact is he shouldn't be Attorney General. Here's what I don't understand though. This is what kind of perplexes me, is that we know that as a campaign box that he stood on, the first thing he addressed was immigration, illegal immigration from the southern borders. And he got a lot of bang for the buck on that. And that's what they call his base. But here's what doesn't make sense is a lot of polling, the Gallup poll just recently. Democrats, 85% think that immigration is a good thing. And it doesn't say, you know, undocumented immigration. It says immigration. 65% of Republicans think it's a good idea. So now, I guess what I don't understand is if a majority of Republicans and Democrats think that immigration is good for the country, how is he getting these sort of followers and his poll numbers on immigration? It's a good question. I mean, there are people out there, I guess, who agree with him. But it's awful. You know, I went to Australia not too long ago and found that they had opened the doors. And you know that Singapore is an example of opening the doors. Singapore believes that a country with immigrants is a healthier country economically. And so they invite them in. They manage them. You've got to do that. But they invite them in. They want more immigrants. Australia wants more immigrants. A lot of countries in Europe happy to take the migrants. You know, Germany, of course there's a dispute in Germany about it in Scandinavia. They're happy to take the migrants. And what I think is interesting is that we're not, oh, in Canada, Trudeau, Canada is deeply ingrained in Canada. We need people. We believe that people are the way to a better economy. We invite them in. And Canada has a huge diversity. And it's a great country for that reason. Why can't we do this? Why can't we see this? Well, Canada stuck up to the plate when it came to the Syrian refugees. I mean, we're citing conflicts in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador. That is the impetus for all this humanity, this wave of humanity that's trying to apply for legal asylum. Yet when it came to bringing those seeking asylum from Syria, we said no. Asylum is the law. It is the law. So it's really remarkable that he says, no, no, we have to follow the law. But if he would follow the law, they would welcome them in. I'm going to do away with due process. Yeah, that's the other thing. Due process. We're going to do away with due process. This is scary. It sounds like Germany in the 30s. I hate to say it, but when you say I'm going to do away with due process, that all alarm bells and everyone's head should go off on this one because that's quite a statement. He's looking for scapegoats. And the first two subjects we talked about, North Korea, great scapegoat, immigrants, great scapegoat. That sounds like the 30s. And the reality is, first they came for the North Koreans, then they came for the immigrants. And soon enough, they come for us. Let's take a short break. Hold my head in my hands for a minute. I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers. It's just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktecawaii.com 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up. And please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keeping you safe. Follow us. Are you tired of sleepwalking through life? Are you dreaming of a healthier, wealthier, happier you? You're not alone. And that's why thousands of people tune in each week to watch RB Kelly on Out of the Comfort Zone Tuesdays at 1 p.m. Make a change, get the help you need, and stop sucking at life. Hello, it's 1 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon, and I'm your host, RB Kelly. Welcome to Out of the Comfort Zone. Hold my head in my hands. I don't feel better, though. And Tim, you had one more comment about the demonstration and the immigrants. I do. And that is the optics, the optics that have been observed. I mean, all I could say is when the First Lady showed the concern and wanted to spend the energy and fly to one of these encampments where the children were being detained, and the whole idea is to say, we care. I care about these children. I don't understand the jacket she wore for $39 that says, I don't care. Typhon, do you? I'm trying to look at the optics on this. Options, options. She knew what it said. And her staff knew what it said. And maybe Donald Trump knew what it said. And they were trying to scramble things, keep us guessing and jumping and wondering and distracted. What's going on here anyway? Trying to make sense of it. I think that's part of it. Is the public relations bad looks good? I mean, is that the goal of the public relations? Keeping dancing, keeping jumping, keeping guessing. That's one possibility. Because if that's one possibility, I could actually understand that. But I don't understand. The other possibility is that she didn't know her elbow from a hole in the ground. And she didn't notice that it said this. And she thought it was high fashion or something. So she decided to wear it anyway. But the context. The context. The context. Does she belong down there looking at kids in jail? Could she do anything good about it? Didn't she make any statement whatsoever? And if she was going to make a statement, why make a statement, I don't care. I don't think she does care. I'm not sure why she... Are you saying this is a Mariana Antoinette moment, let them eat cake? Something exactly like that. Yeah. Ooh, let them eat cake. We've heard it before. Part of another jackass administration. You call it the French Revolution. Okay, let's go to the next one. I'm talking about Kilauea. I'm talking about the eruption. We're talking about what sense to make of this. So all these people are homeless, losing hundreds of millions of dollars of homes. Where are we on this? And the world is watching and then saying, gee, what a terrible thing. And even Trump gave money with FEMA to rebuild or help people rebuild their homes. But I suppose disasters happen. Natural disasters happen. And I would offer you the thought they will continue to happen, and they'll be worse in the time of climate change and sea level rise. But was this unpredictable? It was predictable, completely predictable. I hate to say it, but this issue pertains to permitting of homes in areas of forest where it's tender dry. There's no fire hydrants. There's no access to some of these homes that have been permitted to be built. It's no different than allowing house to be built on sensitive geotech soils that are prone to erosion. Who would issue permits at the base of a volcano? I don't understand. Yeah, it's so interesting. Three things happen here. Number one is permits were issued. You can't build a house in Hawaii without a permit, although I'm sure there's people in the backwoods that do something like that. Second is insurance. You can't go too far with your house unless you buy insurance. Or a mortgage. You can't get a mortgage without insurance. No mortgagee is going to give you a mortgage. And so there was some statute. I heard this on HPR last week. There was some statute that was adopted by our legislature in its wisdom in the 90s, which required the insurance companies to give mortgages for properties like this, even though they might not otherwise do that. And they did. It was the law. They did give mortgages. I'm sorry, they did give insurance. And the insurance was much more expensive. Well, Lloyds of London will insure anything. I guess so. It was like that. It's going to be a Lloyds of London type policy. But they were required to. Otherwise, they might not have done that. And when the insurance was available, then the mortgagee would come and give a mortgage, and thus you had a community of hundreds of homes up there. Was this a wise idea on the part of the legislature? Well, I know the other flip side of this argument is, and that is if you own this property and we're city government, we're county government, we're state government, to what point do we are taking the task in the court system to say we're prohibiting the development of someone's property rights. So it's property rights versus foolhardy permitting. It's lobbying too, don't you think, of course. You have developers and builders and unions, and they want to develop these homes. It means a lot of money will flow through the system. So they say to the ledge, you got to help us out on this. You got to have homes here. You want housing, don't you? We have a housing crisis. Housing crisis, we need housing. It doesn't matter if in 10 years or 20 years or some period of time, we don't know when the whole thing is going to collapse, which it did. So I think there's a real issue with that at the intersection. Well, I just see a lot of pain and despair, probably unnecessarily so. Again, it's not just a house. These are people's homes. This is their neighborhoods. This is where their kids were raised. This is where they continue to play soccer and baseball. And it's a tragedy. It really is. It's very sad. And I would just question before you do a community planning, keep the lobbyist at bay and use common sense permitting. So right. That's the message. That's the most important takeaway here. You know, I remember riding my bike in the 70s around the big island all the time. And going down there in the Puna area where this happened, you know, it was desolate. And all you saw was old lava. And you said to yourself, and then they started having these subdivisions. I said, really, is this going to work? Or is this going to be even as a kid, you knew? Even as a kid, I mean, riding bicycle in the area. But anyway, I mean, I think we have to learn from this on a macro level, on a governmental level. We have to do planning. We have to figure out how the environment is either friendly or unfriendly and focus on that. I mean, there's not enough planning going on. May I say hasn't been. This is a time when we want to really consider how we're going to plan developing the state and the future, especially about housing. Great. Yeah. I mean, you want to plan for $100 million condos. Now there's a plan. Just think about all the stuff. Just go down Kakaako at night time, take a look at the skyline and you'll see 60% of those units darkened. I mean, 4,700 units. The new Soho, if you will. But I don't know how that's all going to work out. Turn off. And then you're surprised that they're homeless. They're not in that league. They can't afford those really expensive condos. Middle class can't afford those condos. So we have another opportunity coming up in Kalihi. And if the developers have their way, they'll do the same thing they did in Kakaako. Big tall buildings, I wouldn't argue that. But vertical, those that are very expensive. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. We got a long way to go. Well, we got a plan. This is a time and maybe too late in some ways. Okay, let's move on to, oh, by the way, the homeless, just one point on the homeless. Gee, we don't have a lot of time left. I just want to say this to you, Tim. The homeless are a, they're a canary in the coal mine on the condition of the country, on the condition of the democracy, on its sensitivity to its citizens. The more homeless you have, the more pathetic they are, the more troubled they are. It's not mental illness. They got to be sick because they were under such economic and social pressure. So what we have in the growth of homeless around the country is an indication of how well the country is working socially, politically, economically. You're right. It's a canary. If you want to step in and fix that, you know, it's not a matter of a food kitchen. No. It's a matter of fixing what ails the country, so this doesn't happen. We got a long way to go on that kind of planning, too. Yeah. No, I couldn't agree with you more. It's, you know, it's livable wages. It's, it's a whole host of things. It's cost of land, the cost of occupancy. Government regulation of bureaucracies. You can build every, you know, square footage of land here and you're still going to have a shortage for homes. You're just going to have a shortage. And we got to do something. And then therefore you're going to have higher rents and higher prices. Put us in a room for a couple of days. We'll figure it out. Okay. Maybe at this table. Okay, last item, the Supreme Court. To some interest, it has struck a terrible blow against Hawaii because Hawaii was ordering things cheap without paying tax from the big box online sellers. Now that's going to change. And we're going to have to pay tax on everything we order in. If not immediately, then soon enough. And that's across the country. You think it was a good decision? Well, the Supreme Court looked at this in 1992. They said, no problem. Let the retailers sell without taxation. But at that point, only 2% had access to the internet. Today, we have 89% of our United States has access to the internet. So there is a huge chunk of change that's not being collected as revenue in every state. It's licking their chops. Yeah. And Hawaii, happily up to this point, has had tremendous benefit because things are expensive here because they, you know, the retailers with the big box, they're going to ship them in and pay to store them. And all of that is higher than it is anywhere else. So the result is the prices of what we buy in the stores, the retail stores are higher. I think it's moot point because what's our sales tax? Less than 5%, 4 point, what is it? 4.84%. So bottom line is they're still going to pay the sales tax. They're going to say, I can get it for less. I'm going to keep going on Amazon Prime because shipping will be free. And it's going to be business as usual. Will it help the state coffers? Sure. It will. It will. And I think the state can use a little help. Yeah. So the state will charge the tax. And I think retailers or, you know, we have the loss of Kmart. We have the loss of Sears and Roebuck. I think retailers are really on the mat crying uncles saying we can't compete. So here's an opportunity for retail stores, brick and mortar stores to say, okay, this is a breath of some fresh air for us. Yeah. But the basic formula is still the same. It's not just a difference in tax. It's a difference in shipping it in, holding it, storing it. The difference in paying high rents, the difference in building and expensive building. None of that is included in this decision. Only thing is the sales tax, the use tax, whatever, you know, that would have the gross excise tax. Bottom line is I don't think it's going to change things in the larger sense and the sea change sense for Hawaii. I would agree. Have to pay that tax. I would agree. Yeah. Thank you, Tim. Gosh, this is great. Jake, thank you for allowing me on your ship. It's been a pleasure. Hey, watch out for the inaugural flight, the inaugural maiden voyage, wherever you want to call it. I appreciate it. We'll see you next time soon. You got it. Tim Appichella.