 policies can we expect after election day? That is the question, Shakespearean question, to have new policies or not? And what kind of policies? Shakespeare asked and we can ask to and we gonna ask Roger Epstein, he's here with us today. He joins us from time to time to express himself and we like when he does that. Welcome to the show, Roger. Hi, Jay. So nice to see you and be with you. It's always my great pleasure and enjoyment. It's been, it's been nice knowing you through the years, Roger. I don't know where we're going now. Nobody knows where we're going now. But you were talking before the show about being in a hole. And I wonder if you could express yourself on the status of the matter. Well, you look back 2025 years. You could go back as far as Reagan in 1980. But the government's been dysfunctional for a good 2025 years. And things have gone downhill. I do a little talk periodically on the changes from when you and I were getting out of college, in terms of the, you know, the share of the wealth of the country. And, and now and how dramatically that's changed. And the system hasn't changed in terms of democracy and all the still the United States. But the rules have changed, and the focus has changed so dramatically that we have the one or point one percent and the rest of the 99 and, and your kids can't possibly dream of having a house like I had, you know, when I was 25, and maybe not until they're 40 or but in any event, all these things have changed. We've gotten to a place where we don't believe anything, any anyone who doesn't agree with us says, and we just really don't know where we're going. In terms of what we're going to talk about today, should the Republicans win, the only policies I've been able to really come up with are undoing what the Democrats have been doing for social policies, and we can get into that more. But my point really that we were discussing is the world, I mean, you know, things are full of cycles. This is a cycle of, of I would call negativity, darkness, lack of communication and inability to move forward with a vision. And as Joseph Campbell said, in your darkest cave lies your greatest treasures. So we have a country that changed the world hundreds of years ago has been through its own nightmares with slavery and, and Jim Crow has had the 1900s with with child labor and many, many periods of ups and downs. And then we had, of course, after World War Two, the most successful economic situation in the history of the world for about 20, 30 years, maybe through the 70s. And then things started to change later on. So we find ourselves in a place where, you know, we're willing to pay $50 million for somebody to play football, and can't even pay a teacher to teach our kids and have a decent living. So we're out of sync, our values are out of sync. But as a people as a humanity, we're we're good people. Whether you're red or blue, your idea about raising a family and being nice to people and generous and there's wonderful people in this country and throughout the world. We're just really in a black hole struggling to figure out, where do we go from here? And neither party really has a clue. And we've dumbed it down so that it's all about money. The reason 40, 50 years ago when we were in law school, and nobody voted in a block, I mean, you know, a few people, but you didn't have if you're a Republican, you got to vote this way. If you're a Democrat, you got to vote this way. And nobody, it's, it's just ridiculous. So it's dysfunctional. So you bring yourself to that point, which is, if you follow our good friend, Elizabeth Satoris, who tells you that the whole world as a as a evolution biologist, that all changes in the world come from getting to a point where you can't live with what you have, where it's not working anymore, and you got to find another way out. And I, I kind of feel like that's where we are as a civilization now. And Joseph Campbell says, in your darkest cave lies your greatest treasure. Yeah, but you know what? These evolutions should talk about the ones we enjoyed. And that's a euphemism in the 20th century. They cost a lot of people a lot. They cost some people everything they cost a lot of people their lives. Yes. So these evolutions are not without complexity. And, you know, there was an article in the Times, you know, indicating that we really don't know what's going to happen in terms of in terms of all the threats of violence, you know, it's a problem. And we don't know. And it could be we have a violent future. We'll probably know in a few days, but it might be more than that. Anyway, I want to let me one more point on that, you know, the last two major eruptions of evolution were the the depression in the 30s, the end of the 20s. So many people were disrupted and just lived in really, really sad condition. And then the horrible World War Two, that took so many lives. But at the end of that, we went into a whole new era of modern living, which was quite good for a number of years. And I agree. And you know, the point about rationality is really hooked up to that. You know, if the community is irrational, dysfunctional, a good war will straighten it out. People will think more clearly after the war there, they'll have different values that happened where one and World War Two, sadly, but that's that's the kind of the way we got to a better place, at least for a little while. I want to revisit earlier discussions with you when we talked in early 2017 about the the tax quote reform act. I can never say that without putting the words reform in quotes. And you remember that it was really intended to serve the rich, the 1% and to give only temporary illusory benefits through the middle class. So let's catch up on that. What did it do over the past five years? Well, it's hard to put it all on that back. The pandemic had impact too. But we've exacerbated the the the slip between the rich and the poor. While the working person was losing money, the wealthiest were doubling and tripling what they have. And you end up with a Elon Musk fighting about whether he can spend $44 billion to buy something that doesn't even really exist. You know, just kind of a virtual platform. So that's one main thing that we've had happen. The other thing that's happened is the success of the quote reform has been consistent in other areas, so that we can talk out or politicians can talk out of both sides of their mouth and say I'm for this while I'm putting down exactly what I'm what I'm saying I'm helping. For instance, we're talking now about what changes might come up, assuming the Republicans win and control one or both of the houses. Of course, that will probably force at least for a couple of years. Again, a dysfunctional government that may not be able to pass any laws. But what the Republicans would like to do is to undo some of the benefits that have been given by the last two years by the Democrats. They like to cut taxes again for the rich. They'd like to raise the eliminate a reduction in the drug costs for seniors in Medicare, Medicaid. The insurance premiums are likely to go up based on the reductions under the Obamacare, if you wish to call it that. We even see these student loan payments where I think I read 40 million people is it four or 40 million people are going to get some of their money back from the costs of college. And yet, I think it's closer than 40. Is it? Okay, so four million stills a nice big number. Why are we unhappy that those people? You know, don't we want to educate our people when you and when when you and I went to college it cost a few hundred dollars a year at a you know, at a public school. That's what I paid at the University of Maryland. And now that school is 1520,000 dollars. And so what are we doing? And yet, both parties say they want to help the country, they want to make people progress, they want to make things better. Yet, the policies don't seem to follow. Yeah, it's a but you know, there's a mechanical issue, and I wanted to discuss that with you. Yeah, let's let's talk about any number of things. Let's talk about student loan forgiveness. Okay. So so now it's, it's January one, we have a new Congress, let's assume as you did, that it's mostly Republican Congress, and they pass a bill, say even in both houses, saying that that Joe Biden's forgiveness is revealed, not going to happen. Okay, but in this country, that doesn't get to be law, unless he finds it, or let me put it this way, if he vetoes it, it doesn't go anywhere, which is, you know, which, you know, was happening in under Trump. So the question is, how do the Republicans get their policy through? When there's still a Democratic, you know, president who who would veto anything that reverses his accomplishments from before. And one of the things that I have noticed is this crescendo of, let's impeach Joe Biden, as soon as we can, well, PS, you can impeach a president without his permission. You don't need him to sign off on it. And you can impeach him without having any good reason at all. It's strictly political. So tell me how all that would work, in terms of, you know, the Republicans initiatives, try to ingratiate themselves for the electorate in 2024. You're making a good point. First of all, even if you impeach the president, the way our our government works is the vice president becomes the president. So if you impeach Joe Biden, then Ms. Harris becomes the president. And how many, how many MAGA people want that to happen? So what would be the benefit? Then you're going to impeach her. Then I guess you get the head of the house. You get Kevin, Kevin McCarthy is what you can't McCarthy, but it's going to take a long time to go through all those elections and impeachments. I mean, maybe I think that's pretty farfetched. I think what we're going to see is a lot of dysfunctionality. And I think if this happens, or maybe people try to find some way to compromise, because there's a lot of things that I think we agree upon. The main difference in the in the Republican and Democratic parties historically have been the how much how much government should we have? And how much should we not have? How much regulation? How much control should we have over business? And the Democrats have said tremendous control. And the Republicans have said, no, let's trust the businesses, let's them let them control things. On the other side of the coin, the Democrats have said, let's not control individual rights, abortion being obviously the biggest one. Let's not let the government tell you how to live your life. Now, as we're talking, I'm really what you said is really interesting, Jay. How much can either party do unless they control everything? And so I'll tell you what they can do. Joe Biden, Joe Biden is going to be assuming he lives out this term. He's going to be a complete lame duck. He can, you know, the country may be sailing right into a big recession. We don't know that yet. And the Fed is trying so hard to avoid that. But it may happen. And we may it may be beyond the control of the Fed or anyone else, you know, and they tried before and failed and recession happened. You try in this country, and maybe it happens somewhere else. And, you know, it affects, you know, the flat world. And it happens here, whatever we do. Okay, so then it's up to the president to try to figure out some stuff. And sure, there are a lot of measures that he could take. But they're mostly legislative measures. And he goes to Congress and he says, I'd like you to do this, that and the other thing. And they say, No, we're not doing anything for you. We're you're a lame duck, and we're going to make you look, you know, a few times. Yeah, impotent. And we just want to make you look bad. So the next election, you and for that matter, all Democrats will never win the presidency. That's what they could do. It's negative. But that's, that's consistent with, you know, the positions they've taken over the past five or six years or more. They don't do anything positive. They just criticize the other guy, and they won't go along with the other guy's, you know, initiatives. He was lucky. You got to give him credit to get a couple of things through in the past couple of years. But that won't happen after they control both houses. Well, you know, Jay, this is no different than we've had at the last two years of Obama, the last two years of Trump, and maybe perhaps the last two years of Biden. And each of the presidents has worked on executive privilege to do certain things. So as far as the economy goes, what the classic way to deal with it as inflation goes up, you raise interest rates. Now, people are screaming and yelling. But when Reagan was president, interest rates went to 20%. I remember paying four points to get a 12% mortgage one time when I needed to refinance something desperately. And so he's gonna, they're gonna find, he'll find ways to do things. The question is, are they going to be in a position to do negative things? I don't think so, because as you said, so we're going to have a stalemate. And the president probably has more power than the Congress in terms of what he can do absent agreement with the Congress. And I think we're gonna, we're gonna find out if we get to a point where maybe we have to collaborate. The biggest thing coming up is the debt ceiling. So the Republicans have a history of saying, we're not going to fund the government. If you don't give us this, this, this and that. And that's been their control. And, and What do you think they're gonna do that again? I think they're gonna do that again for sure. Oh, definitely, because if as we are predicting there's a stalemate, because any legislation they try to pass is going to be vetoed by Biden, then I'm, I'm sure they're looking at this point in 2023, when we've got a substantially increased the debt ceiling, or we're not going to be able to pay our debts. And although the Republicans are supposed to be conservative, it's hardly conservative for a country to not pay its debts. And so we got right down to the crossroads, you know, the steps of the court, so to speak. And we'll see who flinches. And I expect it to be dog eat dog at that point. And we'll see what the Republicans ask for. And what the Democrats or Biden are willing to give to him today. Let me let me up up the scale a little bit. You know, Timothy Snyder Yale wrote on tyranny and a bunch of other books. And he he he sent around a an article, a speech, if you will, suggesting people should vote for anyone. Well, they should not vote for anyone who has denied the last election election denies you don't vote for them because they they really implicitly saying voting doesn't count and elections don't count. And we just have a free for all chaos at the end of every election season. So, you know, you've got to vote against that. I say if you don't do that, and if you allow the election deniers to get into power, and they may be coming soon, then you know, you don't you don't really have a democracy in terms of representative government. That democracy involves two things, you know, representative government and balance of power checks and balances with, say, three branches. That's the genius of the American constitutional system. So, we're in trouble as far as he's concerned. And the larger question is whether this this election day where in which many Republicans, including deniers, many deniers, there are 300 deniers running for office in this country. Whether that changes the way all of this works. You and I, we talk in the crucible of, you know, what do you call it, congressional versus presidential politics. That's fair, because we've always talked in that vein. We've always talked about how the Congress interacts with the president, but it may not be that way going forward. So, how does it change things if we have essentially a Congress that denies the validity of elections? Well, I think you're, I don't think we can make those assumptions. I think, I think you deny an election, but it didn't work for Trump. And I'm not sure how it's going to work going forward. If we really do devastate our election procedures in this country, we're going to have a big problem. But we've got an educated country. We've got a lot of people that don't believe in that. You have to, it's like I said, when you're in that dark cave, you don't know what the answer is going to be. If you assume the worst and don't plan for the best or look for the best, you're missing the point. We cannot, I cannot understand what people are thinking about Trump, why they would vote for him, why they would vote for an election denier, but I cannot deny that 70 million people in this country think that way or some large portion of those who voted for Trump. And so I've got to be willing to accept that maybe the Democrats don't have an answer and that's why nobody's, they're not getting big majorities. Or that people are so scared they'll latch on to anything that looks like a life preserver. But that doesn't mean that they're going to, when they find out that the life preserver is empty, that they're going to drown and not look for another one. So I just say, okay, these are the facts. This is where we are now. What are the reasonable possibilities? What do we do today to try to make it better? Are there places where we could even compromise? If, you know, maybe this instead of the battle of the worst place in history in, when it comes to the debt ceiling, turns out to be a place for a little bit of compromise. And people see that, yeah, we're really all in the same country. And I'm just, I'm not sure that's going to happen. I understand and you make a good point. But I want to raise the ante just a little more, okay? Yeah. We've seen a number of articles about Mr. Putin and how he has re-initiated or continued his internet research agency maneuvers on the elections. And he does this, of course, through social media. Yeah. Just as Elon Musk does it through social media, he has 150 million followers. And he wakes up on election morning and sends them all a tweet saying, vote Republican. I don't know how much effect that had. It doesn't have any effect on me. I don't do Twitter. But, you know, it may have effect on somebody. So you have social media through Elon Musk, who is committed to Trump, who will allow Trump back on soon enough. And Putin, who knows how to use social media through his hackers in Moscow. Both of them working on the fairness of our elections. Now, we can't get into how much effect that's had on election day. It's not the purpose of this discussion. What is the purpose, however, is that a number of Republicans have already said they don't want to fund support for Ukraine. And that's a domino theory. If Ukraine gets no support, then Ukraine falls to Putin. Putin would like to see that. He would like to see Trump. He tried to do that in 2016. He'd like to see Trump win. He did that in 2018 and make that 2020. And he'd like to see Trump win. So he'd still like to see Trump win perhaps more now than ever. And if Trump wins, it's transactional. Trump wins. Trump softens on support for Ukraine. And he, you know, joins forces, which, you know, the whole Russiagate thing was about this, you know, and Trump is successful in burying it. But if he's able to get Putin to help him in 2024, he will clearly pull support for Ukraine. And that means we have a change in the world order, doesn't it? Yes. So tell me your thoughts about that. And how profound would that change of policy be here now? Well, you're raising some good points without answers. We don't know. All right, let's take a look at what's going on in Ukraine. Have you seen how demolished the cities are? Do you know what's going to happen during the winter and how many people in Ukraine are going to starve? To some extent, the world has already proved that Putin made a huge mistake in Ukraine, and it will support Ukraine. It will support a defense against an invasion like that. I don't think the next step for Putin, if people stop, if the West stop supporting Ukraine, would be to invade Poland. I don't think we're looking at the old domino theory of communism in Asia. So I'm not sure. We've already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Ukraine, and Putin changed his strategy. So we're at a point where, when we say we want to keep Ukraine going, what if it goes on for two more years and the whole country gets destroyed in this horrible war, is our goal to get rid of Putin and change everything in Russia? I mean, I'm just saying, Jay, when we start expecting consequences of actions today and reading it in 2024, Trump's going to be the president. I just don't know. It may happen earlier, Roger. There are a number of Republicans who are espousing this view right now. I hear you. I hear you. And the fact of the matter is, we just don't know the answers to these questions. And what our government has said is we elect leaders and they make decisions. When they make bad decisions, they get thrown out of office, hopefully. And somebody who knows a better decision comes in. But we're at a place where there are no good decisions. There's only less bad decisions. And we don't agree on so many things. So I feel that we're going to have a big change. I feel like maybe we begin, maybe more people begin to see how awful Trump is, how crazy it is to put an election denier in office. Maybe we need that now to wake up our public. What did Benjamin Franklin say? You have a republic. If you can keep it, it requires you to be educated. You really can't go online and believe everything you read without checking it out. I don't think people know what life would be like without a democracy, without a republic. I don't think they realize how that's going to work. Look at Iran. Look at Iran. Right. Look at Syria. Look at Syria. That's what it would be like. And so the reason Campbell says you've got to be in that cave before you learn, and he's talking about old mythologies. The wisest people in the world have seen that you don't often make meaningful change until you get to the bottom of the negativity. True. History proves that out, Roger. I think he's right. But you have to be alive, and you have to be capable of having that thought process to be effective. But here's my last question for you. Okay. Here in this country, and lawyers are especially vulnerable to seeing it through the eyes, through the lens of the Constitution. Congress, two houses, presidents, Supreme Court, rule of law, elections every two years, and so forth. And yet you look back on this country in the period you were talking about when things began to begin to slip and slide, say, from 1960 or 70 when people lost confidence. Maybe a lot of that had to do with Vietnam. And there were ways that people had of expressing themselves. And although the average Joe had not been expressing himself not to the public in the same way before, all of a sudden, and it was our generation or the generation that followed, learned that there are other ways to affect public opinion and affect public policy. And they could express themselves. I mean, I'm sure that most of the people you know have written op-ed pieces for the newspaper. That's a community of people that really didn't have the same depth of breath that you and I had when we were in college. And of course there are ways to get on the media now that really were impossible back in the day. So I'm asking you this. Although, you know, the presumptive view of this is that you have to wait till the next election, whether it be state or perhaps more important federal, there are ways to express yourself in the interim. There are ways to affect policy in the interim. I don't know exactly what those ways would be in the context of, you know, the current situation. But I wonder what your thoughts are about whether people who are, you know, disappointed with the results of this election, what they could do to affect the policy that we should be having now. Well, that's a great question and here's what I think personally. I think when you're in a place, first of all, our whole system is based on one person, one vote, and an agreement with the majority. If the majority elects people that you're not happy with, what you do and what I think we should do is to look locally. We should find ways in Hawaii, which has so many pluses, and this could be done in other states. Find ways for your community to demonstrate how we move forward properly. If you can't do it at a federal level, you know, we went to the federal government in the 60s to get rid of segregation because it was necessary. Roe v. Wade is not going to have a major impact in Hawaii or California or New York because they're going to continue the laws that are still permitted to be done. It's now on a state-by-state basis, so we're moving back away from that. And if that's what we're, when we look at the facts, that's what we're supposed to get, then let's do that. Think globally, act locally. And I really feel that this is a time when that's what we should be doing, not just sending up ads that we can do that, send it to the Washington Post or Fox News or whatever you want, but we can also take some specific actions because we're in the hole and we don't really know where we're going. So we've got to try new things that we think will be helpful. Bring us together with Aloha, work on houselessness, work on proper taxation, so we have enough money to pay teachers, so that a guy who works in a hotel that used to be worth a million dollars is now worth 200 million, can at least make enough to pay for food for his family. All those things we can do, Jay. And on the other side, we can, after Trump was elected, we had the biggest protests since the 60s. You forget because he wore us out, but there are a lot of people out there and so maybe it's another step away. Maybe we have to make sure he doesn't get reelected. All these kind of things can be done and that's the reason I keep pointing this out, because I don't want people to lose faith. This is just a blip in history. This is just our time, but there have been our times that were worse. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live through World War II. I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to live through, so they're worse times. What you say, Roger, what you say really interests me, do it locally, do it locally, but do it mindful of the national issue, the national public policy issue. That means, okay, that you know that carries me to this point and I want to run this by you. That means we have to make sure that our local legislators, our local governor, are not only aware of how Hawaii fits in the national embroidery, so to speak, how Hawaii fits on all these issues that we would like to see properly resolved nationwide. They have to understand that and they have to support legislation that will make Hawaii a standout on these public policy points. You can't do it without them and if we want to do this and make ourselves special and adopt a good policy in the face of what's happening on the mainland, they have to be involved, right? Yes, and it's very difficult. It's not easy because the money is powerful. The money is out there and you know you're a legislator and you're making $50,000, $75,000 a year between a legislation and whatever else you do and somebody offers you $50,000, it's hard to say no or gives it to your pet project or puts it into your campaign fund. So we've got to have people in our state who really want to be legislated. They want us to be servant leaders. They're not there to have their resume increased or their power increased in the community. They're there because they take the responsibility for moving us out of our dark hole and perhaps showing the way and some light for the rest of the country. I think we have more opportunity here and probably any place else because we're so interrelated, we're so small, but we have the power of a state. There are two moderated features on that. Number one is just as many states on the mainland have a roughly 30% rate of conservatism within the electorate. We do too. We prevail on the blue side, but there are there are conservatives here. Secondly, there are also lobbyists who come from the mainland and under the banner of, you know, Citizens United, they spend money trying to affect our legislature. So if we do this, if we take this road that you and I are talking about, we have to be mindful of those two points of resistance and we have to overcome them. But I want to ask you about one other thing. Does this what we are talking about here today trying to affect good policy in the years to come in Congress? Does this affect the role of our delegation? Some of them have been more active, some of them not so active in dealing with some, you know, public policy issues that are complex in the Congress, but does it affect them now? Should they change their way of looking at things? Are they important in, you know, protecting Hawaii on these public policy issues? And thus, from a local point of view, having a beneficial effect on the country? Well, they're all Democrats. So if they're not in control, they're going to have even less power than they have now. I think our senators have represented themselves in our state pretty well. I'm not sure about the representatives and how much they've done or been able to do, but I think we have at least intelligent people there and thoughtful people. And I would like to see their input in how we can make Hawaii a better place, you know, to tell us when do we look to the federal? When should we go there? How can we do, let them be part of our community and not part of the Beltway community and say, you know, guys, you're doing a good job or you're not, but here's how the federal government could help you. And here's how we could collaborate together and that kind of thing. We got to have some good ideas. We got to have people who are willing to go past the negatives that you mentioned, particularly the lobbyists and the money. It's really not that easy. And maybe it's not all government, Jay. Maybe we've got a lot of good community groups here. We've got a lot of solidarity and we've got people here with money to do things too. So I think if we could get a good focus, that's the base. Do we have any vision at all of where Hawaii could be, should be, we want it to be? And if we do, I mean, my focus is people should be able to live here comfortably and everybody should have food, clothing, shelter, and hospital and medical. And of course, if you work harder, you should do better if that's what you want. And if you have more creative talents or more talents in demand, you do better. I'm not saying everybody gets the same, but everybody gets a shot. And we've set it up now. We're in a place where you have no shot if you're getting out of high school or even if you're getting out of college. It's very difficult and it's not going to get better unless we turn it around. And I honestly think it's not going to happen overnight, but if you had a five-ten-year plan, or like the Chinese, five-ten and fifty years, that would be a pretty intelligent way to look at Hawaii now. Let me run one more thing by you. You know, I always think that although Katanshi Brown Jackson is in the minority and will be in the minority for quite some time on the Supreme Court, she's affable. And with what I'm looking for, she's the kind of person who could influence others. And I have this sort of vision of her walking down the hallway, you know, like Bruce Bader Ginsburg did, and talking to Samuel Alito and talking to some of those other guys and trying to persuade them that maybe, you know, the conservative view, the bizarre cases we've seen and not right. Dobbs, for example. Now, she may not succeed, but the idea is that she would walk down the hallway. She would break through the bubble. She would say, look, I spoke to Roger Epstein and he told me to come and see you, and that would be good. Likewise, in Congress, potentially, I think, you know, I think Brian Schatz actually does this, you know, our delegation walks down the hallway and talks to the guys on the other side. They may not succeed, but at least they're opening a channel. What do you think about that? I want to focus first on the Supreme Court justice, and I'd love to do a conversation. We may get cast as racists, but I grew up in Martian D.C., which was the first city outside of Africa to have more than 50 percent black population, and I've seen the transition of the black population that I knew into opportunities that have created some incredible people in our country. If you look around, two of the people that have been willing to really take on Trump are Leticia James, a black lawyer, woman lawyer in New York, and Faina Williams, who's a black woman lawyer in Georgia, about to take on Trump in Georgia. And Merrick Garland, who is a wonderful jurist and long history, hasn't been willing to pull the plug or get that far. I'm not saying he won't, I'm just saying. We're seeing incredible, I don't want to say development, but coming out of our black population, who if you, I don't want to get, well I like to get very philosophical, who have been in a black hole for a long time, and were literally allowed to become human beings get out of that hole 60 years ago in the 60s. And now we have that whole cycle, you know, five elements of the six animals where we're in a new 60-year cycle from the 60s, and we may get that same kind of activity that was so dramatic. So I get it, Roger, I get it. I think I hear what you're saying too, because they have a risen, and they are there in our community, in the media, in government everywhere, and they're intelligent, thoughtful human beings, they are leaders, no question about it, and you are inspired by hearing them. And so my point though is that it should not stop. The phenomenon that you are describing should not stop with election day. No, no, no, it has to continue every day, and we need them to lead us, we need them to keep going right through, right on through. I know you're saying that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Jay, and I really like this conversation, I always enjoy talking to you, but I like to get this conversation out, because I think it's where we should be headed. One more thing I want to say, but those black women, they don't take any shit, you know, they don't take any crap, they come out and this is the way it is, and this is the way it's, you know, that it should be. And I think there's a lot of timidity in a lot of other folks, but yes, let's, let's, let's, you have a great portal for discussion in the community, it's unique in our community. Maybe you could think of a, a series of programs to kind of bring this out. Where are we now? The election's over, let's not think about the next election, let's think about how we can make Hawaii the aloha state, and have that really mean something to model for the rest of the country. Roger Epstein, a retired tax lawyer, and a man about the world, so to speak, joining us from time to time on Think Tech. Thank you so much, Roger, for coming around, really appreciate it. Thank you, Jay. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.