Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) joins us to talk about the recent false alarm alert sent out to all cell phones in Hawaii, and how she handled it. She also talks about how she and her staff responded to the alert, and what they did to prepare for the possibility of a nuclear attack from North Korea. Thank you for listening to Hawaii in the House, and we hope you enjoy this episode! Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Holidays from the Bay Area, and thank you for checking us out! Love ya, bye. Peace, Blessings, Cheers, EJ & Rory - EJ and Rory - Rory McElroy (Rory McElory is a former Navy SEAL and is currently serving as a member of the House Armed Services Committee. He is also the District Attorney for the District of Washington's Third Congressional District) and is a regular contributor to CNN's Morning Drive and the New York Times Magazine. EJ is a frequent contributor to the National Post. and the Daily Mail, and has been featured in the New Yorker, The Huffington Post, The New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. In this episode, he talks about what it's like to be a congresswoman in Hawaii. , and what it s like living in paradise, and why she loves coming back home to her hometown of Honolulu, Hawaii, after six years in her district. (and why it s is the best place to be in paradise. in the middle of the most beautiful place in the country. . Thanks for listening, Rory, and thanks for being here! - Thank you, Rory! (A very special thank you! , EJ and Rory and EJ, and Good Luck, Good Luck. - Rory, & Good Luck! - Thank You, Rory and Good Night, Good Place, Thank Me, Ooo XOXO, P. ( ) - <3 - OOOO - Kristy, EYO, RYANTHORO (Thank You, EK ( ) - RYO ( ) and RYNN ( ) ( ) & KARY ( ) . (KUY ( ) ( ) (Thank you, RAY ( ) AND KAYLE ( ) ? ( ) )
00:01:07.000We have gone through a few near misses with hurricanes, some big flooding on Kauai, and now we've got another one that's knocking on our door.
00:01:41.000And then on top of that, you guys had a false alarm where a text went out to everybody on the island saying that a nuclear missile was headed your way and this was not a drill.
00:01:58.000I was in Washington when that happened.
00:02:00.000It was a Saturday afternoon-ish in D.C. time, you know, early morning in Hawaii.
00:02:06.000And somebody from Hawaii sent me a screen capture of that alert that went out to over a million cell phones across our state saying, you know, ballistic missile headed towards Hawaii.
00:03:09.000So I called, the first person I called was our state adjutant general, who's also the head of our civil defense and the National Guard, and called his cell phone.
00:03:57.000But that's not very far for a nuclear missile.
00:03:59.000It's for an intercontinental ballistic missile.
00:04:02.000And knowing progressively, just over the six years that I've been in Congress, and this was a major issue that I've been bringing up since I've been there, in just raising the alarm bells that North Korea is increasing their capacity and their ballistic missile capabilities that put Hawaii closer and closer than reach,
00:04:28.000And after people started getting the word that this was a false alarm, I started hearing from folks who just shared their stories of what they went through.
00:04:37.000On the news, they showed the guy who was lowering his daughter down a manhole on the side of the street, his little girl.
00:04:44.000I heard from another guy who said that, you know, I had one kid in town in Honolulu and another kid in Waianae over an hour drive, and he literally sat there thinking, how am I going to choose which child I'm going to go and spend the last minutes of my life with?
00:05:02.000Because you're either driving in one direction or the other.
00:05:59.000There were clear vulnerabilities in our state alert system that would even allow one person to have that power to do that is obviously not good.
00:06:09.000And so there are things that we're working to do just to strengthen our civil defense alert system, but also just to Bring attention to North Korea and make it so that people aren't living under this threat of possibility that that could be a real thing and that alarm could come through your phone and know that you now have around 18 minutes to find good cover or say your final goodbyes.
00:06:34.000Well, it's so scary because it's such an erratic and dangerous regime.
00:06:38.000I mean, when you see what that guy has already done and the people he's executed, including family members.
00:06:45.000I mean, he's quite a maniac and a legitimate dictator in the old world kind of sense.
00:06:57.000In the age that we live in, it would be very difficult to control an entire country the way that they've controlled North Korea for so long since the Korean War, but they still can do it.
00:07:12.000It may be easy to write him off as a maniac.
00:07:15.000There has been a consistency throughout the different regimes of the Kim family as they've developed this nuclear and nuclear missile capability in that they are doing it to protect themselves against regime change war.
00:07:41.000Our US foreign policy experts point that out, that this is the reason why they're developing this capability, because they have seen how, if you look at Libya, for example, when Gaddafi was looking at building and acquiring nuclear weapons, He was doing so also as you know to protect himself and his regime and then he made a deal with the United States saying okay give up your nuclear weapons program and we're not gonna you know don't worry about it we're not gonna touch you and then of course we know what
00:08:11.000happened the US led this regime change war toppled Gaddafi and North Korea says okay so that's what you do when you have you know a leader of a country without nuclear weapons to protect themselves.
00:08:25.000Well, it's also the consequences of that regime change is a failed state.
00:08:31.000And it's more terrifying than even when Gaddafi was in control.
00:08:36.000I mean, I'm sure you've seen the slave trade videos from there.
00:08:57.000It's almost like we don't learn from our mistakes.
00:08:59.000And I don't know what the proper solution is.
00:09:03.000I mean, do you keep someone like Saddam Hussein or someone like Muammar Gaddafi?
00:09:07.000Do you keep them in power and let them still be horrific dictators and evil maniacs?
00:09:12.000Or do you step in and cause more damage?
00:09:16.000I mean, it's almost a lose-lose situation.
00:09:20.000Yeah, it's not a good situation, but it's where we as the United States need to be pragmatic about the situation and the fact that we live in the world that exists, not some kind of idealistic world that is a fantasy.
00:09:36.000And then think about how counterproductive our acting as the world's police has been, has proven to be in example after example after example.
00:09:47.000So yes, there are bad people in the world who do horrifying things.
00:09:54.000Is it really in our place to go in and take action and say, okay, we're going to remove this person and then we're going to put this person in and this is how you're going to govern this country and really acting as the world's police?
00:10:06.000And then as a result, as we've seen in Iraq and Libya and now in Syria, the people in those countries are far worse off than they were before.
00:10:17.000And it's counterproductive for our interests as well because we have...
00:10:22.000Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and these other terrorist groups who have been strengthened directly as a result of our policies in these countries.
00:10:30.000When you talk to people in the intelligence community, what do they think?
00:10:35.000I mean, either off the record or on the record, what do they think is the solution for situations like that?
00:10:43.000Many of them are hesitant to share their own opinion, because especially in the intelligence community, their job is to report on what they're hearing, what they're gathering, the intel that they're bringing in, and so on and so forth.
00:10:58.000But, you know, when you talk with folks who operate in that space, the ones who are honest and not trying to further a specific agenda or cover somebody else's bad decisions, there is a recognition of how our policies of the past decades have failed,
00:11:36.000Worse for the people in those countries, as well as we should be thinking about before we take any of these actions, is how does this best serve the interests of our people in this country?
00:11:47.000And these actions have been counter to those best interests.
00:11:52.000And so your question about, so why do we keep doing this?
00:11:57.000I think there are a lot of different things that go into that and to drive that.
00:12:01.000You know, you have the military industrial complex that benefits and makes a lot of money off of our being in a perpetual state of war.
00:12:10.000You have a lot of other countries like Saudi Arabia, for example, who dump a lot of money into the United States.
00:12:19.000And kind of try to use our U.S. military as their force to go in and do certain things in the Middle East that's more beneficial to Saudi Arabia.
00:12:28.000We see this happening in Yemen right now.
00:13:23.000And that was one of the main reasons that I ran for Congress in the first place.
00:13:28.000Having come back from my own deployments to the Middle East at the Hawaii Army National Guard, experiencing and seeing firsthand the cost of war, both on our troops, on our friends who didn't make that trip home with us,
00:13:46.000as well as on the people, the people in these countries where we were.
00:13:51.000And I came back and saw just the cavalier attitude that a lot of politicians take to making these decisions.
00:14:01.000And I worked in a medical unit in my deployment to Iraq.
00:14:05.000We were in a base about 40 miles north of Baghdad.
00:14:12.000Our base where we were was nicknamed Mortaritaville because of the constant, almost daily mortar attacks.
00:14:21.000And every day, part of my job was to go through a list of We're good to go.
00:14:46.000Just going through that list name by name every day, whether there were people on there who I knew personally or people who I would never meet, and knowing about the family members and the loved ones,
00:15:07.000You know, stressed out every day, fearing getting that phone call that their loved one had been hurt or worse, killed in action.
00:15:16.000And I wondered then, you know, how many of these politicians who make these votes and who make these decisions actually think about this or who lose sleep on this?
00:15:28.000Do you think a solution to that would be mandatory military service for people who are in those positions?
00:15:37.000Because as a soldier, I don't want somebody in my foxhole who doesn't want to be there, first of all.
00:15:42.000I think having an all-volunteer force, which we have, is a positive thing.
00:15:47.000I think that the American people need to impress upon their leaders.
00:15:56.000The importance of taking these decisions very seriously, that if they want to represent the American people and make these decisions for our troops and for our country, they need to understand who pays that price for the cost of war.
00:16:12.000And yes, it is every single one of our service members, both those who pay the ultimate price as well as those who come home with both visible and invisible wounds and who will continue paying that price for a very long time to come.
00:16:29.000Every one of our communities filled with people who may not have worn the uniform, but who've had trillions of dollars taken out of their wallet to pay for these counterproductive interventionist wars.
00:16:40.000As we in Hawaii, for example, struggle to put air conditioners in schools where kids are trying to study in over 100 degree heat.
00:16:47.000As we deal with massive infrastructure problems, people in Michigan, they just shut down the water system in a bunch of schools in Detroit because they have lead and poison in the water for the kids.
00:17:00.000So the kids are not able to use the water fountains at school.
00:17:03.000So we have major infrastructure, major challenges and issues and so making sure that leaders are held accountable for the decisions that they're making is ultimately what needs to happen.
00:17:13.000One of the things I like about you and one of the things I've liked about a lot of your interviews is you're an obvious, genuine person.
00:17:19.000Like, if you're not genuine, I'd be very shocked.
00:17:23.000So when you're talking about these politicians and having these people being held accountable, It's a real problem, but one of the problems with politics and one of the problems with public speaking and being charismatic is a lot of these people are just really good at being full of shit.
00:17:39.000And because they're really good at being full of shit, a lot of slack-jawed dum-dums out there buy into it, hook, line and sinker, wave that flag and kiss those babies, and they vote these dummies into office.
00:17:51.000So saying these people need to be aware of the consequences, or they need to be held accountable, I firmly believe there's more sociopaths than we really think.
00:18:04.000I think if you look at the general consensus as something like, what is it, one out of a hundred or something like that, what do they think it is?
00:18:14.000I think there's a lot of people that get through life doing things and getting away with things and not doing things that are going to cause them either danger or social consequences, but they manage to get through life with a song and a dance.
00:18:46.000There's a weird motivation that a lot of these people have, and that motivation is to be the Uber, to be the king, to be the top of the heap, to be the queen, whatever it is.
00:18:56.000I don't know how you change that in those people.
00:18:59.000I don't think making them aware of the consequences of their decisions is going to work.
00:19:04.000It's just the type of people who they are in the first place.
00:19:12.000However, I've just seen over the last few years the level of awareness amongst people, amongst voters, has been increasing as there are more and more kind of non-mainstream media outlets that are shining light on these kinds of issues.
00:19:32.000When you say non-mainstream, do you think that mainstream have been holding back?
00:19:38.000I think that you only get a certain narrative.
00:20:13.000I don't pay too much attention to that.
00:20:15.000But I do know that when you look at guys like Jimmy Dore, for example, Jimmy Dore talks about a lot of things that you'll never hear if you flick on the TV, on the cable news channels, and has very interesting conversations.
00:20:29.000And again, bringing facts and different things to life that people don't otherwise feel like they have access to.
00:20:35.000Well, there's way more of that today than there ever has been before.
00:20:39.000And that's where I see there's opportunity.
00:20:40.000And because the more people are learning, like, holy crap, this is what you're doing.
00:20:44.000This is the consequences of those decisions.
00:20:47.000Because there's a ton of votes that happen every single day in Congress that most people don't know about, unless you're really following it closely yourself.
00:20:56.000Just that in and of itself is a job that, you know, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, they're not covering.
00:21:04.000So really a lot of kind of these alternative sites and voices are coming through that are helping to inform and educate people.
00:21:13.000Yeah, the idea of trying to educate politicians on the consequences and what that really means, and the cavalier attitude that you were talking about, like, what's a worst example of that?
00:21:28.000Like, when you were talking about cavalier behavior by these people that make these decisions, like, what kind of things have you seen?
00:21:38.000Well, I'll speak to something that happened most recently.
00:21:41.000I think there are probably a number of examples, but just a couple of months ago in the big defense authorization bill that is kind of one of the only must-pass pieces of legislation in Congress every year, There was a three-page provision that was kind of put in there without really any debate in the committee or anything like that,
00:22:02.000that would essentially authorize the United States to go to war with Iran.
00:22:09.000Now you would think something like that, with that magnitude, would be kind of a big deal.
00:22:14.000You would want to have hearings, you would want to be questioned on strategy, objectives, costs, like all of these different things.
00:22:23.000So when this bill came to the floor of the House where all 435 members of Congress have the ability to vote yes or no, I just put in an amendment that would have deleted those three pages from this big thousands page bill.
00:22:38.000And basically those provisions said that Congress is authorizing the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense to create and implement a strategy to counter Iran.
00:22:56.000Not just come and, hey, bring us your strategy and let us talk about it and see whether or not we agree and approve.
00:23:01.000It was giving the power to the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense to create and implement a strategy to counter Iran.
00:23:12.000Extremely dangerous and a blank check to essentially start a brand new war that currently has not been declared.
00:24:06.000Even though Congress has not declared war.
00:24:10.000Even though, you know, our country just signed a nuclear deal to make it so that they can't build a nuclear weapon.
00:24:19.000It gets to a point where it seems like hysteria.
00:24:23.000But again, it's not based on an actual thinking through tactically and strategically and responsibly what we're actually doing and what our policy is.
00:24:33.000Are you one of the younger people in Congress?
00:26:00.000But I think to that point, just talking about how few younger members of Congress there are, one of the things that I did when I first got elected is I started something called the Future Caucus.
00:26:11.000And it was a bipartisan kind of millennial focused caucus saying that we as a generation recognize the need to work together to drop all the hyper-partisan crap that is tearing this country apart and focus on solutions and actually solving problems.
00:26:29.000And so, you know, different people have come and gone in Congress, but I think what's exciting now is that there is a lot more energy, interest, and activity, I think, from young people in this country who may fall in different places on the ideological spectrum of politics,
00:26:47.000but recognize that, you know, there's no reason why I should give my voice to someone from another generation who has no idea What our challenges are or the challenges that we will face from the decisions they made and left behind.
00:27:01.000When I see someone like Jeff Sessions and then I see someone like you, obviously you're in different realms of the ideological spectrum, but there's a big difference between someone who formed their view of the world while the internet was active.
00:27:18.000And that's you, versus this crazy old asshole who thinks that people who smoke marijuana are bad people.
00:27:25.000It's a weird thing when you see some of these old guard.
00:27:29.000They're a relic of the past, but yet they're still in a position of power and control, and they're making these decisions based on this old world that really doesn't exist anymore.
00:27:42.000And there's so many different ways that that actually has a very real impact.
00:27:45.000And I think some of the hearings that we've seen most recently dealing with Facebook and Twitter and Google are a perfect example where you have people asking questions and it becomes very obvious quickly.
00:27:58.000They don't know how to log into Facebook.
00:28:02.000They've never sent a tweet in their lives.
00:28:04.000Some of these people are very proud that they either don't have a cell phone or they still have a flip phone.
00:28:11.000Which is fine if that's your personal decision.
00:28:13.000But if you're the regulatory body that should be exercising oversight over how technology is rapidly changing the world that we live in, you got to know something about it or surround yourself with people who do.
00:28:27.000Well, especially when it pertains to selling people's privacy or using people's data to influence elections and using, you know...
00:28:38.000The stuff that's been happening with Facebook is even more strange because I don't know how you stop.
00:28:45.000There was a fantastic NPR podcast about these Russian troll farms, about their jobs.
00:28:53.000People show up for work and their job is to spread misinformation and propaganda about whatever the subject is, whatever ideological It's very strange
00:29:24.000when you think that a foreign country is doing this and that people from a foreign country that this is actually a job so there must be some sort of a reason for this and then when you see those people that are questioning What's his name?
00:30:15.000Some of my friends on that committee who actually are under 40 years old, who are members of Congress and who prepared and went in and were asking some tough questions, were very frustrated just because they didn't feel like they were getting...
00:30:30.000They were actually getting many answers, first of all.
00:30:34.000A lot of kind of legally speaking in circles and that kind of thing.
00:30:41.000I think when you're talking about, and there's so many, I don't know, I'm kind of going in a few different directions here with these social media giants, how they're being misused to further certain agendas in different ways, but when you're talking about these Russian troll farms that you mentioned,
00:31:02.000What is missing from all of the news coverage around this and all of the outrage about how this foreign country is trying to influence our elections, which is wrong and which the American people need to be aware of where this information is coming from.
00:31:17.000Is the fact that we, and you're saying, why does somebody do that?
00:31:21.000Well, because this country does want to influence who we're electing, right?
00:31:28.000We know that person is not going to be nice to us.
00:31:30.000The United States has been doing this for a very long time in countries around the world, both overtly and covertly, through these kinds of disinformation campaigns, not even counting the outright regime change wars,
00:31:45.000we're going to physically take you out.
00:31:49.000And I think it is very hypocritical for us to be discussing this issue as a country without actually being honest about how this goes both ways.
00:32:02.000So yes, we need to stop these other foreign countries, and Russia's not the only one, there are others, from trying to influence the American people in our elections.
00:32:11.000We also need to stop doing the same thing in other countries.
00:32:29.000And how much, you know, I mean, how much do they benefit from that?
00:32:34.000This is what's really one of the big questions that's going on right now.
00:32:38.000With all the Russian hearings and the Mueller investigation and trying to get to the bottom of all this and why they did what they did and what they did.
00:32:45.000And there's many people that are blowing this off and they don't think that it's important and, you know, the president's claiming it's a witch hunt.
00:32:52.000But it's very odd that we're having this conversation in the first place.
00:32:55.000It's never existed before in any single presidential election.
00:32:58.000There's never been talk of us or any politician that's running for president being influenced by a foreign superpower before today.
00:33:08.000It's just amazing that it took until 2016 before this became a real issue.
00:33:41.000But one of the weirder ones that I ever saw from her was after the Libya, after Gaddafi was killed, where she was not on the record, but she was still being recorded.
00:34:09.000But this is exactly what I'm talking about, about that cavalier attitude within Washington.
00:34:16.000And for me, that was really the main reason why in 2016, I was a vice chair of the Democratic National Party.
00:34:25.000As an officer of the party, you're supposed to stay neutral in these Democratic primaries.
00:34:30.000But it got to a point where I felt I stepped down from that position, resigned as vice chair, To endorse Bernie Sanders, largely because of the huge difference in their worldviews with Hillary Clinton's very hawkish interventionist foreign policy and track record.
00:34:50.000Libya is a very prominent and recent example.
00:34:55.000Iraq is another, and Bernie Sanders, who generally takes a more non-interventionist worldview.
00:35:02.000That was an issue, again, like as we're talking about, people weren't really raising the differences.
00:35:05.000They're saying, oh, she was Secretary of State, so she's great on foreign policy, but not actually looking at what is the actual policy, and what kind of judgment.
00:35:13.000Would either of these individuals have when they're serving in that most important job of commander in chief?
00:35:24.000And that was something I talked about a lot as I campaigned with Bernie around the country.
00:35:28.000And that was something that I saw and heard from people in, you know, big cities, small towns, Midwest, North, South, East, West, people who appreciated just being told the truth.
00:35:43.000Well, there was also the speeches that she gave where she wouldn't give up the transcripts for those gigantic paid speeches that she gave in front of bankers.
00:36:40.000And there's a direct correlation there, though, with Wall Street big money in general, as you're talking about that influence on politics.
00:36:48.000I was talking with a guy who's, what do you call himself, a recovering kind of finance guy from Wall Street who's left and has now come here to LA. And he talked directly about that.
00:36:59.000And we were talking about how even after 2008, all the too-big-to-fail banks, they were bailed out and people are suffering, they're losing their homes or pensions and all of this stuff.
00:37:10.000These banks are bigger today than they were back then.
00:37:14.000And over time, and even over the last few years, Congress has slowly—and this is not just Republicans.
00:37:20.000There are Democrats who are on the take tour taking this Wall Street money.
00:37:23.000And you're starting to see these bills pass, peeling away the very small amount of regulations that were put on after that crash.
00:37:55.000How do you stop the funding their campaigns, A, and then the paid speeches, B? Those two things alone, if you could just cut that out and say, no, no, no, you have to be legitimate.
00:38:04.000I mean, love or hate Bernie Sanders, you've got to respect the fact that guy never took any money from anybody.
00:38:23.000She didn't say, I'll give you the transcripts, because all I said was, I love America, and we're going to fix everything, and you bankers are dirty.
00:38:31.000Yeah, they don't pay you to call them names.
00:38:50.000So you have to make deals with people who are willing to give you some of that money, and you've got to figure out a way to be able to do this and still convince the people that have to vote for you that you're on their side.
00:39:02.000And this is where that narrative is being disproven, that somehow if you run for office and if you want to serve people within that political realm, that you have to go and kowtow to the corporate interests and the people with the big money in order to be able to fund a campaign,
00:39:19.000in order to win, so you can do good work for the people.
00:39:21.000But also, you told these other guys you were going to make them happy, too.
00:39:26.000I don't take any corporate PAC money or contributions from PACs or lobbyists or anything else.
00:39:31.000And there are more candidates running this year.
00:39:33.000There's over 100 candidates running for Congress this year who have sworn off any of those types of contributions.
00:40:13.000I think a big change happened when Bernie Sanders ran for president.
00:40:16.000I think he did a lot better than he first expected that he would.
00:40:20.000And the fact that he was able to raise...
00:40:24.000In some cases, more money than Hillary Clinton in certain quarters.
00:40:28.000He was very competitive and all of that came from those small-dollar individual contributions.
00:40:34.000You know, he talked about it, you know, $27 is the average contribution that he got and that was kind of a rallying cry at a lot of his events.
00:40:43.000But people, I think people through that experience really woke up to their own power in this democracy.
00:40:50.000And that to have a true strong democracy, it really does take us all doing our part in whatever way that we can.
00:40:56.000If Bernie called you up tomorrow and said, I want you to be my vice president, would you be down?
00:41:13.000I mean, this is basically, dude, I mean, unless someone invents some crazy new medical technology that reverses aging, you only have so much life in you.
00:41:33.000Look, here's the way that I've always made my decisions.
00:41:39.000From the time I ran for the State House of Representatives in Hawaii and I was 21 years old, a lot of people said, like, what are you doing at 21?
00:41:47.000But I cared very much for my home, my community, about environmental issues and things that I saw were not being addressed by many leaders in our state who I felt were out of touch.
00:42:01.000And joining the National Guard and later running for Congress, I try to make my decisions based on how and where I feel like I can make the most impact.
00:42:56.000I don't know how they're going to keep going.
00:42:57.000They're going to kill that guy off somehow or another.
00:43:00.000Somebody asked me when that show for the first season came out, like some of my family especially, it may have been my mother, like, honey, is that really what it's like?
00:43:09.000It's supposed to be loosely based on the Clintons.
00:43:12.000There are some quotes and some things that Kevin Spacey had as the whip in the house.
00:43:17.000There are some things in there like, oh wow, I've actually heard people say that.
00:43:21.000But all the salacious stuff had to comfort my mom.
00:43:25.000It's like, no, I'm not catching the subway late at night.
00:44:09.000Like what you were talking about with these bills that get passed that have these hidden agendas deeply written into a thousand page document.
00:44:16.000How can a person who has three kids and a mortgage and a 40 plus hour week job plus commuting, how can they pay attention to all this?
00:44:29.000And I try to put stuff out on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, social media, because most of us are on those platforms.
00:44:36.000And as you're scrolling through, maybe you're going to see that one thing like, hey, Congress just passed this bill deregulating fracking and liquid natural gas that's affecting your water and your air and connecting the dots between what can seem like Very out of touch policy wonky things to,
00:44:56.000okay, how does this actually affect you, your family, your kids, your house, educate, like the things that really do take up most of people's time and consciousness and care on a daily basis.
00:45:08.000Yeah, and that's one of the more dangerous things, I think, about having a person like Trump as president, is that it's eroding people's confidence in the person that runs the big show.
00:45:24.000That's one of a number of things that have eroded people's confidence.
00:45:28.000I think if you take that one step further and look at how people's confidence in our entire election system...
00:46:39.000To speak of the DEFCON hacking conference that just happened, or happens annually in Vegas, but they just had one this year a couple of months ago, maybe a few weeks ago, where an 11-year-old girl hacked into a replica of Florida's election system and changed the outcome of their election in less than 15 minutes.
00:48:37.000If people don't have confidence in that, then we are in serious trouble.
00:48:42.000So one thing that I introduced a bill a few months ago based on last year's DEF CON hacking conference results that really showed the best way to secure our elections systems, the actual systems themselves, is either use paper ballots,
00:48:58.000Or have a voter-verified paper backup if you're going to use an electronic system.
00:49:04.000So you have an electronic system and then a voter-verified paper backup.
00:49:14.000So in Hawaii, for example, you can choose, when I go vote, I can grab a paper ballot, traditional, or I can go to the machine, which I usually do, Go through and make my selections, and before I hit the final submit ballot button, there's a little printout that pops up in a little window that shows my voter number,
00:49:33.000who I selected to vote for, so I can actually check the paper myself before hitting submit.
00:49:41.000Virginia has off-year statewide elections.
00:49:43.000So they had theirs in 2017. And after that DEFCON hacking conference happened last year, they said, we have to fix this before our election.
00:49:57.000They did paper ballots or they did voter-verified paper backups.
00:50:02.000And their elections commissioners came and testified in Congress after the elections were done.
00:50:08.000And they said that that was the first time in their entire careers that they didn't have a single complaint about the accuracy of the vote count itself, where in previous years they had.
00:50:21.000But their proof that you identify the problem, this is not going to take years to fix.
00:50:29.000And actually secure the outcome of these elections.
00:50:32.000That's what I've been pushing for in Congress, especially as we head to these midterms, especially as we head into 2020. But again, it goes back to the point, like my bill hasn't gotten a vote yet.
00:50:49.000But you have leaders in both parties who are just continuing to fight and fret and moan and groan about how we have all these vulnerabilities in our elections.
00:50:58.000But not actually doing anything about it.
00:51:01.000Using it as a partisan kind of political football.
00:51:04.000But again, why don't you actually solve it?
00:51:09.000Because it's issues like this that help with fundraising and they help kind of motivate people and they worry people and they bring all these fears about.
00:51:47.000A number of outside kind of election security experts have been talking about this.
00:51:51.000Some of the hackers have been talking about the fact that the only way you can secure an election is by using paper.
00:51:58.000I cannot come up with an excuse for why the leaders in these committees and in Congress have not actually, like whether it's my bill or someone else's bill, why haven't they actually solved this?
00:52:12.000Because it's something that could potentially impact us in the coming weeks and months.
00:52:18.000Well, I remember the hanging Chad controversy.
00:52:22.000And how many different votes got thrown out.
00:52:25.000And then there was also so many people that were denied the right to vote.
00:53:16.000Well, that points to the superdelegate issue that Democrats have been dealing with, where people who have been arguing to keep the system of superdelegates, where in a state like mine in Hawaii, for example, we've got four superdelegate votes,
00:53:33.000two for the members of Congress and two for the senators.
00:53:36.000Explain that to people who don't know what a superdelegate means.
00:53:42.000Created by the political parties themselves.
00:53:45.000So the Democratic Party has been using the superdelegate system where as people are running for president, you have a certain number of delegates that go to one person or another based on that state's rules.
00:54:01.000So some states say it's winner take all.
00:54:03.000Other states say that it's proportional.
00:54:06.000So if you get 60% of the vote, that means you get 60% of the delegates.
00:54:09.000But then you have this special category of superdelegates, which there are over 700 of them.
00:54:14.000It includes all 435 members of, sorry, all Democratic members of Congress, Democrats in the Senate, and people who are appointed by the party leadership, both at the state and the national level.
00:54:28.000And so what we saw in my state of Hawaii, for example, is Over 70% of the voters voted for Bernie Sanders, but out of those four superdelegate votes, he got one,
00:55:04.000This is about really looking at people casting their votes, and then you have this special group of people who are either elected or appointed who can then say, no, I don't agree with the way that the people in my state or my district voted, so I'm just going to vote the other way,
00:55:19.000and then shift potentially the outcome of that election for that state or for the country.
00:56:17.000I think they may have superdelegates, but those superdelegates are required to reflect the votes of their constituency.
00:56:25.000So they don't have the freedom to change their vote or change their mind.
00:56:33.000Yeah, so this is something that I've been fighting to try to reform within our party, is to get rid of superdelegates, to make it so that we have open primaries, so that you don't have to be a card-carrying party member to vote in Democratic primary,
00:56:49.000because that was another problem we saw across the country, where people were turned away, because in some cases, well, you didn't register with the party a year ago, which is the requirement.
00:57:00.000And then you have same-day registration.
00:57:02.000If you're not registered to vote, you should be able to register to vote on the day of the election so that you can participate in our democracy.
00:57:18.000So there's been some progress made since then, though.
00:57:20.000Just recently, the DNC had a meeting where it was a very strong majority of people who voted to bar superdelegates from casting their own free votes in the first ballot in a presidential convention.
00:57:40.000It's been a long time since it's gone to the second or third ballot, but that was a major step forward to make sure that as people are going and casting their votes in these primaries, that they're not risking being overruled by, again,
00:57:56.000a group of special individuals who are elected officials, who are lobbyists and who are party officials and people coming from all different backgrounds.
00:58:04.000Is there any resistance to getting rid of these superdelicates?
00:58:10.000It was not a given that this was going to pass at all.
00:58:13.000People who are very, very invested in this system.
00:58:16.000But it seems like they would have to be invested in keeping the system rigged, like making it easy to influence elections by having these few people that you can control, having influence over these people.
00:58:27.000These people have massive influence over the results of the election.
00:58:52.000I'm doing this and all of that, which all of that is fine and it's great.
00:58:57.000But that shouldn't make it so that, like, you know, as myself, as a super deli, and I've talked about this, I shouldn't have any, my vote shouldn't count for any more than yours or anyone else's.
00:59:09.000And that we should be strengthening and empowering and uplifting the voices of the people rather than saying, well, this small elite group has way more power than you, so we'll see what they think about things.
00:59:23.000It's so bizarre that that's a part of the system.
00:59:25.000It just seems like that's something that should have been eradicated a long time ago.
00:59:33.000I mean, from that, and then from finding out the DNC actively conspired to have him lose the primary, all of that.
00:59:41.000Sorry, one last thing on the Superdellies that some of those who support it have said is that it is their job to be able to save the country in case the people elect someone who isn't good.
01:00:28.000So, I mean, that's been, I think, a positive thing that has come through all of this is more people are saying, like, you know, I honestly wasn't paying a bunch of attention to superdelegates before all of this.
01:00:38.000And a lot of people had their eyes opened up to say, okay, this is clearly wrong.
01:01:46.000And I think that's where you see a lot of A lot of the energy that came around for somebody like Bernie Sanders or somebody like Donald Trump who are perceived as being not of the system.
01:02:04.000But it shows us where we need to go, honestly.
01:02:08.000And you're talking about authentic, honest leaders who have integrity.
01:02:14.000And I think people are not as blind to that.
01:02:46.000I mean, there's also like calculated maneuvers that people do politically to align themselves with one group or another where they realize like, okay, there's a lot of money in being a this, that's a that.
01:02:57.000There's a lot of money in being a whatever it is, Republican or Democrat.
01:03:06.000All of those different labels and things that people are capitalizing on within the political world, I think, are the things that are turning off more and more people to the politics.
01:03:17.000Because then it's like, well, if you're not branded with this label, then I'm not going to talk to you.
01:03:23.000Or it's this camp versus another camp, this tribe versus another tribe.
01:03:28.000Rather than recognizing even amongst our own families and friends and communities, we...
01:03:34.000We figure out ways to talk things through and find ways to collaborate in areas where we agree.
01:03:40.000We can agree to disagree on certain things, but we can do that with what we in Hawaii call aloha and with respect and actually find a way through to move forward.
01:03:51.000There's a lot of things that have been discussed in terms of the future of...
01:03:59.000Of economics in particular with regards to artificial intelligence and automation and these radical changes that are probably coming whether we like it or not.
01:04:10.000And one of the things that's been discussed as a potential solution to some of the economic woes is a universal basic income.
01:04:50.000I'm very open to the idea of it because I think that we very well could run into a situation where millions of people are almost instantly out of jobs.
01:05:23.000And then there's a problem psychologically.
01:05:25.000People say that, well, if you just give people money, you take away their ambition and their will, and one of the things that makes America great is that people hustle.
01:05:34.000And that you give a bunch of people money that they don't earn, and they're gonna be lazy.
01:05:44.000And I think there's another one that points to, if you look at how much taxpayer dollars are spent on Section 8 housing or different affordable housing programs, On food stamps, on kind of these different social welfare programs.
01:06:03.000How much are we spending on overhead to administer those programs?
01:06:07.000And so would it make more economic sense to just kind of compile all of those benefits into one package and just give people a check instead of piecing it out through all of these different things?
01:06:19.000And would we actually save money as a country by doing so?
01:06:24.000And the argument to incentivize productivity, even amongst people that are accepting universal basic income, I believe is to let them keep it no matter what.
01:06:34.000So the idea is even if you make $10 million a year, you're going to still get X amount of dollars per month as universal basic income.
01:06:42.000And you can choose to donate that to the causes of your choice.
01:06:46.000But if you're a person who's concerned that this is going to somehow or another stifle people's motivation to get jobs, because if you get a job, then they won't get that money, which is the case with welfare, right?
01:06:56.000The idea that, you know, you—it's very difficult to get someone, when you're giving them free money, to say, look, you're going to have to work harder, and then you're going to get less.
01:07:06.000They're going to go, why would I work harder?
01:07:08.000So the idea is, and I believe Elon Musk is one of the ones that came up with this, well, don't take away the money.
01:07:14.000Like, everybody gets it no matter what.
01:07:15.000You can choose to do whatever you want with it, but the way to incentivize action and productivity is to make that money just universally available to everyone.
01:07:29.000You know, I mean, I kind of believe that, I mean, Just culturally, people, and we were talking about these young kids, for example, you know, I mean, they're not getting one paid one thing or another, but just their drive and their interest and kind of their intellectual direction.
01:07:47.000I think people are not necessarily lazy by nature.
01:07:51.000And I think there's something to be said for wanting to actually get things done.
01:07:57.000And I think you open up rather than saying, well, we've just got to Our purpose is just to work in a job.
01:08:04.000You maybe broaden that spectrum to where your purpose in life is not just to work a good paying job, but actually have meaning and purpose to what you're doing with your life.
01:08:22.000I mean, I think in large part, maybe the problem is planting the seed in young people at an early age that you're not supposed to just try to make money to survive.
01:08:46.000And I think that opens it up into kind of how we view education in this country and how there's all this drive towards, well, you've got to get a college degree, you've got to do this, you've got to do that.
01:09:00.000But really, there's a lot more where people aren't asking those questions.
01:09:06.000Asking that most important question of purpose.
01:09:10.000And seeing, well, getting a bachelor's degree or master's degree or whatever, that may not be what you want or how you feel you can best use your time or your skills.
01:09:22.000And whether it's vocational training or doing something else or starting up a business right away or...
01:09:28.000I think we just have to broaden the spectrum here so that we're not so tunnel-visioned where we're saying, well, you're going to have to go $60,000 in debt because you've got to get a college degree of which you will have no guarantee that you will get this high-paying job that you were hoping to get so that you make lots of money and then you end up wasting your life wondering,
01:09:45.000That's a very good point because I think the system that we have in place is not perfect, but yet we're not fixing it.
01:09:51.000We're not changing it and college education is essentially subsidized and you have so much money that these kids are in debt with.
01:09:59.000By the time they graduate, I mean, I had a friend who made it through medical school and by the time he got out he owed more than a quarter million dollars.
01:10:10.000And he's like, when people talk about doctors and they talk about doctors being greedy, He goes, you have to understand that so many of them are struggling just to stay alive.
01:10:18.000They're struggling just to pay their own bills and keep the lights on.
01:10:21.000The reason why they want to see 20, 30 people a day and just keep pumping in the numbers and just constantly do whatever they have to do, whether it's operations or whatever it is, And that they're not considering the overall health and welfare of these people and looking at all these different solutions,
01:10:38.000whether it's nutrition or maybe there's a way to avoid surgery or maybe there's a way to, you know, figure out a way to strengthen your body first before we do this or maybe we alter your diet and maybe you're not getting enough sleep.
01:10:49.000Let's take that into consideration and what kind of pills you want and how are they negatively affecting your health.
01:10:55.000They have another person that's waiting and then another person that's waiting and they have to keep those people coming in because they need that money.
01:11:03.000And that's where, whether we're talking about the cost of education or the cost of healthcare, for that matter, when we look at technology and how we can both bring down cost and improve quality in these areas, I think there's tremendous opportunity.
01:11:20.000In Hawaii, there's a pilot program on the Big Island right now called Paramedicine, Where current Medicare reimbursement laws say that as our EMTs go out in ambulance to pick up somebody, they will only get reimbursed if they pick up that person and take them to an emergency room.
01:11:38.000So never mind if that person needs to get their prescription drugs refilled, which happens.
01:11:44.000They'll call 911 for that if they're living out in the boonies somewhere and they can't get to where they need to go.
01:11:49.000Or if that person needs to see a mental health professional or a social worker or anything else.
01:11:55.000So this idea of paramedicine that we're working on trying to build and actually change some federal policy to help support is Really look out for what does this person actually need and not just shove them into this healthcare system that drives up the cost for everyone and also use technology to do that.
01:12:14.000So I was asking him, okay, so you're not going to be able to physically bring a social worker with you on all these calls.
01:12:19.000That's not how you're going to economize your cost here.
01:12:23.000He said, oh no, we bring an iPad with us.
01:12:25.000So there's a social worker at the clinic.
01:12:28.000And then we can dial them in and they can FaceTime with the person whose house that we've gone to if that's the service that they need and they can start helping connect them to resources.
01:12:38.000So that's where you're able to help kind of both bring down costs but also making sure that we have the services accessible to those who need them.
01:12:46.000Well, that's a fantastic idea, just to avoid the trips to the doctor for rudimentary things.
01:12:52.000But one of the things that Bernie Sanders brought up when he was running for president that I thought was very intriguing was the possibility of free education.
01:13:02.000And, you know, obviously we have public schools when it comes to high school and junior high school and all that other stuff, but the idea of a public Full education through university to your degree.
01:13:19.000I think it's possible, but I think it doesn't get to the root cause of the problem, which is the cost of education.
01:13:27.000And I think that if you write that ticket, then you are at risk of then these education institutions just saying, okay, so if you are guaranteeing X number of dollars for a student to go through and get that education,
01:13:44.000Then we're going to adjust our costs to make it meet that amount.
01:13:48.000Or if it's a blank check, then they'll know that they have a blank check.
01:13:52.000So we have to get to the root cause of these challenges.
01:13:57.000Whether it is education or healthcare, we have to get to the root cause of why are these costs being driven up so dramatically and not just say, well, we're going to pay for everything without actually dealing with the fact that things are not affordable as they are.
01:14:14.000Well, how did education get to a point where you could go bankrupt with any other kind of debt and you're no longer required to pay that debt?
01:14:23.000So if you owe credit card money, you lose your house, whatever it is.
01:14:28.000But if you owe money because of a college loan, you owe that money until you're dead.
01:14:36.000I mean, it's one of the weirder things that we have in our culture, is that we saddle these young, ambitious people with insurmountable debt.
01:14:55.000And this is a part of the system, and they're profiting off of it, and they don't want it to go away.
01:14:59.000And somehow or another, they've talked someone into passing these laws that make these kids stuck with this bill, no matter what happens in their life.
01:15:10.000You know, get in a car accident, no longer take care of yourself?
01:15:23.000When you pull the veil back on kind of the crony capitalism that exists in this country, then you start to see and connect how it really impacts people's lives in so many different ways and how it affects the policies in our country.
01:15:37.000What was Bernie's solution for that when he wanted to institute some sort of a Free education system for higher education.
01:15:48.000And I don't know his bill chapter and verse, but I believe it was focused on public colleges, not private institutions, and that it was by levying some sort of tax on Wall Street to pay for it.
01:16:02.000That was the big criticism, that everything was going to be tax, tax, tax, tax, tax.
01:16:06.000But an inefficient system is going to chew up a lot of your tax dollars.
01:16:10.000So people were thinking their hard-earned dollars were going to go to some bureaucracy and a bunch of red tape and horseshit and too many people that are working, doing too many different things just to try to keep jobs going.
01:16:27.000I mean, you know, I think the focus on...
01:16:32.000On Wall Street, I think, is a very specific one.
01:16:35.000However, as you're looking at possible funding and tax sources, but again, I mean, I just point to soundbites can catch fire easily, but getting to the root cause of how we solve some of these problems is really what we need to do.
01:16:55.000How are we delivering education to people?
01:16:57.000Why is it that these colleges, why is it the cost of education has gone So far up and really in an uncontrolled manner.
01:17:07.000Why is it that, you know, these prescription drug companies can raise their prices hundreds if not thousands of percent on life-saving medication for people?
01:17:17.000Why is it that doctors are not required to go through any kind of nutrition training as they get their certification?
01:18:02.000Is this the business of the federal government to get involved in how doctors are educated?
01:18:07.000I mean, how do you fix that without getting your hands into everything?
01:18:12.000Because obviously, we would like to believe that medical schools know more about how to raise doctors than you or I. But the government pays a lot of money to help take care of people and make sure that they have access to education,
01:18:31.000especially those who don't have money.
01:18:33.000And so it is our responsibility to try to do what we can to help improve that system, to make it so that it's affordable, and to look at these preventive health measures.
01:18:49.000I have yet to get a good answer from anyone in a medical school or in that field about why...
01:18:56.000I'm not even talking about you have to become a licensed nutrition professional, but just having this basic education that will help them better take care of people, why that doesn't exist.
01:19:09.000Well, it's also bizarre that, I mean, it's such a complicated thing, especially diet and nutrition.
01:19:14.000It's so complicated that even nutritionists don't agree.
01:19:17.000I mean, you have experts in nutrition that, I mean, I'm having a bunch of debates coming up in the future, two of them at the end of this month.
01:19:26.000One, a vegan doctor versus a former vegan paleo scientist who believes that organ meat and eating animal meat is the key to health and happiness.
01:19:38.000The vegan obviously believes that that's not the case.
01:19:41.000And, you know, there's people that believe in high carbohydrate, low fat, low carbohydrate, high fat.
01:19:46.000All the different diets that are out there.
01:20:00.000And there are folks, some friends of mine in Waimanalo in Hawaii, who have a little cafe and a farm and their goal is to be able to feed healthy food to their community.
01:20:10.000And so one of the things that they do is...
01:20:14.000They identify people on the island who are dealing with a 30-plus-year-old guy who's dealing with major heart failures already and who's obese and dealing with weight and diabetes and all these other issues and helping people like him change their diet.
01:20:31.000So they provide free meals to them for, I think it was like three months, and they have a doctor who's supervising and monitoring what the effect on their body is.
01:20:42.000My friend Malia, she told me that one of these guys who came in, she's like, you know, you should try to eat more salad in your diet.
01:20:49.000You should try to eat at least once a day.
01:21:11.000Wow, he thought macaroni salad was salad.
01:21:13.000Right, so that's what I'm talking about, the basic level of just eating fresh foods and cutting out sugar and minimizing fried foods, those kinds of things.
01:21:23.000We can't take for granted that everybody just knows this, especially when you're brought up in a certain way or a certain kind of culture or whatever, that that may not be something that you're taught.
01:21:33.000And the benefit to all of us as taxpayers is that you're going to have less health care costs.
01:21:40.000If you're preventing people from getting sick, then you are lowering the cost of highly escalating health care.
01:21:58.000Just the time that you'll get with your family and with your kids and being mobile and getting out and around.
01:22:04.000And so using the example of these people in Waimanala, that's what they've seen with the folks that they've been able to help is about education and like here's how you could eat in a healthy way that's good for you and seeing how that is impacting those individuals' personal health and their families has been really life-changing for some of these guys.
01:22:23.000Now, as a congresswoman, what other bottlenecks are you seeing that you see in the system that you would like to change or fix?
01:22:34.000Civil liberties is one that I have and continue to be focused on in an area where there is bipartisan support.
01:22:44.000When you look at a lot of the abuses that we have seen and continue to see in agencies like the NSA and in the post-Patriot Act world where laws were passed licensing warrantless spying on Americans...
01:23:02.000That is an area where we still need to make a lot of changes.
01:23:08.000Criminal justice reform is another, and this is one where uniquely right now I think there's a moment in time where you have organizations like the ACLU partnering with the Koch brothers, very conservative Koch brothers, coming at and supporting the same pieces of legislation.
01:23:27.000And the federal marijuana prohibition to deal with sentencing reform, to deal with prison reform, and to make it so that we're not constantly cycling these same people through our prison systems and that we're not throwing people into already overcrowded prisons who have no business being there.
01:23:47.000Yeah, those are really important points and I'm glad you brought that up.
01:23:51.000I've heard argument that the wiretapping and that the surveillance program is necessary to prevent terrorist activity.
01:24:10.000The point here is that it is illegal to spy on Americans without a warrant.
01:24:17.000So if you have somebody that has raised some level of suspicion, then as a law enforcement officer or agency, we're protected by our Constitution in this way, where you have to do the tough work of building your evidence and actually getting a warrant to do this.
01:24:35.000But there have been example after example how...
01:24:41.000This has been grossly abused and how, you know, whether it's our cell phone records that were being gathered en masse by the NSA or other things, we're seeing that because of the Patriot Act,
01:25:00.000there are the loopholes that have been created that have allowed these agencies to exploit that.
01:25:05.000There's also some weird rules where, like, if you get pulled over, they can't ask you for your PIN number for your phone, but they can use your thumbprint to access your phone.
01:25:22.000I believe it pertains to whatever the crime is.
01:25:26.000I don't think they could do it if you get caught speeding, but I think if they believe that you're involved in something that may or may not be a felony, that they can check your phone.
01:25:35.000And there's actually these devices that they've been selling to police departments that allow them to crack into iPhones, which are supposedly incredible.
01:26:21.000Well, the problem is, and this is good and bad, cops are people, okay?
01:26:26.000They're just you and I, and they're just folks that have a very difficult job and a very high level of responsibility.
01:26:34.000But why would you allow them to decide whether or not they can go into someone's personal property and view their information and look at their emails, look at their text messages, and make a determination as to whether or not this person's involved in illegal activity without a judge and a search warrant?
01:26:56.000Or is this just one of the things that happens sometimes is that technology accelerates at a rate where we don't have laws that are pertinent to that technology.
01:27:07.000And there's some legislation that we've worked on that we are continuing to try to get passed to try to help get the laws caught up with where we are today.
01:27:19.000And there's one bill that we have that deals with emails, for example, where it's against the law to open up someone else's mail.
01:27:30.000But it's not necessarily against the law to open up someone else's email.
01:27:35.000Because the law was written back when, you know, whatever, handwritten letters or letters sent through the U.S. Postal Service was the only way people communicated and it has not been updated to this day.
01:27:52.000What are your feelings on private prisons?
01:27:57.000When you're making money off of keeping people in prison, then you have a serious problem.
01:28:05.000The fact that we have a criminal justice system that is so broken, that we're allowing these corporations to make money off of keeping their prison beds filled, we are doing a disservice to those people, to our communities, our family, and every taxpayer who's paying money for these private prisons.
01:28:24.000I mean, it seems an obvious conflict of interest.
01:28:27.000You have no incentive whatsoever to actually help rehabilitate people, help provide people with transitional training, with drug rehab, with all of these other things that can help people who have been incarcerated for one reason or another leave and never come back.
01:28:50.000One of the good news stories that actually has happened recently in Congress was we passed this bill called the First Step Act that deals specifically with this prison reform issue to help make sure that those who don't belong in prison,
01:29:05.000like nonviolent drug offenders, don't go there in the first place.
01:29:09.000And to make it so that those who are there and those who are the returning inmates are actually addressing what is it that you need to make so you don't keep coming back.
01:29:27.000And that was something that faced some opposition on both sides of the aisle.
01:29:31.000But again, it's one of those examples where when you focus on, okay, we may come at this from different directions, like some folks are more concerned about the social cost and the impact on families and communities and how you're criminalizing people.
01:29:44.000Others are more concerned about the fiscal impact and how much money we're spending on these people cycling through our prisons.
01:29:50.000Regardless, we both want the same outcome, which is less people in our prisons and bringing down the costs, both economic and social.
01:29:59.000And so that was a bill that we passed through the House.
01:30:02.000It's sitting before the Senate right now, but it has support from the White House and Ironically, there is a Republican senator in the Senate who is the number one opposition against this bill.
01:30:12.000It passed, like, I don't know, there were over 300 members of the House who voted for it.
01:30:17.000So there's some hope there, but there's some work to be done in that area.
01:30:23.000How did this whole private prison thing happen before people even realized it took place?
01:30:29.000I don't know the exact history of who made it happen or who allowed for this government contract to take place, but I think the sick part about it is that you have people who recognize that they could make money off of people who are going to jail.
01:30:46.000I'm sure you're aware of that Pennsylvania judge who was sentenced who was He was irresponsibly and wrongfully sentencing young people to jail for profit.
01:31:15.000And when you look at all of the other impacts of that, and this is what I often talk about when we talk about ending the federal marijuana prohibition.
01:31:25.000Is look at how it is impacting the lives of those individuals who will now have a criminal record and follow them everywhere.
01:31:33.000Look at how it's impacting their children, their family members, their opportunities for their future, and how these impacts are often very, very long-reaching and impact a lot of these other social systems and programs that exist.
01:31:51.000And how much more prevalent these arrests are than most people realize.
01:31:56.000Yeah, and then there's the economic windfall that takes place when you legalize it.
01:32:01.000And that's the only thing that you're seeing where these states are voting for because they realize there's massive amounts of tax dollars that they can make.
01:32:23.000I mean, the people who are actually benefiting from this, especially these kids with epilepsy and those with other medical disorders.
01:32:31.000I've met with families in states like Iowa, for example, met with families and met with their kids who, you know, they are breaking both state and federal law in Iowa, where even CBD products are not legal.
01:32:48.000And so they're having to find ways to get it there, and they're trying to fight this within their own state to change the laws.
01:32:54.000But, you know, these people who consider themselves conservative Republicans are talking about this issue that they feel is a life-saving issue for their children.
01:33:03.000Well, once you see people that have cancer, that can't eat, and they're going through chemotherapy, and you realize that this may be one of the only things you can give someone, given their appetite back, Exactly.
01:33:15.000When you see children that have severe autism, and one of the only things that can stop their seizures is medical marijuana.
01:33:22.000I mean, do you realize there's so many different things that we could help people with?
01:33:29.000I mean, there is personal freedom issues that you really shouldn't be able to tell someone that they can go get whiskey, but they can't get marijuana.
01:34:02.000And the same thing is happening now with this opioid epidemic, how there are states that have legalized, either whether it's just medical or full legalization, there has proven to be a direct correlation to a drastic reduction in opioid-related deaths in those states where people have access,
01:34:22.000again, either to medical or non-medical use.
01:34:27.000And you see, you wonder, okay, if we know this, and every one of the leaders in this country are so concerned about this opioid epidemic, why hasn't this been brought forward?
01:34:38.000You learn about the prescription drug companies who make a lot of these opioids, who are now making the other prescription drugs to help wean people off of the opioids, and so they're making money on both ends of the spectrum without really any care for the person.
01:34:54.000And their welfare and their well-being.
01:35:01.000Well, and there's also things that are federally illegal, like Ibogaine, which has an incredible result ratio in terms of getting people to kick addictions, whether it's alcohol, heroin, pills.
01:35:17.000There's clinics in Mexico that people go to on a regular basis to take this one psychedelic medicine that's been shown to have radical results.
01:35:27.000It's not killing people, yet it's extremely illegal.
01:35:30.000It's a Schedule I drug in America, and it's...
01:35:39.000There's several studies that they're doing right now that they're trying to show that there's a direct correlation between use of psilocybin in these clinical situations where they're curing cigarettes, heroin, all these different addictions with different psychedelic drugs that are Schedule I. There's a lot of work being done right now.
01:36:01.000MAPS is involved with one thing that they're doing that's helping a tremendous amount of soldiers and people with PTSD is with MDMA, is assisted MDMA therapy.
01:36:14.000And there's a lot of these that are being explored now where people had demonized these particular drugs or plants and they were thought to be something that would ruin your life.
01:36:25.000And now they're realizing, no, these, like many things, can be used or abused and that there's solutions for a lot of our problems.
01:36:34.000But there's a lot of resistance to this.
01:36:36.000There's a lot of resistance in particular from...
01:36:39.000I mean, the resistance about CBD is one of the dumbest ones of all time.
01:36:42.000Because CBD is non-addictive, non-toxic, and massively beneficial to so many people.
01:36:48.000Whether it's helping them with anxiety...
01:37:26.000When they realize it's not psychoactive, it's incredibly beneficial, whether it's for food, whether it's for textiles, whether it's for oil.
01:38:18.000They just don't want to compete with it.
01:38:20.000Whatever they're profiting from, whether it's the people that are selling pain pills or the people that are using it for...
01:38:25.000I mean, it was initially made illegal because of paper.
01:38:28.000William Randolph Hearst got involved in it because he had paper mills.
01:38:32.000And he also owned newspapers, so he started demonizing it to get people to think that if we made hemp legal, we were going to have people running around on the marijuana, killing people and jumping out of windows.
01:38:45.000I'm working with a Republican from Florida named Carlos Curbelo.
01:38:48.000We just introduced a bill to essentially commission a study by the National Academy of Science made up of objective studies.
01:38:58.000Reports and other studies that have been done from states that have already legalized to one extent or another marijuana to compile an independent fact-based report for the federal government on what has come about in those states in every respect.
01:39:17.000Whether you're talking about health care, economy, or criminal justice, and law enforcement, every single thing.
01:39:23.000And to have this entity do it that sits outside of the federal government.
01:39:30.000Because the challenge that we keep coming up against, both at the federal level as well as at the state level in some cases, is they say, well, there are no studies that show the benefits of what good will come about if you end the federal marijuana prohibition.
01:39:46.000As one example, in Hawaii just recently, the state legislature, House, and Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to allow opioid addiction to be added to the acceptable things that medical marijuana can treat.
01:40:00.000So even though medical marijuana is legal in Hawaii, there is a limited list of the ailments or whatever that you can prove your eligibility.
01:40:11.000Legislature said it should be, which I agree it should be, but it was vetoed by the governor.
01:40:16.000Who said, well, those studies aren't proving that this will help those who are opioid addicts.
01:40:24.000And there's a bureaucratic process that takes a really long time if people really want this to happen.
01:40:31.000What are the other things that are of concern to you as a congresswoman that you're seeing not addressed or that are somehow or another still in place when you feel like they should have been eradicated?
01:40:42.000You know, there's a long laundry list of issues and I think you can go through each of the major issues that a lot of folks are concerned about and pick those apart and say, hey, here are the things that we need to address and improve in each of those.
01:40:59.000But I think the conversation that I hope more people start having is about why aren't these things being fixed or addressed?
01:41:08.000And that speaks directly to people's unwillingness to actually talk to each other, to stop demonizing each other because you're from the other camp, and actually engage Based on our common mission of serving the people,
01:41:26.000And, you know, that's something I look back to during my time in uniform, serving the Hawaii Army National Guard.
01:41:32.000You got diverse people, diverse opinions, diverse ideas, but ultimately, you know, we wear the same flag on our uniform and we are focused singularly on that same purpose and mission.
01:41:45.000And unfortunately, that's what we're missing a lot of in Congress is the hyper-partisanship And the political winds too often take precedence over the reason why people in our districts hire us to go and work there.
01:41:59.000And a lot of that comes from not having a basic level of respect or aloha for each other as people.
01:42:05.000And instead, just saying, hey, it's us against them.
01:42:11.000And that's where the battles are fought.
01:42:14.000And who suffers as a result is the people who are suffering and who are dealing with a lot of the challenges that we've been talking about.
01:42:21.000That's something that, you know, I try to bring Hawaii's Aloha to Washington.
01:42:26.000I try to bring that through in the work that I'm trying to do on these different issues, in the conversations that we're having.
01:42:32.000Sometimes it means you talk with people who you disagree with, or you may have different ideas than they have about how you solve these problems.
01:42:40.000But even if you're able to come together on one thing, then we can start to see problems actually being solved and delivering results.
01:42:48.000Well, what I saw from you in video is exactly what I've seen from you in person.
01:42:56.000You give me hope that there are politicians that are legitimately in it for the right reason and that they have a real vision of how to fix things.