Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to the Solari Report.
I am thrilled today to have a
conversation with one of my favorite
people in the Solari Network.
Let me introduce you.
Susan Luschas from South
Dakota, who is Susan.
You are a force of nature.
I first learned about you because you
started posting on Solari is a subscriber.
And you described your work in the
health area, which and helping
as a mom, helping your family
be healthy and what you’ve done
in that area is very impressive.
I discovered I was not surprised
to learn that you had three degrees
from MIT and electrical engineering.
Quite an impressive career before
you decided to take time off to
make sure your family was healthy.
And then in the pandemic you decided
in a very amazing move to literally
grab your kids, leave Silicon Valley
and move to the school district in the
country that had the least pandemic
restrictions and very impressive.
And so then I got a
chance to get to know you.
I came up to South Dakota and we also
have other mutual contacts in common.
And and you started to go to work on
cash and we now have a whole section
at the financial Transaction freedom
website called Turtling for Cash.
That is really embodies all of your work.
I think what you’ve
accomplished to date is amazing.
And so we’re here to talk about
turling for cash and I have asked
you to help us go through in detail.
Your journey and what you’ve
accomplished legislatively and in your
community with cash in South Dakota.
And to go through it carefully
so that other people can, one, be
inspired, but get a lot of ideas and
materials to help them do the same.
And of course, I’m very interested in
this because the last thing I wanna do
is wake up and find myself controlled
by the financial system and have
my life and how I live mandated by
controls in the financial system.
So you are doing amazing
things for freedom.
I’m unbelievably grateful to you.
I’m thrilled to have the chance
to go through this story with you
because I’ve been there for many
steps and each one is amazing.
So I know you hate compliments,
so I’ll stop there.
Anyway, Susan, welcome
to this leader report.
Thank you for.
Joining us to, to give us a, an education
about how you’ve been turling for cash.
Thanks, Catherine, and
thanks for having me.
I was actually inspired to work on
Cash, by Financial Rebellion by you
and Polly Tommy, when Polly and her
wonderful accent said, cash every day.
Cash every day.
And so my husband and I and our
family Turtled and said, okay, we’re
gonna reduce our credit card usage.
We’re gonna pay with cash.
This is important.
And there was actually a website
and I can’t find it anymore.
It’s down now that I think Polly Tommy
had recommended where they had these
little pieces of paper, why pay with cash?
And so you could hand them out to people.
So I threw some of those in my wallet
and as I was paying with cash all
around town people would get in
a conversation or comment that I
was using cash, and they got in a
conversation, I would hand ’em this
piece of paper and PE why pay with cash?
And it had all these reasons.
And slowly over time, I just realized.
I’m setting an example for people by
paying with cash and by talking to people.
And this is important.
And if we all pay with
cash every day, we’re free.
Our freedom.
We have freedom.
We don’t have to worry about CBDC, we
don’t have to worry about transactional
gold getting us, we don’t have to
worry about our bank accounts being
frozen, being de banked, none of that.
We all pay with cash every day and
refuse to comply or refuse to shop
at businesses that don’t take cash.
We’re free.
And if I can get South Dakota
to do that we only have about
a million people in the state.
So even if I get
10,000 or so people to do this,
I mean that, that’s quite a
bit for the size of our state.
They can’t do a digital control
system until they get an
all digital monetary system.
And so they need to stop cash adaption.
And if cash adaption grows, it makes it
impossible to go do an all digital system.
Exactly.
So that’s what I’ve been doing over
the last several years since you and
Polly basically came up with the idea.
And it’s just evolved and I’ve just
literally, we’ve had some miracles and
some divine with us somehow, and we just
have to go with that and follow that and
have faith that whatever we do is gonna,
somehow in hindsight we’re gonna look
back and say, we’re glad we did that.
And we made a little bit of a difference.
So I started planting seeds back in
2023 with Halloween these little
pieces of paper that I was carrying
in my wallet when I was paying with
cash, I realized, wait a minute, I
can tape those to the back of a dollar
bill and give them out at Halloween.
We have weather here in South
Dakota, so depending on the weather,
I have between 102 hundred kids
that come to my house every year
knocking on my door on Halloween.
And so I thought I’ll just
back roll tape these stickers to
the back of these dollar bills.
I’ll hand ’em out at Halloween.
So can I just interrupt for a second?
This means you don’t give kids sugar.
Exactly.
Which is also very good.
Yeah, exactly.
So I then I realized, I
need a costume and a theme.
The cash is the theme ’cause I’m
gonna hand out these dollar bills.
So I made a cash costume out of an
old Amazon box and some dollars and
$5 and $10 bills that I just printed
off the internet on my printer and
glued onto this cardboard box and
wore with straps around my shoulders.
So it became my cash costume.
And then I ordered a king hat
and that cost me like five bucks.
So I made this really cheap cash is
king costume and then I took my kayak.
’cause we live really close to the
big Sioux River here in South Dakota.
So I took my kayak and I flipped
it over, which gave me a big
white surface to write on.
And I wrote Cashs King, and
then I put my kayak in front
of my house with a spotlight.
So when people would come up
for Halloween, they’d see cash
is king on, written on the
big, on the bottom of my kayak.
And then they come, they were
confused by that the first year.
Now they know we’re the cash house.
So now everybody knows and they
line up and stuff like that.
But they were confused by that.
Then I open the door with my cash is king
costume, and then I give ’em a dollar bill
with a sticker, or now it’s a sticker.
It used to be a Backroll tape,
piece of paper dollar bill.
And I’d say to them, pay
with cash, not credit.
And these little five-year-olds
would go back to their moms and say,
mommy, pay with cash, not credit.
Look.
And they got a dollar bill.
And they were so excited.
And it, it was interesting in that
first year I got a random message from a
random parent that I don’t know saying,
thank you so much for doing this.
This was great.
And it was just one person that
sent me that email and I thought,
okay, we’re gonna keep doing this.
It’s making a difference.
And the kids like the cash,
they like getting cash.
It’s something different.
And overall, I think they liked it.
And then the other thing I did is
if they were older, say fifth grade
or over, I gave them an extra dollar
bill if they could name for me, the
presidents that were on various bills.
Wow.
So if they could tell me who was on the
dollar bill or the $5 bill or the $10
bill, they would get an extra dollar.
And a lot of times those teenagers
would come in groups of three or four.
So I’d ask one of them $5, one of
them, the $10, one of them $20,
and then they get $2 instead of $1.
So that was pretty popular as well.
And then the first year I think
I ended up running out a dollars,
’cause the word got around.
So the line in my driveway got really
long and I started giving out quarters.
Because that was what I had and
any change I had in my wallet.
So now I get a whole stack of dollar
bills from the bank and now I do that.
So that was the first year of
cash dollar bills at Halloween.
And then this Halloween I
added to that constitution.
So if the child was fi fifth
grade or over, they also got a
constitution with their dollar bill.
And then the other thing I did is I
started doing the same thing at Easter.
So I would take the Easter eggs and put in
a dollar bill or a quarter whatever, and
put that little piece of paper in there.
Why pay with cash?
And I always host, we always host
the neighborhood Easter egg hunt.
And done that for over a decade.
And so we just started stuffing our
Easter eggs with the little cash pieces
of paper and a dollar bill or a quarter.
This worked out really great
because we’ve always had the problem
of the older kids steal all the
easy eggs from the younger kids.
The ones that are just
lying in the front lawn.
They won’t search necessarily
for the harder eggs that are
up in a tree or in a bush.
So I told the older kids there is
a magic egg with a $5 bill in it.
And so you guys better leave those easy
eggs and search for the hard eggs because
that’s where the $5 bill is and you can’t
believe how well that works actually
when you’re hosting a neighborhood.
Group of 10 to 20 kids, it actually
works really well ’cause they’re
all looking for that $5 bill.
Anyway, so I do it twice a
year, Halloween and Easter.
With the kids, it’s incredibly effective
’cause they go back and tell their parents
and it just affects the whole family.
So I’ve found that’s
pretty effective then.
So I’ve been doing that for a couple
years and then August 20, 24 hit
and our school district announced
this cashless ticketing system.
So you had to pay with a
smartphone, QR code or a credit.
Later they added a credit card.
Because of our pushback, they added a
credit card to get into any school event.
So football, any sporting event,
volleyball, band, concerts,
theater shows, any school event you
had, you couldn’t pay with cash.
And I can tell you I did not
want to deal with this issue.
I had a lot of things at work.
I had a lot of things at home.
I did not wanna deal with this issue,
but cash is my issue and I have
to put my money where my mouth is.
And so I said, okay, it’s
time to stand up for this.
We can’t just not say anything and
we’re not gonna comply, which means
we’re not gonna go to any of our kids’
volleyball games, band events, et cetera.
And here in South Dakota, all
the parents go to all the things.
So I said, okay, it’s time to stand up.
I prayed about it, I said, I
do not wanna do this right now.
And it was just basically came
down to me that I gotta stand up.
Okay.
We’re here today from Let the UK Live.
Let London Live, and a whole lot of other
groups in Aldi shop and go Greenage.
Are insisting on nobody.
Nobody can buy anything here unless
they’ve got download an app and
join a digital currency regime.
I’ve attempted to buy some res
and they will not accept cash.
These places must be closed down
because if we don’t close them down,
they’ll come all over England and UK
and the world and then we will not be
able to have our freedom with cash.
So get in touch.
Keep cash.
Keep cash keep cash and resist.
Define, do not comply.
So we stood up.
And my goal with standing up, I wanna
talk a little bit about my mindset
because my mindset with standing
up was, I’m gonna stand up, I’m
gonna take the punches, and I’m.
My goal is to get the word cash out there.
So every time I get a school
administrator, an athletic director,
a parent, a grandparent, talking about
the cashless ticketing system, talking
about cash, saying the word cash, I won.
Every time I get a newspaper article,
a post, and anything about cash,
I’ve won, whether it’s positive
or negative, that was my mindset.
I’m trying to raise awareness about
cash, get people talking about cash, and
I’m gonna just keep trying to do that.
So those were my goals.
So the first thing we did
is I organized some people.
We went to two school board meetings,
the Sioux Falls School Board, which is
the largest school district in the state.
That’s where my kids attend school.
We were allowed three speakers.
We showed up with three speakers.
We gave handouts with statistics.
We used our full time.
I had another solari subscriber show up
with me to that school board meeting.
And we, the school board ignored us,
but the good thing about it was we
got two mainstream newspaper articles
about that, talking about cash.
Perfect.
So they were against us, but we
got cash in the newspaper and
two na mainstream newspapers.
Then we went to my local town school
board meeting and I had showed up
with someone else with me and the
school board said they agree with us.
The student superintendent agreed
with us and said, as long as cash is
legal tender, they will continue to
accept it in that school district.
So they were totally with us.
It’s a smaller town outside
of Sioux Falls and the
the thing was though, that even
people from that town that have to
play it in away, game away volleyball
game, for example, they still are
subject to the cashless ticketing
policy in that other school district.
Even though that town for home games
takes cash for away games, those school
districts may or may not take cash.
So what, and also I should mention
what happened was Sioux Falls is
the largest district in the state.
They decided this and they
basically bullied the surrounding
towns to do the same thing.
And they said, if you don’t do it
too, you won’t be compliant with us.
And people would get confused about
how, where, and to get their tickets
and people won’t show up with cash.
And so they basically
bullied surrounding towns.
So it was just, I guess three or four
school districts that went cashless.
But the problem is all the schools
across the state that travel here to
play, they’re subject to that policy.
So in a way, this was good advertising
for us because people coming from
five hours away were subject to this
policy and could feel it even if it
wasn’t implemented in their hometown.
So that was actually really
good publicity for cash.
Could you calculate how much.
Because sports has been the
real place where they’re
really trying to force out cash.
So whether it’s high school sports,
college sports, or professional
sports, that’s a very important
vector to go to an all digital system.
But what it means is
there’s a lot more expenses.
So you’ve got the provi, the
electronic or FinTech providers, and
then you’ve got the credit cards.
Were you able to calculate how much
it was costing the school districts to
implement these kinds of complex systems?
Yeah, we were, they wouldn’t tell
us, the school district wouldn’t
tell us what the contract was.
But we were able to back calculate it
from some numbers that they let slip
out for various events where they made.
So they, what they did is they
didn’t tell you make you pay the fee.
They just ate the fee.
The school district ate the fee,
so you couldn’t see what it was.
And they wouldn’t tell us what it
was, but we were, they let some fees
slip out on accident and we were
able to back calculate from that.
So some of the fees were
about 7% and some were 22%.
I would say that.
Whoa.
The average.
Whoa.
Yeah, the average was about
15, 16% of our ticket sale.
Of the $6, for example, to
go to a volleyball game.
On average about 15 to 16% of that was
going back to that digital provider,
which includes the credit card fee
and the whatever, all the fees.
And when I talked to someone at a
private school district who also
went cashless, one of these private
schools, they said it was between
15 and 20% at their private school.
So that’s pretty cons.
Pretty consistent with my back
calculations, I would say.
So the fees are incredibly
high, but they’re, the school
district is hiding them.
From the parents, basically.
And why would they be willing to sacrifice
that much money to go all digital?
You want the official reasons
or you want the real reasons?
Both.
I want both.
Okay.
So I think the official reasons
that they say it’s more convenient.
They say that you get in
faster to your football game.
Personally, I don’t think that’s true
because a lot of times the QR code doesn’t
scan or the, it’s technology problems.
Someone’s having trouble with their phone,
someone’s having trouble with the scanner.
So that hasn’t been the case.
There.
Say it’s reduced staff, so you need
fewer staff there to handle cash.
I haven’t seen that either.
We have the exact same number
of people taking tickets here at
football and volleyball games.
So I haven’t seen that
actually be implemented.
And I see.
So I don’t see any of those reasons
being valid, but those are the main
reasons that they officially say.
I think on the unofficial
side, there are two reasons.
One reason is I have some evidence
that the private company that’s based
outta state, that does our ticketing
system here had a whole webpage devoted
to South Dakota Athletic Director of
the Year, which by the way, was the
Sioux Falls guy who made this decision.
So that guy in Sioux Falls that made
that, so if you think about it from
the private company standpoint, all
you gotta do is buy the guy at the
largest school district in the state.
And then what they did is they made
it, they were stupid enough to make
a webpage and promote this guy.
So who do you think got the kickback?
Probably that guy.
And it makes sense.
If you wanna buy the whole state, you buy
the largest school district in the state,
then everybody that comes to play at
that school district has to use your app.
And then they think it’s convenient or
they get bullied into it too, or bribed.
And so then they do it
in their school district.
So I think they bought that guy.
That’s my conjecture.
I have minimal proof.
The only proof I have is I can show
you the website, which they’ve now
deleted since I’ve gone public about it.
They’ve now deleted it showing
highlighting that guy from Sioux Falls.
The second reason I think
they do it is for discipline.
And there was a newspaper article out
of Wisconsin, the school district in w
Wisconsin that did this, and they admitted
it that they were doing it for discipline.
So there are two discipline things.
If you can keep, who are you
keeping out by not accepting cash,
you’re mostly keeping out the low
income kids and the minorities.
The statistics show us that we
can talk about that in a minute.
So if you keep out those low income
kids and minority kids, you are less
likely to have discipline problems
and fights at your football game.
And they’ve admitted that in Wisconsin.
If you look at the privacy policy of
the company that we have doing our
cashless ticketing, it says in there
that they can automatically report
attendance of who’s at that football
game to police all school officials,
all parents in involved in the booster
club, et cetera, without permission,
without getting your permission.
So first you keep those kids out,
and second of all, if those kids
do show up, you know that the
police knows that and they can send
extra police to police those kids.
So I think it’s partially also a
discipline problem that they’re
trying to solve with this.
But also that data’s very valuable
if you have data from many games all
across the state as to who’s showing
up and who’s interested in sports.
That data is worth a lot of money to
different companies that are marketing
sports or products through sports.
Are they free to sell that data?
What can they do with that data?
I didn’t see, I read the
whole privacy policy.
I didn’t see anything about
them selling the data.
What I did see was it’s automatically
basically reported to police,
all school administrators and
all parent booster club members.
Now, if you consider my school and the
parent booster club has about, gosh, we
must have 500 parents in the booster club.
So at that point, it’s pretty
much public information.
Who’s at the game if those parents
are even getting the information
or if they request the information?
If you have a parent that wants to
request the information and sell it.
I think that’s probably valid
right now, whether anybody’s
doing that or not, I don’t know.
Wow.
Okay.
So I wanna go back quick to the
school board meeting in my local town.
So one interesting outcome we had of
that was unexpected was that a reporter
talked to me afterwards and one of my
talking points for accepting cash at
school events is that now you’re requiring
kids to show up to a football game with
their smartphone, with their QR code on
it, or they have to show up with their
parents’ credit card and who knows what
they’re gonna buy at the concession
stand and the gas station along the way.
Okay, so you have, so now you’re
requiring kids to basically show
up with their smartphones, with
their QR codes because the parents
don’t wanna give them a credit card.
So why are we encouraging kids
to be on their smartphones?
Why are we encouraging
kids to have smartphones?
The guy, the reporter looked at me and
he could not, so he called me after,
or he talked to me after the meeting.
He could not understand why this was a
problem giving your kids a smartphone.
So I told him, look, I built
this technology in Silicon
Valley back in 2003 to 2005.
I built some of the first wifi
Bluetooth and cell phone chips.
I said, this, your cell phone is mind
controlling your kids and spying on
them and addicting them and making
them unhealthy and all these things.
So he just, he couldn’t
even speak back to me.
He was in such shock about this.
I need to just interrupt for a second.
I just saw a presentation yesterday
by someone who has a very successful
podcast with Scott Galloway and.
He’s 26 years old and he says, so
he considers himself Gen Z, and he
said, on average Gen Z send spends the
equivalent of approximately a hundred
days a year sleeping and approximately
109 days a year on their phone.
And that means they have 40% less
time than my generation had for life.
In other words, if you look at how much
time they have after they spend 109
days on the phone they don’t have
time as much time to run around in
the woods or do things with friends.
It’s astonishing.
So it’s the greatest argument I
ever heard for why you don’t want
your kids to have smartphones.
And he says the push to
get them out of schools is
accelerating across the country.
Yeah.
Yep.
So this reporter.
Couldn’t believe that I was
against smartphones and that I
didn’t give my kids smartphones.
My kids have phones, but they
don’t have any apps and all
they can do is call and text.
And he was in sh such shock that someone
would do this, that he went off on
his own and wrote a whole newspaper
article about researching banning
schools in banning phones in schools,
which our school district locally does
not have a ban on phones in schools.
So he wrote a whole article about that,
which prompted me and my husband to
write a letter to the editor back to
him in the paper, in the local paper.
So us going to talk about cash at the
school board ended up in this whole local
paper discussion about phones in schools,
which was a great discussion to have.
And then another random parent
reached out and sent me a random
email parent I’d never met before.
Now I’ve met him, he’s great,
but I had never met him.
And he said, thank you so much for
writing that letter to the editor.
I’m with you.
It’s an uphill battle.
Let’s keep working on it.
And I was just like, okay, I guess
we’re doing the right thing still.
We’re sticking our necks out
and it’s not comfortable to stick
your neck out in a small town.
But that one email just made me
think, okay we’re on the right track.
We’re doing the right thing.
So that was an unexpected outcome
of that school board meeting.
So after all the school board meetings,
the next step was we handed out dollar
bills outside of football games.
And let me tell you,
it was terrible for me.
I hated that.
I hate standing there on the side of the
road and I was even handing out cash.
It’s better than protesting
something without handing out cash.
But in South Dakota it’s hard
because people just live in little
house on the prairie world and
they don’t think anything’s wrong.
And a lot of them don’t understand what
the problem is with cashless society.
And let me tell you, it was hard.
But it was such a blessing.
I’m so glad we did it in
hindsight because we found our
people, we had people to help us.
We we just found our people.
And let me talk a little bit
about how we found our people.
So before we went to the
football games, I made a flyer.
It was called Refuse to Comply.
I actually had someone I knew from the
Solari Network do the graphic editing
on it because I’m terrible at that.
They did a fantastic job on
that Refuse to Comply flyer.
And I posted that on
social media, on Facebook.
Everything here is on Facebook.
I hate it, but that’s how
South Dakota operates.
So I posted it on Facebook.
They refused to comply and I
cannot tell you in my local
town, I got tons of support.
People were totally with me.
They said, we’re always
gonna pay cash at games.
We’re all with you.
We’re gonna pay cash.
But in, in the school district where my
kids attend in Sioux Falls, in the biggest
district in the state, all I got was hate.
It was terrible.
People attacked me, attacked my kids,
attacked our character, our ethics, and
I just said, okay, I’m gonna respond very
professionally, very nicely, very kindly.
Invite these people over for dinner.
That’s just how I went with it.
The nicer I was, the meaner they got
and it just, that post on Facebook just
went viral because of all the comments.
And most of them were hate.
It was almost all hate.
In fact, it was by the end,
and they just kept on with me
and my kids and everything.
It was so terrible and I
couldn’t keep up with it.
I finally just stopped responding.
I’m like, I, this is too much.
I can’t respond to all this.
And I don’t know what else to say.
And they don’t wanna, if they
wanna comply, let them comply.
I’ve said what I’m gonna
do, and I stuck my neck out.
It turns out that hate was one of
the best things that could have
happened to me because the hate.
The hate got me a speaking engagement
at a local group and I said, sure,
you want, you wanna hear about this?
And I thought, okay, they
can throw tomatoes, whatever.
I don’t know this group very
well, but I’ll go speech speak.
I thought they were on my side, but
I wasn’t a hundred percent sure.
I just said, I’ll talk to anybody
about cash that wants to talk to me.
So I showed up at this group to talk
because of all this hate on Facebook.
And I brought handouts, I brought the
flyer, I brought all the things, I brought
dollar bills, I gave everybody cash.
And there they just loved it.
They were on my side.
They got it.
They understood it.
I don’t know.
Somehow I was gifted the words to say
that these people would understand it.
And there was a cowboy pastor there.
I didn’t even know we had a cowboy pastor.
Of course we do in South Dakota,
but I didn’t know at the time.
And the cowboy pastor said,
oh my gosh, you need to come
talk to these other groups.
So he introduced me and got me
connections at other groups.
And from there I talked to other
groups and it just went on.
And before you know it, I was on a cash
speaking tour because of this hate I
got on Facebook, so it was amazing.
I talked to Republicans, I talked to
Democrats, I talked to moms groups.
I talked to anybody that
would talk to me about cash.
I went and spoke and I took
dollar bills and I took flyers
and I answered questions.
And I, sometimes I had videos or
made little presentation or whatever.
I just did every invitation that I got.
And the other thing that hate on
Facebook got me is it got me the
news crew at my house the next day,
and they showed up with a video
camera and I did an hour interview.
We ended up being the head story
on the nightly news, and the
school district refused to respond.
Of course, ’cause they, so they just gave
some quotes from the school district.
So almost the whole video was
just a video of me talking
about cash on the nightly news.
Top story, your first alert station.
Good evening.
I’m Andrea Anderson.
At the end of July, the Sioux Falls school
district announced it would be moving
to cashless entry for all sporting and
fine arts events within the district.
This policy is now seeing backlash
from some concerned parents.
Hannah Ewell is telling us
why in tonight’s top story.
Andrea, since the announcement of
cashless events, other schools have
followed suit such as T Harrisburg,
O Gorman, and Brandon Valley.
One of those speaking
out is Susan Lu Shaws.
She’s the parent of a senior and
freshman at Lincoln High School.
Neither of her children having
a smartphone or credit card.
Susan says the new policy
singles her family out.
The Sioux Falls School District said
in a statement, we understand that not
everyone may have access to digital
devices or credit cards, and we are
committed to ensuring equal access for all
event goers, but for concerned parents.
Susan, this isn’t the case, that this
policy just discriminates against low
income people, against elderly people.
I grew up low income.
I understand it.
Sometimes a low income family
doesn’t know until Friday
afternoon if they have enough.
Money left from their paycheck to send
their kid to the football game that night.
Susan says she plans to stand outside
and give attendance the cash she said
she would’ve used to pay for the event.
All of it will be free
with a message attached.
Why pay with cash at events?
Number one, to give your school
more money with no transaction fees.
Number two, to support low income, elderly
and students making a healthy choice not
to have credit cards and smartphones.
Number three, so your location
isn’t tracked via QR code.
And number four, cash is legal, tender
and ensures our financial freedom.
So at that point I
really stuck my neck out.
My kids had their neck stuck out
and things just went on from there.
The, so then we gave out.
So from all these speaking engagements,
I ended up with a group of people
that would help me at football games.
And my goal was.
I realized how much hate there was.
So I tried to keep the bullseye
on me and my family because we
already stuck our necks out.
So every time there was something to
do, give out dollar bills at football
games or come testify to school board or
come testify at the legislature, I always
tried to take different people with me.
I always tried to keep
the bullseye on myself.
And so at football games, we
had a couple solari subscribers
who came out and helped.
We, I had a bunch of people from those
speaking engagements from various
groups that came out and helped.
I had different people at every game.
We gave out the dollar
bills on the street.
We raised some awareness.
There was a lot of people that just in
South Dakota did not know what to do with
a protestor did not even take the cash.
And then there were other people
that took the cash and they’re
like, we’re with you, but we don’t
wanna miss Johnny’s football game.
So what do we do?
So I just have to interrupt and say,
when I started talking to people about
cash, the first, they would go, it’s
not convenient or you know what, but
they and they would start to think
about it, and then it would, it could
take as much as a year or two, but they
would really turn around because they
started to realize, oh, I don’t wanna
be controlled and if I keep cash alive,
it’s gonna be harder to control me.
And suddenly, so you had to plant
these seeds, but it would they
could really mature in time.
Were you seeing that?
Yes, I was plant, I felt like
I was planting a lot of those
initial seeds, and talking
about the digital control grid.
And because I’m from Silicon
Valley, because I’ve built a lot
of this technology and I really
understand it, people tend to
take me a little more seriously
about the control grid part of it.
But I still feel like I’m planting a seed.
They need to hear it over and
over, which was why my goal for
on this from the beginning was
to get people talking about cash.
Cash in the newspaper,
cash on the nightly news.
The more they hear the word cash.
The more it sinks into their
brains and they think about it.
I think the control grid element it
takes a few seeds and waterings of those
seeds to get people to understand that.
And I’m not a hundred percent sure
in South Dakota that could take
a while to, to get those to grow.
Like you said, years.
I started by the end I had the same
issue where people would say it’s so
inconvenient, it’s more convenient to
just use my credit card and I get miles
or I get cash back on my credit card.
And I finally just started
being a real jerk about that.
And I just said, you know what if I can
just talk about some of the statistics
quick I’ll explain what I tell them.
So I looked at some statistics
from the Federal Reserve and it
showed us that in 2022, about 18%
of all payments are made with cash.
18% of all payments are
cash payments in 2022.
And then on the Federal Reserve Web
website as well in 2023, if you look at
the credit card, they have a table about
who has a credit card and who doesn’t.
And you’ll find that low income families
with less than $25,000 a year in income,
54% of them don’t have a credit card.
Okay?
So a lot of low income families don’t have
a credit card, which kind of makes sense.
And the overall per a lot of people
by the if you look at the same table,
a lot of young people don’t have
a credit card, which makes sense.
And many of the people without
a credit card, 30% of blacks
don’t have a credit card.
26% of Hispanics don’t have a credit
card, and 31% of people with a
disability don’t have a credit card.
So the overall percentage of people
without a credit card are 18%.
So let’s think about this.
18% of all payments are made with cash and
18% of people don’t have a credit card.
So the people that are using credit
cash are the ones without a credit card.
Now, who are the people
without a credit card?
I just said they’re low income people,
young people, black and Hispanic people,
and people with a disability so that the
low income minorities with disabilities
are keeping our freedom alive.
Not us.
Not us, but the people that are low income
with disabilities and are minorities,
they’re keeping our freedom alive.
’cause they’re the 18% of people without
a credit card who are using cash.
So those of us with the, let me finish.
So those of us with a credit
card are using our credit cards.
So every time you use your credit
card and you’re getting your
miles and you’re getting your
cash back, who’s paying for that?
The low income minorities
with a disability.
So you’re using your credit card so you
can get your miles and your cash back.
Meanwhile, you donate to a
charity for low income people.
Why don’t y’all just use cash?
Great.
And that’s your charity for low
income people because they’re the
ones who are paying for your mi
your miles and your cash back.
So let’s stop praying
off of low income people.
And I know I’m a jerk when I say that,
but sometimes when I say that, they start
to think, oh yeah, my, my vacation miles
are being paid by low income minorities.
So I live in a community with, so I,
it’s a very low if you look at our per
capita income we’re relatively low.
And I’ve been for years, lining up at
the post office to get money orders
with a lot of my fellow my neighbors
who fit the profiles you’re describing.
And what’s interesting is many of
them don’t have a bank account.
They’ll stop off at the utility to
pay with cash, or they’ll use money
orders if they put it in the mail.
If they don’t want a bank account
and they don’t want to use checks
or a credit card because they want
privacy and they’re not, they could
get a bank account if they wanted.
They could pay with a check or
they could pay with a credit card.
They want privacy and they know
the power of that kind of privacy.
And and some of them are
doing it because they’re smart and
they are, they’re protecting our
freedom and it’s time we join them.
Exactly.
They know.
Exactly.
And I feel like my time is better spent
paying with cash and inspiring others
to pay with cash all the time than it is
to even run for the state legislature.
If we all pay with cash all the time,
we’re free and the legislature can be
bought out and the feds can be bought
out and everyone can be bought out.
As long as we refuse to comply
and pay with cash we’re free.
And that.
So I think that’s where
my time is best spent.
I’m with you.
Keep going.
Okay.
So we did the football games handing
out the dollar bill that also
allowed us to assess the market.
So basically in hindsight, we really
assessed the market that in Sioux
Falls, there are a lot of people with
us, but they don’t wanna speak out.
They don’t like protestors,
they don’t, they like everyone
to comply in Sioux Falls.
But in our local town, our smaller
town we had 90% support there.
So that helped us later when we were
trying to find a spons, when I was
thinking about a sponsor for cash bills
for legislation, that helped us figure
out, okay, who do we want to sponsor it?
Who’s not gonna have a
pushback at the next election?
Right?
Which is why, part of the reason I
chose my local legislator here in
the smaller town cause he’s not,
he’s got huge support here for it.
So the football games, handing out
$800 in football outside of football
games was painful at the time, but
in hindsight, I’m glad we did it.
The other thing I did is I handed
out flyers and dollar bills outside
of a school band event at my school.
So a couple hundred kids in the
band, and I started handing it out.
This was initially when it first
got announced, like literally a
week within a week of when it got
announced, I was on it, just said,
okay, it’s, I gotta drop everything.
I gotta do this now.
Now is the time, because once
everybody complies and gets used
to it, it’s gonna be really hard.
So I was at the band
event, it was terrible.
I hated it.
I was in my cash costume.
I was giving out dollar bills to all
these kids that are my friends of
my kid they all know my kid’s a
freshman trying to fit in the band.
It was really terrible.
But luckily the administration
didn’t know what to do with me.
They never had a protestor let
alone one handing out dollar bills.
So they had to make some phone calls.
So that gave me time to give
out flyers and dollar bills.
And I got quite a few given out
before they moved me to the street.
So it was terrible, but I did it.
And I raised some initial
awareness with that.
So some of the things I did weren’t
wildly successful, but and painful
for me at least for my personality.
So some, there were very few
families that did not comply.
There was my family, there was one other
very strong family that stood with us
and almost everybody else complied.
Even some of the people that were at
some of those groups I talked to or led
some of the groups I talked to, they
just said I can’t miss Johnny’s football
game or sally’s volleyball game.
And again, I started being a
jerk about that and telling
groups missing one football game
is like poking you in the arm.
Now I tell you, if you don’t, transgender
Johnny into Jane or I’ll freeze your
bank account, that’s all digital and all
your credit cards and everything else.
Now what are you gonna do?
Exactly.
That’s cutting off your head.
You not attending one of Johnny’s
football games is like a poke in the arm.
But when now I tell you to transgender
your kids or I freeze all your digital
accounts, what are you gonna do?
And the transgender issue works
very well in South Dakota.
So that was a good example.
I lucked out with that one.
So here’s the thing, it’s hard for people
to imagine that could happen, but I
absolutely believe it will happen if
they get financial transaction control.
Can they fathom that?
I not really, because we live
in Little House on the Prairie
here, literally, which is great.
Life is good.
We don’t have many low
income people in this state.
Everybody’s, we have a very
solid middle class in this state.
Right now it’s very hard to get
people to understand because they
hardly know anybody that’s been Deb
banked or that’s had those kind, right?
So I’ve told people that I have
been de banked and I’m from Silicon
Valley, so I’m a little bit of a
different story and people have,
I don’t like to talk about it.
But people have pressured
me into telling that story.
And when I tell the story,
people tend to get it.
So I use the Canadian truckers, and
you’re not that far from Canada.
Do they realize what happened
to the Canadian truckers
and it could happen to them.
Trudeau in Canada, they’re having some
problems with protestors these days.
There is a covid protest going
on in Ottawa going on in Canada.
What caught my attention is not
necessarily that protest, but on
the back of this, there is now a
mandate from Trudeau and those in
power in Canada to freeze protestors.
Bank accounts absolutely ridiculous.
This is que, this is
qual freedom of speech.
They are freezing bank accounts to
people that are expressing speech banks
will be able to freeze personal accounts
of anyone linked with the protest.
Anyone linked with the protest
freeze your personal bank account.
Okay?
And the take is this
time, it’s their protest.
Maybe you’re not protesting,
maybe you don’t care about this.
Next time it’s yours.
What if next time it’s about
like runaway inflation.
Government shouldn’t be able to
freeze people’s bank accounts without
a court order, without due process.
The government is using the banking
system to silence political dissent
that should not be happening ever.
Some a small set of them do.
So I went to the Canadian
truckers came through Sioux Falls.
I went and supported them and I
gave them cash because I didn’t
want my bank account frozen again.
But if I look at who was there supporting
them, it was a very small group of
people, and I think a lot of the other
people weren’t aware of it and didn’t
even know they came through Sioux Falls.
I don’t think word got out as much as
it probably should have here, right?
But so that story does work
with some people here, but not.
Not everybody.
We did have, as I said, people
don’t like to protest here.
So we did have a lot of people just
secretly coming up to us and telling
us telling us that they supported us.
And there was a lot of secret here’s
20 bucks behind the scenes, but don’t
tell anybody that I’m helping you.
So we had a lot of that
going on along the way.
So the next step was we still didn’t
have, we still had cashless ticketing at
the largest school district in the state.
We had my family and some others,
and some low income people.
The few that we have sitting outside or
being denied entry into games and events.
But still not a majority of
people that weren’t complying.
The majority of people were still
complying and there were still
very few of us not complying.
So at that point, I wrote two
bills for the legislature.
I realized after you were here and
we met with legislators that a lot of
lobbyists write their bills for them.
They don’t have time.
They have full-time jobs.
They don’t have time to
draft their own bills.
So I just said, okay, I’m gonna draft
these bills and then I’ll find a sponsor.
And so I drafted, I actually
only drafted one bill.
I drafted one bill for school
events, so requiring schools
to take cash for school events.
The way I did it is I looked
online, I saw Ohio had something,
and North Carolina had something.
I basically copied off them.
Ohio made a mistake.
They did not include the playoff
season the way they wrote their bill.
So I made sure our bill was written
to include the playoff season.
Playoff games have to take cash
as well as regular season games.
So I wrote the bill and then I decided
that I should go for a sponsor in my
district because we have huge support for
it here, and we are affected by it because
we do play a lot of games in Sioux Falls.
So my local representative.
Supported it and sponsored it.
He’s great.
But from the beginning, I never
expected that bill to pass.
I said, there’s no way we’re gonna get
this to pass, because I just looked
at all the hate I got on Facebook.
The, I’m fighting against the largest
school district in the state, which
is the district my kids attend.
I just had, I had no hope for
the legislation to be passed,
but I said, you know what?
Every time if we go to the
state legislature with this
bill, they have to consider it.
And that means legislators from all
over the state are gonna talk about
cash, and they’re gonna hear about cash.
And they may not have this
policy in their district, but
it gets them thinking about it.
It gets them aware of it.
And we’re planting seeds all
over the state just by taking
a bill to the legislature.
And maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll
get another newspaper article.
That was my goal.
That was my mindset.
So every time they say the word cash in
the legislature, I tally that as a win.
Every time there’s a newspaper article,
even if it’s against us and it says cash
in the title, I tally that as a win.
So that was my goal going in.
I never thought we would
get the bill passed.
So my local legislator said
he wanted an additional bill.
He wanted our bill, he
wanted a couple things.
He wanted this bill to include Board
of Regents, which is the colleges, and
he wanted it to include concessions.
So I said, all right, if that’s what
you want, I’m here to support you.
That’s what we’re gonna do.
So we, I added those to my bill and then
he wanted a separate bill for retail.
And I said, okay, if you wanted, if
you think you can do that, let’s do it.
So I wrote that bill too.
Based on other states that have
passed cash at retail bills that
sort of evolved over time.
So after I wrote the bill, then they go
to LRC, which is Legislative Research
Council in South Dakota, and they
are basically the research analysts,
the legislative analysts and lawyers.
Look over the bill
and make sure it’s okay.
Usually they draft the bill for the
legislator and then it goes back and
forth and the legislator has to sit
in their office and spend lots of time
like, no, that’s not what I wanted.
That’s not what I meant.
In our case, we had them drafted,
so all they had to do was edit.
And that’s basically what they did.
They edited.
So then we, I said to my local legislator,
I said, okay, you’re gonna sponsor these.
You’re gonna stick your neck out.
What can we do to support you?
What do you want?
And he said, I want you to
give me five testifiers.
I want you to do five minutes each,
and I want you to show up in person.
And this is during a workday.
I said, all right, we’re
gonna somehow get that done.
So luckily from the speaking
engagements, the solari, we had a
Solari subscriber come, we were able
to put together five testifiers from
different districts across the state.
To come in person, take a
day off work and testify.
We did raise some research.
We had some handouts with some statistics
and we had talking points divided.
We were organized and we went and
testified for both bills.
Luckily we got both bills on the same day.
We got the retail bill
and the school events.
Bill testified on the same day,
and I can tell you I definitely
made some mistakes there.
I should have listened to how
other bills go in the legislature.
I should have listened to paid, I
should have gone up there in advance
and seen how this whole thing works.
’cause we just walked in blind.
We were all new.
We had never, none of us that showed up.
We were all new faces.
We had never been to the legislature
before, which I thought would
work in our favor because we’re
literally average citizens.
We’re not lobbyists, we’re not people
that are up there all the time.
We’re not people they’ve seen before.
But in hindsight, I probably should have
gone up before and seen how these things
work and how the talking points go.
Because I thought we had great talking
points, but I wasn’t prepared for
the lobbyists who just made up lives.
I had no idea that was coming.
I I just had no idea.
So one good example of that was the
lobbyist who said, we never even
told the school board about it.
They had no idea.
Meanwhile, I had a front page newspaper
headline from back a few months ago when
we went to the school board meeting.
So I had proof of that, but I didn’t
bring the proof because I didn’t
think they would lie about that.
So there were just all kinds
of lobbyist lies and things.
So in hindsight, I definitely would’ve
listened to the lobbyist how they
approach things and how they lie and
brought more proof with me in hindsight.
But, so to summarize how the bills went.
We squeaked by on the
cash at school events.
We got that through committee.
I think the vote was eight to seven and
the cash at retail failed spectacularly.
And that bill should
have passed committee.
We had a friendly committee.
We had a lot of friends on that
committee and we just were not
well prepared with our arguments.
I think South Dakota does not like
to regulate businesses, right?
And they did not see a reason.
What they wanted to hear was, Johnny
can’t buy groceries because he doesn’t
have a credit card, but we’re not at the
point yet with cashless grocery stores.
They really wanna see a need for it.
They wanna see that.
And we don’t have any low income
people in South Dakota and we
don’t have any grocery stores
that aren’t taking cash right now.
So the, they wanted to know who’s
not taking cash in South Dakota.
And so what I could say is certain event
venues, concessions school football
games and school events, and a car wash
and a couple of restaurants, that’s it.
So their answer was don’t
shop at those places.
And it’s I don’t, but this is coming
and we’re getting more and more.
And so our friends on the committee
for a commerce committee where a
retail build failed, they all said
they, or a bunch of them said they
wanted to see it brought back.
They liked the topic, they
wanted to see it brought back.
So I’m not sure if we’re gonna
bring it back or in what format
we’re gonna bring it back.
I don’t think the no sales tax on
cash purchases under a hundred.
We loaded that too.
I, the fiscal note on that is
just gonna be tough to get right.
So I have some other ideas.
We’ll talk about those at the end.
But anyway, so I’m gonna go
back to the school events bill.
We got it through the committee, barely.
Then we went to the house
floor on the school events bill.
And we won 34 to 32,
but you need 36 to pass.
So we didn’t pass, but we won the vote.
So then that was a Friday.
So then over the weekend we heard
that at least one vote wanted to flip.
And so we decided to reconsider on Monday.
So there were all these
flurry of newspaper articles
because it was a close vote.
All these newspaper articles
over the weekend, cash.
And they’re gonna
reconsider all this drama.
I can’t even read the newspaper
articles because they’re mostly
against us, but hey, we’re getting
the word cash in the newspaper that
got drawn out over the whole weekend.
They reconsidered Monday.
We got 35 to 33, I think we flipped
three votes and they flipped three votes.
Plus we, I don’t know, they flipped
four, we flipped three plus we got one.
I don’t know.
So a bunch of them flipped,
but they flipped some.
So we got, we won 35 to 33,
but you need 36 to pass.
So again, we lost and at that
point we were dead with this
cash at school events bill.
So I notice that the other thing
to note is that we have 70 people
in the house, so it should have been
70 votes, but a few of them were
missing because of various things.
’cause no one went to the
federal government and so forth.
So there were two seats missing anyway.
Okay.
So at that point we were dead and I just
told our representative, we still had
time to reintroduce the bill if we want.
He wanted to.
And I just left it to
him and prayed about it.
I just said, you know what?
We’ve gotten a lot of newspaper articles.
We’ve gotten a lot of talk about
cash because the committee testimony,
then it went through the house.
Then we had the whole weekend
and people were talking about
it and then a re-vote on Monday.
We got a lot of press on cash, so we won.
Okay.
We won in my mind and I told
them, if you wanna reintroduce
the bill, we’ll support you.
We’ll show up with new people to testify.
We’ll try again.
If you don’t think it should
go we can do it next year or just
drop it or whatever you wanna do.
By the way, I forgot to mention
that to the final vote, we
had to drop concessions.
We dropped concessions
and we dropped colleges.
So we were just down to
high school, public schools,
regular season and playoffs.
We dropped the concessions
’cause some people said they
would vote for us if we did.
Some people said that they would
vote for us if we drop the colleges.
I don’t think either of those drops
actually got us votes, but I don’t know.
I don’t know.
Because people say if you drop this,
we’ll vote for you, and then they don’t.
So I’m not sure that we should have
done that, but that’s what we did.
So I left it to my representative
and I just said, we’ll support you.
Whatever you decide, you have
to figure it out with your
friends, what you think is right.
So I heard nothing and I just
thought, okay, that’s fine.
And then literally an hour before the
drop deadline, he got, they got someone
in the Senate Senator Greg Blanc, he’s a
freshman, to reintroduce it and basically
make it start over as a Senate bill.
They thought that if it went
through the Senate first instead of
the house, we would have a better
chance coming back to the house.
So I said, all right, we’ll
support Senator in the Senate now.
I asked my representative, John
Sharda how do I reach out to Greg?
What does he want?
And John says, I’ve never met the man.
I have no idea.
Our friends lined him up and an hour
before the deadline he agreed to drop it.
And so I’m gonna meet him too.
And I have no idea.
So I just texted him, I
said, we’re team cash.
We’re 38 people at this point.
We are.
We’ll do whatever you want to support you.
What do you want?
What can we do?
And he basically, so anyway, it turns
out Greg Blanc is a wonderful minister
in South Dakota on the other side of
the state, five hours away from us.
He ministers when he is
not in the legislature.
So he is in the legislature four
days a week, and then he works at
his church for the rest of the time.
And he’s just amazing.
Freshman legislator, he knew nothing
about cash, didn’t know us, didn’t
know if we would show up to testify
just didn’t know John Sard at either.
But he just went on faith and.
We showed up, we testified for him.
He told us what he wanted.
We tried to get that for him.
And we had, again, some solar
new ary subscribers that came,
that testified with us new faces.
And we got through the Senate committee.
I forget what our vote was,
maybe four to four to three.
So we got through Senate committee and
then, oh, the one thing about Senator
Blanc was he wanted to be right with God.
He was a, he’s a minister and he wanted
more than anything to be right with God.
And I said, okay how
can we be right with God?
And he said, I want us to have
proof for everything we say.
And I said, oh, that’s good.
I’m good at proof.
I, when we went into House committee, we
had stapled five and seven page handouts
for the committee members with statistics
and articles, and I. Things like that.
I said, oh, don’t worry,
we’ll prove everything.
So we proved, we went to the school
board meeting, we proved everything.
And I sent him emails with
all the handouts and documents
and what else do you want?
He said, okay, bring paper copies.
We’ll hand them out.
So we did we were right with
God at the end of the day, and
that’s what he really wanted.
And then when it went to the Senate floor,
we’re not allowed to testify on the floor.
He wanted again, to be right with God.
So he took our handout.
If they sign the handout, if the senators
sign the handout, they can put it on
every single desk of every single senator
on the floor right before the vote.
They have the pages, do that.
So he signed every single page of
our handout, had the pages, made copy
copies, and had the pages put it on every
single desk of every single senator.
So while they were discussing
the bill, he could refer to the
handout, refer to the proof.
And he got it.
He got it through the Senate, him
and friends got it through the,
then we came back to the house.
So meanwhile, while all this is going on,
you can imagine the newspaper articles.
Okay.
It was just constant.
Ash comes back in the Senate,
new sponsor, new bill number.
It just, the cash
publicity just kept going.
This was actually the ideal situation.
Failing being reconsidered, failing,
and now coming back in the Senate.
This was ideal.
Let me just jump in and ask a question.
So all of your handouts and the testimony,
the materials we have up on the Turling
for Cash section of Financial Transaction
Freedom, and you did an amazing job, but
I would think, did any of the reporters
writing these articles read and digest
the materials that you produced and did
it change minds because it’s really, I.
The case for cash is extraordinary.
And the materials you produced
were quite effective, I thought.
I have to say no.
I think every single reporter that
reported on us was against us.
Wow.
And yeah, there, yeah.
The one that was maybe for us or
neutral was Our Town Paper, or Our
Town has 12,000 people that paper.
Those people I think are with us.
But all the other mainstream
articles I saw were against us.
I actually had to stop
reading them because I was
losing my state of amusement.
And so I just stopped reading them and
I said, it has cash in the headline.
It’s talking about cash we won.
And the thing to realize is
a lot of people these days do
not have the attention span
to read a newspaper article.
So a lot of people do
not read the article.
They just see cash or they
just, some of them see my name.
I have people at hockey, people
at church come up to me, oh,
I saw cash was in the paper.
Good for you.
I was like, did you read the article?
It’s against us.
It says Lies about my family.
And they said, no, but cash is in
the newspaper, so you did good.
And I’m like, yeah, I did.
I did.
I think this was a brilliant strategy.
I never thought of it, but you’re,
I think you’re dead on, right?
You wanna get the conversation going.
It was fabulous.
And keep going.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So we got through the Senate and
then we went back to the hou.
We had to go back to the
same house committee.
So back with John Sharda back to
the same house committee where we
passed eight to seven last time.
So I asked John, what do you want?
Do you want new people?
What do you want us to talk about?
And he said, you know what?
One legislature later in the, I
think in that committee had said.
We’ve spent a lot of time this
session talking about cash.
It seems like all we
do is talk about cash.
I’m like, yes, on and so John said
they’re all sick of talking about cash.
They’re tired of us.
And he said, I just wanna make a few
points that the lobbyists had lied about
so that they know that the lobbyist lied.
So that’s when we came back with a
photocopy of the headline from the
newspaper saying we were at the school
board meeting back in September.
Some of the lobbyists lies.
We debunked all those.
’cause we knew what
they were at that point.
And he said, I just want
one quick in person.
I don’t wanna spend their time.
It’s just gonna annoy them.
They’re sick of talking about cash.
So I said, all and what was
interesting is my 18-year-old
daughter went to testify with us in
the house and the Senate committee.
She did great.
I was so proud of her for standing up.
She did fantastic.
And when we walked outta that first house
committee, she walked outside the room
and she said, mom, we made a mistake.
We need a man.
And I said, okay.
My 18-year-old is very intuitive.
And if she says something like
that, she’s usually right.
It usually comes from God because
sometimes she comes up with stuff I don’t
know where, and she’s usually right.
So when we went back to House
committee, I just remembered what she
said and she said, we needed a man.
And I said, all right, I’m
just sending my husband.
My husband does not wanna do that.
Let me tell you he does not wanna do that.
And I said, okay, honey, it’s your,
it’s it’s you or Uncle Steve and Uncle
Steve doesn’t wanna do it, so it’s you.
And so he got on his big boy pants and he.
He studied and read up and he did it.
And I was so proud of him.
Let, and let’s point out, your
husband is very smart and very cogen.
If he wants to make a good presentation,
he can make an impressive presentation.
Correct.
Except, yeah, English is
not his first language.
And last time I sent him to court for me,
’cause we had a court, something in court
in California, he almost got put in jail.
So he was very suspicious of going to
the legislature for me, but, or for us.
But he knew it was for us.
And I told him John showed
him around the legislature.
He had a great day.
He ended up staying for the afternoon
and getting a whole feel for it.
So it’s a real education for the kids
if you bring your kids to testify.
My kids did not wanna
go just like my husband.
They did not wanna go.
Mom, are you making us
do, this is ridiculous.
We already get backlash at school.
Then they went and they testified and
they saw the lobbyists, they saw the
legislators, and they had a blast.
They loved it.
I don’t wanna say they loved
it, but they learned so much.
They were totally into it.
They were the point.
They wanted to be called out school when
the final floor vote was done was on.
Live.
They wanted to listen to it live.
It’s like a soap opera they said
this is better than reality tv.
They really got into it and
it was so good for them at the
end, but it was so painful.
And the same for my husband.
It was so good for him, but it
was so painful to get him there.
So he went and testified in that house
committee and at that point, the last
time we were in the house, the vote
was 35 to 33 and we needed 36 to pass.
So we only needed to flip one vote.
So in that house committee, there’s
this older representative from I.
From a different part of the state.
And my husband just said, you
could see the man’s smoke and
his wheels turning in his head.
And my husband said he, he was watching
this guy and he could see it, that
the guy was finally understood.
And I think he mentioned when he
talked about his vote that if he
didn’t vote for cash now he may
never have another chance to do it.
And he flipped his vote.
He flipped his vote in committee,
and then he flipped his vote.
He was the flip vote on the floor that we
later won with that guy in that committee.
And my husband said it
just took him the turtle.
Because we turtled, because
this was, he voted in committee,
he voted twice on the floor.
And then this was back
to voting and committee.
This was the fourth time he voted on cash.
So we just turtled that
vote out of him, right?
He had already voted
no on cash three times.
And the fourth time he finally
realized, if I don’t vote for
cash now, I may lose it forever.
I may never be able to vote for it again.
This is my fourth vote.
And then his fifth vote, he voted for us.
So we were able to flip that last
vote in that committee just by
divine intervention, I don’t know.
So I learned from Frank nicely ’cause
he, he was the original it took him
seven years to get his bill that stripped
sales tax off of precious metals.
But he would do that, he would spend year
after year and he would just keep turling
and educating and turling and educating.
And that’s how you get there
because it’s a learning process.
Both you’re learning what you know,
what the issues are that you don’t
necessarily see when you start.
You’re also educating people like that
legislator who gave you your 36th vote.
And that’s how you do it.
It’s really it’s great about your
kids ’cause they’re in the sausage
factory and they realize okay,
we, we have the power to make law.
We can do this.
It’s amazing.
Anyway, keep going.
Yeah.
So at this point, to recap, I
think we had 15, 20 newspaper
articles in this area alone.
I didn’t track the newspaper
articles on the other side of the
state or in the middle of the state.
But anyway, around here I saw
at least 15 or 20 just from
all the cash drama that we had.
So that was great.
Our team cash was 38 people at this point.
Most of those 38 people I did not know,
they were not friends before cash.
So we just had this team of people
that just showed up and I. We
found somehow, I wanna talk a little
bit more about the kids and the
back backlash against the kids.
Because a lot of people don’t
wanna speak up because of the
backlash of their kids in school.
I was literally testifying against
lobbyists from the school district that
my kids attend, and those lobbyists
were saying lies about me and my family.
That’s not pleasant.
And your kid, you have to send
your kid to school the next day.
So the first thing that happened with
the backlash of my kids in school was
that a teacher who has a PhD told her,
spoke up in her class against our family.
Wow.
And this teacher teaches to be fair,
she teaches journalism and speech
and debate and the school magazine,
she advises the school magazine.
She has a PhD. So she spoke up against
her, against our family in her classes.
And how ridiculous is it?
And why can’t we just get a
QR code and all the things.
There were a couple good friends of my
kids in the class, so of course they run
to my kids and tell my kids about it.
And one of the kids that was in the
class told my daughter, you know what?
I didn’t even think about this issue.
None of us cared about it.
But now that she mentioned it
in class, your mom is right.
It was like, okay, we got hate in class,
which raised awareness about cash and now
these kids are thinking about it, care
about it, and think that we’re right.
So that kid actually said when it came
later, so then the next thing that
happened was that kid said, I’m gonna
write an article for the magazine.
Wow.
And she knew she couldn’t write
an article for us because the
teacher was strongly against us.
So she had to think about
how to write her article.
So she wrote an article about screen
time and apps and cell phone addiction,
which the teacher let through and
was published in the magazine.
So one of the, again, one of the talking
points was, why are you forcing kids to
bring their smartphones to school events?
So she took the cell phone screen
time issue and wrote about that for
the magazine and got it published.
And then that same per student wanted
to actually come to the capitol with us to
testify too, which was pretty interesting.
So this teacher speaking out against
us publicly ended up getting us
more supporters from the student
body and then also her speaking up.
I ended up getting many teachers to
approach my kids and say, we’re with you.
Keep going, but don’t tell anybody because
we were fighting our own school district
and our own athletic director, so you
can’t believe the number of staff that was
with us, but didn’t want it said publicly.
So sometimes hate can
backfire into love somehow.
So then the other thing my kids had was.
We had a period where they said, okay,
you can bring cash into the office and
we’ll print you an anonymous QR code,
which I don’t believe it was anonymous
at all, but at least we could pay
with cash and get into certain events.
So we did that for a few events.
I don’t know if that’s complying or not.
We still paid with cash even though we got
a pay and we still got a paper to get in.
I don’t know.
I was on the border of that.
But we had some events that we really
didn’t wanna miss, so we did that.
Most events, we just showed up
with our cash and just either sat
outside or they let us in for free,
or sometimes they took our cash and
stuffed it in their pockets or whatever.
We had various experiences.
But one event, one thing my kids had was
the staff would actually roll their eyes
and sigh at my kids when my kids came in
to give the cash to get the paper ticket.
So that was just annoying.
And but my kids were like whatever,
they’re acting like babies.
So the girls actually got it at the end.
The other thing that happened is one of
my daughters wrote a college scholarship
essay about this, about the prompt was how
would you change the world or change make
an improvement in the world or something.
She wrote about the cash legislation.
So a scholarship essay came out of it.
And then my, one of my daughters got in
a little fight in the locker room with
one, one girl whose father is a legislator
who not only voted against us, but
spoke out against us and told some lies.
So she almost got in a brawl with
that girl in the locker room.
But then my daughter,
actually, I was proud of her.
She turned away and walked
away, and I said, okay, good.
I’m glad you did that.
And then my daughter said, you know what?
I feel bad for that girl and I feel
bad that’s her father and he’s acting
that way, and I’m gonna pray for her.
So I thought, wow, that was
actually really, that’s good.
Really cool that my daughter did that.
And in hindsight I can say the kids, it
has been such a blessing for the kids.
I thought it was gonna
be absolutely terrible.
I thought I was gonna have to
pull ’em outta school district.
In the beginning I just thought,
oh, this is gonna be difficult.
But in hindsight, now I can say a
lot of the hate turned into love.
And a lot of the there were so
many life lessons learned by the
kids and we studied in home, we
homeschool as well as public school.
So we studied the South Dakota State
legislature before we went to testify.
So my kids knew how many legislators
are there and how do we get a
bill through, and how did, how
does the whole process work?
So we were somewhat prepared in
that way and they learned a lot about
the legislature and then they got to
actually see it and actually testify.
And that’s way better than being a
page when you’re actually involved.
Invested.
It’s way better.
They learned so much.
And in hindsight, it was great for them,
but it was not always easy along the way.
So now I think that’s pretty much
everything that’s happened on the
turtle so far in the last couple years.
Wait you gotta mention the fact that
the bill got passed and then signed.
Oh, correct.
Yes.
The bill.
Yeah, the bill got signed by the governor.
It did.
And then your legislator, we
made him here of the week.
So you can see the, I think the picture
is the picture of the bill signing, right?
Yes, correct.
Yeah.
So he he did a great thing and
he has a lot to be proud of.
So this is, for someone like him,
this is an important accomplishment
and that’s a great thing.
Yeah.
Correct.
Yeah.
Our John Sharda our prime
sponsor, he was amazing.
He was just a turtle.
He, and no matter what hate he got and
comments and he just kept smiling and
laughing and he was such the spirit.
I was not super hopeful that we
would get anything passed and he
just was super positive and
hopeful and just kept hurtling.
He did not give up.
He did not lose his cool.
And he was very to the point
and didn’t waste people.
He was just so high integrity
throughout the whole process.
He was just a joy to work with.
Absolutely fan.
And that’s why I believe in America,
if you look at all the time that people
spend watching sort of politics or being
involved in ways that don’t support
people like him if you look at the
great legislators that we have both
somebody like Massey in Congress who
just got the worst build stopped or
John or Frank nicely in Tennessee.
If you look at these people and how much
they get accomplished, look at what your
support has achieved working with them.
And I just wanna say, I think.
In terms of our time, they’re one of
the best investments in the country.
They can do amazing things
if we will support them.
And as you said, they can’t they
can’t stand up against bad things
if they don’t have that support.
But if they have that support,
they can get amazing things done.
I love your different stories because
you demonstrate that again and again.
Yeah I just, I asked
him, what do you want?
I’m here to support you.
What do you want?
And then he told me what he wanted and
I did what he said as best I could.
Because that’s what I need to do.
He’s spending the time to go do that.
In South Dakota, in my opinion, it’s
basically a volunteer job, essentially.
They have no staff.
They hardly get any money for the
time that they spend up there.
Some days are long and some of
the people and lobbyists you have
to deal with are icky, right?
Let me say icky.
We have some fantastic legislators,
but we also have some icky lobbyists
and we have some icky legislators too.
So I’m just so grateful that
he sits up there and does that.
It’s hard work.
Yeah.
And anything I can do to support
him, and that’s what I tell him.
Anything I can do to support you,
you tell me what you need and
I’m gonna try and do it for you.
So that’s just my attitude about it.
So one of the things we are trying to
do, or he wants us, or we’re trying to
help him with, is clean up our district.
So we have two legislators in our
district, another representative
and a senator that are voting
against us all the time.
So all he does is John Sharda does,
is go up there to peer to the capitol
and vote and cancel out the other
representative from our district.
Basically, that’s what
happens on every single vote.
Every vote.
So one of the things we’re working
on right now is trying to identify
people to run against those two, the
senator and the other representative.
So we already have someone who just
filed last week to run in the Senate.
So that’s awesome.
He’s gonna be great.
I think he’s got an excellent chance.
It’s gonna be great.
We just need one for the house.
And so we have two possibilities right
now for the house, and if neither of
those work out, then my husband’s gonna
do it, which will be really, yeah.
Oh my God.
And in fact because of the cash
bill, we have another actually Solaris
subscriber who came and testified with
us, who is doing the exact same thing.
She’s cleaning up her district
and if she can’t find people to
run against the people that need
to be out, she’s gonna do it.
So she’s doing That’s wonderful.
The same thing we are, my husband
does not wanna be in the legislature.
I don’t want him up there.
It’s just ’cause I, that means I’m gonna
have to probably be up there sometimes.
We have work, we have a kid at home still.
We have farm life, we have other things.
But if push comes to shove and we
can’t find one, we can’t get one of
those other PE two people to do it,
then my husband’s gonna have to do it.
And I think because he wouldn’t have
never ever considered it, but because I
made him testify in the cash bill and he
saw it and he saw that John Arda is up
there by himself from our district and
that he saw the other representative
and talk to them at lunch and everything.
He’s these guys have to go.
And I’m like, yes, exactly.
So if we can’t get these other
two people to go, you have to go.
He said
so he’s going, that means he’s going.
But hopefully hopefully the one of
these other two people will work out.
But literally because of the
cash bill, now my husband’s at
least open to going to running.
How long is this session in South Dakota?
Is it four months?
It’s four days a week for 10 weeks.
Okay.
That’s it.
But those four days a week
could be 8:00 AM till 6:00 PM
Sometimes they’re long days.
They’re long.
Very immersive days.
It can be.
Yeah.
So it’s only four days
a week for 10 weeks.
But it’s intense.
And it’s in p and that’s Pier is,
I mean it’s a three, three from us.
It’s a three, three and a half hour drive.
It’s a drive and it’s a rural
place, so a lot of the legislators
have to drive to three, three
and a half hours to get there.
Yeah, so that was one sort of
side outcome from the cash bill.
But I wanna talk a little bit
about future turtle moves.
So what’s the turtle gonna do next?
So one thing we are doing is
we are promoting businesses
that offer a cash discount.
So if there’s a business that either
charges more for credit card purchase
or offers a straight up cash discount,
we put them on a flyer and we now have a
website called SD for South Dakota cash
discount.com, where we list all those
businesses with links to their business.
And they’re organized by
location in South Dakota, so
by the city that they’re in.
We want to add more
businesses to the list.
We haven’t started promoting it yet.
This is literally a list I
put together just from team
Cash and friends and family.
I haven’t started promoting it at all yet.
I’m just trying to get more businesses on
the list and trying to get the website.
A little more solid.
And so in the fall, probably late summer
to fall is my plan to start promoting
that, and I’m going to use that.
So this came out of our
cash at Retail Fail.
So instead of maybe going for the
legislation, we’re gonna promote
businesses that offer a cash
discount and potentially use that.
Promotion for me to go back on the
speaking tour and talk about cash again,
because now I have a new flyer, I have
a new handout, and I have a new topic.
Cash businesses, let’s all shop and
eat at these businesses and let’s
not shop and eat at these other
businesses that don’t take cash.
Is the kind of corollary to that.
The other thing we can do with this
is we could go for a joint resolution
in the legislature, so we could bring
this as a joint resolution to promote
the use of cash businesses, and then we
can refer to the flyer in the website.
So that’s another way to bring cash,
the word cash back to the legislature.
Next session is to go
for a joint resolution.
So that’s one idea we might do that.
So I have to tell you, I think this
is brilliant because the people
who are afraid to who say we’re
with you, but don’t mention my name
or they love to be for something.
So if you give them something to be
for, we’re for these businesses doing
this and we support this business,
they will be much more willing to come
off the outside of to come off the
bench and really support you openly.
And that’s so that gets
them in and that’s great.
Exactly.
Exactly.
The other things we might do
in the future, John Charter’s
talking, we’re talking about what
we wanna do for cash next session.
We might go after the Board of Regents.
The colleges unfortunately they,
they’ve been cashless for a long
time, so that’s harder I think than
we pr We targeted the public schools,
which had just started the new system.
The Board of Regents has been cashless
in their ticketing for a long time,
so I’m not sure we might go for that.
We might go for concessions.
Must accept cash.
Although we don’t have a concession
problem in the public schools because
most of the concessions are run by the
booster club who don’t wanna give away
15 to 16%, 15 to 20% of their revenue.
So most of the concessions are cash.
Ironically, by the way, in the Sioux
Falls school district, it’s cashless
to get in and the concessions only take
cash because they’re run by the parents.
So that was another
pretty interesting thing.
Oh, I should mention also, one thing I
did not mention that helped us is that the
cashless ticketing, they marketed for us.
So we had a senator and a representative
turned away from a school event
in Sioux Falls from their, and
they aren’t even from Sioux Falls.
They were from, they were going to an away
game for one of their kids or grandkids,
and they were turned away because they
wanted to pay with cash or only had cash.
One of them I think ended up getting
someone else to pay for them, and then
the other one had to go back to their car,
find a credit card, and then come back.
So that helped us, the fact that
the, like the cashless system, they
actually helped us by educating the
senator and representative who might
not have voted for us otherwise.
So we got lucky on some
of this cash at government.
We might go after cash at government.
So the, so in other words, things like
the DMV must accept cash, things like the
public water utility must accept cash.
That’s, it’s a little different
than going after cash at retail.
I think the legislature
would probably go for that.
The problem is we don’t
have a problem with it.
So it’s not like the DMV went cashless.
If the DMV went cashless in South
Dakota, WI think I’m confident
we could get that passed.
But given that there is no problem,
like why pass a bill to solve
a problem that doesn’t exist?
That’s the thinking of
a lot of the legislature.
So I’m not sure if
we’re gonna go for that.
We might go full on and just
go for cash at retail again.
Just be better prepared.
We could try again and with just,
we would definitely have better
statistics, better pay, better
handouts, better lists of businesses.
We’d have all kinds of things.
If we went back with
that, we might try that.
We might try the joint resolution
promoting the cash businesses.
I’m pretty sure we’ll come back
with some kind of cash legislation.
At least I’m gonna push for
it just to get the word cash
mentioned in the legislature again.
And we’re just gonna keep turling and keep
talking about cash as much as possible
because if we all pay with cash in South
Dakota, we’re gonna keep our freedom.
So one of the things I used to,
or I always do, is I picked out
three one minute videos showing
the plans to do complete digital
control of financial transactions.
So there were three one minute videos
that the first three videos in our
financial transaction shorty video list.
And I would sit down, this was always
on the finance committees, and I would
show them these three one minute videos
and their mouth would just be on the
floor and they would say, I have, I
had no idea that this was in the works.
They just had.
Did you ever do anything like that to
show them the danger down the road?
I did in one of my speaking
events at the groups, my speak,
I call it my speaking tour.
I did do that in one of them
and it was pretty effective.
And if I go back, I’ll probably go
back on the speaking tour in the
fall for this cash business event
that flyer and I will probably bring
those videos with me and see if.
See if I can’t get some
people to look at some of them.
We know in the past, when it
comes to cash Central bankers,
we’re very much in control
with all aspects of cash.
And now we’re comfortable to the
point where the private sector plays
a big role in the printing of the
cash and distribution of the cash.
And with the private sector,
we use interest rates to
manage the supply of cash.
The same thing is likely
to happen with CBDC.
Yes, the Central bank will have a
role, but at some point in time, the
same way we don’t call it Central Bank
Cash, we’re probably gonna stop calling
it Central Bank Digital currency.
It’s going to be a
digital form of the cash.
And at some point in time, hopefully we’ll
be able to be a hundred percent digital.
I said that we’re in a hybrid model,
there’s less and less use of cash.
And I think the tra from.
Predominantly digital
with a little physical.
I think the transition to fully
digital is not going to be a stretch.
People are used to it, people have engaged
in it, and circumstances did help.
Is adoption rates
increased because of Covid?
Yeah.
This is where contactless started
to became something of a necessity,
something of convenient safety,
something of a requirement.
And because of that, there
is very little resistance.
Trust is already there.
We just need to build it.
The second thing that’s happened is
the disasters that have been going on.
So in the hurricane and the weather
in eastern Tennessee and western North
Carolina you heard constant refrain.
Thank God we had cash.
I wish I’d had cash.
Thank God we had cash.
We’re gonna look at the New Zealand the
governor of the New Zealand Central
Bank and New Zealand has just had a
cyclone and they’ve been through it.
The after effects of the cyclone
were very devastating, and now
he’s talking about real risks.
So let’s just hit it.
Our biggest activity at the bank here
with regard to climate change is our
financial stability work around making
sure that the financial systems are both
prepared and resilient, but also doing
their part in pricing and identifying
risks and working with their communities.
The way through that is real.
That’s live.
And and this is real example and
other angle which I will state.
So it’s well noted as resilience
in our banking system.
Our drive to cashless society
shows how vulnerable we are.
This is why we have been doing
the work on cash and cash
distribution throughout the economy.
De-risking, de branching pricing
cash management out of use
increases risk, reduces resilience.
Yeah, no cash.
You think that’s a good idea.
It increases risk and
it reduces resilience.
Get it through your head.
And after that one, and now two of
the Scandinavian central banks have
said, given what’s going on with
disasters around the world, we made
a mistake to try and go all digital.
We’re gonna roll it back and encourage
cash, which is for Scandinavia to do that.
That’s a major turn.
So something is also
happening with disasters.
Has that issue come up in South Dakota?
We’ve had some legislators
talk about that.
That was one of our talking
points in testimony.
And we’ve had some legislators
testifying or testifying with us for
us on the floor, who’ve mentioned that.
That talking point here doesn’t seem to
have a lot of resonance, unfortunately.
I hate to say we need a disaster
in South Dakota but maybe we do.
I don’t, I, it just doesn’t really
resonate with people for some reason.
But we have made the point.
I think the other thing to note
in South Dakota, not to brag,
is we have amazing utilities.
Unbelievable and unbelievably run.
I can’t believe how well our electric
company runs and how well it’s managed.
It’s unbelievable.
It’s better than anything I’ve ever seen.
So we tend not to have outages, or
issues with that kind of stuff.
So I don’t know.
I think sometimes you need it to happen
to get it to really resonate with people.
Okay.
Susan, any more you wanna cover today?
I think we’ve covered most of the turling
and I’m just gonna keep turling on this
and see where it takes me and my family.
And there was a big debate at C about
the six pillars of building wealth.
The sixth is turtle.
Turtle fourth.
And there was a, that one of my
partners thought we should subsume
that in one of the other pillars.
And I said, no, that’s
the most important pillar.
If you keep turling you’ll
figure out the other five.
And so the trick to all of
this is you’ve got a turtle.
So you’ve picked up on the
turtle the importance of turling.
So just say a little bit about
what it means to turtle.
It just means you don’t stop and you just
keep going and you have faith that the
next step will come to you eventually.
And Turling doesn’t mean
I work on this full time.
I don’t.
But when there’s a step to take or a
cashless system that all of a sudden
gets introduced, it’s time for the turtle
to pop its legs and arms out of its
shell and take a few more steps, right?
And I just have faith that it’s not
always easy, but I have faith that
for some reason this is all gonna
work out and it’s all gonna be great.
And if we can get everyone in South
Dakota paying with cash all the time, a
lot of these other control issues just
go away and we’re gonna keep our freedom.
And we don’t have to, it doesn’t matter
if a billionaire comes in and buys our
governor or buys our state legislator
leaders or buys our city council in
our local town, if we’re all paying
with cash, we’re still gonna have some
level of freedom at the end of the day.
If we refuse to comply with doing
anything else and refuse to shop
at businesses that don’t take
cash and always pay in cash, we’re
always gonna have our freedom.
What’s incredible is because
you just started and kept going.
So in a period where so much is
uncertain and so much is unknown
turling, you just make it up as you go.
And if you look at what you’ve
accomplished, it’s remarkable,
but you just never quit and
you just kept making it up.
Or people would show up with
ideas and things would happen.
So anyway, I think it’s a great
demonstration of what can happen
if you just keep tarling Anyway,
so I can’t thank you enough, Susan.
It’s been very inspiring to watch
what you’re doing and if people
wanna support you or if people wanna
reach out to get help with what
they’re trying to do in their state.
How did they find the materials?
How did they find you?
How did they connect?
Your team did a wonderful website on
financial transaction freedom, right?
And that has all my documents,
all my flyers, all my pictures
of my kayak and my truck.
Oh, we did a cash, we painted,
put some paint on our truck
too, and drove that around.
It has all our talking points
for testimony, copies of our
bills, statistics, everything.
Please use it.
Please take it.
Please plagiarize it,
take it, make it better.
I would’ve loved to have had this as a
starting point when I started, so please
use it for Halloween, Easter, everything
if it can help you, please use it.
Please take it.
You can message me, you can find
me on Connect or on solarity to,
if you wanna message me and ask
more questions or get more details.
But I think all the documents are
there and I hope other people can
use them, and I hope they’re useful.
So if I’m a Solari subscriber in
South Dakota, I can find you through C
Connect and if I wanna support you on
Team Cash, can I do it through Connect?
I’m not really taking
any donations or anything.
I’m not looking for money.
People have offered me money
and I don’t really take it.
I’m I’m not talking about money
but I’m assuming if you, on your
next step with legislation, the more
people you have on Team Cash who can
go out and push their South Dakota
legislators, that would be helpful.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, they can finance on Ary Connect
or you can put you can put my email,
I don’t know if my email’s on anything,
but you can put that, or you can contact,
put in a Ask Catherine or something and
you can send up my email or whatever.
They can find me, they can
pull my name and probably find
my phone number, honestly.
So I think in we did a pushback
on your Halloween package.
And I think you provided an email
in there as well, so Exactly.
I have no problem with that.
You can put my email in the notes
if people wanna reach out to me.
We do try to have meetups in South Dakota.
I’ve been working a lot on cash, so
we haven’t had one recently, but we
will have another one eventually and
hopefully get more people together.
But the Solari Network has been
amazing help in South Dakota.
We’ve all, because of the meetups
and people I’ve met, seven of
the 38 members of Team Cash are
from Solari, which is amazing.
’cause South Dakota’s not a big
state, if you’re in South Dakota,
you definitely wanna pile in.
That’s what I think.
Anyway, so you want to, you wanna
be turling for cash with Susan.
Anyway, Susan, thank you so much.
Thank your kids, thank your husband.
Thank the whole family for
everything you’re doing to
protect our financial freedom.
It’s deeply appreciative and
I’m just so grateful that you
joined us on the SLE report.
This has been amazing.
I’m sure it’s gonna inspire actions all
over the place and it just goes to show
you one person can do tremendous things.
It’s amazing, but they can,
and now your kids know it, so
they’re gonna be frightening.
Exactly.
Anyway have a great day, Susan.
And ladies and gentlemen, thank you
for joining us on the Solar Report.
Some good news out of Bat Ship,
bonkers Britain, although I’m
on the Isle of Man right now,
which does not belong to Britain.
But anyway, cash.
So cash for the first time in a decade.
Cash use has gone up and it hasn’t
just gone up by a little bit.
It’s gone up by 7%, which is actually
massive and hugely bucks the trend.
And it’s the trend of this
thing that really matters.
So for the longest time, over
a decade, cash has been on a
massive downward trajectory.
And you will know that the plan is to
get rid of cash to digitalize everything.
And in fact, a bank called, I think
Macquarie in Australia has just
come out and said by November,
2024, no more cash, no paying in,
no checks, no nothing, all digital.
But because of glorious people in the
uk, and I would like to say a huge well
done to anybody involved in campaigns
to keep our cash or keep our cash
campaign, whatever you are being glorious.
So a 7% uptick, if you look at the
graph, it’s sizable, it’s substantial.
Mainstream media are trying
to explain this away.
They are saying it’s due to
the cost of living crisis.
And people find it easier to budget
if they have cash, which begs the
question why are you getting rid of it?
Then if it helps people budget, but
they do not want to acknowledge that.
Actually, one of the reasons I believe
that there is a shift and a dramatic
shift in the trend is because of people
like you, good people who are determined
to use cash more to stand up for cash
so that it does help our elderly.
So it gives people a reason to have
conversations so that people have a
form of currency they can use, where
you can’t also be tracked where someone
one day can’t just turn it off or
take it away from you or control you
by the use of your digital currency.
So I choose to believe that this
massive 7% uptake in the use of cash
is down to you, is down to the massive.
Silent majority that want to keep
cash and are beginning the fight back.
And the one thing I say to everyone
when they ask me What can we do more
of what pisses people off, the people
that are trying to control us, the
way we fight back is we do more of it.
You, they piss you off by trying
to make you a bloody locus sucking
person, eat more damn meat.
They want you to travel less,
fly more, and they want to take
away your cash today if you can.
Try and do one transaction
that you would’ve done by card.
Try and do it with cash.
We need to keep cash alive.
It’s a great conversation
point for our elderly.
It’s a brilliant way of being able
to live our lives outside of the
control of the tyrannical state.
And I want you to look at that graph
and the uptick and know that you guys
are fighting back, and that graph
shows you that we are starting to win.
