Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The
Speaker 1: Weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from
Speaker 1: this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, So, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. Anyways,
Speaker 1: Miles gear thrilled to be joined in our third and
Speaker 1: fourth seats by the co hosts of the wonderful podcast
Speaker 1: that you must go listen to right now, the future
Speaker 1: of our former democracy. They are the executive director and
Speaker 1: the director of Policy and Outreach, respectively, for the racial
Speaker 1: justice organization More Equitable Democracy. Please welcome George Chung and
Speaker 1: Colin call Hey, welcome, Yay, hey guys.
Speaker 2: Thanks. So m know, we like lights. We like to
Speaker 2: keep the lights.
Speaker 1: We have invited you into just a blank white space.
Speaker 1: We record in heavy avoid the hea then the white
Speaker 1: void of old Mac versus PC commercials.
Speaker 2: Or what was the one? What isn't in Willy Wonka?
Speaker 2: Where are they at when they go into that all
Speaker 2: white space in the TV? I think, Oh, that's in
Speaker 2: the TV, inside the TV. Yeah, inside the TV.
Speaker 3: Colin Cole a k A Mike TV.
Speaker 2: Oh you're Mike TV. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've always been a little bit of uh whatever the
Speaker 1: guy is who gets sucked into the tube myself.
Speaker 2: The yeah as ye something, come on, nail it, come on,
Speaker 2: I'll come to you Germany.
Speaker 1: I mix it up, my brain is and there it
Speaker 1: is shadow to super producer Victor bringing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, liked the group a little too much.
Speaker 1: Maybe someone say that is a movie I recently watched
Speaker 1: with my children, and it has like thirty really good
Speaker 1: minutes and it is just coasting off of our memory
Speaker 1: of the thirty really good minutes and oh really Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of it that's just like uh huh,
Speaker 1: all right, Like after they leave the Big Candy World
Speaker 1: and go on the boat ride, it does kind of
Speaker 1: grind to a halt a little bit. There's other moments,
Speaker 1: but like they are fleeting and that's just my opinion.
Speaker 2: Shame. I just remember always hating when he got all
Speaker 2: mad at Charlie. I was like, dude, what you're supposed
Speaker 2: to be cool with? Yeah? Like, and as a kid,
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to make sense of that character's experience.
Speaker 2: I'm like, dude, this guy's an asshole. Let's just turn
Speaker 2: this off. I thought you turn it off. You never
Speaker 2: saw the end. Yeah, it's like what an asshole? Did
Speaker 2: you see?
Speaker 3: A hum?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yep, George Colin, thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 1: from the Great Northwest. Yes, you guys are in Seattle,
Speaker 1: Is that correct?
Speaker 2: Ye? Just keep going and take a past reading. Keep going,
Speaker 2: keep going, keep going, keep on. It is it called
Speaker 2: the five up there or it's high five up here?
Speaker 2: Just five? Yeah, it's in l A. Nobody else the
Speaker 2: words highways. The importance of being the five, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, but it is an important interstate. You know,
Speaker 2: we love our folks. That's why the ten also deserves respect,
Speaker 2: going from sea to shining Sea. Oh right, they're all
Speaker 2: given the the I think in l A and l A.
Speaker 2: I've never heard here what the history is of our
Speaker 2: inability to just I guess because we always I want
Speaker 2: to speak differently than other people.
Speaker 3: It's a remnant of surfer culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, take one dude over to the four
Speaker 2: h five. They cast the one to eighteen over hit
Speaker 2: Meat up in Granada Hills. But yeah, anyway, that's probably
Speaker 2: not as important as about then what we're about to
Speaker 2: talk about today, but I still wanted to mention.
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, what is something from your search history?
Speaker 2: I was so when I.
Speaker 4: When they sent this question over to me, I was like,
Speaker 4: oh lord, let me not go back and look at
Speaker 4: incognito mode. But I am going to go right now
Speaker 4: to my phone, and.
Speaker 1: Wow, we're getting the live results. The results are coming
Speaker 1: as we speak, Miles and Adulter.
Speaker 4: And I feel like, you know, there's always this divide
Speaker 4: with what you search. It's like the default browser on
Speaker 4: my iPhone is Safari, so I think my first search
Speaker 4: has come there, but my favorite saves tabs are in Chrome.
Speaker 4: So my third fourth wave searches lived there, right right right,
Speaker 4: But we're going to start with my recent Safari Google searches.
Speaker 2: How do I? Okay, I googled roche fort cheese. There
Speaker 2: you go.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 4: I was talking in another podcast this morning about one
Speaker 4: of these far right conspiracy theories about some people on
Speaker 4: the right saying that Biden has been slow on hurricane
Speaker 4: response because he's been at his beach house sunning his testicles.
Speaker 4: So that led me to google the time that Tucker
Speaker 4: Carlson was pushing testical tanning on his show. So my
Speaker 4: last real Google were the three words Tucker Carlson testicles, Yes,
Speaker 4: fantastic and how are we How are the results what
Speaker 4: we don't want to go down that bell.
Speaker 2: You don't want to go down that Now that is
Speaker 2: surprising to me.
Speaker 4: It just kind of outlines how this dude was like
Speaker 4: fully crazy and like two years ago he was telling
Speaker 4: people to sun their testicles to up their testosterone, and
Speaker 4: he had someone called a bromo therapist on or something
Speaker 4: to talk about all this stuff just kook science.
Speaker 2: Romeopathy or something like that. Yes, yes, yes, bromeopathy. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: There's a Vanity Fair headline that reads, Tucker Carlson Colon
Speaker 4: tan your balls if you want to be a real man.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow.
Speaker 4: And while we're here, And I can say this because
Speaker 4: I'm gay, so I can be offensive to straight men
Speaker 4: who on the what straight man in the world has
Speaker 4: taken how to be a man lesson from Tucker fucking Carlson.
Speaker 2: The most Yeah, the most misguided. I think. Hold on, now,
Speaker 2: what did tuckles Tucker say? It's like, I guess, do
Speaker 2: I keep my bow tie? Yeah? When I tann my balls?
Speaker 2: Because I remember, wasn't there someone like around like at
Speaker 2: the start of the lockdown someone was talking about like
Speaker 2: sunning your butthole too, and like your taint was like.
Speaker 4: That was the thing also then for a while when
Speaker 4: of Paltrow was like, stick this jade egg up your Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then jas some nony sunning as well on the side,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 4: And for a second there was nony steaming, right And
Speaker 4: I know this because years ago when that was a trend.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, they can't keep this from the man.
Speaker 4: So I went to a spot in LA that did
Speaker 4: the vaginal steaming in all earnestness. I went with my
Speaker 4: former partner and I was like, well, can you do
Speaker 4: it for us too? And they were mad that I
Speaker 4: would even ask. I was like, well steamline too, alas
Speaker 4: they wouldn't steam me why. It's probably for the best.
Speaker 4: It's just for vagins.
Speaker 2: But I mean, like, is the technolo I mean what
Speaker 2: I'm picturing just maybe someone having like a garment steamer
Speaker 2: like under.
Speaker 1: And then like a barber shop like cape that you
Speaker 1: put like around your waist, right right, right?
Speaker 2: Okay, well yeah, hey for the one day I'll find out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you're being discriminated, just get yourself a garment steamer
Speaker 2: or maybe a humidifier. We legally cannot give this advice, yep, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh. Anyway,
Speaker 2: check out my live stream on Saturday morning. But don't
Speaker 2: do what I do. Do as I say, not as
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 4: That's also Gwyneth. If you need a male volunteer as tribute. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I like your Gwyneth. I think you're cool. I volunteer
Speaker 4: to be steamed.
Speaker 1: It does suggest that the people who are doing the
Speaker 1: steaming are like in it for the wrong reasons, Like
Speaker 1: why are they discriminating between you know, right, hmmm.
Speaker 2: Because if because I'd imagine right, like if are they
Speaker 2: saying like that you just won't get the benefits from it?
Speaker 2: You're like, well, what if I just want to feel
Speaker 2: the steam up there? Or they're just like oh that
Speaker 2: you know what was happening? I get it and I
Speaker 2: understand this response.
Speaker 4: They were just like, why is a man even trying
Speaker 4: to get up in there?
Speaker 2: It's for women?
Speaker 4: And is as as well intentioned as I was going
Speaker 4: to that storefront? They probably were like, is this guy
Speaker 4: pranking us right right?
Speaker 2: Trying to get it? Yeah? Yeah, you did have an
Speaker 2: entire YouTube video crew with you.
Speaker 4: I had James o'keefehind me yeah, wearing a yeah's.
Speaker 2: Hey Chris, yes, what's something you think is underrated? Thank you? Host?
Speaker 5: Of the Daily Guys, Jack O'Brien, I think that something
Speaker 5: underrated is the movie Devil at Your Heels. It's a
Speaker 5: documentary I've mentioned, i think before, on the show many
Speaker 5: many years ago.
Speaker 2: Maybe early references.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's one of my favorite things, and it's it
Speaker 5: turns out it's almost impossible to make someone watch a documentary.
Speaker 5: You can tell them about it over, you can tell
Speaker 5: them about it over. You can make it your life's
Speaker 5: mission to use every breath in your body to tell
Speaker 5: people about this movie Devil at your Heels, and no one.
Speaker 2: Will watch it, no matter what. I love that as
Speaker 2: a truism of that human experience. No matter how much
Speaker 2: you fucking love a documentary, it is almost impossible to
Speaker 2: get somebody to watch a doctor. I feel like the
Speaker 2: only way I've done it is to be like, it's
Speaker 2: gonna fuck you up. There's such a twist in it.
Speaker 2: I feel like the only time I've gotten people to
Speaker 2: watch the documentary was that one about like the tickle tournaments.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, it started one way and then goes
Speaker 2: yeah another way. Every other time I talk about it's
Speaker 2: true like they're like, oh yeah, I chuck it out.
Speaker 5: Well, what makes me mad is American Cinema Tech in
Speaker 5: LA Like, somebody just showed it. They just showed Double
Speaker 5: at Your Heels, the only the only print in the world.
Speaker 2: They showed it in l A.
Speaker 5: And like my friend Seth, who I've told about, who's
Speaker 5: directing a documentary about me ding and it's done, it's done.
Speaker 5: I will I'll mention that. Maybe I'll mention that'll be
Speaker 5: underrated so or overrated, so overrated will be like not
Speaker 5: knowing about that documentary or something.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I see what I did, so I.
Speaker 5: Do it every time. So cool, so cool. So anyway,
Speaker 5: The Table at Your Heels is just a great movie
Speaker 5: about a guy who's like a dreamer and he's trying
Speaker 5: to jump a car over the Saint Lawrence Seaway, which
Speaker 5: is like a half mile to a mile wide, and
Speaker 5: he is so damn genuine and earnest that he manages
Speaker 5: to get the ramp built and he sort of gets
Speaker 5: it to happen in a roundabout way. But there's a
Speaker 5: twist in the movie too, and the movie also includes
Speaker 5: Why He's Bounded Down's main characters named Kenny Powers. Because
Speaker 5: Kenny Powers is without a doubt that the reference to
Speaker 5: this movie, which is Kenny Powers is the guy who
Speaker 5: ends up jumping the car. But the way that we
Speaker 5: end up with that is like so neat. But also
Speaker 5: I'm just hoping on this show, you guys will see it,
Speaker 5: and now that American cinema tech has gotten on board whatever,
Speaker 5: you guys will all be like, oh my gosh, they'll
Speaker 5: smoke pipes and talk about it and I'm so mad ya.
Speaker 5: So Seth finally went and saw it when it was
Speaker 5: in LA and he's like that documentary it was incredible,
Speaker 5: and I was like, you know what, fuck you.
Speaker 1: Like, I feel like I can't watch this now, Like
Speaker 1: there's no win win for no at this point. I
Speaker 1: watch it now, you're gonna be like, yeah, exactly, No, you.
Speaker 2: Need this show.
Speaker 5: This is a perfect vehicle. So let's roll the very beginning.
Speaker 5: It's just it's it's a Connecticut. It's a Connecticut. It's
Speaker 5: a I'm from Connecticut. It's a Canadian Broadcasting Company, so
Speaker 5: it's public domain. It's a great great resource. Also Canadian
Speaker 5: Canadian Broadcasting Company posts all their great stuff. I just
Speaker 5: want to show people the ramp and I feel like
Speaker 5: then people will.
Speaker 2: Be on board. People will sooner stand Yeah, as soon
Speaker 2: as do you see when you see? Yeah, do you
Speaker 2: see how reckless we were? But are you guys the best?
Speaker 2: Here we go? Sorry? Got it? No, I didn't know
Speaker 2: if without further ado the ad the show is the ADU.
Speaker 2: Many apologies to you.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the Canadian Broadcasting Company podcast.
Speaker 2: Yes Here we Go. I love that logo National Film
Speaker 2: Board of Canada. Okay, wow, that's a poorly built ramp.
Speaker 5: Is Now that doesn't get you interested in watching a documentary?
Speaker 2: I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: You try and jump that body of water with yes
Speaker 5: on what in a Lincoln Continental with wings on it?
Speaker 5: And he gets pretty damn far and he gets a
Speaker 5: lot of experts on board with him. He gets someone
Speaker 5: to put the wings on the car. He gets this
Speaker 5: expert guy to say that he's like, well, I don't
Speaker 5: know how he can do it, but once he's up there,
Speaker 5: these wings will work. He can steer in the air.
Speaker 5: I don't see how he's gonna get up there, but these.
Speaker 2: Will work if he does.
Speaker 5: I mean what he's like, I don't This whole thing
Speaker 5: sounds unlikely to me. But if he does get up
Speaker 5: in the air and he is cruising, he will be
Speaker 5: able to move the car with these wings.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: So it's like, also he can't swim what Ken Carter
Speaker 5: can't swim?
Speaker 2: So the guy is getting jump across a fucking river.
Speaker 2: Do you know what. I'm sure you've seen the documentary.
Speaker 2: What is that distance exactly he has to go across?
Speaker 2: Its supposed to be a half mile mile or something.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's impossible to Well, he's planning on going
Speaker 5: six hundred miles an hour off the Rimp, but.
Speaker 2: He has jet car.
Speaker 5: It's a jet car, and it does go like two
Speaker 5: hundred and ninety miles an hour off the Rimp and
Speaker 5: when it eventually goes, but that's not nearly enough to
Speaker 5: get to cruising altitude, it turns out.
Speaker 2: So he never gets.
Speaker 5: But anyway, it's a great it's a and Ken Carter
Speaker 5: is just awesome. He he's he's like a grade school
Speaker 5: dropout or like a high school maybe he says fourth
Speaker 5: grade by I think in Canada that meets something else.
Speaker 5: So I think it's like maybe he dropped out of
Speaker 5: high school.
Speaker 2: I don't know what. He's like year four or something.
Speaker 5: He's really confident and for no reason, he calls himself
Speaker 5: a healthy specimen when he's broken every bone in his body.
Speaker 2: He's just great.
Speaker 5: He says, I'm a healthy specimen standing on the threshold
Speaker 5: of life. He's like forty two and has broken every
Speaker 5: bone in his body. I just love. It's inspirational.
Speaker 2: All right, here we go. And then God, this guy
Speaker 2: the full goatees, curly hair possibly, and this man is
Speaker 2: a lovely man.
Speaker 5: This guy is a lovely man. He's insane. But this
Speaker 5: he's about to tell you all in me what I'm like.
Speaker 5: He admits what what the quest for fame is all about?
Speaker 5: But he doesn't he says something so earth shatteringly honest
Speaker 5: right here. But it's just amazing.
Speaker 2: Anyway, an jump, Oh no, no, this is the guy
Speaker 2: who tries to jump it and this is ken like
Speaker 2: lung quest. It has been to try and jump.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he does other I mean he's been also
Speaker 5: doing stunts along the way, but he wants this big
Speaker 5: monster stunt because he wants to be the greatest daredevil
Speaker 5: of all time. And right before this clip, Evil Canevel
Speaker 5: comes out and checks out. They were going to broadcast
Speaker 5: this on Wide World of Sports, but then they decided
Speaker 5: not to because they thought he was gonna die. So documentary.
Speaker 5: Evil cans in this documentary and he comes and assesses
Speaker 5: the jump and talks to Ken, and Ken's thrilled. You know, Ken,
Speaker 5: he was a relentless human being, and he had two
Speaker 5: personalities that he talks about. He's like, there's Ken Polachak
Speaker 5: and then there's Ken Carter, because his real name is
Speaker 5: Ken Poulachak. He's like, Ken Polachak is the one who says,
Speaker 5: maybe you shouldn't do this jump, maybe it's not a
Speaker 5: good idea. But then Ken Carter says, what are you
Speaker 5: talking about, you pussy.
Speaker 1: So it's like a very very there's so much inside
Speaker 1: you are two wolves. Both of them have pretty normal
Speaker 1: last names. Yeah, Ken Carter a cooler.
Speaker 5: Name, so funny what you called Ken jump or something?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is on fame, he said, this is him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's gonna talk about why he jumps. And it
Speaker 5: turns out this is why you do stand up, why
Speaker 5: you play music, why you I mean, it's just amazing.
Speaker 6: Some work harder at something, Some sacrifices are a little
Speaker 6: more than others, so therefore they deserve more. You know,
Speaker 6: if it's money, if it's glory, no matter what it
Speaker 6: may be. I always said when I first started, I
Speaker 6: always I said it's money. Years and years went by,
Speaker 6: I knew, I knew that wasn't it. I then begin
Speaker 6: It's challenge. It's it's all a challenge. It's a challenge,
Speaker 6: and it's a starvation for popularity, is what it is.
Speaker 2: You have just been liked by three more people in
Speaker 2: high school. I love it, you know, I just love it.
Speaker 5: And he throws that in you always like at first
Speaker 5: I thought it was money, you know, yeah, and then
Speaker 5: then then I thought it was the challenge. But then
Speaker 5: I realized that ain't and that it's challenge and a
Speaker 5: starvation for popularity.
Speaker 2: Moving along, I just love that.
Speaker 5: I want to start doing that everything I do. When
Speaker 5: I get if I ever get interviewed about everything anything,
Speaker 5: I'm just gonna be like, listen, it's a starvation for popularity.
Speaker 2: Primary. I also like to paint, Like, yeah, I like
Speaker 2: to paint.
Speaker 5: A van interview with Van Goh, yeah, I like to paint.
Speaker 5: But I also I'm also starved and popularity.
Speaker 2: Fucking dying over here, man like me already. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So that just was like, we're amazingly honest, right right right.
Speaker 5: He's an endearing guy because I.
Speaker 2: Invested and I'm like, I just want to go to
Speaker 2: the part where he jumps the fucking car, but well
Speaker 2: it's so pop. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's like there's a corporate guy who comes in and
Speaker 5: tries to make him jump when the rams not ready.
Speaker 5: I'm and he's like, I don't want to die.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: He's like, I don't want to die. The rams not ready,
Speaker 5: and he's like, yeah it is. I think it's going
Speaker 5: to smooth out once you get up to speed. And
Speaker 5: once you get up to.
Speaker 2: Speed, it smooth out.
Speaker 5: And this guy who says it's going to smooth out,
Speaker 5: who's trying to kill Ken Carter because the money men
Speaker 5: are like, get him to fucking jump the car. We
Speaker 5: got film rolling and this is costing his money because
Speaker 5: there's a production crew to shoot it. And they were
Speaker 5: from Hollywood for real. They were like came in from Hollywood.
Speaker 5: They kept saying in the documentary, these Hollywood guys, and
Speaker 5: they were like the Hollywood guys were like listen, man,
Speaker 5: we're burning daylight.
Speaker 2: Get him to jump the car.
Speaker 5: And so there's all this intrigue and then there's just
Speaker 5: like yeah, things like that, like uh, and there's also
Speaker 5: tons of people misusing metaphors and old sayings and stuff
Speaker 5: like that guy right before you know, he'll say like
Speaker 5: they're like you think Ken can do this, and he's like, well,
Speaker 5: a man's got to bite off a hunk and fight
Speaker 5: it till he can.
Speaker 2: You know, Like he uses a lot of dot dot
Speaker 2: there's a ton.
Speaker 5: Of like there's a ton of misused sayings in it.
Speaker 2: You got to fight that hunk. You a bit off? Yeah,
Speaker 2: what is something that you think is overrated?
Speaker 7: I think independence is overrated. I'm like really anti being
Speaker 7: independent these days. I don't think you should be codependent,
Speaker 7: but I think there's this sweet spot called interdependence where
Speaker 7: like you let yourself depend on other people they depend
Speaker 7: on you, but you also go out and have your
Speaker 7: own life. And I think that, like especially American culture
Speaker 7: is just like no, you must be able to do
Speaker 7: everything on your own and that's just like not not
Speaker 7: nice and often not feasible.
Speaker 1: So I'm anti.
Speaker 2: Independence, sure, sure, sure not.
Speaker 1: According to this little declaration of independence that I keep
Speaker 1: on me at all times, we need a declaration of interdependence.
Speaker 1: If interdependence, yeah, yeah, belong to a club, they have friends, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just have We just have trouble asking for help,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: That's like where the independence mindset comes in. It's like
Speaker 2: I don't need help do this. Where that's to your point, Like,
Speaker 2: that's the most fulfilling part of having relationships with people
Speaker 2: is that you can be like I need help and
Speaker 2: then you have people like Hi, can I help you?
Speaker 2: And you're like, wow, this is this is cool. I
Speaker 2: don't have to bootstrap my way out of this narrowble
Speaker 2: depression when that person shows up. I'm just smoking a
Speaker 2: cigarette sand the person next to me. Who's this guy
Speaker 2: who's beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it, creep?
Speaker 2: I need help, man, I help you get the fuck
Speaker 2: out the fuck out of here. Whoa look at this creep?
Speaker 2: What do you think? I mean? Like, are is that
Speaker 2: sort of like the main like or how how do
Speaker 2: you sort of make sense of your of embracing interdependence
Speaker 2: versus independence?
Speaker 7: I think yeah, it's that balance of like actually accepting
Speaker 7: the help and then also like being comfortable relying on somebody. Right, So,
Speaker 7: as we talked about before we started recording, my mom
Speaker 7: passed away like to a half weeks ago, and it
Speaker 7: was horrible, and she died from a very rare awful
Speaker 7: disease called CJD, but like so many people showed up
Speaker 7: for us and helped, and like my sister's friends were
Speaker 7: like taking care of her children, like my friends were
Speaker 7: like doing stuff for me in Los Angeles. Like it
Speaker 7: was just like a period of time where like we
Speaker 7: just like actively needed help and then to like realize
Speaker 7: that people not only could do that, but like wanted
Speaker 7: to do that. There were even times were like I
Speaker 7: didn't necessarily need someone to do something, but I could
Speaker 7: tell that they would just want to do.
Speaker 2: Something, so factly, yeah, like you have garbage you need
Speaker 2: taken out, I'll fucking come throw your garbage out and
Speaker 2: bring some whatever.
Speaker 7: Yeah, like literally, yeah, And so I think it just
Speaker 7: like really, I mean, it was something I'd obviously already
Speaker 7: been thinking a lot about, you know, having this whole
Speaker 7: book on marriage coming out and been researching you know,
Speaker 7: marriage for the last few years, but just just like really,
Speaker 7: you know, solidified for me that like none of this
Speaker 7: is really worth it if we don't have people in
Speaker 7: our lives that we care about and connect with and
Speaker 7: show up for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and at a like Zeitgey's news level. I mean,
Speaker 1: as we're recording this Hurricane Milton is a few hours
Speaker 1: away from making landfall. But I mean we talked about
Speaker 1: yesterday that, wow, the mainstream media wants to focus on,
Speaker 1: you know, looting and acts of violence that happened in
Speaker 1: the wake of these hurricanes. Like really the overwhelming account
Speaker 1: that you get from these sorts of disasters is like
Speaker 1: other people helping one another. But like you said, like
Speaker 1: we're in a disaster and a really difficult moment, like
Speaker 1: people show up for one another. It's just like when
Speaker 1: it's at this level of like abstraction of you know, institutions,
Speaker 1: that things start to.
Speaker 2: Get fucked up.
Speaker 7: But yeah, and just like with the way society is built,
Speaker 7: like you can't just like go get a regular job
Speaker 7: and then buy yourself the house the way that you
Speaker 7: used to and or like that some people were able to,
Speaker 7: and so now there's this like I don't know, there's
Speaker 7: just like this weirdness around like depending on your parents
Speaker 7: or depending on like your extended family, but you have
Speaker 7: to like a lot of times like that's the best option.
Speaker 7: And I think that like we've built so much guilt
Speaker 7: around that when like in reality, like it's like a
Speaker 7: privilege to be able to maybe depend on your parents,
Speaker 7: even though you grew up thinking by thirty five, I
Speaker 7: shouldn't have to anymore.
Speaker 2: Right, yeaheah, for sure. Yeah, we need the system is fucked.
Speaker 2: We need the help, so take it. Yeah, people want
Speaker 2: to give it. If you can to give the help,
Speaker 2: if you can to, yes, if somebody is definitely willing
Speaker 2: to accept it, usually all right.
Speaker 1: Let's uh, let's take a quick break and we'll come
Speaker 1: back and we'll talk about somebody who took some help
Speaker 1: from her father in law. We'll be right back, and
Speaker 1: we're back. And this is the time of year where
Speaker 1: everybody there's a lot of nervous energy. People want to
Speaker 1: know what's going on with the election. This is when
Speaker 1: you start getting the stories about the store that sells
Speaker 1: merch from both Like I think it was like t
Speaker 1: shirts from both from both campaigns, and every year, whoever
Speaker 1: they sell the most of or like cups they sell,
Speaker 1: whoever they sell the most cups from, ends up winning.
Speaker 1: Like people are just looking for any story that will
Speaker 1: tell them who's going to win the election, and the
Speaker 1: reality is absolutely nobody knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think, well the thing is too
Speaker 2: there's also this thing that the right is doing in
Speaker 2: the build up to this election, right, there's like constant
Speaker 2: alarmism from conservatives or it's like illegal voting, especially when
Speaker 2: you're looking at things like Mike Rogers, who's running for
Speaker 2: the Senate in Michigan. He may have illegally voted by
Speaker 2: claiming an address of like a place that was uninhabitable.
Speaker 2: That's another news story that you know will probably develop
Speaker 2: over you know that coming weeks or not. But they're
Speaker 2: also like, you know, it's about seating this idea of
Speaker 2: the narrative that this this election has already been won
Speaker 2: by Republicans in their supporter's mind, so if they begin
Speaker 2: to contest things, they sort of the framing is there
Speaker 2: to be like what the fuck they stole it from us.
Speaker 2: But it's the anecdotal stuff that you hear a lot of,
Speaker 2: like like you're saying, Jack, like they'll be pople Like
Speaker 2: I was just with nine thousand black cops and they
Speaker 2: are all voting for Donald Trump. They just told me
Speaker 2: this is going to be a huge win. I was
Speaker 2: with forty two cricket farmers and they said they they
Speaker 2: went from Biden to Trump. This thing's in the bag.
Speaker 2: Like okay, I mean I did this the other day.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we ended up talking about it
Speaker 1: on Mike, but I talked to you Miles where I
Speaker 1: was like, I just saw this TikTok.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was interviewing people at an Arizona State Fair
Speaker 1: and everyone was saying.
Speaker 2: Trump, We're fucked, you know, like Jack, come on, it's over, man,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's fuck. So Laura Trump was recently
Speaker 2: on Laura Ingram Show. And if you know Lara Trump,
Speaker 2: she is the wife of Eric the Lesser and she
Speaker 2: also got her hands dirty with a bit of anecdotal forecasting.
Speaker 2: And I just want to play this because this is
Speaker 2: a very this again. Oh man, hold on to your butts.
Speaker 2: If true, true, it's over. If true, pack your bag
Speaker 2: your escape plan. Yeah, please pack your bags up for Canadia.
Speaker 2: If true. So here she is talking about the secret
Speaker 2: sauce and the tea leaves she's been reading out there
Speaker 2: in America.
Speaker 8: No one buys that Kamala Harris has the capability to
Speaker 8: do that job. And polls like that I think are
Speaker 8: absolutely ridiculous. I get slipped beverage napkins every time I
Speaker 8: get on an airplane saying we can't wait to vote
Speaker 8: for Trump. Go Trump Trump twenty twenty four, or people
Speaker 8: just coming up to me these days, were everywhere I
Speaker 8: go saying how excited they are to get out and
Speaker 8: vote and vote early when you go vote for Donald Trump?
Speaker 2: Oh wow, oh wow wow. Every time she boards a plane,
Speaker 2: are sliding her airplane napkins just before they put the
Speaker 2: beverage on top of it.
Speaker 7: Here's where the story falls apart. Yeah, nobody, nobody carries
Speaker 7: pens anymore. No, no one has the ability to write
Speaker 7: on your napkin anymore.
Speaker 2: Why are they using the same communication method that people
Speaker 2: who are being held hostage used to alert authorities that
Speaker 2: they're like, are refilled? Help me? Also, every every plane
Speaker 2: you're on, like maybe because maybe because you're flying on
Speaker 2: private planes specifically chartered by the fucking campaign? Is that what?
Speaker 2: Or are you flying commercial all the time. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm just from what I understand, I believe that they're
Speaker 2: flying on you know, campaign chartered aircraft. But that's okay,
Speaker 2: that works too, and it is it is wild to
Speaker 2: think it's like someone who would recognize you and would
Speaker 2: even want to get near you in public would also
Speaker 2: be a Republican, right again, and that.
Speaker 7: You would let anyone get near you in public.
Speaker 2: That I also yeah yeah right right right? Did you
Speaker 2: ever are you guys? Nathan? For you fans? Oh, I
Speaker 2: love it, love it?
Speaker 7: Okay, ken, I figured because I like Cannon. But you know,
Speaker 7: the episode we're here engineers that whole story that he
Speaker 7: can tell on late night shows.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, So he's not lying, Yeah, he's.
Speaker 7: Not lying, but he sets up this elaborate things so
Speaker 7: that you can say it. I feel like this is
Speaker 7: what they're doing. They're like hiring people to give them
Speaker 7: napkins saying they're voting for Trump.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine that scenario though too. She's like she
Speaker 2: board a plane, She's like, do you mind handing me
Speaker 2: these napkins? My drink quarterer? What just please hand it
Speaker 2: to me. I'll give you five hundred bucks. Okay, right,
Speaker 2: here's your napkin. Miss Oh wow? Oh do you see this?
Speaker 2: It says we're voting early for Oh my god, bless
Speaker 2: your heart. So that happened and I'm not lying. Is
Speaker 2: that a way that people communicate with each other, like
Speaker 2: sending like what in a way that isn't unless they're
Speaker 2: like in trouble of some sort. I mean, that's like
Speaker 2: millennial gen X Like that's school note passing was obviously
Speaker 2: a thing like you know, you would write a long
Speaker 2: winded remember when you would just communicate in notes in
Speaker 2: school and you would fill out like a line sheet
Speaker 2: of paper front to back with Like the thing is
Speaker 2: man like, I know you asked her to I know
Speaker 2: you asked for the homecoming, but like the thing is
Speaker 2: like we had something going before you asked and like
Speaker 2: doing all this kind of weird shit that feels like that.
Speaker 2: Do kids do that? Do they do y'all? Do y'all
Speaker 2: pass notes? Still? Is that a thing?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 7: I don't know, I mean, are they on their laptops
Speaker 7: and they can just yeah, they just like, yeah, electronically.
Speaker 2: Text each other? You do. Yeah, I'm revealing my age. Okay,
Speaker 2: thank you? Forty Super producer Victor said, yeah we texted. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's fine. I was whatever that eleven Yeah when nine
Speaker 2: to eleven happened. I was a junior in high school. Okay,
Speaker 2: so hold that. Yeah that makes sense, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that the pen thing too, I mean I
Speaker 2: guess you might have a pen. I'm always like forgetting
Speaker 2: to pack a pen whatever I travel, I always try
Speaker 2: and make sure have a pen, and it's international flights.
Speaker 1: I've like not had a pen and the flight attendance
Speaker 1: like don't have pens when you have to like fill
Speaker 1: out that form, like right.
Speaker 2: They probably because they probably get stolen all the time.
Speaker 2: They're like, yeah, man, these motherfuckers stole on my pens.
Speaker 2: What do you mean to do?
Speaker 1: But again, anyone who recognizes her is probably like a
Speaker 1: fucking mont blanc wielding Republican piece of shit who's you know,
Speaker 1: I can imagine that like one person per flight is
Speaker 1: on board. It is still kind of mind blowing. We'll
Speaker 1: get into this in like the political donations section.
Speaker 2: Let's just move on to that.
Speaker 1: But it's wild, like one of the melon people is
Speaker 1: like full boat one hundred million dollar donation to Trump
Speaker 1: like that, it does seem like the rich have just
Speaker 1: openly declared war on all of us.
Speaker 2: At the end. Yeah, they're really the fucking worst. It's
Speaker 2: because they started moving at light speed during the pandemic
Speaker 2: with all that wealth accumulation, and now they're like, well,
Speaker 2: this party can't do not pump the brakes on this thing.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Like you know what what I was? It
Speaker 2: like it went up eighty eight percent or something. Their
Speaker 2: wealth we talked about some just eighty eight percent. The yeah,
Speaker 2: billionaire wealth went up eighty eight percent in the past
Speaker 2: four years. Like hosts, everybody being like, this is this
Speaker 2: is an unbelievably huge problem. They have way too much money.
Speaker 2: Their wealth has gone up eighty eight percent. Yeah, they've
Speaker 2: just gotten yeah, so like along with this, like right,
Speaker 2: huge amounts of money affecting political outcomes. Right now, Senate
Speaker 2: races are tightening in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. And if
Speaker 2: things go the wrong way, uh, this would potentially give
Speaker 2: the Republicans a majority in the Senate they haven't had
Speaker 2: since twenty sixteen. And if Kamala ends up winning the
Speaker 2: White House, that would be disastrous for any kind of
Speaker 2: confirmation process of cabinet positions or judges, because at that
Speaker 2: point you don't really have control over it in terms
Speaker 2: of canna have a Republican in our cabinet though, So, yeah.
Speaker 7: Say, what do you think about that? I don't think
Speaker 7: anything good.
Speaker 1: I fucking hate it, blowing it so hard, don't move
Speaker 1: to the right, fucking crazy.
Speaker 7: I was so cocon utpilled, like back in the summer,
Speaker 7: and now I'm just like, oh my god, please let
Speaker 7: this be over.
Speaker 2: Yeah killed, Look it was. It was a brat summer
Speaker 2: and now we're in the hangover fall and we're moving
Speaker 2: to the right in every.
Speaker 7: Rapidly, rapidly moving to the right, just purely.
Speaker 1: Listening to the same Democratic strategists who have fucked the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party for the past.
Speaker 2: You know, don't don't get progressive.
Speaker 7: And it's interesting because it's like, in the moment she
Speaker 7: chose walls, it was like, and now I shall mess
Speaker 7: everything up.
Speaker 2: Now everything else bad?
Speaker 9: Yeah quit for whoa whoa a pretty good rollout, and yeah,
Speaker 9: I will continue to dispat So anyway one race, I
Speaker 9: think that should be getting a lot of attention, and
Speaker 9: it is, I think purely because of the Senate math.
Speaker 2: But the why I think is important is shared Brown's
Speaker 2: reelection campaign in Ohio. So he is the chair of
Speaker 2: the Senate Banking Committee, and that's very, very powerful position
Speaker 2: when it comes to the financial sector, and he's been
Speaker 2: a vocal critic of cryptocurrencies and the need for regulation.
Speaker 2: And it is for this very reason that a crypto
Speaker 2: pack is spending forty million dollars to unseat him. Forty
Speaker 2: million dollars to unseat him. Fair shake which is the
Speaker 2: industries like Crypto's super Pack, they have raised just over
Speaker 2: two hundred million dollars this cycle. To put that into perspective, right,
Speaker 2: the next industry group that comes in second place in
Speaker 2: terms of money raise, that's coke Industries, you know, we
Speaker 2: know them, the big dogument They've raised a paltry twenty
Speaker 2: six million dollars for this cycle, and we're talking one
Speaker 2: from million from Crypto. And it's right now, Crypto is
Speaker 2: accounting for almost half of the corporate spending this election cycle.
Speaker 2: So their tactics are just to carpet bomb the airwaves
Speaker 2: with ads. But in some races, like in Shared Brown's race,
Speaker 2: like it's just NonStop ads and they have nothing to
Speaker 2: do with Crypto. It's just they're just helping Marino of
Speaker 2: his opponent. They're just trying to help him win as
Speaker 2: much as possible. So, so aside from the airwave stuff,
Speaker 2: sometimes they don't even have to spend money to get
Speaker 2: people to bend to their will. They'll just threaten to
Speaker 2: make it rain on a politician's opponent to get them
Speaker 2: in line. So the earlier this is from Slate quote
Speaker 2: earlier this year, Fairshake indicated it would enter the spending
Speaker 2: arena without announcing which candidate it would support. Soon after.
Speaker 2: This is like in the in the Montana race, soon after,
Speaker 2: vulnerable incumbent Democrat John Tester, who has criticized the industry
Speaker 2: in the past, voted to pass pro crypto legislation. So
Speaker 2: their big pet project here is to try and get
Speaker 2: this crypto friendly legislation passed that in order to sort
Speaker 2: of gain legitimacy as a financial product and escape the
Speaker 2: oversight authority of the SEC. And this is again from
Speaker 2: the same slight article. In forty two of the primary
Speaker 2: races where crypto backed super PACs intervened, the crypto sector
Speaker 2: won its preferred outcome in thirty six. In just two
Speaker 2: cycles of spending, crypto corporations now ranked second in total
Speaker 2: election related spending over the past fourteen years the entirety
Speaker 2: of the Citizens United Era. Okay, they've be just two cycles.
Speaker 2: It took them to fucking hit like just to get
Speaker 2: to second place. They quote they trail only fossil fuel corporations,
Speaker 2: which have spent one hundred and seventy six million over
Speaker 2: that same period. And it's not just Republicans that are benefiting.
Speaker 2: Democrats are also getting hit with cash in other races,
Speaker 2: if they've been friendly towards these kinds of bills, then
Speaker 2: they are being rewarded with financial support. But it's clear
Speaker 2: that Republicans are much more willing to help here, so
Speaker 2: therefore they're getting a larger share of these dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just the future is so yeah, Like, if you
Speaker 2: want to see what the industry, what industries are going
Speaker 2: to run slash ruin the future, you just have to
Speaker 2: look at who is donating the most across the board,
Speaker 2: and the future is going to be so stupid.
Speaker 7: Like crypto, I just can't understand it. And at times
Speaker 7: I'm like, am I just like too old or or
Speaker 7: are stupid to just understand what the appeal of crypto is?
Speaker 7: But what if maybe I'm not and it just doesn't
Speaker 7: really make much sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think for those in the beginning,
Speaker 2: it was very idealistic. We're sort of like, you know,
Speaker 2: this is a decentralized form of currency that can operate
Speaker 2: outside of these you know, like the World Bank and
Speaker 2: these forces of corruptive forces. And now if they're just
Speaker 2: becoming central entities, it's yeah, so that's gone.
Speaker 7: But I think the other they're still being influenced by
Speaker 7: like the greater markets right right, and go up and
Speaker 7: down and up and down.
Speaker 2: And I think what's interesting here though, too, is because
Speaker 2: a lot of people have made money in cryptocurrencies. It's
Speaker 2: more people are trying to get in on it, and
Speaker 2: now they see it as a way to protect their investor.
Speaker 2: It's an investment. So now they're now motivated to also vote. Like,
Speaker 2: let me just play an ad. There's like a thing
Speaker 2: where they're come there. They have like things like I'm
Speaker 2: a crypto voter, and that's kind of I'll just play
Speaker 2: this so you could understand. This is kind of the
Speaker 2: messaging to people to understand, like to say, like, we
Speaker 2: also have numbers out there, and this is how we
Speaker 2: can sort of get them. We can turn that into
Speaker 2: votes in an election.
Speaker 10: To be an American is to embrace innovation. And that's
Speaker 10: where blockchain and crypto come into play. Crypto equals innovation,
Speaker 10: innovation equals jobs. That's why I'm a crypto voter. Don't
Speaker 10: let anyone else decide your future, make.
Speaker 4: A plan to vote.
Speaker 2: That's from stand with crypto, which is another pack but
Speaker 2: again and you and you see this with people that
Speaker 2: are invested in cryptocurrencies to get this sort of legitimacy
Speaker 2: as a financial product would be huge for their investments.
Speaker 2: So now people are incentivized with their own investments to
Speaker 2: votere s. So it's it's a huge thing. That's why
Speaker 2: I think big tech is realizing they have a lot
Speaker 2: of numbers for people that are invested in their platforms
Speaker 2: or use their platforms that then they can you know,
Speaker 2: turn that into a formidable voting block. And yeah, the
Speaker 2: money being spent is just like will cause it would
Speaker 2: cause people's eyes to bleed twenty years ago even because yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of people are like looking ato, like I've
Speaker 2: never seen people just put this much money towards just
Speaker 2: getting one bill passed, and you know, the like to
Speaker 2: your point, Jack, you can see that other industries are
Speaker 2: looking at like, oh, you know, we used to just
Speaker 2: keep like friendly politicians there and give them sort of
Speaker 2: bills that they can vote on or whatever. But now
Speaker 2: just to go whole hog to say we need to
Speaker 2: get this one thing done and make everyone bend to
Speaker 2: our will just may become even more so than new normal.
Speaker 2: I think it was just happening at a smaller rate
Speaker 2: than what we're seeing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now with Citizens United, it's just open robbery.
Speaker 2: Right, And I think another reason why people always calling
Speaker 2: for election reforms with this kind of thing, because yeah,
Speaker 2: it allows someone to just step in and say, I
Speaker 2: will spend forty million dollars to get you to scare you.
Speaker 2: Are you ready to now play ball? And yeah, and
Speaker 2: it again seems to work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Open Secrets did a dive into like who is donating
Speaker 1: to the Republicans and Democrats this time around? And like
Speaker 1: I said, one of the Melon pscions is donating one
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars to Trump the which, by the way,
Speaker 1: like that that is a great example of like a
Speaker 1: thing where if you look at how money is being spent,
Speaker 1: you can see the future, like the money that was
Speaker 1: spent by these dynastic like these families with dynastic fortunes
Speaker 1: like the Melons and the Getty's and all those people.
Speaker 2: Like since the late seventies, they've just been spending, spending,
Speaker 2: spending in politics, and the rate of that those types
Speaker 2: of people have been taxed has gone way way down
Speaker 2: to like now the average tax rate of the top
Speaker 2: point zero one percent has fallen by more than half
Speaker 2: to about thirty percent, while rates for the bottom ninety
Speaker 2: percent of people have climbed slightly, so they are getting
Speaker 2: better and better deals and the rest of the world
Speaker 2: is getting fucked, and so that it makes sense that
Speaker 2: that these people are continuing to spend and get trying
Speaker 2: to get an investment that actually gets you in return.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I just I can't even imagine the need for
Speaker 7: like more than one hundred million dollars, right, No, there
Speaker 7: is none. Like I'm like, I'm not above one hundred
Speaker 7: million dollars. I'd love it, I welcome it, but at
Speaker 7: that point it's like, Okay, well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you won't hear from me anymore. I'm funny, right,
Speaker 2: I'm chilling. Yeah, I will lay down for a long time.
Speaker 2: That's that's probably what I'll do. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 2: think that's why it's always just you know, like when
Speaker 2: you get like these billions of dollars in wealth, you're
Speaker 2: just like this, there's this isn't sustainable because if it's
Speaker 2: all about this like explosive growth that that that comes
Speaker 2: from somewhere else, that comes out of other people's pockets,
Speaker 2: or rather the inability of other people to fill their own,
Speaker 2: you know, bank accounts with actual money.
Speaker 7: That is needed so I feel like that's the disconnect
Speaker 7: is people are like, well, why shouldn't people be allowed
Speaker 7: to make a lot of money, And it's like, well,
Speaker 7: they are, but there's no way to make that much
Speaker 7: money and have been ethical throughout the whole process and
Speaker 7: have like, had every single person working for you been
Speaker 7: paid fairly and.
Speaker 3: You still have that much money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And it's just a Lena Gomez and she
Speaker 2: doesn't want to talk about being a billionaire. That's just
Speaker 2: still so funny to me. She's like, I'd rather not
Speaker 2: talk about money and being a billionaire. Please just let
Speaker 2: me be.
Speaker 7: Even and give it away and then you don't need
Speaker 7: to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the nine hundred million dollars of it,
Speaker 2: and we'd be fine with you. The good will these
Speaker 2: fuckers would generate from just being like, you know what, dude,
Speaker 2: I only need Like I fuck, I don't even need,
Speaker 2: Like I think I just need eighty million for the
Speaker 2: rest of my life. I'm seventy years old. I think
Speaker 2: I'll be fine with eighty million dollars for the rest
Speaker 2: of it. I'm giving the rest away. The people would
Speaker 2: be erecting fucking statues. Yeah, for that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: But no, it's more just like how do we protect this,
Speaker 2: how do we create more loopholes to keep our wealth?
Speaker 2: And how do we again cozy up to people that
Speaker 2: are fine watching everything fall apart, but hey, we get
Speaker 2: to keep our money.
Speaker 1: Like Open Secrets has like the just these industry breakdowns
Speaker 1: and like air transport donated ten point five million dollars
Speaker 1: to Trump, like real estate ten point four million. But
Speaker 1: I just like I can't, I can't believe that it's
Speaker 1: now just like is dope to airlines? Like I didn't
Speaker 1: dig in deeper, but like, are these like major corporations
Speaker 1: just like donating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's Boeing is the large like in that category.
Speaker 2: Because then within transport there's air transport, there's also airlines,
Speaker 2: which would be like the deltas of it all, but
Speaker 2: they also give money. Yeah, like ups, they they're all
Speaker 2: I mean, because that's just how it is. You have
Speaker 2: to you have to get in bed so you can
Speaker 2: get favorable looks when it comes to regulation or you know,
Speaker 2: not regulating.
Speaker 1: Even when one of them one of the options is
Speaker 1: just like nazis, they're just like no, well, a delta,
Speaker 1: we believe in everybody gouging. Yeah, yeah, I believe in
Speaker 1: both price gouging and everybody having a free the freedom
Speaker 1: to express their beliefs.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It's a corporate kleptocracy.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, what's happening with Milton Like the fact that
Speaker 7: these airlines are literally raising their prices so that people
Speaker 7: cannot die, and like the government is just like, okay, no.
Speaker 2: That's capitalism, baby, Like, yeah, that's capitalism.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that they have the freedom to evacuate and
Speaker 1: we have the freedom to get rich, right, Just like, at.
Speaker 7: What point will people be like, huh, this doesn't make sense,
Speaker 7: maybe we should change this.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's where I think people know it
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense, but enough people who have who have
Speaker 2: like the microphones to sort of shape public discourse, they're
Speaker 2: not saying it right. Like the American Prospect, I think
Speaker 2: reached out to a couple of the economists who are
Speaker 2: like slamming Kamala Harris because she deigned to say, like,
Speaker 2: it's corporate price gouging that's driving up prices. We need
Speaker 2: to get a handle on that. They asked them, like
Speaker 2: the in light of what's what happened in the aftermath
Speaker 2: of Hellene and with Milton and price gouging happening, They're like,
Speaker 2: do you think that this is bad? Now? Like is
Speaker 2: do you think this necessitates some kind of intervention? And
Speaker 2: they kind of were like, well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of like they just we're not very forceful on it, which,
Speaker 2: you know, I think is pretty revealing because like the
Speaker 2: their whole perspective is sort of aligning with what a
Speaker 2: corporation would want to do or you know, what the
Speaker 2: free market should be doing. Yeah, all right, let's take
Speaker 2: a quick break and we'll come back and we'll do
Speaker 2: we'll do the sports section, We'll go to our sports
Speaker 2: guy for sports updates.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, and we're back, We're back, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, I just wanted to hear kind of from
Speaker 1: you guys what your vision is for how that system
Speaker 1: that is currently a representation a representative democracy, like, how
Speaker 1: that could take hold in the United States.
Speaker 11: Just let me throw one quick historical footnote and I'll
Speaker 11: turn over to Colin. Actually, their implementation of what Colin
Speaker 11: will refer to shortly actually started in nineteen twenty one
Speaker 11: Northern Ireland and as they were partitions Northern Ireland away
Speaker 11: from the South, which then became the Irish Free State. Basically,
Speaker 11: the British said, okay, well, why don't we agree as
Speaker 11: part of this end of this war with the Irish,
Speaker 11: that both sides will have some form of power sharing
Speaker 11: built into their systems because both sides have minorities that
Speaker 11: they wanted to protect. Northern Ireland gets rid of it
Speaker 11: as soon as they can, because they see.
Speaker 2: The writing on the wall.
Speaker 11: They're like, one party control, let's do it. Ireland actually
Speaker 11: keeps it for a full hundred years, and that's still
Speaker 11: the system that they use today. So actually in nineteen
Speaker 11: ninety eight when they actually re implemented it, something that
Speaker 11: they actually had for about roughly ten years beginning of
Speaker 11: the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3: So I'll kick over a column well, and we'll come
Speaker 3: back to the sort of forgotten history question in a
Speaker 3: moment too. So the system that they use in Northern
Speaker 3: Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is a system of
Speaker 3: proportional representation, so called because each segment of the population
Speaker 3: has the power to win their fair share their propoor
Speaker 3: in government. So if Irish Republicans who are different from
Speaker 3: US Republicans, they want to join the Republic of Ireland
Speaker 3: Irish Republicans or Irish Nationalists win thirty three percent of
Speaker 3: the vote, they're going to win about one in three
Speaker 3: seats in parliament. And what you might have it happen
Speaker 3: is you might have, say, forty percent of the vote
Speaker 3: go to Irish unionists, folks who like being part of
Speaker 3: Great Britain. Maybe forty percent of the vote goes to
Speaker 3: Irish nationalists, and then another twenty percent of the vote
Speaker 3: goes to people who say, oh, we don't really care
Speaker 3: about that, we care about jobs, or we care about housing,
Speaker 3: and then that ends up being the makeup of your parliament,
Speaker 3: and in terms of what they could look like in
Speaker 3: the US, it's interesting. So there are there's a path
Speaker 3: to get it here. There's an act that's been introduced
Speaker 3: in Congress every year since twenty seventeen, the Fair Representation Act,
Speaker 3: that would just move the US congressional seat system to
Speaker 3: that system. So instead of electing, you know, instead of
Speaker 3: Massachusetts electing ten Democrats, they would probably elect six or
Speaker 3: seven Democrats and three or four Republicans. And instead of
Speaker 3: you know, Alabama electing all Republicans, they would elect you know,
Speaker 3: two Republicans and a Democrat or whatever.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 3: The population might be, and you could have these smaller
Speaker 3: chunks breakthrough. But what's really interesting is that the specific
Speaker 3: version that they use that is proposed for this bill,
Speaker 3: that they use in Northern Ireland, it's a form of
Speaker 3: ranked choice voting, and I say a form of rank
Speaker 3: choice voting, because a lot of folks might have heard
Speaker 3: of our CV rankfice voting. But there's a bunch of
Speaker 3: different ways to do it. The way they do it
Speaker 3: in Minneapolis is different than the way to do it
Speaker 3: in Maine, which is different than the way to do
Speaker 3: it in New York, which is different than the way.
Speaker 2: That they do it in Ireland.
Speaker 3: But back in the nineteen tens, twenties, thirties, forties, cities
Speaker 3: in the US actually used this Irish version of proportional
Speaker 3: ranked choice voting, cities like New York City, Cincinnati, and Cleveland,
Speaker 3: Sacramento in California. And you saw again back in the forties,
Speaker 3: at the height of Jim Crow, well before the Civil
Speaker 3: Rights movement, you saw black communists from Manhattan get elected
Speaker 3: to the New York City Council. And that's just sort
Speaker 3: of it's hard to imagine today, let alone during the
Speaker 3: Red Scare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is. We always talk about the way
Speaker 2: that these facts that aren't part of the system as
Speaker 2: currently constructed get just memory hold from history and kind
Speaker 2: of erased from history. So that's super interesting.
Speaker 1: And you said that someone to be like, what is
Speaker 1: that from a marvel like reality or this is a
Speaker 1: city council or some shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that's real.
Speaker 1: That's real in the context of racial justice and equity,
Speaker 1: like in the US. Like when listening to your show,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about we had a lot of energy
Speaker 1: behind that cause in twenty but we it feels like
Speaker 1: we no longer have the attention of the mainstream Democratic
Speaker 1: party right now, and you know, having a party that
Speaker 1: is focused on that cause and is always there even
Speaker 1: if you know they're not the majority in power, but they're.
Speaker 2: Always being represented.
Speaker 1: Could like that that's just a thing that I had
Speaker 1: taken for granted as like impossible, and that that would
Speaker 1: just be amazing to have that, like you know, there
Speaker 1: would always be people doing work for racial justice and
Speaker 1: equity in the US, like in government. Rhich does not
Speaker 1: see it's wild that that is such a basic idea,
Speaker 1: but like it's just yeah, because you think of how
Speaker 1: like platforms change every year, like the Democrats platform looks
Speaker 1: completely different now than it is in twenty twenty, Like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we use too much like political
Speaker 1: capital to be talking about us to form this go round,
Speaker 1: So let's put that on the back burner and become
Speaker 1: fully pro cop this.
Speaker 2: Year, because you know, we kind of are a little
Speaker 2: in our policies can be nebulous at times, and I
Speaker 2: think that's like it really gets to what really affects
Speaker 2: voters and makes people so that you just get to
Speaker 2: this point where you're totally disaffected. You become ambivalent to
Speaker 2: the process because you feel like, well, what about all
Speaker 2: these other real problems And the only way to enter
Speaker 2: the conversation is this very rigid system where unless you're
Speaker 2: reading from the same hymnal, your chances of getting elected
Speaker 2: aren't really possible. And I think that's really a great
Speaker 2: way for I think that would help a lot of
Speaker 2: people also become much more involved, because what we're talking
Speaker 2: about is something that does give people a fair shake
Speaker 2: where it's like, no, if you have the numbers, like
Speaker 2: you can get a seat at the table. That's just
Speaker 2: it is what it is. And then guess what people
Speaker 2: will have to have coalition governments where they are going
Speaker 2: to have to work with you to get the kinds
Speaker 2: of majorities you need to achieve certain things. And I
Speaker 2: think that's super I think rated an underrated thing about it,
Speaker 2: because I think most people will just go to the
Speaker 2: factor like, oh, so what you want more Republicans And
Speaker 2: it's like, well, no, that's really not the case. You
Speaker 2: just want something you wanted to actually be representative of
Speaker 2: what's there. And I feel like it sounds like too
Speaker 2: And just listening to the show, like we had a
Speaker 2: moment when we were writing the Constitution where they're like,
Speaker 2: what if Congress looked like everything we see out there
Speaker 2: in America? And it's like, and that's like one of
Speaker 2: those forks in the roads where our destinies like. And
Speaker 2: we decided it's not that new of a concept, like
Speaker 2: these are things we've been grappling with since the beginning
Speaker 2: of this country.
Speaker 11: Absolutely, there's a few other things that are kind of
Speaker 11: mind blowing. When we talked about Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland,
Speaker 11: one story that keeps coming up is that whenever we
Speaker 11: talked to folks on the ground there, they kept saying,
Speaker 11: you might have some concerns in the US about getting
Speaker 11: far right parties elected and taking seats in that might
Speaker 11: freak some people out, but in many ways that's important
Speaker 11: because in the Northern Ireland experience, they saw that there
Speaker 11: were people who were shut out of the political system
Speaker 11: that they had no alternative but to be violent. And
Speaker 11: so when you have people win seats their fair share,
Speaker 11: maybe they win one or two in a city council,
Speaker 11: and they have to grapple with balancing the budget, closing
Speaker 11: a hospital, dealing with pensions, then it's harder to be
Speaker 11: completely anti government when you actually have some power and
Speaker 11: you have to grapple with some collective decisions that you
Speaker 11: just can't just throw rocks at at the house. One
Speaker 11: other interesting thing that we learned about that kind of
Speaker 11: blew my mind is how power sharing was taken to
Speaker 11: the logical extreme in both Ireland and to more so
Speaker 11: in Northern Ireland. So our winner take all system, we
Speaker 11: understand it particularly in our electoral system in terms of
Speaker 11: there can only be one winner when you have one
Speaker 11: member per district. But when you think about the winner
Speaker 11: take all system in terms of legislative governance, we understand like,
Speaker 11: if you're the majority party, you get to pick all
Speaker 11: the committee chairs it's like to the winner go the spoils.
Speaker 11: That seems obvious to us, right right, That's not how
Speaker 11: neither Ireland nor Northern Ireland does it. If you win
Speaker 11: forty percent of seats in the Parliament, you win forty
Speaker 11: percent of committee chairs. They have this process it's called
Speaker 11: the Dahunt method, whereby it's like the NFL draft. Your
Speaker 11: party as like the team gets to pick in a
Speaker 11: particular order which committee chairs you want. So if you're
Speaker 11: the first pick, you'll probably get to pick like the
Speaker 11: Taxation Ways and Means Committee because it's likely the most
Speaker 11: powerful justice as usually second, something like that, and so
Speaker 11: you just kind of go down the list in terms
Speaker 11: of who deserves the next pick. Added to that logical
Speaker 11: extreme in terms of Northern Ireland, if once again, if
Speaker 11: your party is forty percent of the seats in Parliament,
Speaker 11: you get forty percent of the cabinet seats in government itself,
Speaker 11: as a way to make sure that everyone has a
Speaker 11: fair share. There are critiques in terms of sometimes it
Speaker 11: grinds to a halt because those parties almost never agree
Speaker 11: on lots of big things, and so sometimes it shuts
Speaker 11: the government down, which is its own problem. But the
Speaker 11: idea that they are committed to power sharing in order
Speaker 11: for everyone to feel like they have a stake in governance.
Speaker 11: That's a really key idea that's really missing in our
Speaker 11: debates here in the US, and it's.
Speaker 3: Something that Northern Ireland folks we talked to kept emphasizing that, like, oh,
Speaker 3: like there's a lot of critiques about power sharing, the
Speaker 3: specific model we have maybe how many seats, but the
Speaker 3: elections being proportional, like that's a no brainer. Like no one,
Speaker 3: no one debates that at all, Like that's obvious.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, I mean Project twenty twenty five. The
Speaker 1: thing that's scary about it to people is that they're
Speaker 1: planning to like clear house and just make all the
Speaker 1: cabinet entirely one thing.
Speaker 2: So that that's interesting. I feel like maybe after this
Speaker 2: next presidential administration there might be more appetate. It could
Speaker 2: be the last one, folks, but give be the last election.
Speaker 1: Not for the reasons he's saying, but oh yeah, well yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead, Sorry Miles, I interrupted, Oh.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I was just saying. And also like
Speaker 2: the visibility, right, because I think, especially in the United States,
Speaker 2: we have this version of like the amount of extremists
Speaker 2: there are in the United States, you would think depending
Speaker 2: on where you're watching news, like outnumber there's seven billion
Speaker 2: of these people, and it's always interesting to see like
Speaker 2: when people like are like in in Europe when they're
Speaker 2: having their elections, you're like, oh, they're far right parties
Speaker 2: only got like a fraction of what people thought they
Speaker 2: were going to do. And I think that's also helps
Speaker 2: too for people to understand like, Okay, there is this
Speaker 2: group of people that exist, but they aren't nearly as
Speaker 2: large or influential as they would want you to think,
Speaker 2: which I think also helps people have a little bit
Speaker 2: of a clear understanding of like truly like what we're
Speaker 2: dealing with in the country in terms of like who
Speaker 2: who's sort of like where everyone's ideologies sort of lie,
Speaker 2: because yeah, I think it's very easy to sort of
Speaker 2: obscure that with our media in this country and have
Speaker 2: people kind of thinking like, oh my god, like what's
Speaker 2: all happening, Like what are we up against? And yeah,
Speaker 2: knowing that I think putting being able to quantify that,
Speaker 2: I think is a big benefit.
Speaker 3: And that's part of the risk of a winner take
Speaker 3: all system is you can have a fringe element, right
Speaker 3: that wins it all. People forget that. Back in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: if you looked at Poles, most Republicans didn't actually like
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, but they were split between Chris Christy and
Speaker 3: Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and John Kasich and Mitt Romney.
Speaker 3: And Romney wasn't running in twenty sixteen, was he No,
Speaker 3: He's no, he was not running.
Speaker 2: The spirit but anyway, yeah, right, spirit.
Speaker 3: Of John Huntsman point is like they were the winner
Speaker 3: take all system. Lets a fringe element if they win
Speaker 3: more than others in the primary process or whatever, win everything.
Speaker 3: The proportional system caps your ceiling at your actual support,
Speaker 3: so you never have a fringe party take over every
Speaker 3: chamber of government.
Speaker 1: I do want to just go back to this idea
Speaker 1: that you know, it doesn't say anything about two parties
Speaker 1: or parties of any sort in the in the Constitution.
Speaker 1: And yet and like George Washington was like kind of
Speaker 1: against parties in general. He was just a downer, didn't
Speaker 1: didn't like to party, but he like America just kind
Speaker 1: of snapped to a two party system and like kind
Speaker 1: of keeps going back to a two party system and
Speaker 1: like staying in this two party system, and so for me.
Speaker 1: That's one of my big questions is like, is there
Speaker 1: just something about America and our at the central lie
Speaker 1: at the heart of America where it's like we're we
Speaker 1: are a representative democracy and also the system is completely
Speaker 1: designed to keep the dispossessed without power, like that's been
Speaker 1: the deal kind of from day one, Like when you
Speaker 1: look at the wording of the Constitution and then like
Speaker 1: what who those words actually apply to? I'm just I
Speaker 1: guess that's the big question for me is like how
Speaker 1: you know in the experience of granted a winner take
Speaker 1: all primary system, but like the primary system of a
Speaker 1: progressive and widely popular Bernie Sanders, you know, getting a
Speaker 1: lot of attention and enthusiasm, and then it just kind
Speaker 1: of felt like you were always up against this entrenched machine.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious how you guys think about the existing
Speaker 1: kind of inertia and money and power of the system
Speaker 1: as it currently exists, and how you could potentially see
Speaker 1: this idea overcoming that over time.
Speaker 3: George, can you mind meld with me real quick?
Speaker 2: I want to say something. I'm I'm gonna go back
Speaker 2: to French class. Yes, the name is do verj.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I of course know what that means, but
Speaker 1: the listeners, George and no further questions, all right.
Speaker 11: Dou Verge was a French philosopher that basically came up
Speaker 11: with this theorem or this law that basically said, any
Speaker 11: winner take all system is going to end up with
Speaker 11: only two major parties that can contest for power, because
Speaker 11: when there is like another faction, another party that tries
Speaker 11: to buy and play within the confines of a winner
Speaker 11: take all system, they almost never win. And if you
Speaker 11: try us several times, you'll have to just give up,
Speaker 11: because how do you tell people to vote for us
Speaker 11: if you can never turn their votes into actual seats
Speaker 11: that is actual political power.
Speaker 3: You actually increase the odds that your opponents win, Like
Speaker 3: if Bernie Sanders runs a viable candidacy, that increases odds
Speaker 3: Republicans win. So like it just turned the the logical
Speaker 3: conclusion is only have two candidates.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like a bad system almost.
Speaker 11: And so you see this playing out in basically the
Speaker 11: UK and the other former British colonies that have kept
Speaker 11: this system. In Canada, there's essentially only like the Conservative
Speaker 11: and the Liberal slash Moderate party that can win ever
Speaker 11: any election. They only have multiple parties because they have
Speaker 11: kind of regional politics of like Quebecua separatists that has
Speaker 11: its own political party. But for the most part nationally
Speaker 11: they are a two party system because they have the
Speaker 11: exact same system that we have. The UK is pretty
Speaker 11: much the same. You have Labor and then you have
Speaker 11: the Tories or Conservatives. Sometimes the Liberal Democrats play that
Speaker 11: kind of in between role, spoiler role, but for the
Speaker 11: most part, du Verget's law plays out very clearly in
Speaker 11: all of these systems, and so being able to start with,
Speaker 11: you know, what is the electoral system that we want
Speaker 11: for our society. Is it something that is very simple
Speaker 11: and that forces a majority even though it doesn't reflect
Speaker 11: the majority interest or do you want to make sure
Speaker 11: that you have a minority representation built into our electric
Speaker 11: And so by picking a proportional system, whichever flavor, because
Speaker 11: there's definitely variations on a theme, the fact that you
Speaker 11: will get you know, three, four or five parties means
Speaker 11: that there are coalitions. There is kind of like a
Speaker 11: shifting depending on which issue that different parties can call
Speaker 11: us and get legislation passed. So there is nothing structural
Speaker 11: or cultural about the US that pushes us towards a
Speaker 11: two party stip. It is the system that pushes us
Speaker 11: awkwardly into these two camps that don't fit us.
Speaker 3: And actually there's some really interesting political science. I'll give
Speaker 3: the very high level. We can put a link in
Speaker 3: the show notes if you all want, but there's some
Speaker 3: political science that's been done that shows that effectively, in
Speaker 3: the US right now, there are six political parties. There's
Speaker 3: six ideologically consistent and distinct ways of being basically that
Speaker 3: most people subscribe to, and it's just that they're jammed
Speaker 3: into the two parties. Like Alexander Cassio Cortez said a
Speaker 3: couple of years ago, in any other country on Earth,
Speaker 3: Joe Biden and I would not be in the same
Speaker 3: political party.
Speaker 5: But in the US we have to be.
Speaker 3: And so when you think about like, you know, your
Speaker 3: Romney Berry Goldwater, John McCain type folks and your evangelical
Speaker 3: Christians and your like Mago wing of American Nazis, like
Speaker 3: they don't actually have anything in common politically and on
Speaker 3: the same parallels on the left. And so whether or
Speaker 3: not these six parties emerge or they become distinct factions
Speaker 3: within the two parties as we have them there's Those
Speaker 3: are probably the coalitions that we would see emerge if
Speaker 3: we moved to a proportional multi party system.
Speaker 2: I think the other part about this too is like
Speaker 2: I think at this point, we see that there is
Speaker 2: a way to do it, It is being done. We've
Speaker 2: we've dabbled in it in the United States before, but
Speaker 2: right now, in its current form, it seems like intractable,
Speaker 2: like this is it's stuck. And I know when we
Speaker 2: were speaking a little bit earlier before we even recorded,
Speaker 2: I remember Jack and I were like, well, how do
Speaker 2: we it? Is it possible? And I felt like you
Speaker 2: brought up a few good points. Was to think about
Speaker 2: a lot of like the major changes we've had in
Speaker 2: the in the United States across you know, the storied
Speaker 2: history of this place, the years preceding those changes. It
Speaker 2: felt like this is going to be how it is forever,
Speaker 2: and then boom, we have rights, We have universal suffrage,
Speaker 2: we have civil rights, et cetera. We have marriage equality
Speaker 2: in those kinds of things. And I think for a
Speaker 2: lot of the times too, we're also like the I
Speaker 2: feel like the de facto way we speak about it
Speaker 2: in very early kinds of political conversations when you're younger
Speaker 2: and getting into it is like it feels everything has
Speaker 2: to happen from the top down, and when you look
Speaker 2: at the current system, like there's no way these freaks
Speaker 2: are going to be like, yes, I would like to
Speaker 2: dilute my power, but it seems like this is the
Speaker 2: kind of thing where we can create upward pressure from
Speaker 2: a more local level, and that is happening in the
Speaker 2: United States.
Speaker 1: We like to make things about personality and like individualism
Speaker 1: in the US, and so often the answer is actually
Speaker 1: structural and we don't like to admit that a lot
Speaker 1: of the times because it doesn't allow for us to
Speaker 1: be the heroes of our own narrative.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so can you sort of just point to
Speaker 2: some examples of like how this is not just like
Speaker 2: you know, Cincinnati decades ago, which where things like that
Speaker 2: were happening, but like even in the year of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, there are there are movements being made that
Speaker 2: are approaching something like this that could potentially help, you know,
Speaker 2: drive the conversation on a national level.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I'll start, and I'll kick it over to Colin.
Speaker 11: I think the most exciting thing for folks to watch
Speaker 11: in the twenty twenty four elections besides the presidential is
Speaker 11: what happens in Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 2: It's on the five.
Speaker 11: If you'd go north on the five, you get for
Speaker 11: the What was really exciting, and this goes to some
Speaker 11: of the work that we do as an organization More
Speaker 11: Equitable Democracy. We support people of color led groups on
Speaker 11: transforming our electoral system in order to advance racial justice,
Speaker 11: and so our colleagues there were doing a lot of
Speaker 11: advocacy work in community of color, trying to bring more
Speaker 11: resources to their communities, and they always hit like this
Speaker 11: huge buzz saw their city commission. It was a commission
Speaker 11: whereby there was no separate executive branch from the legislative branch.
Speaker 2: They were one and the same.
Speaker 11: They were all elected at large, so you essentially had
Speaker 11: to win like a congressional race in order to win
Speaker 11: a city council seat. At that always favored big moneyed interests,
Speaker 11: usually of folks who had relationships with developers, and so
Speaker 11: they understood we did a lot of research to kind
Speaker 11: of back this up that breaking up that system was important,
Speaker 11: but that going to the most obvious solution in the
Speaker 11: American kind of context is to go from all at
Speaker 11: large to single member districts, just like cut up the
Speaker 11: city into five equal districts, maybe we'll be able to
Speaker 11: get two seats out of the five that are responsive
Speaker 11: to our community's needs. Those communities of color about twenty
Speaker 11: five percent of the population in Portland because of a
Speaker 11: really long anti black history, there is no one particular
Speaker 11: area that is heavily people of color. There isn't the
Speaker 11: same type of segregation there is in other cities. And
Speaker 11: so just drawing those single member districts was not going
Speaker 11: to solve any of those problems.
Speaker 3: Any configurational highlight. Like we said, what if we move
Speaker 3: from five to seven, to nine to twelve to fifteen
Speaker 3: city councilors, you just could not do it.
Speaker 2: Not possible.
Speaker 11: And so that's why we introduced the Irish model to them,
Speaker 11: and they started to think, okay, well, if we had
Speaker 11: a larger district where we elected three, maybe we can
Speaker 11: win one or two of those that are in neighborhoods
Speaker 11: that we do a lot of organizing. And so what
Speaker 11: was really exciting was that, And this sounds when I
Speaker 11: say exciting, this will sound boring.
Speaker 2: For just a second.
Speaker 11: There was a charter review process.
Speaker 2: Please don't fall asleep. This is not exactly Yeah crps baby,
Speaker 2: that's me all day. We got an air horn in there.
Speaker 2: When shorter review.
Speaker 11: Process ah awesome and so baked into their charter their
Speaker 11: constitution was this mandatory about once every decade Ish process
Speaker 11: whereby folks from the community were invited in to kick
Speaker 11: the tires of their system, their structures of government, and
Speaker 11: asked to come up with ideas to change it. For
Speaker 11: ninety nine percent of the time, when local governments do this,
Speaker 11: it's just window dressing. They don't really mean to invite
Speaker 11: people to change things. But to their credit, everyone understood
Speaker 11: in Portland, this antiquate system that had been designed about
Speaker 11: a more than a hundred years ago wasn't working. So
Speaker 11: everyone understood something needed to change. And so the ability
Speaker 11: for our partners to organize around a process where people
Speaker 11: were supposed to be invited in to come up with
Speaker 11: ideas and to really flesh them out, that's what allowed
Speaker 11: for that deep conversation about what does it mean to
Speaker 11: have an election and have everyone represented? How do we
Speaker 11: integrate or prioritize racial equity within these structures. Can a
Speaker 11: winner take all system ever be equitable. It's kind of
Speaker 11: like at odds with one another, and so that's how
Speaker 11: they came up with this design of essentially the Irish system.
Speaker 11: They ran a campaign to support the recommendation that came
Speaker 11: from that city charter review process, and they won fifty
Speaker 11: seven forty three. This is the first city that has
Speaker 11: adopted this form, the first major city that has adopted
Speaker 11: this electoral system since New York City did in the
Speaker 11: nineteen thirty So it's been one hundred years of that
Speaker 11: kind of hidden history that it's been kind of outside
Speaker 11: of our imagination. Colin, do you want to say any
Speaker 11: words about like how things are going at this point?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, also, a lot of folks might be like, oh, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: Portland did it. But like I've seen Portland, Ya, it's
Speaker 3: crunchy liberal hibbies who demn Kyle McLoughlin is a good mayor.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: But if you talk to some of the activists and
Speaker 3: colleagues of ours in Portland, what they would tell you,
Speaker 3: and I think what like looking at the elections also
Speaker 3: tell you is that Portland is like most major cities
Speaker 3: in the US, and that that has not been the
Speaker 3: people winning elections. The city council has largely been the
Speaker 3: candidate's most preferred by developers and big business. Like George mentioned,
Speaker 3: they are all folks from downtown or west of the River,
Speaker 3: which is where all the really rich people live. Like
Speaker 3: the the established political I mean, the political establishment that's
Speaker 3: entrenched in Portland is the same as it kind of
Speaker 3: as anywhere. And you know, one in four Portlanders is
Speaker 3: a person of color. So like, yes, it's pretty white,
Speaker 3: but it's not. It's not just like a white utopia
Speaker 3: like people might think it's.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 3: It is a multi racial community. And if Portland can
Speaker 3: do it, I actually think anywhere can do it that
Speaker 3: at least on the city level. Like the four of
Speaker 3: the five city councilors came out against the reform when
Speaker 3: it was being considered. The former mayor came out against it,
Speaker 3: you know, the Chamber of Commerce came out against it,
Speaker 3: like they were fighting every single established interest that existed,
Speaker 3: and they still managed to win.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And yeah, now they're doing it for the first time
Speaker 3: that they just like made sample ballots public a few
Speaker 3: days ago. And there are some other smaller cities in
Speaker 3: America that are using proportional systems Albany, California, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
Speaker 3: for their Parks and Recreation Board, and there was one
Speaker 3: Detroit suburb that used it for a few years. Because
Speaker 3: this is a weird story, but basically, the Obama Department
Speaker 3: of Justice brought a lawsuit that the Trump Department of
Speaker 3: Justice settled, and so under the Obama case, like, they
Speaker 3: adopted a proportional system to resolve a Voting Rights Act complaint.
Speaker 3: But the Trump DOJ said, you only have to use
Speaker 3: this system twice and then you can go back to
Speaker 3: the old system that violates the Footing Rights Act. So
Speaker 3: they don't use it anymore. But it's not just at that.
Speaker 1: If I can't get it right and make it permanent
Speaker 1: after to it back, that's right.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know what we're doing here.
Speaker 1: All right, that's gonna do it. For this week's weekly Zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: Please like and review the show If you like, the
Speaker 1: show means the world demiles. He needs your validation, folks.
Speaker 1: I hope you're having a great weekend and I will
Speaker 1: talk to you Monday.
Speaker 2: Bye.