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Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,

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Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of

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Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.

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Speaker 1: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade

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Speaker 1: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent

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Speaker 1: coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about,

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Speaker 1: it just means the absolute world to have your support.

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Speaker 1: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Counterpoints with our new intro music. Emily, what'd you

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Speaker 1: think of that? I loved it. It was pumping me up.

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Speaker 1: But I think there's some people who are going to

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Speaker 1: have completely mixed emotions about this. On the one hand,

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Speaker 1: the thing that made Counterpoints unique is that we had

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Speaker 1: this incredibly jarring, silent opening and now you get to

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Speaker 1: get it pumped up like a regular morning show. We

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Speaker 1: can still nix it, go back to that. So, Emily,

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Speaker 1: are joining us from Wisconsin? Is that right? Where are you?

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Speaker 1: I'm in Puerto Rico, so about as far from Wisconsin

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Speaker 1: and as is possible. The first vacation I've taken in years,

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Speaker 1: but I had to be here for Counterpoints. Joining us

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Speaker 1: on your vacation since you're not in the studio, you

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Speaker 1: don't know that we're actually starting with something different than

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Speaker 1: what we talked about. We have breaking news. Just got

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Speaker 1: alerted from the New York Times that they are trying

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Speaker 1: to pierce the attorney client privilege and go after one

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Speaker 1: of Trump's attorneys in the document case to try to

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Speaker 1: get him to try to get him to testify. This

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Speaker 1: is in the classified documents case that they that they

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Speaker 1: still have going against Trump. You might have seen that

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Speaker 1: alerted on your phone just now, but your what's your

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Speaker 1: reaction to this? Do you think that there's still momentum

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Speaker 1: behind this case, given the fact that they're finding classified

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Speaker 1: information at every former president, former vice president, former senator's

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Speaker 1: house who seems to have left office in the last

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Speaker 1: twenty years. No, it's a good question because I think

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Speaker 1: the momentum is the legal momentum is going to be

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Speaker 1: different from the question of whether there's sort of a

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Speaker 1: public momentum. Like the court of legal affairs is very

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Speaker 1: different than the court of public opinion. The court of

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Speaker 1: legal opinion versus the court of public opinion is a

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Speaker 1: huge distinction. And to the extent that they also started

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Speaker 1: looking for these documents and Joe Biden's different residents and

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Speaker 1: the think tank, and then they went through Mike Pence's

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Speaker 1: office and his residence. That was all motivated by the

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Speaker 1: Court of public opinion. It was really just like, hey,

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Speaker 1: we need to see what's going on in case we

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Speaker 1: end up, you know, we end up in a really

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Speaker 1: untenable situation. And in fact, they did find themselves in

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Speaker 1: an untenable situation. Ryan, the other question I have for

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Speaker 1: you because I'm curious what you think about that same question,

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Speaker 1: but also with the news today about the news in

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Speaker 1: the last couple of days about what's happening in the

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Speaker 1: case in Georgia and Fulton County where the prosecutor was,

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Speaker 1: as we can covered a couple of weeks ago, wants

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Speaker 1: to keep the grand jury testimony and the grand jury

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Speaker 1: report basically under wraps until they're ready to release it.

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Speaker 1: And we think we expect that she is going to

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Speaker 1: indict Donald Trump, right, and all of this just to

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Speaker 1: me just takes way too long. Like what is everybody

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Speaker 1: waiting for? Like, if you have the goods on somebody,

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Speaker 1: just move on. And this this thing where you're waiting

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Speaker 1: Merrek Garland taking what two years to decide to move

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Speaker 1: and then at the last minute he punts it over

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Speaker 1: to a special prosecutor, taking two years down on Georgie.

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Speaker 1: I understand it takes a long time to interview witnesses,

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Speaker 1: to collect information to move forward, but you're right, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it does seem like this is heating up, you know,

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Speaker 1: just as we're kind of entering into the Republican Republican

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Speaker 1: nomination contest. And I think the problem for Trump here

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Speaker 1: is that if you're looking at this from thirty thousand

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Speaker 1: feet away and you're not following this very closely, it

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Speaker 1: does look like everybody's finding classified information, and maybe even

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Speaker 1: Tho Georgia things seems to kind of lump in there

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Speaker 1: with it. But if you get into the details, Trump

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Speaker 1: was the one. Trump was the only one of all

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Speaker 1: of these people who kind of was actively monkeying around

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Speaker 1: with people who were trying to get back the information. Now,

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Speaker 1: when he unclassified the documents, right, he unclassified them all

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Speaker 1: in his mind, Right, it's by declare bankruptcy. Exactly, declared bankruptcy.

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Speaker 1: Again with Biden and Pence, they you know, their lawyers

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Speaker 1: found it and they immediately kind of reach out to

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Speaker 1: the National Security Archives or they reach out to the

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Speaker 1: Department of Justice say hey, we found these classified information

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Speaker 1: with the other It's like boxes are getting moved around,

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Speaker 1: there's there's you know, mar A Lago is just a

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Speaker 1: den of spies, which isn't exactly Trump's fault, but it's

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Speaker 1: going you know, it's going to attract a whole bunch

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Speaker 1: of foreign intelligence agencies who were going to try to

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Speaker 1: penetrate that that type of situation. So, you know, for

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Speaker 1: him to have just classified documents just kind of lying

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Speaker 1: around or as trophies to kind of show off, puts

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Speaker 1: him in a different category than Trump. Than the Georgia thing.

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Speaker 1: That's going to be wild, because that really is going

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Speaker 1: back to something real, like his attempt to mess with

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Speaker 1: the election in Georgia. What's your read on the Georgia prosecutor, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but to your first question about the momentum, we have

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Speaker 1: learned that Joe Biden had apparently classified documents we don't

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Speaker 1: know how classified, we don't know what they are about

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Speaker 1: in the garage next to his corvette, in a house

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Speaker 1: that Hunter Biden was living apparently and had access to.

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Speaker 1: And so when Hunter Biden has engaged in really high

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Speaker 1: level foreign lobbying where he's trading on his name, and

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Speaker 1: there's documents there it does whether or not. I think

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Speaker 1: there are substantive reasons for concern and both the Trump

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Speaker 1: and the Biden case, because presumably there are intelligence assets

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Speaker 1: of foreign countries both in mar A Lago and around

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Speaker 1: Hunter Biden, maybe even around Mike Pence. So there is

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Speaker 1: a real substantive question. We still don't know the real

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Speaker 1: nature of many of these documents. I think really does

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Speaker 1: take some of the momentum away from this particular pursuit

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Speaker 1: of Donald Trump. Now the Georgia one, this is the

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Speaker 1: most serious, I think legal threat to Trump that I

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Speaker 1: have seen in the last several years. I don't know

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Speaker 1: about you, but to me, this is like, this is

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Speaker 1: the one that actually carries weight. And so if it

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Speaker 1: gets sort of tick, if it gets sort of tacked

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Speaker 1: on to the tiki taky ones, I don't know that

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Speaker 1: that's super helpful for the folks in Fulton County, Georgia. Yeah. No,

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Speaker 1: it's it's going to get exciting. We're gonna we're gonna

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Speaker 1: keep watching that. I think what they ought to do

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Speaker 1: just declassify all of the documents and then let let

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Speaker 1: everybody just decide who had the worst documents. And if

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Speaker 1: it's the nuclear codes, redact the nuclear codes and also

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Speaker 1: change your nuclear codes like that. You know best practices

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Speaker 1: on nuclear codes. When you have a new administration, you

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Speaker 1: do new nuclear codes. Right, that's pretty reasonable. Nor we

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Speaker 1: can agree on that. Yeah, So moving moving on to

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Speaker 1: Social Security, which which I think actually represents a wedge

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Speaker 1: that kind of points right at the most probably the

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Speaker 1: most important kind of realignment going on in politics over

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Speaker 1: the last twenty or thirty years, and that's the kind

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Speaker 1: of class realignment or de alignment going on inside the

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Speaker 1: two parties, with social Security working as a spotlight shining

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Speaker 1: right on the strange situation that we're that we're finding us.

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Speaker 1: And we can get more into that in a moment.

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Speaker 1: But Bernie Sanders, we can put up this. This a one.

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Speaker 1: So Bernie Sanders is out with his new bill to

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Speaker 1: expand and strengthen Social Security. He expands and strengthen is

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Speaker 1: by basically raising taxes on the rich. He lifts the

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Speaker 1: cap on payroll taxes for people making more than two

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. They don't get

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Speaker 1: higher Social Security benefits, but they're going to pay more

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Speaker 1: in payroll tax people at the bottom are going to

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Speaker 1: see a ten to fifteen percent increase in their SOLI

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Speaker 1: security benefits. And the actuary says that this would solidify

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Speaker 1: the program for the next seventy five years, and they

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Speaker 1: use a seventy five year window. And so you've heard

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Speaker 1: a lot from Republicans saying that they want to strengthen

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Speaker 1: Social Security, warning about the insolvency problem. Basically too fomism

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Speaker 1: here on counterpoint exactly, Basically, there's two ways to do it.

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Speaker 1: You can bring more tax money in or you can

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Speaker 1: reduce benefits. And so now Bernie Sanders has put his

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Speaker 1: cards on the table. He's like, all right, here's my idea.

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Speaker 1: Let's raise taxes on the ridge to fund it. So

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Speaker 1: how are Republicans going to respond to this, because now

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Speaker 1: if they say strengthen, it's like, oh, so you support

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Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders' plan. Oh, if you don't support Bernie Center's plan,

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Speaker 1: then you do support benefit cuts at least down the road. Right,

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Speaker 1: there's a guy on the right, I think he's at

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Speaker 1: the Manhattan Institute, Brian Riedl, who does a lot of

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Speaker 1: these calculations from the conservative perspective, and even he concedes

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Speaker 1: he has said this is in the hof Post article,

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Speaker 1: that the seventy five year mark or at least decades,

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Speaker 1: actually is a step towards for Social Security. He does, however,

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Speaker 1: raise a really good point, which is that you run

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Speaker 1: out of tax the rich proposals to then fund the

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Speaker 1: gap with Medicare, which is a very very serious problem

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Speaker 1: without implementing dramatic tax hikes on the middle class or

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Speaker 1: cutting and so the math is still really really tough

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Speaker 1: if you combine the problem that we have with both

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Speaker 1: Social Security and Medicare. And Brian Reedl has looked at

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Speaker 1: some of these numbers and one of the most interesting

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Speaker 1: things is that the average American is coming out on

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Speaker 1: top in terms of what they put into Social Security

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Speaker 1: and Medicare and what they get out. But what's even

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Speaker 1: more interesting is to see how many benefits are going

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Speaker 1: back to very wealthy Americans. We're talking about upper middle

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Speaker 1: class and upper class people. That there are a lot

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Speaker 1: of people getting benefits in the Restructuring might be another

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Speaker 1: way to look at this, but that doesn't preclude tax hikes.

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Speaker 1: It certainly doesn't preclude tax hikes on the ridge. But

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Speaker 1: it is interesting to think that what we can do

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Speaker 1: with social Security. If we tax the rich basically at

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Speaker 1: that level, then you leave Medicare Medicare without much to

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Speaker 1: do in terms of increasing taxes. From that point, I

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Speaker 1: think when it comes to the wealthy getting Social Security,

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Speaker 1: I think for everybody who makes more than four hundred thousand,

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Speaker 1: who made more than four hundred thousand dollars over their

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Speaker 1: career a year, if they want their solid security checks,

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Speaker 1: they should have to go down to a Social Security

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Speaker 1: office and stand in line every month, and also maybe

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Speaker 1: even pee in a cup, you know, do all the

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Speaker 1: degrading things that they that they make poor working class

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Speaker 1: people do to get their benefits. That way, if somebody

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Speaker 1: really wants their Social Security benefits that they paid into,

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Speaker 1: hey you can have them. Here's you know, here's the

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Speaker 1: address of the office. You got to physically go down

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Speaker 1: there and get it every month. But more seriously, what

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Speaker 1: they could do is just kind of raise taxes a

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Speaker 1: little bit more on the rich. So that way, Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you're getting it, you're but there's a progressively higher tax

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Speaker 1: rate on you. So we're just basically taxing it back.

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Speaker 1: You can have it, and we're taking it right back.

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Speaker 1: But so Mike rounds center, Mike Rounds was on. I

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Speaker 1: guess I think it was Fox. We'll find that out

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Speaker 1: in a second one of these cable networks talking about

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Speaker 1: Social Security. Let's roll a two. Here. He's pointing specifically

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Speaker 1: to the plan that your colleague, Senator Rick Scott, Republican

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Speaker 1: of Florida released when he was leading the Senate GOP's

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Speaker 1: campaign arm which says, just to quote, all federal legislation

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Speaker 1: sunsets in five years, if a law is worth keeping,

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Speaker 1: Congress can pass it again unquote. Do you support that plan?

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Speaker 1: I kind of look at social Security the way I

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Speaker 1: would at the Department of Defense and our defense spending.

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Speaker 1: We're never going to not fund defense, but at the

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Speaker 1: same time, every single year we look at how we

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Speaker 1: can make it better. And I think it's about time

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Speaker 1: that we start talking about social Security and making it better.

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Speaker 1: We've got eleven years before we actually see cuts start

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Speaker 1: to happen to people that are on Social Security, and

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Speaker 1: I think it'd be very responsible for us to do

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Speaker 1: everything we can to make those funding programs now and

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Speaker 1: the plans right now, so that we don't run out

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Speaker 1: of money in Social Security. Okay, that was obviously not Fox.

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Speaker 1: The next clip we have is Fox Business. But what

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Speaker 1: what was your what was your reaction to that? Because

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Speaker 1: all of these Republicans are getting hit with this Rick

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Speaker 1: Scott thing, like, hey man, you do you agree with

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Speaker 1: this guy who wants to sunset sold security and medicare

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Speaker 1: over five years and reupp and then you have somebody

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Speaker 1: like Mike Browns who says, yeah, we should keep we

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Speaker 1: should keep looking at it. That Democrats seeing that are like,

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Speaker 1: thank you, We're just gonna hammer you with this. What

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Speaker 1: was your reaction to it? The White House was giddy

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Speaker 1: when Rick Scott put out that plan. I mean it

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Speaker 1: was palpably giddy in Washington that the Democrats at DNC

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Speaker 1: in the White House was just tap dancing that day

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Speaker 1: because they knew this was their midterm weapon. And Mitch

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Speaker 1: McConnell was furious. And for all my problems with Mitch McConnell,

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Speaker 1: he's absolutely right to continue, you know, throwing the blame

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Speaker 1: over to Rick Scott. Now, that plan, by the way,

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Speaker 1: had a lot of really really good stuff in it,

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Speaker 1: but this one thing that was buried in it. Basically

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Speaker 1: it wasn't a huge aspect of that plan. It was

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Speaker 1: just killer And I was involved in a lot of conversations.

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Speaker 1: I remember talking to Republicans, some high level Republicans even

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Speaker 1: back in the spring, who were just furious that Scott

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Speaker 1: had sort of gone rogue and put out this plan

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Speaker 1: that included that note in it. And the reason you

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Speaker 1: keep hearing Scott and Round's talk like that, honestly, is

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Speaker 1: because there is no answer unless you do to the point,

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Speaker 1: we just had tax the rich at a crazy high rate,

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Speaker 1: and then you're still left with either Social Security or Medicare.

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Speaker 1: Like the math just doesn't add up. But they love

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Speaker 1: to talk about it, and they don't want to seek

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Speaker 1: any options that involve taxation. And on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: nobody wants to seek any options that involve cuts. So

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Speaker 1: there's no restructuring plan that fits the bill. And that's

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Speaker 1: why I think people like Mitch McConnell are like, just

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Speaker 1: shut up about it. Now. You can interpret that one way,

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Speaker 1: which is they're going to say one thing publicly and

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Speaker 1: do the other thing that debt ceiling negotiations come. I

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Speaker 1: think a lot of people are right to have that skepticism.

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Speaker 1: But I will say the mood among Republicans in Washington

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Speaker 1: was basically furious with Rick Scott that that got into

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Speaker 1: the plan. It feels like it could be the Republican

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Speaker 1: version of defund the police, where you really only had

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Speaker 1: like one or two Democrats, and you'd say, Corey Busher say,

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Speaker 1: did one interviewer he says defund the police. But in

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Speaker 1: general it's you know, they're marching with people who support

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Speaker 1: defund the police, or they're saying we ought to reduce

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Speaker 1: funding from the police and move it over to social services,

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Speaker 1: and then Republicans just you know, hit them over the

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Speaker 1: head with it, you know, for multiple election cycles in

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Speaker 1: a row, saying that you are for defund the police.

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Speaker 1: Democrats the party of defund the police. I would suspect

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Speaker 1: Democrats are just going to do the reverse to Republicans

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Speaker 1: with this over time. That's a perfect parallel because if

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Speaker 1: Republicans really believed that they needed to do entitlement reform,

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Speaker 1: like they desperately had this Paul Ryan commitment to entitlement reform,

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Speaker 1: it would have been a priority for them in seventeen.

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Speaker 1: But Republicans are politicians just like Democrats, and politicians are

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Speaker 1: categorically cowards because they want to continue being re elected,

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Speaker 1: which means they don't want to touch entitlements. They might

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Speaker 1: want to talk about it at the Chamber of Commerce meetings,

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Speaker 1: but they don't want to actually do it, except for

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Speaker 1: a few sort of deficit hawkish nerdy types that love

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Speaker 1: love doing the math and et cetera. Still think the

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Speaker 1: tea Party era was all about the Debton deficit, which

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Speaker 1: it never really was. Sager likes to make that point.

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Speaker 1: It's a good one that the tea Party was sort

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Speaker 1: of more cultural than really a movement to cut the deficit.

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Speaker 1: But all that is to say, I think that defend

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Speaker 1: the police parallels a really really apt one, and that's

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Speaker 1: why you just see some real true believers that floated

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Speaker 1: every now and then. But the real seriousness about making

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Speaker 1: those cuts. They're too cowardly to do it even if

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Speaker 1: they wanted to, and I don't suspect that they actually

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Speaker 1: really want to. And I want to play this clip

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Speaker 1: of Buddy Carter because it's interesting to see how a

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Speaker 1: kind of rank and file house Republican is talking about this.

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Speaker 1: Also want to play the clip because I love the

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Speaker 1: kind of jerkstore insult that he comes up at the

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Speaker 1: very beginning of this. Let's roll it through and remember

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Speaker 1: it took him about a week after the State of

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Speaker 1: the Union to come up with this put downs. Let's

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Speaker 1: roll a three here. The supposedly State of the Union

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Speaker 1: address that Tuesday night, it was more of a state

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Speaker 1: of confusion address. I mean Senator Biden wanted to suspend

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Speaker 1: the Social Security and Medicaid Medicare, and now he's claiming

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Speaker 1: that Republicans want to end it. No, it's ridiculous. We

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Speaker 1: have always said we want to preserve it, we want

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Speaker 1: to stabilize it, we want to save it. That's what

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Speaker 1: we want to do. Now he can continue to ignore

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Speaker 1: it if he wants to do, but I'm going to

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Speaker 1: tell you it's got to have attention. We've got to

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Speaker 1: do something about this. We've got to address this situation.

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Speaker 1: Otherwise it's not going to be there. And that's why

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Speaker 1: Republicans are trying to do our best to save this program,

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Speaker 1: to preserve it so that it'll be there for generations

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Speaker 1: to come. It's not a state of confusion. Yes, we're

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Speaker 1: going to stabilize, secure strengthen like he just was whipping

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Speaker 1: everything out. Yeah, but I think the problem for Republicans

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Speaker 1: to tell me if you agree with this, is that

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Speaker 1: if voters hear Republicans say that they want to save

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Speaker 1: solid security. They want to strengthen so or whatever they

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Speaker 1: want to do with Social Security. They get nervous, like

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Speaker 1: I don't think voters want Republicans talking about Social Security period. No. No,

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Speaker 1: Because voters are smart. They understand that those are euphemisms.

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Speaker 1: They're not dumb, and Republicans when they talk like that,

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Speaker 1: treat voters as though they are dumb. And just to

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Speaker 1: be clear, I do think like Corey Bush and defund

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Speaker 1: the police or whomever else, there are true believers in

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Speaker 1: the Republican Conference and in the Senate that absolutely do

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Speaker 1: want to cut these programs. They do want to do that,

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Speaker 1: but the party as a whole, even if they did

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Speaker 1: want to do it as a whole, they want to

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Speaker 1: get re elected more than they want to make those cuts.

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Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it's because they're all, you know,

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Speaker 1: morally upstanding people who want to protect benefits. I think

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Speaker 1: it's because they're coward So even if they believed it

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Speaker 1: needed to happen, wouldn't have the political guts to do it.

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Speaker 1: From your lips to God's ears, let's hope. Let's move

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Speaker 1: on to this great interview that John Stossel did that

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Speaker 1: went under the radar with Mike Pompeo rumored twenty twenty

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Speaker 1: four presidential candidate for CIA Director and Secretary of State

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Speaker 1: under President Trump. Fascinating and wide ranging interview in which

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Speaker 1: he really got pressed on several things. But we wanted

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Speaker 1: to look at a couple JFK and Edward Snowden. Let's

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Speaker 1: roll the first clip from that. Why'd you fight to

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Speaker 1: keep the JFK file secret? Because I was trying to

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Speaker 1: keep Americans safe? And by the way, don't paint with

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Speaker 1: too broad a brush. Ninety nine points six percent of

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Speaker 1: the JFK files are public today. But it was sixty

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Speaker 1: years ago, John, Not everything was sixty years ago. I

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Speaker 1: don't want to spend a lot of time walking through this,

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Speaker 1: but suffice it to say, the definition of a document

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Speaker 1: covered by this statute that you're referring to, it's a

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Speaker 1: little bit wonky, but suffice it to say, if Congress

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Speaker 1: holds a hearing tomorrow on the Kennedy assassination, the documents

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Speaker 1: generated tomorrow will be part of those files. Those would

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Speaker 1: be tomorrow, they'd be sixty seconds old, not sixty years old.

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Speaker 1: And last thing I'll say is there are things that

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Speaker 1: happened sixty years ago that are still important to keep

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Speaker 1: in the bolt. There are lots of things that happen

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Speaker 1: that that long ago that still are appropriate not to release.

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Speaker 1: Think of names and addresses and families. And by the way,

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Speaker 1: there's also no value in them. These don't hold the

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Speaker 1: dark secrets that everybody wants to just hold up as

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Speaker 1: the bogum. And I saw the UFO files too. We've

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Speaker 1: got bigger problems in America, got lots of bigger problems

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Speaker 1: just because something is kept secret. Why not not go

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Speaker 1: to the darkest corners. But it's a lot of fun.

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Speaker 1: I'm happy to go there with you if you'd like.

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Speaker 1: I had a chance to see not all of those

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Speaker 1: documents but most of them. The news value of them

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Speaker 1: is grossly overrated, and the desire to keep them secret,

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Speaker 1: the motivation, the rationale for keeping them secret is wholly justified.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, the content this of course to Tucker. Carlson

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Speaker 1: recently said on his show that he invited Mike Pompeo

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Speaker 1: on to talk about why he had made the decision

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Speaker 1: to not release these documents, and Carlson also said that

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Speaker 1: he spoke with somebody who had direct access to those

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Speaker 1: documents and that that person said it indicated that the

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Speaker 1: CIA itself was involved in a conspiracy to assassinateing Kennedy.

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Speaker 1: So that's Carlson's reporting. Carlson said Mike Pompeo, who never

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Speaker 1: turns down an opportunity to come on to his show,

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Speaker 1: declined the opportunity. He did agree to do an interview

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Speaker 1: with John Stossel. Good for John Stossel for pressing him.

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Speaker 1: Should we take Mike Pompeyo's word that there's nothing to

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Speaker 1: see here? And you know this better than I do.

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Speaker 1: But what he's talking about, that this sixty year thing

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Speaker 1: is absolute nonsense of Congress brig a Hole. The hearing

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Speaker 1: tomorrow that it would be you know, in the JFK

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Speaker 1: of files is sort of hilarious, and I think he

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Speaker 1: almost knew it when he was saying it was funny,

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Speaker 1: which is why he added that second answer, which is

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Speaker 1: that you know, he goes on to say in the interview,

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Speaker 1: potentially there are human sources that are still alive that

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Speaker 1: might be compromised by it, and that I think is

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Speaker 1: his real contention, that if there are people who are

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Speaker 1: still alive that might be implicated by potentially releasing the

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Speaker 1: percentage of documents which is small but obviously important because

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Speaker 1: they haven't been released despite the timeline, that these confidential

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Speaker 1: human sources might be the problem. And Ryan, you mentioned

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Speaker 1: the Tucker thing, and this is a great time to

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Speaker 1: bring up a theory. I know both you and I

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Speaker 1: are interested in that a legal scholar, and the name

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Speaker 1: escapes me at the moment floated, which is that, potentially,

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Speaker 1: is Donald Trump Tucker Carlson's source who would have access

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Speaker 1: both to Tucker and to those documents? Is it Donald

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Speaker 1: Trump himself that told Tucker Carlson the CIA was involved

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Speaker 1: in this assassination. And then you can when you sort

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Speaker 1: of fill in that blank, if that's the case, that

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Speaker 1: the remaining JFK files sort of definitively prove that link,

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Speaker 1: Mike Pompeo can say, maybe to himself and to the

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Speaker 1: country in a vague way, that you know, he still

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Speaker 1: needs to keep American safe and that the news value

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Speaker 1: is low potentially because everybody already knows about the JFK files,

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Speaker 1: the JFK assassination's relationship to the CIA. So you can

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Speaker 1: sort of see the intellectual gymnastics that might go into

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Speaker 1: a rationalization like that. Yeah, And if you go back

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Speaker 1: and look at the syntax of the quote that the

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Speaker 1: person gave to Tucker Carlson, this person that you know,

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Speaker 1: had a direct access to these files. He said. The

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Speaker 1: quote was something like, it's all fake. It's it's not

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Speaker 1: the country that we thought that we thought it was.

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Speaker 1: And once, when you think about the different quotes that

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Speaker 1: than Carlson reads on air, and you think about how

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Speaker 1: Trump speaks and thinks, you're like, oh, that's funny. That

431
00:22:47,160 --> 00:22:50,080
Speaker 1: actually might be Trump might be his source. I don't

432
00:22:50,119 --> 00:22:53,600
Speaker 1: know if that doesn't necessarily inspire me with more confidence

433
00:22:53,640 --> 00:22:58,080
Speaker 1: than less, like I know, but it does maybe want

434
00:22:58,080 --> 00:23:00,679
Speaker 1: to see the documents, like, Okay, what are these? And

435
00:23:01,600 --> 00:23:05,239
Speaker 1: Pompeo's argument to me isn't serious because there are there

436
00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:08,320
Speaker 1: are such things as redactions, like if there is an

437
00:23:08,320 --> 00:23:12,199
Speaker 1: eighty year old who was undercover in Mexico City in

438
00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:16,560
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty and you know when they were twenty years old,

439
00:23:16,720 --> 00:23:18,920
Speaker 1: then you can redact that name or you can they

440
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:22,400
Speaker 1: and they have redacted enormous amounts of the files that

441
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:25,520
Speaker 1: have that they have released so far. And so if

442
00:23:25,720 --> 00:23:28,000
Speaker 1: if that's really what it is, then then just go

443
00:23:28,119 --> 00:23:31,159
Speaker 1: then just go ahead and release it. Let but let

444
00:23:31,320 --> 00:23:35,920
Speaker 1: let's let's play the Edward Snowden clip where he presses

445
00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:38,840
Speaker 1: him on these questions and gets some rather kind of

446
00:23:38,880 --> 00:23:42,640
Speaker 1: stark answers from Pompeo. Edward Snowden, the man who told

447
00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:45,399
Speaker 1: the world about the federal government sweeping top secret domestic

448
00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:48,480
Speaker 1: spying program, is on the move. After Snowden fled America,

449
00:23:48,520 --> 00:23:51,680
Speaker 1: Pompeo said, we've had the trader, Edward Snowden steel that information.

450
00:23:51,720 --> 00:23:54,080
Speaker 1: He should be brought back from Russian given due process,

451
00:23:54,080 --> 00:23:55,879
Speaker 1: and I think the proper outcome would be that he

452
00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:58,040
Speaker 1: would be given a death sentence. He should be executed.

453
00:23:58,040 --> 00:24:01,640
Speaker 1: He's a trader. Yes. What the NC doing every single day,

454
00:24:01,680 --> 00:24:03,920
Speaker 1: it's ordinary course of business, is violating not only the

455
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:07,560
Speaker 1: laws as written, but likely the constitutions. What he told

456
00:24:07,600 --> 00:24:11,080
Speaker 1: the American people about court said was illegal. Both of

457
00:24:11,119 --> 00:24:12,440
Speaker 1: those thoughts can be held in one's head at the

458
00:24:12,480 --> 00:24:14,560
Speaker 1: same time. So what should he have done. You can't

459
00:24:14,600 --> 00:24:19,240
Speaker 1: steal stuff, John, You can't steal American secrets. It's unacceptable,

460
00:24:19,240 --> 00:24:22,040
Speaker 1: even even if your justification is noble. He put my

461
00:24:22,080 --> 00:24:25,639
Speaker 1: friends at risk. He put your family members, or your cousin,

462
00:24:25,720 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 1: or your friend who's serving in a submarine fleet somewhere

463
00:24:27,560 --> 00:24:28,919
Speaker 1: in the world he put their lives at risk, and

464
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:30,760
Speaker 1: he did it by stealing American stuff, and that by

465
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:32,840
Speaker 1: definition is unlawful. And he did it in a way

466
00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:34,920
Speaker 1: that he knew put their lives at risk. What's one

467
00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:37,760
Speaker 1: example that no longer would threaten somebody, How does he

468
00:24:37,800 --> 00:24:40,359
Speaker 1: threaten somebody? Well, the information that he stole and then

469
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:43,800
Speaker 1: provided to the world, shared trying to figure out how

470
00:24:43,800 --> 00:24:45,399
Speaker 1: to do it without being the same man that he is,

471
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:51,399
Speaker 1: shared patterns of American activity and our naval fleet. It's dangerous, John,

472
00:24:51,560 --> 00:24:54,720
Speaker 1: that's not noble. That's not sharing something the government's doing.

473
00:24:54,760 --> 00:24:57,320
Speaker 1: That's bad. And that wasn't his mission set. His mission

474
00:24:57,359 --> 00:24:59,520
Speaker 1: ship was to be mischievous and undermine the United States

475
00:24:59,560 --> 00:25:02,640
Speaker 1: of America, no mistake about it. Edward Snowden's intentions were

476
00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:05,720
Speaker 1: to weaken the United States of America and he did. Yeh,

477
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:12,200
Speaker 1: What was your reaction to that? So it's he also

478
00:25:12,320 --> 00:25:15,960
Speaker 1: in the interview didn't know. When Stosselbrode brought up that

479
00:25:16,119 --> 00:25:20,000
Speaker 1: there was a previous whistleblower, Pompeo said he hadn't heard

480
00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:23,440
Speaker 1: that another person had attempted to blow the whistle by

481
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:28,320
Speaker 1: talking to Republican staffers. By the way, Republican congressional staffers,

482
00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:32,600
Speaker 1: intelligence staffers with this information and had ultimately been punished

483
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:34,480
Speaker 1: that actually a lot of people had been punished in

484
00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:36,639
Speaker 1: the process of trying to blow the whistle on the

485
00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:40,240
Speaker 1: NSA's Post nine eleven activities, And Pompeos basically said he

486
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 1: wasn't familiar with the fact that that had happened. And so,

487
00:25:44,119 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 1: if I'm in Edward Snowden's case, do I morally know

488
00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:50,640
Speaker 1: whether or not he did the right thing? It's hard

489
00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:53,200
Speaker 1: for me to say. I think there's a real question there.

490
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:55,960
Speaker 1: But at the same time, Edward Snowden is clearly a

491
00:25:56,040 --> 00:26:01,600
Speaker 1: victim of the impossibility that our government created surrounding blowing

492
00:26:01,600 --> 00:26:05,080
Speaker 1: the whistle on the NSA. And the value I think

493
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:07,159
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy, are you. The value of what he

494
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 1: revealed is outweighed the sort of cost benefit. The benefit

495
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:15,800
Speaker 1: of what he revealed is outweighed by the cost, and

496
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:20,480
Speaker 1: we continue, I think to learn more proving that's the case. Yeah,

497
00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:22,720
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly right now. And I also think

498
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 1: that there's something revealing about his use of America and

499
00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:30,480
Speaker 1: America's secrets, and it raises a question of what is

500
00:26:30,520 --> 00:26:33,879
Speaker 1: the definition of America and for Pompeo, clearly what he

501
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 1: means by America is the American government like that that

502
00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:43,560
Speaker 1: the American government has sole custody of all of these secrets.

503
00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: That whereas I think most people would think of America

504
00:26:47,119 --> 00:26:50,199
Speaker 1: as we the people, that that there is, that that

505
00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:53,560
Speaker 1: there is that there is a collective ownership of these things,

506
00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:56,440
Speaker 1: and that that the people have a right to this information.

507
00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:58,879
Speaker 1: Now that the government has a right to try to

508
00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:02,879
Speaker 1: keep importance secrets, and it ought to do that to

509
00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:05,679
Speaker 1: keep people safe. If it fails at doing that, it

510
00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:09,120
Speaker 1: has remedies. It can fire those people, it cannot hire

511
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:11,000
Speaker 1: those people in the future, it can take away their

512
00:27:11,040 --> 00:27:14,560
Speaker 1: security clearances. But everyone in this country has a First

513
00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:16,800
Speaker 1: Amendment right to speech. Whether you work for the government

514
00:27:17,320 --> 00:27:19,639
Speaker 1: or not, you have a First Amendment right to speech.

515
00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:21,800
Speaker 1: And all of us, as Americans, you know, have a

516
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:24,639
Speaker 1: right to know whether or not our government is breaking laws.

517
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 1: And I think your point is a great one that Okay,

518
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:31,200
Speaker 1: let's say that Edward Soden had tried that route. Oh,

519
00:27:31,359 --> 00:27:33,920
Speaker 1: we don't have to say, because we know that people

520
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:36,160
Speaker 1: have tried it in the past and they haven't haven't

521
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 1: gone anywhere. So you can't set up a situation where

522
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:41,879
Speaker 1: nobody can blow the whistle legally and then also say, well,

523
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 1: that's that's your only avenue. Oh it doesn't work too bad. Whoops. Yep,

524
00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 1: no exactly. And just as we wrap up, I want

525
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 1: to make a final comment. I think it's great that

526
00:27:51,359 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: a former CIA director is actually running for president because

527
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:56,680
Speaker 1: that means you will be peppered with a lot of questions.

528
00:27:56,880 --> 00:28:00,280
Speaker 1: Good for John scoswel for asking those questions. And I

529
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:03,240
Speaker 1: look forward to hearing more people question my Pompeio on

530
00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:06,880
Speaker 1: these issues. And coincidentally, the last CIA director to serve

531
00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 1: as president is thought to have possibly been involved with

532
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 1: the very conspiracy about Pompeo does not want more documents

533
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:19,960
Speaker 1: to be to be released upon So yeah, another another

534
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:22,480
Speaker 1: CIA director And what I don't I don't. I can't

535
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 1: imagine him. And the last question for you, I can't

536
00:28:25,080 --> 00:28:29,600
Speaker 1: imagine him as a credible Republican candidate. But what do

537
00:28:29,680 --> 00:28:33,520
Speaker 1: I know? Could he be? You know, I think he's

538
00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 1: good on a huge issue, good from the perspective of

539
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:39,760
Speaker 1: a Republican voter on a huge issue for them, which

540
00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:41,640
Speaker 1: is China. So that is a top priority for the

541
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:44,719
Speaker 1: average Republican voter, and Pompeo probably checks a lot of boxes.

542
00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:47,160
Speaker 1: On that note, Niki Haley is obviously announcing her run

543
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:50,640
Speaker 1: for president today, someone who I don't think checks a

544
00:28:50,640 --> 00:28:54,640
Speaker 1: lot of boxes on China and the economy and national

545
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 1: security in the same way Pompeo might. But two almost

546
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:04,120
Speaker 1: similar candidates in a way kind of hawkish pre Trump figures.

547
00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 1: So it'll be interesting to watch the racing wall. Well,

548
00:29:10,440 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 1: moving to China and India, if we can put up

549
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:17,880
Speaker 1: this c one here. So, the Indian authorities have now

550
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:23,200
Speaker 1: rated the offices of the BBC in India in retaliation

551
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:27,400
Speaker 1: for the Modi the Modi documentary that we've that we've

552
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:30,840
Speaker 1: talked about here. We previously talked about this documentary in

553
00:29:30,880 --> 00:29:36,200
Speaker 1: the context of Twitter and YouTube both agreeing to take

554
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:40,200
Speaker 1: it down after demands made by the Indian government that

555
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:44,040
Speaker 1: they that they do so. This is a documentary that

556
00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 1: looks into Prime Minister Modis role in a brutal massacre

557
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 1: back in I believe it was two thousand and two.

558
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 1: It's a two part documentary and has been called propaganda

559
00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:00,320
Speaker 1: and basically banned to be viewed in any of Some

560
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 1: students UH tried tried to view it. Some were detained

561
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 1: by police. Others at other universities tried to view it

562
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:11,360
Speaker 1: were pelted with with stones. It's becoming not just a

563
00:30:11,360 --> 00:30:14,880
Speaker 1: cultural moment in Indy but also a free speech touchdown

564
00:30:14,920 --> 00:30:18,320
Speaker 1: in the country, but also relates uh to free speech

565
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:21,760
Speaker 1: debates here in the United States because Uh Elon musk

566
00:30:22,080 --> 00:30:27,720
Speaker 1: did finally comment on Twitter's decision to comply with India's

567
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:31,840
Speaker 1: request to take to block any sharing of the BBC documentary,

568
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 1: and he said, look, his comment was basically, look, I'm

569
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:39,120
Speaker 1: running three companies. I don't have time to fix every problem.

570
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 1: Uh that's going on with Twitter all over the world.

571
00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:42,640
Speaker 1: You know, what do you what do you people want

572
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 1: from me? And that was several weeks ago. Uh it

573
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:50,320
Speaker 1: is it is still being banned. Twitter's offices actually were

574
00:30:50,400 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 1: raided before Elon Musk uh purchased the company by Indian

575
00:30:55,440 --> 00:31:01,000
Speaker 1: authorities because the the the pre Musk Twitter was actually

576
00:31:01,080 --> 00:31:04,880
Speaker 1: pretty aggressive in rejecting a lot of these demands from

577
00:31:04,920 --> 00:31:07,600
Speaker 1: the MOTI government, which led to a rate of their offices.

578
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:11,640
Speaker 1: So what was your reaction when you saw that that

579
00:31:11,760 --> 00:31:19,840
Speaker 1: Indian stormtroopers are like moving in to a media organization's office. Well, yeah,

580
00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:23,320
Speaker 1: And according to CNN, these were tax authorities that were

581
00:31:23,400 --> 00:31:26,520
Speaker 1: raiding the office and not letting employees in. And the

582
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:29,440
Speaker 1: first thing I thought about actually was a CNN headline

583
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:32,440
Speaker 1: that asked, this week, I mean, this is headlines that

584
00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:36,560
Speaker 1: are happening concurrently, is the iPhones made in India era

585
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:39,960
Speaker 1: about to begin? Look at that. And so again you

586
00:31:40,040 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 1: have a situation very similar to what was happening in

587
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:46,000
Speaker 1: China in some very important ways, which is that companies

588
00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:51,880
Speaker 1: like companies like Apple are about to entangle themselves very

589
00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:56,240
Speaker 1: very deeply in another country where leadership I'm not talking

590
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:59,800
Speaker 1: about the people, but while people in the government shared

591
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,360
Speaker 1: different set of values about what that government should look like,

592
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:05,480
Speaker 1: and how that government should function, and what the relationship

593
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:07,719
Speaker 1: between the people and the government should look like. So,

594
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 1: for instance, in that article, you have a top minister

595
00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:13,560
Speaker 1: in India saying that Apple wants to go for making

596
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:16,960
Speaker 1: five to seven percent of its products in India to

597
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:19,920
Speaker 1: twenty five percent of its products in India. This is

598
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:22,760
Speaker 1: a huge jump. Fox con wants to start doing more

599
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 1: business in India. Obviously, that's a huge iPhone manufacturer that

600
00:32:26,120 --> 00:32:28,440
Speaker 1: has done most of its operations in China for a

601
00:32:28,520 --> 00:32:31,600
Speaker 1: very long time, had huge problems We covered that here

602
00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:33,840
Speaker 1: extensively just a couple of months ago, when it came

603
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:36,840
Speaker 1: to workers upset about the zero COVID policy. Tim Cook

604
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:40,560
Speaker 1: has recently said that India is hugely exciting. That's his

605
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:44,000
Speaker 1: direct quote. And there's also an interesting point in the

606
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:47,840
Speaker 1: CNN article which talks about how Samsung ended up already

607
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 1: moving shifting a lot of its operations. It's a lot

608
00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:53,920
Speaker 1: of its manufacturing from China to India because of rising

609
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:57,760
Speaker 1: wages in China, the rising cost of labor in China,

610
00:32:57,920 --> 00:33:01,720
Speaker 1: meaning here are some poor people we can exploit in

611
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:06,680
Speaker 1: another country to keep costs low for us. And so

612
00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 1: this dynamic is now emerging when it comes to India.

613
00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:12,720
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, this is their last element is sending,

614
00:33:13,080 --> 00:33:15,440
Speaker 1: is reporting that more and more CEOs are about to

615
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 1: make trips back to China or already have. We're talking Volkswegen, Mercedes.

616
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:23,360
Speaker 1: We're talking about Albert Borola of Pfizer and Tim Cook

617
00:33:23,440 --> 00:33:27,720
Speaker 1: of Apple flirting once again over in China, you know,

618
00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:32,320
Speaker 1: with their benefactors in the Chinese business community and the the

619
00:33:32,440 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: Chinese government to the extent that those are separate. But

620
00:33:35,560 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: this is going to pose a really difficult, I think

621
00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:40,719
Speaker 1: question for Apple, and to see Tim Cook in particular,

622
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 1: just diving right back into the deep end in a

623
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:48,440
Speaker 1: way that so reminds me almost eerily of the early

624
00:33:48,600 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 1: days of our sort of China merger. There seems to

625
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:55,920
Speaker 1: be the same naivete. I don't know, it's not naivete,

626
00:33:55,960 --> 00:33:58,840
Speaker 1: it's cynicism, I guess, Ryan, right, And you see the

627
00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:03,520
Speaker 1: same process unfold continuously. You know, the comp factories start

628
00:34:03,600 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: in the kind of the north of the United States.

629
00:34:05,800 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 1: As they unionize and costs grow there, labor costs grow there,

630
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,799
Speaker 1: they move down to the south where they have fewer unions.

631
00:34:11,560 --> 00:34:14,440
Speaker 1: As those factories start to unionize, they move from there

632
00:34:14,480 --> 00:34:17,799
Speaker 1: to Mexico and elsewhere in Central America. Then when when

633
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:20,680
Speaker 1: those costs get too expensive, then they move over to China.

634
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:23,959
Speaker 1: Now that it's getting expensive in China, you know, they're

635
00:34:24,040 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 1: they're moving from there over to Southeast Age and over

636
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:28,759
Speaker 1: over to India too. And I'm curious if you take

637
00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:31,520
Speaker 1: that Indian number seriously, you know, we have to take

638
00:34:31,600 --> 00:34:33,640
Speaker 1: the source with a grain of salt. This is a

639
00:34:33,719 --> 00:34:36,520
Speaker 1: this is an Indian minister who is you know, who

640
00:34:36,560 --> 00:34:38,839
Speaker 1: has an incentive to kind of you know, pomp up

641
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:41,480
Speaker 1: how much Apple is going to how much business Apple

642
00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:44,319
Speaker 1: is going to be doing in there. The ninety five

643
00:34:44,360 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 1: percent of the manufacturing that gets done in China is

644
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:51,239
Speaker 1: done because the Chinese government, you know, subsidized these the

645
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:53,600
Speaker 1: development of these factories over the last twenty to thirty

646
00:34:53,680 --> 00:34:57,360
Speaker 1: years to a significant degree. So, you know, how quickly

647
00:34:57,719 --> 00:35:00,279
Speaker 1: do we think that this could actually happen in or

648
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:03,240
Speaker 1: is this just or is this something of a bluff

649
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:06,520
Speaker 1: that they're that Tim Apple is my favorite name for

650
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:09,920
Speaker 1: that guy, that Tim Apple would be using uh against

651
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:13,040
Speaker 1: against China to try to just say, look, look, we

652
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:16,960
Speaker 1: do have leverage against you, because it looks India they're

653
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:21,520
Speaker 1: they're desperate for us, and we're investing heavily over there. Well,

654
00:35:21,560 --> 00:35:23,799
Speaker 1: a couple of things. That's a great question because on

655
00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:26,279
Speaker 1: that point, one, if it's getting I mean, this is

656
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 1: all about the bottom line for them. There's no sort

657
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:31,160
Speaker 1: of moral argument for China in the way that they

658
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:34,080
Speaker 1: were making you know, around WTO I think you know,

659
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:37,520
Speaker 1: they've they've really basically just given up on that. So

660
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:39,480
Speaker 1: at this point it's all about the bottom line. And

661
00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:43,040
Speaker 1: if there are a lower wage costs in India, then

662
00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:46,080
Speaker 1: I think that's extremely tempting especially if they start getting

663
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:50,200
Speaker 1: showered with subsidies. And on top of that, if if

664
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:54,080
Speaker 1: India is taking back seat to the sort of geopolitical

665
00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:58,279
Speaker 1: tensions with China, especially over time, one that we have

666
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:01,800
Speaker 1: this like sort of military conflict getting increasing or potential

667
00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:06,040
Speaker 1: military conflict getting increasingly increasingly hot, then they have supply

668
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:09,320
Speaker 1: chain concerns that come along with another question about the

669
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:12,239
Speaker 1: bottom line and so the financial risks of continuing to

670
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 1: do business in China versus what they might see as

671
00:36:15,200 --> 00:36:18,560
Speaker 1: a lack of financial risks in India. I think that

672
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:22,360
Speaker 1: would be enough to actually really start to shift some

673
00:36:22,520 --> 00:36:26,320
Speaker 1: of this business. But on that point it is I

674
00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: shouldn't say naive. It is cynical again to make this

675
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:33,760
Speaker 1: bet on India, When to your point, Ryan, we're seeing

676
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:39,280
Speaker 1: tax tax authorities raid a media outlet over apparently apparently

677
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:41,960
Speaker 1: a documentary. You can see in similar ways how our

678
00:36:42,040 --> 00:36:46,560
Speaker 1: idea of liberal democracy or classical liberalism is again going

679
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:49,799
Speaker 1: to clash in a way that might not necessarily be

680
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:53,240
Speaker 1: a rising tide lifting all boats. And the Indian governments

681
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:55,319
Speaker 1: France was Look, if the PBC hasn't done anything wrong,

682
00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:58,919
Speaker 1: they don't have to worry about these inspections by these

683
00:36:59,239 --> 00:37:02,960
Speaker 1: financial authorities that it also reminded me of prohibition. If

684
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:06,400
Speaker 1: you remember who who was doing the like the bashing

685
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:09,239
Speaker 1: in the doors of all the of the saloons and

686
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:13,400
Speaker 1: all the bootleggers, those were Treasury Department officials. So you

687
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:16,840
Speaker 1: know this, it's certainly not outside of the realm of

688
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:19,799
Speaker 1: possibility that you can have tax taxcoons that are that

689
00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: are knocking, that are knocking your door down. But let's

690
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:27,080
Speaker 1: let's turn now to a kind of fun story that

691
00:37:27,080 --> 00:37:32,600
Speaker 1: that Bloomberg put out UH this week about uh ESG,

692
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:38,120
Speaker 1: the kind of protests against ESG done by Texas and Florida.

693
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:40,640
Speaker 1: They crunched a bunch of their numbers. Essentially, what they

694
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:46,080
Speaker 1: found is that Florida and Texas, by refusing to work

695
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:51,759
Speaker 1: with major banks that embrace kind of ESG standards, now

696
00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:56,560
Speaker 1: have much less demand for their for their their bond floats,

697
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:00,920
Speaker 1: and as a result, they're paying somewhere between you know,

698
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:05,400
Speaker 1: thirty five and fifty five basis points higher, which in

699
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:10,000
Speaker 1: the case of Texas accounted for about five hundred plus

700
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 1: million dollars and probably something similar for Florida given the

701
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 1: roughly equal size of their economy. So in other words,

702
00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:21,360
Speaker 1: for the exact to borrow the exact same amount of money.

703
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:26,319
Speaker 1: They're spending hundreds of millions of dollars more so that

704
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:29,719
Speaker 1: they don't have to work with these companies that they

705
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:33,400
Speaker 1: consider to be politically incorrect. The whole thing to me

706
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:40,839
Speaker 1: just hilarious. Christina was he named pushaw the Ronda Santis spokesperson.

707
00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:46,080
Speaker 1: She actually liked one of the responses to my tweet

708
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:49,360
Speaker 1: up there that said, look, that's just thirty five basis

709
00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:51,920
Speaker 1: points is a fair price to pay to not have

710
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:54,480
Speaker 1: to deal with these woke banks, And she liked that.

711
00:38:54,560 --> 00:38:56,920
Speaker 1: So that's we're in this weird place where there's an

712
00:38:56,920 --> 00:39:01,120
Speaker 1: acknowledgment that, Okay, this actually is costing the taxpayers of

713
00:39:01,120 --> 00:39:04,880
Speaker 1: Florida more money, but from their perspective, it's it's worth it,

714
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:09,400
Speaker 1: and that the fiduciary responsibility to get the lowest to

715
00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:13,960
Speaker 1: get the lowest interest rate on the loans is outweighed

716
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:19,040
Speaker 1: by the kind of the political necessity to push back

717
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:24,000
Speaker 1: against this. The trend of ESG what what what? What

718
00:39:24,040 --> 00:39:25,840
Speaker 1: do you think is? It is? It is the price

719
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:29,600
Speaker 1: worth it? I'm so glad we're talking about this article

720
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:32,239
Speaker 1: because I have a completely different perspective on it than

721
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:34,880
Speaker 1: you do. I thought it was just dripping with this

722
00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:40,839
Speaker 1: classiest condescension for it was yeah, oh, it was amazing. Yeah,

723
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:43,600
Speaker 1: these like red state cultural conservatives who don't know what's

724
00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:46,240
Speaker 1: in their own interests. They're too dumb to vote based

725
00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:48,719
Speaker 1: on what's actually in their interests. You heard over and

726
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:52,560
Speaker 1: over again. But in a sense, I think the tweet

727
00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: that Christina Peshaan liked, you would probably find a whole

728
00:39:56,520 --> 00:40:01,200
Speaker 1: lot of Floridians, whether they are middle class, upper class,

729
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:05,000
Speaker 1: agreeing with that. I don't know about the low income bracket.

730
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:07,000
Speaker 1: I think that's probably a very different question. But I

731
00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:09,839
Speaker 1: think you would go a lot of Floridians saying hell yes,

732
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:12,720
Speaker 1: it's the same sentiments you find with two other areas,

733
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:16,239
Speaker 1: one restoring and second of all tariffs. There were the

734
00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:21,160
Speaker 1: sort of corporate press was sitting in their air conditioning

735
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:24,919
Speaker 1: studios talking about how the soy tariffs, for instance, were

736
00:40:24,960 --> 00:40:27,560
Speaker 1: just crushing soybean farmers in the Midwest and the ones

737
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:30,359
Speaker 1: that Trump had implemented, and then they would send, you know,

738
00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 1: some sweaty correspondent out to talk to farmers at the

739
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:35,560
Speaker 1: state fair, and the farmers would all be like, hell, yeah,

740
00:40:35,600 --> 00:40:38,400
Speaker 1: we support the tariffs, it needs to happen, and you

741
00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:40,760
Speaker 1: get a similar sort of sentiment from a lot of people.

742
00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:43,759
Speaker 1: When it comes to restoring there are mixed attitudes about

743
00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:45,840
Speaker 1: that in the country. But hey, for instance, if it

744
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:48,799
Speaker 1: costs a little bit more to bring jobs back here

745
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:51,440
Speaker 1: to make things in America, would you prefer that, you

746
00:40:51,480 --> 00:40:53,960
Speaker 1: get a lot of people saying yes. And it's just

747
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:59,320
Speaker 1: like the article, for instance, in Bloomberg sites that Larry

748
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:03,480
Speaker 1: Fink him else has said that ESG is a good thing,

749
00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:06,120
Speaker 1: as though that's supposed to be the persuasive argument. Now,

750
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:08,439
Speaker 1: if you go tell Floridians, if you explain to them

751
00:41:08,520 --> 00:41:12,239
Speaker 1: the bullshit that Blackrock is pulling around the country and say, yeah,

752
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:14,480
Speaker 1: you're going to pay a little bit extra in taxes

753
00:41:14,520 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 1: because we don't want Florida to be entangled with financially

754
00:41:18,920 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 1: complicit with what Blackrock is doing. Man, I think you

755
00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 1: would get a pretty resounding sentiment. I think it's I

756
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:31,200
Speaker 1: think you got to respect Republicans for wielding power here.

757
00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 1: Like if they really believe that this is a mission

758
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:38,840
Speaker 1: that is important to them and they're they're willing to

759
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:41,640
Speaker 1: then you know, admit that they're going to spend more

760
00:41:42,080 --> 00:41:45,759
Speaker 1: money financing their debt in order to push back against it,

761
00:41:46,280 --> 00:41:49,759
Speaker 1: you know, you do have to credit them. I and

762
00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:53,239
Speaker 1: I appreciated Christina acknowledging that that that that is what's

763
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:56,080
Speaker 1: going on. That could because there would be a tendency

764
00:41:56,120 --> 00:41:58,440
Speaker 1: to say this is, you know, there's other reasons that

765
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:02,840
Speaker 1: the that you're paying more financing. Although Bloomberg's analysis is

766
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:05,040
Speaker 1: pretty rock solid and I agree with you, I think

767
00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:08,439
Speaker 1: that on this, on this sense, I think that from

768
00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:10,839
Speaker 1: the from the left, I think people would say, like, yes,

769
00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 1: if it helps do something about runaway climate change, then

770
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: we would be willing to pay a little bit more.

771
00:42:20,520 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: If it brings manufacturing back to the United States, we'd

772
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:25,000
Speaker 1: be willing to pay a little bit More's if it

773
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:29,520
Speaker 1: supports unionized labor, we'd be willing to pay a little

774
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:32,960
Speaker 1: bit more. And you know, if it supports a higher wage,

775
00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:35,560
Speaker 1: because you often see people say, well, if you pay

776
00:42:35,760 --> 00:42:38,600
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen dollars an hour wage, then you know

777
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:41,040
Speaker 1: your happy meal is going to cost another fifteen cents,

778
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:44,440
Speaker 1: And a lot of liberals say, fine, I would rather

779
00:42:44,480 --> 00:42:48,080
Speaker 1: pay that fifteen cents and have you know a living wage, Well,

780
00:42:48,200 --> 00:42:50,239
Speaker 1: fifteen isn't a living wage anymore. And a lot of

781
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:53,080
Speaker 1: a lot of areas, but the point is the same.

782
00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:57,239
Speaker 1: So what's nice about it from my perspective is that

783
00:42:57,360 --> 00:43:00,759
Speaker 1: it has moved us out of of free mark a dogma.

784
00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:05,160
Speaker 1: Now we're debating, you know how as a democratic society

785
00:43:05,360 --> 00:43:07,480
Speaker 1: we ought to be moving resources around, and I think

786
00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: that's what we ought to do rather than just pretending

787
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:13,279
Speaker 1: that we're all just going to be hands off and

788
00:43:13,400 --> 00:43:15,840
Speaker 1: you know, wherever the chips fall is is the fairest

789
00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:18,960
Speaker 1: way for it to shake out. No, you're really you're

790
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:20,799
Speaker 1: really right about that, And that's an important point that

791
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:24,239
Speaker 1: it actually is. I think both a political benefit and

792
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:27,319
Speaker 1: obviously a moral one for politicians like Rondo Santis and

793
00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:30,320
Speaker 1: Greg Abbatt to be honest that this is a cost,

794
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:32,880
Speaker 1: that this is a hidden tax, to borrow the exact

795
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:36,160
Speaker 1: phrase from the Bloomberg article that said, I think it's

796
00:43:36,160 --> 00:43:38,960
Speaker 1: also really important. The climate stuff is a little bit different,

797
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:41,480
Speaker 1: but like the the S and the G part of

798
00:43:41,520 --> 00:43:45,520
Speaker 1: that of ESG, it's really important to acknowledge that in

799
00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 1: many cases, if not most, it is a corporate pr

800
00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:52,040
Speaker 1: smoke screen so that they continue to can continue to

801
00:43:52,080 --> 00:43:55,239
Speaker 1: act like Blackrock does. Chevron has all of the e

802
00:43:55,680 --> 00:43:58,200
Speaker 1: they will spend all day talking about the E and

803
00:43:58,239 --> 00:44:00,239
Speaker 1: how good they are on the E. They will give

804
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:03,799
Speaker 1: to charities that support the E, and it's nonsense. It's

805
00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:06,920
Speaker 1: a way for them to cover their own asses because

806
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:10,240
Speaker 1: they're doing very bad things and they're doing them behind

807
00:44:10,239 --> 00:44:13,000
Speaker 1: closed doors, so they try to bring good things into public.

808
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 1: Might it funnel some money into some good causes, sure,

809
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:19,799
Speaker 1: But if you look overall at many many of the

810
00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:23,160
Speaker 1: people that are benefiting from ESG dollars, there are people

811
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:26,880
Speaker 1: that corporations are just using as human shields, as charitable

812
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:29,960
Speaker 1: shields to continue doing bad behavior because they, at the

813
00:44:30,080 --> 00:44:33,359
Speaker 1: end of the day, are corporatists, they are capitalists. They're

814
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:35,399
Speaker 1: doing what they think is best for their bottom line,

815
00:44:35,400 --> 00:44:38,120
Speaker 1: which is to be able to advertise how good they

816
00:44:38,120 --> 00:44:41,120
Speaker 1: are on ESG. And it allows them to go to

817
00:44:41,160 --> 00:44:45,400
Speaker 1: cocktail parties with their heads held high without actually doing anything. So,

818
00:44:45,920 --> 00:44:50,520
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very The Bloomberg article was hilarious.

819
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 1: I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, and we could

820
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 1: put that Bloomberg article up that next element there. But yes,

821
00:44:56,640 --> 00:44:59,080
Speaker 1: lately Fong at the intercept. If you google his reporting

822
00:44:59,239 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 1: and ESG, you'll find a number of good stories that

823
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:06,759
Speaker 1: he's done some of them, exposing how private prison companies

824
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 1: will score super ESG scores. Uh. He interviewed one CEO

825
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:15,359
Speaker 1: whose lawyers told him, you know the fact that like

826
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:19,359
Speaker 1: your mother was half Asian American means that you can

827
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:22,960
Speaker 1: qualify as a minority and then and then your ESG

828
00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:26,279
Speaker 1: score will go up x amount because now you can

829
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:28,759
Speaker 1: say that you're it's a minority run like company or

830
00:45:28,800 --> 00:45:31,440
Speaker 1: something like that, like so and and the CEO himself

831
00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:34,799
Speaker 1: was like, this is completely absurd, and so there to

832
00:45:34,840 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 1: me that the there there is, there's an enormous amount

833
00:45:39,120 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 1: worth criticizing esg Over. I think that while wokeness is

834
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:47,640
Speaker 1: the thing that gets talked about as the as the

835
00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:50,280
Speaker 1: kind of crux of this and that and that sells,

836
00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:51,800
Speaker 1: I think a little bit better. I think it's actually

837
00:45:51,840 --> 00:45:56,160
Speaker 1: the EU that that is the actual kind of power

838
00:45:56,239 --> 00:45:59,480
Speaker 1: center where this debate is being being held. And if

839
00:45:59,520 --> 00:46:02,400
Speaker 1: and if you and the Republicans sometimes and kind of

840
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 1: right wing Democrats who are critical of it, they'll often

841
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:08,480
Speaker 1: very quickly go to this is going to hurt us.

842
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:10,440
Speaker 1: When it comes to energy independence, You're like, okay, this

843
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:13,400
Speaker 1: is about fossil fuels, this is actually this is actually

844
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 1: a fight over energy and oil and gas rather than

845
00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:19,840
Speaker 1: what we were cloaking and we're trying to we're cloaking

846
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:21,760
Speaker 1: it in kind of culture war stuff, but it's actually

847
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 1: a raw kind of money and power fight over the

848
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 1: future of energy in America. That's that's my guess. How

849
00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:31,239
Speaker 1: much of it do you think is actually about that

850
00:46:31,400 --> 00:46:34,920
Speaker 1: and it's just disguised as a cultural war issue. I

851
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:37,560
Speaker 1: think that's a good point, and that's it's actually an

852
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:39,759
Speaker 1: important point to the conversation we were just having, which

853
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:43,680
Speaker 1: is it gives these corporations an off ramp. They're bolstering

854
00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:47,279
Speaker 1: the sort of necessary off ramp that they have when

855
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:49,640
Speaker 1: it comes to oil and gas. Right. They know that

856
00:46:49,680 --> 00:46:51,759
Speaker 1: they can't depend on oil and gas forever, so they

857
00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:54,840
Speaker 1: can divert some of their resources with charitable sort of

858
00:46:54,840 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 1: public relations smoke screens to building up infrastructure that they

859
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:01,360
Speaker 1: will later benefit from. Its actually sort of a genius

860
00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:04,359
Speaker 1: little scheme that they have going on there, and they

861
00:47:04,360 --> 00:47:07,000
Speaker 1: can you know, maybe it's beneficial. Maybe you disagree with

862
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:09,040
Speaker 1: me in some sense think that that'll go to a

863
00:47:09,080 --> 00:47:12,839
Speaker 1: sort of net benefit. But there you know, again, these

864
00:47:12,840 --> 00:47:16,479
Speaker 1: are corporatests. They are doing it for their bottle line. Well,

865
00:47:16,760 --> 00:47:20,640
Speaker 1: speaking of bottom lines, let's let's move to Michigan, which

866
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 1: just announced that it was the winner of what a

867
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:28,120
Speaker 1: two point five billion dollar investment from Ford into a

868
00:47:28,160 --> 00:47:33,520
Speaker 1: new battery plant in Marshall, Michigan, which it was basically

869
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:35,960
Speaker 1: right smack in the middle of the state, will create

870
00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 1: two five hundred direct jobs. The multiplier on that, they

871
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:43,840
Speaker 1: said was something like four. So you're talking about, you know,

872
00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:47,360
Speaker 1: ten thousand, ten thousand jobs supported in the area. Plus

873
00:47:47,680 --> 00:47:49,279
Speaker 1: once you get to that, you're talking about building an

874
00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:52,040
Speaker 1: entire kind of economic engine for an area. I think

875
00:47:52,040 --> 00:47:55,520
Speaker 1: this is maybe thirty forty minutes. You may might know

876
00:47:55,560 --> 00:48:00,319
Speaker 1: this area better from Kalamazoo. What makes this entire fight

877
00:48:00,400 --> 00:48:05,000
Speaker 1: so fascinating is that this was an investment that Ford

878
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:07,399
Speaker 1: had been kind of taking around the country to see

879
00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:10,880
Speaker 1: what would what would be the best spot to plant it,

880
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:15,760
Speaker 1: and it made news because Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin withdrew

881
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:18,960
Speaker 1: Virginia and said, we don't want your money, calling it

882
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:23,080
Speaker 1: basically a front for the Chinese Communist Party. Crystal Ball

883
00:48:23,400 --> 00:48:25,560
Speaker 1: reported on this a couple of weeks ago. Let's run

884
00:48:25,680 --> 00:48:29,200
Speaker 1: a little bit of her monologue on that governors go

885
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 1: to great lengths in order to attract these types of

886
00:48:31,760 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 1: jobs into their own states. But here Governor Youngkin has

887
00:48:35,239 --> 00:48:37,560
Speaker 1: gone in the total opposite direction, and what at first

888
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 1: blush might seem a surprising move. Here's the Washington Post quote.

889
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:44,800
Speaker 1: Governor Glenn Youngkin said this week that he had rejected

890
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:48,200
Speaker 1: efforts by Ford Motor Company to consider locating an electric

891
00:48:48,239 --> 00:48:52,200
Speaker 1: battery plant in Virginia over concerns that the automaker's partnership

892
00:48:52,239 --> 00:48:56,200
Speaker 1: with China created a security risk. Quote. We felt that

893
00:48:56,280 --> 00:48:58,399
Speaker 1: the right thing to do was to not recruit Ford

894
00:48:58,400 --> 00:49:01,120
Speaker 1: as a front for China to America, Youngkin said Wednesday

895
00:49:01,200 --> 00:49:03,840
Speaker 1: night to reporters after delivering his Day of the Conwell

896
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:06,319
Speaker 1: speech to the General Assembly. Emily, is there any way

897
00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:08,120
Speaker 1: to defend Glenn Younkin here? Or is this as bad

898
00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:13,000
Speaker 1: as it looks? I have a couple of possibilities I

899
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:15,360
Speaker 1: think might be going on one. I don't know that

900
00:49:15,400 --> 00:49:18,239
Speaker 1: this is true. It's a guest. I do wonder if

901
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:20,879
Speaker 1: he knew that it was going to Michigan and then

902
00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:24,320
Speaker 1: made a statement about withdrawing to look tough on China

903
00:49:24,520 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 1: as people are floating his name as a potential presidential

904
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 1: contender and then what do you think about that? Yeah,

905
00:49:31,719 --> 00:49:34,319
Speaker 1: we don't want your stupid factory anyway, get out here

906
00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:43,160
Speaker 1: exactly exactly right. It allows him to, yes, yes, to

907
00:49:43,719 --> 00:49:48,120
Speaker 1: take a really bold stance. On the other hand, it's

908
00:49:48,200 --> 00:49:53,000
Speaker 1: tough because I think the type of voter that he

909
00:49:53,080 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: wants to appeal to and Virginia and its rural areas

910
00:49:56,760 --> 00:50:01,239
Speaker 1: is very, very red. Actually, probably he doesn't want to

911
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:05,280
Speaker 1: get completely entangled in a company that is also entangled

912
00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:08,040
Speaker 1: with China. But I think Crystal and you are raising

913
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:11,880
Speaker 1: a really interesting point, which is Glenn Youngkin mister pe

914
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:18,719
Speaker 1: baron Patagonia vest wearing champion of the new rights, champion

915
00:50:18,960 --> 00:50:22,200
Speaker 1: of the populist right. I mean, it's always been a

916
00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:27,280
Speaker 1: very strange conception or a strange caricature of what Glen

917
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:30,719
Speaker 1: Younkin actually is because he did talk, so I think,

918
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:35,400
Speaker 1: capably about some cultural issues, especially education, when he was

919
00:50:35,440 --> 00:50:38,120
Speaker 1: on the campaign trail, and he won in an upset

920
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:41,120
Speaker 1: over Terry mccaulliffe. But then that slots him into this

921
00:50:41,200 --> 00:50:44,600
Speaker 1: position of populist because he checks off some of the

922
00:50:44,600 --> 00:50:47,600
Speaker 1: cultural boxes that he might not check off when it

923
00:50:47,640 --> 00:50:50,759
Speaker 1: comes to economic issues. Because again we're talking about a

924
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:57,040
Speaker 1: guy who was a pe like magnet basically. So that's

925
00:50:57,080 --> 00:51:01,600
Speaker 1: a real tension. He's from Carlisle Group, that's the PE

926
00:51:01,800 --> 00:51:04,480
Speaker 1: firm that he was at, right, Yeah, it is, and

927
00:51:04,520 --> 00:51:06,640
Speaker 1: I actually remember it just it reminds me of what

928
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:08,319
Speaker 1: we were talking about in the last segment. I haven't

929
00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:10,160
Speaker 1: reported this. A couple of years back. I think that

930
00:51:10,239 --> 00:51:12,960
Speaker 1: Glenn Youngkin had signed a letter when he was at

931
00:51:12,960 --> 00:51:15,680
Speaker 1: the head of the Carlisle Group diverting funds to BLF.

932
00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:19,520
Speaker 1: So again, like you just see where this tension exists

933
00:51:19,880 --> 00:51:22,359
Speaker 1: with Glenn Youngkin as sort of a populist champion and

934
00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:26,879
Speaker 1: Glenn Youngkin as also a business champion, and Carlisle, while

935
00:51:27,239 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 1: Youngkin was there, did enormous amounts of business with China.

936
00:51:30,640 --> 00:51:34,640
Speaker 1: So I would suspect that his advisors have been telling him, Okay,

937
00:51:34,680 --> 00:51:38,319
Speaker 1: this is a huge vulnerability for you, and so this

938
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:40,879
Speaker 1: might be a way that he thinks he's gonna then,

939
00:51:41,160 --> 00:51:44,360
Speaker 1: you know, push back against it. To me, it probably

940
00:51:44,440 --> 00:51:47,320
Speaker 1: goes way too far because it's brutal for him that

941
00:51:47,320 --> 00:51:49,880
Speaker 1: it's Ford. And you know, there are people in Michigan

942
00:51:49,880 --> 00:51:53,120
Speaker 1: who are like, you're kicking Ford out for being a

943
00:51:53,160 --> 00:51:55,160
Speaker 1: front for the Chinese Communist Party, Like if we can't

944
00:51:55,200 --> 00:51:58,080
Speaker 1: have a Ford plant, then what plants can we have?

945
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:02,800
Speaker 1: And also if you're not willing to have any manufacturing

946
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:06,840
Speaker 1: you know, in your state that has a linkage along

947
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:09,239
Speaker 1: the supply line with China, then you're basically not going

948
00:52:09,320 --> 00:52:14,680
Speaker 1: to have any manufacturing Like that's that's basically what you got. Yeah,

949
00:52:14,719 --> 00:52:17,560
Speaker 1: And that also makes me think potentially more about the

950
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:19,880
Speaker 1: theory that he sort of whether or not he actually

951
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:22,239
Speaker 1: knew these were going to Michigan. Maybe he had a

952
00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:25,600
Speaker 1: very strong suspicion that they were going to Michigan and

953
00:52:25,800 --> 00:52:29,280
Speaker 1: use it as an opportunity then to signal on China.

954
00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:31,840
Speaker 1: Because if he if he did do a lot of

955
00:52:31,880 --> 00:52:35,480
Speaker 1: business with China at the Carlile Group, you'd think he

956
00:52:35,520 --> 00:52:39,120
Speaker 1: would be friendly enough to take the jobs and then

957
00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:41,279
Speaker 1: also take the you know, if he knows this is

958
00:52:41,280 --> 00:52:45,400
Speaker 1: already a vulnerability for him, he would take the jobs,

959
00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:49,279
Speaker 1: especially since it's Ford, and then you know, he can

960
00:52:49,480 --> 00:52:52,600
Speaker 1: continue to have positive ties with China. It's sort of

961
00:52:52,600 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 1: a win win because again it's forward, it's not you know,

962
00:52:56,440 --> 00:52:59,759
Speaker 1: we're not talking about a Chinese company. But to your

963
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:04,200
Speaker 1: if you're if you're just gonna grandstand over any company

964
00:53:04,200 --> 00:53:07,120
Speaker 1: with any ties in the manufacturing supply chain at China.

965
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:09,239
Speaker 1: It's going to be impossible to have manufacturing jobs in

966
00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:12,919
Speaker 1: Virginia right right, there's basically no company that you're gonna

967
00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:15,960
Speaker 1: be able to find that doesn't have some supply connection. Now,

968
00:53:16,960 --> 00:53:18,680
Speaker 1: obviously a battery plan is going to be the most

969
00:53:19,040 --> 00:53:22,880
Speaker 1: but if you're going to dislodge China from a monopolistic

970
00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:25,680
Speaker 1: kind of control of that, you're going to have to first,

971
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:28,160
Speaker 1: you know, build up some some capacity. Like it's not

972
00:53:28,239 --> 00:53:31,680
Speaker 1: you can't just flick a switch and instantly have a

973
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:35,720
Speaker 1: have a kind of self sustaining domestic clean clean energy

974
00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:41,160
Speaker 1: industry when you've allowed China so far to basically lock down, uh,

975
00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:45,520
Speaker 1: pretty much a global monopoly on it. So uh, it

976
00:53:45,600 --> 00:53:47,840
Speaker 1: does mean that, yeah, you just can't You basically just

977
00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:50,600
Speaker 1: can't do anything if you're if you're a governor who

978
00:53:50,640 --> 00:53:53,800
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be at all involved with China. It

979
00:53:54,160 --> 00:53:57,520
Speaker 1: also reminded me of a lot of populists over hundreds

980
00:53:57,520 --> 00:54:01,360
Speaker 1: of years have said the thing we need are term limits.

981
00:54:01,640 --> 00:54:03,839
Speaker 1: And I get that because it's like this is how

982
00:54:03,880 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 1: you get back at those career politicians. But guess what,

983
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:12,839
Speaker 1: because Virginia has a single term limit on its governorship.

984
00:54:13,280 --> 00:54:15,840
Speaker 1: As soon as that person gets there, they're no longer

985
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:18,960
Speaker 1: thinking about Virginia voters. They're thinking about where they're headed next.

986
00:54:19,920 --> 00:54:23,880
Speaker 1: And so he's thinking more about Republican primary presidential voters

987
00:54:23,880 --> 00:54:27,880
Speaker 1: probably than he is Virginia voters because he doesn't have

988
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:31,600
Speaker 1: to face them for reelection. And so folks out in

989
00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:35,839
Speaker 1: southwest Virginia all of a sudden have no power over him,

990
00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:41,880
Speaker 1: or have no sway. All right, Emily, what's your point today?

991
00:54:42,320 --> 00:54:44,160
Speaker 1: All right? Well, I want to talk about a Cost

992
00:54:44,200 --> 00:54:47,800
Speaker 1: of Thriving Index, a really interesting project that was released

993
00:54:47,960 --> 00:54:51,160
Speaker 1: on Monday or Tuesday by American Compass, a writ of

994
00:54:51,200 --> 00:54:54,200
Speaker 1: center think tank that sort of seeks to shake off

995
00:54:54,239 --> 00:54:59,040
Speaker 1: the old Republican economic orthodoxy, the sort of free market dogmatism,

996
00:54:59,680 --> 00:55:02,839
Speaker 1: and propose some ideas that actually helped working class Americans,

997
00:55:03,239 --> 00:55:06,680
Speaker 1: even if they make the Republican Party kind of uncomfortable,

998
00:55:07,239 --> 00:55:09,000
Speaker 1: they do a lot of really great work, and I

999
00:55:09,000 --> 00:55:12,120
Speaker 1: think the Cost of Thriving Index is one example of

1000
00:55:12,160 --> 00:55:16,280
Speaker 1: that and well worth talking about. So instead of relying

1001
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:21,440
Speaker 1: on simple inflation calculations to try to measure what has

1002
00:55:21,680 --> 00:55:26,920
Speaker 1: changed between earlier decades of the twentieth century and now

1003
00:55:27,040 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 1: one of those things that's been hard for people to

1004
00:55:28,719 --> 00:55:31,560
Speaker 1: kind of put their finger on. Instead of just using

1005
00:55:31,600 --> 00:55:34,400
Speaker 1: that simple inflation metric, they came up of with this

1006
00:55:34,480 --> 00:55:37,280
Speaker 1: cost of thriving index, which takes a ratio of nominal

1007
00:55:37,400 --> 00:55:40,840
Speaker 1: costs to nominal wages. And so the cost of Thriving

1008
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:44,640
Speaker 1: index uses a ratio of nominal costs to nominal wages

1009
00:55:44,719 --> 00:55:47,920
Speaker 1: instead of just relying on simple inflation. So you can

1010
00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:50,680
Speaker 1: see that the index then has gone up just an

1011
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:54,040
Speaker 1: incredible amount since nineteen eighty five to twenty twenty two.

1012
00:55:54,640 --> 00:55:57,480
Speaker 1: You have about eighteen thousand dollars and then a median

1013
00:55:57,800 --> 00:56:00,680
Speaker 1: weekly income of four hundred and forty three dollars that's

1014
00:56:00,719 --> 00:56:03,800
Speaker 1: for your twenty four year old full time worker versus

1015
00:56:04,520 --> 00:56:09,080
Speaker 1: your annual expenses of seventy five twenty twenty two, along

1016
00:56:09,120 --> 00:56:13,000
Speaker 1: with a weekly income of about twelve hundred dollars in

1017
00:56:13,600 --> 00:56:16,200
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. So you can compare that to nineteen

1018
00:56:16,200 --> 00:56:19,400
Speaker 1: eighty five and look at the ratio, and the ratio

1019
00:56:19,600 --> 00:56:23,359
Speaker 1: is fascinating to see how that has exploded. And I

1020
00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:25,759
Speaker 1: really like what American Compass puts in the survey that

1021
00:56:25,800 --> 00:56:28,239
Speaker 1: it released or this report that it released. It says

1022
00:56:28,280 --> 00:56:32,960
Speaker 1: this quote explains what economists cannot that with all of

1023
00:56:33,000 --> 00:56:38,520
Speaker 1: these technological innovations and advancements quote, something important has been lost.

1024
00:56:38,719 --> 00:56:40,799
Speaker 1: So Ryan, I wanted to get your take on this

1025
00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:44,440
Speaker 1: ratio way of finding a metric to figure out kind

1026
00:56:44,480 --> 00:56:46,879
Speaker 1: of something economists have had a hard time putting their

1027
00:56:46,880 --> 00:56:49,719
Speaker 1: finger on what has changed for the average American and

1028
00:56:49,760 --> 00:56:52,719
Speaker 1: especially for the average American family where you have or

1029
00:56:52,760 --> 00:56:56,359
Speaker 1: you intend to have one kind of breadwinner, typically the man,

1030
00:56:56,520 --> 00:56:59,000
Speaker 1: so that you don't have these insane childcare costs, which

1031
00:56:59,040 --> 00:57:02,080
Speaker 1: is also more in line with people's preferences generally in polling.

1032
00:57:02,080 --> 00:57:04,080
Speaker 1: Whether you agree with that or not, it's a hard

1033
00:57:04,120 --> 00:57:06,719
Speaker 1: thing that economists have had sort of nailing down. So

1034
00:57:06,719 --> 00:57:09,920
Speaker 1: what do you think about the ratio method? That's the

1035
00:57:09,920 --> 00:57:12,399
Speaker 1: only reasonable way you can do it, because I think

1036
00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:16,040
Speaker 1: that's how people experience it on a day to day basis.

1037
00:57:16,080 --> 00:57:18,240
Speaker 1: The only other thing I would try to add in

1038
00:57:19,000 --> 00:57:21,680
Speaker 1: is the precarity of the situation. You know, back in

1039
00:57:21,720 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties and seven even through into the seventies,

1040
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:28,120
Speaker 1: people had a sense that the life that they were

1041
00:57:28,120 --> 00:57:30,240
Speaker 1: living at that moment was still going to be the

1042
00:57:30,280 --> 00:57:32,280
Speaker 1: life that they were going to be living the next year,

1043
00:57:32,360 --> 00:57:35,200
Speaker 1: the year after the year after that, and also that

1044
00:57:35,240 --> 00:57:38,960
Speaker 1: life would get better for their kids and for their kids' kids,

1045
00:57:39,400 --> 00:57:44,080
Speaker 1: And so that enabled you to then eat some of

1046
00:57:44,120 --> 00:57:48,240
Speaker 1: the indignities, perhaps because you were trading it for some

1047
00:57:48,440 --> 00:57:54,200
Speaker 1: sense of economic security going forward. Whereas now, as you're describing,

1048
00:57:54,400 --> 00:57:59,920
Speaker 1: people have fallen much further behind because the costs, particularly education, healthcare, childcare,

1049
00:58:00,240 --> 00:58:03,640
Speaker 1: like you said, have have ballooned and have and have

1050
00:58:03,720 --> 00:58:08,920
Speaker 1: not have outpaced wages, Whereas you know, food prices have

1051
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:11,880
Speaker 1: stayed pretty steady. Like you know, when I was in college,

1052
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:14,040
Speaker 1: you were paying the same at Wendy's that you're paying

1053
00:58:14,160 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 1: now twenty years later. But you're absolutely not paying the

1054
00:58:16,720 --> 00:58:18,840
Speaker 1: same for college, you're not paying the same for healthcare,

1055
00:58:18,840 --> 00:58:22,240
Speaker 1: you're not paying the same for housing, et cetera. And

1056
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:24,520
Speaker 1: so on top of that, if you throw in the

1057
00:58:24,560 --> 00:58:28,480
Speaker 1: fact that you don't have any certainty that what your

1058
00:58:28,880 --> 00:58:31,920
Speaker 1: situation is now is going to be your situation a

1059
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:34,120
Speaker 1: year from now, and you also have kind of the

1060
00:58:34,160 --> 00:58:37,080
Speaker 1: shredding of a social safety net, then that's then that

1061
00:58:37,160 --> 00:58:40,160
Speaker 1: adds an enormous amount of anxiety to it, because if

1062
00:58:40,200 --> 00:58:42,440
Speaker 1: you feel like, all right, there's some more precarity in

1063
00:58:42,480 --> 00:58:44,680
Speaker 1: the job market. But at least I know if I fall,

1064
00:58:44,720 --> 00:58:46,440
Speaker 1: I'm going to be I'm going to be protected, I'm

1065
00:58:46,440 --> 00:58:48,240
Speaker 1: going to be able to bounce back. Then then you

1066
00:58:48,320 --> 00:58:50,720
Speaker 1: might feel a little more comfortable and maybe willing to

1067
00:58:50,720 --> 00:58:53,480
Speaker 1: take some risks. But if you don't feel that, then

1068
00:58:53,520 --> 00:58:56,320
Speaker 1: you're just going to have constant anxiety. Even if the

1069
00:58:56,400 --> 00:58:58,439
Speaker 1: numbers are matching up for you, even if you're making

1070
00:58:58,560 --> 00:59:01,400
Speaker 1: ends meet you, you're going to continue to be able

1071
00:59:01,840 --> 00:59:04,680
Speaker 1: to do that. And as that shows, you're you're certainly

1072
00:59:04,680 --> 00:59:07,640
Speaker 1: not able to put anything away. And as housing prices

1073
00:59:07,800 --> 00:59:10,280
Speaker 1: you get out of control. The one access to real

1074
00:59:10,320 --> 00:59:13,560
Speaker 1: wealth creation for middle class people, which is people would

1075
00:59:13,560 --> 00:59:16,320
Speaker 1: buy a house when they're twenty five years old and

1076
00:59:16,880 --> 00:59:19,840
Speaker 1: be in good shape thirty years later as a result.

1077
00:59:20,080 --> 00:59:23,720
Speaker 1: And so Emily my question, you would be given this reality,

1078
00:59:24,120 --> 00:59:26,960
Speaker 1: you know what kind of policies and politics is the

1079
00:59:27,240 --> 00:59:29,560
Speaker 1: is the right willing to embrace to kind of do

1080
00:59:29,640 --> 00:59:33,360
Speaker 1: something about this, to do something about these runaway costs. Well,

1081
00:59:33,400 --> 00:59:35,880
Speaker 1: that's why I wanted to talk about this particular index,

1082
00:59:36,040 --> 00:59:39,560
Speaker 1: because one of the things that the right debates sort

1083
00:59:39,600 --> 00:59:43,200
Speaker 1: of within itself is whether or not wages have actually

1084
00:59:43,280 --> 00:59:45,600
Speaker 1: stagnated and a lot of the problem is if you're

1085
00:59:45,680 --> 00:59:49,200
Speaker 1: just looking at the CPI versus wages, it's just hard

1086
00:59:49,240 --> 00:59:51,400
Speaker 1: to put your finger on that. And so moving to

1087
00:59:51,480 --> 00:59:54,600
Speaker 1: this ratio formula is one of those things that can

1088
00:59:54,720 --> 00:59:58,200
Speaker 1: help put in very stark perspective to this sort of

1089
00:59:59,000 --> 01:00:04,080
Speaker 1: bespectacle the well paid expert class in Washington, DC, what

1090
01:00:04,120 --> 01:00:07,919
Speaker 1: the average American is experiencing and why there's malaise. Here

1091
01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:10,960
Speaker 1: are the numbers that can actually sort of put this

1092
01:00:11,040 --> 01:00:14,440
Speaker 1: into perspective as opposed to having these debates about CPI,

1093
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:18,280
Speaker 1: which is not, to the point you just outlined, going

1094
01:00:18,320 --> 01:00:21,200
Speaker 1: to be the most helpful, because you have this mismatch

1095
01:00:21,240 --> 01:00:25,880
Speaker 1: where prices for TVs have plummeted. I mean, it's insane

1096
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:30,760
Speaker 1: how low TV prices have gone and other electronic goods

1097
01:00:30,760 --> 01:00:34,120
Speaker 1: and sort of things like that versus the skyrocketing prices

1098
01:00:34,120 --> 01:00:38,320
Speaker 1: of healthcare and education. So relying on something that looks

1099
01:00:38,360 --> 01:00:41,520
Speaker 1: more like a ratio than that just basic calculation, I think,

1100
01:00:41,600 --> 01:00:44,800
Speaker 1: is one of those things that hopefully can help start

1101
01:00:45,120 --> 01:00:48,320
Speaker 1: the process of settling that debate on the right because

1102
01:00:48,400 --> 01:00:51,920
Speaker 1: if you still don't get it, you need to because

1103
01:00:52,040 --> 01:00:55,439
Speaker 1: your policy prescriptions will be way off if you don't yeah,

1104
01:00:55,480 --> 01:00:59,000
Speaker 1: I think it's important that our kind of our politics

1105
01:00:59,280 --> 01:01:02,160
Speaker 1: really start to measure these things, because you know, there's

1106
01:01:02,440 --> 01:01:04,680
Speaker 1: that old saying, you can't fix you don't measure you.

1107
01:01:04,880 --> 01:01:06,520
Speaker 1: And the things that you measure, those are the things

1108
01:01:06,600 --> 01:01:09,920
Speaker 1: you're able to fix. And the more you keep things

1109
01:01:10,080 --> 01:01:12,640
Speaker 1: kind of out of the political conversation, you make them

1110
01:01:12,680 --> 01:01:16,320
Speaker 1: a political than they just soar. And so that's why

1111
01:01:16,360 --> 01:01:20,160
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful to Bernie Sanders in twenty fifteen for

1112
01:01:20,240 --> 01:01:23,640
Speaker 1: kind of bringing the cost of college into the political conversation,

1113
01:01:23,640 --> 01:01:27,560
Speaker 1: because it wasn't it wasn't really a political question before that.

1114
01:01:27,600 --> 01:01:29,760
Speaker 1: In other words, it wasn't something that was contested in

1115
01:01:29,760 --> 01:01:32,040
Speaker 1: the political arena. It was just something that's people said, well,

1116
01:01:32,040 --> 01:01:34,560
Speaker 1: that's unfortunate. I guess we better, you know, maybe do

1117
01:01:34,600 --> 01:01:36,520
Speaker 1: a few tax credits here or there for middle class

1118
01:01:36,560 --> 01:01:39,360
Speaker 1: people to help them afford these now sixty thousand dollars

1119
01:01:39,400 --> 01:01:42,920
Speaker 1: a year, you know, costs for colleges out of state

1120
01:01:43,280 --> 01:01:47,040
Speaker 1: public college is costing fifty sixty thousand dollars. And it

1121
01:01:47,160 --> 01:01:49,240
Speaker 1: was it was Sanders coming in saying, no, no, this

1122
01:01:49,240 --> 01:01:51,360
Speaker 1: this is a political question. This is a decision that

1123
01:01:51,400 --> 01:01:54,080
Speaker 1: we need to make democratically, and so at least at

1124
01:01:54,160 --> 01:01:56,240
Speaker 1: least it's on the table part of the conversation. And

1125
01:01:56,280 --> 01:02:00,160
Speaker 1: the same for healthcare. I feel like we're not hit

1126
01:02:00,280 --> 01:02:05,200
Speaker 1: there yet with housing, that it's something that gets talked

1127
01:02:05,200 --> 01:02:07,240
Speaker 1: about in the press all the time, but it's not

1128
01:02:07,320 --> 01:02:11,880
Speaker 1: really something that you see a lot of politicians proposing

1129
01:02:11,920 --> 01:02:15,040
Speaker 1: things that might actually get done, you know, build back better,

1130
01:02:15,200 --> 01:02:20,400
Speaker 1: had you know, several hundred billion dollars going toward housing policy,

1131
01:02:20,960 --> 01:02:23,520
Speaker 1: but when it got you know, stripped down to becoming

1132
01:02:23,520 --> 01:02:25,840
Speaker 1: the Inflation Reduction Act, it was the first thing that

1133
01:02:25,960 --> 01:02:29,800
Speaker 1: was just gone out of here. Yet yet it is

1134
01:02:29,880 --> 01:02:34,280
Speaker 1: so central to what is making life so difficult for

1135
01:02:35,600 --> 01:02:38,760
Speaker 1: ninety percent of people in this country. It's one of

1136
01:02:38,760 --> 01:02:41,000
Speaker 1: those things that like even the people in the top

1137
01:02:41,040 --> 01:02:44,800
Speaker 1: twenty percent, you know, are like it just are just

1138
01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:48,480
Speaker 1: getting killed by it. No, you're right, And one thing

1139
01:02:48,480 --> 01:02:50,360
Speaker 1: that worries me, and maybe this why there aren't a

1140
01:02:50,360 --> 01:02:52,480
Speaker 1: lot of solutions proposed, because one of the things that

1141
01:02:52,800 --> 01:02:56,600
Speaker 1: worries me is you hit an impass here when you

1142
01:02:56,640 --> 01:03:01,080
Speaker 1: look at, for instance, the relationship between subsidies education and

1143
01:03:01,200 --> 01:03:03,920
Speaker 1: healthcare and the costs of both of those industries. Now,

1144
01:03:03,920 --> 01:03:06,440
Speaker 1: nobody's saying that has to be the case. But historically

1145
01:03:06,480 --> 01:03:10,400
Speaker 1: in the United States, we've seen, for instance, subsidies increase

1146
01:03:10,480 --> 01:03:13,880
Speaker 1: the cost of education. We've seen subsidies in some ways

1147
01:03:13,960 --> 01:03:16,160
Speaker 1: increase the cost of healthcare. And so if we do

1148
01:03:16,240 --> 01:03:19,040
Speaker 1: the same thing with housing. Not all of these proposals

1149
01:03:19,120 --> 01:03:22,080
Speaker 1: involve subsidies, to be sure, but that's another thing that

1150
01:03:22,120 --> 01:03:24,920
Speaker 1: like you and I might disagree in some cases on

1151
01:03:25,000 --> 01:03:28,640
Speaker 1: whether the subsidies are responsible for the hikes, and that

1152
01:03:28,880 --> 01:03:32,920
Speaker 1: makes it hard for policymakers to come to an agreement

1153
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:37,000
Speaker 1: on or at least an agreement that isn't like cronyism

1154
01:03:37,200 --> 01:03:40,480
Speaker 1: like we've seen in the healthcare space specifically, so that

1155
01:03:41,280 --> 01:03:43,320
Speaker 1: if I was to do something that might put a

1156
01:03:43,400 --> 01:03:47,080
Speaker 1: dent in your optimism, that's what I would say. Well,

1157
01:03:47,240 --> 01:03:49,680
Speaker 1: there you go. So I was listing. I was only

1158
01:03:49,680 --> 01:03:51,240
Speaker 1: looking down as I just got a call from our

1159
01:03:51,680 --> 01:03:54,840
Speaker 1: next guest, Matthew Weaver. We're going to check to see

1160
01:03:54,880 --> 01:04:01,000
Speaker 1: if he's ready. He is a union railroader in in Ohio.

1161
01:04:01,280 --> 01:04:05,520
Speaker 1: He's the elected kind of elected legislative director for the

1162
01:04:05,680 --> 01:04:09,360
Speaker 1: for the Ohio kind of brotherhood up there, the BMWD,

1163
01:04:10,440 --> 01:04:13,320
Speaker 1: and he's also a member of the rank and file

1164
01:04:13,600 --> 01:04:17,600
Speaker 1: railroad Workers United which is a caucus that we've talked

1165
01:04:17,640 --> 01:04:21,680
Speaker 1: about here before, and so we're going to get Matthew

1166
01:04:21,680 --> 01:04:25,120
Speaker 1: Weaver on here to talk about the chemical disaster in

1167
01:04:25,160 --> 01:04:30,600
Speaker 1: East Palestine. In a moment, all right, to talk about

1168
01:04:30,600 --> 01:04:34,120
Speaker 1: the ongoing disaster in East Palestine Ohio. We're joined now

1169
01:04:34,160 --> 01:04:37,800
Speaker 1: by Matthew Weaver, who is a twenty eight year railroader

1170
01:04:38,080 --> 01:04:41,240
Speaker 1: member of the bmwe D and he's also the elected

1171
01:04:41,880 --> 01:04:46,720
Speaker 1: legislative director in Ohio for the Union. Matthew, thank you

1172
01:04:46,760 --> 01:04:50,080
Speaker 1: so much for joining us. Good afternoon, Thank you for

1173
01:04:50,160 --> 01:04:53,000
Speaker 1: the opportunity to join you. I appreciate it. Yeah, you

1174
01:04:53,040 --> 01:04:55,600
Speaker 1: got it. And so, you know, one of the one

1175
01:04:55,640 --> 01:05:00,000
Speaker 1: of the things that I've seen being discussed in political

1176
01:05:00,120 --> 01:05:04,040
Speaker 1: circles in relation to this disaster. I've seen a lot

1177
01:05:04,040 --> 01:05:07,800
Speaker 1: of people saying, look, this doesn't actually have anything to

1178
01:05:07,840 --> 01:05:11,919
Speaker 1: do with PSR, with precision Scheduled railroading. So you guys

1179
01:05:11,920 --> 01:05:14,880
Speaker 1: are out there just trying to shoehorn everything in to

1180
01:05:15,000 --> 01:05:18,840
Speaker 1: this issue that we've talked about a lot on this show,

1181
01:05:19,120 --> 01:05:21,840
Speaker 1: the same but it doesn't fit. The facts of the

1182
01:05:21,880 --> 01:05:23,720
Speaker 1: case just don't line up. But it has nothing to

1183
01:05:23,720 --> 01:05:25,960
Speaker 1: do with why there was this disaster. I wanted to

1184
01:05:26,000 --> 01:05:28,880
Speaker 1: get it. From your perspective as a railroader, what do

1185
01:05:28,920 --> 01:05:32,000
Speaker 1: you think were some of the kind of general structural

1186
01:05:32,080 --> 01:05:34,920
Speaker 1: causes that led to a situation where something like this

1187
01:05:34,960 --> 01:05:39,240
Speaker 1: could happen. Well, it would be false for me to

1188
01:05:39,520 --> 01:05:43,400
Speaker 1: speculate on the real cause until the NTSB report comes out,

1189
01:05:43,800 --> 01:05:48,440
Speaker 1: But I can tell you from discussing with machinists and

1190
01:05:48,640 --> 01:05:53,800
Speaker 1: car shop workers that the inspections have been rushed. The

1191
01:05:53,960 --> 01:05:56,520
Speaker 1: two guys working four to five minutes per car to

1192
01:05:56,600 --> 01:06:00,560
Speaker 1: inspect a car for departure, now it's one guy ninety

1193
01:06:00,640 --> 01:06:05,640
Speaker 1: seconds or less. So that's time involved in inspecting those axles,

1194
01:06:05,680 --> 01:06:08,960
Speaker 1: those journals, those bearings, and all the component components of

1195
01:06:08,960 --> 01:06:14,920
Speaker 1: the railcard. Now on the side of government, that's another

1196
01:06:15,200 --> 01:06:17,160
Speaker 1: big question. There's been a lot of sort of back

1197
01:06:17,240 --> 01:06:22,959
Speaker 1: and forth within Ohio about who might bear responsibility for

1198
01:06:23,440 --> 01:06:28,400
Speaker 1: lacks standards and then the fallout is another question entirely.

1199
01:06:29,320 --> 01:06:31,600
Speaker 1: What can you tell us about the government sort of

1200
01:06:31,680 --> 01:06:35,640
Speaker 1: oversight of the railways in Ohio and how that could

1201
01:06:35,640 --> 01:06:41,080
Speaker 1: have potentially related to what we're seeing unfold and East Palasting. Well,

1202
01:06:41,280 --> 01:06:43,880
Speaker 1: I can discuss you know, many articles that we've seen

1203
01:06:43,920 --> 01:06:52,680
Speaker 1: about railroad lobbyists campaign finance, watching big money in this industry, skirt,

1204
01:06:53,040 --> 01:06:57,680
Speaker 1: try to skirt laws, limit laws, delay enforcement, and that's

1205
01:06:57,760 --> 01:07:01,280
Speaker 1: kind of the problem. The breaking set systems are Civil

1206
01:07:01,280 --> 01:07:04,480
Speaker 1: War era, you know, this is an old industry, but

1207
01:07:04,960 --> 01:07:09,800
Speaker 1: there are some improvements that can be made to avoid

1208
01:07:09,880 --> 01:07:13,360
Speaker 1: things like this. Yeah, you know, let's talk talk a

1209
01:07:13,400 --> 01:07:16,120
Speaker 1: little bit about that, because it seems like there are

1210
01:07:16,200 --> 01:07:19,720
Speaker 1: kind of two ways that you could kind of from

1211
01:07:20,120 --> 01:07:22,920
Speaker 1: from an industry perspective, go about go about making it

1212
01:07:23,000 --> 01:07:25,439
Speaker 1: less likely that this is going to happen. One would

1213
01:07:25,480 --> 01:07:29,080
Speaker 1: be the one that you alluded to, which is allow inspect,

1214
01:07:29,320 --> 01:07:32,560
Speaker 1: allow you know, mechanics who are inspecting the trains more

1215
01:07:32,600 --> 01:07:35,480
Speaker 1: time so that they can actually expect it. Because as

1216
01:07:35,880 --> 01:07:37,920
Speaker 1: there's been some reporting that this had something to do

1217
01:07:38,200 --> 01:07:41,560
Speaker 1: with a busted axle, you know, if you're underneath the train,

1218
01:07:41,600 --> 01:07:45,360
Speaker 1: you only have ninety seconds. You might not have enough time,

1219
01:07:45,880 --> 01:07:47,840
Speaker 1: you know, to spot the problem that is going to

1220
01:07:47,960 --> 01:07:50,520
Speaker 1: lead to you know, an act and actual breaking. The

1221
01:07:50,600 --> 01:07:54,320
Speaker 1: second is the other thing you alluded to, better braking systems,

1222
01:07:54,320 --> 01:07:58,200
Speaker 1: and this you know, to to basically modernize the Civil

1223
01:07:58,240 --> 01:08:01,960
Speaker 1: War technologist post civil technology that we've been relying on.

1224
01:08:02,160 --> 01:08:04,520
Speaker 1: So what would it take to get us to a

1225
01:08:04,560 --> 01:08:09,200
Speaker 1: place where they're actually implementing these braking systems on on

1226
01:08:09,400 --> 01:08:14,680
Speaker 1: trains that are carrying these hazardous materials. It would take

1227
01:08:14,720 --> 01:08:18,759
Speaker 1: an investment in the infrastructure, I mean electronic braking. They

1228
01:08:18,800 --> 01:08:22,960
Speaker 1: have the technology out there. They did improve tankers. The

1229
01:08:23,200 --> 01:08:27,040
Speaker 1: problem is is that would upset the shareholders in an

1230
01:08:27,080 --> 01:08:33,000
Speaker 1: industry with skyrocketing profits, profit margins that are you know,

1231
01:08:33,000 --> 01:08:36,320
Speaker 1: they're screening for to work for a fifty five percent

1232
01:08:36,360 --> 01:08:40,880
Speaker 1: operating ratio when you're talking food industry working at ninety

1233
01:08:41,040 --> 01:08:47,439
Speaker 1: you know. So it's all about profit over people, and

1234
01:08:47,640 --> 01:08:52,880
Speaker 1: we depend on the regulators to regulate ensure safety, and

1235
01:08:52,920 --> 01:08:55,880
Speaker 1: that's where I believe we're going to find a failure here.

1236
01:08:56,360 --> 01:08:58,320
Speaker 1: You know, there were a lot of comparisons. I'm sure

1237
01:08:58,400 --> 01:09:01,439
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen people saying why does small town,

1238
01:09:01,479 --> 01:09:05,559
Speaker 1: Ohio look like Chernobyl in the past week or two.

1239
01:09:05,880 --> 01:09:08,040
Speaker 1: And I want to ask a question that maybe the

1240
01:09:08,080 --> 01:09:10,839
Speaker 1: answer we don't really want to know because it's frightening.

1241
01:09:10,920 --> 01:09:12,960
Speaker 1: But from your perspective, as somebody with a lot of

1242
01:09:13,000 --> 01:09:18,559
Speaker 1: insight into this just across the board, what other kinds

1243
01:09:18,600 --> 01:09:23,040
Speaker 1: of safety issues that are not being sort of adequately

1244
01:09:23,080 --> 01:09:26,360
Speaker 1: attended to either on the corporate side or on the

1245
01:09:26,400 --> 01:09:31,400
Speaker 1: government side, exist in your mind? Are there potential criseses

1246
01:09:31,560 --> 01:09:34,639
Speaker 1: looming that sort of Again, is somebody with insight into

1247
01:09:34,680 --> 01:09:39,760
Speaker 1: this keep you up at night knowing the lapsed standards

1248
01:09:39,800 --> 01:09:43,599
Speaker 1: are out there? Well, I mean, from my perspective, from

1249
01:09:43,600 --> 01:09:49,479
Speaker 1: the maintenance wait perspective, I think it's for maintenance. You know,

1250
01:09:49,520 --> 01:09:51,519
Speaker 1: you don't put a band aid on broken leg. We

1251
01:09:51,520 --> 01:09:55,400
Speaker 1: don't fix things till they break. Preventive maintenance often seems

1252
01:09:55,400 --> 01:09:59,519
Speaker 1: to be lacking because they even call us maintenance in

1253
01:09:59,560 --> 01:10:05,639
Speaker 1: the way then instead of maintenance of way, it's but this,

1254
01:10:05,640 --> 01:10:08,120
Speaker 1: this is not This is mechanical as far as I know,

1255
01:10:08,160 --> 01:10:11,960
Speaker 1: And it sounds like a bearing, a hot bearing, hot journal,

1256
01:10:12,280 --> 01:10:15,400
Speaker 1: a hot box detector caught but it was too late.

1257
01:10:15,960 --> 01:10:18,679
Speaker 1: I get the impression that this ran for twenty miles

1258
01:10:19,360 --> 01:10:24,400
Speaker 1: without those conditions. So perhaps we need more detectors. We

1259
01:10:24,479 --> 01:10:29,920
Speaker 1: need to address these issues. Right, And you've been, as

1260
01:10:29,960 --> 01:10:32,479
Speaker 1: you said, a railroader for twenty eight years now, how

1261
01:10:32,520 --> 01:10:35,720
Speaker 1: how have you seen the industry change in that in

1262
01:10:35,720 --> 01:10:38,639
Speaker 1: that amount of time? Well, in other words, like what

1263
01:10:38,800 --> 01:10:42,120
Speaker 1: would what would what were inspections looking like before? What

1264
01:10:42,240 --> 01:10:47,800
Speaker 1: was maintenance looking like before? We've lost thirty percent of

1265
01:10:47,800 --> 01:10:51,160
Speaker 1: our manpower of rail labor in the in the last

1266
01:10:51,160 --> 01:10:55,599
Speaker 1: eight nine years. They're just not the numbers aren't there.

1267
01:10:55,680 --> 01:10:59,760
Speaker 1: The manpower is not there to do the work they have.

1268
01:11:00,280 --> 01:11:05,200
Speaker 1: There's something going on with having conductors inspect the cars

1269
01:11:05,280 --> 01:11:08,080
Speaker 1: or inspect the connections with the hoses. I don't know

1270
01:11:08,080 --> 01:11:10,280
Speaker 1: all the details on that, and much of this is

1271
01:11:10,360 --> 01:11:13,839
Speaker 1: mechanical rather than engineering, and I work for the engineering department,

1272
01:11:15,479 --> 01:11:18,839
Speaker 1: And since we're talking to a national and international audience,

1273
01:11:19,280 --> 01:11:21,320
Speaker 1: I want to ask just a pretty basic question. Is

1274
01:11:21,360 --> 01:11:24,920
Speaker 1: there anything you wish people understood about the industry that

1275
01:11:25,040 --> 01:11:28,280
Speaker 1: as it's come into the sort of front of our

1276
01:11:28,320 --> 01:11:33,360
Speaker 1: political discourse, our discourse in general, with the strike last

1277
01:11:33,439 --> 01:11:37,760
Speaker 1: year and now again with this insane story out of Ohio.

1278
01:11:38,160 --> 01:11:40,800
Speaker 1: Is there anything you wish people understood or you think

1279
01:11:40,800 --> 01:11:48,360
Speaker 1: maybe they misunderstand about the industry. I believe that public

1280
01:11:48,400 --> 01:11:52,280
Speaker 1: doesn't understand how powerful the industry of what is, how

1281
01:11:52,920 --> 01:11:56,479
Speaker 1: the subsidies the railroad's got or building across the country,

1282
01:11:56,800 --> 01:11:59,760
Speaker 1: you know, and the power they have. You know. I

1283
01:11:59,840 --> 01:12:04,639
Speaker 1: tell applied for the Ohio House Transportation Committee about crossing

1284
01:12:04,680 --> 01:12:09,000
Speaker 1: safety and two man crew and there were seven lobbyists

1285
01:12:09,000 --> 01:12:10,800
Speaker 1: in the back of the room listening in on what

1286
01:12:10,840 --> 01:12:14,240
Speaker 1: I was having to say. It's a very powerful industry.

1287
01:12:15,040 --> 01:12:16,559
Speaker 1: I was actually just going to ask you about that

1288
01:12:16,600 --> 01:12:21,439
Speaker 1: because as the as the legislative director for your union

1289
01:12:21,560 --> 01:12:24,640
Speaker 1: in Ohio, what is it like when you when you

1290
01:12:24,640 --> 01:12:27,720
Speaker 1: go to the state capitol? I mean, what are you

1291
01:12:27,840 --> 01:12:30,000
Speaker 1: what are you up against there? And how hard is

1292
01:12:30,040 --> 01:12:32,120
Speaker 1: it for you to get a hearing in the halls

1293
01:12:32,120 --> 01:12:36,280
Speaker 1: of power in Ohio? It seems very difficult. We've been

1294
01:12:36,280 --> 01:12:40,080
Speaker 1: trying for multiple years to get a crossing safety bill

1295
01:12:40,200 --> 01:12:44,000
Speaker 1: in that simply adds and other on track equipment to

1296
01:12:44,000 --> 01:12:47,120
Speaker 1: the laws so that the public acknowledges that we have

1297
01:12:47,200 --> 01:12:50,720
Speaker 1: track equipment, we have inspectors, trucks, we have there's more

1298
01:12:50,760 --> 01:12:54,400
Speaker 1: than just trains on the tracks. And we failed at

1299
01:12:54,400 --> 01:12:57,720
Speaker 1: that in Ohio. I believe thirty one states have a

1300
01:12:57,720 --> 01:13:02,080
Speaker 1: crossing safety bill for that purpose, but not Ohio. So

1301
01:13:02,280 --> 01:13:07,760
Speaker 1: it's very difficult because the money the railroads have it

1302
01:13:08,640 --> 01:13:12,400
Speaker 1: is tremendous and as you say, you can't just fix

1303
01:13:12,439 --> 01:13:17,160
Speaker 1: things when they're broken, right right, And we had had

1304
01:13:17,200 --> 01:13:20,679
Speaker 1: Devin Mant's, a railroader from North North Dakota on earlier

1305
01:13:20,680 --> 01:13:22,960
Speaker 1: and he was mentioning one of his He also does

1306
01:13:23,000 --> 01:13:24,639
Speaker 1: maintenance away and one of the things he does, he's

1307
01:13:24,840 --> 01:13:28,400
Speaker 1: driving basically a big pickup truck over the tracks looking

1308
01:13:28,400 --> 01:13:31,200
Speaker 1: for looking for flaws, kind of making sure that things

1309
01:13:31,280 --> 01:13:33,960
Speaker 1: are are running so the train can move over smoothly.

1310
01:13:34,400 --> 01:13:37,439
Speaker 1: So is that the kind of crossing that you mean

1311
01:13:37,520 --> 01:13:40,160
Speaker 1: that you're that you're trying to make sure that as

1312
01:13:40,400 --> 01:13:43,400
Speaker 1: a as a pickup truck is driving along the tracks,

1313
01:13:43,600 --> 01:13:45,840
Speaker 1: that you're not going to get slammed by a big

1314
01:13:45,920 --> 01:13:50,719
Speaker 1: rig coming in the other direction. Yes. Often our trucks

1315
01:13:50,760 --> 01:13:53,840
Speaker 1: are on track. Equipment does not foul the main all

1316
01:13:53,920 --> 01:13:56,439
Speaker 1: the tracks, so the gates don't go down. I was

1317
01:13:56,520 --> 01:13:59,519
Speaker 1: putting a crane or a boom truck on the tracks

1318
01:13:59,600 --> 01:14:03,000
Speaker 1: until some years ago, and I had to jump up

1319
01:14:03,080 --> 01:14:06,960
Speaker 1: on the high rail gear up. I'm the bumper because

1320
01:14:06,960 --> 01:14:10,880
Speaker 1: I was almost hit because somebody not paying attention. You know,

1321
01:14:10,960 --> 01:14:13,439
Speaker 1: the gates weren't down. I had the flashes on, but

1322
01:14:13,560 --> 01:14:17,560
Speaker 1: you know they it's a dangerous scenario at the crossings,

1323
01:14:17,560 --> 01:14:28,080
Speaker 1: and we have had people die in those instances. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, right,

1324
01:14:28,160 --> 01:14:30,720
Speaker 1: And what would be what's what do you hear when

1325
01:14:31,320 --> 01:14:33,639
Speaker 1: when you talk to lawmakers and say Hey, can you

1326
01:14:34,000 --> 01:14:36,519
Speaker 1: just add this, like, what is what is the railroad's pushback?

1327
01:14:36,600 --> 01:14:40,200
Speaker 1: What is what is the lawmakers problem with? It seems

1328
01:14:40,240 --> 01:14:44,519
Speaker 1: to me that that should be the bare minimum, And

1329
01:14:44,640 --> 01:14:48,280
Speaker 1: in that circumstance, it is difficult for me to comprehend

1330
01:14:48,320 --> 01:14:52,320
Speaker 1: because it would save the railroad's liability as well because

1331
01:14:52,320 --> 01:14:57,240
Speaker 1: it puts more emphasis on public responsibility to acknowledge that

1332
01:14:57,320 --> 01:15:00,160
Speaker 1: there's more than trains on the tracks all. But it

1333
01:15:00,200 --> 01:15:04,400
Speaker 1: seems like the carriers are always pushing back against the unions.

1334
01:15:04,840 --> 01:15:07,559
Speaker 1: This is a real safety issue. Well, and one last

1335
01:15:07,640 --> 01:15:10,559
Speaker 1: question from me is just in the last week or so,

1336
01:15:11,640 --> 01:15:16,960
Speaker 1: do you sense a different maybe sentiment arising among regulators

1337
01:15:17,040 --> 01:15:21,439
Speaker 1: and maybe even the companies as they reckon with the

1338
01:15:21,760 --> 01:15:26,880
Speaker 1: incredible destruction and problem, the scale of the problem that

1339
01:15:26,960 --> 01:15:29,840
Speaker 1: was caused in Ohio. Do you sense that maybe this

1340
01:15:29,920 --> 01:15:32,320
Speaker 1: is an opening for real change or do you sense

1341
01:15:33,080 --> 01:15:35,080
Speaker 1: maybe more of a cover up in motion or an

1342
01:15:35,120 --> 01:15:37,200
Speaker 1: attempt to just sort of paper it over, put a

1343
01:15:37,240 --> 01:15:41,200
Speaker 1: giant bandit on it, and keep on moving. I think

1344
01:15:41,200 --> 01:15:45,479
Speaker 1: it's a very good opportunity to stripe while the iron's

1345
01:15:45,520 --> 01:15:49,000
Speaker 1: hot and get media attention. I've had a lot of interviews,

1346
01:15:49,040 --> 01:15:51,639
Speaker 1: we've talked to a lot of people railroad Workers United.

1347
01:15:51,720 --> 01:15:54,519
Speaker 1: Railroad Workers United dot org is probably how you got

1348
01:15:54,520 --> 01:15:59,000
Speaker 1: my contact in full. And they've had a media committee

1349
01:15:59,000 --> 01:16:02,760
Speaker 1: that's been out in droves and we have to keep

1350
01:16:02,800 --> 01:16:06,200
Speaker 1: the attention. I do know. A big issue on bargaining

1351
01:16:06,840 --> 01:16:11,360
Speaker 1: was the attendance policy. And at least four unions in

1352
01:16:11,400 --> 01:16:14,280
Speaker 1: the last ten days have gotten sick days at CSX

1353
01:16:14,640 --> 01:16:17,000
Speaker 1: and that's a promising step forward. And there were no

1354
01:16:17,080 --> 01:16:21,280
Speaker 1: concessions in getting that. Yeah, And I think that's important

1355
01:16:21,280 --> 01:16:23,639
Speaker 1: for people to understand because when you wage a public

1356
01:16:23,680 --> 01:16:27,400
Speaker 1: fight and you raise national attention on an issue, even

1357
01:16:27,439 --> 01:16:32,160
Speaker 1: if you don't win the ultimate victory in Senate. In

1358
01:16:32,200 --> 01:16:34,799
Speaker 1: the Senate for instance, sometimes it puts so much pressure

1359
01:16:34,800 --> 01:16:36,519
Speaker 1: that you end up winning anyway. So how how did

1360
01:16:36,560 --> 01:16:39,400
Speaker 1: you end up with with with those sick days through

1361
01:16:39,520 --> 01:16:45,080
Speaker 1: through UH through your railroad? Honestly, I give a lot

1362
01:16:45,080 --> 01:16:48,479
Speaker 1: of credit to the new CEO who came from Ford.

1363
01:16:49,439 --> 01:16:52,040
Speaker 1: I met him twice. On the second time I met him,

1364
01:16:52,560 --> 01:16:55,040
Speaker 1: I told him that I forgot to mention that now

1365
01:16:55,040 --> 01:16:57,840
Speaker 1: that he's the CEO, perhaps he can talk to other

1366
01:16:57,920 --> 01:17:01,000
Speaker 1: CEOs from the class on railroads and get us sick days.

1367
01:17:01,600 --> 01:17:03,479
Speaker 1: He said, you know, matt that's a good idea. I

1368
01:17:03,479 --> 01:17:05,879
Speaker 1: don't believe it will happen in this round of bargaining,

1369
01:17:06,360 --> 01:17:09,519
Speaker 1: but I'll work on it. And he's leading by example.

1370
01:17:09,600 --> 01:17:13,360
Speaker 1: So you don't see me often giving credit to company officials,

1371
01:17:13,400 --> 01:17:16,720
Speaker 1: but I was, I appreciate that you know that we

1372
01:17:16,800 --> 01:17:20,080
Speaker 1: have paid sick days now, right, and going to do

1373
01:17:20,120 --> 01:17:26,360
Speaker 1: if they're not pressured, right, right, and so get Yeah, well, well, Matthew,

1374
01:17:26,760 --> 01:17:31,040
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you joining and be safe out there,

1375
01:17:32,040 --> 01:17:34,040
Speaker 1: thank you. And it's not the thing they're going to

1376
01:17:34,080 --> 01:17:37,280
Speaker 1: do without attention. So I appreciate the media attention. You

1377
01:17:37,320 --> 01:17:39,160
Speaker 1: guys are really helping us get the word out there

1378
01:17:39,360 --> 01:17:42,040
Speaker 1: because the public doesn't know. No people thought we had

1379
01:17:42,080 --> 01:17:45,840
Speaker 1: sick days and we had zero until last week. Yeah,

1380
01:17:46,120 --> 01:17:51,080
Speaker 1: it's really crucial, it's really crucial. Thanks so much, Matthew.

1381
01:17:51,640 --> 01:17:57,200
Speaker 1: Thanks you guys. I appreciate the opportunity. Right. And so

1382
01:17:57,400 --> 01:18:01,719
Speaker 1: they continue to discover more and more, or they continue

1383
01:18:01,760 --> 01:18:04,320
Speaker 1: to announce more chemicals that that were on that train.

1384
01:18:04,479 --> 01:18:09,560
Speaker 1: I announced the just just yesterday. Uh. The disaster continues

1385
01:18:09,800 --> 01:18:13,519
Speaker 1: uh to unfold. They actually published a list of of

1386
01:18:13,600 --> 01:18:15,599
Speaker 1: everything that was on that train. I noticed it seemed

1387
01:18:15,600 --> 01:18:18,840
Speaker 1: like half the train was malt liquor. There has not

1388
01:18:18,880 --> 01:18:21,640
Speaker 1: been any reporting yet on on what happened to the

1389
01:18:22,000 --> 01:18:23,800
Speaker 1: malt liquor that I assumed that that went up in

1390
01:18:23,800 --> 01:18:28,440
Speaker 1: that outrageous chemical chemical blast that I think you appropriately

1391
01:18:28,439 --> 01:18:30,759
Speaker 1: described as kind of looking like Chernobyl in the middle

1392
01:18:30,800 --> 01:18:34,000
Speaker 1: of middle of Ohio. Emily, do you sense that there's

1393
01:18:34,040 --> 01:18:36,240
Speaker 1: any that this is a wake up call or do

1394
01:18:36,280 --> 01:18:39,080
Speaker 1: you you know, Pepe Pete Buda Judge was asked or

1395
01:18:39,200 --> 01:18:43,519
Speaker 1: appeared publicly recently and didn't even didn't even mention anything

1396
01:18:43,560 --> 01:18:48,240
Speaker 1: going on in uh in East Palestine. How many disasters

1397
01:18:48,280 --> 01:18:51,200
Speaker 1: are going to happen under Pete Buddha Judge's watch at

1398
01:18:51,240 --> 01:18:54,799
Speaker 1: the dot. I mean, seriously, it's just a never ending

1399
01:18:55,880 --> 01:19:00,719
Speaker 1: supply of disasters from America's transportation infrastructure under Pete Boodha

1400
01:19:00,800 --> 01:19:04,280
Speaker 1: Judge's nose. So yeah, I don't know if there's any

1401
01:19:04,320 --> 01:19:07,400
Speaker 1: momentum when you look at the fact that that's what

1402
01:19:07,520 --> 01:19:09,880
Speaker 1: our management and it's not just Pete Booda Judge. He's

1403
01:19:09,960 --> 01:19:13,720
Speaker 1: representative of I think something much broader, which is this

1404
01:19:13,880 --> 01:19:19,360
Speaker 1: technocratic precision. The precision word is such an important part

1405
01:19:19,400 --> 01:19:23,680
Speaker 1: of this, this like precision technocracy that we've built as

1406
01:19:23,720 --> 01:19:27,240
Speaker 1: a country, and so it doesn't just require a shift,

1407
01:19:27,280 --> 01:19:30,320
Speaker 1: it requires a paradigm shift. It doesn't just require momentum,

1408
01:19:30,400 --> 01:19:34,760
Speaker 1: it requires momentum to literally change the sort of structure

1409
01:19:34,800 --> 01:19:38,320
Speaker 1: of how we manage these things. And with that, I mean,

1410
01:19:38,439 --> 01:19:40,879
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know, maybe I would. I imagine

1411
01:19:40,880 --> 01:19:43,560
Speaker 1: you're in the same boat. I'm just I feel eternally

1412
01:19:43,600 --> 01:19:47,560
Speaker 1: pessimistic because to actually like really shift the paradigm is

1413
01:19:47,560 --> 01:19:51,240
Speaker 1: such a different question. But when I ask Matthew that

1414
01:19:51,280 --> 01:19:53,400
Speaker 1: question about what sort of maybe keeps him up at night,

1415
01:19:53,760 --> 01:19:56,599
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the Chernobyl thing is like what it's

1416
01:19:56,640 --> 01:19:58,400
Speaker 1: really what I mean by that, I'm you know, the

1417
01:19:58,720 --> 01:20:00,840
Speaker 1: fact that all of a sudden you have Chernobyl like

1418
01:20:00,960 --> 01:20:07,080
Speaker 1: cloud hovering over small town, Ohio. That's exactly like we

1419
01:20:07,160 --> 01:20:09,840
Speaker 1: only hear about these things when they happen, right, We

1420
01:20:09,960 --> 01:20:13,840
Speaker 1: don't know what's happening. Nobody can pay attention to the infrastructure,

1421
01:20:15,000 --> 01:20:18,840
Speaker 1: you know, minutia and every given problem every second of

1422
01:20:18,880 --> 01:20:20,720
Speaker 1: the day, and so we don't know what's sort of

1423
01:20:20,800 --> 01:20:23,799
Speaker 1: lurking in the shadows. But we know the infrastructure is failing.

1424
01:20:24,560 --> 01:20:27,760
Speaker 1: So God only knows truly what is to come if

1425
01:20:27,800 --> 01:20:30,920
Speaker 1: we don't get our act together right. And it isn't

1426
01:20:30,960 --> 01:20:33,080
Speaker 1: like you said, only Pete boo to Judge, but it

1427
01:20:33,120 --> 01:20:38,160
Speaker 1: also is a peat Boota Judge has responsibility as Transportation

1428
01:20:38,320 --> 01:20:41,479
Speaker 1: Secretary for this, and he needs to be doing something

1429
01:20:41,560 --> 01:20:45,360
Speaker 1: like this. It's it's you're right, he has been He's

1430
01:20:45,400 --> 01:20:48,320
Speaker 1: been dealt a really difficult hand as Transportation secretary. But

1431
01:20:48,320 --> 01:20:51,560
Speaker 1: at the same time, crises like that are opportunities to

1432
01:20:51,600 --> 01:20:55,280
Speaker 1: show leadership and he just has simply decided not to

1433
01:20:55,360 --> 01:21:00,160
Speaker 1: do that. And it's just it's utterly confounding because if

1434
01:21:00,720 --> 01:21:02,880
Speaker 1: you are as ambitious as he is, if you're eyeing

1435
01:21:02,920 --> 01:21:06,480
Speaker 1: the presidency, it seems like you would take these opportunities

1436
01:21:06,520 --> 01:21:09,519
Speaker 1: to start cracking some heads, cracking some railroad ceo heads,

1437
01:21:09,600 --> 01:21:14,720
Speaker 1: cracking some airline ceo heads. Instead, it just seems like

1438
01:21:14,760 --> 01:21:18,519
Speaker 1: it's just the mckinsiness is just so deeply kind of

1439
01:21:18,720 --> 01:21:22,800
Speaker 1: ingrained that he just can't see his way to that,

1440
01:21:22,920 --> 01:21:26,000
Speaker 1: and it's going to be to his political detriment. I

1441
01:21:26,000 --> 01:21:29,680
Speaker 1: suspect I don't see how he recovers from this. And

1442
01:21:29,920 --> 01:21:33,599
Speaker 1: you know, it's not as if Pete Boota Judge's political

1443
01:21:33,640 --> 01:21:35,679
Speaker 1: career is even in the top ten of the most

1444
01:21:35,720 --> 01:21:39,600
Speaker 1: important things when it comes to these crises. But it

1445
01:21:39,760 --> 01:21:42,200
Speaker 1: is that is going to be some of the fallout,

1446
01:21:42,240 --> 01:21:44,880
Speaker 1: I think, And you know, he hasn't really shied away

1447
01:21:44,920 --> 01:21:47,240
Speaker 1: from media. We'ch sure tells me more about where his

1448
01:21:47,360 --> 01:21:49,920
Speaker 1: motivations really lie. So like he's been hiding from the

1449
01:21:49,960 --> 01:21:52,280
Speaker 1: media as these disasters unfold. I think he's happy to

1450
01:21:52,280 --> 01:21:55,080
Speaker 1: go out there and talk about it. And that makes

1451
01:21:55,080 --> 01:21:57,240
Speaker 1: me think that he really wants a job where he

1452
01:21:57,280 --> 01:21:59,680
Speaker 1: can go out there and talk about things instead of

1453
01:22:00,320 --> 01:22:03,759
Speaker 1: or in lieu of perhaps really you know, doing things,

1454
01:22:04,680 --> 01:22:06,880
Speaker 1: except this one. He hasn't really had much to say

1455
01:22:07,520 --> 01:22:11,320
Speaker 1: about this one. But that's true. That's true with the strikes,

1456
01:22:11,479 --> 01:22:14,000
Speaker 1: all all the other ones. Yeah. Absolutely, but that's going

1457
01:22:14,080 --> 01:22:17,880
Speaker 1: to do That's gonna do it for this episode of Counterpoints, Emily,

1458
01:22:17,920 --> 01:22:23,000
Speaker 1: thanks for beaming in from Puerto Rico very much. Appreciate

1459
01:22:23,040 --> 01:22:27,400
Speaker 1: that this time next week I will be in Mexico

1460
01:22:28,360 --> 01:22:31,800
Speaker 1: preparing to watch a couple of days of fish concerts.

1461
01:22:32,040 --> 01:22:35,360
Speaker 1: I will not be joining you from there. We'll have

1462
01:22:35,640 --> 01:22:38,599
Speaker 1: we'll get somebody else in the desk for you. Maybe

1463
01:22:38,640 --> 01:22:40,559
Speaker 1: people can suggest who they want in the in the

1464
01:22:40,600 --> 01:22:43,040
Speaker 1: comments section. I don't think we've I don't think we've

1465
01:22:43,640 --> 01:22:46,559
Speaker 1: roped anybody into it yet. But I will be thinking

1466
01:22:46,600 --> 01:22:50,800
Speaker 1: of you, guys, uh, I promise we'll be We'll be

1467
01:22:50,840 --> 01:22:54,280
Speaker 1: thinking of you. Maybe we'll smoke a jay to be

1468
01:22:54,320 --> 01:22:56,479
Speaker 1: in solidarity with Ryan when he said that at the

1469
01:22:56,479 --> 01:22:58,720
Speaker 1: Fish concert. I would, I would, I would appreciate that,

1470
01:22:58,800 --> 01:23:02,120
Speaker 1: not breaking Americ going to do it in America. We'll

1471
01:23:02,200 --> 01:23:05,439
Speaker 1: get Sager to do this in your honor. There you go, excellent.

1472
01:23:06,280 --> 01:23:11,320
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we'll see everybody soon. H