Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 1: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Counterpoints with our new intro music. Emily, what'd you
Speaker 1: think of that? I loved it. It was pumping me up.
Speaker 1: But I think there's some people who are going to
Speaker 1: have completely mixed emotions about this. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: the thing that made Counterpoints unique is that we had
Speaker 1: this incredibly jarring, silent opening and now you get to
Speaker 1: get it pumped up like a regular morning show. We
Speaker 1: can still nix it, go back to that. So, Emily,
Speaker 1: are joining us from Wisconsin? Is that right? Where are you?
Speaker 1: I'm in Puerto Rico, so about as far from Wisconsin
Speaker 1: and as is possible. The first vacation I've taken in years,
Speaker 1: but I had to be here for Counterpoints. Joining us
Speaker 1: on your vacation since you're not in the studio, you
Speaker 1: don't know that we're actually starting with something different than
Speaker 1: what we talked about. We have breaking news. Just got
Speaker 1: alerted from the New York Times that they are trying
Speaker 1: to pierce the attorney client privilege and go after one
Speaker 1: of Trump's attorneys in the document case to try to
Speaker 1: get him to try to get him to testify. This
Speaker 1: is in the classified documents case that they that they
Speaker 1: still have going against Trump. You might have seen that
Speaker 1: alerted on your phone just now, but your what's your
Speaker 1: reaction to this? Do you think that there's still momentum
Speaker 1: behind this case, given the fact that they're finding classified
Speaker 1: information at every former president, former vice president, former senator's
Speaker 1: house who seems to have left office in the last
Speaker 1: twenty years. No, it's a good question because I think
Speaker 1: the momentum is the legal momentum is going to be
Speaker 1: different from the question of whether there's sort of a
Speaker 1: public momentum. Like the court of legal affairs is very
Speaker 1: different than the court of public opinion. The court of
Speaker 1: legal opinion versus the court of public opinion is a
Speaker 1: huge distinction. And to the extent that they also started
Speaker 1: looking for these documents and Joe Biden's different residents and
Speaker 1: the think tank, and then they went through Mike Pence's
Speaker 1: office and his residence. That was all motivated by the
Speaker 1: Court of public opinion. It was really just like, hey,
Speaker 1: we need to see what's going on in case we
Speaker 1: end up, you know, we end up in a really
Speaker 1: untenable situation. And in fact, they did find themselves in
Speaker 1: an untenable situation. Ryan, the other question I have for
Speaker 1: you because I'm curious what you think about that same question,
Speaker 1: but also with the news today about the news in
Speaker 1: the last couple of days about what's happening in the
Speaker 1: case in Georgia and Fulton County where the prosecutor was,
Speaker 1: as we can covered a couple of weeks ago, wants
Speaker 1: to keep the grand jury testimony and the grand jury
Speaker 1: report basically under wraps until they're ready to release it.
Speaker 1: And we think we expect that she is going to
Speaker 1: indict Donald Trump, right, and all of this just to
Speaker 1: me just takes way too long. Like what is everybody
Speaker 1: waiting for? Like, if you have the goods on somebody,
Speaker 1: just move on. And this this thing where you're waiting
Speaker 1: Merrek Garland taking what two years to decide to move
Speaker 1: and then at the last minute he punts it over
Speaker 1: to a special prosecutor, taking two years down on Georgie.
Speaker 1: I understand it takes a long time to interview witnesses,
Speaker 1: to collect information to move forward, but you're right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it does seem like this is heating up, you know,
Speaker 1: just as we're kind of entering into the Republican Republican
Speaker 1: nomination contest. And I think the problem for Trump here
Speaker 1: is that if you're looking at this from thirty thousand
Speaker 1: feet away and you're not following this very closely, it
Speaker 1: does look like everybody's finding classified information, and maybe even
Speaker 1: Tho Georgia things seems to kind of lump in there
Speaker 1: with it. But if you get into the details, Trump
Speaker 1: was the one. Trump was the only one of all
Speaker 1: of these people who kind of was actively monkeying around
Speaker 1: with people who were trying to get back the information. Now,
Speaker 1: when he unclassified the documents, right, he unclassified them all
Speaker 1: in his mind, Right, it's by declare bankruptcy. Exactly, declared bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: Again with Biden and Pence, they you know, their lawyers
Speaker 1: found it and they immediately kind of reach out to
Speaker 1: the National Security Archives or they reach out to the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice say hey, we found these classified information
Speaker 1: with the other It's like boxes are getting moved around,
Speaker 1: there's there's you know, mar A Lago is just a
Speaker 1: den of spies, which isn't exactly Trump's fault, but it's
Speaker 1: going you know, it's going to attract a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of foreign intelligence agencies who were going to try to
Speaker 1: penetrate that that type of situation. So, you know, for
Speaker 1: him to have just classified documents just kind of lying
Speaker 1: around or as trophies to kind of show off, puts
Speaker 1: him in a different category than Trump. Than the Georgia thing.
Speaker 1: That's going to be wild, because that really is going
Speaker 1: back to something real, like his attempt to mess with
Speaker 1: the election in Georgia. What's your read on the Georgia prosecutor, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but to your first question about the momentum, we have
Speaker 1: learned that Joe Biden had apparently classified documents we don't
Speaker 1: know how classified, we don't know what they are about
Speaker 1: in the garage next to his corvette, in a house
Speaker 1: that Hunter Biden was living apparently and had access to.
Speaker 1: And so when Hunter Biden has engaged in really high
Speaker 1: level foreign lobbying where he's trading on his name, and
Speaker 1: there's documents there it does whether or not. I think
Speaker 1: there are substantive reasons for concern and both the Trump
Speaker 1: and the Biden case, because presumably there are intelligence assets
Speaker 1: of foreign countries both in mar A Lago and around
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden, maybe even around Mike Pence. So there is
Speaker 1: a real substantive question. We still don't know the real
Speaker 1: nature of many of these documents. I think really does
Speaker 1: take some of the momentum away from this particular pursuit
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump. Now the Georgia one, this is the
Speaker 1: most serious, I think legal threat to Trump that I
Speaker 1: have seen in the last several years. I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but to me, this is like, this is
Speaker 1: the one that actually carries weight. And so if it
Speaker 1: gets sort of tick, if it gets sort of tacked
Speaker 1: on to the tiki taky ones, I don't know that
Speaker 1: that's super helpful for the folks in Fulton County, Georgia. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's going to get exciting. We're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: keep watching that. I think what they ought to do
Speaker 1: just declassify all of the documents and then let let
Speaker 1: everybody just decide who had the worst documents. And if
Speaker 1: it's the nuclear codes, redact the nuclear codes and also
Speaker 1: change your nuclear codes like that. You know best practices
Speaker 1: on nuclear codes. When you have a new administration, you
Speaker 1: do new nuclear codes. Right, that's pretty reasonable. Nor we
Speaker 1: can agree on that. Yeah, So moving moving on to
Speaker 1: Social Security, which which I think actually represents a wedge
Speaker 1: that kind of points right at the most probably the
Speaker 1: most important kind of realignment going on in politics over
Speaker 1: the last twenty or thirty years, and that's the kind
Speaker 1: of class realignment or de alignment going on inside the
Speaker 1: two parties, with social Security working as a spotlight shining
Speaker 1: right on the strange situation that we're that we're finding us.
Speaker 1: And we can get more into that in a moment.
Speaker 1: But Bernie Sanders, we can put up this. This a one.
Speaker 1: So Bernie Sanders is out with his new bill to
Speaker 1: expand and strengthen Social Security. He expands and strengthen is
Speaker 1: by basically raising taxes on the rich. He lifts the
Speaker 1: cap on payroll taxes for people making more than two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. They don't get
Speaker 1: higher Social Security benefits, but they're going to pay more
Speaker 1: in payroll tax people at the bottom are going to
Speaker 1: see a ten to fifteen percent increase in their SOLI
Speaker 1: security benefits. And the actuary says that this would solidify
Speaker 1: the program for the next seventy five years, and they
Speaker 1: use a seventy five year window. And so you've heard
Speaker 1: a lot from Republicans saying that they want to strengthen
Speaker 1: Social Security, warning about the insolvency problem. Basically too fomism
Speaker 1: here on counterpoint exactly, Basically, there's two ways to do it.
Speaker 1: You can bring more tax money in or you can
Speaker 1: reduce benefits. And so now Bernie Sanders has put his
Speaker 1: cards on the table. He's like, all right, here's my idea.
Speaker 1: Let's raise taxes on the ridge to fund it. So
Speaker 1: how are Republicans going to respond to this, because now
Speaker 1: if they say strengthen, it's like, oh, so you support
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders' plan. Oh, if you don't support Bernie Center's plan,
Speaker 1: then you do support benefit cuts at least down the road. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a guy on the right, I think he's at
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Institute, Brian Riedl, who does a lot of
Speaker 1: these calculations from the conservative perspective, and even he concedes
Speaker 1: he has said this is in the hof Post article,
Speaker 1: that the seventy five year mark or at least decades,
Speaker 1: actually is a step towards for Social Security. He does, however,
Speaker 1: raise a really good point, which is that you run
Speaker 1: out of tax the rich proposals to then fund the
Speaker 1: gap with Medicare, which is a very very serious problem
Speaker 1: without implementing dramatic tax hikes on the middle class or
Speaker 1: cutting and so the math is still really really tough
Speaker 1: if you combine the problem that we have with both
Speaker 1: Social Security and Medicare. And Brian Reedl has looked at
Speaker 1: some of these numbers and one of the most interesting
Speaker 1: things is that the average American is coming out on
Speaker 1: top in terms of what they put into Social Security
Speaker 1: and Medicare and what they get out. But what's even
Speaker 1: more interesting is to see how many benefits are going
Speaker 1: back to very wealthy Americans. We're talking about upper middle
Speaker 1: class and upper class people. That there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people getting benefits in the Restructuring might be another
Speaker 1: way to look at this, but that doesn't preclude tax hikes.
Speaker 1: It certainly doesn't preclude tax hikes on the ridge. But
Speaker 1: it is interesting to think that what we can do
Speaker 1: with social Security. If we tax the rich basically at
Speaker 1: that level, then you leave Medicare Medicare without much to
Speaker 1: do in terms of increasing taxes. From that point, I
Speaker 1: think when it comes to the wealthy getting Social Security,
Speaker 1: I think for everybody who makes more than four hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: who made more than four hundred thousand dollars over their
Speaker 1: career a year, if they want their solid security checks,
Speaker 1: they should have to go down to a Social Security
Speaker 1: office and stand in line every month, and also maybe
Speaker 1: even pee in a cup, you know, do all the
Speaker 1: degrading things that they that they make poor working class
Speaker 1: people do to get their benefits. That way, if somebody
Speaker 1: really wants their Social Security benefits that they paid into,
Speaker 1: hey you can have them. Here's you know, here's the
Speaker 1: address of the office. You got to physically go down
Speaker 1: there and get it every month. But more seriously, what
Speaker 1: they could do is just kind of raise taxes a
Speaker 1: little bit more on the rich. So that way, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're getting it, you're but there's a progressively higher tax
Speaker 1: rate on you. So we're just basically taxing it back.
Speaker 1: You can have it, and we're taking it right back.
Speaker 1: But so Mike rounds center, Mike Rounds was on. I
Speaker 1: guess I think it was Fox. We'll find that out
Speaker 1: in a second one of these cable networks talking about
Speaker 1: Social Security. Let's roll a two. Here. He's pointing specifically
Speaker 1: to the plan that your colleague, Senator Rick Scott, Republican
Speaker 1: of Florida released when he was leading the Senate GOP's
Speaker 1: campaign arm which says, just to quote, all federal legislation
Speaker 1: sunsets in five years, if a law is worth keeping,
Speaker 1: Congress can pass it again unquote. Do you support that plan?
Speaker 1: I kind of look at social Security the way I
Speaker 1: would at the Department of Defense and our defense spending.
Speaker 1: We're never going to not fund defense, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, every single year we look at how we
Speaker 1: can make it better. And I think it's about time
Speaker 1: that we start talking about social Security and making it better.
Speaker 1: We've got eleven years before we actually see cuts start
Speaker 1: to happen to people that are on Social Security, and
Speaker 1: I think it'd be very responsible for us to do
Speaker 1: everything we can to make those funding programs now and
Speaker 1: the plans right now, so that we don't run out
Speaker 1: of money in Social Security. Okay, that was obviously not Fox.
Speaker 1: The next clip we have is Fox Business. But what
Speaker 1: what was your what was your reaction to that? Because
Speaker 1: all of these Republicans are getting hit with this Rick
Speaker 1: Scott thing, like, hey man, you do you agree with
Speaker 1: this guy who wants to sunset sold security and medicare
Speaker 1: over five years and reupp and then you have somebody
Speaker 1: like Mike Browns who says, yeah, we should keep we
Speaker 1: should keep looking at it. That Democrats seeing that are like,
Speaker 1: thank you, We're just gonna hammer you with this. What
Speaker 1: was your reaction to it? The White House was giddy
Speaker 1: when Rick Scott put out that plan. I mean it
Speaker 1: was palpably giddy in Washington that the Democrats at DNC
Speaker 1: in the White House was just tap dancing that day
Speaker 1: because they knew this was their midterm weapon. And Mitch
Speaker 1: McConnell was furious. And for all my problems with Mitch McConnell,
Speaker 1: he's absolutely right to continue, you know, throwing the blame
Speaker 1: over to Rick Scott. Now, that plan, by the way,
Speaker 1: had a lot of really really good stuff in it,
Speaker 1: but this one thing that was buried in it. Basically
Speaker 1: it wasn't a huge aspect of that plan. It was
Speaker 1: just killer And I was involved in a lot of conversations.
Speaker 1: I remember talking to Republicans, some high level Republicans even
Speaker 1: back in the spring, who were just furious that Scott
Speaker 1: had sort of gone rogue and put out this plan
Speaker 1: that included that note in it. And the reason you
Speaker 1: keep hearing Scott and Round's talk like that, honestly, is
Speaker 1: because there is no answer unless you do to the point,
Speaker 1: we just had tax the rich at a crazy high rate,
Speaker 1: and then you're still left with either Social Security or Medicare.
Speaker 1: Like the math just doesn't add up. But they love
Speaker 1: to talk about it, and they don't want to seek
Speaker 1: any options that involve taxation. And on the other hand,
Speaker 1: nobody wants to seek any options that involve cuts. So
Speaker 1: there's no restructuring plan that fits the bill. And that's
Speaker 1: why I think people like Mitch McConnell are like, just
Speaker 1: shut up about it. Now. You can interpret that one way,
Speaker 1: which is they're going to say one thing publicly and
Speaker 1: do the other thing that debt ceiling negotiations come. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people are right to have that skepticism.
Speaker 1: But I will say the mood among Republicans in Washington
Speaker 1: was basically furious with Rick Scott that that got into
Speaker 1: the plan. It feels like it could be the Republican
Speaker 1: version of defund the police, where you really only had
Speaker 1: like one or two Democrats, and you'd say, Corey Busher say,
Speaker 1: did one interviewer he says defund the police. But in
Speaker 1: general it's you know, they're marching with people who support
Speaker 1: defund the police, or they're saying we ought to reduce
Speaker 1: funding from the police and move it over to social services,
Speaker 1: and then Republicans just you know, hit them over the
Speaker 1: head with it, you know, for multiple election cycles in
Speaker 1: a row, saying that you are for defund the police.
Speaker 1: Democrats the party of defund the police. I would suspect
Speaker 1: Democrats are just going to do the reverse to Republicans
Speaker 1: with this over time. That's a perfect parallel because if
Speaker 1: Republicans really believed that they needed to do entitlement reform,
Speaker 1: like they desperately had this Paul Ryan commitment to entitlement reform,
Speaker 1: it would have been a priority for them in seventeen.
Speaker 1: But Republicans are politicians just like Democrats, and politicians are
Speaker 1: categorically cowards because they want to continue being re elected,
Speaker 1: which means they don't want to touch entitlements. They might
Speaker 1: want to talk about it at the Chamber of Commerce meetings,
Speaker 1: but they don't want to actually do it, except for
Speaker 1: a few sort of deficit hawkish nerdy types that love
Speaker 1: love doing the math and et cetera. Still think the
Speaker 1: tea Party era was all about the Debton deficit, which
Speaker 1: it never really was. Sager likes to make that point.
Speaker 1: It's a good one that the tea Party was sort
Speaker 1: of more cultural than really a movement to cut the deficit.
Speaker 1: But all that is to say, I think that defend
Speaker 1: the police parallels a really really apt one, and that's
Speaker 1: why you just see some real true believers that floated
Speaker 1: every now and then. But the real seriousness about making
Speaker 1: those cuts. They're too cowardly to do it even if
Speaker 1: they wanted to, and I don't suspect that they actually
Speaker 1: really want to. And I want to play this clip
Speaker 1: of Buddy Carter because it's interesting to see how a
Speaker 1: kind of rank and file house Republican is talking about this.
Speaker 1: Also want to play the clip because I love the
Speaker 1: kind of jerkstore insult that he comes up at the
Speaker 1: very beginning of this. Let's roll it through and remember
Speaker 1: it took him about a week after the State of
Speaker 1: the Union to come up with this put downs. Let's
Speaker 1: roll a three here. The supposedly State of the Union
Speaker 1: address that Tuesday night, it was more of a state
Speaker 1: of confusion address. I mean Senator Biden wanted to suspend
Speaker 1: the Social Security and Medicaid Medicare, and now he's claiming
Speaker 1: that Republicans want to end it. No, it's ridiculous. We
Speaker 1: have always said we want to preserve it, we want
Speaker 1: to stabilize it, we want to save it. That's what
Speaker 1: we want to do. Now he can continue to ignore
Speaker 1: it if he wants to do, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you it's got to have attention. We've got to
Speaker 1: do something about this. We've got to address this situation.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's not going to be there. And that's why
Speaker 1: Republicans are trying to do our best to save this program,
Speaker 1: to preserve it so that it'll be there for generations
Speaker 1: to come. It's not a state of confusion. Yes, we're
Speaker 1: going to stabilize, secure strengthen like he just was whipping
Speaker 1: everything out. Yeah, but I think the problem for Republicans
Speaker 1: to tell me if you agree with this, is that
Speaker 1: if voters hear Republicans say that they want to save
Speaker 1: solid security. They want to strengthen so or whatever they
Speaker 1: want to do with Social Security. They get nervous, like
Speaker 1: I don't think voters want Republicans talking about Social Security period. No. No,
Speaker 1: Because voters are smart. They understand that those are euphemisms.
Speaker 1: They're not dumb, and Republicans when they talk like that,
Speaker 1: treat voters as though they are dumb. And just to
Speaker 1: be clear, I do think like Corey Bush and defund
Speaker 1: the police or whomever else, there are true believers in
Speaker 1: the Republican Conference and in the Senate that absolutely do
Speaker 1: want to cut these programs. They do want to do that,
Speaker 1: but the party as a whole, even if they did
Speaker 1: want to do it as a whole, they want to
Speaker 1: get re elected more than they want to make those cuts.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it's because they're all, you know,
Speaker 1: morally upstanding people who want to protect benefits. I think
Speaker 1: it's because they're coward So even if they believed it
Speaker 1: needed to happen, wouldn't have the political guts to do it.
Speaker 1: From your lips to God's ears, let's hope. Let's move
Speaker 1: on to this great interview that John Stossel did that
Speaker 1: went under the radar with Mike Pompeo rumored twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four presidential candidate for CIA Director and Secretary of State
Speaker 1: under President Trump. Fascinating and wide ranging interview in which
Speaker 1: he really got pressed on several things. But we wanted
Speaker 1: to look at a couple JFK and Edward Snowden. Let's
Speaker 1: roll the first clip from that. Why'd you fight to
Speaker 1: keep the JFK file secret? Because I was trying to
Speaker 1: keep Americans safe? And by the way, don't paint with
Speaker 1: too broad a brush. Ninety nine points six percent of
Speaker 1: the JFK files are public today. But it was sixty
Speaker 1: years ago, John, Not everything was sixty years ago. I
Speaker 1: don't want to spend a lot of time walking through this,
Speaker 1: but suffice it to say, the definition of a document
Speaker 1: covered by this statute that you're referring to, it's a
Speaker 1: little bit wonky, but suffice it to say, if Congress
Speaker 1: holds a hearing tomorrow on the Kennedy assassination, the documents
Speaker 1: generated tomorrow will be part of those files. Those would
Speaker 1: be tomorrow, they'd be sixty seconds old, not sixty years old.
Speaker 1: And last thing I'll say is there are things that
Speaker 1: happened sixty years ago that are still important to keep
Speaker 1: in the bolt. There are lots of things that happen
Speaker 1: that that long ago that still are appropriate not to release.
Speaker 1: Think of names and addresses and families. And by the way,
Speaker 1: there's also no value in them. These don't hold the
Speaker 1: dark secrets that everybody wants to just hold up as
Speaker 1: the bogum. And I saw the UFO files too. We've
Speaker 1: got bigger problems in America, got lots of bigger problems
Speaker 1: just because something is kept secret. Why not not go
Speaker 1: to the darkest corners. But it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to go there with you if you'd like.
Speaker 1: I had a chance to see not all of those
Speaker 1: documents but most of them. The news value of them
Speaker 1: is grossly overrated, and the desire to keep them secret,
Speaker 1: the motivation, the rationale for keeping them secret is wholly justified.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the content this of course to Tucker. Carlson
Speaker 1: recently said on his show that he invited Mike Pompeo
Speaker 1: on to talk about why he had made the decision
Speaker 1: to not release these documents, and Carlson also said that
Speaker 1: he spoke with somebody who had direct access to those
Speaker 1: documents and that that person said it indicated that the
Speaker 1: CIA itself was involved in a conspiracy to assassinateing Kennedy.
Speaker 1: So that's Carlson's reporting. Carlson said Mike Pompeo, who never
Speaker 1: turns down an opportunity to come on to his show,
Speaker 1: declined the opportunity. He did agree to do an interview
Speaker 1: with John Stossel. Good for John Stossel for pressing him.
Speaker 1: Should we take Mike Pompeyo's word that there's nothing to
Speaker 1: see here? And you know this better than I do.
Speaker 1: But what he's talking about, that this sixty year thing
Speaker 1: is absolute nonsense of Congress brig a Hole. The hearing
Speaker 1: tomorrow that it would be you know, in the JFK
Speaker 1: of files is sort of hilarious, and I think he
Speaker 1: almost knew it when he was saying it was funny,
Speaker 1: which is why he added that second answer, which is
Speaker 1: that you know, he goes on to say in the interview,
Speaker 1: potentially there are human sources that are still alive that
Speaker 1: might be compromised by it, and that I think is
Speaker 1: his real contention, that if there are people who are
Speaker 1: still alive that might be implicated by potentially releasing the
Speaker 1: percentage of documents which is small but obviously important because
Speaker 1: they haven't been released despite the timeline, that these confidential
Speaker 1: human sources might be the problem. And Ryan, you mentioned
Speaker 1: the Tucker thing, and this is a great time to
Speaker 1: bring up a theory. I know both you and I
Speaker 1: are interested in that a legal scholar, and the name
Speaker 1: escapes me at the moment floated, which is that, potentially,
Speaker 1: is Donald Trump Tucker Carlson's source who would have access
Speaker 1: both to Tucker and to those documents? Is it Donald
Speaker 1: Trump himself that told Tucker Carlson the CIA was involved
Speaker 1: in this assassination. And then you can when you sort
Speaker 1: of fill in that blank, if that's the case, that
Speaker 1: the remaining JFK files sort of definitively prove that link,
Speaker 1: Mike Pompeo can say, maybe to himself and to the
Speaker 1: country in a vague way, that you know, he still
Speaker 1: needs to keep American safe and that the news value
Speaker 1: is low potentially because everybody already knows about the JFK files,
Speaker 1: the JFK assassination's relationship to the CIA. So you can
Speaker 1: sort of see the intellectual gymnastics that might go into
Speaker 1: a rationalization like that. Yeah, And if you go back
Speaker 1: and look at the syntax of the quote that the
Speaker 1: person gave to Tucker Carlson, this person that you know,
Speaker 1: had a direct access to these files. He said. The
Speaker 1: quote was something like, it's all fake. It's it's not
Speaker 1: the country that we thought that we thought it was.
Speaker 1: And once, when you think about the different quotes that
Speaker 1: than Carlson reads on air, and you think about how
Speaker 1: Trump speaks and thinks, you're like, oh, that's funny. That
Speaker 1: actually might be Trump might be his source. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that doesn't necessarily inspire me with more confidence
Speaker 1: than less, like I know, but it does maybe want
Speaker 1: to see the documents, like, Okay, what are these? And
Speaker 1: Pompeo's argument to me isn't serious because there are there
Speaker 1: are such things as redactions, like if there is an
Speaker 1: eighty year old who was undercover in Mexico City in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty and you know when they were twenty years old,
Speaker 1: then you can redact that name or you can they
Speaker 1: and they have redacted enormous amounts of the files that
Speaker 1: have that they have released so far. And so if
Speaker 1: if that's really what it is, then then just go
Speaker 1: then just go ahead and release it. Let but let
Speaker 1: let's let's play the Edward Snowden clip where he presses
Speaker 1: him on these questions and gets some rather kind of
Speaker 1: stark answers from Pompeo. Edward Snowden, the man who told
Speaker 1: the world about the federal government sweeping top secret domestic
Speaker 1: spying program, is on the move. After Snowden fled America,
Speaker 1: Pompeo said, we've had the trader, Edward Snowden steel that information.
Speaker 1: He should be brought back from Russian given due process,
Speaker 1: and I think the proper outcome would be that he
Speaker 1: would be given a death sentence. He should be executed.
Speaker 1: He's a trader. Yes. What the NC doing every single day,
Speaker 1: it's ordinary course of business, is violating not only the
Speaker 1: laws as written, but likely the constitutions. What he told
Speaker 1: the American people about court said was illegal. Both of
Speaker 1: those thoughts can be held in one's head at the
Speaker 1: same time. So what should he have done. You can't
Speaker 1: steal stuff, John, You can't steal American secrets. It's unacceptable,
Speaker 1: even even if your justification is noble. He put my
Speaker 1: friends at risk. He put your family members, or your cousin,
Speaker 1: or your friend who's serving in a submarine fleet somewhere
Speaker 1: in the world he put their lives at risk, and
Speaker 1: he did it by stealing American stuff, and that by
Speaker 1: definition is unlawful. And he did it in a way
Speaker 1: that he knew put their lives at risk. What's one
Speaker 1: example that no longer would threaten somebody, How does he
Speaker 1: threaten somebody? Well, the information that he stole and then
Speaker 1: provided to the world, shared trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to do it without being the same man that he is,
Speaker 1: shared patterns of American activity and our naval fleet. It's dangerous, John,
Speaker 1: that's not noble. That's not sharing something the government's doing.
Speaker 1: That's bad. And that wasn't his mission set. His mission
Speaker 1: ship was to be mischievous and undermine the United States
Speaker 1: of America, no mistake about it. Edward Snowden's intentions were
Speaker 1: to weaken the United States of America and he did. Yeh,
Speaker 1: What was your reaction to that? So it's he also
Speaker 1: in the interview didn't know. When Stosselbrode brought up that
Speaker 1: there was a previous whistleblower, Pompeo said he hadn't heard
Speaker 1: that another person had attempted to blow the whistle by
Speaker 1: talking to Republican staffers. By the way, Republican congressional staffers,
Speaker 1: intelligence staffers with this information and had ultimately been punished
Speaker 1: that actually a lot of people had been punished in
Speaker 1: the process of trying to blow the whistle on the
Speaker 1: NSA's Post nine eleven activities, And Pompeos basically said he
Speaker 1: wasn't familiar with the fact that that had happened. And so,
Speaker 1: if I'm in Edward Snowden's case, do I morally know
Speaker 1: whether or not he did the right thing? It's hard
Speaker 1: for me to say. I think there's a real question there.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, Edward Snowden is clearly a
Speaker 1: victim of the impossibility that our government created surrounding blowing
Speaker 1: the whistle on the NSA. And the value I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy, are you. The value of what he
Speaker 1: revealed is outweighed the sort of cost benefit. The benefit
Speaker 1: of what he revealed is outweighed by the cost, and
Speaker 1: we continue, I think to learn more proving that's the case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly right now. And I also think
Speaker 1: that there's something revealing about his use of America and
Speaker 1: America's secrets, and it raises a question of what is
Speaker 1: the definition of America and for Pompeo, clearly what he
Speaker 1: means by America is the American government like that that
Speaker 1: the American government has sole custody of all of these secrets.
Speaker 1: That whereas I think most people would think of America
Speaker 1: as we the people, that that there is, that that
Speaker 1: there is that there is a collective ownership of these things,
Speaker 1: and that that the people have a right to this information.
Speaker 1: Now that the government has a right to try to
Speaker 1: keep importance secrets, and it ought to do that to
Speaker 1: keep people safe. If it fails at doing that, it
Speaker 1: has remedies. It can fire those people, it cannot hire
Speaker 1: those people in the future, it can take away their
Speaker 1: security clearances. But everyone in this country has a First
Speaker 1: Amendment right to speech. Whether you work for the government
Speaker 1: or not, you have a First Amendment right to speech.
Speaker 1: And all of us, as Americans, you know, have a
Speaker 1: right to know whether or not our government is breaking laws.
Speaker 1: And I think your point is a great one that Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say that Edward Soden had tried that route. Oh,
Speaker 1: we don't have to say, because we know that people
Speaker 1: have tried it in the past and they haven't haven't
Speaker 1: gone anywhere. So you can't set up a situation where
Speaker 1: nobody can blow the whistle legally and then also say, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's your only avenue. Oh it doesn't work too bad. Whoops. Yep,
Speaker 1: no exactly. And just as we wrap up, I want
Speaker 1: to make a final comment. I think it's great that
Speaker 1: a former CIA director is actually running for president because
Speaker 1: that means you will be peppered with a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: Good for John scoswel for asking those questions. And I
Speaker 1: look forward to hearing more people question my Pompeio on
Speaker 1: these issues. And coincidentally, the last CIA director to serve
Speaker 1: as president is thought to have possibly been involved with
Speaker 1: the very conspiracy about Pompeo does not want more documents
Speaker 1: to be to be released upon So yeah, another another
Speaker 1: CIA director And what I don't I don't. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine him. And the last question for you, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine him as a credible Republican candidate. But what do
Speaker 1: I know? Could he be? You know, I think he's
Speaker 1: good on a huge issue, good from the perspective of
Speaker 1: a Republican voter on a huge issue for them, which
Speaker 1: is China. So that is a top priority for the
Speaker 1: average Republican voter, and Pompeo probably checks a lot of boxes.
Speaker 1: On that note, Niki Haley is obviously announcing her run
Speaker 1: for president today, someone who I don't think checks a
Speaker 1: lot of boxes on China and the economy and national
Speaker 1: security in the same way Pompeo might. But two almost
Speaker 1: similar candidates in a way kind of hawkish pre Trump figures.
Speaker 1: So it'll be interesting to watch the racing wall. Well,
Speaker 1: moving to China and India, if we can put up
Speaker 1: this c one here. So, the Indian authorities have now
Speaker 1: rated the offices of the BBC in India in retaliation
Speaker 1: for the Modi the Modi documentary that we've that we've
Speaker 1: talked about here. We previously talked about this documentary in
Speaker 1: the context of Twitter and YouTube both agreeing to take
Speaker 1: it down after demands made by the Indian government that
Speaker 1: they that they do so. This is a documentary that
Speaker 1: looks into Prime Minister Modis role in a brutal massacre
Speaker 1: back in I believe it was two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: It's a two part documentary and has been called propaganda
Speaker 1: and basically banned to be viewed in any of Some
Speaker 1: students UH tried tried to view it. Some were detained
Speaker 1: by police. Others at other universities tried to view it
Speaker 1: were pelted with with stones. It's becoming not just a
Speaker 1: cultural moment in Indy but also a free speech touchdown
Speaker 1: in the country, but also relates uh to free speech
Speaker 1: debates here in the United States because Uh Elon musk
Speaker 1: did finally comment on Twitter's decision to comply with India's
Speaker 1: request to take to block any sharing of the BBC documentary,
Speaker 1: and he said, look, his comment was basically, look, I'm
Speaker 1: running three companies. I don't have time to fix every problem.
Speaker 1: Uh that's going on with Twitter all over the world.
Speaker 1: You know, what do you what do you people want
Speaker 1: from me? And that was several weeks ago. Uh it
Speaker 1: is it is still being banned. Twitter's offices actually were
Speaker 1: raided before Elon Musk uh purchased the company by Indian
Speaker 1: authorities because the the the pre Musk Twitter was actually
Speaker 1: pretty aggressive in rejecting a lot of these demands from
Speaker 1: the MOTI government, which led to a rate of their offices.
Speaker 1: So what was your reaction when you saw that that
Speaker 1: Indian stormtroopers are like moving in to a media organization's office. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: And according to CNN, these were tax authorities that were
Speaker 1: raiding the office and not letting employees in. And the
Speaker 1: first thing I thought about actually was a CNN headline
Speaker 1: that asked, this week, I mean, this is headlines that
Speaker 1: are happening concurrently, is the iPhones made in India era
Speaker 1: about to begin? Look at that. And so again you
Speaker 1: have a situation very similar to what was happening in
Speaker 1: China in some very important ways, which is that companies
Speaker 1: like companies like Apple are about to entangle themselves very
Speaker 1: very deeply in another country where leadership I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about the people, but while people in the government shared
Speaker 1: different set of values about what that government should look like,
Speaker 1: and how that government should function, and what the relationship
Speaker 1: between the people and the government should look like. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, in that article, you have a top minister
Speaker 1: in India saying that Apple wants to go for making
Speaker 1: five to seven percent of its products in India to
Speaker 1: twenty five percent of its products in India. This is
Speaker 1: a huge jump. Fox con wants to start doing more
Speaker 1: business in India. Obviously, that's a huge iPhone manufacturer that
Speaker 1: has done most of its operations in China for a
Speaker 1: very long time, had huge problems We covered that here
Speaker 1: extensively just a couple of months ago, when it came
Speaker 1: to workers upset about the zero COVID policy. Tim Cook
Speaker 1: has recently said that India is hugely exciting. That's his
Speaker 1: direct quote. And there's also an interesting point in the
Speaker 1: CNN article which talks about how Samsung ended up already
Speaker 1: moving shifting a lot of its operations. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of its manufacturing from China to India because of rising
Speaker 1: wages in China, the rising cost of labor in China,
Speaker 1: meaning here are some poor people we can exploit in
Speaker 1: another country to keep costs low for us. And so
Speaker 1: this dynamic is now emerging when it comes to India.
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, this is their last element is sending,
Speaker 1: is reporting that more and more CEOs are about to
Speaker 1: make trips back to China or already have. We're talking Volkswegen, Mercedes.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Albert Borola of Pfizer and Tim Cook
Speaker 1: of Apple flirting once again over in China, you know,
Speaker 1: with their benefactors in the Chinese business community and the the
Speaker 1: Chinese government to the extent that those are separate. But
Speaker 1: this is going to pose a really difficult, I think
Speaker 1: question for Apple, and to see Tim Cook in particular,
Speaker 1: just diving right back into the deep end in a
Speaker 1: way that so reminds me almost eerily of the early
Speaker 1: days of our sort of China merger. There seems to
Speaker 1: be the same naivete. I don't know, it's not naivete,
Speaker 1: it's cynicism, I guess, Ryan, right, And you see the
Speaker 1: same process unfold continuously. You know, the comp factories start
Speaker 1: in the kind of the north of the United States.
Speaker 1: As they unionize and costs grow there, labor costs grow there,
Speaker 1: they move down to the south where they have fewer unions.
Speaker 1: As those factories start to unionize, they move from there
Speaker 1: to Mexico and elsewhere in Central America. Then when when
Speaker 1: those costs get too expensive, then they move over to China.
Speaker 1: Now that it's getting expensive in China, you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're moving from there over to Southeast Age and over
Speaker 1: over to India too. And I'm curious if you take
Speaker 1: that Indian number seriously, you know, we have to take
Speaker 1: the source with a grain of salt. This is a
Speaker 1: this is an Indian minister who is you know, who
Speaker 1: has an incentive to kind of you know, pomp up
Speaker 1: how much Apple is going to how much business Apple
Speaker 1: is going to be doing in there. The ninety five
Speaker 1: percent of the manufacturing that gets done in China is
Speaker 1: done because the Chinese government, you know, subsidized these the
Speaker 1: development of these factories over the last twenty to thirty
Speaker 1: years to a significant degree. So, you know, how quickly
Speaker 1: do we think that this could actually happen in or
Speaker 1: is this just or is this something of a bluff
Speaker 1: that they're that Tim Apple is my favorite name for
Speaker 1: that guy, that Tim Apple would be using uh against
Speaker 1: against China to try to just say, look, look, we
Speaker 1: do have leverage against you, because it looks India they're
Speaker 1: they're desperate for us, and we're investing heavily over there. Well,
Speaker 1: a couple of things. That's a great question because on
Speaker 1: that point, one, if it's getting I mean, this is
Speaker 1: all about the bottom line for them. There's no sort
Speaker 1: of moral argument for China in the way that they
Speaker 1: were making you know, around WTO I think you know,
Speaker 1: they've they've really basically just given up on that. So
Speaker 1: at this point it's all about the bottom line. And
Speaker 1: if there are a lower wage costs in India, then
Speaker 1: I think that's extremely tempting especially if they start getting
Speaker 1: showered with subsidies. And on top of that, if if
Speaker 1: India is taking back seat to the sort of geopolitical
Speaker 1: tensions with China, especially over time, one that we have
Speaker 1: this like sort of military conflict getting increasing or potential
Speaker 1: military conflict getting increasingly increasingly hot, then they have supply
Speaker 1: chain concerns that come along with another question about the
Speaker 1: bottom line and so the financial risks of continuing to
Speaker 1: do business in China versus what they might see as
Speaker 1: a lack of financial risks in India. I think that
Speaker 1: would be enough to actually really start to shift some
Speaker 1: of this business. But on that point it is I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say naive. It is cynical again to make this
Speaker 1: bet on India, When to your point, Ryan, we're seeing
Speaker 1: tax tax authorities raid a media outlet over apparently apparently
Speaker 1: a documentary. You can see in similar ways how our
Speaker 1: idea of liberal democracy or classical liberalism is again going
Speaker 1: to clash in a way that might not necessarily be
Speaker 1: a rising tide lifting all boats. And the Indian governments
Speaker 1: France was Look, if the PBC hasn't done anything wrong,
Speaker 1: they don't have to worry about these inspections by these
Speaker 1: financial authorities that it also reminded me of prohibition. If
Speaker 1: you remember who who was doing the like the bashing
Speaker 1: in the doors of all the of the saloons and
Speaker 1: all the bootleggers, those were Treasury Department officials. So you
Speaker 1: know this, it's certainly not outside of the realm of
Speaker 1: possibility that you can have tax taxcoons that are that
Speaker 1: are knocking, that are knocking your door down. But let's
Speaker 1: let's turn now to a kind of fun story that
Speaker 1: that Bloomberg put out UH this week about uh ESG,
Speaker 1: the kind of protests against ESG done by Texas and Florida.
Speaker 1: They crunched a bunch of their numbers. Essentially, what they
Speaker 1: found is that Florida and Texas, by refusing to work
Speaker 1: with major banks that embrace kind of ESG standards, now
Speaker 1: have much less demand for their for their their bond floats,
Speaker 1: and as a result, they're paying somewhere between you know,
Speaker 1: thirty five and fifty five basis points higher, which in
Speaker 1: the case of Texas accounted for about five hundred plus
Speaker 1: million dollars and probably something similar for Florida given the
Speaker 1: roughly equal size of their economy. So in other words,
Speaker 1: for the exact to borrow the exact same amount of money.
Speaker 1: They're spending hundreds of millions of dollars more so that
Speaker 1: they don't have to work with these companies that they
Speaker 1: consider to be politically incorrect. The whole thing to me
Speaker 1: just hilarious. Christina was he named pushaw the Ronda Santis spokesperson.
Speaker 1: She actually liked one of the responses to my tweet
Speaker 1: up there that said, look, that's just thirty five basis
Speaker 1: points is a fair price to pay to not have
Speaker 1: to deal with these woke banks, And she liked that.
Speaker 1: So that's we're in this weird place where there's an
Speaker 1: acknowledgment that, Okay, this actually is costing the taxpayers of
Speaker 1: Florida more money, but from their perspective, it's it's worth it,
Speaker 1: and that the fiduciary responsibility to get the lowest to
Speaker 1: get the lowest interest rate on the loans is outweighed
Speaker 1: by the kind of the political necessity to push back
Speaker 1: against this. The trend of ESG what what what? What
Speaker 1: do you think is? It is? It is the price
Speaker 1: worth it? I'm so glad we're talking about this article
Speaker 1: because I have a completely different perspective on it than
Speaker 1: you do. I thought it was just dripping with this
Speaker 1: classiest condescension for it was yeah, oh, it was amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these like red state cultural conservatives who don't know what's
Speaker 1: in their own interests. They're too dumb to vote based
Speaker 1: on what's actually in their interests. You heard over and
Speaker 1: over again. But in a sense, I think the tweet
Speaker 1: that Christina Peshaan liked, you would probably find a whole
Speaker 1: lot of Floridians, whether they are middle class, upper class,
Speaker 1: agreeing with that. I don't know about the low income bracket.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably a very different question. But I
Speaker 1: think you would go a lot of Floridians saying hell yes,
Speaker 1: it's the same sentiments you find with two other areas,
Speaker 1: one restoring and second of all tariffs. There were the
Speaker 1: sort of corporate press was sitting in their air conditioning
Speaker 1: studios talking about how the soy tariffs, for instance, were
Speaker 1: just crushing soybean farmers in the Midwest and the ones
Speaker 1: that Trump had implemented, and then they would send, you know,
Speaker 1: some sweaty correspondent out to talk to farmers at the
Speaker 1: state fair, and the farmers would all be like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 1: we support the tariffs, it needs to happen, and you
Speaker 1: get a similar sort of sentiment from a lot of people.
Speaker 1: When it comes to restoring there are mixed attitudes about
Speaker 1: that in the country. But hey, for instance, if it
Speaker 1: costs a little bit more to bring jobs back here
Speaker 1: to make things in America, would you prefer that, you
Speaker 1: get a lot of people saying yes. And it's just
Speaker 1: like the article, for instance, in Bloomberg sites that Larry
Speaker 1: Fink him else has said that ESG is a good thing,
Speaker 1: as though that's supposed to be the persuasive argument. Now,
Speaker 1: if you go tell Floridians, if you explain to them
Speaker 1: the bullshit that Blackrock is pulling around the country and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going to pay a little bit extra in taxes
Speaker 1: because we don't want Florida to be entangled with financially
Speaker 1: complicit with what Blackrock is doing. Man, I think you
Speaker 1: would get a pretty resounding sentiment. I think it's I
Speaker 1: think you got to respect Republicans for wielding power here.
Speaker 1: Like if they really believe that this is a mission
Speaker 1: that is important to them and they're they're willing to
Speaker 1: then you know, admit that they're going to spend more
Speaker 1: money financing their debt in order to push back against it,
Speaker 1: you know, you do have to credit them. I and
Speaker 1: I appreciated Christina acknowledging that that that that is what's
Speaker 1: going on. That could because there would be a tendency
Speaker 1: to say this is, you know, there's other reasons that
Speaker 1: the that you're paying more financing. Although Bloomberg's analysis is
Speaker 1: pretty rock solid and I agree with you, I think
Speaker 1: that on this, on this sense, I think that from
Speaker 1: the from the left, I think people would say, like, yes,
Speaker 1: if it helps do something about runaway climate change, then
Speaker 1: we would be willing to pay a little bit more.
Speaker 1: If it brings manufacturing back to the United States, we'd
Speaker 1: be willing to pay a little bit More's if it
Speaker 1: supports unionized labor, we'd be willing to pay a little
Speaker 1: bit more. And you know, if it supports a higher wage,
Speaker 1: because you often see people say, well, if you pay
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen dollars an hour wage, then you know
Speaker 1: your happy meal is going to cost another fifteen cents,
Speaker 1: And a lot of liberals say, fine, I would rather
Speaker 1: pay that fifteen cents and have you know a living wage, Well,
Speaker 1: fifteen isn't a living wage anymore. And a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of areas, but the point is the same.
Speaker 1: So what's nice about it from my perspective is that
Speaker 1: it has moved us out of of free mark a dogma.
Speaker 1: Now we're debating, you know how as a democratic society
Speaker 1: we ought to be moving resources around, and I think
Speaker 1: that's what we ought to do rather than just pretending
Speaker 1: that we're all just going to be hands off and
Speaker 1: you know, wherever the chips fall is is the fairest
Speaker 1: way for it to shake out. No, you're really you're
Speaker 1: really right about that, And that's an important point that
Speaker 1: it actually is. I think both a political benefit and
Speaker 1: obviously a moral one for politicians like Rondo Santis and
Speaker 1: Greg Abbatt to be honest that this is a cost,
Speaker 1: that this is a hidden tax, to borrow the exact
Speaker 1: phrase from the Bloomberg article that said, I think it's
Speaker 1: also really important. The climate stuff is a little bit different,
Speaker 1: but like the the S and the G part of
Speaker 1: that of ESG, it's really important to acknowledge that in
Speaker 1: many cases, if not most, it is a corporate pr
Speaker 1: smoke screen so that they continue to can continue to
Speaker 1: act like Blackrock does. Chevron has all of the e
Speaker 1: they will spend all day talking about the E and
Speaker 1: how good they are on the E. They will give
Speaker 1: to charities that support the E, and it's nonsense. It's
Speaker 1: a way for them to cover their own asses because
Speaker 1: they're doing very bad things and they're doing them behind
Speaker 1: closed doors, so they try to bring good things into public.
Speaker 1: Might it funnel some money into some good causes, sure,
Speaker 1: But if you look overall at many many of the
Speaker 1: people that are benefiting from ESG dollars, there are people
Speaker 1: that corporations are just using as human shields, as charitable
Speaker 1: shields to continue doing bad behavior because they, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, are corporatists, they are capitalists. They're
Speaker 1: doing what they think is best for their bottom line,
Speaker 1: which is to be able to advertise how good they
Speaker 1: are on ESG. And it allows them to go to
Speaker 1: cocktail parties with their heads held high without actually doing anything. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very The Bloomberg article was hilarious.
Speaker 1: I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, and we could
Speaker 1: put that Bloomberg article up that next element there. But yes,
Speaker 1: lately Fong at the intercept. If you google his reporting
Speaker 1: and ESG, you'll find a number of good stories that
Speaker 1: he's done some of them, exposing how private prison companies
Speaker 1: will score super ESG scores. Uh. He interviewed one CEO
Speaker 1: whose lawyers told him, you know the fact that like
Speaker 1: your mother was half Asian American means that you can
Speaker 1: qualify as a minority and then and then your ESG
Speaker 1: score will go up x amount because now you can
Speaker 1: say that you're it's a minority run like company or
Speaker 1: something like that, like so and and the CEO himself
Speaker 1: was like, this is completely absurd, and so there to
Speaker 1: me that the there there is, there's an enormous amount
Speaker 1: worth criticizing esg Over. I think that while wokeness is
Speaker 1: the thing that gets talked about as the as the
Speaker 1: kind of crux of this and that and that sells,
Speaker 1: I think a little bit better. I think it's actually
Speaker 1: the EU that that is the actual kind of power
Speaker 1: center where this debate is being being held. And if
Speaker 1: and if you and the Republicans sometimes and kind of
Speaker 1: right wing Democrats who are critical of it, they'll often
Speaker 1: very quickly go to this is going to hurt us.
Speaker 1: When it comes to energy independence, You're like, okay, this
Speaker 1: is about fossil fuels, this is actually this is actually
Speaker 1: a fight over energy and oil and gas rather than
Speaker 1: what we were cloaking and we're trying to we're cloaking
Speaker 1: it in kind of culture war stuff, but it's actually
Speaker 1: a raw kind of money and power fight over the
Speaker 1: future of energy in America. That's that's my guess. How
Speaker 1: much of it do you think is actually about that
Speaker 1: and it's just disguised as a cultural war issue. I
Speaker 1: think that's a good point, and that's it's actually an
Speaker 1: important point to the conversation we were just having, which
Speaker 1: is it gives these corporations an off ramp. They're bolstering
Speaker 1: the sort of necessary off ramp that they have when
Speaker 1: it comes to oil and gas. Right. They know that
Speaker 1: they can't depend on oil and gas forever, so they
Speaker 1: can divert some of their resources with charitable sort of
Speaker 1: public relations smoke screens to building up infrastructure that they
Speaker 1: will later benefit from. Its actually sort of a genius
Speaker 1: little scheme that they have going on there, and they
Speaker 1: can you know, maybe it's beneficial. Maybe you disagree with
Speaker 1: me in some sense think that that'll go to a
Speaker 1: sort of net benefit. But there you know, again, these
Speaker 1: are corporatests. They are doing it for their bottle line. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of bottom lines, let's let's move to Michigan, which
Speaker 1: just announced that it was the winner of what a
Speaker 1: two point five billion dollar investment from Ford into a
Speaker 1: new battery plant in Marshall, Michigan, which it was basically
Speaker 1: right smack in the middle of the state, will create
Speaker 1: two five hundred direct jobs. The multiplier on that, they
Speaker 1: said was something like four. So you're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: ten thousand, ten thousand jobs supported in the area. Plus
Speaker 1: once you get to that, you're talking about building an
Speaker 1: entire kind of economic engine for an area. I think
Speaker 1: this is maybe thirty forty minutes. You may might know
Speaker 1: this area better from Kalamazoo. What makes this entire fight
Speaker 1: so fascinating is that this was an investment that Ford
Speaker 1: had been kind of taking around the country to see
Speaker 1: what would what would be the best spot to plant it,
Speaker 1: and it made news because Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin withdrew
Speaker 1: Virginia and said, we don't want your money, calling it
Speaker 1: basically a front for the Chinese Communist Party. Crystal Ball
Speaker 1: reported on this a couple of weeks ago. Let's run
Speaker 1: a little bit of her monologue on that governors go
Speaker 1: to great lengths in order to attract these types of
Speaker 1: jobs into their own states. But here Governor Youngkin has
Speaker 1: gone in the total opposite direction, and what at first
Speaker 1: blush might seem a surprising move. Here's the Washington Post quote.
Speaker 1: Governor Glenn Youngkin said this week that he had rejected
Speaker 1: efforts by Ford Motor Company to consider locating an electric
Speaker 1: battery plant in Virginia over concerns that the automaker's partnership
Speaker 1: with China created a security risk. Quote. We felt that
Speaker 1: the right thing to do was to not recruit Ford
Speaker 1: as a front for China to America, Youngkin said Wednesday
Speaker 1: night to reporters after delivering his Day of the Conwell
Speaker 1: speech to the General Assembly. Emily, is there any way
Speaker 1: to defend Glenn Younkin here? Or is this as bad
Speaker 1: as it looks? I have a couple of possibilities I
Speaker 1: think might be going on one. I don't know that
Speaker 1: this is true. It's a guest. I do wonder if
Speaker 1: he knew that it was going to Michigan and then
Speaker 1: made a statement about withdrawing to look tough on China
Speaker 1: as people are floating his name as a potential presidential
Speaker 1: contender and then what do you think about that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't want your stupid factory anyway, get out here
Speaker 1: exactly exactly right. It allows him to, yes, yes, to
Speaker 1: take a really bold stance. On the other hand, it's
Speaker 1: tough because I think the type of voter that he
Speaker 1: wants to appeal to and Virginia and its rural areas
Speaker 1: is very, very red. Actually, probably he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: get completely entangled in a company that is also entangled
Speaker 1: with China. But I think Crystal and you are raising
Speaker 1: a really interesting point, which is Glenn Youngkin mister pe
Speaker 1: baron Patagonia vest wearing champion of the new rights, champion
Speaker 1: of the populist right. I mean, it's always been a
Speaker 1: very strange conception or a strange caricature of what Glen
Speaker 1: Younkin actually is because he did talk, so I think,
Speaker 1: capably about some cultural issues, especially education, when he was
Speaker 1: on the campaign trail, and he won in an upset
Speaker 1: over Terry mccaulliffe. But then that slots him into this
Speaker 1: position of populist because he checks off some of the
Speaker 1: cultural boxes that he might not check off when it
Speaker 1: comes to economic issues. Because again we're talking about a
Speaker 1: guy who was a pe like magnet basically. So that's
Speaker 1: a real tension. He's from Carlisle Group, that's the PE
Speaker 1: firm that he was at, right, Yeah, it is, and
Speaker 1: I actually remember it just it reminds me of what
Speaker 1: we were talking about in the last segment. I haven't
Speaker 1: reported this. A couple of years back. I think that
Speaker 1: Glenn Youngkin had signed a letter when he was at
Speaker 1: the head of the Carlisle Group diverting funds to BLF.
Speaker 1: So again, like you just see where this tension exists
Speaker 1: with Glenn Youngkin as sort of a populist champion and
Speaker 1: Glenn Youngkin as also a business champion, and Carlisle, while
Speaker 1: Youngkin was there, did enormous amounts of business with China.
Speaker 1: So I would suspect that his advisors have been telling him, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a huge vulnerability for you, and so this
Speaker 1: might be a way that he thinks he's gonna then,
Speaker 1: you know, push back against it. To me, it probably
Speaker 1: goes way too far because it's brutal for him that
Speaker 1: it's Ford. And you know, there are people in Michigan
Speaker 1: who are like, you're kicking Ford out for being a
Speaker 1: front for the Chinese Communist Party, Like if we can't
Speaker 1: have a Ford plant, then what plants can we have?
Speaker 1: And also if you're not willing to have any manufacturing
Speaker 1: you know, in your state that has a linkage along
Speaker 1: the supply line with China, then you're basically not going
Speaker 1: to have any manufacturing Like that's that's basically what you got. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that also makes me think potentially more about the
Speaker 1: theory that he sort of whether or not he actually
Speaker 1: knew these were going to Michigan. Maybe he had a
Speaker 1: very strong suspicion that they were going to Michigan and
Speaker 1: use it as an opportunity then to signal on China.
Speaker 1: Because if he if he did do a lot of
Speaker 1: business with China at the Carlile Group, you'd think he
Speaker 1: would be friendly enough to take the jobs and then
Speaker 1: also take the you know, if he knows this is
Speaker 1: already a vulnerability for him, he would take the jobs,
Speaker 1: especially since it's Ford, and then you know, he can
Speaker 1: continue to have positive ties with China. It's sort of
Speaker 1: a win win because again it's forward, it's not you know,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about a Chinese company. But to your
Speaker 1: if you're if you're just gonna grandstand over any company
Speaker 1: with any ties in the manufacturing supply chain at China.
Speaker 1: It's going to be impossible to have manufacturing jobs in
Speaker 1: Virginia right right, there's basically no company that you're gonna
Speaker 1: be able to find that doesn't have some supply connection. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously a battery plan is going to be the most
Speaker 1: but if you're going to dislodge China from a monopolistic
Speaker 1: kind of control of that, you're going to have to first,
Speaker 1: you know, build up some some capacity. Like it's not
Speaker 1: you can't just flick a switch and instantly have a
Speaker 1: have a kind of self sustaining domestic clean clean energy
Speaker 1: industry when you've allowed China so far to basically lock down, uh,
Speaker 1: pretty much a global monopoly on it. So uh, it
Speaker 1: does mean that, yeah, you just can't You basically just
Speaker 1: can't do anything if you're if you're a governor who
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be at all involved with China. It
Speaker 1: also reminded me of a lot of populists over hundreds
Speaker 1: of years have said the thing we need are term limits.
Speaker 1: And I get that because it's like this is how
Speaker 1: you get back at those career politicians. But guess what,
Speaker 1: because Virginia has a single term limit on its governorship.
Speaker 1: As soon as that person gets there, they're no longer
Speaker 1: thinking about Virginia voters. They're thinking about where they're headed next.
Speaker 1: And so he's thinking more about Republican primary presidential voters
Speaker 1: probably than he is Virginia voters because he doesn't have
Speaker 1: to face them for reelection. And so folks out in
Speaker 1: southwest Virginia all of a sudden have no power over him,
Speaker 1: or have no sway. All right, Emily, what's your point today?
Speaker 1: All right? Well, I want to talk about a Cost
Speaker 1: of Thriving Index, a really interesting project that was released
Speaker 1: on Monday or Tuesday by American Compass, a writ of
Speaker 1: center think tank that sort of seeks to shake off
Speaker 1: the old Republican economic orthodoxy, the sort of free market dogmatism,
Speaker 1: and propose some ideas that actually helped working class Americans,
Speaker 1: even if they make the Republican Party kind of uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: they do a lot of really great work, and I
Speaker 1: think the Cost of Thriving Index is one example of
Speaker 1: that and well worth talking about. So instead of relying
Speaker 1: on simple inflation calculations to try to measure what has
Speaker 1: changed between earlier decades of the twentieth century and now
Speaker 1: one of those things that's been hard for people to
Speaker 1: kind of put their finger on. Instead of just using
Speaker 1: that simple inflation metric, they came up of with this
Speaker 1: cost of thriving index, which takes a ratio of nominal
Speaker 1: costs to nominal wages. And so the cost of Thriving
Speaker 1: index uses a ratio of nominal costs to nominal wages
Speaker 1: instead of just relying on simple inflation. So you can
Speaker 1: see that the index then has gone up just an
Speaker 1: incredible amount since nineteen eighty five to twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: You have about eighteen thousand dollars and then a median
Speaker 1: weekly income of four hundred and forty three dollars that's
Speaker 1: for your twenty four year old full time worker versus
Speaker 1: your annual expenses of seventy five twenty twenty two, along
Speaker 1: with a weekly income of about twelve hundred dollars in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. So you can compare that to nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five and look at the ratio, and the ratio
Speaker 1: is fascinating to see how that has exploded. And I
Speaker 1: really like what American Compass puts in the survey that
Speaker 1: it released or this report that it released. It says
Speaker 1: this quote explains what economists cannot that with all of
Speaker 1: these technological innovations and advancements quote, something important has been lost.
Speaker 1: So Ryan, I wanted to get your take on this
Speaker 1: ratio way of finding a metric to figure out kind
Speaker 1: of something economists have had a hard time putting their
Speaker 1: finger on what has changed for the average American and
Speaker 1: especially for the average American family where you have or
Speaker 1: you intend to have one kind of breadwinner, typically the man,
Speaker 1: so that you don't have these insane childcare costs, which
Speaker 1: is also more in line with people's preferences generally in polling.
Speaker 1: Whether you agree with that or not, it's a hard
Speaker 1: thing that economists have had sort of nailing down. So
Speaker 1: what do you think about the ratio method? That's the
Speaker 1: only reasonable way you can do it, because I think
Speaker 1: that's how people experience it on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1: The only other thing I would try to add in
Speaker 1: is the precarity of the situation. You know, back in
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties and seven even through into the seventies,
Speaker 1: people had a sense that the life that they were
Speaker 1: living at that moment was still going to be the
Speaker 1: life that they were going to be living the next year,
Speaker 1: the year after the year after that, and also that
Speaker 1: life would get better for their kids and for their kids' kids,
Speaker 1: And so that enabled you to then eat some of
Speaker 1: the indignities, perhaps because you were trading it for some
Speaker 1: sense of economic security going forward. Whereas now, as you're describing,
Speaker 1: people have fallen much further behind because the costs, particularly education, healthcare, childcare,
Speaker 1: like you said, have have ballooned and have and have
Speaker 1: not have outpaced wages, Whereas you know, food prices have
Speaker 1: stayed pretty steady. Like you know, when I was in college,
Speaker 1: you were paying the same at Wendy's that you're paying
Speaker 1: now twenty years later. But you're absolutely not paying the
Speaker 1: same for college, you're not paying the same for healthcare,
Speaker 1: you're not paying the same for housing, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: so on top of that, if you throw in the
Speaker 1: fact that you don't have any certainty that what your
Speaker 1: situation is now is going to be your situation a
Speaker 1: year from now, and you also have kind of the
Speaker 1: shredding of a social safety net, then that's then that
Speaker 1: adds an enormous amount of anxiety to it, because if
Speaker 1: you feel like, all right, there's some more precarity in
Speaker 1: the job market. But at least I know if I fall,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be I'm going to be protected, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be able to bounce back. Then then you
Speaker 1: might feel a little more comfortable and maybe willing to
Speaker 1: take some risks. But if you don't feel that, then
Speaker 1: you're just going to have constant anxiety. Even if the
Speaker 1: numbers are matching up for you, even if you're making
Speaker 1: ends meet you, you're going to continue to be able
Speaker 1: to do that. And as that shows, you're you're certainly
Speaker 1: not able to put anything away. And as housing prices
Speaker 1: you get out of control. The one access to real
Speaker 1: wealth creation for middle class people, which is people would
Speaker 1: buy a house when they're twenty five years old and
Speaker 1: be in good shape thirty years later as a result.
Speaker 1: And so Emily my question, you would be given this reality,
Speaker 1: you know what kind of policies and politics is the
Speaker 1: is the right willing to embrace to kind of do
Speaker 1: something about this, to do something about these runaway costs. Well,
Speaker 1: that's why I wanted to talk about this particular index,
Speaker 1: because one of the things that the right debates sort
Speaker 1: of within itself is whether or not wages have actually
Speaker 1: stagnated and a lot of the problem is if you're
Speaker 1: just looking at the CPI versus wages, it's just hard
Speaker 1: to put your finger on that. And so moving to
Speaker 1: this ratio formula is one of those things that can
Speaker 1: help put in very stark perspective to this sort of
Speaker 1: bespectacle the well paid expert class in Washington, DC, what
Speaker 1: the average American is experiencing and why there's malaise. Here
Speaker 1: are the numbers that can actually sort of put this
Speaker 1: into perspective as opposed to having these debates about CPI,
Speaker 1: which is not, to the point you just outlined, going
Speaker 1: to be the most helpful, because you have this mismatch
Speaker 1: where prices for TVs have plummeted. I mean, it's insane
Speaker 1: how low TV prices have gone and other electronic goods
Speaker 1: and sort of things like that versus the skyrocketing prices
Speaker 1: of healthcare and education. So relying on something that looks
Speaker 1: more like a ratio than that just basic calculation, I think,
Speaker 1: is one of those things that hopefully can help start
Speaker 1: the process of settling that debate on the right because
Speaker 1: if you still don't get it, you need to because
Speaker 1: your policy prescriptions will be way off if you don't yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's important that our kind of our politics
Speaker 1: really start to measure these things, because you know, there's
Speaker 1: that old saying, you can't fix you don't measure you.
Speaker 1: And the things that you measure, those are the things
Speaker 1: you're able to fix. And the more you keep things
Speaker 1: kind of out of the political conversation, you make them
Speaker 1: a political than they just soar. And so that's why
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful to Bernie Sanders in twenty fifteen for
Speaker 1: kind of bringing the cost of college into the political conversation,
Speaker 1: because it wasn't it wasn't really a political question before that.
Speaker 1: In other words, it wasn't something that was contested in
Speaker 1: the political arena. It was just something that's people said, well,
Speaker 1: that's unfortunate. I guess we better, you know, maybe do
Speaker 1: a few tax credits here or there for middle class
Speaker 1: people to help them afford these now sixty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year, you know, costs for colleges out of state
Speaker 1: public college is costing fifty sixty thousand dollars. And it
Speaker 1: was it was Sanders coming in saying, no, no, this
Speaker 1: this is a political question. This is a decision that
Speaker 1: we need to make democratically, and so at least at
Speaker 1: least it's on the table part of the conversation. And
Speaker 1: the same for healthcare. I feel like we're not hit
Speaker 1: there yet with housing, that it's something that gets talked
Speaker 1: about in the press all the time, but it's not
Speaker 1: really something that you see a lot of politicians proposing
Speaker 1: things that might actually get done, you know, build back better,
Speaker 1: had you know, several hundred billion dollars going toward housing policy,
Speaker 1: but when it got you know, stripped down to becoming
Speaker 1: the Inflation Reduction Act, it was the first thing that
Speaker 1: was just gone out of here. Yet yet it is
Speaker 1: so central to what is making life so difficult for
Speaker 1: ninety percent of people in this country. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things that like even the people in the top
Speaker 1: twenty percent, you know, are like it just are just
Speaker 1: getting killed by it. No, you're right, And one thing
Speaker 1: that worries me, and maybe this why there aren't a
Speaker 1: lot of solutions proposed, because one of the things that
Speaker 1: worries me is you hit an impass here when you
Speaker 1: look at, for instance, the relationship between subsidies education and
Speaker 1: healthcare and the costs of both of those industries. Now,
Speaker 1: nobody's saying that has to be the case. But historically
Speaker 1: in the United States, we've seen, for instance, subsidies increase
Speaker 1: the cost of education. We've seen subsidies in some ways
Speaker 1: increase the cost of healthcare. And so if we do
Speaker 1: the same thing with housing. Not all of these proposals
Speaker 1: involve subsidies, to be sure, but that's another thing that
Speaker 1: like you and I might disagree in some cases on
Speaker 1: whether the subsidies are responsible for the hikes, and that
Speaker 1: makes it hard for policymakers to come to an agreement
Speaker 1: on or at least an agreement that isn't like cronyism
Speaker 1: like we've seen in the healthcare space specifically, so that
Speaker 1: if I was to do something that might put a
Speaker 1: dent in your optimism, that's what I would say. Well,
Speaker 1: there you go. So I was listing. I was only
Speaker 1: looking down as I just got a call from our
Speaker 1: next guest, Matthew Weaver. We're going to check to see
Speaker 1: if he's ready. He is a union railroader in in Ohio.
Speaker 1: He's the elected kind of elected legislative director for the
Speaker 1: for the Ohio kind of brotherhood up there, the BMWD,
Speaker 1: and he's also a member of the rank and file
Speaker 1: railroad Workers United which is a caucus that we've talked
Speaker 1: about here before, and so we're going to get Matthew
Speaker 1: Weaver on here to talk about the chemical disaster in
Speaker 1: East Palestine. In a moment, all right, to talk about
Speaker 1: the ongoing disaster in East Palestine Ohio. We're joined now
Speaker 1: by Matthew Weaver, who is a twenty eight year railroader
Speaker 1: member of the bmwe D and he's also the elected
Speaker 1: legislative director in Ohio for the Union. Matthew, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us. Good afternoon, Thank you for
Speaker 1: the opportunity to join you. I appreciate it. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: got it. And so, you know, one of the one
Speaker 1: of the things that I've seen being discussed in political
Speaker 1: circles in relation to this disaster. I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of people saying, look, this doesn't actually have anything to
Speaker 1: do with PSR, with precision Scheduled railroading. So you guys
Speaker 1: are out there just trying to shoehorn everything in to
Speaker 1: this issue that we've talked about a lot on this show,
Speaker 1: the same but it doesn't fit. The facts of the
Speaker 1: case just don't line up. But it has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with why there was this disaster. I wanted to
Speaker 1: get it. From your perspective as a railroader, what do
Speaker 1: you think were some of the kind of general structural
Speaker 1: causes that led to a situation where something like this
Speaker 1: could happen. Well, it would be false for me to
Speaker 1: speculate on the real cause until the NTSB report comes out,
Speaker 1: But I can tell you from discussing with machinists and
Speaker 1: car shop workers that the inspections have been rushed. The
Speaker 1: two guys working four to five minutes per car to
Speaker 1: inspect a car for departure, now it's one guy ninety
Speaker 1: seconds or less. So that's time involved in inspecting those axles,
Speaker 1: those journals, those bearings, and all the component components of
Speaker 1: the railcard. Now on the side of government, that's another
Speaker 1: big question. There's been a lot of sort of back
Speaker 1: and forth within Ohio about who might bear responsibility for
Speaker 1: lacks standards and then the fallout is another question entirely.
Speaker 1: What can you tell us about the government sort of
Speaker 1: oversight of the railways in Ohio and how that could
Speaker 1: have potentially related to what we're seeing unfold and East Palasting. Well,
Speaker 1: I can discuss you know, many articles that we've seen
Speaker 1: about railroad lobbyists campaign finance, watching big money in this industry, skirt,
Speaker 1: try to skirt laws, limit laws, delay enforcement, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of the problem. The breaking set systems are Civil
Speaker 1: War era, you know, this is an old industry, but
Speaker 1: there are some improvements that can be made to avoid
Speaker 1: things like this. Yeah, you know, let's talk talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about that, because it seems like there are
Speaker 1: kind of two ways that you could kind of from
Speaker 1: from an industry perspective, go about go about making it
Speaker 1: less likely that this is going to happen. One would
Speaker 1: be the one that you alluded to, which is allow inspect,
Speaker 1: allow you know, mechanics who are inspecting the trains more
Speaker 1: time so that they can actually expect it. Because as
Speaker 1: there's been some reporting that this had something to do
Speaker 1: with a busted axle, you know, if you're underneath the train,
Speaker 1: you only have ninety seconds. You might not have enough time,
Speaker 1: you know, to spot the problem that is going to
Speaker 1: lead to you know, an act and actual breaking. The
Speaker 1: second is the other thing you alluded to, better braking systems,
Speaker 1: and this you know, to to basically modernize the Civil
Speaker 1: War technologist post civil technology that we've been relying on.
Speaker 1: So what would it take to get us to a
Speaker 1: place where they're actually implementing these braking systems on on
Speaker 1: trains that are carrying these hazardous materials. It would take
Speaker 1: an investment in the infrastructure, I mean electronic braking. They
Speaker 1: have the technology out there. They did improve tankers. The
Speaker 1: problem is is that would upset the shareholders in an
Speaker 1: industry with skyrocketing profits, profit margins that are you know,
Speaker 1: they're screening for to work for a fifty five percent
Speaker 1: operating ratio when you're talking food industry working at ninety
Speaker 1: you know. So it's all about profit over people, and
Speaker 1: we depend on the regulators to regulate ensure safety, and
Speaker 1: that's where I believe we're going to find a failure here.
Speaker 1: You know, there were a lot of comparisons. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen people saying why does small town,
Speaker 1: Ohio look like Chernobyl in the past week or two.
Speaker 1: And I want to ask a question that maybe the
Speaker 1: answer we don't really want to know because it's frightening.
Speaker 1: But from your perspective, as somebody with a lot of
Speaker 1: insight into this just across the board, what other kinds
Speaker 1: of safety issues that are not being sort of adequately
Speaker 1: attended to either on the corporate side or on the
Speaker 1: government side, exist in your mind? Are there potential criseses
Speaker 1: looming that sort of Again, is somebody with insight into
Speaker 1: this keep you up at night knowing the lapsed standards
Speaker 1: are out there? Well, I mean, from my perspective, from
Speaker 1: the maintenance wait perspective, I think it's for maintenance. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't put a band aid on broken leg. We
Speaker 1: don't fix things till they break. Preventive maintenance often seems
Speaker 1: to be lacking because they even call us maintenance in
Speaker 1: the way then instead of maintenance of way, it's but this,
Speaker 1: this is not This is mechanical as far as I know,
Speaker 1: And it sounds like a bearing, a hot bearing, hot journal,
Speaker 1: a hot box detector caught but it was too late.
Speaker 1: I get the impression that this ran for twenty miles
Speaker 1: without those conditions. So perhaps we need more detectors. We
Speaker 1: need to address these issues. Right, And you've been, as
Speaker 1: you said, a railroader for twenty eight years now, how
Speaker 1: how have you seen the industry change in that in
Speaker 1: that amount of time? Well, in other words, like what
Speaker 1: would what would what were inspections looking like before? What
Speaker 1: was maintenance looking like before? We've lost thirty percent of
Speaker 1: our manpower of rail labor in the in the last
Speaker 1: eight nine years. They're just not the numbers aren't there.
Speaker 1: The manpower is not there to do the work they have.
Speaker 1: There's something going on with having conductors inspect the cars
Speaker 1: or inspect the connections with the hoses. I don't know
Speaker 1: all the details on that, and much of this is
Speaker 1: mechanical rather than engineering, and I work for the engineering department,
Speaker 1: And since we're talking to a national and international audience,
Speaker 1: I want to ask just a pretty basic question. Is
Speaker 1: there anything you wish people understood about the industry that
Speaker 1: as it's come into the sort of front of our
Speaker 1: political discourse, our discourse in general, with the strike last
Speaker 1: year and now again with this insane story out of Ohio.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you wish people understood or you think
Speaker 1: maybe they misunderstand about the industry. I believe that public
Speaker 1: doesn't understand how powerful the industry of what is, how
Speaker 1: the subsidies the railroad's got or building across the country,
Speaker 1: you know, and the power they have. You know. I
Speaker 1: tell applied for the Ohio House Transportation Committee about crossing
Speaker 1: safety and two man crew and there were seven lobbyists
Speaker 1: in the back of the room listening in on what
Speaker 1: I was having to say. It's a very powerful industry.
Speaker 1: I was actually just going to ask you about that
Speaker 1: because as the as the legislative director for your union
Speaker 1: in Ohio, what is it like when you when you
Speaker 1: go to the state capitol? I mean, what are you
Speaker 1: what are you up against there? And how hard is
Speaker 1: it for you to get a hearing in the halls
Speaker 1: of power in Ohio? It seems very difficult. We've been
Speaker 1: trying for multiple years to get a crossing safety bill
Speaker 1: in that simply adds and other on track equipment to
Speaker 1: the laws so that the public acknowledges that we have
Speaker 1: track equipment, we have inspectors, trucks, we have there's more
Speaker 1: than just trains on the tracks. And we failed at
Speaker 1: that in Ohio. I believe thirty one states have a
Speaker 1: crossing safety bill for that purpose, but not Ohio. So
Speaker 1: it's very difficult because the money the railroads have it
Speaker 1: is tremendous and as you say, you can't just fix
Speaker 1: things when they're broken, right right, And we had had
Speaker 1: Devin Mant's, a railroader from North North Dakota on earlier
Speaker 1: and he was mentioning one of his He also does
Speaker 1: maintenance away and one of the things he does, he's
Speaker 1: driving basically a big pickup truck over the tracks looking
Speaker 1: for looking for flaws, kind of making sure that things
Speaker 1: are are running so the train can move over smoothly.
Speaker 1: So is that the kind of crossing that you mean
Speaker 1: that you're that you're trying to make sure that as
Speaker 1: a as a pickup truck is driving along the tracks,
Speaker 1: that you're not going to get slammed by a big
Speaker 1: rig coming in the other direction. Yes. Often our trucks
Speaker 1: are on track. Equipment does not foul the main all
Speaker 1: the tracks, so the gates don't go down. I was
Speaker 1: putting a crane or a boom truck on the tracks
Speaker 1: until some years ago, and I had to jump up
Speaker 1: on the high rail gear up. I'm the bumper because
Speaker 1: I was almost hit because somebody not paying attention. You know,
Speaker 1: the gates weren't down. I had the flashes on, but
Speaker 1: you know they it's a dangerous scenario at the crossings,
Speaker 1: and we have had people die in those instances. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: And what would be what's what do you hear when
Speaker 1: when you talk to lawmakers and say Hey, can you
Speaker 1: just add this, like, what is what is the railroad's pushback?
Speaker 1: What is what is the lawmakers problem with? It seems
Speaker 1: to me that that should be the bare minimum, And
Speaker 1: in that circumstance, it is difficult for me to comprehend
Speaker 1: because it would save the railroad's liability as well because
Speaker 1: it puts more emphasis on public responsibility to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: there's more than trains on the tracks all. But it
Speaker 1: seems like the carriers are always pushing back against the unions.
Speaker 1: This is a real safety issue. Well, and one last
Speaker 1: question from me is just in the last week or so,
Speaker 1: do you sense a different maybe sentiment arising among regulators
Speaker 1: and maybe even the companies as they reckon with the
Speaker 1: incredible destruction and problem, the scale of the problem that
Speaker 1: was caused in Ohio. Do you sense that maybe this
Speaker 1: is an opening for real change or do you sense
Speaker 1: maybe more of a cover up in motion or an
Speaker 1: attempt to just sort of paper it over, put a
Speaker 1: giant bandit on it, and keep on moving. I think
Speaker 1: it's a very good opportunity to stripe while the iron's
Speaker 1: hot and get media attention. I've had a lot of interviews,
Speaker 1: we've talked to a lot of people railroad Workers United.
Speaker 1: Railroad Workers United dot org is probably how you got
Speaker 1: my contact in full. And they've had a media committee
Speaker 1: that's been out in droves and we have to keep
Speaker 1: the attention. I do know. A big issue on bargaining
Speaker 1: was the attendance policy. And at least four unions in
Speaker 1: the last ten days have gotten sick days at CSX
Speaker 1: and that's a promising step forward. And there were no
Speaker 1: concessions in getting that. Yeah, And I think that's important
Speaker 1: for people to understand because when you wage a public
Speaker 1: fight and you raise national attention on an issue, even
Speaker 1: if you don't win the ultimate victory in Senate. In
Speaker 1: the Senate for instance, sometimes it puts so much pressure
Speaker 1: that you end up winning anyway. So how how did
Speaker 1: you end up with with with those sick days through
Speaker 1: through UH through your railroad? Honestly, I give a lot
Speaker 1: of credit to the new CEO who came from Ford.
Speaker 1: I met him twice. On the second time I met him,
Speaker 1: I told him that I forgot to mention that now
Speaker 1: that he's the CEO, perhaps he can talk to other
Speaker 1: CEOs from the class on railroads and get us sick days.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, matt that's a good idea. I
Speaker 1: don't believe it will happen in this round of bargaining,
Speaker 1: but I'll work on it. And he's leading by example.
Speaker 1: So you don't see me often giving credit to company officials,
Speaker 1: but I was, I appreciate that you know that we
Speaker 1: have paid sick days now, right, and going to do
Speaker 1: if they're not pressured, right, right, and so get Yeah, well, well, Matthew,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you joining and be safe out there,
Speaker 1: thank you. And it's not the thing they're going to
Speaker 1: do without attention. So I appreciate the media attention. You
Speaker 1: guys are really helping us get the word out there
Speaker 1: because the public doesn't know. No people thought we had
Speaker 1: sick days and we had zero until last week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really crucial, it's really crucial. Thanks so much, Matthew.
Speaker 1: Thanks you guys. I appreciate the opportunity. Right. And so
Speaker 1: they continue to discover more and more, or they continue
Speaker 1: to announce more chemicals that that were on that train.
Speaker 1: I announced the just just yesterday. Uh. The disaster continues
Speaker 1: uh to unfold. They actually published a list of of
Speaker 1: everything that was on that train. I noticed it seemed
Speaker 1: like half the train was malt liquor. There has not
Speaker 1: been any reporting yet on on what happened to the
Speaker 1: malt liquor that I assumed that that went up in
Speaker 1: that outrageous chemical chemical blast that I think you appropriately
Speaker 1: described as kind of looking like Chernobyl in the middle
Speaker 1: of middle of Ohio. Emily, do you sense that there's
Speaker 1: any that this is a wake up call or do
Speaker 1: you you know, Pepe Pete Buda Judge was asked or
Speaker 1: appeared publicly recently and didn't even didn't even mention anything
Speaker 1: going on in uh in East Palestine. How many disasters
Speaker 1: are going to happen under Pete Buddha Judge's watch at
Speaker 1: the dot. I mean, seriously, it's just a never ending
Speaker 1: supply of disasters from America's transportation infrastructure under Pete Boodha
Speaker 1: Judge's nose. So yeah, I don't know if there's any
Speaker 1: momentum when you look at the fact that that's what
Speaker 1: our management and it's not just Pete Booda Judge. He's
Speaker 1: representative of I think something much broader, which is this
Speaker 1: technocratic precision. The precision word is such an important part
Speaker 1: of this, this like precision technocracy that we've built as
Speaker 1: a country, and so it doesn't just require a shift,
Speaker 1: it requires a paradigm shift. It doesn't just require momentum,
Speaker 1: it requires momentum to literally change the sort of structure
Speaker 1: of how we manage these things. And with that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know, maybe I would. I imagine
Speaker 1: you're in the same boat. I'm just I feel eternally
Speaker 1: pessimistic because to actually like really shift the paradigm is
Speaker 1: such a different question. But when I ask Matthew that
Speaker 1: question about what sort of maybe keeps him up at night,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the Chernobyl thing is like what it's
Speaker 1: really what I mean by that, I'm you know, the
Speaker 1: fact that all of a sudden you have Chernobyl like
Speaker 1: cloud hovering over small town, Ohio. That's exactly like we
Speaker 1: only hear about these things when they happen, right, We
Speaker 1: don't know what's happening. Nobody can pay attention to the infrastructure,
Speaker 1: you know, minutia and every given problem every second of
Speaker 1: the day, and so we don't know what's sort of
Speaker 1: lurking in the shadows. But we know the infrastructure is failing.
Speaker 1: So God only knows truly what is to come if
Speaker 1: we don't get our act together right. And it isn't
Speaker 1: like you said, only Pete boo to Judge, but it
Speaker 1: also is a peat Boota Judge has responsibility as Transportation
Speaker 1: Secretary for this, and he needs to be doing something
Speaker 1: like this. It's it's you're right, he has been He's
Speaker 1: been dealt a really difficult hand as Transportation secretary. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, crises like that are opportunities to
Speaker 1: show leadership and he just has simply decided not to
Speaker 1: do that. And it's just it's utterly confounding because if
Speaker 1: you are as ambitious as he is, if you're eyeing
Speaker 1: the presidency, it seems like you would take these opportunities
Speaker 1: to start cracking some heads, cracking some railroad ceo heads,
Speaker 1: cracking some airline ceo heads. Instead, it just seems like
Speaker 1: it's just the mckinsiness is just so deeply kind of
Speaker 1: ingrained that he just can't see his way to that,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be to his political detriment. I
Speaker 1: suspect I don't see how he recovers from this. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's not as if Pete Boota Judge's political
Speaker 1: career is even in the top ten of the most
Speaker 1: important things when it comes to these crises. But it
Speaker 1: is that is going to be some of the fallout,
Speaker 1: I think, And you know, he hasn't really shied away
Speaker 1: from media. We'ch sure tells me more about where his
Speaker 1: motivations really lie. So like he's been hiding from the
Speaker 1: media as these disasters unfold. I think he's happy to
Speaker 1: go out there and talk about it. And that makes
Speaker 1: me think that he really wants a job where he
Speaker 1: can go out there and talk about things instead of
Speaker 1: or in lieu of perhaps really you know, doing things,
Speaker 1: except this one. He hasn't really had much to say
Speaker 1: about this one. But that's true. That's true with the strikes,
Speaker 1: all all the other ones. Yeah. Absolutely, but that's going
Speaker 1: to do That's gonna do it for this episode of Counterpoints, Emily,
Speaker 1: thanks for beaming in from Puerto Rico very much. Appreciate
Speaker 1: that this time next week I will be in Mexico
Speaker 1: preparing to watch a couple of days of fish concerts.
Speaker 1: I will not be joining you from there. We'll have
Speaker 1: we'll get somebody else in the desk for you. Maybe
Speaker 1: people can suggest who they want in the in the
Speaker 1: comments section. I don't think we've I don't think we've
Speaker 1: roped anybody into it yet. But I will be thinking
Speaker 1: of you, guys, uh, I promise we'll be We'll be
Speaker 1: thinking of you. Maybe we'll smoke a jay to be
Speaker 1: in solidarity with Ryan when he said that at the
Speaker 1: Fish concert. I would, I would, I would appreciate that,
Speaker 1: not breaking Americ going to do it in America. We'll
Speaker 1: get Sager to do this in your honor. There you go, excellent.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we'll see everybody soon. H