Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show everything.
Speaker 1: So we got a new report from Axios about how
Speaker 1: President Biden is a little different in private than maybe
Speaker 1: the public persona, the carefully crafted public persona. Let's put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen we're in. Daubt actually tweeted
Speaker 1: this piece out with some of the choice language that
Speaker 1: he apparently directs at AIDS. God damn it, how the
Speaker 1: f don't you know this? Don't fing bullshit me and
Speaker 1: get the f out of here. Let me read a
Speaker 1: little bit from the piece. The headline is old yeller
Speaker 1: Biden's private fury in public, President Biden likes to whisper
Speaker 1: to make a point. In private, he's prone to yelling
Speaker 1: behind closed doors. Biden has such a quick triggered temper
Speaker 1: that some AIDS try to avoid meeting alone with him.
Speaker 1: Some take a colleague almost as a shield against a
Speaker 1: solo blast. They can then go on to describe the
Speaker 1: language that we're in doubt included here why it matters.
Speaker 1: The private eruptions paint more complicated picture of Biden as
Speaker 1: the manager and president than the image as a kindly
Speaker 1: uncle who loves Aviator sunglasses and ice cream. They also
Speaker 1: go on to say this is kind of interesting. Some
Speaker 1: Biden aids think the president would be better off occasionally
Speaker 1: displaying his temper in public as a way to suage
Speaker 1: voter concerns that the eighty year old president is disengage
Speaker 1: and too old for office. Senior and lower level aids
Speaker 1: alike can be in Biden's line of fat fire quote.
Speaker 1: No one is safe, said one administration official.
Speaker 3: Your thoughts socker.
Speaker 4: I kind to be honest, this made me like Biden.
Speaker 4: I mean, I respect it.
Speaker 2: I personally. I saw a lot of pearl clutching around this, like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, I can't believe he treats people this way.
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah. I mean, you know, I know a
Speaker 2: lot of people politicians also people who work for them,
Speaker 2: people who care about their work. Get passionate. So I
Speaker 2: mean the other thing is the only way that this
Speaker 2: would be a criticism is if this was like a
Speaker 2: doddering old man thing. But by all accounts, old accounts
Speaker 2: of him as a candidate back in nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 2: describe the same temper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's always been a sort of like cranky,
Speaker 1: volcanic asshole to his staff, right, I mean.
Speaker 2: Look, which president hasn't been I mean the one. In fact,
Speaker 2: the only guy who was ever really nice to his
Speaker 2: staff was Jimmy Carter. So it's like it tells you
Speaker 2: that there, I think you have to be a raging
Speaker 2: narcissist to be president. I don't think it's really possible
Speaker 2: to do it otherwise. And I think that people who
Speaker 2: all work at the highest level and who care a
Speaker 2: lot about their work often.
Speaker 4: Behave in this manner.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying it's necessarily a good thing, but you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of these staff like they also know what
Speaker 2: they're getting into, So I don't know. I saw a
Speaker 2: lot of annoying curl clutching, curl pearl clutching around this
Speaker 2: and annoyed me. I'm like, yeah, it's like the most
Speaker 2: stressful job in the world, What do you expect to happen,
Speaker 2: especially whenever you are unable to have public outbursts In
Speaker 2: the same way, I also do agree that going out
Speaker 2: and kind of showing this kind of temperament makes you,
Speaker 2: frankly a lot more relatable.
Speaker 1: Remember when he had that moment on the trail, A
Speaker 1: lot of people did, like, mayfully like challenge that kind
Speaker 1: of push ups or whatever called that one young voter,
Speaker 1: lying dog.
Speaker 2: Face, lying dog posts, lying dog faced pony soldiers.
Speaker 1: I still don't know what that means, but okay, so
Speaker 1: I would not ever justify the sort of treatment of
Speaker 1: individuals who work for you, your staff, who are clearly
Speaker 1: like terrified of him. That being said, you know, the
Speaker 1: stakes are really high the United States, and I think
Speaker 1: it would almost be an unreasonable expectation for anyone to
Speaker 1: one keep their cool under the circumstances. Number one. Number two,
Speaker 1: it is amazing to me the areas that the media
Speaker 1: decides to critique like this is.
Speaker 4: The problem, how about Joe Biden?
Speaker 1: This is the one we played this week, them defending
Speaker 1: the view defending Joe Biden over like literally not acknowledging
Speaker 1: one of his grandchildren. They're willing to go to bat
Speaker 1: for him over that. But then when it comes to like,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, we said some naughty words in the office,
Speaker 1: let's do a whole expose. And then even bigger than that,
Speaker 1: I mean, some of the policy choices, the abandonment of
Speaker 1: key campaign promises, everything from you know, the proag minimum
Speaker 1: wage public option has just like completely disappeared. That doesn't
Speaker 1: get scrutiny or attention, but this does. So I will say,
Speaker 1: you know, there was this piece in I think it
Speaker 1: was Politico about Mary and Williamson and like, you know,
Speaker 1: her being having a temper with her aides at times.
Speaker 1: And part of why that piece annoyed me so much
Speaker 1: is because I knew that this is how Joe Biden
Speaker 1: is behind the scenes, and it was like, you know, anyway,
Speaker 1: But I do think just like the choice of what
Speaker 1: the media decides to focus on is probably the biggest
Speaker 1: story here, more so than him losing his temper with
Speaker 1: his aides.
Speaker 2: Look, one of the best presidents in modern history was
Speaker 2: one of the biggest pricks to his staff, Lynnon Baines Johnson. Okay,
Speaker 2: go read a book if you want to figure out
Speaker 2: how he treated them. He also got the Civil Rights
Speaker 2: Act done, so you ask yourself, which what do you
Speaker 2: value in terms of your impact. I'm not saying it's
Speaker 2: a good thing. Like you said, I don't treat people
Speaker 2: this way. But we're not the president, you know, we're
Speaker 2: not the people who are literally running the country.
Speaker 4: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think that a lot of us is just a
Speaker 2: little bit ridiculous in terms of the personal, you know, critiques.
Speaker 2: As you said, in terms of the personal critique, the
Speaker 2: only one I think that's really valid is one that
Speaker 2: we discussed on our show this week about Biden ignoring
Speaker 2: his grandchild. I think that's actually totally within the realm
Speaker 2: of what's legitimate in all this, whereas this one just seemed,
Speaker 2: you know, pretty stupid in terms of the way that
Speaker 2: he acts behind the scene. They even note by the
Speaker 2: way that he doesn't even have close to his bat
Speaker 2: of a temper as Bill Clinton did. Bill Clinton had
Speaker 2: volcanic temper in terms of the way he treated his staff.
Speaker 2: Obama too. Obama was a nasty person. He was one
Speaker 2: of those people who he would not have the volcanic outbursts,
Speaker 2: but he would undercut you in front of everybody. So
Speaker 2: if you said something that he thought was stupid. He
Speaker 2: would be like, let's sit on that.
Speaker 4: He was like an intellectual bullying he he was exactly
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 3: I feel like.
Speaker 1: Trump you probably you may be able to speak to
Speaker 1: this more. I feel like he's sort of like more
Speaker 1: passive aggressive where in person super nice you and then
Speaker 1: we'll just like.
Speaker 5: Blow you up.
Speaker 2: Trumpet also had a volcanic temper. I personally witnessed him
Speaker 2: humiliate staff, and honestly, it's super uncomfortable. It was very
Speaker 2: Johnson asked in terms of what he would do. Can't
Speaker 2: go into all the details, but he would effectively like
Speaker 2: call people in and like make them stand up while
Speaker 2: he questioned them from behind the oval office, sitting like
Speaker 2: this with a scowl on his face, and he would
Speaker 2: kind of make them tap dance a little bit.
Speaker 4: And he would do this in front of me and
Speaker 4: in front of other people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to basically prove he'd be like, look at these
Speaker 2: people that you know, he wanted to prove that. One
Speaker 2: guy would come at his back and call, so he
Speaker 2: would press that intercom thing and be like get so
Speaker 2: and so here in the office and they would come
Speaker 2: running in all sweaty.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: He's also big on like I said.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, public humiliation.
Speaker 2: So it's big on like the power and look, I mean,
Speaker 2: I once again believe that this.
Speaker 4: Is probably a requirement for the job. John F.
Speaker 2: Kennedy did this to many of his aides, people who
Speaker 2: he didn't like and who he didn't respect. He would
Speaker 2: do big public shows of kind of humiliating him in front.
Speaker 2: I think of an example almost from every single president,
Speaker 2: like I said, except for Jimmy Carter. So you know,
Speaker 2: maybe it's just a this is what it takes, I
Speaker 2: think to be in the job. And I you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I do
Speaker 2: think it is probably intrinsic to the personality type.
Speaker 1: He wants to sit there, I'll just say, again, don't
Speaker 1: condone this type of behavior. However, it is like very
Speaker 1: low on my list of problems. I agree with Joseph
Speaker 1: Robin at Biden.
Speaker 4: Well said, all right, we'll see guys later.
Speaker 1: Got some pretty interesting new data that we wanted to
Speaker 1: dig into. Lit's go and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So a record show of Americans are now living alone.
Speaker 1: Nearly thirty percent of American households comprise a single person.
Speaker 1: That is a record high. If you're looking, and if
Speaker 1: you're watching this, you can see the way that the
Speaker 1: number of people living alone the percent of one person
Speaker 1: households just skyrockets sort of starting in the fifties even sixties,
Speaker 1: but it's continued to go up and now we are
Speaker 1: at record breaking numbers. There's a lot that contributes to this.
Speaker 1: The older you are, the more likely you are to
Speaker 1: be living alone. So partly it's, you know, an aging population.
Speaker 1: Partly it's the fact that fewer people are getting married.
Speaker 1: Partly it's the fact that you have more divorces, so
Speaker 1: you have fewer people who are married at any given time.
Speaker 1: And I also just think it has become more of
Speaker 1: a sort of acceptable phenomenon. I mean, in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, our society is less doing things together in
Speaker 1: the real world, and apparently that includes cohabitating.
Speaker 2: So I support people having individual ability to pursue toe
Speaker 2: like what they want to do outside of the strictures
Speaker 2: of family, because I think that could be very oppressive.
Speaker 2: That said, I think we've probably gone too far. And
Speaker 2: one of the things that you often hear from a
Speaker 2: lot of people who are elderly and who do end
Speaker 2: up living alone, is, you know, for the lack of
Speaker 2: a better word, They feel lonely, They feel like they
Speaker 2: desire social connection, you know. Even what they point to
Speaker 2: in the report around this is that humans are social
Speaker 2: creatures and the problem is not living alone per se.
Speaker 2: It's that living alone is indicative of lower familial ties,
Speaker 2: of less community. And it's not like, you know, I
Speaker 2: know many people who live alone who are very very
Speaker 2: socially active. These are people who live alone because they
Speaker 2: need their own space. But they also are out not
Speaker 2: every night, but you know, a couple nights a week,
Speaker 2: meeting friends, you know, in social clubs, trivia and night
Speaker 2: you know whatever. But for every one of those people,
Speaker 2: I know probably five others who live alone and report
Speaker 2: feeling very socially isolated, being attached only to their job,
Speaker 2: feeling very adamized, not feeling fulfilled very much.
Speaker 4: In their life.
Speaker 2: And also you can't ignore cost, you know, really from
Speaker 2: a lot of this, which is that it is much
Speaker 2: more cost effective to have like networks of family who
Speaker 2: are around you, who can help care for your kids,
Speaker 2: who can you know, help you in whatever circumstance that
Speaker 2: you that befalls you. Whenever you're with people, even when
Speaker 2: you're younger, and you're with roommates. There's a real kind
Speaker 2: of community aspect that happens, especially when none of you
Speaker 2: are making all that much money and you're trying to
Speaker 2: figure out who you are and what to do in life.
Speaker 4: I think those are important things. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think it's sad because I don't think old people.
Speaker 2: You know, many old people don't want to live alone.
Speaker 2: They just kind of end up living alone. And then
Speaker 2: many young people also they don't want to live alone.
Speaker 2: But you know, sometimes the only way to make something work.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I think things have moved in a bad direction.
Speaker 1: It is interesting. So at younger ages it's men who
Speaker 1: are more likely to live alone, at older ages it's
Speaker 1: women who are more likely to live alone. They talk
Speaker 1: to a number of researchers in the field of basically
Speaker 1: like loneliness, which I do think is a really underdiscussed
Speaker 1: problem in America where we have all of these like
Speaker 1: social media connections, but we're lonelier than ever. But they said,
Speaker 1: there are different ways of living alone. Right, you live
Speaker 1: by yourself, but you have super active social life and
Speaker 1: you're out and about, and maybe you live in a
Speaker 1: city and those connections are easy and you have a
Speaker 1: big network of friends and family are constantly over You're
Speaker 1: over at their places. That's one thing. Another thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, you live potentially more in a rural area,
Speaker 1: and living alone means that you really are alone. And
Speaker 1: you know, all the research says that this isn't good
Speaker 1: for people like we are social creatures. We are not
Speaker 1: meant to just be solitary all the time. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's also different personality ranges. Some people are more introverted,
Speaker 1: they can handle that psychologically better than people who tend
Speaker 1: towards the extroverted end of the spectrum. But you know,
Speaker 1: we really have moved away, and the way that our
Speaker 1: cities and suburbs in particular are even constructed make it
Speaker 1: so that there are barriers to being together in person,
Speaker 1: and instead we're fed this sort of like fake social
Speaker 1: interactions that end up not providing the you know, real
Speaker 1: world benefits that actual in person relationships help to create.
Speaker 1: So I do think that this is contributing to some
Speaker 1: of the issues that we have with loneliness in society.
Speaker 4: Oh, there's no question. I mean, this is why.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm tickets a flack for this, but part
Speaker 2: of why I'm like, I'm not really for one hundred
Speaker 2: percent of work from home because especially for really young people,
Speaker 2: because I think that and I'm not saying it's a
Speaker 2: good thing, but the you know, it's a very key
Speaker 2: way to meet people, to meet friends, to be involved,
Speaker 2: especially post college, for a lot of people to have
Speaker 2: relationships and develop a new life. And you know, work
Speaker 2: from home I think is great for people who are
Speaker 2: well established, for one hundred percent work from home, who
Speaker 2: are well established in their career and they don't have
Speaker 2: problems with any of that. But I've personally seen a
Speaker 2: lot of people who kind of suffer from that, and like,
Speaker 2: look for flexibility. If that's what you want to do,
Speaker 2: I think that's you know, go for it. But I
Speaker 2: am I've seen a trend towards some adamization at much
Speaker 2: younger ages, which I really think is not good.
Speaker 4: And I don't know how to fix that.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know there's no work solution, that
Speaker 2: there's no government solution even really to that. But sociologically
Speaker 2: obviously does have a lot of problems.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe Elon Musk can get together with the other
Speaker 1: tech oligarchs and destroy all of the social media platforms,
Speaker 1: not just Twitter, and that may actually be very healthy
Speaker 1: for beneficial right.
Speaker 4: Definitely might be right. All right, we'll see you guys later.
Speaker 6: You'll be surprised to learn that CNN is gatekeeping against
Speaker 6: Cornell West's presidential run.
Speaker 3: I know that.
Speaker 6: Again, it's shocking. We've never seen this treatment before from
Speaker 6: the media. It's were as popular as candidates. But let's
Speaker 6: start by rolling this clip here.
Speaker 7: I think a bigger problem for them. We're as big
Speaker 7: is Cornell West. He is running as a Green Party candidate,
Speaker 7: and we can look back to twenty sixteen, to Wisconsin, Michigan,
Speaker 7: and Pennsylvania as well.
Speaker 3: Signed, let's actually do just that.
Speaker 7: I'mbers tell the story they really do.
Speaker 8: I mean the margin on the right there the right
Speaker 8: of green, that's Trump's margin and Jill Stein's margin in
Speaker 8: the green. Look at Michigan, I see one thousand votes.
Speaker 8: Trump won by ten thousand votes. That's a big potential.
Speaker 7: Difference maker, without question, and everything is different. Of course,
Speaker 7: a lot of that Jill Stein vote was a hangover
Speaker 7: from the Bernie Sanders primary fight with Hillary Clinton. So
Speaker 7: that has been done away with. Bernie Sanders is now
Speaker 7: very supportive of this president and he has been but
Speaker 7: I think the bigger issue other than an Hill table
Speaker 7: is Cornell West and what is he going to do on.
Speaker 3: The campaign trail.
Speaker 7: But again a lot of questions about who's behind the
Speaker 7: funding behind these and what is a unique ticket mean?
Speaker 7: Is that Joe Mansion.
Speaker 5: Maybe, is it's Larry Hogan.
Speaker 8: Maybe yeah, or some combinations.
Speaker 7: So, I mean it's a worry for the White House
Speaker 7: and it will continue to be probably for the next year.
Speaker 6: I think he's right to say Democrats should be worried
Speaker 6: that Cornell West could play spoiler. But again, the just
Speaker 6: disrespect for voters seeping through in that tone.
Speaker 3: I think Krystal and I talked about this a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago.
Speaker 6: What the media continues to not understand is that for
Speaker 6: some folks saying a vote for Cornell West or a
Speaker 6: vote for Jill Stein is a vot for Hillary Clinton
Speaker 6: or a vote as a vote for Trump or a
Speaker 6: vote for you know, Ronda Santis.
Speaker 3: Or whomever it is. For some people, they're like, that
Speaker 3: is absolutely accurate. Can tell you.
Speaker 6: They tell me that more like I understand it. What
Speaker 6: you don't understand is I think Hillary Clinton is just
Speaker 6: as bad as Donald Trump, or I think that Joe
Speaker 6: Biden is just as bad as Donald Trump, and they
Speaker 6: continue to have absolutely no respect for that point of view,
Speaker 6: even though I think it's entirely reasonable. We could have
Speaker 6: a debate over it. But you know, if you're not
Speaker 6: privileged enough to walk the tony halls of CNN newsrooms,
Speaker 6: that might be more obvious.
Speaker 3: To you, right.
Speaker 5: And there's a lot going on in that clip, And
Speaker 5: so they start by the conversation talking about no labels,
Speaker 5: which is compared to the Green Party, a well financed organization.
Speaker 5: They this is a dark money group basically that claims
Speaker 5: to raise some seventy million dollars in order to get
Speaker 5: on the ballot in all fifty states and recruit a
Speaker 5: Joe Manson type And Joe Manchin has not ruled out
Speaker 5: whether or not he will accept this invitation to run.
Speaker 3: Sort of a Ross Pero type thing.
Speaker 5: Right, right, except it would be financed by you know,
Speaker 5: private equity goons and hedge funders from around the country
Speaker 5: rather than kind of self financed from by Ross Perot,
Speaker 5: which I feel like the American population is much cooler
Speaker 5: with somebody like a Ross Perot kind of self financing,
Speaker 5: because then he's not bought by anybody. But if your
Speaker 5: campaign is literally financed by dark money groups mostly funded
Speaker 5: by a variety of different moguls, but you know, primarily
Speaker 5: from the kind of private equity and hedge fund world
Speaker 5: like get sorry. And what that does seem to be
Speaker 5: able to do is to hurt Democrats and and help
Speaker 5: Trump because the they're they're more likely to draw from,
Speaker 5: more likely to draw from Biden No labels.
Speaker 6: Is yeah, and that's where you get the ninety two
Speaker 6: pero dynamic, and that it usually like with Jill Stein
Speaker 6: from the other direction of Ronan from.
Speaker 5: That Parou arguably drew money more from hw Bush. Is
Speaker 5: that is that kind of the way that the right
Speaker 5: understands this that Clinton Clinton benefited from Perot being in
Speaker 5: the race.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, And where this again gets interesting is that no
Speaker 6: labels candidate could pull from Democrats in those key suburban
Speaker 6: areas in swing states with scunsin Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: You heard them actually mentioning that.
Speaker 6: But when you look at where democrats feel is there,
Speaker 6: it's there, like what's the two thousand and four version
Speaker 6: of like the Ohio soccer moms, like that's what they
Speaker 6: they're actually still worried about the Ohio soccer moms, and
Speaker 6: that's why they make particular decisions when it comes to
Speaker 6: salts deductions, when it comes out whatever else.
Speaker 3: I don't think Ohio.
Speaker 6: Is an assault state, but you know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 6: that sort of like upper middle class, educated, suburban family.
Speaker 6: That's where Democrats feel is there against Donald Trump and
Speaker 6: against what they see is like extreme mega Republicans in general.
Speaker 3: That's their key demographic.
Speaker 6: And you could see a Joe Manchin coming in and
Speaker 6: playing on you know, all of the Democratic Party support
Speaker 6: for things like Medicare for all and picking away key
Speaker 6: voters or you know, being soft on crime, like picking
Speaker 6: away key voters.
Speaker 3: And states like that.
Speaker 6: It could genuinely be a problem for them, especially if
Speaker 6: you have Cornwell West also in the game, picking off
Speaker 6: leftists in the same way Jill Stein did, like real
Speaker 6: leftists in the same way Jill Stein did. The math
Speaker 6: wouldn't be great for Democrats in that situation, but that
Speaker 6: should mean that they put forward better candidates that don't
Speaker 6: force these third party bids because nobody trusts the DNC right.
Speaker 5: And so then it comes to Cornell West, who initially
Speaker 5: launched with the People Movement for a People's Party, was
Speaker 5: kind of driven away by all the drama around that,
Speaker 5: and probably also the fact that they don't really have
Speaker 5: ballot access anywhere, or maybe maybe they have it somewhere,
Speaker 5: but they don't have it all all across the country.
Speaker 5: So now he's running, he could still lose the Green
Speaker 5: Party nomination. Green Party's hilarious. You never know, he's got
Speaker 5: to fight for that. But let's assume that he wins
Speaker 5: the Green Party nomination and is on the ballot in
Speaker 5: key in key swing states. Then then it comes down
Speaker 5: to the question of do you vote for the person
Speaker 5: you know whose values you you support, or do you
Speaker 5: vote pragmatically between the two people who are most likely
Speaker 5: to win. And then there's a third argument that are
Speaker 5: our friend over at Rising Brown and Joy Gray makes,
Speaker 5: which is that there's actually a pragmatic way to vote
Speaker 5: third party, which is that if you threaten to withhold
Speaker 5: your votes from the Democratic Party, that then they're going
Speaker 5: to do things to kind of win your vote over
Speaker 5: absolutely the problem.
Speaker 3: That happened within, by the way, well, the problem.
Speaker 5: For me with that argument, well, and I want to
Speaker 5: hear what you What you mean by that is that
Speaker 5: that has that has to be a collective organizational decision
Speaker 5: because you have to have somebody who can negotiate these
Speaker 5: terms otherwise, like who who is like who who are
Speaker 5: the we that you're negotiating on behalf of and talking to?
Speaker 5: Who can go to Biden and say, look, if you
Speaker 5: ignore the Supreme Court and do complete student, don't debt cancelation,
Speaker 5: we will vote for you. Who's the WII and who's
Speaker 5: the you? Like who gets to sit down in that room?
Speaker 5: Because if he announced that he was going to do
Speaker 5: that now, you would have an enormous number of Cornell
Speaker 5: West supporters would say, bs, I don't believe it.
Speaker 4: He's a fraud.
Speaker 5: And I know this because you know, in two thousand
Speaker 5: I was a Native supporter and there was absolutely nothing
Speaker 5: Altgre could have told me that would have changed my
Speaker 5: mind on that. Everything he said I was just a
Speaker 5: complete lie. If you go back and watch his two
Speaker 5: thousand convention speech, it was it was just an anti
Speaker 5: corporates screed, which great good for him, but like I
Speaker 5: watched that and I was like, this is cynical nonsense
Speaker 5: coming from You're trying to you're lying to me. None
Speaker 5: of this means a word to me, Like this is
Speaker 5: all this is all lies and so I think so
Speaker 5: many people are in that place that there's nothing Biden
Speaker 5: can say that's going to change their minds. Those are
Speaker 5: things that Biden perhaps could have done, but he didn't.
Speaker 5: Now have they don't have the House, so that there's
Speaker 5: nothing they can do right between them and now, So,
Speaker 5: what did you mean by jill Stein though?
Speaker 6: Oh well, I meant basically that because so many Bernie Sanders'
Speaker 6: supporters ended up voting for jill Stein or even staying home.
Speaker 6: But like, since for the purposes of this conversation, voted
Speaker 6: for Jill Stein, Democrats, the field was completely different.
Speaker 3: There's like this great.
Speaker 6: McClatchy analysis of Hillary Clinton's platform in twenty sixteen versus
Speaker 6: Joe Biden's in twenty twenty, and Biden's was arguably the
Speaker 6: most moderate of all of the major candidates that ran
Speaker 6: for the Democratic nomination that year.
Speaker 3: They said it was.
Speaker 6: Really far to the left, even compared to Hillary Clinton's
Speaker 6: in twenty sixteen. That's McClatchy, and I agree. I think
Speaker 6: it's obvious that he ran way further to the left.
Speaker 3: And again, all of these.
Speaker 6: Candidates, like so called moderates start a Kamala Harris embracing
Speaker 6: Medicare for all, et cetera, et cetera. Whether or not
Speaker 6: people think those are since concessions, they are absolutely concessions
Speaker 6: because Bernie Sanders and then downstream of Bernie Sanders Jill Stein.
Speaker 6: The fact that so many Bernie Sanders supporters were so
Speaker 6: upset by Hillary Clinton that they then went to vote
Speaker 6: for Jill Stein. I think that was a huge wake
Speaker 6: up call for the Democratic Party. And again, people may
Speaker 6: look at the way Biden has governed and say it
Speaker 6: was all insincere, and that's where they would argue Brianna's
Speaker 6: argument falls apart, like maybe you'll get superficial concessions.
Speaker 3: But I don't think from.
Speaker 6: The perspective of the left that having all of those
Speaker 6: candidates come out for free community college, medicare for all,
Speaker 6: et cetera, et cetera. I actually think that puts them
Speaker 6: in a really difficult position when Democrats do have governing
Speaker 6: power to make good on those promises. And it might
Speaker 6: not be the next presidential administration, but down the road,
Speaker 6: that Overton window has shifted for good.
Speaker 5: But I think the phenomenon you're describing of the Democratic
Speaker 5: Party moving to the left since twenty sixteen actually makes
Speaker 5: the opposite case, which is that working in primaries is effective, like.
Speaker 3: To primaries over generals.
Speaker 5: Right to me, that it was the Bernie Sanders camp.
Speaker 5: It was that and then the second Bernie Sanders campaign
Speaker 5: that is what convinced people like Kamala Harris. I don't
Speaker 5: Thinkamala gave a rip about Jill Stein when she decided
Speaker 5: to endorse Medicare for all. I think Kamala was trying
Speaker 5: to win the Democratic primary voters who attached the idea
Speaker 5: of medicare for all to the idea that you're a
Speaker 5: progressive champion. I guess so that's why, like you said,
Speaker 5: basically all of them except Biden were pro medicare for all.
Speaker 5: And I don't think that was Jill Stein. I think
Speaker 5: that was Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 6: I guess the way I think of it, you would
Speaker 6: know this better than I do. I just think of
Speaker 6: it as like the Jill Stein losing Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin
Speaker 6: in ways that actually really could be tied back to
Speaker 6: people voting for Jill Stein, who by the way, may
Speaker 6: not have voted for Hillary Clinton either way. But if
Speaker 6: they say all of those Jill Stein voters they go
Speaker 6: for Hillary Clinton and blah blah blah. Well, I just
Speaker 6: feel like that has loomed so largely in the Democratic
Speaker 6: establishment's imagination that it's almost like inextricable from the Bernie
Speaker 6: thing that like so many people did end up voting
Speaker 6: for Bernie for Jill Stein because Bernie told them not
Speaker 6: to do this, but because they were big Bernie supporters
Speaker 6: and they didn't believe anything other Trump or Hillary were selling.
Speaker 6: That just like loomed so largely in the DNC imagination
Speaker 6: that it's part of what freaked them out and part
Speaker 6: of what freak candidates out.
Speaker 3: But I say, I definitely see what you're saying.
Speaker 5: But and I think in the end, though, it was
Speaker 5: actually a really tiny number. And if you can, you
Speaker 5: go back and look at those CNN numbers, and you
Speaker 5: also had a storm that doesn't exist today, and that
Speaker 5: storm being Hillary Clinton being massively disliked by so many,
Speaker 5: like so many Democratic primary voters and Democratic voters held
Speaker 5: their nose to vote for her in the general. And
Speaker 5: then small numbers ten thirty and fifty thousand in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Speaker 5: Michigan Ish voted for Jill Stein couldn't go forward. But
Speaker 5: also in Wisconsin, you had a huge drop off of
Speaker 5: people just not voting, which and you know, all of
Speaker 5: that is that's on that's on the Democratic Party, and
Speaker 5: that's on and that's on Hillary Clinton. But the other
Speaker 5: elements of the storm that it existed then don't exist now,
Speaker 5: is that Trump was a potential at that point rather
Speaker 5: than a reality, like and and people didn't think that
Speaker 5: he was actually going to win.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 5: Like you know, Poles had him down stance, you know,
Speaker 5: massively pulling units across the board, giving him a mine
Speaker 5: over Daffin was gave him like a ninety five percent
Speaker 5: chance of losing the election. And so people, I think
Speaker 5: weren't taking him as seriously. And I think I bet
Speaker 5: a bunch of those voters in pennsylvaniais continent Michigan who
Speaker 5: voted for Stein afterwards were like, oops, I thought I
Speaker 5: was just casting a little protest vote I didn't actually want.
Speaker 5: So I think some of them were like, who didn't vote?
Speaker 5: I think some were like, I think Trump and Clinton
Speaker 5: are both awful, and I don't care that that I
Speaker 5: gave up my opportunity to vote against Trump by voting
Speaker 5: for Sign.
Speaker 3: I don't care.
Speaker 5: There's lots of those, but I think I bet there
Speaker 5: are a bunch who afterwards were like, Oh, if I
Speaker 5: could do it over again, Knowing that Wisconsin, Michigan, Pensylvania close,
Speaker 5: like they thought those were blue states, Blue Wall was
Speaker 5: secure that they would go Actually, they would have go
Speaker 5: back and vote for Hillary. And you saw that because
Speaker 5: the Green Party was basically non existent in twenty twenty,
Speaker 5: and so will having somebody as charismatic and impressive and
Speaker 5: popular as Cornell West kind of changed that calculation. Maybe,
Speaker 5: but I think most people who are going to support
Speaker 5: West at this point were not going to vote for
Speaker 5: Biden anyway. They were just going to not vote.
Speaker 3: So yeah, although I think that's going to really depend.
Speaker 3: I mean, but.
Speaker 5: Most is most is a lot. But if it moves
Speaker 5: ten thousand votes and elections decided by ten thousand or
Speaker 5: a thousand or whatever, so yeah, you're right, Like, even
Speaker 5: if ninety percent of West voters wouldn't have voted, but
Speaker 5: the other ten percent would have voted for Biden or
Speaker 5: whoever the nomine ends up being, if he doesn't make it,
Speaker 5: then that could swing a close election.
Speaker 3: And if West hits the.
Speaker 6: Road hard on Biden's sort of fumbling student loan debt
Speaker 6: plan going in one direction or the other and kicking
Speaker 6: it to Supreme Court in a way that was predictably
Speaker 6: going to put people in that crunch if he hits
Speaker 6: the road hard on other like populist priorities that Biden
Speaker 6: hasn't been great on that young people in particular are
Speaker 6: interested in. I could see, I could see some interesting numbers,
Speaker 6: but again it all does depend.
Speaker 5: All right, and for people who are new to politics
Speaker 5: and aren't following this, like why why does Europe get
Speaker 5: to do this?
Speaker 4: But we don't.
Speaker 5: You know, Europe and other countries have these parliamentary systems
Speaker 5: where everybody votes for who they like. If you're a Green,
Speaker 5: you're a Liberal Democrat, you're communist, you're a Democratic Socialist,
Speaker 5: you're a Christian Democrat, you know, nationalists, whatever, and then
Speaker 5: they all get to the parliament and they form coalitions
Speaker 5: and then and whatever coalition can get a majority, then
Speaker 5: they elect a prime minister.
Speaker 3: It's like how AFC.
Speaker 6: Said in era, I wouldn't be in the same party
Speaker 6: as Nancy plus.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, and they wouldn't be. There'd be three different
Speaker 5: but then they all get behind the same prime minister.
Speaker 5: So it's like, careful what you wish for. It's not
Speaker 5: like you're necessarily going to get that much more of
Speaker 5: a pure system. But over here it's called first past
Speaker 5: the post. And so Bill Clinton had forty three percent,
Speaker 5: and then you know George H. W. Bush like whatever,
Speaker 5: low forties, high thirties, and then Ross Perro with nineteen.
Speaker 5: That forty three percent wins. Yeah, and so that's that's
Speaker 5: just the system we have. People often say, well, what
Speaker 5: about the Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party. You know,
Speaker 5: they're a third party and they won, except no, they
Speaker 5: were not actually a third party. There were two major parties,
Speaker 5: the Whigs and the Democrats. Democrats and that election split
Speaker 5: into two, you know, a super pro slavery party and
Speaker 5: a just kind of pro slavery party, and the Whigs disappeared, evaporated.
Speaker 5: Lincoln was a partisan wig his entire career and clung
Speaker 5: to the Whig Party as a partisan until the very
Speaker 5: bitter end, until it was completely obvious that it collapsed.
Speaker 5: And then a bunch of parties tried to come up
Speaker 5: and replace the Wigs, and the Republican Party is the
Speaker 5: one that managed to do that. You also had a
Speaker 5: fourth party, a Constitution Party, which was you know your
Speaker 5: classic like moderate senators who were just saying, let's not
Speaker 5: talk about slavery. Let's just can we can we all
Speaker 5: please just not? And I think they won Tennessee or something.
Speaker 5: Maybe around the people could look that up. That was
Speaker 5: the fourth Party. But then you know, you had all
Speaker 5: these other ones that were trying to compete, but the
Speaker 5: Republicans were a major party immediately.
Speaker 6: Basically, this concludes today's edition of Ryan Gram rambling about
Speaker 6: American history.
Speaker 3: That interesting. I always learned, right, I always learned.
Speaker 6: Someone's going to clip that and juxtapose it with another clip,
Speaker 6: and I know what you're going to do.
Speaker 3: Don't do it?
Speaker 5: Which one?
Speaker 3: You know one?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 5: That one I really didn't. That was Soviet history though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it also we don't.
Speaker 5: Need to get into that.
Speaker 3: That's the last thing we need to do right now.
Speaker 6: Although that clip was caught unfairly and I saw in
Speaker 6: a YouTube video recently once again.
Speaker 5: And again like to you or something.
Speaker 6: Yes, So we'll we'll wrap on that note, but we'll
Speaker 6: also obviously continue to follow the Cornell West candidacy very closely,
Speaker 6: and actually the Green Party nomination, which is Ryan says
Speaker 6: he's really gonna have to fight for it. So it's
Speaker 6: an interesting race. So we'll keep you posted on any
Speaker 6: developments in the Green Party.
Speaker 1: So new Axios report detailing something that's kind of key
Speaker 1: to me, at least in terms of the RFK junior campaign.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up on the screen. So apparently his
Speaker 1: campaign merch is not union made, nor.
Speaker 5: Is it US made. Let me read you a little
Speaker 5: bit of this.
Speaker 1: They say that his team is bucking Democratic Party tradition
Speaker 1: by selling campaign merchandise and not made in America, not
Speaker 1: bade by union leader Union Labor. They also say the
Speaker 1: move is out of step with Kennedy's stated commitment to
Speaker 1: labor unions, and along with his anti vaccination views, could
Speaker 1: complicate his long shot primary challenge of President Biden. For generations,
Speaker 1: a rule for Democratic campaigns has been that as many
Speaker 1: materials as possible, shirt stickers, placards, alongsides, even campaign buses
Speaker 1: be made by union shops in America as a sign
Speaker 1: of the party's commitment to labor unions and the working class.
Speaker 1: It appears that the T shirts are have a label
Speaker 1: that says assembled in Hondurs. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: common on the Republican side. They don't typically use union shops,
Speaker 1: they don't particularly pay attention. Even with the Trump campaign
Speaker 1: that talked a lot about made in America, even their
Speaker 1: stuff was made overseas. But for a Democrat, this is
Speaker 1: really a no go. And even putting like the convention
Speaker 1: of it aside, you know, we have merch. We went
Speaker 1: out of our way to make sure that it was
Speaker 1: consistent with our values of being made in America and
Speaker 1: being union made. That can be difficult, although in the
Speaker 1: campaign space there are all kinds of vendors who do
Speaker 1: this work. So it just shows me, like, if you're
Speaker 1: really committed to unions, number one, you need to have
Speaker 1: a plan about that, which we asked him about and
Speaker 1: he didn't have a lot to say about.
Speaker 3: But number two, like this is a basic gimme.
Speaker 2: He's got a prompt to staff in order to fix this.
Speaker 2: My theory most likely is that they were somebody inexperience
Speaker 2: or whatever. They had just set up merch and they didn't,
Speaker 2: you know, think all that much about it. But yeah,
Speaker 2: as you said, if you care, which we cared a lot,
Speaker 2: you know, and I think people should know. It's a
Speaker 2: pain in the ass and this is not a knock.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying you still shouldn't do it, but it's
Speaker 2: cheaper and easier for a reason, to make stuff in China.
Speaker 2: We could make tons more money off of our merchandise
Speaker 2: if we were willing to do that, and it would
Speaker 2: be vastly cheaper, easier shipping, and all of that to you.
Speaker 2: But because we believe in maide in America and a
Speaker 2: union made well, we have had to go in a
Speaker 2: different direction. And that's what a lot of different Democratic
Speaker 2: candidates have done before. I've seen some Republican candidates do
Speaker 2: it as well, and I think that's the right thing
Speaker 2: to do. You know, just because economy of scale is
Speaker 2: easier to get something made in China or Honduras or whatever,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that's what you should do. So again,
Speaker 2: my theory on this is just that they were like,
Speaker 2: go with the easiest option. Yeah, just spin up. But
Speaker 2: this is an opportunity where do the work? Man Like,
Speaker 2: if you think that, if you do care, then you
Speaker 2: should change it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, come on to it. You're yety yeah,
Speaker 1: been invested in democratic politics your entire life. Your campaign
Speaker 1: manager is Dennis Kissinich.
Speaker 4: Oh that's so, you know, Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: Point has to know about these things as well. And
Speaker 1: you know, we like had to put in a lot
Speaker 1: of effort to get our stuff made Union because you know,
Speaker 1: it's been decimated and there just aren't done anymore shops
Speaker 1: that are Union and America made at this point. But
Speaker 1: in the campaign world, there's a whole slew of them,
Speaker 1: you know, on the Democratics, there's tons of them. It's
Speaker 1: not hard, you know, it's not hard to find, it's
Speaker 1: not hard to figure out. I guess the next test
Speaker 1: will be how do they respond to this? Do they care?
Speaker 1: Do they fix it, do they address it? Do they apologize?
Speaker 1: Like where do they go from here? Because he has
Speaker 1: tried to make a point of saying, you know, he
Speaker 1: stands with labor, even though again on the substance there
Speaker 1: hasn't been a plan laid out of how he would
Speaker 1: increase union participation. Just to give you one more sense of,
Speaker 1: you know, how this is significant, how this plays within
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, they asked Ray Buckley, who's the chair
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party in New Hampshire. In New Hampshire
Speaker 1: key obviously, because the whole rift with Biden is not
Speaker 1: going to be on the ballot there, but it's still
Speaker 1: going to be in an early state. RFK Junior has
Speaker 1: an actual chance to win that state, so this is
Speaker 1: really key. So the chair of the Democratic Party in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire says, it's politics one oh one. I would
Speaker 1: hope that Kennedy would put human rights above his political aspirations.
Speaker 1: That's the nicest way I can say that. So we'll
Speaker 1: see how they respond and if they make this right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm curious what his response should be because I mean,
Speaker 2: there's no you can't justify this making stuff, yeah in
Speaker 2: the Hondura, especially whatever you're talking about maid in America.
Speaker 2: I mean, we asked him also about unions. He didn't
Speaker 2: have some specifics on the plant if I recall, or
Speaker 2: on the pro act, but he did say it was.
Speaker 4: Very supportive of the union way of life.
Speaker 2: Obviously, his own father has a complicated history, I guess
Speaker 2: is the nicest way of saying.
Speaker 4: Whatever came to storied battles.
Speaker 2: JFK as a very pro union president, so you know,
Speaker 2: in terms of carry on the Kennedy legacy, and then
Speaker 2: Ted Kennedy of course was a longtime front of the
Speaker 2: unions in the actually US Senate. So I think you know,
Speaker 2: given what you said for Kennedy's elector apolicis this is
Speaker 2: one of those that you absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1: You got to walk the one, right have we already
Speaker 1: got a price?
Speaker 3: We do play.
Speaker 1: It's hardy pro union and is mixed on the topic.
Speaker 1: Let's just say so anyway, We'll see where it goes
Speaker 1: from here.
Speaker 4: All right, We'll see you guys later.
Speaker 5: What is the best way to educate our children? When
Speaker 5: that question arises, the discussion eventually turns to the issue
Speaker 5: of school choice.
Speaker 7: Feels important for National School Choice Week, advocating for alternative
Speaker 7: options to public schools, such as charter and magnusine.
Speaker 9: He use the public money to fund private schools has
Speaker 9: had its fair share of controversy.
Speaker 10: Supporters say vouchers help students succeed, but opponents say they
Speaker 10: siphon away crucial public school resources.
Speaker 9: A battle is raging on in America's classrooms right now,
Speaker 9: one that seemingly pivots around giving parents the opportunity to
Speaker 9: choose between public and private education for their kids. But
Speaker 9: is there also more to this issue than what meets
Speaker 9: the eye?
Speaker 7: Ballwork of the American farm of government is educational, for
Speaker 7: true democracy can exist only among a people prepared from
Speaker 7: childhood for the responsibilities of citizenship.
Speaker 9: America's public education system, since its inception in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 9: has been a cornerstone of the American dream and an
Speaker 9: integral part of the country's cultural fabric. Seen as the
Speaker 9: Great Equalizer, it offered a promise of opportunity and upward
Speaker 9: mobility to all, regardless of economic or social standing. But
Speaker 9: fast forward to today, the future of education seems to
Speaker 9: be headed in a vastly different direction.
Speaker 1: The historic night at the State House Monday, with both
Speaker 1: House and Senate lawmakers passing a bill to send taxpayer
Speaker 1: money to some Iowans to pay for private school tuition.
Speaker 4: Today, just about an hour ago, Florida Governor Ron de
Speaker 4: Santa's signed House Bill one.
Speaker 2: The education bill relates to school choice and expanding private
Speaker 2: school vouchers.
Speaker 11: Parents could get thousands of dollars back for sending their
Speaker 11: kids to a private school.
Speaker 10: The bill giving parents public dollars for private school tuition.
Speaker 7: The bill would give scholarship money to families who qualify
Speaker 7: and choose to take their children out of the public school.
Speaker 9: That's right. Instead of directly funding the public school system,
Speaker 9: school choice or school voucher programs would allocate those public
Speaker 9: taxpayer dollars to help parents fund their children's private school
Speaker 9: tuition should they choose not to attend public school. The
Speaker 9: first program of its kind was implemented back in nineteen ninety,
Speaker 9: the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Fast forward to twenty twenty three,
Speaker 9: fifteen states have voucher programs to help parents pay for
Speaker 9: private school, and such programs have only exploded exponentially in
Speaker 9: recent months. Just this year, fourteen states have passed bills
Speaker 9: establishing school choice programs or expanding existing ones, and lawmakers
Speaker 9: in forty two states have introduced bills to establish similar programs.
Speaker 9: Proponents of such programs, like Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, who
Speaker 9: earlier this year okayed allocating taxpayer money to fund private
Speaker 9: schools in her state, say that it will give parents
Speaker 9: more choice and improve educational outcomes by fostering competition between
Speaker 9: public and private schools.
Speaker 4: It's all about options, it's competition. It's a good thing.
Speaker 9: Now the question is do you buy it? I mean, choice, competition,
Speaker 9: Those are all universal ideals shared by almost everybody. But
Speaker 9: to achieve it by diverting taxpayer dollars from public to
Speaker 9: private schools, I think it's worthwhile for us to take
Speaker 9: a peek under the hood. Recently, I spoke with Joshua Cowen,
Speaker 9: a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who
Speaker 9: has studied school choice for nearly two decades, to help
Speaker 9: us understand what the data is telling us.
Speaker 11: The one only ambiguous thing that seem used to come
Speaker 11: from all the pro voucher findings is that parents who
Speaker 11: use the vouchers to appear to be happier with their kids' education.
Speaker 4: Happy parents. That is a good thing, right, Well, maybe
Speaker 4: so vouchers.
Speaker 11: About three quarters of new voucher users actually already in
Speaker 11: private school in first place. The new part just comes
Speaker 11: from the source, the founding, the government, instead of the parent.
Speaker 9: According to data from the National Coalition for Public Education,
Speaker 9: in Arizona, eighty percent of voucher applicants are from children
Speaker 9: who have never attended a public school. In New Hampshire,
Speaker 9: eighty nine percent have never attended a public school. In Wisconsin,
Speaker 9: seventy five percent have never attended a public school. Why
Speaker 9: is that, Well, the truth is, even if some parents
Speaker 9: wanted to use a voucher, the reality is, unlike public schools,
Speaker 9: private schools can decline to admit children for any reason
Speaker 9: that's not considered a protected characteristic. So yeah, you can
Speaker 9: be rejected simply for being poor. So in terms of opportunity,
Speaker 9: it seems to me like the group that benefits the
Speaker 9: most from school choice programs are parents of existing private
Speaker 9: school students who now get to enjoy a public subsidy
Speaker 9: for their children's private school tuition.
Speaker 11: Of course, parents are more satisfied when something they were
Speaker 11: footing the bill themselves for up until last year, all
Speaker 11: of a sudden the government comes and who gives them
Speaker 11: money for that? That's not that surprising. So the real
Speaker 11: question then just goes back to are they delivering what
Speaker 11: the promises, which is that the academics are better.
Speaker 9: Unfortunately, study after study confirms that new students using vouchers
Speaker 9: to attend private schools leads to lower test scores and
Speaker 9: worse educational outcomes. How much worse Some studies show that
Speaker 9: voucher impacts on a student's educational outcome are equivalent to,
Speaker 9: or sometimes even worse than the learning loss caused by
Speaker 9: natural disasters and even the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 11: For that smaller percentage, that quarter or thirty percent or so,
Speaker 11: who kids who do transfer from public to private their
Speaker 11: test course tend to be catastrophic. And the reason for
Speaker 11: that is that for the most part, these voucher programs
Speaker 11: prop up what I I would call subprime private schools.
Speaker 11: There's schools that are financially distressed, the struggling. They might
Speaker 11: close anyway, often many do. You're not talking about like
Speaker 11: this pathway to elite private school education.
Speaker 9: Cowent Sites, Wisconsin as an example, as forty one percent
Speaker 9: of voucher schools there have closed since the programs in
Speaker 9: section in nineteen ninety and that includes the large number
Speaker 9: of pop up schools opening just to cash in on
Speaker 9: the new voucher payout. For those pop up schools, average
Speaker 9: survival time is just four years before their doors closed
Speaker 9: for good. Well, what about competition?
Speaker 11: It is true is that we've seen small and really
Speaker 11: really tiny, but real test score improvements in the public
Speaker 11: school side when these voucher programs expand. And the reason
Speaker 11: for that is that you can find those positi effects
Speaker 11: mostly concentrated in low income communities, communities of color, vulnerable
Speaker 11: communities generally speaking, historically marginalized communities. And what's happening is basically,
Speaker 11: when you pit these vulnerable communities against each other to
Speaker 11: compete for scarce dollars.
Speaker 4: You do see some kicking scores.
Speaker 9: That sounds awfully close to an educational huggy games type situation,
Speaker 9: if I can editorialize a little bit, poor kids battling
Speaker 9: it out in public schools, test scores falling off a
Speaker 9: cliff for those children who transferred with a voucher to
Speaker 9: a subprime private school, and the children who are already
Speaker 9: in elite private schools are sounding like they're even better off.
Speaker 11: Debates really settled about whether these things do or don't
Speaker 11: help kids who use them.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's over.
Speaker 11: We just don't get evidence like that in the research
Speaker 11: community that's that consistent, that straightforward. Very oftenitially it's on
Speaker 11: the one hand or on the other hand, that's.
Speaker 2: Not what boxers are.
Speaker 11: It's pretty bad stuff. So then it comes down to
Speaker 11: what's the idea and what is the idea here?
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 9: To fully understand the true motivations behind the push for
Speaker 9: school choice, we have to go back nearly three quarters
Speaker 9: of a century to nineteen fifty four Brown versus Board
Speaker 9: of Education, in which the Supreme Court unanimously ruled racial
Speaker 9: segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional and almost Immediately thereafter,
Speaker 9: attacks against the public school system began tomate among certain
Speaker 9: elite circles.
Speaker 7: The state of schooling alemandary secondary higher schooling in the
Speaker 7: United States is deplorable.
Speaker 9: This man is famed economist Milton Friedman. Yes, the same
Speaker 9: Milton Freeman who in nineteen seventy proclaimed in The New
Speaker 9: York Times that the social responsibility of business is to
Speaker 9: increase its profits the god of shareholder privacy. Freeman pen
Speaker 9: the gospel on private education a decade and a half earlier,
Speaker 9: in nineteen fifty five, perhaps not coincidentally, just a few
Speaker 9: months after the Brown v. Board ruling, in an essay
Speaker 9: called the Role of Government and Education, in which he
Speaker 9: advocated for governments to use school vouchers as a means
Speaker 9: to stimulate competition in the education system.
Speaker 11: For Freedman's paper was published in nineteen fifty five, that
Speaker 11: was just a few months after Brown versus Board of Education.
Speaker 11: The reason that's relevant today is Freedman's idea was very
Speaker 11: quickly latched onto by segregationists, particularly in Virginia and in
Speaker 11: Texas as kind of what they say is something of
Speaker 11: a race neutral way to avoid the integration orders that
Speaker 11: came out of round for supports, and.
Speaker 9: That is the cold, hard truth. School choice is really
Speaker 9: nothing more than a coded term used by wealthy, influential
Speaker 9: individuals and advocacy groups to maintain a segregated education system
Speaker 9: that disproportionately benefits the affluent and leaves less privileged populations
Speaker 9: at a disadvantage. It is designed as a mechanism that
Speaker 9: in effect gives choice to private schools rather than to
Speaker 9: the parents.
Speaker 8: If you close all the public schools in your area
Speaker 8: and you pop up two or three charter schools, what
Speaker 8: is the choice. You have no choice.
Speaker 9: Maggie Perkins is a former teacher who taught for nearly
Speaker 9: a decade at both public and private institutions.
Speaker 10: It's in us first them situation, and this is my
Speaker 10: sense of it as a teacher's perspective, that as other
Speaker 10: groups become more included and have more access and more
Speaker 10: opportunity is there for them, that their children are getting
Speaker 10: things taken away from them. It is more about personal
Speaker 10: values and in a way resegregation of schools. So I
Speaker 10: think it's more based out of fear and less about
Speaker 10: let's take our money and go spend it on a
Speaker 10: quality education.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's about quality.
Speaker 9: Just the idea of resegregating education at a state or
Speaker 9: federal level might be kind of a hard sell nowadays.
Speaker 9: So it is one hundred percent by design that school
Speaker 9: choice advocacy groups market such programs as quote opportunity scholarships
Speaker 9: or lifeline scholarships. Legacy publications like The Wall Street Journal
Speaker 9: recently even framed opposition to school choice as the killing
Speaker 9: of scholarships for poor students in failing schools. So what
Speaker 9: should we do? What can we do? Because the honest
Speaker 9: truth is that I sympathize with legitimate critiques of the
Speaker 9: public school system in America. No doubt the system is
Speaker 9: in need of serious reform.
Speaker 11: I mean, we need to address that. We need to
Speaker 11: make it easier for kids the special needs to learn
Speaker 11: in public schools. We need to make it easier for
Speaker 11: kids who are struggling with mental health to go to
Speaker 11: public school and learn there. We need to investing in
Speaker 11: the teacher workforce. Right you see bills like and my
Speaker 11: governor here in Minnesota are putting a lot of money
Speaker 11: behind universal free meals because there's strong evidence that hungry
Speaker 11: kids at.
Speaker 4: School don't learn as well.
Speaker 11: Like those are ways to improve learning in the public
Speaker 11: school community.
Speaker 9: Many of those issues we've explored right here on this
Speaker 9: channel together, administrative bloat, diverting critical resources away from classrooms,
Speaker 9: a manufactured teacher shortage crisis, and other systemic inequalities. They
Speaker 9: all need to be taken very, very seriously. But ultimately
Speaker 9: I have to say this, the solution or the debate
Speaker 9: over education is fundamentally philosophical, which is to say, do
Speaker 9: we as a nation believe in a quality public education
Speaker 9: system that opens its doors to everyone, regardless of their class, creed, color,
Speaker 9: and we work together to reform that institution, or do
Speaker 9: we believe that quality education is something of a privilege,
Speaker 9: one in which public taxpayer money is turned over to
Speaker 9: private entities that don't necessarily exist to improve educational outcomes,
Speaker 9: but rather act as gate keepers deciding which children should
Speaker 9: have access to, which type of school that has offered
Speaker 9: me this time? What do you think about school choice?
Speaker 9: Sound off in the comments section below. If you've been
Speaker 9: enjoying these beyond the headline segments, I would highly encourage
Speaker 9: you to check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel
Speaker 9: fifty one forty nine with James Lee. Link will be
Speaker 9: in the description below. Really appreciate that and as always,
Speaker 9: keep on tuning into breaking points and thank you so
Speaker 9: much for your time. Today.
Speaker 8: Near renderings of the proposed new Titans stadium will released today.
Speaker 2: Here's your home of the Buffalo bills about.
Speaker 1: Two point one billion dollar price tax taxpayer dollars towards stadium.
Speaker 9: Most people here in the valley are against using any
Speaker 9: public money to help fund the proposed stadium.
Speaker 12: Stadium doesn't seem like it's gonna fall down. This is
Speaker 12: Charles Evans. By teen o nine, he had become the
Speaker 12: sole owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and he wanted to
Speaker 12: give them a new, modern home, not like the wooden
Speaker 12: parks they had been playing in because sometimes those burned down.
Speaker 12: He decided to build a steel stadium. Ebbitts took seven
Speaker 12: hundred and fifty thousand dollars of his own money and
Speaker 12: paid for this ballpark to be built Ebbitts Field. In
Speaker 12: nineteen twelve, they broke ground and this stadium by Prospect Park,
Speaker 12: would be the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 12: In nineteen fifty one, the Commissioner of Baseball, this guy
Speaker 12: Ford Frick, basically said, hey, you know, we bring in
Speaker 12: all this money for these cities we create jobs, were
Speaker 12: doing these cities a favor by existing, they should reciprocate.
Speaker 12: This is when the cost of building these stadiums really
Speaker 12: started shifting from the sports franchise to the city that
Speaker 12: hosts the franchise. So the Dodgers had been playing at
Speaker 12: ebbitts Field since nineteen thirteen, and by the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 12: Walter O'Malley was the owner of the team. By this point,
Speaker 12: the Dodgers were one of the most profitable teams in baseball.
Speaker 12: O'Malley wanted to build a new stadium at the Atlantic
Speaker 12: Yards in Brooklyn, and he began threatening to move to
Speaker 12: la if the city didn't acquiesce. Now, it's worth noting
Speaker 12: that moving cities wasn't really a thing at the time.
Speaker 12: Until nineteen fifty three, no Major League Baseball team had moved.
Speaker 12: The first were the Boston Braves in nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 12: who had wanted to leave Boston because they were having
Speaker 12: trouble building a fan base and couldn't fill their stadium.
Speaker 12: Plus Milwaukee gave them a stadium using public money. In
Speaker 12: fifty four, the Saint Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles
Speaker 12: fifty five, the Philly Athletics became the Kansas City Athletics,
Speaker 12: but officials were unmoved by the Dodgers threats. As the
Speaker 12: mayor said, we don't intend to allow ourselves to be
Speaker 12: blackjacked into helping either the Dodgers or Giants financially. The
Speaker 12: New York Giants also wanted a new stadium. One congressman said,
Speaker 12: let the Dodgers move to Los Angeles if the alternative
Speaker 12: is to succumb to an arrogant demand to spend The
Speaker 12: taxpayers wanted to build a stadium for them in Brooklyn. Plus,
Speaker 12: the city had already spent one hundred and ten thousand
Speaker 12: dollars on studying the proposed site of the new stadium,
Speaker 12: and a new stadium probably would have meant extensive use
Speaker 12: of eminent domain to clear the space. This is exactly
Speaker 12: what happened fifty years later when they started working on
Speaker 12: the Barclay Center, which is exactly where they had proposed
Speaker 12: putting a field for the Dodgers. The new Dodger Stadium
Speaker 12: in LA would also negatively impact residents, and that's where
Speaker 12: they've been since nineteen fifty eight. But this would mark
Speaker 12: a new era where professional sports teams would threaten to
Speaker 12: pull out of cities unless they got a new stadium,
Speaker 12: which coincides with a new era of public funding for
Speaker 12: private stadiums. Let's take the NFL as an example. Head
Speaker 12: of thirty two teams, twenty seven used stadiums that were
Speaker 12: subsidized by taxpayers. These five teams play in stadiums that
Speaker 12: were privately funded, but the rest had helped from the public,
Speaker 12: and for the twenty twenty sixth season, the Titans and
Speaker 12: the Bills are getting new stadiums entirely, both with the
Speaker 12: aid of public financing. In the case of the Bills,
Speaker 12: people feared that they might move to San Diego if
Speaker 12: they weren't given a new stadium, and San Diego is
Speaker 12: in need of a team because the Charters moved from
Speaker 12: San Diego to La because they got a new stadium there.
Speaker 12: But the Bills got their stadium and New York citizens
Speaker 12: are going to contribute one billion dollars to it. The
Speaker 12: new Titan stadium is projected to cost one point two
Speaker 12: billion dollars for taxpairs. Psychotically, stadiums are considered to have
Speaker 12: hit middle age at about twenty years old, so if
Speaker 12: teams aren't working on acquiring whole new stadiums. They're working
Speaker 12: on one hundred million dollar plus repairs and upgrades. Governor
Speaker 12: Tony Evers would allocate two hundred and ninety million dollars
Speaker 12: from the state's surplus towards upgrades to American Family Field
Speaker 12: in exchange for the Milwaukee Brewers extending their lease at
Speaker 12: the stadium through twenty forty three. This is when all
Speaker 12: the teams moved into their stadiums, and these teams are
Speaker 12: all set to get these expensive renovations and repairs, some
Speaker 12: of which will be supported by tax payers. The Saints
Speaker 12: actually received twenty seven million dollars in pandemic aid for
Speaker 12: their recent renovations, but this is all in service to
Speaker 12: attracting or keeping a team. This is also a thing
Speaker 12: in lower levels of sports. The early two thousands in
Speaker 12: New Jersey saw a bunch of minor league baseball stadiums
Speaker 12: go up. One was Campbell's Field in Camden. It cost
Speaker 12: taxpayers eighteen million dollars. The team that played there was
Speaker 12: the River Sharks. The River Sharks and Campbell's Field were
Speaker 12: supposed to revitalize the impover city by being the centerpiece
Speaker 12: of an economic Development plan along the edge of the
Speaker 12: Delaware River. Actually, economic development is always the justification for
Speaker 12: publicly funding these stadiums, the idea being that if teams
Speaker 12: are here, as the former Commissioner of Baseball asserted, the
Speaker 12: local economy gets a boost. But things like naming rights, concessions,
Speaker 12: ticket sales, all the things that really generate money, there's
Speaker 12: not really any profit sharing between the team and the
Speaker 12: host city. In exchange for naming the stadium where the
Speaker 12: Panthers play Bank of America Stadium, Bank of America is
Speaker 12: paying the Panthers one hundred and forty million dollars, but
Speaker 12: the state doesn't get any of that or take concessions.
Speaker 12: Stadiums make as much as two million dollars per game
Speaker 12: on concessions, but none of that goes to the city.
Speaker 12: So the economic boost comes from construction of the stadium,
Speaker 12: hotel stays, traffic driven to the area. But in reality,
Speaker 12: decades of academic studies consistently find no discernible positive relationship
Speaker 12: between sports facilities and local economic development, income growth, or
Speaker 12: job creation. So it's very unlikely that a sports team
Speaker 12: is going to boost your local economy, especially if you've
Speaker 12: made an investment in a team and they decide to
Speaker 12: leave anyway. In nineteen ninety five, Saint Louis put two
Speaker 12: hundred and eighty million dollars into a stadium for the Rams,
Speaker 12: and when the Rams decided to move to LA taxpayers
Speaker 12: still owed more than one hundred million dollars in debt
Speaker 12: on the bonds used to finance the Edward Jones Dome,
Speaker 12: where the Rams played. There are several examples of taxpayers
Speaker 12: having to pay for stadiums after the team has stopped
Speaker 12: using them. The River Sharks, who played at Campbell's Field
Speaker 12: and Camden, moved to Connecticut, so taxpayers were then on
Speaker 12: the hook for one million dollars to tear the stadium down.
Speaker 12: The old Giant Stadium, demolished to make way for new
Speaker 12: Meadowland Stadium, left New Jersey with a debt of one
Speaker 12: hundred and ten million dollars. Seattle's King County had debt
Speaker 12: over eighty million dollars for the Kingdome, which was raised
Speaker 12: in two thousand and Here's the other thing. Voters don't
Speaker 12: want to pay for your dumb stadium. Sometimes they do.
Speaker 12: In the case of the Broncos Stadium, where fifty one
Speaker 12: percent of voters approved the stadium proposals, but sometimes they don't.
Speaker 12: San Diego voters overwhelmingly defeated a new downtown stadium plan
Speaker 12: for the San Diego Chargers. Ballot Measure C in San
Speaker 12: Diego asked voters whether they wanted to effectively increase the
Speaker 12: city's hotel room tax rate from twelve point five percent
Speaker 12: to sixteen point five percent, with the proceeds helping fund
Speaker 12: a new one point eight billion dollars stadium and convention center.
Speaker 12: They did not, and so the chards moved to LA.
Speaker 12: But often they aren't given a say at all for
Speaker 12: the new Bills and Titan stadiums. Voters weren't consulted, however,
Speaker 12: and after the fact poll of New York state voters
Speaker 12: found that they opposed the bill's deal by a whopping
Speaker 12: margin of sixty three percent to twenty four percent, with
Speaker 12: opposition consistent across both parties and all parts of the state.
Speaker 12: A poll by a Nashville community group of residents of
Speaker 12: the neighborhood where a new Titan stadium would be built
Speaker 12: found ninety percent opposed to taxpayer funding of the project.
Speaker 12: So if your city is considering paying for a new stadium,
Speaker 12: it likely won't be the economic windfall they're telling you
Speaker 12: will be. Now, maybe that doesn't matter to you. You
Speaker 12: would vote for the stadium anyway. Either way, the citizenry
Speaker 12: should probably be allowed to have a say. And regardless
Speaker 12: of how badly you want that stadium, it should be
Speaker 12: understood that no major sports team needs subsidies. You're not
Speaker 12: voting on whether you want to keep a team or
Speaker 12: improve a stadium. You're voting on whether or not to
Speaker 12: acquiesce to the whims of an extremely wealthy team owner.
Speaker 5: And that will do it for me.
Speaker 12: If you found this video interesting, make sure you are
Speaker 12: subscribed to Breaking Points. Of course, you can also check
Speaker 12: out my YouTube channel where I talk about media and
Speaker 12: politics and other interesting things. Linkin description. Liking and sharing
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Speaker 4: Please do that.
Speaker 12: Thank you to Breaking Points. Thank you so much for watching,
Speaker 12: and I will see you in the next one.