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Social Security in Crisis & A Warning for the U.S. About Socialism · 3 Martini Lunch – Political Humor & Commentary

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch. Grab a stool next
0:05
Speaker 1: to Greg Corumbus of Radio America and Jim Garrity of
0:08
Speaker 1: National Review.
0:10
Speaker 2: Free Martini's coming up. So glad you're with us for
0:14
Speaker 2: the Tuesday edition of the Three Martini Lunch. Another special edition.
0:18
Speaker 2: And when we have special editions like this, it could
0:20
Speaker 2: mean a number of things. One of us is out,
0:22
Speaker 2: but in this case, we're both away on vacation or work.
0:25
Speaker 2: And as was the case yesterday when we did our
0:27
Speaker 2: midterm election preview, but today we're going to be looking
0:31
Speaker 2: at stories that have fallen through the cracks, big stories,
0:34
Speaker 2: but stories that didn't quite make it to Martini or
0:37
Speaker 2: even chaser status. So we've each picked three. We never
0:40
Speaker 2: know what the others have picked. And Jim, what's number
0:44
Speaker 2: one for you?
0:45
Speaker 3: So this is one that you and I have talked
0:47
Speaker 3: about semi regularly. I feel like the media coverage nationally
0:51
Speaker 3: has not given it nearly as much attention. I know
0:53
Speaker 3: that part of this is because elected officials and candidates
0:57
Speaker 3: for high office don't want to talk about it. But
0:59
Speaker 3: the fact that they don't want to talk about it
1:01
Speaker 3: doesn't mean the problem is going.
1:03
Speaker 1: To go away.
1:03
Speaker 3: And I speak, of course, of Social Security and titlements.
1:06
Speaker 3: There was a little bit of a hubbub earlier this
1:08
Speaker 3: year when the Social Security Trustees announced they projected the
1:11
Speaker 3: Retirement Trust Fund would be exhausted in twenty thirty two.
1:15
Speaker 3: If you are elected to the Senate this year, you're
1:17
Speaker 3: going to be dealing with this problem on your watch.
1:19
Speaker 3: That got a little bit of coverage. What didn't get
1:21
Speaker 3: nearly as much coverage is a new study from the
1:23
Speaker 3: Committee for the Responsible Federal Budget. And when I say new,
1:26
Speaker 3: I mean it's like me a couple of weeks ago
1:28
Speaker 3: that if you do not do anything about this immediately,
1:32
Speaker 3: twenty four percent across the board for all benefits to
1:35
Speaker 3: Social Security, Right, So, like, whatever you're getting from soci
1:37
Speaker 3: Security right now, nearly a quarter of it poof goes away. Right.
1:41
Speaker 3: That would add up to a average monthly benefit cut
1:44
Speaker 3: of more than five hundred dollars in twenty nine states.
1:47
Speaker 3: Usually it's as you kind of expect the wealthier one.
1:50
Speaker 3: More than fifteen percent of the population would be directly
1:53
Speaker 3: impacted in forty seven states, pretty much the entire country,
1:57
Speaker 3: and total benefit cuts would exceed one percent or are
2:00
Speaker 3: more than one percent of gross domestic product in forty states,
2:04
Speaker 3: so almost every state is going to be seen. The
2:06
Speaker 3: economic effect of this would be absolutely devastating and a
2:09
Speaker 3: whole bunch of people, Now, you know, a little while
2:11
Speaker 3: ago I talked about how if you're on Social Security
2:14
Speaker 3: is called supplemental security income or supplemental like you're not
2:17
Speaker 3: supposed to be supplementing some savings that you have or
2:20
Speaker 3: other outside income a pension for a one K something
2:23
Speaker 3: like that. Whole bunch of Americans haven't saved much of anything.
2:25
Speaker 3: But like, the economic effects of this would be absolutely devastating.
2:28
Speaker 3: You would think this would come up semi regularly in
2:32
Speaker 3: our discourse.
2:33
Speaker 1: Now.
2:34
Speaker 3: I know that Bernie, who's going to have a no
2:36
Speaker 3: nickname Sanders moreno uh, introduced something with Elizabeth Warren last
2:41
Speaker 3: week and that got some attention.
2:42
Speaker 1: It's mostly tax.
2:43
Speaker 3: Increases, which is actually have its own bad effects on
2:46
Speaker 3: the economy. But by and large, this is a largely
2:49
Speaker 3: unspoken issue, and we are we are fresh out of later.
2:52
Speaker 3: This is this is you know, the future is now.
2:54
Speaker 3: As they used to say at the Washington Redskins turned commanders,
2:57
Speaker 3: there's not a lot of time to deal with this anymore.
3:00
Speaker 1: Would have been a lot easier to deal with it. Oh,
3:01
Speaker 1: I've only been listening to George W. Bush, you know.
3:03
Speaker 3: So that's that is an issue that I feel like
3:05
Speaker 3: really deserves a lot more attention. And any day now,
3:08
Speaker 3: mainstream media, any day now, candidates, you want to talk
3:10
Speaker 3: more about this. No, No, we're we're gonna deal with
3:13
Speaker 3: this probably in like I don't know, twenty thirty one,
3:15
Speaker 3: something like that.
3:15
Speaker 2: Well, they're going to try kick the can down the road. Yeah,
3:18
Speaker 2: we had all these Blue Ribbon commissions. I remember towards
3:20
Speaker 2: the end of the Clinton administration, Senator bro was leading one.
3:23
Speaker 2: I think Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles looked at entitlements
3:26
Speaker 2: and debt and all that stuff, and they came up
3:28
Speaker 2: with recommendations. I don't remember how conservative they were, but
3:31
Speaker 2: at least they they thought about it, came up with ideas,
3:34
Speaker 2: and then everybody just, you know, okay, thanks for your work,
3:36
Speaker 2: and shoved it in a drawer somewhere. Bush of course,
3:39
Speaker 2: tried to allow with it two percent maybe of your
3:42
Speaker 2: putting your social security into investments, which would be.
3:45
Speaker 3: A look at attorney in the stock market in two thousand.
3:48
Speaker 1: Imagine how bad it would have been.
3:50
Speaker 2: His own party just blanched at him, even after he
3:52
Speaker 2: had just won reelection, and.
3:53
Speaker 3: I guess it like in two thousand and five, two
3:55
Speaker 3: thousand and six, Oh, it's you know, it's terrible.
3:58
Speaker 1: Sin's that. Yeah, yes, exactly.
4:00
Speaker 2: Here's my thought on this. I originally thought that we
4:03
Speaker 2: were probably going to just have to go to higher
4:06
Speaker 2: age eligibility or slightly to reduce benefits in combination with that,
4:09
Speaker 2: so it's not too much drastic. They might just end
4:12
Speaker 2: up borrowing it all from someone and try to keep
4:15
Speaker 2: the numbers level, which will only just astronomically if increase
4:18
Speaker 2: our debt, and then the interest on the debt will
4:20
Speaker 2: take up a bigger and bigger and bigger portion of
4:22
Speaker 2: our budget.
4:23
Speaker 3: It's interesting right now debt is going to go from
4:26
Speaker 3: like a quarterbacks number to a wide receiver's number. It's
4:30
Speaker 3: going to be Yeah, I know lots of wide receivers
4:32
Speaker 3: have single digit numbers now, but you get the idea
4:34
Speaker 3: or an offensive line and number this rate.
4:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not good. But you know, one of the
4:39
Speaker 2: things that makes you not very confident that they're going
4:42
Speaker 2: to get this right is how far left the Democrats
4:45
Speaker 2: are shifting. You know, we saw some socialists nominated and
4:48
Speaker 2: essentially elected to Congress last week in New York City,
4:51
Speaker 2: and we got some very far left candidates running for
4:53
Speaker 2: Senate and governor in different places. But where people live
4:56
Speaker 2: that have tried socialism or had socialism foisted upon on them,
5:00
Speaker 2: they know it doesn't work. And you might want to
5:03
Speaker 2: pay attention to what's been going on in some elections
5:06
Speaker 2: in Latin America where socialism was all the rage not
5:09
Speaker 2: that long ago, including Venezuela, which went from the one
5:12
Speaker 2: of the richest nations in the world who absolute disaster
5:17
Speaker 2: with people starving to death and so forth because of
5:19
Speaker 2: the corruption there. But in just you know, the last
5:23
Speaker 2: year in change, we've got a person on the right
5:25
Speaker 2: elected in Chile, Bolivia, Peru. So far we think it's
5:29
Speaker 2: very close, and they're still fighting over that. Ecuador, Honduras,
5:33
Speaker 2: Colombia most recently that's also in dispute, Costa Rica and
5:36
Speaker 2: so forth, And so the people who've tried socialism, and
5:40
Speaker 2: they tried in Argentina before me Le got there, and
5:42
Speaker 2: things are definitely looking better there. And so one of
5:45
Speaker 2: the things we're seeing is not only the people coming
5:47
Speaker 2: back to sanity in these places, you also have the
5:50
Speaker 2: socialists saying, no, I just don't like those election results.
5:53
Speaker 2: So in Colombia, the outgoing socialist president Gustavo Petro says
5:57
Speaker 2: he does not recognize the presidential election results a legend
6:00
Speaker 2: possible Israeli interference in the vote.
6:02
Speaker 1: Sure.
6:03
Speaker 2: And then in Peru, the leftist presidential candidate Roberto Sanchez
6:07
Speaker 2: wants to throw out a bunch of votes that went
6:09
Speaker 2: to the apparent winner there, Keiko Fujimori so jim Some
6:13
Speaker 2: things are the same over and over again. People have
6:17
Speaker 2: wised up on socialism in some of these countries, and
6:19
Speaker 2: the left can handle it.
6:20
Speaker 3: Obviously, very few countries in South America get nearly as
6:23
Speaker 3: much attention as they deserve in the US media news cycle.
6:26
Speaker 1: It's been a busy media.
6:27
Speaker 3: Cycle, a lot of Iran and China and Russia Ukraine,
6:31
Speaker 3: which I'll talk about in a second. I think Henry
6:33
Speaker 3: Kissinger had said that South America is a dagger pointed
6:37
Speaker 3: straight at the heart of Antarctica, and that's why it
6:40
Speaker 3: doesn't get the attention that it probably ought to in
6:42
Speaker 3: the US news cycle. No, but it's also kind of like,
6:45
Speaker 3: somewhat this is the white pill option you're giving us
6:48
Speaker 3: that once people have had socialism over and over and
6:51
Speaker 3: over and over and over again, and they quite yo
6:52
Speaker 3: to use the Margaret Thatcher term. They've run out of
6:54
Speaker 3: other people's money. They then say, oh, you know, all right, fine,
6:57
Speaker 3: we'll try this crazy idea of moving in a right
7:00
Speaker 3: direction and free market economics.
7:02
Speaker 1: And go figure it works.
7:03
Speaker 3: Lo and behold, Argentina does not have the crazy inflation rate,
7:07
Speaker 3: and lo and behold, state spending goes down, Lo and behold,
7:10
Speaker 3: entrepreneurship starts working. I don't know if he's literally taken
7:13
Speaker 3: a chainsaw to anybody, like a Texas massacre or anything
7:17
Speaker 3: like that, but Malay is getting the results he wants
7:20
Speaker 3: to see way which point out it's not completely painless,
7:22
Speaker 3: and it's not happening overnight, and it's been a gradual process.
7:25
Speaker 3: But one year afterwards you can see it. We're now
7:27
Speaker 3: probably coming up on close to two years. You see
7:30
Speaker 3: the progress. Things are moving in the right direction. If
7:33
Speaker 3: only there was some if only we could learn from
7:35
Speaker 3: other countries' experiences, greg if only there was some other
7:38
Speaker 3: people who tried these ideas that the democratic socialism of
7:41
Speaker 3: America are pitching. If only some had written a book
7:44
Speaker 3: what happens in socialism. But alas, we'll never know, because
7:48
Speaker 3: true socialism has never been tried.
7:50
Speaker 1: I know.
7:50
Speaker 2: All the Cuban immigrants have tried to tell us, the
7:53
Speaker 2: people who are freed from behind the Iron curtain have
7:55
Speaker 2: tried to tell us. But no, no, it'll work this time.
7:57
Speaker 2: They just didn't do it right in the Soviet Union
7:59
Speaker 2: here or wherever else. But anyway, let's hope we get
8:03
Speaker 2: good results from these people who are more on the
8:05
Speaker 2: right in some of these Latin American countries. That would
8:07
Speaker 2: be good show an example of how things work well
8:10
Speaker 2: and be a good lesson for some people on the
8:12
Speaker 2: right who don't focus enough on the bread and butter issues.
8:16
Speaker 2: You know, have an articulate economic plan, explain why the
8:19
Speaker 2: other side isn't right instead of just attacking the candidate.
8:22
Speaker 2: Explain why this is better. It shouldn't be that hard.
8:25
Speaker 2: We've got a lot of history on our side. Well,
8:26
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9:57
Speaker 2: what is your second story that slipped through the cracks?
9:59
Speaker 3: So it didn't slip through the cracks from me in
10:01
Speaker 3: part because I wrote about it quite a bit. I
10:03
Speaker 3: was kind of hoping that my coverage would spur more
10:06
Speaker 3: attention on this issue, and it really didn't. Listeners probably
10:09
Speaker 3: recall I took a two week trip to Eastern Europe
10:13
Speaker 3: visiting the NATO countries NATO's eastern flank. I had a
10:15
Speaker 3: lot of people saying, no, it should be NATO's eastern front.
10:18
Speaker 3: The countries organizing the trip call themselves NATO's eastern flanks,
10:21
Speaker 3: so stop giving me grief about that. But anyway, I'm
10:23
Speaker 3: talking about Russian drone incursions into the airspace of NATO countries.
10:26
Speaker 3: Happened eighteen times in twenty twenty five alone, including a
10:30
Speaker 3: group of dozens of them which came into Poland one night,
10:33
Speaker 3: and then you know, a couple over this and over
10:35
Speaker 3: this year, and also in a couple of cases they
10:37
Speaker 3: have been Ukrainian drones that they are trying to fly
10:39
Speaker 3: up along the border between the NATO countries and Russia
10:42
Speaker 3: and Belarus curl around and hit targets near Saint Petersburg.
10:47
Speaker 3: The Russian air defenses, including electronic jamming and stuff like that,
10:51
Speaker 3: is driving Ukrainian drones off course and they're hitting targets
10:54
Speaker 3: in Eastern European countries. Eastern European members of NATO are
10:57
Speaker 3: supportive of Ukraine, but would really liked for the forecast
11:01
Speaker 3: to not include partially cloudy with a chance of misguided
11:03
Speaker 3: a recountry and drone crashing into your roope. But even
11:05
Speaker 3: more significantly, Russian drones have gone into NATO airspace and
11:08
Speaker 3: probably the most serious example of this happened in Romania
11:11
Speaker 3: about a month ago. Crashed into an apartment building in
11:14
Speaker 3: a Romanian city. It was only in Romanian airspace for
11:17
Speaker 3: about four minutes, so you know, not super deep into
11:20
Speaker 3: the territory, but nonetheless Romania is a NATO country. Romania
11:24
Speaker 3: is one of our allies. Romania has a right to
11:26
Speaker 3: expect not to have Russian drones crashing into its buildings.
11:29
Speaker 3: Two people were injured, damage was pretty significant. Response from
11:32
Speaker 3: Russia was that could have been anybody's drone. Then the
11:35
Speaker 3: Romanian government showed all the pictures of the Russian components
11:38
Speaker 3: in Russian writing, including made in Russia in the drone parts.
11:43
Speaker 1: This was a Russian drone.
11:44
Speaker 3: Now what bothers me is that NATO issued all the
11:47
Speaker 3: appropriate tiss tisk statements and you should not do that
11:50
Speaker 3: or something like that. What happens next time when instead
11:53
Speaker 3: of hitting the roof of the building and only you
11:55
Speaker 3: know injuring two people, what happens when you goes into
11:58
Speaker 3: the middle of a building and kills people like once
12:00
Speaker 3: you've established this precedent of we're not going to respond
12:03
Speaker 3: to this. This is part of the Russian hybrid warfare,
12:06
Speaker 3: in which, by the way, I have a very hard
12:08
Speaker 3: time believing this was accidental. I have a very hard
12:10
Speaker 3: to believe you go too deep enough into an enemy airspace,
12:14
Speaker 3: like people know exactly where the borders stop, and I
12:17
Speaker 3: have a seeking suspicion that not when it happens eighteen times. No,
12:21
Speaker 3: that's not an accident. So the question is what does
12:24
Speaker 3: NATO want to do about this? What does the United
12:26
Speaker 3: States want to do about this? The US ambassador made
12:29
Speaker 3: a statement about this, saying, we put you know, this
12:31
Speaker 3: is an outrage and Russia should not do this. A
12:34
Speaker 3: big fan of Mark or Rubia. No statement from Rubia,
12:36
Speaker 3: no statement from Hegseth, certainly, no statement from the President,
12:39
Speaker 3: And I just kind of feel like we have decided,
12:41
Speaker 3: while that's a thorny problem, We're just going to issue
12:44
Speaker 3: some brief statements and hope it doesn't happen again next time.
12:47
Speaker 3: I seem to recall this slogan hope it's not a strategy.
12:50
Speaker 3: And I'd like to see more attention on this. I'd
12:52
Speaker 3: like to see more people thinking about what are we
12:54
Speaker 3: going to do and what are we going to do
12:55
Speaker 3: to deter this? So what are we going to say
12:57
Speaker 3: to the Russians as a consequence if their drones continue
13:00
Speaker 3: to go into NATO airspace and crash into civilian targets
13:05
Speaker 3: in NATO. But yeah, apparently I'm the only person in
13:09
Speaker 3: the world. I am one of very few Americans who
13:11
Speaker 3: pays attention to this and worries about this.
13:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't see the media covering it much
13:15
Speaker 2: until you told me about it. I wasn't even aware
13:18
Speaker 2: of it. You mentioned it in our special after you
13:20
Speaker 2: got back from visiting those countries. But I guess it's
13:23
Speaker 2: because of what's going on in Iran and so many
13:25
Speaker 2: different things that that war is just not getting much
13:28
Speaker 2: attention in most mainstream or even conservative publications right now.
13:32
Speaker 3: I periodically here, you know, Oh, you know, what do
13:34
Speaker 3: we do if the Russia Ukraine war spreads to Eastern Europe?
13:37
Speaker 1: It has spread, that's now happening.
13:39
Speaker 3: We also, this is not even getting into the dragging
13:41
Speaker 3: of anchors to break undersea cables in the Finland and
13:45
Speaker 3: various other factors like this. The war is now spilling over.
13:49
Speaker 3: The question is what we want to do about it,
13:51
Speaker 3: which is so far apparently not much.
13:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what the threshold is for full response on that?
13:56
Speaker 2: A lot of questions to answer, But good for you
13:58
Speaker 2: for bringing that up and keeping the attention on it, Jim.
14:01
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to Minneapolis. There's been a couple
14:04
Speaker 2: of decisions on prosecutions as it relates to Ice related issues.
14:09
Speaker 2: One of them I think is very good and the
14:10
Speaker 2: other one is absolutely inexplicable. These all happened in June.
14:14
Speaker 2: This one a couple weeks ago. Hat tipped to Freebeacon
14:18
Speaker 2: on this one. This is from June sixteenth. The Department
14:21
Speaker 2: of Justice announced a federal indictment against fifteen members of
14:24
Speaker 2: a militant ANTIFA group who created blockades around a government
14:27
Speaker 2: building and forcibly obstructed federal officers to halt ice operations
14:31
Speaker 2: in Minneapolis. Some were also accused of attacking agents and
14:34
Speaker 2: encouraging agitators to take up arms against quote literal bleeping
14:38
Speaker 2: Nazi gunmen unquote. The defendants, two of whom are still
14:41
Speaker 2: at large, block the roadways surrounding the Bishop Henry Whipple
14:44
Speaker 2: Federal Building using trucks, flipped trailers, debris, and metal anti
14:48
Speaker 2: vehicle obstacles known as Czech hedgehogs on January twenty third.
14:52
Speaker 2: In March first, according to the indictment, others carried human
14:55
Speaker 2: shields and formed a human wall to physically resist the
14:59
Speaker 2: efforts of law enforcement and to aggressively wedge or breakthrough
15:03
Speaker 2: teams of officers on foots. But it's well coordinated. Operations
15:06
Speaker 2: detailed in the indictment span from January to June and
15:09
Speaker 2: include extensive planning through signal messages, meetups, and targeted trainings
15:13
Speaker 2: and dry runs. The agitators stocked and surveilled federal officers
15:18
Speaker 2: and relied on a Whipplewatch surveillance program that involved photographing
15:22
Speaker 2: ice vehicles and logging license plate numbers into a publicly
15:25
Speaker 2: accessible real time database to help the group track and
15:28
Speaker 2: intercept federal agents that also held after action reviews to
15:33
Speaker 2: refine their methods. Meanwhile, that's the Feds. Let's see what
15:37
Speaker 2: the far left locals are doing here. This is from
15:39
Speaker 2: earlier in June. The Saint Paul City Attorney's office has
15:43
Speaker 2: declined to bring state criminal charges against demonstrators who disrupted
15:47
Speaker 2: a January eighteenth service at city's church. In a statement,
15:50
Speaker 2: city Attorney Irene Cow said videos and other materials related
15:54
Speaker 2: to the January eighteen incident were insufficient to establish probable
15:59
Speaker 2: cause and result in a criminal conviction.
16:02
Speaker 1: Quote.
16:02
Speaker 2: This decision should not be interpreted as an endorsement of
16:05
Speaker 2: unlawful behavior or public disorder. The right to peacefully protest
16:09
Speaker 2: is protected, as is the right to exercise one's religious beliefs.
16:12
Speaker 2: Balancing these equally important rights is paramount to our decision today. However,
16:17
Speaker 2: acts of violence, property destruction, or threats to public safety,
16:20
Speaker 2: none of which occurred here, remained serious concerns and will
16:23
Speaker 2: be prosecuted when supported by admissible evidence. Jimmy, don't need
16:27
Speaker 2: to balance them in the church service. These people can
16:30
Speaker 2: protest anywhere they want on the sidewalk or or or
16:33
Speaker 2: what have you. And yes, there were threats to public safety.
16:36
Speaker 2: People weren't allowed to leave the sanctuary. Kids were terrified
16:39
Speaker 2: and crying. This is just pure politics in this decision.
16:42
Speaker 3: You know, Greg, I remember when Whipplewatch used to me
16:45
Speaker 3: just figuring out who's going to just squeeze the sharmon.
16:50
Speaker 3: So yeah, like, look, we all remember when you know,
16:53
Speaker 3: this was the Don Levin thing, and we all kind
16:55
Speaker 3: of were like, you know, well, at least the cops
16:57
Speaker 3: are going to deal with these cops did not really
16:59
Speaker 3: deal with these folks in a bunch of these cities.
17:01
Speaker 3: It feels like we have federal prosecutors who are attempting
17:04
Speaker 3: to enforce the law as it is written, protect the
17:07
Speaker 3: civil rights of people, protect the protect rights to protest.
17:10
Speaker 3: You're allowed to do that, but you don't bring charges
17:12
Speaker 3: against people just for protesting. You charge people for you know,
17:14
Speaker 3: when they go into private property and they disrupt people,
17:17
Speaker 3: and are you know, not allowing other people to exercise
17:20
Speaker 3: their constitutional rights. Your right to protest doesn't overrule other
17:24
Speaker 3: people's constitutional rights. But clearly we have a whole bunch
17:27
Speaker 3: of state prosecutors to state prosecutors who just don't want
17:29
Speaker 3: to deal with this, and they've decided that like it's
17:31
Speaker 3: politically bad, or they're betraying the cause, or they're trying
17:35
Speaker 3: they like a sense of intimidation on their streets. Which
17:38
Speaker 3: if that's your attitude, you really should not be the
17:40
Speaker 3: profession of prosecuting crimes because I think, like, what do
17:43
Speaker 3: you do as a prosecutor? Well, I think it's right
17:45
Speaker 3: there on the name, you prosecute And if you don't
17:47
Speaker 3: want to do that, go become a public defense lawyer.
17:50
Speaker 3: There's still a need for those. Probably not as lucrative
17:52
Speaker 3: in a lot of cases, particularly if you're a public defender,
17:54
Speaker 3: but that's what you can do there, So, you know, infuriating,
17:58
Speaker 3: but also not surprising, and at least we have a
18:01
Speaker 3: possibility of better federal prosecutions for crimes like this.
18:04
Speaker 2: Now, the pastor of the church says, according to Saint
18:07
Speaker 2: Paul's City Attorney's logic, it's perfectly fine for agitators to
18:10
Speaker 2: invade a mosque, a cathedral or a temple to intimidate
18:12
Speaker 2: the families and children inside and shut down the religious gathering. Jim,
18:15
Speaker 2: I disagree with that. If somebody had some group had
18:18
Speaker 2: barged into as in the Somali community, you think there'd
18:22
Speaker 2: be no charges, No, because it'd.
18:24
Speaker 1: Be dead.
18:27
Speaker 2: Unbelievable. The double standard here is quite something. All right, Well,
18:31
Speaker 2: make sure that you protect yourself at all times, whether
18:35
Speaker 2: you're in church. Unfortunately that's necessary tomes sometimes too, but
18:38
Speaker 2: also online. In an age of data breaches, identity theft,
18:41
Speaker 2: and constant online tracking, protecting your privacy has never been
18:44
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18:47
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18:50
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18:55
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18:59
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19:02
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19:05
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19:07
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Speaker 2: cogny dot com code three mL. All right, Jim, last one,
19:44
Speaker 2: what's on your list of stories that slip between the cracks?
19:47
Speaker 1: So you don't don't blame kids?
19:50
Speaker 3: Because I'm about to praise a non national review conservative publication,
19:54
Speaker 3: The Dispatch run by my friend Joonah Goldberg, had a
19:57
Speaker 3: very good article not long ago what people mean when
20:01
Speaker 3: they talk about affordability, and in the title of it
20:03
Speaker 3: was half of America cannot afford to live and other
20:05
Speaker 3: wrong numbers. It's by Cliff Asnis, Michael Mendelssohn, and Aaron Brown.
20:10
Speaker 3: It covers a lot, but it begins by discussing student
20:13
Speaker 3: loan debt, and it talks about a people who have
20:15
Speaker 3: a Harvard MBA and are making you know, considerable amount
20:18
Speaker 3: of money, but who also owe considerable amount. Then there
20:21
Speaker 3: are people who are you know, people who've worked in
20:24
Speaker 3: a studies field and who are career services office turned
20:28
Speaker 3: out to be fiction works in retail. They got real
20:31
Speaker 3: problem defaulted under debt, you know that kind of stuff.
20:33
Speaker 3: And then you have the unemployable graduate of a forfrofit
20:35
Speaker 3: college that was shut out by the Justice Department for fraud,
20:38
Speaker 3: but who only owes three thousand. And he says when
20:40
Speaker 3: people talk about student loan debt, they lump them alltogether.
20:43
Speaker 3: And his argument is that we really should be having
20:45
Speaker 3: different categories for this. And when we talk about affordability,
20:49
Speaker 3: we're looking together people who are like my substreaming subscriptions
20:52
Speaker 3: are too expensive and the people who are genuinely having
20:54
Speaker 3: hard enough time affording food for their families on a
20:57
Speaker 3: day to day basis. There's a wide range between those
20:59
Speaker 3: people and it really doesn't help illuminate things. The detail
21:03
Speaker 3: in this and it was actually from a couple of
21:05
Speaker 3: years ago. I thought it was very very revealing. You
21:07
Speaker 3: and I are opponents of amnesty when it comes to
21:09
Speaker 3: illegal immigration. We've said that not only do we oppose it,
21:13
Speaker 3: we don't want to see elected officials, usually Democrats, talking
21:16
Speaker 3: about it because when you talk up in amnesty, more
21:19
Speaker 3: people want across the border and get there so that
21:21
Speaker 3: they can be beneficiaries of it. Well, sometimes talking about
21:25
Speaker 3: a potential plan can have consequences even if that plan
21:29
Speaker 3: never gets enacted. And listeners probably remember for most of
21:32
Speaker 3: Joe Biden's presidency, it's like I'm gonna forget student loan debt.
21:36
Speaker 1: Ah, wait, these people are suffering.
21:38
Speaker 3: And he kept invoking COVID years after the COVID pandemic
21:41
Speaker 3: and things like that. Well, it's a new study, but
21:43
Speaker 3: found out about one in three borrowers did a there
21:47
Speaker 3: was a survey of nine more than nine hundred borrowers.
21:50
Speaker 3: One in three said they spent more than they normally
21:53
Speaker 3: would assuming they were going to get debt relief from
21:57
Speaker 3: the Biden administration. Supreme Court said that Biden did not
21:59
Speaker 3: have the already do.
22:00
Speaker 1: That, could not do that.
22:02
Speaker 3: And so now student loan payments are due again and
22:04
Speaker 3: they're saying, ah, I know, like well, wait a second,
22:07
Speaker 3: if you knew you were gonna have to pay it back, one,
22:09
Speaker 3: you would have kept making your payments or you know,
22:10
Speaker 3: even though they were suspended for the better part of
22:13
Speaker 3: was it three years, four years something like that, some
22:15
Speaker 3: you know, a significant amount of time.
22:18
Speaker 1: But people like, oh, it's so much real life is
22:19
Speaker 1: so inexpended.
22:20
Speaker 3: Well, maybe it's because they have this expenditure that they
22:22
Speaker 3: got a four year break from and now it's back
22:25
Speaker 3: in there, right. And then also the fact that all
22:28
Speaker 3: that money that they spent during that time period that
22:30
Speaker 3: they could have used to pay back or at minimum
22:32
Speaker 3: they could have saved it, and they didn't do any
22:34
Speaker 3: of these things. So just by talking about the possibility
22:37
Speaker 3: of this student loan forgiveness, Joe Biden altered people's behavior,
22:42
Speaker 3: made them spend money that they really should not have,
22:44
Speaker 3: and put them in a worse financial situation. So just
22:47
Speaker 3: kind of a very useful example of the fact that
22:48
Speaker 3: bad idea. Yes, of course we believe in the First Amendment.
22:51
Speaker 3: Yes people believe in you know, anybody can say anything.
22:53
Speaker 3: But when politicians talk up bad ideas, people make financial
22:58
Speaker 3: decisions expecting those bad idea is to become an acted
23:01
Speaker 3: and there are bad consequences down the road.
23:03
Speaker 2: I'm from the government and I'm here to help. And
23:06
Speaker 2: that's what we got there with those people thinking those
23:09
Speaker 2: loans were going away. But the law is the law
23:11
Speaker 2: of the Supreme Court, got it right. I have, you know,
23:13
Speaker 2: sympathy for people who have crushing student loan debt, but
23:17
Speaker 2: that's not supposed to be foisted on the rest of
23:19
Speaker 2: the taxpayers. They're not the ones who took out the loans,
23:22
Speaker 2: but some people, you know, it's difficult not to see
23:25
Speaker 2: that when you just want that debt to go away.
23:27
Speaker 2: But Jim, yesterday we talked a little bit about, of course,
23:31
Speaker 2: the big Senate races, and we mentioned in passing on
23:33
Speaker 2: the Senate side that two examples again this year of
23:36
Speaker 2: the Democrats really not running officially a Democratic candidate, but
23:40
Speaker 2: they're basically getting behind these independent candidates, particularly in Nebraska
23:44
Speaker 2: and Montana. In Nebraska, that candidate it actually dropped out
23:48
Speaker 2: of the race after winning the nomination. In Montana, it's
23:51
Speaker 2: a little bit different. The Democrat Elonnie Bankhead has stayed in.
23:54
Speaker 2: But Seth Bodnar is really who the Democrats want to win.
23:57
Speaker 2: He's John Tester's hand pick candidate. And all the money's
23:59
Speaker 2: going in that direct. But you know, at the time,
24:02
Speaker 2: it's like, oh no, but we're really independent. You know,
24:04
Speaker 2: we have problems with the Democrats, we have problems with
24:06
Speaker 2: the Republicans, and that's why we're independent. We're tired of
24:10
Speaker 2: this binary and this just constant division. They're not in
24:14
Speaker 2: the middle here. I am going to be loyal to
24:16
Speaker 2: National Review and quote Camden Mulder, who says reports two
24:21
Speaker 2: independent candidates for the US Senate have fundraising profiles on
24:23
Speaker 2: Act Blue, the Democratic Party's key fundraising platform, raising questions
24:28
Speaker 2: about the candidate's true political independence as they look to
24:31
Speaker 2: capture two long held Republican seats this fall.
24:34
Speaker 1: Act Blue allows.
24:34
Speaker 2: Independent candidates to fundraise on its platforms on a case
24:37
Speaker 2: by case basis, quote unquote, based on whether a Democrat
24:40
Speaker 2: is in the race, the candidate has an endorsement from
24:43
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party, or the candidate has demonstrated alignment with
24:46
Speaker 2: the Democratic parties ideals and policy goals. But both independent
24:50
Speaker 2: candidates Seth Bodnar and Montana Dan Osborne and Nebraska are
24:53
Speaker 2: running against Democrats as well as Republicans. The Nebraska Democratic
24:57
Speaker 2: Party has endorsed Osborne. Bodnar has not received an official
25:01
Speaker 2: Democratic endorsement. Actively did not respond when National Review asked
25:05
Speaker 2: to what circumstances allow Badner and Osborne to fundraise on
25:09
Speaker 2: the platform. So, Jim, again, I don't know exactly what
25:12
Speaker 2: the Democrats think they're accomplishing by pretending these people aren't
25:15
Speaker 2: Democrats but at the same time encouraging all their voters
25:18
Speaker 2: to vote for the independent candidate. But the more we
25:21
Speaker 2: peel this back, the more it's obvious that the Democrats
25:24
Speaker 2: are just running as Democrats under a different party.
25:26
Speaker 1: You know, steekingly.
25:28
Speaker 3: I get the thing is that, look, the Democratic Party
25:30
Speaker 3: in particular, you know, the far lefty candidates, the aocs,
25:33
Speaker 3: the Johanno Omar's, they've ruined the image in places like Nebraska,
25:39
Speaker 3: and you know that's you can't get elected as a Democrat.
25:42
Speaker 3: So the plan is to just say, Okay, we're not Democrats.
25:46
Speaker 3: We happen to support everything Bernie Sander does, but we're
25:48
Speaker 3: not going to identify as a Democratic. You know, they
25:51
Speaker 3: choose to identify as a dependents greg which is actually
25:55
Speaker 3: a much more applicable and accurate use of that phrase. Nonetheless,
25:59
Speaker 3: if it walks like democrat, talks like a Democrat, spends
26:01
Speaker 3: like a Democrat and is getting donations through Act Blue.
26:05
Speaker 2: It's a Democrat, no, no question about that. And so
26:08
Speaker 2: fun stories, well not all of them fun, but important
26:11
Speaker 2: stories that we didn't have time for on other episodes.
26:14
Speaker 2: Glad to get to him today. Some closing thoughts in
26:16
Speaker 2: just a second, all right, Jim. That concludes our episode
26:25
Speaker 2: with these stories that have slipped through the cracks. Always
26:26
Speaker 2: good to get a few more stories out there that
26:28
Speaker 2: don't get the media attention they deserve. And there were
26:30
Speaker 2: others that could have gone out there. I had one
26:33
Speaker 2: story about Mark waynmull and the DHS secretary talking about
26:36
Speaker 2: how they've finally made contact with one hundred and forty
26:38
Speaker 2: six thousand illegal immigrant kids that the Biden administration lost
26:42
Speaker 2: track of, and there's still three hundred thousand to go. So,
26:45
Speaker 2: I mean, the tentacles of Biden's malfeasance continue a pace.
26:50
Speaker 3: I was going to say, if I always like to
26:52
Speaker 3: have a runner up for this category. Just a couple
26:55
Speaker 3: of days ago, Greg, the US Pentagon announced they had
26:59
Speaker 3: struck and killed ISIS leader in Northwest Syria. Yeah, ISIS
27:02
Speaker 3: is still around, you know, thankfully they are much less
27:05
Speaker 3: of a factor in people's lives around the world than
27:09
Speaker 3: they used to be. I suppose even technically al Qaida,
27:11
Speaker 3: or at least al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is
27:13
Speaker 3: still around. And look, the fact that the Islamis threat
27:16
Speaker 3: is significantly less than it used to be. All those
27:18
Speaker 3: suppose these rallies might have a different perspective on that.
27:21
Speaker 3: The fact that, you know, that's good, the fact that
27:23
Speaker 3: Americans do not lay awake at night wondering what God forbid,
27:26
Speaker 3: what if there's some terrorist bomb blows up downtown tomorrow.
27:29
Speaker 1: That's good.
27:30
Speaker 3: With that said, I don't want policymakers to feel like
27:34
Speaker 3: this is not something they need to worry about. This
27:36
Speaker 3: is not something we need to continue putting deep resources
27:39
Speaker 3: to and intelligence monitoring and all that stuff. And so
27:43
Speaker 3: it's one of those things where like, look, I kind
27:45
Speaker 3: of don't want Americans to worry about this, but I
27:47
Speaker 3: also don't want Americans to forget about this or ignore this.
27:50
Speaker 3: So again, you know, when we kill an ISIS leader,
27:52
Speaker 3: it is kind of nice to, oh, yeah, by the way,
27:53
Speaker 3: still out there, Yeah, problems still in Yeah.
27:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, never really goes away, it does it. So all right, Jim,
28:00
Speaker 2: we'll be on vacation tomorrow and Thursday, and so Craig
28:03
Speaker 2: Collins will be filling in for me. Have fun.
28:06
Speaker 3: We will try to have fun in your absence, Greg,
28:07
Speaker 3: but it's never quite as much fun without you and
28:09
Speaker 3: your Algre impressions.
28:11
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jim Garretty National Review. I'm Greg Corumbus of
28:14
Speaker 2: Radio America. Thanks so much for being with us today.
28:16
Speaker 2: Please be sure to subscribe to the Three Martini Lunch
28:18
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28:20
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28:26
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28:29
Speaker 1: Have a great Tuesday.
28:30
Speaker 2: Join Jim and Craig on Wednesday for the next Three
28:33
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