Latest / the ACT OUT podcast / Data Centers, Money & Power: Who Really Controls American Politics?

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Data Centers, Money & Power: Who Really Controls American Politics? · the ACT OUT podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_04: Welcome to the Act Out Podcast.
0:02
SPEAKER_04: I'm your host, Adam Tomlin.
0:04
SPEAKER_04: Today's guest is the future president of the United States, and he is also uh the Commonwealth of Virginia's foremost expert on the ecological and economic impacts of data centers.
0:18
SPEAKER_04: So, why is he uh so much in favor of them?
0:21
SPEAKER_04: Let's find out.
0:23
unknown: Yeah.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm a foremost expert on all of the impacts and terrible uh effects of data centers.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: So I'm a huge fan.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's cool.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me here.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: This is a great setup.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: This is really fun.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: This is great, man.
0:36
SPEAKER_04: Dude, I I appreciate it.
0:38
SPEAKER_04: Uh so I I don't know if I actually said your name, Tim Sawinsky.
0:41
SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
0:41
SPEAKER_04: Timski pronounced it correctly, which is like that's a rarity.
0:44
SPEAKER_04: So I every time like I I spell it, uh, you know, and I'm ti and I get it right, yeah.
0:49
SPEAKER_04: I'm like I've a fist pump.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: It's phonetic.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: People get people see the length of it and they think, uh, I don't know how to pronounce that.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: It's just phonetic.
0:57
SPEAKER_04: And there's also like letters that aren't normally together in like an English um English language.
1:03
SPEAKER_04: I guess that's true.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's some Polish name.
1:05
SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
1:05
SPEAKER_04: Kind of reminded me of Sheshewski, the you know, Coach K.
1:08
SPEAKER_04: Duke.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: Um I hope that's the only thing that reminds you of of me and him in the same breath.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: He was a phenomenal basketball coach.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: I know, I know, but I'm a Villanova fan.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: Fair enough.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: That's where that's where my mom went.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: So okay.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: And uh, where did you end up going?
1:24
SPEAKER_00: I went to Roanoke College for undergrad and I studied political science and international relations and behavioral economics while I was there.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: And then much later on in life, I studied um political communications and public relations and media and got a master's in it from Johns Hopkins.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: That is like some of the most fascinating uh things that you can possibly uh I suppose, but I'll tell you, like soft sciences for grad school, it's kind of a grift.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna say I didn't I didn't really learn much.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: There's like two classes where I learned a lot.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: But once you do the job and then you go back to school, you don't really learn anything new.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: It's just an execution of it.
2:00
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
2:00
SPEAKER_04: I was a uh I was a political science major.
2:03
SPEAKER_04: Uh I mean, God, I love politics, been involved my whole life.
2:09
SPEAKER_04: Um but I tell people that I learned more about politics being in a fraternity for four years than I did uh taking all the political science classes.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, I mean, politics is the study of who has power and how they leverage it.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: I think that's the easiest way to talk about it.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, and power comes in different forms.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Like in our system, it's mostly about money.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: It's just money.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: So you you're saying the our system being the uh American capitalist system.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: The American political system.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: Well, economic system, yes, money is power, but so is workers, we just have a tilted like labor is still is part of the equation, but our system, because of the rules of our economy, are tilted in favor of the people who have so much, even though it comes at the expense of people who have so little.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: Like you and I have similar like working class backgrounds, right?
2:53
SPEAKER_00: Like I worked two full-time jobs my entire academic career.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Still came out with a bunch of student loans.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: But that was what I was told I had to do in order to get ahead without realizing that like we could just make college more affordable across the board for everybody, but the people who have so much have to pay so little compared to how much they have in order to do it, and they just won't because they've consolidated power.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: They consolidate that power by inserting money into our political system so that they themselves get to write the rules for themselves.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: Like I don't know where else in any other part of our society that that's acceptable, other than politics.
3:29
SPEAKER_04: One of the uh very first classes that I took in law school, it was a uh it was a civil procedure class.
3:36
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
3:36
SPEAKER_04: And um one and uh the first quote that uh that the teacher uh you know, like came up with on the uh screen was uh you can choose the game.
3:45
SPEAKER_04: So long as I can write the rules, I'll win every time.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly oh, dude, that's exactly what I said on the campaign stomp.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: It was just like if they don't like the rules, and then uh everything about our society, because I, you know, my background is in community organizing.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: Community organizing specifically of like, how do I stand in between communities and special interests?
4:05
SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes that's polluters, sometimes that's bad faith politicians, sometimes that's just some dickhead who has a lot of money, right?
4:12
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: Data centers, that's pretty much why things have gotten so bad.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: And it's such a glaring example of why.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: Such a glaring example of like how our society is tilted in favor of the people who have the most.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: Because nobody, it nothing has fallen out of favor as as quickly as data centers are.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: How do you think that happened?
4:33
SPEAKER_00: Like it's be it's because of the rules.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: It's when people try to change something, they're told by the people at the top, well, you can send these comments to this agency, or you can go to this meeting and express your concerns.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't work.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: It used to work 30, 40 years ago, it works.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: Like environmental activism through labor rights, like all that stuff, where it's like these are the rules that were created when everything we thought could be fair.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: But the powerful got so powerful where no one could compete with them.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: So they started saying, no, no, those rules that you have before, now we own those rules.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: And once somebody owns the rules, it's impossible to win.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: So you have to change the rules.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: That's why when I ran for office, because I ran for Congress and I lost really, really bad.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I called myself a reformist Democrat because it was an acknowledgement of the system being broken.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: The system itself is created by rules that consolidate power by the haves, even though it comes at the expense of the have nots.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: And unless you're in like the top, top, top part of the 1%, you're have not in this society.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: Like the vast majority of Americans, 99% of us, are closer to a homeless person than the people who are on the 0.1% or the 1%.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Like that's that's that's how outrageously disconnected we've come between the people who have the concentration of power and the people who don't.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: And there's a way to solve it, but it requires all of us to come together, stand together, and fight together, but we're too busy saying, okay, uh, actually, I look at this little difference.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean biological men.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: Well, okay.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: So there's that, but there's also within like just even left, even left versus right.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: And like the right has a consolidation of like they're all on the same page.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: The left has slices of what we focus on at different times.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: And some of those, some of the people within those have different slices of like their purity tests.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that's there's nothing wrong with having higher standards.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing wrong with holding people accountable.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: There is something wrong with saying, if this is our dividing line, then we're not going to be able to take on the biggest issues.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: Because the biggest issues require all of us.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: And like, I'm a white dude, I'm straight, I get that.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: Like that that means that society doesn't target me just because of who I am.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: But that also means that I have to be as obnoxious about wanting to do things for the vulnerable as the other side is about hatred and division and scapegoating and distractions.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's it.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: That's how so many of these bad faith guys get involved.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: They say, look over here, not over here.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: Look at this person with pronouns you don't understand.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: Jinglickeys.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: But really, look at this person who you know is from a different country, but he's not bothering anybody.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: She's not bothering anybody.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: They're actually contributing to our economy and our society.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: And actually display a certain amount of humanity that's admirable.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, look at this person who's fighting for this rights, or these women or these children who are suckling at the teeth of our taxpayer system.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: Why is it my responsibility to take care of them?
7:17
SPEAKER_00: Because we live in a country, because we live in a society, and I think the standard of being a good fucking person is whether or not you care about people's kids, even if they're not your own.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: Like, and and that gets us.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: That gets us.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we double down on protecting those vulnerable groups and we don't focus on anything else when like this is a long board, right?
7:35
SPEAKER_00: This is like this is a huge board of chess.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we focus on only a few pieces as opposed to the entire board.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that just puts us behind.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: Like we can have a unifying message for everyone.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: We can.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: But once you start putting standards of, you know, if this person doesn't agree with me 100% on this, then I'm gonna blast them on social media.
7:54
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: Which seems to only have an impact on our side, by the way, not the other side.
7:58
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's incredible that uh that that can happen.
8:01
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
8:02
SPEAKER_04: The like the way that it does.
8:04
SPEAKER_04: So you saying that uh Democrats needing a unifying message kind of brought me back to my old uh Republican days uh growing up.
8:12
SPEAKER_04: What?
8:12
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Matt.
8:13
SPEAKER_04: I'm out of here.
8:14
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, my first vote.
8:15
SPEAKER_04: George W.
8:16
SPEAKER_04: Bush.
8:16
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
8:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because you're just a fan of the of the WMD strategy.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: Like, we gotta get them out of here, man.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: I I I I thought Matt was very reasonable.
8:26
SPEAKER_04: But growing up, there was such a unified message from the right.
8:32
SPEAKER_04: Um one of the like things that I kind of that uh came up into my mind as you were talking was about unions.
8:39
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
8:39
SPEAKER_04: Man, nothing um like nothing was demonized more than unions.
8:44
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
8:45
SPEAKER_04: It was like all that's doing is like uh hampering progress, and it's just a bunch of lazy workers that are trying to be able to own the company where the owners actually, he's the smart one.
8:57
SPEAKER_04: And it's of course it's gonna be a he.
8:58
SPEAKER_04: You know, he's the smart one.
8:59
SPEAKER_04: He's the one doing all the work and stuff, and they're just you know, they're they're trying to suckle at his teeth essentially.
9:05
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
9:05
SPEAKER_04: But that was how it was uh portrayed to us.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: Not that the guy is could not make his money without the people who do most of the job.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, look, I grew up in a conservative rural south my entire life, right?
9:17
SPEAKER_00: You do a job, you expect to get paid.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: And we would complain about, you know, people like, oh, I worked this hard and I still don't get this much money.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, you could.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: You could if you just had a little bit more bargaining power, or if you were just like had the solidarity to say, like, hey, by the way, we're we're working double time and we don't get overtime, which happens all the time.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Like the most expensive crime in the United States, you know what it is?
9:39
SPEAKER_00: Illegal immigration.
9:40
unknown: No.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: No, not at all.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: No, it's uh it's wage theft.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: So when I was so in the summers between when I was I was uh working in between uh undergrad, like I worked a full-time gig, I was waiting tables and bartending, and I would work 60 hour weeks.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: And that's how much it cost just to pay for books, just to pay for books and maybe make a tiny dent in my tuition.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, it still came out as true loans.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Whatever.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm not complaining about that part.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Um so I was, I was, I didn't have to write down my orders.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: So I was one of the best waiters in there.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: So I get to be an opener and a closer.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: That's how you make the most money through tips.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: It's 213 an hour to be a waiter.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: That's what you get paid on, you know, in tips.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: If you don't make it, you make minimum wage, because I know some conservative dickhead is gonna comment about that.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, if you were so if you overtime's time and a half, right?
10:27
SPEAKER_00: So if I would work 60 hours a week, which I did every single week, that means I would get another dollar and six cents, which is like twenty dollars, twenty, twenty-two dollars.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: Except my managers didn't get approval for me to get that extra twenty dollars a week.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: So they would go into my system, the reporting system, they'd use a little magic manager card and they'd cut it by 18 hours.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: So on paper, I only worked 38 hours.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: I got to keep my tips, you know, which is why it was a okay deal.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: But like to not question the greed that's built into a system that can't give a struggling college student who's working his ass off 23 extra dollars.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: You know, you know.
11:07
SPEAKER_04: Growing up, I I had a very idealized notion of what America was.
11:14
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
11:14
SPEAKER_04: And I thought that America was the greatest country on earth because we could achieve the American dream.
11:22
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
11:23
SPEAKER_04: Which essentially, like, I as if I kind of go back and I kind of think of like what I had in my mind whenever I'd heard that.
11:31
SPEAKER_04: I think the best I can come up with is that it was the idea that no matter where you were, or no matter how where you started, you could actually you could go up.
11:40
SPEAKER_04: You you could make it higher than you were before.
11:43
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
11:43
SPEAKER_04: And you could make a life for yourself and for your children if you just worked hard enough.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: I think that's still true, but there's a little there's a little caveat to it.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: The fastest way to make money in this country is to screw other people over.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say the fastest way to make money is to have money.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: But that's what I'm saying.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: But I I don't disagree with that.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: I think the fastest way to make a lot of money is to screw other people over.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: Like private equity doesn't actually do anything for us, it just makes rich people more rich.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: And they do it by buying small businesses, scrapping it for parts, and then selling it.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that's an example, right?
12:16
SPEAKER_00: So like you could work really hard, get into college, do it, be a finance bro, and do that, right?
12:21
SPEAKER_00: You know, like you could potentially maybe get a scholarship if you're from an impoverished background, and that's how you do it.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: But if you try to take the route that I took, which is like work really hard, try to do something that's better for your society, well, you're probably gonna be paying student loans until you're in your 60s.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: And now that's an oversimplification of a larger, you know, stratification of our economy.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: Stratification?
12:41
SPEAKER_00: What am I, Adam Dunnigan?
12:44
SPEAKER_00: Adam Dunegan uses those big words.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: Why am I doing that?
12:46
SPEAKER_00: The polymer care.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: No, he's a really sharp guy.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: It's just that's not how I talk.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: It's almost like you went to Harvard.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh but for but I do think that like there's something to be said about the way, again, the study of economics is not this is the study of supply and demand, right?
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Behavioral economics looks at the study of economics is how does it influence behavior?
13:07
SPEAKER_00: How does it look, how does it influence our society, and how can you control that?
13:13
SPEAKER_00: The economy is built by rules.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: Who sets the rules?
13:16
SPEAKER_00: The government.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: The rules in place right now are to strategically advantage the people with the most, specifically shareholders.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: Shareholders have the most economic value in this country, even though they just sit there and they watch their shares either get sold or bought.
13:31
SPEAKER_04: That's what's so interesting to me is that if you were to ask the average Joe on the street who doesn't maybe probably doesn't even have a 401k.
13:39
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you ask them how is uh how's the economy doing, they're going to talk about the stock market.
13:45
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
13:46
SPEAKER_04: And so I think that that has that's sort of been like kind of ingrained into us that how the stock market goes is how our economy is going.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: I I I that's I mean, I think we're on full display right now.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: It's called a K-strape, K-shaped economy, where it's like economically speaking, people in the middle class and lower are doing really bad.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: People up in upper middle class are doing really good.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: Like Why?
14:12
SPEAKER_00: It's well, that's because the people who can afford things as prices are going up are the only ones who can afford them.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: So they're doing great.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: And the people who own those things that only rich people can afford, now that they only have to sell to a class of people that can only afford it, they can just continue to raise price, raise price, raise price, price, and they'll get away with it.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the price of a car now is outrageous, right?
14:31
SPEAKER_00: It's like 40,000 for a new car, it's like 40, 50,000,$60,000.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: Like that means we've reached a point in our economy where only people with a certain amount of um wealth threshold can afford it, which means the market is only designing itself to sell to them.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: So the affordability crisis is more about that, where it's like we're being outspent because we can't hit the certain threshold and required to buy in the first place.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking about like, you know, well, I am talking about food and basic goods, but I am also talking about like assets.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: There's, you know, income and wealth.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: Those are different things.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: I could have a million dollars in cash.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm not as rich as someone who has a million dollar home.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Because that's a that's a wealth that's gonna grow, that's gonna increase.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: And that's where we have a problem in the income inequality of America is actually more of like wealth inequality, is because the assets are being bought up by the people who have so much already and it's pricing everybody else out.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: Like, why do we have an affordable housing crisis?
15:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, in like Arlington, it's because they didn't do a good job of housing policy.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: But in most of the United States, it's not a supply issue, it's a price issue.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: And you want to solve things for like our generation, just make the price of housing go down.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: Allow us to save money.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: Like, seriously, like with the basic necessities that we need healthcare, shelter, food, right?
15:45
SPEAKER_00: Education.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: Education, well, yeah.
15:48
SPEAKER_04: Okay, so we're depends on where you're going, like hierarchy of needs, I guess.
15:51
SPEAKER_04: Is that kind of what you're getting towards?
15:53
SPEAKER_00: Just to you were the subject's the m the American dream.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: Right?
15:57
SPEAKER_00: How can you have the American dream and be successful without at least being able to have a lot left over in l if you can afford to like live, like actually live, house, food, healthcare.
16:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: Right.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: And I would I would absolutely add education as an intangible to that, but it doesn't mean but you can technically still get a job and be able to thrive if those other things are are are taken care of.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Like 40 years ago, a postman, like my uncle, he could just be a postman and he could buy a house.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: Right?
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Like, why can't we do that anymore?
16:31
SPEAKER_00: What happened?
16:31
SPEAKER_00: It's that the economy, the rules of the economy shifted towards shareholders and was against workers.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: And now we reached a point where now it's against customers too.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: That's why the economy is so bad.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: It's because that's where all the wealth is going, because that's where the most money is made.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: And what do shareholders do with their power?
16:47
SPEAKER_00: They give to politicians.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't mean every shareholder, you know, I'm not talking about 401ks.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about like the people who actually own the stock market, which is only like 90% of the stock markets owned by like only 100 people.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:57
SPEAKER_04: Right.
16:58
SPEAKER_04: So very small.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: They create political action committees and they have lavish donations to people who write the rules.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: And so, for example, our tax code.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: This is something I talked about all the time as a reformist Democrat, right?
17:10
SPEAKER_00: It's it's if you are on income, if you're me trying to just make money for college, there's only about 187 pages that is uh for our for the American tax code that relate to me.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how big our tax code is?
17:25
SPEAKER_00: How many pages?
17:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh like thousands, tens of thousands.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: $7,000.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: So everything after that has to do with assets, loopholes, tax credits, all this other stuff.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that big when we rewrote the tax code in the 80s.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: It's just grown and grown and grown and grown and grown.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: And if but not by us, not by people who work for a living.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: Like that's what I'm that's what I'm trying to say is like the way we could actually solve this crisis and solve inequality is just like restore the balance of who pays what and when.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: I think the majority of Americans shouldn't have to pay as tax pay as much taxes as they're paying right now.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: I really do.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: I really do.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm a Democrat who wants to lower fucking taxes.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: It's not so much to ask.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: But that means that the people who can afford it the most, they should pay a little bit more.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: Not to mention, these are also the same people that we've given bailouts to.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Right.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: These are the same people that we give tax credit after tax cut, after, you know, tax incentive to over and over and over again that small businesses frankly don't get to enjoy.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: Right.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: So I don't think it's so much to ask in an affordability crisis, in in an inequality crisis of economic inequality crisis, that they pick up the tab for once.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: But that would require people in power to actually stand up to the same people who are giving them a lot of donations.
18:39
SPEAKER_04: That's where we are.
18:40
SPEAKER_04: That's where we are.
18:41
SPEAKER_04: This is going to be very ballsy of me to uh uh posit this in front of uh like an economics uh guy.
18:48
SPEAKER_04: But I I see a lot of this starting, or a lot of the problems that uh you were discussing, yeah starting around 19, January 20th, 1981.
18:58
SPEAKER_04: Uh Ronald Reagan being being inaugural.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: I got it.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:02
SPEAKER_04: I'm not wrong.
19:03
SPEAKER_04: Go ahead.
19:04
SPEAKER_04: So is the is is it that kind of simple or does it go back even further?
19:09
SPEAKER_00: The 1970s is when businesses figured out that they should have a sustainable presence lobbying.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: Lobbying.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: So it started like really in Nixon, but then Reagan put his foot on the gas and didn't let up.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: And we've been stuck in that Republican-Democrat, we've been stuck in that same foundational tax code, same foundational idea of political economics since then.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: We no president since Reagan has tried to really shift the foundation.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: And until we shift the foundation of that, things are just gonna get worse.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: They're just gonna get worse.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: And then you have things like Endo Citizens United, which made it even worse.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: Like in the even Reagan, like something that was a big giveaway, such as the big beautiful bill, which is the largest giveaway to billionaires in human history.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: Like there was no appetite in America to do that.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: But then after the 80s, you were to mention education.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: Like, what do they do?
19:59
SPEAKER_00: Before the 80s, there was no idea to ever cut education.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: It was like we came from the Great Depression era and then we created America, the the world's greatest institutions of learning.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: We were proud of that.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: No way we're gonna cut that.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: And then Reagan came in and said, I love America and I hate education.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: And for some reason, those things are mutually exclusive.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: So starting, um, I I was a big Reagan stand for a while.
20:28
SPEAKER_04: Hell yeah.
20:29
SPEAKER_04: Um starting wait, just real quick.
20:32
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: What the fuck is his appeal?
20:35
SPEAKER_00: I don't understand.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: He's a guy who kind of talks like a little lady.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: And he was a two-bit actor in B-rated movies, and he just he just tapped into something that everybody wanted to hear instead of needing to hear.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: Is that really what it is?
20:47
SPEAKER_00: I I think.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Mr.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Gorbin Jeff turned down this.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's how he talked.
20:51
SPEAKER_04: He was, I think, unlike unrelentingly optimistic and was very folksy.
20:57
SPEAKER_04: In the greediest way possible.
20:59
SPEAKER_04: Well, yeah, but 19 uh when when did Wall when did Wall Street come out with Michael Douglas?
21:03
SPEAKER_04: Greedest guy.
21:04
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, greedy.
21:05
SPEAKER_04: You know, like that was that was kind of his thing, you know.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: Like it's that movie was a comment on him, though.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: That movie.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Do people forget that the point of that movie is to show that these guys are the bad guys?
21:15
SPEAKER_00: The main characters in that movie are bad guys.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: That's the point of Wall Street.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Don't empathize with these, don't want to be like these guys.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Although they did make it look cool.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: It's like Wolf of Wall Street.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like Wolf of Wall Street.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: They're having a great, grand old time, and then everyone like remembers those scenes and not the scenes where he punched his wife.
21:33
unknown: Yeah.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's I mean, yeah.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: I know we're going off track here.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: It's like, remember when they were throwing the little people on the target?
21:39
SPEAKER_00: That's hilarious, man.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Remember that time he beat his wife?
21:41
SPEAKER_00: We don't talk about that partner.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: And that's Conor Reagan in a nutshell.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: Remember how like he terri he was terrible for the American economy and unions and people of color and vulnerable populations, and just pretty much ignored the AIDS crisis?
21:54
SPEAKER_00: No, but he said there's a shining city on a hill, and that made me feel good.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:59
unknown: Uh
22:00
SPEAKER_04: Is is uh the the uh his FDA tried to have ketchup be listed as a um as a vegetable for uh school lunches.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: Hell yeah, dude.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean not I mean guess we're broken clocks right twice a day.
22:13
SPEAKER_04: Well, uh anyway, what uh what I was saying before was so rudely interrupted, you dick.
22:18
SPEAKER_04: Sorry, brother.
22:19
SPEAKER_04: Uh so Reagan uh starting in the uh 60s in his campaign for governor, uh there was the uh all the protests going on against uh the Vietnam War.
22:29
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
22:29
SPEAKER_04: Uh Reagan would uh bash specifically colleges, saying that uh these college kids are fascists, anti-American, uh and that's whenever education began to get tied with uh progressive elitism.
22:45
SPEAKER_04: Yeah it was in that moment with with Reagan, it just kind of like got on steroids.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: I do think hot take from Tim Stoinsky, colleges are training people to be elitist pricks.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about the progressive thing, but I do think academic elitists.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Well the polemic would disagree with you.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: That's uh I mean I don't know.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: I just I wasn't supposed to go to college, not with my grades, not with my lack of, you know, uh Well, I'm sorry, you're great, dude.
23:11
SPEAKER_04: You I I would assume you were like a straight A dean's list.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: When I tried, yeah.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: But no, I was no, I was pretty much.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Were you too bored?
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's this is a this is I haven't told this to anyone publicly.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: So I was um when I lived in uh Colorado, I was in the suburbs of of Little Rock.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: Um and um I was I was I was there, I was around for the Columbine shooting.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Oh god, okay.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Like I was in a I was in second grade when it happened.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: Um and it was a weird day.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: Like um I think I was eight years old, seven or eight years old.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: And um, you can just kind of feel the tone shift.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: And like when you're that young, you're not, you're not you're not storing memory in the bank, you know.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: But there's one day when you just come online and you just remember the whole day.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: So it's like the first full day I remember.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: I was in art class, and all of a sudden the teacher leaves, and like we're all like, eh, you know, being kids.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: And then just like because the teacher doesn't come back, we can just kind of feel something collectively.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: Next thing you know, a cop walks in and takes us all out one by one.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we had to be escorted by two cops on both sides to get on the bus.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: And the bus had a cop here, a cop here, a cop here.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: Because this was the first time.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States when it happened, right?
24:20
SPEAKER_00: Or school shooting.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: I think it was the it's both.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: But um it freaked my mom out when we got off that bus that day.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: And so she sent me to this godforsaken Christian school.
24:30
SPEAKER_04: Like Godforsaken Christian school.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it really was.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: But it was though.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was like it was like a southern, non-denominational, you know, evolution's not real kind of school.
24:40
SPEAKER_04: So I didn't it's just the theory.
24:42
SPEAKER_04: Like if it behaves really well, one day it'll grow up to become a real law.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: I wish that was the level of like how screwed up it was, but it was also like the Native Americans agreed with Manifest Destiny, and there's drought in Africa because they haven't turned to God, and it's the war of northern aggression and like all that stuff.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, my mom, she disassociated this private school, which we couldn't afford to, so she taught there, which actually at first it was angry, like how you abandon your values.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, that's how strong she felt to like protect her kids.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And she tried to sneak in, like, oh, here's real history, because she was a history professor or teacher there.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: But like that fucked up my ability to critically think and have a foundational level of knowledge that when I finally got kicked out of that Christian school and went to public school, I was so far behind.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: So I didn't get good grades.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, also just like I was in a place that nobody, no, not a lot of kids went to college.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: So I was just already conditioned not to think it.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: So it was like two years before I went to undergrad, two, three years.
25:41
SPEAKER_04: How so you said you were like eight or nine whenever you like went into the school.
25:45
SPEAKER_04: And then uh, if you don't mind, when did you get kicked out?
25:47
SPEAKER_04: How old were you?
25:48
SPEAKER_00: Oh, so nine years old.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: And I remember them saying, I remember coming home and being like, the wages of sin or death, the wages of sin or death.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: Like they would have us third graders chant that before we went.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: And that's when my mom was like, okay, uh, we can barely afford this anyway.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go teach there to try to do a counterbalance.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh so sophomore years when I got kicked out?
26:06
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
26:07
SPEAKER_04: So you had kind of had a like a like a base level of uh of education, and then you also had your mom who was not like kind of Well, I learned more from her than I did that 11 years I was at that school.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's what I think was 10 years, eight years.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: How much did the contrast just yeah, back and forth?
26:25
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
26:25
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
26:26
SPEAKER_04: How much did that kind of contrast screw with your kind of map of reality?
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, if in those books, everything you need to know on the test is in bold.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: So I don't I didn't test well when I went to places that are like, you read this, so write down the thoughts from it.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: Like I'd never been exposed to that.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: But where I I did thrive in writing classes, so like English, GT, and all that stuff.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Like I was always good at that.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: But math, history, all that stuff was just very difficult for me because I didn't know how to deconstruct something into a critical analysis.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: I just didn't know.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was I'm always like, I'm always in my own thoughts.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, my mom was a lawyer before she was a history professor, so we would joust rhetorically all the time.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: Your mom sounds awesome.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she's great, she's the best.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: Um and so, like, you know, she would literally use what she learned in law school when she was arguing with her 13-year-old rebellious kid.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: So she she even told this story on my election day party.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: She said, like, I knew Tim Timmy was gonna be something to do with politics when he told me when he was 12 years old that I was infringing upon his First Amendment rights.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: She she tells that story all the time.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: Um so I but I do think later on in life, I can I have the ability to connect with a lot of different groups.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as a community organizer, I work with MAGA people all the time because I don't ask people who they voted for in the last election if they're being targeted by a data center or a landfill or a power plant.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: Um and like that that like religious lens of like no, I wouldn't even say religious, but like that level of ignorance that is tied, that is that is implemented through a Trojan horse of religion.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: Because I think people really just can be good people.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: Like I don't want to I don't want to print a bad brush that's like all Christians uh uh are like dumb idiots.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: I I don't want to be that person.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: There are institutions that use that as an excuse to promote ignorance so that they just follow that Reaganomics, Reagan era kind of stuff, though.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: And that's where I went.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Right.
28:15
SPEAKER_04: And Jesus is a Republican.
28:16
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, and that doctrine, like Jesus and God are Republicans.
28:20
SPEAKER_04: The only thing that you can do to be against their will is to vote for a Democrat.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: That's that's pretty much what they taught us.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Also, in that school, my mom was probably gonna vote for John Kerry.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: And people knew that.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: And I got bullied at that school for that.
28:36
SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah, I'm sure.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because like your mom's a Democrat.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: It's like it's also, dude, we're like 13.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: Like, who you don't know, you don't know dick about shit at that point about politics.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, um, but then yeah, and then when I was 18, that's when Obama was running, and I and I worked on his campaign and just got into it.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: And like that was the convincing of like politics is a vehicle for good.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: It can be.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: It's an imperfect one, but it can be.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we believed.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: I think that's what we all believed in 2008.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: And it was the first time I got to think about my presence in this civic society that we have.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: And I believed it.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: And then I started working in it, and I never felt out of disbelief from anything so fast.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: Because I thought the way Obama was describing it was like the existing system can work.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: We just need to try to rise above it all.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: And uh after working, you know, I was an intern for Senator Tim Kane for a while.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: I worked on a slew of campaigns, and it's disappointing.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: All of us disappointing.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: All of us disappointing, and it's not changing.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: And the foundational things about why it's disappointing, that's what we need to take on.
29:43
SPEAKER_04: So I think I see, like uh you you uh you've referred to yourself as a reformist Democrat.
29:48
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
29:49
SPEAKER_04: Um, but it seems like, you know, that that moment when Obama gets elected, you kind of like that that jading, that jadedness happens so quickly.
29:58
SPEAKER_04: So you do think that it is possible to reform within the system to get things better, or do you you don't think we need to like it's it's either that it's either that or there's civil um uprising like we've never seen before.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: So you you don't think that there is a way to Yeah, it's there's a way.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: You just reform the Democratic Party.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: You beat them in primaries, you beat them in primaries and you show them that the what that they are so epically disad d disappointing that they have to change for the better.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just want to I just want you know how people when they when they hear about a Republican, they think they see somebody who's like, well, that person's pro-life.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: I want people to see a Democrat and be like, that's the person who fights for the vulnerable.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: That's the person who wants to fight big money in politics.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: That's the person who believes in dignity for everyone, all the time.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: No exceptions.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: Like that's what I want.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: But you can ask anybody in the party or outside of it, what is the vision of the Democratic Party?
30:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: They don't have one.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: They don't have one.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: So how am I supposed to tell a bunch of young people who've been priced out of education, price out of housing, priced out of, you know, X, Y, and Z things about the American dream which we started for, and tell them, no, you should just continue to vote Democrat.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: Because all they have right now is that we're not going to take your rights away.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: But if you don't deliver on these other things, then guess what?
31:13
SPEAKER_00: We might get the house back, or excuse me, the the White House back in 2028.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: But then if they don't deliver on things like the economy, if they don't deliver on things like actually, you know, giving a leg up to the vulnerable once in a while, like actual things, not performative stuff, then everyone's gonna become disillusioned with them again, and then we're gonna get another MAGA acolyte in 2032, and the wheel will just keep turning.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: We have to break the wheel.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: And since we're forced to live in a two-party system, yeah, I think the only way is to be insurgent in the Democratic Party.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: I want the Democratic Party to be what it claims to be.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: I want the Democratic Party to deliver on the promises that they make us believe in when they're running every two years and every four years, and then they find an excuse not to deliver it.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: There's no excuse not to the fact that we didn't raise the minimum wage.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: $725 an hour.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: That's outrageous.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: In this economy.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: In this economy?
32:01
SPEAKER_00: But really, though, there's no excuse not to deliver.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, remember in 2020 they campaigned on social justice shit.
32:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: What did they do?
32:10
SPEAKER_00: You know?
32:11
SPEAKER_04: Jack shit.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there was some I mean, they I I'll just never forget to me was when that racial justice uprising happened in 2020, right?
32:22
SPEAKER_00: Um and Nancy Pelosi and my former boss, Tim Kane, were in that picture where they're well in that, you know, like African garb and they kneel in the Capitol.
32:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: And they so they do that, and then they get the power, and there's nothing that happens from it.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing like I know that we have a filibuster.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: That's an excuse.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: 60 wrote think that's an excuse.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: I know that they were like, well, Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema, two like perfect examples of major dickheads, um, like what just wouldn't vote for a higher minimum wage.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay, then you then you go at them.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: Use your bully pulpit.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: You you say, we're not gonna work with you on anything else.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: You use the leverage of power that you have in leadership, which neither of them were in, by the way, to say, fine, you guys want to do that, you don't want to play ball, you're not getting anything else done.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, something like that.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: It's my problem with the Democratic Party, it's not that they lose.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: It is that they don't go down swinging.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: That's what we need to see right now, especially right now.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: Because everything's on the line.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: Everything's on the line.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: And they're a lot more on the line for people who don't look like us than you and me.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: And that's why I think it's even more important that I call out this bullshit.
33:27
SPEAKER_04: I could not agree more.
33:30
SPEAKER_04: Um, I I think that if the Democratic Party were to uh just say, look, we we have a three-plaint platform dignity, equality, opportunity for everybody.
33:42
SPEAKER_04: That's good.
33:43
SPEAKER_04: Every policy that we have is going to be directed towards one of those three things.
33:46
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
33:47
SPEAKER_04: That's that is a winning message.
33:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: I think so.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: But I think so.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: But that requires a vision.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: If we don't have a vision, then we don't have a direction.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: If we don't have a direction, then we can't give people a reason to look up and not be disappointment.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: What?
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Which is north.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Which is north.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: Up is north.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and up is north, yes.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, that's why it's the North Star.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, seriously, like if we're just like we we're kind of like the NBA.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: Like the NBA at some point in time was kind of a team sport, but now it's more about like the superstars.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: The Democratic Party, I think, is more like the NBA now.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: It's like there's superstars in it that we can all believe in, but until they start acting like as like a cohesive team and remember the fundament the fundamentals, you know?
34:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: Like you're sounding like my dad, right now.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: I I got into sports later on in life and I'm like catching up on the excitement of it.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, but you seriously, like, you know, I would like to be right now, we're the Knicks in the last championship game.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: If we're gonna continue this thing, they were never supposed to win.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: Like on paper, they're the worst team.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: They're not supposed to win.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: And every single game in the championship, they came back from behind, but they wanted it more, they fought harder.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: That's why they won.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't the talent, it wasn't the structures, it was because they wanted it more.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's just can we just be that right now?
35:11
SPEAKER_04: It's so fascinating to me.
35:13
SPEAKER_04: So I I've seen a lot of um 2010 uh and 2026, uh specifically with the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2010.
35:24
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
35:25
SPEAKER_04: Um, it seems like you know, the that the Tea Party movement was able to just wholly take over the Republican Party, and then like the the Republican Party became the Tea Party for a while and then Trump took over.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: Um it evolved into Yes.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, MAGA.
35:41
SPEAKER_04: You're seeing now though, in 2026, and unfortunately your uh candidacy kind of like, you know, kind of like proved the point to where there is a lot there there are outsiders that should that should be winning.
35:55
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'm not just saying this because you're sitting next to me.
35:57
SPEAKER_04: You were the best damn candidate in that race.
35:59
SPEAKER_04: Thanks, man.
36:00
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I I would have voted for you a hundred times if I could have.
36:02
SPEAKER_04: I appreciate that.
36:03
SPEAKER_04: Um why do you think that uh the challengers of the establishment are having a harder time in 2026 with the with Democrats than the Tea Party was with Republicans back in the day?
36:17
SPEAKER_00: Because the Republicans fund the people that have political talent and communication skills and the Democrats don't.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
36:24
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they haven't given me a damn cent.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: See what I mean?
36:28
SPEAKER_00: But we talked about this before when we were when we were uh drinking tea um at at that tea bar the other night.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: Um but you know, if like Charlie Kirk didn't raise all that money by himself to become the person that he was, you know.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: God did.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: He prayed for it and then he just derived by someone named the Koch brothers, right?
36:49
SPEAKER_00: Or like adjacent insert whatever person to do that.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: Like we don't have a counterbalance on the left.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: And not only to that, but we're completely unbalanced when it comes to media as well, just not just in social media, but also like news media, AM radio, right?
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Like one of the reasons people are like, I cannot break this cycle of like insert relative here about the MAGA stuff is because the real indoctrination has been happening over the course of decades silently, you know?
37:16
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, that guy's just listening to Rush Limbaugh.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: If you rush in that listen to Rush Limbaugh, you listen to Rush Limbaugh every single day, every single morning on your drive to work.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: Like, where is that same like uh avenue on the left?
37:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: And it's not like we couldn't get there because the vast majority of America actually believes in the best versions of the Democratic Party's uh solutions, right?
37:38
SPEAKER_00: People want ultra-rich people to pay a couple cents more so that we can make sure that nobody starves in the streets and no kid has to go without healthcare and that everyone can have pre-K.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: Like we people want that.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: But again, you know, MS now or whatever the hell they're calling it.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: Like, first off, it's boring.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: Because we get, we overintellectualize things and we don't make it what the Republicans figured out, how's it make it more entertainment?
37:59
SPEAKER_00: But two, like, there's just not people coming in, be like, I like the cut of the jib of that person.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: That person deserves money.
38:05
SPEAKER_00: And look, I set out to prove the the when I ran for Congress, I was like, big money does not matter.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: Big money is not as important.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: I was completely wrong.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what happened in my election.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: We we came in order of what was fundraise for the most part.
38:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm I was proud of the way that I did it.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: I was proud of the like I, you know, I had opportunities to get more money and I just said no.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: I had uh I had opportunities to get more political clout, but it required me being flexible on my values and my morality.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: And I just didn't want to do that.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm proud of the fact that I did that and I went all the way through.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: Um but from a practical speaking matter, what is politics?
38:43
SPEAKER_00: Who has power?
38:44
SPEAKER_00: How's that power leveraged?
38:45
SPEAKER_00: The people have power, but I couldn't get people to notice me without some money.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: That was the problem.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's and that's okay.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: That's all right.
38:55
SPEAKER_04: Um Do you think it is possible to to win without money?
39:00
SPEAKER_00: I I think it's possible.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: I think it's it's highly well I think that the best version of politics is the way where it's whoever campaigns it's it's the Knicks.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, who fights the hardest is the person who who wins.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: Who has the best message is the person who wins.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: I it's not like I'm disillusioned by this after my race.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: It's more just like we have to be more clever and figure out how to change the rules.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: And that was the thing.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: I never figured out how to change the rules of campaigning.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: And the rule, the one rule I could never figure out how to get around was the money thing.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: You know.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: So the the like if you blow up on social media, I suppose you could, but even then, like, we're not seeing a lot of creators who decided they were gonna run for office with, you know, a million plus people win their primaries.
39:51
SPEAKER_04: Well, I mean, it's uh um, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there, but uh I'm ranting.
39:55
SPEAKER_04: Adam Dunnegan, who uh, you know, I was helping out his campaign in the uh guy.
39:59
SPEAKER_04: He's so Hollywood.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: He's just like, I'm cool because I was a Marine and CIA and like he drives the motorcycle, wears the tub, the Maverick sunglasses, yeah, super effing jealous of that guy.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: He's just like good looking and he's cool and he's like just and like doesn't take himself too seriously and he's super smart.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely gonna edit this part out.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: No, dude, Adam and I, that's how we became friends.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: We just randomly just two dudes we ran into each other, started talking like dudes, and then in the same night, both found out we were both running for Congress separately because it never came up in conversation.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: Um But no, I have all the bit of respect for that guy.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I mean well, yeah.
40:36
SPEAKER_04: But the thing is he blew up on social media, you know, he had no followers whatsoever, and then you know, like blew up.
40:43
SPEAKER_04: I can't remember how many, like 200 or something, thousand.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: 200,000 something?
40:46
SPEAKER_04: But though those followers weren't enough to kind of push him over the uh over the finish line.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, and that's the other thing is like you have to think where are the followers coming from?
40:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: Like are the if it's just like you're a national sensation, that doesn't help you in a congressional district necessarily.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: But if you're an international sensation, yeah.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, you are internet, you're an intergalactic sensation, Adam.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: Um Independence Day, that's those guys are just trying to get your autograph.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for understanding that reference.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, which I can just do the speech, by the way, if you want to end the podcast with me just doing the presentation.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I absolutely want you to every 4th of July is our independence day.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: Um But I at the same time, I do feel like we are at a crossroads period with in a full-blown identity crisis, the Democratic Party.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: And I'll also say this for anyone who's trying to run for office.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: Like, if you're running out of primary, you cannot expect endorsements to come your way or progressive progressive organizations to even talk to you unless you raise a lot of money.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was one of the things that surprised me.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: Like I I would I have There was kind of a barrier to entrance.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, barrier to entrance.
41:53
SPEAKER_00: So like one group wouldn't put me on their website unless I'll just say it was the political integrity project.
41:58
SPEAKER_04: Oh, that's ironic.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they wouldn't give me, they wouldn't put me on their website until the FEC, the Federal Elections Commission website said I raised$25,000.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: Like so like their whole point, their whole thing is about like, oh, we want to get big money out of politics and the corruption of big money, and yet money is a threshold for you.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: Another group that could have supplied more than$100,000 plus, um, which like their tax plan and my tax plan almost mirrored each other, and they released theirs after I released mine, by the way.
42:27
SPEAKER_00: $100,000 a quarter, a quarter just to get the barrier entry.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: And they'll excuse it, those groups will excuse it by saying, well, we want to be good stewards of our people who give us donations.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: To me, that's like that's one of those rich people myths.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: That's like, oh, money can't buy you happiness.
42:43
SPEAKER_00: Like that's that's what that sounds like to me.
42:45
SPEAKER_00: And I could deconstruct why it's stupid, but like honestly, again, it comes back to the excuses.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: It's just an excuse.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: Like, just take the time to get to know these candidates, see who's worthwhile, see whose idea is good, see who's has a vision that's practical, and help elevate them.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: Because what we did in Virginia is we just we elect we elected more of the same in the primaries.
43:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:06
SPEAKER_00: And we actually, and I know that there's a lot of headlines about like DSA candidates and the vast majority of people who are winning across the country are the establishments in the primary.
43:15
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: The vast majority.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: There's been kind of mixed results, but like, yeah.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: I for for the for the most 80-20, though.
43:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: They still have the consolidation of powers to elevating those places.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, the DSA has some like the DSA has a very like well-structured, organized infrastructure in New York City.
43:36
SPEAKER_04: I was I was wondering how that sentence was going to end and be logically coherent.
43:41
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, well, also one of the most left leaning places in the United States, right?
43:44
SPEAKER_00: Like you can't replicate that and that message in a place like that is, you know, R plus three, like my the district I was running in.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
43:52
SPEAKER_00: But also, like, well, I'll keep that stuff to myself.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: Just stop calling yourself socialist.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: Can we just your idea if your ideas are so good, you shouldn't need a label.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
44:02
SPEAKER_00: And you're hurting people in other parts of the United States who want to follow those ideas, but you are literally giving it breath to say that's socialist.
44:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:09
SPEAKER_00: So just just call yourselves what you actually are, because you're not socialist, you're New Deal Democrats.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: Just say you're New Anyway.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: No way.
44:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, but they're winners and I'm a loser, so they can do whatever they want.
44:20
SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: But I can just tell you like I the reason I didn't have climate change on my website is because if I went to rural farmers who are good dudes who um will actually will like my message as long as I don't say the word climate change, that is an aid to the mission.
44:36
SPEAKER_00: That is a support for the cause.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: But like unfortunately, we've in a society where one phrase can be so polarized and so politicized that it just turns them off from listening in the first place.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: I want to open doors, not close them.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: And when we start saying, uh, probably I'm a democratic socialist, I know that they're not socialists.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: I know because I pay attention to these things.
44:54
SPEAKER_00: But most people in the United States are just working their fucking asses off.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: They don't have time to get down to the nuances of these things.
45:00
SPEAKER_00: So, like, if I the reason I called myself a reformist wasn't for the label.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: It was the business I wanted to stand on.
45:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, people called me progressive, people called me moderate, people called me socialist, people called me communist, people called me uh soy boy cuck, you know.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: But that's that's part of the gig.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: People call you what they want to call you.
45:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: If I get to call myself anything, it's the business I stand on.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's just just call yourselves New Year's Democrats, please, for the love of God, because that would make it a lot easier to get these solutions in the minds of the public, and that would help help mobilize so many more people, I think.
45:35
SPEAKER_00: Because like you you you've transitioned from Republican to more of a liberal guy, you know, right?
45:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: How and if I was talking to you then and I was like knowing who I am now, and I was just like, dude, I think it's kind of fucked up that healthcare is for profit.
45:53
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, if somebody gets cancer and then they can't afford that's something that happened to them, not because of them.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: And then and let's just say it's a kid and a kid got cancer, right?
46:03
SPEAKER_00: And like, and they he's literally just been priced out, and somebody gets to make millions of dollars off of a system like that.
46:08
SPEAKER_00: I think as conservatives you are, especially back in like the 90s, early 2000s, when they're not the hard lines that now, and even now I've talked to MACA people about this who do who don't literally had a GoFundMe on their website on their Facebook and said, like, I have lymphoma, anything you can do helps.
46:24
SPEAKER_00: I hate asking for this.
46:26
SPEAKER_00: Like, and if we just had that conversation, that's a different story.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: That is building, that is the building blocks of persuasion.
46:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: And persuasion is about asking questions.
46:35
SPEAKER_00: Masters in political communications, you know?
46:37
SPEAKER_04: Well, you uh, oh sorry, I didn't know.
46:38
SPEAKER_00: No, no, I was just saying, but like, but if I was like, hey, but before we had that conversation, I was like, I want you to know I'm a democratic socialist.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: Like a person's not gonna do it.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: And like, like I'm a grassroots guy.
46:48
SPEAKER_00: I think that the most of the work and change is gonna happen on the ground with everyday people.
46:53
SPEAKER_00: Stop making our jobs fucking harder.
46:56
SPEAKER_04: So I'm kind of thinking back in, I'm putting my uh Republican hat on.
47:02
SPEAKER_04: And um, yeah, I especially as soon as uh as you started that uh kind of like hypothetical, um my uh Republican brain was like, uh capitalism is the like only for or is the greatest force of good in the world.
47:17
SPEAKER_04: So we need to have capitalism in healthcare in order for it to like succeed.
47:22
SPEAKER_04: I think that is what I would have said.
47:24
SPEAKER_00: I can but I can agree, but we don't have capitalism in healthcare.
47:27
SPEAKER_00: We have monopolies.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: Monopolies is inherently a socialist system.
47:32
SPEAKER_00: Because a monopoly can only be propped up by the government doing giveaways in order to keep in order to keep its structure.
47:37
SPEAKER_00: There, I win.
47:39
SPEAKER_00: You're a Democrat now.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: I bequeath thee Oh, thank you.
47:41
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you're welcome.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you that five.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, welcome to the Democrats now.
47:47
SPEAKER_02: What I Hey, we're we we party or whatever.
47:55
SPEAKER_02: We actually do that.
47:57
SPEAKER_02: Well, we do, but we're the we're the we're the outskirts.
47:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're we're the bad boys.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're the punk rock.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: We're punk rock, we're punk rock democrats.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: If you have to say it, you know.
48:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: God damn.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: But I think that um more gin, please.
48:12
SPEAKER_04: It's water, it's water.
48:14
SPEAKER_04: Uh I blame um I actually blame the Cold War on the uh on socialism being such a scary word.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think Yes, but uh okay, again, I'm raised by a historian, so it's like how much context do I go into?
48:34
SPEAKER_00: Bad faith politicians will always find two strategies to rely on and hook their hat on for their whole career.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: One is blame the people with the least amount of power on every for everything, for everything.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: Why can't you afford a house?
48:50
SPEAKER_00: It has nothing to do with the private equity firm that bought up all the houses in this neighborhood.
48:53
SPEAKER_00: It has to do with a guy from a different country.
48:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
48:56
SPEAKER_00: You know?
48:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, but the second thing is they will always rely on distraction techniques in order to hold on to power.
49:03
SPEAKER_00: Right.
49:03
SPEAKER_00: And there's a phenomenon, you you studied political science, you probably know, rally around the flag effect.
49:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, when there's tragedy, there's always an increase in reality.
49:11
SPEAKER_00: And that is inherently a human thing, I think, is like when something is so horrific that we can't turn away from it, our natural inclination is to stand together.
49:20
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
49:21
SPEAKER_00: It's not 9-11.
49:23
SPEAKER_04: George W.
49:23
SPEAKER_04: Bush's approval rating was up into like the 90s.
49:26
SPEAKER_00: But that yeah, I mean, but the same thing happened after Pearl Harbor, the same thing, you know, that shows that humanity in this country is actually more good than bad.
49:36
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the time when we could just start saying, I can't believe this happened, and it's everybody else's fault, and I'm gonna hide in my own little corner and my own view of the world.
49:44
SPEAKER_00: And instead, those are the moments when we can actually come together.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's the politician's job to try to remind us that we can be more.
49:53
SPEAKER_00: We can be more than we were before this happened.
49:58
SPEAKER_00: But unfortunately, there's been key moments in our society where that's happened, and people just said because it was a short-lived rally around the flag effect, because then what had happened?
50:07
SPEAKER_00: There was a rise in Muslim and you know, Muslim violence.
50:09
SPEAKER_00: There was, excuse me, violence against Muslims.
50:12
SPEAKER_00: I had to make sure I that's a clear important clarification.
50:15
SPEAKER_00: There was a rise in division, short.
50:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was only like eight months, you know.
50:18
SPEAKER_00: And then when they made the wrong decision of like the WMDs and the and getting Adam Tomlins to vote for the that's why did they do that?
50:26
SPEAKER_00: Why did they make that point?
50:27
SPEAKER_00: Why did they say the WMDs things?
50:29
SPEAKER_00: Why did they say, oh, there's why did they double down on immigrants?
50:32
SPEAKER_00: Oil.
50:32
SPEAKER_00: No, well, yes, that's part of it.
50:34
SPEAKER_00: But it was also so that they could win the 2004 re-election campaign.
50:38
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
50:39
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
50:40
SPEAKER_04: Very much so.
50:41
SPEAKER_04: The day before the election, they uh raised the terror alert.
50:45
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it went to orange.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
50:47
SPEAKER_00: I remember it's also colored.
50:48
SPEAKER_00: A color-coded system is so funny to me for that level of stuff.
50:51
SPEAKER_00: Like, they might use sarin gas on your children.
50:54
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna raise this up to red.
50:58
SPEAKER_00: A light red.
50:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it was a light red.
51:00
SPEAKER_00: Not full red.
51:01
SPEAKER_00: We still need you to vote for us, but not the not the light.
51:04
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's not blue, so you can't vote for Democrats.
51:07
SPEAKER_00: But again, I again, and then I'll say this on the other end is like, what's our contrast to Donald Trump other than saying we're not Donald Trump?
51:14
SPEAKER_00: What's our contrast to MAGA other than saying we're not MAGA?
51:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, they represent what's bad, but you're not telling us what's good.
51:21
SPEAKER_00: And you have to tell us in multiple ways, not just the way you talk about it, not just your rhetoric, but what you do with the power that you have.
51:29
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, one of the things I discovered when I was running for office is you don't need legislation to to come up with solutions.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: Like there's a lot of powers a congressman can do.
51:37
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's petitioning for more money in a budget for a specific area.
51:40
SPEAKER_00: Like I identified a lot of poor, underrepresented areas in my district, which was huge, by the way, by land mass.
51:46
SPEAKER_00: Like one of the places in my district, 20% of the houses don't have clean drinking water.
51:51
SPEAKER_00: What?
51:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they set up 12 different water stations every single day at community centers and churches because that's the reality of it.
51:58
SPEAKER_00: That wouldn't cost that much money to fix.
52:00
SPEAKER_00: And then it would be like a decimal point of a decimal point of a decimal point of a decimal point of a fraction of the federal budget.
52:06
SPEAKER_00: Like that's something a congressman can petition for and get in the federal budget.
52:09
SPEAKER_00: The current guy who's there doesn't care, right?
52:11
SPEAKER_00: Because he's too busy saying, oh, capitalism will fix it.
52:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, he's he's answering phone calls that don't exist.
52:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's yeah, there's that.
52:17
SPEAKER_00: But there's also like there's the power of your platform.
52:19
SPEAKER_00: When you go somewhere, the press comes.
52:22
SPEAKER_00: When you go somewhere and want to shine a light on something, you can do it.
52:26
SPEAKER_00: That was nine, that was, you know, at least 50% of the reason I wanted to do it was like I wanted to go and say, something over here is happening and it's and it's wrong and it's unjust.
52:35
SPEAKER_00: And now you don't have an excuse not to know about it anymore.
52:38
SPEAKER_00: Like I had no problem going at odds with my own party if I thought they were ignoring an issue that deserved to be recognized.
52:44
SPEAKER_00: And you can do it in a way that is delicate enough to not like say, oh, fuck those guys.
52:48
SPEAKER_00: But you can also do it in a way that's delicate enough to say, you need to act on this.
52:52
SPEAKER_00: And if it wasn't in the power of the federal government to do it, then it is the power of the local government to do it, you know?
52:57
SPEAKER_04: And you well, with your position, you you shun in that light on it is going to get the local level to probably act on it faster than it otherwise would.
53:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's just let's just call it out for what it is.
53:08
SPEAKER_00: Anyone who wins in the 2026 election who is uh has a D by their name on the ballot, they're not going to be an effective legislator.
53:14
SPEAKER_00: No.
53:15
SPEAKER_00: And by effective legislator, I don't mean somebody who passes legislation.
53:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean someone who's going to pass legislation that actually improves our lives because there's a madman in the White House, right?
53:24
SPEAKER_00: So you have to look about what else you can do on the margins.
53:26
SPEAKER_00: You have to look at what else what are the the other responsibilities?
53:29
SPEAKER_00: One is constituent services, making sure you have the best team that's like when people call you with their issues that they're having with federal agencies, you get on that shit and you get it done.
53:37
SPEAKER_00: That's what I did at Tim Kane's office.
53:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I like to think I was pretty good at it, but I was also, at some point, I got I hit a ceiling of what the law would or what the federal agencies were capable of doing and not capable of doing.
53:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, but then also like, what do you spend your time?
53:51
SPEAKER_00: They also only work a hundred days out of the year.
53:53
SPEAKER_00: They work Adam, they work a hundred days out of the year and then they blame teachers for being lazy.
53:58
SPEAKER_00: But they get paid 365 days of the year.
54:01
SPEAKER_00: Teachers don't, by the way.
54:03
SPEAKER_01: And they say socialism's so bad.
54:04
SPEAKER_01: Right.
54:05
SPEAKER_01: What do they get?
54:06
SPEAKER_00: They're the socialists.
54:06
SPEAKER_00: Yes, they're the socialists.
54:08
SPEAKER_00: We pay them to go out and campaign and shit.
54:11
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's with their excuse.
54:12
SPEAKER_00: But Ted Ted Cruz goes to Cancun in the middle of like the worst event, worst uh worst natural event in his state's history, and he's still got a paycheck.
54:21
SPEAKER_00: He's still got a paycheck.
54:22
SPEAKER_00: You know?
54:23
SPEAKER_00: You don't do your socialism isn't it will it reward the lazy.
54:26
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the tenets of like the apparatus and things that'll do it.
54:29
SPEAKER_00: If you're destroyed, then what the hell are we doing with the current people that are there?
54:33
SPEAKER_00: A hundred days out of the year.
54:34
SPEAKER_00: That's how much they're in session, maybe 120.
54:37
SPEAKER_00: But and what's the consequence?
54:39
SPEAKER_00: And that's the other thing.
54:40
SPEAKER_00: What is the consequence for them enriching themselves while everyone else suffers?
54:44
SPEAKER_00: What is the consequence of them not doing enough in Washington to hold the powerful accountable?
54:50
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
54:50
SPEAKER_00: A third jet like that?
54:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but really, that's right.
54:53
SPEAKER_00: So it's just like, why are people disillusioned with politics?
54:56
SPEAKER_00: And why do you have to ask questions that was serious was that was, you know, a very relevant question to ask of like, can the system be reformed from the inside?
55:03
SPEAKER_00: I like to think yes.
55:04
SPEAKER_00: But if someone disagreed with me, I'm not gonna hammer it home with them.
55:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm not.
55:09
SPEAKER_00: I can't.
55:10
SPEAKER_00: Because I agree.
55:11
SPEAKER_00: But what else do we got?
55:12
SPEAKER_03: What else do we have?
55:14
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
55:14
SPEAKER_04: No, I I think that as written um and originally intended, the separation of powers into three coequal branches of government is a it's about the best way that you can like make sure that you know the power doesn't go too far into one hands.
55:34
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
55:34
SPEAKER_04: However, that being said, you're seeing now the consequences of uh one of those branches just well, two of those branches just basically castrating themselves.
55:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:44
SPEAKER_00: Um Well, we also have a bicameral legislature, which is stupid.
55:48
SPEAKER_00: I will say that's down.
55:50
SPEAKER_00: Would you prefer a unicameral?
55:51
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
55:52
SPEAKER_00: I would.
55:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
55:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
55:54
SPEAKER_00: So what are well get rid of the Senate.
55:56
SPEAKER_00: Stupid.
55:57
SPEAKER_00: Or it can be performative like it is in England.
55:58
SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
55:59
SPEAKER_00: They can they can they can pontificate on what the young whippersnappers are doing wrong and right, but they don't have any power.
56:04
SPEAKER_04: Did I ever tell you this is going to be an offshoot and something highly irrelevant?
56:09
SPEAKER_04: Uh one of the uh first times I ever went uh overseas, I went to uh a wedding in London.
56:17
SPEAKER_04: And um the the ceremony itself was like in the uh chapel right next to where William and Kate got married.
56:25
SPEAKER_04: Oh, cool.
56:26
SPEAKER_04: Um and then the um the first reception was in Parliament.
56:32
SPEAKER_04: Uh the bride's mom.
56:34
SPEAKER_04: What who's who okay, I guess I got a lot of questions, so go ahead.
56:37
SPEAKER_04: Keep going.
56:38
SPEAKER_04: The bride's mom was a member of the House of Lords.
56:41
SPEAKER_04: Uh she was a uh she was a family law attorney and had done divorce the divorce of like Prince Andrew, I want to say.
56:50
SPEAKER_04: So yeah.
56:50
SPEAKER_04: Sick.
56:51
SPEAKER_04: Uh and like a few of the other like royal family members.
56:54
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
56:54
SPEAKER_04: Uh and so like for her service to the crown, they appointed her a member of the House of Lords.
57:00
SPEAKER_04: That's sick.
57:01
SPEAKER_04: So yeah, like to go in there.
57:04
SPEAKER_04: That's that's cool.
57:04
SPEAKER_04: And it was like, you know, like hanging out, rubbing elbows.
57:07
SPEAKER_04: And I mean, they love the accent.
57:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh but one of the uh the the what Adam, are you uh what they call a redneck?
57:16
SPEAKER_04: I mean, yes, pretty much.
57:17
SPEAKER_04: That's exactly what it was.
57:18
SPEAKER_04: Every and like their accents, if if they're like, hey, will you do an American or if I asked them, will you do an American accent?
57:24
SPEAKER_04: It'll either either be Cali or Southern.
57:26
SPEAKER_04: Those are the only things.
57:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they can't talk like I talk like me.
57:30
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
57:30
SPEAKER_04: But you know, I was like rubbing elbows and I was like, you know what?
57:33
SPEAKER_04: Like, I I'm I'm charming these people.
57:35
SPEAKER_04: Like, I I I think we could like, you know, I think maybe we could be friends.
57:38
SPEAKER_04: And then the um the groom gave a uh gave you know gave his speech or gave his toast and uh part like his opening joke was talking about how he had uh him and his family had eaten so much that the family tailor was gonna have to work overtime and doing their um in making their clothes.
57:56
SPEAKER_04: I was like, uh, never mind.
57:58
SPEAKER_04: I'm not gonna be able to make it here.
58:02
SPEAKER_00: That's also just a hacky joke.
58:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, whatever.
58:05
SPEAKER_00: Teach their own.
58:06
SPEAKER_00: It's an easy, it's like when people, you know, because I publ I'm a public speaker, I do it all the time.
58:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
58:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's like when people are like, How are you doing?
58:12
SPEAKER_00: And then it's like, uh, and they're like, I that's not good enough.
58:16
SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
58:16
SPEAKER_00: I hate that shit.
58:17
SPEAKER_00: I it's so hacky.
58:19
SPEAKER_00: Get their attention some other way, please.
58:21
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that's that's super oh, that's me being elitist, I suppose.
58:24
SPEAKER_00: But I just do it with a booming voice.
58:26
SPEAKER_00: That's terrible.
58:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
58:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, call and response is one anyway.
58:30
SPEAKER_00: We could good, that's a whole other podcast to like talk about rhetorical tool tools and like the ones that are actually Obama was fucking awesome at rhetorical tool.
58:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was.
58:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, but that's but that's he didn't he did are y'all fired up?
58:42
SPEAKER_00: Ready to go?
58:43
SPEAKER_00: That's a callback.
58:44
SPEAKER_00: That's not hacky.
58:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's not hacky to make the audience feel bad for not doing what I want them to do.
58:50
SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
58:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
58:51
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the who are we talking about before I got all uh Yeah, okay.
58:54
SPEAKER_04: Oh, so we're talking about a unicameral legislature.
58:56
SPEAKER_02: And so Well, yeah, I mean, you know, do I actually see that happening in my lifetime or ever in the I in the history of the what is the benefit of that that would want to be.
59:06
SPEAKER_00: Get some shit done.
59:07
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
59:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the Senate, the Senate has this 60 vote filibuster thing that's only designed to slow things down as they are now.
59:16
SPEAKER_00: Are is anyone okay with the things that they are now?
59:18
SPEAKER_04: And not just the filibuster, the Senate itself.
59:21
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
59:21
SPEAKER_04: So there was like in the um in the Federalist papers, uh, there's kind of this big debate.
59:26
SPEAKER_04: Uh should uh should elected, should should uh should the electeds be a mirror to their constituents?
59:33
SPEAKER_04: Or do they uh do they have the uh the same f the same passion, the same interest?
59:39
SPEAKER_04: Or should they be kind of a a step removed where like cooler heads can prevail, so to speak.
59:46
SPEAKER_04: And so what they did was split the baby.
59:48
SPEAKER_00: The lasses can't possibly think for themselves.
59:50
SPEAKER_00: They did talk like that.
59:51
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
59:52
SPEAKER_04: But essentially, what hey, we can have our cake and eat it too.
59:55
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we can have a House of Representatives that is elected every two years.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_00: That makes me mad.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_00: But it's also just like the reason that we have a Senate is because of the consolidation of power for slave-owning states.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_04: I mean, that's a hundred percent that is another thing, too.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_04: Like that's yeah, they were never gonna uh southern states were never gonna go along with a uh a population control.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_00: Because the northern states had higher populations because you know that's where a lot of people are.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_04: Not if you count three-fifths of like other persons.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_04: Right.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, and that and that's the other thing.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_00: Like you did both.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_00: We got that and that.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_00: So it's like a double shitty burger, you know, or it's a double shitty sandwich.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_00: Um you know, and but that's and and we have to I maybe that's why it's such a defunct thing, because we have to that's that is a legacy of sin of our past, right?
1:00:41
SPEAKER_00: It's a legacy of sin of like America's original sin is slavery.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_00: So like now we have to deal with a bullshit Senate because that's the thing.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_00: The other thing is here's the other thing that pissed me off about this, Adam.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, average age of a of a house representative member, I think is like 50.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh, 60.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, you're getting closer when you get to the Senate.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, nine people who are in office died in office this year.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_00: Because that's how old they are in the federal government.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_04: Like a memory care facility right now.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: So the filibuster used to be you had to earn your filibuster.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_00: You had to stand up there and you had to you had to speak for 12 hours and you had to get somebody else to speak for 12 hours.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_00: That's how they were blocking the first civil rights legislation.
1:01:18
SPEAKER_00: They're just like it was a bunch of old dudes being like, back in my day, literally for 12 hours.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_00: And then they earned it though.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_01: Growing up, always told them they were heroes.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, exactly.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_00: But like that's they're so old now, they can't possibly imagine doing that.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_00: So, like, yeah, I think we should go if not if we can't get rid of the Senate, then fine.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_00: Earn it, earn your fucking filibuster.
1:01:41
SPEAKER_00: None of this bullshit.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_00: I get to hide behind 60 votes things.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_00: Okay, especially since you only work 100 days out of the year.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_04: Oh so you've you've been involved in politics for a very long time.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_00: Half my life.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm almost 36.
1:01:55
SPEAKER_00: I know like younger, but yeah, I'll be 36 next month.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_04: So you you've been running for office.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_04: There, there's some grace.
1:01:59
SPEAKER_04: I thought you were 40.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
1:02:01
SPEAKER_00: That would be great.
1:02:01
SPEAKER_00: I wish I was 40 at the beginning because that was one of the that was one of the things that hurt me.
1:02:05
SPEAKER_00: People were like, I like him, but he's so young.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_04: One of your opponents isn't even 30 yet.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_04: Um, do you think that people only go into or like people only run and stay in office for power?
1:02:18
SPEAKER_04: Or is it something that like once you get in over time, you you're kind of idealistic, you're like, you know what, this is for the people.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_04: And then you kind of get in, and just over time, there is a natural inclination to kind of lean in towards the establishment.
1:02:32
SPEAKER_04: Do you think that's a good idea?
1:02:32
SPEAKER_00: I think there's the way I categorize it, if like if I was writing a book on my experience with politicians at the federal level, state level, local level, because I have vast experience with all three, is that there are people who are legitimately good politicians who want to do good, but they exist inside the system.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_00: You know, they exist inside of like, I do have to make this compromise on this, I do have to kiss ass over here.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
1:02:56
SPEAKER_00: I I do have to do all these things, but I'm I'm doing it in the name, and I will eventually push for, you know, more funds for underserved schools, right?
1:03:04
SPEAKER_00: Or like more funding for um rare diseases.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_00: Those those people exist.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_00: I know them.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_00: Those, that's the smallest category of politicians that I know.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_00: And then I think that the second one is like pure ambition, trying to like I want to make a name for myself.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm doing this.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_00: And like I cares about certain things, but this is more about me.
1:03:25
SPEAKER_00: And then the third one is the anointed.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_00: And the anointed, generally speaking, not all, are useful idiots for whatever powers that be that help put them there.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_00: And I would say that in my experience, that makes up a large amount of those people, you know.
1:03:43
SPEAKER_00: Um and I think the longer you're in office, you can actually switch between those things at all different times, right?
1:03:50
SPEAKER_00: The first and the third one specifically.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_00: Um and that happens.
1:03:54
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people just get jaded, but they don't want to lose the seat.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_00: Also, people have been there for decades, literally.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_00: Like, what else are they supposed to do?
1:04:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, be a consultant, right?
1:04:02
SPEAKER_00: And that's probably the only thing that they would be good at, you know?
1:04:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_00: Like you're not gonna go from being a senator for 40 years to a CEO of a Fortune 500, that would be insane.
1:04:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, so it's like, well, what can I do?
1:04:13
SPEAKER_00: I can talk to my buddies who I talked to you for 40 years.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_00: Like there is some banality in this evil.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_00: There is some, like, it's, and I don't even think it's nuanced.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_00: I think this is that's exactly what anyone else in their position would be, which is probably why we should have term limits.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_00: But again, I think if you just take care of the big money and politics problem, the term limits thing fall that solves itself because they'll become out of touch.
1:04:31
SPEAKER_00: And once they become out of touch, and then they won't have the connections to fund their campaigns, and people will be able to do it.
1:04:37
SPEAKER_00: And this, I feel like I was too cynical when you asked me like, can we, can people like me win?
1:04:43
SPEAKER_00: I do think people like me and Adam and all these other people can win.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_00: We have to just play a much longer game.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_00: And it would be nice if we didn't have to at critical moments in the United States, like we are right now.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, neither of us had any name recognition.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_00: We were complete unknowns.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, he he got some money.
1:04:59
SPEAKER_00: I I had a hard time with money, and I even refused money from certain groups because I just I don't think running from starting to see why you had a hard time with money.
1:05:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, it the point is not to take from people, it's supposed to serve people.
1:05:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:05:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so when, yeah, when people are like on fixed incomes and they give me more than I'm comfortable with, yeah.
1:05:16
SPEAKER_00: Or if I don't think that that older person who gave me$100 meant to give me$100, maybe was meant to give me 10, and you meet them and you know they're all there, yeah, I'm gonna I'm not gonna take that money.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's noble, by the way.
1:05:28
SPEAKER_00: I think that's the standard of what we're talking, of what we should come to expect from our politics.
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: That's base level.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I think is the moment we're in right now.
1:05:35
SPEAKER_00: If we actually want to save this country, those three categories that I was talking about, we need a fourth.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_00: We need a new class of politician.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_00: We need somebody who says, I reject the notion that we have to do X, Y, and Z things in order to do this good.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_00: I reject the notion that I have to pay tribute to the top before I advocate for the bottom.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_00: And if there's enough of us to do that, you don't need a majority of people in the House of Representatives to do that.
1:05:58
SPEAKER_00: You don't need a you don't need to bring Retake the Senate in order to do that.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_00: You just need enough people who will be firm in their conviction and say, I won't vote for a speaker of the House of Representatives unless they agree to X, Y, and Z things, which the Republicans did in 2022.
1:06:11
SPEAKER_00: And it was for bad shit.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_00: It was for stuff that like picked on the vulnerable, because God forbid we actually give people who are the least among us a leg up in the world.
1:06:19
SPEAKER_00: Um it was for bullying people who had different pronouns than they were comfortable with.
1:06:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, but they but that guy gave them a massive amount of power, an unprecedented amount of power to the rank and file.
1:06:30
SPEAKER_00: Imagine if we had that same strategy, but we used it for good.
1:06:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:06:32
SPEAKER_00: So that goodness could prevail in politics again.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_00: But that requires vision.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_04: I kind of see, and um, I mean, you and I have been pretty much talking about the uh the entire time, that the defining issue of our of our age is who gets opportunity.
1:06:55
SPEAKER_04: Like who who gets the opportunity to succeed.
1:06:58
SPEAKER_04: And um, you know, kind of we've been talking about this that it is kind of come to the point now where all of the opportunity is put up into like one category for one certain group of people.
1:07:12
SPEAKER_04: And then that's left for like people like you and me.
1:07:15
SPEAKER_04: We're fighting for like just whatever is left over.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_04: We're fighting for the scraps.
1:07:20
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
1:07:20
SPEAKER_04: How do you level that out whenever everyone that has that power is like, I'm not giving this away.
1:07:29
SPEAKER_00: I know it's super nerdy.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_00: It's the tax system.
1:07:31
SPEAKER_00: Our tax system is written in a way that incentivizes bad behavior if you're not in the tip tip top right now and disinvenifies disincentivizes good behavior.
1:07:40
SPEAKER_00: You actually, and it's not redistribute redistribution of wealth, by the way, it's the correction of the of the middle class being able to grow.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna be able to do if the middle class continues to shrink at the rate that it's shrinking now, we're not gonna have a thriving, vibrant American society.
1:07:57
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have another, it's gonna be an economic feudal system.
1:08:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:08:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, because things like Social Security won't have any money, things like not forget college, but think about public schools, we'll be able to have some healthcare is gonna get more expensive.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_00: So if we, you know, 7,000 pages, like I said, we rewrite the tax code with a philosophy that is if you work hard, you pay less taxes.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_00: If you are someone who gets to sit in a bed of wealth, yeah, you pay a little bit more.
1:08:23
SPEAKER_00: Corporate greed pays more.
1:08:25
SPEAKER_00: Greedy billionaires, they pay more.
1:08:27
SPEAKER_00: Not a lot, by the way.
1:08:28
SPEAKER_00: Disincentivize bad behavior.
1:08:30
SPEAKER_00: So essentially.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_00: So like if a corporate a corporation can get tax incentives for buying their own stocks, right?
1:08:36
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
1:08:37
SPEAKER_00: If you buy your own stocks, which is literally taking wealth from way available from the public, then you have a tax penalty.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_00: So they won't that disincentivizes the behavior.
1:08:47
SPEAKER_00: If you um want to lay off 20% of your own employees, for example, or even you know, a certain amount, yeah, just so that you can boost your shareholder profit because you can show more profits, yeah.
1:08:59
SPEAKER_00: You get you have to pay, you have to pay a tax penalty.
1:09:01
SPEAKER_00: However, if you want to engage in, you know, even menial profit sharing with 100% of your employees, including shareholders, including um contractors, yeah, you can get a tax break for that.
1:09:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:09:14
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
1:09:15
SPEAKER_00: Like those are those are some steps in the right direction.
1:09:17
SPEAKER_00: You just tax corporate greed more, tax hard work less.
1:09:20
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, like Elizabeth Warren has a bill right now that's like if people making more than$50 million pay three cents on every dollar they make after$50 million, and uh, people in a who are billionaires pay four cents after every dollar they make after a billion dollars, then we could fund universal healthcare, we could fund um debt-free college, we could fund universal pre-K, which would be a huge, like my sister has young kids.
1:09:47
SPEAKER_00: Like, I know how much that would be.
1:09:49
SPEAKER_00: Um and you do that with a combination of also like dis decoupling healthcare from employment and decoupling healthcare from private profit motivations.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_00: Then you open up a whole nother avenues for wealth because we took away all the excuses and the incentives for corporate greed to thrive in our society.
1:10:11
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that's the whole ball game because we have a whole other conversation about rights, right?
1:10:16
SPEAKER_00: And making sure that people who are vulnerable more vulnerable than you and I like have the protections that they need.
1:10:22
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, when we're arguing about like how you should refer to people with different pronouns than you, I think that those same people would also really appreciate a healthcare that doesn't make them go bankrupt for going sick.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
1:10:35
SPEAKER_00: So like and those things are mutually exclusive.
1:10:39
SPEAKER_00: We can advocate for both at the same time.
1:10:41
SPEAKER_00: But dignity starts with survival and then thrive.
1:10:48
SPEAKER_00: Survive and thrive.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_00: That's dignity.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_00: Survive and thrive.
1:10:52
SPEAKER_00: Let's we're right now, we're on the survive side that we need to work on.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_00: And then let's look at the ways that we can make pretty sure people thrive.
1:10:58
SPEAKER_00: You know?
1:11:00
SPEAKER_04: Uh earlier, uh be I think uh before we were recording, you were like, hey, your uh your handle or whatever it is on uh Instagram is uh matriarchy man.
1:11:09
SPEAKER_04: Um and I'm just I just said that because I wanted to plug it.
1:11:12
SPEAKER_04: Uh well the the At matriarchy.
1:11:16
SPEAKER_04: The thing about matriarchy that I I look at like matriarchy through the lens of power.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, okay.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_04: Power and leadership.
1:11:23
SPEAKER_04: And so I see that like the the system that we're in now has all the power up here and it is hoarded and lorded over everyone else.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_04: I think so.
1:11:34
SPEAKER_04: In a matriarchy, that power flows down, where everyone is interesting.
1:11:40
SPEAKER_04: That's that that that is in in an in essence, that is why I am uh that's why I'm in favor of matriarchal systems, is because I believe wholeheartedly in dignity, equality, and opportunity.
1:11:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:11:51
SPEAKER_00: I just think dignity.
1:11:52
SPEAKER_00: I think all of those things are matched when you talk about dignity, which is why my own.
1:11:57
SPEAKER_00: I think equality is an is an avid well, it doesn't really matter.
1:12:00
SPEAKER_00: This is just we're just being semantics dicks right now.
1:12:03
SPEAKER_00: Um semantic.
1:12:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, mine's bigger.
1:12:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it is.
1:12:07
SPEAKER_00: I we can compare afterwards if you want to.
1:12:11
SPEAKER_00: I it's it's uh I am who I am and I'm proud of it.
1:12:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh my semantics are huge.
1:12:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, I had a funny experience with uh my um, because we're kind of talking about race, kind of not talking about race right now.
1:12:23
SPEAKER_00: We my nephew is going to school now and he's almost four years old, and he lives in a rural part like I did.
1:12:29
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to make sure he gets exposed to like diversity.
1:12:32
SPEAKER_00: I want to make sure he gets exposed to children who are different, who look a little different than him.
1:12:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we're talking about it, and I was and with his mom in front of him, and he's talking all the time stuff.
1:12:41
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I just want to make sure like there's you know kids of color in his class.
1:12:44
SPEAKER_00: And Harry just screams, I'm white.
1:12:47
SPEAKER_00: And I went, Yes, buddy, and we're neither proud nor ashamed of that.
1:12:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:12:52
SPEAKER_00: Just exist in that, just exist in there, okay?
1:12:54
SPEAKER_00: Just look at absorb the world as it is and be who you are as you are.
1:12:59
SPEAKER_04: You don't have to very interesting how you say that though.
1:13:02
SPEAKER_04: We are neither proud nor ashamed of that.
1:13:05
SPEAKER_04: Because I think can't change it.
1:13:07
SPEAKER_04: Right.
1:13:07
SPEAKER_04: I I think that that's been a s like like Erica Kirk.
1:13:09
SPEAKER_01: You know, she's like, they're wanting you to apologize for being white.
1:13:13
SPEAKER_01: No, no one's asking us to do that.
1:13:14
SPEAKER_01: No.
1:13:14
SPEAKER_01: That's also stupid.
1:13:15
SPEAKER_01: She's just a grifter.
1:13:16
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
1:13:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like her husband.
1:13:18
SPEAKER_00: We're all just grifters.
1:13:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:13:20
SPEAKER_04: Dude.
1:13:20
SPEAKER_04: And yeah.
1:13:22
SPEAKER_04: If I had no morals, I would become a right-wing influencer tomorrow.
1:13:27
SPEAKER_04: I know, I know.
1:13:28
SPEAKER_04: Well, you've seen my speeches, right?
1:13:29
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever seen it?
1:13:30
SPEAKER_00: No, I've never seen foreseen.
1:13:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, you see the way I can rile up the crowd.
1:13:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:13:34
SPEAKER_00: If I was a Republican, I guarantee you they'd be grooming me to run for president right now.
1:13:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:13:38
SPEAKER_00: And I know that sounds arrogant.
1:13:39
SPEAKER_00: Nope.
1:13:40
SPEAKER_00: I know it does.
1:13:41
SPEAKER_00: But like, if I can rile people up, it's not arrogant if you can back it up.
1:13:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:13:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:13:45
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, brother.
1:13:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:13:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:13:47
SPEAKER_00: It's and you know, and that's the thing is like you I exist in the space now after the election, a couple weeks out.
1:13:52
SPEAKER_00: Like, I was I was good at the parts that I was supposed to be good at.
1:13:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:13:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh coming up with solutions, unique solutions for unique situations, um, listening to people.
1:14:02
SPEAKER_00: Like I wouldn't, I would I sometimes I'd do house parties and I wouldn't leave till several hours afterwards because I just wanted to know the area.
1:14:09
SPEAKER_00: And people who live there are the experts on their own community, right?
1:14:13
SPEAKER_00: So, like that that was all to make me a better candidate, the kind of candidate that I wish people would get to see and be able to vote for.
1:14:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, the speak the public speaking part I was good at.
1:14:24
SPEAKER_00: I think even my primary opponents would all tell me that I was good at it, right?
1:14:28
SPEAKER_00: Um it just didn't, it just didn't matter in the end.
1:14:31
SPEAKER_00: And like, don't get me wrong, like I raised tens of thousands of dollars, which is pretty good for a complete grassroots candidate.
1:14:38
SPEAKER_00: 90% of that those those donations came from Virginia, where I live.
1:14:43
SPEAKER_00: Like that, you don't see that happening.
1:14:45
SPEAKER_00: And the majority of those were less than$50.
1:14:48
SPEAKER_00: So like that shows momentum.
1:14:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, most of it came in towards the end, too, which was tough because like that was not enough time to film a commercial and do things, and it was not enough time to do a mailer.
1:14:57
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I just think when you see a world where Marjorie Taylor Green can get elected to Congress, it's not because she was all that.
1:15:08
SPEAKER_00: It was because they saw that there was some political talent, political communications talent in particular, and they were like, Yeah, give her a bunch of money and we'll get her a win.
1:15:16
SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, that's kind of what we have.
1:15:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:15:20
SPEAKER_00: And until you, like I said, until you get that new class of politicians who's willing to fight that aspect of our politics, it's gonna be hard to change it.
1:15:29
SPEAKER_00: But that's the thing.
1:15:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I'm not, I'm undeterred from wanting to do it again.
1:15:33
SPEAKER_00: I don't know when or if that actually happens, or if I can just help out other candidates, like with my knowledge about what happened.
1:15:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:15:39
SPEAKER_00: But that's what we need to find.
1:15:40
SPEAKER_00: That's what and that's our role, you know, because people are gonna be there's gonna be more grassroots candidates in the future.
1:15:45
SPEAKER_00: I think I was part of the first wave that started after like the AOC insurgent era.
1:15:50
SPEAKER_00: There was an insurgent era where a few people got there.
1:15:52
SPEAKER_00: Now I think there's a wave of grassroots candidates.
1:15:54
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's going anywhere.
1:15:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:15:57
SPEAKER_00: We as a society, especially on the on the left side of things or the blue side of things, we're the ones who just need to like realize that's the way it should be.
1:16:08
SPEAKER_00: So we gotta raise the standard of what we come to expect from our politicians.
1:16:12
SPEAKER_00: And that is what we that's how we figure out whether or not they're the good ones worth supporting.
1:16:16
SPEAKER_04: This is going to sound like a dick question, please.
1:16:21
SPEAKER_04: Uh Jimmy Carter is one of my what was one of my rest in power kings.
1:16:27
SPEAKER_04: Oh, he died?
1:16:28
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
1:16:28
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
1:16:30
SPEAKER_04: He was uh w one of the best human beings on the planet.
1:16:34
SPEAKER_04: Super nice.
1:16:35
SPEAKER_04: Uh that being said, his tenure as president not exactly known for great things.
1:16:44
SPEAKER_04: But there's bold things that he did.
1:16:46
SPEAKER_04: You're you're you're going against the point I'm trying to do.
1:16:48
SPEAKER_04: Oh, sorry, go ahead.
1:16:50
SPEAKER_04: Go ahead.
1:16:50
SPEAKER_04: He he he did do some bold things.
1:16:52
SPEAKER_04: Um I mean they also caused him to get his ass kicked in 1980.
1:16:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh again, dude, if RFK not R who which Kennedy ran against him?
1:17:01
SPEAKER_04: Uh Ted.
1:17:02
SPEAKER_00: Ted, Ted Kennedy ran against him.
1:17:04
SPEAKER_00: He split the if you take out Ted Kennedy, he probably gets re-elected.
1:17:08
SPEAKER_00: I reject this notion that we get to pick on Jimmy Carter for losing because he was a bad president.
1:17:13
SPEAKER_00: He was a great domestic, he had great domestic policy, wasn't perfect, especially when it came to the highway system separate.
1:17:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay, maybe he was not that great.
1:17:20
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:17:20
SPEAKER_00: But he amnesty to draft dodgers.
1:17:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh he he did reintegrate.
1:17:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was, yeah, the pen, yeah, the people who, you know, actually built it, by the way.
1:17:31
SPEAKER_04: Was he the Abraham Accords?
1:17:33
SPEAKER_04: I don't remember.
1:17:34
SPEAKER_04: Uh, but I mean he's a good thing.
1:17:35
SPEAKER_04: He's also helped strengthen unions.
1:17:37
SPEAKER_00: There's like a lot of shit that he did.
1:17:39
SPEAKER_00: And Kennedy was like, no, it's my turn.
1:17:41
SPEAKER_00: And then he was like, nah.
1:17:42
SPEAKER_00: But that's why Reagan won anyway.
1:17:44
SPEAKER_04: Well, the thing is, and a lot of that is because he was kind of a nice guy.
1:17:48
SPEAKER_04: Like he was too good of a guy to be a good politician.
1:17:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:17:53
SPEAKER_04: Are you too good of a dude?
1:17:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm a fucking asshole.
1:17:56
SPEAKER_00: I just decide to use it for good.
1:17:58
SPEAKER_00: There are people who have been bullied their entire lives.
1:18:00
SPEAKER_00: There are people who've been overlooked their entire lives.
1:18:02
SPEAKER_00: I know what that's like.
1:18:03
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it's like to be at a certain level when I don't look the way that I do, but I know what that's like.
1:18:08
SPEAKER_00: I am perfectly capable of being a dick to people.
1:18:12
SPEAKER_00: I just decide that I will use that power for the people who deserve it.
1:18:16
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between that.
1:18:17
SPEAKER_00: Lyndon B.
1:18:18
SPEAKER_00: Johnson, for example, maybe not a great guy, but he got a lot of legislative shit done both as a senator and president because he was a dick to people who deserved it.
1:18:26
SPEAKER_00: Maybe somebody who didn't and he was just wheeling that thing too much.
1:18:29
SPEAKER_04: Well, yeah, he would like have his aides come in as he was sitting on the John.
1:18:32
SPEAKER_04: Like they would see his dick care.
1:18:34
SPEAKER_04: That was a power play.
1:18:35
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly.
1:18:35
SPEAKER_04: Very much.
1:18:36
SPEAKER_04: It wasn't he was because he was a country boy.
1:18:37
SPEAKER_04: Bring you in and like, yeah, yeah.
1:18:38
SPEAKER_04: It was his own.
1:18:39
SPEAKER_04: I won't go that far.
1:18:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe I would, I don't know.
1:18:41
SPEAKER_00: If it's for the good of the country, right?
1:18:43
SPEAKER_00: If it's for the John Lewis Act, which I think is the floor for voting rights, not the not the ceiling.
1:18:49
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, that's the thing.
1:18:51
SPEAKER_00: I've gone to in my community organizing gig, I go into the lion's den all the time, and I'm a dick to the industry or I'm a dick to a bad faith politician.
1:19:01
SPEAKER_00: There's there's article, there's uh radio spots on MPR where I call out a sitting congressman for being a fucking asshole.
1:19:08
SPEAKER_00: Like the that's the part that I don't like, is I think we confuse goodness with softness.
1:19:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:19:19
SPEAKER_00: You can be good and you can be a dick in the best way possible at the same time.
1:19:24
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what we need.
1:19:26
SPEAKER_00: The standard of goodness does not change.
1:19:28
SPEAKER_00: Your actions and whatever standards of decency that's tied to that, throw those out the fucking window.
1:19:33
SPEAKER_00: Because the other side has.
1:19:35
SPEAKER_00: The other side has.
1:19:36
SPEAKER_00: So screw it.
1:19:37
SPEAKER_00: Screw it.
1:19:38
SPEAKER_00: Be as a like I said, when the other side is the way that they are, then we have to be as obnoxious about the truth and obnoxious about decency and dignity and opportunity and equality, like you were saying, as they are about all the bullshit that they present.
1:19:54
SPEAKER_00: All of it.
1:19:55
SPEAKER_00: That requires you to be a little bit of a dick.
1:19:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:19:58
SPEAKER_04: So whenever you uh get elected president, can you don't even know what I was gonna say, man.
1:20:05
SPEAKER_04: I was gonna ask to be vice president.
1:20:07
unknown: Sure.
1:20:08
SPEAKER_04: I'm probably not gonna get you any electoral votes.
1:20:10
SPEAKER_04: So I don't need it at that point.
1:20:11
SPEAKER_04: And I'll be more of a figurehead anyway, you know, which I am really good at, dude.
1:20:15
SPEAKER_04: Well, that's vice president.
1:20:16
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, man.
1:20:16
SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm not much a workhorse.
1:20:18
SPEAKER_04: But I am a show horse, though.
1:20:19
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, there you go.
1:20:20
SPEAKER_04: Perfect.
1:20:20
SPEAKER_04: Awesome.
1:20:22
SPEAKER_04: Um Mr.
1:20:23
SPEAKER_04: President to be, uh huh.
1:20:24
SPEAKER_04: Thank you for acting out with me.
1:20:26
SPEAKER_04: Hey, brother.
1:20:26
SPEAKER_04: This is a pleasure.
1:20:27
SPEAKER_04: Thanks for having me.
1:20:28
SPEAKER_04: Though, Tim, this was fucking awesome.