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Guest Bill Reeside Speaks About Running for SC US Congress District One · Conversations With the Hoff

1:12
SPEAKER_02: It's a beautiful day on the South Strand.
1:14
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Conversations with the Hoff.
1:17
SPEAKER_02: I'm Steve Hoffman, your host, and with me in the studio today are two Liberty Crack Media regulars, Randy Oporowski and Trip Detmering.
1:28
SPEAKER_02: I don't know how regular we are, but yeah.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: What a fiber.
1:34
SPEAKER_02: We also have a special call-in guest who is seeking the South Carolina Libertarian Party nomination to run for the first congressional district, a state currently being held by Nancy Mace.
1:47
SPEAKER_02: Our guest today is Bill Reeside.
1:51
SPEAKER_02: He was born and raised in Malvern, Pennsylvania, and has lived in Virginia, North Carolina, North New York, and South Carolina.
2:02
SPEAKER_02: He owns some property in Edisto Island since 2004, and that's where he currently makes his home.
2:10
SPEAKER_02: His professional background spends 40 plus years in the nuclear power and nuclear research fields.
2:17
SPEAKER_02: As a nuclear engineer and manager, he supported construction operations and maintenance at nuclear facilities across the Eastern U.S.
2:27
SPEAKER_02: and internationally.
2:29
SPEAKER_02: He was named the Project Manager of the Year in 2017 for a multi-million dollar corporation.
2:38
SPEAKER_02: He has seen firsthand the burdens created by excessive regulation, wasteful government spending, and federal overreach.
3:00
SPEAKER_02: And he's even built homes in five foreign countries.
3:05
SPEAKER_02: As a candidate for U.S.
3:06
SPEAKER_02: House, he will be focused on establishing fiscal discipline, protecting civil liberties, and promoting free market solutions.
3:16
SPEAKER_02: He believes the Federal Government should be smaller, more efficient, and firmly limited to the roles enumerated in the Constitution.
3:26
SPEAKER_02: Sounds like a constitutional libertarian to me.
3:28
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
3:29
SPEAKER_02: So welcome to the show, Bill.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: You've captured uh everything perfectly, except it is Malvern, Pennsylvania, but that's okay.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay, great.
3:41
SPEAKER_02: And where is that?
3:43
SPEAKER_00: That's the southeastern Pennsylvania, about 20 miles west of Philadelphia.
3:47
SPEAKER_02: Okay, great.
3:49
SPEAKER_02: So uh I guess to start the show, um the the question that probably is on everybody's mind is why do you want to be the next representative from South Carolina for Congressional District No.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the the number one reason is the country is failing from within.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: The greatest threat to our country is not Iran, but the greatest threat to our country is that we've become constitutionally unbalanced.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: The founder's genius was creating three branches of government that would have specific roles and have checks and balances on each other.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: And over the last hundred years, we have let our uh government get way out of balance.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: The Congress has given away way too many of its authorities, and the executives, of course, will take it.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: When Congress gives away its authorities, the executive will jump up and take it.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: So I'm running to restore that balance, which will lead to all those things you mentioned in the bio.
4:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, on your web page, you uh you have a bunch of uh issues there.
5:00
SPEAKER_02: Primarily, you you say they want to restore Article I powers of Congress.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: And uh could you talk a little bit about that, uh presidential tariffs and all the other good things?
5:13
SPEAKER_00: The two most obvious ones that have been in the news recently and really should have been in the news for the last 30 or 40 years, is the uh authorization to declare war.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: Article one clearly states that Congress has that authority.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: And since 1945, the executives in uh in our government, which is a mix of Republicans and Democrats, have put us in endless wars.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Iraq twice, Vietnam, Korea, we're even at war with Cuba again by blockading them.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: And Congress keeps putting forth these authorizations to use military force, and the executive abuses it.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: They're still the executives have been abusing it since uh 9-11, and Congress refuses to repeal that authorization to use military force, and it's just an open door for executives to to take us to war unnecessarily.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: So that's one problem.
6:10
SPEAKER_02: Seems like Congress never lets a crisis go to waste after 9-11.
6:15
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that when they started that uh AUMF authorization for use of military force?
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely, and it's still in effect, and every executive since, again, both Democrats and Republicans have used it to take us into unnecessary wars.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: The second one is tariffs.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: Again, Congress has the authority to lay taxes.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: It's laid out very specifically in the Constitution, and yet, for unknown reasons, Congress passes these emergency authorizations for the executive to lay tariffs or taxes on the American people.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: And it's a disaster.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: Tariffs are taxes, and they're leading to inflation.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: So, again, I want to immediately repeal all those emergency authorizations.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: And right now, we're depending on the courts to rein in the executive branch, and Congress should be just doing its job, and we wouldn't need the courts to rein in the executives.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: Those are two very specific examples.
7:21
SPEAKER_05: Do you think that the abdication of making these decisions by Congress is because these congressional people want to keep their hands, I guess, clean for their re-elections?
7:35
SPEAKER_05: And uh I I personally think that maybe uh the big solution might be term limits.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: Man, you you read my mind.
7:47
SPEAKER_05: I read your book, Bill.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: The answer to your question is yes, and your solution is right down my alley.
7:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, Congress, again, the founders were geniuses.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: They set up the House of Representatives to be elected every two years so that those folks would be closest to the people and held accountable to the people every two years.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: But unfortunately, the power of incumbency, the power of money, the power of name recognition has overwhelmed that that goal of keeping the folks in the House of Representatives close to the people.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: And so instead of taking the risk, doing the right things, incumbents fear losing their power.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: Now, I would add one corollary to what you said.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: It's not just that they're afraid of losing their power.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: If the United States government was shrunk by about 60 or 70 percent in terms of dollars, the power that they have would be very much less than it is now.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: And if the power is less, then the influence of lobbyists and other uh outside forces would be less, and it would empower Congress to do the right thing.
9:03
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: Now, term limits.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: I have signed the uh USTL, which is the United States Term Limits Organization.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: I've signed their pledge to serve only three terms in the Congress.
9:29
SPEAKER_02: Excellent.
9:30
SPEAKER_02: You talk about restoring Article I of the Constitution.
9:34
SPEAKER_02: So so yes, Congress has to take its authority back again, but what about Article I, Section 8?
9:41
SPEAKER_02: They should only be limited to certain enumerated powers.
9:45
SPEAKER_02: They've gone way beyond that.
9:48
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a reason we're again, there's a reason we're called the United States of America.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: I always try to use that phrase for two reasons, because it reminds us that we are United States.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: We happen to have 50 of them.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: We are not America.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Canada is America, Mexico is America, South America is America.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: So I use always use the phrase phrase United States of America to remind us we are states.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: And I am a huge proponent of pushing things back to the states that have been taken over by Congress.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: And I've got a couple examples of those if you want to go into them.
10:30
SPEAKER_02: How about uh telling us about 1913, the direct election of senators rather than the states?
10:37
SPEAKER_02: You know, they kind of lost uh the what do they call it, the the the rights, sovereign rights of the states in 1913?
10:45
SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: That was a major change that uh, again, gave away some of the powers of the states.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: You mentioned uh you're a nuclear engineer and you brought up Iran.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: I I wanted to ask you this at the county meeting uh you went to in Ori County.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: What is your overall view of this whole Iran situation?
11:08
SPEAKER_01: I know Israel has like 300 plutonium nuclear bombs, and Marco Rubio said Israeli action pulled us into Iran and they bombed them in Midnight Hammer, and now we're bombing them again, and oil's$110 a barrel.
11:28
SPEAKER_01: And just what your overall view is.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: I think Nancy Mace has sort of hedged on this.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: Yes, she has.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: She has.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: I just actually, right before I was while I was waiting for you guys to call me, I put my daily Facebook post up, made it very clear, uh, I do not favor in any way this war in Iran.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: No way.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: And if I was sitting in Congress right now, if I was sitting in Nancy Mace's seat, I would not vote for this$200 billion in supplemental funding.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely would not vote for it.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Um Iran is not a threat.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Iran with a nuclear weapon is not a threat.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: Nuclear weapons have been used once, and that was obviously at the end of World War II, and the absolute mass destruction that those two weapons uh display to us has kept other countries from using them for the last 80 years.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And I would prefer to see them go away entirely, uh, but a lot of countries feel like that they're an insurance policy.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: So I would not be in favor of this war in Iran.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh and if nothing else, logically, and I'm a problem solver.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: I look at what's the data that says uh we have a problem.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: If Iran's enrichment of uranium to 60 percent is the biggest problem the United States has, then we should be at war in Pakistan, North Korea, we should invade Russia, we should invade France.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: France has nuclear weapons.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: Israel.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: Those things just Israel, those things just don't make sense.
13:05
SPEAKER_05: I I do agree we should invade France.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know what, you know what General George Patton said about France in World War II?
13:14
SPEAKER_04: What's that?
13:15
SPEAKER_00: He said he'd he said he'd rather face one German brigade than have two French brigades behind him.
13:25
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'd like to move on to some other issues that are brought up in your uh webpage.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: You talk about reforming Social Security and Medicare.
13:35
SPEAKER_02: If you listen to uh past episodes of Conversations with the Hoff, we've discussed uh privatization of both of those uh at length.
13:43
SPEAKER_02: So what what do you mean by stabilize and personalize Social Security?
13:49
SPEAKER_00: Um actually I am a devotee of the Cato organization.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: I've I use their polic policy solutions to drive what I'm going to do when I'm in Congress.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: And yes, when I say uh stabilize and personalize Social Security, the number one thing is Social Security is gonna start running out of money in about 2032.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Some say 2033, some say 2032.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: And if you're on Social Security right now, you should go home and take a calculator out.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: And if you're getting$1,000 a month from Social Security starting in 2032, that number's gonna go to 800 and it's gonna continue to go down.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: So it needs to be stabilized.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: The last time this happened and it got attention was when Ronald Reagan was in office, and unfortunately, they had to take two actions.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: They extended the retirement age out to 67, but they also had to raise taxes.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: And I want to get in front of this six years before it starts running out of money.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: So stabilizing it means we're going to have to do a couple of things, and number one is we're gonna have to push the ages out.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, having folks whose life expectancy is now close to 80 be able to get Social Security at age 62, just it just doesn't make any economic sense whatsoever.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: We are a healthier society.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: Um we're living to late 70s and early 80s in good health.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: So the ages are gonna have to be pushed back.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: And although I don't like the idea of raising taxes, I would want the experts to tell me if raising the cap on Social Security moves the needle.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: If it moves the needle, we may have to uh re take away the cap on spending.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: If it doesn't move the needle, then I certainly would not push to raise taxes just for emotional reasons.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: And then the personalization part is I want to start immediately taking a small percentage of what employers and employees now pay and start putting that into personal accounts, just like a 401k.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: And it might be one-tenth of one percent to start to keep the system fiscally sound, but eventually Generations Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie will start having a personalized retirement account that will make them all millionaires.
16:15
SPEAKER_02: There are countries out there who did privatize Social Security.
16:20
SPEAKER_02: Peru is a good example, and Singapore.
16:23
SPEAKER_02: Has the Cato Institute ever gone into in-depth on how we could eventually privatize Social Security?
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're page 271 of the Libertarian Mind.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: I got it right here next to me.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah, you can probably and and again, the current president with his bombastic way of doing things, these Trump accounts, is really a privatized uh retirement account for children.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: Now, it's a it's a not the best way to do it.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: But um yeah, it can be done very easily.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: Just you just basically turn Social Security into a 401k.
17:04
SPEAKER_02: With the national debt where it is today, I think we need to do everything possible to stop having the government interfere in functions that are not outlined in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
17:16
SPEAKER_02: And there's nothing in there that says that Congress has a responsibility to provide you with a living after you're age 65.
17:23
SPEAKER_02: I I didn't read it.
17:24
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you read it.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: No, I believe you're I believe you're correct on that one.
17:29
SPEAKER_02: Also, uh one of my first episodes in conversation with the Hoff had to do with the Affordable Care Act.
17:36
SPEAKER_02: Obamacare was a disaster then, and it's even a worse disaster today.
17:41
SPEAKER_02: And you talk about stabilizing and personalizing Medicare.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: Right.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: Medicare should be turned into, just like Social Security can be turned into a 401k, Medicare can be turned into a health savings account.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: So I believe roughly right uh when you're working, about about 1.5% of your salary goes to Medicare, and your employer puts in another percentage, and I think there's some kind of sliding scale there.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: But roughly 3% of your salary is going to Medicare, which ends up in the hands of insurers.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: So again, let that 1.45% of the employer of employees' uh salary, if we're gonna have a government-funded system at all, uh, let that 1.45% go into an HSA.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: And when you're young and healthy, when you start working at age 16 and you're not using the medical services and and uh products, you can build that account up, and then when you get to 40s, 50s, 60s, when you have to start using it, you'll have again, you'll have hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you all you'll need is catastrophic insurance.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, we can privatize, uh and I like to use the word personalized, and I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you, it's because the word privatized just immediately turns off any voter.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: So I use the word personalized, but you can turn Medicare into a personalized account, just like an HSA.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, the second piece of the disaster of Obamacare is we have to commoditize medical services and uh products.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: There is no reason replacement knees can't be a commodity.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: Replacement hips, they can be a commodity.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: People that say health care is an inalienable right are wrong.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: You can have commodities.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: You should be able to go into your doctor's office and look up at the menu board just like you do at a fast food restaurant.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: Knee replacement, X thousands of dollars, hip replacement, cough and cold, flu shot,$22, whatever it is.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: We can commoditize health care, the services, and the products.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: And one way to separate that out and start making it a commodity is for Congress to immediately take away the tax protection of employee-provided health care.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: It's doubly protected from taxes.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: If we take that away, people will have to start paying for their own health care, and they'll start paying attention to what it really costs, and that will drive the cost down.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: We have to commoditize health care.
20:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've read that throughout the uh different solutions to Medicare or healthcare in the U.S.
20:33
SPEAKER_02: When I went out to buy a new car six months ago, I went to six different car dealers, different manufacturers, different prices, different models.
20:43
SPEAKER_02: It's called freedom of choice.
20:45
SPEAKER_02: And that leads to competition, which leads to lower prices.
20:49
SPEAKER_02: So we need a free market.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: It takes insurance companies that every we all know that third-party payer systems are the worst way to provide a service because it takes the consumer away from the decision making.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: And now the insurance company becomes the bad guy.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: There's no other product in the world where you pay hundreds and thousands of dollars to a quote provider who then spends their entire amount of energy trying to prevent you from getting the service.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
21:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Steve, you want a new car?
21:23
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna have to go through your insurance company, Steve, to buy that new car.
21:27
SPEAKER_02: Now, how ridiculous does that sound?
21:29
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, we do the same thing for healthcare.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: We can commoditize it.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: I would also push very hard as in with legislation.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: As an example, the first step is in Congress, I would basically tell the executive branch for all the thousands and thousands and thousands of federal workers, we are no longer going to provide employer-provided health care.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: Now, we will make employees whole.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: If we're spending$10,000 per employee on health care, perhaps we raise their salary$10,000 at a one-time shot, but now you're on your own.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Go commoditize health care, products and services.
22:08
SPEAKER_02: When you do get to Congress, you may want to invite a bunch of Canadian citizens to come before a uh a board to talk to Congress about how great and wonderful government health care is in Canada.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: I'll do it.
22:26
SPEAKER_02: And yes, I'm being facetious.
22:27
SPEAKER_02: If they can live long enough.
22:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: My wife, uh my wife was actually born in Canada, but uh she left when she was five, so I can't use her as an example of why the United States is better.
22:39
SPEAKER_02: You need an MRI scan?
22:41
SPEAKER_02: Oh, no problem.
22:41
SPEAKER_02: We have an opening uh one year from today.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's but Yeah, oh yeah.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: The British the British healthcare system is just awful as well.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: It's just awful.
22:52
SPEAKER_02: Okay, the the next thing on your website, which we definitely need, when I mentioned the national debt, we need fiscal discipline and government reform.
23:03
SPEAKER_02: And you talk about restoring the balance of power, you talk about bringing back fiscal discipline, and fixing broken federal systems through hands on problem solving.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you three my three Ps.
23:18
unknown: Uh
23:19
SPEAKER_00: And actually, the current president stole one of my peas.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: He did the right thing, but he stole one.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: My three Ps were the post office, the penny, and public broadcasting, as three examples of what you just said.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: The penny need needed to go away a long time ago.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: And now I understand if you do a little research, the nickel is even worse.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: The nickel costs about 15 cents to make, so we need to go after the nickel, but that's that's another story.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: So we got to get rid of things like when the when the penny costs so much more to make than it's worth, we gotta get rid of it.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: Now, the other two Ps are a perfect example.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: The post office.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: The post office is actually mentioned in the Constitution.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: It says Congress may fund and create a post office.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: Now, that was in the 1780s.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: Who today really believes the post office is necessary?
24:13
SPEAKER_00: It is not necessary.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: You look up the word anachronism in the dictionary and post office, the United States Post Office will be Postal Service, excuse me, will be number one on the list of anachronisms.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: The current forever stamp is about, I believe, 70 cents.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: The leader of the post office just came out publicly and said, We are going broke, and I want the post the stamp to be$2.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: He said it in public.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: He admitted it.
24:43
SPEAKER_01: How many millions a year does the post office lose?
24:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh, billions.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: They lose billions per quarter.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: So that's a perfect example of where Congress, again, you gotta have problem solvers that say, look, the post office was necessary when we were expanding westward.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: We needed ways to communicate.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have the telegraph, we didn't have the telephone, we didn't have computers, we didn't have email, we didn't have UPS or FedEx.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: Um so it's an anachronism.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: It's 230 years old.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work, it's not necessary.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: I would immediately look at getting rid of the post office.
25:26
SPEAKER_05: Or rethinking it, like it could be a group of maybe a hundred people that uh all they're in charge of is to make sure that we have uniform post box rules and uniform zip code zip coding.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, and then that's it.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: And then let private enterprise take over.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: Now I know I've looked at this and you know the uh the post office says, well, nobody will take over the last mile.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, FedEx and and you you order stuff.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, sometimes it comes in your mailbox and the FedEx truck doesn't deliver to you.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: Private enterprise will figure that out.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: I guarantee you they'll figure it out.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: And the argument that that rural people have to have the post office, when you make the decision as a family to live in, you know, the wilds of Wyoming, that's one of the decisions you have, what's one of the pieces of information you need to make that decision?
26:29
SPEAKER_00: The rest of the country should not pay for your decision to live in rural Wyoming.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, the post office has got to go.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: Public broadcasting is really government broadcasting, so that should change from a P to a G.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: There should be zero dollars.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: You listen, do you a little thought experiment here?
26:48
SPEAKER_00: Listen to NPR for six hours and listen to how many private listen to how many private companies fund NPR.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: If NPR wants to be on the radio, they can go get the MacArthur Foundation and everybody else will fund them if they if they have a good product.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: So those are my three Ps.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: We've got to get rid of them.
27:10
SPEAKER_05: All it would happen is it would decentralize uh uh uh the uh broadcasting done by colleges and universities throughout the country.
27:21
SPEAKER_05: And then that's it.
27:22
SPEAKER_05: The the all the hardware, all the people would still be intact.
27:26
SPEAKER_05: They would just go back to being decentralized where they don't have uh their network anymore.
27:34
SPEAKER_05: And that's all the public broadcasting.
27:36
SPEAKER_05: It wouldn't be that catastrophic and it would save us millions.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: Here again, uh it's not a it's not gonna move the needle on the deficit, but it's an example of the pro the quote, the problem that NPR and public broadcasting solved 40, 50 years ago.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: It's not a problem.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: The problem is not there anymore.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: We have unlimited ways of getting information now.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: We don't need the government running radio stations, television stations.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: We just don't need it.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: It's just not necessary.
28:10
SPEAKER_05: And it was pretty much not even the government, it was just left-wing academics that were and are running it.
28:15
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: And it's not our even if it was liber even if it was libertarian oriented, I still don't want the government buying it and paying for it.
28:25
SPEAKER_05: No, that's what Liberty Crack Media is for.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: Right.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
28:28
SPEAKER_02: Going back to post offices.
28:30
SPEAKER_02: Ever heard of Lysander Spooner?
28:33
SPEAKER_02: No.
28:33
SPEAKER_02: He was a libertarian.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: Oh, he was a libertarian, and he established his own post office.
28:39
SPEAKER_02: And the government, the government shut him down.
28:41
SPEAKER_02: The government does not like competition.
28:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: Well, and it's interesting.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh my I've done my done the genealogy, and I won't make this long, but I've done the genealogy on my father's side of the family.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: And one of my ancestors uh actually ran stagecoaches that were the kind of the predecessor of the widespread post office.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: He used to run the mail from basically the Baltimore, Philadelphia area to the Cumberland Gap, which at that time uh in our history was really kind of the western edge of the United States.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: This was pre-Civil War, post-revolutionary.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: The early 1800s, basically.
29:18
SPEAKER_05: Pony Express, yeah.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, he he ran those stagecoaches.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: He was known as the Red Admiral because his stagecoaches were all painted red.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: And when the trains started, you know, coming in, he uh evidently staged some very famous races between his horse-drawn stagecoaches and the railroad.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: And it was interesting.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: For a while there, he would win, but the railroad eventually won and he went out of business.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: So you're gonna be running for the first congressional district of South Carolina, and you talk about local focus, um strengthening the low country.
29:57
SPEAKER_02: How do you plan on serving your constituents back in the low country?
30:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the the number one thing I can do, and and this is gonna sound more like a national issue than a local issue, but the low country of South Carolina, which is Buford County, Collotton County, Dorchester, Berkeley, and uh uh who am I leaving out?
30:18
SPEAKER_00: Jasper County, we are growing phenomenally in numbers.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: And that's good news.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: Growth is always good, but we are also aging precipitously.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: We are attracting retirees who, of course, are already old, and then we're the population that's here is also aging.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: We have a we have a margaritaville down in Bluffton.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: We have at least two uh gigantic retirement communities, again, in Buford County and up in Berkeley County.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: So the number one thing I can do for the low country is fix Social Security and Medicare.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: And the number two thing is if I get get the when I get the federal deficit down, inflation will go down.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: So those are the two number one things.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: Now they don't sound like local issues, but all 750,000 people in my district, whether you're age 16 or age 76, you're affected by inflation and you're affected by the fact that Social Security is going broke and Medicare is going broke.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: So those are the things that I can do at the national level that will impact all 750,000 of my constituents.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: Now, once the budget is balanced and there is federal money to go to things perhaps like infrastructure, uh hurricane relief, of course I will advocate for the low country to uh to get what's necessary and what's appropriate at the federal level.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: But my number, I'm I'm really nationalizing this election because Social Security, Medicare, endless wars, uh the demographic issue in this country.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: We haven't talked about immigration yet.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: I hope we can get to that.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: That's another thing I can do for the low country.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: Um got to get inflation down by 15 to 57.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: Since COVID started, national inflation, I've looked at three or four different uh organizations.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: Inflation's roughly been, the total inflation's been about 27%.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: I can guarantee you, most of my constituents have not had 27% raises in their salaries over the last five or six years.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: They just haven't.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: They're losing ground because the federal government is overspending and driving inflation.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: If you live in uh coastal South Carolina, you're probably a retiree and you're probably living on a fixed income.
32:40
SPEAKER_02: So you're right.
32:41
SPEAKER_02: Inflation definitely impacts the quality of our lives.
32:46
SPEAKER_02: So I have a final question for you today.
32:49
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
32:50
SPEAKER_02: So why should the delegates for the upcoming Libertarian Party of South Carolina nominating convention nominate you to run for the South Carolina Congressional District, number one?
33:02
SPEAKER_00: Yes, uh the number one reason is that I am a libertarian.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: I was a libertarian probably before there was actually a party.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: The the founding of the Libertarian Party was roughly the early 1970s.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: I became eligible to vote in 1976.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: That's the last time I voted for a Republican or a Democrat.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: I voted for Gerald Ford.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: And since then, I have not never voted for a Republican or Democrat.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: So I am a Libertarian.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: Um I just am a libertarian.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: It's uh economic freedom, personal freedom are what I believe have created this country and allowed it to prosper for 250 years.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: So I asked the Libertarian Party of South Carolina to look at my voting record, look at the issues, look at my policy solutions, and definitely send a problem solver to Congress, not a problem creator.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: So that's what I'm asking the South Carolina Libertarian Party to do on April 11th in Columbia.
34:04
SPEAKER_02: Okay, very good response.
34:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thank you.
34:06
SPEAKER_02: Um it's gonna be an interesting race.
34:09
SPEAKER_02: I was looking at uh the Google today, and did you know there are eight Democrats running for that seat, and there's also 12 Republicans running for that seat.
34:22
SPEAKER_02: So it'll be a very interesting uh election.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a good thing.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, and Mark good old Mark Sandberg came off the Appalachian Trail and he's gonna run again.
34:31
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's pretty good.
34:31
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
34:32
SPEAKER_05: Well, I since I've got you as the nuclear engineer on the show, we had Larry Sharp on earlier, and uh you may have heard that interview, but we talk about uh Gen 3, Gen 4 nuclear plants, and you could probably speak on this more expertly than anybody else.
34:51
SPEAKER_05: Uh but a lot of people that are, I guess, nuclear plant fearful um it could probably have their fears uh appeased by some an expert like you.
35:06
SPEAKER_05: Do you have any uh comments or or or sure?
35:09
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, absolutely.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: I'll give and I'll keep them short.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll focus on the technology and the economics.
35:14
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: And just for credibility purposes, let me state I held a senior reactor operator license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for 10 years back in the 80s and early 90s.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: So I've had my hands on the controls of a nuclear power plant up here, Charlotte.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: So I'll I'll I'll just do that to give myself some credibility.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: So technologically, the technological issue of commercial nuclear power, they are one of the safest ways to generate electricity.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: And they also can give you bulk electricity.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: And bulk electricity is critical because the alternative energies like solar and wind and hydropower are cyclical.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: They you can't count on them 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: You just can't.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: So they give you this big base load, and they're really good at that.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: And once they're built, they run forever.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: The plant that I uh helped build back in the 70s is now on its third license extension, and the plant can probably go another 20, 40 years very safely.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: So they're great at that.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: The downside is and and the the generations three and four that you're talking about are smaller, more modular, they're easier to build, um the infrastructure needs are not as great, and they're they're gonna be great at the 50 to 100 megawatt um level.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna be great.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: The biggest problem, and I think it's I hate to call it a problem because economically it was good.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: When the geniuses in the fossil fuel industry figured out fracking, they made natural gas almost free.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: And nuclear power plants, no matter how big or small, are very capital intensive and they take a long time to build.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: Once you build them, they're cheap to run and they run forever.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: But the capital intensiveness of them, they can't compete with natural gas.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: And the perfect perfect example in my district is Collatin County.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: Um it makes much more sense to build a big natural gas plant there in Collatin County.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: It can be built in 18 months versus the nuclear plant, which takes eight to ten years, and then the natural gas is almost free.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: So that's the quote problem with nuclear.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: Technologically, great, safe, uh, run forever, run cheaply, but it's that capital intensiveness that doesn't make them competitive with natural gas.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: Did that answer your question?
37:55
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, very good point.
37:56
SPEAKER_02: Okay, Mr.
37:57
SPEAKER_02: Reeside, thank you for being a guest on Conversations with the Hoff.
38:01
SPEAKER_02: I hope our listening audience can now appreciate the need for more libertarians to not only run for public office, but to be elected to public office.
38:12
SPEAKER_02: Libertarian policies and solutions like those presented by Bill Reeside show that you cannot fix government-created problems with big government programs.
38:24
SPEAKER_02: Think about that the next time you enter the voting booth.
38:27
SPEAKER_02: I believe that electing libertarians to public office is essential to making less government, more freedom, as well as less government, more prosperity, the new American reality.
38:41
SPEAKER_02: Conversations with the Hoff is part of the Liberty Crack Media Network.
38:46
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38:52
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38:56
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39:02
SPEAKER_02: And now a word from our glorious leader, the executive director of Liberty Crack Media, Trip Detmering.
39:09
SPEAKER_05: Yes, I want to thank everybody for tuning in to another uh wonderful uh conversations with the Hof.
39:16
SPEAKER_05: Uh tune in next week.
39:17
SPEAKER_05: I'm sure we're gonna have some exciting news guests.
39:20
SPEAKER_05: And also, if you've got uh a taste for some more excitement, tune in to Microsoft Monkeys.
39:26
SPEAKER_05: Microsoft, I did it on Microphone Monkeys.
39:30
SPEAKER_05: But more importantly, if you want to learn more about Bill Reeside and his uh run, go to ReesideforCongress.com.
39:39
SPEAKER_05: That's R-E-E-S-I-D-E for Congress.com.
39:44
SPEAKER_05: And uh Bill, I want to thank you again and everybody get out to go.
39:49
SPEAKER_05: Thank you again.
39:50
SPEAKER_05: Take care everyone.