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Genesis Bordner Running for SC House District 5 · Conversations With the Hoff

• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful day on the South Strand.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Conversations with the Hoff.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Steve Hoffman, your host, and with me in the studio today is the co-host of Liberty Crack Media and all our podcasts, our executive producer, Tripp Detmering.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: We also have a special in-studio guest today, Genesis Bordner.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: She's running for fifth district seat on the Ory County Council, a seat currently held by Tyler's servant.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis comes from a family that's rooted in service.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Engineers, veterans, nurses, and postal workers who help build and maintain the systems that keep America running.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Her great-great-grandfather had laid electrical line at Camp David.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Her great-grandfather served in the Navy, and her great-grandmother made sure that Genesis was a member of the American Legion Auxiliary at age eight.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Many of her immediate family members retired from the United States Postal Service.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: From an early age, she developed a deep respect for hard work, resilience, and the people who keep communities connected.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis experienced homelessness at age 14, but she refused to believe that the American dream couldn't be hers.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: She fought her way through college, often sleeping in her car and working overnight shifts while attending classes during the day.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Through grit and determination, she earned three degrees and built a career as a professional musician, educator, and small business owner.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis is a homeowner, a business owner, and resides in Surfside Beach with her partner and adopted son.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: She's running for county council because she believes regular people are being left out of the decision-making process.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Across Ory County, families are being squeezed, homes are flooding, schools overcrowded, roads failing, costs rising, and wetlands are disappearing.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yet there doesn't seem to be anyone on the council representing or even considering the needs of the residents.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: She is running to change all that.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the show, Genesis.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_06: Thanks for having me, Steve.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: To begin with, I'd like to start off with a kind of a general question.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Why on earth are you running for a seat on the Ory County Council?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're the fastest growing county in the United States, and with fast growth comes a lot of problems.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_06: Sure, I get it.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_06: I guess I should I should start by saying I've always known that I would end up um sticking my feet, sticking my hands, sticking my nose into local politics and public service.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_06: I just knew that I just knew growing up that that was something that I would do.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_06: And when I realized last year that this was the time that I was being called to run for something, um I weighed my options.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_06: I thought about Washington, of course, because I think that's where we all end up kind of magnetized to.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_06: And then thought that was that was over quick.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_06: I was like, no, I don't want to go to Washington for a myriad of reasons.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_06: And then for a brief time, considered going to Columbia, or rather asking the voters if they would send me to Columbia.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and even then I thought, you know, that just feels very out of touch with our day-to-day lives and with where the people should have the most power, which is in small local government.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_06: Um and so after consideration and speaking to a few mentors, I landed on county council because the council is the body, the governing body that has the some of the most influence in what happens in our backyards.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And our founding fathers thought the same thing.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_06: Yep.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, on your um webpage, you have uh numerous issues that uh people can learn about what your stance is.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I understand that you want to uh concentrate on this show on two primary uh topics.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, stop building in the in the wetlands.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_06: Um where do you even begin with this topic?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_06: Uh as wetlands disappear, flooding gets worse.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_06: And I think all of us who live here are acutely aware of the fact that we m live in a wet area.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_06: We live in wetlands, flood-prone areas.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but the more that we fill them in, the more that we develop them, the worse the flooding will get.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_06: And now we're seeing a lot of displaced water flowing into older developments that didn't used to flood, um, especially as the development has taken off.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_06: Steve, you look like you're gonna say something.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, geez, I wonder why he always waits for a pause instead of going in.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, seven or eight years ago, my wife and I drove through a neighborhood behind ours, and uh there was a huge area and it had a big sign, wetlands, or uh some kind of wet drainage area or whatever.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then a year later we drove by the same road and there's bulldozers out there.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and today there's probably 50 or 60 homes out there, and it's all concrete, no more wetland.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how did that happen?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: How can it be a wetland one day and have a housing development on it the next day?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting question.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, a lot of people here in in our area only think of the wetlands that are close to the inland waterway, but they don't understand that uh we have like the Pine Lakes chain of lakes that's in downtown Myrtle Beach because of the development that they've had uh on 67th Avenue um along Kings Highway in the upper, I would say from the 58th Avenue to about 79th Avenue, where they've been developing in in the lower, the wetlands, the swampy areas.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because of that, uh when we've had hurricanes or or tropical storms, there are sections of Myrtle Beach that end up being islands.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: We cannot, I mean, where my my condo is, when it rains, I cannot get out uh in any major direction.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to do this like cool pretzel work even to get around, if if it's possible.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And um so we've seen this development that's gone on over and over again.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and my research has been that the developers have been hand in hand um uh paying off uh uh people in, unfortunately, in academia to help them with falsifying um uh floodwater data.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, this is these unholy alliances that we have got to somehow disconnect and and prevent.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because the local people understand that they're you know that's ridiculous to fill in these these waterways because where's the water gonna go?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: But they're able to slip it by somehow, these councils and everything else, to get the zoning permits to to do these developments.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: What is your plan then to to go forth to thwart this?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because they have been, I guess their plan to thwart us from this is this unholy alliances between the developers and uh the the scientists that that sign off on on giving them their their floodplain uh prediction plats.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Build, build, build the heck with the consequences.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean we have the thing is we've got we've got laws on the books, and they've been able to thwart these laws.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So is a as a councilwoman, what are what are your some of your plans to be able to to thwart this?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_06: So at a at the highest level, and I might get in trouble for saying this, but at the highest level, we have to shed light on these unholy alliances, and we have to refuse to participate in unholy alliances.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_06: Um, which, you know, as I understand, may prove difficult for some.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_06: Um but as someone who is coming in without without institutional background, I mean, I'm a musician.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_06: Um, it's easy.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_06: I think it's I don't feel particularly tempted by big money interests.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_06: And I I don't know, you know, I suppose that as people walk through these positions of power and they get increasingly frustrated with fighting back against these institutions that are thwarting these laws and manipulating these laws.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_06: And look, people, I mean, even at the local level, they're up against big Wall Street interests, especially like D.R.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_06: Horton and huge developers who are coming in here and they have tactics that they have enacted across the country that are designed to tie local municipalities and local councils up in uh litigation and cost taxpayers tons of money fighting against ordinances that make sense and protect local people.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and those are difficult problems for sure.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_06: Um but I think that step one is you have to remove yourself from that money, you know, you you have to.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_06: And I've had conversations with several people involved both in an activist perspective and in a in a like more governing perspective.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_06: And my my attitude is simply like, I'm sorry, but you can't take their money.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_06: Like, because even though I don't think it necessarily turns you into a bad person, right?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_06: Everybody's a hero in their own story.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_06: Everybody has convinced themselves on some level that they're doing something right or good.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_06: Um, when you tie your career or tie your um your mission to someone else's financial interests, it's going to influence your decision making.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_06: So I think that that is a high-level issue.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and then underneath of that is really that we need to follow numbers and data that's coming from sources that don't have a vested interest in developing, right?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_06: And we need to be honest and clear about that.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_06: You mentioned um reporting on the water displacement and compatible land use.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_06: Um, there are tons of smaller groups and smaller institutions, smaller um groups of people who are studying those things, and we need to be amalgamating that kind of data.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_06: Does that answer your question?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: I yeah, it sort of does.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm also gonna address another uh elephant in the room.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be going up against what I call the uh political nepotism that still exists here in um in the low country and particularly in Ori County.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and when I say political nepotism, people understand that most of our my listeners are local, that there are a lot of old families that are here in the the area and their recognized names and so on.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Their f fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers have all been in political power uh for these areas and and so on.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you're gonna be going up against some of this, I'm sure, in in your area.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure who she's gonna be going.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know if what anyway?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Tyler servant, I guess.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Tyler's gonna be coming back.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so his family's an old old Oh yeah, mill servant, big mill servant, yeah.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Made all his money in real estate.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, exactly.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: So um are you gonna be running kind of a gorilla campaign and continue going on with people like this, going into the minor parties and and talking with them at their at their meetings and so on and gathering them together?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of reminds me a little bit.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I are you familiar with Larry Sharp?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_06: The name is ringing a bell, but illuminate me.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, he he is uh he's the thirty third party uh candidate perennially that runs for governor of New York.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's a uh a libertarian, but he is also a good friend of Andrew Yang's.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he came up with the BRO program, BRO, and I can't remember what the it stands for, but essentially what it is is a coalition of people that have uh like-minded interests for specific uh uh, I guess, specific events or or things that they're they're looking at.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh instead of saying, okay, we're gonna marry our whole political philosophies together or anything like that, they point out, okay, we both have interest in getting this type of bill passed, or reducing this part of government, or reducing these taxes over here, or uh eliminating these wasteful programs over here.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, it it it's kind of like that.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you're hopefully you can go out and you know snipe some of the people from uh the what I call the the uh more radical uh independent Republicans, the uh independent-minded uh libertarians, and then even some of the radical independent Democrats, if you can go and get those and find those groups.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there is a ray of hope here in that the uh percentage of independence in the electorate has dramatically increased over the past decade.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, they they far outnumber the number of registered Republicans and Democrats today.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think we can all agree that collectivism of all sorts, including political parties, stink.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even libertarians hate their own party.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um we we would rather have all politics.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: We'd rather all political parties just go away.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but the only reason that we form these political parties is because we need ballot access.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's uh that's essentially the evil that comes along with that.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis, you're also going to be fighting uh obviously the the special interest.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Elected officials today really don't represent the resident or the citizen.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: They want to they want money for their re-election campaigns or election campaigns, and that money comes from special interest groups.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Usually.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: We had the uh chairman of the South Carolina Legislative Freedom Caucus on this show, and he said that in South Carolina today, you have three branches of government.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the lobbyist branch.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's basically what you're up against.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_06: And I think that we're up against that on several levels of government.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: But we're very interested in what you have because what you have and what you're saying is resonating.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh these are things that do uh I mean, these have affected families, homeowners, pocketbooks of working class families across this uh across this area.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that would be great representation if you can get in there and be able to do this.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: But you also wanted to talk about some other things, wasn't it?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the cost of living was one of your Yes.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_06: I kind of want to backtrack a little bit though and kind of answer your point a bit about the predicament that we find ourselves in with the legacy party system.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_06: Um and how it has stifled the free flow of rational ideas.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_06: Um, because it the system as it stands rewards polarization.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_06: Um, especially as like, you know, even if you look at branding psychology, it's easy to understand how we ended up here.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_06: Um in terms of in terms of the party system.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_06: So one of the platforms of the forward party, which is the party, and we we don't like to call ourselves a party.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_06: We prefer to call ourselves forwardists.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but one of the platforms is ranked choice voting.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's one of ours too.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and allowing um that's that's the R in Bro, by the way.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_06: Is ranked choice voting.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_06: I'm gonna have to look that up because that acronym is BRO.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Bro.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_06: Um but uh that's kind of one of the Andrew calls it the Mr.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_06: Yang.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_06: I haven't met him, so I don't know if I should refer to him as his first name.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_05: He's called Andy.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_06: Andy.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_06: Um if you're listening to this.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_06: Um he references it as the what did he call it?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_06: He called it the vent, the vent port in the Death Star.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_06: Is that at the small level, it is much easier to have electoral reform, but it's proven um and at the at our our executives, our party executives have been having conversations in Colombia about ranked choice voting for a couple of years now.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_06: Um in South Carolina is not quite as easy as in some other areas.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_06: However, um, you it begs the question of can the municipalities enact this kind of thing?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_06: You know, presumably in a Republican state, a state that identifies primarily as Republican, where we believe in devolved government and yanking power back down towards the people, presumably the count the the surfside city council couldn't enact ranked choice voting in the at the city level, presumably.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_06: I think that there's research that I need to do.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_06: Um and I think that to another point that you brought up in terms of like the ways that our laws are written and these kind of layers of legacy laws that sometimes people don't fully understand or they've just been at the bottom of the, they've been at the back of the book for so long that people forget them.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_06: And then they suddenly become relevant and they suddenly become leveraged to manipulate, to manipulate and kind of strong arm local governments.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_06: Um, I think that that is a really interesting question that we are dealing with on again on a national level.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_06: And I don't actually like that I keep drawing our attention back to a national level because, like I said at the beginning of this conversation, where we can actually do something is at a local level.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_06: Um but I think that it it stands the quest, it begs the question of okay, at what point do we understand that this pile of bureaucratic this law kind of means this and that law kind of means that, and they kind of don't agree, but they kind of do agree.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_06: At what point do we need to commit to reassessing that um and and kind of trust just cleaning it up?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_06: Just cleaning up the edges.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you're going to defeat the duopoly or the ruling elite, yeah, you might have to go to ranked choice voting.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the state of Alaska already has that.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_06: And uh there are several large cities, I think, that have I think Seattle, don't quote me on that one.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_06: Um New York, I think has ranked choice voting.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_06: So on a smaller level, we are seeing it rise, but we're seeing pushback from bigger institutions against it.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the other thing too we I point out here is that uh South Carolina is not Republican.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um even though it looks real red, uh, it's not a GOP, it's a G-O-B.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: These are all Dixiecrats, these are all old school uh uh Democrats that changed hats uh back in what were we thinking about 1970?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and uh so you've got like Luke Rankin and some of the yeah, these people who are devout Democrats, uh old school Democrats, but they still fly under the Republican, have a lot of power in Colombia and and so on.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: So uh yeah, this is still a very, I guess you'd call it purplish state.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're purple, definitely.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_06: See, and this is the this is the problem with it, is with this two-party system, it is so easy to manipulate voters.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, yeah.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_06: It is so easy to manipulate people who have a background of or a family background of this is how I identify or this is where I'm from, and this these are my core beliefs.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_06: And it's so easy to just say, oh, well, I'm a Republican, so I believe what you believe.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_06: Or so I'm a Democrat, I believe what you believe.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I gotta hit that R button, God forbid the Democrats get in.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and then yet they're what they didn't realize is they're voting for high taxes and a lot of social programs, a lot of programs and a lot of spending, and yeah, things like that.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_06: Well, let me ask you this how many Democrats who are currently holding office are acting like Democrats?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Not not many.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_06: How many Republicans who currently hold office are acting like Republicans?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not many.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well we don't know what a Republican is, but there is no platform in a Republican Party.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, today it's a cult.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then that's also the argument that there's actually a uniparty.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's just yeah, that the they're they're just completely blended.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_06: Well, and this is where Senator Sanders talks about oligarchy.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oligarchy.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oligarchy.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_06: Oligarchy.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and it and this is how we're so funny having a socialist Marxist talking about oligarchy, like that's something foreign to him.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_06: Um Well, and it it's funny because that's how that's kind of how we entered this conversation of like there are three branches of government, and one of those is the lobbyists, and the lobbyists represent the oligarchy.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_05: Amen.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and it's it is a it is a mess, a predicament that we have found ourselves in.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_06: But I'll say this if we don't find a way to change course, the county is going to be in a world of hurt, and we're already in a world of hurt.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_06: Our our infrastructure cannot keep up, and the developers are not paying their fair share.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_06: They're paying, I think.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_06: When the last assessment that I am aware of, the recommendation was that they pay about six thousand dollars per roof.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_06: The county is charging them twelve hundred dollars per roof.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_06: Right?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_06: And then and then they're saying, Oh, well, we don't have the money to do this, and we don't have the money to do that.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_06: Um we better enact a penny tax.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: What now they want to increase the temporary penny tax to two cents.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_06: Temporary penit penny tax is kind of like saying I'm a Democrat or I'm a Republican.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_06: Like the word temporary is a veil.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and I think that most of us are aware of that.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: When's the last time a tax was rescinded?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_06: I saw I thought I saw something in the post and courier about a boat tax being rescinded.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_06: I've seen a lot of luxury taxes being rescinded.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but taxes on your groceries, taxes on your vehicle, taxes on the things, your everyday use items that you need to take your kid to school or that you need to eat.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh those don't seem to be private property ownership is just uh a a myth because we still rent everything from the government.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: You you buy your house, no, you still pay year after year property taxes.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, you know never fully owning uh even with automobiles.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you need to realize that when you go to a restaurant in Ory County, the taxes that you have on your bill are actually higher than uh the pre-mondam dame taxes in New York City.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like 35%.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's over 11%.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_06: I know with the consideration of the additional sales tax in Myrtle Beach, it would be definitely the highest taxes in the state.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_06: So and it the it begs the question, we have more taxes and the same problems.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, because uh supposedly, uh allegedly, uh it's supposed to be for infrastructure, but y like we've been pointing out, our infrastructure is crumbling.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_06: Well, there's no plan.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_06: They don't seem to they I have not seen productive.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_06: And if you watch some of these council meetings, they'll sometimes open it by joking about how they've talked about the same issue for 35 meetings in a row and they don't have any meaningful plans.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they spend their money on on retreats so they can discuss it at at these little you know vacation spots.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: They uh they they have their cousins and uncles that have uh uh advisory groups and stuff that they'll spend money to do studies that they don't do anything with, but they spend tens of thousands of dollars on these studies and it goes into their their uncles and cousins' pockets.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, keep in mind that the taxes have a negative impact on most of the residents of Ory County.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us are old folks, we're retirees.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: We came down here because we thought we had a low cost of living.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the increase in taxes has a definite negative impact on the fact that we're living on a fixed income.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Ladies and gentlemen, the pot had just explained that he's old.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Compared to other people, yes.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Stay away from my gummies.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, don't touch my gummies.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Not a pretty sign.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_06: I think this is elder abuse.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the abuse is just beginning.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Genesis.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you're here, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners are interested about the forward party.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: You did talk a little bit, but I understand there are actually six party platforms for the forward forwardest movement.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: How's that sound?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Planks on the platform.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_06: Planks on the platform.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Planks.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_06: Well, I actually brought uh Andy's book.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I was our good close friend Andy.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_06: I think if he's hearing this, he I hope he's giggling right now.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_06: Andy, I read your book.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_06: Um so there are six key principles, and I hope you'll indulge me if I can just read some of them straight out of here.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_06: Um so ranked choice vote voting and open primaries.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_06: Uh party primaries disenfranchise the majority of voters.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_06: And and this is part of the reason why I think people are are disengaging from the process because they know on a fundamental level, even though they can't explain to you how it happened or why it is that way, they know that they're being disenfranchised.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_06: They look around and they see every single person I talk to believes this, and yet our governing bodies are still doing the opposite of what we need.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_06: They know.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_06: Um, in 80% of cases, the general election is essentially a foreordained conclusion.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_06: I think there was a New York Democrat who pretty famously said, I don't care who does the voting as long as I do the nominating.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_06: Um, candidates spend millions trashing their lone opponent, making us all more cynical.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_06: And ranked choice voting better captures voters' true preferences and enables a more dynamic and truly representative democracy while addressing all of these problems.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and so the party believes that it's the key to unlocking true reform, but that it has to happen at the grass level.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_06: It has to start at the grass level at least.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_06: Um, which is why I talk a lot about uh yanking power back down.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_06: Um, because if we were able to if we were able to enact this style of voting and find ways to encourage participation and also reward people's participation in the electoral process, that's how you yank the power back down towards the grass.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_06: Um but right now the the avenues of communication between the will of the voters and the actions of the governing body, those avenues are closed.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_06: Um ranked choice voting is a way of opening them.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_06: So the uh second point here is fact-based governance.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_06: Um and this is something that we touched on a bit when we talked about the um floodplains assessments and how one hit one day it was marked a wetlands and the next day they were paved in paradise.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_06: Um politicians today compete in messaging and news cycles.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_06: They should compete on results.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_06: The only way to know how you're doing is if you agree on facts and if all parties can agree on one version of reality.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_06: We should be very concerned about political leaders who don't accept that measurements of social and economic health have weight and that science is real.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_06: Spin must have limits.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_06: Um and this is why I talk to small media outlets such as yourselves, right?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_06: Who are not we talk about filtering propaganda, not uh profiting off of scaring people.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_06: Um parties can differ on what goals they would like to pursue, but we need to share a baseline of where we are and how we are doing.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_06: And so uh Andy, he talks about um when we are giving addresses to the people and when we are when we are essentially reporting to the people how things are going, we need to be giving ourselves report cards and we need to be measuring things like quality of life, graduation rates, um death by death by hopelessness, which I think for us right now and for the past generation has been manifesting as uh drug addiction, um, death by drug addiction, which has touched my life, which is how I ended up with an adopted son.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but how often do we see these things measured by our governing bodies, you know, and used as a measurement of how well we are governing our governing ourselves?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_06: Um so the next one would be human-centered capitalism, kind of leads me next into that.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_06: We measure our economic health based on GDP, stock market prices, and headline unemployment rates.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_06: Meanwhile, life expectancy is declining, deaths of despair are surging, and millions of Americans are getting pushed aside.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_06: Our economic system should be geared to benefit us with life expectancy, average income, and affordability, childhood success rates, mental health, clean air and water, and other measurements of our well-being front and center.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_06: We must humanize our economy to work for us instead of continuing to see ourselves as inputs in a system.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_06: And I feel strongly that this plays into what we talked about with cost of living here and the way that the council has attempted to address uh the housing.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_06: What's interesting because we're the fastest growing county in the country, but we still have a housing shortage.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_06: Um and that is, you can trace that back to one or two ordinances that were geared towards actually kind of slowing population boom, um, but ultimately positioned us in a way where housing is year over year one per it's it's underpacing population growth by about one percent.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_06: And that's compounding year over year, which can explain how supply and demand is of course in play here, but the supply isn't actually keeping up with demand in the way that it would appear according to our land usage.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_06: So not all housing is created equal.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_06: We need to be seeing housing as shelter before we see it as investment, which is hard for me too.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I'm not here trying to demonize regular real estate agents who are trying to make a living.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_06: And real estate is a is a cornerstone of the local economy here.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and that's good.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_06: Like nobody wants to, at least I don't want to see that disappear.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_06: I don't want to see real estate agents fall off.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_06: I want to buy more real estate.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_06: Like I get it.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_06: Um there's I see a differentiation between real regular real estate agents and giant developers who are gobbling up our land, who are getting blanket approvals on, I think there's something like 48,000 contracts that are haven't even been like fully processed yet of just gobbling up and gobbling up land and then using it incompatibly with what the land is actually how the land is actually serving like the uh landscape and the um local ecology.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_06: Um I think that that all has to do with the fact that the capitalism right now is not human-centered.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_06: The capitalism right now is really profit and profit, out of state profit-centered, even.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_06: Um yeah.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_06: So I know I've been gabbing for a long time.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_06: I've gotten through three of these.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_06: Shall I keep going?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_06: Go.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, you got uh another four or five minutes.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_06: Okay, I'll talk really fast.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_06: Give me the coffee.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_06: Uh effective and modern government.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_06: Americans have lost our faith in our government at multiple levels because it often seems hopelessly bureaucratic and behind the times.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_06: And it is.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_06: Interacting with our government should be easy and painless, even elevating instead of something to dread.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_06: In many ways, the best way for us to restore faith in our ability to accomplish big things is to adopt higher standards for what we are doing right now.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and that's really about open opening those pathways to communication that I mentioned before.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and there's we understand so much about how to get people to engage in conversations.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_06: Psychologists have made leaps and bounds, okay?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_06: Um, so we we do know how, and just like we know how to get them to shut down out of conversations too.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_06: So we need to flip that switch.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_06: And one of the ways of doing that is to modernize the government, which we can do a lot more easily here, right?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_06: Because Washington is far away and in it not responsive to us.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, universal basic income is a party platform.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_06: Um, in a period of unprecedented economic change and technological disruption, we should acknowledge that millions of Americans will need a new way to meet their basic needs and a pathway to stand on.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_06: And I think the way that's playing out here is that the cost of living has skyrocketed, but wages have stayed stagnant.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is I've actually seen financial data where if we had a universal basic income, it would be cheaper than running the nanny state of all of the other programs that we have in place.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we would it would actually save Americans money.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely have to close down those programs in order to inflate that.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_06: I think no, no, I I love that.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_06: Um I think that there is a lot to say, but I was told I only have four minutes.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_06: So I'm gonna keep going.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_06: You you can go over, but the last party platform is grace and tolerance, and this is where I I feel most aligned.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_06: Um I align on all of these issues, but this is where I feel most aligned.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, most parties need an enemy.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_06: Our enemy is those who would cast our fellow Americans as enemies and as an existential threat and the forces of inertia that make our government out of touch with the people.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_06: We all need to come to the table with different experiences and qualities.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_06: We are all human and we are all fallible.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_06: We are right now polarized and tribal.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_06: We will give the benefit of the doubt to ourselves and each other and avoid engaging in the politics of personal attach or attack or destruction.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_06: If my family member disagrees with me on politics, they remain my family and I love them as much as ever.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_06: And I think of this often as the destruction that the two-party system has wrought on our families.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, except there's one thing I disagree with uh Andrew on, and it's we are all human.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: You've met the hof.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Wait until you listen to Microsoft Monkey.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Microphone.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now you got my desire.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's contagious.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-oh, got him.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: My disease is catching.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but this has been great.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: This has been very enlightening.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Genesis, thanks for being on Conversations with the Huff.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad there are that there are people like you out there who are tired of control of our political systems by the duopoly.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's about time that residents had a real choice other than just Republicans or Democrats.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: In closing, I also want to paraphrase from Andrew Yang's book, Andy's book, excuse me, forwards.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Note on the future of our democracy.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Our institutions are failing to keep pace with technological and social change, leading to polarization, declining trust, and a democracy increasingly unable to solve problems.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: He further emphasizes that meaningful change must come from the citizens rather than waiting for the political cavalry.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say that accurately describes the political climate here in Ory County.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again, Genesis, for being our guest today.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: And for all of you listeners out there in Podcast Land, thanks for listening.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Conversations with the Hoff is part of the Liberty Crack Media.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to deliver the Liberty message in an effort to increase our individual and economic freedom.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, real freedom involves freedom of choice, especially at the ballot box.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And now for a word from our glorious leader, the executive producer of Liberty Crack Media, Trip Detmering.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Genesis, before we leave, I know people are going to be interested in your campaign.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: How can they uh can you give us your website and how they can reach out to you?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_06: I am grassroots funded.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and the more volunteers I have, the better chance I have of succeeding.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_06: So you can find my more about me and my platform at Bordner, B-O-R-D-N-E-R, the number four Ori that has an H in it for those of you listening out of state.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_06: H-O-R-R-Y.com.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_06: Uh you can also contact me directly at 843-410-9155.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_06: I want to hear from you if you voted Republican, if you voted Democrat, if you didn't vote at all, I want to hear from you.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you so much.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: And listeners, if you didn't catch that, you'll see it in the show notes.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to thank again Steve and his guest for another wonderful conversations with the Hoglique.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: Let's read the more open doors of founders.