Latest / 3 Martini Lunch – Political Humor & Commentary / Dems Happy if Trump Dies, Obamacare Fraud, Failing Your Kid for a Cause | Last Call

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Dems Happy if Trump Dies, Obamacare Fraud, Failing Your Kid for a Cause | Last Call · 3 Martini Lunch – Political Humor & Commentary

0:03
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.
0:04
Speaker 2: Grab a stool next to Greg Karambas of Radio America
0:07
Speaker 2: and Jim Garrity of National Review. Three martinis coming up.
0:13
Speaker 3: Welcome to the last call of the week for the
0:15
Speaker 3: Three Martini Lunch. This is our weekly recap of the
0:18
Speaker 3: biggest stories of the week. In this edition, a poll
0:21
Speaker 3: of Democrats shows a majority would be happy if President
0:24
Speaker 3: Trump died or was ousted in a military coup yesterday.
0:27
Speaker 3: Three-quarters of a million patients are removed from Obamacare, many
0:30
Speaker 3: of whom don't even exist. And 1619 Project author Nicole
0:35
Speaker 3: Hannah-Jones reveals her teenage daughter is furious at her for
0:39
Speaker 3: being enrolled in a failing New York City public school,
0:42
Speaker 3: so Hannah-Jones could make an ideological point. And in our
0:45
Speaker 3: Chaser of the Week, the Democratic nominee for governor in
0:48
Speaker 3: Wisconsin links systemic racism and injustice.
0:52
Speaker 1: To beer gardens.
0:54
Speaker 3: But we begin with Democrats wanting Trump out of office
0:56
Speaker 3: by any means necessary, including way too many who would
1:00
Speaker 3: be happy to see the president assassinated. Let's start with
1:04
Speaker 3: this poll, courtesy of the Center for Strategic Studies, not
1:08
Speaker 3: to be confused with CSIS, the Center for Strategic International Studies.
1:13
Speaker 3: You know, you see a lot of polls this time
1:14
Speaker 3: of year. Who are you going to vote for for
1:15
Speaker 3: Senate governor? All that sort of thing. But sometimes you
1:18
Speaker 3: actually get questions like this exclusively of Democrats. The question is,
1:23
Speaker 3: if you woke up tomorrow morning and saw the following
1:25
Speaker 3: news headlines, how would you feel? President Donald Trump has
1:29
Speaker 3: been impeached and convicted by both houses of Congress and
1:31
Speaker 3: been removed from office among Democrats. Plus 80. They would
1:34
Speaker 3: feel good about that.
1:35
Speaker 1: That's not a huge surprise.
1:37
Speaker 3: Using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, President Trump has
1:39
Speaker 3: been declared unfit by a majority of his cabinet and
1:42
Speaker 3: removed from office. Plus 77.
1:44
Speaker 1: They'd be happy to see that.
1:45
Speaker 3: President Donald Trump died overnight in his sleep is the premise.
1:50
Speaker 1: Plus 40.
1:51
Speaker 3: 55% feel good about that. 28% not sure, of course.
1:56
Speaker 3: And then a small pittance would not want to see that.
1:59
Speaker 3: To safeguard the Constitution, quote unquote, a group of U.S.
2:02
Speaker 3: military leaders have removed President Trump from power and assumed
2:05
Speaker 3: control of the United States, plus 32. 59% would love
2:11
Speaker 3: to wake up on the Democratic side and see that.
2:13
Speaker 3: Only 28% think that would be a bad thing. And
2:16
Speaker 3: then lastly, President Donald Trump assassinated while speaking at a rally. Thankfully,
2:21
Speaker 3: that's a minus 12, but they still can't get to
2:24
Speaker 3: a majority of Democrats who would think that's a bad thing.
2:26
Speaker 3: 32% thinks it would be very negative, which is the
2:29
Speaker 3: highest category. But 32% overall would see that as positive,
2:34
Speaker 3: 43% negative, and 25% of Democrats still have neither positive
2:39
Speaker 3: nor negative feelings about this. So, Jim, I mean, when
2:43
Speaker 3: you can't even get a national consensus on that one,
2:46
Speaker 3: the left has really gone off its rocker here.
2:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I got to be perfectly honest, Greg, out
2:51
Speaker 2: of all the responses, the second most shocking one are
2:55
Speaker 2: the number of respondents that if President Trump were assassinated tomorrow,
2:59
Speaker 2: how would you feel?
3:00
Speaker 1: But one in three Democrats.
3:02
Speaker 3: Are like, meh.
3:04
Speaker 2: I could almost understand the, ah, thank goodness, that's one
3:07
Speaker 2: less thing to worry about. We know these guys really
3:10
Speaker 2: hate these guys. To be kind of nonchalant about a
3:13
Speaker 2: presidential assassination, you'd like to think, as far as I
3:16
Speaker 2: can go, the whole country really, really shocked when JFK
3:19
Speaker 2: was assassinated in 1963. The whole country really, really shocked
3:23
Speaker 2: and horrified when Reagan was shot in 1981. The idea
3:26
Speaker 2: of people saying, ah, well, what's new with the Kardashians?
3:29
Speaker 2: That really strikes me as a sign of a deeply
3:31
Speaker 2: troubled country. But even more so, Greg, there was actually
3:36
Speaker 2: less positive feelings about Trump dying in his sleep than
3:39
Speaker 2: a military coup. But, you know, and these people apparently
3:44
Speaker 2: never saw seven days in May. The other thing I'm
3:47
Speaker 2: sitting here thinking here, like when the question goes to
3:51
Speaker 2: safeguard the Constitution, a group of U.S. military leaders have
3:54
Speaker 2: removed President Trump from power and assumed control of the
3:56
Speaker 2: United States. please tell me that the pollsters on the
3:59
Speaker 2: phone at least sounded sort of sarcastic when they said
4:02
Speaker 2: safeguard the Constitution. Because a military coup is just about
4:06
Speaker 2: the most unconstitutional thing that you can do. For the
4:10
Speaker 2: number of people who say they support the 25th Amendment,
4:13
Speaker 2: you know, look, I'm always inclined to look at the
4:14
Speaker 2: positive side, Greg. This is what happens when you're a
4:17
Speaker 2: Jets fan. I look at that, that's a great start
4:20
Speaker 2: for Democrats for Vance. That's a great start to indicate
4:23
Speaker 2: that there are Democrats who are just itching to see J.D.
4:26
Speaker 2: Vance become the president of the United States. Also, in
4:29
Speaker 2: a very strange way, maybe Democrats for Hegseth with the
4:31
Speaker 2: military coup scenario. They're really itching to see. Obviously, most
4:36
Speaker 2: Democrats hate Hegseth as much as they hate President Trump.
4:39
Speaker 2: But I feel like I've been hearing ever since January
4:43
Speaker 2: 6th that Republicans and conservatives hate democracy, that they're against
4:49
Speaker 2: our Constitution, that they want a military dictatorship. that they're
4:53
Speaker 2: a cult of personality, and sometimes these criticisms are valid
4:57
Speaker 2: here and there, but this indicates that there's a significant
5:00
Speaker 2: chunk of the Democratic Party that wants to see Donald
5:03
Speaker 2: Trump removed from office, and they really aren't choosy about
5:07
Speaker 2: which way it is, to the point where assassination is
5:11
Speaker 2: barely considered more negative than positive in this survey of,
5:15
Speaker 2: I believe, 683 Democratic voters. Not a particularly small sample size.
5:20
Speaker 2: This is not a fringe viewpoint. It is now a
5:22
Speaker 2: semi-mainstream viewpoint that we really want to see Trump gone
5:26
Speaker 2: before January 20th, 2029, and we don't really care how
5:30
Speaker 2: it shakes out.
5:30
Speaker 3: No, it's utterly ridiculous. And they're just as crazy on
5:34
Speaker 3: the issues. It's now plus 59 that the next Democratic
5:38
Speaker 3: president should expand the Supreme Court. Plus 30 that Democrats,
5:43
Speaker 3: when they retake the Senate, they should end the filibuster
5:45
Speaker 3: in order to pass more legislation. But I bet they
5:48
Speaker 3: didn't feel that way at the beginning of this Congress.
5:51
Speaker 3: I don't know why that would change. Billionaires should exist,
5:54
Speaker 3: minus six. I don't know if they want genocide or
5:57
Speaker 3: just to steal all their money. Democrats should move to
6:00
Speaker 3: the right on transgender issues, minus seven. The only positive
6:04
Speaker 3: one here, the Senate should be abolished, minus 46. So
6:08
Speaker 3: they're apparently opposed to that at the moment, probably because
6:10
Speaker 3: they think they're about to take the majority here.
6:13
Speaker 1: It's a strange message in the middle of a midterm election.
6:17
Speaker 2: Elect our guys, donate to our candidates, and then once
6:20
Speaker 2: in office, we will abolish the chamber.
6:22
Speaker 3: And as always with the Democrats, democracy, as Gavin Newsom
6:25
Speaker 3: has said, is on the line. The future of democracy
6:27
Speaker 3: hangs in the balance, but only if their side wins.
6:31
Speaker 3: If democracy ends up with the Republicans still in charge, well,
6:34
Speaker 3: that's not okay. uh that's that's that's their hypocrisy on
6:37
Speaker 3: that all right well uh if you responded to this
6:40
Speaker 3: poll and are on one of the uh really whacked
6:42
Speaker 3: out positions on some of these questions there is better
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6:48
Speaker 3: you know what about you you're probably listening to this
6:50
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6:53
Speaker 3: i hope not but if you could wake up tomorrow
6:55
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6:57
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7:00
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Speaker 3: slash 3ML. This week, we learned that Trump administration efforts
7:54
Speaker 3: to root out fraud found a lot of it in Obamacare,
7:57
Speaker 3: including a lot of patients who aren't even real. Jim,
8:01
Speaker 3: sometimes a person who doesn't actually exist can be a
8:04
Speaker 3: good thing. You and I grew up in the 80s
8:07
Speaker 3: where we had Knight Rider. And of course, Knight Rider
8:09
Speaker 3: was a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a
8:12
Speaker 3: man who does not exist, meaning Michael Knight. Ten years later,
8:16
Speaker 3: we had Randall Stevens in Shawshank Redemption, which was a
8:19
Speaker 3: big part of... the demise of Warden Norton and the
8:22
Speaker 3: escape of Andy Dufresne. But for the most part, fake
8:26
Speaker 3: people usually mean somebody is committing massive fraud, which, of course,
8:29
Speaker 3: Randall Stevens was in Shawshank Redemption. But right now we've
8:35
Speaker 3: got Vice President Vance. We've got Dr. Oz from the
8:38
Speaker 3: Center for Medicare and Medicaid Studies finding and rooting out
8:42
Speaker 3: fraud all over the place. We've seen it, of course,
8:44
Speaker 3: at the state level in Minnesota, California with the hospice
8:47
Speaker 3: over and over and over again. barely real entities, only
8:51
Speaker 3: on paper. They're not doing any work. They come up
8:53
Speaker 3: with fake clients, but the government just keeps shelling out
8:55
Speaker 3: the money. Well, now the same is true when it
8:57
Speaker 3: comes to Obamacare subsidies, and the numbers are not small.
9:02
Speaker 3: Vice President Vance explaining just how many people they've kicked
9:05
Speaker 3: out of Obamacare enrollment, and there's a lot more. that
9:08
Speaker 3: they are still investigating.
9:10
Speaker 4: We are stopping Obamacare enrollment for about 750,000 people, 750,000
9:16
Speaker 4: people who we believe are fraudulently enrolled in the program.
9:20
Speaker 4: That's number one. The second thing that we're going to
9:23
Speaker 4: do is we're going to do some additional verification. We
9:25
Speaker 4: expect that most of these people are fraudulently enrolled, but
9:28
Speaker 4: we're going to do some additional verification on about 419,000 people.
9:32
Speaker 4: We're going to make sure that they're, first of all,
9:34
Speaker 4: legal residents of the United States of America and And
9:37
Speaker 4: second of all, we're going to make sure that they
9:38
Speaker 4: actually meet the income threshold requirements in order to receive
9:42
Speaker 4: these Obamacare benefits.
9:43
Speaker 3: So, Jim, if most of those people are also not
9:46
Speaker 3: supposed to be on the rolls, we're talking about a
9:47
Speaker 3: million people who are created, some of them out of
9:50
Speaker 3: a whole cloth. And Vance is explaining how some of
9:52
Speaker 3: these fictional people end up on the rolls.
9:55
Speaker 4: In one case, we found a fraud ring that had
9:58
Speaker 4: 40 people. agents, 40 brokerage agents who had funneled 50,000
10:04
Speaker 4: people into the Obamacare system fraudulently. Now, some of those
10:08
Speaker 4: people were probably legitimate. Most of those people were not eligible.
10:13
Speaker 4: Either they didn't meet the citizenship or the income requirements.
10:16
Speaker 4: Many of those people quite literally didn't even exist. We
10:20
Speaker 4: had a system in this country that rewarded brokers, that
10:24
Speaker 4: made people rich for enrolling fake people in programs that
10:28
Speaker 4: are meant to ensure that our fellow citizens have health care.
10:31
Speaker 1: This was a scandal.
10:32
Speaker 3: So, Jim, I mean, we've seen this over and over again.
10:35
Speaker 3: So good work here. I still think this is just
10:38
Speaker 3: the tip of the iceberg, probably, given all the federal
10:40
Speaker 3: programs that are out there. But the more you dig,
10:43
Speaker 3: the more bad people are going to get nervous. And hopefully,
10:46
Speaker 3: as you root it out, you get less of this.
10:48
Speaker 1: We'll see.
10:49
Speaker 2: So, Greg, that was a wonderful introduction, but I'll dive
10:52
Speaker 2: into this in a second. But how do you mention
10:55
Speaker 2: Great non-existent Americans and not mention our frequent listener and
10:59
Speaker 2: frequent subject, Irving Schmidlapp, the representative of the non-existent American community,
11:05
Speaker 2: perennial presidential candidate at any other office in which there's
11:09
Speaker 2: an opening, usually on the Democratic side.
11:11
Speaker 1: Irving, we love you.
11:13
Speaker 2: No, first of all, I think one of the lessons–
11:15
Speaker 2: first of all, this is good to see. It is
11:18
Speaker 2: not surprising. Anytime you have a government program in which
11:21
Speaker 2: you're handing out benefits– There are people who are going
11:24
Speaker 2: to try to cheat. There are people who are going
11:25
Speaker 2: to try to collect benefits that they are not entitled to,
11:28
Speaker 2: that they are not eligible to. Or as we're seeing,
11:30
Speaker 2: they will make up someone and create this person and
11:33
Speaker 2: then try to collect benefits in their name. We saw
11:37
Speaker 2: in Minnesota... Over a cumulative, several of these large-scale fraud scandals,
11:42
Speaker 2: and with the state auditor who did a terrific job
11:44
Speaker 2: and kept testifying before the state legislature and saying, look,
11:47
Speaker 2: the people running these programs think of themselves as caregivers.
11:51
Speaker 2: They think of their job is to distribute as many
11:54
Speaker 2: benefits as possible to as many people as possible. And
11:57
Speaker 2: the idea that someone's trying to con them, the idea
12:00
Speaker 2: that someone's running a scam It sounds like it almost
12:04
Speaker 2: literally never crossed their mind. It just that's not what
12:07
Speaker 2: it's not on their radar screen and they don't see
12:09
Speaker 2: it as part of their job. Well, if you're administering
12:12
Speaker 2: public benefits, it is part of your job. It is
12:15
Speaker 2: part of your public duties. And when you don't win
12:17
Speaker 2: and my suspicion is, is that as soon as one
12:20
Speaker 2: person makes a successful scam and starts collecting benefits, they're
12:22
Speaker 2: not entitled to. They start telling their friends, oh, this
12:26
Speaker 2: is where I'm getting all that cash from. That's how
12:27
Speaker 2: you end up with these networks growing. We've always had
12:30
Speaker 2: fraud in government programs. It's just a fact of life.
12:33
Speaker 2: But I think it's very clear we now have it
12:35
Speaker 2: on a scale that we have not seen in previous generations.
12:39
Speaker 2: Because it is so evident that you can get away
12:42
Speaker 2: with this up until very recently. Obviously, we've seen some
12:44
Speaker 2: crackdowns in Minnesota. Hey, did you see in Minnesota who's
12:47
Speaker 2: running as a guy who's been fighting the fraud, Greg?
12:51
Speaker 3: Who's that?
12:51
Speaker 1: Keith Ellison, the state attorney general.
12:53
Speaker 2: Ha, ha, ha. Who's done jack squat. All of these
12:57
Speaker 2: scandals are on his watch and I'm the one fighting
12:59
Speaker 2: the fraud.
13:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sure, pal. You were in fact talking with
13:02
Speaker 1: some of the people committing the fraud.
13:04
Speaker 3: We have you on tape.
13:05
Speaker 2: And looking for donations from them and all that stuff.
13:07
Speaker 2: So yeah, so first of all, good job. Really not surprising.
13:10
Speaker 2: The scale of it is pretty surprising. And hopefully we
13:13
Speaker 2: get more details on this as this investigation of fraud continues.
13:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, and when Dr. Oz was talking, he talked about,
13:19
Speaker 3: he had some pictures of the properties that these brokers
13:22
Speaker 3: had bought, lavish properties down on the floor to Sure,
13:25
Speaker 3: from all this money they fleeced from American taxpayers. But
13:27
Speaker 3: I think the most telling thing that he said is
13:29
Speaker 3: from about 2015 to 2020, the Obamacare exchanges had about
13:32
Speaker 3: 10 million Americans on there. That was a pretty consistent number.
13:35
Speaker 3: During COVID, it jumped to 22 million and a vast
13:39
Speaker 3: percentage of that, I can't remember the exact number, Never,
13:41
Speaker 3: ever used it. So that's usually what happens when you
13:44
Speaker 3: don't exist, but not a prescription drug, not an annual checkup,
13:47
Speaker 3: nothing for years upon years upon years. That tells you
13:50
Speaker 3: that something's fishy.
13:51
Speaker 2: These are exceptionally healthy non-existent people. So good for them
13:54
Speaker 2: for taking care of themselves.
13:56
Speaker 3: In a moment, prominent lefty Nicole Hannah-Jones deprives her daughter
13:59
Speaker 3: of a better education to make a political and ideological point.
14:08
Speaker 3: Several years ago, New York Times columnist Nicole Hannah-Jones wrote
14:11
Speaker 3: the 1619 Project, which claims the U.S. was built on
14:15
Speaker 3: slavery and that ideology still permeates our culture today. She
14:20
Speaker 3: also thinks failing schools are a result of white supremacy. Now,
14:25
Speaker 3: she's feeling conflicted for sending her child to a terrible
14:28
Speaker 3: public school in New York City in the belief that
14:31
Speaker 3: that would help turn the school around. Jim, you know,
14:34
Speaker 3: sometimes you got to be somewhat happy when someone really
14:38
Speaker 3: far on the left gets a dose of reality, but
14:41
Speaker 3: at the same time, they don't really learn the lesson
14:43
Speaker 3: that they should have learned from the whole situation. Well,
14:46
Speaker 3: that's what we got yesterday in the New York Times
14:48
Speaker 3: Magazine from Nicole Hannah-Jones. She, of course, is infamously the
14:53
Speaker 3: author of the 1619 Project and You know, the whole
14:57
Speaker 3: assertion that slavery is the founding element of this country
15:01
Speaker 3: and it still infiltrates everything we ever do. So she's
15:05
Speaker 3: been full of nonsense for a long time, but it
15:07
Speaker 3: turns out she believes her own nonsense, or at least
15:10
Speaker 3: did for a long time. And when it comes to
15:13
Speaker 3: her own daughter's education, this is the New York Post
15:17
Speaker 3: version of the story. The writer behind the New York
15:19
Speaker 3: Times controversial 1619 Project deliberately sent her daughter to poor
15:23
Speaker 3: Big Apple schools as a sacrifice, quote unquote, to try
15:26
Speaker 3: to boost the education system and no one is angrier
15:29
Speaker 3: than the kid. The teen is now boiling mad, badly
15:33
Speaker 3: behind her peers after finally being allowed to enroll in
15:35
Speaker 3: a more rigorous high school. Nicole Hannah-Jones enrolled her only
15:39
Speaker 3: child in two struggling Brooklyn public schools beginning in 2015
15:42
Speaker 3: as part of a battle to change what she characterized
15:45
Speaker 3: as systemic racism, despite having the connections and time and status,
15:49
Speaker 3: she says, to get the girl into the city's best schools.
15:52
Speaker 3: That status included top-notch education of her own and financial security.
15:56
Speaker 3: She and her husband had recently bought a $ 1. 5 million
15:59
Speaker 3: brownstone in Bed-Stuy back in 2018. But by her own account,
16:03
Speaker 3: Hannah-Jones' daughter knows she was cheated by her parents. Quote,
16:07
Speaker 3: so you had money to send me to one of
16:09
Speaker 3: the best schools and you chose not to? The girl
16:11
Speaker 3: yelled in one fight, according to the essay. Quote, because
16:14
Speaker 3: other kids are disadvantaged. You didn't want to put me
16:16
Speaker 3: in a great school? Hannah-Jones wrote of her decision, we
16:19
Speaker 3: thought by sending her to a mostly low-income and black school,
16:23
Speaker 3: we could help improve it for all the children there.
16:25
Speaker 3: We believe strongly that if families like ours went to
16:27
Speaker 3: schools like this one, it would challenge other families with
16:30
Speaker 3: similar values to do the same. She felt an obligation
16:33
Speaker 3: to do that. Well, now that she has some time
16:36
Speaker 3: to reflect on this, the girl's still mad. Another quote is,
16:40
Speaker 3: sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids,
16:43
Speaker 3: you would have thought about me, said Hannah-Jones, now 16-year-old daughter.
16:46
Speaker 3: I never really got the education I wanted. One of
16:50
Speaker 3: the things that she learned was that she thought this
16:52
Speaker 3: kid was doing well in math in fourth grade. Turns
16:54
Speaker 3: out the teacher was never correcting her. Also, her English
16:57
Speaker 3: papers were all full of grammatical mistakes and badly formed
17:01
Speaker 3: sentences and so forth. No corrections whatsoever. So they were
17:04
Speaker 3: just funneling her through the system, just like we hear
17:07
Speaker 3: constantly about poor and failing schools. So, Jim, the end,
17:11
Speaker 3: she's still in this conflict about her values and her
17:13
Speaker 3: child and which one she should use.
17:15
Speaker 1: There really shouldn't be.
17:16
Speaker 3: A conflict here, because if you valued a good education,
17:20
Speaker 3: you'd send your child to the best school.
17:21
Speaker 2: Greg, again, I hate to be my stereotype, but there
17:24
Speaker 2: is a lot to unpack here. For starters, look, you
17:27
Speaker 2: and I would love to knock around McCall Hannah-Jones like
17:30
Speaker 2: a piñata, metaphorically. And she deserves a great deal of
17:33
Speaker 2: criticism for a lot of the things she has said
17:36
Speaker 2: and written and done over the years. But I think
17:38
Speaker 2: this was really an extraordinary essay, because rarely do you
17:41
Speaker 2: see someone say, I made a mistake. I made a
17:45
Speaker 2: really bad and consequential mistake. I made a really bad
17:48
Speaker 2: and consequential mistake for my child. And I did it
17:52
Speaker 2: because of my ideology. Like in some ways, this is
17:55
Speaker 2: a remarkably honest essay, except in certain ways. People, you know,
17:59
Speaker 2: immediately everyone in at least, you know, my social media
18:02
Speaker 2: world noticed, you know what.
18:03
Speaker 1: Words they didn't see in this? Teachers unions.
18:07
Speaker 2: Now you mentioned there's an exceptionally bad performance on the
18:11
Speaker 2: part of the teacher. not correcting incorrect math problems, not
18:15
Speaker 2: correcting bad grammar, bad spelling, all kinds of errors and
18:18
Speaker 2: stuff like that in the essays, leaving her daughter with
18:22
Speaker 2: the impression that she is a much better student than
18:23
Speaker 2: she actually is. So I feel like she can get
18:27
Speaker 2: almost there, but not quite pointing out the problems there.
18:31
Speaker 2: I also point out that to the extent that Nicole
18:33
Speaker 2: Hannah-Jones points towards any problems, it's a very familiar chorus
18:37
Speaker 2: of underfunded schools.
18:39
Speaker 1: Blah, blah, blah. Well, wait a second.
18:40
Speaker 2: New York City public school system spends 52,000 per student?
18:44
Speaker 2: For a long time, conservatives have argued that there is
18:47
Speaker 2: no discernible connection between spending per student and educational outcomes.
18:52
Speaker 2: And we should stop teachers unions, but also Democrats. Anybody
18:55
Speaker 2: should stop assuming, well, if you throw more money at
18:58
Speaker 2: the problem, the kids are going to do better. A
19:00
Speaker 2: whole bunch of factors go into that. Indisputably, the parents
19:04
Speaker 2: at home, and Nicole Hannah-Jones, whatever else you want to say,
19:07
Speaker 2: is not an uneducated woman. She's a successful professional woman.
19:11
Speaker 2: You'd think the house is full of books. You'd think
19:13
Speaker 2: there'd be the supportive environment. How did you not notice
19:16
Speaker 2: that your child was doing so poorly in school? And
19:18
Speaker 2: I think there are quite a few people who said, oh, sorry,
19:21
Speaker 2: I can't help you with your algebra, honey. I'm too
19:22
Speaker 2: busy writing the 1619 Project. That kind of nagging question
19:27
Speaker 2: of why are we with the mid-teen years and recognizing
19:30
Speaker 2: that her education is subpar. Also, Greg, this is all
19:35
Speaker 2: occurring in the New York City public school system. It
19:38
Speaker 2: is run by the New York City Department of Education,
19:40
Speaker 2: not the New York City Department of White Supremacy. There
19:43
Speaker 2: are no evil right wingers. There are no conservatives to blame.
19:47
Speaker 2: There are no like this is an entirely Democrat.
19:50
Speaker 1: Run city.
19:50
Speaker 2: And by certainly by your and my standards, very progressively
19:54
Speaker 2: run city. There's nobody else to blame other than the
19:57
Speaker 2: party and the city officials have been running this for
19:59
Speaker 2: a really long time. And I'll make one last observation
20:02
Speaker 2: about this. I don't want to say there was anything
20:04
Speaker 2: like Nicole Hannah-Jones, you know, at least would probably say
20:07
Speaker 2: every parent should have the option to send their child
20:10
Speaker 2: to an excellent public school. Yeah, we'd all like that
20:13
Speaker 2: to be the case. We know that there are some
20:15
Speaker 2: public schools that are, you know, like not only are
20:17
Speaker 2: half below average, because that's what happens when there's an average,
20:20
Speaker 2: or half below median, because that's what a median is.
20:23
Speaker 1: We know that there are certain.
20:23
Speaker 2: Schools that are getting really good results, and we know
20:25
Speaker 2: there are schools that are really, you know, lousy results.
20:27
Speaker 2: Most of us as parents, we want to give our
20:30
Speaker 2: kids something, everything we didn't have when we were growing up, right?
20:33
Speaker 2: We don't want our kids to be spoiled, but we
20:35
Speaker 2: also are kind of like, we remember not having some
20:38
Speaker 2: sort of advantage, not having some sort of thing that
20:40
Speaker 2: would make our education easier, our lives easier, and we
20:44
Speaker 2: try to give that to our kids. And interestingly here,
20:47
Speaker 2: Nicole Hannah-Jones resisted that because she talks about her education
20:50
Speaker 2: in the sense that she went to a school that
20:52
Speaker 2: was excellent but largely segregated. And she wanted her kids
20:56
Speaker 2: to go to a school that was mostly minority and
20:58
Speaker 2: to prove that mostly minority schools could be excellent. Well, unfortunately,
21:03
Speaker 2: the one who paid the price for that judgment was
21:05
Speaker 2: her daughter.
21:06
Speaker 1: And there's kind of this thing in the pursuit.
21:09
Speaker 2: Of an abstract idea of, oh, we believe that this
21:12
Speaker 2: poor performing public school can be really excellent. We didn't
21:15
Speaker 2: do everything we could to send our kid to the
21:17
Speaker 2: best school possible. I think, you know, the entire concept
21:21
Speaker 2: of this progressive idea of we can't have school choice.
21:24
Speaker 1: We can't have vouchers.
21:25
Speaker 2: We can't have parents having the option of sending their
21:28
Speaker 2: kids to religious schools or private schools or stuff like that. Yeah,
21:31
Speaker 2: is there an argument that that skims off the top
21:33
Speaker 2: performing schools or the top performing kids? Is there an
21:36
Speaker 2: argument that that skims off the kids who have the
21:39
Speaker 2: most engaged parents? Yeah, there's some validity to that argument.
21:42
Speaker 2: But in the end, you cannot expect people to not
21:44
Speaker 2: put their kids' interests first. I guess unless their name
21:47
Speaker 2: is Nicole Hannah Smith-Jones.
21:50
Speaker 3: So I'm sure she's come to the conclusion now that
21:54
Speaker 3: she and her husband can afford to send their daughter
21:56
Speaker 3: to a better school now, that other parents should have
21:58
Speaker 3: that freedom and that choice.
22:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, that paragraph must have been lost in the editing process.
22:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I didn't read that part. But, you know,
22:05
Speaker 3: she's not the only one who thought that way. Years ago,
22:08
Speaker 3: years before I met Mrs. Karumba, so obviously years before
22:11
Speaker 3: I had any kids, a friend from church had a
22:13
Speaker 3: bunch of people over for dinner, and somehow the topic
22:15
Speaker 3: got onto public education. And so knowing I didn't have
22:18
Speaker 3: any kids at that point... He says, would you send
22:21
Speaker 3: your kids to a public school? And I said, well,
22:23
Speaker 3: it depends how good the public schools are. And there
22:25
Speaker 3: was a public school teacher there who literally said, you
22:27
Speaker 3: should send your kids to the public school because they're
22:30
Speaker 3: the public schools. And if they're not good, it's only
22:33
Speaker 3: when people who do care about their kid's education send
22:37
Speaker 3: their kids to the public schools that it'll get better.
22:39
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I'm not a guinea pig. And my
22:41
Speaker 3: kid is certainly not a guinea pig in your long
22:43
Speaker 3: game to maybe make public schools better. My job is
22:46
Speaker 3: to get the best opportunity for my kid. And that's
22:49
Speaker 3: what we've done.
22:50
Speaker 1: Yeah.
22:51
Speaker 2: If we had a magic wand and could make every
22:53
Speaker 2: parent engaged and every parent joining the PTA and doing
22:58
Speaker 2: the bake sale fundraisers and doing everything they could to
23:01
Speaker 2: make the school the best.
23:02
Speaker 1: That'd be wonderful. Great. We don't live in that world.
23:05
Speaker 1: We have to prioritize.
23:06
Speaker 2: We have to say, you know, my kids, you know,
23:09
Speaker 2: one's in college already, one's out. We go to public
23:11
Speaker 2: schools regularly. We are blessed and cursed with the most
23:15
Speaker 2: engaged parents you're.
23:16
Speaker 1: Going to find on the planet.
23:18
Speaker 2: All of whom are type A personalities and all the
23:22
Speaker 2: tiger mom stereotypes and all that kind of stuff. I
23:25
Speaker 2: can sit back and relax because there are a ton
23:27
Speaker 2: of parents who have 300% of the necessary amount of
23:30
Speaker 2: engagement in their kid's education. It's kind of like Harvard,
23:34
Speaker 2: except a little more competitive. A little more competitive, higher pressure, and...
23:38
Speaker 2: So there are school districts where we have the opposite problem.
23:41
Speaker 2: We kind of need to put quaaludes in the water
23:43
Speaker 2: around here. People are really high strung.
23:45
Speaker 3: I remember years ago, Jim's contribution was usually to chaperone
23:48
Speaker 3: a field trip where Jim's two rules were, come back
23:51
Speaker 3: with the same number of kids you left with and
23:52
Speaker 3: bonus points if they're the same kids.
23:54
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
23:55
Speaker 2: And by the way, it was a free tip to
23:56
Speaker 2: Jamestown or Gettysburg or Williamsburg. It was really just awesome
24:00
Speaker 2: just going to do that. Yeah, the kids barfed. Cleaning
24:05
Speaker 2: up barf was my commitment to the public school system.
24:08
Speaker 3: Later in the week, video was uncovered showing Hannah Jones
24:11
Speaker 3: from several years ago claiming that she could end any
24:14
Speaker 3: problems in the school by writing about it in the
24:17
Speaker 3: New York Times.
24:18
Speaker 5: A New York Times reporter in a high poverty school
24:21
Speaker 5: changes the school, right? There's certain things that just are
24:25
Speaker 5: not going to happen in that school. I can go
24:27
Speaker 5: to that school and say there's a problem and it
24:29
Speaker 5: gets fixed immediately.
24:31
Speaker 3: Didn't quite turn out that way. Well, not only are
24:34
Speaker 3: failing public schools supposedly the result of racism, so are
24:38
Speaker 3: beer gardens in Wisconsin. At least according to the Democrat
24:42
Speaker 3: running for governor there. That's next. All right, Jim and
24:50
Speaker 3: our chaser today, David Crowley is the normal, the moderate
24:54
Speaker 3: Democrat nominee for governor in Wisconsin. Not like that crazy
24:57
Speaker 3: socialist Francesca Hong. David Crowley has been for several years
25:02
Speaker 3: now the Milwaukee County Executive. And just like with Francesca Hong,
25:08
Speaker 3: Twitter never forgets. There was a report from WPR, Wisconsin
25:12
Speaker 3: Public Radio, back in December 2021 that says Milwaukee County
25:15
Speaker 3: Executive David Crowley has warned parks face a fiscal cliff
25:19
Speaker 3: in six years if additional funding isn't found. They quote
25:22
Speaker 3: him saying, I think it's important to understand that the
25:24
Speaker 3: way we fund parks is just not sustainable. At which
25:27
Speaker 3: point Crowley then chimes in on Twitter saying, saying past
25:30
Speaker 3: heavy reliance on revenues to keep the system going is
25:32
Speaker 3: not sustainable and doesn't cover the need. When a system's
25:35
Speaker 3: operational budget is so heavily reliant on user revenues to
25:39
Speaker 3: survive like parks is, there's often a very real conflict
25:42
Speaker 3: between generating money and racial equity. Revenues often come from
25:46
Speaker 3: activities that those with discretionary funding can afford, like golf,
25:49
Speaker 3: the marina, and beer gardens. These activities are traditionally and
25:53
Speaker 3: predominantly supported by white users. This racial inequity is born
25:58
Speaker 3: from a history, of course, Jim, of systemic racism and injustice.
26:03
Speaker 3: I don't know if he's planning to chalk this up
26:04
Speaker 3: to woke one, but I didn't realize drinking beer was racist.
26:08
Speaker 1: Happy Oktoberfest, everyone.
26:10
Speaker 2: So first of all, I will give one molecule of
26:14
Speaker 2: forgiveness in the recognition that, Greg, I don't know about you,
26:18
Speaker 2: but whenever I hear the melodic, easygoing German language, my
26:23
Speaker 2: mind flashes to an Indiana Jones movie, right? Like, you know, like,
26:27
Speaker 2: French is always... Whereas German always sounds... It is hard, guttural, angry.
26:36
Speaker 2: And I suppose if you just... Oh, beer garden, German.
26:39
Speaker 2: It must be connected to the Nazis somehow.
26:41
Speaker 1: It is not.
26:42
Speaker 2: It is a Munich tradition going back way before the Nazis.
26:46
Speaker 2: There's really nothing racist about it. But if you just
26:49
Speaker 2: hear Germans, the language German or German words... And somewhere
26:54
Speaker 2: in the back of your mind, Norm MacDonald pops up
26:56
Speaker 2: and says, I don't know if you guys are history
26:59
Speaker 2: buffs or not, but not everything German is bad and
27:03
Speaker 2: scary and evil or something like that.
27:04
Speaker 1: And also, Greg, it's Wisconsin. Do people in Wisconsin like beer?
27:08
Speaker 3: They do, more than any other state, I believe.
27:10
Speaker 2: I was going to say, oh, not only like beer,
27:12
Speaker 2: like they make every other state look like amateurs. Yes.
27:17
Speaker 2: There are Europeans who are like, whoa, we can't go
27:19
Speaker 2: toe-to-toe with those folks. And are there German-Americans in Wisconsin?
27:23
Speaker 1: I've been out to Milwaukee. I've been out to Kohler.
27:27
Speaker 1: The names should.
27:27
Speaker 2: Kind of give you a signal, even though Miliwake actually
27:30
Speaker 2: means the good land in Algonquin, as we all know,
27:33
Speaker 2: because of Professor Alex Cooper. But of all the things
27:37
Speaker 2: you could be, just as Abdul El-Sayed said that cars
27:42
Speaker 2: are the cigarettes of the 21st century. Hey, Greg, you
27:46
Speaker 2: have some roots in Michigan.
27:48
Speaker 1: Are cars a big deal in the state of Michigan?
27:50
Speaker 1: Do people take pride in their cars?
27:52
Speaker 2: So you've got a Democrat running against cars in Michigan
27:55
Speaker 2: and against beer in Wisconsin. All of a sudden, Francesca
28:00
Speaker 2: Hong is like, look, I just had a problem with
28:01
Speaker 2: apple pie. I just hated holidays, right?
28:05
Speaker 1: Second look at Francesca Hong.
28:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
28:07
Speaker 3: I mean, Milwaukee is not the place to say that.
28:08
Speaker 3: There literally is a suburb of Milwaukee called Germantown.
28:11
Speaker 1: So that's meant to be a clue.
28:13
Speaker 3: And, you know, and the beer, you know, that's the
28:15
Speaker 3: home of Miller.
28:16
Speaker 1: It's the home of Pabst. It's the home of Schlitz.
28:18
Speaker 3: I don't think they make that anymore. It's the home
28:20
Speaker 3: of old style. I mean, on and on it goes. Blatz,
28:22
Speaker 3: I think, was originally from there. So, I mean, you
28:24
Speaker 3: could literally go to the old Milwaukee Brewers ballpark, which
28:27
Speaker 3: is right next to the Miller Brewery, and the smell
28:29
Speaker 3: would waft over the whole stadium. So, when they call
28:31
Speaker 3: them the Brewers, they mean it. So, good luck there,
28:34
Speaker 3: David Crowley.
28:35
Speaker 1: Not really.
28:36
Speaker 3: Hopefully, Tom Tiffany can pull that off, but... Man, the
28:39
Speaker 3: internet never forgets, and sometimes it's fun to see it.
28:41
Speaker 2: The trips I've taken out to Wisconsin have involved good meals,
28:45
Speaker 2: good sausage, and good beer. I was like, traditionally, Democrats
28:48
Speaker 2: do better amongst women voters than Republicans do. But you
28:52
Speaker 2: keep talking like this, Greg, you know, this guy's going
28:55
Speaker 2: to lose both Laverne and Shirley.
28:56
Speaker 3: That's the last call of the week for the Three
28:58
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