Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #150: Supreme Court Reels In FDA and USDA Power: A New Balance in Washington

Transcript

Episode #150: Supreme Court Reels In FDA and USDA Power: A New Balance in Washington · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, everybody.
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your co-host, Dr.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Cena McKella, and I'm here with our favorite farmer, Joel Salatin.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Today's episode is actually really exciting because today we're talking about a Supreme Court decision that was brought down on Friday, June 28th, and it overturned a 40-year precedent called the Chevron Deference.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now I know this already sounds super boring, but I promise you this may be one of the most important decisions that the Supreme Court has made in my lifetime that's going to impact all of us.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: So the Chevron Deference was really a precedent that made it easier for the federal government to actually regulate the environment, public health, workplace safety, our food supply.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: And they were able to do that through the federal agencies, the bureaucracy, as we call it, like the FDA, USDA, and EPA.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: So this Chevron decision essentially said that federal agencies like the FDA should be allowed to fill in the details when laws are not crystal clear.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, if Congress passes a law, and then the federal agency like the FDA is tasked with enacting that law, the public servants in the FDA would put together regulations to implement that law.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: But if Congress wasn't clear about what they were authorizing those public servants to do, like the specific regulations that they were then going to impose, for example, then the courts would have to defer to those bureaucracies or those federal agencies to interpret the law in terms of how to implement it.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like just so everybody's with us here.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: For example, the Clean Water Act.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was a watershed act under, I think, Richard Nixon, uh, the Clean Water Act, which you know talked about uh which gave the EPA power over, you know, um water, and it's and and it said navigable waters, and and that was in the law.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what have what's happened is the EPA has determined that if you can put a child's paper boat in a puddle, that's the navigable, that's a navigable water.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we're talking about here is for 40 years we've seen this this incredible, well, attorneys call it overreach, overreach of of of what Congress passed and the president signed, but then once the agencies get done with it, they just they just keep uh keep pushing farther and far.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so what's what we see happening is that these federal agencies um were given that authority by Congress, right?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you and I have talked about this before, for instance, with the bioengineered food law that was passed by Congress.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: They basically handed it over to the secretary, right, to be to come up with um the actual regulations of how to implement that law, right?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: So Congress has been kind of handing over, in my opinion, some of their power to these bureaucratic agencies which are not accountable by the public, uh by the American citizens, because we don't vote for the people in the bureaucracies, those are under the executive branch, right?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, in essence, what we have is these bureaucracies have in essentially been, in a way, writing laws, right?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Even though constitutionally Congress is supposed to write the laws.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this is another reason why the bureaucracy is sometimes referred to as the fourth branch of government, because it's like they are writing these things into law and they put them in the federal registries and they they become the rule of the land.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: So what happened is that has all now changed, right?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: In a case that was brought by New England fishermen, the Supreme Court has reversed this chevron decision.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, in doing so, the Supreme Court now is basically taking back judicial power by saying that it is the job of the courts to actually interpret the laws.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: It is not the job of the federal agencies like the FDA, USDA, or EPA.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how the government in the United States was actually originally set up, right?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: The courts are supposed to be the ones that are interpreting the laws, not the bureaucrats.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, this is kind of the beginning of a return to our founding, you know.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and Joel, I should mention this decision was six to three.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was led by the six conservative justices.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: The liberal justices were in dissent.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, as I mentioned, this was brought about by the New England fishermen.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: So this is another example of what we would call this overreach by this fourth branch of government, the bureaucracy.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there were basically regulations passed that were requiring these fishermen to have inspectors on their boats.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so basically it was a government program where they had to have these inspectors on the boats, but it wasn't funded by Congress.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the government agency said, well, the fishermen are going to have to pay for having these inspectors on their boats.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like$700 a day.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: This, in essence, was a tax that was passed uh that was applied to these fishermen, right?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: So under the Chevron, um, the Chevron decision, if the fishermen sued, the court would have to actually defer to the experts in the government bureaucracy who wrote that law instead of the court interpreting the law for itself, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: So now the court doesn't actually have to defer.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: It can actually interpret the um interpret these laws for itself.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a spokesperson for this fisheries organization that said that this was a huge win because now, quote, citizens have the same legal rights in court as the U.S.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: government does.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: She said that citizens have a fighting chance against government regulations that they think are unjust or constitutional, that a citizen can now start winning cases in not just the Supreme Court, but in district courts, um, because this decision applies to all courts, even the lower courts.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: So the fishermen did win this one.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the court, the Supreme Court did decide that this was not constitutional for them to pass this tax on onto the fishermen just because Congress didn't fund it.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: So this is this is a huge win for them, but if this is a huge win for constitutionalists.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, you know, we're uh people who understand the way our country was put together, the three branches of government, three branches of government were executive, legislative, and judicial.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So executive was the president, legislative was Congress and the Senate, and judicial was the Supreme Court.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So those were the final that that was the three, and and and they all of their powers were basically supposed to be balanced with each other.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh what a lot of people don't realize that when we say law or what is legal, only about um maybe a quarter of that is actually passed by Congress.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: 75% is law that is written and enforced by the bureaucracy, the regulators, these, you know, the EPA, FDA, USDA, you know, um uh and and and the problem the problem with those uh with those is they they're kind of they're kind of not in any branch, you know.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're you know, you you have Congress enabling them, you know, Nixon uh uh uh back at Nixon's time, they created the the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, EPA.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of these agencies are relatively new.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um uh Franklin D.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Roosevelt, of course, you know, established numerous of them.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: We know that um we know that uh uh uh Teddy Roosevelt established the Food Safety Inspection Service, FSIS.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um but but they're they kind of they kind of take on a life of their own because they write the law, they interpret the law, and they enforce the law.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So what you have is is as far as a as a citizen, like you and I are are are concerned, we when we run up against one of these agency rules, I'm not gonna call it a law, I'm gonna call it a rule.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just so we separate from what from from laws from Congress, what I would call legal laws versus versus rules, rules that are um that are written and created by the bureaucracy uh that aren't voted on by anybody.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I tend to call them the regulations.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Would that be technically correct?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're more regulations because Congress can is the only one that can actually pass laws.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's correct.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's correct.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so but but what Congress does often is it is it it's it's what's called enabling legislation.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: So they pass enabling legislation that creates, for example, an agency, you know, homeland security, okay, uh uh TSA, all right, uh Transportation Safety Administration, that they create this agency and then they essentially let the agency um write its own regulations.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if you and I as a citizen come up against those regulations and and and we what you know run afoul of them, for example, like you know, we fail to wear a mask at the airport, then where do you appeal?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: The the problem is it when you start you so so you appeal to a superior.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's in the same agency.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you know they have an appellate process, but the process gums up through the agency, and and you you can't get and and if you go to court, the court defers, and here's here's where this Chevron case is so important, or where this new case is so important.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: The court then basically uh punts and says, well, whatever the whatever the agency says is is the rule, and and so you have no um there's there's there there's no fair appellate structure.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um Cena, we've just gone through this, for example, at our at our slaughterhouse, which is under food safety inspection service.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's in the the we take the beef and the pork up there and it it gets uh slaughtered under federal inspection, which has you know a rule book, a big, thick rule book that is that even though it's big and thick, has a lot of nebulous uh aspects to it.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So an inspector can stand there and arbitrarily make a decision on is this acceptable, is this not acceptable?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And and a lot of people don't know that for the last like three years, we've had an inspector up there, young, uh, who is not familiar with grass-finished beef.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so us and every other grass-finished beef farm, she's been throwing out our livers because grass-finished beef livers have a uh of just a tinge of green patina right around the edge of the liver.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, when you pull that liver out, it'll have just a little bit of a green uh uh fringe around it because of all the green, the salad, the you know, green grass.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and if you haven't seen one, if all you've seen are feedlot livers, they have a very different look.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so for three years, she's been throwing out all of our livers.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we've been losing something like$30,000 a year worth of livers that our customers desperately want, but we can't get them.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you where do you appeal?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: You so you appeal to her boss.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, her boss is gonna protect the agency and protect the, you know, protect the outfit.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so um the the one of the ways we proved that this was going on was we actually took we actually took beef to another slaughterhouse up in northern Virginia, totally out uh, you know, totally different region, different inspector, got all of them back, all of our livers back.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Same, same, same, same, you know, same steers, same everything.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: One inspector, they're fine.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Another inspector, they got to be thrown away.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and when I say thrown away, we can't even get them back and feed them to dogs.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, if if the inspector says this is not fit for human consumption, it is then denatured with acid.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it can't be used for pet food, it can't be fed to chickens, nothing.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so and so the the problem is where do you go for appeal?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, so a a slaughterhouse, um, a little federal inspected outfit south of us several months ago, they had a situation come up that was that that the inspector was absolutely wrong, completely wrong, and they appealed it and ended up being shut down for three months, almost lost their whole business and lost their whole farm because they tried to go through the appellate process.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: It took three months, and it's it's I don't I don't want to be a whiner, but but but this is what we're talking about here.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: That there is no when you get into these agencies, I mean, if you if if an EPA agent comes out and you happen to you know dig a pond in a wetland, for example, what in a marsh and you dig a pond, I mean permaculture, think about this.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: In permaculture, they're all about if you've got a if you've got a wet spot, digging a pond in it actually is way better ecologically because now instead of just being a wet spot, you have 10 or 12 feet of of of wet of riparian strata, each of which grows a different kind of species of animal.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: So suddenly you've gone from just a wet spot that grows, you know, X number of critters to a multi-tiered wet spot that grows, you know, 5x uh number of critters in it.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: But um but but it but if you dare to take a wet spot and put a pond in it and do the ecologically correct thing, you can be brought up to the EPA as you know messing with a wetland, and then suddenly you're you know you're in uh big trouble because this is you know this is this is the way it's interpreted.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: So And that's on your own land?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: People have lost they've lost farms over this kind of thing.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, yeah, it's um it's real serious.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Goodness, and don't even get me started on employee stuff, you know, work workmen's workmen's uh like OSHA, um, OSHA regulations and stuff.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know farmers, for example, that that have a farm accident.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Next thing you know, OSHA is there, you know, Occupational Safety Health Administration is there.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean a guy can lose his farm, you know, uh afraid extension cord, a um a tractor with a drop of oil uh coming out of the oil pan, you know, that's not perfect, um, a ladder uh with a loose rung.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you you just can't imagine the number of things that that you can go in.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, so all of us out here that are in business, even if we have an injury, you never turn it in.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: You never say it happened at the workplace because you open yourself up for the vulnerability of these uh bureaucrats to comb over your place.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And trust me, they will find many, many different things, and then they can fine you$30,000,$50,000,$100,000 for you know for several infractions.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, we know we just found we just found a uh you know, a PTO guard off of a tractor, you know, those court sorts of things.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I actually I was just looking up something real fast uh to piggyback with what you were saying, but um I actually was reading that there was uh somebody had said that over that 40 years of Chevron, um there were like over 80,000 regulations that were settled based on the Chevron case.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So so when you're giving these examples, um these are widespread regulations that have been implemented this way, where the courts have to defer, and we don't really have um any way to kind of fight them, as you're saying.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: So so it's it's quite the big deal.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you think about it, like almost practically everything that we do or buy has federal regulations attached to it that are usually imposed by these bureaucracies, like the anywhere from like the type of gas in your car to the shampoo that you buy to the kind of car that you drive, like any of the all of these things, like right, Joel?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, practically everything that we do has some kind of regulation attached to it, even though we're not aware of it.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, uh it is, and all of those, all of those compliance costs, those compliance costs get passed on to the consumer.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where, oh my, Cena, we we can go down a rabbit hole here pretty quick, but this is where uh I if if there is one kind of political thread that I'm quick to admit that I don't have an answer to or I I don't have a strong opinion about, uh Cena, uh maybe you maybe you do, it's tariffs.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm a pretty free marketer guy, and but I'll tell you, when when you see the the number of regulations on businesses in the US, and then you see the um the ecological devastation, for example, in China, that's allowed to produce steel, for example.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: The free market can't work when one government imposes expensive regulatory requirements on a on a business, on on a let's say, you know, a commodity, an item, that a competing country doesn't impose any of those regulations on.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a level playing field for our for our domestic for our domestic production.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and this this happens, it happens in food, it happens in drugs, it happens in in uh you know commodities, all sorts of things.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, here we are in our country, you know, uh shutting down all the coal plants, for example, in in China, they're basically building uh one coal plant, one coal power powered uh uh electric plant a week.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Every week, one a new coal-powered electric utility plant is going up in China, meanwhile, our country is trying to shut down everything except solar and wind, which depend on China for their parts.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it it's it it it's it's not it's not a fair playing field.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and so so I, you know, in general, I'm a I'm a free market person.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: But if if you if you have a a level playing field for business, you don't need tariffs because hey, I'm a red-blooded American.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think we can compete with anybody in the world.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: If it if the playing field's level, yeah, and it's not just for the businesses, too.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's for the individual.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: So have you ever read that book or heard of the book, Three Felonies a Day?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're you you you basically need a license to pee.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I just pulled it up.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I was looking up when you were talking.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and let me just read you just a couple of the sentences under the description.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: It says the average professional in this country wakes up in the morning.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal law, which have exploded in number, but also become impossibly broad and vague.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so he talks about how the bureaucracies, you know, write these regulations.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And like I said, they put them in the code of federal regulations, which in essence becomes the rule of the land, even though they're, you know, it's not Congress's laws.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're put in the federal register.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, in the federal register.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it basically says they don't just apply to white-collar criminals like most people think of.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, no social class, no profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: So this whole book is based on this that we walk around all day thinking like we're upstanding good citizens, but we unknowingly are committing what he says on average three felonies a day.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because of this system where we have all these regulations written by these bureaucrats that we don't even know about because most of us have read the Constitution, right?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we know like the rules and the laws and the bills are bill of right and like what's in that, right?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: But then you have all these, like probably hundreds of thousands, if not more, of these regulations that are on the books that we're not even privy to, like the water that you were talking about.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't even own the water on my land now.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: I can't touch it, you know.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know about these things.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's what he's saying, is that this is how far um overreach this has become with the bureaucracies having this kind of fourth branch of the government perceived power.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: So this is really, to me, I got really excited when I heard about the Supreme Court overturning this Chevron decision because, you know, maybe I'm a little bit too hopeful, but I think this can really rebalance some of the powers between the three branches of government, right?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's gonna pull power away from not just the bureaucracies, but it's also gonna pull power from the executive branch and bring it back into that judicial branch.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: What what it means is is that if I if if there is overreach or let's just say not non-centric nonsensical, nonsensical regulatory intervention um in in something, it makes it it makes it far easier to seek judicial redress from that overreach than than has ever than has been possible in the last 40 years.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and the re the reason our you know our police state, our regulatory structure has grown so dramatically in the 40 years is is absolutely because of this deferential treatment that you judici that the judicial branch had to give, based on Supreme Court ruling, had to had to give to defer to the uh to the agency.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so now just imagine, just imagine if you go into a court of law and and the actual uh whatever the the the bias the bias of the judge is not now assuming that the agency is right, but actually does not assume the agency is right.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that the that the the the plaintiff in this case a a wronged citizen or business is just as apt to be right as the agency interpretation.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that that that's that's a that's a yeah, that's that's that's cause for celebration because we haven't had that, you know, in our in our recent memory.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you go in, every time you go in, it's it's a stacked deck.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um when there's any little question, the judge defers the well, whatever the agency says is fine.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh Congress passed enabling legislation, legislation, the you know, whatever the agency says is fine.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, raw milk, um, you know, mandatory um radio frequency identification tags, um, you know, chemtrails, you know, whatever it is, uh, they assume that the bureaucratic expert knows knows what he or she is doing.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this this casts casts a new light on that um you know, on that bias and has the chance to bring, I think, bring a lot of corrective action.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: It it it will it will uh it creates oxygen, oxygen into the space for corrective action for this kind of overreach.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's so poetic too that it's happening right before 4th of July, right?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is something to celebrate on our in our country's birthday.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah you know, I think the founders would be proud.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, they would be.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and they would roll over in their grave if they saw the level of of uh intervention that the federal government has, you know, their their their thing, I mean we've got the executive, legislative, and judicial, you know, throughout, you know, all the way down, federal, state, um, local, but but but beyond that, they did not envision a federal nanny state like we have.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: They envisioned a 50-state uh 50 state experiment.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I think that one of the reasons that our country, that that we feel so uh bifurcated in our country and the the the anger and whatever uh all that is going on is because we have arrogated at to the federal level things that were supposed to be done at the state level.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what if what if one state says, well, I don't think the government should be involved in education at all?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And another one says, Well, I think we should be cradle to grave education.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then you can, you know, you can have two experiments going on, and people can look.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, look what they're doing over there.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Huh?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're getting this, this and this and this results.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And look over here, you know, look what they're doing.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're getting this and this this results.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and you can have 50 simultaneous experiments going on in a space, you know.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one state says, you know, I think we're gonna let food be completely unregulated.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna have any regulational food whatsoever.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another state says, Well, I think Is that your dream?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do you lay awake at night and dream about that?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would I would love to see that.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Another state says, Well, I think we need to, you know, regulate every morsel of food, uh, and even uh and even you know, criminalize herd shares of raw milk and and and anything else.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and then everybody can sit back and well, you know, look what's happening in this state.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, uh, people are getting well and the hospitals aren't needed as much.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And over here, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the the the the so you know when you when you layer on the balance that was supposed to exist between the three branches, and then you layer on the balance that was supposed to exist between federal, state, and local, shroud Chevron all but destroyed the the the executive, legislative, judicial uh um balance.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then the regular and then that gave uh whatever, gave um room to allow the acceleration of you know of arrogating everything to the federal level.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so you had you had kind of both things going on at one time.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it would be really fascinating to to follow this story and see how this all unfolds.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we know this has been a huge issue for citizens, you know, like we said, as well as for businesses.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even Rand Paul wrote a book uh related to this topic.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was called like government bullies, uh, where in some of those examples he was talking about this very same thing that we don't have this recourse when an agency does come and say, Oh, you've committed a felony, right?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully now that this is going to change.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think this might also make it so not only is the power going to shift in a couple of ways.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: So one is that um it's gonna shift away from the eight, these bureaucratic agencies and toward the courts, you know, rebalance that, but also from the agencies back to Congress.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: So how Congress has kind of deferred over to these agencies uh to kind of fill in these missing regulations, right?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think Congress may now have pressure to be more specific when they're writing laws, right?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's they can't write these ambiguous laws anymore, they're gonna get held up in the courts.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: So they're gonna have to be, you know, on the ball and not handing over their some of their power and authority over to the bureaucracy.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Joel, why don't you why don't you give us your final takeaway?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have a community question that's just burning.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I I do.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and um, you know, I wrote a book, Everything I Want to Do is Illegal.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um shoot, uh what, 10, 12 years ago, about you know, the things that that we've either gotten in trouble about or things that we don't do in order to stay legal that we would like to do.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so um uh interestingly enough, I've had numerous professionals read that book, you know, doctors, electricians, plumbers, whatever.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and every one of them says that, I mean, mine obviously was based on you know food and farming, but they said that same book could be written for every other vocation there is out there.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing, whether you're a a cosmetologist or or a or a you know uh uh an insurance agent, uh the the interventive um the interventive role at the federal level is pretty is pretty dramatic.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: So Cena, my question, I have a question.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: My my question for our community is if you could eliminate one regulation, one federal regulation, what would it be?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was I I was I was gonna say one federal agency.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's a little bit too little bit too broad.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: I like that one though.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you take your pick, one regulation or one agency.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: See, Cena, I've always said, I've always said what we need is to allow people to designate their taxes.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: So when I pay my taxes, um I could designate it to the Department of Defense, the EPA, the Department of Education.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, so you got these cabinet level, you know, you've got these, whatever it is, 10 roughly 10, 12 cabinet level departments.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and so wouldn't it be cool if we could designate our taxes to one of those department one of those cabinet level departments, agencies, then the agency um agencies would have to truly serve the people to uh it would be almost a a a pay for service kind of thing.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if I like the service you're giving, I'm gonna, I'm gonna send my taxes to you.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and the ones that don't uh just dry up.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they just get defunded.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and wouldn't that be cool?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you just defund the ones you don't like.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I think I think that would be a truly dramatic way to um you know to create true accountability uh at the federal level uh to actually have designated taxes.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: So folks that want a strong military, they can send their money to the Department of Defense.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Folks that want us want, you know, that think the EPA is the best thing that ever happened, send it to the EPA.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Folks that think, oh man, we need this, we need this, these uh this this department of education, boy, we really need that.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they can you know send it to that.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um man, uh talk about talk about a way to really gauge the public's mood.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that would really gauge the public's mood.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the question today is if you could shut down one regulation or one agency, what would it be?
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I can only pick one.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: A whole list ran through my head, but uh I yeah, I will do it.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: I will just pick one.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh that's going to be based on my mood, which one I'm picking.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I love it.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think that sounds great.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Joel, it is such a pleasure, as always, to get your insights and your personal experiences.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: You you've you've been around as a farmer much longer than I've been around as a scientist.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like you've had your hand in everything.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're like this this whole ocean of well of will wellness and knowledge.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I totally appreciate it.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this was a fascinating topic.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: If you guys have questions, send in your questions.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: We always love to hear from you.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we will see you next week.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Bye bye.