WEBVTT 00:00:00.010 --> 00:00:04.550 Hello, folks. We are about to get started with a live stream. 00:00:04.850 --> 00:00:06.270 Live stream. Live stream. 00:00:06.710 --> 00:00:12.230 Let's see. Can we get a... Not yet. We're waiting for the little announcement to go out. 00:00:13.130 --> 00:00:19.750 There we go. Announcement out. And I will re-blook it, blah, 00:00:19.870 --> 00:00:23.310 blah, blah thing as soon as it shows up here. 00:00:23.650 --> 00:00:25.970 There we go. Okay. 00:00:28.330 --> 00:00:32.030 We're just going to jump into it and i'll intro what's going on and blah blah 00:00:32.030 --> 00:00:39.790 blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. 00:01:04.870 --> 00:01:11.290 Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, March 22nd, 2025. 00:01:11.510 --> 00:01:15.730 It's just after 17 UTC as we're starting to record this. I am Sam Minter, 00:01:15.930 --> 00:01:18.670 and I do not have an Yvonne with me. 00:01:19.600 --> 00:01:23.980 Yeah, he's traveling again, and whatever his travel schedule this time around 00:01:23.980 --> 00:01:28.680 is one that was incompatible with doing the show this week. 00:01:29.020 --> 00:01:36.100 I sent out my little note to our stable of potential substitute co-hosts, 00:01:36.120 --> 00:01:37.200 and at first no one answered. 00:01:37.620 --> 00:01:43.900 But then I did have someone say they would do it. And that would be my wife, Brandi Donaghy. 00:01:44.220 --> 00:01:47.420 Representative Brandi Donaghy. State Representative Brandi Donaghy in Washington 00:01:47.420 --> 00:01:49.980 State, 44th Legislative District. 00:01:50.380 --> 00:01:53.500 But right now, at this very second, while I'm starting to record, 00:01:53.720 --> 00:01:58.160 she is preparing to go out and do a series of two town halls. 00:01:58.980 --> 00:02:02.940 And so I thought I'd just get the show started, and then we will record more 00:02:02.940 --> 00:02:04.500 with her later on in the weekend. 00:02:04.740 --> 00:02:09.460 As usual, I'm anchoring the show in the correct week, and so she'll be with 00:02:09.460 --> 00:02:10.820 us after the first break. 00:02:10.820 --> 00:02:14.420 And then as usual for a guest she'll pick topics maybe 00:02:14.420 --> 00:02:17.240 we'll talk about those 10 halls maybe we won't i don't know it depends what 00:02:17.240 --> 00:02:19.980 happens there and what she wants to talk about that's it's gonna be up 00:02:19.980 --> 00:02:25.700 to her the one thing that i yeah since i figured i'll do this first segment 00:02:25.700 --> 00:02:30.180 to anchor i'll do the but first thing where i do some media first especially 00:02:30.180 --> 00:02:34.320 like and i looked to see what was next on my list and if it was something that 00:02:34.320 --> 00:02:39.020 i knew like you know she'd watched with me or something, I would have said, hey, 00:02:39.380 --> 00:02:43.920 let's wait and have a conversation where she can talk about it too. 00:02:44.020 --> 00:02:49.780 But no, this one was definitely not one that she was with me when I watched. 00:02:49.940 --> 00:02:54.120 As with all of these, I think my son was with me, but I don't remember anything 00:02:54.120 --> 00:02:59.780 about his reaction to this one because I imagine it was very understated. 00:03:00.060 --> 00:03:09.880 This was a 2021 documentary called Stuart Udall, The Politics of Beauty. 00:03:11.240 --> 00:03:20.140 And I guess you can imagine. So first of all, let's say who was Stuart Udall? 00:03:20.140 --> 00:03:30.140 For anybody who may not remember, he was a Democrat. He was a congressman from Arizona. 00:03:30.300 --> 00:03:38.960 He was Secretary of the Interior from 1961 through 69. So that's under Kennedy and Johnson. 00:03:40.310 --> 00:03:45.250 And he is best known, I'm reading from the first paragraph of his Wikipedia 00:03:45.250 --> 00:03:50.190 page now, for promoting environmentalism while in the cabinet and his success 00:03:50.190 --> 00:03:51.130 under President Johnson. 00:03:51.470 --> 00:03:56.130 So that's who he is. I believe there is a brief, 00:03:56.530 --> 00:04:04.630 like, very tenuous family connection in that I think my grandmother and grandfather 00:04:04.630 --> 00:04:08.730 on my father's side of the family, 00:04:08.850 --> 00:04:13.710 so the Minter side of the family, I believe they like were at least acquaintances 00:04:13.710 --> 00:04:16.170 with this guy or knew him in passing. 00:04:16.170 --> 00:04:22.030 I don't think they were like good friends or something, but I remember hearing 00:04:22.030 --> 00:04:30.310 that he was like a friend of the family kind of thing, or maybe it was his brother that was. 00:04:32.610 --> 00:04:45.430 Let me see. Okay. I brought up a note from 2024 from my dad to his sisters, 00:04:45.730 --> 00:04:49.910 actually in May 2023, that says, 00:04:50.850 --> 00:04:59.310 Hi, as I remember, both Stu Udall and his brother Mo Udall were friends of dads, or patients, or both. 00:04:59.470 --> 00:05:02.610 Does that fit with your memories? Mine is not very certain, 00:05:02.790 --> 00:05:10.790 and I am almost sure it is because of this email that I put this movie on my 00:05:10.790 --> 00:05:17.450 list, because it includes a link to historynewsnetwork.com, a blog post about the movie. 00:05:18.570 --> 00:05:24.150 My Aunt Diane answers, I remember Mo being a closer friend, though they also 00:05:24.150 --> 00:05:27.850 knew Stu, of course. He was closer to other friends of theirs in Tucson. 00:05:28.190 --> 00:05:33.310 Maybe the Barrys? I remember the National Parks and Secretary of Interior, but not anything else. 00:05:34.230 --> 00:05:40.890 And then we've got from my dad, thanks for your good memory. 00:05:41.050 --> 00:05:44.230 Frank Berry was indeed the key connection to the Udalls. 00:05:45.150 --> 00:05:51.930 And then there's a little biographical bit that he puts, 00:05:52.250 --> 00:05:55.690 you know, when John Kennedy rewarded Udall for delivering the Arizona delegation 00:05:55.690 --> 00:05:59.610 at the 1960 Democratic Convention by appointing the 40-year-old congressman 00:05:59.610 --> 00:06:00.570 as Secretary of Interior. 00:06:00.730 --> 00:06:03.770 No one anticipated that one of his first acts would concern civil rights. 00:06:03.970 --> 00:06:07.730 By 1961, Washington, D.C. had become a primarily black city. 00:06:07.850 --> 00:06:11.510 The federal government had just completed the construction of a new public athletics 00:06:11.510 --> 00:06:14.050 facility, the District of Columbia Stadium. 00:06:15.210 --> 00:06:18.610 In April, Udall requested that Interior Department solicitor Frank J. 00:06:18.770 --> 00:06:21.850 Berry render an opinion on discrimination at any facilities administered by 00:06:21.850 --> 00:06:22.870 the Department of Interior. 00:06:23.190 --> 00:06:26.950 Using court cases, executive order, civil rights laws, and the 14th Amendment, 00:06:27.130 --> 00:06:30.790 Berry informed Udall that he could simply announce that there could be no discrimination 00:06:30.790 --> 00:06:33.030 at any federal properties, including the new stadium. 00:06:33.350 --> 00:06:36.830 The Washington Redskins of the National Football League planned to share the 00:06:36.830 --> 00:06:38.470 new stadium with baseball senators. 00:06:38.870 --> 00:06:42.510 However, the senators moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and became the Twins. 00:06:42.850 --> 00:06:48.330 In 1961, the Redskins were the only NFL team without even one black player and 00:06:48.330 --> 00:06:51.470 had nowhere to play if Udall denied them access to the new stadium. 00:06:51.710 --> 00:06:55.290 The city received an expansion baseball team, also called the Senators, 00:06:55.430 --> 00:06:56.930 but it had black athletes. 00:06:57.390 --> 00:07:00.710 Consequently, Udall announced that the Redskins could not use the facility because 00:07:00.710 --> 00:07:03.170 of discriminatory hiring practices. 00:07:04.270 --> 00:07:09.110 And let's see, my Aunt Susan asks, I wonder what Tom Udall is doing these days. 00:07:09.230 --> 00:07:10.250 I think he was a grandson. 00:07:10.610 --> 00:07:13.950 And Diane says he's the ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. 00:07:14.130 --> 00:07:16.930 This was obviously still during the Biden administration. 00:07:17.630 --> 00:07:21.910 My aunt Susan says, nice work if you can get it. I wouldn't mind that job. 00:07:22.250 --> 00:07:26.810 Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa? That sounds nice. 00:07:27.430 --> 00:07:34.170 And then I mentioned in June 2024, I replied back to this thread from like a 00:07:34.170 --> 00:07:39.430 little more than a year later that Alex and I were actually watching the movie now. 00:07:41.790 --> 00:07:46.390 And yeah, then. So let's see what else in this email thread. 00:07:46.590 --> 00:07:49.590 Mo was a friend, not sure if he was patient, but better friends with the berries. 00:07:49.750 --> 00:07:51.070 They knew Stu, but not as well. 00:07:51.270 --> 00:07:54.730 But Stu is the example I use when I want to talk about honest politicians. 00:07:54.930 --> 00:07:59.230 And Mo's son was until recently the governor of New Mexico and Stu's son of Colorado. 00:08:00.070 --> 00:08:04.670 So anyway, there's lots of, Lots of politicians in this family, 00:08:04.750 --> 00:08:12.370 and apparently I had a sort of weak family connection through my grandfather, my father's father. 00:08:12.830 --> 00:08:16.490 So, Mo Udall. Anyway, the documentary itself. 00:08:19.430 --> 00:08:24.770 Look, you can go find out more information on StuartUdallFilm.org. 00:08:25.490 --> 00:08:29.930 And let's see, does that History Channel link still work to actually watch it? 00:08:29.930 --> 00:08:32.310 I forget how we watched it or where we found it. 00:08:33.290 --> 00:08:40.210 I'm going to check Just Watch as well real quick because that always tells me where to find things. 00:08:40.790 --> 00:08:45.530 You know, it corrected Stuart Udall to Stuart Usual. 00:08:46.230 --> 00:08:50.230 There we go. Not available for—oh, Ovid. 00:08:50.850 --> 00:08:55.710 Ovid. It was available on this service called Ovid. 00:08:57.100 --> 00:09:04.260 Which I probably set up just to watch this stupid thing. Anyway, the movie itself. 00:09:05.280 --> 00:09:11.620 It's one of these documentaries that are made by people who are obviously fans 00:09:11.620 --> 00:09:17.080 of the person and with close cooperation with the family or whatever. 00:09:17.400 --> 00:09:27.260 Stuart Udall died in 2010, and this movie came out just a few years later in 2021. well, 11 years. 00:09:27.680 --> 00:09:33.380 You know, you could tell, you know, you could tell what stage of life I'm at 00:09:33.380 --> 00:09:35.820 with 11 years is just a few years. 00:09:36.840 --> 00:09:42.800 Not a lot, you know. Anyway, so it's kind of a hagiography. 00:09:43.540 --> 00:09:48.700 You know, it's not doing a lot of, you know, sort of a balanced, 00:09:48.900 --> 00:09:50.600 here's the good, here's the bad, here's the whatever. 00:09:50.600 --> 00:09:54.960 It's like, hey, look at this great guy and all the things he accomplished during 00:09:54.960 --> 00:09:59.060 his life, which is fine, which is fine. 00:10:00.240 --> 00:10:07.080 I'm going to give it a thumb sideways. I mean, look, it's a documentary about 00:10:07.080 --> 00:10:11.660 sort of a mid-level politician from the middle of the 20th century. 00:10:12.080 --> 00:10:16.660 You're not talking somebody super famous. You're not talking about, 00:10:16.660 --> 00:10:22.900 you know, a president or, you know, things that are like dramatic historical 00:10:22.900 --> 00:10:25.040 events that we have all heard of. 00:10:25.980 --> 00:10:32.400 We're talking about a guy who is secretary of the interior and a congressman. 00:10:33.260 --> 00:10:40.620 And, you know, it seems like he accomplished some good things. 00:10:40.820 --> 00:10:45.980 I mean, you know, as we go through it, like I'm scanning the Wikipedia page 00:10:45.980 --> 00:10:50.100 from his time as Secretary of the Interior, because I don't actually remember 00:10:50.100 --> 00:10:53.360 the details from the documentary that I watched almost a year ago. 00:10:54.320 --> 00:10:56.320 But, you know, he... 00:10:57.360 --> 00:11:00.740 He oversaw creation of new national parks. 00:11:01.500 --> 00:11:06.940 He played a key role in getting some environmental laws through. 00:11:07.200 --> 00:11:13.740 Clean air, water quality, clean water restoration, some wilderness stuff. 00:11:14.800 --> 00:11:17.760 There's a list of laws that he helped. 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:21.360 There's the Washington Redskins thing that I just mentioned. 00:11:21.360 --> 00:11:29.760 And he apparently did some other anti-racism stuff, like policy on use of ethnic 00:11:29.760 --> 00:11:32.040 slurs on topographic maps. 00:11:32.380 --> 00:11:40.480 So, you know, names of places that were insensitive, let's say. 00:11:44.740 --> 00:11:48.000 He apparently had a bit role in the 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:50.780 lead up to the cuban missile crisis like in 00:11:50.780 --> 00:11:55.460 some communication with khrushchev i don't know you 00:11:55.460 --> 00:11:58.180 know he he he wrote a 00:11:58.180 --> 00:12:00.960 book on the conservation i mean 00:12:00.960 --> 00:12:05.080 he was known his big thing was being an environmentalist okay 00:12:05.080 --> 00:12:12.760 and he was also a big proponent it looks like for starting to use nasa satellites 00:12:12.760 --> 00:12:21.860 to survey as part of the u.s geological survey and to understand what the natural 00:12:21.860 --> 00:12:24.920 resources of the country really were etc etc. 00:12:27.220 --> 00:12:33.440 Okay you know and and like that that that's the list of stuff about him but the point is like okay. 00:12:34.700 --> 00:12:43.460 It's a biographical film that concentrates on the good stuff about sort of, 00:12:44.060 --> 00:12:48.460 you know, I'm not going to say he didn't matter. 00:12:48.600 --> 00:12:52.100 Of course he mattered. He did important things, but he's not the big famous person. 00:12:52.100 --> 00:12:58.400 So you don't have that hook and you don't have a hook either of, 00:12:58.960 --> 00:13:06.760 oh, and there was this big scandal, or of other things along those lines that would make you think, 00:13:07.180 --> 00:13:13.700 that would give it sort of extra flavor and interest just as a documentary of, 00:13:13.900 --> 00:13:19.960 oh my God, this source material is so interesting that it's interesting no matter what. 00:13:20.320 --> 00:13:23.900 So, thumbs sideways. And look, honestly, 00:13:24.200 --> 00:13:31.160 unless you have some sort of direct interest in this man or the environmental 00:13:31.160 --> 00:13:39.860 movements of the 1960s or just generally of mid 20th century Democratic politicians, 00:13:39.860 --> 00:13:43.660 I don't know why you would like seek this out. 00:13:44.260 --> 00:13:49.480 Because it, you know, like I said, I think I signed up for a new streaming service 00:13:49.480 --> 00:13:55.020 or at least the free trial for a streaming service just to watch this movie. 00:13:56.170 --> 00:13:59.790 And, you know, or maybe I found it online somewhere else. 00:13:59.910 --> 00:14:04.450 I don't remember where I saw it, but I do know I have Ovid on my Apple TV now. 00:14:04.590 --> 00:14:07.110 And the only thing I can imagine is I probably got it for this. 00:14:08.410 --> 00:14:12.350 But I wonder if I'm still paying for it. I should probably check that. 00:14:12.850 --> 00:14:15.310 Anyway, thumb sideways. 00:14:15.850 --> 00:14:19.550 It wasn't bad or anything. It's just like it's not exceptional. 00:14:19.550 --> 00:14:26.330 So it's sort of like you need to have some reason to be watching it, I think. 00:14:26.790 --> 00:14:33.650 Maybe if you were studying this era for school, like you were in a college program 00:14:33.650 --> 00:14:38.530 studying this stuff or a graduate program studying this stuff. I don't know. 00:14:38.790 --> 00:14:42.110 Anyway, or your family knew him. 00:14:42.510 --> 00:14:47.430 Like apparently my family knew him. So anyway. way. 00:14:50.570 --> 00:14:53.550 Okay, I think that's going to be it for this segment. 00:14:53.790 --> 00:14:59.910 As I mentioned, next up, when we come back from this break, I will have my wife, 00:15:00.230 --> 00:15:01.170 Brandy Donaghy, with me. 00:15:01.310 --> 00:15:05.310 I am actually going to leave and go to the town hall right now. 00:15:05.810 --> 00:15:09.490 She's doing two town halls today in two different parts of her district, 00:15:09.810 --> 00:15:13.650 one in Mill Creek, Washington, and one in Snohomish, Washington, 00:15:13.870 --> 00:15:16.290 Snohomish City. We're all in Snohomish County. 00:15:17.430 --> 00:15:21.310 So I'm going to attend both town halls with her, even though I've got other 00:15:21.310 --> 00:15:25.010 stuff I should be doing too, but I don't miss her town halls. 00:15:25.110 --> 00:15:29.850 So I'm going to go attend both town halls, probably participate a little bit 00:15:29.850 --> 00:15:33.450 in helping set up and tear down. I usually help with that stuff. 00:15:34.070 --> 00:15:38.310 And then, yeah, later on this weekend, 00:15:38.330 --> 00:15:44.250 we will pick this up and my wife will join me for the rest of curmudgeon's corner 00:15:44.250 --> 00:15:54.370 but first this exciting break and yeah yeah yeah i'm confusing myself first this break. 00:15:54.370 --> 00:16:01.610 You're supposed to say do do do do do do do alex amzilla, 00:16:02.870 --> 00:16:10.830 alex amzilla is awesome its videos are fun and today once again we have one 00:16:10.830 --> 00:16:14.990 of our most The Loyalist Subscriber is here to tell you how awesome Alex Emson is. 00:16:15.690 --> 00:16:23.370 I'd say on a rate from 1 to 10, Alex Emsla is awesome at, I don't know, 37, 82. 00:16:23.850 --> 00:16:29.050 He's pretty radical. His videos are phenomenal. They're full of creativity. 00:16:29.490 --> 00:16:33.230 And they're so funny and exciting to watch. 00:16:33.610 --> 00:16:39.670 Wow, what happened to your voice then, Amy? Was that dad pretending to be you 00:16:39.670 --> 00:16:46.150 because the audio was distorted when it really wasn't Because I told him to? 00:16:46.750 --> 00:16:50.210 Yes. Good job on remembering, Dad. 00:16:50.930 --> 00:16:52.510 Do, do, do! 00:16:53.950 --> 00:17:01.290 Okay, we are back. And as promised, I do now have my wife, Brandy Donaghy, 00:17:01.470 --> 00:17:05.910 who, as I mentioned, representative, state representative, Washington State, 00:17:06.090 --> 00:17:08.770 44th Legislative District, all that kind of stuff. 00:17:09.410 --> 00:17:13.410 I did want to finish up, before we get to Brandy, and I'll say hello to Brandy, 00:17:13.410 --> 00:17:18.010 And we've sort of decided we're going to do like one segment with like Washington state stuff. 00:17:18.190 --> 00:17:23.530 Cause we do have her here as a state rep and then one segment on national ish stuff. 00:17:24.290 --> 00:17:32.730 But, you know, I had talked in the last segment, I talked about Stuart Udall and I, and after. 00:17:34.810 --> 00:17:40.210 After I recorded that segment, I did notice that it was one more thing on the 00:17:40.210 --> 00:17:44.450 Wikipedia media page that was worth mentioning about him. 00:17:44.910 --> 00:17:51.130 And it's just that him and his brother Moe, which apparently my grandfather 00:17:51.130 --> 00:17:55.310 and grandmother on my father's side knew both of them to some degree. 00:17:56.730 --> 00:18:01.430 I mentioned his career in Congress and Secretary of the Interior. 00:18:01.750 --> 00:18:06.690 This is because of a movie I watched, Brandy, a documentary about this guy. Anyway, 00:18:07.320 --> 00:18:09.220 Apparently, they were also known 00:18:09.220 --> 00:18:16.800 before that for helping to integrate the University of Arizona cafeteria. 00:18:17.520 --> 00:18:20.020 And this is apparently one of the stories they tell about themselves. 00:18:21.800 --> 00:18:31.420 Basically, as with most places back in that era, this was actually pretty early, in 1947. 00:18:31.420 --> 00:18:38.980 47, they specifically went and did sort of a thing where they invited some Black 00:18:38.980 --> 00:18:43.180 students into the cafeteria with them, which was against the rules at the time. 00:18:43.440 --> 00:18:48.560 And it apparently helped open up the situation. 00:18:48.740 --> 00:18:51.900 I don't know the details of that, but it was in the Wikipedia page and I thought it was interesting. 00:18:51.980 --> 00:18:52.440 Anyway. 00:18:53.920 --> 00:18:55.640 Okay. So, Brandy. 00:18:56.080 --> 00:18:56.600 Yes. 00:18:57.500 --> 00:19:02.460 Since we have you here as a state rep in Washington state, and I did mention 00:19:02.460 --> 00:19:05.800 to folks that I was going to your two town halls today. 00:19:06.640 --> 00:19:11.540 What do you want to talk about on the local side or on the Washington state side? 00:19:13.920 --> 00:19:17.080 Things have been incredibly busy incredibly busy 00:19:17.080 --> 00:19:20.000 and sometimes it's busy in a good way and sometimes 00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:26.080 it's busy in a less good way um so this is definitely a very different session 00:19:26.080 --> 00:19:33.340 than i've i've experienced before and i think most most the most of the people 00:19:33.340 --> 00:19:36.820 in the house anyway will probably feel the same way we do have people who've 00:19:36.820 --> 00:19:38.980 been around since previous um, 00:19:39.960 --> 00:19:41.200 previous funding issues. 00:19:41.920 --> 00:19:46.440 So most people listening will probably have absolutely no idea what funding 00:19:46.440 --> 00:19:47.800 issues you are talking about. 00:19:48.500 --> 00:19:51.360 So explain. 00:19:51.820 --> 00:19:52.780 Okay. So. 00:19:53.520 --> 00:19:55.740 And how is it different than every other time? 00:19:55.920 --> 00:20:00.360 So we've had a decent amount of money coming in and some of it was due to like 00:20:00.360 --> 00:20:03.140 the COVID, the one time things for COVID. 00:20:03.340 --> 00:20:06.960 And so we were able to fund stuff and do some things that we hadn't been able to do before. 00:20:07.600 --> 00:20:11.100 And it's important to remember that when you're using like money, 00:20:11.380 --> 00:20:14.760 like federal money, or putting out grants or receiving grants, 00:20:15.020 --> 00:20:19.260 there can be stipulations that they actually have to be spent or at least allocated 00:20:19.260 --> 00:20:22.820 within a certain period of time. So it's not like you can save it for later. 00:20:23.400 --> 00:20:29.260 You want it to go. And so a lot of the things that we had done before, 00:20:29.480 --> 00:20:35.540 of course, we're not able to continue because our budget situation has changed. 00:20:35.720 --> 00:20:39.340 We've gone from having extra cash to having much less. 00:20:39.540 --> 00:20:44.440 Just to make sure I understand that properly, there's a lot of that was expected. 00:20:44.620 --> 00:20:47.160 Like you said, it was temporary programs with temporary funding. 00:20:47.320 --> 00:20:49.280 So you expected those to go away. 00:20:49.340 --> 00:20:57.260 We expected to have less, but then, and we knew it was going to be a tighter biennium anyway. 00:20:57.820 --> 00:21:02.160 But I think the change in- What's a biennium? It's two years. 00:21:02.160 --> 00:21:06.460 It's the two-year period that we fund things for that. 00:21:08.540 --> 00:21:12.480 So, next biennium starts, I want to say July 1st. 00:21:12.660 --> 00:21:13.100 Okay. 00:21:14.320 --> 00:21:16.420 And then it's a two-year period. 00:21:16.660 --> 00:21:20.960 So, basically, you have to have all the budget stuff, all the spending stuff 00:21:20.960 --> 00:21:24.400 has to be in place by July that will cover the next two years. 00:21:24.640 --> 00:21:29.860 Well, kind of, yeah. So, basically, it trails the legislature by about six months. 00:21:29.980 --> 00:21:35.180 Okay. The start of the biennium so that we can do the budget and then it goes into effect. 00:21:35.740 --> 00:21:37.280 And that's every two years. 00:21:38.680 --> 00:21:42.280 I mean, there's usually a supplemental budget, too. So, like, 00:21:42.380 --> 00:21:43.380 this year we did the budget. 00:21:43.780 --> 00:21:47.540 Next year we do a supplemental budget for picking up things that we missed or 00:21:47.540 --> 00:21:48.980 things that need to be adjusted, whatever. 00:21:49.600 --> 00:21:53.300 But our revenue forecasts are not great. 00:21:53.980 --> 00:22:01.480 And I think they'd have been better had we had a different outcome in November. 00:22:03.800 --> 00:22:09.580 How so? How would the national election results, because I'm pretty sure that's 00:22:09.580 --> 00:22:16.720 what you're referring to, make a difference to the revenue forecasts for the state? 00:22:17.640 --> 00:22:22.140 Well, they make a difference to revenue across the country, actually across the world. 00:22:22.940 --> 00:22:26.080 Perfect example is, as we've seen the stock market crashing, 00:22:26.300 --> 00:22:35.180 a big part of that is due to the implementation of this weird tariff war and, 00:22:37.130 --> 00:22:40.430 mass firings and all sorts of things there. 00:22:40.950 --> 00:22:43.990 Everything they do in D.C. was going to have an impact on us, 00:22:44.090 --> 00:22:47.490 and it's going to have an impact on what we can expect to be coming in. 00:22:48.050 --> 00:22:54.450 So real quick, I think it's, and look, I'm reflecting back some stuff I heard 00:22:54.450 --> 00:22:57.970 at your town hall earlier today, but I think it's important to note, 00:22:58.210 --> 00:23:01.350 part of this is Washington state has no income tax. 00:23:01.950 --> 00:23:07.250 Most states have state income tax. Washington state does not. 00:23:07.630 --> 00:23:14.810 So the revenue sources, and a lot of it is from sales tax. 00:23:15.250 --> 00:23:16.310 Sales tax and fees. 00:23:16.550 --> 00:23:21.030 Sales tax and fees. And both of those are sort of consumption related. 00:23:21.390 --> 00:23:27.010 So if people are out there spending, you get more of that. If they're not, then those decrease. 00:23:27.850 --> 00:23:33.170 So basically, unlike a state with income tax, Washington state, 00:23:33.510 --> 00:23:36.690 and there are only a couple more, like Florida has no income tax, 00:23:36.930 --> 00:23:39.670 but a couple more, I think. Is it just the two? 00:23:40.370 --> 00:23:40.690 Yeah. 00:23:41.430 --> 00:23:45.950 I know those two don't, but most states have income taxes. 00:23:46.250 --> 00:23:52.490 And in those cases, you'll see a reduction if people lose their jobs and such, 00:23:52.490 --> 00:23:59.430 But just a regular slowdown of spending is probably more impactful for Washington 00:23:59.430 --> 00:24:01.750 because there's no income tax, right? 00:24:02.010 --> 00:24:02.150 Yeah. 00:24:02.650 --> 00:24:08.730 Okay. So, sorry. Tangent or additional explanation that I thought would be helpful. Okay, continue. 00:24:08.930 --> 00:24:10.430 You're translating for me again. 00:24:13.270 --> 00:24:16.330 No, but I think that does have an impact on our economic forecast. 00:24:16.650 --> 00:24:21.310 You know, we also, we saw some changes because of inflation and that kind of thing. 00:24:21.310 --> 00:24:30.190 But I mean, one of the things that inflation did was, or the inflation was a, I guess, a byproduct of, 00:24:30.720 --> 00:24:32.760 keeping us out of a recession. 00:24:34.340 --> 00:24:41.760 And a lot of still sort of post-COVID adjustment stuff was still going on as well. 00:24:42.020 --> 00:24:45.620 Yeah, because the world was about to spin into a recession. 00:24:46.340 --> 00:24:51.100 Honestly, I think at this point, unless things change in D.C., 00:24:51.100 --> 00:24:53.340 we're going to go beyond that this time. 00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:56.400 Which will be very bad. 00:24:56.400 --> 00:25:01.140 But so revenue revenue 00:25:01.140 --> 00:25:08.980 down and then costs for doing things up because of inflation so you're you're 00:25:08.980 --> 00:25:14.400 you're sort of so the state's in a revenue pinch or in a about an out of balance 00:25:14.400 --> 00:25:20.120 budget pinch and you have to do stuff about it right yes and i want to say. 00:25:20.120 --> 00:25:21.680 It's 12 to 15 billion dollars. 00:25:22.600 --> 00:25:26.040 And, and you said, you know, this is a biennium kind of thing happens every two years. 00:25:26.160 --> 00:25:29.420 You were here two years ago too, but this kind of issue did not, 00:25:29.600 --> 00:25:31.200 wasn't a problem years ago. 00:25:31.660 --> 00:25:35.740 No. I mean, there was, I, I, I think there may have been a little bit less, 00:25:35.900 --> 00:25:39.560 but it was still, it was a different time. 00:25:40.180 --> 00:25:40.580 Okay. 00:25:40.840 --> 00:25:45.040 That's the easiest way to put it. and. 00:25:45.040 --> 00:25:51.160 And so this is like the big theme of the legislative session this time is all 00:25:51.160 --> 00:25:52.280 surrounding this crisis. 00:25:52.280 --> 00:26:00.620 Sort of i guess i i would say yes but also i mean it's it's where we are right 00:26:00.620 --> 00:26:07.580 and financially the the money that has to come in the money has to go out but there's also that big, 00:26:09.150 --> 00:26:12.090 piece of unknowing about what's happening at the federal level, 00:26:12.090 --> 00:26:15.890 whether or not we're going to get funding for schools, which is about 8% of 00:26:15.890 --> 00:26:19.270 the funding for schools here comes from federal government. 00:26:20.030 --> 00:26:25.290 We have lots of transportation projects that have federal matches or federal 00:26:25.290 --> 00:26:32.810 funds, grants, all sorts of infrastructure things that are partially funded by the feds. 00:26:32.930 --> 00:26:38.790 And we don't have a realistic understanding as to whether or not that's actually going to happen. 00:26:40.210 --> 00:26:44.750 So, and if it does happen, if they just claw it back once they give it to us, 00:26:45.170 --> 00:26:47.670 because they've apparently done that too. 00:26:48.090 --> 00:26:52.370 And that potentially makes the issue worse. 00:26:53.050 --> 00:26:59.550 Yeah, because you have a shortfall anyway, and then potentially you're losing 00:26:59.550 --> 00:27:03.450 even more revenue that you're expecting to happen from the feds, but may not. 00:27:03.810 --> 00:27:07.030 Yeah, and Washington's what you'd call a donor state, I believe. 00:27:07.550 --> 00:27:12.030 We actually send more to the federal government than we receive back from them. 00:27:12.390 --> 00:27:16.530 Now, just to be clear on that, because I've heard a couple people in other contexts 00:27:16.530 --> 00:27:23.530 talk about what happens if donor states just withhold, but it's not the state 00:27:23.530 --> 00:27:25.850 itself donating, right? It's just federal income tax. 00:27:25.850 --> 00:27:26.430 It's the people in the state. 00:27:26.630 --> 00:27:29.150 It's federal income tax from all the people in the state. 00:27:29.370 --> 00:27:31.750 And the businesses. Right, right, right. 00:27:31.750 --> 00:27:36.750 But the point, it's not like the state legislature could say, 00:27:36.750 --> 00:27:39.370 we're not going to contribute to the feds this time. 00:27:39.550 --> 00:27:42.750 You know, it's individuals and businesses paying their taxes. 00:27:43.270 --> 00:27:50.110 Yes. But again, that creates an interesting balance because if... 00:27:50.650 --> 00:27:56.210 I am not advocating for not paying federal taxes, but if we didn't, we'd probably be fine. 00:27:56.390 --> 00:28:00.050 So it's like this weird little space to be in. 00:28:00.390 --> 00:28:05.770 Well, they're cutting all the enforcement abilities of the IRS anyway, 00:28:05.990 --> 00:28:08.270 right? So like, who's going to do anything? 00:28:08.370 --> 00:28:09.070 Yes, that is true. 00:28:11.350 --> 00:28:13.650 I would not recommend that. 00:28:16.130 --> 00:28:18.150 I too am not recommending that. 00:28:19.010 --> 00:28:21.930 We will be paying our taxes just to 00:28:21.930 --> 00:28:25.610 be clear sadly yeah so 00:28:25.610 --> 00:28:30.070 so basically this puts you in a position of in order to bring this back into 00:28:30.070 --> 00:28:38.190 balance some combination of spending cuts and tax increases that's really the 00:28:38.190 --> 00:28:45.470 the only two options right yeah and yeah yeah you have to like Like, from these town halls, 00:28:45.610 --> 00:28:49.510 and I'm going to keep coming back to the town halls, because in between the 00:28:49.510 --> 00:28:51.410 first segment and the second segment, 00:28:51.610 --> 00:28:54.630 I attended two of these town halls that Brandy was giving. 00:28:54.930 --> 00:28:58.530 Each one of them had, what, about 40 people? About 50. 00:28:58.750 --> 00:29:03.190 40 or 50 at each one, so about 100 people total for the whole day. 00:29:03.310 --> 00:29:07.650 Which, you know, actually was fairly small, because there were other ones that 00:29:07.650 --> 00:29:11.890 had hundreds and hundreds of people show up. I usually take that as a whole 00:29:11.890 --> 00:29:17.410 bunch of people not showing up is that not everybody's mad at me, but I guess we'll see. 00:29:18.870 --> 00:29:19.030 Yeah. 00:29:21.430 --> 00:29:28.870 But one of the themes that I found, it's not really, I was going to say found 00:29:28.870 --> 00:29:30.910 remarkable, but it's not really remarkable. 00:29:31.130 --> 00:29:37.530 It's fully expected because this is like, there are several common themes in 00:29:37.530 --> 00:29:39.450 American politics, and this is one of them. 00:29:39.790 --> 00:29:44.890 But at both of your town halls, there were a combination of people. 00:29:45.150 --> 00:29:49.450 There was one set of people who got up over and over again. 00:29:50.040 --> 00:29:54.740 And we're, and especially in the realm of education, but in some other areas 00:29:54.740 --> 00:30:00.720 too, but especially in education, we're like saying, we've already been cut to the bone. 00:30:01.120 --> 00:30:06.100 Please don't cut our funding any further. We're already like, 00:30:06.220 --> 00:30:09.740 we can't provide the services we're supposed to provide. 00:30:09.980 --> 00:30:15.980 It is really tough out there. We are losing people. We are losing some from 00:30:15.980 --> 00:30:20.320 straight up layoffs, some from you're just not paying competitively, 00:30:20.460 --> 00:30:21.960 so they go do other things, etc. 00:30:22.420 --> 00:30:29.840 And these people basically saying, look, you're already cutting crucial things. 00:30:30.100 --> 00:30:35.780 Please don't cut any more. And then there's another group of people who raise 00:30:35.780 --> 00:30:41.840 their hands and say, don't talk to us about raising taxes. 00:30:42.080 --> 00:30:46.300 You shouldn't be even thinking about that. Cut, cut, cut, cut, 00:30:46.440 --> 00:30:49.540 cut. You should not be spending this money you don't have. 00:30:51.600 --> 00:30:58.200 And these two groups of people will speak within minutes of each other at the 00:30:58.200 --> 00:31:03.020 same town hall, talking about the same issues, obviously coming at it from a 00:31:03.020 --> 00:31:04.240 very different perspective. 00:31:04.240 --> 00:31:07.100 Yeah, well, there's a couple things, right? 00:31:07.420 --> 00:31:12.220 One is that I don't, I don't, people see that the budgets are, 00:31:12.380 --> 00:31:13.820 the budget is large, right? 00:31:14.020 --> 00:31:21.820 But I don't think that they truly understand that the vast majority of the money 00:31:21.820 --> 00:31:28.260 that we start with goes to just like operations and maintenance companies. 00:31:29.320 --> 00:31:32.620 Because the money we start with goes to all the agencies. 00:31:34.720 --> 00:31:39.800 It pays for all the different departments. It pays for all of the staff. 00:31:40.060 --> 00:31:44.420 It pays for all of that. So the discretionary part of, and I say that with quotes, 00:31:44.520 --> 00:31:51.300 the discretionary part of the budget in the first place is, and that's the stuff 00:31:51.300 --> 00:31:54.300 that we can legally not pay for. 00:31:54.480 --> 00:31:58.760 Not that it wouldn't be completely destructive and make everything fall apart. 00:31:59.320 --> 00:32:03.200 Is like 15% or something. It's actually a pretty small percentage, 00:32:03.300 --> 00:32:08.940 like 15 or 20%. Everything else, we actually have legal requirement to pay. So there's that. 00:32:11.080 --> 00:32:14.920 Now, you say that though, but legal requirement, but you're the legislature, 00:32:14.920 --> 00:32:16.340 you could change those laws, right? 00:32:18.200 --> 00:32:23.460 Not always. We have a constitution. We have other things that we've been required to do. 00:32:23.600 --> 00:32:28.240 For example, one of the issues with the school funding is the player aid decision. 00:32:28.240 --> 00:32:34.020 So when that went into effect, I think there was this camp of people that thought 00:32:34.020 --> 00:32:35.720 that when McCleary went into effect. 00:32:35.920 --> 00:32:38.620 School was going to be fully funded. Explain what it is. No one knows what that is. 00:32:39.440 --> 00:32:46.280 It was a court case. But basically what it comes down to is we, 00:32:46.280 --> 00:32:48.920 as a state, are required to fully fund education. 00:32:49.540 --> 00:32:52.960 The definition of fully fund education is where it gets tricky. 00:32:52.960 --> 00:32:55.760 Because it'll be like maybe it'll 00:32:55.760 --> 00:32:59.880 cover the books and the teachers the certified teachers but not the office staff 00:32:59.880 --> 00:33:07.320 not the custodial staff not the food not the building there are all sorts of 00:33:07.320 --> 00:33:10.520 people that are things that are not actually caught up in what's considered 00:33:10.520 --> 00:33:13.900 fully funding education so yeah, 00:33:15.460 --> 00:33:23.640 By adhering to the decision in McCleary, you would think that everything's getting 00:33:23.640 --> 00:33:25.140 taken care of, but it's really not. 00:33:25.460 --> 00:33:30.120 And then we have that secondary piece where the way the school budgets are set 00:33:30.120 --> 00:33:36.760 up is that the state pays a chunk, about 8% comes in through the federal government. 00:33:36.760 --> 00:33:44.780 And then levies are actually part of the operating budget of schools, 00:33:44.960 --> 00:33:46.700 like those levies that people vote on. 00:33:46.840 --> 00:33:50.320 That's basically local taxes ends up being paid by local. 00:33:50.340 --> 00:33:56.860 Yeah. But that's when the levies fail. That's why they have to let go of a bunch of people. 00:33:57.260 --> 00:33:57.780 Right. 00:33:58.000 --> 00:34:02.140 Because that's actually part of how the school funding is done with the levies and the bonds. 00:34:04.160 --> 00:34:06.840 So I lost track of where we were because it's late. 00:34:09.340 --> 00:34:11.080 But, you know, we have. 00:34:11.380 --> 00:34:18.100 You were responding to my comments about like half the people are like, don't cut anymore. 00:34:18.360 --> 00:34:20.580 And half the people are like, you need to cut more. 00:34:20.980 --> 00:34:25.160 Yeah. But I think McCleary, with the way that came out and some of the adjustments 00:34:25.160 --> 00:34:29.680 that were made, actually put school districts in a worse spot than they were before. 00:34:30.160 --> 00:34:30.700 Mm hmm. 00:34:32.140 --> 00:34:37.020 So there's that. And that's part of the issue with especially the school, 00:34:37.280 --> 00:34:45.000 the teachers talking about school funding is because the shifts made things 00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:47.700 worse for a lot of schools, not better. 00:34:48.980 --> 00:34:53.540 And we knew that was going to happen, by the way. We knew it was going to happen. 00:34:54.440 --> 00:34:56.380 But it was a forward order. 00:34:56.380 --> 00:35:01.540 So backing up a little bit, that was in response to you saying there's a certain 00:35:01.540 --> 00:35:03.080 amount that's legally mandated. 00:35:03.640 --> 00:35:13.780 But how do you respond in general to this clear bifurcation with the people 00:35:13.780 --> 00:35:18.120 in the audience at town halls and presumably the people in general that are 00:35:18.120 --> 00:35:23.260 your constituents in terms of what they're demanding? 00:35:23.260 --> 00:35:27.100 I mean, and this is clearly like related to the general partisan divide, 00:35:27.400 --> 00:35:29.960 but not 100% aligned with it. 00:35:30.800 --> 00:35:35.700 But if we are in a position where we have to see property taxes go up, 00:35:35.800 --> 00:35:42.680 it also makes sense to ensure that we've got enough coverage for an exemption 00:35:42.680 --> 00:35:45.980 for people who are living on fixed incomes, 00:35:46.400 --> 00:35:49.100 older people who are retired, people who are disabled. 00:35:51.270 --> 00:35:54.990 So wait, you're talking about the revenue side now. 00:35:55.610 --> 00:36:00.890 No, I'm talking about both. I think that if we're in a situation where we have 00:36:00.890 --> 00:36:03.770 to raise property taxes, 00:36:03.790 --> 00:36:09.650 we also need to look at that situation from the angle of those who are living 00:36:09.650 --> 00:36:14.230 in fixed incomes and such and actually start to make more exemptions for them 00:36:14.230 --> 00:36:18.630 to expand the exemptions to ensure that we're not pushing people out of their homes. 00:36:18.630 --> 00:36:21.990 I think all of the stuff that we need to do has to be balanced. 00:36:22.610 --> 00:36:26.030 So, but that's still like, you're talking the revenue side. 00:36:26.170 --> 00:36:29.270 You're saying if we have to increase taxes, we have to make sure we're structuring 00:36:29.270 --> 00:36:31.590 it so that it's not hurting these people. Yeah. 00:36:31.910 --> 00:36:37.790 But also on the cut side, what do you say, like, on the one hand, 00:36:37.790 --> 00:36:41.230 you have people saying you've already cut too much. 00:36:41.770 --> 00:36:47.370 And then you've got people saying you haven't cut enough. How do you square 00:36:47.370 --> 00:36:51.290 that? What's your take on what's going on with that? 00:36:52.210 --> 00:36:56.750 I think I kind of want to say that both are right to an extent. 00:36:57.090 --> 00:36:58.810 It depends on where you're looking. 00:37:01.530 --> 00:37:02.050 Explain. 00:37:03.490 --> 00:37:08.770 I'm sure there are places where we can make some cuts that would be less devastating. 00:37:11.070 --> 00:37:19.090 But in a lot of spaces, I think our focus is between our caucus, 00:37:19.370 --> 00:37:22.510 our Democratic and Republican caucus, are probably opposite. 00:37:24.530 --> 00:37:28.790 So I'm not going to say opposite. A lot of them care about making sure people 00:37:28.790 --> 00:37:32.290 have access to health care. They care about making sure people have places to live. 00:37:32.470 --> 00:37:38.290 They care about making sure people have food to eat. But they also represent 00:37:38.290 --> 00:37:44.870 areas that tend to be a lot more, want to be a lot more independent, I guess. 00:37:45.410 --> 00:37:51.030 So there will be situations in which they would resist any kind of assistance 00:37:51.030 --> 00:37:57.030 and instead be mad because they feel like we're driving them into a hole. Does that make sense? 00:37:58.550 --> 00:38:01.050 The constituencies are different. Right. 00:38:03.250 --> 00:38:08.810 It all gets, it gets really tricky. I think when it comes down to it, 00:38:09.010 --> 00:38:10.990 this biennium, no one's going to win. 00:38:11.490 --> 00:38:15.390 Everybody's going to lose. And our goal is going to be keeping people safe and 00:38:15.390 --> 00:38:18.630 alive as opposed to ensuring they can thrive. 00:38:18.930 --> 00:38:21.710 And that's not great. 00:38:22.870 --> 00:38:23.970 It's really not great. 00:38:24.350 --> 00:38:27.270 Because basically you're, you're, you're stuck in a hole. 00:38:27.270 --> 00:38:32.030 Like the, despite the people who want even more cuts, 00:38:32.250 --> 00:38:36.050 what's on the table right now, and I guess, correct me if I'm wrong, 00:38:36.190 --> 00:38:40.270 the governor made a proposal for what the budget should be that had some pretty 00:38:40.270 --> 00:38:43.390 deep cuts in it already, but not enough to balance the budget. 00:38:43.610 --> 00:38:49.030 And now the legislature is trying to figure out how to take what started with 00:38:49.030 --> 00:38:53.270 the governor and then adjust it further because you're legally required to balance 00:38:53.270 --> 00:38:54.330 the budget in the end, right? 00:38:55.010 --> 00:38:59.130 Yeah. And we're also not legally required to do everything the governor wants. 00:38:59.530 --> 00:39:00.050 Right. 00:39:01.710 --> 00:39:06.790 Although then he has to sign it. So there has to be a balance there, too. 00:39:07.210 --> 00:39:11.170 But even compared to what the governor submitted to you guys, 00:39:11.450 --> 00:39:16.090 you either have to cut even more or you have to raise more revenue. 00:39:16.430 --> 00:39:19.150 There's no other ways around. 00:39:19.790 --> 00:39:21.710 Honestly, both. We have to do both. 00:39:22.370 --> 00:39:26.050 And both are going to make people unhappy. Like you said, there's no, 00:39:26.370 --> 00:39:31.670 you know, the, the, the, the, there are people who are upset that it's already 00:39:31.670 --> 00:39:33.210 been cut as far as it has been. 00:39:33.490 --> 00:39:40.190 And there'll be people who are going to be upset on any increases in taxes to make up revenue. 00:39:40.630 --> 00:39:43.850 Like, and so are, are you just screwed? 00:39:45.050 --> 00:39:50.430 Define screwed. like I think we're is the. 00:39:50.430 --> 00:39:53.570 Whole state screwed what's the situation I. 00:39:53.570 --> 00:39:58.630 Used to joke that you know the sign of solid legislation is 00:39:59.000 --> 00:40:06.320 was when nobody won. It was, maybe nobody loses, but nobody wins. 00:40:06.760 --> 00:40:10.700 I was going to say, shouldn't we be looking for win-win situations, 00:40:11.000 --> 00:40:14.280 not just everybody loses? 00:40:14.540 --> 00:40:17.740 Yes, but those are always suspect. When it's win-win, you've got to worry a 00:40:17.740 --> 00:40:21.200 little bit about what's hiding behind here. 00:40:21.220 --> 00:40:23.880 I mean, there are occasionally win-win. I had a bill that would be a win-win. 00:40:24.420 --> 00:40:27.640 There's a Senate version, because mine's not moving, but the Senate version 00:40:27.640 --> 00:40:30.260 is, and that would be a win-win. but they're rare. 00:40:31.780 --> 00:40:32.900 Mostly it's... 00:40:32.900 --> 00:40:34.800 Don't just drop that without saying what it is. 00:40:35.160 --> 00:40:39.400 It's actually, it's a really simple bill. It impacts a fairly small group of 00:40:39.400 --> 00:40:42.700 people, but we have registered tow truck operators. 00:40:43.480 --> 00:40:47.060 They're registered with the state and they are a regulated business. 00:40:47.940 --> 00:40:52.320 And basically when there's a need for a tow, they have to go out and do it. 00:40:54.080 --> 00:40:59.960 It's kind of a requirement. it. So they'll take a vehicle, they'll tow it. 00:41:00.460 --> 00:41:06.580 And if the owner doesn't turn up, they can auction it off after a period of time. 00:41:07.180 --> 00:41:10.860 And they hope that what they auction it off for will cover at least some of 00:41:10.860 --> 00:41:14.720 the storage and tow services and stuff that they've had. 00:41:15.020 --> 00:41:19.640 Now, there are plenty of people who are living in their vehicles. 00:41:19.640 --> 00:41:23.440 There are plenty of people who do not have the money to get their cars back 00:41:23.440 --> 00:41:24.980 from impound when they've been towed. 00:41:25.180 --> 00:41:31.680 And so there's this fund that when a vehicle is sold at auction, 00:41:31.680 --> 00:41:42.120 if the amount made at auction was more than the cost of the tow truck services, 00:41:43.100 --> 00:41:47.260 the towers would be able to get paid with that income there. 00:41:47.380 --> 00:41:52.340 And then whatever remains gets put to a separate account, and it's the excess funds account. 00:41:53.240 --> 00:41:57.540 So my bill would say that when there's money in the excess funds account, 00:41:57.840 --> 00:42:03.840 when somebody who is indigent has their car towed, they can attest that they 00:42:03.840 --> 00:42:07.920 do not have the funds to be able to get their car out of impound. 00:42:08.060 --> 00:42:11.900 Or if they live in their vehicle, they can be like, my vehicle is my home. 00:42:12.140 --> 00:42:16.360 And if there's money in the excess fund account, it allows the tow truck drivers 00:42:16.360 --> 00:42:20.580 to get paid for the tow, plus release the vehicle. 00:42:21.160 --> 00:42:21.760 Okay. 00:42:23.540 --> 00:42:30.120 And it's an excess funds account, so it's not filled by the transportation fund or the general fund. 00:42:30.500 --> 00:42:35.600 And it ensures that tow truck drivers actually get paid for their work when 00:42:35.600 --> 00:42:36.800 there's funds available. 00:42:37.380 --> 00:42:44.000 And you said your version of this bill is not moving, but there's a Senate equivalent that is? 00:42:44.320 --> 00:42:44.800 Yeah. 00:42:44.980 --> 00:42:45.180 Okay. 00:42:46.160 --> 00:42:51.180 So, and that's what matters. No, I mean, in this case, that's what matters because 00:42:51.180 --> 00:42:53.360 it'll help keep an industry functional. 00:42:54.340 --> 00:42:57.840 So back to the budget, it's just going to be bad. 00:42:58.840 --> 00:43:02.520 Everybody's going to be unhappy. Nobody's going to be happy. 00:43:04.340 --> 00:43:09.540 And, you know, are we going to get a situation where Democrats are all blamed 00:43:09.540 --> 00:43:15.740 for this and end up losing some traction next election? or is it enough time 00:43:15.740 --> 00:43:19.300 before the next election that this will be the last thing on anybody's mind by then? 00:43:19.560 --> 00:43:24.320 Well, you know, I think it depends. We don't have any certainty about the federal situation. 00:43:24.340 --> 00:43:28.820 So how that plays out is going to have an impact. For example, 00:43:29.840 --> 00:43:33.600 they're talking about raiding Medicaid or Medicare, Medicaid. 00:43:34.100 --> 00:43:37.080 If that happens, there are 00:43:37.080 --> 00:43:39.780 going to be lots and lots of people who are going to 00:43:39.780 --> 00:43:42.780 be sick who will probably die 00:43:42.780 --> 00:43:48.540 and there are lots of people who rely on that for health care services particularly 00:43:48.540 --> 00:43:57.000 in states that supported donald trump if he cuts everybody's health care and 00:43:57.000 --> 00:44:01.180 they also mess like at social with social security though it looks like they will, 00:44:02.930 --> 00:44:07.010 I don't think we're going to continue to see so many people say, 00:44:07.170 --> 00:44:09.930 oh, well, this is just part of the plan, but it's going to get better. 00:44:10.710 --> 00:44:14.270 We're going to have a bunch of people who are really struggling across the country. 00:44:16.810 --> 00:44:21.850 And that's actually going to be really hard on blaming on anybody other than who's responsible. 00:44:21.850 --> 00:44:31.610 Now, if those kind of national things do hit, is there talk of state contingency, 00:44:31.750 --> 00:44:33.870 like the state having to step up and do stuff? 00:44:34.030 --> 00:44:36.310 But with all the budget stuff you just talked about, how? 00:44:36.710 --> 00:44:40.470 Yeah, the states don't have money. It's just the same idea. They're talking 00:44:40.470 --> 00:44:44.350 about eliminating FEMA and that states should take responsibility. 00:44:45.070 --> 00:44:50.070 But part of what FEMA does is it helps organize and direct funds to where they need to be. 00:44:50.070 --> 00:44:53.010 So we don't have the 00:44:53.010 --> 00:44:56.090 infrastructure for that because fema's been 00:44:56.090 --> 00:44:59.630 there and we don't have the money to build it up so 00:44:59.630 --> 00:45:02.870 again there are going to be states that actually 00:45:02.870 --> 00:45:06.130 are much much worse worse off because of 00:45:06.130 --> 00:45:09.550 the actions of the the federal government and i 00:45:09.550 --> 00:45:17.170 think that can definitely have an impact on where we end up because even if 00:45:17.170 --> 00:45:23.390 even if people believed when he said he wouldn't do these things once he does 00:45:23.390 --> 00:45:29.310 and they're hurting it's going to be hard to justify continued, 00:45:29.930 --> 00:45:33.570 adoration i guess um i. 00:45:33.570 --> 00:45:34.790 Guess we'll see on that. 00:45:34.790 --> 00:45:40.010 Yeah i mean i there are going to be people who think it's wonderful all the 00:45:40.010 --> 00:45:44.150 way through and keep making excuses but i think a lot of people made the choice 00:45:44.150 --> 00:45:49.630 they did because they wanted to believe him yeah and if he directly does this, 00:45:50.710 --> 00:45:57.610 then that's going to be an issue and you know how we our focus is really you 00:45:57.610 --> 00:46:00.010 know it's keeping people alive it's keeping people safe, 00:46:01.250 --> 00:46:06.750 And that needs to be our goal. So for those states that are able to do that 00:46:06.750 --> 00:46:09.950 better than others, I don't know. 00:46:11.170 --> 00:46:14.410 I think it's really going to depend on how things come out, whether or not we 00:46:14.410 --> 00:46:19.630 find ourselves in a recession or even a depression. 00:46:19.870 --> 00:46:27.470 And how many games the federal government is going to continue to play with economics. 00:46:28.690 --> 00:46:33.090 Okay so i mean i love my job and i'm usually really cheery about it but this 00:46:33.090 --> 00:46:39.150 is really hard it's because it's a struggle to make sure people have what they 00:46:39.150 --> 00:46:40.890 need let alone get what they want. 00:46:42.570 --> 00:46:49.130 Right so just it sounds like the the mood this session is just entirely different 00:46:49.130 --> 00:46:52.050 than the same time two years ago for. 00:46:52.050 --> 00:46:57.870 Instance it's it's very strange like even even the new representatives are like, 00:46:58.010 --> 00:47:01.130 this feels really odd. And it's like, yeah, this is really odd. 00:47:01.330 --> 00:47:05.130 So people who haven't been here before know it's out of character too. 00:47:05.310 --> 00:47:08.270 So that's really interesting. That's how marketed it is. 00:47:09.790 --> 00:47:13.850 So obviously the big theme has been the budget stuff. 00:47:14.010 --> 00:47:19.310 Anything else you'd like to highlight either from what's going on in Olympia 00:47:19.310 --> 00:47:26.350 these days, other than the big budget crisis or or things specifically to call 00:47:26.350 --> 00:47:27.550 out from your town halls today. 00:47:27.550 --> 00:47:34.070 I have a couple traffic safety bills i've been doing a lot around traffic safety 00:47:34.070 --> 00:47:41.650 okay and i have a couple traffic traffic safety bills that are useful one uses 00:47:41.650 --> 00:47:46.310 sound to identify vehicles that have been modified for racing okay, 00:47:48.140 --> 00:47:55.660 And the other one would increase the age that young people are required to have 00:47:55.660 --> 00:47:57.480 driver's training before they get their license. 00:47:58.000 --> 00:48:00.840 Okay. How are those doing? 00:48:01.320 --> 00:48:07.220 I think the young drivers was already moved out of the transportation committee. 00:48:07.540 --> 00:48:10.100 I'd ask Jessica, but we got distracted today. 00:48:10.680 --> 00:48:12.600 Jessica, her legislative aide. 00:48:12.780 --> 00:48:17.240 Yeah. And then the other one has a hearing coming up in a week or so. 00:48:18.140 --> 00:48:23.560 So they're still moving. I had a lot of bills this session, more than I've ever had before. 00:48:23.860 --> 00:48:29.100 I didn't let you do your intro like you do at your town halls. I know you didn't. 00:48:29.960 --> 00:48:34.640 I had mentioned you're a state representative, 44th legislative district in 00:48:34.640 --> 00:48:37.900 Washington State, but you usually say all the committees you're on and stuff. 00:48:38.020 --> 00:48:39.820 So what are all the committees that you're on? 00:48:40.780 --> 00:48:44.420 I am on technology, economic development, veterans. 00:48:45.320 --> 00:48:50.880 I serve on consumer protection and business. I am on education and I'm new to 00:48:50.880 --> 00:48:52.520 education. This is the first year. 00:48:53.180 --> 00:48:55.240 And I'm vice chair of transportation. 00:48:56.480 --> 00:49:03.120 So, okay. Of those committees, like why, what, how did you end up on those committees? 00:49:03.360 --> 00:49:08.360 Why, why was, were you a, are they things that are of particular interest for 00:49:08.360 --> 00:49:12.780 you or were you just assigned or, and what do you, what do you like best? What do you like least? 00:49:12.780 --> 00:49:17.000 So the way people are assigned to committees, they're pretty careful. 00:49:17.180 --> 00:49:22.900 They have a certain number of Republicans, a certain number of Democrats on them. 00:49:23.200 --> 00:49:28.660 So shifting people around is necessary when you need to move people from committee 00:49:28.660 --> 00:49:31.920 to committee. So when I started, it was the middle of the term. 00:49:33.060 --> 00:49:36.700 And so because it was the middle of the term, I think the goal was to put me 00:49:36.700 --> 00:49:43.860 on some of my predecessors' committees to make things easier so fewer people had to shift around. 00:49:44.400 --> 00:49:46.200 So that's how I ended up on transportation. 00:49:46.940 --> 00:49:51.380 And at that point, I was on housing and what was innovation, 00:49:51.580 --> 00:49:53.240 community economic development, and veterans. 00:49:55.700 --> 00:49:59.700 But the next year i was 00:49:59.700 --> 00:50:05.320 assigned based on what my choices were which happened to be transportation because 00:50:05.320 --> 00:50:10.600 i had a blast in transportation i really like it it's like i want to say it's 00:50:10.600 --> 00:50:16.720 grittier than the rest of the committees in some ways grittier yes like, 00:50:17.340 --> 00:50:20.020 I'm getting a vision of like 1970s. 00:50:20.020 --> 00:50:21.060 Movies set in New. 00:50:21.060 --> 00:50:23.600 York or something. Grit, dirt, asphalt. 00:50:24.460 --> 00:50:25.020 It's... 00:50:26.310 --> 00:50:33.970 I like the concept that so much of this is about things getting built, I guess, or maintained. 00:50:34.450 --> 00:50:38.830 And there are so many different areas of it. I just, I find it all fascinating, 00:50:38.830 --> 00:50:41.930 the engineering and everything that goes into the work that's getting done. 00:50:43.250 --> 00:50:46.670 We're talking roads, bridges, trains, ferries, that kind of stuff. 00:50:46.990 --> 00:50:52.150 Yeah. I mean, there's also all sorts of policy around how things are used, 00:50:52.930 --> 00:50:57.770 et cetera. But like the other piece about transportation is that it's actually a fiscal committee. 00:50:58.030 --> 00:51:02.090 So we have, I guess, four main fiscal committees. There's finance. 00:51:02.330 --> 00:51:04.130 That's the committee where you find revenue. 00:51:04.610 --> 00:51:09.950 And then you've got appropriations. That is where money in the operating budget 00:51:09.950 --> 00:51:11.970 goes out. You have capital budget. 00:51:12.210 --> 00:51:15.190 That's where money in the capital budget goes out. 00:51:15.390 --> 00:51:19.690 And then transportation has its own budget. And so you've got both the policy 00:51:19.690 --> 00:51:21.090 and the budget in the same place. 00:51:21.530 --> 00:51:28.770 And what I like about that, it's that we're able to not only look at whether 00:51:28.770 --> 00:51:36.230 or not the policy is good, but also weigh the cost of it and weigh the ability to fund it. 00:51:36.230 --> 00:51:39.350 So all in one committee so in 00:51:39.350 --> 00:51:42.250 other places you may have something go 00:51:42.250 --> 00:51:45.170 through as policy committee and everybody there understands the policy and 00:51:45.170 --> 00:51:48.870 why it needs to happen then you may have it go to appropriations after that 00:51:48.870 --> 00:51:53.670 and then it kind of it almost separates the policy from the i think it makes 00:51:53.670 --> 00:51:58.210 the policy further away from the from the costs like you don't have that same 00:51:58.210 --> 00:52:02.310 expertise i I guess. Does that make sense? 00:52:02.570 --> 00:52:02.910 Mm-hmm. 00:52:03.670 --> 00:52:06.870 So that's why I enjoy transportation. 00:52:08.230 --> 00:52:09.870 Is that your favorite? 00:52:10.250 --> 00:52:11.530 So here's the thing. 00:52:13.790 --> 00:52:17.750 I really like all of them. Innovation. 00:52:19.750 --> 00:52:24.250 Community economic development and veterans is now technology, 00:52:24.630 --> 00:52:26.550 economic development and veterans. 00:52:26.930 --> 00:52:33.250 And so I've got that tech side. So data privacy and all the all those pieces 00:52:33.250 --> 00:52:38.630 that go with it, as well as stuff for veterans, which which I also really like. 00:52:38.810 --> 00:52:43.570 The economic development, I do find interesting, but it's the technology and 00:52:43.570 --> 00:52:48.350 the technology, tourism and veterans pieces that I really enjoy about that committee. 00:52:48.350 --> 00:52:51.570 And then consumer protection and business. I have a business degree. 00:52:51.830 --> 00:52:55.950 It actually gives me the opportunity to use some of what I learned. 00:52:57.630 --> 00:53:04.530 And then it also handles some real estate aspects of real estate. 00:53:04.550 --> 00:53:07.370 And so having experience there, too, it's also useful. 00:53:07.910 --> 00:53:12.990 And then education is new. I requested either education or environmental energy, 00:53:12.990 --> 00:53:16.630 but I would have loved to do both, but they're at the same time and I can't. 00:53:16.790 --> 00:53:20.250 And I don't think I can actually fit another committee into my schedule anyway. 00:53:22.270 --> 00:53:23.750 So that's why the four. 00:53:24.370 --> 00:53:30.350 One more thing before we take a break and switch to national stuff. Two town halls today. 00:53:31.850 --> 00:53:35.910 What are your general thoughts on those kind of interactions, 00:53:35.910 --> 00:53:37.530 the town hall interactions. 00:53:37.970 --> 00:53:43.050 What are they good for? What are they not good for? Do you like them? Do you have fun? 00:53:44.030 --> 00:53:48.630 They're not great for really, really in-depth, policy-heavy conversations, 00:53:49.290 --> 00:53:55.130 but I really like them because I think there's this idea that we are hard to 00:53:55.130 --> 00:53:58.270 reach and that we are not available. 00:53:58.610 --> 00:54:04.590 And I really believe that it's very important that we are, right? 00:54:04.790 --> 00:54:09.230 Like legislators be available to the communities they serve because it's not, 00:54:10.130 --> 00:54:13.050 it's a service position. It's not a, 00:54:16.080 --> 00:54:18.860 In order for me to do my job, I have to be able to interact with people. 00:54:19.340 --> 00:54:23.940 And so being able to understand what they need, what they're thinking, 00:54:24.240 --> 00:54:28.260 and how they see the things that we are doing is really important, 00:54:28.260 --> 00:54:31.320 I think, to being able to do my job as effectively as possible. 00:54:31.320 --> 00:54:34.100 So I mean I'm not a 00:54:34.100 --> 00:54:38.380 huge fan of public speaking so there's that but I 00:54:38.380 --> 00:54:48.260 do enjoy them in that it helps it helps me understand what they need what they're 00:54:48.260 --> 00:54:53.680 hearing and I hope it helps them understand a little bit of how how things are 00:54:53.680 --> 00:54:57.060 working and what's behind them because those Those are important. 00:54:57.860 --> 00:55:00.120 Do you get a lot of angry people? 00:55:00.620 --> 00:55:01.800 At the town halls? 00:55:02.060 --> 00:55:02.460 Yeah. 00:55:03.060 --> 00:55:06.720 No. I mean, there's always going to be someone who's upset or angry. 00:55:06.740 --> 00:55:12.500 But I've heard stories about other districts getting a bunch of people showing up shouting. 00:55:14.100 --> 00:55:21.380 Today, in one district, people actually protested outside one of the legislators' homes. 00:55:21.780 --> 00:55:22.260 Oh. 00:55:22.600 --> 00:55:27.780 And then brought some of that into the town hall as well. And it's, 00:55:27.940 --> 00:55:34.880 I think part of it is a, it's just part of the district, who the people in the district are. 00:55:35.280 --> 00:55:35.880 Okay. 00:55:36.140 --> 00:55:40.960 I think that's probably a big piece of why, why maybe we don't see that. 00:55:41.180 --> 00:55:47.240 It's, it's not that people in the district care less or, or more. 00:55:47.620 --> 00:55:52.700 I think it's just the different groups of people do things differently. 00:55:52.700 --> 00:55:56.080 But I typically don't get angry people. 00:55:56.640 --> 00:56:04.280 I also make it a practice to listen to everybody and actually value their positions. 00:56:05.460 --> 00:56:13.100 And again, I'm not suggesting other people don't do this, but I think I represent the entire district. 00:56:13.340 --> 00:56:17.260 That means everybody in it. And I have a responsibility, even if somebody doesn't 00:56:17.260 --> 00:56:22.380 vote for me, even if maybe I don't agree with everything they stand for, 00:56:22.600 --> 00:56:24.640 I think we can always find common ground. 00:56:24.880 --> 00:56:29.360 And so being able to demonstrate that, I have a child trying to crawl onto my lap. 00:56:30.740 --> 00:56:33.460 Being able to demonstrate that I think also helps. 00:56:34.740 --> 00:56:40.940 Okay. Any other Washington State stuff you want to throw in here before we move on? 00:56:43.080 --> 00:56:44.660 I really like washington. 00:56:48.920 --> 00:56:55.880 Okay okay very good okay well let's take a break and then when we come back 00:56:55.880 --> 00:56:59.880 may i'll get your thoughts on some of the national stuff you've already touched 00:56:59.880 --> 00:57:03.840 on it a little bit in relation to washington state stuff because. 00:57:03.840 --> 00:57:04.560 It's all connected. 00:57:04.560 --> 00:57:05.400 Yeah, 00:57:07.490 --> 00:57:07.670 Okay. 00:57:08.990 --> 00:57:12.490 So you know I also have your daughter behind me. Oh, no, she's gone. 00:57:12.950 --> 00:57:16.050 I'm waiting for everybody to be quiet before I... 00:57:16.050 --> 00:57:21.470 Alex has left the room. Okay. He's followed his sister. Tretzky looks like he 00:57:21.470 --> 00:57:23.970 cares that they left, but not enough to move. 00:57:24.930 --> 00:57:26.390 Okay, here's that break. 00:57:27.290 --> 00:57:29.870 Okie dokie. Here it comes. 00:57:35.730 --> 00:57:39.130 It was just my internet being stupid. 00:57:39.450 --> 00:57:44.530 My internet being stupid is a new song we will make. 00:57:44.530 --> 00:57:57.410 The baby well well well well well, 00:58:11.030 --> 00:58:13.850 Come on, come on. 00:58:17.390 --> 00:58:22.570 I'm tired. What's wrong? I'm really tired. 00:58:23.270 --> 00:58:26.450 It's amazing. Show on the road. 00:58:27.050 --> 00:58:31.590 There's a road? There's a road? Oh my God, there's a road. 00:58:32.690 --> 00:58:37.730 Okay, we are back. Did you enjoy that break? I was enjoying your facial expressions during the break. 00:58:39.860 --> 00:58:47.120 Sometimes I wonder if maybe did you eat something that was a little bit too expired and, you know, 00:58:47.500 --> 00:58:55.500 it had like a hallucinatory effect or like what is going on in your head? That's all. 00:58:56.220 --> 00:59:00.320 Oh, OK. Yvonne enjoys that one as well. 00:59:01.420 --> 00:59:01.980 OK. 00:59:02.620 --> 00:59:08.520 OK, so national news, you know, we talk about that every week on this show. 00:59:08.520 --> 00:59:15.500 So what in particular of the goings on nationally, internationally, 00:59:15.800 --> 00:59:22.760 et cetera, I guess, what, two months and three days is the relevant time period here. 00:59:23.020 --> 00:59:29.080 What particular things are you like hankering to talk about on the national 00:59:29.080 --> 00:59:33.160 scene and your thoughts? so. 00:59:33.160 --> 00:59:37.860 There's this movement it's like 50 51. 00:59:37.860 --> 00:59:41.680 50 51 yeah. 00:59:41.680 --> 00:59:49.220 And they it's like groups that they'll do protests 50 states same day every month. 00:59:49.220 --> 00:59:52.940 Okay 50 51 what 00:59:52.940 --> 00:59:56.320 what's this 50 states yeah 00:59:56.320 --> 01:00:00.680 50 protests yeah one day oh 01:00:00.680 --> 01:00:10.540 okay yeah i think i've i i i don't know that i recognized that name but i definitely 01:00:10.540 --> 01:00:17.200 know they're the concept a number of these things going on to try to so what 01:00:17.200 --> 01:00:19.040 what what about this one in particular. 01:00:20.630 --> 01:00:26.230 I actually went out during it. There was time that I could actually go out and 01:00:26.230 --> 01:00:27.410 walk through the crowds. 01:00:27.530 --> 01:00:30.290 To one of the protests there at the state capitol. 01:00:30.530 --> 01:00:30.690 Yeah. 01:00:30.790 --> 01:00:30.990 Okay. 01:00:31.750 --> 01:00:37.430 And I walked through and there was, there were a couple of people I talked to, 01:00:37.510 --> 01:00:39.870 but there was one in particular that stuck out because they're, 01:00:40.010 --> 01:00:43.250 they're black hawk pilot. 01:00:43.830 --> 01:00:44.350 Okay. 01:00:45.570 --> 01:00:46.350 And trans. 01:00:47.750 --> 01:00:58.410 Oh, and just to be clear, it's 50-51, not 50-51, 50-50-1 movement. 01:00:58.810 --> 01:01:04.230 It's 50 states, 50 protests one day. 01:01:04.230 --> 01:01:06.630 One day, right. Okay, go ahead. 01:01:06.630 --> 01:01:11.290 So I was talking to them, and they're a Black Hawk, I think, pilot. 01:01:12.890 --> 01:01:17.410 And that's not something just anybody can go do, right? 01:01:17.870 --> 01:01:20.930 Like, it takes special skill to be good at it. 01:01:22.110 --> 01:01:24.050 And they've been all over the world. 01:01:25.330 --> 01:01:29.130 But because they're trans, they're being transitioned out of the military. 01:01:29.610 --> 01:01:35.890 And I know that since then, there was a requirement to put a stop on it. 01:01:35.890 --> 01:01:39.230 But fundamentally, I think that's 01:01:39.230 --> 01:01:44.690 the kind of thing that has been sticking with me through all of this. 01:01:45.890 --> 01:01:47.630 Specifically the anti-trans stuff? 01:01:47.870 --> 01:01:51.910 It's not just the anti-trans. I mean, that's a problem, but to me, 01:01:52.050 --> 01:01:58.370 it's the direct attacks on specific groups of individuals by the administration. 01:01:58.910 --> 01:02:04.310 On veterans, federal workers in general. Well, it's federal workers, 01:02:05.170 --> 01:02:09.870 30% of federal workers, almost a third of them are veterans. 01:02:10.890 --> 01:02:16.090 And, you know, making more huge cuts at the Veterans Administration, 01:02:16.090 --> 01:02:24.470 that ensures less efficient and less effective services for vets. 01:02:24.670 --> 01:02:31.110 And then also you take into account there are more vets working in VA than the other agencies. 01:02:32.070 --> 01:02:38.630 It's like it's just like an attack on an attack on veterans because. 01:02:40.070 --> 01:02:45.370 We're not useful to the administration anymore because they can't take us and 01:02:45.370 --> 01:02:48.770 throw us at other places like when they want to start a war right? 01:02:49.250 --> 01:02:55.010 Like we're done so we don't have value to them anymore we're not useful and 01:02:55.010 --> 01:02:58.650 that's that's something that's been really standing out to me, 01:03:00.070 --> 01:03:06.370 or You're removing all the pictures and information about military members, 01:03:06.550 --> 01:03:08.650 color or women in the military. 01:03:09.330 --> 01:03:14.490 Removing the top officer at the Coast Guard because she was a woman. 01:03:15.720 --> 01:03:23.080 These aren't just random slashing. These are deliberate attacks on specific groups of people. 01:03:24.380 --> 01:03:30.880 So, yeah, like the latest one of those that I heard was Bea Arthur, 01:03:31.180 --> 01:03:35.100 who was before she was a golden girl. 01:03:35.880 --> 01:03:37.320 She was a Marine. 01:03:39.160 --> 01:03:43.900 And that's one of the web pages where information about that got purged. 01:03:44.980 --> 01:03:52.640 Now, I have heard administration people saying that this is actually malicious 01:03:52.640 --> 01:03:59.620 compliance from employees who've been told to remove DEI stuff and so are intentionally 01:03:59.620 --> 01:04:03.780 looking for sort of high-profile ones to remove that'll make them look stupid. 01:04:05.020 --> 01:04:11.000 Maybe. But I don't hear the administration complaining. 01:04:12.180 --> 01:04:13.740 They're like, okay. 01:04:15.240 --> 01:04:23.180 So, yeah, I mean, look, those kinds of things are just, I don't know, 01:04:23.280 --> 01:04:28.660 it's just so dumb, so stupid, so clearly hateful. 01:04:30.560 --> 01:04:34.820 It's and i know they're they're at 01:04:34.820 --> 01:04:39.760 least at least in theory if you give them any sort of benefit of the doubt whatsoever 01:04:39.760 --> 01:04:52.920 and say okay they believe that di stuff is sort of fundamentally harmful to promote diversity, 01:04:54.000 --> 01:04:59.440 which I have a hard time giving any benefit of the doubt to that statement. 01:04:59.940 --> 01:05:08.320 But assuming you do, even if you do, like the way they're going about it is just brain dead stupid. 01:05:08.940 --> 01:05:14.680 Like, they're not actually like, okay, like, if you want to criticize, like, 01:05:15.100 --> 01:05:19.340 you some of the like, mandatory training stuff that, like, almost everybody 01:05:19.340 --> 01:05:24.000 thinks is done badly and does stupid is stupid and is kind of performative. 01:05:24.720 --> 01:05:28.860 Then, okay, maybe, you know, get rid of some of that stuff, maybe improve it, make it better. 01:05:29.000 --> 01:05:33.980 I don't know. But like this kind of stuff, like getting rid of references to 01:05:33.980 --> 01:05:37.680 the Tuskegee Airmen or to Bea Arthur or to, 01:05:38.020 --> 01:05:44.900 you know, various other historical figures who, who happened not to be straight white men. 01:05:46.180 --> 01:05:53.880 It's just, it's just so idiotic, but I guess it's also very indicative of the entire mindset. 01:05:54.300 --> 01:06:01.780 I mean, it's so clear that the mindset is only straight white men belong here. 01:06:02.700 --> 01:06:09.760 And anything else should be, you know, we need to get rid of it however we can. 01:06:09.900 --> 01:06:11.840 I mean, they almost explicitly say that. 01:06:12.360 --> 01:06:15.500 Yeah, but there's another part of that, right, too. Yeah. 01:06:15.660 --> 01:06:21.520 It's that if women and people of color are being... 01:06:22.240 --> 01:06:26.460 Celebrated for something then it's 01:06:26.460 --> 01:06:29.640 not straight straight white men right they feel 01:06:29.640 --> 01:06:34.680 like they're losing something because somebody else was successful and the concept 01:06:34.680 --> 01:06:38.480 of somebody else being able to be successful even with all the barriers placed 01:06:38.480 --> 01:06:44.280 in front of them means that a lot more work had to happen in order for a person 01:06:44.280 --> 01:06:48.080 to be where they were and that's that's really hard for people. 01:06:48.660 --> 01:06:54.200 I think the DEI excludes them when really it includes, it makes sure that we're including veterans. 01:06:55.900 --> 01:07:01.840 Fucking Abbott, Governor Abbott. He's in a wheelchair. He's getting rid of all the DEI stuff. 01:07:02.060 --> 01:07:05.740 Does that mean they're going to take the ramps out of the Capitol? 01:07:06.040 --> 01:07:08.820 Because, like, that's why they're there. 01:07:09.340 --> 01:07:09.780 Right. 01:07:09.940 --> 01:07:11.200 It's a DEI that they're there. 01:07:11.720 --> 01:07:16.380 Now, we've been throwing around the term DEI. 01:07:16.540 --> 01:07:21.280 I've heard a number of people make the argument of, like, don't even use that 01:07:21.280 --> 01:07:24.560 acronym because it's giving in to their framing of it. 01:07:25.260 --> 01:07:27.980 DEI is diversity, equity, and inclusion. 01:07:28.380 --> 01:07:31.160 Well, right. I've heard people say, well, say it out every time. 01:07:31.540 --> 01:07:38.140 Don't use the initials because they've, just like they did with all kinds of other words in the past, 01:07:38.500 --> 01:07:45.020 they have made it a bad word that many people hear it and they don't hear anything 01:07:45.020 --> 01:07:48.060 else other than, oh, yeah, that's that awful thing. 01:07:48.920 --> 01:07:53.900 Yeah. They think it's also affirmative action, which is ignorant. 01:07:55.780 --> 01:08:01.580 But, yeah, I think the fact that they're very carefully picking specific groups 01:08:01.580 --> 01:08:05.540 of people to go after is a major problem. And it's intentional. 01:08:06.720 --> 01:08:15.300 And now, you know, deporting, detaining Americans and deporting people who are 01:08:15.300 --> 01:08:19.420 illegally, all that kind of stuff is problematic as well. 01:08:19.840 --> 01:08:21.560 Say more. Go into more detail. 01:08:23.000 --> 01:08:28.020 There have apparently been cases now where people will be picked up by ICE, 01:08:28.180 --> 01:08:31.700 their identification will be confiscated, 01:08:31.920 --> 01:08:38.440 and they'll be stuck somewhere, despite having legal status in the U.S. 01:08:39.700 --> 01:08:43.000 Apparently some citizens have been caught up in it, like actual U.S. 01:08:43.520 --> 01:08:46.180 Citizens, green card holders. 01:08:48.180 --> 01:08:54.700 Because it's not about, it's typically not about looking for people who are 01:08:54.700 --> 01:09:01.820 here illegally. It's typically looking to get people who are here who are black and brown gone. 01:09:03.240 --> 01:09:06.320 Although what I found interesting, I think you're absolutely right. 01:09:06.500 --> 01:09:08.660 That is the focus. That is what they are. 01:09:09.280 --> 01:09:13.280 That's the fundamental goal is they don't actually care about like, 01:09:13.460 --> 01:09:16.800 you know, white Christian straight immigrants. 01:09:16.800 --> 01:09:19.840 Um you know they they'd 01:09:19.840 --> 01:09:23.360 be perfectly happy with more swedes or whatever however 01:09:23.360 --> 01:09:30.720 despite that because they're pushing people so hard on numbers presumably and 01:09:30.720 --> 01:09:35.360 people are just trying to do whatever there have been numerous cases in the 01:09:35.360 --> 01:09:41.160 last couple weeks of like people from germany people from England, 01:09:41.480 --> 01:09:44.140 people from various other places. 01:09:44.480 --> 01:09:48.340 The actress from American Pie. She was detained for like two weeks. 01:09:48.580 --> 01:09:58.500 Right. I mean, and we're talking, you know, non-brown people are getting caught up in this anyway. 01:09:59.960 --> 01:10:04.860 You know, non-brown, non-trans, you know, because they're specifically targeting 01:10:04.860 --> 01:10:07.120 trans people for immigration stuff as well. 01:10:07.120 --> 01:10:09.860 But you know so all kinds of 01:10:09.860 --> 01:10:13.080 people are getting caught up on it there i saw that 01:10:13.080 --> 01:10:16.160 several countries who are ostensibly our allies 01:10:16.160 --> 01:10:19.200 have been updating their travel warnings for the u.s 01:10:19.200 --> 01:10:22.020 uh telling people like i 01:10:22.020 --> 01:10:25.780 think canada put out a warning saying hey be super 01:10:25.780 --> 01:10:28.940 super careful about like time frames 01:10:28.940 --> 01:10:32.160 like if you're going in and it's 01:10:32.160 --> 01:10:35.140 you're you're you're legal for 30 01:10:35.140 --> 01:10:38.240 days as a tourist or whatever be damn sure 01:10:38.240 --> 01:10:41.960 you're home before the 30 days expires yep 01:10:41.960 --> 01:10:46.060 because you may get caught up with this i've seen warnings from places in europe 01:10:46.060 --> 01:10:51.220 saying if you're trans now is not a good time to go to the united states you 01:10:51.220 --> 01:10:59.380 know and various other places that are saying hey look maybe you should reconsider travel to the u.s. 01:10:59.380 --> 01:11:03.560 Well the thing is just because somebody has a visa to come here even if they 01:11:03.560 --> 01:11:06.920 do everything right they don't have to let them in and they don't have to let them stay. 01:11:07.660 --> 01:11:12.360 I mean, technically anybody who's here in the U.S. is actually covered by the 01:11:12.360 --> 01:11:14.540 Constitution. They have those constitutional rights. 01:11:15.280 --> 01:11:22.180 Well, they're trying to work on that. Well, this administration is going to follow them. 01:11:22.520 --> 01:11:25.000 Yes, and who knows? 01:11:25.840 --> 01:11:28.820 I'm sure some of these cases are going to go back to SCOTUS, 01:11:28.900 --> 01:11:31.580 and I don't know what this SCOTUS will decide on those things. 01:11:31.580 --> 01:11:37.400 It may not be the same as the decisions that currently govern things. 01:11:38.280 --> 01:11:41.900 They're starting to speak up, though. They've done a couple things now that 01:11:41.900 --> 01:11:48.160 make the Supreme Court, I think at least some of them are recognizing that they 01:11:48.160 --> 01:11:51.100 helped bolster a monster. 01:11:52.040 --> 01:11:58.960 Yes. I think it's an open question what SCOTUS will do on various of these issues. 01:11:58.960 --> 01:12:07.060 It's, you know, on the one hand, it's very easy to sort of think, hey, it's a 6-3 court. 01:12:07.260 --> 01:12:09.360 They're going to back up Trump on everything he does. 01:12:09.560 --> 01:12:12.260 I don't think it's quite that straightforward. 01:12:13.320 --> 01:12:19.940 You know, Roberts has shown multiple times that he's willing to go against sometimes. 01:12:20.900 --> 01:12:24.240 What is her name? Brown? Barrett? 01:12:24.800 --> 01:12:29.980 Barrett. Barrett. has also conservatives are apparently mad at her now because 01:12:29.980 --> 01:12:31.320 they think she's gone soft. 01:12:32.260 --> 01:12:33.800 So, you know, because. 01:12:33.920 --> 01:12:37.960 Oh, my God, the Constitution, let's try to follow it. I mean, 01:12:38.000 --> 01:12:39.220 literally, that's their job. 01:12:39.900 --> 01:12:40.240 Yes. 01:12:42.780 --> 01:12:48.120 OK, moving on from targeting direct folks and immigration, other things like. 01:12:49.340 --> 01:12:52.980 Well, I'll ask you first, then I've got a couple that I'll throw your direction 01:12:52.980 --> 01:12:54.020 if you don't bring them up. 01:12:54.020 --> 01:13:00.120 I already mentioned the medicare thing the dismantling of the department of education. 01:13:01.240 --> 01:13:01.840 Um 01:13:01.840 --> 01:13:06.980 And dumping things specifically in places where they know that they're going to get fucked up like. 01:13:06.980 --> 01:13:12.900 Well that's that's the whole point i mean honestly like one of the things i've 01:13:12.900 --> 01:13:19.180 been frustrated with on some of the commentary i've heard and some of this applies 01:13:19.180 --> 01:13:20.660 like to international things like, 01:13:21.260 --> 01:13:23.240 Trump and Ukraine and Russia. 01:13:23.440 --> 01:13:27.120 But some of it is domestic, too, where people are like, well, 01:13:27.360 --> 01:13:30.360 you know, it's hard to see how with these kind of reductions, 01:13:30.360 --> 01:13:35.900 it's not going to diminish the ability of this agency to do its job. And it's like, 01:13:36.610 --> 01:13:37.970 That's the whole point. 01:13:40.210 --> 01:13:43.150 They fundamentally don't believe 01:13:43.150 --> 01:13:47.290 that government should be doing whatever that agency is tasked with. 01:13:47.450 --> 01:13:51.010 The entire point is to make it non-functional. 01:13:51.650 --> 01:13:55.070 I don't think that they believe that they shouldn't be doing it. 01:13:55.170 --> 01:14:02.870 I think that they recognize that an uneducated, sick electorate isn't going to fight back. 01:14:03.290 --> 01:14:05.090 They're just not. Hmm. 01:14:05.870 --> 01:14:09.490 Well, I was, I was talking more generally than the Department of Education. Right. 01:14:10.010 --> 01:14:16.450 Just, just in general, like the, the whole, like, Hey, let's gut all these agencies. 01:14:16.650 --> 01:14:22.310 Let's try to find the, the waste fraud and abuse or whatever fundamentally is 01:14:22.310 --> 01:14:25.990 undergirded by the notion that they believe government doing any of this work 01:14:25.990 --> 01:14:27.850 is waste, fraud, and abuse. 01:14:28.270 --> 01:14:34.750 Like, it's not like you're actually trying to find the 1% of people who are 01:14:34.750 --> 01:14:37.590 doing something fraudulent with Social Security. 01:14:37.770 --> 01:14:44.790 It's that they fundamentally believe that the idea of Social Security is waste, fraud, and abuse. 01:14:44.950 --> 01:14:46.790 Even though we pay into it. 01:14:47.150 --> 01:14:53.550 Yes. And that's just one example. I think it's true of practically everything. 01:14:53.730 --> 01:15:00.390 I mean, the whole Heritage Foundation Project 2025 stuff is just a continuation 01:15:00.390 --> 01:15:04.050 of the fight that started with FDR. 01:15:04.610 --> 01:15:09.850 Like, it's people who fundamentally think that everything since the New Deal 01:15:09.850 --> 01:15:15.510 in the late 1930s was a mistake, and we should undo all of it. 01:15:15.710 --> 01:15:20.910 You know what I want to know? I want to know if when they eliminate everything, 01:15:20.910 --> 01:15:25.550 if they're actually going to stop taking all of our taxes. 01:15:27.530 --> 01:15:32.070 Only if you're in the top 1% or less, top 0.1%. 01:15:32.910 --> 01:15:36.070 Because, see, that's the other thing, right? They want to eliminate all this 01:15:36.070 --> 01:15:40.390 stuff, calling it wasteful. But they're going to keep taking our money. 01:15:40.610 --> 01:15:45.210 Well, I mean, one thing that some folks on the right actually do say is that 01:15:45.210 --> 01:15:49.850 they fundamentally believe the income tax was a mistake and should be eliminated 01:15:49.850 --> 01:15:52.510 entirely and replaced by things like, 01:15:52.960 --> 01:15:59.640 tariffs. And so would that actually happen? 01:15:59.760 --> 01:16:02.980 I don't know. But there are those out there who say that. They say, 01:16:03.100 --> 01:16:04.700 fundamentally, income tax is bad. 01:16:05.300 --> 01:16:11.720 Where we need taxes, it should be other forms of taxes. They particularly like 01:16:11.720 --> 01:16:17.780 tariffs because, I don't know, the other countries pay for them. They don't. They don't. 01:16:17.940 --> 01:16:22.060 But they don't. But I don't know. That's what Donald Trump keeps If any of them 01:16:22.060 --> 01:16:23.560 ever studied economics. 01:16:23.560 --> 01:16:28.780 I know that Donnie was supposed to have, but apparently he was a really shitty 01:16:28.780 --> 01:16:31.920 student, and they had to buy his way in in the first place. 01:16:32.160 --> 01:16:36.460 So then he clearly demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of economics, 01:16:36.460 --> 01:16:40.780 because I'm pretty sure he doesn't do this maliciously. He does it because he's stupid. 01:16:43.860 --> 01:16:48.840 Well, yes. I mean, he's definitely stupid. He's definitely like last person 01:16:48.840 --> 01:16:51.220 who talked to him is what he does, these kinds of things. 01:16:51.580 --> 01:16:57.820 However, he's also just incredibly self-interested. 01:16:58.080 --> 01:17:02.820 And I think everything comes down to, does he think it will, 01:17:02.960 --> 01:17:04.920 does it help him personally? 01:17:05.960 --> 01:17:09.220 And that could be either that the policy helps him personally, 01:17:09.220 --> 01:17:15.160 or just that advocating for the policy helps him personally because of who else might like it. 01:17:15.160 --> 01:17:20.860 And I think in very few cases, if any, 01:17:21.260 --> 01:17:27.660 is he making any sort of evaluation in terms of what will this policy do in 01:17:27.660 --> 01:17:32.120 terms of the greater good or anything like that? 01:17:32.260 --> 01:17:34.420 I don't think that even crosses his mind. 01:17:34.740 --> 01:17:35.740 No, he doesn't care. 01:17:36.560 --> 01:17:40.120 Okay. A couple I'll throw out for you. 01:17:40.220 --> 01:17:42.780 And they're sort of related, so maybe I'll merge them together. 01:17:42.780 --> 01:17:47.120 Fundamentally, there's been a lot of debate about, 01:17:47.260 --> 01:17:55.260 over the last two months on how national Democrats are or not meeting the moment 01:17:55.260 --> 01:17:57.920 for what's going on with the Trump administration. 01:17:58.360 --> 01:18:02.000 Now, obviously, Democrats lost the 01:18:02.000 --> 01:18:06.140 presidency. They lost the House of Representatives. They lost the Senate. 01:18:06.420 --> 01:18:09.580 They effectively lost the Supreme Court a long time ago. 01:18:09.780 --> 01:18:15.660 So there's very tight limits on what's actually possible out there. 01:18:16.260 --> 01:18:21.440 But at the same time, even without the ability to, quote unquote. 01:18:22.360 --> 01:18:25.660 Do something in those official capacities, 01:18:25.660 --> 01:18:32.300 there's a lot of question in terms of just what you what you do do in terms 01:18:32.300 --> 01:18:37.720 of messaging, in terms of how you react to things, in terms of what you do. 01:18:37.720 --> 01:18:44.060 Everything from what Chuck Schumer did with the continuing resolution to how 01:18:44.060 --> 01:18:50.620 people acted at the State of the Union in terms of who sat there politely versus 01:18:50.620 --> 01:18:53.920 who went and protested versus who didn't go at all. 01:18:54.320 --> 01:19:02.700 What are your general thoughts on the... And another thing is who's actually talking and who's not. 01:19:03.060 --> 01:19:08.320 There was a news article in the last couple of days about Biden wanting to get back in the game. 01:19:08.820 --> 01:19:15.240 Meanwhile, Harris has been really quiet, but Walls has been out there a lot in the last few weeks. 01:19:15.580 --> 01:19:21.840 There's a whole Sanders AOC tour that's going on where they're having big, huge rallies. 01:19:24.540 --> 01:19:28.540 What's your general thoughts? And I threw out a whole bunch of examples, 01:19:28.740 --> 01:19:35.680 but what's your general thoughts on how national Democrats are handling the moment. 01:19:35.680 --> 01:19:43.200 So i i've said before you know i think that democratic messaging sucks it's really bad, 01:19:45.000 --> 01:19:50.700 so there's that and that certainly plays a part but also you're right there 01:19:50.700 --> 01:19:57.280 they how how do they fight they have very little power to actually affect change 01:19:57.280 --> 01:20:03.020 and so they have to be very very careful how they wield that power, 01:20:03.240 --> 01:20:05.200 or it will no longer exist. 01:20:05.500 --> 01:20:11.400 And then take into account the fact that there's a president who has been given 01:20:11.400 --> 01:20:17.740 immunity from utilizing his office against people who disagree with him, 01:20:18.040 --> 01:20:21.840 utilizing the FBI against people who agree with him. 01:20:22.520 --> 01:20:23.820 Disagree. Yeah. 01:20:23.880 --> 01:20:29.380 Yeah, who disagree. Sorry. He removed Secret Service details from. 01:20:31.440 --> 01:20:33.220 People, because he wanted to make them vulnerable. 01:20:35.230 --> 01:20:40.170 This is somebody who's not going to think twice about putting people in their 01:20:40.170 --> 01:20:42.190 families in very dangerous situations. 01:20:43.070 --> 01:20:49.510 I think that is true. And the Supreme Court has given him the leeway to do so. So there's that. 01:20:50.370 --> 01:20:55.890 I do think a lot of people are out there speaking. They're just not always speaking to who is expected. 01:20:56.150 --> 01:21:01.150 Like, there seems to be this whole thing where, where are the Obamas? 01:21:01.770 --> 01:21:05.330 Where are the Clintons? Where's Kamala? why 01:21:05.330 --> 01:21:08.870 aren't they fighting for us and it's like i mean 01:21:08.870 --> 01:21:12.050 that kind of happened already and we 01:21:12.050 --> 01:21:15.330 told you this was going to happen and you ignored 01:21:15.330 --> 01:21:21.090 us and so now here we are and you want to know who's going to save you and that's 01:21:21.090 --> 01:21:27.570 not how this works but like i think the last i saw hillary clinton was in germany 01:21:27.570 --> 01:21:32.890 talking about the rise of fascism like they're out there doing stuff If they're 01:21:32.890 --> 01:21:34.090 all out there doing stuff, 01:21:34.090 --> 01:21:36.830 they may not be in the spaces where other people want them to be. 01:21:36.970 --> 01:21:39.990 And they have no responsibility to be in those spaces. None. 01:21:40.930 --> 01:21:42.730 And that's important to remember. 01:21:43.690 --> 01:21:47.290 And I know there were some people who were kind of like, oh, 01:21:47.450 --> 01:21:50.290 we can't let Biden back in. Dude's offering a fundraise. 01:21:50.490 --> 01:21:52.230 He is a master at fundraising. 01:21:53.130 --> 01:21:57.830 If you say no, then you are essentially saying, that's okay. 01:21:58.130 --> 01:22:00.530 We don't want our party to succeed anymore. 01:22:02.410 --> 01:22:07.990 I feel like in the Biden case, I have no problem with the fundraising. 01:22:08.310 --> 01:22:14.070 I feel like in general, it probably is time for Biden to sort of walk off into the sunset. 01:22:15.430 --> 01:22:20.570 And I was a Biden fan defending him staying in until the moment he dropped out. 01:22:20.710 --> 01:22:24.170 But I think it's okay for him to walk out into the sunset. 01:22:24.580 --> 01:22:28.180 Walk away, except like, like you said, fundraising. 01:22:28.460 --> 01:22:32.540 Okay. Let, let him do it. Like that's not harmful. That's not the same as, 01:22:32.700 --> 01:22:37.400 you know, I'm going to go on TV all the time and be in him doing the Bernie 01:22:37.400 --> 01:22:39.480 Sanders rallies, you know, I don't know, 01:22:39.820 --> 01:22:45.260 but, but like, but at the same time, I, I, I on it, I do feel a little bit disappointed 01:22:45.260 --> 01:22:48.680 in that Harris hasn't been more visible now. 01:22:48.920 --> 01:22:53.840 You're absolutely right there's no there's no obligation absolutely no obligation 01:22:53.840 --> 01:22:56.980 whatsoever but i feel like she could be being useful. 01:22:56.980 --> 01:22:58.500 She could be doing. 01:22:58.500 --> 01:23:00.080 Some i told you so's you. 01:23:00.080 --> 01:23:05.840 Know she could be she could be but nobody even has a right to that i mean when 01:23:05.840 --> 01:23:10.160 it comes down to it again people chose what they got, 01:23:10.740 --> 01:23:17.060 it's not her job to come coddle people now because she's not there to protect 01:23:17.060 --> 01:23:18.540 them well i mean hell She. 01:23:18.580 --> 01:23:23.820 You know, she, you know, one extreme the day after the election, 01:23:24.000 --> 01:23:25.820 she could have announced her run for 2028. 01:23:26.280 --> 01:23:27.320 She could have. 01:23:27.680 --> 01:23:30.740 Yeah. I mean, obviously, there's no obligation. 01:23:30.740 --> 01:23:40.420 But the thing that I am feeling right now is when it does come time for 2028, 01:23:40.860 --> 01:23:51.000 I am going to have, I will be more inclined for people who are being active 01:23:51.000 --> 01:23:55.760 right now versus people who wait till after midterms. 01:23:56.360 --> 01:24:00.460 Now, it of course depends on the person. Like, you know, there are certain people 01:24:00.460 --> 01:24:06.980 I like and certain people I don't like anyway, you know, but I feel like the 01:24:06.980 --> 01:24:08.960 folks who are just sort of like, 01:24:09.240 --> 01:24:11.700 well, there's nothing we can do right now. 01:24:11.700 --> 01:24:16.200 So we're just going to lay low for a year or two. 01:24:16.540 --> 01:24:20.640 At least in, and then maybe we'll pop our heads up and start campaigning for midterms. 01:24:20.840 --> 01:24:24.440 But like, at least for the first year, we're just going to lay low, 01:24:24.720 --> 01:24:27.640 see what happens, let Donald Trump do damage. 01:24:27.860 --> 01:24:32.280 I mean, cause you can't stop the damage. And I have argued at various points 01:24:32.280 --> 01:24:39.540 in the past that a fundamental problem of our system of checks and balances. 01:24:39.720 --> 01:24:42.240 I mean, there are lots of good things for a system of checks and balances. 01:24:42.260 --> 01:24:43.820 It's bad that it's being eroded. 01:24:44.060 --> 01:24:48.920 But one of the problems was that people couldn't see the consequences of their votes. 01:24:49.480 --> 01:24:54.020 Like they, you know, you'd either vote for somebody because you wanted them to do something. 01:24:54.060 --> 01:24:58.820 And then because they didn't have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, 01:24:59.080 --> 01:25:02.300 they didn't actually get those things done. And then you're like, oh, they failed. 01:25:02.460 --> 01:25:04.800 We voted them to do X and they didn't get it done. 01:25:05.440 --> 01:25:09.220 And they, and so people don't see that result or, 01:25:09.520 --> 01:25:17.600 you know, they see the other part, they blame the negative for the wrong folks 01:25:17.600 --> 01:25:21.100 because they just don't understand how the system works. 01:25:21.480 --> 01:25:29.580 And it feels like if you really and truly allow the consequences of the vote 01:25:29.580 --> 01:25:34.700 to happen, either positive or negative, then it makes for a better next election, 01:25:35.580 --> 01:25:40.680 because people are actually voting on, hey, the people I voted for actually 01:25:40.680 --> 01:25:42.760 got to enact their policies. 01:25:42.980 --> 01:25:47.100 And now we've seen what happens. The problem, of course, is on the negative 01:25:47.100 --> 01:25:48.420 side, lots of people get hurt. 01:25:49.020 --> 01:25:54.320 But I've heard the argument here in some degree that, like, you know, 01:25:55.240 --> 01:26:00.920 you got to let the damage happen because then people will realize they fucked up. 01:26:02.140 --> 01:26:06.280 Yeah. But at this point, though, we got to let the damage happen because we 01:26:06.280 --> 01:26:08.800 have no control over making it go away. 01:26:09.340 --> 01:26:11.340 We don't we just don't have it. 01:26:11.340 --> 01:26:14.940 So allowing for 01:26:14.940 --> 01:26:17.700 you have no control and allowing for what you said 01:26:17.700 --> 01:26:23.740 before about democratic messaging tends to suck what approach should these folks 01:26:23.740 --> 01:26:31.040 be doing what like you know um our our congress people our senators what approach 01:26:31.040 --> 01:26:35.920 should they be taking towards the national stuff right now it feels like they're. 01:26:35.920 --> 01:26:37.900 And they're talking and they're being honest. 01:26:37.900 --> 01:26:41.320 But it seems that's the approach it seems 01:26:41.320 --> 01:26:44.340 like so far yeah and again 01:26:44.340 --> 01:26:47.560 completely recognizing that they can't actually 01:26:47.560 --> 01:26:52.720 do anything substantive because they don't have majorities but it seems even 01:26:52.720 --> 01:26:58.060 the communication stuff they're doing for the most part with a handful of exceptions 01:26:58.060 --> 01:27:03.940 for the most part they're not doing great on the message you said you said messaging 01:27:03.940 --> 01:27:06.340 sucks but they're really doing badly at it. 01:27:06.920 --> 01:27:12.900 Like, and there seems to be a coherent strategy from leadership anyway, 01:27:12.900 --> 01:27:14.660 on the national level to say, 01:27:14.800 --> 01:27:21.400 you know, hey, we're not going to spend most of our time pointing out all the 01:27:21.400 --> 01:27:22.680 bad things Trump is doing. 01:27:23.120 --> 01:27:28.680 Instead, let's just keep talking about, you know, the price of eggs is still bad. 01:27:29.420 --> 01:27:36.100 Or, you know, the lesson learned from 2024 is that people cared about, 01:27:36.120 --> 01:27:42.180 you know, breadbasket, kitchen table issues. And so that's all we're going to talk about. 01:27:42.420 --> 01:27:46.280 All of the other issues, forget about. We're not going to talk about democracy 01:27:46.280 --> 01:27:48.360 because that clearly that didn't work in the election. 01:27:48.540 --> 01:27:53.420 We're not going to talk about the trans stuff because that was wielded as a 01:27:53.420 --> 01:27:55.340 hammer against us and they won. 01:27:55.620 --> 01:27:59.560 So let's just ignore the trans people for now and the issues there. 01:28:00.300 --> 01:28:02.160 I've heard people make that argument. 01:28:02.580 --> 01:28:03.880 Yeah, that's a stupid argument. 01:28:04.100 --> 01:28:13.880 I've heard people say, look, being all worried about trans people, 01:28:14.420 --> 01:28:18.940 minorities, immigrants, wanting to be like, you know, 01:28:20.540 --> 01:28:26.780 having empathy, caring about DEI, that didn't work. So we got to stop doing that. 01:28:26.840 --> 01:28:29.100 And it's the economy, stupid. 01:28:31.280 --> 01:28:37.200 And there's a big push to say, hey, the problem was we were two left. 01:28:37.600 --> 01:28:42.480 Let's go to the center and get more of those Trump voters back. 01:28:43.200 --> 01:28:48.320 Yeah, that's not likely. And the true Trump voters aren't going anywhere because 01:28:48.320 --> 01:28:51.300 politics is not about data. 01:28:51.340 --> 01:28:52.720 It's about faith. 01:28:52.720 --> 01:28:59.540 Yeah, it's about emotion. And I feel like, I feel like the, the, 01:29:00.420 --> 01:29:05.700 you know, the, I've said this on the show before. 01:29:05.900 --> 01:29:10.500 So for long time, long time listeners are going to be annoyed at me, but. 01:29:10.500 --> 01:29:13.140 I'll be in what you do just for the sake of it. 01:29:13.500 --> 01:29:21.760 I'm sure you will. I feel like the time of the traditional wisdom of trying 01:29:21.760 --> 01:29:28.400 to swing the median voter and so always trying to sort of triangulate and get the center. 01:29:28.400 --> 01:29:35.300 I think that may have been appropriate for certain times in the past, but for this moment, 01:29:35.780 --> 01:29:38.700 given how polarized everything is, 01:29:38.900 --> 01:29:43.800 I think that was a mistake in the 2024 campaign when they tried to do it. 01:29:43.800 --> 01:29:51.840 And it really is about motivating your base and getting them out there and making sure like, 01:29:52.040 --> 01:29:58.620 you know, there was a poll out from I think it was NBC in the last week talking 01:29:58.620 --> 01:30:04.980 about the approval rating for the Democratic Party as a whole had now dropped 01:30:04.980 --> 01:30:07.000 below 30 percent nationwide, 01:30:07.020 --> 01:30:10.540 which is the lowest it's ever been while they've been tracking these things. 01:30:10.540 --> 01:30:14.240 And is lower than Donald Trump, lower than the Republicans, 01:30:14.920 --> 01:30:22.240 you know, and, but, but that's not, the problem with those kinds of polls is 01:30:22.240 --> 01:30:24.620 they often aren't accompanied with why, 01:30:24.860 --> 01:30:30.880 because while certainly some of that is going to be, oh, the Democrats are too far on the left. 01:30:31.640 --> 01:30:38.460 Some of it is, from what I've seen in other polls and just the general zeitgeist 01:30:38.460 --> 01:30:41.480 that's out there, is a lot of it is... 01:30:42.050 --> 01:30:48.950 Okay, you guys lost, but you're acting like losers. Start actually acting. And yes, they are. 01:30:49.150 --> 01:30:53.010 It's the whole, why aren't you doing something? And it's like, 01:30:53.110 --> 01:30:55.350 what do you propose is done? 01:30:56.530 --> 01:31:01.850 I think the thing that people are looking for, because I think most people recognize 01:31:01.850 --> 01:31:05.690 they can't actually do anything in their jobs. 01:31:05.690 --> 01:31:09.170 They're looking for them to 01:31:09.170 --> 01:31:13.270 look upset look passionate be 01:31:13.270 --> 01:31:16.430 like leading demonstrations and stuff not 01:31:16.430 --> 01:31:21.590 just sitting back like i think there was a lot of frustration for just like 01:31:21.590 --> 01:31:26.050 you know the state of the union thing the 10 democrats that went along with 01:31:26.050 --> 01:31:31.290 the center of the one guy who stood up and protested um that was weird you know 01:31:31.290 --> 01:31:35.030 things like that i i think i see them doing things like, okay, 01:31:35.250 --> 01:31:37.530 the people who showed up at the state of the union, 01:31:37.770 --> 01:31:40.570 but held up little signs or t-shirts that are like, that's just, 01:31:40.630 --> 01:31:42.570 that's just weak and silly. 01:31:42.690 --> 01:31:48.130 Like the guy who stood up and, and then was made them escort him out. 01:31:48.390 --> 01:31:51.950 That's more like it. Like, and did it accomplish anything in the end? 01:31:52.190 --> 01:31:56.430 No, but it's a bit more demonstrative and it's a bit more, okay, 01:31:56.590 --> 01:31:58.350 you're showing us you're with us. 01:31:58.450 --> 01:32:01.370 You're showing us you feel the same level of anger we do. 01:32:02.010 --> 01:32:08.870 I understand that but i also recognize that it's not it's not always useful like. 01:32:08.870 --> 01:32:10.870 Do you think you're alienating more 01:32:10.870 --> 01:32:15.150 people than you're gaining when you do performative things like that i. 01:32:15.150 --> 01:32:21.750 Think i think as time goes on as we start to play the same kind of games they do. 01:32:22.850 --> 01:32:29.750 Well that term that term is actually one i've i've heard explicitly is like 01:32:29.750 --> 01:32:37.410 you know So they this this like when they go low, we go high stuff failed. 01:32:37.970 --> 01:32:41.590 We have to start like when they go low, we kick them in the nuts. 01:32:42.350 --> 01:32:45.110 Yeah. But here's the thing. Then that makes us know better than they are. 01:32:45.690 --> 01:32:49.910 And that's what differentiates us. Having more compassion. 01:32:50.930 --> 01:32:52.470 Caring about people. Yeah. 01:32:53.170 --> 01:32:56.190 Being the better human beings, that's what differentiates us. 01:32:56.350 --> 01:32:58.330 And if we take that away, then we're no different. 01:32:59.150 --> 01:33:05.230 So do you feel happy with how the National Democrats are handling it for the moment? 01:33:05.450 --> 01:33:08.610 Or do you wish they'd be doing something different? What do you think they should be doing different? 01:33:10.450 --> 01:33:13.870 I honestly don't know that there's anything they can do right now. 01:33:14.350 --> 01:33:19.410 And so saying you need to be doing this thing differently doesn't work. 01:33:19.410 --> 01:33:23.950 And honestly, I don't know enough about the politics and how it works there. 01:33:25.730 --> 01:33:29.890 Some examples that have been thrown out, I think we're pretty much at the end. 01:33:30.030 --> 01:33:31.170 There's like one or two stragglers. 01:33:31.330 --> 01:33:37.070 But people mentioned, hey, on confirmations that the Senate has to do, 01:33:37.310 --> 01:33:40.450 why aren't we a unified no on everybody? 01:33:41.310 --> 01:33:45.990 Instead, they have the votes to pass them anyway. 01:33:46.590 --> 01:33:53.190 Yeah. You know, so do the performative no and make them take, 01:33:53.370 --> 01:33:57.530 you know, do every procedural thing in the book to slow it down and make it 01:33:57.530 --> 01:33:59.210 take as long as possible. That kind of thing. 01:33:59.510 --> 01:34:04.950 What I would have done is I would have saved my no for the ones I thought were the most dangerous. 01:34:05.450 --> 01:34:07.790 Well, that's essentially what happened, right? Like, yeah. 01:34:08.290 --> 01:34:10.410 Like, because if you just say no every time. 01:34:10.810 --> 01:34:14.270 Rubio was like essentially unanimous. I think he got like 99 votes. 01:34:14.870 --> 01:34:20.330 And then but like the the unanimous democratic opposition came for things like 01:34:20.330 --> 01:34:26.390 rfk jr and and hogeth and i i think even those might not have been perfectly unanimous they were. 01:34:26.390 --> 01:34:31.790 Close but but you know if you do it all the time and you do it the same way 01:34:31.790 --> 01:34:35.390 all the time it it has no value you. 01:34:35.390 --> 01:34:36.610 Don't get credit for it anyway. 01:34:36.610 --> 01:34:39.050 Yeah because people. 01:34:39.050 --> 01:34:40.650 Will still be like you didn't stop it. 01:34:40.650 --> 01:34:46.030 Yeah but you didn't stop it whether you voted for it or against it because, 01:34:46.790 --> 01:34:51.070 they don't have the power so yes they 01:34:51.070 --> 01:34:55.030 could they could be performative and vote 01:34:55.030 --> 01:35:03.730 no every time but i i think i think it the message it sends a clearer message 01:35:03.730 --> 01:35:09.950 when you're holding out for the ones that are the problem i think rather than 01:35:09.950 --> 01:35:11.810 just doing the same thing over and over again, 01:35:14.590 --> 01:35:16.810 um i know so you say you're. 01:35:16.810 --> 01:35:21.210 You're not happy with how they're doing things but you don't have any particular 01:35:21.210 --> 01:35:24.590 things you wish they would do different because you think it's a no-win situation. 01:35:24.590 --> 01:35:30.010 Yeah well i think sometimes there's that whole thing right it was from the american 01:35:30.010 --> 01:35:34.330 president you fight the fights you can win versus you fight the fights that 01:35:34.330 --> 01:35:38.370 need fighting from the movie from the movie The American President yeah. 01:35:38.970 --> 01:35:40.910 Good movie it's been a while. 01:35:40.910 --> 01:35:44.730 I know right and I've been thinking about that a lot lately yeah, 01:35:46.190 --> 01:35:50.110 If you're fighting every fight, though, you don't have the energy when something 01:35:50.110 --> 01:35:55.010 really big comes along that you might actually have the opportunity to change the direction of. 01:35:56.610 --> 01:36:01.710 So you kind of think the lay low and wait for the right opportunity is actually 01:36:01.710 --> 01:36:08.730 the right way to do it rather than because, again, the push from a lot of people is like, you know, 01:36:08.950 --> 01:36:13.890 we want people who are sort of demonstrably, 01:36:14.170 --> 01:36:15.170 clearly. 01:36:16.450 --> 01:36:17.610 Fighting even if. 01:36:17.610 --> 01:36:18.190 Even if they. 01:36:18.190 --> 01:36:22.150 Even if they are continuously losing we want to see them in the battle. 01:36:22.150 --> 01:36:23.430 And not sort. 01:36:23.430 --> 01:36:26.490 Of preemptively say we can't win this one so we're not going to try. 01:36:27.090 --> 01:36:29.910 They want god i just lost the 01:36:29.910 --> 01:36:34.050 word they want activists yeah most 01:36:34.050 --> 01:36:36.890 politicians aren't activists and never were 01:36:36.890 --> 01:36:41.190 so it's 01:36:41.190 --> 01:36:46.030 also not something that everybody knows how to do and so they They think like 01:36:46.030 --> 01:36:52.290 politicians and they strategize and they do the thing that will have more of 01:36:52.290 --> 01:36:57.190 an impact when they do it every once in a while instead of all the time. 01:36:58.190 --> 01:37:01.210 I think the activist identification is correct there. 01:37:01.350 --> 01:37:05.890 I mean, like, there are clearly people hankering for, like, Democratic leaders, 01:37:06.170 --> 01:37:10.250 whether they be elected leaders or non-elected activists or whatever. 01:37:10.250 --> 01:37:15.870 They want to see them like protesting and getting arrested and beaten and like 01:37:15.870 --> 01:37:19.950 just the, the performative, like, you know, they, you know, it was just the 01:37:19.950 --> 01:37:24.790 anniversary of the whole Edmund Pettus bridge thing that I think. 01:37:25.330 --> 01:37:28.690 People are hankering for that kind of activism right now. 01:37:28.830 --> 01:37:33.470 And you're right. It is an activist thing, not necessarily something you expect of elected officials. 01:37:33.750 --> 01:37:37.250 But I think people are hoping for some of that. 01:37:37.390 --> 01:37:43.130 And even for the elected officials, it's like, I think the thing that really 01:37:43.130 --> 01:37:48.230 rubs people the wrong way is the, we know we can't win this one, 01:37:48.430 --> 01:37:51.050 so therefore we're not going to try. see. 01:37:51.050 --> 01:37:58.810 And and the other thing is i don't think there's no no trying i think it's just not public. 01:37:58.810 --> 01:38:00.550 You know. 01:38:00.550 --> 01:38:02.070 I i think they are. 01:38:02.070 --> 01:38:04.250 But but that's the thing that like 01:38:04.250 --> 01:38:09.190 if you're talking about the general electorate and the general world of. 01:38:09.190 --> 01:38:10.350 They don't see that. 01:38:10.350 --> 01:38:16.090 They don't yeah because if it's if it's not public they don't see it and you've 01:38:16.090 --> 01:38:20.930 got a lot of especially in the younger generations, you see a lot of people 01:38:20.930 --> 01:38:23.870 who are like, they won't associate themselves with Democrats. 01:38:24.110 --> 01:38:28.590 They may not like Trump, but they won't associate themselves with Democrats 01:38:28.590 --> 01:38:31.770 either because they think of Democrats as weak and feckless. 01:38:32.230 --> 01:38:38.830 And this is marketing. This is not about what they actually do. This is marketing. 01:38:40.370 --> 01:38:50.410 So I would suspect some of the people who are activists will end up in 5, 01:38:50.610 --> 01:38:54.970 10, 15 years being the new electeds at that point in time, 01:38:55.970 --> 01:38:58.830 because of names they'll make now. 01:38:59.910 --> 01:39:04.870 I can tell you, though, that people who go from activism to policy, 01:39:05.190 --> 01:39:10.150 like politicians, don't always do well because they expect to be able to make... 01:39:10.150 --> 01:39:11.690 Radical change quickly. 01:39:11.870 --> 01:39:18.050 Radical changes, but don't take into account that we are working in a system 01:39:18.050 --> 01:39:24.830 that was not made for us and not designed for people like us to be a part of. 01:39:25.250 --> 01:39:27.230 In fact, excluded. 01:39:27.570 --> 01:39:34.790 And also, despite the current efforts to dismantle it, the entire American system 01:39:34.790 --> 01:39:41.170 at a national level was specifically designed to slow down change. 01:39:41.170 --> 01:39:50.690 It was designed to not allow the whims of the crowd, as it was called back then, 01:39:51.070 --> 01:39:53.150 or maybe I just made that up. 01:39:53.270 --> 01:40:00.570 But it was designed to insulate against raw democracy. 01:40:01.690 --> 01:40:05.530 Because prior to the American experiment, 01:40:05.950 --> 01:40:11.810 democracies were known as a system that always failed because you would always 01:40:11.810 --> 01:40:18.230 end up in a situation at some point where the hoi polloi would vote themselves out. 01:40:18.550 --> 01:40:23.050 All kinds of goodies and it would go bankrupt and it would get corrupt and it 01:40:23.050 --> 01:40:27.310 would, you know, it's, it's a cycle that happened over and over again. 01:40:27.550 --> 01:40:33.070 So the American system was specifically designed with all kinds of choke points 01:40:33.070 --> 01:40:37.990 and checks and balances that were specifically designed to insulate the system 01:40:37.990 --> 01:40:43.010 from the raw popular will and slow things down and, 01:40:43.010 --> 01:40:45.470 and prohibit concentration of power, 01:40:45.870 --> 01:40:48.670 all of this kind of stuff at which, you know, 01:40:49.210 --> 01:40:52.290 you know, someone like Donald Trump is trying to get rid of all that and allow 01:40:52.290 --> 01:40:56.070 himself to have monarchical power again, 01:40:56.510 --> 01:41:02.070 again, but have, you know, have unrestricted power and we'll see, 01:41:02.270 --> 01:41:06.070 but, but yeah, it's intentionally slow. 01:41:06.270 --> 01:41:12.910 So yeah, no, I can definitely see how the activist mindset and the, 01:41:12.910 --> 01:41:16.070 and the sort of Actual governance, 01:41:16.870 --> 01:41:21.330 sort of one hits the brick wall of the other, and that can be frustrating. 01:41:23.010 --> 01:41:28.490 But at the same time, it's a big reason for people's disillusion right now, 01:41:28.630 --> 01:41:33.110 is that they feel like, you know, it doesn't matter who you vote for because 01:41:33.110 --> 01:41:34.870 nothing good happens no matter what. 01:41:35.210 --> 01:41:38.890 Yeah. I think that we're going to see some interesting changes in the midterms. 01:41:39.730 --> 01:41:43.270 Yeah. Well, I think part of that depends on... 01:41:43.270 --> 01:41:43.850 Assuming they happen. 01:41:44.790 --> 01:41:51.050 Yes. I mean, we got a year and three quarters left to go, but it's like forever. 01:41:51.510 --> 01:41:55.250 I think approximately I did. I do the math right. Anyway, it doesn't matter. 01:41:55.450 --> 01:41:55.770 Yes. 01:41:57.450 --> 01:42:02.610 But that's gonna, but certainly with the current direction, 01:42:03.050 --> 01:42:09.510 you got to think like Donald Trump has been doing unpopular things since January 01:42:09.510 --> 01:42:12.970 20th and doubling and tripling down on them. 01:42:12.970 --> 01:42:19.230 And at some point that has to like, 01:42:20.370 --> 01:42:25.650 As much as people talk about how much of a disaster the 2024 election was for 01:42:25.650 --> 01:42:31.890 Democrats, it's because we have a winner-take-all system, essentially. It was really close. 01:42:32.330 --> 01:42:35.210 The Democrats actually gained ground in the House. 01:42:35.470 --> 01:42:40.610 They only lost a little bit in the Senate. They just barely lost the presidency. 01:42:40.610 --> 01:42:46.970 And I continue to believe that if the Harris campaign hadn't shifted tone in 01:42:46.970 --> 01:42:51.170 mid-September, they could have still pulled off a win. It was really close. 01:42:51.570 --> 01:42:58.110 And so you don't need to fundamentally change the entire political universe 01:42:58.110 --> 01:43:05.430 to reverse these trends. You just need the Republicans to lose a couple percent of ground. 01:43:05.850 --> 01:43:09.370 And that's not much, especially if you destroy the economy. 01:43:10.090 --> 01:43:17.990 If you remember too there was a at least one situation in which donald trump 01:43:17.990 --> 01:43:22.690 actually said the election was rigged for him do you remember that. 01:43:22.690 --> 01:43:28.090 He he he made a little statement about elon musk and elon musk knowing stuff 01:43:28.090 --> 01:43:35.010 and blah blah blah i don't think it was rigged i think he said it was yeah i 01:43:35.010 --> 01:43:35.990 mean there are different. 01:43:35.990 --> 01:43:39.970 Ways to rig an election right like i was talking to somebody was convinced that 01:43:39.970 --> 01:43:46.010 there are a lot of houses that went out for sale or rent right after the election 01:43:46.010 --> 01:43:53.190 like people relocating in order to shift to vote people who had money being 01:43:53.190 --> 01:43:54.730 able to do that that kind of thing. 01:43:54.730 --> 01:43:58.630 Um and that that's been hell i've 01:43:58.630 --> 01:44:02.150 suggested that tactic i've suggested moving through 01:44:02.150 --> 01:44:08.030 it's entirely just barely you know move to purple states move to states that 01:44:08.030 --> 01:44:13.470 don't need that many people i i've pointed out many times how like wyoming may 01:44:13.470 --> 01:44:19.310 seem very red but it's also very small so it wouldn't take that many people to flip it you know, 01:44:20.030 --> 01:44:28.070 you know those are actually like you know there's rigging and then there's okay 01:44:28.070 --> 01:44:31.170 that's a legitimate tactic you know paying. 01:44:31.170 --> 01:44:32.290 People to to. 01:44:32.290 --> 01:44:32.990 Vote for. 01:44:32.990 --> 01:44:33.710 A certain candidate. 01:44:33.710 --> 01:44:41.270 Well yeah and and elon's like lottery in pennsylvania oh and he's doing it again 01:44:41.270 --> 01:44:46.710 oh yeah he's doing it in the the the in the judge judge race wherever it is 01:44:46.710 --> 01:44:53.370 um and it's still legal yeah well and we've we've made And, you know, 01:44:54.310 --> 01:44:59.930 current campaign finance basically allows you to spend as much money as you want. 01:45:00.350 --> 01:45:03.630 Yes, but it doesn't allow you to buy votes. That is illegal. 01:45:04.290 --> 01:45:06.990 Not, yes, not directly. But, like... 01:45:07.600 --> 01:45:13.920 He tried to do it in a very loophole-ish way to make it technically by the letter 01:45:13.920 --> 01:45:16.880 of the law legal, even though clearly in spirit it wasn't. 01:45:17.000 --> 01:45:18.880 And, of course, you're going to see that kind of stuff. And now, 01:45:19.000 --> 01:45:24.780 with the current environment, nobody's going to go after him for any of this stuff anyway. So, ugh. 01:45:25.740 --> 01:45:28.040 Now Trump wants to take over the FECs. 01:45:28.580 --> 01:45:35.720 Yes. Well, didn't he already fire all the Democratic members of the FEC last week or the week before? 01:45:36.240 --> 01:45:42.460 Yeah. So, yeah, it's going to be, like you said, my take is not that, 01:45:42.700 --> 01:45:44.940 you know, you said if there are going to be elections again, 01:45:45.160 --> 01:45:48.200 there'll be elections again. But all of the stuff. 01:45:48.360 --> 01:45:50.120 Will they be rigged? 01:45:50.200 --> 01:45:53.840 Well, and I don't even know if rigged is the right word, but all of the things 01:45:53.840 --> 01:46:01.520 that we know about that make it harder for Democrats to win will be emphasized more. 01:46:01.740 --> 01:46:06.900 There'll be more voter suppression. There'll be more hoops that you have to jump through to vote. 01:46:08.640 --> 01:46:13.720 The media environment will be pushed in a certain direction. 01:46:14.360 --> 01:46:19.000 Trump is actively threatening media outlets who say anything negative against 01:46:19.000 --> 01:46:20.580 him, and that's going to have an effect. 01:46:21.600 --> 01:46:29.220 But they're playing off the Eastern European playbook from Orban in Hungary 01:46:29.220 --> 01:46:33.000 who did this kind of thing and other authoritarians elsewhere in the world as 01:46:33.000 --> 01:46:35.720 well, where you don't know... 01:46:36.020 --> 01:46:42.820 At this point, it's not, you're transitioning to what they're calling an illiberal democracy, 01:46:42.820 --> 01:46:47.960 where you still have all the institutions of democracy officially running, 01:46:47.960 --> 01:46:54.360 but you try to put your thumb on every way possible to make it really, 01:46:54.600 --> 01:46:56.320 really hard for the opposition. 01:46:56.580 --> 01:46:59.400 You know? So there you go. 01:47:00.260 --> 01:47:05.200 Okay. We've gone on long enough. Any last thoughts before we close it out? 01:47:06.580 --> 01:47:13.080 Every day seems like a really long day. And then also every day seems like a 01:47:13.080 --> 01:47:14.240 really short period of time. 01:47:14.880 --> 01:47:18.060 Right. All right. 01:47:20.000 --> 01:47:24.120 Just because of session or because of the entire damn world? 01:47:24.440 --> 01:47:25.940 Because the entire damn world. 01:47:26.360 --> 01:47:35.240 Okay. Yes. a lot of people seem to have forgotten how this was like during the 01:47:35.240 --> 01:47:36.420 first Trump administration. 01:47:37.000 --> 01:47:39.620 And if anything, it's twice as bad this time. 01:47:39.720 --> 01:47:42.460 Oh, yeah. It's way worse than it was before. Because before, 01:47:42.640 --> 01:47:45.280 he didn't have a plan. He didn't think he was going to win. 01:47:45.840 --> 01:47:48.240 So he just kind of banged around inside there. 01:47:49.180 --> 01:47:50.680 This time, there was a plan. 01:47:50.860 --> 01:47:54.360 And there were a lot of the quote-unquote adults in the room who may have been 01:47:54.360 --> 01:47:59.240 conservative, but they believed in the basics of government and the constitution 01:47:59.240 --> 01:48:02.840 and tried to reign him in. Those people are all gone now. All gone. 01:48:03.000 --> 01:48:07.240 And he believes himself to be a king. What would the long live the king crap, 01:48:07.420 --> 01:48:09.980 which also really fucking is trolling. 01:48:10.140 --> 01:48:14.760 Well, he loves trolling with that kind of stuff, but he clearly, even with other things. 01:48:14.820 --> 01:48:16.860 I don't think that's trolling. He has a golden throne. 01:48:18.560 --> 01:48:23.920 He may be trolling with the meme but the underlying thought that he believes 01:48:23.920 --> 01:48:27.780 that his power should be unlimited is absolutely true absolutely. 01:48:29.340 --> 01:48:35.000 Okay we can be done thanks everybody for listening to yet another curmudgeon's 01:48:35.000 --> 01:48:38.640 corner Ivana's gonna be gone again wait, 01:48:39.290 --> 01:48:44.710 Yes. Yvonne will be gone again next week too. So I don't know who I'll have on next week. 01:48:44.870 --> 01:48:47.810 I'll have on somebody or I'll just do it myself. Who knows? 01:48:48.270 --> 01:48:52.430 But, but yeah, he, this, this week he was traveling for work. 01:48:52.570 --> 01:48:55.490 Next week is like spring break or something. So he's doing something with his 01:48:55.490 --> 01:48:57.210 family. So good for him. Have fun. 01:48:58.250 --> 01:49:03.230 We'll see. We'll see what I do next week. In any case, go to the website, 01:49:03.370 --> 01:49:04.730 curmudgeons-corner.com. 01:49:04.870 --> 01:49:08.010 You can find all the ways to contact us. You can find the archive of our shows, 01:49:08.150 --> 01:49:11.710 transcripts of recent shows, all of that kind of fun stuff. 01:49:11.710 --> 01:49:16.530 There's a link to our YouTube where these live streams exist and you can watch 01:49:16.530 --> 01:49:21.730 the show unedited instead of listening to the edited audio version. 01:49:21.970 --> 01:49:29.250 Now I say edit, but I'm not like picking out the best half hour out of a two hour recording. 01:49:29.530 --> 01:49:38.870 No, I'm just removing coughs and the dog barking, children interrupting nonsense like that. 01:49:39.030 --> 01:49:44.830 But on YouTube, you can see all of that stuff, including the fact that because 01:49:44.830 --> 01:49:47.610 of technical difficulties, it took us like five tries. 01:49:48.110 --> 01:49:52.830 I did the one recording earlier, and then it took us five tries to get a good 01:49:52.830 --> 01:49:55.750 connection and whatever, four tries. I don't know. 01:49:56.070 --> 01:49:57.270 I blame you, Sam. 01:49:57.430 --> 01:50:00.510 It is entirely my fault. But you can see all 01:50:00.510 --> 01:50:03.630 of those artifacts on YouTube and see the video 01:50:03.630 --> 01:50:06.410 of us and that links there i i still have 01:50:06.410 --> 01:50:12.430 not added a tiktok link i am posting highlights on tiktok every week but oh 01:50:12.430 --> 01:50:18.270 and this last week for the first time curmudgeon's corner on tiktok now has 01:50:18.270 --> 01:50:25.350 more followers than my personal tiktok so i it's a it's a huge milestone i know i know, 01:50:26.050 --> 01:50:32.130 but but yeah i i'm waiting to post the link because a i'm lazy and busy and 01:50:32.130 --> 01:50:38.250 b like my excuse is I want to wait till TikTok's 90 day reprieve is up and see 01:50:38.250 --> 01:50:39.910 what happens then, you know, 01:50:40.130 --> 01:50:42.690 but anyway, all of that stuff. 01:50:42.770 --> 01:50:45.870 And of course you can find a link to our Patreon where you can give us money. 01:50:46.330 --> 01:50:51.270 Money is always appreciated, whether it's a dollar, $5, or, you know, 01:50:51.450 --> 01:50:54.130 what would really be nice, $50,000 a month. 01:50:54.600 --> 01:51:01.640 If you have that in you, cough it up. We'd be fine with that. You know, anyway. 01:51:02.360 --> 01:51:08.300 Or $500,000 a month. I don't mind more zeros. Add as many zeros as you feel comfortable with. 01:51:08.900 --> 01:51:10.740 Right, Brandy? You'd be okay with that, right? 01:51:11.180 --> 01:51:11.520 Totally. 01:51:12.120 --> 01:51:12.340 Yeah. 01:51:14.500 --> 01:51:19.320 Anyway, at various levels on the Patreon, we will send you a postcard, 01:51:19.540 --> 01:51:24.260 send you a mug, ring a bell, talk about you on the show, whatever. 01:51:24.600 --> 01:51:29.060 At $2 a month or more, or if you just ask, we'll invite you to our Curmudgeons 01:51:29.060 --> 01:51:33.760 Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I and a variety of listeners are chatting throughout 01:51:33.760 --> 01:51:38.600 the week, sharing links, just talking about whatever. 01:51:38.860 --> 01:51:45.300 Let's see, what interesting thing is there recently on there? 01:51:53.260 --> 01:51:57.320 Oh, I know I mentioned this on the show that it was coming soon, 01:51:57.320 --> 01:51:59.960 but here's something that you would have seen on the TikTok. 01:52:00.240 --> 01:52:02.180 I am officially Uncle Sam now. 01:52:02.500 --> 01:52:13.540 I have to wear the red and white hat and the star-spangled suit every day because I am Uncle Sam, 01:52:13.760 --> 01:52:19.920 because my sister had a beautiful baby boy that I shared some, 01:52:20.140 --> 01:52:24.160 I shared one picture of the mother and child. So yeah, 01:52:24.320 --> 01:52:28.320 this is my first time as an uncle. I don't know when I'll get to go see the 01:52:28.320 --> 01:52:31.060 kid. Maybe the summer. I'm thinking the summer, maybe. 01:52:31.820 --> 01:52:33.400 If Cynthia will have you. 01:52:33.620 --> 01:52:39.800 If Cynthia will have me. Yes. So anyway, that that's, that's my highlight from 01:52:39.800 --> 01:52:41.000 the Slack this time around. 01:52:41.620 --> 01:52:45.420 Okay, everybody. Thank you for joining us. 01:52:45.860 --> 01:52:52.220 It's been a wonderful, exciting show. I will send out my usual email to potential 01:52:52.220 --> 01:52:54.220 co-hosts, but if you're listening to this, 01:52:54.320 --> 01:52:59.820 and you have not co-hosted recently and you are interested in co-hosting and 01:52:59.820 --> 01:53:03.620 we've at least had some contact in the past so I know who the hell you are, 01:53:04.740 --> 01:53:08.940 go to curmudgeoncorner.com, use one of the contact methods and let us know you're 01:53:08.940 --> 01:53:12.940 interested and maybe I'll pick you. 01:53:13.320 --> 01:53:17.580 Maybe I won't, but maybe I will. So contact us. 01:53:18.060 --> 01:53:22.460 And if I haven't ever heard from you before and you're listening and you get 01:53:22.460 --> 01:53:26.880 to this point, Contact us anyway, just to say hi, but I probably won't like 01:53:26.880 --> 01:53:30.320 say, yeah, come co-host if it's the first time I've ever heard from you in my 01:53:30.320 --> 01:53:32.720 entire life. Just, just being honest there. 01:53:33.200 --> 01:53:37.800 So anyway, that's it. Thank you, everybody. Goodbye. We'll talk to you next 01:53:37.800 --> 01:53:39.700 week. And thanks again, Brandy. 01:53:40.580 --> 01:53:46.920 It's always great having you and I'll come downstairs and see you in person in a few seconds. 01:53:49.540 --> 01:53:53.040 Bye everyone. Say goodbye. Goodbye. 01:53:53.040 --> 01:53:53.180 Bye-bye. 01:54:23.040 --> 01:54:27.600 Thank you. Okay, I'm going to hit stop, and then you wait until I tell you to 01:54:27.600 --> 01:54:30.560 hang out. Okay, hitting stop!