Sam: It's fine. Everything's fine. Everything's fine.
Sam: And it's looking good. I'm gonna play the intro music and then we'll get started. Here we go.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Friday, November 7th, 2025.
Sam: It's just after 3 UTC as we are starting to record.
Sam: I am Sam Minter. Yvonne Bowe is out this week, as he has mentioned for the last
Sam: few weeks. He had surgery a couple days ago.
Sam: He reports that he is recovering well. It was a hernia surgery.
Sam: It went perfectly, exactly as the doctors would like it to go.
Sam: He is recovering in a little bit of pain, but a lot less pain today than he
Sam: was yesterday, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and seems to be doing fine.
Sam: And we expect to have him back on the show next week if all goes well.
Sam: So instead, we have Ed and Bruce here who have both been on the show before,
Sam: but I believe never together.
Bruce: Yes, hello. And yes, it's good to be back.
Ed: And likewise. Hello.
Sam: That was Bruce talking first, and then Ed, if you can't tell their voices apart or recognize them.
Sam: So as usual, when we do one of these shows with guest hosts,
Sam: I let the guests pretty much pick the topics.
Sam: So the plan here is we're going to have three segments, and in each segment,
Sam: Bruce will pick one topic, and Ed will pick one topic, and then we'll take a
Sam: break, and then we will repeat. I'm not going to pick any topics.
Sam: I'm just going to talk about whatever these guys want to talk about and go from there.
Sam: So who wants to go first, Ed or Bruce?
Ed: Go ahead, Bruce.
Bruce: Okay. So I wanted to talk about your recent job loss.
Bruce: Okay. And I'm sure that you've already gotten some good advice from a lot of
Bruce: people and some of the advice that I was thinking of giving you, you've already done.
Bruce: But for me, I have had five different jobs in the last six years.
Sam: So just real quick, for anybody who didn't listen to last week's show or see
Sam: any of my other announcements on social media, I did get laid off from my employer
Sam: two weeks ago now, something like that.
Sam: Yeah, some. And it was, I was not surprised at all. I saw it coming from a mile away.
Sam: I had not, I drifted apart from my employer and like my priorities were not
Sam: theirs and vice versa. and it was clear I didn't belong in the group I was in,
Sam: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: And they gave me a nice fat severance so I don't have to panic and find something right away.
Sam: At the same time, I don't have enough save to just retire right now.
Sam: So I know I'm going to have to find something to make money sooner rather than
Sam: later, but I don't have to be in an immediate, like, oh, crap,
Sam: I got to have something by next week kind of thing.
Sam: So that's the current step. So you had five jobs in how long?
Bruce: In the last six years. That's a lot. Yeah, it's just that it's...
Bruce: It's a different story for every one of them, but it's not my fault.
Bruce: I've always done a good job.
Sam: Sure you have. Yeah, that's your story.
Bruce: Yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't cause that door to fly out on the Boeing plane.
Bruce: That happened just two weeks after I started there.
Sam: But the submarine thing was all your fault, right?
Bruce: No, not at all. In fact, I have a government report that shows that it had nothing to do with it.
Bruce: I'm innocent. Okay. So, yeah, I think that you're doing the right thing by doing LinkedIn Premium.
Bruce: You want to update your resume on there, treat your LinkedIn profile as a resume,
Bruce: or make it a copy of your resume.
Bruce: There were three job sites that I would constantly rotate through.
Bruce: It would be LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Indeed.
Bruce: And actually, to tell you the truth, Indeed is the one that I've had the most luck with.
Sam: Okay, good to know.
Bruce: Three of the jobs I've gotten have been through Indeed.
Bruce: So it's a very basic site, not a very pretty site. It's difficult.
Bruce: It's archaic to navigate, but there's a lot of really...
Bruce: Jobs in there. And what I would do is I would just spend a good half hour to
Bruce: an hour every day just looking through at all the job listings.
Bruce: I had searches already built up and just go and apply to everything.
Bruce: And then I would just work on projects for the rest of my free time.
Bruce: And the advice I've got is to, when there's really good, you have access to
Bruce: classes in LinkedIn for job searching.
Bruce: And there are sample interview questions on LinkedIn that are very good because,
Bruce: most interviews are pretty much the same.
Bruce: They ask the same basic questions. And if you know those 20 or 30 questions
Bruce: and you have a set answer for them, especially if you have a story for every
Bruce: one of those questions that they ask,
Bruce: then that will make your answers very memorable and it'll stand out.
Bruce: And also, when you're about to have, so just take, get as many interviews as
Bruce: you can, especially early on so you can kind of be in practice and then you'll be.
Bruce: So when the real jobs come that you really, really want, you'll be relaxed and
Bruce: well-practiced and you'll have those answers already and everything.
Bruce: And also, when you have an interview scheduled with somebody,
Bruce: look them up on LinkedIn and see if you happen to know someone who they know.
Bruce: Because when you go into the interview and you say, oh, I know someone that you know.
Bruce: Have you worked with this person before? And then that just having that,
Bruce: that one person separation really helps because then that's kind of like an
Bruce: instant reference that you can have that you can bring to somebody.
Bruce: So that's, there's other things I could tell you, but don't want to,
Bruce: we got a lot of topics to talk about.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, much appreciated, all that kind of stuff.
Sam: And, you know, as I said, I'm sort of, I know I can't wait too long before diving
Sam: full-fledged in because the market is awful right now.
Sam: There are all kinds of reports about people taking over a year to find anything
Sam: and doing like, having to find hundreds and hundreds of things just to get an
Sam: interview and all that kind of stuff.
Sam: And so I know I can't wait forever, but on the other hand, I also knew that
Sam: mentally I need a little bit of a break and that also, you know,
Sam: this is going to be the best opportunity I have to like actually make progress
Sam: on some of those personal projects.
Sam: So I better do it while I have the chance.
Sam: And so like, I'm not, I'm not waiting very long before I actually start like
Sam: looking at, you know, the real, okay, let's do, like you said,
Sam: a half hour of searching for jobs every day and throwing out some applications.
Sam: And also not even like, you know, when, when I had a job and I knew it was sort
Sam: of, and I want, I wanted something else, but I wasn't like, you know, I was still there.
Sam: I was, you know, when I looked at job listings, I was being pretty picky.
Sam: You know, I was being like, you know, this job, could I do it? Yes.
Sam: But it looks like it would suck. It wouldn't be any better than where I was, where I am.
Sam: And so I'm not going to like save it or apply or anything like that.
Sam: Whereas I think the situation now is if it remotely makes sense,
Sam: go ahead and apply. You know?
Bruce: Yeah. Especially early on because you can get those practice interviews in.
Sam: Yeah. And, and, and, you know, I've, you know, in the past, I've done lots of
Sam: interviews for the kind of position that I had.
Sam: And so, but it's been a long time since I've done a lot of those.
Sam: So it'll be interesting to see. But also part of what I have to figure out for
Sam: myself is like the job I was doing is actually not what I want to be doing.
Sam: Like you know so i have to figure out like do
Sam: i apply for those kinds of jobs anyway do i
Sam: search for completely different sort of things but if i search for completely
Sam: different sort of things then i don't necessarily have the right experience
Sam: match for them and potentially like there's you know salary implications and
Sam: all that kind of stuff so i got a lot to figure out but i've got i've got some
Sam: time to figure it out too so i'd.
Bruce: Say cast a wide net.
Sam: Yeah and.
Bruce: Apply for everything now because it may not matter.
Bruce: And then when the job offers actually come, you can either, if you don't like
Bruce: it, you can just negotiate up to a super high salary.
Bruce: And that can probably make that...
Sam: That can compensate for doing something you don't like.
Bruce: That can compensate, yes. And so, yeah, don't give up opportunities when they could be there.
Bruce: And you definitely want to do something you really enjoy.
Bruce: You got to put food on the table.
Sam: Well, yeah. In the end, you have to put food on the table. You have to pay the
Sam: mortgage, you know, all this kind of stuff.
Sam: And, you know, as much as it's, you know, I've joked before,
Sam: like, you know, I'm ready to go, like, buy a Unabomber cabin in the middle of
Sam: nowhere and just sit there, you know, but plus internet.
Sam: Like, Unabomber didn't have internet. I still need internet.
Sam: But, like, but realistically, that, no, that won't work.
Sam: You know, I've got a family. to think about.
Sam: I got things going on, you know, moving isn't really an option and at least
Sam: not unless it's, I mean, if we would have to be in a really desperate situation
Sam: to consider like picking up and moving to a lower cost of living place.
Sam: And, you know, so yeah, I'm going to be doing all this stuff.
Sam: You know, I, I don't want to think about all those things.
Sam: I want to think about my fun little projects. I want to think about like hanging
Sam: out at home and doing some things around home, spending time with the family.
Sam: Those are the things I want to think about. But I fully recognize,
Sam: you know, that the amount of time of runway I have will disappear before I know it.
Sam: And so, you know, so it's, it's nice to have a little bit of a runway,
Sam: but at the same time, that doesn't mean wait until you only have a few weeks of money left. Exactly.
Bruce: Yeah. Well, you know, you can also apply for an, for unemployment.
Sam: Yeah, and so Yvonne's already mentioned the unemployment, several other things.
Sam: He's like, he's given me a little checklist.
Sam: Do these things, start this thing moving, start that thing moving, and I will.
Sam: I've been adjusting, you know, you know, Yvonne's joked about like my,
Sam: my systems for my to-do list before, but I've been, I've completely revamped
Sam: my to-do list to reflect my current situation,
Sam: to reprioritize things, to make sure like, you know, all these things are, you're checked off.
Sam: Like my, you mentioned you get the resume in LinkedIn, correct?
Sam: I did that like six to nine months ago, but it doesn't have the stuff from the six to nine months.
Sam: So just make the appropriate little adjustments to make sure it's really up
Sam: to date, both a, both a nicely formatted resume version and the LinkedIn profile.
Sam: And I do, I do have the matching completely like word for word,
Sam: you know, I have to do that.
Sam: I have to, you know, there's all kinds of little things to do.
Sam: And and yeah i want to make progress on all
Sam: those personal projects too and i've got a list of those and even within the
Sam: last and i've started you know i i've made more progress on a couple of them
Sam: in the last week than i had in the previous couple months now that that doesn't
Sam: mean like i got anything to show for it yet but it's going faster well.
Bruce: You did mention last week that one of the,
Bruce: And I don't live far from you.
Bruce: So if you ever need any muscle to help you with anything, I have an open offer for you.
Bruce: I'll be happy to head down there and help you move any stuff if you need.
Sam: Well, thank you very much. Unfortunately, with a couple of exceptions,
Sam: most of it's not muscle stuff.
Sam: Most of it's like open up a bin full of crap and sort through it and decide
Sam: which things you want to get rid of and which things you don't.
Sam: That is so hard having more people doesn't
Sam: actually help with that you know it's just like you
Sam: have to make yourself do it and that is on my list of things
Sam: to do but i'll tell you it actually came up you know i i do randomize and i
Sam: came up go through a bin did come up in the last few days but then i said i
Sam: picked like i've got four zones where the bins can come from and the one i picked
Sam: like the bins were actually blocked by other stuff.
Sam: And I'm like, okay, I can't actually go through a bin until I do some real cleaning in this area too.
Sam: And so like, I'm, I'm refactoring how I do that, but yeah, that definitely is a goal.
Sam: And specifically, I think it's a goal for the earlier part of this timeframe,
Sam: like for part of my decompression will be like doing stuff like that.
Sam: Just pick out bins, go through them, sort them, take, take what is currently
Sam: in 20 bins and try to find the three bins worth of stuff I want to keep and
Sam: throw the rest away, you know? So,
Sam: Anyway, that's going to happen. Any thoughts on all this, Ed?
Sam: You've been retired for a while.
Ed: I've been retired almost as long as I worked. Wow.
Ed: The only time I had any significant job hunting was when I retired from the Army.
Ed: I had a job ready and waiting. I had written a place, and they said, yes, please.
Ed: And so there wasn't much of an application process. but then after two years
Ed: that was with Humana and after two years I was fed up with them so I started
Ed: hunting and I I actually applied several places had a couple interviews and
Ed: and what didn't seem to be getting anywhere and then I decided I was I re-looked at my recommendation,
Ed: list and I said you know I've got people I've worked with and and they're nice
Ed: people but no one knows them so I said rather than that at this time around
Ed: I'm going to put some prominent names and I'd check with them to make sure they'd be all right with it.
Ed: So one of them was the guy, the three-star general I worked for in Europe,
Ed: and another one was almost as high a ranking.
Ed: But anyway, I got a call back very quickly from a lady who was looking for several people, apparently.
Ed: And she said, I wasn't going to really pay much attention to you,
Ed: but then I saw that you had a general, I can't remember his name,
Ed: it doesn't matter, the general. and I worked with him once and he was incredible.
Ed: I decided anyone he would recommend, I would want to hire.
Ed: I probably would have gone. I think she was going to offer me something,
Ed: but then I got an offer for a job that I really wanted. And so I went there instead.
Ed: So think about putting somebody real famous if you have them on your recommendation
Ed: list. Make sure they want it.
Sam: Yeah, no, I've got people of various levels of prominence in different areas,
Sam: but I don't think I've got anybody who would qualify as famous in my list.
Sam: You know, I've got...
Sam: If you do degrees of connection, you go a couple people out,
Sam: okay, there can be famous people there.
Sam: But I'm not sure that would work because they don't know me.
Sam: They know somebody I know.
Sam: And that's not the same thing. And of my list directly,
Sam: the people who would sort of be most prominent in their areas are quite likely
Sam: not in areas that would actually be directly helpful for jobs I could actually get.
Sam: You know, but and then, well, yeah, and then I want to have the conversation.
Sam: You mentioned, Bruce, like spread the wide net.
Sam: And part of that is I do want to contemplate things that are completely different
Sam: from anything I've ever done before.
Sam: But, you know, there's so many problems with that, you know,
Sam: because your experience doesn't lead up to it.
Sam: You're going to be starting at a more junior area and there's compensation things
Sam: for that. And also the areas of that I find like most interesting are probably low paying anyway.
Sam: You know, and so I, you know, but I feel like, okay, explore,
Sam: you know, and I also want to explore a little bit brainstorming.
Sam: Hey, can I, can I do things to make money that don't involve actually having an employer?
Sam: It would be awesome. I don't know that I can, but it would be all,
Sam: but I should, I feel like I should at least brainstorm on that without just
Sam: discounting the possibility from the beginning you know if you.
Bruce: Look on YouTube for side gigs there's an endless list of things you can do there,
Bruce: My oldest brother, he just recently started selling stuff on TikTok,
Bruce: actually multivitamins on TikTok.
Bruce: And I'm like, how is he ever going to make money off that? But it takes time,
Bruce: but he's gradually building up. You never know.
Sam: You never know. And it's like some of those kinds of side gigs I know I don't
Sam: have the right mindset for.
Sam: It just wouldn't work. I just could not do that.
Sam: But you never know. you're.
Ed: You're a little limited geographically too aren't you because your wife's on the.
Sam: Yeah no moving is not an option
Sam: for me right now for for any number of reasons that being one of them like that
Sam: my my wife's job is geographically constrained like we can't move more than
Sam: a few miles away from where we are really like you know but you know the other
Sam: thing i'll put out is like I was surprised.
Sam: I did a post on Facebook and a post on LinkedIn, identical text,
Sam: just sort of saying, hey, I was included in this, and here's what I'm thinking about it, whatever.
Sam: And I got all the usual likes from people I knew in high school and stuff on Facebook.
Sam: But LinkedIn, Like I was surprised by the reach.
Sam: I'm looking at my stats, 150,000 impressions on that damn post,
Sam: uh, with a hundred thousand members reached.
Sam: I had over almost 6,200 profile views from the post. I gained 193 people following me.
Sam: Um, 1,800 people reacted to my post. I don't know 1,800 people on LinkedIn.
Sam: I had like a few, because I had been fairly religiously like.
Sam: If I actually worked with somebody, I would connect with them on LinkedIn.
Sam: But, you know, I wouldn't like if I got random LinkedIn requests from people,
Sam: I had no idea. I would reject them.
Sam: But like here, I started getting all kinds of invites and people wanting to
Sam: connect. I'm like, what the hell?
Sam: I'll agree to all of them, you know. And so I have a whole bunch of new connections
Sam: on LinkedIn of people I've never met.
Sam: I have no idea who they are. I probably wouldn't reach out blindly to any of
Sam: them, but I guess this means if I actually do,
Sam: do something interesting with one of my personal projects and want to announce
Sam: it, more people will see it, you know, so might as well.
Sam: You know, I had 40 comments, six reposts of my thing, like some of,
Sam: some of which from people I didn't know at all, you know, 51 people saved it,
Sam: 43 people sent it on to other people.
Sam: I'm like, really? Like, i i mean i.
Bruce: Expected the end well because linkedin is
Bruce: like a it's a big it's a big empty room there's a whole bunch of people well
Bruce: it's a well it's actually a bit it's a very full room but it's very quiet not
Bruce: many people talk so or post so uh so when you post i got i yeah so when you
Bruce: post it gets a lot of a lot of attention because yeah.
Sam: I was surprised i mean i expected to like hear from you know people i'd worked
Sam: for worked with or for 25 years ago that i hadn't talked to in a decade,
Sam: but I wasn't expecting it to just be in front of all kinds of people I'd never
Sam: heard of. I'm like, okay, that's fine.
Sam: It's perfect timing for that. I mean, I guess I want to get that kind of attention
Sam: again when I'm actually full-fledged into, okay, now I'm seriously looking for
Sam: a job, but it can't hurt now either.
Sam: And a number of people reached out and were like, hey, we'd love to talk to
Sam: you. Can I help? Blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And I made an initial response to all of them and have on my to-do list to follow
Sam: up in more depth with all of them over the next week or so, week or two to,
Sam: you know, okay, yeah, I'll get on the phone with you. I'll catch up.
Sam: I'll talk to you about like what's going on, what I'm interested in, what I'm not.
Sam: You know, there are a few people who are like, look, you know,
Sam: check the job listings at my company.
Sam: If there's anything that's good. I'll put in a good word for you, that kind of stuff.
Sam: And like the first couple I've looked at, there wasn't anything there,
Sam: but you know, I still appreciate the sentiment, you know, so I don't know.
Sam: We'll, we'll, we'll see. We'll see. Fun stuff.
Sam: Like I said last week, too, fun stuff right now.
Sam: If in six months I have no money-making prospects, I will feel very different.
Sam: But, you know, we do have ways to make it work past six months.
Sam: But the further out we go, the more serious the situation becomes.
Sam: Okay, so enough about my job situation. Ed, what's your topic for this first segment?
Ed: Well, we're going to look at current things. How about we talk a little bit
Ed: about Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Sam: Okay, yes.
Ed: Beginning a few weeks ago, she suddenly seemed like a new person.
Ed: The first thought was maybe somebody had kidnapped her and put in a body double.
Ed: But she's done a lot of stuff that people don't expect.
Ed: And a lot of folks, I mean, there's some who are speculating that
Ed: she had to come to Jesus moment or a road to namascus
Ed: type moment there's an article in today's times
Ed: no it wasn't it was in the atlantic today okay talking speculating that actually
Ed: it may be a lot more sinister because she probably still is every bit as much
Ed: mega as ever however if she looks at the the results of the current polls and
Ed: the results of the elections from yesterday and these sorts of things.
Ed: She has to be thinking that somewhere in the next year or two,
Ed: there's going to be a new head leader, if you will, for MAGA.
Ed: And because Trump's days may be over the way things are going right now.
Ed: And if that's the case, she may be positioning herself to be the new MAGA leader.
Ed: This thing gave me nightmares that are likely to keep me awake all night.
Ed: But what do you think? Do you think she's that smart, number one?
Sam: And number two...
Sam: There are a few things I've heard. First of all, there are several aspects of
Sam: this that might be in play.
Sam: One, when she was flipping on the health care thing and flipping on Epstein.
Sam: It seems like on Epstein, this was something that she had been talking about
Sam: prior to the last election, etc.
Sam: And she's just holding a consistent opinion from where she was before.
Sam: On health care, this was a situation where suddenly her direct family members were impacted.
Sam: And so she saw the effect of it herself.
Sam: And so there's the notion, you know, Yvonne and I have talked about before,
Sam: like for a lot of these folks, problems don't exist until or unless they affect
Sam: you or your family directly. And it sort of hit that.
Sam: And so maybe that changed her opinion of that. But then also people pointed out.
Sam: And this is sort of report from a person who knew a person who knew it's one
Sam: of these things where it's not like MTG was saying it directly herself.
Sam: But rumor has it that her intention was to run for Senate in Georgia.
Sam: And Donald Trump basically said he would not support her in that endeavor.
Sam: And so she was pissed at that. and so was acting out a bit in terms of being
Sam: more willing to do things that did not match up with the Trump agenda than she
Sam: has been at various times before.
Sam: But remember, she was one of the ones who was trying to vacate the Speaker when
Sam: nobody else, including Donald Trump, was supporting that before.
Sam: So she's got a record of that.
Sam: And then also, yes, the rumor is that she's interested in running for president.
Sam: Now, I'm not sure that of the various people in MAGA world that could potentially
Sam: do that, she's the frontrunner, but she's reportedly interested.
Bruce: Well, I'm not familiar with what has happened in the last few days,
Bruce: but I do know that she's been virulently America first.
Bruce: And Trump has definitely drifted away from the America first label that he originally.
Sam: Uh well just as an example bruce today
Sam: she was talking to you know when nancy pelosi announced that
Sam: she wasn't going to run for re-election marjorie taylor
Sam: green was on the view saying all kinds of good things about about uh pelosi
Sam: and how like great a leader she was and how she was great for her party that's
Sam: called being she was just very nice yes which is something that's rare but a
Sam: few months ago i don't think she would have been saying that same stuff.
Ed: When she was talking about running for senator, she was going to be against
Ed: Ossoff. Is that how he says his name, Ossoff, or whatever?
Ed: And supposedly, from what the Atlantic thing, she was somewhere in the range
Ed: of 15 to 20 points behind.
Ed: So it wasn't just Trump who told her she wasn't going to do very well.
Sam: Well, she is in her place because she is in a district that is very aligned,
Sam: is very red, very aligned with her kind of, it's a perfectly formed district for where she is.
Sam: The broader a universe she goes out to, the harder it's going to be for her
Sam: to appeal, even within Republicans.
Ed: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, I just thought that was sort of a little interesting
Ed: thing that we'll be finding out over the next couple of years,
Ed: but I'm still going to have nightmares imagining her being the next president.
Sam: Yeah. So go ahead, Bruce. You had more.
Bruce: Well, as far as she's concerned, she's recently, well, the last several months,
Bruce: she's been virulently anti-Israel and especially pointing out over and over
Bruce: that Israel is a nuclear power.
Bruce: And we're always referring to the nuclear power Israel, the nuclear power Israel.
Bruce: It's just getting the word out there that Israel is being very evil,
Bruce: and it's becoming the irony of history that the Jews who were persecuted in the Holocaust—,
Bruce: persecuting the Palestinians to the same degree. And that sense,
Bruce: well, in the last couple of years of the Gaza war, it's amazing how that Overton
Bruce: window has shifted against Israel and public opinion has shifted significantly.
Bruce: And she's been part of that shift, especially on the right.
Sam: I mean, you can argue the same degree part of what you said,
Sam: but there's certainly, They've been doing things that are beyond the pale for a while now,
Sam: and not just since the incident where Hamas went against them,
Sam: but even looking back a few decades,
Sam: it's gotten increasingly worse, the treatment of the Palestinians.
Sam: And, yeah, the rest of the world was already there.
Sam: But, you know, the U.S. is catching up.
Sam: Europe is catching up. Europe was there before we were. And public opinion has
Sam: shifted dramatically in the last year within both parties, frankly.
Sam: And I think the sort of politicians who've been in place a long time are slow to catch up with this.
Bruce: Yeah, and this is typically the case in American politics where the politicians
Bruce: are lagging behind public opinion.
Bruce: And so as time goes forward,
Bruce: we'll see that shift be reflected in the electorate, and then the days will
Bruce: be numbered for Israel's unchecked support by U.S. government.
Sam: Yeah, I think you're right. That's just a matter of time.
Sam: That doesn't mean no support, by the way, but I think it does mean the U.S.
Sam: Being more willing to exert its influence to try to change Israeli behavior
Sam: than they have been in the past and be more aggressive with what they're willing
Sam: to put conditions on additional military support or whatever.
Sam: You know, now, of course, the risk of all that and the reason people like Joe
Sam: Biden and other sort of long term traditional folks are is the worry,
Sam: of course, is if you do that,
Sam: you drive them straight into the arms of adversaries.
Sam: You know, OK, U.S. isn't going to support Israel anymore.
Sam: Well, Russia will, you know. And what do we do about that? Do we care?
Sam: You know, how do we react? And that's part of why people are concerned and go
Sam: slow and all of that kind of stuff.
Sam: So back to MTG.
Sam: I feel like she may be interested in exploring all these things,
Sam: but I seriously question the likelihood of her success.
Sam: I think even if you're talking within the world of, oh, okay,
Sam: Trump is eventually gone, whether it's naturally at the end of his term or something
Sam: else, there are a number of candidates who may want to pick up that baton.
Sam: I don't see MTG winning that race.
Bruce: So then I guess that brings the question, who is going to take on the same persona?
Bruce: Who's going to fill that Trump?
Bruce: I mean, no one's ever going to be able to fill Trump's shoes completely as far
Bruce: as his personality, but that brashness.
Bruce: Rudeness, overbearing ruler, who on the Republican Party is going to fill that?
Bruce: MTG maybe might be able to do that. I mean, when you look at her on a stage
Bruce: on a debate, she might be the one who's like insulting the others.
Sam: From that attitude perspective, she's closer. I mean, people always talk about
Sam: J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance can't do that.
Sam: J.D. Vance can do other things, but he can't.
Sam: This is not what he is. He is not a swap-in replacement for Donald Trump's personality, right?
Sam: And I think also, I'm not sure that anyone, I'm not sure that the person who
Sam: succeeds in taking over this movement will succeed by trying to be a clone of Donald Trump.
Sam: You know, it's going to have to be somebody else's different twist on this.
Bruce: Someone's going to try.
Sam: Someone will probably try. Someone will try to, like, imitate that style.
Sam: And look, there certainly are people out there who try to do that.
Sam: And most of them aren't existing politicians. It's more like the,
Sam: you know, the podcast circuit.
Bruce: Well, Vivek Ramaswamy is probably pretty close to that. He's got a silver tongue.
Sam: He kind of tried to do that and completely flamed out last time around.
Sam: I mean, of course, he was going against Trump, which is a different scenario.
Sam: But, you know, I don't think, you know, I don't know. I don't know there.
Sam: I have to start like, you know, sorting through like who are who are the real
Sam: candidates on the Republican side who might want to do this.
Sam: I mean, of course, they keep talking about, well, Trump's going to go for a third term, et cetera.
Bruce: Y'all were talking about that a couple weeks ago And I was thinking I will take a bet,
Bruce: from any of you all.
Sam: And he's not going to do it.
Bruce: He's not going to try. He likes to have that open, but he's never going to actually try.
Sam: I think it is more about he enjoys the noise that comes from him saying it than
Sam: it is that he actually wants to do it. He didn't want this.
Sam: The only reason he did this second term is it got him out of all of his legal
Sam: problems. He didn't really want to be president again.
Sam: You know and of course he wanted to show that you know just get revenge for
Sam: having lost last time but like.
Ed: Yeah i think the i think the federalist society wanted him to be president because
Ed: he with this brashness and nastiness that he has he keeps the the spotlight
Ed: on him all the time and people keep running after the the bullshit stuff that
Ed: he spouts out more heritage in the meantime,
Ed: In the meantime, Vogt and the others are wanting a government.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, like I said, more heritage than federalist society.
Ed: I'm sorry. Yeah, I meant the heritage. Yeah, I'm sorry.
Sam: But yeah, and there may be something to that, but, you know,
Sam: it's always, yeah, I don't know.
Sam: I think the, but I think, Bruce, you're right. He doesn't want a third term.
Sam: He's going to be old. He knows how old he's going to be. He knows he already
Sam: feels old. He's bored with the job.
Sam: He delegates almost everything except, like, you know, knocking down the East
Sam: Wing, you know? Those are the things he cares about.
Bruce: He cares about his legacy.
Sam: And, uh, yeah, he wants to build a few monuments to himself and this kind of stuff.
Bruce: That's what the East wing basically is.
Sam: Yeah.
Bruce: No one's going to tear it down again.
Sam: He wants to do that arch too. That, uh, the, the Arc de Trump for whatever.
Bruce: Oh, I hadn't heard about that.
Ed: He may have a harder time getting that through.
Sam: He wants to build an arch near the Potomac river across from like the Jefferson.
Sam: Memorial or something that's like based on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
Sam: Oh no. but named after him instead.
Ed: Brendan Burgey, the Arc de Triomphella. I think he'll have a harder time getting that through.
Ed: I mean, the East Wing thing, he just sort of, you know, clearly broke a whole
Ed: bunch of laws and just tore it down.
Sam: Well, the actual building of the new thing is always harder than the tearing
Sam: down of the old thing. Yeah, so we'll see.
Ed: They could be in litigation over, you know, if they can prove that there was
Ed: asbestos, I can't imagine a building didn't have a lot of it.
Ed: If they prove that, then that becomes a real huge issue because asbestos is
Ed: a dangerous substance they have blowing around in the wind and the dust.
Sam: Yeah, well, you know.
Sam: Knock down first, think about those kinds of things later. That's the whole
Sam: philosophy of this administration.
Sam: But yeah, anyway, I don't know. I have to start thinking more seriously about
Sam: who are the Republican contenders.
Sam: Because, you know, again, the talk of it being Trump, I think that's all just
Sam: bluster. So we have everything from Trump Jr.
Sam: To MTG to Vance to a variety of
Sam: other senators who will undoubtedly throw themselves into the ring again.
Sam: We've got various people from the commentary world that might jump in.
Sam: There are a bunch of folks. It'll be, you know, whenever you have an open seat
Sam: primary like that, it's always a very dynamic situation. And I don't think this will be any exception.
Bruce: And in the meantime, every one of them will be trying to get Trump's endorsement.
Ed: Yes.
Bruce: And Trump will try to exploit that too.
Ed: His endorsements are not working out all that well lately.
Bruce: Yeah, well, they're going to want to get it anyway.
Sam: Yes, they will. And, of course, the dynamics change entirely.
Sam: If Trump dies and Vance actually is president, that changes everything.
Sam: But, you know, we got hard.
Bruce: Oh, he's the healthiest person. Ever. Yes, yes. So that ain't going to happen.
Ed: In New Jersey, Mikey Sherrill was the one who kept talking about Trump endorsing Ciccarelli.
Ed: Ciccarelli didn't mention Trump much, but almost every time she talked,
Ed: she kept saying Ciccarelli is Trump's chosen guy.
Sam: Well, you know, but that's a general election. And so there's an entirely different
Sam: set of things playing out for trying to win a nomination within the Republican
Sam: Party versus winning a general election.
Sam: But even within the Republican Party,
Sam: I think the power of a Trump endorsement is declining the further we get into
Sam: the lame duck situation.
Sam: You know and the more stuff
Sam: he does that's unpopular because he's losing support
Sam: even within republicans i mean you know
Sam: his support is still high within republicans but it's less than it was as people
Sam: get dissatisfied with the actual results they see as opposed to the idea of
Sam: what might happen that they projected onto the scenario before he came back
Sam: so okay with all of that said.
Sam: Let's take another break, and
Sam: then it'll be time for, well, not another break. This is the first break.
Sam: We'll take a break, and then it'll be time for another topic from Bruce back after this.
Sam: Okay, we're back.
Bruce: Hey, I'm just looking out the window here. I think my son has got a campfire going on right now.
Bruce: And it's like, this is a weird night to be doing a campfire out there. But, oh, wow.
Sam: Has the rain at least stopped?
Bruce: Yeah, I think the rain has stopped, but it's really windy out there.
Sam: So he's going to be sending ashes up to the neighbors to set their houses on fire.
Bruce: Yeah, I hope not. And I might need to call him or something to make sure that
Bruce: everything's like that.
Bruce: He's 29 years old, so he's— So he should know what he's doing.
Bruce: Yeah, he knows what he's doing.
Sam: Yeah, a little bit different than if you're like a 12-year-old was out there doing it.
Bruce: Yeah, yeah.
Sam: Okay, so Bruce, the next topic is yours.
Bruce: So let's talk about the government shutdown. So it's been going on over a month now, supposedly.
Bruce: I keep hearing in the news that it's like now the longest government shutdown.
Bruce: And so from a libertarian perspective, libertarian to me is like,
Bruce: yeah, this is great. This is like a holiday every day. The government's shut down.
Bruce: But it's disorderly and there's a lot of problems with it, of course. But there's the.
Sam: Main— I hear you're flying somewhere in a few days.
Bruce: That's right.
Sam: What you're thinking about—how's it affecting you then?
Bruce: Well, my point of view is, as it's always been, that it doesn't make sense for
Bruce: the TSA, for the federal government to be running airport security.
Bruce: The federal government doesn't run security at the mall.
Bruce: Why would they be doing it at the airport? Same thing with the inter-traffic controllers.
Bruce: That should be privatized just like it is in Canada.
Bruce: And so I think as people are waiting in long lines and having their flights delayed or cancelled,
Bruce: they should be looking at it that way rather than saying, ah,
Bruce: the government should be getting this open again because this really doesn't
Bruce: make sense for the government to be running that.
Bruce: So, yeah, I think that,
Bruce: I would think that once you have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people
Bruce: really mad about their flights getting delayed or canceled, that's going to
Bruce: really push the government to get this thing resolved.
Sam: I think what's always happened in these is that, well, not always,
Sam: I shouldn't say always, but,
Sam: There's always, I keep saying always, always is a bad word. Never use the word always.
Sam: But one of the ways you can get out of these kinds of scenarios is simply it
Sam: becomes so painful that people start desperately wanting to get out of it.
Sam: And options that seem to be off the table for both sides start suddenly being
Sam: palatable because you're having to deal with a situation that real people are feeling the pain,
Sam: your constituents are feeling the pain,
Sam: oftentimes you yourself are feeling the pain.
Sam: I think I read that at one of these previous shutdowns, a turning point was
Sam: when a national airport in Washington,
Sam: D.C., that many Congress people used themselves to go back and forth from D.C.,
Sam: started being seriously affected. And all of a sudden, they're like,
Sam: well, we can't have that.
Bruce: Yeah. Well, actually, we should probably step back and say, why are we here?
Bruce: And it boils down to the fact that, first of all, Congress has not been able
Bruce: to pass, what is it, 13 appropriations bills or 12 appropriations bills?
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
Bruce: They have not been able to do that in October 1st, like in the last long,
Bruce: long time, probably not 20 or 30 years.
Bruce: And so, and on the other hand, you got the minority party, the Democrats,
Bruce: well, right now it's Democrats, that are trying to use the necessity of passing
Bruce: a budget or at least a continuing resolution to...
Bruce: To continue a subsidy that has been going on for, what, like the last five years?
Bruce: It's got the Obamacare subsidies.
Sam: And specifically, the big, beautiful bill is ending the subsidy,
Sam: and so they actually want to reverse
Sam: something that was just passed a few months ago to have it continue.
Sam: And so one of the things that is brought up in the whole back and forth about,
Sam: like, well, who's at fault, blah, blah, blah, is –,
Sam: continuing the status quo would be to let this thing expire.
Sam: If you just continue existing law, you would just do this.
Sam: So the Democrats aren't agreeing to just turn it back on for a few months and
Sam: then we'll punt it a few months and we'll deal with it again in a few months,
Sam: but we'll just leave things where we are.
Sam: They are trying to use this leverage because this is the only leverage they have to try to,
Sam: and they picked sort of the one policy issue that they thought they could make
Sam: the biggest case about and try to use that as the leverage. And that's where they are.
Bruce: Well, it's because it's a benefit that has gone to the middle class.
Bruce: It's a benefit for people who are well, actually, it's a benefit for people
Bruce: who are over 400% of the poverty level that are getting this benefit.
Bruce: It ends up being something on
Bruce: the order of, I think it's like $350 billion over the course of 10 years.
Bruce: That's the cost of continuing that subsidy.
Sam: Well, and when you look at individual pieces, people in individual cases,
Sam: it makes a huge, It's a huge percentage difference for the individuals who are affected as well.
Sam: It's not just like 5% here or there. Like in some cases, the amount they're
Sam: going to have to pay out of pocket doubles.
Bruce: It's thousands of dollars a year. But it's a benefit going to people who are making good income.
Bruce: So there's really not much justification to be giving this benefit to people
Bruce: who pay for it for themselves.
Sam: I'd say it's going to people who have decent income. It also does go down the
Sam: scale as well. It's just less so.
Sam: But the thing is that the numbers are so big that even for people with those
Sam: incomes, it's not a trivial amount of money.
Sam: It's a significant chunk of change. And the notion behind all this is that,
Sam: you know, without this, the total numbers are just too big overall,
Sam: and you're wanting to bring the price down for everybody.
Sam: And it was brought in as a COVID thing initially, but as with most things,
Sam: if it doesn't go away, people become used to it and et cetera.
Sam: And then you just also have, I mean...
Sam: The whole health care thing is out of control anyway, in terms of how much it
Sam: costs, the pricing, all of this kind of stuff.
Sam: But you can see where they come in. The bottom line and the reason they picked
Sam: this issue out of all issues is it's health care, and it's a direct pocketbook
Sam: issue, and it's substantial amounts, like you said, for the middle class.
Sam: So this isn't like some small group here or there, and it's not some marginalized
Sam: group. This is affecting lots of people, and it's affecting them in a serious
Sam: way, and so you can try to make the case out of it.
Sam: Now, it's still difficult in some cases because you're still talking future.
Sam: You're still talking an impact that hasn't happened yet, and you're trying to
Sam: avoid an impact in the future, and that's sometimes a hard case to make because
Sam: people just aren't recognizing it, aren't paying attention, aren't whatever.
Sam: And so, but so far, if you look at the polling on how people are thinking about
Sam: this, nobody likes anybody involved.
Sam: Like everybody, all of the numbers, like the Republicans, the Democrats,
Sam: the president, they all get horrible ratings on this. Nobody likes anybody.
Sam: But it seems like right now the Democrats are coming off the least worst in those polls.
Sam: That may continue to change over time. I feel like that's all very dynamic based
Sam: on how things are going this week. Yeah.
Bruce: And then another major thing that's been affected by the shutdown is the SNAP benefits.
Bruce: That affects, I think, something like 42 million people in the country,
Bruce: which is more than 10% of the population. Yeah.
Sam: And in some states, the percentage is significantly higher as well.
Bruce: Yeah, I can imagine. It's very regional. I saw a headline that said that the
Bruce: courts have said that Trump has to fully fund it.
Bruce: Trump and the administration has said, though, they can only partially fund
Bruce: it out of reserve funds. And so it'll be interesting to see how that goes.
Bruce: But hopefully the people who need it the most will be getting some and...
Bruce: But I think, for me, I'm in favor of giving help to the poorest of the poor.
Bruce: But when it starts reaching up into the middle class, it doesn't make sense.
Bruce: So I think SNAP, I'm not sure exactly what the criteria is for getting into that.
Bruce: But I believe that's still, of course, the poor. But is it really more than
Bruce: 10% of the country that really goes or dies on that?
Sam: No, I think the national number is actually slightly under 10%.
Sam: There are some states, particularly in the South, where it's significantly higher.
Sam: I think I read that the, I forget which state it is, but I think the state with
Sam: the highest penetration is like a third.
Sam: And so, you know, and of course those are red states, which is also one of the dynamics at play here.
Bruce: Yeah. So that's what it's, which doesn't, I really have a hard time believing
Bruce: that there's really that many people who would starve to death.
Bruce: Well, I mean, that's like, well, that's a little exaggeration,
Bruce: are really, really in desperate need of food aid.
Sam: Well, I mean, unfortunately, I think those numbers are about on par.
Sam: I mean, and honestly, if there's, my attitude towards it is I would rather give
Sam: the aid to some people that don't need it than miss people who do need it.
Sam: But I think that, you know, the numbers are high.
Sam: There are quite a few folks that can't make ends meet without additional supports like this.
Sam: And it's not a trivial number.
Sam: And, you know, they're going to start to be affected.
Bruce: So another aspect of this government shutdown is the filibuster.
Sam: Yes.
Bruce: So this could have really big repercussions.
Bruce: If the filibuster really is removed, then that will dramatically change the
Bruce: dynamic of the way the Congress operates. Yes.
Sam: And so— I think for the better. I've said this on the show for years.
Ed: Oh, just a second now.
Bruce: So, yeah, I think in my mind, I think the filibuster is a good thing,
Bruce: but I'm interested to hear what Ed has to say.
Ed: Well, if a party has a 51 to 49 majority in the Senate and you don't have a
Ed: filibuster, the minority party might as well go home because they will not get
Ed: to do or accomplish virtually anything.
Ed: And it used to be just to go back historically the Supreme Court justices,
Ed: could not survive a filibuster if it was someone who was unacceptable,
Ed: they would filibuster it and you had to come up with a new nominee basically
Ed: because they were keeping it limbo once we said no we're not going to do that
Ed: it's 51% we get justices who are,
Ed: radical both directions because whoever's got control of the Senate can do what
Ed: they want and ride rush out, and the minority vote no longer matters because the majority vote.
Sam: You're absolutely right. One of the things that changed over the last 50 years
Sam: is the willingness to use the filibuster for everything.
Sam: It used to be going back 50, 70, 80 years, The filibuster existed,
Sam: but it was reserved for sort of,
Sam: critical, rare issues, like most things passed with 50 votes.
Ed: But see, part of that was, they've made it very easy to filibuster now.
Sam: Yeah, that's part of it.
Ed: Hey, I want a filibuster, and they take a vote. And if you don't get 60 votes, yeah.
Sam: Absolutely. That's bullshit.
Ed: If you want a filibuster, you need to stand on your feet and talk for three days.
Bruce: I mean, one of the- And cross your legs while you're doing it.
Sam: One of the proposed filibuster reforms is just make them do it the old-fashioned way.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: May essentially make it so you can use a filibuster to delay, but not to stop.
Sam: But my argument, and then Bruce, you can do yours, and I've said this on the
Sam: show before, but fundamentally the existence of the filibuster,
Sam: I feel, ends up distorting democracy in both directions.
Sam: Because what happens is people vote in the party that they're for,
Sam: whichever party it is, because they're going to do X, Y, Z, Q.
Sam: And then they get in and they can't do it because of the filibuster,
Sam: because of other institutional things.
Sam: And then they get blamed for not doing what they promised, even though they
Sam: tried to do it, but they were stopped by the other side.
Sam: And so then you get this cycle of throw the bums out, throw the bums out,
Sam: throw the bums out, throw the bums out, where everybody's just always disappointed
Sam: that whoever they brought in couldn't do what they said.
Sam: And so they're a bunch of liars, and they're ineffective, and they're whatever.
Sam: And you can't properly give credit and blame for the parties implementing their stated policies.
Sam: As long as there are, of course, some exceptions where if you,
Sam: let's say, the majority party decides to eliminate all elections forever, that changes things.
Sam: But as long as you are continuing to have elections, I feel like letting the
Sam: party who wins actually implement their agenda means that next time around,
Sam: the voting public can give a proper,
Sam: you know, do they like what they got or not? If they like it,
Sam: they'll keep the people.
Sam: If they don't like it, they'll get rid of the people.
Sam: But they can make that judgment properly based on what's actually happened.
Sam: Whereas right now, people are just judging it based on they said they were going
Sam: to do acts and they didn't on both sides.
Ed: There's another option, which is that you negotiate rather than the majority
Ed: party saying this is the way it's going to be.
Ed: You sit down and say, well, we need to negotiate until we reach some sort of
Ed: thing that at least two-thirds of the Senate agrees with.
Ed: I don't think that's a bad thing.
Sam: You're right. That would be a great thing. It hasn't existed in 30, 40 years at least.
Bruce: Well, they are negotiating to some degree. It's just it's behind closed doors,
Bruce: like even now, for the government shutdown.
Sam: Well, there's always uncontroversial things that pass through the Congress that
Sam: aren't partisan in nature.
Sam: And those are the things that get no attention whatsoever because everybody agrees.
Sam: And those do still continue to happen.
Bruce: Yeah, well, even now, because when there's an impasse, you end up with a group of centrist senators,
Bruce: some Republicans and Democrats, who get together and they can control the vote
Bruce: because they can sway it one way or another.
Bruce: And so that's when you do get the
Bruce: negotiations. Yes, it's not to the same level as we've had in the past.
Sam: No, I like even that, like the scenario you've described has not actually resulted
Sam: in legislation in probably at least 20 years.
Bruce: Yeah, I don't have the examples on the top of my head.
Sam: I get the viewpoint of like, hey, maybe government should only ever be able
Sam: to do things that a super majority supports.
Sam: You can make that argument, and I'm sure you would, Bruce.
Sam: Needing two-thirds limits how much can get done, and it can only get done what everybody agrees on.
Sam: The problem is we're so divided right now, there are very few things that everybody agrees on.
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: So. So anyway, yeah, look, the one thing that is clear is that eliminating the
Sam: filibuster would completely change what our politics look like now,
Sam: because of that and because of the worries that you're talking about, Bruce and and Ed.
Sam: Donald Trump is pushing for it right now. He talked to senators,
Sam: but I don't think he's going to get it.
Bruce: Which is quite notable because typically Republicans have been the one to be
Bruce: in favor of keeping the filibuster.
Bruce: But of course, Trump has no long-term thinking.
Bruce: All he cares about is what he can get done right now, future be dead.
Sam: And senators from both sides, you know, when the Democrats were thinking about
Sam: potentially getting rid of it, Manchin and Sinema famously blocked it.
Sam: But the reports were there were probably five or six other senators who weren't
Sam: going to go for it. They just didn't want to go on the record at the moment.
Sam: And I think you probably have at least five to 10 Republican senators who won't
Sam: go along with this now. and it's because the recognition that.
Sam: Yes, we could get a bunch of stuff with this done right now,
Sam: but as soon as the Democrats take power again, and we assume at some point they
Sam: will, there's a whole bunch of stuff they're going to do, too.
Sam: And one of the arguments against is, you know, I said, like,
Sam: OK, you get the policy you ask for, but that also potentially brings up a world
Sam: where the policy swings wildly every few years.
Sam: And that's not exactly stable either. And it also brings up like when Donald
Sam: Trump listed the kinds of things he wants to do with it, there's a lot of voter
Sam: suppression kind of stuff in there. There's a lot of making voter voting harder.
Sam: There's a lot of locking in things that he's wanted to do.
Sam: And of course, when I talk about things I would want the Democrats to do,
Sam: it's exactly the same kind of thing.
Sam: Expand the Supreme Court, add more states, lock in nonpartisan redistricting
Sam: and expansive voter rights, make mail-in voting nationwide, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: You know, and so both sides are going to want to do things that advantage them long term.
Sam: And if if either one of them succeeds in the right set of policies that make
Sam: it really hard for the other to ever win, you are potentially causing all kinds
Sam: of long term damage as well.
Bruce: And of course, the because of that, the number one priority is to make the changes that,
Bruce: Not to fix our national problems, but to fix the election system in such a way
Bruce: that locks in their majority through gerrymandering,
Bruce: voting laws, and such to either restrict or cause different outcomes in the elections.
Sam: And you'd hope in an ideal world you would construct all of that in a way that's quote unquote fair.
Sam: But of course, the reality is either side is going to be sorely tempted to just
Sam: do something that locks in their advantages.
Bruce: Yes. And that's why it's the number one priority when it comes to when they
Bruce: get into power, whereas the actual real problems in the country have nothing
Bruce: to do with how we're doing elections.
Sam: Although I will say, although, you know, we have the situation with California
Sam: undoing it right now, for 15, 20 years now,
Sam: Democrats have been pushing these nonpartisan redistricting things that try to be fair.
Sam: You know, they haven't been locking in their majorities. Instead,
Sam: they've been locking in. In some states.
Sam: No, no, no. In some states, absolutely, there are a handful of states,
Sam: like Illinois is an example, Massachusetts is an example, that have gone the
Sam: other direction, but the vast majority of states where they have...
Sam: Put together something have actually there was a trend that was going for a
Sam: long time of more and more states instituting these non-partisan.
Bruce: Well the way we do it here in washington is a very good way i i i like the way
Bruce: it is done it's there's no controversy uh there's it's not a there it's like
Bruce: it just they do they do the redistricting note they do the redistricting and
Bruce: there's no fight in the legislature about it right we.
Ed: Almost got it done in pennsylvania but the republicans scuttled
Ed: it and they scuttled it by two things
Ed: number one the speaker of the house tried to keep it from ever coming to the
Ed: to the legislature to get even getting to the floor then when it finally got
Ed: to the floor the republicans introduced something a hundred amendments of each
Ed: one had to be debated and they reached uh when the term was over and it never,
Ed: And then for some reason, it hasn't come back.
Ed: Well, it hasn't come back up again because we got redistricted in 2020 and we're
Ed: not going to get it into it.
Ed: So it's not a problem now. What the hell would we ignore it?
Sam: Anyway, I feel like for these kinds of reasons, we're not yet at the breaking
Sam: point where the filibuster will go away.
Sam: I've said for a decade or more that I think all it will take is the right important
Sam: issue that you have more than 50 but less than 60 votes in favor.
Sam: And it's something really crucial to the party that is in that zone.
Sam: And the other thing you've had, though, which I think is very interesting,
Sam: is that you have had the eating away at it.
Sam: And just within the last couple of months,
Sam: the Republicans twice had an override of the filibuster where they had the parliamentarians
Sam: say, no, this requires 50 votes, and then them say, eh, never mind that.
Sam: We'll do it with 50 on particular individual bills where they haven't changed
Sam: the rule permanently, but instead they've said, you know what, on this one vote,
Sam: let's say we need 50 instead of 60 and just plow right through it.
Sam: And I think that may be the way that this ends up happening is not through a
Sam: one and done, we're going to change the rules and we're going to eliminate the
Sam: filibuster, or even we're going to eliminate the filibuster in a certain category.
Sam: It's just going to be more decisions on one-off votes that says,
Sam: okay, this time we'll do it. We're not saying forever.
Sam: We're just saying this time we won't require the 60 votes. And that'll just
Sam: happen more and more often.
Ed: That's sort of what California has done with the redistricting.
Ed: It's, you know, it's a one-time redistrict, and then after the elections go back, supposedly.
Sam: Well, after the next census, actually. So it goes until then.
Ed: It goes until then. Okay, I wasn't sure. I knew it was to be temporary,
Ed: not permanent filibuster. Yeah.
Sam: Okay, that was all starting on the government shutdown and transitioned into
Sam: the filibuster because it's been talked about.
Ed: But basically, the reason our government keeps shutting down is it's so dysfunctional.
Ed: Okay.
Sam: So, Ed, your turn. Pick a topic.
Ed: Oh, crap.
Sam: Caught you by surprise.
Ed: Yeah. Okay. You know, I said something out earlier today that I thought might
Ed: be a little interesting to talk about. a little bit.
Ed: And that has to do with the income inequality, which gets to the heart of a
Ed: lot of things that are going on.
Ed: What triggered it off was a podcast I listened to actually this morning with
Ed: a guy by the name of Branko Milanovic,
Ed: who has currently, he's done a lot of research on income inequalities,
Ed: and specifically has talked about in China and in Russia and in the United States
Ed: and other places where there are such major income inequalities.
Ed: The podcast itself was one of the University of Chicago ones.
Ed: It's called Capitalism slash Capitalism, And just thought of an interesting way.
Ed: The guy who runs it, his name is Luigi Zincalas.
Ed: He's from Italy originally, and he's an economist professor at Chicago.
Ed: And then a lady, Bethany McLean, who's a journalist that writes on economic issues.
Ed: It's a worthwhile podcast. If you've never listened to it, it's kind of fun
Ed: to listen to because they do interesting good things.
Ed: What this came down to Is talking about Is if and can equality A big problem
Ed: And if it is Why is it there And it's been present throughout.
Ed: You know, the dictatorships, socialist, communist countries.
Ed: Free countries, the United States, it's always there.
Ed: And in France, it's what led to the French Revolution in 1789,
Ed: basically, was the massive inequality, people starving to death and others living in great luxury.
Ed: I don't know what we do about it Because for one thing, it's probably not right
Ed: to just say Well, we'll take 10% of the wealthy people's money and give it to the poor.
Ed: That's not such a good idea That's what Ayn Rand called that,
Ed: looting On the other hand, it's probably not appropriate for corporations To
Ed: pay $50 million to the CEO a year and have people working on the line making the products at $5,
Ed: $10, $15 an hour and not being able to pay their rent and food and needing to
Ed: rely on the rest of us to buy SNAP budgets for.
Ed: Fully employed people should not need to need SNAP.
Ed: So, you know, some things I don't think would be appropriate at all.
Ed: They talked about a tax on capital, retained capital value. or we should tax
Ed: that maybe charge 2% or 3% only of it.
Ed: But that doesn't work because if a guy's got all of it, like Warren Buffett
Ed: has billions of dollars tied up in the stock, if he had, say,
Ed: a 2% tax on his $100 billion,
Ed: that would come out to, what, something like $200 million a year that they would
Ed: have to pay to pay that tax.
Ed: No one has $220 or even $200 million, either one, sitting around.
Ed: So in order to generate the money to pay that tax, they've got to sell their
Ed: stock, which immediately hits the stock. The price goes down.
Ed: It dilutes the capital control that the capitalist has of his company.
Ed: I don't see how that could possibly work.
Sam: I'm getting lost a little bit, Ed. So what was the main thesis that these guys
Sam: were sort of advocating that you want to talk about a little bit?
Ed: Well, I think they were primarily just discussing, is inkling equality an issue?
Ed: And if so, they didn't really get into saying what to do about stopping it,
Ed: just mostly describing that it's present throughout the world.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, from my understanding of things I've read about this in the past,
Sam: increasing inequality, measured in a variety of different ways,
Sam: has very often presaged significant societal turmoil. Let's just put it that way.
Sam: As one of the warning signs. Now, I think you can argue, does that necessarily
Sam: mean every time that gets too big, something bad's going to happen?
Sam: Does it mean it's bad in and of itself?
Sam: I think you have a lot of arguments there, but I think it's definitely...
Sam: There's a strong correlation of when income inequality gets too high,
Sam: there's a high chance of turmoil.
Sam: Now, what if anything you do about that or whether that's just a natural cycle
Sam: that's going to occur, I think you can argue.
Sam: I don't know, Bruce, this seems like one of those areas where I imagine your
Sam: take would be laissez-faire. Whatever happens, happens.
Bruce: Yeah, absolutely. I would say, is the goal a higher average income or do you
Bruce: want a more equally distributed income? That's not the same thing.
Bruce: I just brought up the list of income inequality of all the countries on the world.
Bruce: And we're looking for the United States to see where we are in our ranking.
Bruce: I think we're kind of like in the middle. Like the country with the highest
Bruce: income equality is Slovakia, Slovenia, Belarus. Wow, Belarus, India.
Sam: The highest inequality.
Bruce: The highest, no, highest equality.
Sam: Oh, highest equality. Yeah, I think so. I was expecting the inequality would
Sam: be, you know, actually fairly poor countries.
Bruce: I may be wrong. It just has it sorted by Gini coefficient. So remind me again
Bruce: what the Gini, is a high Gini coefficient good or bad?
Sam: Oh, let me look it up. I know that's a measure of exactly that,
Sam: but let me, I think a Gini coefficient of, and I'm not going to talk before I look at it.
Bruce: Oh, zero is perfect equality, one is perfect inequality.
Bruce: Okay, so the countries with the highest equality.
Sam: So lowest Gini coefficient.
Bruce: With the lowest Gini coefficient are Slovakia, Slovenia, Belarus, India.
Ed: India.
Bruce: Wow. Ukraine. Those are the top five.
Sam: What are the bottom five?
Bruce: Well, the bottom five, yeah, as far as... But top five as far as equality.
Sam: Oh, right, right.
Bruce: You would think that Denmark would be like, oh, because they got a very...
Bruce: A Western European country. They're like...
Bruce: 30 out of how many countries are there here? I don't know. About 100 countries here.
Bruce: But anyway, I think there's multiple things you want to go for.
Bruce: Do you want income equality? Or do you want...
Sam: Wait, I still want the answer to my question. Those were the ones with the most
Sam: equality. What are the five with the most inequality?
Bruce: South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Eswatini, and Colombia.
Sam: Okay.
Bruce: Brazil. So it's like...
Sam: And we're somewhere in the middle.
Bruce: Let me actually get a control F here. Oh, is it USA?
Ed: What I've heard while he's looking that up is that our present level of inequality
Ed: is approaching that of France before the revolution in 1789.
Sam: Right. Well, and that's the example that's always brought up is sort of,
Sam: you know, when the inequality gets high enough, the chances of sort of violent revolution increase.
Bruce: Well, I'd say that income inequality probably has very little to do with politics
Bruce: because the United States is like right in the middle.
Sam: And also that this is this is one where probably wealth inequality matters more
Sam: than than income inequality.
Sam: There are all kinds of things you could measure and and to answer your question
Sam: in terms of what do you want to sort of optimize for I don't think I don't think
Sam: it would be valuable to equalize everything at all that would cause all kinds of its own problems,
Sam: but I think the notion that you want to look at.
Sam: I want to say look at medians instead of averages at the very least,
Sam: but really you have to look at like deciles or something.
Sam: You look at all 10 deciles and how they're behaving, and you do probably,
Sam: to be in a healthy state, the difference between your lowest decile and your
Sam: highest decile probably can't get too great.
Sam: If it gets too great, you're probably causing problems.
Sam: Now, what do you do about that? Now, I know Bruce is going to disagree violently,
Sam: but I actually think one of the proper roles of government is to act as a pump
Sam: to take things off the top and shove them down to the bottom,
Sam: you know, to sort of to to make that cycle work more effectively because trickle down does not work.
Sam: So to some degree, you want to help trickle down along.
Bruce: Well, I agree that it would be good to have the rich help the poor,
Bruce: but I just don't want force involved.
Bruce: There used to be, before we had a welfare state, people would group themselves
Bruce: together into societies, mutual help societies, mutual aid societies.
Bruce: And those all basically went away after the government kind of took over that
Bruce: whole industry or that whole operation of society.
Sam: Those never did all that well. You know,
Sam: they had limited success in limited areas, but they never had the oomph to actually
Sam: have the effect that you would want them to have.
Sam: Yes, they went away, but they were replaced by something that actually was more effective.
Bruce: Well, I think the effectiveness of private industry is going to be better than
Bruce: anything that the government can do. Look at the Walmart.
Sam: Only if the incentives align for private industry to even do the thing.
Sam: If the incentives don't align, then.
Bruce: Of course the incentives align because the corporations want to serve larger
Bruce: and larger groups of people and they want to serve the masses.
Bruce: Look at Walmart. Walmart has done much more to help the poor than any government program ever.
Sam: Just by providing cheap products that they can buy.
Bruce: Right? Yes, exactly. And finding the efficiencies in the supply chain and pushing
Bruce: those savings towards the consumers.
Bruce: Or even Amazon will be included in that, too.
Sam: Yeah, part of this is long-term versus short-term, too.
Sam: The problem with how companies like Walmart are currently structured is they're
Sam: very short time horizons. And sometimes you need to be thinking about a larger
Sam: time horizon to even deal with these things.
Sam: But I think the question, though, about what works and what doesn't,
Sam: I fundamentally think it's an empirical question.
Sam: Try it and find out. Like the difficulty is I don't have, like you do,
Sam: sort of the inherent, well, certain things are off the table because,
Sam: you know, we don't want to force the billionaire to pay more taxes,
Sam: you know? I'm like, that's fine.
Bruce: It's because the billionaire will always get away with it. The billionaire has
Bruce: ways of not paying any taxes at all by, by instead of, instead of by,
Bruce: by accumulating assets and never selling,
Bruce: they just borrow against their assets and you can't tax your borrowings. And so it's.
Sam: Well, you could, they're all, they're all, you know, there's, what is the law now?
Sam: What could it be in a, in a world where you throw all options on the table?
Sam: There are all kinds of things you could do.
Sam: You could have an instantaneous and automatic transaction tax on all transactions no matter what.
Sam: And, you know, there are all kinds of things you could do.
Sam: You could require everybody to deposit all of their money in government-controlled
Sam: bank accounts that a certain percentage is taken out of every hour.
Sam: There are all kinds of things you could do.
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: You know.
Ed: You could. Yeah. Well, one of the things I've wondered why we don't do is right
Ed: now the top five employees in many of the corporations in the United States
Ed: earn exorbitant salaries in the tens of millions up to 50, 60,
Ed: you know, as a regular.
Ed: Basically, that's salary and stock options and other such stuff.
Ed: It strikes me, and the corporation is encouraged to do that because that's all
Ed: tax deductible against the corporate profits.
Ed: So why not put a salary cap that's deductible?
Ed: And then if the corporation wants to pay more, that's fine, but they don't get
Ed: to deduct it off of their costs. So, you know, let's say you save $10 million.
Ed: After $10 million, you pay the guy $50 million. That other $40 million is taxed
Ed: for the corporation as well as giving it to us.
Ed: That would encourage, I don't know if it would encourage them or not,
Ed: but theoretically that could encourage them to either build more factories or
Ed: invest in their capital or maybe increase the salaries of the workers on the floor.
Ed: Right now, many of the corporations are, I don't know the current,
Ed: one of the two to 300 times as much as the average worker is getting, the CEOs get.
Ed: There's something wrong with that. That's not.
Sam: I also like, I mean, I would be reluctant even myself to like actually put rules on that.
Sam: Like I wouldn't want to be like, okay, you, we're going to put rules on how
Sam: much you can pay your employees.
Sam: I think that's one place where, you know, there's a good reason for market.
Ed: I didn't say we should tell them they can't pay them 50 million.
Sam: I know.
Ed: I'm just saying that 40 million, that would still be taxed. Yeah.
Sam: No, I know. I know. I know. I just, I feel like there's.
Sam: There's some fundamental sort of structural things you can do that we should
Sam: perhaps think about, experiment with, whatever.
Sam: But I feel like when you get micro about it, where you're trying to make very
Sam: specific rules about specific things, that's where it always gets screwed up.
Sam: It never works out the way people want it to.
Sam: Like you come in with all kinds of good intentions and you set up some system
Sam: and it breaks down immediately.
Sam: It has results you didn't want. and people find ways around it in the first microsecond.
Sam: But having said that, I still think that the fundamental thesis,
Sam: and then let's take a break and move on, that when there is a high degree of
Sam: income inequality, you are at risk, I think has historically proven to be true.
Sam: And so like you either
Sam: accept that risk and at some point it collapses and
Sam: you just say that's a natural cycle of things no worries or you know you try
Sam: to figure out something to encourage that that curve to not be quite as dramatic
Sam: not to be flat flat would also be bad i think but not to be quite as dramatic yeah.
Bruce: I i don't know if income inequality or at least the genie coefficient which
Bruce: which is a representation of that, is anything that you want to even use as a guide.
Bruce: Because if you look at this list, there's no rhyme or reason behind any of it.
Bruce: It's like you look at the countries at the top of the list and the ones at the bottom of the list,
Bruce: There's no desirability on either end of that spectrum.
Sam: Yeah, I think I found the list you're looking at.
Sam: And the one thing I would say right off the bat is the list I found is by income.
Sam: I really would be interested to see what it looks like by wealth instead.
Sam: But yeah, this, yeah.
Bruce: So another measure that I would want to use instead, or if you're going to use
Bruce: a measure, would be, well, at least you want to look at it. is social mobility.
Sam: Yes, that's a good one.
Bruce: So how likely is it that someone who is poor can move up and become wealthy?
Sam: And that is another, I don't have a measure of that in front of me.
Sam: By the way, I think, were you looking at the list of countries by income inequality on Wikipedia?
Bruce: I'm looking at the World Population Review. It's countries sorted by Gini coefficient.
Sam: Okay, I think they matched up, so it's probably the same source.
Sam: But no, I have heard that the social mobility index kind of thing that you're
Sam: talking about has also been declining over the last few decades in this country,
Sam: where if you look, you know, 50,
Sam: 60, 70 years ago, there was more mobility than there is today.
Sam: Now, when does that become a crisis? When does it not? I don't know.
Bruce: And now that I think of it, just off the top of my head, I think social mobility
Bruce: has a lot to do with just mobility in actual physical location.
Bruce: And people are moving less. That I've seen recently in the news where people
Bruce: are actually staying put less than they have in the past.
Sam: More than they have.
Bruce: Or more than they have in the past. They're moving around less than they have
Bruce: in the past. And part of that has to do with,
Bruce: the cost of living in the most successful cities has gone so high that it's
Bruce: not possible to live where the best jobs are. It used to be that.
Sam: Someone- Unless you already have one of those best jobs.
Bruce: Yes. Like, yeah, I like the, when somebody who wanted to make it big,
Bruce: they'd move to LA and they'd make it big or move to San Francisco.
Bruce: Well, you can't do that anymore.
Bruce: That's because it's just too expensive.
Sam: Well, and on the other hand, if you're looking to go to where the cost of living
Sam: is less, there are no jobs there.
Bruce: Exactly.
Sam: You know?
Bruce: So it's, and that gets into things like zoning laws, which is a totally different
Bruce: area, but that I have a little bit of expertise that I've gained by being in
Bruce: the planning commission at my city of Alabama. Right.
Sam: Okay. Let's take another break and then two more quick topics and we'll be done
Sam: and i mean quick topics because we're we've been going a while already so so here we go another break,
Sam: Okay, we're back. And Bruce, what's your last topic of the night?
Bruce: Oof. Dang, I should have been looking. Oh, let's see. Let's see.
Bruce: Let's talk about Venezuela.
Sam: Okay.
Bruce: Yeah. So this is nuts that we seem to be on the verge of a hot war with Venezuela.
Bruce: I'm certainly hoping that this is just gumbo diplomacy,
Bruce: but it's just infuriating and very disappointing that the military-industrial
Bruce: complex seems to be winning again as far as getting a war started here.
Bruce: So this just doesn't make sense. I don't know if you saw the interview on 60
Bruce: Minutes or the extended interview.
Sam: I read little bits and pieces of this, but I did not watch the whole thing,
Sam: and I did not see the Venezuela relevant part. So tell me.
Bruce: Well, the whole interview.
Sam: Oh, the we're just going to kill people quote? Was that from that interview?
Bruce: Yeah, that's part of it. Well, I mean, it's totally fact-free.
Bruce: Everything he's saying is just totally untrue.
Sam: And by he, you mean Donald Trump.
Bruce: Donald Trump, yes. and i was i
Bruce: listened to the extended interview and i was thinking wow you know
Bruce: if there was any way to torture yvonne
Bruce: this would be the way to do it make him actually listen to it it'd be like you
Bruce: know clockwork orange you know you'd be sitting strapped down in a chair forcing
Bruce: to listen to this it was it's just it's it's it's so infuriating that he has
Bruce: no understanding just as an example.
Bruce: So a couple of weeks ago, Putin and Russia announced that they have a,
Bruce: nuclear-powered cruise missile. And so what does Trump announce?
Bruce: We're going to start testing nuclear weapons.
Bruce: And no, that's not a nuclear weapon. It's a nuclear-powered weapon that Russia has.
Bruce: And Russia and the other nuclear powers are like, we haven't been testing.
Bruce: And so now that Trump has said that they're going to start testing,
Bruce: now Russia is saying, or Putin has said, all right well i guess we're gonna
Bruce: have to start testing too.
Sam: And it's.
Bruce: Like it's like this total idiocy because he just.
Sam: Doesn't understand what does not understand.
Bruce: The most basic things.
Sam: Well and this goes back to over and over again like i i still have not seen
Sam: counter evidence that he understands what seeking asylum means that it's not
Sam: people from mental asylums yeah you know Well.
Ed: The question with Trump always is, does he really understand,
Ed: but he knows that a lot of people don't.
Ed: And he says these things to create fear, antagonism, excitement,
Ed: and all the sorts of things that drive demagogues.
Sam: I think I would give him that benefit of doubt, like, at the beginning of his
Sam: first term, maybe sometimes. Sometimes this way, no, I think he actually just
Sam: has no idea. He has no idea.
Bruce: So just to step back, the situation going on in Venezuela is that Trump and
Bruce: the administration believe that,
Bruce: not Chavez, it's Maduro, is sending drugs and immigrants and criminals into
Bruce: Venezuela, and he's somehow going to stop that.
Bruce: No evidence, especially for the boats that are being shot in the water. There's no evidence.
Bruce: And even if they were drug boats, there's no way they could reach the United States.
Sam: Well, and even if they were drug boats, not that anybody cares about legality.
Sam: But even if there were drug boats, the legal thing to do is intercept the drug
Sam: boats and arrest the people.
Bruce: Yeah, and even the law that they think that they're supposedly breaking is not
Bruce: a criminal, it's not a capital offense.
Sam: Right.
Ed: So well then however murder is a capital offense and one of the war crimes capital
Ed: offense is whether or not the guy is a combatant if they are defenseless and
Ed: you kill them that is a capital crime in these,
Ed: boats are being shot with weaponry that they have no defense against they are
Ed: defenseless even if they're guilty of carrying drugs this is crimes And the
Ed: guys pulling the triggers at some point may be tried for murder.
Sam: Yeah. And it's key, you know, the Supreme Court gave Donald Trump immunity against
Sam: this kind of stuff, but not the people under him who are executing.
Ed: Well, the presidents are never found guilty of having.
Ed: I mean, how much did the Bush get punished for authorizing torture?
Sam: Right.
Ed: But several of the guys who did the torture are, I don't know if they're still
Ed: in prison or not, but certainly their careers were destroyed.
Ed: And they were severely punished.
Bruce: I don't think that was the case. I think the people who revealed the torture
Bruce: are the ones whose careers got ruined. The actual torturers never got punished.
Ed: The actual torturers, several of them were... A handful of them.
Ed: The whistleblowers also got destroyed.
Bruce: So supposedly there's a big chunk of our Navy is right off the coast of Venezuela, ready to fire.
Bruce: But something that I saw in the news today that's very heartening was,
Bruce: let me see if I can find the headline.
Bruce: It says that, I don't have it right now, but it's something along the lines
Bruce: of that there is no legal justification.
Bruce: Uh like the the white house lawyers have
Bruce: uh told the administration that there's no legal justification for doing a land
Bruce: attack or land invasion of venezuela so if we can believe that trump would actually
Bruce: obey what his lawyers are telling him he's gonna do.
Sam: What he wants to do regardless.
Bruce: Like yeah exactly if.
Sam: He decides he doesn't want to because he doesn't want to or because he thinks
Sam: he'll lose or whatever, then he won't.
Sam: But what the lawyer says is not going to influence him in the slightest.
Bruce: And the, now the Russians have actually landed there in Venezuela lately.
Bruce: And we don't know, of course, what they were, what they brought to Venezuela,
Bruce: but they, but there is some concern that maybe they brought in some S 400 anti-aircraft,
Bruce: anti-missile batteries there and so what may what what uh the u.s military may
Bruce: think it would be a really easy attack may not be so easy and well the.
Sam: Thing you know these things are always seem to be underestimated.
Bruce: Yeah you know this may if he actually goes in there and attacks this may be trump's bay of pigs.
Sam: It could be.
Ed: Or worse.
Sam: I mean, of course. But of course, his gamble is like, hey, we attacked Iran.
Sam: We were fine. Nothing happened.
Sam: They politely asked if they could retaliate against one of our bases.
Sam: And we said, yeah, go ahead.
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: And no one was hurt.
Bruce: And already Maduro has actually offered everything. It's like Trump even admitted
Bruce: that Maduro has offered him anything as far as even allowing American companies
Bruce: to do the oil extraction.
Bruce: And which, of course, is the real reason behind all this, I think,
Bruce: is that it's a resource-rich nation and Trump sees it and he wants to get some of it.
Sam: So, well, I think Trump in general likes to, and this goes for all the tariffs as well.
Sam: He likes to threaten something in the hopes that the other folks will capitulate
Sam: and give him what he wants.
Sam: At the very least, get a, something he can claim as a win, whether or not it actually like is real.
Sam: But ideally he also gets some stuff
Sam: out of it ideally not just for the country but for himself
Sam: personally and then once he's gotten what he wants
Sam: then he'll back off whatever he said originally and hopefully it
Sam: never happens the problem is these are always the games of chicken at some point
Sam: you're going to hit one of these where you end up stumbling into a real war
Sam: or you end up stumbling into real negative consequences of other sorts.
Bruce: Or maybe you could end up being defeated. Kind of like, look what is it? Yemen.
Bruce: Yemen basically forced the U.S. to retreat.
Sam: I mean, look, I don't know the specifics about Yemen or what the battle would
Sam: look like, but the key is there's Donald Trump likes to play risky games.
Sam: And a lot of the times when he plays the risky games, you end up coming out on top.
Sam: You end up winning the exchange. And again, at least like being able to claim
Sam: the win, even if objectively the facts on the ground, you're,
Sam: you only got back to where you were.
Sam: Like in many of these tariff situations, he hasn't actually won anything,
Sam: but he's gotten the other country to say, oh yes, Mr.
Sam: Trump, we're giving you this, this, and this. And he's like, great, I won.
Sam: Well, it turns out they were doing those things anyway, but whatever, you get to claim the win.
Sam: But at some point in one of
Sam: these you're going to go a little too far you're going
Sam: to stumble you're going to get in trouble something bad will
Sam: happen and some of the potential negative consequences are really bad and you
Sam: know and every time trump manages to do one of these gambles and play russian
Sam: roulette and not shoot himself in the head people are like oh wow look he's winning. What a genius.
Sam: I got to think at one of these points, one of these things is actually going to like go badly for him.
Sam: And it's just like, unfortunately, he's not the only one who gets hurt in that situation.
Sam: I mean, arguably, you know, COVID response was one of those where he mishandled
Sam: a bunch of it and, and things went badly.
Sam: And that's probably the main reason why he lost re-election to Joe Biden.
Sam: If there hadn't been for COVID, he probably would have been re-elected. No problem.
Bruce: You know, he shouldn't have shut everything down.
Sam: Well let's not i don't
Sam: think that's the thing he did wrong i think there's other things he
Sam: did wrong yeah we'll disagree more down damn
Sam: it but no but uh uh but yeah like i i just we've been lucky so far most of his
Sam: gambles have not had as horrible even when they've had bad results they They
Sam: haven't been the worst case scenario.
Sam: And yeah, I don't know if we'll continue to be lucky. We'll see.
Bruce: So it's, it's kind of crazy because next week I'm going on a cruise to the Caribbean.
Bruce: And it's, if you look on the map, it's not that close, but, but in a couple
Bruce: of months, my mom is going on another cruise and she's going down to the,
Bruce: to the ABC islands, which are right off the coast of Venezuela.
Bruce: You can literally see Venezuela from Aruba.
Bruce: She's going to be down there. And so it's like, are they really going to have
Bruce: a war with, With these, with these ships.
Bruce: You could sit there on the deck and watch the fireworks.
Sam: Oh, man. You know, people did that in the Civil War. They went out and picnic
Sam: and watched the battles and stuff like that.
Bruce: Yeah, very true.
Sam: But, yeah, I mean, cruise ship better not get in the wrong place at the wrong time, you know? Yeah.
Sam: Okay. Moving on, Ed, your last topic.
Ed: But real quickly, the Supreme Court heard the tariff issue today,
Ed: and the speculation seems to be that they may say Trump could not enact those tariffs.
Ed: What happens if indeed they do that?
Ed: Now we've collected something in the range of $50 to $80 billion in tariff money.
Ed: That will have to presumably be returned to the people who paid it,
Ed: which is mostly United States corporations, I understand.
Ed: What sort of an impact is that going to have on anything?
Ed: It'd be a stimulus It could be a stimulus, yeah Those CEOs will get a billion dollar salary, huh?
Sam: Yeah, first one thing It'll be a while yet I think, Bruce, you had shared something
Sam: under CurveGence Corner Slack Where there might be a result before the end of
Sam: the year Most people I'm hearing are saying they're probably not until June, actually,
Sam: Now, maybe they'll surprise people and do it early, but most of the chatter
Sam: seems to be that they will probably release their decision on this at the end of their term in June.
Ed: That's another couple hundred billion in tariffs.
Bruce: But this was a case that was fast-tracked, so they need to give a response because
Bruce: the taxes are being collected.
Sam: They don't need to do anything. They fast tracked it in terms of when they set
Sam: the hearing, whether or not they are quick in terms of giving their decision
Sam: or not is entirely up to them. They can release it whenever they want.
Sam: Now, and here's the thing. Here's why I think most people are thinking they
Sam: did seem like in the oral arguments, it seemed like there were probably five,
Sam: maybe six votes to say that Donald Trump couldn't do this.
Sam: Critically, it's not that he can't do this at all.
Sam: It's that he couldn't do it under the authority of the specific law that he
Sam: claimed under the executive order.
Bruce: And he has many other laws that he can reinterpret.
Sam: And that came up in the arguments. They specifically were like,
Sam: one of the conservative justices actually asked,
Sam: if we only look at this one particular narrow thing, what's to stop Donald Trump
Sam: from turning around 10 minutes later and reissuing the same tariff under a different authority,
Sam: under a different legal authority, and what would we do then?
Sam: And Neil Keitel, who was arguing the case of the people who think the tariffs
Sam: are illegal, said, well—
Sam: then we would sue under that one and we would do this all again.
Sam: And the justice was sort of like, really?
Sam: You would want us to like spend another two years going through all the levels
Sam: of the courts and getting back to the Supreme Court on, you know,
Sam: okay, now we've said he can't use law A to do this, but now he's trying it under law B.
Sam: Don't you want us to look at the bigger question? And he was like, no. Oh, really?
Bruce: I would think that he would want them to have a broader view, but I don't know.
Sam: Well, because they didn't argue the broader thing. They didn't argue all of
Sam: those other cases, right?
Sam: And so it's been—now, I don't know what the court will do specifically,
Sam: but what I would speculate is this SCOTUS has,
Sam: even in cases where they disagree with Donald Trump, has tried really hard to
Sam: minimize the impact of their disagreement with Donald Trump.
Sam: So, first of all, that will lean towards...
Sam: If they were going to say, actually, Donald Trump has the authority to do this,
Sam: they would probably do that quickly and come back with that result quickly.
Sam: If they're actually going to go against Donald Trump, they will delay their
Sam: decision as long as they possibly can.
Sam: And then they're going to jump through hoops to try to make it as narrow as
Sam: possible to give Donald other things that he can do and make it very specific to this scenario.
Sam: So that they go against him, but with as little pain to Donald Trump as possible in this scenario.
Sam: And so you probably will get the thing where the next day Donald Trump reissues
Sam: the tariffs under something else.
Sam: They also were really worried about the unwinding and the refunds and all that.
Sam: Because one of the things is they had the option to pause all the tariffs until
Sam: this went through all the courts.
Sam: They did not do that. They let the tariffs stay in place, and now they're worried
Sam: that the longer they go, the more has to be unwound.
Sam: So they are worried a little bit about the mechanism of that.
Sam: And Neil Keitel didn't quite say this, but it was obvious that,
Sam: like, the implication was, well, if you're worried about that,
Sam: you shouldn't have let these stay in effect while this goes through the process.
Bruce: That's true.
Sam: You know, yeah.
Bruce: Yeah, and this whole idea of the president having this singular authority to
Bruce: impose tariffs at will just goes completely against the whole idea of the Constitution,
Bruce: of the separation of powers.
Bruce: And now it's true that Congress has given up much of its powers by enacting these laws.
Bruce: Well, then what really needs to—I'm sure what the SCOTUS would really like to
Bruce: do is to push it back on Congress and say, hey, you made this mess.
Bruce: You need to pass laws to actually pull back that power, which they can certainly do.
Sam: In this particular case, the argument is that the specific law that Donald Trump
Sam: cited talks about all kinds of things, but not tariffs.
Sam: And that it's a stretch of the language to include tariffs within this particular law.
Sam: But, yeah, I mean, Congress has shown no appetite to pull anything back from Donald Trump.
Bruce: And that's why I'm so worried that when President Newsom comes along,
Bruce: he's not going to be in favor of removing or removing any of the powers that
Bruce: Trump and Biden and Obama and Clinton and Bush have all pushed and gained through the presidencies.
Sam: One of the specific examples that one of the conservative justices asked of
Sam: the representative of the Trump administration is,
Sam: so what you're saying is if a future Democratic president decided that we need
Sam: 100% tariff on all imported gas cars, that would be fine.
Sam: He could just do that without any congressional authority, without anything,
Sam: because that's equivalent to what you're claiming here that Donald Trump is
Sam: doing just on a different issue for a different reason. And in fact here, and you,
Sam: I mean, the whole thing with Donald Trump is he's not even having reasons.
Sam: It's almost just his whim on a day-to-day basis.
Bruce: He's using it as a negotiating tactic. So, yeah, it's really horrible.
Bruce: And so it's kind of a flaw in our system in that every president gains new and
Bruce: new authorities by pushing back on norms.
Bruce: And these norms are never actually enacted into law. And so when it's actually
Bruce: challenged, the Supreme Court says,
Bruce: They can do it because there's no law against it. And so when President Newsom
Bruce: comes in, he's not going to say, oh, I need to remove these powers because he's
Bruce: going to want those same powers for the things that he wants to do.
Bruce: And so I really have no hope that this will ever be reversed, these authorities.
Ed: No one who's willing to run for the presidency is going to be willing to give
Ed: up power unless it's taken from him. You're absolutely right.
Sam: It's a rare exception. I mean, it has happened, but it's very rare and it takes just,
Sam: you know, I mentioned, I think on last week's show or the week before, I forget,
Sam: that there was somebody who had done an analysis of democratic countries who
Sam: had slid into authoritarianism and worked their way back towards democracy.
Sam: And in the most common
Sam: outcome by far was that
Sam: you you you move back a little bit but yes the new governments retained many
Sam: of the powers that were added on during that phase and only gave up stuff around
Sam: the edges it was the the rarest outcome the best outcome but by far the rarest outcome.
Sam: Was when they actually ended the authoritarian
Sam: interlude with a complete revamping of the country's constitution and everything
Sam: else to directly make illegal the abuses that had happened that led towards
Sam: the authoritarian regime in the first place.
Sam: And that's very rare And because what it requires for it to happen is a unified
Sam: opposition that is unified around the principles of process and democracy that, you know,
Sam: this is the right way as opposed to specific policy outcomes.
Sam: That they are willing to enact a system that they think is fair,
Sam: even if they know that their policy outcomes will sometimes lose.
Sam: And that's very rare and very difficult because people have to put sort of these
Sam: thoughts about long-term stability and fairness over short-term policy goals.
Bruce: Yeah. And so we will continue to live under an elected king,
Bruce: which ends up getting switched back and forth every four to eight years.
Bruce: And what has been a seesaw will become more like a whipsaw,
Bruce: where the first day of Newsom's presidency is he's going to have 500 executive
Bruce: orders that he's going to sign, just to reverse all the executive orders that Trump was saying.
Sam: Assuming neither side at any point puts in the kinds of changes that make it
Sam: impossible for the other side to win again.
Bruce: I certainly hope that that's the case.
Sam: In which case you have like 40, 50 years before you break that.
Bruce: Yeah. Yeah.
Sam: So, yay! Yay! Ha ha ha ha!
Sam: Okay, on that, I think we should wrap it up, folks.
Ed: Sounds like a winner.
Bruce: That's great.
Sam: So thank you. Let me give this stuff at the end. I'll thank you all at the very end.
Sam: So you guys know curmudgeons-corner.com. You can see our archives.
Sam: You can see all the ways to contact us. You can see all our social media,
Sam: all of that fun stuff, old transcripts, old shows.
Sam: And you can now buy a mug. You can now buy a mug. Both of you have mugs already.
Sam: But you can, other people who don't have mugs, you can now buy a mug directly from the website.
Sam: So go buy mugs, go buy curmudgeon's corner mugs. They're wonderful mugs.
Sam: They're wonderful mugs. I just gave mugs to Emily, who was on the show a couple
Sam: of weeks ago, and her um, sir, co-host, Sammy.
Sam: I gave them both mugs yesterday when, by the way, I was a guest on their podcast,
Sam: which will be out the one.
Sam: I actually recorded two episodes with them. The next two weeks of their shows,
Sam: I think their shows come out on Wednesday.
Sam: Anyway, the next two weeks of their shows, I will be on as a guest.
Sam: And so enjoy that. And of course, we have a link to our Patreon where you can
Sam: give us money at various levels.
Sam: You will get one of those mugs. You will get a postcard. You will be mentioned on the show.
Sam: All of that kind of fun stuff at $2 a month or more.
Sam: Or if you just ask nicely, we will invite you to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack
Sam: where Yvonne and I and Ed and Bruce and others are chatting throughout the week
Sam: and sharing all kinds of stuff.
Sam: Do either of you have ones that anything you want to share or shall I?
Bruce: Yes, I do have one and I really have a question about it. You just plopped in today.
Bruce: Oh, just in case anybody needs a full body view of my skeleton, enjoy.
Bruce: So there's an in, there's a picture of Sam's full skeleton, which I,
Bruce: which is, I don't understand why you would, how you have that in the first place. Did you just like.
Ed: It's got nothing to do in his hernia, I'm sure.
Sam: No, no, that's Yvonne. This is me. No, I'll tell you.
Sam: I got myself enrolled in like a one-year clinical trial of something.
Sam: And part of it was at the beginning, middle, and end, they do a full-body scan of me.
Sam: And they they said that they're not allowed
Sam: to actually like give me the data
Sam: from these scans however they were allowed to show me and i was just sitting
Sam: there snapping pictures uh with my phone and so yes it was it was actually this
Sam: morning i went in and had my middle of the one year period full body scan is that is that.
Ed: A ct or mri scan.
Sam: It's it's what was the name of the stupid device uh it's actually just an x-ray i think but uh that's.
Ed: A lot of radiation exposure.
Sam: No it's not it's not your standard one it's it's like this it it's a little
Sam: bar that slides over you from your head down to your toe over a seven minute
Sam: period um well that's less than you.
Ed: Have a ct.
Sam: It has a specific name that i
Sam: i forget but anyway and there's
Sam: a there's a second piece that has uh that
Sam: shows some of my organs and stuff too which is fun as well
Sam: but i shared the skeleton because it was uh it
Sam: was it seemed a little cooler and and
Sam: for some reason the skeleton seemed a little bit less invasive than
Sam: the one showing my organs i don't know but but yeah no it is it's sort of so
Sam: yeah i i had one at the beginning this one is middle and they'll scan me one
Sam: more time in another six months and yeah like they're they're measuring like
Sam: does this effect, X, Y, Z, Q and whatever.
Sam: And it was just fun. I saw the picture and I'm like, I'm, I'm taking that picture.
Sam: And, and yeah, I thought I'd share my skeleton. So yes, if you were on the curmudgeon's
Sam: corner slack, you can see the full body scan of my skeleton.
Sam: I should get a 3D model, a 3D printed model built and put up in the yard at Halloween.
Sam: Or just put it behind you. It's a little plastic skeleton? No, it's actually mine.
Bruce: Mine.
Sam: Not just any skeleton. It's my skeleton. So, okay. Ed, do you have one to highlight?
Ed: The only one I noticed is that you posted yesterday that apparently Australia
Ed: is now generating so much solar electricity that they're starting to give it away and exporting it.
Sam: Yep.
Ed: We're not going to have that problem here, I don't think.
Sam: It's not so much exporting it directly. They were going to make electricity
Sam: free for the peak midday hours where they were generating more solar energy
Sam: than either was being used or they could store in batteries.
Sam: So they were generating in excess. So during the hours that they are generating
Sam: in excess, they were just going to give it away for free.
Bruce: Sounds like a good place to set up a Bitcoin mine.
Sam: I'm sure people have. So I will add mine as well.
Sam: There's a chart in the Financial Times that they published on the potential
Sam: effect of artificial intelligence on GDP per capita.
Sam: And they presented a range of options.
Sam: Their range of options went from, on the one end, AI could end scarcity,
Sam: in which they have the GDP line rapidly increasing to infinity.
Bruce: It had been going up to $500,000.
Bruce: Per person.
Sam: Yeah, well, that's the top of the chart. That was after just a couple years,
Sam: and it continues to go up from there.
Bruce: Yeah, true.
Sam: At a very steep angle. The other extreme was AI ends humanity.
Sam: And in that scenario, the line goes down slowly at first and then more and more rapidly.
Sam: And then again, it's a log scale, so it stops at 1,000, but presumably goes
Sam: down even further beyond that as humanity goes extinct. And the entire range of options in between.
Bruce: Interestingly, they're both labeled tech singularity.
Sam: Yes. Tech singularity, end of scarcity, versus tech singularity, human extinction.
Sam: And anything in between.
Sam: And I said under Curbudge and Coruscant, people used to make fun of me.
Sam: Bruce used to make fun of me. Yvonne used to make fun of me.
Sam: For the wide ranges of my annual predictions of the Dow and the price of Bitcoin
Sam: and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: That pales in comparison to this range of possibilities that they outlined here.
Sam: All righty. Okay. So now, thank you, Ed.
Sam: Thank you, Bruce, for joining us yet again. It's always fun to have you guys.
Sam: And it was fun to have you guys together, which we have not done before.
Sam: Hopefully we can do something like this again. but also hopefully Yvonne finishes
Sam: his recovery and we'll be back next week and we'll have a normal show next week
Sam: but thank you all goodbye goodbye.
Ed: What did we.
Sam: Okay one at a time let's do this I will go first then Bruce then Ed goodbye
Sam: goodbye goodbye here here comes the outro,
Sam: Okay. Thanks again, everybody. So have a great night, everybody. See you. See you later.
Bruce: Okay. Good night.
Ed: Good night.
Bruce: Bye.
Sam: Here comes, I'm hitting stop.