We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jashinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit fdr LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to the
premium version of the Federalist website, the Federalist dot com as well. I'm
joined today by oh Skinner. Oh Skinner is the executive director of the Alliance
for Consumers, also the most recent Arizona Solicitor General. Welcome to the show,
Oh Skinner, Thank you so much for having me on. Yeah.
Absolutely. What's the website for Alliance for Consumers, by the way, Alliance
for Consumers dot org. It's at alliancefoc Consumers dot org. And then it
is for underscore consumers on x where I think we try to try to flag
some interesting stuff for people. Oh, super interesting stuff. I always love
talking to you guys, because Europe to things that I think, also the
corporate press doesn't pay a ton of attention to, but actually does affect the
daily lives of the American people, even though it might like that. You
say that because that is exactly one of the things that we very much try
to do is put an actual consumer and every day face on things that mostly
just get covered by you know, big you know people who don't always understand
what regular people care about one hundred percent, And it's not convenient to the
narrative that media likes to tell about all kinds of different issues, whether it's
the environment or the administrative state. So why don't we actually just start there?
Could you tell us a little bit about what the Alliance for Consumers does,
like some of the different projects and focuses that you guys have, Like
what are you what are you looking at? Yeah, so we look at
a couple of different things. We look at how consumer protection that the government
level does a pretty historically bad job of helping people. So you would see
headlines of a class action settlement or your state attorney general or the CFPB doing
something to somebody who arguably looked like they did a bad thing, and then
you find out that nobody actually got a check, or if they got to
check, it was twenty five cents, and like the lawyers took all the
money or the government bureaucrat put all the money in a government bank account to
pay for more government bureaucrats, and you know, at the end of the
day, there was just no voice for consumers in that space. And so
we talk a lot about how government doesn't do a good job for consumers,
or trialers don't do a good job, how they can do a better job.
And then another part that we talk about is just the real everyday effects
of kind of these government mandates. There's been everyday people. I mean,
I'll use one simple example, which is most of the things in your house
probably feel like they are worse than they were ten years ago. They cost
more, they do a worse job, and there's fewer of the things you
want in them. And that's weird, right, that's weird for regular people
absolutely, because you know, look there's a lot of whatever the problems in
our economy, most of the time, companies are trying really hard to make
something that you want. Sometimes you know they're selling you things that you don't
even need but you know you might want. And here is an example where
like you look around your house and you're like, that costs more, takes
longer, does a crappier job, And the little dirty secret behind that is
starting especially in the Obama administration, the federal government and the DC elites realize
that they could just start taking away stuff from you and mandating that you live
life a certain way, and they just started ractioning that on all sorts of
products. And so we we spend a chunk of our time at Alliance cert
Consumers trying to raise awareness of this because people are all away that things are
kind of worse in their house and it really affects you. But you might
not have known that it was coming from DC, right, Okay, so
you said something interesting there, which is starting, especially in the Obama administration.
A lot of people will think back to Ralph Nader or to regulations that
came about decades in the past and sort of gradually started to change the relationship
between you know, the the let's say, entrepreneurs or the capitalists that were
selling goods and consumers were buying goods. And in some ways that made a
lot of sense. In other ways, for example, as we're taping this,
the Supreme Court's about to hear oral arguments in a case where that's testing
Chevron deference. Is a ministrative agencies have just grown sort of under our noses
in ways that the average person could not possibly track or understand because it's absurd.
I mean, even when you work on these issues, it takes like
attorneys like yourself, people at the federalists to study, like they have to
study this day in and day out for years to grasp all what's happening here.
So could you talk to us about the process, like how did this
happen? Yeah? So, I mean it's it's it's I really like that
you flagged the rath Nader thing. There's a I mean, there's a reasonable
debate in the world on like product safety. Okay, I think very reasonable
people on the right can disagree about like you know, and you got like
libertarians and about how many safety features a car needs to have to be safe,
or how many times something's allowed to blow up in your house before it
should not be allowed to be sold, right, Like, these are actually
fine discussions, Okay, what's and that's some of where a lot of existing
government regulation talk was like rath Nader says that car blows up, and somebody
says, well that it shouldn't be sold, and then there's a debate,
right, because that those things can cause products to be more expensive, but
arguably they are making them safer, and you're taking away consumers' choices. But
I think in the safety zone, like maybe we can have a discussion.
What's crazy is in the Obama administration, the you know, the nerdy nerds
in DC figured out that they could use stuff that had historically not been used
as a weapon as much. Okay, I'm not going to say as perfect.
But they started thinking, well, we used to just give credits or
tax incentives to buy a more efficient car or a more efficient dishwasher or a
more efficient refrigerator. You know, you've seen the energy star stuff on products,
right. They decided that what they could start doing is saying no,
no, no when we're the energy Oh see you now that's that is a
long running project that the Department of Energy does with the EPA. It's like
really funny if you talk to people in the administration because like each one wants
to claim credit when they like what it does. Oh that's an older product.
But that's I think in a space where it's like, okay, if
you want to identify for consumers what is energy efficient and put like a green
clover leaf on it or like a little smiley face, and then that makes
people want to buy it, or even if you want to offer them ten
bucks off. As a consumer group, we're like fine, you know if
you live in a progressive enclave of San Francisco and that makes you feel good,
Like I'm not fine, have at it? Right. What the Obama
people started doing is saying, hey, we could just start eliminating options for
people to live differently than we want them to. We can start to say
that you can't sell a dishwasher unless it meets really efficient standards. We can
start saying that you can't sell cars unless they meet standards that are so efficient
that only electric vehicles count. Do you get them? Get it? Like?
They just start imposing these mandates. Now, what's terrible from a consumer's
perspective? And let me just add they think it's veryver because the person who
the mandate applies to are the people who make the product. Okay, it
applies to like Whirlpool or LG or Samsung. So they just have to stop
making the stuff people want. And so the consumer goes into the store and
if they complain, the store just goes, well, that's all Samsung makes
me. And maybe the consumer thinks that Samsung just hates them. I don't
know picking Samsung to my friend, just want to samsunger for your you know,
maybe Samsung just hates me, but really, the DC bureaucrats went to
Samsung and said, you are not allowed to sell anybody a dishwasher that can
do anything with more than a thimble of water and no heat. So surprise,
the engineers at Samsung decided that the best they could do was a dishwasher
that takes two hours and forty three minutes to run and does an okay job
and costs a bajillion dollars. And the Obama people were all sitting there,
you know, golf clapping and the cell all yes, good, good,
jump and jump. Because what they had done is they had basically mandated that
all sorts of people in Plano, Texas, or Lincoln, Nebraska, or
Topeka, Kansas have to buy something which was the product that all of the
elites in DC and San Francisco wanted for themselves. They're like, aha,
I got so sick of trying to cajole everyday Americans into living like me.
I just like made it so that because of efficiency rules, they all have
to buy the stuff I buy because not allowed to sell inefficient products because of
you know, climate change and the environment and all sorts of other things.
And so they really just started this like relentless campaign. And I will say
they started it right, It's not like they perfected it. And all of
a sudden you started to realize that, like I don't know about you,
but like I used to live in this tenement apartment in Boston when I was
in law school. That dishwasher ran for forty five minutes. It got everything
and hot like sculpture fingers, and it was great. And then we moved
to Phoenix, Arizona, and into a newer house that was not made in
like nineteen o eight, and the dishwasher was really fancy looking, but it
takes almost three hours and it does an okay job if I'm really careful with
it. That is the one the effect of the government tapping all the manufacturers
on the shoulder and saying walk with us, walk in line with us,
or we're gonna find you and your business right And going back to your point
about like corporate media, most industries most of the time are like, okay,
you're gonna promise that everybody has to play by the same rules. Okay,
I guess I don'tay right, they'd like to sell something better. But
if the government says, don't worry, no one's gonna be able to sell
a dishwasher that works, they're like, oh, so you usually have a
lot less corporate pushback anyway. So that worked across that one, across all
sorts of products, and then and then what you saw with the So what
I think is so interesting is in the Trump administration, I went to the
state of Arizona and we worked closely with parts of the Trump administration on this.
They took a pretty populous event which was, hey, why don't we
just create a new category of dishwasher that could maybe like and washing machine and
some other things. They could just like do the job in an hour,
like its sole criteria is it needs to run in an hour, and it's
like a whole different category. And that way, like every day people could
just buy that. And if you want to buy like a traditional three hour
washing machine, go do that and you'd be amazed, Like consumers roting comments
the State of Arizona a lot a comment to kind of aggregate a bunch of
these where every day people were just like, thank you, I'm running my
dishwasher twice. How is that more efficient? I'm putting three pods in my
dishwasher. That's stupid. I'm hand washing my dishes then using my dishwasher.
How could the Obama administration think that that's more efficient? Right, just all
sorts of things that I think we're like everyday common sense, which is,
how can it be more efficient to mandate that something doesn't work so then everyone
uses it twice? Yeah, and it's crazy. I think it's crazy,
and everyday people think it's crazy. But the elites in DC were like,
we figured it out, Like we figured out how to force people to only
buy what we want them to buy. Well, just like remove everything else
from the market under efficiency standards. Like you and I would have never thought
like efficiency standards are like the key to unlock the door for like progressive lifestyle
choices to be mandated for everybody, right, But that's what they figured out.
Well in the I was gonna say it, it's also interesting that these
efficiency standards hamper quality in a way that you consumers don't like obviously, but
they're you can't have both when you have these standards, like there's there's no
way to meet and this is sort of a question. This is my understanding
of the situation is like there's absolutely no way for these companies to meet the
standards and and also make products efficiently that are affordable for consumers, and then
also hit those standards while performing really well. It just that seems like an
untenable situation for the companies. Like gravity, I mean, like if you
tell somebody make a really fast car, but you can spend eight Like when
you when you constrain so many of the factors saying no water, no heat,
they have to they send as much money as they can to get it
as good as they can, but they still there's limits, right, like
you're you're you're messing with so many of the inputs that it makes it almost
impossible. And then and then, but I think, what's really fascinating that
none of the elites ever thought of because I think I think that maybe just
not normal people. I think I'm allowed to say that one here. Oh
please, Yes, it didn't occur to them that people were going to just
like run, they just rush or twice. So the whole premise of the
rule was it's so much more efficient, you know, for for the land
and the water and you know, mother guy, but the but they were
doing it in such an aggressive way that the obvious reaction of a family of
five in Topeka, Kansas was one that had to floster twice. It's the
only way to make it work, which of course very clearly would undo the
efficiency mandate, right like, and they hadn't factored that in because I don't
think they don't think it occurred to them, like maybe some families have more
than like one point two children or live in places that are in San Francisco.
So ayah. So the strumministration did all these good things, right,
and I think what's like, what's really fascinating and why I think this is
newsworthy is last week when the news came out that in the fifth circud quart
of Appeals down in Texas, Judge Andy Oldham, a great American, wrote
an opinion in louisianaivers part of Energy. Where So the first sorr, I
should say, the first day of the Biden administration, one of the executive
orders was he ordered the agencies to basically undo all of these Trump pro consumer
rules, like you cannot have those dishwashers that do anything in an hour or
less, right like how dare you? And there was a lawsuit the state
of Louisiana, one of my good friends sued and some of the arguments were
really strong. There were things like this isn't more efficient And what happened is
the Fifth Circuit said the Biden attempt to undo these good rules was flawed,
and there was a lot of legal reasoning that is not that relevant. But
I think what was really fascinating is a judge in Texas, Judge Oldham,
just wrote things like you didn't consider that people are going to run something,
and that was pretty obvious from all the comments, but you didn't address that.
Also, your mandate with regard to dishwashers is to make the more energy
efficient, but most of your analysis talks about saving water. Well, the
statue doesn't say you're allowed to think about water, and in fact, you
know what you should be doing is allowing them to use a lot more water,
even if you constrain the energy efficiency. So you're thinking about it wrong.
Your analysis is all wrong, and you're not considering how everyday people actually
use these products, which means you've totally failed under classic administrative law, like
imposing something without considering how people are going to use it is the height of
absurd and no, I'm undoing what you did. That's huge, that's huge
because it is a like you will laugh. I think I laughed. Like
it took a federal judge in Texas to be like, you know, clapping
like idiots. People don't use these things like you think they do. They
use them like a regular person does. Right, And he was like and
on that basis, you you're idiots, and did the Biden administration. So
this is from the Fifth Circuit on January eighth, right, like this is
very recent, yeah, very recent. And what's the Biden administration pursuing.
I imagine they've immediately signaled that they're pursuing in the opposite direction. They're going
to keep fighting. I don't know what they're going to do because the hardest
So this is where Judge Olden did like a classic very clever thing, which
is he not only said you failed to consider how every day people are going
to use them, but he said a lot of strong things about the statute
where he goes, you can't just like ratchet down the water and say that
that's on energy efficiency, like you know, it's very nerdy. But he's
like some statutes say that you're allowed to consider water. This one doesn't.
Why are you considering water? Seems like you didn't read it, seems like
you aren't trying to follow it. Seems like you don't get to count that
as better. Right, So that that's going to hurt them, because the
one thing that I didn't get to he got me all wound up is in
the last two or three months the Biden administration. Whatever we thought of the
Bomb administration, the Biden administration went just it was like a royal rumble.
At the end of the year, they put out rules for refrigerators, freezers,
dishwashers, ovens, cars, and furnaces, all at the end of
the year initial proposals, and they're not done yet. And in almost every
case their proposals acknowledged that eighty ninety sometimes almost one hundred percent of the product
currently on the market would not meet the new standards, which, if you
think about it in non government speak, means Biden decided at the end of
twenty twenty three to announce that he was going to wipe away eighty percent or
more of the cars on the market, the dishwashers, the refrigerators, the
furnaces off of the market and make all the manufacturers start making what he wanted
them to make highly even more efficient, even better this, even better that,
and make this go to like the next level. And a lot of
those, not every single one of them, but a lot of those are
going to have to go back to square one because you know, the State
of Tennessee had already called them out for a bunch of things, but now
the Fifth Circuit has said, at least with a bunch of those, like,
you're not actually even thinking about efficiency right, and you're not factoring in
how people use these products still, like you really like this is you're not
doing this right, and that's going to cause the bureaucrats to go back to
square one on a lot of this stuff, which because it's an election here,
couldn't mean that like consumers were just saved. It all depends on how
the next election is and what is Obviously, there's a ton of conversation about
blueprints for a future Republican administration, whether it's another Trump administration or otherwise,
specifically as it comes to the administrative state, and obviously, again as we're
recording, this chevron is quite literally on the table at the Supreme Court right
now. A, is there is Chevron's salient to this question? Are there
are there major ways that we've seen Chevron defference contribute to the problem that you
just really helpfully described. And b what are at the extent that you're aware
conservatives suggesting be done? You know right away again if the executive branch goes
to Republicans in the future. So Chevron difference plays into a lot of this.
So the key with Chevron difference is that it really kicks in when a
statute is not very clear. So what's interesting is in a lot of these
spaces, the Biden and Obama administrations would say that the statute was super clear.
It says increase efficiency, and therefore I'm increasing energy efficiency, right.
They didn't actually ever say it was unclear. Sometimes you get Chevron difference.
Shoven difference really plays in. And a lot of these were like they have
to go find some like tiny statute that had never been ran a certain way
and like shove like a student mom bailadd or something through it just like use
like an imagine you're hypothetical. But all of this plays down on what I
think is so powerful is when people and the next administration should do this,
and I know a lot of people worked in the last administration and they did
do this is when you so I'll use this. I'll use this as the
framing of consumer protection. For a long time, the conservative kind of corporatist
model of consumer protection was don't sue people because companies are so important. And
the liberal perspective was sue everybody, but keep all the money because we need
to sue more people and the government needs the money. Right. What we've
tried to do is insert like a different voice, which is like you should
just like fight for people and you should really focus on like doing consumer protection
so that checks go to consumers. Well, similarly on the regulatory space,
it's amazing Judge Oldham didn't stay super aggressive things in fighting over this diffasher role.
What he said was like almost he took on the language of the left,
like fine, you have to be efficient. Let's talk about how everyday
people use stuff. If they have to use it twice, it's not efficient.
So it's almost just like bringing common sense, non DC thinking to these
problems of like, okay, your your mandate from the statute is to do
efficiency. Let's make sure that We're only going to pass rules that are going
to actually make people's lives better in the real world. So, like one
of the Biden administration rules is mandating fuel efficiency. That's so hot that everyone's
gonna have to buy an electric car? What we just saw that everybody's electric
cars throws up like hockey pucks in Chicago because it got really cold, and
I am so yeah, giant hockey bucks. Like what does local TV called
it? Like dead robots? Just like a field of dead robots. That
was pretty funny. You know. A Judge Oldham like approach to this would
be like is it actually more fuel efficient if nobody can buy a new gas
car? So everybody who lives in rural Texas or rural America just keeps buying
older and older used trucks which are less efficient, Like if those stay on
the road, are you really being more efficient when you mandate new cars?
Right? Basic questions about like how does a reasonable person react because the liberal
beercruts, Just like if we ban all the gas cars and everyone will just
buy brand new, super expensive electric cars, and it's like, no,
they won't. A bunch of people can't afford them, and a bunch of
people live in rural parts of the country where they would rather be caught dead
than have a car that they don't know where they can charge it. Right.
So even just like when you go into these boardrooms at the you know,
the EPA is and the Clinton Building in DC, and you say things
like you have to actually factor in consumer choices. Why don't we do a
consumer survey, Why don't we actually talk to consumers? Why don't we weigh
consumer comments higher than random nonprofits? Back by doors sorrows just little tweaks to
be like, the whole point is to improve people's lives, not to make
their lives worse. And it's funny because, like a lot some chunk of
these bureaucrats, they don't think they're making people's lives worse. And when you
explain to them that they are, they're like they feel kind of sheepish because
they just were so fixated on efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. So to me,
it's like, oh, I want to be very clear. And going
back to your corporate media, think the automakers man, those guys they all
were talking like they thought that the new Biden administration rules would be okay.
And then when the rules came out. They were supposed to announce them in
Detroit, and all the automakers like freaked out, and they're just now realizing
that the Biden administration just hates them and jobs are going to China. Yeah,
exactly, exactly all the things like they The little secret is the Bide
administration, like most of the progressive staffing of the Biden administration, just wants
everyone to kind of have smaller houses, smaller cars, go less places,
have fewer kids, eat less. You know, it's kind of it's kind
of dystopian in a bad way, rather than helping people live, you know,
a slightly more efficient life, life in a way that isn't just like
pain and suffering. And so I think it's important to constantly think about consumers
because in DC there's so many interest groups. There's like the carmakers, there's
the you know this group, the National assisial manufacturers. They all have interests,
but very rarely do they have the interest of consumers in mind. And
so a lot of what we just talk about all the time is just everyday
people care about basic things. They want the things in their house to work.
They don't want them to blow up. Let's be very clear, but
they also would just like like them to work and not cost a gajillion dollars.
And at the end of the day, you know, that's that's the
most important thing. And if you keep that in mind, a lot of
regulations get a lot easier to think about because you're just thinking, like,
what's this going to do to an avera Ridge person And the answer is normally
it's going to make their lives the miserable. I don't know if you saw
that. Walter Kern wrote a superviral essay on this recently on how nothing works.
Like you talked about his car, but he also talked about how he
has things, you know, simple things that he's got garage sales that were
manufactured in like the fifties. That works so much better than something you get
on Amazon. And I was actually just going to ask you kind of what
you were talking about, potentially about the role of consolidation and all of this
lobbying and all of this, and I know that's kind of a huge issue,
but I'm just kind of basically curious in the sort of Baptist and bootlegger
dynamic in that, you know, if you're talking about cars, for example,
not a ton of not a ton of competition anymore. I mean there's
a lot of consolidation in that industry, but I bet with dishwashers and other
things. You know, in some cases, these corporations have acquiesced to the
status quo a because they're full of you know, now we know you know,
for example, who's investing in renewables at the highest rates, like it's
eggs on. Partially because they're staffed by people who buy into all of this,
and also partially because it hurts any potential competition and it hurts the small
guys. To what extent is that dynamic present in what you're describing, I
mean, it's president in almost every aspect of what you're seeing with what so,
the left influence on corporate America has a lot of the as A lot
of it come starting in the bomb administration with you know, look at Dee,
I look at all this stuff. When the BOMBA people came out and
started stacking up companies under the assumption that Hillary Clinton would be the next president.
They were telling everyone like, get ahead of it, right, get
ahead of the diversity mandates that are going to come out of the Civil Rights
Division, get ahead on the green mandates. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
get ahead of everything, just like get ahead because she's going to come after
you. And if you don't, and I can teach you how to get
ahead because like I drew the map up to this point and she's going to
keep drawing it. I can get you there, right and then like surprise,
Hillary Clinton's not president. But I think what's what's crazy is this big
little dynamic that you flagged is so present, Like why do big oil companies
not mined? And look, I think oil companies are great because we more
power for more people is just better. Like life is better when you can
heat your home. Life is better when you can air condition your home.
It's just true. But they don't mind all sorts of limits on new drilling
in America because they already have oil fields in like French Giana, right Uh,
I mean I'm serious, Like they're like they're like they're drilling oil and
Surinam and they are making some of these up, but not really you know,
they're they're drilling oil and Surnam or Nigeria, and so sure, shutdown
American drilling. I don't care. I already got a big oil field off
of Brazil or off of Angola or where and and they like these things because
you know it helps them, So it's not that shocking. But I think
what's also important is there are still divergences. And what I like about conservatives
when we talk about consumer issues is we have the ability to remind people.
I don't know, I think the EV's thing is just so big the by
I mean, I don't know how many stories you have to see about hurts
selling their evs. All of these promises and dreams of evs has run into
the reality. My friend always says this, and I hope maybe it's tied
to something that will cause us to get canceled. But like the dogs just
don't like the dog food, right, it's just everyday people just don't really
want evs. They certainly don't want them now. So like twenty percent of
America or ten percent, probably ten percent of America got really excited about EV's
and they bought them and they drove them, and they didn't care how much
they cost. Tesla is like slashing the price of EV's boards, making evs
no one wants them. I mean how many times. I mean, if
you ever followed there's a great Twitter account called car dealership guy all of the
pictures of it's an anonymous account. It's so great all of these Ford dealers
in outside like Kansas City, because remember the Ford dealers are like where people
who buy F one fifties their placed there right, Like you don't have a
lot of Tesla dealers in like rural misery. And they're like, yeah,
I got all these like Ford Mustang monkeys. Nobody wants them. I would
just really like to have more F one fifties, but we can't make more
of those. So I'm stuck with all these evs and no one wants them.
They're literally sitting in a lot over there. Nobody wants them. You
know, You're starting to see that more and more. We're like, at
the end of the day, the companies are realizing that the consumers don't want
what Biden is pushing, and the F one fifties cost more money and the
evs are subsidized. Oh, I mean, have you This is maybe I
should listen to your podcast more. My favorite is there was a line in
the Ford annual statement to ten k like last year we're described how they're large
duty vehicles, which is basically their truck and maybe like a Ford expedition,
Like I'm making up the number, but I'm off only by a little bit.
They were responsible for like one hundred and fourteen percent of the net profit
of the company. Yeah, which basically means that all of the rest of
the divisions lost a metric boatload of money, and so they had to make
as much money as they could off of the trucks to pay for all the
money losing on the other side of the business. Right, So when people
are like, man, I can't believe a new Chevvy suburban, So this
is a great example. I can't believe a new Chevy suburban caused like eighty
thousand dollars because at least when I was a kid, like that was just
a normal car. And it's like, well, when you explain to somebody
like, well, every time you sell one of those, you have to
sell two ebs to meet your feel efficiency standards as a company, which means
you better make a lot of money off of that suburban because you're going to
have to lose five grand on each of those you know, Chevy bolts over
there in order to be allowed by the government to sell this. Does that
make sense? Like that's the world that the Obama and Biden administration have made
where they have to gouge you on their big cars in order to meet the
efficiency standards so that the FEDS don't find them into oblivion. And then you
just imagine how much more money they would lose if the evs weren't subsidized and
they were just to sell these. Yeah. Now, I want to be
very clear that the scariest thing from a consumer perspective is there's two conclusions from
what I just explained to you on dishwashers on cars, right, consumers don't
want the kreddit products. So auction one is manufacturers pray for the ability to
sell you what you want. Option two is they're just like, so,
the only solution, Biden, is if you literally mandate that everybody buys electric
vehicles, because if you don't mandate it, we can't make them do it.
We keep cutting the price and they just don't want them. And then
Biden's like, hold my beer, like I'm just going to ban gas powered
cars. Brilliant, And then the minute and then and then the car companies
are like, well that might do it, like like if nothing else sales,
we'll just like, we'll just ban it, right, And so that's
what I fear is like, the negative sales of evs is heartening because it
shows that the consumer can still fight back, right, like barely, they
can still fight back against this. Yeah, and their voice is still heard.
Right every time Bloomberg or some big left wing media company runs a story
about how consumers don't like EV's, don't want them, won't buy them,
They're losing money, and people still don't want to buy them because like,
let that sink in. Ford's losing their face. I'm like a Chevvy bowl,
and yet you still don't want it, even though you're getting it for
ten grand less than it costs them to make, right, Like that's just
an amazing reality. And and so that's I feel heartened that, like,
the consumers are punching so hard back that even Michael Bloomberg's news company is announcing
that consumers just don't want the dog food. So I'm also curious about your
experience as a solicitor general, because you know, I'm thinking, right now,
this might seem like a little bit of a one to eighty, but
I think the connection makes sense too, and I'll flush it out a little
bit about Robert F. Kennedy Junior and the interesting tension that exists between the
sort of nator side of him and the side of him that was infuriated by,
for example, a vaccine mandate that was justified and obviously overturned, but
in this like obscure part of OSHA, like the act that established OSHA.
So there's this, you know, the Natiarism is increasingly butting heads with the
administrative state, and as Solicitor General, I imagine one of the interesting things,
kind of coming from a conservative perspective is that you are working with people
in the government who might not necessarily be you know, they kind of died
in the wole Conservatives, and you are responsive to a broad populace and all
of that. So I guess I'm just curious for your thoughts. As you
know, there's more and more awareness kind of about the dystopian and of the
administrative state's goals on the left and the right at least nationally, and then
your experience, you know, kind of on that state level of talking to
people, just like having these conversations, thinking these things through, and just
hearing people's responses to that. So I would say the biggest thing is they
did a lot of consumer protection cases in Arizona was it's everyday people, in
my opinion, want government, especially if your consumer protection division. They get
the most excited about the small things. They want the government to help make
sure that the local used car lot doesn't screw them over, or that if
their warranties not being honored and they write a life or to the government,
that the government like responds and tries to help mediate the situation, which we
did a lot in Arizona. Like there's this really rich guy who's apparently friends
of a friend of mine and they were like, oh, I got screwed
over with this Jaguar dealership. Like can you help me because I ran consumer
protection and they thought that I was being kind of glib when I said,
just file the online consumer complaint for him. They were like really. And
then I heard from the guy like a month later, he goes, I
filed out, I filed out the form, and the team, which is
non college educated call center people helped and the warranty got honored. He was
exciting. Wow, that's like government. That's what everyday people want. They
want the DMV to work, They want consumer protection to help them get their
warranty honored, and they want a check out of a bad actor like quickly
the way that and it's amazing if you tell bureaucrats that's the goal, man,
they will do that because it's like, we want to help people quickly
with the things that are highly relevant to their everyday lives. If you direct
them in that way, they're do gooder nature. At least here in Arizona.
They're like, sounds great, let's go do that, and they think
about how they can accomplish that. What you see with the Left and a
little bit of this like post Nator like new the Obama style is they actually
do a terrible job with helping on the car warranty, and they do a
terrible job of running the DMV, and they do a terrible job of getting
you a check out of a bad actor within like a year. Because they're
so fixated on changing the world, they don't think like whatever, Like Nator
had both of these streets, but like the way he talked was like stop
the car from blowing up. Now the way they talk is like make everything
the way I want it to be. And so I think that is just
a fascinating dynam because when you're in government. If you focus on the little
things, people are blown away that the government works for them. And when
you get them at you know, we worked really hard to finish consumer cases,
like really fast, because people were so used to like six y I
saw this case the other day. Apparently I like to talk about Ford a
lot. It was like this case that the states were bringing against Ford over
like trucks for towing capacity. It took him eight years and they got something
like eighteen million dollars spread over fifty states. And if you think about how
much money that means per state and how many years they were spent, it's
like comically stupid. But that's what people are used to. They're used to
like hearing about a settlement over a product that nobody even remembers anymore. Because
the administrative state that the Left envisions is changing America and we should be focused
This goes back to the tru administration. You should not be focused on like
government not existing. We should just be focused on government working and looking down
at tiny problems that affect everyday people because there's a lot of them. They're
overlooked constantly, and people are immensely grateful when the government helps with those things.
They are far less interested in the government taking away their dishwashers than they
are with the government like stopping some fly by night operation on Amazon from selling
them something to poison their kid. But you notice how like the Biden administration
seems like not very focused on like drugs coming through the border, but they're
like very focused on like ebs. Like that's a great example of like when
you just focus on the little things, I mean little in the sense of
like scale not importance. Right, people don't want things to blow up.
They want the things in their house to be safe, and they want scammers
to stop scamming. Right, They are far less interested in using government power
to reshape America in the image of like San Francisco progress. That's so interesting.
That's such an interesting perspective. Oh wait, Skinner, I just have
to thank you so much for kind of walking us through all this, because
I'm always trying to wrap my head around it, and I think it was
it's just the scope of what's happened over the course the last couple of decades.
It is hard to just track. So I just appreciate your perspective here.
Yeah, I mean, if you haven't know a minute, I'll give
you another example of it. Please, how conservatives do better? So like
when you go into government, the first thing you ask is like why are
you here? And if people are like I wanted the people that I represent,
which is how they should think about it to like have better lives.
That's that's really good. But like, let's use another example of like the
environment. Right, the Biden administration seems far less focused on like clean air
and clean water and very focused on like greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
Right, But what's fascinating is those aren't the same thing. Right, Like
clean air and clean water is about like stopping somebody from dumping something in a
river, or from like running a factory that's like literally putting out heavy metals.
But climate change stuff that actually like you don't see carbon in the air,
You don't in carbon dioxide in the air, Like you don't see it.
It's not affecting your clean air, your clean water. It's like some
sort of a global phenomenon, right, Like the air you breathe, in
the water you're drinking. Those are American problems. Climate change is like a
global thing, right, And yet bid the administration and the EUPA and all
those people currently are entirely seemingly focused on climate change and not so focused on
like clear and clean water, which goes back to like, most people just
care about clear and clean water. They don't want to look like China.
They don't want they don't want the air to be like so visible that you
can't even see your friend across your yard, and that's what they care about.
So I just think every time we take over an agency, we should
think about how does an everyday person interact with this agency, and how can
we focus on the little things that are in there way? You know,
how can we focus on those kinds of things, because that, to me
is just the biggest difference between conservatives running government and I mean actual conservatives,
Because there was these jokes that were always made about the the Bush administration was
that it was driving the car in the same direction as the Clinton administration,
just in the lower gear. Perfect joke, But like, focus on little
things. So I'll use another example. When I was going around talking to
my solicitor general colleagues back many years ago we first started this dishwasher issue,
a couple of them were like, my boss is going to get laughed at
because this is too small ball of an issue, and I retorted with,
no, this might be the only thing people in your state know about your
boss when he doesn't. Now we fast forward, and it's getting a lot
of attention because it is true that people, most people aren't consuming news about
government twenty four hours a day, but they're very aware of what's happening in
their daily lives. Right, They're very aware that the cars are cost more,
that the dishwasher costs more. Those are the issues, and so I
just think that is the biggest difference between conservatives and liberals, and it's something
that I think is is how we should think about the next general administration.
And it's a way to turn the administrative state, because you can't go in
I mean, have all the respect in the world for like mcmulbany and these
people, but you can't go into the CPB and just basically ask them to
go and like drink hemlock. Right, No, you can't, just can't.
Right, But like if you have some sort of a legal argument for
ending an agency, like only the first one to sign up normally, right,
that's federal lock. Hemlock is y do. But it's legal, Yeah,
do legal. But but what I really mean is when you go into
an agency and tell them I don't think you should exist and therefore none of
you should really be here. That doesn't work. But when you go into
like a consumer protection group and you say, I care about consumers, I
care about every day people. I care about scammers. Let's go and focus
on fly by night people selling stuff on Amazon, people who are stealing products
from stores and then repackaging it and selling like spoiled baby formula. We should
focus on the people who are like scamming old people out of their retirement savings
by promising to build the websites that we're never going to sell anything. I
mean, these are all real things that I dealt with. Let's focus on
those things. Now. Some of the staff are going to be like,
WHOA, I didn't sign up here to like fight like scammers, And you're
like, cool, that's fine, you can leave, But like the rest
of us are going to go and fight scammers. You'd be amazed, Like
you start to split the administrative staff because a whole chunk of them are really
there to help people, and then there's a chunk of them there there to
like remake the world, and you know Elizabeth Warren's image, and you can
use the first group to help people. Well, you've got to tell them
where to up and where they should go is normally, let's work on making
dishwashers better for people. Let's go and stop scammers. And that's smaller stuff,
I mean, or at least the more like the more like domestic aspects.
You can get those people marching in your direction because you've convinced them that
you care about people and that you want them to help people, and that's
the goal, Like in every federal agency should be that, because you can
split the staff, like a chunk of them are on like club fed and
they're working from home and they're not going to do any work anyway. But
like frankly, that's a separate problem because that also means they're not making Biden's
life an easier. But like a chunk of them you can get to help
you because you just convinced them that you actually want to do something. Club
fed so good. That's a literal thing. Did you have You never heard
that before? No, I haven't heard it before. And I'm ashamed because
I've lived in DC forever and it's just the club fed island basically. Yeah,
no, it's like they're on club fed. They like there's secretaries and
these agencies that are on one hundred sent permanent work from home. Oh my
gosh, like a bunch of these people, a bunch of these people.
I'm not the best at this because my friends all worked in the in the
from administration, know ifestor like some of them are allowed to flex their time,
which means they only work four days a week, ten hour days,
and then they're allowed to work from home like two of those days, and
then there's so basically they just refer to a club bed. Like some of
them their job is to be a secretary, but they only work from home.
And then some of them only come to the office like two days a
month. Because when you add up the flex time and this time and the
work from home allowance, and they just call it clubbed. They're like they're
here, but like they're not really here because they're literally at home doing whatever
and we can't even know, we don't even know what they're doing. Yeah,
and I know you like when you talk to people in DC that are
kind of outside like the conservative bubble, it's amazing how many of them.
Like, I talked to a guy. I'm not making this up. I
mean he was inebriated, to be fair, but he worked for a federal
agency and was telling us all about how he travels the world and you know,
can wink wink work everywhere or anywhere, and it is just like astounding
the There you go, look quite literally club fed. In that case.
EXCI is the executive director of the Alliance for Consumers and you can go to
Alliance for Consumers dot org to find more about their work. Thank you so
much for joining us, really really appreciate it. Thanks a lot, and
may days be numbered. Yes, amen, you've been listening to another edition
of The Federalist or a radio hour. I'm Emily Tashinsky, culture editor here
at The Federalist. We will be back soon with more. Until then,
the lovers of freedom and anxious for the Fray