Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
what you can do for your country.
Speaker 2: Mister Garbaschoff, tear down this wall.
Speaker 3: It's the Ricchet Podcast with Stephen Hayward and I'm James
Lilas and today we go to the Conservative Crossroads and
dot to Rob Johnson, no Henry Olson. So let's have
ourselves a podcast.
Speaker 4: And you took ten thousand dollars. That's a lot, and
help them do it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: The other thing is, whistle blowers came to you as
early as twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4: Let's look as early as twenty nineteen.
Speaker 5: Whistle blow don't talk over me early talking about in nineteen.
Speaker 2: It's my hearing pal. As early as nineteen, don't come.
Speaker 1: Whistle blowers came to well, I should call you a
prisoner because you ought to be in jail.
Speaker 4: Welcome everybody.
Speaker 3: It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and seventy six.
Speaker 4: Well that sounds patriotic.
Speaker 3: I'm James Lynx here in Minneapolis and I'm joined by
Stephen Hayward and I presume California.
Speaker 4: Yes, and this is the Ricochet Podcast.
Speaker 6: You can join us at by the.
Speaker 3: Way and be part of the most stimulating conversations and
community on the web.
Speaker 4: Why don't you go there?
Speaker 3: Well, not now, I mean you're you're you're leaning forward,
elbows on the table, wrapped, waiting to see where this
is all going to go.
Speaker 4: But you know, when we're done, amble over and see
what all the fuss is about. Stephen? How are you today?
How have things been? It's been two weeks.
Speaker 3: Last week I was I was flat with a with
a stomach bug, not the stomach flu. There's no such
thing as stomach flu. I don't think, I mean, you
can't have influenza of the you know, the g I part.
It was some bug, some neuro some campy, back to
some something.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm fine.
Speaker 1: I'm still getting over a respiratory bug I caught a
week ago. But I'm back up and fighting form and
very happy about the news.
Speaker 2: This week just been. You know, I'm not tired of winning.
I'll just put it that way.
Speaker 3: Well, let's go down those lists of winds as you
see them. I'm sure some people regard them as mortal
blows against the American experts. But with your sunny optimism,
in your particular prism, what are the things that you
what winnings do you like today.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the biggest story of the week, and
I think you can't overstate how big it is is
the Trump administration rolling back what's been known as the
endangerment finding of the Opening.
Speaker 4: That would be the one.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, that's the most consequential thing that I've got
to explain.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, look, I used to be when I
lived in Washington.
Speaker 1: I marinated in all the fine points of the climate
policy and energy debate. And it's so and I want
to avoid the technical details because it gets thick and
boring in a hurry. But what's important is is that
this was step one, now almost twenty years ago, essentially
for the federal government to take over the entire energy
system of the United States, and that meant nationalizing all
the electric utilities. They never said that's what they were doing,
but that, in effect is what was happening.
Speaker 2: And you know, I actually used to read through.
Speaker 1: These fifteen hundred page draft plans of the EPA and
because I have a high threshold of pain, Well, so
if the Trump administration has done is not merely a
simple bureaucratic step. But to make a long story short,
they've done patient work quietly over the last several years
Will Biden was president to lay the groundwork to not
only roll back the cornerstone of their power grab overpower
good by that included our client standards, other things you
and I have covetched about forever, but to make it
stick legally. And that's very important, and that gets the
way the bureaucratic wheels grind, and I think they are
going to be able to make it stick. But to me,
the most delicious part of all this is watching the
press coverage. So the ABC Evening News said Trump rolls
back the power of the United States to control the climate.
Speaker 2: That's what he said, Like, you know, we have a
knob in the ebs.
Speaker 1: You do just control the climate by turning a knob,
I mean, And you know, the New York Times is
having a fit.
Speaker 2: I love their headline.
Speaker 1: Here is Trump allies near total victory in wiping out
US climate regulation. And I thought, gosh, the Times that's
like it's a bad thing, right, And the Time says
that looks like they're going to be able to make
the stick. Unlike other things Trump is doing, that may
be reversed on day one by a democratic president.
Speaker 3: Now I'm just a little old Country hic moron up
here in the fly flyover states. But to me, this
is like reading a headline that says the Administration relaxes
ban on flogistin there is a I mean, let's go
back to two thousand and nine here, if I can
read my notes. At two thousand and nine, which is
when they began, the EPA found that carbon dioxide, which
I hope I never have anything to do with, methane,
and nitrous oxide, which of course that stuff you get
at the dentist. It makes you feel better now, and
three other greenhouse gases quote endangered the public health and
welfare of current and future generations. So one of the
Clean Air Act this was said, and then SCOTUS ruled
a little while later that the agency could set the determinations. So,
in other words, it's huge, huge power was lent to
these people predicated on the science that all of these
greenhose gases are going to cause changes in the climate
that will be catastrophic, that will be expensive, that will
kill people, that make the seas rise, all the rest
of it, And that has been gospel ever since. Right,
we are living in an era, as we've talked before,
of the authoritative, settled science, all the things that people know,
all the institutions that people trusted, all of the experts
and the rest of it. All that credibility is being dismantled.
And this is one piece of that. Now you're right
about the hysteria. I mean, the Barack Obama be tweeted
out that said that the endangement finding served as the
basis for limits on tailpipe emissions. And I found that
to be an interesting way to put it, because it's
most of it's supposed to make people think, you know,
of those huge, choking, horrible, stinky, dark clouds that come
from the back of every car. Tail pipe emissions I'm
guessing at this point are significantly cleaner than they used
to be, in part because they have to be. But
she remember back in the days of leaded gasoline when
I was a child, I mean you would actually see
you would see these anti pollution ads are the ones
that had the fake Indian with the tear rolling down
his cheek, and you would see fleets of cars and
this massive dark smoke billowing from underneath them.
Speaker 6: I can still smell this stuff.
Speaker 3: Well, that isn't the case anymore so, finding saying that
tailpipe emissions might not be the thing exactly that gets
people all head up. And he also talked about power
planned rules are going to be relaxed.
Speaker 6: Well, maybe we need more power plants, and maybe we
need more nuclear plants, but he says it's just to
the only reason is so the fossil fuel industry can
make more money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know this recent cold snap we went through
a couple of weeks ago, coal and oil save the day.
You know, we actually don't generate any serious amount of
electricity with oil anymore. It used to be fifty years
ago twenty percent, but then oil got expensive, as we know,
and we shifted to coal and natural gas. But in
the North the East, where they have been blocking natural
gas pipelines, they had to fire up a lot of
oil and diesel power generators to keep the lights on
and keep people warm.
Speaker 2: And they've been on.
Speaker 1: For I mean, I think I just read earlier this
week that they finally in the New England shut off
the last of the oil fired power plants they put
online for emergencies. Steps the tailpipe thing, Oh gosh, I
know all the statistics on this, and yes, emissions of
some things are down almost one hundred percent from what
they were fifty years ago. To dramatize it for listeners,
I show students a slide, and you'll appreciate this because
you're old enough as I am to have worked on
a carburetor at one time in the line, Right, I
always like to pop the hood and fiddle with the
screwdriver and the carburetor. It probably made things worse. But
we don't have carburetors anymore. We went to fuel injected engines, right.
And another thing is that little flaps on our the
gas tanks where we put the nozzle in.
Speaker 2: We didn't used to have those.
Speaker 1: Well, I show a slide to students when I go
through all this, and I show on the left side
a nineteen sixty seven Mustang parked in a driveway with
the engine off, and on the riot, I'll show a
late model or on two thousand and five Mustang driving
down the highway at sixty miles an hour. And the
trick question is which one of these cars is putting
out more air pollution? And of course the trick answer
is the Mustang parked in the driveway is emitting more
pollution with its engine off than the Mustang driving down
the road of sixty miles an hour with the engine on.
Speaker 3: Explain that way. Explain that counter intuitive example, Miss Well.
Speaker 2: The technical term was fugitive emissions.
Speaker 1: The reason we sealed up engines the way they are
now that you can't get to him anymore, is to
stop essentially gasoling from evaporating.
Speaker 2: It really was that simple.
Speaker 1: It used to be tons of place like La where
I grew up, significant amount of you know, gasoline evaporating
into the air from our old style cars from fifty
sixty years ago. We have none of that anymore. And
that's why SOMEMOG levels have fallen, depending on the city
you're in, you know, by fifty sixty seventy percent. And
I could say I can bore you silly, But I
also stop there and say Obama doesn't know what he's
talking about.
Speaker 2: As usual.
Speaker 3: Well, we're in a bit of a bind here because
we say, well, you know, cars are cleaner today, the
air is cleaner today.
Speaker 4: We don't need this stuff. A lot of the reasons
that we have these advancements and we have cleaner engines.
Speaker 3: And the rest of it is because there has been
the heavy thumb of the federal government pushing down the
scale and telling everybody what they want.
Speaker 4: I mean, so we have to admit that probably.
Speaker 3: We would not have the progress that we do if
it had been left up to the consumer or the
industry itself.
Speaker 4: I mean, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 3: But the point is is that after you've done a
certain amount of work, then the existence of the agency
has to perpetuate itself and it has to justify itself.
So you have ever more attempts to get cleaner and
cleaner and cleaner and cleaner, which are incremental and small
and petty in what they accomplish, but actually great in
the impact that they have on driveability, on the shape
of the cars, on survivability, and you know all of
that stuff. So yes, I'm not gonna be one of
those guys who say we should go back to where
it was in sixty.
Speaker 4: Eight when they were dumping cadmium in the river.
Speaker 3: You could say that markets have aally would have fixed everything,
and maybe that's so.
Speaker 6: False.
Speaker 4: Five, But we did clean things up.
Speaker 3: I mean, you remember ecology was oh yes, that's what
it was called back then, and it had all the
raiments and all the trappings of a religion as it
does to this day. But it won, and it got
a lot of stuff good, and it changed public consciousness.
Speaker 4: But we have never moved.
Speaker 3: It seems like we haven't moved at all in public consciousness.
Speaker 6: About the imminent demise of the late great planet Earth,
right of spaceship birth.
Speaker 3: It seems like we're still back in seventy nine sixty nine,
where people are protesting somebody dumping cadmium in the river.
Speaker 1: Well, I actually think there has been some changes in
public opinion now. Of course, you're right, the climate cult
or the environmental cult as I like to call them,
the true believers still think the world's coming to an
end tomorrow, and they get way too much press attention.
I think for a variety of reasons, and I've looked
at a lot of surveys on this, a lot of
the public has been suffering from a while now from
what I call apocalypse fatigue. Right, we we're hearing all
this stuff, and that's one reason why. It's why I
think it doesn't stick anymore. I think what you would
say is, and again my sort of summary line on
this is what regulation did was in a few instances,
make us get after things we would have otherwise ignored
and it's sped up technological change and development that was
already in process in the marketplace.
Speaker 2: But most people don't know.
Speaker 1: For example, that a lot of kinds of air pollution
were falling in the sixties pretty fast before the first
Clean Air Act passed. That wasn't because companies wanted to
be good. It's because they wanted to be more efficient
in their resource use. They also face some lawsuits, you know,
local nuisance suits and so forth, and so so. Regulation
certainly has a role, but it's not the case. Well,
I always put it this way. You know, it took
the civil rights movement of the century to get to
their milestones in the sixties with the Civil Rights Act.
A lot of the environmental organizations problemed today weren't founded
until after all that landmarkt legislation was passed in Congress
and then mostly lived the just file lawsuits.
Speaker 3: Well, one of the unexpected results of this is the
end of the stop start, stop start engine. I don't
have one of those, Oh yeah, because I absolutely despise
the idea, no matter how many people tell me that
they're wonderful and efficient and the.
Speaker 4: Rest of it. Every time I drive in a car
with one of those things. I just I just.
Speaker 3: First of all, the idea of legislating out of existence
the American urged to put it in neutral and revit
just because you can, just because you can. I mean,
when I drove a stick, I used to just absolutely love,
you know, just winding that thing up and then dropping it.
Speaker 4: It's unamazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's as American as using too much lighter
fluid on your barbecue, which we should all.
Speaker 4: Do, absolutely so.
Speaker 3: And then it's overfilling your zipon and putting that in
the pocket and getting one of those rashes.
Speaker 4: But yeah, gosh, it's great to be an American.
Speaker 3: Speaking of great Americans, we got Henry Olsen back, Henry
Senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Speaker 4: You can find his writings, oh, in.
Speaker 3: Countless places, the Washington Examiner, Commonplace, the Liberal Patriot, Brussels Signal.
We'll have to ask him about Brussels here in a bit.
You can also catch him on the air right here
at Ricochet, thet On Audio Network, because he.
Speaker 4: Hosts Beyond the Polls and is of this year.
Speaker 6: He's launched a new series, Conservative Crossroads, and we'll talk
a little bit more about that later.
Speaker 4: As well, Henry, welcome back.
Speaker 5: Well thanks for having me back.
Speaker 4: Well good, So here we are now, Kime.
Speaker 3: When we had you back on last but probably the
president's poll numbers were higher than they are now. I
think he's thirteen thirteen points underwater or something like that.
Of course, Gallup is pulling out of that business. I
don't know why is this accurate? Is this a reflection
of a fickle public? Is this because of ice? What's
driving the numbers at the moment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think there's a lot of things driving the
numbers that First of all, the economy is not bad,
but it's not rip roaring good, especially if you are
the sort of person who had a difficult time in
the Biden inministration. Real wages are still lower than they
were when Joe Biden took office. Getting better, but you're
still poorer on average than you were, and I think
people expected a quicker turnaround. I think the sheer amount
of chaos and action that is coming from the Trump administration,
much of which is geared overseas, is sending a message
he doesn't care about us, us being the marginal voter
who can go either way. And then I do think
that it's a case of people want the president to
succeed on his objectives with immigration, but they think that
the in the street, in your face, and all too
often violent tactics, even if provoked, are a step too far.
And I think the combination of those things is why
the swing voter in America had swung toward him and
now are currently swinging against second.
Speaker 4: Boitt is interesting.
Speaker 3: As much as we were told that we were done
with foreign wars and entanglements and all the rest of it,
We're going to be America first, But it's not as
if we are engaged in protracted, long kinetic exercises in
places with building of the sort that we had before.
Is it possible for those people who are suspicious of
foreign entanglements and or adventures still might be saying, hey,
you know, if Cuba topples of its own court after
we cut off the gas, maybe that's a good thing.
Speaker 5: You know, there's not a whole lot of support for
long ground wars. There's not a whole lot of opposition
in the Trump coalition to short victorious wars or the
exercise of American power to stop the bad guys. And
I think Venezuela was a perfect example of that Operation
Midnight Hammer, and Iran was another example of that. And
if they managed to topple or significantly reform the regime
in Cuba without firing a shot, not only will jubilation
be heard in South Florida, but I think most people
who are open to voting for Trump would be very
happy with that.
Speaker 1: Okay, Henry, I want to ask you about the Gallop
decision to stop daily tracking polls. And I mean, I
wonder is it just because some of the other people
are doing it now that they don't need to anymore,
or has it gotten more difficult or expensive or related
to this, and or I observe that every recent president
has landed in the low forties after a while, going
back now at least to George W. Bush right, And
I'm wondering now if that's a new pattern in American
presidential approval.
Speaker 2: So the whole number is, it's not meaningless.
Speaker 1: I understand the correlations between low approval ratings and how
you fare in the midterms. I wonder if this is
the new normal in American presidential politics, whereas you know
the other party doesn't like you, and so you're already
you know, you're already down to fifty percent, and then
the independence and the swing voters who pay attention at
various levels, they defect in a hurry, and so everybody
lands after a couple of years down around forty two
to forty five percent.
Speaker 5: Now I think there's some, uh, there's some truth to that,
but there's also I think the general fact that we
haven't had a successful presidency in unambiguously successful presidency in
many decades. So you've got Obama coming to power, saying
that he's going to bring hope and change, and then
he focuses his attention on things he didn't campaign on,
leading to Obamacare, and you have President Trump's chaotic first
couple of years. And then you have Joe Biden, who
said he was going to bring normalcy back and instead
he heightens the divisions and we have the highest inflation
in forty years and the breakout of war. So you
look and you say, why would you expect approval ratings
over fifty percent when you actually look at the interplay
between what these candidates said and did, and I think
Trump is falling into that same a pattern.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, all right, But the counter argument, though, Henry,
is that Trump was almost re elected in twenty twenty
even with the COVID disaster and impeachment, and Kamala Harris
almost won in twenty twenty four despite inheriting the terrible
record and ratings of Biden. So that's why I think
that now maybe there's I have a look at the
numbers the way you do, which you know you don't sleep.
Speaker 2: Because you're up all night looking at these things all
over the world.
Speaker 1: We know this, But I'm wondering if that the numbers
simply less not insignificant, but less meaningful than it used
to be.
Speaker 5: I think what's true is that we have a much
narrower event band, you know, and that is caused by partisanship.
That if eighty five to ninety percent of people who
are going to be polled are on one team or
the other, they're not going to give the leader of
the other team a whole lot of credit. But that
doesn't explain the variation within the band. And that's what
I was trying to say, is that Donald Trump has
negative job approval, but his strongly dislike or strongly disapproved
numbers doesn't really rise above forty or forty one percent.
That's the other team, and the same is generally true
during the Biden administration. Yeah, he had terrible job approval numbers.
But the difference between forty eight or fifty and forty
one or forty two is the people who somewhat disapprove
and sometimes they can somewhat approve. So yeah, I'd say
we no longer. We'll get a president who will get
sixty percent or seventy percent job approval ratings, as was
not uncommon at all during the fifties through the nineties.
But the difference between forty two and forty eight is
not caused by partisanship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, let's shift gears to your new initiative, Conservative Crossroads,
and I want to ask you a question. Is there
I want to have a debate with yourself. In other words,
I want to see if we can't create a schizophrenic
episode of Conservative Crossroads by asking you, Henry Olsen, there
are one or two issues over whatever time, Fray you want,
that you have substantially changed your mind about, and what
are they and why?
Speaker 5: I've substantially changed my mind about a lot of things
over the last since you and I met each other
many years ago. I've changed my mind about the possibility
and the desirability of a very small federal government. I
think that the rise of the New Deal, while diverted
in directions that are inconsistent with American Republicanism, was actually,
on the whole a largely beneficial and unstoppable trend. Because
of the question for human dignity, I've changed a lot
about that, So that means I've changed my mind about
questions like the appropriate level of taxation and spending. You know,
I would have agreed with always trying to starve the
beast in the eighties, and now I don't agree with
starving the beast. I think raising taxes on people is
not necessarily a job killer. It depends how you raise
them and where you raise them level that they're at.
And then you know, with respect to foreign policy, I
would say I became I was very chastened by the
failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the failures of our
allies to actually act as allies as opposed to supplicants.
You know, I was at a Canadian embassy event thirteen
years ago, and I learned. I listened to them, and
I realized that American leadership and American deership, and I
politely said, yeah, you can talk about different levels, but
you're going to have to do more. And I've never
been invited back to the embassy, But so I have
moved on a host of issues in a way because
Ronald Reagan said in his nineteen seventy seven Seapack speech
that an ideologue fits the facts to meet his theories,
like sitting them in a pro krusty in bed, where
if they stand over for people who aren't interested in
either the Perry Percy Jackson series or Greek mythology, that
means if you're too long for the bed, pro Krusty's
cuts your legs off. Whereas a conservative somebody who ejects
changes his not principles, but his direction based on facts
on the ground. And I changed my direction based on
what I consider to be facts on the ground.
Speaker 6: If I may interject, let's go to taxation.
Speaker 3: Taxation, for example, I think is something that the state
ought to do the least amount of because it's a
distorting mechanism. It requires obfiscation of private property by the
force of the state. And my example, when I sat
down and put and wrote out a check for my
estimated taxes for the state of Minnesota, I felt like
an absolute fool. There are times when I just think, oh, yeah, well,
there's a lot of wasteful spending on there. But you know,
on the other hand, Social Compact, Wendy Anderson, and now
I feel like an idiot because billions of dollars of
that that that we all sent to them was completely misused,
was completely wasted, was spent on fraud, and the state
did nothing about it and.
Speaker 4: Doesn't seem to really particularly care other than saying, look
over there.
Speaker 3: So I'm I'm less inclined to say yay taxation, and
I'm curious to know what you what your rationale is
for saying yes, by gum, let's hoover up more into
the arms of the state, and the next time.
Speaker 4: They'll spend it absolutely correctly.
Speaker 5: Next most of the money is spent correctly. I mean, yes,
there's fraud and they should be doing more about it.
And Minnesota is an egregious example, but you know, let's
take a look at where we are. I favor state
level tax cut. States tend to be in a position
where they aren't running deficits, they have access revenues they've
already met. I mean, Steve laughs because he's in California
with yeah, but you take a look at Republican states
that have been cutting income taxes dramatically in the last
five years. It's all from surplus revenue. And you read
the budget announcements and they're always saying, well, we're doing this,
and we're spending money on K through twelve, and we're
doing this, and we're doing this. That's because most states
have met the basic level of what their voters want.
They have a strong safety net, they have a strong
transportation system, they have a strong public safety system, they
have a strong support for public education, in the environment.
In those worlds, yeah, let's cut taxes, but that's not
where the federal government is. We're running five to six
percent of GDP deficit, nearly two trillion dollars. We've got
nearly one hundred percent of GDP in debt. We're never
going to pay that debt down. We're going to We're
paying spending a trillion dollars a year, over three percent
of GDP simply to pay the interest on that debt.
And it strikes me that, yes, there's plenty of places
I would like to cut I've written about it, but
we're not going to solve that deficit problem, and we're
certainly not going to pay for the national defense that
we need to counter China based on growth. And I
think it's we should raise taxes to recognize the fact
that forty years have starved the beast, have simply bloated
the debt, and we're not going to start the beast
because Americans don't want to starve the beast. Republicans don't
want to starve the beast. So the question is, how
can we get to put the beast on a diet
and how can we increase our muscle through taxation so
that we do what people want, what we need, and
we don't bankrupt our children and grandchildren.
Speaker 3: In the state, you have to gate Donald Frum going
in front of the you State of the Union and
saying we've got to raise taxes on the middle class
because that's where money is.
Speaker 5: Look, there's a lot of ways you can raise revenue.
You know, for example, people who are wealthy seniors pay
only about on an average, twenty eight percent of their
cost in Medicare Part B and Part D premiums. If
you're making one hundred and fifty grand and you're seventy
years old, why not pay one hundred percent. You know,
why is it that people who are in the top
two tax brackets get in deduction for home mortgage interest
at all? They don't need it to buy their home.
This is just a layap, you know, a giveaway. There's
lots of ways to raise revenue without raising rates. And
let's see where we come after that, before we talk
about raising taxes on the middle class.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, Henry, I was afraid you were going to
go full Rhino on us and you were not disappointing.
Speaker 5: Well, gee, you know, let me put it to you
this way. You can't win a national election. Yeah, okay, right,
who provide Donald Trump his majority are people who voted
for Obama against Romney, Obama against McCain, carry against Bush.
And the reason he had a popular vote majority is
the people who voted for Biden and Clinton who decided
to change their votes. You can't win a majority with.
Speaker 2: What well, well, let me give let me give it
to you that.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm in considerable agreement with you for different grounds. First,
I think I'm with James that I still have Milton
Freeman's attitude that I'm for cutting any tax at any
time for any reason except now here to be wonky
for a minute, and because you just did some yourself,
we couldn't stop you.
Speaker 2: I think it was Bill Bill A. Scannon, the late
Bill NA Scan.
Speaker 1: A good conservative, Republican economists, libertarian, Cato Institute guy, I
think twenty years ago. He did the empirical work, and
I found convincing that in fact the Reagan tax cuts
and other attempts actually increased spending. Wasn't the debt he
was looking at. He said, it didn't have the effect
of starving the beast. Instead, the beast figured out new
ways to gorge. Which is why I've thought, and boy,
get a lot of pushback on this. I thought, Okay,
if starve the beast doesn't work, maybe we ought to
adopt the strategy which is yours, I think. But I'll
stay it this way, serve the check. And my proposition
is if the American people, all the American people, the
middle class teams bring up, if they had to pay
for all the government we got, they might want a
lot less of it, and so there would be a
failure nerve of Republicans or anybody else.
Speaker 5: You know, I just don't see what I see from
the States where you don't have the deficit. Problem is
that Republicans don't want to cut You take a look
at the example I like to use of Alaska. Alaska
state has no packs, state packs, no sedale tacks, but
they do have the permanent fund of oil dividends, and
each person gets thousands of dollars a year from the state. Well,
because of the shortfall and oil, they've been cutting that
in app and when Governor Donalleevy took over in twenty nineteen,
he presented a you know, let's shrink the state budget.
He said, we can double what you get, which is
thousands of dollars a year regardless of income for each person.
So a family for would get like seven grand a
year back. All we have to do is cut state
government twenty five percent. He was nearly impeached crually, I
mean not impeached. He's nearly recalled. They had definitely his
approval ratings, saying he had to retreat. They've been spending
down their savings every year, and each year he says,
let's have a discussion about what level of state we have.
Republicans don't want to cut government twenty five percent to
get thousands of dollars back in their pocket. No possible
tax cut can give individuals more money than doubling the
PFD and Alaska would have given and they almost ran
the Republican out of Dodge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know what he has to be able
to do in Alaska as he hasn't been able to
get the federal government to lift their thumb off of
oil production.
Speaker 2: So you made all the numbers.
Speaker 1: Alaska production peaked in the eighties at two million barrels
a day. Now it's under five hundred thousand bears. It's
fallen by more than seventy five percent, and of course
oil prices adjusted for inflation, have actually gone down. But
of course, you know democrats and the environmental group stuff. Okay,
you know all that part of it. But the other
thing is Henry. And I'm surprised that you haven't invoked
our mutual hero Ronald Reagan, who used to say, you know,
it's the problem with spinning is growing like this. He
put his arm up at a forty five degree angle,
something like this is what we need to do is
make it grow like this, and he'd lower his arm
to a thirty degree angle.
Speaker 2: That works.
Speaker 1: And so, for example, Florida has not cut its budget. However,
Florida's budget today, the state of Florida, its budget is
lower than the budget for the state for New York
City under Mundami, Right, with a bigger population, much better results. Right,
So I don't think it's really I think you put it.
I always hate that phrase, a false choice, that's overused
and it's a cop out. But I do think in
this case it's not a matter of having big slashing
of budgets, but it does need some kind of discipline
we haven't seen for a long time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't have Again, I don't have a problem
with spending discipline. But that's doesn't allow you to cut
every tax all the time. You know, is that you
don't have a whole lot of tax cutting going on
in Florida. You know, of course they don't have an
income tax, and you've got a little cutting of taxes
on the edge.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you, Oh, let me sorry, let me
bring us up.
Speaker 1: Sorry to interrupt, Henry, but it does play into the
longer history of this. Desantas has been making noises about
abolishing the property tax.
Speaker 4: Ye, the idea about that idea, Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's a terrible idea.
Speaker 2: That's what I think too.
Speaker 5: But yeah, the reason why it's a terrible idea is
that the reason why it worked in California when you know,
the people when we were younger and Prop thirteen cut
property taxes by about two thirds, was because California had
a massive budget surplus and basically kept the level of
spending up by transferring the burden from the property tax
to the income tax. Florida doesn't have this multi billion
dollar annual state annual state surplus that it can just
throw around. It's got reserves. But if you want to
abolish the property tax, people want well funded public schools.
They want well funded public safety, police, probation, fire that
comes from the property tax. If you abolish the property tax,
something has to pay for it, because I can tell
you Republican voters don't want to significantly cut in those areas.
You can change the rate of growth somewhat, you know,
get rid of some wasteful employees in public education, fine,
I'm fine with that. Renegotiate contracts so it's not goal plated,
and you can fire bad teachers. Great. So you move
from having to replace one hundred percent of current spending
with eighty five percent of current spending that's good, but
you still have to actually spend what people want and
tax for it. And that's why government Desanta's idea is
not a good one, because he's talking about eliminating the
tax without really prudently preparing for backfilling.
Speaker 3: The spanis well, yeah, I mean, I get that. The
problem is that the cointacular nature of the state means
that everything is interconnected and started to do this without
doing that. You can say, we can get rid of
the property tax and then we'll find a better way
to fund the schools. Well, we'll do that by eliminating
public schools and giving everybody a voucher, and in the
long run that may indeed work, and all of a
sudden you've cut the costs because you're not having to
deal with unions, etcetera, etc. But that second part isn't
going to happen, and the first part requires the second
part to happen, and the second part requires a dismantling.
Everything becomes just like trying to do a Rubik's cube
in the.
Speaker 4: Dark during a hurricane.
Speaker 3: The reason a lot of people want to get rid
of the property tax, there's something that galls them to
think that they can actually own something. But if they
don't continue to cough up with the state requires them,
the state will come and take it away. And so
you don't really own your home. Nobody really does. And
I can understand why that animates some people. I see
your point there about the you know, the funding mechanisms,
but gosh, let's start with schools and fix that and
then maybe go to the funding mechanisms.
Speaker 6: TV. You had something else because I wanted to ask.
Speaker 3: Get into the question and hear about the Conservative Crossroads
the new podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I was going to propose a whole new
topic for Henry to take up on Conservative Crossroads, and
it's immigration.
Speaker 6: Ah.
Speaker 1: And there's two parts of this, and maybe the need
more than one. I mean one is I'll confess. I'll
make a guilty confessional listeners who will flame me for this.
I was always something of an immigration dove. I was
not open borders, and I thought there were the numbers
were too high, but generally thinking immigration, even a lot
of illegal immigration, had economic benefits. I'm now an immigration hawk.
That's something I've changed my mind about, rather dratic, dramatically,
but you know, a lot of our libertarian friends, like
the Cato people, are still effectively open borders and have
always numbers about how even in high numbers it's great
for us.
Speaker 2: So I think that's dubious.
Speaker 1: And then the second related part is birthright citizenship coming
before the court soon. And you know, it used to
be the person's the only people who denied or made
the case against birthright citizenship in a serious way, where
our friends John Eastman and Ed Erler, and that was
about it. But now there are more and more people
Elin Morman up there in Minnesota, down from James and
a lot of other people Richard Epstein, I think, to
some extent are saying, yeah, wait a minute, maybe this't
so clear. So anyway, there's two topics for you. But
where do you fall out on all that? And if
you want to talk about public opinion, that's fine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, you know, first of all, Conservative Crossroads is
going to have a debate in early March between Mark
Raccrian and Neil Bradley from the US Chamber on the
question of H one B visas. There you go, yeah, yes,
we are not shying away from this, you know, is
Mark coming down down? My view on illegal immigration is
Sonny bonos, it's illegal. I do not have much sympathy
for people who have managed to evade the law here.
And I also think that Trump, with his famous use
of leverage, ought to deport everybody everywhere he can find,
because that puts the leverage on the left and businesses
to finally deal with the question that we haven't dealt
with the last thirty years, which is how much and
what types? When you get to that point, I would
be perfectly happy to have a reasonable amount of migration
that's tied to employment and tied not to visas that
are essentially indentured servitude, which is what hb ones are,
but instead are general we think you have the skills
as long as you can show that you have some
degree to support yourself and your immediate but not extended
family come on in and you're not tied to a
particular employer while you're here. I don't know what that
level is more on either out. It's less than a
million and a half a year, which is what we've
been taking in legally, mainly because of chain migration. And
I think we should have everifying mandatory. I think there
should be audits, and I've written these things. These are
not new. I think the irs should pivot its audit
from high wealth individuals to business returns, and disallow wage
and benefit deductions for people who are not found on everify.
You want to stop illegal migration, stop feeding the beast,
stop giving the ability to be here. They're most of
them are not on benefits or scamming the system. They're working,
and they're taking jobs that could go albeit at higher
wages and benefits, to meet the expectations of native born Americans.
So get at the people who are feeding the beast.
And I think that we should have a much higher
tax on remittances from people who can knock demonstrate that
they're in the country legally. You want to let's dry
up the swamp and get at the demand for illegal.
Speaker 1: Okay, well we'll take one of your rhino horns back
from you then, Henry, that was good.
Speaker 6: Well, no, I just want to be clear.
Speaker 3: Beast wise federal governments stopped starving, and beast wise immigration starve.
Speaker 4: Just so, just in case anybody.
Speaker 5: It should be US plus not competition off.
Speaker 1: By the way, Henry, your invocation of Sonny Bono allows
me to tell a rob long type story.
Speaker 2: It's thirty five years ago.
Speaker 1: Now we're more When he was mayor of Palm Springs.
I don't remember how it happened, when we had lunch
together and he was then planning to run against Gray Davis,
remember him for a lieutenant governor, And I said, oh, Sonny,
I've got your your bumper sticker. It'll be better Sonny
than Gray. And maybe our producer can put in a
rim shot at this point, but still he was great.
Speaker 2: That guy was so underestimated, and boy do I miss him?
Speaker 5: Yeah? No, I mean that skiing accident was a terrible thing,
and he was much much more effective and much smarter
than the people are willing to give him credit.
Speaker 3: So Conservative Crossroads is about, you know, the discussion is
going on within the right. Yes, how much of the
pro immigration Chamber of Commerce stiment that you're describing before,
how much of that is held by the right these days,
because it seems to me to be about a ninety
ten issue.
Speaker 5: Well, it depends what type of immigration you're talking about.
If you're talking about illegal immigration, it is, which is
why I'm not having a discussion on illegal immigration. You know,
I may have something later this year about mandatory use
of the verify, where I would guess the Chamber will
say no, we don't want that business burden. But on
legal immigration is dramatic differences of opinion. We may very
well come up with that. You know, I think we're
the Republican base, but I think more broadly, in terms
of the potential Republican coalition, there's significant differences not on
the question of illegal immigration and deportation, but on questions
of h one B's, on questions of the degree to
which we should have legal immigration, the degree to which
we should have forbearans, for people who have been here
for a long time, or have American citizen children, and
so forth. There's a large difference of opinion questions, and
they're unquantifiable. They're difficult things to nail down because people
will say, yes, illegal has begune. But on the other hand,
when presented with the example of somebody who's been here
for thirty years, has never done anything wrong, has got
a business, the wife, child, the rest of it, has
lived in an exemplar real life, a lot of people say, well,
you know, I can see making you know you can't vote,
but you have to do this, and they come up
with this elaborate process which other people think the minute
we get that it's going to be amnesty and forget
about it, and they're all going to be citizens.
Speaker 6: And that's that.
Speaker 4: That's one part of it.
Speaker 3: The second part of it that we don't talk about
is the cultural impact of this and how it changes places.
Specifically when small towns have to deal with influx is
because they're the guys who work in the meatpacking plant
or or you.
Speaker 6: Know, the factory or whatever.
Speaker 3: And that's a conversation that the right doesn't seem to
want to have at all, and it's sort of it's
left to return with the unsavory types on the internet,
to go straight straight to the mass deportation theory and
saying just everybody got to go.
Speaker 5: One of the things Conservative Crossroads is trying it is
trying to do is say, we have to talk about
these things. We can't pretend that we that we agree
on everything, because we don't. We have large agreement at
the level of principle. We have large disagreement on specific things.
And it's precisely by leaning into it that you minimize
the opportunity of people to present themselves kind of as
you know, the custodian of the secret key. This is
what they don't want to tell you, and then you
open up all these weird conspiracy theories and bogus stuff.
But if no one's talking about the problem and the
only person who's talking about the problem is a maligned
nut job, some people are going to be seduced by
the maligned nutjob. So let's let's open the doors. Let's
have these discussions and say it's okay for conservatives to
talk about it, and hopefully that means a healthier conservatism
in the.
Speaker 3: End, especially when somebody is saying there's no such thing
as the great replacement theory, and then you have somebody
in Spain saying, what we knew need to do is
to replace all these people greatly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and every other college course is and whiteness, right,
I mean they put that on the titles, and gee,
we're not supposed to think.
Speaker 2: They mean it.
Speaker 6: Before we you know, before we go, and we're going
to let you and we're not going.
Speaker 4: We're not done. We're not done with you yet.
Speaker 3: Henry Concert Conservative Conservative Crossroads is the coming podcast. It's
going to be great. But also you've written elsewhere. You're
in commonplace.
Speaker 4: You wrote a piece.
Speaker 3: About the st FU or the st the state of
the Union speech, and you're giving some advice to the president. Now,
we're all tired of the State of the Union speeches,
especially when it becomes a long, legislative loundry list of
things that are good that we can spend money on.
It would be nice if somebody got up read a postcard,
since State of Union is great, good Calvin Coolidge, goodbye.
Speaker 4: But no, so you would said that he should.
Speaker 3: Talk about tariffs and let's start there, because tariffs have
not been in the forefront of the American imagination or
discussion recentlyncas just ninety other things he's done, but.
Speaker 6: That he should bring them up and he should tell
people that they're good.
Speaker 4: Why.
Speaker 5: Look, what the president does not have is a coherent,
consistent argument for his economic policies. He's one of his
strengths is that he's transactional. But in this case, the
political thing is that one of his weakness is that
he's haphazard. And what I'm saying is, Look, what you
need to do is tell the American people what you
say in pieces elsewhere, but put it all in one place,
which is Look, the reason we have had a weak
economy that doesn't work for every American, for the last
three five years is this, we've favored foreigners and consumption
more than Americans and production. We bring people in, often
illegally to compete with you for jobs, and that drives
down your wage benefits because guess what, somebody who comes
from Guatemala, where the minimum wage is three dollars an hour,
is going to accept a lower salary than you, who
have to have expectations of an American style of living.
People in Indonesia, where it's even poor, of course they're
going to work for lower and that means the factories
are going to go overseas, and that hurts you. The
way we solve this problem is by cracking down on
immigration illegally, reducing legal immigration so that we have a
tighter labor market so that you can get the higher
paying jobs that Americans want. And we reduce foreign trade
so that we don't have foreigners undercutting us. And tariffs
are a way to do that. Is that if you
put in a tariff, what happens is somebody wants to
outsource jobs. Great, if you want to satisfy the economics community,
you can call them pagoovi and taxes on externalities. You know,
is that the externality is social decline and growing social
angst because of declining relative living standards in America. And
what that does is it will create an incentive for
people to produce in America. That means we'll move from
an economy based on cheap labor and cheap consumption and
cheap goods that sends money out to other countries, enriches them,
and allows places like China to potentially destroy freedom. And
give me a chance. It'll take me more than a
year to turn it around, but we've seen the turnaround before.
Franklin Roosevelt turned the economy around in the Great Depression,
Ronald Reagan turned it around in his administration. I'm going
to do it now. Give me a chance.
Speaker 1: By the way, Henry, I can't believe you mentioned Pegoo
because you know what happened is Trump heard that and
he's giving us mister magoo instead.
Speaker 4: Come terrass.
Speaker 2: Well, it's all over the place.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I'm going to doubt that he's actually going
to put Pagoovian taxes. However, who I know, you know
he understands pagovi and taxes and he can make that argue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as I'm afraid of Okay.
Speaker 4: So what else should he tell the people. I imagine
that there will be discussion of immigration.
Speaker 3: I imagine there might be discussion of foreign policy, and
I'm sure that this is one of the things that
Conservative Crossroads is also going to deal with, because there
does seem to be well.
Speaker 5: We've had a discussion on Israel already, we have one
coming up on Ukraine. Depending what happens in Iran, we
might have one in Iran, but I'm planning to do
one on NATO, the nature of American alliances, and so forth.
So we will cover many of those topics because they
are actively being debated within conservatism, but broadly, Trump has
and Populism's worldwide thesis is essentially this. We were told
after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that if we
embraced globalization in the economy, we would have a rising
real living standard for everybody, that that would lower tensions
in the world by democratizing the world and making them richer,
and that if we push social progressive measures, we will
reduce tensions internally by bringing the excluded into the mainstream.
What has happened is all three of these policies have failed.
Globalization has enriched our adversaries and foreign countries at the
expense of the working class throughout the West, and it
is deliberately hurt our ability to make things, which I
don't know. Cyber warfare doesn't seem to replace bombs, even
if they're delivered by drones. You have to make things
to protect yourself. They have not democratized the world. Instead,
China has used our wealth, our ideas to build the
largest military that an adversary of ours. Their Bluewater Navy
is already more powerful than the Soviet Unions ever was,
and they're building massive numbers of ships each year. And
that's because we gave them the money and the material
and the ideas. Do you think that was a good idea?
Progressive social values, some of them have worked to lower tensions.
On the other hand, the speed and the degree and
the anti West, anti westernism that is on display with
so many of these advocates has actually dramatically increased social tensions.
So what you've got is a catastrophic failure. And if
I were Donald Trump, I would make that case and
tie all of my things together under the rubric of
I'm here to replace the failed system that has hurt
us economically hurt us socially and threatened our freedom. Only
you wanted to change. I'm giving you change, give me
the chance. That's how I would do it.
Speaker 3: You know, sometimes you just miss the old days of
the end of history. But now the end of history
seems to be like a Warner Brothers logo. And then
Donald Trump bursts in like porky big at the end
of it and waves his hand across the screen. But
he's not saying that's all, and he's saying something else
is about to begin, and we'll see what it is,
and we'll hear what it is. On Conservative Crossroads Henryelsen. Henry,
thanks great as ever, lots of fun. Didn't even get
to talk about Europe, but that'll be the next time
everybody listen to Conservative Crossroads here in the Ricochet Audio Network. Henry,
have a great day, great weekend, et cetera, and we'll
talk to you later.
Speaker 5: Same to you too. Thank you for having me back.
Speaker 4: Always a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Well before we go, dang, I hate to do it
to just hate to do it, but friend of the
show and a friend of the site, John Ecdall died
And if you're hanging around on conservative Twitter, you've probably
found that, and if you were following Charles C. W. Cook,
who usually is here, you will have noted that he
mentioned that that. As a matter of fact, he tweeted
at the time that John was his best friend and
he died of cancer at forty seven, so he has
a long ex post about this is very Charles. Of course,
the fellow would have spoke English accents talking about Florida
and football, which I love, and he said during the pandemic,
and I'm not.
Speaker 4: Going to do this in Charlie's voice.
Speaker 3: During the pandemic, John and I started a business together that,
relative to our expectations, did pretty well for a while.
As is typical, most of our ideas didn't pan out,
but that didn't matter. We had fun coming up with
them at the bar, adding just one more drink to
the tab to make sure that we hadn't missed an
angle or forgotten to write something down crucial in the
back of an increasingly ragged napkin.
Speaker 4: I'm forty one years old, and with the.
Speaker 3: Exception of my wife, I've never met anyone who's easier
to talk to than John. If we went for lunch,
we'd go for hours chatting about sports and roller coasters
and with kids in the new iPhone. And the unforgivable
changes is he made epcoc and EPCOP ninety nine. I
shall miss that immensely. The last time I saw him,
I said the same thing I said every time I
chatted with him over the last eleven years. Talk to
you in a bit, So that's bad, and said, yeah,
and his memory be a blessing, as they say. Of
course you might want to talk about on his most
triggering tweets, which was a masterclass in trolling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I followed.
Speaker 1: Him, I never knew him, interacted with him, but most
famous one, I think it's like a decade ago. And
he pointed out that what was the Ford F one
fifty and you know, the GM equivalent the best selling
cars in America?
Speaker 2: Buy a lot.
Speaker 1: And then the question was how many people in the
Washington Post or New York Times newsrooms know anyone who
drives a pickup truck? You would have thought somebody had
thrown a dead mouse in the middle of the newsrooms.
Speaker 2: It was outrageous to ask the kind of question.
Speaker 1: I mean that the parallel question that's even older, is
how many of you know an evangelical Christian in the
Washington Post newsroom, right, same outrage. Why just the impertinence
of asking such a question. Uh, But I do think, James,
we ought to add that Charlie has set up a
gofund me account for John's family. Uh, and it's on
his tweet. I don't have it handy. Maybe we can
put it in the show notes or something. But that
would be if people are so inclined and able. I
think that would be a nice gesture for Charlie and
John's family. You know, it's uh, I I don't know
about you, James, It's it's hard for I think it's
hard for guys in middle aged to lose their best
friend because it happened to me ten years ago. And
you know, it's a shock, it's a surprise. You can't
believe that a healthy person's uh suddenly goes downhill in
a hurry. And anyway, it's just, you know, it's a
I don't know. We're not very good at that. I
think I'll speak from no anyway, Yeah, no, no, no,
we're not. One of the things I learned though, when
I was just sort of googling around and you know,
assembling some stuff about John that I didn't know. I
never met him, I knew him, but then he he
was involved in in the co founder and the web
designer for a site called uni Watch, which is basically
about uniforms, which is about sports uniforms and charting the
minute derivations and changes and the.
Speaker 3: Rest of it, which is what the Internet is for. Frankly,
that's just basically what it's for. Yes, it's a massive
disinformation machine. Yes, it's a massive dark thing with tor browsers,
probably run by the CIA to coax people to get
defended from Thailand.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all sorts of awful things, but at its heart,
it is a mechanism by which people can find each
other and share things and dive into the things that
they love with at the level of detail in the
community that you just didn't really get to fined before
the Internet. And John was good at it on the
technical side and the human side as well.
Speaker 1: So I hope Charlie or somebody can keep up uni Watch,
only because we still have not yet been able to
prevent the Seattle Seahawks from those dreadful lime green uniforms
that you wear from time to time.
Speaker 3: Oh don't time don't don't you know, you know, and
also the strange topography sometimes that you see Sam Darnold.
Speaker 6: As a matter of fact, when he was a Minnesota Viking,
for some.
Speaker 3: Reason, we would look at the back of his jersey
and it would look that the D was actually sort
of more like an O. And so he became to
us amongst my friends, Sam Darnallo, which sounded like some
great stage musician, magician, and we would call it the
Great to Darnallo.
Speaker 4: Whenever he came. And you do that in public and
people look at you like you're an absolute idiot.
Speaker 6: What do you mean, Darnallo?
Speaker 4: It's darnay never mind, never mind. It is a uniform thing. Hey, folks,
you should go to Apple. You should over the podcast
thing and give us five stars.
Speaker 3: You should probably be happy with the with the volume
A level on this one, because I presume that that's
been fixed and the ads have been coming in and plasted.
Speaker 4: Your ears off, and that everything is fine.
Speaker 3: You should go to Ricochet itself and sign up if
you haven't, because when you say sign up, great, give
him an email, get lots of junk. Well that's just
what I want. No, we want you to go there
and give it money. It's just a little. It's just
a little, but that's what enables you to access the
member feet, and that's what enables you to call.
Speaker 4: Him to write comments. I mean, if you've been to
these other sites with a discus.
Speaker 3: And I got discus on my sight, I got some
really good commentators. But every once in a while I
got to step in and just give somebody the eighty six.
There's some sites that I love. I absolutely love the sites.
Never do I go to the comments because it's such,
it's just vile.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Got skin of the game. As founder brother Rob Long
once said, is he a father?
Speaker 4: Is he a past?
Speaker 1: Yet?
Speaker 3: We don't know what reason is Ecclesiastical Journey's skin of
the game, which means that everybody has to subscribe to
a code of conduct, and that keeps things interesting, it
really does. I mean, it's sort of like the old
days when you wore a tie and a suit down
on the airplane. Everybody sort of likes those old days.
Well that's what Ricochet is like in the member side.
It's like wearing a sit. I shouldn't say that. That
sounds uncomfortable, you know.
Speaker 4: What I mean.
Speaker 6: It's where adults behave, and now.
Speaker 4: We are done.
Speaker 3: We'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet four point zero,
Bye bye.
Speaker 4: Ricochet joined the conversation