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