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And again, thank you so much for your support. Speaking
of the Supreme Court, but actually this is actually the
best of Supreme Court at all. Well, but it is
kind of because I expect this is going to get
litigated too. The Justice Department issued a final rule updating
its regulations under Title VI. Some people call it Title
six of the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 1: This rule.
Speaker 2: This is according to the Justice Department Press Relief Here.
The rule ensures that the federal civil rights laws are
firmly grounded in the principle of equal treatment under the law.
I am as shocked as you. What is it going
to do? The rule change? The rule update eliminates disparate
impact liability.
Speaker 1: Good good.
Speaker 2: I have talked about this disparate impact for all sorts
of cases over the years, I mean, just for so long.
This is basically where you don't actually have to prove
that there was any kind of discrimination intended by somebody
or some company or drawing legislative maps for example. This
disparate impact idea has permeated so much of gov CO,
even the private sector. I've seen people that correlate and
they argue that its causation is that ever since this
disparate impact liability became the norm or was passed or
was interpreted into existence, I think it was like seventy
one or seventy two, nineteen seventy one or seventy two
timeframe for the last fifty years. Ever since then, productivity
has slowed. And I've seen the charts. Now, I don't know,
I'm not an economist. I just I've seen the argument
being made, and it's kind of persuasive.
Speaker 1: Why.
Speaker 2: Because companies became so worried about being sued and not
being able to defend themselves that they dialed back on
hiring based on merit and they started trying to check boxes,
and in doing so, they lost productivity because they were
no longer trying to get the best people, the best
candidates for the job. They were trying to avoid lawsuits
that they would be unable to defend themselves against, and
not because they actually discriminated. It was because the disparate
impact analysis. What is the disparate impact analysis. It is
to say, if you have, like, let's say you're hiring
for firefighters, for example, and you want your firefighters to
be able to drag a two hundred and fifty pound
sack of weights in order to mimic, you know, dragging
a body out of a burning fire. And so you
put in the criteria for the job description that you
have to be able to drag two hundred and fifty pounds,
and then the people who go through the fire academy
who are able to do that, they get hired. The
people who can't drag the two fifty they don't get hired.
They don't make it through. And then you look at
the graduating class from the academy and it's all men.
That would indicate that, according to disparate impact analysis, that
would indicate that you are discriminating against women. We're looking
at the outcome and we're saying, ugh, this outcome shows
that only guys have the job. Well, that means that
you're discriminating against women, even though there is a real
interest in setting up the criteria to drag two hundred
and fifty pounds.
Speaker 1: That's one example. Like I said, this is all over
the place.
Speaker 2: This idea, this disparate impact idea, permeates all sorts of
rules and issues and hiring systems and such. Back to
the DOJ's press release quote from Attorney General Pam Bondi,
for decades, the Justice Department has used disparate impact liability
to undermine the constitutional principle that all Americans must be
treated equally under the law. No longer, this Department of
Justice is eliminating its regulations that for far too long
required recipients of federal funding to make decisions based on race.
Speaker 1: This is another example.
Speaker 2: Is racial outcomes, ethnic outcomes, gender outcomes. Right, anything that
you can point to that says, oh, there's a disproportionate
number of people of a certain ethnic, racial, or gender
class that end up getting the job, getting a contract
or something. If you can, if you can decipher any
kind of disproportionality, then that's de facto proof of an intent,
even though there's no evidence of intent to discriminate. The
prior disparate impact regulations encouraged people to file lawsuits challenging
racially neutral policies without any evidence of intentional discrimination. That's
according to the Assistant Attorney General Harmey Dillon, she oversees
the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. She says, our rejection of
this theory will restore true equality under the law by
requiring proof of actual discrimination rather than enforcing race or
sex based quotas or assumptions. This is the same argument,
this disparate impact analysis. It's the same thinking that is
always wrapped up in the redistricting lawsuits. Right, North Carolina
was ground zero for this kind of analysis. We saw
it repeatedly, which was the North Carolina Republicans draw the maps,
they get sued. They're accused of drawing racially discriminatory maps.
Why well, because well Democrats, it's the suit till blues strategy.
But they say, oh, you moved around too many black voters,
and so the court says you can't use any kind
of racial data. So the Republicans say, fine, we'll use
partisan data. Only they use partisan data. And then the
lawsuits come again and they're like, you're still using racial data,
and the Republicans are like, we are not. We are
strictly using Republican and Democrat partisan registration data and voter trends.
But because the outcome looks the same, because ninety percent
plus of black voters vote Democrat, then you look at
the outcome and the outcome looks discriminatory even though there's
no intent to racially discriminate. And so it's like you
don't even have to prove intent, which is at odds
with the point of the Civil Rights Act. You're not
supposed to discriminate based on race, but by doing disparate
impact analysis, it forces you to discriminate based on race,
because now you're looking at people's race and you're saying,
we don't have enough of a certain minority or a
certain gender or whatever. We don't have enough of them
in order to avoid a lawsuit, so let's hire more
of them.
Speaker 1: Which is discrimination.
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dot com. Let me jump over and chat with Corey.
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Corey. Hey you sweet, thank you for taking my car?
Speaker 1: Sure what's going on?
Speaker 3: Spost? I gave you your screen or my message here.
I'm a worker at Walmart and I know a lot
of ladies are probably gonna be upset with but it
irritates myself that we hire people, tell them the qualifications
to get the job, then when they get the job.
They can't lift a tire. They can't lift a battery.
Now I got to do three to four times for
work at the same PASDM.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they get you. Hey, Corey, come lift this
tire for me. I can't lift it. But they were Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean theoretically they're supposed to be able to lift
you know, fifty pounds or something unassisted.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, sir, Yeah, But as soon as I say something, oh, Corey,
that's the squarem in eight, I'm like, what, so it's
all right to work me to my grave. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: And the reason why is that they're afraid of being
sued by somebody who would say, oh, well, look, you know,
you're not hiring women in the automotive department I'm assuming
is where you are that they're not. They're not, you know,
they're not hiring enough females in that department. Therefore that's
the facto proof of discrimination. And so in order to
avoid those lawsuits, they hire people without any kind of
adherence to the criteria.
Speaker 3: I understand it, and I think we just as society,
we need to be honest with each other. Men can't
do everything women do. Women can't do everything men do.
And let's just be honest what I said.
Speaker 2: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa? Are you suggesting that men
and women might be different somehow?
Speaker 3: Oh yes, sir, I'm going to go out on our
huge lamb with that, right. Well, go ahead and starting
off the limb.
Speaker 1: That's right, man, that might get you canceled, Corey. I
appreciate the call, sir, Thanks.
Speaker 3: So much, Thank you, sir.
Speaker 2: All right, take it easy. Yeah, I mean, this is
the problem. It is discrimination and I have since abandoned
or long since abandoned, the quote unquote reverse discrimination phrase,
because there is no such thing as reverse discrimination. It's
all just discrimination, that's what it is. It's and recognizing
that somebody like a female working in a warehouse may
not be able to lift. And that doesn't mean all
women hashtag not all women. I'm not saying that. I'm
not saying that no woman could lift the same amount
of weight as a man.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that.
Speaker 2: What I'm saying is that if a woman applies for
the warehouse gig and she can lift all of the
same weight requirements that a guy can lift, then she
should get the job too. Now, if you're not giving
her the job because she's a woman, Like, that's pretty stupid.
I mean, you're trying to hire somebody that can lift
the weight. Doesn't matter who can lift the weight, right,
that's all that should matter. That's your criteria. But if
you set a criteria out and then you're not following
it in order to hire people, so you're checking boxes
so you don't get sued, that means you're discriminating against people.
You're discriminating against other people that would otherwise have gotten
the job because they can lift the weight. Back to
the DOJ press release here, for over fifty years, this
is a statement from the chief of Staff and supervisory
official for the Office of Legal Policy. Try to put
that on a business card, Nicholas Shilling quote. For over
fifty years, the prior disparate Impact rule fostered the very
thing that the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four prohibited,
which is the discrimination on the basis of race, color,
or national origin. With today's rule, the Department reaffirms Congress's
commitment to measure all Americans by merit. Congress enacted Title
six as part of the landmark Civil Rights Act of
nineteen sixty four. It prohibits discriminating on the basis of race, color,
and national origin in programs and activities that get federal
financial assistance. In nineteen seventy three, the federal government added
to the law a new rule. Say here's the problem.
This is what I was talking about in the last
hour with Congress delegating this rule making authority to these
quote independent agencies or government departments, and it lets them
make up the rules.
Speaker 1: And when this was not something.
Speaker 2: That Congress passed, Congress didn't say, hey, we're going to
do quotas.
Speaker 1: They didn't say that.
Speaker 2: I mean, they did with maybe affirmative action, but they
didn't do that with the Civil Rights Act. They simply
said you cannot discriminate based on race, color, or national origin.
And so they created this disparate impact rule that was
not part of the law, and it refers to the
concept of imposing liabilities on a federal fund recipient only
because there may be different outcomes for different people, even
when there is no proof that the different outcomes were
due to prejudice or due to an intent to discriminate.
Title six has and will continue to prohibit intentional discrimination. Now, look,
you can look at the outcomes and say, Wow, this
company isn't hiring any isn't hiring any Hispanics, isn't hiring
any blacks, isn't hiring any whites. It's not hiring you
know one demographic of people. You can use that as evidence,
but that isn't in and of itself proof of discrimination.
You've got to have something else to rebut the or
to prop up your argument, right, to buttress your argument.
The Department's view, the new rule ensures that recipients of
federal funding will be judged on their actual content, not
on statistical outcomes or circumstances beyond their control. Here's a
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Russ with a feel good disparate impact story. A while back,
I saw a story about a former marine twenty five
year fireman whose daughter wanted to join the fire department.
He would not give her his blessing until she could
drag and carry him six foot two, two hundred and
thirty five pounds. She had to drag him one hundred
yards and then he would give her his blessing. It
took her almost a year to build up her strength
and endurance to do it, but she did and Dad
could not have been more proud. A good story, Russ,
thank you. Uh let me see here, if there's a
David on the text line says reverse discrimination should better
be called unexpected discrimination. That's the thing. You don't need
any adjectives or qualifiers. It's just discrimination, that's all it is.
It's the same thing. Seven oh four numbers says Corey
was the best caller I've ever heard on your show. Well, well,
as long as you said it's not the best thing
anyone's ever said on my show, then that's fine.
Speaker 1: It's the best caller. That removes me from the contest.
So all right, he was great. Corey was great. Okay.
Speaker 2: So the Daily Caller News Foundation reporting that Senate Republican
leadership announced that they will bring their own healthcare proposal
to a floor vote. This will run in parallel with
the Democrats push for an extension of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies. Okay,
so this was part of the deal with the Schumer
shut down in order to get the government reopened, the
Senate promised Senate Republicans promised Senate Democrats that they will
let the Democrats bring forward their proposal. That's what the
Democrats claim to have one in order to reopen the government.
And most people watching said, well, they offered you that
like a month ago. Why didn't you take it a
month ago? Other people said, well, why would you have
shut down the government for that right? The Senate is
scheduled to vote tomorrow on the Democrats proposal, which is
a three year extension of the boosted subsidies right the
increase the enhanced subsidies to Obamacare Democrats had secured as
part of the deal that ended the record breaking government
and shutdown for the promise to vote on these subsidies.
That was what they wanted in order to end the
deal which they were offered, but they rejected for weeks
and weeks and weeks until after the No Kings rallies,
and then after the election, the November election, and then
after all of that and they didn't need it any more,
They didn't need the shutdown anymore for political sloganeering and such.
Then they agreed to the thing that the Republican said
they could already do. Following internal debate over several Republican
health care proposals and whether to schedule a side by
side vote, GOP senators coalesced around a health savings account
based approach. All right, So what the Republican plan. It's
called the Healthcare Freedom for Patients Act. Under the plan,
between one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars will be depot
posited into hsas. The hsas would be paired up with
the bronze plans on the Obamacare Exchange. And if you've
never been over there, they have a Bronze, a Silver,
and a gold plan. But everybody who's offering the plans
they all have to offer the same coverages, which you
have to offer the same coverages. There's really not any
kind of unique value proposition going on there. You don't
have a unique position against competitors because you have to
offer the same coverages, and like, you know, fifty year
old dudes have to carry insurance coverage for pregnancy, which
is kind of weird, you know. So the hsas would
be seeded with one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars. They
would be tied to the bronze plans or catastrophic plans
on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. As I read this,
this is not for private plans, So if you have
an HSA through your employer, for example, you're not getting
this subsidy. It's just for people on the exchanges. The
idea of redirecting federal subsidies from insurance companies directly to
individuals has the backing of the President, so that's going
to be the sales pitch here from Republicans. They're not
dismantling Obamacare. They're simply saying we are going to divert
the money away from insurance companies and send it directly
to the individual, sort of like a voucher, if you will,
but not really. It's an individual health savings account, so
that's yours. You get to make the choices on it.
So I'm sure this will get all sorts of opposition
because Democrats are pro choice on only one thing.
Speaker 1: They don't like school choice, which is weird because the voucher.
We already do this with.
Speaker 2: Medicare, like you get to go to your own doctors basically,
and it's essentially a voucher system. But for some reason.
They're okay with that, but they're not okay with school vouchers.
But I digress. Trump has warned that extending the Obamacare
subsidies like Democrats want would hand insurance companies a huge
payday at the expense of the American people, which, of
course it does. He is correct about that. Democrats, meanwhile,
are pressing ahead with their three year extension of these
soon to expire subsidies, despite the near certainty that the
measure is not going to have the sixty votes to
pass in the Senate. So a walk down memory lane
real quick is that these enhanced subsidies were enacted by
Democrats back in twenty twenty one. It did not get
any Republican support. And what the enhanced subsidies did was
it removed the cap for upper income people. It removed
the cap and increased the subsidy amounts, dropping premiums to
zero dollars for many enrollees. They're not paying anything. These
are set to expire by the Democrat's own hand. They
wrote this law, got no Republicans to support it. They're
the ones that put this thing in place and put
a sunset on it. The end of twenty twenty five.
A clean three year extension with no eligibility changes will
cost about three hundred and fifty billion dollars to the
national debt over the next decade. Republicans say the Democrats plan,
which goes even further than the one year extension that
they had actually demanded during the shutdown, is primarily a
political maneuver, because yes, of course it is. Obviously it
is right. They wanted one year extension. Now they're asking
for a three year extension, and they know it's not
going to pass, but they don't care. They want the
issue so they can say Republicans stopped you from getting
your premiums zero dollar premiums. They want to kill you.
It's the same line of attack Democrats have employed for
forty years. It's so tiresome, all right. If you're listening
to this show, you know I try to keep up
with all sorts of current events, and I know you
do too, And you've probably heard me say get your
news from multiple sources. Why, Well, because it's how you
detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed
with ground News. It's an app and it's a website,
and it combines news from around the world in one
place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You
can check it out at check dot ground, dot news
slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too.
I started using ground News a few months ago and
more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate
because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered
and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which
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for yourself check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe
through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription.
I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to
every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast,
but it also supports ground News as they make the
media landscape more transparent. Again from the Daily Caller News Foundation,
this piece about the Republicans with their proposal for the
Healthcare Freedom for Patients Act just affecting apparently people that
are on the Affordable Care Act plans in the exchanges.
They're going to propose one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars
be deposited into hsas that are paired with the Bronze
or Catastrophic plans on the exchanges. Now Concerns about fraud
are also fueling the Republican resistance to the extension of
these subsidies, because you'll never guess what happened when Democrats
made this stuff quote free. There's a thing called the
woodwork effect. We've seen it happen every time they expand Medicaid,
same thing in North Carolina, every state. Whenever you make
something quote free, you always end up with people coming
out of the woodwork in greater numbers than you projected.
And so you think you're going to have five hundred
thousand new enrollees to a program, but it turns out
to be six hundred and fifty thousand people. Oh my gosh,
we didn't expect that. But you also end up getting fraud.
Research has now shown that fraud is especially widespread among
the zero premium plans. Critics say this creates opportunities. The
zero premium plans create opportunities for bad actors to enroll
people unwillingly, unknowingly, unsuspecting individuals get enrolled without their knowledge.
And you can imagine why that might be lucrative. Right
If you have a firm, a company, and your job
or nonprofit, and your job is to help people guide
them through the enrollment process, and you get a certain
amount of money from the federal government by enrolling people
and helping them out. There's an incentive there to get
a lot of people enrolled in the government program. And
so you know, you find some people they don't have insurance,
or you just have their information somehow, and you can
just enroll a bunch of people on the program.
Speaker 1: So you can get your slice.
Speaker 2: In fact, they have found cases like this is a
big One of the big ones was out of Florida.
I'm gonna go in depth more on this fraud stuff
because there's a whole GAO report that came out on it.
The Government Accountability Office. They recently uncovered rampant fraud and
systemic failures in the ACA marketplace, including fictitious identities, in
valid social Security numbers, and even dead people who were
approved for the taxpayer funded subsidies. John Thune, Senate leader Republican,
said this program desperately needs to be reformed. The Democrats
have decided we're not going to do anything to reform it,
and so we'll see where the votes are on Thursday.
Senate Democratic leadership has already dismissed the Republican plan. Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said their phony proposal is dead
on arrival. Their bill is junk insurance. It's been repudiated
in the past. The American people will repudiated once again, right, Okay,
So really going after the merits of the proposal there.
Speaker 1: I see, just.
Speaker 2: Really digging deep into the policy wonkery in order to
make that argument over in the House, because remember this
is all just on the Senate side.
Speaker 1: Over in the House.
Speaker 2: Senate or sorry, the Speaker, Mike Johnson said that Republicans
will vote on a healthcare proposal by the end of December,
and we'll continue working on healthcare legislation into early twenty
twenty six.
Speaker 1: Well, time is running out, guys.
Speaker 2: If the elections that we have seen are in fact
any indication of the way the midterms are going to go,
you do not have a lot of time if you
are going to try to repeal Obamacare to fix the
health care industry. Have you seen your premiums? Our premiums
went through the roof for twenty twenty six. There was
a piece over at PJ Media by Jamie Wilson headlined
they broke America and blamed Trump and Wilson goes through
a series of examples here, but the pattern is the same.
You create a disaster Obamacare, deny responsibility, and then shove
the wreckage at Trump's feet. For example, the economic fire
that they lit with the stacks of cash right, printing money,
printing money, money was hurled into green energy fantasies that
went insolvent almost instantly. More money was shoveled into Ukraine.
COVID era payments continued long after COVID ended. Inflation sword
groceries doubled, housing prices became unrecognizable, entered, she builds, crushed families,
and now that inflation is starting to come down, but
it doesn't We're never going back to the pre Biden prices.
Speaker 1: Inflation just persists.
Speaker 2: So it's coming down, yes, slowly, yes, but now Democrats
are blaming Trump for not reversing the damage. The only
way you're going to reverse that is with like a
massive recession, which I don't think we want. All right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
for listening. I could not do the show without your
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