Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call Like I See it, we're going to discuss the huge damage award that Alex Jones has been ordered to pay the parents of a child who was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. And consider whether this is a positive development from an accountability standpoint, from a decency standpoint, or a slippery slope that could lead us to a dangerous place.
And later on, we're going to take a look at the reports of massive teacher shortages around the country and figure out whether there are any easy solutions for what appears to be a serious but multifaceted problem.
Joining me today is a man whose energy never dies. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you going to show the people today how you got that boom boom, pal?
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Yeah, man. For those old enough, I'm the Energizer Bunny. I realize I don't think my kids know who they are. Yeah, exactly.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: All right, we're recording this on August 8, 2022. And we saw last week that Alex Jones found liable for his extensive deception and misinformation campaign about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, where he pushed the idea essentially, that it was a hoax. And as a result of this, he was ordered to pay almost $50 million in damages to one set of parents. And that's one set. You know, there's still ongoing actions against him. So, Tunde, to get us started, what is your reaction to the Alex Jones verdict and damages award? Now, as a citizen of this country who cares about his fellow citizens, but also believes in the concept of free speech, do you find this as something that is reassuring or alarming?
[00:02:01] Speaker B: I like the way you pose that question, sir.
And no, because I would say I am satisfied in the fact that he has been, you know, chastened and reprimanded for his behavior. However, I appreciate you leading in with the idea of freedom of speech, which, you know, that we hold dear. So one of the things that, you know, I'll remind the audience is that, yes, we have freedom of speech protected via the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. However, there are limited limitations on free speech.
You know, for example, the. The main categories are incitement, defamation, fraud, obscenity, child pornography, fighting words, and threats, as per the encyclopedia.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: You're going to law school at night, man.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, man.
I stayed in a Holiday Inn last night.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: There you go. That's another data drum.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Yes, the millennials will know that one. The Gen Z won't.
But no, so the idea is that in my opinion, my humble opinion, as someone that understands who Alex Jones is, and, you know, I heard his stuff over the years and, you know, he's been around a long time. You know, clearly, I would say he fell under the category with a speech of incitement, fraud.
I guess obscenity is to the ear of the beholder, but fighting words and threats, for sure. I mean, he made those kind of. He incited his listeners, through his words, to carry out acts of violence against the parents of children who were killed in a, in a, in a mass shooting. The Sandy Hook victims.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: Well, and just to make it easier, I'd say, you know, just from a legal perspective, us, we're not going to go through, and go through the elements of each of these and say, okay, here's how he did this. But I think, as you made the point you've made, he ran afoul of several of these, these exceptions to freedom. It wasn't like he's on the line of, oh, well, did he? Was it defamatory or was it not? It's like, no, he crossed the line on a couple of these, or a few of these things. And so, you know, it wasn't. This wasn't a particularly close case where we're looking at possibly one. One thing that he did, but go ahead.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Yeah, and so that's, that's kind of, My point is just kind of to finish and pass it back is, you know, my, my end thing is I'm. I'm glad that the justice system work on behalf of the parents in this case.
I've never suffered that kind of harassment, and I hope I never do. But I can't imagine losing a child to a shooting and then for nine and a half years being told by other people that it was a fake incident, that I'm an actor and that, you know, none of it was real. And apparently, you know, these people had acts of violence committed against them, the parents.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: People shot at their home, constant harassment.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Yes. People shot at their car. People abused them on the street, verbally and physically found them out. And, and, you know, and for, for, for someone like Alex Jones to freely intimidate other people. I mean, I think that's, that's why I felt good, because I think for any of us who generally want to just feel like there's etiquette and some sort of norms of decency within a society. Right.
Especially when you're talking about people that lost their kids, I mean, why should.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: I mean, I think that we all should Be free to a, from a certain level of harassment and entitled to a certain level of decency though. And I mean to me there is a slippery slope. You took, I think the, you did a good job of going through kind of why this is something that's reassuring. And generally speaking, I agree with you where there's cause for concern from Alex Jones standpoint now in a sense to some degree he's being punished for how effective he was at riling up his people, the people who listened to his listeners. Alex Jones wasn't out there shooting at somebody or anything like that. So he is being punished for his words. You know, he, he spoke words, things happened after he spoke those words and then he's being punished for that. That now that is not something that is novel that can happen. If you go into a crowded theater and yell fire, you know, and somebody gets killed because of a resulting stampede, you can be held liable for that. You know, so now in our, our law can help hold you liable as far as prosecution, criminal prosecution or civil, which this, what we're dealing right now is civil. This is the parents can't sue to then have Alex Jones go to jail, but they can go after him in civil court and go after monetary damages as a, to something to stand in, so to speak, for the harm and also to deter. And in fact that's what happened here. Alex Jones got hit with a four plus million dollar award or you know, damages award for the parents for, to compensate them for their, the harm. And then the big one was the 45/million which was punitive, which means that's supposed to create a deterrent of the conduct. So he got hit, you know, not just on the side of compensating for the harm he was causing, but also just saying hey to make an example of him. And so the slippery slope, I think actually you can look back just earlier this summer that where I would just, you know, like I have a little bit of a concern. We've seen how conservatives in our country have gotten focused and been able to put judges in place to give them their desired outcome in something, something that was important to them. So I always worry anytime, you know, like something like this happens in the sense that, well, what happens when it becomes okay, well now we're going to start seeing people try to put judges in that will allow people to get sued just for any kind of speech, you know, just because they're mad that they're getting sued for this kind of speech or whatever. That said, I don't think you cannot do the right thing, which I think what happened here with the judge and the jury awarding these damages was the right thing. I don't think you cannot do the right thing for fear of how people may try to exploit that in the future. So ultimately, forget slippery slope. This guy was being dishonest. This guy was causing harm to people, and he was using his platform in a way that was clearly detrimental to these people and to our society. So he should be reprimanded for that. And I'm happy that he was. So, I mean, to me, it's. I can say all that stuff, and it's still an easy. I come to an easy conclusion saying, look, no, this is what had to happen. You can't be out there, you know, telling lies like this and defaming people like this, inciting people against people like this. You can't do that like that. We can't have a decent society if people are allowed to do that.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's interesting because the other thing that comes to mind in watching that trial and all that and is the grift, you know, the amount of money. And this is why. That's why I'm glad it happened this way with Alex Jones. And I hope they continue to target others who have this. I feel like this is helping disrupt our society's narrative generally. And I'm not going to blame just the Alex Joneses and the performers, because there's an audience for this, and a lot of people do know better. I mean, there are some people that, you know, different ends of spectrums, you know, with. With, you know, whether they're delusional or not and all that. And they can believe in the most outlandish conspiracy theories and genuinely believe them. But I don't think that's the majority of people. I think a lot of people, whatever reason, they're bitter in their life, they're angry. And people like Alex Jones and others who will mention they tap into that nerve and they're able to latch onto it and get these people more riled up to the point where. And that's what I'm saying. Like, think about it. There's people listening to Alex Jones that got so ginned up and incited by him and what he was saying, that they decided it was their job personally to go do physical harm to the parents of these kids who got killed. And it just reminds me of so many other things. I mean, we can even get to the January 6th insurrection, right?
People stormed the Capitol, and certain people got hurt. 140 cops got hurt. Some died. Whether that day or later, whatever. The lady got shot by a cop, remember? What I'm saying is it's been pretty much proven that all that election stuff's a lie, but somebody's been out there inciting this stuff, right?
[00:10:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And there's other people, I would say we call them lies as a shorthand, but really what it is is that they're making claims that they cannot prove, they have not been unable to prove, or they've been unable to prove. They've been put on the spot to prove it, unable to prove it, and they keep making these claims. And so, yeah, you call it a lie because it's like, well, you're saying stuff you can't prove. And so it's like you get into this situation where there's one thing I want to bring in because you talked about the grift and we talked about this back in April, actually, we did a show called Systematized Disinformation Exploits Our Human Nature. That was the title of it, or the first half of the title. And we. We got into the author and journalist who's a Nobel laureate, Maria Ressa, and how she talked about how what she's observed is online misinformation.
It spreads so much more readily and so much faster than real things. And so. And people are exploiting this and so that when you talk about Alex Jones and the grift and how he's able to make so much money by crafting these false narratives that play that push people's buttons in a certain way, it really is an example of that. And I bring up that to say in that show, we were saying it's really difficult. This is a really difficult thing to control. In a society with free speech, it's difficult to control regardless, but in our type of society, it's very difficult to control. But this is an example of how you can push back against that. Like, if somebody's gonna out there, just unsubstantiated claim after unsubstantiated claim and causing harm to someone because of that. This is ideally, this is a shot across the bow. Well, a shot that it hits Alec Jones, but Alex Jones, but it. To everyone else, it's like, look, you can't be out there just saying stuff you can't substantiate, you know, like. And you can't cause harm to people because of that. And so hopefully this. Maybe a couple more of these people start getting the idea, like, okay, we need to have a little more self regulation because there's no way the law is going to get to everyone, but you need to have some, you need to have enough on the line where people start self regulating a little bit of this as well. People who would be inclined to be foolish, basically.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: I don't know if they'll self regulate. They'll just try and make. It'll be a bigger grift. Seriously, because think about it.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: Or they'll appoint judges that won't hold them accountable.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: What we learned is that Alex Jones made potentially upwards of 300 million a year in recent years and he just got told to pay 50 million, meaning he could be sitting on $500 million.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: And he's hiding all his assets. He's hiding, I know you got a kick out of. He's hiding his text messages, hiding all this stuff and then just jamming, causing havoc on the legal system.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: And that's what I'm saying. So I don't know if I just think it'll take more than just this one case to kind of soften this, but it just, I thank the legal system, you know that. And it's just a beautiful thing to me, that's the way that the system operates. Because think about it, the jury, they found him liable in this way. It wasn't just some, you know, bureaucrats in a court system. Right. And so, and so the, and that's what I feel like with, as relates to some of the other topics, because the courts are the reason why 60 lawsuits were lost by the former President Trump's legal team. As relates, like you said, to the lie is the reason why I can say that they're a lie and not feel bad about saying that. Believe what I'm saying is because they said in court, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Lin Wood, that they do not have evidence of what they're saying.
So they're telling us they're lying. That's the beautiful thing about the court system is in discovery you got to show your goods. And they didn't have goods. And so this is, but this is what I'm saying, we're dealing. This is why this is pretty serious to me.
Alex Jones is going to be replaced by the next guy because that audience continues to want to believe things. You see what I'm saying? So that's the concern I have, is because you and I see those 60 lawsuits, for example, about the election and the big lie. But there's millions of people in this country that see all of that and they just continue to discount it and say, well, that must be a lie. There must be something else going on. And I'm going to keep listening to the people that keep telling me that I'm a victim and that somehow the whole system is usurping me. And so I don't know. That's why I said it's great for us and we can sit here and celebrate this legal victory for truth, but in the end, it's just going to continue as long as well. But they're allowed to make money in grift in this way?
[00:14:33] Speaker A: Well, either that or there's leadership from within their group. It has to come from the in group. Like we saw recently, it made, you know, made news with Dick Cheney doing an ad last week for his daughter, for Liz Cheney. And he said directly in the ad, I'll quote, talking about Donald Trump, he is a coward. A real man wouldn't lie to his supporters. He lost his election and he lost big. I know it, he knows it. And he said, deep down, I think most Republicans know it. And so that's the kind of messaging to really push back on the Alex Joneses and the other people that are making a lot of money telling people what they want to hear. You'll need people from the in group willing to tell the truth and enough of them that they're not drowned out by the people telling people things that they want to hear or things that create that bunker mentality like, oh, everybody's against us, and things like that. Because you've pointed out this, so much of the messaging is off oftentimes about I'm being victimized, we're being victimized and so forth, and creating that bunker mentality and so forth. Remember Infowars? He started Infowars as kind of the entity that's telling you information that the government won't tell you or that these people are trying to hide from you and stuff like that. So it even comes from a place where, oh, you're being lied to, you're being deceived. I mean, it's definitely scratching an itch that exists in humans, you know, but just to circle that up or circle that back, that's why we talked about how these types of. And this was back in our April show, we talked about this type of disinformation really exploits parts of our human nature. You know, the parts of it, oh, where you're missing something or people trying to keep something from you. And what they're doing it, they're doing it for the money, but it has such a detrimental effect. And so again, if they're doing it for the money, Then one way to attack it is by going after the money. Now, to your point, made a lot more money than it's costing them here. So he could turn around and say it was worth it. But if everybody. Everybody's not making money like he is. So if. If this. People start getting sued for this kind of stuff, eventually it might. Oftentimes, litigation does change behavior. I mean, that's. That's one of the things it can do.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Yeah. It doesn't. A dozen. Because the thing is, I was watching some of the. Again, and I hate to say this, because this sounds partisan, right. But not for the whole Republican Party, but there's a large chunk of it now that has embraced this conspiracy theories, period. So I'm watching. The cpac, Conservative Political Action Committee, on Saturday was in Dallas, Texas. There, the organization in that city, I guess, hosted a big event and a conference. And again, this is why I say this is. I don't like to sound partisan because I'm not a Democrat and I'm not against Republicans. But the keynote speakers at this event were Donald Trump, Steve Bannon. So you got a former president, you got his National Security Council or whatever, his aide. Bannon was his aide, Marjorie Greene, who's a current congresswoman, you know, Mike Lindell, the pillow guy who was a big supporter and I guess was showing up at the White House near the end of Trump's, you know, to advise him. And near the end of the presidency for Donald Trump, they were all keynote speakers here. So just by the fact you got a former president who's embracing these things means that it's now mainstream in the Republican Party. That's why I don't want to blanket all Republicans with believing or wanting to behave this way. But the party hasn't embraced this, so.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Well, I mean, I think just to your point, like, the point isn't that only Republicans could ever do something like this, you know, or that Democrats could never do something like this. The point is just that this is what's happening.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Yeah. This is today.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: This is what's happening. This is what. You know.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Well, here's what I'm gonna say, because the lawsuits don't always work, because it's funny. Mike Lindell was on stage, and I quote, he said, 54 countries now use the voting machines that help Biden win in the 2020 election.
You know, and. And it's just like, I'm thinking, hold on. So here we are, you know, a year and a half after the insurrection, just understanding how serious these kind of. These words can be. And at the end of the day, these people want to keep saying it and I'm not here. I mean, I guess the court will have to decide whether he's violating freedom of speech or not. Because again, I've always said I'm not. I'm, I'm willing to give anybody the ability to say something even if I don't agree with it, because that way I can say stuff that people don't agree with. So I'm not here to tell them they can't speak. What I'm saying is that clearly there is now a major political party in our country that has chosen to embrace this as their platform. And it doesn't sit well with the idea of moving this country forward, governing and taking certain things that we need too serious. And so my concern is that the only way this ends is not through litigation, not through people finding kind of, you know, the Jesus, so to speak, and not through leaders like Dick Cheney who no longer are well liked in their own party saying anything. I feel like it's just going to get worse and there's going to be violence and then people are going to get tired of it after a while and we're going to go back to some sort of political correctness where everyone says, hey, you know what, maybe we shouldn't say insightful things constantly because some people will react negatively to it.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Well, I mean that's, that's the question that is going to be in front of us. Because the thing is, is that these kind of animal spirits, so to speak, exist, you know, like that will hear a message like Alex Jones and go shoot at somebody's house, like that's not you. But that type of thing exists. And so it's a question that needs to be answered. And this has to be answered in a context in our country that is sensitive to the concept of freedom of speech. Because you don't want to just going around telling everybody what they can and can't say. And just for the point with the, the cpac, the issue of free speech is there's even more leeway given with political campaigning, you know, like, and that's the law of the land as well. Like you can in a sense tell lies when you're, or very exaggerate a whole bunch when you're campaigning politically. And that's just set up that way. And there's a reason for that. You don't want the cops showing up at political candidates houses because they stepped over the line onto this or that because that can be abused very easily for, for one person or one group to maintain power at all times. So there is leeway with that. And so ultimately what we're going to end up in a place, hopefully not what you're saying as far as the violence, but it does have to be a situation where society itself, not the, not the animal spirits, the animal spirits always want this. But when everyone else is less accepting of these messages and that's where the echo chambers and things like that get into a place where more people are drawn to it, more of the mainstream is drawn to it, not necessarily just the animal spirits. And so the animal spirits, they're going to do what they're going to do and if they're getting catered to and more of the mainstream is willing to look the other way or rationalize it because it's like, oh, okay, well, they went over the line, but they're on my side or whatever. That's where we slip into this thing. Because remember any of these examples you give, it's never the majority of people that are out there, Alex Jones as well, it's not the majority of his listeners going around shooting people, you know, or shooting at people and stuff like that, but they're all the other listeners are okay, or at least will rationalize away the fact that, hey, some of the people that I'm that are listening and enjoying the same stuff that I'm enjoying are going crazy, you know, like, and that's, that's something that, when that happens, when they start rationalizing away and it has this critical level of popularity, that's where we do get in. We can slip into someplace that's very dark. And so you hope something like this can be a wake up call. And again, there's more of these cases against Alex Jones. And then ideally there'll be more that's publicized about other people that are being dishonest and making money off of dishonest claims and so forth, where a tide can turn. Now that's being optimistic. Maybe I'm being optimistic, you know, like tune day today. But, well, depending on if your glass.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: Half full or glass half empty today, oh, you're glass.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: And I got, I got to step up, do the glass half full.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: You got to, you got to carry us today on the positivity.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: So. Well, it, I'm not saying it will happen, but it can. I mean, there is a road for it to happen. There's a road for it not to happen. I mean, and there's a long way to go before it gets to, you know, where some of the historical examples you've given.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: But what really fascinates me, honestly, I'm starting to become more fascinated with the people that consume this than with the actual people that disseminated, like the Alex Jones or Donald Trump is because it just felt like, like.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: Well, no, the incentive structure for a Jones or for a Trump is very clear. Jones is a multimillionaire. Trump has won the presidency doing this kind of stuff. So their incentive structure is very obvious, very clear. The incentive structure for the animal spirit, so to speak. The people that want, you know, conflict and confrontation and stuff. That's pretty clear. It is the curiosity of the people who just want to live a good life and they may lean this way or that way, but they're not really out waking up in the morning looking to go after people.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean, because there must be a lot of cognitive dissonance in the true believers of it. Because it's amazing. I mean, I guess because it's funny, like I was going to say, Alex Jones said in the trial that he believes the Sandy hook attacks were 100% real.
And it's kind of like.
Or like, you know, when President Trump went on the microphone right before he, you know, got into the election in 2016 and said that he doesn't believe that Barack Obama wasn't born here, but birtherism was not true.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: And I feel like, okay, it's interesting because the people that keep consuming these guys. That's what I mean by. I'm fascinated by the listener more than the grifter. Right. Because like you said, the grifter's motivation and reason of being is pretty obvious.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: So because I'm thinking either you're acknowledging to yourself, you must be that these people were lying.
So it's interesting to me, fascinating to me that people keep following people that keep lying to them, like, blatantly like this, or they must be playing a trick in their mind, like believing that, oh, this guy is just saying it to get off the hook or because he's being, you know, told. Like, Alex Jones is just saying it because he's in court, or Trump's just saying it because, you know, he just wants them off his back, which is just interesting.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: That goes along, though, with the idea of people saying that Alex Jones is being, quote, unquote, prosecuted for political reasons because he's not being prosecuted, of course, he's just being sued civilly and they've proven their case. But either way, like, that goes to that same kind of, you know, remember, self delusion is possibly the Most amazing superpower that the human brain has. The human brain can convince itself of anything. You could be sitting there in a shack, sitting under a volcano and convince yourself that you're going to be okay. You know, you could like human brain has throughout. That's part. I think one of our survival instincts is delusion. And so I think that's.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: So I did win the lotto.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Hey, if you tell yourself, if you wake up every morning for the next 30 days and tell yourself you did, you'll be surprised where you end up in 30 days.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: Just, just so the audience, we're taping this a week after somebody won that one thing, like $6 billion with a B.
So you're just saying if I keep telling myself for the next few weeks.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: You will be amazed at where your mind and how convinced you will be.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Over that when my wife calls you really upset that I just keep talking about all this money we have and I keep spending.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: You keep spending it. Yeah.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: But that's, that's when I'm knocking on your door with a, with a suitcase.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: And, and so, but no, I'm equally fascinated by the, you know, like the, the, the. The demand. We did a show, one of our first shows all the way back was talking about, you know, the, the fake news. Is it supply driven or is it demand driven? And really, it's impossible to really parse it out, you know, because there is definitely a, A incentive structure with the supply, but then there's also a demand. And so it's, it's, it's something that exists. And I think what we're seeing now more than anything, it's always been around, but just how it can be amplified so much, you know, in our current circumstances with the, with the Internet and cable news and so forth, the amplification of it creates, makes it more present and prevalent in our lives.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And the dangerous thing, I think with all this as we wrap it up is we see where this goes. Right. Everybody always, I think, thinks, oh well, people wouldn't do this or that to other people. You know, And I got me, for some reason, in prepping for this part of the show, I started thinking about the Salem witch trials. Yeah. Because, you know, I mean, and I'm not saying that as a joke. I mean, today we would think to call someone a witch and really burn them. That's what I was gonna say. To put them on, against a stake, a wooden stake, and set it on fire and listen to them scream and watch them burn to death.
Seems pretty unrealistic but people did that. And I, you know, for the audience who might not know this, 10,000 people estimated to have been killed in the late 1600s in Salem, Massachusetts over a 10 year period. I mean this wasn't like just a couple people. This was clearly a part of the culture in that part of Massachusetts at the time, to be suspect of anybody for whatever reason. And you know, there's stories I read about people with age spots, literally that was, that was the mark, like the mark of the beast. Those spots were the reason why they were a witch. And so what happens is, and it's just like the Holocaust or these other things, once you convince enough people in a population that there's certain people don't deserve rights or don't deserve to be here or whatever, just don't deserve the same level of care that you do, then these things inevitably happen. And I think that's.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: You delegitimize their humanity.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what Alex Jones did at a micro level to these families. That's what I want to say is that he took something that happened, which is their first graders getting killed by a kid who had autism, who went in there and shot the school up and they took it. He dehumanized them to his audience so that his audience felt it was their job to go and harass them and attack them physically, verbally, and I don't know a decent human being that would defend that. Yeah, I just, you know, and sorry to be judgmental to non decent human beings, but it's just.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: Well, but I mean, I guess that's part of the problem then because there are plenty of people that are defending it, you know, including at the conference that you just cited.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:56] Speaker A: Being defended there and so. But I think we can move on from there. I mean that's pretty a pretty down place to leave it. But this is a serious topic.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Last half empty.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: Well, no, this is a serious topic. This is a serious issue. And we're talking about an issue where kids were killed, you know, and then people were profiteering off of that, you know, like there's no, you're not going to end on this with some kind of, you know, happy go lucky, you know, everything is all right. Like this is serious. This is bad. Honestly.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: And not to be a smart ass to that quote unquote conservative crowd, but where's the family values in all what you're saying? Right. I mean seriously, kids got killed and someone's over here grifting, making $800,000 a day, spilling lies.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I always say to.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Awarded them more money. Yeah.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: But the second topic we wanted to look at today, we've been seeing a lot of reports on the just massive teacher shortages around the country. And you know, you think or you. You see how in many respects this is a. Something we've never recovered from, from, you know, the COVID 19 shutdowns and how things just changed at that point, how it became they're just teaching itself in the profession. There was much more stress put on it and everything like that. And, you know, like right now, you know, we got kids about to go to school, this is August, and school's about to start back up, and there aren't enough teachers by a long shot. Not like, oh, we're missing one or two here or there, but by a long shot. So how concerned Tunde should we be about this massive teacher shortage and it's affecting school districts all around the country?
[00:30:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, look, I think definitely we should be concerned, especially anything that involves kind of the teaching of the next generation of humans in this country. I think that's pretty important. But I think, like, it's interesting, the pandemic, I guess, which should be totally understandable. Right. When you throw a monkey wrench into the system of anything, it's going to expose certain things. One of the positive things is it sped up the idea of remote working because the technology was there, just we weren't using it. And I think that this teacher thing is another example where there was already some issues with kind of the national teaching situation in the United States. And then the pandemic just exacerbated the negatives of that. So we had always heard for years prior that some areas of this country didn't have enough teachers. There were too many kids in the classroom. I remember prior to the pandemic here in South Florida, there were some classrooms with 40 kids per class when they're supposed to be no more than 28 or something like that.
I've been hearing chronically for the last 10 to 15 years, teachers being chronically underpaid type of thing. So those are all. Those are all things that seem to have been there prior to. And then I think just again, like many other areas of our society, the pandemic just threw a bigger monkey wrench into a system that was already hurting a little bit.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: So I'm not surprised.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: And from a human standpoint too, because you mentioned all the structural things that, you know, we were springing a leak here, springing a leak there. As far as the pay as far as the. Just the overall administration and structure on what we have to acknowledge is admittedly a difficult endeavor. Now, the problems were seen all over, but most school, you know, school districts in general are administered fairly locally. And the fact that you see so many problems repeating themselves over such a wide space, areas that weren't always the same, you know, like big cities or rural areas, you know, facing similar issues oftentimes, or maybe issues that rhymed, even if they weren't directly analogous. And so you had structural issues, you know, that existed that the pandemic exacerbated. But then the pandemic brought, you know, really brought to a head a lot of. A lot of the human issues as well. And just being able. And right now we're in the process of trying to bring things back together, put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And a lot of people, a lot of teachers just aren't coming back, you know, and our needs haven't decreased since then. They've grown. So we're really in a tight spot. I mean, you can look at the pandemic really as the impetus for revealing this. Revealing or bringing us, I guess, to a point here, a breaking point here. But ultimately, I guess, in a sense, it's similar to what you said with the remote work. And we're not gonna be happy about this, that it brought this to us right now, something that may have been brewing for. And it was gonna come in five years or eight years, and it brought it to us right now all of a sudden, because we got to solve it anyway. But essentially, I look at it in a similar kind of way, like these. These were all trends that were coming. And then in the aftermath of the pandemic and trying to put things back together again, they're just here. Like, it's not like they're going to slowly ramp up. This is like, boom, we're all here. And so now we have to deal with it. And, you know, it's going to put our society and our societies and our communities to the test, because right now, you know, we don't do too much problem solving, you know, and so we'll see what. What ideas we can kick around, some of the ideas people have brought up and stuff, but we'll see what people can do with these. Because these are multifaceted problems. They are not issues that you can just say, okay, yeah, do this one thing, and we're all good.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, prior to the pandemic, I'm sharing some anecdotal stuff directly I mean, I remember when my oldest son was in third grade going to the first kind of parent teacher night, and the teacher asking us to help with supplies, like tennis balls and pencils and all that. And I remember calling my mom because I was just dumbfounded. This is a public school, you know, And I said, mom, you know, because I grew up outside the Washington, D.C. area, I was like, when I was a kid in public school, did the teachers ever ask you, the parents to like, help pay for stuff, like buy supplies? And she was like, hell no. That was part of the budget of the school system. And I just thought, that's weird. And then another one was when, I mean, this is part of the tax code that. And school teachers can get up to $250 at least a couple of years ago when I saw this. $250 reimbursed or a tax credit for supplies they buy for their classroom.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: And again, I'm just thinking like, so the school doesn't have the budget. They like teachers who are getting paid 30,000 a year got to spend their own money.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: Guy money. Yeah.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Like, that's terrible. Like, what is that? And, and so part of when we're reading these articles to prepare for today, you know what I'm reading a lot is things like teacher burnout, underpaid. And then I'm thinking about post pandemic. What's happened since this pandemic? I would hate to be a teacher in today's world where everybody's got an opinion about what you're talking about in the classroom.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, we just found social aspect of it is just crazy now.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: But in New York County, Pennsylvania, they banned books about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. That's how bad it got there. Now, thankfully, they got shamed into reinstating those specific books. But the fact that it would be too much to even talk about that, like, that's what I'm saying.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: That's one of those oops, we went too far. We slipped a little past the. Where we think we can sell this stuff. But that's kind of. You're getting that pressure. Remember we see when we've talked about the school boards and all that stuff. But what you're talking about is beyond that. That's like teachers putting pressure on. Or excuse me, parents putting on. Putting pressure on teachers directly. Like, look, what are you talking about this, we talking about that. And that's something that's happening more and more now. And not from a standpoint of, oh, I don't think my child is getting enough attention but just saying, hey, I don't think you guys should be doing this. I don't think you guys should be doing that. And so the job as society, as, you know, kind of political correctness, being able to deal with other people in a respectful manner has become less and less something that's more prevalent. Their interactions are going to be something that are going to be more stressful dealing with, you know, whoever. And so you, you can see how just from what the, just from, from what we see in our society and people can't even fly on an airplane together anymore. Yeah, you're telling me that, you know, like the teachers aren't going to catch that brunt too. So we see how that situation can get to a place where teachers are burning out, teachers are feeling undervalued, underpaid and so forth. One thing you brought up I want to get to right away is the I of how much, how our priorities as a society is reflected by how we spend our money. And you're talking on one hand on how they're making teachers go buy supplies, advance money and then they'll, hey, they'll reimburse you a little bit or asking parents to do that, which, hey, you know, parents, that's good. We should be, we should be engaged and involved. But compare that to, and this was that, you know, this was the point you made to me and say, hey, you know, that you were ready to talk about this. So I want to throw it right at you. Compare that to how much money we spend, you know, for, and not to say we shouldn't be taking care of the elderly, but how much money we spend on people that are 65 and older. And it's just really interesting how our priority is tenfold, twenty fold, like so much more on that than it would be on educating the young.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: Yeah, no, you're right. So I'll rattle off some numbers for the audience here because it's pretty, again, it's pretty eye opening when you look at like you're saying the money represents, let me put it this way, our fiscal budget represents our priorities as a country, whether we like it or not. Right. Like some people want to say, no, it doesn't because I don't want to build bombs and pay for fighter jets. Well, national defense is the third highest thing. So that means part of our country is focused on. Right. Like that's a high priority for us.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: So and just to the point, like it's where you make a choice on that is with your vote and you know, like, and with your involvement in the political system, like, so, yes, it's not, may not be your particular priority, but us together as a group, we all vote or, you know, the ones of us who do vote and then, you know, the people who are representatives make these choices then. And yes, as far as overall money spent, military is number three. As far as discretionary money spent, they're number one. You know, so, like, that's.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: I'm going to advocate for little kids voting because a, then I'll be president because then I'd just be giving away candy just for votes and that'd be fun and it'd be a lot cooler.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Hey, man, they used to say you can't compete in an election with Santa Claus. But I think, I think they, I think they found a way to compete, man.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, the Alex Joneses. Yeah. No, because then I could. Yeah, but see, with little kids, I could like, campaign on, like talking about Spider man and, and, and, and, and, you know, Luke Skywalker and stuff and actually feel like, have a good time doing it. Not feeling like I'm just delusional.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: How you gonna do all this?
[00:39:29] Speaker B: No, but, but so here, let's go to the money part. So, because what I'm joking about, it got me thinking about that stupid joke was clearly senior citizens vote. So that's why the money, I think, is gonna be a bit tilted that.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: I say as far as our collective. They have. The senior citizens have a much larger voice than the kids.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: Yep. So the, so first of all, in 2021, we spent as a country $6.28 trillion in our budget. That was much bigger number than I anticipated seeing then. So Here we go, though. 1.1 trillion. 17% was spent on Social Security, 796.8 billion, or 12% spent on. So call it almost 800 billion on healthcare and 696 billion, call it almost 700 billion on Medicare. Then on education, in total was 296 billion. But if we break it down, because I'm thinking about the little kids now, because 172 billion was on higher education. So elementary, secondary and vocational education was 90.5 billion. So if we add up Social Security 1.1, general health care, again, the reason why I say healthcare is because about 65 plus percent of the cost of healthcare is in the last couple years of a person's life. Generally when someone's elderly, it costs a lot more than when they're younger. So that's another 800 billion. So let's call that 1.9 trillion on total. And then Medicare is 700 billion. So now you've got 2.6. Oh, sorry, 2.8 trillion.
And I'm not going to get into veterans benefits and all that, but so we have almost 3 trillion, let's call it that goes directly for the seniors and the older people in our country in 20, 21 and 90 billion that went to the education of people, let's say under 18.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:38] Speaker B: Which is quite scared. It is lopsided. I mean there's no denying what a fair.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: To be fair. I just, just to give some context.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: A lot of times, to be fair.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: But the, a lot of the school expenditures are locally funded and generated. So it's property taxes and school levies and things like that. So it's not unlike Social Security, which is not something that is locally funded a lot of times. And the other thing, the other piece is that the Social Security one is thrown in there and it's always a big number. But also that's a tax we pay, specifically that. It's called an apportion tax. Social Security and Medicare are called apportion taxes. So that money that we spend to come out of your payroll taxes is supposed to be spent there. But there's no prohibition from having an apportion tax for elementary school education or primary school education. So we've chosen to have those apportion taxes and for good reason. In the 30s, people were dying in the streets and it was like, hey, this is not a good look. We can't have this. And so society decided to take care of that issue. And so, but the real issue, it'd be one thing if we were spending $90 billion and we were getting everything that we needed out of it or getting 90% of what we needed out of it. And it was just. But what's happening here is the neglect, it's the local revenues are not sustaining it to the extent that maybe they had in the past or whatever reason, the diversion of priorities or whatever. And so in those cases, a lot of times it is on the federal government to figure out a way to pick up the slack and put more into it. Maybe that's the answer, maybe that's not. But ultimately the priority of society does seem to have been, have drifted away from, from education as far as educating. And education is something that if we want to be first world society, if we want to be big and bad America, it's not something like the next generation is coming, we can't stop that. We can't, we can't hold that back. And say, oh, well, you know, we'll just. The people that are around now are educated. We'll just keep them around forever. Like, that's just not how it works. You know, Father Time, when they say Father Time is undefeated. And so if we're not going to prioritize educating the next generation as part of our duty as this generation, then we're really saying that we're okay if our country starts to really fall apart in that sense, because the next generation are going to be the ones that can hold it together in the future. And so ultimately, to me, I mean, and this is. Without being too crazy about it, you saw earlier generations a lot of times prioritize trying to make the country a better place for future generations. And I think, by and large, we seem to have lost that. Like, you don't see many people out here talking right now. You do see some. I mean, we just did this climate bill that will help, but you don't see many people talking about how we have to make things better for our children. And that, I think, is what's lacking when you talk about making things better for our children. Implicit in that is that you're saying, yeah, we need to do a better job of taking care of teachers and, you know, like. And doing what we need to do.
[00:44:48] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, it goes back to, like, the drought out west. You know, we got a teacher shortage, we got a shortage of water, and the Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam.
These are the important things about that are going to affect our future 100%, but no one freaking cares.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: Yeah, but we're talking about all this other.
[00:45:03] Speaker B: They want to talk about an election in 2020 and about, you know, stuff like that. I'm serious. Like, that's where people are focusing their attention and not about the future. And that's what I'm saying. We've got a generation of seniors in this country who are stopping everyone else and making us focus on their issues.
[00:45:21] Speaker A: And what you mean now you're talking about senators and politicians.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: Yeah, everybody.
That's well said. Them and their audience.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:29] Speaker B: The seniors that listen to them.
[00:45:31] Speaker A: Yeah. So. But now I think we can wrap from there, man. It's definitely. Again, I don't think we leave either one of the topics feeling great today, but it's ultimately things that need to be in our consciousness, and I feel we need to pay attention to it.
[00:45:44] Speaker B: I learned from you today that if I believe for the next 30 days I won the Powerball, I won it.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: Yeah, well, no, that you will.
[00:45:51] Speaker B: You'll forgive me, it shall be.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Hey, delusion man. You know, the strongest force in the universe.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: Get that guest room ready for when the wife kicks me out after she realizes that I'm actually delusional, that I wasn't joking.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: But no, we appreciate right for joining us on this episode of Call Like I See It. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think, share with a friend, and until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:46:15] Speaker B: Tuned tonight.
[00:46:17] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
