Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to the call like I see it podcast.
I'm James Keyes. And in this episode of call like I see it, we're going to discuss the indictment of Senator Bob Menendez, which is another indictment, really, I should say, because he's been indicted before and beat some charges before, but he has a new indictment on federal charges related to, like, corruption and bribery and so forth. And, you know, the allegations are quite cartoonish in some ways, you know, but, and they sound like what we think of typical corruption.
But we're also, we're also going to compare that to just kind of the normal way Washington operates and what people can term as legal corruption in terms of our, what our system is anyway, and compare what Menendez is doing to what's perfectly legal and so forth.
And later on, we're going to take a look at some recent research that's been published about the so called two parent privilege that some kids have with two parent households and just the way that the kids in two parent households benefit in ways that extend beyond the potential for that, for higher collective incomes that two people versus one might provide.
Joining me today is a man who works hard to know issues backwards and forwards. Tunde yoga and Lana Tunde. Are you ready to let folks hear what you got on the b side?
[00:01:38] Speaker B: I was going to laugh and say they weren't supposed to see me sweat, but now you're telling everyone I sweat.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: You still make it look easy, though, man. It's all good.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: We'll do some work behind the scenes.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: There we go. So we're recording this on September 23, 2023. And last week, as I mentioned earlier, US Senator Bob Menendez, who's the senior or the democratic senator from New Jersey, was indicted and faces three corruption related criminal charges, conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, and conspiracy to commit extortion under the color of official.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Right.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: So again, corruption related. You know, he's getting money and offering to do stuff in its official capacity for that private gain, for public work. And the details, you know, are extra, you know, with, with tales of gold bars, you know, like, like action movies in the sixties and seventies, gold bars and, you know, cash hidden in random places around the house and, you know, like casino, the movie, like just, you know, just that they're extra. And so, you know, but to get us started, tunde, you know, just on your thoughts on the corruption allegations and you know, that what, what Menendez is facing right here.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I think I'll take the word you used in your intro, which is cartoonish. I think you're right. The first inkling I read of it, and especially the gold bars and the cash stuffed in envelopes and different pockets of suit jackets around the house, I.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: Thought this guy was a Bond villain, man.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I was like, man, this sounds like a good old James Bond movie, or something like that. Yeah, I think, you know, it's funny, and I know this is going to be the basis of our discussion, right. That the lines have been blurred so much between legal and illegal financial contributions to political endeavors, if I can say it that way. Because I guess if it's legal, it's not corruption. Right. And from a certain legal.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Well, we could still call it corruption. No, I know.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: I mean, it could be not that ethical, the way we look at it. But I guess legally, certain things aren't corruption, which we'll get into today, that we would consider corruption. Right. Or let's put it this way, a better use of the word would be something that can corrupt an individual. Cause I think the word corruption clearly has a legal and kind of negative connotation. But the idea of corrupting a human being's intent, I think, is just another part of humanity. Right. This is not something that has ever.
I don't think there's any been, ever been a society where some influence that's trying to corrupt a person who's in or influence them to make different decisions when they're in a position of power. I think that's part of just humanity and human society. So, getting back just to finish up.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: But that's why I don't think corruption and legality are really the one in the same, you know, like, so we can talk about what's legal and what's illegal.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: I saying that there. That this one, though, with Menendez, which is interesting, is it's just been a long time since we've seen somebody kind of with their, quote, unquote, hand in the till like this, like in kind of a obvious.
Like we're saying about gold bars and the cash laying around.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: I mean, never heard of swiss bank accounts and.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Or a pac, right. That's political action committee, so. Cause I remember the last time I saw something like this, like. Like a movie, like blatant, like you're saying about the movie casino where he just got money, you know, sitting in, you know, the little hole under his closet.
There was a congressman, if you remember, is probably, I think it was 2009. It was somewhere around over a decade ago, not quite 20 years ago, he had $90,000 of cash in his freezer. Yeah. And he was the same thing. He was, I think he was paying to play with some contractors and all that.
But the idea is that, yeah, in today's corruption, which, you know, I guess some of this is legal, is you can just get people to give money to a pack and then keep it.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: When you're done with it, which we'll talk about. But honestly, that was kind of my reaction to this was in that vein, kind of like, oh, okay. Like, I wasn't an outrage. Normally I have a problem with corruption, you know, like, so. But I wasn't as outraged as this. My first thought on this was like, well, hold on. Is this guy an idiot? Like, there's a million ways to do this now, you know, like, why? What's he doing? Is. Was kind of like. He's like, too old fashioned, you know, kind of thing.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Oh, that's kind of quaint, you know? Oh, you know, he's got actual cash.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: He's freaking cash and gold bars. Yeah, that's like old school, man. That's like a century.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: It's like, what stood out to me with this was just like, yeah, he didn't know that.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: He could have got some crypto and it would have been a little bit harder.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: A lot. There was a lot of different ways. And then really, like, the. Again, the direction of our conversation is gonna go is just kinda like the. There are a lot of different. We've separated out in our, like, kind of our system. The idea of pay for play versus, like, it's like, if you pay for play a certain way, as long as you don't say explicitly that, hey, give me this money and I will do this for you. And even still, even sometimes, if you say explicitly that, then it's not going to be considered illegal. And so to me, it really did. And that's the nature of our conversation today, which we're gonna get into, is, I was like, okay, well, what is the line then? If this guy crossed the line, then where is the line between millions and millions of dollars going into somebody's campaign aligned pack versus somebody just getting money at their house or getting money in a briefcase or something like that? Again, other than the silliness of when you look at it from the briefcase.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Standpoint, one joke I wanna just say before we move on, I just wanna.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: Get this out there.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: The more serious part of this conversation, this, to me, is funny part of what I thought. I mean, I'm sure there's more money, let's put it this way, for his sake, I hope money to have a swiss bank account or some more money somewhere because what I'm reading is 400,000 gold bars and maybe another 470 in cash. So I'm like, hold on.
So for under 900 grand, this guy just ruined his whole life. You know what I mean? Like, but he might not have ruined.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: His, remember this isn't his first rodeo. No, I know, and I mean, and this is the crazy thing. There's some legal precedent out there that it may put him in a position where he's okay. You know, like it's really like, I.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: Know it's going to be. We'll discuss that too, some of the legal rulings of late, but. But that may allow him to escape something that appears so blatant, like we're talking about, right.
Which, you know, will only have more damage to the apathy and kind of the way american voters look at their politicians, which will be a shame. But that's what I mean, I was just joking in my head a little bit and laughing like, man, so for under a million bucks somebody bought a us senator. And how, what I was thinking, like, what a dummy this guy is because like we're saying forget about political action committees and kind of the legal way of grifting in today's political environment.
He could have just said, all right, I'm gonna take all this and retire and go be on Fox or MSNBC and make a million dollars a year as a commentary. Meaning he's in a position where he could made a lot more money in general than what it appears these bribes were, which again, just interesting. So it is funny.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Well, but that goes back to your thing as far as with, you know, with money always finding power. Like people want the power too, you know, and it's annoying. Like it's not just I want to get on the, get on the tv and talk, you know, talk my stuff or whatever, so. Well, but let's just get right to it then. I mean how do you think this, what we've seen and you know, like you hope that the prosecutors have the goods if they go down this road, you know, if they're gonna go down this road, hey, I hope you got the goods. But this kind of what we're seeing here is allegations of illegal corruption compares to what we would call legal corruption, so to speak. But just, or just the idea of, hey, I'm gonna give you a bunch of money and I would expect you to do things in my favor when you get in power or as you're in power and so forth, which is kind of what we all expect as far as how our politics work. Like, that's the general expectation. We don't blink an eye with the super Pacs or the. All these campaign donations. And then, lo and behold, people do things in favor of the people who are their donors. We kind of expect that.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah. No. And so I'm gonna read a quote, and we're gonna have fun. Cause I wanna see if you can guess who this was that said this. And we won't go, you know, for ten minutes. But. So I'll quote real quick. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. No longer. It is a government by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations. Who said that?
[00:10:13] Speaker A: Rutherford B. Hayes.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Jeez.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: We read the same. We read some of the same stuff, man.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: I should have.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: I should have stressed it out a little bit. Like, can I phone a friend?
A friend or something?
[00:10:28] Speaker B: We could add some music, edit in here, the whole thing.
No, but on a serious note, that's what I like, having a fellow nerd.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Which, by the way, though, that's back in the late 18 hundreds.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: That's what I was going to say. That's in 1886.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: So for the audience, that's why I wanted to start there, to say, again, the idea of money and power finding each other and money influencing power. Then you know it. That's nothing new. And we even had a great group of philosophers called the Locks. Remember, they had a song called money, power, respect, how you get the order. First you get the money, then you get the power.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: Then you get the respect. Yeah.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: So. So we're seeing song.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: It's a good song.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: A lot of that stuff play out today, so it's amazing how simple the world is, right?
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Hey, pop at 50, man.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: Yeah, but, but, no, but, but that's. What I'm saying is that I, you know, this is nothing new. I think it's what's new in this recent era that makes it feel a lot more like the gilded age. Because I think we are now, at that point, for the first time in our lifetimes, meaning you and I are under 50 years old, right. That we're seeing the type of hand in glove relationship between really, really big money and government enterprise, let's say, since that period, since this ruther B. Hayes period. And so I think, how do we get. Here is a question, right. Because in preparing for today, I was reminded that over the last 150 years or so, Congress has passed legislation, hundreds of laws, dealing with campaign finance. What's legal, what's not legal and all that. And it seems to be recent, and I say recent, within the last 20 years or so Supreme Court rulings that have really taken this to another level because. And I'll pass it back in a second. But one example I was reminded of in preparing today was something that came before this current, you know, almost 20 years of this current kind of supreme Court and who led it. And this was exactly 20 years ago when this happened, which was Medicare part D, the prescription drug program.
So that was an example of the old school way of lobbying, or, sorry, of corruption, which was, as you said, it was just pretty much limited to lobbying or the kind of stealing that Menendez did. But the lobbying was when, I think that year, the pharmaceutical industry as a whole spent $100 million in lobbying the federal government as to why Medicare shouldn't be able to negotiate the lowest prices for the american taxpayer.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Even though they were buying in such bulk that any other purchaser in that situation would be able to negotiate a better deal.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Correct. And so what happened is there was a congressman who pushed it through right after this legislation. His term was up, and he resigned from Congress, and he became the CEO of pharma, P h a r M A, which is the industry lobby for the whole pharmaceutical industry. That's kind of the old school way we're used to seeing it. Like, okay, big industry.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: The revolving door is what it was.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Between their money together. They've been working these guys for years, lobbying them, and they finally get the legislation in. Is it estimated that that cost, that added $1 trillion to the deficit over ten years? So it's been 20 years. So we can assume it's over 2 trillion now. And so that's kind of how the old school way of fleecing the american taxpayer used to work.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Well, the old school, in the new era, though, because you go back to the gilded age, obviously, and it was, you know, it was more kind of.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Like in our lifetime. That's.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. But that to me is, you know, a lot of times people talk about things being cyclical, and that's kind of what we're seeing now is after the gilded age, when it was kind of, like you said, a free for all. Like it was just money going in, big money. It was big money being made, and big money was influencing the politics. And it was pretty unabashed, you know, almost as we are now. And you get from that, you get more guardrails, you get more handcuffs on how. On the flow of money. And we're now in a cycle where we're getting, we're lessening those guardrails progressively and progressively, even more and more, you know, more, less guardrails, less limits, everything like that up culminating really with the citizens United decision, which ends up taking away the limits on how much money can be given to politicians and so forth. And, you know, we talk about, like, we have these words lobbying, you know, and I think lobbying lets everybody off the hook, so to speak, because lobbying, all that means that you look it up definition wise, seek to influence, you know, a politician on an issue. There's nothing in, there's no money.
That's not part of the definition of lobbying. You know, like, my lobbying is about seeking influence. Hey, why don't you get up there and give a presentation? You know, that's not what we're doing here with the lobby, you know, so, but to me, what that is emblematic of is how we've all kind of internalized that this is the way that this works. It's all pay to play and what the Supreme Court has done and what our legal system has done. And that's why I wanted to make the point earlier. I wanted to, you know, at least note earlier when you're talking about, well, but if it's not illegal, then it may not be corruption. That corruption is not necessarily coinciding with what's legal. And what's not is because essentially what the law has, or from a regulatory standpoint and a legal standpoint, what's been rolled back progressively over the past 20 years is the amount of connection, or one of the major things that's been rolled back beyond taking away the limits of financial contributions, is the, how much, how direct does it have to be in terms of the action you take because money's given to you? You know, do you make a phone call, well, that's fine. Or do you push this up, push a lever this way or push it that way? That's fine. You know, Supreme Court weighed in on this within the past ten years. And, you know, there was a case dealing with former Virginia governor Bob McDonald. And, you know, they actually, in their decision, talked about, oh, you know, we're not going to deal with all the tales of Ferraris and Rolexes and ball gowns, which to me harkens back to what I could see the same kind of rationale be saying here, we're not going to get into all the gold bars and the cash and coat pockets and all this other stuff and said, hey, there's not enough to connect all of this stuff, he was getting to the things that he was doing, but those being official acts and so forth. So by rolling all that back and making it harder and harder to say the connection between you getting something and then doing something on that behalf, getting something to you privately, and then getting. Doing something on their behalf, from a public official standpoint, making it harder to make that connection, it really opens the floodgates to what people can do. And honestly, what we're seeing now is how people respond to that. Did you become the people that out there trying to take? People are just going at it more and more brazenly.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Yeah. No, and I think to speak directly to that, I mean, I think it's important to, like, peel back this onion a bit for people to understand, especially anyone watching and listening, is because. So think about this. It's just the current era of the last decade, a little bit more than a decade. We just learned again this year because the first came out in 2011 about the relationship between a billionaire named Harlan Crowe and a Supreme Court justice named Clarence Thomas. You know, that issue first came out, there was an internal whistleblower somewhere within the government or Supreme Court that knew about all these gifts and trips and all that. And they first reported it in 2011. And that's when Justice Thomas first addressed it and said, there's nothing to see here. So in 2016 was when the ruling you mentioned about the case with Bob McDonald, who was actually found guilty by a court, a trial jury, for corruption. And what I mean, it was specific. He was given gifts such as a Ferrari, such as a, you know, I think a 60, $70,000 Rolex, other cash. You know, I think his mortgage was paid off here by a real estate developer who then got contracts by the state of Virginia when Bob McDonald was governor. So this is. What I'm saying is this is classic corruption. Right. Just.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: Well, at least what we see as classic.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: That's what I'm just saying is that's what we're all used to acknowledging. Yeah, a guy gets a Rolex and a Ferrari and then gives the guy who gave it to him a contract.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Well, but here's the thing. He doesn't give it to him. The government that he is at the head of does. And so. But go ahead. But the point is, though, so when.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: The Supreme Court in 2016 takes a case that was already found, a jury of his peers found him to be guilty, and the Supreme Court goes out of their way to look at this case and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we gotta re. We gotta redo this. Because, just because, like you said, just because, you know, he's getting this and that. We don't want the government to be able to say what is a bribe and what's not. Now I get it. A lot of us have a fear of big government and government overreach. And that's a genuine cultural concern, especially in America. Right. So there is. And that's why I feel like the Supreme Court, looking back at everything we've learned now between Justice Roberts and his wife and the law firms are dealing with, I just learned that Justice Gorsuch, in preparing for the day he was trying to sell a property for two years, within a month after he becomes a Supreme Court justice, he sold the property. Guess who the buyer was?
The CEO of. Greenberg Traurig.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Think about that. Which is, for the audience, one of the huge law firms, and they have cases in front of the Supreme Court all day. He didn't disclose who the buyer was. You know what I mean? Who he sold it to. Sotomayor with her book, Alito with his trips. So my point is that, so by 2016, if we know now that Clarence Thomas had someone blow the whistle on in 2011, what really, it appears is that the Supreme Court went out of their way to cherry pick a bribery case. That's amongst a high level politician, a governor of a state in our country. There's only 50 of them. To be able to set precedent.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Doing favors for receiving gifts. Yep. In order to be able to set the precedent. But doing favors to receive gifts isn't illegal.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: Correct. And so now we have been faced with the reality this year of learning how many times in recent years, since 2016, those who have provided gifts and greased, for lack of a better term, I'll use my professional language here, greased Supreme Court justices through gifts and bribes. And in the just example of Justice Thomas owning his mother's home where she lives and levying her live rent free, paying the tuition for the kid that they raised, all this kind of stuff. I mean, he literally owns Clarence Thomas in that sense.
And no one's talking about it. Right. We want to talk about Hunter Biden. We want to talk about the Trump kids and the money they made, which all that stuff deserves to be looked into. But think about it. We have judges in our federal system that are playing these games, and these.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Aren'T somebody's kidde, but this is actually the person in the seat of power.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: And what we've learned this year is they have not recused themselves from cases that these folks have brought you know, the people that are giving them gifts also bring legal cases to them, which.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: If they were any other judge in the federal judiciary, they would have to recuse themselves. So it's an abuse of power in order to maintain this legality of what we all would see is undue influence, improper dishonesty in our political, in this case, our judiciary system.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: But you know what I want to ask you to go through, actually, because I think this will be interesting as a kind of why. Why are we here? Right. How did this happen? Besides the fact that power and money do, I believe, find each other over time, no matter what kind of guardrails are set up to keep them separate? Because it's more of just the human nature of people.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: You know, the money and power attracts itself because that's how we are wired. So we need these guardrails and we need people to take them seriously. But I feel like.
Because, like, this is kind of an offshoot of that period of the late sixties when a lot of things in politics changed. And I feel like because a lot of the public don't necessarily, from a voting standpoint, they're not all in bed to vote on lower tax cuts for billionaires or tax rates. They're not all in to make sure that, you know, chemical companies or fossil fuel companies can dump their waste into clean water systems, water that we drink. Because, remember, as someone in the public, we would say, well, yeah, they shouldn't do that. They just got to clean it up. But the company itself is saying, well, that might be. Cost me 10% of my revenue to clean all that up. I'd rather find somebody in the Senate who's going to approve a justice or who's going to vote to deregulate certain things. So how do we get here that it seems like this billionaire class figured out in a smart way, hey, let's jump the regular political process and trying to have our people win elections, so to speak, let's actually just go manipulate the courts and get the right judges in who will then repeal. Because that's what I realized is if Congress passed hundreds of laws in the last hundred years, how is it that this can happen? And it's because the Supreme Court repealed a lot of these laws, you know what I mean? So.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, well, no, but not just the Supreme Court, but the laws have been watered down. I mean, this is where, you know, the people that argue that things are cyclical. This is their point, basically. But you and I term it in a different way a lot of times, in terms of living memory, basically. Like, there is a problem, and then the people that are alive at that point say, oh, we got to solve this problem. You know, the gilded age, they had this huge concentration of wealth. Once you have this concentration of wealth, they're going to take steps to keep their wealth, to grow their wealth and so forth. And they figured out the best way to do that was to influence the government. And so they use their wealth to influence the government. And you had, you know, a president saying that it's a government of the corporations for the corporations, and by the corporations after that, leading, you know, Teddy Roosevelt, time not turning the century and all that. 19 hundreds. All right, okay, we got to clean this up. And you're never going to. As you point out, you're never going to clean it up 100%, but you're going to make the hurdles higher. So it's like, okay, you're trying to do this. You're trying to do that. We're not gonna make it as easy for you. And so you go through that time period where it's much harder to just blatantly buy this politician or to buy this justice and so forth. Not to say that it never happened, but, you know, it made it much more difficult, maybe related, maybe not, but once you make it more difficult for the money people to manipulate the system, not too long after that, and you go to the 1930s, 1940s, now, you got a great depression here, which also created urgency for a problem. Hey, we can't concentrate all of our wealth like this. You have the new deal, which further, instead of breaking up the power, then what you're doing is breaking up the money and saying that, okay, well, you can't have. People can't accumulate these large sums of money like they did in the gilded age, you know, anymore, under the new deal, when you have the tax rates that get more punitive, the more you try to pull out of the system, the more punitive the rates are. To the extent that you. At a certain point, you just won't make any more money, you know, like, so to speak. And all of that, though. Okay, so you get to this point where you have power that has been. It's the ability to use money to exert power has been diminished, and the ability to commute, accumulate huge sums of money has been diminished. And then, so. But then we got to start over the cycle again. All of those. All of those protections that were put in, you know, around the turn of the century or so forth, and then in the new deal, that the protections in the. As far as using money in politics and then the protections as far as allowing people to accumulate huge sums of money, those were all whittled away over the past 50 years, you know, like, so to speak. So now we have to learn these lessons again that we learned, you know, at various points. And so that we're just in that part of the process basically, because we didn't appreciate when all of these incremental steps were being made that what we would end up with is this situation that we're ended in before. And I'm sure before it happened, you know, like in the Gilded Age, it had happened before in other iterations in societies. Because as you point out, I think that this is a natural kind of way that our human societies kind of evolve.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I think you're right, because before that was, you know, the French Revolution or somewhere else, the russian revolution of 1917, all those kind of things. And I think that, you know, that's kind of the concern I have. Right. Is that the beautiful experiment of the United States being only 250 years old, I mean, we've talked about this in other examples of, you know, the Greeks, us. I mean, there's not too many examples of straight democracies that have lasted a long time. And by a long time, I just mean a few hundred years. I mean, we're talking about, you know, tens of thousands of years of modern human history. We've got about 80 to say it.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: One way, just, just real quick, just throughout human societies, both money or wealth and power were very rarely diffused. They were usually pretty concentrated in most societies. But I want to get back to the corruption piece, though, because one thing, like, a lot of times we look at these things as well, you know, when you see it, you know, and so, like, yes, I would say that the Menendez stuff, that's corruption. But I would look at a lot of the way our politics operates today as being corrupt as well. Like, I thought you gave great examples on the Supreme Court stuff. And to me, one of the defining features of the corruption or of corruption of activity that is corrupt is, is the dishonesty or the aspect of it that makes it something you don't necessarily want everybody to know about, so to speak. And so why did these Supreme Court justices not want to tell everybody that they were getting all these gifts and so forth? Well, it's because they, they knew. Okay. Yeah. This is not something that we should really have out there like that people are going to look at this and it's not going to pass the smell test, but to me, that's one of the more damaging things about the way this kind of, even if it's not something that is, quote unquote, illegal, but if it's something that would be embarrassing or that would make you lose support, because at that point, like you said, you know, Crow, you say, Harlan Crowe, he only owns Clarence Thomas. It's not because he paid money to buy him as a man. It's that crow can at any point blow up Clarence Thomas and say, look, if I disclose all the stuff I've done for you, then you are going to fall. I'm going to still be rich.
And so you become, you basically get into this situation where you become compromised because you've accepted so much things that you're not really supposed to be doing. And you know that if people found out that I was doing this, then, you know, it would not be something that I would skate on that easily. And so to me, that's a big part of it, is when people are doing stuff out in the open, a lot of times it's not always ethical, it's not always great, but when it, then this is why a lot of governments and a lot of places have these laws or open records and stuff like that for you. You know, Freedom of Information act and so forth, which we need that stuff because keeping it in private is a big, big feature of the corrupting influence of these types of things.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's, I mean, you're right. Thank God for things like the Freedom of Information act in our country. Sunshine laws in certain places like Florida, you know, that the state government is required.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: Let me say one thing, because, or let me ask you a question as you respond to that is just also, I want to get to our final point on this, which is just, you know, does anything in terms of where we are now? Like, are you more concerned about it? I mean, the nature of our conversation does kind of lean one way here, but just what we're seeing from Menendez and how he may be emboldened by the way the law is going to him and people like him, like the people that'll just straight up do the wild stuff, you know, whether it's legal or not, or just kind of the general direction everything is going, where pay for play is kind of just understood to be the way the system operates.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I think obviously, like you said, the nature of our conversation is definitely going negative. So I feel negative about the whole thing, but I, no, I think you're right, because I think it's like certain things just in other parts of life, we, you know, it's like a death by a thousand cuts. And what we've been doing is chipping away at just the integrity of certain positions. Like, I'll be honest, and this is a totally off topic. I'm not happy that the Senate changed the dress code because, you know, like, there's a certain level of integrity that you want to maintain. And they're senator, you know, this is a top, top, the most.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: You guys, to act like you're just like us. Why don't you.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: I don't want to walk in to the Senate as a senator with basketball shorts and a t shirt and go and act like he's trying to be serious. So I do think, you know, as much as, you know, I might sound like a stuffy old guy right now. I mean, there are, there's a reason why, you know, we get haircuts and we dress up and all that. I mean, human beings respond to certain things and, you know, and I think it's the same thing as relates to this money thing in politics. Like, I had a good conversation with a friend of mine last week who's really on the right, and he was hammering me about how bad Hunter Biden is and Joe Biden's so corrupt and all this. And what I was telling him was, I'm not here to defend Joe Biden or Hunter Biden because it's not my business to do that. Whatever comes out, comes out. But I said, but the problem is, is that because they're trailing a president who made money while he was on office unabashedly, and who overcharged a secret service, you know, on the taxpayer dime. When they stayed at his hotels, they got gifts from foreign leaders by them buying 100 rooms in the Trump hotels here.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: I gotta stop you real quick, though, because now the, yeah, getting the, having the foreign dignitaries, like, there's one type of corruption that's bad, which is, hey, I'm gonna get other people to give me money because of my power, and then I'll do stuff for them. It's worth the stuff of overcharging the Secret Service. That's corruption. Like, that's overcharging the taxpayers.
[00:32:23] Speaker B: That's, that's what I'm saying.
No, I agree. And so I just had to point.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: Out, like, that part that bothers me even more. And I don't like that. Any of the stuff, you know, in terms of.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: No, no. And that's what I'm saying. Like, and that's what I was saying. And I talked to my friend. I said, and then look at Hunter Biden. I go, as much as he seems to be a total screw up himself, look at Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were employees of the administration. And in their last disclosure, they disclosed that they made. Because they got to give ranges, right? They disclosed that they made between 140,000,600, $40 million in income over the four years that they were employees of the administration. And Jared Kushner was 36 in 2016. There's not too many people that age that make that kind of money. So that's what I told my friend. I said, the problem is not that I want to defend Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, and I don't want to do that. The problem is, now that we've accepted what we just came through before, this kind of pales in comparison, in a sense.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: And, well, and the thing is, it shouldn't be depending on what side you're on, that's going to be the side you should be. It should be if anybody's doing, if either it has to be, if anybody's doing it, we're all bad. Yeah.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: And that's what I'm saying. And you know what? I gave him an example. I said, look, I wasn't a big George W. Bush fan. I said, but I appreciate he came from an extremely wealthy family. We all know that. And he owned a baseball team, he owned the Texas Rangers. He had oil and gas interests and all that. Guess what? When he became president, he put a line and said, I'll get back to that stuff after I'm done. But right now I'm president of the United States. And I think that's really the concern I have, is that we have a culture now of people that aren't going like, remember you said this? The word noble actually comes from the word nobility. There used to be people from the Ivy League. The kind of nobility of our country would go into government. Not everybody, but the culture was that they were going to serve the public, do public service, and then go back to their family ranch or make all their money, you know, in the private sector. Yeah, we now have people, and this is what I'm saying, like, that lines.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Been blurred or in fact, it may be the reverse where people go into public service.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: What I was going to say, yeah, we now have people that appears that have Fitzgerald figured out a formula. And it's like this kind of, this constellation of ecosystems, which is I can go, I got one or two ways or a multiple way of doing. I can either go after the big dollars. I was looking at reading about Ron DeSantis, and there's a billionaire who now is done with supporting him. But they were saying that this guy gave out of his personal money, $10 million between the 2018 and the 2020 campaign. And so you can either go for the big donors and just say, let me just get them, or you do. I mean, that's what I say. It's probably a combination like the Steve Bannons and the Trumps did, which is the grifting off the small donors, the 20. Remember when Donald Trump had to give back 67 million to 500,000 supporters because the fine print didn't.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: They turned a one time donation into auto.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: It was a recurring donation. And so I think we're right, unfortunately, that there's people that have figured out, hey, this is a great hustle. Again, why? Because now it's not a coincidence that Citizens United was just one of several legal cases that repealed a lot of these guardrails of money in politics. And that was in 2010. And it seems like, yeah, in the last decade or so, we, now it's a clown show in Congress to me.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: I mean, I agree. Like this. The overall setup of the system seems to be the biggest threat. Like, I think it's actually, it would be helpful for the system if someone like Menendez gets convicted because we just don't have any signals right now that this type of conduct you can doesn't pay. All the, all the feedback you're getting in the system, all the signals that are being sent is that this type of conduct pays. You want, you don't make your money and then say, hey, I'll give six years to my country and do public services in the Senate, and then I'll go back to making money. It's like, no, no, I'm going to get into politics in order to be able to make some money. You know, and it's, it's, it's, it's all reversed. And that's well beyond the, quote unquote, revolving door that was there 20 years ago or whatever. And the thing, the also, the other thing that the system, the way our system discovered what it does is it discourages people who would want to do good for a society from even getting involved. If you look at how toxic the situation is, how toxic our politics are, how toxic our media environment are, that essentially, if you're getting in just to help people, why that's such a bad deal for you, why would you do that? You get in, I'm, hey, I'm going to help people. I'm going to make their lives better. And then people are attacking you. People are the average people you're trying to help. They're attacking you, they're attacking your family, they're attacking your kids and all this other stuff. And it's like, hold up, I'm here just to help you guys. The deal actually makes a lot more sense. Hey, if I'm going to get attacked anyway, a better argument can be made a lot of times and say, okay, well, I'm just going to go in and try to enrich myself, then it's kind of quote unquote, worth it to deal with all the b's that you got to deal with when you, when you want to get involved in that system. And so that's part of it as well. The corruption and making the system more toxic pushes away the people who actually would try to go in and represent our best interest. So, but ultimately, and I want to end here, you had mentioned this offline, and I'll mention it because I do want to get to the next topic, the buck stops with us, the voters. I mean, and that's really what it is. And part of this you mentioned earlier, and I think it was very important point, the apathy that this stuff creates is very damaging. And that's why I said, if, you know, if Menendez is guilty of what they're accused him of, it's actually better for the system that he gets convicted. And again, that's not a partisan statement. That's like, hey, I am a fan of not, not having corruption in my system. And so without that, we are with corruption, you get, or, excuse me, with a conviction, you get less apathy. Without this guy gets off, that's more apathy. That's more people getting in just to enrich themselves. And, I mean, that's, people are counting on this country and this economy and this political system to keep running on without steady guidance and just to keep being the golden goose. But we know how the story of the golden goose works out.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: No, that's a sad part because people are ripping the goose open and there's going to be nothing in there. You know what I mean? That's a sad part. Just before we jump, I just want to spend 30 seconds with some numbers that I think will blow the audience mind. So in 2020, we'll have all this in the show notes.
The, the election on the books was $2 billion spent in terms of money that is, through the official channels.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Art money.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: Yeah, the non, like, a lot of money. Anyway. But they estimate that as much as 11 billion on top of that was spent, to your point, on the dark money, the shadows. And so, yeah, I started looking. Sheldon Adelson, who is a big donor and only donates to one side, which is Republicans, broke a record at that point and spent $172 million of his personal money on that election.
That was broken the following cycle in the 21 22 cycle by George Soros, who spent 178 million in that one. Now that one, too. And it's interesting, he spent that all on democrats, zero on republicans. Michael Bloomberg, I was reminded, remember, he came into the 2020 race and he said on tv, I'm prepared to spend $400 million of my own money.
I got here. Peter Thiel spent 35 million in 22, all on Republicans, zero on Democrats. Sam Bankman, freed from FTX, spent 37 million on Democrats, zero on Republicans. So what I realize is this is also what's going to create apathy and why american people feel like the government is not working for them, because all these congressmen and senators literally are courting this few hundreds of really wealthy people. And it's like, oh, 30 million to only Democrats, not Republicans. 30 million to only Republicans, not Democrats. And who's getting left out? So all these people's interests, that's why I read that thing about where the GOP right now is trying to negotiate lower spending to avoid the government shutdown. They're going to shut down this government and all the millions of government employees who are going to be furloughed and not have salaries so that the people on this list can, you know, have the SEC gutted, the IR's gutted, and a consumer protection agency's gutted.
I mean, that's, that why I want to finish on that is. Is up to us. The voters. The founders gave us this system. It's called the House of Representatives because they represent us. But right now, they're representing this list of people, not us. Yeah, and I think that's it. You know?
[00:41:04] Speaker A: Yeah, no, no. So.
[00:41:06] Speaker B: But now we get the democracy we.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: We deserve. Yeah, that's what I've been saying for two decades, man. You get the democracy you deserve. If you sit it out, then the people who don't sit it out are gonna get, you know, whatever. And so it's right now, again, we're learning the lessons that we as people, that we the people need to learn in order to get the system back under control.
But, you know, what's going to happen isn't a given. You know, like, we're gonna write the next story. But at least this is us learning these lessons now, so.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: But it feels better. When I watch my favorite anchor on my cable news channel railing about the other side, it just makes me feel better about myself. I think I'm just gonna do. That's the game you keep trying to educate me on. Forget all this.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the game.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: The game is all for these guys.
[00:41:52] Speaker A: But, see, that's the difference. All of those guys aren't donating based on what feels good. You know, they're donating based on, again, dispassionate. And, you know, we got to move to the next topic. The second topic we want to discuss today dealt with is some recent research that's been published going into single parent versus two parents. And, you know, the research was. Was showing, you know, the. The. It wasn't a study that was, at least from what you can tell, that was that they were doing to try to make a point. You know, it was more so trying to. Trying to figure out, you know, well, you know, what's happening with. With single parents versus two parents, and then also, why is it happening? And is there anything that can be done about it? Then? Basically, it showed what you would imagine that kids with two parents have advantage over kids with one parent, you know, like one parent in the home and so forth. And that actually in the home, you know, like married parents, you know, makes a difference in terms of outcomes as far as the kids, as far as avoiding poverty, as far as, you know, just what they do in life. And these are numbers. This is not like. This is so. This is like percentages and statistics and so forth. This isn't everybody. This isn't 100% of anything. It's just increasing the odds of this and that of positive outcomes versus negative outcomes. So. And this has always been one of those touchy topics because. And the researchers talk about this like, hey, we're not trying to demonize single parent, you know, single parents that are doing the best they can and everything like that, but it is, you know, it's something that we think is important to study, you know, so to speak. So what was your reaction to seeing this? And, you know, there's kind of. What did you. What did you kind of take from this?
[00:43:19] Speaker B: That was very interesting for me. You know, I tell you, it's. For me, it's personal, because I was, you know, raised in a single parent household. My mom and dad divorced when I was two, and my dad went back to Nigeria and didn't look back. And, you know, I was raised in Washington, DC, with my mom.
So, but I've, I've, and that's why I say it's, it's personal in that way. And I get it 100% because, and I think this is where I've seen in our media now, people trying to cherry pick out of this what they already, their preconceived biases about this topic because I always, I remember this, and I'll say this, you know, on a personal level from, from kind of a family standpoint, you know, even now as a 45 year old man, I had an awesome childhood. I don't think I was one of, you know, I've hear people say, oh, you know, a woman can't raise a man. I don't believe that. I think my mom did a great job. I'm a good person. I'm married with my own family, wife with three kids. I've been married one time, not divorced. So, you know, I don't feel like I have some sort of emotional or bad baggage. My mom made sure I just had a great childhood and, you know, and the right kind of discipline and all that. I remember when I was about twelve or 13 having a conversation with her.
I don't remember how we got to this in the conversation. I just remember because it stood out. He told me that my dad had hit her once.
And I remember at that moment understanding because I was, I think, like in most kids that I would have at that age, I wanted to have a two parent household. I was probably asking my mom how come it didn't work out. But I remember being at that age and just having that foresight and understanding that. And I remember saying to myself, wow, I guess it's better that I got raised by one parent who's happy then risk having to watch my dad beat up my mom. Right. And so I think that's why I feel fortunate. Maybe that's why. Because we had that conversation at that age, when I was that age that I grew up feeling like, well, I'm glad that my mom was by herself and she was happy and gave me a good childhood and a good experience so I could be a nice, well rounded adulthood versus, I guess if I had my dad around and he was treating her like that, I wouldn't be the same person today.
[00:45:31] Speaker A: Well, you know, that's one thing that's very interesting to me in the sense that that's something, though, that can't be studied, so to speak.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: Correct? Yeah.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: Can we study what's the outcome for kids that are raised in happy homes versus you know, tense or stressed out homes. And you can't really measure that, you know, like, so it's part of, it's kind of implicit in some of these things, but it's not really captured, you know? But that's an excellent point, though.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: Well, and the reason I bring that up, not to make it all about me in my past, but more because just giving that context, that when I see these kind of studies, sometimes I look at, okay, someone else is trying to prove why single parent households are deficient or something like that. But this one was interesting because the economist went out of her way, I think, in a good way. Not to say I'm not making a judgment. I'm not saying that single moms are bad. I'm not saying that because I find sometimes, and again, not to blanket this, but sometimes the uber religious crowd makes this kind of case that, oh, if you don't have two parents in a house, somehow you can't teach morality. You're doomed.
[00:46:32] Speaker A: You know?
[00:46:33] Speaker B: That's what I mean.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: Like, that was my biggest takeaway of this, actually, was that a lot of times when you read stuff like this, it's being, it's presented in a way, and it's, the approach is with one without any kind of empathy, without any kind. It's just like, it's very preachy. It's like, oh, you're reading this? And like you said, somebody started out with this mindset, like, I'm gonna prove that everybody should be married and yada and raise kids in a two parent like this. This seemed to be more intellectually curious in terms of a study, in terms of like, okay, well, what's going on here? Hey, is it the money? Is it just that there's more money and this and that? And like you said, that they were careful many a times to say, look, we're not here to try to say that, you know, to try to demonize or, you know, diminish the parent of a single parent, you know, household and so forth. And so I think it was helpful to, for someone like myself, who's just intellectually curious, you know, just saying, okay, well, I want to, I just want to learn something about this. Like, what? What are you seeing here? I don't need you to try to preach to me one way or the other. You know, I remember Chris Rock had a joke years ago talking about, you know, making the point that, you know, and people use comedy for different things, but, you know, he was like, the joke was essentially that, you know, nobody's saying that you can't raise a kid by yourself. Uh, you know, but you can drive a car with your feet, but that may not be the best way to drive a car. You know, there's other ways to drive it that may be more effective or whatever, and so. But a lot of those, it's really difficult, I think, for us as human beings and you, this is kind of the lottery conundrum, so to speak. We just don't do good. A lot of times, on a personal level, looking at statistics and numbers and saying, okay, well, it's a 10% better chance, so this is going to happen. Or in the reverse, the pharmaceutical company uses this against us. It's like, oh, you can reduce your risk of infection by 15%. And we don't convert that. Like, oh, okay, well, that means if 45 people would have got it before, then only 30, you're getting it out of 100. Yeah, like, we don't do that in our mind. We just, oh, big number great, you know, or small number terrible, or whatever, you know, depending on what you're doing. So.
[00:48:27] Speaker B: But I do think then we overpay for the drugs.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: But ultimately, I do think these are the kind of things that do need to be looked at. And, you know, I want to kick it back to you, but I have some. Some more specific thoughts about kind of where I think this come. Where I think this actually leads to more than anything.
[00:48:45] Speaker B: But.
[00:48:45] Speaker A: But go ahead and just to finish.
[00:48:47] Speaker B: My personal kind of story on it, because I found. That's why I found this very intriguing for me to read, because it's the first time in reading something like this that wasn't about. Because that's what I mean. Most of the stuff I read is about the morality and that, you know, and I'm like, I mean, my mom taught me right from wrong.
[00:49:02] Speaker A: Trying to guilt people, you're doing.
[00:49:04] Speaker B: So it's like, I mean, you know, if everyone could look up me online and stuff. I don't have a criminal record. I don't. You know, like, I didn't. I always. I grew up saying, you know, it probably would have been better to have two happy parents in a house.
[00:49:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:16] Speaker B: But again, that story I told about what my mom shared with me when I was younger made me realize, no, I'm better off with one parent that's happy than two parents that are miserable together and watching that play out, so. And that's when I read it. Of course, she's talking about economics, only the author of the study, and I agree, like, that was good for, well, economics and time.
[00:49:36] Speaker A: Also economics and time. Like the, like two parents, you know, like, if you have two parents, then that's potentially more time to read.
[00:49:43] Speaker B: No, I agree. That's what I mean. Like, it was the first time that I saw this argument presented in this way where it forced me to have to go back and think, and I had to acknowledge, yeah, of course, forget about happiness for a second. If there was just a second income coming in from my house. Yeah, obviously that would have made things a little bit easier financially, I'm sure. And, yeah, I remember my mom sleeping in every Saturday till, you know, noon or something. Cause she was exhausted. My mom worked her butt off. You know, she was working 60 hours a week. And so, you know, it's not that I look back and I don't feel like my mom never had time for me, but I do think, you know, my mom just cranked it out and she died at 70 of cancer. So maybe the stress of raising me on her own for, you know, the decade plus and all that stuff hurt her body in a way where she died prematurely, who knows? But the point I'm making is that it's the first time I looked and I acknowledged, yeah, of course, having two human beings, adults, in a home raising children is going to have certain positive effects when you look at them on the sur, like you said, laying down statistics, more money.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: There's a thing, many hands, light work. There's. That's a saying that potentially more money.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: And if not more money, definitely more ability to help and hands. And so is there a positive of that? Yes, but I think that's where, again, everyone needs to be careful not to cherry pick their pre existing notion about this topic because like you said, which is hard to measure, is the happiness scale. Are they happy or they miserable?
[00:51:14] Speaker A: But what this doesn't answer, and this is where I like, okay, I think a lot of people would. Could hear this and be like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. Then what? It's kind of like this. And I think the author was like, we can't answer that with statistics, you know, like, and so forth. One of the things that I've considered and looked at just in terms of society, and this is where you get into different types of societies. We have a very individualistic society in the United States and other places that have individualistic societies. One thing about marriage, and I'm sure you know this, you know, in terms of just your. From your life experience as well. One thing about, like, marriage, forget kids for a second, is that it requires that two people approach they're generously at least. I mean, if you're going to do it with where people are reasonably happy, both people are reasonably happy. People have to approach it in a way of requires sacrifice. It requires, you know, putting the needs of others and ahead of your own sometimes and so forth. And so if you go into like a lot of times, I think an individual societies, that's not things that people learn to do, you know, like that very often. And so if you apply that to then adding kids to that environment, a lot of times if you have an approach to relationship with a spouse or with your kids and so forth of sacrifice and putting the needs of others ahead of your own, then that can also lead to better outcomes a lot of times as well, because I've seen a lot of times just myself where parents have different level of commitment in terms of their own wants and desires versus their kids wants and desires. And that's not to say that there's some right answer there. There's because kids, and there's plenty of things like kids need to also have, you parent can't be holding their kid all the time either. Holding their hand, their kids hand all the time either. But, you know, there is kind of a mentality that would, I mean, even in terms of the partners you select, you know, do you select partners, a partner that is one that is more self oriented or more oriented, say, hey, I know how to fit on a team as well. And so last thing I'll throw out about this. One of the things that's interesting about this to me also is sports in terms of ways to learn things like this. Like we're in a society, even a society like ours. Can you learn teamwork, you know, sacrifice putting in these? And then for me it's like, that's one of the benefits of sports, you know, and why, like, I have my kids in sports and it's like, I mean, it's not so they get married, but it's just like, it's just one of those things that I look at the, where, where do these characteristics come from or where do they develop? And that's one of the ones that to me I like, yeah, you go on to a sports team and if you're doing that right, part of it is, okay, yeah, I got, I come into this group and I figure out where my role is, you know, and a lot of times my role is lined up with what I do well or, you know, things like that. And, and I fit into the group and we make, we as a group, then try to succeed or fail together.
[00:53:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, as we close out, I actually had dinner with someone on Friday, which I had a good conversation. I had no idea this conversation will be relevant for our show today, but I'll share it, because as I talked about my own childhood just now, it made me realize it. To also share and explain that one of the things that I always wanted to be, because I didn't have the experience of having one, was a dad.
And that's the interesting thing, too. Like, you know, whenever I hear people say, oh, a single woman can't raise a man and all that, I just don't understand that, because I remember thinking even as a teenager, like, I can't wait till I'm old enough. I want to have a family because I want to be the type of father that I never had. And so I'm very active with my kids and all that. The guy I had dinner with on Friday was intrigued. We got into this kind of family talk.
So he grew up in a household, unfortunately, with parents that didn't get along and then had a really nasty divorce. And he joked and said that when he was five or six, he was the mediator, flying on planes, going back and forth to the different parents. So what? We were having a deep conversation because he's been with a nice young lady. They look like a very nice couple together, but she's kind of given, and they've been together for years now, and she's kind of given him the kind of thing like, hey, look, my clock's ticking. And, you know, if you don't put a ring on his finger, we gotta go. And when I got into his head, what was interesting was he's not opposed to marrying her and all that. He literally has this, like, visceral feeling that he had from when he was a kid, that because of his experience, he doesn't want to mess up his relationship with his lady. Now, he really believed, he grew up conditioning himself, that this must be what marriage is, that if you get married, you just hate each other, and then the kids are going to be miserable and all that. So what I'm saying is going back.
[00:55:45] Speaker A: To, like, we're saying that's like, trauma, basically. You're talking about, like, a traumatic.
[00:55:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, it's a trauma. Yeah. And so what I'm saying is, so me being raised by a single mom was not traumatic. Him being raised by two parents that then got divorced was super traumatic. And so what I'm saying is, I'm not saying that there's a better or worse. This is why it's almost impossible to try and figure out, like, when people want to do what I would call this social engineering. Like, everybody should be married, or we shouldn't have any single parents, or some people now are, you know, no one should get married. This is where we should accept that it's a free country and let people, you know, engage each other in this way, in the way they should. But again, because we can't predict where the child will be happy. If there's a single parent that's doing well, they can be happy. If there's a married couple doing well, they'll be happy. If there's a married couple that's miserable, the kids probably miserable. If a single parent is miserable, the kids probably miserable. Yeah. So I think it's the engineering piece.
[00:56:38] Speaker A: I think you're 100% right. But that doesn't mean that there aren't, like, optimal ways to approach things. And so I think that that's kind of the purpose of the study and the researcher talked about was just kind of like, well, we just. We just want to ask more questions, and you can kind of. That doesn't mean that the government needs to do this or the government needs to do that or whatever. And I don't think that's the role of the government. That's more social and cultural type things, which is not really the government's role, at least, like you said, in a free society like ours. Now, culturally, if we're gonna have a very individualistic society, I mean, bottom line is we're just gonna have to. That part of having a very individualistic society, which I'm not arguing against of, is that people are gonna be looking out for number one. And marriage doesn't always, you know, like, it's hard to stay married if you're always looking out for number one.
[00:57:23] Speaker B: You know?
[00:57:24] Speaker A: So that's just kind of the deal that we've made from a cultural standpoint, and people will champion that in some ways and be like, oh, yeah, you know, we're all about, you know, just. Just pushing it forward and, you know, grind it to the bone and then. But this is one of the, you know, everything has trade offs, and so if we're gonna have this society, you know, we push super hard and we're all about me, me, me and everything, then, you know, this is the marriage, and raising kids in wet lock is not gonna be one of the things that we're gonna be able to hold on to as tightly as societies that are more collective. And again, that's not saying societies that are more collective are better, but it's just kind of you. You take the good with the bad with whatever kind of approach that you, you you either born into or you live with. So. But I think we can wrap from here, man. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Carter. Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:58:11] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Guan. Lana.
[00:58:13] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
