Is the Push to End Amazon’s Government Contracts an Abuse of Power? Also, Action Still Beats Manifestation

May 03, 2022 00:51:10
Is the Push to End Amazon’s Government Contracts an Abuse of Power? Also, Action Still Beats Manifestation
Call It Like I See It
Is the Push to End Amazon’s Government Contracts an Abuse of Power? Also, Action Still Beats Manifestation

May 03 2022 | 00:51:10

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Hosted By

James Keys Tunde Ogunlana

Show Notes

Seeing Senator Bernie Sanders’ push to get the U.S. government to end its contracts with Amazon over the company’s labor practices, James Keys and Tunde Ogunlana consider the boundaries of the legitimate use of government power and whether labor and unions still have a place in society (01:34).  The guys also compare Sanders’ push to Florida governor Ron Desantis’ recent move to punish Disney for speaking against a recent Florida law (25:02) and discuss the importance of action in bringing about positive change in one’s life (41:38).

Sanders calls on Biden to cut Amazon out of U.S. federal contracts (Reuters)

Amazon workers in New York City vote to unionize, a first for the company (PBS)

Amazon workers reject union bid at second Staten Island warehouse (The Guardian)

How Amazon keeps a close eye on employee activism to head off unions (CNBC)

How Amazon Crushes Unions (NY Times)

Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (Wikipedia)

GOP Governor Hutchinson Blasts DeSantis Over Disney Fight in Florida (Newsweek)

Here’s How Disney Could Block—Or Benefit From—Republicans Killing Its Special District (Forbes)

Show Up. Mood Follows Action (Pocket)

View Full Transcript

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it presented by Disruption Now, I'm James Keys and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to react to Bernie Sanders effort to get the federal government to end its contracts with Amazon because of what Sanders calls Amazon's illegal anti union activity. And we'll also see how that relates just in terms of the exercise of government power, how that relates to other actions that we've seen lately that we may or may not have disagreed with. And later on we're going to discuss the importance of doing less thinking and taking more action as far as trying to bring positive change or build new habits in our lives. Joining me today is a man who, whether you're ready or not, is going to find you and take it slowly. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde, Are you ready to show the folks how you play your enemies like a game of chess? [00:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah, you cleaned it up with that last one with the game of chess and the enemies because I wasn't sure where we were going about me taking. [00:01:20] Speaker A: It slow, taking it slowly. No trickery. [00:01:27] Speaker B: Yeah, no trickery. [00:01:30] Speaker A: But now we're recording this on May 2, 2022 and last week we saw U.S. senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, the independent, call on Joe Biden to issue an executive order to end the government's federal contracts with Amazon. So that's the federal government end those contracts with Amazon over its labor practices. So you know what Amazon is doing out here in the world. They wanted the in the government contracts where Amazon is providing a service to the US Government. They want to end those contracts and use another provider. Now efforts to unionize and Amazon's practices as far as that, this stuff's been going on for decades and until recently Amazon has been able batted a thousand, so to speak, been able to defeat all of these efforts for its employees in various forms to to unionize, whether it be smaller or larger. And people have complained about Amazon's tactics and the union officials have been brought in, government officials have been brought in and so forth. There's been disputes, but recently one of Amazon's Staten island facilities in New York voted to form a union. So it seems like this issue is actually still picking up Steam and Amazon's tactics as far as how it's dealing with the stuff are going to remain under a microscope. So Tunde, to get us started, what are your thoughts on Sanders effort to get the government to stop buying stuff from Amazon basically because of its labor practices. And you can get into the plight of organized labor as well as you. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Get into this, it's an interesting conversation because this is the intersection of. If I can kind of pull it out to 30,000ft, kind of the intersection of what's the role of government and what are we doing as a society. Let's just say any large society where you have a labor force especially. I think it's even more pronounced in our type of society where you have private sector ownership of capital. Right. So we have private businesses which are owned by people who pay taxes and who vote, and they employ people who pay taxes and who vote. So if you're looking at the society from, like, if you're in government, for example, what is your role as someone who's an elected official in protecting all of those interests? Right? Because some people may feel that they are there to more protect the interest of the private capital that organizes to form the businesses that provide jobs and all that stuff in a society. Other politicians may feel that they are there more to support the workers and those that are in the labor force, those companies, which, again, going back to Bernie Sanders, that's what I said. I'm not surprised he's taken the side he's taken because he's always been vocal about his support for labor. So that, to me, is what this conversation. Why it's interesting to me, because although I know we're gonna talk about some current events here, I just find this dance and this dynamic between labor and capital historically to be interesting because it goes back to even about how some chimpanzees have. Societies have organized where the weaker ones will team up against the more aggressive warrior types as a way for their own survival. And there's been. I've seen documentaries where that's been kind of throughout human evolution, the role of women in society as they group together to combat maybe more aggressive men, things like that. Where, you know, this, to me, is another example of that. [00:05:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't. I wouldn't. I didn't see the primate comparison coming. Yeah, I mean, I feel you, though, in the sense that, like, I think looking at Bernie Sanders effort in particular, what you have, the role of government and what's very important here, which I take for granted, just with my training, my background as an attorney, is the government. We don't want the government. And the government is not in place to, so to speak, make rules and to either reward or punish companies based on. Based on their political positions or their beliefs or things like that in terms of regulation. But the government does have. And this is something that's been dealt with extensively throughout the history of the United States. It does also have purchasing power. And that is something that the government is allowed to. Has much more discretion with in terms of who is it going to. Not in terms of any laws or anything like that. But if it needs, you know, to buy a bunch of paper or if it needs to buy a bunch of computers, the government can exercise discretion in terms of the values it wants to promote or the things that it wants to support in its, in its, in the country or things that it doesn't want to support through this purchasing power. And that's consistent with freedom of speech and things like that. And so what we're talking about here is Bernie Sanders trying to push Biden and the White House to use the government's purchasing power to direct money, to not send that to Amazon because of what he's alleging as far as Amazon is doing, as far as how they're dealing with these efforts to unionize in their facilities. And so that piece, it's an interesting distinction, like you said, in terms of the role of government. So yes, it's understandable that Bernie Sanders would be the one bringing this up. He touts himself as a champion of the worker and labor and so forth. And it's. What he's doing is not something that, while it may sound, well, I'm going to throw some comparisons in later, but it may sound similar to what things we see elsewhere. It's actually, it's really directed at the government purchasing power because the government is a huge entity as far as buying things. You know, the government can make or break companies. You know, getting government contracts is something that is, can, can make or break a company or you know, to sustain something. And so that part about it I think is very interesting. And then just the plight of organized labor, I mean, I have looked at it, it seemed like organized labor lost at the, at the end of the 20th century now. And I'm one that, you know, personal philosophy and my read on these things is that organized. I view organized labor in the same way I view organized capital. Organized capital, you understand, as a corporation or an LLC or whatever, as ways to organize capital together to, to accomplish things. Organized labor to me is the inverse of that. It's the way to organize the labor piece in order to put yourself on an equal bargaining position with the capital. The capital, when it's organized, can wield an abnormal and really out of balance amount of influence if the labor is then unorganized in the same way as if the labor was organized and the Capital, you only had sole proprietors and that's it. The capital couldn't put their money together and organize in a way. So the fact that labor has just been decimated essentially and even amongst workers is looked at very unfavorably these days. And I think there's reasons for that which we may get into, we may not. But the fact that that's happened is notable in our society in a lot of ways. But also that Amazon being the biggest and the baddest right now in terms of employers, big employers out there, they're not as big, I think as an employer as Walmart. But that labor is trying to get back in right here, almost like at the top of the food chain, and trying to get back in and really establish a foothold is because labor, organized labor, has certain benefits to workers, to all workers, whether they're unionized or not. [00:08:55] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's interesting because in even preparing for today and looking at some of that history in our country, because remember, the country was founded right, in a way of trying to start something different. And it wasn't just about not having a king and having some sort of representative government, but it was also, remember the idea was that every man could come here and kind of make something of himself. Yeah, that's one reason I would say, I would argue that's one reason. One of the reasons we went to civil, to the Civil War, right, Is because the union at that point was kind of saying, look, these Southern states are starting to mirror Europe with this planner class that has all this free labor in the form of slavery. But every other person that's not either a slave or a plantation owner, which was the majority of the white population in the south were basically dirt poor because there was no prospects to get better. And there was no one representing them, right. Saying, hold on, you guys should still at least try and sprinkle out some activity to these guys so this southern communities can actually thrive more than just your plantation. And so one could argue that the foundations of the Civil War, meaning the decision of the government, the non Confederate states, to not have slavery in the new territory states of the Louisiana Purchase and then west after we got New Mexico, Texas and California from the Spanish, that was, although we've been conditioned to believe it was all about slavery really, it was a labor movement in a sense, if you think about it, slavery. [00:10:32] Speaker A: But it wasn't necessarily about. All about altruism. Yeah, there were people in that that were altruistic, but then there were also people saying, hold on, you know, from a Labor standpoint, we need to get rid of slavery. [00:10:42] Speaker B: That's what I mean. It's just. It's just the conversation was about the greater good of the country. Like, well, we could have slavery, but that means this huge. Not only are the slaves disenfranchised, like you're saying that wasn't. Some people were altruistic, some people weren't. But also you're gonna have this other part, this white population that's also disenfranchised, all for the benefit of this very, very small planner class. And I think you could mirror that today with the conversation about Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Right. They say that I was reading an article that Amazon took off in 2020 due to the pandemic and what was going on, and they hired an additional 500,000 workers in warehouses around the world, in a sense. But Jeff Bezos personal net worth went up by 75 billion over that time. So the question is, yes, we have a society of private ownership. And I commend Jeff Bezos for growing his net worth and starting this company because I'm a consumer of it. I was gonna make a joke and say, you know, I think it's my family's prime membership which has a greater effect on Amazon's bottom line than whether they unionize or not, than the government contracts. [00:11:47] Speaker A: All they need is Tune day. [00:11:49] Speaker B: I'm sure I'm not the only husband who feels that way with a wife and kids, but. And then. And in fairness to my family, I'm part of that reason too. Well, that's kind of my point in saying is that from a historic standpoint, I guess just to finish it off, this argument is the same argument that's been had a long time, which is not. Doesn't diminish it. Right. But it just kind of says, this is one of those areas of our society that I think we continue to refine, let's put it that way, and we're in one of those moments. [00:12:19] Speaker A: You can boil it down even more simply than that. It's a battle over power. And in a normal. Well, I shouldn't even say normal. And what's been considered to us, normal. Now, when capital organizes and labor does not, capital has all the power. When labor organizes and capital organizes, then there is, and this is for labor intensive businesses, then there is a sharing of power that has to happen. And that is basically, capitalists generally push back on labor movements because they don't want to share that power. They like to be able to unilaterally do whatever they want. To do. And we see this, and you brought this up to me offline. We see this in action with the sports leagues because their labor force is unionized. And so we see the collective bargaining in terms of there is a power dynamic of the labor that can say, well, we'll just withhold our services collectively or we'll do this. And they're able to ask for things and demand things that, absent that collective, they wouldn't be able to do from the billionaires that own the teams if it was like, hey, you're going to act up. We'll just get rid of you and so to speak. But when it's everyone, then. So ultimately you're always going to have this. This will never go away because it's a battle over power. It's a battle over the means of production. If the means of production are people, then they're either going to have some agency and some power, or they're not, or they'll have some degree of it, depending on how strong they can organize again, organize to counterbalance the organized capital that's there. And so because ultimately, you know, we're all supposed to be equal under the law, but we're not all supposed to be equal in commerce, you know, like that it depends on leverage, you know, where you are, your equality, so to speak. Anytime you negotiate a contract or anything like that, it depends on your leverage. And when you have leverage, then you get better terms than you might in a vacuum deserve the. And when you have no leverage or little leverage, you get worse terms than what you could deserve in the context of, you know, like in the. In a vacuum. And being in a union gives you more leverage because you're not just speaking as far as you. You're speaking as far as everyone else. And ultimately, it's always surprising to me how negatively in our country we look at labor and unions. And I get like. And I say that as someone who, you know, unions definitely went overboard. You know, when, when they were big, they got corrupt. And not unlike corporations get corrupt, though. You know, like, they got cor. And they were doing all types of stuff. [00:14:43] Speaker B: Anywhere there's centralized power and money. [00:14:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:46] Speaker B: Whether it's government or private sector, whether it's. [00:14:49] Speaker A: Whether it's government, whether it's corporations or whether it's unions. But see, government and corporations were able to survive. Unions got corrupt and they were like, we just get rid of all of it, or we just don't have sympathy for it at all. But it still has a role. And so ultimately, I look at this as for me, from my standpoint, is because I see organized labor as a necessary counterbalance to organized capital. I look at this as a positive that someone is saying, hey, if this company, if Amazon is not obeying the law, which there have been settlements as far as what the National Labor Relations Board that Amazon's had to enter into, some of which we just find out recently, they were secret or whatever where they were doing things where I'll put it like this, I can't say that they were breaking the law, but they, in the settlement agreed to no longer break the law. So when they had stuff like that, that stuff's been happening. And so Bernie Sanders was saying, well, hey, as long as this stuff is happening, then we shouldn't be giving these windfall contracts to Amazon. That makes sense to me. [00:15:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think it goes back to my point about our primate cousins, the chimpanzees, the weak ones, need to group together to be able to at least have a chance against the strong ones. And I think in our society, the. [00:16:02] Speaker A: Workers are the weak ones. [00:16:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's what I mean. In our society, capital is the ax that's wielded, right? Yes, correct. So one human being like Jeff Bezos, who's worth, you know, close to $200 billion at this point, we recognize he's got a lot more power and reach than maybe his employers that are earning, you know, 30,000, 50,000, even 100,000 a year. So they. For their ability to organize collectively. I mean, that's why I think, as you brought up the sports world, it's a great example of where the labor and capital relationship is not always pretty and perfect. There's strikes, we know that. But it's a little bit more. More transparent to us all as sports fans. And I think our, as a society, we accept that. That. Okay, well, you know, the NBA Players association, the MLB union, the NFL union, you know, that they. [00:16:53] Speaker A: But it is fascinating. Let me say this real quick. I'll let you keep going. But it is always fascinating that generally speaking, workers in society, other, you know, the citizens of our society, oftentimes, more often than not, side with capital over labor, with these things. [00:17:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:09] Speaker A: You know, like. And there's a lot of reasons for that, but it's just, it's endlessly fascinating to me how people, you know, like, they can essentially, it seems like they relate more to the capitalists than the labor trying to get a. A piece of the pie, basically. [00:17:22] Speaker B: Well, there's been studies on that about, you know, the. Especially in America the way our culture is that most Americans believe at some point in their life they will be that guy at the 37% tax rate. Yeah, yeah. Clearly, the stats don't bear that out. But each of us has a chance, right? But. But. But each of us has a chance, right? So I want to believe. So what it is. [00:17:44] Speaker A: I'm. Again, and there's a lot of things. But what I've seen a lot of times is that the fans oftentimes tend to relate to the laundry and they just want their game. Yeah, well, they oftentimes look at the players. [00:17:54] Speaker B: Yeah, well, the owners know that too. [00:17:55] Speaker A: Well, exactly. And then the player, the fans are like, I wouldn't. I would do this for. For, you know, 47% of $100 billion. Why can't you do it for 47%? And it's like, you know, so there's. There's a lot of, you know, like, envy or whatever. But it always strikes me as odd. Like, people in unions, if they collect, if they. They fight for the collective, they are seen as greedy, more so than capitalists. [00:18:18] Speaker B: So I've got an old friend who was the treasurer of the players union for the NBA. And this is in the last decade. And I remember their last. I mean, the last collective bargaining agreement he was involved with. I don't know if it was the last one, but I'm not even going to name the team he was on and all that. I just remember that he. One day he came to me. He's like, tunde, man. These guys are so. Because the power that they have, they're like, literally billionaires. So he was on a team that was owned by a guy that was worth at the time around 8, 9 billion. And he was just telling me how the rules of the NBA are. You can only discuss the revenue from the actual team. [00:18:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:59] Speaker B: To the bottom line. And he was a sharp guy that could read financial statements and all that. [00:19:04] Speaker A: Meaning none of the other arena revenue. [00:19:07] Speaker B: That's where I learned their game from him. He goes, danae, let me tell you, this guy owns a lighting company that does the lighting in the stadium. He owns a bunch of the companies that do the concessions. He owns the company that does the laundry. He owns this. And then he said, so what he says is what they do is they overbuild a team so that it appears that he goes, the guy even owns the bank that's financing that. He's got debt on the team to make it look like. So he's got all this interest. He got $100 million in interest every year going out. So he's like, so I can put back together all this stuff and say, nah, man, you're really making this much money, but you're trying to show this. So that's what he was telling me. He goes, us trying to negotiate for 50% is not even 50 when you really look at it. But we can't go out. I can't tell him, hey man, you got to put back your lighting stuff and the concessions and all this stuff you're making. Because it's basically what he's doing is the owner's peeling out revenue that otherwise would be in the team coffers at the end of the year by over billing from his other companies that are vendors to the team. [00:20:11] Speaker A: Organize capital. I think he has his capital organized in separate spots. [00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that is a great definition of organized capital. And I think, and I'm glad actually we got to this point of the conversation because it's hard to explain to people how powerful individuals can be when they're at that level of wealth. [00:20:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:31] Speaker B: That if they're smart like that. I mean, these guys are shrewd, smart business guys. [00:20:34] Speaker A: Yeah. They're not sitting there with a savings account and all this money. [00:20:37] Speaker B: Exactly. They're not. Yeah. They're not the proverbial trust fund baby with a billion dollars sitting in, you know, Philip Morris stock and IBM and AT&T and there's living off dividends. These are. These are the financial engineers of the world. And so, you know, it's. [00:20:49] Speaker A: Labor has a place like. And that's kind of just. [00:20:52] Speaker B: So that's where I was going to get to is clearly, because there are people like that out there, then there is a need for organized labor. And. And it's funny because it is about someone's principles in the end because both sides can take it too far sometimes. So I'll. One of the things that intrigued me in preparing for today because, you know, I was a little kid in the 80s, I'm born in the 70s, and I remember always hearing about the. When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. And it was a big deal. You know, I grew up in Washington D.C. so of course I was in the heart of all that stuff. And I never really knew the story, but it was interesting. There were 16,000 members of the air traffic controllers union. That's pretty impressive. I didn't know there was that many people working like that. And they basically went on strike, which could have shut down the whole airline situation in the United States. Right. [00:21:42] Speaker A: Correct. They're Relatively high skilled and important. That's quite. Yeah, important, important, exactly. [00:21:47] Speaker B: Extremely important job. So, but what were they demanding? It says here they were demanding a reduction in their work week from 40 hours to 32 hours, $10,000 bonus pay raises, up to 40% and early retirement. So to be fair to them, it doesn't say here what they had before. But I know at least in 1981, most Americans didn't have a 32 hour work week. [00:22:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it seemed like they were asking for the move. [00:22:13] Speaker B: That's what I mean. So that's my point is like sometimes labor does go for a little bit too much. And then what happened is Reagan called their bluff and said no and basically the strike collapsed and the union lost and was dissolved. And so unfortunately though, for other labor, and that's what I'm getting at, is an aggressive group, and this happens in other areas of our society too. One group comes out maybe from a fringe and they're very aggressive and they might get smacked down. But then again it causes the rest of or other parts of society to say, oh, we've been wanting to do that to this group. So of course I'm sure there were other capitalists, if we could call, or industrialists is probably a better word, that didn't want any organized labor, whether the organized labor was being genuine with them or not. And so unfortunately, within a year or two after that incident in 1981, it put a chilling effect on unions around the country. So says Here the average first year raise for 1000 plus hour worker contracts fell from 9.8% to 1.2% on average in manufacturing raises fell from 7.2% to negative 1.2%. Salaries of unionized workers also fell relative to non union workers. Women and blacks suffered more from these trends because women and blacks were in more unionized industries at the time. So that's what I mean. Is that the unintended consequence of that strike in 1981 from a group that was a little bit too aggressive, most likely as a union, as a labor group asking a little bit aggressively for too much, then unfortunately hit a lot more people on the labor side, because I'm sure that large employers were able to use that as a boogeyman. [00:24:08] Speaker A: Well, yeah, because if you think about it like this, they were, as we said, they were uniquely from just a general labor standpoint or they were particularly important and particularly skilled relative to most people that are in unions. And so if they can get broken like that, then you can break the. Yeah, that's going to, you Know, if. [00:24:26] Speaker B: You'Re people that are dishwashers, unions, pretty easy to break after those guys. [00:24:30] Speaker A: And so, but it shows, you know, like, they may have been overreaching. And I'm not saying whether, like, I'm not putting myself in, you know, early 1980s, but it just. They may have been overreaching. And I think it's a good point that that though represented kind of a sea change in the way labor was viewed and was able to exert influence. And again, it all comes back to that power dynamic. And you saw shift of power to the employers, which is kind of. That trend has continued. But I want to ask you something. It's slightly shifting gears, but it's more in the same context of what Bernie Sanders is trying to do. Bernie Sanders is trying to get the federal government to stop buying Amazon, basically because of what Amazon is doing out in the marketplace. We mentioned a couple weeks ago and we talked around it a little bit, that Ron DeSantis in Florida, the governor of Florida, was adopting, or they had hit him in the Florida legislature, had enacted a law to take away Disney's tax status, special tax district status that they had that allowed them to operate and do improvements in Central Florida, where they are, and had really helped them grow to what they, you know, in terms of Disney World and that whole area build up around there that they'd done. And they took that away because, and this is their words, they took it away because they didn't like Disney speaking out against the quote, unquote, don't say gay law, you know, and I'm calling it that just because that's what most people refer to it as or have heard of it as. And so do you see this as any different to what Ron DeSantis is doing and what he did in Florida versus what Bernie Sanders is talking about doing here? [00:26:11] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, obviously that's clear difference. I mean, I don't think. [00:26:14] Speaker A: Well, I think you should explain it then. [00:26:16] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I just think on just the clear difference, obviously, is just that Sanders is trying to represent those in labor unions and those who want to be in labor unions. [00:26:28] Speaker A: Well, let me say it a different way because basically I think the difference here is that Sanders is saying we don't want the federal government to be a customer of Amazon because of this with the purchase. Remember I mentioned earlier purchasing power. We don't want to use the government's purchasing power to Support Amazon. What DeSantis is doing in Florida is one of regulation. We are going to attack Florida with regulation. He's not saying. And in fact, if he did say, hey, Florida just won't. We won't let. Or we won't have any state conventions in at Disney Properties, that would be akin to what Bernie Sanders is stand here saying here. But he's saying, no, we're going to actually change the law from a regulatory standpoint to attack them for their. Their exercise of speech. And so I think the biggest difference there is that one is one of regulatory and the other is one of commerce, of purchasing power. And that's. That's kind of the. As an attorney, that's the difference. I see. And we can get into kind of what that means and so forth. But I just wanted. I wanted to make sure that we made that distinction clearly at the beginning, because it's an important part to be able to have this conversation. [00:27:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm saying. To me, they're two totally separate incidents, but I guess they're connected through government's relationship with business, right? Yeah. [00:27:46] Speaker A: Government responding to something that a business is doing. [00:27:48] Speaker B: And I think this is why it's just interesting how a little bit of everyone's got the situational ethics based on where they're coming from in the political discussion of all this. Right. So if you're someone like a Bernie Sanders type, I'm not going to pick on him personally, but just more someone that would lean to his camp. You're going to look at government's role as doing what we just talked about for the last 20 minutes, just making sure that there's some sort of check against the power of those with uber capital. If you're more of a kind of culture warrior on the DeSantis side, you're, whether you say it or not, in your political leanings, you want the government to be there to go against things you don't agree with from a cultural standpoint. So the. [00:28:40] Speaker A: I don't think you should put that on people because really what DeSantis is doing here is attacking free speech like he is. [00:28:46] Speaker B: No, I'm not disagreeing with that. But I'm saying. [00:28:48] Speaker A: But what I'm saying, I don't. I'm sure there are people who support DeSantis that are on board with this. And you put. Pointed this out to me, and maybe this is where you're going. There are people on the right that are looking at this like, no, hold on, hold on. We shouldn't be. This is attacking free speech. We shouldn't be punishing Disney through law, through regulation for speaking out on a political issue, even if it is a culture issue that we're trying to. [00:29:08] Speaker B: Well, that's what I was going to say about the situational ethics of it, because a lot of people who are supporting DeSantis for attacking Disney for their stance on culture stuff, in this case the LGBT community stuff, they are usually the people that I've heard that always champion, you know, deregulation, small government, and not having government interfere with business stuff generally. [00:29:37] Speaker A: And free speech. [00:29:38] Speaker B: Yeah, and free speech. So. Well, I'm separating the two specifically for this conversation only, because the whole, you know, discussion about free speech and the fact that this is a governor punishing a private enterprise for what it said, you. And I totally understand that that is against the First Amendment generally, but there's a lot of people that. That's kind of a messy conversation. I'm just making the point that at the end of the day, what Bernie Sanders represents to a lot of people is protecting their rights as people on the labor side from abuses by those in the capital side or the industrialist side. What Ron DeSantis is representing, for those that support him on this, really has nothing to do with that type of tension in a society. This is really about a true culture war. Like, do you believe that this company itself is trying to do something like indoctrinate your kids with their videos and their movies and all that? [00:30:45] Speaker A: And. [00:30:45] Speaker B: And that that has nothing to do with government's role with labor and business and all that. And so. [00:30:50] Speaker A: But I think you got to look at this. [00:30:51] Speaker B: Well, I was just going to finish and say that. But you're right, there are those. And I'll give him a nod. Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas, as a. As a staunch Republican who's come out and I would say reminded conservatives that traditional conservatives in the Republican Party don't like what DeSantis is doing because of. Exactly. What you're saying is that he's going against the idea of the private sector being separate and shielded from government abuse, and I use the word abuse specifically. [00:31:27] Speaker A: Well, but let me say this, because I think that. I don't think that this is murky. A lot of people confuse freedom of speech. You hear people talking about freedom of speech when they're talking about private companies banning them from something or something like that, which is not freedom of speech. That's not government action. That is punishing you for speaking on a political issue. That's a private company. Private companies aren't required to provide people with freedom of speech. And so that is one thing. Here you actually have government action. Attacking a business. Now, businesses, whether I agree with this or not, corporations are entitled to free speech and their money is protected. As far as that free speech under United States law. [00:32:11] Speaker B: Aren't corporations people, too? Apparently. [00:32:13] Speaker A: Apparently. You know, that's the Supreme Court said. [00:32:15] Speaker B: That's my point. [00:32:16] Speaker A: I'm not saying it's right. [00:32:17] Speaker B: All those people that said that 10, 12 years ago, now I don't hear it anymore. [00:32:20] Speaker A: Yeah, Citizens United, all that stuff. [00:32:22] Speaker B: Now, they're not people. [00:32:23] Speaker A: But either way, what I'm saying, though, is that here, Disney made a political statement. They said, hey, we don't like what the Florida legislature just did and Deron DeSantis just signed in. That's a political. That is political criticism. And the Florida government responded by attacking them from a regulatory standpoint. And like you said, that's something that, like one attacking your enemies with the law, not purchasing power with the actual law. I'm going to change the law so it messes this guy's business up is one thing that is not, that's not a proper exercise of government power. That's corruption. That's how corrupt nations operate. Oh, I'm going to make the law so that my friends make a lot of money, and I'll make the law so that people that are my enemies don't make money or can't make any money and so forth forth. So that's, again, that's not Ron DeSantis saying, Florida, the Florida government is no longer going to have any conventions on Disney properties. That would be a legitimate way to, to attack Disney, so to speak, a legitimate exercise of government power. That's consistent with the Constitution. What, what Florida is doing right now is not that. And so what, what the, the distinction that I think must be made is that what Sanders is doing is that purchasing power. Now, if Bernie Sanders came out and said that we need to change the law so that we punish Amazon for this or punish Amazon for that. That's something that would be, that, that's, that would be not a legitimate exercise of government power. And that people of principle should call that out. And so ultimately, I do think it's important to at least have a baseline understanding of the principles at play here, because I think from 30,000ft, this stuff can all look the same. And it's like, oh, yeah, Bernie Sanders is just doing what Ron DeSantis is doing, and they're just, they're just mad about this company doing something, so they're trying to make their life harder. And at 30,000ft, that is what's happening. But one is actually a. And now. And I think you can distinguish between whether or not, like Bernie Sanders, if you are a person who supports who is more backing of the industrialists or the corporatists, you might, you know, and so forth. You might say, I don't like that he did that. And then in the response there, you should be organizing your vote. So let's get him out of office or let's, let's, you know, take him out of the majority. So they can't do this. That doesn't mean it's not a legitimate exercise of government power. That just means that you disagree and that you should try to go about that politically to undo that or whatever. So I think it's important to distinguish between the two though, is more so what I'm saying. [00:34:41] Speaker B: Well, I think, I mean, you're right, obviously. And that's what we're saying. They're both very different in the sense that. Because I could see both men having constituencies for what they're doing. Right. Like we talked about labor and also people detracting. Right. The industrialist doesn't want Bernie Sanders in there talking about cancel federal contracts for anybody who's not unionized. Right. Correct. And there's a. There. [00:35:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is their right. Yeah. [00:35:06] Speaker B: And there's people out there that say, I don't want anybody who's gay friendly or friendly to this or that group that I don't agree with having having anything to say at all in public. And I think that's where. But I think that's where. That's where exactly my own 30,000 foot definition of it leads down the road of DeSantis going against the kind of norms of how we deal with this stuff in our discourse. Right. Like this is an aggressive way just because the company spoke out against something. Because number one, if Sanders succeeds, the worst case scenario is either A, companies like Amazon lose federal contracts, but they got still they got me on my prime membership and they'll be. [00:35:51] Speaker A: Which is not a legal thing. They're not legally entitled to federal contracts. [00:35:55] Speaker B: Or B, they unionize and maybe Wall street doesn't like it as much because they gotta pay some more benefits and all that, but they'll still be in business doing okay. I'm pretty sure the knockoff effects of what Sanders is doing could have a whole disruptive effect on the state of Florida. Because of the Orange County. Yeah. DeSantis is because of the Orange county tax in Osceola county, the two counties where Disney is located at, to unwind the whole agreement. They've had since 1967 with the state would basically put all that on the taxpayer. And that's not me saying it. It's the Orange county tax collector, a gentleman by the name of Scott Randolph who told the Washington Post, quote, orange county is going to be stuck with $164 million or more per year in expenses with no revenue. They're going to have to raise property taxes. This is a huge tax increase for the citizens of Orange county that they'll have to pay every single year. So, I mean, and that's. That's not me. That's a tax collector. [00:36:54] Speaker A: And. But I mean, and that. That's a good point to make in terms of how the. This is. The effects of this can be particularly harmful. But I would say, like I said, to me, the principle actually is the most harmful because once we go down the road of people are okay with the government doing regulation to punish companies for speaking out in ways that they don't like, just for speaking. Again, the government doing it, not a company punishing a company for speaking out. Like, if some company doesn't want to do business with Disney anymore because of what Disney said about the don't say gay law fine, again, that doesn't implicate. [00:37:32] Speaker B: That's their right. Yeah. [00:37:33] Speaker A: Constitutional right. So I think we can jump here. [00:37:37] Speaker B: One thing I wanted to add, though, to show exactly what we're talking about, that this was a choice by Governor DeSantis, specifically, in my opinion, for political reasons. Because if we take a look, I had a friend of mine talk to me about this, and he was very against Disney speaking out. And he said, you know, I'm just tired of when these corporations put their, you know, always trying to get political and their whole woke stuff and da, da, da. And I just stopped him. And I go, you know what? Other corporations located their headquarters in Daytona Beach, Florida? And he said, what? I said, nascar. And I said. And he goes, so what? And I said, well, two years ago, in the summer of 2020, in the George Floyd summer, they announced that they were going to ban Confederate flags from all their property, their venues, their events, everything. I go, that's a statement in support of black people and people that don't like the Confederacy and don't want to have people celebrating a bunch of people that wanted slavery. Right? And I went to war with the US Government. So I told him, I said, but I didn't see you out there railing against the fact that NASCAR did this. They made a statement or saying that. [00:38:47] Speaker A: The government of Florida needs to Punish them from regulatory way. [00:38:50] Speaker B: That was my point to him. I said, Governor DeSantis chose to make this an issue. That's the difference. I said, companies been speaking out forever about just random stuff. But no one, I said, the difference is the messengers who you watch on TV and who you listen to on the radio and who you watch in your newsfeed, they all telling you not to like Disney right now because this is all politics. And that's the danger. That's the danger of mixing politics with culture wars. Right? [00:39:19] Speaker A: Well, but, yeah, I mean, certainly on that. But this also, though, and here is the danger of mixing the politics with the culture wars is that there's supposed to be a hard line. And again, I hate to keep reiterating it, but just because your friend is tired of Disney saying this or Disney saying that, we as Americans are supposed to reject the idea that we need to use government power to shut them up. And so whether it's the people they trust that are egging them on to want the government to use regulatory power to shut them up because you don't like what they say, either way, that's anti American, that's anti free speech. And so I think, again, to me, I think that's the biggest thing to see here now, all the. Not to take away any of the other stuff that you're saying, because I think those are all valid points, but I think that we have to hold these constitutional aspects up first and foremost. Because, yeah, there's a lot of things that people may say that you may not like or, you know, whatever. And I may myself may not do business with them, or I may want a political official to not have the government buy things from them or whatever, but to say, hey, let's make a law that says nascar, we're going to charge them a tax for every mile that a driver drives on a NASCAR track, then just because we don't like what they said, that that's an attack on freedom of speech and that our government shouldn't be doing in any way, shape or form if we're going to still support this Constitution. So that's why I think it's important to not lose that in all the other reasons. All the other reasons are valid and helpful. But the key thing is there is this. Actually, Twitter doesn't attack people's free speech. People are all up in arms. Oh, Twitter. Free speech. Like Twitter does. Twitter is a private company. This is an attack on free speech. And so that's where we need to have that reaction there. [00:41:02] Speaker B: What tells me it's political is that it goes into effect June of 2023. He's gonna get through the midterms and then be like, oh, Disney, I guess, you know, just have your lawyers talk to just kind of have your lawyers, the good lawyers you hire deal with Tallahassee. [00:41:16] Speaker A: You know, this is for the midterms. I got you. [00:41:18] Speaker B: We'll find a way to unwind this so that the good citizens. Oh yeah, OCL and Orange county don't get stuck with this tax bill. [00:41:26] Speaker A: Yeah, that's funny. I haven't heard that. That's really good. Well, I want to. It's still, you know, something that we all have to keep our eye on, you know, again, because certain principles that are supposed to guide our government. But I do want to move on from here. We saw an interesting piece this week and you know, changing gears, just more about our self improvement when we talk about these type of things. And it really stood out to me because it's something I definitely myself have internalized. And that is like a lot of times the tendency, you know, people do kind of self apprisals and or things you want to try to. I want to do this, I want to work out more, I want to read more, I want to learn to do this. I learned to do that. And it talked about the importance of not necessarily doing a bunch like preparation is cool and everything like that, but none of this stuff matters. Learning about, you know, the new skill or whatever, but you got to just start doing it. And a lot of times the trap people fall into is that they either wait until they feel like doing it or they do all this preparation and everything like that. But they never actually just commit to doing it for a period of time long enough to actually internalize the doing aspect of this. So you know, what stood out to you in this piece that you know. And this will be something we have in the show notes as well. But as long as the other along with the other stuff that we've referenced so far today. But what stood out to you in this piece, Tunde? [00:42:38] Speaker B: It's funny because I was ready for a nice big long article and it was like a one pager. And it's funny. The simple. [00:42:46] Speaker A: You got to stop reading and start doing. [00:42:48] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. Like it's funny. The short, the shortest article you've given me in like two years of this show with your self is one of the most profound. When you ask me about what stuck out, I'm like, I'm just having all these visions of my life experience here. No, it's just fascinating because so many experiences I've had where actions, you know, it's that whole thing. Actions speak louder than words. Right. And I think this is a way for us to reflect on that internally, for ourselves, that our own actions are what's needed, not just our just thoughts and words and all that. And so three areas stuck out to me. I'll give you three, but I'll speak on two now, and then we'll joke about the last one. So one was business. The other was boating. The third was sports. [00:43:38] Speaker A: All right. [00:43:38] Speaker B: I'll save sports for less. So business. So I became an entrepreneur in 2015. I opened my business, and, you know, I had some partners when we started, and not. This is not a negative on them at all, but it's something I learned. I was hungry, and I had to go get it because I had the wife, the three kids, the whole thing, and they were my partners, but they also had other stuff going on that was feeding them so they didn't have to go get it like me in that same way. And what I used to hear from them was, well, you know, I'm not. I can't really go look for clients until I have business cards. Okay. Then I got in business coach. Oh, well, now we need an office. Okay. Then a couple months later, I got a nice house. Oh, that I need this and that. It was always, I, we're not ready. We need. And I had to go keep working. [00:44:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:28] Speaker B: So the first year in the business, I brought in 98% of the revenue. [00:44:31] Speaker A: Wow. [00:44:32] Speaker B: And I'm looking around like, what are you guys doing? Like. And that's why I say it's not to knock them. They're all great people. But it was more like I realized that at some point, you just got to get out and do. [00:44:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:43] Speaker B: You can't just wait for this perfect time for this and that to be good, because you always be waiting. It's never perfect. You just got to do. And so that was one thing. And the second thing with boating, because, you know, I've been. I started boating five years ago, and I remember. And to the audience, this wasn't a luxury yacht. I bought a boat for five grand off somebody in the Florida Keys, and I had to put another 10 into it. It was in such bad shape. But I remember taking a course online before I really started boating. I don't know, maybe I'd been out once or twice on the boat. Right. And I'm reading this stuff, and I'm all like then I remember I went on the boat like a day later and something just told me, there's no reading, man, you gotta just get out and do, you know? Yeah, and it was true because then I went to take the Captain's license in 2020 during the pandemic. And that time reading made sense because I had already had three years of boating under my belt. So I had the. So now I'm reading stuff and I got conte. Now I'm like, okay, well that, that's why that signs pink and that signs green. That's why this light flashes three times and this one only flashes once every second. And so but when I hadn't gone and done the action yet, I had no frame of reference. Like there was this, I didn't understand anything. So those two things stuck out to me specifically because. [00:45:59] Speaker A: Let me jump in. [00:46:00] Speaker B: Oh, okay, good reminder now. Just good reminders that like, yeah, you can't just sit around reading and thinking and all that. Sometimes you just got to go do it and then figure it out later, you know. [00:46:09] Speaker A: Well, no, that's a really good point as far as how the learning part made more sen. After you had spent the time doing that, if you tried to stuff all that stuff in your brain, then you would have still just had to do it to figure it out anyway. [00:46:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:21] Speaker A: And so that might have been one of those things, oh, I need to do this first, I need to do that first. Which would have been a roadblock for me. The thing that stood out the most actually is the connection to mood and feeling and so forth in terms of a lot of times, and we see this with procrastination just in your day to day life or any type of self improvement like exercise or you know, just whatever it would be. A lot of times we just as human beings, if we're not intentional about it, we want to be in the mood for something, we want to feel like doing it. And what it pointed out is that you can't control your feelings. And so if you're always tying your feelings to your ability to do things and you can't control those feelings, then you actually can't control whether you're going to do stuff. And so the link between doing which is something you can control your actions, you can't control your feelings, you can control your actions. And so if you focus on that and what you can control, which is your actions, then a lot of times I think, I think the quote was your mood follows your action, you know, so you, you, you do it and Then you feel better about doing it, or you do it enough repeatedly that then you want to do it because it's in your custom to do it a lot. And so to me, that's actually. And they actually cite, like, cognitive behavioral therapy that talks about this with anxiety and depression, which focuses on the fact that you can control behavior, you control your actions, but again, you can't control the feelings. And if you spend all your. If you get to have the feelings and you're trying to suppress them or whatever and do all that other stuff so that you can do stuff, you're actually working backwards because suppressing the feelings is creating some other issue. So, again, the ability to focus on what you can control, and in this context, what you can control is what you do, to me, was very profound. [00:48:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. And that's what I mean. Like, this is like basic humanity 101 that we kind of forget about. But it's good to be reminded because as we're talking, I'm thinking of, like, you know who's a great example of all this? Babies. [00:48:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:19] Speaker B: I'm thinking about seriously watching a kid learn how to walk. You think they're sitting there contemplating the universe and all that? No, they're just doing. They're trying to, and they're learning, and they fall and they cry, but then they get up and keep going. And at some point, we all knew how to walk. And so I think it's partly that of just doing. And someone else I'll give props to on this show, this will just be so she could listen to her first show ever after two years. Because I'll specifically talk about my wife here for the audience. My wife hates my voice, so she doesn't get down with this show. She likes James, but I'm too much. No. So there's a section I'll quote here. It says dedicating yourself to the practice, no matter how you feel, is what builds motivation, like you said. Right. Just doing the actions. Because my wife just got done with, like, two months on the keto diet, and she lost 17 pounds. And, you know, she's done all kinds of stuff over the years to try and figure that part of her life out, right? And usually they. They don't stick, but this one stuck. And that's what I mean. I give her props for that because I know that it sucked for her, especially at the beginning when she was really curving her. Her eating habits and all that kind of stuff. And it's not something that was fun. But watching her through the process what it stuck out to me is it said, what builds motivation. Not only was she then motivated by watching the pounds just shed off of her, then she felt better about herself. She felt better about how she was physically moving around. She had more energy. [00:49:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:56] Speaker B: So now, even though she's weaning herself off the keto diet because it's not healthy to be on the keto diet long. [00:50:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:50:04] Speaker B: I feel like this is gonna stick for her long. Her new habits, because she's in a happier place from having put herself through that initial misery. That makes sense. [00:50:12] Speaker A: No, it makes sense. Yeah. [00:50:13] Speaker B: So that's why. It's just funny, like, you asked me what came out of reading this. I'm like, yeah, a whole bunch came out. [00:50:17] Speaker A: So, yeah, it's something that like it. Like I said, intentional, I think, is a word, because it matters here, because it's one of those things that if you do look at your life, you can see the areas where you did it right or the areas where you didn't do it right, you know, like. And, you know, it's. It's, as you said, something that we all kind of know through experience, but it's good to be reminded of from time to time. So I think we can wrap from there, man. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call It Like I See It. Subscribe to the podcast, Rate us, review us, share it with your friends, and until next time, I'm James Keys. [00:50:51] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Golana. [00:50:52] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.

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