Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
Welcome to the call it like I see it podcast.
I'm James Keys, and in this episode of call it like I see it, we're going to take a look at the controversy that's been taking place at Northwestern University this month. And it involves allegations of, like, sexual assault, assault, style hazing, and a fire coach, and apparent attempt before that happened to sweep things under the rug. And also a student newspaper that blew up the possibility of sweeping it under the rug and immediately changed the calculation on what kind of accountability was going to be necessary. And later on, we're going to consider who should be paying to get the lead out of our old telecommunications lines, telecommunication transmission lines, in light of recent reports that at and t stock, stock and other telecom companies have been falling over concerns that they're going to be stuck footing that bill.
Joining me today is a man who, if you know him well, you could say he is a lot like paper planes. Tunde Ogun, Lana Tunde. Are you ready to show the people why no one has swagger like us?
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah, but the paper plane thing, I'm not sure. Does that mean. It means I either get folded real easy, which I'm not sure how I feel about that.
I can glide in coast. I can be cool with that, or I burn easy. I mean, you know, you gotta explain that one to me offline.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: No explanation. I just let it ride. Now, we're recording this on July 17, 2023. And last week, Pat Fitzgerald was fired as the head football coach at Northwestern following allegations of hazing within his program that he knew about and possibly endorsed.
Now, this followed a review, or the review of a report from an independent law firm based on a six month investigation that included over 50 interviews, you know, with the leadership reviewing that. And after they reviewed it, the president of the university, Michael Schill, determined that Fitzgerald should be suspended for two weeks. And then three days later, after some of the allegations that were. After some of the allegations as far as the hazing and the sexual nature and all this other stuff went public, the president reversed course and fired Fitzgerald, like, so. He decided to suspend him on Friday, and then on Monday, after things get publicized, he fires him, you know, three days later. And, you know, this is something pretty notable. Fitzgerald is a legend at that school. He played there, part of their best teams ever. He's coached there. He's never left. You know, he's had opportunities to get better, better jobs. And it was very loyal. So it's. It's quite a shake up. It's not just a guy passing in the night. But nonetheless, there's a lot here. And so, Tunde, what stands out to you about the situation? You know, like what stands out to you most, I should say, because we'll get into a few aspects of this.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I'll say the most is that from 30,000ft would be this is another example of kind of a big bureaucratic style organization, this time being a large university that has a good name and in football world, in a good conference, in the Big ten conference.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: And an academic institution that's very thought.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Of big, big university in terms of, you know, it's good all round in that way. Right. Good, good academics, good athletics. But, and, you know, I know we'll get into the details, but they tried to cover something up that I think not only most of us in terms of the audience listening or people that read the story just in digesting it in the regular media, would probably not want to go through personally or have our kids go through. I think most of the people, probably including the university president, I'll just guess here, they probably wouldn't condone this at an individual level. And so what stands out to me here is it's another example where sometimes this groupthink in a bureaucracy where people are more protected in, sorry, more interested in protecting either the brand of the bureaucracy or certain powerful individuals within it. And so what I just wrote down three separate incidences of, let's say, the last decade. One was Penn State with the Jerry Sandusky, which was really unfortunate that he was a pedophile, and they covered that up for many years. And other again, large university, very good school, as well as huge football program. We had the University of Michigan doctor Larry Nassar with the US Olympic gymnast team, the young ladies, which unfortunately, he was sexually molesting them. And that one covered up by people who knew and again, didn't report it the right way to the authorities. And then the last was a recent case in May of this year where the Archdiocese of Illinois, the Catholic Church branch in Illinois, was found to be guilty of sexually molesting kids. From 1950s to 2018 was where the cases, and there were 2000 individual cases where they were found guilty. And again, this isn't a knock on.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Knowledge of it and, you know. Correct. Yeah.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: So as I finish, those are worse.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Those are worse allegations than what we're talking about here from the standpoint. A lot of those deal with like adults and minors, you know, well, let.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Me say this, and then I want to pass it back. It's just because I think it's very important, especially as I bring up the catholic church because I know that's sensitive, because that's religion. You know, as I mentioned, all of these, none of them are reflections on the actual institutions themselves. Like, I don't think Penn State or northwestern or University of Michigan or the Catholic Church themselves are bad institutions. The unfortunate thing is when these bad apples are left to fester within them, it taints the work that everyone else said that.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: Well, though, let me, let me jump in because I think you said that well, and it becomes, there's something that happens as far as groupthink or institutional kind of thinking, there's some kind of switch that happens where people almost get detached from the humanity aspect of this and are like, okay, we need to protect the institution. What do we do to protect the institution? And so they make a bunch of compromises that you would think are pretty egregious from a human standpoint because they're, it just, it's something that happens. So, like, it can't, this can't be about an individual because this happens from time to time where we'll see people make these decisions and say, hey, we don't want this getting out there. We'll deal with it internally. And a lot of times we'll deal with it internally comes with not really dealing with it, you know, so, but what stood out to me was very rarely do we get to see accountability from the media work so quickly. Like essentially there is a, they had invest a six month investigation done by a law firm interviewing over 50 people got all this information and they said, all right, we're going to suspend the dude for two weeks, but they're not releasing a report. They weren't then and they're still not planning to release it now. And then as soon as they decided on a Friday to decide, like, I will suspend the guy for two weeks when they thought that all the information was contained. And then as soon as the student newspaper, other media reports start, stuff starts getting out as far as what the allegations were. They fire the guy immediately. Like, it immediately changes the calculation. And it really does show the importance of media in terms of accountability of powerful people and organizations or institutions is like when they're able to keep things quiet in all of the cases you're talking about, as long as they were able to keep the information in house, then the, the tendency, the temptation, so to speak, was there for, and again, this isn't to say to cast aspersion on the people that didn't publicize it now I'm not talking about the people who were committing bad acts, but again, something must be going on, because this happens so consistently among so many different people where they just, there's something in their brain clicks, and they're like, all right, we got to protect the institution. And the only way that really changes is with the media accountability. And in this case, in some cases, it takes a decade for that to happen. In this case, it took three days. And we got to see in real time, like, okay, yeah, suspension. You know, like, no, nothing to see here to. All right, dudes, you're fired. Like, right away, it was like, okay, wow. That is media accountability. Media gets beat up a lot, you know, but that in itself, right there, is kind of that job of the media, so to speak.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I would say the good thing about having a law, a lawyer as a partner on a podcast is I remember you telling me your first comment after that was, this guy's gonna win a massive case because they said one thing, and then two weeks later, after seeing the same information, they fired three days later.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Just, just to say that a little.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Bit from a legal, you know, for me.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Let me say. Let me. Let me explain that just a real quick. What I was saying to you, basically, is that they are. They read the report, and then they decided a punishment. And so, and then, so that he gets punished for that, and then you move on. And then they're. They're not saying. Nobody's saying that. The media reports contain new information that there wasn't in the report. So a, like, he's going to say basically that in. He's going to file a lawsuit or, you know, make a demand. Like, hey, you got to pay me out because you already decided a punishment. Just because the stuff went public. You can't then enhance my punishment. You know, and so I've been wrongfully fired. I should serve a two week suspension. And that's it. That was what you determined after you had all the information. So it's interesting in that sense. That mean, in northwestern, I'm not saying anything they don't know. They knew that, too, but they decided even with that, they had to ask. They had to punish him again for once the information went public.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: So, so, well, tell me this. I want to. There's two things about this that we, I want to really drill down on. One being kind of just, you know, the nature of the allegations and how society has evolved and changed over time, and then the other being, I want to go a little bit more on this media piece and accountability in a society where you have some people that are very powerful or some organizations that are very powerful. So first part, just, you were a young man once, you know, and boys are, you know, a handful, you know, so. But what do you say to someone who, look, who looks at this and says, and so some of the allegations are, you know, like, that they're. People are being hazed. They got to get naked. They get dry humped while they're naked, or, you know, they got to spin around. And it's a car wash, so to speak. They got to spin around and have their. Their private parts spinning around, too, and everything while people run through it.
And so some people, like, I'm sure there's people that think, hey, you know, this is. People are making a little too much of this. And, you know, this is just stupidity. Boys be young boys being young boys, but it's ultimately harmless, so to speak. Again, distinguishing from, like, a Larry Nassar or a Jerry Sandusky. So, I mean, in that context, I mean, we're not 20 anymore, so, you know, we're going to look at not like a 20 year old, but a 40 something. But so what. What was. What's your thought? You know, just kind of on that angle of it.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Okay, so I'm going to say two things first before I get into my actual thoughts. One is, at 20, I would have thought something called a car wash where I got to run through dudes spinning around, letting their wee wee hang out. Like, I would have just thought that was weird at 20. So I'll just let you know. Number two is, I appreciate you saying that I was once a young man because I was laughing in my head thinking, yeah, I hope my kids listen to this, because they think that they were born on the 6th day after creation. You know, that the world didn't exist before, you know, their birth. So they. They think that I've never been younger than the day they were born.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. Course.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: But. But I guess I thought that about.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: My parents, I was gonna say, I think that's.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: That's.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: That's. That's a condition of the youth.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I like to gripe about it, but, um. But no, so. So I think. Yeah, I mean, look, it's funny, because offline we were talking, and I won't name the organizations that I mentioned where I had gone through hazing out of respect for the organizations that aren't here to defend themselves.
But I've been through hazing as a young man in organizations, and I've never heard of anything like that. Let me just put it that way. And I say that in all seriousness, like, meaning, because the thing is, is one thing, like, the dry humping part is weird enough. Like, I never been where men are pretending to hump, you know, have sex with each other with clothes on. Then you take the clothes off. That even gets weirder. So that just, to me, is just weird. Right. And I think. Cause I was thinking about and preparing for the discussion, like, all right, the concept of hazing, what is it really? Really, if we break it down? Hazing is another thing that's very important in the human experience, which is ritual.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: The idea of rituals are very important for all of us. And that's why in some. In most contexts, we think of rituals or either in a cult, like a satanic ritual, or in a church or synagogue or mosque, you know, religious rituals.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: But stated broadly, it's about building bonds. You know, like, building strong bonds.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: But yeah, because I was gonna say, I was reminded that when I played little league baseball, we had a ritual about which socks we will wear for which game. And I really believed that stuff that I didn't, if I didn't have the right pair of socks on pulled up the right way, it would affect my batting average. So we have rituals all over the place. So the idea of hazing in itself, even though I know the word hazing itself has a negative connotation, I think that the idea of a ritual, when you have a group of, especially young people, in an environment where you're trying to build more trust, camaraderie and, you know, some sort of moat around the group where everyone has a certain level of understanding each other. I don't think a ritual. I don't think. Sorry. Hazing is necessarily bad. Clearly the idea, like we said earlier, there's now a spectrum of where do you go on that spectrum of hazing? And I'm sure that there's certain things that maybe when I was hazed, might not be acceptable today. But, like, as you're asking me directly, this form of hazing, to me, is very extreme. I mean, that's my opinion.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: So I would actually use a different word than extreme. And it's a word you said several times there, and that's just weird. Like, it's just.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: I'm trying to be a little nicer.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: And I'll say this. This is actually, I think, where it really does come to the coach, because I don't have a fundamental or inherent problem with hazing the concept. Like, I get it. Like, you do want like, when you're in a situation like that, you have to. There's a lot of trust involved. There's a lot of, you go, and I'm gonna sacrifice my body for somebody else to do something. There's a lot of that that's helpful to build in a sports team. And sports, a lot of times mirror the other aspects of society, you know, like the sacrifice, the teamwork, and stuff like that. And so I'm not gonna be here saying that hazing should never happen, but I do think this is where an authority figure, ideally, would come in and say, hey, that stuff's probably a little too far. Like, I agree with you. In the nineties, this would have. This didn't. This doesn't seem like society as much moved, and it was cool to do naked stuff in the nineties. And now it's not like there are situations where some things were cool then, aren't cool now, but this doesn't seem like one of them. And so, like, hazing, like, I look at it, you know, okay, it can be some kind of embarrassment, some kind of humbling experience, and there can even be some kind of, you know, like, some pain or something like that involved. Not like crazy and stuff like that. But this, again, weird. It's just like, well, there should have been somebody in an authority situation saying, hey, this is what I'm hearing, or this is what I know it. Like, okay, why don't you guys do something? Do something. Why don't you guys do something else? You know, I do something that doesn't involve, like, naked. Like, yeah, make them. Make them stand up and, you know, sing the fight song or, you know, do it, do it. You like. You like people to not be fully clothed. Make them do it in their boxers. You know, like, have them stand up and sing something.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Or, like, the social dilemma. When Zuckerberg was jealous of his roommate because he made the fraternity, but that was his rule, he had to walk around with a chicken for, like, two weeks.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, there's a lot of things like that. A lot of things you can do that can be embarrassing, that can be humbling, you know? And so this is where. This is where it does to me come back to the leadership and saying, okay, at certain lines we don't need to cross in order to try to get our overall objective across here, which is to try to build a tight knit organization. Like, the fact that you got all these people coming out and talking and saying, hey, this was. This was really messed up. This was traumatizing means that maybe that your form of hazing might not be the best way to build the bar, you know?
[00:16:20] Speaker B: No. And it's interesting because, as you say, it makes me think. So one of the organizations I got hazed in was in my twenties when I joined it. And it was physical, man. And I remember coming home. We came on real late, probably like one or two in the morning. So when I woke up, we woke up. Me and my wife woke up the next morning, dude, I had bruises on my torso. And she asked me straight up, she go, what happened to you? This and that.
And I just looked at her with a straight face, and I just said, well, I'm now a member of said organization.
And she just looked at me, and she kind of got it. And I just said. And I just kind of matter of fact. And I said, that's it. And she just didn't ask me any questions again. And so my point is saying that, I mean, it wasn't excessive. I broken bone.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Well, but even that, though, that's what I'm saying. Like, that's not like you came back with missing teeth and, like, the extreme. There's an extreme there to taking blows.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Now, let me tell you something, but go ahead. Someone did die in the nineties in the state of Florida during a hazing incident. And so that was serious, and people went to jail and all that. So what happens is, because this organization has a hierarchy, you know, throughout the state of Florida, we have district deputies. So what happens is there's rules now that certain people that have kind of a direct link as officers to the mothership type of thing have to be in attendance. When you're bringing in potential new members, like candidates, you can't just do stuff and some. So that's what happened is the organization changed and said, okay, we're gonna make sure that there's more accountability, but making sure more people have eyes on this thing so that if something does happen again, more people are gonna be, you know, if you threaten more people with going down, someone's gonna blow a whistle, most likely. So that's why by the time I.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: Got there, that's what you want, basically, is you want organizations to create a culture that encourages accountability.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Self regulating organizations.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: Sros.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: You want that. And so if accountability is encouraged, then that can counteract kind of that natural, you know, put up the, you know, the defenses, deny, deny, deny kind of thing. And then, which leads to, ultimately, in a free society, in a society like ours, we can't just make anything and everything illegal just because there's a potential for it to go wrong. There's a lot of things that, there's a potential to go wrong. Like by that logic, we shouldn't drive anymore because there's a potential that something could go wrong with driving. But so we can't just say, oh, well, with hazing, and there is a potential for things to go wrong and we can't just say, but you do want organizations to put in and you want to send signals to organizations that you need to put in, put in mechanisms that encourage accountability, not mechanisms that encourage keeping things opaque. And because when things are opaque, think bad things do happen, as illustrated here. You know, and this was about to get covered up while it was opaque. And then it went. Once it came, I'm going to ask.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Maybe we can have someone send that message to the Supreme Court. How about that?
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Well, they're upset at the media now because, but that's the thing.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: That's my point.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Yeah, the media's reporting on all this stuff and they don't like it getting out there because that is where accountability comes from. And very powerful people usually don't like being held accountable. But, you know, that's why people attack media.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: People start asking you why you're fine on your friends boats and jets, you know, of course they're encroaching on your privacy.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: So, but this, this seems to be another instance where until something's made public, there's just little or no interest in holding people accountable for their actions amongst the people that have the information. So what do you think about how this shows, like the traditional media still being able to play a significant role in our society, even in like the social media age, and people can throw anything out there at any time, you know, but this is traditional media. This is reporting, talking to sources and all the other stuff. So what's your thoughts on that?
[00:20:00] Speaker B: No, I think, look, going back to one of our regular exercises of kissing the backside of the founding fathers of this country, you know, we, like, again, we've joked on other shows, right. Freedom of the press is embedded in the first Amendment of the United States Constitution. And it's interesting that it's embedded in the first, not the 10th or the 7th or the 14th Amendment or not.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: One of the amendments that had to get added after the fact.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: So top of the line. It was like we always say, if you look at the first amendment specifically, but then obviously, like I said, most of the amendments would, you could include in this. But the first amendment specifically creates a safety net legally in this country around areas where authoritarians would want to strike first. Freedom of individual speech, not to be oppressed by the government, freedom of citizens to assemble to protest against their government, freedom of a free press so that the press cannot be hindered by government and oversight or corruption.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: And just for the record, all three of those are, you're free to speak against the government. You're free to gather with other people to demonstrate against the government. And the press is free to speak against the government. Like those, all of those are specifically there for that refor, holding accountable for providing for accountability.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Correct. And so on. The last one is that this country will not legislate a religion. So all that stuff are usually things that people, you know, strong men will use to begin to dominate and, you know, create an environment that's not a open democracy. So let's put it that way. So the freedom of the press is important.
I think that we have examples up and down the history of, let's say, the last hundred years. I'm not going to go back too far because I know that also the modern press is in a certain form. So we could take it back to Watergate, the Gulf of Tonkin, the Pentagon papers. We can go to Iran Contra, we can go to Bill Clinton having an affair. And that coming out in the press, the press is there to do their job, to hold.
Like we say, sunlight's the best disinfectant, right? And we joke here in Florida, they have a law, a statute called the Sunshine law, that the government is prevented from withholding certain information from the public. So I do think that, and we've seen it in more recent with things like the Supreme Court, like we were joking about, or even the big lie on the election, you know, one of the things that at least allowed, I think, a lot of the country to just be able to somewhat move on was because for the next year, with the hearings of Congress and all that, that was all in the press.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: So at least enough people got ahold of some kind of narrative where they were able to see with facts, because those who are supporting the argument of the big lie that the election was stolen, they had every opportunity to deliver their facts, too, and they didn't have any that really were able to be backed up. So at least the, the idea of those with the truth, you know, that, that old joke from Mark Twain that the ally can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on, that that has, that rings true in an environment with a free press, that in the short run it seems very messy because people who want to the money, the water on topics always also have a free microphone. That's part of the idea of free speech.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point. Just in the cut, just to kind of say that in a different way. Like, basically, if there's a free press, then in many respects, actually, there can be islands of propaganda that operate amongst that as well. But they won't be the only source that's out there. They'll just be very, you know, insulated. They'll try to insulate themselves from everywhere. Only look at us. Only look at us.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: That's a great point. Can I jump in right now? Let me.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Well, I want to. I want to get into this a little bit more, but.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Because the standpoint of the, the traditional press, so to speak, and what we're talking about here, really, and this, we talk about this from time to time, is the news media. And it's important to distinguish that from the entertainment media. And that's become harder and harder and harder in modern society, which is to the detriment, I think, of the news media. When the news media is complete, competing with, for eyeballs with the, you know, with, with entertainment or just things that don't profess to be giving truth or accurate representations of what's actually going on, there's a tendency. There is a, you know, like almost a. Yeah, you know, almost kind of an incentive for the traditional media to try to be more exciting or to try to embellish or to try to present things in ways that are more engaging. They got to get more engagement. They got to get more clicks. But that's a slippery slope, because what's important here to me is that there are organizations that could come out with information and be taken seriously and not saying, oh, well, these guys are just coming out with alternate facts, or they're just coming out because they want to defend or they want to go after this coach, or they want to. The fact that having a press that is still trying to practice journalism is very important, and I think we need to try to protect that. And in the sense that individuals or organizations that are holding themselves out as news, we got that there's a certain obligation that should come with that. You know, and if you want to say you're not news, if you just want to say, hey, we're so and so entertainment show, or, you know, like, then say whatever you want to say. But there is a problem when you can hold yourself out as news and then lie the whole time, because that is deceptive. In my business, you know, I'm an intellectual property attorney and my, my business, that's false advertising. You know, like that's saying, no, no, no, you can't come out and tell everybody that you're news and that you're giving information, you know, that you're news media and then tell everybody in court that, oh, no, no, people know that we're not telling the truth. You know, like, that's, that there's a dissonance there that I think is harmful to the ability for us to know where there are trusted sources, which again, if there's no trusted sources, then what we see is that there's no accountability for powerful people.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: Yeah. No, and that's, look, that's where we are now in a certain sense in our society is that obviously there's a lot of people in power who don't want to be held accountable in various situations in various ways.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: And that's normal.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: That's a normal state of mind, but with the fracturing of our conversations through the fracturing of our media in general. Right. So we got tv, we got streaming.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: Of quote unquote news is what my point.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Like, yeah, well, I'm getting there because like you said, it's a good example that, because, I mean, look, this was a great example was what we learned during the Fox Dominion lawsuit, during discovery. Forget about all the stuff about the text and, you know, certain, certain host of shows, like, literally saying they think I, the whole election lie was B's and that they, you know, all that. I think the, one of the things that I thought were, one of the things. Sorry. That I thought was important that came out of that was that the executives at Fox, from a business standpoint, understood that the, the eyeballs were going other places once they were trying to be factual about the election result. And so from a business decision and a revenue decision out of fear of losing revenue. And some of them even type these texts and emails to each other that they didn't want the stock price to go down. They then changed their tune and allowed their host to continue to tell lies. And so I think that's a big part of the issue here, is that there's been, become a new business model which has proven to work, which is disturbing people and keeping them on your screen as long as you can, whether it be a phone, whether it be a tv, whether it be a social media company, a traditional media company, a cable news, whatever. And so I think that's what, when you're saying that traditional media and journalists, because here's the, here's the interesting thing. You say that journalism is actually something you can get a degree in, right? I mean, think about it. You can go to a university and study how to be a journalist and actually how to discern information, how to try and pick through propaganda, how to try.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: And, you know, there's certain standards that are.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: Like how to deal with, with your own biases as an individual so that you can try and report things fairly and clearly like that. All that stuff takes learning, like understanding human psychology, all that. And so I have yet to see, I might be wrong here. Maybe someone can email us and let us know. But I've yet to see any university have a degree on bull, you know, just B's. And so like, meaning like a degree online and a degree on how to manipulate people and do propaganda. I've never seen a propaganda degree.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: It's called an MBA.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: That's a whole nother discussion.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: I'm just messing with you.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: I'm just, I'm gonna ceasefire on that one.
Especially as a business model.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: No, but the business model thing is.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: At least I never paid for an MBA.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: Thank you.
I'm joking, I'm joking. But the business model thing is an interesting point and it's a good point, but that's kind of my point in what I was saying is that there needs, there was effort taken in this country up until around the 1980s or in the 1980s to separate out the news media aspect, the news gathering and news reporting from the entertainment. It wasn't let people got smarter in the eighties and nineties. It was that the firewall preventing news organizations from operating like entertainment companies was in place. And once that got removed, then things started changing. And you see that the types of media that started to pop up in the mid eighties and so forth on from that. There was, there wasn't a firewall between how you, if you were going to be a news organization or if you're going to be an entertainment company. So, you know, I think that we can't get the toothpaste back in the tube, but I do think it's something we should keep in mind. Because again, if, if all information that's going to be out there now is only just based on who will click on it and what's most salacious and what can, you know, what's going to keep the attention the most, then this is something we can lose. This is something we can lose the ability for. Whether you agree that the guy should have been fired or not. Again, the notable thing to me is how quickly once information became public, the decision makers completely reversed course in terms of what kind of accountability was appropriate like that. To me, it's an illustration of how that happens and how that's something that I think, like I said, that we need to make sure that we protect if we want to be able to hold people who are powerful accountable for things that may or may they may or may not should be doing or that they shouldn't be doing.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And I got just a couple more things on media, and then I got some final thoughts on the culture of the hazing stuff where we started with. But, you know, there's a couple things. One is, I think, just for listeners to be reminded. Right. Like we've seen examples in recent, just the last two, three years of how, what it looks like in other, some large nations, how they handle the media. So, for example, I was thinking of Russia with the invasion of Ukraine. You think about the idea of propaganda, that a whole country was convinced that their neighbor, they had to go invade their neighbor to denazify them when their president is jewish, meaning how strong the russian propaganda is because they don't allow freedom of the press. And then the idea that we all know, which is once the invasion happened, journalists were threatened with 15 years imprisonment if they called it a war.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Imagine being in prison now just because you said it's a war and now it is a war. Meaning Putin finally had to admit as a war because it's not going the way he wanted and it stretched out much longer than he anticipated. So that was why.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: And the reason he did it, just to kind of back it in, is because he wanted to avoid accountability, like.
[00:31:18] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So that's one. And then the second, I found something very interesting, which will be in the show notes. It's in our stuff, is a study from an index from the Heritage foundation, which I say is a very conservative think tank. And I say the kind of traditional conservative, maybe not the idea of conservatism that's been hijacked by some on the far right, but they're the traditional conservatives that really believe in individual freedom and things like that. Right. And so they have something called less government intervention. Yeah. They have an economic freedom index and the 2023 index. A big part of it is, and I'll read you actually the quick definition. For 29 years, the index of economic Freedom has measured the impact of liberty and free markets around the globe. And the 2023 index confirms the formidable positive relationship between economic freedom and progress. So a free press is a large part of their index. So it's interesting. The top ten countries are Singapore, Switzerland, Ireland, Taiwan, New Zealand, Estonia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden.
The United States is 25th on the list.
They break the index up into several categories. The first is free.
You got a score of 180 to 100. That's only Switzerland and Singapore out of all countries. The next is mostly free.
So. Sorry, it was four countries. Ireland and Taiwan were the other two, so I apologize.
The next section is mostly free, which is from number five to number 27. So we fall in there with mostly free, along with New Zealand, the Czech Republic, so on and so forth. You know, it's interesting. Moderately free United Kingdoms and France. So you got countries, Mexico, Colombia, and then the last section is mostly unfree. And those will be all your third world countries that we could kind of assume. So I just wanted to close that section on the media about that. That is interesting that a conservative think tank that's about business made the case that a free press and freedom of expression actually has a pot. And we've talked about this in other discussions, a positive long term economic impact on a society.
So.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: Yeah, no, no, but was there one other thing you wanted to mention real quick about the hazing?
[00:33:43] Speaker B: And then I got really, my thought, and this isn't long, is just because I was preparing for this, you know, I thought kind of of the me too movement, and I thought how, like, if you remember, like, Andrew Cuomo and some of the people that kind of came down in this recent years of this wave of the hash metoo stuff, that one of the sad parts for those guys, I mean, I'm not defending their actions. Right. But their behavior at one point was normal, you know, in the 1980s, early nineties, I mean, men did behave differently in professional settings with women and got away with it. And I'm not saying it's right. I'm just like. There was a difference.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a statement of just, like.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: The difference in norms racially in America. Right. White Americans used to get away with a lot of things. They don't now, just with other groups. And so things change over time. And I think that's what we're going back to just to. Just to finish off the whole discussion here is we don't believe that the norms and hazing have changed that much.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that was kind of, the point was before. Is that, like, I don't. This doesn't seem to be kind of a recency kind of thing. Like, it's like, oh, well, now this isn't cool anymore. Like, I wasn't around when this kind of thing would have been cool, you know? And again, that's. I'm not a person.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: I don't know if it ever was cool, is my point.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: And there are plenty of people that say, oh, there should never be any hazing. I'm not that, you know, but I'm just like, oh, I don't. I don't know if this was the one, you know, that this is the direction you'd be going, like, again. But that's why you look at the leadership and, you know, like, somebody needs to be able to speak on where the line is, because boys will push things, young boys will push things to the limit and do things. They'll cross that line. But who's the one saying, okay, well, here's the line type of thing, because that's necessary. That's part of leading. That's part of being a leader of men or a leader of people in general, is to set the bounds of acceptable conduct. And the last thing I'll say before we move to the next topic is just that this topic or this conversation say that all the media is heroes, or the news media is all heroes or whatever. There are bad and deceptive actors across the media, you know, like art, like clickbait, clickbait. All pretty. Basically all media. News media, everything. They use clickbait. That is manipulative, you know, like, on its face, it's manipulative, you know? And so that is that that comes from a lot of times, the pressure to, that this new financial kind of setup is where news media competes with entertainment. But nonetheless, you can't get confused, though, with the manipulate, the clickbait style manipulation with just outright deception, you know, like, or outright just. We're going to turn news media into something that has alternative facts, like facts that just aren't true, you know, like, that still is a another level of dishonesty that can be an entertainment. You know, like, I watch movies and people are flying around, and I know they're not really flying. You know, like, that could be an entertainment. But you got to be very careful when you accept that in news because it tarnishes the whole idea of news, of being able to go find information that's valid. That's true. So, second topic we want to discuss today is we saw recently that at and T stock has been, as you've told me, at and T stock is kind of like, that's not a volatile type of thing, but their stocks been taken a hit lately, and a lot of people are thinking it's because of concerns about the costs and dealing with lead in the transmission and their transmissions lines. And that's something. These are old lines and back before they knew that lead was super toxic and everything like that. And so, but somebody's got to clean it up. And so what's your reaction to this story? I know since then you've told me that there's even more, you know, we first started talking about this on Friday and there's even more fallout right now. But what's your reaction to this story specifically on the, how, who should have this obligation? Is this something that at and t is using them so they should pay for it? Or is this kind of a government thing that maybe we should look at the government to try to do and also how this kind of ripples through the company and the economy, something like this? Because this is a pretty big deal when you have big time stocks like that taking a hit.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: Yeah, man. No, I'll say I'm upset because I'm a shareholder myself, so I'm a little bit poor than I was on Thursday at the close of the market.
No. And I think, look, it's interesting because there was a report from Goldman Sachs today that both, they believe both the company and the regulators were unaware of this. This really seems to, that's why the reaction has been so strong, because this seems to have come out of nowhere. And the concern, of course, is, I mean, just to go loosely on some numbers, I think they say the total amount to clean this up would be $59 billion.
And I think clearly any company that has to face that kind of charge is going to be looked at as maybe a risky bet going forward and especially leading into an environment that was already kind of difficult for telecom in general. I mean, Verizon at and T, these companies were facing headwinds for various reasons. Number one, they're dealing with the issues of inflation, supply chain backups. Remember, it's not just our cell phone service. A lot of these companies are in the business of laying cable and Fibernet and all that. So when the pandemic was on, the supply chains were messed up. They were dealing with it. They had cost overruns. They had to deal with inflation, all that. So their numbers have not been great in recent years. And then the concern with telecom in general going forward, like in the recent months, was kind of like, all right, we might be heading into a recession, you know, all those kind of fears that are there in this environment of the rising rates. So in a recessionary environment, you might have people giving up some of their, you know, services, like some of their cell phone coverage and, you know, maybe some of their streaming stuff that might, some of these companies might still have a foothold in. And then the other was the fact that there's a lot of competition for telecom because of just the way things have gone. Right. I think the interesting thing is this is going to hurt the companies. But I think, and this is where I want to get your thoughts on it, is the fact that stock prices are getting so beat up. My concern is the perception will become the reality that the taxpayer will end up being on the hook at some point because as the stock prices keep dropping, it's going to scare off the capital markets like firms like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs that might be able to give lines of credit to an at and till at a favorable rate. Now they're going to say, well, if we're going to give you a few billion dollars of lines of credit so you can get through this, it's not going to be a 3%, right. It's going to be at a much more elevated. So I could see something like a bailout akin to what happened with Chrysler or in the eighties or Ford after the zero nine crash where the, or the airlines over the decades that's been, you know, happened several times where the, where the, maybe the government just says, look, this industry is too important for the United States not to have it well oiled over this period of time. So we're just going to maybe give them low interest loans or we'll buy preferred stock, and then if, when it appreciates, we'll sell out at a profit like they do with the banks after the great financial. So I think there will be the government involvement at some point, but, yeah.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: Well, yeah, that's interesting, man, because, yeah, to me, like that's that the stock goes down, makes it more difficult for them to deal with it. It's an interesting kind of bed fellow here. It's like, oh, Mandy, if the stock was stayed still, maybe we'd be able to deal with it. But to me, there's a more fundamental question, and that's just when stuff like this happens, whose job is it to take care of it? And as you point out, these are important industries. Our country, our economy, the world's economy. This type of stuff is very important to it.
Yes. At and t has benefited and earned profit off of these transmission lines for decades, you know, or Verizon. You own some, you know, like just they have, they have benefited from these. So it's not an unfair, inherent inherently, for them to have to pay to, to modernize them or to clean them up or to get the, the toxic stuff out, that's not unfair. But at the same time, at the time when these, this wasn't them cutting costs at the time, this was, these, these cables were run, you know, like, this wasn't saying, oh, well, we could do it in a way that, that is healthy, but we'll do it in this, in this unhealthy way because it's much cheaper, more or less. That was kind of what was happening at that time. And so at least as far as I understand this. And so there is, when society changes like that or when society learns something and grows, we become better at, hey, let's avoid this practice. Let's get away from doing this. Let's get away from doing that. Then it's not unfair or unreasonable to say, hey, this is why we have, this is why we have the government. You know, like now the problem is that this kind of, in case something bad happens, we have the government to fall back on. That kind of mentality only works if you support the government and the government's funded and stuff under normal times, like, right. So much of what we do now is to underfund the government. And then when things come up, we're like, all right, let's just borrow a bunch of money. So our kind of approach to emergency, and we'll just use the government when there's an emergency. And when there's no emergency, we'll just try to abandon the government, kind of sets us up in this situation where whatever is going to happen here, we're not prepared for it. We're not prepared for the unexpected. In this instance. We're going to have to deal with it. It's something that's going to come up. And like you said, I agree with you that most likely there's going to be some kind of public situation that is taxpayer, taxpayer money is going towards make this happening, make, making this happen, because it, it's something that, it's much easier to try to point to the company when they did something negligent or intentionally bad than it is when they, this is just kind of the circumstance that they're in. Like, and even when companies do stuff negligent or intentionally bad, a lot of times the government ends up stepping in and helping with the cleanup or whatever.
[00:43:32] Speaker B: Well, I'll give you an example. Like I looked up just out of curiosity, what was the, what's the market cap of the stock today? As you know, we're recording this after the market close. And for the audience, the market cap is the share price multiplied by the amount of shares outstanding. And this is with a massive drop. I mean, the stocks down about 30 plus percent year to date. They still have a market cap of 159 billion. So that goes back to the idea that, let's say the stock went up 40% for the last two weeks. They might have had a market cap of 240 billion.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Right? Yeah.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: They could have just sold some stock on the market, raised cash and started paying for this themselves. But the fact that they're getting punished for this, you know, that's where I think the government will be forced to step in. Because, number one, it goes back to all the discussions we have about, you know, people on fringes don't understand that. And it's more, like we say, a more conservative way to look at things, right. You can't have instant change without massive pain. So just like you can't get rid of fossil fuels tomorrow, we wouldn't want to see at and t go out of business tomorrow because they have to pay $59 billion by next week. Right. And so. Because that'll be very painful for all of us from a telecommunications standpoint. So what I can.
[00:44:40] Speaker A: Yeah. From a mark, you know, that that creates a more monopolistic market, that there's ripple effects.
[00:44:47] Speaker B: 40% of Americans would lose their Internet tomorrow. I mean, it's the ability to work. You know, all that kind of stuff would just be out the door for a while. So it'd be, be worse than the pandemic shutdown. So in a certain way. So the, so my point is saying that, let's say out of the 59 billion, because I know Verizon and I think Lumen or another company, it was basically those three companies had the, the largest exposure, but at and t had the largest out of all of them, hypothetically, let's say their exposure is 30 billion. Like, I can see something where the government lends them $30 billion and they pay it back 1 billion a year for 30 years. Like, that's the type of thing that I don't think would be unfair because if I look in their last numbers, in 2022, they had 120 billion in revenue.
So my point is, can they afford to part with a billion dollars a year? Yeah, you know, it might hurt a little bit, but I. Then the taxpayer gets paid back. And to your point, that's how we can say, okay, we can help a company that's so instrumental that it is kind of too big to fail. That's why I think the example of the AIG and some of the banks during the financial crisis was good because the treasury actually made a profit on AIG because they bailed them out. But they did it in a way where they also owned some stock, and when they made money selling the stock a few years later, the money went back in the treasury. So it's, you know, I'm not opposed to that kind of idea versus, obviously, writing them a blank check to make sure they don't fail.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: Well, that'd be the hope. Yeah. That, you know, like, that's, you always run into that question or concern. You know, you want to make sure that you have competent people in the government, that they're not getting circles run around them by the people in industry. Like, this is a thing. Like. No, I mean, like, I know people in South Florida, you know, are very familiar with this because, like, with the, when the Marlins got a new stadium built, they, like, the negotiation was so slanted, it was like, well, who's, who's negotiating on this side on the side of the taxpayers? Like, is it some five year old? Like, what's happening here? How are we getting such a bad deal? So, yes, the AIG is an example where the government, okay, hey, let's do this in a way where we win, too, so to speak. We keep a problem from happening or we prevent a problem, and then also we, we don't take a hit just because we're bailing somebody out. But I think the other thing I'll.
[00:46:52] Speaker B: Mention, you know, what I wanted to say is that the, if the government were to bail them out with no strings attached, then we got to buy the stock.
That thing's going to shoot right up. They don't got to pay it back, and no one else is going to. We're not going to dilute shareholders by making them, you know, issue more shares. So the government can.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: You better give your caveat on that one. Right?
[00:47:16] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. That was not financial advice. I have to say that legally. Okay.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go. So. But the other thing I'll mention is, before we get out of here, is just that this is also a reminder that, like, without it being anyone's fault in particular, bad things come up from time to time that we as a society have to address. And, like, the thing that you see, like, all this culture war stuff is not really relevant to any of this. And, in fact, the people that are elected based on culture war stuff and the people, that, that's what animates them. And that's all they think about doing when they get into power. Like, they're not the ones who are in a position to be able to even conceive, like, to understand and address these problems. Like, we need serious people in government, because when stuff like this comes up, one, it's then just become a crony situation, like, oh, well, I'll help you out. What are you gonna do for me? But to, you know, like, the taxpayers and I can get a real deal out of it. But two, you gotta be able to have the foresight, you gotta be able to have the, the analytical ability and not be obsessed with some ancillary thing where that's taken up all your time, where you can actually deal with this kind of the boring stuff in government. Like you've talked about it before. Like, government's not exciting. Like, nobody's watching C SPAN. Like, this stuff is not all that engaging as far as all of the stuff that's necessary to keep the trains running on time, all that stuff keep the banks up and running, everything that from a regulatory standpoint, from just a system and a framework standpoint that needs to happen to keep our system running. This well oiled machine, one of the biggest and baddest machines, you know, in history. World. Yeah, culture wars doesn't get us there. It's basically my point.
[00:48:47] Speaker B: So I just want to say, because I could see somebody maybe listening to us and say, well, what do you mean? It's not their fault. They're the ones that laid the lead cables. And I just want to speak to them and say, yeah, that obviously is a fact. Right. These companies did lay them down, but they laid him at a time when laid cables were our main option because with, that was the cheapest way. And we didn't have certain other actual, I don't want to say technologies, but materials, yet we made it under that PVC back then, we definitely didn't have certain forms of synthetics and the ability to cover cables with things maybe like graphite and other things that are still just as sturdy to protect them. Because remember, I mean, these are things that anyone that owns a home and has a garden and trees in it will understand, right. When they lay these cables, they have to account for things like big trees, like oak trees, have roots that penetrate concrete.
[00:49:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:40] Speaker B: So you need to have, you know, casing around these cables that are strong enough that you're not going to have to sit there and fix these things every single day around the country, which is going to be more costly and disruptive to service so like you said about a well oiled machine. So the fact is that this was the way it was done, you know, 100 years ago when they were laying cable and up to 50 years ago. And now we know leads bad for you. And unfortunately, there's a lot of it still left under the ground. It has to be dealt with. So I think to your point, right, like, if these, all these things become culture wars, like recently we saw that farmers insurance pulled out of property insurance in Florida and the CFO of the state calls them woke when they're the fourth company to pull out this year. And they did it because they can't afford to insure homes in the path of a friggin hurricane every year. So that's why it's kind of childish when we get to the cultural wars when it comes to serious things, and this maybe goes back to the discussion that freedom of speech is what's going to allow us to get through these things. Because people that want to suffocate everyone and just do the culture wars will definitely not be able to help us fix these actual serious problems.
[00:50:46] Speaker A: Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, yeah, they're not like, they're not even interested, interested in solving the problems, you know, like it's, it's all about sticking it to somebody and everything.
[00:50:54] Speaker B: Like that and canceling everyone. So.
[00:50:55] Speaker A: Yeah, so. But no, I think we can wrap from there. But it's definitely, I mean, something to keep an eye on because it's such a huge project, you know, but I mean, obviously in all of us, we expect our services to continue irrespective of any of that. You know, it's like, hey, I don't, I don't need to know anymore. Just make sure to my Internet and my cell phone or, you know, whatever is all still working. So. But it's a significant thing. And again, sometimes, you know, just based on it, not anyone's fault, kind of in quotes, like there wasn't someone who said, hey, I know this is horrible, but you know what, I don't care. Let's just do it. Like, that's what I, that's more so what I saying there is, it's kind of a lack of knowledge that led to this more than something sinister or something negligent, at least as far as we know. But I think we can close it up from there. We appreciate it for joining us on this episode of call. Like, I see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: I'm tunde with Lana.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
