Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
Welcome to the call it like I see it podcast.
I'm James Keyes, and in this episode of call it like I see it, we're going to discuss the dysfunction in the US House of Representatives following the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as the speaker of the House. And consider what is driving this level of dysfunction that has essentially paralyzed the House of Representatives right now.
And later on, we're going to react to some economic data, some recent economic data, which shows that Latinos in the US now have an economic output that exceeds the nation of India, which has 1.4 billion people in it. So that's a lot of economic output for just the Latinos in the US.
Joining me today is a man who went deep into his bag of fire takes last week. Tunde Ogun. Lana Tunde.
One question for you, man. Are you ready to give me some mo?
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Yes, sir. But don't tell everyone. It's a very small bag. It's like a baggie.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: That's how you had to go so deep.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: It wasn't like Santa's like bag of gifts. Big and nice and big, but there you go.
Yeah.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: No, we're recording this on October 17, 2023. And a couple weeks ago, Kevin McCarthy was voted out of his speakership position. And in an effort that was led by just eight republican congressmen, out of 435 total congressmen. And it was historic in that it was the first time a speaker of the House was voted out during the term like that.
Now the House needs a speaker that's an important leadership role in terms of organizing the business, bringing votes to the floor and so forth. The Republicans, who are in the majority of the House, have now begun an effort to or immediately began an effort to replace him as the speaker of the House. They first nominated Steve Scalise, but he stepped down almost immediately, within like a day, because he just didn't have the votes to win the speakership, so to speak. He canvassed the room and saw he didn't have the votes and stepped down. And so now we have Jim Jordan, who's nominated, and we're expecting a vote here by the time this comes out.
And he's been putting on the full court press and there's been reports on that as far as to try to get the votes to win the speakership. The key is that out of the 220 or so republican congressmen, which is a majority of the 435, you need pretty much everybody. You can only have about four defects or people who don't vote for you out of your caucus in order to have enough to have the majority of the votes because none of the Democrats are, none of the members of the Democratic Party are going to vote for the republican nominee.
All the while, there's no elected speaker. So the House of Representatives just isn't operating, you know, at all, meaning this isn't just dysfunction, but it's not even operational.
So, tunde, what are your thoughts on the deposing of Kevin McCarthy by the G, by the GOP Congress and, you know, a couple weeks back and also, you know, just the struggle to agree on a new speaker of the House?
[00:03:18] Speaker B: Good question. But before I answer, I just want to piggyback on what you just said because you just said a mouthful in terms of, I realize as I'm listening to you, I'm like, man, that's a lot.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: That's a lot.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Last two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. But it also made me realize that if what you talked about just now requires necessarily a certain understanding of our government and the functioning of it, like, what is the House of Representatives? Why is it there? Why do we have members of the House? What do they represent, who are they? And all that stuff. So I know we'll cover some of that, but it just, you know, what I got me back to realizing is the great system we have is about the people's participation in it. So we do have the democracy we deserve in that sense. So I know we'll get into that. But to answer you directly, I find this all fascinating.
The note I wrote in preparation was a slow moving train wreck. And I want to train because just like a slow moving train wreck, it's like I'm kind of watching it, knowing that it's not comfortable. And this is going to be probably painful for somebody. But like I said, I'm on this train because I'm american and I live in this country. So we're all dealing with this together in a sense, no matter what, how we feel about it. You know what I mean? So it's a good reminder that celebration.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: Here going on that they, our congress, our legislative brands, can't get their stuff together.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So, well, let's put it this way. We aren't celebrating. Maybe someone out there is. So then it kind of just brought me back and no one worth talking about this. Right. This topic. I thought about the fact that Speaker McCarthy, it took him 15 votes, a record, to get his speakership because he kept having to concede his own, I guess, political future, which played out this way to a small faction of very hard line people in his party. And so this is an example of minority rule within a democratic republic of the United States, meaning a very. It seems like 96% of Republicans in Congress did not want him removed.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: So 4% of the Congress or the Republican Congress of the republican party were able to do this. And again, I don't know if that's dysfunction or how the system's supposed to work, but I guess that's the conversation.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: But, I mean, you made the point, though, that as a part of becoming speaker, of getting the vote, securing the votes that he needed to become the speaker in the first place, he set the stage for his demise, you know, because the concessions that he made are the things that allowed it or made it easy for a small group of republican congressmen to later on if they decide to take him out. And they wanted that to have constant leverage on him. And ultimately, it wasn't a bluff.
They weren't just saying, oh, yeah, we want to be able to threaten you. They wanted. They ultimately took him out. Now, to me, what I see what's happening here is kind of a reorganization of the hierarchy of the republican coalition. As you noted, these are kind of far right agitators, or whatever you want to call them, in the. Within the republican political parties. I've talked about this before. In the United States, we form coalitions before the voting. Our coalitions are housed under parties and parliamentary systems around the world. You'll hear you have a bunch of different parties, and they'll all win a percentage of the vote, and then they'll come to parliament and make governing coalitions. Well, our coalitions are done beforehand because of the nature of our elections. You gotta get to 51%, or you. You want to be able to get to 51%. So you don't want to be fragmented with a bunch of different groups. And so the coalitions form. And so within each of the parties, the varying coalitions have different amount of power, different levels of power. And so you kind of have the traditional group that's been in power of the republican coalition for a while, and there's, they're just basically taking fire from the right flank, you know, and then the right flank is trying to say, we are going to be the dominant coalition now in this party. And this is something that many people have said has happened, you know, across the board, you know, the. The big lie type of stuff, you know, like that, that, that there's this. This come coming from the extreme right that are saying, look, we're going to be. The Republican Party is going to be about us. Now, it's not going to be about, you know, small government or, you know, all these things that we think about from 1980 that the Republican Party said they were about, but it's going to be about different stuff now, whether that's Donald Trump or whether that's, you know, the, the never compromise on anything or anything like that. So to me, that's what I really see here is that this is the, this wing, this coalition right here was like, look, McCarthy is not do sufficiently doing our bidding. We set up the, the trap door on him when he got in here. We're going to pull the trap door and then they're going to try to impose upon the next person who comes either similar types of constraints or they're going to try to get one of their own to be the speaker of the House then.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Yeah, no. And I think, you know, as you're finishing, it makes me realize the fact that the just former speaker, Mister McCarthy, is out. He broke two records. So he broke the record when he got nominated for the most votes because he had to twist himself into a pretzel. And then he broke the record for being the first guy ever moved in this way, which interrelated. Yeah, exactly. And it's pretty embarrassing. And so I think, you know, not to knock him. It's more of this is, I think, the symptom of a wider problem that's been brewing for some time, especially over the last decade, but it had seeds even earlier than that. And I think what this, we're at the culmination, this is just very interesting, being alive to watch this in our own country, because this is no longer about the traditional disagreements between liberals and conservatives over how to deal with government and what its role should be in our lives. So like you said about should taxes.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Be relatively high or relatively low? But again, still in some, how should.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: That tax revenue be used, right. Like for entitlement programs and helping out people, you know, single moms trying to raise their kids and helping them with food stamps and early learning projects? Or should it go to defense spending and giving, you know, oil and gas companies leases on federal lands, you know, that are very cheap. Those are the things you and I grew up with in terms of the arguments between both parties. But they both centered around an idea of, it was really about the philosophy of the two different bases of each party of how to see the country move forward. And I think, let me, let me.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Say that a different way. It wasn't, those arguments weren't about the, what the, what was agreed upon, what are we doing here? It was the how. How are we going to use our resources to, to accomplish the what. But, you know, I think what you're getting to now is that we're actually having more.
We're heading more towards some disagreements about the what, like, okay, well, what are we gonna be working on here?
[00:10:26] Speaker B: What's interesting is, and this is just interesting, it's really sad for me to say it because I think we, you know, we benefit, all of us, from a robust debate. And what the whole point of this country is, well, that's one of the.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Things that we aren't necessarily agreed upon anymore, you know, but that was one of the things we take for granted.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yeah, but this is our show, so I'm expressing my opinion.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: So. So I'll let you say it without being challenged.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Come on. So, of course. Of course some people don't agree with this. That's why we're here. That's the whole conversation. So. No, but that's the point is saying that the idea of debate, you know, you have Congress again, what you, like I said at the beginning, you said some complex things which aren't. I'm not saying it to be a smart as. What I'm saying is it's the understanding of the system. We have an upper and lower chamber of the US Congress, the Senate as the upper chamber, the house of representatives being the lower chamber, both create and ratify legislation that goes to the president's desk for signature. So the idea is that debate between the two parties, as de facto and proxy representatives of us, the voters, happens in those chambers, like you said, that should lead to an outcome that benefits the nation, puts us forward with the best ideas. And what I think we're seeing is the culmination of this era of anger and kind of grievance. And this is what it's turned into, you know, and this is why I think it's hard for the Republican Party to find this direction right now, because what they've done is exhausted.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: The question I want to ask you this. Why do you think it's so hard for them to come up with this seemingly like they have the majority of seats in the House of Representatives? So in any other scenario, and earlier this year, they then will use their votes, their majority votes to vote on in a speaker of the House. Why do you think they're having such a hard time with doing that? You know, like this, and you were touching on it, but I think we just go straight into it.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think, I mean, look, the definition is dysfunction. So I guess. How do, how do you get to this dysfunction? I want to be very clear. I mean, it's interesting also, like, I definitely, just for the audience, I'm not a Democrat, so I'm not here to be a partisan, like beating up Republicans of this discussion. I found one thing, and even preparing today is when, when one side is dysfunctional, it actually highlights something of the other side. And I realized, you know, the Democrats, you know, we heard a lot of negative things from kind of the media on the right about Nancy Pelosi during her tenure and all that. And again, I recognize her politics may have upset some people, but I kind of realized watching this, I'm thinking, yeah, it's interesting how she didn't seem to have these problems. She was able to have control of her caucus. So that's part of leadership is just being able to hold down the fort now.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: Everybody keeping everybody on board. Yeah.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Correct. And the problem here is, again, whether one agrees with democratic policies and ideas or not, the idea, what I'm gonna say is Democrats still have their own reason of being other than just grievance and anger, no matter what the media tries to tell us. Right. It's things like green energy trying to fight climate change, like we talked about.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Things that people may disagree with, but you can name them.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: And it's like we were just saying earlier, like they still believe in redistribution of certain wealth from the tax policies and all that to help those at the bottom and all that. That's, to me, I can say, okay, I can point to that.
We don't no longer know what the Republican Party is really about in terms of what it used to be, like you said, the eighties and nineties, early two thousands, because right now they've been cannibalizing their own leaders because it's almost like this resentment from the ground up. So the base is always angry now, constantly angry and triggered.
The media triggers them, the social media, all that could, the ecosystems trigger. And what we've got now is part.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Of the base, we should say, because it's not the entire base, but a large enough part of the base that it really, really matters.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: Correct. And a very aggressive, like you said, vocal. So it kind of scares the people that aren't as aggressive from, from standing up against it. And I think that's what we're seeing now with, with this fight for the new speaker. And so that's the thing I think that's the issue is it's like the dog that caught the car for a group of people that perform better when they're out of power, if that makes sense. Because when you're out of power, it's easy to constantly criticize and throw tomatoes from the cheap seats and say that everything sucks. But once they get in power, then, then they don't seem to have that direction. Right? Like, think about how serious the world just got in the last two weeks. Between the attack from Hamas on Israel. We've got a government shut down looming in three weeks. We still have a land war in Europe, like a real war for the first time since World War Two.
And the Republican Party can't find a speaker of the House in this moment of seriousness.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: So, which is seemingly a pretty basic function. You know, like, that's kind of one of the first steps of leadership is, okay, you know, in Congress. Now, I want to say kind of what you were saying, but in a different light. Like, what I see here is that the unifying principle of the co, I was talking about the coalitions and so forth, the unifying principle seems to be about either the grievance or owning the Dems. You know, it seems to be a unifying principle about the Republicans settling scores with the media or with Democrats or whatever. It's always about an opponent, a political adversary, and so forth is every, the things that unify them, that animate them, it's always are about scoring things on a political sense. And so that does leave you ill equipped when it's just within your own group and saying, okay, all right, within our group, what are we going to do? Because it's like, well, it's not about who they select as a speaker. Whether they can agree on a speaker doesn't have anything to do with, really, the Democratic Party. It doesn't really have anything to do with the mediaev, you know, and with certain exceptions, which you may get into. But so this is only about looking at the Republicans looking at each other and saying, okay, what do we want to be about? And this is honestly what you get. And you brought this up offline. I think you're going to get into this. And so I'm not going to go too far into it. But we saw this start to come to fruition a little bit back in 2020 when the Republican Party, and we've mentioned this on the show before, their platform for the 2020 election was what Donald Trump wants to do. You know, like, it wasn't normally parties. Each presidential election, they have a long platform. And it's about, oh, you know, we want to build roads and we want to do this. And do that. And they didn't do a platform like that for the, you know, this was just like, oh, we're just going to, we're about what Donald Trump is about. And so that is, again, not to say that is the cause of this, but that's a symptom, that's an example from their own mouths that there aren't a set of principles, a set of things that we wanna get done when in power in the country, that unite the whole caucus, that bring this coalition of groups together that they all can agree on. And so when you have to say, okay, well, we need leadership, you're ill equipped really, because all you're about is either we're following this guy who's not here right now, who's not, you know, who's not able to become there, we're not going to become the speaker of the House. Or it's about, let's make sure that we stop the Dems from doing fill in the blank. And it's like, well, but this is about you having to do something, not dealing with the Democrats, just you yourself. And so can you, can you everybody get, can you get everybody on the same page about doing something for yourself as opposed to doing something to thwart what you, you know, what you build your, your identity around and thwarting the enemies or thwarting the media or something like that.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, before even getting into, you know, the party platforms and that stuff, it's just interesting because again, as you're speaking, I just want to remind the audience, you know, why is this important? Is the speaker of the House, number one, is basically the next in line for the presidency of the United States after the vice president. So if, God forbid, Biden and Harris are traveling somewhere and the plane goes down, the speaker of the House is, leads the country.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: So right now the speaker of the House brings like, that's a more remote, but they bring legislation to the, that's.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Where I was going next. So right now, with all what I just said going on around the world and Biden today is in Israel. So again, God forbid something happens, right. In terms of our leadership as a country, then we have no one in position to take that authority. And like you said, we have all this stuff going on which we just mentioned and a government that is at risk of shutting down in three weeks and we can't pass any legislation.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: We can't even bring to the floor. Like, we can't even consider legislation, you know, like, so to me, that's like the House of Representatives. Their job is to bring legislation to the floor and then pass it. And then the Senate will consider it or vice versa. The Senate will pass something and the House considers it. We can't do that. Like, Congress cannot operate right now at all.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's why I want to say it for the audience, because that's what I mean. This all sounds wonky sometimes and all that. It's really to stress the point right now, an important branch of our government, out of the three branches, one of them is dysfunctional, period.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: And so it's not operational. I would go even further. It's like we got, we got a tricycle and one of the wheels is gone.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: So, no, and that's what I mean in a time with all this going on, which, I mean, look, it's a, there's always important things going on, but it seems a little bit heavier now. So going back to the point you said about like the party platform and all that, I mean, I just, you know, preparing for today, I was just thinking about the assault on the american voter by certain parts of our political spectrum. And I got to thinking back, you know, into, like, there's three phases of this that have already happened, and now we are entering the new phase, which is, I kind of, just stay with me here. 1968 to 1994, I kind of went from southern strategy through the 94. Congress was kind of phase one. Then I said phase two was kind of the 911 and George W. Bush era because that was kind of when the nativism, and again, not to bash american people, we were scared after 911.
And that's when I remember I've said this in other discussions, the first time I've seen people on the news saying, you're either with us or against us. And the Bush administration was the first time in my life that I saw kind of an authoritarian style presidency in the United States. Remember, we had the issue with the us attorney's offices and the way that the kind of rhetoric from the administration of this, like I said, this with us or against us thing, and a lot of Americans kind of fell into that. And then the next phase I had was the Tea Party era, the response to Obama's presence. And that led us to kind of now, because I thought about important issues like, let's say healthcare in this country, which is very important.
We had Americans being told there were death panels and all that stuff. And that was now 13 years ago. But the opposing party has not come with any ideas in 13 years of how to make our health care system better.
You know, at least the party that opposed that. And that's what I'm talking about is I'm not here to say that the democratic ideas are the best. We need good, challenging ideas. We just haven't had any because the party has devolved from a platform of ideas that are conservative and how to make America better to now becoming a personality call of anger and also this issue of the fealty to one man like idolatry. So, well, no, I mean, that's where.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: That'S the point in the sense that the reason, if you go back to the 1980s and you can consider whether this is totally genuine or just convenient, but there was rationale in reasoning provided for why entitlement programs were bad. And it was, you know, like, well, people need to stand on their own 2ft. If you, if the government helps people, then they become more irresponsible. Like, and that stuff, there is a logical basis for that type of rationale. Like, hey, you know, if we're just, if it's a welfare nanny state, then the people will, many people will not try to even stand on their own 2ft. They'll just, you know, become, you know, part of, just take care of by the government and that's it. And so versus going to, you know, like, okay, we're going to do, we're going to, the government's going to foot more of the bill in healthcare. The government's going to do certain parts of health care. And the push against that, there may have been some underlying basis from a logical or rational standpoint. But like you said, it became like death panels. It became like deception trying to get people angry, trying to get people afraid of it as opposed to being it, something at being, okay, well, okay, if we need to solve the healthcare problem, which everybody seemed to acknowledge, there was either in terms of costs or in terms of how we're administrating it, let's, we need it, we have a different idea. Our idea is better because it won't fall into blank trap and so forth. So there's definitely something there. I mean, one thing I'll point out here is that the, from the ground up, you know, like this issue, as you pointed out before, this doesn't seem to be something that's being driven.
This level of dysfunction, dissatisfaction, anger doesn't seem to be coming from the top. It seems to be brewing up. And so in the House of Representatives, honestly and well, you know, it is the branch of our government or the part of our government and the federal government that's closest to the people. So if there is a level of dissatisfaction, dysfunction, distrust that's brewing up from the people, it's going to hit the House of Representatives first, most likely because that's the one. There's 435 of them. Your house district's senate is, is two per state, whereas House districts are much smaller, generally speaking, unless it's a very small, from a population standpoint, state. But the House representatives members are supposed to be closest to the, you know, the citizens, so to speak. So I want, my question for you is, do you think the level of dysfunction here, you know, like, do you think that it actually is revealing, though, more of an issue with the failure in the system, or do you think this is truly people driven? Like it's a chicken and egg thing? Like, we can see that there's a lot of anger and so, and resentment in the public, but are there systemic things that you think that are, that are actually driving that as well? Or do you think this is, you know, like a, like a, whether it be misguided or not, something that is being driven by, from the ground up, from, you know, the parts of the republican electorate?
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Of course, there's, there's, it's all swirling together to all the ingredients of the stew, but I think that it's a little bit more of the latter than the former. I do think of. There's, of course, we're a big society with 330 million people, and we got.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: A lot republican voters right now, you know.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Yeah, no, where I'm getting at is, of course, there's systemic issues in any nation as big as ours. That's what I'm saying. Like, I think we need to accept the fact that there's never going to be a finish line when we just get everything done is all this accomplishment stuff, and then everything's great forever for the rest of.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Also, there's no perfect system because there's.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: 300 plus million of us. So we all have a different idea of maybe how a perfect system might look. And so that's the idea of a democracy, right, is that we figure it out. We go vote. We vote for people to sit in the House of Representatives to represent us, and they are supposed to vote on our behalf in the way that we based on their party, like we said at the beginning of this discussion, based on a certain philosophical outlook that a voter has and chooses a party to follow based on that outlook. And so I think that I don't want to get to beating up the system so much because the system's never been perfect. You know, like, I tell, remind people, we used to have slavery in this country where human beings were owned like cattle. Then we had segregation. We used to have, we had women's suffrage for a reason, because there was a time up until a hundred years ago women couldn't vote. So there's all that stuff, right. That, that's just reality. And so right now, if I compare it to all those prior things that we could talk about, the system is okay, you know, for the general, american in general. Now, I understand the middle class is smaller than it was and all that, but those are the normal debates that you're supposed to have in politics. Right. And we've gone from that to talk to freaking out about, you know, whether a transvestite holds a beer can or if the, you know, stoves are going to be gas or electricity. And that's what I mean. Like things that, in the wake of this recent stuff going on, like the war between Hamas and Israel, and you think about Ukraine still going on and literally they're still sending missiles at each other in Europe. And, you know, just all this serious stuff, all of a sudden all that stuff looks so petty. And it's interesting because with this anger, I do think it's coming from the ground up.
And I think what we've done is because leadership's important.
And we've just watched over the last decade republican leaders that saw this coming try to get ahead of it and tell the public that this is what's going to happen and they've all been pushed out of the party.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: So I don't, again, I don't know where we go from here.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Right. No.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: John McCain to Liz Cheney. You know, in the recent example, Jeff Flake.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Yeah, there's, there's a bunch of them. And now Mitt Romney's the one. You know, that's, you know, but there's been a steady line of republican, republican leaders who have been, as they've been pushed out or walked out, been like, yo, this is not going where you guys think it's going.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: But it's the sad part. I just want to say this before you take over, because I want to get your thoughts on this. This has led us to the point where, because there's a lack of real leadership. I was just thinking about the death panels from that we remember from the Obamacare stuff, all that fear, which was a purposeful deception.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: We didn't say that like it was a purposeful deception to make people afraid, make people mad in order to then manipulate themselves.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: That was back when you could still one could make an argument that that was a deception because the philosophy of the overall party, of the republican party was to fear something like universal style healthcare and all this. So by gumming up the works in the public perception, they were able to get the closest thing to non universal, which was the idea that private health insurance would just get subsidized by the government. But fast forward, the reason I'm bringing this up is fast forward to right now. Like the last few weeks, I've seen immediately when asked why McCarthy lost his speakership on his own press conference after he lost, one of the things he did was blame Nancy Pelosi. He said that because she promised him she would step up and support him and she didn't. And then the day that Hamas attacked Israel, all the republican candidates for President blamed Joe Biden.
And a few days later, the leading frontrunner of the Republican Party for president said Hamas was very, Hezbollah was very smart and praised President Xi because he can keep 1.4 billion people in line and none of the people had a comment on that. So what I'm saying is the lack of leadership got us here.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Well, you can say, oh, well, the previous deception was more honorable because it led to. But that opened the door for just deception. It was just like, look, and this is Mitt Romney's point. Well, this is Mitt Romney's point that he's been saying for a few years is that we got to stop, we speaking of him and his fellow republicans, we got to stop lying to our people. That's not me saying that. That's what Mitt Romney is saying. And so you open the door and this is what comes through basically is, okay, well, we can, let's deceive to try to defeat a legislative priority of the, you know, of the Democrats and now. So, well, let's deceive for other reasons, too. You know, the deception seemed to work. And so, I mean, to me, I think there are systemic issues, you know, in terms of how the system is driven by money. And some of these things that have been unraveled actually in the last 20 years in terms of, you know, money in politics and just the nature of what it takes to get in power and to stay in power, I think lead people to a place that may lead to more dysfunction. But what we're seeing here is driven from the ground up. I don't think there is no equivocation about that in the way, you know, this is that people who are pushing for stability and or for rationality are punished at the polls and people that are pushing for chaos and for, you know, just let's blow it up are rewarded at the polls. And you talk about how, you know, the political candidates when, you know, this hamas does this crazy attack on Israel.
And, you know, again, when we've talked about that, you know, like, I'm one that can look at what was, what Hamas did and call that crazy while still understanding that there's complexities going on in the entire Israel palestinian type of front or that what's happening there. But again, you can distinguish that. So I'm not going to go down that point, but look at that and then say, hey, what should we do? Oh, let's blame Joe Biden. The reason for that is what we talked about earlier, because they know there are very few things that unite all Republicans these days, but one of those things are blaming something on the Democrats. Like that's one of the things that pulls the whole coalition together. So that's kind of one of their only. Yeah, that's the one of their only plays. If they could blame the Democrats successfully for something with the speaker vote, they could, I'm sure, solve that right away, too, because that will get everybody in line once it becomes something they can blame. They can, like, they can find some way, whether it's honest or dishonest, to blame the Democrats for. So to me, like, the fact that the agents of chaos are the ones that are ascendant, that are, you don't come in, cause chaos, and then it's like you're worried that, oh, man, I don't know, if I cause chaos, I don't think the voters will appreciate that. That to me makes it clear that this is something that's driven from the ground up. So the real question, honestly, is why? Why are, particularly, because this is the part that I find so fascinating is that why are republican voters much more so than other voters, democratic voters or more independent voters, so disturbed perpetually right now that they support people who essentially are out there saying, we got to blow it up, debate and compromise. We can't, we can't debate. We can't compromise. Forget the separation of powers. We got it. Everything needs to be streamlined. Democratic elections are optional. If we don't win, you know, like, what is driving the ground up? Swell. That's in the Republican Party. It's not the whole, you know, group, but what's driving that? Because to me, and I can throw, you can, you know, take the, take a look at this or take a shot at this if you want or not. But to me, that actually is the question that is really raised here when you're looking at, okay, there are a lot of people here that seem like they're just out on a lot of the things that we talk about in terms of, okay, well, yeah, there needs to be debate. There needs to be compromise. There needs to be, you know, we're all, we're Americans. We're all Americans and we need to be pulling in the same direction. And that doesn't seem to be something we can agree on right now.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Yeah, look, there's a lot there. I think we're, no, because I'll finish off on your last question, but I want to go back. As you were talking, I wrote a note here that you're right about this. This anger is coming from the ground up. And in my opinion, it's like we talked about the death panels. Right. It's being manipulated by specifically media outlets.
And I want to say this, this idea that the liberal media is the most powerful thing in the world is, again, interesting because I would say the mainstream media is more corporate than liberal.
We can get into that. But you think about it, everyone recognizes that the top cable news opinion heads and anchors in the evening slots are all on Fox. It's, you know, former Tucker Carlson, it's Sean Hannity, it's Laura Ingraham. They're the ones that seemingly, whoever they.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: Put on tv, yeah.
BILL O'Reilly, whoever they put on tv instantly becomes the most powerful news anchor.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And we learned a lot through things like the discovery process during the Dominion lawsuit that, you know, there's a lot of money to be made with this anger style of selling media. And that's one reason why Fox lost its lawsuit and had to settle, because it was evident that once they actually got honest about the election not being stolen, they were losing viewership to other outlets and they got worried about their stock price and other things and they started lying. And so that's where it's sad because we saw in writing text messages from anchors like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity that they didn't believe what they were telling their own viewers. And that's why it's a very difficult thing for me to wrap my mind around because I don't necessarily blame the voters because they're being told by people that they're supposed to trust like tv anchors and like congressmen and senators who they elect and who are in their ecosystem of messaging.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: And so when you have Romney's point, hence, yeah, when you have people that.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: Are elected officials telling you things that are lies, you know, it's. I'm not gonna blame the people there. That's why I said it's really about leadership. And so the problem is, is that what I wrote here was that McCarthy was voted out because he compromised, because he dared to keep the government open. And what they don't realize is, like, the debt ceiling debate just a few months ago.
I mean, McCarthy actually got so many concessions out of Joe Biden and the Democrats for the debt ceiling. Remember, a month before the debt ceiling deadline, Biden was like, I'm not debating anything. You guys come to the table, whether just keep going clean and, or else I'm not doing it by the end of that debate to keep. To keep the government or the debt ceiling going up, Republicans were able to get the IR's funding put to the side. They were able to get a lot of things done. And so the fact that McCarthy was fired by his own party for compromising on keeping the government open, which would keep 2 million Americans employed by the government with a paycheck and keep our ability to function properly, shows you a lot. It shows you that we now have a group of politicians that really are just interested in their own power and not in.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Not just that they see that they derive power from chaos.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: So they're interested in their power. Excuse me. They're interested in their power, and they understand and they seem to have a really good feel for the fact that they derive power from creating chaos. And, yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Yeah. You brought up the whole liberal media, boogeyman, corporate media type of thing. But if we look at the last couple of years, whether it be the Dominion lawsuit, whether it be what's happening right now with the speakership and so forth, the way that we see the, the Fox News is of the world and the radio hosts or podcast hosts, that it seems like conservative media is the most powerful force right now because they're able to really, they're able to topple, you know, like the leadership of the house, you know, or they're able to put up a presidential candidate and keep his support strong through indictment after indictment. And so, you know, it's quite a, you know, it almost becomes, you know, the, the indictment of the liberal media is almost like the ultimate throw off. You know, the liberal media, which, again, you and I call the corporate media because, you know, these aren't nonprofits that are out here, need to have a boogeyman.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: You know, I mean, I mean, it's just, and it's also, well, it's the.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: Need to have, remember, because if your, if your coalition is united by sticking it to people, you've got to have people to stick it to.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:15] Speaker A: So you crew, you have to either have to have the boogeyman or create the boogeyman so that you can unite people behind sticking it to that person or in other words, the straw man. You know, like, you create it like that. So, I mean, I do want to move to the next topic. I mean, there's still a lot happening, like I said, with, with this, and this is going to be an ongoing story. But even with, even if Jim Jordan, who was up for the position now, if he's able to win the election and become the speaker of the House, we're not seeing the last of this. Basically, Jim Jordan is more closely aligned with the far right members of the House and you will see how he governs, but he understands where his bread is buttered as well. So again, it's not very democratic for eight of House of Representative, out of members out of 435 to be able to hold so many cards. But it's the situation we're in because as I pointed out in the beginning, who's in charge amongst the 220. So members of House of Representative, of Republican House of Representative members. That's what's being fought over right now. And so we're going to see how that plays out over the next year or so, over the next week and next day and then over the next year. So the second topic we want to discuss today, you had sent me a piece that was very interesting the other day, and it was just about how Latinos in the US, their economic output measured in terms of GDP, now exceeds the GDP of India, the country. And India has 1.4 billion people in it. And that's not some completely third World India. That's a nuclear power. They sent something to space not so long ago. It's a serious country. And so, I mean, what was your, what are your thoughts on this as far as, you know, just, just a segment of our population, not a majority segment or anything, but just a segment of our population having such robust economic output relative to, you know, just other world powers?
[00:41:06] Speaker B: Well, without intensely trying to tie in the part, one of our show today and our conversation with now is that might have to do with some of this anger in the public.
We have a demographic that just is doing so well compared to everyone else. I could see that being, you know, an issue for people, especially given the history of our country. So they're not for everybody, but for enough people that they get vocal about it. I find this very interesting. Look, first thing, I'm happy to see this, right? I mean, at the end of the day, we're american. So any group in this country who's having a nice big economic boom is helping the rest of us. So we're all, you know, we're all sharing this economy together. So I will say that.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: Now, look at it like that again, to your other, to your point, you just look at it like, hey, Americans are in this together, then you know that.
[00:41:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not angry about it. Maybe someone else is, but not me.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: I mean, that's the thing. If you're, if you, if you take the mindset that Americans are in it together, then this would, you would take this as positive news. But if you're looking at it and Americans are fighting over a zero sum type of thing, then you might not see this as a good.
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Yeah, well, if you're not, you know.
[00:42:15] Speaker A: If you're not inclined, I'm also happy.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: To add, I'll add a few more countries. So not only is US Latino GDP output higher than India, but it's also higher than the UK, France, Italy and Canada. So again, like you said, these are serious countries with their own big economies and all that. And so the other thing that I found interesting with the stat.
There we go. So from 20, I'll just quote this article from 2011 to 2021. So over a ten year period, the US Latino economy was the third fastest growing among major economies, trailing only China and India.
So it grew at a pace faster than any other country outside those two countries, and it grew at a pace faster than the United States as a whole. So I just, it's fascinating. I think it's, you know, I would have the attitude of why wouldn't I be happy or anyone be happy? But I recognize, you know, like you said, some people look at it as if they're doing better, then I must not be.
[00:43:15] Speaker A: So, yeah, I mean, that's, there are a certain number of people in the world that do bring that zero sum mentality, you know, but, and again, if you're trying to have a pluralistic society, that could be dangerous.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: See, I'm going to say this to be really nerdy about it. This is the beauty that we got off the gold standard in 1973 and now have fractional and banking and inflationary, the deficits, because the pie just keeps growing.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: That definitely is one of the benefits is the piece of, if you do it right, the pie can continue to grow. And I mean, and my, my take.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: On until it collapses. But until then, we're good.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: Well, but if, but that's why I say if you do it right, you know, because if you don't do it right, then you, you're walking yourself to. But, and we've learned those lessons already. But again, we've talked about before kind of the living memory. Just because we've learned the lesson doesn't mean we're going to apply those, those, you know, apply what we learned generation over generation.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: Three weeks.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: Yeah, but to me, what stands out about this one is just how big United States is. Like, we talk about all these other countries and just, the United States is just a very large country from a land mass standpoint and a population standpoint. Now, it's not as large as India or China or something like that in terms of population, but when you look at european powers and so forth, the size of some of our states will exceed them. California, we know, is one of the largest economies on its own, largest economies in the world.
And so just the sheer size of the United States and the size of the United States economy is staggering when you can take a 15, 20% slice and say, okay, this now exceeds so much, so many other places in the world. The other thing is, I think this is also indicative of that. Our economic system, again, while I can raise some issues with it in terms of how well it's able to reward the winners on an ongoing basis, and not just those who won previously, but it's, it's a really, really good system. I mean, that you can have a group within a society have such a big leap now. The group may have had more room to grow because where they were starting, you know, coming in, you know, if it's a lot of, with a lot of immigrants and so forth, there's a lot of room to grow there because immigrants typically don't come en masse with a lot of things to their name already. But, you know, it really does show, you know, that the system that we do have is one that is good for promoting economic activity, you know, which is not a given around the world. And so, you know, you look at things like the infrastructure, the courts, the banks, the regulation that some people hate. But again, this is the stuff that sets the stage for growth like this and for economic activity. So we can sometimes, a lot of times we get hung up on the imperfections or the things that it's like, oh, okay, well, we got all these mass accumulations of wealth, and, you know, that's undermining our political system. That's underlining our market system and all that. We plenty to complain about. But sometimes it's good to just take the larger view and say, wow, this is quite an operation that we have going here. And that's what really stands out to me about that. And kudos to, you know, like, it's not like we, a lot of times we look at the latin american community or, you know, the latino community and be like, it's one group and they're all in one place. And it's like, well, no, this is dispersed throughout the United States. But still, it does show that any of these groups that we know, we segment ourselves out as we're all Americans, one. But two, we want more opportunities because then this can happen. You create more opportunities, then more groups can grow. And as you pointed out, which I agree, this makes the United States overall stronger.
[00:46:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think also it highlights going, I mean, again, not to beat a dead horse about part one, but the dysfunction of our Congress really hurts a topic like this in the future about our ability to bring in immigrants in an organized way that will then, like you're saying, work and help grow the economy, because if we don't, we're gonna be like Europe and Japan, where we have a falling birth rate.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: The aging, like, that's, America's been able to avoid the aging society issue United States, for so long because of immigrants, you know, and so can keep a society, keep a culture society that keeps growing an economy, the economy that keeps growing and growing and growing because we keep getting an influx of. And I always point this out, the immigrant is not the one who's lazy. The immigrant is the one who got up and moved hundreds of thousands of miles, you know, and the people that stayed behind are the people that are the less motivated. Not all the time, but a lot of times, you know, so that's like, yeah, can, how about we totally tell another country, hey, how about you send us, you know, the people that, you know, they're the real go getters of your society, and you can keep everybody else. Like, normally, you know, you would think from a logical standpoint, somebody like, yeah, yeah, that's a good deal for the United States. So, no, you're 100% right.
[00:47:55] Speaker B: Well, I think it's. It's a victim of just, again, the dysfunction we talked about in the first half of the show. And again, a lot of Americans now have been trained to be very angry about the immigration and the southern border, everything and so. Yeah, well, everything but that especially. And so when I look at, you know, I'm looking at another thing I'll read. Latino significantly, significantly bolstered the us economy through population growth, a high degree of workforce participation, and increased productivity linked to educational attainment. Yeah, so what I realized in reading, I was like, if they're Latino, then 100% of them were immigrants from south of this country into this country.
[00:48:35] Speaker A: Now, we're not immediate generational, but nonetheless.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: But what I'm saying is, at some point, someone was not in the United States and came here, or else they'd be a Native American. Not Native American indigenous, but an American that from, you know, Europe, right, from the Mayflower or some english ship. So everyone else would be considered an immigrant in a different way than either someone that settled the colonies or an african slave descendant or a Native American as an indigenous. Everyone else is an immigrant or descendants of immigrants. So the reality is that by me saying that doesn't mean that I don't recognize. We have an issue with the border right now, and it needs to be streamlined. But who's the only one that can fix that without doing something authoritarian, like just saying, build a wall or send the military? Is Congress. Right. We need new immigration laws because this is evidence. You know, again, it's one of those things. Numbers don't lie. Like you said, the people coming here are the people who had enough, either stress in their own country or ambition, that they're going to come here and work. We just need to make it an organized system again, like it was in the past, prior to, let's say, the last 20 years of our own dysfunction. So, again, that's, that's. That's one thing.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: The point being is that when the system is disorganized, then what you have is a disorganized rush to the border. When the system is organized and predictable, then people can participate in an organized and predictable system. And the. The idea of just rushing the border is less, uh, you know, it's less appealing because, oh, then you're gonna get caught or, you know, yada, yada, yada. But when that's the only option, because the system is broken and there is no legitimate means to say, okay, I'm going to apply, I got to wait three years, and then they'll. They'll bring me in. Then, you know, you incentivize the chaos at the border by not creating an alternate solution. And so, and that's really what we're lacking. A lot of times when this, in this immigration debate, it's always framed as, we just got to stop what's happening at the border. And it's like, well, why is that happening at the border? It's happening at the border because the signals that we're sending is that there is no organized way to do this. There is no proper way that we've set up that does that. We can do this and then it works. You got, if you want to get in here, you got to just rush the border. That's the signal we're sending by not having a set that has to originate from Congress.
[00:51:01] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's what I was going to say. That's the problem of having Congress being dysfunctional on a topic like this and then having it only any changes made through executive orders by president because you make a good point every time. And since George W. Bush, who tried this and wasn't able to get the Congress around to doing anything, so we've had now Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden, four presidents that, you're right, each one sends a different signal. And so each time we have a new president, it's a different signal to south american countries. And of course, they're dealing with their own misinformation.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: And each time we have an election, they know there's about to be a different signal. And like, so it's, it creates so.
[00:51:40] Speaker B: We don't have permanent legislation where no matter who the president is, the understanding is this is how you deal with coming in the US and also for us Americans to know. And I guess maybe somebody benefits from Americans being angry and this system being chaotic.
[00:51:59] Speaker A: I'm not sure who, going back to the first part, yes, there are people who seem to benefit from, understand they benefit from chaos and anger and fear. And so, I mean, honestly, the biggest thing is that people who don't want chaos, anger and fear or don't want to emphasize or prioritize those have to take a look at their own choices and have to look at who they're supporting and so forth to make sure that they're not, they're not plugging into or supporting and in fact, hopefully opposing the agents of chaos and the people who derive power from chaos. And again, not just dumb luck deriving power from chaos, but understand they derive power from chaos. And so they'll therefore set out to create chaos that they will then derive power from. So, but I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us.
[00:52:44] Speaker B: Hold on. Let me ask and make sure I understand you're asking me as a citizen that I should pay attention.
[00:52:53] Speaker A: But now we do 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. Until next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:53:03] Speaker B: I'm Tundra Venlana.
[00:53:04] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
