When you're ready to ride Metro, we want you to know we're ready for you. Here are just a few of the people at Metro to tell you how we're doing our part to keep riders safe. We're cleaning like novel before you found half sound of sound of statist, no mask, no Metro need one. We have a few extras at Metro. We're doing our part to keep the
DC area moving. Find out more at well mata dot com slash doing our part, Tom, Yeah, I know it's tough to keep your chin up, isn't it that Jimmy Kimmel joke that we played on the show in which the audience people in America have no concept the difference between their taxes going up or down or their refund going up or down. It's just dis and hard. I mean, democracy won't work. No, No, it's doomed. It's doomed. Sooner you accept that this is are you're gonna have a
happy life. Well, let's prolong your suffering for just a moment or two about trying to make a little sense of the world with Lanha Chen he Is David and Diane Steffy, research fellow with the Hoover Institution director of Domestic Policy Studies at Stanford and Ladies and Gentlemen, the host of the podcast Crossing Lines with Lanha Chen. We'll have a link so you can find that easily. I have a feeling that's really, really good, Loni. How are you, sir?
Hey guys, good morning, happy, happy rainy Wednesday. Happy twenty two trillion dollar budget that day as well. So listen, why don't we start with how about four words? Okay, Green New Deal, don't so how long do we have? Where would you like to start? You know, here's the thing. I tell people that they should just go and read the Green New Deal because there's all this uh ankst on the left up it's being this characterized that the
conservatives are out to demonize this thing. So you know, I just went and they said go and read it, so I did that. I went and read it, and what I discovered, apparently is that we should not be flying from Hawaii to California anymore. We should all get in votes. And by the way, those boats can't give off, you know, can't have any carbon footprints. So I'm talking about canoes. So we have to canoe our way from
Honolulu to San Francisco. Now that is the vision of the Green New Deal, because they don't want to have any airplanes anymore. And by the way, they don't want to have any cars any any regular gas uh consuming cars. So everyone needs to have an electric vehicle. And oh, by the way, as if that weren't enough, we need medicare for all too. Well. Here's here's what here's what we're trying to figure out. And you're the perfect person to understand it because you've been in campaigns. You understand
the politics of it all. Is this similar to Trump saying I'm gonna build a thirty football in Mexico. Is gonna pay for it? I mean, just an over the top, outlandish promise to to show everybody I care about this issue, knowing that it will fall short of that. Is that what AOC and others have done with the Green No Deet New Deals. That the politics of it because nobody they don't actually believe they're going to pull this stuff off.
I think there's some percentage of them to do. Actually, I think I think AOC and a few of her counterparts in the far left progressive way of the Democratic Party actually think they have a shot at at a good chunk of this. But but for other Democrats. I mean, here's the thing about this. This has been embraced not just by the far left. There is a tendency amongst some in the mainstream media in particular to say this
is actually not representative of the mainstream Democratic Party. Well, why is it then, that pretty much every declared candidate for the presidency from the Democratic Party supports the Green New Deal Corey Booker, Cambella Harris, Elizabeth Warren, uh Susan Gillibrand why is it that they're all co sponsoring this thing? So clearly it's got some traction. Clearly some of them
believe it. But even if it's just a messaging tool, I think it's a very dangerous messaging tool because it allows us then to normalize some of this, to normalize socialism, and I just don't think we should do that. Yeah, the the green parts of it are utterly fanciful. And I'm a guy. If we could eliminate fossil fuels in the internal combustion engine tomorrow, I'd be in favor of it. Why the hell wouldn't I be. I mean, let's let's cut down pollution as much as we can, but it's
utterly unrealistic. I mean wildly unrealistic. The social reordering stuff of it is absolutely terrifying, as it forcefully advocates near complete control of the economy, near complete confiscation of revenue and redistribution of it. It's communist well, house wages, healthcare, education for everyone, right, yeah, and and I mean job guarantees. Uh, you know, very very strong support for unions in there by the way, which you know, it's probably a controversial topic,
and there's something wrong with unions per se. It's just they're talking about taking every workplace unionized and and some of this stuff that The reason why people have a difficult time with this is because, on the one hand, if the goal is to address climate change, then there are a set of policies that that suggests. And you understand why they want to promote, for example, alternative forms of energy. They want to get rid of nuclear, they want to get rid of co Okay, you can understand
that at least on space. But then there's this total almost non sequitur where they're talking about, as I said, health care for all, housing for everybody, job guarantees, family and medical leaf paid vacations, full retirement security, and you know, again, I think the challenge here is some of this actually sounds good to people. I think they started listening to that ess actually not a bad idea, and I think
that's the siren song of of socialism quite Frankly. Lani Chen is the director of Domestic Policy Studies at Stanfords podcast is Crossing Lines with Lon hie Chen. How do you like um McConnell's idea of putting it up for vote, to get everybody to do on the record voting for it. I think it's genius. You know, Miss McConnell is, whatever people think of it, He's a great tactician, and he understands the politics of this and forcing Democrats to go on the record with where they say, I mean, we
know where all the Republicans are. They're not going to get a single Republicans vote, that's for sure. But but looking and saying where do you stand? Are you really in favor of this? And and they it's a text, it's a legislative text. It's not a binding statute or law. In the same way that Dodge Frank or Obamacare was. This is a little different. That is a sense of a Congress resolution. But it's going to force people to
take a position on it. And I think that's actually really smart because then you can't have Corey book or reasling out and saying, oh, not actually was I wasn't really for it, you know, I just said I was for it, but I but I didn't mean it. Did you say it was normalizing communism or normalizing socialism, socialism socialism? How since you since you teach this sort of stuff, Well, I think you guys alluded to it. It's first of all,
it's confiscatory and redistributed. It's the notion of taking well been redistributing it to equalize the distribution of wealth in a forceable manner via government and coercive control. It's about the government centrally planning redistribution and and and beyond that. There there are also elements of socialist policy in the
form of central economic commands. So when you have sort of a central strategy that government puts together to dictate how certain parts of the economy behaves, that is socialists as well. So there are many different dimensions to this, and obviously we can get into what the implications of it are, but Fundamentally, it's about where the locus of control. Is that with the people or is it with the government. Having set through thousands of hours of this in college,
is this going to be on the test. So so listen. Uh, we are privileged to have people listening to the Armstrong and Getty Show all over the country and UM. And I frequently point out that the reason you want to pay attention to Cali Unicornia, the Golden State, UM, is that it is the the leader, certainly the leader in
America of utterly unrealistic, unicorn riding fantasy government. I mean, for instance, they're pushing again to have children be allowed to vote in California, teenagers because you can get teenagers to fall for virtually anything that makes them feel good and sounds good. Yeah, that's that's what I'm in favor of.
And also you get a scheme going like the bullet Train, UM, which you know, just the brief outlines have passed by an ill advised ballot measure they said would be thirty nine billion dollars if it were ever built, if it were ever completed, forty years from now, it would be to billion dollars. And I'll go to my grave saying, and nobody would write it, and when nobody would still want it um but the changing of one governor to another,
one man said, now this is a bad idea. And after all of us, all of the citizens, all of the activists, all of the court cases, all of our efforts to kill it, just a new God's off And now it's off. What does that say about government in America? On he it scars the hell out of me. Well, this is a big challenge we have is that we see this listing from side to side depending on who's in power. And and by the way, there's some now who say, look, Donald Trump ought to use executive action
to get all these things done. I completely disagree with that because this notion that what was good for the previous party is now good for us because we have the reins of power sets a horrible precedent and and it creates this this policy change that goes from administration
to administration. And we're talking about big, major projects. I mean your point about the Tutor train, about high speed rail, I mean this is a massive piece of government spending and and to be able to sort of just shut it off on a dime given a change in administration. While I'm glad that they're shutting it off, I think suggests. I think it's suggests, just just a we're in a
horrible place when it comes to policy making. We don't believe in checks and balances, We don't believe in the proper roles of a legislature and a governor or a Congress and a president anymore. We want instantaneous change. We want someone to snap their fingers and make something happen. And indeed, that's the system of policy making we have. So um, you know, look, this train needs to go.
That Merced and Bakersfield, California are perfectly wonderful communities, but those are the two terminal points of this train at this point in time. And and it's it's a ridiculous thing, and I'm glad it's going. Those you who are in the podcasts and the internet inner what do they call the intellectual dark nets or whatever it's called, You've got to check out Crossing Lines with long Hea Chen his podcast. Uh, just just before we let you go, you have one
more question on the Green New Deal. Is this a blip one of those stories it's just a blip week long? Or is this a big one. This seems like this is a big one to me. I think it's a big one. I think it also depends on where the dialogue goes. You know, if if people on the left don't keep talking about it, then then keeople on the
right will certainly keep talking about it. But if they will have the same level of energy, my spence is that this is just where the energy is at the progressive left, the Green New Deal is there, Uh, is there much? Then they're going to talk about it. So it will be will be part of the conversation going forward. Well, and and part of that that conversation. In our chat about socialism, I was gonna ask, has there ever been any country that on its that has had its momentum
toward more collectivism? Go in the other direction, realize, Hey, we've gone too far. This isn't working. We need more free markets, We need less infantilizing our citizens and citizens by taking care of their every need. We need to go back along the road we came from. Well, I'll give you one example of China. Uh, you know, for many, many years, obviously you had a a Maoist socialist communist
society and look at still a communist country. Don't get me wrong, But in the nineteen eighties there was a leader named dump shel Ping who came along and opened up China and decided that what they needed was more markets, free enterprise and the influence of the West. And and sure enough, what happened to China's economy. It took off like a rocket ship. You had a massive increased and standards of living, massive increases in economic growth and prosperity,
and you had the creation of a middle class. And I think the people the thing that people are scared about in China now is the reversal of that, the turned back towards a maliz state of socialists, uh fundamentally socialist system. So China is a great example of what happens when you introduce capitalist elements and capitalist of strictures into what had been a socialist society. You see economic
growth and prosperity. Yeah, and generally when you're like Venezuela will soon and some of the Scandinavian countries in a more peaceful way of decided a lot of their schemes haven't worked, and they've re embraced the more liberty. But we'll see. Lanha Chen is the host of the the podcast Crossing Lines of Lani Chen, director Domestic Policy Studies at Stanford University and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution on he always enlightening. Thanks a million, Hey, thanks guys,
good to talk. Check out his podcast Crossing Lines with Lanha Chen. We want him to see the love and uh and like coming on the show because we really like him. Stay that out loud makes us sound needy and well. We are needing. You're needy need good guests, strong and independent. I really like good guests better than the crappy guests. I'll name move. The crappy guests are going up. You're listening to the Arms, Strong and Getty show. When you're ready to ride Metro, we want you to
know we're ready for you. Here are just a few of the people at Metro to tell you how we're doing our part to keep riders safe. We're cleaning like never before. To the Great Queen. You've found half sound of sounds of statist no masks, no Metro need one. We have a few extras at Metro. We're doing our part to keep the DC area moving. Find out more at Well nota dot com slash doing our part