18 Strikes & You're Out!

Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe, Katty Armstrong and Jetty and he Armstrong and Yetty.

Speaking of the Pope, the trading card company Tops said that Pope Leo's new card just became their best selling.

Nonsports trading card of all time.

My guess is, if you collect pope trading cards, you're probably more celibate than the Pope.

I'm just saying, boy ouch, I see his point. I'm kidding.

Talking to Tim Sander for this hour of the Goldwater Institute about the recent Supreme Court oral arguments about ostensibly the birthright citizenship question the Fourteenth Amendment, But what most of the hearing was about was can a single federal judge issue anation wide injunction and stop an administration from executing its policy for a significant amount of time? What are the reasons why that's a good idea and what are the reasons why it's a bad idea?

And we'll discuss that. Yeah, looking forward to it.

Will be a little cerebral, so you know, get yourself in the right.

Mood, bring your brain well.

It sure is tiring to every time the a president does something, then you get alerts on your phone. A judge in Minneapolis has said no, Joe Biden can't do that, and then another judge.

Somewhere else says, yes he can.

It's back on, and you know the back and forth, right, Yeah, exactly. It's an interesting challenge because that sort of thing has been skyrocketing in recent years. They it was practically unknown for the first one hundred and fifty years of our country, and then there it happened once or twice here and there every decade and a half. And now it's like every three weeks. So anyway, more on that to come. Headline today. Of more immediate concern, I think to most

So I did start to get into Facebook Marketplace because somebody told me I mentioned I was using Craigslist for something. They said, Craigslist. Nobody uses Craigslist anymore. Everything's on Facebook Marketplace. I thought, okay, I'm probably behind the times. But particularly I was looking for coincidentally, an Apple Vision pro headset, and there were so many, so cheap, and it was like,

And then so.

Then I just don't know how much of the marketplace thing is phony, and I just kind of bailed on the whole deal.

But wow, yeah, yeah.

They open with a guy who runs a like a wholesale home improvement supplies garden equipment in bulk out of a suburban Atlanta warehouse, and bunches of people have been ripped off thinking they're buying from him, and when the products never arrived, they all call him to complain.

He has to tell them the bad news they've been swindled. Oh that sucks.

Yeah, what sucks, he says, is we have to break it to be layd been scammed.

We don't even do online sales.

We keep reporting these pages to Meta, but nothing ever happens meta platforms.

The or companies, yes.

Or metas trying and they can't go as fast as the people keep putting them back up.

He can probably have.

An AI bot that puts them up faster than they could be taken down.

That's possible, although that's not what the article suggests.

Okay.

Meta platforms is increasingly a cornerstone of the Internet fraud economy. According to regulators, banks, and internal documents reviewed by the journal, The company accounted for nearly half of all reported scams on Zel. It's a payment service you might use. The peer to peer payment platform is owned by several banking giants, including JP Morgan and Wells Fargo. Other banks that offer Zel have experienced similarly high fraud claims originating on Meta.

Yeah, it's interesting because Craigslist was huge for a long time, destroyed newspapers across the country. We all went to Craigslist, and I'm sure there were plenty of scams on Craigslist, but I didn't. I wasn't never I used Crazelist a lot, never came up against a scam. But on the Facebook marketplace it seems to be all over the place. I wonder what the difference is. Just the Internet era that we're in now.

Is different, yes, and I think the criminal enterprises have caught up to the opportunities. But again, going back two and a half years, seven out of ten of newly active advertisers or scammers of some sort or another account information for the scam pages from the guy in Atlanta we talked about show they are run out of China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and the Philippines. But they use stolen pictures of the warehouse and list its address with more than three billion daily users on Meta's platforms.

Holy cow.

So those are advertisers, which is different than like, I just keep focusing on Facebook.

Marketplace, right advertisers?

Well, like, go on your Facebook marketplace, tap in Apple Watch near you and try to figure out which of those ads are real and which are a whole bunch of them have to be fake.

Like a lot of them.

Okay, well, seventy percent perhaps, But anyway, with more than three billion daily users on Metas platforms, fraud is hardly a new phenomenon for the company. But fed by the rise of cryptocurrencies, generative AI, and vast overseas crime networks based out of Southeast Asia, the immensity of metas scam problem is growing and has been regularly flagged by employees over the last several years. But here's where you get

I wish I could current, Ay, Mark, I could be yeah, Mark, reach out to I'm.

Sign to our DMS or whatever you do on Facebook, I'm not on it. But anyway, current and former employees say Meta is reluctant to add impediments for ad buying clients, who drove a twenty two percent increase in advertising last year to over one hundred and sixty billion dollars, even after users demonstrate a history of scamming. If the checks keep coming Meta Box and removing.

Them, that's unbelievable. Well, our whole lives of You know, if you're anywhere near our age, you grew up with.

Radio and TV.

Every single ad you heard, minus like three were legit and your whole life.

I mean, just you didn't have endless scam advertisers.

On radio and TV all day long, right, right, there was some sort of gatekeeper involved. There's the occasional buyer be where a question of quality or value or whatever, but not just a right you give them your money and never get anything back.

Yeah. Right. So here's here's the really damning part of this.

Current and former employees say Meta is reluctant to add impediments, et cetera, et cetera. Uh one late last year document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal shows that the company will allow advertisers to accrue between eight and thirty two automated strikes for financial fraud before it bans their accounts. I mean eight and thirty two.

In instances where a Meta employee personally escalates the problem, the limit can drop to between four and sixteen. The correct number is one, yeah, or zero, depending on how you look at it.

You know, one striking, you're out. That's crazy.

And marketplace is a big part of the problem because that is advertising, but a meta spokesmans is the company's working to address the epidemic of scams that has grown in scale and complexity in recent years, driven by cross border criminal networks.

And I hate to come off as a racist or something here, but.

I would look at again, looking at applevision pro headsets. They cost like three thousand dollars new, and I was seeing them on there sometimes as low as like eight hundred dollars, nine hundred dollars, and it.

Would be attached to some Middle Eastern name.

Now that doesn't automatically make it a scam, I know that, but it seemed like all the really low priced ones without a box where some foreign name yeah, and so I don't know, and then the other end of this and then we can move on.

And we talked about this, I think a couple of weeks ago. The report estimated organized scamming operations, often called pig butchering groups, comprised hundreds of thousands of people. Many of the scammers trafficked after falling for fraudulent social media employment adds themselves kept in prison like compounds. The workers are forced to work under threat of extreme forms of torture and abuse.

In the United States. No, in Southeast Asia.

In Southeast Asia, yeah, I couldn't tell that are just originated there and they're getting to people there.

Okay, so getting Yeah.

They have warehouses full of people who will be whipped, beaten, and tortured if they don't try to scam you, you know, eighteen hours a day.

Wow.

And then this law enforcement gal who's looking into this says the growth of this nightmarish industry stems directly from the inaction of Meta, and to lesser extent, it's social media peers.

Well, all I need to hear is you have an eighteen strikes in your out policy.

I mean, what the hell is that? Yeah?

Yeah, wow, beyond buyer beware, I'm not sure I'd even want to wade into that.

Like I said, I bailed.

I was really interested in buying an Apple product and finally just decided it's too big a mess for me to deal with.

I'd forget. Hey, here's one more example.

I can't resist because peer to peer sales are trade of live animals are banned on Meta outside of narrow contexts.

Peer to peer, So if another talk show host wanted to buy a goat.

From me, no, just like another user, okay, another facebooker. But a recent search for puppies yielded thousands of ads, most stating no affiliation with a known dog reader or rescue organization. As Meta's rules require, other red flags abounded. Many of the results displayed common hallmarks of scams, including stolen photos of specific pets and ads from sellers supposedly near me who are actually operating out of Cameroon checking locations.

I am not in Cameroon. I'm going to see I'm going to see the Cameroon puppies tonight.

They're good, but so loud. Bring earplugs. So you know Facebook has these, and Instagram the Meta. You know outlets have these alleged rules, but they have zero interest or practically no interest in enforcing them.

Zuckerberg, come on, you're smart, dude. That's some short term thinking. If enough people like me bail from the marketplace because they think there's too many fraudsters, then you get nothing.

It's like the Laffer tax curve. I mean, if everybody.

Decides it's full of frauds, you're you're not gonna make more money, You're gonna make zero money.

Oh I'm chump. I'm channeling Mark Zuckerberg. I am gifted in the psychic arts. He's speaking to me, speaking through me, Jack, I'm all already a billionaire.

Shut up, Mark Zuckerberg waiting in there.

Or more likely he's just trying to keep these quarterly numbers up. I'll worry about the next quarter.

Next quarter.

Scammers checks, they cash baby, that's what he's thinking.

Wow.

I wonder what we'll go to if Mark if back to Criggs list, you're back to classified in your local newspaper.

Radio Saturday mornings, I got a sat of snow tires. I'm willing to trade for a life boat or something similar. On numbers five, five, twelve.

Twelve, Tim sander for this hour to talk about the Supreme Court arguments from yesterday, among other things.

Passenger recently shared a video of roaches in the cabin of a Spirit Airlines flight.

Wow, they really can survive anything. That's a twist. That's a good punchline.

I like that Supreme Court arguments yesterday about whether or not all these federal judge across the country can say no to presidents and their executive orders. And we'll discuss that with Tim Sanderford coming up. It's pretty interesting topic. This is also an interesting topic, trying to find unbiased

It almost feels drop.

I am like boring, and I have to keep reminding myself that confrontation isn't what you're looking for out of every news story.

You're just trying to get the facts.

And it's just it's we're all so used to everything being presented in a shouty way from one side anyway, this company that looks at media bias.

They're top four slots were all News Nation programs throughout the day that had the least.

Media bias, with number five being Brettbear Special Report on Fox, which is another news show we all like around here. So I just say, give it a look. It is it is. It is weird if you're used to like a strong point of view and anger. We've all gotten so accustomed to it. It just I don't know. I

Right, Sure, Yeah, yeah.

I once heard a couple of describing the fact that he came from a family that was very I can't remember which was switching, that doesn't matter. That was very English and hers was very Italian, and if you know anything about those cultures, that would be a tough thing to get used to.

Yeah, eat a direction.

I'm going to both the DMV and The Doctor today back to back, quick doctor's appointment and then to the DMV, which will be more bureaucratic, unfulfilling. I'm sorry, you don't have the right form. It's going to be quite the contest, well, and which will just be generally be more preferable being probed and jabbed with short sharp objects or being subjected to the special mental.

Torture of the DMV.

Right, this isn't the right form. I don't even know what to do at this point. And that could happen with.

The insurance all right, or at the DMV either one. Well, that's true.

Doctor's offices have really up their game, mostly unintentionally because now they have such compliance hurdles from the many thousands of laws and regulations. They're becoming more and more DMV like in some ways.

I've been a couple of times in the last few years, unfortunately, where it's like emergency situation and man, they get that paperwork in front of you.

Who's paying for this?

Again? Sorry trying to talk over your screams, but who's paying for this?

We need to make sure we know who's paying for this before we start in on any of these.

The DMV has got to come up with an excuse or two to penetrate your body in one way or another.

If they're going to keep up with doctors.

Offices always have to throw in the caveat if you're like a working, honest person who's going to follow the law. Now, if I just said no, I'm here illegally from l. Salvador, they just go ahead and treat me and write it off somehow, and tax pers would pick up the bill.

It's a good point. Yeah, yeah, we are paying for everyone. Congratulations, We thank you, Tim Sanders joining us. Yeah, the fourteenth Amendment, birthright citizenship nationwide injunctions by a single federal judge.

What to make of all this? Coming up next? Stay with us, Armstrong and Getty.

So I've been living this reality for a while now, and it's growing as a problem. A president decides to do something with an executive order or whatever, often that they promised on the campaign trail, their voters get all excited.

Yay, they did it day one like they.

Promised, And then then I get an alert on my phone. Some judge somewhere I've never heard of it said no, you can't do that, and then it stops, and everybody's like Groan's like, oh, they can do that, and it keeps happening over and over again, and uh, do we

So do we want them to be able to hold up the whole country?

Let us discuss the very interesting and multifaceted oral arguments yesterday before the Supreme Court with Tim Sandefer, vice president for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute, among other auspicious titles, author of eight books, including most recently Freedom's Theories, How Isabel Patterson, Rosewilder and ein Rand Found Liberty and Age of Darkness.

I've recommended it many times. It's terrific. Tim. How are you, sir? Just great?

Thanks for having me back.

Guys published poet. Gotta throw that in there. True, Yes, a polymath as they say.

Anyway, Tim, so ostensibly everyone's talking about that we are going to discuss birthright citizenship in front of the Supreme Court, and that did come up. But would you agree that the more significant discussion was about nationwide injunctions by individual federal judges.

Oh, yes, absolutely, that was the focus of the argument, and it was a very interesting argument. But I don't think that it's a hard question. I think the answer is obviously nationwide. The injunctions are perfectly fine. They're the ordinary way of doing business in the courts, and people who complain about them either don't understand the system or are trying to get away with something illegal.

Yeah I don't.

I don't always like that it happened, but I can't see what the alternative would be. As somebody pointed out, so you're gonna let me. I guess it was you that pointed it out yesterday in Twitter. The idea that so every time a president does something, it's got to work its way all the way through the courts up to the Supreme Court, and then a decision by the Supreme Court. Before the Supreme Court might say sometimes nine nothing, you can't do that.

Oh wait, and during that whole period of time, the government is still doing the illegal thing.

Right right, Wow, So clearly it's two to one for a judicial takeover of the government.

But I will stand up for liberty.

Uh.

Is there no middle ground.

It's got to be three judge panel and not a single ya who in a rural Tennessee.

Yeah, I think. I think having a single unit ya who in rural Tennessee is perckly fine, because that's what the appellate process is sort of, that's why you appeal cases. And by the way, that's why you should avoid appointing yahoos to the federal bench. Might mention that too. The argument, the argument against nation right injunctions always seems to boil down to, well, this is a democracy and the majority

The underlying theme here being, folks that what we really need to fear is the power of the government in this country is kind of the idea of forming it. So there's no question that these nationwide injunctions were relatively or practically completely unknown for one hundred and fifty years. Then there were a handful of them, and the number of them is now skyrocks every day.

It seems like on my phone, I see a judge jumped in.

Someone Actually right, I actually don't think that that's true. I think that what happened was we just started calling them by a different name. You know, there were been injunction injunctions against unconstitutional government actions since before there was a constitution. One of the points that was brought up during the arguments was that British judges used to do this before the American Revolution, and that was considered perfectly legitimate.

So I didn't want to get to this part too fast because you're a lawyer, and this part can't be fixed with the law.

It seems to me.

That we've got a cultural problem in that presidents are way more likely than they used to be to want to challenge the Supreme Court, either to like legitimately they don't think the law is correct, or they don't care if they're wrong.

They just want to get the political credit for trying.

And perhaps I don't know this, but it seems like a likely response. The six hundred some federal judges out there, there's a lot more of them who are willing to let their politics get ahead of their judge reasoning and jump in and stop somebody they hate.

Yes, you're absolutely right about that, and especially the thing about the President and Congress being willing to do things that they know are unconstitutional because they know that the judges are going to strike it down, and they can blame the judges and say all those evil activist judges, or they can get away with their unconstitutional things. So it's win when if you want to do something unconstitutional. And honestly, every president's done this to some degree. Obviously

Yeah, a lot of the pieces I've read that have been following the growth of this use that as kind of like the patient zero because he said it out loud, and then other presidents thought.

Hey, I can do that.

I just won't say it out loud, and Obama did it, and Biden did it, and Trump did it in whichever order, and then Trump again, and and and it's how do we fix this?

Well, there's a long answer and the short answer. The short answer is elect good presidents. The long answer is that we have to restore respect for the Constitution in this country. I think it's the long term damage that's been done to Americans understanding and appreciation of the Constitution is horrifying. We have prominent law professors. There was a law professor at at Georgetown Law School a few years ago published an article in The Washington Post saying, the

We should have written a law specifically putting him in jail. In my opinion, Tim Sandefer is online from the Goldwater Institute Little Constitutional Humor for.

Exactly punish one man.

That's a good idea now so you know, blah blah blah, disclaimer about it's difficult to read the tea leaves of the oral arguments, blah blah blah. Did it strike you that the justices, the sane ones that we like, were leaning in any particular direction as to the nationwide injunctions judges, et cetera that we've been discussing.

Some of the judges have made clear for a long time that they're against these what they call nationwide injunctions. Justice Thomas in particular. Some of the others are a little harder to read. Justice Barrett, for example, and Justice Roberts, who have become really the swing judges on this issue. I thought the most interesting judge if you want to if anybody wants to go and listen to the argument online, I thought Justice Jackson was the one who is the

That sound about right to me.

Is it even worth getting into what happened on that topic yesterday or do you think it's.

Well, they really just talked about whether or not they have a legitimate case in the first place, and they haven't really briefed it or argued it yet. But that's important because in order to get an injunction, you kind of have to first show that you have even an arguable point to make, and that was what they were arguing about. And I will say, I know this is talk radio, and we're all supposed to think that we clearly have the right answer and everything. I think the

Let's talk about that when we come back from the break. I want to hear the arguments on both sides.

Of that.

That's interesting And clearly you've probably seen the breakdown who speaks the most.

The chicks talk too much? Is that given?

Well, Jessic so to my r does love cutting off lawyers and not letting them answer her questions.

Yeah, the chicks talk too so much.

I think that's been in the new Gal talks more than anybody. That shouldn't happen in any organization. All right, more with Tim Sandefert in just a moment or two. But first word from our friends at Prize Picks. The best place to get in on the action is the basketball playoffs. Build in intensity, whether it's points, rebounds, or assists.

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Tim's gonna stick around, and I got this question for him when we come back. He can think on should the media attached to every judge what president appointed him?

Does that help us or hurt us? I love that one. On the way stay here.

Strong.

On the actual case itself, I've always thought.

It's obvious that now is designed for slaves, and you shouldn't be able to be like a Chinese. A rich Chinese family that comes the United States, has your baby in San Francisco and then gets all the benefits of being a US citizen forever. But a lot of really smart people I like think there's a good reason for that.

So I'm looking forward to hearing that.

Discussing the oral arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday with Tim Sanderfervice, President for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute. It was advertised as a birthright citizenship hearing it or discussion. It really was much more a discussion of individual federal judges and nationwide in junctions and that sort of thing. But to the question of the Fourteenth Amendment, Tim, you said before the break that it's not an easy call. I'm glad to hear you agree. I've thought the same thing.

Well, the first sentence of the fourteenth Amendment says, all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are US citizens.

And all of this.

Case, all of these arguments turn on that phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof. What does that phrase mean? It's really tough because the word jurisdiction is one of those words that can mean all sorts of different things. It basically means power, but there's all sorts of different kinds of power, and so that's what the argument turns on.

What they would have thought about this question right right well, at the point that this enormously radical, disruptive president has overturned, that's when you tag me and Tim and I come in and explain to the good folks that look, the nature of global transportation, the movement of people or peoples from one place to another has changed so vastly.

Joe's a living constitution guy. You can hear it coming.

Out of what No, don't you dare know that the very nature of comings and goings from countries has been so radically transformed.

A Chinese national with not the slightest.

Notion of making life in the United States can can depart China, arrive here, give birth, go back to China, all in the span of.

Seventy two hours.

I'm inducing labor in this case, probably getting very lucky, and that.

Child had citizenship.

That's the eventuality unimaginable back in the day.

Is the kids I think that that's sort of true. But on the other hand, the Chinese question came up back then because there were so many Chinese in California in the eighteen sixties, and senators rasked, well, isn't this going to make the children of the Chinese immigrants who back then did not intend to sty in the United States. They intended to go back to China. The senator's rast, does this make their kids us? Senator US citizens? And the senator from California said yes, and then he was

Means a single case from eighteen ninety eight, or is there more precedent?

Really, there really isn't. There's really just a handful of presidents and no Supreme Court case has ever said that birthright citizenship is the is in the Constitution. There have been some that have kind of mentioned it or kind of assumed it, but none has said so outright.

I am surprised the polling shows that only about a third of Americans want to do away with the way we do it now. I'm surprised by that. I do want to get this. This is a journalistic question. But I think it has an effect on people's respect for the law. It has come up recently. It has become a pattern that anytime the media mentions a judge, they mentioned what president appointed them. Do you think that's a good idea or not? They didn't just barely got a minute.

I think I think it's fine. I think people should know where these For instance, I think it would help a lot of judges. You know, a lot of Republican appointed judges have been ruling against the Trump administration, and I think it would be helpful for people to know that these questions are not things where it's all partisan. The law is not just partisan politics. It's something much more profound and much more important.

Yeah, well, I.

Agree, But it implies that judges I don't know.

True.

I didn't used to think.

I didn't used to think about it. Ever.

If a judge ruled, I just thought, all, that's interesting, Now it's all who appointed him?

Oh of course he said that. That is true.

That is a risk, But I think we should err on the side of informing people as opposed to keeping people in the dark.

So that's always Trump.

Tim Sander for the Goldwater Institute On the Line, Tim final question, I've called for a monarchy.

You in favor of it? Yes or no?

No, I'm against him monarchy. I'm for the constitution, Joe.

One more question. As a published poet, I was thinking about this. Yesterday he won the Nobel Prize. Bob Dylan good poet or not lousy poet?

Now read Robert Hayden or Richard Wilbur instead.

Hmm, how about Ringo Star Octopus's Garden was creative?

Tim, It's always great and enlightening. Thanks Millian for the time. Let's talk again soon. Thanks guys.

All right, I was actually thinking about this listening to Dylan lyrics. Why do they stick in everybody's head so much? Why do people keep going back to them?

If it's just.

Gobbledegook, like a lot of real poets claim, it can't be. It wouldn't lodge, It wouldn't it wouldn't make the market made, would it?

All?

Right?

He was famously moody about his career and his music in his Life's Philosophy. I think some of his stuff is absolutely brilliant, and I think some of it's gobbledegook.

Hum.

Maybe maybe more on that another day, or maybe not. We got plenty of stuff to tell you. I hope you can stick around if you missus, Sigmann, I thought that Tim thing was really, really good, and you want to listen to it again. Get the podcast Armstrong You Getty on demand

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