Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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So we got a new report from Axios about how President Biden is a little different in private than maybe the public persona, the carefully crafted public persona. Let's put this up on the screen we're in. Daubt actually tweeted this piece out with some of the choice language that he apparently directs at AIDS. God damn it, how the f don't you know this? Don't fing bullshit me and get the f out of here. Let me read a
little bit from the piece. The headline is old yeller Biden's private fury in public, President Biden likes to whisper to make a point. In private, he's prone to yelling behind closed doors. Biden has such a quick triggered temper that some AIDS try to avoid meeting alone with him. Some take a colleague almost as a shield against a solo blast. They can then go on to describe the language that we're in doubt included here why it matters.
The private eruptions paint more complicated picture of Biden as the manager and president than the image as a kindly uncle who loves Aviator sunglasses and ice cream. They also go on to say this is kind of interesting. Some Biden aids think the president would be better off occasionally displaying his temper in public as a way to suage voter concerns that the eighty year old president is disengage
and too old for office. Senior and lower level aids alike can be in Biden's line of fat fire quote. No one is safe, said one administration official.
Your thoughts socker.
I kind to be honest, this made me like Biden. I mean, I respect it.
I personally. I saw a lot of pearl clutching around this, like, oh my gosh, I can't believe he treats people this way. Blah blah blah. I mean, you know, I know a lot of people politicians also people who work for them, people who care about their work. Get passionate. So I mean the other thing is the only way that this would be a criticism is if this was like a doddering old man thing. But by all accounts, old accounts of him as a candidate back in nineteen eighty eight describe the same temper.
Yeah, so it's always been a sort of like cranky, volcanic asshole to his staff, right, I mean.
Look, which president hasn't been I mean the one. In fact, the only guy who was ever really nice to his staff was Jimmy Carter. So it's like it tells you that there, I think you have to be a raging narcissist to be president. I don't think it's really possible to do it otherwise. And I think that people who all work at the highest level and who care a lot about their work often.
Behave in this manner.
I'm not saying it's necessarily a good thing, but you know, a lot of these staff like they also know what they're getting into, So I don't know. I saw a lot of annoying curl clutching, curl pearl clutching around this
and annoyed me. I'm like, yeah, it's like the most stressful job in the world, What do you expect to happen, especially whenever you are unable to have public outbursts In the same way, I also do agree that going out and kind of showing this kind of temperament makes you, frankly a lot more relatable.
Remember when he had that moment on the trail, A lot of people did, like, mayfully like challenge that kind of push ups or whatever called that one young voter, lying dog.
Face, lying dog posts, lying dog faced pony soldiers.
I still don't know what that means, but okay, so I would not ever justify the sort of treatment of individuals who work for you, your staff, who are clearly like terrified of him. That being said, you know, the stakes are really high the United States, and I think it would almost be an unreasonable expectation for anyone to one keep their cool under the circumstances. Number one. Number two, it is amazing to me the areas that the media decides to critique like this is.
The problem, how about Joe Biden?
This is the one we played this week, them defending the view defending Joe Biden over like literally not acknowledging one of his grandchildren. They're willing to go to bat for him over that. But then when it comes to like, you know, oh, we said some naughty words in the office, let's do a whole expose. And then even bigger than that, I mean, some of the policy choices, the abandonment of key campaign promises, everything from you know, the proag minimum
wage public option has just like completely disappeared. That doesn't get scrutiny or attention, but this does. So I will say, you know, there was this piece in I think it was Politico about Mary and Williamson and like, you know, her being having a temper with her aides at times.
And part of why that piece annoyed me so much is because I knew that this is how Joe Biden is behind the scenes, and it was like, you know, anyway, But I do think just like the choice of what the media decides to focus on is probably the biggest story here, more so than him losing his temper with his aides.
Look, one of the best presidents in modern history was one of the biggest pricks to his staff, Lynnon Baines Johnson. Okay, go read a book if you want to figure out how he treated them. He also got the Civil Rights Act done, so you ask yourself, which what do you value in terms of your impact. I'm not saying it's a good thing. Like you said, I don't treat people this way. But we're not the president, you know, we're not the people who are literally running the country.
So I don't know.
I think that a lot of us is just a little bit ridiculous in terms of the personal, you know, critiques. As you said, in terms of the personal critique, the only one I think that's really valid is one that we discussed on our show this week about Biden ignoring his grandchild. I think that's actually totally within the realm of what's legitimate in all this, whereas this one just seemed, you know, pretty stupid in terms of the way that
he acts behind the scene. They even note by the way that he doesn't even have close to his bat of a temper as Bill Clinton did. Bill Clinton had volcanic temper in terms of the way he treated his staff. Obama too. Obama was a nasty person. He was one of those people who he would not have the volcanic outbursts, but he would undercut you in front of everybody. So if you said something that he thought was stupid. He would be like, let's sit on that.
He was like an intellectual bullying he he was exactly like that.
I feel like.
Trump you probably you may be able to speak to this more. I feel like he's sort of like more passive aggressive where in person super nice you and then we'll just like.
Blow you up.
Trumpet also had a volcanic temper. I personally witnessed him humiliate staff, and honestly, it's super uncomfortable. It was very Johnson asked in terms of what he would do. Can't go into all the details, but he would effectively like call people in and like make them stand up while he questioned them from behind the oval office, sitting like this with a scowl on his face, and he would kind of make them tap dance a little bit.
And he would do this in front of me and in front of other people.
Yeah, to basically prove he'd be like, look at these people that you know, he wanted to prove that. One guy would come at his back and call, so he would press that intercom thing and be like get so and so here in the office and they would come running in all sweaty.
Yeah.
You know.
He's also big on like I said.
Like, yeah, public humiliation.
So it's big on like the power and look, I mean, I once again believe that this.
Is probably a requirement for the job. John F.
Kennedy did this to many of his aides, people who he didn't like and who he didn't respect. He would do big public shows of kind of humiliating him in front. I think of an example almost from every single president, like I said, except for Jimmy Carter. So you know, maybe it's just a this is what it takes, I think to be in the job. And I you know, I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I do think it is probably intrinsic to the personality type.
He wants to sit there, I'll just say, again, don't condone this type of behavior. However, it is like very low on my list of problems. I agree with Joseph Robin at Biden.
Well said, all right, we'll see guys later.
Got some pretty interesting new data that we wanted to dig into. Lit's go and put this up on the screen. So a record show of Americans are now living alone. Nearly thirty percent of American households comprise a single person. That is a record high. If you're looking, and if you're watching this, you can see the way that the number of people living alone the percent of one person households just skyrockets sort of starting in the fifties even sixties, but it's continued to go up and now we are
at record breaking numbers. There's a lot that contributes to this. The older you are, the more likely you are to be living alone. So partly it's, you know, an aging population. Partly it's the fact that fewer people are getting married. Partly it's the fact that you have more divorces, so you have fewer people who are married at any given time. And I also just think it has become more of
a sort of acceptable phenomenon. I mean, in a lot of ways, our society is less doing things together in the real world, and apparently that includes cohabitating.
So I support people having individual ability to pursue toe like what they want to do outside of the strictures of family, because I think that could be very oppressive. That said, I think we've probably gone too far. And one of the things that you often hear from a lot of people who are elderly and who do end up living alone, is, you know, for the lack of a better word, They feel lonely, They feel like they
desire social connection, you know. Even what they point to in the report around this is that humans are social creatures and the problem is not living alone per se. It's that living alone is indicative of lower familial ties, of less community. And it's not like, you know, I know many people who live alone who are very very socially active. These are people who live alone because they
need their own space. But they also are out not every night, but you know, a couple nights a week, meeting friends, you know, in social clubs, trivia and night you know whatever. But for every one of those people, I know probably five others who live alone and report feeling very socially isolated, being attached only to their job, feeling very adamized, not feeling fulfilled very much.
In their life.
And also you can't ignore cost, you know, really from a lot of this, which is that it is much more cost effective to have like networks of family who are around you, who can help care for your kids, who can you know, help you in whatever circumstance that you that befalls you. Whenever you're with people, even when
you're younger, and you're with roommates. There's a real kind of community aspect that happens, especially when none of you are making all that much money and you're trying to figure out who you are and what to do in life.
I think those are important things. So I don't know.
I think it's sad because I don't think old people. You know, many old people don't want to live alone. They just kind of end up living alone. And then many young people also they don't want to live alone. But you know, sometimes the only way to make something work. So anyway, I think things have moved in a bad direction.
It is interesting. So at younger ages it's men who are more likely to live alone, at older ages it's women who are more likely to live alone. They talk to a number of researchers in the field of basically like loneliness, which I do think is a really underdiscussed problem in America where we have all of these like social media connections, but we're lonelier than ever. But they said,
there are different ways of living alone. Right, you live by yourself, but you have super active social life and you're out and about, and maybe you live in a city and those connections are easy and you have a big network of friends and family are constantly over You're over at their places. That's one thing. Another thing is, you know, you live potentially more in a rural area, and living alone means that you really are alone. And you know, all the research says that this isn't good
for people like we are social creatures. We are not meant to just be solitary all the time. And you know, it's also different personality ranges. Some people are more introverted, they can handle that psychologically better than people who tend
towards the extroverted end of the spectrum. But you know, we really have moved away, and the way that our cities and suburbs in particular are even constructed make it so that there are barriers to being together in person, and instead we're fed this sort of like fake social interactions that end up not providing the you know, real world benefits that actual in person relationships help to create.
So I do think that this is contributing to some of the issues that we have with loneliness in society.
Oh, there's no question. I mean, this is why.
I mean, I'm tickets a flack for this, but part of why I'm like, I'm not really for one hundred percent of work from home because especially for really young people, because I think that and I'm not saying it's a good thing, but the you know, it's a very key way to meet people, to meet friends, to be involved, especially post college, for a lot of people to have
relationships and develop a new life. And you know, work from home I think is great for people who are well established, for one hundred percent work from home, who are well established in their career and they don't have problems with any of that. But I've personally seen a lot of people who kind of suffer from that, and like, look for flexibility. If that's what you want to do,
I think that's you know, go for it. But I am I've seen a trend towards some adamization at much younger ages, which I really think is not good.
And I don't know how to fix that.
You know, I don't know there's no work solution, that there's no government solution even really to that. But sociologically obviously does have a lot of problems.
Well, maybe Elon Musk can get together with the other tech oligarchs and destroy all of the social media platforms, not just Twitter, and that may actually be very healthy for beneficial right.
Definitely might be right. All right, we'll see you guys later.
You'll be surprised to learn that CNN is gatekeeping against Cornell West's presidential run.
I know that.
Again, it's shocking. We've never seen this treatment before from the media. It's were as popular as candidates. But let's start by rolling this clip here.
I think a bigger problem for them. We're as big is Cornell West. He is running as a Green Party candidate, and we can look back to twenty sixteen, to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania as well.
Signed, let's actually do just that.
I'mbers tell the story they really do.
I mean the margin on the right there the right of green, that's Trump's margin and Jill Stein's margin in the green. Look at Michigan, I see one thousand votes. Trump won by ten thousand votes. That's a big potential.
Difference maker, without question, and everything is different. Of course, a lot of that Jill Stein vote was a hangover from the Bernie Sanders primary fight with Hillary Clinton. So that has been done away with. Bernie Sanders is now very supportive of this president and he has been but I think the bigger issue other than an Hill table is Cornell West and what is he going to do on.
The campaign trail.
But again a lot of questions about who's behind the funding behind these and what is a unique ticket mean? Is that Joe Mansion.
Maybe, is it's Larry Hogan.
Maybe yeah, or some combinations.
So, I mean it's a worry for the White House and it will continue to be probably for the next year.
I think he's right to say Democrats should be worried that Cornell West could play spoiler. But again, the just disrespect for voters seeping through in that tone.
I think Krystal and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago.
What the media continues to not understand is that for some folks saying a vote for Cornell West or a vote for Jill Stein is a vot for Hillary Clinton or a vote as a vote for Trump or a vote for you know, Ronda Santis.
Or whomever it is. For some people, they're like, that is absolutely accurate. Can tell you.
They tell me that more like I understand it. What you don't understand is I think Hillary Clinton is just as bad as Donald Trump, or I think that Joe Biden is just as bad as Donald Trump, and they continue to have absolutely no respect for that point of view, even though I think it's entirely reasonable. We could have a debate over it. But you know, if you're not privileged enough to walk the tony halls of CNN newsrooms, that might be more obvious.
To you, right.
And there's a lot going on in that clip, And so they start by the conversation talking about no labels, which is compared to the Green Party, a well financed organization. They this is a dark money group basically that claims to raise some seventy million dollars in order to get on the ballot in all fifty states and recruit a Joe Manson type And Joe Manchin has not ruled out whether or not he will accept this invitation to run.
Sort of a Ross Pero type thing.
Right, right, except it would be financed by you know, private equity goons and hedge funders from around the country rather than kind of self financed from by Ross Perot, which I feel like the American population is much cooler with somebody like a Ross Perot kind of self financing,
because then he's not bought by anybody. But if your campaign is literally financed by dark money groups mostly funded by a variety of different moguls, but you know, primarily from the kind of private equity and hedge fund world like get sorry. And what that does seem to be able to do is to hurt Democrats and and help Trump because the they're they're more likely to draw from, more likely to draw from Biden No labels.
Is yeah, and that's where you get the ninety two pero dynamic, and that it usually like with Jill Stein from the other direction of Ronan from.
That Parou arguably drew money more from hw Bush. Is that is that kind of the way that the right understands this that Clinton Clinton benefited from Perot being in the race.
Absolutely, And where this again gets interesting is that no labels candidate could pull from Democrats in those key suburban areas in swing states with scunsin Pennsylvania.
You heard them actually mentioning that.
But when you look at where democrats feel is there, it's there, like what's the two thousand and four version of like the Ohio soccer moms, like that's what they they're actually still worried about the Ohio soccer moms, and that's why they make particular decisions when it comes to salts deductions, when it comes out whatever else.
I don't think Ohio.
Is an assault state, but you know what I'm talking about, that sort of like upper middle class, educated, suburban family. That's where Democrats feel is there against Donald Trump and against what they see is like extreme mega Republicans in general.
That's their key demographic.
And you could see a Joe Manchin coming in and playing on you know, all of the Democratic Party support for things like Medicare for all and picking away key voters or you know, being soft on crime, like picking away key voters.
And states like that.
It could genuinely be a problem for them, especially if you have Cornwell West also in the game, picking off leftists in the same way Jill Stein did, like real leftists in the same way Jill Stein did. The math wouldn't be great for Democrats in that situation, but that should mean that they put forward better candidates that don't force these third party bids because nobody trusts the DNC right.
And so then it comes to Cornell West, who initially launched with the People Movement for a People's Party, was kind of driven away by all the drama around that, and probably also the fact that they don't really have ballot access anywhere, or maybe maybe they have it somewhere, but they don't have it all all across the country. So now he's running, he could still lose the Green Party nomination. Green Party's hilarious. You never know, he's got
to fight for that. But let's assume that he wins the Green Party nomination and is on the ballot in key in key swing states. Then then it comes down to the question of do you vote for the person you know whose values you you support, or do you vote pragmatically between the two people who are most likely
to win. And then there's a third argument that are our friend over at Rising Brown and Joy Gray makes, which is that there's actually a pragmatic way to vote third party, which is that if you threaten to withhold your votes from the Democratic Party, that then they're going to do things to kind of win your vote over absolutely the problem.
That happened within, by the way, well, the problem.
For me with that argument, well, and I want to hear what you What you mean by that is that that has that has to be a collective organizational decision because you have to have somebody who can negotiate these terms otherwise, like who who is like who who are the we that you're negotiating on behalf of and talking to? Who can go to Biden and say, look, if you ignore the Supreme Court and do complete student, don't debt cancelation, we will vote for you. Who's the WII and who's
the you? Like who gets to sit down in that room? Because if he announced that he was going to do that now, you would have an enormous number of Cornell West supporters would say, bs, I don't believe it.
He's a fraud.
And I know this because you know, in two thousand I was a Native supporter and there was absolutely nothing Altgre could have told me that would have changed my mind on that. Everything he said I was just a complete lie. If you go back and watch his two thousand convention speech, it was it was just an anti corporates screed, which great good for him, but like I watched that and I was like, this is cynical nonsense
coming from You're trying to you're lying to me. None of this means a word to me, Like this is all this is all lies and so I think so many people are in that place that there's nothing Biden can say that's going to change their minds. Those are things that Biden perhaps could have done, but he didn't. Now have they don't have the House, so that there's nothing they can do right between them and now, So, what did you mean by jill Stein though?
Oh well, I meant basically that because so many Bernie Sanders' supporters ended up voting for jill Stein or even staying home. But like, since for the purposes of this conversation, voted for Jill Stein, Democrats, the field was completely different.
There's like this great.
McClatchy analysis of Hillary Clinton's platform in twenty sixteen versus Joe Biden's in twenty twenty, and Biden's was arguably the most moderate of all of the major candidates that ran for the Democratic nomination that year.
They said it was.
Really far to the left, even compared to Hillary Clinton's in twenty sixteen. That's McClatchy, and I agree. I think it's obvious that he ran way further to the left.
And again, all of these.
Candidates, like so called moderates start a Kamala Harris embracing Medicare for all, et cetera, et cetera. Whether or not people think those are since concessions, they are absolutely concessions because Bernie Sanders and then downstream of Bernie Sanders Jill Stein. The fact that so many Bernie Sanders supporters were so upset by Hillary Clinton that they then went to vote for Jill Stein. I think that was a huge wake
up call for the Democratic Party. And again, people may look at the way Biden has governed and say it was all insincere, and that's where they would argue Brianna's argument falls apart, like maybe you'll get superficial concessions.
But I don't think from.
The perspective of the left that having all of those candidates come out for free community college, medicare for all, et cetera, et cetera. I actually think that puts them in a really difficult position when Democrats do have governing power to make good on those promises. And it might not be the next presidential administration, but down the road, that Overton window has shifted for good.
But I think the phenomenon you're describing of the Democratic Party moving to the left since twenty sixteen actually makes the opposite case, which is that working in primaries is effective, like.
To primaries over generals.
Right to me, that it was the Bernie Sanders camp. It was that and then the second Bernie Sanders campaign that is what convinced people like Kamala Harris. I don't Thinkamala gave a rip about Jill Stein when she decided to endorse Medicare for all. I think Kamala was trying to win the Democratic primary voters who attached the idea of medicare for all to the idea that you're a
progressive champion. I guess so that's why, like you said, basically all of them except Biden were pro medicare for all. And I don't think that was Jill Stein. I think that was Bernie Sanders.
I guess the way I think of it, you would know this better than I do. I just think of it as like the Jill Stein losing Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin in ways that actually really could be tied back to people voting for Jill Stein, who by the way, may not have voted for Hillary Clinton either way. But if they say all of those Jill Stein voters they go
for Hillary Clinton and blah blah blah. Well, I just feel like that has loomed so largely in the Democratic establishment's imagination that it's almost like inextricable from the Bernie thing that like so many people did end up voting for Bernie for Jill Stein because Bernie told them not to do this, but because they were big Bernie supporters and they didn't believe anything other Trump or Hillary were selling.
That just like loomed so largely in the DNC imagination that it's part of what freaked them out and part of what freak candidates out.
But I say, I definitely see what you're saying.
But and I think in the end, though, it was actually a really tiny number. And if you can, you go back and look at those CNN numbers, and you also had a storm that doesn't exist today, and that storm being Hillary Clinton being massively disliked by so many, like so many Democratic primary voters and Democratic voters held their nose to vote for her in the general. And then small numbers ten thirty and fifty thousand in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Michigan Ish voted for Jill Stein couldn't go forward. But also in Wisconsin, you had a huge drop off of people just not voting, which and you know, all of that is that's on that's on the Democratic Party, and that's on and that's on Hillary Clinton. But the other elements of the storm that it existed then don't exist now, is that Trump was a potential at that point rather than a reality, like and and people didn't think that he was actually going to win.
Yeah, that's true.
Like you know, Poles had him down stance, you know, massively pulling units across the board, giving him a mine over Daffin was gave him like a ninety five percent chance of losing the election. And so people, I think weren't taking him as seriously. And I think I bet a bunch of those voters in pennsylvaniais continent Michigan who voted for Stein afterwards were like, oops, I thought I was just casting a little protest vote I didn't actually want.
So I think some of them were like, who didn't vote? I think some were like, I think Trump and Clinton are both awful, and I don't care that that I gave up my opportunity to vote against Trump by voting for Sign.
I don't care.
There's lots of those, but I think I bet there are a bunch who afterwards were like, Oh, if I could do it over again, Knowing that Wisconsin, Michigan, Pensylvania close, like they thought those were blue states, Blue Wall was secure that they would go Actually, they would have go back and vote for Hillary. And you saw that because the Green Party was basically non existent in twenty twenty, and so will having somebody as charismatic and impressive and
popular as Cornell West kind of changed that calculation. Maybe, but I think most people who are going to support West at this point were not going to vote for Biden anyway. They were just going to not vote.
So yeah, although I think that's going to really depend. I mean, but.
Most is most is a lot. But if it moves ten thousand votes and elections decided by ten thousand or a thousand or whatever, so yeah, you're right, Like, even if ninety percent of West voters wouldn't have voted, but the other ten percent would have voted for Biden or whoever the nomine ends up being, if he doesn't make it, then that could swing a close election.
And if West hits the.
Road hard on Biden's sort of fumbling student loan debt plan going in one direction or the other and kicking it to Supreme Court in a way that was predictably going to put people in that crunch if he hits the road hard on other like populist priorities that Biden hasn't been great on that young people in particular are interested in. I could see, I could see some interesting numbers, but again it all does depend.
All right, and for people who are new to politics and aren't following this, like why why does Europe get to do this?
But we don't.
You know, Europe and other countries have these parliamentary systems where everybody votes for who they like. If you're a Green, you're a Liberal Democrat, you're communist, you're a Democratic Socialist, you're a Christian Democrat, you know, nationalists, whatever, and then they all get to the parliament and they form coalitions and then and whatever coalition can get a majority, then they elect a prime minister.
It's like how AFC.
Said in era, I wouldn't be in the same party as Nancy plus.
Right, Yeah, and they wouldn't be. There'd be three different but then they all get behind the same prime minister. So it's like, careful what you wish for. It's not like you're necessarily going to get that much more of a pure system. But over here it's called first past the post. And so Bill Clinton had forty three percent, and then you know George H. W. Bush like whatever, low forties, high thirties, and then Ross Perro with nineteen. That forty three percent wins. Yeah, and so that's that's
just the system we have. People often say, well, what about the Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party. You know, they're a third party and they won, except no, they were not actually a third party. There were two major parties, the Whigs and the Democrats. Democrats and that election split into two, you know, a super pro slavery party and a just kind of pro slavery party, and the Whigs disappeared, evaporated.
Lincoln was a partisan wig his entire career and clung to the Whig Party as a partisan until the very bitter end, until it was completely obvious that it collapsed. And then a bunch of parties tried to come up and replace the Wigs, and the Republican Party is the one that managed to do that. You also had a fourth party, a Constitution Party, which was you know your classic like moderate senators who were just saying, let's not talk about slavery. Let's just can we can we all
please just not? And I think they won Tennessee or something. Maybe around the people could look that up. That was the fourth Party. But then you know, you had all these other ones that were trying to compete, but the Republicans were a major party immediately.
Basically, this concludes today's edition of Ryan Gram rambling about American history.
That interesting. I always learned, right, I always learned.
Someone's going to clip that and juxtapose it with another clip, and I know what you're going to do.
Don't do it?
Which one?
You know one?
Oh?
That one I really didn't. That was Soviet history though.
Yeah, but it also we don't.
Need to get into that.
That's the last thing we need to do right now.
Although that clip was caught unfairly and I saw in a YouTube video recently once again.
And again like to you or something.
Yes, So we'll we'll wrap on that note, but we'll also obviously continue to follow the Cornell West candidacy very closely, and actually the Green Party nomination, which is Ryan says he's really gonna have to fight for it. So it's an interesting race. So we'll keep you posted on any developments in the Green Party.
So new Axios report detailing something that's kind of key to me, at least in terms of the RFK junior campaign. Let's put this up on the screen. So apparently his campaign merch is not union made, nor.
Is it US made. Let me read you a little bit of this.
They say that his team is bucking Democratic Party tradition by selling campaign merchandise and not made in America, not bade by union leader Union Labor. They also say the move is out of step with Kennedy's stated commitment to labor unions, and along with his anti vaccination views, could
complicate his long shot primary challenge of President Biden. For generations, a rule for Democratic campaigns has been that as many materials as possible, shirt stickers, placards, alongsides, even campaign buses be made by union shops in America as a sign of the party's commitment to labor unions and the working class. It appears that the T shirts are have a label that says assembled in Hondurs. So this is kind of common on the Republican side. They don't typically use union shops,
they don't particularly pay attention. Even with the Trump campaign that talked a lot about made in America, even their stuff was made overseas. But for a Democrat, this is really a no go. And even putting like the convention of it aside, you know, we have merch. We went out of our way to make sure that it was consistent with our values of being made in America and being union made. That can be difficult, although in the campaign space there are all kinds of vendors who do
this work. So it just shows me, like, if you're really committed to unions, number one, you need to have a plan about that, which we asked him about and he didn't have a lot to say about.
But number two, like this is a basic gimme.
He's got a prompt to staff in order to fix this. My theory most likely is that they were somebody inexperience or whatever. They had just set up merch and they didn't, you know, think all that much about it. But yeah, as you said, if you care, which we cared a lot, you know, and I think people should know. It's a pain in the ass and this is not a knock. I'm not saying you still shouldn't do it, but it's cheaper and easier for a reason, to make stuff in China.
We could make tons more money off of our merchandise if we were willing to do that, and it would be vastly cheaper, easier shipping, and all of that to you. But because we believe in maide in America and a union made well, we have had to go in a different direction. And that's what a lot of different Democratic candidates have done before. I've seen some Republican candidates do it as well, and I think that's the right thing
to do. You know, just because economy of scale is easier to get something made in China or Honduras or whatever, that doesn't mean that's what you should do. So again, my theory on this is just that they were like, go with the easiest option. Yeah, just spin up. But this is an opportunity where do the work? Man Like, if you think that, if you do care, then you should change it.
Yeah, I mean, come on to it. You're yety yeah, been invested in democratic politics your entire life. Your campaign manager is Dennis Kissinich.
Oh that's so, you know, Yeah, that's good.
Point has to know about these things as well. And you know, we like had to put in a lot of effort to get our stuff made Union because you know, it's been decimated and there just aren't done anymore shops that are Union and America made at this point. But in the campaign world, there's a whole slew of them, you know, on the Democratics, there's tons of them. It's not hard, you know, it's not hard to find, it's not hard to figure out. I guess the next test
will be how do they respond to this? Do they care? Do they fix it, do they address it? Do they apologize? Like where do they go from here? Because he has tried to make a point of saying, you know, he stands with labor, even though again on the substance there hasn't been a plan laid out of how he would increase union participation. Just to give you one more sense of, you know, how this is significant, how this plays within the Democratic Party, they asked Ray Buckley, who's the chair
of the Democratic Party in New Hampshire. In New Hampshire key obviously, because the whole rift with Biden is not going to be on the ballot there, but it's still going to be in an early state. RFK Junior has an actual chance to win that state, so this is really key. So the chair of the Democratic Party in New Hampshire says, it's politics one oh one. I would hope that Kennedy would put human rights above his political aspirations.
That's the nicest way I can say that. So we'll see how they respond and if they make this right.
Yeah, I'm curious what his response should be because I mean, there's no you can't justify this making stuff, yeah in the Hondura, especially whatever you're talking about maid in America. I mean, we asked him also about unions. He didn't have some specifics on the plant if I recall, or on the pro act, but he did say it was.
Very supportive of the union way of life.
Obviously, his own father has a complicated history, I guess is the nicest way of saying.
Whatever came to storied battles.
JFK as a very pro union president, so you know, in terms of carry on the Kennedy legacy, and then Ted Kennedy of course was a longtime front of the unions in the actually US Senate. So I think you know, given what you said for Kennedy's elector apolicis this is one of those that you absolutely yeah.
You got to walk the one, right have we already got a price?
We do play.
It's hardy pro union and is mixed on the topic. Let's just say so anyway, We'll see where it goes from here.
All right, We'll see you guys later.
What is the best way to educate our children? When that question arises, the discussion eventually turns to the issue of school choice.
Feels important for National School Choice Week, advocating for alternative options to public schools, such as charter and magnusine.
He use the public money to fund private schools has had its fair share of controversy.
Supporters say vouchers help students succeed, but opponents say they siphon away crucial public school resources.
A battle is raging on in America's classrooms right now, one that seemingly pivots around giving parents the opportunity to choose between public and private education for their kids. But is there also more to this issue than what meets the eye?
Ballwork of the American farm of government is educational, for true democracy can exist only among a people prepared from childhood for the responsibilities of citizenship.
America's public education system, since its inception in the nineteenth century, has been a cornerstone of the American dream and an integral part of the country's cultural fabric. Seen as the Great Equalizer, it offered a promise of opportunity and upward mobility to all, regardless of economic or social standing. But fast forward to today, the future of education seems to be headed in a vastly different direction.
The historic night at the State House Monday, with both House and Senate lawmakers passing a bill to send taxpayer money to some Iowans to pay for private school tuition.
Today, just about an hour ago, Florida Governor Ron de Santa's signed House Bill one.
The education bill relates to school choice and expanding private school vouchers.
Parents could get thousands of dollars back for sending their kids to a private school.
The bill giving parents public dollars for private school tuition.
The bill would give scholarship money to families who qualify and choose to take their children out of the public school.
That's right. Instead of directly funding the public school system, school choice or school voucher programs would allocate those public taxpayer dollars to help parents fund their children's private school tuition should they choose not to attend public school. The first program of its kind was implemented back in nineteen ninety,
the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Fast forward to twenty twenty three, fifteen states have voucher programs to help parents pay for private school, and such programs have only exploded exponentially in recent months. Just this year, fourteen states have passed bills establishing school choice programs or expanding existing ones, and lawmakers in forty two states have introduced bills to establish similar programs.
Proponents of such programs, like Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, who earlier this year okayed allocating taxpayer money to fund private schools in her state, say that it will give parents more choice and improve educational outcomes by fostering competition between public and private schools.
It's all about options, it's competition. It's a good thing.
Now the question is do you buy it? I mean, choice, competition, Those are all universal ideals shared by almost everybody. But to achieve it by diverting taxpayer dollars from public to private schools, I think it's worthwhile for us to take a peek under the hood. Recently, I spoke with Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who has studied school choice for nearly two decades, to help us understand what the data is telling us.
The one only ambiguous thing that seem used to come from all the pro voucher findings is that parents who use the vouchers to appear to be happier with their kids' education.
Happy parents. That is a good thing, right, Well, maybe so vouchers.
About three quarters of new voucher users actually already in private school in first place. The new part just comes from the source, the founding, the government, instead of the parent.
According to data from the National Coalition for Public Education, in Arizona, eighty percent of voucher applicants are from children who have never attended a public school. In New Hampshire, eighty nine percent have never attended a public school. In Wisconsin,
seventy five percent have never attended a public school. Why is that, Well, the truth is, even if some parents wanted to use a voucher, the reality is, unlike public schools, private schools can decline to admit children for any reason that's not considered a protected characteristic. So yeah, you can
be rejected simply for being poor. So in terms of opportunity, it seems to me like the group that benefits the most from school choice programs are parents of existing private school students who now get to enjoy a public subsidy for their children's private school tuition.
Of course, parents are more satisfied when something they were footing the bill themselves for up until last year, all of a sudden the government comes and who gives them money for that? That's not that surprising. So the real question then just goes back to are they delivering what the promises, which is that the academics are better.
Unfortunately, study after study confirms that new students using vouchers to attend private schools leads to lower test scores and worse educational outcomes. How much worse Some studies show that voucher impacts on a student's educational outcome are equivalent to, or sometimes even worse than the learning loss caused by natural disasters and even the COVID nineteen pandemic.
For that smaller percentage, that quarter or thirty percent or so, who kids who do transfer from public to private their test course tend to be catastrophic. And the reason for that is that for the most part, these voucher programs prop up what I I would call subprime private schools. There's schools that are financially distressed, the struggling. They might close anyway, often many do. You're not talking about like this pathway to elite private school education.
Cowent Sites, Wisconsin as an example, as forty one percent of voucher schools there have closed since the programs in section in nineteen ninety and that includes the large number of pop up schools opening just to cash in on the new voucher payout. For those pop up schools, average survival time is just four years before their doors closed for good. Well, what about competition?
It is true is that we've seen small and really really tiny, but real test score improvements in the public school side when these voucher programs expand. And the reason for that is that you can find those positi effects mostly concentrated in low income communities, communities of color, vulnerable communities generally speaking, historically marginalized communities. And what's happening is basically, when you pit these vulnerable communities against each other to compete for scarce dollars.
You do see some kicking scores.
That sounds awfully close to an educational huggy games type situation, if I can editorialize a little bit, poor kids battling it out in public schools, test scores falling off a cliff for those children who transferred with a voucher to a subprime private school, and the children who are already in elite private schools are sounding like they're even better off.
Debates really settled about whether these things do or don't help kids who use them.
I mean, that's over.
We just don't get evidence like that in the research community that's that consistent, that straightforward. Very oftenitially it's on the one hand or on the other hand, that's.
Not what boxers are.
It's pretty bad stuff. So then it comes down to what's the idea and what is the idea here?
Well.
To fully understand the true motivations behind the push for school choice, we have to go back nearly three quarters of a century to nineteen fifty four Brown versus Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court unanimously ruled racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional and almost Immediately thereafter, attacks against the public school system began tomate among certain elite circles.
The state of schooling alemandary secondary higher schooling in the United States is deplorable.
This man is famed economist Milton Friedman. Yes, the same Milton Freeman who in nineteen seventy proclaimed in The New York Times that the social responsibility of business is to
increase its profits the god of shareholder privacy. Freeman pen the gospel on private education a decade and a half earlier, in nineteen fifty five, perhaps not coincidentally, just a few months after the Brown v. Board ruling, in an essay called the Role of Government and Education, in which he advocated for governments to use school vouchers as a means to stimulate competition in the education system.
For Freedman's paper was published in nineteen fifty five, that was just a few months after Brown versus Board of Education. The reason that's relevant today is Freedman's idea was very quickly latched onto by segregationists, particularly in Virginia and in Texas as kind of what they say is something of a race neutral way to avoid the integration orders that came out of round for supports, and.
That is the cold, hard truth. School choice is really nothing more than a coded term used by wealthy, influential individuals and advocacy groups to maintain a segregated education system that disproportionately benefits the affluent and leaves less privileged populations at a disadvantage. It is designed as a mechanism that in effect gives choice to private schools rather than to the parents.
If you close all the public schools in your area and you pop up two or three charter schools, what is the choice. You have no choice.
Maggie Perkins is a former teacher who taught for nearly a decade at both public and private institutions.
It's in us first them situation, and this is my sense of it as a teacher's perspective, that as other groups become more included and have more access and more opportunity is there for them, that their children are getting things taken away from them. It is more about personal values and in a way resegregation of schools. So I think it's more based out of fear and less about let's take our money and go spend it on a quality education.
I don't think it's about quality.
Just the idea of resegregating education at a state or federal level might be kind of a hard sell nowadays. So it is one hundred percent by design that school choice advocacy groups market such programs as quote opportunity scholarships or lifeline scholarships. Legacy publications like The Wall Street Journal recently even framed opposition to school choice as the killing of scholarships for poor students in failing schools. So what
should we do? What can we do? Because the honest truth is that I sympathize with legitimate critiques of the public school system in America. No doubt the system is in need of serious reform.
I mean, we need to address that. We need to make it easier for kids the special needs to learn in public schools. We need to make it easier for kids who are struggling with mental health to go to public school and learn there. We need to investing in the teacher workforce. Right you see bills like and my governor here in Minnesota are putting a lot of money behind universal free meals because there's strong evidence that hungry kids at.
School don't learn as well.
Like those are ways to improve learning in the public school community.
Many of those issues we've explored right here on this channel together, administrative bloat, diverting critical resources away from classrooms, a manufactured teacher shortage crisis, and other systemic inequalities. They
all need to be taken very, very seriously. But ultimately I have to say this, the solution or the debate over education is fundamentally philosophical, which is to say, do we as a nation believe in a quality public education system that opens its doors to everyone, regardless of their class, creed, color, and we work together to reform that institution, or do we believe that quality education is something of a privilege, one in which public taxpayer money is turned over to
private entities that don't necessarily exist to improve educational outcomes, but rather act as gate keepers deciding which children should have access to, which type of school that has offered me this time? What do you think about school choice? Sound off in the comments section below. If you've been enjoying these beyond the headline segments, I would highly encourage you to check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel fifty one forty nine with James Lee. Link will be
in the description below. Really appreciate that and as always, keep on tuning into breaking points and thank you so much for your time. Today.
Near renderings of the proposed new Titans stadium will released today.
Here's your home of the Buffalo bills about.
Two point one billion dollar price tax taxpayer dollars towards stadium.
Most people here in the valley are against using any public money to help fund the proposed stadium.
Stadium doesn't seem like it's gonna fall down. This is Charles Evans. By teen o nine, he had become the sole owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and he wanted to give them a new, modern home, not like the wooden parks they had been playing in because sometimes those burned down. He decided to build a steel stadium. Ebbitts took seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars of his own money and
paid for this ballpark to be built Ebbitts Field. In nineteen twelve, they broke ground and this stadium by Prospect Park, would be the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Now.
In nineteen fifty one, the Commissioner of Baseball, this guy Ford Frick, basically said, hey, you know, we bring in all this money for these cities we create jobs, were doing these cities a favor by existing, they should reciprocate. This is when the cost of building these stadiums really started shifting from the sports franchise to the city that hosts the franchise. So the Dodgers had been playing at ebbitts Field since nineteen thirteen, and by the nineteen fifties,
Walter O'Malley was the owner of the team. By this point, the Dodgers were one of the most profitable teams in baseball. O'Malley wanted to build a new stadium at the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, and he began threatening to move to la if the city didn't acquiesce. Now, it's worth noting that moving cities wasn't really a thing at the time. Until nineteen fifty three, no Major League Baseball team had moved.
The first were the Boston Braves in nineteen fifty three, who had wanted to leave Boston because they were having trouble building a fan base and couldn't fill their stadium. Plus Milwaukee gave them a stadium using public money. In fifty four, the Saint Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles fifty five, the Philly Athletics became the Kansas City Athletics, but officials were unmoved by the Dodgers threats. As the mayor said, we don't intend to allow ourselves to be
blackjacked into helping either the Dodgers or Giants financially. The New York Giants also wanted a new stadium. One congressman said, let the Dodgers move to Los Angeles if the alternative is to succumb to an arrogant demand to spend The taxpayers wanted to build a stadium for them in Brooklyn. Plus, the city had already spent one hundred and ten thousand dollars on studying the proposed site of the new stadium, and a new stadium probably would have meant extensive use
of eminent domain to clear the space. This is exactly what happened fifty years later when they started working on the Barclay Center, which is exactly where they had proposed putting a field for the Dodgers. The new Dodger Stadium in LA would also negatively impact residents, and that's where
they've been since nineteen fifty eight. But this would mark a new era where professional sports teams would threaten to pull out of cities unless they got a new stadium, which coincides with a new era of public funding for private stadiums. Let's take the NFL as an example. Head of thirty two teams, twenty seven used stadiums that were
subsidized by taxpayers. These five teams play in stadiums that were privately funded, but the rest had helped from the public, and for the twenty twenty sixth season, the Titans and the Bills are getting new stadiums entirely, both with the aid of public financing. In the case of the Bills, people feared that they might move to San Diego if they weren't given a new stadium, and San Diego is in need of a team because the Charters moved from San Diego to La because they got a new stadium there.
But the Bills got their stadium and New York citizens are going to contribute one billion dollars to it. The new Titan stadium is projected to cost one point two billion dollars for taxpairs. Psychotically, stadiums are considered to have hit middle age at about twenty years old, so if teams aren't working on acquiring whole new stadiums. They're working
on one hundred million dollar plus repairs and upgrades. Governor Tony Evers would allocate two hundred and ninety million dollars from the state's surplus towards upgrades to American Family Field in exchange for the Milwaukee Brewers extending their lease at the stadium through twenty forty three. This is when all the teams moved into their stadiums, and these teams are all set to get these expensive renovations and repairs, some
of which will be supported by tax payers. The Saints actually received twenty seven million dollars in pandemic aid for their recent renovations, but this is all in service to attracting or keeping a team. This is also a thing in lower levels of sports. The early two thousands in New Jersey saw a bunch of minor league baseball stadiums go up. One was Campbell's Field in Camden. It cost taxpayers eighteen million dollars. The team that played there was
the River Sharks. The River Sharks and Campbell's Field were supposed to revitalize the impover city by being the centerpiece of an economic Development plan along the edge of the Delaware River. Actually, economic development is always the justification for publicly funding these stadiums, the idea being that if teams are here, as the former Commissioner of Baseball asserted, the
local economy gets a boost. But things like naming rights, concessions, ticket sales, all the things that really generate money, there's not really any profit sharing between the team and the host city. In exchange for naming the stadium where the Panthers play Bank of America Stadium, Bank of America is paying the Panthers one hundred and forty million dollars, but the state doesn't get any of that or take concessions.
Stadiums make as much as two million dollars per game on concessions, but none of that goes to the city. So the economic boost comes from construction of the stadium, hotel stays, traffic driven to the area. But in reality, decades of academic studies consistently find no discernible positive relationship between sports facilities and local economic development, income growth, or
job creation. So it's very unlikely that a sports team is going to boost your local economy, especially if you've made an investment in a team and they decide to leave anyway. In nineteen ninety five, Saint Louis put two hundred and eighty million dollars into a stadium for the Rams, and when the Rams decided to move to LA taxpayers still owed more than one hundred million dollars in debt on the bonds used to finance the Edward Jones Dome,
where the Rams played. There are several examples of taxpayers having to pay for stadiums after the team has stopped using them. The River Sharks, who played at Campbell's Field and Camden, moved to Connecticut, so taxpayers were then on the hook for one million dollars to tear the stadium down. The old Giant Stadium, demolished to make way for new Meadowland Stadium, left New Jersey with a debt of one
hundred and ten million dollars. Seattle's King County had debt over eighty million dollars for the Kingdome, which was raised in two thousand and Here's the other thing. Voters don't want to pay for your dumb stadium. Sometimes they do. In the case of the Broncos Stadium, where fifty one percent of voters approved the stadium proposals, but sometimes they don't. San Diego voters overwhelmingly defeated a new downtown stadium plan
for the San Diego Chargers. Ballot Measure C in San Diego asked voters whether they wanted to effectively increase the city's hotel room tax rate from twelve point five percent to sixteen point five percent, with the proceeds helping fund a new one point eight billion dollars stadium and convention center. They did not, and so the chards moved to LA. But often they aren't given a say at all for
the new Bills and Titan stadiums. Voters weren't consulted, however, and after the fact poll of New York state voters found that they opposed the bill's deal by a whopping margin of sixty three percent to twenty four percent, with opposition consistent across both parties and all parts of the state. A poll by a Nashville community group of residents of the neighborhood where a new Titan stadium would be built found ninety percent opposed to taxpayer funding of the project.
So if your city is considering paying for a new stadium, it likely won't be the economic windfall they're telling you will be. Now, maybe that doesn't matter to you. You would vote for the stadium anyway. Either way, the citizenry should probably be allowed to have a say. And regardless of how badly you want that stadium, it should be understood that no major sports team needs subsidies. You're not voting on whether you want to keep a team or
improve a stadium. You're voting on whether or not to acquiesce to the whims of an extremely wealthy team owner.
And that will do it for me.
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