American Justice - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 1/30/23

going ballistic. What happened? You know? I trace it back to when we got all these cable TV channels and I thought, wow, that's going to be wonderful. Well, A're all going to get different information. But I was wrong, because now you'll find these different cable TV channels that will find exactly your thoughts, George, and your biases and will cater everything right to you. And I think made us very polarized. We don't have any Walter Kronkites anymore

that try to talk to everybody. They just talk to individuals. And you do this sometime where we have an important story, listen to about five different broadcasts and different stations, and they'll get the names right and everything else will be slanted one way or the other. It's just it's a sorry thing, and I think it's resulted in our being so polarized, which is a disaster. Yeah, it really is. It really is. Do you have hope that we're going

to pull ourselves out of it? George. We're resilient, I do certainly. So. We've faced a lot of difficulty in our past. But we need some leadership and we need people to stand up. And by the way, it's our government, George, and if it's not working, we have no one to blame but ourselves. That's a rather overwhelming task. But it's up to all of us to hold people accountable, to contact our elected officials and say, wait a minute, what about this and what are you doing about that? And

you mentioned one of our books. I'm proud to say that I wrote with my wife, Grace Walker Gray. It's called twenty thirty Kids We are Rising Heroes of the Planet, and it talks about I think the most important issue facing our country today, which is we have too many

public schools failing our children. And it's unnecessary and it certainly doesn't have to happen, but it's a tragedy and almost always gravitates into lower economic areas, which regretfully, are a lot of African Americans, Hispanics and that sort of thing. It's not racial, but it's economic. But we've written a novel to try to empower parents to understand that if they could choose where their government money would be spent for the education of their children, they would demand excellence

and they would receive it. So, if you think about it, George, and this is something that's really leading our country astray. Public education is the only area in our economy where the provider dictates what the purchaser will buy, and so they don't have to compete. But if you bring in choice, you bring in empowering parents to choose. Now you'll have competition and everybody will get better except teach years that can or won't teach, they'll be fired, fortunately, and we

will have to go off and do something different. But losing our children at such an early age for not getting a quality education is a disaster and we must change that. I looked at that title for that book twenty thirty and it seemed like it was millions of years away. It's only seven years away from now. Oh

my god, that's correct. Yeah, it's amazing. We take a fourth grade student and you know, seven or eight years from now, he's going to be graduating from high school and he's going to be out there in the world, and what type of person will he or she be? Uh? And there's so much better. We have them decide to all be investigators and so they're gonna they're going to decide to make a table well, because you have to measure, and you have to add up, and you have to

you know, all this sort of stuff. So we have them much more active in their school. Uh. And uh, it really it's it's just exciting, exciting possibility, and it's starting to sweep the country. And Arizona has gone into this now, lots of places in Florida, Milwaukee, Wisconsin has at it for years. It's something everybody should look into and support. Are the schools different than when we went to school? Yes, I think so. I got a very quality education, but we were upper middle class and I

was public schools all the way too. I met Milton Friedman one time. Actually, I was running a drug policy for him. He was there and in the intermission, he was talking about school choice and I said, well, doctor Freedman, I was a product of public schools. I don't want to harm our public schools. And he said, Jim, I

may ask you two questions. Number One, if you're the parent of a high school age child, what country in the world would you want to that child to go to to get the best public education that he or she could? And I said, well, I'm not sure, but probably not the United States of America. He said, I think you're right. Second question, if you're the parent of a college age child, what country in the world would you want that child to go to to get the

best quality public education that he or she could? And I said, well, there, I think it would be the United States. He said, I agree with that as well. You know the difference parents can choose where their money is going to be spent for college, They cannot choose for high school. He converted me at that moment, it's critically important. What about private schools, Well, it could be private school, it could be military school of vocational school.

The parents are in much better position to understand the best place for their child to go and the best type of education. You know, some are going to be doctors of philosophy and others want to be mechanics. So maybe a vocational school would be best for some liberal arts school. You know, let the parents choose and let the money go where those choices are made, and they will demand excellence again and it will be a lot more catered to the needs of that individual child. Do

you think we should make drugs legal? No, but only in a technical word. I would regulate and control them basically like wine, as far as some of them, like marijuana, But as far as the other mind altering drugs, I'd probably put them in the control of medical doctors, the medical profession. So then if you're going and they could

prescribe them, but they would then educate you. George said, think about it this way with regard to mind altering sometimes addicting substances, the best quality program we have had in the United States in the last forty years is with cigarettes. You know, we have not made them illegal for adults, but we put education out there, we put actual morays out there, we put restrictions with regard to

where you can smoke, and it's worked. We have many, many fewer young people smoking cigarettes than certainly when I was growing up. And so a program of that kind, where you rely on education and responsibility is where we should go with these other substances as well. And then you get into a disaster, which is fentanyl, and fentanyl people do not overdose on fentyl, George. That's a drug poisoning, and it's caused by drug prohibition because we have no

quality control. You don't know what you're putting into your body, you don't know what the substances are, you don't know what the ranks are, and that's why people die. When we had alcohol prohibition, we had the same problem with white lightning, with impurities and the alcohol, people go blind. We heard that and people could die. That went away almost overnight when we came to our senses and repealed alcohol prohibition. So it's the lack of quality control, and

of course the drug money. Already talked about juvenile street gangs, but just look at Mexico, George, Look what our drug money has done for life in Mexico, where the cartels now almost outgunned the military, the government. They have more money too, and it's just been a bloody disaster literally. So it's all caused by our policy of drug prohibition, shame on us. Do you have plans to run from political office again? No, I'm running away from political office

at this point, George. I tell people you mentioned it that I ran for Congress as a Republican in nineteen ninety eight, I ran as a libertarian for US Senate in two thousand and four, and I was the Libertarian nominee for Vice president in two and twelve. Didn't get to winning any of those elections. So I tell people with all sincerity that I'm not a politician, and I have the votes to prove it. I think people are

tired of politicians, aren't they? I am. I don't see any leaders in our forget whatever political views you have, I don't see any leadership where people are standing up and educating saying this is the reason, this is why we should do such and such. Basically. In fact, I just got something today with a man that's going to run for presidents, a libertarian, and he says, in fact, his name is Lars Mapstead. He says, if you think the problems government caused their bad, wait till you see

there's proposed solutions. And in our government's just off base. It is not the right way to go. It doesn't do things nearly as well as the private sector. George, I talk about controversial. I would do away with FEMA, you know, the Federal Emergency Response and just have private contracts with the Red Cross when we have a disaster. They do a far better job than government always did. Yes, yes we should. We have a huge prisoner population listenership, Jim, Yes, huge.

And how many of those people should really be in jail. Some should be in jail, some should be in prison for a while, but a vast majority could have gone on probation. Without that, we overincarcerate, particularly mindlessly long periods

of time incarceration. Now, I'm not talking about Charles Manson and sir hands her hand, that sort of serial killer, mortalize all that, But there's so many people that, Okay, maybe they made a mistake, maybe they're factually innocent, you know, but they had a snitch who was going to testify wrongly that oh he confessed to me or whatever, and they're facing thirty years in prison if you go to trial and they believe the snitch, and they're offering you

two years in prison if you plead guilty. Some people that are factually innocent, are literally coerced in depleting guilty. Now, I'm not damning the its higher system, George. I think our system is basically pretty good, but it's certainly has some holes in it, and certainly I think that the Bureau of Prisons needs to be examined. We need to get some transparency, much more into our prisons. We have

too many people that died of COVID. We have lack of medical care in prison that is I think a disgrace. From what I can tell, I have a good friend who's a medical doctor who is in a women's prison and just monitoring it. He said, it's just terrible, and these people are in our custody and they should have a threshold of security, healthcare, nutrition, exercise. I mean, it's

just basic to who we are. It's in fact, it is DOFCISKI I think it was who said that you can tell more about a society by walking into its prisons than you can't any other way. And I don't think our society would look very good. From what I can tell, I hear the prison system in Mexico is deplorable. Oh, do not get arrested in Mexico, by the way, I wouldn't want to go to Turkey. I mean, there are a lot of bad places that But you know, you go into Switzerland, you go into Sweden, you go into

most of the European countries. They have a far lower number of people in prison for a far lower period of time. And when they are there, they actually address their needs. Like I told you, I address the needs of alcoholics. But you know, if you have a mental illness, they help you with that. If you don't have a job, they help you get job skills. George, the recidivism rate for people that have a job is plummets, and if you don't have a job, it's increased. You're almost you're

almost guaranteed to go back into prison. So help people get some job skills while they're in custody. We call them correctional institutes, but they're only correctional in the name only. We don't mostly help people get a degree, learn some job skills, and be able to go out and support yourself, which most people want to be able to do. What's going on with carjackings and car thefts and stuff, it's at a record pace right now. It's out of control.

Videos of people pumping gas at a gas station and a couple of thugs will come by, jump in that car that maybe was foolishly running still or something like that, and take off and steal it. What's happening, Jim, We are into a lawless thing. You know. We have declared war on police in a lot of ways, you know, defund the police. So the police and they know if they go out and and they get into a little bit of trouble, they're gonna get hounded. So they're much

more reticent. Dudes who got out and do I was in Oakland about two months ago, City of Oakland. I went to Amsterdam University. They were having a which is marijuana related, marijuana education related. And while we were there in this wonderful old theater, some people broke into a car.

They smashed the rear window, they took a bunch of camera equipment, and so the guy that had the car found out called nine one one didn't get a response, and a friend of mine who was with me, who's a former police officer, saw a police car going by, flagged them down, told them what had happened, and the guys weren't even interested. They weren't even going to go over and look at it or file a report. It's like, I mean, goodness, sakes, if the police, if you get

these carjackers, know that they're not going to be tracked down. Hey, that's an open invitation and that's where we're going. But at least people have that feeling, which is a disaster for us all. I wrote an editorial op ed piece with my friend, submitted it to the Oakland newspapers. They weren't even interested. I said, you know, this is what happened.

This is why crime is increasing in Oakland and other places because the police are not doing their job because they know that sometimes if they make a mistake, they're going to get persecuted. So I would, as a judge in a few times. They do make mistakes. Obvious, of course they do. Everyone does. But I tell people I have an opportunity to speak to prosecutors and police officers. I look them square in the face and say, you have an absolute mandate to do the right thing for

the right reason every time. Now we know you're going to make mistakes sometimes to it. If you try to do the right thing, we've got your back. Don't worry We've got your back. But if you do things for political reasons, or do things like seemingly happened in Memphis which I can't even discuss, but you know if you are, we're going to investigate and prosecute. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot com for more