I respect Moudang too much, okay, and I don't to bring Moodang into the thirty six chambers. I don't know. Moudang is a child. Jack Wudang is ready does not know about you know.
Well, my wu tang is for the children exactly.
So yeah, what you're kind of arguing for it? Yeah, so yeah, is that what you meant?
You meant that this is a good mixture because Moudang is a child in wu Tang is for the.
For the children. Yeah. Okay, Hey, hippo's in the front. Let's just stiple hippos on.
The left, braction the deck, Hello the Internet, and welcome to season three sixty two, Episode two of dir Daily.
Production of iHeart Radio.
This is a podcast we take a deep dive into American share consciousness. And it is Tuesday, October twenty ninth, twenty twenty four. You know what that means. Halloween's coming up and nothing else, nothing else, nothing happening exactly one week from this Tuesday.
Nothing going on the road, nothing else. Put on your squid game costumes and go about your day. People. It's National Oatmeal Day, though for those that are concerned, National Hermit Day, and also National cat day. Just nice and easy, nothing else happening. Celebrate those things.
Also that are good for your health. Oatmeal hermits. We've heard a hermit and then cutting yourself completely off from human contact all good?
Is that?
Is that what they're saying when they refer to a hermit.
Yeah, it just as it recognizes the hermit in all of us, I guess, which means maybe are you know, sometimes capacity to be introverted rather than being like and swearing off everything that the modern world has to offer in the service of living in cave.
Yeah, or just you know, not interacting with people and using uber eats and only interacting with people over social media also.
Really good, I'm told how very good for us.
Anyways, My name is Jack O'Brien aka Moo Dang clan ain't nothing to fuck with.
Moodang clan ain't nothing to fuck with.
Move Dang clan ain't nothing to fuck with. Move dan clan ain't nothing to fuck with.
There's no place to hode.
Once I stepped inside the zoo bahad prepare for the move. Dang oh maang I slang and bang surf cunt like move dang that one wore to see a Strange Wang.
On the disc board. Did it? Yeah, I did it, I did it.
I had to ask.
First of all, I thought maybe I missed you guys talking about being parts of the Moo Moodang clan, yeah when I was out last week.
But yeah, yeah yeah.
Anyways, I'm throwing to be joined as always by my co host mister Miles Gres Miles Gray.
Because you're gonna go to the Elon store and you gonna give him all your money. Then he'll say what he wants you to hear, to tell you it's cool. You just don't believe it. Bail out of Elon's car. Bail out or die tonight because those funky cars are killing walking people and nothing will ever be oh right.
Shout out to real big fish.
Shout out to Snarkyla on the discord because my my love of sky is always there lying torment, awaiting a moment to just, you know, blowout, like the volcanic ashes of whatever name, whatever volcano you want to volcano djore, So thank you for that. I just I wanted was devastating. Oh yeah, Mount, I didn't. I'm not familiar with that song.
I don't think.
God just from your vocal performance.
So you don't know that song?
I bet west Coard full instrumentation. Maybe I was pretty I was singing it pretty good, dude. Yeah no, you I mean either that song or you don't. Yeah, yeah, so you don't because that was I guess I fucked up, man. I guess my childhood was misspent. And this is the first time I'm figuring.
Trenches of ska. Yeah yeah, like me, Yeah, Miles.
We are thrilled to be joined by the head of represent US, a good government group that does work around anti corruption, changing voting laws, just general trying to fix democracy.
Stuff for Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hey, if that's what you want to do with your time, I guess you know what we saying. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But you know, I guess he's got ideas. So welcome to your show.
It's Josh.
Hey, Josh, what a great entire My voice cracked on, Josh, but you are defectually welcome, Josh.
Yeah, thanks, good to see you, guys. I'm sorry I didn't bring a song. I didn't know I was supposed to bring a song.
It's okay, okay, that's how we started set. That's level setting energetically. So now you come you're coming in in a deficit and now energy is up here. Oh yeah, yeah you got you got a lot of josh you guys. It was like it was inspiring, It was inspired. Thank you, thank you.
Oh yeah.
Anyway, nothing else happening this week. What are you gonna do for Halloween? Yeah, let's just talk about moodang, just.
Talk only about Halloween.
Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe a little a little bit we can, but we have to if we have to.
Yeah, were you're in Massachusetts and you said that you are familiar with some Wu tang saying Wu tang yard signs that I wasn't aware of.
Oh yeah, presidents are temporary, Wu tang is forever.
I like that.
So don't vote, right, Is that basically what we're saying.
I'm not sure that's the message.
Yeah right.
I think it's like the American version of keep calming care right.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh it's wild because I'm seeing versions that are definitely done in the Maga style, which I guess makes sense that you some people would have like a visceral reaction to that font and be like and they're like oh good, yeah, yeah, yeah, good to.
I feel like that that trick is not that fun. Like when somebody has a mega hat that like doesn't actually say mega, it says.
Like, made you look dude, Yeah, the major look guy.
Yeah Yeah, all right, Josh, We're thrilled to have you here. We are going to talk about some things that ail our democracy for again for some reason, like unfamiliar with any reason this would be topical in any way.
But before we.
Get to that, we do like to ask our guests, what is something from your search history that's revealing about.
Who you are?
Okay, so who I am? I don't know about you guys, but like sometimes I feel like I have to be right about things. I know, it's a rarety, it's not couldn't be me, but let's let's proceed. So maybe one of these people who's guilty of like getting into it with somebody debating, debating, debating, and they be like, fine, let's just google it.
Yeah yeah right.
The most recent one was I used the term fungible in a sentence and I was talking to my mom my moms buying a house, and we were talking about how money is fungible and.
Like capable of turning into a mushroom fungible.
Yeah yeah, oh I thought those are the psilocybin based kids lunch packs that oscar fungible. Yeah, fungibles. Yeah, hey, send your eight year old on an existential trip with fungibles. Wait, so that means I only know what I mean, I don't know. I mean I know it in terms of a non fungible token, because that's where my money's at in NFTs mushroom tokens. Yeah no, no, just just just really cool stuff with like Wu Tang albums as an NFT. I'm I'm upside down.
Oh yeah, that's exactly right. Like that's what the term means. It's like you can non fungible means you can't swap it for anything else. Fungible just means two things that can be swapped. When my mom was looking at me like I had two heads using the term fungible, and I was like, Mom, I know, I know what this word means. I just learned it a few years ago from another friend, and so I googled it and I was correct, and I nailed it, and I just nailed the definition. It was awesome.
Oh wow, that's a good feeling. Yeah, that is impressive.
You know what fungible meant.
Only because a friend who works in finance told me a few years Yeah, tell me what this word means.
That you Jack for all that, Yeah, for other people you know that work in finance. Jack, I'm surprised you don't. You don't have fungibility on the brain.
Yeah, I do again, because I take a lot of mushrooms.
Just stopped it. Stopped it fun.
I'm a fun guy. My six year old's favorite joke right now.
That's one of the best.
Because I'm a fun guy.
I have that on T shirt.
Yeah, that's a good one. What is something that you think is underrated?
Huh? This will make people not understand who I true am. But the tater tots at Burger King Okay, I'm like, I'm like an organic food guy, farm grown, eat healthy all the time. Tater tots at Burger King are They're only available in the morning. They're like the breakfast food and yeah, just they're underrated. I don't know what else to say. Like they're so crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. Get yourself some.
Miles.
I told you if he brought up, how did they? Okay, So when we're talking tots. Are they They're just like little guys.
Right, Like are they little discs?
They're like little ye little Yeah, they're little tots. But the thing is, we all spend all of our time talking about French fries, right the French far wars, doing all the different pastors. Personally, I'm like handcut fries or nothing, right, like it has to be fresh handcut fries. But something about BK tater tots, they're just like they're perfect. They're like perfect, They're perfect.
I'd say I spend seventy percent of my time talking about French fries. But I'm a pretty well rounded individual, so I talked about other stuff thirty percent. I guess my kids dad, but I've never had these. How do they compare to the McDonald's hash.
Brown Those are floppy? I'm gonna say that right now.
McDonald's hash browns are floppy. I get a lot of flop. I'm you know, I like a floppy fried thing. But there they could be more. I mean they're not as, they're not as consistent. I was worst case scenario. I'd say they're fly. They can be crispy, like they can get a nice crisped up like just anything you rub them on turns translucent.
Oh yeah, like the Simpsons episode where Homer had to gain all the weight.
Yeah yeah, and that they rubbed it on the wall and then see a bird crash into it.
Yeah.
Hey, don't they sell me out when I'm stealing Simpson's jokes. Sorry, I feel like everyone who likes the Simpsons loves that picture that moment. Yeah yeah, probably picturing that moment too.
Wait, so what is it? Yeah? What is it about it?
It's like they're so they do the greasy thing, for sure, Yeah, yeah, for sure. But you get a little bag of just these perfect little I'm showing with my hands. People can't say it, but it's like a perfect little golden nugget and the outside is so hard and crispy, and as soon as you crunch it, the inside is just fluff.
Wow.
It's like a nyuki wrapped in crunch.
Oh my god.
I mean I'm telling you that I'm not overselling this there.
I just there's not a Burger King near me. I feel like our burger kings on the way out like a feeling. Yeah, yeah, thank you. The burger King's still king headlining. Yeah exactly, But okay, now now I'm on the look for that.
Like before ten thirty or something. I know, I know it's I'm.
Never up before ten thirty.
I feel like we should pick ten foods that are you know, mass produced chain restaurant foods, and then like praying food like culinary reviewers, and like just bring them before that, like put BK tater Tots before. Oh yeah, some high end food reviewer and just like see what they actually think. You know, Yeah, they're gonna be all They're gonna all be high flaluting about it.
They don't know about the real ship.
I don't know. I think the Burger King Tot would hold up in any five star restaurant.
Yeah. I wonder like if there are.
No look you asked for something under rated.
Yeah no, this is perfect because it's a total blind spot when it comes.
To b K, like just completely out of context. I feel like the perfect bloomin onion or you know whatever the chili rip off of that is could wow the right person, Like presentationally, it's impressive. Sure, sure, sure it's I feel I feel like sometimes when when I'm eating at Chili's or out back, I feel like I'm having fine cuisine or I like to pretend I am what is, Josh, something you think is overrated?
I'm all tired of tough guys, like the tough guy routine.
Yeah, came to the right show, Josh.
I've been thinking about this for a long like a long time. I'm forty six now, and it's taken me many many years to realize that, Like, you actually don't have to be an asshole to get ahead in life. And the more successful people I meet who are just like wonderful individuals taking care of the people around them, being great leaders. I just I keep meeting people who are that personality type and they're hugely successful, right, and they're not like crushing other people to get.
There, right.
I just I'm all about it. I think it's overrated to play the tough guy routine.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. I feel like also too, Like in entertainment a lot of the time too, Like on a production level, the people who have that sort of like ethos or they're like I'm easy to work with, I support other people I work with, like I'm not toxic, typically do very well. Also, like you, I feel like people should strive for one of those things where you go, oh them, they're the nice. They're the best fucking person I've ever met. Yeah.
I love working with that person. Oh my god, it's so good. Yeah, why would you not want to be that?
Yeah, versus like the other thing. It's like he made me carry a ten gallon water jug above my head for forty minutes because I missed. I misquoted the Simpsons in front of him, and immediately he.
Threw a phone at me, and then when he missed, he had another phone hand pity also threw at me. Is that bezos? I think that was silver? Isn't that someone's Yeah, someone's act someone that actual?
Yeah?
Through is this like a no no, I cry for help? I don't know. I'm just checking.
Hey, you know, just ain't nothing broke here, ain't nothing to fix. I think this criticism of tough guys is overrated. You want to know what's over ray?
Oh we got a tough guy over here? Oh right?
You. I think it's overrated to get things done, get the most e Yeah.
Do you think it's a generational thing though? Too? Like I feel like because in my working experience, I've worked for these like tough guy, asshole type people who like somehow really making rows to the tops. No, no, no, not all, but like I mean like sort of in that sense where the experiences we have like coming up, we sort of that evolves us into the way we treat people as we sort of move ahead in our
own careers. And I feel like, just generally speaking there, I feel like a lot of workplaces do have a shift where people are a little more like, Yeah, I worked with some pretty fucked up people, so now I just want to make sure that I have like a more chill, nice environment for everyone I work with, because that's typically how people do a better job, rather than being like totally stressed out all the time.
Yeah. I mean that's what every new expert who's been studying this stuff for their whole lifetime finds. What I've seen, though, is the narratives that are around about like who's the most successful people and what are the models? And how do you make a ton of money? Sure, it's it's typically not like, do you know who the CEO of Target Corporation is?
Right right?
Like that's an incredibly successful business. I don't know their name offhand. They're not making themselves famous by writing books and being all flashy and saying crazy things on the Internet. They're just running the business, taking care of their employees, doing a good job. Yeah, and like, those are the stories that I think would be interesting to hear, rather than the sort of tough guy hero narrative, you know, which is also like clearly people are successful with that.
Oh yeah, I mean I once dispatched a puppy because it was so unruly. And now I'm not actually going to be vice president.
Although instead of keeping that is a dark secret that I never tell anybody but a therapist who I really trust, I'm going to put it in my memoir so that people think I'm a good leader.
Oh my god.
It's a Christynome reference for listeners who don't who aren't up on Christian Nome I do. It does feel like the because I hear this about Amazon, for instance, people who work at Amazon like grow own people crying in the office. He's so dope to work there, tears of joy because of and not like lucky.
So I'm not talking about the people who.
Are like on have bracelets that monitor their pulse and like won't allow them to go to the bathroom. Like at the executive level, you hear about things being difficult. Steve Jobs apparently very difficult to work for. So it's feels like there's a lot of like the bad is still is still out there and I do yeah, I don't know, probably too right.
It's just like, yeah, I think it's just the easiest way. Most people just think I can motivate people by screaming at them or threatening their lively. Yeah, like and that is the easiest way. It's not effective, but sure you could be like, oh if you don't like that's what Steve Jobs would do is like make this fucking thing this small. They're like that's physically impossible. They're like, then I will fire you until I find the people that can like Okay, well, moment one moment and I.
Mean when they pulled it off right, yeah exactly. They didn't pull it off right, So you're like that didn't work. Whereas the other part that takes a little bit of like nuance and understanding human emotion and emotional intelligence is like, how can I motivate people in a way that isn't just like a fucking.
Put you to the sword you want to die? And it's like, yeah, yeah, maybe that's not the best verson.
I worked for one of those who is like super tough guy over email only, and like you'd be in the next room over from him and he would send the wildest, meanest ship and then you just walk into his office and be like, Hey, read your last email, and you'd be.
Like, Hey, what's up.
How's it going?
Oh?
No, you know, And that's how you knew he was tough and a good leader.
Yeah, because he was a key solid head games though, right exactly.
Yeah, you sent that anyways, you know, water under the bridge?
Yeah, all right, anyway, protect your fucking neck, loser. What was that? Nothing? Nothing, a great day.
It's almost like what I also wonder how much of it is people getting to the top by acting that way, and how much of it is once you get to the top end accountability is removed you start acting that way.
That's a great question. I was thinking about this in terms of like just tying back to the Wu Tang jokes earlier. I was thinking about this in terms of the like nineteen twenty year olds that were coming up in early hip hop when I was a kid. Yeah, like they're all grown men with babies, and like you see Snoop on TV at the Olympics having the best time ever and then you go back and listen to his albums from when he was nineteen years old, which.
Was on trial for murder. I remember as.
Right, But like that was a path and they all got off of it once they got their success because they were like, I don't want to do this anymore. So I don't know, I don't know what the answer is with that, but it's definitely it's definitely been on my mind, right, Like that was a crazy life they were living.
Yeah, the kind of gentle person you see before you today. And mister Miles Gray once.
Come on, come.
On, choked, choke somebody out for leaving Anger.
They thought it was They thought they were tough for leaving Anger, the Anger Management movie. They thought they were tough.
And so my parents were My parents marriage was exploding upon re entry before my very teenage eyes.
So I didn't have the best emotional outlets. I'm a different man now.
Yeah, And I'm just saying this is an underdog tail.
Yeah, yeah it is. I turned it around, folks, I turned it around. Yep. I do love that.
You said, Oh, so you're a tough guy.
I don't know you excuse.
Him of thinking he was tough for leaving the movie Anger Management early.
That he didn't like a movie wrong with I don't know, I just I mean, he's.
Still pretty mad at him for leaving the movie early. To be honest, Josh, you asked the right question. That is the right follow up question. Wait, so what's wrong with Anger Management?
Well?
Yeah, yeah, I just I just I don't know why. I just that is disrespect.
This feels like this is like the the meta thing about this story is that it was anchor management exactly. Has never seen the movie?
Ever seen it? I won't because it's just what if it's like bad? And I'm just sobbing, like what And this is the moment in which I too would have locked out at the theater. Yeah, he was.
All right, let's take a quick break. We'll come back and we will talk about finance reform in politics and what's all those money doing in there.
We'll be right back and we're back.
We're back, and all right, so we want to talk about how money operates in politics these days, in particular with we did just remember over the break that the elections coming that was the thing. Besides Halloween, there is a presidential and many other elections coming up.
Voting in a week. Are you going to vote, dude?
I mean I I think I've proudly said that I'm undecided, still making up my mind. I don't even know if I want to get out there, but I guess I will. It seems seems pretty grim out there.
Yeah, you gotta vote, guys.
Man Josh said, all right, come, all right now, Yeah, we are kidding. I I do just find it funny the idea that there are still people who are undecided.
It's really wild, right it is.
I think people who are willing or unwilling to reveal their terrible biases to a certain Maybe.
They just really like public opinion polls, and so there, Yeah, I'm undecided.
And the New York Times will obliged. They will fly to your house, throw you a viewing party for the late debate, and then ask you, huh so tough choice between and to have the person be like, yeah, I still didn't hear enough. I'm not sure what what you didn't hear enough racism? But there is Trump to be all right, But so one of the goals of this episode. I've heard so many billionaires getting involved in this race.
I really want to like Schoolhouse Rock. This shit like help us understand how one million dollars in billionaire's bank account, or let's go one hundred million dollars make it more realistic in a billionaire's bank account goes from numbers in account to us not having more effective plans to address climate you know, like.
What, how exactly is that working? Right? Because most people, the most of us, we hear like, oh, this bill like they're getting in the race to the tune of X million dollars, and I think most people like it sort of stops just like okay, so that'll be used for like ads, probably because airtime is expensive, but it it manifests in a myriad of other ways. So how how should we how does it manifest in those other ways? Aside from obviously, I think the most visible stuff are like the ads that you.
See right and the ads. So let's just back up to like what they're actually trying to do, which is convince people to vote one way, one way or the other for one candidate or another. That's ultimately what the race is about. And the way that that gets done is ads tell you the story, but also flyers getting mailed to your house, people knocking on your door, ads
that chase you around the internet. Content that gets created, I don't know if you get a fundraising emails and emails on your phone, all that text messaging, all of that costs money, right, Like that's all right now, it's me too, I'm blowing up. Biden texted me last night.
Yeah, I have one from maybe Nancy Pelosi. It's I feel like that, thanks Siri, Yeah, maybe.
And so yeah, let's it's just like, let's go through the how it actually works, right, So who's running those ads? Who's paying for all that stuff? You've got the DNC and the RNC, the Democratic Committee and the Republican Committee that are supporting the candidates. You have the candidates campaigns themselves, so like Harris has a campaign, Trump has a campaign.
And then there's all these things we call independent expenditures, which are people in groups who are organizing outside the party apparatus to spend money on campaigns, and those are known as political action committees or packs. And so you can have a pack, or then there's a super pack, which is basically the same thing with no spending limits at all. It's just a different denomination. And the only thing with super packs is they're supposed to be totally
separate from the campaign. But like, if you've got a pack called the Maga pack, we all know who they're supporting. There's no actual separation, right right, And so these people are raising and spending tons of money and then running their own ads and doing their own mailers and their own door knocks to get out support for that.
Candidate mega pack is Donald Trump. I just googled that.
Sorry, I just wanted to.
I'm glad you checked it out. Are you an undecided voter?
So I'm a low information undecided voter.
I should clarified that, I think. Dude, Mac Yeah, okay, maybe not this one. Oh that's him. That's Trump. Yeah, I knew it.
I knew I Like, I just had to google to make sure.
But so this all fits, I think, because like we also hear about like dark money spending, Like there's all this dark money that goes into our elections and things like that, a lot most of it in the form of like you know, nonprofits that have like opaque donor lists. So you're like, I think I know who's I don't. I don't. I actually don't know, but there's they have
a lot of money. What is like you know, I think looking at them, not even just this race specifically, just generally, I think we've we've gone from like Obama and eight sort of being like, oh, you know, public public funds might be good to be like who am I kidding?
Man?
These like you're gonna get destroyed if you're not taking like this like huge, these huge sums of money from outside groups. What's been kind of like evolution, I know, like obviously Citizens United is a is a Supreme Court decision we talk about a lot because it's like, hey, yeah, you the corporation have the same rights as a person to spend as much money on a race. But what what's kind of like we're was it ever in a
good space or does is it truly that? I feel like since my time in politics that was really like when it just went completely bonkers when you know you're ordained by the highest court in the land to be like, yeah, man, just let it rip with your dollars however you want.
And you said that those two are not unrelated, you being in politics and things just going from bonkers.
I think you said off, Mike, I was smoking on that super pack.
Yeah you were loud of loud, yeah, yeah, I did turn my hat backwards and skateboard into frame to say, yeah.
Force pierced your own ear. Yeah, that's cool, that's good. I'm sorry, gosh, But actual question.
Let's just talk about how much it really is. We're talking about five point one billion dollars this year, be a billion with a B going into these super packs getting spent on the elections. And you kind of lost me with the.
Has it ever has it ever been good or less bad?
Oh? Yeah, right, like it's just been different bad. If you go way back in American history, right, like we all know the stories of the smoke filled rooms and like and that's yeah, that's how politics used to happen. And then yeah, that's exactly smoke filled rooms twenty twelve Citizens United happens. And it takes us from the era of packs. So people being able to get together and spend some money on politics with regulation saying there's a
limit to how much you can spend. So they just ripped the roof right off of it, so it became unlimited and all billions and billions of dollars start flowing in. And the problem is we the American people can't see where candidates are getting their funding from so like it could be coming from overseas, it could be coming from
people with bad intentions. We know a lot of it comes from a big industry here in the US that's trying to stop regulation from moving, and so they create these big packs and they basically like let's say I was a lobbyist and I was like, hey, Myles, I know you're running for office, and I think it's great that you do. But I've got one hundred million dollars
in a pack. Great, And I know you got this candidate Jack who's running against you, who might be a little bit you know, you might be a little bit cooler with what we need to have done. And so what do you hundred million smoking?
Oh dude, I love whatever you're doing.
Man.
I love crypto, I love gasoline, I love plastics, microplastics. So dude, i'm your guy. I'm your guy.
What about an NFT made of fossil fuels. I'm just saying, like, no, but you said the Supreme Court ripped the roof right off of it. That actually sounded really cool, but it's bad what they did. Yeah, ripping the roof right off Because I do that sometimes to a party and when I do it, it's kind of cool.
But yeah, I bet it is. Yeah, yeah, all right.
Yeah, but you're not taking American democracy down with you. Oh let's just go back. That was twenty twelve, right, and we say, okay, forget it. There's no more rules about money in politics. And since then, we've seen the two parties move further and further apart, which means that big money has more control over these two parties that run everything. We've seen the American people get more and more disillusioned with the political system, like we all just
kind of take for granted. Now they're like, oh, the whole thing is bought, Like it's all bought, sold and paid for, and so like they're never going to do anything for me. And then we see studies from major universities that actually underscore the same point, which is like, yep,
the political system doesn't work for you regular Americans. And I think if you tie a line back to twenty twelve, from twenty twelve to January sixth of twenty twenty one, you kind of think, like, well, if people are that disconnected and that angry and that correct that the whole thing has been bought and sold, it's no surprise, they're going to show up being really angry at the Capitol, Like we've turned it into a breeding ground for that kind of behavior.
Right, because it's all like it feels, it's like an illusion. People are like, but I thought, this is I'm my the outcomes I'm looking for will be achieved through this quote unquote political process. But all I'm seeing is like an exacerbation of all the things that make my life more difficult. And the people that are being enriched look nothing like I will. My life looks nothing like the way theirs look. Yeah, and I feel like that just
turns into apathy or anger or whatever. And more and more people just you know, I think we all understand it is Uh, it's frustrating to see that, but absolutely think there's no rules.
The people that have the money to make a hundred million dollar donations, they are doing just fine. They've been doing just fine since twenty twelve. They're getting more and more and more share of the economy going to them, and meanwhile regular Americans are getting completely left behind. And right now, neither party is stepping up to fix it.
I mean, there's a clear difference between the parties. Obviously, we were joking around before, but like clear difference in the two parties, and nobody seems to have the balls to act, actually step up and deal with the problems with the political system when they're in power. Otherwise you know, maybe like maybe Obama would have done it when he had power in both houses in the first term, but like they didn't get done.
Because the other part is like the FEC. Also, it's I remember at that time when Obama was in office, like there was a chance to maybe put more competent or people who are more dedicated to enforcing campaigns finance laws, like as commissioners at that FC, and that just kind of came and went, and yeah, that's where you kind of I think, and that's where it becomes easier to see like, well, what are the differences because at the end of the day, like they're all sort of both
both parties are beholden to playing this sort of game of like, well, I also have to answer to like corporate benefactors, which we've now just kind of we're taking the mask off.
That's kind of what's going on. They it's all about money. They have the money. What am I going to do?
Swear off that money?
And they completely blown out like in an ad war or something because I just don't have the funds to compete. And it's yeah, now we're at this place where we're I guess at.
The bottom already. Can we get more bottom? We can always get more of the bottom.
Yeah, we can go Bottomer, Yeah.
Sure, Yeah, it's so.
Yeah, the signal is no longer like the idea of a democracy is signal goes from people to the politicians or the institutions that can actually do something about the will of the people. And that stopped happening like kind of completely in the.
Last Yeah, I don't want you guys to get like totally blown up on the internet. So we're going to talk about the democracy versus republic thing before say we're not a democracy, we're a republic. We are a republic that is also a democracy, and it's just worth saying that. And so yeah, yes, what you said, Like, we're supposed to be able to vote for representatives in our republic who're supposed to do the will of the people, but
they don't. They do the will of special interests and the people that are funding those super PACs and the people that are funding their campaigns that's who they have to work for.
Yeah, if you if you think about it, like the the body politics and metaphor of like a body the signal not getting from the eyes to the brain that moves things, because like that would be a disorder, that person would be in trouble or they would be really high off that lab pack.
All right, I'm just I'm picturing somebody like involuntarily punching themselves in the face. Yeah, yeah, it feels like the metaphor you're going for it, Yes.
Exactly, because they're that super peck of lab Okay, Yeah, you said something in our last conversation that kind of put a lot of this into perspective. Just when I hear dark money, I never really thought about the fact it's only dark to us, like we don't know where the money comes from. But the politicians know that. That's just like so like they have to do the extra work to keep us from knowing who is funding their campaigns. That's just totally so inherently sinister.
You know, if you think about the motivations of somebody who's giving a hundred million dollar donation, it might be because they have a worldview and they really want to support it like it might be just totally all good, right, Like I want to see war rights for this group or that group, and I'm just gonna give a ton
of money to support it. The other scenario is that they're piling up all this money and they're making a phone call to a political consultant or to a politician and saying, hey, I got this giant pile of money that's about to go to either you or your opponent, and we're going to make sure that if you don't support the thing I care about, then you're going to.
Lose, right.
And it's that that's so sinister, right, And it's exactly what's happening with with all this stuff. It's it's folks who are spending shit tons of money to make sure that they have political power that is over the power of the voters. It's terrible.
Yeah, I mean, like, what are some examples that people that kind of go over people's heads and how like I think most people are like, yeah, they put money behind a candidate and then this person they get to office, they're able to find a way to make sure that that donation didn't go completely unheard, that that results in
legislation that's favorable to them. I think that's like one easy way to think about it, But like, what are some other ways that, you know, just just to kind of for people to fully understand outside of just sort of like these very easy to understand examples, Like what are the more nuanced ways that this is completely completely like perverting the process.
Yeah. So in twenty fourteen, Princeton and Northeastern University did a study together and they looked at eighteen hundred public opinion polls over the course of twenty years to find out whether or not the laws that Congress pass actually represent the will of the people. And when they plotted all of their data for average American income earners, they found that when zero percent of average Americans want something, there's about a thirty percent chance that Congress is going
to pass that law about that thing. And they also found that if one hundred percent of Americans want something, there's a thirty percent chance that Congress is going to do it. That's the key takeaways. Yeah, it's like it's not good, No, it's not great. No matter what the American people want, there's about a third percent chance that Congress passes a law. In other words, we have near zero statistically near zero impact on public policy. We the
American people. They ran the same data for special interests and wealthy donors and all of that, and they found
that those groups actually do have influence. And then when you think about it practically, like there's all sorts of issues that Americans really do agree on that are just like common sense solutions to stuff that we care about, whether it's whether it's background checks or abortion or like, there's lots of really difficult issues that Americans want solutions on, right but the only way that we end up talking
about it is it's this incredibly wild, divisive way. And that goes right back to the It goes right back to the money in politics, because they have so much more power when we're all talking about the extremes rather than common sense solutions.
Yeah, were there were just a there's been some moments in the Biden administration where it felt like he was like, yeah, man, I want to Jeck, but like I just my hands are tied, where it felt like he wasn't talking specifically about Congress.
But it was like if they said he wasn't talking specifically to me, Jack to.
Me, I know, I know that was confusing but Jack and Mac and I feel like that is kind of what he's referring, like when you're a politician, like you're stepping into this system where you are beholden to these like massive moneyed interest groups and you know, the stuff that he was able to get passed, for instance, with regards to like pushing back on just tech monopolies and
the power of the tech industry. I was reading this New Yorker profile of like billionaires who are donating to Trump's campaign, and like it's there are some of these traditionally Democrat donors who like switched over because they're like, well, we just can't live like what Biden has done in this administration is like unconscionable as just like he's like trying to regulate, you know, completely unregulated tech power. So yeah, it just it feels like like it's pretty clear how
it works. I guess we just don't hear the specifics of it, like on a day to day basis. It feels like it's one of those things that like in the mainstream media, they won't just be like, yeah, now all that money's going to Trump. Because there was pushback against like tech oligarchs in during the Biden administration, you know.
Totally the first time ever. This year, the crypto industry is the largest super pac industry. Like their crypto companies are giving more to politics than any other group, two hundred and four million dollars going into the campaign, right, and uh yeah, yeah, it goes back to the same thing.
It's like they don't sure, I guess they don't want to be regulated, but like, isn't it the government's job to do what's in the best interest of all the people and not just like those that have already made a ton of money off the system that we have.
Yeah, and so well, and I think because that's like all roads lead to well, it's it's just the the just obscene influence of money that creates this sort of like legislative gridlock too, like to a you know, a much more extreme extent, because like to your point, whenever people are like E when politics like, well it's not that easy, what they're saying is like, well, in this game, if I step out of line, that special interest group they come in and they primary me and put someone
else up to race in the race against me that will be much better funded than me, and then I will lose my seat, and because I want to be the most popular person in my state, I have to
do whatever it takes to stay in office. And so it's really not so much about what you want, but like half of making it seem like I'm acting out the will of the voter in my constituents and the other half making sure I damn sure do not cross these donors, because that's really that that's that's who causes the most damage because they they can actually influence the voters more than the voters can influence me.
And look, if you want to get anything done, you have to be in power right right, And the only way to stay empower is to fundraise. The New York Times did this awesome expos recently where they interviewed a bunch of members of Congress who are on their way out, so they're retiring this year or whatever, and one of them talked about, in order to get a bill put forward, you have to be on a committee, right otherwise you
can't even move a bill. And in order to be on the committee, you have to hit your fundraising goals for the quarter, which is some ridiculous amount two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or something. But in order to be the person who decides whether or not the bill makes it to the floor of Congress, you have to be the chair of that committee, which is an even higher fundraising goal. And so when we talk about like the system is designed to stop good people from getting
good things done, it's that kind of thing. It's like, right, no matter how well intentioned you are, you're gonna have to go fundraised from special interest in order to get anything done.
Right.
And if that's who you have to fundraise from, and then you cross them, you're cutting off your source of power. Right, and we fix this problem, it's just gonna keep getting worse.
Okay, so there's a fix. No, it sounds like we're fucked. I think the episode's over a well, okay, so I we we just cut there. Josh told us that there might actually be a solution. So we're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back and we're gonna hear what what could possibly be done about the way this system operates.
Will be right back.
And we're back. Yeah, I don't know.
We we talked a lot about the difficulty that we have as Americans imagining things any like having a political imagination for a different future, like I can't. I was alive for when and McCain Fine Gold was a thing
and people were like, oh, that's a good bill. That kind of made John like it is one of the things that made John McCain's name, because he like made campaign finance reform a big sort of bipartisan issue of like getting money out and even I now like looking at the way things currently operate as we have this like presidential election where fucking Elon Musk is like one of the main players, Like, it's hard for me to even imagine like how we back out of this, But yeah,
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that.
I think the first thing is you got to remember that the folks who founded this country weren't given permission by anyone else, right, Like, the founders of the country were some young folks with a vision who wanted to see things differently than they were, and they had a whole entire revolution about it. So it's deeply embedded in our history that we change the system to make it
work better. And what that could mean now is changing the rules of the system so that if you're a lobbyist for instance, maybe you can't bundle millions of dollars to give to a politician to ask them to pass a law anymore. That's a thing that we could pass today. You could pass laws to end jerrymandering today, so that you don't have politicians drawing their own voting districts, you have voters drawing voting districts so that they're fair and equal.
All of these things would help put power back in the hands of the people. And when we talk about like what are the reforms that would actually change the system, it doesn't need to be through the federal government where everything is totally stuck. We can do it state by state because elections are run in the states, not federally
according to the Constitution. And if you go state by state and pass laws making it putting campaign finance limits in place, making it so lobbyists can't give guests to politicians, so that ethics and transparency are baked into the law, you really move the needle. And then if you really want to fix things, you implement public funding systems for elections, which means that the funding for elections comes out of tax payer dollars instead of coming from super packs and billionaires.
Anybody can run for office by talking to their neighbors, by making a strong case, and by qualifying to get to get public funding. And that's totally affordable. It would cost something like one percent or point sorry, point one percent of the military budget, the military budgetal one point one percent. We could have clean elections across the entire.
And that's seventy trillion dollars point one percent of the military budget. Right, that's it's ridiculous, no, right, because that's also too it also means that there's a level playing field. It's like, well, if everyone is using the same these these same sort of fixed funds, you can't then be like and then I can call in a strategic airstrike from a pack to then like take me over the edge. It's like no, no, no, this is this is the budget.
This is what you get. Now make it work based on your you know, the merits of your candidacy.
Right, not instead of whether or not you're you know, best buddies with some billionaire who you went to Princeton with. Right,
that's yeah, it's like level playing field. Or you can consider it like free market capitalism, where nobody has a true leg up and it's actually the best ideas when and who's going to do the most for the people and who can get the most popular support, and then they get into office and they actually have an incentive to do the things they said they were going to do instead of getting into office and then fundraising more.
Right, and being beholden to people who paid for them to get into.
Office one hundred percent.
Yeah, I mean, and surely these common sense solutions you're talking about, but like, did you take those from science fiction books? You're certainly stealing those, not from other real countries or our own history, right, those are just made up solutions that you dream made them ups.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I also dreamed up one hundred and eighty victories in the last twelve years for the groups of people that have been working on passing these laws across the country. And so, like all kidding aside, this year, there are twenty one ballot initiatives across the country that are designed to make government work better for the people. And so in states across the country, people are going to be voting on some of these reforms.
And this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about before, where like you get it on the ballot, you get it organized, you get it on the ballot, and you win, and then you've changed the laws in your state. And when you have enough people organized and willing to fight for it, we can change this stuff and we can win.
Yeah. I think that's really important, like an important point because I think we look at the the broader consequences of money in politics. You're like, you just can't get anything done. The rich control everything, which yeah, no, that's true. But rather than thinking that there is this like this other bill or something we have to pass federally, it's like all of the pressure of their influence sort of leans on the idea that it is legal to do this.
So the best weapon against that is just to kick that leg out, which is to say you aren't able to spend unlimited sums of money. It's very it's we're cleaning this whole thing up, and very quickly that influence wanes because if you have no other weight, I mean, maybe they'll be clever and they'll be like, hey, you gotta you want some NFTs on the side because I can't give you money or whatever. But either way that we and just address a huge, huge pain point in
the system. Which is this one specific thing. And to your point, it's not something we need to wait for, like for a federal election to decide or a presidential election decide. This is the person that can help do away with it all. It's like, if we're an organized enough at the state level, this is a much more effective way to really take to take that sort of that that you know, this, uh, this, what's the word I'm looking for, this pestilence off of the table.
I'm glad to use the word pestilence because it's.
One of my favorite magic the gathering cards. Pestilence. Z. How are those ballot initiatives performing.
We'll see on November fifth, they are there.
You're not riding the polar coaster.
You know, the polar coaster. I've never heard that before. Like, we know if they're super popular with voters, super popular with voters. When you talk to voters about what these things do, even like ranked choice voting, open primaries, fixing, jerrymandering, voters love it. It's just a question of whether or not we can get enough information into their hands to
make these choices. And then on the money and politics stuff, It's like these ballot initiatives usually win with huge margins, and so all the money in politics related ones, I'm not worried about it at all. Some of the others will be tighter, but like it's democracy, it's messy. Sometimes you have to go to bad a couple of times before you win.
Yeah, is the I a home run every time? Go ahead months.
I'm going to say, like, I know, like you know, for probably people that listen to this show, it's really easy to be like, yeah, no, shit, we don't want, you know, corporations and billionaires to have like you know,
just unlimited influence through their money on political races. And I know, like sometimes when you hear conservatives talk about like the billionaire boogeyman as like George Soros or some nonsense like that, But it's also interesting to know that, like it does have real bipartisan support, so they're not I don't know if they're nessarily looking at the same way to be like, yeah, look at all the power
Elon Musk has. But there I think, but some people are able to relate that their own pain and suffering is somehow connected to the billionaire class too.
Totally, and like it's not just that the solutions are bipartisan. It's the problem is bipartisan. Two right, there's no there's no question that candidates on both sides are beholden to packs and super PACs in the billionaire class and special interests. I will underscore I don't think this is a both sides kind of thing, where like both sides are equally bad and both sides are doing exactly the same thing
about it. I think it's clear that like voters should be able to make a decision about who's going to do the right thing for democracy, so to speak. Right now, without me getting into any specific candidates, there's some pretty clear differences there, but.
It would be helpful if you could just give me the answer because I'm still no.
I think you got it.
I think it's Wu tang Jack Wu tang is for the children.
Yeah, write it in.
But like if you look at the top ten super donors, they come from both sides of the aisle. Sure like our friends over at Open Secrets did this. They follow it all the time. We did a big study with them this year. The money is coming from both sides to buy influence on both sides. That is true. It is also true that voters on both sides understand the problem and want it fixed, Like, of course we do.
We just we know that we want it fixed. I think where it falls off is that people don't often believe that it's fixable, which is just a myth that we have to get over, and then we get stuck in this part is in battle where conservatives are like, I don't know, changing the rules. We should leave things the way they are, it's tradition, and liberals are like,
throw the whole thing out, like let's start over. Let's like we have to get common sense about it, and it's really easy to do, like if you actually look at the policies that we're talking about moving here, if you're a lobbyist, you shouldn't be able to give donations to a politician. That's common sense. And so it's just about being you were joking around about like low education voters.
If we could all just be a little bit more educated, like read the ballot packet when it comes home, take a little time, learn about what you're voting on, and get it done. I think there's a much better chance.
Yeah, I guess my and I and I do think. I just want to say on the record, I think the corporate influence is bad, but what happens to the entire lobbying industry if oh, I know, and all the people that lose their job, I mean, they're going to have to go to some other kind of consulting gig on the Capitol Hill. And I'm just worried about those people. And I'm worried about them, and I just, you know,
what their constituency that I come from, K Street. I come from K Street and I want to let them know I'm still thinking about your baby.
That's good. I feel like maybe what the lobbyist state is a lobbyist to help them protect their interests.
Oh my god, that sounds like a trillion dollar industry.
Does that exist? Oh my god. I think I just set you guys up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lobby the last episode of the show, being Lobbyist for the lobbying and lobby for y'all.
Friends of ours made a great video a few years ago. It's exactly. It's like these poor, sad sack lobbyists that nobody is looking out for. And it's got like Sarah macglachlin music in the background. You know, it's like, adopt a lobbyist kind of thing right, Like, they're like, I had to fly commercial to Davos this year. You know how humiliating that is. Exactly I had to fly through Frankfurt. Okay, oh my god, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it.
Just before you go, another danger that comes up in your work, it's foreign influences.
Can you talk about just what the fact.
That foreign influences are are able to participate in American democracy? Like, what are the theoretical or even real problems.
That we've seen as a result of that. Yeah, let's start with the theoretical. Let's just say that you had a super pack, and because it was a superpack and you had unlimited secret dark money where nobody could really see where it was coming from or where it was going.
It sounds like it's on the up and up to me.
But yeah, sounds good to you. But that's because you're obviously a Russian plant. Thanks clearly, Yeah, there'd be nothing stopping you from taking international money. And so when we look at where these super PACs get their funding from, of course some of it's going to be foreign, Like there's no rules saying that it can't be it's just unlimited money and it comes from wherever, and there's no trace ability. Like that's in and of itself a problem,
and then we get into the real practical things. This is actually one of the solutions. The state of Maine this past year passed a law saying that any corporate entity that was more than I think it's five percent foreign owned was no longer allowed to make any contributions to candidates or ballot initiatives in the state of Maine. So they passed this law, and as a result, the next cycle, there was eighty percent less money going into
ballot initiatives in Maine. And when we looked at why, it's because Maine had a ballot initiative that was about main citizens' ability to choose how they make their electricity, like home rule over electricity, and all of the outside money that had been coming in was of course coming in from multinational oil and gas companies that wanted to use main as they passed through for pipelines, and so it just it's like exactly the problem, right, Like you
want citizens to not have all that foreign influence but instead be able to just vote. They're conscious of whether or not they think something's a good idea without folks from Canada or Russia or wherever trying to sway our elections.
And also it feels like that will pull better to be like you can't have foreign corporations, you know, like we don't like to board. Yeah yeah, at least at starting point, you know, like get a foothold, and then people see, oh shit, that like changed the way this election runs. Set up a bunch of American shell companies.
I guess I don't think you have to be like xenophobic to think that it's bad for foreign governments to be meddling in our elections, right right, Like that's just that goes down to like the sovereignty of a nation. We need to be able to protect our own elections and run them our way without foreign influence running ads telling us who to vote for in our state, our own country. That's sketchy.
I get it, I got it, man. So Canada is what is the main problem? I think we can all agree.
I think so yeah mostly Trudeau, Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, and that's Trudeau. That's Trudeau and that though sorry sorry I had to it was right there like.
That one, Joshlyn, such a pleasure having you on the daily zeitgeist? Where can people find you? Follow you find out more about what you guys are doing.
So you can find represent us at www dot represent dot us. We're on all the social media. Is that at represent us and you can find me at at Joshua g.
Lynn, should I have called the organization represent dot us instead of represent us?
That's a great question. No, No, we're called represent us, but the U r L is represent.
Dot In a panic, he was texting me the whole time and the rest you do.
Not hear anything I said this whole time.
Jo, Yeah, that was sick, dude. You see, like down with the Super Bowl and all that.
Man, I.
Know, shadowy Green Bay Packers, dude, man, Big Brett Farm fans over here. So yeah, anyways.
Great, And Josh, is there a work of media that you've been enjoying?
Is there a work of media that I've been into?
Yeah, tweet?
You know something on so she needs yeh as we call it you and I.
Is there something I've been enjoying lately? I don't know. I consume a lot of media, but my my thing is like I'm always trying to figure out if I can write a tweet that will go viral and they never do. Oh so, yeah, but here's what, Like, there's one that I wrote recently that I thought was pretty clever. Can I read it out loud?
Yeah?
Please?
Yeah. Whenever I'm worried that I'm not paying enough attention to the details, I remember that X also known as Twitter, still uses Twitter blue on all their buttons, which I just don't understand, Like, get rid of that, and that Google hasn't updated the buttons when you go to save
your Gmail settings, there's still these like nineteen nineties buttons. Yeah, every time I see that, I'm like, how are these massive companies with like super talking about tough guys Like, yeah, where's the where's the macho tough guys saying like hey go fix that button or you're fired. Nobody's doing it.
The tough guys are gone, They're gone.
It's a good reminder.
Yeah, where have all the tough gangs?
Gang? Let's help that. Let's let's get that viral. Let's get that one viral. Where have all the tough guys? Go? Is what I just said.
That's how the English language works, miles. Where can people find you as their working media? You've been in Twitter Instagram at Miles of Gray. If you like the NBA, Jack and I talked that on the basketball podcast Miles.
And Jack on Moosty's an official NBA product.
Also, if you want to hear me talk about ninety day Fiance, I do that on four to twenty Day Fiance. U.
There are a couple of things that I like. One is apparently there's a Jimmy John sandwich that's just a gigantic pickle as the bread. It looks it's a Halloween and tell me this. I don't know, it can't be real, but anyway, but the quote tweet is from Autumn at Fall Sunday that just saying this is some of y'all thinking you get bread whole time you in a pickle.
Wow, that's right there. That's poetry. And then another one at Cerial Burrito tweeted, God never seen San Francisco this bad spider webs completely covering entire businesses, skeletons just strewn about sidewalks in every neighborhood. Things have to change. I mean, truly, could be a Fox News like, how have they not
done that yet? Zombies walking the street? I do just want to shout out super producer Victor, who was silent throughout the entirety of this episode, talking about, you know, the ways that our democracy is being torn down around us, brick by brick, and then show that Jimmy John's pickle sandwich entered the chat to say, what the fuck.
What the fuck not the all kinds of other stuff about outside spending. No, no, no, what the fuck are they doing? Jimmy yeah or John?
All right, Victor, we see where your parties are a right places. Yeah, in the right places. Emo Normy tweeted Hawk boo ah spook on that thing. Haha, just a little something I came up with. Happy Halloween guy.
Welcome man.
You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien. You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and a website, Daily zeikes dot com, where we post our episodes and our footnote link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy, Miles, is there a song that we think people might enjoy?
Yes, man, just the our artistic evolution of the artist McGee mk dot g ee really like the last album that he put out, it was called two Star and the Dream Police. And he has a new single that just came out last week called Rockman and it's really dope if you like like his the guitar pedals he's using is really cool. Like he has his very own
unique sound. But this track kind of reminds me it's sort of like put the Police, not the blaw Enforcement, like the sting Band, with like the harmonies and just like kind of the vocal melodies and stuff. So if you're a fan of the sting Led Police, you'll probably like this track called Rockman by Nicky And this is some modern stuff and it's good, So put this in your speakers and enjoy. All right, We will.
Link off to that in the foot note. For today is the production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio ap Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That is gonna do it for us this morning, back this afternoon though, to tell you what is trending, and we'll touch y' all.
Then bye bye,