Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The Weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza. Uh yeah, So, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. Anyways, Miles gear thrilled to be joined in our third and fourth seats by the co hosts of the wonderful podcast that you must go listen to right now, the future
of our former democracy. They are the executive director and the director of Policy and Outreach, respectively, for the racial justice organization More Equitable Democracy. Please welcome George Chung and Colin call Hey, welcome, Yay, hey guys.
Thanks. So m know, we like lights. We like to keep the lights.
We have invited you into just a blank white space. We record in heavy avoid the hea then the white void of old Mac versus PC commercials.
Or what was the one? What isn't in Willy Wonka? Where are they at when they go into that all white space in the TV? I think, Oh, that's in the TV, inside the TV. Yeah, inside the TV.
Colin Cole a k A Mike TV.
Oh you're Mike TV. Yeah.
I've always been a little bit of uh whatever the guy is who gets sucked into the tube myself.
The yeah as ye something, come on, nail it, come on, I'll come to you Germany.
I mix it up, my brain is and there it is shadow to super producer Victor bringing it.
Yeah, liked the group a little too much.
Maybe someone say that is a movie I recently watched with my children, and it has like thirty really good minutes and it is just coasting off of our memory of the thirty really good minutes and oh really Yeah, there's a lot of it that's just like uh huh, all right, Like after they leave the Big Candy World and go on the boat ride, it does kind of grind to a halt a little bit. There's other moments, but like they are fleeting and that's just my opinion.
Shame. I just remember always hating when he got all mad at Charlie. I was like, dude, what you're supposed to be cool with? Yeah? Like, and as a kid, I didn't know what to make sense of that character's experience. I'm like, dude, this guy's an asshole. Let's just turn this off. I thought you turn it off. You never saw the end. Yeah, it's like what an asshole? Did you see?
A hum?
Yeah?
Yep, George Colin, thank you so much for joining us from the Great Northwest. Yes, you guys are in Seattle, Is that correct?
Ye? Just keep going and take a past reading. Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep on. It is it called the five up there or it's high five up here? Just five? Yeah, it's in l A. Nobody else the words highways. The importance of being the five, Yeah, yeah, I mean, but it is an important interstate. You know, we love our folks. That's why the ten also deserves respect,
going from sea to shining Sea. Oh right, they're all given the the I think in l A and l A. I've never heard here what the history is of our inability to just I guess because we always I want to speak differently than other people.
It's a remnant of surfer culture.
Yeah right, yeah, take one dude over to the four h five. They cast the one to eighteen over hit Meat up in Granada Hills. But yeah, anyway, that's probably not as important as about then what we're about to talk about today, but I still wanted to mention.
That, Yeah, what is something from your search history?
I was so when I.
When they sent this question over to me, I was like, oh lord, let me not go back and look at incognito mode. But I am going to go right now to my phone, and.
Wow, we're getting the live results. The results are coming as we speak, Miles and Adulter.
And I feel like, you know, there's always this divide with what you search. It's like the default browser on my iPhone is Safari, so I think my first search has come there, but my favorite saves tabs are in Chrome. So my third fourth wave searches lived there, right right right, But we're going to start with my recent Safari Google searches.
How do I? Okay, I googled roche fort cheese. There you go.
Oh.
I was talking in another podcast this morning about one of these far right conspiracy theories about some people on the right saying that Biden has been slow on hurricane response because he's been at his beach house sunning his testicles. So that led me to google the time that Tucker Carlson was pushing testical tanning on his show. So my last real Google were the three words Tucker Carlson testicles, Yes, fantastic and how are we How are the results what we don't want to go down that bell.
You don't want to go down that Now that is surprising to me.
It just kind of outlines how this dude was like fully crazy and like two years ago he was telling people to sun their testicles to up their testosterone, and he had someone called a bromo therapist on or something to talk about all this stuff just kook science.
Romeopathy or something like that. Yes, yes, yes, bromeopathy. Yeah. Yeah.
There's a Vanity Fair headline that reads, Tucker Carlson Colon tan your balls if you want to be a real man.
Wow. Wow.
And while we're here, And I can say this because I'm gay, so I can be offensive to straight men who on the what straight man in the world has taken how to be a man lesson from Tucker fucking Carlson.
The most Yeah, the most misguided. I think. Hold on, now, what did tuckles Tucker say? It's like, I guess, do I keep my bow tie? Yeah? When I tann my balls? Because I remember, wasn't there someone like around like at the start of the lockdown someone was talking about like sunning your butthole too, and like your taint was like.
That was the thing also then for a while when of Paltrow was like, stick this jade egg up your Yeah.
And then jas some nony sunning as well on the side, if I'm not mistaken.
And for a second there was nony steaming, right And I know this because years ago when that was a trend. I was like, oh, they can't keep this from the man. So I went to a spot in LA that did the vaginal steaming in all earnestness. I went with my former partner and I was like, well, can you do it for us too? And they were mad that I would even ask. I was like, well steamline too, alas they wouldn't steam me why. It's probably for the best. It's just for vagins.
But I mean, like, is the technolo I mean what I'm picturing just maybe someone having like a garment steamer like under.
And then like a barber shop like cape that you put like around your waist, right right, right?
Okay, well yeah, hey for the one day I'll find out. Yeah, if you're being discriminated, just get yourself a garment steamer or maybe a humidifier. We legally cannot give this advice, yep, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh. Anyway, check out my live stream on Saturday morning. But don't do what I do. Do as I say, not as I do.
That's also Gwyneth. If you need a male volunteer as tribute. Yeah, I like your Gwyneth. I think you're cool. I volunteer to be steamed.
It does suggest that the people who are doing the steaming are like in it for the wrong reasons, Like why are they discriminating between you know, right, hmmm.
Because if because I'd imagine right, like if are they saying like that you just won't get the benefits from it? You're like, well, what if I just want to feel the steam up there? Or they're just like oh that you know what was happening? I get it and I understand this response.
They were just like, why is a man even trying to get up in there?
It's for women?
And is as as well intentioned as I was going to that storefront? They probably were like, is this guy pranking us right right?
Trying to get it? Yeah? Yeah, you did have an entire YouTube video crew with you.
I had James o'keefehind me yeah, wearing a yeah's.
Hey Chris, yes, what's something you think is underrated? Thank you? Host?
Of the Daily Guys, Jack O'Brien, I think that something underrated is the movie Devil at Your Heels. It's a documentary I've mentioned, i think before, on the show many many years ago.
Maybe early references.
Yes, it's one of my favorite things, and it's it turns out it's almost impossible to make someone watch a documentary. You can tell them about it over, you can tell them about it over. You can make it your life's mission to use every breath in your body to tell people about this movie Devil at your Heels, and no one.
Will watch it, no matter what. I love that as a truism of that human experience. No matter how much you fucking love a documentary, it is almost impossible to get somebody to watch a doctor. I feel like the only way I've done it is to be like, it's gonna fuck you up. There's such a twist in it. I feel like the only time I've gotten people to watch the documentary was that one about like the tickle tournaments. Oh yeah, yeah, it started one way and then goes
yeah another way. Every other time I talk about it's true like they're like, oh yeah, I chuck it out.
Well, what makes me mad is American Cinema Tech in LA Like, somebody just showed it. They just showed Double at Your Heels, the only the only print in the world.
They showed it in l A.
And like my friend Seth, who I've told about, who's directing a documentary about me ding and it's done, it's done. I will I'll mention that. Maybe I'll mention that'll be underrated so or overrated, so overrated will be like not knowing about that documentary or something.
So yeah, I see what I did, so I.
Do it every time. So cool, so cool. So anyway, The Table at Your Heels is just a great movie about a guy who's like a dreamer and he's trying to jump a car over the Saint Lawrence Seaway, which is like a half mile to a mile wide, and he is so damn genuine and earnest that he manages to get the ramp built and he sort of gets it to happen in a roundabout way. But there's a twist in the movie too, and the movie also includes
Why He's Bounded Down's main characters named Kenny Powers. Because Kenny Powers is without a doubt that the reference to this movie, which is Kenny Powers is the guy who ends up jumping the car. But the way that we end up with that is like so neat. But also I'm just hoping on this show, you guys will see it, and now that American cinema tech has gotten on board whatever, you guys will all be like, oh my gosh, they'll smoke pipes and talk about it and I'm so mad ya.
So Seth finally went and saw it when it was in LA and he's like that documentary it was incredible, and I was like, you know what, fuck you.
Like, I feel like I can't watch this now, Like there's no win win for no at this point. I watch it now, you're gonna be like, yeah, exactly, No, you.
Need this show.
This is a perfect vehicle. So let's roll the very beginning. It's just it's it's a Connecticut. It's a Connecticut. It's a I'm from Connecticut. It's a Canadian Broadcasting Company, so it's public domain. It's a great great resource. Also Canadian Canadian Broadcasting Company posts all their great stuff. I just want to show people the ramp and I feel like then people will.
Be on board. People will sooner stand Yeah, as soon as do you see when you see? Yeah, do you see how reckless we were? But are you guys the best? Here we go? Sorry? Got it? No, I didn't know if without further ado the ad the show is the ADU. Many apologies to you.
Welcome to the Canadian Broadcasting Company podcast.
Yes Here we Go. I love that logo National Film Board of Canada. Okay, wow, that's a poorly built ramp.
Is Now that doesn't get you interested in watching a documentary?
I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry.
You try and jump that body of water with yes on what in a Lincoln Continental with wings on it? And he gets pretty damn far and he gets a lot of experts on board with him. He gets someone to put the wings on the car. He gets this expert guy to say that he's like, well, I don't know how he can do it, but once he's up there, these wings will work. He can steer in the air. I don't see how he's gonna get up there, but these.
Will work if he does.
I mean what he's like, I don't This whole thing sounds unlikely to me. But if he does get up in the air and he is cruising, he will be able to move the car with these wings.
Wow.
So it's like, also he can't swim what Ken Carter can't swim?
So the guy is getting jump across a fucking river. Do you know what. I'm sure you've seen the documentary. What is that distance exactly he has to go across? Its supposed to be a half mile mile or something.
Yeah, yeah, it's impossible to Well, he's planning on going six hundred miles an hour off the Rimp, but.
He has jet car.
It's a jet car, and it does go like two hundred and ninety miles an hour off the Rimp and when it eventually goes, but that's not nearly enough to get to cruising altitude, it turns out.
So he never gets.
But anyway, it's a great it's a and Ken Carter is just awesome. He he's he's like a grade school dropout or like a high school maybe he says fourth grade by I think in Canada that meets something else. So I think it's like maybe he dropped out of high school.
I don't know what. He's like year four or something.
He's really confident and for no reason, he calls himself a healthy specimen when he's broken every bone in his body.
He's just great.
He says, I'm a healthy specimen standing on the threshold of life. He's like forty two and has broken every bone in his body. I just love. It's inspirational.
All right, here we go. And then God, this guy the full goatees, curly hair possibly, and this man is a lovely man.
This guy is a lovely man. He's insane. But this he's about to tell you all in me what I'm like. He admits what what the quest for fame is all about? But he doesn't he says something so earth shatteringly honest right here. But it's just amazing.
Anyway, an jump, Oh no, no, this is the guy who tries to jump it and this is ken like lung quest. It has been to try and jump.
Yeah, and he does other I mean he's been also doing stunts along the way, but he wants this big monster stunt because he wants to be the greatest daredevil of all time. And right before this clip, Evil Canevel comes out and checks out. They were going to broadcast this on Wide World of Sports, but then they decided not to because they thought he was gonna die. So documentary. Evil cans in this documentary and he comes and assesses
the jump and talks to Ken, and Ken's thrilled. You know, Ken, he was a relentless human being, and he had two personalities that he talks about. He's like, there's Ken Polachak and then there's Ken Carter, because his real name is Ken Poulachak. He's like, Ken Polachak is the one who says, maybe you shouldn't do this jump, maybe it's not a good idea. But then Ken Carter says, what are you talking about, you pussy.
So it's like a very very there's so much inside you are two wolves. Both of them have pretty normal last names. Yeah, Ken Carter a cooler.
Name, so funny what you called Ken jump or something?
Yeah, this is on fame, he said, this is him.
Yeah, he's gonna talk about why he jumps. And it turns out this is why you do stand up, why you play music, why you I mean, it's just amazing.
Some work harder at something, Some sacrifices are a little more than others, so therefore they deserve more. You know, if it's money, if it's glory, no matter what it may be. I always said when I first started, I always I said it's money. Years and years went by, I knew, I knew that wasn't it. I then begin It's challenge. It's it's all a challenge. It's a challenge, and it's a starvation for popularity, is what it is.
You have just been liked by three more people in high school. I love it, you know, I just love it.
And he throws that in you always like at first I thought it was money, you know, yeah, and then then then I thought it was the challenge. But then I realized that ain't and that it's challenge and a starvation for popularity.
Moving along, I just love that.
I want to start doing that everything I do. When I get if I ever get interviewed about everything anything, I'm just gonna be like, listen, it's a starvation for popularity.
Primary. I also like to paint, Like, yeah, I like to paint.
A van interview with Van Goh, yeah, I like to paint. But I also I'm also starved and popularity.
Fucking dying over here, man like me already. Yeah.
So that just was like, we're amazingly honest, right right right. He's an endearing guy because I.
Invested and I'm like, I just want to go to the part where he jumps the fucking car, but well it's so pop. Yeah. Yeah.
It's like there's a corporate guy who comes in and tries to make him jump when the rams not ready. I'm and he's like, I don't want to die.
You know.
He's like, I don't want to die. The rams not ready, and he's like, yeah it is. I think it's going to smooth out once you get up to speed. And once you get up to.
Speed, it smooth out.
And this guy who says it's going to smooth out, who's trying to kill Ken Carter because the money men are like, get him to fucking jump the car. We got film rolling and this is costing his money because there's a production crew to shoot it. And they were from Hollywood for real. They were like came in from Hollywood. They kept saying in the documentary, these Hollywood guys, and they were like the Hollywood guys were like listen, man, we're burning daylight.
Get him to jump the car.
And so there's all this intrigue and then there's just like yeah, things like that, like uh, and there's also tons of people misusing metaphors and old sayings and stuff like that guy right before you know, he'll say like they're like you think Ken can do this, and he's like, well, a man's got to bite off a hunk and fight it till he can.
You know, Like he uses a lot of dot dot there's a ton.
Of like there's a ton of misused sayings in it.
You got to fight that hunk. You a bit off? Yeah, what is something that you think is overrated?
I think independence is overrated. I'm like really anti being independent these days. I don't think you should be codependent, but I think there's this sweet spot called interdependence where like you let yourself depend on other people they depend on you, but you also go out and have your own life. And I think that, like especially American culture is just like no, you must be able to do everything on your own and that's just like not not nice and often not feasible.
So I'm anti.
Independence, sure, sure, sure not.
According to this little declaration of independence that I keep on me at all times, we need a declaration of interdependence. If interdependence, yeah, yeah, belong to a club, they have friends, Yeah, you just have We just have trouble asking for help, you know what I mean.
That's like where the independence mindset comes in. It's like I don't need help do this. Where that's to your point, Like, that's the most fulfilling part of having relationships with people is that you can be like I need help and then you have people like Hi, can I help you? And you're like, wow, this is this is cool. I don't have to bootstrap my way out of this narrowble depression when that person shows up. I'm just smoking a
cigarette sand the person next to me. Who's this guy who's beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it, creep? I need help, man, I help you get the fuck out the fuck out of here. Whoa look at this creep? What do you think? I mean? Like, are is that sort of like the main like or how how do you sort of make sense of your of embracing interdependence versus independence?
I think yeah, it's that balance of like actually accepting the help and then also like being comfortable relying on somebody. Right, So, as we talked about before we started recording, my mom passed away like to a half weeks ago, and it was horrible, and she died from a very rare awful disease called CJD, but like so many people showed up for us and helped, and like my sister's friends were like taking care of her children, like my friends were
like doing stuff for me in Los Angeles. Like it was just like a period of time where like we just like actively needed help and then to like realize that people not only could do that, but like wanted to do that. There were even times were like I didn't necessarily need someone to do something, but I could tell that they would just want to do.
Something, so factly, yeah, like you have garbage you need taken out, I'll fucking come throw your garbage out and bring some whatever.
Yeah, like literally, yeah, And so I think it just like really, I mean, it was something I'd obviously already been thinking a lot about, you know, having this whole book on marriage coming out and been researching you know, marriage for the last few years, but just just like really, you know, solidified for me that like none of this is really worth it if we don't have people in our lives that we care about and connect with and show up for.
Yeah, and at a like Zeitgey's news level. I mean, as we're recording this Hurricane Milton is a few hours away from making landfall. But I mean we talked about yesterday that, wow, the mainstream media wants to focus on, you know, looting and acts of violence that happened in the wake of these hurricanes. Like really the overwhelming account that you get from these sorts of disasters is like
other people helping one another. But like you said, like we're in a disaster and a really difficult moment, like people show up for one another. It's just like when it's at this level of like abstraction of you know, institutions, that things start to.
Get fucked up.
But yeah, and just like with the way society is built, like you can't just like go get a regular job and then buy yourself the house the way that you used to and or like that some people were able to, and so now there's this like I don't know, there's just like this weirdness around like depending on your parents or depending on like your extended family, but you have to like a lot of times like that's the best option.
And I think that like we've built so much guilt around that when like in reality, like it's like a privilege to be able to maybe depend on your parents, even though you grew up thinking by thirty five, I shouldn't have to anymore.
Right, yeaheah, for sure. Yeah, we need the system is fucked. We need the help, so take it. Yeah, people want to give it. If you can to give the help, if you can to, yes, if somebody is definitely willing to accept it, usually all right.
Let's uh, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll talk about somebody who took some help from her father in law. We'll be right back, and we're back. And this is the time of year where everybody there's a lot of nervous energy. People want to
know what's going on with the election. This is when you start getting the stories about the store that sells merch from both Like I think it was like t shirts from both from both campaigns, and every year, whoever they sell the most of or like cups they sell, whoever they sell the most cups from, ends up winning. Like people are just looking for any story that will tell them who's going to win the election, and the reality is absolutely nobody knows.
Yeah, I mean, I think, well the thing is too there's also this thing that the right is doing in the build up to this election, right, there's like constant alarmism from conservatives or it's like illegal voting, especially when you're looking at things like Mike Rogers, who's running for the Senate in Michigan. He may have illegally voted by claiming an address of like a place that was uninhabitable. That's another news story that you know will probably develop
over you know that coming weeks or not. But they're also like, you know, it's about seating this idea of the narrative that this this election has already been won by Republicans in their supporter's mind, so if they begin to contest things, they sort of the framing is there to be like what the fuck they stole it from us. But it's the anecdotal stuff that you hear a lot of, like like you're saying, Jack, like they'll be pople Like I was just with nine thousand black cops and they
are all voting for Donald Trump. They just told me this is going to be a huge win. I was with forty two cricket farmers and they said they they went from Biden to Trump. This thing's in the bag. Like okay, I mean I did this the other day.
I don't know if we ended up talking about it on Mike, but I talked to you Miles where I was like, I just saw this TikTok.
Oh.
Yeah, I was interviewing people at an Arizona State Fair and everyone was saying.
Trump, We're fucked, you know, like Jack, come on, it's over, man, Oh my god, it's fuck. So Laura Trump was recently on Laura Ingram Show. And if you know Lara Trump, she is the wife of Eric the Lesser and she also got her hands dirty with a bit of anecdotal forecasting. And I just want to play this because this is a very this again. Oh man, hold on to your butts. If true, true, it's over. If true, pack your bag your escape plan. Yeah, please pack your bags up for Canadia.
If true. So here she is talking about the secret sauce and the tea leaves she's been reading out there in America.
No one buys that Kamala Harris has the capability to do that job. And polls like that I think are absolutely ridiculous. I get slipped beverage napkins every time I get on an airplane saying we can't wait to vote for Trump. Go Trump Trump twenty twenty four, or people just coming up to me these days, were everywhere I go saying how excited they are to get out and vote and vote early when you go vote for Donald Trump?
Oh wow, oh wow wow. Every time she boards a plane, are sliding her airplane napkins just before they put the beverage on top of it.
Here's where the story falls apart. Yeah, nobody, nobody carries pens anymore. No, no one has the ability to write on your napkin anymore.
Why are they using the same communication method that people who are being held hostage used to alert authorities that they're like, are refilled? Help me? Also, every every plane you're on, like maybe because maybe because you're flying on private planes specifically chartered by the fucking campaign? Is that what? Or are you flying commercial all the time. I don't know. I'm just from what I understand, I believe that they're
flying on you know, campaign chartered aircraft. But that's okay, that works too, and it is it is wild to think it's like someone who would recognize you and would even want to get near you in public would also be a Republican, right again, and that.
You would let anyone get near you in public.
That I also yeah yeah right right right? Did you ever are you guys? Nathan? For you fans? Oh, I love it, love it?
Okay, ken, I figured because I like Cannon. But you know, the episode we're here engineers that whole story that he can tell on late night shows.
Yeah yeah, yeah, So he's not lying, Yeah, he's.
Not lying, but he sets up this elaborate things so that you can say it. I feel like this is what they're doing. They're like hiring people to give them napkins saying they're voting for Trump.
Can you imagine that scenario though too. She's like she board a plane, She's like, do you mind handing me these napkins? My drink quarterer? What just please hand it to me. I'll give you five hundred bucks. Okay, right, here's your napkin. Miss Oh wow? Oh do you see this? It says we're voting early for Oh my god, bless your heart. So that happened and I'm not lying. Is that a way that people communicate with each other, like sending like what in a way that isn't unless they're
like in trouble of some sort. I mean, that's like millennial gen X Like that's school note passing was obviously a thing like you know, you would write a long winded remember when you would just communicate in notes in school and you would fill out like a line sheet of paper front to back with Like the thing is man like, I know you asked her to I know you asked for the homecoming, but like the thing is like we had something going before you asked and like
doing all this kind of weird shit that feels like that. Do kids do that? Do they do y'all? Do y'all pass notes? Still? Is that a thing?
Like?
I don't know, I mean, are they on their laptops and they can just yeah, they just like, yeah, electronically.
Text each other? You do. Yeah, I'm revealing my age. Okay, thank you? Forty Super producer Victor said, yeah we texted. Okay, that's fine. I was whatever that eleven Yeah when nine to eleven happened. I was a junior in high school. Okay, so hold that. Yeah that makes sense, that makes sense. But yeah, that the pen thing too, I mean I guess you might have a pen. I'm always like forgetting to pack a pen whatever I travel, I always try and make sure have a pen, and it's international flights.
I've like not had a pen and the flight attendance like don't have pens when you have to like fill out that form, like right.
They probably because they probably get stolen all the time. They're like, yeah, man, these motherfuckers stole on my pens. What do you mean to do?
But again, anyone who recognizes her is probably like a fucking mont blanc wielding Republican piece of shit who's you know, I can imagine that like one person per flight is on board. It is still kind of mind blowing. We'll get into this in like the political donations section.
Let's just move on to that.
But it's wild, like one of the melon people is like full boat one hundred million dollar donation to Trump like that, it does seem like the rich have just openly declared war on all of us.
At the end. Yeah, they're really the fucking worst. It's because they started moving at light speed during the pandemic with all that wealth accumulation, and now they're like, well, this party can't do not pump the brakes on this thing. I'm sorry, Like you know what what I was? It like it went up eighty eight percent or something. Their wealth we talked about some just eighty eight percent. The yeah, billionaire wealth went up eighty eight percent in the past
four years. Like hosts, everybody being like, this is this is an unbelievably huge problem. They have way too much money. Their wealth has gone up eighty eight percent. Yeah, they've just gotten yeah, so like along with this, like right, huge amounts of money affecting political outcomes. Right now, Senate races are tightening in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. And if things go the wrong way, uh, this would potentially give the Republicans a majority in the Senate they haven't had
since twenty sixteen. And if Kamala ends up winning the White House, that would be disastrous for any kind of confirmation process of cabinet positions or judges, because at that point you don't really have control over it in terms of canna have a Republican in our cabinet though, So, yeah.
Say, what do you think about that? I don't think anything good.
I fucking hate it, blowing it so hard, don't move to the right, fucking crazy.
I was so cocon utpilled, like back in the summer, and now I'm just like, oh my god, please let this be over.
Yeah killed, Look it was. It was a brat summer and now we're in the hangover fall and we're moving to the right in every.
Rapidly, rapidly moving to the right, just purely.
Listening to the same Democratic strategists who have fucked the Democratic Party for the past.
You know, don't don't get progressive.
And it's interesting because it's like, in the moment she chose walls, it was like, and now I shall mess everything up.
Now everything else bad?
Yeah quit for whoa whoa a pretty good rollout, and yeah, I will continue to dispat So anyway one race, I think that should be getting a lot of attention, and it is, I think purely because of the Senate math.
But the why I think is important is shared Brown's reelection campaign in Ohio. So he is the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, and that's very, very powerful position when it comes to the financial sector, and he's been a vocal critic of cryptocurrencies and the need for regulation. And it is for this very reason that a crypto pack is spending forty million dollars to unseat him. Forty
million dollars to unseat him. Fair shake which is the industries like Crypto's super Pack, they have raised just over two hundred million dollars this cycle. To put that into perspective, right, the next industry group that comes in second place in terms of money raise, that's coke Industries, you know, we know them, the big dogument They've raised a paltry twenty six million dollars for this cycle, and we're talking one
from million from Crypto. And it's right now, Crypto is accounting for almost half of the corporate spending this election cycle. So their tactics are just to carpet bomb the airwaves with ads. But in some races, like in Shared Brown's race, like it's just NonStop ads and they have nothing to do with Crypto. It's just they're just helping Marino of his opponent. They're just trying to help him win as
much as possible. So, so aside from the airwave stuff, sometimes they don't even have to spend money to get people to bend to their will. They'll just threaten to make it rain on a politician's opponent to get them in line. So the earlier this is from Slate quote earlier this year, Fairshake indicated it would enter the spending arena without announcing which candidate it would support. Soon after.
This is like in the in the Montana race, soon after, vulnerable incumbent Democrat John Tester, who has criticized the industry in the past, voted to pass pro crypto legislation. So their big pet project here is to try and get this crypto friendly legislation passed that in order to sort of gain legitimacy as a financial product and escape the oversight authority of the SEC. And this is again from
the same slight article. In forty two of the primary races where crypto backed super PACs intervened, the crypto sector won its preferred outcome in thirty six. In just two cycles of spending, crypto corporations now ranked second in total election related spending over the past fourteen years the entirety of the Citizens United Era. Okay, they've be just two cycles. It took them to fucking hit like just to get
to second place. They quote they trail only fossil fuel corporations, which have spent one hundred and seventy six million over that same period. And it's not just Republicans that are benefiting. Democrats are also getting hit with cash in other races, if they've been friendly towards these kinds of bills, then they are being rewarded with financial support. But it's clear that Republicans are much more willing to help here, so
therefore they're getting a larger share of these dollars. Yeah, it's just the future is so yeah, Like, if you want to see what the industry, what industries are going to run slash ruin the future, you just have to look at who is donating the most across the board, and the future is going to be so stupid.
Like crypto, I just can't understand it. And at times I'm like, am I just like too old or or are stupid to just understand what the appeal of crypto is? But what if maybe I'm not and it just doesn't really make much sense.
Yeah, I mean I think for those in the beginning, it was very idealistic. We're sort of like, you know, this is a decentralized form of currency that can operate outside of these you know, like the World Bank and these forces of corruptive forces. And now if they're just becoming central entities, it's yeah, so that's gone.
But I think the other they're still being influenced by like the greater markets right right, and go up and down and up and down.
And I think what's interesting here though, too, is because a lot of people have made money in cryptocurrencies. It's more people are trying to get in on it, and now they see it as a way to protect their investor. It's an investment. So now they're now motivated to also vote. Like, let me just play an ad. There's like a thing where they're come there. They have like things like I'm a crypto voter, and that's kind of I'll just play
this so you could understand. This is kind of the messaging to people to understand, like to say, like, we also have numbers out there, and this is how we can sort of get them. We can turn that into votes in an election.
To be an American is to embrace innovation. And that's where blockchain and crypto come into play. Crypto equals innovation, innovation equals jobs. That's why I'm a crypto voter. Don't let anyone else decide your future, make.
A plan to vote.
That's from stand with crypto, which is another pack but again and you and you see this with people that are invested in cryptocurrencies to get this sort of legitimacy as a financial product would be huge for their investments. So now people are incentivized with their own investments to votere s. So it's it's a huge thing. That's why I think big tech is realizing they have a lot of numbers for people that are invested in their platforms or use their platforms that then they can you know,
turn that into a formidable voting block. And yeah, the money being spent is just like will cause it would cause people's eyes to bleed twenty years ago even because yeah, a lot of people are like looking ato, like I've never seen people just put this much money towards just getting one bill passed, and you know, the like to your point, Jack, you can see that other industries are looking at like, oh, you know, we used to just keep like friendly politicians there and give them sort of
bills that they can vote on or whatever. But now just to go whole hog to say we need to get this one thing done and make everyone bend to our will just may become even more so than new normal. I think it was just happening at a smaller rate than what we're seeing.
Yeah, and now with Citizens United, it's just open robbery.
Right, And I think another reason why people always calling for election reforms with this kind of thing, because yeah, it allows someone to just step in and say, I will spend forty million dollars to get you to scare you. Are you ready to now play ball? And yeah, and it again seems to work. Yeah.
Open Secrets did a dive into like who is donating to the Republicans and Democrats this time around? And like I said, one of the Melon pscions is donating one hundred million dollars to Trump the which, by the way, like that that is a great example of like a thing where if you look at how money is being spent, you can see the future, like the money that was spent by these dynastic like these families with dynastic fortunes like the Melons and the Getty's and all those people.
Like since the late seventies, they've just been spending, spending, spending in politics, and the rate of that those types of people have been taxed has gone way way down to like now the average tax rate of the top point zero one percent has fallen by more than half to about thirty percent, while rates for the bottom ninety percent of people have climbed slightly, so they are getting better and better deals and the rest of the world is getting fucked, and so that it makes sense that
that these people are continuing to spend and get trying to get an investment that actually gets you in return.
Yeah, I just I can't even imagine the need for like more than one hundred million dollars, right, No, there is none. Like I'm like, I'm not above one hundred million dollars. I'd love it, I welcome it, but at that point it's like, Okay, well.
Yeah, you won't hear from me anymore. I'm funny, right, I'm chilling. Yeah, I will lay down for a long time.
That's that's probably what I'll do. Yeah, I mean I think that's why it's always just you know, like when you get like these billions of dollars in wealth, you're just like this, there's this isn't sustainable because if it's all about this like explosive growth that that that comes from somewhere else, that comes out of other people's pockets, or rather the inability of other people to fill their own, you know, bank accounts with actual money.
That is needed so I feel like that's the disconnect is people are like, well, why shouldn't people be allowed to make a lot of money, And it's like, well, they are, but there's no way to make that much money and have been ethical throughout the whole process and have like, had every single person working for you been paid fairly and.
You still have that much money.
Yeah, exactly. And it's just a Lena Gomez and she doesn't want to talk about being a billionaire. That's just still so funny to me. She's like, I'd rather not talk about money and being a billionaire. Please just let me be.
Even and give it away and then you don't need to talk about it.
Yeah, that's that's the nine hundred million dollars of it, and we'd be fine with you. The good will these fuckers would generate from just being like, you know what, dude, I only need Like I fuck, I don't even need, Like I think I just need eighty million for the rest of my life. I'm seventy years old. I think I'll be fine with eighty million dollars for the rest of it. I'm giving the rest away. The people would be erecting fucking statues. Yeah, for that kind of thing.
But no, it's more just like how do we protect this, how do we create more loopholes to keep our wealth? And how do we again cozy up to people that are fine watching everything fall apart, but hey, we get to keep our money.
Like Open Secrets has like the just these industry breakdowns and like air transport donated ten point five million dollars to Trump, like real estate ten point four million. But I just like I can't, I can't believe that it's now just like is dope to airlines? Like I didn't dig in deeper, but like, are these like major corporations just like donating.
Yeah, that's Boeing is the large like in that category. Because then within transport there's air transport, there's also airlines, which would be like the deltas of it all, but they also give money. Yeah, like ups, they they're all I mean, because that's just how it is. You have to you have to get in bed so you can get favorable looks when it comes to regulation or you know, not regulating.
Even when one of them one of the options is just like nazis, they're just like no, well, a delta, we believe in everybody gouging. Yeah, yeah, I believe in both price gouging and everybody having a free the freedom to express their beliefs.
Exactly. It's a corporate kleptocracy.
Yeah, well, what's happening with Milton Like the fact that these airlines are literally raising their prices so that people cannot die, and like the government is just like, okay, no.
That's capitalism, baby, Like, yeah, that's capitalism.
I'm hoping that they have the freedom to evacuate and we have the freedom to get rich, right, Just like, at.
What point will people be like, huh, this doesn't make sense, maybe we should change this.
Well, I think that's where I think people know it doesn't make sense, but enough people who have who have like the microphones to sort of shape public discourse, they're not saying it right. Like the American Prospect, I think reached out to a couple of the economists who are like slamming Kamala Harris because she deigned to say, like, it's corporate price gouging that's driving up prices. We need
to get a handle on that. They asked them, like the in light of what's what happened in the aftermath of Hellene and with Milton and price gouging happening, They're like, do you think that this is bad? Now? Like is
do you think this necessitates some kind of intervention? And they kind of were like, well, I mean, you know, kind of like they just we're not very forceful on it, which, you know, I think is pretty revealing because like the their whole perspective is sort of aligning with what a corporation would want to do or you know, what the
free market should be doing. Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll do we'll do the sports section, We'll go to our sports guy for sports updates.
We'll be right back, and we're back, We're back, and so yeah, I just wanted to hear kind of from you guys what your vision is for how that system that is currently a representation a representative democracy, like, how that could take hold in the United States.
Just let me throw one quick historical footnote and I'll turn over to Colin. Actually, their implementation of what Colin will refer to shortly actually started in nineteen twenty one Northern Ireland and as they were partitions Northern Ireland away
from the South, which then became the Irish Free State. Basically, the British said, okay, well, why don't we agree as part of this end of this war with the Irish, that both sides will have some form of power sharing built into their systems because both sides have minorities that they wanted to protect. Northern Ireland gets rid of it as soon as they can, because they see.
The writing on the wall.
They're like, one party control, let's do it. Ireland actually keeps it for a full hundred years, and that's still the system that they use today. So actually in nineteen ninety eight when they actually re implemented it, something that they actually had for about roughly ten years beginning of the nineteen twenties.
So I'll kick over a column well, and we'll come back to the sort of forgotten history question in a moment too. So the system that they use in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is a system of proportional representation, so called because each segment of the population has the power to win their fair share their propoor
in government. So if Irish Republicans who are different from US Republicans, they want to join the Republic of Ireland Irish Republicans or Irish Nationalists win thirty three percent of the vote, they're going to win about one in three seats in parliament. And what you might have it happen is you might have, say, forty percent of the vote go to Irish unionists, folks who like being part of
Great Britain. Maybe forty percent of the vote goes to Irish nationalists, and then another twenty percent of the vote goes to people who say, oh, we don't really care about that, we care about jobs, or we care about housing, and then that ends up being the makeup of your parliament, and in terms of what they could look like in the US, it's interesting. So there are there's a path
to get it here. There's an act that's been introduced in Congress every year since twenty seventeen, the Fair Representation Act, that would just move the US congressional seat system to that system. So instead of electing, you know, instead of Massachusetts electing ten Democrats, they would probably elect six or seven Democrats and three or four Republicans. And instead of you know, Alabama electing all Republicans, they would elect you know, two Republicans and a Democrat or whatever.
Whatever.
The population might be, and you could have these smaller chunks breakthrough. But what's really interesting is that the specific version that they use that is proposed for this bill, that they use in Northern Ireland, it's a form of ranked choice voting, and I say a form of rank choice voting, because a lot of folks might have heard of our CV rankfice voting. But there's a bunch of
different ways to do it. The way they do it in Minneapolis is different than the way to do it in Maine, which is different than the way to do it in New York, which is different than the way.
That they do it in Ireland.
But back in the nineteen tens, twenties, thirties, forties, cities in the US actually used this Irish version of proportional ranked choice voting, cities like New York City, Cincinnati, and Cleveland, Sacramento in California. And you saw again back in the forties, at the height of Jim Crow, well before the Civil Rights movement, you saw black communists from Manhattan get elected to the New York City Council. And that's just sort of it's hard to imagine today, let alone during the Red Scare.
Yeah, and it is. We always talk about the way that these facts that aren't part of the system as currently constructed get just memory hold from history and kind of erased from history. So that's super interesting.
And you said that someone to be like, what is that from a marvel like reality or this is a city council or some shit.
Yeah, like that's real.
That's real in the context of racial justice and equity, like in the US. Like when listening to your show, I was thinking about we had a lot of energy behind that cause in twenty but we it feels like we no longer have the attention of the mainstream Democratic party right now, and you know, having a party that is focused on that cause and is always there even if you know they're not the majority in power, but they're.
Always being represented.
Could like that that's just a thing that I had taken for granted as like impossible, and that that would just be amazing to have that, like you know, there would always be people doing work for racial justice and
equity in the US, like in government. Rhich does not see it's wild that that is such a basic idea, but like it's just yeah, because you think of how like platforms change every year, like the Democrats platform looks completely different now than it is in twenty twenty, Like, well, you know, I think we use too much like political capital to be talking about us to form this go round, So let's put that on the back burner and become fully pro cop this.
Year, because you know, we kind of are a little in our policies can be nebulous at times, and I think that's like it really gets to what really affects voters and makes people so that you just get to
this point where you're totally disaffected. You become ambivalent to the process because you feel like, well, what about all these other real problems And the only way to enter the conversation is this very rigid system where unless you're reading from the same hymnal, your chances of getting elected
aren't really possible. And I think that's really a great way for I think that would help a lot of people also become much more involved, because what we're talking about is something that does give people a fair shake where it's like, no, if you have the numbers, like you can get a seat at the table. That's just it is what it is. And then guess what people will have to have coalition governments where they are going to have to work with you to get the kinds
of majorities you need to achieve certain things. And I think that's super I think rated an underrated thing about it, because I think most people will just go to the factor like, oh, so what you want more Republicans And it's like, well, no, that's really not the case. You just want something you wanted to actually be representative of
what's there. And I feel like it sounds like too And just listening to the show, like we had a moment when we were writing the Constitution where they're like, what if Congress looked like everything we see out there in America? And it's like, and that's like one of those forks in the roads where our destinies like. And we decided it's not that new of a concept, like these are things we've been grappling with since the beginning of this country.
Absolutely, there's a few other things that are kind of
mind blowing. When we talked about Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland, one story that keeps coming up is that whenever we talked to folks on the ground there, they kept saying, you might have some concerns in the US about getting far right parties elected and taking seats in that might freak some people out, but in many ways that's important because in the Northern Ireland experience, they saw that there were people who were shut out of the political system
that they had no alternative but to be violent. And so when you have people win seats their fair share, maybe they win one or two in a city council, and they have to grapple with balancing the budget, closing a hospital, dealing with pensions, then it's harder to be completely anti government when you actually have some power and you have to grapple with some collective decisions that you
just can't just throw rocks at at the house. One other interesting thing that we learned about that kind of blew my mind is how power sharing was taken to the logical extreme in both Ireland and to more so in Northern Ireland. So our winner take all system, we understand it particularly in our electoral system in terms of there can only be one winner when you have one
member per district. But when you think about the winner take all system in terms of legislative governance, we understand like, if you're the majority party, you get to pick all the committee chairs it's like to the winner go the spoils. That seems obvious to us, right right, That's not how neither Ireland nor Northern Ireland does it. If you win forty percent of seats in the Parliament, you win forty percent of committee chairs. They have this process it's called
the Dahunt method, whereby it's like the NFL draft. Your party as like the team gets to pick in a particular order which committee chairs you want. So if you're the first pick, you'll probably get to pick like the Taxation Ways and Means Committee because it's likely the most powerful justice as usually second, something like that, and so you just kind of go down the list in terms
of who deserves the next pick. Added to that logical extreme in terms of Northern Ireland, if once again, if your party is forty percent of the seats in Parliament, you get forty percent of the cabinet seats in government itself, as a way to make sure that everyone has a fair share. There are critiques in terms of sometimes it grinds to a halt because those parties almost never agree on lots of big things, and so sometimes it shuts
the government down, which is its own problem. But the idea that they are committed to power sharing in order for everyone to feel like they have a stake in governance. That's a really key idea that's really missing in our debates here in the US, and it's.
Something that Northern Ireland folks we talked to kept emphasizing that, like, oh, like there's a lot of critiques about power sharing, the specific model we have maybe how many seats, but the elections being proportional, like that's a no brainer. Like no one, no one debates that at all, Like that's obvious.
Yeah right, yeah, I mean Project twenty twenty five. The thing that's scary about it to people is that they're planning to like clear house and just make all the cabinet entirely one thing.
So that that's interesting. I feel like maybe after this next presidential administration there might be more appetate. It could be the last one, folks, but give be the last election.
Not for the reasons he's saying, but oh yeah, well yeah, go ahead, Sorry Miles, I interrupted, Oh.
No, no, no, I was just saying. And also like the visibility, right, because I think, especially in the United States, we have this version of like the amount of extremists there are in the United States, you would think depending on where you're watching news, like outnumber there's seven billion of these people, and it's always interesting to see like when people like are like in in Europe when they're having their elections, you're like, oh, they're far right parties
only got like a fraction of what people thought they
were going to do. And I think that's also helps too for people to understand like, Okay, there is this group of people that exist, but they aren't nearly as large or influential as they would want you to think, which I think also helps people have a little bit of a clear understanding of like truly like what we're dealing with in the country in terms of like who who's sort of like where everyone's ideologies sort of lie, because yeah, I think it's very easy to sort of
obscure that with our media in this country and have people kind of thinking like, oh my god, like what's all happening, Like what are we up against? And yeah, knowing that I think putting being able to quantify that, I think is a big benefit.
And that's part of the risk of a winner take all system is you can have a fringe element, right that wins it all. People forget that. Back in twenty sixteen, if you looked at Poles, most Republicans didn't actually like Donald Trump, but they were split between Chris Christy and Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and John Kasich and Mitt Romney. And Romney wasn't running in twenty sixteen, was he No, He's no, he was not running.
The spirit but anyway, yeah, right, spirit.
Of John Huntsman point is like they were the winner take all system. Lets a fringe element if they win more than others in the primary process or whatever, win everything. The proportional system caps your ceiling at your actual support, so you never have a fringe party take over every chamber of government.
I do want to just go back to this idea that you know, it doesn't say anything about two parties or parties of any sort in the in the Constitution. And yet and like George Washington was like kind of against parties in general. He was just a downer, didn't didn't like to party, but he like America just kind of snapped to a two party system and like kind of keeps going back to a two party system and like staying in this two party system, and so for me.
That's one of my big questions is like, is there just something about America and our at the central lie at the heart of America where it's like we're we are a representative democracy and also the system is completely designed to keep the dispossessed without power, like that's been the deal kind of from day one, Like when you look at the wording of the Constitution and then like
what who those words actually apply to? I'm just I guess that's the big question for me is like how you know in the experience of granted a winner take all primary system, but like the primary system of a progressive and widely popular Bernie Sanders, you know, getting a lot of attention and enthusiasm, and then it just kind of felt like you were always up against this entrenched machine.
I'm just curious how you guys think about the existing kind of inertia and money and power of the system as it currently exists, and how you could potentially see this idea overcoming that over time.
George, can you mind meld with me real quick?
I want to say something. I'm I'm gonna go back to French class. Yes, the name is do verj.
Yes, and I of course know what that means, but the listeners, George and no further questions, all right.
Dou Verge was a French philosopher that basically came up with this theorem or this law that basically said, any winner take all system is going to end up with only two major parties that can contest for power, because when there is like another faction, another party that tries to buy and play within the confines of a winner
take all system, they almost never win. And if you try us several times, you'll have to just give up, because how do you tell people to vote for us if you can never turn their votes into actual seats that is actual political power.
You actually increase the odds that your opponents win, Like if Bernie Sanders runs a viable candidacy, that increases odds Republicans win. So like it just turned the the logical conclusion is only have two candidates.
Yeah, it seems like a bad system almost.
And so you see this playing out in basically the UK and the other former British colonies that have kept this system. In Canada, there's essentially only like the Conservative and the Liberal slash Moderate party that can win ever any election. They only have multiple parties because they have kind of regional politics of like Quebecua separatists that has its own political party. But for the most part nationally they are a two party system because they have the
exact same system that we have. The UK is pretty much the same. You have Labor and then you have the Tories or Conservatives. Sometimes the Liberal Democrats play that kind of in between role, spoiler role, but for the most part, du Verget's law plays out very clearly in all of these systems, and so being able to start with, you know, what is the electoral system that we want
for our society. Is it something that is very simple and that forces a majority even though it doesn't reflect the majority interest or do you want to make sure that you have a minority representation built into our electric And so by picking a proportional system, whichever flavor, because there's definitely variations on a theme, the fact that you will get you know, three, four or five parties means
that there are coalitions. There is kind of like a shifting depending on which issue that different parties can call us and get legislation passed. So there is nothing structural or cultural about the US that pushes us towards a two party stip. It is the system that pushes us awkwardly into these two camps that don't fit us.
And actually there's some really interesting political science. I'll give the very high level. We can put a link in the show notes if you all want, but there's some political science that's been done that shows that effectively, in the US right now, there are six political parties. There's six ideologically consistent and distinct ways of being basically that most people subscribe to, and it's just that they're jammed
into the two parties. Like Alexander Cassio Cortez said a couple of years ago, in any other country on Earth, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same political party.
But in the US we have to be.
And so when you think about like, you know, your Romney Berry Goldwater, John McCain type folks and your evangelical Christians and your like Mago wing of American Nazis, like they don't actually have anything in common politically and on
the same parallels on the left. And so whether or not these six parties emerge or they become distinct factions within the two parties as we have them there's Those are probably the coalitions that we would see emerge if we moved to a proportional multi party system.
I think the other part about this too is like I think at this point, we see that there is a way to do it, It is being done. We've we've dabbled in it in the United States before, but right now, in its current form, it seems like intractable, like this is it's stuck. And I know when we were speaking a little bit earlier before we even recorded, I remember Jack and I were like, well, how do we it? Is it possible? And I felt like you
brought up a few good points. Was to think about a lot of like the major changes we've had in the in the United States across you know, the storied history of this place, the years preceding those changes. It felt like this is going to be how it is forever, and then boom, we have rights, We have universal suffrage, we have civil rights, et cetera. We have marriage equality
in those kinds of things. And I think for a lot of the times too, we're also like the I feel like the de facto way we speak about it in very early kinds of political conversations when you're younger and getting into it is like it feels everything has to happen from the top down, and when you look at the current system, like there's no way these freaks are going to be like, yes, I would like to dilute my power, but it seems like this is the kind of thing where we can create upward pressure from
a more local level, and that is happening in the United States.
We like to make things about personality and like individualism in the US, and so often the answer is actually structural and we don't like to admit that a lot of the times because it doesn't allow for us to be the heroes of our own narrative.
But yeah, so can you sort of just point to some examples of like how this is not just like you know, Cincinnati decades ago, which where things like that were happening, but like even in the year of twenty twenty four, there are there are movements being made that are approaching something like this that could potentially help, you know, drive the conversation on a national level.
Yeah, I'll start, and I'll kick it over to Colin. I think the most exciting thing for folks to watch in the twenty twenty four elections besides the presidential is what happens in Portland, Oregon.
It's on the five.
If you'd go north on the five, you get for the What was really exciting, and this goes to some of the work that we do as an organization More Equitable Democracy. We support people of color led groups on transforming our electoral system in order to advance racial justice, and so our colleagues there were doing a lot of advocacy work in community of color, trying to bring more resources to their communities, and they always hit like this
huge buzz saw their city commission. It was a commission whereby there was no separate executive branch from the legislative branch.
They were one and the same.
They were all elected at large, so you essentially had to win like a congressional race in order to win
a city council seat. At that always favored big moneyed interests, usually of folks who had relationships with developers, and so they understood we did a lot of research to kind of back this up that breaking up that system was important, but that going to the most obvious solution in the American kind of context is to go from all at large to single member districts, just like cut up the city into five equal districts, maybe we'll be able to get two seats out of the five that are responsive
to our community's needs. Those communities of color about twenty five percent of the population in Portland because of a really long anti black history, there is no one particular area that is heavily people of color. There isn't the same type of segregation there is in other cities. And so just drawing those single member districts was not going to solve any of those problems.
Any configurational highlight. Like we said, what if we move from five to seven, to nine to twelve to fifteen city councilors, you just could not do it.
Not possible.
And so that's why we introduced the Irish model to them, and they started to think, okay, well, if we had a larger district where we elected three, maybe we can win one or two of those that are in neighborhoods that we do a lot of organizing. And so what was really exciting was that, And this sounds when I say exciting, this will sound boring.
For just a second.
There was a charter review process.
Please don't fall asleep. This is not exactly Yeah crps baby, that's me all day. We got an air horn in there. When shorter review.
Process ah awesome and so baked into their charter their constitution was this mandatory about once every decade Ish process whereby folks from the community were invited in to kick the tires of their system, their structures of government, and asked to come up with ideas to change it. For ninety nine percent of the time, when local governments do this, it's just window dressing. They don't really mean to invite
people to change things. But to their credit, everyone understood in Portland, this antiquate system that had been designed about a more than a hundred years ago wasn't working. So everyone understood something needed to change. And so the ability for our partners to organize around a process where people were supposed to be invited in to come up with ideas and to really flesh them out, that's what allowed for that deep conversation about what does it mean to
have an election and have everyone represented? How do we integrate or prioritize racial equity within these structures. Can a winner take all system ever be equitable. It's kind of like at odds with one another, and so that's how they came up with this design of essentially the Irish system. They ran a campaign to support the recommendation that came from that city charter review process, and they won fifty
seven forty three. This is the first city that has adopted this form, the first major city that has adopted this electoral system since New York City did in the nineteen thirty So it's been one hundred years of that kind of hidden history that it's been kind of outside of our imagination. Colin, do you want to say any words about like how things are going at this point?
Yeah?
Well, also, a lot of folks might be like, oh, yeah, okay, Portland did it. But like I've seen Portland, Ya, it's crunchy liberal hibbies who demn Kyle McLoughlin is a good mayor.
That's right.
But if you talk to some of the activists and colleagues of ours in Portland, what they would tell you, and I think what like looking at the elections also tell you is that Portland is like most major cities in the US, and that that has not been the people winning elections. The city council has largely been the candidate's most preferred by developers and big business. Like George mentioned, they are all folks from downtown or west of the River,
which is where all the really rich people live. Like the the established political I mean, the political establishment that's entrenched in Portland is the same as it kind of as anywhere. And you know, one in four Portlanders is a person of color. So like, yes, it's pretty white, but it's not. It's not just like a white utopia like people might think it's.
It is.
It is a multi racial community. And if Portland can do it, I actually think anywhere can do it that at least on the city level. Like the four of the five city councilors came out against the reform when it was being considered. The former mayor came out against it, you know, the Chamber of Commerce came out against it, like they were fighting every single established interest that existed, and they still managed to win.
Wow.
And yeah, now they're doing it for the first time that they just like made sample ballots public a few days ago. And there are some other smaller cities in America that are using proportional systems Albany, California, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for their Parks and Recreation Board, and there was one
Detroit suburb that used it for a few years. Because this is a weird story, but basically, the Obama Department of Justice brought a lawsuit that the Trump Department of Justice settled, and so under the Obama case, like, they adopted a proportional system to resolve a Voting Rights Act complaint. But the Trump DOJ said, you only have to use this system twice and then you can go back to the old system that violates the Footing Rights Act. So they don't use it anymore. But it's not just at that.
If I can't get it right and make it permanent after to it back, that's right.
You know, I don't know what we're doing here.
All right, that's gonna do it. For this week's weekly Zeitgeist. Please like and review the show If you like, the show means the world demiles. He needs your validation, folks. I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday.
Bye.