Advisory Opinions - In Chambers

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

David and Sarah talk with Chief Judge David Jones, of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston, about how the court system is handling coronavirus. Is the judge seeing an uptick in bankruptcies? David and Sarah also discuss the future of Bernie Sanders' movement and share an exciting announcement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isger, and we're going to start with something that has nothing to do with coronavirus, which either may seem off topic to you or a relief. But that's what we're going to do. We're going to start by talking about where does the Bernie Sanders movement go? And then

back to coronavirus. We're going to talk with the chief bankruptcy judge from the Southern District of Texas, David Jones. Sarah was, because as we've said consistently, Sarah knows everybody. Sarah was able to secure an interview with him as to how the court systems are handling coronavirus. Is he seeing any upticks in bankruptcy? Why is it that certain businesses are more vulnerable and fragile perhaps than others? So that was a fascinating conversation that we pre-recorded. So we're going to have that. That's going to sound a little bit different in the middle. And then we're going to end with a question about whether hunkering down in the face of coronavirus is contrary in some ways to sort of this essential American restless energy that we have and what that's going to mean for our efforts

to confront the virus. So without further ado, as Sarah, as you say in the non-flagship Dispatch podcast, because this is the flagship, let's dive right in. Let's do it. So Sarah, as I said in the Dispatch podcast, I never thought I'd say these words in my life, but Joe Biden just nuked the Bernie Sanders movement from orbit, Joe Biden. That is not something too many people anticipated. They did not anticipate the route. This was supposed to be the revolution. It is not the revolution. It's turning out more like the barricades in Les Miserables than the American Revolution. I love Les Miserables, so you couldn't have picked a better analogy for me. And so where do they go from here, Sarah?

So I think what's interesting to me is that I certainly thought that the left would have the same movement to the edge as the right had. So there was going to be a leftward response to the Tea Party movement, basically. And that was then Bernie Sanders movement, it made a lot of sense, this hyper progressive, democratic socialist movement. What is most fascinating to me is that it has actually weakened from 2016, it is not getting stronger. And that if you're a progressive right now, you would have been better off probably with Bernie not running again and rely and, you know,

being able to point back to the strength of the 2016 movement and AOC and some of these other elections, because even set aside Bernie for a second, the Bernie backed candidates that were challenging democratic incumbents have also by and large not done well the exception that proves that rule is dan lapinski in illinois this week for sure uh he was incredibly vulnerable he was a pro-life democrat uh who had also voted against Obamacare. I mean, this was like the most conservative Democrat left in the House that they toppled.

But for the most part, those candidates have not been doing well. I find that fascinating. And I think that the turnout numbers we're seeing where Sanders is not just not increasing overall turnout, but his share of his normal base of young people going down. Yeah, that's I don't think anyone predicted that could possibly be the case. No, I don't think so. I didn't predict it. I thought that you would see I was more bullish early on on Joe Biden's chances than than many folks were just because, you know, one of the reasons was we learned from 2016

that these persistent front-running polling numbers and from 2012 and from other races, it's not universally true, but persistent front-running polling numbers often tend to kind of hang in there. They tend to hang in there longer than one might expect. So I thought Biden was going to be strong. I wavered in that view after the first three contests. And then, holy smokes, the Biden comeback did not. I did not see that. I thought this would be if Biden was going to be strong, it was going to be a slugfest. And so I would say on the one hand, the Bernie movement accomplished a lot. And that is, it is true that the mainstream of the Democratic Party on multiple issues has moved to the left. Now, it doesn't seem to have moved to the left as fast and

far as we thought, but I think it has moved to the left in part to the Bernie movement. But a lot of that conventional wisdom about how far it has moved to the left just came crashing and burning in the actual primary. And so I think it does remain to be seen how much to the left did the Democrats actually move. Yeah. So there's this, you know, pundits love talking about the Overton window. Yes. Acceptable range of conversation, things like that. My take on this is that I think that the Republican Party shifted very much to the right since 2009. Since the Tea Party movement really came in full force. And that I think it is hard to argue that the Democratic Party

has symmetrically moved that far to the left as of today, as of looking at Joe Biden. Am I saying that Joe Biden in 2020 is not more liberal than Joe Biden was in any of his previous runs? Of course, he is running on more liberal policies. Yes, the conversations have opened up. A higher minimum wage, Single payer is clearly a conversation that Bernie has pressed. There's, you know, plenty of other issues like that. But is it symmetrical to how far I think the Republican side moved to the right? No, I don't think I do. Well, and also it's really hard to sort of say the Democrats have gone crazy when the nominee of the party is Joe freaking Biden.

I mean, there's just sort of a bottom line to that. Right. You know, there's a bottom line that says, OK, wait a minute. The Democrats just nominated. And of course, the actual formal nomination has not occurred, but it's all but certain. It is all but certain the Democrats have nominated the archetype, the absolute archetype of the establishment candidate to take on Donald Trump in the election. And all across Twitter, you kept seeing these phrases for years. All the Democrats have to do is not be crazy. for years. All the Democrats have to do is not be crazy. Well, nominating Joe Biden, let's put aside for a moment, you know, the questions about age, but nominating Joe Biden is the most not crazy thing they could have done. There's also the issues, and I've mentioned AOC before, but, and it's somewhat unfair. She represents this larger movement. So I don't even really mean her in particular, but she's a nice stand in here.

Highly charismatic, gets a lot of media attention, and is certainly trying to expand that Overton window, quote unquote. Right. Right. But in terms of actual efficacy in the House, Pelosi has largely swatted that group aside as freshmen who she's not that interested in dealing with. Right. Oh, they've been incredibly marginalized. I mean, basically, at this point, if it's not if it weren't for right wing media, nobody would be hearing about the squad. media, nobody would be hearing about the squad. You know, I think Pelosi regrets elevating them in particular so much early on. Remember, she posed for, was it a Rolling Stone cover? I can't remember. It was a National Magazine cover that she posed with the squad, when probably if she had to roll it all back and do it all over again, she'd pose with one of the many more moderate women than one in the suburbs than the squad. And then after they became a problem and after, you know, let's not forget, you know, AOC's

initial and her team's initial ambition was to really revolutionize the Democratic Party from within. And as soon as they started taking aim at some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, that was a no-go. That was a no-go. And so their success at Revolutionary, they have crashed and burned in their effort to try to sort of replicate a Tea Party style primary operation against establishment Democrats? You know, one thing that'll be interesting is the Massachusetts Senate race. So Joe Kennedy is running for Senate in Massachusetts to unseat an incumbent Democrat, Ed Markey, who's very popular. And much to the annoyance of a lot of the Democratic establishment. And I think it reminds me so much of those initial Tea Party taking on incumbent Republicans, the sort of rhino movement, rhino hunting, was that what they were calling it back in the day? Yes.

And that got so much attention now for a variety of reasons trump as president uh a very you know large white house or democratic presidential field i don't think that race has gotten a lot of attention for other reasons but boy it hasn't gotten a lot of attention compared to the rhino hunting days of 2010, 2012. No, no. And there's a really important difference even between this insurgency in Massachusetts and the insurgencies, the Tea Party insurgencies, particularly in 2010. And that is, I'll just sum it up in one word. Well, it's not really even a word. It's a name. one word. Well, it's not really even a word. It's a name. Kennedy. Kennedy. The insurgent is a Kennedy. Okay. Are you kidding me? So I went to law school with Joe, by the way, and it is uncanny how much he can look and sound like his grandfather. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, he might be an insurgency from the left, but particularly in Massachusetts, you don't get a more establishment name than Kennedy.

You might not get a more establishment name in the country, honestly. Oh, that is absolutely the truth. So I have a theory. Yes. And I want to get your expert opinion on my theory. So I have a theory that the right in America is much more vulnerable to populism than the left for this reason. The institutions of the right were either nonexistent or very, very weak. either non-existent or very, very weak. The Republican Party, particularly post-Obama's election, was quite weak. There are not an array of powerful conservative institutions. There's very small numbers of conservative colleges, truly conservative colleges, for example. of conservative colleges, truly conservative colleges, for example. The conservative entertainment or media complex is really concentrated in one entity.

So there wasn't, if the, the establishment such as it existed was just really pretty weak after the Obama victory was kind of on its knees and was ripe for the plucking. Whereas the Democrats, if you look at where do people on the left live and work and make their living, the cultural institutions of the left are really strong and big. So you've got much of the academic establishment. You've got most of the rest of the news media, aside from Fox and these other conservative outlets. You've got pop culture. The institutions there are much more robust. And a populist uprising against those institutions would be much more disruptive of many more people. Let me point out one issue I take with that. Okay. And it's coming on the horizon. It's not here yet.

I don't take any issue with that as of 2020. Okay. But during the eight years of the Obama presidency, they lost a thousand down ballot races to Republicans. Their bench got wiped out. We have not yet fully seen the repercussions of that. And what's going to end up happening to sort of crassly compare it to the one child policy in China. You're about to have a whole generation missing of establishment Democrats with experience. And that's why you saw so many older candidates, I think, in the 2020 Democratic presidential race, because there's a big gap that's coming

up through the generations in the Democratic Party from 2008 to 2016. What that looks like when that gap really hits, I don't think we know yet. Yeah, that's a good point. And just to sort of make it concrete, 2020 is when, say, a superstar governor who was elected in 2010 or, you know, a particularly charismatic senator elected in 2012 or 2014, this would be their time to shine. And while there are some people from very, very blue states like Kamala Harris or Cory Booker, who in theory could have fit that bill for a variety of reasons they didn't, there just weren't many other people. And in a more normal political environment for the Democrats where they weren't so wiped out, you would have had some of these superstars emerging from purple states or from swing states where they would have

had a real opportunity to make a case that they could bring together a coalition that somebody like Kamala Harris from a very, very blue state could not. And yeah, that's... Well, it was the Pete Buttigieg argument from South Bend. It's just that in theory, they should have had a lot more mayors, a lot more Pete Buttigiegs out there. Yes. So if I had to sum up the Sanders movements, if I had to sum up their weaknesses right now, I would begin with, here's one, it's super white. Like the big move to the left in the Democratic Party is highly concentrated amongst white progressives. I mean, super concentrated amongst white progressives. But the demographic future of the Democratic Party is not white. So that's one problem that they have. And in fact, it's one of the fatal flaws

in their electoral calculus. So it's super white. Its standard bearer is 78 years old and just got walloped in an election. There is no real heir apparent at a national level. And AOC, even though she has celebrity, hasn't been around quite long enough and hasn't had a test outside of one race in a deep, deep, deep blue district to establish herself as a national presence. And many national Democrats are kind of running from her as fast as they can. There's some real profound, this brave new socialist future has some real profound hurdles to overcome. Okay, let me give you the flip side of that. Okay. They are one great candidate away. And yep's it's not bernie sanders maybe it's

not aoc the time isn't now but as you saw with donald trump as you saw with barack obama as you saw with bill clinton a lot of movements are one candidate away yeah true enough true enough well shall we leave can i make one quick um b one quick Bernie Sanders dropping out to save public health PSA? Yeah, yeah, yeah, please. I'm all about that. I just have this like pet peeve. And since we're sort of on the Bernie Sanders topic, there's all these people online who are saying Bernie Sanders needs to drop out because coronavirus. And I just want to defend the Sanders campaign for a second. dropout because coronavirus. And I just want to defend the Sanders campaign for a second. Primaries happen regardless of whether Bernie Sanders is in the race and Bernie Sanders dropping out of the race will not cancel a single primary or postpone it. That is up to the governors of

those states to do so and make that decision for public health, not Bernie Sanders. Well, yeah, that is true. Although I would say in fairness to the coronavirus, the anti-coronavirus, anti-Bernie argument, that it is more likely that they'll cancel or postpone if there is no Bernie race. And a lot of these primaries, down-ballot primaries, are much more easily postponed if there is no race between Bernie and Biden. So that would be my... Well, they might be more easily postponed in the sense that there won't be some huge national outcry because it's a local race, but it doesn't make it any more disruptive to that race. Any less disruptive. Yeah.

Right, right. No, I totally understand. And I you may you we were talking before we recorded the dispatch podcast yesterday. And I think that that was that I had been fully on the come on, Bernie. Drop out for public health train and you you derailed my train. Well, my take is if you're a governor and you think that public health is on the line, then postpone the primary. If you don't think public health is on the line, don't postpone the primary. But foisting it off on Bernie Sanders, I think I'm pretty harsh on the Sanders campaign over a lot of things, but this is not their call to make. So I've jumped to a different train. So I was on the come on, Bernie, drop out for public

health to now I'm on. Come on, Bernie, drop out. You lost. I think that's a different. Yeah, very solid ground on that train. I'm not going to argue much with that train. All right. We can wrap we can wrap on the Bernie stuff. All right. So we now we'll move on to the interview we had with the chief judge of the Southern District of the Bankruptcy Court, Federal Bankruptcy Court in Southern District of Texas. A great conversation with David Jones. So we'll pick that up now. Next up, I am particularly excited to introduce family friend of the pod, the chief bankruptcy judge of the Southern District of Texas, David Jones. David, thanks for joining us from sunny Houston. Of course. Thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure.

And you're in chambers right now, right? I am in chambers. So we're quite literally taking you away from something much more important. Lunch. As I said, more important. But just out of curiosity, are you taking out? Are you going to dine in somewhere? Are you social distancing?

I, of course, am trying to social distance as best I can. And choices downtown Houston these days are extremely limited. Interesting. What do you have? A bag of Fritos and a Diet Dr. Pepper. Oh, that's extremely limited. Okay. I saw that someone left a $9,600 tip at Irma's, one of my favorite lunch spots in downtown Houston last week.

Excellent. How do you think I got my takeout dessert? So I was really interested to talk to you because I think people are starting to, you know, we're all settling into our quarantine lifestyle at home, but starting to think about what happens next, how bad the economic impact of all of this will be. And some of that is going to fall into the court system and specifically the bankruptcy courts. So I guess the first question is, are you already seeing effects currently in your current bankruptcy cases? So there are a number of things that are currently happening and they're happening simultaneously. If you look at it from a volume perspective, things have actually gone down.

As you can probably imagine, people are trying not to file new cases. I will assume that lenders are being accommodating. You have hearings that are currently scheduled. People are asking for continuances. The only thing that we're really hearing are emergencies. Now, the other side of that is that we follow a protocol in the Southern District when we deal with commercial cases, and one of the things that we ask lawyers to do is when they think they are getting ready to file a case, we ask them to contact our staff and give us an estimate of when they think they're going to file so that we can reserve time for those cases. And the calls that we're getting are, it's just constant. It's almost unlike anything we've ever seen. And we're only really sort of in the second week of this. So currently, if you came to the courthouse today, the courthouse would be extremely quiet.

But if you were to listen to the phone calls, to look at the emails, to look at the text, you would see a huge amount of volume that is circulating as people try to figure out what they're going to do. And on most of those commercial cases, do you think they're mostly restaurants? Are they a certain industry, small commercial, or some of these big oil and gas, they took out a billion dollar line of credit or something, and now they're, you know, up a creek. Sarah, it's both, it's both ends of what you described and everything in between. I just had one of the few filings that we've had recently was a very small oil and gas company that simply because of, and of course, you know, you have a number of things that are happening both with the pandemic as well as the current dispute,

if you will, overseas with respect to production. And what we saw yesterday was simply a very small company that with oil and gas prices where they are simply ran out of money. They just didn't have any other options. So there are a whole host of things going on. I think that from an energy perspective, you saw a wave of bankruptcies that have been filed over the past, I'm going to say, within the past three years. And all of those reorganizations were done based upon a price curve, which is no longer accurate. And you're seeing a lot of those folks readjust and evaluate, and they may very well be back for what we call a Chapter 22, which is your second time through chapter 11. You're seeing

panic going on with individuals, actually worse than after Hurricane Harvey, where you have families who thought that everything was rocking along, they were making enough money to pay for their house, their cars, and they found out this week that they are furloughed and they don't know for how long. You also have, if you take, and let me, you mentioned restaurants. Let me talk about restaurants for just a second. Restaurants typically operate off of very, very thin margins. And most of those businesses simply cannot survive for very long without having the doors open. And even if you include takeout and delivery, I was talking with one of your colleagues prior to starting the podcast, you know, the oven in my home has never been used.

And yet this week, I haven't been out not one time. So for instance, if a restaurant though, the reason you'd go into bankruptcy is because you can't meet some specific obligation, a lease, some payment of some kind to presumably normally a large lender. What incentive though does the large lender have to call in a loan right now? They're not going to be able to do anything else with that property. Sure. I think, Sarah, I think that that's part of the equation. I do think that most of those types of businesses do have one or more loans that I'll call institutional loans. But you also remember that if you have a business, But you also remember that if you have a business, whether you're there or not, you have a water bill, you have an electric bill, you have an insurance bill, you have installment debt due on the equipment that you purchased when you opened the restaurant. Obviously, you have lease obligations.

There is a monthly, I'm going to call it a nut, that has to be met irrespective of whether your doors are open or not. And when you can't pay those, sometimes these folks just simply don't have any choice. And it's not like it's not all held by Bank of America or Bank of America can just say, oh, we'll wait a month. Exactly right. And you also have to think about what happens too is your wait staff, your kitchen staff, in our example, you know, those folks can mess, while it's a hardship, even if it's a day, those folks can mess a couple of days and be fine. You

get to a week or two weeks, or more importantly, we don't know when the end is going to be. And those folks have their own mortgages, their own car payments, their own families, their own children. You think with school closings that are happening now, you've got child care that perhaps didn't exist previously. And as I understand, you're about to find out fairly soon. Childcare is relatively expensive. It's a snowball effect, and it really runs, when one falls, the rest of it comes right behind it. You mentioned Hurricane Harvey. So in 2017, for those who maybe weren't paying attention, forgot, or don't know someone in Houston, Houston was hit, calling it a hurricane is a little misleading because it wasn't the hurricane that did the damage. It was

massive, massive, unprecedented flooding throughout a lot of Houston. And it shut down the city for weeks. And the bankruptcy courts in Houston in particular are well, you're very used to natural disasters that shut down the city. It happens about every 10 years or so. But why is this the same? Why is it different? So it's interesting simply, and you're right about the rain. The rain gauge in my backyard was 55 inches during the storm. Wow. It's amazing. Yeah, that's, I quite frankly have never seen that. And I've lived in Houston for a long time. With the storm, what you saw is you saw an event. It happened.

It ended. And immediately after the rain stopped, the sun came out. And while there was a huge amount of damage, you slowly saw gas stations reopen, stores reopen, shelves were restocked. So there was a finite amount of time that people were unsure. Today, people don't know what's going to happen. People don't understand when's the end of this. When is the corner restaurant going to reopen? When is the grocery store going to have bread on the shelves? When are they going to restock the toilet paper?

And there's a huge amount of fear. And also during Hurricane Harvey, both during and after, kane harvey both during and after people were out i mean people were moving around they were going places they were doing things there were some limited closures but here when you've got people you know schools are closed kids are home um and there are a lot of stores that just simply aren't open and people are staying in. That has, in my view, just a natural end to it. You know, what generally is a 20-minute trip from my home to the courthouse, it now takes about seven minutes. Wow. So, I mean, I'm trying to find a silver lining, but the traffic just simply it isn't there. And that's a reflection of who's working, who's not.

Judge, let me let me ask you let me ask you a quick question. So I've I before I joined the journalism world full time in 2015, I practiced law in federal courts for 21 years. And so I have this practicing lawyer switch that flips that asks, how do you practice law in an era of social distancing? And part of me says, okay, in a way with e-filing just exploding, we're more set up than we say we were 20 years ago when you were hand carrying everything down to a courthouse. But you can't do everything by e-file. You're still going to have to have some instances where you take live testimony. But how has it impacted how people are going to be able to practice in your court? Sure. So let me tell you some of the things that I've done. For instance, if you've been in a federal courtroom, you know that there are doors that you have to open.

If you walked onto the bankruptcy floor today, you will see all of the doors to the courtrooms propped open. propped open. And again, that's just simply, you know, it's a basic, let's not touch, let's not touch door handles because that is obviously a mode of transmission, at least based on what I've read. We have also tried to be sensitive to the fact that you have lawyers who have children at home. You have clients who have children at home. They aren't in school. You have lawyers who have children at home. You have clients who have children at home. They aren't in school. You have lawyers whose offices are closed. You have lawyers in other cities who are subject to travel restrictions. And so we've really done, we've really tried to come up with different levels of options that we can offer people. And let me give

you a couple. So we have in the Southern District of Texas, we've always had document sharing and audio conferencing available. And we have always, for instance, when lawyers would come in in a big case and first day hearings where we learn what the case is about what the goals are what the needs are there's always a very elaborate powerpoint presentation we publish that powerpoint presentation out onto the internet and you will typically see a couple hundred people log on and watch that power. At the same time that they're watching by PowerPoint, they're also listening to what's occurring in the courtroom by audio conference. We've taken that one step further, and we have opened up limited video conferencing so that we can now take evidence remotely. So I can, you know, I could

look at you as I'm doing right now and I can hear you as well. And I can ask you to raise your right hand and have you swear that you will tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And we have worked on alternative ways to actually make sure that people had access to documentary evidence. Typically, what we do is we have a numbering system, and you will actually file the exhibits on the docket so that they can then be downloaded remotely. And then we have the lawyers, when they're referencing, let's look at docket number 26-2, and that way everybody on the call can get on the docket and look at 26 dash 2 and see the evidence. One of the first things we did when this started is that we put all of this into an emergency protocol, which is published on the court's website, available for everyone to read.

We have not yet invoked it, although we have used certain portions of it for the convenience and necessity of the parties involved in a particular case. As chief judge, what's going to cause you to invoke it? What would be the trip? So one, I'm hoping that I never have to. If you ask me, is there a single event that would cause me to pull out my pen and start thinking really hard about it, it would be a movement restriction. Obviously, if you can't leave your home and come to the courthouse, that would be a reason, probably the best reason to invoke it. One of the other things that we've tried to do is obviously in every hearing and david as a former lawyer you know this is you have to have an

official record of any hearing that you have many years ago we got away from the court reporter that would sit in a courtroom and use the i don't even know what it's called anymore, the machine where they would take the transcript as they would go. And we went to electronic recording. And one of the things that we've tried to, or that we've gotten accomplished is to worry about the time when we can't get to the courthouse. It's either closed because there isn't enough staff, there isn't security to maintain the courthouse, or there is an outbreak and simply we're told to stay away, or some sort of state or national restriction on leaving your home, is that we have put together the capability that I can take the ability to create the official record home. And with two laptops, I can start a hearing, institute my audio conference system remotely,

bring up the document sharing program, initiate the video conferencing if necessary, and at the same time, take the official record that is preserved on a laptop that then once I'm able to get back into the courthouse would then be downloaded and put into the, we call it the vault, but it's where all of the recordings go. Judge, I have to say that the technological savvy of a judge in federal bankruptcy court now is now light years ahead of where it was in 19. I think my first appearance in a federal bankruptcy court was in 1996. And there was the stenographer with the old school, a typewriter that only had about 10 keys. And I don't think that the bankruptcy judge

had ever typed on a computer in his life. There are still some of those around. There are. So David, and this is broader to your whole courthouse, my understanding is there was one about three week trial that had been ongoing sort of before this became an obvious what it was going to be pandemic, and that that jury has been allowed to deliberate. They are still deliberating, but that's the only jury trial currently occurring. Can you talk a little bit about Speedy Trial Act exemptions and what's going on from that sort of larger court perspective? So this is the time where I will tell you that I simply don't know. That's not my area. I was a bankruptcy lawyer. I understand what the Speedy Trial Act is.

I do understand that there is an ability to have that waived. I understand. I went to a judge's meeting yesterday that was two minutes on the bankruptcy court and two hours on the district court, because obviously the rights of criminal defendants has to be, has to be respected, has to be dealt with. And they were working through all sorts of different scenarios, citing code sections that quite frankly, I know how someone who's not used to bankruptcy court feels, because I heard a bunch of numbers that I had no idea what they pertained to. I do know that it's a big issue, and you've got the district judges, the magistrate judges,

you've got the prosecutors, you've got defense lawyers all trying to deal with the situation. And I want to give you another example since you go on that. As you know, I handle the docket, the bankruptcy docket in Laredo. And I was talking to my two district judges in Laredo. And if you can imagine the number of immigration cases and arrests that they process in a day, it runs into the hundreds. And you simply can't say, well, we're not going to have, we're not going to have arraignments for a week. Their holding facilities simply don't exist that would take that kind of volume. And so I know that they've gone, you know, they've taken, they've done the best

they could by creating physical barriers and creating distance barriers so that you try and maintain some, you know, some precautions. But I don't think anyone would ever tell you that they are anywhere close to being enough if all of the information that we're hearing from our administration and from the CDC is accurate. I did, Sarah, want to go one follow-up before I forget about it. When you ask about social distancing, one of the things that we have done is in these cases where we have a large number of lawyers who may be present so that we can maintain social distancing, we have taken a spare courtroom and outfitted it with a TV screen and the audio conferencing, and we're simply porting the video signal from the courtroom over into that courtroom

and also dialing in from that courtroom so that you can hear the audio so that if people are uncomfortable and simply want some additional space, you know, we're taking one courtroom full of people and putting it in two. Do you feel like you and your staff are able to, I don't know, wash your hands as much as you want, not touch documents that are handed to you by lawyers that, you know, you're having so many people cycle in and out of that room. Sure. So let me sort of address those. And now I'm going to give you not the bankruptcy court as a whole. I'm going to give you David Jones's court. I am running my staff with alternating staff so that if someone catches something, hopefully we don't infect the entire group so that we can continue to operate. So I am operating on a rotating staff.

In terms of touching documents, shows you the last time that you were in a bankruptcy court. We don't deal with paper. Everything's electronic. And so if someone were to hand up a thumb drive, if you will, with documents on it, which happens a lot, then that's received in a Clorox wipe and simply and clean before it's then used. But the majority are, and especially in the emergency cases, we've got four exhibits. They're simply emailed to staff. They are then tested in accordance with the court security system for viruses and then forwarded on to me. So if someone handed me, I have to be honest, and I'm thinking about your question.

If someone were to hand me a paper document in the middle of a hearing, I think 30 years of taking documents, I would probably reach out without thinking twice and take it, which is something I really need to work on. All right. Thank you so much for joining us, David. Any other pressing questions you have? Right. Thank you so much for joining us, David. Anything, any other pressing questions you have? No, no, no, no other pressing questions. I'm tempted to tell my most illustrious bankruptcy court story. Please do. No, please do. But I will just say, to give the listeners a taste of what it is, it caused me at the end of the long evening to be a receiver in charge of a strip club in Lexington, Kentucky, without me intending to be in that role. And so that's a story for the ages, but it takes a little bit too much time to tell. I will say this, I have a visualization, and that'll just be a story for another day.

And what you'll have to judge, you'll have to listen to a future podcast because that certainly happened. So I appreciate you all having me on today. I really do. Thank you so much. We very much appreciate it judge. Okay. So we ended with my brief foray into the strip club story, right? Yeah.

And David, just to have one follow up on that conversation, which was recorded earlier today, by the way, just like an hour ago. So this is it's a totally recent recording. There is one thing that he did say in that recording that I feel like I should explain to our listeners. Yes, go ahead. I think it might be time. Oh, that's right. So I am in my third trimester, which is a particularly... So when I talked to the judge earlier today, and he asked, how's the pregnancy going? And I said, oh, being in your third

trimester during a worldwide pandemic is super relaxing and easy. So, you know, we talk about personal stories on this podcast, but I haven't wanted to, you know, make it all about me and the impending, I don't know, like bathtub birth that I feel like might be coming now. But as we get closer, I thought it was worth sharing. So, you know, cat's out of the bag on that one. Well, you know, we've talked about it before the pod. We've talked about it after the pod, but not during the pod. And for some reason, it had slipped my mind that we hadn't talked about it during the pod.

And then when he said that, it was like, Oh yeah. So let me say on behalf of all of our listeners, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. We are terrified and excited.

And for those who are Wu Tang clan fans, he currently, he currently goes by Ghostface Keller. But it also seemed to segue into our next topic, which is sort of the cultural feelings around what's going on. Yeah. So I'm putting the finishing touches on my newsletter, which will go out later this afternoon. And I'm positing a theory and I wanted to get your thoughts on the theory. If you hate it, maybe you'll have to rewrite my newsletter.

But so my theory is and I begin with a discussion of what happened in March 3rd in Nashville. So March 3rd in Nashville, early morning hours, tornadoes swept through, killed two dozen people, an immense amount of devastation. But every moment throughout the process, you could know what was going to happen as far as talking about the best of the American spirit. Immediate first responders, immediate crackling to life of all the social media networks. Who's okay? Who's hurt? Who's not hurt? What do you need? Immediately neighbors running to the damaged houses in their neighborhoods and frantically pulling away at the debris to rescue people. Immediately all kinds of volunteers swarming all the most devastated areas. You know, it's what we do. It's America at its best, like

runs to the danger. And you can go through all kinds of examples throughout American history. Let's just take in the last 20 years, 9-11. As soon as the smoke cleared or it didn't even it wasn't even cleared after the towers fell, people were rushing to ground zero to rescue people and try to pull people out of the rubble. People were jamming phone lines for recruiting centers to sign up to fight. One of my favorite Americana stories of the last decade is this Cajun Navy, you know, when Louisiana had flooding. And there's this great picture I'm putting in my newsletter of all these pickup trucks with bass boats in a line heading to Houston. Yep. Where the Cajun Navy mobilized to help Houston, which, you know, between Texas and Louisiana, there's not a lot of love lost there.

But, hey, people over. And so time and time again, when there is a crisis, you can ask somebody who is in the middle of it, what did you do in the crisis? ask somebody who was in the middle of it, what did you do in the crisis? And the answer will more often than not be, I did something that was active, that was immediate, that sometimes was heroic, was at the very least was helping my neighbor. And in this circumstance, aside from those people who are on the absolute front lines of the health, you know, of health care and the hardest hit areas of coronavirus, or those people who are right now keeping our food chain supply lines going. For most of us, it's like, what did you do in the great quarantine of 2020, granddad? Well, Sonny, I binged watched Breaking Bad with your grandma.

I texted your great grandpa a lot and I conserve toilet paper. And that just is, I just feel like we've got a challenge that is at odds with that, like restless American spirit. And I feel like that's going to be an issue. That's my theory. So that's my theory. You know, I think you're definitely on to something. So after Harvey, I was in Houston for that. And I remember the military trucks being the only ones on the roads during the disaster. Right.

And the Cajun Navy. And you're right, the second that everyone was allowed back out, it was incredible because it was worse than rush hour. And in Houston, by the way, rush hour is no joke. Cell phones were difficult to use in the hardest hit neighborhoods because there were so many people who flooded into those neighborhoods, it was unintended, to help. And, you know, I was at one of those houses with, you know, a big, you know, hammer ripping out sheetrock and everything. And the people who were too old to be able to do that sort of manual labor were driving around with Chick-fil-A, bottled water, food to help the volunteers. So everyone had some part to play. And there's a lot of jokes on the internet right now that this is like the introverts best crisis because introverts can tell everyone else how to do this. And I am an introvert. And so I will admit that I'm adjusting quite well to staying at home.

Yeah, I mean, you know, and the other thing, and this is something we've talked about via Slack, is there's another dynamic here that is really tough. And I don't think our policymakers are grasping the full dimensions of this. There are a lot of people who right now, they had a job five days ago at a thriving business, thriving. They are not sick. They do not know anybody who is sick and they don't have a job. And I think that that is going to create a tension that we're going to have to deal with. And I don't know the best answer for dealing with it. I do feel like as much as possible, as much as possible, we do need to give people a sense of a light at the end of the tunnel. Yes. And the problem we have with that is we were so slow on testing that unlike South Korea, we don't still quite yet have the vision and the knowledge of where the virus is and how widespread it is.

And so that inhibits our ability to sort of say, oh, look, look at the – look, the curve is going down. Look, it's contained to this neighborhood or this community. Look, it's contained to this neighborhood or this community. And so whereas the South Koreans are difference between tornadoes hitting Nashville, Hurricane Harvey, flooding Houston. And it's what Judge Jones talked about. You know, the flooding did last for several days. But you also knew the flooding would stop. And he said the sun came out. Literally, the sun came out.

Yeah. That wasn't a metaphor. Like, the sun came out. But then everyone knew what to do because it was over. So then it was just like, OK, now we start rebuilding. It will take X amount of time to rebuild. But we are starting rebuilding now. The problem here is that we're not in a rebuilding phase yet. To your point, David, in terms of what people are going to be able to do, maybe it will look more like a natural disaster than we think but we're not through the flooding if you will yes right right and we don't know how long that's going to last right and i think that this is where government you know we talk about guns versus butter in like economics classes for high schoolers uh this is a very very serious big version of that and it's the economy versus human lives and um i think that we're glib when we say that that's an easy choice one way or the other

frankly uh we do all the time make economic choices that cost lives and vice versa we make decisions to save lives that have an economic impact. It's rare, though, that it's so stark a choice. It's truly guns versus butter right now. And I think that, you know, that's why elected representatives matter. It's for these moments. And that's, I think, what people will struggle with for years to come. Well, yeah. And I think you're exactly right about that,

because we're in a situation where by doing by by taking the action that we're taking, we're diminishing greatly the chance that we end up like Italy, where if we actually ended up like Italy, there would be an enormous amount of social consensus around the idea that we got to isolate, enormous amount of social consensus around the idea that we got to isolate, we got to quarantine. If we never get like Italy, which I hope and pray we don't, like that, you know, that's a collapsing health system and sectors of that country right now. So if we never get like Italy, we're going to have, but we do have millions of jobs lost, which it's looking like the next jobs report is going to be brutal. So if we never get like Italy and we do have millions of jobs lost, there is going to be a live debate over whether it was all worth it. And on one side, there will be people who say it was worth it because we never got like Italy.

And on another side, people will say, I'm not convinced we would have ever been like Italy. But here's what I do know. Three million Americans, four million Americans, five million Americans are out of work. And that has real social, cultural and physical cost. It has a physical cost all its own through the stress of joblessness. And we know that from a lot of, you know, a lot of scientific, a lot of research on the effects of long-term joblessness on people. It can have a real physical toll. And so... I was just going to talk about some of that physical toll of right now,

the anxiety. You know, as I said, I'm pregnant, so it's a little hard to chalk up what's pregnancy related and what's coronavirus related in terms of, you know, physicality. You know, my dream last night was that I was at the Twin Towers like that. It's an anxiety dream, clearly. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it was about all of this. And it's it's sitting here.

It's stewing about it. It's not knowing what's going to happen to me, to my friends, to my family, to, you know, this kiddo that's coming. Oh my, like, what, what, what if this, what if the flooding is still going on this summer, metaphorically? And, and I feel incredibly blessed for the situation I find myself in. I'm talking to folks who don't have nearly the cushion that I have. And there will be physical effects on people ranging from depression to suicidal thoughts to anxiety that I don't think we're even close to finding out yet because we're still in the flooding zone. Yes. And we're also,

and we also are blessed in the sense that in a way, our services are more in demand right now. People are wanting information. They're wanting analysis of what's going on. And so we're not in one of those industries. Although I do think local press, especially, you know, the press that depends a lot on that local in-person distribution, say your alt weeklies, et cetera, they may be weeks from extinction. National Press is in a little bit of a different circumstance. So we're in a position where people want to know what is happening and they want answers and they want thoughtful analysis. So in that sense, we're blessed that to the extent that we can offer those services that we're in demand. But I really feel for folks like who are restaurant workers, who who one week ago were slammed with work. You know, downtown Nashville trended because people

were jam packed into those bars and restaurants, you know, after the coronavirus, the true dimensions of it really emerged. And people were widely condemned for jamming into those bars and restaurants. But at the same time, if I worked there, I had a thriving business. I had a financial plan. I had a financial future. Now, you know, it could have been that I'm saving money as a waiter while I'm writing songs. This is Nashville after all. Or it could be that this is a way station where I'm saving money to do the next thing that I want to do or whatever. But you had income. But it's also not just the, you know, we concentrate a lot on the restaurant sector because I think it's something we all touch. I'll be interested, by the way, culturally, whether, you know, okay, April 1, we all get

to go back to our lives suddenly. A, that's not how it's going to happen, but let's say for a second it did. People are learning new habits and we don't know how those habits will translate long-term. And it's very possible that we were at the, we were at such a peak restaurant patronage part of our society. It may never go back to that, or certainly for a long time. But even outside of restaurants, interestingly, doctor's offices are suffering, GP practices. Because they don't have the capability to test for coronavirus, the protective gear. They're not set up for that. Nobody wants to go to a doctor right now because they think that's a pretty good place to get a transmission. Dentist's offices are all closed. My dentist is closed,

at least. I got my cleaning three weeks ago. I'm very grateful. And so there's these other small businesses that you don't think of being quote unquote service industry, the same way that a hotel or an airline or a restaurant would be that are also, I mean, just getting whacked out. Well, and Ford, GM and Chrysler cease production. You know, that's huge. Who makes a big car purchase right now, David? Like, do you want to go put, you know, $15,000 towards a car when car purchase right now, David? Like, do you want to go put, you know, $15,000 towards a car when you're not sure whether you're going to have your job in a couple of weeks? Oh, I know. I know. It's just every, it's a grinding halt. And, and look, I,

I am completely comfortable at this point because I've seen enough from Europe and especially Italy to know that the consequences of unrestrained transmission in a community are horrible. They're horrible. And so I'm all about flatten the curve. I'm all about understanding that right now we need to make a sacrifice. What I just want our policymakers to makers to understand is there is a cost to this that is very profound that they are not bearing and that a lot of Americans, unless it gets awful, will not understand. And it's real. And so this is something that I think, and I think we can talk about this. Talking about this honestly does not say don't flatten the curve. We absolutely should flatten the curve. But I think it says it's a request to leaders as they're taking in the cost-benefit analysis to take in the fullness of the cost-benefit analysis.

And this is where I do think I feel like we're going to get a lot of listener feedback on what I'm about to say. Having a president who had spent his entire life in the private sector is a good thing right abstract, I can agree. The question I have is this president, not a president, but this president. But time will tell. And, you know, and I do think there will have to be. You're talking about, though, you're talking about the balance. And I think someone who had spent their entire life in public service is very admirable. But I think it is then hard for them to imagine the anxiety of not knowing if your job exists in a couple of weeks, because, of course, their job exists, whether they're furloughed or not. It's just not quite the same peril.

whether they're furloughed or not. It's just not quite the same peril. I think having someone who spent no time in the public sector has some downsides to it. But one upside is they, I think, more fully understand a guns versus butter tradeoff than a lot of people currently in government. I'd grant that. I think, and the way I would put the frame this conversation, we're going a little bit long on the pod, is I don't think that this is a, I think this is a question that is going to be applicable, that is not as applicable now when we still don't know how widespread this is in our communities. Like that's a consequence of the delay testing. That's why we are not in the position where South Korea is right now. So we're right now, we don't know how widespread it is. There's not a great argument for taking our foot off the gas of social isolation,

but there will come a time when we need to start having that conversation about when to take the foot off the gas of social isolation. And I'm worried that we're when to take the foot off the gas of social isolation. And I'm worried that we're going to take a better safe than sorry approach that is going to possibly be bad for us. And I just want to put a marker in that for right now because we're not there now. But I could see it happening. All right. All right. Marker down. Well, thank you guys for listening. And we really appreciate it as always. We appreciate your feedback. We've gotten some

legal questions in that we are going to be addressing in the non-coronavirus portion of our podcast, which Sarah, I think we've always got to have a non-coronavirus portion of our podcast, which Sarah, I think we've always got to have a non-coronavirus portion. Just for my sanity. Yeah. Oh, mine too. So we will be addressing those things, including what about the difference in pay between the men's and women's national soccer teams? I'm so pumped for this. I'm so ready. Like I can't tell you how ready I am for this conversation. That is going to be fun. So that's coming up as long along with the answers to other questions. So please keep sending them to us. David at the dispatch dot com. Sarah at the dispatch dot com. And please rate us on

Apple podcasts and please become a member of the dispatch. And so we will come talk to you again on Monday.