America's Talking - Episode 33: Senators introduce bill to prevent 'crack pipe' funding

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

Senators introduce bill to prevent 'crack pipe' funding. Feds warn local police about trucker convoy protesting vaccine mandates. Inflation climbs higher, worst numbers in 40 years. Poll: 75% say ‘Defund the Police’ caused violent crime wave. America in Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. You can listen to all of our podcasts at www.AmericasTalking.com! Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So this has been a big story. You know, there's already a bill introduced. They called it the Crack Act, which is kind of funny. But it will prohibit federal funds from going to crack pipes. Welcome to American Focus. I'm Cole McNeely, general manager of America's Talking Network. American Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. You can listen to America and Focus and all of our podcast at America's Talking.com.

That's America's Talking.com. Now here's your host, Dan McAulb. Thank you, Cole. and welcome to America in Focus, a podcast where we talk about the issues from our nation's capital that matter to you. I'm Dan McAulib, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. America in Focus is brought to you by America's Talking Network. If you're tired of the divisive rhetoric coming from Echo to Chambers in our country today, America's Talking Network is for you. America's Talking Network is a new podcast hub where you can find news, civil

conversations, and all of the Center Square's great podcasts. The only agenda is a job. The only agenda that America's Talking Network has is to get America talking again. Go to America's Talking.com to check out all of the great podcasts. Once again, that's America's Talking.com. Now, joining me today is Casey Harbour, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, we've just joined America's Talking Network, host to a number of great podcasts like this one. Are there any podcasts out there you enjoy listening to? Yeah, Dan, well, it's good.

We're on America's Talking because if there's anything you and I are good out. It is talking and talking. So yeah, I mean, you know, I was going to say, though, my favorite podcast is, is this one right here every week with you, do. Oh, wow. What about you? Well, this one's pretty good. I also participate in Illinois in Focus. I'm in the Chicago suburbs and the Center Square was launched in Illinois. And our very first podcast was Illinois in focus. And so I like that one as well. There's also some pretty cool presidential archive podcasts on there.

I'm not sure which all ones. I know that they have Nixon, I believe, and Reagan and may get some other. Seeing those is pretty cool as well. Well, we encourage our listeners to check it out. Once again, that's America's Talking.com. But we have some news to talk about today, Casey. So why don't we get into it? Anyone who's been paying attention to the news has followed the trucker protests in Canada, the nation's capital of Ottawa.

Well, that might be coming to the U.S. What can you tell us about that, Casey? Yeah, that's right. The Department of Homeland Security, they actually sparked a little bit of controversy when doing this, but they sent out a bulletin, which is basically a memo to law enforcement all around the country, essentially warning them about this trucker protest. Now, they highlighted two main events. One is the Super Bowl this Sunday, which I'm curious to hear who you're reading for. But the Department of Homeland Security is worried that the truckers could even begin on the West Coast in Los Angeles on the Super Bowl. And then head east and be there in time for the State of the Union.

So those are the two, which is March 1st. Be in Washington, D.C. Right. Be in Washington, D.C. for the State of the Union. So those are kind of the two events they raised. It could be blocked, you know. And we see right now on the U.S. Canada border that things have been pretty much shut down by the truckers who are protesting vaccine mandates in Canada. I believe January 15th, Canada put in place a vaccine mandate for those crossing the U.S. Canada border.

And, of course, truckers make that trip all the time to transport all kinds of goods. And so they're upset about it. Their protest is getting a lot of attention. Canada's been pretty authoritarian and their crack. down of it, you know, doing all kinds of measures. But now it's coming to the U.S., it looks like, you know, how big it will be remains unclear. The Canadian protest was very large, raised millions of dollars, widespread support. I guess what's controversy with the GoFundMe.

Fundraiser where GoFundMe refused to give the truckers the $10 million. Yeah, this is a crazy thing. I mean, GoFundMe, everyone knows is a fundraising site where you can, you know, post a web page and plead your case and then people can donate, you know, through card, through credit card or debit card online and you get the money. That's how it's supposed to work. But GoFundMe has shown a tendency to be a little unfriendly towards certain conservative causes, it seems.

There's been a few instances of that. And they're actually being investigated now by Texas Attorney General. And there's actually some Republican lawmakers in D.C. who are looking into GoFundMe now because of this and other incidents. but GoFundMe said, you know, actually this is too controversial. There's been a couple reports of violence, which really there hasn't been in hardly any violence at these things. And so they said, we're going to take this money and give it to a different charity of your choice.

But, you know, of course, people kind of freaked out about this. That's my mind. Yeah, it's $10 million. And so then there would actually actually Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who's always quick to jump in on the state. these kind of stories and I often get results actually but he threatened to do an investigation and then Texas followed suit and then suddenly go fund me just said okay we'll refund all the money sorry for for months and months we've been we've been experiencing a supply chain crisis

anyone who goes to the grocery stores notice you know empty shelves all over the place Is there concerns that this could exacerbate the supply chain crisis? Not just the protest itself, but the policy that you have to be vaccinated to cross the border or quarantine. Yeah, I saw online that, you know, it looks like the grocery store needs to go to the grocery store. You know, it's just they're thinking the shelves are looking bare. And depending on what you're looking for, they may not have it at all. I know here in D.C. where I'm based out of for the centerscore.com, we, you know, have people and people I know that are going from store to store looking for different, you know, whatever they need.

So it's definitely, it's happening all over the country. But the truckers situation will definitely make it worse. I mean, if you could, if you could sit in a room and diabolically orchestrate a way to make the supply chain worse, you could not come up with a better idea than to have, you know, truck drivers go on strike. I mean, that is the, in a country as large, it's the U.S., which is still based on the highways and transportation. There's no better way to create more supply chain issues than to slow down truckers. But, you know, I think they know that.

And I think, you know, the point of a strike is to get a little more appreciation because when you stop working, people realize how important you are and then maybe they treat you a little better. So I think that's the idea. but so, you know, just about anything you can imagine is transported by a truck to some local store, especially, you know, actually the cities are the ones hardest hit by this because they have by far the biggest demand. And if they, you know, if you go to a couple days where that truck's coming into a city, I mean, this stuff disappears really quick because there's such a large demand. There's so many, you know, thousands and thousands of sometimes millions of people going to these stores. So it could be a problem.

Right now it's a little bit speculation. We don't know how big this trucker protest is going to be, but you wouldn't be out of left field to say this could be a real problem. And you say it could start as early as Super Bowl Sunday. The Super Bowl is in Los Angeles, of course, on the West Coast. So we'll have to pay attention to that and just see if it happens. And you asked me about my Super Bowl pick or who I'm, I'll tease

you here and say, I'll give it at the end. So you got to stick with us to the end of the podcast. For Dan McHale of Sport Analysis. That's right. Maybe we get that on America's talking, Dan.

Sports talk with Dan and Casey. I think we have diverging interests, so I don't know how well that would go. That'll make interesting. Conflict cells, you know. Well, let's move on. The Texas Public Policy

Foundation published an interesting national report today about the federal unemployment benefits, the enhanced benefits that were passed during the pandemic when so many people were laid off. What can you tell us about this report? Yeah, so anyone who's been following this podcast for the center square.com for a while has probably heard us talk about and seen us write about these federal unemployment benefits. So in the name of, you know, COVID compassion, Congress passed these $300 a week, you know, unemployment benefits, which would be in addition to state unemployment benefits in a range of other, you know, welfare and federal and state handout programs. And so, of course, people were eager to take these. And, you know, there was a lot of joblessness around the pandemic because of the government forced shutdowns, which now there's a lot of doubt about whether those actually did anything and may have actually.

actually been more harm to good. But the Texas Public Policy Foundation released this report, which found that more than 3 million people stayed on unemployment in states that maintain the increase in benefits versus the states that ended the program early. And that's really interesting because last year, we wrote about this a lot and covering how more than two dozen Republican governors said, wait a minute, unemployment is way higher than it should be. And we are taking these, you know, federal unemployment benefits, maybe we should stop taking the benefits because with the federal benefits, with the state benefits, with the stimuluses, with several other programs, which are child tax credit, which could be well over $1,000 a month. I mean, especially if

you live in a pretty low cost of living state, I mean, that would be more than enough to just live off the government dime and not go back to work. And maybe you think you'll go back to work eventually, but you're in no rush because you've got more than, you know, your needs taken care of by these federal handouts. So, and state handouts. So it exacerbated the worker crisis. I mean, oh, totally. The worker shortage, yeah.

Right. Well, and there was a lot of people casting doubt on that, though, saying, well, no, people don't do that. You know, it's more complicated. It's not just a one-to-one. And so there's been a little bit of doubt or conflict or contention about whether the unemployment benefits really were causing. more unemployment, though. Many were saying that. But this report really provided a lot of hard

data to back up what a lot of people hypothesizing, a lot of people were saying to be true. And they put it a number of three million people. And it's interesting that the states, like that I alluded to, the Republican states that said, all right, we got to cut this program off early compared to the Democratic states. The Republican states saw way more, what saw unemployment go down much faster. So, I mean, it's harder to find, you know, here's another thing. The report adds that states that refused the federal funds saw unemployment numbers increased by more than two million. So, yeah, that really says what you need to know when coming into this debate over whether these additional, very generous unemployment benefits made the job crisis worse.

And as you mentioned, there was plenty of speculation as Republican states pulled out of this federal program, these additional $300 in weekly benefits on top of state benefits. There was plenty of speculation that the worker shortage was being, was at least in part being caused by these additional payments. You and I even talked about that, but it was really speculation at the time. Now we've got this report that seems to back that up. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's important to revisit these issues and bring in the hard data because anytime a government official does anything austere, cuts any kind of benefits, cuts spending, they're just attacked relentlessly as heartless. I mean, there's Republicans who who pulled back these federal benefits were just blasted by people in the media,

by, you know, their opponents, by some experts saying, you know, this is heartless, people need this help. How could you do something like this? People aren't lazy. They don't not go to work because of unemployment benefits. And, you know, they just stood their ground and look, now the data backs them up. But often we have these kind of debates. And one side is called evil for not opposing government expansion. And then later on the data comes out and shows they were actually right.

but by then everyone's moved on. So I think that we wanted to cover this and bring this back up and say, hey, we're following up on the story. This is what the data is saying. Agreed. Let's move on. Casey, another major issue during the pandemic has been an increase in violent crime, particularly in big cities.

After the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a couple of police officers there, there was a pretty vocal movement to defund the police. police to cut police department's budgets across the country. Where there's a new poll out this week that you reported on at the center square.com about Americans' feelings about defund the police and what that meant. Can you tell us about the poll? Sure.

This is really interesting because the defund movement has really defined so much of the political conversation over the last two years and has really become a point of division within the Democratic Party. So this Politico morning consult poll released this week found that 75% of surveyed Americans say that the defunding of police departments is a reason that violent crime is increasing in the U.S. So say again, three out of four Americans say this defund, this whole defunding of police is a reason why we're seeing such violent crime spikes, which are really breaking records in some cities. Only 25% said it was not a reason. You know, of those of those who said it was a reason, you know, there was like 49% percent.

said that it was a, you know, a significant or major reason and the rest said it was a minor reason. But 75% say it's at least a contributing factor, which this is actually similar to the other story, which is, you know, there's kind of a certain group of lawmakers, actually both on the right and the left, who said, wait a minute, we don't need to defund police departments. That's too far. And then everyone just, like, calls them racist and heartless and all these things, the media, there are critics in that moment. And now, A little bit of time goes by. And we find that actually the American people agree with him and think, hey, this isn't what we need to go.

And President Biden has even come out and said that he agrees with him. He does not support defunding police. Yeah, he has said that. And he's actually, to his credit, he said that since last year. But his party has been anything but lockstep with him on that. Particularly the progressive branch of the. Exactly. You know, people called the say the squad, quote unquote, the squad.

But Representative Cory Bush has been extremely outspoken on this and has really doubled down. She's practically leading the charge on this in Congress right now. And I think, you know, I think we'll be talking more and more about the November midterms on this podcast as we draw closer to it. But this is going to be, I think, could be a defining issue. And Democrats do not want it to be a defining issue from everything that I'm seeing and hearing, you know, analysts talk about. They don't want it to be a defining issue. They see these poll numbers. This is one where I think a lot of moderate Democrats are afraid that the progressive wing of their party is going to end up sinking the ship because, as you see here, 75% of Americans don't think defunding police is going to help.

And there's plenty of anecdotal evidence, too, that America's viewpoint, the majority of Americans viewpoint, is accurate. Just take the city of Austin, Texas. There's Austin City Council cut the police department's budget significantly more than a year ago. And then last year, the Austin Police Department announced that it was no longer going to be able to send officers to burglary charges. It told residents to stop calling 911 for anything other than actual violent type crimes because it didn't have the staffing, the manpower to, it stopped responding to car accidents because it didn't have the staff. Right. So there's no doubt that the movement has had an effect in those cities where it became

that actually was put into place. Yeah. And you're absolutely right. And another way that it's impacted is that a lot of police officers feel that they're not going to be, they don't, they feel they're not supported by either their local government, maybe even their own chiefs at times. And so these police officers who were kind of expecting. to just patrol the city at the risk of their own lives, you know, don't feel like they're

going to be supportive. They feel like if they get in a confrontation that they're, you know, they're not going to get the benefit of the doubt. And so what we're seeing is, you know, and I've talked to experts about this, is a lot of them are pulling back from the more dangerous neighborhoods. So they still do their jobs, but they're just going to, they're going to stick around in the parts of the city that they know are safe and they'll, they'll focus on, you know, giving people speeding tickets in the nice part of town and neglect.

the more dangerous parts of the city, which really leaves them largely unpoliced and leads to more violent crime. But the incentives for the police officers are set up so that, you know, they feel like they're not going to be supported. It's more dangerous. Why am I going to spend most of my time in this more dangerous part of the city? So there's a lot of factors going on here. But you're absolutely right that we've already seen anecdotal evidence that and I think voters are taking notice of it. And just one last point, the widespread, organized retail theft, has gone on over the past year.

You see viral videos of just criminals boldly walking into stores, some in groups, smashing cases, grabbing expensive items and just walking out with no resistance. I wonder how much that had an effect on it. Anyway, time to move on again, Casey. Crazy story this week, a story that you wrote, you wrote about. of the Biden administration's grant program includes paying using taxpayer dollars to provide crack pipes and other drug paraphernalia at taxpayer offense to drug users. What's this about? Yeah, I think you meant to say taxpayer expense. You said taxpayer offense, but I think you're right.

There's a lot of offense. It's pretty offensive to a lot of taxpayers. And there's been some kind of controversy over the story. The White House has just flat out denied it. it was initially repeated, reported by the Washington Free Beacon, which is, you know, we, we wrote up that they reported it. And so just kind of to clear some of that out, the Washington Free Beacon reported on this grant, which is a real grant, a harm reduction grant for $30 million. Harm reduction, you know, does things like gives out syringes so that people don't spread hepatitis by sharing syringes. You know, those, you know, it deals with a lot of that kind of thing with drug use harm reduction. And basically, part of that money is used to purchase smoking kits. Now, smoking kits usually include glass pipes that are distributed. And the reasoning behind that is that if people share glass pipes, which can use

smoke meth or crack, then they can pass communicable diseases, especially if those pipes get cracked. A lot of people who regularly use drugs, they're often, they're living. have open source on them. And so it's very easy for them to transmit diseases. So the idea, you know, if you look at it in the best light, the idea is that if everyone has their own pipes, then they won't spread, you know, these certain diseases to one another.

But it caused quite a bit of controversy when the Free Beacon reported that, you know, millions of dollars would go to a program that would hand out these glass pipes to drug users. And it also ruffled feathers that it was really in the grant, in the name, of kind of racial equity, which is a really interesting way, you know, could be construed as racist and was by a lot of critics. So this has been a big story. You know, there's already a bill introduced by a couple of Republican centers. They called it the Crack Act, which is kind of funny.

But it will, it will prohibit the funding of this federal funds from going to crack pipes. And really the controversy comes or the accusations of misinformation come down to this. The White House says that glass pipes were never going to be used in these smoking kits and that the reporter made that assumption. The reporter says someone at HHS told him that the pipes would be used for smoking illicit substances. Smoking kids usually have glass pipes like this. Several of local governments and groups hand out smoking kits with glass pipes. This is not novel. Several big cities, Democrat-controlled cities, have already started programs like this.

Absolutely. And it's, you know, for a smoking kit to include a glass pipe is not beyond the pale, is not some invention of a reporter. It's a very reasonable thing to say for anybody who works in the, you know, harm reduction area. And actually, you know, the National Drug Policy Alliance, which is a very large harm reduction group, you know, published a statement. And we included this in the story. And their statement basically said they were very disappointed. with the Biden administration for removing glass pipes from the smoking kit distribution, which certainly seems to suggest that the pipes were in there.

And at least the National Drug Policy Alliance expected to be receiving glass pipes in their smoking kits. And so something's not adding up. You know, the more cynical critics would just say that the White House is kind of shifting their stance on these because of the controversy and directed HHS to change their policy. and that's what's upsetting those in the harm reduction community. But, you know, the controversy is already, the cat's out of the bag. You can't have a program buying crack pipes for people and then try to make an administrative change to clean that up. So we'll see where it goes.

Just a crazy, crazy story. We're almost out of time, Casey. But before we go, we've got to talk about the Super Bowl. Super Bowl. Los Angeles Rams are hosting the Cincinnati Bengals, who you're rooting for and who you picking. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a big fan of either, but I think I will be rooting for the Bengals. And because it's more fun to pick the team you're rooting for. I don't want to pick against who I'm rooting for.

So that's my pick. I think it's a little hard for me to root for a team that's such a new transplant. I mean, the Rams have only been in L.A. for a few years. So really having a lot of nostalgia and home team kind of vibes is tough when you have a new team like that. So what about you? So I really don't, can't say I have a rooting interest. Maybe when the game starts, I'll start rooting for one team or the other. I just don't know.

I don't, I'm not a fan of either team. Either it is nice to see someone other than, you know, Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs and, well, the Buccaneers and previously the Patriots in the Super Bowl. I just, I'm rooting for a good game. I do think, I do think the Rams are more experienced. to have a little bit better defense. So I am going to pick the Rams. Okay, what are we putting on this?

Like a 5% raise or something? Actually, with inflation, it's got to be at least 7.5% just to keep up. Just see, I'm not on a poor house. Keep begging. Keep begging. Yeah, okay. All right. That's all the time we have this week.

And to those of you listening, you can find all of the Center Squares podcast at America's Talking.com. Take a look, please subscribe. There is no cost. Again, that's America's Talking.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McAid. Talk to you next week.