Lovett or Leave It - All Riots Matter!

Episode Date: July 24, 2021

The very funny Sean Devlin breaks down the week’s news - from insurrectionists on the insurrection committee to Wally Funk's wild ride with some rich dudes. Charles Marohn of Strong Towns explains what happens when a road and a street have a baby. And we play Fearmongering Mad Libs, because it's like Fox News is barely trying anymore.Take Crooked's listener survey: crooked.com/surveyFor a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/lovettorleaveit. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Love It or Leave It, Out of the closet! How did you seize the earth? Now we're vaccinated Now left to learn what it's worth To find our attitudes Survivors guilt may glitter We know it isn't Gold Everyone

Get off Of Twitter Three months Before we Get Out Out Out

Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out

Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out

Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out

Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out

Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out

Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out

Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out of the closet Right in the streets Right in the closet Right in the closet Right in the streets Right in the streets N-P-A-W-C-Y

Thanks to all your fascist covers Now it's cool to go outside Sorry John but I don't love it Stripping everything we've got Turned out in 2022 You've lost 600,000 times Don't let that number record you This mansion we're living in feels like a cage

Hard to enumerate all of my rage We were all hyped to go to the cinema Now I prefer books so let's turn the page This quarantine hasn't made me lose my edge I'm paving the way like I'm people to judge But don't be surprised when you hear I allegedly Pushed some white supremacist right off a ledge Out of the closet

Into the street Out of the closet. Into the street. Out of the closet. Into the street. Out of the closet. Into the street. Out of the closet. Into the street. All right, that has to be the most aggressive song in the history of these songs.

Thank you to Stuffy Doll. If you have an out-of-the-closet, into-the-streets song, please email to us at leaveitatcrooked.com, leaveitatcrooked.com. And as we return to live, if you have pitches for what we should call it, if we do decide to call it something, send it to me. Tweet it at me. I'm open. I'm open. I'm open. On the show this week, I talked to infrastructure expert Chuck Marone about something that is halfway between a street and a road called a strode. All right.

I promise it's very interesting. I promise. And we played a great game about Fox News misinformation, especially when Fox News has been totally phoning it in lately. But first, he is a writer, comedian, organizer, and Canadian. Please welcome Sean Devlin. Sean, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me.

Let's get into it. What a week. President Biden tried to back away from his statement asserting Facebook is killing people, but he was too late. This summer's nasty as old man cyberbullying had already begun. In response, Facebook's VP of Integrity, Guy Rose, declared, President Biden's goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4th. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed,

which feels very much like guns don't kill people, people kill people. Like, sure, people radicalize people, but it's a lot harder to do it by walking up to somebody at a Trader Joe's. You know, Sean, the infrastructure wasn't there. I think Biden misspoke. The thing is, there aren't any more young people on Facebook. So Facebook isn't killing people. It's killing old people, which means Zuckerberg isn't a murderer. He's technically facilitating assisted suicide, which is very, very different. That is different. Actually entertaining their argument. They were like, well, 85% of Facebook users profess to being pro vaccination

in some fashion. So that can explain why we haven't hit our 70% goal. But that's not actually true. Like there's no reason to believe that the misinformation that has spread on Facebook not only caused that 15 percent, but had a wider impact on the culture. And if you're contributing to the fact that certain people aren't getting vaccinated, the fact that there are other pockets of people who, for unrelated reasons to you, are not getting vaccinated doesn't make what you're doing good. You know, like, yeah, it's like two wrongs, you know, that old thing. Yeah. And the data is flawed there, right? They're saying 85% of Facebook users said that, but 100% of Facebook users say they're happy.

That's not true. That's definitely not fucking true. That is absolutely not true. That's definitely not fucking true. That is absolutely not true. I think it's very funny to have a vice president of integrity because it means something has gone very wrong. Like if you were like at a meeting with a business and like they were like, oh, we're so excited for you to meet all of the people at our business. And like this is our VP of marketing. This is our VP of sales. This is our VP of preventing carbon

monoxide leaks. You'd be like, wait a second, wait a second. It sounds like you must have had a pretty big fucking problem with carbon monoxide if you've instituted a vice president to stop that problem. Like a VP of integrity is a kind of an everything's okay alarm, you know? It's also like, what are they holding back the president of integrity for? Like, we're talking about causing mass death, and we're only getting the VP. Like, what do they have to do for us to hear from the president of integrity? Right, the vice president of integrity is much more of a figurehead waiting in the wings in case something happens to the president of integrity.

Right, that's the other thing, right? You would like to assume that everybody's job is a little bit integrity. You know, you don't you don't put it on the job description. It's one of those things that's sort of assumed. Imagine if McDonald said, like, this is our vice president of McChickens not killing people. Like, wait a second. How many were killing people? I'm worried about.

And how big is this department that you need a vice president? Right. Like how many people report up to the VP of integrity? Speaking of misinformation spreading like wildfire, Dr. Anthony Fauci got into it with Senator Dr. Rand Paul in the Senate this week after Paul accused him of lying about the role of the National Institute of Health and Funding Research in Wuhan, China. Let's roll the clip.

Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about. It's a dance and you're dancing around this because you're trying to obscure responsibility for four million people dying around the world from a pandemic. I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, Senator. Sean, do you know what happens when you make something like that official? How do you officially not know what you're talking about?

I feel so bad for Fauci. Like when he was studying in medical school, he never could have anticipated the mess he would be dealing with now. Like no one has the training to deal with all this bullshit. Right. There's very little in medical school about testifying before libertarian buffoons. It's a lot of like I think like organic chemistry and like organ location, you know. Yeah. That's more of the focus.

I interviewed him and all I just you can just see like all he wants to do is say how like how excited he was to vote for Joe Biden. And he never can say it. He's not allowed to say it. He hates Rand Paul so, so much, and he's so measured and so contained. But he hates him so fucking much. Meanwhile, in a real FU to political decency, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy nominated five Republicans to join the January 6th committee, three of whom personally voted against ratifying the 2020 election. So you know the scene in a rom-com where the gals gather around a trash can and throw out some photos and keepsakes from the terrible ex and they talk about their feelings

and like maybe they sing. The whole thing point is you can't do that with the ex and the villain from work who he slept with on the business trip. Like, they can't be at the bitch session. They can't be at the inquiry, which is basically what it is when you gather around the trash can. That's not allowed. And now, Sean, I know that these rom-com tropes stem from deep cultural misogyny. Right, right. Okay? I know that.

I know that. But the analogy does still work. And I think we can still use the analogy while acknowledging the kind of sexism central to a lot of the core rom-com archetypes. Do you disagree? Or are you a misogynist, but as a diehard rom-com fan. OK. OK. And I love that the Republican line here has been that there are other more important questions that the inquiry needs to ask having to do with other riots that were happening. Like, of course, the Republican response is all riots matter, right? That they want to investigate other domestic uprisings. And I think it's actually because those uprisings were more effective in achieving their aims. Like, I don't think they're looking for answers. They're looking for best practices.

I just want you to know that all riots matter. This episode has a title, That's Baked, That's Done. So that's something I don't have to worry about. Thank you for that. Nancy Pelosi subsequently rejected two of his picks, causing McCarthy to withdraw all of his appointees. But in fairness to Kevin McCarthy, you can't have a debate about an insurrection without a pro side and a con side. Otherwise, it's just a group of people trying to save democracy. You know what I mean?

You have to actually have – if this is going to be exciting television, you need a Jim Jordan. Yes. All right. To make it entertaining, to make it a real show. Otherwise, it's just a fact finding examination of one of the darkest days in recent American history. And who, that's not good TV.

All right. Yeah. You need, you need the conflict, right? Otherwise it's just like progress and healing and all that good not good TV. All right. Yeah, you need the conflict, right? Otherwise, it's just like progress and healing and all that good stuff. Yeah. On Monday, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was banned from Twitter for spreading COVID misinformation

for 12 hours, which is the same amount of time I ban myself from Twitter every January 1st when I delete the app from my phone. It's the same, like that period of time, I ban myself from Twitter every January 1st when I delete the app from my phone. It's the same like that period of time before you realize you can log into Safari. When she was subsequently interviewed about her vaccination status, MTG responded, I hate calling her that, by the way. I really regret using it. I'm not using it. Yeah. When she was subsequently, fuck her, Green. Marjorie Taylor Green responded that the question was a violation of her HIPAA rights. I think we have a clip.

Two questions. Have you yourself gotten vaccinated and do you disagree with the Republican whip? Well, your first question is a violation of my HIPAA rights. You see, with HIPAA rights, we don't have to reveal our medical records. And that also involves our vaccine records. Wow. She needs the 12 hours to do some Googling. She's so nefarious.

These people are so stupid. Like, I don't know what we're supposed to do. Like, I don't know how we're supposed to have a country with these people. She's supposed to be a town crank. She's supposed to show up at school boards and city council meetings and yell for a bit and sit down because, like, she's furious that she's the only smart person. She's not supposed to be in Congress, but there she is because we have this ecosystem that turns town cranks into internet sensations. And there's no – I don't see anything on the horizon to fix that.

Look, I don't see any solution right now to the Marjorie Taylor Greene problem. We have built a way to turn town cranks. Every town's got one. I remember one in Syasset High School. I remember that guy wandering around with his signs. Every town has one. Yeah. If they all end up in Congress, we're pretty well fucked. Yeah. Well, I remember my mom being banned from an entire season of my soccer games for doing much less than this woman has. I thought she would get banned for a game, but she wasn't allowed to come to a whole season of games for interrupting them and yelling. That's cool, though. It sounds like your mom was a real supporter. Or was she yelling against your team?

She was yelling at me mostly. I think people were trying to protect me. When I was a kid, I was on the baseball team, and my dad was the coach. And I was fine. Before the kids all got tall, I was okay. But every year they had an all star game. Now why we make children not only compete, but sort them so thoroughly at every stage of their life is cultural capitalism, we should probably kind of reckon with. But regardless, there was an all-star game for the whole league. And the idea is every coach would pick a couple of the best players from their team, and there'd be this game. Because the coaches had volunteered for the whole year, as part of it, all the coaches' kids got to be in

the all-star game. So basically the teams were made up of the coaches' kids and the best kids from every team. Now, I didn't like that nepotism. I hated that. Like the idea that I was going to be on this all-star quote unquote team, having not fully earned it in any way, forget the fully, I was a progressive child, you see. And so I was like, I will be part of this farce on one condition. I want to bat last. I want you to stick me in the outfield. Like I'll be part of this, but I don't deserve to be in the main part of the lineup. I don't deserve to be on the infield. Just stick me in the back. I'll play. I'll be there. That was the agreement I reached. I forgot that I made this arrangement. And so then I get to the big game and all of a sudden there's a fun game of baseball

happening and I forgot I made this deal. So now there's this other dad who's coaching the team and I'm begging to be put in. Like, please, please let me play in the infield. Let me bat. Let me be part of this. Why won, please let me play in the infield. Let me bat. Let me be part of this. Why won't you let me play? And so somewhere out there in Syosset, there's a person who thinks my father is one of the great monsters for not letting, but I just forgot. I got, I had, I had, I had, I was, I think it was a lesson. I was progressive until presented an opportunity,

at which point I became someone who wanted all the fruits of nepotism. You know? Yeah. Then you threw your dad under the bus. Completely. Completely. Also this week in Kansas, Frito-Lay employees continued their third week of strikes,

protesting suicide shifts, mandatory overtime, and sweltering factories. PepsiCo, owner of Frito-Lay, denies the strikers' claims, calling their claims grossly exaggerated. No, Buffalo Wild Wings or IHOP. Pepsi is not all right. No, I'll have some dog piss instead, thank you very much. Oh, you have Pepsi? You know what I'd rather have? How about some fucking ditch water?

All right? Get out of here with this shit. All right? I never liked your fucking Pepsi. All right? Now it's morally despicable. This also reminds me to point out that Lay's, quote, kettle-cooked, unquote, chips are overrated. I don't believe kettles are involved.

Not at all. They're certainly not better for you. And Funyuns suck. They're not fun and they're not onions. They're nothing. They suck. They don't taste like onions. They taste like something else.

I looked up this thing that was being shared about food that you can eat if you want to support the striking workers. And it's literally everything that's sold across the street from my home. So I'm just eating like raw garlic and drinking water now. Can I eat these clovers I found?

Yeah. Did the PepsiCo people get their hands on the grass? On Tuesday, astronaut Jeff Bezos and his three fellow space near space travelers successfully returned from their trip on the New Shepard in a speech after landing. Bezos, wearing a cowboy hat, told press, I also want to thank every Amazon employee and customer because you guys paid for this. Yeah, we fucking know we did, Jeff. We know we did. That's why we're pissed. I will never get over seeing on Good Morning America,

you have Jeff Bezos, his brother, Rick, Chip, whatever. You have Wally Funk, who like is a serious person who was training her whole life, who was denied a chance to go to space because of the misogyny and sexism of the space program, who has put in the hours, seen spaceflight unfold for more than half a century from the Earth purely because our country could not imagine sending women to space for so long. And who the fuck is she sitting next to? This rich Dutch kid whose rich dad bought him a fucking seat. I don't like what this says about us, obviously. I don't like any aspect of it. But the part I can't get over, Sean, is how does that kid physically get himself

to sit next to this fucking kick-ass septuagenarian pilot who spent her whole life dreaming of going to space? A pilot? A woman becoming a pilot in like the 1950s? The kind of fucking daring that takes to say, fuck you, to so many people. She becomes a pilot in like the 1950s, the kind of fucking daring that takes to say fuck you to so many people. She becomes a pilot. She becomes part of the fucking space program. They say, oops, no thank you.

We're not ready to send you up because this is man's work. No women in space. No thank you. 50 years go by. Jeff Bezos gets on the blower you say yes then you're on good morning america and gail king is like are you all excited and it's like uh yes rich man rich man rich man and i we couldn't be more excited it's always been independently each of our dreams to fucking go to space. Unbelievable.

The indignity. Wally Funk. Mercury 13. Unbelievable. I'm upset. Commercial space flight is important. It is. I like actually do believe in it.

But it's something, there's something about the way we're going about it that speaks to something so like unholy about this planet like that's those are the only two options i think that technology needs to be explored and expanded like i believe in space exploration and i believe in private space exploration but there is something so ugly about this kind of performance of achievement this like performance of milestones and path breaking like excuse me excuse me we've been up there for a while. It's the first time for you. It's the first fucking time for you. It's a big deal for you personally,

but it's not a big deal for us. We've gone much higher and much further. Like Elon Musk has. SpaceX is already much better at this. This was a branding opportunity. Like if you believe in private space flight, SpaceX is sending people like higher and further and their technology is much further along. Jeff knows that

Richard knows that. But they wanted the headlines. Fucking guys want the headlines. All right. And what's your vision for the future of it? Because I just feel like I can't get enthusiastic about it because I just assume it's only going to be rich, beautiful people who are being preserved for the genetic pool. Like it's going to be like Melrose Place in space. Yeah. I mean, I think we are seeing that like the same ways in which these companies have produced like yawning chasms of unfairness on earth. They are setting about creating similar problems amongst the stars. I don't like that. Right. I agree.

But I do like the kind of the fact that they are now for kind of ego reasons and then also some kind of more tangible, but maybe further to reach actual reasons, kind of practical, financial, capitalistic reasons. See a reason for going to space. Like I am excited about that. I am genuinely excited about that. So I'm seeing now that maybe that's why Bezos brought the female astronaut was just so that he could preserve class disparity on the spaceship. Well, that's really unfair

because like the average net worth of everyone on that ship was like 25 or $50 billion. Yeah. On average. So I don't think that's really fair um yeah like the middle yeah like the middle class on that spaceship was a hundred million dollars like that yeah yeah now there's also this week been some pushback uh on the assertion that the uh beds at the Olympic Village were anti-sex beds. They actually are recyclable beds. They can hold over 440 pounds of sex. Irish gymnast Rhys McLennan even jumped on the bed to demonstrate their durability, declaring anti-sex bed rumors fake news.

Fucking chill out, Rhys. This is some desperate shit. It is not cool to jump on your own bed and say, see, you can have sex on this. Like, yeah, all right. So maybe that's not the reason you're not having sex on that bed. All right. Maybe you're coming on a little too strong.

Yeah. I mean, it's too late to cancel Olympics. McDonald's and Coca-Cola have invested way too much money into the construction of this COVID spreading orgy village. There's no going back. They've been working on this for four years. COVID spreading orgy village. Yeah, there's no going.

Oh, no, we're in. We're in. The Olympics are fucking happening. It's also just kind of what the world needs right now is to believe once again that people could come from every country in the world and unite and come together and get very sick i do think it was probably a good idea to add the 500 meter unproductive cough to the track and field because at least that'll kind of i don't know make lemonade uh and finally wild hogs are wreaking environmental havoc in the U.S. and abroad, destroying native plants and producing more than a million cars worth of carbon dioxide.

And get this, Sean, they're already leading in the 2024 Republican primary. Thank you for applauding that. Thank you. Thank you for applauding that joke. Thank you for applauding that joke. Sean Devlin, thank you so much for being here. Where can people find you? You can go to seandevlin.website. Nice, nice. Sean, thank you so much.

When we come back, I had a great conversation about infrastructure. It was really interesting. All right, trust me. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. He is the founder and president of Strong Towns. He also coined the term Strodes.

Please welcome Chuck Marone. Thanks so much. Thanks for being here. Brian Semel, our producer, did want to title you as the person who coined the term Strodes because we've been saying the word Strodes's because this is a segment of the show where we get very specific about infrastructure. Great. So before we get to that, you have an interesting history. There are a lot of people who are activists around changing the way the suburbs work,

changing how we build cities, think about cities. They tend to be progressives. They tend to be liberals. You are a Republican. You started your career as an engineer. I don't know if you still consider yourself a Republican, but can you talk a little bit about your realization around suburban design that led you to see it as unsustainable? I am a conservative guy from a conservative place. Yeah, I don't really identify as much as Republican anymore, maybe more when I started Strong Towns did. But certainly as an engineer doing projects, building roads, streets, sewer systems, water systems, all this stuff, I was dealing in like multi-million dollar capital

investments that we were doing. And I was watching the development that was resulting from that being two things. One, not nearly enough in terms of its intensity or its value to actually, through the tax system, recoup enough money to pay for it. And I also looked at it as being very temporary. I'm only 47 years old. In my little town, I've seen the Walmart move twice now. And those buildings be abandoned afterwards. And we spent millions of dollars to get the sewer and water out to the Walmart building. And so you look at this disproportionate level of investment, the public investment being essentially an eternal investment, a permanent, veryate level of investment, the public investment being essentially an eternal investment, a permanent, very high level of public investment, and the private investment being a very almost throwaway, temporary, disposable level of investment. If that weren't bad enough,

just the revenue streams themselves come nowhere near maintaining what has been built. There was a really hard realization for me because, like I said, I grew up in a place that this is what we built and this is what success looked like. And so it was really hard to actually peel back the numbers and recognize that the more we did, the more of this stuff we built, the more difficult our financial situation became and actually the more broke our city was becoming. And so what I find interesting about sort of your perspective is I think there's a lot of partisan arguing. You see, you know, Democrats pushing for investments in transit, in rail, in broadband and clean energy. And then

there's this kind of addiction to cars on the part of Republicans. But what I find interesting about the way you look at this is that that's almost beside the point. And I think stroads are a good way into this. I think this is something people see all over the country all the time. And they don't have a word for it. And they know it's not right. And they don't know about how to make something better. So what is a street?

What is a road? And what is a stroad? A street, it's a platform for building a place. We talk about it in terms of finance often. So it's a platform for building wealth. But if you think of wealth as kind of a multidimensional thing, it's a platform for building a place people want to be. A road is a connection then between places. It's how you get from one place to another very quickly.

And I like to describe a road as a replacement of a railroad, which is a road on rails. You get on at one spot, you get off on another spot, and there's a high-speed connection between the two. We can look back in history and we can see that roads used to be waterways. You would get on a boat at one place and that's how you got long distances very, very quickly. But once you arrived in a place, you had a series of streets that were designed to build wealth, not for through traffic, not for fast movement. So a road is like a highway, an interstate, a railroad, a river, whatever. It connects to places. And a street, like a quintessential street to your mind, is what people all claim to want to

live around, be around. It's like when people talk about quaint towns, they talk about a beautiful downtown district where they can walk around and go to a restaurant and go to a store. Like that's a street, a commercial space that's a destination. The economic value of a road is in connecting places, not in having development along it.

And the economic value of a place is about building the greatest place possible, not about having cars that can go through it very quickly or travel that can pass through it very quickly. And you see this embodied in a strode, the street road hybrid is something that is trying to both move people and goods and stuff quickly and create economic development. And it just fails at both. You really can't do both simultaneously. and create economic development. And it just fails at both. You really can't do both simultaneously. Yeah. Like you compared it to, I think, a futon, which is that like a futon,

it's a bad couch and it's a bad bed. So a strode, it is something that's trying to do both and doing both poorly. And these are places you see all over the country, which are basically like multi-lane highways off of which you can go into big giant parking lots where there's either strip malls or big box retailers or like series of giant restaurants or what have you. And they're traffic-y. They're not easy to drive through. They're certainly not easy to walk through. And they're not kind of lovely places to visit. And we've built these stroads everywhere. They're all over the country. So I want to talk about places that are kind of deconstructing these spaces, these roads, these like bad places to visit and bad places to drive through. But OK, what were the incentives that led sort of cities and counties and municipalities

all over the country to construct these street road hybrids? Transportation funding largely comes from the state and federal government. What you see is that a lot of these places are on state aid highways, state through roads, county through roads, basically transportation funding that comes from someplace else. And so what you're doing when you can build a $200 million bypass of a city or where you can build a $20 million frontage road, thoroughfare kind of thing. What you're doing is you're tapping into outside money. And so it's in a sense like house money you're playing with and you put it in place. And so any development that you get off of that

is like free money for a local government, right? For a local government. That's the government incentive. If you look at the private sector, the private sector incentive is massive. The government comes in, they build for you at no cost to you or at very low cost to you, the Walmart, the strip mall, the McDonald's drive-thru, what have you. They build this piece of infrastructure. What in pre-Great Depression days would have been like the developer's cost, that's all covered. Even where it's not covered, the part of it, we've made that development process really cheap and easy. So we've got long-term financing for you. We've built secondary markets for that. You can think of it as a modern equivalent of slash and burn agriculture. You just build things like pop up really quick,

one life cycle, and you don't worry about the second life cycle. You just get it really, really, really quickly. And in the economic system we've set up, everyone benefits from it. If you're the federal government and you measure success in terms of GDP, which is a measurement of transactions and unemployment, this creates a lot of transactions and it lowers unemployment in the short term. If you're the local government and you measure success in terms of the number of permits you issue and the, you know, the amount of tax-based growth you had over the last year, this is like really easy to do. The problem always comes in two, three decades later when you have to go out, fix and maintain this stuff. And the tax base you have is either gone

or insufficient to actually do that job. You know, you see this in a few different kind of forms of unsustainable buildings. So you talk about the life cycle of suburbs as being unsustainable. They are built, they flourish, and then they slowly fade away because the cost of maintaining the infrastructure, the roads, the sewage, the electric lines, all of that is too expensive in this kind of sprawl. The same thing happens with these kind of multi-lane highway, but also commercial spaces that like ultimately they are built to decline, right? They are built to decline. And we can say that confidently because if you, if you look at organic systems, you look at natural systems that sustain themselves over time, there's a certain evolutionary process, right? They adapt, they change, circumstances are

different. You just go back to the roads that I built in my early engineering days, let alone, you know, the people who taught me, who taught me. It's a completely different economy today than it was back then. So we have to have systems that we build adapt and change over time. The defining feature of post-war development is that we build everything all at once and we build it to a finished state. And so everything that we build is designed to be good at the same time, fail at the same time, and then not change or adapt in any way. Whether you're looking at it environmentally or ecologically or socially or financially, that's not a viable model. You know, we talk a lot of it about how these sort of big box retailers have, like Walmart

and others, have pushed out. There's like this debate, right? Like, oh, are they just living in the wreckage of downtowns or are they helping to push the destruction of those downtowns? But we don't talk enough about the actual infrastructure choices and where we put dollars in the system that make it much cheaper to build a big box store and actually kind of suck money out of the downtowns. Everyone talks about loving, right?

The community spaces, the places where people gather and see friends and see family on the street, the kind of the quintessential version of a downtown space that people want. Can you talk a little bit about places that are kind of coming back towards supporting kind of downtown development and what that looks like in terms of like how people should be pushing either locally or pushing their representatives to kind of support stronger downtowns? Like everybody says they want, but doesn't know how to support. When we think of downtowns, like the quintessential downtown, I think a lot of times we think of, and I'm not saying this in a derogatory way, but we often think of like Main Street Disneyland, which was designed to be like a simulacrum,

like a version of like the quintessential downtown, right? Like that's what we're plugging into. But you see like restaurants and coffee shops and bakeries and like knickknack places. And I feel like that is the version that we are sliding into. And I think it's a good like foothold, but what we're really trying to get back to and what would have been before this kind of museum piece of a downtown was an actual real economic ecosystem where you had not only offices and shops, but you had local retailers doing locally produced stuff. You could buy your clothes locally that was actually produced locally, that actually was sourced materials locally. There's a whole economic ecosystem that ties into a core downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods that has essentially like human life to it.

We can go back and look at cities for thousands of years and we see not just restaurants and coffee shops, but we see like the things that humans actually need to survive. Yeah. Like not just retail, basically. Yeah. Actual kind of commercial life in small towns, in downtowns. We embrace the malls and we embrace the big box stores and we embrace that because it felt like progress, right?

It felt like, well, that downtown is the old and this is the new and our economy's changing and we need to change with it. We put a massive amount of subsidy into making that happen. I mean, unfathomable amounts of money into driving downtown out of business and bringing back new stuff post-World War II. If we want the other stuff back, there's going to have to be not only a different subsidy

approach, but an actual localization of the money. And I think that's the hard thing right now. Our economy is wired to put lots and lots of money. I wrote a thing about the Cheesecake Factory and how we bailed them out in the pandemic. Cheesecake Factory, within four weeks of the pandemic started, had notified every place they were in they were not paying their rent and they were going to go bankrupt. But we put a ton of money into buying their debt and pumping them up. And I said, it's not because anyone loves the Cheesecake Factory.

Let's not say something we're going to regret. There's a simple mechanism to put lots of money into the cheesecake factory. And it's harder. And you saw this through the PPP program and all that. It's harder to put money into that local restaurant. I know that you've been critical of the way in which some of these larger infrastructure proposals moving through Congress distribute the money that it kind of follows the same pattern.

Basically, you know, localities to the point point you're making, localities will get this money. It's a use it or lose it situation. They will come up with a way to spend vast sums of money and build new things. But rather than kind of the kind of ground up development that is needed. I mean, part of this is like this is where the money is. The federal government is going to fund infrastructure. We need part of the problem is some of these amounts are not enough because even in the next 10 years in which we'll spend this money, a bunch of other things will go into disrepair. We're just not

keeping up with the amount of maintenance we need to do. But so what would you like to see in terms of how the federal government invests in local infrastructure to re-tip the scales away from big box, you know, highway, giant parking lot development? What the federal government is really good at is doing things at a large scale over and over again, very efficient. So building the interstate system, ridiculously efficient. We went out and within a decade transformed an entire continent around a new idea of highways. an entire continent around a new idea of highways. Ever since really the end of the 1960s, early 1970s, we've been pouring money into the same system. You can look at the diminishing returns. I mean,

a billion dollars for an interchange that's going to increase drive times by 15 seconds for the average commuter. These are not good investments. What really needs to happen is that we need to stop expanding these systems and stop trying to build these systems and actually go out and see what we can do to make better use of the investments we've already made, increase the financial productivity, actually turn those parking lots into buildings and turn those one-story buildings into two-story buildings and start thickening up neighborhoods. The problem with that approach is that the federal government does not do that well. It's not an approach that scales. It's a hyper-local, nuanced approach.

And so in a world where we kind of feel compelled to spend money out of DC, as opposed to kind of bottom up, what I've said is stop spending money on transportation. Just say the federal government is just going to maintain the systems the federal government has already built. And if you've got to spend money, just give cash to cities and say, do whatever you want with it. We talk about like the atomization in our culture through the lens of politics often and also through the lens of social media, but not often in the lens of infrastructure

and the way infrastructure shapes how we engage with community, engage with the towns in which we live. There are examples of places that have basically converted their roads into plazas. They've converted formerly kind of like dead economic zones for basically you drive in, you fill your car, you drive home into more kind of community spaces. Can you talk a little bit about that? What do you think it foretells for some of the changes we need to make? I think the most exciting places right now in this country also tend to be the poorest places.

And I'll point to Memphis, Tennessee. I'll point to Shreveport, Louisiana. I'll point to Santa Ana, California, places that we've spent time in as an organization, places without a lot of money and a lot of resources have basically gone in and said, how do we make the best use of what we have? And what you see is kind of less pretty, less refined version of what you see in some very rich places where they've gone in and built the plaza and done the very high-end thing. To me, those feel often like, again, kind of like museum pieces, like lifestyle appendages to a place. But if you go to some of these places, Detroit is another example where a lot of neighborhoods are coming back and these gathering spaces are being created.

I'm not going to say people live in like some left-right, blue- red utopia. But what you do see is a lot less dysfunction in terms of people conversing with each other, being part of each other's lives. I think you see a lot of the natural mixing of humanity that humans are wired to do. I think one of the things that Strong Towns has taught me is that there's a huge ton of value in progressive perspectives, particularly at the local level. And I can have really great conversations about conservative values and conservative approaches that line up with progressive values and progressive approaches once we're talking about our block, our neighborhood, our city, our community in ways that cross all the boundaries that we're struggling to cross today. Chuck Maron, it was so good to talk to you. Thank you for sharing

your thoughts. Really appreciate it. Hey, thanks for the invitation. Nice to see you. When we come back, Fox News has been cycling through bad guys lately and they are phoning it in and we played a great game about it. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. And we're back. Fox News. It's always been a well-oiled machine. Not a machine that should be oiled, just one that is well-oiled,

like an incredibly oily laptop. That's the Fox News we've come to know and loathe. And while they've always been quick on the cut and paste when it comes to meaningless, hate-filled talking points, they've really been sort of phoning it in lately. Don't believe me? Then let's play a round of Talking Heads. I'll play a clip,

and Sarah will have to tell us what each venomous, weirdly vague quote is ranting about. Is it the COVID vaccine? Is it the caravan that has been heading to our southern border for, say, the last five years whenever there's an election? Or is it the most recent and most dreaded threat to America, knowing American history? Hi, Sarah. Thanks for being here.

Hi. Thank you for having me. What part of the country are you in right now? I am in Indiana, home of Mike Pence. I see that.edu, right? Oh, yeah. That's on there. That's my school email. Sweet, sweet sweet what are you studying um i just graduated i got my jd and i take the bar next week that's cool um are you ready for the bar it's hard right yeah very hard not ready do you think it's strange that law school

doesn't prepare you for the bar that's what we've saying. There's a big push to like get rid of the bar exam, but nobody's listening to us. So yeah, that's the thing, though. It's like it's a perverse incentives because once you've taken the bar, it is no longer in your interest or really that big of a deal to you to fight for others to not have to take the bar. And the only people who take the bar are people who aren't lawyers. Therefore, lawyers don't advocate to have people not take the bar, you know? Which is strange because we're supposed to be advocates, but... Yes, but have you met a lot of lawyers? Really, just the ones that I work with.

And those are good lawyers. Haven't met a whole lot of others, but I hear about them. Well, here's how the game works, all right? We're going to play a clip and you have to tell us what it's about. Are you ready? We'll see. Let's do this. First up, we've got Tucker Carlson. They will do what they want. You will do what they say.

No one will stop them. You will not want to live here when that happens. Sarah, who is they? Is Tucker mindlessly denigrating those who support critical race theory or Black Lives Matter? I'm going to go with Black Lives Matter. You got it. You got it. You're one for one.

You're one for one. Next clip. We're on the verge of East German style. Show me your papers. East Germany. Sounds scary. According to Will Kane and his viewers, gut reaction. Why are we on the verge of that?

Is it gun control or COVID vaccine mandates? I think I'm going to go with the vaccine mandates. You got it. You got it. Next clip. This is a big topic that I cover extensively. I truly believe that it's time for us to pull our kids out of school. What threat is she talking about? She covers it extensively. What threat is she talking about? She covers it extensively. Candace Owens is worried about what?

Is it fairness for trans kids or critical race theory? Well, it's definitely not the first one. So I think I'm going to stick with critical race theory. Yes, critical race theory is the answer. Next, from Campus Reform Editor-in-Chief Cabot Phillips. Cabot Phillips, you know you're dealing with a right-wing person. Here's the clip. They are organized. They are growing. And they do not care about all the ideals that we hold dear in America. They don't care about free speech. They care about intimidation and violence to get what they want. They don't care about America. They're here for your free

speech. They could be absolutely anybody or anything. Who is Cabot Phillips trash talking now? Is it Antifa, cancel culture, or Black Lives Matter? Antifa? Yes, you got it. It's Antifa. That's who he's worried about there. Next up, you know her from her Nazi salute at the Republican National Convention, Laura Ingraham. The goal is to break the bond with the nuclear family.

The goal is to break the bond with the nuclear family. The goal is to break the bond with the nuclear family. We're sick of these tired old nuclear families. We want a new depraved liberal family, three dads, four moms, sex robots. According to Laura Ingraham, what is being used to achieve this end? Which again, we all want. Is it allowing gay marriage?

Is it teaching kids about they, them pronouns? Or is it the new Biden child tax credit? Is it the they, them pronouns, or is it the new Biden child tax credit? Is it the they, them pronouns? Yeah, it is. It is. It's the they, them pronouns. You got it. Yeah, she's bad. She's no good. She's no good. Next up, Reagan biographer Craig Shirley said this. These are basically the Jacobins of the French Revolution now in the 21st century version. They are the stormtroopers of the deconstructionists who want to tramp over the rule of law. The Jacobins and stormtroopers at one time.

So France and space. Two frontiers threatened by this terrible, terrible deconstructionists, whatever that means. Who is he warning us about? Is it Antifa? Is it the squad? Or is it the caravan? I feel like he's talking about the squad. The caravan. Isn't that wild? That doesn't make, but it doesn't make any sense. What? They're Jacobin stormtrooper deconstructionist, the caravan? But that's what he said, all right? It was the caravan.

But I see why you went with the squad. It felt, that's why I thought it was hard, hard to have it be the squad there. Final question. Tucker Carlson said this. It's lunacy. It's the French Revolution. The stuff is everywhere.

The French Revolution is their go-to analogy. Get ready to put in overtime at the guillotine factory because Tucker Carlson knows his cake eating days are over. What is going to usher in the liberty, equality, and fraternity that Tucker is so afraid of? I like that the writing of this is very pro-French Revolution. So what was he talking about? Was it Antifa, fake news, critical race theory, or the Green New Deal? My gut says the Green New Deal. Your gut is wrong. He was talking about critical race theory, but you hesitated.

So your other gut felt like that might not be the answer. Just a little bit. All of them are very plausible. Sarah, you have won the game as surely as you will win your battle against the bar exam in Indiana. Congratulations. I don't know. You won the game. Thank you. How many flashcards are within 10 feet of you right now?

I don't have flashcards because they're on my iPad. But I do have handouts right next're on my iPad, but I do have handouts right next to me. Sarah, what does it say? This is making me feel very strange. Here's the thing. The last time I took a test, there weren't iPads. I haven't taken a test in the flat screen era. So of course I thought flashcards, but yeah, iPad, they make great flashcards for the iPad. You know, it's a great medium for the flashcard, you know? Yeah, I was just cheap and didn't want to have to wait for the cards to get here. So I bought the electronic one. I think you're gonna be a great lawyer, Sarah. Thank you so much for being here. Good luck on the bar exam. All right.

When we come back, we'll end on a high note. And we're back because we all need it this week. Here it is, the high note. Hey, I love it. It's Mandy in Sendai, Japan. Yes, I said Japan. We're still dealing with the virus really bad here. Not many people are vaccinated, but my city has started a program so that any elderly or sick people who don't go to their appointment, who miss it, their vaccine is given to teachers at elementary schools here. So I will be getting my second shot next week on Wednesday. Tomorrow's our last day of this term before summer vacation. And after the school is finished, I'm going to the Olympics. So y'all can check out the China versus Brazil women's soccer game. I will be there with some of my students. It's very exciting. And on Saturday, I turned 39. So hopefully one more good

year and we'll be through this virus here as well. I hope everybody in America is doing well. I'd like to come back home and visit. Have a great one. Yes, this is Paul calling from West Central, Illinois. I just want to leave. My highlight of the week was running the annual local 5K race here for the 42nd time. It was not only satisfying physically, but mentally as well.

Running is my way of dealing with my demons of having been a participant in America's war in Vietnam. Your show may not have the physical benefits of running, but it does help with the mentally coping with the stresses of life. Thanks for doing that. Hey, Lovett. My name is Daniel Ortiz, and my high note for this week is that I just got certified to be on the ballot for this year's Toledo City Council primary race.

I've never run for office before. I've never even worked on a campaign before, but, you know, partly inspired by what you guys do at Crooked and people you've had on from Run for Something. I decided last year that I was going to run for office this year. And starting from nothing, starting from zero followers on all platforms and everything like that, we went out, we got the signatures we needed, and now we're going to be on the ballot this September for the Toledo City Council race. Hi, Lovett. This is Pam from Bremerton, Washington, and I'm leaving a personal high note.

You're desperately in need of good news. My grandson, Owen, who is four weeks old today after his corrective heart surgery, finally had his feeding tube removed. This means that he has enough energy to eat his calories on his own and is gaining weight. So he is mitten free since we now don't have to worry about him pulling things out of his face. And he is living his best baby life. I want to thank everyone at Yale Children's Hospital for the compassionate care he and my daughter received. Thanks also to everyone ever anywhere who made vaccines possible because I am so excited to be able to go and see him next week. I want to thank you and everyone at Crooked and Love It or Leave It for making this flash and for giving me motivation to get involved

and help make this world a better place for ourselves and little humans like Owen. So thanks a lot. Bye. Hey, love it. This is Steve and Indy. Just wanted to say thanks for all that you guys do. Love the show. And our high note this week is that my wife and I just found out that we're going to have our first kid. So keep up all the good work and thanks again. Thanks to everybody who called in.

If you want to leave us a message about something that gave you hope, call us at 740-298-5880. Thank you to Sean Devlin, Chuck Marone, and everybody who called in. There are 472 days until the 2022 midterm elections. Have a great weekend. is Brian Semel. Bill Lance is our editor and Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Our theme song is written and performed by Sure Sure. Thanks to our designers

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