Morning Wire - Happiness Gap & Bullet Train Debacle | 10.15.22

Episode Date: October 15, 2022

New study offers clues about the underlying reasons for this persistent “happiness gap” between liberals and conservatives, political infighting is blamed for California’s languishing billion-dollar bullet train, and a high-profile concussion case shakes up the NFL. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are conservatives really happier than liberals? A new study offers some intriguing clues about the underlying reasons for this persistent happiness gap. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's October 15th, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire. The once-promising bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco has now languished in the planning stages for 14 years, costing billions before a single mile has been laid. What went wrong? and what's being done to move the project forward now.

And the NFL has made some big changes and one doctor working for a team has been fired after a high-profile concussion case. Nobody wants to see players get concussed, but it's a part of the game. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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to create a will. And when used promo code wire, you'll save 10%. Go to Epicwill.com and use promo code wire to save 10% on Epicwill's complete will package. That's Epicwill.com, promo code wire. A new American Family Survey has some notable findings about the connection between political ideology and happiness. The study found that those who identify as liberal are about 15 points less likely to be completely satisfied with their lives than their conservative counterparts. Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham is here to explore what's driving the political happiness gap.

So, Megan, studies like these always seem to spark a lot of social media commentary, but there's some pretty fascinating breakout data in this particular study. Hey Georgia. Yeah, there is. So I think we need to start by adding the context that the fact that there is a happiness gap between left and right is actually not news. Polling companies first started surveying people about overall life satisfaction in 1972. And the results have consistently found that conservatives tend to be happier than liberals. Now, the thing that has changed is theories about why that is. So some sociologists have argued that it has to do with their views on. meritocracy, whether or not you think someone gets ahead by working hard, which also ties in with feelings of agency. And then religious beliefs also seem to have a strong correlation to happiness and conservatives tend to be more religious. In 2015, Science Magazine ran a paper that essentially argued conservatives just think that they're happier. And finally, conservative commentator George Will once joked that maybe it's all this news about conservatives being happier that's depressing liberals. But the latest research has also shown some interesting dichotomies between men and

women that offer some new clues about what's going on here. So both liberal men and women are less happy than their conservative counterparts, but liberal women are a lot less happy. On measures of mental health, for instance, they registered a full 20 points lower than women on the right. Now, I spoke to University of Virginia sociologist and American Enterprise Institute fellow Brad Wilcox about that huge disparity. And he said much of it comes down to two key areas. When you do the statistics here behind these kinds of trends, which you see is that two family factors being married and being satisfied with your family help help to explain the gap between liberals and conservatives and happiness and help. So we see that only 36% of liberal women say that they're completely satisfied with their families compared to 61% of conservative women. And again, there's no gap as large in family satisfaction

in the data as there is between liberal women and conservative women. So Wilcox points out that conservatives are about 26% more likely to be married. And they're also more likely to have children. And the latest research shows that parents are happier than non-parents. Modern progressives are statistically less inclined toward traditional marriage and family. Now, he said the question of marriage and family impacted men's happiness and mental health as well, but not as much as women. So that's where that biggest disparity lies. So left-leaning women are kind of dragging down the scores disproportionately. Correct. That's right. Now, you say they have 50 years worth of data. Has the happiness divide dovetailed with marriage rates

during that whole time? Loosely, yes, it has. As the gap in marriage has been growing, so has that happiness divide. And that does seem to suggest that the difference could be coming more from how our political outlook influences us to order our personal lives.

I think the problem for progressives is that they're not kind of partaking of the benefits of having a spouse, the benefits of living a family-centered lifestyle because a lot of the values and virtues that they embrace don't point them directly in the direction of families. Now, what about religiosity?

I imagine that's pretty hard to disentangle from marriage rates since religious people tend to get and stay married, correct? Right, that's correct. And that's something that Wilcox and a fellow researcher have been looking at pretty closely. And it turns out those factors are tough to isolate because, as you mentioned, religious faith does tend to promote marriage and family

and religiosity correlates with happiness. And by the way, that holds whatever your religious faith, whether you're Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, what have you. So maybe we need to spend more time talking about those factors being drivers of happiness than our political views. Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime. That was Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham.

Coming up is political infighting to blame for California's languishing billion-dollar bullet tray. If you like this podcast, subscribe. to our Morning Wire newsletter available exclusively to DailyWire members. Get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at DailyWire.com slash subscribe. Use code MorningWire to try Reader's Pass membership and get your first month for only 99 cents. California's bullet train has turned into a logistical and administrative disaster, leaving many wondering if it will ever see the light of day.

The project has been fraught with political dealings that have contributed to the issue. Here to give us the details is Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence Bond. So Charlotte, what can you tell us about the project? Will California ever actually see this train? It's a good question, John. California's bullet train was supposed to shuttle passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco by way of the Central Valley in around two hours and 40 minutes. You may have heard of the bridge to nowhere, but right now, this is potentially the train to nowhere.

And the artifacts of that failure, massive cinder blocks, dot the Central Valley of California, and our daily reminders of a project that might never be completed. The New York Times looked into the project and really found that politics is a huge reason for the train's failure. So take us back. How did this all start? In 2008, Californians voted in favor of an almost $10 billion bond for the rail line, and it was supposed to be done by 2020 and cost $33 billion. Now, it's obviously 2022, and not a single mile of this project is done.

One of the main concerns is where construction was started in the middle, right in the Central Valley. This was a political agreement. People in favor of operating it through Central Valley cities made some compelling arguments such as the need for employment opportunities in the area and because it's mainly agricultural land, so it'd be less difficult to construct it there. But this led to even more complications, right? Right. This shifted the route from the west to the east and would be expensive. It also would lead to more setbacks and issues over getting the land needed, as well as as additional environmental concerns.

Here's Governor Gavin Newsom in his first state of the state address in 2019. The current project, as planned, would cost too much and respectfully take too long. There's been too little oversight and not enough transparency. Right now, there simply isn't a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego,

let alone from San Francisco to L.A. This summer, a deal on California state budget provided the last $4.2 billion of that bond funding, for the project, and established a new inspector general role to hopefully help move things along. That agreement allowed this 171 mile span of the railroad in the Central Valley to continue. The state's high-speed rail authority has spent over $1.4 billion purchasing land in the middle of the state, too, which has also been a main reason for the setbacks.

So some of it is being constructed now. Yes, some of phase one is being built linking some cities in the center of the state. That's supposed to be done by 2030, but there are a lot of doubts if that's possible. The final plan for the cost is now projected to be $113 billion. And no one knows where the money to connect the train to L.A. and San Francisco is going to come from. Now, other countries have made bullet trains and been successful. So what's the main issue here? It really looks like political infighting is to blame since that led to changes that affected the long-term success.

SNCF, which is the French government rail operator, wanted to the, help with the project, but when their recommendations were ignored, they pulled out of California in 2011 and began a project in North Africa. SNCF was able to build a fully operational bullet train in Morocco in seven years. A career project manager told the times that SNCF left California for North Africa because it was, quote, less politically dysfunctional. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of California politics. Charlotte, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. That was DailyWire's Charlotte Pitts-Bomb.

The world's most lucrative sports league, the NFL, has suffered a series of PR hits over the issue of concussion protocols after an unsettling on-field collapse of a star quarterback. The league has already made some major changes that could impact the sport, and one doctor has already been fired. Here to discuss is sports writer and craning company co-host David Cohn. Hey, David. Hi, John. So for those who haven't followed this over the last couple of weeks, catch us up to speed here. Sure. So this mainly revolves around Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tua Tago Viloa, who took a hit about three weeks ago during the team's matchup against the Buffalo Bills. He began stumbling while coming off the field and everyone watching immediately knew something was wrong.

Tua left the game after that play, but returned for the second half after medical evaluation and managed to lead the dolphins to a win. So despite what appeared to be clear signs of cognitive impairment, he was, greenlit to go back into the game. Correct. And he was clear to play four days later, and that's where things get disturbing. He took the field against the Cincinnati Bengals in a primetime Thursday night football matchup, and during the first half of that contest, Tua was tackled and then immediately showed signs of head trauma when he raised his hands near his face mask, which is a reflex known as the fencing response. Following this scary scene, Tua was carted off the field, and he has not played since. Yeah, that footage is pretty hard to watch.

Yep. So it seems clear that Tua was not fully recovered from the hit on Sunday, yet still played Thursday night. I guess the big question here is who's at fault. Yeah, and that's the overarching question. The NFL and the NFL Players Association conducted an investigation and found that protocol was followed in evaluating Tago Viloa, but also acknowledged that the outcome in this case was not what was intended when the concussion protocol was drafted. Okay.

The Players Association, which has long criticized these Thursday night games due to the quick turnaround, has the ability to terminate the consultant, which is called the unaffiliated neurotrama consultant in these situations, and it exercised that right by firing the neurologist who initially cleared TWA. Okay, so that move was made by the Players Association, not the leak. Both can do it. In this case, the NFLPA is the institution that made the decision. And in addition to this firing, the NFL made revisions to its concussion protocol writ large, specifically as it relates to ataxia, which is the medical term for the poor muscle control

associated with concussions. This can manifest as unsteadiness or slurred speech or stumbling. So moving forward, any player who is diagnosed with ataxia will not be allowed to return to that football game. All right, so changes made by the NFL, have we seen any impact from these changes in games over the past few weeks. Well, there were several roughing the passer penalties handed down this past weekend from fairly innocuous tackles. Some people around the league are calling this coincidence, but many others believe this is a direct result of the NFL attempting to fundamentally

change the game. Now, we had sports science creator John Brinkus on our show Craning Company, as well as former NFL quarterback Danny Connell on this week, and both made the same statement. physicality is a part of football. That's why they're wearing helmets. It's why they're paid handsomely at the NFL level and now even in college to take on that risk. And every player who puts on the uniform and puts on a helmet is aware of that risk. I think the NFL would be far better served to just admit it to be like, you know what? It's a risky game.

And we're trying to do our best to protect the players, but we can't protect them all the time. Deal with it. So while the league will undoubtedly continue looking for ways to make the game safer, John, we must acknowledge that football is a contact sport. And if you take away the contact, it's no longer football. Yeah, I guess there's just no way around it and all involved know what they're getting into. Yep. David, thanks for coming on.

Thank you. That was Crane & Company co-host, David Cohn. Another story we're tracking this week. Tulsi Gabbard has officially begun campaigning for New Hampshire senator Don Bulldoch. Bulldoch has received support from former President Trump and is challenging incumbent Democrat Senator Maggie Hassan. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.