Morning Wire - UK Prime Minister & California Homeless | 10.1.22

Episode Date: October 1, 2022

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom faces economic and social challenges, the White House revives the name-change controversy during Atlanta Braves visit, and policies incentivize drug use among homeless. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Liz Truss was sworn in as the UK Prime Minister just days before the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Despite facing multiple challenges, including inflation, recession, and the Ukraine war, trust does not seem deterred. We speak to a UK expert about England's new conservative PM. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's October 1st, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire. We should listen to Native American and indigenous people who are the most impacted by this. The Atlanta Braves' visit to the White House prompted a statement from the press secretary

about changing the name of the team. And the sports world has responded. And thousands of homeless people die on the streets of Los Angeles every year, many from drug overdoses. Some say federal homeless policies reward drug use. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

Do you like to be the first to know about trendy news and current events? If so, you've got to get the Daily Wire Plus app. Not only will you receive mobile notifications whenever something's happening, but you'll also have access to the best commentary to break it all down. Download the Daily Wire Plus app and keep up with the facts no matter where your day takes you. In the midst of war, recession, and energy shortages, the United Kingdom is undergoing a major change in leadership. The new prime minister, Liz Truss, took office on September 6th, but her term in office was immediately overshadowed by the death of Queen Elizabeth the second just days later. Still, Truss has been quietly making a mark on British politics.

Joining us to discuss why many are comparing the UK's new Prime Minister to Margaret Thatcher is Ted Bromond, senior research fellow at the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation. Ted, welcome. Thanks very much for having me. Appreciate it. Now, Liz Truss is very different from Boris Johnson. Can you tell us a little bit about her background? Prime Minister Trust has come in to the office of Prime Minister after a very rapid rise through the UK political system. She really made her reputation as the international trade secretary under the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. And this was a position that didn't exist in the British government before Brexit. She made a really brilliant start on negotiating new agreements

with Australia, Japan, India, the Pacific Trade Block, the United States, big consequential agreements. And maybe even more importantly than that, she was one of a very few conservatives who were consistently optimistic and forward-looking about Brexit and who took a really serious position towards making supply-side reforms to enhance the British economy. Now, I understand she is a big proponent of free market economics, and very shortly upon coming into office, she pledged to overturn the 2019 ban on fracking for shale in England, but then very shortly afterwards,

she installed a cap on household energy costs. How do you square those two with her being a proponent of free markets? One of them is a piece of free markets. The other one is a step by a politician who doesn't want to lose too many votes. It would be nice if politicians were always consistent and always upheld the right policies. Unfortunately, politics is frequently a matter of 6040. There are some fundamental differences between the U.K. and the U.S. that viewers should understand. In the U.S., if you own a piece of ground of property, you own what's underneath.

You own the mineral rights. If there's coal or there is oil or you can frack, you know, salt mine underneath, whatever, you can dig down and you can harvest those resources. You've got a direct benefit from it. In the United Kingdom, the crown, that is the government, owns everything below the surface. The state owns all of the mineral rights. That means that if there's any fracking to be done, you don't really benefit from it. because they're not your resources. The government owns them. And that not only means that the government

has to permit everything, it means that there is no room at all for private innovation of the kind that drove fracking in the United States because there's no private sector to benefit from it. But it was compounded by this structure of British property ownership, whereby the government inherently owned it all anyhow. So what Truss has done is we can hope unleash some fracking in the UK. And the UK, by the way, does have huge formations of shale and potentially massive reserves of natural gas. Now, on September 17th, Liz Truss announced her new cabinet and to great fanfare for the first time ever, there was not a single straight white male or white man in her cabinet.

Would you say this was purposeful? and is there a woke aspect to Liz Truss's approach to government? No, I think she's about the most unwoke person you could imagine with, you know, one or two exceptions. I don't think that Truss is the kind of person who would select her cabinet on that basis. It really sort of reflects the nature of, and the NPs that she had to pick from. You know, the difficulty that you have, if you're a prime minister, is that you have to allocate people in the cabinet for all sorts of reasons. It's not, unfortunately, just a question of who would be good in the job. It's also a question of who supported you when you were campaigning for office.

All right. Well, the next election in the UK is less than two years away, so she doesn't have much time to win Britain's over. Ted, thanks so much for joining us. Absolutely. Glad to do it. That was Ted Broman, Senior Research Fellow at the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. Coming up, the White House revives the Atlanta Braves name change controversy. 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.

When the Braves visited the White House this week to celebrate their World Series win, White House press secretary Corrine Jean-Pierre said the president believes it's important to have a conversation about changing the names of teams named after Native American groups. And Native American and indigenous voices, they should be at the center of this conversation. Here to discuss is sports writer and Crane & Company co-host David Cohn. So, David, we have the White House attempting to revive controversy about teams named in honor of Native Americans. First, will the Atlanta Braves be changing their team name anytime soon? It appears no. Executives for the Atlanta Braves have been adamant. There will be no name change

in Atlanta. Terry McGurk, the team's chairman, is on record saying, quote, we are so proud of our team's name and the expectation is that we will always be the Atlanta Braves, unquote. Now, John, having said that owners of other franchises have made similar statements in the past, but eventually backtracked due to public pressure. The Washington Redskins is a great example. They gave into corporate demands to change their team name in 2020. They are now the Washington commanders, and the Cleveland Indians baseball team changed their name a year ago to the Guardians. Right, two high-profile examples of teams changing their names to something more sort of generic amid pressure from activists. Yes. How has the MLB handled the Braves question so far?

Well, it's a good question. Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred pointed out that many American Indian tribes support Atlanta's baseball team, stating, quote, the Braves have done a phenomenal job with the Native American community in that region, and the Native community is wholly supportive of the Braves program, including the use of the celebratory chop. The chop, which was borrowed from the Florida State Seminoles. Exactly, via Dion Sanders. I knew you'd bring that up. I have to. Now, Richard Sneed, the principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, which is located in Western North Carolina, defended the Braves as well. in 2020, stating, to me, the Washington Redskins name was probably the only team name I could look at

and say, that's derogatory. That's a racial slur. But all the rest, they're an affirmation of the honor, strength, courage, and the warrior spirit of the native people. Now, Atlanta is the same city that Major League Baseball relocated the All-Star game from last season, correct? That is correct. The League relocated that game from Atlanta to Denver, Colorado, due to voter laws passed by the state of Georgia. Then Democrats said those laws were racist. Many critics of the move pointed out, though, that Colorado's voting laws are in many ways more restrictive than Georgia's, and that Georgia's voter turnout has been at historic records. Did that topic come up in President Biden's address to the team? No, President Biden congratulated the team. He made a joke about knowing what it's like

to be counted out in Georgia, referring to his election victory there. And then he spent a good bit of time praising former brave star Hank Aaron for overcoming racism. So even in a short ceremony to honor the World Series champions, the president didn't miss an opportunity to bring up race. Or to tout his victory. Exactly. David, thanks for coming on. Thank you.

That was Crane & Company co-host, David Cohn. Around 2,000 homeless people a year die on the streets of Los Angeles. In fact, homeless deaths have doubled in many cities. across the country in recent years, and drug overdoses are the biggest driver. One reason for this surge in deaths is that many government programs actually incentivize people to use drugs, especially among the homeless population. Here again to discuss is Judge Glock, the director of policy and research at the Cicero Institute. So, Judge, how does the government reward drug abuse? Thanks for having me. Well, the federal government runs several housing programs

for the homeless, and it gives preferences in those programs to people who have what they call a substance use disorder, meaning an addiction to drugs or alcohol. It also tells governments and nonprofits to create a scoring system for who gets this housing, and those systems award extra points, as they're known, to people who can show they're using more drugs. And how does that work? Most of the local governments across the country adopted a survey for the homeless. It's called VI-Spadat and asked homeless people about their problems and awards them points towards free or subsidized housing if they have more of these problems. So you can get a point if you share a needle for injecting drugs or if you've run drugs for someone else. You can get another point if your drug

use got you evicted from your apartment or if you got put in a drunk tank or jail. With enough points, you can get a free house, possibly for life. So this scoring system incentivizes the most dangerous behavior. Yeah, it's kind of shocking at the extent to which the government tries to reward the very worst kind of behavior among the homeless. So the VI For Homeless Parents gives extra points for, say, leaving your kids unsupervised, for having them miss school, having them even taken away by child services. One of the most shocking ones, the Massachusetts has its own scoring system for its federal housing programs for the homeless. And it gives people four points if they're abusing drugs right now, but only one point if they've been clean for at least a year. There's a bonus two points, though, if someone's overdosed in just the past year.

So what's the rationale for this scoring system? The basic argument the government makes is they're looking for the most quote-unquote vulnerable people, and that means finding people with the most problems. But that theory just underestimates the degree which people respond to incentives. If you're telling people, you get better housing and more services if you abuse drugs to commit crimes. People do that. We at Cicero talked to one homeless man, Ira in Austin, who told a caseworker that if he had been a drug abuser, he might have gotten subsidized housing. And the caseworker basically agreed with that.

How widespread is this practice of prioritizing services to people who are actively using drugs? There's a surprising number of programs like this. For one, there, special federal programs to sign homeless people with addictions up for welfare, social services, and food stamps, especially what they call outreach programs for people with addictions. Medicaid funds a lot of programs designed to give support to people with addiction, too. For instance, at Los Angeles, A woman on Medicaid who has, say, three overdoses in a year can get free child care, transportation, help applying for other benefits. Like in all of these programs, the government just ignores how it's actively encouraging people

to abuse drugs, and thus it's contributing to this increase in overdoses, especially among the homeless, but basically among any part of the population that's poured in need of these services. All right. Well, Judge, thanks so much for coming on and talking about these issues with us. That was Judge Glock, Director of Policy and Research at the Cicero Institute. Other stories we're tracking this week? North Korea fired two ballistic missiles Thursday in retaliation for Vice President Kamala Harris's visit to the DMZ. Harris toured sites at the DMZ met with service members and received an operational briefing from U.S. commanders.

According to a new report by Reuters, several major advertisers, among them PBS Kids, Mazda, Forbes, and Dyson, have suspended marketing. campaigns or removed ads from parts of Twitter after they appeared alongside tweets soliciting child pornography. Virgin Atlantic Airlines will now allow its pilots, flight attendants, and ground staff to wear non-gendered uniforms. Staff will also be able to wear pronoun badges. Thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and you stand with our mission, please consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend. Well, thanks for waking up with us.

We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.