Tangle - Listener Mailbag: Your questions answered.

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

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Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Soule, and on today's episode, we are doing a bit of a reader mailbag. I've got a lot of reader questions stuck in the backlog, and I decided today I'm going to clear the deck. I'm going to answer a bunch of those questions in our newsletter.

I also have a special offer for you, my podcast listeners. I often, at the end of the show, will ask you to subscribe to the newsletter, subscribe to our work. at the end of the show, we'll ask you to subscribe to the newsletter, subscribe to our work. That's because aside from the ads we run in the podcast, which honestly don't make a lot of money, we only make money off subscribers, off of you, off supporters. So today I'm trying a little experiment. I'm going to do this for 24 hours. I'm launching a special subscription offer for podcast listeners only. you're the only people who are going to hear this because you're listening to the podcast but right now if you go to

readtangle.com slash podcast you will be able to get a 20% discount on our subscription if you sign up for the year this is basically just a way to incentivize you to see how many podcast listeners are out there who would subscribe to support our work. A quick reminder, the subscription gets you a number one Friday editions of the newsletter, which only go out to people who are subscribers. So, for example, tomorrow I'm publishing a piece called Journalistic Malpractice at The New York Times. That's my little teaser that will just go out to paying subscribers. But on top of that, you're really just supporting our work, the podcast, the newsletter, Trevor, who edits

this podcast, all the interns, the part-time employees who help make Tangle happen. All of that is supported by subscriptions. You get some special offers from our partners. You get things like updates on the business. Every quarter. I send out an email to subscribers telling them how this is going. So exclusive content, opportunities to shape the future of Tangle, all that good stuff. You get it when you subscribe. So I'd really appreciate if you did it. Again, readtangle.com slash podcast. You can get 20% off a subscription. That means it's just $40 to subscribe for the year. That is like less than a dollar a day. It's like 40, 70 cents a day or something. I don't know, but it's

cheap. It's really cheap. So you should do it. retangle.com slash podcast. All right, we're going to jump into today's edition, today's mailbag edition by starting off with some quick hits. First up, a New York court struck down Democrats' heavily gerrymandered congressional map, dealing a major victory to Republicans and handing them a gerrymander advantage heading into the 2022 midterms after initial reports that it would essentially be a wash. Number two, the U.S. economy shrank by a 1.4% annual rate in the first quarter of 2022 despite solid spending by consumers and businesses. Number three, Moderna submitted a request for FDA emergency use authorization for a low-dose COVID-19 vaccine for children six months to six years old. Number four, the Minnesota Police Department was accused

of a years-long pattern of racial discrimination in a new report from the state's Department of Human Rights. Number five, Russia and the U.S. conducted a prisoner exchange, trading a former Texas Marine detained in 2019 for a Russian pilot serving a drug trafficking sentence. Number six, Southern California declared a water shortage and imposed restrictions on water use for six million residents. All right, that is it for our quick hits. That brings us to today's main topic, which is our reader mailbag. A lot of stuff to cover. Like I said, a little bit at the top. Every day, we try to answer one reader question in the podcast and the newsletter, but over time,

they just add up. We get questions every day, so there's always a backlog. Every couple months, I try and do this, just a straight reader mailbag edition where I clear the deck, get some of those questions answered. I know there's a ton of really important stuff to cover out there right now, like Biden potentially canceling all student debt or the Supreme Court case on prayer in school. We're going to get to them next week, I promise. But today, we're going to jump in with this reader mailbag. All right, first up, this is a question from Ryan in Hackensack, New Jersey. He said, I've been seeing a lot of reports from conservative outlets that yesterday on April 27th, a lot of conservative

accounts gained a tremendous amount of followers and some high profile liberal accounts lost a lot of followers. Basically, the indication is that Twitter altered its algorithms in advance of Elon taking over, confirming the suspicion that conservative accounts are suppressed by current algorithms and left-leaning accounts are pumped up. Can you confirm if this is true? No, I can't confirm that is true. According to Twitter, that behavior is actually all organic. Now, there's reason to maybe question this. I think there's reason to believe Twitter. I don't think there were any algorithmic changes. Those wouldn't have happened that quickly. Twitter also said it had locked all software updates for fear its

engineers may revolt against Musk. More importantly, though, every news channel in the world covered Musk buying Twitter. So it's not a real surprise to see a huge influx of users. And Musk actually agrees with this assessment. This is how he responded to the news and what he said he thought the cause was. There were also several campaigns to leave Twitter in some smaller factions of the left, so it's no surprise to hear that some people have quit Twitter. I think the organic argument is actually pretty convincing. Relatedly, I don't think we'd see follower changes if the algorithm changed. If

the algorithm changed, you'd see engagement changes. You'd see certain posts being suppressed or growing faster than they would otherwise. You wouldn't see accounts gaining and losing followers. That being said, not everyone believes that story. Some people like you have suggested there's something shady going on where conservative accounts are ballooning. Other people have suggested that there was a big influx of bots, bot accounts, but that doesn't explain why someone like Barack Obama lost 300,000 followers. If the bots were coming in, it would just inflate everybody's numbers, not just conservatives. So I'd buy it. I think a bunch of people quit Twitter because they hate Elon, and most of those people are on the left. And I think a bunch of conservatives probably came back to Twitter and reactivated their account because they kind of like Elon or they think he might be

restoring some kind of free speech to Twitter. All right, next up is a question from Nick in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Nick said, why is Election day not a national holiday? So the timing of election day is kind of one of those hilariously dated and bizarre things we still hold on to. Until 1845, elections could be held anytime in this 34-day window. But as communication improved, concerns rose that early results would influence later voting and thus the final count. So Congress passed a law to make election day the second Tuesday in November. This was essentially a way to acquiesce to farmers across the country since we were mostly an agricultural society. The idea was that farmers went to church on Sunday and the market on Wednesday,

so Tuesday would give them time to make a trip to the polls and back without interrupting their lives too much. Obviously, now Tuesdays are pretty inconvenient for most of us. Being too busy or having work is one of the top reasons people cite for not voting, but switching to Sunday or Saturday would be tough for devout Christians or Jews who have those days off for the Sabbath. Several bills have proposed solving this dilemma by making election day a national holiday, but they've been resisted mostly by Republicans in Congress. The reasons are kind of twofold. One, tradition, as weird as it is, we hold on to that kind of stuff in America. It's just like Tuesday's election day and that's how it is and we're not

going to change it. Number two is money. Another national holiday would actually be an economic hit. We lose money on those national holidays because a bunch of places are closed, the country, the GDP as a whole. So that matters to a lot of people. I also think if you ask liberals, they would say Republicans don't want to see increased voter turnout. My view on that is I'm not totally sold. I think this could go very well or very badly for Republicans, depending on what race you're talking about and where it is in the country. I think high turnout has positive impacts for Democrats or Republicans specific to the race. Others have argued more simply that instead of a national holiday, we should just spread

the voting out over days or months. We shouldn't have an election day. We should have like election week. That's the real solution. And, you know, rather than clearing one day for voting, we just make voting available for like a whole week. For whatever it's worth, I would support an election day as a national holiday, even if we just made Veterans Day election day. So would 65% of Americans. It's a very popular idea. I just want to make sure we have options to vote on the weeks around that day as well, because I think it's a good point that just because it's a national

holiday still doesn't mean it's going to be a convenient day for everybody. All right, next up is a question from an anonymous reader in California. They asked, have Republicans proposed any concrete solutions to deal with inflation? Have Democrats. So Tangle has covered this a little bit before. Democrats' biggest push has been for a gas tax holiday. Biden is obviously trying to address the price of fuel by releasing stocks from our strategic reserve, which appears to be having some positive effects. He has also suggested that his Build Back Better plan would reduce inflation, repeatedly citing a group of Nobel laureate economists who agree. Most agree that the proposal would be effective long term to fight inflation, but not short term and could have a bunch of other consequences outside of inflation.

There is a piece in Business Insider that compares the Democratic and Republican solutions. They sort of cite Republicans' major proposal as being a strict cap on all future spending, like the Build Back Better plan. Basically, no more government money, which is juicing inflation. A lot of people also think this probably would not have any impact in the short term, but maybe in the long term could be positive. To be frank, Republicans don't have a totally unified message on how they would solve inflation, which is a positive of being a minority party. You don't have to agree on a good idea because you don't really have the power to implement that idea. But that doesn't mean they don't have a lot of legit ideas that are out there. Various senators have floated energy

related ideas like boosting domestic energy production. Some have called for ending all COVID-19 restrictions, which they say would resolve the supply chain issues and some of the labor shortage issues. Others have floated temporary elimination of shipping and trucking regulations. I think all of these ideas have merit in their own way. The supply chain is obviously a big part of why we're seeing inflation, but like anything, they probably also come with some unintended consequences. NBC News had a good roundup of some of the ideas out there, and there is a link to it in the newsletter today. All right, next up is a question from AS in Eugene, Oregon. They asked, if inflation

is being driven partially by lack of workers and unemployment is low, why are we not increasing the immigration of individuals to fill those open positions? This seems particularly relevant for service roles like retail, maintenance, and child care, and semi-skilled home health elder care that may have shorter training requirements. Okay, so there are a lot of people on the left who are asking this question. Brookings did an entire piece calling for Biden to, quote, tear down those walls and let immigrants take jobs in high demand. As the author of that piece, Danny Bajar, argued, if there was any time in modern history of the United States to promote a flexibilization of its migration policies, it is now. It is the most efficient and easiest way to offer a smart solution to the unprecedented tightness in U.S. labor markets.

to offer a smart solution to the unprecedented tightness in U.S. labor markets. He notes that port workers and truck drivers are in huge need, could help address inflation, and require a lot of skills that migrant laborers have. Key to that piece, though, is this kind of supposition that we can or should suspend certain immigration rules to bring in workers en masse. In other words, part of the reason that we're short on immigrant labor is the pandemic and the huge backlog in the U.S. immigration system due to so much less capacity to process folks than we need, which means we can't really bring those workers in without paring down the current process in some ways. So I struggled actually to find many arguments against this idea. I mean, there are traditional arguments about why immigrants are bad for US laborers, but the Wall Street Journal wrote a whole piece on how low

levels of immigration are exasperating the labor shortage we have right now. So it's not really that we need more immigration than we had in, say, 2019 pre-pandemic. It's that we have so much less immigration now. We are short about 2.5 million immigrants of the working age of where we typically are or should be. So yeah, I mean, it seems to me like it could be a good solution, but I've also struggled to find the counter argument, which both makes me a little suspicious and makes me feel like I don't totally know what the best counter argument is. So that's kind of my take where I land on it. Next up is another anonymous reader, this one from Afton, Missouri. They asked, the new Amazon warehouse union you said is pushing for a $30 minimum wage. I understand

this is a negotiating tactic rather than a final amount, but as a New Yorker, I was hoping you could answer this question for a Westerner. Is this reasonable? I know the cost of living in NYC is astronomical, but here a good middle class yearly contract comes out to maybe $25 an hour. A good unskilled warehouse job would be maybe $16 an hour. Okay, so it's really hard to say. I mean, such a massive expansion of the minimum wage has really not been tried in a lot of places. But I think there's reason to believe it's actually in the ballpark for what Amazon should pay. And specific to this kind of work, which is essentially like hard labor.

The living wage calculator from MIT says $22 is a living wage for one adult and no children in the New York state. So I imagine the city is a bit higher than that. Indeed lists the average warehouse worker in Staten Island making about $17 an hour. On a personal note, my first job in New York City paid me $40,000 per year. I lived in a six-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment, which is basically a hostel in Harlem, where I was paying $600 a month in rent and also paying off my student loans. So in this city, I was dead broke. And I lived like that for my first year here. I left that job for a huge pay bump. And my second gig was about $60,000 per year. And that was pretty much what I lived on for most of my time in New

York. The difference was remarkable. I mean, I was able to breathe. I could get laundry done once every two weeks. I paid off my loans in a few years. I could have a couple of beers and go out and do all this stuff without overdrawing my account. Still, all that required me living in a six-bedroom apartment and paying $600 or $700 in rent. So $30 an hour comes out to about $58,500. So just shy of that

second salary that I made, I think that's well above a living wage for a single adult. I mean, I think $30, $35, $40 an hour is a pretty good wage for that kind of work. I mean, most people are living off that in the city. I think a lot of workers are making that or less in New York City. So for me, I struggled to make ends meet at $40,000 a year. At $60,000 a year, I was a lot more comfortable doing it even while paying off student loans. But it's not like anybody's getting rich. I mean, if you had a kid or a family member to support, you'd still be scrapping. And you were probably never going on

vacation. You probably could not afford any serious emergency. I mean, Amazon, I think maybe could afford this, which is part of the reason why I think maybe they should do it. It's a little bit harder. Any other company, I don't really know. You're probably going to see a lot of layoffs if they get their rate. So it's definitely above a living wage to me. I think it's a fairly decent wage. But yeah, it's really hard for me to say. I guess it depends what your standard is and what you think the standard of living should be. All right, next question. Jennifer from Fredericksburg, Virginia said, what would happen if we had an open door policy where anyone could come in and get paid legally for jobs? That way, immigrants could pay the taxes

to support the country and just not vote until they are citizens. What are your thoughts? Would the influx be too many people to handle? Okay, I haven't really ever considered this before, both because I find the idea a little bit absurd and supremely unlikely. Open borders, quote unquote, is kind of like a colloquial way of saying high levels of immigration but we've never really seen open borders it's hard to get into the U.S. legally or illegally however there is apparently an entire book written by a libertarian that imagines a world where immigration is unlimited in every country it is called open borders the science and ethics of immigration maybe you want to check it out I have read it. I did read some summaries of the arguments about it. And apparently the author, Brian Kaplan,

basically reframes immigrants as generators of wealth rather than low skilled workers who are going to use up social services and alter public culture, which is the way they're framed right now. That's the crux of his piece. This is a quote from The New Yorker that wrote about the book. It says, The basic principle of his claim is that workers in poor countries are underutilized. How productive would you be in Haiti? Kaplan asks. If people could travel as freely as commodities and capital do, they could produce vastly more stuff, ensuring that almost everyone ends up better off. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book,

Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.

Restrictions on immigration, Kaplan writes, are the equivalent of leaving trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk. So that is how he frames it. Obviously, there are a lot of counterarguments to this. The common ones from the right, I think, are typically security-based. You can't just let people into the country indiscriminately. Economy-based, workers willing to work for cheap will take jobs from Americans without college degrees, while high-skilled laborers will take jobs from more educated Americans. There's obviously a cultural debate. I mean, we see it all across the world. Anytime there's super high rates of immigration, there's a lot of social tension, cultural upheaval. Those things do happen, however we like it or not. I mean, I happen to be a pretty

pro-immigrant person, but that's just history. Even many immigrants argue against open borders on the grounds that immigration is a privilege, not a right or a constitutional mandate. And there's also a left-wing argument for this. I mean, Angela Nagle wrote a really interesting article that's the left's case against open borders. And she centers her argument on labor politics, saying high levels of immigration threaten liberal policies like public health care, a federal jobs guarantee, and affordable education for all, basically saying none of those things are possible if we have a ton of immigrants in the country because there's just more people to cover. Nagel explains that open borders is really a rallying cry of the business and free market right who want cheap labor, yet somehow the left has become

the face of that idea. So that's another perspective on the argument. Next up, this is from a reader in Rochester, New York, who says, can you explain more on Judge Katonji Brown Jackson's record on sentencing for child pornography? I've heard and read that she has sentenced far less than what prosecutors recommended in several cases. And if that's true, it's concerning to me, but it doesn't seem to concern many others. Can you explain? Yeah, we covered this during the hearings. We actually wrote a good deal about it. So you can go find the link to that in the newsletter today. But the general thrust of it is that framing it this way is kind of dishonest. You don't just take what the prosecutors tell you to do. It's kind of like saying the defendant asked for no jail time, but the judge didn't listen. It just doesn't make sense. The whole

point of the judge is to take what the prosecutors say, take what the defense says, make a decision. Anyway, when analyzing how a judge sentences someone, the most appropriate thing to do is probably compare the sentences not to the prosecutors or sentencing guidelines even, but the probation office's recommendations. This is an arm of the court that sort of advises a judge how they should handle a case like this. In most of the cases, Senator Josh Hawley and others brought up about Jackson, her sentences equaled or exceeded the recommendation of the probation office, meaning the reality was actually kind of the opposite of the allegation. So the real issue here is that Congress has not updated sentencing guidelines for child pornography

offenses to better distinguish between producers and possession, which is something they should do. I think if you're looking for a very good conservative perspective on this, a right-wing view, Andrew McCarthy had an awesome write-up in National Review where he kind of defends Jackson and explains why some of the allegations are disingenuous. There is a link to that in the newsletter. Okay, next one. This was the hardest question to answer that I got. This comes from an anonymous reader in Portland, Oregon. They said, you mentioned a top three political priority today. What are your top 10 ranked political priorities? Holy moly. Okay, this is really hard, not just because it's hard to think about what is most important, but also because

when I think about political priorities, I'm thinking about things I want to see change. And there's a lot of good in America and a lot of things about our country I don't want to change, things I want to preserve. So when assembling this list, it kind of ends up being all the things I'd like to see reformed, which in our current political paradigm makes it look like I have political priorities that are just aligned with the Democratic Party. That's just the nature of things right now. Democrats are advocating a lot of change. Republicans are advocating more preservation. You're basically asking me, what do I want to see change? So I'm addressing a lot of stuff that I think Democrats care about. So I just want to preface it that way because I made this list and then I looked at it and I was like, oh,

this kind of sounds like something Biden might write. Anyway, here's my list. Number one, reducing the cost of healthcare. The price of healthcare in America is egregiously expensive. I had skin cancer when I was 23. I've had some stress-induced heart issues I've written about before in Tangle a few years ago. I play a ton of sports that have high risk of injury. So I like having good health insurance. But to get a decent plan on the public exchange, remember, I'm self-employed. So I'm buying this out in the market like a lot of people are. I pay $1,062 every month for my premium on my healthcare plan in New York. $1,062. It is bananas. That's a huge chunk of my income. The insurance still isn't even that good, especially compared to the employer-provided insurance I had a couple years

ago. So yeah, we have to do something about that. It's totally broken. Number two, expansive immigration reform. I've written about this a lot. Everyone wants this. This is not a left or right thing. My perspective is that one of the things we really need to do is we need to have more judges on the border to process asylum seekers and migrants who are fleeing north through Mexico. We also need to continue to fund border security. We need to give DACA recipients clarity about their status. We need to beef up staffing to address legal immigration where there are huge backlogs, something akin to a complete overhaul is probably necessary. Becoming a citizen or even getting a visa to come to the U.S. and work is very difficult right now. And in some ways, that's good. It should be. But it shouldn't be

unnecessarily difficult and it shouldn't be inefficient. And it is both of those things right now. Basically, everything about our immigration system is dysfunctional. Everyone in Congress on both sides knows it. They agree on it. We need to do something about it. Okay. Number three, prison reform. I've said this in the past. My most extreme political view is that locking people in eight by eight foot cages is not rational or effective, and it's not a good way to deliver justice or rehabilitate someone. I understand we cannot release every prisoner in America tomorrow. That's not what I'm advocating, but I do think we need to change what kinds of offenses land you in prison and also what

conditions are like when you get there. So I would love to see major federal prison reform because that would probably eventually lead to reform at the state level, which is really important. Number four, election reform. Yeah, I support open primaries. I think I am convinced that we should have term limits in Congress. Nick Tombalidis came on the podcast and he handed it to me. He made a very good argument that I have trouble beating back. So I think I agree with him. I'm lukewarm on things like

ranked choice voting. I tried it in New York City. I wasn't crazy about it, but paired with open primaries, it could be a great reform. We need changes. Our election system is bizarrely dysfunctional, and it should not be a simple two-party system. We should not be picking the lesser of two evils. I think there's a lot of room for improvement there. Number five, reduce inflation. This is the only issue that appeared in the last year or so for me, go figure. It's probably the job of the Fed, so I don't know how political, quote unquote, that priority is, but so many of our economic metrics are strong right now. Low unemployment, wage growth, et cetera. This is the thing sinking our progress. It's inflation.

It's crushing workers, crushing middle-class families, crushing lower-class Americans more than anyone. I'd be all hands on deck to beef up things like the supply chain as the Fed makes its moves to address it. But yeah, this would be like a top political priority for me. Number six, addressing addiction. Drug and alcohol abuse are a massive public cost. They're destroying entire family units. They're destroying towns, rural, suburban cities. It doesn't matter where. Everywhere I've ever lived, addiction has

been an issue in the community I'm in from the time I grew up to living in Brooklyn to being in Pittsburgh, Western PA, suburban PA. It's awful everywhere. We need a national movement to address this. It got worse during the pandemic. It's really, really sad. It's horrifying. It's fairly unique to the United States. It is a big, big problem. Number seven, reducing childcare costs. Okay, this is another one that, you know, bipartisan in my opinion. We need to be having more babies.

A lot of people seem to agree on that. I've written about it in the past. I'm not personally totally sold on that, but a lot of Republicans and Democrats feel that way. And they also agree that one of the top barriers to Americans having more kids is the cost of children itself. I think there are a lot of clever ways we can do something about this. I thought the child tax credit was a good policy. I'd love to see it come back, reducing child care costs. America's kids should not be in poverty. It's a shame,

a stain on our country. Number eight, compete with China. This is a very conservative one on renewables, on manufacturing, on military, on everything. Working with China suits our needs too, but we need to make ourselves as independent from them as possible. We've learned in this war in Ukraine that having a reliance on Russia for a bunch of things is a really dangerous and politically vulnerable place to be in. The same is true of China, but like 10x, doubly so, way more. We rely far too much on them for just about everything. There's some legislation percolating right now that I'm enthusiastic about to address this, but that's definitely up there. Okay, that's eight. And I just, I can't round this list out.

There's so many things. So securing our government from cyber attacks probably next big one military type investment that that's that's what that would be the infrastructure bill has a lot of potential i want to see the funds get used for roads and bridges but also rural broadband is huge for me the internet is the economy now we need to finish bringing our country online i am currently hoping trying to build a house out in West Texas in the middle of nowhere. And yeah, it's really hard. You need water and you need internet and you need power. And there are a lot of places in our country where that's a lot harder to get than you might imagine. Climate change is the big one I didn't touch on. So climate change and environmental issues are really important to me. I'm honestly not sure how much more the government can do about the former. I mean, I think there are all sorts of ways the

government can regulate more climate-friendly policies into fruition, but we need innovation on carbon capture. We need battery storage to go to the next level. We need to enforce the emission and pollution standards already on the books. We need to figure out how to make renewable energy more renewable. More than a government mandate, we need a collective societal commitment to be more conscious about our environment and love our environment and probably use less than we use. Preserving our parks and natural lands is great. And we're actually pretty good at that from a government perspective. So we should keep that up. But yeah, I'm just sort of like, I'm sort of of two minds about the climate change thing. I mean, I think there's stuff the government can do.

I also think the government is not the best solution. I think it's us. I think it's the private sector taking things into their own hands. So that's that super tough question to answer. Great question. Thank you. Really hard stumped me. I probably spent more time on that than I'd like to admit. Next up is a question from Matthew in Houston, Texas. He said,

how likely or unlikely is it that Biden will extend the student federal loans pause? If you had asked me this three months ago, I would have said an extension of the pause was likely, but cancellation was unlikely. Now, I'm really not so sure. Yesterday, CBS News reported that Biden told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus he's looking into forgiving student loans, and MSNBC is reporting that a decision is coming soon, and that the administration is sending signals that it's, quote, warming up to the idea of, quote, broad cancellation. So buckle up. Next question, Will from California said, what does it mean now that Donald Trump has

been found in contempt of court? Will he actually comply and turn over the documents or just continue to get away with it? Are there any next steps the court can take if the fines don't work? In short, not much. I mean, Trump appealed the order that imposes a $10,000 daily fine. So that's paused now. I expect it will be tangled up in legal drudge for a bit. It's possible, I suppose, that if he loses the appeal, he'll have to hand over the documents and maybe some cash, but they don't call him Teflon Don for nothing.

I mean, he is remarkably adept at sliding out of situations like this. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turns into another dead end for the New York attorney general. This is kind of a half question, half criticism from Morris in Colorado Springs. He said, you were quick to point out that you believe President Trump lied, but you failed to note all the lies that Biden has stated. Another good topic would be to touch on Biden's very obvious cognitive decline. I doubt you have the courage for this topic either. A few of the many individuals that have proven to have extraordinary courage with intelligent commentary and news reporting are Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Glenn Beck. They all have what you lack in intelligent journalistic courage, integrity, and a better grasp of reality. Okay, I'm not sure which issue you're referencing

directly here, but as a general rule, I don't do tit for tat. Every time I mention Donald Trump lying, I'm not going to also mention that Joe Biden lies, unless it's relevant to what I'm writing about. That standard is impossible to meet aside from being juvenile, and it would commit me to something that would likely end with me referencing John Adams' first speech to Congress 200 years ago in a fib he told. I mean, we could just go back, back, back, tit for tat, whatever, all the way to the beginning of time. I do my best to add context and balance to every piece. You can't expect me to couch every criticism of a Democrat with a criticism of a Republican or vice versa. As for Tucker, Candace, and Glenn, you're entitled to your opinion.

I can tell you unequivocally at the very least, Candace Owens is not a courageous person. I don't think her commentary is very honest. She blocked me on Twitter because I fact-checked her. Her views have repeatedly evolved to be the most profitable possible. I've tried several times to engage her, but to no avail. I think she posts a lot of very misleading arguments in Half-Truth, and I actually don't think she is an honest broker. I think she's kind of a dishonest person. So finally, in response to your parenthetical quote, another good topic would be to touch on Biden's obvious cognitive decline. I doubt you have the courage for this topic either.

Well, I guess I'm very courageous then. I wrote an entire article about Joe Biden's cognitive decline, that very topic. There's a link to it in the newsletter. You can go click it and read it if you want. I hope you keep reading Tangle, Morris. I think there's a lot more here for you than you might think. Next up, another criticism question. This one is from an anonymous reader in Youngstown, Ohio. They said,

you are as liberal as they come. Who are you trying to kid? Okay, so I suppose I'm going to have to do this for the rest of my life as long as I'm writing Tangle, but I'm not going to stop doing it because I think it's really important. I'm not trying to kid anyone. I've said it before and I will say it a million more times since there are always new readers to Tangle. The way that we bring balance is by sharing a wide range of perspectives all in one newsletter. 90% of Americans who read Tangle should see two things,

their perspective represented or something close to it, and then a bunch of views they either slightly or strongly disagree with. That's the whole point of this project. It's to get people out of their bubbles, to make sure we're all engaging with arguments from across the political spectrum, and to see if people can either change their minds or better understand the folks they don't agree with. I'm trying to turn the honesty up and turn the temperature down. As for me, I'm not here to be a centrist. I never claim to be a centrist. I'm trying to turn the honesty up and turn the temperature down. As for me, I'm not here to be a centrist. I never claim to be a centrist. I'm not here to be heterodox. I'm not here to be

moderate. Those are all ideologies in and of themselves. Centrists are always looking for the middle when sometimes the middle is wrong. The heterodox folks are the same ones who thought Putin wouldn't invade Russia. Moderate can sometimes be synonymous with apathetic. I care. I'm trying to call it as I see it. Sometimes my views align with the left. Sometimes they align with the right. Often I see huge flaws on both sides and I make a point to say so. Your perception of my bias might be a reflection of your own bias. I have no party loyalty. I am here to report a variety of viewpoints accurately, then tell you what I think and why. All right, next up is a question from Michael in Philadelphia

PA slash criticism. Michael said, the fact that someone would find Tangle balanced but left leaning is absurd. You bend over backwards to give the right's false, intentionally disingenuous arguments a chance to be heard, which is one of the things that bothers me the very most about Tangle. Well, Michael, I think you should have a chat with the anonymous guy from Youngstown who thinks I'm a closet pleading heart lib. All right, everybody, that is it for today's reader mailbag. I hope you appreciated it. Again,

tomorrow, if you want to get our Friday edition titled Journalistic Malpractice at the New York Times, you need to subscribe and we are giving you, my dear podcast listeners, a special offer, 20% off our subscription for the next 24 hours only, readtangle.com slash podcast podcast you can go subscribe and do that right now before we go last but not least or have a nice day section at the start of the pandemic just 12 percent of low-income students and 20 percent of all kids in oakland school district had devices at home and a strong internet connection this was a major barrier for remote learning and one the community tried to address now two years later oakland has connected 98 of the students in the district handing over This was a major barrier for remote learning and one the community tried to address. Now, two years later, Oakland has connected 98% of the students in the district, handing over close to 36,000 laptops and more than 11,000 hotspots to low-income public school students. The partnership has been dubbed Oakland Undivided and is becoming a model for districts across the country.

Good, Good, Good has the story. There's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, everybody, that is it for the pod. It was an extra long one, the mailbag today. We appreciate you tuning in. Don't forget, retangle.com slash podcast to get your special Tangle subscription for the next 24 hours only. And if not, then fine, whatever. I'll see you Monday.

Peace. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter

or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. We'll see you next time. Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.