The MeidasTouch Podcast - The Meidas Brothers Reunite with their High School Social Studies Teacher

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

It’s a very special show! The Meidas Brothers reunite with their high school US history to reveal all about the brothers’ past. BUT FIRST! The brothers kick off the show by delving into the new information about the various investigations into the Trump family and the deafening silence of Donald Trump Jr. after his recent deposition in DC. They also highlight the anniversary of some of the horrific COVID takes by Trump administration officials, which led us to where we are today. Then, the brothers connect with Mr. Buchman, their high school history teacher, and discuss the brothers’ days on Long Island and the importance of a civics education and the need for objective truth. Mr. Buchman also reveals the shocking video Brett made for the class back in the day! The brothers wrap up the show with updates on the COVID relief bill and the Equality Act, and expose the racism, misogyny and double standards of the opposition to President Biden’s cabinet nominees and how to deal with Senator Joe Manchin. Thanks for making the MeidasTouch Podcast a top podcast in North America! Please share this show with a friend and rate us 5-stars on the Apple Podcasts app. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And make same-day withdrawals if you win. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. You don't want to miss out. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, Welcome to the Midas Touch Podcast. Ben. Mycellus here, joined by my younger brothers, Brett Mycellus and Jordy Mycellus. And I am feeling good, brothers, because I had a minor crisis yesterday.

I thought that I had lost my calendar. For those who have been following us on Twitter, Jordy dimed me out publicly that I keep a written calendar. I don't do a cool word. Dimed me out. You staying hip for the kids. There was zero like, hey, Ben, do you mind if I post our private chats on the Internet? It was just like, boom, you're exposed. Exactly.

At this point, you know, our whole lives are just public. So why not? Why not bring everyone into the text chain too? Well, Ben goes, I can't find my calendar. And Jordy had the ultimate 2021 solution. He goes, dude, it's easy, man. Just drag your thumb down on the iPhone, type in calendar. It will search your phone for it. It will pull it right up. And Ben's like, no, Jordy, I have a physical paper calendar that I carry with me from place to place like we live in the 1960s. The thing is too, Ben, your schedule, you're a busy man. Your schedule is changing throughout the day. Are you just constantly X-ing things off? Ben is holding up his calendar. It looks like a,

I don't know if you ever got an agenda given to you at your school. We used to get agendas at our high school and at our middle schools where we would write out our homework and stuff. It's basically what Ben is using with really tiny, horrible handwriting. No wonder why you're late to every call. How do you do that? I mean, it all makes sense now. How do you know what's going on in your life with that system? First, I'm not late to every call.

Second, the expression to dime somebody out is not a new cool kid expression. It is a Gen Y expression that me and my fellow Gen Yers like to use. You're trying really, really, really hard to try to distance yourself from the fact that you're millennial. We get it. It's been litigated. You're incorrect on this one. But speaking of school agendas, guys, I'm pretty excited because today on our show, we're actually going to have a high school teacher of all the brothers. Mr. Buckman will be joining us on the show. He was the AP American history teacher in our high school on Long Island. And we are really excited to dig in with him, have him tell some behind the scenes stories

about the brothers. Maybe he'll reveal who his favorite Midas brother is. This is what I was going to say. This is why Brett's so excited. Folks, anyone who's part of Team Jordy or Team Ben, we're in for a tough show. Brett was most likely Mr. Buckman's favorite. Now, Mr. Buckman is the greatest person ever.

We all love him. But there, Brett and Mr. Buckman, you could just cut that out. Mr. Buckman, you could just cut that out. Mr. Buckman, you just cut that out. Mr. Buckman apparently recalls Brett did a video, a senior class video that made Buckman look really good. And apparently Buckman still remembers that. The origins of Midas touch in Mr. Buckman's 12th grade high school AP history class. Okay.

Let me ask you all the question before we have Mr. Buckman on. Do any of you know Mr. Buckman's first name other than calling him Mr. Martin? I can't say on the show. I just said it. So let's bleep it out,

but it's, it's Martin. Why can't we say it? Yeah. Why can't we say it? Jordy? It's not like... Wait, Jordy, explain to me why you think that his name needs to be bleeped out.

I don't know. We're very public people. It doesn't mean Mr. Buckman needs to be very public. I mean, if he's not going to be public, why would he come on the Midas Touch podcast? Look, I haven't thought it all out yet. I haven't thought it all out. I'm just trying to be good to our guests. Wait, Jordan, what's his first name? Martin. Beep, beep, Martin. Oh my God, Martin. Martin's coming on like the most public podcast and Jordy's worried about bleeping out Martin's first name.

Are you doing okay today? We've got one mess up by you in the first 10 seconds. Usually it takes you about 10 minutes before we get the... I'm doing good. The diet's going really well. But here's the thing. I've incorporated something that I call Wendy's Wednesday. Now it's going to sound like I'm sponsored by Wendy's right now, but I'm not where every Wednesday I just have tons of Wendy's. But then every other day in between, I work out really, really hard and it's going really well. I'm just trying to understand just Jordy's argument before we get into the news.

Jordy, are you blaming your mess ups as we're recording this on a Thursday based on the fact that you ate Wendy's yesterday? Is that the argument? No, I'm saying I'm good. My mess ups, those are going to happen. Look, if you bat three out of 10 in the MLB, you're going to the Hall of Fame, right? I'm going to mess up here and there, but my hits are going to way outweigh my misses. That's why we call them Hall of Famer Jordy. What was the point of the Wednesday Wendy story though? I don't know. I just wanted everyone

to know. And if anyone from Wendy's is listening, like maybe hook me up and I'll talk about Wendy's more on the show. Yeah. So for those of don't know the hall of fame analogies, a consistent one that Brett and I use about Jordy, Jordy will give us multiple ideas throughout Midas and there will be about seven to 10 of them will just be really, really, really bad. And so when we get the three of 10 really good ones, we're always like Jordy's a hall of famer. He's good. That's the home of Famer. He's a Hall of Famer.

That's the home run right there. So let us get into the news. So let's talk briefly about some updates in the criminal investigations into Donald Trump, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in their investigation into the Trump organization and Donald Trump and his family's tax fraud has obtained Trump's tax return and related records. The records include millions of pages of documents. They obtained these documents just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied Trump's last effort. Just an interesting thing on the law firm side of what I do in the hospitality side, not in the Midas side, but one of the top people within the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, Cy Vance's number two, Karen Agnifilo, is actually going to be working at our law firm. For you our for you at the law firm. And so I'm excited to have her aboard. And it's incredible to have Cy Vance's number two here and an incredible person. She worked in the Bloomberg administration. Maybe you can get us the inside

scoop, Ben. Oh, I'm not sure I can. I'm not sure I can go there, but we'll see. We'll see. And then we have an update in the Washington, D.C. criminal investigations that relate to the Trump inauguration committee. We previously had some guests on who talked about the fraud attendant to that. It was reported that Don Jr. had previously been deposed by the D.C. Attorney General on February 11th in regards to the lawsuit that's pending there. And what's interesting there is I think the silence is deafening. Normally, the Trumps, when there's a deposition, they go out there and just start bragging about it. Don Jr. still has his Twitter account. So I assume if he wanted to, he'd normally be tweeting documents. But he tried to keep that one very, very, very quiet. I didn't know about that. No, I mean, the only thing we've

seen of him recently was that weird post of him in front of the wall of guns complaining about teachers. That was really the last thing with the hostage sort of terrorist video from Don. The optics of that video, too, were weird because all the all the guns were pointed at his head. I mean, it was just a really it was really weird and it's bizarre. And in an era where there are more school shootings than ever, we're coming off the heels of the anniversary of the Parkland massacre. To do a video threatening school teachers in front of a wall of guns is at best and really poor taste. And that's Don Jr. for you. But I implore everybody to also remember with all this, this is just the beginning of all these investigations. We are just

getting started. Trump is coming out of four years of being immune to this sort of prosecution. And now the fun begins. Lots of prosecutions coming. These things take their time. You have to sift through all of the documents. But I am confident, based on my legal background, that Trump is in a lot of jeopardy for what he did in terms of the inauguration committee and siphoning money there for the Trump inauguration and by lying about his tax returns. And that's the investigation, the Manhattan district attorney. When they say that they've turned over millions of pages of documents, do you take that as a some sort of stalling tactic that we're going to give so many documents that it's going to sort of clog up the system and make this take a long time? Or is it just, do you think the nature of his taxes? The pages, think about pages. There are a lot of emails. If you actually focused on the pages of emails and if you have attachments ever in the emails, and if someone were to do like a subpoena of your emails, Brett, for the past five years and everything related to it, you can

see why it could get into the millions, just like news articles that are attachments. And so, you know, when I have discovery, it's not in my cases, it's not uncommon that on a business case, I'll have 10, 15, 20 terabytes of information, which is hundreds of millions of records. But what you do with that is you put them in a software and it's called e-discovery and e-discovery software. And you're able to really kind of figure out what are the key hot emails. We call them hot documents, hot docs, hot docs, and which documents are just kind of filler and BS docs. So that's the exercise that the Manhattan DA is doing, the Washington DC Attorney General is doing.

And we'll keep everybody posted on that. And they've just hired a very high-end forensic accounting firm to analyze all the documents. So they're not coming to play. Yeah. And these cases are the kind of easier ones to prove. They're tedious, but they're paper cases. And on these paper cases, you know, you show the paper to the jury and you go, here's what he said his taxes were.

Here's actually the value. And with Trump, there's going to be such massive disparities that I think it'll be a fairly easy case, especially the one in the Manhattan DA. They just have to go through all of the records. We've reached a difficult milestone for the nation, but one that is important for us to reflect just how incompetent and murderous the Trump administration is. It's the one year anniversary of COVID idiocy with the Trump tweet from February 24th, 2020, where Trump tweeted the coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. The stock market is starting to look very good to me. And of course, we have Kayleigh, a.k.a. Kayleigh McEnany, with her going on TV saying we will not see the coronavirus here. Absolutely. This president will always put America first. He will always protect American citizens.

We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here. We will not see terrorism come here. And isn't that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama? Kayleigh McEnany, thank you so much. Good to see you. Thank you. Isn't that refreshing? Isn't that refreshing after the horrible presidency of President Obama. Kayleigh McEnany, thank you so much. Good to see you. Thank you. Isn't that refreshing? Isn't that refreshing after the horrible presidency of Obama? Isn't that refreshing? It can't be said enough just how evil these people were running the country. It's really amazing that we survived the past four years. Barely. I mean, democracy is hanging in the balance, but it's amazing that we survived the last four years with these people. And of course, actually, everything that Kayleigh said ended up being proven false in a big way.

Coronavirus, we just passed a staggering half a million coronavirus deaths in the United States. That clip with Kayleigh McEnany, her bragging that coronavirus would never come to the United States, her bragging that there would never be terrorism in the United States when at the end of his term after the election, Trump himself was the one who orchestrated a domestic terrorist attack against our own country. And speaking of a hot doc, I'm just so happy that we had Dr. Fauci these last 12 months just to keep us sane. You just called Dr. Fauci a hot doc. I thought it was a good callback in my mind. It didn't sound as good. And I don't think people

are going to connect it right away. But yeah, I did that. And let me analyze. I want to go on and play another person's clip in the Trump administration. But Jordy, just getting into it just for a quick second. What was your tweet the other day? It doesn't make any sense to me where you called Senator Howley. You're like Senator Howley is a fuck boy. Yeah, I just I just don't know what one what's a fuck boy and two why is Howley a fuck boy? Just I don't think we could get into that on the podcast what a fuck boy is. But but the word said it on twitter plus you said it on twitter though you called him a fuckboy right yeah definitely why can't we get into what that

means because what a fuckboy is it's really hard to put into words you just need to look at someone look at their behavior you're like that's a fuckboy so looking at it in the world of politics you look at a guy like josh holly you're like, that's a political fuckboy right there. Okay, so you're set, you're, you're doing like the Supreme Court defense with with porn, kind of, you know, when you see it, that's your exactly. And I'm going to use the definition of fuckboy as I define it. Sometime in the future that we don't know about. Hall of Fame, Jordy. Let's play that clip about Larry Kudlow, if you can. He was the director of the National Economic Council for Trump.

He was also notoriously wrong about everything. Here's Larry Kudlow last year. We have contained this. We have contained this. I won't say airtight, but pretty close to airtight. We've done a good job in the United States. So that was one year ago today. And like we were saying, Kudlow has a history of being wrong about literally everything he's ever weighed in on. In late 2007, he mocked the idea that the U.S. was facing a recession before we plunged into the greatest recession since the

Great Depression. In 2017, he was a key voice speaking out on the GOP tax cuts for billionaires, saying that they would lead to 3% to 4% GDP growth and pay for themselves. Kudlow should not be in any position of power whatsoever. And I think it's just important, as frustrating as it is to hear these voices, to be reminded of the failed leadership that led us to where we are today and to understand what we need to do now to combat this virus. It's just so wild to me after I hear that Kayleigh McEnany clip, you hear the Larry Kudlow clip. It's not like being wrong where you estimate that a deficit is going to be $1,345,000,000 and it's actually $1,349,000,000 or $1,355,000,000. It's so willfully and maliciously wrong, resulting in so many deaths,

500,000 deaths in the United States. And for people to look at these individuals, to people to look at the party from which these individuals come, the fact that they even exist tells me there is really a deeper issue at play here. It's not that people are accepting of all of the flaws and all of the errors and all of these horrible statements. It's that the remaining support for this party is based, in my view, purely on racism. It's purely based that this current GQP projects a vision of white supremacy that a portion of our country still clings to horribly for racist and horrible reasons. And so they look away from the death and the depravity and the destruction that they cause because at the root of it, there is 30 to 35% of this country, possibly even a little more that are violently horrible and racist people. And we have to be very clear to

pro-democracy loving people. Don't sit out these elections. Don't sit out this political discourse. We'll talk about some of the issues that confront the political situations we have when Biden's trying to get his agenda passed and compromises that he has to make. But in his fight to reach agreements and to make the world better, do not, progressives, do not people who call yourselves liberals, allow this vicious strain of fascism, of Trumpism to rise again. Because I promise you, if you sit this out, if you project a corrosive view of if it's not ideal, if Biden's not a 10 of 10 every day, you're not with him, you're going to get Trump again

or another version or a worse version of him. When we come back, we are going to have our high school teacher. Oh, I'm so excited for this. Our social studies teacher, Mr. Buckman. Mr. Buckman will Mr. Beep!

Buckman will be on the show. You guys are hilarious. We'll be right back with Mr. Buckman. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart

shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled rib eye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. I'm thrilled to have our social studies teacher from Plainview, JFK High School, Marty Buckman. Mr. Buckman, how are you today? I'm great.

It's great to see the boys. Marty, what are you on? Get the band back together, Mr. Buckman. We've had celebrities on. We've had elite political figures, but having Mr. Buckman on our podcast has to be the biggest honor of all so far in the history of the Midas Touch podcast. Flip side, man. It brings me like incredible nachos to have my three guys. Like I was following, I saw Midas touch stuff and I didn't make the connection until I saw, I think Jordy's Facebook page or something. I'm so proud of you guys. So that's really funny. First off, Brett, first off, Brett, I got to ask Mark,

what are you drinking? Do you not age? I mean, you look the same as our social studies. You look the same as our social studies teach. Seriously. What are you drinking? Do you not age? I mean, you look the same as our social studies. You look the same as our social studies. Seriously, what are you doing over there? A lot of yoga, man. I'm actually a certified yoga teacher and my wife and I bicycle all around the world and life's been good. So I got no complaints. So thanks for the compliment. And yeah, my wife and I run this bed and breakfast. We call it a bed and bike in. It's called the Stony Brookside. Google it. Plug, plug.

I love it. That's a good plug. Oh, you're like a pro. This is a professional move. Have you been on podcasts before, Mr. Buckman? Oh, shit. No, but the wife does the marketing. So it's a bed and breakfast that we market to cyclists and we give people

routes and you tell me how many miles you want to do. And I'll give you a guided route, a self-guided, or I can do a history tour around here because this is where the Washington spy network happened in the revolutionary war. And as you guys might know, I taught a little American history once upon. I've heard about it.

I've heard, I've heard some things. First, we'll go back in time in a second, but I'm curious as to how you even heard about Midas Touch. I think I saw it on Jordy's page or maybe your page, one of your Facebook pages. It would probably have been Brett's. Yeah. I'm not on Facebook. But you had heard about it prior to even seeing us post it. Yeah. I know for forensic marketing, you need to know where I first found it.

But, you know, wandering around the liberal waters, I must have come across it somewhere. But I didn't put the connection together until I saw one of your pages. That's too funny. So what did you think when you saw that we were the three behind it? First of all, just total pride. And also, I think it's really cool that it's a family thing. And I absolutely know the division of labor. Ben does the grown up stuff. He does the legal. He does the, you know, and the business plan. Brett, ever since seeing your show, I know that you do all the tech stuff. You know, you're slicing the video and Jordy, you do the marketing. Did I hit it?

Nailed it. Going back to the schools, you know, I think first off, we got to just get this off our chest. Who was your favorite student out of the three of us? I know I was in your AP history class. Jordy, did you have Mr. Buckman directly? Were you in his class? Of course. Yeah. Honors history wasn't as smart as you, Brett, but I put in my fair share of work. And Ben was famously the president of our high school. That was really- Yeah, Ben always throws that in, in every email. I shouldn't forget. There's like a certain my Salas thing that runs through all of you. And then there's also a real uniqueness. So it'd be like comparing.

I'm serious. It would be like asking me who's my favorite cat. Without saying who's your favorite me, without saying who's your favorite. If you can tell, do you recall any specific stories about me, Brett, and Jordy? Oh, I absolutely do. Start with your least favorite. Brett, go. I'll start with the salient one first.

Brett was part of one of the great senior shows of all time. Was it Jake Walter Warner? You guys did a parody of To Catch a Predator. Yes, I forgot about that. And you had me with my cats yeah and i just wanted to come over and play with jake's cat yeah and you had set up like it was a sting that i was going to molest the cat yeah that was funny and so well done if you want to talk about taking a big swing in high school but your make your teacher the subject in it to catch a predator parody yeah you guys you guys like were so afraid to ask for

permission and originally like i was i was a little hesitant about letting you just go full full out but it ended up like there was only one way to do it to just make it totally that is one of the funny the funny thing is i forgot about that specific bit the video i was thinking about that i did in your class was the World War II video that I did with my great friend, Jason Blackman, who's a comedy writer now. This 15 minute video for you in lieu of a traditional essay for the class. And I remember that actually being a big moment for me early on looking back because that actually, you know, gave me the confidence to A, make those sorts of videos for other classes. And it gave me sort of free reign

in other classes to say, hey, Mr. Buckman, let me do it. So you could let me do a video for your class. And I use that. And I know you showed that video after that year to other classes, right? Yeah. You know, I had a lot of creative projects that I let kids do. And, you know, sometimes it didn't go over, but I have a lot of kids, kids, they're now in their 30s and 40s, who will remember something that they did

that was a little non-traditional. And that was what I was trying to do as a teacher is, I don't care how you learn it, but find something that you enjoy. Find something that is part of you. And I'm glad that you have that memory. I still remember seeing your show. I guess it was traumatic. How could you not? Of course, you'd remember. Brett made a video of you implying that you were molesting a cat. Of course, that's going to be a. It was a it was a head fake. It looked like

the catch a predator. But then Mr. Buckman was very obsessed with his cat. So we were poking fun at the cat. And even in a World War Two video, we we managed to sneak in your your obsession with your cats into that video as well. And I wish I could find it. I'll have to see if if my mom has it back at our Plainview home. All right. Brett's trying to hog this interview. Tell us a story about Geordie. Geordie, were you the one who lifted all the time? Yeah, that was me. Every time you would wear a short sleeve shirt, even in the fuck in the, can I say, even in the middle of the winter, you'd be wearing a short sleeve shirt so that you could end the show. One time I said, Jordy, no, no guns in class. This is a true story, and I remember that well.

And did you play basketball also? I did. In your year, who else was on the team? Oh, let's see. We had Robbie Rothman. We're definitely going to have to bleep these names out, guys. We had Robbie Rothman on the team. We had Greg Rankle on the team.

Farber, John Farber. So you guys weren't, that wasn't one of the championship years. Before you came on. Mr. Buckman, Jordy was like, should we beat Mr. Buckman's first name?

I'm like, Mr. Buckman is coming on the podcast. I assume that he knows this is a public podcast and we're not just having a private chat here. So, yeah, my name of course is Martin,

but you know, I have students who are now like, you know, like this guy, Ben Masalis, who's this big-time lawyer. And he still calls me Mr. Buckman. So I guess I'm always Mr. Buckman. Always Mr. Buckman. Wait, so what's a Ben story you got there, Mr. Buckman? Oh, I got a Ben story. Ben was taking APUS and he didn't like the teacher. Most people didn't like her. No names here, but he thought he would maybe slum it and down in honors instead of AP.

So he tried taking the honors course with me for a couple of days with just like the common people. And he decided he'd rather go with the teacher he didn't like and AP than, you know, the charismatic Mr. Buckman. So he he he didn't take my class. And, you know, no grudge. But I remember 20 years later, I'll tell you a funny story about that teacher who won't be named. I still remember the song she sang. And this is how the song went. This old land is full of sorrow, full of anger and of woe. If you love your neighbor truly, love and comfort would follow you.

And it was a song that was a Revolutionary War song. But me and my friend Evan Blank, me and Evan, we cracked up in her face as she was singing War song. But me and my friend Evan Blank, me and Evan cracked, we cracked up in her face as she was singing this song. She had a voice that was just painful to listen to. It was, her normal speaking voice was like falsetto. So then when she would sing, it would, and she thought she was like, she thought she was John Baez. You know, you endured it instead. And your brothers, your brothers have memories and you don't. I'm so happy that you are retired and that we're not getting you fired. We were cracking up in her face. I still remember the song that just came back to me, cracking up in her face.

And what would make it worse is she would stop singing it and look at us. And she'd go, what are you laughing at? That would just make us laugh even harder. And like for 30 minutes, it was just us laughing until she had to excuse us from the room. But those are incredible memories. One thing I wanted to ask you about, Mr. Buckman, is that the importance of a civics education, the importance of teaching, and I think that's lost in many ways today. We are so fortunate to have had you, to know you as a teacher and for students to just learn about democracy, kind of plain and simple of what took place in this country. But now we're seeing really that under attack. We have schools

that don't want to teach about Black History Month. We have schools that want to tell incorrect versions about the Civil War and to portray the Confederacy very different. What needs to be done, Mr. Buckman? I know you're seeing it and it must trouble you. I think there is a definite feeling in schools that you have to teach civics or government as this is how the system is and it always works. We have these checks and balances and the founders devised this beautiful system. And if anything we learned over the three years is that we came a hair away from a guy breaking that system. Right. You know, I'm lucky I didn't, I retired in 2017, a few months into his administration. And I don't know if I could have taught the last three years American history

and government, my head was exploding every day. And if you try to be someone to just set the facts straight, then there's always one kid in the room who's going to be, you know, some sort of right wing gadfly who's going to claim that you're biased. And so that there is no objective truth anymore. I remember a line from a show called The Newsroom, it was a Sorkin show, where he talked about the bias of balance. And the bias of balance is that if, you know, the Republicans put out a platform of that the earth is flat, and the Democrats started giving evidence that no, science says it's really not, you know, the newspaper would run a headline, Republicans and Democrats can't agree on shape of earth. And that we're so divided so that there are certain things that are universal truth, and it would have been very difficult. So to get back to your question, yeah, there needs to be a greater emphasis on civics

and government education, but also on the idea that it takes a lot of effort, our system, and how easily it can be demagogued. I was just watching the news conference with Biden about an hour ago, and it was so refreshing to see how boring he was, to see how in charge he was and how that government needs to be run by people who believe in the jobs that they're doing. So I know that was a much longer answer than you wanted, but welcome back to Mr. Buckman's history class. That's what Mr. Buckman would do. He would, you would come in the class and he would just start talking and you'd be expected to kind of just know what to do get your notes going and ask the right questions it was very much like a college level class because

it was a college level class yeah no no shit sherlock that's what i told you the first day exactly he definitely did not baby us in that class now i'm consuming just like every one of us here just tons of news day in and day out. And I even watched Fox News just to get in the mindset of how, you know, the other side is really thinking. It looks to me like teachers from the right perspective are under attack in a certain way. Do you feel that? Have you seen that in the media? And has that sort of boiled over to your day to day? I think because, you know, we were the people in class who told them they weren't so smart or, or, or just it's easy or everyone remembers that bad teacher that they had. And I,

Jordy, I try every once in a while to see how I play this game where I try to see how long I can make it on Fox news or Newsmax. I can't make it. It's bananas. I mean, the brothers. No, I can't watch more than a minute. It's insanity. And the brothers make me do it, which is the only reason why I watch. Mr. Buckman, I have one final question for you. This term millennial,

this term millennial has been thrown out a lot recently about Brett and Jordy's generation. When I went to high school with you, Mr. Buckman, I had never heard the term millennial then. I get that it's a term now that's used millennial, but I heard Gen Y. When I went to high school with you, Mr. Buckman, did you hear the term millennial or is that a term that you think is becoming more in vogue now? I think a generation, an appellation for, you know, a name for a generation doesn't start to congeal or doesn't start to materialize until that generation enters an age when they are, when they can make a difference. Yeah, ridiculous question. Maybe the exception would be the baby boomers. And every generation after the baby boomers has had sort of an arbitrary determination to it.

I think it's funny that you think you're of a different generation than your brothers. Funny, but true. As the digital age came about, that was the first time I started feeling a generation gap between me and students is that they grew up in a fundamentally different reality. So I don't know about the generalization. I think it's easy to make generalizations about millennials. And just like it's easy to make generalizations about boomers. Right. Okay. Okay. Boomer. Okay. Boomer. Mr. Buckman, thank you for confirming my theory.

I appreciate you coming on. I don't think that's what he did. He definitely didn't. You tried to lead the witness with your questioning. That's what happened, but totally shut you down. But proceed. Thank you, Mr. Buckman, for confirming everything that I said. Thank you so much, though, for being an inspiration to three brothers who eventually went on to found Midas Touch from our very separate backgrounds. We appreciate all the work you do on behalf of ourselves and from all of the POB, JFK

high school students. Thank you for your service and teaching us all of the things that helped us grow. Most of us grow and become productive adults out there. Can't speak for the whole class, but a lot of us. And we thank you for your time and joining the Midas Touch podcast. Thank you for reaching out to us. It's been a true pleasure. I loved it, guys.

Keep up the, you know, God's work. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Buckman, who hasn't aged a day since I knew him in high school. Thank you for joining Midas Touch. Have a great one. Bye. Welcome back to the Midas Touch podcast. So great to see our social studies teacher.

Hi, Mr. B. Buckman. Mr. Buckman, very zen, huh? Very zen. Like he's a yoga guy. He's got his bikes. He's got a bed and breakfast. I mean, I got to say, like what you didn't get out of that interview is Mr. Buckman was a hard teacher.

Like he was a really hard teacher who cut no corners and really held everybody to a very high standard. So, you know, very happy to see him in just very good spirits, all chilled out on his Ashtanga yoga and his bicycling and all that. I mean, Mr. Buckman, man, keep up the good work. Oh, it was great. It was great to see him. During the commercial break, Jordy created an OnlyFans page and tweeted about it to the public. So that's great for our brand image. Thank you very much, Jordy, for diversifying our portfolio, guys.

Come on. But what's the end game there? It's like the most ridiculous thing in the world. I didn't actually create an OnlyFans. I'm making a joke about Twitter becoming a paid platform down the line. So that was the joke. Oh, can you just read for the people what your tweet says? Sure. The tweet says, I picked the worst day to open an OnlyFans account. Where did you talk about like the Twitter and making this analogy? That's what

I do. A lot of my stuff is really like in the know. It's a thinker, you know, you got to be like, okay, so what's the joke behind this tweet? Oh, it's Twitter is going to start allowing people to start charging their users for extra content. And Jordan is making a joke like I wasted my time doing OnlyFans. I think the most people who would read a tweet that says I picked a bad day to join OnlyFans would probably think that you meant that you literally joined OnlyFans today. And I think the responses that I've seen are reflective of my interpretation versus Jordi's eight various levels of intellect before you get to it. But what our fans don't realize is later today,

we have like a big donor conference where I'm going to be speaking in front of people who are going to help support the future legacy of Midas Touch. And as we prepare for that, I have Jordi tweeting about creating like porn websites and making jokes about that. So Jordi, thank you for that. In three hours, I go in front of a large audience to talk about how Midas Touch is restrained, running an organization, running an organization carefully and diligently. Going to the next piece of news, the COVID relief bill making its way through the House and the Equality Act making its way through the House, both becoming closer to being reality. Brett? Yeah. So the House is set to pass President Biden's COVID relief bill this Friday. And the House bill currently includes the increase

to a $15 minimum wage, which has staggered over about four years, and the $1,400 additional checks. And that's in addition to the $600 that we got earlier. As we've discussed before, the Senate's using reconciliation to pass the bill, meaning that there's one person, one unelected person named Elizabeth McDonough, who everybody is looking to right now to see whether or not she allows the minimum wage increase to be in this bill or not. So this one person has a ton of power right now. But here's the problem, guys, and I really don't know what's going to happen here, is even if she does allow the $15 minimum wage in the bill, there will be no Republicans who will support this bill. And possibly the death blow to the $15 minimum wage being included in this is Senator Joe

Manchin of West Virginia, who has said that he won't support it. So do you think it's even relevant what McDonough does, what the Senate parliamentarian does? Do we have a shot at getting $15 an hour through? I think it is important, unlike Jordy, who wants us to occupy eight various levels of intellect to determine what he means. We have to go piecemeal, one by one. So the parliamentarian for the minimum wage to become a reality has to make it clear that that is indeed part of Congress's spending and taxation powers. Thus, they have the right to put the raising of a minimum wage into a reconciliation bill, in which case, if it's in a reconciliation bill, you just need a simple majority to pass it. So assuming it clears that hurdle, Brett, that's why it is important that she makes that decision.

We go to the next level of the analysis, which is what Democrat Joe Manchin is going to do. I'd say this. The arguments against raising the minimum wage, I mean, just border on the absurd and stupid of people who haven't really thought through the issue. I'll give you an example. Senator John Thune, a Republican senator, talked about the $6 an hour he was making when he was young, which means that assuming Thune was about 16 or 17 when he was making $6 an hour, that actually would be equivalent to earning about $25 an hour in today's dollars. So the minimum wage has not been adjusted to reflect the modern realities of what it requires to earn a living wage.

Please, that it's not even just the wages. It's the cost of living that has increased so much. The inflation around us of every single thing that we have to do to survive. The tuition when Thune graduated from Kansas State University was $898 a year. And you could say, okay, what does that adjust it for inflation? It's like $3,600 adjusted in today's dollars. Today, that same tuition is $10,000. So that's a $6,400 difference in the tuition. And you're effectively making less money than you were making back in the day. Here's what would be very problematic,

Jordy. If you precipitously raise the minimum wage tomorrow, and it went from what it currently is to $15 an hour, basically more than doubling it. Yes, unfortunately, that could have an impact, a negative impact on small businesses if you just literally did it overnight. But what all of the studies have shown that if you phase it in appropriately over a number of years, three to five to seven years, businesses and small businesses will do what they frankly should do from the outset, which is adapt and pay a living wage, but with very minimal impact on the business because they're able to pass through those costs to the consumer in a very kind of diligent way because they've known how to structure it over time as opposed to overnight. And that's what the Democrats are proposing. Not that the minimum wage is going to be increased to $15 tomorrow upon it being passed. But basically in 2026 or 2027, almost to the 2030s, by then we

can basically have people having a living wage. I remember when people get paid more, especially low wage workers, they spend that money. It goes back into the economy, which then creates more jobs. So let's not be too short-sighted about all this. Now, the Republicans are pitching this side bill to try, they're trying to pitch a compromise to say that it should be a $10 an hour minimum wage, which is something they themselves opposed a few years back, vehemently using the same exact rhetoric that they're using now to oppose the $15 minimum wage. But three senators today signed on to this concept, Susan Collins, Shelley Moore Capito, and Rob Portman,

to a $10 minimum wage to take place in 2026. Now, one of the most ridiculous things that I noticed about this was that the minimum wage today in Maine, where Susan Collins is a senator, is $12.15. So she's saying that her own constituents should be actually earning less money than they're currently earning now. I mean, it baffles the mind.

I just side where for me, it's always been, I'm a very simple person. Again, I don't live in Geordie's eight layers of sophistication. To me, you exist on earth for a very finite period of time. If you're in government, if you have a position of power, you should at the very minimum, want to have people who are around you or who you are responsible for to earn a wage that allows them to live a living wage. If you're against that concept, seriously, go fuck yourself. What do you guys think is that like the heart of it? Why do the Republican just opposes so much other than the fact that they're fascist, other than the fact that they're just the worst people in the world? Is it their donors? Is it

the people who fund them at the very top are telling them, no, we don't want this because we at the top, the big money people don't want to pay their employees. I mean, they're controlled by large corporations who give donations and large corporations rely on paying their workers very little to take big profits. I'm not discounting all their arguments that they have against raising the minimum wage. I'm sure there are some people who have legitimate concerns about the impacts on small businesses. I think they're overstated or non-existent, but they have a right to voice those opinions and it's not necessarily fascist or whatever. But the fact is a lot of these people,

most of them, I would say are just beholden to their corporate donors. And also at the same time, they're so concerned about, oh, welfare, we can't be paying people and all this stuff. But what you end up doing is you end up subsidizing wages anyway. The American people are paying for the gap that what people are earning or rather not earning by working at, say, Walmart for seven dollars an hour. Who do you think makes up that money that they can't afford to pay their bills? It's the American taxpayer who has to pay for all the other sort of stimulus and relief that these people need. It's corporate welfare at the end of the day. It's corporate socialism. And for the party that claims to not like socialism, they sure like it when it benefits

the wealthy. Guys, and I'll break it down for you again. Very simple, Ben. These Republicans were against masks, so much so against wearing masks that they literally fucking died. Okay. These are people who literally lost their lives because they had the dumbest fucking views of COVID. So let's not look at these people as rational actors. What these people view generally is, this is not going to happen to me. Their privilege projects to the point of their own death. Many of them have been raised

in places where they don't have to struggle. They haven't come from families where you have to struggle to have your next paycheck, where you can't just go to whatever schools you want to go to, where you don't necessarily know if you're going to be living in a house, you could be homeless. These people haven't experienced that. And so they think this is never going to happen to me. This happens to other people. We don't give a shit what happens in their lives. We don't give a shit what they make. They should be able to survive on peanuts and they should be thankful for it. That's what these GOP Republicans think. They don't think government is for the people. They think government is for the power. And for so long, they've been the ones who have been in

the power. And so they're struggling with this concept right now where they're losing and their power is eroding. That's what genuinely explains Trumpism and what explains it to the point that they fucking killed themselves like suicide bombers over their dumb views of COVID because they thought they told people it was never going to happen to me. That just happens to them. That's it, fellas. That's the truth. So long. Good night.

That's the truth. And if the privilege, you know, if the polls are any indication about this privilege gap, which I guess we could call it, is that 76% of the Americans actually support the package and want it, including a lot of Republicans. So, I mean, this is very popular legislation that should be passed with overwhelming support. And if anything, $15 an hour is the compromise, because if pegged to inflation, it would be more like $25 to $30 an hour. So $15 is the compromise. And if you're in West Virginia by any chance listening to this, call Joe Manchin and tell him to get behind this bill. $15 an hour, it's so incredibly important. Let's get into, you know, we're in 2021 now. Let's make it happen for people and let's improve. And we're in 2021. Let's talk about the Equality Act. What makes me so livid is what I saw Marjorie Taylor Greene do when she put up that sign that says there are two genders, male and female. Trust the science in the hall where her congressional office is. And she, her office

is directly across from representative Mary Newman, a Democrat with a transgender daughter. And Mary Newman put a transgender flag to show support of her daughter and support of equality. And for Marjorie Taylor Greene to put that sign out there is just, it's just so hateful. And just the strange and fucking discriminatory view that somehow giving rights to a group of people, humans who deserve rights, takes away rights of other humans is such a strange way of looking at the world. That's how Marjorie Taylor Greene sees it. And I think looking at both sides of the hall there, you saw the real dichotomy of the two parties, the separation of the two parties. You saw on one side of the hall, you saw somebody putting out a flag in support of civil rights, in support of their daughter, who is suffering because of discrimination.

And then on the other side, you saw somebody put up a sign purely for hate, purely as a troll for hate against the LGBTQ community. And I think that sums up the kind of politics that we're in right now. While Democrats are trying and did today in the House pass the Equality Act. I mean, these are basic civil rights that we should all have. It would amend the Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, public accommodations, public education, federal funding, credit, and the jury system. That should be a no brainer. Everybody should be on board with everybody getting the same human rights to not have the right to not be discriminated against because of who you are. But to let you know where we are with this, when there was an Equality Act

that went through the Congress in 2019, it got nine Republican votes. This Equality Act today in 2021 got three Republican votes. I think that's a pretty good summary of the trajectory of hate for people, for Democrats, and genuinely just out of this country. She doesn't love this country. She doesn't. She hates performative. And it just, they lead with hate and division. And that's, they have nothing to say. They have no policy. They don't want to help people. I mean, you name the policy, they're always on the wrong side of the issue. And they're always out there to try to troll Democrats

or troll the libs or own the libs. And it shows you that last year at the last Republican convention, they literally didn't have a platform. Their platform was whatever Trump said we'll do because they have no beliefs. Trolling is their belief. I don't get it. You know, life is so short. And for you to spend that short period of time hating others and using your position to to inflict pain on other people who just, they're not saying I want more rights than you. You say, you know what, just make it equal, okay?

And then Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Republicans go, you know what? No. You can't be equal to us. You are a lesser human being for whatever your characteristic is that you were born with. You're lesser than us. That's what they're saying. And it's just so hard for me. And we see this in other ways manifest also. Joe Biden's cabinet nominees, it seems that it's the people of color as the nominees who are the ones who are facing opposition. It seems they are facing opposition from the Republicans under

the most absurd pretext, Neera Tanden, who is up for the OMB, Office of Management and Budget, in the Biden administration. The Republicans have the audacity to talk about her tweets, her tweets. These were the same Republicans who claim they didn't even have Twitter, apparently, because they claim they haven't seen a single one of Donald Trump's tweets. They were fine with his tweets. They've tweeted the craziest shit. But when it comes to Neera Tanden, a woman of color, that's where they draw the line

and say that her tweets are divisive and would create toxic and detrimental issues. All those words, toxic, detrimental, divisive, those are all code words that she's a woman of color. Let's just be clear. That is what the Republicans are saying. And not just the Republicans, because those words were specifically from Joe Manchin. And so once again, we have Joe Manchin being a thorn in our side in West Virginia. And it's going to have to be something that we are going to have to deal with

over these next four years. How do we deal with a Joe Manchin in the Senate? Well, let's just also say, Brett, too, before Joe, we have Deb Haaland, who's also being criticized by Manchin and others. Haaland would be the first Native American to run the Interior Department. Who else, Brett?

We have Xavier Becerra, who was nominated for Health and Human Services Secretary. And Manchin is once again undecided. And Manchin finally, with Holland yesterday, finally said that he would support her after much introspection. And he's not made a decision yet on Becerra. I mean, these are all highly competent, very experienced people. And they're under scrutiny that no other nominees are under. And there was a great Washington Post piece called What Terrible Things Did Neera Tanden Tweet? The Truth. And it gave this great breakdown of all the hypocrisy of her nomination process,

because you had people like Ryan Zinke, who called Hillary Clinton the antichrist and the real enemy. And he was confirmed, including by Manchin, for secretary of the interior. You had Jeff Sessions called the NAACP a pinko organization that, quote unquote, hates white people, used racial epithets. And he also was confirmed by the Republicans and by Manchin. You had Mike Pompeo called Secretary of State John Kerry a traitor and Vietnam's worst export. And he, too, was confirmed by the Republicans and by Manchin. So if you are not seeing the double standard here, your eyes are not open.

So it begs the question, what do we do about somebody like Joe Manchin? I mean, we need Senator Joe Manchin to remain a Democrat. So he has a lot of power because if he were to flip to a Republican, all of a sudden Mitch McConnell is back in charge. And that is a death knell to the Joe Biden agenda. But what could we do, you think, to move things forward? And what do we have to do in the future, prove that the Democratic Party is a party that can govern so that we can expand our seats in the Senate and the House. I think it's vitally important that the things that we can control are controlled at the highest level.

Vaccine distribution, which right now is highly successful under Biden. We need to be hard on our foreign adversaries and show that contrast between how the Biden administration and Democrats are running things than the Trump administration, who basically bowed down to foreign dictators and allied themselves with dictators. And so we need to expand our seats and we need to not make dumb, unforced errors. I mean, look, we should have won that Senate seat in North Carolina. We had our candidate that was exposed for having, you know, an affair with those text messages about him kissing everybody. And, you know, look, at the end of the day, is it unfair that he was held to a certain scrutiny while Donald Trump bangs porn stars and hides them on his tax while cheating on

his wife, who's pregnant at the time, and that Donald Trump has been accused of sexual assault after sexual assault without any accountability? Well, look, Donald Trump gets away with it because the Republicans are fine with that. They support that. And Democrats were decent, law abiding people. So we're not OK with that. But that means if you're a Democratic candidate, you can't make those unforced errors like that seat could have been very vital to passing some of these things.

And so we have to expand. We have to treat everything like it's existential. But we can't just because of a Joe Manchin or just because of an effort for Biden to compromise. We can't just destroy our own fucking self. The Republicans are eating themselves up. We can't destroy ourselves. I remember like put yourself also. And, you know, I don't have much sympathy for Manchin, but put yourself in his shoes from a selfish point of view as a Democrat. Be selfish about this. In order for Joe Manchin to maintain his seat, he has to play to a very conservative group in West Virginia. And that's what's guiding his decision making. Now, you know, there have been

reports and stuff on, you know, the fact that his daughter raised the price of EpiPens and that Neera Tanden was against it. And so he's holding this grudge. I mean, there might be that stuff, too. But at the end of the day, people care about are they going to be reelected? And I can understand why, you know, Joe Manchin might be worried about being reelected in conservative West Virginia as a Democrat by supporting one of these policies. But I think what we have to do is we need to just show overwhelmingly why these are important policies that will help people. I think we've seen time and time again, Joe Manchin kind of make empty threats and then end up folding.

I mean, this guy does not wanna be the guy responsible for hundreds of millions of Americans not getting an increase in the minimum wage, for not getting a raise. So we need to make that clear while walking this fine tightrope of keeping him as a Democrat so that Mitch McConnell doesn't take over. I mean, this is the game of politics. This is the game of compromise. This is where it gets tough. And Joe Manchin makes me want to tear my hair out. But we got to figure out a way to manage him. And not only that, you know, come 2022, come 2024, we need to elect new senators that could actually make Joe Manchin less important. And if we had a much bigger lead in the Senate, we wouldn't have to worry about what Joe Manchin thinks. I agree with you, Brett. And I think you said it all. I think we've had, you know, just reflecting on this podcast.

I mean, we've had a pretty incredible discussion today. We've talked about Jordy's OnlyFans. We spoke with our high school social studies teacher, had a lot of great debate, a lot of great discussion, excited for our next podcast. You know, we'll be back to having some guests who were in the news and making news, but I thought it was great to share with everybody.

And we got a very special podcast coming up. I'm not sure we're ready to quite tease it yet, but stay tuned for information about our extra special episode of the Midas Touch podcast coming next Tuesday. And also this weekend is CPAC 2021, the Conservative Political Action Conference, aka QPAC, aka the GQP Comic-Con Convention of Hate. Jeez. And get ready for a lot of craziness and just know that Midas Touch will be there. We can't quite tell you what we're going to be doing yet, but keep your eyes peeled to our Twitter feed, to our Facebook, to our Instagram, to our TikTok, to everywhere that you are, because we're going to have a lot of stuff coming your way. We're going to cause some good

trouble in Orlando at QPAC. So stay tuned. The Comic-Con of hate, Brett, before we log off, that's a good one. That's new. The Comic-Con of hate QPAC. did you just make that up? I saw some people saying it and I thought it was brilliant. Brett just made that up. Yeah. Brett made it up. The comic con of the comic con of hate. No, it works anyways.

Yeah. This thing has layers. They're comical. Like they're, they're jokes. They're comics. They're jokes. They're cons.

They're con men. And they claim to be conservative, but they're cons and they're hateful racists. So the Comic-Con of hate. Anyway, thank you so much for listening to the Midas Touch podcast. New episodes you can download every Tuesday morning

and every Friday morning. Please subscribe. Make sure you leave a five-star review. The Midas Touch podcast is a top 20 national podcast. Some weeks we hit number one in North America. Keep supporting us so we can stay that way and keep bringing you

these incredible podcasts. From this time till next time, Ben Micell is here. From this time to next time. What a stupid way to sign off. From this time to next time, Ben Micell is here signing off. Thank you for listening to the Midas Tech Podcast. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.

Fuck it, we'll do it live.