The Problem With Jon Stewart - Democracy Under Threat: The Soft Hum of Corruption

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Despite what cable news may have you believe, Donald Trump is not the sole threat to our democracy. This week, we’re peeling back the rhetoric and taking a look at where the vulnerabilities in our institutions lie. In conversation with Jane Mayer, Chief Washington Correspondent for The New Yorker magazine and Noah Bookbinder, President of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Jon explores the roots of our democratic dysfunction. From ever-multiplying dark money to shark tanking ideas for tax transparency, this episode has it all. Plus, hear from producers of the pod and get a taste for what you can expect in episodes to come! Fact Check: Jane Mayer mentions that Jon said the FEC is about as useless as male nipples. It was, in fact, Jordan Klepper who said this.  Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more:    > YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast > Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast > TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast  > X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer - James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Lead Producer – Lauren Walker Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic Video/Audio Editor & Engineer - Rob Vitolo Researcher - Catherine Nouhan Music by Hansdale Hsu This podcast is brought to you by: ZipRecruiter Try it for free at this exclusive web address: ziprecruiter.com/ZipWeekly Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody. Welcome. It's Thursday. I've had, I've had a good two days to recover from my Monday work schedule, the vitamin B shot, the IV drips. I'm, I'm almost back. Exhausted. But welcome to the weekly show with John Stewart. I am John Stewart. And we are going to be doing this podcast for the year. And we thought a little bit about, uh, kind of what is what is the thrust of this what is the kind of thing that we're trying to explore uh during this because as you know your your podcast time is is valuable it is a valuable part of your let's say four hour commute or i don't know how you get to work but i'm assuming that's the time that you might listen uh to a podcast because otherwise i mean the fucking tvs right there so why would you did you get the whole narratives and things uh But what I want to talk about as we get into this is the biggest issue of our time right now appears to be the threats to healthy functioning democracies.

And I think we generally view those threats as specific to people or movements, Donald Trump, autocracy, authoritarian, Christian nationalism. The idea, though, is let's look at it. from the flip side. What are the vulnerabilities in our democratic systems that makes them maybe less resilient to those kinds of threats? Corruption, maybe the idea that it's not as responsive to the needs of the people and that dissatisfaction leads some to want to lean in other directions.

or maybe it's just the easy candy and drug of government is bad and for the people. And maybe that's just something inherent in any kind of system that purports to be a part of regulating our lives. And maybe that's just what it is and we just have to deal with that at some level. But I don't think that's correct. I think there are steps that can be taken from the banal to the drastic that can help make our democratic system more resilient, less vulnerable to these kinds of attacks that come around it, and ways that the government can function in a manner that brings more satisfaction, less crony capitalism, less corruption, to those. that are, listen, man, it's all about the consent to the governed. And you don't want to kiss the govern's ass, but you want to make it more responsive, I would think.

And we're going to do our best to do it. We've got a great team with us. I want to introduce you to some of the folks that you'll become familiar with and that you'll get to know. We got Lauren Walker. Hello. We got Brittany Mehmetavik. Brittany, hello. Hello, John.

Catherine Newhan is going to be with us. Hello. They are going to be producing these shows. They are going to be researching these shows. They are supremely talented. I trust them explicitly and implicitly. So this is the premise. I hope you guys are along for the ride.

I hope you enjoy the different episodes that we're going to be giving. Today's episode is about those that have been on the front lines of trying to get to the heart of public corruption. And what are some of the things we can do about? And without further ado, that's right, I'll be using some French words in our podcast universe. I'm going to get to our guests. We have with us Noah Bookbinder, who is president of citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington, which I didn't know any of those words existed in Washington. The acronym is crew, all capitals.

Noah Bookbinder, welcome. It's great to be here, and we've got a lot of work to make that title of reality. We do have a lot of work to make that title of reality. And we're also going to welcome Jane Mayer, Chief Washington correspondent for the New Yorker magazine, author of Dark Money, the hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. Jane, thank you very much for being with us. Great to be with you. All right, Jane.

All right, Noah. Here's the deal. Here's what we're working on. So this podcast for this year, the focus is going to be threats to democracy. And we're hearing an awful lot about that democracy is under threat. And generally, the threats that we hear about, as most pronounced, have to do with authoritarianism, autocracy, Donald Trump, Christian radical, all of these different things. What I want to get to is sort of the more banal death by a thousand cuts to democracy that is represented by the things that we don't think about as much that make authoritarianism more appealing or more possible. And that is democratic dysfunction, the sort of low-level hum of corruption, a system.

a system that is having difficulty meeting the needs of the people it purports to represent. It's not the sexy version that is the threats to democracy. But I think it's equally as dangerous and damaging to the system. So what I would like to start with you guys, and I'll start with you, Noah, does that resonate with you in any way that the real threat to our democracy? democracy is its increasing inability to meet the needs of its, let's, for lack of a better word, call them its customers. Is that resonant?

It's absolutely resonant. I mean, look, the- Noah, that's it. I'm going to cut you off. We're done here. All right. Glad to be of service. No, please.

So, you know, when people talk about the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump, that's a real thing, right? Donald Trump is the guy who tried to keep himself in power after losing an election, which is about the most dangerous thing you can do in the democracy. And I've got a lot more to say about that if we go down that road. But I also think you're absolutely right that Donald Trump didn't come from nowhere. There's a reason why people were willing to look to someone like Donald Trump. I think a major cause of that is this sense that our government isn't

working for regular people. It is working for corporations. It's working for people with a lot of money. And that's because we now have this system where money in politics has been institutionalized. The Supreme Court, as a lot of folks know, a number of years ago in the Citizens United case, but that's really just one case among many, said that corporations could give unlimited money to politics. They paved the way for dark money, for non-profits that can spend money on politics without disclosing their donors. And since that time, not only has the amount of money been increasing, but there's been this constant pushing the boundary to allow more money in different ways to make sure that there's less disclosure, there's less enforcement. So that's the thing that's going on.

at the same time the Supreme Court has been doing something that's getting a lot less notice, which is they've been gradually chipping away at our anti-corruption laws. Boy, that, Noah, spot on in terms of the amount of money. But boy, that issue about our anti-corruption laws, this idea that it has to be explicitly, and for those who don't know, the Supreme Court sort of has redefined corruption as, unless you hand a legislator a bag that has a giant dollar sign on it and a note that says, I will give you this money if you do explicitly this, it is not considered corruption. I think those two things are paramount.

Jane, I want you, you know, he mentioned dark money and he mentioned that. You know, we hear a lot about the amount of money that's been infused into the system and the lessening of what is considered explicit corruption, would you say those are the things that have eroded the foundation of the democracy for you? Well, certainly they're huge, both of them. I mean, I totally agree with you guys that this Trump, in many ways, is the face of it now, but this is really a table. A symptom. A symptom. But it's been, this has been something the table was set, I'd say, beginning around 40 years ago. And that one of the other things that's been going on is the people who have funded the kind of the undermining of democracy have also launched a

pretty constant attack on just the idea of government. So a lot of Americans have lost their troughed in it. So you're saying this is purposeful. There has been a purposeful campaign to undermine those tent posts that kept democracy functioning on maybe a clear attack. I mean, absolutely. I do think that it's not a conspiracy, but just as a reporter, it's, I was, you know, if you go back, you can trace the story of how this all happened. He goes back to basically, at least in, in one place you could begin is 1971 when a blueprint was really written up about how to do this by a tobacco industry lawyer, Lewis Powell, who Nixon then put on the Supreme Court. By the way, lovely, lovely people. Lovely people. I've always said, you want to find yourself a good friend, a solid companion, find yourself attack, a tobacco company executive.

So what's the blueprint, Jane? What were they trying to do? So basically, in the 70s, for those that don't remember them, somebody like me barely does, there was a feeling that there were too many of these kind of good guy movements. There were consumer movements. There was Ralph Nader. There was an anti-war movement. There was a growing EPA, which was environmentalists were beginning to say, we want clean water.

Consumer protections and things like that. Consumer protection, all that kind of thing. And who did it hurt? Well, for most people in the country, it was fantastic. But for people who had huge businesses that polluted, it was a problem. And so there were a bunch of new regulations. And so basically what happened in 1971 is the business heads kind of got together. and said, we've got to stop this.

And they had this blueprint. And pretty soon, if you kind of watch it, it was put into action step by step. And what it did was try to empower business in a way to push back against the rest of the sort of public interest movements. Right. What they would consider the regulatory state. So this brings us, so I think this has set the table very nicely. There's sort of this idea that the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, the 60s, the state. 60s, it's corporate America is having its heyday, even though the tax rate at the top of it is

around 80, 90 percent at that time. And, you know, it's sort of different. The 70s ushers in a movement with the EPA, by the way, Richard Nixon, who today I would assume would be considered left wing, oddly enough, other than his enjoyment. Maybe communist. Maybe communist other than his enjoyment of wars and bombing. But the point being, this regulatory state begins to take shape in the hopes of empowering the citizens of making the government more responsive to its citizens. So the question now becomes, yes, there is a concerted effort now to disassemble that for people. But I think the more interesting question that I kind of want to get to is, how has that regulatory state also let us down? Because we always talk, well, they made the water clean, they made the air clean.

but are there things that have occurred that have over-expanded it that have made it ripe for those who would be dissatisfied has the regulation in some ways tied our hands and made solving urgent problems more difficult and the example i'll give you is uh do you remember uh this was maybe a year ago maybe a half a year ago a collapse of a highway in philadelphia Yeah. There was a huge fire. Right. If we had gone along the normal governmental regulatory routes to solve that problem,

you would not be able to probably drive into Philadelphia until, I would say, 2035. If we went along with, you can only use contractors of this. Everything has to meet the bar of this. We can't fix it unless that. I think the governor of Pennsylvania said, we don't have time for this nonsense. I have to just do this. And he went and did it. Is there something to the critique that the regulatory state itself has contributed in some ways to the dissatisfaction?

Noah. I think there is. I mean, I think that we're done here, Noah. That's it. That's all I needed from you. Again. No, go ahead. Yeah, the one sentence answers are always the best ones, right?

But there was a sense, you know, over time that to solve a lot of problems, problems of unfairness, problems of ethics, that we needed lots of rules. And the federal government is a giant apparatus. So it doesn't do anything quickly or efficiently. And so, you know, as we started to get more rules and often they're sort of blunt object rules. I think that probably has contributed over time to this idea that government's not responsive. It's not working for people. And again, you talk about how do we get Donald Trump. Some of it is like, hey, we want someone who's just going to cut through the rules, pretend they don't exist and, you know,

do whatever the heck he wants, basically, because that's more efficient. I think one of the things we saw there, you know, what we ended up with was not something more efficient. It was, we ended up with something even more corrupt where then, you know, rules were ignored and cronies were put in and industries were catered to just more directly. So, you know, I think that is, that's sort of the challenge, right? How do you make things effective and efficient without creating a system where it's some guy doing whatever the heck he wants, which is ultimately going to be what benefits him and his buddies. You know, that's something.

The kind of crony capitalism. So that brings up an issue point. Jane, I want to ask you about this. The one gift that I think Donald Trump has given to us as a country, as he has exposed, I think, the soft hum of corruption that is the engine of almost all of our business. I think one of the things that Trump. does is, you know, when he says it was a perfect phone call, well, in his experience, extorting someone or blackmailing them or saying, I will send you the weapons that we were

going to send you or the money that we were going to send you. But in return, transactionally, you will give me the information on my opponent that I need. Because, look, his first lawyer was Roy Cohn, the lawyer for Joe McCarthy. His only two clients later where I think Donald Trump and Satan. I think Satan was his other client. And Satan used to say to Roy Cohn, take it down a notch, Roy. I don't feel comfortable with the tactics you're using. Oh, I mean, yeah. Trump is nothing, if not blatant. I mean, he's turned the whole thing into a transaction. So that basically the government is kind of like the way he ran his business. You give me something and I'll give you back something. And so, I mean, we see. But is that different, Jane, than what it really is. What I'm saying is, is he exposing a reality? I'm not saying he's not pushing the limit of it. I'm not saying he's not exploiting it.

But isn't he exposing at some level a reality of crony capitalism, a reality of transactional corruption that is the heartbeat of corporate and political America? I think it's a great question. It's very much what he's arguing is every, and it is that everybody's corrupt. and I'm no different. I'm no more shameless than anybody else, and this is how we do it. And if you remember, back in 2016, I actually think part of the appeal of Trump in 2016 was he slammed the big money donors.

I don't know if you remember this, but he went after specifically the co-brothers. I know the system is rigged because I helped rigged. Because I've been in it. And I know it better than anyone else. And it's a dirty thing. And there's the deep state and the swamp. and I'm going to go drain it. And he went after the big donors, actually at that point, rhetorically, largely because

they weren't giving him their money at that point. So it was a kind of no-cost thing to take on. I don't think he's right. I mean, I will push back against this. Sure. You know, I've been covering politics a long time since like 84 in Washington. And what I've seen is the money has become bigger and bigger and bigger. and it is corrupting the government, but it wasn't always this way. It's not the whole story.

There are incredible numbers of people in Washington who are really dedicated to doing the right thing for the right reasons, both Republicans and Democrats. They're just, they're interested in policy. They're interested in serving the country. And he's really bad-mouthing that whole possibility. And again, I see this as part of this effort to just, to attack the government and not appreciate the things that it does right. And it does a lot of things right from my standpoint. That's a great point. So let's step back. Everything ultimately becomes Trump-centric.

So when I talk about his, when he calls it the deep state, the thing about Trump is, you know, people say like he's racist. I think he's Trumpist. As far as he's concerned, he doesn't care about any of this as long as it's for him. an election result that is rigged is one where he doesn't win. The deep state is rigged if it gives a decision against him. The court system is rigged if it goes against him. But my point is he's identifying, though, a dissatisfaction. And two things can be true.

One is there are a lot of really good, dedicated policy people and good heart with great integrity people working in Washington every day to make the country work better. And number two is the system is so removed from the needs of its people and so insulated and isolated within the Beltway and within that very peculiar system within the Beltway, that it can't actually accomplish the goal that even those good-hearted people of integrity wanted to. And we can talk about examples, but, you know, Noah,

does that contradiction resonate with you? Jane brought up a great point. There's tons of people down there working their asses off every day. I'm going to agree with you again. And maybe I can just stop there. But, you're a paid shell.

This isn't fair. Jane, it's dark money. You have no idea what I have been funneling. I have been funneling to Noah. Exactly. So look, I mean, I worked for the federal government in all different branches for for a lot of years. And I did see, worked every day with terrific people, really trying hard to make the country better, Democrats and Republicans. And so that's a reality. And, you know, for all the sort of slamming of the deep state, you know, for the most part, these are very talented,

committed professionals trying to make the country better. Of course. What I do in my job now is trying to clear away those systemic conditions that make it hard for those people to do that. I do think that where Donald Trump is not just the latest example of sort of what everybody's doing, I'd say, there are two things. One is that there are folks in Washington who may be, who are raising tons of campaign money, you know, doing all the things that are problematic, but who are also working on a policy level to change that. In 2021, I believe it was, legislation passed the House of Representatives and came two votes away from passing the Senate that would have not just protected voting rights

and a lot around that, but also would have made really major strides on money in politics, would have required disclosure of who the donors are to dark money groups, would have started matching campaign contributions that give more power to regular people. That almost passed. Donald Trump and his supporters were all on the other side of that. They were all trying to stand in the way of reform. So that's one piece. The other is the way that Donald Trump has pushed.

things to a really dangerous extreme. So with Donald Trump, it's not just give money to my campaign and you'll get what you want. Now, he's doing that too, even though he used to be against that. Now he's meeting with oil. Honestly, he was never against it. Most of almost everything that he does is rhetorical, strategic to get the transaction that he's looking for. He will say anything to anybody to get the result. It's why when he goes in front of a right to life group, he says, I am the only man who was able to restrict abortion in this country. I delivered that for you. And then he walks out in the country and goes, I left it to the states because everybody's happy with that. You know, there is no ideology there. That was my point is there's no ideology other than

I would like more power and control, whatever that means. Absolutely. So, you know, now he's asking oil executives to raise a billion dollars for him and you'll figure out environmental regulations. But at the same time, he's done something that nobody else has done, certainly in modern American history, I think arguably in American history at all, which is that he's had this vast business empire, which essentially, you know, he has been pretty explicit about the fact that you can, if you want to influence me as president, either when I am president, or if I am elected president, you can give money to me directly. Or through my hotels or through the golf course or by buying an apartment.

That's right. And he wants to run the country like he ran the Trump organization. It's not a public company. I mean, it's very much the model of foreign dictators too. I mean, if you look at most democratic states, they're very corrupt. And they, you know, you look at, look at Russia today. Putin decides which of his cronies he's going to give the oil and gas, you know, franchise too. And they become billionaires.

And then they owe them. And then they have to do what he wants. You serve at the pleasure of the king. Absolutely. And so that is the model here. That is exactly the opposite of what the founding fathers tried to set up with all these checks and balances to keep us from having a dictator who could take it all and enrich himself. I mean, there are a million ways that the laws are set up to try to stop that. So it's not really surprising that Trump is at this point going at the few sort of the barriers that stopped him last time.

And he started this really from the time he took office. What are the independent barriers that try to stop somebody like Trump? One is the— What are the guard rolls? Well, what are the guardrails? It's the independent press. The very beginning, he started by attacking the press. It's the justice system, which, of course, we see him attacking every single day.

It's the FBI, the CIA, the intelligence agencies, anything that has any independent information that could criticize him, the inspector generals. Unless they deliver a verdict for him and then he praises them. But so this gets to the crux of kind of the discussion that we're going to. In some ways, he is doing us a service in that he is like, you know how they're. employ like a white hat hacker who will go into a system and find its vulnerabilities. Now, he's not doing it for our benefit. He's doing it to exploit it. But what I'm saying is, what if we take the information that he's delivering us, which is, here are the vulnerabilities in your system that I can exploit. Can't we reverse engineer that and bolster those very

institutions in a way that makes them much less fragile to these kinds of attacks. And that's where we get into, I think the more interesting conversation. I think the more interesting conversation has less to do with Trump and his excesses and his exploitation and more to do with how do we turn the light on our own beautiful, flawed, confounding system and begin to rebuild it with more resilience and stability. And that's where we get to, this isn't about criticizing Trump. This is about the constructive look at what is making this system so much more vulnerable. So now let's flip that back into our talk about the money.

The money. I do think that No and I, I don't know. I haven't checked with No about this. But my guess is we both think that you really can't fix most of the important things that need fixing until you get a handle on the amount of money that it takes to get elected at this point. It's absurd how expensive it is to get elected. And it forces even politicians who want to do the right thing. got to find the money somewhere and they have to make compromises to get it. And then when they're in office, they're afraid of not getting reelected unless they serve the people with the money.

So it's actually not that the government doesn't work. I don't think. I think it's the government works very well, but for a handful of people who are funding it and not for everybody else. But that's, I mean, I think that's, the point is it's not, it's supposed to work. I think there is an enormous, that's right, there's an enormous disconnect. So this is great, guys. We will be right back after this quick sponsorship message. Look, you know, the holidays are over. Let's face facts.

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See mintmobile.com. We're back. So I want to push back a little bit to both of you about this conventional wisdom that it was the floodgates of electioneering. Now, I'm not, you know, I'm not going to give you the kind of libertarian view of like, that's why government should not have its hands in anything. I think government is essential. You know, we have a system built on checks and balances.

and government can be the only entity powerful enough to balance out corporate power, which would exploit all of us, you know, to the best of their ability, if not for some of those checks and balances. But are there things, I'll give you the example. Like, you know, we talked to Rose DeLora, who was a congressman from Connecticut. And she was talking about how in the, I think it might have been a Medicare discussion. they were trying to pass legislation. In the halls of Congress, during that discussion,

there were more lobbyists for the healthcare companies and the pharmaceutical companies than there are Congress people. And sick people and regular people and people who are trying not to go bankrupt based on an illness they have, were not represented in any way. during that discussion. So how could you possibly, even without dark money or things that flow on there,

how could you have a healthy legislative session without that input? There are a lot of ways to combat money in politics. Campaign finance is a huge one. And, you know, there are steps that, there are legislative steps that could be taken now. I think the biggest thing you'd need to do is change the composition of the Supreme Court to one that is less open to this idea that any regulation is a problem. But that's not the only one. Lobbying is another form of money in politics. And that can be regulated also.

And I know that sort of more regulation is an answer that creates some of its own problems. But I think we've been moving so far in this anti-regulation direction that money is running rough shot. And I think you have to be really aggressive about it. And one of the things that we've found, and I think Jane has had similar experiences, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is that you've got to be really aggressive on the regulatory front, because if you tweak the rules, if you make it a little harder. What regulatory agency would you point to that you think, other than the person I've been most impressed with is Lena Con is the head of the FTC, but what regulatory like the SEC seems like they've in some respects just given up they've said well there's

a ton of corruption down on Wall Street and but what we're going to do is we're not going to refer anything to the DOJ we're just going to take a cut of it to try and control some of the we'll bring people up on certain things and they'll have to pay a fine if they say so do you have a a regulatory model that you feel like has been really effective you know an issue that we work on that almost nobody else works on is this law called the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act says that regular government employees, pretty much everybody in the federal government

other than the president and the vice president, aren't able to use their official position for electoral politics. So you can't have some guy who works, or some woman who works in the White House or works in the Justice Department out there saying, you should re-elect President Biden, you should elect Donald Trump.

In the Trump administration, it became essentially a first official policy that everybody should use their official positions to promote Donald Trump's re-election. And there's this office that nobody's heard of called the Office of Special Counsel, separate from not the special counsel that prosecutors people. They enforced that law. And they said there have been all these violations, particularly by folks in the White House, Kellyanne Conway was the biggest offender. She has, I think they found something like 59 violations, she should be fired. And Donald Trump essentially came in and said, I decide who

gets fired in my White House, and I'm fine with this, and she's not going to get fired, and the violations continue. There's now a guy who's running the Office of Special Counsel, who very quietly a few weeks ago said, we looked at the law, and we think that even if it's someone in the White House who's violating this, that actually, we can take steps to actually have that person disciplined or even fired just as we do with anybody else in the government. And, you know, that's a tiny thing. Probably 10 people noticed that.

But that's a change in regulations that actually could make the government less corrupt. But no, to be fair, like something like the hatch act, and I do remember, and Jane, I'm sure you remember the, you know, the cries of this is violating the hatch act. and this isn't normal. To an utter disregard and sigh and yawn from the American public, because again, that feels like does it make us less corrupt? Does it matter? How do you define electioneering?

All those things. I'm talking about more basic foundational that will resonate with the customers of our government. Like even the idea of removing money feels like for people, disconnected from what their lives are. Well, that may be because people who oppose this much money, maybe which you could include me in, maybe we're not doing a good enough job of explaining why does it matter to you when the government's corrupt?

And there's a book that I really like by Larry Lessig that starts with a really good concrete example. He's giving a bottle to his new baby. And he describes, describes, describes how he suddenly realizes that there are these forever chemicals that are in the the rubber nipple of the bottle. And he's wondering, wait a minute, why is it that I'm already polluting my new baby with forever chemicals? Where are the people who are supposed to keep us safe from this? And I think what people need to understand is that all these problems,

you know, there's so many problems that ordinate people have just getting to the end of the year, they can't, you know, figure out how to pay their taxes or their medical bills or, you know, everything else, that there are reasons for this. It's not just like accidental. We have agency to fix some of these things. And the other thing I just want to say is that it may seem far away as an issue, what to do about big money and corrupt money. But actually, if you look at polls, it is an issue that has overwhelming bipartisan support. People hate Citizens United and they hate the idea that billionaires are owning their government and that they are, and deciding, you know, all these major issues. I mean, it's like 90% of people feel that way.

And so there is, but isn't that in some ways, Jane, as long as it's their billionaire, they're okay. On the right, Elon Musk's buy. of of X and, you know, his activism is viewed very, very favorable. On the left, you know, when Soros, Soros puts it. People, as long as it's their billionaire, they don't care as much. So my point is, how do we get, if you were, you know, there was a great thing about education that I saw once, which was it was a list of all the ways that kids learn. And it was they learned through hands-on experience and they learned.

through things. And it listed like 10 really interesting ways in which children learn the best. And then it listed the 10 ways that schools teach. And they were utterly disconnected. And that's how I feel, and you can't change it. And it's how I feel about if you talk to people about their lives and what they want from the government, what they would say is, all right, my kids are in college right now, just as my parents are getting older and I'm having to put that in there. And I've got medical expensive. So it would be child care, health care, elder care, education. And yet, the direct policies of government don't, in their minds, make a clear difference for those things. And even the programs that are in place to do that are oftentimes corporate subsidies, food stamps. You know,

you can pay a low wage and the employees of a company will still be on public assistance. You know, food stamps is kind of a subsidy to craft and the Bisco and all those other kinds of things. You know, we're not responding. And I'll give you example, what I think is a much more crucial aspect to it. And it doesn't have to do with regulation or education of the public. When we went down to try and get something together for toxic exposures for veterans, right, who had been exposed to burn pits, we had some advocate groups that had been banging down doors for 10 years and not really getting anyone.

We brought in a meeting, a bipartisan group of Congresspeople, almost all veterans who had absolute interest and desire to do something about it. We educated them in the room. We got access, which you normally can't do to this group. We're not lobbyists. We're door open. We laid out the case very compellingly to a bipartisan group. They were in agreement that something needs.

needed to be done. When the meeting was over, this is at the very beginning of this process, they pulled us aside and said, this is fantastic, but we're really busy. Could you write it? Now think about that. We're the legislative body. We're Congress, but we're so busy that we can't write the urgent legislation that you need. So will you write it. Now, we're just a group of rag-tag idiots who are down there trying to get this thing done. But now imagine you're a pharmaceutical company or now imagine you're a giant bank and you're the representatives that you're lobbying are busy and you know that. And you can exploit that. And so the legislation that is crafted is actually crafted, I think, by the very entities that we should be restricting

or we should be regulated. You're absolutely right. It happens all the time. I mean, look at, there was a great report recently about the fossil fuel industry. It was in Politico. They wrote up all the new regulations and laws they'd like to see Trump Institute if he's elected. And then he says, well, give me a billion dollars. And then we can make. a deal basically. You want to know why not enough is happening about climate change? That's it in, you know, one sentence.

You know, I mean, but what are those legislators so busy doing? Take a look. I mean, I'm sure no one knows this. Every afternoon they get on the phone and they dial for dollars. They have to raise money. You're saying the money is even

tied into their time. It's a huge commitment of time. I remember, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan kind of blew the whistle on it and said, I can't believe it. I have to spend, you know, two-thirds of my time on the phone raising money. I mean, it is this, it, it, it, I hate to sound like my great-grandmother, but it is kind of the, the, you know, the, the source of all evil in a lot of ways. And again, unless they get a handle on it. And why are these people having so many problems out in the country? Part of it has to do with, um,

take a look at what's happened over the last 40 years in terms of taxation. And those tax bills that get passed by Congress, in the last 40 years, $50 trillion was transferred from the bottom 90% to the top 1% through taxation. So people are really feeling stretched on the bottom, the top, the bottom 90% of the country. I don't even know if there's a bottom anymore. I think it's the middle class in those eras that you talk about, James. could have a job, could buy a house, could put their kids through school, and they could do it all. Not easily. It was always stressful. But not. Today, the middle class has no opportunity to do that. True. I mean, again, how does that happen? Why is it that we've been through a 40-year experiment in radical, you know, inequality? Right. Well, it's not an accident. Look who's running the government. Why does that, who makes the tax policy? But Jane, this has been, you know, that that has been through Republican and Democratic administrations.

In fact, you could say other than Reagan, the person who deregulated our government the most was probably Bill Clinton, who allowed the financial institutions to deregulate that way. The era of big government is over is what Greta said. I mean, I think the Democrats really bought into a lot of the trickle-down economics for a long time and sort of what, you know, the wonkier term. is neoliberalism. And I think maybe after 40 years, we're seeing the results and people are beginning to say, wait a minute, this is not working. Well, no, is that, that brings up an interesting point because it seems like now the right and the left are competing in some ways for this populist mentality without obviously the benefit of providing legislation that actually reinforces it. Like, I mean, look at the child tax credit. It alleviated child poverty.

while it was in effect during the pandemic. And so immediately they were like, we've got to stop that. And they cut it off. All right. I hate to break the flow here, but we got to do a quick sponsorship message. We're back. Noah, as you, you know, you're pounding away at these sort of corrupt dynamics. In your mind, what you see is, is money that beating heart of what controls all of this.

Oh, I think it is. I mean, I think, you know, one of the, one of the, one of the, the paradoxes that we're in now is what we really need is institutions backed by people to step up and work for regular people. And so this populism that sort of tears down institutions that says government is the problem, that says science is the problem, education is that that's the exact opposite of what we need. But also institutions have failed us. So we need to be kind of finding ways to, let's say, institutions, you got to, you got to get it together, you got to do better. So that's my premise, Noah.

That's the premise of this entire conversation, which is institutions, how do we help them do better? What is it about these institutions? Because if these institutions can do that, boy, does that, I think, safeguard us against some of this populace rage. Absolutely. And I think, you know, a lot of that does come back to money. You know, I did work, I was a congressional staffer for a bunch of years. And you know what? We didn't have time to do all the things we needed to do. It would be so little money to give, to, first of all, pay members of Congress more, which is sort of a weird thing for an ethics person to be saying. But, you know, we don't want it. We don't want it to be. kind of a hard sell. Yeah, but we don't want it to only be millionaires and billionaires who can be in these positions. We want regular people to be able to be in those positions. We want them to have more staff. We want agencies to be able to figure out what is more efficient and more effective.

If people don't trust what they'll do, and this is again, this comes back to the institutions, for instance, if Democrats say, I want to raise taxes on billionaires, you might say, well, yeah, that's fairer. They need to pay their fair share. They've got too many lawyers getting them out of too many different taxes. But at the very heart of that, though, is a mistrust that people have of what they would do with that extra money. If they don't feel, so we have money in two ways here. One is the money that's poured into the system by corporate interests to try and gain leverage and crony capitalism. But there's another money thing. And that is the money that the government extracts from the people that they feel is not spent in a manner that they feel the value of.

You know what I've... Yeah. Go ahead, Jane. Okay, I was going to say, all right, this is sort of a dumb idea maybe, but I really think people don't know how their tax money is spent. I agree with you. Everybody hates paying taxes, including me. But I have thought it would be really useful if the job.

geniuses of Silicon Valley made it possible so that you could look up your address and see, okay, what's, where's my money going? And you could see, oh, the public swimming pool down the street. Oh, holy shit. How much goes into the school system. Jane? You know, all, you ought to be able to know what's, what are you getting back? Jane, I, I don't need to do a podcast anymore. Like that I think that's utterly brilliant because when we talk about transparency, it's always about who's giving the money or what and what their name is. And I always find that it creates kind of a hum that people don't connect to. I love that. Great.

Has that been attempted? Because I will say this, in a lot of other countries that pay much higher taxes, the satisfaction that they have with the services they receive are much greater. But transparency in tax money? Boy, has that been done, Jane? Do you know? I don't think it has. There was a friend of mine named Michael Tamaski, who was the editor at the New Republic. And he was really big on this idea.

And he said he'd quit his job as editor of the New Republic if he could just make this happen. I mean, I think it's a – I'll tell you why he thought it was thinking about this. Sure. He did it. It was actually kind of a great little anecdote. He went to a small town and he wanted to ask people about their views about government. And he wanted to find out what it, you know, how much money was coming from the federal and local state government into that one community. And the thing that he discovered was there was no way to find out. There was no Polly. There's no place you could look. So people have no idea what they're getting. Oh, nobody saw it to keep track of that. Okay, so here's the next question, guys. I got to tell you, boy, do I love this. I feel like we're on Shark Tank right now, and you just threw something out there,

and I'm like, I'm in, I'm back in. Great, because we need you, actually. This amount of money for 20% of the, I think that's such a brilliant idea. So here's the question. Do you think if we were able to do that, would the citizens be surprised? surprised at how much value they were getting for their dollar, or would the government be ashamed of the waste, fraud, and other sort of dissipating value that they're giving for that? But what do you think would be both?

Depending on the community. I mean, some places are really corrupt and people are, siphoning off all the money and not doing their jobs. And I think a lot of places, though, you know, there, that people have no idea how much help they're getting from the roads, the, you know, everything, the people, the plowmen and when it snows, you know, I'm not even necessarily talking about the town infrastructure. I'm really focused more on life is hard for people.

and getting harder. And we have this incredible machinery of government that we need to provide a check to corporate exploitation, to protect environmental rights, to protect all these different things, but also to lend a social safety net of support that matters in people's lives. Simple things like your older parent,

lives with you, direct money to that person because that is a job having them living with you. It's so expensive. And for people to try to take care of the elder people in their lives, it's unbelievable. Sure. I mean, I think that it is, it really is both in the sense that I think people would really be blown away by all the ways that government is helping them. But it then also comes back to who is government helping. And that we have this system where interests with a lot of money get disproportionate money as a result.

You know, how much money goes to defense contractors. I think people would be appalled by that. How much money, you know, subsidizes oil companies. Preach, brother. And so I think we need to do both things. This is a terrific idea to show where your money is going and all the good things it's doing. We've got to combine that. But not just the good things, Noah.

Yeah, that's right. You have because it has to serve as a reform map. Exactly. If you were able to try, I almost feel like we could all become like David Attenborough and we're out in the wild and you're tagging an animal to see where it goes to help it, but also to see like, oh, this is this is a problem over here. It's a reform map that could be created. That's right.

And if you have a system where. taxpayer funds are going to policymakers and to the programs that benefit people. But you're cutting, and that's going to be expensive, but you're cutting out the ways that billionaires and corporations can pour billions of dollars into the system. And get subsidies out of it. That's right. And then those resources start to be spent in ways that, that benefit the people who are putting the money in, which is going to be regular people.

And not, you know, so, you know, we have a system now where there are, you're right, it's not just campaign contributions. There are so many ways for big money interests to tip the scales. It's campaign contributions. It's lobbying. It's, you know, there was this crazy Supreme Court decision a few years back. There was this guy, Bob McDonald who was governor of Virginia. Sure.

Well, that was the quid pro quo. decision that ended corruption in America. That's right. I mean, essentially the Supreme Court said it's not about a campaign contribution. You can give this guy a Rolex watch. You can pay for his daughter's wedding as long as all you're getting is access. You know, it's not tied to a specific act. It's just you're setting up a meeting. And, you know, all of us who have had jobs in the world understand how it works. If your boss comes and says, I want you to take a meeting with this person and give careful consideration to what he says. Right.

So what you're what you're doing there is the Supreme court is giving a blueprint for corruption. You can. Yes. Give this guy a watch and then you get a privileged meeting with his, his or her top aide, and you can make your pitch there. It's so funny. No, it reminds me that this is like the NCAA. A. So the NCAA for years was this giant regulatory state over college athletics. And they had rules like,

you can have a bagel, but you can't have a bagel with peanut butter. Because if you have a bagel with peanut butter, that's considered a meal. And so it's, and this is what gets back to the heart of like regulation is great unless it makes no sense and it's over regulation and it has no bearing on anything. So, you know, ultimately the NIL comes in and college athletes who've been exploited for their labor, forever and under these ridiculous rules. And this is why it reminds me of government ethics. In government ethics, a lobbyist cannot give you a sandwich. You cannot give a congressperson a sandwich or something over $25, something along those lines.

Can't give them theater tickets. What you can do is pay for a luxury vacation for them in a resort and bring along 10 lobbyists and airfare and meal and everything else. And you can treat them to this as long as it's through a certain pack, a 501-389 thing. So the idea is it's meaningless, arcane nonsense.

But the heart of it is still carved out and protected of access and corruption. That's what, how do you bridge that, gap. Jane's idea, Tumaski's idea, to do it for taxes is brilliant. Now we have to attack it for government regulation as well. Well, it would help if the IRS worked. I mean, they're really not doing their job as watchdogs of this. And that's also, again, very deliberately, the people at the IRS that are supposed to inspect nonprofit organizations, which is really what dark money

groups are. They're not doing it. They've been deprived of the funds to do their jobs. So, by Congress, which really didn't want them policing it. And attacked politically when they ever try. When they tried to do it. Oh, gosh. I mean, the Republicans made a big thing about, you know, IRS agents with guns coming to your house. I mean, and you were the one, John, that had someone on, I think, from the FEC, maybe the chairman of the FEC at one point, Anne Ravel. And I believe the phrase that I remember to describe what the FEC does and what the chairman does is she's about as useless as male nipples. I think that was, that's just, that's just hurtful. That's just hurtful. Why would anyone even? By the way, male nipples is laugh. So that God knows where to grab you

when he's pulling you up to heaven. That's the male nipple is merely. Well, that is what the FEC is. I mean, you know, it's a toothless, useless organization at this point. And the IRS is not doing its job either when it comes to policing the money going into this thing. And when you're talking about special, being able to give people special vacations, I thought you were going towards the Supreme Court, you know, where you can actually take someone out on your yacht and take them around the world for weeks. And it's called personal hospitality. And there's a loophole that at least the justices. are arguing makes it legal. And the interesting thing to me about that stuff, and this is where we'll unfortunately have to end it. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate you guys and the expertise. And, you know, I have the easy job, which is to opine in my house. But you guys are on the front lines of the, I mean, Noah, the work that you do, I'm sure, is just a day in and day out hand-to-hand fight.

And having been down there and seen the frustrations, I can't tell you how much I admire the fact that you are in there and you are doing those things. And Jane, your reporting is always exquisite and just so powerful and well laid out. And, you know, I can't thank you both enough for lending your expertise to this. Well, thank you, John. But I can't thank you enough for making us laugh and get through our lives and being so smart about it. I just, my only grievance is that you were off the air for a while. I had to raise children for God's sakes.

Making us laugh and asking the hard question. But I want to end it with just this last thing about because I think Jane brought it up just now, which is this abject corruption that, you know, it's sort of that pornography. Like I don't know the definition, but I know it when I see it. It's corruption. What is being done with rich people in the Supreme Court is corruption. What's being done with PACs and lobbyists in Washington is corruption. And what's shocking to me is the arrogance and defensiveness that naming it is somehow in a front to the high integrity of the man in the million dollar RV that was given to him by the. And I'll give you an example of it.

And we'll discuss this. And this will be where we leave it. I had an interview for, I was at a forum called the Warhorse Forum in University of Chicago run by this guy, Thomas Brennan, who has started this. the idea is to get military reporting that is more geared towards the veteran and their families and sort of a grassroots. It's a wonderful project that he's embarked on. So I got to interview the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Now, I didn't know much about her. I didn't. I didn't really have much prepared to be perfectly frank. And I just started out with what I thought was a simple, you know, the idea is, here's the Department of Defense at a forum about better military reporting.

You know, the Pentagon's got kind of a very complicated relationship with transparency and reporting. First thing she says is, we welcome transparency. And I was like, oh, we're just going to fucking lie right off the bat. Like, that's just, that's just nonsense. But what I said was the, you know, every organization in the government, every government has to undergo an audit. And they've all passed them except for one organization.

And it's the organization that has an $850 billion budget, and that's the Department of Defense. And they failed it every time. And each time they fail it, they get like a $40 billion bump. What came back at me was so shocking. Do you even know what an audit is? Isn't it? I thought it was when, like, you check the money versus what you got and they don't match up. Is that?

Like, I'm not an accountant. you don't understand that doesn't but so now we start going back and forth and at one point she says to me you seem awfully concerned about the money and I thought am I in crazy town first of all it's $850 billion and second of all it's our money but what struck me was the utter disregard for those concerns and the idea that to be called on it is outrageous. And you should look up the interview. It's on,

I think it's online. I think you'd be stunned. I was utterly stunned by the attitude. And that's, and that's a Democrat, and it seems pervasive. And, and is that part of the problem that they're so insulated

that oversight seems like persecution? I think it's absolutely part of the problem. I think, you know, I really do think there's no clearer example of that than the U.S. Supreme Court, which until a few months ago, was just about the only workplace in America that didn't have a code of conduct. And then they did put one into place, which is- They did not have a code of conduct? They did not have a code of conduct. None.

They put one into place a couple of months ago, which is a set of rules, but it says, but you're in charge of figuring out whether you're in violation. and if so how to fix it. So it would be like, if all of us were like, well, if we broke the rules, I'll decide if I'm the guy who broke the rules. And if so, I will take steps to fix it. That never works.

That's never worked in human history. But we have the situation where despite this utter lack of oversight, despite constant documentation of abuses, not only are the people, you know, Samuel Lelito, Clarence Thomas, the people who have these abuses, documented, not only are they affronted, but all of them, all over, you know, across the political spectrum seem to be affronted that these questions are being asked and that they're not being trusted to take care of their own business. And so I think we need a situation where we do rebuild

trust in government, which in some cases deserves it and needs to deserve it, but it's only going to be able to deserve it if we put in place rules and mechanisms that check, you know, what's happening, that hold people to account and hold them to the high standards that we deserve as American people and American taxpayers. And Jane, to your idea, is it the shaming with tenacity? I like that. Shaming with tenacity sounds very good to me. I mean, I have to say that I think the good news about the scandal surrounding the Supreme Court is that it was broken wide open by fantastic reporting, which just won a Pulitzer Prize for ProPublica. For a long time, the court does great work. I mean, and there are a nonprofit news organization and, you know, for a long

time the court was sort of treated as like the, you know, the oracles of Delphi and they were above being covered, you know. So, I mean, I think, you know, holding them accountable and, you know, exposing it and demanding reform. I mean, as a reporter, I'm always hopeful that when you expose something, it's going to make people care, and then they'll reform it. They'll fix it. And I think, you know, so I maintain, I'm still hopeful. Always hopeful, Jane. Always. I'm the same way. I know it sounds crazy, but because I've seen what pressure and shame and tenacity, you know, can do to change things in a profound way. And then suddenly the effects of that change on real people's lives is palpable. I've seen it work. It takes way too long. It erodes the good people in the

trenches of activism that do it. It erodes them to a nub. Sometimes they pay an enormous price physically and mentally. But I've seen it work. And I think it has to work. But the issue is, identifying those pressure points and strategies. And that's why I love Jane's idea so much. And, and, uh, oh, great. Well, make it happen. You can do it. It's your idea.

I don't know. Well, I'll be an angel investor, but I'm not jumping in there. All right. We'll get to Maskey on this. Okay. All right. All right. Very, very, very good.

So fun. Noah, Loebiner of, citizens for responsibility and ethics. Responsible ethics. I don't know. What is not going to happen. in Washington. But boy,

keep on those ramparts, man, and keep doing that thing. And Jane, obviously, I love your work and reading it and thinking about it.

And it's so thoughtful and interesting. And thank you both very much for starting this journey for me because it's going to be a learning experience for me about where are the gaps and holes.

What is that roadmap to reform? And how do we, even in the reform movement, get out of the institutional thinking that has sometimes, and the conventional thinking that has sometimes held us back and got us stuck in place. We can crack this nut, sure of it. And thank you both for being a part of that.

Great to be with you. Thanks so much for having us on. Boy, boy, did I like that? Did I like when Jane, everything was a blur to me, And we're all trying to figure out a roadmap to some. It's so important when you're talking about government corruption and those things, that we also challenge ourselves not to fall into conventional wisdom and institutional thinking and all those things that have kept this.

When Jane, boy, that epiphany about a roadmap provided for your dollars. And exactly, boy, could that, boy would that be, I think, a slight embarrassed. to those that are the keepers of the money. And boy, do I love that idea. It would be incredibly illuminating. We should find, maybe that's another episode is where we find that. But as the season goes on, we're going to talk about corruption in industries, pharmaceutical industry, our food industry, the way everything is incentivized for ultra-processing

and all those other things and the defense industry and government and, the confluence of government and these industries. I'm excited. Now, during the conversation, were you guys, this is our first one, were you guys nervous? I was going to go off the rails and say something crazy. I have full faith in you, John. Yeah.

Catherine, you and I have not worked together before. I was Googling, and what you were saying was pretty pretty accurate. Yeah, live fact checking. Is that what we're doing, Catherine? Yeah, yeah. I love that idea, too. Please feel free at any point when you hear something that just is dumb or insane or wrong, pop it in there.

And we'll correct it right off the bat. I don't know why news organizations don't do that more, that live fact checking. For everyone out there who is listening, thank you so much. This is the weekly show. And we will be out there on Thursdays with other episodes. Are there ways for them to contact us with like story thoughts or ideas or things like that? Yeah, they can reach us on Twitter. kind of all social media.

We'd love to hear what everyone's thinking about wants us to talk about. So we got a weekly show pod on Twitter. And then we got weekly show podcast on Instagram and TikTok. I will never not feel like a fucking idiot giving social media handles. It will never feel right to old man, Stuart. But those are the places you can. can get a hold of us. So thank you all for listening. The Weekly Show, I'm John Stewart, and we will see you next time. Goodbye. The Weekly Show with John Stewart is a Comedy Central

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