The Ricochet Podcast - Hot or Not?

Episode Date: February 15, 2019

This week on the world famous Ricochet Podcast, our own Bethany Mandel sits in for Peter Robinson as we parse Amazon’s departure from NYC, discuss the climate with noted expert Bjorn Lomborg, and talk politics with the WSJ (and Manhattan Institute’s) Jason Riley. Also, is CPAC now just a grifter’s convention? We discuss, you opine. Music from this week’s show: Heatwave by Ella Fitzgerald... Source

Us pigeons see everything when we're flapping around up here. Well, almost everything. See, burning certain fuels releases invisible toxic pollutants, which can trigger asthma and lead to serious illness. So if you're going to light a fire in your home, make sure to use low-smoke fuel. Oh, and never wing it burning rubbish. Choosing low-smoke fuel is better for all of us. Let's clear the air for everyone.

And remember to clean chimneys and heating appliances at least once a year. Brought to you by the Government of Ireland. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lylex. We've got Bethany Mandel sitting in for Peter. We've got Rob Long. We have Bjorn Lomborg to talk about where the environment's going. And Jason Wiley to talk about where the left is going.

Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 435. I'm James Lilacs. Rob Long is here. And Bethany Mandel is sitting in for Peter Robinson. And I assume that you have knotted your sweater around your neck accordingly, as all replacements for Peter must do.

Welcome. There's no replacing Peter. You're no longer in the New York area, right? You moved to D.C. No, thank God. Thank God, yeah. New Jersey, out of New Jersey. Out of New Jersey, right.

But if you were still in that area, no doubt that you would have been what AOC calls the everyday people who came together to effectively organize against, she wrote, creeping overreach of one of the world's biggest corporations. You would have been there on the front line keeping Amazon from bringing, oh, I don't know, 2,500 jobs and all the property and payment taxes that those entail. You would have fought that.

You're cheering this news, aren't you? I am just so glad that there will now be so many residents of Long Island City able to enjoy their new condos in peace without jobs and new shops and everything. They can just enjoy the beauty that is Long Island City that they have invested in, in peace and quiet as it was meant to be enjoyed. And Rob, as somebody who spends a lot of time in New York and no doubt has dealt with their subways, you're probably happy now that the $3 billion that was going to be given to Amazon is going to be promptly turned around and spent on the subways, right? Isn't that how it works? Yeah, the governor, the mayor will get along again, and they will agree to work together to

fix the subway system. I mean, this is classic liberalism right here. The people who live in Long Island City overwhelmingly supported the Amazon deal. The people, the ethnic minorities, the traditional oppressed groups, people of color in that region overwhelmingly supported it. It was really used as kind of a rallying cry. I don't think, I mean, look, there's a tweet going around by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that seems to be celebrating this event. It is not. It happened before this.

These people are shocked today that Amazon did what any sensible corporation would do, which is to say, you know, too much trouble, not worth it. What they expected was that Amazon would come hat in the hand and say, well, what do you need? How can I make you they expected was that amazon would come a hat in the hand and say well what do you need how can i make you happy and that they would be able to extract their whatever it is their little uh their little wish to uh their little requirements for you know

a rubber stamping this agreement instead amazon did the smart thing to say this seems like a whole lot of trouble for us why bother and yeah why we don't need this we don't need the big losers as always in all of these progressive movements are actual people who work for a living of every race and creed and color and religion and strength like you know they're the people who are going to lose if alexandria ocasio-cortez gets her green new deal they're the people that are going to lose every time somebody wants to put in a big employer in a region. They're always going to lose to whatever the trend du jour is. Yeah, because it's always for the greater good. But the greater good just keeps on being that there are not enough jobs and not enough industry. It's really frustrating, especially for all of

New Yorkers, not just people in Long Island City, because this had the potential of saving the subway system. And now there's just no reason for it to ever run properly ever again. Amazon had people bringing their delivery men gift baskets trying to get them to come to their cities. And New York, in true New Yorker fashion, were like, yeah, whatever. You sell us. And Amazon, rightfully so, was like, we don't actually need to do that. That's not how this relationship has worked

in any other city in this country. I think they made a good decision, even though it would have been nice for me as a New Yorker to see this happen. The question is, when was the last time that any major corporation moved in to New York City? see this happen. The question is, when was the last time that any major corporation moved in to New York City? Exactly. Yeah.

There was a tweet that I saw that said that now this will keep New York from becoming the enclave of the ultra-rich. Keep it! They're having an exodus. You have a property market that's been buoyed for the last decade or so by an influx of Chinese and Russian plutocrats wanting to top each other and buy a $75 million piano tear in the sky.

It's long been that. The jobs that Amazon was going to bring in, it seems to me, were diverse enough so that it wouldn't just be another financial service company coming in with people shuffling paper around until the BMW falls out. You had actual jobs of the sort. You didn't have to go to master's, get a master's degree to do. Right. And you make an interesting point there because the truth is that the financial services businesses are leaving New York City. That big banks and investment banking, which used to have a lot of employees, a lot of employees, big, big buildings, there's a net exodus of those people. So it isn't as if there are people coming in that replace the people going out. Now we have people going out and nobody coming to replace it.

And what's worse is that Long Island City earmarked had already planned for a large employer. I mean the idea – Amazon didn't just sort of show up on the horizon for them. They were planning it. They've been planning it for years. They've been planning, trying to find some large employer to come in and sort of do that kind of redevelopment and do that kind of investment. And, you know, luck, heaven sent them the perfect solution and the politicians drove it away.

Not even the politicians i mean that's what's so amazing about this is that the two politicians who hate each other the most in america today is not nancy pelosi and donald trump or donald trump and everybody else it's governor cuomo and mayor de blasio theyise each other. And they somehow managed to work together to get this offer made, and now it's been blown up by a bunch of progressive Yahoo crazies. And again, the huge losers in all of this

are always working people. Well, wait a minute, Bethany. You've got to weigh in on this fact. I mean, AOC has tweeted out that the power of the richest man in the world has just been defeated by the people. He's the devil. I mean, the fact that he had enough money to buy the Washington Post is probably the one thing that's going to keep him from burning eternally in the pits of hell. But as somebody else said today on Twitter, Jeff Bezos could feed everybody on earth with his money, and he doesn't.

And why do we need these guys why do we need people who have just one billion dollars i mean jeff bezos has so many you point out that a lot of his wealth is actually stock and it's if he sold it all to make money i wouldn't exactly help the stock very much that uh you know we need people who can make investments like this but uh that's the wrong set of history isn it? We're supposed to really hate the billionaires today. Yeah. I mean, I just don't see New Yorkers buying into this crap. There is definitely hatred of sort of the 1% within New York, but this is very clearly going to negatively impact a city that is, I mean, the whole city and the state are witnessing a mass exodus. And it's because these policies don't make it possible for businesses and families to survive. Seth and I

left the New York area four months ago. And a large reason why we did so there, I mean, there was two large reasons. One of them was we couldn't afford to buy a house. The property taxes in New Jersey were so prohibitively high. And if we had moved anywhere in the area, it would have been the same. And by the way, people move to New Jersey to get relief from New York. Yes, yes. That's how, imagine how bad New York is if New Jersey is so bad. Yeah. I mean, we are a pretty middle class, so two journalists, but I'm home full time. And so I only work part time. And we have a lot of children. And the cheapest property taxes that we could see were around $1,000 a month. And most of the houses, we would have been paying more in property taxes than we would have been paying on a mortgage. And we've had a lot of friends who have done renovations and saw their property taxes go into the 20s per year, $20,000 per year.

And we have other friends who bought a house and saw their property taxes go up so significantly over the course of just 10 years, 50% over the course of 10 years that they couldn't sell their homes. So we sort of saw New Jersey and we're like, that's not an investment that we want to make. And Seth's commute was nearing four hours round trip a day. And he was getting home at 1030 every single night and late every single day because New Jersey transit has not worked really since Sandy. The tunnels have been destroyed. And one of these days quite soon, there's two tunnels that go into New York and they were both significantly

damaged by Sandy and, and governor Christie nixed a tunnel project, sort of rightfully so they would have had a massive cost overrun. But one of these days coming up, sooner than we would like to imagine, at least one of those tunnels is going to have to go out of commission for a significant amount of time, two or three years, to be totally refurbished after Sandy. And then after it goes out of commission, when they bring it back up, they'll have to bring the other tunnel down and do the same thing. So there's a possibility that there won't be two working tunnels in the next probably for a course of five years.

And that will destroy New Jersey's economy because people aren't going to be able to get into New York City. And that's the whole Northeast corridor. It's the whole Amtrak line from DC to Boston. And when that happens, it is going to be a potential national disaster because it's going to destroy the New York economy. And I don't hear any tears from you. I don't, I don't, I don't sense the people in the great heartland of America are boohooing over. It's going to hit the heartland too. It's going to hit everybody. When people can't get to their jobs in New York City, I mean, what's probably going to happen is

all these companies are going to have to relocate. They can't have five years of people working remotely. It's just not possible. There's not a working subway system in New York City. There's not going to be a working train system in New Jersey. And that was a lot of why we decided not to buy also because we saw property values tank Jersey. And that was a lot of why we decided not to buy also because we saw property values tanking. When these tunnels go out of commission, everyone is going to have to leave New Jersey if they want to keep their job in New York City. Well, that's the thing. I mean, here you have a city, a municipality, a state, which is an example of one party rule. It's unable to do the basic things that make a place

habitable. And then based on that, they claim the right to be able to run the entire country top down according to their schemes. What mystifies me at this point is if your life includes spending an hour in a car in a tube under the river, what possible advantages are there to living there? What greatness am I? I mean, I love New York City to visit, to look at the architecture. It's spectacular. It's fabulous. I love the energy of the streets. After three days, I'm tired of it. I want to go home. But what is there about it that also, it's an amplification of everything that's wrong in general. I don't, I don't think, I don't think New York City or New York State has, has problems that aren't,

that aren't duplicated across the country in, in, in similar ways, but different scale. Although I think in terms of the sheer scale of the disaster, it's probably much larger in California overall. of a bigger pie is actually a bigger slice. That if you encourage a big investor and a big business like Amazon to come into your community and actually invest in it, that it's highly likely that that is going to be a net positive for you, even if you have to give them certain tax breaks to do it. And I don't think there was, there's probably no way to run the numbers on the Amazon Long Island City campus that came out upside down for the people of New York State and New York City. It just seemed like an overwhelmingly positive – but on the other hand, it's very easy to make that sound bad. It's like – I think we talked about this last week. It's like it's smart policy to do it, but maybe bad politics.

But you've got to figure out a way to communicate it. So the big failures were the – I think were the governor and the mayor radiest of all the third-rate minds is probably AOCs, to distort and to poison and to toxify what should have been a great big win for them and a great big win for her constituents. Well, we'll still be told, of course, that if you want to do anything in the financial sectors, you've got to go to New York City. But hey, let me tell you something that's not so. Have you about robin hood robin hood is an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks you have etfs options cryptos and it's all commission free while other brokerage charges up to you know 10 bucks every trade robin hood

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Sign up at ricochet.robinhood.com. That's ricochet.robinhood.com. And our thanks to Robinhood for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And y'all should probably invest in Amazon. They're obviously making some good decisions. And now we welcome to the podcast Bjorn Lomberg. He's the Danish author and president of his think tank, Copenhagen Consensus Center. He became internationally known for his best-selling and controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, which he argues that many of the costly measures and actions adopted by scientists and policymakers to meet the challenges of global warming will ultimately have minimal impact on the world's rising temperature. Welcome to the podcast, Bjorn.

I'm glad we have you now, because according to some of our notables and great thinkers here, the world will end in 12 years. So we just made it. We did. So really, are we that doomed? I mean, the other day I read about a Manhattan-sized gap in a glacier somewhere that means that the oceans are going to rise another six feet beyond what they predicted. What should we make of the current state of environmental crisis thinking, and how accurate is it? Well, I mean, there's two things to realize.

First of all, global warming is a real problem. It is something that we should be concerned about. But we should also remember that if you look back in time, there has been an enormous amount of things that you've been told, now we're going to die from this, that, and the other, and it hasn't happened. That should give you pause for a little sort of skepticism. And certainly, if you look at what global warming will actually do, it is much, much less than this sense that imminent doom is upon us. The 12-year meme, which Ocasio-Cortez also fell for, is really just the answer to the question, how are we going to manage to just keep temperature rise at 1.5 degrees centigrade? Since that is incredibly hard, you basically have to get it done the next 12 years or you won't make it. But all that means is we're not going

to make it to just 1.5 degrees. It means nothing else. It just simply means we're too late to do something that anyway would be incredibly inefficient. But it doesn't mean in any reasonable way that humanity is as close to extinction or anything. What it actually tells us when you look at the UN Climate Panel, when they try to estimate all the disbenefits of global warming, they show us the total impact by the end of the century will be in the order of two to four percent of GDP. That's a problem, not the end of the world. Hey, Bjorn, it's Rob Long in New York. So I have a question. Are you a climate change denier? What does that mean, climate change denier? Well, and that's an instructive question because I just started out saying, and you have to be very careful to say, look, global warming is a real problem. That's also implicit in saying global warming is going to cost us 2 to 4% of GDP by the end of the century. But the problem now is, so no, I'm not by any means, any rational means, a denier. But what

is happening increasingly in the debate is that anyone who does not only sign up to global warming is man-made and it's a serious problem and that we should fix it, but also doesn't sign up to pretty much anything anyone would say, we should throw everything in the kitchen sink at it, is a deny because they're not worried enough. And that's, of course, just a silly argument, a way of saying there's only one right way to do the policy analysis of what should we do about global warming. And not only should you be concerned about that kind of conversation, because clearly that seems like no other conversation we've ever had that there's only one right answer to the policies. And yeah, you know, there's climate change is a problem. Then I have a choice, right? Then I could say to you, well,

I mean, it's a problem, but it's nothing that anybody in the United States can possibly solve. We're not even, we're not, we're not even the worst case here. I mean, if China and India can continue to grow, they're the most important thing. So any change that's going to be meaningful to any, any ameliorative policy that's going to have an effect on climate change in the future is going to be irrelevant unless it's done by China and or India. So is that right or wrong? Well, it certainly has merit because what we have to recognize is that we can't fix global warming unless everyone cuts emissions a lot. And there's two points to that. One is first to realize nobody emits CO2 to annoy Al Gore. We emit CO2 as a side effect of burning fossil fuels, which basically supports

everything we like about civilization. That's what keeps us warmer, colder, feeds us and gives us electricity to have this conversation and do all the amazing other things that we can do with civilization. So fundamentally, the reason why it's hard to cut carbon emissions is because it's a side effect of all the amazing things that plentiful and cheap energy allows you to have. what should we do in order to get rid of the problem of global warming? Well, we need to find cheaper and more effective green energies. The US actually did that with fracking. You made gas much, much cheaper, and it's basically taken over a lot of coal. That matters for climate because gas emits about half as much CO2 as what coal does. So in reality, what you've done is you've made a technological breakthrough that allows the U.S. to cut its emissions dramatically. the only real way that we can be realistic about cutting carbon emissions if we get technology where we get cheaper greener energy and gas is a greener it's not green but it's greener than uh than coal then you can get people to switch so in your and of course i'm saying

this facetiously but i'm sort of also kind of trying to make a point so in your crackpot view the executives and investors in natural gas companies and the people who do the fracking and fracking engineers, they are the true and most practical and most effective environmentalists fighting global warming or climate change today? They are certainly the ones who are the reason we're seeing the most cuts in emissions. So yes, what we should do is to make sure we get a lot of these guys working in China and in India so that both China and India can get gas that's cheaper than coal so that they can switch from gas to coal. uh can we do this without china and india well right now it's very clear we can't do it period because if you look at what the paris agreement which is currently the big thing that will save us all from global warming what they have actually signed up to is to cut less than one percent of what we need to cut to get to two degrees centigrade so what we will cut and and this is not me saying it this is actually the estimate of the unf triple c the guys who organized for the un the paris conference so basically we know that we have promised to do almost nothing

of what we need to do and of course remember almost country, so certainly not the US, the EU, Japan, many other big countries, are actually achieving what they promised yet. But even if they did that, it would only be a tiny proportion of what's needed. And that is why you need to recognize with current policies, we're just never going to do this. So, I mean, just to summarize in an incredibly crude way, fracking for China and fracking for India would the association, all the associations of all the concerned scientists that ever lived, the chances of that being adopted as a rallying cry is probably zero. So how bad is it going to get before people get real? Well, first of all, actually, the Sierra Club for a while was endorsing fracking gas. Of course, they also got a lot of money from gas companies to do it. But it is a possible way of getting a lot of pragmatic environmentalists to realize, wait a minute, let's do something that'll really work. But then you're asking,

how bad is it going to get before we get our act together? Well, because global warming is never actually going to be all that bad. We're talking 2% to 4% of GDP by the end of the century. And remember, by then, we will be somewhere between 300% and 1,000% richer. So fundamentally, we'll have a problem by the end of the century, but by no means the biggest problem, by no means something that will really be threatening humanity or anything. there's a very good chance we'll just keep on making really bad ones where we subsidize solar and wind that's fairly inefficient, that costs a lot, that solves very little of the problem, but makes us all feel like, hey, at least we tried. I would like to believe that if we want as a humanity to do smart stuff, maybe we should do the things that actually matter and make sure that we spend our resources well, so that there's also money over for all the other problems that we're not talking about when global warming is sucking out all the oxygen in the room. But do you think, this is Bethany in D.C., do you think that when I think of emissions that are at toxic levels, I think of China and India because you can't breathe in these countries

when you step outside. Do you think that it's going to get to a point in these cities that they will take on fracking and they will lower their emissions because it's impacting quality of life, it's impacting health, it's impacting business? I know of expats in Beijing who have turned down appointments in Beijing because they said, I have kids and I don't want them wearing a face mask for the rest of their lives. Oh, absolutely. And you can see that already. I mean, if you look at many places around the world, so Mexico City is a good example. We actually saw dramatically high air pollution levels in the 80s, early 90s. And since then, air pollution levels have actually gone down because as you get richer,

you start cleaning up your act. And of course, China is going to do that. And we know how to do that. That's both catalytic converters in cars, it's scrub and on smokestacks. There's a lot of very sensible, very cheap solutions that you will absolutely embrace. Let me also just point out to you that while we talk about this very fashionable in the West, talk about how terribly polluted it is in Beijing, the reality is that for almost half the world's population, so about 3 billion people, they cook and keep warm with dirty fuels like dung and wood indoors. And their indoor air pollution in these 3 billion people's huts is about 10 times more polluted than outdoor Beijing. The reason why you don't hear about it, of course, is because none of your friends actually go to these. And they don't go to these huts, right? They go to Beijing,

and that's where the journalists are. And so there's an even bigger environmental problem, which of course is only about getting people out of poverty. You don't cook with dung if you don't have to. And so the reality here is if we get people out of poverty, we'll solve one of the arguably the biggest environmental problem, which is indoor air pollution. And as you get people richer, you'll get them out of outdoor air pollution. So of course, Beijing and India is going to fix this. In India, it's a little harder because it's also very, very much about agricultural burn off on the fields close to, for instance, New Delhi. But that's, again, also a poverty related issue.

And once we get people out of poverty, they'll stop doing that. So there are very simple solutions to most of this. And most of it is about getting people out of poverty. In the long run, of course, we also need to get them to worry about global warming and fix it smartly. And that's what they'll do with, for instance, fracking. Bjorn, here in America, of course, we've been debating this unicorn assembly program called the Green New Deal, which waves away a variety of things. It just says we're going to go to a 100% renewable, zero emission, et cetera.

They don't even mention things like they would have to electrify the entire freight train system in the United States, which is huge, and it's three quarters of a trillion dollars just for that, and then the high-speed rail system on top of that. And they never tell you where the energy exactly is going to come from specifically, only that we will invest so much in technology that technology will provide this incredible added demand on the grid. But it seems to me, and tell me if I'm wrong, that there are some technological problems that don't exist because we just haven't put enough money into them, that there actually are significant technological barriers to getting to that point of 100% renewable emission in 10 years.

And it's not a question of money. Or is it? Is there a magic sun that we can spend and we get the battery that will allow us to power the whole grid on what we've stored from solar and wind? Well, I mean, I think it's worth pointing out that Obama's energy secretary called the whole project implausible. That was his own quote. It's just not going to happen that we can go 100% renewable. And there's a lot of reasons for that. But the fundamental point is that most people would like to have access to electricity when the sun is not shining and when the wind is not blowing. And then you're like, yeah, but batteries? Yes, but you can't do batteries that'll last you for weeks.

And so there's absolutely some technological issues here. But of course, the main part is simply money. How much more are you willing to pay to actually get to a situation where you have 100% renewables? So Bloomberg did a rough estimate of what her New Deal plan would cost. And they found that the cost per year would be, just for the climate part, would be $2.1 trillion. Now, remember, that's almost the same as the entire mandated cost of all budget posts on the U.S. budget. So, you know, we're talking about a huge increase. Compare this so that would be in the order of what, $6,000 per person in the U.S.? Compare this to when you ask people, how much would you be willing to pay to avoid global warming. And in a recent survey, it was found that 68% of all Americans

said no to paying $120 a year. So, you know, a vast majority says no to paying $120 or more, of course. And yet, a court is suggesting, hey, let's try $6,000 on for size. And of course. And yet, Ocasio-Cortez is suggesting, hey, let's try $6,000 on for size. And of course, you also need to get a sense of how much would this actually help if you were successful in achieving all of these things that you talk about, freight trains, and also, what are you going to do about fertilizer? What are you going to do about cement? What are you going to do about steel? And of course, what are you going to do about transport in general? There's so many different questions, but let's just assume that you magically avoided all of them. You would still have a situation where the U.S. is responsible for about 6.5 gigatons of CO2 per year. That's not an unsubstantial part of what it would take to cut carbon emissions in the world but

if the u.s cut all of that throughout the century the impact on global temperatures by the end of the century would be less than 0.3 degrees fahrenheit reduction in temperatures so you would almost not be able to measure in a hundred years the US had taken on costs of more than $2 trillion per year. That's just not a very good deal. Hey, I know we have to let you go. One last question. Are the people who were surveyed who said they wouldn't spend $120? Yes.

Are they crazy? Because it seems to me that that's sort of a sensible approach to a problem that, as we've mentioned a couple times just in this conversation, is essentially a technological one. I mean, if you're a sentient American

going about your day and you were paying attention to the world 15, 20 years ago, so you don't have to be that old, all you have seen is a cascade of technological miracles and breakthroughs. Doesn't it seem like if you're going to make the smart bet is technology, if properly incentivized, and all of the sort of collection of innovators across the country with the right carrot leading them, a financial incentive. Technology will not only solve this problem, but will solve it in a way that

unlocks even greater value and prosperity. Is that a crazy optimistic view or is that rational given the cascade of miracles the past 20 years? So I don't think it's crazy uh obviously we don't know that we can do that uh but we should definitely try i've been a big proponent of saying look pretty much everything we've fixed in the past is because of technology uh if you think back in the 1860s uh we were hunting whales like crazy uh because it turns out that whales have oil in them that burns really brightly and really cleanly. And so whales lit up most of the homes of America and Western Europe in the 1860s. And that's why, you know, we almost hunted all the whales to extinction. The current approach

to climate policy would be a little bit back in the 1860s, like telling everyone, sorry, could you dim your light and go back to that polluting oil so we don't actually hunt down the whales? And of course, that would never succeed. What did succeed was that you drilled for oil in Pennsylvania and discovered something that was even cheaper and even cleaner. And then suddenly it didn't really pay to go out and kill whales. And so we stopped. And that's the way you

solve a problem. You get a better technological solution. I think when, so the $120 number comes from the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago. They surveyed a lot of Americans and they basically found what we find typically, that people were not just not willing to pay very much for global warming. You ask, is that rational? Well, it depends probably on how you end up spending the money. I think probably $100 spent on really smart policies that would mostly focus on investing a lot more in research and development into green energy would probably be a good idea. But I'm simply pointing out, we have an incredible disconnect between the amazing amount of money that green worried people are telling us we should spend on global warming, and then the actual willingness. And we see this across the world.

When you ask people, do you want to do something for global warming? They'll typically say yes. Then when you ask them how much, they'll say not very much. So, you know, maybe a hundred dollars or something. And that's the limit that we have to deal with this. So we really got to find smart solutions and we got to find solutions that will work for humanity rather than if you will against it. And yes, let's by all means invoke the ingenuity, both of Americans and everyone else to make sure that we actually do this in a way that'll make us better off in the long run. Bjorn, the technology that saved the whale, that came because people were worried about peak ambergris. I think that was in 1880s. Hey, thank you for coming on the show. We'd like to talk to you as soon as possible again, but heck, maybe we'll talk to you in 13

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Eero Plus. All you have to do is visit Eero.com slash Ricochet and at the checkout end of the promo code, what do you think? Yeah, Ricochet. That's Eero.com slash Ricochet. Promo code Ricochet for $100 off in one year of Eero Plus included. And our thanks to Eero for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. But before today, Jason, since Amazon has made its decision, and the people who hate the billionaires are happy, you wrote a piece with a rather provocative subject that how a billionaire spends his money is his own business. This is wrong thinking today's world, isn't it? Yes, it certainly is.

Although the Amazon announcement today is quite a shocker. And you're right. You know, the facility was going to go up in the district of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and she was one of the leaders of the opposition to this. So she's scoring this as a victory. But it's quite amazing. The governor and the mayor got together, cut a secret deal with Amazon, offering them some $3 billion in corporate welfare and enticements to come here, and then announced it to the public. Public went berserk. Not only local leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but city council members, state legislatures all said, you can't do this behind our backs. We need to be included in this process.

They pushed back and caused enough stir that Amazon said, it's not worth it. We're out of here. It's remarkable. One of my favorite examples of this, sorry, this is Bethany in D.C. One of my favorite examples of this that was also in new york sort of story was when gotham nest went under do you remember the that whole controversy that it's gothamist is one of these um super local sites that covers um that covers new york city and uh it was just atrophying money. And the billionaire in charge of it said,

you know, this isn't really, bleeding money is not what I was really interested in when I bought this site and he closed it down. And all of the journalists who used to work for Gothamist lost their minds and said, you know, basically they were entitled to his paychecks indefinitely. Yeah, a lot of people in the journalistic profession don't realize that it is a mostly for-profit profession, and you do need a business model that makes money. And even billionaires are

interested in getting some return on their investment often. So you can't expect them to just bleed money year in and year out. Hey, Jason, it's Rob Long in New York. Thanks for joining us. So let me just see if I could tie all this stuff together. We have a large company that was coming into Long Island City and was going to promise you to employ a lot of people and do a lot of building and put a lot of construction people and office people and engineers to work, presumably them who become then New York City taxpayers. And it was essentially squashed not by the machine politicians who tend to get things done, the Cuomos and the de Blasios, but by the crackpot progressives who are off on their own, you know, screaming and shouting.

Isn't that kind of how it happened? Well, sure. But let's, I mean, I think we should give credit where it's due. I, too, was outraged that this was a deal cut in secret. And the people who cut this deal are treating taxpayer dollars like, you know, like the coffers of the city and state, like they're the personal piggy banks, turn around and give $3 billion in handouts to one of the richest men on the planet.

This is, I mean, the progressives have a point here, that this is outrageous. This is not how this should be done now, to be fair. But now he's going away. So who wins? Who loses? The middle class in New York City loses. That's who loses, because they were going to provide tens of thousands of middle class jobs in this city.

Wait a second. Hold on. I think we have breaking news here. You're saying there's actually a middle class left in New York City. Not anymore. Not anymore. You're right. And that is worth remarking on, because of some comments that the governor made last week, I believe, or in recent weeks, about the limits of taxing rich people.

At some point, you start to lose your tax base. They start to flee the state and go to friendlier climes, not just in terms of weather, but in terms of taxes. And that is what is happening in New York. Post-Trump tax cuts, the city is seeing a decline in tax revenue, and Cuomo admitted that this is hurting. It's because wealthy, the most productive residents of the state are leaving because taxes are too high. Incentives matter.

So you're absolutely right. Well, I guess what I'm trying to tie it in is just sort of a larger question, which is that it could have been a win. It could have been a win for the local politicians. It could have been a win for the local tax base. Instead, they turned what should have been a win into a loss. The Amazon project was roundly supported by their constituents and by every poll measure, hugely supported by those constituents. So my question is, what is it about the progressive left right now that makes it so incredibly committed to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Yeah, they have a lot of pie-in-the-sky provisions. I think the Green New Deal that everyone's been talking about is a perfect example of that. Just say anything, basically.

It'll get paid for somehow. There's no downside to any of this. That's their thinking. I don't understand why they think it's a political winner in the long run, but I guess they think that in 2020 the president is so beatable that they can say anything and push anyone in terms of a nominee, regardless of electability or regardless of practical, pragmatic ideas, and they'll still win. So they're letting the sort of progressive tail wag the dog right now. I don't know that that's necessarily a political winner, but they seem to think so. I also think with the progressives, there's a little bit of hypocrisy going on here with

the Amazon deal, which is that they would have been okay with a lot of these subsidies that the mayor and governor were offering, provided they had gotten certain guarantees in terms of wages, in terms of union labor being used to build facilities and so forth. So it wasn't entirely principled for all of them. Some of them would have been okay with these subsidies. They were really just a pretense for opposing the fact that they didn't get a lot of the labor conditions because they weren't consulted early promise as it seemed evident to everybody at Amazon that they were going to drag this thing out for a year, a year and a half, until Amazon was fully committed. And then, of course, it wasn't going to get approved until 2020.

And then in 2020, when the deadline came, the leverage would be all on the side of the activists, and they'd be able to demand all sorts of concessions. And Amazon said quite wisely, I think, just economically, said, forget it, buzz off. Yeah, I agree. I agree. But at the end of the day, this was politically mismanaged. This was

political incompetence. This is not how the governor and mayor should have gone about trying to lure Amazon here, and particularly trying to do it behind everyone's back without any input from the city. I guess what I'm trying to do is to draw this connection, which may be so tortured, it may not be obvious, and this may be dumb to do, but I'm going to do

it anyway. Between the idea that they had this thing in hand, they could have worked, both the governor and the mayor, but also all the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's in the area, both in the city council and also in Congress, and they had an ability to actually do something good and actually have a win, and instead they took a loss. And it seems like they're doing that with the president. The president, who is deeply unpopular, deeply disliked, is facing steep, steep uphill headwinds in his re-election battle.

Every now and then it seems like there's a break in it for him, and the sun is shining, but predominantly because the left is so insane. Like, why? Yeah, they're overplaying their hand. I agree. And it could come back to bite them. Again, if you're going to let the purist in your party run things and make the perfect, in their view, the enemy of the good, I think there's a tremendous downside there. But

that is what's going on. I mean, you look at the presidential race and the Democrats that are announcing. I mean, that progressive lane is really crowded right now. It's really, really crowded. They're convinced that to beat Trump, they need to nominate an angry populist that's going to go blow for blow with this guy. That seems to be their strategy right now. I'm not sure that's what the country is looking for, a left-wing version of Donald Trump. I don't know about that.

So one of my favorite things is watching the left eat its own. And we're seeing that with this Amazon story. So Governor Cuomo just released a statement, a small group of politicians put their own narrow political interests above their community. The New York State Senate has done tremendous damage. They should be held accountable for this lost economic opportunity. Do you think that this is going to have sort of sort of electional? You know what I'm saying? What happened to my words? Is this going to hurt them in New York?

No, no. I mean, Cuomo's party runs. I don't know if you mentioned that Cuomo's party now runs the New York State Senate since the November election. So he's got a sort of his party runs everything. The Democrats run everything in New York right now. It's like it's just Jerry Brown had in California for so long. So it's going to say, I mean, you're either left or further left in Albany right now that they're running things. And I don't know that that this will that this will damage them in the long run. If he had still a Republican-controlled Senate to blame it on or something like that, maybe.

But who's he going to blame? This was done by a progressive mayor, a Democratic governor. This is a fight all on the left. This is among Democrats within the party. That's who's fighting this out. There's no way to bring partisanship into this, into this fight over Amazon. This is the Democrats eating their own. Jason, this is James Lilex. I'm here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the epicenter, of course, of the political world. You know, we've produced so many failed presidential candidates, and to the list is now to be added, perhaps not failed, Amy Klobuchar. And going back

to what you were saying before about the way the party is moving, you would think that they would recognize that there's an opportunity for somebody to appeal to the moderates, to people who are disaffected with Trump, to people who don't want to vote for him again. But she's just said, she's declared, she said, I'm a progressive. People say that I'm said she's declared she said i'm a progressive people say that i'm a moderate but no i'm a progressive so even she seems unwilling to carve out that space yet the greatest enthusiasm on the left seems to be for congress person omar who uh in her exchange with elliot adams um or her various uh intemperate statements about israel and the like seems to be enthusing the base because she's hitting the other side harder as Trump hits as well. I mean, so it's very – when a moderate state like Minnesota,

I mean moderate in temperature, moderate in temperate, starts turning on people like this sort and this temperament, you really wonder whether or not the entire side, left side of the aisle has become infected with its own desire to, um, to self immolate. I mean, there, let me phrase it better. How many people are going to vote for Trump who don't want to vote for Trump simply because the left has become extreme? Yeah, that, that's, that's a good question, but I think you, you've summarized what we've been seeing in the post Obama years, which is a significant move to the left of the Democratic Party. They're not in a compromising mood.

Just ask Howard Schultz about that, the Starbucks CEO who's been floating his name as a Democratic candidate and talking about sort of pragmatic issues, talking and criticizing some of these pie-in-the-sky notions, this Medicare for all and guaranteed jobs and things like that, that used to be fringe issues, but are now part of the mainstream Democratic Party thinking about public policy going forward. But they're not in a compromising mood. They don't feel, and I have a little bit of understanding among this freshman class coming in, they don't feel they were sent there to cut deals with Donald Trump. They feel that they were sent there to stop Donald Trump from accomplishing anything. They ran on that, and they picked up 40 seats.

I mean, so I can understand their thinking i can understand uh pelosi playing hardball when it comes to say a border deal that includes a bunch of wall funding why should she trump tried to make this an electoral issue in november his party lost 40 seats he shut down the government his poll numbers tanked uh Why should she budge? They feel like they're in the driver's seat. They really do. I'm sorry? I understand why an opposition party would say, well, we're going to oppose.

What strikes me is that by saying Medicare for all, by free college, by all these really large, expansive programs, they don't have to do that to appeal to a lot of people and get electoral success the opposition is enough smaller programs but but without these grand society changing initiatives of theirs what exactly do they have because they've practically gotten everything that they want well uh no they want single-payer health care. They want a big amnesty for everyone who's here illegally. They want sanctuary cities. They want less border security. There are a lot of things that they want. want. They, they want less income inequality.

They want more wealth redistribution. Uh, so no, they're not done yet. Those just seem like, it just seemed like unwise things to run on, I guess is what I'm saying. Um, well, again, I think they are banking on the fact, uh, that Trump is a very unpopular president. Uh, they think that they can nominate someone far more progressive than they might otherwise

in normal times. They think they can get away with someone further left because they just think it's crazy. They think Trump's re-election chances are quite low. I really do. I think they feel like they're in the driver's seat here. There's no possible way this country will reelect this man. And so why play it safe?

Why not put someone in there who we really think represents where we really want this party to go? That's what I think they're thinking. And they were absolutely convinced that about George Bush as well, because everybody they knew absolutely hated the chimster. Hey, Jason, thank you for showing up on the show today. We appreciate it. We'll see you and read you in the Wall Street Journal where you're a member of the editorial board. And of course, we mentioned again, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Thanks for coming by today. Thank you. Thanks, Jason. Thank you. I just forgot how much everybody was convinced that George Bush was going to lose the second term, the second election, right? Because we all knew that everybody hated Bush and that would be sufficient.

Right. And they were surprised. I think they'll be surprised. Well, we'll talk about that in a second. What I have to say is something else. It has to do with money, which you have, and it has to do with credit card debt, which you might have as well. You know, for decades now, credit card companies have been telling you, buy it now, pay for it later, with interest, of course. Despite your best intentions, that interest can get out of control fast.

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WebBank, member FDIC, equal housing lender. Thanks to LendingClub for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. We'll talk about the electoral thing in just a second here, but Rob, who at this moment seems to be sounding sort of like Darth Vader in an underwater breathing apparatus. I'm still hearing that sound. It makes me feel like I'm at the aquarium. I like it. Does this sound all right? Does this sound better? You aren't actually in a bathysphere with James Cameron.

That's my question. No, no, I'm not. Maybe he's in the bathroom. Maybe you're just being a little too intrusive. No, I'm just, this is all you get. Well, Bethany, when it comes to intrusive, nothing is as intrusive as a Rob Long member pitch. And so everybody just stand back and let him do it because we have to do it.

And don't fast forward. Don't fast forward because Rob, in the middle of his member pitch, is going to give you a little insider secret to the television industry. Those hot shot, top fat cats don't want you to know. Right, Rob? Well, I'll tell you this. The benefit of Ricochet membership is that you get to be part of a community that actually is kind of cool. And you get to be part of a place that we've sort of solved the problem of the incivility and the swampiness of the internet by creating a club where you can have skin in the game and you're part of it. And nobody joins a club to befoul it.

People who are part of Ricochet really care about it. And to that end, I would say if you enjoy this podcast and you've been thinking about joining Ricochet, we'd love to have you join now today, right this minute. We really do need you. We need to keep doing this stuff. And if you like this podcast, it would be great if you would show some support our way by going to ricochet.com slash join. If you join, you get to do cool stuff, including come to member events, and there will be a member event in Palo Alto, California on March the 12th. I'm doing a speech at Liberty Forum that day, that afternoon, so you can join Liberty Forum too, and we'll post the info on the show notes. And come to that, and then afterwards, where all the Richie members are going to gather. And yes, uh, it, we're not, no one's going to be checking your member name and number at the door, but, um, wouldn't you rather come and say hi, Hey, and let's do, uh,

have a nice conversation as a member. Um, so go to ricochet.com slash join and join. We are desperately need your help and we will be very grateful to see it, to see, to have it and to see you on March 12th. Okay. Now let's all three of us. Yes, sir. So I am on, um, lady brains, which is a far better podcast than this one. Other than this week, this week, it's been great. Otherwise is the better podcast, but we are also hosting a meetup, um, during CPAC, um, somewhere in the DC area. So,. So I haven't said that to anyone yet, but we just decided on it today. So keep an eye on the Lady Brains Twitter account and we'll announce it on the podcast as well when we've solidified details. All right. So now on the count of three, let's all

laugh in unison so that people who are fast forwarding this will wonder what they missed and then go back. Three, two, one. James, you're encouraging. I know. I know. What a caution. What a caution. Speaking of CPAC, there was a tweet today. I can't remember who it was.

It may have been Bill Kristol, cruise ship icon. I know. Everybody hates him. Ahoy. Yeah, ahoy. Talking about how CPAC is now a grifter's convention. I thought that was me. It was you. Okay.

Now, now using me with Bill Crystal. No, I think Bill Crystal may have tweeted. I think, no, I think he may have approved of what you did because I'm looking at a graphic here that has Candace Owens, Dr.

Sebastien, Sebastien, Dr. Sebastian, Charlie Kirk and Janine Pirro. I'm sorry, judge Janine Pirro and and saying so this is what the movement has become now but hasn't seat back always been sort of a bit of a uh it's always

been awful but anyway so you tweeted that bethany what do you think so it's always been awful um donald trump made one of his first appearances there and in like within the sort of the conservative movement world but it's always been awful. But it has been a nice place to meet people and interact with people. And I had the worst moment of my professional career at CPAC a couple years ago. So, I mean, it's got that going for it. Do you want to hear this awful story? Yeah.

Yes. So, I was interviewing Scott Walker's wife for a publication that has since gone kaput. Yeah. lady brains. And she did not disclose sleeping arrangements and they were not optimal for children sleeping. And my kids were exhausted and everyone who saw them were like, oh my God, they're so cute. Let's give them candy. So at the end of the day, they were sleep deprived, hadn't napped and were just running on sugar. I know where this is going. Oh, no, you don't, actually. I think I do. I'm interviewing her. And I think my daughter was three and my son was one.

No, no, no. They're closer together than that. Two and a half and one, I think. So I sit down and I'm with Mrs. Walker and two assistants, one of whom was male, which is information to keep in your head. So we sit down and my kids start running, but we're in a room. And so they just run into walls, literally just run headlong into walls, the two of them at the same time.

And they were both still breastfeeding. They're still nursing. And they decided they had to nurse at that moment. The two of them. And so they ripped my shirt open. In front of everyone. And I had to tandem nurse. My one and two and a half year old children.

While interviewing Scott Walker's wife. You know what? I didn't know where that was going. It was mortifying. Mortifying. And she took it mostly in stride. And I was basically like, this is going to be a really glowing profile of you

because you're clearly very gracious. I am very sorry for this. is not how i i was thought thought today was gonna go but um yeah so that was thank god now that thing is scrubbed off the internet and um now the story can live on and it's me on the ricochet podcast still amazed that women have invented some sort of topical benadryl cream that you can just rub on a child and sort of send them into a gentle stunned estate i mean when you mentioned you were at cpac and interviewing her and you said you had your kids on you i i mean imagine them just sort of like like a marsupial covered with small it's basically what i look like right and i i mean i found it hard to well

i didn't find it hard but it was it was something of a challenge to work at home when i had one and you've got 14, right? Roughly. Right, 14. Right, and you're going out in the world and doing things. So I think those people who scoff at the ability of women to work after they've given birth need to take a look at examples like this. That's quite remarkable.

Yeah, it was bad. I don't recommend it. Well, don't do that. Are you going to CPAC again this time? Literally just looking at my calendar, trying to figure out how I could arrange childcare this time. Cause that's, I don't want to ever bring my children back to CPAC. So I was thinking, you know, which day are we going to do this, this meetup for lady brains?

And I was thinking, you know, like maybe Thursday night when my kids are asleep and I'll get a babysitter and I'll text her right now. Can't you glue them to your husband? Just glue them to your husband, you know, like maybe Thursday night when my kids are asleep and I'll get a babysitter and I'll text her right now. Can't you glue them to your husband? Just glue them to your husband. Wait until he's asleep, then get out some Superglue and glue your children to your husband's side. He'll have no choice. So wait, it's a grifter's convention, but you're going anyway? So I am going anyway because it's nice to see people. It's nice. And I also have a press pass, which helps because I didn't have to pay for a ticket. But it is nice to see people. It's nice. And I also have a press pass, which helps because I didn't have to pay for a ticket. But it is nice to see people. It's nice to have conversations. I hosted probably like eight or nine years ago now. I hosted a CPAC Shabbat dinner at my house where, I don't know, I think we had like 30 people in my house, in my apartment in DuPont Circle. And it was lovely. And it's one of my favorite memories of living in that apartment. I think that there is a lot of value to meetings coming together. And there's been

so much animosity within the conservative movement because of Trump. And it's not his fault. This was there long before Trump and will remain long after Trump. But I think that one of the cures to this anger is just seeing people in person. It's a lot harder to hate people. Like Kurt Schlichter, long after Trump. But I think that one of the cures to this anger is just seeing people in person. It's a lot harder to hate people. Like Kurt Schlichter. He is awful on Twitter. But you see him in person

and you meet his wife and you're like, you're not so bad. And it helps temper the ahoy. I see. I'm still stuck on CPAC Shabbat, which sounds like something in the 50s.

CPAC Shabbat. which sounds like something in the 50s. CPAC Shabbat. Where in DuPont Circle did you live? Because when people say that, they want us to think you actually lived on DuPont Circle when you were probably in Columbia Heights, right? No, I was in DuPont Circle. I paid for that apartment out of my nose. So if people are awful on Twitter, though, I tend to take them at their word i mean they're telling me something about themselves that's revelatory even whether anonymous or not this is who they want to be and i they may be nice in person but if they're an absolute jackass on

twitter why should we do that i know a lot of jackasses on twitter who are actually lovely people in person i i think that then why are they jackasses on Twitter? So I think we're all jackasses. I think that all of us are jackasses, but some of us have better impulse control than others. I don't tweet a lot of the things I think. I know that's surprising to people who follow me on Twitter. That is surprising.

I follow you on Twitter. I know. I know. You see a little bit more of it on Instagram. Well, we're handing out reads now for not standing on the corner and shouting the things you say to yourself in the shower i mean of course i don't tweet everything that i think i mean obviously i don't but there's no of course it doesn't mean it doesn't mean i'm a jackass to hold the idea in the back of my head unexpressed um that's that's i i don't understand why people go out of their way to be polarizing and alienating

and cruel and you don't nobody listens to you You just get filed in the schlichter bin. No, you get totally listened to. He has more followers than all of us combined. Well, I mean, there are two different, you know, it depends on what your goal is, right? I mean, if your goal is to have followers and to be entertaining and be amusing and to amuse the people who agree with you and kind of build an audience, then I think that's probably the smart thing to do. I don't know how you monetize that i mean my problem with it is just that with that kind of thinking is that i i

i do that for a living and so i wouldn't want to work that hard on something that is so incredibly paltry as twitter i mean you don't make any money off twitter um but if you're trying to persuade people if you're actually trying to write persuasive, I guess, tweets, I guess, or persuasive opinions, get people who disagree with you or who are winnable or who are on the fence to agree with you, that's another set of strategies you have to employ. The problem, I think, is that usually when people are arguing with each other, they're either arguing that you're not being persuasive or you're not being entertaining or you're being entertaining when you should be persuasive or the other way around. Well, there's that kind of brackish entertainment, right? They're the people who are just all vitriol and fire and bile and funny sometimes, but it's just – there's something you want to take aloof to yourself after you read the entirety of their tweet stream. And they're the people who are funny. They can be hard-hitting they can be persuasive they can be ad hominem but there's a general persona behind it that is not as yeah and sour as some of these

people are that's just it i mean bethany is a delight to read and i wouldn't accuse her of jackassery at all and she speaks her mind and she's funny. So that would be the model that I encourage everybody to follow. Yes. Yes. Are you back there? We know you had to, I was just telling everybody that you are the model for everyone to follow. I think with that degree of suck uppery,

we might actually be coming to the end of our podcast here. Yeah. I don't think there's anything left. No, that's an awful note to end on, but yeah, we should probably quote. No,

no, there's more I could say, like follow lady brains and listen to the podcast, but that would be going too much in the way of international promotion. And also go to CPAC where she's going to be having the CPAC Shabbat Lady Brains meeting there as well. Right? In DuPont Circle? You're just making stuff up. I am. It will be at some point, I think on Thursday night. I think that's a fair guess. At the DuPont Starbucks, right. So it's a CPAC pre-Shabbat lady brains meetup.

Yeah, because I'm not having random people in my house. That, by the way, is a sentence that would have made no sense to anybody like two years ago. CPAC pre-Shabbat lady brains meetup. Yeah, that makes total sense. We should make that the title of the meetup. Or a tongue twister for testing sobriety. We want to tell everybody one thing and then another thing. The first thing is that we're brought to you by Lending Club, by Arrow, and by Robinhood.

Support them. You support us. It all works out for everybody else. The second thing is, and I keep saying this, and I say it because not enough of you are doing it, you have to go to iTunes and leave a review. You really do. I mean, I'm begging you here. Last week, I tried to use reverse psychology and told you

not to. That didn't work. I'm going to tell you, do it because the more reviews we get, the more listeners we get, the more listeners we get, the more subscribers. Right, Rob? That's the idea. It's exactly right, and it's important to do that. And also if you really like this podcast, if you've listened to this podcast five times in a row you should become a member and you know

you should so why don't you do it today ricochet.com join all right now's the point where we quit and think we've turned off our mics and actually say a lot of stuff that we don't mean to say but it goes on the end of the podcast anyway because yeti forgot to clip it right you ready to do that guys let's do it do it. Hey, everybody. Thanks for listening. Bethany, great to have you sitting in. Rob, give my regards to wherever you happen to be, and we'll see everybody. Comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week.

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Can, can Gee, I run out of air. May the mercury jump to 93. Yes, sir, we're having a heat wave. A tropical heat wave The way that she moves That thermality proves That she certainly can Can, can

Ricochet! Join the conversation. ¶¶ ¶ She, her anatomy ¶ Made the Mercury jump to 93 Yes, sir, we're having a heat wave A tropical heat wave The way that she moves that thermometer Proves that she's...