The Ricochet Podcast - Pennsylvania Polka

Episode Date: October 7, 2022

America never fails to be interesting, and she tends to kick it into high gear around Election Day. Take Pennsylvania, for example. The Keystone state has shaped into one that is a much watch around this time – and on this go around, we’re watch Dr. Oz and John Fetterman… This is why we’re lucky to have our new friend Charles McElwee of RealClearPennsylvania to take us into the trenches of this... Source

This is the kind of fast-paced operation we run here. It's really high-tech. I have a dream this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Let me start off with two words. Made in America.

Made in America. Made in America. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall.

It's the Wipishay Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lally. Today we talk to Charles McElwee about the Pennsylvania race and Larry Kudlow about the economy. So let us have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast number 613. Why don't you join us at Ricochet.com.

Why don't you? No good reason why you shouldn't. You will find the community on the web you've always been looking for. Sane, civilized, good conversations without all the throwings of pots and pans and hammers and bricks and all the rest of it. Well, sometimes. Ricochet.com. Give it a try. You'll wonder why you weren't there 10 years ago. And yes, we've been around that long, as have I in a few years more, and as has Rob Long and Peter Robinson, who will be joining us very shortly. Rob, how are you? Doing very well, James. How are you? I'm good. I think it's time that we all draw our families close together in these perilous times and realize the value of

each other and how the future is not vouchsafed. And, you know, these are difficult times. And I don't know what to say. I mean, given the news of the last week, the realization that, well, that Ron DeSantis wore white boots is just, I don't know. The white boots were a mistake. Let's be honest. The white boots were not a mistake. The white boots actually were what they wear in that place.

They are. Well, okay. But what I loved about it was that he his office put out a meme of an alligator wearing those white boots uh with the phrase don't tread on florida which is just to kind of slapping back clap back as they say that we love it's clever it leans right into it it makes fun of the people who are making fun of it it's his tan suit controversy which if i remember correctly everybody's freaking out about on the right. I don't think so.

Anyway, we usually waste your time with some pointless banter here the first, but we're going to cut that, wait for Peter, and we're going to get right to our guest, who is Charles McElwee. Charles, welcome. Editor of Real Clear Pennsylvania, contributing writer for Real Clear Politics and the astute and wonderful City Journal. With the race between Fetterman and Dr. Oz tightening up, as they always say, as we get closer, and Josh Shapiro seemingly on his way to the governor's mansion, we thought Charles could get us up to speed in the fight in the Commonwealth and why the rest of us should possibly care. Now, Charles, let me tell you from an outsider's perspective, it looks like this. You've got this Dr.z guy who i've has been

floating on the periphery of my of my head for however many years i have no opinion other than whatever television doctor i don't care and the doctor right oh oprah's doctor and hannan's america's doctor and federman uh came to my attention because of a series of uh well tweets that just says what's that thing on his neck? And he isn't speaking clearly. That's how it looks from here. And I'm sure you have a few more details you can add. So what's going on? It's a remarkable matchup. So with Fetterman, you have this figure who really has run, I would consider, a marketing campaign to get where he is now for the past decades. So he was well profiled in the national press going back to the late 2000s, Rolling Stone

profile Fetterman as the mayor of hell, Braddock, Pennsylvania, in the West, a community that once had 20,000 people, it's down to 1,900 today. And he was the mayor of this community that has just precipitously declined. And over the years has been profiled everywhere from the Atlantic to being part of a Levi's gene campaign. And here we are. Fetterman is the nominee facing off against Oz. Fetterman's lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania he wanted to run for lieutenant governor so he could oversee the board of pardons which is under the purview of a lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania and his family is from the state and he's facing Oz who up until I would say recent weeks has run this elevating campaign,

a positive message reflective of that daytime TV syndication persona. But in recent weeks, he has taken a turn on going on the offense against Fetterman, who has run what I would consider a negative type of campaign, the type of campaign that tries to reach working class voters in Pennsylvania and tell them that their lives are rough and he is here for them. And Oz, in turn, is now calling Fetterman out, questioning his authenticity. So it's a battle of authenticity in many ways. Oz, up until recently, has been attacked as the carpetbagger, daytime TV guy, the quack doctor.

But now Oz is on the offense saying, well, look at Fetterman's authenticity. Is he the real deal or is he just a progressive activist who is not up for the job considering his health crisis this spring? Before I hand it off to Rob, who will give a well-considered question, I just want to get to one thing you said before about he wants to run because he can control the pardons. That seems a very specific thing. Does he have a lot of people in mind that he wants to get out? Is he one of those Soros types who's going to empty the jails and flood the streets with the people who ought to be behind bars? So this spring, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a report on Fetterman's time as head of the Board of Pardons, as lieutenant governor.

And in the report, he was described as having the heart of an activist. But really, in his role, he was oftentimes described as a bully. oversight of the Board of Pardons has been with the forthright goal of releasing life sentences, people in prison. He endorsed the comment of a former corrections secretary in Pennsylvania who said that you can release a third of prisoners in Pennsylvania and the crime rate in the state would not increase. Now, of course, a U.S. senator has no control over state prisons, but nevertheless, Fetterman's positions on matters of criminal justice are reflective of those of Larry Krasner, district attorney of Philadelphia, a city that is continuing to confront record crime, a record homicide rate, and on the path to surpassing its record crime rate in 2021.

So Oz is on the attack against Fetterman for these positions in a state where between 2019 and 2020, Pennsylvania's violent crime rate increased more than any other state in the nation. The crime crisis here is not limited to Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. This is a state of many small to midsize cities where crime is rising, where police departments are stretched thin and where voters are living in struggling communities who do not subscribe to the progressive viewpoint on matters of criminal justice so hey charles is rob calling um 2016 i had dinner probably 2016 maybe 2015 had dinner with a 2016 had dinner with a a couple of like pennsylvania watchers and they said pennsylvania citizens right residents and political watchers and they they said, oh, you know, I think Trump's going to win Pennsylvania. And I kind of

rolled my eyes like, really? I don't think so. And of course, we know. He won. And since then, Pennsylvania's been really, really interesting, but also really, really, really weird. Like, there's some kind of, like, if you had asked me to pick the two party

representatives vying for this Pennsylvania Senate race. I mean, these are two people who do not resemble Pennsylvania senators in the least. Like there's no like a crackpot weirdo running for California Senate. Yeah, we've had that. But Pennsylvania, this is like kind of a Keystone state. Is Pennsylvania changing, or is it emerging, or is it having a nervous

breakdown? There's a reason why this is a real clear Pennsylvania. Right. Because it's interesting. Why is it interesting? This is a state that is struggling, and it was no surprise to me in 2016 that Trump won Pennsylvania.

My family's from Luzerne County, from Hazelson, a city that is a microcosm of all the social and economic discontent that we're seeing among voters across the Mid-Atlantic, industrial upper Midwest. But we do have a long tradition, that's right, of electing patrician-like elected officials. The best example of that is John Hines, right? I mean, this is a guy, the most successful politician

in the history of the state, even now, the highest winning margin of all time in Pennsylvania was John Hines in 1988. And who was more patrician than the condiment family who collected Flemish arts.

And now we got a guy with tats and a beanie running against Oprah's doctor. Exactly. Is this progress? This could be progress. It doesn't sound like it to me, but that's because I'm a hidebound but it could be i mean are pennsylvania voters different now i mean is there is like a is they've changed the way i think florida voters have changed in the past 25 years and even texas voters have changed the past 25 years is that happening

in pennsylvania are we are we going to be staying up late or worrying about Pennsylvania on election nights from now on? So the average Pennsylvania voter going beyond the suburbs has not really changed. You're just confronting voters who are deeply disillusioned with both political parties. So when you had the voter in northeastern Pennsylvania from a lifelong Democratic family, working class Catholic, living in a town where his family goes back generations, he wasn't voting for the Republican Party in 2016. He may have only changed his party registration this year. The average Pennsylvania voter is one who voted for Kerry in 2004, opposed the Bush era, voted for Obama in 2008, may have given Obama a second chance in 2012, and is now, based on the leftward direction of the Democratic Party, in lockstep with the Republican Party. But these

are voters who are angry with both parties and hold no allegiance to either party because of the past 30 years and how so many communities in Pennsylvania have struggled. I mean, we're the state where you would you can go to rural parts of Pennsylvania and see these dense communities, places, neighborhoods that look like they could fit into brooklyn right and these are communities where people hold memories of what life was once like even 20 years ago but they have so profoundly struggled and it results in this anti-incumbent mood but also this mood to shake things up and that leave and that's why oz performed in the primary why he performed so well in northeastern pennsylvania and why fetterman dominated statewide in the primary against connor lynn they're the patients for centrism okay so um we've got two kind of outliers running in a pretty much like a what used to be a solid sort of kind of conservative i mean small c conservative state um and uh betterman's outraised oz got more money than oz right am i right about that

it's more competitive now oz is getting help from the republican party when it's on the pack he's in a better position now than he was a few weeks ago. Okay. If I, if I, if I, if I had a demand that you make a prediction, which I kind of am, what would you, what would your, what would you predict state of play today and then try to project in the future? So the real clear politics pulling average has a Fetterman about four points ahead, which suggests to me

that at this point this is oz's race to lose i think he's in a good position to uh barely pull it off i don't think there are voters um in the working class regions that have trended republic in recent years who are going to be flocking to Fetterman thinking that he's their working class hero. If anything, they may not like Oz, but they can't wait to vote for him so they don't have to see Fetterman in Washington. The voter registration trends alone tell the story of Pennsylvania. Counties that were reliably Democratic when Trump was elected in 2016 now have Republican office holders from the federal down to the hyper-local level. These are courthouses that are now Republican. These are voters who have switched their registrations. We are now a state that has about the same voter

gap between Dems and Republicans that it had in 2000 when this was a very competitive state for Republicans. Of course, the suburbs tell a different story. They're more transient. There are more suburbs than 20 years ago in Pennsylvania. They're quite prosperous. They're trending blue. But there are still enough voters even in those suburbs who have no time for Fetterman. And that's why I think Oz has the upper hand going into election day okay so i know i know peter wants to get in i have just just one one last one one little mini one here's the mini one um it's sort of a general 50 000 foot um real clear pennsylvania are there any other states that real clear does this with yes real clear florida which of course florida is another state yeah

i noticed there's no real clear massachusetts what is that telling me it tells us that it's a one-party control state and quite boring yeah it's not that interesting right right um okay so um somewhat i talked to minnesota is what i'm looking for right i saw i talked to a friend of mine in politics and he said you know oz is having a great week and it's a great week because herschel walker and george is having a terrible week the theory being that there are people with money and people with sort of know-how saying okay walker is now much more uphill it's that is a jump ball we don't know what's going to happen there that oz is winnable um and you just told me that oz is

winnable even though in your real clear poll average, he's four points down, which is actually within the margin, right? So you're saying if Oz, as long as Oz in the averages is in hunting distance, firing distance, he's got the upper hand. But that doesn't seem, explain to me why that counterintuitive statement is true. Because we're still weeks away from Election Day. And I think one thing to watch heading into Election Day is the October 25th debate between Fetterman and us. So this is this will be a debate to watch. I know in recent cycles, we have that ongoing debate or debates matter anymore. They matter to 2020 than 2020 i mean the vote average trump voter i talked

to in pennsylvania when asked to say why did trump lose pennsylvania they'll say oh it was that first debate that was a yeah so that that was actually borne out by the trump campaign's own research i mean they said that that was wisconsin and parts of arizona and definitely pennsylvania was that first debate absolutely so you're going to see a debate where you have Oz. Now, look, could that debate work against us? Of course, because there's the factor of empathy among voters in Pennsylvania who are confronting their own chronic health issues and may say that Oz is exploiting Fetterman's serious health setback to his advantage. So Oz has to play it safe or be cautious about how he approaches this. But in recent weeks, Fetterman has spoken for himself. We see the clips. He is clearly recovering from what happened in May, and he

is asking voters to sign on to a six-year contract. And now, Peter Robinson has joined the chat, as they say, and he's got some frequent questions for Charles. Yes, I grew up in upstate just across the border from Susquehanna County, where my grandparents lived, and having watched me screw around to try to plug in my microphone a moment ago, this will come as no surprise to Charles. He will have pegged me as an upstate New Yorker right away. Okay. So I have some feel for northeastern Pennsylvania, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Scranton, believe it or not, when I was growing up, when my mom and her friends wanted to go shopping in a big town, they'd get together and drive down to Scranton. Okay, so here's the question. I'm going to put

Pennsylvania very, very crudely, and then you're going to adjust the picture. And in adjusting, as you adjust the picture, we're all going to learn. Two Pennsylvanias, really simple, crudely simple. One is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the other is the rest of the state. And Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman each have to choose which Pennsylvania to campaign for, and then they just have to get their Pennsylvania to outvote the other. And they're pretty evenly matched. But it breaks down almost like that, doesn't it? No.

Okay. Yeah, I disagree with that. This is an extremely culturally fractious state. And the state has dramatically evolved since Jim Carville threw that famous line on Pennsylvania, Alabama, in the middle between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in the 1986 campaign. He ran Bob Casey, a Scrantonian, his gubernatorial campaign that year. That made his career. But Pennsylvania is a state of many regions. We have multiple media markets beyond Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that do matter.

We just take South Central Pennsylvania, for example. Harrisburg, Lancaster, York, that is a booming area, the most prosperous county in the state outside of Chester County, which was historically Republican, trending blue in the Trump era just outside Philadelphia. Cumberland is an economic powerhouse, increasingly transient. I would compare Harrisburg's West Shore to Northern Virginia, a Fairfax-type town that's exploding in growth and that is increasingly competitive for both political parties. And Northeastern Pennsylvania, in turn, complex in a sense of Democratic, Trinity Republican. But you also have to consider the demography of the state. Now, most cities east of the Susquehanna River, minus Philadelphia and Harrisburg,

have majority Hispanic populations. This wasn't the case 20 years ago. You have Allentown that has more than 50% Latino residents. Hazleton is now approaching... Whoa, whoa. Hazleton? Allentown are more than 50% Hispanic? Hazleton is 70% Latino. Reading is 85% Latino. These are cities that have been completely transformed by demography, economics. These are the lost stories. And these are new voters. These are voters that both parties are trying to reach. And that social, economic, that demographic transformation, I'd say east of the Susquehanna River, makes this state quite complex for both political parties in the years ahead. is a good one to watch in a sense of voting trends that emerge beyond Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Philadelphia is kind of predictable at this point. Greater Philadelphia is trending blue. You have Bucks County as an exception. That's still down the middle. But besides that, you have a state

where no region is the same, and it's a lot of work for both parties. Charles, you're a very kind man. I've just done a Rip Van Winkle act in real time. The Pennsylvania of my grandparents is no more. Wow. So here's one more question. You said a moment ago that the Real Clear Average has Fetterman up a little over four percentage points, and that means Oz is ahead.

Okay, question. Is that because the polls are wrong on the ground now? Or because you're extrapolating movement on the part of Oz that Oz has been overtaking or closing on Fetterman in recent weeks? Because if it's the latter, I've missed it. I've been watching Real Clear every day for a couple of weeks now, and that race just seems to bounce around. So are you saying the polls are just wrong? And if they're wrong, and everybody knows they're wrong, even the Cook Report seems to be suspicious of the polls. They've moved this from lean Democrat to toss up. Why don't the pollsters correct them? What's

wrong with polling in Pennsylvania? Well, I think you have voters who are reluctant to display their views in surveys, the age-old phone calls, they're not really disclosing who they're going for. But I will say I travel all over the state. I am racking up miles every week, traveling throughout the state, talking to voters. And the consistent takeaway on the Oz Fetterman race is quite simple, that the favorability ratings of Oz, which are quite low, he does not have good favorability ratings, that's accurate. But that doesn't suggest that these voters who may not hold favorable views of Oz will vote against him.

And the consistent conversation that I have with voters is that though they may not like Oz for all his supposed faults in their view, they will certainly vote for Oz because they fear the alternative due to their stance in the Democratic Party, their view that Fetterman, more than anyone, captures their fear of the leftward direction of the Democratic Party. Why would they either sit out this race and not vote at all or vote for Fetterman, who, in their view, is like the apocalyptic progressive scenario? So that's why I just don't buy that Fetterman would handily win in Pennsylvania. I'm surprised it's not a Fetter person.

Hey, Charles, Michael, we thank you very much. Real clear Pennsylvania, and of course, that real clear politics. We'll talk to you again down the road, perhaps after the election, and run what you said against what happened. And fingers crossed, hoping for the best. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Charles, thank you very much. It was fun. Thanks a lot.

Great. You know, if we were really smart, we'd have him back and give all of his predictions. You know, this guy wins and then a prediction for this guy wins. And then this guy wins big and this guy wins by this margin, you know, just get them all together so we can just splice them in later and make him look absolutely brilliant. You know, call it an insurance, if you will, against his reputation. I'm kidding. I'm sure his predictions are fine as they are. He doesn't need to modify them. But you need to

modify your insurance profile if you don't have any. You really do. Life insurance is important. And you think, why? I won't be there. But others will. Behind you. Who needs you? Who needs you now and will need you in the future? You know, you hope you never need it. But mortgage payments and child care and other expenses, they don't disappear when you do. No life insurance through your workplace, that's great, but might not offer enough protection for your family's needs. And it won't follow you if you leave your job, you know. Since life insurance typically gets more expensive as we age for obvious reasons, now is the time to buy. Now. Policy Genius. Policy Genius gives you a smarter way to find and buy the right coverage for you and your family. Policy Genius was built to modernize the life insurance industry.

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way to find it and buy it. So head to policygenius.com or click the link in the description here if you're at ricochet.com at the moment to get your free life insurance quotes, free life insurance quotes. See how much you could save. That's PolicyGenius.com. And we thank PolicyGenius for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Now we welcome back to the podcast, Larry Kudlow, Associate Director for Economics and Planning at the Office of Management and Budget in the Reagan administration and served as the assistant to the president for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council under President Trump. He's currently the host of Kudlow on Fox Business Network.

You can find that, you know, weekdays, 4 p.m., I think. He's a Fox News contributor, friend of the show. Larry, I got to ask you, I used to be able to buy eggs for $2.29. There's a sign at the grocery store today that says they're apologizing for the price of eggs. A dozen eggs is five bucks. How long is this going to go on? Can I just say that Oz is going to win. Easily.

And the reason he's going to win is Fetterman is a crazy person. Well, there you go. Well, you say that like that's a political liability. Yeah, it still is, at least in some states in the union so we're dealing with uh inflation as i was saying oh sorry we've we we passed the fight administration passed passed a big bill and i guess uh we're supposed to be heading now towards uh you know one two percent inflation doesn't seem to be happening what do you think of the causes duh and uh what do you think is the short-term outlook for five dollar eggs well look inflation uh which was caused by too much federal spending

and too much money printing is going to last for a while. The Fed's target is 2%. Right now, the basic underlying inflation rate is somewhere between 6% and 7%. And I think it's going to be difficult to bring that down to 2%. I think it's going to take at least another year, and the Fed's going to be raising interest rates, continuing to tighten up on the money supply. So it's going to be a struggle. But, I mean, right now, you talk about the price of eggs. You had a jobs report today where wage rates are up about 6% for production workers, blue-collar workers. But the CPI is up over 8%, so real wages are still falling. And that's the soft underbelly of the economy.

And that has, you know, we're probably either in a recession or at the front end of a recession. And I think it also has political consequences. This election is going to be about inflation. It's going to be about recession. It will be about crime and other things too. But I think inflation, the economy are the big issues. I mean, hey, Larry, it's Rob Long. Thanks for joining us.

Again, whenever we have you on, I always tell you what I think I know about economics, and then you chuckle indulgently and pat me on the head and set me straight. But here's what I think I know. I don't know if this works or not, but I do think that the prevailing wisdom is that here's how you get out of inflation. You cause a recession. And that seems like the playbook that the fed is following um we're kind of entering it seems like the late 70s kind of economically early 80s um i mean there's no reagan in sight well there is one he's wearing white boots in florida as

far as i'm concerned but okay um is that what's happening here i mean is that what the what the grandees in the in the in the uh the the fed offices are saying like i'm sorry about this fellas but we're gonna have to cause a little bit of an economic downturn to mop up all that excess cash or am i am i wrong i was just gonna say that i haven't spoken to you in a couple of years, so I didn't know how much economics you had or remembered. Since we raised this point, look, what's missing here, and I think it's been a problem, is that there's no supply-side economic growth

policies. You know, the Bidens have shut down energy. They've shut down fossil fuels. And their regulatory burdens, I mean, they had the biggest regulatory increase in their first year in office in history. It's $200 billion, which is stifling business. And recently they've raised taxes on businesses. So you're not getting growth. Growth would help. I don't think you'd still have a pain-free adjustment to price stability. But if you had more production and more investment,

it would certainly make the job easier. So let's say the Fed, by throttling back on the money supply, has curbed the excess demand created in 21 and most of 22 but you would also increase the supply of goods and services so less demand more supply be easier but that adjustment is going to be more painful because you have economic policies from the biden's that are quite hostile to supply side economics so it's going to be much more difficult. So the regulatory burden is a wet blanket on risk. Yeah. And how much of that, which to me still seems so hard to figure out, how much of that is energy,

energy production, energy transportation, energy research. How much of that, how much of that wet blanket that the Biden administration has put on the economy is kind of energy related? A good deal of it. But there are other factors, too. I mean, they have assaulted businesses. They're putting on so much red tape the uh right the climate change crusade uh which is so obsessive and so radical and so extremist so what you got is you've got these federal agencies like the let's take the sec for example okay the sec has created i don, a 300-page rule on climate change, on environmental impact. Now, mind you, this is the Securities Exchange Commission.

This is not the Securities and Environmental Commission. Right. commission right they have no expertise in this field and yet they are imposing massive restrictions uh and requests for data that isn't even available on businesses now this rule has not yet been implemented, but it's in the planning stage. And it's causing firms to be very wary, very leery of making future investments that might boost productivity, might boost wages, might boost job opportunities. So that's an example. The Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, is doing the same thing. And also the Federal Trade Commission, because of its anti-business views, is crusading about monopolies and breaking up companies and things of that sort. So yeah, a lot of this is direct energy. We're about 2 million barrels a day short of where we should be, maybe 3 million barrels a day. But a lot of this is against

business. It's had a freezing impact. I mean, it's literally strangulating business, not strangling business. So, you know, these are all related problems. One other point I'd like to make here, you've had this explosion of federal assistance programs, which was originally aimed at emergency COVID assistance, but has carried over well beyond the pandemic. Now, that assistance

comes without any work requirements. And so, a lot of people have dropped out of the labor force because basically Uncle Sam is providing them with uh you know family of four up to a hundred thousand dollars of assistance without working so that would obviously reduce the productivity of the economy and would reduce the output of the economy so between all these things the war on fossil fuels the war on business the war on work you know you got yourself a very difficult position and the federal reserve is therefore going to bear the burden of bringing

inflation down i don't want to sound sympathetic to the Fed because I'm not. They looked at this. They did not understand what was going on. They pushed for a lot of these plans, and then they called inflation temporary, transitory. They bought into the administration view. So now they're hoisted on that guitar as well. Hey, if I could just interrupt Larry for a second here, and I love to do that, and he loves it when people do too, don't you? Okay, all right, hold on. I'll be right back to you, Larry. I just want to say, what are you listening to now exactly?

And what are you listening to this show on? You know, one of the reasons that it's great to listen to the stuff that I do is because I got Raycons. Raycon wireless earbuds. Raycons everyday earbuds look and feel and sound better than ever. And by look, by the way, they're blue. There's this great color blue that I just like. Everybody else got the white.

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you can buy them at buyraycon.com slash ricochet today. Use this promo code ricochet to get 15% off your Raycon order. That's B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N, buyraycon.com slash ricochet with a promo code 15% off with ricochet. That's the word, Buy Raycon.com slash Ricochet. Code Ricochet. And we thank Raycon for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. And if you're listening to this on your Raycons, you know what I mean. I got one more. I know Peter wants to jump in. Is there a way, I mean, you know, we have a, right, and the brain trust and the geniuses you have putting on our pension funds this sort of ESG nonsense, there's a price to pay for all this.

Do we know what the reason that their pension funds are not growing as they should is because we are we are putting uh i guess you know i don't know a speed limit on the future well that's an interesting point i mean the short answer is no we don't know i mean all these estimates i just saw an interesting article of in article in The Atlantic that the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which is the Inflation Enhancing Act. Yeah, that's estimated $400 billion in green tax credits. But then the Atlantic Magazine article says, well, that's going to be way low because

every business in the country is going to want their own little green tax credit, whether they go green or not. Now, they're saying it could be $800 billion. Now, they said that joyfully, by the way, because they think that this green crusade is fabulous. I don't. But that's an example of why these underestimates. Here's another one. The student loan cancellation, which was done by executive order, which is, in my view, completely unconstitutional.

They have no authority to do this. But in any event, you know, the estimates, you look at the progression of estimates, the White House said it was going to cost $150 billion or $200 billion, as though that were nothing. But then the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, whatever it's called, Maya McGinnis' group. They're tax raisers, but they do good work on the spending side. So they said, no, no, it's going to be about $500 billion. And then the Penn-Wharton model, which is a conventional model, but it's honest work. And they said it could go as high as $1 trillion.

So I don't know, Rob. It's honest work. And they said it could go as high as one trillion dollars. So I don't know, Rob. You know, it's one way to look at this is we just crossed 31 trillion in debt. OK, now that's an official number. That's an actual number. That's not a forecast. And that's about 130% of GDP. Now, down through the years, I've never been a debt monger, a debt hawk. I'm a supply-sider. You know, I think low tax rates through the lab for curve boosts economic growth. But I must tell you, 130% of GDP gets my attention if for no other reason I've never seen a number that big in this country. So I don't I have no idea what this stuff means.

But what I here's what I do know. It must be stopped. It must be stopped. Otherwise, we are going to live in a stagflation world, you know, for the next I don't know how many years, 10 years or longer. And that's unacceptable. Larry, you mentioned all the subsidies for green energy. A lot of that stuff, the electrical vehicles and the like, and the big, nice, wonderful wind, you know, things, blades going in the countryside requires a lot of copper, a lot of copper, a lot of high grade copper. The Biden administration recently canceled a project here in minnesota that would have enabled a large

copper mine to start up which makes me wonder i don't think they know what they're doing they just sort of assume that that all the necessary resources materials will just arise magically somehow from the earth to make this electrical green vision possible in the future but if they're mandating it in one hand and forbidding it on the other doesn't that give you the idea that there really isn't anybody guiding this they're just sort of making it up reacting to various intellectual pre-existing conditions yes yeah they don't know what they're doing you got it right i mean this is like immaculate conception i i have no idea i mean by the way uh uh copper and you're probably thinking about the iron range copper yes we need a lot of we need nickel uh lithium

uh which i guess they're they think they're going to buy it from china but we have these we have these resources but they won't let us mine for them but here's another point even if they permitted mining it would require uh you know construction development and so forth that would be uh carbon intensive carbon intensive i can't emphasize that enough and you know these these uh wind farms that they're talking about okay by the way i'm not not against wind. I'm not against solar. And by the way, I do think there's a climate change issue over the next 100 or 200 years, but I would rather go about it by letting a thousand flowers bloom with respect to fossils and renewables, including nuclear, and let the technology and the innovation

of capitalism solve this problem. What this crowd is trying to do is end fossils without any alternative structure of renewables. Larry? Yes. Larry Peter here. I have a correction of you personally that I have to issue, and then I have a question. And here's the correction. Here I am clicking around on Fox News the other evening, and I stop because there's my buddy Kudlow. And he's saying interesting intelligent things, and they're all correct as they always are when Larry talks. But he's saying interesting, intelligent things, and they're all correct, as they always are when Larry talks. But he's not wearing a tie.

Larry, Larry, standards are collapsing everywhere. We look to you to remain the one well-dressed man on television. What the hell do you think you were doing there? Jeepers, creepers. It was a nice shirt and blazer. That cuts no ice with me okay listen we're talking about today and tomorrow and what they're doing wrong and what we need to do to fix it it's important to get the past right too i was skimming the economist the other day they were attacking liz trust the new prime minister of brit, because she had put into effect, she had attempted a Reagan-like program. They described it that way. Now she's

done a U-turn. She chickened out. She's not going to cut taxes. But at the moment, they were running. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, you get to Liz Truss comes second. First, here's what The Economist wrote. They said that she misunderstood the Reagan program in the first place. I'm going to quote them. It's three sentences long. The Reagan program's early record was mixed. The tax cuts did not stop a deep recession. And by March 1984, annual inflation had risen back to 4.8%. And America's bond prices reflected fears of another upward spiral in prices here's the kicker inflation was anchored only after congress had raised taxes close quote the reagan

expansion was the product of tax hikes larry didn't you know that yeah i did you know it's really the economist has just deteriorated so badly in recent years. It's too bad. No, that's not true. I mean, look, the inflation, it is true. And in 81 and 82, boker had to slay inflation which had gotten up to whatever 15 percent uh i think that the giver you know if we had it to do over again we wouldn't have delayed the full impact of the tax cuts and as art laffer has said many times when the tax cuts. And as Art Laffer has said many times, when the tax cuts kicked in, the 25% tax cut kicked in in January 1st, 1983, you watch

the economy take off. And it did grow by about 12% for the next 18 months, 12% in the annual rate. Now, the inflation rate fell from, I don't know, 1980, 81, where it was about 15%. The inflation rate fell to about 2% in the next five or six years. So I don't know what the economist is writing about. And even the tax, there were some tax adjustments in 1982. I was opposed to it, but Reagan went along with it because he thought he would get a lot of spending cuts. He never got the spending cuts.

But he didn't change marginal tax rates. He never touched that. There were some revenue enhancers in there. So that history is just completely wrong. Look, Liz Truss, by the way, yeah, the Tory wets pushed her back on the top income tax drop from 45 to 50. But she still cut the payroll tax. She still

cut the corporate tax, or she prevented the corporate tax from going up six or seven points. And she did drop the basic middle class tax rate by one pence, I think. And she gave a heck of a great speech at the party conference a couple of days ago saying that she pledged not to let the no growth crowd run the Tory party. So I know Liz Truss. She was trade minister when I was in the White House, and I had some dealings with her.

She's a very talented woman, and she's taken on a Thatcherite stand, and I think she's going to stick with it. But you've got these Tory rom-coms that are impossible. Larry, call it. Will you please call the election? The country is solid enough. It remembers growth well enough. And it's sick enough of the Democrats and their endless regulations.

They're absurd. We don't know what we're doing, Green Deal. That Republicans are going to capture both houses of Congress. Is that right? That is correct. It's going to be a clean... You really do believe it? Even the Senate? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. All the Senate races are breaking for the GOP. The cavalry is coming. The House is going to win at least 40 seats, and the Senate is going to pick up, I don't know, somewhere between three and five seats, that'd be my guess.

Really? So, okay. Forty seats? Wow. That's the most... Now, Larry, wait a minute. You're sure that this is experience and analysis speaking? This is not the wish as the father of the thought? Look, I... Are you wearing a tie as you say this no i'm not as a matter of fact but um i would just say that in the senate races if you take a look at at the good most likely voters polls uh you know scott raspison r Rasmus Wards, Trafalgar, even the ABC, WAPO ABC poll showed this. They're all breaking for the GOP.

You know, they spent the Democrats spent hundreds of millions of dollars of negative ads in August. And it did have an impact, but it didn't move the needle very much. And now you're seeing it close. I mean, look, Ron Johnson's going to win for sure. Oz is going to win for sure. Vance is going to win for sure. Herschel, I think despite some mistakes he's made, I believe he will win. Masters is going to win. Laxalt is the layup. I think Tiffany Smiley up in Washington is going to win. Laxalt is a layup. I think Tiffany Smiley up in Washington is going to win. I mean, I think it's going to be a tremendous...

In New York, we don't have a Senate race up for grabs, but I think Lee Seldon is going to win for governor. He'll be the first Republican governor. You do? Five years. That would be huge. That would change everything, Larry. You might have to move back to Manhattan.

Well, I don't know that we want that necessarily, but I think that basically, yes, Lee Sullivan's going to beat Hochul. It's the Republican sweep. Again, look, it's inflation, economy, crime. Those are the big issues in this race. The GOP has huge leads on all these issues. And there's a lot of money now coming in to get these Republicans on TV in the last few weeks of the campaign. So yeah, I'm very optimistic. I'm just very optimistic. Rick Scott told me on the show, 52 plus was his number so they're at 49 and i i think 52 plus is a good way to put it

larry thanks so much for being with us and the next time that you are on television don't wear a tie and then blink take that peter robinson code with your eyes you're all my favorite never Trumpers. I love you. Larry Kudlow. Thanks, Larry. Bye bye. Those of you at home may have wondered towards the end what that audio was. It sounded as though actually, you know, the creaking door from the inner sanctum was opening up as Larry was speaking. It was a very strange sound, which actually i have to say door yeah there's only one uh inaccuracy in what he said which was

that we have seen each other in person like a few months ago i was coming walking into fox news and he was walking out and he sort of stopped and said look it's my favorite never trumper and then everybody turned and looked at the security guards looking at me and i'm like it And he sort of stopped and said, look, it's my favorite never-Trumper. And then everybody turned and looked, and the security guards were looking at me, and I'm like, it took me longer to clear security to get into the building that day, thanks to Larry Kudlow. But you did. You did get in. I did, eventually, yeah. It's like, we live in a fair world.

Right, and then you went back to the green room, right? Yeah, exactly. What do they have in the green room? Is there anything actually green back there? No, it depends on what studio you're in. So you have these little rooms everywhere, depending on the studio. It's just a name for it. Yeah, it used to be green.

It used to be green. Okay, good. Like a potted plant or something like that. I would like to think that. I mean, there should be something green in there, even if it's only in a pot. And, you know, you may have a pot of plant in your house too, but you also may think, gosh, I wish I had more greenery outside of my house. You can do that. Now, right now where I live in Minnesota, we're just having the freeze. So we have to take all the plants in so they don't die, which is sad. We have to cover them up with shrouds at night. So it looks like our backyard

is full of ghosts that have just collapsed on the yard to keep them from dying so we can have a few more weeks of wonderful green and not only a few more days. You may live someplace where you can still plant. And if you do, why not get that tree in now? You know, it's just going to grow more and faster, but only if you get it at fast-growing trees. I don't know about you, but I spend a lot of time making this house feel like a home, indoors and out. And my wife spends an awful lot of time just beautifying the garden and the rest of it. And we've had some trees go out, which is why it's nice to put new trees in. The experts at fast-growing trees curate thousands of plants so you can find the perfect fit for your specific climate, your location, and your needs.

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And we thank Fast Growing Trees for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, Rob, last week you weren't here. We don't know where you were, actually. You missed a barn burn. I missed a good one, yeah. you weren't here. We don't know where you were, actually. You missed a barn burn. I missed a good one, yeah. A real corker. But I had to do your ricochet promos where you tell everybody that they should join. And I did so in your style, I believe.

Ineffective? Was that the style you used? That was what I was shooting for, yes. Long, inefficacious. No, I tried. You put on your, we're about to file chapter 11 tone of voice. I tried to bring the enthusiasm for the enterprise that you do. So stop and look at yourself and tell people about the wonderful things that are coming up.

Well, listen, if you are a Ricochet member and you're listening to this podcast, we are thrilled and welcome you to Ricochet and are thrilled to be members along with you. If you are not, you should join. And here's why. Because you get to go to the meetups. The meetups are loads of fun, and they're happening. We'll give you some that are happening now. If you join ricochet.com, you'll know, of course, we'd have to tell you, but here are the hints. We've mentioned

over the past few weeks that events will be going on in Huntsville, Alabama. That's the 22nd of October. There's a group meeting on the National Review Institute cruise in November, so if you haven't signed up for that cruise, please do. We have one scheduled in Pittsburgh in December. And finally, New Orleans next year during the French Quarter Fest.

I will move evidence to be there for sure. So some of you are probably thinking about how you'd like to go to these things, but the meetups on the schedule are just a little too far or whatever, and it's a big country, and money's tight, blah, blah, blah. We know. We just talked to Larry Kudlow. We know exactly the problem.

Now, if our meetup locations are out of reach, you aren't doomed. Just join Ricochet. Join Ricochet. Pick a time and a place. I guarantee you, Ricochet members will come to you. That's the benefit of Ricochet. We like the online, but we also like, as the kids say, IRL. Ricochet IRL is as fun, if not funner, than the.com part. So, details on the Ricochet meetups, go to ricochet.com slash events, or find the module on the sidebar of the site.

Join us online, and then join us in person. We would love to see you. Sounds good. Love to do so. I'm still thinking about having one here in Minnesota next spring. It would be a great thing to do, and to get all the locals over to the house or in some place where we can meet just uh because they're fun you know i went to one in new york yeah earlier this year had a grand time caught covid and i had a grand time okay i give up i give up as i so often am forced to do and i'm

listening to the two of you i googled to try i have r.i.l rest in love reduced impact logging ira not real it's irl in real oh oh i thank you thank you i take my correction and now slink away internet relay loquaciousness yes in real life oh my my my lol peter as the kids say so before we go a couple of other things that have passed. Biden made a little speech. He was doing some fundraising, said, hey, we're pretty close to Armageddon. Okay. But the thing that was interesting was white waving away the pot convictions.

Apparently 6,500 people or so from 92 to 2021. And out the door, of course, you know that a lot of people who the number, the number of people who are actually in prison for just possession seems to strike me as low. I may be wrong, but oftentimes I think you have something that's been bargained down to possession. But there we are. And he urged other states to do the same we'll see exactly what comes with this but isn't it sort of odd to you that his vice president was sort of uh famed at what time for the number of pot smokers that she put away in the who's cow it's a very weird thing i don't i don't quite get who's in the i mean comel harris she was a state official.

She was Attorney General and a prosecutor in the state. I mean, how many people are in federal prison for marijuana as their primary? For just having it and smoking it. Yeah, as their primary crime i mean ann coulter um wrote a pretty good piece as ann does like within 11 seconds after the announcement suddenly i got an email in my box and it's written but she does ask a very legitimate question in her typical way which is like those people are not if you're you're not in federal prison because you were you were possessed marijuana that's what you eventually bargained down to so the people that now are now

going free are not the you know i just had my you know my joint in my pocket and on my way to the um you know to to volunteer at the soup kitchen there's a there's a there's a story behind each one of those as to why they bargain down to marijuana i think she thinks i i she's usually right about this stuff so who are we letting out like i'm i'm all in favor of drug legalization i'm all in favor of pot legalization i think we put too many people in prison for it i think we sent a lot of people to prison where they went to basically to graduate school on how to be uh anti-social violent criminals and they came out and guess what we succeeded at creating a whole class of anti-social violent criminals

um but i'm not sure this is the solution. Are you in favor of fentanyl legalization? No. Okay. But fentanyl is very different from marijuana. Yeah, but it's a drug. I mean, I'm in favor of vodka legalization. That's where I would put marijuana.

No, there are a couple of things to that. One, when people talk about drug legalization, there usually is a line when they get up to things like Fetty. No, we should not have government-approved, stamped, and regulated ketamine dispensaries in neighborhoods. That's a bad idea. The thing about the marijuana legalization here in Minnesota, thanks to some ledger domain at the legislature that nobody was really following well, they turned out they legalized edibles of a higher quality and higher potency. So now Minnesota has got these things. But the marrow, I still think that a lot of people today who are saying, you know what, it's just time to legalize it. And I get those arguments are confusing the sort of mellow ditchweed of their youth with the high-tech

varieties that are available today right and there's a lot of studies that i've been seeing and i tend to believe them based on observation and experience that the number of people who actually experience bad outcomes psychosis anxiety a whole lot a whole raft of bad things can be attributable to pot. That it's not just the, here's, you know, pass the joint around and listen to some Grateful Dead. Nothing's better than Lilacs' hippie voice, by the way. Yeah, I know. And it's such a cliche. Come on, Groovey, turn on. I know, and it's only a 50-year-old cliche.

But I think a lot of people are still operating in that old cliche when the new stuff actually can screw you up for good um well i think that's true i mean that that there are i mean i think that's actually not even just studies say i think it's pretty much understood that people are noticing over time uh the ta the high high amount of thc which is sort of the the groovy element in pot um can can lead to anxiety and all sorts of other problems and more serious mental problems over sustained time. That's very true. But we are running at least a contemporary experiment, the way we should in our constitutional republic, about drug legalization in places like Colorado and California and Washington and Oregon. And so we do have information about it.

And ketamine, you mentioned ketamine. Ketamine is a very good example, too, because ketamine is perfectly legal. It's a perfectly legal drug. It's just medicalized. I mean, you have to go to a doctor to get it. And people are going to doctors to get it. In fact, there are ketamine clinics all over the place. Just Google them.

They're near you if you want. And you go to a doctor, and then they give you ketamine. And psychiatrists have been using it for at least a decade so we have a lot there's a lot of material about it but ultimately we're just going to have to face the fact that we we that we we keep inventing things and inventing substances and we keep trying to alter our consciousness in a lot of different ways maybe positive maybe negative um ultimately what we're going to have to do as a society is figure out where the law where we draw the line between um hey you make your bed you lie in it nobody's telling you to go smoke weed five times a day for 10 years straight that's going to you know in the same way nobody's telling you to eat a dozen donuts every day that's going to you know in the same way no one's telling you to eat a dozen donuts every day that's going to have major negative effects on your health and well-being and to the extent

that we can protect people in an anti-state way from doing that so i'm not sure i know where the line is but i think there i think we have erred on the side for some of these drugs of being way way way way too reliant on law enforcement and not relying enough on personal responsibility but then that's that's my brand of conservatism the line exists to me in that uh right i agree go and do as thou wilt but you can't live in a tent city in the middle of a downtown you you cannot shoot up on the train you cannot shoot up on the bar do crack on the that that it's the refusal to have a modicum of civic order in some of these cities that we see that just stuns me because we know what we know what to do we know we can what we can do and you have to ask yourself how

much does society owe to somebody who is habitually engaged in their own oblivion and i just would say i don't know peter wants to get in, but I would say that what's interesting about that subject is that we are looking at a population that suffers from the two opposite problems. One problem is readily available drugs that they are now addicted to, and the other is anti-psychotic drugs that they are not taking. Half of those people need to be on drugs desperately and the other half need to get off drugs desperately and we have no system rational system effective system

for um making that happen peter you're gonna say no i well the thought in my head is oh oh, I can tell when Rob's had another drink with Nick Gillespie of Reason Magazine. Listen, so here, between my ears is what's going on in the heads of a lot of Americans as these experiments play out. I live 30 miles south of San Francisco, and I want to know, I want somebody to do book-length work on those populations that Rob described. Who's here because he's on drugs and who's here because he's not taking his medication? And then the other thing, all I have here is anecdotal stuff. San Francisco's really bad. And you see people who are obviously in pain and not eating well. And the cops don't do anything for all right.

And then the last time I was in Denver, it happened to be a beautiful spring day. And my wife had never been to Denver. So we walked around downtown Denver. Great clouds of marijuana filled the air. A lot of people who were clearly enjoying themselves but a few blocks that were starting to look like san francisco so what's going on there is it working there are things turning in a nasty corner does marijuana have anything to do with it the my whole point about drug control is that rob has an argument of course he has an argument but so much

of it turns on actual lived experience it just doesn't seem to me to be the kind of thing where where we can say what should be done where you can't reason terribly well for morality you just have to watch these experiments take place and learn from them fast. I think that there's a space for a politician to say, look, we need to spend money on this. We need to spend a lot of money on this. That means taxpayer money. We need to build places for these people to go because they can't live on the streets. And I'm talking about the people who just, you know, who get themselves hooked on this and want to, you know, die in a street corner somewhere. That's not who we're talking about the people who just you know who get themselves hooked on this and want to you know die in a street corner somewhere that's not who we're talking about the people that top that that robbers are right people who have actual bad wiring bad chemistry even people who've given

themselves problems by their previous drug use if there is a treatment there's a lot of that too in a controlled environment like an asylum an asylum or the people who are just insane and cannot, it is utterly inhumane to leave the insane on the street to mutter and wave and stalk around naked and throw feces at people. It's inhumane to them, and it's destructive to the cities that we spent so many years trying to rebuild. So a politician who comes to me and says, we're going to bring back the asylums, we're not going to have, of course you can't call them that we're not going to have them like the bad old days where everybody is rocking back and forth in an empty concrete room dreaming that there are a million bugs on him we're not going to do that it's going to be it's going to be humane it's going to be

well well done i think that would work because that would say that the people who need help were going to get it but the people who who just simply want to live on the streets because whatever reason no no tolerance or patience anymore none yeah i i think you're i mean they think you're right to make the distinction right and there's a certain amount of um uh skid row bums on the street that's a given in any city, right? Since Hogarth did his famous gin lane, that's why they call the part of San Francisco that the tenderloin, because that was the skid row, bums, drunk winos were on the street, and they were on the street when I was a kid living in the Bay Area.

They were on the street now. That's a separate problem. It's a problem, but it's a perennial problem. It's a problem that we're going to live with forever but like any like a lot of the problems we face today they are problems brought about by the solutions that people confidently pointed to in you know 30 years before like everything we face is really was supposed to be the solution um when we de-institutionalized mental health uh inmates of mental health institutions which were bedlam and horrible and terrible and

like remember run through the cuckoo's nest that was the emblematic of the problem that these pd all they're just shuffling around don't don't give me started on that yeah right but that was why we have this problem because everybody saw that movie and thought it was kind of true right these places were terrible and your point james is where is it written that the the false the choice is between terrible mental health facilities uh away from you know public eye where people are being abused and you know narcotized and basically warehoused in horrible filthy conditions and the only other solution is well they live on the street they push you in front of the car the subway car when they when they when they have a psychotic episode that that just seems crazy to me as it seems crazy to you that we we

there's nobody articulating the idea that that's a stupid choice we don't there's a million different ways to solve this problem than this and um you know we just have to try rob i have one i have one since we're rolling along here and since we get together only once a week, I'm going to ask Rob a question. And you answer it very briefly if you want to run. It's this. Here's what I want. I want to know the answer to the following question before I support any more legalization of anything. Here's the question.

Yeah, there were always bums in the Tenderloin and there were always drunks in the Bowery. But Venice Beach, California used to be just pretty glorious. You lived there for years. And you saw this happen in real time. Homeless people moved in. As you know, my daughter rented an apartment down there for a year, and we moved her in. Not on my recommendation, but yeah. There were homeless people on, I drove around to show her your old house, and there were homeless people two blocks from your house. There was a drunk lying outside. A homeless people living in that alley, by the way. Okay.

Homeless people living in the alley behind her apartment and in a campground on one of the canals, and that hadn't been the case 10 years earlier. What caused that? Well, that's a very good point, because in fact, Venice, that Venice Beach, that iconic little colonnaded part of Venice, was Skid Row for many years. In the old, old days. I mean in the 60s, 70s.

Or 60s, 70s, early 80s. Yeah. Main Street, Santa Monica, which now is like boutiques and Starbucks and new restaurants, etc., cetera, was liquor stores and porn shops. It was another form of Skid Row, you know, kind of very weird to think about it. But like that so close to the beach, it just wasn't nice. And then it became nice. So I would say that the difference is just the fact that the people who are living on the street are insane now maybe they've been driven insane by living on the street um but it's not the same as a bunch of drunks uh a bunch of drunks is not good but it's not the same as a bunch of drunks when a bunch of

drunks lived in those neighborhoods people still felt like okay i can buy that house and i'll this neighbor could turn around that's not the same feeling as you get when you're like these are crazy people living in tents setting each other on fire muttering to themselves uh and they're unreachable like you can't put it this way you you can't imagine um you know a mission revival like they have in the bowery or they have downtown la or they have you know places like where the salvation army goes to save the drunks right that is simply not the problem so that is not a solution now they're probably that is a solution for some people but um we're living in a world in which insane people are deinstitutionalized not i mean yeah. It's not great, but drunk people, even opioid addicts,

are not pushing people in front of the subway trains. They are not setting each other on fire. It's not great. I'm not recommending it as a lifestyle, but we just don't know. It's almost like we don't know how to treat people. We do, but you know it's almost like we don't know how to treat people uh uh we do but we have a do we have a political class that uses them yeah that's that's better it uses them as a means of extracting more money for social service organizations and also uses them coincidentally and and how nice as a

cudgel against the current system look at how bad things are exactly because of capitalism look how bad things are because ron look how bad things are because ronald reagan personally grabbed them all by the collar and dragged them out of institutions and threw them on the street it's very convenient if the problem goes away and they solve it uh then what are they going to do next year but you're right you i mean you're absolutely right about the the loss of skid row there used to be one in every city and here in minneapolis we had a huge amount of what they called sro single room occupancy and they were horrible places they were fire traps with the rooms distinguished distinguished times by no more than chicken wire but they were a place

where the drunks went they would go down to the you know the persian palms get totally blotto for a buck and a quarter and then they'd have a place upstairs to go. And eventually, that was such an eyesore and such a decrepit area of town that they razed the entire thing. Where do those people go? But you're right. It's not the drunks. It's the people who I don't think...

I say this in defense of drunks everywhere. In defense of us. In defense of us. That's where I'm next. But I think you're right. I mean, I think two things I always say. You're right. People use it as a cudgel. There's actually a great old movie, I'm sure you've seen it, mean, I think the two things I say is like, you're right. People, people use it as a cudgel.

There's actually a great old movie. I'm sure you've seen it, James, called On the Bowery, in which is kind of a docudrama. It's a very weird picture in which they make this movie and everybody acting in it is actually a denizen of the Bowery. It's really a weird movie. I've never seen anything like it. But if you're watching it, the star of the show, the star of the movie is a guy who's a drunk on the Bowery.

And they're all drinking port. Like a Thunderbird, right? They're all drinking Thunderbird. Are you old enough to remember when that was a thing? Yes, absolutely. You were drinking Thunderbird. And the second thing is that people, you can always tell whether people are being serious about, it's like climate change. If the first thing you say about climate change is no nuclear power plants ever then you're not serious about climate change if the first thing you say

about the homeless population in america is it's a housing crisis then i know that you're not serious because it's not a housing crisis right right right you just got other things you got another agenda you're just tacking on to this one well we could go on for this forever and i'd love to but you know we are probably training in the last oh my god of our audience as patient as it is let's get out uh but the reason we're here in the first place is of course ricochet.com and it sponsors policy genius raycon fast growing trees support them for supporting us and your life will be so much better for all those individual products join ricochet today why don't you and after you do so and you love it so much why not go over to apple music give us five stars because then more people will see the show and more people

will join ricochet and we'll be here in 2024 and 26 and all the rest of those years beyond hope to see you at a meetup but i hope even more to see you in the comment section at ricochet 4.0 next Next week, boys. Next week, boys. Ricochet. Join the conversation.