The Ricochet Podcast - The Boilermakers

Episode Date: January 28, 2015

This week, the men of the Ricochet Podcast travel to America’s heartland to interview a beloved figure from the country’s recent political past. Former Indiana governor and current Purdue Universi...ty president Mitch Daniels joins us to discuss his WSJ Op-Ed piece How Student Debt Harms The Economy. We also chat about making college more affordable and the President’s proposal “to lower the cost of... Source

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Starting point is 00:00:46 They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's going to prove to be disastrous. What it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long. I'm James Lilacs. And back in the fold is Peter Robinson.
Starting point is 00:01:15 One guest and we don't need any more. Mitch Daniels talking education and politics. Here, let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. and pop culture matters. And that's why Acculturated.com will tell you why, when, and where. Go there. And we'll tell you a little bit more about them later. But in the meantime, hi, I'm James Lilacs. Rob Long is in New York. Snowbound, we expect.
Starting point is 00:01:55 And Peter Robinson, back with us in California. Guys, good to have everybody back in the same place if it's only virtual. And Peter, before we go to learn how California is doing, you know that Rob is itching. Well, I don't want to say itching and skin in the game. It brings things to mind, but he is anxious.
Starting point is 00:02:12 No, no, no. Eager. He is sitting in New York with a cup of tea and a croissant, no doubt, ready to tell you why Ricochet is so necessary to your life and why you had to pony up. Well, listen, here's what I really want to tell you. If you're listening to up? Well, listen, here's what I really want to tell you. If you,
Starting point is 00:02:27 if you're listening to this podcast and you're a member, we thank you. And we are pleased and honored to have you as be a member with us. If you are listening to this podcast and you are not a member of Ricochet, look, I keep saying, uh, join, join,
Starting point is 00:02:37 join. Um, there are tens and tens and tens of thousands of you over 100,000, maybe 200,000 of you listen to Ricochet podcasts. We have somewhat short of that number of members. We don't need that many members to keep this going. If you're listening and you want to join, but don't join, just go to ricochet.com. Just check out the site, sign up for the Daily Shot, get that every day, check it out, and
Starting point is 00:03:00 then I'm sure that you will want to join in the next few weeks anyway. So I'm not going to try to tell you on joining. I just want you to go to the site and see what it's all about, Ricochet.com. And you'll find reports from places like New York where the snow has barely set on Western civilization. And Paris where Claire Berlinski has been going to the suburbs of Paris. Her own on-the-spot reporting about whether or not these are indeed no-go-no. She took a trip that is pretty amazing. It's really worth catching up to.
Starting point is 00:03:31 If you haven't seen it yet, it's on the front page. Scroll down and find it. Claire Berlinski. But both the seat of crime and also the seat of terrorism and the seat of where terrorism and crime meet in France where the men who did the Charlie Hebdo massacre are incubated. And she's doing some great reporting on it. And it's riveting. So check it out. Really worth doing. So Peter, we welcome you back.
Starting point is 00:04:01 You've been away, and you've been in one of those situations, I presume, where the goings-on of the world sort of recede over the horizon as you deal with issues close to home. But now that you've cast your eyes about the wider world again, what strikes you as the story that we're ignoring in favor of talking about silly snow and this, that, and the other thing? Oh, no, no. That actually does strike me as the story. Well, Rob is back east having cast his lot once again with New York City and found the subway shut down and traffic shut down and the mayor giving emergency announcements and the governor elbowing into the act to give his own emergency. And while Rob has been enduring all that, the temperature here in Northern California has been 66, 67 degrees and cloudless day after day after day.
Starting point is 00:04:49 So yet again, I am right and Rob is wrong. I would just like to begin my return to the Ricochet podcast with that observation. Well, it's not really an observation, is it? I mean, it's really more of a reassertion of something you've asserted many, many times. Look, what's interesting about New York was that the mayor is getting all the trouble, getting all the bad press. But the subway, which closed inexplicably – the subway has not closed in the city for 110 years, did not need to close, did not even need to shut down even in anticipation of the storm that they were promising. But that was not the mayor's call that is the governor's call that's governor cuomo's call he controls the subways not the mayor
Starting point is 00:05:31 so um governor cuomo uh and governor christie for that matter and mayor de blasio both reacted with hysteria um and and actually did economic harm to the city because everything shut down on Monday night around 7. People had to go home. So businesses emptied. I was going to do Red Eye. Yes, I saw that. I was looking forward to it. They called me at 2.30, 3.30 in the afternoon and said, listen, we're all going home.
Starting point is 00:05:56 No more Red Eye. So to be truthful, here's what I'm struck by. First of all, everybody in our family, amazingly enough, little kid, older – I too. Everybody got a cold so bad that it verged into a mild case of pneumonia. We just were sick for several weeks and then we lost my mother-in-law. So there was a funeral, which by the way, it turns out funerals can be beautiful. But there's no way to talk about them without seeming morbid. So I won't go into that in great detail.
Starting point is 00:06:25 But there was a – just to see this wonderful woman who lived a long and magnificent life carried to her rest by four grandsons on each side of her casket was just very sad, lots of tears, but extremely moving. There are moments when even death has a certain real beauty and rightness about it. Okay, put that to one side. What I am struck by as I return to the land of the living is just a creeping sense of disconnect that the State of the Union address was either delusional or he has made a very calculated and unbelievably arrogant decision that nobody matters. None of his projects even matters. What matters is his reputation and not just his reputation but his reputation in particular places. Above all, the faculty lounges at Harvard and Yale and Columbia and other elite universities. He's not going to try to lock in Obamacare by making some reasonable compromises that
Starting point is 00:07:29 would get it up and going and running. He's not actually going to try to produce jobs in this country by permitting the Keystone pipeline to be built. There's just no connect between what he says and what will actually happen, except that it will burnish his record as a true liberal among true liberals. And I don't believe I have seen such true arrogance, solipsism, total self-absorption since the days when we were, well, I was too young to feel this way, but I remember hearing people talk about it, since the days when people were truly worried that Richard Nixon
Starting point is 00:08:12 in the final days of Watergate was coming unhinged. Just astonishing. I couple that performance at the top of the federal government with another performance in the private sector. I am the owner of a new iMac with retina display. It is spectacular. And with my old eyes, I hadn't realized how tired my eyes were getting using the old, which was by my standards, a very good display.
Starting point is 00:08:37 Now comes along this retina display where they've got a 27-inch screen that is as sharp from corner to corner and top to bottom as the sharpest iPhone 6. You have the 4K? Is that what I'm asking? Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And then we see that Apple yesterday announced the biggest earnings, the biggest profit, as far as anyone can tell, of any private entity in the history of mankind. And there – what better could you ask? We have a president of the United States who is borderline delusional and a great company in the private sector, hiring bright engineers, producing great new products, and doing what it should do, which is making huge amounts of money,
Starting point is 00:09:18 which it will use to make many of its employees rich, but most of which it will plow right back into the research and development of great new products. So I emerged back to the land of the living and I say to myself what I already knew, the government doesn't work, but the private sector sure does. On the other hand, however, here's a troubling statistic. Between 2010 and 2013, the percentage of younger people who owned part of a new business, well, it used to be 6.1%, and it dropped to 3.6% in Obama's economic recovery. Why is this? Well, one of the reasons might be student debt. And one of the people who's been writing and thinking a lot about this is our guest, Mitch Daniels. Of course,
Starting point is 00:09:57 you know him as the former governor of Indiana, and he's now the president of Purdue University. And we welcome him back to this, the Ricochet podcast. Hello. Morning. Peter, if you'd like to take the first, I just referenced his wonderful piece this morning in the Wall Street Journal about how student debt harms the economy. I'll just let you go and say, tell us how exactly. Mitch, I used to have to call you governor. I think now that you're president of Purdue, you probably, knowing you, you stroll around
Starting point is 00:10:24 the campus, you encourage people to call you Mitch. Probably very few people call you Mr. President. May I call you Mitch? Yeah, I wish you would, especially old pals. But yeah, even – I encourage everybody to just use my name. Works best. All right. So here's the baseline.
Starting point is 00:10:42 It's a wonderful piece. I feel very lucky to have you with a fresh one. You've got a piece in The Wall Street Journal today. Hurdle question. If we don't understand this, we don't understand anything. You note that the costs of higher education in this country have been going up faster than any sector in the economy, including health care. The costs of higher education have been rising faster than inflation, but faster than the costs anywhere else. Why? Oh, there are multiple reasons.
Starting point is 00:11:14 But I think I sometimes encourage people to think of this in business terms. I say, here's the business you want to be in. People believe you're selling a necessity that they simply have to have. Secondly, there is no price elasticity. That is to say, since no one's measuring quality or has anything authoritative to say about that, you can raise your price and raise your price and raise your price, and you won't lose customers. In fact, many customers will conclude that a higher price must connote a better product, even though there's no proof of that. And then finally, just to make sure that
Starting point is 00:11:58 it costs too much, you insulate people, at least initially, against the cost of it by flooding it with subsidies, as the government has done. And it's pretty well documented now that all that well-intended money, grants and loans and so forth, has all too often been pocketed by a higher ed system that's just raised its price, swallowed the money, and left the students no better off. Was that not a sufficient explanation? That was very sufficient. Sorry, I was on mute. Hey, Mitch, so it's Rob Long in New York, so I have a question.
Starting point is 00:12:35 President Barack Obama's suggestion to make community college free, that should be – that should solve part of the problem, right? Well, I doubt it. Not in the form it was proposed. I mean, I think we probably can all agree that this is more rhetorical than real proposal. I'm not likely to be talking about it much in another couple months. But let me say that getting more students into post-secondary education is an extraordinarily important goal, and community college is going to be the very best place for some of those students to go or at least to start off. You know, in my last job, I actually proposed reaching a similar goal. It was a different mechanism, it wouldn't have been an open-ended entitlement program that exposed
Starting point is 00:13:26 the taxpayers of Indiana to an uncertain, possibly runaway cost. We thought we had a way to, in essence, endow it. But the idea of encouraging and enabling students to get something past high school is very important. But I think the plan as proposed is not the best way to get at it. You know, today's young people, whatever other problems they will have to overcome, every single one of them shares an enormous problem, and that's already $700,000 of lifetime national debt that they've been saddled with. And the very last thing we need is another open-ended entitlement. Well, so here's the – just – this is an awkward question to ask a college president, especially one of such a famous and well-respected place.
Starting point is 00:14:27 But there are a lot of people, a lot of people in Silicon Valley, a lot of people around the country who say, hey, college is overrated. That's their solution to the student debt problem. Don't go. Get a better high school education and just start your life. I think I know what you're going to say to that, but how would you respond to that argument? Well, first of all, it's a legitimate question to ask, at least up to the point of saying, you know, how do we know it's worth anything like what people are charging? There hasn't been any proof of efficacy, let's say. And it's not just a few billionaires making this suggestion, which is obviously not the right one for the next Gates or some rare person like that, but it's not for most young people.
Starting point is 00:15:33 But in a very startling, I thought, statistic among so many we see these days, the percentage of people who said last year that a college diploma was... Spring is here, and so are the new season ranges at Decathlon, with more products and value than ever before. Evenings are getting brighter, weather is getting better, and Decathlon is here to get you moving, with over 70 sports on offer. So get up, get out, and get ready to play. Spring into our Ballymun store or check out decathlon.ie. Flying from Cork? Start your trip stress-free with the Stay, Park & Fly package at Cork International Hotel.
Starting point is 00:16:09 Enjoy a luxurious overnight stay, free parking, and a hassle-free with the stay, park and fly package at Cork International Hotel. Enjoy a luxurious overnight stay, free parking and a hassle-free airport transfer with rates from just €165 for two people. Relax before you fly and leave the rest to us. Book now at corkinternationalhotel.com. Very important thing to have in life has plummeted by from the 70s to the 40s, which is an astonishing change for any public opinion number, and in this area should trouble everybody in higher ed. So, no, we need ideally every American youngster to first have a credible quality high school education and then to go on to something else which could be vocational in character could be community college for many it really should be
Starting point is 00:16:52 involvement in what is still despite its problems i think the finest system of higher ed anywhere on the planet well and so i have one last question because just about Purdue specifically because Purdue – if you're outside of Indiana and you're outside of the country, Purdue is famous and, I mean, if not the best, one of the best in government should subsidize loans for computer science study or engineering study, I'm going to be a lot more willing to do that than I would be if you asked me that – if you tell me we're going to subsidize loans for comparative French literature. Am I a Philistine or am I on to something? Well, I think you're on to something. You're certainly on to something that – you're certainly in're on to something. You're certainly on to something. You're certainly in good company with people who are beginning to think that way, and public policy may be drifting that way. I happen to think that all the disciplines that we teach here, and we teach them all,
Starting point is 00:18:02 have a lot of value, but it's certainly true that in a nation which is told by multiple commissions and studies that it needs thousands more engineers per year, for instance, and certainly needs a citizenry which is at least literate enough scientifically to make sound judgments about life in the most technological society we've ever imagined. So, you know, we here at Purdue, and thank you for noticing the great reputation that our predecessors have established, we believe we've got, it's part of our original land grant mission anyway, but it's certainly consistent with the needs of our state and nation today. We're in the process of a major expansion of engineering, science, computer science, these things you mentioned, and also very committed to keeping the cost of education affordable.
Starting point is 00:19:05 We're in the middle of a three-year tuition freeze now, which is a start. Mitch, Peter here. You're in the middle of a three-year tuition freeze. As the piece you wrote in today's Wall Street Journal makes clear, you've also worked to cut the costs of textbooks and room and board for your students. You've set up some counseling for students to help them work out their finances. And the student indebtedness at Purdue is actually shrinking. You're charging them less and helping them understand how to get loans that are effective for them and not to take on more indebtedness than they need to. Terrific. Now, let me play three roles. Role number one, I'm a prospective student and I say to myself, or the parents of a prospective student, wow, Purdue is really doing interesting things.
Starting point is 00:19:50 They have a fascinating new president. He was a governor. He makes sense. He's a great source of publicity for the institution. Look, he just had a piece in the wall. Terrific. Now I'm a member of your board. Same thing. Mitch Daniels is bringing this institution
Starting point is 00:20:06 real excitement and some rigorous business-like analysis and thinking. I'm thrilled. But now I'm a member of your faculty and I'm saying, hey, wait a minute here. A tuition freeze? He himself just said, Mitch Daniels himself just said there's price elasticity. And the way these things work, everybody knows that tuition isn't what we charge students. Tuition is the top asking price. We have financial aid. We work it out. If kids can't make the top price, but with wealth rising in this country, if the 1% can pay the top price, they ought to, or else we're leaving consumer surplus on the table. As a member of the faculty, I'm thinking, gee, I'm not so sure about this thing.
Starting point is 00:20:52 The old game worked pretty well for us. If it ain't broke, why fix it? Are you getting any of that? Very little. Are you really? Are you really? Yeah, which is, well, which is not to say that people don't disagree with this or that initiative that we've taken. I will say this. Almost everyone here, at least I believe when asked, associates with our goal of keeping this place affordable.
Starting point is 00:21:24 You know, remember, we're a land-grant school. Abe and his allies put us here for two reasons. One was, we already talked about it, they said to specialize in agriculture and the mechanic arts, meaning teach those things that are especially relevant to producing a growing, more prosperous society. And two, the mission, we're going to give you this land so that you can throw open the gates of higher education beyond the elites. And that's very much in our genetic code here at Purdue. And so, you know, we intend to have it both ways. Excellence, high rigor. By the way,
Starting point is 00:21:58 great inflation never happened at Purdue. Go look at the data. Very proud to say it's still hard to get a good grade here, and we think employers in the world know it. So without compromising rigor and excellence, I think everybody here, and our faculty certainly among them, are very sensitive to the fact that we don't want to become a place where only the wealthy can afford to attend. And I will just tell you that when we first started down this trail now two years ago, I did hear from some people, oh my gosh, it'll send a signal that we don't have confidence in our product, you know, if we don't stay in on this escalator and lockstep with everybody else. I don't see that at all. Our applications are soaring at a time when they're
Starting point is 00:22:45 pretty flat nationally. Got it. So one last question on higher ed, one last question for now. I'd love to have you back again and again and again. As I look over the scene, and there are roughly 5,000 institutions of higher learning in this country, colleges and universities of various sizes, different historical, but about 5,000 of them. I count Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue, and I count Phil Hanlon, president of Dartmouth, who is in his second full year, has asked the board not to increase tuition and has just announced that he's going to ask all administrative units of the college to give him back 1.5% of their budget so that he can reallocate that toward the college's needs for growth and so forth. The idea of reallocating budgets in an institution of higher learning instead of simply giving
Starting point is 00:23:36 everybody an X percentage increase every year turns out to be shocking. So that's Mitch Daniels and Phil Hanlon who are even beginning in a serious, rigorous way the project of examining the expense of higher education out of 5,000. I'm not sure I like those numbers. Are there more? Do you sense that there's a trend developing? Oh, I think so. And I think it has to ultimately. Sooner or later, marketplaces do speak.
Starting point is 00:24:04 And so here and there, I mean, you are seeing others. Sometimes it's been with a nudge from a state legislature or maybe a board of regents or something. But I do think you are going to see some moderation in the price escalation. And, you know, I for one felt when we started on our freeze here at Purdue, which was at the outset, I felt that it was an appropriate thing to do. But I also had the sense that it not only wouldn't hurt us in the marketplace, that it might distinguish us, differentiation is the essence of marketing after all, that might catch the attention of people who are becoming so much more cost-conscious. I mean, a lot of data points, Peter, but the last couple years, record percentages of high school seniors headed for college passed over their first choice who accepted them, and almost always the issue was cost. Wow. And so you don't need that to go on too long before lots of people say, you know, maybe we better modify our way of doing business to keep up.
Starting point is 00:25:34 Mitch, it's Rob again. I just want to shift gears a little bit. When Peter started his last question and said he surveys the horizon, he sees 5,000 – I thought he was going to say 5,000 Republicans running for president. Oh, it's more than that, isn't it? Yeah, it's more than that. Yeah. Now, you broke my heart last time and I've forgiven you. It's been taking me a while, but I've gotten to a good place. So I'm not going to put you in an awkward position here. I'm not going to ask you who your favorites are, but I will ask you a little advice. If you're a voter, if you're a Republican primary voter facing a blizzard of what is in fact pretty good candidates, a lot of them are really good. What are the things that you're not, you know, I'm not mentioning names.
Starting point is 00:26:14 What are the things that you're looking for and that you think other voters should be looking for as they make their choice for the person who's going to lead us in the next four years? You know, if I'm going to answer such a question at all, I have to start with my usual disclaimer that I absolutely – and it's true. I mean I have scrupulously stayed out of anything remotely partisan. And as someone who, for various reasons, fatherhood and my current job among them, is intensely interested in how we're treating our young people, one thing that as a citizen I'd be looking for is someone willing to point out the mathematical facts of life and propose a way out of the fiscal corner we're painting ourselves into. People, I think, have gotten tired of hearing about debts and deficit, desensitized. People out there are celebrating essentially a half a trillion dollar deficit because it's lower than last year.
Starting point is 00:27:23 Well, wait a minute. First of all, it's still bigger than every deficit we ever ran in history until 2008. Secondly, everybody knows that it's being artificially held down in a big way by a monetary policy that has these artificially low interest rates. If they were paying a normal interest rate on all the debt that's out there, these deficits would be a heck of a lot bigger. And third, everybody knows it's going to start screaming upward again if we don't make some changes because of the built-in, you know, two-thirds of the money going to check writing programs that are built in to increase, you know, we got bigger trouble coming. So the number one thing I would be looking for as a citizen,
Starting point is 00:28:07 and especially if I was a young citizen on the upslope of life, is who's going to tell me the truth about the fix we're in and propose humane and moderate, probably gradual ways of dealing with it, and who's just going to pretend that the elephant is not in the room. Well, that sounds like – okay, I'm a Tea Party member. I'm careful about government spending. That sounds like you're saying raise taxes.
Starting point is 00:28:41 Well, I'll stop short of prescription here. I left some litter behind when I left public life, you know, speeches and books and things that tells you kind of what I thought then, and it's not much different now. But, you know, I'm for what works, and especially in facing what I believe literally is an existential question in our public debt. Mitch, Peter here. We promised your staff 15 minutes, and we've already stolen more time than that. Here's a final question for you.
Starting point is 00:29:15 You worked in the Reagan White House. That's where you and I got to know each other. You've had a long, distinguished career in business at Eli Lilly, one of the great companies in this country. You spent eight years as governor of Indiana, and now you are president of Purdue on the banks of the Wabash, an institution with over 5,000 faculty and staff, almost 75,000 students, a big, complicated place. Are you enjoying yourself? Well, yeah, Peter. I mean, for openers, when you get to spend all your time hanging out with young people
Starting point is 00:29:56 and smart people, I mean, that's a pretty good state of affairs. You know, as I do as often as I can, a couple times, three times a month anyway, I was over at one of our residence halls last night having dinner with, well, probably 40 of the brightest young people you're going to find. In that room there were kids from one, two, three, oh, five at least, foreign countries. Kids in this particular group study in physics, study in mathematics, study in engineering, all the sorts of things on which our country's future largely depends. So, sure, it's fun, and I feel very lucky, as I did, that those other opportunities came along.
Starting point is 00:30:42 Fantastic. Mitch, thank you so much. We hope to have you back. I'd love to. Thanks for the offer. This is an informal survey, but out here at Little Sacred Heart Catholic High School where my kids go, I have noticed that in the last couple of years, Purdue has gotten hot. We have kids applying to Purdue who three, four, or five years ago would not have applied to Purdue.
Starting point is 00:31:05 So your reputation is spreading. Congratulations. Well, school deserves it. California is right behind Illinois now as our number two out-of-state state. And, you know, president of the student body that just left office was a Californian. So tell them we love them here and you'll be in good company. I'll do just that. Thanks so much. See you all. Bye-bye.
Starting point is 00:31:28 Thanks, Mitch. You know, my wife sometimes accuses me of wanting to live like I'm still in college or accuses me, frankly, of living like I still am in college. And she says it's like it's a bad thing. Like that really wouldn't be the goal of any reasonable person because your hours are not the nine to five hours of an office, right? You're in a place that is usually sort of hermetically sealed but yet connected to the urban environment and is scattered with architectural gems from all ages. From the clichéd ivy-covered towers to the interesting new buildings to the old sense of time and knowledge and learning and all those things.
Starting point is 00:32:06 I loved going to the University of Minnesota and I pitied those people actually who got kicked out into the cold steps of the real world. So I took my time getting out and of course as an English major, I was prepared for a variety of jobs including the ones I eventually took which were waitering on tables and working at a convenience store, closing it at midnight, standing behind a big plate glass window like bullet bait for all the people who wanted to relieve the till of the receipts. So, yeah. So I appreciated Rob's point about, you know, do we really need a lot more college students when you think about it?
Starting point is 00:32:33 Well, you don't need all your French majors. Good lord. Do we? No. as we learned this week in Berkeley, are not only taking stories or classes about the canon of Western civilization and its philosopher founders, but are angry because it's just old, dead, white males like Plato. That's why popular culture is so important. I wish there was a place where we could – You want to do this?
Starting point is 00:32:59 I want to know more about it. I'm getting a cup of coffee. Go ahead. See, I had to throw, I had to like, kind of, sometimes you just think I'm going to interrupt. And then sometimes I jump in the segue. I got to keep him active. You know, I got to like.
Starting point is 00:33:15 Has he been doing this? He started walking away from the microphone. No, I've missed three podcasts in a row. James. James. Uh-oh. This is actually smart because now I'll never do it again because I don't want to have to do this. All right.
Starting point is 00:33:27 Well, I'll do it. James, I'll do it. He's really going. Okay. If any of this – this is going to be terrible. My spots are going to be terrible. We need James back. James, I'm sorry.
Starting point is 00:33:43 We're just going to let a long silence occur. There he is. And we'll have to have the blue yeti cut. I'm sorry, James. Did you finish the spot? Yeah, it was great. But you know what? Why don't you do one too?
Starting point is 00:33:58 Well, actually, I completely forgot what I was saying or doing or going. But, I mean, the point that you were making, that we were making about college education and finding it to be something useful and necessary. I mean, I see kids around the University of Minnesota taking out loans to live in these palatious apartments. Can you remember where you guys lived in college? I can. I can. Yeah, so can I. It was a rooming house.
Starting point is 00:34:15 You could put your fist right through the particle board walls. It was a cheap place. It was drafty. We lived on ramen noodles. There were hockey players downstairs in the basement who periodically came up and beat us because we were bookworms. I mean it was – and now you see these apartment buildings with built-in gas fireplaces and they've got widescreen TVs. And I look at the kids and say, you are going into debt, severe debt to live like this while you get a degree that is guaranteed never to produce an income at all.
Starting point is 00:34:46 But that leads to the question as to whether or not college is good for its own sake because it expands your horizons. It teaches you new ways of thinking. And if people were being challenged nowadays in college as opposed to expecting it to be a hermetically sealed environment in which every one of their preexisting beliefs is reinforced because it's a safe space, I don't know. I have little sympathy for the people who actually go to college, get a lot of debt, and come out with no way to apply themselves to society except to go back to college or to a think tank or something like that. So anyway, that would be – Hey, think tank. You're cutting it a little close there, pal.
Starting point is 00:35:22 That's true but let's say a think tank that is funded by california investor billionaires whose primary objective is to make everybody drive a bicycle or go to work by a rickshaw right all right that's what i mean that's what i mean so and if you spend enough time on the web you realize exactly how many little websites there are you stumble on them all the time in which, well, like Rob, for example, writes now and then for Medium. He will take some of his content from the martini shot and repurpose it for Medium, which is great because he provides a conservative voice in what appears to be a very large, warm bath full of comfortable liberalism.
Starting point is 00:35:59 So what was the Michael Kelly, his theory about magazines, anything that is not specifically predicated on a conservative position will inevitably drift left, right? Right. Also – John O'Sullivan. O'Sullivan's law – well, O'Sullivan's law about – Institutions. Institutions, yeah. Any institution that is not explicitly right-wing becomes over time explicitly left-wing.
Starting point is 00:36:22 Well, then the Sullivan-Kelly colliery could be applied to Acculturator.com, which was founded on the idea that you have to look at the culture and you have to look at the culture from a conservative perspective in order to understand it, to appreciate it. And if you want to move the needle on the culture, that's what you have to do. You can't just snipe from the outside. You can't be one of those people who shows up on Bill Maher's show and say, well, I haven't seen American Sniper, but frankly, I'm appalled by everything I think it represents. Now, go to acculturated.com where pop culture matters and read things like The Daily Scene where you'll find the best from the internet on hot pop culture topics here and there.
Starting point is 00:36:55 Original posts every day, topics like books, comics, culture, fashion, movies, games. Oh, games. In a conversation with my wife a couple of days ago, she wanted me to get rid of the Xbox because a neighbor kid wanted it. And I balked because I said, I haven't finished playing that game that I wanted to play. She cocked an eyebrow wifely. Really? Games? But yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:16 I mean, it's an art form. It is an art form. And if you read about books and games and movies and things like Bioshock, you'll find out exactly what sort of cultural ideas are working their way through those kids today, as you find out. And otherwise, you're not going to speak their vocabulary. And it's got sports. And it's got tech. And TV. A lot of your favorite writers.
Starting point is 00:37:35 Ricochet readers, if you like this podcast, check out Acculturated.com and read what young conservative writers have to say about pop culture. Well, I want to go back to something at the very beginning. Rob, when you said that the governor shut down the subway. Yes. Okay. The subway is underground. Yes. Now, we were sort of sold the idea that mass transit under the ground.
Starting point is 00:37:59 Correct. Avoids. I like where you're going with this. The problems of surface streets. Right. So after billions and billions and billions and decades, over a century of infrastructure development, when it comes to the one moment that they need it, why did they shut it down? I know that they said that Uber can't jack its rates up because that would be – They could.
Starting point is 00:38:19 Uber could jack its rates up, not as much as they would do ordinarily or they would ordinarily happen automatically. Well, on the night of – Monday night of the blizzard, I was out because everything was kind of closed and I wasn't going to do red eyes. So I had some time. So I went out. I have this little restaurant around the corner. I'm standing there, a couple of friends of mine, and this old guy is there. Not old guy. He's like 60. And for no reason, he turns to us and says, can you believe it?
Starting point is 00:38:51 They shut down the subway. And he and the other two people who he doesn't know who have been sitting there arguing about this for an hour or two hours at the bar part of the restaurant then go through every subway line. There are many of them. I don't know how many there are in Manhattan – in New York City, but there are lots. And they talk about the amount of subway space underground and the amount of subway space that's out. So the outlying boroughs, Queens, parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx, that is above ground. But there's tons – you're right. There's tons of tunnel space. The idea was you don't want your rolling stock to be out there frozen because then you can't start it again.
Starting point is 00:39:26 Here's what people forget though. Wait. Here's what people forgot though. During the shutdown, the shutdown of the subway, the subway cars were still running. They just weren't taking passengers. Yeah. Well, that's to keep them moving, to keep them warm? I guess. I guess. Yeah. I don that's to keep them moving, to keep them warm? I guess. I guess. Yeah, I don't know. Wow. Even if they're above ground, I got a mental picture of a train.
Starting point is 00:39:49 And correct me if I'm wrong because I'm just living here in Minnesota, of course, where we got sleds and dogs and go mush for the rest of it. But as I understand a train, it's a fairly large powered object that can move through things like, I don't know, snow if it keeps going. Don't think about that, right? So I love that fact. We have light rail, and the light rail manages to ding, ding, ding its way in the worst of storms. But here's the other thing I like. I remember somebody in my Twitter feed, the liberal persuasion, saying, I just can't wait
Starting point is 00:40:18 for all the people who are going to be saying, oh, global warming is to blame for this storm. Because to them, there were two certainties one global warming was to blame for the storm and two if it wasn't that didn't mean anything about global warming well that's a great thing about climate change isn't it that they can say uh these freak storms are a product of climate change and then when we don't have a freak storm they can say notice how we're not having any freak storms anymore that's because of climate change. And then when we don't have a freak storm, they can say, notice how we're not having freak storms anymore. That's because the climate change, I mean,
Starting point is 00:40:47 it doesn't really matter. The problem really is excess of caution. This idea that your government is supposed to protect you from things like the weather in 110 years, they have not shut down the subway. They did it for no reason. They did it because this is the kind of bicycle helmet, nanny statism that we have now, where the governors, including Governor Christie of New Jersey and New York and the mayor, don't want anyone – well, what happens if you're stuck on the road?
Starting point is 00:41:15 Well, then you're an idiot. The weather is on our own and navigate ourselves around the area, taking our own safety as our primary responsibility is just a sign of a real problem. Speaking of experts, may I? This is a related – it's a different subject but related. I noticed just in this last week, you're talking about the nanny state people telling us how to behave. And so Jeffrey Sachs was on the web saying, just as you put it, Rob, he was saying, get ready for more. The warm air over the ocean is what is producing this kind of especially heavy storm. Global climate is responsible for it. Get ready for more.
Starting point is 00:42:03 And then I stopped and thought, wait a minute, Jeffrey Sachs, I've heard that name. And Jeffrey Sachs, now I believe of Columbia, but formerly of Harvard, has had a career of screwing stuff up. He first came to note when immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he put a team of geniuses, fellow academics together to go to Moscow to advise Boris Yeltsin on how to turn Russia into a functioning, thriving, democratic, capitalist state. Look how that turned out. That's Jeffrey Sachs. On op-ed page after op-ed page, on reports from Davos, we're getting Larry Summers telling us that we need more government. We need more infrastructure. I thought, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a moment.
Starting point is 00:42:53 Larry Summers could not govern the 400 members of the arts and science faculty of Harvard College. We know that he couldn't. This is known. This is objective. They had a coup. They threw him out as president of Harvard College. We know that he couldn't. This is known. This is objective. They had a coup. They threw him out as president of the university. And so because he cannot handle 400 people, he now feels entitled. And what amazes me is that nobody says, huh?
Starting point is 00:43:17 He now feels entitled to tell the entire world how it should behave. Unbelievable. I have had it up to here sure experts with experts also also suddenly the lack of accountability and also the suddenly insightful billionaires there's another billionaire and his name escapes me at davos who said listen americans are just going to have to learn to live with less you have to learn to live with smaller profiles lower expectations they're not gonna be able to have the big houses they have they're not gonna be able to live with smaller profiles, lower expectations. They're not going to be able to have the big houses they have. They're not going to be able to live the way they live. He has I think half a dozen houses.
Starting point is 00:43:49 He flew to Davos in his own private jet. The idea that we have to be preached to by these sort of lofty individuals who somehow – that is actually a problem and I think it's a problem that people on the right have contributed to, which is the idea that there's something about being rich. Oh, right. That is a sign of your smarts and a sign of like, well, that's the way it is. I'm rich because I built a better product or I'm rich because – sometimes that's true. But it's often not true.
Starting point is 00:44:19 And the idea that somehow because you're successful in business that that was a – that's a sign that you were doing something right is something we need to disabuse ourselves of. I'm not saying that it's by definition makes you a fat cat who should be taken down to pay. I'll give you an example. But there is something about that attitude that I think the people on the right have, I don't know, allowed to flourish or contributed to in some way we need to take back. You could be a moron and be a billionaire. You could be a crook and be a billionaire. You could be a philanthropon and be a billionaire. You could be a crook and be a billionaire. You could be a philanthropist and be a billionaire. And you could be all three of those things and also only have $100 in the bank.
Starting point is 00:44:50 And I'll give you an example. I was just praising Apple a moment ago. I knew Steve Jobs a little bit. I never once heard him open his mouth on politics that he didn't make a fool of himself. He knew his business. He knew almost nothing else. We were talking about Mexico and he said with a straight face, oh, well, the way to handle Mexico is that we should simply
Starting point is 00:45:09 invade it and turn it over to the Disney company. If we could run Mexico, if we could run Mexico as a giant theme park, we could get that country squared away right away. I said, Steve, could I quote you on that? Could I go public? And then he finally realized what he was – anyway. A great man, a good man in all kinds of ways. But OK. So – but this brings us to a matter which is close to the bone for us. Here we are deriding billionaires when yesterday the Koch brothers – it was in the news yesterday. I think the conference was in Rancho Mirage.
Starting point is 00:45:42 I think it was over the week. Palm Springs. Right, right, right. So they got together, three or four hundred very rich people. What do you and I have to do to get invited to that, Peter?
Starting point is 00:45:52 To get rich, apparently. Apparently, we are not close to rich enough. I mean, like, just, you know, just to kind of talk and mingle. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'd serve the hors d'oeuvres. I'd serve the canapé
Starting point is 00:46:01 just to mix the drinks. I would watch you do that. I would let you serve them. I'll let you serve them. So the figure is not quite $900 million that they are not saying they themselves will pony up $900 million, although the Koch brothers are going to pony up a substantial portion of that. That was the number that they put in front of this audience to say, fellas, let's all kick in. We need, I think the actual number, I don't know why this number, but it was $869 million to spend between now and election day 2016, electing our kinds of candidates. Are we in favor of that? Well, of course, because they're citizens and they're allowed to do it.
Starting point is 00:46:46 And recent history tells us that of the $869 million they spend, about $850 million of those dollars would go down the tubes, which is perfectly fine. This is their money. They get to do it. And in general, spreading that kind of money around is probably a good idea. It puts a lot of people to work. A lot of people got to make those little commercial spots and got to mail that stuff and got to package it and got to print the flyers and all that stuff. That's fine.
Starting point is 00:47:11 What I find is bananas is the hysterical gasket popping overreaction from the left. These guys, all my life, at least all of my life that I've been a political rhino squish, which has been almost in my life, my Democrat friends have come to me and said things like, you know, I'm not against you guys and your party. Or when we talked about certain issues, they said, you know, hey, listen, if there were Republicans who believe the way you believe about the social issues or whatever, I would consider voting for them. The left's model idea of a republican or conservative is somebody who is basically libertarian on social issues but a little bit more strict on public expenditure and has a business mind. And it's also a philanthropist who believes in generally making society a better place. That's the Koch brothers. That's the Koch brothers. That's the Koch brothers. That's exactly who they are.
Starting point is 00:48:08 They're sort of pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, kind of pro-drug legalization, small government, big philanthropy. They absolutely live out their own philosophy. And they are the model. This is exactly right. We have delivered to the liberal media exactly the conservatives they want and they are the model this is exactly right that we we have delivered to the liberal media exactly the conservatives they want and they don't want them which shows you something about one more one more ring and of course the other thing that that in the gasket popping outrage you're quite right that's what we've gotten over the last couple of days i have
Starting point is 00:48:39 not seen anywhere certainly not in the new york report on this, any attempt to estimate the amount of money that goes into democratic campaigns year in and year out from unions. No, no. Well, they almost always pull that out, right? They almost always subtract that from the pile so that it's never part of their calculus. That's a separate kind of expenditure. They don't count. As far as I know, this is still a less than offsetting – much less than offsetting amount of money.
Starting point is 00:49:08 It does not offset what unions of all kinds in every place contribute to democratic campaigns. One additional question though, Rob. And on this one, I have to confess. I myself am of two minds. Most of the Koch's money, if these reports are to be believed and on this point, I don't see any reason to doubt them. Most of the Koch's money, that is to say their own money and the amount that they're going to be raising from their well-to-do friends, runs through organizations that do not have disclosure requirements. If you're a candidate, you must disclose where your money comes from. If you're a political party, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party … It's every quarter, right? It's like you have the quarterly reporting.
Starting point is 00:49:48 It's like filing a 10Q, yes. And so this money gets to be donated and spent anonymously. Does that give you the queasies? No, not really. I mean, not really. I mean not really. I think the problem with campaign finance and political finance in this country has more to do with the fact that politics – that the government spends so much money, that government has so much power, so that naturally people are going to be gravitate to trying look, the history of politics and of elections, even to be fair, those initiatives, those statewide initiatives that we have in California and here in New York, it's hard to move the needle with advertising and with campaign expenditures. Rich candidates, they call them self-funders, often lose. The more highly financed candidate or highly financed campaign often goes down in flames. You still have to have a message. You still have to appeal to some aspect of the voter that they want. Maybe with a lot more money, you can make Barack Obama feel like a centrist.
Starting point is 00:50:59 But he felt like a centrist in 2008 not because of money but because they ran a very, very smart campaign. So I'm not really sure. I think the money is – the money is a way for the left to talk about big, bad republicans I think more than anything else. I have to say in a perfect world, my own campaign finance rule would be as follows. Any person may give – any person or entity, company, union, whatever, may give as much money as it wants to any candidate that it wants as long as it's disclosed within 24 hours. Yeah, that's the way to do it. To me, that's the ideal world. But I tried that out on Nelson Polsby, the late great political scientist at Berkeley.
Starting point is 00:51:37 And Nelson said, careful there. Remember during the civil rights movement, some of the people who contributed to Martin Luther King wanted to do so anonymously because they were afraid they would be harassed. And in our own time, I have to say, here in California – well, we saw it with the fellow who was the CEO of something or other. I can't remember what. Oh, yeah, Mozilla. Mozilla, exactly. And there are certain causes. If you stand up for traditional marriage or certain other causes, you will be harassed. So I have to say I am now in favor of permitting money to be given anonymously.
Starting point is 00:52:12 Secret black funding. to be spent over the next two years, that is roughly one-sixth what one company, Coca-Cola, will spend on advertising over the same period of time. Just to those who say there's too much money in politics, the following question, is our politics as important as our soft drinks? I think so. Well, it's an interesting point to make about Coke because I have a fridge full of Coke right now. Do I have a fridge full of Coke
Starting point is 00:52:50 because they got $6 billion in advertising? No, because it was 3 for 12 at Target. Next week, it'll be 3 12-packs for $12 of Pepsi, and I will go to Pepsi. No. Oh, no.
Starting point is 00:53:03 No soda loyalty, James? I have absolutely oh no i've asked i've asked no soda loyalty james i have absolutely no brand loyalty whatsoever now i admire coke as a brand in abstract in their advertising history and all of that stuff i love that i love the product i love the contour bottle i love the whole way that they've managed to twin themselves with america and santa claus and the rest of it but when it's five dollars for a 12 pack as opposed to three or four America and Santa Claus and the rest of it. But when it's $5 for a 12-pack as opposed to three or four, I'm going to buy the Pepsi. So money can only do so much. I mean when you talk – I'm beginning to be where Peter is now because when you see people donating and then getting harassed for it, you realize that there's certain
Starting point is 00:53:39 something to be said for anonymous donations. Now, I would like to know whether or not, for example, Russian oligarchs were pouring money into a political campaign in order to convince me to do something. But A, I will take a look at what that idea is and judge on my own, using my own intellectual apparatus, whether or not I think it's a good idea. And B, well, even if we find out that Russian oligarchs or the government is funding some stuff in America,
Starting point is 00:54:03 nobody seems to care. The Daily Caller had a piece this week talking about how some strange sort of Russian-tinged money has been making way into organizations that fight against fracking because they don't like it because, of course, it brings down the course of their price. And, you know, Russia's having junk bond ratings right now because the price of oil is cratered. So even when that information is out there in the public, I'm not sure a lot of people know. But here's the thing. A billion dollars for this.
Starting point is 00:54:32 Nobody really seemed to squeal and squeak when Hillary Clinton's people announced that she was going to raise a billion dollars. This was a sign of her inevitability and her strength and her power. And it's a great thing because Hillary will do all the right things. But, of course, the Koch brothers are regarded as dragging us back to some paleolithic fifties era. However, Rob's right. They are a remarkably, I don't want to say progressive,
Starting point is 00:54:50 but they are the model of the socially liberal, socially moderate economic conservatives. Liberals always say, I'd vote for him. So why doesn't that influence on our side of the ledger? People like, well, I don't know in the member feed this week,
Starting point is 00:55:04 there's a post by Robert McEnrey Reynolds saying, you know, the national GOP, there's no way this is, they're conservative. It's time to start up a third party. Isn't the Koch brothers, I'll leave this to you before I go let the dog out again, because he's barking. Isn't this, isn't this a sign that the way that you keep mainstream predictable candidates from taking over is to inhabit the husk, the host itself, as opposed to the absolute futility and seppuku and ritual suicide of starting a third party. Well, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I've said this many times and I think you have to look at what the progressive far left wing of the Democratic Party did in 1968 or did in 1964.
Starting point is 00:55:47 They not only stayed with the Democratic Party, they infiltrated. They got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Every single thing on the left wing agenda in 1972 in the McGovern campaign and in the – frankly, in the Mondale campaign of 84 has now been enacted in law. It has been either written by a Republican president on a Republican Congress or a Democratic president in a Democratic Congress. It is all now the law. And how do they do it?
Starting point is 00:56:11 They got big. The Democratic Party got big. They didn't get small. The part of the Democratic Party that decided they really didn't like the fact that there were conservative Democrats and Texas Democrats and, you know, you know, yellow dog Democrats or whatever it is in the Democratic Party, they broke off and formed the Green Party, which has only one political strength. That's its ability to hurt the chances of a Democratic presidential candidate.
Starting point is 00:56:36 It does not advance its agenda at all. It does not make its agenda more likely to be enacted. It has no effect on anything except making sure that it's harder for a Democrat to be elected nationally. So, yeah, you could – you can. You can break off and form your own party if you want. It will just be really hard and it won't – it will have the opposite effect. And also I'd say there's other things. The thing of the Republican Party is Republican primary voters are the most conservative Republicans around.
Starting point is 00:57:05 They are actually conservatives. Republican primary voters are the most conservative Republicans around. They are actually conservatives. They describe themselves as almost uniformly conservative, not moderates, not centrists. Republican primary voters choose the president. This obsession with like the establishment candidate from D.C., there are candidates who seem to represent that resume, but they have no extra – they have no extra advantage over a candidate that doesn't have that. The Republican primary voter votes usually bizarrely in my opinion but tends to vote for the next guy. And that maybe is because temperamentally conservatives, as rabble-rousing as they are, when the music stops, they tend to get really conservative, I guess. That may change, but the Republican primary voter is not an establishment voter. It's much, much farther to the right, much more committed,
Starting point is 00:57:56 much more conservative than your typical national Republican. Yeah, yeah. Well, so what did we see this past week? Again, I've kind of been resurfacing here. I was so tied up with family matters. This past week we saw Jeb Bush give a speech out here in San Francisco. It was one of his last scheduled paid speeches since stepping down as governor. He's been giving speeches for money. Nothing wrong with that. Hillary's still doing it. And it was to the National Association of something or other. And so Jeb Bush, as far as I can tell, in running for president has done two things. He has spoken to a lot of rich guys. And then he's given a speech, a couple of speeches, but this speech in particular, that were really pretty unremarkable, quite flat. So there's that. Then by contrast, we have a couple of events over the weekend.
Starting point is 00:58:46 At the Koch Brothers Conference, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz spoke. And then at an event in Iowa, Representative Steve King hosts an event in Iowa. And there, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz also showed up there. I believe Mike Huckabee was there. Two interesting contrasts in the sense that Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush seem to be trying to line up the money before they let anybody know quite what they would stand for, whereas these other candidates are going at it just the other way around. And in my judgment, as best I can tell, the ones who are exciting Republican primary voters who will vote first in Iowa are the true conservatives, not the moderate Jeb Bush, not the moderate Mitt Romney. So what am I saying here?
Starting point is 00:59:33 What I'm saying here is I still think that the Republican Party is the best place for genuine conservatives. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think that's exactly where we're going as opposed to what we're talking about here is the social issues. Social issues and then when you get to Rand Paul, there's this question of how strong a presence you want the United States to take outside our own borders. That there would be conservative versus libertarian. But these are really good things to be arguing about and this is a really good debate to be having. Of course they are. This is exactly what you want to be talking about, the role of government, the role of the country, the role of independent economic freedom and liberty. All that stuff is like – well, these are first principles that are good.
Starting point is 01:00:15 So I mean I carry no water for the Republican Party. I'm not a Republican operative. I don't really care. I just am looking – I would just – I'm just looking at what – You carry no water for the Republican Party? Mickey Mouse and Fantasia comes to mind. No, no, I don't. I mean – I'm kidding. Right. I know what you mean. But I mean if you look at the history of American politics recently and how you take a country that was essentially a black and white country made up of RG bunkers in 1961, 62, 63, in which conservative Democrats were conservative, really conservative.
Starting point is 01:00:50 And you turn it into a progressive European socialist state on its way to becoming somewhere over there in the EU like – how do you get what you want? You stay with the big guys. You swim with the big fish and you keep nudging everything your side. And my argument would be to conservatives and arch-conservatives and paleo-conservatives and radical conservatives who want to change the country. It's to stay with the big guy and change – and keep pushing the big guy to the right. You know, also another thing, let's – as Gene Kirkpatrick once said, we must learn to face the truth about ourselves no matter how good it may be. Consider this. As of now, Republicans have the biggest majority in the House of Representatives since 1932. They have over 50 seats in the Senate. They dominate
Starting point is 01:01:47 state legislatures. They don't have every state and they don't control every state legislature, but I believe the numbers, it's well over 30 where there is a governor and at least one house that's controlled by Republicans. And there are a healthy number of states, Texas and Florida among the big states where you have a Republican governor and decisive majorities in both chambers. Consider that. Then consider – just consider – I wasn't there. Rob and I wish we had been there circulating drinks and serving canapes. But at the Koch's event in the desert this past weekend, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul on stage in a friendly debate fielding questions about everything from tax
Starting point is 01:02:27 rates to foreign policy to Cuba. Those are three articulate, intelligent office holders. At Steve King's event, again, you've got – I don't know whether Bobby Jindal was there, but Bobby Jindal gave a foreign policy speech in London. Brilliant. You may not agree with it all, but brilliant. And at Steve King's event, Scott Walker comes down from Wisconsin and tells how he's done it in Wisconsin. And oh, by the way, I'm thinking of running for president. Just consider the sheer intelligence, the standing of all these people. And final point, what are the organs the other side has anymore? The mainstream media, the New York Times is a – as a business, it is a husk of its former self.
Starting point is 01:03:11 CBS News, George Stephanopoulos, they run George – George Stephanopoulos is getting gray. They have to go with him now because their audience is aging. The mainstream – and their – I mean I was surprised like – MSNBC is cratered this week. We're cratered in the ratings. The mainstream – and their – I think Fox News is going to bounce right back up and CNN is going to go right back down in the next quarter ratings. All of these – and as I said, I posted about this in Ricochet and there was a member – a Ricochet member actually posted something great and I'm going to mess up the name. Patty Shuchain. It's Irish. S-I-O.
Starting point is 01:03:59 It's a sh, right? Right. Shuchain. It's probably Patty Smith probably. Sullivan. Yeah. Gaelic is like impossible. It's probably Patti Smith probably is how you pronounce it. Sullivan. Yeah, Gaelic is like impossible. It's worse than – not worse than Welsh but it's close.
Starting point is 01:04:15 Why do so many Hollywood liberals and western lefties have a beef with American Sniper? And probably it's because it's so good. I mean I haven't seen it but people like it. It's a popular movie about a guy who's really good at a job and the job has a powerful effect on him and his family that's both good and bad, but he does it. I mean, what could be more dramatic than that? They hate it because it's not explicitly anti-war, anti-Bush, period. That's the gospel. Now, you ask what organs the left have. All they have are busted Wurlitzers that are capable only of playing an E minor chord in the high screechy register. And it doesn't – the power that they have – I was driving home the other day and listening to the comedy channel on the satellite radio. And they were playing a bit from All in the Family.
Starting point is 01:05:01 It was Archie B bunker uh talking about evolution and it was the most it's hard to describe exactly the contempt that the writers obviously had for anybody who wasn't um who didn't find the very concept of what archie was saying to be just absolutely the point was to make archie into an absolute idiot as most of these shows were now imagine that sort of cultural message reducing conservatism down to its dumbest element and then blaring it out to millions of households week after week after week. That doesn't happen anymore. The market is split. There are so many more new channels.
Starting point is 01:05:39 For example, Rob had a post this week. We should probably end here because it's a great point to go out on about how conservatives ought to really relax because – well, American sniper aside, Hollywood, he wrote, is dead because we're talking about so many other distribution channels that are out there. Rob, you want to expound on that a little bit because it almost seems to me that it goes – Go ahead. No, go on. It actually goes along with what Rick Shea member Patty Sullivan was saying, the same thing, which is that the audience finds entertainment product that it wants. The one thing that they don't make anymore – look, when you analyze a business or analyze an industry you you first have to figure out okay what are the hard hard ceilings i can't change so if i'm in the data transfer business i probably can't go faster for the next 25 30 40 years faster than the speed of light that's about the fastest we're going to be able to get data from one place to another right If you're in the entertainment business, you're like, well, there are still only 24 hours in the day.
Starting point is 01:06:48 They're not making any more of those. So anything that takes more of my audience's time away from me, it's going to be zero sum, right? Now, you see a little bit of that blending when people have their phones and their iPads and they're watching TV and they call it the second screen and that's a big deal. But in general, box office – the box office, not necessarily the receipts, but the box office, the number of people going to movies is down. The prices are going up and the number of people going to movies is down. The number of movies in release is down. The number of people watching TV is down. Last quarter, they had to add extra ads onto it just to kind of make up what their loss was. Now, that's not to say that those movies – there aren't going to be big hit movies, American Sniper, big hit TV shows, and that there aren't going to be great versions of all those things.
Starting point is 01:07:33 In fact, I was talking to some guy, to Mark Idris yesterday on Twitter, and I'm like everybody recognizes that now it's almost the golden age of movies and TV and that there are so many great ones around. But there are – not so many. There are fewer of them, but the product is pretty good and it has come from that squeeze, that margin squeeze. People are on the web. They are playing video games. They're probably the only entertainment product right now where you really can't, if you're going to be good at it, you can't be doing something else at the same time, right?
Starting point is 01:08:02 You can't be watching a movie and playing a video game as far as I understand it. So when you have all these commitments, your time commitments and all these entertainment products asking for half an hour here, an hour here, it's going to be a squeeze. So you look for the growth. Where's the growth? The growth was in apps. There's a reason why Apple is the most profitable nation on earth. Yesterday or two days ago, they announced their profits.
Starting point is 01:08:26 They were record profits. About a week ago, they announced – they showed receipts, app store revenues on a straight hockey stick line up. Not a hockey stick but a straight slope up. Box office revenues for Hollywood on a flat line. And even if you add in DVDs and streaming and rentals and all the other ancillary businesses in Hollywood, you still come up with a flat line. What business is growing? What business isn't? So if you're asking yourself, okay, what am I – if you're one of Mitch Daniels'
Starting point is 01:08:57 students and you're saying, okay, I want to be in a growth business. I want to like study and learn something to be in a growth business even if I want to be in a growth business. I want to like study and learn something to be in a growth business. Even if I want to be in a growth entertainment business, well, it's more likely to be video games and apps and things like that. That's entertainment too. Anyway, end rant. Sorry. Go on, Peter. I was just going to take one little – ditto to everything Rob just said. I was going to take one simple – it seems to me Patty, which I'm convinced his last name must be pronounced O'Sullivan.
Starting point is 01:09:28 Patty O'Sullivan's question, why do so many American liberals and Western lefties have a beef with American sniper? I have a take which is so simple it may be mistaken, but it seems to me clear that the movie treats – it doesn't necessarily celebrate and it certainly doesn't try to cram these values down your throat. But it treats as worthy of respect. It treats as plausible two propositions. One, that the defense of the United States of America is important and worthwhile. And two, that the defense of the United States of America may require us to kill our enemies. And the lefties have trouble with both. Isn't it as simple as that?
Starting point is 01:10:09 I think it would be simple. Someone explained it to me this way. And again, I feel stupid because I haven't seen the movie yet. Someone explained to me very simply. Someone in Hollywood explained it very simply. Here's why. The movie American Sniper, it's about the American sniper. It's about a guy.
Starting point is 01:10:23 It's not about someone's opinion. It's not about someone's political polemic. It's not about someone's ideas, someone's politics, somebody's a point to make about Bush or the war, pro or con. It's about a guy. It's about a guy doing a really, really weird job that's hard and strange and makes him feel funny and morally compromised and his wife and family at home. It's a classic movie about a person, and that's what makes a great movie. It's not about what someone at MSNBC wants to say about the war, and that's why audiences like it. It would make $200 million.
Starting point is 01:10:57 I'm sure there are a lot of people who watch that movie and don't like – do not approve of and do not support the Iraq war. But the point of a movie is that you're supposed to – movie makers, right? The point is you're supposed to be able to go and make a movie and the movie is supposed to stand on its own and not make a – not be an op-ed or a Huffington Post post but an actual movie about a guy. And people had to go to the movie theater to see it, which pushes back a little bit against Rob's point about Hollywood being dead. I mean obviously I know what you mean and Hollywood will still be around and still have a role. There's no app for American Sniper. Well, not yet, probably. But when you mention about the other distribution platforms,
Starting point is 01:11:31 this is an opportunity and a problem, and I'll give you an example. One of the apps you can get for free is Amazon Prime streaming video. Now, I have Amazon Prime, which means I'm entitled to 947,000 programs that they offer. Another huge Alexandria library, this vast repository of entertainment that I can pick and choose from as if I don't have enough already with Netflix and my own and the cable and the rest of it. Who has the time?
Starting point is 01:11:56 But Amazon is not putting out their own television shows. This is like going to a bookstore and the bookstore is saying, would you like to go in the back room here where we're showing – we made a movie. It's odd except it's not. We're used to this now. Of course, Amazon would make its own television shows. Why wouldn't it? So the one that I wanted to see was called The Man in the High Castle based on a book by Philip K. Dick who is one of those authors you think that nobody ought to really be able to adapt for the screen but yet they do and when they do, it's good. Blade Runner was one of his.
Starting point is 01:12:23 Man in the High Castle is about the United States, 25 years after World War II, where we lost. The Nazis have the east part of the country. The Japanese have the west part, and there's a little strip in the middle. They did a pilot, got good reviews, and I sat down to watch it, and I, first of all, realized I couldn't, because my Apple TV doesn't have an Amazon button on it that I can press. So what do I do?
Starting point is 01:12:47 Well, I'll stream it through my phone. So I got my phone and I got the Amazon Prime app on my phone and I was streaming a movie from my phone to my television, which itself is marvelous. And which is also a pain because for some reason the app would just freeze every seven minutes or so and refuse to do anything. So after a while of being tired with the freeze, I said, oh, it's time for a work run here. What am I going to do? Okay, I'll call up the movie in my browser on my laptop
Starting point is 01:13:13 and then use Apple Airplay to stream my laptop screen to my television, which I did and it was choppy and the resolution wasn't that great, but it was a good show and I was interested, and I followed it to the end. Now, I'm reasonably technological savvy. I guarantee you that people who are just calling up their television and looking for the button that says Amazon are going to stop there and not go through all of this complicated rigmarole. So we need to figure that stuff out because otherwise, it's just left to the smart kids. It's just left to the people.
Starting point is 01:13:45 But the opera word is kids, right? I mean you're a gentleman of a certain age, but you're – it's definitely out of the demographic of people who bounce – or who are thought of as bouncing their browser to their – through AirPlay to their TV. But if you're under 30, that's not weird. That's normal. If you're – and I suspect that in the next five years, if you're – everybody will be doing that. And Apple TV will have an Amazon Prime button. And these are just – these are just things that will happen. And what's amazing is that – here's what's amazing is that you watch the show and you are absorbed in the story and the characters irrespective of the fact that the picture wasn't perfect and the sound wasn't great.
Starting point is 01:14:25 Exactly. Which is something we always say in Hollywood is that people – we spend so much time worrying about that and not enough time worrying about the story, the dialogue and the characters. Which is basically – we say that in Cheers. We say, hey, this is a radio show, OK? This is radio with pictures but it's radio first. So let's get the lines right and the dialogue right.
Starting point is 01:14:45 This conversation will be... Go on. No, I'm done. I'm done, yeah. Conversation will be amusing in five years when we're using our phone on our wrist or our Apple Watch on our wrist to beam to the television shows, and we'll be logging on to our Amazon Prime account
Starting point is 01:14:58 with an optical retina character reader that we just hold up to our face and it knows. It'll be very easy, and this will seem like the dark and the golden ages, which ages which you know they always kind of both end up being now listen if you have trouble like i had trouble getting that thing um if you have trouble getting the podcasts like i might have had a little trouble getting the amazon to my television set there's a big nice white button on the ricochet home page that says help getting the podcasts obviously you got this one so maybe you know I'm not preaching to the right people here.
Starting point is 01:15:25 But if you're having trouble getting others, there's the button. There's also the button for the Daily Shot, which, of course, lands in your browser every day, makes you smile, makes you think, brings you up to speed, is a delightful read with all, from history to pop culture to politics, it's all there in the Daily Shot. And, of course, it's free. It's free.
Starting point is 01:15:43 It's free. I get so much junk in my email box. I always smile when I see the Daily Shot because I know it's going to be worth my time. And hey, you know, that's not the only thing in the world you ought to be reading. Ricochet, the Daily Shot. You might want to make Acculturator.com
Starting point is 01:15:58 the stop you go to right after because Acculturator.com, proud sponsor of this little podcast along with the Institute for Something or Something, is going to show you why exactly pop culture matters in these days. Obviously, if we're talking about education, movies, games, like we've been doing here, the rest of it, well, it's whetted your appetite for more.
Starting point is 01:16:16 Acculturator.com is where you want to go. So thanks to our sponsors. Thanks to our guest, Mr. Daniels. Thanks, Rob and Peter, and for you for listening, and we'll see everybody. Really, we will. I go there. I check.
Starting point is 01:16:25 I wait to see it. And it's always all about how great EJ's Photoshop's are. But they are. You're asking for it now. That's just one of the things we love here at Ricochet 2.0. Next week. Next week, fellas. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Thank you. Ever grateful, ever true Let's raise our song anew Fire up, go The days we spent with you
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