An Interview addressing the underlying problems in U.S. politics today

I sit down with politics enthusiasts and amateur experts Gary and Woody to ask them about the problems at the core of U.S. politics right now.  This helps me make sure we stay right on track, only addressing the most central, most important issues and not wasting anyone's time.  (On that note, this is only about 44% of our whole recording, coming in under 34 minutes-- you didn't need all those stutters and tangents!)  Plus you get to hear some nice, friendly conversation this time, rather than just me!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is Anthony Camberiati. I'm here with Gary Ebert and Doug Ovinson, who we will refer to as Woody, because we always refer to him as Woody, even though his name is Doug. And we're doing a nice friendly interview type of episode of Get to the Point. So the key with this podcast, of course, is to kind of figure out bigger issues, more of the crucial types of things, what's going on. So I have some interview questions set up here. It's not just purely free form. I don't know if you'd like to go one and then the other, or just kind of both talk together. But the first question is what would you like to tell the audience about yourselves as a way of introduction?

SPEAKER_02 0:45

You want to go first or you want me to?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

I am a senior citizen and uh ready to talk politics or whatever you ask.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

This is that's that is Woody.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

That is correct.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Yes, the the elder statesman here.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

That's correct.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

He's been around a while, he's seen quite a few things, and he has uh a good deal of uh unusual expertise in different perspectives of things for sure. Yeah, I'm I'm Gary.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

I identify as either a moderate Democrat or a liberal Republican, and I don't really like either political party, which I'm sure as we get into these discussions will come to be extremely clear.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

It's very good. I think that's a very good stance to have if you are trying to be very reasonable and really figure out the point and not get sucked in any big biases.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

I I agree, at least in my case. I mean, I you know, everybody's different, but that's my perspective. For me, I like slightly left of center. Uh anything in around the center is usually pretty good. The biggest thing is just being able to like hear out what's going on with other people and just hearing both sides, getting the information instead of just getting the very biased stuff in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Uh the key is to listen by here. Some people hear they've got to listen and then respond.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yes. So what are some of the biggest concerns in politics currently? Things that you really are particularly concerned about. Kind of heading towards the big issues, the underlying points.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Climate change.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Climate change.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

I live long enough to see it, I would like to see it in my lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Absolutely. Is just going to is making the biggest, probably one of the biggest impacts. That's a good one.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

That's not what I would choose, but it's hard to argue against that. But for me, well certainly with America, I mean specifically US politics. I I think both parties now, generally speaking, tend to pander to the extreme members in their party and tend not to listen to the more moderate members in their party. And I think that is the reason we have these polarizing points and neither side is willing to try to meet the other in the middle. Yeah, I mean, I'm not that old, but you know, I'm in my middle 50s, and I've seen a big change as far as that goes in my lifetime. And to me, the big cause of that, as we have discussed before, is is is gerrymandering.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Those two both go go so tightly together, I think it's hard very, very difficult to separate them as an issue. I think that is one of the biggest problems because as long as politicians only have to cater to one group of constituents and they can still continue to get elected without making concessions to other groups, it brings in all this infighting that we're seeing. And of course, the Democrats want to blame the Republicans, the Republicans want to blame the Democrats, but they're both doing the same thing. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

If I may the news also slants it to one side like Fox. So you're gonna have that's gonna polarize it further.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Yeah, there's very there's very few truly neutral news outlets that are really consistently accurately portraying both sides of every issue. You can certainly point to some that are more neutral than most, but still most of them have a slight bias one way or the other, and they're not they don't they will report some things one way, some things the other way, and some things they will report right down the middle. Whereas again, when I was in my teens, for example, we we we didn't see that anywhere near as much as we see that today. There were, of course, some very liberal news organizations, but the news organizations were much more just the facts, yeah, kind of things. And and you don't see that much anymore because for whatever reason the news networks think that's what people want to hear.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

It seems like there's an emotional side of it because I have in the last few years spent a lot of time listening to MSNBC on a podcast, and I've kind of stopped that in the last few weeks. Now I'm focusing more on like the NBC News website, which is certainly more centrist than MSNBC, and you know, 530A, Bill Maher's show. A lot of it is at least more reasonable and not just purely that leftward bias.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

I I I stopped watching the news carefully a long time ago because it just drives me crazy because the news is so inaccurate with so many things, even just simple things. Like, for example, let's talk about the number of people in America. There's roughly 330 million people in America. Yes. So when you're trying to make a specific impact, a news story will say, Well, two million people suffer from whatever. Right. And it's like, well, don't get me wrong, I'm sorry for those two million people, but or let's say 3.3 million people to make the math easier. Yeah. Um, you know, but that's only one percent of the population. Exactly. And I understand what impact you're trying to make, but by picking one of those and not both, you're already coloring the story. Exactly. And and there's a lot of those subtle things that to me, someone someone trained as an engineer, uh, or trained as a scientist, yeah. It's very frustrating to watch mainstream media because they intentionally, in some cases, make an impact by reporting those kinds of things one way or the other. It is very frustrating. But back to my original point is I really don't know if those are the more neutral ones or not. But about ratings.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

A lot of it's about ratings.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Well, of course it is, because that's because that's how they make money. They make they make money selling commercials, and and the higher your ratings, the more you can charge for commercials.

SPEAKER_03 6:30

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

I mean, right. I understand that. I don't like it, but I understand it.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

So the next question I want to ask that definitely builds off of the biggest concern thing. What are the so-called roots of all evil in politics these days, according to you? Now you already mentioned gerrymandering. Yeah. And I certainly agree with you on that.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Well, yeah, I know you do, yeah. Campaign financing.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Campaign finance, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, it is. It is. But I mean, but I mean, you know, to very briefly argue, the opposite side of campaign financing, Trump really did not accept much campaign finance. He pretty much self-funded. To the best of my understanding, he took almost no money from anyone.

SPEAKER_03 7:12

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

And he ran one of the more crooked campaigns we've ever seen. Right. Right. So campaign finance reform can only go so far, is my point. I'm not saying it's not a problem. I agree that it's a problem. Don't get me wrong. You can also throw in lobbyists.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Yeah, well, of course. Anything with big money is gonna take there. I think they said there were two lobbyists for every Sandra or every member of Congress. I just heard something like Probably every member of Congress. Probably every member of Congress. That sounds about right.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

No, I mean the the company that I used to work for, we we had a lobbyist that worked. I mean, he was relatively small time. He probably had, you know, 30 different clients they worked an hour here, an hour there, kind of thing for.

SPEAKER_03 7:51

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

And he was a nice guy, and uh, we were we were trying to lobby for getting our product into the hands of the U.S. military. It was a it's a satellite communications product, not that it matters. Right. But so I mean, but but if you don't do that, if you don't, if you don't hire a lobbyist and and you're you're you're somehow tied to the government, it can be very, very hard to get funding and to get your to get whatever widget you're making used or use more or whatever else. It's it's they're a necessary evil because it's not like a member of my company can go in and knows which senators to talk to and knows which congressmen to talk to about this, that, or the other thing, or could even get or could even get through the door to talk to them, or as a lobbyist can. So they're they're they're a necessary evil, but again, I agree that they're they're a big part of the problem.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

It's interesting when I think of lobbyists, like you mentioned like the lobbyists you described. I feel like a lot of times people talk about how there are these big businesses. Obviously, the corporate structure of America is set up so that as a CEO or the executives in charge of a business, your your goal is to kind of act psychopathically in a sense and just maximize profits for your company. And obviously, there are various levels of morality that various people operate at, but there's a great deal of motivation to do something that is not serving the greater good, but is serving the corporate entity, the corporate entity itself. I feel like just building off the idea that there's a big issue with lobbyists being one of the roots of all evil, but at the same time, lobbying in and of itself certainly is not always bad. Yes, it doesn't have to be bad. There has to be hopefully there's a way to parse it out where it's like, what is moral lobbying or benevolent lobbying, like you're saying, versus like kind of uh looking out for smaller interests and very much going against the the big picture or helping the greater good.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

I mean, to oversimplify it from my perspective, anyhow, again from my experience, is that you know the the point of a lobbyist is to have someone who can go and talk to these people on your behalf and promote you you or your company. Right. And you know, if if you have a guy who's doing this for 20 or 30 small companies, I mean my company had, what, 50 employees. Okay. Well, my branch of the company, we eventually got bought by another company. That's very different than a company like like Pick One, IBM, Microsoft, Apple.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Haliburton.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Halliburton. You know, they probably have 20 or 30 lobbyists, and and they're high-powered lobbyists, and they're getting paid maybe tens of millions of dollars a year, each of them, right, to do their job. We weren't paying, I don't know what we were paying this guy, but it wasn't anywhere near that. We didn't have the we didn't have that money in our budget. So I know that wasn't happening in our case. Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

There was some kind of formula where it's like how much is this helping a few people versus how much is it helping a lot of people?

SPEAKER_02 10:49

Because the idea of uh corporate thing is to get a lot of people jobs and I mean like you know, Boeing selling five extra aircraft makes a lot more jobs than than than my company selling you know five thousand more of our widgets. Right, right. Because they're so much bigger and they take so much more. I mean, so there's definitely different kinds of lobbyists and and and different things are expected of them. But uh again, if you're if you're a government, if you're doing anything directly for the government, meaning you're the prime contractor, you you have to have them. Yeah. You you have to have someone who is getting in the right senator's ear, the right congressperson's ear.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Should those congressmen and uh senators know be knowledgeable about it in the first place, it wouldn't happen. But but there's like a whole senator.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Yeah, the other way around. We vote them in. That does tie into another thing I kind of want to kind of have on the record of just the idea of a lot of people in power are not technically savvy enough to understand a lot of these things, or savvy in all sorts of ways enough to understand a lot of these things, and therefore that alone might be part of the misapportionate.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

We're not talking pump, are we?

SPEAKER_00 12:06

We're talking just in how you have a lot of very old people in the Senate and in the House and all who don't understand modern technology and things along those lines.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

I feel like that's this is this is something I talk about all the time. There's a difference between knowing how to use an iPhone and understanding how an iPhone works. Yes, yes. There's a really big difference. I don't know if you guys have heard this, but but you know, you hear a family gathering, oh, this two-year-old is so smart, he can use a computer already. He's gonna be a computer genius. It's like knowing how to turn on the computer and log in to I don't know what kids what a four-year-old logs into. Hopefully not TikTok. Yeah, hopefully not TikTok, but but you know, logs into whatever infotainment thing that they're getting into, does not take any technical savvy. Just because you, 70-year-old grandma, don't understand how to do it doesn't mean it's difficult. Right. I mean, that's the point. That's the point I'm making. And so some people get awed by this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

So okay, so let's move on to the next question here. What the heck is going on with the Republican Party nowadays, and is this particularly unusual or not? And if you want to balance it out with any concerns about the Democratic Party, by all means you can do that as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Well, right now, even within their own party, they're polarized. The Trump side and the more centered side.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

So yeah. That's part of it. Okay, it sounds like the the whole factual basis thing. There's this thing that at least it's on the liberal side, they call it the big lie that the Republicans all follow out. This whole belief structure that say that Trump won the 2020 election, a lot of things tied in with that. Let's balance that out.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

Okay, let's let's talk about that one really briefly. Sure. There's a lot fewer Republicans who believe that now than believe that two years ago.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Uh the polls say otherwise, from what I've heard.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Well, let me put it this way: when I hear people talking, uh-huh, when I hear friends, family walking down the, you know, you don't hear people referring to that anywhere near as much now as you did then.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Now, granted, I'm I'm living in this, in the in one of the most liberal states in the country. Yes. Maybe top two.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Next to the most liberal city.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Yeah, and uh, and I'm in the next to the most liberal city, and and um in the most liberal county, and the I'm I'm hearing those kinds of things a lot less than I did. And I think sometimes this is where you know the media gets into this. I I don't know that the average Republican actually believes that.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

As much as they did closer to the time of the election, whatever it was, 18 months ago. I can't I'm I can't do the math in my head.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Because if they were taken in Alabama, it's gonna be different.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Well, you would hope these are scientific polls, but you never know.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Right.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

But to me, the problem with the with the Republican Party is very similar to the problem with the Democratic Party, and and it's it's what I talked about earlier. It's they're they they really tend to only listen to these three members of the party.

SPEAKER_03 15:08

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

I think I think those those are or at the very least, those are the ones who are garnering the headlines. Yes. Yes. The moderate members, if you look at really scientific polls done by universities, not paid for by some political group. People with no agenda, most people are more towards the middle than they are the extremes. Right, right. It's like what, 65, 70, 74 percent, 75%, somewhere in there.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

You get one of those Gaussian curves, basically. Normal distribution.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Yes, you do. But the stuff that we're that we hear about the most in the media is the stuff at the edges.

SPEAKER_03 15:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

And I really think that that's the problem.

SPEAKER_03 15:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Is that the concerns of of the people who are more in the middle don't get addressed. And that's where we're seeing these polarizing effects as well. I'm a um I think I'm a Democrat, and so I have to identify with the Democrats, and I have to do whatever the Democrats say. I mean, you you get a lot of that in both parties. I think you probably get a little more of that in the Republican Party, but I don't think it's a huge difference. And I stress a little bit more. Right. Um, is I think I think that's the problem, is that you if you want to succeed, you can't just listen to the vocal 20%.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

You have to you have to listen to everybody. Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

You're saying there's more middle people than the other. Absolutely. How does that more independents get elected?

SPEAKER_02 16:29

Because independents can't get elected because they don't have the funding of the major parties behind them. It's only as impossible for an independent to get elected. Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Well, it doesn't matter what the percentage of people believe that they can't get elected anyway.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

I'm just saying, for example, if the Democrats listen to their more moderate members, you know, they they might not necessarily be making the making the same big pushes that they are.

SPEAKER_03 16:50

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Or looking at the Republican Party, for example, the the the more moderate members of the Republican Party probably really don't care all that much about abortion.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

But the extreme members do, and and the Republicans are always making abortion a big issue. And I feel the same way on the Democratic side. Is that the most liberal Democrats probably care a lot more about it than the average Democrat. And so many people become one-issue voters, but the parties are making them one-issue voters because they only want to because they spend so much time focusing on one issue.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Well, I can say that my family seems to be moderate Republicans uh for the most part, and they do very much care about abortion, though. And it feels it seems almost like that uh the abortion thing is the biggest thing that ties them to the Republican Party. Even though it's not the only thing. Well, like my like my relatives and all, it it's not all about guns at all with them. Not yours, but yeah, other at least from the the Catholic block of people, there's probably a lot who are not extremely conservative, but still like the abortion thing is there, and also some of the democratic things are definitely in line with Catholic beliefs too, obviously. And I think there is some degree of moderation with due to that.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

But obviously, you have a lot of evangelicals and such who are just just to underline, sorry to interrupt, but just to underline that point, uh huh, you know one one of the things that religion teaches us is that all lives matter, all lives are sacred, right? Right? Right. So we're supposed to support because of that, we're we we being religious people, we're supposed to support the side that is anti-abortion because we want we want to support these unborn lives, we want them to live. On the other hand, we're also supposed to support, we're also supposed to be anti-corporal punishment.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Well, we don't want we don't want we don't want people killed, but but well, that's not as big of an issue, so we'll still support the Republicans, even though one's a Democratic issue and one's a Republican issue. So it's like you know, they're making a choice that the young life is as more worth than the older prisoner who committed whatever crime is get and is gonna get uh the death penalty for it.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Well, there's also things with um how do you approach wars? They're the more dove-like and the more hawkish, and it's there's a lot of people, at least on the liberal side, say, oh, Republicans care about uh the fetus until it's born, and then after that they don't care about them anymore. And there's a lot of social nursing homes.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Yeah. It's like they don't care about them at all.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

There are a lot of social programs where it's like you have all these young kids, and now these kids weren't necessarily wanted and they're out in the world, and the Republicans are anti-social programs to deal with the kids that they didn't want aborted.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Right. And I think a lot of that that particular problem, just the stuff we're talking about, there is some room for compromise there. But on abortion, for example, neither side wants to compromise at all about any part of it.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

That's why. And that's why we're getting that crazy abortion law in Texas.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Nobody compromises because they don't know what happens because they think that there are other people on their side saying, Yeah, you're going over to their side now. And they don't want to be seen as they don't they don't want to they don't want to have any weakness.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

And again, nowadays, because of gerrymandering, they don't have to.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

If they know that 70% of their district is ultra-liberal, well, they can just continuing being ultra-liberal and just screw the other 30% of the people in their district. I don't care about them because I don't need them to get elected.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

If you're talking gerrymandering, you gotta bring up the point. But did you say about your district it goes all the way up to Margaret? Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

I mean, the people always want to, that's a fair point. The people always want to blame blame Republicans for gerrymandering, but we we here in Maryland, especially in the district that Anthony lives in, Anthony has uh lives in one of the most ridiculous gerrymandered districts in the entire country.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

I live in Rockville, Maryland, I remember. I'll I'll say the the quick story for the podcast here. I live in Rockville, Maryland. I remember I got I'm technically registered Republican since I grew up that way. So I get stuff in the mail, and I got this stuff in the mail. I guess the guy's name was Neil Parrott, and I was getting stuff in the mail about him as a candidate, and I was okay, so that that's the information I get. And then my family and I went up to Deep Creek in uh August of 2020, and I think which is what, 120, 160 miles away? It's two and a half hours away. It's in Garrett County, which is the upper left corner of Maryland. I know it's a small state, but it's not that small a state, it's still a two and a half hour drive.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

So either from here or from roughly 120 miles apart. That sounds reasonable. It's not like that. When I'm up there and I see these signs from the opair, and I'm like, oh, I I didn't realize he was a statewide candidate. I thought he was just my district. And then I look into it like, oh, that is part of my district. My district is Rockville, Maryland, and Garrett County, and whatever, you know, I think Allegheny and Mushkin County also. So basically, they grab a whole lot of liberal people in my area. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

And the entire these counties are very small, relatively, relatively conservative counties in Western Maryland.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

That there's actually been talk of them seceding to West Virginia.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

It is a massively different mentality up there.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

It really is like you're you're not even in the same state anymore because of how liberal the state is as a whole. And so they gerrymandered the hell out of it. So all those conservative votes get canceled out big time by very liberal Rockwell.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

You were so close to getting rid of gerrymandering with that whole Joe Manchin Freedom to Vote Act. If it had passed, it's supposed to get rid of gerrymandering. And now would be the perfect time because they they do the census in the every 10 years on the multiple of 10.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

The numbers are nearly through getting crunched. Yes, yes, for the census.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Not anywhere near as much, but I yeah, not anywhere near as much, but it's it's helping them a little bit, but at the same time, it's just like this is not the right direction for anybody to be going in. We'd be much better off if everything was drawn up by a computer. I remember I heard like Mitch McConnell's like, oh, you want a computer drawing your maps? Like, yes, I do want a computer drawing the maps, or at least get some both parties have to agree on this, or some anyway.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

You have to have some what's the size of a congressional district? I can't remember, is it 900,000 or is it 1.1 million?

SPEAKER_00 23:55

900,000-ish people per district. And obviously, like Wyoming is one district. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

But I I would like to see more logic, just more logical lines drawn. You have to come up with some criteria. Like if it's supposed to be 900,000, you can't have a district that has 450,000. There has to be a minimum. Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

There has to be, you know, and they do except for when you have a state that you just can't divide up that way because there's too few people. Yeah. Uh they do they do actually get the numbers.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Well, I know, but but yeah, my point, you know, so so you draw the line at this county, this county line, and well, okay, there's there isn't enough here, so we have to include the next county. Well, that makes it too much. Well, then we split the county in half, right? You know, north to south, east to west, whatever makes sense for that state.

SPEAKER_03 24:43

Right.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

You know, just something that that's relatively logical.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

There's this font of gerrymanders for your each letter, did I tell you this before? Each letter of the alphabet. I think so, yeah. Each letter of the alphabet is a gerrymander district. And you can make an entire font with all 26 letters out of that. So just for perspective on what craziness is going on with all this.

SPEAKER_03 25:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

And we would be so much better off if there was a need for people to be much more towards the middle.

unknown 25:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

As opposed to only and there's certain there's certain district like your district in Rockville is still going to be extremely liberal no matter there would be there would be no way in Maryland to to gerrymander that. I mean you could you you'd have to make it part of both western and and eastern Maryland at the same time to even have hopes of making it a conservative district. Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

I'm going to be represented by a liberal regardless of how I personally. Yeah, that's my point. That's mine. Yeah, there's a lot of people. But Garrett County is being represented by a bi-liberal representative, too. And that's that is not fair to say.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Yeah, but when you have a state that's that's what, let's say roughly five hours wide. Sure. And you have to go two and a half hours to cover from one extreme to the other in your district, yeah. That that's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Right, right. So if it's so liberal, how did Connie Morilla end up in Montgomery County? She's a Republican all the way. Well, that was a well, but when we're got two Republic governors, Hogan and Hurley coming.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Well, look at look at who they were up against. So in your viewpoint, you know, just you know, like we're not expecting to solve the problems, but like what are we, like what what what can we what can we hammer at? What can we look into? What can we like, you know, like we're gonna address the real issue, like just anything in that general direction of getting to the point. I feel like you've been talking so much, I won't I'm gonna toss it to work.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Well, no, there's a lot of issues. Yeah, what do you have to do? Education. You gotta get education, then you can take care of these things in an intelligent manner.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

There's just too many people that they're just evenly left behind.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

I've heard a great many things about about yeah, they just pass people through great.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Well, uh, I mean this is the time in the podcast where I have to say my wife is a is a high school teacher and my views do not reflect hers or should reflect upon her. Uh but I obviously have insight into the issue as a result. And and I I've heard I've heard stories where parents have said in seventh grade, my kid's failing every subject. I want you to hold him back. Right. I want him to repeat seventh grade. We we we you know, he needs to learn this lesson that he can't skate by doing nothing. No, we won't do it. Right. They refuse to hold people back.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

There's a child left behind. Well that that that's that's that's that's ancient history now.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Yeah, I know it is, but that started that mess part of it.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

It did, but but some ch some children need to be left behind.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Yeah. I mean some I mean to have them repeat a great is I don't call that being left behind. I call that putting them in the proper position to get to a point where they are better off for it.

SPEAKER_02 28:03

Yes, exactly. You know, the you want to talk about the problems with education, you get people writing papers from this liberal arts standpoint rather than a scientific standpoint, and they make bad conclusions. There's nothing wrong with a liberal arts education, but trying to take principles that you learn in a liberal arts education and then applying them to scientific principles, you have to understand and have a background in the scientific principles. And people don't understand how to how to write a proper research study.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

Okay, so let's let's wrap up. Closing thoughts. What do you have about how about you first?

SPEAKER_01 28:38

You didn't mention filibuster.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

The filibuster, okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Because I know that's uh uh sticking your core on it.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

The filibuster is definitely a realm of roots of all evil of some sort. The gerrymandering is to the house since the filibuster is to the senate, perhaps. No, not one-to-one, but they are in some ways they are both roots of all evil. The gerrymandering for sure. The filibuster has they're analogous.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

I are analogous.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Uh they're very different, but they're roughly analogous, yeah. So so what do you what else do you think? Any other roots of all evil uh that come to mind at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 29:13

So you mentioned earlier the age, and I saw this a few weeks back, the age of the Senate.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

Yeah, what's the age of the average senator? It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

There are about, I think there are three, maybe four senators who are younger than me.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Yeah, they need term limits.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

So they need Well, I mean I mean, it's okay if they were all a little older than me. If they if they were in their 40s and 50s, I wouldn't. Yeah, but I think most of them are in their 60s. There are many in their 60s, there are some in their 80s, 70s, 80s, sure. It's yeah, that that's a little on the old side. And the the whole creature of the Senate thing, it's a lot of frustration with that, and there's a lot going on with people who they're just kind of in there for life and they don't need to learn the new society to become more and more out of touch, perhaps.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

Yeah, I I wouldn't have come up with that, Woody, but but I I agree with you a whole lot.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

If you're gonna do that, you extend it to Supreme Court age limit. Okay, Supreme Court.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

I I'd have a harder time figuring out how to do uh uh an age limit or term limit for the Supreme Court, but I I agree that term limits for the House and the Senate would would be good ideas, but let's face it, this is an this is an unsolvable problem because who decides they have to act outside their own best interests and in the trade of the city. And who's I mean, look, it's just human nature. Who's gonna do that?

SPEAKER_00 30:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

I mean it it's like who who decides if the Senate gets a Senate gets a pay raise? Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

The Senate does. Right, yeah, vote the whole vote themselves a pay raise thing.

SPEAKER_02 30:45

I mean, you have to you have to be a very magnanimous person to not vote for you to get a pay raise.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Right. So I mean, right. So part of it is acknowledging problems that are unsolvable, but other parties acknowledging problems that might in theory be solvable. But the important thing is acknowledging the problems and getting to the roots of the problems. And okay, in some ways it's just human nature is flawed, and that's that's a root of all problems. But that said, we're like a human nature is flawed in the perspective than that.

SPEAKER_02 31:14

But the the the the overall flaw is is that the people who people who have to make the decisions, the people who have to make the changes, are the people that get hurt by the changes being made. So of course they're not going to be made.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

And term limits you were talking about, at the end of the term limit, then you get the lame duck situation where all kinds of crap gets passed. Then that becomes a problem.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

Yeah, I mean let's just uh let's talk about like term limits in the Senate, for example. In the Senate, it would work a little easier because you have the offset, because they're not all elected the same year. Right. Which which makes a big difference. Right. And so eventually you get to the point where there would be enough randomization of who's term limited out of office and who isn't, that in the Senate, I don't think the lane duck issue eventually would be an issue anymore, but in Congress it would. Yeah. Yeah. Every two years every yeah. It would be uh it would be a big percentage every two years that are getting voted. I mean it it's a much more difficult issue in Congress than it is in the Senate.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Well, those are more like systemic changes with here's how the system is set up. We're not really looking at changing how the system is set up so much as working within the legal parameters of what the Constitution defined and trying to build from there and trying to fix things along with that. I think that it's working out loopholes, right? Exactly. Some of the stuff has been norms that have been unwritten and they aren't codified, and people take advantage of that. It's like the gun show loopholes.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

They use those little things to the same type of thing.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

Yes. Gary, any further closing thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 32:45

No, I mean I I think a lot of the stuff we've talked about, you know, the the conclusion that that we've just kind of reached is the issue. The issue is that when you have have the senators deciding what's gonna happen to the senators, human nature takes over and and nothing is gonna change, and and likewise for congresspeople. You know, and I don't know what to do about that.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

So well, I don't know, I don't know how you change that.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

So what I'm going to do from here is build on and maybe do some of the uh like like the first episode I did delved into the Supreme Court recent ruling and all that. I think I'm gonna try to delve into an episode here or there with some of these key things and try to now analyze what's going on and lay it out in detail. So, yeah, so we are we'll uh we're going to wrap up at this point. Uh great discussion, nice talking with you both. I noticed like Woody very much has been the guy who uh who brings up the initial idea and then Gary expounds on it. So uh both pieces of the puzzle with you guys have been helpful for sure with getting the conversation going with this.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Sure. It was fun.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Yes, well until next time. Thank you both. Until next time, and we are out.