Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
The problems we have in the country are solvable, but not solvable the way we’re approaching them today, because of partisan politics. Richard Helppie, a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist seeks to find a place in the middle where common sense discussions can bridge the current great divide.
Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
Episode 12- Common Bridge Recap Part 1
As we spin down 2019, we take the next two episodes and pull a few clips from earlier podcasts. This is part one of that recap. We think you'll like hearing it.
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Speaker 2:Welcome to the podcast, the common bridge with Richard helpy. Rich is a successful entrepreneur in the technology, health and finance space. He and his wife Leslie are also philanthropists with interest in civic and artistic endeavors, but with a primary focus on medically and educationally underserved children. My name is Brian Kruger. And from time to time I'll be the moderator and host of this podcast. Hello everyone and welcome to a Christmas Eve. We're going to have some fun today. Uh, Rich's not in the studio. So, uh, what I've decided to do this week and maybe next week too until until he comes back, uh, for the new year is to have a little bit of a greatest hits. And um, we're going to reach back to the first episode because it encapsulates what the common bridge is all about. And rich talks a little bit about, um, the polarization problem in politics today.
Speaker 3:I think that the case can be made that party politics has failed, that we are in an election cycle right now. And I'd like to ask people if, does it matter who the Democrat nominee is and does it matter who wins in November, 2020. Now rest assured you'll get very emotional, uh, answers to both those questions. Okay. But I'd like to pose this question. How different are we today or how different would we be? Had the 2016 presidential election turned out the way everybody expected it to you, you think that the polarization would still be the same? The hatred on both sides of the year and year out? I'm against you. I'm for you would still be as well. Think about how adept our politicians have become at partisanship. They're really, really good at it. And so the day that our current president was elected, the other party said, we are going to fight this. Resist this. There was no handshake across the aisle. There was no olive branch. There was no, let's put the election behind us. Let's work for the people. It was no, we are going to be very radical about opposition from day one.
Speaker 2:You know what? I think I'm going to pull another, um, clip from that first episode because it also gets into something that is a part of Rich's soul. And that's the value of education. And I think this is very interesting as well.
Speaker 3:I first want to step back and talk about how absolutely vital education is and the future of our country relies on it and an educated populace and an educated is, so let's take a fictional character, a childless miser with a harder stone. We'll call him rich. I, well, let's think of another name, I think, I think Dick is, might've said have been easier.
Speaker 2:But anyway, this, this, this, this, this, this, this,
Speaker 3:this fictional person is a work in a, let's say they're making a medium wage and they've been frugal and they've saved their money and their plan is to retire and rely on social security and Medicare to supplement their pension. Okay. That's the plan. Why should they be concerned about education? Well, let's examine that. What makes up their pension? It's investments in companies. Well, who's working at those companies? It's the kids that are in school right now and the kids that are about to be born that are going to go attend those schools. How good are those companies going to be if that workforce is an educated, so how good is the pension going to be? And similarly, the social security payments which come from the current workforce. If you want to have enough money in there to take out, you have to have enough people paying taxes in today in order for those of us aging out to take out.
Speaker 2:I'm going to jump ahead now to the second episode, way back in October where rich was talking about gun control and what his policy idea was about, uh, proficiency and training based, uh, gun ownership. And this is kind of interesting listening to this.
Speaker 3:And when I think about firearms, I think about this, we don't allow pilots to get their private pilot license and jump into the seat of a seven 47 and take off. Um, we do not allow people to own fireworks and unless they can show they know how to handle them and they know how to store them. And that they're, they can be competent with them. We don't take driver's licenses and let a 16 year old get behind the wheel of an 18 Wheeler w w we, we don't do that in all of these cases. We have graduated licensing so that the person that enjoys these privileges, that they show that they've taken the time to understand how to safely operate, they show that they will commit to safe storage. Um, and they will demonstrate a competency under the watchful eyes of trained instructors. And in the case of pilots, including medical exams and psychiatric evaluations. And I think about a structure perhaps like this, if someone wants to purchase a gun, they should have the right to purchase that gun. And there's lots of good reasons for it, but frankly, they don't need a reason. And, but I would say this, that the first gun might be limited to revolvers of a certain caliber with a certain capacity and perhaps a deer rifle with a limited number of rounds and, uh, subject to a bit of a written test and then demonstrating that they have the ability to handle the weapon safely. And then, you know, in a period of time it could be a period of months or it could be up to a year, uh, more education and more a review by a gun instructor and show you can handle a semiautomatic handgun. You can, you can, uh, use a, a larger caliber weapon, um, that in and move up to carbines and such. I believe it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 million guns in the United States. Amazing. Over 10 million of the so-called assault rifles. Now if you think about those numbers, if the issue was the hardware, every day would be absolute carnage, right? Right. But, you know, and so people, most people are using them safely. Most people are storing them. Well, what we need to do is make sure that the people that shouldn't have them don't, and part of that process is demonstrate that you've got proficiency with it. And note that the proposal, I have restriction no one from owning a firearm. It does not infringe on the second amendment. And while I'm no constitutional scholar, it does have the words well-regulated and these seem to be sensible regulations. Now, here's a good thing about this, Brian. Sure. Nobody's going to agree with this because nobody wants to give up their position on the polar extreme. And so once again, our government that's supposed to be for the people refuses to come together to compromise because they're way more interested scoring points against each other. Right? Which gets back to your common bridge theme. It's like, how about you come a little bit this way on this, on the bridge, we'll come in this way. And here the answer is somewhere in the middle. The answer is somewhere in the middle. And it used to be that the art of compromise and getting the most sensible thing or what's achievable was considered to be good leadership, good politics, good policy, good government that's been in our lifetime. It, it wasn't too long ago where we valued that and the politician valued that. And that's disappeared in the last two decades. Yes, it has. And now we have, uh, extremes and, and choices that are worse and worse each year.
Speaker 2:So we're going to jump now into the third episode, which is also in October. And rich was, uh, talking about, uh, his disappointment again and the polarization of politics in that, uh, the democratic party can't seem to get their act together to defeat a president that makes everybody a little uncomfortable to say the least. Um, listening
Speaker 3:and we've all seen the behavior of our president. And look whether you like the economy, whether you like the destruction of ISIS, whether you like the, uh, action on the border and so forth. You have to admit there every American cringes not knowing what's going to get tweeted out at three in the morning. All right? Or the constantly changing positions and so forth. All right. It's an uncomfortable time. At best. Trump has been a disruptor. Yes, indeed. And all the opposition party had to do was act like adults. Get a platform that America likes and present a reasonable candidate. In fact, two of the three, it'd be a landslide. And yet, what have they done? They've acted like children from the, uh, street marches, the property destruction after an election, um, to, uh, the horrible behavior at the Supreme court, uh, nomination. All right. To the, uh, hoax investigations that are going on to the yes, this time we've got him on impeachment. It's like, give it a rest for Pete's sake. Think about a platform that America wants and come up with a candidate and everybody would get behind that. People are hunger for that. So the answer is not going to be in partisan politics. All right? I don't believe, um, you know, no matter what the outcome of the election is going to be, that people are going to go, okay, great. We've got that behind us. Um, and the really sad thing is that when you look at the people that are struggling in the Democrat primary, like John Hickenlooper, who's out well qualified to be president of the United States, um, uh, Delaney, Bennett, uh, Tulsa gathered maybe a little early for Tulsi, but, um, these voices of reason that are not ideologues and know how to operate a government, uh, there are long out of the process at this point.
Speaker 2:In this last clip that we do, um, for this, uh, greatest tip hits episode, and I think we'll do this again next week too. Um, rich talks a little bit about, uh, Elizabeth Warren who, uh, back in October, um, had probably, uh, maybe a little higher approval rating in the polls, but, uh, Rick says some interesting things here, um, on this side of the Island, on the left side of the aisle, which I think you might find interesting.
Speaker 3:There is a theory that, um, the Democrats have to fall in love with their candidate. Um, and, and there is more of appeal to the emotion on that side versus the pragmatism. And that's the nature of the beast for both sides. Indeed. And it may be more about appealing to the pragmatism. And so if I was advising Senator Warren and if she gets a nomination, I would really stress where do we go from here, um, and acknowledge that, you know, at the pocket book issues, things are pretty good right now. Um, and then move to the, you know, how do we invoke more fairness into the system and so forth. Um, and again, I think she's doing a brilliant job with the campaign. I think she's treading a fine line between the, uh, Medicare for all, um, that now the people who've seen the bill, they go, well, wait a minute. That's not really what we want. So the, the kind of, you know, uh, catchphrase is off. Um, and she's a very, she's a hardworking person. She's a, uh, you know, good economist and such. Um, but she's going, but she's going to have very difficult time separating herself from what people fear about the Democrats that they've moved too far left and there's a lot of ammunition out there for those shares. And you think that that's her biggest Hill to climb? Or do you think that maybe health decline is wrong when, or do you think the next biggest thing she needs to worry about is that running mate, how can she, how can that running mate then bring in a much more, right. The running mate is the ticket to being competitive in November of 2020. All right. That's, that's going to be, I mean, if you think about it, if I'm playing the hand of the president, right, I would point at her and say all of the unemployment numbers, which are impressive, no matter how you want to call them, the increase in wages, the fact that the taxes on the coastal elites is starting to get balanced a little bit, which is a aspect of the tax system that's long been overdue, that, that this current president Trump fixed, um, pointed all those and say they want to go backward. Okay. And if she plays into that, she loses. She has to acknowledge that those gains have been made and then point to the future and say, this is where I'm going and I'm the adult leader to take you there. And that's where I give her really high marks, is that she has behaved like an adult. And that is one of the, to me, the three elements for the Democrats act like adults platform that America wants reasonable.
Speaker 2:So I think we'll wrap this up, uh, this week. And, uh, like I say, it's Christmas Eve. So it's our little gift to you. Um, but I've like this, I think what we'll do is, um, perhaps a week from today we'll finish off the recap of what we've done this year with the common bridge because I think it starts to bring together a lot of, uh, what rich, um, which is what, what's important to rich. When he promotes the common bridge, uh, concept. Um, it gets a lot more into policy and such. And um, and I think you'll find that interesting for those of you who've been following it along all along. Um, I think you'll appreciate those clips. And for those of you who haven't, just keep going, you might want to go back and, uh, look at, uh, podcasts on apple.com or go to uh, Richard helpy.com and you can go through all these episodes, all these podcasts. I think you'll find it very interesting and we're looking forward to, um, an incredible 2020. We have a lot of stuff coming out in the new year and, uh, everybody just have a happy holiday and have a safe holiday and we'll see. See you next week. You have been listening to Richard healthy's common bridge podcast recording and post-production provided by stunt three multimedia. All rights are reserved by Richard helpy. For more information, visit Richard helpy.com.