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 49- Half way Through 2020, and Historically Epic Six Months
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Rich breaks down what could go down as one of the most historic six month periods in U.S. history, and sets up what could top that in the final six months.
Engage the conversation on Substack at The Common Bridge!
[inaudible]
Speaker 2Welcome 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.
Speaker 3And welcome to the common bridge. This is our 49th episode and as we inch closer and closer to that half century, Mark, what better time than now to look back at other halves in particular, the first half of the year 2020, which by any yardstick , uh , has been amazing in , uh , almost biblical standards. Rich. It's great to have you. I'm sorry. We're not in the studio again. We haven't been in the studio together in almost four months now. So we do this using phone technology and such, but it seems to work rich. Tell us that it's going to be all right. I mean , just give us your perspective on the first six months of 2020.
Speaker 4Well, Greg Brian , and look even for a chronically optimistic person like myself, this is been very difficult. We've had to deal with things that other generations have had to deal with, but the intensity and the compressed timeline and the amplification through our 24 hour news cycle, I think has really stressed people out. You know, look, we still are playing by the same two problems. We have a government that's been confiscated by two major parties, neither of whom can work on the issues of the day last Thursday, or excuse me, last Wednesday, the Democrat shut down a police reform bill because they thought it might give the Republicans a win it's nuts. And it's happened the other way too. I should be clear about that. And then we all have a reporting process. That's massively corrupted. There's a story narratives first and then fit selected facts to support that narrative and then ignore or twist others. Look , if you remember, at the beginning of this year, the stock markets were flying along. Unemployment was at record lows , uh , across all sectors of the economy. Wages were rising. They were rising faster in lower incomes. That all categories by race by gender by income level were going up. Things looked really, really good at that point in playing in the background, we had the impeachment narrative that was winding to its inevitable conclusion. Of course, at the beginning of the year, the articles of impeachment had not yet been delivered to the Senate by speaker Pelosi . Those were dispatched , uh , fairly quickly. And you know , we're still looking for the whistleblower if such a human being actually exists. But that was also at the beginning of the year, just January, June, January, and then as the rising number of cases of COVID-19 caused us to pivot and you know, like any crisis, there were things that were done well, there were things that were in hindsight, not done well as we tried to battle this with the best information that we had at the time. And, you know, we did flatten the curve and it came that curve flattening came at a price of more mental health cases, suicides, addictions, domestic violence, as well as devastation through the economy. Now on the list of things that were done wrong, probably top of the list was the five States that discharged elderly people into COVID infected nursing homes that drove a substantial part of the death rate that we dealt with and will continue to deal with. On the upside. Both parties came together to get relief to American people. And in contrast to the great financial crisis where the liquified , the banks on a selective basis, there was more liquification for the households. So 2007, eight, nine, you know , person would lose their job. They weren't able to make their mortgage or rent payment. Their credit rating would suffer and they'd lose their home. And there were a lot of families that had to restart after that. And now that person may have lost their job, but because of the enhanced unemployment, the payroll protection program and the stimulus checks, they could still make their rent or their mortgage payment. So their credit ratings remain intact and they still have their home. So the restart, while it's going to probably go in fits and starts that at least we haven't wiped out a lot of households. So rich, what are some of the other things we haven't dealt with them ? So the other things that we haven't dealt with though, are things like infrastructure and that we had dams literally burst. And I was surprised to learn that both the owners of the dams and the state government were suing each other about the management of those dams. The fact that I was frankly surprised that the dams were privately owned, which doesn't really make a lot of sense to me, but, but they were. And the ideas that have been bounced around at federal and state levels about roads, bridges , uh , information systems, and the light have remained completely on addressed. You know, we, we have today, you know , as we came out of the pandemic crisis, now we have a economic situation that we need to try to get restarted. And of course, as these things go, we just don't know enough about the contours of this disease. So when the second wave hits and it spikes again, which is sort of is doing right now, do you see them shutting the economy down again? Or do you see them handling this any differently? Uh , yes. I do see them , uh , handling things differently. And the big part about it is that we know what the metrics are that we need to manage to . And that is around our ability to care for people that are stricken with the virus. So I think we need to be watching , um, hospital capacity. So it's beds. Um, we need to be monitoring our personnel, which we of course exhausted the people on the front lines and expose many of them to , uh , infection. Are we adequately supplied with personal protection equipment? If those things are in place based on the spread of the disease that we're sure to get, then it'll be managed much better this time around. We've also learned that since the first time that the disease likes to attack elderly and vulnerable people. And that the answer to that is to not let that infection get into nursing homes and the life . And we've learned that the ventilators are not a particularly good therapy and that four out of five people put on the ventilators die. And the reason that they go on events is that their blood oxygen level reflects somebody that is crashing, even though they're alert and speaking, I actually spoke to a respiratory therapist at one of the big university hospitals on the front lines and said, yeah, none of the data correlated, but they had to really kind of break protocol and not put people on vents and they had a much better outcome. So I do think we'll manage it better, but we'll probably still be plagued by people trying to build an agenda off of it. Porno a couple things that I've talked to people there's alarming and going look, the total number of cases is going up. And I said, look, it's a total. It can't go any other direction. Interesting thing about those increasing numbers, right? It's like, it can't go, it's the total. It can't go down and it can't go sideways. It's gonna go up. And then I've seen entire articles about , uh , hospitals are at capacity, that name no hospitals, and don't have a single number in the entire article, no numbers at all. And to manage anything you have to know you're managing and you have to be able to quantify it. And had we a more competent leadership at the federal level, it would be a good crisis manager, which Donald Trump is not. I'm saying here's where we're at, you know, across the country, in terms of infections, how many symptomatic infections, how many hospitalizations, here's our capacity for them? Here's an area that it looks like we could be under strain and we could get that at, at the state level, but we don't. And we could get it at the local level, which we don't.
Speaker 3Well, yeah, rich. I think if we all agree that if we could get news that everybody could trust, that might be a different story. It's no secret that CNN, MSNBC and Fox are really just TV shows , uh , more for entertainment , um , and , uh , opinion persuasion than real news. Well, maybe that would help things out as well,
Speaker 4Precisely. And I've been through a number of economic recessions and the news articles and the news outlets were reporting key factors. What's the interest rate today. What's the unemployment rate today, those kind of business briefings, you know, net it for me, where do we stand? What are we doing about it? But we have this hysteria mongering reporting mechanism that wants to take each of those numbers and write a story spun one way. And if the numbers don't support it, just knock the numbers out. Exactly. So anyway, I would like to get us into a more adult conversation about that. Probably no discussion of 2020 is complete without the tragic death of George Floyd. I don't think I have anything to add about the circumstances around his death, but there are things that are remained on a dress by way of example, within days of mr. Floyd's death, there was a, a white man that had a gas mask on was going and breaking windows in Minneapolis at AutoZone and other the businesses. There was a brief time where it was purported that this person worked for the st Paul police or one of the other cities, both of which said, no, we don't know who this person is. It doesn't work for us. I haven't heard a thing about this since that time. And I'm hard pressed to believe that someone doesn't know who that is and why that person would be stoking violence the way they did
Speaker 3Well. I'd say it drives the narrative, sells advertising and probably makes great TV, right?
Speaker 4It's but it's off TV. That's the thing. Where is the story? Because to me that's important. Look, I think that we can understand a spontaneous eruption of frustration that might lead to a property damage roads, blocked arson and such. If people feel like they're being persecuted and finally enough's enough. I think that while not , would not condone it, I think that is very understandable that someone could react like that. I don't believe that we should ignore people that are using these kinds of tragedies in an opportunistic or in a planful way. And this is an unending dressed aspect of all that's transpired in the last several weeks in our cities of all sizes and indeed across the world that we need to get to the bottom of who is doing what, what is the difference between a peaceful protest and a planned violence and anarchy because it's all out there in some
Speaker 3Measure . Well, rich as you and I had spoken about in a previous episode, and I think it was even maybe last week, you had pointed out that as you said, the protests are valid and you can see the spontaneous reaction to some of this stuff. But what bothered you is that on the very next day and sometimes the same day protests around the world would feature the exact same talking points, the exact signs with the exact font protestors , with the exact same outfits on. And it makes you take pause and wonder if this is not a global effort with some sort of coordination on the, on the backside,
Speaker 4You know , same tactics, same weaponry, and in New York. And this did get reported. It's being muted somewhat now. But two lawyers were caught with Molotov cocktails. They torched a police car and they had Molotov cocktail supplies in their car and they were going to distribute them. And in probably one of the more outrageous pieces of reporting that I've seen, and I've seen a lot of outrageous reporting CNN, the headline was something to the effect that how did two lawyers find themselves in this situation? It's like, you don't just wake up one day and go, Oh no, the pipe burst. Um , gosh, I never saw that cancer coming or, you know, my company got sold, no, you made Molotov cocktails and you went into Manhattan and you torched a police car.
Speaker 3Exactly. Nothing spontaneous about that. You had to go get those supplies and be ready for a confrontation after that.
Speaker 4Oh, it's , it's a lot. And, you know, look, we all know that the most effective use of Malatov of course, or the fins and particularly the fins from Lapland who beat up the Russians for several years. Yeah .
Speaker 3Well done for backing that into the story of rich , uh , waive that finished flag
Speaker 4Indeed. You know, that was just masterfully done. It'll look, we remain a country capable of doing incredible things. Yet we are stuck not being able to deal with our roads. Our bridges, our school systems are equal access to higher education , uh , to discussions about equal treatment under the law to , you know, and that's from a question still surrounding conduct at the level of the president , uh, down to the patrol officer on the street , um , with citizens of , uh, different races. And we are capable of addressing those things in a methodical way. But if I have to recap 2020, we've moved away from them. And if anything should be able to bring us together, it would be a pandemic, but I'm sure you were astonished as I was that certain groups of people in the street were immune from Corona virus infection. Uh , but other people were sure to be super spreaders for doing essentially the same thing.
Speaker 3Yeah. That was sort of interesting. Wasn't it, there was sort of a , a task that approval of all of the demonstrations in the streets, even joining in spray, painting the streets, murals rioting. And then within a few days after that, there was a rally in , uh, Oklahoma. Um, Trump had a rally and that was seen as probably the most dangerous thing we could be doing during the spike and this , uh, Corona saga.
Speaker 4Yeah. Well, I mean, you could make the argument though, that one was indoors and one was outdoors and one was masked and one wasn't masked. But again, what, some things don't change. Like, you know, there was the president concerned again about size. I mean, geez , we should be able to do better.
Speaker 3All right . Alright . So let's recap something. And I got to ask you a question on top of it. So it's been since just January six months, we've had impeachment primaries, COVID-19 police brutality turned into protest, turned into riots, turned into tearing down statues and painting streets and starting own little kingdoms within cities and such. And now we're back to covert again, just taking a look at this. I got to ask you if this would have happened two years ago, and this wouldn't have been an election year, do you think it all would have gone down the same way?
Speaker 4Well, I'd like to be like the Congress and I reserve the right to revise and amend my remarks at a future time. Great preamble. Alright . So I thought about that and here's the troubling thing. Me elections have been about accountability where the incumbents have to go back to the electorate and say, we promised you we were going to do a, B and C and we're here to report. Here's what we've done. And here's what we would like to do in a next term. And the challenging party or parties would need to come in and say, we've observed what's occurred. And this is the alternative policy and approach and priorities that we're offering. And what we have done in effect is let the Republicans and the Democrats and the reporting sources off the hook, by not asking them about the key policy matters and let them distract us into this race, to the bottom, with the heads of both tickets, being wholly unqualified for the job as it will exist in January, 2021. And we're being distracted about peripheral matters that have no bearing that to me is the crumbling part of where we sit in history.
Speaker 3Well, I know this is a loaded question, but where does the media sit in all of this? Oh , no , here's a better one. I feel better about asking, asking you this. How has the media failed us on this are
Speaker 4Mainstream media. As some people coined it, a reporting outlets or sources as I coin it today, they are in scented to mute both president Donald Trump and vice president and presumed nominee, Joe Biden, you know, Trump, they desperately want to mute because between the crazy things he says, he actually says some reasonable things and , uh, you know, Biden, they want to mute because, well, frankly, there's a reason they are keeping them in the basement.
Speaker 3All right . Let's shift gears just for a bit. How do you think we turn this around or a better question would be, how is this justified? And when I say this, I mean the , uh , the protest they get, but the violence, the destruction of public property , uh, how is that justified? Is it a policing issue? Is everybody upset with the police? I mean, how does that work out?
Speaker 4I don't think there's any dispute that Americans want to have evenhanded policing. And we do not want to be frightening or incarcerating people because of the color of their skin or their gender or anything. But when you look at what's happened in Madison, Wisconsin in recent days that the national guard had to come out to protect state properties, that there were statues that were torn down and fireside. And the thing is, these are statutes that are there to honor advocates of women's rights. And that put an abolitionist , people that put their lives on the line to fight slavery. When you take down those monuments, like a man by the name of Hans Christian Hague antislavery activist, he fought for the unions. He died in battle and you take down his statue. There's something going on here beyond what the purported root cause is. And that those that are elected are not stepping up to take care of their citizens that are not stepping up to protect property that are not stepping up to protect government owned property. You wonder how they expect in a constitutional Republic form of government to gain reelection . I just can't imagine. I can't either rich and the both of us have seen much stranger things this year. It's so rich. Let's try to put a bow on this as much as, as much as we can. Um, this has been the first six months of the beginning of the third decade of this century, and it has been a doozy. There's no question about that. Is there a way forward and you are an eternal optimist, and I appreciate that, but do you have any words of comfort going forward as we look forward to the back end of 2020? Um , I believe it's imperative that we get on to policy and we have so many things to address , um , healthcare, which benefits, all of us is still unresolved. We still have no meeting of the minds around gun violence, and we don't have meeting of the minds around educational opportunities, fair treatment of people. And we need to really burrow in on that and insist that those that we elect actually help us resolve those matters. That's what the common bridge is about. That's what we hope to do as we move forward through the remainder of this year. I fear it's going to be a really wild ride, but we need to actually keep in mind that this country needs to turn its attention to its resources, its passions toward addressing those matters. There's much, much more that unites us , uh , whether you're a person on the left pole or the person on the right pole than there is in what divides us and the divisions can destroy us and the compromise and the middle ground and the reaching out at least gives us a fighting chance into the future. Um , and that's where we're going to be on the common bridge , um , as we roll into the second half of this most incredible year. So thanks, Brian. Appreciate you posting the common bridge again.
Speaker 2Thanks a lot. Rich . You have been listening to Richard healthy's common bridge podcast recording and postproduction provided by stunt three. Multimedia. All rights are reserved by Richard helpy for more information, visit Richard [inaudible] dot com.