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 53- Rich's Take on an Assortment of Today's Headlines and Chaos
Rich goes over civil unrest, and reaction on both sides, and as always, seeks to find solutions and a place to discuss them, on his Common Bridge. He also teases topics to come in the next two months that will complete Season One.
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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 Bruger and from time to time, I'll be the moderator and host of this podcast. And welcome to the common bridge. This is our 53rd episode. We're very excited about that, but we're even more excited about the fact that over the weekend, rich just got his 50,000 download, which is just amazing. Um, 90% of those have come in the last four months, and that's just awesome. And today we're going to do a little something different with this podcast. I'm going to give rich a couple of topics here and there, and it may seem a little more disjointed than normal, but I think it's a lot of fun because I try to take them off guard, but also get him to give us a real gut reaction about some of the things that are happening, uh, today and just try to get those takes. So without any further ado, here's rich and this is 53rd episode. And, uh, and here we go.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, Brian. It is indeed a surprise that we've had this much traction and this much following. And the acceleration that we've seen in new listeners is really gratifying. And it leads me to believe that people really do want to discuss policy issues, that the problems of the day can be solved. The opportunities of the moment can be seized and that people are just tired of the alarmist nature of the reporting industry, this whole arc of trying to shut down people that you don't like, or that you don't like what they say. I think more people are finally reaching their saturation point on that, looking for something else. And who knows, perhaps we're a small part of that. It's been a really interesting excursion so far. I think that many of the guests that we've had on have been not only educative to our audience, but a somewhat prophetic in some of the things that they indicated might happen. And, you know, we look forward to revisiting them. I'm hopeful to get, uh, Robert Greenfield back on and Aaron Boesky to talk about China, given everything that's going on.
Speaker 1:Uh, Palm PEO speech last week at Yorba Linda at the Nixon library about China was Dyer's probably the wrong word, but alarming is pretty close, right?
Speaker 2:It is. And there's a indication that he knows something that we don't know that they're gathering connections and evidence. And I know that I'll be watching very closely, you know, even people that are very staunch Democrats are very staunch left. I have a respect for Mike Pompeo as a professional. It's a shame that he's in a administration that is so uniquely run, shall we say,
Speaker 1:Well, you pulled that punch. Well,
Speaker 2:You know, look, it's, uh, people like to pile on the president. I have, you know, my assessment on how we ended up like this, uh, you know, with a man that is not qualified to be in the job who doesn't appear to want to learn how to do the job and has, I mean, there's no other way to put it, but massive personal problems. A night before last I watched an interview and there was a physician interviewing the president. The president had done a fairly standard basic cognitive assessment and he, the way he described it, he could remember five words and he went over it on and on and on. And so do you, nobody else can do this. And I know for sure, that's not true. And I had to conclude either he was lying okay. Or he's delusional, but it was odd that he would be doing this. And I think we're in this really strange point in time right now where my opinion, and I know this is not an opinion podcast, but if we were to hold an election today, and the choice was continued with Donald Trump as the president, or let's have a new election, I think it might be 60 or 70% in favor of let's just do another election. But I also anticipate that the November election is going to be very, very close that if the choice is Trump or Biden, or, you know, do a write in or vote for someone else, I think that the Trump Biden race is going to be extremely, extremely close. So rich this morning, I'm reading in the Oregon
Speaker 1:About the protests last night. And, uh, it's a really interesting article because they had cited and quoted, uh, an African American resident who thinks that the black lives matter, or at least the protests there have been co-opted by white America. And it's frustrating them. What are your thoughts about it?
Speaker 2:Oh, well, I read that piece myself and I thought that the quote from the man was spot on. And, you know, he said as a black person, this isn't a game cause I'm always going to be black police officer has a chance to take off the uniform. This is more than just a protest. This is more than a movement. This is my life. And you know, we've talked about the despicable way that black Americans have been treated, uh, throughout the history and how things have evolved to this point. But you look at a largely, in fact, indeed overwhelmingly white city like Portland, destroying the downtown, breaking into buildings, defacing things, attacking the courthouse. That's not what black America is after. As far as I know, and I've been listening carefully, we do need to move to a society where people are not judged on their heritage or their color, their skin. And I think that this anarchy and I'm going to use that term specifically, and I'm going to back it up by saying what sheriff Jerry Clayton said about it, that I think this anarchic is really co-opted or, or taken over what could be a real healing moment in the country and made it to something that is divisive and ugly.
Speaker 1:Well, rich, we had something in Detroit this past week, uh, where the schools, uh, the summer school programs have been interrupted by blocking buses and, uh, James Craig, our police chief in Detroit has really been disheartened by the fact that a lot of those protestors, most of those protestors are coming from the suburbs. And we're hearing from the black mothers, uh, in Detroit who are really upset saying, look, I need my child to go to the summer school program. And there are people outside of my city with an agenda. I don't understand stopping this. Do you have any thoughts on that at all? It just seems like there's a big disconnect.
Speaker 2:There's a number of elements that are converging at first of all, let's be real clear. Education is the way toward a successful life. And a person has to be educated and or trained in order to contribute. And you know, whether somebody is going to be a person that repairs air conditioning, uh, or assembles a product, or if they're going to be inventing a new technology or a new, uh, medicine and so forth, they all need to have education and all of the statistics and, you know, over a long period of time, bear that out, looking at an information economy, moving to a biotechnical economy. Education is the underpinning. And I challenge anyone to come up with a person that has excelled in their field without an education. Now, perhaps there's some artists and things that just had God given ability and coupled that with a lot of hard work and sacrifice, but education needs to be there,
Speaker 1:Which I know that education has close to both you and your wife. Leslie. So could you extrapolate on that a little bit more?
Speaker 2:One of the things that we need to acknowledge is that education particularly K through 12 is largely a local and state, both financed and controlled public service that's provided. And the department of education is a, almost a ineffective bureaucracy. It doesn't do a lot. It doesn't consume much of the spending. It doesn't have a great deal of power, quite frankly. And in my philanthropic work, which is an arc of many decades, there are great ways to educate a child. And one has to meet that child where they are today. And during this COVID sometimes it's best for online learning depending on the circumstances that child in that community at other times, the best place for that young person is in a school building. And that of course is with the appropriate protections and all of the steps that we are learning about to prevent this viral spread. But I really do take exception to people that continue to promote a centralize monopolistic education system that produces high school graduates that are unable to read or write or do basic computation. And they're trapping a lot of children of color inside of those. We absolutely have to have a society and an economy that gives as much education to as many people as possible. And I mean, real education tools that they can use to be a productive and contributing member of society.
Speaker 1:In the case of disrupting the summer school, obviously that's not a good thing. And, and obviously out of the 11 people that were arrested on Thursday, uh, 10 of them had no children. Not only were they from the suburbs, but they also had no children. And it's, I think it speaks volumes to the frustration of the inner city, uh, black families. And in this case, there were mothers who were counter protesting. They were saying, look, those are my children, but I'm not sure you understand, uh, not having a child and not living here what our struggles are and how important it is to be in school. Um, that must frustrate you from your philanthropic standpoint. Because again, as you said over the decades, you've strived hard to make those opportunities not only equal, but plentiful and the districts that you help out
Speaker 2:Leaving aside, the moral correct thing to do, which is to support every child and the child is innocent. They don't control the circumstances that they were born into, or the circumstances that they live under giving that child. The best opportunity, I think, is a moral imperative of every adult in the society. And for those people that don't have children that are not living in the district, even if they don't have the heart to do the right, they're
Speaker 3:Acting against their own interests, because they're going to want to retire or they are retired. And when they do become retired, they're going to live on either a pension, which is going to be dependent on the economy, or they're going to want to live on our broad social programs like social security and Medicare that are funded by payroll taxes. So they should for no other reason than their own selfish interest, want every one of those children to get the greatest education they can get. So they can be employed in this quickly changing economy so that their retirement incomes are secure. And that's where people frustrate me. They do things that are harmful. They do things that no feeling person should be doing, and they're doing it in a way that goes against their own interests.
Speaker 1:This seems like it's the exact same thing we were talking about at the beginning of this segment, where in Portland, the majority white community, I think 96% white community in Portland was co-opting the message that black lives matter was trying to get out. And now the story is about them. Uh, in this case with the buses in Detroit, the suburbs childless protestors white from the suburbs were, co-opting a message. And in this case, getting in the way of what the African American community wants in Detroit, there seems to be a disconnect there don't you think?
Speaker 3:Well, I think what you're describing really is the whack-a-mole nature of this hyper partisan world that we're living in. There are people and a good many of them that have such a unbridled hate for Donald Trump, that whenever they hear or see something, the first reaction is whether it's going to be good or bad for president Donald J. Trump. Now in the history of our Republic, presidents have come and presidents have gone and some have been very good. Some have been very bad and some have been someplace in between, but the basic principles of the country have remained intact. So I look at the evidence coming out about our FBI and other intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies in the 2016 election. And while I am no fan of Donald Trump as a president and am astonished, that was our pick. At that time as a nation, I can still be equally or more so outraged at the conduct of law enforcement, operating outside the boundaries of their charter and abusing their power. Yet you have a vast section of our country that doesn't want to deal with that because it is an attack on this particular president. Similarly, when we look at some of the protests, which no, Oh one disagrees with that has morphed into civil unrest, that most of us can understand that morphs into outright and our key and destruction of other people's property. They're all for that. Yeah. Under the perception, it may not be good for this president or perhaps this president's opponents. And they're all for, until you ask the question, well, what if this was going in front of your house or it was your house, it had to be boarded up. Alright. Alright. And, and so this notion that what's right, isn't right, and what's wrong. Isn't wrong. It's well, who does it benefit? And Brian looked to take this further, okay. That we have had society that was structured to impede the progress of women to realize their full potential and their first full range of choice. My beloved godmother, for way of example, when she got married, she had to leave employment at the telephone company because their policy at that time was, we don't employ married women. Really? What year was that? Oh gosh, this would have been, you know, 1940. So let's say, I think our early or late 1930s, she had to leave employment at that time. And, you know, then we went through in the mid seventies, as more women were in the workplace began the first development of the sexual harassment laws and then fairly well codified by 1981, where there were two causes of action under harassment. One was quid pro quo. The second was hostile environment. But listen to this while corporate America was dealing with these liabilities and discharging people from their jobs and disciplining people that couldn't make this much needed change in society, it wasn't until until 1995, that members of Congress were subject to the same rules. So think about this as bill Clinton was discovered to be doing really bad things as governor of Arkansas carried that forward into the presidency, he really bridged that arc between what laws were being used, change the corporate business world. And we're finally coming into government, but guess what area of the economy was left out? All right, the entertainment industry, how do you get to a point some 21 years after the Congress has been subject to sexual harassment laws? And then you have a reality TV host at that time, not a presidential candidate giving a very accurate description of Hollywood culture. What could be done to women if you were a star and this was 2016. And then shortly after that, we have the revelations around Harvey Weinstein. And we then discovered that this part of our economy, and some of this was the news to me, less than 5% of the writers women, less than 5% of the writers black and I'm astonished. But I just have to kind of tie this back to what this man said about the rioting and anarchy in Portland, that black people are being co-opted and used for another purpose.
Speaker 1:So what you're saying is, again, blacks are being co-opted for their cause and having it more offended as something else. And it's turning the message into it's either their cause or the other sides. Cause, and that's probably not right,
Speaker 3:Right. We have to quit thinking about their complaint, our complaint, and we need to have a just society that values human beings for the value of that human bank. And look, I am in a multiethnic household, our kids are taught the good things about all of the cultures that they emanate from. And when people say, well, they're offended by the tone, you know, black lives matter. That's not exclusionary because all lives cannot matter unless black lives matter, you can't separate them. And if we're in a culture or a society that denies opportunity to a person because of things that are beyond their control, their ethnicity, their race, the circumstances that they were born in, we can never have a fully just society. And look we've had on this program just recently, Chris Allen talking about the social determinants of health. I know for my work in education, that the adverse childhood events affect people and scar them forever. And there's more work that needs to be done
Speaker 2:There.
Speaker 1:You're right. That was a great podcast. I think that was an episode 38 with, uh, judge Mack and welcome all of our listeners to go back and listen to that one. Rich recently, you and I were talking off air about the cancel culture and you had told me, Brian, there's something new that comes up every week. That just surprises me. Um, and another one came up. Do you want to talk about that?
Speaker 2:I've seen in recent days a fact, this morning's Washington post, this is Sunday, the 26th, the Sierra club has to come to terms with its racist origins. And I'm thinking about all the great things the Sierra club's done. And do we have to pull that up by the roots?
Speaker 1:Exactly. So did you see last week that Louie Gohmert a Congressman from Texas, uh, introduced a bill that would ban the democratic party and other groups who supported the Confederacy. And I was laughing out loud when I heard the bill, but is that not the exact same thing as the cancel culture and the left is trying to do with the Sierra club?
Speaker 2:Well, who is he talking about as he was going through a history of abject racism and the punchline was the Democrat party.
Speaker 1:And I was thinking the same thing, I think what's he getting at? And then that came out, but it's sort of the same thing, right?
Speaker 2:Any chance that today we eliminate the Democrat party based on what they were doing a hundred years or 75 years or 40 years ago. You wouldn't want to hold that standard there. Or you could hold that standard and say, where are we today? And where do we go versus taking a historical figure and measuring them based on where we are in terms of our progress as a country and as a human race,
Speaker 1:Why cancelled culture, I think has this all wrong. They need to look at it in perspective. And of course you wouldn't get rid of the democratic party because of the advances that they've made since then. But I guess they could also be argued that in some ways the democratic party is still doing that today in the inner cities, right?
Speaker 2:If the choice was presented to most people and behind door, number one is the we're going to eliminate the Democrat party and we're going to erase everything they've ever done in history, or we're going to fix the problems so that young people in minority communities get a better education. I'd rather look forward. Can we do something here for those kids today?
Speaker 1:Right, exactly. And so I know it seems like we've been all over the map in this episode today, but in a lot of ways, we haven't and you keep coming back to the same theme of this chasm that appears in all walks of society, where there to be two sides that are bitterly opposed to each other. And there's no solution
Speaker 2:In the middle, Brian, this is why I'm doing the common bridge. And the Genesis was around gun policy and realizing that people that say they're afraid of guns and don't want any on one hand and people on the other side that say, there should be no restrictions that some place there was a reasonable place that we could come to to say guns are providing a part of our society and their protections from tyranny. And we don't want them in the hands of people that shouldn't have them. And I put up the policy about graduated licensing. And interestingly, I found people moving from the left saying, you know, maybe that would be better. I heard people moving from the right, who said, you know, I'm really a little uncomfortable with that, but you know, if that keeps the guns out of some hands of people that don't have it, we'd love to have those tools,
Speaker 1:The essence of the common bridge, two sides steadfast need to find the, a space in the middle. And that's exactly what you're trying to do here with the common bridge,
Speaker 2:Trying to find a pragmatic place. Let's talk about policing. And you look to the episode we did with sheriff, Jerry Clayton. People want to be able to bring in an authority to resolve situations that they cannot so that the strongest, most aggressive cannot take advantage of the weakest people or those that don't want to engage in a conflict. And that people will agree with that people will also agree. There's an absolute right to a protest. And people will also agree that characterizing the destruction of property and the menacing of police officers is not a peaceful protest. Despite what the news people want to say.
Speaker 1:I think that's where a lot of America gets off of the bandwagon of protest. When they see quote unquote peaceful protesters showing up in riot gear and helmets and weapons and such. And then when federal law enforcement shows up in similar garb, the protesters are now hurt and feel like they're being oppressed by a dictatorship.
Speaker 2:And now here we are, where if you believed what was published, you'd say, well, it's jackbooted thugs versus anarchistic, but people seize on, Hey, that's for or against someone I'm for or against. So I'm going to believe them without question. So,
Speaker 1:As we wind down this episode of assorted topics, I want to shift to major crimes spikes in major cities and specifically New York city, a while back a few weeks ago, mayor DeBlasio was celebrating on one hand, uh, the D population of his main jail at Rikers Island. He said, the population is now somewhere under 4,000. It usually has a daily population of around 10,000. At the very same time. New York has seen a spike in violent crimes and a 260 some percent jump and a specific gun violence and gun homicides. And even governor Cuomo has said, yeah, the there's probably a link to those two things. How can you have one with the other? And how do you reconcile those two things? And, you know, from a common bridge standpoint, rich, uh, how would you speak to, to that? And maybe not from a blaming standpoint, cause that's kind of obvious, but more from a solution step
Speaker 2:To be. This is a great opportunity for dialogue versus demagoguery for civil discussion versus setting out positions, that'll lead to civil war and you could sit down with most people and reach a conclusion on who ought to be in jail and who shouldn't be in jail. Um, there are people that are jail just because they can't make bail. We had judge Milton Mack on who was talking about mental health and how so much of our jail population really needs to be treated in a mental health facility and the number of people that are held in jail because they just can't afford bail for a nonviolent crime. And I think reasonable people could say, yeah, maybe jail's not the best place for them. At the same time, we have people that are social pass that do need to be incarcerated. So they cannot do any more damage or that need to be held for a day or two. So they can calm down and punishment. Particularly jail time is a deterrent. And if you have people that know they can commit crime, they can get themselves arrested and be processed out in a couple hours. There's really no downside to continuing their behavior,
Speaker 1:Right. So they know what they can get away with. They can take more risks and kind of recap like that,
Speaker 2:Right? And we can overreact on both sides. We can overreact on, you know, locking people up or abusing them for petty crimes, uh, or, you know, they, uh, expire during a confrontation with police over small stuff. Or we can go the other direction and not put away the people that need to be put away. And again, this is where the people that we elect are failing. Why are they failing us? Because they are not only emboldened, but they're supported by their particular political party. And they're very, very good at playing the partisan game. They're terrible at doing the policy work to get us to a better society.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's really unfortunate that our elected leaders, aren't willing to make the hard decisions when they need them. They're more interested in the vote, but that's been going on for a long time. Rich, you know, what do you think has been causing all the civil unrest in our cities as a COVID is that, um, lack of work, people are bored or true social unrest because of social injustice.
Speaker 2:I don't think anybody knows the full answer to that. Uh, the interview that I've been waiting to see on any of the legacy news channels or publications or on any of the cable news outlets is, um, let's interview a person that is throwing, uh, cement chunks or fireworks or something in Seattle, Portland, Oregon, Chicago. And let's ask them, what's up? What are you trying to accomplish here?
Speaker 1:Exactly. What is it exactly?
Speaker 2:Do you want, yeah, again, what's and that's, and again, you know, me, what's the dog. That's not barking. Why isn't that interview taking place? And the skeptic in me wants to say that it's due to the fact that people are taking their political view and they're over laying it.
Speaker 1:And to that point, rich, I was thinking about nine 11, which is now what, 19 years ago. Now, if you remember the day of nine 11 and the decade that followed and more, it was a really a badge of honor to wear an NYP logo on your hat or on your tee shirt. If you went to time square, if you want it to anywhere in New York, that t-shirt, and that hat was a sellout. Everybody wore that thing. You couldn't find them in stores that were sold out and you fast forward, not even a generation, not even a generation. And you get an unbridled hatred for the NYP PD. And I know a lot, a lot of the kids that are, that are taught or that are asked about that. Now don't remember nine, so they don't have any perspective on it. They're just, they're just angry and referring to that YouTube PSI saw. And we'll try to put this up on Richard[inaudible] dot com to a guy, went in and did a film. And the first part of the film was he interviewed a lot of young folks. When I say young folks, probably, you know, college age kids, and one in particular just went off on, on the New York police department, how much he hated them. And then person by person by person, they just kept going on. And these were all white people, how much they can't stand the police department. We hate the police department. And then the second half of the film, they went up to Harlem and they asked the African American community, do you need to get rid of the police department? There seems to be a lot of talk in Manhattan about that. And they were so adamantly opposed to getting rid of the D D police department that it just, it was this glaring disconnect, huge disconnect. The people in Harlem are going, no, we've got psychopaths up here. The crime would be rampant up here. That would be insane to get rid of the police department. They're in our communities. We work with them. No, we can't get rid of the police department. Rich. Why the disconnect, where do you think that comes from?
Speaker 2:So, Brian, I think you've got a couple of profound pieces there. So first of all, the police officer's job, you know, Sheriff's deputy police officer. They have an incredibly difficult job, uh, that they may be called upon to be a first responder. Uh, they may be called on to be a mental health worker, a marriage counselor, a neighbor mediator. Um, and they also may need to go into warrior mode at any time, um, for a violent confrontation. And I think what you're seeing is, uh, that full arc of the job is that we celebrated as a society, the incredible bravery and sacrifice, uh, of courageous first responders and especially the police officers, uh, that reacted during an attack on the country on nine 11. Um, today you see people being told how an entire police department behaves based on, um, a number of incidents. And certainly there should be a zero tolerance for those, but not looking at realistic reforms and wanting to burn the country down over it. So, um, I think you need to listen to the people that are being most effected. Um, I guess the followup question I would have asked the, uh, into the YouTube, uh, piece that you're, but from way you're describing it, I would have asked the white person, how would removing the police department affect your life day to day? That's the followup question that we're not getting from the reporting sources today?
Speaker 1:Exactly. So when you ask the, the Midtown Manhattan or the kid from Soho, uh, he's gonna have a different perspective because law enforcement is not part of his life on an everyday basis. Like it is with the person up in Harlem, unfortunately. So his views are going to be such that almost like it's trendy to be anti police officer. And that's unfortunate.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Precisely. And look where policing works best is when police departments and communities come together around a common set of values, common set of, of, um, boundaries and, and processes. Um, uh, because we live in Southeast Michigan, we often hold up the Detroit police department under, uh, chief Craig. Who's doing a great job. I know that he's shocked. Some people when he said he didn't mind citizens being armed and taking out a home invaders. And he said something to the effect that we can't be every place all at once. So it appreciates the community support and shooting people, trying to break into homes, come to things where we haven't heard too much anti second amendment rhetoric lately. That's probably another story. And then he's going to, and then working with people in the community. But I think that time will tell, although my expectation is going to be that a lot of what we're seeing go on today, these aren't going to be people coming from a disadvantaged disaffected communities, arguing for redress. These are going to be people coming in from other places with different agendas. And again, time will tell, we'll have to wait and see.
Speaker 1:So rich, this has been fun. So as we wrap up this episode, what kind of things can your listeners look forward to as the rest of season one winds down, as we get into August and September,
Speaker 2:We're going to talk about how we relate to China. We're going to call out politicians of whatever political Stripe we're going to talk about. The things that we need as a society. We need good health. We need good healthcare services. We need good education and access to education. We need economic opportunity. Uh, we need to make sure there's effective policing mental health. We need to be talking about the privacy implications, antitrust implications, the fairness of our courts, the conduct of our law enforcement and the impact on our environment. And one thing I will promise all my listeners and I thank you for the 50,000 plus downloads. And I want to promise my listeners that I will work really hard to try to bring forward discussion, leading to solutions on all of those topics and anything else that they would like to hear about, or that may arise. I just believe that we're a country populated by compassionate and generous people. We are not the kind of group portrayed on your cable news, no matter where you're getting it from or your news source, no matter where you're getting it from. And if we have a civil discussion, we will avoid civil war. So let's have a discussion with each other. Let's be measured in our responses to things that might try to get us a whipped into a mode of hysteria. And let's see if we can demand that our government give us better service and demand that those reporting to us do a better job. Brian, I appreciate the time today. This is rich helping
Speaker 4:Signing off on the common bridge. 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 helpy.com.