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 56- Top Ten Takes for the Week that was.
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In this episode, Rich is asked to break down 10 Topics from the week that amoung other things, included Biden's VP pick, Riots in Chicago, and the cancellation of much of college football.
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Welcome to the ,
Speaker 2The 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. And welcome to the common bridge. This is August the 18th. Richard's , it's great to have you back. We're going to do a show today back by popular demand is a lot of your listeners. Like when you do this, I'm going to give you 10 topics and actually it's going to be nine, and I'm going to give you the last one for your closing. So in the end it will be 10 topics, but last week was very eventful. Everything from Joe Biden, naming his vice presidential running mate to the riots in Chicago, to college football. And there's a bunch of them. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you each topic, going to give you nine of these and close on 10, but we got to try to get it done in 30 minutes, at least the nine topics. What do you say? Does that sound like a good time?
Speaker 3Now this sounds like a lot of fun and I'm trying to weave in as much policy as I can, but let's go. What's the first topic you want.
Speaker 2Okay. We're going to start with a light topic. We'll go from there. We're going to talk about college football last week, the big 10 canceled their seasons and they're followed by the pack 12. And before that, I think outside of the power five, the Mac canceled and the mountain West canceled. What do you think about that? And was that the prudent thing to do? And do you think that any of that rubs off on the NFL this year?
Speaker 3Well, I don't think college football had a good answer available to them and it's just like the reopening of schools. You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. And so I think it remains to be seen , uh, the big 10 and the pack 12 and the mid America conference all made the prudent cautious decision to say college football. Isn't worth it during this unknown health crisis. And contrast it as of today, the sec, the ACC and the big 12 are all saying they're going to play. And they think they have it contained, you know, the NFL. It should be interesting because they've had the benefit of seeing major league baseball, go first without a bubble type of environment. And we've had a couple teams that are playing much, most notably. The st. Louis Cardinals have played five games now and compared to most teams have played 19 or 20 because of infections, but we've seen the NHL and the NBA get their sports going well because they were in a bubble. Now, apparently they're going to let the players have some girlfriends and wives and two , I think it's the NBA doing that. And I don't know if you notice this , there was a , uh , a rookie cut from the Seattle Seahawks because he tried to sneak a woman into their training facility. Disguise , just another player. It's like, I mean, like I like these are young guys. There's a, there's a part of me that wants to say good try. That was another part of me to say, how did he think you were going to get away with that goes , uh ,
Speaker 2All right , we got to keep this tight, let's move to the next topic. And that is probably the biggest news story from last week was that , uh , Joe Biden has picked his running mate and it's Camila Harris. And from all indications, she sounded really good at the , uh, at the introduction, the rollout, if you will. But how do you think the media is covering ? Do you think that there was maybe a , at least a break and how both sides of the media took a look at it or am I being way too optimistic?
Speaker 3You know, I listened with great interest and watched the presentation and saw her make the first speech , uh , you know, there's some , some good things in there. Um, and you know, some predictable things. Uh, I was hoping that we were going to find more words about , uh , uniting the country. And at one time I wrote down sounds like she's running against a virus , uh, versus saying where they're kind of lead the, the country. Um, you know, on a broader note though, after Kamala Harris was announced, everybody , it seemed predictably went to their corners. So the Democrats naturally attacked , uh , president Trump, president Trump continued as juvenile name-calling. I mean, I don't know whether to shake my head or just, you know, smack my forehead against the desktop because, but very predictable. Um, Mike Pence was a gentleman welcomed her to the race, the reporting industry, which I call the group that used to be the press selectively, put out pieces, the, the left and the Democrats went more to a personality, a little bit of fawning and worshiping of the person of Kamala Harris.
Speaker 2Well, that's sort of to be expected in a honeymoon phase of one day and they would do that cause that's pretty nice ,
Speaker 3But then you lose the right and the Republicans were asking more, you know, policy matters and which Kamala are they going to get? And, you know, in her history, she has either depending how you look at it, either quote evolved to her view or changed a hundred percent. And I think it's just a shame that we're in a situation where, and just her or any other person seeking public office, couldn't explain that change or that transition. Yes. I used to think X and then I thought about it. I got more experienced. I listened to people and I've come to a different conclusion. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And we all do that in our personal lives, but we've somehow created a situation where we want the people that we elect to be perfect. You know , frankly, I like people that have made some mistakes because I think they've learned from it. But in the reporting environment that we're in today, we don't give people a chance to talk about nuance and to completely provide an opinion. It's one little item is seized out of a news conference or out of a presentation and it's blasted and most people, I guess, accept that and figure that that's the whole thing .
Speaker 2Okay. So that brings us to topic shift number three, and this one may seem a little self promoting. I don't mean to do that. You have gotten a lot of compliments on the common bridge as being a forum where policy and news can be discussed for a half an hour or an hour. Um, and you can actually bring out the nuance in what a topic might be. So it's not just , uh , somebody punches, somebody punches back and that's Testament to the show. I think that's why you started the common bridge, but the way news is handled now, you don't get that and you can look at the same rock and both sides will come up with something way different. How do you feel about that and how do you , where do we go from there?
Speaker 3I hope that that is the reason people are listening in, and we're very honored by the growing audience. Uh, and if you go to the reporting industry today, somebody might conclude that one of our political parties wants to keep the post office and eliminate the police. And the other wants to eliminate the post office and swarm the streets with stormtroopers , right . Um , of course, you know, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not too far off. And I think one of the things that we're able to do on this program is to ask, follow up questions , uh , give our guests time to talk and then kind of work the 360 degree analysis around an issue versus you got 30 seconds to land on something that is supposed to convince an audience to move in one direction or the other.
Speaker 2All right , great. We're moving this along and keeping it tight. Topic. Number four, as Joe Biden goes into the final stretch are the quote unquote Biden. Gaffs going to be controlled like next week, he's got to give an acceptance speech and that it could be canned. And we'll talk about that later. Or maybe it's, it's taped because every Gaffey makes is going to be hammered by the opposition , uh , and , and any so apt to do them. It wasn't even a week ago that he went after CBS reporter Aero Barnett, when Barnett asked him if he had taken a cognitive test and Biden jumped back and said, you know, have you taken a cocaine test? Are you a junkie?
Speaker 3Well, let's give the former vice president credit that he did not refer to the gentlemen as a dog faced pony soldier, a lying dog face ponies culture. So I don't know where he comes up with these things. Uh , but the former vice president says really strange things. He's done it for the entire time. He's been in public office. Um, and, and to your point, the political opposition has taken it and run with it. And it's not like it's deep history. Um, he's done it three, four times during a campaign of which race relations are very central. So I don't know what to make of that,
Speaker 2But rich, that starts to get really egregious . And at some point it has to be acknowledged by the press by a fair press. So the one that comes to mind is his quote about poor black kids can learn just as fast as white kids.
Speaker 3There's a great catch right there. He didn't say black poor kids. He said, poor kids can learn as well as white kids inferring that poverty was linked to the race of a young person,
Speaker 2But it seems there's an instance almost every day that he's .
Speaker 3Yeah, but he , you know, he , you've heard about, you know, you ain't black and saying things that would imply that , uh, blacks are a monolithic thought process.
Speaker 2That one really stung. And I had read a couple of op ed pieces that resonated in the black community.
Speaker 3That is who he is and the people that right .
Speaker 2And I don't mean to interrupt, but where is the press on that? And how come that's not discussed more in full
Speaker 3Well, I think that's the issue. As I said, with the common bridge, we can ask the follow up question and the president doesn't ask the follow up question. And the key is this. I think that people that say they know Joe Biden would say, no, he's, you know , he's not a racist, he's not a massage. And as he's, you know, that's just, Joe, is that he's just clumsy. And you know, if, if people are comfortable with that, then fine, but it certainly needs to be addressed. And in this soundbite world, if the reporting source like deer point Fox was going to take it and run with it and pounded into the consciousness of their listenership and CNN is going to ignore it yet, they will take something that president Trump says and amplify it.
Speaker 2Right. Okay. So that leads us into topic shift number five, which is Donald Trump. A lot of folks up there saying that this could be a referendum on among other things, the behavior of Donald Trump, how do you see that working its way out as we get down to the finish line?
Speaker 3Our current president says a lot of ridiculous things. He tweets a lot of ridiculous things. He's finding that his lack of preparation for the job is catching up with him and not withstanding that he's had some successes, the way that he has approached the job, trying to run it off the seat of his pants. This incredible focus on ratings, ratings ratings has rendered him ineffective. And I want to talk about the pandemic and a couple of things on this, Brian that I imagine if back in February, our president had gone to the microphones and said, I need to tell you that there is a new strain of virus that looks potentially very deadly and very fast spreading it's appeared in China. It's appeared in Italy. We think we have some cases here. We don't know exactly what we're dealing with, but we are going to work daily with the governors and with the centers for disease control to try to find out so that we can give you information because this is new. We don't know everything about how to handle.
Speaker 2Well , I think I know where you're going. Yeah .
Speaker 3Ratings would have gone through the roof. Now contrast that. And as I said earlier, that vice presidential candidate Harris says miracle cures that he found on Fox news, trying to equate a BOLO with coronavirus flip-flopping on mass wearing as if that was a construct that the president alone did. It's the questions that aren't being asked in the followup is to, to Joe Biden and to comma Harris's what would you have done differently? And how would we have a different outcome today? Because when you strip away the idiotic things that president Trump does and his abysmal crisis management, there's not a lot of substance about what might have changed. The data still shows that the devastation was in the States that were most affected early on because they put elderly people into homes and care facilities where the virus was running ramped .
Speaker 2Yeah. And that one, there's no way you can paint that one differently. Um, that one is something that Cuomo New York Whitmer in Michigan. I'm sure there's another one that followed that lead and did the same model, put them in senior homes and nursing homes. And there's just no arguing with the fact that 40% of the nations deaths from COVID came out of those centers. So , uh, enough of that, right now, we need to move on or the halfway point. So let's take a look at a topic. Number six, mayor Lightfoot in Chicago for the first time, took a look at what maybe might've been the difference between protesting and what happened on the miracle mile and all of the riots that happen .
Speaker 3She said, it's an organized rate and not a demonstration of angry protest . And again, I don't think anybody has a problem with protests to seek redress from our government, but I also believe most people think, you know, smashing and looting is a bad thing. And yet now we've gone into this climate where there's this equivalence between those two things. And as mirror life would said, people showed up on Michigan Avenue, would you haul trucks and cargo vans, sophisticated equipment cut metal. And they spun it up very quickly. It wasn't any spontaneous reaction yet people will defend it. Well, they have a right to protest. Yes. You have a right to protest. No, you don't have a right to steal and loot .
Speaker 2Right? The comment that she made though, that was troubling to me was I think just trying to make it in a nice way, but it speaks volumes. She said, look, when you're tearing down these, when you're, when you're looting these businesses and it's businesses that are small mom and pop businesses not, and they don't have a big insurance companies or big, big insurance policies, like the big ones have, it's like she had an implicit, like, I understand you're doing that because I'll make their money back on insurance as though insurance is not a business. It's a, it's a heavenly thing too . So it doesn't, it doesn't mind if you're hurting them, but she made that on an off remark. And I know what her intention was. And it was right. You know, that there was a watchmaker who lost his 40 year business when they just took all of his parts, his watches and everything else. He couldn't get that back. But what she was saying, what she was saying was it's okay if you, if you knocked over Apple, but you can't knock over this guy. But the other thing that happened with those riots is it brought in people from the neighborhoods when they saw that was happening. There's a secondary wave. That's not organized. Um , that, and I think she sees the problem with, with what happened. I mean, it just turned into a mess.
Speaker 3You made a few points in there. So first of all, they're relative to insurance. So what happens next is someone wants to open a store. They're going to have to insure their property, insure their , their inventory and the life, the price that they're going to charge for that insurance is going to be sky high and who gets hurt. It's the people that live in that area because the cost of covering that risk is going to be baked into the price of any goods or services.
Speaker 2So do you think that this is a benchmark in , uh , at least recognizing that what black lives matter for instance was trying to do is way different than what this organized , um , uh , rioting is. And is it a recognition on mayor Lightfoot part and it does it spiral out of this. And you had mentioned to me something off Mike, before we started about , um, a person, a black activist , uh , in Chicago that was commenting on the, what was it?
Speaker 3What's that all about? There was a group of black residents from the Anglewood neighborhood and they went and they demanded that the , uh, they called it, the blacks lives matter group. I don't know if it was, but they said that , uh, the people that were holding these protests that run a muck , um, they said, leave the neighborhood and don't come back until you're ready to really help the community. Um, the happened in a couple of cities now, well , one , uh , uh, I was watching as a guy who was a 42 year old guy, lifelong resident of the area said, none of these expletives are gonna be here tomorrow. That's why I've got a problem. Yeah . And I thought that was insightful. He said, who's going to deal with it tomorrow. The community, not them. They'll be somewhere sipping sangria. I'm telling you like it is. And y'all, don't come out. When a kid gets shot. You all come out when it's something to do with the expletive police,
Speaker 2Which brings us to topic seven, which is a tragedy as is topic eight. And we'll see if we can maybe combine those two. But , uh , needless to say earlier last week, a five year old white boy cannon hinted in North Carolina was shot and killed in his front yard by his 25 year old black neighbor, dairy assessment, allegedly. And evidently cannon was riding his bike across the lawn of dairy SSMS. Mr. Sassons was very upset, came over. Um , there's evidence that there was maybe an argument earlier between Canon's father and mr. Sason , but regardless mr. Sessoms came over and shot Canon in the head in front of his two younger sisters. There's a lot of outrage out there because of that, but it's mostly toward the media. And because folks are saying that if Canon would have been a little black boy and dairy assassins would have been white, that would have been
Speaker 3A call for more riots around the country. You however,
Speaker 2Hold me off Mike. And I think you're right. I just hadn't thought of it that look, mr. [inaudible] was arrested and put into custody within 24 hours. It's it's not really the same argument. And then you also said that race aside, the killing of children, which has really run rampant this summer
Speaker 3Needs to be addressed. Well ,
Speaker 2What are your thoughts on that for your audience?
Speaker 3Well, as a father and a grandfather, uncle, I it's an unspeakable tragedy. And I know that there are people trying to make a story saying if the races of the perpetrator and the victim were reversed, it would be front page news. It would be signaled to begin further on rushed . And that, I think they're trying to paint the picture that we're , we're experiencing violence and tragedies every place. And my hurt is that we're not dealing with the behavior and whether the behaviors right, or the behaviors wrong, we're politicizing everything. And that includes the cold blooded killing of a little boy. And we're being told by this reporting industry, that's less important than some of the other stories that we're going to amplify, but that's where we need to get to as a society is we all need to agree that the carnage that happens in Chicago every weekend, including lots of little kids being lost is wrong and needs to be addressed. And this incident in North Carolina also needs to get addressed. So
Speaker 2Then that dovetails into topic eight last week, the entire George Floyd videotape was released and it dealt with the beginning of the encounter all the way to the tragic. And do you think that what was seen in the full videotape changes the narrative at all, or since the doctors found in his autopsy report that he was
Speaker 3Positive, I'm glad we're not in a situation where it's about sound bites , because this would be fraught with risk. If it was something I had to answer in two sentences. And let me begin by saying that nothing that George Floyd did warranted a death sentence period. Also, I will say that police officers need to treat all citizens with respect and people can watch the video and see whether this occurred or not. But in any case, the end of that drama in the streets should not have been a , that a man lost his life. Period. I think what my observation was that , uh, mr. Floyd was suffering either from an emotional issue, a mental health issue, or perhaps something related to the amount of drugs that were found in his system on the toxicology. Uh , he clearly was agitated not thinking, right. And think about this. Think if we had a situation where the police officer could step back and say, we have a man here under distress, we need to get a mental health worker to the scene immediately. And we need to see if we can calm him down. Now, part of that video also showed a woman who was riding with mr. Floyd saying, you know, George has got kind of problems in his head, okay. Another signal that he's not going to act rationally, he's not going to respond to commands. He's not going to necessarily say there's a consequence to what he might be doing, but he was in distress at the point when the officers first engaged him and the officers just didn't have enough tools to deal with them . And it ended up tragically and that could have been the national conversation failure in the mental health field, perhaps failure in what to do with felons after they've completed their sentence failure in asking the police officers to do a job that is far too broad. All those things could have been discussions versus what occurred.
Speaker 2Okay. Final two topics, topics nine and 10. They're intertwined. If you were put in charge, this is the first one. If you were put in charge of the Biden Harris campaign starting today, what would you advise going forward and include the speech he has to give next week? Whether it should be live or it into their risk of that, or do they produce it and would you have your candidate debate Donald Trump, but whatever else you have to say,
Speaker 3Well, to answer specifically to the first question, yes, they need to debate otherwise. In the case of the vice president, it just gives the Trump administration unlimited license to say he doesn't have the function to show up into a live event and alive exchange in terms of whether it's scripted or not. I, I don't really think it matters. I mean, the vice president did a really good job reading off the teleprompter when he presented to his vice presidential candidate.
Speaker 2So you would be confident that he would be able to deliver that speech in a enough of a flawless manner.
Speaker 3He's given lots of speeches and he's polished and they're going to rehearse them . They're going to present it. And, you know, I think there's more risk if he says , uh, let's just tape it and send it out. And a video recording, I think that's going to give rise to this is all being orchestrated. So I wouldn't recommend that he does that. And I look, I will even predict here that if he presents it live, you're going to hear people saying, well, he was on a seven second delay by the networks who covered for them . Right. They'll see a shadow or a paper move or something.
Speaker 2Then it'll be like the moon landing. And some people just aren't going to believe it.
Speaker 3Yeah. Right. So , I mean, look, I, America deserves to have their candidates. Side-by-side in a debate because clearly the country wants off the Trump train and the Democrats just, just made it really hard by their behavior over the last three and a half years. And by who they nominated.
Speaker 2Okay, let's flip it around now. You're the campaign manager for Trump and Pence. What do you do during the stretch run here to get a victory,
Speaker 3Two things. I would give Trump a set of talking points around the successes that he's had. And I give him a set of MEA culpas about his handling of the pandemic on the front end. He should, you know, figuratively fall on his sword about how badly he communicated and what a terrible crisis manager he was. And perhaps communicate that his heart was in the right place. And he was suspicious of the world health organization. And he was scrambling to be definitive at a time when you couldn't be definitive, but that's one way to blunt that issue. And then he needs to come back and talk about the strides they've made with China trade and with NATO paying more for their own defense. And for the fact that we aren't in any new Wars and that when he took office ISIS occupied Fallujah and Mosul and the Anbar provinces, he needs to change the dialogue around that. Okay .
Speaker 2Okay . So here it goes. Do you think he can do that?
Speaker 3And my answer is no, because it would require a that he understands, he doesn't know what he's doing. And B require a desire to learn, which would mean listening to other people and setting his ego aside. What I would advise vice president Pence to do, continue to be the gentlemen that he always has been. I don't envy his position having to debate Kamala Harris, but you know, he's a good and decent man. And while people may not agree with his religious perspective on things, I think he's been consistent in his values. And I'm going to bet that 10 years from now when he writes a memoir or other people begin speaking, I think you're going to find that Mike Pence probably kept a lot of the chaos contained and did a great job on behalf of the country and not a story you can tell today. Um, but Mike Pence has just gotta be that calm, cool gentlemen, and make the case. And again, I don't envy him. I think he's going to get waxed by Camila Harris. Who's really, really a very good debater. Hey, rich .
Speaker 2We did it. Nice job. We got in under 30 minutes. So I'm going to give you the last, it'll be technically the 10th topic and you can close this up so well done. And it was a pleasure talking with you.
Speaker 3Well, Brian, that was quite a session today. I thank you for guiding it. Everything from pandemics to football and , and everything in between. What this experience has revealed to me is that Americans and American voters are way more United than we are being depicted by the Republicans, by the Democrats or by the reporting industries. And I'd like to ask all of my listeners on the common bridge, just to do a couple of things. If I could. Number one, as we enter this very intense political season to ask the hard questions of those that are seeking office, yes, we have a problem. What are you going to do? Different? No platitudes. Give it to me in policy. And number two, ask the reporting industry to ask the follow up question, take the acute angle, quit trying to be cheerleaders for a particular ideology and earn that spot as the treasured press. That is so vital to our free society. So with that, Brian, I'm going to sign off on the common bridge.
Speaker 2You 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 .