Episode 316- How Local Power Shapes National Outcomes. With Chris Armitage

The fastest way to lose a democracy isn’t one dramatic moment, it’s the slow drift from problem-solving into tribal power games. Rich Helppie sits down with writer and Substack creator Chris Armitage to ask why serious policy talk keeps getting drowned out by team identity, and what regular people can do when national politics feels locked in permanent conflict.

We start with the local level, because that’s where the leverage is. School boards, city councils, and state legislatures can either defend human rights and fair outcomes or become a pipeline for ideological capture. Chris explains why “it’s not my job” has become a surrender phrase, and why civic engagement has to be daily and practical. From there, we connect the dots to healthcare policy failures, incentive problems, and how government becomes less responsive when party machinery dominates.

Then we go deeper into democratic reform: election access and election integrity, open primaries, alternatives to first-past-the-post voting, and how changing the rules can change the quality of candidates. We also debate institutional trust through Supreme Court ethics questions, including Chris’s argument for investigating conflicts tied to Chief Justice John Roberts. The conversation turns urgent around civil liberties, state power, and the Minneapolis shooting, with a clear through-line: in a free country, the Bill of Rights has to be enforced, not just celebrated.

If you care about political polarization, local government, election reform, and defending individual rights against authoritarian drift, this one will challenge you in the best way. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who disagrees with you, and leave a review with the one reform you think would matter most.

Transcript

Welcome To Season Seven

Announcer 0:00

Welcome to season seven of the Common Bridge, hosted by Richard Helpie, a leading analyst, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. Now expanded with healthcare, education, finance, science, and world affairs bridges, the podcast, now in its seventh season, with an audience of over 7 million worldwide, explores issues in a fiercely nonpartisan way. Find us at the Common Bridge at Substack.com, YouTube, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.

Rich Helppie 0:32

Hello, welcome to the Common Bridge. I'm your host, Rich Helpie, and we are continuing our series with noted Substack authors, content creators from all points on the political spectrum. And we have with us today Chris Armitage. Chris, welcome to the Common Bridge. It's an honor to have you with us today.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Thanks for having me, Rich. Happy to be here.

Rich Helppie 0:56

Okay, Chris, I know that with your audience that people must know about you, but you know, my audience may not overlap as much. So if you don't mind, just a little bit about your bio and what your Substack page is named, what it's about, how people can get a hold of you, and how did you get from wherever you started to uh where you're at today?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Well, it's been a weird journey, I'll tell you that. Once upon a time, I was a Mormon Republican. Then I turned 12, figured I'd do other things with my life. Uh and joined the military, served almost 10 years in the U.S. Air Force, uh, military police, had deployed twice during Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, was a corrections officer for about a year. I have uh undergrad degrees in criminal justice and psychology, master's of science in homeland security. I've worked with troubled youth, and I've now I'm doing the journalism thing. I have a couple books like Conservatism, America's Personality Disorder, that I wrote with uh retired clinical psychologist, Dr. uh D. Carl Brown, and my recent book, which is Toppling Tyrants, A Field Guide to American Fascism. I'm also currently publishing research for law review on uh taxonomy, oppositional federalism, a taxonomy for federal, for state postures in response to federal authoritarian capture. And I write at the existentialist republic on Substack.

Policy Gives Way To Power

Rich Helppie 2:21

Again, Chris is a prolific writer. He researches, he dives deep. You may not like what he has to say or what he concludes, but I guarantee you you'll be able to follow his logic and how we got there. Chris, on the Common Bridge, I started this seven years ago, 10 million downloads ago, and it was trying to seek policy solutions under the theory that we're never gonna drag somebody from the far right or in the Trump MAGA camp all the way over to the Bernie Sanders left wing, or perhaps beyond that, or vice versa. That's an impossible thing to do. People have a mindset, they're gonna be there. But are there things we can agree on? Like we want people to have shelter and food and medical care and safe neighborhoods and education and opportunity. And are there ways we can get there? I have to tell you candidly, since I started this seven seasons ago, I don't think I'm getting anyplace. Fewer and fewer people want to talk policy. And I'm not sure if I'm interpreting your writings that you're kind of reaching that conclusion, but we've just kind of fallen into this political world than a policy world. Am I reading that right? And correct me if I'm not, and then maybe tell us a little bit about what you're writing about today and why that's important.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah, well, what you're describing is it's a problem to be solved. Sometimes I think of all this like a big Rubik's Cube, and if we don't solve the Rubik's Cube, then humanity dies. And if the Rubik's Cube is hey, you need to be able to convince everybody or enough people, especially in a first past the post system, that they should be on board with your ideas. And if you can't, you know, uh one of my favorite quotes comes from Kurt Vonnegut. Any scientist who can't explain what he does to a four-year-old is a charlatan. And so there's a communications aspect to it. I much of what I'm interested in doing is really replicating the strategies that have worked most effectively and ethically applying them. So we look at what Republicans did to take over our country, and they started local, and they took every bit of power they could and put it in the hands of the people they agreed with and did what they could to remove it from the people that they disagreed with. And when the agreement or disagreement is, you know, people of color should have rights, or you know, if you should be allowed to marry any other consenting adult you want to marry, the stakes are pretty high, and there's some people who shouldn't get a seat at the table. And so that communications issue is a big part of it. But honestly, I mean, just to speak candidly as well, if you can't convince stupid people to get on board for your idea, then maybe we don't deserve, then we don't deserve to win if we can't. Not you, if we can't. And um, you know, it's a lot of why I focus on the state level, though, is and the city level is because you gotta just coup where you can, get power, and do as much as you can with it at the lowest level possible for the benefit of your community.

Rich Helppie 5:18

What what would be an example of the Republicans taking power at a local level and disenfranchising other folks?

SPEAKER_01 5:26

School boards, moms for liberty. They there's no there they brought politics into the classroom like nobody's business. And that's because they said, you know what, these are our values, and we're gonna, even if it's dog catcher, you know, they they are gonna take any office they can and they're gonna inject those values into it. Unethical. I disagree with it. But what I will say is there's an ethical application, which is your school board members have a duty to as aggressively as possible defend human rights, liberty, justice, uh, fair and equitable outcomes that are aligned with, you know, the best interest of everybody, not just of their particular group. And if only the zealots are willing to fight, then we lose. You know, if if we can't outfight, you know, the the zealots, we don't get to win.

Rich Helppie 6:23

Look, when I was in school, which was a long time ago, one of the speakers they brought in was a guy you never would have heard of him. He was in Detroit, Donald Lobsinger, who's a very strong right-wing guy. When he came in and did the anti-communism speech. And so I saw some evidence of that. And I think that people on the right today would argue, well, the school boards have kind of gone so far to the left that it's a counter-strike. And that's what I'm saying is what should school boards be doing? And it seems to me that educating people with basic skills. Can you read? Can you write? Can you speak? Can you do computation? Can you get marketable skills so that you can go on to a good life would be a good thing. We don't need to be carrying any agendas into the school building at all.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yeah, but preventing bad actors from being present. And also when it comes to the public, if you it's an elected position, you're gonna have to speak to the things that upset them and you're not gonna get them attention. If you're a city, I know too many city council members who all they're willing to talk about is zoning laws. And if you can't talk, that's part of how Republicans have taken and bad actors, not just Republicans, but bad actors, have taken lower offices is because they're willing to talk about the issues that are really occupying people's minds. If you're running for city council, I want you to tell me what you're gonna do about my health care. Don't tell me it's not your job. I would much rather vote for somebody else because you're gonna find a way to help their constituents with the things they care about if you're really there to serve them. And too many people on the right side of things, on the good side of things, have abdicated responsibility and just say it's not my job to do that. And that's just not an acceptable answer when you're dealing with authoritarian consolidation.

Rich Helppie 8:02

I want to come back to authoritarian consolidation, but I do want to agree with you on that point with healthcare. Again, early days, I came from a lower class, blue-collar area, first generation to go to college, people that the opportunity was with the assembly lines and the like around Detroit. There were charitable networks for people that didn't have enough clothing, didn't have enough food. The county hospital was on a sliding scale, and that was the place to go for your maternal and child care because they did such a good job. And we've kind of knocked out that county hospital layer as the healthcare delivery system, which does miracles, but the payment system is the worst in the world. Well, thank Richard Nixon for that. Yeah, Nixon brought in the HMOs. That was his signature healthcare legislation, was enabling HMOs and attempting to get away from fee for service, which was beginning to run away then. And fee for service, of course, we don't have an insurance system anymore. It's prepaid and it's money laundering. And that all got lit in 1945 with price controls when benefits could be provided without any kind of tax deduction. And and I'm long published on this, been a long time in healthcare. But yeah, that was Nixon's first health care. Of course, he put the EPA in. And Richard Nixon couldn't get nominated by today's Republican Party.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Agreed. And he also was interested in maybe instituting a negative, uh, negative income or uh what was it called? Uh negative income tax, I think it was. It's basically just giving money to people below everybody, but yeah, um below a certain income threshold.

Rich Helppie 9:34

Yeah, we ended up getting that with the earned income tax credit.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

It would have been more ambitious than that, though. He he it was a really interesting proposal in its in its original form. And I I think, well, not to defend Nixon, but actually I do think that there I mean he'd be better than our current situation. And there were things that he did, like you said, the EPA. I I I think he actually did have some concern for the American public. He just also was like a wildly paranoid person who was willing to do things he shouldn't do that are illegal to try and stay in power, and that's bad. Bad and some good.

America’s Old Fault Lines Return

Rich Helppie 10:06

Right. Look, and no, there hasn't been anybody in that office that hasn't been wildly ambitious and ego-driven and has looked at exercising power that has not happened in the history of the Republic. You know as well as I do the controversies around the 1960 election that put JFK in office and whether that was legitimate in Chicago and such. Nixon, of course, had his failings as well. And you can go right down the line. But the difference that I see today, Chris, and I don't know if you agree with me on this or not, but we've kind of given in to this notion of Republicans and, you know, whatever the Republicans are today, Trump's party, and Democrats, and like whose team are you on versus what are you doing for me? Healthcare is a great example. We have fumbled this forever, and the solutions in front of us. And everybody that knows anything about it knows the solutions in front of us, and the system is such under stress, it will collapse. We are about there right now. When you think about other weighty matters of the day, housing, infrastructure, deficit spending, etc., I think you can go down the line and get a lot of agreement, except from the people that we hire to do those jobs. So, how did we get so divided and how do we get undivided?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Well, there's a couple different threads there. In, you know, during World War II, there were some very rich and powerful Americans who were upset that the United States did inside with Germany. Uh, some folks out there might be familiar with the business plot, where a group of wealthy folks decided to go to General Smedley Butler and try to convince him to help lead a coup and institute, you know, kind of a fascist oligarchy in the United States. Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather and George H. W. Bush's uh father, was part of the business plot. He, after General Smedley Butler blew the whistle and told Congress about the possible coup by these rich and powerful people, they held some meetings and uh eventually George or sorry, Prescott Bush ended up a U.S. senator. So that tells you about what we've done when rich and powerful people try to overthrow the government. We elect them to office a couple years later. And that can't be ignored in this process. Uh also it's the same thread that's been happening. I mean, it's throughout U.S. history, there has been, I think, an ideological battle. We had an actual war. And that war was predicted. James Madison said, We're in the next hundred years, we will have a war over slavery in this country because there were abolitionists, people who said we shouldn't have slavery, and people who said we should enslave other human beings. And those people tried to start a country together. And I don't know if that was a wise decision. A hundred years later, we had a war, three-quarters of a million dead, three cities burned to the ground, and a hundred, you know, under fifty years after that, we're in this position where once again we are divided along very similar lines and with deeply different ideologies. Because even if there might have been periods with things seemed more civil, I mean, let's go back to the civil rights era. You know, the horrible lynchings, even just a few decades ago, were pretty common in a lot of the country. So the eras that we might look back on with more nostalgia for when debates would happen and you'd have, you know, uh the the Republican and the Democrat on stage being very polite to one another, even complimentary at times. At that same time, there were lynchings and and state-sanctioned racism to extreme degrees, and a lot of those people who ran the country then are still running the country today. And so I don't know. I I I feel this has been our shadow of the whole time. And Republicans have just they've they treat this as a war and the Democrats as the enemy. And I mean that George McGovern said that this was gonna happen, right? He said if you allowed religious zealots to take over the Republican Party, there would never be room for compromise because you can't compromise with the laws of God. And that mixed with the wealth and power consolidation led to a really toxic mix. But do we fix it? I think the solution is a reformation. I think the government has had the same fault lines from the beginning. It's become slower, weaker, less ambitious, less adaptable, more mired in its own ways. You see, there's a lifespan of a nation. I'm sure a lot of people have heard how countries last about 250 years, and then the empires start crumbling over a 50-year period after that. They have a lifespan as a meta-organism of human beings. And what happens as a human ages? The cells aren't replicating as effectively, there's more damage in the DNA, telomeres. The same thing happens in all systems throughout the universe, whether it's a sun that experiences entropy, or a human that experiences the entropy of aging, or an Asian that experiences it. And the solution is we need to take a different form. Or it's, you know.

Federalism And Local Civic Power

Rich Helppie 15:04

Look, I've written about the parallels leading up to the first U.S. Civil War, and I've been writing on it about it, you know, periodically for seven years. And that we are becoming more deeply divided. I don't want to see it, but I keep finding the parallels and people becoming more and more dug in in defeating the other. We saw this a lot in the 2016 presidential election, the first time in my life that I ever heard a candidate attack the voters of the other candidate, being called deplorables. That wasn't a good look instead of trying to win them over. You know, I was alive when it was necessary for us to pass the Civil Rights Act. It was legal during my lifetime to discriminate against a black person, deny them employment, housing, transportation, etc. And in that case, it was the federal government overcoming the states. What JFK did in 1962, Oxford, for example. It was, you know, so James Meredith could attend University of Mississippi, who had to send in federal troops, and it was touch and go the whole time. It's a little odd, too, because federalism versus states' rights, it's kind of like the hats of exchange now. It used to be states' rights was a more of a Republican slash right position, and federalism, you know, a stronger central government was more a democratic left. Now it seemed to have turned the tide. Why do you think that's occurred?

SPEAKER_01 16:28

You know, the ball's gone back and forth a few times throughout U.S. history. It's it's uh it's really just whoever's not in power is the one who wants to switch the structures. But I I really think when you look at governance, like the Federalist Papers and the original formation of the U.S. government as more of a loose collective uh and less centralized. But as we've moved towards centralization, of course it's made us more uh more divided. I just I don't see a situation where Florida and Texas are satisfied with the same president as California and New York. And there's that I just don't see that fault line moving in the other direction. The animosity's gotten worse to me. You know, the people have drawn the line or the comparison between uh, you know, a couple in need of divorce. And at this point, you know, why are we staying together for the kids? But as far as the state's rights versus versus you know decentralized government, the whole idea of democracy is to put the keys to power in as many hands as possible. And there's no place where your voice carries more weight than at the local level. Most people don't know the name of their state house member or their city council member. You can just go meet these people and talk to them. Heck, you can ask them to go get coffee and they will respond to common sense very often. They will actually say, Wow, that's a good idea. I'm gonna think about that. And if you volunteer for them and you keep showing up and you get friends to show up, you'll influence their policy decisions. And so to me, while this, you know, would I be singing a different tune if it was my team in charge, which I won't call my team Democrats or Republicans or anybody. I'm I, you know, I support policy first and foremost, but um, I wouldn't be because ultimately I want people to self-determine to the greatest degree as long as they are not causing harm to their fellow humans. And even then, I think there is a line around violence where if you can find alternatives, I look at the Civil War and I see an environment where slavery was had already gained tremendous disfavor around the world and countries stopped trading cotton with the South because of slavery, their economy was crushed as a result. And there are legitimate scholars who say that if we had just the South wrote a constitution codifying slavery and white supremacy. That's the only difference between their constituents the Confederate Constitution and ours. Fine. I don't want to share a country with them. What we can do, use diplomacy and soft power to destroy their economy, then the slaves don't have any cotton to pick, and we can let them come over here. We are not going to protect our border, let the Confederacy try to stop slaves from coming over here. And any that come over here at 40 acres and a mule and will treat you like humans. Like there, there are other alternatives to warfare, burning down cities, killing millions of people. Soft power has a place, and that's still what I believe today is to allow consent of the governed and self-determination to lead, even with the people I disagree with, as long as that is their choice, and you know, people get con yeah. So that's that's my take on that.

Rich Helppie 19:34

I think you and I are fellow travelers in that. It's like uh independent self-determination. And when I hear somebody going off, whether they are a far-left person or a deeply ingrained MAGA person, and they're telling me what the other is doing, I will typically stop them and say, How many people do you personally know that behave that way? And it'll be like, Well, wait a minute, maybe not anybody. Well, how did you get to that conclusion? Very good point. I read it, I saw it. Okay, where did you read it? Okay, now that publication has lied to you about, you know, I'll list off 10 or 12 things. Why do you keep going back there? Well, those other people are so awful. I know, and we just went circular. I agree with your point. A president that Florida and Texas would be happy with, but then I look at where the migration is going. People that have the ability to leave California are leaving and they are going to Texas and they are going to Florida. People that have the ability to leave New York, New Jersey, and Illinois are going to Tennessee and Florida. So when we talk about self-determination and people making choice and freedom of travel, I look at if I'm in government in a powerful place in New York or California, and my population's leaving, the answer is I got to do something different, not double down on where I'm at. And I'm wondering on what planet, with Governor Gavin Newsom's track record, with billions spent on, not I can't even get the tracks down, much the trains, 400 billion in fraud. And what planet does this say, you know what, good job. We want to give you a bigger job.

Voting Rights And Better Elections

Commercial Speaker 21:18

Before we dive back into today's enlightening discussion, we have a quick message for all you Common Bridge enthusiasts out there. Did you know that you can find this episode and over 300 more on Substack as part of the Common Bridge series? You can also find written columns and opinions as well. Subscribe at the commonbridge.substack.com for a full Common Bridge experience. There you can comment and express your opinion on all the topics we cover on this and the past seven seasons of our podcasts. If you'd rather support the show without subscribing, you can do so with Zell at rich at richardhealthy.com or using Venmo at Richard CBridge. Thanks for listening. Back to the episode.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

And here's my point to that. Here's what I'll say is I support the right of voters to make the wrong decision. I just want that decision to be at the lowest, to impact them as much as possible, less than everybody. And that's part of why I support um, you know, states' rights and even cities' rights, and just bringing power to the lowest levels possible. If California wants to elect Gavin Newsom, that's the business of their voters. What I want to make sure is that they I want every I want democracy. I want people to be able to vote. I want it to be easy to vote. I want you to be able to trust your voting. And anyone who wants to vote, who is legally allowed to vote, I think that should be constitutionally enshrined, is that you get your vote and we do everything we can to make sure that your voice is heard. And that so if if somebody, if if Texas wants to get rid of the minimum wage and basically be, you know, like, I don't know, all the wonderful countries that don't have minimum wages, right? I think that's a dumb idea. But that's up to the people of Texas. I'm not going to come after them for that. What I will come after them for is not allowing free and fair elections. That is where I think as an as a nation, we have shared leadership and management. I see the European Union as a really good model for actually, I think if the founding fathers saw the European Union, that's the model they'd go with for our nation, for our United States, is we share military, we care about human rights, but we use soft power and we manage a currency together, um, and we protect democracy and we want free and fair judiciary. And I mean, gosh, I'll tell you, it's a I I'm happy agreeing with people because when you have the conversation that I want you to run your neighborhood and I'll run mine, and we don't have to hate each other even though we disagree, we're all good, right?

Rich Helppie 23:46

Exactly. And look, when it comes to voting, I'm very passionate about that. I I think everybody needs to vote. It needs to be very simple. And look, we all have one of these, right? And with blockchain, we could have an election that with a hundred percent accuracy on Chris Armitage, Rich Healthy. We get to vote, we vote one time. It could be done on a Sunday and tabulated by midnight. But we don't do that. Now, both sides have accused the other of cheating on the election. I think you and I are also, I'm gonna I don't want to infer much in here, but fellow travelers on, we're not getting the our best and brightest into elected office. And my data point on that is going into the 2024 presidential election, 70% of voters did not want Trump or Biden. Okay, seven out of 10 said no, give me a different choice. How do we advance someone that can get us back to like a common policy that might appeal broader? How do we get there from here?

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Well, I think, and I, you know, you just gave me an idea for an article about some of the more like bipartisan causes for celebration that the majority of Americans would actually say, Oh, I guess we are improving some things in some important ways. And one of those things is I see states that are um experimenting with uh voting systems besides first past the post, uh also with um open primaries. I think one of the greatest inhibitions towards quality candidates is is the party infrastructure, the Byzantine ways that they can put their thumbs on the scale to have establishment candidates. Uh in for the Democrats in in Maine, there's a lot of there's I mean, there's some people more or less happy, but uh the governor, Janet Mills, uh just stepped out of the race because she didn't want to take votes away from from Platiner, and they do an open primary or jungle primary, if I'm not mistaken. Um I'm sure any Mainers will let me know after they hear this. Um, but uh, and and so that you know, that not having to go to like a private convention where people have to sign up six months in advance to be a precinct committee officer, and then they have to go to a bunch of webinars and they have to show up to three in-person meetings, and then they do this, and then they do that. But just saying the voters are going to decide at the primary, and we're gonna have the system as and you can put a D next to your name, an R next to your name, an L next to your name, an I next to your name, a G next to your name, whatever you want for your party affiliation, but you're all going up there. Some of the other policies I would love to see that I think would have broad bipartisan support would be uh making it so that top 10 candidates can all get 30 minutes of air time to just, and there are other countries that do this because I love looking at effective use cases. Top 10 candidates for every office, you're all gonna get to go on public television. We are going to set set time aside, we're gonna make it so it can be in everybody's news feed, and you get 30 minutes uninterrupted, where you're not arguing with somebody to just talk about what you are about. I also love a lot of places now they're doing this thing where they'll have candidate forums and they give them a sign with uh a no or a yes. And people are figuring out ways to try and discern this. And and Janet Mills was the chosen daughter for the establishment of the Democrats. Greg Platt is just a dude who stepped up, but the voters like what he's saying, and he built so much support that the sitting governor said, you know what? I'm withdrawing my campaign or halting my campaign for the governor mansion, or sorry, for the senator, Senate seat, and that's strong democracy.

Rich Helppie 27:24

I hope that people are watching some of this on video because I'm nodding vigorously in agreement, because we've covered voting systems extensively on the Common Bridge, including open primaries and such. What's fascinating to me is watching some of it play out in real time. So Maine's a great example. And I look at what the Democrats would in California, which is essentially a one-party state at the Sacramento level in the assembly and governor. Uh-oh, two Republicans are surging, and then out of nowhere, Eric Swalwell, they just pull the rug out from under the sky. Unless someone says, Oh, yeah, miraculously we just discovered all this malfeasance, which I don't think anybody with an IQ over room temperature believes. But it's they're still trying to play the old game. And there's an interesting phenomena here in Michigan, Chris, playing out that we have a gubernatorial election coming up, and our uh current governor is uh term limited out. And so she's not running again. And typically it's been two terms of Republican, two terms of a Democrat back and forth, right? Well, the mayor of Detroit, Mike Duggan, uh, who did a, in my humble view, a great job with the city of Detroit, is running as an independent. And the both the Republicans and the Democrats are trying to undermine him and take him out. The Republicans are saying he's just because uh Mike Duggan has Democrat roots, he's just another Democrat in the race. And the Democrats are saying, well, wait a minute, he took money from MAGA donors. Well, you know, they're business interests, right? That tends to go hand in hand. But you might see an independent governor in the state of Michigan the next general election. It's gonna be really, really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

I've been looking at some property in Detroit, so it might end up becoming relevant for me.

Rich Helppie 29:21

Well, uh, you call me when you come here, I'd love to take you around on how familiar you are with the city, but it's uh you're not from here, are you? No, I'm from New Jersey. New Jersey? Okay. Um I you know, like what did Rupert Pupkin said at that time? It was not a federal crime to be that, right?

The Duopoly And Moral Drift

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Very true. Very true. But that's that's an interesting situation. You know, there's I remember listening to uh this thing once about uh I think it was NPR discussing how these uh it's Ben and Jerry's and there's another Briars, I think. Are these two uh like an unintentional cartel? They never coordinated with each other, but just kind of as an emergent property of limiting competition and buying up, scooping up competitors, that they uh settled on, okay, we're mostly gonna do plain flavors, Briars, and then Ben and Jerry's we're gonna do the weird flavors, and we'll mostly stay out of each other's way and not compete in the same space. And that's what's happened with the establishment. In some ways, I think of it as the dual a deep state because they are they hate each other, but also they are deeply entrenched long term in their position. And what's happened over the last, you know, there used to be landslide elections, and that's over, and it's largely because they did the same thing as Breyer's ice cream and Ben and Jerry's ice cream, where they said, cool, this is our lane, that's your lane, we'll stay out of each other's way. And God help anybody else who tries to step in. And that's part of why what happened in Hungary, I think, is not indicative of what can happen here because they don't have a duopoly. They they have they were able to start a new political party two years ago and have that party now have a constitutional supermajority. Not happening in the current system in America.

Rich Helppie 30:58

Not a bit. You look what's happened to all the third party attempts and you know, RFK and right down the line. But again, it's to your earlier point, and you and I agree, it's thwarting the public. It's making the government less responsive. And meanwhile, healthcare, firearms, infrastructure, education go wanting. And that shouldn't be the case. And our republic was designed, I think, in a very wise way. I've often challenged people if you're going to start a new country today with a blank sheet of paper, what would the Constitution look like? And amazingly, it kind of comes out with what we've got. But here's the difference, in my humble view. None of it works without a higher moral code. There's always been sleazy politicians. There's always been dishonest business people. There's always been people abusive of other classes of humans, but they were reined in. Now it's almost seems like, yeah, that's a scumbag, but it's our scumbag. And it can't work that way when it's the offense is considered horrible if it's done by the other. And it's considered, well, it's not a big deal. I read your piece about John Roberts. I will just tell you, I read it thoroughly. I've got some experience in these matters, and I don't think it's a big deal. I I did read all the transcripts and things coming out of the prosecution of uh President Trump in New York by Alvin Bragg. It was a terrible miscarriage of justice. It was abuse of the system. And yet you have the divisions of, nope, I'm gonna look the other way because I don't like Trump, or uh, you know, I'm gonna look the other way because you know I like Roberts. I mean, Roberts should be accountable, but commission salary, I mean, who cares? It's not a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

Well, do you mind if I weigh in on that real quick? I thought you might want to talk about that because it's fresh. So here's why the salary versus uh um commission is relevant. So the way that the DC Bar ethics standards go is it's looking at the household income and will that be influenced by the outcomes of the cases? So uh how do you evaluate the effectiveness of an attorney? By winning, right? Now, John Robert's wife's job is to recruit for these firms. If it's a salary, that is not directly impacted by the outcomes or performance of the candidates for whom she recruits for these cases. In the case of a commission, they are. It's performance-based. If she brings better candidates and they win more cases in her husband's court, then she makes more money. And she's made at least 11 million, but that's because there were several years where he didn't omit things. They all she also holds an equity stake in a company that appeared before his court. They didn't omit that, they didn't uh include that in paperwork for three years. Uh these the appearance of uh ethical violations is very serious. If you accept certain roles, especially in the highest court in the land, then you might need to have a conversation with your partner. One of us is gonna need to have a different job if you're going to be regularly working with clients and making more money based on them showing up in my courtroom. And this, the I have a 15-page, I just today released the 15-page uh disbarment memo that I sent to the memo requesting investigation to the DC bar. And in it, part of that is actually showing cases where materially the same circumstances existed, and the some in some cases federal judges went to prison, but in most of the cases they were disbarred for materially identical conduct. And that is about as strong of a standard as you can have with dispensation of justice.

Rich Helppie 34:46

Look, I read your paper today. I think you achieved your objective, and I think you made your case, but the two pillars that it rests on, I would quarrel with as follows. First of all, in that headhunting practice, she was getting a salary, a recoverable salary, which is is consistent. And whether it's something a box got checked salary or commission, I mean like yawn. It happens all the time. We knew the nature of the work she was doing, who she was doing it for. And the oversight, three years not reporting about the equity position. It was uh something like$100,000, uh$250,000. I don't know where that fits into their net worth. I think it's more of an indictment of the tax code more than anything else, in that it is for any person that's been successful, the taxes are a mess. And the people they hire to do them, you start with the junior people, and the junior people start with the return from last year. And if something wasn't there, they don't catch it. And yep, I can see that going through the cracks. Now, to your point, is he needs to be accountable and he needs to explain this. But I'm thinking that's a thin read given everything else we've got going on. That it just it hit me as like people are gonna read the headline and they're gonna repeat that. But I mean, I I got your point. I read the supporting material, I I shrugged it. But again, I have in depth on all of those things, and I can see the the other side of it.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

Yeah, well, and that's you know, I something I appreciate about your perspective is I mean, I try to do this with myself, I try to argue against myself, and that I mean that's I think part of what people appreciate about my writing is I do what I can to remove my own bias as much as you can and bulletproof ideas and steel man them. And ultimately, you know, the DC bar is going to receive the complaint. Uh, part of what I do is is uh, you know, I I'm trying to help people understand that you can be far more effective than you are, because people will do one, you know, a march every other month, and they're in the 0.1% for civic engagement. It's like, no, every day you can make a phone call to your AG, the next day you call your city council member, the next day you send an email to your mayor, the next day you email the DC Bar Association because you think they need to look into because that's the thing, I don't make the determination. I can send them evidence, I can encourage other people to do the same, and I can hope that they handle this uh in an ethical and fair way, and they're the most qualified people to make that decision, right?

Rich Helppie 37:17

By the way, I'm in heated agreement with you on that. All of that, it's chipping away, it's calling out things without bias. And and look, I'll tell you, Chris, I had to file a malpractice claim against an attorney, and it was hands down unethical what this guy did. The state bar of Michigan shrugged, did not give a rat's behind about it. I don't know if you've ever been in criminal court at all, but if you're the victim, you're in the workplace, the judge works there, the police work there, the criminals work there, the defense attorneys work there, you're like the least important person.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

Yeah, well, that's why I tell people to make sure they get an attorney because it's a good way to make everybody upset. If you make you that judge feel like you're wasting their time telling, yeah, yeah. You get yeah.

Minneapolis Shooting And State Power

Rich Helppie 38:02

And now look, the other thing that we should talk about in Minneapolis, right? I wrote a column after the shooting of Renee Good. And I said, this is the latest skirmish in the Civil War, in that one side ordered its soldiers into the field, the other side ordered its soldiers into the field, conflict arose, and eventually a tragedy occurred. And by the way, if you go and unwrap 1962 Oxford, Mississippi, and lay it side by side against modern-day Minneapolis, it's almost one-to-one how it all played out and how close we came to federal troops rolling in. It is absolutely frightening. But I look at this as this poor woman, stirred up by guys like Tim Walls. Tim Walls, of course, was accused of cowardice by his own troops, and put her life on the line in front of armed people. And the Minneapolis Police Department, because of the Minneapolis separation ordinance, could not even enforce the traffic laws that she was violating. And like every other tragedy, one step led to the other, and we have a needless death. Is it a justifiable shoot? I don't know. I leave it to other people to decide that because I can't tell. And I looked at, I'm sure you've looked at every piece of video I've looked at. I don't know what to think. I've never been a police officer like you have, but I'm a keen observer and I can't make a determination.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

Yeah, I mean, and I there coming from the law enforcement background, there's always perspectives and other details. Um what I'll say is as someone who spent a decade carrying at least a handgun every day, if not, you know, having a rifle in the car or when deployed, a 203 or 240 in the back seat. Um, actually the 203 would be in you know closer than that. But anyway, um, so looking at that case, he directly went against the actual uh rules for ICE. He walked in front of the vehicle. There have been accusations on the border for years that agents would walk in front of vehicles to give justification for shootings that were not recorded, where they would say it looked like the car started to move forward, so I I had to protect myself from this deadly weapon. What I see is that when you are given the authority to carry a gun and dispense law, there's an expectation for your conduct. And the Minneapolis Police Department police chief himself said if that was one of my officers, he would not be on duty after that. That officer followed no protocol after there was no debrief, there was no paperwork fight, he did nothing. He I'm gonna say fled the scene because that's what you do, because no police officer, no professional would handle it that way. They are not training these people, they're sending them into I I in Minneapolis had a law enforcement uh an ICE agent scream, make America great again, bitch, while walking towards me with his hand on his gun and saying, Is that a threat? As I put my hands up and said, Please don't shoot me. And he says, Is that a threat? While putting his hand on his gun, Baton, on the other hand, another officer came out and did the same thing. As a former law enforcement officer, I was shocked. I was walking backwards saying, Please don't shoot me. He's screaming, Make America Great Again, bitch, while on duty and threatening me with his weapon. That is cut, he should, that officer should be in jail too. And I saw people get assaulted. I saw ICE agents, somebody's walking near them, they slap the phone out of the hand and shove the person on the ground. I saw a guy who had his guitar and he's singing songs, making fun of these guys on a public sidewalk. They beat him up and they take him away. There's video of that online. Um, this is not what a free and fair country looks like, and those men belong in jail by the constitutional order. And that's why I believe we need a reformation, not a revolution in this country. Because I don't think this country has ever done an effective or admirable job in defending the Bill of Rights. And while we could use more amendments, if we just enforced those first ten, I think we'd be in a hell of a lot better position.

Rich Helppie 42:04

I appreciate that you've had that firsthand experience and you know what that officer's experiencing things. And I've had officers on the show, I've had FBI multiple times and prosecutors and such. Granted, I'm getting my information other than firsthand. The parallel, though, when you go back to Oxford, Mississippi, the police force that was sent in at first to protect old miss was U.S. Marshals, unequipped for crowd control. And they were largely armed with flare guns. They took a bad situation and they made it worse. And they didn't know what side local law enforcement, local National Guard was going to go on. And ultimately it was the Mississippi National Guard before the federal troops arrived because they were federalized, but there was always a question whether they were going to listen to the president or the governor at that time. When you unwrap this, too, you realize how blasted and competent the Kennedys were. I mean, you couple that with the handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, these guys were in way over their heads.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

Yeah. Well, it's the problem with electing Nepo babies.

Why Leaders Fail And What Works

Rich Helppie 43:12

Yeah, indeed. I know what's told you anybody can grow up to become the president of the United States. It used to be, well, we had somebody, you know, like Dwight Eisenhower. We said, look, you were an excellent general. We want you to be our leader. And we had somebody that maybe was a senator or an academic. 330 million people. How come we can't get better people into the top jobs? Why is that?

SPEAKER_01 43:34

You know, it's the federal government. It's easier to capture this giant, ugly machine with all those moving parts. That's part of why we got to just reform, focus lower, take more power at the state and local level using lawful constitutional uh doctrine. Um, it's the system they in there's an inertia, just like a star, uh, entropy over time, enthusiasm, ambition, positive change, ethical conduct, degrade. And the larger the organization, just like the larger the sun of a son is, the more rapid the entropy. So you have to find the smallest organizations possible because power is ultimately corrupting. The office of the president is too powerful if we are concerned about the other side having control of it. Now, and I just one note too, I just want to mention about personal liberty, because I believe in the rights of the individual as supreme over the rights of the government as a founding doctrine in this country. And so to me, when I see a person get shot, while not violating the law in a way that deserves death penalty without a jury, I side on the right of the on the side of the individual. And that would be for a Republican or a Democrat or anybody, I am going to be much more careful about siding with the state because that's what, as a former law enforcement officer, you are an armed agent of the government who is there to enforce their laws, their order. Once upon a time, slavery was legal, many other atrocities. Um, I'm on the side of the people always in those debates or in the in those in those two.

Rich Helppie 45:05

You and I are, again, fellow travelers with that. It is a an incredible authority in that what a police officer is called on to do, they're a family counselor one minute, they're looking for a lost pet or child the next minute, and then it's warrior mode. How they shift gears like that, I don't know. When the Michigan militia went onto the grounds of the Capitol building in Lansing carrying rifles, I asked three questions. Number one, who do you plan on shooting? Number two, where's the safe shot in that situation? And number three, do you see the staple sharpshooters around on the buildings? Who do you think's going to get shot first? And I look at the other fella in Minnesota, Pretty. Same three questions. You're going to carry a firearm into that situation. Number one, who do you plan to shoot? Number two, where's the safe shot? And number three, if you're carrying a firearm, you're more likely to be shot. And we have yet another tragedy. But people need to be thinking a little better on this. Chris, I want to again compliment you on your excellent writing, fearlessness, if I may.

SPEAKER_01 46:13

Very kind to you.

Final Advice And Sign Off

Rich Helppie 46:14

And also your wisdom by looking at Detroit as an investment and being a bit of a homer here. God bless you. We've kind of come to the end of our time here. So I hope you'll come back because this has been a very stimulating conversation, and I feel like we barely scratched the surface. What other final closing thoughts do you have for the listeners, readers, and viewers of the Common Bridge?

SPEAKER_01 46:35

Find out the name of your state house representatives and make sure they know your name. That's my final message. Yeah, and this really has been a pleasure, by the way. Uh I there is a dynamic tension. I don't want to talk to people who we agree on every little thing. I want to be able to have thoughtful, honest, good faith conversations about um how to solve the Rubik's Cube of governance.

Rich Helppie 46:57

I'm going to adopt that and calling it the Rubik's Cube of Government. I'm giving you attribution the first 20 times, and after that, I probably own it. But thanks for doing that. This is your host, Rich Helpie, with our guest, Chris Armitage. Look him up on Substack. You'll be glad that you did. Subscribe because he's more than worth it. And this is your host again, Rich Helpie, signing off on the Common Bridge.

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