June 14, 2025 • 78 mins
Join host Tom Butler as he shares the results of his latest 60-mile ride that put his new nutrition and electrolyte strategy to the test. Tom breaks down the valuable lessons learned from this almost entirely successful challenge. Meanwhile, Kelly pushed her own boundaries on her longest ride to date while discovering just how far her e-bike battery can take her.
This week's episode features a conversation with true topic expert John DiPippa, Dean Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy. Who is also an avid cyclist. John brings his extensive knowledge and experience to discuss the critical topic of advocating for safe cycling infrastructure in today's political landscape. Whether you're a seasoned cyclist-advocate or just starting to think about how policy affects your rides, John's insights will help you understand the real opportunities that exist to make a meaningful impact on cycling safety and infrastructure in your community.
From nutrition strategies that fuel longer rides to the policy work that makes those rides safer, this episode covers the full spectrum of what it means to be a cycling enthusiast in today's world.
Thanks for Joining Me!
Consider becoming a member of the Cycling Over Sixty Strava Club! www.strava.com/clubs/CyclingOverSixty
Cycling Over Sixty is also on Zwift. Look for our Zwift club!
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Show music is "Come On Out" by Dan Lebowitz. Find him here : lebomusic.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tom Butler (00:04):
This is the Cycling Over 60 podcast, season three,
episode 33.
Can we still lobby for bikes?
And I'm your host, tom Butler?
Thank you for listening to thepodcast this week.
(00:25):
Knowing that you're listeningreally does keep me going, and I
still love seeing what ridespeople are doing in the Cycling
Over 60 Strava Club.
If you aren't part of the club,consider joining us, of course.
I especially like seeing theride photos.
Last week I talked about theelectrolyte and feeding strategy
that I was planning to try outon the 60-mile ride with Kelly.
(00:46):
I miscalculated how manycalories I needed to consume on
the bike a little bit because Iforgot that we were going to
take a snack break at the20-mile mark.
So I ended up consuming fewerdates than I had planned while
riding and instead had a feworanges.
And my lunch was huge Way toomuch food.
We ate at a place called CafeNeo in Arlington, washington.
(01:08):
I ordered a Neo Power Bowl.
It was definitely too big forone meal, but I grew up in a eat
everything on your plate kindof family, so I tend to feel bad
about wasting food.
Since we didn't have a way tocarry food.
I ate way too much.
One thing about it the food atCafe Neo was excellent.
(01:28):
I suggested that next time wedo the ride, kelly and I should
share the bowl.
She shut down that idea becausethe veggie gyro she had was
really, really good.
I paid a price for overeating,with a bit of discomfort for the
last 20 miles.
It was hot that day and I didpress the pace as much as I
could For the last 10 miles orso.
(01:51):
The heat was elevating my heartrate so I couldn't push as hard
as I actually would have likedto.
So it was really hot, I wassweating a lot, I was really
pushing it, but I had absolutelyno cramping after the ride, and
that is an unusual outcome forme.
So I think my electrolytestrategy did pay off and I look
(02:13):
forward to testing it more.
I do have cramping after ridesenough that it would make a huge
difference to find a way toeliminate them, and that is
especially a problem for thenight after the first day of the
STP, because it interferes withme getting a good night's sleep
.
One strange outcome was that Ihad a bunch of broken blood
vessels in my right eye.
That happened toward the end ofthe ride.
I found out that the medicalterm for this is subconjectural
(02:37):
hemorrhage.
After doing a bunch of readingit doesn't seem like very often
it's something to worry about.
While I don't believe there's alink, I would like to eliminate
that it's related to theelectrolytes that I took in.
Because of the positive impactand cramping, I'm still going to
use the electrolyte mix that Icame up with for this ride on
other rides and we'll just haveto see what happens.
(02:59):
I expected to do much better onthis attempt than when I first
did the ride two and a halfyears ago, and my results showed
again that you can certainlyimprove your cycling later in
life.
I set 41 personal bests on theride Pretty much every segment
that was there two years ago.
I bested that effort and I dida 13.9 mile per hour average,
(03:22):
which was much better as well.
I wish I could see and comparethe average on just the last 20
miles.
For that section of the ride.
I was trying to get to 14 milesper hour average.
Before the end of the ride wehad been at a 14 mile per hour
average until our slow ride tothe lunch stop.
That little bit took us down to13.5.
(03:43):
So for the last 20 miles I wastrying to get that back up.
Really, the most important thingis that Kelly had a really good
time.
As I mentioned, we were testingher battery, so she took it
easy and used a lot of pedalassist.
The battery power indicatorended up at about half after 60
miles.
That is excellent news becauseI think when we ride together we
(04:05):
will likely not go further thana metric century, so there's
plenty of flexibility as far asher battery is concerned.
Even if we get into a ridewhere there's a lot of climbing,
we're really curious just howfar it will go.
It's hard to imagine that shecould do like 120 miles on a
full charge.
We're going to do some morerides before charging the
(04:26):
battery to see if that will helpus determine just how far she
could go on one charge, but it'shard to know how much power
it's losing when it's justsitting.
One more thing before we get tothe interview.
I've ramped up the organizationof the September 14th Cycling
Over 60 event.
There's one aspect of the eventthat I need to make a decision
on.
I would like there to be a timeto socialize.
My thought is to find a venuewhere we can eat and have the
(04:49):
space to get to know each other.
I also want to have a guestspeaker that will give a brief
talk on something interestingthat's cycling related.
My question is when to havesuch a gathering.
I originally planned to have itthe night before the ride.
My thought was that the vastmajority of people doing the
ride will be local, so I feltthat it wouldn't be difficult
for people to come both Saturdayevening and then ride the next
(05:11):
day.
In fact, I thought it might bekind of fun to potentially meet
some people that you would ridewith the next day.
Someone from outside the areashared that they thought it
would be asking a lot of peopleto come Saturday night.
There is an option of doing thesocial event after the ride on
Sunday, but I don't know ifpeople will want to hang around
that long.
For people doing the 30 mileride, they would get finished
(05:33):
hours before the event would getstarted.
Another factor is for peopleoutside the area is how late
they could stay on Sunday beforeneeding to travel home.
They might want to get startedright after the ride is over.
I'm having a really hard timefiguring out what is best, so it
would be awesome if you wouldhelp me out, if you could take
just a few moments, go to theevent description and hit the.
(05:54):
Send me a text link.
I would love for you to tell meif you think a Saturday night
event works or if it should bean after-ride party.
Thank you for taking the timeto do that for me.
In the spring, I participated inthe Washington Bikes Lobbying
(06:17):
Day in Olympia.
I'm so glad that I did, and nowI wish I had been involved in
advocacy work sooner.
So many people complain aboutwhat the government does or
doesn't do, but I find thatrelatively few of us are engaged
in the process of sharing ouropinions directly with
legislators.
While I'm as committed as everto working to get safe biking
(06:37):
infrastructure, I have to behonest that it seems like a
strange time for activism at thenational level.
It actually seems dangerous toexpress opposition to White
House policy, but I thinkfederal transportation spending
is an important source offunding for safe infrastructure.
I wanted to find someone who wasan experienced cyclist who
could also talk about how themassive political change could
(07:00):
impact my ability to helpinfluence policy.
I'm thrilled because I foundthe perfect person.
John DePippa is an avid cyclist, but he is also Dean Emeritus
of the William H Bowen School ofLaw at the University of
Arkansas, little Rock.
He formerly taught for 40 yearsand is a distinguished
professor of law and publicpolicy.
Here's our conversation.
(07:21):
I feel incredibly fortunatetoday to be joined by John
DePippa.
Thank you, john, for coming onthe podcast.
John DiPippa (07:29):
Oh well, thank you for asking me.
It's going to be fun and a realhonor.
Tom Butler (07:33):
Well, cool and it's an honor to have you here and
you're the perfect guest.
We'll kind of get into that alittle bit more about some
questions I have for you, butfirst can you talk about your
earliest memories of the bicycle?
John DiPippa (07:47):
You know, my earliest memories are actually
of someone else riding a bicycleand it was my aunt.
Her name was Carmilla at thetime she went into the convent
and became Sister Bethestina,but my earliest memory is that
she didn't learn to drive.
She rode a bike everywhere andshe was really well known for
(08:12):
that.
She was also my favorite auntever and I think I was her
favorite nephew.
But besides that, that's myearliest memory of somebody who
used a bike actively in a waythat you know was transportation
, but it also was part of anidentity.
Now, eventually she did learnto drive and became the
(08:34):
chauffeur for all the nuns, butshe didn't learn to drive until
she went to the convent.
So that's really my earliestmemory of a bicycle.
And then of course, I thoughtthat was cool to have a bicycle,
and growing up in the 60severybody had bicycles, all the
kids did, and so that's you knowpretty much how we hung out.
(08:55):
We'd ride around town and comeback before it got dark.
Tom Butler (09:00):
Now, somebody that's relying on a bicycle rather
than a car sounds like somethingthat would happen in Europe.
Was your aunt here?
John DiPippa (09:09):
Oh yeah, this was in the United States.
I grew up in a small town so itwasn't that large, you know.
I mean, obviously it was theuniverse to me.
She could get around townpretty much.
I remember she had a basket onit and so she could carry things
to and from wherever she wasgoing.
Tom Butler (09:31):
I'm wondering about.
As you got into adulthood, youknow for many of us it gets hard
, with so many responsibilities,to keep going cycling.
How did you find it?
Did you stay with cycling as anadult?
John DiPippa (09:46):
It's interesting, you know.
I mean obviously didn't staywith cycling forever, but about
40 years ago, when I firststarted my job teaching law in
Little Rock, I didn't live thatfar from the law school and we
had children four children inone car and I thought, well,
this isn't a bad way to getaround, I'm just going to, you
(10:06):
know, ride to the law school.
So I got a second hand bike andI started riding it to and from
the law school, and at the timeI was a runner.
So that was my.
Running, was primarily myexercise, but the bicycle was
actually, you know,transportation, but the bicycle
was actually, you know,transportation.
Eventually I started having alot of running injuries and so,
(10:28):
probably 35 years ago, I startedriding the bike more and more
for exercise and less and lessfor commuting, and probably the
mid 90s I just switched over tobicycling and that became my
primary form of exercise.
Tom Butler (10:48):
So when you were running and then cycling for
exercise, what was moving you tobe healthy?
It sounds like you liked beingactive, that form of challenging
your body or whatever.
John DiPippa (11:11):
I'm wondering if there was something that was
going on that was causing you towant to be active.
Yeah, I mean, I come from afamily history of pretty
significant heart disease onboth sides of my family.
Most of my male relatives on mymother's side died early, some
in their forties, some in their60s, from heart attacks, and
then my father had a heartattack at 58.
And this was probably in thelate 70s and I thought, oh my
(11:33):
gosh, you know the dice are kindof loaded against me.
And so I resolved to becomehealthy and my first goal was
really to live past 60, since somany of my male relatives died
at 60.
And that's how I took uprunning and then eventually
cycling.
So that was my primarymotivation, you know, basically
(11:53):
to stay alive and stay healthy.
Cycling, as you know, sort ofnot only grows on you but
becomes part of your identity,just like my aunt.
And so now you know, I still doit to stay healthy, but I also
do it because I love it and it'spart of who I am now.
Tom Butler (12:12):
Would you say that when you look at being active,
that you feel like it has keptyou healthy.
It has helped you avoid themaybe the problems that
genetically you were predisposedto.
John DiPippa (12:26):
Absolutely.
It's interesting.
Sadly, my wife and I've hadseveral experiences being in the
hospital in the last severalyears for cycling injuries and
you know we're givinginformation to the doctors and
the nurses and they say, so,what medications are you on?
And we say, well, none.
And they say, really, we sayyes and they say, well, no.
(12:51):
I mean, like, what medicationsdo you take every day?
And we say we don't take anyevery day.
Well, how do you stay healthy?
And then you know, ironically,we stay healthy by the thing
that brought us to the hospitalfor our injury.
But it's a conversation we haveevery single time and you know
people just say, well, how doyou stay healthy?
(13:13):
Why aren't you taking medicine?
Well, I know why I'm not takingmedicine.
I know I am healthy.
Tom Butler (13:19):
Well, I have moved into this point where I'm
talking about the bicycle as amedical device.
I feel like if you buy into thestatement that exercise is
medicine, then the bicycle is amedical device.
When people ask well, whatmedicine do you take, you know,
maybe you can start saying Itake almost daily bicycling.
John DiPippa (13:41):
Yes, I think that's a good answer and you
know, a lot of physicians arenow prescribing exercise as part
of their prescription and Ithink for a lot of people they
kind of need that direction fromsomebody with authority to get
them off the couch and moving.
Tom Butler (13:59):
Yeah, for sure.
And you mentioned your wife,Karen.
John DiPippa (14:03):
Yes.
Tom Butler (14:03):
And she's a special cyclist.
John DiPippa (14:06):
Oh yes.
Tom Butler (14:07):
I wonder if you could talk a bit about her.
I hope to someday bring her onthe podcast.
I don't know if you'veapproached that subject with her
, but hopefully I can talk herinto that.
But can you talk about it?
Yeah Well.
John DiPippa (14:20):
I'll tell you what .
After this I'll send you heremail address so you can talk to
her directly.
But her story has to go back tohigh school and college.
In high school she was a reallyreally good track athlete.
She went to school in London,england, because her father was
in the military, and so she hadsome track experience.
She came back to the UnitedStates and went to the college
(14:42):
where we met and it was knownfor physical education, so that
was her major.
At the time they did not have awomen's track team.
Now this was 1970, before TitleIX, which created opportunities
for women in college sports, andso, you know, she was trying to
(15:03):
do this on her own and at onepoint the male, the men's track
team, said why don't you comeand work out with us?
She said, well, I would, butcould I compete?
They said, well, no, you can'treally compete, you can just
come and hang out with us.
And she thought, well, that'skind of weird.
And so that experience kind ofled her to become a health major
(15:26):
and a bunch of other things.
And so in the 80s, when I tookup running, she said you know, I
might run too.
I said OK, so we both entered a5K and I'm running and I'm
really suffering and I feel thistap on my shoulder and she runs
by me and says come on.
And from that point on I'venever been able to keep up with
(15:48):
her.
So she became a very good agegroup runner in the state and I
would say at one point she wasprobably in the top 10 of female
runners in the state.
But then injuries took over andso she kept trying to ride a
run and finally she said youknow, maybe I could ride your
(16:08):
bike to just recover from theseinjuries.
I said okay, and so she starteddoing that, said you know, I'd
like to ride a little more, butI'm worried about falling.
I said oh, don't worry, I'vebeen riding for like 10 years
and I've never fallen.
Well, she's had seven accidentsin the last 25 years um, but
(16:30):
we're still married, um, so soshe's going on she.
So she really ended upchallenging herself on the
bicycle because she's such agreat athlete and so late in
life.
We ended up going to the SeniorOlympics in 2022 and then 2023.
And she picked up three medalsin those events.
(16:52):
She's still in contact withsome of her competitors.
Unfortunately, she can't gothis year, but she's got her
sights set on two years from nowin Tulsa.
Tom Butler (17:03):
Well, that's fantastic, and I do hope that
she comes on, because I'd loveto get more of her story.
John DiPippa (17:10):
I think it'd be great.
Our cycling group calls her themountain goat because she beats
everybody up the hills.
Tom Butler (17:18):
That's fantastic.
I love that.
Now, do you have some bikeexperiences that are really
special to you, if you thinkabout different things you've
done?
John DiPippa (17:27):
Yeah, we started taking bicycle vacations.
We use a company.
We've gone to Europe,especially Italy, so we've been
there 10 times.
We've been to Croatia once weshould be in Mallorca right now,
but we can't because of herinjury.
Should be in Mallorca right now, but we can't because of her
(17:50):
injury.
But probably the most specialcycling event really was in 2009
.
And we took our kids and theirsignificant others.
So we have four boys and theywere all adults at the time and
we went to the part of Italywhere my grandparents came from.
So you know that was specialbecause cycling is wonderful.
(18:11):
That part of Italy is beautifuland it's not well-traveled or
well-touristed, but, of course,having our kids there with us
was just really special.
So, of all the trips we'vetaken, that's probably the most
significant we've ever done.
Tom Butler (18:28):
Well, it does sound special, and I think there is,
you know that time spenttogether, you know on the bike,
as a family.
That sounds just wonderful.
John DiPippa (18:40):
Yeah, and I think this is not an answer to your
question, but it makes merealize that one of the nice
things about cycling is thatKaren and I can do this together
, and even though she's fasterthan me, you know we're
relatively well matched,although let's just say that I
usually she usually gets back tothe car before I do, so it's
(19:01):
something that especially peopleour age can do together, and
with e-bikes, the slower partnercan still keep up.
So if you're into cycling,there's no reason not to do it
with your partner at this age,because it's a great partner
experience.
Tom Butler (19:23):
Well, I know that we could talk bikes the whole time
here, but I wanted to bring youon for a specific reason.
You had mentioned the lawschool at University of Arkansas
, little Rock, the Bowen School,right, and you started teaching
there, I think in 1983.
Correct and you are a DeanEmeritus and a Distinguished
(19:46):
Professor of Law and PublicPolicy.
I think you left the schoolformally in 2012.
Did I get that right?
John DiPippa (19:54):
2021.
Tom Butler (19:56):
I retired in 2021.
Wow, yeah, okay.
So 40 years, yeah you mentionedthat.
So there must have beensomething that kept you there.
What was it about thatexperience that kept you so long
?
John DiPippa (20:11):
Well, it's funny you mention that, because when
we moved to Arkansas and I tookthis job, we thought we'd just
be here for a few years.
Really, two things happened.
One, the law school was aspecial place.
Two things happen.
One, the law school was aspecial place.
It's relatively small, and soyou get to know the faculty and
you have to know the students.
And while Little Rock is thecapital city, it's not a huge
(20:34):
city, and so you become embeddedin the city.
So you have an.
I had an opportunity to do a lotof things outside of the
classroom that I probablywouldn't have had anywhere else,
you know, testifying beforelegislative committees, writing
memoranda.
I did a lot of media work inthe 90s, especially during the
(20:57):
Bill Clinton presidency, youknow, with local and national
news, and so it was anopportunity that was unique,
that couldn't have beenreplicated anywhere else.
But in addition there's a realI guess I would say both
gratitude and specialrelationship with the students.
(21:19):
I mean, it's exciting to sortof see the lights go on and then
to watch them in their careersand to see the lights stay on,
and so, again, because it's nota large place, you get to know
them in a way that's unique.
And so those things, those twothings, the opportunity to do
(21:40):
something in the community thatI couldn't do anywhere else, and
the relationship you have withyour students or I did really
kept me here.
Well, that's fantastic, and I amenrolling as a student with you
today, so I'm here to learn abit, so hopefully I'll use it
(22:01):
well, I'll use it well, but Ishould also add, before we get
to that, that when Bill Clintonopened his library, he also
started a school for publicservice in Little Rock, and I
was one of the inauguralprofessors with that school, and
so, from 2005 to 2021, I wasboth teaching at the law school
(22:26):
and teaching in this graduateprogram, and so that's another
unique thing that I couldn'thave done anywhere else, and the
experiences of meeting studentsfrom all over the world, having
an opportunity to take law buttranslate it into public service
was also special.
Tom Butler (22:46):
Well, and that makes you absolutely perfect, I think
, for what I'm curious about.
So recently, I got involved inadvocating with our state
legislature about cyclinginfrastructure and so, at 62
years old, I got involved inthat process for the first time,
(23:07):
that process of lawmaking andrulemaking and everything.
I don't know why it took solong and I really don't have a
good excuse for that, but Ithink I'll continue to do it.
This conversation I want tohave with you comes out of that
desire to continue with advocacywork.
(23:29):
I'm convinced that lobbying forbetter bike infrastructure is
an important part of encouragingpeople to start and stay
cycling, which is a big part ofwhat I'm doing now, but also I'm
really concerned and I'mfeeling like some of the changes
(23:50):
that we're seeing could reallythreaten kind of being able to
advocate.
I think that federal spending isreally important when it comes
to bike infrastructure, and soyou know, I'm hoping that
there's still reason to believethat there's a role for
(24:11):
individuals like me to getinvolved and try to impact
policy.
First, I guess I'd ask is ourright to impact decision-making
something that you believe isvital?
John DiPippa (24:23):
Oh, absolutely.
One of my areas when I taughtlaw was the First Amendment, and
the First Amendment has fiveguarantees.
One of them is basically aguarantee that says we have the
right to contact our governmentto ask for changes, to ask for
something.
So that's baked in to theConstitution, and so I
(24:48):
absolutely believe it's vital.
It's also vital because, if youthink of our system of
government, which is really ademocratic republic, not a pure
democracy, the fuel for thatsystem of government has to come
from the people, because,unlike a pure democracy, where
(25:09):
everybody gets together and theymake a decision, we elect
representatives to make thosechoices for us.
Well, they don't know what todo unless you let them know what
you want, and so it's reallyimportant.
I mean, that's the fuel for oursystem of government, and unless
(25:29):
that fuel gets into the system,things don't happen.
And if people think that youcan't affect them, it's not true
.
Surely there are some peoplewho will never listen to you,
but every office will tell you,every congressional office,
state officials will tell youthat they tally up the comments
(25:54):
they get from constituents andthey'll know exactly how many
people are saying yes and howmany people are saying no to
certain things.
So it's really important,especially now that we get our
numbers into that tally.
It's not going to, it changesand happen overnight, but it is
(26:16):
a kind of gradual iceberg, thatsort of melts, if you keep that
fuel in the system.
Tom Butler (26:25):
And I want to believe that.
You know, I want to continue tohave hope in that process.
There's a couple foundationalthings that are part of this
here that I'd like to hear fromyou on these things, and first
(26:46):
is what is the law, and first iswhat is the law.
I mean, that's a pretty bigquestion, but how do you answer
that in a way that doesn'trequire a law degree to
understand?
John DiPippa (26:54):
That's a great question.
It's also the first questionyou ask in a jurisprudence
course, so I'm not going to giveyou that answer.
But here's the answer I think Iwould give.
Imagine every rule andregulation the government has
for our way of life EverythingTraffic rules, housing codes,
(27:19):
city zoning rules.
You just go up and up and up.
That's the law, all thattogether plus court
interpretations of that.
So it's a huge sort ofsprawling thing, but you can
boil it down to every rule thatthe government wants us to live
(27:39):
by.
That's the law um writ large.
Now there's lots of pieces tothat right, so you have to sort
of pull out some of the pieceswhen you talk about law with a
small l right.
What's the zoning law?
What's the traffic law?
What's the law about grantingmoney for people to, for local
(28:05):
jurisdictions to spend on bikinginfrastructure?
Tom Butler (28:09):
so lots of little law within the big piece that
makes sense yeah, and I reallysee these two different areas
kind of this construction ofthings.
So bike infrastructure, there'slike construction and money
(28:31):
allocated towards construction,and then there's things like
slowing down traffic and settinglaws as far as speed is
concerned.
So I see that there's, you know, like when you're talking about
making cycling safer, there's alot of different aspects of
that thing that you call thisbig category of law.
And then there's another relatedthing, and you know, I'm really
(28:54):
curious to hear you talk aboutthis, but how then does law
relate to the Constitution?
John DiPippa (29:01):
Sure here.
Think of a pyramid.
Okay, at the bottom of thepyramid are all the local laws,
all the things that arebasically the day-to-day stuff
that cities use, and thenthere's a bunch of state law
that gets overlaid on top ofthat.
(29:21):
At the top of this pyramid youkeep going up you have laws
passed by Congress.
The very top of the pyramid isthe Constitution.
Everything underneath it has tobe consistent with what the
Constitution allows or prohibitsor prohibits.
(29:51):
So the classic sort offormulation of that is
essentially, congress can passlaws, but the Constitution only
gives them power to pass certainkinds of law.
So Congress doesn't have thepower, for example, to pass a
national divorce law because theConstitution doesn't give
Congress that power.
It gives them other powers theycan regulate commerce, they can
(30:13):
spend money, they can makerules for the Army and Navy,
they can coin coins, things likethat.
So Congress can only pass lawsthat the Constitution allows
them to pass.
In addition, congress andeverybody else has to follow the
(30:33):
rules the Constitution putsdown.
That says there are certainthings governments can't do.
So governments can'tdiscriminate people against
people on the basis of race, forexample.
It's the 14th Amendment.
No government can impose an expost facto law punishing people
(30:54):
today for something they didbefore.
So all those limitations alsoapply all the way down that
pyramid to everybody else.
Tom Butler (31:05):
Here in Washington State I feel like we have a
fairly bike-friendly group ofleadership.
Governor Inslee, who recentlyleft office, is a huge advocate
for cycling, so I kind of misshim, but at the same time it's a
pretty friendly place.
I think people recognize prettyimportant to bicycle
(31:27):
infrastructure.
But how does the law come intoplay when it comes to how money
(31:49):
is spent in Washington?
John DiPippa (31:50):
Okay.
So the constitution says thatCongress can spend money.
All right, and Congress canchoose to spend it in one of two
ways or both ways.
They can spend it directly.
So if Congress wanted to set upa federal agency that spent
money directly on bikinginfrastructure, they could do
(32:13):
that and there are some federalprojects where that's part of it
.
But the most prominent way thatCongress spends money that
affects biking infrastructure isCongress can send money to the
states and say here's money youcan spend on these things.
They can attach some conditions.
(32:36):
That's called conditionalspending.
The biking infrastructurefederal money comes that way,
usually through the federalhighway laws, and they say you
know, you can spend this highwaymoney on all these things,
including bike infrastructure.
So at the state level they getthis money and they can choose
(33:01):
how to spend it within thatcategory of things.
Typically Congress doesn'trequire bicycle spending.
Again, there may be somespecial projects where they do,
but it's a general proposition.
They give the money to thestate and they say you can spend
it on biking infrastructure.
Most states will spend about 2%of their money, their
(33:27):
transportation money on bikeinfrastructure.
That's the average.
So you can kind of get a reportcard on your state by how much
of that transportation money isgoing to biking infrastructure.
Arkansas, for example, does notspend 2% of its money on biking
projects.
(33:47):
Some other states I suspectWashington probably spends more
than 2%.
Tom Butler (33:54):
I like this concept that money comes from the
federal level with already astamp on it and I think that's
awesome.
But it feels like there's likethis ship going on right now at
the federal level and let's saythat a president decided that it
(34:21):
was vital that we spend like ahalf a trillion dollars putting
an American flag on Mars like ahalf a trillion dollars putting
an American flag on Mars.
Are there rules that are meantto prevent that spending, if
most people would rather spendmoney on, like active
transportation infrastructureinvestment program, which exists
and just real quick, that was$45 million in fiscal year 2023.
(34:41):
So you could fund a lot ofyears at $45 million, a lot of
$45 million chunks, and stillnot reach a half a trillion
dollars.
John DiPippa (34:52):
That's right.
Let me address that.
First I would say that thequestion isn't, sadly, whether
most people want money to bespent a certain way.
The question has to be whetherCongress wants money to be spent
a certain way.
So the connection to the peoplewould come whether we can
(35:14):
convince Congress that we oughtto spend money on biking
infrastructure.
And the rules are supposed tooperate this way Congress
appropriates the money, thepresident, as the executive,
carries out congressional will.
So Congress says here,president, here's money we're
going to spend on bikinginfrastructure, give it out to
(35:38):
the states or spend it directly.
It's supposed to work that way.
I think the danger right now isthat we have people advising the
president who think that thepresident has unilateral power
to say no, I don't want to spendmoney that way, I want to spend
it some other way.
(35:58):
And there's two parts of thatright.
The first one is can thepresident just refuse to spend
money that Congress has lawfullyappropriated?
And most people are going tosay well, no, it's not the
president's job.
Congress says here's the money,spend it.
That exact question.
(36:26):
Over the years presidents haveargued that they have this power
to impound money.
Right, just say I'm not goingto spend it.
In the 70s Richard Nixon triedto do that and he kind of got
slapped back about that.
The court said you know, whenCongress appropriates money, you
can only spend it the wayCongress wants you to spend it.
But they never said well, youcan't impound it.
(36:49):
And so the currentadministration is arguing they
have the right to just say we'renot going to spend money we
don't want to spend.
And then the second part iswe're going to spend it on
something else.
And this relates to a lot ofwhat I see are the very
dangerous things coming out ofthis administration,
particularly in usingpresidential power to declare
(37:12):
emergencies.
So the president has beensaying look, there are all these
emergencies all over the place.
I get to decide how to dealwith them.
And that's a real dangerbecause the rules are not.
The Constitution is notsupposed to work that way.
Constitution is supposed towork Congress decides the power
(37:34):
of the purse that's their powerand the president carries out
the laws Congress passes.
We're in a very, very dangerousspot, not just for biking
infrastructure, because that'sunder the gun, but lots of other
things that the president isarguing.
I'm just not going to spendthis money.
Right, it's not what I want todo, and so I'm not going to do
(37:58):
it.
Tom Butler (37:59):
I think the Nixon example is really interesting to
me, because there's a decisionmade.
I mean, I don't know anythingabout it, so you know there was
somewhere.
A decision was like thisdirection that the White House
is going, that the president isgoing is counter to the
(38:23):
intention of the Constitution,that has to be questioned by
someone in some way.
And so here, if we have thisthing where it's like Congress
has allocated this and it'searmarked for a specific place,
where does the law come in, asfar as how that gets challenged?
John DiPippa (38:45):
Well, I mean the law comes in in that people who
are affected by, say, thepresident not spending money
will bring a lawsuit saying hey,you're injuring me by not
spending this money.
You can't do that, stop it.
That's the technical term foran injunction, right, stop it.
(39:06):
Essentially and there are a lotof those going on because the
current administration isrefusing to spend certain money
or they're cutting contracts andthings like that A lot of
litigation in the lower courtsthat are working their way up to
the Supreme Court and so whenthey get there, the questions I
(39:28):
raised about does theConstitution allow the president
not to spend money that theCongress appropriated, those
questions are going to bedecided.
It just takes a while for thesethings to work their way
through the courts.
But notice, it comes from aperson who brings the lawsuit
(39:49):
Right.
Again, it's the citizens andthe fuel to our democracy going
into it.
One decision the Supreme Courtmade this winter actually, that
(40:10):
seems to be providing an insightinto their thinking, and this
was when the Trumpadministration canceled $2
billion of payment undercontracts for the work when the
work had already been performedwork when the work had already
been performed and theplaintiffs in those cases said
(40:31):
wait a minute, right, you can'tjust refuse to pay us.
It's one thing to say, well,we're not going to spend the
money.
It's another to say you justcan't pay us for work we've
already done.
And the Supreme Court, inwhat's called an emergency, said
you know, you really ought topay them.
They refused the Trumpadministration's request to stay
(40:55):
a lower court order that saidyou got to pay these people.
So they sent it back to thelower courts.
Now that's, they're stillfighting about that, but at
least we know that this SupremeCourt, or at least five of the
justices, think that thepresident can't refuse to pay
people who've already done workfor the government.
(41:16):
The scary thing is that fourjustices dissented and said hey,
wait, we can't tell thepresident what to do here, we
can't force him to spend money.
And that's a very worrying signto me that four out of nine of
them think sure president canjust not pay people if he
(41:38):
doesn't like them.
Tom Butler (41:39):
It just seems like there's some tests going on with
the way our democracy functions, that it's never been tested
this way before.
Is that fair?
John DiPippa (41:50):
Oh, I think you're spot on and you know we heard a
lot about Project 2025 in thecampaign, but one of the real
fundamental theoretical piecesreally goes back in legal
thinking to the 80s and it'scalled the unitary executive
theory and the idea is fromthese theorists that the
(42:15):
Constitution only created onepresident and gives the
president lots of powerexecutive power, power to
faithfully execute the laws,things like that and so, under
this thinking, congress has verylittle power to limit the
president and the courts havevery little power because the
(42:35):
president again, in this way ofthinking, sort of sits at the
top of the pyramid.
They say, well, the president'sthe only federal official for
whom the entire nation votes, sohe represents the kind of voice
of the nation and there's onlyone of them, and some of the
(42:56):
framers thought we needed a veryrobust chief executive, and
that played a role last yearwhen the Supreme Court said that
the president cannot becriminally prosecuted for acts
taken in his official capacity.
So you take that and what yousee is the Project 2025 people
(43:19):
really pushing the limit on anylimitations on the presidency,
right, so they're trying to firepeople that Congress said you
can only fire for cause it'slike members of the National
Labor Relations Board, forexample.
And the Trump administrationsays, no, they work for me,
(43:40):
they're in the executive branch,they work for the president.
I get to fire whomever I wantwhenever I want, for whatever
reason.
Supreme Court seems to besiding with him there, so you
sort of take that all the waydown.
The unitary executive gets todecide how he executes the laws.
So he doesn't like spending,doesn't want to spend it,
(44:04):
doesn't have to.
So there's lots of things thatthis administration are doing
that are pushing theConstitution to extreme.
The other thing they're doingis they're pushing the existing
powers of the president to theirextreme.
Pushing the existing powers ofthe president to their extreme.
(44:27):
So the Constitution gives thepresident the power to pardon.
The Supreme Court has alwayssaid that's unreviewable.
The president can do that.
The whole point of pardon isfor the executive not to be
limited by other people.
Well, this president has takenit so that he is pardoning
people not because they weretreated unfairly.
He says they were, but theyweren't.
(44:48):
He's pardoning people becausehe likes their politics, or they
like him, or they were campaigndonors or for any number of
other reasons don't relate atall to the justice behind their
conviction.
We pardoned all of the January6th rioters, for example.
There's no reason to do that.
(45:09):
They committed crimes, they haddue process, they were
represented by lawyers, theywent to trial, they appealed
their convictions.
Nothing wrong with whathappened.
He just didn't like that hissupporters were being held
accountable.
So he's pushing the existingpowers.
He's doing it with tariffs aswell, and he's also pushing the
(45:34):
theory that essentially, hewants to say I can do what I
want while I'm president and noone can stop me.
Tom Butler (45:43):
It seems like there were guardrails in place that
were like a concept of decency.
Yeah, and then what we arefinding out is that if you don't
have decency there to guardthings, there's an awful lot of
things that you can do thataren't there.
(46:05):
It's not like baked into thelaw keeping someone from doing
it.
John DiPippa (46:10):
Yeah, there are a couple of things there.
I think you're absolutely rightA lot of the powers the
president has, for example withtariffs.
Congress has the power toimpose tariffs, but over the
years they said you know, wereally shouldn't be doing this.
They delegated that power tothe president to impose tariffs
(46:30):
in certain situations.
Now I think everybody assumedthat presidents would act in
good faith, that they wouldfollow the procedures and they'd
only use this power when theyreally needed to.
Well, that's not true.
I don't think you can say thispresident is acting in good
faith, using this power, and sothe assumption from Congress is
(46:52):
that you'd have a decent personwith integrity, acting in good
faith, exercising thisdiscretionary power.
That just got blown upcompletely.
I think the other thing goesback to my point about fuel.
In the system we have a sensethat everything is sort of well.
(47:14):
There's the idea of the fairand just world fallacy and
people seem to think and this isfairly well proven that the
world will act and operate in ajust manner, and so democracy
essentially assumes that thepeople we elect will act in a
fair and just manner and willact for the common good.
(47:36):
Well, it's never been true.
You know it's naive to think,for example, that the
legislators in the 19th century,prior to the end of slavery or
before Civil War, were acting inany kind of morally meaningful,
just way by continuing toimprison Africans who they stole
(48:03):
from their countries.
Right, I mean?
The story we tell ourselves isthat somehow all these people
were the framers, for examplewere wonderful people.
Well, they were slave owners.
They protected slavery in theConstitution.
And so the naive way ofthinking about our situation now
(48:25):
is to think this is somehow sodifferent that it's
unprecedented.
It's if men he used the wordmen were angels, we wouldn't
need governments.
And because men are not angels,we need to limit the
(49:00):
government's power because wecan't trust fallible human
beings to actually always get itright.
And that was his argument forthe way he set up the
Constitution.
It didn't always work, but itdoes sort of illustrate that we
can't be naive about the peoplewe elect and hope that they do
(49:23):
the right thing and hope thatthey do the right thing.
Tom Butler (49:24):
I think there was an interesting moment where Josh
Hawley, senator, showed a chartthat had the number of
injunctions against PresidentTrump.
Imagine you saw that thatthere's some force that is
(49:45):
treating Trump unfairly, ratherthan this is a president that is
further outside the bounds thanmost presidents have been.
To me, that's a veryinteresting dynamic to present
it.
Like look how poorly we'retreating this president you're
(50:08):
poorly retreating this president.
John DiPippa (50:08):
Yes, and again, that's really scary because the
data show that people who areleast informed about current
events tended to vote for Trumpin the last election.
When I say least informed,they're the people who got no
news whatsoever overwhelminglyvoted for Trump.
So people like Josh Hawley,who's smart he's not a dumb guy
(50:30):
knows he can prey on people'slack of information, and so what
he really?
He knew the answer, which wasTrump is doing more things that
get challenged than other people, but what he wanted was the
idea to seep into the lowinformation voters that Trump is
(50:50):
being treated differently, whodon't have the wherewithal to
sort of work through it.
All you know.
The truth is, we've never had apresident who tried to overturn
the election in Congress.
We've never had a president whoencouraged the election in
Congress.
We've never had a president whoencouraged people to riot.
(51:12):
We've never had a president, asfar as we know, who tried to
get a foreign leader to smearhis political opponent in
exchange for money.
He basically said to PresidentZelensky I'm not going to give
you any money unless you smearBiden.
We've never had a president actlike that.
And so, yeah, he's unique, buthe's unique in a bad way.
Tom Butler (51:36):
Again, he's unique in a way where he's testing
guardrails.
To me it's somewhat of a scaryway and again, from this
perspective of I want to be ableto see our country move forward
not just the state ofWashington but our country move
forward as far as activetransportation measures are
(51:57):
concerned.
You know I have representatives.
If I do a bunch of work and Ifind people who I think are
great leaders and they alsounderstand the importance of
active transportation and I workand we send that person to
Washington.
If they're part of a body thatjust rubber stamps everything
(52:20):
that the president does, itseems like I've lost that
representation.
John DiPippa (52:26):
Yes and no.
So yeah, you still have yourrepresentation formally, but
it's frustrating when the policythat comes out doesn't reflect
your interests at all.
So I guess there are a coupleof things I'd say there.
One at the federal level it'snot just who you elect to
(52:47):
represent yourself, it's whoother people in other and get to
Washington and figure out howthey can mesh those together.
That's not happening right nowbecause at least one political
(53:17):
party acts in lockstep.
So the first answer is we haveto elect more people.
In this case it would beDemocrats wasn't always, but
this case it is so that theDemocrats can, in their policies
and platforms, advance things.
That's how we have the currentbiking funding.
(53:40):
We've got Basically DemocraticCongresses who put that into the
bills in the last 15, 20 yearsand those have stayed.
So it's not just you, it's whoother people elect.
The second thing I'd say is themost effective advocacy is
going to be on a local level andso, no matter what happens in
(54:02):
Congress, there are things thatwe can get done on a local level
if we stay active.
And, as a friend of mine saidtoday, I asked my cycling group
what I should say and one ofthem said be a pain in the ass,
and you can be a real pain inthe ass on local levels.
And so I think that's reallyimportant too, not to get too
(54:25):
hung up about the slow progressin Washington there will be but
to also make sure that we canget done on a local level what
we can do.
Cities can adopt the SafeStreets program, for example,
and some of it depends on money.
But cities have their own moneyand not all of it are big kind
(54:47):
of expenses, you know.
So part of the Safe Streetsprogram is when a city
resurfaces a road, they add abike lane.
That's not very expensive,right, but that happens on a
local level.
It doesn't depend on whatCongress is doing at all.
You can advocate for bettertraffic enforcement, for slower
(55:11):
speed limits in well-traffickedareas, so there are lots of
things you can do at a locallevel that don't depend on
whatever craziness is going onin Congress.
Tom Butler (55:35):
Well, you say that, john, but here's something that
I would propose.
Sure that again we're in aweird time that becomes his
talking point that we need toeliminate bike lanes just
because cars need to get through, for the economy, for safety,
for national security, whatever.
John DiPippa (56:11):
It seems like there's some levers he's pulling
, where he's threatening towithhold dollars from states
that don't go along with that,and so again, where does the law
come into play there?
I think that's a very realconcern.
But you talked about gettinginto the legislature and
advocating for positions, andthe cliche is you don't want to
know how laws are made, becauseit's like watching sausage being
made, right and so.
But here's where we have toactually embrace the sausage
(56:31):
making to some degree, becauselots of things happen, and a lot
of things happen below thesurface, and sometimes they
happen in a way that benefitspeople.
So let me give you a currentexample.
The president has argued thathe doesn't want to extend these
(56:51):
electric vehicle subsidies andsome other green energy
subsidies that were part of theBiden's Infrastructure Act.
We're noticing that a lot ofred state representatives are
saying wait a minute, that'staking jobs from the people that
represent me, and it wouldn'tsurprise me if a lot of those
(57:14):
stay in the final package.
Now, that came about becauselocal people, including
businesses, for example, weresaying to their representatives
wait a minute, if you cut outthese projects, we're going to
have to lay off people in yourdistrict.
They're not going to like that.
So the sausage making might andI think will keep that.
(57:38):
I think the same thing you seewith bicycle infrastructure.
To some degree it's become apartisan issue.
The most extreme conservativesare arguing, for example, that
it's a communist thing.
Well, that's crazy.
But there are also a lot ofconservatives who actually like
cycling and like cyclinginfrastructure.
(57:59):
The husband of our currentgovernor is really big into
mountain biking.
Husband of our current governoris really big into mountain
biking and so our state'senjoying this renaissance for
mountain biking because he likesit.
Well, if you're a locallobbyist, you're going to
exploit that all you can.
You've really got to make surethat you invite him to all the
(58:24):
openings to all the cyclingevents, the whole thing, and
really make sure he knows what'sgoing on.
So that's part of the sausagemaking.
Our member of Congress, who's aRepublican who tends to vote
with the Republicans, is acyclist.
He doesn't make a big dealabout keeping cycling
(58:44):
infrastructure in these bills,but they stay in there and he's
got some influence.
So again, we just currentlyopened a section of a trail
that's going to run for about 70miles from Little Rock to a
city called Hot Springs.
We opened a section of thetrail.
He was there right.
(59:04):
Make sure he knows how much youappreciate whatever it is he
can do for cycling.
And so you've got to embracethe sausage making.
You know, and sometimes you'regoing to get what you need maybe
ugly, maybe in a watered downversion, but you're going to get
it if you stay with it.
Now that's too Pollyannish andI know we're facing real
(59:29):
problems, but again, the fuelfor this democracy is for us to
be pains in the ass and keepmaking noise and keep making
points and keep letting ourrepresentatives at every level
know we care about these things.
Tom Butler (59:47):
Well, I like the sausage making, you know, I
think, when you had people like.
McCain and Biden that werebehind the scenes getting things
done.
That was a better way, you know, for things to happen.
You know, right now I feel kindof like you mentioned, you know
, this concept and the Project2025 concept of the really
(01:00:11):
strong executive.
But if you have, like, all thispower, then it seems like you
have one man, you know, makingthe decision.
Maybe what that means is thatcyclists need to all come
together and buy a whole bunchof Trump's cryptocurrency and
have some influence over Trump.
(01:00:33):
It's like how do you affectchange if the sausage making
goes out and it's just this oneperson that gets to make
decisions?
John DiPippa (01:00:46):
I don't know much about cryptocurrency, although
it's possible.
Something that I was veryactive in student movement in
college and something that aprofessor said to me at one
point was be ubiquitous beeverywhere, everywhere, all the
time, and I think that's theanswer.
Again, change doesn't happenovernight, but if we can be
(01:01:07):
ubiquitous.
On the president thing, I'mvery worried, as you may know
from some of my posts, about thepresident turning himself into
a legal dictator and pushing allthe limits and getting all this
power, and I'm very worriedabout that.
(01:01:28):
But I think the key is whathappens in the midterm elections
next year, because that's theway to put a brake on all of
this.
He'll still push, but there area lot of things.
If we can flip at least theHouse to Democrats and don't
know about the Senate, that's ahard one but at least the House
(01:01:51):
to Democrats and you don't knowabout the Senate, that's a hard
one, but at least the Housestops the worst things from
happening and you get the Senateand the House, I think it's
possible to flip both in the2026 election.
Then you've got the sort ofquote Jack Nicholson from Mars
Attacks Two out of threebranches of government.
Ain't bad, you know.
(01:02:11):
So that's what I hold out hopefor.
In the meantime, we have tokeep making as much noise as we
can about the issues we careabout and put as much sand in
the gears as is possible.
It's not going to be pretty andmay not always win.
If 2026 does not turn out theway I hope it does, then I would
(01:02:34):
be very, very worried about oursystem of government.
Tom Butler (01:02:45):
So a couple of things right now.
Our constitution does not makeroom for a dictator, but you're
talking about a legal dictator.
So what do you mean by that?
John DiPippa (01:02:58):
I've written about this and what I'm arguing is
that what Trump is trying to dois create this unitary executive
by amassing unilateral powersthat he already has right.
So, again, as a as thepresident, he's a dictator of
pardons, gets to decide thosecongress has given him a lot of
(01:03:20):
essentially one man ruleauthority over terrorists and
he's pushing those to his limits.
He's also using the courts tochallenge some other limitations
on him.
So what he wants to do, hewants to get the Supreme Court
to essentially say yeah, you'reright, you know, you're the only
(01:03:43):
president.
You get to fire anybody youwant.
You get to decide not to spendmoney, because it's up to
Congress to do that.
You get to do all these thingsyou're pushing.
That's what I mean by a legaldictator.
He's trying to create astructure that would allow him
to be a dictator in lots ofareas, and you have to worry
(01:04:04):
because essentially that's whatViktor Orban has done in Hungary
.
Viktor Orban has taken overessentially the government and
he got the Congress largely hisparty to give him what are
mostly dictatorial powers overthe courts, over the
(01:04:27):
universities, for all sorts ofplaces, and so there's a
playbook for becoming a legaldictator, a dictator that the
law essentially empowers.
We have to also remember thatAdolf Hitler started out as a
legal dictator because, afterthe Reichstag fire, he got the
(01:04:49):
Reichstag to say, yeah, you know, we're really in a bad shape,
here's all this power you canuse, and adopted laws that gave
him that authority.
So that's what I mean by alegal dictator a one man rule, a
one-man rule empowered by allthe legal rules that he both
exploits and gets.
Tom Butler (01:05:30):
You talk about Republicans and Democrats, and I
think that's breaking the rulesversus a belief that the rules
that we have can be usedeffectively.
Have majority of people and Ithink there's plenty of
Republicans that would say youknow, we're really outside of
the boundaries here as far asthe way the government is
(01:05:52):
supposed to work.
But if we have a majority ofpeople that are saying what we
need is a rule breaker, what weneed is someone that's going to
break the system because thesystem doesn't work, then it
feels like it's a much moredifficult process.
John DiPippa (01:06:08):
Well, I agree with you that a large portion of our
population I don't know howmany, whether it's a majority or
not, but certainly a majorityof the voters voted for Trump
really want to see somebody actlike a bull in a china shop and
break things and get things done.
(01:06:29):
That's how things operate inthe tech world, for example,
which is why Elon Musk is sopopular and I put it in
democratic and liberal termsbecause only the Republicans
have tapped into that sense.
Only the Republicans havetapped into let's go break
things.
You can hear it in theirrhetoric and that's why, as long
(01:06:50):
as they keep getting elected,they're going to keep allowing
people to break things.
The Democrats on the other sidehave never figured out how to
tap into that.
I mean, they had some people Ithink Bernie Sanders is a good
example who ran.
He didn't quite say it, but Ithink a lot of his message was
(01:07:10):
hey, things are wrong, thingsare broken, we got to fix.
But the Democrats keep runningpeople who think, if we just act
normally I think that was JoeBiden's presidency we just act
normally, people are going tocome back to us, and so you know
, think about, just compareBiden and Trump, not just on
(01:07:34):
their personalities, but in theway they govern.
Biden was an institutionalist.
He wasn't going to fool withthe Justice Department.
He appointed people who werekind of sober and mindful and
respectful of the tradition.
He followed the sort of rulesand passed legislation that, in
(01:07:56):
his experience, people would say, oh yeah, that's a normal thing
to do.
Thank God we have you aspresident.
But he never broke anything.
He didn't try to break theinstitutions, and so I think
you're right.
A lot of people want to seethings broken, and it's only the
Republicans have figured outhow to tap into that.
(01:08:17):
I think the next election cycleand this is way beyond biking,
but the next election cycle isgoing to be about how can the
Democrats signal that they'rereformers too?
They want to fix the system ina way that actually cuts into a
(01:08:37):
lot of that support that Trumpand the Republicans get.
That make sense.
Tom Butler (01:08:43):
Yeah, I think it does and, you know, in some ways
, coming through this, it seemslike it has identified some
areas where there needs to be adifferent kind of accountability
in order to keep things fromgoing too far off the rails.
John DiPippa (01:09:04):
Yeah, and that's also a big question, because
accountability comes fromelections.
I mean, that's the basic formof accountability If you don't
like what your representative isdoing and enough people agree,
you vote in somebody else, andthat's the sort of civics high
school civics version, right.
(01:09:25):
But there are lots of otherthings that are making it very
difficult to have that kind ofaccountability, and so
gerrymandering, for instance.
Most seats in Congress are safe.
Those are both Democratic andRepublican seats.
Well, if people never have tocompete for any votes, then how
(01:09:47):
can you hold them accountablewhen they don't really like what
they do?
If they don't have to respondto other people within their
district, you might havedifferent ideas.
You never get any differentideas and so both Democrats and
Republicans have exploited that,although again, the Republicans
have been better.
So that's one form ofaccountability.
(01:10:08):
I think the other form is withthe courts, and you're seeing
some of that right now.
Despite what it seems, thecourts have been entering
injunctions against thepresident in his most extreme
forms, invoking the AlienEnemies Act and some of the
(01:10:29):
tariffs.
So there is that form ofaccountability too, and again
that's going to be messy.
I think some of that's going tohold, but I want to go back to
elections.
We just have to elect peopleand hold them accountable for
when they don't follow through,and that requires the hard work
(01:10:49):
of organizing on a local leveland constantly letting people
know.
This isn't right.
Let's do something about it.
Tom Butler (01:11:00):
It seems like a cyclist again or anybody that's
interested in activetransportation, or anybody
that's interested in activetransportation in safe streets,
in these different ways topromote something besides cars
on our roadways.
There is this local action, andthen there's also this process
(01:11:22):
of weaving together all of thislocal action into a federal
process and it seems like, youknow, maybe there's room for
more organizing different localefforts into a more unified
front from a cyclinginfrastructure perspective.
John DiPippa (01:11:46):
I think that's a great point.
You know, think about all thecycling clubs in your area.
Well, they all go out and cycle, but they all have a common
interest cycling infrastructure,safe cycling.
So I absolutely agree.
I think we need a cyclingcoalition in every locality that
(01:12:09):
includes all kinds of cyclistswith all sorts of ideas.
You know, I often say allcyclists matter, but not all
cyclists are the same.
You've got to get all thosepeople and I think the place to
start would be cycling clubs andothers together often to talk
(01:12:31):
about their cycling concerns.
That creates an agenda andallows the whole cycling
community to finally act in somecommon way, you know, but I
absolutely agree.
And then it's got to move upmean every locality has one.
(01:12:52):
You have a state structure thattakes from all those coalitions
now we do have league ofamerican bicyclists.
Tom Butler (01:12:59):
it would be interesting to see their
leadership and I am connected abit with some leadership there
and to be talking more about howdo they plan to weave together
local advocacy into a unifiedvoice?
John DiPippa (01:13:13):
Yep, you know, I think that's right.
It also shows that this isbi-directional right.
I mean, localities can move upand try to aggregate at a state
level or a national level, butthese national organizations
need to come down locally andstart showing up and saying hey,
wouldn't it be a good idea forall of us to get together?
(01:13:34):
I mean, that could work too.
Tom Butler (01:13:37):
Yeah Well, I'm ready for a large party, nationwide
party to happen, an organizingparty.
John DiPippa (01:13:46):
It's a bicycle party.
I like it.
Tom Butler (01:13:49):
Well, this has been the exact conversation that I
wanted to have, and I thank youso much for bringing all of your
experience, your knowledge, tothis.
I want to leave with thisquestion, and that is if we turn
back to cycling, what do youhave coming up as far as cycling
adventures are concerned?
It sounds like you had oneinterrupted because of an entry
(01:14:10):
that's right okay, so what'sgoing?
John DiPippa (01:14:12):
on.
So, yeah, we had thatinterrupted.
So we're planning for next yearand may not be mallorca, could
be somewhere else.
For me I've got sort of two bigadventures.
One I'm planning to ride ourbig local ride called the Big
Dam Bridge Ride.
It's a ride that takes place,that crosses this bridge that
(01:14:34):
went over a dam on the ArkansasRiver.
That is the longest pedestrianbike bridge in the country,
built just for that purpose.
So it's pretty impressive andthey have a 105 105 mile ride in
September.
It's the biggest cycling eventin the state and so I've got a
particular goal in mind.
It's a pretty challenging ride,has about 5,000 or so feet of
(01:14:58):
climbing, and most of that comeslate in the ride.
So you know you're not ready.
So I've got some plans and I'mreally, really trying to do that
.
My other sort of big cyclingthing would be, in a couple of
months, to hope that my wife canback, get back on the bike, we
can start riding together againand and ease her way back into
(01:15:20):
cycling.
Tom Butler (01:15:21):
Well, I'm hoping all the best for that.
You know, like you're talkingabout, it's so fun when you can
cycle together with your spouse,and so I'm really hoping that
all of that healing happens andeverything gets stitched back
together perfectly and again,thank you so much for joining me
today and helping to throw somelight on this.
John DiPippa (01:15:44):
Well, you're welcome, tom, it's been a
pleasure.
Tom Butler (01:15:47):
Cool.
Well, maybe someday I'll makeit down to Arkansas and all the
other adventures that I want todo.
John DiPippa (01:15:55):
Come and do the big damn bridge in September.
Tom Butler (01:15:58):
I don't know that I could do 5,000 feet of elevation
.
That would be a challenge.
John DiPippa (01:16:04):
You can do shorter rides.
Tom Butler (01:16:05):
Yeah, maybe, maybe.
Yeah, all right, you can doshorter rides.
Yeah, maybe, maybe.
Yeah, all right, thanks again,take care, you're welcome.
Bye, bye.
Now there was an interestingdevelopment after my
conversation with John.
I had planned to attend aTacoma Washington Bicycle Club
(01:16:25):
meeting in the evening.
Conversation with John, I hadplanned to attend a Tacoma
Washington Bicycle Club meetingin the evening.
At that meeting they weretalking about needing someone to
be the government and communityrelations director.
I felt moved to volunteer to dothat, so now I'm in a position
to take John's advice and applyit with my local bike club.
Here are a couple of key thingsthat I'm taking away from the
conversation.
First is to be ubiquitous.
(01:16:48):
There are a bunch ofopportunities locally to just
show up as a cyclist, so I willbe looking to do that as often
as I can.
Of course, showing up takestime, but other than that it is
pretty easy.
The other point is the conceptof linking together all the
local advocacy that is going on.
The other point is the conceptof linking together all the
local advocacy that is going on.
I think being the governmentand community relations director
(01:17:10):
here locally gives me a reasonto reach out to the League of
American Bicyclists and askabout their efforts to maximize
impact by linking local effortstogether nationally.
I do believe this is going tobe one of the more interesting
activities I've ever beeninvolved with.
Regardless of whether you ridein an urban environment or on
rural roads, I hope you arefinding routes that feel safe
(01:17:33):
and remember age is just a gearchange.
This is the Cycling Over 60 podcast, season three,
episode 33.
Can we still lobby for bikes?
And I'm your host, tom Butler?
Thank you for listening to thepodcast this week.
(00:25):
Knowing that you're listeningreally does keep me going, and I
still love seeing what ridespeople are doing in the Cycling
Over 60 Strava Club.
If you aren't part of the club,consider joining us, of course.
I especially like seeing theride photos.
Last week I talked about theelectrolyte and feeding strategy
that I was planning to try outon the 60-mile ride with Kelly.
(00:46):
I miscalculated how manycalories I needed to consume on
the bike a little bit because Iforgot that we were going to
take a snack break at the20-mile mark.
So I ended up consuming fewerdates than I had planned while
riding and instead had a feworanges.
And my lunch was huge Way toomuch food.
We ate at a place called CafeNeo in Arlington, washington.
(01:08):
I ordered a Neo Power Bowl.
It was definitely too big forone meal, but I grew up in a eat
everything on your plate kindof family, so I tend to feel bad
about wasting food.
Since we didn't have a way tocarry food.
I ate way too much.
One thing about it the food atCafe Neo was excellent.
(01:28):
I suggested that next time wedo the ride, kelly and I should
share the bowl.
She shut down that idea becausethe veggie gyro she had was
really, really good.
I paid a price for overeating,with a bit of discomfort for the
last 20 miles.
It was hot that day and I didpress the pace as much as I
could For the last 10 miles orso.
(01:51):
The heat was elevating my heartrate so I couldn't push as hard
as I actually would have likedto.
So it was really hot, I wassweating a lot, I was really
pushing it, but I had absolutelyno cramping after the ride, and
that is an unusual outcome forme.
So I think my electrolytestrategy did pay off and I look
(02:13):
forward to testing it more.
I do have cramping after ridesenough that it would make a huge
difference to find a way toeliminate them, and that is
especially a problem for thenight after the first day of the
STP, because it interferes withme getting a good night's sleep
.
One strange outcome was that Ihad a bunch of broken blood
vessels in my right eye.
That happened toward the end ofthe ride.
I found out that the medicalterm for this is subconjectural
(02:37):
hemorrhage.
After doing a bunch of readingit doesn't seem like very often
it's something to worry about.
While I don't believe there's alink, I would like to eliminate
that it's related to theelectrolytes that I took in.
Because of the positive impactand cramping, I'm still going to
use the electrolyte mix that Icame up with for this ride on
other rides and we'll just haveto see what happens.
(02:59):
I expected to do much better onthis attempt than when I first
did the ride two and a halfyears ago, and my results showed
again that you can certainlyimprove your cycling later in
life.
I set 41 personal bests on theride Pretty much every segment
that was there two years ago.
I bested that effort and I dida 13.9 mile per hour average,
(03:22):
which was much better as well.
I wish I could see and comparethe average on just the last 20
miles.
For that section of the ride.
I was trying to get to 14 milesper hour average.
Before the end of the ride wehad been at a 14 mile per hour
average until our slow ride tothe lunch stop.
That little bit took us down to13.5.
(03:43):
So for the last 20 miles I wastrying to get that back up.
Really, the most important thingis that Kelly had a really good
time.
As I mentioned, we were testingher battery, so she took it
easy and used a lot of pedalassist.
The battery power indicatorended up at about half after 60
miles.
That is excellent news becauseI think when we ride together we
(04:05):
will likely not go further thana metric century, so there's
plenty of flexibility as far asher battery is concerned.
Even if we get into a ridewhere there's a lot of climbing,
we're really curious just howfar it will go.
It's hard to imagine that shecould do like 120 miles on a
full charge.
We're going to do some morerides before charging the
(04:26):
battery to see if that will helpus determine just how far she
could go on one charge, but it'shard to know how much power
it's losing when it's justsitting.
One more thing before we get tothe interview.
I've ramped up the organizationof the September 14th Cycling
Over 60 event.
There's one aspect of the eventthat I need to make a decision
on.
I would like there to be a timeto socialize.
My thought is to find a venuewhere we can eat and have the
(04:49):
space to get to know each other.
I also want to have a guestspeaker that will give a brief
talk on something interestingthat's cycling related.
My question is when to havesuch a gathering.
I originally planned to have itthe night before the ride.
My thought was that the vastmajority of people doing the
ride will be local, so I feltthat it wouldn't be difficult
for people to come both Saturdayevening and then ride the next
(05:11):
day.
In fact, I thought it might bekind of fun to potentially meet
some people that you would ridewith the next day.
Someone from outside the areashared that they thought it
would be asking a lot of peopleto come Saturday night.
There is an option of doing thesocial event after the ride on
Sunday, but I don't know ifpeople will want to hang around
that long.
For people doing the 30 mileride, they would get finished
(05:33):
hours before the event would getstarted.
Another factor is for peopleoutside the area is how late
they could stay on Sunday beforeneeding to travel home.
They might want to get startedright after the ride is over.
I'm having a really hard timefiguring out what is best, so it
would be awesome if you wouldhelp me out, if you could take
just a few moments, go to theevent description and hit the.
(05:54):
Send me a text link.
I would love for you to tell meif you think a Saturday night
event works or if it should bean after-ride party.
Thank you for taking the timeto do that for me.
In the spring, I participated inthe Washington Bikes Lobbying
(06:17):
Day in Olympia.
I'm so glad that I did, and nowI wish I had been involved in
advocacy work sooner.
So many people complain aboutwhat the government does or
doesn't do, but I find thatrelatively few of us are engaged
in the process of sharing ouropinions directly with
legislators.
While I'm as committed as everto working to get safe biking
(06:37):
infrastructure, I have to behonest that it seems like a
strange time for activism at thenational level.
It actually seems dangerous toexpress opposition to White
House policy, but I thinkfederal transportation spending
is an important source offunding for safe infrastructure.
I wanted to find someone who wasan experienced cyclist who
could also talk about how themassive political change could
(07:00):
impact my ability to helpinfluence policy.
I'm thrilled because I foundthe perfect person.
John DePippa is an avid cyclist, but he is also Dean Emeritus
of the William H Bowen School ofLaw at the University of
Arkansas, little Rock.
He formerly taught for 40 yearsand is a distinguished
professor of law and publicpolicy.
Here's our conversation.
(07:21):
I feel incredibly fortunatetoday to be joined by John
DePippa.
Thank you, john, for coming onthe podcast.
John DiPippa (07:29):
Oh well, thank you for asking me.
It's going to be fun and a realhonor.
Tom Butler (07:33):
Well, cool and it's an honor to have you here and
you're the perfect guest.
We'll kind of get into that alittle bit more about some
questions I have for you, butfirst can you talk about your
earliest memories of the bicycle?
John DiPippa (07:47):
You know, my earliest memories are actually
of someone else riding a bicycleand it was my aunt.
Her name was Carmilla at thetime she went into the convent
and became Sister Bethestina,but my earliest memory is that
she didn't learn to drive.
She rode a bike everywhere andshe was really well known for
(08:12):
that.
She was also my favorite auntever and I think I was her
favorite nephew.
But besides that, that's myearliest memory of somebody who
used a bike actively in a waythat you know was transportation
, but it also was part of anidentity.
Now, eventually she did learnto drive and became the
(08:34):
chauffeur for all the nuns, butshe didn't learn to drive until
she went to the convent.
So that's really my earliestmemory of a bicycle.
And then of course, I thoughtthat was cool to have a bicycle,
and growing up in the 60severybody had bicycles, all the
kids did, and so that's you knowpretty much how we hung out.
(08:55):
We'd ride around town and comeback before it got dark.
Tom Butler (09:00):
Now, somebody that's relying on a bicycle rather
than a car sounds like somethingthat would happen in Europe.
Was your aunt here?
John DiPippa (09:09):
Oh yeah, this was in the United States.
I grew up in a small town so itwasn't that large, you know.
I mean, obviously it was theuniverse to me.
She could get around townpretty much.
I remember she had a basket onit and so she could carry things
to and from wherever she wasgoing.
Tom Butler (09:31):
I'm wondering about.
As you got into adulthood, youknow for many of us it gets hard
, with so many responsibilities,to keep going cycling.
How did you find it?
Did you stay with cycling as anadult?
John DiPippa (09:46):
It's interesting, you know.
I mean obviously didn't staywith cycling forever, but about
40 years ago, when I firststarted my job teaching law in
Little Rock, I didn't live thatfar from the law school and we
had children four children inone car and I thought, well,
this isn't a bad way to getaround, I'm just going to, you
(10:06):
know, ride to the law school.
So I got a second hand bike andI started riding it to and from
the law school, and at the timeI was a runner.
So that was my.
Running, was primarily myexercise, but the bicycle was
actually, you know,transportation, but the bicycle
was actually, you know,transportation.
Eventually I started having alot of running injuries and so,
(10:28):
probably 35 years ago, I startedriding the bike more and more
for exercise and less and lessfor commuting, and probably the
mid 90s I just switched over tobicycling and that became my
primary form of exercise.
Tom Butler (10:48):
So when you were running and then cycling for
exercise, what was moving you tobe healthy?
It sounds like you liked beingactive, that form of challenging
your body or whatever.
John DiPippa (11:11):
I'm wondering if there was something that was
going on that was causing you towant to be active.
Yeah, I mean, I come from afamily history of pretty
significant heart disease onboth sides of my family.
Most of my male relatives on mymother's side died early, some
in their forties, some in their60s, from heart attacks, and
then my father had a heartattack at 58.
And this was probably in thelate 70s and I thought, oh my
(11:33):
gosh, you know the dice are kindof loaded against me.
And so I resolved to becomehealthy and my first goal was
really to live past 60, since somany of my male relatives died
at 60.
And that's how I took uprunning and then eventually
cycling.
So that was my primarymotivation, you know, basically
(11:53):
to stay alive and stay healthy.
Cycling, as you know, sort ofnot only grows on you but
becomes part of your identity,just like my aunt.
And so now you know, I still doit to stay healthy, but I also
do it because I love it and it'spart of who I am now.
Tom Butler (12:12):
Would you say that when you look at being active,
that you feel like it has keptyou healthy.
It has helped you avoid themaybe the problems that
genetically you were predisposedto.
John DiPippa (12:26):
Absolutely.
It's interesting.
Sadly, my wife and I've hadseveral experiences being in the
hospital in the last severalyears for cycling injuries and
you know we're givinginformation to the doctors and
the nurses and they say, so,what medications are you on?
And we say, well, none.
And they say, really, we sayyes and they say, well, no.
(12:51):
I mean, like, what medicationsdo you take every day?
And we say we don't take anyevery day.
Well, how do you stay healthy?
And then you know, ironically,we stay healthy by the thing
that brought us to the hospitalfor our injury.
But it's a conversation we haveevery single time and you know
people just say, well, how doyou stay healthy?
(13:13):
Why aren't you taking medicine?
Well, I know why I'm not takingmedicine.
I know I am healthy.
Tom Butler (13:19):
Well, I have moved into this point where I'm
talking about the bicycle as amedical device.
I feel like if you buy into thestatement that exercise is
medicine, then the bicycle is amedical device.
When people ask well, whatmedicine do you take, you know,
maybe you can start saying Itake almost daily bicycling.
John DiPippa (13:41):
Yes, I think that's a good answer and you
know, a lot of physicians arenow prescribing exercise as part
of their prescription and Ithink for a lot of people they
kind of need that direction fromsomebody with authority to get
them off the couch and moving.
Tom Butler (13:59):
Yeah, for sure.
And you mentioned your wife,Karen.
John DiPippa (14:03):
Yes.
Tom Butler (14:03):
And she's a special cyclist.
John DiPippa (14:06):
Oh yes.
Tom Butler (14:07):
I wonder if you could talk a bit about her.
I hope to someday bring her onthe podcast.
I don't know if you'veapproached that subject with her
, but hopefully I can talk herinto that.
But can you talk about it?
Yeah Well.
John DiPippa (14:20):
I'll tell you what .
After this I'll send you heremail address so you can talk to
her directly.
But her story has to go back tohigh school and college.
In high school she was a reallyreally good track athlete.
She went to school in London,england, because her father was
in the military, and so she hadsome track experience.
She came back to the UnitedStates and went to the college
(14:42):
where we met and it was knownfor physical education, so that
was her major.
At the time they did not have awomen's track team.
Now this was 1970, before TitleIX, which created opportunities
for women in college sports, andso, you know, she was trying to
(15:03):
do this on her own and at onepoint the male, the men's track
team, said why don't you comeand work out with us?
She said, well, I would, butcould I compete?
They said, well, no, you can'treally compete, you can just
come and hang out with us.
And she thought, well, that'skind of weird.
And so that experience kind ofled her to become a health major
(15:26):
and a bunch of other things.
And so in the 80s, when I tookup running, she said you know, I
might run too.
I said OK, so we both entered a5K and I'm running and I'm
really suffering and I feel thistap on my shoulder and she runs
by me and says come on.
And from that point on I'venever been able to keep up with
(15:48):
her.
So she became a very good agegroup runner in the state and I
would say at one point she wasprobably in the top 10 of female
runners in the state.
But then injuries took over andso she kept trying to ride a
run and finally she said youknow, maybe I could ride your
(16:08):
bike to just recover from theseinjuries.
I said okay, and so she starteddoing that, said you know, I'd
like to ride a little more, butI'm worried about falling.
I said oh, don't worry, I'vebeen riding for like 10 years
and I've never fallen.
Well, she's had seven accidentsin the last 25 years um, but
(16:30):
we're still married, um, so soshe's going on she.
So she really ended upchallenging herself on the
bicycle because she's such agreat athlete and so late in
life.
We ended up going to the SeniorOlympics in 2022 and then 2023.
And she picked up three medalsin those events.
(16:52):
She's still in contact withsome of her competitors.
Unfortunately, she can't gothis year, but she's got her
sights set on two years from nowin Tulsa.
Tom Butler (17:03):
Well, that's fantastic, and I do hope that
she comes on, because I'd loveto get more of her story.
John DiPippa (17:10):
I think it'd be great.
Our cycling group calls her themountain goat because she beats
everybody up the hills.
Tom Butler (17:18):
That's fantastic.
I love that.
Now, do you have some bikeexperiences that are really
special to you, if you thinkabout different things you've
done?
John DiPippa (17:27):
Yeah, we started taking bicycle vacations.
We use a company.
We've gone to Europe,especially Italy, so we've been
there 10 times.
We've been to Croatia once weshould be in Mallorca right now,
but we can't because of herinjury.
Should be in Mallorca right now, but we can't because of her
(17:50):
injury.
But probably the most specialcycling event really was in 2009
.
And we took our kids and theirsignificant others.
So we have four boys and theywere all adults at the time and
we went to the part of Italywhere my grandparents came from.
So you know that was specialbecause cycling is wonderful.
(18:11):
That part of Italy is beautifuland it's not well-traveled or
well-touristed, but, of course,having our kids there with us
was just really special.
So, of all the trips we'vetaken, that's probably the most
significant we've ever done.
Tom Butler (18:28):
Well, it does sound special, and I think there is,
you know that time spenttogether, you know on the bike,
as a family.
That sounds just wonderful.
John DiPippa (18:40):
Yeah, and I think this is not an answer to your
question, but it makes merealize that one of the nice
things about cycling is thatKaren and I can do this together
, and even though she's fasterthan me, you know we're
relatively well matched,although let's just say that I
usually she usually gets back tothe car before I do, so it's
(19:01):
something that especially peopleour age can do together, and
with e-bikes, the slower partnercan still keep up.
So if you're into cycling,there's no reason not to do it
with your partner at this age,because it's a great partner
experience.
Tom Butler (19:23):
Well, I know that we could talk bikes the whole time
here, but I wanted to bring youon for a specific reason.
You had mentioned the lawschool at University of Arkansas
, little Rock, the Bowen School,right, and you started teaching
there, I think in 1983.
Correct and you are a DeanEmeritus and a Distinguished
(19:46):
Professor of Law and PublicPolicy.
I think you left the schoolformally in 2012.
Did I get that right?
John DiPippa (19:54):
2021.
Tom Butler (19:56):
I retired in 2021.
Wow, yeah, okay.
So 40 years, yeah you mentionedthat.
So there must have beensomething that kept you there.
What was it about thatexperience that kept you so long
?
John DiPippa (20:11):
Well, it's funny you mention that, because when
we moved to Arkansas and I tookthis job, we thought we'd just
be here for a few years.
Really, two things happened.
One, the law school was aspecial place.
Two things happen.
One, the law school was aspecial place.
It's relatively small, and soyou get to know the faculty and
you have to know the students.
And while Little Rock is thecapital city, it's not a huge
(20:34):
city, and so you become embeddedin the city.
So you have an.
I had an opportunity to do a lotof things outside of the
classroom that I probablywouldn't have had anywhere else,
you know, testifying beforelegislative committees, writing
memoranda.
I did a lot of media work inthe 90s, especially during the
(20:57):
Bill Clinton presidency, youknow, with local and national
news, and so it was anopportunity that was unique,
that couldn't have beenreplicated anywhere else.
But in addition there's a realI guess I would say both
gratitude and specialrelationship with the students.
(21:19):
I mean, it's exciting to sortof see the lights go on and then
to watch them in their careersand to see the lights stay on,
and so, again, because it's nota large place, you get to know
them in a way that's unique.
And so those things, those twothings, the opportunity to do
(21:40):
something in the community thatI couldn't do anywhere else, and
the relationship you have withyour students or I did really
kept me here.
Well, that's fantastic, and I amenrolling as a student with you
today, so I'm here to learn abit, so hopefully I'll use it
(22:01):
well, I'll use it well, but Ishould also add, before we get
to that, that when Bill Clintonopened his library, he also
started a school for publicservice in Little Rock, and I
was one of the inauguralprofessors with that school, and
so, from 2005 to 2021, I wasboth teaching at the law school
(22:26):
and teaching in this graduateprogram, and so that's another
unique thing that I couldn'thave done anywhere else, and the
experiences of meeting studentsfrom all over the world, having
an opportunity to take law buttranslate it into public service
was also special.
Tom Butler (22:46):
Well, and that makes you absolutely perfect, I think
, for what I'm curious about.
So recently, I got involved inadvocating with our state
legislature about cyclinginfrastructure and so, at 62
years old, I got involved inthat process for the first time,
(23:07):
that process of lawmaking andrulemaking and everything.
I don't know why it took solong and I really don't have a
good excuse for that, but Ithink I'll continue to do it.
This conversation I want tohave with you comes out of that
desire to continue with advocacywork.
(23:29):
I'm convinced that lobbying forbetter bike infrastructure is
an important part of encouragingpeople to start and stay
cycling, which is a big part ofwhat I'm doing now, but also I'm
really concerned and I'mfeeling like some of the changes
(23:50):
that we're seeing could reallythreaten kind of being able to
advocate.
I think that federal spending isreally important when it comes
to bike infrastructure, and soyou know, I'm hoping that
there's still reason to believethat there's a role for
(24:11):
individuals like me to getinvolved and try to impact
policy.
First, I guess I'd ask is ourright to impact decision-making
something that you believe isvital?
John DiPippa (24:23):
Oh, absolutely.
One of my areas when I taughtlaw was the First Amendment, and
the First Amendment has fiveguarantees.
One of them is basically aguarantee that says we have the
right to contact our governmentto ask for changes, to ask for
something.
So that's baked in to theConstitution, and so I
(24:48):
absolutely believe it's vital.
It's also vital because, if youthink of our system of
government, which is really ademocratic republic, not a pure
democracy, the fuel for thatsystem of government has to come
from the people, because,unlike a pure democracy, where
(25:09):
everybody gets together and theymake a decision, we elect
representatives to make thosechoices for us.
Well, they don't know what todo unless you let them know what
you want, and so it's reallyimportant.
I mean, that's the fuel for oursystem of government, and unless
(25:29):
that fuel gets into the system,things don't happen.
And if people think that youcan't affect them, it's not true
.
Surely there are some peoplewho will never listen to you,
but every office will tell you,every congressional office,
state officials will tell youthat they tally up the comments
(25:54):
they get from constituents andthey'll know exactly how many
people are saying yes and howmany people are saying no to
certain things.
So it's really important,especially now that we get our
numbers into that tally.
It's not going to, it changesand happen overnight, but it is
(26:16):
a kind of gradual iceberg, thatsort of melts, if you keep that
fuel in the system.
Tom Butler (26:25):
And I want to believe that.
You know, I want to continue tohave hope in that process.
There's a couple foundationalthings that are part of this
here that I'd like to hear fromyou on these things, and first
(26:46):
is what is the law, and first iswhat is the law.
I mean, that's a pretty bigquestion, but how do you answer
that in a way that doesn'trequire a law degree to
understand?
John DiPippa (26:54):
That's a great question.
It's also the first questionyou ask in a jurisprudence
course, so I'm not going to giveyou that answer.
But here's the answer I think Iwould give.
Imagine every rule andregulation the government has
for our way of life EverythingTraffic rules, housing codes,
(27:19):
city zoning rules.
You just go up and up and up.
That's the law, all thattogether plus court
interpretations of that.
So it's a huge sort ofsprawling thing, but you can
boil it down to every rule thatthe government wants us to live
(27:39):
by.
That's the law um writ large.
Now there's lots of pieces tothat right, so you have to sort
of pull out some of the pieceswhen you talk about law with a
small l right.
What's the zoning law?
What's the traffic law?
What's the law about grantingmoney for people to, for local
(28:05):
jurisdictions to spend on bikinginfrastructure?
Tom Butler (28:09):
so lots of little law within the big piece that
makes sense yeah, and I reallysee these two different areas
kind of this construction ofthings.
So bike infrastructure, there'slike construction and money
(28:31):
allocated towards construction,and then there's things like
slowing down traffic and settinglaws as far as speed is
concerned.
So I see that there's, you know, like when you're talking about
making cycling safer, there's alot of different aspects of
that thing that you call thisbig category of law.
And then there's another relatedthing, and you know, I'm really
(28:54):
curious to hear you talk aboutthis, but how then does law
relate to the Constitution?
John DiPippa (29:01):
Sure here.
Think of a pyramid.
Okay, at the bottom of thepyramid are all the local laws,
all the things that arebasically the day-to-day stuff
that cities use, and thenthere's a bunch of state law
that gets overlaid on top ofthat.
(29:21):
At the top of this pyramid youkeep going up you have laws
passed by Congress.
The very top of the pyramid isthe Constitution.
Everything underneath it has tobe consistent with what the
Constitution allows or prohibitsor prohibits.
(29:51):
So the classic sort offormulation of that is
essentially, congress can passlaws, but the Constitution only
gives them power to pass certainkinds of law.
So Congress doesn't have thepower, for example, to pass a
national divorce law because theConstitution doesn't give
Congress that power.
It gives them other powers theycan regulate commerce, they can
(30:13):
spend money, they can makerules for the Army and Navy,
they can coin coins, things likethat.
So Congress can only pass lawsthat the Constitution allows
them to pass.
In addition, congress andeverybody else has to follow the
(30:33):
rules the Constitution putsdown.
That says there are certainthings governments can't do.
So governments can'tdiscriminate people against
people on the basis of race, forexample.
It's the 14th Amendment.
No government can impose an expost facto law punishing people
(30:54):
today for something they didbefore.
So all those limitations alsoapply all the way down that
pyramid to everybody else.
Tom Butler (31:05):
Here in Washington State I feel like we have a
fairly bike-friendly group ofleadership.
Governor Inslee, who recentlyleft office, is a huge advocate
for cycling, so I kind of misshim, but at the same time it's a
pretty friendly place.
I think people recognize prettyimportant to bicycle
(31:27):
infrastructure.
But how does the law come intoplay when it comes to how money
(31:49):
is spent in Washington?
John DiPippa (31:50):
Okay.
So the constitution says thatCongress can spend money.
All right, and Congress canchoose to spend it in one of two
ways or both ways.
They can spend it directly.
So if Congress wanted to set upa federal agency that spent
money directly on bikinginfrastructure, they could do
(32:13):
that and there are some federalprojects where that's part of it
.
But the most prominent way thatCongress spends money that
affects biking infrastructure isCongress can send money to the
states and say here's money youcan spend on these things.
They can attach some conditions.
(32:36):
That's called conditionalspending.
The biking infrastructurefederal money comes that way,
usually through the federalhighway laws, and they say you
know, you can spend this highwaymoney on all these things,
including bike infrastructure.
So at the state level they getthis money and they can choose
(33:01):
how to spend it within thatcategory of things.
Typically Congress doesn'trequire bicycle spending.
Again, there may be somespecial projects where they do,
but it's a general proposition.
They give the money to thestate and they say you can spend
it on biking infrastructure.
Most states will spend about 2%of their money, their
(33:27):
transportation money on bikeinfrastructure.
That's the average.
So you can kind of get a reportcard on your state by how much
of that transportation money isgoing to biking infrastructure.
Arkansas, for example, does notspend 2% of its money on biking
projects.
(33:47):
Some other states I suspectWashington probably spends more
than 2%.
Tom Butler (33:54):
I like this concept that money comes from the
federal level with already astamp on it and I think that's
awesome.
But it feels like there's likethis ship going on right now at
the federal level and let's saythat a president decided that it
(34:21):
was vital that we spend like ahalf a trillion dollars putting
an American flag on Mars like ahalf a trillion dollars putting
an American flag on Mars.
Are there rules that are meantto prevent that spending, if
most people would rather spendmoney on, like active
transportation infrastructureinvestment program, which exists
and just real quick, that was$45 million in fiscal year 2023.
(34:41):
So you could fund a lot ofyears at $45 million, a lot of
$45 million chunks, and stillnot reach a half a trillion
dollars.
John DiPippa (34:52):
That's right.
Let me address that.
First I would say that thequestion isn't, sadly, whether
most people want money to bespent a certain way.
The question has to be whetherCongress wants money to be spent
a certain way.
So the connection to the peoplewould come whether we can
(35:14):
convince Congress that we oughtto spend money on biking
infrastructure.
And the rules are supposed tooperate this way Congress
appropriates the money, thepresident, as the executive,
carries out congressional will.
So Congress says here,president, here's money we're
going to spend on bikinginfrastructure, give it out to
(35:38):
the states or spend it directly.
It's supposed to work that way.
I think the danger right now isthat we have people advising the
president who think that thepresident has unilateral power
to say no, I don't want to spendmoney that way, I want to spend
it some other way.
(35:58):
And there's two parts of thatright.
The first one is can thepresident just refuse to spend
money that Congress has lawfullyappropriated?
And most people are going tosay well, no, it's not the
president's job.
Congress says here's the money,spend it.
That exact question.
(36:26):
Over the years presidents haveargued that they have this power
to impound money.
Right, just say I'm not goingto spend it.
In the 70s Richard Nixon triedto do that and he kind of got
slapped back about that.
The court said you know, whenCongress appropriates money, you
can only spend it the wayCongress wants you to spend it.
But they never said well, youcan't impound it.
(36:49):
And so the currentadministration is arguing they
have the right to just say we'renot going to spend money we
don't want to spend.
And then the second part iswe're going to spend it on
something else.
And this relates to a lot ofwhat I see are the very
dangerous things coming out ofthis administration,
particularly in usingpresidential power to declare
(37:12):
emergencies.
So the president has beensaying look, there are all these
emergencies all over the place.
I get to decide how to dealwith them.
And that's a real dangerbecause the rules are not.
The Constitution is notsupposed to work that way.
Constitution is supposed towork Congress decides the power
(37:34):
of the purse that's their powerand the president carries out
the laws Congress passes.
We're in a very, very dangerousspot, not just for biking
infrastructure, because that'sunder the gun, but lots of other
things that the president isarguing.
I'm just not going to spendthis money.
Right, it's not what I want todo, and so I'm not going to do
(37:58):
it.
Tom Butler (37:59):
I think the Nixon example is really interesting to
me, because there's a decisionmade.
I mean, I don't know anythingabout it, so you know there was
somewhere.
A decision was like thisdirection that the White House
is going, that the president isgoing is counter to the
(38:23):
intention of the Constitution,that has to be questioned by
someone in some way.
And so here, if we have thisthing where it's like Congress
has allocated this and it'searmarked for a specific place,
where does the law come in, asfar as how that gets challenged?
John DiPippa (38:45):
Well, I mean the law comes in in that people who
are affected by, say, thepresident not spending money
will bring a lawsuit saying hey,you're injuring me by not
spending this money.
You can't do that, stop it.
That's the technical term foran injunction, right, stop it.
(39:06):
Essentially and there are a lotof those going on because the
current administration isrefusing to spend certain money
or they're cutting contracts andthings like that A lot of
litigation in the lower courtsthat are working their way up to
the Supreme Court and so whenthey get there, the questions I
(39:28):
raised about does theConstitution allow the president
not to spend money that theCongress appropriated, those
questions are going to bedecided.
It just takes a while for thesethings to work their way
through the courts.
But notice, it comes from aperson who brings the lawsuit
(39:49):
Right.
Again, it's the citizens andthe fuel to our democracy going
into it.
One decision the Supreme Courtmade this winter actually, that
(40:10):
seems to be providing an insightinto their thinking, and this
was when the Trumpadministration canceled $2
billion of payment undercontracts for the work when the
work had already been performedwork when the work had already
been performed and theplaintiffs in those cases said
(40:31):
wait a minute, right, you can'tjust refuse to pay us.
It's one thing to say, well,we're not going to spend the
money.
It's another to say you justcan't pay us for work we've
already done.
And the Supreme Court, inwhat's called an emergency, said
you know, you really ought topay them.
They refused the Trumpadministration's request to stay
(40:55):
a lower court order that saidyou got to pay these people.
So they sent it back to thelower courts.
Now that's, they're stillfighting about that, but at
least we know that this SupremeCourt, or at least five of the
justices, think that thepresident can't refuse to pay
people who've already done workfor the government.
(41:16):
The scary thing is that fourjustices dissented and said hey,
wait, we can't tell thepresident what to do here, we
can't force him to spend money.
And that's a very worrying signto me that four out of nine of
them think sure president canjust not pay people if he
(41:38):
doesn't like them.
Tom Butler (41:39):
It just seems like there's some tests going on with
the way our democracy functions, that it's never been tested
this way before.
Is that fair?
John DiPippa (41:50):
Oh, I think you're spot on and you know we heard a
lot about Project 2025 in thecampaign, but one of the real
fundamental theoretical piecesreally goes back in legal
thinking to the 80s and it'scalled the unitary executive
theory and the idea is fromthese theorists that the
(42:15):
Constitution only created onepresident and gives the
president lots of powerexecutive power, power to
faithfully execute the laws,things like that and so, under
this thinking, congress has verylittle power to limit the
president and the courts havevery little power because the
(42:35):
president again, in this way ofthinking, sort of sits at the
top of the pyramid.
They say, well, the president'sthe only federal official for
whom the entire nation votes, sohe represents the kind of voice
of the nation and there's onlyone of them, and some of the
(42:56):
framers thought we needed a veryrobust chief executive, and
that played a role last yearwhen the Supreme Court said that
the president cannot becriminally prosecuted for acts
taken in his official capacity.
So you take that and what yousee is the Project 2025 people
(43:19):
really pushing the limit on anylimitations on the presidency,
right, so they're trying to firepeople that Congress said you
can only fire for cause it'slike members of the National
Labor Relations Board, forexample.
And the Trump administrationsays, no, they work for me,
(43:40):
they're in the executive branch,they work for the president.
I get to fire whomever I wantwhenever I want, for whatever
reason.
Supreme Court seems to besiding with him there, so you
sort of take that all the waydown.
The unitary executive gets todecide how he executes the laws.
So he doesn't like spending,doesn't want to spend it,
(44:04):
doesn't have to.
So there's lots of things thatthis administration are doing
that are pushing theConstitution to extreme.
The other thing they're doingis they're pushing the existing
powers of the president to theirextreme.
Pushing the existing powers ofthe president to their extreme.
(44:27):
So the Constitution gives thepresident the power to pardon.
The Supreme Court has alwayssaid that's unreviewable.
The president can do that.
The whole point of pardon isfor the executive not to be
limited by other people.
Well, this president has takenit so that he is pardoning
people not because they weretreated unfairly.
He says they were, but theyweren't.
(44:48):
He's pardoning people becausehe likes their politics, or they
like him, or they were campaigndonors or for any number of
other reasons don't relate atall to the justice behind their
conviction.
We pardoned all of the January6th rioters, for example.
There's no reason to do that.
(45:09):
They committed crimes, they haddue process, they were
represented by lawyers, theywent to trial, they appealed
their convictions.
Nothing wrong with whathappened.
He just didn't like that hissupporters were being held
accountable.
So he's pushing the existingpowers.
He's doing it with tariffs aswell, and he's also pushing the
(45:34):
theory that essentially, hewants to say I can do what I
want while I'm president and noone can stop me.
Tom Butler (45:43):
It seems like there were guardrails in place that
were like a concept of decency.
Yeah, and then what we arefinding out is that if you don't
have decency there to guardthings, there's an awful lot of
things that you can do thataren't there.
(46:05):
It's not like baked into thelaw keeping someone from doing
it.
John DiPippa (46:10):
Yeah, there are a couple of things there.
I think you're absolutely rightA lot of the powers the
president has, for example withtariffs.
Congress has the power toimpose tariffs, but over the
years they said you know, wereally shouldn't be doing this.
They delegated that power tothe president to impose tariffs
(46:30):
in certain situations.
Now I think everybody assumedthat presidents would act in
good faith, that they wouldfollow the procedures and they'd
only use this power when theyreally needed to.
Well, that's not true.
I don't think you can say thispresident is acting in good
faith, using this power, and sothe assumption from Congress is
(46:52):
that you'd have a decent personwith integrity, acting in good
faith, exercising thisdiscretionary power.
That just got blown upcompletely.
I think the other thing goesback to my point about fuel.
In the system we have a sensethat everything is sort of well.
(47:14):
There's the idea of the fairand just world fallacy and
people seem to think and this isfairly well proven that the
world will act and operate in ajust manner, and so democracy
essentially assumes that thepeople we elect will act in a
fair and just manner and willact for the common good.
(47:36):
Well, it's never been true.
You know it's naive to think,for example, that the
legislators in the 19th century,prior to the end of slavery or
before Civil War, were acting inany kind of morally meaningful,
just way by continuing toimprison Africans who they stole
(48:03):
from their countries.
Right, I mean?
The story we tell ourselves isthat somehow all these people
were the framers, for examplewere wonderful people.
Well, they were slave owners.
They protected slavery in theConstitution.
And so the naive way ofthinking about our situation now
(48:25):
is to think this is somehow sodifferent that it's
unprecedented.
It's if men he used the wordmen were angels, we wouldn't
need governments.
And because men are not angels,we need to limit the
(49:00):
government's power because wecan't trust fallible human
beings to actually always get itright.
And that was his argument forthe way he set up the
Constitution.
It didn't always work, but itdoes sort of illustrate that we
can't be naive about the peoplewe elect and hope that they do
(49:23):
the right thing and hope thatthey do the right thing.
Tom Butler (49:24):
I think there was an interesting moment where Josh
Hawley, senator, showed a chartthat had the number of
injunctions against PresidentTrump.
Imagine you saw that thatthere's some force that is
(49:45):
treating Trump unfairly, ratherthan this is a president that is
further outside the bounds thanmost presidents have been.
To me, that's a veryinteresting dynamic to present
it.
Like look how poorly we'retreating this president you're
(50:08):
poorly retreating this president.
John DiPippa (50:08):
Yes, and again, that's really scary because the
data show that people who areleast informed about current
events tended to vote for Trumpin the last election.
When I say least informed,they're the people who got no
news whatsoever overwhelminglyvoted for Trump.
So people like Josh Hawley,who's smart he's not a dumb guy
(50:30):
knows he can prey on people'slack of information, and so what
he really?
He knew the answer, which wasTrump is doing more things that
get challenged than other people, but what he wanted was the
idea to seep into the lowinformation voters that Trump is
(50:50):
being treated differently, whodon't have the wherewithal to
sort of work through it.
All you know.
The truth is, we've never had apresident who tried to overturn
the election in Congress.
We've never had a president whoencouraged the election in
Congress.
We've never had a president whoencouraged people to riot.
(51:12):
We've never had a president, asfar as we know, who tried to
get a foreign leader to smearhis political opponent in
exchange for money.
He basically said to PresidentZelensky I'm not going to give
you any money unless you smearBiden.
We've never had a president actlike that.
And so, yeah, he's unique, buthe's unique in a bad way.
Tom Butler (51:36):
Again, he's unique in a way where he's testing
guardrails.
To me it's somewhat of a scaryway and again, from this
perspective of I want to be ableto see our country move forward
not just the state ofWashington but our country move
forward as far as activetransportation measures are
(51:57):
concerned.
You know I have representatives.
If I do a bunch of work and Ifind people who I think are
great leaders and they alsounderstand the importance of
active transportation and I workand we send that person to
Washington.
If they're part of a body thatjust rubber stamps everything
(52:20):
that the president does, itseems like I've lost that
representation.
John DiPippa (52:26):
Yes and no.
So yeah, you still have yourrepresentation formally, but
it's frustrating when the policythat comes out doesn't reflect
your interests at all.
So I guess there are a coupleof things I'd say there.
One at the federal level it'snot just who you elect to
(52:47):
represent yourself, it's whoother people in other and get to
Washington and figure out howthey can mesh those together.
That's not happening right nowbecause at least one political
(53:17):
party acts in lockstep.
So the first answer is we haveto elect more people.
In this case it would beDemocrats wasn't always, but
this case it is so that theDemocrats can, in their policies
and platforms, advance things.
That's how we have the currentbiking funding.
(53:40):
We've got Basically DemocraticCongresses who put that into the
bills in the last 15, 20 yearsand those have stayed.
So it's not just you, it's whoother people elect.
The second thing I'd say is themost effective advocacy is
going to be on a local level andso, no matter what happens in
(54:02):
Congress, there are things thatwe can get done on a local level
if we stay active.
And, as a friend of mine saidtoday, I asked my cycling group
what I should say and one ofthem said be a pain in the ass,
and you can be a real pain inthe ass on local levels.
And so I think that's reallyimportant too, not to get too
(54:25):
hung up about the slow progressin Washington there will be but
to also make sure that we canget done on a local level what
we can do.
Cities can adopt the SafeStreets program, for example,
and some of it depends on money.
But cities have their own moneyand not all of it are big kind
(54:47):
of expenses, you know.
So part of the Safe Streetsprogram is when a city
resurfaces a road, they add abike lane.
That's not very expensive,right, but that happens on a
local level.
It doesn't depend on whatCongress is doing at all.
You can advocate for bettertraffic enforcement, for slower
(55:11):
speed limits in well-traffickedareas, so there are lots of
things you can do at a locallevel that don't depend on
whatever craziness is going onin Congress.
Tom Butler (55:35):
Well, you say that, john, but here's something that
I would propose.
Sure that again we're in aweird time that becomes his
talking point that we need toeliminate bike lanes just
because cars need to get through, for the economy, for safety,
for national security, whatever.
John DiPippa (56:11):
It seems like there's some levers he's pulling
, where he's threatening towithhold dollars from states
that don't go along with that,and so again, where does the law
come into play there?
I think that's a very realconcern.
But you talked about gettinginto the legislature and
advocating for positions, andthe cliche is you don't want to
know how laws are made, becauseit's like watching sausage being
made, right and so.
But here's where we have toactually embrace the sausage
(56:31):
making to some degree, becauselots of things happen, and a lot
of things happen below thesurface, and sometimes they
happen in a way that benefitspeople.
So let me give you a currentexample.
The president has argued thathe doesn't want to extend these
(56:51):
electric vehicle subsidies andsome other green energy
subsidies that were part of theBiden's Infrastructure Act.
We're noticing that a lot ofred state representatives are
saying wait a minute, that'staking jobs from the people that
represent me, and it wouldn'tsurprise me if a lot of those
(57:14):
stay in the final package.
Now, that came about becauselocal people, including
businesses, for example, weresaying to their representatives
wait a minute, if you cut outthese projects, we're going to
have to lay off people in yourdistrict.
They're not going to like that.
So the sausage making might andI think will keep that.
(57:38):
I think the same thing you seewith bicycle infrastructure.
To some degree it's become apartisan issue.
The most extreme conservativesare arguing, for example, that
it's a communist thing.
Well, that's crazy.
But there are also a lot ofconservatives who actually like
cycling and like cyclinginfrastructure.
(57:59):
The husband of our currentgovernor is really big into
mountain biking.
Husband of our current governoris really big into mountain
biking and so our state'senjoying this renaissance for
mountain biking because he likesit.
Well, if you're a locallobbyist, you're going to
exploit that all you can.
You've really got to make surethat you invite him to all the
(58:24):
openings to all the cyclingevents, the whole thing, and
really make sure he knows what'sgoing on.
So that's part of the sausagemaking.
Our member of Congress, who's aRepublican who tends to vote
with the Republicans, is acyclist.
He doesn't make a big dealabout keeping cycling
(58:44):
infrastructure in these bills,but they stay in there and he's
got some influence.
So again, we just currentlyopened a section of a trail
that's going to run for about 70miles from Little Rock to a
city called Hot Springs.
We opened a section of thetrail.
He was there right.
(59:04):
Make sure he knows how much youappreciate whatever it is he
can do for cycling.
And so you've got to embracethe sausage making.
You know, and sometimes you'regoing to get what you need maybe
ugly, maybe in a watered downversion, but you're going to get
it if you stay with it.
Now that's too Pollyannish andI know we're facing real
(59:29):
problems, but again, the fuelfor this democracy is for us to
be pains in the ass and keepmaking noise and keep making
points and keep letting ourrepresentatives at every level
know we care about these things.
Tom Butler (59:47):
Well, I like the sausage making, you know, I
think, when you had people like.
McCain and Biden that werebehind the scenes getting things
done.
That was a better way, you know, for things to happen.
You know, right now I feel kindof like you mentioned, you know
, this concept and the Project2025 concept of the really
(01:00:11):
strong executive.
But if you have, like, all thispower, then it seems like you
have one man, you know, makingthe decision.
Maybe what that means is thatcyclists need to all come
together and buy a whole bunchof Trump's cryptocurrency and
have some influence over Trump.
(01:00:33):
It's like how do you affectchange if the sausage making
goes out and it's just this oneperson that gets to make
decisions?
John DiPippa (01:00:46):
I don't know much about cryptocurrency, although
it's possible.
Something that I was veryactive in student movement in
college and something that aprofessor said to me at one
point was be ubiquitous beeverywhere, everywhere, all the
time, and I think that's theanswer.
Again, change doesn't happenovernight, but if we can be
(01:01:07):
ubiquitous.
On the president thing, I'mvery worried, as you may know
from some of my posts, about thepresident turning himself into
a legal dictator and pushing allthe limits and getting all this
power, and I'm very worriedabout that.
(01:01:28):
But I think the key is whathappens in the midterm elections
next year, because that's theway to put a brake on all of
this.
He'll still push, but there area lot of things.
If we can flip at least theHouse to Democrats and don't
know about the Senate, that's ahard one but at least the House
(01:01:51):
to Democrats and you don't knowabout the Senate, that's a hard
one, but at least the Housestops the worst things from
happening and you get the Senateand the House, I think it's
possible to flip both in the2026 election.
Then you've got the sort ofquote Jack Nicholson from Mars
Attacks Two out of threebranches of government.
Ain't bad, you know.
(01:02:11):
So that's what I hold out hopefor.
In the meantime, we have tokeep making as much noise as we
can about the issues we careabout and put as much sand in
the gears as is possible.
It's not going to be pretty andmay not always win.
If 2026 does not turn out theway I hope it does, then I would
(01:02:34):
be very, very worried about oursystem of government.
Tom Butler (01:02:45):
So a couple of things right now.
Our constitution does not makeroom for a dictator, but you're
talking about a legal dictator.
So what do you mean by that?
John DiPippa (01:02:58):
I've written about this and what I'm arguing is
that what Trump is trying to dois create this unitary executive
by amassing unilateral powersthat he already has right.
So, again, as a as thepresident, he's a dictator of
pardons, gets to decide thosecongress has given him a lot of
(01:03:20):
essentially one man ruleauthority over terrorists and
he's pushing those to his limits.
He's also using the courts tochallenge some other limitations
on him.
So what he wants to do, hewants to get the Supreme Court
to essentially say yeah, you'reright, you know, you're the only
(01:03:43):
president.
You get to fire anybody youwant.
You get to decide not to spendmoney, because it's up to
Congress to do that.
You get to do all these thingsyou're pushing.
That's what I mean by a legaldictator.
He's trying to create astructure that would allow him
to be a dictator in lots ofareas, and you have to worry
(01:04:04):
because essentially that's whatViktor Orban has done in Hungary
.
Viktor Orban has taken overessentially the government and
he got the Congress largely hisparty to give him what are
mostly dictatorial powers overthe courts, over the
(01:04:27):
universities, for all sorts ofplaces, and so there's a
playbook for becoming a legaldictator, a dictator that the
law essentially empowers.
We have to also remember thatAdolf Hitler started out as a
legal dictator because, afterthe Reichstag fire, he got the
(01:04:49):
Reichstag to say, yeah, you know, we're really in a bad shape,
here's all this power you canuse, and adopted laws that gave
him that authority.
So that's what I mean by alegal dictator a one man rule, a
one-man rule empowered by allthe legal rules that he both
exploits and gets.
Tom Butler (01:05:30):
You talk about Republicans and Democrats, and I
think that's breaking the rulesversus a belief that the rules
that we have can be usedeffectively.
Have majority of people and Ithink there's plenty of
Republicans that would say youknow, we're really outside of
the boundaries here as far asthe way the government is
(01:05:52):
supposed to work.
But if we have a majority ofpeople that are saying what we
need is a rule breaker, what weneed is someone that's going to
break the system because thesystem doesn't work, then it
feels like it's a much moredifficult process.
John DiPippa (01:06:08):
Well, I agree with you that a large portion of our
population I don't know howmany, whether it's a majority or
not, but certainly a majorityof the voters voted for Trump
really want to see somebody actlike a bull in a china shop and
break things and get things done.
(01:06:29):
That's how things operate inthe tech world, for example,
which is why Elon Musk is sopopular and I put it in
democratic and liberal termsbecause only the Republicans
have tapped into that sense.
Only the Republicans havetapped into let's go break
things.
You can hear it in theirrhetoric and that's why, as long
(01:06:50):
as they keep getting elected,they're going to keep allowing
people to break things.
The Democrats on the other sidehave never figured out how to
tap into that.
I mean, they had some people Ithink Bernie Sanders is a good
example who ran.
He didn't quite say it, but Ithink a lot of his message was
(01:07:10):
hey, things are wrong, thingsare broken, we got to fix.
But the Democrats keep runningpeople who think, if we just act
normally I think that was JoeBiden's presidency we just act
normally, people are going tocome back to us, and so you know
, think about, just compareBiden and Trump, not just on
(01:07:34):
their personalities, but in theway they govern.
Biden was an institutionalist.
He wasn't going to fool withthe Justice Department.
He appointed people who werekind of sober and mindful and
respectful of the tradition.
He followed the sort of rulesand passed legislation that, in
(01:07:56):
his experience, people would say, oh yeah, that's a normal thing
to do.
Thank God we have you aspresident.
But he never broke anything.
He didn't try to break theinstitutions, and so I think
you're right.
A lot of people want to seethings broken, and it's only the
Republicans have figured outhow to tap into that.
(01:08:17):
I think the next election cycleand this is way beyond biking,
but the next election cycle isgoing to be about how can the
Democrats signal that they'rereformers too?
They want to fix the system ina way that actually cuts into a
(01:08:37):
lot of that support that Trumpand the Republicans get.
That make sense.
Tom Butler (01:08:43):
Yeah, I think it does and, you know, in some ways
, coming through this, it seemslike it has identified some
areas where there needs to be adifferent kind of accountability
in order to keep things fromgoing too far off the rails.
John DiPippa (01:09:04):
Yeah, and that's also a big question, because
accountability comes fromelections.
I mean, that's the basic formof accountability If you don't
like what your representative isdoing and enough people agree,
you vote in somebody else, andthat's the sort of civics high
school civics version, right.
(01:09:25):
But there are lots of otherthings that are making it very
difficult to have that kind ofaccountability, and so
gerrymandering, for instance.
Most seats in Congress are safe.
Those are both Democratic andRepublican seats.
Well, if people never have tocompete for any votes, then how
(01:09:47):
can you hold them accountablewhen they don't really like what
they do?
If they don't have to respondto other people within their
district, you might havedifferent ideas.
You never get any differentideas and so both Democrats and
Republicans have exploited that,although again, the Republicans
have been better.
So that's one form ofaccountability.
(01:10:08):
I think the other form is withthe courts, and you're seeing
some of that right now.
Despite what it seems, thecourts have been entering
injunctions against thepresident in his most extreme
forms, invoking the AlienEnemies Act and some of the
(01:10:29):
tariffs.
So there is that form ofaccountability too, and again
that's going to be messy.
I think some of that's going tohold, but I want to go back to
elections.
We just have to elect peopleand hold them accountable for
when they don't follow through,and that requires the hard work
(01:10:49):
of organizing on a local leveland constantly letting people
know.
This isn't right.
Let's do something about it.
Tom Butler (01:11:00):
It seems like a cyclist again or anybody that's
interested in activetransportation, or anybody
that's interested in activetransportation in safe streets,
in these different ways topromote something besides cars
on our roadways.
There is this local action, andthen there's also this process
(01:11:22):
of weaving together all of thislocal action into a federal
process and it seems like, youknow, maybe there's room for
more organizing different localefforts into a more unified
front from a cyclinginfrastructure perspective.
John DiPippa (01:11:46):
I think that's a great point.
You know, think about all thecycling clubs in your area.
Well, they all go out and cycle, but they all have a common
interest cycling infrastructure,safe cycling.
So I absolutely agree.
I think we need a cyclingcoalition in every locality that
(01:12:09):
includes all kinds of cyclistswith all sorts of ideas.
You know, I often say allcyclists matter, but not all
cyclists are the same.
You've got to get all thosepeople and I think the place to
start would be cycling clubs andothers together often to talk
(01:12:31):
about their cycling concerns.
That creates an agenda andallows the whole cycling
community to finally act in somecommon way, you know, but I
absolutely agree.
And then it's got to move upmean every locality has one.
(01:12:52):
You have a state structure thattakes from all those coalitions
now we do have league ofamerican bicyclists.
Tom Butler (01:12:59):
it would be interesting to see their
leadership and I am connected abit with some leadership there
and to be talking more about howdo they plan to weave together
local advocacy into a unifiedvoice?
John DiPippa (01:13:13):
Yep, you know, I think that's right.
It also shows that this isbi-directional right.
I mean, localities can move upand try to aggregate at a state
level or a national level, butthese national organizations
need to come down locally andstart showing up and saying hey,
wouldn't it be a good idea forall of us to get together?
(01:13:34):
I mean, that could work too.
Tom Butler (01:13:37):
Yeah Well, I'm ready for a large party, nationwide
party to happen, an organizingparty.
John DiPippa (01:13:46):
It's a bicycle party.
I like it.
Tom Butler (01:13:49):
Well, this has been the exact conversation that I
wanted to have, and I thank youso much for bringing all of your
experience, your knowledge, tothis.
I want to leave with thisquestion, and that is if we turn
back to cycling, what do youhave coming up as far as cycling
adventures are concerned?
It sounds like you had oneinterrupted because of an entry
(01:14:10):
that's right okay, so what'sgoing?
John DiPippa (01:14:12):
on.
So, yeah, we had thatinterrupted.
So we're planning for next yearand may not be mallorca, could
be somewhere else.
For me I've got sort of two bigadventures.
One I'm planning to ride ourbig local ride called the Big
Dam Bridge Ride.
It's a ride that takes place,that crosses this bridge that
(01:14:34):
went over a dam on the ArkansasRiver.
That is the longest pedestrianbike bridge in the country,
built just for that purpose.
So it's pretty impressive andthey have a 105 105 mile ride in
September.
It's the biggest cycling eventin the state and so I've got a
particular goal in mind.
It's a pretty challenging ride,has about 5,000 or so feet of
(01:14:58):
climbing, and most of that comeslate in the ride.
So you know you're not ready.
So I've got some plans and I'mreally, really trying to do that
.
My other sort of big cyclingthing would be, in a couple of
months, to hope that my wife canback, get back on the bike, we
can start riding together againand and ease her way back into
(01:15:20):
cycling.
Tom Butler (01:15:21):
Well, I'm hoping all the best for that.
You know, like you're talkingabout, it's so fun when you can
cycle together with your spouse,and so I'm really hoping that
all of that healing happens andeverything gets stitched back
together perfectly and again,thank you so much for joining me
today and helping to throw somelight on this.
John DiPippa (01:15:44):
Well, you're welcome, tom, it's been a
pleasure.
Tom Butler (01:15:47):
Cool.
Well, maybe someday I'll makeit down to Arkansas and all the
other adventures that I want todo.
John DiPippa (01:15:55):
Come and do the big damn bridge in September.
Tom Butler (01:15:58):
I don't know that I could do 5,000 feet of elevation
.
That would be a challenge.
John DiPippa (01:16:04):
You can do shorter rides.
Tom Butler (01:16:05):
Yeah, maybe, maybe.
Yeah, all right, you can doshorter rides.
Yeah, maybe, maybe.
Yeah, all right, thanks again,take care, you're welcome.
Bye, bye.
Now there was an interestingdevelopment after my
conversation with John.
I had planned to attend aTacoma Washington Bicycle Club
(01:16:25):
meeting in the evening.
Conversation with John, I hadplanned to attend a Tacoma
Washington Bicycle Club meetingin the evening.
At that meeting they weretalking about needing someone to
be the government and communityrelations director.
I felt moved to volunteer to dothat, so now I'm in a position
to take John's advice and applyit with my local bike club.
Here are a couple of key thingsthat I'm taking away from the
conversation.
First is to be ubiquitous.
(01:16:48):
There are a bunch ofopportunities locally to just
show up as a cyclist, so I willbe looking to do that as often
as I can.
Of course, showing up takestime, but other than that it is
pretty easy.
The other point is the conceptof linking together all the
local advocacy that is going on.
The other point is the conceptof linking together all the
local advocacy that is going on.
I think being the governmentand community relations director
(01:17:10):
here locally gives me a reasonto reach out to the League of
American Bicyclists and askabout their efforts to maximize
impact by linking local effortstogether nationally.
I do believe this is going tobe one of the more interesting
activities I've ever beeninvolved with.
Regardless of whether you ridein an urban environment or on
rural roads, I hope you arefinding routes that feel safe
(01:17:33):
and remember age is just a gearchange.
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