"CELEBRATING AMERICA, STILL" 06-28-29-2025 POET GOLD, PETER & UNCLE MIKE'S ANNUAL 4TH OF JULY DISCUSSION WITH SPECIAL GUEST BRIDGETT NALLY.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The views and opinions expressed in the following programmer those
of the speaker and don't necessarily represent those of the
station it's staff, management or ownership. Good morning, you'll find
out With Pete and the Poeic Gold, I'm Peter Leonard
and I'm the Poet Gold, and we're on the air
for the sixth annual Fourth of July Special with Poet Goal.
I'm Uncle Mike Hanson and myself talking about the state

(00:21):
of America at the moment. And before we get to
our insightful and maybe conflicting opinions, we're going to go
right to the poblic Goal for her weekly prayer poem
incanntation Gold, Please let.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
It roll, Okay, I'm going to do I heard it, Sung,
I heard it, sung. A change is going to come,
storm clouds and pending dooms swallowing up the blue will
make way for the sun.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
I heard it, sung.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
A change is going to come like a melody leading
to a bridge, a poem's vaulta an orchestra's crescendo. I
heard it, sung. A change is going to come like
our combustal existence, fragile residing in the cosmo, anerating electrifying.
I heard it, sung, A change is gonna come, like
the African roots of Homo sapiens, whose footsteps traverse the

(01:07):
evolutionary landscape through time, the elevation of our minds. I
heard it, sung, A change is gonna come. So do
not fear the vol to winds of reckless words, wars,
leaving carnage and destruction, splintering souls hearts with open wounds.
Because I heard it, sung, A change is gonna come.
And hope is the dirt sifted and tilled by human toil,

(01:30):
creating fertile soil from which planted seeds are planted. And
I heard it, sung, A change is going to come.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Amen to that. And I love the linking time and
mind I never recognized as a rhyme, but also mind
and time are are connected. And you know with the
fourth Jew, I hear, Mike, you know you're in a
all the you follow all the action, the show in

(02:01):
the morning and with a Koulawski show, And so you
want to give us a sense of what your impressions
are of the changes since the new administration is in.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
It's interesting because we're going to celebrate the two hundred
and forty ninth anniversary this year. Two hundred and fifty
is next year. And one of the things that frightened
me over the last couple of years is I saw
a report on one of the news channels. I can't
remember which one it was, but the gentleman that was
doing the report made the point that the most powerful

(02:37):
empire in the world, the Roman Empire, lasted for some
four hundred years and then it disappeared, and we're only
at two forty eight to forty nine. And that really
woke me up that this is an experiment America. It's
two hundred and forty nine years, almost two hundred and
forty nine years old, and it could disappear. And you know,
we have a lot of hope and we believe that,

(03:00):
you know, we've done a lot of good and we
believe all those things that go along with the American dream.
But you know, they made it four hundred years and
they didn't make it. So we're only at two forty nine.
We still got a ways to go. That struck me
the other day, and I think that it's such a
volatile time in this country right now. There's so many,

(03:21):
so many variables that play into this seems like, and
I'm sure they've always been there, but it seems to
me that in the last couple of years there's been
a lot more maybe that we're paying attention to. Maybe
it's the media, who I don't think has done a
really good job, but they have brought it out there.
And it's something we were discussing actually on a way
in to do this show, Poe and I were discussing

(03:41):
about the difference between some of the communist countries in
here is we may be doing some of the horrible
things that are going on there as well, but we
have a media here that's letting the world and us
know what's going on. Some of these other countries don't
have any way of investigative reporting for lack of a
better word, And that's the different And so I think
in the country and.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
That's a and that's a that's a valid point, you know,
in our discussion, it's a valid point that you brought
up that that that sort of gives us that fine
line difference between you know, the same things maybe going on,
but we at least have the media coverage to tell
the story.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Sure, and but Mike, you know, we don't obviously we
don't rehearse these shows because we want the spontaneoy spontaneity
of the conversation. Let me picking out mind and time
as a theme from Gould's poem.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
You know what you're pointing to too, a political regime,
organization or constitution is the political ideas that are frozen
were made a whole, and but they rode with time
where they get enhanced by the time. So we're in
the middle of rapid change. Uh uh in that our times.

(04:54):
And you know the part about the free press, that's
certainly one of the things.

Speaker 5 (05:00):
I know.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
You watch more political news from more points of view
than almost anybody.

Speaker 4 (05:06):
I try to.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, no, you you drink it in from every fountain.

Speaker 4 (05:10):
It's fascinating to watch sometimes when you see a story
break and you watch six different outlets tell the story
six different ways right right, which is a little troubling
at times, But that sometimes is good, I guess, because
you've got to have all those perspectives.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
And what you need to have to be able to judge,
based on your prior experience, what you're likely to believe
or not. But I think the media is a place
to start with us anymaging. What's different about America now
than it was even a year or twenty years ago.
I think that we're much the news media is much

(05:46):
more controlled than it was even before President Trump gots
sworn in. I mean, President Trump is somebody who cares
very much about the.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
What is said publicly, but what is said about about
him publicly, yeah, you know, or anything that he comes
into proximity with.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
What I find is a lot of negativity, you know,
in the in the New City.

Speaker 4 (06:10):
I think that's one of the most discouraging things for me.
And Peter tells me all the time, because we have
some interesting discussions Peter and I and you'll look at
me finally and say, you know what your problem is.
You're trying to you're trying to have common sense. There
is no common sense in politics. And he's right, and
he but he said, you don't. You'll look at me.
We'll get to a point where we're at an impast
but we're both right and we're both wrong, and you'll say,

(06:32):
your problem is is you're trying to use common sense
and you can't do that in politics, And sadly he's right.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
The extreme of that is you know, uh, miss, you know,
let's see a rich person like virtually you know, all
the Senate isn't certainly the president United States? These very
rich people, and why did it even bother one politics?
Why don't you sit in the beach someplace? And you know,
anybody with actual common sensual rationality would say, I'm not

(06:58):
going to they're becoming secretary of State or the president.
I'm going to go sit on the beach and Mike.
That's where I think we would find Mike.

Speaker 6 (07:06):
If if he had the opportunity, if I became wealthy
like you're talking about, I would give most of it
away to some of the I have enough to live
a comfortable life, and I would do what I wanted
to do.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
That's a very sensible thing. And that's exactly why.

Speaker 4 (07:21):
And I'm telling you right now, money and no money.
I have no interest in being a politician.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
But I think I think that you have the career
politician and someone sort of steps in and goes. It's
like people some nurses who become nurses because it's it's
money for them. It's a career path with money versus
someone where nursing is in their heart, you know. And
so I think that you have politicians that are really
servants of the people. They really feel like, I want

(07:48):
to be the voice of the people in my community.
And then you have some of them said, you know this,
I think I can be good at this, and you know,
the heck with the people. I think this is going
to be a good cash cow for me, and maybe
I'll help some people along the way.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
You know.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
I think that you have some of some of those individuals,
I think, but for the most part, you have more
people who have said, I'm going to do this to
serve the people, and then maybe they get a little
loss along the way because of the climate that we've become.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
We weren't always somewhere.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Politicians have taken a turn, you know, and really have
gotten into what book can I write?

Speaker 7 (08:23):
What?

Speaker 2 (08:24):
And I'm not against anyone writing a book, you know.
Why would I be against you writing a book? You know,
you know, But at the same time, it just seems
that it's become a very commercial market, you know, to
be into politics.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
The medical industry. It's interesting what you just said, because
to me, they've they've gotten away from the hippocratic oath
and becoming doctors and nurses and practitioners to help people.
I think the medical schools today are turning out business people, right. Absolutely,
the kids that come out of medical school today learn
more about how running the business and the insurance game

(08:58):
than they do about treating opinion. And I've run into
a lot of doctors like that, unfortunately a couple that
have scared it. But Jesus and some of the things
they've said to me. But it's interesting that analogy because
it's true that's changed, that that whole profession has changed.
And I think politicians are the same way. I think
there's a lot of politicians that go to Washington, like
mister Smith, goes to Washington with ideals and really want

(09:20):
to change the world. And once they get there and
they get into the swamp lack of a better word,
they get corrupted and they end up maybe not achieving their.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Goals right right, right. The system promotes a kind of corruption.

Speaker 4 (09:33):
You're listening to Pete and the Poet Gold.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
I'm Uncle Mike and I'm Peter Leonnar.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
And I'm the Poet Gold, and we're having a conversation
about America today and celebrating our July Force.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
And we started off in a very egotistical way talking
about the media, which we're all right, But what I
wanted to say one of the things I don't want
to Well, it's time should be me complaining from my
very left wing point of view about President Trump. But
if you take the smallest example, you know, just this week,

(10:03):
we did the bombing of Iran, and you know, it
was a controversial thing to do, but it was not
if I can see either way on that, okay, but
the reporting on it. When President Trump gets up, you know,
thirty minutes after we bomb them, and he said it
was a spectacular success. There's been no assessment. He says,

(10:24):
we obliterated the thing. You know, he doesn't have to
do that. He does not know that. He feels perfectly
comfortable giving reports that he has no way of knowing.
And the listener, we all know that he's sort of
making it up or hoping or something. But I think
prior president's, any prior president, would not have been so

(10:47):
definitive and basically dishonest about how that went on.

Speaker 5 (10:51):
Well, it has to be, but we expected of him, right,
he had away and that's the kind of public correction
you don't expect the real story.

Speaker 4 (10:59):
I was kind of He had a press conference we
played yesterday which I didn't want to play on the air,
but we did had played it where he was talking
about the state that Iran and Israel are and more
or less, he dropped the F bomb on the air
on Fox News, and I didn't really want to play
that because I understand the point he was trying to

(11:21):
make is that these two countries better not screw this up.
As basically what he was saying. He didn't say screw.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
He said the F room.

Speaker 4 (11:28):
But to me, the president of the United States, no
matter what, should not be using that language in the media.
That was unpresidential for lack of a better word, and
I don't think there was plenty of other words he
could have chose at that point. And you know, I
didn't really want to put it on the air because
we have younger people listening in the morning, and you
know what he said, it was bleeding out, but you

(11:48):
know what he said, and you know, maybe in the
war room or in the room with these two leaders
that's necessary. I don't know, but I just that bothered
me that he used that language.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
The the idea of decorum is gone. Yeah, you know,
it just it doesn't it doesn't exist. It's it's quote
unquote I guess what people voted for, even though may
have said, well, it's not really what I voted for,
Yes it is. You just didn't think it out, you know,
you didn't have the vision for it.

Speaker 4 (12:16):
And he has a history where having a successful event,
like he deemed it to be a successful event, the
filters are off. Now he thinks it's it's do whatever
he wants. And to a certain extent, I suppose you
gain that by being successful. But at the same time,
you're the president of the free you know, you're you're
the highest office in the world probably, and that's just

(12:37):
not the kind of language that we should be using
on the air. We agree, I can't, I can't. I
couldn't talk like that on the ear.

Speaker 5 (12:41):
They fire me, right, absolutely, absolutely right, And I think that,
you know, we agree on that, and it's uh, you
know something of course, you know in private, you know,
and nobody thinks that Trump uh doesn't speak that way,
but when you see it on the air, we all
move something like I noticed, you know, twelve hours later

(13:03):
on Laurence o'donald on MSN.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
You see a commentator who's very insightful. He used the
word not quoting the president, but he used the word
casually and got away with it. And my sense is
there should be a distinction between public speech and private speech,
and that's the key.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Well, you know, we said that you were taking out
the swamp to bring in a different swamp, you know,
I mean, you know, and that's really what it is.

Speaker 4 (13:35):
You know, it's amazing to me how our government for
our forefathers, you know, we're talking about the fourth of
July and two hundred and forty nine years later, those
that wrote the Constitution and those that wrote the Bill
of Rights, if they were alive today, I really would
be curious as to how they think their experiment is going,

(13:55):
you know, because it's not anywhere. You know, you made
the point earlier about politicians. The Congress and the Senate
was never meant to be a career. It was meant
to draw the brightest people from religion, the arts, business,
science in for a short term and share all their
knowledge with the government and then go back to what
they were doing right right, not to become and we

(14:18):
have the majority of people in the Senate and the
Congress are our career politicians right now. Yeah, absolutely, nobody
is coming in you know. Okay, Well, Elon Musks betefit,
but that wasn't That's not the same thing. But you know,
you want to share that knowledge and make the government
as strong as it can go. But they shouldn't be
there for forty and.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Fifty Definitely not it.

Speaker 4 (14:37):
I don't think our far fathers, for our forefathers, meant
that when they wrote the laws.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
No, And what I've been surprised by is, you know,
I'm seventy five years old, so I've been as yeah,
just a couple of sidel Yeah, but I'm really as
the Constitution really is challenged. I'm surprised just how insightful
the Constitution is in terms of trying to you know,
the separation of powers, and we'll give everyone gets a

(15:03):
fair shake allegedly and all the you know what he's
called due process. We really thought it out in a
way that's noble. And when you see not only the politicians,
primarily President Trump being fast endous with it, but the
Supreme Court. Like when the Supreme Court made the decision,
the President Trump has what amounts to complete immunity for

(15:28):
his actions. He can't be prosecuted. I mean, this is
no longer a country in which nobody is above the law.
The president of the United States is above the law,
and that had not been true for the first two
hundred and forty eight years. Nobody ever thought of that,
And I really think that it's dreadful. Not only that anybody,
I mean, who would think that you pick the president

(15:51):
you don't like, you want them not to be able
to be arrested. But President Trump, who is like pretty
poorus around, well, was anyway to give him free reign?
It was just so unconscionable in principle and in fact.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Right, But he's not you know, I tell people that
when it comes to Trump, he and I very seldom
say his name, and you know that. But when it
comes to Trump, he is not really the person. He's
the mouthpiece, you know he But he has a machine
behind him, which is the Heritage Foundation. He has an
entity behind him and a plan, a very well thought
out agenda that he did not create. There's a whole

(16:28):
other set of people that are moving, you know, the
government here.

Speaker 4 (16:33):
It's interesting, Peter. I can understand what you're saying, and
the fear of someone being above the law. I get that,
But I think one of the one of the reasons
that that came about was they don't want the chief
executive officer to be chided or he doesn't want to
his decisions can't be held hostage. That he has, some

(16:56):
of the decisions he has to make cannot be held hostage.
And I think that was the thought behind that, is
we don't want to put him in that office and
then put handcuffs on him and say because of certain
interests that you can't do certain things. In other words,
his decision should be free willing. I hear what you're saying,
and I know that that's a dangerous slope.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
Because accountability is important to have.

Speaker 4 (17:19):
But at the same time, I don't think you want
his his decision making influenced by any side, by any any.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Any except the law. I mean, you know, I mean
when they really came down and.

Speaker 4 (17:31):
I understand what you're saying, but I'm saying I.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Think that was what actually happened. Is you know, in
the hearings, they said, now if the president decides to
use Seal Team six to assassinate a political rival, uh,
that could get away with that. I don't think it's
not handcuffing somebody, it's preventing murder. I mean, they're not.
They're not going to do it on little stuff. They're
going to do it on big stuff.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
And whether it's on your soil or anybody else's soil, if.

Speaker 4 (17:56):
You're going to elect him and deem him to be
the commander in chief of the armed forces, there has
to be some there's got to be accountability, There's no question.
But he's got it. He has some authority to do something.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yes, two one forty eight years we all agreed. The president,
I mean Barack Obama, who I like, Okay, he I
don't think he was as good as Joe Biden in
terms of getting legislation passed.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
But the other reason for that, okay.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
But Barack Obama killed the US citizen, a Muslim American
who was living in the Mid East, and he was
very good at public relations Milwaukee. His name was and
Obama had him taken out with no due process. To me,
that was like an illegal thing. And Obama said, I

(18:44):
have no problem. That's not a hard decision for me.
The guy you want real damage to Americans and Americans
resigned because of it, and Obama had him basically executed
by drone. My sense is Obama knew perfectly well nobody's
going to prosecute him for it, right, I mean, and
Obama knew completely well that it was illegal, but he
had that freedom. Okay. Now, if you decide when you're president.

Speaker 6 (19:09):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
And then I said, you're going to assession one of
your political rival, nobody is for that, Mike, You and
I I'm not going to who's cooking before? So that's
one of the decisions that I'm against and we have.

Speaker 4 (19:25):
Yeah, it's Uh, you're listening to Poet Gold and Peter
Pete and the poet Gold.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
I'm uncle Mike and you'll find out. With Pete and
the poet Cold, I'm Peter.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
And I'm Poet Cold.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
You with my uncle Mike Hanson, I'll produce. And we
we're talking about America's birthday and you know, the pride
and the problems we have with America today.

Speaker 4 (19:50):
To me, it's it's just it keeps ringing in my head.
This is just two hundred and almost two hundred and
forty nine year experiment, experiment, and what we're talking about
is how are we doing? Where have we got? Where
have we how have we gotten here? And now that
we're here, are we going to make it?

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Make it through?

Speaker 4 (20:06):
Forty nine years.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
I don't know or as as the as the America
of free choice, you know, of free conversations. I mean,
there are words that are banned, you know, the woman.
How do you ban the word woman?

Speaker 3 (20:20):
You know?

Speaker 2 (20:21):
I mean you know right now, how do you how
do you put it on paper? Would common sense and go, oh, yes, okay, well,
let's add woman to the list. You know, let's add
black to the list. Let's let's add what is it
awake to the list?

Speaker 1 (20:38):
You know of government words that have been perid from
the thing, so you can't have black history.

Speaker 4 (20:45):
But the thing that's fascinating, and you said it earlier, Peter,
is a document, the Constitution, that was written two hundred
and forty nine years ago, how insightful it was in
some respects, and how it's held up. But now the
call se is to be that we need to rewrite it.
Anyone that understands legal documents, like with the Bill of Rights,

(21:07):
you can't the Bill of Rights is is a document,
and we can't change the first Amendment or the third
Amendment or the fourth without changing the entire document. So
the Bill of Rights have to stand as they are
for it to be effective and the call to change
some of these, Like you know, people, there's a lot
of people who are against our profession that we do.

(21:27):
Would love to see the First Amendment struck down. You
shouldn't have the rights that we have. But you can't
do that if you want to maintain that that Bill
of rights, if that's going to stay as the as
the law, and the Constitution is going to stay as
the law, you can't change parts of it the way
it is to write a whole new document.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Right, if I'm not against what I am against is
just regarding it. So you know, another thing I want
to be very explicit in terms of criticizing President Trump,
is this whole thing financially he's making too much money.
He made it to and a half billion dollars in January,
and you're allowed to pay off the president of the

(22:06):
United States, not only you know, accepting the plane from
Cutar and stuff like that, but the cryptos stuff you
can pay directly into his family fund.

Speaker 4 (22:16):
I think the list of the years hold on.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
No, no, nobody has ever said you can shovel money
into my family account.

Speaker 4 (22:26):
Maybe it wasn't available back it was not It certainly
wasn't available been available Peter. I think there's a lot
of them that would have done it.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
And I disagree with that. The only crook we had,
I think, uh, in my lifetime, who was what I
mean by a crook as somebody who was more interested
in money than power is Spiro Agnew spirou Agne was
vice President United States under Richard Nixon, and he was
still collecting payoffs from the highway thing in Maryland where

(22:53):
he was governort. They would come to the White House
with bags of money and give it to him. Most politicians, uh,
are much more interested in power, which is very often
a corrupt density. Also. But the notion that you can
go shovel billions of dollars into family account this is new.
It's disregarding it. It's just silence and believing might nobody

(23:13):
else ever tried it?

Speaker 4 (23:14):
So you don't think so you think none of the
stuff that's been said about the Bidens is true.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
I think some of it is. It's supposed to all
of it, supposed to all of it, hold on, suppose
to all of it is. And Biden's son, who was,
you know, a drug addict and basically a corrupt person.
He was hitting like six hundred thousand dollars a year.
They say from Barisma, that's little stuff, that's tiny stuff.

(23:39):
When you talk about two and a half billion, Yes,
it makes an enormous difference.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
But here's my question.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Enormous difference. Billions of dollars are different.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
From getting hot now. But but but, but here's my question.
You know, we know this is happening. We're the people
who vote. Who do we wish to be? This is
our country. This is not Trump's country. This is our country.

(24:06):
Who do we wish to be? Because if we have Trump,
they're behaving in such a way, or anyone, if it's Biden,
I don't care who it is. There are a reflection
and extension upon who we are as American citizens. So
so when you see something and when you see your child,
so to speak, acting out right, do you say it
it's just that child, or do you say this is
a reflection upon who I am and.

Speaker 4 (24:29):
I've go through with my son or did you ever
hear that? All? I do know where you heard that.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
So it's about it's about ownership, But.

Speaker 4 (24:38):
It's beyond the president. The Congress and the Senate are
full of people who have made a lot of money.
You know that they shouldn't have made and I think
the part of it, and it's interesting. I still believe
in term limits, especially.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
In Oh yes, oh please please give it to us.

Speaker 4 (24:52):
Someone who I love dearly, I was a state senator,
Senator Larkin, I knew all my life, did a lot
for the community. Anytime he was on the show, he
would slam his fist and say, there are term limits.
It's called an election now, and I would say, sir,
I'm sorry, but that's not working because our elections aren't,
you know, when you look at certain states. He saw
what happened last night in the primaries in New York City.

(25:15):
I think everyone expected Cuomo just to walk away, and
he didn't. But unfortunately, I think our election system is
so corrupted. And I don't mean that people are cheating.
I don't mean now, but money has such a big
part of it, and the longer they stay in, the
more chance they have being re elected.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
And again it's not so. The Supreme Court's decision Citizens
United made that possible, and people who voted for that
made a mistake. But one of the big things that
I think conservatives do that I'm against is they in
their thinking, regardless of the issue, that you equate the
little with the big. So if you say, if you

(25:53):
tell a little lie, you're just as guilty as if
you tell a big claw. If you see a little
bit of money, it's just as bad as if you
steal a lot of money. And I want to say,
is a diet in the world Catholic venial sins don't
add up to mortal sins. In other words, there's some
things that are really bad in getting blurring the distinction

(26:13):
between little and big is huge.

Speaker 4 (26:15):
But I understand your philosophy there. But when we talk
about the law, that's how the law works in fraction.
An infraction of the law is an infraction of the law, Peter.
It's prosecuted the same way whether you stole ten billion
dollars or you stole twenty dollars from a candy store.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
Theft is theft, but the sentences is not the same.
To the law theft is, the sentencing is not the same.

Speaker 4 (26:36):
It shouldn't be.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Murder murder.

Speaker 4 (26:41):
So you take those levels, even grand laws whatever that
LS say it's twenty five thousand, So if you've stole
twenty five thousand and one dollars, it is grand laursity
or if you're stole three hundred and eighty million dollars,
it is grand lawsity, it's the same crime.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Okay, but okay, even if I don't agree.

Speaker 4 (26:55):
With that, but it is the same crime.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, scene that. I just have this question. Are you
for the Biden family making extra money out of the presidency?

Speaker 4 (27:06):
No, of course not.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Are you for the Trump family making But well, soon
you say, well what about this? What about nothing? Billions
of dollars? Billions of dollars and so.

Speaker 4 (27:16):
Well, the crime is the crime. I'm with you on that.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah, big crimes are worse than small crimes.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
To me, well, America, what are we going to do?

Speaker 7 (27:24):
Well?

Speaker 1 (27:25):
And you head it right on.

Speaker 4 (27:25):
The head, poet, is that we've gotten away from people
making intelligent choices when they vote. I don't think you
should base your votes on whatever party the candidates from.
You've got to be the best qualified candidate for the job.
And we don't do that anymore. And the candidates when
they campaign don't present solutions to problems. They attack the
other side most of the time, and they both do it.

(27:47):
Absolutely the party system sucks. I don't think it works.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
Another heresy if you're just are we rap I know
what I want to say.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
Oh, if we have two students who usaid, if you're
the one who has a comment or on top.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Of the twenty thing was, and nobody's.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Required you to up. But if you have a perspective
on what has been said so far or another perspective,
we welcome that.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
And since when we just walked in the room, let's
bring you up to speech. It's like, must I don't
know what you're talking about. We do this annually. We're
celebrating Independence Day and the state of America where it
is today, where it was and you know whether or not,
where's it going right? And so that's the conversation today.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
And so you were not required you to speak, but
if you want to, you are welcome here. One of you.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
I think there's to know who you are.

Speaker 7 (28:37):
My name is Bridgin Allian. I'm a I'm a student
at Vassar and I am one of the interns here
for Pete and the Putt Gold this summer. Are very
grateful to be here and learn from from these three
amazing people and their profession. But I think there's a
lot of hope in the phrasing of your question of
like what kind of America do we want to be
and how do we want to respond to this? And

(29:01):
I think that as we move forward, like the phrasing
of those questions is what's important, because I think for
our generation, for our younger generation, oftentimes checking out and
just submitting to a certain kind of of of dismal
view is the tendency. So I think I appreciate the
phrasing of your question, but I know we're running out
of time, so I'll leave it back.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Very diplomatic and insightful too. Well, yeah, she's right, insightful
and diplomatic. I have both of other things, except for
the diplomatic point.

Speaker 4 (29:30):
Maybe not so much, Poet. I think you hit it
right on the head and the point of this whole
show and where we're at. That's where we're at. We
need to become more informed voters and vote for the
candidate who was most qualified. I don't care if they're
a Republican, Democrat, independent communists, if they're Islamic, if you know,
whatever it is. The situation in New York now was
very interesting that this gentleman that won the first part

(29:53):
of this primary. I didn't think that was going to happen.
I don't think mister Cuomo thought it was going to
happen either. Now, where does that go from here? That's
not the end all, but it's certainly going in a
different direction, and we thought it was going to go
And maybe I've said it to you a thousand times
when you talk about wealth, there are millions of people
in this country who could do a hell of a

(30:14):
lot better job with our government than are doing it
right now, but they don't have the money to get involved.
They don't have the ability to do that.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
It's so much money in policy and they don't want
to get.

Speaker 4 (30:22):
You know, when you think about some of these hearings
that we've watched, what the candidates went through, dragging up
stuff about their personal life, why would you want to
put yourself through that. It's not that great a job
to begin with, and you're going to expose your family
and yourself to all that. So I think that's where
we're at. What you brought up is we've got to
become better at voting and put the people in there
that deserve to have the jobs, and we're not doing that.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
And I'm with you on you know, the whole party
thing is just at this point, it's just absurd. You know,
people get stuck in the lane of Democrat, independent, Republican
and the lens become so blurred.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
You know at that point what what.

Speaker 4 (31:00):
What told that story for me was when when when
Marcus ran for governor, he won fifty four out of
sixty two counties and he lost by eighty percent. That's
messed up, okay, because the island of Manhattan typically votes
Democratic and they have the power of putting whoever. But
that didn't mean that they were most of those people.

(31:23):
And I'm speaking I shouldn't say it the way I'm saying,
but a lot of people walk in that voting booth
and they just go D D D D down the
things I do that and they have no idea who
they're voting for. That's that's not working well.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
The notion you can win more counties in New York
State that have lots of cows and o people. That's
not a big accompliment you're saying.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
But the people in those state don't have a right.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
No, no, no, they have a right to be counted
equal to the people in other locations.

Speaker 4 (31:46):
They're losing before they walk into.

Speaker 8 (31:47):
Violay, No, no, no, it's a count My point is
the two point your pointed.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
If you look at statistics from one point of view,
Mark Molina should have been governor in York. I'm not
saying that it was not good in my opinion in Congress,
and you know, I'm friends come and stuff. But in
Congress he the politics numbers. Yeah, yeah, we count people.
We don't count cows. Mike, I mean it's the way.

Speaker 4 (32:13):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
I wasn't counting counties. Uh, they don't have people, but
have it.

Speaker 4 (32:18):
You're saying a citizen in Cayoga County has less say
than someone in the island of Manhattan.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
No, that's what you just said.

Speaker 4 (32:26):
It's not supposed to count the cows.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, but no, we don't count. We want to be
more present county.

Speaker 4 (32:34):
Agree, Well, that's not right now with the two party
system there, it's not equal votes.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
Also, you know Michigan, Pennsylvania. I mean, those are the
people who live in Pennsylvania have more political power than
we do in New York, no doubt about that. That
shouldn't pay the fact that you can win lots of states,
we have very few people. That's it.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
You know, it needs it needs to be event but
we already.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Have the Senate where people who want homing with your
own six hundred thousand people, they have two senators just
like we have in New York California. That doesn't even fail.
I mean they're overrepresented. But if for America Happy Birthday,
and I think the Gold's point, it's the citizens that
determine it. Do we have a lot to be determined.

Speaker 4 (33:19):
If this experiment is going to succeed, it's it's going
to be the citizens that are going to Absolutely, because
the government is screwing it up.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
Royal absolutely actually have to do.

Speaker 4 (33:27):
We need to get involved more, and we need to
make more decisions than we're making. And I don't know
how you make that happen, because I understand on the
side of it, people are heading down in the harness,
barely making a living. You're spending all your time worrying
about paying your bills, and you're not worrying about some
of the other things. And I go I said, watching television.
I go nuts to night watching some of the stuff
on television. Tina has taken all the sharp objects out

(33:49):
of the room. So I don't break the television. I
throw stuff with the television. Not only because of the
absurdity of it. I told you the story can break
at two o'clock in the morning, and if you watch
six different outlets that get told six different ways, but
it's the same story. That's not acceptable. That's that's that's
causing a problem.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
I I agree with that. A lot of the reporting
doesn't have to quote a real source, and you know
you need source.

Speaker 4 (34:12):
And then you throw the Internet into it.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
Oh my god, right and then then bro uh.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Those who feel they're using AI constructively are are making
these AI content stories that are just filled with lies,
and they consider themselves storytelling. It's just it's it's nuts.
What's out there.

Speaker 4 (34:30):
Well, they've had some lawyers that were recently caught having
AI right there there there there, what do you call
those briefs you know for the courts, and the judges
realized that it was it wasn't based on any truth,
right right, And the lawyers were signing their names to
the women. They got all kinds of trouble.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Because I would say, the biggest problem we have in America,
and it's always been a true in politics, is recalled
for the truth. And I think it's some people in
public life now and primarily the president United States President
Trump has less regard for the truth than anybody. You go, no,

(35:05):
it's not. There's evidence for it. Is there's evidence for
the fact, Mike, going back to the Nocean, we did
not obliterate the nuclear capabilities of Iran. Barack Obama was
not born in Kenya. I mean the list that we
have of.

Speaker 4 (35:18):
Distributing that's a pretty limited list right there.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
There were thirty thousand documents of lies from the first administration,
and you know it through the whole thing. President Trump
lies more than other people.

Speaker 4 (35:31):
Well, that's subjective. Are you going to prove that? How
do you know what? We don't even know half of
the lives that have been told. You haven't we haven't discovered.

Speaker 9 (35:39):
Hold on, Michael, Well, well, I want to say to
all right, if you think President and Trump is as
truthful as even President Nixon, I think she was greatly mistaken.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Nixon lied, but not nearly as much as Trump.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
That's why he doesn't like to be compared to Nixon.
He really has a problem being and petni thing.

Speaker 8 (36:00):
Okay, well, they'll go, but I think that really the
point of the conversation is is that for me anyway,
is the system is just not working.

Speaker 4 (36:11):
We need to change it. We need and I think
the students, especially who are sitting back and watching all this,
I'm hoping that they've got ideas on how to change it,
and they're going to come forward with solutions. That's what's
missing in our elections today. Think about so many elections.
In the campaign ads you watch, they're not talking about solutions.
They're talking about how bad the other guy is. Don't

(36:32):
elect him because he did this. Well, what are you
going to do when you get in there and we
know you're not going to do the same thing, How
do we know you're going to I want to hear
from you that these are the five problems that I've identified.
This is what I'm going to do to fix them.
But if you want to, if you if you agree
with me, vote for me. I'd love to see.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
An act that is you have to reason. I mean,
the Republicans from my whole lifetime, President Trump now they
say they're going to take money away from the poor
people and give it to the rich people.

Speaker 4 (37:00):
Yeah, well, what's the name Robin Hood said that to you?

Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yes, But I mean, if you think that's a good idea,
if you think that's a good idea to give make
rich people, Richard, it's expensive poor people. Well, they're vote
for Republicans, but they're not hiding that President Trump is
telling the truth about that, right.

Speaker 4 (37:15):
I don't think it's fair at either side, Peter to
say that the you know, you're you're casting every Republican
in that vein, and they do it to the Democrats.
I think there's a lot of great Democrats out there,
and unfortunately, right now in both parties, the extreme wings
of those parties are controlling things, and there's a lot
of people that are getting sucked into the wake of

(37:35):
it that don't believe what they're saying, but they have
no choice.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
And you need their voice.

Speaker 4 (37:39):
No, you' know how many votes that happened in the
Senate in Congress, where so if they see a bill
coming up and they see there's enough votes to pass
the bill, some of those that normally probably would have
voted for it are voting against it. So I can
go to constituents, Look, I voted against it. I want
to stay. I want to stay in office. I want
to keep this cushy job that I had. Right most
of them, that's what that's what drives And you don't

(38:03):
know if it's always been true.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
That I promise it's always been true. Yes, from the beginning,
you know Democrat, don't the beginning. I mean Representative Accounlissman Lawer.
I mean he's pulling the trickiest thing in the world.
He's going to vote full of Medicaid cuts. But he said, well,
if you want, they uh do what I want on
the say local taxes. I'm fine with it. I mean,
this is really uh chick cannery. It's it's a shell game.

(38:28):
I think it's the young people should do what the
people who found the Constitution did and virtually every responsible
political let's tell the truth, okay, and be against people
who don't tell the truth, and not say every nobody
tells the truth. Some people tell the truth, though he
about more than other people.

Speaker 4 (38:45):
Let's face it, you and I, Peter are more than
two thirds over with our lives. You know, it's not
gonna what's happening today. Well, I'm saying, but I say
to my son all the time, I would not want
to be your age today to be anest with you,
because I know how we grew up and you're not
going to grow up like we did. And everything that
we're doing today, everything we just discussed this whole that

(39:07):
you just heard. It affects you a hell of a
lot more than it's going to affect us. It really does,
and you have the power to change this. But are
you going to be able to do it based on
what Poe and I were talking about? Are you going
to get to a point where you start voting for
people that you think are going to make the change
or are you going to get sucked in like the
rest of the population did and just vote for the

(39:28):
popular candidate. I think that's the difference. That's what's where
That's where we're at right now. How do you feel
about that?

Speaker 3 (39:34):
I don't know how to respond.

Speaker 7 (39:36):
I think I think that where I'm coming from from,
like the school that I go to, it's definitely a bubble,
not only like within New York State, but also within
like the college age population of America. I think if
you were to go like where I'm from, Chapehola, North Carolina,
and you were to interview a bunch of UNC students,
it would be a very different story as to what
they see the political climate being and what they envision

(39:57):
the future. Eyes I think in terms of like what
people my age are talking about at least like in
my circles, a lot of people are there's a big
debate I think within the people I know between voting
for on the national level for issues and then voting
for knowing that at least in this last election, because

(40:19):
we all were voting age this was my first presidential election,
voting for with the knowledge that if you vote based
on issues and what you believe to be right based
on these issues, you maybe it was this conversation of
giving up your vote and that possibly like President Trump
won because certain people were giving up their vote because
they were identifying issues as a Democratic Party that they

(40:41):
didn't believe in, they didn't believe in certain parts of
Kamala Harris's background, and then they voted, you know, third party.
And I saw a lot of people doing that. That
wasn't the choice that I made, But I think at
the time, like I myself, had a lot of anger
about those people, especially given how they turned out. And
you can probably tell where I stand.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
I'm sort of.

Speaker 7 (41:03):
Leaning towards Pete's direction, but I think that we don't
have a consensus as a population about where we're going
to go in terms of voting for going down a
ticket and just voting D or R or or. I
think there's more of an inclination for getting into issue based.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
Candidacies.

Speaker 7 (41:25):
But what that looks like, especially on the national level,
I think, is what where we get lost. I think
in these times like this, the past few months for
me have been turning towards local politics. Sometimes I just
feel like I can't make heads or tails what's happened
on the national level, and so much of it, there's
so much noise, and there's so much breakage from the

(41:47):
typical norm of how things are supposed to proceed, and
there's so much back and forth, like you were saying,
Mike about about it's not even about the issues anymore.
It's about going back and forth about who's a bigger liar,
which I think is a lot of conversation we've been having.
Who's a bigger liar? What kind of lies matter? Or
how do we value the truth? What is the truth?
And so I can't make hea details of that. I
go down to the local level. I'm going to county
legislature meetings, I'm going to local protests. I don't know

(42:09):
what to do about the national level, to be honest,
and I think to.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Your point that that is so important going to the
local level, because the local level, to a certain extent,
you can control you know, the local level, you can
show up at the office of your county legislator. You know,
if you're a city council person, they have to see you.
They can see you every day if possible. You know,
if you're showing up in their faith with issues that
matter to you. So I think being engaged on a

(42:32):
local level for citizens also give them an education on
the potential of what how it spills over nationally they
can hear their conversation in Congress or are incentive. How
does that go up the scales?

Speaker 3 (42:44):
So going local, to me is the way is one
of the ways to go in order to control the environment.

Speaker 4 (42:51):
The local politicians are much more accountable than the national.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
Park right exactly, I think exactly.

Speaker 4 (42:56):
And I'm sorry to hear that you're in I'm sorry
to hear and honestly, I'm sure or to hear that
you're in that state because we're depending on you. Your
generation is the one that's got to straighten us out.
And I know that's a lot of pressure and I'm
just saying it, but I hope that you're going to
find a way to start to understand the national level
and start to make some of the decisions that have
to be made because we're not going to be around

(43:17):
to make them. But the local level politicians are much
more accountable.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
Right, And I think that's what it changes.

Speaker 4 (43:23):
Things that I think that you don't see anymore is
how often do you see someone who is a local
politician make it to the national level anymore? That just
doesn't happen. There's a lot of local people we have
in misgovernment, and you know, I'm not going to name
name some people. I'm very impressed with the young people.
I don't think they have a chance at hell I'm
getting into national politics because they just don't have the

(43:43):
the the culture, not the cultural but the economic ability.

Speaker 7 (43:47):
The money.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
They don't they don't have to have the money, right.

Speaker 4 (43:50):
And they could be doing like I said, they could
be doing a great job and learning how the government
works is important, and they've done that. They understand how
when they when they make it work on the local level,
it should work on the national level. But that just
doesn't happen.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
So how do you do you take do you then
say you know for yourself locally, Okay, on the national level,
you have a figurehead, you know, sort of like do
this thing in your brain, you know where you play it. Okay,
this is a figurehead. But what really matters to my
day to day is what's happening locally, and so you
get citizens engaged in that process to make their world

(44:24):
better for their community. That's making sure that there are jobs,
making sure people are protected from any type of outward
oppression that may be coming from the figurehead, no matter
who it is.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
I don't care if it's Trump, I don't care who
the next person is.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
But you know what impact negatively is it going to
have on the community in which we live in, and
how do we control that within our ecosystem of our community?
And I think the energy at this point in society
to a little bit to your point, because of the
feeling of soulows. I apologize to a young boy on
the young man on the train. I just you know,

(44:59):
I've felt impelled to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry that
those born in the sixties and the seventies and the
eighties have handed you a pile of bs. Right right,
We're screwed up on so many different levels. You know,
we had you had people born in sixties, who fifties
who all got high, had the orgies, did a whole

(45:21):
bunch of stuff. And these are so called some of
the most conservative folks today run in the country and
partied like hell, you know, and now they're like, well,
you can't have babies. I'm going to control your uterus.
I'm gonna do this because this is what happened to me,
you know. And and so so I apologize to him
because because we've handed them crap basically and said and said,

(45:45):
I don't want to overwhelm you.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
Fix it now, because.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
I'm gonna say it was a very nice you to apologize,
young man. Right, I'm not apologized, but I'm not a
nice person, Okay. But one of the things we like
to make two points about the local versus the national.
It's very difficult in local politics to know what's going on.
The decline of local media is something. It's w k

(46:12):
P used to have five local reporters out every day
getting stored and we would write a real news report
in the morning. We don't know what tech is going
on locally, So you know, we have our right wing
talk show in the morning, political talk show, and that's
virtually all national I was talking for years because we
don't know the local news. We don't have the reporters

(46:34):
and know what the media outlet does either. So when
we talk about politics, it's easy to talk about on
national news because we're uh, that's stuff we hear. And
also the national administrations are affecting the local politics more
than ever. If you cut Medicaid, you go down to

(46:54):
you know, Sabrina Marzuka, our Commissioner of Family and Services,
I can't help people, you know. I mean, so what
goes on in the national level has never had more
of an effect, And we were never dumber about or
less informed about local stuff. The Poughkeepsie Journal used to
be a terrific paper, and I mean I wrote for
Pepsie Journal for twenty years. I'd liked it. We had

(47:16):
seven photographers that it were fantastic. We have one now.
So the local stuff is not to save you.

Speaker 10 (47:23):
And this is where I disagree with you. You're listening
to Oh thank you, Pet the Poet. An extended version
of the Fourth of July is twenty two segments.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
Now I'm Poet Gold and I'm Peter Leonard, and.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
And so this is where this is where I disagree
with you.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Sure there are things that come to the top, but
there's a there's a place where let's say you don't
you don't have the media coverage, you don't have the
local newspaper, you may not even have the money, but
you do have wealthy citizens within your community. There are
ways to sort of recreate what's needed in your community
so that your community doesn't go to bus and so

(48:05):
so you know you can go to meeting yourself. Where
am I going to find the information? I don't have
to rely on a piece of paper, a newspaper, or
even a media outlet for information because today that's skewed
a certain way anyway.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
So you may just like we're having this.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Conversation, you're giving your perspective, and if that's the only
perspective I'm hearing, it's not a well rounded one. It's
your perspective. So if I want a well rounded perspective,
I need to go out. I need to find out
where the meeting is so I can hear it through
my own ears. I need to educate myself as a citizen.
If I want a better road, I need to go
and contact that person's office. That's in charge in that road.

(48:44):
I can't rely upon you, myself, or Uncle Mike or
anybody in this radio station to give me the news.
I need to go find out what the news is.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
Cool. I'm sorry to feel picked on here.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
No.

Speaker 4 (48:57):
One of the things that you said earlier was that
you're going to the local legislature meetings. I think that's fantastic, right,
because you're finding out for yourself what's going on. I
think that's important. But here's the thing. When we talk
about elections, none of us have touched on the campaign reform.
It needs to take place. You can't have a pharmaceutical
industry giving twenty billion dollars or whatever they give every year.

(49:18):
They're influencing not only the voters, but they're influencing the candidates.
So some of these candidates are scared to death to
vote a certain way because they're going to lose that money.
That's wrong. That shouldn't be part of it. We need
to We need everybody. When you have a campaign, each
each candidate gets one hundred thousand dollars, good luck, and
that's it. And you're going to finance who has solutions

(49:39):
and who is going to actually.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Do I want to say, I agree one hundred percent
with Mike in that school public financing for elections and
everyone has the same amount of money and they make
it work. And obviously we had the aberration of having uh,
you know Trump, I must with two hundred and seventy
eight million dollars got all that power. And what we

(50:01):
found out about Elon Musch, who must be very good
at arithmetic or something like, he's good at rockets, but
I mean, it's not even as smart as the rest
of us. He was, and he was genuine on his
but he was surprised that his way of the only
things didn't work. Hey, let's not know what the thing is,
but let's cut up by forty percent. How dumb can

(50:22):
you be? Not dumber than that?

Speaker 4 (50:24):
But I think that's one of the areas that I
hope your generation attacks is a campaign reformed, because it
just doesn't make any sense. You can't have somebody donating
that much money and having that much influence. Some of
these politicians they live and die by those campaigns, and
they're not going to vote with their heads. They're going
to vote with their pocketbooks. They're going to try to

(50:45):
get a certain number of re elections so they get
their benefits. It's gravy.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
And let's remember a historical thing, you know, twenty fifteen
when they had the citizens united the decision, which is basically,
if you're a little bit tricky, you can put as
much money into politics as you want. The Republicans are
the ones who buying Lodge supported that and Democrats opposed it.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
If you're for the you know again, Peter, what at
this point what we're trying to solve here, and we're
trying to keep this country, this experiment, from dying. None
of that matters anymore. We've got to come up with solutions.
We've got to move forward here. We can't keep every
time I hear President Trump take a shot at Joe Biden,

(51:28):
it bothers me. You know what, Joe Biden is no
longer the president, Actually he is no longer has any
influence in politics. Why are we still bringing that up?
Why aren't we talking about what's going ahead of us here?
Stop living in the past. It doesn't we agree on that.
Your rearview mirror in your car is much smaller than
your winshield reason.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
But the reason I want to bring it up is
buying Lodge. If you look at issues the party is
No party is perfect, No party is going to be
one hundred percent what you agree with. But buying Lodge,
the Democrats are for high attacks for the rich.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
I think we should do away with the parties.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Peter, do you think you should do away with making
rich people richer?

Speaker 4 (52:09):
Nobody?

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Rich people should be rich, should have fine, let's make
poor peoples fascinated completely. It's called justice some you know.

Speaker 7 (52:19):
Well, I guess that kind of takes me to my
question that I would pose to you all, which I
think that is sort of part of what we've been
talking about, in the sense that one of the things
that I think is there should be more conversation between
people like us, people from very disparate generations, because I
think there's not a lot of dialogue between people of
different age groups, people have been around and seeing different administrations,

(52:39):
and for people for whom this was their first presidential election, right,
Because I totally agree that it is on us, and
I totally think that you have much more insight into
what's wrong and what has worked and what hasn't. And
I can't figure out what to do until until we
start talking about what's happened. But I guess that that
would be my question to you. I mean a lot

(53:00):
of different subjects have come up, campaign reform, the rich
getting richer, local politics. What do you view as the
off ramp? If you were to start in some place
and you would say, you have all these young people
who have all this energy, they're going to put their
efforts somewhere, where would you go to start dismantling this
sort of system that feeds on itself. You know, if

(53:21):
you if we could talk ourselves in circle, where would
you start.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
My answer to that would be, you educate young people
to be fair. So justice and truth I think of
the two places to thought. So tell the truth and
then you figure out what's just and go w with just.
And my opinion is almost nobody would think that it's
a just proposition to make rich people rich and pull

(53:46):
people sicker. If you think that's just, that's a real controversy,
But almost nobody who's voting to medicate things that they think. So,
you know, maybe in middle class we get a clutter
action too, and it will, but mostly the risk we're
getting richer at the expense of poor people is unjust,
and that's a big truth and justice where I come
out and the documents is close to that as the constitution.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Well, you know, and I think truth is a perspective,
you know, everyone has their own version of the truth,
you know.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
So for me, I would I would probably start with
the money, you know, I would.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
I would make some changes that that would put limits,
you know, on how much money can be played into
a campaign, making an even playing field for everybody.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
So you have to come to the table. But what
you really can do.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
You have to come to the table with the plan,
not some other corporation. You know, that's that's backing you.
And the other would be bill packing. Those those are
the two things I would work with.

Speaker 4 (54:42):
I wouldn't assign it if I knew it was in there,
right right, I would, you know, Yeah, I mean, I
guess I'm hopeful that you're gonna your generation is gonna
maybe listen to what has happened in the past, because
that does give you a basis. But don't base your
decisions on what's happened in the past, you know. As

(55:03):
far as rich people getting rich, I don't ever think
about that. Bothers you to all it bothers you really
bothers you people are there's going to be rich people,
there's going to be poor people. And you know, and
you want to hope that the rich people got rich
because they had some kind of ingenious thing they came
up with, or they worked hard. You want to hope that,
I know some of them didn't. A lot of it's
handed down from family to family. I get all that,

(55:25):
but you can't stop that.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
And you know, I'm not against rich people getting richer,
except for the fact that they're doing it at the
expense of poor people. So that's that's what bothers me.
Infinite wealth for rich people is silly. Yeah, but anybody
everybody hundred billionaires in America, and you know, I think,
well of them have too much money. But the problem
is where you're.

Speaker 4 (55:47):
Going to draw the line, though, what's what's too much money?

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Well, well, well, you know, for me, it would be
about about one hundred million. And if you want to
have a controversy, we can have a controversy. But no,
but nobody thinks that having four hundred billion dollars for
individual is a good idea, except for people who think,
oh they must how hard does Elon must work? I
don't know, Well, he can't work harder than you might,
I mean, and how smart is it, I don't know,

(56:11):
not as smart as anybody in this room when it
comes to political realities. Maybe that's why you got to say.

Speaker 7 (56:17):
I don't know if this is an off ramp so
much as another existential question. But do you think that
we all agree about what kind of experiment we're trying
to have, about what the end result of the experiment
is supposed to be. Whether it's a society where someone
can work hard and go from being poor to being
really rich and someone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps,
or is it a society where everyone has equal opportunity

(56:38):
and we to have an equal kind of life that
we can all pursue happiness and live at a certain means.
You know, is it opportunity or is it sort of
an equal quality of life?

Speaker 1 (56:51):
We would like to have equal opportunity, right, And the
notion that nobody can work hard enough to make even
let's say one billion, one million dollars and then mind
a billion, I mean, there's just so much time and
the thing so you don't hard work is a very
very good thing, and middle class people mostly have the
experience of working harder and making more money, But when

(57:12):
you really talking about big money, it has really nothing
to do with hard work. And in terms of intelligence,
it also has very little to deal with intelligence. I mean,
my experience is hard work and intelligence is a real
good middle class value.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
I think eco quality of life. You know, when you
have an eco quality of life, you can build in opportunity.
But you can have opportunity and not have an eco
quality of life, you know, and so so for me,
equal quality of life is important to have because opportunities
grow out of that.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
We're out of time, but we're not out of breath.

Speaker 4 (57:45):
But I think one of the things that always fascinates
me is that I don't have a problem with people
becoming billionaires, but I just wish the billionaires were more charity.
You know, right when you get to a point when
you have that much money where you're never gonna your
generations are never going to spend it, what are you
doing and not helping other people? To me, if I

(58:07):
ever was blessed with that, I would give most of it.

Speaker 3 (58:08):
Away right right and help people that absolutely. I'm with you,
Uncle Mike.

Speaker 4 (58:13):
But the people that you're upset about, most of them,
I will tell you, don't give a dime to anybody, right,
And I don't understand that if you have more than
more than you need, what do you you have to
determine what is enough? But now, but we're at a
number now. I don't know how you how you tackled that.
How is that gonna end?

Speaker 2 (58:33):
And that is in your lovely generation, our generations, generations, generations,
you know so, but thank you, you know for listening
to finding out what Pete and Poe will go. We
do though, regardless of the const of our conversation. It's
all about growth. And we wish everyone a very happy
July fourth, Stay safe, stay blessed day lifted