Full Episode - The Shutdown Has Become A Choice - Trump’s Showdown In Chicago + Why America’s Colleges Are FAILING Their Students - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Okay, cam Firs, rise and shine and don't forget your
booties because it's cool out there today. Yes, I cliched
it up. I'm starting with a groundhog Day reference. I
don't yet have the finances to pay for I've got you,
babe or that, of course, So just have that in
the back of your head as you hear that. But

(00:23):
we are on groundhog Day with the shutdown. I certainly
have other topics I want to get to before I
get to my interview. My interview for this episode's a
terrific one with Paul Glastros, editor chief of the Washington Monthly.
But it's about a different way to rank colleges and universities.
You know, the US News rankings get all the attention

(00:43):
they just came out. Well, Washington Monthly has been doing
rankings themselves, basically almost as a counter and the Washington
Monthly Rankings tries to prioritize best bang for your buck.
Does your degree translate into moving up the economic ladder?
Do you what you get for the money that you
spend for your education? It, I'm telling you you will,

(01:06):
whether you have kids headed to college, whether you are
tired of paying your student loans, and you want to
hear about it, whether it's about saving for college in
any way, whatever you've done about this, trust me, you
will enjoy this conversation. I learned a lot about the
different ways of higher education. And one of the things
you got to remember about the United States. You know

(01:28):
we I think we have massive problems in primary and
secondary these days. Our public school system needs a massive
overhaul revamp. The privatization movement is probably uh, sort of
over over cranked here a little bit. It's it's the
whole thing is is a tapestry of of good intentions

(01:50):
but yet still bad outcomes. In the world of higher education,
I mean, you know, we we have so many terrific
institutions in this country all over the country. It is
not you know, it is it is hard to say
that there is a state that has that doesn't have
a good higher education higher education school. So it is uh,

(02:13):
it's a fascinating conversation. I think you'll enjoy it. And
and you know, in the journalism world here in Washington,
a lot of us have known Paul for a long
time because he's been our In some cases, the Washington
Monthly would would be the first place to that some
of us got our long form magazine articles, and I
count myself among among one of those that was able

(02:33):
to get a byeline in the Monthly and among other
places when I was doing freelance during my days at
the hotline. So it is a always a privilege to
hear from Paul. He is he is certainly extraordine experience.
But this isn't I'm telling you. It's a great conversation
about college affordability, which of course is something I think

(02:57):
that touches so many of us. But here we are
with the shutdown, and look, I will fall on my
nostrodama sword. I really did think we were going to
be done after a week. I think we should be
done with this by now. I think the Democrats have
accomplished what they wanted to accomplish out of it politically.
Now they don't have an agreement yet to extend these

(03:19):
subsidies for the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, whatever you
want to refer to it as. But it's pretty clear
that they've gotten the issue more front and center. They've
got more Republicans talking about it, They've got the President
of the United States concerned about it, they got the
Vice president. It is if they want, as I've said
in previous episodes this week, if they want to declare victory,

(03:40):
they could and say they got what they wanted to
get out of this. And if the Republicans back off
their agreement to try to hammer out a deal on Obamacare,
well this continuing Resolution is only for another six weeks,
so they have another leverage point. And I would say this,
I mean, look, there's no evidence that this is going
to and this weekend. I you know, so I was

(04:03):
wrong about that, but we're going to be missing a paycheck.
The first paycheck missing happens at the beginning of next week.
We've got already impacts on the traveling public right now.
You know, I didn't have any problems going from lax
to Washington Dulles after visiting USC. But I promise you

(04:27):
if you're traveling, whether it's Nashville, Indianapolis, Des Moines, Albuquerque,
any slightly smaller market than some of the large ones,
you know, it doesn't take too many air traffic controllers
in that region to suddenly call in sick to where

(04:48):
you're grounding all flights. Right. It had a huge impact
in Nashville a couple of days ago, this is in
the LA area. Burbank essentially had to go to a
ground stop for a few hours the other day. So
this is only going to grow. This is only going
to get worse. And this is where the more the
public is personally impacted by these things, the more they're

(05:10):
going to be upset at all parties involved, and they
may no longer be as focused on the issue that
I do think Democrats have successfully gotten into the pushed
into the zeitgeist here a little bit. Look, it's hard
for any issue to break through in the Trump era
for any given period of time, but this issue of

(05:33):
health care certainly has the attention of the Republicans on this.
So now it's a game of chicken and the longer, frankly,
if I look on the Democratic side, the longer they
hold out what I say yesterday, then this really isn't
about health care. This is about something else. And frankly,
it is about something else, right. It is about the

(05:54):
fact that Donald Trump is not respecting the Constitution, he's
not respecting the appropriations process, he's not respecting the legislative branch.
But the Democrats have a problem. They're not in charge
of the legislative branch right now, it's the Republicans who
are allowing the executive branch to steamroll them because they're
the ones in charge, and it's an issue that's hard

(06:15):
to get the public to rally around. They're going to
rally around things and impact their lives. Yes, what's happening
with the misuse of appropriations and the sort of the
aggressive nature of what O and B has tried to
do is impactful on people's lives, but it's much harder
for them to see it. You know, it's healthcare hits
their bottom line. That this is premiums doubling. That that

(06:39):
is the cost to live issue, which of course has
arguably been what's been hanging over our politics since we
got out of the COVID shutdown. And I think in
some ways, the healthcare the rising healthcare premiums would only
feed into the cost of to live issues that the

(07:00):
araffs and some of the other policies that President Trump
has pursued has done. I mean, we are, as I
said before, we we have this weird economy that will
statistically look good for those that have money, but it
is completely impossible to catch up or get ahead, or

(07:21):
if you don't already have a little bit of savings earning,
you know, or taking advantage of the supercharged markets that
we have right now, fueled by all of this artificial
intelligence investment. So we are in a situation where either
party can end the shutdown right now. Democrats could declare victory,

(07:43):
provide the eight votes, open the government up, and have
six weeks to hold them accountable again if they don't
come to the table. And of course Republicans could open
the government right now themselves. They don't need a single
Democratic vote. They'd have to get rid of the filibuster,
but they could do it on a party line vote
anytime they wanted to. So we are in the This
is a choice aspect of the shutdown. This is truly

(08:06):
a choice. And I just would warn Democrats on this one.
You've you've had some success here getting this issue more
front and center in the public's mind, but by the way,
your negatives are rising as a political party over the
pulling that that that matriculated out this past week one

(08:28):
on two, and that risks potentially at some point, the
more Americans have their lives disrupted, the more they're likely
to then sour on everybody and then whatever slight even
issue advantage of just getting the healthcare issue into the
ether disappears, and then it becomes, well, what did you
gain for all that adjuta with the shutdown? So you

(08:51):
know there's a there's there's a point of diminishing returns here.
At what point does Team Blue see that? We shall
find out. But again, before I get to a few
other issues I want to get to, Republicans could just
do it on their own if they chose to. They're
also apparently don't mind, and that that gets sort of
what I said yesterday my groundhog Day response here, which

(09:12):
is I think the base of both parties think they're winning,
and so when you think you're winning, you don't want
to stop. The problem is is how big you know,
first of all, your feedback loop is is unfortunately very small.
You know, where's everybody else? How big is the everybody
else pile there? And I think that's that's an open question.

(09:36):
But look, the the other issue that's sort of front
and center for a lot of people is what's happening
in Chicago and this sort of showdown between the Trump
administration and the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago.
This is you know this it it is a few updates. Obviously,

(09:58):
you had the president escal his war of words with
the mayor and the governor, calling on the Democratic leaders
to be impeached, actually be imprisoned for failing to protect
ice officers. Trump wrote on his truth social post, Chicago
mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ice officers.
Governor Pritzker also, I don't think anybody's saying that they're

(10:23):
not protecting ice officers here. But of course this is
this sort of the the the pretext that it appears
the Trump administration is trying to create in order to
force this situation. I have to say, the most bizarre
aspect of all this is the is what the state

(10:43):
of Texas agreed to do? You know, It's one thing, Look,
the President has the authority to federalize the National Guard
in Illinois, so he did it. But to use Texas
troops to essentially invade Illinois, right, and I don't you know,
I know, it can come across that everybody's getting very
dramatic here about some of these things. But nobody seems

(11:05):
to remember the golden rule in life or in politics. Right,
do unto others as you want done unto you. And
I asked the governor of Texas, how would you feel
if a Democratic president decided to send an a governor
of Illinois decided to offer up National Guard troops to

(11:29):
occupy a city in Texas, right without the governor's essentially acquiescence.
I think I know where Texans would stand on this.
And that's the point here. Nobody seems to be thinking about,
Oh is you know what happens if the roles are reversed? Right,

(11:53):
And this has certainly been a virus. It's in our
politics these days where nobody thinks of the of the
reactionary consequence to anything. We don't treat people the way
we want to be treated. In some ways, we're treating
people the way we we think how poorly we're being
treated right. Part of that is internet brain, right. I
think there's way too many people right now in high

(12:16):
level leadership positions on the left and the right who
are live online and don't live in the real world.
And so I do think this is why there's a
disconnect between those that are extraordinarily alarmed by what's happening
and those that are like, here we go again with
with things now. I would say, you know, the courts

(12:40):
are are playing a role here and are providing you know,
the Constitution hasn't been shredded yet. Okay uh, And I
think that should be seen as a positive and not
something that is that is that is me being naive
on this front. We had a federal judge in Chicago

(13:01):
on Wednesday extending a nationwide consent decree that requires ICE
to better document and report probable cause for their immigration arrests,
and they have found this judge found that the agency
repeatedly has violated the twenty twenty two agreement by making
warrantless arrests, both before and during what they called Operation

(13:25):
Midway Blitz. The judge also took particular issue with the
practice by ICE agents here, according to the Chicago Tribune,
of carrying blank warrant forms known as I two hundreds
with them on missions and essentially filling them out at
the scene. Right, they cannot prove that where they're going

(13:45):
that there was a there was a criminal intent by
the person that they believe is in this country illegally,
so they're basically, you know, getting there and then coming
up filling out the form to try to try to
sort of come up with a legal pretext after the fact,

(14:06):
and the judges, rightfully, I think, lectured them about this.
And I can't imagine this one that this part of
the ruling somehow gets over overturned or overruled by a
higher court. We'll see on that front. But I think
more importantly it's what is the public see and what
are they thinking? Right? If you live online, right, if

(14:27):
you live only in the blue sphere, this is the
beginning of the end of the republic. If you only
live in the red sphere, it's about time that the
federal government did something that the mayors and the governor
refused to do in protecting Americans. Right. But the question
is that we live we you know, most of the

(14:49):
rest of us live in this gray area. And what's
interesting about the polling here is that there's there's comfort
in the poll numbers for both sides, and there's warnings
in the poll numbers for both sides. So there's a
new Reuter's zipso's poll that shows fifty eight percent of Americans,
including seventy percent of Democrats and fifty percent of Republicans,

(15:13):
they feel the president should only deploy armed troops to
face quote external threats. Now, part of that may explain
why the president and Stephen Miller in particular, keep using
overheated rhetoric to describe what they say ICE agents are
dealing with and what they say the threat is from
some of these undocumented immigrants. But it is there's clearly

(15:38):
a line here where the more militarized this looks, the
more uncomfortable the public gets, including plenty of Republicans. Now,
that said, and what's interesting here is that there is
not a majority that believe that the president has some
sort of huge authority to do this. Thirty seven percent

(16:01):
agree that the presidents of either party should have the
power to deploy troops into states even when state governors object,
but forty eight percent disagree with that, And in fact,
eighty three percent overall in this poll agreed that the
military quote should remain politically neutral and not take a
side in a domestic policy debate. Now, there's another poll

(16:24):
that was out in the New York Times seeing a poll,
and it's part of the same poll that came out
last week that I was telling you about. But they
released their immigration questions on Wednesday, and essentially it's showing
you the same thing that I've been telling you for
a while, which is a majority agree with the goal
of what Trump is doing, but a majority don't like

(16:47):
how he's trying to do it. Let me put some
numbers around that. Fifty four percent of registered voters broadly
favored deporting immigrants living in the country illegally. Okay, that's
ninety percent among Republicans, fifty two percent among independent and
about twenty percent of Democrats think this. Now, you'll see
on that issue of mass deportation, independence much closer to

(17:09):
Republicans than they are Democrats. Right, it's a majority of independents.
That to me a little warning sign there for Democrats
on their stance on immigration. Now, that said, fifty three
percent of voters feel the process of deporting people has
not been fair, and forty four percent said it was
mostly fair. So that tells you in fifty two percent

(17:32):
of those surveyed also disapproved of Trump's handling of immigration.
The point is this, a majority of people in this
country do think that too many people were let in
illegally and many of them should be returned. But there
is a discomfort in the aggressive tactics that are being used,
and the more that is front and Center, the more

(17:55):
Americans may sour on the policy itself, but this is
to me the warning sign here a little bit. What's
interesting is fifty one percent said they thought the government
was deporting mostly people who quote should be deported. Forty
two percent of the government was deporting the wrong people.
But there's a narrow majority there. So the point is

(18:16):
is that Democrats have to find realize that a majority
in this country want the law followed. At the same time,
a majority of the country's more open to immigration than
perhaps the Trump administration is behaving. So like everything in
our politics, there's more nuanced in gray area than the
two parties are presenting each other. But it is where

(18:39):
we are at this moment. I do think the Trump
White House believes that Pritzker and Mayor Johnson are good
foils for them politically. I think they're personalizing this on purpose,
and Pritzker and Johnson are playing right into it because

(18:59):
I think they think it's good politics to get personal
right back. It is worth noting that Trump put out
that truth social statement on Wednesday after Pritzker on Tuesday
night opened wondered aloud whether Trump has dementia, So it
is certainly getting personal and in that sense, that's also

(19:23):
a bit of a you know, it goes back to
my whole who's going to be the adult in the room.
And when you start to go name calling against Trump,
you have to remember the rule of the pig, which
is careful getting to a mudfight with a pig, because
you'll both get dirty and the pig will enjoy it.
This is a classic case. You want to get into
a name calling fight with Donald Trump, He's always willing

(19:44):
to go lower, He's always going to be more outlandish,
go to places you'll never be comfortable going, and you'll
look and then all of a sudden, you'll look feckless
for some reason. So it's warning there, and it's obvious
what the political motivation is there. Clearly is an attempt

(20:06):
by the Trump administration. Perhaps this is the Stephen Miller
plan to create a confrontation, to create a pretext to
then do more of this and get more aggressive of
these tactics. But the political warning signed to Miller and
the Trump White House is the more aggressive they get,
the more Americans are going to turn on them on this,
and even among Republicans, so as much as it looks

(20:29):
as if they're completely ignoring sort of the reality of
the situation, and they're frankly lying about the threat, the
level of threat that folks in Chicago are dealing with.
There's real political risk in how they're handling this, just
as much as there's real risk for Democrats not looking
like they're not in favor of the rule of law either.

(20:51):
So I wanted to deal I will say this, I'm not.
The reason I'm not my hair's not on fire on
this is that I do think the system is working
more than it isn't right. The courts are having their say.
There's a lot of loud rhetoric from Stephen Miller, irresponsible rhetoric,

(21:14):
but they're biting by the court rulings. So I'm not
saying this is something we shouldn't be concerned about. We
should be on high alert about. They should, but we
got to continue to use the system itself to enact
the guardrails rather than trying to take matters into anybody's

(21:35):
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(22:46):
All right, A few other notes that I want to
get to before we get to the interview with mister Glastrous.
The DNC is starting to circulate its after action report
on the twenty twenty four election Politico has gotten a
few sources to talk about the thwart of top lines
that are being circulated to certain Democratic leaders. And here's

(23:10):
sort of the early take on this. According to the
political report, DNC officials argued Democrats this is I'm reading
directly from the political article. DNC officials argued Democrats didn't
spend early or consistently enough to engage and persuade voters,
one of several problems the party faced in twenty twenty four.
According to the committee, swapping Joe Biden with Kamala Harris

(23:30):
the top of the ticket intensify those systemic long term
problems for the party, the official said. And this is
according to two people that were briefed by the DNC
this week and granted anonymity to discuss the conversations for
what it's worth. So far, in these early briefings of
this after action report, the so called autopsy of twenty
twenty four by the DNZ, Biden's age has not come

(23:50):
up now. The DNC officials also said the party's failure
to respond to voters's top issues led to losses across
once core constituencies, including class voters. That is one of
those duh right. When you don't talk about the issue
that's of most concerned to the voters, you're going to
likely be on the losing end of an election. I'm

(24:11):
glad it's taken them eight months to write an autopsy
to come to that conclusion on that front. Another person
briefed on the report said that they understood the assessment
to mean that Democrats quote didn't talk enough about bread
and butter issues, and instead we talked about social issues,
social anxieties. Now here's the thing. This idea that the

(24:32):
Democrats didn't spend early enough actually doesn't fit the facts.
The Joe back when Biden was still actively running for president,
their campaign actually bought twenty five million dollars worth of
ads in September of twenty twenty three. It was earlier
than either Barack Obama or Donald Trump aired ads during

(24:54):
their first reelections. They also spent another thirty million dollars
on ads in March on twenty four So, and they
were arguing. Biden's team at the time was arguing, according
to Political that this early investment for activate key voters.
So I'm confused here the DNC is claiming it was
too late of investments and money in this idea when
actually Democrats had the advantage early with money. Look, it

(25:18):
sounds like this autopsy is going to end up if
this is what it is, If this is what they concluded,
then they've it is just a a whole bunch of
words to not say what the real problem was, which
is Joe Biden shouldn't have run. Joe Biden didn't have
the capacity to articulate the message that they needed to do.

(25:40):
But more importantly, the Biden white House totally disagreed with
the public on what the top issue was. Remember you
had the Biden white House putting out surrogates constantly saying,
the economy is recovering, the economy is great, look at
all the job creation. And they kept arguing making the
job create argument, saying, this economy, you know, pay no

(26:03):
attention to what the rest of the country essentially we don't,
you know, pay no attention to what you think the
problem is with the economy, I e. Costs. You should
listen to us and we'll tell you that the economy
is okay. I mean it is, so this initial if
this is really the autopsy, it tells me that they're

(26:23):
just trying to I don't know Are they protecting people's
personal feelings or is it just I mean, do you
need an autopsy to find out you had a candidate
that wasn't capable of running for president? That was the issue.
He couldn't sell his agenda, and then more importantly, whoever
was surrounding him totally misread the did have any clue
at what the country was upset about, which was the

(26:44):
cost to live. I don't know what more the autopsy
should say other than that, and you know, other than
you know, do they do they want to try to
light on fire certain consulting groups or people. Obviously a
whole bunch of people made a whole bunch of money

(27:05):
based on bad strategy. Okay, that's a fair point. But
on the other hand, considering how poorly all of this
was handled, the fact that they came essentially about one
hundred thousand voters away from winning the electoral college is
still pretty remarkable. Again, if Kamala Harris simply flips Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Pennsylvania, she's at two hundred and seventy electoral votes.

(27:28):
So they're going to release the whole thing. Apparently they're
going to release the whole thing after this November's elections.
But it is if this is what the early word is,
I don't know if anything's going to be learned from this.
To me, if the autopsy doesn't say, hey, the DNC

(27:48):
has done a terrible job over the last fifteen years
in registering voters, then to me, the entire autopsy is
worthless because that has sort of been one of the
major problems. The party has had a complete and utter
dismissiveness of the fact that they were losing voters, basically
leaking voters for the last decade. And now, of course

(28:08):
you sort of see the accumulation of lost party registrations
and it is it is shocking what the numbers are.
It is almost a ten to one. Look, Republicans have
lost registered voters over the last few years, and so
of Democrats. Literally it's a ten to one ratio. Democrats
are losing ten voters for every one voter the Republicans

(28:30):
are losing. That is an unsustainable path on that front.
A few updates on Virginia. It does appear that everybody
is going to rally around for now, rally around on
the Democratic side, Jay Jones, I want to read you

(28:52):
a few statements that A few state Democrats are. They're
rationales for sticking by for sticking by Jones, the Attorney
general nominee, who, of course had those text messages that
were sort of fantasizing about the death of a former
Assembly speaker's kids. Virginia State Senator Lamont Bagbee, who chairs

(29:14):
the state's Democratic Party, asked the following question in an
interview and asked whether Jones should resign, and his response
was Republicans that are asking him to resign, where were
they when Trump and other Republicans have made their comments? Ah,
the old what aboutism defense? And another I want to
read you one more. West Belamy, a well connected progressive

(29:36):
activist who teaches at Virginia State University, said the following.
People on the left feel as if they have to
be the perfect, highest moral individuals in the world. Normal
everyday people stay stupid things and text messages online all
the time. If that is the thing that means the
Democratic ticket doesn't win the election, then they've got bigger issues. Look,
I don't think this is going to take down the

(29:57):
entire Democratic ticket. It probably is only going to take
down his His own candidacy could make the LG race
a lot closer, and maybe Spanburger wins by single digits
and it costs them some opportunities and down the ballot
and state legislative races and things like that. But this
public defense, this is exactly what I've been sort of

(30:19):
ranting about now for a few months, that the rationales
that many Republicans would use to overlook hateful and violent
rhetoric from Donald Trump and some of his supporters, and
the sort of oh, can't you take a joke and
nobody it's not that serious that the democratic defense of

(30:43):
when somebody on their side sort of behaves similarly as well,
is now going to go to the same thing. Is
that really the answer? I go back to the whole
golden rule. Right, you do unto others as you want
done under you. Right. And the Texas governor has decided
he is going to trounce on the tenth Amendment when
it comes to the state of Illinois. But he has
no apparently he is not worried about Texas's rights being

(31:05):
trampled upon if the roles were reversed. Okay, didn't hear right?
You know, if we are trying to tone the rhetoric down,
then somebody's got to got to take the high ground here,
somebody's got to want to have some moral authority here,
and these defenses and look, in fairness, not many well

(31:27):
known Democrats are willing to stick by and make the
defense like that. But that mindset, and I know it's
there in the base of the party. I get it.
They look at what the Republican, what Trump and his
minions get away with and think, geez, it doesn't hurt them,
So why do we care so much about it? And
I'm like, there's still a vast chunk in the middle

(31:48):
who do care about ethics, who do care a little
bit about character, who do want somebody to try to
pretend to be a role model for doing this the
right way instead of the wrong way. So you know,
I'm sort of shaking my head, but I will I

(32:09):
would be a little leary Democrats of giving up the
adult in the room voter, who I do believe they've
had an inside track on essentially during most of the
Trump era. But if you can't beat them join a mindset,
I don't know what happens. Then you don't know where
this goes. There's a go third party, does it go splintering?

(32:31):
There's a lot of ways that this could go. A
few campaign notes before we get to the interview with Paul,
I think we have another Democrat to add to the
presidential list. So we told you Andy Basheer has been
in New Hampshire. He was just there this week. I
told you there was already a pro Palestinian group running

(32:51):
an attack ad on Bashir. Sort of an early warning shot.
I think to all presidential candidates that there are going
to be some activist groups that are going to want
to make Israel and arming Israel e litmus test. Well,
we've got additional Democrats on the schedule in New Hampshire.
Chris Murphy. I think many people already knew the Connecticut
Democratic senator was sort of at least toying with a

(33:14):
national campaign in twenty twenty eight. He's going to do
a town all in New Hampshire November twelve. But Alyssa Slockton,
the first term senator from Michigan, is going to headline
a fundraiser for the Manchester Democratic Dinner on October fifteenth.
As my friend Chris Eliza likes to say, you know,
nobody shows up to ior in New Hampshire by accident

(33:35):
without at least you know, they're kicking the tires on something.
And what's interesting about Slockton is this is she's doing
this within about two weeks of Gretchen Whitmer, the term
limited governor of Michigan, sort of indicating that she's probably
not going to run for president in twenty twenty eight.
That's that she hopes to be participating in what's next,

(33:59):
but that she probably wouldn't be at the top of
the ticket herself. Is this is this coincidence? Is this related?
Let's just say inquiring minds want to know. And a
few other California notes. I was just out in California.
First of all, it does look like the redistricting effort

(34:20):
it is. I think Gavin Newsom's gonna win this prop.
It looks like they've successfully turned this into a referendum
on Trump, which was the way to win this.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
And it also looks like money is drying up on
the No side of things. Kevin McCarthy, according to punch
Bull News, who had pledged to raise and spend one
hundred million dollars to try to defeat the proposition in
the November elections, has so far only been able to
spend seven million, So it does seem as if that
it's possible. Some money is drying up. So if you're

(34:54):
you're if you're keeping track of the redistricting wars, so
if California is going to happen, and Tech this is
going to happen, they've canceled each other out. So now
it becomes this sort of knife fight one by one.
So we're gonna have Missouri, you might have Indiana. Then
there's the Utah redraw. There could be now a Maryland redraw.

(35:17):
Does Florida get into the game, right, There is another
potential seat or two they could attempt in Broward County,
if you remember my interview with Jared Moskowitz, even w
Wasserman Schultz's district, they think maybe they could they sort
of stretch it across Alligator Alley and essentially try to
create districts that would have nothing in common. I mean,

(35:38):
trust me, growing up in South Florida, you know, the
Fort Myers and Fort Lauderdale have nothing in common that
much other than one's on water and the others on water.
But one's on an ocean and one's in a gulf.
Right it is, but it is too far away to
call it a community of interest, but that doesn't mean

(35:58):
that isn't how they might attempt to draw the map
and make a couple of Democrats in the Broward County
area a little more a little more vulnerable. But if
we do have sort of this standoff between California and Texas,
then it probably means at best Republicans are gonna net

(36:19):
maybe three or four I think max out of this
redistricting effort now in an extraordinarily close midterm election, that
could be the difference. And if it is that close,
and to me, Democrats already have lost, right if they
if they can't make this where they're sort of winning
the national argument, you know, in the generic ballot five six,

(36:42):
seven points, well then you know we're going to be
looking at, you know, two or three seats on either side.
And speaking of California, I think what's notable if you're
listening to this podcast, my guess is you've already seen
the Katie Porter, the former member of Congress who lost

(37:02):
a Senate campaign against Adam Schiff, has been the nominal
front runner for governor ever since Kulanakis got out of
the race and Kamala Harris announced she wasn't going to run,
so Katie Bore has kind of been the front runner.
I've never really thought of her as the frontrunner because
I think Rick Caruso, the guy who lost the mayor's
race to Karen Bass in LA, when he jumps in,

(37:23):
he was likely going to be the new front runner
when he gets in. My guess is he gets in
after the November elections. But for now, Porter had been
the one. She had the most name ID from her
previous campaign for Senate, so she'd been ahead, but she
was like in the twenties, you know in some of
these polls. Well, anyway, that the viral interview, I'm not

(37:45):
going to sort of describe it in detail because it's
been everywhere. I think what's notable is how much both
Republicans and Democrats piled on this. Plenty of us who
have covered Katie Porter, covered Congress, covered the California delegation,
and have known that she's not very popular among Democrats.
You know, she may be popular among MSNBC viewers and

(38:06):
among many progressive activists, but among the sort of insider crowd,
she wasn't very popular, and not because of her stances,
but sort of because of her attitude. It's sort of
how she went about it. You know, she's in some
ways what's good outsider politics is not always good insider camaraderie.
And frankly, if you're going to be governor, you got

(38:29):
to you gotta work with other people. I think her
inability to handle what wasn't tough questions, these weren't hard questions,
it makes me wonder has she spent too much time
in a blue safe space when she interacts with maybe
blue leaning media that don't challenge her, and these were

(38:50):
lightly challenging questions. I mean, no, I'm not disrespecting the
reporter at all. I think the reporter it's clear what
she was doing. She was doing a larger package and
talking to all the candidates. You know, I think she
made that, made that pretty clear. But you want to
be governor of the world's fifth largest economy and you

(39:12):
can't handle a tiny bit of a tiny bit of
a follow up question about Trump voters and you sort
of lose it really quickly. I mean, you're not gonna
be able to control every setting in politics no matter
where you go. So but the most notable thing about
this is not the incident itself. To me, it's how
much everybody else piled on. She does not have a

(39:35):
reservoir of goodwill inside the Democratic Party, it seems. And
I think the way she behaved after losing, after not
making it into the top two with Adam Shift in
the Senate race, and you know, she she just she didn't,
you know, she was angry that Adam Schiff played to win. Right,
So Adam Schiff spent money promoting Steve Garvey during that

(39:59):
prime process so that Garvy would be seen as the
chief Republican opposition to Shift. And so that way the
top two face off would be Shift versus Garvey. D
versus are very easy campaign for Shift to win, rather
than Shift versus Porter, which would have been D versus
D might have been very awkward and a much closer race,

(40:24):
much more competitive, and we don't know which way it
would go. Obviously, Porter was still very bitter about it,
and sort of the way she went about it, you know,
it was sort of like sour grapes that Adam Shift
did something, you know, did a campaign tactic that is
not new, not that controversial anymore. It's sort of how

(40:45):
you you know, he had the resources to do it,
and because she didn't have the same resources in him.
She was frustrated that he got to have more impact
on who he got to run against than she could.
And so I do think that how she how she

(41:07):
carried herself in losing that primary didn't exactly win her
a lot of friends outside of her core base of supporters.
So this was a red flag and probably probably the
type of thing that will be hard for her to
to shake off, especially since how how easily everybody seemed

(41:29):
to pile onto her on that. One other interesting nugget
I want to put out there before I get to
glassters fashion Cure a long time political consultant. He ran
Bernie Sanders' camp campaign for president in twenty twenty. He's
right now aligned with the video, the progressive leaning video

(41:51):
More Perfect Union. They do some really good work. Yes,
it's it's sort of advocacy journalism. But what's interesting is
he was very critical of what he thought Democrats were
doing when it came to short form video. You know,
he was saying that while people like Gavin Newsom, and
you've seen Akim Jeffreys and Chuck Schumer all doing more

(42:14):
videos themselves, trying to talk to voters sort of explaining
different policies that he thinks it's not worked, and he
thinks that if you want more effective viral videos, you've
got to talk to people who's actually impacted by the situation.
And he noted the he said, the raw, emotionally jarring

(42:35):
clips of human suffering and Gaza and the outrages videos
of ice agents separating families, that those videos go more
viral than when a politician is telling you what they think,
and as he said, those clips have done more to
change public opinion on those issues than anything else. His
point is, real people are who you should be featuring

(42:59):
when you're trying to make a point on the cost
to live, on the impact of healthcare subsidies going away,
or the impact of no childcare tax credit, things like that.
And this goes back to some politics never change. Right.
If you make your campaign about the people you're trying

(43:19):
to convince to vote for you, they're more likely to listen.
If you make the campaign essentially about your own ideology
or your own views and you're trying to persuade others
to come to your side, you're more likely to be losing.
And so I just thought that deserved a highlight. I
caught what he had to say, and I thought it

(43:41):
was something worth pointing out. All right, So we're there.
We'll sneak in a break for those of you listening
to the full download here, My friend Paul Glasters on
college affordability is next. So joining me now is somebody

(44:10):
for many of us of a certain age in Washington
is that I would deem an institution. It's Paul Glasters,
the editor in chief of the Washington Monthly. Many of
us count the Washington Monthly as one of the first
magazines that published us. That would be me. So when
I started seeing could I do this? Could I write

(44:31):
long form? After all of my sort of wire copy
years at the National Journal and doing the hotline. And
Paul was an extraordinarily generous editor and a great mentor
to a lot of writers and reporters around Washington. So
this is a real treat for me. Paul.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
It's good to see you, Chuck. What a pleasure. Thanks
for having me on. And I remember that story well
by John Carry.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
I think, yes, yes it was, and so I have
you on because you did something that I love, and
it's something frankly that I remember the Obama administration wanted
to make a bigger deal out of which was how
can we create a list of best colleges for bang
for your buck? Essentially, you know what's going to provide

(45:17):
you the education that you need without making you have
to go into debt for the rest of your life
or to do blood oaths to people that maybe you
don't want to give blood oaths too, because you want
to get into this Ivy League university, that Ivy League university.
I will note the irony that you once worked at
US News and now you have a competing list. But

(45:39):
this is and look where I want to talk about
the future of journalism and and sort of and where
that goes too. But talk to me about the decision
to do this list and for the Washington Monthly, and
how would you describe it and what what what motivated
you to do it?

Speaker 2 (45:58):
Well, you're right that that I used to work at
US News and the US News college rankings paid my
mortgage all of us Right, there was always a kind
of undercurrent of concern about the adequacy of the numbers.
And when my friend Jim Follows became the editor, he

(46:22):
commissioned internal study by a very reputable organization that found
that the use of their metrics. I think the quote
was something like made no logical or methodological sense. And
when he reported this to the owner, Mort Zuckerman of
the US News, and this was the major revenue driver

(46:47):
of the publication, Jim was shortly escorted out the door.
And uh, it was not too long after that. I
quit when Jim was fired. And it was a couple
of years later that, miraculously who knows that internal study
made its way into the Washington Monthly, and we did

(47:10):
a couple of deep dive investigative pieces about US News
and I determined the idea of ranking colleges is fine,
right often, how dare you rank colleges? Nobody could compare us? Well,
you know, we ranked football teams, we ranked students, we
rank colleges. But that basically US News does it in

(47:32):
a kind of a horrific way. And I'm going to
simplify their metrics, but it's basically this. They reward colleges
in their metrics for three things. Number one, exclusivity. How
few students do you let in? It's sort of the
idea that you know, college is like a country club

(47:54):
lectures instead of golf and velvet rope. Yeah, and you know,
which is kind of wacky when you think about it.
If you few restaurants, they don't count country clubs, right,
they say, the best restaurant in the city is this
country club. Well, I can't get into that country club.
Why are you telling me this? It's kind of useless

(48:15):
information to anybody who isn't you know, at the very
upper level of the SAT range. And you know the
way that thing works out. It's mostly people from affluent,
wealthy families who go to the best high schools, who
have years of prep. Those are the ones again into
the IVY League. So for ninety percent of Americans, they

(48:36):
don't even consider those schools. They're not for them, right,
So exclusivity is how US News And there's about a
dozen other rankings out there, and they all, almost all
of them do the same thing. They say, who do
you How many people can you say no to? That
must be you're good. The second thing they reward is
spending is wealth. How much money do we spend on

(48:59):
our students? Which if you're only mostly letting in wealthy students,
you got a lot of money, right, so you can
spend money. And then the third is reputation. US News
does this survey of college leaders and they ask you,
what do you think of that other college, as if
that leader knows anything about what's going on in the
classroom a thousand miles away. But it's sort of like,

(49:22):
you know, high school, who are the cool kids? Everybody
else's cool kids are, So the cool kids are the
cool kids because everybody says they're the cool kids. We said,
these are really terrible metrics. They're not useful for most students,
and they're very bad for the country.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Right.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
They drive inequality, they drive snobbery, they drive expense, They
make college more expensive. Every college president and system wants
their college to go hire on the US News list.
And so they wellt's throw some more money at it.
Let's tell you know, our constituct our students. No, you
can't get in. Let's deny people at education. It's crazy.

(50:02):
So we said, all right. I actually hired the woman
who had done the study right for Jim Follows, and
I said, help me design a different set of rankings.
And so we said, what is it that the average person,
not the most affluent people, not people who went to Harvard,
but the average person wants out of their investment in

(50:25):
higher education. And when I say investment, I don't just
mean tuition dollars. I mean your tax dollars. Government at
every level Chuck spends half a trillion dollars a year
on higher ED. That is seventeen hundred dollars out of
pocket for the average taxpayer.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Right, whether you go, whether they go to college or not,
they have contributed, Right, They've contributed.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
Dollars to the colleges, providing some value for the country
and for ourselves specifically. So what is that value? And
so we came up with three alternative metrics. Number one,
what you alluded to best bang for your buck upward mobility?
Does a college recruit and graduate students of modest means? Right,

(51:10):
working class students, middle class students, boards students.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
First gen basically first gen college?

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Right? Does it recruit and graduate students of modest means
with degrees that don't cost too much, don't load them
down with debt, and that means something in the market
such that they earn middle class or better incomes.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
They've moved up. The latter they're making more money than
their parents exactly.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Number two research, Do colleges create the scholarship and scholars
that drive new economic growth, solutions to global problems, you know,
cures for diseases, et cetera. And number three, what we

(51:55):
call service. Open up the mission statement of just about
any college, and there's going to be a sentence in
there that's saying the point of this university is to create,
is to educate young people to take their place as
engaged members of their democracy. So we're the only ranking
that holds schools to account for their own mission statement

(52:16):
in that regard. And so a school gets extra points
in our ranking if they have a robust ROTC program
serving in the military, if they students go on into
the Peace Corps, if they are friendly to people financially
who serve in America Corps, if the voter registration numbers

(52:39):
are high and they do what they need to do
to make voting easier for their students. If they use
some of their work study money to provide community service
opportunities rather than just you know, free labor for the college,
that sort of thing. And so when you put those
three things together, you get an entirely different, you know ranking.

(53:05):
All the other rankings, it's all the top thirty or
all the colleges that are always there, right they're almost
never changed.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
Harvard, Stanford, maybe a couple of states. They freak out
if they lose a notch er too. I mean, you know,
you hear about it. I mean you know, I think
Georgetown got all freaked out that they went from twenty
five to twenty seven. Yeah, like, oh my god, you know,
this guy's falling.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
No, this is huge for these colleges. And and again.
So you go to the top twenty or thirty, and
they're all schools most people can't get into, right, they're
all country clubs and look, elite schools. They do a
good job. I wound up, you know, transferring to one
and got an elite degree after going to state school.

(53:52):
More power to it. If you can get in, you'll
make a lot of money, you'll have a great network.
But most people can't, right, that's the point. So yeah,
So the top schools in US News this year barely
budged the top thirty schools in Washington monthly. Half of
them were these elite schools. Well, and you know.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Duke and yeah, your Rice is your Vanderbilts there on there.
I was looking at the South, but then you got
a school like that's number. I was just looking right.
The number one school in the South for best bang
for your buck and the number one liberal arts college
is Barea.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
Yeah, it's the number one school among fourteen hundred colleges
that we rank that.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
I mean, nobody would have had that. Where's Brea in
the US News rank? Oh?

Speaker 2 (54:37):
I mean, you know, if you off to the side
and some side ranking, they probably give it, you know,
some lip service. But we're the only ranking in the
country that says Berea University in Barrack in breat Kentucky. Berea,
by the way.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
I mean, excuse me, Yeah, I know we're both is
the number.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
One school and and why because they do it an
astonishing job of providing a great education to students of
modest means. Most of their students nine percent of their students,
by the way, are on pelgrants. That's the federal Where
is where is Brion Bria is in Borea and it's

(55:14):
I don't know, seventy five miles from Lexington, if that
puts you in the.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
So it's in that side of Kentucky.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
Yeah, Lexington, and almost all their students are from the
Appalachia College was founded in eighteen fifty five by abolitionists,
and it was the first college south of the Mason
Dixon line to educate both blacks and whites and women.
And for more than one hundred years it's had the
aspiration to charge no tuition to anybody. And they don't

(55:40):
quite get there, but the vast majority of the students
pay little to nothing and they do that.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
How do they? Yeah, how do they do it?

Speaker 2 (55:48):
It's fascinating. I did, We'll do a podcast and I
interviewed the president, Cynthia Nixon.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Is her name?

Speaker 2 (55:54):
Number one?

Speaker 1 (55:55):
That's not that Cynthia Nixon, right, Yeah, a difference.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
I think they think that's your name. A very bright woman,
and she explained it to us. Number one, they're what
a really designated work college, meaning all of their students
get work study money. So and then some of that
money goes to pay their tuition and some of it
goes in their pocket. Number two And really the biggest

(56:22):
reason is for a hundred years they've been building a
a endowment through small donations that's now like a billion
and a half dollars.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Wow. They're just are really smart investors.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
Smart investors. And if you start a hundred years ago
and you keep going, magic a compound interest and instead
of like using it to build sports stadiums or endow
you know.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
Or beautiful dorms. Right, that becomes the arms race at
these universities for dorms that look like they look like
midtown Manhattan apartments exactly.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
It all goes or not, you know, the bulk of
it goes to keeping costs down for students, and then
the students it's it's it's it's a selective ish university.
Not everybody gets in. It's not like Yale, but they
they it's a academically rigorous institution. When you go look
on the student reports, it's like, wow, I'm working my

(57:19):
tail off here. But when students leave, they earn five
thousand dollars more per year than their peers and their
demographic peers who will go to Coline. So you know,
that's just our idea of a great school. And if
you look at like just the top five, the most

(57:40):
the highest ranking elite school is Princeton at number five.
I think Harvard's down at twenty six or something. But
above Princeton are three campuses of the California State University system.
The number two Fresno State, which I'm going to guess
most of your listeners and viewers don't know much about

(58:04):
it or maybe have never heard of.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
But it shows up on a Saturday night in college football.
It does bully, you do see that.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
But they are a fabulous institution. They charge very little.
The students come from that central valley of California, many
of them from very poor backgrounds. The president of the
university grew up working on a farm in the area.
The students when they graduate tend to stay in the area.

(58:31):
They don't jet off to New York and work for
a hedge fund. And some of them go back to
work for agricultural companies where as children they pick crops. Right.
That is upward mobility, my friend. Right. And so you know,
these are the colleges that are really the ones we
should all elevate and try to support, and unfortunately they are.

(58:56):
They are underinvested in They don't get anywhere near the
money that that schools that you know, cater to the
wealthier student and it's it's kind of a crime.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
You know. It's interesting if there's a pattern, loose pattern
that I've noticed a lot of colleges, meaning these are
schools that don't have graduate programs right. In many cases
they are just focused on the four year I assume
that's not a coincidence. And how your rankings work that
that those that these these colleges that are just focused

(59:31):
on there are not worried about because many many universities,
it is the graduate programs that pay the bills, right.
You know, in some ways undergrad is a loss leader,
and so is there. Do you get a sense that
those without the graduate schools, without the the the post
grad you know, whether it's med schools, law schools, et cetera,

(59:56):
that it it sort of concentrates the administration on running
a better for your undergrad system.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
I think there's a lot to that. You know, there
are tiers of universities that are classified by an institution
called the Carnegie Classification for Institutions of Higher Education, and
we used to follow them kind of rigorously. Because US
News did funny you should mention this year, they really

(01:00:25):
switched up their rankings and that allowed us to kind
of free ourselves from how we used to do it.
And one of the things we did, afropope what you said,
is we pulled all the research data out of our
main rankings and just made a best colleges for research,

(01:00:46):
because that's where the grad programs are really really are.
And those are the universities, and there's maybe a couple
hundred of them that have very big, robust med schools,
law schools, engineering schools, and so forth.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Well you look at your list, and it is the
big These are the school the big schools. It's Michigan,
it's Stanford, it's Berkeley, it's Purdue, Texas A, and M
one through five, all of them huge research institutions.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Right, So we said, let's just put those guys in
their own category.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
By the way, Texas A and m over. Mit, you
know how much some Texans would love seeing that at
they do.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
They brag on it and and you know, not to
get too political here, but these are the schools that
the Trump administration is really going after cuts to research grants.
One of the things we found in doing this exercise,
and it's in the story, is that sure he's gone

(01:01:51):
after the big research universities in blue cities and states,
but the ones that are also being hit. There are
a lot of big research universities in red states and
in rural areas, and they're getting hurt and and it's
like a lot of Trump administration policy. It is aimed

(01:02:12):
at his enemies, but it winds up damaging his boat.
There's a whole Paul, I can tell you this.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
There's a whole bunch of lobbyists making money right now
off of universities who've hired them to say, hey, get
us off this target list. We're not what I don't
think he mean. And and what you find out. I
happen to know of one very public university that that's
having some success doing that because they got as you
just said, they lost some stuff that was aimed at

(01:02:39):
punishing a Northeastern school and it ended up punishing this southern,
big state school. And that is it wasn't the intent.
And so like just like the farmers, he's trying, they're
trying to create carve outs now you know, which of
course just got gum up. The whole works.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
Yeah, yeah, no, And it's and it's a it's a
plotics truck that we've never seen in this country, never.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
As the weaponizing college research. Right like, that's another level.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
Specific targeting of your political enemies on funding that was
never intended to be anything but given out on merit,
right given out.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
And it's and not even really political stuff. I mean,
you know, whether it's health funding, whether it's research, I mean,
this is stuff that is arguably for the masses.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Yeah yeah, so so so I hope that people take
away from our rankings. I mean, I think our rankings
resonate at this moment because there's so much fury at
higher end, and the fury is in all directions from
all quarters, and you know, a lot of it is

(01:03:56):
political and partisan, and I think, you know, maybe have
has grains of truth in it, but is also you know,
kind of hypocritical. These people I'm furious about elite universities
and college in general, and absolutely desperate to get their
kids in there. But part of the fury is is real.

(01:04:19):
Is it costs a lot of money now to send
a kid to college or send yourself to college. I
mean real inflation adjusted spending for two year schools has
nearly doubled since nineteen ninety four, and more than doubled
for four year schools. And you know, people are saying,
you know, is college still worth it? Well, you go

(01:04:43):
to the Washington Mother you see hundreds of colleges that
are really very much worth it. But in general, you know,
at Toyota is a great buy at thirty thousand dollars,
roll or whatever. At one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
it's not worth it. Right, So, until we can get
the cost of college down, prove the quality, because a
lot of colleges are just not delivering quality. You're going

(01:05:06):
to have this this fury, this this distrust.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
What's the best way to find out? I mean, I'll
tell you all these rankings where I feel And it's
one of those things I didn't really appreciate until after
I got on a campus. But what kind of professors,
what kind of teachers do they have? What how do
they hire their professors? Do they demand professors that do
research and prioritize their own work, or do they hire

(01:05:44):
teachers real coaches? And when I mean a teacher, I
mean like a coach. You know who who becomes that
mentor you know? I mean, look, I teach part time.
I'm I'm on use USC's campus right now. And I
did an event last night and three of my former
students showed up and it it brought a ton of

(01:06:05):
joy to me. Right. It is that there is a
joy you get out of it when you feel like
you've you've been able to pass something on, you've been
able to inspire a student, and not all people are
motivated by that or have that. Is there a way
to measure what kind of because you could you look
at a resume of somebody, well, what a great resume,

(01:06:26):
But you have no idea if there are any good
at being a teacher and they know how to be
a coach, you know that sort of mindset. You know,
is that researchable? Is that rankable?

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
So we've really struggled with this, and there are there
is some data that you can use to measure the
quality of student engagement, quality of teaching, but we are
sufficiently doubtful of it to not We've written stories about it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
We've you know, is this what sort of the student
reaction to professors? Is it? Use those rate of professors?

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
There's a professor there's something called the National Survey of
Student Engagement. You know, they ask students and faculty how
many times during the course of the week have you
met with a professor outside the classroom? Right? How many
ten page or more papers did you have to write?

(01:07:22):
They try to measure the degree to which actual evidence
based practices that we know lead to learning are happening
on the ground. Not bad, but it's not of a
quality that we've been felt comfortable to put in our rankings.
But you're asking the right question anecdotally. Like I went

(01:07:46):
to the University of Missouri my freshman year. It's good,
good school, the flag that I transferred to Northwestern. Honestly,
the quality of the teaching at Northwestern wasn't any better
than the quality teaching that I had at MISSOI.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
I Betfess has just had to pay higher rent. Yeah,
they did in Columbia.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
I've given lectures to, you know, many at many colleges.
I've been doing this college ranking thing for twenty years.
And you landed some small bu college, you know, not
well known college in the middle of nowhere, and you know,
you meet these professors who are just wonderful, and they're

(01:08:29):
very smart, and the students adore them, and they have
degrees from very prestigious universities. The thing is, we overproduce
academic talent in this country. Right. Most people that get
PhDs struggle to find teaching jobs. And that's tough if
you're in that profession. But it's great if you're a

(01:08:49):
college in some far flung place. Sure you got your
pick a great talent.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
Yeah, you get a Harvard train, Princeton train, Michigan train
at you know, at a small college in the middle
of camp.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Yeah. And and and the less research they're doing, the
more time they're like, all right, I'll just put my
my My mission is to is to educate these kids. So, uh,
I do think that the quality of teaching between elite
schools and non elite schools is very narrow, is very similar.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
So one of the challenges that's coming. I say this,
I serve on a board at GW, so I hear
these uh admissions concerns, meaning it's the so called demographic
cliff that we are at the beginning of that. I
guess it's I guess it's my generation's fault. I didn't
have enough kids. I only had two, Right, we didn't

(01:09:44):
have there and you did your job to Yeah, I
replaced right, we replaced.

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
The environment i'd had to and we can better close
them back.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
So but there's I look at a lot of your
the colleges that made the rankings, and I many of
them are financially strapped, and I think there is going
to be a you know, in the next ten or
fifteen years, we're going to see colleges. I have a
friend of mine who is the former well somebody you

(01:10:12):
know Hobart who worked in the Clint administration yep, back
in the day. And I remember Mark gearan great guy.
And I remember Mark telling me this fifteen years ago
when he was at Hobart and then he left and
then he came back, that there's real financial challenges for

(01:10:33):
these smaller basically the schools that performed best in your list.
You know, Bria has sounds like they have a good endowment.
Many of these smaller colleges do not. And if you
take away international students and you take away some of
these things, there's going to be some good colleges that
go bankrupt in the next ten years, that just disappear.

(01:10:56):
What are you sensing, you know, have you been able
to pick up on how are some of these smaller
colleges trying to survive in this in this tightening financial climate.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Well, I'll add one one more piece of news for you.
In the big beautiful Act that got passed, uh, there
is uh statutory language that is saying colleges that don't
demonstrate bang for the buck, that don't demonstrate a good
return on investment will eventually get cut off from federal financing.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
Mmm.

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
So there's going to be in addition to.

Speaker 1 (01:11:34):
The interesting reckoning.

Speaker 2 (01:11:35):
Yeah, and honestly, the Washington Monthly has been calling for
something like this for years. You know, whether this bill
got it quite right, we can debate, but the the the.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
Spirit, you like the spirit of it a hundred. Look,
I remember the Obama administration couldn't get anything passed, so
they decided they were going to put out their own
best bang. It never really took you remember that they
were going to make it a king and in the
end they said, no, we'll just put out the data
that I both know what happened. You know, I both
know what happened. There so many of those they all
had connections to some higher institution like don't you rank us?

(01:12:11):
Don't you do that? You know exactly?

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):
They went about as far as they politically could. But
uh so, so if you look at our fourteen hundred
plus schools and our best best uh colleges for your
tuition and tax dollar ranking, we've talked about the good ones,
the great ones, the you know, uh, you know, uh President,

(01:12:36):
there's a lot of colleges down on the blow that
really should go, should disappear. Huh, they need some radical reform.
They charged too much, Their students don't make that much money,
they don't graduate it. There there almost predatory.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
Now, let's let's name some names. What's what's a what's
one that people.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
But you know, you know, Liberty University, right? Uh, just
a terrible college too Lane, Right, people think is a terrific.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
Yeah, my kids loved that was on the list, at.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
Least by our reckoning. Right, I'm sure if you're yeah,
you know it has its But but so there's a
lot of schools you hadn't heard of, a lot of
you know, the arts schools and the music schools where
you know, students go knowing they're never going to make
any money.

Speaker 1 (01:13:26):
Berkeley School of Music, Yeah, one of those very expensive
and and and selective and no guarantee you're going to
make it. All right. Look, I was a I was
a musician. Yeah, and I did get a music scholarship.
But I remember toying with Berkeley and thought, man, I'm
not that that's a you're you're you're, you're going for

(01:13:49):
the dream and literally it's one percent that makes it
exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):
But so there are a lot of towns kept alive
in part by their university. And those are the places
my heart goes out to because one of the great
things about the American system of higher education is it's dispersed.
It's all over the country. And you know, you think of.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
The every European marvels at this. Yeah, you just marvel
at it that we have these institutions everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
And I think we need a new deal. And we've
written about this. Kevin Carry, one of our guest editors,
have written extensively about it. We need a deal, a
new deal for higher ed. We need to reach out
to colleges and say, on a voluntary basis, if you're
willing to control costs, to share your data so that

(01:14:50):
we can monitor what's going on and improve quality and
charge little to nothing to students of bodest means, we're
going to cover you do all your costs up to
a certain modest amount. This is an oversimplification, chock, but
the average cost spending on a student, not accounting room

(01:15:14):
and board, it's about ten thousand dollars a year to.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
Go to college.

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
To cost to college, if you offered colleges ten thousand
dollars per student. That's the deal. And oh, by the way,
any credit at any college from a class transfers over
if that student goes to another college in the network.
That could save thousands of hundreds of these schools anyway,

(01:15:38):
and I think a lot of state schools would join in.
The elites would never do this, but that way you
could deliver free college or virtually free college to the
working middle class American. Save these schools, save these towns,
save these regions, have better quality at lower cost, and

(01:16:00):
I could be transformative for the country.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
Well look, I mean, and I can already hear you
essentially making this pitch so that left and right both
could embrace it. Which is that's as much as to
save these rural towns that do love that. You know.
It's funny, you know there's this sort of war on
higher ed on the right, but locally they love you know.
It's like, Frankly, it's like you're a member of Congress.

(01:16:23):
I can't stay in Congress, but I like my guy,
you know, right, I don't like these higher ed guys.
But you know, we've got a nice little university right
down the street here it's a good you know, you know,
they produce really good people. I get my babysitters from there,
you know, type of mindset.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Yeah, yeah, And they have they have the local radio station,
and they have right a lot of times they provide
the local news exactly exactly. And you know, there are
a lot of these regional public universities the Fresno states,
the Northeast Missouri state or Southeast Missouri state, these colleges
that are known regionally but have no national profile. That's

(01:16:59):
where most people get their BA degrees. Right, and they're
underinvested in I think they get about one thousand dollars
per student, less than the flagship universities in those states,
and maybe half or a third of what gets spent
for these elite schools. And they're doing the yeomens work.

(01:17:19):
They are up the engines of upward mobility in this country.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
If we had had a conversation in the early nineties
the question, I would have assumed back then that we
were going to get what I call mandatory thirteenth and
fourteenth grade, meaning that the first two years if essentially
community college was going to be free, that it was
going to be available the way public the essentially, we

(01:17:47):
were going to extend public education two more years. It
seemed inevitable. It's where I remember, you know, one of
the smarter strategic things that Bill Clinton did in ninety two,
I remember was prioritize in campaign events at community colleges. Yeah,
and you know, it was just you know, that could
why do you do that? That's where the people are,

(01:18:07):
right like, it was a you know, and he was
he was making an economic argument, and what better place
to do that where people are looking to make it
to the middle class than there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
And he took the he began the process of getting
the banks out of student financing because they were making
a boatload with no risk and making it some college
could offer directly. No, he was absolutely right. And I
don't know if you were.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
But we're not there. I don't know. I was. I
was shocked. I am shocked that we didn't get the
And I know it was in the I think it
was in the initial draft of one of the bills
Bill Better Yeah, black Bear.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
It was one of those different versions. It was doing
for community colleges what I just said we should do
for colleges. It was it was basically a set of
funding and regulatory uh offers that said we're going to
make community college free in America, and it came very close.

(01:19:13):
No Republicans voted for it. I think Joe Manchin voted
against it. But what really killed it was the four
year elite schools didn't want all that money because it's
a fixed pie. They thought they wanted the money for themselves,
and so they quietly but non publicly bad mouthed it,
and it didn't make it became mac close.

Speaker 1 (01:19:34):
Where what is the state the state of the community
college system? You know, I grew up in Miami, and
I grew up at the time Miami Day Community College
was almost a model community college. It except it's now
a college. It's a four year college, you know, but
it is a tremendous I mean, it is your path,
you know, out of out of struggles, and it really is.

(01:19:57):
It's a I'm you know, I think it's it's I'm
glad to hear it. Still it hangs in there because
I have always been really proud of how successful it's been.
What is the state of the community college system in general,
because it still is the best path out of the
out of poverty.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
I'm going to answer that question. But before I do
one to say, I hope you'll go back to the
Washington Monthly and read the story about I think we
call it Florida's Fresh Squeezed Universities. It's about Florida, all
about the history of how Florida managed. You know, when
you think of Florida, you don't think higher education, right, No, And.

Speaker 1 (01:20:39):
I've always been personally frustrated that Florida doesn't have a
UT system, a Sunni system or the UC system. And
it's been They've they toyed with it a few times,
but they never they never quite you know, built those
type of systems like Texas and California and New Art.

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
I invite you to read the story because what Florida
doesn't have is Harvard level prestige schools. You know, for
Florida's good school but nobody thinks of it as elite.
But the system that they do have is more like
UT or the California system or the New York system

(01:21:16):
than you realize. And I'll give you one example. First
of all. The end result is you can go to
Florida and go to a four year school and the
Florida schools do extremely well on our rankings.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
By the way, they did really well in the US
News wreankings this year too. Yeah, because they are a
good price. They are very good price. And that is
engineered into the Florida system. They give you one example
in nineteen the nineteen sixties, they passed a system whereby
the every course at every public university in Florida was had.

Speaker 2 (01:21:55):
The same course number. And if you pass that course,
you pass that course at any other school in Florida.
Right as you may know, when you go to community college,
you take English one oh one and then you transfer
to a four year school. The four year schools like
it to say, we don't.

Speaker 1 (01:22:13):
Think that the colge. No, but you're right in Florida.
Santa Fe Community College which is next to Gainesville, it's automatic,
TCC Tallahassee Community College automatic to Florida State It.

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):
Yeah, So Florida has more as I think a percentage
of its students getting the first two years at a
community college and then transferring than any other state in
the Union.

Speaker 1 (01:22:36):
Well, it's it's more affordable. I mean, look, if I
didn't get a scholarship, that was going to be my path. Yeah,
you do the two years and then transfer because you know,
it's a more affordable way to get a four year degree.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
I got a son, you know, at Montgomery College on
and off, so it is a great way. And to
answer the question, community college has benefited some in this
big beautiful act because they're going to get they freed
up money for short term certificates.

Speaker 1 (01:23:05):
These are kind of trade schoolish type of right.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
They do trade school stuff as community college. That's where
most trade school stuff happens. And you know, people don't
quite get that, but it's been the case for decades.
But these are usually the federal government won't give you
a PELL grant if it's not at least a year
long program or two year long program. This is for
six weeks, eight months. I can forget what the timeframe is.

(01:23:32):
We'll see if it works. Because the quality, there's a
question of quality. But this is a potential gusher of
new funding for community colleges. But community college is like
four year There's just a vast range of quality. Some
of them have very low graduation rates, some of them
much higher, even holding demographics studies. Some of them are

(01:23:55):
well supported by their regions and states, some of them
not so much.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
So it's a wide despair is what you're saying. There's
not a consistency to it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:02):
Correct, correct, And and there are some states that just
don't have a lot of community colleges. So it's they
are fantastic as an institution. We need to do more
for them, we need to ask more of them. But
I completely agree with you. They are. They are the
working end of higher education.

Speaker 1 (01:24:33):
Talk about community connection. I mean, I just you know,
we had a the way the Miami Dade Community College
has multiple campuses all around Dade County, and those campuses
also served as sort of host for community events. You
might you know, you might take a yoga class there,
you might take a quilting class there, like you know. Look,

(01:24:55):
because they had to make money, right, they would offer
sort of classes not for degrees, but just sort of
community interest classes to yeah, make a couple of bucks
to support the education part of things.

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):
And the partnerships you find between community colleges and employers,
oh yeah, find these at some of the regional public
universities too, but even more at the community colleges. If
you're an employer, you're you know, an airline, right, and
you need people you work with the community college to
structure your classes such that they're getting the certificates that

(01:25:29):
they need to then work you know, in the logistics
part of your airline or in the accounting or whatever.
And you know, maybe they have a paid internship program.
So that's where a lot of that academic to employment
connection happens or doesn't happen, again, depending on the leadership

(01:25:51):
and the quality of the community college.

Speaker 1 (01:25:54):
Well, look, I want to pivot now a little bit
to sort of where the state of journalism and for
profit all that stuff. But I will just say, I mean,
I think this is this is this is what I
call service journalism, and it sort of gets at something
that I think is overall missing in the conversation that
we're having about the future of journalism. And I think

(01:26:16):
sort of where we lost our way collectively, which is
just this there's not enough service journalism. We you know,
I'm curious what you think of this statement, but I
have a friend of mine named Richard Gingris who used
to run the Google News Initiative, and he said, you know,
the worst thing that happened to journalism was all the
president's men. And you know where he's going, because ninety

(01:26:42):
percent of the work of a journalist is in service
to their community if they're doing it right, it's ten
percent of your work over a lifetime. That is that accountability, right.
That is the stuff you want to put in your resume,
the stuff you might show up at your obituary, right,
the stuff that, yeah, you might apply for an award for.

(01:27:02):
But it's not what most people are going to know
your journalism for. And it's not the impact, right, it's
and it's it's one of these where this ranking system
is more helpful to the average person than doing a
ah an audit of of just how campaign spending is

(01:27:23):
working these days between the NRCC and the NRSC. Right,
I'm not saying it's an unimportant story, but it's it's
not service journalism. And I will tell you in my
conversations with young aspiring journalists, they're getting in not to
help people figure out how to save money in their life, right,
They're getting in because they want to get Joe Biden

(01:27:46):
or get Donald Trump. Right that that they're gonna you know,
they're gonna be the next Bob Boarder. How do we
inspire people to want to be in service that that
journalism is both a service and that part of the
public service get you to the point where yes, you
you're trying to build some trust so that when you

(01:28:06):
do the accountability, they believe you.

Speaker 2 (01:28:08):
Yeah. Look, there's always been a hierarchy in journalism. The
people who are out there doing the yeoman's work, right,
covering the school board, covering uh, you know, government agencies,
covering services.

Speaker 1 (01:28:27):
You know, snap benefits. How is that going to work?
You know things like this. Yeah, you know, the.

Speaker 2 (01:28:32):
Beat reporters, they get their they get their share of
of love from the editor. But who rules the roost
the political reporters, right, it's the big time investigative reporters.
That's where the glory is. That's where you know, you
make your most money. And when you compound that by

(01:28:55):
the utter devastation that has taken place in the last
really ten years but really more like twenty of local journalism, Chuck,
it's dead. They've it's been deloyed.

Speaker 1 (01:29:09):
I think it's the single I think it is the it.
If you look at the proverbial house of journalism, it
turned out local was a foundational right, and you knock
out that it collapsed the entire structure. Right, nobody trusts
anything because they lost that community tether and that turned

(01:29:32):
out to be the single most important connection we had
with the public.

Speaker 2 (01:29:37):
So so you know, there's good publications, you know, online,
nonprofit publications trying to bring back local reporting, bring back
not just accountability reporting like political and bureaucratic, but as
you say, the service journalism.

Speaker 1 (01:29:55):
Where do I save money? Where can I take my
family out of four out to dinner without breaking the bag?
I know that seems not like the greatest scoop, but
that's actually how you help your community.

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
You know, what are the scores at the high school
basketball game? People care about that, and you know it's
you can't just get the data. There was a game there,
Somebody tell me, tell me what happened. Uh, you know,
weather Best drives within three hours of my town. I mean,

(01:30:27):
there's a thousand things that people want and need. But again,
the economic underpinnings of that kind of work have disappeared,
primarily because of Google and Facebook, and you know there's
other reasons for it, but it is primarily the advertising
dollar has been hoarded by the Silicon Valley platforms, and

(01:30:50):
without advertising, it is really hard to make it in
this in this business, and I run a publication that
for a while was doing very well producing online content
that was supported by advertising, and then it disappeared.

Speaker 1 (01:31:06):
So I've lived in and you don't even know why
it disappeared, right because they never were transparent about how
the algorithm worked, right.

Speaker 2 (01:31:12):
Correct, But you know, in a general sense, we know, right,
they monopolized. I mean Google has lost an anti trust
case this year monopolizing the ad tech infrastructure, and and

(01:31:35):
they you know, the connection between readers and advertisers at
the local level has largely disappeared. There's still some and
I think you can come back with the right policies,
but boy, it's tough out there, and anybody doing local
service journalism, I agree that my hat's off to them.

Speaker 1 (01:31:57):
Well, you know, it's interesting the what what I've discovered.
I mean, I'm trying to throw myself into this issue
a little bit and working on a few projects of
trying to is it possible to bring back a to
create a for profit local news environment. And what you
do find is, you know who else hates the Google
ad network? Local businesses. Yeah, they don't like it either.

(01:32:20):
They prefer a personalized connection. They prefer to advertise in
an entity that they that they know. Rather there's quote
unquote programmatic advertising, you know, et cetera, or you just
sort of find people that stumble upon your stuff. And
I do think that, but the I don't know whether

(01:32:42):
this is whether you can do this without the help
of government, and I and I'm and I'm torn on
it because I don't know how much we want government involved.

Speaker 2 (01:32:52):
So there's two ways government can help. Government can and philanthropy, right,
can underwrite some of the call or government can change
the rules of the marketplace from the ones that wrote
yesterday or ten or twenty years ago that destroyed the
AD dollars two new ones that bring the AD dollars back.

Speaker 1 (01:33:13):
Right, Yeah, you can. You can incentive you know, there
is some work being done on the state level trying
to you know, you might give a tax break to
a local business that advertises in a local publication. So
it's not a it's not a direct subsidy to the media.
It actually you're helping the small business. So it's a frankly,

(01:33:34):
it's a way to write, it's a way to make
it a bipartisan ita to be frank yeh, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:33:39):
I hope you know the work of my friend and
maybe yours, Steve Waldman.

Speaker 1 (01:33:43):
Oh, well it's Steve. Yeah, okay, yes, it's Steve's work.
He's he's been he's been going legislature by legislature, making
this argument.

Speaker 2 (01:33:53):
On my board. He's one of my best friends. His
organization is Rebuilt Local News, and and you know, I
think he's making real progress in this.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):
No, he has. I mean I've We've been at a
couple events together as we sort of a are pied
pipering this stuff. And it is, it is. Unfortunately, there
is a I do think it's still seen through a
political lens, right, He's not making the case politic through
a political lens, but it's unfortunately local media is being

(01:34:24):
punished for the perception of cable news. You know, I
used to scream about this that you know, actually the
state of journalism is quite good over the last ten years.
It's amazing some of the work that's out there. The
problem is our curb appeal, you know. Right, the most
prominent news organizations were the three cable channels that really

(01:34:45):
gave journalism a bad reputation. All Right, I'm not going
to sit here and say one is bad. I'm not
going to get into that. It just the the opinion
debates drove the perception of all journalism and it really
harmed local more than anybody else.

Speaker 2 (01:35:00):
Yeah. I think that's right, and I think what happened is,
you know, when I was a kid, when you were
a kid, I'm a little older. You you lived in
a medium sized city or a small town or rural area.
My parents, you know, I grew up in Saint Louis.
They read both the Saint Louis papers, and you were

(01:35:24):
getting a lot of local news, and you were getting
political news if you if you had a sizable town
like Saint Louis, you had your own reporters in Washington
covering the industries, covering government.

Speaker 1 (01:35:39):
But through the prism of somebody that lived in Saint Louis. Yeah,
you know, and that's important.

Speaker 2 (01:35:44):
It's important to know what the you know, localizedeers going
to do to the rivers, right, and so the best
guy covering the Army Corps of Engineers was a Saint
Louis Post dispassed reporter. But every town in Missouri, you know,
was caring a p They were carrying post dispatch reporting
and then they were doing local reporting. And a lot

(01:36:05):
of those small towns they were very conservative, datorially, sure right.
But but the news that they were covering, the national
news that they were covering was whatever every you know,
it was kind of everybody else read differences from writers
from from ape, from your top, I'm that, and it

(01:36:33):
was allable checked. Those those small towns no longer have
national news, right, they can't afford it, and and a
lot of them just disappeared completely. And so where do
people small towns get their news. They go to Fox right,
or maybe they go to MSNBC, and that's not news.
I mean, they're getting bits of reormation, but in a

(01:36:56):
package of partisanship.

Speaker 1 (01:36:59):
Now, and it's so in some ways when you're trying
to salvage local news, people look at it. Yeah, but
do you have an agenda? Right like that? You know,
they've been convinced that that that every if the media
is manipulated, it must be up and down the entire
ecosystem of media, not just on the on the on
the national cable side.

Speaker 2 (01:37:17):
But you're I'm really fascinated about what you said, Chuck,
that businesses want a relationship with their customers. If you
run a hospital and a you know, rural or vault
in area, uh, you know, all of your business or
most of it comes from the region. Right, you run
an HVAC company, if you you know, uh, a grocery business,

(01:37:41):
you need that relationship with the local and and the
local papers aren't there to provide it. And I think
there's an opportunity there. I keep following that trail.

Speaker 1 (01:37:51):
I'm like, no, I I am, And look, I'm a
huge believer that that look we've got. As I joke,
a man named Craig decided classifies out to be YadA, YadA, YadA.

Speaker 2 (01:38:01):
The entire local news industry got destroyed.

Speaker 1 (01:38:06):
But I still think that it's possible local sports and
even youth sports below high school could be the connective
tissue that starts the rebuilding process. It may not be
the elixir, I mean might it'd be as helpful as
classified advertising is. But boy, the one I just look
at it as what can bring red and blue together kids? Right,

(01:38:29):
and and we love sports in this country, and now
sports is going to be a pipeline to college more
than ever before. Right with the variety of you know,
with this, with this NI, l're we're making a limp.
We're sort of it's possible this new world of nil
and sports might actually expand the opportunities of people paying
for college with sports the way frankly the arts were

(01:38:53):
used to pay for college, you know, previous generations, and
and that's maybe.

Speaker 2 (01:38:57):
That's a good thing, let's hope.

Speaker 1 (01:39:00):
So I know, I'm not gonna sit here's saying it definitely,
but it's possible that this is a that this is
a it's a hand up the ladder, not necessarily. Uh uh.
You know, I'm not saying some universities aren't going. I mean,
what we're seeing in college football is a little insane,
but if you go to that next level down, you know,

(01:39:23):
it's really serving as an opportunity for young women. Yep,
you know in ways that we've not seen before.

Speaker 2 (01:39:29):
And and you know, the Silicon Valley keeps throwing punches.
And right now, what's happening to local news is their
contents beings great by AI. Right and and there's a
pretty fascinating movement happening, uh with a company by the

(01:39:54):
name of cloud Stream. I think it's called you may
have looked about it where they host media sites. It
holds all kinds of sites and they give you the
ability to say, I don't want AI scrape in my side,
and you don't have to do anything. It's done automatically
for you. Well, that's got the AI folks freaked out

(01:40:16):
because the inability to have real time, fact checked information
in local areas turns AI into mush. Right, they've already
scraped all the old stuff, and so they've got a lot.
But things change, right, Downtown's changed, roads change, people move,

(01:40:36):
and if you can't get that information, and that's what
the local you know, press has, so they've got more
leverage than they think.

Speaker 1 (01:40:46):
Well, it's it's look, I'm not you know, I'm one
of those who just views AI neutrally. It can be
weaponized for good or weaponized for bad, or frankly, probably
a little bit of both. We just have to be
smart about how we use it as a tool. Yeah, Paul,
this was great. The Washington Monthly is as innovative as ever.

(01:41:07):
And what I like about it is that there's always
it's a home for sort of different ideas. It's you know,
it's not always the conventional, not just in some ways
left right debates get conventional. And I hate to say this,
but there's certain editorial pages that, ah, the editorials new
but I've read it a hundred times.

Speaker 2 (01:41:27):
You kind of know where they're coming from and play
in a different version of the same song.

Speaker 1 (01:41:32):
Yeah, I mean, you do seem to have a you know,
what is it that makes a Washington Monthly story that
doesn't make it into the Washington Post? What would be
your what? What's the secret ingredient in your mind?

Speaker 2 (01:41:46):
We're not afraid to put the same reporting energy into
figuring out solutions as slothing out problem and conventional journalism.
You know, the opinion section may have a piece or

(01:42:07):
two on some new policy idea, some new way out right,
but mostly they feel that that's not their job.

Speaker 1 (01:42:15):
No, let me find problems.

Speaker 2 (01:42:17):
We find problems. There's no politics there, you know, every
but solutions have a kind of political valance or they might.
And we do this twenty four to seven. That's what
we did. We're more guided by figuring out how to
fix things than slew the out. I mean, obviously we uh,
you know, one of my colleagues says, you know that

(01:42:39):
the problem with the Monthly is we provide solutions to
problems people don't know they have. Oh, there's not much
of a market for it. But yeah, and I think
that's the big the big difference.

Speaker 1 (01:42:49):
Yeah, No, I know. It's like, I think one of
the big solutions to some of our political distrust is
to expand Congress. Many people don't think that's a problem
that needed to be solved. I've had I've had a
hard time getting lay people to uh to see that
right away. And it's like, just you know, but but
I take your point. And yet you know a lot

(01:43:10):
of times what you read today in the Washington Monthly
will be a solution that government eventually agrees to in
about five years.

Speaker 2 (01:43:17):
That's how it works. And we have we have a lot,
we have a long record of that.

Speaker 1 (01:43:22):
Yes you do, yes, you do well. You recognize Paul
Glasters always pleasure, Thank you sir, great to see it.

Speaker 2 (01:43:28):
Thanks for having me on. Buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:43:41):
Well, I don't know about you, but I am. I
want to go visit Maria College now in Kentucky in particular,
uh and just see it my see see it for myself.
But that was very eye opening conversation I had with
Paul and uh do dive in to the Washington Monthly
drankings there and how they split it up and they

(01:44:03):
split it up, research different ways to look at it,
pure affordability. They have it by region, but it was
it really frankly, it made me feel better about the
state of Higher ed.

Speaker 2 (01:44:16):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:44:17):
I'm obviously really concerned if we're gonna if if this,
if the federal funding attacks end up making life miserable
for the smaller colleges as we go forward. But anyway,
let's do a few.

Speaker 2 (01:44:32):
Q and as as Chuck as Chuck.

Speaker 1 (01:44:55):
This one comes from John A from New Orleans. Hey, Chuck,
really loved the cast. As Mayor Koch would say, you
are a voice of reason. I appreciate that. Here's an
idea that I would like your feedback on. We use
the tax code to influence behavior all the time, yes,
we do. Why not do it to encourage a true
democratic good. Give people a seventy five dollars tax credit
every time they vote in a national election. More voters
would significantly change voting dynamics. It would give third parties

(01:45:17):
a real shot in the arm. The effect would be profound,
and we wouldn't need a constitutional convention to make the change.
Thoughts interesting, So we're paying people to vote. I guess
that's you know, it's not like Austria. What is I
think it's Australia that has sort of mandatory voting. I

(01:45:42):
don't know, I'm I hear what you're saying. There's a
part of me. There's a lyric from an old Rush song.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made
a choice. It's their song free will. So are we
going to financially penalize people who decide they want to

(01:46:03):
sit out a national election? You see where I'm going here,
So I hear where you're going. I you know, we
had that back and I don't know. I'm not going
to guess what your age is. But there was a
time where you used to be able to check off
on your tax returns. You know, yes, I want, you know,
a dollar, one dollar of my tax return to go

(01:46:24):
to the presidential presidential campaign fund. This was back when
presidential candidates would get matching funds. We had a period
of time where we were hoping to at least partially
public fund elections to keep you know, to sort of
keep the influence of money down. Well, eventually, you know,
I think George W. Bush was the first one to
be able to raise enough money not having to worry

(01:46:45):
about the federal system. And then all of a sudden,
everybody got out of it and so it's it's sort
of lost its relevance. But I do agree with you
generally that the tax code is a good that financial
financial incentive. In some ways. It goes back to the
incentive issue. Right, if you want if you want better outcomes,

(01:47:06):
then create better incentives. Right. If you think more people
need to participate, then that is one idea to certainly
incentivize people to do it. I still think that the
bigger issue is we need equal access to the ballot,
and you need equal access to vote for everybody, right,
And I do think primaries, particularly state run, state funded primaries,

(01:47:31):
do violate equal protection. You know. The fact is, if
I'm not a registered voter of that party, I can't
participate in that taxpayer funded election. That feels like a penalty.
And so I do think that if you're looking at
one thing, one single thing that we could do differently

(01:47:52):
that might actually have massive impact on our politics, is
if we got rid of partisan primaries altogether and had
essentially everybody, you know, like the mayor's races, all party primaries.
So I'm with you on uh using the tax code

(01:48:12):
as a way to incentivize better behavior. I struggle with
the idea of using it as a reward for voting.
You know, it's sort of there's it that I in
a weird way that feels, you know, one step away
from buying a vote. Right, So there's a I just

(01:48:34):
I'll admit I'm slightly uncomfortable with that larger concept, but
I am quite comfortable with using the tax code to
incentive I mean, look, home ownership in some ways is
promoted because of the tech. We promote home ownership through
the tax code with mortgage deduction. So there's always I think,

(01:48:56):
good ways to use the tax code to help to
help people, if you will. But interesting thought and certainly
worth chewing on. Thanks for the question, John, all right.
Next question comes from Carry and saying Lewis, Hey, Chuck,
You've mentioned the logistical challenge of third parties, but with
Democrats wandering in the wilderness and Republicans without a platform,

(01:49:16):
what about an American unity platform that anyone running could
pledge to support. Focus on making government more responsive to
the needs of citizens, working to get big money out
of politics, constitutional convention ending germ mandering, maybe even required
civic service for young people. Yes, I'm huge national service person.
Could that work? What would you include in this platform.
Thanks and I love the history highlights. Oh great best wishes. Look,

(01:49:38):
I love this And in many ways what you're describing
is what my late mentor Doug Bailey, when he Unity
eight is what he called it back in two thousand
and eight. In the run up to that election, he
was trying to create a process that could help nominate
a bipartisan ticket. Well, then the two parties nominated the

(01:49:59):
two the most bipartisan people that were running. Right, Literally,
the most popular Democrat among Republicans was Barack Obama and
the most popular Republican among Democrats was John McCain. They
both did well among independents, and they both won their nomination,
So it made Unity eight kind of a pointless exercise.
He was anticipating that it would be Hillary Clinton and

(01:50:21):
Rudy Giuliani right, a more polarizing, divisive matchup that would
then leave room for a more unifying bipartisan ticket. But
it is, you know, he and in fact, what is
the today's Forward Party has some of the remnants of
what Doug began. Some of the folks that have been

(01:50:43):
working on the Open Primaries movement to try to sort
of get rid of partisan primaries. The gentleman that's been
working on trying to get rank choice voting to be
considered in other states. All of it is derivative of
what Doug began with Unity O eight. And I will

(01:51:07):
tell you this, You are to me on the right
path of what kind of to me that look in
an ideal word would be a four party system. I
think that's I'm not gonna I'm trying to be realistic here.
The most the most likely way that a third party
could have an impact is sort of helping to reform

(01:51:29):
the two major parties by sort of running a race
that did this and I think you don't you want
to plan And this gets it to a debate that
I know some folks that are involved with the Forward Party,
Andrew Yang, Christie Whitman Party, the sort of the third
party movement where there's a debate are they a movement

(01:51:50):
to try to get the two parties to become more
rational or do they want to be their own standalone
party that essentially replaces one of the two major parties
and why? And if you're going to be one thing,
then you're going to have more issues you might take
a stand on. And the more issues you take a
stand on the more opportunity you have of potentially pushing

(01:52:12):
some people, you know, away, If you're trying to be
this sort of moderate party that sort of shoots, you know,
that sort of shoots the gap in between the two parties,
then I do think you want a platform like the
one you describe, where hey, look, we need to we
need to make some massive reforms in how the democracy works.

(01:52:34):
And this isn't going to be about whether we should
have more immigrants or less immigrants. This is about whether
we're going to have a system that is easily understandable
and how immigration works.

Speaker 2 (01:52:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:52:44):
It is almost like a technocratic campaign that you would run. Now,
the problem with that is I think you need an
incredibly charismatic individual to be the leader of that movement.
Ross Perrot had his own charisma, Teddy Roosevelt had his
own charisma. Shoot even George waller Us, who was arguably
had some success at least in shifting that election to

(01:53:06):
Nixon in sixty eight, had had enough charisma to lead
a movement. So there is a you can't just do
this as a dry technocratic exercise. But I do think
going after process and talking about how we need the

(01:53:27):
structural reform of the democracy. And I think post Trump
there'll be an appetite for this. The question is is
there an appetite for it in twenty eight or do
we need sort of a couple more years removed from
Trump before there'll be a full appetite for this. But
American Unity Platform, I mean, I'm going to keep saying
it over and over. So my friends at the Forward

(01:53:48):
Party who I know listened to this podcast regularly. It's
a good idea because, especially if it's about how you
centered it, how do you make government more responsive? Right?
Things I'd put in there is doubling the size of
the House. Right, maybe it's a constitutional amendment that says,
you know, no congressional district can be you know, bigger

(01:54:09):
than point zero zero zero one percent of the population,
which would give a metric so that way you could
deal in case our population shrinks overtime rather than expands.
But that's something I would put in there because I
think that would be something that would make us more responsive.
Getting rid of partisan primaries where you're doing things that
are not about specific issues themselves, because that's where you
start to a third Parties can sometimes lose support almost

(01:54:33):
the more positions you start taking. So it is it is.
You certainly have warmed my heart in what you're prescribing.
But one of the things that I've learned is when
you have the luxury to worry about this, and you
don't have a financial crisis in your life or a

(01:54:53):
healthcare crisis, you have the luxury to worry about the democracy.
There's a lot of voters out there who, in theory
might have with this platform, but are more worried about
the near term and are going to be more in
tune with somebody that's going to throw them a bone immediately, right,
a benefit bone of some sort immediately. And I think
that's that's the only risk in trying to run a

(01:55:14):
very sort of let's fix the democracy, because you almost
have to have a majority agreement that it's broken, and
we're getting there, right. We have over sixty percent saying
we're in a political crisis. So it may be that
by the fall of twenty seven this is a very
appealing idea, which is but the idea of just putting

(01:55:36):
out a platform, almost without a candidate and even without
a political party, is an interesting idea as well. So anyway,
you've given me a lot to chew On that that's
this is not something I want to give up. The
American Unity platform. I love, I love how that sounds
all right. Next question comes from Heather from Littleton, Colorado. Hey, there,

(01:55:57):
I heard you chat your chat with Chrystaliza and appreciated
what she said about Trump being the worst role model
for our children. I have two boys, and my younger
son was born on election Day twenty sixteen. I remember
sitting in the hospital, heartbroken that our country had elected
a man who embodied everything I didn't want them to become.
As a lifelong Conservative and former staffer for Rix and Torum,
I even voted for Hillary Clinton that year because I
feared that would happen under his presidency. Sadly, both his

(01:56:19):
temperament and character have only worsened. Sense Heather from Littleton, Colorado. Well,
you know this goes to the issue of character, and
it goes back to for whatever reason, and I think
in sixteen, look, I think you and I share a

(01:56:39):
similar way that we vote, which is, I do character
matters a lot, right. I think character is destiny. I
think high character people are going to do the right thing.
Low character people are more likely to do the wrong
thing or more likely to be out for themselves, and
I certainly believe that. Unfortunately, a second Trump term has perhaps, Look,

(01:57:01):
we're courser, we just are as a society, and you
can't tell me it's disconnected from the way Donald Trump
has modeled himself for the American people. I mean, you
may have heard me say this. I think the American
bad behavior at Bethpage Black during the Ryder Cup is

(01:57:27):
representative of the Trump era. Do I say Trump himself
go toed those people to behave that way? No, I'm
not going to go that far. But I think his
behavior gives a permission slip that it's okay to sort
of be be rude, be dismissive, be dehumanizing. Hey, if
the president does it, why can't I. And of course

(01:57:49):
this gets it to what we're watching how the Democrats
are dealing with this Virginia issue, where there was there
was an attempt to hold Republicans accountable when they misbehaved
like this, and there are a lot of Democrats who
were lecturing Republicans for not holding their own side accountable.

(01:58:11):
And here you have something on the Democratic side and
they're not immediately taking the moral high ground here on character,
and it's you know how much of that is and
you see that sort of some supporters of Jay Jones
have essentially said, well, if Trump can do it, why
can't Why can't we is essentially, you know, if the

(01:58:31):
voters are going to forgive him, why wouldn't the voters
forgive j Jones? And maybe that is the case. Maybe
the electorate has given up that politicians can be good people.
But unfortunately, right now I do think the I think
good people are afraid to run for office. And I
think there is a sense that if you're morally ambiguous

(01:58:58):
person but you're looking for legitimacy in society, holding office
suddenly gives you legitimacy. You know. It brings up a
quote I've been meaning to share with you guys, but
I just haven't had the right I just haven't had
the right moment to bring it up. But I'm going
to go find the quote for you. So Madison Cawthorne,
the kid who was sort of who when he came

(01:59:21):
to Congress sort of was just he admitted the only
staff he wanted to hire work communication staff. He didn't
really see the job as representing his constituents. He saw
it as just messaging and trolling. He offended so many
Republicans that they recruited a candidate to primary m get
him out of office. And he was a one term
wonder Well, now he has shown up in Florida and

(01:59:43):
he wants to run for the open seat that Byron
Donald's is vacating to run for governor. Well, he's not
the only former member of Congress running in that district
for Byron Donalds. There's another disgraced former member of Congress
that's also running in that race. It is Chris Collins.

(02:00:04):
And if you're wondering who Chris Collins is, he was
a Republican Member of Congress from the from Western New York,
representing the Buffalo area and he was notable at first.
I mean I could tell you how he got my
radar and first time I interviewed me. He was the
only member of congres. He's the first member of the
House of Representative, the first House Republican to officially endorse

(02:00:24):
Donald Trump. And for the longest time, he was the
only one that endorsed Donald Trump. I mean, it was
it was, it was something else, and he was the
only one, and he was sort of he was kind
of I enjoyed interviewing him, and in fact, I'm going
to try to book him for the podcast because this

(02:00:46):
quote really stood out to me, and I'll get to
it in a minute, but it sort of gets it
to what I fear elected office has become for too
many character challenged people, and perhaps describing Chris Collins this
way will make him not want to come on. But
one of the things I found interesting about him is

(02:01:06):
that he seemed to be comfortable in his own skin,
willing to sort of take any question and sometimes say
things out loud that you're shocked that he would say,
which brings me to this quote. So he's among again.
Madison Cawthorne is running in this race. So's Chris Collins, right,
the former New Yorker you had to resign in twenty
nineteen after he pled guilty to some insider trading. Collins,

(02:01:29):
who's now seventy five, he suggested that he wasn't coming
out of involuntary retirement purely because of his desire to
serve his new community in Southwest Florida. Here's what he
said to a podcast in August. He said, quote, if
I then retire as a congressman from Florida nineteen and
Marco Island in Naples. I think I would be welcomed

(02:01:51):
then to serve on some of the you know, the
not for profit boards and hospital boards and being invited
to the you know, fundraisers in galas and being welcome.
He said, that would be a great retirement because right
now it's kind of lonely. He goes, you know, I'm
not invited to any of those things, because all I
am is, you know, the former congressman who resigned in disgrace,

(02:02:12):
convicted felon was This is Chris Collins in a nutshell.
He will he speaks some blunt truths. He's self aware
and not self aware, sort of all at the same time.
Right says the quiet part out loud that the only
reason he wants to run if he could just win
a term. Then suddenly he's invited to all the local

(02:02:35):
events and he gets to, I guess, sit on the
dais rather than I'm sure he could be invited to
these events, but he doesn't want to beg to be there,
I guess. Anyway, I use this as an example to
sort of respond to your question on that, because that
is my concern, is that politics is turned into this
place where people rehab bad images because we now think

(02:02:59):
politicians are kind of you know that we assume a
politician is slimy. You know, you're guilty of being slimy
until you prove that you're not. And that's sad, right.
I got into this. I went to Washington because, man,
I looked up to these people. And it's true, the
more you get to know them, the more you realize

(02:03:21):
not all of them are are worth looking up to.
But there was a time more of them were. And
it's a bummer. We're not there yet. All right, let
me do one more question here and I'll do my
little college football preview for you. Good evening. Loving the
Check podcast find myself anxiously awaiting the next installment every
other morning during the week. I appreciate that my question
you recently cited congressional carve outs for pay during government shutdowns,

(02:03:43):
such as military pay and solid security. I was listening
to someone on Boston Public Radio a few days ago,
where you are a frequent guest, discussed military pay would
cease during the shutdown, So I'm confused. Thanks for a
fantastic source of information critical of both sides of the aisle.
The pay is guaranteed. The pay can be delayed, but
it's guaranteed. And the military pay is was always guaranteed

(02:04:05):
as a as a carve out, and then they have
to a lot of times. Most of the times when
they've done these shorts shutdowns, they do pass a bipartisan
bill that says, hey, we're gonna go ahead and let
military pay happen on time. And that was frequent when
we always had some you know, some members of the

(02:04:26):
military in a in a in a hot zone or
a war zone, notably for whatever reason, they didn't you
know Democrats. In fact, that's one of the ways that
Democrats are now trying to go to Mike Johnson back
to bringing the House back this this this week, is
to just simply vote on that so that there's no

(02:04:47):
interruption in their pay. But there but the carve out.
They're guaranteed their pay and in the case of active
duty military, you know, they're housing. The don't have to
worry about that. So that's why it's it's let that
carve out. If they weren't guaranteed their pay, I think
you'd have a different situation. So where I may have
confused you was I may have indicated that they were

(02:05:10):
they were getting it without interruption, because they always do,
but they hadn't. Actually each time they had to individually
vote to make sure it was done without an interruption,
and they didn't do that for this time, which was unusual.
But there is no but the law guarantees that back

(02:05:30):
pay for it's what the law guarantees the back pay
now of all federal workers. That was a separate law
that was passed in twenty nineteen that Donald Trump signed
in the law and now that his current budget director
is trying to claim does not abide. But anyway, apologies
for confusing you on that, but that that's where that goes,
all right. So with that, I am this is my

(02:05:54):
first weekend and four weekends and I'm not traveling to
see a football game. I will be honest, as a
middling aged man, I am getting exhausted for mayor travel.
So maybe I needed a weekend off from traveling to football.
But that doesn't mean we don't have a great lineup

(02:06:14):
of games this week. Look the most the one I'm
most curious about, and I think the one that will
be more determinative to me. You know, there's two big
ones this week and they're both in the Big ten. Right,
you have Indiana at Oregon. Do you fully believe in Indiana?
And how good is Oregon? Right? Do we look at

(02:06:37):
the Penn State loss to UCLA and start to question
whether is was that just Penn State flat spot or
is Penn State really just not that good without Tyler Warren? Right?
And I think we're starting to come to the conclusion
that they had a special, special talent in Tyler Warren.
How good was he? He's so good He's made the
Colts a playoff team right, all on his own. He's

(02:06:57):
made Daniel Jones look like an MVP candidate. So shame
on all of us for not realizing how maybe that
dude should have been invited to New York at least
to be a heusband finalist on that front. And then
the other interesting game is Ohio State going to champagne
in Illinois? Who is Illinois? Are they the team that

(02:07:19):
beat USC or the team that got their clocks cleaned
in Bloomington by Indiana? They're tough at home. Ohio State
does appear to be getting better every week. Justin saying,
I'm just saying I'm not going to get over that punditry,
that that ability to do so many puns with the
quarterback of Ohio State. We're all just saying that Justin

(02:07:43):
saying is getting better every week. I'm not, by the way,
I'm not somebody who will bet on individual players. I
accept the premise that I think player props are very
corruptible when it comes to when it comes to gambling,
and in fact, in the state of Virginia, they don't
even allow you to bet on awards. You can't bet

(02:08:05):
on the Heisman in Virginia. I have to go across
the river to DC if I wanted to do that.
But if I were taking a long shot Heisman pick
right now, Justin saying would be a pretty good bye
at this point, because you know the way the Heisman
stuff works, it's all recency bias. And as much as
I think Reuben Bain and Miami, or Carson Beck and
Miami both deserve consideration, their most high profile games are

(02:08:30):
now over and Ohio State has a lot more high
profile games to come, and of course that you know
the whole recency bias, right, He's going to be having
that Michigan game, you know, not very far from the
voting itself. Perhaps Ohio State Oregon in the Big Ten
Conference final itself is another stage for him. Anyway, It's

(02:08:52):
it's interesting how good is he? How good is Illinois
at slowing this game down in order to give themselves
a check. They can't afford to trade scores with Ohio State,
So I'm intrigued by that game. I don't know if
I buy into Illinois, And in fact, their victory over
USC makes me doubt USC more than it does make
me more confident in Illinois. And then there's Indiana in

(02:09:17):
Oregon right the other game, So it all depends on
how much of a juggernaut you think Illinois. I think
it's clear Indiana is better this year than they were
last year. But does that mean they're they're they're a
contender for the whole thing or not? If they can
put up a once, you know, even lose just by
one score in Eugene, I think it's fair to say,

(02:09:37):
because that is one tough place to play, I think
it's fair to say they are contenders. I can't believe
I'm not that. The first game out of my mouth
isn't about Texas Oklahoma. Here we have the Red River shootout, rivalry,
whatever we're supposed to call it. Now, it does feel
as if this is a This is become a very

(02:10:00):
important game for Arch Manning's reputation, fairly or unfairly. I
do think it's worth reminding people that Arch's grandfather, Archie,
was the first one to say he's not turning pro
in twenty six. Perhaps he knew his grandson needed more
time to sort of in the football factory to get better.

(02:10:22):
Look the hype machine. It's not as if the Manning
family didn't contribute to the hype machine. And you know,
it is what it is. Sometimes you can't do anything
about it. You know, if he were Arch Smith, he
wouldn't be He wouldn't have gotten the same amount of hype,
nor would he be getting the same amount of criticism.

(02:10:44):
But the real question is whether John Matteer, Oklahoma starting quarterback,
is really going to try to play here in this game.
Except look, Oklahoma are are they legit contenders for the
whole thing? They beat Texas without matir as a as
a relevant force. That's a big deal and that shouldn't
be ignored. So that's probably the third most interesting game

(02:11:07):
for me on the docket. Then After that, everything else
is only interesting depending on how much money you plan
on putting down there. I mean, Georgia Auburn, I think
we thought that would be a big deal game. I
assume Georgia wins that with a little bit of put
it this way, I I will be surprised if that's

(02:11:28):
a if that's a close game in the fourth quarter,
and if it is, then maybe Georgia isn't a top
ten team this year. And by the way, no shame
in that. My goodness, look at how many people they've
sent to the pros. At some point. I'm not saying
the cupboard is empty, but their depth at some point
is going to catch up with them. And in this environment,
you don't get to stockball talent the way you used

(02:11:48):
to be able to stockpilot. So that's a little bit
of a we'll learn a little something there, depending on
the on the spread of that game and if baseball's
not doing it for you. That Friday night South Florida
North Texas game, it's a big deal to South Florida
if they want to be the group of five representative

(02:12:09):
in the playoff. I think it's gonna be a great game.
They're going on the road they got to win that game.
And as a Floridian and as a team that the
Hurricanes have defeated, I want to see everybody that Miami
beat do well. So let's go Bulls. Let's go see
if you can go to the other big game in
North Texas this weekend and give them a good preview.

(02:12:32):
Should be an entertaining game. If you're just looking for
some entertaining football, North Texas and South Florida is one
that will be worthy of your time. All right, With that,
I have a relaxing weekend as my Hurricanes have another bye.
We've get a bye week before Florida State bye. I
have to tell you the scheduling this year for Miami
has been fantastic, which means, let's not screw this season up.

(02:12:53):
We are not going to have where we get a
buye before Florida State and then a bye to recover
from Florida State before going into this Friday night game
that we have coming up next week with the always
dangerous Louisville Cardinals. So with that, I'll see in about
ninety six hours enjoy what is this is? Right now?

(02:13:14):
We are at peak sports fandom. They're all coming together NHL,
NBA regular seasons begin, baseball playoffs, college football, NFL. It
is a smorgasboard, so enjoy it while it's here. Enjoy
this October weekend, and with that I'll see in my

(02:13:35):
name

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