Crazy Town: Episode 68. How Boomer Politicians Found a Third Way to Phuck Over the Working Class

Asher Miller
I’m Asher Miller.

Rob Dietz
I’m Rob Dietz.

Jason Bradford
And I’m Jason Bradford. Welcome to Crazy Town where the government and corporations seamlessly and synergistically “screwlaborate” the American working class.

Melody Allison
Hi, This is Crazy Town producer Melody Allison. Thanks for listening. Here in season five, we’re exploring Phalse Prophets and the dangerous messages they’re so intent on spreading. If you like what you’re hearing, please let some friends know about this episode, or the podcast in general. Now on to the show.

Asher Miller  

Hey, guys, Rob, Jason, how are you guys doing?

Rob Dietz  

Pretty good, you? 

Asher Miller  

Doing all right. Well, I gotta say, you know, part of my job is fundraising, right? At PCI.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, you gotta do that.

Asher Miller  

I’m going to get to it. Excuse me. Yeah, and, you know, have I ever told you about the best, most amazing fundraising pitch I’ve ever seen, or learned about?

Jason Bradford  

No. This is good. 

Rob Dietz  

Nope. That’s why we do a podcast. So we can get stories like this.

Asher Miller  

Okay. So let me paint the scene. Okay? It is January of 2001, a long time ago. And there’s this little tiny nonprofit organization, small town called East Palo Alto. Do you know East Palo Alto? 

Jason Bradford  

Oh I’ve been there. Yeah, yeah.

Rob Dietz  

Come on. That’s like where Stanford is. 

Asher Miller  

It’s a historically black community in East Palo Alto. It’s historically disadvantaged certainly, compared to Palo Alto. Anyways, there’s a little part of East Palo Alto which is basically off the main freeway, Highway 101 right there. And in that little spot when you get off the freeway, and you actually turn towards going towards Palo Alto, there’s a little strip. It was called Whiskey Gulch and it had been there for a long time. It’s basically the only thing that served as kind of like a downtown for East Palo Alto. It was only a couple blocks, few blocks long, with little mom and pop shops and parlors and stuff like that. And there was this little nonprofit called Plugged In. And Plugged In was working on digital divide issues, trying to teach the local community how to use computers and the internet and all that stuff. And they got booted. Everyone got booted out of Whiskey Gulch, okay? So they were going to tear it all down. And so – 

Rob Dietz  

So they were trying to teach them how to use computers, but then they threw them out?

Asher Miller  

Everybody. All of the businesses that were down on that strip.

Jason Bradford  

So they were gonna tear down the old buildings? 

Asher Miller  

Whiskey Gulch doesn’t exist anymore. So they got rid of it all. And poor Plugged In and had to move and they wound up like basically moving into a trailer, right. But in January 2001, so sometime later, Bill Clinton’s going on a tour around the countries visiting different places as part of this last package proposal. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, he’s out. He’s out in some ways.

Asher Miller  

Yeah, he’s just about to head out. But he, you know, he wants to leave on a high note, which is, you know, pushing hits sort of new markets investment initiative of his. So he’s visiting a bunch of places like, you know, he went to Pine Ridge Reservation. He was visiting East Palo Alto and other places. Basically, disadvantaged communities across the country, you know, touting his plan for how to tap markets basically to create opportunities for these left behind communities. So he wanted to come to visit Plugged In because Plugged In was sort of like the showcase project working on digital divide issues. And so he was going to come and visit. And then HP, Hewlett Packard, which was down the road. This is Silicon Valley, right? The heart of the beast there. 

Rob Dietz  

Hey, hey. I thought HP is a Corvallis . . . ? 

Asher Miller  

Well, you know, they’ve had an office here, right? But look, HP was in a garage down in Silicon Valley. It literally started out in a garage.  It started down there, yeah. So Carly Fiorina, I don’t know if you remember her, you know, she actually ran for president at one point as a Republican. She was the head of HP at the time. And she got wind that Clinton was coming. He was going to show up. And so she wanted to be there. She wanted to be part of like this whole digital divide thing that Clinton was doing. And so some person in her office called up the Executive Director of Plugged In, somebody I worked with. I wound up working at Plugged In.

Jason Bradford  

And saying Carly wants to be there?

Asher Miller  

Yeah. So but not starting that way. “We heard about what’s going on for you guys. It’s amazing work that Plugged In is doing. We want to support you guys. Oh, and by the way, it’d be great to have Carly there. Right? And so Magda is like, “Huh.”  Yeah, Magda was running the organization. Okay. So she’s like, “Well, you know, we really could use some help with this capital campaign. We need some funding, you know, in order to get a new building. We’re in this like junkie trailer, right? Any they’re like, “Oh. Well, let’s see what we can do to help you.” So they hang up and then they call back, “Yeah, we really want Carly there. So what do you guys need?” And Magda is like, “Shit. What do I ask for?” And she pulled out her whole Austin Powers thing, “$1 million.” So she just asked for a million bucks on the spot. Done. Literally like, you know, a five minute phone call.

Jason Bradford  

That’s the person who’s your friend? Magda? 

Asher Miller  

Yeah, see . . . Why don’t you fundraise like this? Where’s our million dollars? That’s 2001. That’s like $2 million now. Right? $3 million. It just goes to show, right? When there’s self interest there the money can flow. So they had this even, and I just remember Magda talking about that. And she was also talking about, you know, she had Bill Clinton there and she had Carly Fiorina there. And she had all these kids from the local community and like they didn’t want them to get upstaged. And then they also had Jesse Jackson, as part of I don’t know if you guys remember the Rainbow Coalition. This big coalition going with a lot of different groups that were working on economic justice issues and other things. And so he was there. And Magda had to moderate this panel- Of egos.  With them afterwards. And they sat at this table, and she had like the microphone. They didn’t want the microphone on the table. So the other microphone was in her lap, kind of. And Jesse Jackson kept wanting to talk, and eventually just yanked the microphone out of her lap, and started talking into microphone. And she had to like literally grab the microphone out of this guy’s hands. And she was like in her 20s, or something doing This. But yeah, I’m jealous. I wish I could- 

Jason Bradford  

Replicate that somehow. 

Asher Miller  

I wish I could replicate that somehow. But obviously, that’s not the reason I bring up the story. Really, I bring it up because we’re gonna be talking about Bill Clinton. The man of the hour on that day.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, he’s just putting a punctuation mark on the whole legacy that he was leaving behind, right? I mean, that’s pretty much what we want to hit. Well, we’ve got a lot to say, but we got a lot of the history of this from one particular scholar. And that’s Lily Geisler, who wrote this book very recently actually, March 2022. It’s called “Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality.” It covers a lot of what we’re going to talk about. So highly recommend that if you want to do a deeper dive. The other thing with Clinton, we’re going to kind of skip a lot of what we normally do with these phalse prophets because we’re just kind of assuming that our listeners have some familiarity with this guy. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. Single mom in Arkansas, got a brother who has had some down and outs. Yeah, we know the whole story. 

Rob Dietz  

Two-term president.

Asher Miller  

Single mom? Oh, you mean his mom? I was like, Bill Clinton is not a single mom. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we know his background. 

Rob Dietz  

And “I’m just the guy who likes to have a little bit of sex now and then. That’s all.”

Jason Bradford  

“Just a red-blooded American man.”

Rob Dietz  

So yeah, we’re not really going to delve into his background. So yeah, why don’t you tell us, Asher, why we’ve got him here. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. Which we’ll get into what that means as we go through the show. Yeah. So they call themselves kind of the New Democrats with this Democratic Leadership Council. And here’s how it’s framed in the book by Lilly Geismer: “In the wake of Ronald Reagan’s reelection in 1985, the political strategist, Al Fromm founded the Democratic Leadership Council with an inaugural membership of 41 people, including 14 senators and 17 representatives. Of that group, two members were non-white, and none were women. Only four were not from the Sunbelt.” So the deal here is that these folks are not just about beating Republicans, but they really want to shift the Democratic Party itself.

Asher Miller  

Yeah. I mean, I will just say he was governor of Arkansas and two term president in the United States, right. But the reason we picked him as our as our phalse prophet for this go around is actually not so much about him. You know, there’s been a lot of talk about Bill Clinton. We’ll talk about him a little bit more in some things he specifically did. But, when I think about it, like, okay, this is a phalse prophet, but I want to talk about actually the church. What’s the church behind the Prophet? And that is really the topic of today’s conversation. The church of the Democratic Leadership Council. And their gospel, which is the gospel of the third way.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah. Well, and then Clinton becomes the chair this thing in 1990. And he went on kind of a whistle stop or barnstorming tour around the US in 1990 and 91.

Jason Bradford  

I saw that — I was there. I was in St. Louis and it was a real swing state.

Asher Miller  

Oh really? 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, he was there a couple of times.

Rob Dietz  

He was honing that DLC message, which of course became his presidential campaigning message.

Jason Bradford  

I saw him kiss a baby. I’m not kidding. I’m not kidding. Right in front of me at a farmers market. I know.

Rob Dietz  

I’m thinking poor baby. You don’t know where those lips have been. So Clinton was also assigned the task as head of this DLC, he was assigned the task of finding the next presidential candidate. And well, I think we all know who he picked. I have this vision in my head of him like in an interview room, and there’s like a lineup of people wanting to be president. He’s interviewing and he’s like, “So tell me, what are your qualifications. ‘Scuze me – I gotta go to the bathroom.” And he’s there in the bathroom looking in the mirror. He’s like, “Oh, hello cutie pie. You’d make a good candidate.” He just dismisses the rest of the room, and it’s all history from there.

Asher Miller  

So apparently, as far as I know, Dick Cheney kind of did the same thing. Dick Cheney, when George W. Bush was elected, or was preparing his campaign, Dick Cheney was tasked with finding him the right VP candidate. So I guess he took a page out of Clinton’s book, you know?

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, there you go. No, I think, you know, there are no real new ideas, right? You’re talking about stealing the idea for fundraising.

Asher Miller  

What did he say to himself in the mirror? “I’m gonna shoot you in the face.”

Jason Bradford  

Oh, Clinton was definitely this charismatic figure, right? He was a good talker and stuff. And I remember this election well, because not only did you have Clinton and Bush Sr., but you had Ross Perot.  Oh yeah. Ross was amazing.

Rob Dietz  

“I’m gonna go in there and shake everything up. I’m a business man. I know how to do this.”

Jason Bradford  

Oh, he was great. He was an awesome character. And of course, the vice presidential candidates were great. And Saturday Night Live had a whole bunch of bits. Dan Quayle with, you know – 

Rob Dietz  

Admiral Stockdale, I believe.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, and Al Gore. And so, anyway, it was a good time. These are my glory years. I was in grad school at that time. But anyway, he ends up, Clinton ends up winning the 1992 presidential election with only 43% of the popular vote because Ross Perot was actually quite a candidate. You know, he was talking about “Giant sucking sounds.” You could do the . . . “If we have NAFTA we’re gonna be . . .”

Rob Dietz  

I just remember him saying, “If you want chicken or potato chips, don’t vote for me.” 

Jason Bradford  

Okay? What does that mean?

Asher Miller  

That’s pretty random.

Rob Dietz  

I have no idea what that means. It had something to do with, I think the chicken maybe had to do with Tyson and Arkansas with Clinton. I don’t know what the potato chip – Oh, It’s got to be Frito Lay in Dallas for Bush. 

Asher Miller  

Jesus, man. 

Jason Bradford  

Oh okay. That’s even in the 90s not the 80s and you still figured it. I’m proud of you. 

Rob Dietz  

What a campaign message. Unbelievable. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. So anyway, those were good times. 

Asher Miller  

It’s because in some ways, he was like a precursor to Trump. Ross Perot had a lot of . . . 

Jason Bradford  

Populist business guy, kind of protectionist in some ways. Yeah.

Asher Miller  

“Tell them like it is.” Okay, so Clinton wins. Right? Well, why does this matter? What’s the deal with the the New Democrats, the Democratic Leadership Council? So let’s just talk about their declaration in 1990. They issued something called the New Orleans Declaration. And in it they basically state that the fundamental mission of the Democratic Party is to expand opportunity, not government, because economic growth is a prerequisite to expanding opportunity for everyone. From there it followed that the free market regulated in the public interest is the best engine of general prosperity. So the core idea, I think, is what we want to get into.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, so it was very clear that the difference between these new Democrats and the old Democrats, and you saw a lot of this in the campaign leading up to him getting the nomination. But Clinton really believed in investing in free trade and new markets, and technology, the computer chips, and all this sort of stuff. And adding internet and connectivity to create higher paying jobs. And he talked a lot about private public partnerships and innovation to meet people’s needs. And therefore, being able to shrink the size of government and kind of outsource a lot of government services to the private sector or nonprofit sectors to increase efficiency of delivery of services. And transforming these, you know, reforming a welfare state and advocating a lot for what they call personal responsibility. So anyway, that was sort of the platform and the methods and these core ideas of these New Democrats.

Asher Miller  

It part of it was a political strategy, right. I mean, it was a shift away from sort of the old basically coalition, you know, of unions and working poor, shifting more towards kind of white, more affluent suburban electorate, the aspiring middle. Partly because they saw you know, how Reagan had been an incredibly popular president running on sort of this like free market message and growth and all that stuff. And so they’re trying to appeal to that group, stressing economic dynamism and free trade, and bracing the tech sector. And so it was really about kind of splitting away from the old political strategy, creating a new strategy to try to take votes away essentially from the Republican Party.

Jason Bradford  

Bring back the Reagan Democrats kind of thing.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah. Well, and it worked incredibly well because in a landslide victory of 43%, ere he comes into office. And I think what sums it up really is his own words in his ’93 inauguration speech, he said, “We must do what America does best offer more – ” Okay, I’m gonna quit. “Offer more opportunity to all and demand more responsibility from all. It is time to break the bad habit of expecting something for nothing from our government or from each other. Let us all take more responsibility not only for ourselves and our families, but for our communities and our country.” And there is no better spokesperson for personal responsibility than Bill Clinton.

Jason Bradford  

I could totally see the appeal, of course, you know. People are trapped in poverty and cycles. And you think, you know, we’ve got to figure out a way to have them lift themselves up in a sense. So this is sort of this cry for that.

Asher Miller  

This is not just rhetoric, right? It’s not just a campaign slogan, not just a way of trying to attract suburban white voters. I think this is something that they genuinely believed in. And they tried to put into practice, you know, directly in terms of policymaking.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah. I mean, if we want to go into these policies, you’ve got to start with the economy, right? And one of the key economic pieces of all of this is globalization. So Clinton is well known for signing into law the North American Free Trade Agreement that happened right away pretty much in 1993.

Jason Bradford  

And Gore was a huge champion for that. He was always stumping for that.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah. And of course, that’s called NAFTA for the acronym. And it created the world’s largest free trade zone. So at the time, Clinton said he hoped that the agreement would also, I guess we’ve already hit this theme, their people would copy it, right? That we’d have other nations working toward an even broader world trade juggernaut. 

Asher Miller  

Which definitely happened. 

Rob Dietz  

An interesting thing about it getting pushed through Congress is that more Republicans voted for it than the Democrats, even though you got it being pushed by the President.

Asher Miller  

Well, and that’s part of that shift that hadn’t quite happened yet in the Democratic Party. 

Rob Dietz  

Yeah. Well, and then, you know, Clinton was in office for the full two terms. And in his final year in office, he signed free trade agreements in Africa and Asia as well. And he really glossed over human rights issues and worker protection issues, kind of this whole, what you were talking about Jason. You know, we’re going to give you this responsibility, and you can pull yourself up. He kind of does the same with companies. He says, “Well, we just encourage them to self-regulate and embrace market capitalism.” And you know, “Everything will turn out just fine. 

Asher Miller  

Well it did, didn’t it?

Rob Dietz  

Well, I don’t know. What’s this episode about?

Jason Bradford  

Well, you know, and the unions really didn’t like Clinton very much. The labor movement had been frustrated with them from the beginning. There weren’t much, you know, labor standards in his free trade agreements. So you get by 1999, the protests of the World Trade Organization meeting called the Battle of Seattle. And, you know, we’re about five or six hours from Seattle down here in Oregon, and Eugene is not that far away. And some of the main, you know, vandals were anarchists from Eugene.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, representing Oregon up there in the Battle of Seattle.

Jason Bradford  

And Friends of the Earth noted, quote, “The WTO seems to be on a crusade to increase private profit at the expense of all other considerations, including the wellbeing and quality of life of the mass of the world’s people.” And of course, it was also the Friends of the Earth was really involved because of environmental concerns. They could see, what happens later is of course, you know, palm oil plantations and the Amazon getting razed, and shrimp farms everywhere taking out mangrove forests. They could foresee all the destruction of the wildlife.

Asher Miller  

And massive air pollution in cities where they didn’t put regulations.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. So it wasn’t like people didn’t know. 

Asher Miller  

But it wasn’t just you know, you talked about vandals there. There’s definitely busting windows and shit going on there, but there are a lot of folks that we know that are well known names now that kind of cut their teeth there. Naomi Klein, Jerry Mander, who’s someone that we know and love who’s been involved in environmental sustainability efforts and a bunch of other progressive causes for a long time. Those protests really galvanized kind of a whole generation of people. Yeah, they were doing really constructive things too. I remember Jerry was doing teach-ins. You know, just trying to make people more aware of some of the issues at stake. And outsourcing of jobs because it’s cheaper to do it in a place where they don’t have environmental regulations and you know, just stuff like that that you really ought to know. Okay, so we got the Clinton administration embracing globalization of industry, which obviously preceded the Clinton administration. Right? I think part of the rationale for them and their thinking, and this was even some progressive folks that are like Robert Reich who was part of the administration – Sort of thought, you know, this is kind of inevitable. These jobs are gonna get offshored, these kind of manufacturing jobs. So we need to shift our economy and sort of embrace new opportunities. They talked about sunrise industries instead of Sunset industries. And if, you know, we focus and invest a lot in technology and productivity, you know, then we could create these jobs. You know, there were high paying jobs or sort of post-industrial. We would turn coal miners and JC Penney workers into computer coders, right. Back to what I was talking about with the digital divide stuff and Plugged In.

Rob Dietz  

What if you didn’t want to be a computer coder? Too bad, huh?

Asher Miller  

Yeah. Well, and this is no joke or coincidence. Remember, you know, Al Gore was sort of infamous for saying that he invented the internet? It’s directly tied to the investments.

Jason Bradford  

At DARPA and stuff.

Asher Miller  

Yeah, that the administration was making things and because they…

Jason Bradford  

But prior to the Clinton era, in other words, back in the 80s, even then there was a lot of work going into this.

Asher Miller  

They saw this as kind of the future of the American economy.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, the technology had gotten to a point now where now we can commercialize stuff and really spread it.

Rob Dietz  

Well and Clinton, it’s well known that he really loved it and embraced it. I mean, he was like, “Hey Al, this thing you invented . . . You know what kind of websites you can get on this? Look at all these beautiful women.” Okay, sorry. I gotta stop doing that. It’s too easy. It’s too easy.

Asher Miller  

It’s easy, but kind of deserved.

Rob Dietz  

I actually, I really hate it, especially when men in power abuse that power. It is just so loathsome. Yeah. So maybe we’ll keep going with this thread. Okay, so just a quick summary here, you got globalization, you got anti-union, you got the embrace of technology, but the other big one, and another loathsome thing is the financialization that happens under Clinton. And by that, I mean the banks and the financial players all got more power. Clinton signed all of these pro-banking laws into effect. And it actually got to the point where the American Banking Association wrote that the 103rd Congress will be remembered as the first congress in recent memory to pass clean pro-banking legislation. So you know, the banking industry is really excited and a lot of his appointees for Treasury and Fed, maybe some of these names you’d recognize, like Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan – 

Asher Miller  

They’re all still – I mean, not Alan Greenspan, but God, Larry Summers is still out there peddling. 

Jason Bradford  

Harvard, right?

Rob Dietz  

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so all of these guys, they were actually instrumental in passing this act in 1999 that repealed the Glass Steagall Act. And if you remember what that is, that was the Act passed a long time ago that had separated commercial banking from investment banking.

Asher Miller  

By a long time ago, we are talking about the Great Depression. And there was a reason why they passed that then.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, you basically didn’t want bad behavior in the investing world. And, you know, by the time Clinton is coming along, they’re like, “No, we’re gonna get rid of this.” A quote from him, he said, “The Glass Steagall Law is no longer appropriate for the economy in which we live,” which I guess is like a Gambler’s economy. He also said, “Today, what we’re doing is modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down these antiquated laws, and granting banks significant new authority.”

Asher Miller  

What could go wrong? 

Rob Dietz  

Well, and when he said it you know he’s like, “Derivatives, baby.” Just like, let them run free. And the way I look at it, it’s kind of like letting the foxes run the hen house, right? I mean, you basically said to the banks, you got all the money, you got all the power, now go and do whatever it is you want with it. And I would be remiss if I didn’t include this little coda to the story, which is, I think Bill Clinton really profited off of all this too. I mean, his net worth now is like 80 to $90 million, depending on what sources you look at. Yeah, the investment bonanza that happened. I think he pretty directly benefited from that.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. And It’s helpful to step back and realize what a shift this is, and you know, what is known as the social contract.  So we mentioned the banking laws and the New Deal, right. But there was also a lot of, of course, social welfare programs in the New Deal. And the government essentially was going to allow business profits, but it didn’t expect business to deal with all the troubles in society. So hence, there’s a basic need then if this is going to make a lot of money, but not handle all the issues that are in there out in the world. Governments would tax and they would come up with programs that would redistribute wealth to those left behind or unable to work for whatever reason. And so the New Democrats basically didn’t believe in that system. And they thought that instead, they can make businesses either invest in places they normally wouldn’t, and using tax breaks for enterprise zones, community development banks. Or they would provide incentives for private foundations. So these people are making tons of money setting up this whole foundation industrial complex, and then people have to apply for grants to get help. And also, of course, the outsourcing of services to private interests, whether for a nonprofit. All those things started happening at a rapid pace during this era, just sort of breaking the previous social contract.

Rob Dietz  

Man, it kind of parallels what we talked about with Jack Welch, right? Where the corporation used to provide for its employees and the community it was in, but then it became all about profit, and then forget that. It’s like this is a bigger parallel movement going on in government. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, that is interesting.

Asher Miller  

Yeah. And it was sort of a belief that government was bloated. It probably wasn’t the best way of meeting needs, right? It could be more efficient and productive by outsourcing that stuff.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, and there may be some truth to that in certain circumstances, right? Bureaucracies can get kind of stagnant and unwieldy. I mean, you can sort of see why, to some extent, you might need to shake up a little bit. 

Asher Miller  

There are some key big assumptions there. One is the assumption that a rising tide will lift all boats, so to speak, right? Like, it’s okay for corporations, you go into partnership with them, they can make a profit. But you know, in the process, everyone will sort of benefit, you know. There’s sort of a belief that that’s going to happen. And kind of the benevolent tendency of the market or something to meet needs.

Jason Bradford  

But it’s not very profitable to meet people’s basic needs is what you end up finding out.

Rob Dietz  

Well, the real issue, though, is there’s all these consequences in other areas that government usually intervenes or steps in and helps out with. And one of the big ones that’s, I think, really sad is in the world of crime. So what was going on here with Clinton coming in is This crime bill in ’94, which was the biggest crime legislation in U.S. history. Basically, they just wanted to show that we’re as tough as Republicans. And so we’re going to be really hard on criminals. And they ramp up all these laws that you know, like the three strikes in your out kind of thing. So if you have three minor drug possession cases against you, you end up with a life sentence. 

Asher Miller  

Disastrous.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, and the prison industrial complex, like you said. A lot of that was outsourced to private companies. And then of course, this had disproportionate impacts on African Americans with 12% of U.S. population African American, but 37% of the incarcerated population. It’s actually a global tragedy when you look at the number of incarcerated people and the percentage that are black in America. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, it’s pretty astonishing. Well, the other thing, you know, he’s really well known for his sort of changing in and how welfare programs work, of course, right? So during his re-election campaign, Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. 

Rob Dietz  

Wow. That’s a mouthful. 

Jason Bradford  

I know. I’m kind of tired right now. So that included strict time and term limits for how long recipients could be on welfare. It ended up cutting $24 billion in food stamps, and they kept immigrants from qualifying. So this was a big shift as well.

Asher Miller  

Yeah. And they created these block grants for states, basically giving money to states to figure out for themselves how they wanted to spend money on their own welfare programs. But it built in like financial incentives for states to cut the number of people on welfare. And then leaving it to the states you know, you’re gonna get a situation where maybe not always the best outcomes are done in all places. A recent case of this in Mississippi, where I don’t know if you guys have heard about the scandal of basically, there’s a pool of funding that the state of Mississippi has for welfare. And they’re like, I think if not the worst, among the worst, in terms of actual distribution of funds to people in need. They make it almost impossible for people. Again, unless you are a multimillion dollar quarterback that was highly successful in the NFL. 

Jason Bradford  

What are you talking about?

Asher Miller  

Brett Favre.

Jason Bradford  

He got welfare funds from Mississippi?

Asher Miller  

So there’s this huge scandal of basically taking money out of the welfare pot and using it to like fund the building of athletic facilities at like his daughter’s University. A bunch of other shit, right? Yeah. It’s beautiful. 

Rob Dietz  

And in the world of accountability, we have a research project that was done years later. 20 years after this welfare reform, the National Public Radio’s marketplace wealth and poverty team looked at, how did we do? And they found that the welfare rolls did drop dramatically.

Jason Bradford  

Okay. I’m clapping. I’m applauding now. 

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, you had 4.4 million families in 1996, and that was down to 1.6 million in 2014. So, done. 

Jason Bradford  

Well, that’s usually successful. 

Asher Miller  

And that’s not even accounting for the rise in the population in this country, right? 

Jason Bradford  

Right. Yeah, this is great. Great job, Bill. 

Rob Dietz  

Incredible. But oh, sorry there’s a “but” as usual. “I really liked buts. I gotta tell you.” There’s a but. The number of families living in poverty stayed the same. And the number experiencing deep poverty increased over the same period. So it’s like we’re dropping people off of the list, but we’re not helping in any way. 

Asher Miller  

Well, now they’re invisible. They don’t count.

Jason Bradford  

But the numbers got better. 

Rob Dietz  

Yeah. “I told you I liked buts. Big ones.”

Asher Miller  

Well, I mean, you could see parallels with things like, you know, unemployment, right? You look at a fixed number like women, but you don’t look at the quality of the jobs or the pay.

Jason Bradford  

Or the people that are discouraged. 

Asher Miller  

The people that have stopped looking for jobs. 

Rob Dietz  

The ones – That’s my favorite. People, they’re not part of the unemployed if they’re just living on the street. Exactly, they’re not looking for work. So, yeah.

Jason Bradford  

What do they call that? Are they called discouraged workers or whatever? It basically means you could be my age and just say, given up.

Rob Dietz  

I mean, Biden was recently touting in the State of the Union about how few people are unemployed. He’s like, it’s the lowest in decades, or whatever. It’s like, well, It’s just because you count it differently. 

Asher Miller  

You know, we’re talking about crime and we’re talking about welfare and these things. And in some ways, I see those as consistent with a movement to the right political response. You had Reagan who was a highly successful or popular president before. Remember his whole welfare queens thing? I mean, there’s a huge amount that the Republicans have been pushing for. And again, with this third way approach, you know, that these New Democrats took of trying to appeal to maybe more of a suburban middle class, you go after crime so you look like you’re tough on crime. You go after welfare. Do you know what I mean? But there’s other things that the Clinton administration did that I think were more really around their own sort of orientation and how they thought about things. So like, public housing is an example. Clinton promised that he would end public housing as we know it, right. And one of the ways he went out to do that is they instituted a voucher program, right? So people get vouchers that they could use to get rent somewhere. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, instead of saying, live here in this public housing complex.

Asher Miller  

Which, you know, there’s a direct kind of correlation between that and charter schools as well. This whole idea of let’s privatize this, just give them money to spend, you know. And they’ll do what’s best for themselves, right? Never mind what constraints they might have. Never mind the fact that there’s institutional racism in many cases that limits people’s options and choices of where they could live. So they did that. The other thing that they did was they did a review of all public housing stock to determine qhat should be kept and restored or what should be torn down. And obviously, there are huge issues with this. You’ve got these enormous public housing complexes. These projects that, in many cases, are pretty horrific places, difficult places to live. So I think that you know, maybe the motivation is a good one to sort of assess. 

Jason Bradford  

Get rid of the worst, or whatever. 

Asher Miller  

And think about how to do this differently, right? 

Rob Dietz  

I can picture Clinton out there on one of those machines with a wrecking ball just driving through and knocking these buildings down, “Here we go baby!”

Asher Miller  

But, you know, they did away with this. There was a there was a requirement that for every housing unit that was taken off, you know, taking away from the stock, they had to replace it. So at least a one to one Well, they did away with that requirement. What they did instead was they’re like, the conditions that people are living in you know, the physical circumstances that they’re in are not conducive for them to like, basically come out of poverty, right. They’re depressing or unsafe or whatever. So instead of densely packed complexes, let’s have low density units. 

Jason Bradford  

Put them in a normal neighborhood. 

Asher Miller  

Yeah, let’s create nicer conditions for them. But here’s the rub. They have fewer units, right? So great for people maybe able to get into those units. That’s an improvement in terms of their conditions, right? But now you’ve just made a bunch of people houseless. Because you actually made fewer of these.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. So in many cases, they would in general love to use markets and these public private partnerships to meet basic needs. And so this was sort of an economic empowerment agenda to tackle poverty and racial discrimination through programs like micro enterprises. So there was a fascinating read about this because they were trying to turn everyone into an entrepreneur, and get them to save and invest in their own businesses. And so they did a lot of work actually trying to bring banks into communities that didn’t used to have banks and sponsor investment. And in some ways, you could say, “Okay, well, that’s interesting,” right.” But they didn’t create then the surrounding infrastructure that would allow people to succeed. Maybe it’s education, or whatever.

Rob Dietz  

Well, and let’s just guess when the banks came into the neighborhoods, who ended up with the money? The banks. 

Jason Bradford  

Well, the interesting thing is that they, these banks, often were below market. And they had committees of local people helping with loans and all that. So I think there was a lot of good intention, honestly. And it drew from success in Chicago with Shore Bank and sort of the micro loans that were taking place in India. But you know, it’s explained in Geismar’s book, quote, “These programs collectively treated poverty and racial discrimination as a market failure. These initiatives rested on the premise that access to the private sector, especially the banking system, could replace traditional forms of aid and that credit was an elixir that would magically erase the years of exploitation and racial segregation.” So that’s what I mean. I mean, it’s like, there’s so much more that goes into an entrepreneurial community than just showing up with loans. And so that’s what I think got missed in essence.

Asher Miller  

It was not as systematic or systemic of an approach to thinking about how to address racism, right. You know, institutional structural racism.

Jason Bradford  

Think of how complex it is to start and run a business, and you have an education system that’s failed, you have a community that’s sort of impoverished. Okay, we’re gonna start giving you business loans and expect that you’re going to succeed. Succeeding in the most difficult environment, right? Meanwhile, though, a lot of the social programs you normally relied on are getting dropped. So you can see how there are a lot of hope. But in that context, a lot of the especially rural areas where the economy was pretty stressed to begin with. It’s hard to make a go.

Asher Miller  

So we talked about, and here we are shitting all over Clinton for his policies. But we talked about the real-world implication of the implementation of these DLC, New Democrats policy ideas. But I also want to talk about the politics of it all a little bit. Because I think there’s a real lasting impact of that as well. And I want to specifically talk about sort of the third way. Because if you think about Clinton as being the sort of the Prophet of all of this, you know, the Prophet of the Democratic Leadership Council church. The third way was sort of the political gospel that they espoused.

Jason Bradford  

So I guess we need to define that a bit and contrast it with the first way, the second way, right? So kind of to review the first way, you can think of the traditional, maybe liberal, democrats that believed that you tax and spend on welfare, protectionism is okay, you need you need your own industry, etc. The second way is a more libertarian republican, stricter business interests, believing in free markets and sort of Social Darwinism, right. You know, you really shouldn’t be helping a lot of people. Maybe let the church help people. And so this third way was presented as a sort of hybrid. It’s wanting some social welfare to be taken care of, but mostly via business interest taking the lead. Maybe through government nudging and cajoling. But a lot of this was calls of self-regulation and market oriented solutions, but willing maybe to take less profit to do good instead of just maximizing profits. 

Asher Miller  

Yeah, that worked out well. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. Now today, you see this still ongoing with like, you know, the socially responsible investing movement or ESG funds, and environmental social and government sort of standards for corporations and stock picks and that kind of thing.

Rob Dietz  

I think we’re giving them a little too much credit with letting them get away with the third way as they’re labeled. Third way is really just, “to be.” They really lean that far over. And you saw that with the ending of progressive coalitions. Those guys were not into the idea that businesses are going to get it done for us. That we’re going to take care of special problems and that self-regulation is gonna get us there. But they were just, you know, basically disempowered through all of this.

Asher Miller  

And I think the sort of political calculus for them was, you know, let’s keep the votes of communities of color and social progressives by emphasizing kind of culture war stuff in threats that were legitimate threats that are coming from the right. But, appealing to white college educated middle class with sort of neoliberal economic policies, right. So we don’t have to meet the actual essential needs of the working class. We can have them on board in a sense because we’ve got these cultural issues maybe that get them on board. Or identity politics.

Jason Bradford  

Or the Republicans are just worse. And so they’re going to vote for us anyway. There was a lot of calculus like that. And so what’s interesting, then, is that there was really a global spread of this third way politics. After Clinton’s victory, Labor Party leaders from the U.K. came to the U.S. to learn from these New Democrats. And they rebranded themselves, get this, New Labor.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah. This podcast, by the way, is now called New Crazy Town.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, and so you think about what happened under the Blair government and what’s still ongoing of course,

Rob Dietz  

That’s also still called The Blair Witch Project, right? Just a mess.

Jason Bradford  

Well, this really ended up going global. There were convenings held to spread the gospel to Germany and other European countries during the 90s and 2000s. So this kind of has become the dominant form of politics.

Asher Miller  

Yep. Basically, if you think about sort of the lasting impacts of it, this third way essentially just doubled down, as you were saying, Rob, on the neoliberal playbook, right. It’s globalization, its technology and service-oriented economies, it’s emphasizing productivity and corporate self regulation, but leads to growing inequality and a growing schism between the white working class in particular in and the college educated, right?

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. And I’m glad you brought up the doubling down because this is basically, you know, we’ve got to go back to the taxonomic treatment of the phalse prophets. And I believe that Clinton would fall out as a double downer species.

Asher Miller  

Okay, explain what that is again.

Jason Bradford  

Well, you know, doubling down in a sense, looking at the problems of the world as they are, and essentially then, basically convincing everybody that we need to do basically more of what we’ve been doing in the past, only harder, to solve the problems that were created by what we did in the past. So pretty much, you know, Steven Pinker was the one that we talked about early on. Kind of really believing in progress and these markets and stuff. So Clinton is taking that into politics in a big way.

Rob Dietz  

And look at this: I’m going to tie this back to our Season Three: Hidden Drivers. If you’re thinking of cognitive biases, it’s like the fallacy of prior investment. It’s like, we’ve already gone this far and It’s not really working. But don’t worry, we just gotta go this far because we’ve already done that. I feel like there’s a real parallel there. 

Asher Miller  

Yes, I think so. And we didn’t talk about this that much. But when Clinton comes in, you know, it’s sort of the time of like, the end of history. The idea of the Soviet Union had collapsed. And now, basically, market driven capitalism was the dominant system in the world, and all these markets are going to open up. And so like, on some level, some of these guys probably thought, “Well, this is inevitable,” you know? All these jobs are gonna get offshored. So, we should just take advantage of these emerging opportunities in new markets, and let’s teach everyone to code and it’s all gonna be good.

Jason Bradford  

It’s interesting, you know. These guys grew up during the era . . . if you think about how old Clinton is, they saw the 70s, they saw the oil embargoes and all that. And I would have reacted to that as, okay, we got it. We’ve got to wean ourselves off the sauce. We’ve got to basically, you know, focus more on not worrying about getting all of our widgets from overseas and reducing complexity and . . . 

Rob Dietz  

Ah, you and your logic over there. 

Asher Miller  

This is why you would have had only one term as president.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, exactly. But they essentially, you know, believe, “No, no. This means that we need to expand global trade and get better at it and really integrate.” And if you think about it, look back on the Clinton era with some fondness because it was such a boom time in many ways, and I was young and I could travel the world during my graduate work and cheap flights. It was incredible. Well, you know oil was $5 – $10 per barrel.

Rob Dietz  

That’s nuts. Because today it’s, as we’re recording this, about $80 a barrel. But, it’s been well over $100 in recent times, and that caused this big inflation problem. And yeah, $5 – $10!

Asher Miller  

Yeah, it was unbelievably cheap. And I remember pumping my gas and for less than a buck a gallon.

Rob Dietz  

I remember I had 1000 barrels just stored in my basement. Five bucks at the corner store.

Asher Miller  

You couldn’t sell it to anyone. No one wanted it.

Jason Bradford  

And do you guys remember the first time you started using email on the internet? And how like, amazing that felt. How quickly and easy you get information and how quick and easy it was to communicate?

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, no, I honestly remember when I went to college exchanging a letter with a friend who was going to college actually in Oregon. I was in Pennsylvania. And It’s like, you’re waiting two weeks to like hear back from them and when email came out, like the next year, or whatever. It was over for letters.  Yeah, done. 

Jason Bradford  

I know. So I think we need to put his legacy in the context of these material conditions. He was elected during a very unusual period in history. Like you’re saying, the Soviet Union collapsed, you know, so we’re no longer investing so much to fight communism and the evil empire. And we have the cheap oil, and we have these new technologies, sure enough.

Asher Miller  

And we had the cheap oil because of all the investments that were made in the 80s after we had the previous oil.

Jason Bradford  

Exactly. So there’s a lag and next thing the North Sea oil is flowing, Alaska oil as well.

Asher Miller  

I think the reason that matters a lot is, you know, people do look back at those times. I mean, we went out to the workforce really in that era. And I think there have been studies done that sort of, when you come of age and enter the workforce, the economic conditions of the time really dictate your political orientation for kind of the rest of your life. And those days, they were heady. The economy was growing like gangbusters, you know, the market was going up. We had all this technology stuff that was happening. Clinton got a lot of credit for reducing the deficit and all that stuff. And because of the circumstances that he was in, I mean, yes, he instituted policies that had direct immediate impact. But a lot of it is stuff that sort of inherited, you know, circumstances that are inherited. People look back and say, “Well, all of the philosophy, the approach, the platform, those are the right ones. Because look what missions were like.”

Rob Dietz  

“It worked.” I think that’s a through line for a lot of our phalse prophets is a failure to attribute the real cause of the conditions that they experienced. And a lot of it, of course, always turns back to the fossil fuel bonanza. And I think another through line here with these phalse prophets, and another takeaway I got from thinking about Clinton and talking to you guys about it, is the frickin’ hubris that these people have. Look, everybody was kind of enamored with technology. I shouldn’t say everybody, but a lot of people and, you know, we came through school programs, like you say, emails coming on, we’re doing computer models, spreadsheets, GIS, whatever.

Jason Bradford  

All of that. I remember all of that.

Rob Dietz  

You could use it as a tool. And usually, if you went and got a white-collar job, you’re spending a lot of time on a computer. We’re looking at computer screens right now, whatever. But the hubris comes in, not with like, feeling good about technology. It’s this belief that I can deploy technology, or I can deploy a business practice and it’s just going to run exactly how I think it’s gonna run. It’s gonna make everybody’s life better. It’s like they don’t even bother to check to see if it frickin’ worked or not. And then you can end up with a huge mess, and despite that, you still keep going with the same program.

Asher Miller  

I mean, that was true in Clinton’s case with the microlending stuff. They were doing that in Arkansas when he was governor. And he’s like, “Oh, this is a great idea.” And it wasn’t working. 

Jason Bradford  

It didn’t work very well.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, they remind me of like a good con man or something. You know, where like, somebody like that, it’s about how you say it. If you say it with confidence, then it must be true. It’s like Clinton goes on the whistlestop tour and says this stuff over and over again and then just comes to believe his own bullshit.

Jason Bradford  

Now you mentioned hubris, which is great, because I’m doing initial phylogenetic sort of evolutionary analysis of the phalse prophet species and if I look at the cladogram, and I look at what the morpheme for the clade of phalse prophets is. Hubris. There’s one listener who’s like, I know what that means.  No there isn’t. 

Asher Miller  

There’s not a single listener? 

Rob Dietz  

What the hell are you talking about?

Jason Bradford  

Okay, I’m just . . . Forget it. We can just wait for my paper to come out. And it’ll all be clear on that. Nevermind. Let’s move on.

Rob Dietz  

I will. I’m holding my breath waiting to read that.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, hubris is a key. That’s the main point.

Asher Miller  

That’s all we need to know. Okay, so talking about a through line. Here’s something that to me feels really important about Clinton’s legacy, him as a phalse prophet of something. If you think about it, it really took Clinton and the New Democrats to fully institutionalize neoliberalism. 

Jason Bradford  

Good for them. 

Asher Miller  

So there’s a great statement by a guy named Nelson Lichtenstein and The American Prospect a few years ago. 

Rob Dietz  

“We did it, baby.”

Asher Miller  

And here’s what he said. He said, “Although conventional, historical, and journalistic thinking places Ronald Reagan at the center of the conservative turn in American trade and fiscal policy, we know the ratification of such a policy turn takes place only when the ostensibly hostile opposition party accommodates and then advances this transformation. And that’s what the administration of Bill Clinton did. Normalize key aspects of the Reagan economic -” 

Rob Dietz  

Well said, Nelson Lichtenstein. 

Asher Miller  

No, it’s true. It’s true. 

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, totally. I mean that. Really well said.

Jason Bradford  

That’s astonishing, because you think about how hard the Republicans went against Clinton and Democrats ever since then. And it’s like, but they basically did what you wanted them to do. You won. 

Asher Miller  

Yeah. It’s couple of different flavors of neoliberalism right now.

Jason Bradford  

And not only did the Republicans win, essentially their policies, but Jesse Jackson, like remember the opening scene, that’s Jesse Jackson on tour with Bill Clinton after he has been totally dissed. And all the progressive coalitions, the Rainbow Coalition he represented, was completely just ostracized and dismantled and dismissed. And now here he is, trying to get the financial sector to invest in poor communities. And he’s given up on the government doing anything. He capitulated. 8 years later.

Asher Miller  

Yeah. He had to sort of fall in line. Bringing it back to that, I kind of feel like the story of Plugged In and what happened in East Palo Alto is like a perfect illustration in some ways of the failure of that sort of Clinton and new democratic approach. Because if you think about it, just like the promise of technology and public private partnerships, and new markets. It’s like the perfect emblem. Here, we’re gonna solve the digital divide, and we’re gonna create these work opportunities, you know. Plugged In did have this really cool – 

Jason Bradford  

There’s African American community. 

Asher Miller  

Yeah, we had a cool program where we had young kids who were building websites for paying clients and teaching them how to code and do all this stuff. It was really cool. It really was. But that’s held up as like, this is going to be the vision of the future. It’s gonna solve all these problems. But you look at East Palo Alto now, right? Like two decades before Clinton comes, this is a community that’s 60% Black. 

Jason Bradford  

That’s how I remember it.

Asher Miller  

It’s historically Black. It was actually an amazing community full of gardens. Like the whole town had these incredible gardens because people have these larger lots there. Now 20 years after his visit it’s only 10% Black. 

Jason Bradford  

Wow. 

Asher Miller  

It’s become gentrified, people kicked out. It costs like a million dollars – I’m not even making this up. I think the median home price, you know, until recently was like $955,000 to get a house in East Palo Alto. You know what I mean? 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, that’s amazing. 

Asher Miller  

Yeah. That really served that population of people. And think about this, the very reason Magda to get that $1 million from HP was because Plugged In itself got basically torn out. This historical part of town, Whiskey Gulch, was knocked down. And guess what they put in? A Four Seasons Hotel. That’s what went in its place.

Jason Bradford  

Well, you can use it all year long then, four seasons.

Asher Miller  

And I’m sure all the people that live in East Palo Alto, or did, you know, they could stay there anytime they wanted. No problem. The last thing I would say, and part of the reason I really wanted to talk about Bill Clinton and the New Democrats is I think that there is a real through line of that approach that those politics, the NAFTA stuff, the globalization, direct through line to how we get a character like Donald Trump. But this is how we get a Donald Trump, right? 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah.

Asher Miller  

Because, I mean, think about that Donald Trump ran on, you know. He was anti free trade. He was talking about NAFTA and railing against NAFTA. You know, he was against the free trade agreement with China. He’s been quite protectionist. And he was tapping into a deep anger of many Americans who felt like they had been left behind. You know, left behind by deindustrialization. They’ve been promised good paying tech jobs coding, or whatever the fuck it is. And what did they get? 

Jason Bradford  

And now the AI is going to code for everybody apparently. Well, this is the part of the show where we get to score Clinton on our insufferability index. Okay, so remember 0 to 10. It’s based on three major categories, their intentions, so 0 to 3 for intentions. Are they malevolent or selfish? Do they have good awareness of the polycrisis? High scores are bad. Personality – are they clearly a narcissist jerk? Are they pretty nice, you know, and you’d like to hang out with them? Ideas – complete wackadoodle versus, you know, essentially could be hired by Post Carbon to be part of our think tank. And then there’s a bias for you guys. You throw a 1 in for bias, you know. Just your gut. Alright, so let’s go through . . . 

Asher Miller  

Gotta break these down. 

Jason Bradford  

I know. I always break them down. I try to get various – 

Rob Dietz  

I can go. I’ve seen Clinton speak live. He actually was standing in the bed of a pickup truck at my daughter’s elementary school when he was campaigning for Hillary Clinton when she was running against Barack Obama. And God, what a boring speech. He lost all the Clinton charm that you were talking about earlier, Jason, I was just bored out of my gourd.

Asher Miller  

That’s so interesting, because I would have said on the personality side, definitely an asshole. I mean, there’s shit about him that’s like, look, clearly a womanizing . . . Somebody who abuses power. So seriously high marks there. But you said,  would you want to have a beer with him? I kind of earlier would have wanted to have a beer with him. I remember a speech he gave when he was talking about Kosovo. I don’t know if you guys recall that. You said he was boring. I find him riveting.

Rob Dietz  

That’s the thing. He definitely has that charm charisma piece. I mean, that’s a large way that he got where he was going but I can’t dismiss the part you’re talking about, the abuse of power. He is going to get a pretty high score from me. I think his ideas actually aren’t that off the charts, especially for the time that he came along. I mean, we’re here railing against those ideas, much more than him as a person. But I’m giving him a 7.  Wow that’s high for him. 

Jason Bradford  

I gave him a 5. 

Rob Dietz  

I don’t want much to do with him.

Jason Bradford  

I think he’s a mid-level insufferable.

Asher Miller  

And I’m gonna put him straight at 6. 2 on intentions. Right down the middle. 2 on personality. And 2 on ideas. 

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, maybe I should lower him a point for all the fun I can have making fun of him. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, come on. Give him some credit, man.

Rob Dietz  

“I’m a #1. Come on.”

Melody Allison  

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George  Costanza  

Every decision I’ve ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I wanted it to be. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.

Rob Dietz  

Okay, so here in the do the opposite I really liked where you were going, Asher, by talking about how much of a hero Donald Trump is to you. 

Asher Miller  

Yeah. Absolutely. 

Rob Dietz  

No, but it’s true. You’re actually starting to see this swing back. So that’s really an opposite that’s happening a little bit organically right now. And It’s not just what Trump and the Republicans were doing with trying to oppose free trade agreements. But you will also see it in the Biden administration, kind of going back to, what is it? It’s the first way? I get mixed up. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, yeah. The ole Democrats. 

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, unionization is kind of having a moment right. You’ve got attempts to unionize Amazon warehouses and Starbucks outfits, and in Biden’s rhetoric, he’s kinda supporting it.

Jason Bradford  

State of the Union was all about unionization. 

Rob Dietz  

State of the Union. Haha.

Jason Bradford  

That was funny. Yeah.

Asher Miller  

Yeah. I’m gonna be a little more cynical about that. I mean, to me, its not organic. It’s the conditions in the world that create – So like, the reason why Biden has embraced, I think, and in Democrats you’re seeing sort of like bipartisan support for embracing onshoring and things. Because what we’ve learned from the pandemic are vulnerability to global supply chains and all that.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. 

Rob Dietz  

But It’s also the swing, right? I mean, when all this stuff we’ve been whining about for the last hour, it got so bad for people, they’re like, “Well, yeah, we’re not going to keep doing it that way.”

Asher Miller  

Yeah, in the Union drive, again, there’s been sort of more power in the hands of labor because unemployment was low, so they could get more organized. I’m glad to hear, obviously, you know, rhetoric, and I do think there’s actually things there. There are elements of the Biden administration that are supporting in labor that really are pro-union. And you’re seeing it around their efforts to crack down on monopolies and stuff like that. So there’s some definite progressive elements there. I’m showing my political colors here, obviously. So I’m not gonna poo poo it. I’m just saying I don’t think It’s coming from like, a great aha moment that happened on the part of Biden

Jason Bradford  

Or maybe an “oh shit” moment.

Jason Bradford  

Or maybe an “oh shit” moment.

Asher Miller  

Exactly.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, I mean, in the State of the Union he was talking about not just the great thing about unions, and we need to allow unions to organize. But he also, like you said, onshoring and pledging that the U.S. government is going to buy from American producers and manufacturing. So I mean, yeah, you’re gonna rah, rah, him, but part of me goes, what are we onshoring exactly? You know? Is it going to be the same techno-utopian rah rah kind of bullshit about what we’re going to be manufacturing and growing and prospering? What are we going to be doing? Are we going to be having local sustainable shoe companies, you know? Are the basic needs met?

Asher Miller  

Oh, we have one of those.

Rob Dietz  

That’s the example right here and in Corvallis Yeah, Softstar Shoes is a local manufacturer of shoes. A cobbler. Can you believe it?

Jason Bradford  

I know. 

Asher Miller  

They call their workers elves.

Jason Bradford  

And I think that’s a thing if you think about the previous seasons – I can’t remember which episode. But we talked about the primary, the secondary, the tertiary sector. We need to get more primary and secondary jobs, right. So growing our own food, turning our raw products into useful manufactured goods. I think that’s great. But of course, I want us to recognize that we don’t necessarily need to make the plastic dogshit and vomit that we get from China. 

Rob Dietz  

Well, you’re not going to beat the quality of that imported rubber dogshit anyways.

Jason Bradford  

I know. Forget it. Don’t even compete. 

Asher Miller  

The IP on that. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, we’re gonna try to compete with Taiwan on computer chips, but let’s not joke about this, okay. We’re never going to make it.

Rob Dietz  

It’s a real thing. I mean, It’s hard. I know in the City of Portland a few years back, they tried to do a streetcar company, you know? Producing something that you would want to see more of, or at least certainly a step in the direction of sustainability for your transportation system. They actually did manufacture and sell some street cars, but it’s now defunct. But that’s the kind of stuff we really need to be doing here. 

Jason Bradford  

Oh, definitely.

Asher Miller  

Well, I will say, you know, talking about doing the opposite. There’s things in the, I guess they call it the Inflation Reduction Act, that really is about onshoring, renewable energy production, and manufacturing. We are going to need some of that stuff happening, right? So smart to bring in onshore and, you know, align interests around trying to create economic opportunity, and reduce our vulnerability and dependence on foreign countries or foreign companies. But yeah, It’s a techno-utopian version of manufacturing where we’re basically making a bunch of things that we don’t need. It’s the stuff that’s essential. 

Rob Dietz  

Well, and I think there’s a really important point in all this too, though. If you things back home and you’re making them here, you may see a cost increase, right? Because you’re not part of –

Asher Miller  

Or there should be a cost increase if we stopped externalizing the costs, right?

Rob Dietz  

Exactly. You’re basically doing more of a full cost accounting. And people typically don’t like that. They like to pay their cheap prices. So we need a cultural change in accepting that it’s worth paying for quality. It’s worth paying the real cost of manufacturing something.

Asher Miller  

Yeah. Well, and the other thing around that, too, is the consolidation I think we’re talking about, in onshoring. We talked about re-localizing things. I would also say diversifying is really key if you look at a lot of our industries, including things that are produced locally in the United States. They’re heavily consolidated. Even what you see with like egg prices, which has been an issue, at least right now, at the time of recording, have spiked dramatically. There’s a direct correlation.You can look at the profits of these very small number of very large egg producing companies and the increased costs. So if we diversified those, we relocalized, we had a lot of people doing these things, we’re more resilient, but also probably less opportunity for market manipulation. 

Jason Bradford  

Right. Break up these big monopolies. I think there was some rhetoric around that as well. So that’s interesting. 

Rob Dietz  

Well, and you just launched your plan. A chicken in every backyard. 

Asher Miller  

Exactly. Well, I mean, Vermin Supreme offered a pony to everybody. 

Jason Bradford  

Right. Why not a few chickens? 

Asher Miller  

Yeah, a few chickens. I mean, they’re smaller. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. It’d be more practical than a pony. 

Asher Miller  

And I’d much rather have an egg from a chicken than a pony. Yeah. I want to mention just one other thing in terms of think about doing the opposite, which is almost about redoing what we used to do. And that is renewing the social contract. And I was just thinking about it, you know, Rob, you’d read something that Bill Clinton had said in his first inaugural speech.

Rob Dietz  

“I like big butts.” 

Asher Miller  

It wasn’t that one. That was the second inaugural speech. No. In the first one, he said, quote, “It is time to break the bad habit of expecting something for nothing from our government or from each other.” And I, yeah. I would say do the fucking opposite of that statement. I mean, you know, we should do the opposite by rejecting the notion that the government is just giving people something for nothing. It’s like, this is our money, right? Our collective money. And we have a social contract with each other, or we should, when one of us is in need, right? This is why we pay into Social Security, we pay into other things, right? That we’ll be there collectively to support them, right. So instead of thinking like, “Oh, we’re gonna turn to charitable entities. We’re gonna have these nonprofit organizations who are funded by foundations or corporations that are meeting essential needs. And we’re gonna stop outsourcing all of that, too, in terms of like the responsibility for that.” It’s not like I’m saying the government should provide everything directly itself, but to think that it’s not the role of the government, our dollars, to come to the aid of people when they need it. And the other thing is this idea of not relying on or expecting something for nothing from each other. No. Like, reciprocity and mutual aid, providing support needed to one another. It’s not about a bargain where it’s a transaction, I’ll do this for you, if you do that for me. It’s about being there for one another and when I’m in need, then you’ll be there for me.

Rob Dietz  

Well, and it’s such a frustrating notion of government that it doesn’t . . . You know, we got to break this bad habit of expecting something for nothing. No. We decide together that these are the things that we want to pay for as a society, right. If we think that healthcare is important, we pay for it. If we think that education is important, then we pay for that together. We leave no one out. Everybody gets at least some level of basic service. What’s so wrong with that? I don’t get it.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, I think it is this ideological swing back that may be happening. You see that with health care. I mean, the Clintons, you know, we didn’t mention this in the main rant. But of course, the Clintons did start a conversation in the United States about universal health care. And it didn’t go very far. But Obama picked it up and it went further. And it’s obviously woefully inadequate.

Asher Miller  

Yeah, it wasn’t quite universal. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. But again, that’s the kind of thing where we’re realizing collectively, we should not have to be dealing with these companies making exorbitant profits off of people’s dire needs. And Biden even mentioned, you know, diabetes and Medicare negotiating drug prices. So again, there’s more movement in that direction again. And that’s interesting. And it does go back to the Clintons having some notion of this. But so that’s an interesting, you know, contradiction of their legacy, maybe.

Rob Dietz  

“And listen people, if you really, really want to do the opposite, then go ahead and inhale. Inhale as much as you can, as long as you can. Really hold it in there. It’s what I’m doing with the retirement years.”

Asher Miller  

Thanks for listening. If you made it this far, then maybe you actually liked the show.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, and maybe you even consider yourself a real inhabitant of Crazy Town, someone like us who we affectionately call a Crazy Townie.

Jason Bradford  

If that’s the case, then there’s one very simple thing you can do to help us out. Share the podcast or even just this episode.

Asher Miller  

Yeah, text three people you know who you think will get a kick out of hearing from us bozos.

Rob Dietz  

Or if you want to go way old school then tell them about the podcast face to face.

Jason Bradford  

Please, for the love of God. If enough people listen to this podcast, maybe one day we can all escape from Crazy Town. We’re just asking for three people. A little bit of sharing. We can do this.

Jason Bradford

If the sustainability polycrisis has you bummed out and overwhelmed. You may want to check out the work of the Homeopathic Sustainability Institute. They totally get that the human brain is the most powerful organ for replacing actual reality with what you believe reality to be. They have lists of dozens of miniscule basically homeopathic acts that are trialed and guaranteed to trick your brain into a sense of agency and meaningfulness, all while the systemic crisis unfolds unabated, undeterred, and faster than ever. The Homeopathic Sustainability Institute: Let tokenism bring you a joyous life of willful delusion.