Well yes, yes I am using more or less the exact same thumbnail for this video as the first one, and guess what?  Hello and welcome to the ground line review your source for everything One Piece and today we are going to be donning our scouters once more to dive into the realm of power levels, power scaling, and tier ranking. And this is mostly going to be a response to a video by BDA law that was responding to my original video entitled Common Misconceptions Regarding Power Levels in One Piece. Now I want to say right at the beginning that Brago's video was very polite, super chill, and I think a fantastic example of how all internet discourse should be, so I would like to thank him for his very measured response that did provide a lot of great points for me to think about, which I would like to address and expand upon for all of you here today.  But with that in mind I also do recommend that you watch Brago's video, I have a link to it in the description below, because it's one thing to just sit here and listen to me rant at great length, but you should very much hear both sides of the argument make up your own mind and who knows maybe it's not as simple as someone being right and someone being wrong, in fact it rarely is. There's a lot of different aspects and subtleties to consider especially when it comes to the realm of semantics, so it's not a cut and dry discussion, kind of like power levels, smooth transition, tick. Alright let's begin though and I'll just be going through a list of points as Brago mentioned them in the video, the first of which being the primary rebuttal that power levels do in fact exist and I want to play his exact statement here. Power levels absolutely exist in one piece, they may not have names and they may be fan made and things we just make up to make things easier, but they exist. And initially what I thought Brago was saying here is that power levels do exist because we made them up, and I know that's not what he's saying and without putting any words in his mouth I think his meaning here is that there does exist a defined spectrum of forces within one piece and the fan base has simply taken it upon themselves to label them for the sake of discussion. And I think that this is just a bit of a stark difference between us, because firstly I don't think that those forces are defined particularly clearly at all in one piece, broadly speaking that is, individually that's a very different story, but I also personally don't believe that anything fan made can or should be applied to the canon material, at least not in a particularly zealous way, which is generally how I experience these labels being used. And I don't think it should be done primarily because it warps the perception of the overall story, especially if those fan made terms become so widely used and accepted. And so when I said that power levels do not exist, this is what I was referring to, there is no system however formal or informal in one piece, and no matter what the fan base attempts to construct, that creation should, under no circumstances, be applied without great skepticism involved. And I do think that one of my personal problems with power scaling is that in my anecdotal experience, a lot of people do tend to fling these terms around, like they are a set of commandments bestowed upon us by Oda, but more on that in a bit because Bargo does go into that topic. Firstly though, he does bring up Doriki, and this is certainly a flaw in my original video, I absolutely should have mentioned it because it is the closest thing to a power scaling construct in one piece. Now, Bargo doesn't dwell on this because he says it's a completely different thing, which it is, but for the benefit of those of you who did mention it in my comments, it is in no way reliable because it can only be measured by a single character, and it only takes physical power into account. So with that in mind, someone like Elizabetho is highly likely to be at whatever the Yonko level equivalent of Doriki is, because it doesn't examine speed, durability, intelligence, double fruit abilities, Haki or even quirky individual fighting styles, which makes it in my opinion a fairly pointless system. However, I will admit that it does purely semantically counter my statement about a power level system not existing, and that's fair enough. I should have delved into it there like I did here. But then we come to a potential misinterpretation of my argument, which to be fair, I think I could have been clearer in making. Bargo takes my statement about power levels not existing very, very literally by posing the example that they must exist because otherwise all characters would be equal at all times, and that is most certainly not what I was implying. My argument there once again is that there is no systematic designation in the series outside of what is fan-created. However, there is certainly a spectrum of power in the series, one in which you would say find Kaido on one end and say whoops, slap on the other, and from there you could maybe villain that spectrum appropriately, but it would become incredibly difficult eventually because I stand by my statement of one piece being a very scissors paper rock universe. There are too many possible differing interactions between characters, which are based in every realm imaginable, like devil fruits, Haki subtyping's weaponry, intelligence, everything, all of which make it exceedingly difficult to construct broad levels. I feel like what you would more likely need to do would be to create multiple spectrums to measure, for example one based on raw power where Kaido would be in A and whoops, slap would be in F, and then do the same for speed, intelligence, durability, whatever you want, and then stack individual characters up against each other using those statistics as reference, but even then it definitely doesn't truly account for the nuance of one piece. But I personally think that a tier-based system is even more of a muddled exercise because it just lacks the precision and meaning that at least I think such a system should hold. But I want to jump ahead here a bit because Braga mentioned something that did quite enlighten me actually, which is that in his usage these power tiers, primarily being Yonko level, Admiral level, Commander level etc, are intended to be a launching point for discussion rather than a strict designation, with the idea being that they are kept intentionally broad so that they can invite further discourse. And this is an idea that I can actually get on board with in theory, the idea that say we select a character for discussion and then begin to narrow things down by applying a tier level. It does admittedly provide a clearer structure to work with rather than trying to keep a whole world of characters in mind. And hey if that is your sole usage of the system then go for it. I think a lot of my frustrations in anecdotal experience is that that is not the case. I am more often than not experienced people using these fan-made tiers as a full-stopped argument rather than an opening sentence. I see an awful lot of X can't take on Y because X is this fan-made level and Y is that fan-made level. And in my experience a lot of this stifles discussion rather than encourages it, especially when vehement disagreements break out about the technical classification of these various fan-made tiers. So I do take Brago's point about using them to start a discussion though. And I'm all on board with that so long as they are never taken as gossful. But what Brago conveys here and at several points in the video is that these levels are once again supposed to be taken as a broad spectrum rather than a specific measure of power. You know like say the spectrum of Yonko level ranges from Luffy to Widebeard. I guess I just think that a title based system is not the best way to convey that meaning because if you assign a title and then immediately need to clarify what that means then to me that could just be redundant communication. But that is not the case for everyone and clearly a lot of you do find value in this process. So I get where Brago is coming from. This is not something that is meant to be set in stone. And once again I'm all for that but that has not been my experience with the subject. Generally what I encounter are people who use these tiers to be dismissive and end a conversation rather than begin one. Now we're going to dive into some more specific level discussion and I should say that I am skipping a whole ton of discussion regarding Blackbeard which I will return to closer to the end of the video because that topic deals more with how Blackbeard and Luffy became emperors and it's another interesting discussion but it is going to veer away pretty heavily from power levels so I'll tackle all of that stuff first. So Brago continues by stating that yes I, Grand Line Review, am more or less willing to accept the specific admiral level as a potential tier and it's because I believe that admirals have more or less been displayed to be on an equitable level. The differences between them in my view come from specific ability matchups and Brago mentions the example of Fujitora versus Kizaru and then later on in the video he claims that the general consensus would be that Fujitora is not as strong as Kizaru and here's another thing that I just find simply fascinating because I would personally say that it was completely the opposite way around. Fujitora would be my winner but that's only because he has demonstrated the finest use of observation hockey amongst the admirals and because gravity is one of the very few forces other than reflection or refraction that has the potential to influence the travel of light. So there is every possibility that Fujitora just plain hard counters Kizaru but that doesn't necessarily apply to the other admirals of course and I think they're a fantastic example of how one piece is a scissors paper rock system. Later in the video Brago also brings up two of my favorite tertiary characters being Chaton and Momo Usagi both of whom were canonically considered for the admiral position according to an SBS segment and Brago uses them as evidence for the potential diversity and construction of a spectrum of the admiral tier and it's a very specific and niche disagreement but I do have one here because according to the marines no they did not meet the admiral standard and there is no tangible evidence of anything to do with either one of them. You can make the assumption that they are both vaguely powerful I suppose but that that's literally it we have nothing to place them anywhere and that's before we even consider the fact that they were created entirely as Joe characters by a fan and Oda decided to draw them and make them official so I just don't feel like they can be used as evidence to support the diversity of an admiral tier and I just oh my god I need to point out just how strange this is because now the argument has kind of flipped and I'm actually defending the integrity of a particular power tier which is look it's mind-blowing but like I said in the original video I think that admiral level is the only one that does have the potential to hold any meaning but the general point that Brago is making is that if the admiral tier the one I am willing to accept is also a broad spectrum of individuals then why couldn't that be used in relation to the Yonko commander level for example and that would be because I do think that admiral's are the most clear system because there are official standards to becoming an admiral there isn't as high variance here because they are selected by the world government having met particular bars of power hockey special abilities whatever the criteria is and I really don't think that the same can be said elsewhere especially for the commander level because those guys are a much more informal hodgepodge of beings so moving to the commander level now Brago used my example of karakuri and kraka where I made the claim that they should not be considered on the same level and he disagrees with this with some fair points actually about how their fights against Luffy lasted similar amounts of time and that they both involved Luffy needing to dissect his opponents in order to break through both of them because of specific ability related matchups which is interesting but I don't necessarily accept the premise that just because both of them caused Luffy trouble in their own way that they would be on the same level because what we're doing there is comparing them against Luffy rather than how they stand in relation to each other Luffy is not a universal metric the fact that Luffy struggled against kraka does not automatically mean that kata curry would find himself in a similar situation matching the two of them directly against each other I would honestly say that kata curry is unquestionably the victor because he has the key advantage in highly advanced observation hockey as well as being significantly more potently powerful than Luffy potentially enough to force his way through the biscuit or at least dissect it with the help of future sight last kraka is in no way as durable or as driven as Luffy in terms of sheer willpower so a series of clean hits by kata curry and this delicious biscuitty man is probably going to go down quite swiftly and that's why one piece operates on the scissors paper rock system sure both of them can give Luffy trouble for different reasons but that doesn't mean that they are going to be placed in a fair fight when matched against each other and the high variance of these results makes specifically the commander tier so broad that I very much question why we would bother to use it in the first place and just jumping ahead again in the video a bit there's also some discussion surrounding me hawks common classification as a yonko level and my comment about the use of the title warlord level is brought up and here I want to address some of my commenters more so than brago I know that nobody or at least I really really hope that nobody uses the term warlord level in this fanbase it was more intended to be a clear example of why using title specifically as a classification tier is a bad idea and maybe this is where I just have a ton of semantic issues because in my eyes power scaling if one was to engage in it on a broad level should probably be based more on feats rather than titular status and here I'm going to make the mistake of referring to the world of western comics for a bit I will emphasize that I really dislike power levels here as well but they do have what I would posit as a more intriguing system where characters are classified as say a building buster planet buster galaxy buster universe buster and so on and so forth and don't get me wrong these terms also come with a wide array of problems of their own but at the very least they do evoke a solid portrayal of power when they are applied if a character is classified as a planet buster then that tells me that they at the very least have the power to destroy a planet if they so chose however if a character were to be classified as say a vengeance here then that would tell me almost nothing and if anything it defeats the purpose of even saying it because you then need to dive deep and actually define what it is you were saying whereas with the various buster tiers at the very least they accomplish the broad goal and provide a balanced ignition point for the discussion and they very much feel like the one piece tiers that are based on titles don't quite accomplish that not for me anyway so here's a dumb example I'm warning you it's a dumb example but for example if instead of yonko level we called the characters like white beard big mom kaito and shanks sky splitters or something then that would actually evoke some sort of decent meaning it's a stupid stupid classification of course and no one should use it but I actually think it's more accurate than using a title because for example it immediately clears up any debate about luffy and blackbeard being on yonko level and it does provide a solid tangible basis of equality for all the characters who are included in it because they have all accomplished that particular feat and from there you could drive into the beautiful realm of nuance and staying on the topic of yonko level for a bit more there is this whole part about the question over whether or not one could properly classify shanks and I do think that's a very engaging topic that brago and I take opposite stances on but it's probably best suited for another type of video maybe because it's going to take me pretty rapidly off point but then quite possibly my favorite part of brago's video is when he brings up my other profound love in the anime among world being hunter hunter with a very iconic quote from mr. moral and hunter hunter is very much the epitome of not really being able to power scale because nen abilities interact on an even more insane level than devil fruits could ever hope to and you know what this is actually your mid video reminder to go and check out hunter hunter if you haven't already and I don't disagree with anything brago says about it but I am very happy to know that he is also a man of culture next up though there's a point brought up surrounding my use of Caesar as an example of unpredictable occurrences that could mess with a tier system and that example is when Caesar removed all of the oxygen within a given area and pretty much instantly chaos loofy various draw hearts mocha to shiggy many of whom were in different bodies at the time but still and brago posits that yes these characters do exist and I believe he mentioned sugar specifically throughout the video but there are a whole collective of left field characters in one piece that do have this potential I'll emphasize that word though potential to win against any given opponent however brago's response to that is that nobody expects them to be able to use that strategy on high level players in the world and you know I think that's kind of the entire problem that caused me to make my original video as a result of these tears there are a segment of fans who hold this headcanon like some sort of devout holy text to think that sure a character has a weird power but no that would never work against someone so clearly high ranking such as an individual on the prestigious yonko commander level but then you know what it's one piece and it actually happens like Caesar defeating luffy on punk hazard and when that happens these guys go absolutely wild because that eventuality did not fit their intricate tear headcanon and that is what happened with chapter 980 a certain character who had a poorly established ranking in the minds of certain fans pulled off an attack and regardless of the context of the situation which was largely ignored this segment of people lost their shit and I want to be very clear here I'm not saying the brago is one of these people not at all I mean I haven't seen his chapter reviews but given how eloquent and nuanced his thoughts are on this broad topic of power levels as well as his lengthy career in the realm of one piece I would expect that he had nothing less than a solid take on the matter but one piece is a series where you should be prepared for anything and everything to happen however at the same time I do understand that that makes discussion quite boring because if you're always needing to account for every obscure potential scenario then you will never get anywhere now we move to the topic of toxicity and here I think that brago is 100% correct where he says that it is not the specific power leveling system that is toxic but the entire concept of power scaling in one piece and I guess any battle focus series in general because should we somehow or universally decide that yonko level admiral level and etc should all be removed from the vernacular fan discussion then that really doesn't solve anything because the people who misuse these terms either on purpose or because they're just not familiar enough with the strict fan definition which is the most likely scenario and just to expand on that a bit because this is not a formal system like to my knowledge there is no quick written guide to consult a reference and as a result of that everyone kind of ends up with their own heavily subjective definitions of yonko level yonko commander level and etc and they go on to use them for what I'm hearing from brago is an unintended purpose and so this goes back to my issue of vagarty within said system when these levels are deliberately designed to be broad then that is always going to lead to heavy misinterpretation amongst their users in the quest for meaning especially because say we have an in-depth discussion about sanji and where he belongs for argument's sake let's say that we place him on the commander level and we go through the detailed nuance of why he is there and how he is separate from every other commander level being what next though that might be one solid discussion but in the end sanji is still going to be saddled with the label of commander level because there is no titular outcome from further discussion so after discussing the intricate nuance we then retreat back to our broad classification which would be fine for the two of us because we we know what we're talking about however if either of us then make the statement to a third party that sanji is clearly yonko commander level then they are likely going to very rapidly succumb to thoughts like no no way is sanji as strong as kata kuri or queen or king are you insane ground line review as talking about one piece roughly three to four times a week for the past three is literally melted your brain and they probably won't say that exact statement but they don't have the benefit of our intricate discussion where we very carefully place sanji on our fan made spectrum all they have is the broad title because in the end that's the only tangible result that the two of us actually have as well and as such we then need to have the exact same discussion again with a new person and again and again and again for as many times as we make the statement that sanji is commander level i think i just went on a bit of a super tangent there because brago's original point is that even without this particular system people are going to be pains in the arse anyway because it's power scaling and that i can wholeheartedly agree with i don't think that the system brago has elected to use is the core problem at all i think the broad concept of power scaling is a problem and i believe that the only effective way it can really be done in this series anyway is by taking two individuals and stacking them up against each other i don't personally see the point in putting up vague thresholds of tears in the way first i think it muddles discussion generates unclear conclusions and at the very least in my experience can often lead to some very very unpleasant heated discourse but that is not the same for everyone and to a large segment of individuals in this fan base they do claim it to be helpful and i don't begrudge anyone for engaging in power scaling it's a prolific topic that forms a part of the lifeblood of many fan bases and we all do it to some degree whether we want to admit it or not all right next up though we are moving away from power levels for a bit and we now have a very different criticism this one is more on the topic of emperors and how one goes about attaining that status specifically the difference between how blackbeard became an emperor as opposed to luffy one which brago paints as quite stark and i guess this is just another one of those many many things that i disagree with so basically brago takes us on a journey through blackbeard's impressive cv to demonstrate that he made it to the status of an emperor not just by fate or luck which i wholeheartedly agree with despite flagging fate as a primary force cast upon him in my video i do stand by that though blackbeard is a creature of fate just like luffy but blackbeard also like luffy is an incredible force of disruption in this world and he has more than earned his place as an emperor however brago then goes on to state that the only reason why luffy is considered an emperor is because of big news morgan's publishing it in the bold economic times and here we have rather accidentally stumbled upon one of my other great cripes within the fanbase which is the idea that luffy did not earn his place as an emperor and is only here through fabrication so i for one have quite a bit of difficulty seeing how you could go through blackbeard's entire career as a pirate say he earned the title of emperor which once again i agree with but not stop and do the same for luffy because it's not as if luffy was some no-name chump when morgan's ordained him with the emperor title and you know if anything luffy cv is actually far far more impressive than blackbeard's i mean he is the only individual in this world to have led an assault on all three primary marine facilities including the complete destruction of one and instigating the only mass breakout of impel down in the history of the prison he also had the gold strolled directly into the territory of an emperor of the sea defeat two of her commanders and destroy her delicious wedding cake as well as live to tell the tale furthermore luffy has defeated no less than three warlords of the sea and made allies or acquaintances of six including one that has become his direct subordinate and speaking of luffy commands a powerhouse crew of ever growing infamous individuals one of which is a fellow worst generation member as well as having indirect command of a force of over five thousand members of the straw hat grand fleet which is more than three times the size of the entirety of the whitebeard pirates and these are just the feats that we as fans can directly attribute to luffy as far as the general public know he is also the man who destroyed whole cake chateau fought directly against the admirals of marine food along with various warlords effectively told the strongest man in the world to shove it punch the hero of the marines right in the face punch the world noble in the face and tanked a hit from a fleet admiral during the process of freeing ace his brother which also brings luffy's pedigree into the public eye he is the son of literally the most wanted man in the world the grandson of the greatest marine to have ever lived as well as the brother of one of the most prolific commanders of the whitebeard pirates and furthermore as far as the public knows luffy is actually directly tied to silver's relief the second in command of the former pirate king so in the public eye luffy appears as quite possibly one of the most dangerous individuals to have ever lived and morgans didn't make any of this up he just had to collect and collate luffy's short career as a pirate and he was the first to say the words luffy and emperor out loud but you know morgans didn't just anoint luffy to that position from nowhere luffy 100% earned his place here by causing more chaos than any singular character in the modern day and having gathered an exceptional following that even now includes entire kingdoms directly associated with the bulk government and just to flip things for a second here who's to say that morgans didn't do the exact same thing with blackbeard what if after the payback war morgans published an article calling blackbeard an emperor and that's how he consolidated that influence i mean blackbeard certainly didn't name himself an emperor and the other emperors don't have the power to do such thing so where did it come from the only place it can come from public perception which was probably as a result of morgans but in the end there's just too much we don't know and too many assumptions at play regarding blackbeard's almost entirely shrouded path to power but i don't think it's a reasonable statement to say that blackbeard deserves the emperor title whilst luffy does not and i already know the main thing this is going to come back to which is individual power most of the fans who don't accept luffy as an emperor hold that belief because he does not possess the individual power of the emperors that we've explored thus far and here is where the whole title power system has the ability to really really damage the narrative perception of one piece the fact that there is a yonko level in the realm of fan base power scaling comes with this side effect of skewing what it actually means to be an emperor in the series it's not about personal strength yes you will need a certain degree of it but it has much more to do with the influence over the world and luffy by this point has some of the most profound influence and quite possibly the single most loyal following amongst any organization bar the marines individual power is not the sole deciding factor it is a common one but not an exclusive one so for example just because the average height of nba players is 200 centimeters a six foot seven that doesn't mean that significantly shorter players can't make the league it's rare but it shows that while height is a common factor it is not an exclusive one just like individual power in the one piece world definitely the easiest path to becoming an emperor is raw power but that is not the only way to get there but aside from the issue of power the primary argument i see referenced against luffy being an emperor are the statements that his fellow emperors make about him specifically the one that blackbeard stated that luffy was not ready to be an emperor and brago argues that this is because blackbeard has traveled that path and knows what it takes to consolidate that spot which might be fair enough in his own individual case because blackbeard yes would understand his own personal journey what i find very interesting and often left out of this discussion though is shanks's reaction to the news on that exact same page of manga because he just reads the newspaper and says looks like we'll be meeting soon luffy so shanks who obviously also knows what it takes to become an emperor just immediately accepts luffy which is a complete counterpoint to the blackbeard argument so from my perspective blackbeard big mom kaito they're all making the same mistake that many members of this fanbase are they are looking at luffy from a pure sense of force and disregarding him because he does not fit in with their own personalized portrayal of an emperor which i'll say again is not helped by the existence of a fan made yonko level tier because it gives people the wrong impression of what an emperor is so is luffy ready to fight the other emperors one-on-one almost certainly not with an argument to be made for blackbeard not in this video though but did luffy earn the spot absolutely yes he is a unique emperor who has reached this position by the road less taken and that's why he shunned for it it's very similar to the real world actually you know if you don't follow the establishment path then you are illegitimate even if it gets you to the exact same outcome but as for the rest of brago's video look i don't necessarily disagree with anything a lot of it is just reinforcing his ideas and i very much appreciate that he took the time to present the power scaling case because quite frankly i have not encountered a single person who was able to do so with the clarity that he presented i do love that we come at this and evidently many many other issues from such extremely different viewpoints and i hope that this dialogue has been valuable in some way shape or form to the fanbase at large because i know that there are an incredible legion of people out there like me who do tend to dislike discussion around power scaling but there is also a huge legion of people who take great pleasure in it so thank you very much mr bda law for taking the time to respond so thoroughly to my ramblings and yeah look i'm tired now so i'm just i'm just going to stop talking so what do you guys think please leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my discord server and if you'd like to see more videos like this and please do come check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious one piece business uploaded straight until youtube feed but for now this has been the ground line review and i'll see you next time


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Welcome everybody. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good night. Whatever time zone you're in, JR Fisher here. And I'm joined by the lovely and talented Ms. Jessica. Jessica, you wanna say hi? Hey everybody. And guys, I wanna make sure you can hear me. So let's do that little test there if you would type inside that chat box there. Where do they need to click on to get to that, Jessica? Chat. Chat, I think it's a chat, it's a chat or something. Type in there who you are, where you're at, time zone, all that good stuff. Wanna make sure you can hear me. There's a little bit of a lag between the time I talk and when I wanna see you type. So everybody must do it, just type in there real quick so I can see who can hear me. I wanna make sure you can hear me so that I know this is working. I don't wanna talk for an hour and it not be working. That would be bad. Won't that happen. Looks like I've got Omar in there. No? Christine says there's no sound. Let me check this. Christine, that's why we do this test. But you can't hear me if there's no sound, can you? Let's see here. It looks like the sound is on. Let me just check here. All your messages are private guys so don't worry about that part. Scotty, can you hear me? Type in there if you would, buddy. I think I've seen you in the group there. Really cool guy. Carol says she can hear me. All right, so it looks like Christine, you may wanna check your sound there. Scotty says it sounds good. He's in Seattle, Washington. And we got Marcus here from Pensacola, Florida. We got Donnie from Chicago. We've got Omar in there. Okay, so let me get over here to the next screen. Where are we at? We are on this one here. Okay guys, let me get back to my welcome screen. And there it is. All right, so people can hear me and see me. Well, nobody can't see me, can they? No, I could make it to where you could. You don't wanna see me right now. You don't want to. So today is a really cool one, guys, because when you finish this training today, you will literally have a list of top products you can sell right now. I'll show you where you can get them. I have no affiliation with any of these products just to let you know outside of Carter. I'll tell you about Carter in the end. I do have an affiliation with that. And it's awesome, but that's not a product you would sell. That's a tool. So let's jump right into it. Let's take a look at all these products. These are the top 10 products to sell right now, 2019. So when this video is a year old, I don't know. I couldn't tell if they're any good or not once it's a year old, but right now it's good. So let's look at what a product needs really to be successful to sell online. And keep in mind, none of these products that I'm gonna show you today, do you have to buy first? You can list these products. They can be drop shipped for you. You do not need to invest anything in inventory. So if you don't have a lot of money and you don't wanna take that risk of buying product, these would be, and I think back, oh my God, in 2009 and 10, I would just go out and buy a hundred of a product and then get it home and then sometimes it would sell and sometimes it wouldn't. And sometimes Jessica knows those products would be sitting around for a long time. Oh yeah. It would move from warehouse to warehouse. That just didn't sell. But you don't have to worry about that nowadays. It's really cool nowadays. You don't have to have a warehouse. You can have somebody else drop ship it for you and all these products will qualify for that. So it's gotta be priced right. That's super important guys. It's gotta be priced right. You gotta have a good price on it. You don't wanna try to sell it for four times what you're paying for, unless it's a dollar or something that it would make sense. It's gotta be a little bit difficult to find. So all of these products are not products that you would go into Walmart or your local Target store and find. You're just not gonna see them in there. They gotta be a little bit unusual, a little different. You gotta be a little bit quirky, okay? And all these products are. And they gotta be eye catching. So when somebody sees it, they go what the heck is that? That's different. And all these products qualify under this. So let's look at product number one guys. Product number one is the crystal water bottle. Crystal water bottle. What the heck's that? Let's check it out. These are really popular now. And what it is is for health and wellness and calm and serenity. They actually have a crystal that is inside of the water bottle. This is not some, I wanna preface all this with the fact that you don't have to like these products to sell them, okay? So there's a lot of products out there you don't have to believe that it's gonna make you well or anything. This is a demand for this. If you don't feel comfortable selling it, don't sell it but these are very, very popular right now. And I wanna show you some proof of that. As a matter of fact, this is Google Trends right here and you can see this trend line is going up. Now this high spot here was right around Christmas and it's heading towards Christmas again. So guess what? This would be a great product to have for the holidays out there. People love this kind of stuff. It's different. They're not gonna see it in their stores unless it gets really blown up and then of course they will. But that's your number one product right there. And as you can see, let me go back one here. You could get these things for anywhere. There's $11, there's one for $3, $6, $5. And you could easily sell these for $19.95. I mean, that would not be a problem. And they will ship these to you like this one here. So shipping, US shipping's $1.74. So you still have a lot of profit margin there. So yeah, so you wanna jump on this while you can. And also, when you're selling this, you don't wanna try to sell it to everybody. What you wanna do is go into Google Trends and kind of figure out who's searching for this, who wants this. So what I did is I went down here and I went interest by subregion. So that was the US I showed you above. And you can see, of course, I'm in California, we've got all the strange people out here. But Nevada and California have the biggest searches for this product. So if you're searching, let's say, workout enthusiasts or crossfitters, you may wanna target Nevada and California and Washington state because those are the top three that are actually searching for it. There's no sense in running an ad to the middle of the US for this product. There's almost no search for it. Nobody cares about it. So look at this and then you can look at the related queries over here. So you may wanna put in there, crystal elixir water bottle, whatever in there or crystal infused water bottle because those are the top searches, those are the breakout ones that people are actually searching for. And you can even see like there's 1,300 searches a month for this. There's 1,900 a month for this. So that's really, really good. All right, product number two. What is product number two? Product number two is a microwave steam cleaner. What? A microwave steam cleaner, seriously? Yes, really cool. They're all over the place. Here they are. You can buy them for $2, $1, whatever. What you actually do with this is you put water and vinegar in it and then you put it into your microwave and turn it on. And when the microwave finishes, the inside of the microwave is clean. That's pretty amazing. That's pretty cool, right? Keep your microwave clean. It's a pain to wipe them out. I know that. Gotta get the spray in there and getting all up in there. But this thing here will actually steam and clean the inside of your microwave. Pretty cheap. And as you see it comes in all different shapes and sizes and you can search this one, this search microwave steam cleaner on Halley Express. You'll find a bunch of them. But for $1 or $2, you can get these and get them shipped. And it's a good $9.95, $14.95 item. All right, there's how it works. This is the Angry Mama Microwave. And I found this one here. This is on Amazon right here, selling for nine bucks. And understand that you're not trying to make a living off your initial product. This is to get people on your list so you can market other items to them. So you may have a bunch of cookware that you sell and this would be a good lead in and then you could sell them pots and pans and all kinds of other stuff. That's where the money's made. Do not try to just make money on a $10 item and sell it one time and never sell to people again. These people who buy something from you are 10 times more likely to buy from you than any other cold customer. So once they bought from you, you wanna retarget these people and sell them other products. Super important to do that. Next item, product number three, a flexible mobile phone holder. What? Yep, there it is. The flexible mobile phone holder. And I recorded this screencast here of this. But you can see, it's got the measurements. It's really cheap, $2.75. It bends in every direction you can imagine. Got a nice little clip on here. I don't know how they do this stuff, this cheap. I really don't. I guess because they don't pay anybody to make this stuff. But you can bend it, twist it, turn it, clip it on to stuff. It's really, really handy and it's pretty cool because you know, the extended flexible, this guy sold 6,000 of these. 6,000, so you know it's popular. You know people are buying these. And at $2.75, that's a pretty good deal. And of course you can have a little bit of shipping on it. Do you see other ones over here? That one, there's a $1.70. Ships in four days, which is pretty quick, you know. Really cool product. Something cheap you can do. And you know, it's a mass market appeal type thing. Everybody has a cell phone. A couple of things I do want to remind you of. These things have to be a perfect impulse buy type product. And how do you qualify for that? Well, it's got to be hard to find. So you're not going to walk in the store and find those first three products on all the shelves. You just not. I mean, if you search hard, maybe somebody would have one of those. But bottom line, it's an impulse buy. It's also got to be a practical item. You know, how is it going to help these people? If you notice a little steam cleaner thing, that's something that's kind of all a pain to all of us to clean our microwave. And if we had something like that, you know, we'd pay 10 bucks. Yeah, why not? Same thing with our little, you know, phone holder that's all flexible. We would do that. It's practical, solves a problem for us. And it's also hard to guess the price. I mean, you look at these items, you're like, what should that sell for? Should that sell for $20 or $10 or $15?  And there's a lot of items like that.  And it was really amazing at, I didn't know what a nine-volt battery cost. I didn't know. And I went to the first store and it was 699 and we were just out shopping. So I didn't, you know, I didn't have to get it then. And I thought, well, that's ridiculous for one nine-volt battery, 699, that's craziness. And I didn't realize how expensive nine-volt batteries are. I said, well, we're gonna be at the Home Depot. Let's go to the Home Depot. And I'm sure they're gonna have them for like, you know, two for $5 or something like that. We get to the Home Depot and they're 999 for a single battery. For a nine-volt battery, 999. I thought, well, that's incredibly expensive. Or at least I thought so. I didn't know. I said, well, I should have bought it the first place. And then of course, the Amazon popped into my head. And I found, how many of them was in that packet on Amazon? I think eight? Eight, yeah. I found eight of them on Amazon for $14.95, a package of eight. And guess what? They were Amazon brand. They came up first in the results. But you know, that's another one of those items. It's hard to guess the price. I don't suggest you selling batteries because you can buy those anyway. Don't do that. Alrighty, product number four. What is product number four? A dog jacket. Does your dog have a jacket? I don't know. Yours has a jacket, doesn't it? Jessica, yeah. Yeah, we have jackets. Cute little jackets like this. Look how cheap this is, guys. $1.99 to $4.99. You could put pictures like this on your ad on Facebook and people would jump all over this because they just don't normally see it.  This is a pretty cool item. It looks neat. If you look at it, it's got all different colors here. Shipping looks like... I wouldn't use that shipping. That's not the e-packet, but you know, $0.79. See how it comes in all these different colors here, though? All these different sizes. And you can offer all these different colors and sizes. To broaden your market, there's some more examples of other ones over there. Yeah, and it looks like it's a good seller.  It's got all the sizes there so you can put a size chart on your site. And yeah, and it's just kind of a cool little item that's a little bit different. They've sold 3,800 of these, which indicates right there that they're gonna sell. So you don't have to worry about that. It's a good product, okay? And they have a pretty high rating, too. So yeah, that's another cool product for you. You can find all these items on AliExpress. Not a problem. All right, item number five, product number five is a novelty pet bed. Now, we all have pet beds all over the place in every single room of our house. Or at least we do. Maybe you guys don't. We have pet beds fringing everywhere, but we seem to have a pretty happy dog. We have a pet bed on each side of our bed, okay? In case she gets tired in the middle of the night and is sleeping on one side of the bed, she goes to the other, which she frequently does. But she has a bed in I think every single room of the house. But here you go. These are kind of unusual looking. They're just kind of different. They have a weird kind of look to them. Not something you're probably gonna see in the store. And then come in all these different colors. You can see right here all these different sizes. They're inexpensive. It's six to $22. So you can put a cat in there. Look at that. Cats and little dogs. They're just kind of cool looking. And they're entertaining to the owner. And it's free shipping. I like this here to the United States E-Packet. And you know, it's six bucks. I mean, dang, you could easily sell something for six bucks for $19.95. I mean, that's not a problem. You don't even have to worry about shipping. Here's one that looks like a little house, right? That's kind of a cool one. I hadn't seen that one before.  So that's kind of a neat looking one. Free shipping, right? E-Packet. I'm looking for that every time. So yeah, there's a neat little item that you could sell to your audience if you've got a pet audience or whatever. And then there's all kinds of other items in here. We'll go back to that little shark one we got. So it's a really cool item. They sell 455 of these. So they've got some sales volume there. Cool item. Put that on your list. Next item. Product number six is a woman's vest. Now you're like, well, that's not that unique, JR. Well, let's take a look at this. Let's just check this out for a second. Here is the vest, right here. And I gotta tell you, women's apparel is huge, huge, huge, huge. Women buy all kinds of stuff. Now this comes in all these different colors. It's 11 bucks, guys. They've sold 2,300 of this one. 4.9 star rating. I mean, got a great seller here. And $11, I mean, it's just, you get free shipping via ePacket. I mean, this is easily a $25 or $29 item here. They have some really good pictures. I noticed in China, they always have these American models that are modeling all this stuff. I don't know, I guess that's probably a big job of there, too. Model for AliExpress. It's almost always have an American model. I don't know what that is, what's going on there. Maybe because they're selling mostly to America. They think that'll work better. They're trying to sell to their audience. So number one sales category is women's clothes and accessory online. Number one category. So if you're not selling in that area, you may want to check that out. Pretty cool area. Next one up, product number seven. Product number seven is a stainless steel straw. You ever heard of this, Jessica? Oh, yeah. Stainless steel straws.  And it's been a huge problem and they're dumping them in the ocean. So here in San Diego, actually, most restaurants don't even give you straws anymore. I know even Starbucks has changed their lids where you can drink through the lid. You can get a straw, but you got to ask for it. And a lot of people just don't want to use them. But some people still like straws. So guess what? Stainless steel straws. And check this out. You can get them for a penny to $1.21. That's pretty cheap. So, you know, you even bought some online. Did you pay a penny for it? What did you pay for yours? I paid more than that. She actually bought on one of those abs. See, this stuff does work. And it doesn't matter if you know this stuff. It doesn't make us immune to good advertising and good marketing, right? I buy stuff all the time. I'll see it and I'm like, oh, that's really cool. And then sometimes it'll trigger in my brain, hey, you could get that in AliExpress. But sometimes I want it immediately. I don't want to wait, you know? But you know, that's a pretty cool item here. Let's take a look at this one a little bit closer. And I didn't dig in here too much, but I see that they've sold 26,000 of them. Holy heck, 26,000? That's a lot of straws. You got 9,400 customer reviews and almost five stars, 4.9. I mean, this is pretty amazing right here.  You don't want that. You want E-Packet. All these different colors, you got gold and silver and black. I thought the straws were textured there, but that's the glass. So that's not textured there. Looks like they got straw cleaners that come with it. This is a pretty amazing deal here. And a little carrying case too. So really cool item and it fits into, you know, living green and not destroying our environment and all that stuff. They have really good measurements down here. You can see the size of each of the straws. Very, very detailed. Whoops, went back too far. Let me get back to where I was at, guys. We were right there. Okay, there we go. I'm gonna put my screen. So yeah, they've got really good images down here. You can see there's the straw cleaners because that's another problem, right? You're gonna have straw cleaners once you have a straw that's stainless. You gotta have that too. So that's another problem. All right, so those are pretty cool. So the next one I got up is product number eight. What is product number eight? Anybody guess what product number eight is? What is product number eight? Boom! It's a salad chopper bowl. Everybody needs a salad chopper bowl. Now, this one is really pretty cool, guys. I wanna show you some stuff that it does here. You can get it for $2.79 first off, okay? And I did this little video of the screen. But check this out. You put your stuff in there and you cut it, and then you can use it to strain and clean. You can see there, wash water over it. And then, check this out. You can use it as a bowl to actually eat out of two. So it's all in one for $2.79. Pretty cool thing. Now, keep in mind, who do you market this to? Well, you know, there's new diets every day. Every day there's new diets. But almost all diets will have some form of salad in it, okay? So anybody that is in the diet area, the fitness area, you know, CrossFit, any of that stuff would be a really, really good fit for this. And it's something that's useful once again, it's practical. It's a good impulse buy, because you know, you could sell this for 10 bucks or 15 bucks, and people would buy it, you know? Really, really cool item. E-Packet on this one's a little high. It's 468, which is almost double what the price is. But the point is, it doesn't matter. You could sell this for 14, 15 bucks, 20 bucks, and still come out smelling pretty good. Next item, product number nine. We're narrowing down the list here now. Product number nine is a mermaid blanket. Who doesn't want a mermaid blanket, right? I bought one for one of my nieces. Did you really? I didn't know that. Okay, so there you go, mermaid blanket. And here it is. Looks kind of cool, comes in all these different sizes, seven to $19, which you're gonna pay for it. This is easily a $29, $39 item. And it's got free shipping via E-Packet, so you don't have to worry about that. But look at that, isn't that cool? And they show it in use there. Let me run this little video I did when I looked at this product. But it comes in all these different colors. You have all these different sizes. Just really an amazing item. And it's kind of funny, it's novel, it's different. You're not gonna see that in your local Target store. Well, you may, if it really blows up, that's what happens, these things get big online and then the big stores jump in on it. But right now they're not, so you could get in there, you could sell this, you got the holiday season coming. This is perfect, perfect, perfect for the holiday season. Christmas time and all that, I mean, this is the thing. Or it's just starting to get a little bit cold so people are thinking of stuff like this. That's the other thing. The weather turns a little bit. You can sell this stuff but you gotta get your sales pages ready and be ready when that temperature change happens. Next up is our last product, drum roll. Jessica, there it is, she's got a drum roll. That sounds just like one. This is a nose soap dispenser. Who doesn't want this? A nose soap dispenser. You don't? I don't know, well there's the one person that doesn't want it. All right, let's check this out guys. This is really kind of hilarious. If you look here, you push over the nose and it drips out the nostril there. You see that happening. Sticks on the wall, you just fill up the back of it. And it's a pretty cool item actually. Now, immediately I think of cleaning my shower and this thing being stuck to the wall but people don't think that way. So they're gonna probably buy it. It's $7.48 and shipping is 89 cents which is almost nothing. This is easily a $19.95 or $25.95 item. It's just a novel item, there you go. See it dripping out of the nose? Jessica's turning up her nose at it. She thinks it looks gross. A lot of guys would buy this. So this is a great gift for your dad or something like that or your brother or something. So you may wanna put that in your ad. It could be a dad gift. Yeah, it could be a dad gift too. Yeah, there's a whole lot of things. All it matters is that they buy it, right? That's all it matters. But it's kind of a funny little gift so I thought I would throw that in there and they've sold a ton of them. So, and there's a whole bunch of sellers selling this. So this one's only sharing 40 orders but there's probably over 100 people selling this one here so there's plenty of orders of this. So that rounds out our top 10 products. Now, how did I find these products? Well, you use a couple of things. What you wanna do is you wanna use AliExpress, find products that they're selling a lot of, okay, that's important. And then you wanna use Google Trends to see if it's trending up or trending down. And then once you've done that, you wanna look at the regions of the country that are actually searching for this item and then you can determine if it's a good item to sell. That's really that simple. So, I wanna talk about, we have a few guests here today. This is our Inner Circle Carl. You gotta be a member of the Inner Circle to be on this call unless you got a special invitation which would mean that you're here today visiting us. And if you wanna join the Inner Circle, you really should. It's innercircle.com forward slash enroll. There's a free video there that shows you all you get. You get all kinds of softwares. You get all kinds of training. You get support. Let me hit my screen here. You get access to all my current courses which there's a bunch of them. There's Digital Cash Academy. There's Ecom Road. There's Web Cash Academy. There's Facebook Ads University. You get access to all those. It's actually $46,000 for the courses and you get this for a pittance a month. I mean, it just doesn't cost you much. You also get access to my private Facebook group. You're also gonna get bi-weekly coaching calls which I've actually turned into weekly for right now. But if I ever decide to go back, we'll be bi-weekly. And then we have a yearly mastermind in San Diego or more depending on the demand for that. And you get relationships with other people which is super, super important. I know a lot of my income comes from those direct relationships I have with other people. And you get a network with other people who are doing the same thing as you. I mean, that's just invaluable that you can do that. And you're gonna get insights in a high level masterminds. Everybody knows I travel around, go to a lot of these masterminds. I'll be in Cancun, Mexico next month. And I'll be down there. And I'm gonna be in there in the room with people who earn tens of millions of dollars a year online and picking their brains and getting their ideas and bringing it back to you guys. So you get access to all that high level stuff that people pay thousands of dollars to get. So you're gonna get access to that. So by joining something like this, and there's probably some other good ones out there I think mine's better, but by joining something like this you're 12 times more likely to succeed as a member of something like this than if you just go it on your own.  Whereas if you join the inner circle it's a small amount of money a month and you have access to all this stuff all the time and we stay on top of it. So you can also submit things that you're working on such as your ads, your landing page, sales pages website you have your products, your pricing funnels all this stuff we can look at and review your emails for you. We can review your subject lines and headlines any ideas you have, help you with frustrations look at your failures and successes. All of this comes with the inner circle. You don't have to buy anything to go watch that video it's just jrinnercircle.com forward slash enroll go there check it out, watch the video you don't even have to opt in you don't even have to give your email just go there and watch it this is there okay and it'll tell you all about it. Really cool stuff you do wanna check that out. Best software I always tell people is Cartra. I talked to the owner of Cartra's wife the other day and they've got a whole lot of stuff planned it's pretty amazing. She's actually running that show now doing a great job and running for past two years and they keep improving it guys this will save you a ton of money. If you use my link there you can try this out for $1 to buck a dollar come on seriously do it go there check this out you're gonna want this this is gonna save you from having email providers and you know webinar you know providers and we're not webinar but memberships and landing pages and sales pages and all this stuff it's all combined into Cartra you get it all and you can check it out for a dollar so if I haven't told you go do that go do that now. All right so questions and answers Jessica I put that cat in there for you just so you know and then Shaq is gonna dance with the cat there we go there's Shaq Dancin and any questions you have guys you can put them in the chat box now Jessica is gonna read them off to me and I see certain questions in their markets is asking what is the best niche and I always always always get that question what is the best niche? There's so many good niches there are so many good niches there are so many good niches there is no best niche it doesn't exist because there's so many good ones you just gotta find something you like if there's traffic for it if there's Facebook groups around it that's the niche you want to be in so you know find something you like that's my biggest advice to you Jessica do you have a couple questions on your end? So I think you actually answered this after she typed it but Colleen is asking she said I'm sorry I missed the beginning how do you know these are the top 10 items Well these are my top 10 all I'm saying is these are 10 items that are selling really well right now and what we did is we verified it through AliExpress because I've sold a lot of them we went to Google Trends and we see that it's trending up on these items they're items that are unusual they're hard to find we had certain stipulations we were looking for they were impulse buy items they were items that had a low cost to them you know so when we put all those things together and you can go back and watch the replay you'll see all that but when you put all those things together they just turned out to be top 10 items that I picked but you know there's literally hundreds and hundreds of items out there you could sell but this will get you started in case you don't know how to go out and find them you can pick these products and you know it has some assurance that they've already sold and they're doing well What's having some issues with audio in the name she wants to know what the first product was The first product Alright let me go back to that Christine look at this look how fast I'm going through here amazing amazing alright I have to probably would have been better if I downsized this but it's okay we will go back for Christine Christine Christine and it is ready for this Christine we actually did the Google Trends line on this Christine it was the crystal water bottle it has this crystal in it right here see that there's tons of them there they're selling thousands and thousands this company here sold 2,500 of these already so that was that one and let me down size this and get to the right screen because I don't want to take you guys through all those screens we'll just get right to Shaq here Shaq and the cat dancing there we go the cat and the Shaq cat and Shaq wait wait no no I'm not going to go that way alright so Jessica we have a couple more questions over there I see you're going through all the questions guys put your questions in there we only got time for a few more what is like a Shopify store WordPress you know there's a lot of ways to go about it building out a Shopify store is probably your best bet because you can offer a whole lot of different items however I don't think I would start with Shopify I would go into Cartra use that link and let me get that link for you again and the reason I would do that is because you can put something up much quicker in Cartra and test it and then let me get to that right screen there and then if it's working well for you then of course you can and let me pull up the screen because Cartra you can get Cartra for a dollar here once you figured it out once it sells then you can put it into a Shopify store but to start it out I would definitely say Cartra is a great way to go because you can build a bunch of upsells and cross-sells offer multiples of the item and do all that all in Cartra really quick and you can get a trial of Cartra for one dollar so that's the best way I think I would do it and then I would use some Facebook ads those are pretty good for targeting your audience but you know you can use YouTube, you can use whatever you want I know I watch a lot of cooking stuff I like cooking, I like food travel bloggers and all that like that salad thing would really be a good in-stream type ad if somebody was watching a video on salads which you can actually target you know stuff like that so yeah so she's got like one or two more questions left guys and then we're going to get out of here we're going to get to lunch and we have an appointment you guys check us out at lunch today I think we're going to be going to New Orleans well New Orleans and San Diego okay put your questions in there guys you got a chance still to stick one in there if you want and I'll be happy to help you Derek is asking how to join your inner circle Derek is asking how to join the inner circle it is what you want to do is watch that video Derek it's www.jrinnercircle.com forward slash enroll there's a free video there that gives you some training and walks you through everything shows you what you get and we do have a special offer for members on this call right now now you know this is an inner circle call so this is one of the benefits you would get if you're enjoying this call and you want to continue getting invitations and being able to come to this then you're going to want to join that inner circle okay so this is primarily for inner circle people and Jessica hit me with one more question just one Colleen says have a great weekend Colleen thank you so much you have a great weekend too where is Colleen at I don't know I'm about to sneeze excuse me guys Colleen that's when you know it's live New Jersey well it's warm up there I bet right now but getting ready to be very very very very cold I know I was in Virginia for many years I got cold there okay so I see one more question then there on email list and you know it's funny I did a live video earlier this morning on this somebody wants to build their email list and they want to do it with affiliate marketing you know that's the big problem with affiliate marketing is when you drive traffic to somebody else's offer you don't get the names so what I would tell you is with something like what you could do is drive them to an opt in page where they've been their name and email and then the thank you page can be that affiliate offer you do now the reason you want to do this and you want to tag them with whatever niche they're in so that you can sell them additional products most people don't make it in affiliate marketing because what they try to do is just send traffic to offers and make money and the problem with that is they don't get that second third sale like the affiliate marketer does and since that's the case they're only depending on that profit of the first sale it's usually not enough to pay for the traffic so they end up in the hole so I would definitely suggest if you're going to do some affiliate marketing what you want to do is have like an opt in page which you can build in cartridge super super easy they have some pre-built in there they have templates and all you got to do is just click on it and activate it I mean really that easy and just put your tags on there and build your own list so guys I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up with that we're going to head out to lunch and we got a couple things we're going to do if you follow me on Facebook we usually post a couple pictures of our lunch and where we're eating at and you can check it out if you like good food places San Diego has thousands and thousands and thousands of them and if you follow me on Facebook you'll find a bunch of them because we try to hit a different one every Friday we have been to this one before but I think you'll like it so with that I'm going to go ahead and get out of here Jessica would you like to say goodbye? Yes and JR normally asks me for something inspirational and this week she has and I didn't ask her I know I pulled something up like an actual quote it says change will never happen if you lack the ability and courage to see yourself for who you really are Oh that's pretty good do you have any plugs? What are you doing? What are you working on Jessica? People always ask me what does Jessica do? Well she works a lot at Survival K Food, she works a lot at my courses and all that stuff but she actually has her own business and Jessica could you put a link in there to some of yourself you know Jessica has courses and once you talk about it and you have a book and everything don't you?  And I have yes right now I have one big course that like gives you everything and it's like an absolutely amazing deal at $27 a month Seriously $27? I know because it literally gives you everything but what I'm finding is that for some people that can be a little overwhelming so I'm coming out with some individual like many courses So I think that's going to be And guys if you want to join she has a facebook group also and she can put that link in there just if you want to do that she'll put the link to the facebook group it's a really active group a lot of dog owners in there I know this is off the beaten path of e-commerce but you guys had asked me about it so I do want to fill you in get on her list she does all kinds of free content help you out she does live videos I would highly suggest there's highly suggest you getting her stuff and here's why a lot of those trainers out there today they do stuff that we don't like they're forcing their dog to do something or they're trying to scare the dog she does none of that it's all positive enforcement training they're going to be happy they're going to enjoy you they're going to love you more they're going to like doing the stuff they're doing instead of being forced into it or afraid of you or something like that so you got to really get in there and listen to it really cool stuff I highly recommend it so that's my plug for Jessica today thank you and I'm going to go ahead and get out of here guys I really appreciate you listening today and you guys have a great day and I will talk to you and click that little bell right there so you can be notified every time I do a new video also click on one of those videos there keep watching on my channel


Hello, and welcome to the Donahue Group. We're happy that you're joining us again for a fun-filled half hour of political chatter and delightful insights into the wonderful state of affairs and our localities, our state, not so much the nation. That would probably take a good hour. But I'm joined today, as always, by Cal Potter, former state senator Tom Pineschi. Glad to be here. Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin Ken Risto, the king of social studies in the Sheboygan area school district, me. Just like the king of England. Completely ceremonial. Just, absolutely. Queen of the Lion. And me, I'm Mary Lynn Donahue, after whom this show is named. Queen of the Lion, Queen of the Lion, Queen of the Lion. Thank you. The Zarina, long live the Zarina. Finally getting just a tiny bit of the respected, to which I'm entitled. We're talking about state affairs and boy, it's been interesting lately, not so much in what the state has been doing, our wonderful legislators. Which is not much of anything. Yeah, they haven't been, but what people are thinking about, and I'm going to just take a half a second to read from the journal Sentinel on Sunday, a poll that came out with a lot of interesting information. This is the most interesting thing to me. Excuse me. The poll asked those who were polled, whose interests elected officials represented the most? Voters interest, special interest, or the elected officials interest? Lots of S's there. Only 6%, six. Not 16, not 60, but only 6% thought that their elected officials represented the voters best interest. 41% thought they were representing special interests, and 48% thought that politicians, elected officials were representing the elected officials interests. I don't know about you, but that's a pretty stunning number. That kind of tends to put politicians below lawyers. Car salesmen. Car salesmen. And other assorted ne'er-do-wells in the world. 6% thought that elected officials were representing the voters interests. What do you think? Well, I think it's just a low ranking that they've earned. Well, there you go. I always say you get the government... Merit pay. You get the government you deserve. And I think people have tended to ignore that we need a new financing system for our government. And as campaigns have become more and more expensive, we've seen people who have gone out and gotten in trouble, particularly in the Madison scene, shaking down people for money. We see it on a federal level. And indictments of people who have done cozy and illegal things with the financing of campaigns.  And I would agree that the system has got its flaws. And but people auto start thinking about what the solution is. And in my opinion, the solution is to get big money out of campaigns. But it's something that has evolved to be a system that has broken, I think. If you bring it down to numbers, see, 6%, there's, that'd be about one council member would be for the voters and the rest of the council members are for themselves or special interests. And where do you put the mayor and that is he for his own self or the special interests or is he for the city? You probably get one or two vote at 6% of 17, 18 elected officials. I think there's a problem, you know. But Americans have never liked legislatures a whole lot. I mean, can anybody name a Congress that was esteemed, you know, in public opinion polls? You got that. And secondly, you've got a whole industry of talk radio which exists to generate that discussion. I mean, you can't talk about, you can't get on the air and say, let's talk about how good government is lately and how they're providing us with services that we need, who wants to listen to that? It's not nearly sexy enough. Well, the media, the national media and the state media, all the media like to trash people. Not just talk radio. Well, I know.  That's right. So you got to fill those channels with something and it's got to be 24 hours. What are you going to talk about?  You got certainly that. And you got the, yeah, the reality of raising funds. I wouldn't even want to think about running for public office as much as I'm interested in current affairs. Well, there, bingo. I don't want to raise funds. I don't want to stand around prostituting myself quite frankly. One of the, I think it's incumbent on people who are interested in the political process to try to recruit people to run for whatever office, whether it's school board or city council or state legislature. And even at a very local level where you don't really have to raise a whole lot of money. I mean, you can run a good school board race for, you know, five or $600. I mean, it depends, but you know, you can do it for just that. The disrespect and it's not even the disrespect. It's the distaste, I think, that people have for being in the public eye is so intense that it's very difficult to get good people to run for anything. Three of the four of us have been local elected officials or state elected officials, but it's tough. You know, if you're out trying to recruit people, I know when I left the school board, I was just intent on trying to find somebody who would run in my place. And I did, but boy, it took a lot of work. And in those days, the school board was pretty calm and still is, but I mean, those were fairly calm times. I left things in such good shape, but you know, it really, I don't know, it was just the 6% that really hit me. You're really buffing up your resumes last couple of these couple of episodes. I can't imagine. I can't wonder if I'm thinking if you're thinking about contemplating a run for something. Oh yeah. Are you going to make an announcement here in the air? And you know, I keep batting this microphone and I'm sure I'm our producer's poor eye. And I think that's part of it too, is the culture's gotten a lot less civil. And so, when you're in public service. The culture is also less, I think, political in the sense that, yeah, Americans have never loved their public officials. They've always distressed everything's King George, I guess, but you know, one of the things about the public today is they are a product less of public discourse on issues. In other words, if you look at this, I always, when I was in Madison, I always tell the kids to look at this beautiful Capitol building and just ask yourself, do you think the taxpayers today will build a building with these mosaics and all this original art and this gold leaf? No, the answer is no. Well, they put a glance at it. But they probably would. And but what happened at that time is you had immigrants and sons and daughters of immigrants who had a great deal of pride in their new government in their new home. And they felt they wanted to house it in a distinct building that was fitting of the concept of democracy.  They're just, they're on a different wavelength. And I'm noticing that as I get older, I guess, that the value system differs as you get older.  And interestingly enough, and our Wisconsin Academy group has talked one evening about third party politics in the US and how really literally impossible it is for a third party candidate to get elected these days to any big office. But there's an interesting movement going on right now in Wisconsin, the Fighting Bob Party. It's not a party, but their motto is is a private fighter can anyone join. But kind of coming out of the Fighting Bob, La Follette tradition, and we've talked a little bit about it, but they had their people's legislature in, I think, Baraboo, and I believe this is the fourth year they've done it, and each year more and more people come. I think they had about 5,300 people this year if I'm not mistaken. And these are the folks that convene the people's legislature. Which is meeting tomorrow, I believe, is it not? In Madison? On Thursday, October 27th, they're doing a clean sweep. They're doing a little, they're a fun group. That's the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. And they're really talking democracy and they're equal opportunity hitters. I mean, they'll go after Doyle as much as they'll go after Guard. In fact, they seem to enjoy going after Doyle more than the Republicans. But there is at least a body of people who are thinking and trying to re-engage with the real political process which just has to segue into governing.  It doesn't New York State have umpteen political parties. They have a conservative party. They have some other kind of party. They have the liberal party. They have the Republican. They have about four, five or six parties. And candidates always try to get the endorsement, Republican and Democratic candidates, try to get the endorsement of the conservative party or the liberal party. So there's already a model out there for, you know. But I'm thinking that these fighting Bob folks are pretty active. I mean, it's certainly a small group when you take it in the vast cosmos of Wisconsin politics. But they're lively, they're fun. The internet allows them to communicate with people in ways that all these folks have their blogs. And so it is pretty interesting to me that if you have 6% who are happy with where things are going, maybe this is fertile ground for the growth of alternative views. Which leads me into the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign which actually has online since 1996, I believe, a record of all campaign contributions from all state elected officials right there. I mean, if you wanna see who Jim Baumgart got money from or Cal Potter or Joe Leibharm or you just click on and boy, it's right there and it's an interesting database. But they're a pretty lively group, I think. They're going after Doyle considering him a politician in the Tommy Thompson model which is get as much money as you can out of people. I think Doyle's got some problems. I personally really liked Jim Doyle and I think he's done a good job. And his veto pen I think has been for people who are progressive thinkers has been pretty important. But he's got trouble on this poll. Only 40% think that the state of Wisconsin is going in the right direction. 51% thought it was on the wrong track. The pollsters say this is the highest negative we've ever received on that question. Even though I think Doyle is generally fairly well regarded. Now he's got his own travel gate matters. I don't know, what do you think? I think the mud that drips off of Tom DeLay and Bill Frisk and George Bush. Okay, so what are they doing? I think all politicians are suffering and I don't think Doyle is, I would not put him in the same category as Tom DeLay. Although I did like Tom DeLay's mug shot. I thought he looked positively. Senator, by the way, I'm not calling. He has a mug shot in the favor too. My point is that I did the Burks and the Koalas and anybody who's gotten in any trouble in the console and people in Milwaukee and the recalls it's had. I think it's muddy to water so much that people, as I said before, who are really basically formed by their consumerism and their sports culture and their entertainment culture, say, a pox on alderhouses and so I don't know that push comes to shove when Doyle is up for re-election whether he's got to fight this but I'm not so sure that people examine the records closely and people who really know the individuals involved would come down with the same numbers. I think this is a generalized, again, politician, anti-politician viewpoint. What's interesting, again, is the same numbers can be brought for people's confidence in Congress. It's like 29%. But when you go back to their districts and say, well, what do you think of Congressman Petri or Sensenbrenner? All of a sudden the numbers are way up there. They love their Congressperson but they hate the institution. And so I think in this case- They love their local neighborhood schools when you get right down to it but when you ask about public schools there are shambles and we should destroy them all. So I think some of Doyle's numbers are a result of they don't like politicians but I'm not so sure push comes to shove that he's going to be viewed any worse than green or whatever whoever opponent ends up being his opposition. On the record and Tom, feel free to jabber back at me but I think Doyle's done a nice job. He survived. Well, he's brought in a balanced budget. He has certainly supported public education. Okay, he borrows from the left pocket to pay the right pocket. Sort of like robbing the entire tobacco settlement.  No, I think that was from the film. That was cool. Yeah, well, in any event, yeah. But yeah, you didn't take from transportation to pay, you know. Take from tobacco to pay, yeah, yeah. And I- I think some of the negatives that brought down delay and maybe bring down delay are I think the Republicans will use against Doyle in the contribution list that you just alluded to. I don't think it's that serious because I do believe that what the governor said is that he's known the Edelman family for years. I have known the Edelman when the Edelman served as the legislature, he's now a federal judge. That family has been politically active for a long time. Forever. And so I don't think it's unusual to have had contributions coming from someone like that family. I think if you look at where Doyle's got his money, it's like any other politician where you don't have public financing, they go out and raise it from whoever's got money. And I think Tommy Thompson was a master at it. And I think Doyle has learned well from it. The only thing that raises an issue in my mind is that the history of Edelman or whatever the gentleman's name is and was that he contributed at most $1,000 to any political campaign, whether it was Doyle's or any campaign. And within this time period of pre and post contracts for the travel agency, two people, himself and another person contributed $20,000 to Doyle's campaign. So it looks fishy from that viewpoint. But it may be a legit, but it looks pretty good. That's the point. I know that there's study after study that says you there's really, it's hard to prove that those kinds of contributions actually in the final analysis really make a difference in the kinds of laws legislatures make. But I never, it just looks bad and it always looks corrupt even when it isn't corrupt and who knows. And then whether it be the Democratic Party in the 1980s who controlled the wheels of power in Washington and in Madison and the Republican Party, you spend that much time raising funds and getting cozy with people. It gives, if nothing else, the appearance of impropriety. And that in a culture that you're talking about where the media is gonna pick up on that and play that and spin that as being corrupt or not, it just is going to make people extremely cynical about politicians and their intent. That's why I think the public's outrage against politicians has to take a step forward to say, all right, let's put some rules in here that makes sense. Like for example, no contributions during a legislative session only during the period of the campaign. There are things you can do either without public financing even. That would make a lot more sense and probably give people a better confidence that there isn't somebody on the take here. I know Jim Doyle personally and he's a very, very good politician.  I have full confidence. He's a very decent person. He's a decent person. And I think this is a matter of timing. I think if you go back and you look at the state, the state is always entering into contracts. We do business with people who do laundry. We do people who do road work. SBC does contracts for the phone service. And I think if you go back to Tommy Thompson's years, you probably find executives from SBC who have given money to Tommy Thompson. Well, their company had a contract with the state for phone service. And you could probably draw all kinds of conclusions if you wanted to from that type of interaction. But the fact of the matter is government doesn't provide all the services. It does contract with the private sector. And people who are in the private sector do give to politicians. And so that's the bad part about the whole public, to me, private corporations and so on being involved in campaigns. And if people don't wanna change that to public financing, then we have to do another thing and that is control when those contributions are made. And we don't wanna seem to wanna do that either. So it's really a dilemma that it's in people's hands to start asking and expecting these changes, but they don't take the next step. And I attribute it to I guess the fact that they just are so apolitical. I've stepped back so much from their previous generations that that's nobody says has a sense of urgency to fix it. I don't have, you mentioned Adelman, the company. I figured they'd select him because they're Wisconsin. I mean, homegrown, give it to the agency if it was close. Well there was a thing on Channel 40 a night about Doyle driving in an SUV, a General Motors SUV, made in Jamesville. And they were saying, well, doesn't this guzzled gas? Well he said, I'd buy it because it's the only vehicle that's made by Wisconsin Company. That's why I'm using this vehicle.  But Halliburton can do a lot of things that other oil companies can't do and they know what they can do. Well they can sure make money. And they know how to do it. And they do know how to do it. Do how to make money. They do how to do oil work successfully. Not give it to somebody who's going to screw it up. Well, there's a can of fish for you, but I wanted to. I just thought I'd throw that out to you. I thought I'd ask Professor Risto here just for a little historical perspective. You know, we can be in real despair. I mean, 6% to me is a despairing kind of number. Depressive. Yeah, and as much as I like the Fighting Bob people, it's 5,300 people, not 53,000. Not 5.3 million as a resident state. Exactly. It's a small percentage. Things have been worse in American history, right? Oh yeah.  It was an unbelievable war.  And the Progressive Movement grew out of that. Part of that, the Progressive Movement, was the real feeling that government no longer was responsive to average people and that the United States Senate was nothing more than a million years club or a formal lobby of the industrial forces. Is our current Congress as bad as the Gilded Age Congress? In my view? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yes. But I want to step back. Where's the Progressive Party coming from? Part of it's that. But part of it is that I think as a society, we're just deeply split about some really fundamental issues in our history. And so when I see the Congress being extremely partisan, so I want to separate that, there's certain things that the Congress is extremely partisan about. And I think it's because we just are extremely divided as a people. But then you start looking at the sort of tax legislation and the loopholes and the less energy bill. I mean, say what you want, Democrats and Republicans were both in the trough and the transportation bill. And we're not even thinking about cutting those programs to fund supporting New Orleans reconstruction. In fact, right now it looks like the house on the one side wants to take monies out of the food stamp program to rebuild New Orleans and the Democrats and Republicans, they seem to have a coalition to be able to do that. The Senate is thinking about leaning toward Medicare cuts for goodness sakes. Well, they want to take what I heard just to put it in balance. I heard that there's a lot of money in the food stamp program that's not being used. That's because we don't advertise it. Use it somewhere else, put it in the context. But so I guess I want to separate some issues we're partisan because we just start in a part in our history where we're deeply like pre-civil war. It's really strongly, there's no consensus. And there's other things, you start looking at the kinds of legislation that's passed. And it's just obviously those guys are right in the checks and they're getting what they want. And it's pandering to groups that have evolved to be very strongly in the hearts of voters. I have seen it over the years, I spent in the office more and more one issue.  There's abortion, anti-abortion group that's all they care about that issue. And then there's some people that are homophobic. You can go right down the line. And so politicians not only do they pander to the checkwriters, they pander to a constituency out there that follows very intently and evaluates candidates on one issue. On one issue, yeah. And so that's the interesting part here, two people say very bad things about politicians in general. But when you start getting into these camps of the one issue voter, they'll say, oh yeah, I like this person immensely because they vote right on my issue, even though I don't like any politician. I love this person 99.9% of the time. And so when you've got that type of perception of what politicians should be doing for you and how well they're doing is based on one issue, that's another complicating factor that has evolved. Well, and that brings up also, there used to be in the Congress and in other legislatures, some real party discipline. And part of that was political parties were stronger. Now, sometimes we don't like that. We don't like having, you know, say what you want about Tom DeLay, but he delivered the votes on the floor. Sometimes he had to extend voting time, but he delivered and there was some real party discipline. And that could be good news or bad news, depending on where you are on that issue. But what happens when a candidate can raise the kind of funds independently of the party, they get awfully independent and it's awfully tough than to find compromises and consensus like you say, like you had in the 50s and the 60s. And television has changed that too. It allows candidates to really develop a base of support outside of the party. And parties have gotten weaker and weaker and weaker. To the point where, to the point, and I don't care if it happens to be Tom DeLay right now because they're in power, but in the 80s, it was Jim Wright or somebody else. Those guys are raising so much funds in terms of their own personal personality, they're like the godfather of politics. They're writing checks out to people who need campaign funds. And looking for creative issues. Chucks the same way, right? Looking for creative issues wasn't the mode of operation. It was keeping your power, raising funds, and trying to be creative about something didn't exist.  Well, and I do think that there are just some things that happen and it's just endemic in the, I mean, politicians are gonna have to be politicians to raise money and they're going to have to please certain interest groups and so forth. But it just seems like the threat is becoming undone and the ends are fraying and I have some fear for, or just look at opportunities. I keep coming back to, we talked about episodes ago, is that most districts aren't competitive anymore. Exactly. And so why reach consensus and reach out to the people in your district when you know that you're a shoe-in? And you gotta keep those particular people happy. So you got that dynamic going on as well. Sure. Well, that's another one of those reforms. Not only can you reform the political contribution thing by controlling when those contributions are given, but you could also have a commission that now sets up the districts to try to provide some competitiveness. And Iowa does that real well. Right. And there's some states that have taken that step, but they're probably two out of 50 that have done that. They've done it. Schwarzenegger's trying to do that in California and he's running to resistance because all their state officials, every district, they ran and got reelected. Even though he campaigned against some of them, they still got reelected. And redistricting was a real art in California. Phil Burton of the Hill Burton Act. Phil Burton had so much power in California, but he was always very careful as he exercised his redistricting power to make sure that there were at least some districts that were competitive and some districts that the Democrats could, that it was balanced. So that in spite of having this huge amount of power, he's just a fascinating political figure, having this huge amount of power that he kept things competitive. And I think understanding that if you don't do that, the whole system does fall down. Well, that's the old saying. If you've got power, you put a little, leave a little on the table. Leave a little on the table. And that's exactly the point, is that even the minority prefers the situation this way because at least they're getting reelected and they're getting funds from the light. Well, most of us who have run for office, and I've said this before too, is that we're fully in favor of competitive districts and elections, but isn't it nice when you don't have an opponent? I mean, it really is. We've got to wrap up and just got a couple of minutes left, but any bets on Pegglaut and Schlager, the polls came out a little more favorably than we might have thought. This woman is a scrapper. She is a hard worker and boy, she is undaunted after the drunk driving charge facing breast cancer and has really come back from that and is doing fairly well in the polling against two Republicans, Paul Bucher, whose name is somewhat known, and Van, somebody, I apologize. Whose name is it? I can't remember that fellow's name. Van Hollen, I think the name is. Will Peggwin in 2006? Will Kathleen Falk jump into the race? If Kathleen Falk, okay, I'll go right on the line. Kathleen Falk steps in, she's toast. If Falk doesn't, she's gonna be fine. I'm surprised by the number, but then again, we're not in campaign time. She's coming off on not only the positives of time passage since those acts, but also the conviction of the first that deer hunter up in Northern Wisconsin, where she took on the trial. Well, we'll see. Thanks, it's been fun.