Welcome to Free Thoughts from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. I'm Trevor Burrus, a research fellow at the Cato Institute Center for Constitutional Studies. I'm Aaron Ross Powell, editor of Libertarianism.org and a research fellow here at the Cato Institute. Our guest today is Timothy P. Carney, senior political columnist for the Washington Examiner and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also the author of The Big Rip-Off, How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, and Obama Nomics. Welcome to Free Thoughts, Tim. Hey, thanks for having me. Your beat is corporate welfare and cronyism in general. You're a never-ending source of stories that make me even believe in government less than I already do right now. But it seems that most people believe that government and big business are enemies. Yes. And you often point out that's not the case. So why aren't government and big business enemies? Absolutely.  And this is a frame you see when the media talks about it. They say, well, on the one side, there's government. On the other side, there's business. And one of the reasons that this myth is so useful to sort of the Washington insiders and harmful to the cause of liberty is that it creates this false appearance of unanimity and consensus. So you see this in the coverage of, say, the light bulb laws that effectively outlaw the traditional cheap incandescent bulb and requires bulbs to have a higher efficiency. And they say, well, you got tea partyers against it, but even the light bulb industry supports these regulations. Now, of course, the traditional light bulb was a very low profit margin thing. This was an ongoing problem for the people who made it. And a testament to free enterprise that the price was kept low. And the bigger, the more expensive light bulbs, they have higher margins, higher barriers to entry. And those companies benefited from regulations that made us buy those things. And so that's just one typical example of it, that often free enterprise doesn't allow for giant profit margins. And government can create barriers to entry. And so I like to sort of turn a lot of the argument for free enterprise on its head and say, it's not about these companies making profits. It's about making it hard for these companies to make profits. And government can come in and, through regulation, add barriers to entry. And then a general way I put it is the big guys are going to be able to afford the better lobbyists. And so once government gets involved, it becomes a home game for the biggest guys. That is interesting when they say, you know, we look at the tea party, you presume they're pro-business. And then we say, even businesses like this. Yes. So you turn tea party people and people who are free market onto the same side as business, which is just constantly where the debate is sitting on this false dichotomy. Yes. How long has this sort of thing been going on? I mean, how long has big business been benefiting from government? Because we've got this narrative that stretches back quite a long time that of, you know, the government is the enemy of it, the Great Depression and the programs that came out of that, was this attempt to kind of reign in free market capitalism. Don't forget the Progressive Era, the Muck Rakers. Yes. The big guys were, you know, running loose and we had to stop them when, in fact, they were often heavily involved in these sorts of things. So how new is this? Well, in my first book, The Big Rip-Off, I start at the Whiskey Rebellion, where you've got Hamilton talking George Washington into going out and shutting down the, you know, the guys doing the moonshining in western Pennsylvania and who was cheering on Hamilton in this case. It was the bigger Whiskey producers on the East Coast. But one of the greatest places to focus is, Trevor, as you said, the Progressive Era and Gabriel Colco's Triumph of Conservatism is a book that focuses on this, where he says, when Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson were increasing government, it was often at the request of and to the benefit of big business. And so the most famous sort of Muck Raker Progressive story is up in Sinclair, going into the meatpacking plants, and then everybody reads a book and sees how gross these meatpacking plants are. It's an interesting story as a journalist, because Sinclair was trying to write a socialist thing about the plight of the worker. And people maybe started thinking, oh, the worker has it rough, and then they say, they pull what in my meat, and they lost all consumers. It was sermon beads, I think. They were actually people falling into the vats and stuff. But yeah, he said, I aim for the country's heart, and I accidentally hit them in the gut, was what Sinclair said. And so there's letters that Teddy Roosevelt wrote that Gabriel Colco, who himself calls himself a socialist, he dug up these letters, and he sees Roosevelt saying, I find Sinclair like a completely despicable man, but he's very useful here because it allows me to push for increased mandatory federal regulation of meatpacking. And you have the head of the big meatpackers show up in congressional committees and say, we are now and have always been in favor of federal regulation of meatpacking. And Sinclair said, no, this isn't what I was aiming for. This is going to just give a government sample of approval on the big guys. It's going to create barriers to entry that keeps out the little guys. And you see it again and again throughout where a lot of the attempts at monopoly and say oil and steel, the market undercut those attempts in the ways that you know they very often do, that everybody raises their prices in a cartel, and then one guy is just way too tempted by the idea of stealing all the sales by undercutting the cartel, and that they started to go get together and say, we're not going to have a successful cartel unless we bring the government into it. So again, I track it back to Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, but you can also, you can see it throughout all of history. Given that this has been going on for so long and that in many cases it sounds like it was rather obvious what was going on. I mean, there was no real attempt to hide the influence of big business on these regulations. Why does this narrative of the antagonism persist? Why does the big myth persist? This is something I've tried to look into. For one, there are people who find it useful. If you're a big business, you find it very useful to sort of have a docile kind of Republican party that's willing to do what you say because they believe it's in service of a higher cause. For two, I think, and I'm a journalist as you mentioned, and what we're always looking for is a good story. The worst is when you go and you do all your reporting and what you come out with is, this is kind of complex and nuanced. You need to have two different sides and a clear lesson, and so that's the easiest way to do it. And you just think about the way a reporter does his craft where he calls two different sides. And the easiest thing to do, if you're writing about, say, the environment, is you call Exxon and then you call Greenpeace. While the more telling thing to do might be to call Exxon and then call General Electric. I actually think that would be a more interesting story, but it's a harder story to tell and a lot of the reporters don't even grasp it. When they do grasp it, it's this amazing exception. The New York Times just recently had a piece about catfishing companies and said that these companies that sell this catfish, they were having trouble and so they did the unthinkable. They asked for more federal regulation. And of course, that's almost the same phrase the New York Times used when they said, you know, the Philip Morris did the unthinkable and they asked for more federal regulation of cigarettes. And then you've got, you know, all these other companies that go ahead and they did the unthinkable and they asked for more government involvement. So occasionally they do tell the story and it's always an interesting twist. I'm glad when they don't tell the story because then I get to write the column and nobody else gets it. It's interesting. The next question on my sheet is why would big business prefer more regulations? But I also think it's interesting because sometimes they do, but sometimes when they're smaller, they don't. So at the beginning they might not want more. How does that work between the big business and the small business? So in general, I mean, first it sort of lists off the reasons why they might like more regulation. The simple one and in my second book, Obamonomics, I call it the overhead smash is that regulation adds to overhead. It makes it more expensive to do business. You see Philip Morris doing this and supporting federal regulation of tobacco makes it much harder for smaller guys to come in. But the other is one thing I call the inside game. It becomes a home game for the big guys because they can hire the lobbyists. The lawyers working for the big tobacco companies are former FDA commissioners. The small tobacco guys can't hire the former FDA commissioners. Are there even small tobacco companies? I don't even know if there are startup tobacco companies. Can I start one tomorrow? There have been in the past. So I don't know if there still is artisanal tobacco. Probably it's in Brooklyn if it exists. So there's all these reasons to want to do it. And sometimes the regulations they want is a mandate. The most obvious ones of these are not on the federal level. It's on the local and state level. The restaurants trying to oppose food trucks. The taxi cabs trying to oppose Uber. You see it and it's not strictly big versus small though. You do see in a lot of places supermarkets aren't allowed to sell alcohol. And the smaller businesses are the liquor stores. And they're the incumbent businesses. And they might have more sway because they're actually locally owned than the bigger guys. But in general, and so they'll support state and local rules to prevent the bigger guys from selling it. But in general, the bigger you get, I think the more likely you are to support these regulations. In part because bigger guys gain the advantage of economies of scale and they can deal with the higher costs. They can hire the federal, the former federal regulators or congressmen as their lobbyists. And also they sometimes become a little less nimble. You see it happening with any company in America. Even Apple, you feel them sort of slowing down and getting sluggish and that sort of thing. And so they, the bigger guys are less able to adapt to a changing environment. So the more that you can freeze the environment in place, the better it is for the bigger guys. Yeah. We were talking before we started recording about I was meeting at one point with certain representatives of a certain tobacco company who shall remain nameless who are being outcompeted on e-cigarettes right now. And the problem they face is trying to shift, if e-cigarettes get big and that becomes a growing market, they have to take their entire production line which is like a huge behemoth moving in one direction and try and shift it all over to one other thing. Imagine what Blockbuster Video thought when Netflix came out. How much they had invested in physical stores and physical video and videotapes and whether or not it was easier for them to maybe if they could get a law pass that made Netflix illegal or localized or high cost versus trying to switch their entire business over. So it does seem like a generally consistent idea. Do larger companies use regulations against each other?  But when you earlier on you said they talked to Exxon and Greenpeace, but it would be more interesting if they talked to Exxon and GE. So you do see a lot of times just these battles of the Titans going after one another. Net neutrality is a great example of that where the networks don't want the regulation but the content providers do. And that can be considered Netflix versus AT&T. And then sometimes you do see the guys selling the renewable energy versus the guys selling the fossil fuel energy and they're doing the battle. And those are often very fun. Some of my favorites though are when it's more the midsize industries where you have the credit unions going after the community banks. The credit unions are kind of non-profits so they get some benefits. And so the community banks went after them a couple years ago to try to take away their benefits. They're so upset, the community banks, that they started lobbying against a special subsidy that most people didn't know about created during the financial crisis called the Transaction Account Guarantee, which was basically like FDIC insurance, but it went up to infinity. So it was a subsidy to really rich people who kept their money at banks and it was more important to the community banks. And so the credit unions, as far as I could tell, just said, well, they came after our special benefit, we're going after theirs and they won. And I was thinking, how did this subsidy get killed? And part of it was just out of spite down there on Cave Street. So sometimes these fights are really to our advantage. When I ask about motives, which is something that I have asked variants of this question on quite a lot of episodes of free thoughts. But when I hear stories like this, I wonder – so the congressmen who are enacting these laws or the regulators who are writing them and getting them onto the books, are they – how aware are they of what's going on? Like when these companies approach them, are they like, oh yes, it would be good to pass this thing that will hurt these guys at the expense of these guys or profits for a given industry or are they being duped and thinking they're doing a good thing? I think – so there's a – I always paint a spectrum of kind of how corrupt is something happening in Washington. And on one end – and this is a story a lot of people tell – is basically bribery. And we know this happens. Some guys are in jail for bribery, where he says, if you support my – will you support my policy? And the congressman says, all right, give me $100,000 check and I will and he cuts it and he does it. On the other end – I think that usually comes as a bag of money with a dollar sign on it that they give you straight to him. Well, with one congressman it came wrapped in tinfoil and he put it in his freezer. Yes, yes. And so then the other end of the spectrum is that if you – how is the money in politics connected to this? Well, you're only going to get a meeting with a congressman if he really decides that you're worth his time. If I call up my congressman and I say, by the way, I have some thoughts on the export import bank of the United States, I'm not going to get a seat at that table. But if I've been to his fundraisers and contributed, I'm going to get a seat at the table. Most congressmen often end up hearing from both sides and you posit perfectly innocent motives and you could say, well, the guys who are getting the seat at the table are the guys who can afford to cut the check. And when your problem is a problem of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, then the people paying the costs are much less likely to have a seat at the table than the people getting the benefits. And so the most innocent explanation is that the congressman only gets one side of the explanation and that's why he does it. And I think that's largely true. That's truer than most cases being bribery. But what we can't rule out is you think about the role of senior staff on Capitol Hill Play. The congressmen obviously are outsourcing a lot of their meetings, their decision-making to their legislative director or their chief of staff or their deputy chief of staff. And the congressman himself, they face pressures from the revolving door from the fact that the guy they're talking to is their former boss or their former committee chairman. That's who the lobbyist is. And they know that if they play ball, they're going to be able to afford a suit as nice as that guy instead of wearing the men's warehouse suit that they're wearing as Capitol Hill staffers. And so that's the other thing I think you need to sprinkle in there is a point in the direction of corruption. You mentioned getting into the staff at the great points. We'll get there because we talked about the revolving door and you love revolving door stories about that kind of corruption. But you also mentioned a little bit earlier about the knowledge of the transaction fee that you had mentioned for the community things. It also seems like one of the elements of this is there's so much hidden nuances to the law that only the people who pay attention to it actually know about. How many things and which page of the code of federal regulations and only the specific applies to the specific bank in the specific area so they are the only ones paying attention to it and no one else. Complexity is a subsidy to the big guys. Tax code complexity. There was a story of General Electric in 2011 paying near zero federal income tax. And the New York Times ran this and the scandal was supposed to be that they paid near zero federal income tax. I think every corporation should pay zero federal income tax and I think everybody else, all your listeners, should do what they can to minimize the taxes that they legally owe. Within the bounds of the law. Yes, and of course you pay all the taxes that they legally owe. But for me the scandal was that there was over 900 people in the tax division at General Electric. Not that it was nefarious for them to hire them but it's scandalous that it's profitable for them to hire all these guys to spend their time doing that instead of making their refrigerators work better or anything like that. And the problem is on a couple levels. The lower level problem is that these guys, unlike a smaller business, can just spend all their time going ahead and moving money around on pieces of paper to minimize their taxes and thus maximize their profit and that's unfair and that tilts the playing field in the direction of the bigger guys. The worst problem is that these guys can call off the heads of the actual business department and say, by the way, if you do your business a little differently in another country or at a different time a month or in a different order, then you minimize the taxes. Well then they're actually encouraging business activity that's less efficient and less optimal for the economy but is more profitable. And so that for me is a scandal. It both tilts the playing field in the direction of the big guy and reduces economic prosperity. You mentioned for some examples now because you've got so many. The Big Rip-Off I think is one of the best books for getting a really negative view of government. So, and you wrote about this. The first time I think I wrote about the XM Bank was when I read The Big Rip-Off, which I think you wrote in 2006. And now we're still talking about it. A little bit more now. Finally talking about it. So what is the XM Bank and isn't it the greatest thing ever? It is the greatest thing ever as far as making work for me. But as you've suggested that, you know, if we got rid of it there's plenty else I could write about. Sorry, Boeing paid me to say that. The Export-Import Bank is, it's not a bank, it's a government agency and it actually has nothing to do with imports oddly enough. It is a federal agency that subsidizes U.S. exporters. It does it by financing, by giving taxpayer financing to foreign buyers of U.S. goods. So typically for the most part this means a loan guarantee to a foreign airline which is buying a Boeing. So, you know, J.P. Morgan lends money to Air China because you don't just buy airplanes straight up. You borrow like you would for a house. But instead of J.P. Morgan bearing the risk for that loan Export-Import Bank does, meaning the taxpayer does. So J.P. Morgan charges a lower interest rate. Maybe Air China is more likely to buy a Boeing than they are to buy an Airbus in this situation. And so a lot of their financing happens with direct loans. A satellite company in Belgium wants to buy a U.S. satellite so U.S. taxpayers through XM loan the money directly to them. So if Air China decides it's not going to pay back the loan U.S. taxpayers help out J.P. Morgan. If the Belgian satellite company goes bankrupt U.S. taxpayers just eat the costs of the loan. For the most part XM hasn't lost money in recent years. It basically breaks even. But its costs are, you know, first of all Fannie Mae didn't cost taxpayers money for years. But its costs are spread throughout the economy in distortions. And I write about that in all my articles in my books. The distortions being yes. They can always say we're not costing the taxpayer anything but they're restructuring the economy around themselves and also as Boeing giving themselves an advance. It is called the Boeing Bank. 40% of their finance dollars go to subsidize one company which is Boeing. And again the most egregious forms of corporate welfare in my view don't actually end up costing taxpayers money. I think that would make it too obvious and harder for them to survive politically. Sometimes you have to look at these programs in terms of like Darwinian evolution. Why are they surviving? And one survival trade is not being a direct outlay. And so XIM's costs are, again, the risk that taxpayers carry just like Fannie and Freddie. But also the people who lose business. The most obvious one is the guy who doesn't get the loan. Two guys show up at Boeing. One is, you know, Sullivan's Bar and the other is Air China. And Air China is carrying an export import bank guarantee. Sullivan's Bar loses the loan. Another is the domestic competitors of the foreign subsidized company. Delta Airlines has tried to sue export import banks saying, we lost, we used to fly from Atlanta to Mumbai, but then you guys came in and subsidized Air India to buy planes for this flight, for this route. And they underpriced us because they got subsidized planes.  And so those are definitely victims of export import bank subsidies.  So John Deere gets to sell more tractors to Europe. That's great for John Deere.  So they're another victim. Now maybe it means that they're each paying 100 extra dollars for a tractor. And they don't even know that XIM is involved in it. You can see why these costs are so hidden and so diffused. Dan Ikinson here at Kato is one of the best guys at documenting those hidden costs of XIM. But if Boeing and John Deere are getting more money for their tractors or I guess their planes and their tractors, how – I mean sure, so maybe other guys are losing out, but more money is flowing to them and they're not sitting on that money. They're reinvesting it. They're using it to hire more hardworking Americans. So doesn't it help in some ways too? So it helps some people, yes, and it hurts other people. And so maybe that's a wash or – but the argument for it existing is that it's a gain and that argument is based on the idea that these bureaucrats on Vermont Avenue know better than the market how to allocate resources. And that's an argument that I don't blame Democrats for holding. I mean I do blame Republicans and people who espouse the idea of free enterprise for believing that the government agency is better at deciding where the money goes than the market is. So for example, Elizabeth Warren. Yes. And how she – apparently according to all sources, she hates big business in Wall Street and she wants to bring everything back to the American worker, but she is not against the XIM Bank. No, she is for the Export-Import Bank, which is – Has she explained that? It's a Wall Street subsidy. The most basic level – I go to the Export-Import Bank conference every year and – Wait, wait, who holds – did they hold it? They hold it, yes. The government – So do you hold a sign outside? No, I just sign up as press and I was drinking at the hotel late one night with a U.S.-based banker and he said, well, why wouldn't we do it? It's free money and it is. They make a loan and almost all of the risk is shouldered off to the taxpayer, but the interest payments come back to the loan. It is a Wall Street subsidy and Elizabeth Warren supports it. It seems like you could really just infer how much it's worth to them by how much they spend on lobbyists to try and keep it in place. Yes, so the financial services round table, which represents these banks, they're absolutely supporting it. I haven't noticed whether American Bankers Association is, but you see these guys all sign on to the letters to keep it in place. But for the most part, it's a U.S. Chamber of Commerce and it's Boeing that have a real interest in keeping this agency in place. Has Warren given reasons for why she supports it? She says she thinks it creates jobs. And again, that fits into her economic view that a government can create jobs, but it certainly cuts against the entirety of her rhetoric that the government, you know, that the banks are stealing from us because this is one way in which they are literally offloading their risk onto us. So I say XIM is consistent with Democrats' economic beliefs and inconsistent with their populist rhetoric. Now, what about lobbyists? Because we keep saying, we keep talking about lobbyists and that word is rarely not said with derision anymore or with absolute disgust even. Shouldn't we just ban lobbying?  Congressmen need experts to talk to them. Everybody has a right to petition the government for the redress of grievances. I have a couple thoughts on lobbyists. The first is that the revolving door really is a problem.   No. The optimal thing to do is to increase government involvement but not take the private sector out of it. And that's exactly what Obamacare and Dodd-Frank were. I'm not saying that this was any motives, but I think systematically it's a reason if you had said, I want to make a bill that maximizes the post passage value of every staffer who wrote this, you would have written Obamacare and you would have written Dodd-Frank. And those incentives are bad on the Democratic side and they drive Republicans towards more subsidies and towards stuff like the post Enron Sarbanes-Oxley bill where Michael Oxley became a lobbyist for the financial sector. And a lot of the staffers did too. And so those bad incentives are created by the revolving door. And that's something that I do think we could regulate more because it's about regulating politicians more than about regulating the private sector. How would we regulate that?  So currently there's a cooling off period. It's one to two years depending on, you know, for members and for former Hill staffers. There's a limit on your ability to contact your former boss. And I would dramatically expand that. Barney Frank actually had a good rule after I wrote a few articles about his former staffers becoming Wall Street lobbyists. He said, well, you know what? Those guys haven't spoken to me since the day they left. He said, chairing the financial services committee, if you go and work for one of the companies that we regulate and subsidize, frankly, if you go and work for one of these companies, you are not allowed to talk to me or anyone in my staff for as long as I'm the committee chairman. Republicans could institute that as their own rule. I think that would be a great thing to do. The Congress could pass that as a rule. And again, this is a restriction on government employees, which is what they do when they leave. You got, you know, lots of lawyers here who could argue about whether this is too much of a restriction on the First Amendment. Right, I don't think it is. The cooling off period for senators at two years, there have been bills to make it lifetime. There's a legal definition of a lobbying contact. And if you said you're not allowed to make a paid lobbying contact on behalf of somebody else forever, that's the sort of bill that I'm open to. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but I do think that this is, it's regulating senators and congressmen in how they live their lives. It's not about their ability to petition the government for the redress of their own grievances. It's about, well, first it's about General Electric's right to hire Tom Daschle to petition the government. It's about Tom Daschle to get paid by General Electric to petition the government. So I do think that restrictions on the revolving door are something that conservatives, libertarians ought to consider. That strikes me though as something that would be potentially impossible to pass, right? Because you're asking, I mean, the people who would have to pass it would be the very people who want those high paying jobs as soon as they leave. You're not thinking cynically, Tom. What you do is... That's a rare thing for Eric. You grandfather in the current members. So then you address the problem in the future and you create a barrier to entry. So for the short term, they're making themselves worth even more. Just like they did, the Democrats did when they grandfathered in the current spouses who were lobbyists, which was Tom Daschle, Byron Dorgan, Kent Conrad, Dick Durbin's wife, Liddy Dole's husband. They grandfathered in all those people, which made them the last few women who you could ever hire to lobby or men to hire their spouse. That is a really interesting thing I've noticed in this town in the five years I've been here is that oftentimes your pay, this is not true of most Cato people, especially not because I've never worked on the Hill, but your pay is just sort of directly proportional to the people you know. You wrote an article recently about Hero 34, I think it was number 34, people that Harry Reid's retirement is really going to mess up their life because it's their reconnection to Harry Reid that actually made them valuable. It is an interesting thing to watch the lobbyists who adapt and realize that they're former bosses at some point going to retire and so pick up other areas of expertise. But yes, you're creating a special class who wrote the bills so they know the ins and outs and the really policy people and then door openers are sort of another class of people and that those are what our economy is rewarding and that's what people are getting rich off of. I mean, if you were to just bring in like an old communist and show him the Washington D.C. economy, he would say, yes, see, this is what I was saying about the corruption. The people who are rich don't actually provide any value. Would you be in favor of... One of the interesting theories too about lobbying and you kind of mentioned it is that the Hill staffs are not that big. They don't get paid that much. They're very young and the government and what it does is so big and so broad that lobbyists are just ultimately, partially a legislative subsidy in the sense that they know about this one little area and so they help for maybe better informed lawmaking so maybe increasing staff and increasing salary could be a good deal. It's one of the things when we point out that what is it? Six or seven of the ten richest counties in the country are within commuting distance of Washington D.C. Is that just really chapter-having? Is that the fact that this is everything about what we're talking about today? A lot of conservatives assume that this is about the two government bureaucrats who each make $150,000 and that's a small portion of it. A big part of it is the contractors are evolving toward lobbyists and that sort of thing. I would rather us pay the congressman and their staffers more to have more of that expertise be announced. You are going to necessarily need the expertise from the outside and that is always going to create a potential possibility for corruption but I really do think addressing the revolving door is a way to take away because the problem with the revolving door is not that these guys are getting rich, it's that they have bad incentives when they're on Capitol Hill. I want to get back to some of these fun and juicy examples of awful stuff that's being done. You've talked about, you called that the unholy trinity and we've got the XM Bank and the next one is the ethanol mandate. So, yeah, we got rid of a lot of the federal actual ethanol subsidies. Did that blow your mind? Was that very surprising to you? No, and again, once you think I just got to hang out with you more because I'm not cynical enough here. So, you had a tax credit where a refiner who bought ethanol got a special tax credit and of course it wasn't really a tax credit because there were some people for whatever reason who didn't actually owe the excise tax but could still get a tax credit. So, it was literally a check from the federal government, from the treasury for buying ethanol and then after that in 2005 and 2007 in those energy bills we got the ethanol mandate which basically requires in a complex mechanism I don't totally understand but requires ethanol, requires refiners basically to buy it. So, once the mandate was no once the subsidy was no longer driving demand and it was entirely driven by the mandate, it just ended up being a subsidy to the refiners and if you think about how that works that ended up being a subsidy for the refiners. So, the ethanol subsidy was subsidizing Exxon and people who own SUVs and so that's why Congress was willing to let that expire but the real subsidy now is the mandate and by requiring refiners gas stations to buy the ethanol it is obviously driving up demand for ethanol often driving up the price of gasoline always applying upward pressure to food prices you had tortilla riots in Mexico I think that was in 2007 or 2008 that that happened and that was partly driven by the fact that agricultural land is going over towards corn ethanol corn used to be mostly for feeding cows secondarily for feeding humans now it's mostly for ethanol secondarily for feeding cows and thirdly for feeding humans and so this obviously has a distorting effect on the market using up water creating lots of runoff and that sort of thing and then when they try to do advanced ethanol there are a lot of people who worry about the effects on rain forests of some of the advanced biofuels and that sort of thing and so it really is just a clear special interest boondoggle I mean the benefit to the farmer the corn farmer is completely offset by the cost to the rancher Is this entirely because of the presidential election going through Iowa or is that overplayed? So I used to think that was overplayed until I saw Scott Walker basically do a 180 degree flip-flop when he went to Iowa and that it's a big part of it another part is that there's so many different constituencies for they constantly shift the argument there is a national security people you get a lot of people say oh well it's a way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil I mean nowadays unless you count North Dakota as a foreign country that argument doesn't doesn't hold as much sway oh well it's for the family farmers is one of the arguments that's made oh well it's good for the environment I don't think anybody believes that anymore and so they're really running out of excuses but it gets bundled in with other legislation and that sort of thing and now it's a permanent piece of legislation it would actually take a bill to go ahead and repeal it for us to get rid of this now the third of the holy trinity is something that maybe our listeners have heard before the sugar subsidies which is maybe the most well-known subsidy that's out there how does that work? what is the origin of that? so this one's very complicated in some ways but it starts with the federal government keeps out foreign sugar it has a quota each country is only allowed to sell us a little bit of sugar so it is the as far as I know the most protectionist policy that we have and then the second step of it is that all this every sugar grower can borrow against their own sugar either the growers or the people who are holding on to it at something like 19, 20 cents a pound of sugar and it's a non-recourse loan meaning that if the price of sugar drops too low then they just walk away and the federal government has the sugar which then they of course turn into ethanol they sell to the ethanol makers to turn into ethanol and so this is like a Marx Brothers idea I swear and so if the price drops too low then the U.S. tax payers buy it but the price rarely drops too low even though the world's sugar price is often half that 10, 12 cents I mean it fluctuates quite a bit but the but it often doesn't drop that low the price in the U.S. because of the protectionist policies and then there are other things the silos for storing the sugar get taxpayer backed loan guarantees the entire sugar ecosystem in Florida is because of the kind of draining the Everglades into a bunch of channels so that you could actually grow the sugar there and it not be flooded and that sort of thing and again it used to be justified as jobs program but then the government went ahead and they imported the jobs it wasn't a question of open borders it was government boats getting people from the British West Indies bringing them here saying you can work here unless your boss gets dissatisfied and we send you back and there are these great propaganda videos where they'd be like oh to watch someone from the West Indies work the cane fields is to watch generations of mastery now these people weren't doing these horrible brach breaking jobs until we imported them to do it and so there's all these subsidies and again in the big ripoff I spend about half a chapter on it with one of my favorite details being Bill Clinton's star report the report of the special investigator and during Bill Clinton's inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky at one point while they were inappropriately relating he got a phone call from a congressman and she stayed there at another point while they were inappropriately relating he got a phone call from one of the Fanjul brothers the sugar farmers down in Florida at that point that was too important so he dismissed his friend Monica from the Oval Office I can't decide which part of that story is dirty or that's the difficulty there so is it campaign contributions that's a big part of this how does campaign contributions do? some of the campaign contribution regulations have had the exact opposite effect so for instance right now you can only give a couple grand I think maybe now it's 2700 to a candidate in the primary and then another 2700 2600 I think it goes up with inflation and so what that has an effect of doing because you can't go to somebody and say can I have a $10,000 check you need to go to somebody and say can you get me 40 guys and cut this $2600 check well who's going to do that who's going to volunteer their own free time to do that somebody who wants to earn your favor and has a connection to lots of businessmen that's going to be a lobbyist so it's a lobbyist bundler was a creature made by that and that seems the most corrupting thing as possible if you want to win reelection you need to be able to get these lobbyists and all their clients in there with the room with you so A you have to make them happy and B you're going to be listening to them a lot of times the campaign finance regulations have the opposite effect and if you look at what's happened since we've liberalized campaign finance law with the with the Citizens United ruling you see kind of the birth of an anti-corporate welfare lobby I mean you see that these groups like the club for growth or Americans for prosperity or some other groups that get started up by people in the Koch network they start lobbying against corporate welfare why? Because there's a bunch of rich ideologues and half of them are on the liberty side and they're able to get together and so you think what's your financial interest in killing XM or the sugar subsidy none except they actually want free enterprise while it used to be the only people who would get together and spend money for lobbying or electing politicians were the people who had a concentrated benefit from it and so I think that the liberalizing of campaign finance in recent years has done something to create an anti-corporate welfare lobby which is something that a lot of public choice people didn't think was going to happen I'm curious how green energy subsidies fit into this story because on the one hand so they seem like an obvious there's these companies and they're getting loans or loan guarantees and there's lobbying for it and all that but on the other hand there's the argument that this is an industry that doesn't really exist in a robust way and we need it to in order to get off the foreign oil and global warming or whatever compete with China and so the government is you know it's hard to get these sorts of industries off the ground the government's the one that's got the money to do it because private investors aren't yeah I mean the you hear all these arguments I used to it used to be my favorite thing to talk about was green energy because there's so many of these were technologies or industries that couldn't survive in free markets where they were dependent on this and you saw and you see so much stuff but then it got to be that that was the only thing that Republicans identified with crony capitalism they would simultaneously attack cylinders loan guarantees and defend loan guarantees for nuclear power plants so did you step off the you know what the Republicans have the cylinder thing handled I might back off that one a little bit but so what I always say when I'm you look at how Obama and the Democrats talk about the green energy subsidies and they always say we are going to be left behind economically if we don't spend money on it it's a nonsensical argument but it's an economic one and they're afraid apparently to make the environmental argument which would be to say we should subsidize solar panels because they produce fewer emissions or in less pollution and one reason is that people don't people like the environment but they're not willing to spend a lot more on their energy bills to help the environment and two there'd be a lot more direct ways to address these things I mean the obvious answer a lot of people give is if you want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions you tax carbon dioxide emissions instead of some Jerry Rake thing because I love telling stories about the indirect efforts to do this there's the the corporate average fuel economy standards and a lot of these things where cars have to give off less emissions and so Alcoa is a company that supports these standards and they say and by the way if you use aluminum instead of steel and making cars are lighter weight that reduces emissions that's great they support these standards and then back in Australia they oppose regulations on greenhouse gas emissions because that's where they make the aluminum and make the parts a process which is incredibly intensive not just an energy but also just chemical processes that give off greenhouse gases that are much more potent than carbon dioxide and so if you actually measure what we call the dust to dust economic ecological footprint of an Alcoa car versus a steel car it's about a break even but they find these other ways to measure it and try to save the environment and that just allows for corporate gaming of it and no improvement in the environment so we mentioned these a couple but I know you got a bunch of these so we can just talk about a few as we close out here your favorite revolving door stories because there's just so many good ones oh yeah there are and after I tell you a couple favorite I'll probably think of others that I wish I had told you one that I often tell involves Chuck Schumer right after the Democrats win control of the Senate in 2007 he goes ahead and he gives a talk to a bunch of hedge fund guys in New York in January and he says you guys basically you guys need to grow up politically you're all scattered you're not working together you're working against each other you're immature basically they weren't spending enough on lobbying so he has that dinner and then a few months later at the beginning of a hearing of the banking committee or subcommittee says oh I just want to say farewell to a long time staffer I've had my banking person and her name was Carmen Sita Wonder and he said oh I just want to say farewell to her I used my go-to banking person and of course she's going to a K Street firm Brownstein Hyatt that has hedge fund and banking clients within a few weeks of her hire shockingly they pick up seven more hedge fund clients including the people who were sitting at that dinner with Chuck Schumer that election they're spending on politics and lobbying went up many fold five six ten times with two-thirds of the contributions going to Chuck Schumer's Democrats and a lot of that money going to Carmen Sita Wonder and who then became a bundler for Chuck Schumer and other Democratic senators so what I like about this story is that it shows that often the revolving door is not you know business sort of plucking people off the hill and then using them to infiltrate Congress but it's the political class deploying their people out to business to attract money and cooperation from the private sector that's a good one so I guess the question people would be thinking is who's worse Democrats or Republicans and maybe we can tie that in with I think the last question which would be what do we do and maybe they're both tied together in their own way so who's worse this is always this reminds me of one of my favorite games to play with any Libertarian because Libertarians say oh well I'm neither left nor right but for the most part they're on one or the other side and the way you find out is when a Republican does something stupid are they angry or are they embarrassed and disappointed and when a Democrat does something stupid are they angry or are they embarrassed and and so by that test I calm down on the right I call myself both a conservative and a Libertarian and so I feel more upset for the Republicans when they do it in part because again the Democrats are just basically going against their rhetoric and their politicians and sure as a journalist it's my job to show how their rhetoric is false but we don't really hold them to it the Republicans are going against their rhetoric and sort of their stated principles as well and so that that I think makes it worse when they do it who does it more historically I wouldn't want to judge it some like the export import bank vote you have half of the Republicans supporting XM which is shameful you have unanimity in favor of XM on the Democratic side which is even more telling and it's similar with ethanol it's similar with sugar it was the same with the bailouts where more and more I think the Democrats just see that government's growth in and of itself is good for them and so the easiest way to grow government is not to go and battle big business and grow government in the way they oppose but to team up with big business and to grow government in the way that business wants so especially since the Tea Party I would say the Republicans are a party that's just mostly corporatist and cronyist and the Democrats are a party that's almost entirely corporatist and cronyist So is there any hope whatsoever? Can we do anything except for tear the whole thing down? As I said I think there's an anti-corporate welfare lobby growing up that most people if they find out that they are bearing the risk for going export to a state-owned airline that they don't like them. Most people don't know about it though because you know again it doesn't directly cost the taxpayers money it's one of a million federal programs and that the more that a lot of it is technology Mike Needham at Heritage Actions said like it used to be impossible or he put it this way the cost of informing the public about Export-Import Bank has gone way down the cost of organizing people against it has gone way down and thus Boeing's cost of organizing people for it hasn't gone way down they've always been able to just get XIM give me the list of everybody who got a loan guarantee and we'll get them here to lobby for it so that hasn't really gone down so it's tipping the scales a little bit and so the I mean in the Export-Import Bank fight the agency's charter expires June 30th again if you were to pull Congress right now I think it would pass you got a financial services committee chairman who wants to kill it you got a house majority leader Kevin McCarthy who said he wants to kill it and you've got a Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell who has voted to kill it and so there is a chance that you could win on that and then you've got a Republican presidential field that on XIM on corporate welfare in general on sugar on these things are generally good so not saying that I think we're going to win on all these fights I'm saying that the odds are better today than they were when I started writing about this 10-12 years ago Thank you for listening if you have any questions you can find us on Twitter at Free Thoughts Pod that's Free Thoughts P-O-D Free Thoughts is produced by Evan Banks and Mark McDaniel to learn more find us on the web at www.libertarianism.org


Heavens won't fall if IU resigns today says Bodejord and we're not going back on the opposition to same-faith tickets says the Forum of Northern Christians. This is Post-Politics, I am Mary Anacorn. Former Deputy National Chairman of the People's Democratic Party, Chief Bodejord on Thursday warned that the PDP risks losing the 2023 elections if its National Chairman, Sen. IU, fails to resign. The PDP leader, who noted that the heavens won't fall if IU resigns from office, insisted that the vote of confidence passed on the National Chairman at the next meeting does not hold water. He warned that the party's presidential candidate, Alhagia Tikwabubuka, not to take PDP leaders and members from the southern part of the country for granted, saying the party must do the needful now that anything else will be suicidal. While joining us to discuss this is Oste and then he is a PDP chieftain. It's good to have you join us. Great. Oste, I think you and I have had a conversation similar to this, of course, as a result of the Wikei-Atiku situation. But now I think this has gone past the Wikei-Atiku situation. Now it seems to be a southern caucus problem. I think two days ago we had Atiku with the governor of Oste and a conversation was being had. It seemed to those of us who were watching that your presidential candidate does not have a problem, per se, with the idea of the chairman being seen out of the party, but then he had a certain caveat as to when he should be stepping out of the party. But I want to call for that video. Let's take a look at what the Oste governor had to say about this and then we'll start the conversation. He's asking that the National Working Committee of PDP should be restructured such that what you have in the face of Nigerians right now, which is our candidates from the North East, the PDP National Chairman is from the North Central. What was floated a few days back where they said my brother, Governor Amino Tambua, is the DG of the campaign is from the North West. Maybe that has happened, maybe it has not happened, but he has the quality and the capacity to be the DG of this campaign. There's no doubt about that. We're about to resolve the issue of what we have in the face of Nigerians by asking the National Chairman to step down so that PDP in the southern part of the country will feel included in the top hierarchy of PDP. He has developed a constitution, electoral processes, zoning of offices, power sharing, talk about everything which will bring about the unity of the party and the unity of the country. No problem from wherever any member of the party comes from, but it must be done in accordance with our constitution, our regulations, and our practices. What Governor Shehi is calling for is achievable under our constitution, under our conventions, under our rules, under our regulations, and under our procedures. Governor Shehi made his position and then, of course, this has to be done the right way in accordance to the constitution of the party. I ask you as a party member, what exactly do you think the presidential candidate was referring to? The PDP constitution has put fail safes into it. If the chairman were from the south east and he were to resign or be unable to carry out his duties as chairman, he would fall to the deputy chairman from the south to take over his position. So chairman Ayu is from the north central. Even if he were to step down, we have a deputy chairman north, Honorable Damagun, I think his name is, who would then automatically by our constitution become a chairman. So in essence, what Governor Shehi Makin is asking for is not just for Ayu to step down, it's also for the deputy national chairman south to step down. And then Honorable Arapaja, who is now the deputy national chairman south, would then automatically become the acting chairman of the party. So you can see it's a very convoluted, complicated process. It's not as simple as asking Ayu to step down. We have barely 12 days from the start of campaigns. And yes, Waziri Atiko did say it's achievable, it's possible. But when he puts the caveat about in accordance with the constitution, therein lies the problem. Are we going to have an emergency constitution 12 days before the start of primaries? I don't think it's possible. Whilst I do concede the fact that it may appear on the face of it that, you know, the PDP is top heavy leaning towards the north. A candidate comes from the north. A national chairman comes from the north central. There really isn't to my mind any window, I think, left for us to hold a convention and get and restructure the party as Governor Shea Makin had asked us to do. And what has happened in the past typically is when a president elect emerges, then you then have the time between the emergence of president elect and the swearing of that president elect. You then have time to sort of restructure the party. I think it's dangerous to attempt to restructure the entire party just 12 days before the start of campaigns. I mean, I also remember you saying this the last time we spoke. I'm thinking it's been weeks from then till now. If the party was really indeed interested in making sure that they calm all the frayed nerves, could that not have been a consideration?  But would the party also want to risk winning the elections? Because, again, I want to quote Chief Body Judge. He's saying that the PDP may risk losing the 2023 elections if IU fails to resign. And that must be something that really runs deep in the party. I'm not a member of the PDP, but I'd like to know, does it mean that the party might lose the elections because of IU? How serious is this? I wish I could dismiss it as an idle talk. It's not idle talk. I mean, people speaking about IU stepping down as serious, very influential political figures within the PDP. We're talking about Governor Wiki. We're talking about Chief Body Judge. We're talking about Governor Shea McIndy. And they have been very clear about what they're requesting. And I think the concern is not just their clarity in their request, but the clarity in the consequences that they are warning of that if this isn't done, then the party may well lose the 2023 elections. If it fails, it falls on the chairman to take a decision on whether he won. He feels his seat is more important than maybe the party winning the elections. He didn't say, you know, he's being misquoted as saying that, you know, if a candidate from the North emerges, he will step down. He didn't actually say that. He said if a candidate from the North emerges and the party asked him to step down, then he would. Since the last time we spoke, the party's National Executive Committee has met and actually given a vote of confidence on the continued tenure of the chairman. So the party is backing 100%. As you might be aware, just yesterday, the PDP had released its presidential campaign council. So it seems that at this point, the party is moving forward and they're just getting ready for the start of campaigns and the elections proper. I would urge, maybe from the, you know, and I don't want to dismiss the concern that Chippodejot has raised. For instance, if you look at the party, you know, we have in the Southwest a presidential candidate in the APC. His argument is that he wants to be able to go into the Southwest and show the face of the PDP represented in the leadership of the Southwest. That currently really isn't happening. Even though our national publicity secretary is from the Southwest, it's not a top tier position, so to speak, in the leadership cadre of the party. But, you know, like I said, it's a fine balancing act. Do you risk sabotaging or torpedoing the entire party because you want to assuage the feelings of just one political geopolitical zone? Or would you urge, I think, restraint and say, campaigns are going to be formed. Elections come up in February. Once elections are concluded, then everything that's southeast and the Southern Caucus is asking for can be achieved. Can we also say that the Southern Caucus is just one, you know, region in the party? I'm asking because there seems to be that, there had been that clarion call for party leadership to make sure that whatever candidate was being fielded should be from the South, even though the PDP ended up with an Atikwa bubaka. Do you not think that they have a legitimate stake here, whether they be one region or not? Do you feel that they need to, you know, air their thoughts whether they be aggrieved or not or asking for something that's legitimate or maybe just sentimental? I think it's both. I think it's legitimate and I think it is also sentimental. I think it's a valid conversation to be had. I think maybe why I draw the line is when in the pursuit of this, or the resolution of these issues, you threaten the party's electoral successes. I want us to pull back a little bit from personal or even regional grievances and look at the national condition. We are industrious as a country. We've never had an employment this high. Inflation, we hit record highs, I think a couple of days ago of more than 20%. Insecurity is ripe in every geopolitical zone of the country. We right now are earning less now. We're using the service as debt. The country is technically bankrupt. And I think sometimes, you know, I come on the shelf like sometimes and maybe remind our leaders that the issues at stake here are more than some of the partisan considerations that we might be putting to the fore. And I would always urge that regardless of whatever differences we might be expressing and which I do encourage, we should never lose sight of the fact that ultimately we need to come together as a united party, as a united opposition to take back power from the failure in APC. How do you come together as a united party without dealing with these divisions within the party? I'd like to go back to something that Chief Badejaj said. He said, how will southern PDP leaders convince their electorates to vote for our candidate when there is no substantial national position in the southwest? He again goes on to say, have we thrown our integrity to the dogs? He also said that unless we're united, unless we have fairness, equity, justice in our system, the party and the country is heading nowhere. So if you're asking for people to come together and then there is a huge elephant in the room, that's somewhat just not being addressed as it should be. Where is the oneness and the walking together to make sure that you win the elections? I'm sorry, I know that you're not... I know that you're not the party chairman, but I mean, you're the man here, so you have to answer the questions. Of course, that's fine. I always encourage conversations and just from the ebb and flow of this conversation or the attempts to resolve this. You've seen the BOT chairman step down. He was from the north. He was occupied by Senator Wabora from the southeast. Governor Shea Makinde has emerged as the... I think the deputy director general of the campaign, so the south is represented in the campaign council. Governor Udom is currently the chairman of the presidential campaign council. So there are attempts to resolve this problem. And I am aware that there are limits to what the candidates can do. He cannot force IU to step down. It would spark an entirely different constitutional crisis and would tie us up in court, like it did with previous chairman we had who we tried to force out. Like we did happen in Secondos, like happened with our mother sheriff before him. And I think we need to learn from our history as a party. I spoke about the constitutional provision that says if the chairman steps down, the deputy from that same region replaces him. That came from previous experiences where one chairman would step down and then a chairman from another region would occupy his office. And that was sort of like an attempt to address that problem, that attempts of... that imbalance. So we sort of a harm-stronger constitution. We cannot, like I said, afford to go into this election season tied up in litigation. The candidate has said it's open to the idea of IU stepping down, but it has to be done constitutionally. And I think ultimately it then lies with, not just IU, but maybe on the Magan to say, look, in the interest of peace, progress, and unity for our party, are we willing to, both of us, but both of them have to step down. Both of us step down so a southern or southwestern chairman can emerge. In many 12 days, I think that's the only window we have. There really is no other way. The candidate cannot force a chairman to step down. But sometimes I personally think you should read to the room. If everybody's clamoring for one thing, if the candidate himself is saying, it's open to this being done, if I were in the chairman's shoes, I won't take the path of honor and step down. Well, let's try to turn the tables here. If your presidential candidate were in the shoes of the chairman, would he do the same? And many have also queried that is he doing everything to make sure that he just wins as opposed to making sure that there is some legalities followed within the party again. Going back to the situation between Rike and Atikua Buboka, how well do you think he's handled that situation from a presidential candidate's position? I think he sort of was stoned by what happened in 2019 where he made a lot of unilateral decisions, one of which was picking Peter Albee, Peter Albee then, who became his running mate in 2019. And you sort of have seen a different approach this time around. Everything he has done has been in consultation with party leaders and the party's leadership. And sometimes it has slowed down the process. I think if I have any criticism, it's just how slowly things have moved simply because the candidates have insisted this time on being as consultative as possible. I probably would have handled the weekend situation slightly differently. I'm from the South myself and I understand the grievances he has expressed. But to be fair, many of us ran for primaries and many of us lost. I ran for the House of Reps. I lost. It could have been so easy to throw my dummy out of the pram and start agitating. But I always ask people to remember why we're in politics. It's not just to acquire power. It's to serve. And if that's foremost in our minds then, I think everybody should be doing everything they can do. Whether it's a candidate, whether it's a weekend, whether it's a southern coast, whether it's a chairman. We should be doing everything we can do to make sure we get the APC out of power in 2020. Let's talk about your candidates a bit more. Recently, the NOI put out a poll about the frontline presidential candidate. And there were reactions from all sides. We see that the Labour Party's candidate is in the lead for that poll. And we've seen many candidates, including your party's candidate, shoot down that poll. What's your take on that? I'd like to hear. Because several people have said that, oh, they're fake polls, but these are polls that we normally carry out at this time of the elections. Was that just a political statement? Should the PTA be a phenomenon, be a case for many political parties like yours to worry about? So I'm a pollster myself. I have a polling company. And it would be dishonest of me to come up here and say that NOI who conducted the polls, NOI polls would conduct a poll that wasn't valid. They literally are the best polling company within the country. However, because I'm a pollster, I was able to look at the reports put out by Anna Foundation and there were some very, very glaring followers. First of all, this clearly was a popularity poll. It wasn't a poll of the voter's register. So it was more like a poll of what do you think and who would you vote if you were able to vote. The second thing was that it seemed to have been made or sampled from an urban population. I poll myself and I know that the awareness of the candidates in rural areas, whether it's Tinumbua, Tiku, or Pita or Biokwankwa, so it never reaches the heights you saw in the poll of 95, 97, 96. So it suggests that this was a selected poll in urban areas. We aren't aware of polling size so I can't as a pollster say it's statistically significant. I'm going to give any way the benefit of the doubt because they wouldn't, I think, put out a poll otherwise if it wasn't statistically significant. But there are issues about it. Again, you have a huge amount of people who didn't respond. Either they said they were undecided or they just flat out refused to respond. And in every geopolitical zone but the Southeast, the number of undecided that refused to comment dwarfed the numbers of people who voted expressed an opinion for either of the candidates. So it sort of makes all the polls in every geopolitical zone irrelevant because the margin of error is too large because you have undecided and people who refuse to vote. But I will say interestingly enough in the Southeast Pita or Biokwankwa unsurprisingly I think about 68% of the votes that dwarfed the amount of people who said they were undecided or refused to comment. So the only thing the poll showed clearly was that in the Southeast in urban areas Pita or Biokwankwa is very, very popular. Interesting.  He is a very serious candidate he is a very, very serious candidate I think a lot of us dismissed him as an online sensation when he left the party very early. We studied the democracies and elections across the world and I actually haven't seen anybody move so quickly. I think he joined Leiboy in June or so and in three months he has if you take the words of the NOIPO he has secured the geopolitical zone you haven't seen that type of mobilization in Nigerian history ever. So what he had money to achieve is very, very significant. You also have seen an uptick in an awakening of young people and their engagement in the democratic process whether it's for the advocacy to go out and get their PVCs or it's in the campaigns and the rallies they've been organizing by themselves and I think that's brilliant for our democracy most democracies actually see a reverse you see young people stay away from the process in Nigeria we have seen young people adopt and embrace it so he had done many, many good things I don't see a root of victory for him still. I think he would do probably well in the southeast and the south south and therein lies the problem I spoke about a united party, I also spoke about a united opposition most of the people who are supporting Peter Abbey would traditionally have supported the PDP if it was a two horse race and what we sort of are seeing is Peter Abbey dividing the opposition vote so Attico will get a large chunk Peter Abbey will get a significantly smaller chunk I worry that the votes that Peter Abbey will get may prevent Attico from winning the presidential election in 2023 so I hope as campaigns wind down in December and January opposition parties will come together like they did in 2019 and I find a way to make this work. Attico has promised to run a government of national unity so there will be space for Obie and his campaign within government if we win. I'm hoping to see a government, I'm hoping to see a united opposition campaign together to get rid of the NPC. Okay, well I want to say thank you, Osteanele is a PDP chieftain, always a pleasure to have you join us on the show. Glad to be here, thanks for having me. Alright, thank you.


Meanwhile, the Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has filed a complaint at the International Criminal Court, ICCC, in the Netherlands, against Rwanda Army M23 Collision for Crimes committed in the east of the country. The DRC in a statement said it is deeply concerned by the serious violation of international human law and international human rights law committed and perpetuated against civilian population as well as systematic and large-scale pondling of natural resources by agents of the RDF M23 Collision around the Defence Forces and March 23 movement, which is mainly in the eastern part of the territory. The M23 rebel group launched a new offensive in eastern DRC in March 2022, seizing towns and villages in the area that borders Uganda. The fighting forces have continued to garner more strengthened communities and more than 1 million people have fled.


Brazil is reeling after the Intercept published reports on Sunday, June 9th, which confirmed the political motivation behind the persecution of former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The reports revealed that the prosecutors in the Operation Car Wash Task Force, as well as the judge presiding over the case, Sergio Moro, collaborated with a clear political intention to persecute Lula and prevent a return of the Workers' Party to power. The reports are based on an archive of private chats, audio recordings, videos, photos, and court proceedings that were provided to the outlet by anonymous source. Lula has been under investigation since 2014 as part of the Operation Car Wash corruption investigation and was accused of accepting $1.1 million in bribes from the construction company OAS to remodel a triplex beachside apartment. Despite a flawed and irregular legal process and a complete lack of evidence, Lula was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison by Judge Sergio Moro. In April 2018, after a series of appeals were rejected, Sergio Moro ordered an arrest warrant for Lula, and he has since been serving his sentence in the headquarters of the Brazilian Federal Police in Curitiba. Just before he was imprisoned, Lula was on the presidential campaign trail and was leading in all of the polls. His imprisonment pulled him out of the running and paved the way for the victory of far-right candidate Jair Boltonaro. One of the stars of the Intercept's expose is the same judge who led this legal crusade against Lula, Sergio Moro. One report focuses on Moro's relationship with the chief prosecutor of the Operation Car Wash Task Force, Dalanglion, and shows excerpts from their chat. In their chat, Moro offers advice and strategies to the prosecutor to assist him in the investigation of Lula. Cooperation between a judge and prosecutors is a violation of the judiciary's code of ethics for Brazil, and is completely unethical as a judge's responsibility is to guarantee a fair trial. Another report showed that even after Lula had been eliminated from the running, the right wing still felt the need to silence him. The report showed how the prosecutors who worked on Lula's case discussed in a private chat how to stop an important Brazilian newspaper from interviewing Lula just before the elections. In a group chat, the prosecutors lamented that an interview with a popular leader so close to elections could potentially improve the prospects of workers' party candidate Fernando Haddad. The reports reveal what many have already suspected. The actions of the Operation Car Wash Task Force, as well as the judge overseeing the case, were partial and had clear political motivation. For many, the shameless appointment of Sergio Moro to the minister of justice in Boltonaro's cabinet was evidence enough. During the publishing of these reports, five opposition parties from Brazil's House of Representatives have announced that they will obstruct all actions in the legislative body until the implicated parties, the prosecutors and the judges, are brought to justice. Several lawyers and legal associations have also called for a full investigation to be launched into former judge Sergio Moro, now minister of justice, as well as the chief prosecutor of the Car Wash investigation, Dalton Dalagnão. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders also denounced the actions of Moro and the Car Wash Task Force and said that the exposures should free Lula. He said to the Intercept, Today it is clearer than ever that Lula da Silva was imprisoned in a politicized prosecution that denied him a fair trial and due process. During his presidency, Lula oversaw huge reductions in poverty and remains Brazil's most popular politician. I stand with political and social leaders across the globe who are calling on Brazil's judiciary to release Lula and annul his conviction. Meanwhile, Brazilian people's movements continue to demand Lula's release and announce the actions of the Brazilian oligarchy, which has wielded mainstream media as well as the judiciary to stop the will of the people. They're also gearing up for a general strike on June 14th, which will have participation from all of Brazil's central trade unions to fight against the pension reform of Bolsonaro's government as well as the rest of the tax on workers' rights, social rights, and budget cuts in education.


Everybody forced here we've been twenty two twenty three OPC hockey hobby eight box number six random teams Find the results right here. Thanks for joining everybody and good luck Frank Clark is gonna be on the market apparently And Ridley got reinstated What I didn't realize that he's third he was an older rookie wasn't he yeah? He was like a 24-year-old 30 years old as a wide receiver Hasn't played a whole lot though. So to be fair. I mean Fresh It'll still help the Jags Fun Luke Shen on the blue Well, I'll see a big variation here black Freddy Anderson for the Hurricanes one of 100 More see something here. Oh, it's an all-star card. What do you mean illegal? What are you talking about right now? The brink it Spencer Martin on the blue hell it all been two picks. Oh, yeah, I'll get that later Huston and Stutzler Castellik Barzol was in there Demko year check jackets on the marquee rookie blue Gunther got a Paul Frank who's to 75 for the ads on the pink. It was like highlighter pink I like George Everly red Vasilevsky lightning won a box in the red Riley Walsh Miro Hayskin in Brant Clark where you can buy it. I don't think they're for sale We were given that by one of their players They may have sold them at one point you'd probably have to go to the Salem Red Sox shop online But I they probably won't have them stuff like that. They were like one time or for like one series and then they're just That's it like the whole league will do stuff like that though Brant Clark JT Miller Rainbow foil Mark McLaughlin to 350 for the Bruins, dude He got hit in the face last night and there was blood like all over it looked Pretty terrifying Like he didn't know where he was Maddie veneers look at that capital's alternate logo That is really cool Capital's alternate logo That's that's a that's a rare poll Manufactured patched there Colgren all right guys next up Next up Braves and Blue Jays So we're just open the door and just close it blue Hathaway Bruce Nikolai Eler's Jets to 100 six of 100 for the Jets We got Talbot Jordan Everly par with the Leafs, huh man got Perot Conor Murphy on the blue Isaac Ratcliffe retro Christensen Raiden Tracy Jordan Kairu Jason Robertson come on No, okay, it's blue rookie Dylan Sandberg for the Jets Green Vasilevsky 24 of 33 lightning nice one lightning you're a check. We've got a red Conor McMichael for the capitals Matt boldy rookie z-gross blue dry sidle Sandberg Owen power nine of spades Sabres rookie look at this Sidney Crosby penguins OPG platinum preview Nice one there blue tracks you go pens Tanner Pearson Fajima, we've got a Fajima 350 Kings marquee rookie rainbow Oh and power rookie a warm-up jersey more insider for the Red Wings warm-up jersey variation Stuff there good box Khadri just brought Jordan Harris We've got NT basketball tonight everybody a full case later on two teams for spot Prism basketball three boxer Maddie Baneers got a bunch of Bowman inception coming up after this Still have spots left there z-gross on the tennis bades Timo Meyer blue Fajima Kings on the rookie Coast and then we got a Lucas Reichel rookie to 350 rainbow foil Blackhawks Larkin you got red ever Lee Kraken Seahawks pay Gino Smith Jack Quinn rookie blue Peter Mrazak Caden ghoul marquee rookies Shane Wright premier rookie for the for the Kraken more insider tennis bades Wyatt Johnston Tyler Sagan on the blue Khaliq Posso Kachetka for the Keynes scored that A goalie goal the other night puzzle random to everybody at the end OPG one puzzle bouncy card Clayton Keller mark McLaughlin blue Michael Gremlins Jack of Hearts Jack Eichel flasik Hegel Raleigh Walsh Alex Cullorn Sutterblum Ty Smith on the blue Teddy Bluger How like we got a black Cory Perry for the lightning number three of 100 brand Clark Ten of hearts cider Nils Lunkvist ready to chuck blue Sam steel Cloude Giroux Second star or third star the month Cloude Giroux. No, he was second star one All right guys box for Shane right on the rookie dice at home Matt Gretchlick Tristan Yari black Vasilevsky for the lightning number 27 of 100 is that good or bad illegal? You say this a lot a lot of errands that you're saying Nate Nathan Smith sit the kid ace of clubs Nice ace Bobby Brink blue Dylan Coughlin and Jordan Aberley Kenpey premier Crosby Darnell nurse Dalleen King of Hearts Pat Kane Top Addered boldie ten of ten of clubs. I haven't seen a variation yet Blue Matt boldie rookie you go wild Patrangelo Nikita Okotiuk a Hunter drew for the ducks 49 of 75 marquee rookie Jack Bain red Roslavik for the jackets Kyle Connor blue Adrian Kempey Raleigh Walsh Cherkai's bar saw Barcoff. That's pretty good car. I like that one Abrazee see Wilson three of clubs the brinket John Gibson Bordelow blue philipronic Alex Kerfoot Nils Amin. I think that's a Huberdo, I would imagine that's a headshot variation All I can think that it is because this is a close-up You go full lanes in the Huberdo flames Huberdo The 350 March is so for the Knights rainbow fold of 350 Jonathan Marsh or so Exactly Carl. Exactly. We'll get you something cloud drew. Oh Hunter drew a blank back marquee rookie Congrats ducks Blank back doesn't happen on the car, but that's a one-of-one. You go ducks Ryan Reeves sort of blum right halfway through nice stuff. Good box Carl called the hitch it's not for himself. It's like the opposite of illegal illegal only calls hits for himself Because he's selfish one left on inception divisions the last team on Number 30 is the blue jays Oh what this guy I Had a ban him. I'm only gonna ban for for for questioning me. That's all Yeah, that's what you want us to think of legal I've seen this before nice Victor Gunther McKinnon king of clubs Jordan Everly blue rookie Jordan Spence Kings Walsh we got a Chris Crieder rainbow fold of 350 for the Rangers Sotterblom red Nazim Khadri flames Matt Murray Pelik blue voracek Marquis rookie retro Laoco Clark Dairy trophy winner Canadians Denny Huron as the trophy Denny Huron I hate say his name. I hope that's how you say his name. There we go.  It's our Jean Gabriel Peugeot 27 of 100 is it pageau or pageau? Islanders I'm start calling Donnie Jean Gabriel with no explanation Call grand got by field Kings paint to 75 14 to 75 Gurgansons got premier rainbow Quinn Hughes canucks 42 of 99 Premier rookie Bobby Brink flyers and not Pa Yeah, Peugeot Peugeot Houston and Dvorak Frederick Carlstrom marquee rookie Larkin Shusterkin dry saddle Because I Didn't play my favorite shellfish who's being it shellfish. I'm banning illegal done it at some point Not even I'm gonna do it at a time. We probably even deserve it Bam ambush Ty Smith penguins black numbered 50 of 100. I think I'm thinking you think I'm thinking that hard right now I can't I can't figure that out Robin Salo. You think I'm smart enough to figure that out There's like a marionette up here. Just typing names and opening cards.  It's like premier rookie dull style ducks Abrazee see Josh Morrissey. I think that'd be funny actually We just download some videos and did like voiceovers and Like like the what is it called again the lip reading Jason Roberts in black for the stars nice one there 27 of 100 Yeah, like bad lip reading we should do bad lip reading I'll watch Sam's breaks and voice over for him and he can watch my breaks and voice over for me Joker Bailey for the Kings be pretty good, right? Well, I'm Sean just badly breed for Sam actually those almond blue Brandon Dillon Yeah, some of them are really good. Some of them are very very good three diamonds Bunting where we're in ski there Jiru Patrick Kane, come on now a bunting Shabbat Lean blue Owen power for the Sabres marky rookie Shat and Kirk and Shat and Kirk still playing. He's old, right? older Black foil Brady could shut for the senators to 100 82 of 100 Andre Miller and macelli coyotes marky rookie Nice car there yolks Gunther Sean monahan blue almond Felsky Copa tar blue Bordelo Rookies for the sharks marky rookie retro rat cliff rookie Cain ghoul for the canadiens premiere Riley Tatar Blue TJ Oshie Castellet we got a Tavares maple leaves pink 16 and 75 on the Tavares Johnny T the guy in the box. There he is. We got him That Craig Smith blank back it is for the Bruins Retro blank back should be one-of-one Bruins Craig Smith Baneers premiere rookie for the Kraken Smith. He's gone now Yes, Vaughn blue Mike Matheson. I simply just put all my money in my offshore accounts Black Kyle like posto for the Sabres 7100 I wonder what having that kind of money is like quite pretty cool Rikkel Raymond Don't make any of Andrew Cain jokes. Good Lord make one of Andrew Cain joke and then everybody's a Oilers fan Marco Rossi Premier rookie Jack Quinn Slavkovsky premier rookie Jacob Perot writer good row Eilers gender blue Suzuki canadiens Broncos So guard Jordan Kyru to 350 blues and anders Lee Islanders Caleb Jones Retro Zach Hayes good row blue jackets blue Hollander Prisa premiere rookie Fajimo Kings Stamco's and Eberle Keppke blue Walsh from Islanders rookie premiere Wyatt Johnston stars and black Chris Crider Rangers nice 44 of 100 the Donov Convict David all-star pink Sodersturm for the coyotes 68 of 75 Victor meaty Meat meaty.  Let's get them filled up Let's keep the night rolling I see mop for a space Roman Yossi, Ryan O'Reilly great and Schneider blue March is so Anthony DeClaire Wrenski because that's all for the caps number 29 of 75 Brad Cosme has any cuts nuts off Macelli we got a Josh Morrissey red Vesilevsky blue Elias Lindholm thatcher Demko see a cool variation here another SP maybe Kent Johnson rookie Brendan Gallagher Taylor Hall Blue is a Benajad Rangers Josh Norris Carter for Hague because mango marquee rookie We got Claude Giroux to 100 senators in the black rain on the black foil Claude Giroux for the senators So that's off to 99 Dylan Larkin premiere rainbow foil redwinks Suzuki Laoco Klingburg marquee rookie Dylan Gunther Carlstrom seven of spades Marner Mark Shifley Corsac Kyle Connor Dobson last stack of packs Hunter Drew William Carrier Frederick Adreau That's Frederick Adre right. Yeah, it's spence blue jackets black Jake Bean 50 of 100 I would think so smack, but I don't know for sure You'd have to ask the shipping department have to email us and ask I don't know 100% Yeah, you should Pearson blue Carson Soussi Castellic retro rookie. Come on now. Come on last box Premier Kitchuck John Carlson Renkit Kyle Connor Jordan stall Random to do All right puzzle piece one random to everybody Puzzle bounty piece there three and four seven times Top team gets it One two three four five six and seven wild Quick recap. We had a headshot variation of Jonathan Huberdoe for the flames warm-up jersey more at cider redwinks a blue tracks platinum preview Sid Crosby for the penguins rainbow foals at 350 March or so Fujimo Criter Kairu Raichel McLaughlin black to 100 Claude Giroux Corrie Perry Vasilevsky Ty Smith Nikolai Ehlers Jean Gabriel Pajot Kyloch Posso Chris Crieder Jake Bean Jason Robertson Frederick Anderson Brady Kitchuck to 99 Dylan Larkin and Quinn Hughes To 75 in the pink Victor Soderstrom John Tavares Evgeny Kuznetsov Pablo Francoose Hunter Drew Quinton byfield green the 33 Andre Vasilevsky Markey Rookie's blank back was Hunter Drew There's also a blank back of Craig Smith. By the way, there was a blank back Craig Smith that we pulled We've got a Vesna Canadians Denny Huron art Ross Ross trophy Ted Lindsay and capital is alternate logo patch I'll do it. Thanks again everybody on the baseball


You can't build an economy without people to do the work that builds the economy. And that's where iron workers come in. Because it's iron workers that are building our province and our country. And when you look around at LNG, we're not going to build it without iron workers. Site C, we're not going to build it without iron workers. Those ships that you see down in the harbor, you're not going to build them without iron workers. The bridges, the schools, the hospitals.  When you look at your young daughter or son, drive by something, you drive by a skyscraper or you look out in the harbor, and you say to your child, I built that. I built that. I built it for our province.  There can't be anything more rewarding than that.  So you build British Columbia. And in building British Columbia, you build great families. And those families go on to support the rest of us when we stop working. I want to say thank you to the iron workers who make sure there are so many apprentices who come out of the system who do more than any other organization in producing trained graduates ready to work for iron workers in British Columbia. Because without you, we would not be able to build British Columbia. But with you, we will build a great province. Thank you very much. Thank you.


So in 1972 there was a young MD called Stanley Prusner who was working in San Francisco and in particular studying a disease called Kreuzfeld Jacobs disease that we know very little about at the time. And what he tried to do is try to isolate the disease agent which is very common because you thought it was a virus and just like COVID in that case you would like to at least isolate its RNA they wouldn't do sequencing in those days but that would at least prove that it was a virus. But no matter how much work he did and everything he couldn't isolate this RNA. In fact what rather kept happening is that this was came back with impurities and everything and no matter how hard he tried to isolate it he just found proteins in the solution. And this even went so far that he almost didn't get tenured because he felt that his research was failing. But what Stanley eventually realized was that this was in fact a disease agent and it's common to some other forms. There is a disease called Kuru in New Guinea that had to do with some tribes that were still practiced cannibalism and there is a disease called Scrapy where it comes to sheeps in particular when they eat other sheeps. So what he was able to show that this disease agent was in fact proteins and he coined the term protein similar virus they call it a prion which was quite controversial at the time because obviously we know that anything that infects us it would be either a bacterium or a virus. We don't have proteins carrying disease because proteins would be digested in our stomachs or something right. We have entire systems to take care of this. The amazing things with prions it turned out that the immune defense wouldn't really set off. So the immune defense would not try to fight this disease agent because it appeared to be a natural protein that would occur in our bodies anyway. What Stanley Prusner realized was that this is a type of proteins that somehow builds it plaques. So over very long term times some proteins apparently aggregate so they associate to form much larger things until you can really see them in the microscope and that was common both for Scrapy, Kuru and the Scroidsville Jacob disease. He published this in 1982 a decade later and as a result he got the Nobel Prize in Medicine for this in 1997 I think it was and you might have heard that if you roughly at the same time we had this so-called Mad Cow disease which is another example of a disease caused by prions. So we know a little bit more about this today. What most of these disease agents have in common is that they have a protein that can exist in two forms and I'm well aware that I'm contradicting everything I said. Remember at the start of this lecture Amphinsus dogma the thermodynamic hypothesis that the natural state of the protein is determined by physics so how can we have two states? Well imagine that the world looks this way. We have some sort of free energy landscape with several very deep wells and when this first the protein folds I end up in this well here. This is a beautiful well I'm going to be stable almost forever I will be stable for 50 years whatever but technically it's not the global minimum of free energy it's just a very very good minimum in free energy. Now remember about kinetic stability if we have lots of things there in nature that should select for this in particular natural selection but we tend to have kids by the time we're 30 so even if this will eventually lead to disease in my body natural selection is not really going to select against that if I've had a chance to have offspring before this sets in and historically over billions of years we used to die much younger than we did today so there's not really going to be any natural selection factor fighting this and of course in general this starts to sit in gradually and it would only hit us by the time we're 80 or something so it shouldn't really matter. That is true apart from some sort of genetic effects and everything the other dangerous things if these proteins are now very stable maybe just maybe under some conditions they could move over to this super stable free energy minimum here that really is the global free energy minimum that would have different properties it would be better so it's more stable it's even too stable there but it's not functional so in this case we would have that the functional state is the second lowest while under some conditions we could go to a dysfunctional state even later and that's what happened in this particular protein so there's a protein where we have the native functioning state here and it's exactly the same sequence but under some conditions some of these helices turn into a beta sheet there's a very stable beta sheet remember how I said about beta sheet formation times it can take forever this is so stable that even the normal enzymes we have to digest proteins I think can't break this apart and that will lead to some scary things what if I now take this protein and eat it well my stomach enzymes can't break it and some small fraction of this protein might even make it out into my blood beta sheets as we will see next they have a tendency to aggregate with other beta sheets so if these proteins also aggregate you can kind of get a process that catalyzes more formations of these and then you would effectively have this that we're having something small that's growing into plaques normally this wouldn't matter right because this starts building up by the time we're 80 or so and when I'm really feeling the symptoms here I'm 100 I'm not going to die from this but if you're a 20 year old eating hamburgers or again practicing cannibalism or sheep what might happen is that this build-up process could happen much earlier in your life and then suddenly 15 or 20 years later you would start having very severe neurological disorder and it's in fact it's so bad that people even died from it that is what led the entire british industry to abolish the practice of taking cows that were dead and taking well all the remnants of it including the nerve system and brain and feeding that to other cows and when they got rid of that the spread of quartz filled jacob's disease in the uk pretty much ceased completely so this is a very important memento mori it is dangerous to assume too much in almost all cases amphism was right the global minimum of free energy is the native state of our protein but as the second last concert of this lecture before closing there are exceptions and those exceptions can lead to very scary things in terms of disease this is likely also component in many diseases such as Alzheimer's and everything but we simply know too little about protein aggregation and some of you might end up studying that and having very successful careers