00;00;00;00 - 00;00;05;25 George Coming at you live from the shores of Lake Norman. How's everybody's Memorial Day weekend going? 00;00;05;28 - 00;00;17;20 Propter Malone Oh, it's going great, George. We had a bunch of people over yesterday. My wife's figured out how to make some mashed potatoes and vanished in about 30s flat. So, things things are going well here in D.C.. 00;00;17;22 - 00;00;30;09 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer George, that got me down by this dirty little creek. And there's. There's not even any of them big old women like they got in San Antonio. 00;00;30;11 - 00;00;33;19 George Terrible, terrible city. Knucklehead business. Terrible. 00;00;33;21 - 00;00;36;15 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Terrible. It's a terrible thing. 00;00;36;17 - 00;00;54;22 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Oh, my weekend is going okay. Yesterday I went to a bar that, on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being a nice, respectable place that George would take his wife to. And ten being a place with that speedrun. Enjoy her. And I would find ourselves in it. 30 minutes to closing time probably ranks at about seven. 00;00;54;24 - 00;01;09;10 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE This is a bar where people who I know have been 86 from other bars in the same neighborhood all end up going, was having a, beers with some out-of-town friends of mine. And then today I went to the Portland International Test Rose garden. 00;01;09;17 - 00;01;12;06 George What is it? An international test rose garden. 00;01;12;08 - 00;01;38;26 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE It is a giant rose garden in Washington Park in Portland. It's got about 10,000 individual different rose bushes. Many of which, compete in international competitions for kind of best rose. And so you get things that go back to the early 1900s. So different types of roses that go all the way back there as well. It's all sorts of different, newer kind of hybrids. 00;01;38;29 - 00;01;45;08 George Speaking of glorious competition level beauty, how are we doing up there? Low tax. Where are you at? 00;01;45;10 - 00;02;10;25 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I am in North Georgia, and I had a good old time nearly rolling my, Jeep off the side of a mountain. Because Georgia and its big, dumb red clay, clogged my tires up. But other than that, we're doing great. We made some, we've been cooking all kinds of food, and just having a good old time by the dirty little creek. 00;02;11;03 - 00;02;12;28 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE And. George, what was going on at the lake? 00;02;13;00 - 00;02;40;11 George Brother in law and sister in law are in from out of town, and we're staying at my mother and father in law's place, and we're having a great time. My daughter has her favorite on uncle here, and, my wife and I are getting some time away from child care on a weekend, which is always enjoyable. And they got a nice flat road out here so I can run A5K into the half an up and down the hills in my neighborhood on on something nice and flat and get to dive in the lake at the end. 00;02;40;11 - 00;02;43;02 George So I'm pretty happy I'm doing well. 00;02;43;05 - 00;02;52;16 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Oh, I thought you were going to say you were enjoying the flat little road so you could, you know, hit the hit the gas on your, on your lightning. 00;02;52;19 - 00;02;58;15 George Well, first of all, there's no gas on the lightning, of course, which I know is. Yes, but the big problem with that. 00;02;58;18 - 00;03;02;07 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer That figure of speech is never going away. 00;03;02;09 - 00;03;23;26 George We were driving back from the local state park, and we were listening to one of my country playlists, and the conversation in the car quickly tilted towards, you know, when you're out at the lake, you kind of got to listen to some country. And we do, and we enjoy it. And, you know, a little bomb and down a, back road and a pickup truck, that's the sort of music you got to be listening to so well. 00;03;23;27 - 00;03;26;11 George Morgan Wallen, things of this nature. 00;03;26;13 - 00;03;31;27 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE George, I'm from Oklahoma. You and I may have very different views on the kind of country you should be listening to. 00;03;31;29 - 00;03;43;25 George You know, I'm I'm an equal opportunity country guy. I'm sure. I'm sure there's some good stuff from Oklahoma. I'm not pretending to be some kind of connoisseur here. I just like a little, little, mood music in the background. 00;03;43;27 - 00;03;51;08 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer You said Morgan Wallen, things of that nature. And now I'm hearing that in the Stephen Smith voice because my brain has been destroyed by the internet. 00;03;51;14 - 00;03;59;27 George So we now we're now working on what to imitations of sportscasters at the start of this podcast, I you know, I think we're doing pretty good on that quota today, folks. 00;04;00;05 - 00;04;04;18 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I can't do a Steve I Smith I it's just not in my powers. 00;04;04;21 - 00;04;20;24 George And I'm not going to. And with that welcome to Normal Men, a podcast from four men who are clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when normalcy is impossible to find. We talk about what's happening, explain some of it, and joke with each other in order to stay sane. I'm George in Charlotte. 00;04;20;26 - 00;04;23;24 Propter Malone I'm prompter. Malone, the District of Columbia. 00;04;23;27 - 00;04;27;28 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I'm a low tech speedrun enjoyer in outer Florida. 00;04;28;00 - 00;04;55;22 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I'm go like hell machine and Antifa controlled Portland. So speaking of country music, earlier this week, I was talking about owning my the favorite vehicle that I have ever owned in my life, which was an 88 Dodge Ram Charger. And one of the things that I mentioned about it was that country music and specifically am gold country music was the only thing that sounded good in the speakers because the speakers were garbage. 00;04;55;24 - 00;05;18;21 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE The the car itself was roughly the size of a tank. It is kind of like OJ's white bronco, but on human growth hormone, it had glass specs. And if you're not familiar with glass packs, glass packs make your make the exhaust to your car sound significantly louder than it would automatically. 00;05;18;23 - 00;05;20;02 George So. 00;05;20;05 - 00;05;48;06 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So my dog, I used to have a basset hound named Maggie. My dog could hear me from two miles away and would start barking from two miles away. So all of my podcast roommates, that, this vehicle had a Jag, antique chrome cattle bar on the front. One of the windows worked, which was fantastic. In an Oklahoma summer, the air conditioning did not work. 00;05;48;08 - 00;05;55;10 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Are you the. Are you the most unhinged guy from Oklahoma? Is that what I'm getting from this? I'm not. 00;05;55;10 - 00;05;59;25 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Even in the top 30% of most unhinged people from. 00;05;59;25 - 00;06;04;01 George Oklahoma. 00;06;04;04 - 00;06;05;13 George So that was my favorite car. 00;06;05;13 - 00;06;24;19 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE One of the one of the most ridiculous cars, I ever owned was a lifted Jeep Cherokee that we bought from an ex-girlfriend's brother to help him pay off a child support debt. Because in Oklahoma, you're going to lose your license if you haven't paid your child support. Now, to be fair to this guy. 00;06;24;22 - 00;06;25;06 George To be fair. 00;06;25;06 - 00;06;32;27 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE To this guy, he didn't do this on purpose. He just had a lot of hard time finding a job. And he didn't have any money. And he dug himself into a hole. 00;06;32;27 - 00;06;42;20 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer This is this is, by the way, probably why Elon, has moved Tesla to Texas and not Oklahoma. 00;06;42;22 - 00;06;43;26 George They. 00;06;43;29 - 00;07;00;04 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE But, yeah, this was a not only was it a Jeep Cherokee, it was a lifted Jeep Cherokee, electric blue on oversize tires that I was using to drive city streets to a call center job. 00;07;00;06 - 00;07;29;18 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Cherokees are great. Trucks there. You can always tell what's going to go wrong with them. Like clockwork, like 60,000 miles. The water pump is going to break 120,000 miles. The radiator is going to blow. But to buy a lifted Cherokee used is is a level of bravery that I can only aspire to because I've been around enough of these guys. 00;07;29;20 - 00;07;37;10 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer With their their lifted brow dozers, to to know that I want no part of that whatsoever. 00;07;37;17 - 00;07;59;25 George Jeep Cherokee also has a treasured place in my memories of childhood. We lived about 20 mile or 20 minutes from the local ski hill when I was growing up in Western Canada, and my parents drove a oh geez, late 1980s model Dodge Caravan while I was, when I was a little kid, when I was about 5 or 6, maybe seven years old. 00;07;59;27 - 00;08;17;26 George And I can still remember that Dodge Caravan. And I can also remember driving home from the ski hill one day, and on a relatively straight part of the very steep and twisty road coming down from the ski hill, doing a full donut in this thing. Two wheel drive. Of course you put snow tires on them, but it doesn't help that much. 00;08;17;29 - 00;08;55;25 George Managing to avoid the ditch. But still, this was not the car we needed to be driving in the mountains, Western Canada. And my dad, I think the next day, went to the local Jeep dealership to say I need something with four wheel drive. And so we drove a Jeep Grand Cherokee for a while. That Jeep Grand Cherokee had a memorable incident when I was coming home from college one year, we were driving north from the Spokane, Washington airport, which is the nearest decent sized airport to my hometown, about 3.5 hours south of my hometown, and we're driving around a corner at pretty good field speed and an entire wheel comes off. 00;08;56;02 - 00;09;15;15 George The Jeep Grand Cherokee turned out that the tire shop had forgotten to more than hand tightened the bolts on that side of the car, and the whole thing came under torque. I don't think it can be blamed on Jeep, but it was memorable. And the Jeep Grand Cherokee is a is a venerable vehicle. At least mid 1990s versions. 00;09;15;17 - 00;09;16;18 George And in my memory. 00;09;16;24 - 00;09;22;07 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So talking about bad cars proper, what's the worst car you ever had? 00;09;22;09 - 00;09;44;16 Propter Malone All the way, all the way through college, I drove a, 85 Toyota Corolla, with a Korean War surplus roof rack. That was, screwed into the top. It was not the most aerodynamic of roof racks, but I had one particular drive going back down to school. I went to school in Southern California, about a 26 hour drive from where I grew up in eastern Washington. 00;09;44;18 - 00;10;04;15 Propter Malone And, I was leaving my hometown in eastern Washington, at the crack of dawn to try to get on the road and it was snowing and the plows weren't out yet because it was four in the morning and I'm crawling along at about ten miles an hour when I swear we slide off the road. No big deal. 00;10;04;17 - 00;10;29;10 Propter Malone Got Ahold of triple F, I got a cop get pulled out of the snowbank. I'm back on the road and I think everything's fine. I go pick up a, a classmate of mine in Seattle, brief, six hours a week. She's a New York Times bestselling author now, actually, but, at this point, she was, she was a 19 year old, girl, and she was driving, and it was good. 00;10;29;12 - 00;10;46;11 Propter Malone The stuff we have on the roof rack starts coming off after we get past Portland, so we have to repack the whole damn car because things are just flying off, in the middle of I-5. And then as we get down past by Rekha, we run into another problem, which is that apparently I did something to the tire, is what? 00;10;46;11 - 00;11;17;24 Propter Malone I slid into a snowbank way back in eastern Washington, and all of a sudden we've got a flat at 75 miles an hour in the middle of absolutely nowhere in Northern California. I mean, absolutely no. So we're on the side of the freeway and we're waiting for, like, we're waiting for, like, half an hour before we even see a cop come by to flag down, and we wind up, spending the night in this crazy hotel that, fortunately, we didn't get stabbed in, 00;11;17;26 - 00;11;24;16 Propter Malone And eventually, you know, we get back on the road and our car ran for another solid four years after that. 00;11;24;19 - 00;11;25;13 George Well, 00;11;25;16 - 00;11;50;10 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE You know, at least it worked out for you. It reminds me of a time that my best friend was driving an 81 Honda, and I cannot remember the actual model, but decided to take us in Oklahoma on New Year's Eve during a freak snowstorm, which Oklahoma doesn't normally get. To this gal's house party for New Year's Eve in the middle of nowhere. 00;11;50;10 - 00;12;22;08 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE That turned out to be her. A goth named storm who spoke in a British accent but was from Sapulpa, Oklahoma. And and then, unbeknownst to us, when the party started, her boyfriend, which posed a problem for us, given the entire reason that we drove out to the party in the first place, was that my best friend wanted to hook up with the girl who was holding the party, and also didn't know that she, that she had a boyfriend staying with her. 00;12;22;08 - 00;12;44;19 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE But the funny part of this was, well, all of it was funny, but one of the funny parts was the drive out because he had no heat. So we were driving through a snowstorm with no heat. He's like 19 years old. I'm like 17 years old. Neither of us should be anywhere on the road. It worked out well for him in the end. 00;12;44;21 - 00;12;47;05 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE It was less exciting for me. 00;12;47;07 - 00;13;13;20 George There's something very special about the road trip or not even road trip, but just significant driving breakdown after college. Somebody and I did a giant circumnavigation of the country in my buddy's, Jeep Patriot. I think it was. It was one of these sort of smaller sized Jeep SUVs. It wasn't the Grand Cherokee, but smaller size. And these vehicles are not built for this kind of punishment. 00;13;13;20 - 00;13;45;03 George We drove from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to Dallas, Texas, in what basically one shot. We had four guys in the in the vehicle, my college roommate, a college football teammate, and my brother and me, and we were doing rotating shifts and driving through some of the most desolate but beautiful country in the West. And on, I believe it was I-5, somewhere around a town called Grant's New Mexico. 00;13;45;05 - 00;13;59;17 George Something stopped working. I have never been to a place for less than three hours, where multiple people suggest I get laid in that town. In that span of time, I am. 00;13;59;19 - 00;14;09;23 George I have never seen a bar. Not alcohol sales, new bar in a gas station. 00;14;09;25 - 00;14;30;16 George For the record, nobody in the car got laid in Grant's, New Mexico. No one even tried. We were too dumbstruck with horror that there was a bar inside a gas station. I'm not talking like this old beer. I'm talking like there were three people perched on the bars, chain smoking, drinking rum and Cokes in a in in a in a gas station, like, like checkout area. 00;14;30;18 - 00;14;42;26 George And that's I think that's not even the most horrifying thing we saw, which was a tweaker hand stripping copper wire at the place we ended up at trying to fix our car. 00;14;42;29 - 00;14;45;03 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Oh, so it's like a Tuesday in Portland? 00;14;45;05 - 00;14;53;23 George Yeah. Grant's New Mexico. I you know, I no offense to the good people of Grant's. I'm sure you're out there. We didn't meet any of you on our trip through town, but, it was it was rough. 00;14;53;24 - 00;14;56;01 Propter Malone I bet you can get a pretty ridiculous Frito pie out there. 00;14;56;08 - 00;15;11;13 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Oh, yeah, I bet. So. So, we have actually owned a Jeep Patriot in the past, and I'm guessing what happened is, one of the little actuators or something got stuck in the transmission, and it probably overheated. Because that happened to us a couple times. 00;15;11;19 - 00;15;17;28 George Yes. And then it unstuck itself. We didn't actually need to fix anything. It just unstuck itself. So I think that's exactly what happened. 00;15;18;01 - 00;15;40;15 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah. You would just pull over and wait for like 15 minutes and that it would be fine. But I do want to circle back to, prompter. An 80s Corolla with a Korean War era roof rack. Can you can you describe this for me? A bit more because I'm. 00;15;40;17 - 00;15;42;22 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I'm equally curious here. 00;15;42;24 - 00;16;03;21 Propter Malone Yeah. So I don't know how my dad wound up with the roof rack. I assume he bought it surplus or something. Somewhere along somewhere along the line. But he'd had it for years. It had gone from vehicle to vehicle as just, you know, your basic giant metal basket that sits on top of a car. It was probably about probably about 16in high. 00;16;03;23 - 00;16;20;25 Propter Malone Like, this is a serious roof rack and it's not aerodynamic in any way. Like this is not like clipping and, clipping into struts. This is not a roof rack for for your outdoor and athletic supplies. This is a roof rack for you to put a whole bunch of suitcases in. And that's that's what we did. 00;16;20;27 - 00;16;31;09 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Were you just also telling us that your your dad drove the same, drove the same smaller truck for, like, I don't know, 20 or 30 years? 00;16;31;11 - 00;16;41;26 Propter Malone He was pushing 40 years by the time, by the time he finally got rid of that thing. But. Yeah. Yeah. Dad, that doesn't move real fast on the automotive side. Tends to pick one and stick with it. 00;16;41;29 - 00;16;49;18 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer A 16 inch tall basket. Isn't that, like, taller than an 80s? Corolla would have been? 00;16;49;21 - 00;17;01;00 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So, low tech speedrunner, how many jeeps have you had? Did you come across here? Your Jeep derangement congenitally, or did you develop this on your own as he became a teenager? 00;17;01;07 - 00;17;30;15 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer No, no. So, actually, it developed in my 20s. So I have a buddy who lives in, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and, we were living in D.C. at the time. This would have been probably around like 2009 or 2010. And we drove up to, to visit him and his girlfriend, and his dad owned, 2008, Wrangler four door. 00;17;30;17 - 00;17;50;25 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And so we drove that around town. He he, chaperoned us around everywhere. And I was like, this is really cool. And and he told us. Yeah, it's been in the shop, like, 50 times since we bought it, two months ago. It's a complete pile of garbage. 00;17;50;28 - 00;17;53;10 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE That sounds that sounds like a great record for a Jeep. 00;17;53;17 - 00;18;04;15 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah. And I was sort of like, I don't care. This is awesome. And so I have owned I've owned three Wranglers, and we've owned a Patriot. 00;18;04;18 - 00;18;10;12 George And one very, very, very well designed Ford SUV. 00;18;10;14 - 00;18;31;21 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Oh, yes. Yes, that would be the worst car I have ever owned. Now I'm a bit spoiled because, we've had great luck with cars. Knock on wood. Like I'm hearing you guys. You guys breaking down and stuff and and rolling into ditches and all that, like, none of this has ever happened to me. Knock on wood, real hard. 00;18;31;23 - 00;19;00;16 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer But, where was I going with it? Oh, my wife's, Ford Escape. Yes. Where the the fuze box did not fit correctly. And so the car would just shut itself down. On the road. And so we took it to the we took it to CarMax. And they had us take it to the Ford dealer, and the Ford dealer says, yeah, you need a new fuze box, but they don't make them anymore. 00;19;00;16 - 00;19;20;08 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer So we're going to total the car. We had owned the car for a grand total of about three months. To their credit, CarMax was like cool about it. They bought it back and, you know, gave us our money for what we had paid on our monthly payment and all that. But I was just like, it was only ten years old. 00;19;20;08 - 00;19;24;22 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer How did how are there not parts for it anymore? How are you totaling this car. 00;19;24;25 - 00;19;54;11 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I guess, you know, so I'm not a driver anymore? I don't drive. I haven't driven in a little while. I have a driver's license, but. But generally, I take the bus or I walk. But the thing that one of the things I miss, about the ram charger that I had was that it had an engine cavity the size of a two bedroom house, which is something that I liked about, like 70s and 80s sort of sport utility vehicles, though I think sport utility vehicles is kind of a weird way to think about those vehicles. 00;19;54;11 - 00;19;57;13 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE When you think about the the Costco runs of today. 00;19;57;18 - 00;20;26;07 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah, we need to bring the 70s 80s dad SUV back. We need to stop with this. Like, you look at the atrocities they've put out in recent years, the the Jeep Wagoneer and and the Ford Explorer, which is now basically a minivan. And the the worst offender of all is obviously the Chevy Trailblazer, which they have turned into essentially a Volkswagen Golf. 00;20;26;09 - 00;20;32;14 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And we we need to bring back the big dumb stuff we used to build in this country. 00;20;32;17 - 00;20;41;20 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE The funny thing is, they're still smaller than something like a Cybertruck. Or or even, you know, any of the the regular full size pickup trucks at this point. 00;20;41;23 - 00;20;49;02 George It's really interesting to hear low tax endorse the concept of the Ford Bronco. I you know, I was not expecting this conversation to go that direction. 00;20;49;04 - 00;21;04;16 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I'm perfectly fine with the Bronco. They should have put a solid axle on the front end, so that it could do real off roading. And they should have, designed a hardtop on it that wouldn't dissolve after sitting in the sun for five minutes. 00;21;04;16 - 00;21;05;23 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Did those exist? 00;21;05;25 - 00;21;10;22 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Well, hard tops that don't dissolve in the sun after five minutes. Yeah, Jeep's been making them for years. 00;21;10;28 - 00;21;11;16 Propter Malone It would be great. 00;21;11;16 - 00;21;19;05 George If they could make anything else reliable on the car. But, you know. 00;21;19;07 - 00;21;19;17 George Again. 00;21;19;18 - 00;21;28;05 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer All right, so who's box? Ten year old car fuze box. Totaled the car. George. That's your four boys. 00;21;28;08 - 00;21;31;10 George That's. 00;21;31;12 - 00;22;27;07 Propter Malone All right. Well, so it's it's summer in America. And that means besides, besides lakes and trucks and country music, that unfortunately also means it's time for gun violence and, political meltdowns. And we had one here in DC, this last week, where we're still getting all of the details on this, but it seems like a young man who was radicalized online as part of the broad left, came to DC, to kill two employees of the Israeli embassy here, who were, at the time he shot them, who were who were leaving a, an event that was, was trying to raise money and organize people for relief for Palestinians. 00;22;27;09 - 00;22;49;03 Propter Malone We've been, I think, somewhat wacky so far in terms of how much of the war has come home to America, from Gaza. We've had I think it's I think it's still single digit numbers of deaths related to that. But this is one that I think is going to be is going to get a lot of attention, in weeks to come. 00;22;49;05 - 00;23;11;25 Propter Malone Because it was explicitly political, explicitly an assassination. And it was the kind of stochastic terrorism that we haven't seen coming out of this so far. The deaths, the deaths to date have been very obvious. In that case, deaths or accidents. And this is something different. 00;23;11;27 - 00;23;41;26 George I think in general, too, we should specify that the left in this country in the past, probably 50 years since the Weather Underground, I think, would be fair to say, has a history of very limited, if any, use of violence. And that is not how things are necessarily portrayed by political opponents of the left. But the objective reality is that violence in this country is a right wing phenomenon, or has been for certainly my entire life and longer. 00;23;41;29 - 00;24;21;12 George And I don't think that one incident necessarily means a change in that trend. I think I've been involved in some pretty radical left wing spaces myself, and have never encountered the sort of bloodlust that is, at this point, standard operating procedure for large swaths of the right. I also think that the, again, just just one trend does not make, or one instance does not make a trend, but I also think we need to be cognizant of the fact that this was a person who was avowedly of the left. 00;24;21;12 - 00;24;42;08 George This was we cannot say that this person was a associated with ideas on the left and, you know, was a it was a sort of un, an off balance person who was attracted to a specific idea that but didn't have a broad left politics. No, this this person had a broad left politics and chose to express that through violence. 00;24;42;11 - 00;24;53;05 George And I think I speaking for myself, and I think the other three men on this podcast, our politics does not have space for stochastic violence. 00;24;53;07 - 00;25;20;16 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE No. Absolutely. I think that, you know, having grown up in the 90s, watched a lot of explicitly right wing violence. So you had, you know, you had the Olympic bombings, you had the Tiller assassination, you had, this whole, this whole litany of, of explicitly right wing violence that was explicitly attributed to right wing causes. 00;25;20;18 - 00;25;50;09 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE What you have seen in more recent years that is often attributed to left wing violence. And so you can talk about something like, the attempted assassination of, like, Steve Scalise, for example. Or you can talk about, you know, the, the protests and, and riots and even more recent years is, I think, harder to exclusively attributing that attribute to kind of strictly left wing politics. 00;25;50;11 - 00;26;16;01 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE You know, the the attempted Scalise assassination, that guy was he had there's some politics that were maybe left wing, had a lot of other politics that were just kind of don't map clearly onto any, any particular ideological structure. The you, you know, protests or even riots or things that, that are never going to, map very, very clearly to left wing politics. 00;26;16;01 - 00;26;28;04 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I think this is a little bit closer. And I worry a lot about how this can be used to sort of weaponize left of the dial politics. 00;26;28;06 - 00;26;48;16 Propter Malone Yeah, I, I think that one of the major differences between the left and the right in this regard is that I do think that the left wing has generally been less violent, but it's the guns. It's it's the the loyalty of the guys in the black bloc who are out there, who want to get into street fights. They're not really killing people. 00;26;48;18 - 00;26;58;03 Propter Malone They're, they're, they're they're hitting people. And, you know, there's there's violence there, but not lethal violence. 00;26;58;03 - 00;27;02;08 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE And that's it's primarily property. It's primarily property damage. 00;27;02;16 - 00;27;25;11 Propter Malone Yeah. And, you know, I mean, that that has a, a long tradition in this country. But I think that I think that the protests in the northwest, 25 years ago were a significant flashpoint for that. But on the other side of things, you know, the gun violence has been characteristic of certain parts of the right wing for a long time. 00;27;25;13 - 00;27;49;16 Propter Malone That this this goes back, you know, guns and explosives go back. So, Eddie, you brought up the long tradition of of right wing violence. But, you know, Oklahoma City is there's a fairly notable flashpoint there, and that informs a lot of the downstream stuff. And then in recent years, we've had more spree shooters, coming out of particularly the manosphere. 00;27;49;18 - 00;27;52;10 Propter Malone And as has driven a lot of that. 00;27;52;13 - 00;28;24;03 George Wanted to go back to something Doctor Hal Machine pointed out, which there is a problematic possibility of this particular. Act of violence being used against the left as a cudgel. And I think that's a legitimate concern. What I worry more about personally is not the right is going to try and use anything it can against the left. We are always going to have something available for them to use as a cudgel against us, and we can't really control that. 00;28;24;06 - 00;29;03;07 George And I don't know if it's worth spending large amounts of energy framing one's own political affiliations or actions in the context of how can this be used against me? Because anything will be used against you. What I worry about is making sure that the values that I hold dear, the egalitarian and ultimately progressive view of the world, that human beings are worth investing in, that other people might know better about their lives than mine, than I do. 00;29;03;09 - 00;29;33;01 George That every human being deserves nurturing and care and support and a place to thrive. I don't see how that politics is compatible with any view of politics that views killing as the means to the end. I don't I don't see how that's compatible. I and I think it's also just to close this out. I my my sort of tangent here, I would I do think again to what Mr. Home Machine said about the black bloc. 00;29;33;01 - 00;29;58;16 George For instance, I've been in protest where there's black like activity, property crime is not the same thing as going out and shooting two people in cold blood. It's not. Absolutely, absolutely not. And, and I do think there is space in a broadly égalité and, and nurturing movement for human potential that, doesn't absolutely avow in all circumstances, all property crime, hypothetically, whatever I, I don't we don't need that purity test. 00;29;58;24 - 00;30;07;19 George But I do think saying if you want to go out and kill people to advance your political project, you are not a part of my political project. 00;30;07;24 - 00;30;40;12 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And I guess I would add to that in just asking the question, what did this guy gain? Like, I think all of us have been watching this situation, this this completely horrifying situation in Gaza play out over the last year and a half. This guy was radicalized about this conflict, killed these two people in DC. What these are these are like administrative clerical workers at an embassy. 00;30;40;20 - 00;30;43;14 George He did not save one Gazan life. Not one. 00;30;43;16 - 00;31;07;24 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Not one, not one like you're you're not helping this in any way, pal. And cheering it on, by the way. And all of us have seen some of that on on blue Sky and Twitter. That's that's not helping either. This is you're not you're not saving any lives there. You you can you can go to hell. 00;31;07;24 - 00;31;12;11 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer As far as I'm concerned. This is this is not what we do. 00;31;12;14 - 00;31;47;24 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I think that I think is, and there's probably it's worth listening to people who are, I think, better versed, kind of in the history here and in and even in the psychology of it. But, I think, either either Georgia proper, mentioned the, the Weather Underground earlier and there was, there was kind of a coherent theory of controlled violence leading to leading to social or political change. 00;31;47;27 - 00;32;20;03 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE When you look at kind of the, the some of the political violence that you saw on the, the, the 1960s or the 1970s, this is, I think, kind of different in meaningful ways in that it it feels, and, and there's, there's more of this that you've seen it feel significantly more nihilistic. Not, not intended, to achieve any particular sort of any particular sort of goal. 00;32;20;05 - 00;32;48;13 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Yeah. It just it feels unfocused, and encouraged by other nihilists, you know, and, and encouraged by a, by really a fairly shallow politics, and like a, a fairly, a fairly shallow grounding that is not well considered. You know, I mean, embassy attacks have have happened on and off both here, in the United States and abroad, more than once. 00;32;48;13 - 00;33;25;16 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE They've they've never been successful at anything. They have always had exactly the opposite approach. Or or, I mean, the, the opposite result that the person committing violence would have hoped for. But but this, this feels even shallower and dumber than that. It's a it's a thousand word manifesto posted on Twitter. Which which doesn't even really explicitly take responsibility so much as deliberately attempt to avoid taking responsibility. 00;33;25;18 - 00;33;49;06 Propter Malone You know, a bit ago, Rotax asked what it was that the shooter got out of this. And I think that that's really the key to approaching the psychology of this, that the shooter referenced. Aaron Bushnell in his in his manifesto, Aaron Bushnell was the American soldier who self immolated outside of the Israeli embassy, in protest of, of, outside of the Israeli embassy in DC, in protest of the war. 00;33;49;06 - 00;34;34;15 Propter Malone But I think that the other the other major strain here is for the, frankly, admiration and adulation from some quarters that that Luigi has gotten. After after killing the United Healthcare, CEO. That these are maybe all young men who felt alienated, from from people and things in their lives and latched on to something that they saw as a worthy cause where they could in one moment, do what they thought was contributing a lifetime, to that cause. 00;34;34;15 - 00;34;54;01 Propter Malone And that's that's not a way to fight for a thing. You do much more good by living than you do by burning out in one action, even if that action is well considered and good. And the correct action, which none of these work. The end. 00;34;54;01 - 00;34;57;00 George Result of. 00;34;57;02 - 00;35;27;25 Propter Malone What would you did in New York is, is, is one dead CEO a whole lot of heightened security budgets, for, for corporations around the world, and probably the life imprisonment of Luigi. The end result of Aaron Bushnell's action is that Aaron Bushnell died in agony and that he inspired, apparently, the DC shooter, to go to go and kill people as a as a morally righteous cause. 00;35;27;28 - 00;35;48;09 Propter Malone And I would expect that the end result of the shooting in DC, is going to be that the shooter goes to jail for the rest of his life, and that two young people who from all appearances were, were broadly aligned with the cause of peace, are dead. 00;35;48;12 - 00;36;16;23 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah. I'm glad you you brought up Luigi, because, you know, the question applies just as well to Luigi as it does to this guy. What did he accomplish? Nothing like. I'm sorry. Politics is is hard. You have to. You have to grind away at it. The people who are remembered in politics are not guys who. Who shot a CEO or, shot some some staff at an embassy. 00;36;16;23 - 00;36;46;11 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer They're they're guys who, you know, ran for office, pushed a bill through Congress, ran for the presidency, you know, established Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid or, the Affordable Care Act. These are not these may not be sexy things. In in the world of, in the terminally brain poisoned world of online. But nevertheless, that's that's how real change happens. 00;36;46;11 - 00;36;57;22 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer That's how, real people's lives are improved. It's not by these these stochastic terrorism incidents. 00;36;57;24 - 00;37;41;29 George We talk a lot. This podcast hasn't dwelled on it to an excessive degree, but we are going to talk about it. We have talked about it previously about the broader theme of quote unquote, the crisis of masculinity in our contemporary culture. And this violent act was one more expression of that larger trend. I think it's important to keep in mind the historical context around violence and how un violent our society is, which sounds like a crazed thing to say, given the mass violence that's currently being perpetrated against immigrant communities by our government. 00;37;42;02 - 00;37;46;09 George Given the violence, the genocide that's underway in Gaza. 00;37;46;11 - 00;37;47;16 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE The. 00;37;47;19 - 00;38;10;07 George Large scale violence and many other forms both domestically and around the world. But, you know, I was listening to Patrick Whiteman's podcast recently, and he was recounting the demographic impact of Hannibal invading Italy. And during that, the early Roman in Rome, during the Roman Republic, one inch seven male citizens of military age in Rome were dead, after the Battle of Cannae. 00;38;10;10 - 00;38;49;17 George If we look back to much more recent history, we look at the toll that World War One placed on men, specifically in terms of psychology, in terms of raw death and maiming and physical toll. It was a generation gutting experience. And then World War Two came 25 years later, sorry, 30 years later. And so you count it, the men have always had very, very fraught relationships with violence and societal conflict. 00;38;49;25 - 00;39;09;28 George This is not new. That is not new. How it is expressed has become much more individualized and stochastic, to use that term that we've used a couple times now, that stochastic term just means that there is a randomness and an outsized impact to these events. And I think we need to chew on why these events are taking place. 00;39;09;28 - 00;39;29;23 George But we also need to remember the broader historical context, whether it's the longest run of human history or even something as recent as to a lifetime ago in World War One or half a lifetime ago. Using the Weather Underground as an example. This is not a new problem. It is just a new expression in a society that we haven't ever had before. 00;39;29;23 - 00;39;38;07 George Our society is is novel. So I, you know, I think we, we just always need to, to keep that bigger arc in mind when we talk about these issues. 00;39;38;10 - 00;40;10;23 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE The individual atoms atomization of it to me is is a thing that I think is really hard to square with, with anyone who would kind of consider themselves having any kind of collectivized politics, or or or or general kind of group action. And the I don't want to just say socialism, because I think that that takes it down a very specific ideological direction that I don't necessarily mean. 00;40;10;25 - 00;40;20;18 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah, I think I think you mean I mean, it would apply to liberals just as much as liberals as we think of them in an American political context. As it would socialist. 00;40;20;20 - 00;40;57;26 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Yeah, absolutely. Like the, the weird sort of lone gunman nature of this is like fundamentally not very different from like, school shooter. It's it's it's a, it's, you know, killing these two staffers, at the Israeli embassy, did did nothing to to advance the the cause, Palestinians it did nothing to try to raise, raise awareness, for what's happening in Gaza. 00;40;57;28 - 00;41;54;21 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE The what what might be interesting in the future is that I think that there's a real possibility that the Trump administration is going to absolutely overreact, act here. This falls into newly appointed, Jeanine Pirro's district. And I think this it, I think that the the possibility that the Trump administration completely overreacts, and, and behaves extremely badly and overcharges here is probably very likely, which just frankly deepens kind of the tragedy of it, and, and treats it as a propaganda activity, and probably fails to, and it just makes the entire story, the entire story sadder. 00;41;54;23 - 00;42;12;03 Propter Malone At this point. We actually do have the first set of charges filed, and I did not think that they were overcharging the crime at this stage of the game. This was something that I that I was also very worried about, that, that Pirro would come in guns, guns blazing. But and, you know, there's still plenty of opportunity for that to happen. 00;42;12;08 - 00;42;45;03 Propter Malone There may very well be superseding indictment, but the initial charges is, First-Degree homicide, which I think is substantiated. A couple of guns charges, and there's a DC specific charge, related to, related to attacking foreign embassy personnel. They didn't charge hate crimes yet. They might down the road. I think it's just really important that for those of us on the broad left, we try to continue to do what I think we've done a pretty good job on. 00;42;45;03 - 00;43;23;16 Propter Malone As we alluded to earlier, for the past many years of kind of movement hygiene, of trying to keep this sort of thing on the other side of the street. That for me and, you know, I, I don't know, the last Rodriguez I, I, I read his manifesto and I, I still don't really feel like I understand what he believes in that sense, but it seems to me that there is a through line from this lone shooter, right wing violence, all the way through to Luigi, who was also coming out of a coming out of a very specific right wing scene. 00;43;23;19 - 00;44;14;13 Propter Malone That leads us to this point, and I think we need to do a better job. Apparently, of keeping those attitudes and those relaxations in the rules of engagement from metastasizing across the political middle into the left, because once this stuff takes root, it's very, very hard to get it out. Once you start getting copycats, once you start seeing people who do this kind of thing turned into heroes, that creates imitators, that you see people who have weak attachment to other people in other movements in their life, latching on to these acts as something that they can do that will, will validate, will complete, will redeem their lives. 00;44;14;16 - 00;44;40;03 Propter Malone And that's a cycle that can have a lot of repetitions. You can you can knock over one domino and and get a lot of others down there. And, you know, one of the things that kind of gets tossed around on blue sky is the notion that we might be entering an American days of LED, which is a period in Italian history where there were just political shootings all the time. 00;44;40;05 - 00;44;47;08 Propter Malone And that's that's a frightening prospect. That's not a better world than the one we live in right now. 00;44;47;10 - 00;45;16;23 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah, I think, and adding to what? To what y'all have said, I think the broad left has been much better about coalition. All hygiene, upkeep. Right. And I say that of of both, the sort of liberal left, you know, establishment Korean sort as well as the, the socialist, you know, Bernie AOC left. 00;45;16;26 - 00;45;18;27 George Even going further left than that. Honestly. 00;45;19;00 - 00;45;33;05 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah. Even going further left than that. This is, this is a dark road that I don't think we want to be going down. This is, as I said, this is not what we do. 00;45;33;08 - 00;45;47;05 Propter Malone You know? You know, the joke, the line, the line is that your political strategist strategy pales in comparison to mine, which is firebombing a Walmart. And then they don't firebomb a Walmart. We don't want them to firebomb the Walmart. That's actually really important. 00;45;47;08 - 00;46;17;13 George And I mean, even firebombing the Walmart, as long as you do it after it's closed, is a real different ballgame from going and shooting two people in cold blood. I mean, I think that's important to to point out. I think we should also remember, too, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably found us through blue Sky, a posting platform just keep in mind when you're liking stuff or replying to stuff or quoting stuff or whatever, you are providing feedback and giving people an incentive to do something. 00;46;17;16 - 00;46;48;13 George It's the same when you use TikTok with the same when you use Instagram. Every interaction, everything you do, you do have agency over both. What is being shown to you next and how the people producing that stuff, or acting on the incentives that they're getting from these apps. How they make decisions. I don't think that means every decent leftist needs to go out and post their own counter manifesto or decry, you know, the and the the killings or whatever. 00;46;48;13 - 00;47;02;08 George You don't have to say anything. But just remember, when you do cease to say something or when you do interact or whatever you're you're doing on social media, you are creating an incentive for somebody and you need to be very careful about what incentive you're creating. 00;47;02;10 - 00;47;05;05 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer That's why, oh, my posts are good. Unmixed. 00;47;05;07 - 00;47;16;06 Unknown Everything that's. 00;47;16;08 - 00;47;17;12 Unknown Stacked. 00;47;17;14 - 00;47;23;04 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And so with the heavy stuff out of the way, let's get on to, cutting everybody off Medicaid. 00;47;23;07 - 00;47;46;01 George It's a tradition. It's an exaggeration, but it's not that dramatic of an exaggeration. We're referring, of course, to the House passing its version of the reconciliation bill that is working its way through the House and Senate on its way to President Trump. President Trump's desk eventually, presumably, the important thing I think, before we. 00;47;46;04 - 00;47;46;29 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Get. 00;47;47;02 - 00;48;08;22 George To the meat of what's in this bill, everything you're seeing from the House bill is a negotiating position. It is not the final say. The Senate is going to write its own bill. It may have better stuff in it. It may have worse stuff in it. It's going to be different. The Senate and the House then need to get together and hash it out. 00;48;08;25 - 00;49;14;11 George And we can't say definitively what that final bill is going to look like. It's we can't say it's going to be better. We can't say it's worse. We just have to acknowledge that this is one step in the process and not the final say. 00;49;14;13 - 00;49;52;00 George So let's talk a little bit about what exactly is in the bill that came out of the House. So first off, there's tax cuts for people with high incomes and businesses. That works to about to almost $4 trillion over ten years away. Yeah, yeah. Then it's important when you hear it. It's just so folks that maybe aren't used to hearing this sort of language when we say it's 3.8 trillion over ten years, when we say that what we mean is relative to current law, it's not actually that much in terms of new tax cuts that are that they didn't get last year, that they will get next year. 00;49;52;02 - 00;50;13;25 George It's extending prior law tax cuts because the original Tax Cuts and Job Act jobs act passed under President in President Trump's first term, had a ten year window. And to keep the budget math solid, stuff had to sunset. And they're now fighting to extend those sunsets as opposed to come up with new reductions. It still has a negative impact on the deficit. 00;50;13;25 - 00;50;40;15 George It still has. It's still you know, it's we shouldn't say necessarily, that it doesn't have a cost because it's extending current law. It does, but it's fundamentally different from saying, okay, we were at, let's say, 10% now we're down to 5%. No, it's more like we're we were at 10%. Now we're down 9.5% is sort of the way to think about it. 00;50;40;17 - 00;51;00;19 Propter Malone Yeah. And I think the one thing that's important to note there is if you're looking at any potential stimulus effect we might get out of this bill, the fact that a lot of it is just keeping existing tax cuts in place is going to mute that stimulus effect. You're not going to get you're not going to get new effects, because we're operating under current law. 00;51;00;21 - 00;51;08;18 George One other note on that if you there's been a lot of economic work done studying how people spend money. 00;51;08;24 - 00;51;09;10 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE The. 00;51;09;17 - 00;51;34;29 George People that spend the most money of new dollars they earn. So if their salary goes up 10%, their spending goes up what amount? It's the lowest part of the income distribution. And it's intuitive why this would be the case if you are barely making enough to get by or aren't getting by, then the a small increase in your income is going to immediately be spent, because there's so much stuff that you need to have a decent life. 00;51;34;29 - 00;51;55;01 George There's so much stuff, if you're higher income, if you get that tax break and you now have a higher income, there's just not that much stuff that you immediately need to run out and buy. Maybe you'll spend more over time, but it's not as a big of an imperative. So we call this, concept a marginal propensity to consume. 00;51;55;06 - 00;52;15;15 George We are giving large tax cuts to people with a low marginal propensity to consume. So all else equal, if you gave the same amount of money to those people as you, or to lower income people as you are to higher income people in this bill, you would get much more consumer spending and therefore much more economic growth. That is one reason this is an anti-growth economic policy. 00;52;15;18 - 00;52;22;24 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I mean, to be fair, we only learned that, you know, what, 85 years ago give or 90 years ago. 00;52;22;26 - 00;52;43;20 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Fortunately, there's all sorts of other weird shit in this bill to talk about. So there is apparently the ability to deduct car loan interest, but only if your car was made in the United States. And I'm curious what you guys think about the efficacy of this as a tax policy. 00;52;43;23 - 00;53;07;18 George So this is actually interesting because it contains a significant drafting error. They they wanted to give the deduction to people, in their calculation of adjusted gross income, which would mean that anybody would be able to claim it without respect to whether they were taking what's called a standardized deduction or not. Basically, higher income people take take, itemized deductions, lower income people take standardized deductions. 00;53;07;19 - 00;53;32;02 George It's not an iron law, but it roughly works out that way. So but they wanted everyone to be able to take advantage of this. So they made it an above the line, deduction of from annual gross income as opposed to below the line where you're talking about your standard deduction, versus itemized deductions. And then they did the phase out the way they, the way they, wrote the phase out in the bill referred to it as a what's called below the line deduction, part of those itemized deductions. 00;53;32;04 - 00;53;58;07 George It's if implemented into law as currently passed out of the House. It would it would be the IRS would say, well, we can't implement this. There's no because it's contradictory. So that's an example of how this bill is absolutely going to change before it passes into law. We don't know exactly how, but it will change. And in part it's because the drafting sucked on their initial thing, because they did an all nighter the night before the vote to get this thing out, and many compromises were made and a lot of work was done. 00;53;58;07 - 00;54;01;11 George And that's often the case in Congress. But there are errors all over it. 00;54;01;17 - 00;54;19;19 Propter Malone One thing to keep in mind when you're looking at any of the differences between deductions that only apply if you're itemizing your taxes and deductions that apply if you're taking the standard deduction, is that I we're down under 10% now of tax filers who itemize. It's it's it's a really small piece of the the pie in terms of people. 00;54;19;21 - 00;54;33;19 Propter Malone But it's a much bigger piece of the pie in terms of money. That the more money you make, the more more the more likely you are to itemize. So in terms of total tax receipts, it's still a pretty good whack. But in terms of people, it's it's under 10% of the filing population. 00;54;33;22 - 00;54;56;22 George There are a bunch of other things in this bill that don't necessarily really relate to tax policy. Medicaid is one example. There are more stringent work requirements. There are changes to benefit payouts. There is an end to gender affirming care and that may conflict with some state laws. Oregon may be a good example, which I think Black Hole Machine has, has done some work on. 00;54;56;24 - 00;55;23;19 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Yeah, I just wanted to kind of like the way that there was this was drafted was was given very little sort of concerned to like to what existing state laws are already out there, to how existing Medicaid programs are currently administered in each state because they are administered different in each state. So I looked into, Oregon, you know, partially because I live here. 00;55;23;22 - 00;55;56;28 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE But also because Oregon has one of the largest population, like one of the largest per capita per capita populations of residents on Medicaid, in the entire country. And some of what they're planning to push through in, in the House, Republican bill does conflict directly with Oregon state law. So like this will cause problems even if they do get everything through the Senate and it seems fairly unlikely that they're going to get everything through the Senate. 00;55;57;02 - 00;56;21;11 Propter Malone So there are a couple of issues here with getting what they pass through the House, through the Senate. One of the major roadblocks in the way is the parliamentarian, as you may recall from last, as you may recall from prior reconciliation efforts, including fairly recently and very memorably, the attempt by Democrats to get, to get a minimum wage raise, into law through reconciliation. 00;56;21;14 - 00;56;44;00 Propter Malone There is a process that is called the birdbath after Senator Robert Byrd, who, who set out much of the reconciliation process that kicks out provisions that are not directly germane to the budget. This is a this is an arcane process. And there is a lot of disagreement by the pundit class on what's going to stay in and what's going to stay out. 00;56;44;02 - 00;57;06;24 Propter Malone But ultimately, what happens is the Senate parliamentarian, who is a Senate employee, not a senator, looks at the bill and says, okay, this provision is fine. This provision is not fine. It is possible that the Senate, by a majority vote, can overrule the parliamentarian and elect to keep something in, even though the parliamentarian thinks it's not germane. 00;57;06;27 - 00;57;27;12 Propter Malone But my guess is that, well, maybe maybe this is not the time for guessing. But the parliamentarian is going to kick out a number of these, a number of these social provisions. Exactly. Which I don't know. We'll find out. But some of these are going to get the ax on that basis, even if they make it through the Senate negotiation process. 00;57;27;15 - 00;57;36;25 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer But if we if we if we throw out the gender affirming care stuff, how are we going to get people to make iPhones? And in Ohio. 00;57;36;28 - 00;57;44;25 George Happy when the New York Times recently or we can't make iPhones here because all the slender little fingers are on the hands of Chinese women, right. 00;57;44;28 - 00;57;59;03 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer That's that's right. Our our our women are women. Have, King Charles fingers. So so we can't do we can't do iPhones. 00;57;59;05 - 00;58;26;12 George Jesus. So what else is in this thing? IRA repeal is really going to nuke, ton of investment that took place under President Biden. We have had a massive, massive increase in factory construction in this country over the past four years, to a level that is far above anything previously recorded, not even close by a wide margin, not not double, but close to double anything previously recorded. 00;58;26;17 - 00;59;08;28 George And that's adjusted for adjusting for inflation. Of course, these the subsidies that were introduced to incentivize all of that factory construction are basically getting zeroed out. It's not zero, but it's very rapid phase out. And some of the conditions that are being put on receiving these subsidies are so onerous that they won't be received at all. That's going to hit not only factories that were spun up to produce batteries, electric vehicles, solar panels, things of this nature, but also the industries that are busy installing massive volumes of solar, energy and battery storage across the country, there is a historic boom. 00;59;08;28 - 00;59;31;25 George Roughly 90% of new US electricity installs are renewables. Very, very coal hasn't been done on a new plant basis in 20 years. At this point, natural gas is a very small share of the total. So you're left with nuclear, which is infrequent. We'd we did have a really large nuclear reactor going line in Georgia last year. But other than that there's very little nuclear. 00;59;31;25 - 00;59;55;15 George So it's all renewables. It's all renewables. This bill will nuke the investment in, any power production, because if you want to build gas, you need turbines. And turbine orders are booked out for the next five years. Not just because of U.S. demand, because of global wind turbine manufacturers are saying we're not sure this is going to last because a, we're going to be out competed by solar. 00;59;55;15 - 01;00;23;09 George It's already basically cheaper to do solar plus storage than it is to do a new gas turbine in this country. And it's going to get a lot cheaper. And so this bill is basically saying instead of leaning into that trend of lower cost, we're actually going to try and fight against it. And what will end up happening is there's just very little new power production will be built, which is not going to be good for anybody that uses electricity for anything. 01;00;23;12 - 01;00;25;29 George And, and, and that is everybody. 01;00;26;02 - 01;00;38;00 Propter Malone If I can go on a quick tangent here, there was a really cool paper going around the other week about a new, underwater battery storage solution. Did you guys see this, that these are these are this is this is spheres. 01;00;38;00 - 01;00;38;14 George Yeah. 01;00;38;17 - 01;01;02;03 Propter Malone Yes. This is this is these gigantic concrete spheres that are supposed to go under like a significant depth of water. It's important they be deep because the water pressure needs to be high that store electricity by using electricity in times of peak solar production to pump water out of the sphere. And then when you want to get the electricity back, you want water back into the sphere. 01;01;02;03 - 01;01;29;01 Propter Malone And it it rotates a turbine. So you've got you've got these the they've got a working model of this that I want to say it's like a nine meter sphere. But they're saying that the goal was to get these up to like up to like 50m. So just these absolutely gigantic spherical fields of, of these, of these batteries, that are going to sit, I guess, on the seafloor, off the California coast or wherever. 01;01;29;01 - 01;01;29;23 Propter Malone Anyway. 01;01;29;25 - 01;01;35;29 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Technology is great. Did did it, did we find a thing that is not just steam for power generation? 01;01;36;02 - 01;01;58;06 George Hard to to store steam for long periods of time, although there are really cool batteries, out there that involve heating up, basically salt to the point that it's molten and letting it sit inside what looks like a shipping container and then releasing it via either photovoltaic or, creating steam, when you when you need the power. 01;01;58;06 - 01;02;07;27 George This is colloquially referred to as the hot box of Rocks battery. And it rocks. So. 01;02;07;29 - 01;02;38;08 Propter Malone So the basic principle of like pump water one place when you have lots of electricity and then let it flow back and turn turbines is that's already in use in America. Like I don't know which lakes you guys are on, but a significant number of the man made lakes in America are part of these systems that are essentially these gigantic batteries where in times of lots of electricity, they pump water into the into the high lake, and then they let it flow through a hydroelectric dam, in times of low electricity. 01;02;38;08 - 01;02;44;13 Propter Malone Virginia has got a couple of these, that are also pretty nice places to go spend a weekend. 01;02;44;15 - 01;02;52;13 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Wait, Virginia has got these, but they they still can't pave their roads more than once every 50 years. 01;02;52;15 - 01;02;56;03 George I think you may be referring to South Carolina with that joke. 01;02;56;06 - 01;03;09;22 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer No, no, no, it's it's every other state is has bad roads. So Virginia bad, North Carolina good, South Carolina bad, Georgia good. Until you get to Arkansas and Louisiana. And then it's just all bad. 01;03;09;24 - 01;03;42;21 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE All right. So another thing that this bill includes is exponential increases for ice. And and the amounts that they want to include for ice are are pretty nuts. So looking at like 46 around billion for the wall apparently out there, I think that's going to end up being both the wall and facilities. Around another 5 billion separately for CBP and Ice facilities, 6 billion to hire and train more Ice and CBP officers. 01;03;42;21 - 01;04;23;01 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE These are enormous amounts of money. This is the kind of money that is actually kind of difficult even to spend quickly, in terms of trying to actually make all of this happen, particularly when you're looking at a federal government who has kind of got it gutted its own capacity over the last several months. In terms of just the ability to do basic functions like do background checks, and, you know, check references and everything else that you need in order to hire CBP or Ice agents. 01;04;23;04 - 01;04;26;18 Propter Malone Yeah. It's not like CBP hiring was going great beforehand. 01;04;26;21 - 01;04;33;15 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer We're still doing background checks like, I mean, I didn't I didn't that kind of go out the window with Doge? 01;04;33;17 - 01;04;36;25 Propter Malone Yeah, I think the criteria might have changed a little on the background checks. 01;04;36;28 - 01;04;43;14 George But the background is there looking in the background of your account to see if you have a Pepe there. 01;04;43;17 - 01;04;56;07 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer There's there's a fricking guy named who's whose LinkedIn profile is named Big Balls. Who's a neo-Nazi running around. And we're still talking about background checks. 01;04;56;10 - 01;04;59;00 Propter Malone Damn it. Low tax is the best we've got. 01;05;00;08 - 01;05;22;28 Propter Malone To jump to jump on what? Go like hell machine was saying about the Ice funding. This is really a very anti-immigrant bill across the board. Not just in terms of direct enforcement, but we have provisions in there that punish states that have, legal immigrants on the Medicaid rolls. Again, that's legal immigrants. That's not that's not undocumented immigrants. 01;05;22;28 - 01;05;45;22 Propter Malone That's people who are legally in the country. There's a financial penalty for states covering them. I would be surprised if that survives, but we'll find out. There's, child tax credit. That only applies if the taxpayer has an SSN. That is clearly an attempt. And sorry, it only applies if both of the child's parents have an SSN if memory serves. 01;05;45;24 - 01;06;01;03 Propter Malone So it's an attempt to make things to to create a child subsidy that's directed exclusively towards, the children of two Americans, which is actually not nearly as many parents as you might think. 01;06;01;06 - 01;06;29;08 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So if we're looking at this bill, this bill is extremely anti-immigrant. It is anti Medicaid recipient. It's anti Snap recipients. It's anti Medicare recipients. It's anti lower wage worker recipients. Does who does whom does this bill even really benefit. Like who like what kind of an agenda does this set. 01;06;29;10 - 01;06;50;03 Propter Malone One big winner on this is the crypto industry. One of the anti-immigrant immigrant provisions is a 3.5% excise tax on remittances, which is money sent from immigrants to their home country. That excise tax explicitly excludes crypto, which seems almost cartoonish in the degree to which it's a giveaway. 01;06;50;05 - 01;06;56;17 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer It's all those it's all those farm workers in Iowa who are sending Bitcoin back to, Honduras. You know. 01;06;56;19 - 01;07;04;04 Propter Malone I mean, they will now, you know, if it's if it's been Western Union before, but it's cheaper to do it in Ethereum or whatever, then that's what they'll do. 01;07;04;06 - 01;07;34;13 George Speaking of capital capital controls, there's also an interesting provision in here that gives the ability to the I believe it's Treasury to strip the tax treaty status of foreign investors that invest in a bunch of different, funds that are pretty standard fare in, the, the US. So business development companies are one example. Rates are another example. 01;07;34;15 - 01;07;53;24 George General partner slash limited partner funds. What this would do is, is basically destroy demand for U.S. financial assets of a certain type that that tend to be held through those, those vehicles. And there is no way I just, I cannot imagine them passing this because it would destroy. 01;07;53;27 - 01;07;54;16 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE The. 01;07;54;16 - 01;08;16;03 George Fund management industry and a bunch of very, very painful ways. And it would really blow out credit spreads like it would they would have a really bad impact on that part of the financial markets. And it's in their in an on the overseas libs, capacity that is just so blindingly shortsighted. I can't even begin to describe it. 01;08;16;05 - 01;08;39;24 George In general. A common thread we're seeing across this bill is that we are going to own the libs, and we don't care what we do to economic growth and inflation along the way, because owning the libs is more important. This is without a doubt the most anti-growth pro inflation policy mix I have ever seen from a developed country. 01;08;39;27 - 01;09;14;00 George Nothing else comes close and if it passes, if a version of the bill from the Senate looks similar, you're talking about upward redistribution of income, destruction of investment, significant damage to financial markets, really bad impacts on labor supply from immigrants. Capital controls, effectively capital controls, via taxes on remittances. And that and the situation I just described, this is a nightmare for anyone that cares about economic growth in this country. 01;09;14;00 - 01;09;28;02 George And there are lots of people who probably listeners podcast and say, I don't care about economic growth. Well, you probably care about inflation. And from a fiscal policy perspective, this bill is comp pletely bughouse nuts. 01;09;28;09 - 01;09;32;14 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So basically we're making great leaps forward. Great again. 01;09;32;16 - 01;09;34;23 George American Maoism. We love to see it, don't we, folks? 01;09;35;00 - 01;09;37;00 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer That's right. 01;09;37;03 - 01;09;43;24 George That's going to be it for us this Memorial Day weekend from the shores of Lake Norman in North Carolina. I'm George. 01;09;43;27 - 01;09;45;00 Propter Malone I'm Proctor in DC. 01;09;45;03 - 01;09;48;11 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer From outer Georgia. I am a low tax speedrun driver. 01;09;48;13 - 01;09;54;13 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE And from, anarchist controlled Portland, Oregon. I am go like hell. Michigan. 01;09;54;15 - 01;10;11;09 George Thanks for listening. If you have the time or the inclination, we'd love a rating and a review in whatever podcast app you're listening to this in. Please feel free to share us on whatever social media floats your boat. We don't care. We're not going to judge you and I. We hope you come back next week and keep it normal. 01;10;11;11 - 01;10;14;19 George Us.