GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, August 9, 2017

[0:00:00 Speaker 1] in the news.

[0:00:07 Speaker 3] Good morning. I’m Professor Shaw.

[0:00:08 Speaker 4] First, McDaniel. Welcome to in the news for American in Texas politics,

[0:00:12 Speaker 3] and you have made it. This is our last in the news segment. So we’ll do like we always do will bring it hard and bring it fast. And, you know, I was undoubtedly very happy with the product. Service guaranteed. You Okay, uh, we’ve been falling into a little bit of this starting international and kind of narrowing towards more localized things. And we’re kind of comfortable that patterns. So for this week’s in the news, we’re gonna follow that blueprint, and we’re gonna start with just one international thing we wanted to cover, although talk a bit about immigration, which is someone international. But what just mentioned the North Korea situation, Uh, be kind of crazy not to at least put it on the table and to alert you guys to it. Especially since this set of modules will include or does include economic, domestic and foreign policy. So the foreign policy implications here are fairly straightforward. Although North Korea may be the most idiosyncratic, the most unique kind of foreign policy situation, we’ve talked about multilateralism and We’ve talked about the Bush doctrine in the Obama doctrine. All of that kind of makes sense, I guess, in a post Cold War world in a post 9 11 world, even. But it’s very difficult to figure out what to do with North Korea, the best I can do. So For those who haven’t been paying attention, North Korea continues to engage in missile exercises despite admonitions from the rest of the world ranging from places that air hostile to the North Korean regime. Like the United States, the places that are got less hostile, like maybe China. All of them are agreed that this is a bad thing, that this is destabilizing. The South Koreans and the Japanese are particularly upset because they don’t need a very long missile launch to get something to Japan or to South Korea. The United States, obviously significant, has significant assets and is sort of long allied relationships with South Korean Japan’s. So you know, the United States is vested in this. I guess maybe the best kind of intellectual take I can give to you guys is to link it to the question of negotiating bilaterally versus multilateral. Lee what the United States has preferred in the past with respect to North Korea is toe work. Multilateral e. That is to use the Japanese, the South Koreans and the Chinese in particular to want to bring them into any negotiations with North Korea. And the notion is that you know there

[0:02:43 Speaker 2] need to be, you

[0:02:44 Speaker 3] know, the particular concerns are with the Japanese and the South Koreans, but that only China really has any kind of sway with the regime in North Korea, which is very insular, that just doesn’t really talk or have relations with any other countries. So we need them in on the negotiations, probably even the Russians as well, because the Russians during the Cold War, hand relations with the North Koreans as well. But the North Koreans have typically balked it that they prefer would prefer to have bilateral is opposed a multilateral. They want bilateral talks with the United States, and they don’t really want to these other actors in on it, and it’s not clear exactly what they would want from the United States anyway. North Korea is exceptionally isolated. They do seem to have kind of an illicit trade going on with countries like Iran, where there been purchasing weapons and things like that. But even these things, you know, the Iranians deny this, although no real reason to believe the Iranians haven’t been brokering arms deals with the North Koreans. So it’s a very tricky play. It’s very tricky place of the United States is in right now. Clearly, everybody wants except the North Koreans, the North Koreans to stop launching these missile tests. But no one quite knows what to do about it. The Trump administration has. It’s been interesting. The Trump administer the Trump campaign was very critical of President Obama, as well as being critical of President Bush about how those administrations were handling relations with North Korea. But it’s not clear what the alternative is, And Trump has been basically issuing threats to the North Koreans about, you know, we’re going to retaliate like nothing the world has ever seen before. It’s unclear whether this is helpful or constructive or part of a larger plan. It’s just hard to say right now, so you know, that’s what’s going on there. We want to turn now the focus from the sort of wonder national situation there, obviously others we told you last week. Keep your eyes on Venezuela. Keep your eyes on Venezuela. There continue to be protests and sort of government reactions and crackdowns toe A lot of people think was an illicit election. An illegitimate election in Venezuela. Couple weeks. Ghost that’s going on. Let’s turn to the United States, where Professor McDaniel As we’re scoping out this class, I thought there were at least three or four different topics we wanted to cover, so we’ll try to do them and kind of rapid fire fashion. But we won’t talk about immigration reform, about the Democrats and tax reform or tax overhaul. Trump seems to be actually reaching out to the Democrats, the opioid crisis and the Afghan war. So let’s talk about these. Your immigration. Maybe you know a little bit about immigration, what you got for us on that.

[0:05:20 Speaker 0] So last week, President Trump, along with two members of Congress, introduced the Raise Act eso in act Ray, Stan Sport reforming America, American immigration for a strong economy. They were really looking fit that

[0:05:38 Speaker 3] I mean, they couldn’t possibly have thought that and then just noticed

[0:05:40 Speaker 0] Hey, yeah, they raise yeah, just like shield or things like that. They really worked hard on this one. Uh so the this one is really to change the visa system and restrict how we allow immigrants to come in. So restricting the role of family so

[0:06:00 Speaker 4] which family members can be allowed to to come over which made problems cannot. But also there’s an emphasis on certain skills, and so they’re putting a strong emphasis on skills that they’re in

[0:06:11 Speaker 0] the past. But then also English proficiency. And so they’re kind of several steps here. I think the English proficiency is where a lot of people are getting a lot of strong pushback because what they’re basically saying is, Well, are you saying that or to be an American, you must speak English and there’s kind of this it is arguable, should be in English, Onley nation things, things like that. So that that’s been put forward. And really, it’s an attempt to in some ways reduce the amount of immigration and say, if we’re goingto bring in immigrants, we’re gonna bring in those with certain skills, highly needed skills and may be truthful. This is already out there, that if you if you before you go and ask for a ah for the work of her position, you must advertise in the US and so you must advertise in the US for this position. It doesn’t filled the you can go overseas and it actually has become comical and in some cases, so who this had to be? Maybe, like a decade ago, there was a strip club in Miami that one to hire a stripper from, I guess, Brazil or somewhere like that. But before they could hire her, they had to put the ad out and their force for the ad out in the Miami newspapers. So there’s all of this kind of this argument about this, and it’s very, very weird situation. But also the key, the key thing about visas and who gets visas, who doesn’t get visas. This really boils down to again. They’re trying to say, Look for coming in here. You’re only coming here to increase the economy to make the economy stronger, and you’re gonna be you invite certain skills that are that are desperately needed, bit thin. He also have the English proficiency part and there and again, the Jessica case. For that, I think they got to work a little bit harder on that to solidify that

[0:07:59 Speaker 3] well, I want to take thes thes different sets of issues. Immigration reform constitutes maybe the first. It’s kind of hard to tell with sequencing but the first effort by the Trump administration and the Republican Congress to move on to expand the agenda after the botched attempt. Teoh to repeal and replace Obamacare. Right? So that took a shot. Healthcare. That was kind of the first big thing, and it didn’t work. So now immigration reform, the tax overhaul, the opioid crisis, legislation relevant to the opioid crisis and how to deal with the Afghan war. These four issues are now on the agenda, and they represent an attempt by the administration by the Republican Congress to move the debate beyond Obama care. Right? So, Professor McDaniel point on immigration reform There are lots of different coalitional possibilities here. This was a major piece of Trump’s campaign. Perhaps the biggest substantive issue that he campaigned upon was, you know, the immigration issue, illegal immigration. What we gonna do about it? You know, immigration reform. I would encourage you guys to think about immigration. Azan issue in the United States is comprised of two different elements, probably more, but at least two different. The first is border security, and the other is immigration reform. So border security Republicans actually have kind of a good hand with respect to public opinion. People are in favor of tightening the border of securing the border of taking measures. Teoh. You enforce the laws that exist on immigration reform. The Democrats have a better hand, better position, that is, Most people think there ought to be some kind of pathway to citizenship, that you have 11 million people in the United States illegally and you know they’re living in the shadows. And some sort of serious attempt to deal with this issue needs to occur. So Trump is trying to deal with these things, and he might be able to get a deal cut. You know, if he combines border security measures with some immigration reform, others of the Democrats give him something on border security. Maybe he can give something them something on immigration reform. Write. Is that actually gonna happen? I don’t know, but it’s a it’s a point of opportunity, and Trump tryingto you know, kind of reboot the etches sketch here of on overhaul on taxes. Once again, he’s reaching out to Democrats because there’s some conservatives Republicans he doesn’t think he can get on a tax reform plan he thinks he’s gonna need. What what Trump would basically like to do is lower the business tax, the corporate business tax in the United States, which actually is high in relative terms. It’s much higher than it is in places like Ireland or other European countries, which is ironic, right? We always think of Europe is being high tax, but the corporate tax rates United States air relatively pretty high. Trump would like to see those lowered. He’d like to see the Social Security tax transform slightly. He would. I don’t know, that income tax rates are gonna be on the docket, but he wants to streamline and limit. You know, the tax code in the United States in a way that makes it easier for business to do business right. And he thinks he might be able to work with some Democrats on that, you know, in a way that they didn’t do on health care, you know? So you get immigration reform. Democrats on the work reach out Democrats on the tax overhaul. Then you’ve got this, as you’re probably aware, this this opium opioid crisis that exists in United States, that was really it’s really been kind of pronounced in states like Vermont and New Hampshire. It I would simply point out I don’t have expertise on this at

[0:11:26 Speaker 5] all. But

[0:11:27 Speaker 3] I would point out, from a political point of view, the sorts of people are affected by this, these sort of lower socioeconomic status, predominantly white communities. These communities have been devastated by this opioid crisis, and they were critical to electing Trump. So Trump is sensitive. I think he’s probably sensitive from a humanitarian point of view, but he certainly sensitive from a political point of view about the relevance of these constituents. And so he is working to craft corrective legislation to try to deal with the opioid crisis. In the fourth thing we had on the docket here is the Afghan where I just came across this article I don’t know of Professor Daniel sought, but I sort of threw it in here with the other issues that Trump is exploring options for what you use the air quotes here privatizing the Afghan war. And I think this is he’s at least looking at. And so when I hear privatizing, I always think of like, you know, Was it Blackbriar from the born movies? Yeah, right. You know, or somebody sort of mercenary. You know, corporations that exist out there that have, you know, merchants of war who go out and fight these wars instead of the government actually doing it. I don’t Maybe I’ve seen too many movies, but I always have that sort of image in my head. But Trump apparently is exploring this option, because again, he made these pledges during the campaign. Teoh, you reduce the military’s presence. But now that he’s president in the military, coming back and saying, Hey, man, if you leave, if you just pull all the troops out of Afghanistan, that place is just gonna go to hell in a handbasket. And you know these terrorist groups are going to move in. The Russians are going to move in, You know you can’t do that. So how do you get out of this quandary? How do you draw down troop levels without allowing the Afghan government to collapse? Maybe he can hire some people to go in and do the things, the security things, that the things he needs to do. So, um, now I mentioned that in this sort of group of issues where I think he’s trying Teoh sort of restart his agenda. I think he’s looking at forming different sorts of coalitions, not just relying on a right of centre, especially very conservative said of Republicans. He’s trying to figure out, Can I get Democrats on any of these issues? Can I take care of the constituents, are really critical to my election and actually get something done because that’s been a real problem with the 1st 6 months? So we just wanted Teoh put that on the docket. We also have a second. So that’s our baskets or Trump and domestic issues. We got another best. It’s a whole bunch of issues. This week came up involving issues of race, diversity, affirmative action and so I want to talk about Google. But I think Professor McDaniel has a couple things on the end of CPI and the Missouri travel advisories, right and DOJ and some affirmative action stuff, so why don’t we start with the race stuff and then we could go to the genders.

[0:14:10 Speaker 6] OK, eso I was

[0:14:12 Speaker 4] announced last week that the DOJ will be investigating are suing certain universities that they believe their affirmative action policies actually harm whites in particular. And so this has been a major concern that the way that affirmative action set up specifically the racial aspect of affirmative action I think it’s important, understand, is that affirmative action’s multi multi dimensional. It’s not just about race. There’s a race opponent gender component without your handicap veteran status. They’re about affirmative action. There are multiple things that go into this. But race seems to really be the one that people really glom onto and get to get the most upset about. Um, and so they’re getting a number of cases. University of Texas, with the Fisher case, has been central in this, and so you’re seeing this going out where you are seeing Are the the vaccine law set up in such a way? They’re actually discriminatory against whites? Are they hurting whites at the same time you’re seeing? Harvard is being sued because they believe it’s admissions policy actually is harmful to Asian Americans. So there’s there’s an opinion piece in the Washington Post today by the person who brought the suit, saying Harvard has a horrible history. So prison to try to reduce the number of Jews. That Harvard on DSO when trying to not right now is cap the number of Asian Americans trying to present a certain type of image. And it’s important to note is that this is issue of affirmative action. Asian Americans really been been a big issue. So the profession shock and private point after being in California, there has been a great deal of concern about to what degree of these policies actually hurting Asian Americans. Now again, it’s important to note when we talk about Asian Americans doing well, it’s a certain segment. Eso if you think about the economic progress of Asian Americans, what you find is that it’s kind of by motile in the sense that one group is doing really well. Another group is not doing so well on the group’s They’re Doing Well are the groups that were that immigrated because of certain skill levels, and so you bring in. People with high high skills are undertaking high job, whereas individuals were coming over because being fleeing political repression and things that things bad nature. They are not doing as well economically. So it’s not like the whole Asian American unity is flourishing. Certain aspects of it are. And if you probably look at these cases, you’ll find that certain people from certain ethnic backgrounds of the ones who have been advancing the most. So this kind of a big case, I’m gonna see how how this goes about. Second, we have the in double A CP issue issue, actually, first ever travel advisory to a state and initiated to the state of Missouri. And the reason for this is that Missouri the Legislature passed a law passed, passed the bill. The governor signed it, putting in a lot, which makes it more difficult individuals to sue regarding and employment and housing discrimination. And so what Missouri’s basically said is, you know what? What you’ve done here is, you know, you made it more difficult or made It made it more difficult for people to fight. Discrimination may be easier for people to discriminate, Uh, and this kind of hits close to home because I grew up in ST Louis and surprise, surprise victim of housing discrimination. So my Mom was looking at an apartment. She went, she walked around, she looked on and she’s okay. Probably this place. And she called like, Oh, we’re all booked up looking. That’s interesting. So her boss, it was white called Hey, I’m interested. Looking for an apartment. Uh, and oh, yeah, we got plenty of places, just like, Oh, that’s funny because you just told the women I work with that there are none.

[0:17:50 Speaker 3] Well, well, you see what happened was, uh uh

[0:17:55 Speaker 4] and you know, now again, I’m four when this is going on, so I’m not really paying attention. We’re right across the ramp, right? Cross street from grants, farm grants. Farm is basically this huge kind of how I would describe it. It’s ah, played around the bush and I was a bush built, so they’re not handing out beard the kids, but like, you could do all kind of stuff. But the great thing about it is you could see the Clydesdales so I could see the Clydesdale. So my window, so, like, the Clydesdales? Eso I didn’t notice this and my mom kind of talked about the fact that yeah, we were the only black family there and because I had a four year old three or four year old with me, people excelling to talk. But it was big dicey.

[0:18:38 Speaker 0] So they issued this travel advisory basis saying, Look, this is not a state that you want to be in and again, as we talked, we were talking about over and over again. Would you have? Here is pitting the business interests against against

[0:18:53 Speaker 4] really my concern with social conservatives, things of that nature. And we talk about the Montgomery bus boycott about all these boycotts. Really trying to split this coalition of business interests and social conservatives is the same thing going on in Texas. So, for instance, get a number of business interests have actually come out and spoken out against Governor Abbott. There was a letter sent to Governor Abbott earlier this week by a number of business Interesting number big biz names in Houston who were saying, Look, this transgender bathroom bill is horrible for business. And so what you’ve got is Governor Abbott trying to work with the business interests, but also piece of social conservatives, and you’re seeing a splintering of this coalition. So this is really one things kind of pay attention to because again, think about the Ferguson case. If you think about the University of Missouri, I get and the state of Missouri does not have the greatest history regards to race. It was ST for dread. Scott Missouri was a slave state. However, it didn’t formally secede from the union because it was split on and then 1111 out. It’s funny story. More interesting story is there’s a fight over whether that Kansas would be a free state or a

[0:20:07 Speaker 0] slave state. And what Congress said is, You know what? We’ll let the people of Kansas decide. And so what happened is a bunch of pro slavery people from Missouri just moved up, moved into Kansas and try to take over the

[0:20:21 Speaker 8] poles

[0:20:22 Speaker 4] on. So we think of John Brown. If you ever look up the history of John Brown and is raid on Harpers Ferry in Virginia, it mean John Brown kind of got its start fighting against slavery there. So again, Missouri has this very mixed history when it comes to when it comes to raising thing with work of Mark Twain. The’s air. Other example. Again, I went to grade school there, so I know all of these things. Sorry. You mean you’ve been Missouri history

[0:20:48 Speaker 3] lesson? That’s good. I like it’s really interesting state.

[0:20:51 Speaker 0] Oh, yeah. I’m a good cave. Yeah, Surprisingly good, actually. Diamonds there, too. It’s You

[0:20:56 Speaker 3] know it. Actually, we were traveling one time or driving from Santa Monica. After Detroit, you went through Same. You went through East ST Louis and it was a little bit like everything. The movie vacation

[0:21:06 Speaker 0] in Saint Louis, Illinois?

[0:21:08 Speaker 3] Yeah, he ST Louis. I felt like Chevy Chase and vacation. I stopped there to KFC, and I don’t know if this is it’s probably right for me, but I got my KFC and what goes on the road. But it was surprisingly hilly was actually it’s actually quite beautiful, but But actually, I like the history. Missouri is a really interesting seeing a lot of ways, you know, I do a lot of election politics and Missouri. It’s changed a little bit. It used to be like one, the ultimate bellwether states, because it has an appreciable African American population and has a Catholic population. It has a rural population has to metropolitan areas significant metropolitan areas in ST Louis and Kansas City,

[0:21:48 Speaker 6] Kansas State, much bottled out of state. I went

[0:21:51 Speaker 3] there going about 85 miles an hour on the highway and thought it looked really cool last year. So the

[0:21:55 Speaker 0] point about Kansas City’s when you landed the airport? It’s in Kansas. So you drive 40 minutes before you actually like, see Kansas City?

[0:22:02 Speaker 3] I couldn’t understand. As a kid, I didn’t understand why Kansas City was in Missouri, but, you know, be that as it may, but the main point that we wanted to raise here, I mean, these singular episodes is this. What we want to do generally with the new segment, is connecting back up to themes we’ve been talking about. And so, in the case of the Department of Justice lawsuit, the DOJ, we talked about how you know Department of Justice, and the American government is constantly trying to navigate this question of pursuing broader societal goals diversity, lack of discrimination, etcetera against this notion of individual rights. And with a conservative administration and a more conservative Department of Justice, the pendulum swings from really going out of its way to, you know, aggressively pursue civil rights cases, too, considering these reverse discrimination cases, right? That’s that’s those of the political consequences of, you know, Donald Trump versus Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the travel advisory case again, Professor Ganz point about the continued first fall. We talked a lot in civil rights lectures about strategies about how you deal with, you know, an attempt to move your group’s interests forward, to claim the protections and guarantees of the Constitution that you I think you are entitled to its citizens in the United States. How best to do that in the end of CPI is still a big actor, and they still, interestingly, are still kind of a using in a modern way. This strategy developed by King and others, which is t basically play to these fissures to these cleavages within the white community and in Missouri. That’s what they’re trying to do, which is to link policy in a way that allows them to bring economic pressure and to kind of hive off elements of the conservative coalition and get the policies that they want. That has also been the case in Texas. One last thing kind of in this general discussion of diversity and race and discrimination. And how you deal with these things is an episode that I think a lot of you probably heard from Google this last week. There was a an engineer Google, James Dumb or D a M o R e. I believe it’s pronounced them or sent out a memo. And it was an internal memo at Google directed the issue. Why there aren’t more female engineers and personnel in Google. Google has this enormous issue. In fact, there’s a lawsuit against Google right now because I believe I’m sort of making this up. But I think it’s close to reality that something like only 20% of Google employees or female may be lower than that. But so there’s this massive discrepancy in the distribution of men versus women in Google. The lawsuit is actually about women not getting equal pay a TGA Google, and so Google’s had all these policies aimed to deal with these issues and dim or this engineer wrote this memo about Leo 10 pages or so, asking, you know, why are we doing this? Thes diversity programs, he argues, are hurting Google. They’re not helping, they’re not addressing the problems, and he raises this sort of possibility that, you know, maybe the problems here aren’t discrimination. Maybe the problems were that women just aren’t as interested in an art is good at some of these things that we value of Google’s men, right? So this, as you might imagine, has produced a firestorm dim or was now This was leaked. Now he was. It wasn’t an internal memo that got mysteriously leaked. He put it out there, and it was quickly descend was a Google docks. Ironically, Google Docks document. They got leaked to the press, and there’s been a whole bunch of reaction from the right and the left. There’s an article on salon dot com this morning talking about how dumb or plays into all these false stereotypes about, uh, biologically based differences in sort of computational scientific abilities of men versus women. There a lot of articles on the right saying this is another example of political correctness that dim or actually just sort of raises. This is a possibility. He doesn’t say it’s the fact he just says, Maybe there are differences that aren’t simply socially constructed, and he’s fired for that. How is it? How can you be fired for that. He did not discriminate against etcetera, etcetera. So Google’s CEO cut short his vacation. You know that’s serious when he cut short his vacation to have a ah virtual town hall last Thursday. So But again, you know this particular episode, I think, is interesting in its own, but also speaks to this larger issue of you know, What can you say, Uh, what can you be fired for? Um, this question of you know it particularly gender, these questions of biological difference versus socially constructed differences and what is legitimate? What is not, it’s It’s kind of fascinating argument against the backdrop of one of the world’s largest and most important companies. So that’s kind of it substantively is that we hit North Korea, you know, kind of politics in the US, and then they sort of race and gender issues. But they’re a couple of things we want to say in closing. We got two stories, one about sm you and trigger warnings, and the other is kind of a throwaway article. But we loved it anyway about San Francisco, because we always like taking shots in San Francisco. So what’s

[0:27:17 Speaker 0] the S M. U thing? s M. U S O against Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Eso for many years now? Yes, smooth. So the Mustangs, the school that paid their Dickerson so well, Tony excess. That’s right. So the thing about SMU is that they have the Dallas Hall lawn and this kind of a main lawn, and for years they’ve been putting up for 9 11 They’ve been putting up flags, basically leads flag representing one American who passed away in the terrorist attacks. S, um You passed some type regulations saying, You know that that cannot be used for these types of displays, that the Dallas Hall Law cannot be used with these types of displays that you move somewhere else somewhere that was not in the center. The argument that gave is that my sickness flags were kind of trigger certain things among students. Uh, so you present The students were upset. Governor Abbott spoke out against this, and they did change that rule. But it does because large thing about trigger warnings, what can be said, what can’t be sitting in classes, and it’s I’m not really sure what the trigger warning thing is. Now I understand there are certain things which are extremely graphic in nature that you might. They look, it’s gonna be graphic in nature. So for it is when I when I taught my class in black politics or talk about race, you know, and I’ll show pictures of lynchings. I’m like, No, this is extremely violent stuff, so I’ll let you know about that ahead of time. But they have, in other cases where people talk about trigger warnings were in talking about things that seems somewhat innocuous, like I don’t see what this is an issue. Furthermore, you know, this is basically like celebrating Pearl Harbor. This is almost like saying, Get rid of the Alamo gets to trigger warning. I mean, it’s there’s some certain things were like You might be going too far Now if you put up you know, the images or gruesome images. That’s one thing. But putting up flags might be, might be. It’s kind of seen as an overreach. And so one of the things that was going on that is you’re trying to find this middle ground. Sometimes you go too far. Sometimes I could go far enough and you’re trying to really see okay, what is the proper way to handle this. And what you find is that a lot of times there isn’t one perfect way to handle it. A lot of times, depending upon the context in which you’re in. And you know what people get upset about this and this put a quickness going, gone crazy. It’s like, Well, it may actually be putting correctness, but it’s this idea of trying to be aware of other people’s feelings and other people’s concerns. However, sometimes in doing that, you make you make decisions that are actually harmful. Extremely Harvard with large group or you may be overreacting in

[0:30:02 Speaker 3] that regard. So, in fact, the University of Texas for years I don’t know if they’ll do it this year, but has a 9 11 memorial on the mall in between. The six pack right? And it’s it’s actually very moving, and I find it very compelling. I’ve never occurred to me that it would be offensive to anybody, you know, but I’ll keep my personal pains to myself on this. Uh, we’re closing with the San Francisco San Francisco Homeowner Association. Uh, and private roads. I was intrigued by this Professor McDaniel. You know, the day before we, you know, we taped the in the new segment. We kind of throw around ideas first, McDaniel highlight of this, and I wasn’t aware of it. So I went and looked it up and, uh, found the article where a, uh let’s see, just reading from the NPR had this article yesterday. Four floor San Francisco mansion at 26 Presidio Terrorists was recently on the market for 14.5 million. So for those of you want investing in real estate, go to San Francisco. It’s very affordable. 30 Presidio Terrorists and neighbor in the gated community last sold from 9.5 million. But Presidio Terrace itself, as in the street, the strip of pavement thes Tony residents rely on to reach their front doors. The private road, the Homeowners association zone for more than a century. That’s a bargain. After the homeowners association failed to pay a $14 tax bill for three decades, the road went up for auction. All right. A San Jose couple snagged it for about $90,000. Yeah, so Tina Lamb and Michael Chang made their strategic purchase in 2015 but now the newspaper right there, looking to cash in. Maybe by charging the residents of those mansions to park on their private street. I love this story.

[0:31:45 Speaker 0] It is the keeping about this. This is This is a very wealthy neighborhood in San Francisco’s. This is the neighborhood for Senator Dianne Feinstein as well as majority leader. I’m forgetting with Nancy Pelosi forgetting the minority leader, but my northern, maybe majority leader, we’ll see what happens. Minority Leader. Yeah, is still a minority leader. I don’t I don’t see that happening. So this is really one those big things of, you know, people, like all Well, they were sticking to the wrong address. They were singing to the wrong address if somebody didn’t work here for 30 years. So now. Now the couple, the couple of bars, that look, you know, they actually held onto it for a couple of years. This a just like, you know, we own this now. So would you like to buy it back? Would you like to rent it? What would you like to do? Let’s work this out. Let’s let’s make a deal and be truthful. This is an example. And they’re trying to fight it in court. Uh, and probably a long, drawn out battle. But it’s really an issue of bad bookkeeping and bad bookkeeping leading to this. And it does involve the government because they were supposed to pay taxes and the government like, Oh, you pay taxes we’re taking it from All right, So, uh, take it from you will put it up for auction. And guess what somebody got. It s So if you think about I remember going to these government auctions like they would seize vehicles from drug dealers. And so you know

[0:33:12 Speaker 4] everything in the eighties,

[0:33:13 Speaker 3] you know, boats and stuff like that seized in drug deals. Yeah.

[0:33:17 Speaker 0] And so I mean, this mean what? They want a drug deal. But he didn’t pay your taxes, so

[0:33:22 Speaker 3] I was looking for, like, a $20 cigarette boat or something like that. I know it never happen to me.

[0:33:28 Speaker 0] I understand. But this this is kind of I mean, it’s a funny story, but it’s also a story like, you know of you have these people, these $1,000,000 homes. You keep wondering, why is their tax bills so low for this private road? And they’re giving about seven because a bunch of private roads where they basically, you know, they take care of it. You know, the city isn’t the city isn’t involved. Things like that. They didn’t pay the tax bill. And so now somebody else owns it, and now they have to negotiate this, and it could turn into a long, drawn out court battle. But the court. But I think we’re primarily between be between the standing, the city and the homeowners Association. Not between the owners, and that’s the owners. Kind of sit there and wait. They had to pay the taxes on the property. And they’re good. And I don’t think the tax bill is that high. So most I don’t think it’s gone up more than you know, maybe 20 maybe 20 bucks a year. So yeah, a

[0:34:24 Speaker 3] couple of things irrelevant here. We’ll get you out of here for the day for this mystery guest. The first is is that this is a story that we just like because it was sort of funny. But the more you think about it, the more plays into some of the the ideas and themes of government that we’ve been talking about throughout the semester, right? California has a lot of public land, and they also have a lot of private land. And that way there, they’re like Texas. I grew up in San Diego in San Diego, had this massive area down by the waterfront off the harbor that was owned by the Marine Corps and the Navy. The Marines moved out, moved to another place in San Diego. The Navy finally. So that’s what this was unbelievably prime property for a long period time and revert to the city of San Diego City. San Diego didn’t know what to do with it. Rather talking about building low income housing on it. Now, I’m much in favor of low income housing as the next guy, but this is this has got something unbelievably, uh, affluent property in the country, right on the harbor in San Diego. So that idea was never probably gonna be a starter. Sanchez goes a lot of similar territory. The Proceed EEO area that we’re talking about refers that the reasons called the procedures that used to be military own land, and it still is a chunk of its own by the military. But the military is all the Presidio. Yeah, with uh, I think Kevin Costner. Okay, but great eyes. That isn’t as the U. S. Military presence sort of shrinks in the United States, those territories become available. A lot of them are in these prime areas in metropolitan areas. You know, to bring it home, we’ll make a little more local. Austin Bergstrom International Airport is on what used to be Bergstrom Air Force Base, which is why they had, you know, these unbelievable unbelievably long and, you know, kind of appropriate runways and spaces for landing planes. And so I You know, when I first moved here, we were over Mueller was our airport Austin Bergstrom pickiness. But so there’s a lot of this kind of territory round, and cities have interesting decisions about what to do with this land when it becomes available, right, And you know, a lot of it’s in this sort of prime area. Texas is uniquely advantage compared to California because all the expensive space in California right on the coast, whereas Texas has we got room, if nothing else plays in again these sorts of local versus state versus federal arguments versus the rights of private citizens. We’ve been talking about all semester, right? So with that, I got some office hours today. I think Professor, make dams around for the rest of the week. You know, give us a holler if you have any problems or issues. We’ve really enjoyed your company. I’ve seen a few of you like to see a few more of you before the semester is over. But with that, I think we’re done.

[0:36:53 Speaker 6] All right, Have a good day.

[0:36:55 Speaker 3] All right. See you later.

[0:37:04 Speaker 1] Government 3 10 And the news podcast is hosted by doctors Darren Shaw and Eric McDaniel and is produced by the liberal Arts TS Development studio and the Department of Government in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin