GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, July 18, 2017

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

[0:00:07 Speaker 2] morning. A Professor Shaw

[0:00:08 Speaker 3] and I’m President Daniel. Welcome to in the news for American and Texas government.

[0:00:12 Speaker 2] You’re in our cocoon. Could have warmed where Everything, Everything is safe, insecure. You can say whatever you want. What act? You can’t say anything because we’re not really listening. But we’ll talk to you, and we will feel your vibes vicariously. So welcome. What we week two now at one in the news got three more after this. So we’re kind of midstream here, like baseball got our all star break. We’re moving towards the first exam, which is when? No, like this week.

[0:00:39 Speaker 3] Yeah. Okay. Sona Bari. So

[0:00:41 Speaker 2] we’ll be on that will be on that. Thanks to many of you have communicated with Professor McDaniel myself. We need to hear about some of the issues and situations that you’ve got early in the class for having been a ton of those. But a few people have contacted us, and we encourage that I don’t sit at home with, you know, problems or problems with the class. Come and talk to us. And if we can’t help you, we can certainly put you in touch with the tech people of the th with the appropriate people to kind of get stuff going. It’s tough in a class like this and where, you know, you have a lot of content, but not a lot of personal contacts. Who would encourage you to go ahead and do that? Especially when you need something. But also Professor McDaniel, I will be holding. I’ll have in person office hours. Professor McDaniel have a lot of virtual office hours over the semester, so take advantage of that. You know we’re here for you. That’s right. Not so much emotionally, but intellectually. Yes, Yes. Yeah. All right. So what we got this week,

[0:01:33 Speaker 3] so quite a bits been going on. So we’ve been talking about the health care vote in the Senate s again. It was a pretty big fight to get it out of the house. Now it’s moved to the Senate, and it looks like it’s going to die in the Senate. It was there was gonna be a vote that was delayed because Senator John McCain had have surgery. Now you’ve had four Republicans spaces say they’re not going to support it to you. Consider be kind of the hard line conservatives, one moderate in one kind of middle of the pack. So it looks like for right now the health care bill it’s him to overhaul, replaced the A c a. A is done for now. Now again, their statements like, No, that will come back, However. A lot of political Capitol’s been spent on this, and it’s gonna be very interest to see what what’s happened. The public is already wild up and made their statement like, Look, this is what we want. You had governors of both the both of left and the right being upset about this and really people see this as an attack on Medicaid. So it’s really interesting to see if anything can be salvaged from this Azaz. You know, as Congress is ready for a recess, they’d be university. What happens when they come back and reconvene next year? Yeah, well, a

[0:02:44 Speaker 2] couple things. Let’s get down into the weeds a little bit with this because this is the major public policy issue that’s facing the current Congress. There are other things going on there, questions involving security and immigration and tax reform, but really reforming the Affordable care act. Obama care has been front and center is a critical Republican promise. In 2014 when they retook the Senate, it was a critical part of Trump’s campaign. So with the Republicans, have the presidency, the House and the Congress and, you know, a functioning majority really something close to majority on the Supreme Court? Can they actually fulfill one of their major campaign promises? This is, Professor McDonough suggested, and we talked about last week. There’s pressure on the right, these Air Republicans who want to completely just blow out Obama care, and you start from scratch. They don’t want to tinker with it. They want to do away with it. And then there are others. Olympia Snowe is an obvious one, but there are other Republicans, and a lot of these governors, especially, were listening to people like Rob Portman from Senator Portman from Ohio and John Kasich, Governor Kasich of Ohio, have said, You know, they’re not the fire breathing conservatives who want to do way that they’re concerned about the federal government yanking in a new deal. If they repeal Obamacare, the federal government yanking subsidies for the expansion of Medicaid, which was critical to increasing coverage We talked a little about that last week, but Professor McDaniel, I think, correctly pointed out there’s a little bit of a revolt amongst these governors, Republican and Democratic. But the governors, because what Obamacare did was the federal government came in and said, We’re going to insure more people. We’re going to expand Medicaid so that people who couldn’t previously qualify for it But you know, right at the poverty line or have real trouble paying for their own health insurance, we’re gonna help them get that to do that. The federal government’s going to give money to the states to expand this coverage. Some states said, no, we don’t want to do that. Texas, for instance, said no, and Texas’s reasoning was the federal government has only promised this money for X period of time. We think the federal government’s going to yank that money away from us, and then we, this state of Texas gonna be responsible for that was Texas’s justification, right? Sort of paranoia about the federal government’s commitment to this sometimes paranoids justified. But that was the paranoid right. Ah, lot of other states Ohio did this. California, New York, etcetera. They accepted the terms that said, We’ll go ahead and expand this the Medicaid system. We will accept the federal money. Those of the states and the governors of those states were really mad right now because I said, Well, look, you guys, we put ourselves out on the line We expanded Medicaid and now it’s not the federal government simply running out of money. It’s a political decision to reform this thing in a way that we’re going to take away a benefit that we granted to our people

[0:05:35 Speaker 3] and benefits are very difficult to take away. That’s why so, security Medicare cannot be touched. Eso once you provide certain benefits, think of subsidies, things of that nature. It is very hard to take them away. Once you give a benefit, it’s very difficult to take away one of things that’s been being covered quite a bit. The press is how the Medicaid expansion is actually improved. Health care in the West least access to healthcare and many of the Western states that are very rural, and they’ve been able to set up a new infrastructure and that by reducing Medicaid that would harm its infrastructure. So now you get what’s important to note here is that access to health insurance or having health insurance does not actually mean people will be healthier. Health insurance is supposed to increase access for the idea that increased access will lead to increased health. Specifically, that increased access will prevent will help in terms of bidding certain illnesses or how people control started chronic illnesses. So if you think of someone is able to regularly visit their doctor, they’re able to take care of something. Chronic illness such as diabetes. I’m one of things the US suffers from. One of the big problem the U. S. Has is treating chronic illnesses so one preventing chronic illnesses and then treating chronic illnesses. And so, in many cases, things that could be easily prevented or treated kind of spiral out of control and you end up in a you in a crisis. And so many other nations are very good at preventing chronic and treating chronic illnesses. However, they’re not as good as when it comes to crisis. The U. S. Is great when it comes to crisis, but a very poor at preventing crisis. And so it’s kind of this straight off and again, one of the key aspects of its financing health, and this is where it becomes very complicated. And that’s where you have a number of people involved. You have third party payers, things that nature. And that’s what people argue for a single payer system, because a single payer system really simplifies how we’re gonna finance help. However, that’s really been pushed back. Very strong pushback against that. And so as you read through this and try to understand what all is going on, it’s very important to send. This is all about financing health care and that by financing health care, you can increase access with the hope being that increasing access will increase positive health outcomes.

[0:07:48 Speaker 2] Well, I think, you know, Professor, against a nice job of laying out the policy implications. And one of the reasons were attracted to this. Not only is it a dominant issue in the news, we like Russia as much as the next guy, but this is actually a important public policy issue facing United States. It has. The substantial policy implications is Professor Morgan is laid out, but it’s also really interesting issue politically. And what things all closed with this, you know Ah, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, seems to be, at least if I’m reading the tea leaves. And some of the conversations on the Sunday shows correctly. Seems to be of the opinion now that he doesn’t necessarily need to have a deal on health care, in fact, that if it blows up and there is no Senate bill, there’s no Senate bill. There’s no reconciliation bill between the Senate, the House and the Republicans aren’t going to reform Obamacare. McConnell is now apparently kind of leaning towards doing nothing, and the reasoning is, is that he thinks if the Republicans do nothing than the Democrats still own health care, that is, they own obamacare and its implications and many Republicans. McConnell apparently is one of them think that Obama care is going to have a funding crisis that maybe even send it into what journalists hyperbolically called a death spiral. And that is to say that, you know, right now the federal government is subsidizing some of these statewide exchanges. They’re subsidizing the pharmaceutical companies and some of the health insurance companies to ease the transition to Obama care. The system is dependent on exchanges, expanded Medicaid, etcetera, these subsidies have been critical to keeping a lot of players in the system health insurance companies that are losing money. They’re OK because the federal government’s offsetting some of those costs. The subsidies are set to expire, however, and they’re set to expire before the 2018 midterm elections. So what, McConnell is thinking, apparently, is it okay, this is bad. But if we don’t get a deal and Obama care is simply left out there that you’re going to start to see, does the subsidies go away? A death spiral begin, Or at least what will happen is to stay in the game. Insurance companies will jack up their premiums, jack up their copays and that voters will feel this in advance of 2018. They’ll blame the Democrats and Obama care, and the Republicans will be OK. It’s an interesting take. It may be whistling past the graveyard. My two cents worth is that you know, if you control the entire keys of government, if you control both the house, the Senate, so is the presidency. And you can’t deliver on one of your fundamental campaign pledges. Just not good public policy aside politically. That suggests you’re not doing a very good job, and that never seems to work out for midterm. So I’m you know, I like a good story. McConnell seems to be working on a good story away to frame what can’t otherwise be character is anything other than kind of a disastrous attempt to reform obamacare. But you know, who knows? These guys were much smarter than I am not Professor McDaniel. Much smarter than I am, So we’ll see how it goes. But it seems to be that the Republicans are laying the groundwork. At least Senate Republicans were laying the groundwork for Yeah, we didn’t get a deal, but that’s OK. Obama care is a disaster in the American public will figure that out and they will punish the Democrats for it. Well, see, that’s kind of a bank shot, right? You’ve got to be right about it failing, and you got to be right about attribution of blame, and we’ll see if that pans out.

[0:11:16 Speaker 3] I guess in one last point, really, that’s very important is there’s been some work regarding gridlock, and this is clearly a sign of gridlock where D. C is not able to watch TV, but anything done. And people always said, When you have divided government, that’s when you have gridlock. But really, we have unified government right now, and we still have gridlock. And the key thing here is gridlock is the norm. And so gridlock is the norm. Even when you have unified or divided government and non gridlock is the unique thing. And so it’s very important to pay attention to this, that even if both parties control the House, the Senate, meaning one party, controls the house, sit in the presidency, you’re still gonna have gridlock. And so this is important to be aware of us. We talk about really the relationships between Congress and the presidency and really the relation between the House and Senate.

[0:12:06 Speaker 2] We’ll talk about divided government versus unified government later. This Mr But Professor began, just had a key definition. Unified government is when one party has both houses of Congress and the White House. That’s unified. Anything else is divided government, in our theoretical expectation is that if there is divided government because of checks and balances and separation parts, you will have the potential for gridlock, that is, no public policy gets past least without substantial compromise. We seem to have gridlock with unified government. So maybe divided government isn’t as big a deal. Maybe there are other factors involved. And that’s something we’ll talk about later in the semester. Okay, so what else do we got? We’ve

[0:12:45 Speaker 3] got So again, Trump Jr? Yeah, talk about Russia because, hey, why? I mean, we could talk about Beyonce’s twins, but so the news come out that Donald Trump Jr met with several individuals linked to Russia because they had supposedly incriminating evidence on Hillary Clinton. People who are kind of up in arms about this. From what I can tell, there’s nothing illegal about what was done. Now you may say this is a little bit unethical. It makes it may look a little sketchy, but there’s no sign of any of this being and this being illegal, and so we’re kind of stuck with a okay, Yes, it looks like they try to work with the Russians to win be when the election. But here, so get information and mean Donald Trump, as definitely it’s politics is what we do, you know, and some people have argued that if you say you gotta drain the swamp. It looks like you got pretty deep into a swamp, so I don’t to me. It’s kind of like, OK, all right, just come to me and you got something interesting. I would like to talk to someone who’s high up in the National Press Club about this. He’s like, Look, it’s proud. What’s going on is really gonna be a slow, slow drip. And I guess with Watergate, Watergate doesn’t blow up overnight. It took a while for us to really figure out what’s going on. So it seems to be a lot of things going on. It seems to be a yes. There was an attempt to get information with the Russians, maybe even collude with them. But to what extent? You know, I think from most part people might be hit with perjury charges, but to the fact that they actually engaged in something illegal that is still up in the air.

[0:14:23 Speaker 2] This is just a weird We’re dealing eso to reset this. The Donald Trump Jr story runs roughly as follows. Donald Trump Jr was part of his father’s campaign. He was contacted via 1/3 party, saying, Hey, you should talk with this of person with Russian government who has ties with the Russian government. They may have some dirt on Hillary. So at this point, Trump Jr says this email exchange and they set up a meeting where the sort of inducement to the meeting is. We might have some information that, you know it’s gonna make Hillary look bad. So he takes the meeting as well as I think there’s a 60 Bannon. Was there a couple of their higher ups? The trump. They had this meeting with this woman who straight out of a bond movie, I swear she was in GoldenEye. So she’s, you know, looks like, you know, I’ve on a hump a lot or whoever the character is from from Russia, with love, you know, they meet with her. It turns out she doesn’t really have any information, you know, on Hillary. And so she begins talking about the They begin talk about the Russian orphanage problem back in 2016 as retaliation for some things, the Americans were doing some sanctions that the Americans had slapped on the Russians. After Ukraine, the Russians had basically stopped all of the orphanage, the adoption programs from Russia to the United States for Russian Children. And so they ended up talking about that. The meeting itself, nor the alleged information was not report to the FBI. This professor McDaniel says it’s weird in the following way. Is it treason to meet with the Russians? Russian woman said. I have infringed for the government about Hillary Clinton. I don’t know. It’s kind of treason. Seems t kind of rises to a much higher there are treason. Is it the kind of thing you do in campaigns? I’ve

[0:16:12 Speaker 0] been in a

[0:16:12 Speaker 2] few campaigns and my certain personal pain. You don’t take that meeting, you just don’t take the meeting. You sort of put them off and you know, on and you probably report that to the FBI. But the notion that the Trump campaign was not a conventional campaign is hardly new. And I guess I’m with professor in day on this, too. If the other shoe that falls would be okay, and then this information was passed on to Trump, and then Trump used it or this instrument. But apparently they really have any other information. So they took a meeting, you know, someone dangled a little bit a we got some dirt on Hillary. You take the meeting with this sort of questionable foreign source, and then nothing comes of it. I don’t know. I mean, you know, unless that information actually was in play and it came out through other sources and his professional,

[0:16:59 Speaker 0] Maybe that

[0:17:00 Speaker 2] happens. Maybe we learned about that in a few months, but any rate, those air sort of the circumstances of the Trump Jr me. Now I will say this having poo pooed. You know, I don’t really particularly care too much about the substance, man. Do they act like they’re guilty? Think they deny I never took the meeting? Um, you know, we don’t know what you’re talking about, and they say, Well, I took the meeting. It would, but it was about Russian orphanages. All right, Well, actually, as it turns out, it wasn’t just about a Russian orphanages. The reason I took the meeting was because it was about dirt on Hillary. You know, stop acting guilty and maybe people won’t think you’re guilty.

[0:17:33 Speaker 3] Yeah, that’s the That’s the worst part about it is you know, the cover up is usually worse thing.

[0:17:40 Speaker 2] I tell my kids it’s not the crime, baby. It’s a cover up.

[0:17:44 Speaker 3] Yeah. Yeah. So

[0:17:45 Speaker 2] not happy reading chocolate and bid this Don’t lie about Chuck. Finally, the our crack production staff here seem to be much more interested in the Beyonce story in the trump to your story. So,

[0:17:54 Speaker 3] uh, yeah,

[0:17:55 Speaker 2] so maybe we’ll get

[0:17:56 Speaker 4] that or put it off till next week.

[0:17:57 Speaker 3] Yeah, I was going around with kids. Names are, um they mind so I don’t really care, Rumpelstiltskin. Yeah,

[0:18:04 Speaker 2] Yeah. All right. Okay, so we got a couple of more localised or kind of not funds the stories or certainly stories that you know, important for the people involved, But we’ll go with first. We got to kind of potpourri stories. One is the Airbnb story. The other is the student loan story. We won’t go with first.

[0:18:23 Speaker 3] So we got yourself a student loan. I like nothing that hits closest to home. That’s not so right now. There is the potential for about close to five billion or at least $5 billion in loans could be forgiven. So of student debt loan. Forget us from private loan companies. And one of things about private loan companies is that they usually give the loans at a higher interest rate than government loans. Also, they’ve been pointed to as being much more predatory, and they’ve been linked to the for profit colleges. And so there has been a lot of pushback against them and regards to their lending practices, but also their collection practices. So they’re extremely aggressive in terms of collecting their their their funding. And so they, they a lot of people have been taken to court over this, as these industries of try to get their money back from people have given loans to however many years, case has been thrown out over one particular issue. Bad paperwork on the bad paperwork is really there’s no clear understanding who actually owns the loan. And so because they cannot establish the owner of the loan. Many of these loans have been forgiven. And there’s a fear that right now about $5 billion worth of loans will be forgiven because the paperwork was done horribly so. New York Times reports that the troubled loans, which told at least $5 billion or the center for protracted legal dispute between the student borrows and a group of creditors who have aggressively pursued them in court after they fell behind on payments. So judges have already dismissed dozens of lawsuits from against former students, essentially wiping out their debt because documents proving who owns the loans are missing. And so this is really a big issue here. Really bad paperwork is going to crumble this industry now. Many people have said this is very similar to the subprime mortgage crisis that happened really about what’s about 2008?

[0:20:16 Speaker 2] The big short, you haven’t seen it, See it?

[0:20:18 Speaker 3] And so they’re saying Basically, they’re very predatory things of that nature. And so they’re going after people and getting and basically like I can’t pay it so you can’t get blood from a rock Or it was a blood from a turnip or water from Iraq. I don’t know.

[0:20:29 Speaker 2] It’s blood from blood from a turnip,

[0:20:31 Speaker 3] blood from a turnip, water from a rock. Either way for rockets bleeding. I’m leaving. Okay, so, doctor bleed, That’s right. So the key thing about it is you know, this is really one those major issues and reds really being settled in the courts and you’re seeing it the way the laws of created are actually protecting the students and writing. Some push back against what many people paint as predatory lenders. And also this somewhat of a pushback against the for profit colleges, which have faced a great deal scrutiny over the past. I would say several years.

[0:21:03 Speaker 2] Yeah, I’ll just say that, you know, this was an issue that some of you guys might remember from from the 2016 campaign that Bernie Sanders raised in a forceful way that really hadn’t been raised by national or prominent political figures before this issue. Student loans And it’s a It’s an issue that faces, I mean, someone face my generation face Professor McDaniels generational more forcefully. And you guys, I’m sure many of your quite familiar with this this notion that you’re gonna get out of college, or certainly if you make it to graduate school. You get through graduate school. You can have these sort of massive debts that you’re gonna have to pay, and it’s it’s frightening. It’s important, and I think underappreciated and not well understood kind of aspect of the personal economy that exists heading into the 20 twenties. And this is an interesting story because it suggests that you know, these consolidated debt organizations and go after try to collect these loans that they’re dealing with many different entities. They sort of their umbrella organisations that deal with all sorts of different loan organizations. And when they’ve tried to actually prove in court the nature and magnitude of these loans they put out for individuals, they don’t have the paperwork, Right? So now this is why class action suits or such a big deal you personally may not have the wherewithal to pursue a case against some loan organization if they come at you in a progressive way. But in these class action suits, many, many different individuals who have been targeted get together. You know, they sort of consolidate all lawyers fees and protect themselves against these predatory organizations and these predatory organizations. That turns out some of these cases actually don’t have the paperwork to go after the people they’ve been going after. So if you’re asking, so what should my reaction be? You know, you as a student, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know that you should be relieved that, you know, gosh, maybe I won’t have to pay my debt because they’ll script, the paperwork. I don’t think that’s the take away point. I think the take away point is that there clearly needs to be some accommodation or coming to grips with the nature of all these different loner entities that are out there and these unbelievable interest rates that they’re charging. I mean, you gotta come to Professor McDaniel me for a loan or something. Don’t pay 28% interest on some of these student loans, for God’s sake. So very

[0:23:16 Speaker 3] key thing about this. This is a specific subset of loans. So these are not the loans that are that are guaranteed, but or protected by the federal government. These air outside our pell grants through the use of actual coming out of from private companies, which the federal government has nothing to do with. So there are a lot of loans you can get from your bank, which the federal government guarantees. And so there are certain restrictions put on those loans. But these private loans really bear no government strictures put on them. And so because of that, they can behave in a charge much higher interest rate, and they can behave in a much different manner.

[0:23:50 Speaker 2] The government’s beginning to get these guys in their crosshairs, though they’re really looking at these things, and it’s, you know, an area that is ripe for more substantial regulation than currently exists.

[0:24:00 Speaker 3] And this is a perfect example of why people complain about regulation. But here is an example of why people call for regulations because sometimes businesses they know we can regulate ourselves. We trust us. We know what we’re doing. But then things like this happen, and people like No, I don’t think you can on So it’s really this each of how much freedom do we give the businesses to? Basic innovate do things? But, you know, when do we know they’re going too far? Speaking of regulation, that’s right.

[0:24:25 Speaker 2] Our last story is about Airbnb, which is many of you. All probably know is an organization that makes housing or provides a platform for people to make their houses available for people to rent out for a few days. Usually vacation homes, things like that. You ever done Airbnb?

[0:24:39 Speaker 3] No, I’ve never done people rave

[0:24:41 Speaker 2] about it. We did v r. B o up near Yellowstone last year, so we’re in. Uh, couple was that little town, Grand Isle, a great ill or something like that off of West Yellowstone. A big old house had a couple families there. It was great, but, it turns out, might not have been so great had we been Asian American story coming out of it’s actually coming from a couple of different places. The most recent kind of iteration of this story or expression. The story is from California near Big Bear. I’m from Southern California originally, so I know where big periods up in the mountains. Little east of Los Angeles. Nice area, Big Old Lake Lake Arrowhead. Well, it turns out an owner of a Airbnb place had a contract out for a nation family. They were going to rent a place up there in the mountains. The Asian family had asked for ah, particular accommodation. They wanted extra family than like a dog or something like that as part of the agreement, and initially I believe it was accepted. But then the owner got back to them and said, No, I’ve changed my mind. You’re not going to do that and sent racially insensitive explanation.

[0:25:45 Speaker 3] Yeah, have video explaining that.

[0:25:47 Speaker 2] Yeah. Could we go to that.

[0:26:00 Speaker 6] The four of us made a reservation on Airbnb about a month ago, and I asked the woman Who’s the host if two more friends of you okay, I made a reservation for two of us and I asked, Two friends were okay. She said, That’s fine. We just have to pay more money. So we’re driving up. We think everything’s fine. We’re ready for the ski trip in Big Bear. Um, there were a flash flood warnings all day by this woman. Guys, okay, that my two friends come right like we give you cash. Or how much did you say it was? A good. And she says, Absolutely not. And I, um But you said yes. I’m here some screenshots of text messages where you said that I

[0:26:37 Speaker 7] could bring my friends and she says, You must be high if you think that that would be OK in the busiest weekend in Big Bear on. But she said no, like we’re done. And she canceled the trip and she said, like one word says it all Asian, and,

[0:26:56 Speaker 8] uh, she said, This is why we have Trump. And she said, Like, way can’t have foreigners telling us. What? To Dio? She said that to me. I am an American citizen. This is my home. I was I’ve been here since I was three years old. America is my home. I consider myself an American. But this woman discriminates against me for being Asian. She canceled on us when we were three minutes away from the house for three minutes away. I just feel so maybe it people thought, Oh, with the election of President Obama, like racism is over in this country. No, it’s very much alive. It exists and it could happen to anyone. There is no balance to racism no matter what class you are, no matter what your education level. No matter if you’re an American citizen, what they see is that I’m Asian. What? The CIA’s diaries and this is how we get treated. It stings. It stings that after living in the US for over 23 years, this is what happens. No matter. Like if I follow the law five. I’m kind to people No matter like how well I treat others. It doesn’t matter. It’s if you’re Asian, you’re less than human and people can treat you like trash

[0:28:28 Speaker 3] all right, so that is kind of a firsthand account of what happened. The woman that own the house, she was fined $5000. She’s also removed from Airbnb so she could no longer work with Airbnb to rent out her place. But there’s one additional aspect of this that really caught the media’s attention as fresh. All you want talking about that part

[0:28:49 Speaker 2] but says that, Ah, it says an Airbnb Votes has been fined $5000 for racial discrimination, and we’ll have to take a course in Asian American studies, which I think is pretty interesting. The other thing I thought was kind of interesting about this. Also, we’ll talk about this kind of broadly here in a second, but the first time an Airbnb host has been penalized after California regulators Paston agreement that allows officials to test Airbnb hosts for racial discrimination. So this is into this is very interesting other than singular episode, which I think kind of dovetails with, You know, we’ve talked a lot about race and civil rights and discrimination, civil liberties and civil rights and things. That’s kind of a core point of the first set of modules that we’ve passed out in this class. But this kind of dovetails with some things we talked about, which is the federal government in this case, not the federal government spoke with state government has gotten involved, but Airbnb lift uber v r B. Oh, this is kind of an interesting thing. The new Economy, where there are these sort of clearing house organizations that service platforms for people to provide person to person services. Right? That’s what uber is. That’s what lift is. That’s what Airbnb. They basically kind of serve as a way a meeting place and allow these kind of new economic entities to form. Well, there’s a downside to that. What if your uber driver is a racist and won’t pick somebody up? What if your V R B or Airbnb host is a racist? To what extent are you as a company responsible for that behaviour? Fiscal. He dollar wise, responsible for those behaviors and the other aspect of very related the state’s obligation and sense of involvement here? So we’ve seen this in Austin with lift and uber about the city of Austin trying to get in saying, Well, wait, you just can’t operate here your drivers have to be subject to a criminal, a criminal background test and, you know, uber says what? We don’t want to do that. And, you know, the state of Texas had to get in because of this patchwork quilt of regulations emerging at the city level to try to regulate what’s going on. That’s what California has done right here. So California actually says, but they have a racial discrimination test for their Airbnb host, which is, I think, fascinating. I I should have looked up the test before I came in to be kind of interesting to see what exactly they’re responsible for. But, you know, I mean, on the one hand, you could look at and say, Well, wait a second. What? What’s if somebody has got a house and they don’t want to rent a certain people, you know, isn’t that their business will, In fact, no, uh, as we’ve seen recently in some of the cases involving, you know, bakers and cakes and gay weddings. I mean, this stuff is really all of this stuff, this sort of nexus of private enterprise, you know, But it’s in the public realm, and the States want to regulate it, but they don’t want it in, for instance, to private enterprise. And what about people with religious off? You know, all of this stuff is coming together, and it’s forming this. I mean, I hate to sound enthusiastic about it because some of these cases air kind of personally reprehensible. But it’s fascinating as students and scholars of American politics. Where are the lines, right?

[0:32:12 Speaker 3] Yeah. I mean, you had the federal case, Heart of Atlanta Motel or hotel versus the United States, where the federal government ruled that no, you cannot. Just even though your private entity, you must fulfill the 64 Civil Rights Act. Ah, and so this was a case where bakes to use the commerce clause saying, Look, this is gets this gets in the way of business It actually argue that California’s defense, making sure that discriminatory, is that this is tourism is a big part of California’s industry. And if people are saying people find out that, well, I can’t go to certain parts of California, this actually hurts the bottom line. Eso if you think of all the ad you have come out, visit California, you know, like this with people California to use all the various things you could do in California. But then people are being told that no, you’ll be discriminate against if you go there, then people don’t go. And so one, This is the city for vote of the Civil Rights Act. But it is also an issue of commerce and that this actually interferes with the ability for the state to properly run into actually undercut some of its industries.

[0:33:18 Speaker 2] Right? I mean, you may be asking Well, if I’ve got a house and I list on the RB Oh, don’t I have the right? Let’s take away from racial discrimination, But I think we would all agree is you know, you can’t do that, But for religious reasons, you wanted not to rent to an atheist or something, right? Don’t you have the right not to rent your house to some Or if you’re vegan and someone’s gonna cook, you know, steaks there or something, You know, actually, that probably would be something you could not do, but But what Professor Afghanistan is. Hey, look, the federal government in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the heart of Atlanta, hotel is really key because in that heart of Atlanta hotel case, what happened was hardly land Hotel said. Well, we we only cater to people within the state of Georgia. There’s no interstate commerce that allows the federal government to regulate us. And what the Supreme Court said was, with a sick You’ve got Heinz beans in your restaurant. Those come from out of state. It is. Your hotel has a stream of commerce such that the federal government does, in fact, have the right to regulate discriminatory acts because of its power under Article one in the interstate commerce clause. So it was a lot of ways sort of fast inning. But here, in a Airbnb case, I think it’s pretty clear. Yeah, they’re probably dealing with in this case, that around Big Bear there, mostly dealing with people from L. A. By guarantee they’re getting people from out of state. I guarantee they got products out of state. So heart of Atlanta hotel precedent would suggest that no, you can’t discriminate in terms of who you rent your house out to. Write that it’s part of the stream of commerce such that you are subject to federal regulation in this case, nine federal regulation. All that would come into play. I think it’s the state of California has its own regulations, right? So if you’re out there wondering, how is it that the state of the federal government has the right, the constitutional right, you know, to regulate well, they do, at least as a matter of through decided law.

[0:35:20 Speaker 3] And also you could argue that by not giving this person a place to live, you put them in. Danger is in. The videos showed heavy snowfall. There is no other place to stay. These individuals are now homeless because you basically pulled back on agreement the last second, because off the race of the individual, there’s no there’s nothing such as lawyers, a water leak or a gas leak, some type of emergency, but because really could argue sometimes arbitrary reason behind this, which may have put them in in greater danger. So there there are a variety of ways of trying to got to justify the state’s actions in this. But even Airbnb has been active in putting forth policies, saying having anti discriminatory policies, anti discrimination policies because this issue has arisen quite a bit. So they’re trying to get ahead of the curve wear. Chuckling

[0:36:07 Speaker 2] for checking before class, we were discussing this. Is there being being the sort of proud statement that since October 2016 Airbnb has had a non discriminatory policy the last 10 months? That’s right. They finally got around four police stating, We’re not going to discriminate. So kudos to you Airbnb. Well, I don’t know. I don’t want to rag. It’s not fair me to say that it is struck. This is a little comical toe. Pat yourself on the back for a nondiscrimination statement. But

[0:36:34 Speaker 3] it’s like people where the teacher said, established in 2015 like like 100 years from now that would be great. But right now, nobody Manning helping,

[0:36:43 Speaker 2] and I shouldn’t rag on them because, in fact, he probably thought prior to these sorts of incidents, current didn’t need a specific anti discrimination policy. Don’t you just assume that you know people are not gonna do that kind of stuff, And you know, if if if they are going to do that kind of stuff, you can boot him out. But no, you actually need a you know, an anti discrimination, nondiscrimination, policy statements. So, uh, so I think of I’m pretty much done with that. That’s good. We’ve kept you guys here long enough. We thank you for your patience. Um, just remember, stand top, your readings, the Web text. If you have specific questions beyond the syllabus, please refer to the syllabus. It’s pretty detailed the Lancer about 99% of questions. But I think beyond that please come first or McDaniel and I will get you fixed up. And short of that, we will see you next week.

[0:37:39 Speaker 0] The 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 and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin