GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, July 2, 2019

[0:00:07 Speaker 1] live from the University of Texas at Austin, the Liberal Arts Development Studio and the Department of Government. Present introduction to American government with your professors

[0:00:17 Speaker 0] Daron Shaw and Eric McDaniel. Professor Shaw

[0:00:25 Speaker 1] and Professor McDaniel. Welcome to in the news for Internet American Government

[0:00:29 Speaker 0] week number 55 So we are this’ll be it. This is your last in the new segment, hopefully have enjoyed them, much as we’ve enjoyed making them. So I wanted just toe get a couple of logistical issues out of the way before we get to the substance of the conversation today, the first logistical issue is you now have to exams in the bank. Except for a couple of you who have illnesses or other university proved excuses. So congratulations. You’re 2/3 of the way there were into the third set or the third element of the class will have an exam. Ah, week from Friday. I guess so in about a week and 1/2. Last class day is Thursday of next week, so we’re kind of closing it on the end here. So congratulations. Just a reminder. Keep monitoring the syllabus. If you have questions or monitoring should say go to the syllabus for information about the requirements for the course about how we’re handling the grating situation. We still have the grating video up online. Those you want. Teoh. You kind of remind yourselves of some of the, um, I guess some of the little nuggets of Professor McDaniel and I had with respect to how to prepare for the exams and things like that. Also, the way we approach grading in the grating video. We talked about the curve. You’ll remember. We have 300 points available in the class right now. We’re probably looking at a curve. We probably are looking at a curve, and it’s probably somewhere around 2 90 or so again, that’s not a commitment that a contractual obligation on our part. It’s just a suggestion. So if you’re noodling around with your point totals right now and you’re trying to figure out where you need to be, it’s probably just a good to take to 90 as the top end of the curve and take 90% off of that. If you want to figure out the A range 80 to 90 with 2 90 is, the top is to be range, etcetera, OK, so if this is completely mystifying to you, go back and look at the syllabus and go back and look at the grading video for an explanation of the curve. Not that complicated. But again, you know, we want to be precise and give you information. So you know where you’re standing the course so you could make smart decisions about how to allocate your time and energy and things like that. Also, just a small piece of information. We’ve got kind of two evaluations at the end of the semester. One is something that l A I t s has cooked up. They were particularly interested in. We’re gonna have you do that. We’re gonna make an announcement. You can access this evaluation of the course of how we’re running it kind of the contribution to your overall education that will be put up on the canvas website. It will be an announcement you can link through the home page and you can do that evaluation. And this is the most important part. You’re gonna get a point in extra credit point for doing that one. All right. Also beyond the look out, this is a separate thing make sure you understand these things are separate. Will also have the course instructional survey, which will be available next week at some point. So they’ll be two things that we’re asking you to do. It really helps us gives us feedback on the class, how we can better organize it, things that you like, things that you less were less kind of thrilled with. So maybe 21 will be an announcement on the home page. That’s when it’s administered to get sort of cooked up through liberal arts, information technology services. The other is the more traditional course. Evaluation will make sure it’s pretty clear they’re separate things. You’re only going to get the extra credit point for the one that’s coming later this week from L. A. I t s. We can’t give you credit. I think for the for the eat, of course, about instructor service

[0:04:00 Speaker 1] real quick, we some of the point. It’s very quick. This is not a point towards your final grade, so if you have about 89% now, you have a 90%. This is the point towards the total point total. So again, if you think of the class of being out of 300 points. This is a So if you’re at a to 79 this push up to a to 80 it’s a

[0:04:21 Speaker 0] single point curve precursor, like pretax dollars. This is pre curve. Okay, so yeah. So you, professor, being is totally right. If you’re, like, 89% we’re gonna give you an extra book. Oh, you have a 90? No, no, it’s This will be added to your point total. Then we will go in, calculate, you know, the curve and cut points and stuff like that. Okay, so so again, too little evaluation exercises. We’d like you to do both. We really appreciate that. All right. And you get the extra credit points for the for the one from L. A. I t s will appear later. This week is again. I’ll have an announcement on that. All right. So substantively, a lot going on for, you know, late June. In the summer of off year 2019 we’re gonna talk about three things today. Last week, we teed up the Democratic debates. We’re gonna talk about the fall through and talk about the debates. We’re going talk about an issue that was raised repeatedly, both in the Wednesday debate from last weekend on Thursday. Debate from last week that is student debt and the forgiveness of students that as a public policy issue, and we’re gonna talk about something that came up last 24 hours or so, so we only know what we’ve been reading about it. And that is the Betsy Ross flag Colin Kaepernick Nike shoe debate so we’ll end with that. All right, let’s start with the Democratic presidential debate. Did you watch the Wednesday or Thursday

[0:05:40 Speaker 1] debate? Oh God, no. I tried to save my sanity. I mean, I’ve read quite a bit about it. And what as I expected, I think if you think of the first night, the Wednesday night debate was, I think Elizabeth Warren sent Elizabeth Warren came out of the star the Thursday night, But I set out to be kind of the group of death because you had a lot of people who were front runners there, and it was clear that everybody went directly at a former vice president. Joe Biden s o. One of things about Joe Biden. Many talks must have this experience. I’ve been in the Senate since the eighties. Yes, and you’ve done a lot of things since the eighties that you need toe account for so not only his actions towards Anita Hill, that which were highly problematic. His crime bill, which was seen as you know, strong racial tensions to it but most directly related to race, is bussing. And where’s Vice president? Biden tried to say they know he wasn’t strongly against busing. He was against busting under certain circumstances, if you look back at reports like he made a big name for himself by fighting bussing A to the federal, state and local level. So there are certain things that he’s has to live down, Uh, and think about is having so much experience means you’ve done some things well, you’ve done some things, Some things not so well. This the same thing when you think Senator Kamala Harris that when she was the D A in Oakland, you know there are certain things that she did that many progressives are not happy with. So the thing about have experienced me. Yes, you’ve experienced with successes. You also have experience with failures, whereas the others may not have as much experience they look much fresher. They don’t seem to have any dirt on them. But can they care? Can they pull this off? Uh, and again, One of things about it you’ll see, is if you think of, uh, Marianne Williamson Williamson ritual invited the spiritual adviser, and basically, you know, we’ll do this through spiritualism will solve this. Okay, I guess she had edible before she got on stage. But it was one of those, very, but that matters should expect when you have 20 people up, there s o there are a lot of people were up there mailing because, like, I think I got a chance or they have a message. They want to get out there. Maybe one particular thing that they want to talk about. But it is clear that there certain individuals who gained from it, I think simply center Kamala Harris is Senator Elizabeth Warren. Both rose in the polls. Vice President Biden fell in the polls be also North Sea, where Bernie Sanders goes. Given that he is not as there are a lot of people who sound a lot like Bernie Sanders but seem to be but people articulated much better. And I think where we’re gonna have here is you know, by the time we actually get to the rial, you know, primaries, I would expect maybe about 1/3 of these individuals who have dropped out. So right now we have 24. I say, by the time we get to the primaries, it’ll be about 16 on. Then after that, I think it’ll it’ll probably die down quickly or hopefully, because a long, protracted primary season is actually harmful because that’s a lot of resource is being spent trying to win the primary. You’re also taking a lot of hits during the primary, and it makes you kind of an easy. It makes it very difficult. We moved towards the general election. So again, having 24 people, not good. But I think by the time we get to the primaries, it’ll probably close to 18.

[0:09:28 Speaker 0] Okay, a couple observation. I was jotting some notes down as I was watching the debates. I watched the debate was on vacation, but I was watching the debates. So the first debate last Wednesday, um, you know, was essentially the main contenders. Although there were 10 people on stage. Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Julio Castro and Beto O Rourke. So there was a real Texas flavor to the first Democratic debate. Uh, it was sort of fasting. Warren is the only one polling in double digits amongst that entire group. So Warren really kind of had the field herself. Elizabeth Warren has carved out a niche as being kind of a wonky ist of the policy wonks. That is to say, today there’s an expectation. If you run for president, you’re supposed to have a detailed proposal on everything. Now, is that reasonable? Is it reasonable for somebody in the July before the presidential election year to have a detailed policy on Syria or, you know, on AIDS in Africa? Or, you know, pick your issue? Well, probably not, but it’s not a reasonable process. So Elizabeth Warren, however, has embraced that. She’s decided that in his professor Magenta mentioned Field 24 all of whom are Democrats, all of whom are essentially liberal Democrats. How do you carve out a niche? How do you establish an identity? And she’s basically gone to her law professor kind of academic routes. Politicians air Runas with sort of an academic bent, always make Professor McDaniel. I feel very uncomfortable because we watch and we listen to him talking too much like us. Uh, that’s kind of where Elizabeth Warren is. So she’s very detailed, and this is allowed her to stand out. There are some who question some of the details as to whether these things are actually workable, but that’s not in some ways, that’s not the point. The point isn’t that, you know, to analyze the details of our plan. The point has a detailed plan. Therefore, she’s serious. Therefore she stands out. Ah, but what was? I was actually very interested in Wednesday in the Spanish off between Julian Castro, Beto O Rourke and Cory Booker. So sort of bad Spanish amongst the three of them, Castro and think would speak better Spanish, I think. Yeah, and but But he’s not actually kind of ah goes terribly fluent or whatever, but, uh, Rourke started speaking a little bit of kind of bad Spanish, and you could see Cory Booker, the senator from New Jersey, who’s, you know, a guy with sort of impeccable academic credentials and kind of lives amongst his constituents in New Jersey. That’s Cory Booker’s calling cards. He actually kind of walks the walk and talks the talk on Booker kind of looked at him like dang it. I was going to speak Spanish. It took you stole my thunder. So then he did a little Spanish and then asses O Rourke started. And then Castro did a little Spanish out. Some of the most interesting thing the consensus amongst people who watched the debate was that Julian Castro had a pretty good night. Pretty good night by taking the issue of immigration, you know, this is kind of funny. In some ways, he’s the mirror image of Donald Trump. Donald Trump rose in the Republican primaries or Republican kind of pre primary contests and debates in 2016 and 2015 by talking about immigration by taking a hard line, we’re gonna build a wall. Castro some ways did the exact opposite. He basically said, You know, we had a de criminalise, you know, people across the border heretofore illegally. And he put the rest of the Democrats really on kind of noticed. There. He took a very strong stance, and by Thursday night this question was asked, how many of you support decriminalising crossing the border with without documents. All the Democrats raised their hands. All right, so that that was sort of fast, Inning. So Castro got a little bit of buzz out of that. He again, you know, kind of a war continues to take a little bit of a beating because Castro essentially used dressed down O’Rourke as a way to raise the immigration issue. He says, I can’t believe that you’ve taken such you don’t know about the border here from El Paso, etcetera. And so it was interesting in that regard. The second night you had Joe Biden, Pete Buddha, jich Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders. And so in some ways, Warren had She was kind of the big dog. On Wednesday night, there were three or four big dogs, with Joe Biden being the Rottweiler of the big dogs on Thursday night, and Joe Biden basically had a bull’s eye on him. Kamala Harris, in a kind of nifty bit of political jiu jitsu, says, You know, we can’t have a food fight on the Democratic side. That just helps Donald Trump. Oh, by the way, I’m going to attack Joe Biden, which

[0:14:06 Speaker 1] is a smart move.

[0:14:07 Speaker 0] It was a smart move. Kamala Harris, I think, understands that Elizabeth Warren is taking votes away from Bernie Sanders as Elizabeth Warren sharpens her progressive liberal message that I believe is mostly coming out of Bernie Sanders. Hide right, that she’s kind of ah, more credible. Less. Yes, it is not that she just spring chicken, but she’s a little newer. You know, she’s not an old white guy. She’s a middle aged white woman. But the gender and the fact that she’s actually kind of had a better reputation as a senator from Massachusetts than he’s had for senator from Vermont. Um, I think she’s basically stealing his thunder a little bit. People look at her and say, like she might be able to do this. You might be able to be somebody a little more electable, incredible with the American public, but carries this fight to Donald Trump. Kamila Harris, I think, is looking to Joe Biden and looking at Joe Biden, saying You’re getting you know, 50% of the African American vote right now. And Biden is by virtue of we believe, the credibility he established as job as Barack Obama’s vice president, right African American communities, a very kind of warm, fuzzy feeling towards Joe Biden and his role in Obama’s administration. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, especially Kamala Harris. Look at him go. There is no reason that he should be taking those votes instead of me. And she went after him on busing and she went after him on some of these statements he’s made about working with, You know, White segregation is during his very early days in the Senate. Um, and he’s had trouble responding. She raised the issue of busing. It’s interesting. I was in California in the early eighties and they were still talk of busing busing. For those of you who don’t know, it’s kind of the second part. Brown versus Board of Education, as we’ve talked about, has two components to it. In the first part of the Brown versus Board of Education decision, it was found that separate you can’t have separate and equal separate is inherently unequal, right? So there’s a basically knocked out segregation. The public schools is a legal matter in the United States. The second part of Brown was how to achieve desegregation of the public schools and the Supreme Court’s language on that was in a very famous, really with all deliberate speed and with all deliberate speed, left a lot of discretion to the states and localities about how to achieve desegregation. Busing was something that came up fairly early on in the conversation about how to desegregate the public schools. So by the 19 seventies and eighties, and those of you who are in Austin know, this has been an issue in Austin into the nineties. Busing is a way to achieve desegregation. It’s extremely controversial because you’re not simply busing Children from lower income schools or predominantly African American or Spanish schools to white schools. You’re also bussing the white kids into the African American and Hispanic schools, and that’s caused enormous backlash. Right? And you know, this is, you know, those of you who have Children or been involved in this? No, it’s a tricky, tricky issue. Kamala Harris went after Biden on his his opposition to busing as a senator from Delaware in the 19 seventies. She said that she was, you know, she was on the other end of that stick that she was raised in a I don’t remember coming here is being from a poor community, but I don’t know enough about your

[0:17:21 Speaker 1] about she She was part of the busing program. So the seat to the bus, 40 minutes to another school

[0:17:27 Speaker 0] that were shipped from the ship from Oakland issue.

[0:17:29 Speaker 1] I want to say she’s from the Cup Won t.

[0:17:32 Speaker 0] California Because her discussions conversation kind of reminded me of how how it was the late seventies and early eighties in California butts a complicated mission by didn’t really have first. I don’t think he remembered his record exactly. He didn’t know he didn’t really seem to know how to relitigate. Yeah, this as an issue. I mean, I thought it was in some ways, everybody was kind of a hardball softball does, you know, disguises a hard bomb. He could have easily said, Look, busing was a very complicated issue. But if the question is my stance, a commitment to civil rights all point to my record in public service, we didn’t do that. Instead, I think he got into a little bit of fight. This is a general rule for you. You know, if you’ve got an area where you kind of have some credibility, try not to get bogged down in the details. I think it’s one of the few ways of Joe Biden loses a fight on civil rights. And, you know, he insists on talking about the details of who he worked with under what circumstances and what issues you

[0:18:30 Speaker 1] think he’s going for the same problem that Hillary Clinton had with e superpredators. Comment. It’s basically you’re seeing Democrats who had a lot of, uh who are not a part in the late eighties early nineties, where there are a lot of decisions being made that seemed to have kind of a racial undertone to them and them kind of playing into it. Basically, Now you know, the chickens coming home to roost without the answer, for answer, for their support of these things that we’re now seeing as very harmful towards towards minority populations. Eso any

[0:19:04 Speaker 0] written? I wanted Justo make three points, so that’s kind of a more specifics and kind of ah, stream of consciousness about what occurred on Wednesday and Thursday night, a couple of big points that we want to raise with respect to nomination politics. General, the first is we know about debates. Debates themselves don’t matter much, Professor began. Does for a living. He didn’t watch, right? Um, I was on vacation. I watched, but most people didn’t watch the debates. They had very large audiences. But that’s compared to a normal cable audience for summer programming. You know, there’s basically 160 million voters in the United States, over 340 million Americans. And you know, these debates are drawing, you know, 10 million or so right? Media coverage of the debates matters mawr than the debates themselves. That’s something we want to emphasize here. So we have our observations. You all who watched you all 10 of you probably have some independent observations. But the media comes up after the debate with the consensus about what happened, and we tend to hear about that consensus so you may not have watched the debates, but you probably heard the Joe Biden had problems. You probably heard Kamala Harris had a good night. You probably heard Julian Castro had a good night. That’s common media coverage. The consensus amongst media leaks about what happened often times is mawr influential than what actually happened, the debates itself. That’s not to say there’s some kind of reality distortion that the media, I do think the media have their own agendas, but I’m not arguing the media are wrong or corruptor that. No, no, no, no. All I’m saying is what the media decide happened in the debates shapes how viewers view the debates. That’s point number one point number two. I do think what you’re seeing in these Democratic debates. We’ll see how this plays out is a pull to the left right. We’ve talked about median voter theorem in the United States, and that is to say, most Americans are kind of bunched in the middle on political issues. And, you know, if you want to compete, if you want to win an election, a general election, you have to compete for that median voter, that middle position where most of the voters are. But what’s going on right now is not a competition for the median voter of the American electorate. It’s a competition for the median voter within the Democratic primaries. That voter is considerably further to left, and so it shouldn’t be surprising if you’re kind of a moderate or an independent or Republican leading or even Democratic leaning voter out there right now, you may be surprised that the debate is centred on universal healthcare. Doing away with private insurance open borders, right? These things have some appeal to the kind of die hard Democratic voter who’s probably gonna show up on a Monday night in Iowa or a Tuesday night we can have later in New Hampshire or in South Carolina on Super Tuesday, and you know it was gonna caucus in North Dakota. But is that same voter really, you know, exemplary when it comes to the American public? Well, see, there is a question about two things. How far left is the average Democratic primary voter compared to the average Democratic voter? I’m not sure further left and not, but I don’t know how far. And then secondarily, you know, where’s the meat? You know, how far will the candidates pull in order to try to look? Lock that down? Is Joe Biden going to move to the left or is he going to kind of maintain his positions? They know I’m a centrist on the moderate, you know, because that’s that’s kind of who I am. You know, that’s gonna be very interesting to watch. Third point, I would call sort of broadly speaking coalitions. Each those candidates is tryingto identify coalitional element within the Democratic Party that they can count on for support. So Bernie Sanders If something’s about Bernie Sanders, he doesn’t have much appeal with racial or ethnic minorities. He’s basically a candidate of educated white liberals, and maybe he goes beyond that. But it’s tough to win a Democratic primary and to really be embraced by the Democratic Party when you don’t really have strong appeal in that regard. I’m not knocking Bernie. I’m not saying that his positions air bad or anything, but, but he just doesn’t seem to resonate much with African American or Hispanic voters compared to white liberals. Kamala Harris, I’m telling you right now, she’s looking to Joe Biden’s coalition, saying, I can win those sorts of voter. I need those sorts of voters. Joe Biden shouldn’t have those over me. I think Cory Booker has the same kind of approach, which is, you know, they look at their path to the nomination as having to include a large chunk of African American voters, most of whom right now are committed to Joe Biden. The question is how soft is that commitment. So it’s funny. It’s interesting to watch issues are used to attract voters. And I liked since I don’t know enough about individual voters in this context, to say much of intelligence, I look to serve a more sociological perspective. I look at the white, liberal, educated women, the Democratic Party, African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, white, working class and try to figure out who’s cobbling together a coalition from what different elements of the Democratic Party. That’s interesting to watch right now. So if you watch the candidates Buddha Church reaching out to LGBT communities, right speaking Spanish, guess who that’s attempting to appeal, to write Harris, talking about busing and Biden spotty record on bussing these air issues. They’re genuine issues, but they’re designed to win voters and that that’s really kind of fascinating to watch. So with that said, let’s let’s pick up transition we’re gonna cover to other topics today. One is related to this. No question about how far to left our nomination politics pulling the Democrats. Let’s talk about a particular issue that was raised. It ought to be interesting to you all college debt or student loan debt. So, um, most of the Democratic candidates have committed to a debt relief program of some sort, and it varies in type I think. Club HR Amy Klobuchar, senator from Minnesota, has talked about simply partial relief or conditional relief, depending upon how much money you have now, other candidates Bernie Sanders is basically called for completely abolishing all college dead. So what you make of this prison, your public policy guy? What’s the appeal?

[0:25:16 Speaker 1] What’s the claim? So be truthful. It’s Ah, think what? Bernie Sander. What Senator Sanders putting forward is kind of a pie in the sky. I think I think it will never be fully forgiven because it’s just way too high. I do think there probably will be some aspect of parcel debt forgiveness, but I think also what will probably take take shape is some way of dealing with tuition and why the rising cost of tuition. I think one thing has been pointed out is that the when states were low on funds, that there could only raise money in certain places. And so you begin to see the state schools start to raise their tuition. They raise their tuition, and then often the private schools start raising their tuition as well. And so it’s one of these things of trying to understand why, Ah, maybe better funding of state schools. So they don’t have to, uh, have such high level tuition rates but forgiving debt completely. It’s just way too high on, and it’s unbelievably costly. I do believe some parcel debt forgiveness. I know. There you’ve seen something happens. Some of the online schools or people with these kind of school just disappear on DSO. There have been calls for debt forgiveness because the people pay for a service that was not rendered to them. So I think the debt forgiveness it sounds nice. But as far as actually pulling it off Oh, it za hot mess, I think it’s Do you think it

[0:26:45 Speaker 0] would help the economy? That’s the claim, right? Is it? You know, millennials out there who’d accrued tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a debt that if you get the By the way, there is an issue about the federal versus the state government, which is the federal government, which is what Sanders, of his others we’re talking about, could basically sort of say like, Well, we’re just not gonna collect this money or drop the program. But there’s obviously cost issue. What’s the economic argument? The benefit of just frees up revenue? That’s otherwise. Yeah, it’s people like you guys and us

[0:27:17 Speaker 1] having tea, lowering taxes, it freezing revenues. People spend more. Now, one thing is important to note is the federal government does play a big role in student loans. Right now, the reason why the interest rate for student loans is so low is because the government subsidizes their backs, our backs it up. And so if you think about this, you’re an individual with a high school diploma, no skills, no work record asking for 50 to $100,000 in loans. You should expect the interest rate to be sky high, but because the federal government backs it up, you’re actually able to get it at a much lower interest rate. And so I think this is a critical thing that we’re trying to re ignoring. The federal government does play a role with student loans, specifically keeping that interest rate low. Ah, now, as far as forgive me a completely I don’t really see this. I think the student loans yet maybe a problem. But there’s also showed the workforce housing costs have gone up. So I there were multiple things going on that are affecting millennials. So the idea that you know if you get rid of student loans also said everybody would be a big boom on avocado toast. No, I don’t I don’t think that’s the case. Molinos be buying houses everywhere now. I don’t think that’s the case, either. I do believe there numerous things going on with student loans contributing to it. But getting rid of student loans doesn’t solve the problem. It made less the severity of it. But you still have some other things going on. It’s

[0:28:48 Speaker 0] interesting question. I mean, we’re talking off camera beforehand about what happens to tuition rates. If, you know, essentially, you make college free. Yeah, and by college free. It’s an interesting way of putting it right When we say college is free, We mean that the government pays colleges and then colleges provide a service to the students. It gets in these questions of federalism, you know about the federal government providing you know, for instance, the University of Texas. If you know the federal government says OK, we’re gonna pay for the costs of students going University of Texas. Well, first of all, it’s a state institution. It’s not a federal institution. So the state of Texas would have to agree to this. Is it possible that the federal government would make a ton of money available to the state of Texas conditional upon the state of Texas either providing free education for all of its residents or some such arrangement? That’s possible. But Texas has repeatedly turned down federal money with strings attached. We’ve done that in the expansion of Medicare situation with health care, the federal government said. We want to expand. Medicare will give you the money to do it. The state of Texas has said, You know, that’s also additional commitment on our part. We’re not willing to do that. Besides, we don’t trust the federal government not to pull the money out from under us at some point anyway. So it’s It’s tricky and suggested it involves questions of federalism. First begins right in terms of Pell grants in these sorts of federal loans, which are, I believe, the lion share of loans, I think to call it students these days come from the federal government. But a lot of these institutions are state run, and so it’s a complicated nexus. I do think there’s a chance that you’re going to get colleges that do away with tuition over the next 25 or 30 years, you know? And by the way, if Harvard did that, if Harvard just said we’re gonna do away with tuition, the amount of money we’re get it’s interesting. As colleges, I don’t get too far off the track. But its colleges have gone to their endowments, have gone to a lot of fundraising and foundations support. The percentage of the budget that comes from tuition per se is actually shrunk considerably. It would be interesting if the Harvard or Princeton or Stanford did away with tuition. It could be a real quick domino effect, because I think there’d be significant pressure on the other colleges to,

[0:31:01 Speaker 1] you know, their endowment of so large that they could go tuition free and

[0:31:05 Speaker 0] put a huge amount of pressure on institute other institutions. And then, of course, there’s, you know, this colleges I just mentioned Stanford, Princeton, Harvard Deal or private Yes, University, Texas is not so. It’s a little bit of a different situation, but they were talking about this we’re talking about, You know what? And by the way I mentioned the cost. I believe the Sanders plan. It seems like all elements of the Sanders plan would be paid for with the tax on the very rich. You don’t like them millionaires. I haven’t seen any indication that a simple tax on people making even over five million a year would do much to subsidise an eradication of all student debt. But again, the devil’s in the details, I suppose. Yeah,

[0:31:54 Speaker 1] one of things that has been floated is free for free community college that’s been put forward. I think Tennessee is practicing that. I figured what stated? Practicing that right now to see. Okay, how might this be put forward? It’s something you saw President Obama put forward as a way to make college more accessible s. So the idea is that people would be able to kind of continue. And if the college ready, maybe go, Uh ah. Go forward. And there are actually a lot of states that actually have their system set up that way where you spend time kind of the Hub campus prefers two years, then come to the main campus for the last two years. So Penn State is like that where they have hub campuses for your freshman sophomore year, and then you move Teoh the central camps for your junior and senior year. So

[0:32:37 Speaker 0] a lot of innovative ideas out there, but it’s It’s an issue that’s attracting a lot of attention, probably overdue. The third and final topic we want to cover said This came to my attention just last evening, and this morning was recently Nike shoe Company announced that they were going Teoh put out a shoes celebrating American Independence, Fourth of July, and it’s gonna be adorned with the Betsy Ross flag to have a picture of that, I actually think. Yeah, so there you go. That was the proposed Nike shoot Now Colin Kaepernick, former quarterback of the San Francisco 40 Niners turned social activists who was employed by Nike, said that he thought advised them, advise him that this was not a good idea, in fact, that the Betsy Ross flag I had some very negative connotations on I think to most, particularly one. It’s simply harken back to a time that for a lot of Americans is emblematic or symbolic of slavery and then, secondarily, that the Betsy Ross flag had been appropriated by some white supremacist groups. Professor Daniel and I did some research on this, and by research, I mean, we googled it five minutes before this segment and found there was, ah, Michigan case in which there was some Yahoo’s at a high school football game or something waving the Betsy Ross flag on. And then the superintendent of the school system apologized after the local chapter, the end of CP, reported that that this was in fact kind of Ah ah, group of white supremacists or people affiliate with white supremacist were waving this flag. Yes. So that’s that, since much of we have on it. So for final topic, what do we think about

[0:34:20 Speaker 1] it, zee? Interesting. Take eso. I think maybe you’re probably familiar with Frederick Douglass, the famous black abolitionist who have a speech know what is the fourth of July to a slave on? So there is this concern about romanticizing this period of American history of Independence Day when, you know, many of the founding fathers were slave owners and supported slavery Uh, And so there is a bit of a pushback on that, just like you see the pushback with E Star Spangled Banner, where if you look at the further verses that it is a very strong white supremacist, but again, a very strong attack on the slaves who did not fight on the side of the U. S. Under the War of 18 12. So this idea of kind of white supremacist, kind of cooperating certain things, something, what with Pepe the frog. I guess there are other things that these groups having have kind of appropriated. And there was a concern that Okay, what you’re basically doing is you are marketing a shoe. That is, uh, that is going to be warmed by this group as as And so they’re gonna be celebrating you for wearing this shoe. Now the heirs of the governor of Arizona has pulled, I guess some some funds to go to Nike format for building. They’re going for some type of manufacturing plants and having Arizona over this, it seems like any time Colin Kaepernick and Nike get together there some humongous problem. But this has become a very big issue, but it also becomes an issue of freedom of speech in terms of what symbols you can carry. So we could think about, you know, trying people bear public bans on burning the flag. But that’s particulars free speech. But you won’t put this out there. It’s, I believe, that this is a messy topic. The fact of the Betsy Ross flag isn’t has been appropriated by white supremacist, I don’t know. But these underground groups, these aren’t groups operating in the, um in the mainstream, and so it’s hard to tell what they’re doing. And so it’s hard to tell what they’re symbols are and to properly react to it. I don’t know if what Nike said. If Nike what Nike shows was the right thing or the wrong thing, I just know that it’s it’s a bit of Ah, it’s a hot mess.

[0:36:46 Speaker 0] Well, okay, so we’re talking about this again before class trying to sort out my thoughts on this, So if they’re a little jumbled, you know, I apologize in advance, but, um, I’m a little torn. I’m always up for bragging on 90. Uh, I mean, I have some Nike products, but this is an attempt by company to profit off of, ah, symbol of Americanism in Americana. So you know there’s a part of me. It’s like, you know, you tried to take advantage of the flag, and the fact that it’s come back to bite you a little bit is a little bit of karma, but it raises his profession, dances some interesting free speech issues. I mean, eso I’ll say this is a sort of personal slash professional observation. It’s more or less sympathetic, depending upon kind of the nature of the countercharges. So calling Kaepernick advises. Nike didn’t threaten to leave or whatever. He’s making too much money, I think, from Nike to threaten to leave over this. But he says, like for some, this is gonna be offensive, You should know that. And Nike said Okay. Nike is now in the game of kind of social justice, so they want to make money off the flag. But they also don’t want to offend a constituency that I think is very important. So let’s be clear. You know, if if you have a question, sometimes why did Company X or Person X do this? One of your first go to explanations has gotta be our Where’s the money? Um And so my guess is Mikey. Nike made a business decision, and now again, not to be too cynical. You could argue that well, but they made a decision about social justice, and my thought is like, Yeah, probably. Except I think it’s some level. Maki has decided there’s profit in social justice not to be too cynical about this, but I think they’ve kind of made a calculation that in the long term they’re going to be on the correct side economically. Now. If I’m wrong, that’s fine. Maybe they think this is a losing position economically, but they still feel forcefully in terms of politics. Okay, okay, that’s possible. But I’m a little ambivalent because on the one hand, look, you know, you kind of wonder about any fringe group that appropriates symbols that that should we be held hostage? Actually think they’re kind of cool looking shoes, not big in the white tennis shoes, because it’s just impossible to keep clean. But they’re kind of cool look and shoes, and I sort of like the Betsy Ross flag. It’s sort of a sharp looking flag. So if a fringe group appropriates it, and we had to google it to find out this group. I wasn’t aware of this at all. Is that really something we ought to be? That ought to dictate how we behave as consumers or how we feel pride or lack of private Americans? I’m a little bit kind of skeptical of that. Um also, are we at a point where anything historically, anything prior to say, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, it’s a symbol of America is immediately cut off limits? That’s it. That’s tough. That’s a tough situation to be in. You know, we have a long history Ondas you’ve seen throughout this conversation. We’ve talked about race in most of these topics. Now they would cover today in the news. But previously, race is a dominant fact of American politics. Now we can have a really interesting conversation about whether it’s primary or secondary or tertiary in a particular circumstance, right? That I think is an important car is a class or is it race? You know? Is it economics or, you know, sort of religion? Or is it race? Those are important conversations, but it’s got to be on your list on your top five. It’s just too important to American political history. But, you know, this creates issues for us as Americans, right? I mean, you know, I didn’t know about some of the for instance, Professor McDaniel, Reference Colin Kaepernick, Who you guys probably know is a quarterback who kneeled during the national anthem, and this was very controversial. But he was, According to him in his team, he was bringing attention to, uh, not just current problems in the United States social problems, but also using the history of the national anthem, which has all these additional lyrics, as it turns out, that air pretty dicey and pretty offensive. I didn’t know that it was interesting that he brought that to our attention. You know, I don’t know that that’s actually the case here. I was wondering, with professional game before class, we’ll wait. Was the it was Betsy Ross commissioned by slave owners? Or is there a kind of a slave owning history to the Betsy Ross flag? Or is it just It was a flag that was made at a time when America had slavery. We think it’s the latter. Were not totally confident out that we think it’s the latter, and to me that that does make it more interesting, right? I mean, it’s every symbol of America you know, that occurs before the Civil War, even after the Civil War, before the civil rights movement. Is that inherently offensive to a segment of the population, you know, and maybe more. But what do we do about that? It’s interesting, right? But I guess the proximate thing here is Hey, Nike tried to make a profit on an American flag on their shoe and it blew out. Now I should say it’s according to media reports they’re selling on eBay for $2200 the Betsy Ross shoes. So for those you thought, you’re going to go out and grab some well, unless you got a lot of student loans, probably gonna be kind of tough right now. But if they pulled a ask people to pull them from themselves. So again, we’re kind of careening all over the place, this sporting, But But that’s one of the great things about American politics, about a class in American government. They’re all these different elements to these debates. You know, these questions of federalism on states rights versus the national government, the appropriate role, the national government, constitutional questions, branches of government. We talked about the fights between and amongst them, questions of race, religion, gender. All of this plays into politics. That’s why social science is a messy science. We’re trying to bring theory and rigour and empiricism to it as we study these things and framed questions. But there’s a lot of art as well as a lot of science to the study of politics. Right, So, you know, we don’t have any answers on ridiculous last question. Interesting question about First Amendment rights and you know the right to see what you want. But, you know, the first day that are kind of big on this side, you have the right to, you know, to protest, and I have the right to protest your protest. And I think that’s what’s happening right now. Calling Kaepernick is advised Nike about there, maybe protest. And you know, this governor of Arizona is protesting the potential protests, so we’re having potential protests of potential protests. So that’s where we are in American politics these days. All right, so with that, I think that’s it. That’s our last in the new segment for summer session number one Again feel free to contact us. Visit office hours. If you want to talk about the class about substance or style, we’re always up for that. And we had a good time. Hope you have, too. And we’ll see you later.

[0:43:30 Speaker 1] Good one