GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, July 24, 2018

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

[0:00:07 Speaker 1] there. I’m Professor Shaw.

[0:00:09 Speaker 0] Professor McDaniel. Welcome in the news for American in Texas Politics

[0:00:12 Speaker 1] Week number two. Yeah, we’re gonna have a lot of stuff. It’s interesting during the summer. Usually, Professor McDaniel, I have a little trouble. Well, during past administrations, we have trouble filling the news void. Now, So much, you know, these days, but we are going toe kind of cover some ground that just keeps recurring. Let’s get on dio the news of the day. I’m leading off today. Professor McDaniels got some heavy hitting stuff at the back end, but, um, we’re going kind of mawr topics, but we’ll get in and out a little quicker today. It’s not quite a lightning round, but it’s the bloviating professor version of that, which means we’ll be done in about four hours, probably. But all right, so I’m gonna start. I got three things I want to talk about in press Mammogram has something to say about these also, but I want talk about fundraising in the Texas elections. Coming up 2018 Texas elections. I want to talk about the race in the Senate, the United States Senate, and then I want to talk just a little bit about Democrats and their strategy with respect to the nomination of Cavanaugh for the Supreme Court vacancy. So three things. So let’s start with fundraising in Texas and kind of all over the map. You got some state stuff, got some national stuff. Let’s start with the state stuff and I wanna point you guys to an article that came out by Ross Ramsey in the Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is wonderful, Ah, website that has detailed information, really good analysis on Texas politics. So if we could go to the to the Texas politics article, here’s the one. It’s Texas Democratic candidates find friendly donors in hostile Congressional District Just a few things to know about this. I want toe cursor down here. I’ll show you in particular just a read real quickly. The set up here. Democratic challengers out raised Republican congressional incumbents. So these air for the the the United States House seats is what we’re talking about. The U. S Congress in seven races in Texas during the second quarter of the year, but in most of those races, including the statewide contest for Senate, so they’re counting the Senate race with Cruz and work Recent election history favors the Republicans, sometimes by a wide margin on it goes on to talk a little bit about the role of money in in elections and spoiler Alert. Professor McDaniel and I do think money matters. You know, if there’s a little bit of context here, right, if you know McDaniel raises two million in Shaw, raises 1,900,000. It’s not clear McDaniel has a huge advantage with his natural sexiness and charisma. You might expect that that’s right. But if McDaniel raises a 1,000,000 shot raises nothing, I put a lot of money on McDaniel to win that race. Okay, so the particularly I want to point to this paragraph here, So let me see if I can fire up. I love this Who? Okay, So here’s a paragraph I’m really interested in. Let me see if I get that working here. Know all I can do is well, I can do is do a whole lot. I’m out the paragraph. There is a seven Republican incumbents in the Texas congressional delegation were outraged by their democratic challenges. So seven and it includes, Cruz says here said Senator Ted Cruz. Reps. John Carter of Round Rock, which is a pretty Republican area. John Culberson of Houston will heard Pete Olsen, Pete Sessions and Roger Williams. They were out done as here. They were out done by some Democratic names that for now are a little less well known. Beto O. Rourke, MJ Hagar, Lizzie Panel Fletcher, Gina Ortiz, Jones three Preston Kulkarni, Colin Allred and Julie Oliver. Right? So that’s seven races, including the Senate race, where the Democrats have out raised the Republican. And that’s a big deal in Texas. What that means is that Democratic money in Texas is kind of close to New York for the number two spot in the country with respect to money, political money. So you’ve got California, which is, you know, what is it? Is it the 600 or the £800 gorilla of American politics will call it 800. California’s the behemoth out there. More money comes from California than any other state. But Texas is right up there, along with New York and that number two slot right Florida trailing. So there’s a ton of political money money to political campaigns. It comes out the state of Texas. But because the state has been so Republican slanted in the last 15 or 20 years, the Texas money tends to go to competitive races in other states and districts in other states and Texas. Democrats have been really annoyed by that for quite some time now. So it’s interesting. Kind of feature of the 2018 elections is that you have this very competitive national race. You know where the House is very much in play. We think where the Senate is probably in play, get two more on that in a second. But that money, you know, you’d think the way things have gone lately, the Texas money would be going to competitive races outside Texas. A lot of it’s staying here, but on the so that could be good news for Democrats. On the other hand, a lot of the money were, you know, where these Democratic candidates have a lot of the races where the Democratic candidate have done well. Those aren’t necessarily races where you expect the Democrats toe win, and that’s the point of Ross Ramsey’s article here Is that you know, in most of these and in fact, let me cursor down just a little more for you here. All right, Um, and 1.2 in six in the sixth Congressional District. So this is the last paragraph it’s seeing visible on the screen here in the sixth Congressional District, where Democrats outshone Republicans in second quarter fundraising case. The second quarter fundraising on Lee won the 23rd District. That’s that kind of long district that runs basically from San Antonio all the way out of the West Texas. It’s Ah district that’s got a substantial Latino population. Onley won, the 23rd has been competitive in recent elections, heard one by a hair that’s the Republican incumbent. 1.3% points in 2016 after successfully drawing ah, challenging a Democratic incumbent two years earlier. Um, and he’ll face Gina Ortiz Jones. Right? So that’s the one race where the Democrat is out raising the Republican that looks competitive in those other races. They don’t really look that competitive Sessions did not have a Democratic opponent two years ago. In 2014 he finished 26 points ahead of the Democratic candidate. The other four seats are testaments to very effectively drawn political maps each of the improper incumbents won easily in 2016. Culberson by 12. Williams by 20. Olson by 19. Carter by 21. So you know, it’s interesting that Democrats are raising money, but they’re raising money in districts where it’s gonna be very, very tough for them to be competitive. It’s It’s not that the Republicans aren’t raising money. These districts is that the Democrats are raising a ton of money. On the other hand, these are pretty Republican districts, with the exception of the 23rd. Okay, so that’s sort of 0.1 lots of money. The Democrats again, I guess the to kind of put a real fine point on. The Democrats seem to be as excited, perhaps more excited than the Republicans in 2018 even in Texas. But it’s not clear what the strategic implications of that are. You know, I guess you could think of it is, you know, is this money strategic or is this money expressive? And right now the money looks to be expressive, right? That is, it’s people in these areas were genuinely fired up there giving money in their districts. But if you were ah, you know, if you were in the Democratic Party sitting on a cloud somewhere. These may not be the district where you would want to spend that money. Okay, So again, I don’t want to monopolize it. Should any thoughts on the Democrats doing pretty well in terms of fundraising in Texas?

[0:07:36 Speaker 0] Yeah, I think it’s part of this whole story that people Rotel of Texas, I guess becoming purple in the sense that becomes a competitive state. This idea, that text will eventually become staying. Which Democrats could win because again, it was one of the price states, the Democratic Party. I think Lyndon Johnson think of former Governor and Richards. But I don’t think this is gonna happen as well. At a swell, there may be some gains, but it’s not gonna be on overall support. And the biggest fear is that after you do see this high level of spending in these knock competitive districts that people will see this loss as well give up whether this again and so you won’t see the same amount of spending the next time around. Was important. Understand is that if you spend the first time around, you got to be willing to spend a second time around. It’s it’s an issue of momentum. You got to keep things going. But a lot of times people don’t win the first time. They’re like, Well, what’s pointed spending? And this becomes problematic and in many ways become a self fulfilling prophecy. Okay, so it’s moved from

[0:08:38 Speaker 1] Texas to the national scene right now. I wanted Teoh just briefly put up kind of an overview of the United States Senate, and it will be a transition point here because the Senate is obviously key for judicial nominations. So a connection between my final two points here, one on the Senate and the other on the on. Mr. Kavanagh, Right here we have a map. This is from Washington Post. They’ve got a nice political bloc called the Fix. Chris Cillizza some other people right in this thing it’s using got some nice data driven analyses of American politics, and I wanted Teoh get is recent a mapas possible here. So you are probably aware the Republicans control hopefully or where the Republicans control both houses of Congress, Will is the presidency. The the Democrats are looking to 2018 is with kind of licking their chops they see an opportunity to take over the House. They need to flip. I think it’s 23 or 24 seats in the House in order to take over. That’s right around what one normally expects in the president’s first midterm election. Uh, Senate, however, is a little problematic, and I want you guys to see why. Here, remember, the Senate has six year terms. Only 1/3 of the Senate is up every two years. Okay, so 33 34 seats are up every two years. That’s why it’s a It’s a staggered cycle. And this is part of the idea that the Senate is a little less responsive to public opinion than the House or even the presidency. In some sense, right? It is the cooling sauce with respect to legislation. Now what What you’re talking about in 2018 is the Senate class that was elected in 2012. Why is 2012 significant? That was Barack Obama’s re election. So there are a lot of Democratic senators elected in 2012 on the coat tails of Barack Obama. In other words, they’re Democrats representing states, and aren’t that democratic? And without Obama at the top of the ticket, There are questions about whether they can make inroads. So while the Democrats are Onley only need to flip a couple of seats in order to take the Senate. They’re actually defending much more turf than their kind of prosecuting right now. So you take a look here at the map and you see the Democrats here 26 seats in play. So 26 9 Republican seats Now you may just say, like, Wait a sec, Shaw. That adds up to 35. You said there’s 33 or 34 there, a couple of special elections here. In fact, there may be a no additional one. I mean, obviously, you’re probably aware that John McCain of Arizona has some serious health issues, but as of right now, you know that that scene still McCain’s. But there are going to be some states in which there are multiple elections. Mississippi is one. You see the last tricks here. Mississippi has two Senate races this time because there’s a retirement. Someone joins the administration and that seat has to be filled. And then there has to be an election. So what they’ve got here is it’s hatched. So there’s blue seats representing Democratic seats. Red seats representing Republican Hatched indicates what they see to be a competitive race, a competitive race. So you notice down here in the mountain West Nevada and Arizona are areas where the Democrats are looking at. I’m going, huh? You know, we could pick up those seats, maybe win the Senate. It’s instance. Seat in Nevada. This is the seat of Jeff Flake in Arizona, who is retiring. So that’s an open seat race in Arizona, where the Democrats look to be fielding a very strong challenge, right? And then amongst the other red states, there’s only nine of them. Tennessee is an open seat. Bob Corker is resigned or is resigning. So that’s an open seat race where the former Democratic governor of Tennessee is running. That’s a popular candidate there. So three potential pickups you noticed Texas is not hatched, even though better work seems to be running a very strong campaign. Uh, The Washington Post doesn’t see that as being a seat. That’s probably gonna flip at this point, but you look at just the numbers where the Democrats are defending, so let’s say they pick up all those seats well, they have to successfully defend in Florida, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Montana. Some of these states, in fact, six of them were states that Donald Trump carried by over 10 points. So, for instance, you know you’ve got Missouri. You’ve got Indiana, you have West Virginia. West Virginia went for Trump by, like 40 points last cycle. And you know, poor Joe mansions out there trying to convince them toe, you know, stick with him. Is the Democratic counted? So, um, this is all by way of saying, Even though the Democrats face a much narrower margin in the Senate, only a couple of only a couple seats they need to flip. The map is not good. It’s not 50 50. You’re talking about the Obama class of 2012. Places like Indiana, Missouri, West Virginia are pretty Republican and the Democrats, even if they pick up some of those seats in Tennessee, Arizona, Nevada, they have to hold everywhere else. And that’s a very tall order. So a lot of people think, even though there’s, you know, you have to flip. In the mid twenties, in the house versus only two or three in the Senate. They still think the House is much more employees in the Senate.

[0:13:53 Speaker 0] Yeah, it’s clear that you when you have to defend nine and you’re trying to gain three again, you have to keep those nine. And so that’s gonna be the main thing because you gain those three. But you lose six within the me Jack C. Three down. So again, right now, the more really the thing about the Democratic Party’s, they’re on the defensive, not on the offensive.

[0:14:13 Speaker 1] Yeah, I think that’s one question with the case. And if you’re again looking for the places where the Democrats have the best chance to pick up clearly. Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee, where the most vulnerable North Dakota you talk about a Republican state with Heidi Heitkamp is a Democrat defending that seat. Missouri Claire McCaskill. She keeps winning. She’s got more lives in a Siamese cat, but she keeps winning. But that’s a tough race, and Joe Donnelly in Indiana and Joe Manchin in West Virginia. Those Air Force. That’s where the Democrats can hold two of those. I’ll be surprised, and it might make might make them competitive foot. The Senate. Last thing I just want to mention real quickly. So that’s the money situation in Texas, the national Senate races. And then I just want to briefly touch on the Supreme Court again. I just wanted to comment about Democratic strategy. It seems that the Senate Democrats remember, So you’ll remember from our lessons on the Constitution and will reinforce us when we get in the modules on institutions later on. You know, the president nominates justices to the Supreme Court. The Senate has to confirm they have hearings and a vote. In this case, Democrats have decided it looks like in the Senate most of the Senate leadership has decided they’re going to oppose Cavanaugh. There’s two sort of interesting lines of argument now. Okay, let’s let’s be perfectly candid. The main line of argument is we think he’s going to pursue a conservative your brand of jurisprudence, and we don’t like that. Um, and that’s not to rag on Senate Democrats so that Republicans have the same attitude towards President Obama’s nominees, right? So let’s it has nothing to do with one party being hypocritical, both parties or hypocritical, but I would actually defend this position. The court has become very political. It’s important to politics and public policy, and the notion that politics is irrelevant I’m not so sure is is a particularly compelling argument. But but you need to present more than just a We don’t like your politics kind of approach. Teoh do somebody in the Senate. So the Democrats have tried to lines to oppose Cavanagh. The first is interesting. Cory Booker, Democratic senator from New Jersey, offered the following. Lee said, Well, the president, um, is under suspicion, possibly under investigation in this whole Mueller FBI probe. It is inappropriate for somebody to be nominated and confirmed who would then sit in judgment of that president potentially. Okay, so that’s the That’s the artist. So hold off on everything. Okay, So it’s one line of argument right now that there’s an obvious problem with this, and that’s precedent, which is in fact, we’ve seen this before. We saw it in Watergate. We saw it when President Clinton had two justices that he appointed when the special counsel was, you know, investigating Clinton’s behavior, Both of them not only were confirmed, both of them sat in on cases involving evidence on the Paula Jones in the obstruction of justice case. So it’s an interesting argument. Constitutionally, legally, it’s one that has no precedent, in fact, is present in the opposite direction. Another interesting are. So that’s kind of one shouldn’t because all this trump rushes stuff, you know, the potential president could be subject investigation. It comes before the court shouldn’t do that, that not sure that’s gonna have a lot of legs, right. There’s a second argument, and it’s little more forceful version. The first. It’s that Cavanaugh said at one point in a interview, or a speech in front the American Enterprise Institute, that he agreed with the Senate allowing the special counsel law to expire. All right, that’s a was a law that was passed in the eighties that allowed the president to appoint a special counsel would have investigative power over matters involving the executive branch, and there were some special counsels. Nobody really liked the way they worked. And so when and especially after the Clinton investigations of the 19 nineties, when that law came up, when it’s statute came up for renewal, the Senate allowed it to expire. They didn’t pass it, and Kavanagh had said he agreed with that. He thought it was actually constitutionally problematic. This has been picked up by some Democrats to say Cavanaugh doesn’t believe the president should be subject to a new independent counsel. Okay, there is a problem with that, which is they’re not the same thing. These are different things authorized by different statutes, some of them or inflammatories. I think Dick Durbin actually had a line that says, Well, we know now that Kavanaugh does not think the president eyes subject to the laws of the nation. Not sure that’s what Cavanaugh said. Um, but you’re going to get a lot of hyperbole. This seems to be rather than the abortion argument, which is, you know, Cavanagh would overturn Roe v. Wade and using abortion as a litmus test. It seems to be the Democrats are going Mawr with a doesn’t believe in checking the president and you count trying to dump tying Trump into this whole thing. We’ll see how far that goes. I’m sort of skeptical just with a little bit of background knowledge of these different laws and what Cavanaugh’s said doesn’t look like he said a whole lot as most justices, you don’t on matters that are gonna be of interest to the Senate. And so there’s gonna be a lot of dodging. When when these hearings began, it looks like they’re gonna They’re gonna begin. So

[0:19:44 Speaker 0] yeah, I mean, with any Supreme Court justice nominee, people are concerned about how this nominee affect our legacy. So if you think of the Republicans being a post, many of the justice that President Obama put forward is because how will this affect our legacy? Well, well, this person kind of restrict to meet many things that we’ve done using the same thing going on here. What the idea what will have with Obamacare will happen with some of the I would have seen her liberal victories and using this idea that that Thea Pointy may not be supportive of investigating the president when you know there’s a high level suspicion of the president is supposed to ring true. This idea of kind of increased corruption and things of that nature and this is extremely problematic because one of the problems we’re gonna run into is if we see the court being politicized and if the members of the court are also did not begin to see see his cronies of president or Congress, where it is already a little level respect. If the court loses legitimacy, we’re gonna have a major problem in terms of understanding, are actually establishing trust in government. And when that lack of trust in government boils over, you get you get a number of problems and in terms of not just who was elected but also policies there put forward but also people’s responses to policies. And people don’t trust government going to constantly fight these policies. In many ways, things the government may be trying to that will actually help the community may actually backfire or short circuit because the public has lost their trust. And so we have to be very careful about this in terms off doing this now, both parties want us to not trust the other party, and that’s how they’ve been successful. But in doing so, they really led to the decay of trust in government in general, which has led to numerous problems for the governor to actually govern itself. Teoh carry out policies, but also for the parties to be effective in getting their things through.

[0:21:49 Speaker 1] I think you know I’ll make a arm chair since I haven’t aren’t your prediction, Um, I think you understand the Democrats anger over this, not only the way Obama’s last purported nominee, Gorsuch, was treated, which is he wasn’t given a hearing. It wasn’t that they voted him down, didn’t get a hearing. And the Democrats will say, I’ve heard Paul Begala is a Democratic consultant. Others say that. Look, you know, we’ve We’ve basically, you know, won the popular vote in every election since, you know 1992 except for the 2000 for election, right? You know which one in 2000 and Electoral College, Trump won 2016. And yet the court is going to reflect a conservative mentality, and the court is a long running, longer running institution. And is even Mawr kind of removed from public opinion than the Senate. That’s that’s why Democrats are angry in and scared. But I would suggest this is my armchair prediction. I think Kavanaugh’s gonna be confirmed. It’s a Republican nominee in a Republican Senate, and even though the Senate is close, as you guys saw on that map, there are a lot of Democrats in red states, and I don’t think they want to oppose the candidate, that it looks as kind of qualified experiences Cabinet. But to make my Democratic friends out there feel better, Um, I think that Robertson Cavanaugh, in their past jurors prudence, have shown they’re looking out for the interests of the court, the court as an institution. What Professor McDaniel and I want to really kind of emphasize throughout the semester. It’s hard to see what the Congress sometimes there aren’t many people in the Congress who are acting in the interest of the Congress, which is why they’re trust rating is so low approval rating the presidency. There’s a little bit of that, too, with Trump. You know, whatever you think of President Trump, you know, he doesn’t seem to be kind of guarding the institution The way that Bush and Obama and others had done, um, the courts a different matter, though I think the court has gone out of its way not to get involved in, you know, certain kinds of questions. Roberts cast the deciding vote upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act Obama care. I think in large part not because he actually thought there was a compelling legal argument, but because he didn’t think the court should get involved in knock down a major piece of legislation you know, duly passed by democratically elected institution. I think Robert’s you remember Steven Jesse, Professor Jessie’s ideological spectrum on the court that we saw last week. Don’t be surprised if Robert slides a little closer to Kennedy on that scale. And that Kennedy kind of slides or the Cavanaugh would be kind of where Roberts is. That that’s my my cheap prediction and you know it. You go broke predicting the court That’s a can broke anyway. So you know what I care. All right, So, uh, provisioning down, You got a couple things you want to talk about a cute up your trump stuff on the

[0:24:44 Speaker 0] So what I want to move to is less of discussion kind of politics and partisan, competing with each other and really policy. And one of the policies that are coming forward, or what I did is coming forward is from the Trump administration specifically in regards to reducing the cost of prescription drugs. And so they set up kind of a task force to look into the import importing of certain drugs specifically those in which the patent has expired. And so they’re not trying to basically bringing a bunch of different drugs from overseas that would compete with already established American drugs but specifically those with a patent has expired as a way to try to lower the cost of drug prices. And so there been recent scandals. If you think about the price of EpiPens going up, or do you think of the Marts scarily, where he increased the price of one drug by 5000% eso he’s referred to as the farmer bro again, he was the one who bought the Wu Tang album on Lee to go to jail. So that’s what happens. But there are these concerns about the rising cost of pharmaceuticals, and this is really one of the major concerns we’re talking about reducing the cost of health care. So one of the reasons why the U. S. Has such high costs, pharmaceuticals and a lot a lot of other technology is the U. S. Is very open to new technology where you find a lot of European countries argument. Look, we will not accept any new technology until you establish that it is significantly better than the already established technology. The U. S allows with more experimentation, things that nature. And so because of this, a lot of new drugs on the market and with the new drugs costs go up things that nature. And a lot of times there’s this fear that you’re paying more for a new drug that’s just as effective as the old drug, which is cheaper. However, the Trump administration is taking the very small set of drugs and saying these drugs no one have a patent there for specialized populations. Can we look into importing them as a way to increase competition and lower the cost? And so this is really one of the pushes of the Trump administration. There has been pushback from the Republican Party, and you have pushed back from pharmaceutical companies. Specifically, pharmaceutical companies are arguing that if you use drugs overseas, you cannot check in terms of quality. However, people who are supporting and saying look, the FDA, overseas equality or the of drugs drugs that are that are created overseas already, and so that oversight exists. And so this argument by pharmaceutical companies is actually is a moot argument, But their argument is basically, you know what? We have better control. We have better quality standards. You don’t know what’s going on over there and by the FDA doing this, you’re undercutting quality standards. And so they don’t want to say a you messing with the profits. You’re undercutting quality. And so it’s only interesting interesting to see how this um comes out over time. As you do see, there is a significant level of Republican opposition to this this type of activity. However, you may see President Trump be able to woo some of the Republicans who are weary of this as they may see benefits with this and the constituents over time.

[0:27:55 Speaker 1] Just a couple of quick points and it’s a fascinating issue. I think it shows a couple things. The first is it. Trump is a Republican, but is a Republican largely as a matter of convenience. I think in a lot of ways it’s, you know, he’s shown on trade policy he’s shown on of, you know, with even the relationship with Russia, these air, not traditional Republican positions on these issues, Um, and that has worked to his advantage so far. He hasn’t really lost much of the hard core conservatives support that you would think would be suspicious of some of the things that Trump has proposed, that he has done tax cuts and he’s kind of paid attention to evangelicals. But it’s not like Trump’s attraction to evangelical whites has always been a bit of a mystery to me, given his past. But you know, he does stuff like this. He kind of cuts across traditional party lines on some of these issues on DSO. I would encourage you guys as your obviously interested Spectators with respect to the Trump administration. We all are as citizens and followers of politics. Um, he’s interesting, and the rhetoric and the tweeting sometimes gets in the way of some interesting things. I’m not saying good or bad, but I’m saying this is not something you would necessarily expect. Republican president. Now there’s a bit of a caveat there and that, as Professor McDaniels suggested, seeking a way to kind of reduce regulation or get around regulation and stimulate competition is a very kind of Republican, the idea. But you know presidents don’t tend to do these things. They don’t tend to go around some of these existing bureaucracies and so Trump. In that sense, it’s kind of shaking these things up. I’ve been involved in some surveys of, ah, people who use prescription drugs and one of things that really surprised me. Maybe not. But the actual number surprised me the percentage of people who are getting prescription drugs who go online, who shop online for these drugs. And it’s like 1/3 of people who are getting prescription drugs on a regular basis and the percentage of those who go online and who go to foreign sites to get their prescription drugs. And this is people who were admitting this and surveys. It’s about 50% of those who go online. So if you take 1/3 said to get their drugs online, half of those say they get them from foreign sources at 16 or 17% of Americans who were getting prescription drives. Yeah, who are getting their there? You know, prescription drugs from a foreign country, almost unquestioned, not almost unquestioned because of cost. So So let’s see what else we got here. We got

[0:30:28 Speaker 0] so trade war, so s So this is it’s next to the trade war. So we think of President Trump trying to open up trade in terms of certain pharmaceutical drugs. We are. We are seeing that he’s trying to close down trade in other areas, and so there is a and this is actually taken really the next two things. I wanna talk about it taking for the wonk blawg in The Washington Post with Walk Block So W. O. In K blawg is really policy analysis. And so you have a lot of data driven analysis or discussions of various research that it exists and the discussion within the walk logs. There’s this chart, and I think we can put the chart up like to accept. We seem to be frozen here frozen. Okay, that’s alright. We’ll describe his chart. The chart really dictates demonstrates where we’re seeing price price increases and price decreases for goods and services. And what we’re finding is that services are becoming much more expensive. So how there’s a good education, medical medicine. Things are medical character. These are becoming more expensive over time, but goods are actually becoming cheaper, and so they’re in regards of inflation, things of that nature. So if you think washing machines, cars, things of that nature. We see that goods. So if those things that are basically traded globally these goods, they have gone down in price. But services which cannot be traded have gone up in price. And so the fear is that if we start increasing tariffs, try to restrict the importation of certain over certain goods from overseas that we will see a rise in these prices. So we’re already seeing a drastic rise in the price of services. Expect to see a drastic rise in price of goods. And so this idea of this trade war being beneficial for the U. S. As common has come under question. Now, the counter argument is that if we restrict trade, but we’ll see is a boon to the U. S economy and so the U. S. Even though things will be more expensive, Americans will have more money to spend on these things to make their American economy strong. And a second thing that’s also important to note is that we have a lot of misconceptions about why we are seeing Americans import more goods. So why is it America’s just the lead and exporting? But now they’re importing more goods, Really, the key thing a point to is it Look at World War I and World War Two. They decimated the industry’s within Europe. And so because the European industry was decimated, the U. S. Was able to take advantage of that because again, the U. S. Did not face much in terms of wars and us, you have Pearl Harbor. But other than that, the US was really unscathed, and U. S production actually increased and was maintained because the European nations had to rebuild. And because of this, US able to get a large market share in terms of exporting goods. But as these other countries rebounded and they were able to start manufacturing, the U. S. Lost its market share. And so one of the reasons why you saw this pocket or this window of US manufacturing and this kind of golden age of us manufacturing is a consequence of World War I and World War Two, where you saw European nations and their industries being decimated and they’re just now rebounding, and the U. S. Is now feeling the effects of that rebound. But this is an important thing to be aware of as we talk about this idea of the trade war, increasing tariffs going forward and what exactly are the cost of this? So where should we expect to see an increase in certain goods and services where we might expect to see a decrease? It’s very clear the things such as washing machines, cars, TBS goods, where we’re going to expect to see an increase over time, even though they have. We’ve seen a steady decrease. But services was still continue to increase in terms of their costs, something that really globalization has no no effect on.

[0:34:28 Speaker 1] Well, I think you know, once again it’s kind of consistent with the point raised earlier about Trump pursuing policies. They’re not traditional Republican policies. In fact, Democrats haven’t touched much on trade issues. They sort of Mao Mao these sorts vision positions when they’re speaking to union members and kind of key elements of what we refer to as the New Deal Coalition traditional Democratic Coalition that you see in places like Michigan and Wisconsin and in Ohio. But it hasn’t come up a whole lot lately. The traditional cry here is that is, Professor McGinnis suggests, is that the American worker is being hosed by these tariffs that exist in other countries. Right that way, since the stuff is produced in China, or stuff is produced in India because the labor is so cheap, right? And then they don’t let our goods and services into their countries because they’re protecting, you know, all of their markets. And we’re going to start getting, you know, we’re gonna level the playing field. And so this trade war reflects that mentality where, you know, the United States is no longer gonna have basically no entry barriers while these other countries have all of these bears. The classic example back from my time in the eighties was Japan, right? You know, the United States got all these goods and services from Japan, but, you know, Japan would not allow us farmers to export rice to Japan. Right? So that’s that’s kind of the mentality, and we want Trump is basically we’re going to stop that, But there are consequences to doing that. Um, and first got hit the nail on the head. The biggest thing, the easiest trade off that you guys can can probably vision here is this might be better for us workers, right? That these barriers we’re going to help protect some U. S. Industries at the cost of prices, though you know who benefits from these kind of, ah, more free market oriented solutions and low trade barriers. Basically, consumers like you or me people the middle class who get cheap milk who get cheap cars to get cheap appliances. That doesn’t happen as much. If you erect these trade barriers, right prices will probably go up for consumers like you for May. But it may be better for people who work in particular industries. That’s kind of the trade off. And Trump look, Trump’s doing what he said he was going to do. He is trying to deliver on these promises to the people in places like Wisconsin in Pennsylvania and Ohio and Michigan who got him elected, right? So I think that’s a big part of what’s going on. Whether Americans like the trade off right, maybe higher inflation, higher goods and services in exchange for, you know, protecting workers in certain industries, you know, we’ll see. We’ll see. All right, so we’re gonna close as we like to with marijuana.

[0:37:09 Speaker 0] That’s right. So I last policy discussion again. This comes from the Washington post walk log is. Does marijuana legalization? What are the costs and benefits up it? And so a study, which is looked at state of Washington and State of Colorado, which have legalized marijuana. What they found is there’s no negative effects associated with legalization of marijuana, and they have found some positive effects specifically in terms of police officers being able to clear cases dealing with violent crimes. And so the argument and this chart demonstrates, is that over the period of the legalization of marijuana, you see that police are able to focus efforts on other types of crimes, and so they’ve been able to spend more time on clearing cases related to violent crime. And this has been a constant argument that people put forward towards the legalization of marijuana that if police been less time prosecuting people for marijuana and more time on more serious crimes, that this will benefit society overall. And there is there is some evidence that, yes, please are are clearing violent crime rates and at a higher rate than before. Now this is an exciting better. It’s not really clear, but one of things that people argued that we would speed would see a drastic change in terms of how police operate and where they focus their time. It’s clear that they were able to spend more time on dealing with violent crime when they’re not dealing with against minor charges such as marijuana. Now, whether or not this leads to a better society and whether or not this the lack of a negative effect of marijuana will persist, really isn’t clear. But these are things that’ll develop As time goes on, Let’s go

[0:38:51 Speaker 1] back to the charge for a sec. I wanna I wanna take a look at that if we could, cause I think it’s a really interesting chart we’ve actually gone to are are hard copies of these things because they are their tablets frozen. Uh, technology is a wonderful thing. Thes lines are really interesting. They so exactly what Professor McGinnis says. So you’re seeing these cut points between the legalization post legalization vs pre legalization, although I swear those relationships. So those airlines, it’s summarized the overall trends, right? Um, man, look at those data points, especially in Washington State. There is a lot of variants around that central line tendency there, so so professor games right to use it. There is, by the way, I think the logical relationship we’re talking about here. That is what happens with policing. If police are no longer forced to deal with these penny ante marijuana possession charges, you know that it seems quite logical that they would be freedom to do that. But But I would suggest that trend line in Colorado is is barely negative. Um, and then the the post legalization and then one in Washington. There’s a lot of variance around those central tendency. So those of you who are used to kind of looking at graphs that summarized data, I encourage you to kind of, you know, pause here and take a look at those things and kind of see how compelling you think the overall evidences I, you know, having seen some articles on this, particularly with respect Teoh the budget impact in Colorado. In Colorado, I’d be making the figure up, but I want to say it’s like $250 million or something. Some really, really and please check me on that because I did just make that up. But for some reason that number six out of my mind has a lot of money. You know, when a lot of the times the argument has been, it’s not just, you know, Scooby Doo Democrats who make the argument for legalization There are a lot of Republicans making the argument for legalization on two grounds. One, the ground that Professor McDaniels is mentioned, which is it frees up policing. The second ground is fiscal. Um, you know that you know, rather than have a black market for this, where you know, guys named Taco Joe make money, this money goes to the state, and it is reinvested in, you know, Usually education is usually what it’s tag marked for. Um, having said that, it’s a It’s a complicated issue, right? I mean, I was talking about this with some friends, like, you know, OK, so the drinking age is 21. What’s what’s the legal age for pot? And you know what? What about Children and selling to Children? I learned there was a conference in Denver I went to, so I got to see when these marijuana shops up close and one of things that was really interesting to me is that place is locked down. I mean, you cannot get in unless you show your i d. You’re of a certain age. Um, it is completely monitored with all sorts of security equipment and things like that. You know, it’s a pretty high end, you know, type shop. I was surprised only dealing cash. Yeah, exit’s really interesting. So you know, and just another anecdote will get you guys out of here. I was watching an episode of the profit with Marcus Lemonis. Or I think that’s his name, who goes around and use his own money to Teoh invest in these businesses and helps fix them up. He had a whole thing on marijuana in California, and the question was, Should I invest in one of these marijuana growing operations in California where certain kinds of pot growing or legal? And there were a couple of counties out in the desert out in the East Desert near Palm Springs in Palm Desert? And they’re basically kind of out of money, and they rented public grounds, public held lands, I should say to some of these marijuana growers, and they, you know, essentially eradicated their, uh, their public debt by virtue of this, but but Marcus that the prophet is the show on him on the CNBC, Then, referring to he basically raises questions, said the problem from an investment point of view is, yeah, The state says it’s legal, but there are still federal laws against doing this. What happens if the feds decide to come out here and sees everything you know? And I’ve invested in this operation and it’s legal by state laws. But if the feds decide to come crackdown on me, I mean, I lose my entire investment. So it’s an interesting question from a business point of view as well as professor dances, that business is just one angle, this huge public policy issue involving policing and law enforcement and, you know, public funds for funds for public enterprises, especially government. And it’s it’s really fascinating, but is a public opinion guy. One thing that’s clearly happened is that opposition to, uh, I would say, Let’s be clear. De criminalizing opposition to decriminalizing pot has gone down, down, down. There are very few people who strongly support keeping pot small positions of pot. Still having it be illegal

[0:43:52 Speaker 0] support, understand everything, making it illegal and de criminalisation. So Massachusetts decriminalised certain amounts of marijuana. Possession of certain amounts of marijuana basically means it’s not legal for you to have it, but we’re not gonna prosecute. And so that’s that’s a little bit different. And so de criminalisation means that if you have it, we’re not gonna prosecute. I think when people think about like Amsterdam or things like that something, it’s legal. It’s that there’s a certain areas were like, You know what? We’re not gonna prosecute it. And where’s opposed to California, where they have made it legal babe? Or are Washington and Colorado, where it is legal? But again, there are certain place where you can swim with one place you can’t smoke in. Some people were allowed to some people who can’t.

[0:44:32 Speaker 1] That’s right. Try in some places medicinal, marijuana and therapeutic, but different laws, different states. This is this patch work quilt of federalism that, you know Professor McDaniels have talked about in some of lecture modules also, So all right, that’s all we have for ah week number to

[0:44:49 Speaker 0] have a good week. 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