what’s a 100 billion it just disappears call from the CDC we’re going to be talking about Federal BC government if you overperform you’re going to get penalized it’s an Empire with over 100,000 employees what’s the pay like you create fake support for emotionally charged issue you get people looking in that direction what can people do Sackler Gallery yeah the pharmaceutical family some are sleeping in there yeah people across the country see investors coming in buying up the housing stock they spend $60 million a year telling America don’t smoke they spend the exact amount of taxpayer dollars subsidizing what tobacco production in the United States you’re going to make a lot of friends I’m going to make a lot of friends America you asked for this well maybe didn’t ask for it but I have to pay for it here we are with First Amendment Attorney Benjamin hey Peter it’s good to see you again thank you yeah for those that don’t know Benjamin and I did a video in Chicago and I loved I loved your Insight and your take on things so round two yeah we’re in DC where I I used to live I lived for about 15 years so I know something about the town I also was a political appointee uh at the Federal Election Commission I served as uh Council to to Chairman of the Federal Election Commission I’ve worked on soft influence campaigns I’ve worked on electioneering campaigns I’ve worked on constitutional litigation I know something about how the game is played and this is the people’s Capital right yeah and so there’s enough that I want to talk about and be fair about that I think will interest folks on the left who have very good arguments and folks on the right that I know a little better so I’m happy to aome happy to jump in okay so you is it fair to say you’re credential Benjamin I have some credentials yes okay but you know here’s an interesting credential $7 trillion that’s our annual budget every year in the United States yep and somewhere hovering around $ 32 trillion is the national debt some some people say that’s more like 60 or 90 that there’s some accounting tricks going on but we’ll take the government’s word for it and say it’s a simple 32 trillion that we’re that we’re staring down we’re walking in the direction here of an iconic scene it’s the Watergate hotel and office complex in front of us 1972 five burglars get caught in the early morning of June and they’re breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters we know some of the common characters like G Gord and lyy we later find out that even the president Richard Milhouse Nixon himself was implicated in this and so when when people think about corruption in DC they often have this sort of visual and I mention the story of Watergate because political scientists tend to think about the presidency having weakened greatly after that time Americans lost trust in the executive branch because of that occurring so what comes in to fill in that Gap is the rise of the more modern administrative State what do I mean by that I mean you know your alphabet agency uh organizations so the EPA that was instituted under Nixon Centers for Disease Control Health and Human Services we don’t know how many there are so so the federal government we don’t know how many the federal government doesn’t know the in in the Federal Register the official reporter legal reporter for the federal government when task to accounting of this the general accountability office said there’s no official list or or or number because remember we can make this really complicated we get into legal ease we have S sort of some semi-private Public Partnerships are those agencies are they not okay um are how Downstream are they and still considered a federal agency informally we know that there’s somewhere around 440 uh federal agencies just in the last fiscal year 2023 alone there was over 300 billion with a B of improper payments that came out so that’s about 2 to 3% of the federal budget okay that’s poof but what’s a few billion 100 billion it just disappears and you started the conversation talking about our federal deficit and our expenditures of roughly $7 trillion yeah yeah but our tax revenues are what hovering around 4 trillion a little over 4 trillion I think that’s right mhm so we have to to to foot that bill we have to print the money right print the money and to print the money devalues the money creates inflationary policy as we see yes even though the city features corruption I tell you what the crop live pretty nicely and the city looks very nice it’s it’s a beautiful place as an outsider just walking around the mall areas and this neighborhood up here Georgetown it’s beautiful oh yeah yeah no and and local we’re going to be talking about Federal DC government but local DC government compared to Chicago it runs in the black it usually doesn’t have a deficit us doesn’t have a debt uh I don’t agree with everything that the city of DC does but one reason is um they can’t go on large Adventures because Congress has oversight uh for any any sort of broad new steps that they want to take have to be approved by Congress first I wish that applied to every city but that’s just political preference yeah you can roll we just thank you appreciate crossing over the water we like to make sure excuse us sorry oh nice boat yeah cool in here they AC see it yeah exactly it’s a nice little break so you’re saying one of the reasons that these agencies keep on growing there’s more money going towards them which we’re going to get into today CU I’m very interested in this topic is because everyone’s got a piece of it here to some degree and they don’t want to see that go in the other direction how you yeah we were talking about budget reform and Dad and you were asking the question is is it all over or can we reform this and my indication is that look the American public loves their subsidy the middle class gets a mortgage subsidy right of the tax tax R they don’t want to give that up the rich for example when they build luxury oceanfront homes the insurance companies that provide for that are subsidized by the federal government through a guarantee so if there’s massive payouts and they’re damaged they know that the feds are going to bail them out in very few American cities does the airport go almost right into downtown right it’s an irritating factor to me in housing policy in dc2 one way to make things more expensive is to build artificial scarcity so if you prohibit Sky Rises you prohibit buildings going upwards beyond the height of the monument behind the height of the capital building you’re going to have less housing and DC is a I’ve lived here a long time it’s a very expensive place to live there’s ways to alleviate that but we have our national pride and when I talk to both Democrats and Republicans about that they almost universally agree with no we we should we should keep that as the highest building I’m on board with that too yeah I I am out of line with probably 95% of Americans that’s why I like you you’re a contrarian And all I’ll let shapes and forms when we get into these policies and these agencies I’m going to I’m going to let you know America you’re going to make a lot of friends I’m going to make a lot of friends America you asked for this right well maybe didn’t ask for it but I have to pay for it yeah [Music] yeah what a beautiful boat ride it’s a good idea yeah oh yeah yeah it’s great take care Oh Benjamin this is beautiful this is new development used to be pretty sey but they put a lot of money into the war you know I had no idea before this trip of all of these different parts of the city I just knew the mall area yeah it has its own little pockets there’s UST Street there’s Noma your Union Station there’s Capitol Hill each one has its own character and spirit this is sort of the residential and little touristy restaurant area we’ll be getting into basically just agency after agency so some of the storied older government buildings there and we have little residential pocket that’s older here as well what a Confluence so you could live here yeah go to dinner there and work right over there now it’s unlikely that you’re going to do that because as I mentioned before housing prices in DC are astronomical so the sort of categories of people you see are sort of younger working professionals once people want to get married or rais children okay if you’re working in a government agency in particular you’re not earning enough to live in a decent place in in DC but we’re heading to the CDC okay if I talk a little bit about them yeah go for it do your thing I always say to my audience that’s you my audience watch my content watch other people’s content go in with an open mind right don’t believe everything here everyone comes from a different angle yes including me no one’s immune from that yes and the beauty of the information landscape we have is you have options you have choices I think the number one skill that needs to be taught now more than ever critical thinking skills right to navigate the flood of information on the internet yeah now I’ve seen a lot of government thinking they’re going to go in the direction of we need to close down speech we need to limit this limit that bad move because then there’s someone that controls that message right I’m a free speech attorney absolutely absolutely that’s your wheelhouse approach every bit of information as a skeptic which is to say when you hear something what yeah even the most plausible bits and to really train yourself into being skeptical on everything and that develops an analytical mind it develops citizens who are capable of self-governance which is the promise of our Bill of Rights and it takes away power from the elites who are trying to rob you of moral agency that is the individual capacity to make decisions and choices in your life and not toed them to folks like what we see right here here in front of us that building is a cross between something at a tashkin usbekistan and Geneva Switzerland some of the if they if those two cities architectural movements had a kid some of the old buildings in DC have a Eastern German vibe to them I I dig it though actually for me understanding DC is understanding power and bureaucracies and less so about the people because if you talk to and I’ve heard this from countless number of political Brokers to bureaucrats politicians will be here for two four 6 years I’m here forever there’s an entrenched bureaucracy an entrenched Shadow political class if you will and it’s understanding how that operates more than who is the named Uh current Secretary of uh the CDC for example by the way this is the building housing the CDC this is a cool building yes that’s the HUD building this is HUD Department of Housing and Urban Development is a scandal ridden organization you always have a linkage between sort of the mortgage banking industry and this organization in the Clinton Administration Henry ceros for example was one of these actors who was pushing for every renter should be able to go out and get a home and we need to really work on the subprime loan market and making that more accessible to Americans and of course that created a real implosion in the mortgage Market in America and bankers who and banking institutions that are again subsidized through organizations such as HUD then are able to enjoy more economic success and when you see countless leaders from HUD taking up spots at some of the top mortgage lending institutions in America it becomes a suspicious question okay so there’s a I don’t know much about HUD there’s a HUD revolving door yes work here go into the private sector exactly the relationships have been and the policies that occur seem to be questionable right that they seem to favor mortgage lending institutions and this is all painted in the name of we want to make housing an American reality for the lowincome you know individuals when that’s usually a message that seems to be being sold and pushed by mortgage shops that want more favorable terms more subsidies more guarantees by the federal government that if they offer these loans to this segment of society that they’re going to be backed up and taken care of and so Americans get excited about this this is another another thing that they get excited we should we should we should be looking out for the working class we should be taking care of them but it’s usually big banking institutions that seem to be pushing A lot of that narrative going okay let me ask you this though we’re going to talk about housing it’s a real important part in the American dream it’s becoming harder and harder yep especially for younger Generations like the boomer generation I mean people are going to call me out here but you could basically walk backwards mouth breathing and and buy a home back in the day right it was easy y compared to now when people across the country see investors coming in buying up the housing stock it’s extremely frustrating and especially I’m not a big regulation guy but there’s certain regulation we need that’s an example of that might be something HUD should look into right I I don’t know if it’s connected to HUD but it’s something that are definitely should be be being pushed by our federal government yeah yeah certainly on the Securities and Exchange side on HUD side those are in the game if you’re in a community and you own your home you’re going to Care way more about your community traditionally than if you’re renting and might move out of it yes absolutely and what do we have here Centers for Disease Control it’s a 9 billion with a B dollar a year agency Public Health act gives its powers to do things like inspect Goods at the border fumigate produce best standards about what uh to do with infectious diseases how to treat them Etc you know most of the agencies that were were set up originally at least early on Were Meant To Be advisory agencies provide information to the American public um here’s best practices here’s some transparency on this or that over time they sort of morph and grow into something more powerful curious fact about the CDC any employee that goes to work there has a 50% chance of sometime in their life than working for big Pharma one of the large 50% 50% of the employees here who are governed with governed with dictating Public Health standards in the United States will go on to work for big Pharma okay where are you getting that number I I can send you links for the okay that I’m going to put the link in the description I’m happy to give you a whole lot of there okay okay cool um you know revolving door we talking about HUD if you look at MC and you look at several of the big Pharma uh companies and their leadership that they send in uh at executive level at the CDC that’s pretty amazing as well so the incentive structure is for many put your time in you’re in a government job you’re going to get a pension uh then down the road potentially you’re going to get something much better you got that deal with the with the company that’s going to pay you way more now there’s a one-year cooling off period most people that’s that applies to most federal agencies once you leave you have to wait one year to work for a regulated community that you know would be subject to the government that you were government body that you were employed for but here’s a more Curious fact about the CDC it’s one of the few agencies where Congress said not only is the agency good we’re going to allow you to create your own nonprofit so it has a nonprofit group on the side the CDC Foundation who are its main sponsors might might you guess who Benjamin who big F K so um Roch the maker of Tamiflu put several hundred thousand into that who produces information ads that you should try to use Tamiflu or to or flu prevention medicines the CDC uh fizer put in over $3 million uh for a disease they’re working on who will be producing informational advertisements about that the fine folks at the CDC so that’s the strange conflict of interest it’s given rise to people saying that all the disclaimers the CDC puts out saying that this is independent advice and uh is completely impartial probably should be removed it’s strange to have the financial backing of a industry and community that you regulate financially support a call from the CDC maybe we touch on something you even more controversial okay Co and uh you know we saw at least there was one public statement from former secretary Alinsky that the US should have done better could have done better in its covid response at this point in time shouldn’t it be like okay here’s a here’s a moment of reflection we should stop it was a chaotic time it was wild time now what worked what did what was what wasn’t and learn from it right to me many of these issues I don’t know if it’s the media cycle or just how human minds work it’s like the treadmill of events just keep coming at you and like rearview mirror is not being looked at too closely something as serious as this yeah we should all sit down doesn’t matter the political party and be like okay what what we get right what’ we get wrong National deliberation right and for those that are watching from this institution I know one thing too there are many good people working in here and all these institutions the last thing I want to do is put every individual under the bus cuz that’s not fair at all but I what the the inertia that something this big takes on can lead more to a negative or more to a positive right yes for society yes and we need to learn about what direction things are going and recalibrate if need be fair to say fair to say speaking of that that’s why we have the rule of law in America James Madison said we’re a country of laws not of men we’re governed by not a charter of good intentions but of actual Bill of Rights and rules that government has to follow Thomas Jefferson didn’t sign a declaration of fuzzy feelings he signed a declaration of independence and that comes to Center for Disease Control they they’ve L been on the losing end of litigation most recently when you hear about the moratorium for rental evictions during Co oh yeah yeah I did I did a story on that actually it wasn’t HUD it wasn’t a variety of other actors it was this body no way who said know if you force people out of their homes they might travel with Co that creates a public health emergency and we have the power to regulate that now that was shut down by the Supreme Court soundly which said you you have defined power spelled out in the public health act they’re a b c and d and you can act within these areas but once you get up far a field of that you absolutely can’t do that and that imagine imagine having a government body that no matter how tangental it could relate something to Public Health it had the power to control your life that would be a tyrannical power Let’s cross here this is fascinating I’ve never been over here these buildings are massive this is straight out of Dio Ukraine we’re looking at the holiday in we’re looking at a dated a very dated holiday in and next to it is FEMA so on the back side of this is FEMA Federal Emergency Management okay FEMA is an interesting one I was just in lahina Maui right where the fires went through still charcoal right and the citizens are not happy understandably they feel like the feds have just sort of left them out there to deal with it and the cameras aren’t paying attention anymore because one of those events when the fires are coming through it’s exciting those are the fireworks on camera right and then 8 months later not many people are paying attention and they’re just like what’s going on out here I mean it’s state bureaucracy is pretty deep coupled with the feds coupled with all these organizations and it’s it’s messy and it’s a slow thing but at the same time if Government wanted to move quick on it they could they could yeah they don’t have an interest it seems like I recall the uh story being during Hurricane Katrina that it was W I don’t know if this is true I just remember the reporting that it was Walmart who got there first on the ground well well before any federal actors were no who was first on the ground were the locals in molai the island over without a traffic light yeah yeah super cool people hunting deer bringing them over on boats yeah those are the first people there that’s people helping people without a bureaucracy so you’re from De Moine Iowa just flew in for the FEMA meeting right perhaps they put you up with the holiday in you Age 3 years in 3 days maybe that’s a public he drapes Public Health Emergency if those drapes could speak all right we’re being at this point Benjamin uh well you’re in a city that that welcomes that it’s easy to poke around yeah as free agents here we need institutions I’m not one of those we don’t need any institutions types right you need strong institutions you need sober institutions to run a country well right correct the genius of Federalism is that we should have in theory Laboratories of democracy where states can test different approaches to governance and we can learn from one another yes nobody at the CDC is smart enough and I I agree there’s very good people very good intention very smart but they’re not smart enough to be able to figure out what that is you allow states to experiment and we’re losing more and more of that through an overarching federal government through more of these sorts of agencies you allow states to experiment and you come up with more Innovative better policy Solutions that’s what I’m in favor of yeah because we did have that benefit in the United States during Co if you’re a laptop jockey like me I could move easy y right and living in Florida was a compl completely different reality than living in California there was all of this Fallout that took place that took some time to really identify but one thing that burned in my memory was schools were closed in San Francisco for 18 months Public Schools right yet the tents on the sidewalk the playground was closed the kids were walking between the traffic and the parked cars because they couldn’t go down the sidewalk parents are at work y you know this was I’m talking the tenderloin this is the yeah I’m familiar poor neighborhood right they’re on drugs or they’re working super hard sort of one of the two there and these kids are just sort of out to fend for themselves but the kids in private school the governor’s kids are getting an education so the hypocrisy I saw was disgusting absolutely it was gross and then and then they say they they care about their safety and their betterment and all that which was yes because if you looked on the streets for 3 seconds You’ be like this this is so wrong then in Florida the kids were out of school for a very short time and they just took a lot of a lot less of a hit to the brain I think right as far as you know social interaction and we’re just starting to learn about these negative impacts we’re starting to see that in the science right how far behinds you think okay here’s where the chips fell yeah what worked what what didn’t what what hybrid model can we use for next time what makes sense yeah and we have from what I’m seeing Zero of that and this was just helicoptered in from duchan Bay toan Sackler Gallery don’t tell me that’s from the Sackler family yeah the pharmaceutical family it’s right here that is unbelievable for those that don’t know the opioid yes catastrophe what was that end of the 90s early 2000s really hit Appalachia hard right I was up there last summer there are towns there where half the population is faced down in the dirt on drugs like small towns it’s like people are working very hard or they’re on drugs that’s what I found right but that’s uh the guy behind Purdue Pharma it is yeah I mean they settled for the opioid is they settled out yeah but I’m sure they still made a ton of money yeah they’re still they’re still doing they can buy museums we have a gigantic set of buildings here this is the United States Department of Agriculture coming in with an annual budget of 380 some billion with a B dollar a year with over 100,000 employees now I’m not going to touch on its more noble purposes which is to say food stamps and snap which is food subsidy programs for the poor but the other Big Arm of business that this entity is engaged in is corporate welfare and it does it very well when we think about farmers in America we probably have a vision of the poor family farmer struggling to make ends meet the small farmer and how nice it is that we have these enlightened folks to be able to send checks and maybe help them out from time to time with things like crop insurance subsidies for growing or not growing certain types of uh products but the average farmer who is a recipient of aid from USDA has a net wealth nine times that of the average American the usually successful business farming has largely gone to Agra business and agriculture Agra corporations the top 10% top 10 wealthiest producers in agriculture reap about 60 6% of the federal subsidies that come through the Farm Act okay this is continuing on the same all Department of Agriculture it’s got its own City here all the way around there yes basically what happened was again in another time of emergency during the Great Depression under FDR president Roosevelt we decided that we could scientifically sort of decide how much production farmers in the United States should be engaging it sounds like a a Soviet style planning economy because it was there’s a famous Supreme Court case called wicker V filburn that challenged that Authority right this was at a constitutional crisis in the United States because all these New Deal programs like ones that told Farmers what they could produce and what they couldn’t were declared unconstitutional until Federal uh FDR threatened to pack the court and put on enough of his own justices to find these to be constitutional so the next year 1937 it’s called the judicial revolution of 1937 all of a sudden the Supreme Court starts saying these are fine exercises of federal power Commerce Clause is fully satisfied here and so you had far-reaching programs that would pay Farmers not to grow things to grow things to set certain amounts aside so that these smart folks 100,000 of them could decide exactly how much corn should be grown exactly how much ethanol how many soybeans Etc it’s a it’s a racket smart large agricultural corporations then also figure out how to siphon money out of this to do things like our cotton the cotton producers have taken hundreds of millions to pay for Indian reality shows in India to promote the sale of us cotton that’s US taxpayer dollars several hundred million to pay for that India reality shows India reality show what do you think about raisins Peter you a raisins fan I used to be more into raisins not so much these days all right well these guys we just walked from the USDA we’re going to Walk This Way in the mall they’re big into raisins all right this is one of the cases they recently lost there was a raisin set asde program so that remember there’s 100,00 folks there they’re very smart and they know better than you about how many raisins should exist in America at any given time they got formulas they got algorithms so what they did was they told Farmers anyone raising raisins in the United States we have our mathematical algorithm and we’ve determined that you have to give us 3% of the raisins we’re not going to pay you for it you have to give us 3% of your raisins one year might be 12% next year Etc and then at some point we will sell them and you’ll get a you’ll get a check and one Fella Mr horn got rather tired of this practice and he set his own raisins aside in his own Farm okay and he wrote them a nice letter and the USDA returned with a $750,000 fine against Mr horn and he challenged that all the way to the United States Supreme Court we have a fifth amendment that has what’s called a takings clause government cannot take property uh without compensating you and and uh he won that case oh that’s great so the courts are working the courts are working absolutely that’s why I love doing constitutional litigation I love bringing government bodies back to the people back to the original purpose it’s it’s like a journey song it just keeps going and going and going it’s an Empire okay this is the people’s this is the people’s department is what President Lincoln said it is the people’s Department this you know we also run agricultural Force speech programs so a lot of Industries through the USDA you have to contribute you’re forced to contribute a certain amount of money there was a mushroom case where mushroom producers had to give however much money every year to Uncle Sam to USDA and they would produce these ads to let Americans know how important mushrooms are in their diet and some mushroom producers said I think I’m perfectly capable of doing my own advertising I don’t need the fine folks at the USDA to do so smart as they may be that was a free speech case that invalidated that program because you can’t government can’t force people to carry a message they disagree with and even if you suspected we might have had problems for example during the Great Depression or in other emergency periods maybe we need to step back and say are we still in that emergency are they the right people the budget the budget and number of people in there are growing every year yes so in all these institutions we’ve passed so far today the number of people and the dollar amount is growing every year continues to go up yes here’s another fun one here is an institution if we go back to the CDC that we started at every year they spend $60 million a year telling America don’t go and smoke it’s bad to smoke you’re going to die hold on then we come over here to this institution they spend the exact amount of money $60 million subsidizing what tobacco production in the United States go and smoke go produce that tobacco come on come on we Ain so Benjamin we have arms of the federal government that don’t talk to one another they’re not aligned they’re spending taxpayer money in a schizophrenic and directly contradictory way that’s got to [Music] stop big sophisticated business interests figure out how to take public sentiment and turn it into a government program that you the American at home loves but which benefits their Bottom Dollar pocket so an example of this goes is dated it goes back to the 1990s when a group of trial attorneys and attorney generals across the United States sued big tobacco and with the theory of we’re going to get tough on these guys and they created what was called the master settlement agreement big tobacco the four largest tobacco producers would have to Place Large sums of money and make payments to the states who participated in this they would be subject to ongoing payments for their health programs but as a reciprocal treat that the big tobacco got was that it created these boundaries to competition so any new company that wanted to be a tobacco competitor would have to post millions of dollars of bonds in every state that they wish to operate so that made it nearly impossible for new entrance to come in they also made it so that they could share information about pricing and be able to raise prices unilaterally which would otherwise trigger antitrust concerns but it was sold as this package to America about the good we finally won we did it we put big tobacco in its place and big tobacco sitting in on K Street here with their team of lobbyists and political influencers and PR guys and they’re laughing because they figured out how to sell a package to the American people that I think is corrupt but which America celebrated and they think of as still a good thing to this day now this happens all the time in DC it’s there’s astroturfing firms uh DCI group is a famous one in in DC where you create fake support for a particular emotionally charged issue you get people looking in that direction you shut down an economic competitor around emotional issue X and this company is just stock prices doring what you call that astroturfing astroturfing the American population is constantly getting astroturfed and I I suppose it goes back to your original position about the need for analytical reasoning in schools and teaching people to to do the to that when you hear these campaigns when you hear promises about we’re going to finally shut down this particular bad group or or the like there’s a big chance that the competitor to that bad group is the one funding it and they’re just wanting to double their Market size and you should be really suspicious about [Music] that so walk us through this a little bit what’s going on up here this is a building most everyone knows every know this is the house that sends uh $1.2 million doar a year for the California prostitutes education program it’s uh one that allocates funding of several hundred million dollars a year for all the agencies we saw so that each one can have a PR firm or a public relations officer managing the image and finessing that for the public um it’s one that uh engages in questionable spending for for most Americans there’s a lot of talk we were just talking about popularity of congressmen and the like and two of the issues that you raised with me were one why are a congressman getting so wealthy and two what about trading and those sorts of issues MH and so I think when you look at insider trading there’s been academic studies that have shown there’s curious results about what happens when congressmen are involved in this particular process and how they have abnormally High rates of return very suspicious Y and so in 2012 Congress passed the stock reform and that requires some level of transparency for the trades that they do yeah the problem is that it probably didn’t go far enough and is doesn’t have effective enforcement So within 48 Hours of a trade they have to file information that’s publicly disclosed y but 48 Hours on a stock market is an eternity yeah okay so hours matter sometimes minutes matter on on a stock market so 48 hours seems too long to be effective also the fines are usually the customary fines are $200 for a violation and the house Ethics Committee the foxes guarding the fox hounds watching the chickens here foxes guarding the foxes uh are are usually prone to wave that fee so there’s you come before the house Ethics Committee they say you didn’t file your form next time we’re going to get you with $200 for that million dollar trade uh that you didn’t report so it seems it seems very effectual from 20 to 22 there was a big push for we can get this done we had a democratic control of of the house strong put people asking not not a word the American people want it American people bipartisan everyone wants this Nancy Pelosi has comeing out strongly opposed to this and strange word she uttered she said America is a free market system and that congressmen are people too and they have and they have rights right okay um so what would change that this is my simple fix yeah pay Congress members a million plus you’re going to bring in bright people right but the one caveat it you can’t do stock trading you can do S&P 500 whatever or you know the basics yeah but you can’t pick individual stocks and wouldn’t that alleviate a lot of that problem uh I think it would help so that’s what we call the Singapore model in terms of thinking about ethics reform Singapore has historically low levels of corruption because they P they pay their public servants extraordinarily well and that’s just a sober reflection of if you’re taken care of in the place that you work at your energies and devotion are going to be there sure and so if you’re at the Department of Defense you’re not thinking about boy how do I how do I become on the get on the board of directors at rathon exact it eliminates that problem now the reform we’re looking at doesn’t go that far the newest reform says um what we should do is one of two things either ban it completely and eliminate it or two um mandate the use of blind trust now several congressmen members and Senators already do this uh put the money into a blind trust and have someone else professionally manage it and when they leave office then they can see that again okay got um that that seems to that seems to strike a balance so long as the blind trust is is really blind I I have difficulty believing sophisticated smart aren’t going to have a way to figure out how to manipulate that but that’s what’s on the table right now in terms of Real Deals they’re getting paid what 160,000 180,000 I think it goes up to 190 for speaker of the house okay so you have a home where you live you got to live here somewhere you have a family with kids you’re flying back and forth they have to put the bill on the flights or no um no a lot of travel is taking care of but still that’s not much these days if you’re here all the time running two homes well you have several people who uh some members elect have CS in their office and they’ll sleep in their Cs and under that some are sleeping in there yeah yeah it’s it’s a very you know members like um I’m not prone to agree with them on many items but U there have been proposals to create basically dormitories for for Congressman okay so that’s not sustainable though maybe maybe in the honeymoon period the first couple years you’re okay with that yeah but after a while you’re going to get sick of that well as a Congress member let let’s let me go back to framer’s view here and Washingtonian view of DC this isn’t a place we’re supposed to be here very long you should come you should serve the public for a certain amount of time and you should leave so I don’t want them getting comfortable let’s make it a really ugly dormatory let’s make it be really cold yeah but if you don’t want the revolving door yeah I hear I hear with good opportunities afterwards why are they going to put so much effort into going here for a few years and then have to start over with whatever yeah I think the better reform on on that sort of angle is looking at systemic changes so term limits like we have for the president um term limits for staff term limits for bureaucracy but so the money’s got to be good so if they’re in those four or eight years or whatever it is absolutely take care of that time they can leave and not be stressing the the year after because if the money’s not good the whole time they’re in there they’re thinking how am I going to make money through this opportunity and not serve the country MH and you have to you have to have some honest appreciation for that because any human being in that situation is going to work through that same calculus and other things that we should think about are cooling off periods that we have we mentioned before Folks at CDC and in other areas how quickly they jump right now it’s about a year cooling off period for most agencies for folks to go to regulated Industries we can expand that to three or five years a year you still have valuable information that you’re going to share say with a pharmaceutical company or with a Auto producer you you put in a 5-year moratorium three-year moratorium becomes much less valuable and and creates a little bit less of that perverse incentive yeah but we want to change the system so the Mitch McConnell’s and the Nancy Pelosi can’t you know basically be paintings on the walls in these places well the problem is that this body um loves all the agencies that we just saw because everything that’s over there what they can do is say instead of getting into to the particular details of a law and passing something controversial they do something that sounds really good like the Patriot Act or the powers to the agency were about to go see the DHS and then they put the responsibility on those bureaucrats and those faceless blobs to to go out and and do it’s an ingenious system because then they don’t take as much of the heat they can say oh you know we we meant for that Patriot Act to work really well and and this the DHS spying on on Americans and pulling up their cell phone that we would have never authorized that right and and so to me yes I I understand the focus is here I think a greater threat is found in the alphabet agencies with the people that nobody really knows who they are as the Deep far right would say the Deep State okay mhm freedom and information request does not apply to to Congress uh a variety of sepas do not apply to members of Congress that apply to every other ordinary American on the street uh up until recently several of the Civil Rights Provisions had no application here they they could freely discriminate while the rest of America could not so they have a history of passing laws building out exemptions and then later it catches up later it applies so a simple fix to that is to prospectively say anything that does apply to Americans in general should also apply to Congress members of Congress what percentage of Congress members do you think go in with excellent intentions good intentions they care about the country they want to do good for the country and the people living here oh I I think just about just about everybody does that yeah so it just if you want to play baseball you have to go by the rules of the game and eventually you have to go by the rules of the game here DC is a it’s a city of deal making it’s a city of a political machine that knows how to operate and make deals happen so if if you believe that this city in this Capital has the wisdom to enact all the sort of policy we’ve already talked about if you really want that to happen then you have to allow these back room deals that most Americans don’t care for to occur Civil Rights Act of 1964 it’s important anti-discrimination law y that can hire on gender race yeah and and ended segregation in public schooling that was an important defining moment in American history Lyndon Johnson a Wheeling dealing sort of guy figured out you know this wasn’t passed because the members of Congress were good people and out of the goodness of their hearts he found one moderate Republican and figured out how do I buy this guy off in verac you know average vernacular sure he went to Congressman sackle in Indiana a moderate Republican and said you know what I’ve got a NASA installation we’re going to put in Purdue University and his vote switched so this is earmarking right and earmarking we banned for a period because people thought it was this is awful bad inside deals but as it turns out a lot of good things actually happen through earmarking and these kind of negotiations so when you have a capital that sits over so diverse and so complicated a society where you have doctors and lawyers you have unions you have environmentalists you have energy producers you have to expect that there’s a really hard compromise that has to occur and it occurs in the back rooms and there’s actual actual need for that space for that to happen President Lincoln uh during the Civil Wars the same thing if you look at War spending records that they’re very suspicious at that that time too giving out larger sums of money to folks who were willing to sell ammunition to friends and family uh patronage jobs for folks who otherwise might not have joined the union important and defining moment in American history political machines help that happen so now in my purest form I don’t I don’t I think this is all oversized and way too large and we need to go back to the original rules but most of America doesn’t agree with me and my radical so if if if we’re here and we’re doing that you have to allow some of some of that to happen understood okay and when you take a country like the United States cuz I’m all over it with making videos St Lawrence Island Alaska mokai Hawaii Southern Louisiana different universes yeah the differences of those areas are the differences of sometimes European countries like correct Slovenia and Northern Italy have more in common than than St Lawrence Island Alaska right and Southern Louisiana right but as this Center here grows as these guys get more power and the agencies start to surpass traditionally local and state Powers we lose that experimentation we lose the ability to do that the dynamism the reflection and the transparency yeah we need all of those components to work right yeah you know one one other radical thing that’s talked about in academic circles and this is on the left and right a national divorce uh do we have a representative democracy Pro probably not based on the number of constituents per per Congress member that sounds pretty simple but here’s the deal no it’s like you have a a blue State and a red state right doesn’t mean the whole State’s blue or the whole State’s red right it doesn’t even mean the town it doesn’t even mean your neighbors so this division that’s cooked up through the you know National divorce argument from what I’m seeing there is way less division than we are shown online or on television as in nobody cares if they’re UPS driers Republican or Democrat there’s no deep vested hatred it’s not the Balkans it’s not albanians versus macedonians your grandfather killed mine I don’t feel it I think it works really well online as a tagline for someone to click on yeah for mostly people that sit behind computers and navigate culture from behind computers which is the majority of people yeah yeah um but if you’re out around the country in these different bubbles in these different places 90% I’d say are on the same page with most things yeah there’s the arguments of how you get more more that draws us together than that which 100% and we’re also way more riant upon one another than we even realize for example you can say hey I don’t like Middle America for this or that if you’re here in DC say a person saying that right okay what about your food what about your energy right you can be in Rural America and be like f the city people they all suck okay yeah what about your telecommunications you know how well Amazon works in your hometown you know what I mean like everyone’s relying on one another interconnected we all need the oil from Louisiana yeah right yeah and so we’re all interconnected just not in a direct way that you see on the surface every day that’s my long rant on on uh I think and it’s actually why I why I love doing work in freedom of speech freedom of Association it’s about those rights of coming together people sharing information people amplifying their voices and Views yeah it’s a beautiful thing nice food truck do you build this my dad did that’s the coolest food truck I’ve ever seen thank you sir yeah good work what’s what kind of food what kind of food uh it’s a Jordanian Cuisine so basically we have Euros we have there you go oh you just closed down look at that too not like the these other the full Monte look at that but you’re closed for today right uh yes sir did you want to anything I I don’t mean to get fire things up and make you cook but I just want to show your truck cuz it’s awesome thanks sir all the best I always love promoting small businesses you know like if you can drive people to a business didn’t try the food but Che this check this place out you guys I’ll leave that link down below we’re in front of the Department of Homeland Security DHS agency Department that has the budget of 37 American states in a year 100 billion dollar it has been routinely found by Congress to lack any sort of serious internal disciplinary oversight so the number of folks who don’t show up for work show up late sleep while at work is incredibly High how do you have this info uh this has been through office of Inspector General reports that have been issued uh as to it and this has also been in Senate proceedings again put it in the you know material below yeah the Customs and Border division is one of the them that has the most arrest out of any federal executive agency for corruption for bribery for extortion at one time one Texas uh field office of the custom and border patrol had 80 corruption cases going on at one time this speak to the issue that we mentioned earlier about steming corruption and that’s the Singapore model about paying people correctly I bet you if you’re paying Customs and Border agents a healthy wage that reflects the risk and the demands of the job that you’re not going to see what we do see like we have videotape of custom and border patrol agents waving cartel across the border we’ve seen custom and border patrol agents loading marijuana onto trucks so Customs and Border Protection I’ve spent a fair amount of time with those guys down at the Border in Texas Arizona a lot of them really good people are in what they’re doing so I just don’t want to put them all into the bus I think it’s a small percentage right yeah no but but apparently you it’s still a small percentage but um the number of corruption rates bribery arrest and the like much higher than anywhere else in any other Federal agency I I have compassion to say if you’re working a hard job and you’re underpaid that is a hard that is a hard job I have some human compassion for that and I think they should be paid by the policies right now a lot of those people feel broken right because they can’t necessarily do their job like they could before yeah so it’s the same uh agency it’s the newest Federal agency right it was created after 911 and its design was to take 22 separate agencies bring them together make them more efficient I’m not sure that it did that because they seem to have different protocols they don’t communicate with one another very well but uh it’s an agency that sent over $4 million to the states to help house illegal aliens uh it’s done that it spent over $100 million uh for electric cars that it never put to use uh and it’s done engaged in other examples of questionable spending problematically what we’ve learned about its data collection practices I think sends a chill for creating a police state in America we know from good work from the American civil liberties Union that they go out to data vendors and they buy cell phone use patterns of Americans because they can’t seize that material the fourth amendment protects that as a reasonable unreasonable search and seizure but if they buy it then all of a sudden it becomes permissible what we’ve also learned they’ve gone further we just learned last year they’re not just buying cell phone data they’re getting all the social media information that they can that Americans are engaging in again not seizing it buying it because it’s available on Market they just buy it directly from the social media companies from third party vendors there’s third party vendors who do this who buy it from these companies right and they they hold those and so that’s that’s sort of a chilling thing we know that they’ve put agents into black lives matter into Muslim communities and while I don’t have Affinity or belong to any of those groups they have the same civil liberties as any other American and I certainly don’t without a warrant want agents out in the field investigating any group whether it’s the NRA or black lives matter that’s chilling that’s been proven yeah ACLU has shown work on that through their freedom of information and their litigation oh wow uh so it’s a it’s a chilling organization it’s one that I think is an anathema to the Bill of Rights it’s something that uh we shouldn’t be doing to America this isn’t a police state we don’t have stazzy we don’t track what people say what people think or how they’re interacting or liking on Facebook or or Twitter uh and so serious reform should come to DHS so what would their argument be for implementing those policies red white and blue it is prevention against terrorism ever ever since 9/11 it’s wrapping up policies that violate the letter or the spirit of the Constitution in a sense of we got to feel protected and that Uncle Sam is the best one to do that predictively so if we have cell phone records if we have social media uh data we can see who’s involved in radical uh Islamic groups or in white nationalist organizations and maybe we can predict and stop the next terrorist attack but we sacrificed so much of that at this but there are also people in there that are for example there’s a lot of fraud going on with Elders easy targets easy victims I met one of these guys really good guy loves his job he’s helping to stop the fraud that takes place I’m sure there are a few small functions of DHS that are beneficial and certainly I’m not opposed to things like FEMA that’s part of DHS the federal Med Emergency Management agency but I am against the police state I am against the or organizations ring and spying on on Americans of any ideological persuasion and I think Liberty and freedom of speech is always the better option rather than prevention due to fear government shouldn’t have a fear of its citizens it should earn the trust and respect of its citizenry and citizens shouldn’t fear that when they go to their next gun rifle club or their next Black lives matter meeting that there’s going to be a secret agent hiding in there recording what they’re doing and what they’re saying right that’s that’s awful and that that means that’s the that’s the beauty of this country is that we’ve had those rights it goes back to you know Alexa totville it’s very important that Americans of different sorts get together and we talk that the rich and the poor meet the black and blacks and whites islamists and Christians that we all flow and we get an understanding of each other and that’s not through a governmental interface that’s doing the hard work of getting to know your neighbor getting to know people in your community and that affects everything reciprocally through the country education critical thinking yeah and what was it Kennedy who set up Peace Corp I think that’s right okay I think there should be a domestic version of that maybe peace score is domestic like that too but an enhanced one okay now we’re talking government government agency so sorry about that you can’t get me to buy off on this but I appreciate the some some organic program that sends the kid from Southern Louisiana out to Hawaii the s a kid from Hawaii out to Nebraska or vice like this is such a big country with so many different values and types of people most of us are in our bubbles and for them to be to different things I think that would help the country immensely I’d love to see a group of well-healed donors get together and and you know what be great is like a couple folks on the right couple folks on the left and say let’s you know we have our own discussions and debates let’s make this opportunity available for the Appalachian poor kid for the poor kid in the Bronx and let’s let’s fund America’s youth Summit or something and they pour in several hundred million to make that I’m on board with that I would love that so that’s a challenge not DH not DHS to make that happen but no and and that’s the beauty of living in civil in a free Society is you call on Elites you call on the successful so whether it’s Mark Cuban listening whether it’s Elon Musk uh who whoever it may be um folks think about this it’s just a way that you heal torn Fabrics in society it doesn’t start from up high it comes from everybody and the rich Society have a part to play in that just as the poor do and if you start young yeah you know summer programs summer like that inner city kid going to Appalachia vice versa that just Bridges understanding and makes everyone’s life better I believe all right so we’re going to go to dinner in a little bit meet your wife you got it talk a little bit more have a broader discussion about the all things she has some interesting Insight yeah yeah okay that should be fun [Music] here at Cafe leapold with Benjamin’s better half is that fair to say that’s right okay shaa hi you’re on a similar page let’s say with this corruption topic right sure yeah our political value Val align okay okay so you have some experiences that took place here in DC we were talking about off camera yeah I went out of my way you know after college to get out of the DC grind because what I experienced trying to find you know work experience in college was pretty frightening you know I was going for a degree in public health health policy I was looking for summer jobs that had like certain alignments to that just to get a sense of what the industry is like medically based how we can help people keep people healthier all that dress and so an opportunity came up to work at NIH which has its main campus not technically in DC but just over Yonder in Bethesda Maryland you know they basically border each other so I get there and there’s not a lot of relevant information is what your day-to-day job is like all of these different sub agencies are combining different like specializations are combining oh you’re coming to work in ah get hyped and so I would say 50% plus and this was well before Co 50% plus of that orientation was talking about how cool the director of nah was uh at the time that was Anthony fouchy he’d been there since the 80s and it was like his whole CV and we’re so lucky to have him and like this guy is basically making the world a better place and there wasn’t a lot of relevant information about like you know here’s some really great things NIH is doing specifically or here’s what day-to-day life is like working as an employee of NH was mostly like let’s hype up this guy as kind of a messiah like figure and I was turned a little off by that it it wasn’t something I had experienced you know I’m not a big believer in like oh you know bow down to the CEO you know in the end it’s just a man and they have faults just like anybody else so that was like my start to it and then you get into the actual office and how do I put this how can we do the least amount of work with as much time as possible and that’s not my style I like to bang things out and keep going I want to keep that energy alive and so you know I got a month’s worth of work and I was down in a couple days uh you know grants management and so we’re processing all this stuff and basically they’re like well it comes in when it comes in twiddle your thumbs so I found out later on I’ve got a friend who’s more senior in like the grants management division of NH now you know I found this years later and they told me that basically you know at his level in the organization if you overperform if you do too much work you submit it all at the same time you’re going to get penalized you’re going to get a bad performance review by who uh so whoever your Superior is who does the performance reviews they’re going to rate you poorly because and that affects like your GS elevation so if you want to uh how do you explain that Federal Pace yeah how much you make what jobs you can apply to next and he’s he’s fairly senior within this organization so I don’t want to say who it is uh but what he does at this point is he does all his work in one week and he’s mostly remote and then he submits it one week at a time which is great I mean yeah what’s what’s he doing the other three weeks every month yeah um he recently got a dog that he really likes and hang out with a dog I ran out of work and I would ask for things to do nothing could happen so in the end I bought like you know you’re not supposed to use your work computer for non like relevant purposes so I bought a tablet and I just stop started watching videos on it because there’s nothing to do all day literally nothing you know I would start walking up and down the stares five times it so in your office at NIH yeah there was nothing to do for like weeks at a time I probably work 10% of the time okay would there be a part of because it’s a massive organization different departments or whatever that are doing doing things totally different or no it’s hard to know because it’s a huge silo effect there you don’t interact with other people you need passcodes to get onto different levels you don’t see anybody else working there it’s very creepy uh so no company parties no but you know there was a few levels I was allowed on and here’s just a weird example of I think Ben talked about this probably on his tour I don’t know for sure but like we know you know each uh agency has a budget that’s given to them by Congress every year and if they don’t spend all of that budget they’re at risk of losing some of that in the next year so imagine going to like or lose it yeah lose it or lose it so imagine going up to the printers of which there’s probably like eight different printer sections on each level of this multi-level high-rise building think wall to–all stacked dreams of paper 5 deep because theyve overbought all of these office materials anything that they can purchase in bulk they’ve done oh okay so they just want to tap out that budget yes and has the budget ever gone down let’s just say it NIH for example is it up every year consistently or I I would suspect the answer is contining Trend I don’t have that on me right now so Mass buying projects where like you you can see this wherever you go just excess being spent on things lots of employee amenities that in my opinion were excessive like a really high-end gym like a food court with all these different options that you might see in like a really high-end Museum that sort of thing what’s what’s the pay like and it depend well you’re you’re talking about different tiers but what’s the pay this was years ago um so it was definitely well above minimum wage at the time for somebody with like entry level experience I would guess at that point it was 15 but that was huge bump for minimum wage and that was entry level first GS I waited out the summer and there was an offer to stay like if we could part-time no no I couldn’t do it it it would have driven me mad it was against my morals to be supporting somewhere that is knowingly wasting my tax dollars I just I couldn’t do that it it felt wrong it felt wrong to be there it felt wrong to the American public when do when did somebody get a pension say if you stayed in that job how long before You’ get a pension re a question I I think it’s like 10 years is that right or 10 or 15 I think federal government pensions best around the 7 six or seven year mark oh that’s way lower okay this is a world I have zero understanding of in DC for most Americans it’s just this far off place and you know what Capitol Hill looks like and the mall area but that’s about it to understand the chessboard inner workings the mechanics of how this Beast operates is really hard to understand and today is just uh a lot of top a lot of overview I have more questions than answers and I feel like there’s about six different areas you can go deep dive on of what we talked about from HUD to CDC to yeah can’t can’t cover it in a short amount yeah impossible okay I’ll just note with to piggyback on what shaa said I was the political appointee with the Federal Election Commission serving two chairman and uh on my day of orientation um I was told in training when you go out on travel when we go to conferences we go to political party conventions make sure that you’re maxing out your per DM so you get from the taxpayers you get a certain amount of money you get a spend per day and their instructions that it was they were very emphatic about it 100 20 a day or whatever it was at the time make sure you’re maxing that out cuz you don’t get any more and you have to return what you haven’t spent so go have you know go have fun and go do and I stopped her in the I was a political appointee not a merit appointee and I said I’m sorry this is contrary to the public trust that we have in this organization no you should be trying to spend the smallest amount of money in saving taxpayers money on this so yeah it’s its own bubble it’s its own little Silo it’s divorced from the fact that they are hardworking Americans who are earning money and losing money to to these entities um they’re divorced from that reality in some way thank you the Schnitzel I grew up in Wisconsin got got to do all right we have the roasted chicken Shauna french fries with a fork that’s right as always how is everything guys terrific terrific okay so just to get back to the topic they don’t see it as our money everybody around here’s money they see it as government money and it’s just a free-for-all we throw it out like candy and that’s you mean you mean it doesn’t come from the government right it’s not the government it’s our money and it’s always more it’s never not more so you’re saying taxes aren’t going down anytime soon never hey AZ lowered its state income tax last year 2.5% flat tax you don’t see that with the government that keeps asking for more who keeps trying to extend the reach of what they can do they don’t want to let go of that control every dollar they get more is another thing that they can interact with in your in our lives the way that they can exert control over how the American population lives their lives how they think how they feel that’s what they want the authors see us Lewis had a great quote paraphrase I would rather be harassed and bothered by a highway Baron than by a moral Busy Body because the highway Baron at least knows an end to his capity he knows that his his evil acts must end at some point the moral busy body has no sense of that in and will keep inflicting tyranny for your own good till complete ruin all right guys so went over a lot today there’s a lot to take in a lot for people to think about I will say from my work traveling the country there is a bit more friction or grumpiness let’s say that’s a nice way of saying it towards Washington and how money is being spent what can people do yeah so I I have two things I fully agree with Peter’s sentiment that you a little bit of skeptic ISM what what what’s that asking some deep questions and not believing that utopian reform being sold to you is going to help is would would deeply help this country but that’s up to you America and two for the for those of us who get to work in the area of constitutional litigation and I’m I’m just privileged and happy to be able to do that I’m going to keep holding government accountable I’m going to keep shrinking uh their scope of authority and I’m going to hold them accountable to abuses on behalf of American taxpayers that’s my calling in life happy to do it thank you for talking with us yeah and it’s it’s beautiful you’re saying the courts are holding up these days yeah from your perspective from what you’re doing I think they’re doing a very good job at limiting abuses and keeping them to their constrained powers and not everyone may like that but if you’d like to go amend the Constitution if you’d like to create a more expansive federal government get on it folks and convince your fellow Americans I’m a skeptic of that proposition all right guys thank you so much shaa thanks for adding in at the end shaa put this together so you get the credit and thanks guys for coming along until the next one [Music]
Video Tags: corruption,peter santenello,documentary,breaking,washington dc,living in america,most corrupt states in america,corruption in usa,political corruption in america,benjamin barr,dc corruption,usa capital
Video Duration: 01:13:51
