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Richard Helppie
Brian, how are you? We got another one of these today?
Brian Kruger
Yes we do. We're going back to the mail bag, Rich, and it's good to see you again. I've been in Hawaii. You obviously are someplace, you've got a Hawaiian shirt on. I haven't seen you in a while. How are you doing?
Richard Helppie
I'm doing great. Actually, this was a gift. I got my Red Wing logo here because you can't be a die hard fan unless you've died hard and see what happens. We've just got to get in the playoffs, come on. [Laughter] I know we don't really have a mail bag. I know we get a lot of emails, we get texts, we get back channel stuff, and then we get a few public responses. But I like what you're doing with publicizing the show, because our numbers keep going up, and I appreciate that. So at the top of this I just want to thank our listeners, readers and viewers for that continued following. That's nice to hear.
Brian Kruger
So yes, especially in the last quarter, Rich, your numbers have really taken off, and that's kind of exciting across all, from Substack to Facebook, Social. So that's cool. A lot of people are interested in The Common Bridge, or at least listening to the center. So with that, let's take a look at ten. Just picked ten of our social media responses and Substack responses and questions they have for you. So here we go. Number one, this is from a guy - I think it's a guy - it's from somebody named Trendtide. He asks, or they ask, with the recent stock market gyrations, do you think this proves that Trump's policies are all wrong?
Richard Helppie
Well first of all, it's a great question, and it's not uncommon, and there's a lot to unpack in here. So first of all, anybody that thinks the stock market is indicative of one absolute or the other generally ends up not getting very good returns. There are lots of things that can affect the stock market, and it's not uncommon that in the first two years of a new administration that the stock market goes down. Then it's not uncommon that it recovers in the last two. The stock market doesn't like uncertainty, and if one thing this Trump administration is giving the investing markets is a lot of uncertainty; they don't know how to invest. No one can really know how to invest if you don't know what tax policy is going to look like, or tariff policies are going to look like. Earlier this week, the president of the United Auto Workers came out in strong support of Trump's tariff plans, but he also said, settle in on a policy and we can live with it. And so the underlying economy is still pretty good. I think you're going to see wages rising when this investment - that will be spurred by tariffs and potentially removing some of the workforce in the deportation orders - you could see a spur in wages. On the other hand, I wouldn't bet on one thing, but certainly the stock market is in turmoil, not necessarily for policies, but because of the uncertainty. It is a completely sentiment driven downturn. There's nothing fundamental that's changed. It's sentiment driven.
Brian Kruger
Okay, this is from somebody named DM Devon. Is the trans agenda truly in full retreat or is that just a misconception?
Richard Helppie
I'm not sure what they mean by the trans agenda, but if we're talking about the medicalization of youth and the only diagnosis that a person can self-declare and get it affirmed, gender dysphoria, then, yeah, that's on its way out. Frankly, there never was science behind it ever. Even the studies that purported to show you could change a boy into a girl, a girl into a boy, those have been found to have no substance to them, and yet the opposite - what damages are done, mentally, physically, emotionally, to those children in particular - that should be on the way out. Again, we have to still maintain kindness and dignity for everyone. If a fully formed adult wants to present themselves in any way they want, then you know what? They should have the freedom to do that without fear. That doesn't mean they can change from a man to a woman or vice versa, but they can present any way they want to live their life, any way they want to. But what's been done to kids is not anything short of evil.
Brian Kruger
This is from Barb Echo. Barb Echo says, as boomers who have paid into Social Security, are we at risk of losing our benefits because of policies from Trump or Doge?
Richard Helppie
Social Security benefits are subject to law and policy, there is a common misconception among boomers like myself that, oh, I paid in and we're waiting for it to be paid back out, when the fact of the matter is, is that money came out of our paychecks and it went to pay the beneficiaries at that time. Today the young people that are working, money is being taken out of their paychecks and sent directly to today's beneficiaries. It's a transfer tax is what it is now. When it started, Social Security was protecting some of the most vulnerable people, the elderly who didn't have much savings. They were among the least affluent groups in the country. Today a lot of that wealth is built up in baby boomers, and the next generation is coming up or trying to look for a toe hold. You'll be hearing this argument. If you were a 20 year old today and you were being asked or forced to put money aside for your retirement, would you give it to the government and they'll promise someday to give it back to you? Maybe, unless they change because they're not obligated to. Or would you rather maybe have a retirement account that you could invest. I think the numbers are compelling. Had our generation been able to do that, we wouldn't be having this fear about losing Social Security.
Brian Kruger
That's a fascinating answer. Okay, this one, I had to take some expletives out of but I've cleaned it up. It's from Whisper Link. Whisper Link says, why does Doge require so much personal information from users?
Richard Helppie
Okay, so the Department of Government Efficiency. Why do they need personal information? Well, first of all, you're looking at computer code in unrelated systems. And at the end of some of those unrelated systems there's money being paid out, and if money gets paid out, it's generally got to have a tax ID associated with it; either a social security number or an employer identification number or a taxpayer identification number. And if money is flowing into one entity or one individual, the only way to trace that is to find all the places that that number comes up. Now, what Doge is doing, from what I can tell from the outside, but somebody with not unsubstantial background in computer systems, we now have technology that is smart that can go in through all that old data and piece things together. And a lot of those systems were written at a time when those technologies didn't exist. Let me try to explain it this way; when computers were coming into more common usage, you had to tell where the data is and what the data was, and then you wrote your logic to say that data is over there, go get it, and here's what we're going to do with it. Now search engines, they don't think about that. They're like, what am I looking for? Where can I find it? And that's what it looks like Doge is doing. They're saying, what are the patterns here. Now you incorporate some intelligence into the software, and you look for fuzzy logic, and where are the relationships. That's why they're turning up these payments going out to the NGOs that they can't tell where payments are going. I also see them getting tripped up by stuff we used to have to do in the mainframe days because you didn't have storage and you didn't have fast enough processors, so you did all kinds of things around dates, like you didn't have to put a date in. You put a displacement from a base date. And of course, once that code stays around too long, that whole system fails. And I know every programmer out there knows this as one of the biggest lies. Yeah, we've got to get this fixed right now so just do what you have to do. We'll go back and do it right later. No one ever went back and did it right. And the other answer was, oh, we can do it this way, because this system will be replaced before that method of doing the dates, for example, expires. Well, of course it did. And Brian, I could go on like this, but I guarantee you there's not even source code for some of the things that are running some major systems. There are three levels. There's a source code that the person sees, there's the compilation, which is kind of in hexadecimal, and then it's the machine language. And a lot of times we don't have the source code. Let me stop there, because I was about to put on a tutorial.
Brian Kruger
We're getting back into your origins as a programmer. That's great.
Richard Helppie
What we could match back in the 70s and through my whole career, and with what we can do now, is astonishing.
Brian Kruger
Yeah, we used to call that spaghetti code when it got mixed up. (Rich Helppie: Exactly right. Spaghetti code.) Okay. So this is from Mike on Substack. We have a couple of Substack questions here. Why does Trump claim he can use the Alien Enemies Act for deportations, and how can he ignore a judge's order? What about the implications for justice and false claims?
Richard Helppie
Well, there's a lot to pack in there. So first of all, I'm not a lawyer. Everything I know about the Alien Enemies Act I've read in the last two days, but apparently it is a law. It's been around for a long time, and one of the issues is, are we at war? And there are people that will argue that, well, only Congress can declare war, yet we have the War Powers Act, which has never actually been fully settled, and we're seeing many of our presidents as commanders in chief, deploying the military. As far as ignoring the judge's orders, my understanding of the chronology, which may or may not be fully accurate when everything is fleshed out, is the judge gave a verbal request and didn't follow it up with an order until the planes had already landed at their destination. Now, another thing I see the Trump administration doing with the Alien Enemies Act is not much different than what the Clinton administration did with the False Claims Act. So you could say it's clever lawyering. What the Clinton administration did when they were unable to get health care reform through and they wanted to cut the budget for Medicare and physician payments, they found a law called the False Claims Act that was enacted in the Civil War era to prevent somebody from selling a lame horse back to the government. And the Clinton administration said, well, you're making a claim to Medicare. That's a claim to the government, right? We don't know that you delivered those services, so we're going to assume you didn't. The hospitals and doctors that provided those services said wait a minute, our billing is accurate. Clinton administration said, fine, prove it, and it would take literally train loads of documents, and that was the way they extracted money from the healthcare system to meet the budget level. So anyway, I mean, that's the only precedent I know of but there's still a lot to be said.
Brian Kruger
All right, so we're halfway through. We're still on Substack. Kirk, from Substack says, won't imposing tariffs simply make everything more expensive, as some critics suggest?
Richard Helppie
Again, the economy is not a one parameter thing, like do this, that happens, there are always shifting parts. And again, I'll cite Sean Fain, who is the president of the United Auto Workers the UAW. He said, look, we've lost 90,000 manufacturing plants in the last 33 years. There's a great recap of this in Forbes, forbes.com, where he talks about - that's 1800 I think, units per state - and it started with the North American Free Trade Agreement. And at that time, those of you that remember the politics in 1992, Ross Perot said you'll hear a giant sucking sound of jobs leaving the country, and Al Gore, that great prognosticator, said, no, it's going to create 400,000 jobs in the United States. So the tariffs are designed to level the playing field. I don't know where it's going to end up, but if we sell cars and that country charges us a 30% tariff, and yet we charge them a 2% tariff and we balance it, theoretically, there'll be more investment in the United States because they'll be under the tariff pricing. Let me tell you one quick anecdote, Brian. Years ago, I was visiting with the fellow that shared a condominium complex with me, and he was from a very well known sporting goods empire family, and at this time he told me, look, we have a baseball we can manufacture in the United States, cost us $5 to make that baseball. We can make it in - I forget where they were making it - someplace in Asia, bring it in with the import duties and it costs us $1.50 so we're not going to make baseballs in the United States. Now, if you took a tariff and said, alright, we're going to put a tariff of $4 on every baseball using those economics of the day, now, the imported ball costs $5.50 but somebody can make it in the United States for $5 and still pay their workers enough to live on. So anyway, I can't remember what the question was... it was a question about tariffs.
Brian Kruger
You got it. Here's the last one from Substack. It's from Diane from Substack. Is it fair to compare Trump to Hitler, or is that just taking it too far?
Richard Helppie
Well, all Republicans are referred to as Hitler by that side of the media, and that side, they called John McCain a Hitler. Obviously that's just hyperbole and it's disparagement. There are parallels, make no mistake. I actually wrote a column that published on March 18 where we talk about that, and one of the things that allowed the Third Reich to rise was the fact that the opposition had swung so far to one side, it created this tribalism and this need to do something and to be nationalistic and to follow a strong leader. There are elements like that, and so I think it behooves us all to get in the middle, talk with each other, and then figure out, well, what are the best policies for all of us, versus trading one side for the other? Because it is a dangerous time, and power begets power, and so there's clearly risk here that we need to be aware of. And so if you're a big Trump supporter, the answer can't be, well, I don't like that, but it's Trump, so I'm going to back it. And also it can't be from the other side; I'd like that, but it's Trump, so I have to be against it. That just opens the gap. It creates opportunity for really bad things to happen.
Brian Kruger
This is from Vibenetwork. With reports of increased deportations why does it seem like deserving immigrants are being targeted? What's the rationale behind making their lives harder?
Richard Helppie
First of all, the life of an immigrant is hard. If you or I immigrated to another country, life would be tough. We wouldn't know the language, we wouldn't know the customs, we wouldn't know where to get food, would know how to rent a house, etc. When our ancestors arrived in this continent, it was really hard. They started with nothing arrived with nothing. Had to figure out how to build a life here, and it came at a great sacrifice. So the narrative of people that deserve to be here but are being swept up on deportation, it's real. I don't know how to quantify it. I know that there is a narrative basically ready to write those stories. Anytime you use something this big, you're going to get it wrong. So I think, again, this is a great place to come together. Let's not have people that are injurious to the country in the country. Let's remove them now, yesterday. Let's ask ourselves, why did - whatever the number turns out to be - 12 to 18 million people coming in unvetted? Why was that ever in the public interest? Why was ignoring overstays on visas ever in the public interest? Let's have that discussion, and then let's talk about what we need to do about those folks that are caught in this whirlwind, because most of them are trying just to live decent lives here. I don't know if the end game is clear the playing field and then have a rational system, but I also know that a large part of the work is to find the people we clearly don't want. It takes a lot of personnel. It takes a lot of time. It spends a lot of money, and you might catch 20, 50 people. Whereas, if you're being measured on pure numbers, you can go to an airport, a bus terminal, and just sweep up a bunch of people. Again, one of those policies, that if you sat everyone down, you'd get to a reasonable approach. But we're being left with this everybody out of here, and worse, people that are green carded or landed immigrants being interrogated and harassed because of their skin tone or their accent. And again, it's a dangerous time on that.
Brian Kruger
This is from MemeKing27 - I love it - could cuts to Medicare and Medicaid result in vulnerable people being left sick and dying in the streets?
Richard Helppie
In an extreme scenario, yes, not very likely, but we could put a lot of strain on our healthcare delivery people, our providers. Ultimately, if there's not enough money, then there's not going to be enough capacity, and services are going to get cut, and likely it would be triage. So things that could be delayed will get delayed, but someone that comes in with a broken bone, appendicitis, what have you, they're going to get treated, although that wait in the ER might be longer. So again, the payment methods we have in the United States are horrible. They need to be reformed. I've spoken written about that, and I'm not going to go any further, but until we get a better plan, we need to fund the one we've got. Simple as that.
Brian Kruger
We've come to the end of our list today. This is from Qsnap22. Qsnap22 asks, Is COVID truly over, or are we still dealing with its ongoing effects?
Richard Helppie
Well, the second part of that's easy, yeah, we're still dealing with the ongoing effects, that we still have work to be done, discussions to be had about why did we let this virus basically destroy the freedoms that we enjoy. One of our popular guests, Robert Greenfield, who lives in Australia, he and his wife were met at the airport upon coming home to Australia and escorted by the military - the military wearing hazmat suits and carrying weapons - into a hotel and guarded there and not allowed to leave for a period of time. I don't remember if it was a week or two weeks, but Robert also told us that there were state lines that a person couldn't cross, a state line that they were barricaded and prevented [from crossing]. And of course, in this country, we had a very intelligent virus that could tell if you were sitting down or standing up in a restaurant. We had governor so smart she could tell you which aisle of a store you could go down. They were immune, though, because certainly those people were allowed to travel. But as far as the disease goes, we just had Dr James Baker on talking about where COVID is today, talking about his view on the efficacy of the vaccines, the censorship that shut down great voices that now are within our government, hopefully trying to do some good things. And maybe we'll get back to science being science again, which is a continual inquiry and a presentation of the facts.
Brian Kruger
Sounds good. We did get a comment from another reader from Substack that asks us to do more mailbags like this. This person enjoys them. Maybe once a month, right?
Richard Helppie
You know what? I like doing them, because it's one I don't have to prep for. And we've got some great stuff coming up. By the way, we have a gentleman coming up, Larry Shell, who identifies himself - see if I can remember - it's a TERG, a trans exclusionary something gay. What a great perspective this guy's got.
Brian Kruger
He's a heck of a Substack writer, too.
Richard Helppie
Yeah, he is. I'm looking forward to chatting with him. And of course, we'll be covering the economy, we'll be covering various policies. And I'd like to remind my listeners, readers and viewers of this, the Democrats and Republicans going at each other. That's their fight. That's Washington DC fight. No one's out there fighting for us. We still haven't figured out health care payment, we haven't figured out firearms, we haven't figured out affordability, we haven't figured out environment. As long as we keep giving our time, attention, energy and or money to that partisan fight, it's not going to get solved because there are too many people profiting from it. So let's talk to our neighbors, talk to people that perhaps we may not agree with but let's see if we can find some common ground. We'll meet you on The Common Bridge.
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