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Brian Kruger

And welcome to The Common Bridge. My name is Brian Kruger, and I'm the producer of this show. Incidentally, I'm also the first opener of most emails, most letters to the editor and such. So what we're going to do today on The Common Bridge is we're going to read through some of those and get Rich's response, which I think will be a lot of fun. Rich, you are ready to do something like that today?

Richard Helppie

We're both going to find out together. [Laughter.]

Brian Kruger

Your first letter is from Mike Horn. He's a reader and a listener and a watcher. Cool. He says, ìRich, I love the show. While this isn't necessarily policy and solutions, I'd like to hear your take on New York Congressman George Santos.î

Richard Helppie

Oh, geez, right off the bat. Well, George Santos, okay. So what people would be expecting me to say is something like, well, gosh, look at Elizabeth Warren's claim to be Native American, look at Joe Biden's claim to have graduated top of his class and have gone on a full academic ride, or that Adam Schiff actually has a whistle-blower or oodles of Russian information, etc. But I don't think that's really germane. It just gets back into the right, left, red, blue, etc. I think this is just something...Donald Trump, okay, is another guy that people expect me to say, well, of course, Trump paved the way and of course, Trump seemed to say whatever popped into his head at that moment, with really no strategy to it, and in fact, to his own detriment. But I really think it points to what we talk about on The Common Bridge; both political parties are absolutely dysfunctional. They're not doing the job they're supposed to do, ie representing us. And the media, the newspapers, or former newspapers now online, the digital news programs, etc. aren't doing what they're supposed to do about ferreting out facts and truth. George Santos is just the result of decades, or probably hundreds of years, of politicians making stuff up. Then coupled with this dysfunction - and what do I mean by the dysfunction - the Republican party obviously didn't vet the guy before they made him the candidate. The media reporting in New York never went in. And for Pete's sake, where is the opposition research that the Democrats should have on this guy? All three of them absolutely misfired. Now that he's there in Washington, people are saying, you know what, he's kind of not the first guy entering this pristine truth telling environment.

Brian Kruger

So Rich, do you think that the demise of the local newspaper, or even the regional newspaper, and their associated newsrooms, that used to research this kind of thing, has effected something like this? Do you think that 20 years ago, this never would have happened? It seems odd to me in the age of the internet, where information is everywhere, that it could be missed as well.

Richard Helppie

Well, there is a vacuum there clearly, that the old media model is dying; this is just one more symptom of it. How do you pay for that? There are some really good hyper-local reporting systems and hyper-local podcasts. I'm a big fan of ìPaid the Cost,î which is Nativo Gonzalez in Santa Cruz, California, hyper-local reporting. I think we need to get more of that. I don't know if perhaps there'll be a subscription model for those types of businesses and they'll become more searchable online, because you do really have people on the ground working to get facts out. But yeah, it's a failure. Why wasn't the democratic op-research all over this? And where were the Republicans in vetting him? I mean - inexcusable.

Brian Kruger

You're right about that. Well, moving on. Sean Phelan writes in, ìWhen are you going to have a guest on to talk about transgender rights in schools? I think you're afraid of the topic.î

Richard Helppie

I'd love to have someone come on to talk about transgender rights. Again, I think it's a subject that we should bring to the fore and you're running into the collision of medical information...again, there are people that are born with indeterminate genitalia with chromosomes that are different; with sometimes secondary sex characteristics that are both. You have people that reach adulthood and they can do whatever they want to do with their body. But I think it gets down to what do we do about school-aged children who are going through adolescence. Again, I think that this hormone therapy and surgeries for people that aren't old enough to order a drink or cast a vote is going to come back to us as a hideous new lobotomy. The fact that well, we're not going to allow parents to be involved is a little crazy, particularly right now when we have parents that are jailed because of the crimes that their children have committed. So you can't have it both ways. I think we need to get it out onto the floor and have a discussion about what makes sense. I'd love to have a great guest. Brian, we do invite a lot of people to come onto the show that won't come on. They're very comfortable going into sound-byte world, affirmation programming, and they don't want to hear the thoughtful question. They don't want to hear the countervailing points of view, and they just won't come on. We've had a number of guests that have agreed to be on the show. We've presented them with the outline, here are the things we'd like to talk about. They are framed as questions, and once they look at the outline, they don't want to be on the show. That's their prerogative. They're still playing in that old affirmation programming world - we're not there.

Brian Kruger

Well, I think in fairness too, Rich, we're approaching the 200th episode here - I think we're at 193 now - we've only had a couple that have backed out since looking at the outline. I don't know...we kind of knew who they were; I think I'd put that under five, that's under a handful of those. So while that has happened, I think you've had a lot of great guests come out as well.

Richard Helppie

Most of the folks that do come on appreciate the wide ranging discussion. Most of them, I don't think, are hearing anything that they haven't heard privately before and they're happy to have the discussion. Some things that are fairly controversial, like ranked-choice voting is one. What's the nuance behind that? And proportional voting? What's the nuance behind those types of stories. Law enforcement, what's working, what's not working. So hopefully, we'll continue to get guests, anyone that comes on will be treated respectfully. They'll have the opportunity to review things in advance, and we don't do “gotcha” questions. We're here to inform, not to influence.

Brian Kruger

Okay, this one's from Jesse Dugan, who's a Substack subscriber. We like that. I like this one, because it appears that Jesse has a long history with the show because he references something that you've covered over the last few seasons and that's your gun control policy. This might appear a little bit as a shot, but I don't think so. Jesse asks, ìHow would your gun training and progressive licensing program have worked with a six year old in Virginia who shot his teacher?î

Richard Helppie

Well, the way it would have worked is that there are provisions, in the idea, for safe storage requirements. So if you want to have a firearm in your house, then you may, with the proviso that you secure it and that firearm - with today's technology and gun vaults and the like - can be readily available should the need for home protection arise without it being accessible to a six year old. So had a law been in place, had the law been followed, the tragedy would not have occurred. Although I should probably point out that there are states like California that do have a safe storage requirement and people just don't follow it, which is an issue, obviously.

Brian Kruger

Thanks, Jessie, for writing that and thanks for being a Substack subscriber as well and writing in. We encourage everybody to be in the Substack world with us. This next letter is from Eric Findley, and it's about an episode that you did with Matt Rosenberg called "Progressive Agenda in Chicago" and it dealt with how things in Chicago are kind of falling apart and how Rosenberg puts that on the back of the progressive city council and mayor and such. Eric writes, ìWhy just focus on Chicago? Name me a major US city where this isn't the case.î

Richard Helppie

Well, it'd be difficult to recap that entire episode, I invite people to go back and listen and also to read Matt Rosenberg's book, which is quite good. He is a real reporter. He knows the city. He walked hundreds of miles, he talked to lots of people. What he really pointed out was the breakdown of the nuclear family, particularly people - young men especially - being raised in homes without fathers, no accountability, that the allegiance can be to something outside the home. Tragically too often, that can be a gang, but it's not just gang type members that are involved, it's the public and the innocence around them as things spill over. Then when we talk about what happens when somebody is arrested for doing something, and they're not held, they're not punished, they're not held accountable, they're right back out there again. I think Rosenberg's big point was we pay these taxes, our education system is horrible - that should be a basic function; our public safety - which is not something you can privatize - has been absolutely compromised. We're being told that we, the law abiding citizens just trying to make their way through life, are the problem. The reason it was about Chicago is because that's what Matt wrote about; was Chicago, which he knew. Certainly someone could write that same story about New York. I've been in Los Angeles recently. I haven't been to San Francisco for several years, basically, because it's deteriorated so badly. But the root of it is, we're not looking out after taxpayers, homeowners, people trying to educate their kids. Those that can, flee.

Brian Kruger

I think what Eric Findley is trying to say, though, is that why pick on Chicago when the exact same thing is happening in all the major cities around the US?

Richard Helppie

Right, and Chicago is not necessarily an outlier. People keep voting folks in that do these things. Now, I will tell you, there's one - and maybe call me a homer or an optimist - but I see a lot of good things happening in Detroit. We still have issues, we still have too much violence, we still have too many fatherless homes. But there are so many good things that are happening in the city itself. Maybe because people have finally gotten tired of accepting a city that was dysfunctional. Frankly, the bankruptcy really helped. That was a collaboration of a Republican governor, Rick Snyder, and a Democratic mayor, Mike Duggan. So bonds that were never really going to get paid back were bankrupted and now that money has gone to new police cars and streetlights and cleaning the streets and so forth. There has been a lot of investment in the town. Some of the wealthier families have taken on parts of the city to revitalize and refurbish. I mean, look, we got a ways to go but things are moving along.

Brian Kruger

Rich, I couldn't agree more. Detroit is a great story. Our next letter is from John Abel. And it's regarding Dr. James Baker's last appearance in studio back in November. Of course, Dr. Baker would come on from time to time throughout the pandemic to give us a fair assessment of what's going on with COVID. John Abel wrote in; ìYou could have stopped at politics, manufactured, marketed, distributed and sold as a deadly virus never amounted to jack squat, smoke and mirrors, misdirection, sheep, it was the flu and ammonia Toretto. I looked up Toretto and I think he's making a reference to a Vin Diesel movie called “Fast and Furious,” but that's for another time. He continues, ìNothing changed before, during, or after the Rona accept the truth and the cover up.î And then he signs it, “FJB MAGA Trump 2024.” Although, that's kind of a funny letter. What's your take on Dr. James Baker's visits, and speak more to what John Abel is saying in his letter?

Richard Helppie

Well, I think there are suspicions out there. I know that the writer is not alone in his thinking. I remember when the Corona virus was first discovered, and I recall you and I were having a conversation about well, are we doing too much, and I said, there are just too many unknowns. We've been trying to get the number of unknowns reduced and try to get the right knowns in there. I can tell you definitively that hospitals and emergency rooms were overwhelmed with COVID patients. We had governors in New York and in Michigan that sent COVID positive patients back into nursing homes where we had deadly consequences. We did not respond as a good society that's following a strong public health reaction. So to the point about was the crisis seized for something else? I think that there's probably valid reason to at least be suspicious of that. I punctuate that by looking at the recent midterm elections and those governors that were most extreme in how they closed the society and shut down schools and so forth, did not run on that. In fact, our newly re-elected governor in Michigan, scoffed and said, what, kids were out of school three months? As if, let them eat cake. They were out a lot more than that so they're not doing themselves any favors. Now couple that with a president in the White House, at the beginning, in Donald Trump, who seemed to think that the daily briefings were a show about him and proved himself to be a horrible crisis manager, [did not have] a steady hand on the tiller, when he easily could have said, look, we're going to protect the vulnerable, we're going to make sure that every hospital and physician office has all the equipment and supplies they need to deal with sick people, we are going to accelerate trying to find a vaccine or a therapeutic and if people are going to be harmed economically, we're going to step in and make sure, that through no fault of their own, they're supported. The weird thing is they did - the Trump administration did - all those things. But all the peripheral stuff and the antics and no focus, people didn't know where to turn. So where did they turn, they went to social media and you saw things get divided into the COVID is a hoax, it doesn't really exist, I don't know anybody that got it, it's a mild cold, etc. And to the other side, it's like the coming of some Stephen King novel or something and we're going to wash our groceries and the like. And by the way that divide and who to trust exists today. People talk about who should wear masks, who shouldn't wear masks, and I see it here in Ann Arbor all the time, I see people out walking in the fresh air wearing a mask. There's no case for doing that. And whether a person chose to be vaccinated or was coerced into being vaccinated or not, that was a decision made at a point in time. Circumstances have changed, what we know has changed, but I still think it speaks to the core problem. It's this thirst for knowledge and real facts and we don't have a media system delivering that to us. I'll end this response by again, recommending Dr. Baker's blog. It's called ìPandemic Pondering.î I don't think Dr. Baker has a political bone in his body, he's eminently qualified. Of course, I'd like you to listen to the four or five episodes he's been on with us. But look up ìPandemic Pondering,î Dr. James Baker, University of Michigan Medicine.

Brian Kruger

Now we're going to move to an episode you did on November 9th, called ìThank Goodness Campaign Season Ends.î This one had about 250 or 300 responses within the first day and most of them were really funny because they all agreed with you. You got one specifically from Lyndon Willingham and Lyndon writes, ìWhat a relief, I went totally to PBS and BBC for news and only checked in locally for weather reports briefly. Mute button got a lot of use in the past few weeks. The negative ads are so utterly toxic, I just did not want that noise in my house. Turns out PBS and BBC are excellent resources for news and the reason that I'm bringing this to you is I think it speaks generally to what you always speak about, and that is, try to listen to different news sources.î Don't always rely on CNN, Fox; they're going to tell you exactly what they're going to tell you, but sort of look at other sources; I think that's what Lyndon is saying here. What are your thoughts on Lyndon Willingham's letter?

Richard Helppie

It's not an irrational response. You know what you're going to get when you turn on Fox, you know what you're going to get when you turn on CNN. CNN is trying to make a pivot against tremendous resistance from the base that wanted the affirmation programming. The five viewers left at MSNBC know what they're going to get [laughter.] so I think getting different sources is important. I recommend a lot of the writers at Substack, who actually go out and do reporting. There is a lot of free stuff there and there's a lot of paid stuff. But more and better information is available [there] than the stuff that we're getting served up. If you recall, Brian, when we started this show, people asked me, how do we quit having the politicians polarize us and how do we quit having the legacy media and the cable media and the former news media quit feeding us this stuff? The answer is real simple: quit consuming it. [Laughter.] They're going to get the idea; you quit buying it, they're not going to do it. They're only doing it because people are buying it. So stop buying it and tell your friends to quit buying it and go elsewhere.

Brian Kruger

Right. What I like about Lyndon's letter though, is Lyndon refers to PBS, but also to BBC, and there was a lot of argument - not even argument, they're agreeing with each other and then kind of having fun - about BBC being a conservative outlet in Europe. What it really said to me is you've got a huge following in Europe. Your following is really all over the world, but I got a kick out of the fact that The Common Bridge was being argued about in Great Britain.

Richard Helppie

I know we have a great following in London - hello Londoners - so I think it's a healthy discussion. Look, PBS doesn't always get it right, BBC doesn't always get it right but the media model has been flipped from, let's go and discover what the facts are and interview people and look at documents and write that, versus here's the narrative and now let's fill in the blanks. We're going to have a guest coming on pretty soon; Justin Higgins is coming back. We're going to talk about the stories that are covered in Washington versus...I'm not speaking for the whole Great Lakes or the whole rest of the country - but I'm just astonished that the whole Hamilton 68 issue and the media fraud that went on and made Jayson Blair looks like a piker, is not front page news. Then it occurred to me; well, that was used by every major news outlet and maybe they just decided, well, we don't want to talk about this anymore.

Brian Kruger

Getting Justin Higgins back on the show is great. He's good on The Common Bridge and you're good on his show as well. Just to wrap up this “Thank Goodness Campaign Season Ends” letters to the editor, Ken Wolff writes, "Now for the Medicare and Camp Lejeune lawsuit ads to end," which I thought was a pretty good twist on that.

Richard Helppie

Well, we do have Mike Cox scheduled. Mike is an attorney of some renown. He was the attorney general of the state of Michigan, he's also a former Marine, and he is in the middle of some of those suits. He's going to come on and inform us about that and what the status of that is. Again, you see the ads, you know something happened. How many people know what the backstory is and where's the reporting been on that?

Brian Kruger

Okay, let's move along to medical assistance in dying, that was just a few weeks ago, we had Dr. Nicholas Tito on and it was a wonderful episode. It garnered a lot of viewer mail, and listener mail, and responses as well. Just to recap, it had something to do with Canada's MAID law - that's Medical Assistance In Dying. This letter is from Grace Thurman, and she writes, "Y'all are using this to kill disabled people instead of adjusting society to support and accommodate them. Don't even try to lie. I know too many Canadians who have the wool pulled over my eyes, including a disabled individual who had Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) recommended to them when they sought an increase in financial support to cover the rising cost of living." That seems somewhat cynical, but I thought it was a very interesting and moving letter. I'm going to add another one in here before you comment; maybe you can comment on both of them. This is from Charles Murray Chilton. "I'm a supporter of one's right to be euthanized. In fact, I would expand the criteria far beyond where they stand now. It's not only about the trillions spent worldwide to keep an empty carbon assembly breathing and pulse. If I don't know my wife, and I can't drink water or eat because I don't know what food or water is for, please let me have the choice to go."

Richard Helppie

I think both of these letters are very germane to the subject matter. I thought the conversation with Dr. Tito was excellent. I hope people will listen to it because it's very thoughtful. It's not advocacy, and it's not opposition at all. It's just, this is a very big societal effort. But I would divide it like this. There's a medical need in people with no hope of recovery, that might be in agonizing pain, end stage of a disease and not be able to function and that if they, as Mr. Murray wrote, choose to end their life, they should have the means to do that, or assistance for that, can't get out of bed to do that. I think that's one category. Then the first writer saying, hey, this is going to be used on disabled people and it's a slippery slope. That writer would be in agreement with what the indigenous peoples of Canada - or first peoples, as they refer to them - said when this law was being enhanced with even broader eligibility standards. So if people listen to the episode, we begin by saying go to the Canadian government's website, Canada.ca, go to ‘justice,’ that's the next level and then go and look at what they're saying about the MAID, Medical Assistance In Dying, law. The important change, come March 17, is that you don't need a medical diagnosis; a mental health diagnosis is all that it takes. So, think about this, Brian, a person is depressed and has suicidal ideation. Today, we say, look, we've got to deal with your depression and we have lots of therapies and medications and ways to deal with that. It seems to me to be barbaric to say, here's a person with suicidal ideation and we say, well, great, we'll give you a hand. I think we need to understand what this kind of power unleashed can do. I know that there are people that believe if we go to this next step, where there doesn't even have to be a medical condition - I believe that word they use is "irremediable" - it was pretty definitive, you weren't coming out of that condition that Mr. Murray writes about, you're a goner, okay, so to speak. And is there a dignified way to end your life? I think there's a moral justification for that with appropriate guardrails on it. The troubling part is, forget about all that, if you just have a mental health diagnosis. Then there's a long list of people that can assist you without facing a criminal consequence. I just think the opportunities for abuse are pretty high. And it is something that we need to keep an eye on, because the next logical step would be mandated termination.

Brian Kruger

Well, that certainly gets really scary.

Richard Helppie

It's very scary. I mean, again, no one knows for sure what's going to happen and I don't mean to be an alarmist. But people need to understand where the law is today and be thoughtful about whether it's the right one or not, who it will be applied to, and so forth.

Brian Kruger

Okay, this next one is from another recent podcast with Adam Coleman, it was titled "Does Mass Media Lie About Conservatives?" This letter comes from Marcus Adams. "Every time the media calls radical right wing reactionaries "conservatives" they lie about conservatives. The "conservatives" on the Supreme Court are an excellent example of this. It is not conservative to bring about radical change." What are your thoughts on that?

Richard Helppie

Well, I think the writer has got a great point. Anything that doesn't fit the agenda of a left leaning publication is by definition, conservative, and it's going to be a radical right wing approach. I hope people listen to Adam Coleman because he is a very thoughtful and insightful guy. He backs up what he says with his own real world experience. One of the things he says that nobody wants to talk about is the correlation between fatherless childhoods and the mass shooters. My dearly departed father, he and I got along on certain levels and didn't on other levels, but I know for sure that I'd have to answer to him as the first line of authority. I guarantee you that is something. We need to teach young men how to be good fathers. We need to teach them how to become good men and to help build great communities. I think if that's a conservative principle, great; I would hope it'd be a universal principle. But if that's a conservative principle, in today's world that would be bringing about radical change to come out and say, it's better to have a father in the house, with the proviso that the father performs as the father versus somebody that's damaging to the spouse or children.

Brian Kruger

Do you think you'd get push-back on that today from the feminist movement or feminists?

Richard Helppie

I think it would depend on the feminist. I think that's another category that people wrap up in one definition. I can tell you in my business career, where we had a lot of women - 45% in upper management - in looking back and understanding that, wow, they were often the only woman in the room during big and important meetings. There might be 20 people in there, all guys wearing white shirts and blue suits and power ties and the like, and what a different experience that must have been for them. I mean, they had the opportunity, but they were clearly in the minority. I've had many family members also that really were pioneers - that's just in my lifetime. So to lump them in then with a more radical fringe that wants to adopt the term feminism, I don't think it's fair. So again, that's one of those labels that we just have to be careful about.

Brian Kruger

So as we wrap this up, I'm going to sprinkle in a couple of more positive notes. This from Mike Crabtree, "Rich, looking forward to your continued success with The Common Bridge in 2023." And from Rayma Gagnon-Hogan, "Congratulations on your fourth season, I always learn something each time I tune in." So I think those are great and if you'd like to take this home, go ahead and do it.

Richard Helppie

Thank you, Mike and Rayma, and anyone else. Certainly, the encouragement is uplifting. I do dearly, appreciate it. So I guess on a closing comment, Brian, there can't be a show unless there are guests and an audience. And I'm grateful to the guests, I'm grateful for the audience. I'm doing my best to be informative versus influencing, trying to open up dialogue so that we can have discussion. Thanks to your great work on producing, putting together nice programs for us. It's the discussion, it's the exchange of ideas, it's the delving into subject matter, that is the only thing that's going to keep us out of a bitter partisan divide and a civil war. We're not going to convince somebody of a particular ideology to adopt an opposite one but maybe we can find places we agree. Should we have clean drinking water? I think I think we can agree on that. Can we have safe schools that give our kids an education that will allow them to have a good life in adulthood? I hope we can agree on that. Can we have streets that are safe? And then another topic, what's our right to privacy? What's our right to be forgiven and forgotten about, maybe something we did as a younger person? I know Bill Maher talks about this, he has a term called "presentism" - I think it's his term; to hold somebody's behavior in 1968 to the standards of 2023 is a little absurd, because people are part of the society. So this is what I think we can do; we can inform, we can invite commentary, and I do appreciate these comments. I hope that we keep getting more and that people will just talk.

Brian Kruger

Well, that's a good way to wrap this up. And let's remind all of our viewers, listeners, and readers out there to join us on Substack because we'd really like to get you over to that platform as our main outlet.

Richard Helppie

Great, and Substack's really designed for writers, and then writers expanding into audio and video, and we're kind of coming in from the opposite direction. So right now, I think it's the best thing as far as a new media model. Is it one hundred percent perfect, certainly not. But it's, I think, a noble attempt at getting us back to what journalism is supposed to be. Your participation in that in support of the show is very meaningful. Again, leave that old stuff behind, they will not change as long as they have an audience. This is Richard Helppie, signing off on The Common Bridge.

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