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Social Justice - A Conversation
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You're listening to locally produced programming created in KU NV studios on public radio K, u and v 91.5. The
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content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
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Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV. And the Boyd School of Law.
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Hi, I'm Gabriella Tam. I'm a fourth year accounting student. And welcome
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to social justice, social justice, our conversation
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a conversation.
Unknown Speaker 0:42
Well, good evening, everybody. And welcome back to our program, program three of the new fall semester. And I'm here with my partner Gabriela Tam, and we're going to sort of get a list of grievances and problems that we have come across, since we last spoke to you. One of the great things about doing the show is the show, in many ways, writes itself, because we have so many things going on in our country, even in the last couple of days that, you know, are really very, very sad. But I want to start off with the Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey. Because this is a disturbing story about a man who basically holds a position of high authority in the Senate. And he has been indicted. This is the second time he's been indicted, for actually for bribery, amongst amongst a number of other things. And, you know, when the law enforcement authorities went into his home, they found a number of bars of gold, they found hundreds of 1000s of dollars in cash, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff that the authorities didn't even release to the public. But, you know, it's very troubling, because, you know, much like the judiciary that we have in our country. And we've talked about this before how people, you know, on the Supreme Court, basically, to not keep to the strict ethical standards that they should. Here's a man who's a senator, I mean, it's a job of responsibility. But it's a privilege to be a senator, there's only 100 senators in the whole country. And you would think that a person would be very scrupulous about, you know, how they conducted themselves, and, you know, et cetera. But Gabby Can, can talk about this as well, because it's, I don't get it.
Unknown Speaker 2:59
No, yeah, I don't, I don't understand how he got, like those bars of gold and how he got that much money. And like we were talking about earlier, like you said, he put it in a coat like he, I imagine he, like sewed it in. And it's just shocking how far people will go to hide their money and stuff.
Unknown Speaker 3:20
Yeah. Well, what's interesting, of course, is, you know, when you're a Senator, you have so many you have so many advantages. You know, you have a very good salary. You have plenty of vacation time. You have basically free medical care. Yeah. You have security, if you need it, you have a whole bunch of stuff. And this is this is the second time that he's been involved in this stuff. And they can't you see, the problem is that you you really, when somebody makes a mistake like that twice, there's a question of whether or not they're adhering to the ethical standards that are supposed to be present. But he's not going to resign. And what's interesting enough is the vast majority of people who have called from for him to resign or Democrats, that the Republicans have been totally quiet about this. And the reason I think the Republicans have been totally quiet about this, is they want to keep him as the senator, because he's up for reelection next year. And they haven't they figured probably, if we run a strong candidate, will beat the Democratic candidate, and we'll pick up that seat rather than if he resigns. Now, the governor can pick somebody completely new who's also a Democrat, but doesn't have any scandals in his background. Yeah. So it's kind of like a really a mercenary decision. I mean, they know he shouldn't obviously most of them should know that he shouldn't be he there. But, of course, the thing is, you know, they've been backing the ex president. So how can you or how can you call in a sense for this guy to resign when they've been backing a man who's under indictment in four different jurisdictions? I mean,
Unknown Speaker 5:08
yeah, like, I, there's just so many. There's, there's just a trend going on that I feel like, more people should be like questioning like, Oh, should we really have these people, you know, lead our country make decisions for us? Yeah, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 5:26
Yeah. Well, and you know, what, once they get in, it's very hard to get them out. Yeah. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 5:32
They get like a taste of like power. And they want more.
Unknown Speaker 5:35
Yeah. Well, that was, you know, in the class, you know, advice and consent. I mean, it's a perfect example, where, you know, they don't think they're answerable to anybody. And I think that's, that's a trend that's been going on in our government for a while. I mean, you see, this, you know, not just the espresso, there's a whole bunch of people who just basically leave, you know, you can do whatever you want. And I think that's one of the reasons people, people are so disillusioned though. Yeah, you know, when you see like, when Trump is going to run probably against Biden. Yeah, but the thing is that the vast majority of people don't want either one of them.
Unknown Speaker 6:18
Yeah. It's like, Was it like the saying like, Oh, like the lesser of two evils?
Unknown Speaker 6:25
Yeah. That's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's that's segues into our second little item here, which is, you know, Donald Trump's business in the Trump Organization. And basically, basically, the judge who, who was hearing the case, basically said that it's a fraud. Yeah, that he's involved in, in, you know, putting out fictitious numbers as to as to his assets, putting out fictitious numbers as to revenue, you know, and that his loan applications were bogus. I mean, the whole deal. And, and that is basically what he based his political career on and the apprentice on that he was a successful businessman, and he had done all these things and made all this money, et cetera, et cetera. But the judge said basically, all the stuff was cooked up.
Unknown Speaker 7:22
Yeah. I, when you like, told me about that was like, like, obviously, I'm sure he had like, accountants, like work working on this right? For me as, like, as an accounting student. I'm like, how do you put out like fictitious, like numbers and stuff? Because, you know, it's a, it's a long road for our like to get a CPA, and you're doing that you risk losing your CPE? Like something you work super hard for? That, to me just doesn't make sense?
Unknown Speaker 7:49
Yeah. Well, you look at it, you're looking at it from a moral point of view. I mean, the guy that the guy that worked for him, Allen weisselberg, you know, he went to Rikers Island went to prison. Oh, and he actually, he actually still refused to cooperate with the authorities.
Unknown Speaker 8:09
Still, you're literally in prison, and you're still,
Unknown Speaker 8:13
but he, but the, the ex President did all kinds of things for him, Oh, he got all kinds of goodies. It wasn't just, it wasn't just, you know, his salary. He paid, he paid the rent for his children. And he did a lot of stuff with the guy. So the guy, you know, in a sense, is beholden to him. But, you know, I always say, you know, that one of the fields, that is that, you know, law are obviously is one of them, but certainly accounting is one of those fields, that's very challenging. Yeah. Because, you know, you get into one of these places, and, you know, people come to you, maybe we could just change this a little bit, you know, to make the numbers look like better, you better Yeah. And you really have to, you really have to have an ethical background. In working for some of these places, especially a Wall Street, the summit has so many things that go on there that are not, that are not ethical, and perhaps how people present financial figures in a certain way. You know, well, you know, if you've been studying for years, you know, it's, it's certainly morally challenging. It is yeah. So talk a little bit of for our audience about the new College of Florida situation.
Unknown Speaker 9:30
So basically what is happening in New College of Florida, like, I don't know how many years ago was but it was like one of the most like, liberal like colleges in Florida. And then they like promoted themselves as like that they're very welcoming of LGBT, LGBTQ like students and just like everyone, they're like, oh, like you can come here. And then the bill or like law about banning courses like gender studies, I believe, and just Are you like, like courses that are supposed to be opening like people's like, mind and stuff? They were banned. Right? So, and then I guess like a bunch of like teachers quit. And so now students like can't even like complete their degrees. And it's just like, affecting like, every student there. Oh, and also, I saw that, as it this year was like their largest like freshman like incoming freshman class. So it's just, it's just sad because now these fresh like their largest like incoming like freshmen are just not necessarily stuck there but like they're stuck there for like this semester where they can't take the classes that they want they thought they were going to be able to take
Unknown Speaker 10:41
Sure, sure. Well, they're there. There's a whole bunch of stuff that's going on down there. Florida is the home of denialism. I call it denialism as to actually yeah, which is basically, in fact, the governor said he says we're against diversity, inclusion and equity. So I'm thinking to myself, Okay, diversity, being against diversity is like being against the wave coming in on the on the beach. Yeah, diversity is what America is. We are diverse. Oh, yeah. A lot of different ethnicities. Number one. Second thing he said was, he's he's against equity. Well, what is equity? Equity is fairness. So he doesn't want to he doesn't want, he doesn't want diversity, and he doesn't want fairness. And he's against inclusion. Well, inclusion is basically community, bringing everybody together, to work together. So he doesn't want that either. But what they've done, interestingly enough, down there is they've changed the whole like curriculum, the whole curriculum, and the admittance standards. So they've actually admitted, you know, a whole bunch of people to the to the school, who have lower scores, because their athletes, interesting to have a majority. Now the incoming students are athletes, and the people who are current students who are in the dorms, they have moved a lot of those people out to hotels, often off the campus. And given those dorm rooms to the athletes, mostly mostly for the baseball team, supposedly, that that still hasn't been scheduled to play any games. So this is what's going on there. So you have to see it as the you have to see like the big picture on it, that they don't want. They don't want thought they don't want history. They don't want a discussion of where we were and where we need to go. They want to go back. Yeah, they want to go back and eon times to what they were when they considered America was great. But they want to go back to a time when America except for the slaves that had been brought here. And the American Indians who were the native owners of the land, it was a basically a White country. Yeah, but that day is over. Yeah, you can't be going back. So we're gonna, we're gonna change No, we're gonna go back today. No, it's crazy, though. But this is what they believe. And this is what they sell to the voters down there, that that that, quote, unquote, These people are your enemy. But they don't even know these people. They don't even know most minority people or people of color or LGBT people, because they have their own like clique of people that they hang out with us. Yeah. But they're criticizing and moralizing about people who they have no idea what they're what they're doing. Yeah, it's it's, it's kind of mind boggling. And later on in the show, we'll get into another aspect of the governor's flowers plan. You know, the next item was something that came across into the Wall Street Journal. And it's very, very interesting, because the Wall Street Journal is a business paper. Yeah, I mean, the Wall Street Journal is not a liberal paper, and they backed Trump twice. I mean, they're very conservative. But they they wrote this very, very interesting article about the AR 15. Yeah, which is an assault weapon. And how, at one time, you know, there was it was a successful gun company that was making a lot of money selling the selling these guns, but they were taken over by a by a hedge fund people basically on Wall Street, and they were able to expand, they were able to expand the company by leaps and bounds. And you have now in this country, an overabundance of assault weapons. Yeah. I think the argument against the assault weapons can be framed Very simply, what is the need for an average person to have a gun that can kill 40 or 50? People? Within a couple of minutes? Exactly. And what can what logically would the gun be used for? The the people who support gun rights say that, you know, you have the Second Amendment. I mean, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with having a gun to protect your house. Or if you want to, I'm not nothing, I'm a hunter, I sort of rule for the animals. But anyway, if you want to, if you want to, if you want to go out and hunt something, I guess it's okay. But what what would you be doing with that gun?
Unknown Speaker 15:38
Exactly? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 15:39
that's the that's the thing that I don't understand. Because I don't understand either. You can't, you can't use it. Like, you know, some people like to shoot skeet, you know, a target shoot, you know, drove the, you know, well, you can't use an assault weapon to target shoot. You certainly, I guess you could use it in your home to protect your house, but you'd shoot up the house and you'd destroy the house while protecting yourself. So it doesn't seem to have any good purpose. It doesn't seem to have any good purpose, except for killing a lot of people. Yeah. And a short time. Yeah. So what would be the public policy benefit of having somebody do that? That's what that's what I don't understand.
Unknown Speaker 16:20
No, I was like, when I was reading the article, I was like, I mean, give a little like history. And I was like, Oh, this is interesting. But then like, I was thinking, like, I've always kind of been, I don't like guns, like at all like, but I guess like, have you like a small like hand gun, like stored somewhere in your houses? We like to promote your safety. But yeah, I just don't understand the benefit of having a gun that can kill like 40 people, like 40 people are gonna come into your house, and you're gonna shoot them?
Unknown Speaker 16:52
Well, and what made this even sadder was the fact that when they were having this expansion of the company, and you know, producing all these guns, they had the shooting and Sandy Hook. Yeah, well, the kids were killed, 20 kids were killed, the six teachers were killed. And of course, you know, President Obama came out with a statement that, you know, we need some
Unknown Speaker 17:18
you do gun control, yeah, regulated.
Unknown Speaker 17:21
And the end of the end of the article, the end of the article is very interesting. And, you know, when I teach, you know, I try to present business as both ethical and unethical, depending on the circumstance. But the ending of the article was very interesting, because the guy basically said, he said, Well, he says, we sell guns to people who can legally buy them. And Monday when we get up. That's what we do. We sell guns. But the guy we met and that this isn't a Wall Street Journal, but the end of the article leaves you thinking, are they really don't care? Yeah, it's just about the money. Yeah, it's just about the money. And if they can get all these people to buy it and increase their volume, they're good with it. But I'm saying to myself, Oh, but all these people were killed. All these little kids were killed. No,
Unknown Speaker 18:18
yeah. And that's another thing. I'm like, like, these people are so like, oh, we have to protect our kids and all that. But your kids are getting killed by the same gun that you're buying. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 18:29
that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, I think, I think deep down, they know it's bogus. Yeah. They just don't care. Yeah. You know, and it's like, it's like selling cars with defective airbags. Yeah. or what have you, that it's about the money. It's about the money, you know, and unfortunately, it's caused a lot of innocent people. Yeah. Who had who really? I mean, if you think of the shooting down in El Paso, the shooting and the school in Texas, this is something that you could be here all day this shooting at the synagogue. Yeah. But But I think the Democrats need to be more much more ferocious about this. Yeah. And trying to, if not change the law, at least point out to the vast majority of people. The public safety need to have regulation. And I don't I don't see them doing it. No, yeah, I
Unknown Speaker 19:29
think that's something that the Republicans have that Democrats don't usually, like Republicans are very, like you said, like ferocious and they're very, like, open about their feelings. Yeah. And like the Democrats are kind of kind of shy kind of like, oh, like, I don't know.
Unknown Speaker 19:43
Yeah. Well, this is, you know, I mean, it's interesting. Speaking about that. We're going to be we're going to be you know, approaching the fall now. It's been I 15 months at least. And we're still waiting for the report on the Texas shooting in the school. So this is not they still don't have not released the official report of what happened. And that happened and how did that happen? How did it happen? Because because in the state of Texas, if you're 18 years of age, you can't get a regular handgun. You got to wait till you're 21. But you can get an assault weapon. Now, how could that be? I feel like that's kind of flip is exactly, exactly. It should be. It should be the other way around. Yeah. But this young man got the gun. And, you know, he kills all these people. But the other aspect of it was the complete failure of law enforcement on that day. I mean, we had hundreds of people. I mean, come on. Yeah, you're supposed to go in. I rest my case. So talk, talk a little bit about the Michigan State thing, because I think that's very interesting.
Unknown Speaker 20:57
So, Mel Tucker, who was the football coach? Correct? Yeah, football coach, for like Michigan State brought in this woman to talk about how to lose it. Basically, she was like a sexual like assault. She was a rape victim. So she was, you know, teaching the football players like how to, I guess, approach, like different situations? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then, like, she one day, she filed a complaint and said that Mel Tucker, like, did, like, did some nasty stuff on a phone call with her. And basically, like, we open like, was it 25 years of like, past trauma for her? Yeah, it was just, it's so sad. Because these people like knew each other. They like worked together for like, a couple of years. And the fact that you're you do that to her is like, you're so inconsiderate. Like you? What was the real motive behind you getting closer with her? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 22:03
yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's, it's also that people don't care. Yeah, it's it's, it's that people are used to behaviors that are wrong. But they are comfortable with that. They're comfortable with being able to victimize people. The thing that jumped out at me in this, in this whole situation, was that they knew 10 months ago, about this. So it was not, it wasn't just, it wasn't like out of the blue wasn't out of the blue, they knew about 10 months ago. And I don't know what they thought it was gonna go away, maybe or she was gonna drop the case, or whatever it was, it's just gonna disappear. Disappear. But the thing about it is, the thing about it is that this is the same university, that you had to pay an enormous settlement to the victims of Larry Nasser, the doctor at Michigan State, Oh, yeah. All the different young women and girls that this guy abused. So you would figure after, after a situation like that, where they obviously were deficient, in their response to what this what this quote unquote, Doctor was doing, that they would be much more aware and attentive, to make sure that, you know, faculty, employees, whatever you have, would behave in a certain way. Yeah. And they basically tried to cover it up. That's basically what they tried to do. And they run their runs. They were unsuccessful in doing it. But I'm saying like, you know, it's it's like we were talking about the northwestern thing. You know, it's it's the coach. Yeah, yeah. It's the athletic director. Yeah. But it's it's the hierarchy to university. Yeah. It's, it's, it's the administration, it's the people, you know, the buck stops at a certain point. And whether it's the president of the university, the provost, whoever it is, if you have been formed or something like that, you have to take action. Yeah, it's not like you know what we're gonna think about it we're gonna have a discussion no discussion at a certain point. You
Unknown Speaker 24:22
you fire I think they did. I saw on the news today that they they fired
Unknown Speaker 24:26
they fired him but he's gonna contest the firing. Oh, he's gonna say that they had no right to firearms, you know, the usual usual usual you know, but that's another interesting trend today also, is that no is responsible for anything. Yeah, you know, it's you know, you would just love to see one person say, I did it. Yeah, I did wrong. I'm ashamed of what I did, et cetera. And then you can say Alright, okay, we will give you will give you some slack. Yeah, that you know, you did the wrong thing and you Maybe you can rehabilitate yourself or somebody but it never happens though and never happens.
Unknown Speaker 25:04
People are just don't like to be wrong and in the wrong. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 25:09
Yeah, that's true. No, it's true. Well, speaking of in the wrong, you know, one of the really sad stories in sports is the Spanish Soccer Team smash women's soccer team, who, you know, whose great achievement was to win the World Cup. And, and to make Spain the only country in the history of the World Cup, both men and women that had both the men's and women's champion. And their victory in their their achievement has been has been completely overshadowed by the treatment of the way they were treated by officials in the Spanish Soccer Federation. Yeah, the coaches and everything. And, you know, you read some of, you know, you read some of these artists, like, I'm a man, okay, I, I, as a man, I have no tolerance for it. I feel very strongly about it that, you know, there's a certain way to conduct yourself. Yeah. Which obviously does not involve abusing people. But what struck me was, what struck me is how long this has been going on now. And how these women basically, were being treated in like a really demeaning manner. Like, you know, the coach's wife wanting to know everywhere, they went out who they went out with, then they had to have like, a night and you know, when they were in a training camp, they always had to have the door open. Why would you have to have your door open? Yeah, you're a grown adult woman or man as the case whatever the case is. And they will be like, if you went, you know, like, like, let's say, you went to an accounting and accounting seminar somewhere, and they say, well, everybody in the seminar, you gotta have your home for that night. Wha? Why? Well, that's, that's, that's the question. Why? Well, because they don't think that these people really, are to be treated with respect. That's the only thing you could you could conclude, right? If you if you basically say, well, they're very good soccer players, etc, etc. So let's use them for the soccer towns, but we don't have to respect them otherwise. So that that's, you know, that's what it is. But it's very sad. It is very sad. Yeah. And then I guess we could talk a little bit as we close out here about the book banning, which is very interesting. Because what's been happening is originally the start in the schools in Florida and other states, where basically they said that to talk about LGBT rights or gay rights, or whatever it is, was inappropriate for children, etc, etc. Yeah. But now it's moved into the libraries, to regular adult libraries. So they want to take the books away from adults. So what is the what is the rationale there? They're not children denied at a certain age. They're grown people.
Unknown Speaker 28:02
Yeah. What is happening to our freedom? You know, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, I, like I've seen a couple of these. And they're banning books like The I read in like middle school in high school. I'm like, that's, that's actually crazy. Because these are like, also like AP books, like, these are books that we need to be have in our brains about, like an a lot of knowledge about to be able to pass our like AP exams. Yeah. So it's just like, so shocking to me. And also like, how, what are the questions going to be like on the exam now? And like, how are kids going to, like, just not like, also, like, navigate like,
Unknown Speaker 28:42
Yeah, well, these these things are not going away? Yeah, the gay people are not going away. Yeah. The transgender people, the LGBT people, the women's rights movement, the racial justice movement, it's not going to disappear. So there's like an unreality there where people just don't want to accept it. Yeah, you know, I'm saying, well, listen, we've had, we've had, hopefully another informative show for all of our listeners. And, of course, it's been a great pleasure to do the show with Gabriella because we sort of like to kick around issues that involves different perspectives. Yeah, hope that we hope that you've enjoyed it as well. And we look forward to having you listen to us next week. So with that in hand, I will say good night,
Unknown Speaker 29:30
and night, everyone. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at tangi one that is t a M, G, one at UNLV thought nevada.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles satin at charles.stanton@unlv.edu See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai