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Social Security trustees predict the retirement trust fund is now projected to run dry a full year earlier than previously forecast, in just 2032. What got us here, and what does Congress need to do about it? Can we keep pushing insolvency forward forever?
And: where does good government end and dangerous negligence begin? The Belfast riots are the latest example of a Western government that suppressed legitimate debate about immigration and crime, and now things are boiling over.
Finally, related to our main topic but separated by over 250 years: the Intolerable Acts of 1774 pushed the colonies past the breaking point, despite an attempt at reconciliation in the Olive Branch Petition, which King George ultimately refused to even read.
And on UNHINGED: Democrat staffers scrambling to spin the Platner story are making it so much worse. You almost have to feel bad for them.
The Heartland Institute's Linnea Lueken, Jim Lakely, S.T. Karnick, and Chris Talgo will talk about all of this and more on Episode #540 of the In The Tank Podcast.
Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook.
Visit our sponsor, Advisor Metals: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals
And: where does good government end and dangerous negligence begin? The Belfast riots are the latest example of a Western government that suppressed legitimate debate about immigration and crime, and now things are boiling over.
Finally, related to our main topic but separated by over 250 years: the Intolerable Acts of 1774 pushed the colonies past the breaking point, despite an attempt at reconciliation in the Olive Branch Petition, which King George ultimately refused to even read.
And on UNHINGED: Democrat staffers scrambling to spin the Platner story are making it so much worse. You almost have to feel bad for them.
The Heartland Institute's Linnea Lueken, Jim Lakely, S.T. Karnick, and Chris Talgo will talk about all of this and more on Episode #540 of the In The Tank Podcast.
Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook.
Visit our sponsor, Advisor Metals: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals
Creators and Guests
Host
Host
Host
What is In The Tank?
The weekly flagship podcast from The Heartland Institute features in-depth policy discussions connected to current news. Host Donald Kendal leads the discussion with the usual crew of Heartland Institute Vice President Jim Lakely, Socialism Research Center “Commissar” Justin Haskins, Editorial Director Chris Talgo, and others at this national free-market think tank. The entertaining and informative discussions often hit topics such as the environment, energy policy, Big Tech censorship, the troubling rise of socialism, globalism, health care, education, that state of freedom in America and around the world, and much more.
This podcast is also available as part of the Heartland Daily Podcast, the “firehose” of all the organization’s podcasts that take deep and entertaining dives into public policy.
Alright. We are now live a couple minutes late, but that's show business. Right? But welcome to the show, everyone. It seems that Social Security's retirement trust fund is set to run totally dry, almost totally dry, by the year 2032, a year earlier than predicted originally, allegedly due to Trump's tax cuts, lower birth rates, and lower net immigration.
Linnea Lueken:How on earth did we get here, and how do we fix this without unfairly burdening younger generations? And, unfortunately, for a second week in a row, we have news about violent attacks on UK citizens by recent immigrants. This one came with a horrifying video of a man's head being nearly sawn off in the middle of a neighborhood street. The question we have is this, where is the line between government overreach and feckless negligence? And for unhinged, democrat staffers are scrambling to explain away the skeletons they missed in Graham Plattner's closet.
Linnea Lueken:It's pretty painful to listen to. You will see what I mean. All of this on episode 540 of the In The Tank podcast.
Speaker 2:The firm sent us a thing and it had some of the
Chris Talgo:posts,
Speaker 2:but it didn't have all of them.
Linnea Lueken:Yikes. Welcome to the In The Tank Podcast. I am Linnea Lueken, your host. And as always, we also have Jim Lakely, vice president and director of communications at the Heartland Institute. He made that singer there, and he also is the one who brought us around Unhinged this week, much to the pain of my ears.
Linnea Lueken:And also Sam Karnick, senior fellow at the Heartland Institute. And Chris Talgo, welcome back, editorial director and socialism research fellow. Alright. We also have in the background today guest producer, Silas Pearson, in the background keeping the show moving along, so be nice to him. Alright.
Linnea Lueken:Before we get started, if you want to support the show, you can go to heartland.org/inthetank and donate there. Please also click the thumbs up to like this video. I see you guys watching. We have a lot of people from the Southeast in the chat today, I noticed. Hello.
Linnea Lueken:Welcome. My weather report says that it feels like a 115, and I don't think that's right. But you guys, all watching, can all click the thumbs up button. And remember that sharing this also helps to break through some of YouTube suppression, and also on x.com would help us out a little bit too. That'd be fun.
Linnea Lueken:Even just leaving a comment helps. And if you're an audio listener, you can help us out by leaving a nice review on whatever platform you're using. Alright. I'm gonna launch right into it. First topic on Unhinged, we have these Ivy League staffers, one from Harvard and one from Yale and UC Berkeley, I believe.
Linnea Lueken:Is yeah. That says something. Who recruited Plattner are struggling to explain how they overlooked so much. These people are both from the Democratic Socialists of America, and they are the ones who approached Graham Oyster Grupen Fuhrer Plattner, that joke comes from Steve Guest, by the way, to challenge Susan Collins for her senate seat in Maine. So let's take a listen here.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Hold on. So the the actual video You
Speaker 5:hadn't done a full scrub of who he is. How did you go about vetting him? And why did you
Speaker 2:We paid yeah. We paid a we paid a nice firm a whole chunk of money and got some stuff back. Some of what you've seen on the news we got back, other stuff we didn't.
Speaker 5:Did the vetting process turn up the tattoo that became so controversial? No. The Reddit posts, did that turn up in the vetting process?
Speaker 2:The firm sent us a thing and it had some of
Chris Talgo:the posts Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it didn't have all of them.
Speaker 5:And what did you think about that? How did you how did you think your way through the fact that he had posted these things on social media?
Speaker 2:I said none of this will or should stop him from becoming a US senator.
Speaker 5:What was your thinking there? I
Speaker 2:think if what the voters wanted were people who were grown in bats and had never done or said anything that they might regret their entire lives, we'd have a very different country. Part of our thesis here is that people do not want their candidates grown in bats. They want people who are real human beings, and they want people who do not look and sound like the background people who've been leading this country off a cliff for the last century, and that was Graham.
Speaker 5:Just days after this interview, more details about Plattner's past
Chris Talgo:emerged. And
Linnea Lueken:Oy. That kinda hurts to listen to. He is attempting to, I don't know, disappear disappear into like a black hole in the back of his throat, it sounds like, to escape that interview. But, Jim, you brought this to us. You inflicted this on us.
Linnea Lueken:Explain yourself. Well,
Jim Lakely:I I know that vocal fry is one of your absolute number one pet peeves, so I couldn't resist. I'd I've never heard a male human being, allegedly, be able to talk like that with vocal fry in in the back of your throat and with Uptalk with it as well. And the and the reason I brought this in to this show is that those two people consider themselves our social, moral, and intellectual better. And they are the ones who vetted Graham Plattner, the guy with the Yahtzee tattoo, I don't wanna get us banned here, on his chest, from the, from the camps in Germany where you would concentrate a lot. They would wore they wore those kinds of tattoos.
Jim Lakely:They those are the people that vetted him, who put him forward to take down the most moderate Republican, milquetoast Republican, probably votes with the Democrats at least 25 or 40% of the time out in Maine. And these people, they they go to work. These are the people in our elite schools. They have some connection, And, apparently, we don't have to have a lot of talent in in speaking publicly or speaking like a human being, not like an avatar of a human being done by AI from ten years ago before it even existed. So this this I I just I just real I just couldn't believe it.
Jim Lakely:That that it's not not only that two Ivy League I could believe two Ivy League people picked a a fake working class social and a, well, as we're finding out, somebody who who, is credibly accused of abuse of women, who was sexting other women, like, months after he was married. This a a absolute horrible human being. I can believe that Ivy League educated people would pick him. What I couldn't believe was kind of how they looked and how they sounded. And, again, these people think they should have their hands full time on the controls of the government.
Jim Lakely:And I just think it's a good reminder of who these people are.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Well, it certainly is, not very much comfort at all that these people, you know, Democratic Socialists of America nowadays are, you know, barely not total tankies, like, you know, apologists for the brutal regimes of communism. It's very much not a comfort that these are the types of people who would happily see us marching into camps ourselves into the gulag. So very, very, very sad stuff. Does anybody else have I wanna move kinda quick on this one, but we just it was just too cringe.
Linnea Lueken:We could not have it for unhinged. Nope. No other commentary? Okay. Then we can get right into it.
Linnea Lueken:And I know Sam is excited for this next topic. So Social Security is apparently close to exhausted. I've been hearing that my entire life. I'm sure everyone here has been hearing that their entire lives. This is a pretty big topic.
Linnea Lueken:It's also so far from my area of expertise, but that is why we have Sam Karnick here. But in a nutshell, I have this explanation by Reuters via Yahoo News, US Social Security Trust Fund set for 2032 insolvency report fines.
Jim Lakely:It's literally
Linnea Lueken:US Social Security know.
Chris Talgo:It's never happened before.
Linnea Lueken:Chris, you guys are on screen. The US Social Security Trust Fund will run out of money in late twenty thirty two earlier than previously forecast in part because of president Donald Trump's signature tax law enacted last year. A Social Security Administration, an annual report projected the old age and survivors insurance trust fund that finances retirement benefits will become depleted and no longer able to pay a 100% of scheduled benefits in the fourth quarter of twenty thirty two, up from the first quarter of twenty thirty three projected from the 2025 report. At that time, the funds projected income will be sufficient to pay just 78% of scheduled benefits. And reserves for those receiving long term disability payments should remain positive though, but two the two funds combined, however, will reach insolvency in the third quarter of twenty thirty four, also unchanged from a year ago.
Linnea Lueken:But at that time, the combined fund will also have income sufficient to pay just 83% of scheduled benefits. The report says that the tax cuts enacted by Trump and the Republican Congress last year resulted in less income tax paid on Social Security and also said that lower US birth rates and lower net immigration also contributed. Alright. Social Security became law in 1935, part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's new deal. And since then, it's been a source of anxiety for everyone forever.
Linnea Lueken:My generation was told in school that we would never see benefits from the retirement program, and that's part of why it's important for all of us to plan for retirement outside of government's meager handouts. Playing the stock markets or having a good savings plan can be part of that, but so are physical assets like property or precious metals. Alright. And with that, a lot of people in the conservative, libertarian, and in emergency prep spaces will hit you with ads for buying precious metals. They're not wrong, but they're a good investment, but you do want to be careful about who you buy your metals from.
Linnea Lueken:At In The Tank, we trust Advisor Metals over all of the other guys, and that's because we know that Ira Birchatsky, the owner and managing member of Advisor Metals, is a great friend of Liberty and has decades of experience in precious metals and is the only person in the physical precious metals industry who has the commodities futures trading commission federal registration. What that means is that everything Ira or a member of his team says to you has to be factual. So there's no sketchy sales pitch or bait and switch. He is held to the highest ethical standards, and there is full transparency, which is far too lacking in other places, including in our own Social Security department. If you want to diversify your investment portfolio and your savings, if you are planning for Social Security never ever panning out for you in any way whatsoever and you are concerned about economic uncertainty, if you want a tangible asset that is easy to buy and sell, you can secure your assets with a wide range of physical precious metals by getting in touch with our friend Ira at Advisor Metals.
Linnea Lueken:Ira will make it very easy for you. So please visit climaterealismshow.com/metals, and you can leave your information for Ira and get started with investing in precious metals and expand your current portfolio. Go to climaterealismshow.com/metals. And when you talk to Ira, make sure you let him know that we are the ones who sent you. That helps us while you're helping your financial future by diversifying with precious metals from Advisor Metals.
Linnea Lueken:How about that one? How about that? Alright.
Chris Talgo:Top 10.
Linnea Lueken:But with that aside, because it took me a minute, I'll reiterate the main points of this report in case anyone already forgot. So by late twenty thirty two, at current spending and income rates, Social Security will no longer be able to pay out 100% of benefits. Social Security office blames tax cuts, lower birth rates, and immigration declining. Sam, it's logical that tax cuts would put a dent in the fund, obviously, because that's how it's funded. But looming insolvency, you know, predates Trump by an awful lot, though, doesn't it?
Linnea Lueken:And, you know, should should Trump's policy should he be making tax cut decisions based on Social Security?
S.T. Karnick:Absolutely not. The Social Security is funded by the payroll tax. And the payroll tax is it's it's funny how they do this. Seven point you you have a 7.5% pull out of your salary by the government before you get it. And there's also 7.5% that your employer, quote unquote, contributes.
S.T. Karnick:So that's really 15% that's coming out of your salary because your employer isn't saying, yes. I will, I will pay this person exactly what I think they should get, and then I'll just throw 50, 7.5% in on my own, just for laughs. They don't do that. So what's what's happening is you're paying 15% of your in of your, salary, your wages, all the time into the Social Security fund. So it goes into the fund.
S.T. Karnick:What happens then is that this money is supposed to be sitting there, allocated for Social Security. Now there's the there's the issue of is it a pay as you go system or is it a true trust fund? It is the it is the former, disguised as the latter. So what they do is they say, well, there's a trust fund there, but that trust fund is actually just full of IOUs. What what it does is it says that you contributed and and so let's say the baby boomers and gen x and now the millennials and, even gen z have contributed x amount of dollars into the the fund over the course of the last five years.
S.T. Karnick:Alright? So you would think that there would be that much money just sitting in in the treasury somewhere, but that's not what happens. Is what they do is the federal government borrows that money to spend it. And so they can they can overspend, and then they basically put IOUs into the into the fund. Now when you have a system like that, it's it's basically a pay as you go system, but as I say, it's disguised as a trust fund.
S.T. Karnick:And what happens there because, for example, if you were to say, to your bank, look. I'm gonna put I'm going to deposit money, and then I'm going to spend it, but you're gonna pretend it's still there. Your bank will tell you that we're not doing that. No. But the public has has not had apparently the the ability to tell the government, we're not doing that.
S.T. Karnick:Okay? So that's that's what you that's what happens. So it is basically a pay as you go system. So so what's going on though is that you're creating obligations that we're going to pay the, recipients this much down the road, and those obligations are in statute. They're under the law.
S.T. Karnick:We have to pay them. And that's why they that's why you call Social Security an entitlement. So when you do that though, then you have to find the money somehow because you didn't just put it in the bank and and let it earn interest and pay out. Now the way people say for retirement, normal people, not people who are depending on government, the way people say for retirement or say for anything is you put the money in the bank, and then the bank invests it, or you put it in investments yourself. And those investments are in the private sector.
S.T. Karnick:The private sector produces profits on what you put in. And the and the reason it does that is because people want the things that the private sector produces. If you put it into government, what happens is it just sits there and the government then declares later what they think it's worth, what they think what you put in is worth. If you'd if you'd save it yourself, then you're getting what you you're getting the the profit on what you put in. If the government saves it for you, you're getting whatever the taxpayers and voters at that time say you can get.
S.T. Karnick:So we have a system where in 2032, the government is has said you will get x amount, but we only are going to have 78% of that. So you're going to get your benefits cut by 22%. Everybody. Everybody in the system is going to get their benefits cut by more than one fifth, or other things are going to happen. Now the the options that the government has is that they could they could just cut your benefits by 22%.
S.T. Karnick:They could raise the payroll tax. They could borrow more money. They could reduce benefits in other ways, extend the retirement age, for example, which reduces benefits, and they could cut other spending. Most of those things are either inflationary or recessionary or both. So they don't want to do any of those things.
S.T. Karnick:So what they, ideally, I think what they would like to do is be able to inflate it away, is give you the nominal 100%, but have inflated away 22% of it in the next six years. And then then they can say we've we've fulfilled our obligation to you. And it's those doggone big businesses that are that are charging too much. Go complain to them. The whole thing is obviously a a scam and a and a pretty disgusting one because it is so big and because people count on this money.
S.T. Karnick:And then the other element that is so important is that the government had said, we are taking this money from you, and I'm putting in parentheses because they don't say it explicitly. Let's put it in brackets. By force. We're taking this money from you by threat of force and force, and we're saving it for you. So you didn't have any choice in the system.
S.T. Karnick:And everybody says, well, the baby boomers all voted for this and so forth. I don't know who voted for what. Certainly, the lost generation voted for this and the the so called greatest generation, which I think is one of the worst generations ever, voted for all this. But I don't think anyone they they voted for the politicians that did this, but I don't think anyone, you know, looked at the numbers and said, hey. This is what Social Security is gonna do.
S.T. Karnick:That's great. I I we'll either have, my my, benefits inflated away or they'll be cut or whatever. Nobody wanted that. So this was all a scam created by the government, and now we're all going to suffer because of it. There are some ways out though, which we, may want to well, which we'll certainly wanna discuss here.
S.T. Karnick:But that's the that's the overview. And if it sounds a little complicated, it is because it is. But the the simple, version of it is it's a scam, and it's all meant to make it look like you're going to get a lot of money when you're not.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Chris, I mean, like I said, this was one of those things that was brought in for the the new deal by FDR, knowing that FDR is possibly one of the least favorite presidents of this organization, and many like it. I I mean, was was it always anticipated from the very beginning that this was gonna happen, that it was gonna run out eventually?
Chris Talgo:No. I think I think calling it a scam is much too harsh because what happened was it was begun during the Great Depression when, people did not have, you know, old age insurance, and it was predicated on the American population growing. And like Sam said, when the baby boomer generation came and went, they were a huge bulge, and there aren't enough Gen X or Gen Y, Gen Z, whatever, to support the, now retiring baby boomer generation. So to me, this is much more of a math problem, and, there are many possible solutions. And the earlier we do them, the better, whether it's allowing people to opt out or moving their retirement age.
Chris Talgo:There's all sorts of things that can be done. The, the congress has not had the willpower to do it. Even twenty twenty or so years ago, I'm sure Jim and Sam remember this, George w Bush, talked about possibly privatizing it, and everyone went insane on the other side of the aisle. So that was twenty something years ago before we were even near the mess we're in now. And demographically, it's obviously getting, you know, worse.
Chris Talgo:So I would really appreciate it if, congress and, the president would begin a plan to address this for people in our generation, Linnea, because you and me have been paying into this system for a very long time. And we, I think, are the ones who are on the you know, probably on, you know, the threat of getting, you know, like, not not even half of what we paid into the system. So the earlier you can address this, the better for the the younger people who, you know, did pay into the system. And for those who are, near retirement, I mean, I don't think that we should slice benefits for them. I think that this should be done, so that people have at least a decade or so to make, you know, alternative, means.
Chris Talgo:So don't don't depend on Social Security. I mean, my dad my my parents been to social social security their entire lives, and I'll tell you that that is not enough money to sustain, you know, a couple, let alone, you know, one person. It's just not. And, I really hope that people in our generation, Linnea, like you mentioned earlier, do have backup, retirement plans or be prepared to work, you know, until you're, you know, pretty pretty late in life.
Linnea Lueken:Yep. I
S.T. Karnick:Well, this this is why Social Security was a bad idea from the beginning. And the thing is it is an extremely destructive, system because it it it undermines the family. It undermines your long term planning as an individual. It undermines personal character because you need to develop all those things if you are going to be able to support yourself through life. But if the government keeps telling you that, look, if things go if things go wrong in your life, somehow they're they're just it's all by accident.
S.T. Karnick:You know? You're not responsible for anything. We'll take care of it. Don't you worry about it. Well, people aren't going to worry about it.
S.T. Karnick:And then what's going to happen is you you you you get a thing like a demographic bulge, and then you say, oh my gosh. What happened? Well, what happened was that this didn't make sense in the first place, and it was unconstitutional from the very beginning. It's completely unconstitutional. It's nowhere listed in the in the in the constitution as an enumerated power.
S.T. Karnick:It's not even an implied power. It's not an implied power. How is how is this, how is this a regulation of interstate commerce? That's the only place you can get it It's the not. And it's not and it doesn't promote the general welfare.
Chris Talgo:That's that's that's what what was used to justify Right. But it's just welfare
S.T. Karnick:and and people pointed that out at the time that it would do that and they've been proven to be right. Now you can we're probably going to get through this and there are a couple of ways to do it. And one of the things that you're going to have to do is you're going to have to cut other spending and devote that money to Social Security. The reason you're going to have to do that is because our government operates on Keynesian principles, which is that if you don't have enough consumer spending, we're all going to go broke because then there won't be any kind of, production going on. Now that's the opposite of the way things work, but that's what we will get.
S.T. Karnick:So you will get cuts. A lot I think a lot of the cuts will come from means testing where they'll say, well, you're too rich to get Social Security, which is dishonest and disgusting because you you said before, well, you're not so rich that we can't take it from you by force and threat of force. And then but now we're not gonna give it back to you. What we took from you by force, the deal was that we will give it back to you, but now we're not going to do that. And then people say, well, they're getting a lot more than they put in.
S.T. Karnick:They're getting a lot more than they put in. Some people are, but what the reality is is that if you had invested this just in just in absolute, the simplest thing, the stock market indexes. Okay? If you'd invested this, you'd just you got at least twice, three times as much as what Social Security is giving you. So they're going to rip off the people who put in the most into the system.
S.T. Karnick:That's number one. Go ahead. There you go, Jim Lakely. They're they're going to rip off the people who put the most into the system. Number one.
S.T. Karnick:The other thing that that they'll that they'll have to do though is they will have to cut other spending because the people who put the most into the system, a lot of those are, like, PR people and so forth. Jim Lakely. So there will be a bit of a a controversy over that. But the the big thing is that they're going to have to cut other spending. Defense spending has gone up an incredible amount over the last six years.
S.T. Karnick:Other entitlement spending has gone up an incredible amount. And that actually could be one thing that's helped save the system so that Gen z and these the millennials get a little something at least. Because what you have to get through the bump. You have to get through the baby boom bump. And, well, you know, the first baby boomers, what are they?
S.T. Karnick:They're 80 years old now. Right? So you're going to have fewer and fewer of them. And we do put this in the nicest way possible, but that's really you know, it's a it's a numbers thing. You brought it up, Chris.
S.T. Karnick:It's your fault. But the, you're going to have fewer and fewer of them. So, ultimately, the the the problem is solved. But what you're going to have to do is you have to get through that that problem, that that bump. So you're going to you're going to if you cut other spending, then you can devote that to shoring up the system.
S.T. Karnick:So you cut you're you're cutting what you, give out to people. You're gonna have to rate my suggestion, which is in a piece a that will be appearing shortly, so you're getting the the news before it happens. My suggestion you know, they've been cutting the retirement age or they've been raising the retirement age when you can get your full benefits by two months every year for the last few years. That stopped in 2026. Now so so these the the trustees of Social Security are blaming it on the the Trump tax cuts and, not enough immigrants.
S.T. Karnick:I don't know that illegal immigrants pay a heck of a lot of Social Security, but, okay, we'll play your game. We'll just take your assumptions and test that. And and that, and and and that so that you're not getting oh, and the and the low birth rates. People being born today paying Social Security, I I these are some hardworking toddlers. You know?
S.T. Karnick:But so they're blaming it on all those things when in when in fact what it what it really is is that they have not increased the retirement age fast enough. They should really my recommendation is they should I'm gonna get a lot of heat from this, but raise the retirement age a full year every year for the next six years.
Linnea Lueken:We had
S.T. Karnick:sink I'm letting that sink in a little bit. But the other part is this. We have an incredible opportunity to get reform. We've never had an opportunity like this. It's the biggest opportunity ever.
S.T. Karnick:You know? But we've seriously, all the entitlement fraud that we're hearing about, which is just, you know, the top of the iceberg, very tip of the iceberg. It's a heavy iceberg. All the all the entitlement fraud we're hearing about is pretty substantial, and there's way more than that. So what we could do is say this.
S.T. Karnick:Congress and the president say, we are going to we are authorizing the White House to do a deep dive on entitlement fraud and get it done. Get everybody all across the country in any entitlement. Social Security too, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, all of this. There's a ton of fraud there, and every nickel that's saved goes into the Social Security trust fund. So if you make that deal, you know who's going to love that?
S.T. Karnick:Jim Lakely is going to love that. The the Maybe. Gen gen x is going to love that because it's because here's the deal. You're either going to lose 22% or possibly all of your your your Social Security for the rest of your life or all of it because the system just collapses and the government cannot borrow any money anymore. And so they can't they can't spend anything because it's almost all borrowed at this point.
S.T. Karnick:They're just borrowing money. So, you know, we take in 4,000,000,000,000 and spend 7,000,000,000,000. That's not a that's not a workable system. So you tell you're you're telling, Gen X in particular and and and then the the later generations that you're going to get you really are going to get nothing. You're getting nothing unless we do this.
S.T. Karnick:If we get rid of this fraud, we can save the system. So this is a this is a new idea that that that I've I've written up and it it should be going out to the public shortly, getting published somewhere. And you'll you can you can read about it when it arrives, but you're you're getting it, before, it becomes the news here. So this is very clever of you to listen.
Linnea Lueken:I I knew you had no strong feelings about this whatsoever, Sam. So, Chris, Ed Hodson over on Facebook says that Social Security became a scam when the structure allowed the government to spend the Social Security taxes rather than invest it in the assets that can be used to pay the promised benefits. What would your take on that be?
Chris Talgo:It was never intended to do that, so he's he's actually incorrect, on that. I would also say that another solution is to grow our way out of this. And I know that a lot of Americans have different opinions on artificial intelligence, but artificial intelligence, like, not is coming, and it is probably gonna be one of the most productive, you know, revolutions in in modern history. So this could completely revolutionize our economy, and it could boost productivity into a realm that we can't even imagine right now. That could actually solve this.
Chris Talgo:So I'm not a, you know, gloom and doom guy on this because I actually do have faith in the American system and in the free market economy that it will meet that we at least can grow our way out of this problem.
Jim Lakely:I Sam, to address you because I am the GenX representative, I thought you were maybe you're late gen or, early GenX as well. I'm not sure. But, nobody in my I literally, nobody I know, nobody my age has ever thought they were ever gonna get a cent out of Social Security. Any any money they get out of Social Security when they retire, and retirement age, I guess, is coming up. I mean, I'm 55, so, I mean, I plan to die at my desk like a hero at the age of 90.
Jim Lakely:But if I do actually want to retire, that's that's fifteen years off maybe. I don't know. But no nobody, none of my peers, we never talk about Social Security as if it's gonna be there, as if we're counting on it to sustain us in in retirement. We have four zero one k's. We have Roth IRAs.
Jim Lakely:We had to plan and have to plan for our own retirement and have known that for a long time. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. It's the it's the world's biggest Ponzi scheme, and you don't. You can't fix a Ponzi scheme. You can only end it, and the Ponzi scheme needs to end.
Jim Lakely:And if, you know, I'm I'm okay with raising retirement age. I'm you know, this whole idea that we we're gonna take money from that we're gonna save from fraud and abuse in, say, the Medicaid system or Medicare or any of these places and then put that into the Social Security trust fund. The word Social Security trust fund triggers me, Sam. There is no trust fund. There's never been a trust fund.
Jim Lakely:Everybody knows this. You know, Al Gore used to talk about the lockbox. You know, the Social Security everybody knows it's a complete Ponzi scam. And the only way you have to end it. You can't fix it.
Jim Lakely:You can't tweak it. It has to end. And Chris brought this up. I actually was covering the White House for The Washington Times when George w Bush won his second term. I was in the room in the post election press conference right there.
Jim Lakely:I gotta ask a question that day. And, he said in that press conference, he says, I've earned a lot of political capital, and I plan to spend it. And he was gonna spend it all on privatizing Social Security, which is actually not what he was going to do. The Democrats were doing back backflips. They couldn't wait to run on that, for a long time.
Jim Lakely:But the plan, the best, the the leading proposal out there was to get younger was was to allow younger workers like me at that time. I was still pretty much a younger worker. I was in my early thirties. And it was to take some allow us to take some of our our Social Security Ponzi scam money and invest it into private accounts so that we could grow our own wealth over here, you know, in addition to any four zero one k's we have with our employer and still be contributing to the system. Probably it was probably $70.30 to contribute to the system to make sure that the elderly people today get their Social Security checks.
Jim Lakely:If that was done twenty years ago, we wouldn't be in this problem. In fact, there probably wouldn't even be an endpoint to Social Security. You could maintain the system all the way through. But The politics in this country, especially from the Democrats, they attack, attack, attack, said they're gonna throw granny out in the street, you know, and we've seen they campaigned on this for for a decade after George Bush proposed that. And, of course, it went nowhere.
Jim Lakely:I don't even believe a single bill was proposed to make this happen. So it was it was a complete waste, but it was the only real chance we've had in the last twenty five years to you know, you can't to not fix the Ponzi scheme, but to eventually end the Ponzi scheme so that, you know, eventually, another twenty years from now, Social Security can actually be gone. You could it'd like the, civil war widow's fund. There'd be very few people alive left that would be collecting Social Security while the rest of the people would have had an actual good retirement that would have injected more money into the investment, into the economy. There's all sorts of good positive things about this, but it's it's not going to happen.
Jim Lakely:So, yeah, I don't expect to get anything. If I get if I get if I get $5 a month out of Social Security, I'd consider that pretty good because I've never expected any of it. Of course, Linnea, it's even worse for you. Sorry.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I'll I'll never forget sorry, Chris. Go ahead.
Chris Talgo:Oh, I was just gonna say that there is another solution that just came to my to my mind. So when I was a teacher, you'd look at a state like Illinois where they say that they're gonna give you a benefit that's gonna or a pension that's gonna write that's going to sustain you for the rest of your life. And what they've noticed is that that is woefully, and they they they can't maintain it. So then when I was a teacher in South Carolina, they said, well, we'll let you have a couple thousand dollars per year, and you can put into an account, and that is your account. It's defined benefit versus defined contribution.
Chris Talgo:If we offer people the, the the decision to make that choice for themselves, most of the young people who were teaching with me in South Carolina said, well, I definitely wanna go down the road of I get a lump sum per year, and then I can just put that into a tax free account. That's another way that you can solve this. You can you can give people different options. It's that the one size fits all. Everybody gets the same Social Security formula that I think is is part of the the problem.
Chris Talgo:And, you know, as we know, more options, more choices are almost always better because people don't always have the same circumstances. So if someone wants to take the option of, hey. You know what? I'm super healthy. I wanna start taking it when I'm later, and I might get, you know, a greater payout, then then give them options.
Chris Talgo:So what I'm saying is we shouldn't just throw the whole system away because I do think that so many Americans, including my parents, they have you know, they they they depend on it, you know, full stop. And you can't just pull the rug out from under those people. And I think it would be really immoral to do that for people who are on the cusp of retiring, so even people within that ten year retirement window. But for people like me who still have a long time left that I can still, you know, make make, you know, alternative plans, I think that what they should do is offer more choices.
S.T. Karnick:My recommendations include moving things toward a a privatized system, which has been done successfully in in other countries. For example, Chile has a has a very successful system. The and and I absolutely sympathize with the the situation of people who are retired like your parents or about to retire. The the problem is you can't get the money. You can't just just we can't just want it, and then it it happens.
S.T. Karnick:No. But see, the thing is that It it's going to
Jim Lakely:For people like for people
Chris Talgo:like but for people like my dad who paid in his entire career and who's now in his early eighties and really does depend on that, that would be a sin to say, well, we're gonna screw you now. So anyone who's on it or who's gonna be on it, I would just say arbitrarily within the next five to ten years, man, we made a promise to them. We have to keep that promise, full stop, no matter what. It's the people who are younger, including I'll include myself in that. And I have been trying my best to have alternative retirement planning because I don't think I'm gonna get the full Social Security.
Chris Talgo:But, Sam, this is also about personal responsibility. You know, Americans do need to practice self responsibility. And instead of looking for the government, there's so many other ways you can do this. You can depend on family. You know, back in the day, you know, people didn't just say to their parents, oh, you're on your own now.
Chris Talgo:What happened? They brought them back into their family. I know that that's, like, really shunned in today's world, but you know what? A lot of a lot of people in my generation are helping their parents, and that's something that we have to do. And if you were to take Social Security out of that equation, you would just be pulling, you know, pulling the rug out from under them.
Chris Talgo:And I I just I I cannot, any way, support that.
S.T. Karnick:Well, Chris, in my upcoming article, as as you know, having edited it the the I make that point that the major sticking point for reform is the fact that these promises were made to people. The government made these promises to people, and they're they're they were not able to keep those promises. The central issue though is that you have to get the money to do this. And the way you get money is by investing it in the private sector And what we've been doing and that's what that's what moving to a more privatized system would would would do. We've been investing in government instead.
S.T. Karnick:The worst investment you can make is in government, especially any of it that's beyond basic infrastructure, and and real needed national defense and the like. So we are going to have to make serious cuts in other spending in order to to save that 22% that's going to be missing on that date. And, yes, we have to make those decisions right now. The easiest one, in my view, is to dedicate, a a an effort, a massive effort to root out fraud in all of in all of the federal government in every area, including defense, whatever it is, all the NGOs that we that we, nongovernment organizations that, promote communism and and other crazy things in our country, root all that out and dedicate all that money to Social Security. And and also, we've gotta fix Medicare.
S.T. Karnick:That that is abs that that is going up exponentially as well. So these are all these are all solvable problems. And in my article, I I point out how you can get there. It's going to mean taking a little from everybody. Every every aspect of life is going to have to change a little bit in order for this to keep from a collapse.
S.T. Karnick:What I'm talking about is the whole system will collapse because the government won't be able to borrow enough money. So if you want to avert that, then you have to make changes and you have to make them right now. The key thing though, and you you made this point, Chris, and and you're absolutely right, and it's a point that I that I make as well, is that you have to grow the economy. That's the only way you're going to solve any problem of resources and of distribution of resources. If you have less resources
Chris Talgo:I totally totally agree.
S.T. Karnick:Going to be able to redistribute
Chris Talgo:But just keep in mind that this is not really a wealth redistribution thing. This is a and this is this is something that people pay into, and then they get something back out of it. So this is not something like food stamps where I have never been on food stamps in my entire life, so I'm literally basically paying for groceries for other people. This is totally different than that. This is something that, you know, I'll use my dad as an example.
Chris Talgo:He paid in from the nineteen sixties until he retired in the February, and he was told, if you keep making these payments, we will then, in turn, you know, give you these payments. That's a contract. The government has to uphold that contract because you can't just say, sorry. We didn't we didn't we didn't plan accordingly, mister Talgo.
S.T. Karnick:With that, Chris, because if if we if we go down that path and we say, made these promises or or people before us because the current congress has every right to say, the people before us made these promises. The current president is
Chris Talgo:There has been Social Security reform. I mean I mean, you know that. Reagan got got some major Social Security reform done in the nineteen eighties. It's just that that, you know, we don't have the political, backbone to do that right now. But I
S.T. Karnick:think the reform part of the reform was that as the baby boom generation created a surplus, the government spent it and put IOUs in there. So so Trump and and, the current congress didn't do any of that. That was years ago, and and Reagan is responsible for a lot of this just like anybody else. I mean, they all did it. I I I'm I'm not sitting here making a a political case.
S.T. Karnick:I'm making an economic and and budget and practical case.
Chris Talgo:Yeah. But if there's also
S.T. Karnick:a And the reality is the reality is what's going to happen is they are going to inflate it away. If the resources aren't there, all money does is is tell people what resources are worth. So if they need to cut by 22%, they'll cut by 22%. It doesn't matter whether we think it's right or not. They're going to cut by 22%, and the way they're going to do it is the the the best way possible, the way that nobody will will say, okay.
S.T. Karnick:I'm really mad at at my congress, person, and I'm really mad at my senators because they cut Social Security. No. They're going to say, I'm really mad at the Fed. I'm really mad at the president because this inflation is killing us because that's what's going to happen. You're going to get your 22% cut.
S.T. Karnick:It now we can we can do things now that would alleviate that. And that's what I'm talking about, and that's what my recommendations are all about. And especially cutting fraud, that is a huge opportunity to to, sort of fix a lot of problems in the in the government right now.
Linnea Lueken:I I almost wonder, you know, I'm not like a I'm not a big proponent usually of direct democracy type of situations, but I almost wonder if it wouldn't be fair, at least at the at the civic side of things, to have some kind of a a conference or something where they where they put together a couple of solid proposals and then put it up to a national popular vote. Because then it's like, well, it's not just it it wouldn't feel like a top down punishment from the government at that point. Not sure if that's anywhere near feasible. But as I'm listening to these different, you know, different potential futures here, You know, it seems like this is something that you want younger generations as well as older generations to, you know, kind of have a have a say in. And and as many of our vote or our viewers have pointed out like Chris is, but who's actually not an American citizen, I don't think, but still good to hear.
Linnea Lueken:Says what's a promise from a politician worth? And that's a very good point is that, you know, I think usually Sam Sam is correct on this is that usually politicians will go for the the coward's way out on pretty much all of these, you know, looming catastrophes in our financial situation in this country. They just wanna kick the ball further down the field and keep it going. But this is this is an issue. This is the part of the reason why we wanted this issue to be kind of central to our discussion today is that this is government causing a a problem down the line that they didn't know necessarily that it was gonna be a problem down the line.
Linnea Lueken:They thought that they were doing a good thing for people to have some kind of a fund for retirement, especially as Chris pointed out during the Great Depression when it was, you know, completely out of the people's hands that they lost everything. Many people lost everything. And so that was kind of, a a huge culture shock where people suddenly realize that the, you know, things can go bad and quickly. And so you can't really I Yes, Chris. Please.
Chris Talgo:I I think you made a really good point. I don't think that FDR designed Social Security to make all American seniors dependent upon the government. I literally don't think that. I think that he did it from a from a, you know, misbegotten point of view, and I don't think that they, in that point in time, understood the unintended consequences that could come from that. But it's here.
Chris Talgo:It's been here for almost a century. And for people who do depend on it, I just feel like we have to do something for that. For people who are still decades away from retiring like myself, I'm willing to accept that I'm not gonna get my full Social Security. That is all I'm trying to say here. And I would just wish that they would offer me options.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. And so this is this angle is kind of the, like, government's role in your financial security. And our next topic here is government's role in your physical security. So this is more bad news out of The United Kingdom from Hot Air's David Straum. Here come the riots.
Linnea Lueken:I'm sure it'll only get worse this weekend. Anti immigrant violence erupting in The United Kingdom was as predictable as the sun rising in the East and setting in the West. Kirstarmer and the entire political elite have been trying to have their cake and eat it too. They're ideologically committed to policies that inevitably result in things like the Pakistani rape gangs and violence against white Britons by people who are culturally alien to the country while they are simultaneously desperate to hide these outrages and suppress debate about multiculturalism and immigration because they know that hatred and violence will spread as more people comprehend the scale of the problem. The thing is, you can't suppress the rage that's been building forever.
Linnea Lueken:There is a breaking point as the disconnect between what the elites say and reality grows ever more obvious and the indifference, even hostility to the concerns of native Britons forces people to take things into their own hands. Britons have made their concerns about mass immigration clear for nearly two decades. And in that time, the problem only got worse. A big reason the conservatives were wiped out in the last election was that people were exasperated with them. They kept saying they would address the problem but only made things worse.
Linnea Lueken:The fact that a near beheading took place in Belfast right on the heels of the Henry Novak revelations ensured that this was the moment when the violence erupted. Honesty would have been a much better policy and allowing Britons to voice their concerns in words might have avoided or mitigated the violence. The cultural and political elite have pushed even moderate Britons closer to the rioters than to themselves by disallowing rational discussion about immigration. When people are forced to be silent about the rape gangs, violence, increasing crime, or even their own Christianity in order to coddle the feelings of people who clearly hate them, there will come a time when they say enough. Chris.
Linnea Lueken:And also Jim after Chris. But, my question question for this section here is this. Right now, what Britons are feeling is that they're trapped in this horror where they're not allowed to talk about the issues that are surrounding them in their neighborhoods and in some cases, act actively harming them because the government will crack down on them for incitement of anti immigrant sentiment or something. But at the same time, their own government is totally unwilling to step up and do anything to alleviate those conditions that are making life less safe. It's worse than just negligence, it seems.
Chris Talgo:All I can say is I'm so glad that I do not live there, and I live in The United States Of America. And I am so thankful for our freedom of speech and our other freedoms because I think a lot of Americans do not understand that those awesome rights are not the norm in places across this world. So I'm gonna keep it short on this because I'm sure Jim probably has more to say on it. He did he he probably knows more about this than I do, but, this is just a reminder for me how, blessed I am to be born and living in The United States Of America despite the fact that Social Security is a big problem.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Jim, I'm I'm really I'm far from an, like, anarchist type of person. I'm not against policing, even very strong policing typically. But in The UK, you have this weird situation where the police seem totally like feckless and unwilling, really, when it comes to real physical crimes against the populace. But then they'll visit a lady at 3AM and bust her door down because she posted something mean on Facebook.
Linnea Lueken:So how, I mean, how long can this kind of a thing be tolerated?
Jim Lakely:Not much longer. I really don't think so. I mean, somebody tried to it's it's Somali, I believe, immigrant, tried to behead a man on the streets
Linnea Lueken:of pretty nice. Yeah.
Jim Lakely:Oh, am I freezing here? Oops. That's great timing. Yeah. So so yeah.
Jim Lakely:So we saw it on on on video, a Somali immigrant was trying to behead a native son of Belfast, Northern Ireland on the street with a knife after cutting out one eye and and blinding him in the other eye. Ironically, I heard is the more you're learning about this guy, he actually helped out that immigrant family move in next door, and his thanks for that was to be almost beheaded in the middle of the street in his own hometown. And what did the what was the first prominent police statement about that incident? Please don't share any videos of this on social media because it might upset the families of those involved. Note a couple things there.
Jim Lakely:The families of those involved. He doesn't mean just the victim. He means the perpetrators too and the community that the per that the perpetrator shares in the in in Belfast. This is not going to go on this can't go on indefinitely. And and it's not just that the voters of The UK have, as you mentioned, Linnea, for twenty years have voted with the message slow down immigration.
Jim Lakely:It's not that they didn't slow it down. It's that they accelerated it. You know, it it is not a radical idea for voters to demand, sometimes loudly, to get what the hell they voted for, And it is not outrageous for people to actually take to the streets because for twenty years, it's not even that they weren't given what they voted for, but they've been given the opposite of what they voted for. And now, as you said, they have police banging on your door at three in the morning because you put a Facebook post up that might offend certain communities in their in their, you know, in their city or in their country. Certain is is certain communities that doesn't include yourself.
Jim Lakely:Native born UK, it's like everything goes. But if you're an immigrant to the country, you're this protected class. This can't go on forever. This is not it it's not self governance anymore. It's really tyrannical.
Jim Lakely:And, you know, leftists and and leftists in government especially have weaponized the tolerance and the kind nature of the people who have built what we have in the West, which is a tolerant, prosperous society and one that values law and order because you can't have freedom and prosperity without law and order. And this leftist mindset that seems to be very bad in The UK, not quite that bad here in The United States, is just the the image out of my head is like somebody opened the hood of the car, just pulling everything that they can't get their hands on out of it and expecting that car to still run. It doesn't work that way. And nobody here is advocating for violence. There should be no violence.
Jim Lakely:But I I think the shouting in the streets should not end until the people that are supposed to be the protectors of the West and our freedom and our free society that that was created over centuries and with money and especially with blood and to give it all away in in the span of a few years really in in context is just the people are not going to put up with it. The the I think the days of the kindness and the tolerance being expressed or trying to exploit that are over. They're definitely over, I think, in Northern Ireland this week.
S.T. Karnick:The population of Ireland is about 5,300,000. Just in the past ten years, there have been more than a half a million people have immigrated to Ireland, The Republic Of Ireland. This individual that is identified as the perpetrator of this horrific crime was admitted to The Republic Of Ireland and then moved up to Northern Ireland, which is part of The UK. This immigration is largely from places that are very unlike Ireland, and you have a an enormous population of people who have no devotion at all to the culture of that country. So what happens is that when you do that, you are creating a big, big problem.
S.T. Karnick:You have a culture clash that is fundamental. These are two exceedingly different mindsets, in place. And at some point, they're going to be literally at each other's throats. So that is what the government of Great Britain has done in The UK. That's what the government of Ireland has done.
S.T. Karnick:And this, folks, this was headed our way under Joe Biden. And if we had not, had this, past election go the way it went and the subsequent changes in our immigration policies, this would be happening here in The United States. So they are going to go through an incredible refiner's fire over there in in Britain and in Ireland. Obviously, I don't envy them, and I do worry, very much for the the common people of Britain, and that includes immigrants who do want to assimilate, of which, unfortunately, it's a very low pro proportion of the the population of immigrants. But the fact is that the government created this, and then the government said, don't talk about it or we will put you in prison.
S.T. Karnick:Mhmm. And they did put people in prison, including Tommy Robinson. So this is all government, once again, not doing their job and doing things that they shouldn't do. And, we in The US have, avoided it so far. It was bad enough.
S.T. Karnick:It was bad enough for four years, but it would have been absolutely mind blowingly destructive and disastrous had we had different results in the last election. Yeah. So go ahead.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. I mean, I I think what really what what really burns people up and, know, starts to make me angry is that, you know, it's not immigration per se. It's the volume, but it's also the in the the unwillingness to adapt yourself and to embrace the culture and values of the country that you're going to. You know, here's a news flash for for for the left. A human being does not have a universal right to live wherever the hell they feel like living just because they wanna live there.
Jim Lakely:The the one of the problems here is that so so so many it's like, oh, we have a responsibility to bring in human rights people who are being abused by human rights. Okay. Maybe. Can we have a discussion about that, about how many and where from and how serious it has to be? The trouble is most a lot of these, you know, so called human rights migrants are just economic migrants.
Jim Lakely:Just wanna live in The UK or they wanna live in The United States because it's gonna be better living here than the place that they came from. But, you know, there is no universal right to live somewhere just because you want to. And a country has a right to, one, reject you at the border, or two, after have a how about a ninety year three year trial period? You're not really working out here. I think you're gonna have to go back.
Jim Lakely:The these are things that a sovereign nation should be able to do. Japan does it. Nobody really, you know, talks about how Japan is is very dedicated to keeping Japan like Japan has always been, and it doesn't seem to be an issue. It it it just seems to be the issue for certain countries around the world, including UK and The United States.
Linnea Lueken:That's right. Producer Andy is in the chat. He says, like and subscribe, you guys. Do it for America. Thank you very much, Andy.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. It was lame, Andy. Thank you. I'll put it up on the screen. No.
Linnea Lueken:You're you're you're right, Jim. And I think I mean, a big portion of this too is just that it was against the explicit desires of the populace. The government just said, no. We're gonna do this anyway. The same thing happened here in The United States.
Linnea Lueken:I mean, and the same thing happened in California. Californians voted against having a huge there's Nigel Farage. A huge quantity of, immigration, and their government just decided to steamroll them on all of that as well. It it's
Chris Talgo:This is the lack this is the lack of the melting pot. My mom came here from Germany after World War two. She didn't speak English. She got brutally made fun of because of, you know, her clothing and her accent and all that kind of stuff. But you know what she did?
Chris Talgo:She acclimated to the American culture. Okay? That's not what's happening with a lot of of immigrants who are coming to America, you know, nowadays. And I get really frustrated when I see what's happening in places like Virginia where you do have illegal immigrants who should not be here, who are killing American citizens, and then the DA and the the governor and other public officials go out of their way to make the the the legal immigrant as the victim. And that's really, really, I think, starting to, you know, rub Americans the wrong way.
Chris Talgo:What happened in Chicago with when a New York, student was, murdered by an illegal immigrant a couple months ago, I think, you know, is starting to really resonate more and more. And, you know, thank god that Donald Trump won the election and, you know, closed the border and, you know, put time home and in charge Because if you do not have a a secure border, you don't have a country, like Jim said.
S.T. Karnick:One of the interesting things is how much fraud is being done by immigrants. We we saw that in Minnesota, of course. And there is a there there is an angle here that does need to be explored if we're going to be honest about things and understand what's really going on, which is not only is there no assimilation, there's a sense in which, some people do come to this country and think, hey. These people exploited my country for decades or centuries or millions of years or whatever it is. And so I have a right to go over there and take from them.
S.T. Karnick:Now I don't think that that's factually correct. In fact, I don't I don't accept it in the slightest, but I do acknowledge that that is a thought, and it is a real thought. And does any sensible group of people want to bring that into their, you know, bring that to their bosom? I think not. But, when you're really, really ineffective at something, you try shortcuts.
S.T. Karnick:And when you're really, really ineffective at governing, you think, well, no sensible person's going to vote for me, so let's import people who will feel obligated.
Chris Talgo:They're also importing people because they have a huge population problem. This goes back to what we were just talking about with Social Security Insolvency and the fact that, Western countries, they're not having children at a rate that can actually sustain the population. So this is like a, you know, like a temporary solution to something that I I do feel is much deeper. And
S.T. Karnick:Yes. Yeah. These places with with falling populations and very low birth rates, they all have Social Security systems. Could there be a connection?
Chris Talgo:Let's see. I blame Prussia.
S.T. Karnick:Figure it out.
Chris Talgo:Prussia's home. Prasha and their stupid Social Security system.
Linnea Lueken:That's right. I mean, the the broader question
Chris Talgo:education system too. Ugh.
Linnea Lueken:When it when it comes to, you know, the role of government, I guess, when it comes to public safety like this. We already talked about it with Social Security. They shouldn't they probably shouldn't have gotten involved in in public's, you know, financial security in the first place, probably. And now we have this situation and, you know, the the government in, Britain and and in The UK is, you know, different than ours. Obviously, they have different, priorities.
Linnea Lueken:But the the question is who does like, the is the British government's only promise to its citizens that they're not just not gonna let you burn down, like, immigrant housing in neighborhoods, which is terrible. Like, I'm not I'm obvious I I shouldn't have to say that I'm obviously not in support of riots where they're burning down people's houses no matter whose houses they are. And the per the article writer of the hot air article, Strom, he made the same point is that, you know, there are a lot of people who are innocent, who are not causing problems for the country, who are being punished by these riots, and that's always the tragedy of rioting.
Chris Talgo:This is also suicidal empathy on on on behalf of Western democracies. And I think that The United Kingdom, I think that some of this is, modern modern people saying, well, we're we're gonna we're gonna pay back those immigrants that we exploited with our colonialism and all that stuff hundreds and hundreds of years ago when that's a very, very farcical argument. That that's like, you know, saying that we need reparations here in America. You know what? The past is the past.
Chris Talgo:The United Kingdom and The United States have their, you know, their trying times. But by and large, look at all the good that The United States and United Kingdom have done in this world, whether it's defeating Nazism. I mean, I could go on and on and on. And, it's just really sad that these, civilizations don't have more pride in, what they've accomplished, and here they are, you know, flagellating themselves. It's sick.
Chris Talgo:It's pathetic.
Linnea Lueken:Chris, this is a really wonderful transition to our Mhmm. America two fifty here. So I'm going to transition to it right now. I have a a little reading for the audience here. Hopefully, it's you know, right this week, we've we're talking about the Intolerable Acts and the Olive Branch Petition.
Linnea Lueken:Starting with a reading from the Olive Branch Petition, which I think may strike some chords with some of our audience here. But anyway, to the king's most excellent majesty, most gracious sovereign, we, your majesty's faithful subjects of the colonies and the inhabitants who have deputed us to represent them in general congress, entreat your majesty's attention to our humble petition. The union between our mother country and these colonies produced benefits that the wonder and envy of other nations were excited. While they beheld Great Britain rising to a power the most extraordinary the world had ever known. At the conclusion of the French and Indian war, your loyal and I added that bit because they just said the war, but that's the war they're talking about.
Linnea Lueken:Your loyal colonists having contributed to its success doubted not but that they should be permitted with the rest of the empire to share in the blessings of peace and the moments of victory and conquest. While these recent and honorable acknowledgments of their merits remained on record in the parliament, undefaced by even the suspicion of any offense, they were alarmed by a new system of statutes and regulations adopted for the administration of the colonies that filled their minds with most painful fears. We shall decline the ungrateful task of describing the irksome variety of artifices practiced by many of your majesty's ministers. The delusive pretenses, fruitless terrors and unavailing severities that have been dealt out by them in their attempts to execute this impolitic plan. Your majesty's ministers have compelled us to arm in our own defense.
Linnea Lueken:We think ourselves required by indispensable obligation to Almighty God, to your majesty and to ourselves immediately to use all means in our power for stopping the further effusion of blood. We solemnly assure your majesty that we most ardently desire the former harmony between her and these colonies may be restored. We therefore beseech your majesty that your royal authority and influence may be graciously interposed to procure us relief, that measures may be taken for preventing the further destruction of the lives of your majesty's subjects and that such statutes might be repealed. That your majesty may enjoy a long and prosperous reign is our sincere and fervent prayer. This is a shortened by me version of the olive branch petition pass.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I encourage you to read the whole thing because there's quite a bit of detail in it that I skipped over. But that was the general gist. It was passed and signed by the second continental congress as a last ditch effort to avoid all out war. And it is said that King George the third refused to even read it.
Linnea Lueken:So if you are an American who attended American public school, you were probably taught that there were four particular acts of British parliament that really tipped the colonies over the edge in 1774. In 1773, a few months earlier, the Sons of Liberty dumped hundreds of chests of tea into the Boston Harbor. Oops. They were protesting the tea act and townsend acts, which had levied taxes on the colonies without allowing them any representation in parliament to argue their case against the taxes and their general treatment over time, which was getting worse and worse. Anyway, parliament was utterly ticked off about the Boston Tea Party to say the least and decided to crush the Massachusetts Bay Colony to make an example out of them.
Linnea Lueken:So they passed with King George the third's ascent to the Boston Port Act, which had the Royal Navy blockade Boston Harbor, one of the most important harbors in on the Eastern Seaboard from all commercial traffic exports or imports except of course for army provisions for the British Army. The Massachusetts the Massachusetts Government Act declared that the colony was under illegitimate mob rule and they stripped of it its ability to self govern. They placed the crown's own judges, sheriffs, and juries. And it also banned Massachusetts colony from having town meetings except for one per year. So they weren't allowed to meet to discuss their grievances.
Linnea Lueken:And then the act for the impartial administration of justice gave the governor the ability to move trails, trials wherever he wanted, which destroyed the concept of the trial by peers came from which came from the Magna Carta. And so it was something that was very dear to the British in general. And most famously probably was the Quartering Act, which is the only one that applied to all of the colonies. It demanded that British soldiers be quartered at the colonists' expense, sometimes even in their own homes. Although that part actually wasn't technically required by the act itself, like, in the actual primary residence, but it was carried out that way anyway.
Linnea Lueken:In many cases, there was very little oversight of how it was carried out. So I bring this up today as an explanation of the years of, you know, trouble that the American colonists put up with and then the overly heavy handed responses from their government. King George could have reigned in parliament, but he pretty much did whatever they wanted thinking that they knew best and it cost the Brits The United States and ultimately, I think probably down the line the entire empire. There's my there's my countdown to two fifty monologue. But this all it it as I was reading the petition and stuff, it's really kind of heart wrenching because they real I mean, they really gave so many off ramps for the British.
Linnea Lueken:They were really trying to avoid splitting off or having any kind of armed conflict or anything for a long time. Even after, you know, this is years after the Boston Massacre even. They're still trying to patch things up and their mother government just wasn't interested. They just wanted to punish them and crush them.
Chris Talgo:I think it's always important to remember that the American colonies were not united for independence at the beginning. It was actually mostly the New England colonies. Boston really played a role in it, and they had to go and they had to convince the other colonies, especially Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, to enter the revolution with them. And I know that people people like John Adams, they get a lot of, you know, a lot a lot of bad stuff about them written. But thank god that John Adams, Sam Adams, John Hancock, and some of these other very brave Bostonites were able to unite the colonies in the declaration of independence, which we are gonna be celebrating in three weeks.
Chris Talgo:So it's really, really cool stuff.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. I mean, there were also many loyalists here, you know, all throughout the revolution. You know, they ended up decamping to Canada. So they're we were kinda related to that's why we have a special relation with Canada because two hundred fifty years ago, we were kind of the same very much in the same boat. But I you what struck me about that, it's been a long time since I I appreciate these these reminders, these lessons that I've kind of half forgotten in my life as they were taught in public school a long time ago.
Jim Lakely:But the court when you wrote the read the part about in the Olive Branch petition about the quartering act or the things leading up to the to the declaration of independence, the quartering act, and what a big deal that was. I mean, can anyone so there is an amendment in the Bill of Rights. First of all, the Bill of Rights, there were a lot of people against even making the Bill of Rights as part of the US constitution because they thought, well, if we lay out 10 bills you know, if if there's a Bill of Rights with 10 things on them, they're gonna think that those are the only important things and government should be able to handle everything else. So there's big debate on that. But does anyone know?
Jim Lakely:I just gave it away. The third amendment. When was the last time the third amendment prohibiting the quartering of soldiers in your home without permission? When was the last time that was ever invoked or maybe it was never invoked? But it was obviously such a sore spot and so important to the preservation of liberty that they included in the Bill of Rights.
Jim Lakely:I just find that I I just find that endlessly fascinating.
Linnea Lueken:Well, I'm sure
Jim Lakely:Because because just real quick,
Chris Talgo:I mean, I'm a US history teacher. I'm a US history, like, fiend. Can you imagine that it's 1774, and you are told these British soldiers are gonna go in your home. They're gonna they're probably actually gonna sleep in your bed. They're gonna eat your food, and you basically have to make sure that they have everything they need.
Chris Talgo:And if you have anything left over, maybe you can take care of your family. Can you imagine being told that as an American, you know, family in in the colonies? No wonder these people, you know, did what they did.
S.T. Karnick:Interestingly, I think there are applications of the the third amendment that expand well beyond the quartering of soldiers. If if you try to take that principle further, The the government has a tendency to to act as if your property is theirs. And the the quartering of soldiers is simply one most vivid example and quite terrifying because, you know, they're not quartering, what do you call it, people who are ill or something, which would be bad enough, of course. They're quartering peep they're quartering people who would kill you if you dispute this. So I think that that it is a it is an important amendment even though it it hasn't been explicitly, an issue a lot of times.
S.T. Karnick:It sets a principle that is important for us to to remember. The government doesn't own your property. What they own is the responsibility to protect your property, and they often do the opposite. All too often do the opposite.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I I wanted to, you know, highlight these, first of all, because they're some of the, you know, the kind of the final straws, I guess, in it turning towards all out war. And What? The yeah. Chris, you're good.
Linnea Lueken:Go ahead. No. I'm jazzed that you're
Chris Talgo:I'm just I'm just going back to all my teaching stuff. And what is really interesting because the intolerable acts were meant to punish Boston primarily. And what John Adams did and Sam Adams and John Hancock because they said they told the other colonists, if if this can happen to us, it can happen to you. And that was a really powerful argument for those people who were on the fence, especially in the Southern Colonies, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, because they did they had not felt the wrath of the king like the people in Boston had. So the people in Boston, they were the ones who were really the the gung ho revolutionaries from the earliest life.
Chris Talgo:I would actually say from the late seventeen sixties up until the, you know, 1776 when it actually took place. But they were the ones who were really driving that. And the, Intolerable Acts in shutting down the Port Of Boston, guys, John Hancock, what was he? He was a bootlegger. This was crushing his business.
Chris Talgo:So when they were told, actually, you can't import or export, any fine wines or goods or anything, that made people like John Hancock who had a import export business say, you know what? They're not only suppressing my freedom, but they're basically saying you can't even, you know, like, have a livelihood anymore. And had it not been for stuff like that, who knows if, we would have, you know, had the declaration of independence in in the way we did, as we did, when we did. So I I I just was always trying to make sure that the students understood how awesome it was that these people put their lives on the line, their fortunes, their families, because they just knew that what was happening was unjust and that the king was not treating them equally. You know, it's just two hundred fifty years ago just think about this, guys.
Chris Talgo:Two hundred fifty years ago, the the status quo was, divine, you know, divine rule. These people said, wait a second. That's not right. Why can't we have the ability to actually govern ourselves? That's only been really happening for two hundred and fifty years in the whole giant span of human history.
Chris Talgo:So when you really think about it like that, is just a blink in the eye of the human story. America's awesome. We're about to celebrate two hundred fifty years of this. I just really hope that, you know, we've got a couple more weeks that Americans really, you know, just celebrate and have an awesome fourth of July. I really, really hope so.
Linnea Lueken:Absolutely. Thank you for that, Chris. So, you know, our our the the mother government of this great country, the British laid heavy burdens and suffering on the colonists. And when those burdens were protested, they ground their heel in even further. Even then, the men of our second continental congress reached out to try to mend things again, asking for the original grievances to be addressed, but promising loyalty to the crown, and that too was rejected.
Linnea Lueken:That was 07/05/1775. One year later, the declaration of independence would be signed and all of the colonies would come into line looking for independence. So we are we are getting there, you guys. This is fantastic month leading up to a fantastic holiday, but that is all the time we have for today, unfortunately. So thank you everyone for your attention to these matters.
Linnea Lueken:We are live every week on Thursdays at noon central on Rumble, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, all over the place. Jim, what do you have for the audience today?
Jim Lakely:We have tomorrow climate, the climate realism show, Godzilla El Nino. If you're a real weather nerd, you
S.T. Karnick:should have some
Linnea Lueken:fun. Alright. Sam?
S.T. Karnick:Thank you. Heartland.org. We've got plenty of great stuff on there today. And also s dkarnick.substack.com, as you can see right in front of you there.
Linnea Lueken:And Chris?
Chris Talgo:I just wanna tell the viewers that Jim and I are gonna play in a golf tournament on Monday, and Donald Kendal, the former host, will be attending this dinner, and Jim and I are gonna have a blast.
Linnea Lueken:Alright. Awesome. Good luck. For audio listeners, please rate us well on whatever service you're using and leave a review. Thank you so much to all of our usual panelists and also, as always, to our viewers.
Linnea Lueken:We will see you again next week.