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Two deranged lawyers talking about our deranged obsessions.
Raven Sinner (00:01)
Thanks for watching!
Pisha (00:26)
Hello derangers. Welcome to Deranged De Jure, the podcast featuring two deranged lawyers discussing their deranged obsessions. I am one of those deranged lawyers. I am Pisha. I am here with my co -hosts, who's also a lawyer. We are the two lawyers that make up Deranged De Jure. And we, yeah, we weren't talking about someone else. That'd be weird.
Raven (00:42)
Gravid.
Yeah, you thought we were talking about someone else, but it's us, actually.
Pisha (00:53)
But no, we are talking about us. It is us. We are here to talk to you today about the final little hurrah of the six degrees of Ronald Reagan. We started with, what did we start with? Reaganomics, which is arguably domestic policy, but we wanted to get really deep into some of those topics.
Raven (00:54)
Yeah.
Pisha (01:21)
then we followed up with the foreign policy and now we're doing domestic policy. It's strictly how he felt about Americans and how they should be dealt with. So we'll talk about that. But first, my mom asked that we debate this. I think mostly to draw attention to a very embarrassing moment that I'd rather forget, but instead I'm going to share it with the whole world right now. So the debate is.
Raven (01:29)
Mm -hmm.
Okay.
Pisha (01:50)
The debate is, do you think oysters on the half shell prior to riding a roller coaster is a good idea?
Raven (02:02)
so should we put that up as a poll and debate it? Yeah, we should definitely do that. Okay, great. Yeah.
Pisha (02:05)
Yeah, yeah. Let's all debate. I think I know the answer because I wasn't thinking at the time. I went to Las Vegas this weekend to see Megan Thee Stallion concert. And yeah, yeah. And, you know, I was living large. I was like, yeah, more oysters. Bring me a dozen more from the East.
Raven (02:21)
V.
Pisha (02:32)
see, I don't know, whatever. I was being very elitist and I was into the oysters and I thought I'd
Raven (02:34)
You
I'm reading, just as an aside, I'm reading Kitchen Confidential right now. And so I'm learning when you should be ordering oysters. And apparently the weekend is probably not the time to do it because I think they come in on like Tuesdays. So like Tuesdays and Thursdays are supposed to be allegedly according to Anthony Bourdain like 20 something years ago, probably more than that actually.
Pisha (03:02)
Well, well, and it was Las Vegas. There's no, where's the nearest oysters? I don't know. It seems like it probably takes a while. Yeah, it probably takes a couple of minutes, but there. It's not too bad. I guess you're right, a couple of minutes. But yeah, so what I...
Raven (03:09)
San Diego.
It's not that far, a couple minutes. Yeah. Yeah, and this is New York. So actually, forget all, scratch all of that. Erase everything. Yeah.
Pisha (03:21)
But yeah, so no, I had Las Vegas oysters. And I thought I had plenty of time, but apparently I was jostling around Meg, you know, just dancing on my THOT shit, you know, and, and
Raven (03:41)
Hehehehe
Pisha (03:43)
Then we go on the New York New York roller coaster and mind you, I'm completely sober. I've been sober for several months now. I'm very proud of it. And I have never in my life been sick on a roller coaster and especially like wasted. Like I've been wasted on that roller coaster and I've never been sick. So I'm on this roller coaster with my stepdaughter who's 16. So of course this had to happen with her in her presence just so I could be extra cringy.
Raven (04:01)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Pisha (04:11)
and I got off the roller coaster and I started sweating bullets. I had complete motion sickness, never happened before. I sat on the ground by the lockers and I quietly as possible threw up on the ground. And then I threw up in a trash can many times. It's okay, the security guard was very nice to me. She was so sweet. She was like...
Raven (04:26)
OHHHH
I am so sorry.
Pisha (04:36)
But she also was like separating my stepdaughter and being like, hey, who is she to you? How did she get sick? Like trying to establish if I was on drugs or alcohol. And I'm like, lady, what's so ironic about this is I'm sober and I'm proud. There's no reason this should be happening. And that's when I realized oysters. It had to be oysters.
Raven (04:46)
Yeah.
Noooo
Oysters, yeah, the seafood stuff, yep. That makes sense. I'm sorry that happened, that sucks. I like that roller coaster though, it's fun. I haven't been on it in years. I haven't been to Vegas in years either, but anyway. Yeah, but well, okay, all right.
Pisha (05:00)
Yeah.
It's fine. I love that roller coaster.
Yeah, that's how it went for me. So moving on, this is your yearly reminder that if you buy and set off your own fireworks instead of attending local fire department sponsored events, you actually hate America, her national forests and veterans and dogs. You hate dogs, you monsters. yeah.
Raven (05:40)
You
Pisha (05:41)
and you are actually supporting China and Chinese products and traditions. You dog -hating, China -loving communists.
Raven (05:51)
that's a good reminder. Does that come up on your phone? Like, do you just do you have that as a yearly reminder?
Pisha (05:54)
So I just wanted to put that out there. Yeah, I had to read it word for word so that everyone knew exactly how I felt about it. But we can't do fireworks in my neighborhood because we have the restrictions. It's a fire hazard. Duh. Like we live in a desert. We're in New Mexico.
Raven (06:03)
Good, yeah.
Yeah, well, the entire like, southwest region or south, sorry, southeast region of New Mexico is burning down now too. So I would think there should be extra precautions, I would hope. I don't, yeah, yeah, it's really sad. I don't, I don't know if there's any like, go find me's or anything. I know that they're out there. So rude. so yeah. Yeah.
Pisha (06:28)
yeah, that's definitely what's going on.
Well, yeah, RUEDOSO is like burning down right now. They've had to evacuate all of RUEDOSO and there's like three fires right now.
Raven (06:44)
It's actually, yeah, it's actually like affecting the courts down there. Like they're not operating. So, mm -hmm.
Pisha (06:50)
I can't imagine where would you go? Everything's on fire. So, yeah, there you go, everybody. Don't buy and set off your own fireworks. Please just go to your local event. It's safer. It's less expensive. You don't have to clean up. It's a good deal. So that's just my opinion on that. Yeah, see, you hate boo if you set off fireworks. Like, I mean it. And you hate my dog Stieglitz. You hate Stieglitz and boo.
Raven (06:55)
True. Truth.
Boo, boo, thank you.
Yeah. Yeah. It is true.
You can't, you cannot hate those dogs. They are the best dogs. So yeah.
Pisha (07:22)
So yeah, so please don't set off fireworks everybody just watch the ones that everyone else sets off. And so last update we are just about 14 days or I don't know 16 days away from the True Crime and Paranormal Podcast Festival 2024 in Denver and we've got all kinds of exciting stuff.
Raven (07:31)
Yes.
Close surround, yep.
in.
Pisha (07:52)
Tell us about some of the exciting stuff we've got.
Raven (07:52)
my gosh, yes. Yeah, well, so I think we, I don't remember if we told everyone about our logo update last time, but we have updated our logo because we had friends of friends who were kind enough to create our logo, which is super cool. So it's up on all the socials. You see it. It's we like had a basic like outline of what we wanted.
And if you are watching and you haven't seen the logo on the actual podcast screen that you're looking at, this is the shirt that we have. So we have shirts, we have stickers, we have merch. We're acting like we're real podcasters. We're leading into it. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the bracelets are cool. The stickers are cool.
Pisha (08:35)
Bracelets if you yeah, if you can see here's the bracelet for the people who were like bracelets, so Yeah
Raven (08:48)
What else we got? We got some business cards. Because we're business people.
Pisha (08:50)
Yeah, I mean, those are more like personally satisfying, I think. I'm not sure the derangers are excited about our business cards, but we certainly are. Like, they're so cool. They're double sided. Really cool. Just very excited.
Raven (08:56)
I'm out.
This is time.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. So yeah, so come pick one up or we'll have them on for sale on our Patreon eventually once I can figure out how to do that.
Pisha (09:18)
Yeah, I'll help. Yeah, I think I can probably help with that. So yeah, that's. Yeah, that's what we got for updates. And now I think we should probably just jump into our our last episode of the Six Degrees of Ronnie Reg and and get moving towards the festival. Like we've got some exciting things ahead. So.
Raven (09:23)
I'm sure we can figure it out.
Let's get into it.
All right. Mm -hmm.
Pisha (09:43)
So I'll start us off. We talked a lot during Reaganomics about those four pillars of Reaganomics and two of them were very relevant to this first policy. So the first policy of Reagan's that has irreparably fucked America. Well, I don't know if irreparably, but has really fucked us up today is fuck poor Americans, especially women and BIPOC.
So, yeah, it's not exactly a mystery that Ronald Reagan was a raging racist and it was evidenced by how he referred to people on welfare. So, first of all, let's talk about those two pillars of Reaganomics that he loved so much. One was cutting taxes, cutting taxes and two was to
cut government spending. So in this case, he cut welfare by over 20 billion in the first few years as president. And this wasn't exactly a huge cut. There was still increases in spending proportional to the budget, if that makes sense. But overall, he was dramatically cutting, especially welfare, food stamps and programs that were specifically designed to help poor people.
And so most poor people, both in the 80s and now, unfortunately, are children. First and foremost, I think a third of the people in poverty are under the age of 17. So these are children who cannot have jobs, they do not pay taxes, you cannot tell me that they're lazy and they're not working hard enough to earn their food.
Raven (11:24)
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (11:41)
And also to hold them accountable for their parents is ridiculous. But that's not the point here. The point is that the other large group of recipients are women, single women, single women with children, and then also single women of color with children. So.
Raven (11:58)
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (12:05)
These were huge recipients of the programs. They benefited greatly from the programs that were being slashed by Reagan during this time. So as you can imagine, they suffered the greatest. And he used this false narrative of the welfare queen. It was this black woman who just had a million babies by a million different fathers, and she just...
She made a living off of mooching, off of the welfare system. And here is his quote exactly. And this I think perfectly encapsulates the racism, I think too, in addition to how much he hated women. So here it is. In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 phone numbers to collect food stamps.
Social Security, veterans benefits for four non -existent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax -free cash income alone has been running $150 ,000 a year. And so...
This was a story that the conservatives really latched onto at the time. And they tried to paint the picture that all of these welfare recipients were these black women with all these children who were just misusing the system so they didn't have to get jobs. And the problem with that is a couple of things. First of all, that most people who have been convicted of welfare abuse have been men, not women.
Raven (13:49)
Big sense.
Pisha (13:51)
And two, most welfare recipients are white. So this idea that they're disproportionately black women taking all this, you know, government handouts, as they love to call it, is just wrong to begin with. So they do make a large portion of people living in poverty and a large portion of the people who are intended to benefit from these programs.
Raven (14:06)
Yeah.
Pisha (14:18)
but it's not exactly true that they are the largest welfare abusers, system abusers. So this narrative, where does it come from? It comes from this woman, Linda Taylor. The Republicans had to dig so fucking deep for her because for one person to fit this narrative, first of all,
Raven (14:36)
for one person.
Meanwhile, how much do we spend again on like one bomb in like Iran?
Pisha (14:45)
I don't even know. Well, and what did he do? He raised our government defense spending to 500 billion or something just absurd the same time. It's like, what the heck? You're telling me we can't pay for these people, but we can pay to kill these people. Okay, cool. So she, Linda Taylor, is this woman who the whole welfare queen narrative is built off of.
Raven (15:03)
Right.
Pisha (15:13)
She was a scam artist in the 1940s and 50s. She did in fact get convicted for abusing the welfare system. However, the total was $8 ,000.
Raven (15:28)
How is she relevant in 1980?
Pisha (15:31)
That's the other thing. Like, first of all, that was 40, 30, 40 years ago. The one woman, the one black woman you could find. Also, it was $8 ,000. I guess if you took 1980s money, maybe that's 150 ,000, but still you.
Raven (15:35)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Inflation, yeah, whatever.
Compared to the waste again, talking about how much waste goes into foreign policy, I mean, you know, anyway, or the military in general.
Pisha (15:56)
But really what shocks me is the mental gymnastics you have to do to turn $8 ,000 in 1950s money into $150 ,000 a year salary in 1980. It was ridiculous. It was so malicious and false and misleading. And they think because it's built on this one shred of truth.
This woman did exist. She was a scam artist. She was black. She did abuse the welfare system. It was $8 ,000. And if $8 ,000 a year is abused in welfare, I'm pretty sure we can write that off in our budget. I'd rather pay for the abuse so that the real legitimate people could get help than not pay for the legitimate people to get help because there's abuse.
Raven (16:44)
You know.
Right. Well, we call them like freeloaders, obviously, like when we're talking about them in economics. And obviously, like people on the right really have a problem with freeloaders because I mean, like the logic is that you don't, nobody profits off of freeloaders necessarily. Like it's too attenuated to call it like profiting. So like for the military industrial complex, for example, or farming industry or whatever.
complex you want to come up with, someone is benefiting from like the government waste in that. And that's why we're not raising any red flags about that. We're raising it against the people because A, we don't want them to come up and like, you know, be elevated in any kind of way because the more oppressed you are, the more, sorry, I'm getting off on my like, yeah, exactly. That's where I was going with that. Yeah. So.
Pisha (17:39)
But the more governable you are, like, it's true.
But it's a good point because that's why we're here talking about this. This happened in the 80s, but look at what has happened since. Ronald Reagan paved the road so Donald Trump could run. And this is all happening, this narrative you see with Marjorie Taylor Greene talking about Jewish space lasers and like the same rhetoric has been in the conservative agenda for a long time. It's just some people didn't have
Raven (17:53)
Mm -hmm.
Yep.
Pisha (18:15)
the, I guess, complete insanity to say it earlier. I don't know. The dog whistles were right, right. And so, yeah, it's not been good for women and people of color since Reagan. As you know, those, yeah. What?
Raven (18:19)
The dog whistles are still dog whistles, they're not regular whistles. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I don't mean to cut you off. As I was doing some of this research and talking to some, we'll call them experts, they would like that, although I don't know that they listened to this podcast, that Nixon was actually the one. Nixon started all of this.
Pisha (18:50)
haha
Well, right. Well, in almost all of them, like almost all of the policy you see it. I think we even discussed this in Reaganomics, how a lot of the Reaganomic policies started with Nixon. But the Republicans don't like claiming Nixon for anything. So they used Reagan and they really ramped it up under Reagan. Like they really ramped it up. What Nixon was doing was really small scale.
Raven (18:58)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
True.
Yep. Yep.
Pisha (19:25)
compared to what they were able to do with Reagan. So, but you're right. I agree. All of these things. And I think I made that disclaimer again in the Reaganomics one. Almost all of these either started during Carter or with Nixon. And they have just, they got so much worse with Reagan. And I think the problem was how far he took it. Just everything up. Exactly, exactly. So,
Raven (19:27)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, he just amped everything up to like the nth degree. Yeah, yeah. So anyway.
Pisha (19:53)
So remember those tax cuts we had talked about for corporations and the wealthy, one of those pillars of Reaganomics? Well, fucking shocker, because of those, the government wasn't making enough revenue to balance its spending. So it made massive cuts to social programs that helped poor people and recklessly borrowed over $1 trillion during this time. We talked about it very briefly before, but at this time,
Raven (19:57)
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (20:23)
23 .9 million Americans were living in poverty in 1980 and the percentage of those that were children, roughly 20%. And that kind of remained unchanged. It dropped a little, I wanna say in the 90s and then it rose and then it dropped again and now it's back up around 20%. So 20 % of our poor people are children.
Just remember when you're taking these quote unquote hands at handouts away from people, you're taking them away from children. So, so as I mentioned, women and. yeah, yeah, they only matter when they're in a womb. So as I said, things have not improved greatly for women and BIPOC since Reagan.
Raven (20:56)
Right.
But children don't matter after they're born, remember that.
Yeah.
Pisha (21:17)
I mean, we've seen some...
closing of the gap in the pay differential between men and women. But in 2021, 1 ,205 women died of maternal causes in the United States. So we have the highest maternal mortality rate out of any Western nation in the entire world. And it's...
Raven (21:45)
Yeah, I don't know the stat on it, but I know it's like way worse after row is overturned. So there is that.
Pisha (21:51)
yeah, well, and that's the problem. I wish I had, I tried to look for the stats since Roe because I wanted to talk about like, it's Scott and we got what Reagan wanted because Reagan wanted to return, he wanted to overturn Roe so that the states had the ability to decide, you know, the abortion issue. But you know, how's that going? Well, I think what we've seen, how many women in Louisiana die?
Raven (21:56)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (22:21)
I know about at least one who's died of bleeding out from an ectopic pregnancy, but it's just not great. And so usually maternal mortality rate is one of the factors used to determine how well a nation is doing, the wellbeing of a nation, and we always rank very low in this regard. And so since 20, this is in now basically,
Raven (22:21)
so many is terrible.
Yeah.
Pisha (22:49)
2021, 1 ,205 women died of maternal causes. That's compared to only 861 in 2020. In one year, 400 more people. And that was 32 .9 deaths per 100 ,000 live births. Yeah.
Raven (22:59)
Mm.
Imagine that probably had something to do with COVID as well, right?
Pisha (23:11)
Yeah, I think COVID had something to do with this as well. This row wasn't overturned yet. That was 2022, right? Okay, so, but yeah. Well, especially with COVID, none of it, it was all one year in my mind. So yeah, so also in 2021, the more...
Raven (23:13)
Mm -hmm.
No.
I believe so. The years bleed together. Like no year after 2020 matters. Yeah. Nothing matters.
Pisha (23:37)
Also in 2021, the maternal mortality rate for non -Hispanic black, subsequently just black women, was 69 .9 deaths out of 100 ,000. That's a lot of dead women. That's ridiculous. And so also just to kind of put into perspective,
Raven (23:54)
It's terrible.
It's horrible. It's really awful.
Pisha (24:03)
how women and children and minorities are doing in the country today. I also looked up who SNAP recipients are. So these are like food stamp recipients. Who are they? Well, approximately 36 % of them are under 17 years old. 36 %! Approximately 27 % are black and approximately 60 % of the adult recipients are women. So...
Raven (24:30)
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (24:32)
These programs are designed to help, especially women who are single, maybe have a child, get jobs, keep jobs, still feed their families and not need that second income. The problem with how we've shifted as an economy, maybe thanks to Reaganomics, is the cost of living is so high. A one income household can't support a family in a one bedroom apartment. And so,
Raven (24:40)
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (25:00)
It's just, it's the nature of the beast. If we don't raise their wages, we're going to have to raise their benefits, their social benefits, because they can't pay. So I just, I don't understand. These poor people are not going away. We're going to create more of them with the policies Reagan has instilled. Like, right, it's going to make more poor people. Don't you want more?
Raven (25:11)
Mm -hmm.
that are only getting exacerbated with the origin and everything else. Right.
Pisha (25:28)
less poor people. Don't you want more people living in sustainable, happy households? Isn't that a sign of a free and wealthy nation? We should be able to support this.
Raven (25:38)
Yeah.
Well, see, like, because I'm sure you know the answer to this on the other side or what they'll come back to you with is like, well, women just shouldn't be having sex and women, you know, shouldn't be having babies. And meanwhile, men are having sex out there. Yeah, exactly. You don't know people's situations and it is not the kids' fault. And so, like, if you're going to force women to have children, then you have to make sure that those children are going to be cared for. Yeah.
Pisha (25:55)
Stop raping us too. And yeah, like you don't.
Mm -hmm. You have to pay for the children and make sure they're cared for. Yep. I...
Raven (26:10)
Yeah, and so that's why I am pro mandatory DNA tests for the men and split custody
Pisha (26:14)
Mm -hmm.
Raven (26:17)
and 50 % child support.
Pisha (26:16)
support. I was like, rearing? Yeah, no, I feel that like if we're gonna force women to have babies, then the men have to be forced to take care of the babies. So I completely agree with that. It's not how it's going right now.
Raven (26:24)
No, it's an equal, yeah. Yeah, it's.
Yeah, because what, right, like, I mean, how are women supposed to be doing it then? And how are the kids supposed to be getting along if like, if there's no early childhood, you know, education, there's no daycare, so the women can't work all day, right? There's no, I mean, there's just, it's an impossible task, yeah, scenario for.
Pisha (26:51)
Go to work, yeah.
scenario.
Raven (26:59)
for women and especially for women who are already in poverty, who grew up in poverty, who don't have any kind of wealth. And so it's just like, the thing is, and I'm sorry, I'm on my soapbox again, but the thing is that we can't have people who have never been in these scenarios creating the laws. And so, I mean, like people like Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, and, you know, I'm not just saying Republicans because
I'll have it known right here and now, and I've said it before and I will say it again, I am not pro -democrat. So same goes for everybody on the democratic side as well. But none of them have been in those scenarios. None of them have seen, none of them have been in a position where they have to rear a child by themselves. And anyway, so they shouldn't be governing women who do.
Pisha (27:36)
no.
Raven (27:59)
That's just my point.
Pisha (28:00)
Right, I agree. Or if you're gonna govern them, govern them with an open mind and an open heart, like the way Democrats do, right? Like we sit there and go, we don't even wanna know what, not we, I keep saying like I'm one of them too, but the problem is it's like, it's the lesser evil, so I have to associate myself. But like the Democrats will say, you know,
Raven (28:10)
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (28:28)
We don't want to assume what your story is. We aren't going to make these assumptions about who you are as a person. These things should be available to everybody, regardless of who you are. And then Republican policy is, who are you? And you should get them because of who you are. And it's just, that's not, I don't like that. It's not realistic.
Raven (28:38)
Mm -hmm.
It's not realistic. It's not realistic. And it doesn't take into, like, it's not a holistic approach to how we need to make sure that our, you know, our people are doing okay and our people are not doing okay. And there's, you know, other ways. I don't know if that was the end for you. Are you, did you want to say anything else? Okay. All right. So policy number two in Reagan's domestic policy is
Pisha (29:01)
Right.
no, I'm ready for your policy.
Raven (29:16)
Fuck Americans struggling with addiction and AIDS. So it's heavy hitter. So I'm mostly going to talk about AIDS here because we're going to talk about addiction in the next part of this, which is what I see a lot of and we'll get into that. But so as everyone knows, AIDS was a big epidemic back in the 1980s. We hadn't really seen it before. We didn't know where it came from. People thought it came from saliva. It didn't blah, blah, blah.
But by the end of 1984, AIDS had already been ravaging the United States for a few years at that point and had affected about roughly 8 ,000 people. It killed about 3 ,500 people. So when it began, the Reagan administration's first reaction was to joke about it, which...
Pisha (30:09)
shut up. I was hoping it was just crickets. Like crickets would be slightly less offense. my God. What was the joke?
Raven (30:13)
no, it got even, it was worse. so this was between the press and someone in the administration when they were having a press conference. One of the press people asked one of the administration people, you know, what is Reagan going to do about AIDS? And the person was like, don't know what that is. Ha ha ha. And like, he was like, well,
Like they're calling it like the gay virus base, which is so offensive and not true. But people just didn't know. And it was a different time and age and, you know, shame on them, but also they didn't know. But so this press person continued to press the administration on what they were going to do. And it was constantly jokes in the press room. It was, you know,
horribly offensive towards homosexual individuals and mostly gay men. So it just, it was terrible. Like they, they really, they joked about it. They laughed about it. I mean, you listen to the actual recordings of this and it's just, thanks to cringe. And so, and they weren't jokes. It was just like, we don't know what that is. it's gay. are you gay? Ha ha ha.
Not funny, anyway. So then it wasn't until September 1985, after, this is like about four years after the crisis had begun, President Reagan finally actually publicly mentioned AIDS. And the reason was, is because he had a friend who was also an actor who had come down with AIDS. And so he decided to finally speak it out loud.
Pisha (32:11)
It was Rock Hudson, right? Like Rock Hudson was very, he was one of the few openly gay people in the entertainment industry at the time and very close friends with Nancy and Ronnie through the Screen Actors Guild and all their acting days and stuff. So of course they don't care until it happens to them or it happens close to home to their friend. And he died of AIDS, right?
Raven (32:12)
Yep. Yep.
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Exactly. He did. That's when he finally was starting to, yeah, now it affects me. I don't care if it affects, you know, however many thousands of people at that point that it did. But beyond that, Reagan completely ignored the epidemic and made it worse because he cut funding to the CDC. Any funding that came from Congress had to go
Pisha (32:42)
Yeah. He was like, no.
UGH
Raven (33:06)
for AIDS research was coupled with like toxic shock syndrome. You remember like the tampon, like back in the, you know what toxic shock is, right? Like it's, do you not know? Yeah, yeah, yes, yes. It's sepsis. Yes, that's what toxic shock is, yes. So they coupled AIDS research with that and also Legionnaires disease. I don't know.
Pisha (33:13)
What?
Like septic, septus, right? Like where you leave your tampon in for too long?
What? Why? What did we need to research with that? What's Legionneers disease? I need to look this up. Hang on. I'm looking it up now. Everybody hold tight. D 'Rangers hold tight. Legionneers? I found it. Okay, so Legionneers disease is a type of pneumonia caused by Legionella bacteria.
Raven (33:36)
I actually don't know. I didn't look it up at all. Yeah, you look it up. You tell me. Yeah. So you... Legionnaires. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.
Pisha (33:58)
What a very specific thing. Yeah, why would you do that? That's so weird. Did we have a Legionella breakout or something?
Raven (33:58)
Well, there you go.
Has nothing to do with AIDS whatsoever. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it... No, I'm sure it wasn't, I didn't, I'm sure it had nothing to do with that. I'm sure this is purely puritanical bullshit. Right, yeah, because it was seen as a gay disease. Like they, you know.
Pisha (34:17)
This was just their way to not fund AIDS research.
Raven (34:26)
And different regions and cities took it upon themselves, obviously San Francisco being the head of it, to try and come up with different alternatives. I actually, I just watched Dallas Buyers Club for the first time. It's so good. And I was like, I've been meaning to watch it. I don't know how I hadn't watched it yet, but yeah, I mean, this was a serious problem in the 1980s where there was just zero treatment.
And the way that people treated each other was just heartbreaking. So, yeah.
Pisha (34:58)
It really was. And this actually brings up another series that I watched recently. It's something, fellow travelers or something like that. And it's basically about the lavender scare in the 50s where the federal government was firing anyone that they thought was gay. And it was just really huge homophobic. Yeah, but it does go into the AIDS epidemic in the 80s as well.
Raven (35:07)
Mm -hmm.
Hmm.
Mm -hmm. I remember this. Yeah. Yep.
Pisha (35:27)
there were really poignant parts in that show where you really saw how the lack of attention from the federal government was killing people. It was actively killing people because they weren't getting any sort of treatment or hospitalization. They were being made to pay for their treatment. This is millions, like sometimes millions of dollars of treatment. So it was bad, but great show. I recommend it to anyone.
Raven (35:38)
you
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right, well, and it also expanded on the discrimination against gays by making parents afraid that the teachers were going to spread AIDS if they were gay to the children, which was just not true in any kind of way. Yeah, it's stupid. It's very stupid. Yeah.
Pisha (36:10)
What? my God. It's so bizarre. Well, and also there was this kind of evangelical element to it as well, where this was seen as a disease of moral, like morality, really. Like you got it because you were immoral, either through sex or through drugs or through...
Raven (36:21)
absolutely.
Mm -hmm, yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (36:36)
some, you know, those are the ways you usually contract AIDS is through sex and through needles, particularly it's blood transfer. But the point is, like, there was a huge epidemic during this time of substance abuse, which we're going to talk about later. And it wasn't just gay people who were getting contracting AIDS. It was drug users, people who had substance abuse disorder. So these were also just normal people struggling with mental health and with substance abuse disorder.
Raven (36:40)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Right.
Pisha (37:06)
And it's just.
Raven (37:08)
And just everyday people too. I mean, that's the thing that just wasn't being said was like, yeah, it was getting treated. And yes, it did have implications with like drugs and obviously with sex. That's how it's transmitted. But like everybody was getting AIDS. Everyone has AIDS.
Pisha (37:23)
Yeah, it didn't matter. Like, seriously, it did not matter who you were. You could get AIDS at the time, you know? And so, but Reagan kind of was able to dismiss it because of this religious idea that these were immoral people who caught this disease as a result of their immorality. So it was so much easier for them to just write these people off as a result of moral issues. And so that's...
Raven (37:30)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Right.
Right, right.
Yeah, which is a constant theme throughout. Yeah. Yeah, I mean...
Pisha (37:53)
It's gross. I just thought Jesus didn't want us to write entire groups of people off. I thought we were supposed to help everyone.
Raven (38:04)
I'm an atheist, I have no idea.
Pisha (38:06)
I don't know either because I'm not a Christian, but my understanding, like whenever Christians argue with me, they're always arguing like, we're meant to help people. And I'm like, well then do that. Have you given that a shot?
Raven (38:08)
but I'm pretty sure that's what the Bible says, pretty sure.
actually help people? Well, yeah, and again, it comes down to a lack of understanding and a point of like unbridled, I'm going to call it privilege that some people have, especially people who are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, who've never seen addiction, who've never been on the streets. Like they have no clue what it's like for people who weren't born without means. And so their answer is like, well, just don't do it. But
you know, it affects everybody. Like the war on drugs was a whole other thing. But, you know, in talking about like the war on addiction, what we started with, Nancy Reagan really like spearheaded this whole like just say no thing. And that's that's where I'm getting back to is like people of affluence or people who, you know, just have no clue have this idea that like
The answer is just don't do it. Just don't do it. And really does not get to the bottom of generational trauma that we've talked about before. And I hate to use buzzwords like that, but when you come from generations before you that have suffered through addiction, that have suffered through poverty, that have suffered through institutional racism, and that have suffered through just various levels of trauma.
it's going to come down the line. The trickle -down theory. You'd think that they would understand it.
Pisha (39:52)
God. Okay. So it's like trickle down with economics, except with trauma. Yeah. People and their feelings and stuff. So,
Raven (39:56)
People! Yeah, exactly.
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (40:03)
also incredibly misleading because most people who deal with drug addiction are wealthy people. They deal with drug addiction. It's just they can support their addictions. They can support their addictions. So they don't understand why these poor people can't support their addictions. But they don't have, when there's little Jimmy Jr.
Raven (40:10)
That's true. Yeah, we've talked about that before. Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (40:26)
is the coke addict, they just pay to put them in rehab. And you know what I mean? Like they don't understand drug addiction at the same degree as people who are suffering from drug addiction and cannot support their addiction. There's there like there's another level there because you're right, you're not going to see as many kind of deviant
Raven (40:28)
Mm -hmm.
I do.
Yeah.
The combination of, yeah.
Pisha (40:53)
I guess auxiliary behaviors kind of like branch off of that because when you get a poor person who's addicted to drugs, then they're going to maybe start stealing or then they might start doing things, you know, whatever. There might be more crime as a result because it's crimes of poverty as a result. Right. So they don't have to deal with the necessity of addiction the same way poor people do. So I just I only took issue with that part because
Raven (40:57)
Mm -hmm.
Exactly, exactly. Necessity, yeah.
Exactly.
Pisha (41:22)
They absolutely deal with drug addiction too. They just have the money to support it.
Raven (41:25)
Right. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear. I guess like my point was just that they're not having to deal with this on a, they can say, just say no. And then like they put the people that they, you know, they can't just say no, that they know into these little closets and just kind of like, you know, forget about them. But, mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Very true. So.
Pisha (41:32)
that's okay.
Put them, ship them off to rehab. Hope rehab fix them, yeah.
boy. Well, and we, Jesus will fix you. Thank God for that. Yeah, so it sounds like he didn't like people with AIDS and people with addiction. Again, addiction was another like immorality thing. You could sit there and be like, well, you're just a bad person for doing drugs. Therefore, I don't care about you. So more, okay. I won't jump into it then. So I'll jump into my next one. How about that?
Raven (41:55)
Yeah, so, but Jesus will fix ya!
haha
Mm -hmm.
Right. Yeah, we'll get into that next. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Pisha (42:24)
Policy number three, fuck American workers and unions. So in the 1940s and 50s, one third of Americans were in some form of labor union. This was the heyday of labor unions. That one guy, Jimmy Hoffa, he was around, you know, that guy, he was around then, not for a whole lot longer, but whatever. Anyways, so Reagan,
Raven (42:45)
Remember that guy.
Pisha (42:53)
was the president of the Screen Actors Guild in the 1950s and also a spokesman for GE during that time. He was really successful because he had like that screen presence. He could deliver a line and all of these working class people just ate up everything he said. So he touted that as like, you should vote for me because I was the only president of a labor union.
Yeah, yeah, that's true. But also during that time when he was president of a labor union, he suddenly switched from Democrat to Republican because he engaged in some really shady anti -competitive shit, really shady with like his screen, like his agency or something.
Raven (43:26)
Yeah.
Pisha (43:52)
with the Screen Actors Guild. Anyways, he loosened some, he made some waiver for them. It was super shady. He ended up getting investigated, though nothing came of the investigation into him. The agency ended up having to be broken up that he gave the weird waiver to. And at that time, he decided that he didn't really like being held responsible for breaking laws.
Raven (43:53)
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (44:17)
So he wants to be a Republican so that there's less laws that he can break. That's pretty much what happened. Yeah. So now towards the end of the 50s, he is a Republican. He is now like a pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of guy, even though he's speaking directly to the guys pulling their bootstraps up every single day to work their asses off for this country.
Raven (44:23)
Cool.
Pisha (44:45)
and they all voted for him and it was all against their interest. Sound familiar? Sound like something else going on nowadays? Well, yeah, people are voting outside their interests because you've got a charismatic fascist leader coming to you and playing to your emotions using his acting and his manipulation. He's a scam artist. Well, wait, I'm talking about Trump now. Damn it. Okay, sorry everyone. I bled into Trump from Reagan.
Raven (44:51)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Well, this is 60 degrees. This is 60 degrees, so it's, yeah.
Pisha (45:14)
Anyways, the axis of evil. Yeah, right. This is the six degrees. So let's just get back to what I was talking about then. So point is he switched to a Republican during this time and he became all gung -ho about loosening regulations and he started attacking labor unions almost immediately in his presidency. In August, 1981,
Raven (45:21)
Okay.
Pisha (45:40)
Nearly 13 ,000 of the 17 ,000 air traffic controllers went on strike after talks with the Federal Aviation Administration collapsed. The strike was organized by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, multiple, called PATCO to protest against stressful working conditions and demand higher salaries.
Raven (45:58)
Got it.
Pisha (46:08)
They had really terrible. I can't remember what the conditions were, but it was not great. Like if I remember correctly, they weren't given adequate breaks. They couldn't have lunches. They were on their feet and stuff. I don't know. It was really bad, but.
Raven (46:10)
Yeah
No, yeah, especially like those are the people that you want to like have adequate conditions because you're going to crash some airplanes.
Pisha (46:27)
They're direct, right. They're directing our traffic. They should be well fed and hydrated and rested and perfectly ready to direct all the thousands of flights that go on every single day in this country. So I know. So the strike was deemed illegal because the air traffic controllers are technically federal employees and federal employees are not allowed to strike. So.
Raven (46:34)
Yeah.
Yeah. Capitalism. Anyway.
Pisha (46:55)
They're forbidden to strike and President Reagan gave them 48 hours to return to work. And if they did not return to work, he considered their positions forfeited. I .E. he began firing 11 ,359 air traffic controllers and also barred them from ever holding a federal employment.
Not only can you not be an air traffic controller, you can't work in any government position ever. And
Raven (47:31)
It seems like they would have a hard time refilling those jobs, but what do I know?
Pisha (47:36)
So he did refill them and he refilled them with scabs. They were lower paid. They had less training, less certifications. He lowered the requirements at that time, I think, for the air traffic controllers and he rehired them. However, despite rehiring them with scabs, there was still months of slowed air traffic as a result of this executive action.
Raven (47:44)
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (48:02)
And like I said, this was 11 ,359 air traffic controllers who were striking in violation of the order, the executive order, and he just fired them all. And so since then, it's basically destroyed the labor movement and it hasn't recovered since.
By the end of Reagan's presidency, remember how I said that about one third of Americans were in labor unions in the heydays in the 40s and 50s? Well, that was cut in half by the end of Reagan's presidency. And today, only about 10 % of workers are in a union. There's also been a huge decrease in strikes, strikes which have been huge tools in collective bargaining.
Raven (48:32)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (48:52)
to get employers to pay fair wages, give workable conditions, just it's so necessary. Strikes are so necessary.
Raven (49:05)
What I don't understand about any of this is I was under the impression, granted I'm not a labor lawyer, but I thought this was all anti -FLSA, the Federal Labor Standards Act. I think that's what it stands for, right?
Pisha (49:20)
Sure, I don't know.
Raven (49:21)
Like it's all like I thought it was, but like again, like I've only done very little in employment and in labor law. So I don't really remember.
Pisha (49:30)
I would have to look specifically into that one. Maybe that'll be an update. I can tell you that basically it was a huge message to the private sector showing that union busting was fair game. If the president of the United States was gonna bust his own union, basically, then they can bust unions and pretty much not fear any sort of repercussions for it.
Raven (49:35)
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (49:58)
So it sent a huge message to the private sector. And one of the factors that they use to determine how well labor rights are doing, like I said, was how many strikes there are. Because a sign of a healthy labor movement is multiple strikes, more collective bargaining and communication through negotiation in these processes. So since pre, okay, so pre -Reagan.
There was anywhere from 200 to 400 major labor strikes per year, two to 400. In 1980, there was 187. In 1989, there was 40. And yeah, and then in 2017, there were seven.
Raven (50:33)
Mm -hmm.
Boy, that's a big decrease. Wonder why.
Pisha (50:51)
So as you can see, the labor movement has not at all recovered since Reagan. It took a huge hit during his years and has not rebounded. So we still don't have a functioning labor movement that can organize effectively against these big wig corporate guys who are making a thousand times the amount of their average employees. So, so.
Raven (51:16)
Yeah, no coincidence that like corporate and bill it, you know, the top 10 % has only exponentially increased versus the decrease in the app, you know, and we, I think you talked about that during the Reaganomics episode as well. So, yeah.
Pisha (51:31)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think the point is these are all tied together. And when you look at the Reaganomic stuff, that all had to do with spending and taxing and government spending and whatever. But this is like very much tied into social policy in addition to spending and taxing. So they definitely tie together. There were a lot of overlaps and
Raven (51:37)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Pisha (52:01)
in both. I mean, you see how cutting taxes for the wealthy and then cutting regulations for the corporations is going to lead to a weaker labor movement. And so all of these things are tied together. That's the point we've tried to make these these three episodes is it's a very tangled web and it's all leading back to Ronald Reagan when it was really ramped up. Like we've mentioned before,
Raven (52:09)
Yeah.
Pisha (52:28)
Nixon and Carter is where a lot of these policies started or in some way were enacted. But it really was, I think Reagan's given so much credit because of how much effort and how successful he was at pushing these policies through.
Raven (52:33)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Oof. Well.
Pisha (52:51)
Yeah, so as you can see so far, Reagan hates everyone in America. Yeah, who's the last group of people that Reagan hates?
Raven (52:59)
It's true. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, he actually, he just, he hates fuck the entire American criminal justice system, which I take some umbrage wit. Yeah.
Pisha (53:14)
Okay, just... Of course you do, that's why I gave you this one. I was like, I wanna hear all of her umbrage.
Raven (53:21)
Yeah, this essentially also means fuck people of color.
Pisha (53:25)
Again, because of what we talked about during the prison riot stuff. Because it disproportionately affects minorities and how we police and how we sentence and all this stuff.
Raven (53:29)
Mm -hmm, right.
which was, which is purposeful. And we talked about that as well. But you know, this whole like, just say no campaign that the Reagan's had come up with in order to address a very real problem, which was substance abuse at the time, decided to criminalize and, and just penalize, create these punitive measures.
Pisha (53:40)
Absolutely.
Raven (54:04)
beyond anything for anybody just doing drugs, which as you can imagine, so the impact of it is like the way that Reagan and people who are pro war on drugs types, which again, started with, actually started way before that, but we'll just, we'll pick it up with Nixon and Reagan because that's where it really kind of exploded.
But with those people, their whole message to the rest of the population, especially the ones who really didn't know anything about substance abuse, was that we just need to get those people who are on the streets, who are on drugs and causing problems into these confined spaces altogether. And then the people who are outside of those confined spaces won't have to deal with them anymore. That's the messaging.
And the problem is that those people don't disappear. Like the people who are, and we've talked about that a ton, like this is my big, you know, again, I'm on a lot of soap boxes tonight, I'm sorry. But we are on a soap box. Yeah, yeah.
Pisha (55:10)
the point. This whole podcast is our soapbox. So everyone, you know what, whoever judges us for getting on our soapbox during our podcast, don't listen. Actually do. We want you to listen. Keep listening. Anyways, go ahead. Get back on your, we don't apologize for the soapbox thing. Get back on it, girl. Get back on that soap.
Raven (55:22)
Right.
But I don't apologize. I don't apologize. No, no, no, I'm getting back on it. So here's the problem with it is that the people who are in these confined places are all together without getting any treatment. It is a disease. It is a problem. And yes, there is a certain level of like the person needs to be able to be in a position to treat it, which is for
every single medical condition that you can think of. There's no moral problem with it. Anyway, so it doesn't actually address substance abuse at all. It in fact exacerbates it because it puts everyone together who all have substance abuse problems into these confined spaces where they can all do drugs together, essentially. And now I'll get better.
Pisha (56:16)
Yeah, and for anyone who thinks, yeah, anyone who thinks like drugs don't get into prison, you're so naive. So naive, they get into prison. Absolutely, they can maintain their habits and, yeah.
Raven (56:22)
Yeah, absolutely.
They run rampant. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so the war on drugs was actually started by Nixon again, which I talked about. He had declared drug abuse public enemy number one, which again, I mean, it just goes to antagonize and to really not deal with the actual problems of substance abuse disorders. So,
Ronald Reagan signed into law the Anti -Drug Abuse Act in 1986. So that was where these very lengthy prison terms came from. I mean, people are really shocked even when I tell them some of the sentences that are still in effect today. They created mandatory minimums. And so, for example, in the federal system,
There's a, it's complicated, but if you have a certain level of drugs that you're distributing and it's a lot less than you would think, then you end up with a 10 year mandatory minimum. So, and that's for the highest level, but then there's five years as well. Anyway, so the one that especially impacted people of color was the crack.
epidemic. And so crack, as people probably know, is less expensive than cocaine. And it just so happens that people of color, especially in the 1980s, were buying and selling crack at a higher rate than white people who were buying and selling cocaine. The, you know,
more expensive alternative. Basically the same thing, just like baking soda anyway.
Pisha (58:24)
unquote white equivalent. It's the same drug. It's the same drug, except, yeah, it's just one's just cut down way with so much stuff. And so I mean, but you're right, the intentional targeting of crack versus cocaine is so key to how this played out with the sentencing because it wasn't the white people who were being sentenced for these these crimes. Like, it's just ridiculous.
Raven (58:37)
Right.
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Right, yeah, completely. And so, and a lot of this is actually also tied to immigration at the time. And so, this is like in the 1980s. All of this again is very racially tied. When a lot of Cubans were coming in to Florida and other places as well, there's a lot of immigration coming in. And so, there was some
Especially, I think Miami was the target city, but there were three other cities that also were tied between ICE and the DEA so that they could essentially surveil people to a very creepy degree and infringed on a lot of our civil rights. A lot of these people talk a lot about
the Constitution and to me, if you don't know the Fourth Amendment, if you don't know the Fifth Amendment, if you don't know the Sixth Amendment, you don't know the Constitution. Like, sorry. And I mean the ins and outs of all of those. And so that was a huge toll to those amendments, to the Constitution really, because it greatly expanded the DEA.
And it allowed for these, like, what are they called? my god. I hate when this happens. Makes me a good brain. It's because I didn't put it in my goddamn outline. The knock. Knock and what is it? I know it's, I'm trying to remember what it is. It's the knock and or not. No, no, no. okay, there we go. Okay.
Pisha (1:00:40)
You were cutting out on my screen.
Raven (1:00:44)
So it allowed for like no knock executions of like search warrants, those types of things. So problematic all around. And so we are still dealing with the war on drugs today. In June of 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a report which declared that the global war on drugs has failed with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.
And in 2023, echoing that, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that decades of punitive war on drug strategies had failed to prevent an increasing range and quantity of substances from being produced and consumed. So...
Pisha (1:01:32)
Yeah, I was gonna say that. It seems I've spent a lot of time in Europe and it seems like one of the biggest differences I've noticed in policy is how they treat drug users there. And they treat it more as a, I know this is gonna sound so cliche because I've set it like a broken record probably a million times to everybody in the world, but it's so true. They treat.
Raven (1:01:34)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Pisha (1:02:01)
drug abuse as it should be as a mental illness and as a health issue, a public health issue, not a criminal issue. When we assigned criminality to a mental health disorder, we took an entire class of individuals who don't have control over their behavior and made them criminals just by definition. And in the
Raven (1:02:04)
Right.
Right.
Right. When shame already comes so much within like abuse in itself, like you don't come at people. Right, exactly.
Pisha (1:02:32)
Exactly. They're punishing themselves. Drug users are usually punishing themselves. And I think the Europeans recognize that it is a mental health issue. These people are not going to go away. So we don't just put them away in a box, in a prison, treat them as criminals and lock them up forever and just expect them to come out better. What we do is we recognize that they are
Raven (1:02:38)
Exactly.
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Pisha (1:03:02)
sick and they need treatment and then they provide the treatment and actually they've had success with people being able to get off of drugs. Like they've had more success with people and with drug addiction. So the drugs are going to exist. Drug addicts are going to exist. But I think the point is
Raven (1:03:03)
Right.
Pisha (1:03:23)
getting the drug addicts to cycle out of that phase in their life and move forward. There's always gonna be a group of people in a drug addict phase. We have to take care of them during that period of time. Otherwise, they're gonna be stuck in that phase forever. They can overcome it.
Raven (1:03:33)
Right.
It only exacerbates the problem. Absolutely. Yeah. So treatment is the solution and it's not the perfect solution. I mean, it's just going to be a problem. And like, and that's the hard fact that we're going to have to deal with because I think that you're right. Europe does do it better than we do, certainly, but it's a problem. It's a really, but it's a, right. It's a problem for like, as it is with all mental health issues, like
Pisha (1:03:40)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's not a perfect system.
Raven (1:04:06)
people are going to be struggling with mental health issues regardless. It's just the level of treatment that you provide them is going to be indicative of like of how much better... Right. It only makes sense because if you treated it like it was like a physical anyway, I'm getting off on my soapbox again. The last thing I wanted to say about the war on drugs was that it increased spending.
Pisha (1:04:19)
future behavior, like how they're gonna progress or not.
Raven (1:04:35)
incredibly. So like in 1981, I believe the drug war budget reached $39 billion. So you know how we talked about all those welfare queens and stuff? Well, it turns out that the United States is actually the biggest welfare queen and created this giant budget unnecessarily and damaged individuals, communities, families irreparably by
Pisha (1:05:03)
Well, and I'm sorry to interrupt, they expanded these federal agencies. This is the party of quote unquote small government, but here they are building a bigger police state that can arrest you for more things and be more powerful. Like what the heck? This is exactly, I thought you guys don't want a police state. This is what you've created. So anyways, continue.
Raven (1:05:12)
Right.
That's a very good point. Yeah. No, no, no, that's actually a really good point because, yeah, like, I mean, the increase in funding, you know, coincided with the ramping up of the DEA and other law enforcement agencies. And so, yeah, like, you want to cut the welfare programs. You want to cut all this public funding for things that are actually going to the people, but you want to increase. I mean, it's...
It's very close to fascism. I'm still not going to call it fascism, but we're going to call it something like where you're trying to tamp down the people by increasing the spending on, you know, making sure that they're tamped down, but while also decreasing spending on actually helping people and, you know, allowing for actual freedom. So, yeah, party of freedom, my ass. I'm sorry. But anyway, so.
Pisha (1:06:18)
Right.
Yep. I feel that.
Raven (1:06:23)
Yeah, yep. So one of the last things I wanted to say about this was just that we had asked what HW was in one of our previous episodes. Well, he was the VP.
Pisha (1:06:36)
No! See, didn't I say that at one point and I was like, no. And then I was like, no he wasn't.
Raven (1:06:42)
I think you did. Yeah, and I didn't correct you. I wasn't there.
Pisha (1:06:47)
I was like, why would he pick that guy as this VP? He called it Voodoo Economics.
Raven (1:06:51)
Yeah, but anyway, so he was and so No, no, no, this is in 1980 in 1988. He defeated him and became president. So yeah so Yeah, so HW What like it became known that? The it wasn't actually effective like they had ramped up all of this federal spending
Pisha (1:06:54)
Okay, both times?
Okay.
Raven (1:07:19)
and it didn't actually decrease the supply of the drugs. The drugs actually somewhat increased in some aspects. And so the DEA agent who was heading the investigative unit said, law enforcement can't stop drugs from coming in. We're just not able to do it. Meanwhile, HW goes, we measure success.
by how much we can disrupt the smuggler and deny him his preferred routes of entry. This is the kicker. Not by how much we catch. How does that make any sense? That makes not even any sense whatsoever. So.
Pisha (1:08:01)
That doesn't even make sense. So he's basically saying, wait, we get this speculative benefit of drugs that are thwarted from being brought in, but there's no way of measuring how many drugs are not being brought in.
Raven (1:08:18)
Their pathway is thwarted, but still it's getting there. So what are they actually thwarting? Like it doesn't...
Pisha (1:08:22)
Yeah. Yeah, what's being thwarted? wow. Okay, so he was a bright, bright gentleman. Cool. well.
Raven (1:08:27)
Nn -n
He's an idiot. Yeah, he's an idiot. So yeah, so that's it. That covers it. I think that that's my bit on, you know, drugs, drugs and guns, drugs.
Pisha (1:08:44)
drugs, drugs and crime and the criminal justice system, the sentencing got fucked. Wasn't it also during this period of time that prisons were privatized?
Raven (1:08:55)
I believe so, although I didn't go into that. So that's for another time. Yeah.
Pisha (1:08:58)
I know you didn't, but that was random. That was just for me bringing up. I guess the point is like the prison system and the criminal justice system in general was very fucked by the war on drugs specifically, but also with the policy. It's just, it's, ugh. I don't know.
Raven (1:09:10)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, yeah, totally. It's, we're, yeah.
Pisha (1:09:24)
I can't believe this. We're still dealing with this. And what's worse is the biggest drug problem we're dealing with now, the drug is legally made and distributed by American companies.
Raven (1:09:39)
Mm -hmm. Well, it was, yeah, yeah, yeah, woo -hoo. Yeah, I mean, a lot of these drugs, the thing is the origins of a lot of these drugs come from pharmaceutical companies or were somehow like created, but when it comes down to the people, they can't be distributing them, so it becomes illegal.
Pisha (1:09:55)
Yeah.
Exactly. Well, I mean, didn't.
Raven (1:10:00)
And there are still people in jail today, in prison today for marijuana. So.
Pisha (1:10:05)
I know, which we'll talk about another time, but I have a big problem with the cannabis stuff. Didn't Biden recently move it down to his schedule? He moved it down, but he didn't take it off the schedule. So whatever. I'm fine. I'm still mad at him for everything. But, but, but yeah, but that's not why we're here. We're here because we're mad at Reagan and he ruined everything. I think we've done a pretty good job in these three weeks.
Raven (1:10:08)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
I think so.
Nope.
Me too. Clearly.
yeah, yeah.
Pisha (1:10:34)
showing the very tangled web he wove of just bullshit. I hope everyone looks into that hostage situation with Carter, that 1979 one, because look into Reagan's involvement in his dealings with the Saudis. It's very shady as shit.
Raven (1:10:48)
Yeah.
Yep. Yep.
Pisha (1:10:57)
And he basically stole that fucking election because of his meddling and how he was able to manipulate that hostage situation. And here he is continuing to fuck us today. He got his dream with Roe being overturned. Yeah. And like, look at us now.
Raven (1:11:01)
Mm -hmm.
from his grave. Yep. There was a debate tonight, speaking of, if we're going political. I don't know. I'm not paying attention because I don't care anymore. No. Yeah.
Pisha (1:11:16)
I thought it's tomorrow night.
I'm not going to watch it because it's too old puppets, just corporate capitalist bullshit, just hot air coming out of their mouth. It doesn't mean anything to me.
Raven (1:11:33)
Yeah, I'm gonna go to the Blink -182 concert instead. Yeah, well, I wasn't going to, but for $35 I'll do it.
Pisha (1:11:37)
Whee! I wish I could go so bad. Ugh.
Yeah, I would do pretty much anything for $35 instead of watching the presidential debate. So I would pay $35 to have a root canal instead of watching the presidential debate.
Raven (1:11:50)
Absolutely. Yep. So...
instead of aggrieved, aggrieved. Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, I know we, we had hit you guys when we have hit you guys recently with a lot of politics. We're not, that's not what we're generally about, but, but some of these things I think are really relevant and kind of interesting in looking at it, like from a whole perspective. But we do, we have a surprise for you. We weren't going to do this, but
we are going to have a surprise extra bonus episode for you prior to the True Crime and Paranormal podcast festival, which is coming up July 12th to 14th. And so it's going to be a heavy hitter. We don't quite have the details on it, but we know.
Pisha (1:12:41)
We're not exactly sure. Yeah, we're not sure. It may or may not involve a musical artist, a rapper perhaps, but we don't know, we don't know. Stay tuned, stay tuned to find out.
Raven (1:12:48)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go. So yeah, so that covers it for today. Thanks for listening. As always, be sure to like, review, and subscribe on all your favorite podcasting networks. Please do that for us, please. I mean, mom, anybody? Dad? I know you both are listening, actually, so make sure that you are doing those reviews because it does really help us out.
And, you know, we do want to hear from you guys. We do want to hear your questions, your thoughts, your concerns. If you have any recommendations on what you want to hear, drop us an email, reach out to us on social medias. You know where to find us, you know, deranged .dejure at gmail .com or at deranged .dejure on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. And other than that, I think that covers it. So be sure to...
stay out of law school and the Infirmaries.
Raven Deranger (1:13:55)
Remember to like and subscribe to Deranged DeJure on your favorite podcast platform and follow at deranged.dejure on all the major social media. Contact us by email at deranged.dejure at gmail.com. This has been a Raven Kink production.