Make Me Smart November 1, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

All right, ready?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, let’s do it.

Kai Ryssdal

Alright Jay let’s go.

Kimberly Adams

He was one step ahead of you. Hello, everyone, I’m Kimberly Adams, welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m Kai Ryssdal. Thanks for joining us on this Wednesday, November the 1st today.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, today is the day, like any other day and the other Wednesday when we’re going to do some news and then some smiles and then let you go on about your merry way. So let’s get into it. Kai, why don’t you go first?

Kai Ryssdal 

I’ll go quick. Mine’s a teeny bit of a rant and a “god really, Mr. Speaker?”. So if you follow the news, you know that the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson from Louisiana, the new speaker has decided to put on the floor a relief bill for, not a relief bill, an aid bill for Israel to the tune of 14 ish billion dollars, maybe it’s 12. Do you know off the top of your head? Somewhere between 12,13,14?

Kimberly Adams

Yes I do, it’s 14.

Kai Ryssdal

14, thank you very much, should have gone with my gut. $14 billion anyway, so he’s gonna put that on the floor. The problem is that he wants to offset that’s the budgetary speak. For what he’s doing. He wants to offset that by cutting $14 billion somewhere else. And the place he has decided to do it is to cut Internal Revenue Service funding. Now there’s a whole political thing that goes along with that, which I’m not going to get into. I’m just getting into the dollars and cents of it. And then a little bit of the disingenuousness of Representative Johnson. So what happens when you cut Internal Revenue Service spending is you actually increase the deficit. Because the Internal Revenue Service is one of the few agencies of the federal government that actually makes money when you spend money on it. So and pays for itself and pays for itself and then some so the Congressional Budget Office came out today, and said, not only is this going to not shrink the deficit by cutting the spending, it’s going to add more than $26 billion to the deficit. Let me say that, again, the Republican Speaker of the House wants to add $26 billion to the deficit, to own the libs as it were. Alright, I said I wasn’t getting into the political thing, but I did a little bit there couldn’t help it. Anyway, so that’s point number one. Point number two is he was asked today about the fact that his pro, pro, proposal sorry, his proposal will add $26 billion to the deficit. And Speaker Johnson, who’s been in Congress now for six or eight years, and knows better said, only in Washington, can you cut spending and add to the deficit. And that’s just nonsense. It’s simply nonsense. And we should not settle for it.

Kimberly Adams 

That’s not true. There are so many parts of that short sentence that are wrong.

Kai Ryssdal 

I know, I know. Anyway, okay. I just, I can’t, I just can’t. Life is too hard. And people are making it harder. You know? That’s what I have. That’s my news. A little bit of a rant.

Kimberly Adams 

Well, then mine will probably follow along well with it, which is there are two Republicans in the House, two representatives, Kay Granger and Ken Buck, who have announced that they will not seek reelection. Kay Granger is the chair of the House Appropriations Committee. And GOP representative Ken Buck is from Colorado. And both of, so Buck said he was disappointed in the Republican Party. Granger did not offer a specific reason for her retirement. But I want to I want to talk about this article in Politico where they really get into sort of why he’s stepping down. And he said, on MSNBC, they quote in Politico, “I always have been disappointed with our inability in Congress to deal with major issues, and I’m also disappointed that the Republican Party continues to rely on this lie that the 2020 election was stolen,” he said on MSNBC, “If we’re going to solve difficult problems, we’ve got to deal with some very unpleasant truths or lies and make sure we project to the public what the truth is.” Now, Buck is in a district that is very conservative, Trump carried that district with 57% of the vote in 2020. Buck won with 61% in his district, in Colorado, and it’s just another reminder that there are fewer and fewer places, it seems within the Republican Party for people who are not super pro Trump, or, you know, part of this effort to create this counter narrative of what’s happening or what’s been happening. And it’s and one of the things that Buck said is that you know, he expects that they will not be the last that there will be several people several more Republicans who will be stepping down, worth noting that Buck was among the eight Republicans who booted Kevin McCarthy from the Speaker’s office. But you know, it’s a, it’s interesting that even he feels like there’s not a space for him in the Republican Party anymore. Yeah.

Kai Ryssdal 

I wonder how long it will be, and look, I know we said this about the Tea Party in 2010. But I wonder how long it’s going to be before there is actually a third party of some size in this country. Right, because you got Democrats who are reasonably cohesive right now they’re split on some issues, especially the Israel-Palestine thing, but that’s a whole different podcast. But the Republican Party now is, is split into, you know, and and how long until it, you know, you’ll have the Republican party like the way we used to do with the Republican Party, and then you’ll have the Trumpist party, I don’t know what it would be called. But there, because this is not doable. Clearly, the Republicans in the House can’t decide what they’re doing. They can’t govern.

Kimberly Adams 

Well, and to go back to your Mike Johnson story from earlier, you know, Republicans are supposed to be the party of fiscal conservatism. Right? And I know that there, you can poke holes in that argument. But that’s at least what the narrative they’re supposed to be. Yes. Yes. There and and for, for whatever else, you want to say there have been a lot of very fiscally conservative policies that would legitimately reduce the deficit pushed forward by many Republicans over the years. And so to see the Republican Speaker of the House, kind of just be like, No, thanks, I’ll just take $26 billion added. So yeah, it’s, I think, an answer to your question of when we’re going to see a meaningful third party. I think if this rank choice voting thing really gets going throughout the country. That will be what does it. And you know, I’ll point folks back to the deep dive we did on rank choice voting. I think it’s really interesting. I think a lot more people are taking it seriously. And I think that is going to be what would bring a third party about more quickly than not. Right. So I have one more just as a follow up to a conversation we had on the podcast a while back when I brought up that Wall Street Journal op-ed, talking about the lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors, and the real estate commission fees. And I know that this was on the PM show. It’s been a bunch of other places. So if you haven’t heard it, yet, they lost big time. They lost and the jury found them liable for inflating commissions, awarded $1.78 billion in damages. My colleague Henry Epp did a story on this today, on Kai’s show, I recommend that you go back and listen to it. It’s a good summary. But you know, the trade group National Association of Realtors does say, do say yeah, they do say that they plan to appeal. And but right after they lost that case. Another lawsuit I’m just gonna read here from a website called CoStar, which says, “Immediately after the verdict was reached in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Ketchmark filed a new lawsuit that he said could result in hundreds of billions of damages to cover what his clients view as artificially inflated commission payments. It’s a national class action suit, covering home sellers anywhere in the country, significantly widening the case geographically, while also naming several new brokerages as defendants.”

Kai Ryssdal 

Wow. Wow. Yeah, we’re not done. We’re not done with this.

Kimberly Adams 

And as you said, on the show, this would potentially like upend the real estate industry.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yep. Totally, totally. Good deal.

Kimberly Adams

He’s like I’m done listening to you. I paid real estate commissions, I don’t wanna hear this.

Kai Ryssdal 

What do you got for your smile?

Kimberly Adams 

Um, mine is a story in the MIT Technology Review about researchers in China who have, it seems been able to get deaf children to be able to hear using gene therapy. Let me just read this. So this has never been done before. And according to MIT Technology Review, no drug of any kind has ever been able to improve hearing. So these scientists in China say that they’re the first people ever to have natural hearing pathways restored in a dramatic new demonstrations, demonstration of the possibilities of gene therapy. So what they did was let me just scroll down to it. Okay. It you know, I’m not even gonna read the whole thing. Basically, it introduces a virus into the ear ear canal that reactivates some of the cells that basically help you hear. And it’s, and one of the subheads is in this is, “can’t believe it worked. Some of the subjects are just toddlers who can’t tell doctors anything about what their first experiences of sound are like, but their parents are seeing behavioral changes. One child who had never spoken has started to say “Baba” and “Mama” after the treatment, she believes it’s one of the researchers, children would ideally be treated at around one year of age, a key moment for speech development. And, you know, these are kids who some of them had cochlear implants, and took them off. And there if you go to the MIT Technology Review website, there’s actually a video with one of these parents and children claiming to demonstrate this. And just this could be really amazing if this is repeatable, and a treatment that could roll out. So you know, it’s really, it made me smile. Yay.

Kai Ryssdal 

Sounds super cool. Yay. sigh Yeah, that’s kind of amazing. That’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s really cool. And also that there’s no medication or drug that’s ever worked on on hearing loss? That’s yeah, well do.

Kimberly Adams 

Because basically, everything just amplifies it or process it.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right, right, right. Right, right. Okay, mine is much more mundane. It’s in the category of pet peeves. But there’s a great little piece in the lifestyle section of the Wall Street Journal today, about a trend in hotels across the country that I confess right at the beginning, is making me crazy. When I stay in hotels, it’s those half glass door things on hotels, that don’t actually block the water from getting anywhere. And so you constantly have wet bathroom floors, when you stay in a hotel, and you use up all the towels and you have to order more towels, because it’s all wet all over the bathroom. I don’t understand why hotels do it. And in point of fact, when the Wall Street Journal called Marriott, the Marriott declined to return their call for comment. So yeah, you know, it’s just it’s a cute little piece. It’s, we’ll put it on the show page. Also, the other thing, by the way, sorry, as long as I’m on it, two more pet peeves, one of which is addressed in this article. The fact that it’s really tough to tell sometimes which way is hot and which way is cold on the faucet. That’s number one. And number two, and this is just bad design, you have to reach through the water stream to turn it on. Yes, you turn it on, and it’s cold. And it hits you come on man.

Kimberly Adams

Yes, cannot deal. Cannot deal.

Kai Ryssdal 

I am by no means a design expert, but that’s bad design. Okay, I’m done. today. How about that?

Kimberly Adams

That’s okay. We all have days like that. And it’s fine. That’s what we have. We are lucky to have the space to rant, you’re lucky. All right. So that’s it for our rant today. And we will be back tomorrow with our audio clips show. And if you’ve heard a story this week that does have some audio that you want to share that caught your attention that you think deserves a little unpacking, do let us know. We might include it in our Thursday show. This Thursday or next Thursday. You know, you got some time. We’re at makemesmart@marketplace.org and 508-U-B-SMART.

Kai Ryssdal 

I know it’s great. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Today’s program is engineered by Jay Siebold, as if you couldn’t tell. Our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kimberly Adams 

Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our senior producers Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts, and Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital.