Make Me Smart March 18, 2024 Transcript

Note: Marketplace podcasts are meant to be heard, with emphasis, tone and audio elements a transcript can’t capture. Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it.

Kimberly Adams 

Hello everyone, I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense. Kai is out today because it’s a Monday, and he fled like many of us wanted to when we woke up this morning. Anyway, but joining me today is someone who showed up for the Monday, the wonderful Samantha Fields.

Samantha Fields

Hey Kimberly. It is great to be back with you, and thank you all for joining us on this Monday, March 18.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, today we are going to do some news and then some smiles. Let’s first start with the news. What caught your attention today?

Samantha Fields

Well, I am sorry to start this Monday on kind of a difficult note. But the headline I saw this morning that I haven’t been able to get out of my head is that the UN World Food Program and other international organizations said today that “famine is ‘imminent’ in Gaza.” Now, we’ve all known for a while that aid was a very difficult situation, getting aid into Gaza has been very challenging for a long time now. Food has become an increasingly huge issue there. But now, the World Food Program and others are saying no one in Gaza is getting enough to eat. And that in northern Gaza, more than 70% of people are already experiencing what they call catastrophic hunger, which seems basically like another way of saying that they are already experiencing famine. Very little food aid or aid of any kind is getting into Gaza. Humanitarian groups say that Israel is blocking trucks from entering, not all of them, but a lot of them. The US and other countries are now air dropping food as we’ve been seeing headlines about in recent days. And some food is now just starting to get delivered by sea. The first delivery happened on Friday, actually. But the World Food Program says that it’s a negligible share of what could be brought in Overland by truck. And that if nothing significant changes that very soon more than a million people, which is about half of Gaza’s population, will likely be facing famine conditions. And you know, I just want to say this is only five months into this war. It’s very quick for this sort of level of food crisis to be happening.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, it reminds me last week there was this group of Democratic senators that sent a letter to Biden. Well, a group of Democratic senators plus Bernie Sanders, who’s technically an independent, saying that the Biden administration, basically accusing the Biden administration of breaking the law in sending military aid to Israel because there’s a section of the Foreign Assistance Act, which I’m reading here from New York Times, “it bars military support from going to any nation that restricts the delivery of humanitarian aid,” which is what folks are accusing Israel of doing and, you know. This weekend that first aid shipment by sea arrived. And you know, I wonder how much that’s going to alleviate things. But you’re right. It’s only a drop in the bucket in this ugly, ugly conflict going forward.

Samantha Fields

Yeah, the World Food Program was saying that it’s just much less efficient to deliver aid both by air and by sea. You know we know the US has also said it’s going to be building sort of a port to deliver more aid, but that is going to take a while too.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, yeah. Is that all of the news that you were watching today?

Samantha Fields

That’s the big news that I’m watching today I would say, yeah. What have you been focused on this morning?

Kimberly Adams 

This is actually stuff that’s kind of one thing left over from last week. And another thing I saw this morning because I was digging around on one of my favorite websites, regulations.gov. Because I am who I am. And I saw that they have finally put out for public comment, something the Biden administration announced a while back. So, the Biden administration said that it was going to do all of these things to help promote sort of gender equity in the workplace and in the federal government and, you know, help women. So, one of the things they said they were going to do was to ban when you’re working for the government or a federal contractor that they’re no longer going to be able to ask you what your previous salary was. So, under this proposed rule, and I’m going to read here from regulations.gov, it “would prohibit contractors and subcontractors from seeking and considering information about job applicants’ compensation history when making employment decisions for certain positions.” And then “under the proposed policy and proposed regulatory amendments, contractors and subcontractors would also be required to disclose compensation to be offered to the hired applicant in job announcements for certain positions.” So basically, you can’t ask people how much you made in your last job or what your pay history was before you applied for this job. And they have to tell you how much the job pays, right? These are two things that a lot of research say, a lot of research says contributes to the ongoing gender wage gap. When you post the salary ranges for jobs, people tend to be paid more equitably. And when you don’t ask people how much they made in their last job, it gives them a stronger negotiating position in the newer job, and helps kind of not perpetuate preexisting wage gaps, whether those be due to gender or race. And so yes, this is limited to within federal contracting, but if you hop over to the website of the Government Accountability Office, they have a handy dandy series of charts about the size of federal contracting in this economy. It’s huge. It’s huge. So, first of all, the federal government is the country’s largest employer, there’s that. So, when the government does something that is a big deal, just in terms of the sheer number of employees, but here in their blog posts from 2022. It says, “in fiscal year 2021, the federal government spent about $637 billion on contracts,” right. And “while the federal workforce performs a wide range of duties, federal agencies enter into contracts with outside companies provide products and services, ranging from aircraft and software to food service, and healthcare.” And if you look at these charts, you can see like the billions of dollars. It’s going to defense. It’s going to civilian agencies. And there’s also a ton that gets, its hundreds of thousands of people this effects. And often things like this that happened within the federal workforce started trickling into other sectors of the economy. So, this is a big deal when it comes to the wage gap.

Samantha Fields

Yeah. And a number of states have done this too. New York has a similar law, so does California. And they you know, they also require pay transparency, and also prohibit employers from asking about salary history. And there is some initial research showing that this does make a difference.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes. And because I was going deep into my nerdiness on federal stuff. Last week, I got an email from this company called Fireside, which is part of another company called FiscalNote. And they sort of do like policy tracking or help. Let’s see. How do you how do you explain this. This company basically helps members of Congress and public officials communicate with their constituents. And they do like software management and things like that. They have an automated mail room. They have relational databases. They do newsletters and all these kinds of things. It’s software that helps public officials communicate with constituents. So, they issued a report analyzing constituent correspondence. And the title of the report is, “What Constituent Correspondence Reveals About Voter Sentiment,” and they analyzed how constituent correspondence reflects and does not reflect district level voter sentiment. And there’s a lot of really interesting findings in here about who contacts members of Congress, right? So, a couple of these key findings. Constituents who contact Congress are more educated, whiter, wealthier, older, and more likely to be retirees. Individuals with stronger liberal or conservative positions write to Congress more than constituents with moderate positions. And it’s not biased, consistently across the board for liberals or conservatives. but Congress hears more often about issues when organizations mobilize advocates, they hear more from opponents have a policy than from supporters. And there’s a bunch more interesting findings in this, but I bring it up because if this is who members of Congress are hearing from in their mailboxes in their email inboxes on their phone lines, whatever in public comments, because you know, that regulation I was just talking about with, you know, on pay transparency or whatever. That already has more than 2000 comments, I think on it. Yeah. 2,249 comments that have been received so far on it, so you can weigh in too. But anyway, when only certain people are writing into members of Congress that shapes what policy we get. So, write to your member of Congress. Tell them what you think. Say the word.

Samantha Fields

Interesting, so does that also apply to regulations.gov? Or would we just kind of imagine it’s pretty similar in terms of people who are really passionate on one side of an issue, liberal or conservative, are more likely to sort of, you know, seek out a place to make their voice heard, like regulations.gov or Congress.

Kimberly Adams 

So, I have done some reporting on public comment periods for things, and very few people weigh in on regulations while they’re being written. Public comments are notoriously underused, but you are most likely to get large volumes of public comments when, same as with members of Congress, some outside group organizes to get people to write in. So, maybe you’ll have the ACLU, you know, tell all of its membership, “hey, comment on this law,” just like you might have your, you know, local food bank says, “Hey, write your member of Congress, we really want an earmark for you know, our new food bank,” or something like that. And when a group organizes its own membership to do a thing that’s when you get the most people weighing in.

Samantha Fields

That makes sense because otherwise people probably aren’t aware of when these public comments are open, when they close, and maybe even how important they can be.

Kimberly Adams 

What? People aren’t checking regulations.gov on a regular? What?

Samantha Fields

I mean, I know some of us are. At your recommendation.

Kimberly Adams 

Another place to visit on a regular basis, at least for the next couple of days for our make me smiles. I’ve got links in the show notes, and you can find them easily online to two different webcams, where you can see the peak bloom for the cherry blossoms. Over the weekend, it got so warm here, and the cherry blossoms just like exploded. And so, there are two different webcams that I like. There’s one, bloomcam.org. It’s from the Trust for the National Mall. And if you click on it, you can see. It’s so pretty. And you can see the Jefferson Memorial.

Samantha Fields

Gorgeous.

Kimberly Adams 

It’s gorgeous. But the Associated Press also has its own bloom cam that set up on the national, well on the title basin. And you can see the Washington Monument in between these cherry trees. And what I love about the Associated Press webcam, it’s on YouTube, is it’s got audio, so you keep hearing everyone’s conversations. And so, when I was watching it earlier, there was a photographer running around trying to get this couple to pose for their wedding photos. And she was like, “walking, walking, walking. Okay, now stop there. Wait for these people to go by.” And you can see all the tourists and things like that. So, it’s pretty cute.

Samantha Fields

What time of day do you go to not have it be slammed with people?

Kimberly Adams 

Like dawn. Like sunrise. All the locals typically will go on like sunrise.

Samantha Fields

I remember the last time that I was there it was, it was wild how crowded it was.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. Although they bloomed so early this year like, peak bloom was supposed to be this coming week, like this week and the weekend. And they peaked over, you know, this past weekend. And so, I think it beat a lot. It’s very early. This is the second earliest on record that they’ve reached peak bloom, which is, you know, good and bad. They’re pretty, but climate change. So, I think a lot of the crowds didn’t make it in time. I don’t know. Anyway, what are your smiles?

Samantha Fields

So, my big one is that I am very excited about the solar eclipse. And it is now officially just three weeks from today. I’m going to go up to Vermont to try to see it even though there’s a very high chance it’ll be cloudy, but it is the closest place for me to go. And I have a friend I can stay with. So, I’m just going to try and cross my fingers and hope that it will be actually sunny. But I came across a piece today in a local Texas paper. Texas is also in the path of totality. And this economics professor from UT San Antonio wrote this piece in the San Antonio Express-News, trying to kind of quantify how much money eclipse tourism could bring to Texas and to the country. And by his calculation, just in Texas, it could sort of at the upper end of his estimates generate up to $285 million for local businesses, which is kind of amazing for an event that’ll last sort of across the entire state just 22 minutes. And nationally, it projects, it could stimulate the economy by up to a billion dollars, which is just kind of incredible.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I’ve heard about places where they’re charging like $1,000 a night for a hotel room.

Samantha Fields

Oh, yeah, no, I looked at not that long ago and yeah, in Vermont, it’s like $900 or you know, $1,500 a night for a hotel room, which is absolutely you know, outrageous.

Kimberly Adams 

Well, I hope you’re staying with friends and family.

Samantha Fields

Oh, I am. I’m staying for free, so it should be good.

Kimberly Adams 

Nice. Well, I hope you enjoy it.

Samantha Fields

I hope I get to see it.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, me too. Well, look at us both of our smiles were about nice natural phenomenon. Cool. All right. That is it for us today. Tomorrow instead of our regular Tuesday show, we’re going to be dropping a Marketplace Morning Report special into our feed, which is called “Democracy in the Desert.” And it’s all about how communities are impacted by the absence of local news outlets, so watch out for that.

Samantha Fields

And if you have a comment or a question for us, you can reach us at makemesmart@marketplace.org. Or you can leave us a message at 508-U-B-SMART.

Kimberly Adams 

Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s program was engineered by Jay Siebold. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. And our intern is Thalia Menchaca.

Samantha Fields

Marissa Carrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. And Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital. We’ve almost made it through Monday.