The speaker ouster and its cost to our democracy

Make Me Smart October 4, 2023 Transcript

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Kimberly Adams 

Um, I’m good to go when you are.

Kai Ryssdal

Okay. All right. Yep. Hey, everybody, I’m Kai Ryssdal. Welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make today make sense.

Kimberly Adams 

And I’m Kimberly Adams. Thank you, everyone for joining us this Wednesday. It is October the fourth, Fat Bear Week is officially here for those of you celebrating and working on your oh gosh, what’s the word? It’s not grids.

Kai Ryssdal 

Brackets.

Kimberly Adams 

Brackets. Thank you. Thank you. I totally lost the word, that tells you how much I play fantasy sports. Okay, anyway.

Kai Ryssdal 

Wait, what brackets are we’re working on?

Kimberly Adams 

Like the Fat Bear Week brackets?

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh, Fat Bear Week brackets. Sorry. I thought I actually thought I thought okay, I don’t actually think you’re that much of a nerd. But I thought you were talking about Speaker the House brackets. It was not an unreasonable supposition.

Kimberly Adams 

It’s not but I don’t think there are enough people who actually wanted that job with a 20 foot pole to fill out a bracket. Yeah. Which, which gets to your news item. Go ahead.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, so so. So a couple of things. Obviously, I watched raft as much of political Washington did and politically minded observers and everybody’s interested in the news because it’s just as huge an enormous story with far reaching ramifications. But there are two things I want to bring up. Number one is the sheer pettiness of leadership of the Republican Party. I’m absolutely gobsmacked that Kevin McCarthy through his Speaker pro tem, Patrick McHenry yesterday afternoon like within an hour of losing the gavel, ordered Nancy Pelosi out of her Capitol building hideaway office. Right. So there are very few relatively speaking actual offices in the Capitol building proper. Most of them are in House and Senate office buildings, which are a three to five minute walk away. But all senators because the Senate is special, I guess. Senators get special hideaway offices inside the Capitol Building proper. And senior members of leadership in the House, get those hideaway offices. Pelosi had one Steny Hoyer the minority. Well what is he now? Is he is he the minority leader? I don’t even know what, no he’s not. He’s like number three in minority hierarchy. But he’s been in Congress for a very long time and he was Pelosi’s number two when she was speaker. They had special hideaway offices in the Capitol building itself. And yesterday make Henry at McCarthy’s bidding threw them both out literally send an email that said please retrieve your belongings. By the end of the day today. The officers will be rekeyed tomorrow, and I’m just I’m gobsmacked. I’m gobsmacked that as a courtesy usually extended by speakers to other leaders. And I just I truly I can’t comprehend it. So there’s that. But then the other thing that I’m having, sorry, do you have thoughts on that? Or do you want to?

Kimberly Adams 

Because I mean, also like Pelosi wasn’t even there. She was in California for Dianne Feinstein’s funeral. And like, that was tacky.

Kai Ryssdal 

I don’t even I don’t even know what to do that it’s just it’s just tacky. And it’s very, very small. Here’s the thing I’m more troubled about though. Lots of commentary late yesterday and today on how Democrats had a responsibility to the institution to vote to keep Kevin McCarthy in office. And I’m having a really hard time wrapping my brain around that I have been for a very long time and until fairly recently. I was, as Trump was shredding norms right and left and the Republican Party, sorry mosquito because it’s 90 freakin degrees in Los Angeles today. I have been as Trump was shedding norm shredding norms. I have been a “look if you want the norms upheld, you have to uphold the norms” guy, but in the last year or two years, maybe maybe a little longer. I’ve changed my thinking on that because the norms are being shredded right and left and the Democratic Party which is the norm abiding party right, has been left to play the fool. And and as the the Republican Party in the House of Representatives imploded yesterday. I’m not sure that I think the Democrats actually had a duty, institutional or otherwise, to save them from themselves. And I’m curious as to your thoughts. Let me rephrase that. Sorry. I am sure that they did not have a duty to the institution to do that, because they’re not in charge of the institution. Okay, go ahead.

Kimberly Adams 

I think it was unrealistic to expect Democrats to save McCarthy, given that he had just put the Impeachment inquiry out there, which pissed off the Democrats, and he did not stick to the debt ceiling deal. He did a lot of things that upset the Democrats. And so just from pure politicking, why save him? Duty to the institution, this argument that I had just I don’t think that argument, like I agree with you, in terms of it not being their responsibility to say the Republicans for them from themselves. But I also don’t necessarily know that it would have made a difference. Right. So let’s just say the Democrats did save McCarthy, right, then what there’d be another motion to vacate. And they would continue to have these motions until eventually, he would get the boot. So why would the Democrats put themselves out there to save him once knowing they would have to continue to save him. And from what I’ve seen of the reporting, he didn’t ask, and he didn’t offer anything. And they didn’t, the Democrats didn’t ask for anything either, because and then he went on the Sunday morning talk shows and blame the Democrats for potentially almost shutting down the government, which didn’t endear him to anyone. So I agree that it wasn’t the responsibility of the Democrats to whip the Republicans in line or to save the Republicans from themselves. But I also don’t necessarily think it would have made a difference. And I think the Democrats saw that too. Like why save him now when it’s clear he, the he doesn’t have the support of his party? So that’s my thought on that. Go ahead.

Kai Ryssdal 

No better put than I did. I agree. I just it bugged me for I don’t know, whatever reason, it bugs me for some irrational reason. But that’s that’s my sort of semi-rant.

Kimberly Adams 

I don’t think that’s a rational, I think it kind of gets to one of my two news items, which is this piece in The Washington Post that looks at what this moment means for the democracy. And we’ve had a lot of heavy moments about where we stand as a democracy. Recently, we’ve had, you know, kind of unprecedented allegations of corruption in the Supreme Court, we had our previous president encouraging people to, you know, attack the Capitol building, and continue to, you know, deny that he lost the election, the fact that he’s been, you know, indicted so many times, and, and is facing criminal and civil charges, and yet still looks likely to be the nominee for the Republican Party. These are all very serious moments for the democracy. But what this article is highlighting is that these eight Republicans, out of the hundreds of members of the House have been able to shut down an entire portion of the federal government. And if this impasse continues, and we do end up with an actual lapse and appropriation slash partial government shutdown, that means this very small group of people will have hamstrung the entire federal government. And one of the things that this piece points out and I would really encourage people to read it. I’m just going to read this paragraph. “The eight Republicans who revolted against McCarthy represent districts that do not look like the rest of the country.” According to a Washington Post analysis. “They are on average 71% White compared to 59% of the US population, and 8%, Black compared with 14% of America.” Their districts are all also deeply red. They averaged a score of point of plus 12 Republican on the cook Cook Partisan Voting Index, a measure of a district’s partisanship. So these members are in very safe Republican seats. And knowing that they are probably going to win the primaries because in these very safe, Republican or very safe Democratic seats. These elections are decided in the primaries, and you have kind of the most I hesitate to use the word extreme but the most dedicated and engaged members of any party voting in the primaries. So they’re not risking much by doing this. But this is, I believe they had the number up here something like they represent something like 1.8% of the United States. And we’ve stopped,

Kai Ryssdal

I’d be surprised if it’s that high.

Kimberly Adams

Everything. Hold on, let me find, yeah, “The rebels collectively represent just 1.8% of the country all in safely Republican districts.” And so they’re not risking themselves. And the cost is to everyone else. And I don’t see a clean or productive way out of this. And I think it’s about to get worse before it gets better. Unfortunately.

Kai Ryssdal 

You know, what I think about a lot actually, I thought about this a lot and a lot in the Trump years, and I’ve been thinking about it the last 24 hours is how the world is looking at us now. Right? Yeah. And how we appeared to our allies, and those who are not our allies? Because, wow.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, messy. We look real messy. Yeah. Um, so I have this other article just about AI. I know, we talked about it all the time. But this other piece in The Washington Post kind of really reset my thinking about it, particularly when it comes to the impact of AI on jobs. So I’m trying to open this up, I’m using my iPad today. So everything is like off. It highlight, it tells the story of this company that had outsourced its call center, right, its customer service lines, like many American companies do, and he did not like his employees and how they were doing the job. He felt like they were not giving good customer service, they weren’t as deeply engaged, and he wasn’t satisfied. And he tested out an AI chatbot power when got it gave it a boost with ChatGPT and found that it worked better. And customers seemed happier. And he fired everybody. And it was like something like three dozen people. And as this article goes on to explain, you know, we’ve been talking so much about the impact of generative AI on the white-collar workforce here. But a greater threat is the educated workforce in the developing world that is doing the things like the call center work that is doing the things like data analysis, I think, I’m not sure if it was tech, or if it was Jennifer Pak, who did a story about all of the gaming studios in China, that are already starting to replace artists with AI. And, you know, yes, there is a threat to some components of the workforce here. But now you have like governments in Bangladesh, and you know, the Philippines, really being concerned that they are going to have massive job losses, from especially all these outsourced call center jobs and something like I think the article said something like India got 10% of some section of its revenue from income from these sort of outsource Western companies outsourcing these kinds of jobs to India. And this is an educated workforce, educated English speaking workforce that may be soon out of a job because of this technology. So I thought that was super interesting.

Kai Ryssdal 

And no, it’s great article. Alright, what’s your smile?

Kimberly Adams 

Might is health related. There is a new malaria vaccine, there has already been one malaria vaccine, which was a huge victory. Everyone’s very happy about that malaria is, you know, terrible and, you know, a bane on the existence of so many people, particularly children and babies in the developing world. And I believe GlaxoSmithKline, yeah, developed a malaria vaccine, the first one that was backed by the WTO, the World Health Organization called RTS, S. But now there’s a second one developed by the University of Oxford that has also been recommended for use by the World Health Organization. And they’re particularly excited about this, because this one is easier to make at scale, and cheaper. And so, so far, I’m going to read from the BBC here. The world’s largest mass vaccine manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India, is already lined up to make more than 100 million doses a year, and plans to scale up to 200 million doses a year. So far, there are only 18 million doses of RTS,S the GlaxoSmithKline vaccine. Also the WHO said the new tool cost is going to cost like two to $4 as a, which is about half the price of the existing vaccine. So this could have major life saving consequences all over the world. According to this, and 2021 there were 247 million cases of malaria. And 19,000 people died, most of them children under the age of five, the vast majority in Africa, and it was a fixable problem and a bunch of people threw a lot of money at it. And now we have a solution. And that made me smile.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, that’s very cool. Very, very cool. Indeed. Mine is totally different but cool on a on a different level. And and, I as as I read this today, I’m like, didn’t we already know this? But I guess not. Maybe we had had inklings of it. A piece in The Wall Street Journal today talking about the spacesuits that the Artemis 3 astronauts are going to wear on the moon in fingers crossed 2025. Turns out that Prada yes, that Prada is going to help work on those suits. So the subcontractor from NASA, it’s a company called the Axiom has engaged the services of Prada to work on the suits, because they have great experience with different kinds of fabrics, and using materials. So that’s cool. It says this article does that the Italian fashion house will help make the suits more comfortable. If you know anything about the Apollo programs, you know how uncomfortable those suits were for the astronauts on the moon. So, so I just thought that was cool. And you know, hopefully we’ll be on the moon.

Kimberly Adams 

We’ll have some good looking astronauts. Well dressed, well-dressed astronauts.

Kai Ryssdal 

And hopefully they will be better looking than those bleepity bleep SpaceX suits. I hate those SpaceX suits. I hate them. I think they’re terrible. Yeah, I should have better things to worry about. I should have better things to worry about.

Kimberly Adams 

You know what we do have better things to worry about, which is why we have the make me smile section of the show so that we can actively force our brains into lighter things because the rest of it’s pretty grim. So I’m here for the Prada designed spacesuits. There you go. There you go. All right. That is it for us today. We are gonna be back tomorrow. And if you have a juicy or interesting piece of audio you’d like us to include in our Thursday show and get some responses to it. Please send it over we’re at makemesmart@marketplace.org. And also at 508-U-B-SMART.

Kai Ryssdal 

Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Today’s program was engineered by Jayk Cherry, our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kimberly Adams 

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