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Campbell Conversations
Hosted by Grant Reeher · EN
Every week Grant Reeher, Political Science Professor and Senior Research Associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute at Syracuse University, leads a conversation with a notable guest. Guests include people from central New York -- writers, politicians, activists, public officials, and business professionals whose work affects the public life of the community -- as well as nationally prominent figures visiting the region to talk about their work.
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Will Barclay on the Campbell Conversations
Feb 2100:27:53Tap to summarizeWill BarclayProgram transcript:Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is Will Barclay. The Pulaski based Republican has represented New York's 120th State Assembly district since 2003 and was the minority leader of that chamber from 2020 until just last week. He recently announced that he was stepping down from that position, and that he would not run for reelection to the Assembly this coming November. Assemblyman Barclay has been on the program several times in the past. Assemblyman Barclay, it's bittersweet, but welcome back to the program.Will Barclay: Thanks, Grant. As always, I appreciate you having me on. I will say this is the first interview I have done since I made my announcement that I wasn't seeking reelection and since I've stepped down as minority leader. So, I always appreciated your interviewing style and I think you give a good, fair shake to all sides, so I appreciate that and look forward to talking with you today.GR: Oh, that's very nice of you, well thanks so much, I appreciate that very much. Well, let me just start with a basic question about the timing of your decision and the timing of your announcement. What were some of the factors that went into that for you?WB: Well, I think primarily the biggest factor was personal. I served for 23 years. You know, I live in Pulaski, I have two boys and my wife, and they put up a lot with politics and I think I put my time in. So, the timing just seemed right from a personal perspective. I’m 57, so I'm not, I'm older, but not so old that I can't do other things in my life and I figured if I kept running for reelection, some of those other things that I would like to do, you know, I had a shorter time period to accomplish them. So that was a primary reason that I decided to get out. There's other factors, like outside income for one that played a role, but I would say that was a relatively minor role. And I think also it's good to have new blood come in to, you know, I have been leading the conference for six years, I gave it my best shot and there's a lot of successes I think I had there, but it's always good to, I think, get new energy. So that also played a role and I feel very confident with the new leadership that's come in in our conference that's going to lead it appropriately going forward.GR: You mentioned in the course of that, the outside income limitations and I appreciate that you did that. I was going to ask you about that and concerned that it might be a little sensitive for you, but you brought it up. So, what I'm assuming that is that, you know, there's this new rule, new law, and it's been challenged, but it looks like now it's going to take effect next year. And it limits the outside income that state legislators can make, I believe it's $35,000 a year. Is that correct?WB: Yeah, that’s correct.GR: So, I guess what I'm taking from this, then, is that you are a lawyer, and you've had a law career so that that was going to constrain your ability to push out on your law career, is that what you mean?WB: Yeah, I'm involved in a number of different things, but yes. So, there is, you know, Mrs. Barclay would like me to earn more money. (laughter) I think anybody's family would like to see spouses, you know, earning more money. So, again, that played a role. But I don't want to overblow that, even though I do find that outside income limitation, really a misdirection by the state and bad public policy. You know, we have public financing of campaigns, now we're going to have full time legislators. And what you're going to see is full dependency by members of the legislature on leadership, because they control all that power. And if you don't have enough income or outside job, you're less willing to take, in my mind, risk. And this was never meant to be a full-time legislator. In my mind, I think it's important that we can attract people with backgrounds, you know, with all different occupations. And I worry that, you know, making this a full-time legislature just will not attract maybe some of the people that I think would be very helpful to good government and legislators. But I don't want to dwell too much, because that was a bit. I’m (unintelligible) it didn't play any role, it did play some role. But, you know, I could have gone on for 2 or 4 more years with, you make a very good salary in the Assembly, so it wasn't like we're going to be impoverished by any sense of it, but it did drive me. And one thing, Grant, it did point to sort of a bigger issue that, you know, I've had frustration with all my time serving down there, but I think it's become more acute over the years is the one-party rule. And we hear a lot about the Republicans drifting right. You know, I don't change my ideology. A few issues I've changed on, some to the left, frankly, and some to the right. But, generally I've had my same beliefs since I've been down there. Where I've seen the biggest drift is from the Democrats moving more to the left and that's because it's hard to have a check on that, because, you know, they control the Senate, they control the Assembly and they control executive branch. So, it's been very hard. And that frustration has probably grown in me over the last few years. And that's another reason I think maybe someone new in my position can give a different, maybe it’s perspective or a different fight than I've been doing. Not that I think I did a bad job, but again, I think some new blood, can re-energize things which I fully support.GR: Well, you know, it's interesting, this is not about you now, with the income. I'm thinking about it more generally, but you brought up something I hadn't thought about, of creating a lack of something to fall back on if you're in the legislature and thinking then about this needing to be your career because you're doing it, not only full time, but it is your entire livelihood. And what just went through my head really quickly was thinking about Congress. Members of Congress know when they get out that they've got, they can take that time in Congress and leverage that into something that they can make quite a bit of money at. And we see all sorts of former members of Congress doing that. I guess that's less true for the state legislature. And so that's a yeah, I hadn't thought about the way it might affect things differentially in that regard. It's an interesting point. Well, let me ask you about some of the positive things, and then I do want to dive into some of the things that you just brought up where your frustrations have been. But what do you think you're going to look back most fondly about your service in the state legislature? What’s going to rise to the top of your fondest memories?WB: Well, I'll talk public policy and some of the successes we had there. But I think what, you know, I went down there, I thought I would serve six years and here I am serving, by the end it’ll be 24 years. And, you know, the reason being is because I love the people that I was able to work with. And I love my colleagues on both sides, I mean, many on both sides of the aisle. So, I ended up making friendships a lot more deeper than I thought, maybe when I first went down there in the first few years that I served that ended up, I think, keeping me there longer than maybe I initially thought I would, so that was good. I think from a public, one thing I love, I love this area. As I've told you many times, I'm 8 generations, so I'm not moving out of the area. My boys are ninth generation, they love here. I love trying to help my area, Oswego County, particularly is where I'm from, Pulaski. So, you know, I look back and some of the successes, some of the things I've been able to accomplish for the area, and that makes me very proud and makes me think my time in politics was worthwhile. Probably on the apex of all that is being able to save the Fitzpatrick nuclear plant. Albeit I didn't do that alone, but I certainly played a, I think a large role in able to save that end up saving thousands of jobs. And lo and behold, look, now we're even looking at possibly getting another new plant here in Oswego County. So, you know, if I had to point to one thing that, I guess I would say was probably my greatest success or the thing that brought me the greatest happiness in the whole thing was saving that plant. There's a lot of other things, being in the minority, I was like, you know, I didn't have the opportunity to pass a lot of state-wide type of legislation, but I can point to a number of things that either we were able to stop or get reform on that I'm also very proud of because I thought the best I could, I was able to use the bully pulpit to sometimes be able to either stop legislation or shame the Democrats into making changes to that legislation. So, there's a whole host of things I'm very proud of during my career and made it all, for me, made it all worthwhile doing it. Even though people often say, you know, you're in the minority, you can't get anything done. I never, like, took that to heart. You can. You just have to have a realistic perspective on it and not think you're going to be able to change the world in a day.GR: I'm Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, and my guest is New York State Assemblyman Will Barclay. So, in a similar vein there, thinking about the institution itself, the way the institution works. What do you think your biggest impact was as minori...
Transcribe →John Zogby on the Campbell Conversations
Feb 1400:27:50Tap to summarizeJohn ZogbyProgram transcript: Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is the pollster, John Zogby. Mr. Zogby is the founder of the Zogby International Poll and with his sons, Jeremy and Benjamin, he serves as senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. He's also the author of a recent book, it's titled, “Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should”. Mr. Zogby, welcome to the program.John Zogby: Hey, Grant. Good to talk to you again.GR: Good to talk to you, always good to see you. So, my questions are going to be driven by your book and also your background. They'll also be driven by my own background, as you know, I’m a political scientist. So, I'm going to draw on some of the discussions I hear from my colleagues when we're talking about polls and surveys, get your take on those. And then I also wanted to ask you some questions about some recent survey and poll data that's been out there and has been in the news. So let me just start with a basic question here, one question that always comes up a lot regarding polling in recent decades is how all the big changes in communication technology have complicated it. I mean, let me just throw out a couple things. You know, landlines are basically gone, people don't answer the phones if they don't know who's calling them when they see the number coming in or the person. It may be harder to find certain demographic groups to tap for their opinions and so on. So, I just wanted to get your sense as a pollster, what in your view are the biggest challenges for polling that have arisen since those golden days when we all used to have landlines and answered the phone when it rang?JZ: Well, of course it's technology and non-response, or low response rates. When I started in business in 1984, response rates averaged 65%. Two out of three that you reach, actually reached by phone we're willing to conduct a survey. However, change has been part of this business from the beginning and the pace of change has increased greatly. So, you know, imagine in the 30s, 40s and 50s, folks like Gallup and Roper and Harris would develop sampling points throughout the United States, identify people in each of those sampling points to travel to those sampling points, mail envelopes to them with survey questionnaires, instructions on First and Elm Street, fifth door on the left-hand side, and conduct the survey over 3 to 6 weeks, mail the surveys back. And that's, you know, providing everything that went out came back, then you'd get results. Well, our world got faster, things move more quickly. We moved to the telephone. As you pointed out, that was a perfect world. 95% of people had a landline telephone and socially, they welcomed a long-distance call, making them feel important. And then that all dissipated. The answering machine, *69 when they would call you right back and find out who you were, call waiting, that sort of thing, and we had to adjust. You know, by the mid to late 90s, response rates had plummeted to 15%, in major metropolitan areas, 7%, 6%. So, we have always had to adjust. The internet was not welcomed just as, incidentally, the telephone wasn't welcomed in the beginning. How are you going to know who you're talking to? Same thing with the internet. And now, of course, you know, technology has changed rapidly and people who conduct polls can't wait 3 to 6 weeks. Frankly, Grant, they can't wait 3 to 6 days. They want their data and analysis right away. We've had to make those adjustments. So, for every advance, and it has been an advance, there have been detractors.GR: So let me ask you a question about the phones specifically and how things work today. Has there been discussion, among you and your polling colleagues about simply just moving away from phones entirely to, say, the internet? I'll just tell you, political science research in recent years has essentially done that. That all political science survey is done by the internet, but that has introduced a whole new set of problems. But how are you folks dealing with it? What do you do with that?JZ: We have well, we had a very large 124 phones call center in Utica. We don't have that anymore, we farm it out, you know, to call centers. I mean, that's obviously one change, but we encourage as much to be done by internet, by email as possible. We also use text to web, so we'll send out emails, we'll also send out texts, but ultimately inviting people to a secure web site to conduct the poll. To answer your question directly, there are still some applications where you really can only do it by phone. If it has to be spontaneous, if it has to be ultra confidential, not to say that the internet can't be confidential, but there are applications, very small areas or very targeted audiences, you know, may require the phone. But I would say, you know, of our survey work, 85%, 90% is online.GR: I'm Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, and my guest is the pollster, John Zogby. He's the author of a recent book titled, “Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should”. So, polling regarding the elections always involves this subset of people that are called likely voters, whether that's likely voters in a primary or likely voters in a general election. How do pollsters identify those people, and does that introduce some kind of inevitable error or challenges? I'm remembering, I think I'm remembering this right, but you correct me, I believe that was one of the problems in the early polling that thought Dewey was going to beat Truman, right? Was the guess about who was going to be voting in that election. So how do you folks deal with that?JZ: Well, first of all, that's 1948, a long time ago. And, the last polling was done two weeks to ten days before the election. And so, those who have read about it or may even remember it, that's when Harry Truman was on his famous whistle stop, and he had built momentum at the top, you know, two weeks before the election. He felt he was going to lose the election. That's why he manically, you know, traveled throughout the country. ‘Give ‘em Hell, Harry!’. And so, there was the issue of timing as well. And to a great degree, there still is the issue of timing. So, first of all, likely voters we ask, we have 3 - 4 question screen that we use to determine if they’re likely voters. Now, of course they could be lying, but it has served us well. You know, what does anybody get out of lying to a pollster? And then how do they create a conspiracy of a thousand people who are also lying? That's, it doesn't happen. You know, I think folks like to beat up the polls and say, oh, you were five points wrong. But when you're talking to 1500 people, five points wrong ain’t so bad. You know, when you think about it, you at least get a direction. So yeah, we poll likely voters when it comes to politics and policy because they're the ones that matter.GR: And you mentioned some of the pollsters getting beaten up recently. And I wanted to ask you kind of a more specific version of that. There has been a lot made of the supposed inaccuracies of polling in very recent years, and particularly regarding Donald Trump and elections that either he's in or he's been heavily involved in. And there's been a lot of different kind of effects that have been hypothesized to be going on that might be driving some of that, maybe people, you know, a bias and who's responding and not responding. And like you said before, maybe not necessarily a conspiracy, but a general sense of, you know, I'm going to tell the pollster some garbage because they don't like Donald Trump or whatever. What do you think's going on there? Is there anything real in that? Is there a Donald Trump effect of some sort?JZ: No, I don't think so. I think if we close our eyes and picture, you know, the red, ‘Make America Great’ cap again, Donald Trump has a lot of people who are ready to jump and scream and write and attend rallies and be proud that they're for Donald Trump. That secret Trump effect, maybe you could have said at one point on college campuses. A professor may not have seen it in his or her best interests to be wearing a MAGA cap, or to sit at lunch, in a...GR: (laughter) That's putting it lightly. I can tell you from my experience at the university. Not that I would put on a MAGA cap, but I could just tell you if someone did, their life might be in danger. But anyway, go ahead.JZ: But, you know, there hasn't really been anything measurable. Donald Trump finishes strong. And the thing is, many of the pollsters conduct their last poll Friday or Saturday before the election. I try to keep the lights on longer, so I'll go till Monday night. Sometimes I've even gone into Tuesday morning, meaning, of course, Election Day to capture that last minute spark or whatever happens, or the last-minute lack of spark where you begin to see. Let me give you a prime example, you know, in January 2008, the focus in New Hampshire was Obama having won the Iowa caucuses against Hillary. And usually a candidate gets a big, huge bounce after Iowa, and then there's two weeks into New Hampshire. This one year, Iowa was on Thursday and New Hampshire was on Tuesday. And so, there was momentum up to Obama, you know, by Sunday night leading by 12 points. And then, Monday night, Obama is still leading by 12 points, we get to 5:00 and our last 125 calls had Hillary leading by six. So now what do I do?...
Transcribe →Nathan Sanders on the Campbell Conversations
Jan 3100:27:54Tap to summarizeNathan SandersProgram transcript:Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I’m Grant Reeher. My guest today is Nathan Sanders. He's a research affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. And he's also published a new book with Bruce Schneier titled, "Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship", and he's here with me today to talk about that book. Mr. Sanders, welcome to the program.Nathan Sanders: So glad to join you, thank you.GR: We appreciate you making the time. So, we'll get into the specific topics that are covered in your book, but first I wanted to ask you just a couple of basic, big picture items to set the context here, and the first one is the most basic of all. All of us have heard by now of artificial intelligence. Most of us have probably intentionally used AI to answer some question or another, but to just start us off, could you give us a very, very concise definition of what artificial intelligence is and what distinguishes it from high powered computing more generally?NS: Oh, it’s such a great and foundational question, and I acknowledge that almost everybody, especially those who are experts in the fields, defines AI little bit differently. In our book, we try not to get bogged down in the technical distinctions and all the variations of how AI models are built, and instead we adopt a very broad definition. That, for our purposes, AI is any technology that replaces a cognitive function that used to be the exclusive domain of humans. So that does include technologies like large language models, which are used to do things like generate text that you might use in writing an email, or also to control external systems like software systems that maybe used to have required a human in control, but it does include other forms of AI as well. Think of, for example, Google Maps or navigation software that's helping you plan a route from point A to point B, something that is a very hard, challenging computing and used to be something only humans can do you, you think of that AI as well, as well as computer vision models, other forms of natural language processing and predictive machine learning as well.GR: All right. Well, I'm glad I asked, and it is already complicated. Now, your book is about the application of AI in the politics and the public policy arena. Let me just start with kind of the end if I can, and that is, could you give me, say, your two biggest hopes for how AI could improve what we do in the politics and public policy arena and on the other hand, your two biggest concerns or worries about it?NS: Sure. In terms of hopes, one thing I am optimistic about is the ability of citizens, of people to leverage any new technology and including AI, to enhance our power as citizens of democracies. We have some great case studies and examples of what that looks like around the world in our book. We talk about citizens groups using AI to watchdog the government to incorporate instances of public corruption. We write about a great example of a group in Brazil that's been using AI for that purpose for about a decade, long preceding the current modern developments and large language model technologies. We talk about groups of citizens in the US and elsewhere around the world who are using AI to improve how citizens can have their voices heard in policymaking processes, helping people to articulate their views about the laws that should govern all of us and communicate that in an impactful way to the legislature. So there's obviously a huge risk, and we see this as the central risk that AI poses to democracy, of the technology being used to concentrate power and make the already powerful more powerful. But I am optimistic about citizens groups leveraging the technology to switch those dynamics. In terms of fears, I already mentioned the biggest one, that it will be used to concentrate power. And of course, we do see examples of that around the world. We see AI as a fundamentally power magnifying technology, and that means that pro-democracy advocates that want to reform good governance using the technology, they can use it for that purpose and it can be effective. But just as well, elected officials and others with authoritarian tendencies that want to use AI to control citizens and to enforce unjust policies, AI will magnify their power as well, and we can see examples of that around the world today also.GR: We'll get into some of those a little bit later. I wanted to ask you a more of a historical question as a follow on to that. And I was thinking about this and I was wondering how would AI compare with technological innovations of the past that have also had great impacts on politics? I thought of three right away. One very simple one is simply the ability to amplify a voice, you know, voice amplification. And then of course, you have radio, then you have opinion surveying and polling. And then an obvious one would be television. Those are all the ones that came to mind to me. Do you think that AI is going to have a more dramatic effect than those kinds of technological innovations, or will it be comparable or less? I don’t know.NS: Well, I think you're right to locate AI along a historical spectrum of new technologies that, when they're introduced, affect not just politics, not just government and administration, but really everything. I'm not a historian, but I know historians and economists have a classification of what are called general purpose technologies, technologies that really do change and transform everything. Maybe some people differ about what belongs in that category, but it includes things like telecommunications and includes things like railroads and includes things like universities as knowledge generation technologies. And I do think we can locate AI along that spectrum. In terms of political applications, you know, we see AI transforming the way that people interact with candidates and elected officials in a way that extends the progression of the introduction of whistlestop tours on the back of railroad cars, moving into broadcast communications like radio, moving into visual communications with television, moving into the internet and social media, and now it's getting the ability to not just broadcast opinions, but to individually respond to questions, tailor conversations to an individual person, and even exchange information in a two way communication with many, many individuals at mass scale in a way that previous technologies just wouldn't have made possible. And once again, that capability can be applied to good purposes that most of us and most of your listeners would probably think are beneficial. And it can definitely be applied in negative ways as well.GR: I'm Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, and my guest is the data scientist Nathan Sanders. And we're discussing his new book. It's titled, "Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship". So, let's get into some of these things more specifically and you have given us clues about the arguments that you, the two of you make in your book. But how would AI affect democracy specifically? You talked about the concerns about concentrating power in the way that citizens might do things, but how will it affect democracy as a system of government? And I'm going to define democracy here very broadly in the way that you defined AI as being a system in which the people, usually through elected representatives and their leaders, give laws to themselves. And I think that's sort of the fundamental essence of it. How do you think AI is going to affect us?NS: It's a great question and of course, it's a broad one. In our book, we do go through in-depth applications across all the major branches and systems of governance, politics, citizenship, the judiciary, the administrative branch.GR: And I want to get into some of those, each with you, as we go on. But go ahead.NS: And maybe what I can do to start that conversation is just to share an example that we think is really interesting, that we've just written an update to the story we shared in the book of the most recent happenings that, specifically talks about how citizens and candidates, voters and candidates engage with each other. We just wrote a story about what's happening in Japan right now with a brand new political party called Team Mirai that is really reimagining how politics works and using AI as a tool in that reimagination. This is a party that was founded by a 30-something software engineer named Takahiro Anno. And at the time we wrote the book, he had just run for office for the first time. He had run for governor of Tokyo, and he is, as an individual software developer, had made some tools to help him get the word out about his platform and views, and to get feedback from people that were novel and helped him reach hundreds of thousands of people in the Tokyo electorate in a way that a individual candidate traditionally couldn't do. Now, since we published the book, he's now been elected to the upper chamber of the Japanese national legislature, the Diet. So, he's effectively a senator now in Japan, and he has founded a political party, and he's now receiving public funding that is distributed to Japanese parties, and he's using it to advance that vision. He's hiring engineers and using it to build new politica...
Transcribe →Brandon Rottinghaus on the Campbell Conversations
Jan 2400:27:44Tap to summarizeBrandon Rottinghaus(brandonrottinghaus.com)Politics has become more partisan and aggressive in recent years, but has that had an effect on how political scandals play out? This week, Grant Reeher talks with Brandon Rottinghaus, who says that it has. Rottinghaus is a political science professor at the University of Houston, the host of "Party Politics" on Houston Public Media, and the author of "Scandal: Why Politicians Survive Controversy in a Partisan Era."Program transcript:Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is Brandon Rottinghaus. He's a political science professor at the University of Houston and the co-host of "Party Politics" on Houston Public Media. He's with me today because he has a new and timely book out. It's titled "Scandal: Why Politicians Survive Controversy in a Partisan Era." Professor Rottinghaus, welcome to the program.Brandon Rottinghaus: Hey, thank you for having me.GR: Well, we really appreciate you making the time, so let me just start with a question that gets at your title there. Basic question about the book. Obviously, political scandals have been around as long as politics has been around. But has there been some kind of historic, recent historical inflection point in scandals, in how they play out? Where things began to turn that caught your eye?BR: Scandals are definitely an indicator of our politics, in some ways a lagging indicator. The kind of things that are affecting American politics also affect scandals. So to answer your question very bluntly, polarization is really the biggest driving factor in terms of changing the way that we see scandals and the less impact that they have over time. So the premise of the book is, in part, that scandals appear less damaging in a polarized era. Politicians ranging from Trump to Santos, who survive these kinds of behaviors that would have basically ended careers years ago, the partisan identity that people have basically shields politicians, even amid very serious criminal indictments or wrongdoing that's been discussed. So really it's about polarization. But it of course, is got tendrils around all kinds of other related incidents and things that are affecting our politics, like our siloed media environment or, just a kind of new age of politician who doesn't have the same degree of shame because they've seen lots of scandals come and go and understand that surviving them is a mix of, guile and media strategies, and a lot of other things. So in a nutshell, basically, the thing that's affecting politics more broadly is also affecting the lessened impact of scandals.GR: Remember, in the McCarthy era, there was, I forget which senator or other political figure, put this question to McCarthy. “Have you no shame, sir?” I guess I guess the answer now is no, I don't. Well, you've brought into the conversation here a bunch of things that I wanted to follow up with you on. So you've kind of set the terms for how we're going to talk here. But we have talked about political polarization on this program many different times with different authors. It always helps, I think, though, just give a super quick thumbnail description of what we mean when we say political polarization.BR: Yeah. There are really two things I think at work. And these are kind of political sciencey explanations, but they've got roots in the way that people think about each other and how they interact with the bigger political system. One is motivated reasoning, where people effectively believe what they want to believe, and even if they are convinced of something by someone else, or they have alternative information, they still believe what they believe. So that's where partisanship thrives. It's like a germ that, if you cover it and keep it warm, it will continue to grow. And so people, once they believe something, it's hard to get them to unbelieve it, or they're willing to find things in the world in news, in the conversations with people that basically already support what they believe. So that's one.GR: Confirmation bias.BR: Yeah, precisely. And the other is just a kind of sense of tribalism in politics. And people call it in the field affective polarization, that I don't like you because you're of a different political party from me. There are actually lots of real-world examples of this that aren't about politics. It works for sports. It works for race and ethnicity kind of bias. So there are a lot of ways that this kind of motivated reasoning, and and this of affective polarization will work together to reinforce partisanship, but effectively, people are retreating to their own camps, and that hyper partisanship is creating a moment where politicians can retreat to their base and basically survive a scandal they didn't years ago or wouldn't have years ago.GR: I was thinking of this topic in part, more as it's sort of a general cultural thing, and we'll come back to the polarization lens and the other specific political factors for this. But I was thinking, as I was reading through your book, is there a particular moment in time where, at least in my lifetime, it felt like something changed, and I wanted to run this by you. The one that I came up with was Bill Clinton's scandal during the primaries in 1992 with the Gennifer Flowers affair. And I remember at the time, the expectation among my colleagues was that Clinton would back out of the race. He’d drop out. He didn't. He ultimately survived at a very famous, thing he said to the New Hampshire primary voters. He'd be “with them till the last dog died.” Would you pick that, or is there other, is there one moment that kind of stands out to you where it begins to feel like something shifts?BR: That's a really great point. And I think that's a moment that you're certainly seeing a lot of that change in the book and in other scholarship. I use the 90s as a kind of cut point for a politician, so it makes sense to basically have it as the pre- and post-moment. I do think that the moment that preceded it is as important as the moment you describe. The moment that preceded it was Gary Hart being essentially be in the middle of a scandal where he was reported to have an affair, and as a married man, and it was a media feeding frenzy. It ultimately didn't show anything definitive, but it definitely suggested that the scandals that are affecting people are now really killing careers. But a short four years later, you have Bill Clinton surviving what was more or less the same kind of scandal. Part of it was about his own initiative. Part of it was the politics of that moment allowed it to happen. But I think you're exactly right to pinpoint that as one of those pivot points. And, to be able to see what that transition looked like from a prior scandal, to me, also was telling, because these scandals aren't isolated, they don't exist in a vacuum. They're all building on each other. And so politicians recognize that other people have been in similar situations, and they've used a certain kind of playbook to get out of it. And that really is, I think, the tale of the tape you're seeing scandals really unfold in ways that we hadn't before. And even though the kinds of things politicians do to embarrass themselves, their families tend to be kind of similar. It's still the case that now that they're able to wiggle out of them in ways that they weren't before.GR: You know, they've you mentioned Gary Hart. This was a situation where the truth is stranger than fiction. On the boat was "Monkey Business" where this supposed to have taken place. And then, as I recall, the woman involved, Donna Rice, went on to make quite a bit of money selling jeans on television. I'm Grant Reeher.BR: Yes, all about recovery.GR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, somebody was the better for it, I suppose. I'm Grant Reeher, and you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, and my guest is political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus. He's published a new book titled "Scandal: Why Politicians Survive Controversy in a Partisan Era." So, just to think about the current era we're in and, basic question on this. If you're a politician, you get caught in one of these. What kinds of responses are currently the most effective? Is it just digging in? Is it ignoring it? Is it attacking your attacker or what? What what do you what do you see people doing?BR: That's a it's a really good question, and definitely one that gets to the heart of how politicians' strategies have changed. Part of the reason they're able to solve these things and to, to be able to survive these things is that they are effectively using this new playbook. A lot of people look at Donald Trump as being the architect of this playbook, but he is not the only one. There are a lot of authors on this kind of playbook, but in a nutshell, a lot of what happens is that you do see the kind of retreating to the base where politicians will say things like, this other great political force, the opposite of us, the others are trying to get you, but I'm in the way. So a lot of politicians like Matt Gaetz, for instance, use a...
Transcribe →Elaine Pagels on the Campbell Conversations
Jan 1700:27:53Tap to summarizeElaine Pagels (Princeton University)We take for granted that Christianity is well established. Indeed, it's the most popular religion in the world. But a close look at what we know about the historical Jesus and the aftermath of his death reveals that outcome was far from obvious. This week, Grant Reeher speaks with renowned biblical scholar Elaine Pagels, whose most recent book is "Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus."Program transcript:Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is the renowned biblical scholar and writer Elaine Pagels. She's a religion professor at Princeton University, and among her many recognitions and awards are a MacArthur fellowship, a National Humanities Medal, and the National Book Award. She's here with me today to discuss her newest book. It's titled "Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus." Professor Pagels, welcome to the program. It’s a thrill to have you on.Elaine Pagels: Thank you. I'm very glad to be here.GR: Well, we really appreciate you making the time. So let me just start with this question. It's a little bit quirky, but I wanted to start with it. What's the most important thing about the written material that forms the Gospels? Either the four gospels that make up the first four books of the New Testament, or any of the others that you write about in this book, and others that most people today don't know or most people today don't sufficiently appreciate.EP: That's a hard question. What is the most important thing? Somehow, the power of the person who was Jesus of Nazareth comes through this material, even though it's got all kinds of miracle stories, it's got all kinds of things that sound very unlikely. It's remarkable that that sense of somebody who lived 2,000 years ago is vivid to people all over the world and often in many different ways. I think that's astonishing, actually.GR: Yeah, yeah. No, it really is when you sit back and think about it. And one of the things I loved about this book as I was reading it is you do that all the way through. You sort of take a step back and remind the reader of the big picture. One of the things that I wanted to ask related to that is, and you write about this in the book, the historical context in which all of these gospels were being written. You talk about that being important to understanding parts of their content. Just tell us briefly about what was going on when the Gospels were being written.EP: Well, when I was growing up and was taken sometimes to a sort of nice Methodist church, I saw pictures of Jesus with children on his lap and flowers around. And it was all very pastoral and all very nice. It looked very much like California, right? What we don't remember is that Judea, land of Israel, is between—always has been between—enormous empires. And at that time, it was also under siege by Rome. The Romans had been allies of the Jews, and then they were so powerful that they just dominated the whole country. And whenever anyone tried to start a revolution against the oppression of Roman power in Judea, they were brutally murdered. There were forests of people who were crucified as Jesus was on the charge of insurrection, as he was. And so it's about war. And the death of Jesus certainly reflects the context of war, because he was accused of starting a revolution against Rome. That was the charge. And the birth of Jesus probably shows that too. But it's not that pastoral, lovely scene so much. It's a very ancient part of the world that has been lived in for so many years. And there's enormous amount of warfare that's going on.GR: Yeah. And I was struck by something that you pointed out, that the writers of the Gospels were writing at a time when they were worried about their own lives. And so that is a lens through which we can interpret some of the decisions they made about the kinds of stories they told or didn't tell. And I think that's an important point of understanding it. I wanted to shift a bit and sort of ask you a question you probably get asked more frequently, which is, you've spent so much time with us thinking about this. You must by this time have a picture in your head of what Jesus was like as a person, his personality, what he was like to be around. You said that it comes through in the Gospels. I'd be very curious to hear your own impression of that.EP: Well, that's a good question. As I mentioned in the book, there's not one word about what he looked like. So you've got all kinds of portraits. That's why I put paintings and photographs in the book of totally different views of what he looked like. I have the sense of a powerful, charismatic, remarkable person with quick changes of moods. And what else? Then it becomes a kind of mosaic of different views of somebody who can be compassionate and welcoming to people who are in need, somebody can be harsh to people in authority. Contemplative, maybe foolhardy in some ways. But there are so many different interpretations that when I think of a mosaic, for 2,000 years people have been making pictures either visually or psychologically or religiously of who Jesus was. So I'm sure I'm affected by all of those different portraits.GR: You mentioned that he could be harsh and again, a personality that varied. One of the things that I was struck by being a neophyte in all this, when I first began reading about this topic of the historical Jesus several years ago, was the fact that he wasn't always nice to his own family. And I'd be curious to hear you talk about that and if you think it means anything for the message of the Gospels.EP: Well, the first thing we know is that the family wasn't very nice to him. That is, the earliest gospel written is the "Gospel of Mark," is just 17 pages and the others are both "Mark" expanded, "Matthew" and "Luke." And what "Mark" says is that when he went to his hometown, people didn't believe that he was a prophet or a preacher, or had any right to talk like he was, or to try to heal people by divine power. They just thought, who is this guy? We know his mother. We know his brothers. There are four of them, and we know his sisters. Who does he think he is? And he said nobody believed in him. His family went out to stop him when he was speaking in public. And it says because they thought he was out of his mind, which is something you don't expect to see. Translators kind of avoid that. That's the Greek, but they make it a little better in English. And they also are very—several of the gospels say his brothers didn't believe in him. So the picture there is of a disrupted family, a mother. And the strangest part of it for me is that they called him—who is this guy? He's the son of Mary. Now, you don't call a Jewish boy son of Mary if he has a recognized father, because it's always a patronymic. But they called him Son of Mary, and they speak of his maybe seven siblings. And so, when the others come up with stories about virgin birth, you begin to wonder what's going on.GR: Yeah. Yeah. Right. No, you speculate about that in the book. Yeah.EP: And critics always said that he was the son of a woman who was rather disreputable and probably illegitimate. And that's the reason that Matthew and Luke make up biblical stories for a birth story that probably wasn't historically true.GR: Interesting. I'm Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations, and my guest is the biblical scholar and writer Elaine Pagels. She's published a new book. It's titled "Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus." So, I'm a political scientist, so of course I'm going to ask you this question about his leadership style. Can you say a bit more about how you'd characterize him as a leader of other people?EP: Well, I'd be interested if you would comment on that, because I didn't really focus on it much. He was obviously somebody who drew people to him in a very powerful way. And it seemed they would do anything for this man. They would go to the death for him. And that's quite remarkable. How he did that? He didn't have any natural authority as far as we know. He was brought up in a family that was not remarkable. He perhaps wasn't educated in the way we think of it, although he would have learned the scriptures by heart the way Jewish boys did, the way Muslim boys learned the Koran and boys in India learned the Indian scriptures. But somehow, he had great power to compel people to believe that the end of time was coming, that all the hopes of Israel were coming to a great climax, and the world was about to be transformed.GR: Yeah. I was thinking as I was reading, I thought, which president has the leadership style that I feel like I'm getting here, and I couldn't come up with any. And the irony was the most religious president, genuinely, knowledgeably religious president we've probably had, arguably Jimmy Carter, at least in the modern age. Certainly, other presidents knew their scripture, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Garfield. But obviously, there's very little similarity in those leadership styles. So it is perplexing. One of the things that you marvel at and you've already spoken to it earlier in our conversation is, but I want to draw you out a little bit more is how and why this movement of early Christianity, with all the challenges that it faced, including t...
Transcribe →Chris Libonati on the Campbell Conversations
Jan 1000:27:53Tap to summarizeChris Libonati(fulkram / centralcurrent.org)Program transcription:Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is Chris Libonati. He's the managing editor of Central Current an online media outlet in Central New York. He also has experience as a crime and politics reporter at the Syracuse Post-Standard. Chris, welcome to the program, it's good to have you on.Chris Libonati: Well, thanks for having me. It's good to talk to you, Grant.GR: You bet. So let me just start with some real basic stuff. We'll get into Central Current in a second, but let's just start with the context and the landscape that things like Central Current are entering into. Remind our listeners what's happened to local news coverage of public issues in recent years in Syracuse, but all over I think the same phenomenon has happened, just bring us up to date on that.CL: Yeah. All over the country, I mean, you know, for decades now, local newspapers have closed, or shrunk. You know, it can be the Syracuse Post-Standard, but it's also Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Buffalo News and, you know, it's not just in New York, it's everywhere. And there are communities all over the country, often smaller communities who are losing, you know, just simple local papers, that, you know, even had only 3 or 4 reporters before, and now you have none. Central Current, you know, kind of grew out of a national effort. Well, it grew from locally, but out of a national effort to expand reporting in communities that need more of it. And then, frankly, all communities need more reporting. This is not just a Syracuse issue, this is a nationwide issue, local newspapers are closing nationally.GR: Yeah. I have a couple colleagues that study the media and they've really driven this point home when I have heard them speak. So, in fact, you know, you hear this phrase, 'food desert' a lot, but then you have these small towns that you were talking about that are being called 'news deserts', and I think what you spoke to illustrates that. So I'm going to go now to Syracuse, and I'm going to make a, I guess I'm going to make a confession here publicly, but one of my slight irritations over the years, is the Post-Standard's apparent reluctance to acknowledge that they've cut back on their local and regional news coverage in recent decades. Instead, they often point to, hey, we've got added content on our website and, you know, this is really it's better somehow. It seems a bit misleading to me. But anyway, you had some experience at the Post-Standard before you took on this position. I would be very interested to hear your views more specifically on how, because they're the, you know, they're the big players in our market, obviously, how their local news, especially public and political affairs news coverage has changed in recent years.CL: You know, honestly, so I started there in late December of 2017.GR: So a lot of this stuff had already happened.CL: Yes, yes, absolutely. So, I came in kind of, I think I was at Syracuse University, and Newhouse while it was changing and honestly, you know, I think I kind of, I missed out on it in the way that, like, the local reader got to see it, right? Because, you know, during layoffs and cutbacks, I just wasn't as avid of a reader of the Post-Standard, and I was probably more reading the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, because that's, I'm from Rochester. And I used to take the newspaper to school every morning with me while I was in elementary school. So.GR: Oh, wow.CL: Yeah. So, and I think though, like, what has happened at the Post-Standard, you know, the Post-Standard cut early, right? They cut or they saw the tide coming and not the Post-Standard really advanced media and the Newhouse family. In some ways they were ahead of the curve in cutting, right? Because now newspapers are, you know, you see it at the Buffalo News, right? They're doing they're cutting now and I think in some ways it's like, it was take your medicine then or take your medicine now. And that's not to say that, yeah, it's just unfortunate that that's happened. And I think that the truth is, you know, in some ways what you, you don't necessarily, very obviously lose like common council coverage or legislature coverage, you lose issues coverage in some ways, right? Like, you think about, you know I was talking to someone, like, the Post-Standard years and years ago had a labor reporter, you know, well before, probably before I was born, honestly. And someone was complaining to me about that at one point. You know, obviously we have Sean Kirst and, you know, that wasn't a cut, you know, but Sean did leave and it was a loss to the community. I think that it's not necessarily the people that work there and the reporters that work there, but just in aggregate resources. And I think that, yeah, I can tell more of a broad story than a specific one, but I think, though I will say, and one of the benefits of the Post-Standard, I do think things have been very consistent since 2017, and that is the benefit of having taken kind of the medicine, so to speak, in the early 2010's, I'd say, is that it has steadied. And, you know, there is, I guess there's something to be said for that, right?GR: Yeah, no, it makes sense, I hadn't really thought about it that way, but you're right. I didn't know that the Post-Standard had done this earlier than everybody else but, and you know, and then they cut back to the three days of sort of a genuinely new paper paper, and, yeah, but it's been steady since then. Well, so, let's then transition from that into Central Current. So give us a brief history of Central Current, you were present at the founding. What do you see as Central Current's place in the local media landscape, and what was the history of its story and its founding?CL: Yeah. So the organization started with the board. So, you know, a couple of our founders, Tony Malavenda, Larry Bousquet got together, and I guess, Tony was like, you know, Tony Malavenda was somewhat unaware of the movement in nonprofit news, and he had kind of gone to a group of people that he knew, and he was like, you know, maybe this could be a nonprofit. And lo and behold, there's nonprofits all over the country, all over the place. And it gave them a bit of a blueprint, right? It made it a little more simple to kind of get that started. They hired Julie McMahon, former editor, you know, also a colleague, former colleague at the Post-Standard to kind of get it rolling.GR: And I spoke to her when it was just starting up. So you're kind of like the second chapter now, but go ahead.CL: And so we, I came over because, you know, what I told one of my editors when I was leaving, one of my editors at the Post-Standard was, you know, I was just kind of like, I want a bit of a feel like a college newsroom and not in all the college age, you know, activities or whatever, but trying things out. You know, that was what, when I was at the Daily Orange, you know, it was like, can we just do a story this way, because we we say so, you know? And I think in legacy media, you get locked into, well, we are the paper of record and we need to look and act like the paper of record. And that is not to say that we don't hold ourselves to a very high standard, but that is to say that that very high standard does not have to be a barrier to creativity. And to exist and to succeed, we have to be creative. And I think it was both freeing and backing myself into a corner where, no, I have to be creative. It is innovate or kind of die out, right? That is the mentality. And I wanted that, you know? That was a challenge to me. There is something to being the first reporter somewhere and that's what I was. I was going to set the tone for who we wanted to be even without editing power, right? Or editing responsibility. And that was, that's how I got here. And I think probably telling people that I wanted a feel of a college newsroom, and maybe it was not the way I should have said it, because, like, back then, because it's just a hard feeling to capture if you haven't been there recently. And, you know, when I left, I guess I'd been out of the D.O. for five-ish years and I thought that there were things that we did there that could apply to a professional, I mean, they are a professional newsroom, but, you know, something like a nonprofit.GR: Yeah, no, it's interesting. And you're still here, and you don't look too hung over to me,CL: (laughter)GR: So I don't think you that you've gone in the bad direction there. I'm Grant Reeher, and you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. My guest is Chris Libonati, he's the managing editor of the media outlet, Central Current. So, you mentioned Malavenda and Bousquet. Where does your funding come from now?CL: Yes, we have a bunch of different places, but so it's about, we think about, on the business side, Maximilian Elye, our executive director thinks about it in about four pillars. So it's a grant funding, a sponsorships, major donors, and then grassroots donors, which is like membership, or we don't have subscriptions, necessarily, but that would be the small dollar donors, however you want to frame it.GR: And what would be the relative size of these pillars? And, you know, and where does some of that grant funding come from?<...
Transcribe →Ben Walsh on the Campbell Conversations
Jan 300:27:53Tap to summarizeSyracuse Mayor Ben Walsh speaks at a news conference in Syracuse Monday, May 20, 2025.(Ellen Abbott / WRVO )Program transcript:Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. Well, the cliché is that all good things must come to an end, and that's the occasion for my conversation today with two term city of Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh. By the time you hear this, he will be former mayor. But today is his second to last day in office. It's fitting, perhaps, that there's a blizzard blowing outside our windows. It's Syracuse, after all. Mayor Walsh, welcome to the program, it's good to see you again and I'm glad we were able to get to speak one more time.Ben Walsh: So am I, Grant. Thanks for having me.GR: Well, I really appreciate it. So let me just start, I want to start by giving you a brief victory lap. Just briefly list some of the things that you're the most proud of accomplishing while you've been in office these eight years.BW: Well, there's a lot, Grant. We've worked really hard over the past eight years. And what I think one thing that I'd like to point out is that, you know, oftentimes you look at administrations and, you know, they might focus on just the small day to day, city service issues. And then others that are focused, you know, primarily on big picture issues, I think we really did both. We spent a lot of time addressing core city services, which is our what taxpayers pay for. But we took some really big swings, too. So, on the city services side, I think about, you mentioned the snow, you know, our fleet, our snowplow fleet is in the best shape it's been in decades. And, you know, we've invested a lot into the fleet, into technology to improve our snow operations. We are paving more roads than we've paved in decades. In 2017, the year before we started, the city paved about four miles of roads. And when it's all said and done, we will have paved over 100 miles of roads over the past eight years. Our municipal sidewalk program, repairing, we've repaired or reconstructed over 40 miles of sidewalks. We plow a lot of sidewalks now in the winter, our new street light network. So a lot of things that people notice, you know, not to mention our new trash and recycling service. While at the same time, you know, advocated for the community grid for the 81 project which is well underway, built thousands of new units of housing. So, again, really, really proud that we were able to do all that.GR: Yeah, that's a good starting list. And obviously, as you've just pointed out, you've accomplished a number of things that you can point to as, you know, real tangible achievements for the city. I was wondering, though, if you had to pick one thing either concrete or more abstract, that you would hang your hat on, let's say, you know, let's go fast forward and we're looking back now in the historical assessment of you as mayor. What would you want it to be and why?BW: I think a couple of things come to mind. Where I always start is with with our team here in city government. We've assembled just an incredible group of dedicated public servants that are incredibly passionate about the city, are highly competent and capable, could be doing many other things, and are choosing to serve the public because they believe in what we're doing here. And so between the team, and then I think, you know, in terms of, it's hard to pick any one of those things that I mentioned, but I think what we've done with housing in the neighborhoods I think will stand the test of time. We built more homes, actual homes, single family homes, as well as apartments, than the city has in decades. And you drive down certain streets and certain neighborhoods. I think about, you know, you drive down to the south side and look, you know, at Baker and Woodland Ave, South State Street, parts of Colvin, we've transformed those neighborhoods that hadn't seen investment, again, in decades. While at the same time, certainly you look downtown and along the Near East Side, heading up to University Hill, all of the new apartment buildings. Again, we've physically transformed these neighborhoods, but I think, you know, in doing so, really built back some of the fabric of the community that, again, will last for decades.GR: And this next question isn't so much about policy accomplishments, necessarily, but I did want to ask you, was there a time in your eight years where this job just felt the best to you?BW: I thought you were going in a different direction than that.GR: (laughter) We'll get there, we'll get there.BW: Okay, so I think, you know, I will say that the recent weeks after a really challenging final year, have been really gratifying to be able to have some time to reflect on our accomplishments and to hear from a lot of constituents that are really grateful for the service. It's it's been nice to finish out that way. At the same time, again, getting back to housing, I think some of the best moments for me were the times when we were cutting a ribbon on a new home and more importantly, handing over the keys to a new homeowner. In many cases, these are, you know, first time homeowners, the first of their family to own a home. And, you know, I remember one in particular woman who had lived in public housing her whole life, who was able to buy one of the new homes that we built with Home Headquarters. Those are those moments where you just, you realize that you're having a tangible impact on someone's life that, again, will have a generational impact for their family.GR: You know, one of the things that struck me when I was thinking about these last couple questions I've asked you, what I would think about them, and this is pretty abstract, but I just wanted to get your thoughts about it. One of the things I would put in the plus column for you is that you've had to deal with two really, really difficult, important people. You had to deal with Andrew Cuomo and you had to deal with Donald Trump, at least the administrations.BW: Right.GR: And that's not easy. But you seem to handle that with some grace and patience, but also not just folding over.BW: Right.GR: Could you talk a little bit about navigating that tightrope?BW: Yeah. So, you know, I'll start with Governor Cuomo. Well, I'll start with the fact that, you know, when I ran in 2017, one of my major platforms was collaboration and partnership. And I would specify that when I talk about those things, it doesn't mean that you have to get along with everybody all the time. But I think you try to treat, I've tried to treat everyone with with dignity and respect. And what I've always said is, if you sit down at the table, you can disagree, and you can get up and walk away, but you always have to come back to the table, and I think we've done that. With Governor Cuomo, obviously his relationship with the previous city administration was strained. And so I went out of my way to develop a strong working relationship with him. I think that that really helped us, certainly on 81. I remember you know, going to him, and making the pitch that the time for studies and analysis were over, that we were never going to achieve full consensus, but all the signs, the data pointed to the community grid being the right option. And he challenged me to show him that in the form of support from various stakeholders, and we were able to do that. And I think that helped him get over the hump with the community grid. Also, I think about the STEAM school, you know, I spent, there was a particular event at the airport where I was with, at the time, County Executive Mahoney, who obviously had a great relationship with the governor. And she kind of set me up, teed it up for me and said, hey, governor, you know, mayor's got this really exciting idea for this STEAM school and I pitched it to him and he was excited about it. And ultimately that led to an $85 million investment from the state. So, again, I invested in that relationship. I think it paid dividends. And as it relates to President Trump, never had the chance to meet him. You know, I've not been shy about articulating some of the challenges that the city has faced as a result of policies that have come out of his administration. But I've also gone, you know, tried not to, you know, to put a stick in his eye. You know, in some cases, just, you know, staying off the radar is all you can do, and I've tried to do that.GR: Yeah. No, I think you've got that exactly right. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with two term Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh and he is in his final week as mayor. So here's a couple of questions that I think you did anticipate. First one, what's the biggest thing you feel like you've left on the table, that with the benefit of a do over, you might have gotten over the finish line that you didn't get over the finish line?BW: Well, I think I appreciate the way you asked it, because I really do feel that everything that I set out to accomplish, we at least if we didn't finish, we got started and will be completed. I really can't think of any one thing where we just completely whiffed. But, you know, I think, I talk a lot about housing in this interview, it's been a priority. The challenge with housing i...
Transcribe →John Mannion on the Campbell Conversations
Dec 2000:27:53Tap to summarize(Ciara Feltham / Mannion for NY)Program transcript:Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. The last time I spoke with John Mannion, it was about six months into his first term in Congress. He's now finished close to a year, so it's a good time to check back in and get his reflections. As always, it seems a lot has been happening in Washington in the last six months. John Mannion represents New York's 22nd congressional district, which contains all of Onondaga and Madison counties and portions of Oneida, Cortland and Cayuga counties, including the cities of Syracuse, Utica, and Auburn. Congressman Mannion, welcome back to the program and it's good to see you again.John Mannion: Great to see you. Thank you for having me on again, Grant.GR: Well, I have to say our listeners can only hear this and I can see you, I'm going to jump right to a question I was going to ask you later, but, you look pretty relaxed. You don't look like a beaten down member of Congress. (laughter)JM: Well, it's still early in the day. (laughter) Listen, there will be times where, you know, I'll be in a grocery store back home or somewhere, and people go, you know, hey, I support you, you know, thank you for everything you're doing, I hope you're doing okay. Every now and then, I'll get a, you look tired, you know, you look tired.GR: (laughter)JM: But I understand the gravity of the position that I hold. And, of course, I love the place where I'm from. I consider it an honor to be able to represent it and we're going to do everything to make sure we do a good job. And we uphold, you know, the history of this country and the norms of this country, the values of it. And, you know, some days are longer than others, but, I appreciate the compliment, and I'll take it wherever it comes.GR: Okay, great. Well, a little more serious version of that, though, if I could. You know, when I think about, and we'll come back to getting your sense of, you know, the things that you've accomplished and all that, but when I think about the weekly life of a member of Congress, knowing a bit about it, it really does seem to me to be kind of a grind in a lot of ways. I mean, you're going back and forth to D.C. constantly. You're always having to raise money. So, I imagine it has been an adjustment from the state Senate, even though that was a challenging position as well. I mean, how, do you have strategies for coping with it?JM: So, I do think my four years in Albany was a great preparation for this. And it was in many ways, no offense to the state Senate and state Assembly, because there's important, very important, if not just as important legislation there, but just the calendar itself. It was a six month in-session session, so January to June, and then you had six months to get back in the district and really get a chance to talk to folks. The D.C. schedule is three out of every four weeks a month on average. August is not a month we’re working and we won't get into the government shutdown or even the cancellation of votes around that time. But it's about four days a week, typically. And when you're here, you're going, you know, from first thing in the morning, all the way through the evening, you get up and you do it again. And there's a lot of committee work, as I think we talked about a few months ago. The committee work here is really intensive, and there's amendments to legislation and multiple hearings, so you can count on those every week. But the travel is something for sure. We're fortunate that, you know, I mean, I have driven, but as far as flights go from Syracuse to D.C., there's a lot of them and they're direct flights, so we could do a lot worse than that. And I feel fortunate that I live where I do. And both airports are great and easy to get in and out of. So, you know, that's the least of it. It's really the importance of the work. And then what's tough is, because it's usually the full week or close to a full week, I miss a lot of stuff at home that I really want to be at, and certainly want to get to new areas of the district that may not know me as well, and let them know that I want to hear from them and that I'm fighting for them.GR: I just can't imagine, for example, how a member of Congress representing a rural district in California manages that with the flights and the travel involved. But, well, let's get to the meat of some of this. You've been in a year, it’s a two-year term. So, what do you regard as your most important accomplishment so far in this first year?JM: You know, some of those things, Grant, have really come up recently legislatively, and I'll get to that. But when I was elected, you know, this past fall and so was the president, I said, I wish for the country's success and therefore I wish for his success. But what we've seen immediately with the executive orders that came out on Inauguration Day was that the backstops of many things to keep executive powers reined in were removed. And that includes the removal of the inspector generals and, you know, clearing out of the DOJ and the FBI. So, you know, a lot of my time has been devoted to, and I say this, I'm just telling the truth, I'm letting people know that regardless of where you land on the political spectrum, that we should always maintain the co-equal branches of government and a system of checks and balances. And when we hear either secretaries or the president himself talk about defying court orders, that's, of course, incredibly concerning. And congressional oversight is not happening to the extent that it has in the past, historically, regardless of which party is in power. So that's a lot of what we work on. But, when we've gone through, I will call it the Big Beautiful Bill, the reconciliation process, there was a lot of work there, a lot of amendments were attempted that were voted down basically by party lines, and some of them were very logical moves, including extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies, also returning what legally has been found to be illegal firings of the federal workforce and returning veterans to that workforce. But most recently, what you've seen are a couple pieces of legislation is that despite, you know, the president really having a tight grasp over the speaker is that we have found, and I do think this is inspiring, bipartisanship within the discharge petition process. So, you know that I come from a union family and I was a union president while I was still teaching in my last eight years. So, there was a discharge petition, passed the House, bipartisan support to restore the collective bargaining rights of some of these, you know, government entities. And I was grateful to see that happen. You know, additionally, a lot of media attention, and justifiably, is around the release of the Epstein files that, two, we should have accountability and justice for victims. And that was something that has happened recently as well. So, you can imagine my frustration in having really logical amendments stall, even though sometimes I'm advocating even more for, proportionally other congressional districts that might benefit from an extension of the Affordable Care Act's tax credits. But, you know, that's what's frustrating, but we have seen some movement. I've got my own legislation that we're going to continue to build support around and consensus around and gain co-sponsorship and try to move that legislation forward while finding our spots to insert our voice and insert our amendments and trying to make some of the legislation that's moving by the majority better.GR: I want to come back to a couple of things you mentioned. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Congressman John Mannion. The freshman representative is in New York's 22nd congressional district. So, one of the things, you mentioned this, was, you referenced our earlier conversation where you observed that one of the biggest differences and surprises in some ways for you was the intensity and the importance of the committee work relative to what you had experienced in New York State. Are there any other big surprises now that you've had a year that you just didn't see coming as far as the nature of the job down there?JM: Sure. I, you know, I'm going to shift again to executive powers here, I think I have to. So, you know, I have to remind people that in a previous Congress, appropriated dollars were obligated to different organizations, you know, including like, NEH and NIH grants, Department of Ed grants, Department of Defense and Energy grants. And that was a Republican majority in Congress that passed that, even though it may have been signed by a Democratic president. But the appropriations process is one of those, what I like to call forced bipartisanship. So, we all want bipartisanship, but the Appropriations Committee and other aligned committees make sure that we're not playing hunger games, we're not playing winners and losers. And I hate the term blue districts and red districts because my district is a purple district. They happen to have a blue representative right now, but I consider myself here for everybody and every district across this country has Republicans and Democrats. So, I wish we weren't playing this game and I know the people I represent, by and large, feel the same w...
Transcribe →Craig Shirley on the Campbell Conversations
Dec 1300:27:53Tap to summarizeCraig ShirleyProgram transcript:Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. Last Sunday was December 7th. I wonder how many of you gave that day serious thought. My guest today will help us do that. Craig Shirley is a political consultant and a noted biographer of Ronald Reagan, and he’s also the author of, "December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World." Mr. Shirley, welcome to the program.Craig Shirley: Thank you, Grant, thank you very much.GR: We appreciate you making the time to be with us. So let me just start with a kind of a basic question about this historical event. What do you think is the most important thing about either the Pearl Harbor attack or its immediate aftermath that most Americans don’t know today?CS: Well, I think the most obvious is that it completely changed America's outlook from being an isolationist country to becoming an internationalist country, that changed overnight. Isolationism had been prevalent in the United States from the end of World War One right up until December 7th, 1941. You know, there was a saying going around America after World War One that all we got was death, debt and George M. Cohan, and we became an increasingly internationalist country as we limited immigration from Japan as we passed various neutrality acts in the 1930s, passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic president. And by 1941, everybody was isolationist. FDR, the White House, everybody knew war was coming, but everybody also had their head in the sand and wanted to avoid war at all costs with either Germany, Italy or Japan.GR: Yeah. You know, your answer is interesting because it, that's exactly the question I was going to ask you a little bit later, but I'll follow up on it now. I was going to point to that isolation, but you already described it very well. And the fact that this was a very quick pivot point, I mean, it just, like you say, this changed overnight. And I was trying to think of, have there been any other similar moments in our history like that? The only thing that I could come up with was maybe the firing on Fort Sumter, but even then there was a lot of lead up to that and so I couldn't, you know, yeah.CS: Yes. There was, I'm trying to think also, I suppose after, during the War of 1812, we barred immigration, obviously, from Great Britain and also, not from France, but from Great Britain and we became, we were somewhat of an isolationist country more because of the distance than anything else until Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay. And then we, obviously the Spanish-American War was an internationalist war. But we've gone through periods, you know, where we've been isolationist and internationalist and isolationist and internationalists again, but we've been pretty much internationalists since 1941, sometimes more expansively, other times less expansively. But even Trump, you know, people say he's an isolationist, but he did, he solved eight wars around the world. He’s solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and he's trying to stop the war in Ukraine. So even, you know, so he's accused of that, but it's really not true. It's just that I don't think he's as activist as other presidents have been in the past.GR: Certainly seems more reluctant than previous presidents to commit ground troops and that seems to be a line that he has drawn on that. Well let me, let me go back to the, yeah go ahead.CS: Let me just say one thing, Grant, is just that anti-communism animated a lot of that response on our part from 1946 up until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991.GR: Right, right, yes, that was a that was a major part of our internationalism. Well, let me go back to this attack of the Japanese. And I think looking back on it now, it's hard, I think, to believe that an attack of that magnitude could have surprised the Americans so much. So how did the Japanese pull that off?CS: You know, military planners still study it today because of the precision it was carried off with, because of the professionalism, obviously, the stealth that it was carried off with. Because don't forget, is that on December 7th and 8th, the Japanese just didn't hit Honolulu, they just didn't hit Pearl Harbor, they hit Wake Island, they hit the Philippines, they hit Indochina. They hit, you know, a half dozen different locations simultaneously orchestrated and organized, all at the same time, which was really, you know, just from the standpoint of accomplishment, it was a masterstroke in a way, because, you know, I mean, you just didn't think that they could get away with that. Of course they'd already been in China and they'd already gotten into bad relations with the United States because of their rape of Nan King and they probably murdered 250,000 civilians when they invaded China in 1939. So there was already bad blood there between the United States. I always believed China was an ally of the United States in 1939. But, I’m losing train of my thought, I guess, but is that we did everything we could to avoid war with Japan. The secretary of state, you know, set out a four point plan. He offered the Japanese something like $25 million, we would lift the oil embargo, we would lift the junk metal embargo and Japan, in turn, had to sign a proclamation of peace and that they would invade no more countries and they rejected this. So we really tried to avoid war with Japan before December 7th.GR: Was it maybe the surprise then came from a little bit of wishful thinking that we would avoid that war?CS: It was absolutely it was wishful thinking. But you know, it was also, you know, they moved a carrier fleet, four of their first line carriers and escort ships 4000 miles across the Pacific without being detected, then launched this completely surprise attack using 300 planes on Pearl Harbor. And when they did so, it reminded me what Frank Borman said. Frank Borman was an astronaut who was charged with the investigation of the fire of Apollo 1, and when he was testifying before Congress a senator asked him, he says, how did this happen? And he says, Senator, it was a failure of imagination. And that's what happened here, we just didn't believe, we didn't imagine that the Japanese would be so audacious or they would be so intent on war, Tojo was intent on a war. That they could transport these four carriers plus escort ships, refueling ships, and I think they made two stops in the Atlantic or the Pacific to refuel, then carried on, and then withdrew their forces without ever getting harmed whatsoever, not even a shot fired at them. And it was just, we never imagined that they would take that monumental step and initiate World War Two.GR: I’m Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations, and my guest is Craig Shirley. He’s the author of, "December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World." So, we got a bit lucky, though, as bad as the attack was that day, regarding our navy. Briefly remind us of how that happened.CS: Well, you're absolutely right, we were lucky in a number of ways. The Japanese main target was the, was our four aircraft carriers that were there, stationed at Pearl Harbor. But they had only recently left, two went back to San Diego to be repaired. One was down in the Coral Sea, that was Bill Halsey's carrier. He was out at sea, and so none of the carriers were actually there in Pearl Harbor, so they escaped the carnage. We were also lucky in another regard. And people have thought about this, is that everybody in America was mad that we didn't go out and attack the Japanese after they attacked us. But if we sent our ships out, they would have been slaughtered, we would've been wiped out. The Japanese ships had much better firepower, much thicker plating, and could survive an attack, whereas their shells would have gone right through the hulls of most of our ships. The ships were built much more for speed than for protection. And they would have been, the whole, you know, instead of losing 3,000 men as we did on December 7th, we would have lost maybe 30,000 men if we got into an open fight with the Japanese.GR: And had much less of a navy.CS: Yes.GR: So, you obviously get into a lot of the stories about heroism and sacrifice on that day. Is there one story that sticks with you the most, after you wrote the book?CS: Well, I got to think about that one, Grant, because there's so many stories.GR: Yeah, it’s a tough question.CS: There's so many stories. There's, is that the heroism of the nurses treating the injured, the badly injured sailors at the hospital, that in itself is worth a book right there. The nurses who have been killed, nurses who have been injured, who still managed to get back to the hospital and managed to treat many of the wounded, you know, in surgeries and drawing blood and, you know, applying anesthesia and doing whatever they could, so that in itself is one. I think also, you know, you have to say, Dory Miller's actions when she received the Navy Cross for need to be cited. Dory Miller was an African-American, was a ship's steward, was not trained for combat. And it's interesting, too, he was named Dory because his real name was Doris. And the story is, his father, his mother and father had five sons, and the father wanted a daughter, and he ended up with, Dory was the sixth and the father named Doris, even though h...
Transcribe →Judith Enck on the Campbell Conversations
Dec 600:27:53Tap to summarizeJudith EnckProgram transcript:Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. You've probably heard something about the danger of plastics, but has it changed any of your behavior? Today, we take a deep dive into the problem with plastics with my guest, Judith Enck. Professor Enck teaches at Bennington College and is the founder and president of Beyond Plastics. She served in the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration and also served in New York State government as a deputy secretary for the environment. Professor Enck is with me today because she's written a new book with Adam Mahoney titled, appropriately, “The Problem with Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and Our Planet Before It's Too Late.” Professor Enck, welcome to the program.Judith Enck: Thanks, Grant. It's a real pleasure to be with you, thanks for having me.GR: Well, we really appreciate you making the time. So, before we get into some of the arguments that you make in your book, I wanted to start with just a very basic question for our listeners and just to remind us all, what is plastic made from and how is it made?JE: Well, plastic is a very durable material that never biodegrades. It's made from fossil fuels and 16,000 different chemicals. And it really was brought into commerce right after World War two. It was created by a guy from upstate New York named Leo Bakelite (Baekeland), and it has dramatically increased in the last decade or two. And that's because plastics used to be made from chemicals and crude oil. Now it's made from chemicals and ethane, which is a byproduct of fracking. Because there's a glut of fracked gas on the market is why we are seeing the proliferation of plastics.GR: Okay. So what are the qualities about plastic that have made it so ubiquitous over time? It's obviously light and somewhat strong, what else do we need to know about it?JE: Well, it's durable, it's heat-resistant. You can make many, many different colors. I mean, the way I want to answer this is explaining why it's mostly not recyclable. So, take an aluminum can. You can recycle that aluminum can into a new aluminum can. Take a newspaper, you can recycle that into new paper products, cardboard paper. Plastics are made from many different types of plastic polymers. There are 16,000 chemicals used to make plastic in many, many different colors. So that's what makes up plastic. So that also makes it really hard to recycle. Think of your own home or apartment, you might have a bright orange hard plastic detergent bottle near your washing machine.GR: I do, I do.JE: In your refrigerator, you may have a black plastic takeout container. Those two things cannot get recycled together because they're different types of plastics, they're different colors. So the people who knew for decades that plastics are really hard to recycle and why we have in this country an abysmal plastic recycling rate of only 5 to 6%. The people who know this are the companies that make plastics. And yet they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising telling us, don't worry about all your single use plastic, just toss it in your recycling bin, knowing full well that most plastic never gets recycled. And the deception is so serious that California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued ExxonMobil in September of 2024 for deception around plastics recycling. So, keep recycling your paper, cardboard, metal, glass. Please, please, please compost your yard waste and your food waste. But recognize that plastic recycling has been an abysmal failure.GR: Interesting. I knew that a lot of plastic wasn't recycled, but I didn't know exactly why. So that's very, yeah, I appreciate that. Well, briefly as an overview, and then we'll get into some of the specifics as we go, but briefly as an overview, what's the problem with plastic overall? You mentioned that it doesn't biodegrade, what are the other problems?JE: Well, it's entering our ocean in a rapid fashion. 71% of the Earth's surface is ocean and every single minute two giant garbage trucks, the equivalent of two giant garbage trucks, dump plastic into the ocean. So we are turning our ocean into a watery landfill. Second big problem is climate change. I mentioned that today, plastics are made from a byproduct of fracking. That is making the climate crisis worse. Third, we have the really significant concern of environmental justice. Most plastic is manufactured in Texas, Louisiana and Appalachia, doing enormous health damage to people living near these plastic production facilities. There's a stretch of the Mississippi River, which we talk about in the book, between New Orleans and Baton Rouge called ‘Cancer Alley,’ and that's because of the concentration of petrochemical facilities making people sick. Johns Hopkins recently did a study where they documented the cancer rates in Cancer Alley are seven times higher than the national average. So, I have visited communities in Port Arthur, Texas, the Houston Ship Channel, up and down Cancer Alley. These have become sacrifice zones, government regulations have failed these people living in these communities. And because most plastics never get recycled, if you go to the other end of the spectrum, what happens to them after they're manufactured and used? They mostly get released into the environment inadvertently and into water bodies, or they go to landfills or garbage incinerators. Those disposal facilities are typically sited in low-income communities and / or communities of color. So environmental justice is a big part of this book and part of the dedication in the book. The fourth major issue is just taxpayer savings. You and I, as taxpayers spend a lot of money getting rid of non-recyclable plastics when we think we could do a lot better on reducing the amount of plastics and also shifting to reusable, refillable products. And then finally, we have the health issue with plastics. So it's people being poisoned near plastic manufacturing facilities. But you and I have little shards of plastic known as microplastics in our bodies. We breathe them in through our nose or we swallow them. So just in the last few years, there have been peer-reviewed scientific studies documenting the presence of microplastics in our blood, our kidneys, our lungs, in the human placenta, both the fetal side and the maternal side, in testicles, in breast milk, also in our heart arteries, the microplastics attached to plaque. And a study found increased risk of stroke, heart attack and premature death if you've got microplastics on plaque. And then finally, there's a study documenting that microplastics pass through the blood-brain barrier. And that has been linked to Alzheimer's disease and other neurological disorders. Now, I want to emphasize that we need more of these studies. You don't make a solid conclusion based on one study. But we now have multiple studies looking at different parts of the human body and I'm willing to go out on a limb and say, no amount of microplastics in our brains or our heart arteries are acceptable.GR: Kind of like smoking. Well, you've anticipated so many of my questions. We're going to dive into some of these things as we go forward. I'm Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media and my guest is Judith Enck. She's a professor at Bennington College and the author of “The Problem with Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and Our Planet Before It's Too Late.” I did have one question before I pursue some of the things that you've just brought up there in your answer. And that is, are certain kinds of plastics or plastics in certain forms more dangerous than other kinds of plastics?JE: Yes. So we're very focused on PVC plastic, polyvinyl chloride. 99% of the highly toxic chemical vinyl chloride is used to make PVC plastic. Vinyl chloride is a carcinogen. We've urged the federal Environmental Protection Agency to ban vinyl chloride. Some of your listeners might know the community East Palestine, Ohio, where just over two years ago, a train derailed.GR: Yes.JE: And very unwisely, the governor and the rail company decided, rather than carefully removing the vinyl chloride from the train cars and what was released into the environment, they decided to do an open burn and just set it on fire so that the rail corridor can open more quickly. I think East Palestine is just an incredible visual of the problem of moving vinyl chloride all over the country, and it's mostly used to make polyvinyl chloride plastic. So we've got a real focus on vinyl chloride. I'm also concerned with plastics that are used in food and beverage packaging. When that plastic gets warm or hot, you may have leaching into your food or your beverage. People who, for instance, put frozen food in a plastic container into the microwave, they may notice it tastes a little plasticky when it's fully cooked.GR: Because it is. (laughter)JE: Yes, it leaches into the food. And so if people have learned nothing else from this radio show, please do not put plastic into the microwave because you're going to get some chemical leaching. And unfortunately, the FDA is very quick to approve the use of plastic in packaging, including recycled plastic, which is incredibly problematic.GR: Well, you mentioned the microplastics that we breathe in and, you know, are in our organs. I'm wondering, is that what when I hear co...
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