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- [00:00]
T-Mobile Representative
Summer fun goes great with Family freedom from T Mobile. We'll pay off four phones up to $3200 and give you four free phones all on America's largest 5G network. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com familyfreedom up to $800 per line via virtual prepaid card typically takes 15 days. Free phones via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement eg Apple iPhone 16 128GB8 2,999 eligible trade in eg iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off early or cancel contact T Mobile Phone.
- [00:29]
Mike Pesca
The GIST is looking for a Social Media Manager do you want to get into the fast paced world of deciding if I look good on horizontal or vertical video? Well then this is the job for you. It's actually an excellent opportunity. It's a good staff to work with if you listen to the show. If you know someone who's good at social media, if you understand how YouTube can be leveraged to reach the youths, please get in touch with us. We are at the gist@mike pesca.com if you if you have any interest it's Wednesday, August 13, 2025 from Peach Fish Productions, it's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Let's check in on the job Donald Trump is doing well, not the job, the jobs. From the New York Times Today, Trump has made himself commander in chief of the chip industry. Mr. Trump has made himself the biggest decision maker for one of the world's most economically and strategically important industries. And he has turned the careful planning of companies historically led by engineers into a game of insider politics, the paper says. Economic historians have said it is the most aggressive federal incursion in the US economy since Obama's actions in 2009 to rescue banks in the auto industry. This time they the economists say the intrusion is unprovoked. At issue, Nvidia is paying a Trump 15% excise tax to sell its chips to China. Excise taxes are illegal under the Constitution, by the way. A few months ago the Trump administration said selling chips to China was a security risk that has plausibility, not the argument that oh, it's not a risk if you pay a tribute. But Trump's status as head of America's most vital cutting edge industry is in a way paralleled by his being in charge of, or at least having veto power over, one of America's oldest most bricks and mortar industries, actually beams and mortar. He's given himself the golden Share of the U.S. steel Nippon Steel deal. Under the agreement which literally bears Trump's name, Nippon cannot change U.S. steel's name. It must pour billions into upgrading U.S. steel's mills and no plants can close and no salaries can be cut without President Trump's sign off. Maybe there is a crypto donation to cut a few steelworkers jobs in in the future. You know how they talk about crony capitalism or populist capitalism. This is capitalism concentrated, concentrated in the person of one man. Hey, remember when the Washington Post rid itself of most of its editorial board and re crafted its editorial stance with Jeff Bezos saying quote, we are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets because he thought that would appeal to Trump. Free markets. That is not the Trump way. It's okay. Trump will probably be too bored to actually fill his roles as de facto chairman of the boards. After all, there are other presidential duties to attend to, like ending most of the wars in the world and policing the US Capitol. Which is exactly why he seems so focused on and can't stop mentioning building a ballroom in the White House. I guess he is at personal liberty to do so. On the show today, a big critic of mainstream media gets hoisted by year to date petards. But first, Aziz Huck is University of Chicago law professor, clerked for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has written extensively about the Constitution and about the dual state one part normal court proceedings, one part politically influence predetermined outcomes. He's authored several books, including how to Save a Constitutional Democracy and one that I'll be concentrating on in this portion of the interview, the Collapse of Constitutional Remedies. Let's Save that Constitution with Azizhwak. Up next, my favorite shirt. This shirt I love. It's actually three shirts. It's a black one, it's a putty one, and it's a white one. And it's from True Classic. True Classic, like the name implies, is simple. It's crisp and it takes something as basic or classic as a white T shirt and makes it feel and look fantastic. Because a true classic, it's never just about the fit or the fabric. The clothes fit the way they should fit, which is weird to understand. After wearing white T shirts that fit the way white T shirts aren't supposed to fit. Hundreds of examples, thousands of data points of white T shirts fitting incorrectly. Then I throw on the True Classic and I'm like, oh, this is it. And that's when I found my truth, my true I've been wearing true classics for a while now. If you watch any of the video you will see me often in a true classic. Hey what's that? Not bunching. That's a true classic Clean effortless fit that actually works for real life and videoing. The gist. You can find all of them at Target, Costco or head to truclassic.com gist to try them for yourself. Let's map out this week's amazing destinations and travel tips.
- [06:05]
Will
Honestly Will, I didn't plan any trips, but I did switch to T Mobile with their new Family Freedom offer.
- [06:13]
Mike Pesca
That's not the itinerary we're following.
- [06:16]
Will
Well, I'm departing from AT&T and embarking on a new journey with T Mobile. They paid off my family's four phones up to $3200 and gave us four new phones on the house.
- [06:29]
Mike Pesca
Bon voyage.
- [06:31]
T-Mobile Representative
Introducing Family Freedom. Our lowest cost will switch our biggest family savings all on America's largest 5G network. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com familyfreedom up to $800 per line via virtual prepaid card typically takes 15 days. Free phones via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement eg Apple iPhone 16128 gigabyte 802999 eligible trade in eg iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off early or cancel contact T Mobile.
- [06:59]
Mike Pesca
Aziz Hawk, University of Chicago professor, has been analyzing the Supreme Court for decades. Even before he served as a clerk for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. One of his latest works argues that constitutional remedies have become weird and warped. Federal courts have steadily removed tools that individuals once had to enforce constitutional rights. Especially since the 1970s for individuals, the justices have stopped offering ways to correct injustice. But at the same time, Huck says speculative, forward looking constitutional challenges from regulated industries aimed at striking down government oversight are going forward. I will now let him take it from here with an example.
- [07:45]
Aziz Huq
And so one of the things I try and do in the book is to offer the reader illustrations of cases where I think for most people there's clearly been a constitutional right violated and where a litigant is turned away. So for example, I give the case of a man called Alexander Baxter, attacked by police dogs, mauled by these dogs, and is told, well, there's no remedy here. And there's a kind of technical reason called qualified immunity for why there's no remedy. But the fact is that 50 or 60 years ago, had he brought the same case, he probably would have gotten some kind of a remedy for his right, and today he does not. And that's the gap that I'm trying to capture with the word collapse.
- [08:29]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And this was one of your earliest examples. And another one was a chicanerous firm that advised on paying state debt, I think. And they didn't. Their defense wasn't something like, no, we didn't lie. Their defense was something like the. This federal agency should not exist. Tell me about that one.
- [08:53]
Aziz Huq
Yeah, that's right. So I just played out the main strand in the book, which is the idea that there's a bunch of rights that we have that we have on paper, but we don't have in practice because the courts have withdrawn remedies. That's not true across the board. As the Supreme Court has become more closely aligned with the project of deregulation, the court has been more and more willing to hear challenges to particularly government regulatory agencies. So things like the department of. In that case, it was the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. But there are important cases involving the environmental law and the like. Across those cases, the court allows the constitutional challenge to proceed. And here's the case on the merits, even though the kind of harm being experienced by the person claiming the constitutional violation is pretty abstract and pretty unconnected from the actual facts of the case. So what do I mean by that? So in the example that you pointed to, Mike, which is a case involving a California law firm called Cellular Law, Cellular Law was advising, I think it was homeowners and giving what I think is fair to describe as misleading or seriously incomplete financial advice in ways that allowed it to make profits. And that left the people who it was advising out in the cold. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau starts an investigation and says, give us documents. We have the power to subpoena you. Cellular Law challenges the subpoenas on the ground that the bureau is improperly constituted under the Constitution. And there's a kind of technical theory about why that's the case that we can just ignore for the time being. But its complaint is not, hey, by subpoenaing me, you're infringing upon a certain kind of personal right. The complaint is, hey, the director. The complaint is, in some sense, hey, there might be a case in which the president disagrees with what the director of the Bureau is doing and might want to fire the person but won't be able to. It's a matter of how the statutes are written. And you, The Supreme Court, should intervene and protect us now from this subpoena, because in this hypothetical future, State of the world, maybe there's this tension between the President and the director and it has a constitutional dimension. So that far in the future, hypothetical problem is recognised in the cellular law case as the basis for hearing and deciding the case on the merits. Whereas in the cases involving, it's most often victims of police violence.
- [12:04]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, guy attacked by a dog.
- [12:05]
Aziz Huq
Yeah, the guy attacked by the dog. Baxter is, I think, the really sort of graphic and very powerful, for me, example of that. He's a homeless guy. In the cases involving kind of the ordinary people, the court, even when confronted with not an injury that might happen in the future, but an injury that's happened in the past and that's left profound physical harm to the person in that case, the court bats the litigation away, but opens the door to the, essentially the regulated entity, the corporate entity that's challenging the regulation. I'm going to give you an imperfect distinction here, and I want to recognize up front that it's imperfect, but I think you could say very, very roughly that in the cases where the court has limited the availability of remedies, usually the person claiming the remedy is an individual, and usually what they're doing is they're concerned or they're protesting about the way in which the coercive, the violent powers of the state have been used. And very, very roughly, as in the cellular law case, in the cases where the court's been much more open about when and how it will hear a case generally, not always generally, the litigant has been a corporate entity, a business, and what it's doing is challenging a regulation. And so you have two very different legal regimes for different kinds of actors in society. And I think that whatever way you want to level up or level down, I think that the gap itself is a matter of concern.
- [13:51]
Mike Pesca
Right, so you're saying the Court, Supreme Court is bending over backwards to find reasons to look at regulation, government regulation, and strike down regulation. But they're turning a blind eye to specific government actions, especially when it comes to policing, excessive policing the individual, they're doing exactly the opposite and not finding the remedies for these things.
- [14:22]
Aziz Huq
And I want to emphasize, or just draw, but just build upon what you just said by emphasizing that we can disagree about what rights there are. This is actually not a question of what Fourth Amendment rights you have against the police or what rights you have against certain kinds of government regulation. This is a question of who gets into court to have their day in court. The distinction I'm drawing is between the person who is told you cannot Even get past the first stage of litigation, which is called the motion to dismiss, you cannot get what follows that which is called discovery, let alone a hearing in court, as opposed to the person who is able to get not just the courthouse door open, but get a hearing and then relief on the merits. Right. So it's not a question of what the rights you have. It's a question of who gets into the courthouse door or who doesn't get into the courthouse door. Mm.
- [15:21]
Mike Pesca
There have been a bunch of Supreme Court cases recently where I guess you could say, perhaps overly simplistically, the police lost.
- [15:32]
Aziz Huq
Right.
- [15:33]
Mike Pesca
Barnes versus Felix, and sometimes victims of the police win. Are those exceptions, or do those still fit in with your thesis?
- [15:43]
Aziz Huq
It is. There are certainly instances in which either police or prosecutors go so far that even the Supreme Court, as currently composed, feels the need to rein them in. Here are, I think, the most interesting cases, which I think are actually about prosecutors rather than police, and involve a process which happens at the beginning of a criminal trial called voir dire boirdia. Is that if you've ever served on a jury or if you've ever been called to jury service, there's this moment where you get brought into the courtroom at the beginning of they're trying to figure out who's going to sit on the jury, and you get asked a bunch of questions. And the questions are about, are you going to be fair or are you going to be unfair? Are you going to be biased? And through asking questions, the prosecution and the defence will pick a jury. And that happens in criminal cases, that happens in civil cases. So there's a bunch of cases, or there's a principle that applies under the equal protection clause that if you're a prosecutor, actually if you're a defence attorney, too, but these cases involve prosecutors. If you're a prosecutor, you can't use race as the basis to pick the jury. You can't just be like, okay, let me look down the list and let me find all the people who are African American, and let me just strike those. Right. So that's a general principle of law. Everybody accepts that. It's good law. But of course it matters how the principle gets implemented. It matters whether the criminal defendant can turn around and say, hey, prosecutor, you've got to give me your papers and you've got to let me see how you decided to pick people or kick people off the jury. And the court's been very, very reluctant to give defendants.
- [17:34]
Mike Pesca
This is one of your. The court gives you a right, but doesn't actually have any mechanism to affect. Enforce this. Right. Is what you're saying.
- [17:40]
Aziz Huq
But then. Yeah, and it's take. It's limited the ability of defendants to discover what's in the prosecutor's papers. But then this series of case comes along that fits your pattern and it's a series of cases in which the prosecutor does. The best example is that in one case called Foster v. Chapman, what the prosecutor does is essentially he has a list of all the potential jury members and he writes B beside the black ones and W beside the white ones.
- [18:08]
Mike Pesca
Yeah.
- [18:08]
Aziz Huq
And it's just, you know, it's not even. He's not even hiding it. Right. It's just so obvious. And then he strikes all the black ones and he doesn't strike the white ones.
- [18:15]
Mike Pesca
Was he saying it meant bad and wonderful?
- [18:19]
Aziz Huq
Maybe. But it turns out the bad. Awesome. You know, just so happy.
- [18:22]
Mike Pesca
There was a strong correlation.
- [18:24]
Aziz Huq
Yeah. Yeah. So. So I. And in that case, the court is, you know, essentially says, oh, come on, this. You, you know, you can't do it this overtly. So Foster v. Chapman asks you like the policing cases that you describe is a case in which. Yeah. The court finds in favor of the criminal defendant. There are some instances in which an agent of the state goes so far, even this court will say no, no, no, but that still in the main run of cases, in most cases, the general rules of immunity and the burdens of proof that are imposed particularly on the. On individuals who are subject to state coercion are going to shut out remedies.
- [19:09]
Mike Pesca
Okay, so take that and now apply it to the government regulation cases. How does the court make sure it's not just a fig leaf, unlike the police or prosecutorial cases? How do they give the remedies teeth? Yeah.
- [19:27]
Aziz Huq
What do you mean by fig leaf?
- [19:29]
Mike Pesca
Well, I think you were saying that in the prosecutorial cases, the court has given a fig leaf. Right. And as long as the prosecutors have de minimis wiggling around the fig leaf or supporting the fig leaf, they know how to get around it. But you're saying it's not true with real regulation or with something like the EPA or the Consumer Finance Protection Board.
- [19:55]
Aziz Huq
So in challenges to regulation, I think two things have happened, only one of which I write about in the book. The thing that I write about in the book is that the court, in cases like cellular law, has been very willing to allow a challenge to regulation to proceed even if there is no concrete or observable harm to the regulatory, the regulated party as a consequence of the constitutional. The alleged constitutional violation Right. There's a gap that is between the theory of constitutional harm and the situation of the litigant. Right. And I gave the example of cellular law where the challenge was, hey, the President doesn't have enough power to remove the director of the cfpb. But you're like, wait, but the President's never tried to remove the director of the cfpb. Why is this a problem? Why isn't it something that can happen that would only emerge in the future? And there's versions of that for different constitutional challenges. Right. That's what I'm writing about, which is the availability of remedies. A second thing has happened. The second thing that's happened is that, particularly over the last four or five years, which is actually after I wrote the book, the books from a few years ago.
- [21:12]
Mike Pesca
That's interesting. That's why a couple of recent cases came to mind that I thought contradicted it in some ways.
- [21:18]
Aziz Huq
But.
- [21:18]
Mike Pesca
Go ahead. Go ahead.
- [21:19]
Aziz Huq
Yeah, it's a 2021 book, but. So one of the things that's happened in the last few years is the court has become much more aggressive about striking down regulation. And maybe some of this is. I think we're now in the weeds of technical legal doctrine. But for what it's worth, last year, the court issued a really practically important opinion that gives it a great deal more power than it historically has had to invalidate regulations that are issued by a federal regulatory agency. You have a willingness to hear cases that's increased and at the same time, a willingness to strike down regulation that's also increased. Can I say something else about what's happened in the last few years? And I think it goes to sort of the cases that you're talking about. Go ahead. So I finished the book in 2020, while that summer, at the beginning of the pandemic that we all try and forget was unrolling. So I probably have a blank spot where, in the moment in time at which this book was being written, because like everybody else, I found the pandemic so traumatic. But remember, that was the summer of the big Black Lives Matter protests, of course. And so I finished this before those protests had actually completely unspooled. And there was a. There was a really interesting moment in, I think it was 2000, 2000, 2001, almost in 2002, where there was kind of a consensus that, hey, we need to do something more about police violence. And part of that consensus became pressure on the Supreme Court to roll back some of these doctrines. And you had a series of Both liberal and conservative legal scholars saying, hey, you, the Supreme Court have gone too far. You need to pull back on some of these limits on remedies for people who are victims of police violence and the like. There was a lot of focus on a doctrine called qualified immunity. And then there was this kind of bubbling set of cases where the court almost looked like it was going to scale back. Qualified immunity decided for a couple of people who were victims of police violence. But it didn't, at the end of the day, change the rule. It didn't, in the end of the day, change the law of qualified immunity. So absolutely, there was this moment of sort of what looked like it could be changed, but it doesn't cash out into something durable.
- [24:05]
Mike Pesca
Right. And so that would, of course, only be on the federal level. And the states had the ability to do that too, and very few did. I think New Mexico did, and maybe Colorado did with an asterisk, Maryland too. Do you think that a change in the qualified immunity rules, maybe this gets beyond your ken as a scholar, but would truly change policing? I have my suspicions.
- [24:29]
Aziz Huq
I think that the case for giving people damages when they are badly hurt by police does not rest upon, you know, what the economists would call a theory of deterrence. The reason that you give people damages when they're really badly hurt by the police is not, you think, well, the police will do something better next time. It's that people who are badly hurt by agents of the state have a moral claim, deserve. Yeah, they deserve restitution. They deserve some sort of payment.
- [25:01]
Mike Pesca
Right. But to be clear, so our listeners understand, the victims still get what they deserve, but it's paid out by entities other than the exact police officers that would. That goes to the qualified immunity question.
- [25:14]
Aziz Huq
So, so, so in. Let me explain why, even if you got rid of qualified immunity, you actually wouldn't necessarily see that much change in policing. In Chicago, where I live, the city of Chicago has a separate judgment fund to pay out to victims of police brutality. Chicago has a long history of police violence. There was a particular unit, for example, through the 1970s, that engaged in what I think now is correctly characterized as torture of a number of different. A series of different people. And in part because of the damages claims brought by those torture victims, the city set up this judgment fund. The judgment fund does not sit in the police department. It sits on the books of the city. And so every time a claim is made on the judgment fund, the city's assets get drawn down, but the police department's budget doesn't change. And because the police department's budget doesn't change, there's no pressure on the police department to change its conduct. Right. So in Chicago, at least. Yeah, you could give people more remedies. You could do away with qualified immunity. You could do away with other doctrines that the court has fashioned to limit remedies, and it probably wouldn't change policing that much. Maybe there would be a kind of public effect if, gosh, there are these big judgments. Isn't that embarrassing? But that's a very indirect effect.
- [26:37]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And the actual judgments from the police, the individuals, would probably be subsidized by unions, and then they could declare bankruptcy. And this would be but a small fraction of what state entities. Even if you don't have these funds, New York City pays out hundreds of millions in claims, not just for police brutality. But I don't, I agree with you. I don't think it would affect much, and maybe there would. There is an argument for some form of justice. But if what we're after is fewer people who are victims of aggressive policing, I don't think that's the right way to get there.
- [27:13]
Aziz Huq
Yeah, let me, let me push back on the argument that I just made. Yeah, let me give you the other side of the argument. Right. So you're, you know, you know, hopefully, you know, your listeners want to hear all sides of, you know, what's a complex issue. Right.
- [27:26]
Mike Pesca
They say they do. I don't know if they say they do.
- [27:28]
Aziz Huq
I want to just tune out.
- [27:31]
Mike Pesca
No, don't tune out. Tune in tomorrow. That is the weirdest tease I can think of. But listen, if you're truly one of those. Yeah, let me hear both sides. You will want to tune in. And we'll also get into an interesting area, I would say a touchstone area of jurisprudence. Homelessness. Can a local government enforce a no homeless encampment ordinance? Is that outlawing an action or is that discriminating against a class of people, the homeless? Your answer will tell you a lot about which judicial label applies to you. That's tomorrow with Aziz Huq on the Gist.
- [28:10]
Aziz Huq
Foreign.
- [28:14]
Mike Pesca
Let's map out this week's amazing destinations and travel tips.
- [28:18]
Will
Honestly, Will, I didn't plan any trips, but I did switch to T Mobile with their new family freedom offer.
- [28:26]
Mike Pesca
That's not the itinerary we're following.
- [28:29]
Will
Well, I'm departing from AT&T and embarking on a new journey with T Mobile. They paid off my family's four phones up to $3200 and gave us four new phones on the Bon Voyage Introducing.
- [28:45]
T-Mobile Representative
Family Freedom Our lowest cost will switch our biggest family savings all on America's largest 5G network. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com FamilyFreedom up to $800 per line via virtual prepaid card typically takes 15 days. Free phones via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement eg Apple iPhone 16128 gigabyte $8,029.99 Eligible trade in eg iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off early or cancel Contact T Mobile Whether.
- [29:10]
Mike Pesca
You'Re into comedians roasting each other's life choices or turning yesterday's bad decisions into today's funny stories, Amazon Music's got the most ad free top podcasts included with Prime. Download the Amazon Music app and get in on the joke or go to Amazon.com ADfreecomedy that's Amazon.com ADfreecomediDy to catch up on the latest episodes with out the ads and now the spiel Matt Taibi is an independent journalist whose racket news site on Substack has over a half a million followers. He's made many contributions to knowledge, the base of human knowledge, and he has, from time to time, I'd say, kind of often a valuable critique of the flaws of mainstream media. He's definitely good with a description. He is, however, a bit more of a showman than I like from my news purveyors. Once, when we were on a campaign trail in 2004, he took either LSD or mushrooms and put on I can't remember a horse mask. I don't need that sort of thing. But it's all fine. It's all good. It's all part of the rich mix of what the media has become. But on Monday, he and his fellow racket news contributor, the novelist Walter Kern, engaged in a live chat which was aired on YouTube x substack. It's called America this Week, and these segments are political discussion, media critique, and in this particular session, which is a mainstay of America this Week, a dunk a thon on the official narrative. The issue specifically was crime statistics in Washington, D.C. which prompted President Trump to send in the National Guard. The city a couple days ago put out a press release titled 2025 Year to Date Crime Comparison to take the top line figures on murder year to date 2025. You know what year to date means? It means up until that press release came out, which was August 11th, there were 99 murders. Then they compared it to 2024. And up until the year at this date in 2024, there were 112 murders. So they were more last year. This validated the DC officialdom claim that murders had gone down 12% year to date. Here was Taibi setting up the stats.
- [31:30]
Matt Taibbi
So the District Columbia wanted to preempt the hoopla about Trump's press conference by putting out a little press release that's entitled 2025 year to date Crime Comparison.
- [31:48]
Mike Pesca
Taibbi and Kern were giddy already. They were laughing at what they were about to unveil. They were teasing it.
- [31:56]
Matt Taibbi
Has anyone guessed, do any of our, have any of our readers yet guessed the punchline of this story? Has anyone guessed that? No. No responsible reporters thought to reach out for, to see, to see what's up with those numbers? Because the first thing that jumps out to me is, gosh, they have a, a number already for homicides for 2025.
- [32:24]
Walter Kern
Exactly. That includes, that includes free crime. Right?
- [32:29]
Mike Pesca
Right.
- [32:29]
Matt Taibbi
Yeah. How are they, how are they scaling out for the whole year?
- [32:34]
Walter Kern
Is it. Isn't the Philip K. Dick novel set or the least movie in Washington D.C. the home of pre crime?
- [32:40]
Matt Taibbi
It is. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That was where. That was where they instituted the first pre crime program. So they obviously, they know how many murders they're going to be in 2025 already.
- [32:51]
Mike Pesca
But wait, that's not what the phrase year to date means. This is a year to date comparison, as is clear not just by the headline of the press release, but by the fact that if you scroll down in the press release, you see pretty clearly a chart that has the total murders of 2024. And total murders in 2024 was of course higher than the number of murders in the second week of August, 2024. That is the year to date. The two hosts, egged on by a response from a DC official which they misinterpreted, were delighted not only that DC got caught in a lie, but that this lie pretty much validated all their theories of feckless corporate media and the laziness and cupidity of both the powers that be and their journalist, quote, unquote, lackeys. The two played a clip from CBS News which caused them to slap foreheads and laughs.
- [33:45]
Walter Kern
The mayor of Washington D.C. emphasized over the weekend that the data, which was produced in concert with the Justice Department, shows a nearly 30% drop in crime from this time last year. The homicide rate down about 12%. You'll see some of the numbers. It's been a downward trajectory since a spike in crime. Dude, what I Love. What I love about this is that it actually shows that crime is going up. At least murder, because we are now at the two thirds point, which is approximately 33% less than the whole. But murder at the 33 with 66% reporting is only down 12%. It should be down 33%.
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Mike Pesca
No, it shouldn't. Because it's a year to date comparison. Taibi could not believe how the press could be so lazy.
- [34:45]
Matt Taibbi
And by the way, it's a question you have to ask when you look at it because the numbers don't make any sense. The you don't. If it had said through eight, yes, then you could, you could leave it be, but you can. There's no way to.
- [35:01]
Walter Kern
And they could have, if they'd wanted to be at all honest, they could have compared the first eight months of last year to the first eight months of this year.
- [35:11]
Mike Pesca
That was the comparison. I tried to see how they could have gotten it so wrong. I think their confusion depended on not reading the entire news release. A somewhat, if I'm being generous to them, a somewhat ambiguous response from a D.C. official, but not so ambiguous that it confused me who did read the entire news release. But also their response depended on being so willing, so eager to think that their usual punching bags were earning their status once again. After more than half an hour of dunking and lecturing and confirmation bias on rails, Taibi read a post from a viewer. His brow furrowed. Wait, I think we may have missed something. Oh, no. It was year to date. Oh, damn. Kern wasn't buying the idea that he and Taibi had even made a mistake.
- [35:58]
Matt Taibbi
Well, that's what it is. That's what it is. We just made a whole bunch of jokes about nothing. But.
- [36:04]
Walter Kern
But what are you talking about? I mean, we're still not finished with this year.
- [36:11]
Matt Taibbi
Well, right. Yeah, but they're.
- [36:12]
Walter Kern
They're claiming that. They're claiming that 112 only represents up until August of last year.
- [36:18]
Matt Taibbi
Yeah, well, that's what our. That's what our. Well, commenter is saying.
- [36:28]
Mike Pesca
I.
- [36:28]
Walter Kern
They must have information that we don't because nowhere here nor in the email that we received is that. Is that stated.
- [36:39]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, except right at the top of the press release. What had become a lesson in the merits of double checking now became a lesson in the merits of triple checking. I could give Taibi a pass, and I do give him a little bit of a pass. Some other kind of broadcasters would try to dig in or fool the audience knowing they could. And in fact, I read the comments on substack and on YouTube. And no one in their audience was too critical of what they had done. In fact, most people were talking about something else entirely. We do all get things wrong. I know I do. Taibi did fess up somewhat reluctantly. Kern till the end, less so.
- [37:14]
Walter Kern
I'm still not convinced, by the way. I'm still not convinced we were in error, but maybe we were.
- [37:23]
Mike Pesca
But here's what argues against too much forgiveness in their admission or because of their admission of error. 1. The tone of the courage immediately went to the motivations of those who they thought had gotten it wrong. The government are liars. The press, the mainstream media, pure dupes. Well, I don't think Matt Taibbi is a dupe, but I do think he has an agenda. His I don't have an agenda agenda is an agenda. But his basic agenda is to prove, even when proof is lacking, that the mainstream media is untrustworthy. A large part of his critique is to explain the media's coverage as motivated by their business incentives. To quote from his book Hate Inc. The media profits from our anger and divisiveness, pitting us against each other for their own gain. But one reason he and Kern got it so wrong was because of their own business incentives to demonstrate themselves as a superior alternative to the mainstream media. They rushed out a story on the air without vetting it, and they were embarrassed. Now, if you want to say something like, come on, it's not really the air, it's just a livestream. And how are two guys, maybe a producer back there, supposed to check everything? Okay? But their pitch to their followers and readers and audience and customers isn't that they are a worthy supplement to the media. It's that they are a valid alternative to the media, a replacement. Don't trust the New York Times. Don't trust CBS News on these issues. Trust us. Racket News, the swashbuckling, vivid no fucks given pirate ship of a news organization that will call out the media's endless hypocrisy. I submit that they have some hypocrisy, but there is an end to it. In fact, Taibi also sometimes has something to add. I do consider his critiques and take them to heart, though. Don't swallow them whole. But as an alternative to the New York Times, if I only had to subscribe to one, as a general rule, I would pick the New York Times. I would even pick CBS News. I might even pick the LA Times. But now I'm stretching it. And this, of course, isn't to say that The New York Times gets everything right, but who does? Not these two guys. And that's it for today's show. The Gist is produced by Corey War, with Ashley Kahn as our production coordinator and with Michelle Pesca as overseer of all except maybe a little bit of a carve out for what we do on the Gist list. And there Philip Swissgood is a consultant and Kathleen Sykes is writing Heard. Oh, by the way, I have a new Pesca profundities piece posted today. Do check it out. It's about some of the spiel that I was talking about yesterday with the CDC and motivations of Shooters, but I fill in more details with more arguments suitable for the printed page. Mike Pesca that's substack.com okay, that's all my plugs. Let me just say in Peru G Peru. Do Peru and thanks for listening.
- [40:40]
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