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June 3, 2022 - Jimmy Dore Show
58:43
20220603_TJDS_20220603_Podcast_-_6222_11.57_AM
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Hey, we're doing stand-up comedy in Irvine, California, Las Vegas, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, Louisville, all over the place.
go to jimmydorkcommy.com for a link for tickets.
Uh, Hey, this is Jimmy.
Who's this?
Jimmy, this is David Axerot.
Hi, David.
How are you doing today?
I'm having a crappy week, Jimmy.
Super crappy, if I'm being honest.
Why is that, buddy?
I'm getting fucking dragged on Twitter, man.
I hate it.
For what?
Just an innocent little tweet.
Oh, yeah?
What tweet?
On May 29, I tweeted, quote, the inexplicable, heart-wrenching delay in Uvalde underscores the indispensable role of police.
Okay, I can see why people are mad about that.
Why?
Because you took this moment to jump to the police's defense.
Well, I also tweeted about guns and how they're bad like I was supposed to.
I know.
Yeah, okay, but a lot of us don't feel this is quite the moment to celebrate policing in general, right?
You don't usually see a massive institutional failure and respond, see, this is why that institution is good, actually.
So I'm supposed to bash the police in general.
What am I?
Some sort of gangster rapper.
David, the notion that policing in our country is irreparably broken, it's not some fringe sentiment.
Well, I've never heard that.
In fact, I was at a dinner party the other night.
A very diverse group, I might add, wealthy Democrats and wealthy Republicans.
And we were talking about how great the police are.
We all agreed that if we ever, any of us, hear any suspicious sounds outside our mansions, the police will show up in like five minutes.
Hehehehehe.
*laughs* Thank you.
Yeah, that's because the role of the police is to protect property, specifically the property of the wealthy, such as yourself.
Well, I mean, is that so bad?
Yes.
The police should protect people.
Jimmy, people and property are inextricably intertwined.
One does not exist without the other.
Sorry, I think we can prioritize human beings over things, can't we?
It's not so simple.
Oh, really?
How's that?
People could not exist without property.
They would not have the means to survive.
And without people, how would there even be property?
Without a sentient entity to declare that something is owned by that entity, how could an inanimate object be identified as property?
See, this is the beauty of capitalism.
It's the horror of capitalism more like it.
Do you have a better system of mine?
Yes, in this case, one where armed police officers don't stand by and do nothing while children are being slaughtered in a school.
See, but this is why police are good, actually.
How can you even say that?
Because we know they made an error in judgment, which means we know that they are what they are supposed to have done, which means the public has faith in the idea of police in general.
So you're saying our myth of the police as superheroes who are here to help is a good thing.
Well, yeah.
Isn't that a more comforting way to look at things?
While the police are busy sending 10 detectives to investigate the theft of my garden hose, the people whose safety is being neglected as a result of that can still have that myth to make them feel safe.
Oh, my God.
Isn't it important to feel safe, Jimmy?
No, it's important for people to be safe.
Well, let's be honest.
They're not going to have that.
And feeling safe is the next best thing, though.
Good God.
And that is the Democratic Party message in a nutshell.
Okay, yeah.
You can't have what you want or even deserve as a human being.
But maybe we can make you feel good about something.
A comforting thought.
Feeling morally superior.
We are the bedtime story and lullaby of American politics.
How nice.
I think so.
I think that is nice.
Hey, happy Pride Month, Jimmy.
Yeah.
Oh, I wonder if there's a gay cop in Chicago somewhere that I could interview on my next episode of the Axe Files with David Axelrod.
Have to be a mouthpiece for this bullshit that I'm saying right now.
Yeah.
Oh, and if he also says racism is bad, that would be axerific.
Okay.
I got to find this guy.
He must exist.
Okay, bye, Jimmy.
Stay comforted.
Good night.
Good night.
Establishment media sets of farmers fighting.
So good luck.
Watch and see as a jackdog comedian who speeds and jumps comedium and hits him head on.
It's the Jimmy Door show.
So I'm here with Professor Richard Wolf, and we're discussing Joe Biden had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
And here it is.
Joe Biden, my plan for fighting inflation.
And there it is.
So he starts out with some fantasy.
He says, in less than a year and a half, my administration's economic and vaccination plans helped achieve the most robust recovery in modern history.
Wow.
Wow.
The most robust.
Wow.
Not since I graduated top of my class, said Joe Biden.
With a full scholarship, have I attained such feats of robustness?
As you know, he didn't.
He lied.
He said he.
Okay.
I'm sure that's not a lie from Joe Biden.
It's probably just him being polite to the economy, right?
It's like when you see a friend you haven't seen for a while and they gain weight, you don't say, hey, I'm alarmed.
You just go, yeah, I'm alarmed by how much you're inflating.
That's how you say that, right?
It sounds nicer.
This is the most robust I've seen you in 40 years.
That's what you say.
That sounds even better.
So he goes, the job market is the strongest since the post-World War II era with 8.3 million new jobs, the fastest decline in unemployment on record, and millions of Americans getting jobs with better pay.
Boy, he makes it sound like there's no problem, right?
Professor?
What's wrong with all that stuff he just said?
Well, you know, what's wrong with it is if a student did that in any course that I'm familiar with, whether the professor leaned left or leaned right or was in the middle, that student would get a robust F. I mean, you can't do this, or at least you oughtn't to as a president.
Let me just give you a couple of realities.
The wages went up, he said.
Yeah, the average wage in the United States over the last period is going up at the rate, for example, so far this year, of about 4%.
The inflation is going up at the rate of over 8%.
In economics, we teach what the wage means to you depends on the prices you have to pay.
An honest statement would say to the American people, I'm very sorry that as your president, I have to preside over a situation in which prices are rising more than twice as fast as your ability to afford them.
I mean, to say that the wages went up with leaving the rest of the story out is a level of, I mean, wow, number one.
Okay.
You know, I mean, I could go on.
But let's go on to the next slide because he goes on.
He says, since I took office, families have increased their savings and have less debt.
A recent Federal Reserve report found that a higher percentage of Americans reported feeling financially comfortable at the end of 2021 than at any time since the survey began in 2013.
Families have increased their savings and have less debt, but only if your entire family works for Pfizer, I'm pretty sure.
And I didn't know that a higher percentage of families were reporting financial comfiness.
Is that the Fed says that?
Is that the same Fed that said inflation shouldn't be a problem?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And let me explain too: in the economics profession, all of us who pay attention to what Americans are feeling do not use the Federal Reserve report.
We use a consumer survey that is done all the time, has been going on for decades, done by the University of Michigan.
And the most stunning thing about the University of Michigan were earlier reports this year, 2022, not at the end of 2021, but more recently that are obviously the more relevant ones for us to talk about.
And guess what?
The University of Michigan Consumer Survey indicates that Americans are more worried about their current financial situation than they have been in decades.
And when they're asked the question, what do you expect to be in terms of a financial situation six months down the road?
They're the worst they have ever reported being.
So, I mean, again, to report, to cherry-pick your numbers this way, it's embarrassing.
He goes on to say business investment is up 20% and manufacturing jobs are growing at their fastest rate in 30 years.
There were more new small business applications in 2021 than in any previous year.
So manufacturing jobs are growing at their fastest in 30 years, but mainly it's just, you know, gun manufacturing and fentanyl production.
That's what I, what do you say about to that?
It's 20% manufacturing.
And what do you say to that?
Well, business investment is up 20%.
Up from when?
From what?
You're measuring, yeah.
If you're measuring from a year or two ago when we were in the depths of the pandemic, then there was no business investment at all.
And being up 20% is miserable because you haven't recovered.
Number one.
Manufacturing, that's the biggest joke.
If you take a look at manufacturing in the United States, it's been shrinking for the last 40 years and it goes down, down.
And you know something?
Every now and then there's a blip, but it's called a blip on a long-term trend that's going down.
Every president, including Obama, Trump, promised that they would reverse the decline of manufacturing.
None of them have achieved it.
And for Mr. Biden to take a look at some blip of manufacturing and not talk about the long-term trend, which he, as vice president under Obama, also did nothing to stop.
Again, this is a game of statistics that's embarrassing to watch.
And the last one, new small business applications.
Here's the reason for that in 2021.
Everybody was unemployed in 2021, and the only thing they could possibly hope for was not a job, but to go out and start mowing other people's lawns and applying for a business application.
Americans love to tell the story that small businesses create most of the jobs, the new jobs each year, which is true.
But here's the other side of that.
Small businesses are where most of the jobs are lost every year because being a small business in this country under the shadow of the power of big business is a very difficult situation and not something that you turn to to look for good news about the economy because it's never there.
So he has a three-point plan.
Biden now goes, that's all his preamble.
Now he goes into a three-point plan to help fix the inflation problem.
And I can't see a plan in there anywhere.
So let's go through it and see if the professor sees a plan in there.
He says the first thing he's going to do is the Federal Reserve has a primary responsibility to control inflation and also to cause inflation, apparently.
He then says, my predecessor demeaned the Fed and past presidents have sought to influence its decisions inappropriately during periods of elevated inflation.
I won't do this.
Wow.
So he's not going to demean the Fed, which, you know, lowers their self-esteem and their interest rates.
Whereas Joe Biden's merely just, he's just going to touch them and sniff them uncomfortably.
That's what he does.
But he goes on to say, I have appointed highly qualified people from both parties to lead that institution.
I agree with their, is it the same?
Was that the same hiring qualified people?
Is that the same judgment that brought us the singing TikTok speech cop lady?
Is that what that was?
And then he says, I agree with their assessment that fighting inflation is our top economic challenge right now.
So You want to go ahead and go through what he said here?
Yes.
So let's start with the Federal Reserve as a primary responsibility to control inflation.
The Federal Reserve has been with us a little over a century.
And it was set up, and everybody has always learned this who studied it, to do to basically not control an inflation, but to prevent an inflation.
The language in the Federal Reserve is to maintain price stability.
This is what the Federal Reserve is supposed to do.
The fact that we are in an inflation the way we are is an indication that they haven't been able to do their job.
It's perfectly reasonable to ask why not and to go into that, but it's not that they are supposed to control inflation.
They're supposed to prevent an inflation.
That's the first thing.
The second thing, my predecessor demeaned the Fred.
Well, yeah, your predecessor demeaned virtually everything.
So, I mean, I don't know why this is all that interesting.
Past presidents have sought to influence its decisions inappropriately.
I don't know what to say about that either, but I can assure you that the effort of presidents to manipulate the Fed is as old as the Fed.
It happens in an elevated inflation.
It happens in a non-elevated inflation.
The presidents do that because they know that the economic conditions shape the votes in their elections, and therefore they want the Fed to do whatever it is that might help them get a few more votes.
The Fed has always been sensitive to all of this, and then you can have a debate about how much the president was able to do.
And to say that he appointed highly qualified people from both, I mean, if they were that highly qualified, then we would have to try to understand that the Fed didn't see the crash of 2008 or 2009 coming.
The Fed wasn't very quick in fixing that one.
It has had interest rates so low that we have over-indebted the entire economy for decades to come.
Now they can't stop the inflation.
All they can think of is raising interest rates, which really whack a population that has already been asked to suffer a lot.
I mean, you're looking at a Federal Reserve that ought to be slinking around in shame rather than putting out statements that they're going to deal with this.
Where were they?
I mean, what have they been doing all along?
They didn't believe that there would be an inflation, so they took none of the steps that might have limited it.
And now that it's as big and bad as it is, they're making statements about what they're going to do, but there's no reason to believe them now, as you implied, Jimmy, any more than there was before.
And even by their own admission, they haven't understood real well what's going on.
So that's his first three-point plan.
That was his first point.
Here's his second.
He says, second, we need to take every practical step to make things more affordable for families during this moment of economic uncertainty and to boost the productive capacity of our economy over time.
That is why I led the largest release from global oil reserves in history.
Congress could help right away by passing clean energy tax credits and investments that I have proposed.
So don't worry if you're starving right now.
Just buy those sweet tax credits.
They're going to be coming six to eight weeks after next April if Congress passes my plan, which historically they won't.
Again, it boggles the mind.
He led the largest release from global oil reserves.
Okay, but we have higher oil prices than before he made the release.
Why?
Well, it turns out that the sanctions against Russia as part of the Ukraine are a major contributor, as everyone in the world has noticed, to a disorganized oil industry globally, which is jacking up the prices everywhere.
And the allies of the United States, like Saudi Arabia and so on, are working with the Russians to keep the price of oil high.
So if this is a plan, it has already failed in part because of other things the same government is doing that work at cross purposes.
I can't believe that people are putting up with this, but because it's been couched that this is a way to fight Putin, this evil guy who gave us Donald Trump and subverted our elections and all this stuff.
That's why I think people are putting up with it.
Because this is what's happening with Ukraine, right?
So this is a proxy war, but we over anyway, I don't want to get too into the weeds on it, but we're trying to hurt Russia.
And what we're doing is hurting ourselves.
And the people doing this, if I know it, I know that they know it.
I know that they're wrecking the petrodollar by doing this, by putting the sanctions on Russia.
Now Saudi Arabia is starting to take payments in other denominations besides U.S. dollars, which is going to crush the petrodollar.
And they're starting to sell it to China in Chinese currency.
And so that's bad for us.
And no one seems to care.
And now, so here, let me ask you this.
Why do you think America is putting up with higher gas prices at the same time they're being told it's being done because of Putin in Ukraine?
But at the same time, we're also being told that oil companies are making record profits.
So that can't be because of Putin then, right?
No, I mean, I sit here and I have to admit I'm very like you in this regard.
The real question isn't the machinations of the Biden administration or of Mr. Putin or any of the other.
The real question is, why do the American people sit and accept this level of make-believe, this level of noise, verbiage to cover the reality?
They know what they're paying at the gas tank.
They know when they fake their car or when they come home stunned by what the groceries at the supermarket cost them this week.
They all know, we all know, and we know it's not getting any better.
And we know the job situation is terrible.
We have a labor movement that's rising up in a way we haven't seen for decades.
And we know why that's happening too, as if anyone needed to understand.
But you have a society that I guess, and I get this from a French newspaper.
They made the analysis the American people are like that famous deer caught in the headlines, the headlights of an oncoming car.
They know they're in danger, but somehow they're frozen for the moment and don't know which way to turn.
So Joe Biden goes on.
He says, a dozen CEOs of America's largest utility companies told me earlier this year that my plan would reduce the average family's annual utility bills by $500 and accelerate our transition from energy produced by autocrats.
So a dozen technocrats told Biden his plan would help transition away from energy from autocrats, and he believes that because he's a Democrat.
So it is.
It is really.
I mean, this kind of a remark, a dozen people told me something.
That's what a person does who doesn't have anything better to offer the people.
He's telling them, you know, I have a plan, and they tell me that it's one day going to be real good for you if I do that.
It is.
He can't point to anything he's done.
My question would be to go back to the beginning of our conversation.
Why is there no discussion about a rationing plan or a freeze plan?
The pros and cons, let's have the debate.
There's lots of people who know about it more than I do who can come in and talk about the positives, the negatives.
We can look at the options, and then we can have a real democratic decision which way to go.
We are not limited to raising interest rates, whacking all the debtors of this society, because that's the only thing these people can imagine doing.
You know, I wonder to myself, really, are you going to let this inflation play out?
The election Mr. Biden is looking at, if he allows this stuff to continue, cannot be a pretty picture for him.
I don't think the establishment, the people, so obviously Joe Biden's not running anything or making any decisions.
And I say this on the show because he's obviously suffering from dementia.
And so there's other people running things.
And it's the establishment, the same establishment that picked him.
And so they don't care if he gets wiped or if the Democrats get wiped out in the midterms, the people running the show, because that's just more tools to work for the establishment that get elected.
It doesn't matter if they're Democrat or Republican.
The same shit happens.
Every, you know, as I say, there's been one company has won every election since 1980, and it's been Goldman Sachs.
And so they've never lost an election, never, ever.
So, and so he goes on.
By the way, Jimmy, one more point.
It just so happened that earlier today, a Twitter storm erupted when the head of JP Morgan, Jamie Diamond, was asked what he thinks of the condition of the American economy and what's facing us, just to give you an idea.
And he gave the answer, and he used the word hurricane.
There's an economic hurricane bearing down on us.
In other words, whatever you're telling us about Mr. Biden's plan, it bears no resemblance to what the big banks are gearing up to, both in terms of how to prepare themselves and how to try to make money off the hurricane they see coming.
It's scary to me.
So here he goes on.
He says, we can also, here's some more garbage.
He says, we can also reduce the cost of everyday goods by fixing broken supply chains, improving infrastructure, and cracking down on the exorbitant fees that foreign ocean freight companies charge to move products.
None of that stuff he's going to do.
None of that stuff he has a plan to do, or else he would tell you what the plan is.
He's just saying we need more good things and less bad things.
That's what he's saying.
And then he goes on and says, my housing supply action plan will make housing more affordable by building more than a million more units, closing the housing shortfall in the next five years.
And don't worry, none of that housing will be built in wealthy liberal leaning areas or built at all, probably, if I'm being honest, which I'm not.
I mean, for example, the ocean freight companies.
Ocean freight is a chaos right now because the entire global economy has been shaken by these sanctions that come out of that war.
Not by the war, by the way, because its impact isn't so big, but by the sanctions that came as a result of it.
And therefore, these freight companies are being asked to change everything, their patterns, their harbors, their maintenance program, and they're charging the money to pay the cost of all of that.
You're not going to undo that.
They're not going to function if they can't do that.
And again, you're right.
He's just talking and fix a broken supply chain.
If corporations are able to raise their prices and make more profits, not only will they not fix the supply chains, they'll understand that a broken supply chain is a very good news if you can jack up your price as a result, which is exactly what many of them are doing.
And Mr. Biden's speeches is not going to persuade them to do otherwise.
So he's almost done talking.
He says we can reduce the price of prescription drugs by giving Medicare the power to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies and capping the cost of insulin.
And we can lower the cost of child and elder care to help parents get back to work.
Also, we can do the thing that I already promised to do, but we didn't do because we're not going to do it.
He's been promising to do that shit for since he started running.
And they're not doing anything.
Absolutely.
And his predecessors, many of them, promised it, and they couldn't achieve it.
And he's not giving us a single reason how or why now he's going to do it.
And to say, if I may add one thing, that he has all this faith in the Federal Reserve, and he's going to let them do their work.
I mean, they didn't prevent any of this, which they're supposed to.
And they haven't been real good at controlling it either.
Where then does the faith come from?
Well, it sure smells like he wants to focus on them so that maybe he can blame them later rather than take the responsibility.
But then we're back to what Republicans and Democrats specialize in, which is blaming each other and hoping nobody pays attention that they blame each other for what both of them do.
And so those are the first two.
So here's his final third.
Here's the third thing he's going to do.
This is it to fix inflation.
He says, third, we need to keep reducing the federal deficit, which will help ease price pressures.
And how do you reduce that deficit?
You send more money to Ukraine.
Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that the deficit will fall by $1.7 trillion this year, the largest reduction in history.
That will leave the deficit as a share of the economy lower than pre-pandemic levels and lower than CBO projected for this year before the American rescue.
So how does that doesn't help, right?
That's all made up.
Most of that is made up.
I mean, that the deficit will fall.
The last five years have seen the greatest deficits in American history.
We've never had anything like it in a peacetime situation.
So reducing it when you've raised it, that's like going to the store that has a big sign in the window, sale.
Everything reduced 20%.
And you go in and you remember that a week before the sale, the prices were half of what they are now.
So when you take the 20% off, you're still paying more than you did before.
That's what these numbers are like.
This is kind of flim flam economics.
It has nothing to do with the underlying reality.
And you have to show whether the federal deficit being reduced, how will it be reduced?
Without knowing that, you don't know that it'll ease price pressures.
It might have the opposite effect.
And lastly, he says my plan would reduce the deficit even more by making common sense reforms to the tax code.
The Internal Revenue Service should have the resources to collect taxes that Americans already owe.
We should level the international taxation playing field so companies no longer have an incentive to shift jobs and profits overseas.
And we should end the outrageous unfairness in the tax code that allows a billionaire to pay lower rates than a teacher or a fire.
This is all this is called platitudes.
This is just talking.
He said we should be doing good things and less bad things, and everything should be fairer.
And everybody, but he's got no plans to do any of this.
And he's been in power for two years or whatever.
And they have complete control of government, the Democrats, his party, and they're not doing any of this.
In fact, they're the ones creating this problem.
And they've been campaigning on this over and over again, leaving us with the question: why do the American people allow this theater?
Because that's what it is.
That's what it is.
This political theater to continue.
It's bad enough when you're limping along, but we're not limping along.
Our economy is in very deep trouble.
I hate to say it, but I think JP Morgan's Jamie Diamond is right.
We are in a storm of economic difficulty.
It's accumulated for a long time.
We haven't addressed it.
Trump didn't.
Biden isn't.
The people before them didn't either.
And eventually, this is going to catch up.
It already is.
And then more and more of people are going to see that this verbiage is way too little and way too late.
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A growing number of cities are no longer enforcing minor traffic stops.
This is real.
Why?
Because cops keep killing people.
And so they figure, yeah, it's not worth killing a guy just for a broken taillight.
You think I'm kidding?
Watch this.
On the second anniversary of George Floyd's death this week, President Biden signed an executive order on police reform.
George Floyd's killing also prompted a growing number of police departments to ban minor traffic stops in a move some say could save lives.
I'm stopping you.
Do you have a license?
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a traffic stop started over a license plate and ended with Patrick La Yoya dead.
An hour away, Lansing, Michigan banned traffic stops for minor infractions altogether in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd.
The goal is to avoid unnecessary escalations, racial profiling, and so-called pretextual stops, where an officer uses a minor violation to pull over and search a car, says Lansing Mayor Andy Shore.
What's been the pushback that you've gotten?
Because you're essentially asking the police not to enforce the law.
Somewhat.
Our police officers are still pulling people over, but they're doing it for public safety reasons.
The officers were concerned that we were trying to take tools away from them.
Lansing police chief Ellery Sosby says it was a hard sell to some officers, but he says the ban could save lives.
If I pull over a traffic stop for a busted taillight and there's not a gun in there and it escalates into something that puts the officer's life in jeopardy or the citizens' life in jeopardy, it's just not worth it.
According to it, maybe tell the cops to stop fucking doing that stuff.
I mean, wouldn't that be the normal thing?
You would tell cops to relax.
How are they going to make their revenue up?
Because I thought all those pissant kind of stops were for revenue.
Like it's like how you tax like, you know, poor people basically.
Yeah.
So where are they getting the money from to make up for that?
And then I mean, I guess they get a lot of lawsuits when they kill people.
So maybe it balances out.
Well, then also, if they're taking away tools, like why would the cops?
I was in Philly.
Like last time I was there, I remember I went to go smoke weed by my old college and a cop just called me immediately in the back and he goes, he goes, hey, here's the ticket.
You don't even have to pay this.
They're going to stop enforcing this pretty soon.
Like I have it just like I actually trying to throw in my tread because you can keep your joint.
So are they getting rid of the quotas?
Because they're giving them numbers they got to hit for, right?
That's how they measure how good a copy is.
I know cops do have quote.
I know.
So is that why they're upset that their tools being taken?
Are they going to take away the dumb?
I just don't understand.
I can't believe that they could keep quotas and then take away their, you know what I mean?
I'm sure they're getting rid of that.
So I'm surprised that there were any cops that were upset over this because I've got family that are in law enforcement and I've just heard so many stories where like, you know, they'll go up to a car late at night, bad area, like in Jacksonville or something like that, and someone will grab a gun real quick and like try to pull it out on them, stuff like that.
Right.
Why would they be upset unless you still have to hit your numbers or whatever?
You know, that's what I guess is why I'm asking.
It's like it's safer if you don't have to do that sort of a thing.
Let's listen to the rest of this.
York Times investigation.
In the last five years, at least 400 unarmed drivers and passengers have been killed by police during traffic stops nationwide, with black motorists overrepresented.
Dante Wright is one example.
A 2017 report found that traffic stops were the leading cause of officer deaths in police-initiated interactions.
Like in the shooting death of Chicago police officer Ella French last year, Chesapeake Police Chief Calvin Wright opposes Virginia's ban.
He says escalation is the real problem, not traffic stops.
Do you want to address the problem or do you want to address the symptoms?
That would be my question.
Let's examine what's taking place and how Can we be trained better to make sure that things don't escalate?
Or if they do escalate, how do we make it so that there are better outcomes?
Yeah, so you train them to de-escalate.
That's what you do.
But cops are not trained to de-escalate.
Cops are trained to, you must obey my authority and to escalate.
Whenever their cops show up, that's when violence breaks out.
Cops are not taught to de-escalate, no matter what you think, and what is their number one priority.
This is their train.
Their safety.
Their number one priority should be your safety.
And they're not trained that way anymore.
They're trained to, and you heard the president Barack Obama even say it, that a cop's number one job is to make sure they get home safe at night.
That is not their job.
Their job is to make sure that I get home safe at night and the people get home safe at night that they serve.
But that's not how policing works in America.
Police often see themselves as an occupying force in a neighborhood and the citizens as the potential killers of them.
That's how they're trained to see not that the people that they're policing as citizens, they're there to serve.
They see them as threats.
That's a big problem with policing.
And most of it, and with your cops coming from the military, also a bad idea because they're trained the exact same way.
Primary is their safety.
That's not what you want in a cop.
Do you want a fireman to be concerned with their safety or yours?
No, that's why you're a fireman.
That's why they get respect.
They get respect because we all know they risk their own lives to save others.
That's what you're supposed to be doing.
So, and it's just amazing.
They've been trained so horribly that they can't stop fucking killing people and escalating.
They shouldn't be escalating.
Also, all these laws, you know, not pulling people.
Like, I'm all for, by the way, not pulling people over and you sit there for an hour for some bullshit shakedown money, you know.
Yeah.
But a lot of the laws, like, if you're somebody that can't afford to get pulled over or your license is, I mean, there's so many like catastrophic things to you.
That's right.
You don't have to be that poor.
You could just be like a little bit struggling and it's going to screw your life up for years to come.
Right.
I imagine that probably escalates a situation before it even gets to the cop showing up.
You know, like, that's why I'm saying this is to get revenue with them cracking down.
Like, how do they make up that revenue?
That kind of like is worrying to me.
Like, where are they going to?
So here we go.
Back in Lansing, Mayor Shore says they do a lot of de-escalation training, but banning minor stops reduces the potential for escalation and increases trust.
A lot of it is a trust factor.
Our citizens have to be able to trust the police.
And I don't think they do.
Here's to rephrase: a number of cities have concluded that the only way to make sure cops don't murder civilians during minor traffic stops is to not do minor traffic stops at all.
I know.
U.S. police have killed nearly 600 people in traffic stops since 2017, data shows.
That's continued apace this year with black victims disproportionately harmed amid calls to reduce traffic encounters.
That's from April of this year.
Encounters with police during traffic stops, including minor infractions, disproportionately harm people of color, according to the data collected by Mapping Police Violence.
And they are by a nonprofit research group, which argues that armed police should not be involved in many of these cases.
Now, I went and saw, I opened for Lee Camp when he taped his special here in Los Angeles.
He has a very similar point in his act.
He's like, why do we have guys with guns write you a ticket for a broken taillight?
Why do we have guys with guns write you a ticket for a left wrong left turn?
Why do those people have guns?
We all have guns, and that's why.
And that's, but why do we have cop, why don't we have traffic people out there that give you traffic?
Why does that have to be a cop?
That's what I think that was Lee's point.
Why not just have a person enforce traffic laws like you have and without a gun?
How about we do that?
So that I 100% agreed with Lee Kemp on that point.
About 10% of the roughly 1,100 people killed by police each year involve traffic violations.
We often see the most extreme examples on the news, but this is something that happens so frequently, said Samuel, a data scientist and policy analyst who founded Mapping Police Violence.
There were 97 deadly traffic stops in 2017, 114 in 2018, 117 in 2019, 119 in 2020, 117 in 21, and 25 so far in 22, as of April, as of April.
So it went up every year, except for COVID year.
There has been a renewed scrutiny of traffic stops since the April 4th killing of Leoya.
Laioia, I don't know how to say that.
An undermined 26-year-old in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
He was shot in the back of the head after a struggle with an officer who pulled him over for having a mismatched license plate.
Loyola's death is the most recent that has captured headlines in a call for change.
Duante Wright, 20 years old, was killed after being pulled over for an expired registration tag and a hanging air freshener.
Sandra Bland, we all remember her, 28, was stopped for failing to signal.
She ended up dead.
A 32-year-old Philandro Castile, we all remember that horrific scene.
He died following a traffic stop after an officer claimed he looked like a suspect in a recent robbery, citing his wide-set nose.
No, I don't know.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah.
Segaway noted that the majority of killings by police involved either traffic stops, mental health episodes, welfare checks, nonviolent and low-level offenses, or no alleged crime.
All circumstances in which there should have been an alternative response to so instead of sending a guy with a gun to somebody who's having a mental health episode, why don't you send somebody who's trained to deal with people with mental health problems?
Instead of sending a guy with a gun to do a wellness check, how about you send somebody who's maybe, I don't know, a nurse or an EMT to do a wellness check instead of someone with a gun?
That's what they're saying.
Aren't they going to have to have, I mean, I know a bunch of EMTs and stuff.
Depending on where you live, like EMT's land, they're not allowed to carry guns there.
And they all like, we should be allowed to carry guns.
Like, you're going to have to have somebody to protect the person you're going in case it's a violent mental health episode.
Yeah, I don't, yeah.
The last person we should send is someone with a gun, Kurt.
Unless that person has a gun and is shooting people.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah, the last person you should send.
If you have a gun, how can you not send someone with a gun?
I understand, like, we're not talking about people with guns, Kurt.
We're talking about people having mental health episodes, people with wellness checks.
That's what we're talking about.
Are you talking about people with guns?
Because that's not what I'm talking about.
Well, any kind of Thing that's potentially violent.
Anything is potentially violent, Kurt.
I don't know.
Mental health episode sounds like wellness check, mental health episode.
I think the last person you should, so you're saying we should send people with guns?
I guess it depends on the severity of the mental health episode.
I'm going to disagree with you voraciously on that point.
That's one of the worst ways to handle a mental health episode is to send a cop with a gun.
But I appreciate your opinion.
We're going to move on.
Some of the deadly traffic cases tracked this year include a Miami man stopped for an expired tag, a Milwaukee man accused of failing to signal, and an Oregon man who allegedly failed to stop while entering a roadway from a parking lot.
So do you think a cop should be there for all those things?
Do you think a guy with a gun should be on the scene for that?
There's an inspired tag, call the guy with the gun.
Yeah, no, that all most of these stops are things, especially that pretext stopping.
That happened me in Big J years ago.
We got pulled over because he used the correct exit of a plaza to return videotapes.
That's how long this was.
And it was suspicious because nobody uses the correct exit.
That's what the cop said.
And another friend of ours had left a blunt roach in the attraction.
It wasn't either of ours.
So the cop pulls over that to search and take us in to pay a fine for this fucking.
It was unbelievable.
But that pretext thing is like the biggest thing to me is that that's a real common and easily abused thing, you know?
100%.
Yes, we've all seen it.
It goes on.
I see no reason why somebody who has bad tags needs an armed response, said Amy Dimock, whose son, Kobe Dimock, Kaiser, 2021, was killed by police during a mental health crisis in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, the same city where Wright was fatally shot.
Police are trained for combat for adverse situations.
And I think that's where we should leave them.
I agree.
Cops should be called to adverse situations.
And they're used for everything now, and they shouldn't be.
Right?
And I don't even think they should be sent to domestic violence disputes.
You know, it's just, it's not good.
It's not good to introduce a gun into a violent situation.
It's just always a bad idea.
And there should be other people.
I'm sure we just gave $40 billion to Ukraine at the drop of a hat.
I'm sure we could probably hire a million fucking EMTs to go help people with that $40 billion.
I'm saying the point is we have the resources to deal with this, but for some reason, we want to make cops take a gun and deal with all these problems.
We have cops with guns in fucking schools now dealing.
And so what happens when you put cops at schools?
They don't protect the people.
They turn those kids into criminals.
That's what happens.
And we've seen this over and over.
People don't understand that more cops also don't mean less crime.
That's not how it works.
Actually, in a lot of places, it means more crime.
But anyway, that's kind of amazing.
And I think that's actually good.
I want to make fun of cops being so corrupt and criminal that they can't help but kill people for minor traffic.
They can't help but escalate.
That's what it is.
They're taught to escalate.
And Michael Wood, when he was on this show, former sergeant in the Baltimore Police Department, he explained all this to us and how they're taught and how they don't even realize that they're part of the problem.
He said, I thought I was one of the good guys.
And then I looked at my statistics and I was one of the bad guys.
And even go ahead.
Even cops like the Houston, former Houston police chief, he himself said, you know, we give cops too many jobs.
Like they are not trained effectively to deal with all these various issues and like mental health crises and stuff like that.
Obviously, if someone's being violent, you have to respond with some sort of security.
But I mean, if someone is literally just having a nonviolent mental health crisis, like a cop is not well equipped to respond to that.
They're not trained to respond to that.
And I mean, I saw it in my own community.
Guy, mental health crisis, homeless, walking across the street, jaywalking, got to the other side, just all right.
Cops went over and tackled him and accused him of trying to grab one of their guns and then they shot him dead for jaywalking.
Where was this?
There you go.
San Clemente, California.
I was like, wow.
A year and a half ago.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's good that we had a guy with a gun taking care of that jaywalking problem.
I mean, it's just nuts.
Anyway.
You know, where I grew up near Seaside in Jersey, like this is years ago now, too.
Most of the cops there would take a course.
So they didn't want to even carry a gun.
They wanted to carry that spray or the taser.
So you had to get videotaped being sprayed yourself or a taser because it, you know, it's all drunk fights and stuff.
Right.
And the gun, they didn't want to have to have the gun on them.
Yeah, right.
It was way better for everybody that they were using tasers and pepper spray if they had to because they're non-fatal.
Yeah.
I mean, if there's a bar fight and half the place is drunk and the people fighting are inebriated, I don't want someone showing up with a gun.
I would like to have someone show up with a taser or have someone show up with pepper spray, something non-lethal.
But that's not how we have it today.
We send guys with guns, cops, into bars to break up fights.
And what are they supposed to do?
They go in with a gun.
That's what they do.
That's what they're trained.
So we need a complete revamp of the policing in America.
And people don't want to hear that because it's a big job, but it ain't ever going to get better.
And, you know, I know a lot of people who are very sympathetic to the police.
And those are people who have not had much interaction with the police.
That's just a fact.
Now, I'm white, and I've always lived in nice white neighborhoods.
Well, I don't know how nice, but white neighborhoods.
And even I've been fucked with by the cops.
So they thought I was buying crack one time.
It's so ridiculous.
I made a wrong turn down an alley, and I realized, like, oh shit, I'm in a bad neighborhood.
And I was driving my roommate's BMW at the time.
You got profiled for like, why would you be here unless you're buying crack?
Yes.
So they pulled me over.
They have their guns drawn.
Oh, my God.
And I'm like, oh, somebody must have just robbed a bank who fits this description.
That's what I thought.
So they're like getting there telling me, get out of the car screaming.
So I get out of the car.
I got my hands up and I go, I don't know who you think you got, but you got the wrong guy.
Right.
That's what I'm saying.
I don't know who you think you got.
You got through it.
Shut up.
You know, that kind of shit.
And they get over and they don't say anything to me.
They just start going through the car, throwing everything out of the fucking car.
Just start throwing.
Is it in Chicago?
No, this is in L.A. Wow.
That's like way.
If it was Chicago, I would have said my, I would have used my dad's name, and I probably would have got something would have happened.
PBA card would count.
It would count.
And they claim they found marijuana on the flag.
I found something.
Now, they didn't find anything.
And then I finally figure out one of the cops said, you're not back there buying crack.
He said something.
And I go, you think I'm buying crack?
I go, there's a coffee in the cup holder.
It's decaf.
Did he taste it?
Look on the thing.
It says decaf for Jim.
Anyway, that filled me.
And they were such assholes to me.
And they were so, and they turned my car inside out.
And it wasn't mine.
It was my roommate.
I was so filled with rage.
I was on my way to a movie with Paul Nodizzi, comedian from Boston, very funny guy.
We were going to see a movie, and I was so upset.
I couldn't even focus on the movie.
I was just boiling with rage.
And I don't know how, I don't know how black people do in this country.
I swear to fucking God.
I have no idea how they do it.
LA cops don't really have a great reputation in general since I've been since I was young.
They're assholes that no, no.
Anyway, so that's my story.
And that's kind of interesting.
So we'll see.
I will see if this catches on.
I don't know why they have cops doing those kind of stops.
Anyway, they should have a traffic person doing those kind of stops without a gun, just like Lee Camp's suggestion.
Over to Steph.
Well, you know, I just want.
Wait, Corey, you want to say something?
When I used to do construction, my old boss used to, he was always like to serve and collect.
I mean, that was what the, it was to collect.
So that's why you need the gun.
Well, that's what Ferguson was.
That's what Ferguson was, right?
That's what Ferguson was.
They would just keep these people in a spiral of debt, right?
And they were running their whole city on the fines of poor black people.
Anyway.
It's all over them.
Yeah.
Over to Steph.
You know, I was just, you know, considering when I've seen these homeless encampments here in LA, when you drive past them and the police are there, and they're just like, and dump trucks are there to scoop up their belongings.
And I have never seen like a medical practitioner there to help these people that are homeless.
I've never seen any kind of, you know, Red Cross there to help these people who are obviously in crisis.
Right.
So that what there's, but what they had their plan.
So when they've been getting rid of these homeless encampments in Los Angeles, and part of their plan was they would first send outreach workers to get them to try to go to some shelter or whatever to try.
And then they would have those same out, but those outreach workers were cops, and then they would also arrest them.
You can't do that.
You can't have the person who's supposed to help you.
That's not.
They call them outreach.
Yeah, that's not an outreach worker.
That's a fucking enemy who's coming to put them in jail.
The story I told about the homeless guy who got killed for jaywalking, those were two homeless resource officers, is what they called them.
The homeless resource officer killed the homeless guy for jaywalking.
Is that what you're saying, Jackson?
Yep.
Yeah.
So you see the problem.
You see the problem.
*Bell rings*
Hey, this is Jimmy.
Who is this?
Yes.
Hello, this is Prince Charles.
The Prince of Wales?
Yes, that's the one.
Well, hello, Mr. Your Princess.
I don't know how I do you.
Oh, we can dispense with such formalities.
After all, I represent the next generation of royals.
It is the 21st century, after all.
You can simply call me Prince Charles.
Okay, Prince Charles, how are you doing?
Why, I am simply jubilant, my dear boy.
Jubilant being the proper emotion when looking forward to the Queen's Jubilee.
Jubilee?
Jubilee, yes, quite.
Yes.
You see, this year, my mother, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, celebrates 70 years on the throne.
Well, not literally.
She gets up and walks about from time to time, but you know what I mean.
Yes.
That is easily the longest reign of any British monarch.
The shortest reign was of a bloke named King Alvrecht long ago.
He was crowned and then not 30 seconds later had his head lopped off by a Viking.
Poor chap.
I see.
Luckily, we live in much more civilized times.
We royals.
As a member of the royal family, next in line to the throne, I might add.
I must say how proud we are of Mum for staying alive and puttering about and waving.
Hey, you know, there's a lot more to that phone call, but we don't have time in today's podcast.
How do you hear the entire phone call?
You got to become a premium member.
Go to JimmyDorrComedy.com, sign up.
It's the most affordable premium program in the business.
All the voices performed today by the one and the only of the inimitable, Mike McRae, who can be found at MikeMcRae.com.
That's it for this week.
You be the best you can be, and I'll keep being me.
Don't freak out!
Don't freak out.
I'm not kidding.
Don't don't.
Don't you go?
Don't go.
Do not program.
Do not freak out.
Don't freak out.
Do not, do not.
Do not freak.
Do not freak.
Do not freak out.
Don't bring out.
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