 Thank you all for joining us this morning. We're into February and we're in nice sunny, warm Hawaii and not in cold freezing Texas, which we'll touch on in a minute. We have the honor of having with us Professor Vanalia Randall, one of the leading experts anywhere on race and the law. Professor Emeritus from the University of Dayton School of Law. We have Ben Davis, Professor Emeritus from the University of Toledo School of Law, and leading expert on just about anything Ben is willing to talk about. Fortunately for us, equally proficient as a ubiquitous universal expert on all topics is Jeff Portnoy, among them the First Amendment, here in Hawaii. So many points. How many points scrabble is ubiquitous? I think it's... I'm a little word person, so I don't mean nothing about it. Yeah, my guess would be upper 20s, maybe 30s. I'm assuming that's a compliment, by the way. It's way too many syllables for me to understand. Well there, yeah. Did you learn that in Tiny Town, Texas? No, I'm an English major. I majored in bachelor's and master's, and then I went to law school to unlearn English, and then I came out of law school to relearn. Perfect. So one of our viewers asked, what's our take on what's going on in Texas? Good. Your people are from there originally. All my families in Texas, from down in Houston on the other side of Houston near the border, all the way up to Amarillo, Texas. You can get on the highway, and I had to stop at every major city. So both of my families live in Texas, in small towns, and they're doing okay. I just talked with some of them, and they're doing fine. But the Texas problem, everybody's kind of like, oh, this is an unanticipated storm. No one could have prepared for it well. It happens every 10 years. Texas has a big frozen storm that hits Houston and goes all the way up the highway about every 10 years. Doesn't want to spend the money to fix the system so that they don't have these problems. So it's not unexpected. It may be worse than they've ever seen, but frozen cold weather in Houston happens. So we sort of have the reversal of the prior administration problem, where the national response comes in to help with the failure of local preparedness and response, which was exactly the opposite for the last four years, including with COVID, masks, precautions, vaccines, everything. So what does that tell us, if anything? Is there a moral to this story? Well, someone told me that there was a few years ago, there was some kind of problem, some other part of the United States, and folks in Texas had stickers on the back of their cars, bumper stickers saying, let them freeze in the dark. And then I think, a couple of weeks ago, they were talking about seceding from the union. Right? So I'm like, well, okay, you really got to take care of the people no matter how stupid the leaders are. I'm going to say it like that. There are people hurting. We got to do what we got to do. One of the nice things I heard a comment made that it's not an administration that's distinguishing between red and blue states, so to speak, in terms of trying to do something to help out. But the fundamental problem is, if you don't do the winter rising, winter is a problem. You know what I mean? I mean, it really is. And I don't, I understand that the theory down there is to do it on a cheat, basically. Do it on the very cheap. Well, this is what happens when you do it on the very cheap. Any state, any state which elects the Ted Cruz's of the world, deserves what happens to the state, not to the people. And I just read Senator Cruz, of course, we all know went to Cancun. His explanation is, is unbelievable. His explanation is that his daughters had already planned a spring trip to Cancun. And as a quote, good father, close quote, he decided to take them down there himself. Because his adult daughters or whatever can't, right, right. Well, you know, in terms of politics and things, it seems to me that that on a national level, we help people when they are in trouble. We have to. That's the only way. But we also have to say to states, okay, when you, you know what, you are going to upgrade your electric thing. That is not a choice. Once you come out of here, you're going to the, just like, I'm going to tie this into the voting rights. Just like I think that we could say to states, you can do whatever you want in your local and state elections. But when it comes to the federal elections, these are the standards. And of course, we've got to be able to assure from state to state that people are treated the same in Mississippi as they are in Oregon or Hawaii. We could do the same thing in terms of disaster money is sort of saying, look, you know what, we're not going to back out when you're in the middle. But we're going to put some requirements on you so that this doesn't happen again. I think the irony is that a state that is so dependent on oil and gas and tells the rest of the country and its politicians about global warming being a hoax and alternative energy being not necessary. What happened? How with all that oil and gas, did their power grid be unable to handle the necessities of the last few days? I find it laughingly ironic. Of course, they blame me, and of course, on the frozen windmills. The Republican governors don't want to spend money. They don't want to tax people. I mean, it's sort of like people being against taxes is sort of like saying, I'm not going to fix up my house because I don't have enough money. I don't have enough money because I'm not going out and getting that job that I need to be able to bring the money in. Taxes is the money we bring in to fix the house up. And if you don't fix the house up, it comes back to haught you. And that's what's happening in Texas. I'm only against cheap for a long time. I'm only against taxing the wealthy. That is such a high noble spirit. Well, I moved to Texas for three years and I moved to Fort Worth, Texas in 2000. And I was in a taxi and I was talking to a taxi driver or I was talking to somebody and they were explaining what Texas is about. And as one businessperson said to another one, well, Texas is a pay-to-play state. That helps you understand Texas, pay-to-play. That's it. Meanwhile, while we were last on, we have watched the Second Impeachment Trial and the foregone conclusion that we all knew about and we talked about two weeks ago and I'm interested in your thoughts. Was it worth it? Was it worth it to spend three days listening to folks trying to convince their colleagues knowing that they had very little chance of convincing enough? My own view is I think for the public who spent time watching, it was quite interesting. But the more important thing is the aftermath, which was Mitch McConnell's speech and then our former president now finding a new pinata to attack. And I'm enjoying it tremendously. Well, you know, 45th is he likes to be called. He doesn't like to be called former president. Yes, right. Former human being maybe. And we'll get right back to that. But for now, you also touched on something that really strikes a nerve and that is when I was a kid growing up, my favorite U.S. history teacher, an older lady from a little town outside of Madison, Wisconsin, taught us history and I talked to her one time and I said, what's the best thing about the U.S. in history? And she said, whenever there's a disaster anywhere in the world or poverty, natural disaster, we're the first ones there with the most to help recover. And that stopped right after the American War in Vietnam when Nixon, Kissinger and McNamara developed a policy and sent McNamara to every embassy and every international financial organization to say, turn off the faucet for Vietnam, nothing. No humanitarian aid, no nothing. Fortunately, the Scandinavians were not tuned into that particular channel and didn't pick up on that. Eventually most of the rest of Europe and some of the rest of the world got on board with that. We were the last. We kept an embargo in place for 20 years after the end of the war. And one of the impacts of that was that it forced Hoshi Min who's strategy was to play the Russians off against the Chinese and ally with the U.S. in the West after the end of the American War. In fact, their constitution was based the preamble on the U.S. Declaration of Independence and he was a scholar in that in France. Anyway, long story short. Where are you going with this? We're coming back. Of course, Vietnam into an alliance with Russia and it alienated us from the most important relationship that we had spent decades developing and would be incredibly invaluable to us now. So the foreign policy reflection and lesson is following exactly from if you take the short term vindictive the Mitch McConnell Trump approach, you will do long term harm both domestically and foreign. And we are no longer known for being the country who comes to people's aid in times of disaster. If we ever was known that I mean that I think that I think that it's that we as a country we tie our foreign aid. We try to cut we do foreign aid in a way but we and I speak not this isn't my area of expertise. But it just seems for me from an observation point of view that even when we come to the aid of people, there's always some underlying policy that promotes some underlying policy because we allow other countries that are in severe disaster to go quite a long time in history looking back over time. Ben Jeff, what do you think? You know my dad used to work for USAID back in the day. Okay, so yeah. And so one of the things about foreign aid when they go up to the hill would be that the people would say well you know why don't you spend money in on our district as opposed to these foreigners overseas. And so what they used to do was they used to list the number of companies in that congressman's district that were getting some of that foreign aid money because the money would be spent with U.S. companies. And so they you know all of a sudden there was like oh this is actually something that in helping those folks overseas is actually helping back in my district. You know it's kind of like the defense department setting up contracts where their you know production facilities happen to be in all the key districts and all that. So that helps I mean it's you know it's part of the strategy. And we got to say that you know American I would like to say that I think we'd all would agree that American foreign policy for as long as we can remember is a very very complicated sort of series of ostensibly for principal ostensibly for well you'd say ostensibly for you know the better the better angels in us and then you find out underneath that it's not so clear. I mean we can go back to Spanish American War right in 1898 and all that stuff and manifest destiny and and and how that all worked out. Obviously it was World War One I'm not going to say anything against that or World War Two. My dad fought in World War Two that was incredible what we did in those settings. But things you know those are the world wars but you know the interests that are being protected by the US are you know it's not as all clear as as we would like it to be. That being said we're just like every other state in that sense you know you're looking for an angel among states you're not going to find one you're not going to find one you just you know they states do their interests and you know the French with their former colonies or the British with the Commonwealth whatever you know there's always they're always looking for their angle for the for their own advantage. Yeah and I think Rene that's exactly right what was called by USAID and others exporting democracy was really just an American variant of exercising subordination and control. But let's get back to Jeff's question about impeachment what does that tell us about the two-party system? Which two parties? Because there's about ready to be a third party probably within the next month with all the media reports of the so-called rational conservative Republicans who are seriously talking about a center-right party. I think the Democrats are split. I think you know there's a far left quote-unquote portion of the Democratic Party and then there's a center left. I think the whole aspect of political parties is very interesting this time around. I'm not sure where you know it's been what really since 1912 that there's been any serious effort to come up with a third party. We've had a few over the years that have you know Ross Perot and and others that have done. Ralph Nader who have just created problems but I think the way this country is divided right now people say it's divided in half. I think it's divided in quarters. Yeah I think it's the party of one. So where is it? I think there's only one party in the United States and that's the capitalist party like the Communist Party. We have a capitalist party like the Communist Party in China the Communist Party has a lot of branches and so when they have elections they got people running on different branches of one party. We have the same structure and I'm serious about this. We have a capitalist party. You cannot get elected. You cannot run in this country if you're socialist. There is no room for anything but capitalism. Bernie would disagree with you. Bernie would disagree with you. Yeah well Bernie has spent the last me and Bernie are about the same age in the same age group and Bernie has spent the last years countering to the Democrats because there's no capitalist no socialist party. But you know the funny thing is that in America if you say anything that vaguely is sort of what is it social oriented you're called a communist. I mean I find that amazing that you know that you know somebody talks about universal healthcare and they're talking about it's your communist and I'm like I lived in France 17 years with universal healthcare. And we're beyond that. They don't call them communists anymore. There aren't any communists left. Now they call them socialists. I just find that kind of amazing how I've been watching the various debates and discussions how people just go to that old communist rag about things that I found really quite normal and even kind of healthy. I mean that you could get your medical care taken care of you know and you had taxes to pay and all that but you know those communist countries like Canada and I don't know Sweden you know I mean it was like I can't believe it. It's just how people just get bitten by that. Well let's talk about the big issue right now which is you know Biden's political statements throughout the campaign about bringing the country together working across the aisle and the reality of the last three weeks going into today just dealing with COVID forget about anything else and the relief package which looks like he's going to have to impose by using some parliamentary rule of the arcane senate. What do you think about that because he's getting a lot of criticism because he set himself up for the criticism. True to it. You know I think it worked for him. You got elected right? You got elected. Yeah but now what? Now what? Okay so remember a politician's promise is only buying those who believe them. Okay that's the first thing that's what I learned. You sound like a communist. You sound like a communist. I learned that from a right wing former president of France said that he was quoted as saying that you never heard him say it lie. Oh then you're a fascist then a fascist. No I don't know what I am but I love that it freed me from being caught up by the the words that were said and you just see what the actions are right. So if he's got to do reconciliation or whatever it is to be able to get that package through then he does it that way but he can't expect Mitch McConnell or anybody to help him out right and he can try and talk to him but you know they're not going to help him out. If he doesn't do that he's going to have if he doesn't if the Democrats and him don't say we're going to use whatever a process we need to push through the things we promised on if he tries to do this bipartisan thing he's going to have the same outcome as Obama they're going to lose the house and lose the Senate in in in the mid-term elections. And the problem for me because I'm not a Democrat or Republican I'm a radical leftist the problem for me is that the Democrats I think the Democrats image of themselves is working across the aisle and so they have as much they have problems moving to the left to get things done because they want to have the Republicans agree with them they're all looking for approval and the Republicans are like we so far to the right if you want our approval you're going to have to come to the right and and if they go to the right on all the things they promised they'll lose the house. But you know you watch the impeachment vote and you see that one-third of the country doesn't believe in any of the things we're talking about the senators from North Dakota and South Dakota and Montana and Wyoming and I can go state by state by state west of the Mississippi that's a different America than the coasts and Chicago and the tiny town Texas or you know whatever I mean we just can't forget that you know McConnell I think has lost control frankly which is amazing if that's actually happened because a third of his party doesn't even believe in traditional Republican values they they are caught up in conspiracies they're they're mourning the death of one of the most evil people sorry Rush Limbaugh oh I mean I know but you know turn on Fox last night which I did yeah and you would have thought Jesus died yeah I mean we have to recognize that a third of the country could care less about the things we talk about about equality about police brutality about clean climate about whatever and you look at those Republican senators and you go wow they were elected by people you know they weren't anointed anyway and that's actually I don't want to understate the election by people is because the Republicans have smartly taken over gerrymandering a lot of the states and and and and that sort of and doing things to keep the voting I mean even in states you call true like or maybe overwhelmingly white most states have large minority populations as a large enough percentage and the Republicans in those states do things to marginalize their their uh the voters although I agree with you that in terms of the number anyway because hey Trump got a lot of votes we keep you know we talk about he got he got right 71 million votes was that it that's not he this that's that and Joe's point is a really important one in some respect because the number of people represented by the 57 senators who voted to convict is many many millions more than the 43 who voted not to convict so if you're looking at governance we are so far from one person one vote from governance by a majority we are we never were that though I mean part of the whole senate was set up to do exactly what it's doing the design of the senate was to make sure that majority the radical majority didn't get out of control and we would have these the leaders center senators you know in uh race based states in racist states uh control what's happening so I was going to say that between now and 2022 you're going to see a lot of laws being put in place to basically ice out the voting of those who led to those majorities in Georgia and things like that particularly minorities and others but that's what you're going to see because those are as you can see the way that the state parties are operating already where somebody voted against Trump they got censored like within minutes of their vote you know and these are just kind of trying to organize uh uh voter suppression minority government that's all minority government that's all we're watching is happening and then you the unfortunately voting rights will uh are in the process of being deluded or efforts are being put forward to do that so you can blame the supreme court for that oh yeah you know Shelby county you can blame the democrats and the republicans that they don't pass a bill controlling federal elections because none of these states are rich enough to uh run uh elections one for the state and one for the federal and so if the if the federal government would step in and say you know what we we the federal government for president one vote one thing you gotta control how I pass the voting right deal reinstating section five making any change in in how people vote if it's going to have a disparate impact it's by definition a racist and and and has to be uh and can't happen but I I have no faith that the democrats will do that so that brings us to the end of our time for today it's a great place to wind up because it's very forward so I have to get to cancun with my daughters my grandson I'll come back tomorrow grandson and yeah I'll come back tomorrow how do you get to cancun without being crucified oh very good so one of the night time show hosts asked Bernie Sanders he said so as an old white guy how does it feel to be so marginalized and on that we'll we'll let you both go come back in two weeks join us thank you so much all right