Social Justice - A Conversation

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Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV. And the Boyd School of Law.

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Hi, I'm Gabriela Tam, I'm a fourth year accounting student.

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And welcome to social justice, social justice, our conversation

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a conversation.

Unknown Speaker 0:42
Well, good evening, everybody, and welcome to Social Justice conversation. I'm here with my partner Gabriella Tam. So we're gonna sort of try to go over all the things that are going on in our country, which would take longer than half an hour, I assure you, but we're going to do the best we can. I guess the first thing we wanted to talk about was the whole issue of the government shutdown. And then, of course, the removal of Kevin McCarthy as the speaker of the house. You know, it's really interesting. In the last nine years, since the ex president came on the scene, there are so many truly amazing, I cannot believe what I saw things that never happened before that are going on in our country. And that whole the way the whole thing played out was was was really, extraordinarily troubling. First of all, you know, that you would have so many people in the Congress, who just wanted to basically shut everything down, but really had no plan as to what they wanted to do after they had the shutdown. And it was, it was, I'm not being original and saying this, a number of even the Republican representative said that these people want to basically burn the thing down. And then of course, you know, they wanted to get rid of Kevin McCarthy. And the primary reason they wanted to get rid of him, because he was able to afford some kind of a compromise with the Democrats, and extend the deadline for 45 days. You know, and the fact that they voted a mouse, I just was watching the television, I'm saying, you know, there's something really, really, really wrong going on.

Unknown Speaker 2:38
I also noticed that they had a lot of, I heard that they wanted to shut down like the government for like, press reasons, like they wanted to cause cause a big stir up, right for everyone and to get it on the news so that there were certain people that could watch it. Right, because you don't have like people like my age watching the news that often right. So and then like, another thing for like, for Kevin McCarthy? is I just like her like, because he could like rerun or something, right? But he was just like, I'm done. Like, I'm, I'm done with this. I'm done with these, like the right flank like these, like super conservative people. Yeah. And like, I thought it was good. That it's like, it's kind of sad. But I think in a way, it's good, because he's like, I don't want to be like thrown around anymore. I don't want to have like, my power. Like all my power is not even for me. It's like for all these people like I have to follow what they say. Right?

Unknown Speaker 3:42
Right. Well, he the problem that you have with Kevin McCarthy, and maybe was any other possible successor to Kevin McCarthy is that to achieve that post, you have to agree to a rule that any one person, depending on how they wake up in the morning, can actually bring a motion to remove you. Yeah. And to me, that's insane. Yeah, too, really, to really be removed from a physician like that. You have to you have to have done something really either really evil, evil or criminally wrong to me. Yeah. I mean, I mean, the fact that the fact that this man wanted to work out a compromise, where the government could stay open, and everything wouldn't close up is not a grounds for removing anybody. Yeah. And I'm surprised I'm surprised that more Democrats did not vote for him. I was surprised about that, too. And, you know, you know, a lot of the Democrats, you know, didn't like Kevin McCarthy because Because originally when they had January 6, he was very condemned the Tories Donald Trump, you And then like a few days later, he completely changed his tune. And he said that, you know, that he was not he was not against Donald Trump. And you know, he basically backtracked from everything he had said, not wonder what happened? Well, it's a good question. But the thing about it is, as maybe deficient as the, as the Democrats thought Kevin McCarthy was, who's going to take this guy's place? Who might be 10 times worse than Kevin McCarthy?

Unknown Speaker 5:31
I was thinking, like, I was talking to my brother about this this morning, too. I was like, well, like, how do we know who they're gonna vote for? Because I was telling him like, There's levels of like, being like, in a certain party, right? Like, you have like your moderate, and then you have like, your hardcore conservatives. We don't want that. We don't want a hardcore conservative because then we're gonna go, we're gonna go back in time, basically. Right.

Unknown Speaker 5:56
Right. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, I think I think, you know, if I would have imagined in a few days, they're gonna reconvene, it's gonna be a mess. Yeah. Because you have now you have, basically the moderate Democrats. And you have the progressive Democrats like Alexandria, Ocasio Cortes, and then you have the Republicans, you have the moderate Republicans, you have the far right Republicans, then you have Republicans that are sort of in the middle. But they never wanted Kevin McCarthy to be removed in the first place. And so out of those five groups, somehow, they're supposed to get somebody who's who's in a sense, a consensus choice. I don't see that happening. I don't see it happening there. No. And when he became the speaker, it took 15 bouts for him to become the speaker. But he was he was an established candidate. And basically, they were trying to get him to agree to certain things, make deals, et cetera, et cetera. But now, who do you have that has any stature in there that could actually appeal to everybody, because the people who want to bring this whole thing down? They don't want anybody that's moderate. The moderates don't want any of the people who were really far right. The Democrats are mistrustful of pretty much all the Republicans. Yeah. And it's it's really, it's really bad, though. It's really bad. It makes our country look ridiculous

Unknown Speaker 7:31
look so split for a country that has united in it. We're so like, split up?

Unknown Speaker 7:37
Yeah. Well, I think I think that over the last nine years, there has been a radical evolution of the Republican Party in so many ways, but primarily, their basic beliefs have changed. When I was growing up, the Republican Party was the defense party. They were the party of, you know, a strong NATO. They were the party of great weariness of Russia, all the rest of these things. And now basically, it's all switched around. And they they they have not, they're not antagonistic toward Russia. You know, they're trying to pull basically aid from Ukraine, and something always other things, but I think that's part of I think that's part of their support for the ex president. Yeah, I don't I don't I don't think it's a principle the decision that they're making. They know that there's a certain percentage 35 40% of the Republican vote that supports this guy. And they're afraid of being primaried. Yeah. So as a result, you know, they make these deals, but running on the platform that they're running on now. I don't see any hope that they would win any election anytime soon. I mean, they've lost like a number of elections in a row. And they're just to outside the mainstream. Really? Yeah. You know, that's really what it is. I mean, I think America has always had racism and all these different things. But there's always been the majority of the people who are sort of in the middle, and they keep the ship running, even though you have extremes on both sides. But you've got like, 40% of the people who really want to turn the clock back. It's really scary. It's scary. It's almost half, it's almost half. Yeah, it's almost half, you know, and, you know, do we talking about talking about the Ukraine and everything. That would be a disaster for the United States. I mean, if we were to pull out at this point of the game, and just abandon them or not fund them when we're not on them. Our status as a leader is gone. on. Yeah, I mean, not only not only that, but it would make all the countries in NATO be very skeptical. Yeah. Where we stand? Yeah, whether we were going to fulfill our obligations if one of them were attacked. Yeah. You know, that makes sense. Yeah. You know, but he, the ex president he wanted, he wanted us out of NATO, though. Yeah, I remember. I remember that. Yeah. And of course, what's interesting about it was, you know, I wouldn't say it amuses me. But they the other day, they had one. General Kelly. And he was talking about, you know, Donald Trump and the fact that he had like disregard for the soldiers, and he didn't respect the soldiers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But all these people that works for the ex president, they're writing books. Yeah. But the point is, it's a little late to rewriting a book. Yeah, you speak out when something is going on? I think that's, that's what that was one of the problems, that they just let this thing go. I mean, they saw all kinds of behavior that was clearly not right. Yeah. Right. And they just, they just went with it. They made excuses, they made rationalizations. And then eventually, the bill came due. And the bill that came due was was was January 6, yeah. When basically, through years of inaction and years of looking the other way. You basically had an insurrection and attempt to overthrow the government. You know, and it's interesting now to see, you know, with all these court cases that he's involved in, how people still still believe that he's, they had an article in one of the papers about how the Christian the hardcore Christians believe he's a messenger from God, you're joking. No, I'm not sure. How serious he's, he's a disciple or a messenger, or whatever you want to call it, I'm saying Messiah, how could that be? How is that possible? Well, how do people believe that? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 12:01
how do people like I'm shocked, this man does not follow?

Unknown Speaker 12:06
Well, I'm gonna say all I'm gonna say on that subject is this. Because you know, that the ultimate power above us, whether you call them God, or Jehovah or Buddha, or, you know, whatever, you whatever you call them, the deity, that they will ultimately judge all of us. Yeah. But, you know, one is judged by their conduct. I mean, if you see if you see the, the circus that is becoming the civil fraud trial in New York, that clearly there's something clearly wrong there, you know, speaking as an attorney, you know, it's become almost like a, like a show, you know, and one can only imagine, you know, you know, I'm for transparency. So in other words, I believe that they did, they still don't have this approved in the federal courts, but in the state courts, you can televise the proceedings, and I believe will in Georgia, they're going to televise this, this trial whenever it happens. And I'm all for that. But if it if it becomes, you know, sort of a repeat of what happened in the OJ Simpson trial, that's going to be that's going to be even worse than than not televising it. Yeah. Because you're gonna have basically it's gonna be like a circus, you know, without without any, you know, really,

Unknown Speaker 13:38
the law will get lost. It's going to be like reality TV.

Unknown Speaker 13:41
It's going to be like reality TV. And of course, that's, that's the way that's the way we're headed. It's reality TV is our society's from social media and all these things. If you look at the top shows, what other shows this shows a reality TV, you know, the, the the bachelor, the Bachelorette,

Unknown Speaker 14:00
golden bachelor?

Unknown Speaker 14:04
Yeah, that's, that's, that's interesting. I'm just gonna use the word interesting. You know, but but but moving on, but moving along on these things, you know, and one of the interesting stories that's that's come out in the last few days was the ex President's intention that we should invade Mexico, and try to stop the drug cartels and all these people. And I found that interesting. I find the whole I find it fascinating, you know, you know, when talking about the drug problem, and they were saying how in the country of Ecuador, the cartels have basically taken over. Yeah, certainly taken over and Mexico has certainly taken over and Colombia. Yeah. But what is the reason for the power? Yes, that yes, the government is corrupt. Yes. You know, people are walled off the police are Yeah. But the essential problem with the drugs is we are the market. Exactly. Yeah, this is this is the problem that we don't want to face, that we as a country, we as a society have a terrible drug problem. Yeah. And we are the we are the major consumers of cocaine. We are the major consumers of fentanyl, heroin, and we all the stuff, all this stuff. And you know, we're saying, Well, you know, we can't have people coming over the border. Yeah. You can't have everybody come over the border. That's true. But the drug problem is our demand. If there's no demand, if nobody wants the drugs, the cartels are out of business Exactly. can't sell anything. What's happened in our country, unfortunately, is not only do we have a tremendous amount of people who are using drugs. But we have a situation where we are in the business now as a country of trading guns for drugs. And so we have basically, in many ways, militarized Mexico, by this by this enormous flood and flow of weaponry into Mexico, in return for the drugs. Now, you may ask, well, how is that possible? Well, it's possible because our drug our gun laws are very lacks. Yeah. And we don't have really any regulation on what people can have in their house or what have you. And you have the AR 15. And what was different kinds of guns that have been used by the cartels, but they're being shipped into Mexico. So what's interesting is, we're not worried we're always talking about what's coming into the United States. But what's leaving the United States? What is what is one of our biggest exports? It's weaponry. Yeah, it's weaponry. And that's why we need that's why we need a policy in our country to limit the amount of guns to limit the assault weapons, because there is no reason that anyone should have an assault weapon. An assault weapon is only should only be used by people who are in the military, or police forces, people who are incensed insecurity work for the government, etc, etc. But they have expanded and inflated the Second Amendment to basically you can pretty much carry whatever you want. And I think that that the Democratic Party has been very lacks. In opposing this, I think the argument that should be made and it's always been made in a certain sensible, you want to take our guns away versus and you know, we have a right on the Second Amendment. Yeah. The Second Amendment says you have the right to bear arms. But the Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to bear any harm. Yeah. So there has to be like a limitation. And you see these people who have, you know, multiple weapons in their house. And

Unknown Speaker 18:14
they have on display, like, like a little trophy.

Unknown Speaker 18:18
Trophy. Yeah. Oh, my God, ya know, it's, it's really, it's really crazy. And it's the fault. It's the fault of our government, too, because a lot of the people in our government know, you know, the dangers and the repercussions of having widespread weaponry that any person can possess. And that's why we have all the mass shootings, basically. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the if you look at the statistics of maybe like, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, you know, you had robberies and you know, you know, do you always had gun crime? Yeah. And you always will have gun crime, because people are sometimes criminal. But you didn't have all these mass shootings, you didn't have people killing 2530 people or, you know, whether it be whether it be, you know, in Columbine, or Charlottesville, or, you know, Sandy Hook and all these places. And one of the disturbing things about our society is, I think, and I think you could you could talk about this too, because you're a little younger than I am. But the thing that's frightening to me is the fact that there's so much crime in our, in our society, that senseless In other words, you know, a very dear friend of mine, he is a psychiatrist. And he was asked to appear before one of the psychiatric societies to talk about the causes a murder, why people actually kill other people. Yeah. And he went through these various things revenge, no crime of passion, you know, trying to get money and everything. And then he came to the last he came to the last reason. And they had like the you had the big screen and it was like, symposium, and the screen was blank. And the man asked him, they said, What will Doctor where's the last thing? He says the last thing is there isn't any reason. Yeah, that you see people today? Who are, you know, inhabited by the evil spirit to put it in the nicest way I can put it. Yeah. And they just commit these crimes?

Unknown Speaker 20:27
No, yeah, that's what I've been saying. I'm like, the people are just violent for no reason nowadays.

Unknown Speaker 20:32
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of that has to do, I think I wouldn't, and not all of it. But a lot of it has to do with with, with the media, social media, television. You know, the internet. You know, I mean, just just in the things we we watch on TV, and what we see. And, you know, especially directed to the young people, you know, you know, when you're when you're older, and you know, you see certain things, well, you know, that this is unacceptable, but this this explosion of crime and violent crime and violence, senseless crime, I think goes back a number of years, to the video games. Yeah, I think that I think there's a connection there. And I think the interesting thing about the video games is, the video games are so dangerous, because it's a game. And you can play that game over and over again. But in real life, there's no replay. Yeah, once you commit one of these acts, the consequences are so dire. But these kids get into that stuff. And then, you know, in a sense that it becomes habit forming. And then they go out and, uh, you know, they have, they have issues, obviously, mental issues, but they're so used to it, you know, and we're seeing that we're seeing that in a lot of the big cities today. Where we have, they had a huge article, a very fascinating article in The New York Times, about how in Portland, Oregon, the city isn't like a deep crisis, it was always considered one of the ideal places to live in America, they have a tremendous drop in the amount of people in the police force. And they're basically using private security guards, as the police. And there is no, there's basically very few police, the 911 calls can take 35 to 40 minutes for somebody to respond if they respond at all. Back. So, you know, this is everywhere. And and I think that, you know, speaking in 2023 Now, we have a number of American cities where you have you have a drug epidemic, you have a crime epidemic, you have a homeless epidemic, you have a mental illness epidemic, and the government doesn't seem to be in any position to do anything about it.

Unknown Speaker 23:08
Yeah, it's like they're fixing their own problems. Now, they can't pay attention to what's going on inside the country.

Unknown Speaker 23:13
Yeah, yeah. Well, was it just struck me, you know, when when they had the DIS sphere, you know, when the sphere went on online, and actually, you know, where I live, you can actually see the sphere really, so at night, you know, I look outside, there's the sphere. But what's interesting about it is that nobody has said, you know, I mean, it's a beautiful thing, and it's, it's great for tourism, all of us have those things. But the enormous cost in the billions of dollars to build this thing. And yet you have so many people in the city have nothing to eat, they have nowhere to go. They have you have young people who are suffering from mental illness and all the rest of these problems. And there was no thought like, Wow, maybe if we had if that kind of money was available since bid to be used to help people out. A lot of the problems in our city might be might be

Unknown Speaker 24:12
alleviated is the same thing with like, the f1 costs because it costs a lot of money to build these tracks, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So it's like this fear and an f1. It's like, why can't we just give some of this money to like the homeless and like our, our young people who have mental illness issues, right?

Unknown Speaker 24:31
Yeah. Well, it's it ultimately comes down to greed. That's really what it comes down to, you know, it comes down to people who many of whom know better, but it's just that their, their whole focus is money and power.

Unknown Speaker 24:50
It's not about the money, but it's about well,

Unknown Speaker 24:53
that's, that's exactly what I was told many years ago. And you see it because you see people who have In all this affluence, and I'm not saying you can solve all the problems, you know, or, you know, 123, but at least make an attempt to solve them.

Unknown Speaker 25:11
Yeah, I think it would help a lot. At least. Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 25:15
So then another thing I wanted to touch on briefly is, you know, the situation with, with Tesla, of course, and, you know, the investigation by the Justice Department and the government about all the racial improprieties that are going on in their plants. And, yeah, it's really it was, it was a little bit of a shock to me, because, you know, from having done, you know, worked and worked in a factory one time.

Unknown Speaker 25:43
It's, it's mix, it's like very, I looked up there, like statistics of who works in like, these factories. And it's, it's really mad,

Unknown Speaker 25:51
right. So you figure, well, you have a mix, you have a mix workforce, that, you know, stuff like that won't go on. Yeah, but it's exactly the opposite, though. And you say to yourself, well, where's that? Where's the supervisory capacity of the people who run the plant? I mean, I mean, your your prestigious company, turning out a major amount of these cars, which are going to be the cars of the future. But the workers, the workers have to be, you know, treated in a certain way. Yeah, you don't have stuff like that going on. I mean, that that it's so ret widespread is very disturbing, to say the least. But it's a bunch of people who really don't care. I guess we go through that again. And I wanted to wrap up tonight with the situation with the Baltimore archdiocese, which is like the icing on the cake on a rancid cake. But you could talk about it a little bit.

Unknown Speaker 26:54
So the archdioceses they filed chapter 11 bankruptcy, and there was a there's going to be a state law passed in Maryland that removes the statue of limitations on Child, child. Yeah. So I'm thinking there is a underlying reason why they filed for bankruptcy, right? I'm guessing it's because they don't want to pay these people like bring like, Orange. Yeah. What was it like paying these people for the damage that they've caused? Right?

Unknown Speaker 27:29
Yeah. Well, I'm from having some experience in that work. Yeah. I don't I don't believe there should be any statute of limitations for that. Yeah. criminally speaking. Oh, yeah. I think that there is no statute of limitations on the suffering for the people who have been harmed by these people. And I think that another interesting case, that's going to be decided, I guess, by the Supreme Court relatively soon, has to do with the whole settlements, that the that the opioid makers made with the government. And whether that and whether that should be opened up to pursue to include not just, you know, civil penalties, but criminal penalties. Yeah, you know, once they knowingly, basically, you know, allow this to continue while obese people were dying. So, the these are, these are things that are, these are things that are pressing on us in our society. And I think one of the things that we need in our society is more leadership of leadership would benefit all of us, not just not just one party, not just one party or leadership that that's too self centered, about about what, what they need instead of what we as a society need, you know. So, on that, on that note, I think we will say that, we will say good night, and I look forward to speaking with you all next week, and

Unknown Speaker 29:03
it was, it was a great chat today. And thanks. Thank you all for listening. Good night. Good night. Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at tangi one that is t a M, G one at UNLV thought nevada.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles Stanton at charles.stanton@unlv.edu. See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai