Shifting Focus

In today's episode I discuss the second prong of the Relief Valve: shifting citizens' attention away from national politics and turning it to their local and state governments.

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Daniel Anthony  0:00  
Welcome back to the relief valve podcast. I'm your host Daniel Anthony. Today we're going to be talking about shifting focus from the National to the local.

Before we start today's episode, I want to give a shout out not to my wife Karen. But this time to a friend of mine and a listener of the show Viet after I published last episode, he texted me and told Give me his thoughts on the points that I made concerning congressional reform. Specifically, he told me actually that he thought 65 would be a better retirement age for congressional members rather than 70. I think that 70 I still think 70 is probably a better age, just because like I mentioned in the episode, a lot of members of Congress don't get elected for the first time until their into their 50s or 60s just because of how our system is set up. And because you need a wealth of money in order to run for office normally, and so most people obviously aren't wealthy enough to run for Congress until they're later on in life. But I do see where he's coming from 65 is kind of the preeminent retirement age. So why should we up it for members of Congress, a counter another counter that I

would offer to that those that are here in Florida, at least the judges of the state judges we have here in Florida are allowed to hold retain their office until the age of 70. And I would put 70, I would put being a congressman as on par with being a judge and that both use a lot of their mental faculties. And it requires a lot of thought and a lot of writing and you have a lot of aides and assistants. So I think that the strenuousness of the job is not so much that a 68 year old couldn't handle it, I think 70 is still the nice round number that I would suggest put placing the age cap for congressmembers at however, I wanted to give Viet the shout out here because he actually listened to the episode and he put in some real thought into his argument for 65. So I actually want to hear from other people. Send me a tweet at him Daniel Anthony, or send me an email at relief valve pc@gmail.com. And let me know what you think 65 or 70 for age caps for members of Congress or if you think that an even younger age or an even older age and be the age caplet. meno Viet also deserves a shout out in today's episode, because he was the only one to notice that two days ago, I made a reference to Rage Against the Machine during the podcast. So let's all give three cheers to Viet one for challenging me on my position on this podcast, but also to for noticing little references like that. Okay, so that's all the preliminary stuff taken care of. Let's move on to the actual meat and potatoes of why we're here today. Today, we're going to talk about the second prong of the national relief valve specifically, what I call shifting focus from national to local. Now, that's simultaneously wordy and not very descriptive. So I have no expectation of you to understand what I mean by that just off the cuff. What I plan to do today, when talking about this prong is I want to talk about the what the why, and the how. So by that I mean, I want to talk about what I mean, why this is necessary to reduce political pressure in the United States. And then how I would actually go about implementing this prong of the relief valve. The one shouldn't take more than a couple of seconds to explain. When I'm talking about shifting focus from the National to the local, I'm talking about turning people's focus away from national politics and helping them look more at their local and state governments. So that's the easy part to explain. I think the harder part or the part that I want to spend more time on is the why. Why would I do this? Why would I focus on turning people's attention away from national politics? If the entire point of this podcast is to reduce political pressures in the United States? Some people have to be informed if we want them to be less, less agitated? And the answer is no. We want people as ignorant as possible so that they are so ignorant, they have no idea what's going on, and they don't know that they should be mad. Okay, that was a joke. And I have a terrible feeling that someday a clip of that is going to get out and ruin my entire political future. But I'm leaving in because I thought it was funny at the moment. But that means the question remains, why is shifting focus from the National to the local shifting focus from the national government to the state and city and county governments necessary to relief political pressures within the United States? To answer that question, we must first recognize the reality that our local county, municipality, municipal and state governments all have much more of a say in the realities of our lives than the national government. Next, we need to understand that under a two party system, only one half of Americans at most will ever feel that they have a voice in the national government. I say at most, because obviously, if you end up with a situation where the Senate or House falls under one party, and then either the Senate or House or the presidency falls under another party, then that leaves both sides feeling like they don't really have a voice in government, because nothing is being passed. But the thing is the founding fathers already for solve this problem when they wrote the Constitution, they created a federal system where we have both a national government and state governments, right. So what we have really are sovereignties. within Saudi, within a sovereignty, you have states which are their own sovereign within a larger sovereign, which is the United States. So even though these people feel like they don't have a voice, and so they feel angry, and so they don't want to compromise and they lash out, and that causes the other side to lash out. And that leads to nothing getting done in government. The truth is, they actually do have a voice. That's the irony here, they do have a voice, they have a voice in their state governments and their state legislatures, and their city council's and their municipalities and their county seats, they have voices all over the place surrounding them, but they don't realize it because too much focus is placed on them.

I'm gonna get a little conspiratorial on you here for a second. Because I think that there's a pretty rational explanation for why so many people are so focused on national politics nowadays, as compared to 100 years ago, when most people didn't look beyond the mayor of their city as the highest governmental authority that they ever really felt had any influence on their lives. I think it really goes back to this idea of a 24/7 news cycle and national news channels overall, before of course, back in the early 1900s, every city and town had their own local newspaper that dealt with local issues. However, as news became more consolidated and more nationwide, and especially with the advent of 24/7, news channels, and then of course, the internet, these news channels, of course, couldn't focus on you know, what was going on in the middle of Orlando, or Houston or Dallas. Instead, they could only focus on one thing that appealed to all Americans. And that was what was happening in Washington, DC. So as the media went, so when the American population, we stopped paying attention to what was happening in our local communities, because the news stopped paying attention to that stuff. So I mean, if you ask people, of course, who the president is, or name a few congressmen and women sitting in office, they'll be able to list those people off. But the irony is, I don't think, no, I don't think I know that a lot of people don't even know who their who their congressman is who their representative is, they may know who their senators are. But many people don't even know the congressional district in which they sit. So we've been completely removed from the politics of the communities in which we live. And we've become completely entrenched in obsessed with this idea of national politics, specifically, really with the presidency. I mean, if we really want to get if we want to be really truthful with ourselves, we care more about who's president than anything else. I'm a big history nerd. I specifically I really like to study Roman history. And it's fascinating to me to see this obsession with who is president because it reminds me a lot of the empire, following the fall of the Republic, where you know, who the emperor was, tended to be the most important thing that anyone cared about, even though a lot of the times the Emperor wasn't really the one running the show, people still wanted their figurehead in place. And that's feeling more and more like what we're seeing here in the United States, people are obsessed with who's sitting in the President's seat, even though unless he has a majority in both the House and Senate, he's not gonna get anything done. And as we've seen with Joe Biden, even if he has a majority and a tie breaking vote in the Senate, he still can't get a lot of things done. But people are still obsessed with this office. In just like the Roman Empire, this obsession can lead to violence. So the question is, is there some way for us to break out of this cycle to avoid history from repeating itself to avoid violence altogether? And my answer is, I sure hope so. Otherwise, the entire point of this podcast is null and void. But more seriously, I think we do have a way to break out of this by talking about the prong that we're talking about today, shifting focus from the National to local, we need to remind Americans that they have a voice in government that who the president is doesn't matter nearly as much to their daily lives as who their mayor is, who their city council numbers are, who's sitting in their county seats, right, who's running the day to day operations of their lives. You know, it's the federal government shuts down tomorrow, most Americans won't feel a pinch. However, if garbageman decided to go on strike tomorrow, you would feel that immediately. If municipality workers decided to stop working tomorrow, you would feel that immediately. If state employees at working in maintaining the electric grid in your city decided to stop working tomorrow, you would feel that immediately. So now we've talked about the what and the why the what is shifting focus from the National to the local, including state and county governments. And the why is because we need to defuse political tensions in this country. And a good way to do that is to remind people that they have a voice in government outside of the national government. So now we turn our attention to the how, here's how we fix this. J Corp status. Now, I'm sure that many of you have heard of C corpse and s corpse, right. These are different tax structures set up for corporations. And they each have their pros and cons and corporations will decide which one they use definitive, you know, to maximize profits and minimize taxation. What I'm proposing is a third kind of corporation tax status called the J Corp. A J Corp would allow us to give tax incentives to local journalistic ventures so that local communities could start their own newspapers start their own online newspapers, obviously, we're not living in the 1890s. But start their own online newspapers start their own online

shows, a lot of larger cities, of course, have their own cable news networks and channels. But the truth is smaller towns don't. And so this would allow smaller towns and communities to be able to build a journalistic infrastructure for themselves. Without worrying about being overtaxed or not able to afford it. This tax incentive would provide an actual incentive to start a newspaper or to start a start a news program to start a start a news podcast for your community, keep people informed of what's going on around them. By being made aware of what's going on around them. In turn, people will get more involved in their community and local politics. And when people get more involved in their community and local politics, they shift their attention away from the National into the local. Now I know what you're saying, while Daniel, you're so handsome, and you have such an amazing voice. And now you came up with this incredible idea on your own. How do you do it? And the answer is, one, L'Oreal because I'm worth it. But to this actually is not my idea. I stole this from Andrew Yang's book, Ford, he published it last October, I read it. And one of the ideas that really spoke to me was this idea of a J Corp status. So I'm incorporating it into my podcast. Now, I don't know how petty the fourth party is going to be about this, they may sue me. And if they do, all I can say is pretty much the only thing of value I have is my three year old. And Sundays me and my wife would be happy to let him go. So you know, we'll see you in court. But assuming they don't want my three year old, and assuming they're good with me using this idea, I really do like this idea. When I was I mentioned last episode how I used to sit in my apartment by myself at law school. And right now ideas on how to fix the country. And shifting focus from the from the National to the local has always been one of the prongs for reducing political tensions in this country. However, I could never quite figure out how to do so until I read his book. And I saw this idea about a J Corp status, because it finally gave me a way where because up until then I was trying to think of how you can force people to quit paying attention to national politics. And the only thing I could think of was either censoring the media so they couldn't talk so much about it, or literally, you know, holding someone's head to the television and making them watch their local nightly news. And both of those ideas seem both impractical and unconstitutional. So I was really thankful to Yang for, for sharing his idea in his book because it really spoke to me it really helps fulfill the promise of this prong. We're not forcing anyone to do anything. But we are incentivizing. we're incentivizing people to take the reins of journalistic control away from the media conglomerates and focusing it back on the local communities. All right, well, that's today's episode. Before we go, I have a few show notes that I want to share. I guess we'll just keep putting show notes here at the end. I'll also kind of shared some notes I guess at the beginning giving a shout out to Viet and all that so well, whatever. Anyway, we're putting show notes here at the end. So that's that's how it is. Alright, so first, I want to say thank you to everyone who responded to last episode to last episodes call to action. Whenever I asked for anyone who's interested about in speaking on the show, to reach out to me I had a number of people reach out to me actually. And over the next week or two I'm going to be having phone conversations with the people who reached out to me to see what you want to talk about. You know what you feel comfortable discussing and kind of just going the over the outline of how these conversations will go. I'm not looking really to interview Have anyone in case you couldn't tell I'm not really a journalist, I'm really just looking to have a conversation and to kind of bounce ideas off of people and have people bounce ideas off of me and see if we can't come to some ideas that some ideas of reform for our country that

would be good. So that's really the whole point in these interviews, it's not so much an interview as it is a conversation. Next, I want to talk about I've been thinking about current events more lately, I really enjoy this podcast. And I like having these, you know, more philosophical discussions on reforms that, you know, we can make to reduce political pressures in the United States. But the problem with the podcast is that I don't feel like it's very reactionary, it's very much a proactive thing. And I do think we need to be proactive when if we want to save our republic, however, it would be fun to also talk about things, it would be fun, and I think it's necessary to talk about things that are happening in real time. And so I've been thinking about how to address current events. One thing that comes to mind, of course, is the rate of foreign President Trump's home in Mar a Lago a few days ago. I mean, I would love to talk about that. And I would love to, you know, have a discussion about that generally, and see, you know, if we can't apply these principles of the relief valve to current modern day situations such as that, but I'm, I'm struggling to think about whether or not I should, you know, include current events in the podcast like me make separate episodes where I discuss current events, like when something pops up, big pops up, I just make a separate episode. And I don't know I give it like a different heading or title compared to the normal relief valve episodes, or if I should just start an entirely different podcast, or if I should start a YouTube channel where I discuss current events. So anyway, I'm saying all this and I'm rambling on like this, because I want to hear your thoughts, please. You know, I give my email at the end of every episode. So my email again, is relief valve pc@gmail.com. So please send me your comments, your ideas, and let me know what you think, you know, should I address current events in this podcast? Should I make a different podcast? Should I make a YouTube channel? The benefit of a YouTube channel of course, being that you could look at my beautiful face while I talk to you? And I know how many of you are just desperately wishing for that. But but you know, let me know. Let me know what you think. I also would like to ask that everyone wish my wife Karen a speedy recovery from her food poisoning. She's been sick the last couple of days. We want to get better. So keep her in your prayers. And I want to give one final shout out to Viet before I close the episode out. He suggested that because I because I complained in the last episode about just staring at a computer screen the entire episode, he suggested that I instead pull up a picture of him and look at it throughout the episode to keep myself more entertained. And you know, I assume he wanted me to do that to remind myself of how handsome I am relative to him. And I did it and frankly, I've enjoyed staring at his face for the last 30 or so minutes. This has been really good. So thank you Viet for that suggestion. So next episode will be out next Tuesday the 16th and we will then discuss the third prong of the relief valve third parties. So until then, this is Daniel Anthony, your fellow citizen signing out