937 - Killing Santa feat. Arjun Singh & David Sirota (5/27/25)

All I wanna be is El Joco.

All I wanna be is El Joco.

We need balls and pesos.

All I wanna

Happy Memorial Day, everyone.

It's Monday, May 26th, and we've got some choppo for you.

In just a little bit, I'll be talking with David Sirota and Arjun Singh of Lever News about 50 years of American tax policy.

But before then,

let's talk some news of the day.

Felix, I want to begin here with...

There are two articles in the New York Times from this week, essentially, about all of the money that the Democrats are throwing at the problem of clout and how can they manufacture some clout, a crumb of clout, please.

And this is all sort of adjacent to the holy grail of the Democratic Party right now, which is the liberal Joe Rogan.

And I guess I want to begin here because I find it fascinating that.

What, four or five years ago,

Bernie Sanders ran a campaign that was overwhelmingly popular with young American men.

And I don't know, like, was there anything really in his campaign or his

profile that gave you the impression that he was specifically trying to get a medical campaign?

Well, no, I mean, no, no, besides like not being a Democrat.

I mean, like, this entire thing is so fucking stupid because it's people are just asking the same question in, you know, slightly different ways for the past year now, which is, why are these explicitly like not Democrat forms of media?

Like, why isn't there a Democrat version?

Like, if somebody asked, like, oh, why isn't there an event, like a pro

like Hillsong Church prestige TV show?

People would go, well, you're fucking stupid.

That's why.

But for some reason, there's like, like, people are still trying to crack this one.

Yeah.

And I mean, I guess I bring this up because like, it didn't seem to me that, like, Bernie appealed, the Bernie's campaign ran as a Democrat and had overwhelming support from young people overall, but young men specifically.

I don't think he was doing anything to like purposely be like, I'm running a campaign for young white men and white men only.

No, that was the first time.

Yeah.

But in 2020, that fact.

that he appealed to young men and young white men was used as like that was the evidence for why he was a dangerous demagogue and ideologue who must be kept away from power because anything that appeals to young men has to be inherently fascist.

So I think it's funny that, like, four years later, they're getting ready to spend tens of millions of dollars to be like, how do we get some young men back in the game here?

And I want to begin with

this piece is from the New York Times.

The headline is: six months later, Democrats are still searching for a path forward.

And there was this line in it that I thought was amazing.

It says, the perspective for one new $20 million effort obtained by the Times aims to be able to do that.

$20 million.

$20 million.

Like, I'm like, okay, do Do you remember?

God damn.

Do you remember like sort of after

both us and Come Town kind of like took off like

post-election, I would say, in 2016 and after the first like 18 months after that, we would hear all these stories from just like around

you know, all these places that have like now either went under or consolidated to just running like

AI or other aggregated content.

They would they if someone had like 50,000 followers on Twitter and was an article writer They would give them like $70,000 to start a podcast and we always thought like how does that take $70,000?

$70 is all you need.

Yeah, like what the fuck?

And they would never get made.

And it was always like, I don't begrudge the people for taking the money.

I just always figured,

because it was always,

this is not a comment on the women themselves, but it was always women getting it.

And I did always figure it was like,

you're so tiny, I could put you in my pocket guy who had command of capital.

But it's, you know, now 20 million?

Well, I mean, 20 million.

20 million to do a thing that can't be done.

I mean, like, I just think it I find it all so surreal because it was like, I feel like up until like a year ago, it was like, if you were popular among young men, that was a sign that you were evil.

And now they're going to spend $20 million to be like, we need to appeal to young men.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do remember when Rebecca Traister wrote that article about us after

the election in 2016.

Oh, yeah.

It was basically like...

We had that whole episode talking about like Hillary and Podesta and Robbie Mook and the Democratic Party.

And we were like, they're freaks.

They should, you know, they should die.

And Rebecca Traister wrote this article that was like, I was shocked to hear them say that the black grandmothers that knock on doors and volunteer in voting centers are freaks that should be killed.

It was like.

Wasn't there a line in there about like leaving Thanksgiving dinner to go to our jack-off goon cave or something like that?

That was another article.

I don't know.

Yeah, there were a lot of articles at the time but yeah it is yeah no i mean nick pointed this out on come town's post-election special in 2016.

i'm doing a lot of re-litigating 2016 which i always you know uh say people shouldn't but i'm not i mean they're spending 20 million dollars to re-litigate it again but they're coming up with the opposite answer i right i don't think like i you know we don't we don't think there is any way to reform this party that like you know if they realize their hypocrisy when they hear we just, this, if you remember this stuff at all, it's very funny.

Because I remember Nick talking about all those, like the pretty much the stated ethos of the party.

Some people would come out and say it during the 2016 election was like, we realize we don't need white men anymore.

Well,

turns out they do.

And to that end, it says here, the prospectus for one new $20 million effort obtained by the Times aims to reverse the erosion of democratic support among young men, especially online.

It is code named SAM, short for Speaking with American Men, a strategic plan, and promises investment to study.

I love this sentence so much.

And promises investment to study the syntax, language, and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.

It recommends, this is $20 million, keep it in mind, it recommends buying advertisements in video games, among other things.

Oh, my God.

Because like, wait a second.

Like, wouldn't that just annoy you if you're a young man and you're playing game?

You're playing like.

I literally,

I just retweeted someone, a computer guy, a good computer guy, believe me.

I don't know him, but I can tell he's a good computer guy because he's talking, he's able to put into computer guy terms the exact stuff I complain about, which is how condescending and intrusive the average user experience is like on Windows, on Windows machines, but also, also like everything, like your car, an Apple product, whatever, everything is shoved in your face.

Have you ever pressed the start menu on your Windows PC?

You will get this thing called top news, which is just like, here's some news for dum-dums that you

might like.

And now, yeah, like a lot of games now, there are ads.

And like, it's like anything.

When I see an ad in something that didn't used to have an ad i make a mental note that in a post apocalyptic scenario i will enslave anyone associated with that corporation we need we need act blue microtransactions in all video games yeah like like what

are they gonna i guess roblox

you can play roblox are nine years old get them young get them young now get uh yeah yeah microtransactions you can use crypto to to purchase new skin you can purchase the big, beautiful Bailey skin, where you can be a big, giant golden retriever in Fortnite or something like that.

I think, like, will there be like a Democratic Legends pass in Fortnite?

You could get like Al Smith.

Oh, that's how they could do it.

They could, like, they could sort of like throw a bone to racist guys and be like, do it reverse to Nesh D'Souza.

and be like, we were actually the guys who are trying to keep segregation going.

And then once they're on board, like slowly live it up, you know, slowly introduce William Jennings Bryant.

But it says, yeah, buying advertisements in video games.

Now, when I saw that, I was like, God, what a stupid idea.

But then I had a brilliant idea that I'm going to give out for free to the Democrats right now.

I think they should just create their own video game.

And my idea for a video game is based on the abundance movement.

I think the abundance guys need to like fund and create like a gaming studio to develop an abundance themed video game.

And the game would basically be like a cross between SimCity or City Skylines, like it's like a city building game and like a Grand Theft Auto open world game.

And like, basically, it's like you have a city that you need to run and manage.

But in order to make neighborhoods safe for new development, you need to like be in the streets stalking and killing elderly people who live in rent-controlled apartments.

That's a great, oh my God.

Do you know, are you familiar with the game, Hatred?

No, I don't think so.

So it's a really stupid game that they made in 2015.

And it was, you know, it was in the

radioactive afterglow, like the nuclear winter of Gamergate.

And

some guy was like, oh, yeah, we'll check this out.

And made this.

I don't, some people, a video game critic who I like has said that he thinks it's, he's British, so he said he thinks it's a piss take, which if it is a piss take, it's hilarious because it portrays a sort of like if Danzig was fat, that's the hero of the game.

A fat Danzig wearing a floor-length leather coat, and it starts with a monologue, and he goes, my name is not important.

I've always hated humanity.

You know, like he, he's like a villain in.

I've always hated scarcity.

Yeah.

He's he's like a villain in Cobra.

That's how bad he is.

Like it's like, why, why?

Yeah, like, why, why have you compiled all this weaponry?

I love killing pigs, man.

I love murder.

I'm bad.

I've always hated birthdays.

And the more people you kill, like you streak together, the longer your mass...

It starts as a mass shooting.

And then eventually, if you don't die, if you keep your streak going, you get to the town's nuclear reactor and blow up the town.

Like you kill millions of people.

And it was, you know, the developer said, I was making a point, which I don't know what that was because the game apparently wasn't very good.

I haven't played it.

But

it should be, yeah, Sim City, but also hatred.

Yeah, we're crushing Sim City and like Manhunt or something like that.

Yeah.

You're stalking and killing like elderly pensioners who live in rent-controlled apartments.

And then like you're, you're, you're, like, you, you find, like, a neighborhood of, like, a single unit, single-story residential units.

And you can, like, plant bombs.

You can do, like, a demolition and just, like, level a whole city block and bring in the bulldozers, get the new construction going.

Let's build things.

Alma, okay, how about this?

Not important.

He had sex before he killed all those people in hatred.

Like, they could, this would be a

part of the hatred franchise.

That's how you would get like

people who still care about Gamergate, which is 150 million Americans on board.

And they're like, and like

GTA, like with every, with every house you demolish with every, with every new, with every new construction project that you start over the graves of, you know, poor people or the elderly, like you have a NIMBY rating goes up.

And like roving games of NIMBY authorities like try to track you down with helicopters and tanks.

Yeah, yeah, your NIMBY rating, that's like your star system, but your YIMBY power meter is like

how many hectorings you can take before you stop.

You can get resupplied with ammo drops from the zero-g factories.

Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.

Like the longer the rampage goes on, the more like abundance things become real.

So like, yeah, by, by the end, they're draw, they're like, they're giving you like, you know, nanotechnology that they developed in

another galaxy with

a solar sail-powered abundant starship Astrolab.

And the hero of the game, Not Important Jr.,

because when did Hatred come out?

2015?

That was 32 years ago.

So Not Important Jr.

is 32.

He's old enough to be like an Iglesia Substack subscriber.

And like, what happened to him?

He tried to get circumcised and they cut his dick off.

And so he's like, well, no point in my life.

And so he's like, well, I might as well, I'm not going to be like my awful dad, not important.

I am going to be my own man.

I'm going to cleanse this city of NIMBYs and horrible rent-seeking old people.

Any car, boom, blam, boom-o.

Student protesters, blamo.

All of it.

All regulation.

I don't know what weapon that is.

It's all getting it.

It's a paper shredder that's shredding all

of this regulation.

Yeah.

So I think that would be very cool.

Oh, shit.

Here we go again.

Worst place in the world.

Yeah, NIMBY Destroyer.

That's the video game.

That's my pitch.

And I don't know.

I mean,

like, it's all this thing where they're saying, like, oh, we're studying the syntax of what creates virality in these communities.

It's just like Joe Rogan was a comedian and an MMA commentator for like a decade, like decades before he started a podcast that caught on.

Like virality is not, we've talked about this so many times, like virality is not something that you can just like reverse engineer by studying what made other things go viral in the past.

Or it's like, hey, you can, but you make something like Mr.

Beast.

It's like something that's explicitly has no like political valence or anything.

It's like content in its purest, most meaningless form.

Like, okay, if you want to make something that everyone will watch and like, okay, make a children's movie where also they're like in the 45 minutes in, there's just a 10-minute sequence of homeless guys getting hit by cars.

And then the children, the CGI children's movie resumes, no reference to the death, the snuff films you just saw.

And then it resumes and then credits and then hardcore pornography.

And that's it.

That's like the judging by economic trends and what everyone likes, that would be like 200 million people would pay for that.

But what, you know, what candidate, what idea are you attaching to that?

Well,

in the other article from the New York Times, Democrats throw money at problem, countering GOP clout online.

You know, like,

it says here, and so far, there are still more ideas than hard committed money.

One Democratic operative described compiling a spreadsheet of 26 active projects related to creators over a dozen of which are new since november but a few of the efforts have ties to major they were just born

well i mean like they just they just came out of the the content chute the content orifice yeah and it says the first out of the gate has been chorus a well-publicized liberal non-profit group co-founded by the democratic influencer brian tyler cohen now when i mentioned this felix you you said you were familiar with this guy i i am not who is brian tyler cohen Brian Tyler Cohn is like um

he's sort of like a like they they brought the Krasensteins in front of a like they tested them before a live studio audience

and they were like okay well a lot of people like them but some people think they're too weird

they don't get why they were spending all that time running a Justin Bieber fan site You know, all the things that make them fun.

They were like, that stuff's too weird.

Who can we get that's like taller, but has a less impressive body?

And he kind of sucks.

And that's Brian Tyler Cohn.

He's

my, I, I, uh, I had one interaction with him, sort of like Adam Gentleman.

He posted a Bloomberg ad.

You know, you remember those Bloomberg ads?

They were like, Donald Trump says he's a billionaire, but he only has $900 million.

We're going to prove it.

Yeah.

Whereas Mike has $30.

Yeah.

$30 billion.

Yeah.

He posted one of those and he was like, this is awesome.

You know, it was like

January of 2020, February or something.

He posted it.

I was like, this is fucking stupid.

Like, what's you're an idiot?

I quoteed him and he's like, oh, yeah, well, I'm trying to stop Trump, you asshole.

You know, something like that.

Good job.

Yeah.

Get it.

Well, I mean, sorry, like, there was just one more line from the other article where it says, this is after it recommends buying advertisements in video games it says above all we must shift from a moralizing tone gee how's that working out yeah yeah

i can think of i could think of one area in which well i'm speaking is that the next one this is not moralizing it's just like annoying and immoral

it's kind of the opposite last year i i like another one of the names of these companies are great it says hoping to move away from the current didactic hall monitor style style of democratic politics that turns off younger audiences, and media, which is the name of this company, and media will focus on directly funding influencers and co-producing their content, opening a creator talent agency by starting and starting by inking deals with four flagship creators, according to a business plan shared with the Times.

And then there's just one more in the name of one of these programs.

A program called Double Tap Democracy, meanwhile, is working with 2,000.

Is that mostly Eddie Gallagher?

Jesus.

What a name.

What a name.

Is working with 2,000 mostly apolitical creators who generally have smaller followings.

Who do you think

the funniest guy we could trick them into funneling money into?

Because obviously, this is just anything.

They announce something like this every two months, where they're like, the Democratic Party is going to try to fix its problem with, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And it's always something like this.

Something where where there's like six layers of like a talent search and new partnerships and flagships and advertising and whatever the fuck we always hear about stuff like this right what you know let's pretend that it's not just a uh

a money laundering program to get money to west exec what guy would we like to get this bounty to?

Ooh, that's a tough one.

I mean, do you have anyone in mind?

I was thinking about this, and the guys that we joke about a lot, you know, like the Mikey's or the what?

Oh, Mikey Miles would be so good.

That's a problem.

Like, if you gave him all that money,

like, something terrible would happen.

He should be in the abundance movie.

He should star in the abundance movie.

Do you, um, do you think he's lives in a rent-controlled apartment?

I don't think he lives in a legal domicile.

He lives in underneath the stairs somewhere.

It's really scary.

Yeah.

I think if he got $20 million, he would like hire Blackwater to kidnap some woman who he saw in the subway eight years ago.

So like, I don't think that's responsible.

That's what young men want, though.

That's what they're doing.

Well, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, he's solved his problems.

And like, the other guys, I don't know.

It's a similar problem, right?

It's the same reason why we want why, like, Branson's idea of Ho Island, like

the island for guys like Brian Pumper, where it's like they're too much of a danger to society, but we like observing them.

And they have like, they're like holograms they can interact with.

Why we that's why we need that is because you cannot give these guys 20 million dollars.

You guys be cracking eggs on all these regulations.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, I again, like, the idea of them going, oh, no, we spent all the money on Brian Pumper.

Why didn't we Google him?

It's very funny and almost worth it, but it's not, you know?

I think it would be funny to get them to give it to like a downdraft and favestar guy.

Like someone who got run off the site, not for anything truly heinous, but something like ridiculous.

You know, I think like that.

I mean, that would be, that would be a shift away from the moralizing tone if we like

bring back some of our canceled faves.

Yeah.

Favestar guys.

I don't know, like a reformed Ho Island type, like demonious may be good.

Or,

yeah.

Yeah.

The problem, that is the problem with all the crazy guys we like is

if they weren't a danger to society, they wouldn't have caught our eye.

You know?

I think

maybe those, you know, those guys who I've been posting who post like the fucking

like the PSAs for stupids, right?

For stupids by stupids.

Yeah.

I think those guys would be good.

Well, actually, I did see a comment from someone earlier today on Twitter that I thought was actually a great idea.

Then rather than trying to sort of reverse engineer a liberal Joe Rogan, they should invest money in you, Felix,

to create like a content mill of cute animal videos on Facebook to sort of ingratiate yourself to Facebook moms who could be open to, you know, more liberal politics if they see like eight or nine videos of seals or bilterongs every day.

Binturongs, I believe they're called.

You know, you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah, the yeah, the bear cats.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, bear cats.

Yeah, I mean, it would be pretty funny if they gave me $20 million.

What would we have to do?

Just start an LLC.

By the way, I love love Israel and I think it's the only democracy in the Middle East.

And I think we have to, I think we must support it.

We must support Israel.

It's the most important thing.

I think that all old people who are.

I'm so sick of anti-Semitism on the left, by the way.

It's got to stop.

All the old people that live in rent control departments are like a cancer on this country.

We need to chop the tall trees.

And by that, I mean anyone in a rent control department.

When I think about an 80-year-old in a rent control department, their body, I just close my eyes and I see like a rat or an octopus.

an octopus gripping around the economy

we do got to get to the certain to Sirota second but but Felix I got one more article for you and this one is really good you ready for this one I think I know which one this is Fetterman activated

I didn't think I didn't think after like weeks of like huge big profiles documenting his mental breakdown could get any funnier but they just keep coming up with articles on this guy and there are so many fucking great quotes in this.

And he keeps talking to them.

Like, if

this article came out about, like, what a buffoon you are, and it's so bad that, like, your wife has to come out and be like, yes, he can tie his shoes.

If that happened, like, it's to the verge of you having to resign.

You then talk to people for the follow-up?

The headline, this is in the New York Times from last week.

Fedderman, often absent from Senate, says he has been shamed into returning.

So, like,

first of all, imagine being a senator and being like being capable of being shamed into doing something or shamed into doing your job in this case.

But it says here:

when Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, showed up at a hearing on May 8th with Sam Altman, the chief executive of Open AI, his colleagues were surprised to see him.

Until then, his chair on the dais of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee had sat empty all year.

But under intense scrutiny about his mental health and ability to function in his job, Mr.

Fetterman has been in damage control mode, attending hearings and votes that he had been routinely skipping over the last past year.

His colleagues, some of whom privately described him as absent from the Senate and troubled when he is there, are trying to be supportive.

Good thoughts, Senator Fetterman, Senator Amy Klomishar, Democrat of Minnesota, said encouragingly after Mr.

Fetterman finished his questioning Mr.

Altman.

Good thoughts, Senator.

Good thoughts, Senator.

That's a very noticeable choice of words.

Love that thought, Mr.

Fetterman.

When I saw that it was Klobucher,

I would give anything to hear her unfiltered thoughts on him.

Yeah.

Mr.

Fetterman does not enjoy participating in these hearings that he has sat through in recent weeks as he seeks to prove that he is capable of performing the job he was elected to do until 2028.

In fact,

at a critical moment for the country, he appears to have little interest in the day-to-day work of serving in the United States Senate.

In an interview, Mr.

Fetterman, who represents 13 million people, said he felt he had been unfairly shamed into filling senatorial duties, such as participating in committee work and casting procedural votes on the floor, dismissing them as a performative waste of time.

Instead, he said he was showing up because people in the media have weaponized his absenteeism on Capitol Hill to portray him as mentally unfit, when in fact it is a product of a decision to spend more time at home and less on the mundane tasks of being a senator.

Okay.

More time at home, like John, we read the article.

I'd love to spend more time in my, I think, I think his family is the one giving all, like, uh, telling everyone to the Senate, you've got to get him in this Sam Altman hearing.

Yeah, he's been a fucking nightmare around the house.

He's walking, he's doing figure eights for eight hours in the living room.

Oh, my God.

That has to,

you know, how mad wives get about, you know, carpet trauma.

Yeah.

Think about the big eight in

all the linoleum in their house.

They've weaponized his appazantias.

All right, so here's the code from Federal.

My doctor warned years ago, after it's public that you're getting help for depression, people will weaponize that.

That doesn't sound like something a doctor would say.

Hey,

just so you know.

Yeah, yeah.

This is like a doctor you go to a doctor for seeking help for clinical depression.

He's like, All right, before we get started, I just want you to know by doing this, everyone's gonna turn on you, right?

Yeah, just so you know, uh, I'm really proud of you for getting help.

No one else is.

In fact, they're all your enemies,

including maybe your family.

They might be recording you.

Uh, he added, It shook me that people are willing to weaponize that I got help.

Why?

Your doctor warned you.

I love this doctor.

Okay, John.

No one likes to hear this, but they're all going to laugh at you.

Okay, Dr.

Dr.

Wicked?

He was an outspoken supporter of Israel after the October 7th terrorist attack and started picking more fights to the left.

His pro-Israel stance gave him a sense of purpose on Capitol Hill and a job he otherwise did not enjoy.

And then at some point in the middle of last year, he pulled even further back from participating in many aspects of the Senate, like attending committee meetings, casting votes, and holding town halls.

This became the Belichick girlfriend story of politics.

He quipped it with a lot of people.

It's another thing in the news, dummy.

It just keeps going and going.

After his discharge from Walter Reed in 2023, Mr.

Fetterman embraced a role as a stigma-busting spokesman for the power of treatment and used his challenges as an opportunity to bridge partisan political divides.

Red or blue, if you have depression, get help, please.

You said it.

Yeah.

If you have depression, just stop doing your job.

Just withdraw from life entirely.

Yeah.

Just fuck off on all your responsibilities.

I would call what he is stigma busting.

I think it's the opposite.

Yeah.

I think it's

brought some much-needed stigma back to all of this.

Yeah.

Mr.

Fetterman, who has said that being away from his family is heartbreaking and the worst part of the job.

says he missed votes to spend more time at home with his children.

Just two weeks ago, we covered an article about how he fucked off on his kid's birthday party to visit the grave of someone he knew in 1993.

What is it going to mean next year, John?

I missed all my votes, so I could either for my family.

Also...

I don't know why you're covering a story about me missing another birthday and a once-in-a-lifetime hot air balloon trip to take.

The ambassador to St.

Kitts.

When I had my near-death experience, I realized that you have to do bucket list items every day.

One of my bucket lists is a hot air balloon.

But I guess you want me to go in my grave regretting.

He seethes over the idea that he must show up for Monday night votes, a staple of the Senate calendar, often known as bed checks, a term he finds paternalistic and demeaning yeah i'm sure from when he was at the laughing academy yeah no i have negative associations about it

he thinks showing up for a vote they're going to make him take pills or something

it's it's the meeting no no show me your tongue mr fennerman say ah did you swallow those

it's the meeting if you don't need it

which you clearly do john

He says,

the votes I have missed were overwhelmingly procedural.

They're even called bed check votes.

I had to make a decision.

Getting here and sticking my thumb in the door for three seconds for a procedural vote or spending Monday night as a dad-daughter date.

Ew.

I would go visit my dad instead of a throwaway vote.

He said.

Wait, is it dad-daughter?

Are you the daughter?

Is it your dad?

What the fuck are you talking about?

Get your lie straight.

Like, hearing likes to make me dress up as a girl.

What?

Hearings also seem to him like a waste of time senator i mean like you know that that i i honestly can't really disagree with the senator but you know what like you're elected to be a senator so yeah i don't know what the else you're doing with your life so what like i like like just like seeing you like shuffle around dc feeding ducks and stuff like in your giant basketball shorts just like staring at the ground like do some work she's just like even if it's a waste of time just show up you loser i repeat myself again but John, were you drafted into this role?

No one warned me there's a bunch of stupid bullshit that you have to do as a senator.

You know, those three months a year where we work, we have to look, you know, most of it is just looking busy.

If only there was, there were multiple books written about this.

It reminds me of Kenny Powers in season one of Eastbound and Down, but like, he gets done with his first day of work being a substitute gym teacher.

And he's like, being out there in the real world, you know, working a job takes it out of you.

And he's got like six beards,

like just littered about the living room of the house he's living in.

One of my favorite,

I love how the Surrounders would always do just like, they would use something like a flashback or something like very,

they would use it two or three times ever.

And they only one time do they let you hear a characteristic monologue.

And it's when Vito has to work an honest day.

Oh, yes.

Oh my God.

He's just like, don't check the clock.

Don't check the clock.

Five more minutes.

And he's like, he's like, should be an hour gone now.

And like, it's like one minute as time has elapsed.

Oh, my God.

I was talking to Brendan the other night about how much I like the Vito subplot, like the Johnny Kick subplot.

Because like, I love it because it shows that like his one chance at happiness or like being a normal person is undone by having to do a real job for like five minutes.

Yeah, that is.

And then he's just back to New Jersey, kills a guy along the way for no reason, just because, like, and ends up being tortured to death by Phil leotardo because he had to like saw wood for like an hour that's it's not like even it's not his kids it's not anything it's exactly this

just the idea of like working five days a week

there are so many funny things in the v like the thing he says when he gets caught for the first time it's a joke guys it's a joke

I was talking to someone about this where it's like, what if it was?

Like, Like, what if there was an entire storyline that Vito is doing these awesome pranks?

And that's...

He's dressed in like the cruising outfit with like the leather policeman's hat and vest.

Guys, it's a joke.

What kind of joke would it be?

Like on who?

I mean, maybe he was right.

Maybe there were a bunch of awesome pranks he was doing.

But also, I like...

When Phil's wife is just nagging him about killing Vito without saying it, and she's like, Father said there's nothing gay about hell.

And Phil goes, that's a good one.

He didn't think of that himself, I guarantee you.

Sorry, just back to Fetterman here.

It says,

hearings also seem to him like a waste of time.

Senators question witnesses in order of seniority, leaving Mr.

Fetterman, a first-term lawmaker, feeling that by the time his turn comes around, there's nothing left to ask.

He has told people.

Oh, yeah, none of his awesome questions

he said listen to this he has told people it feels like making a plate out of the dregs of a buffet bar what a perfect analogy for that

being in the sentence like eating in a buffet when everyone's already taking all the bread rolls this is he's taking all the all the other fried chicken

no one has used a more

macaroni salad yeah no one has used a more revealing metaphor since bill maher was talking about israel and he's like like, he's like, somebody's going to slap a bitch when she gets out of the Palestine.

Palestine is like when a hooker starts going through your wallet when she thinks you're asleep.

First, they want the West Bank.

Then they want your watch.

Okay.

It has my favorite line of the whole piece.

So it says,

Mr.

Fetterman has also foregone events in his state.

He has avoided hosting town halls with his constituents because he does not want to get heckled by protesters.

I just want to be in a room full of love he has told people that i just want

that is literally from mom's basement dude a room full of people who actually love you is always that's way different than a room full of sharks that are hungry as a house

clout sharks man this clout is funny

says that i just want to be in a room full of love a room full of people that actually love you is way hunger than a house full of sharks that are hungry as fuck.

It's like, he's like, well, okay, we all would like to just be in a room full of people who love us and or to just be adored by people.

But like, John, like, in the article, it says, like, it's like at every possible turn, you've just been like, I think we should kill all Balestonians.

I think all that.

I mean, they're like spoiled milk.

Just got to throw them in the garbage.

Go on to the buffet that's full of good food.

If they didn't want their kids to die, maybe they shouldn't have started reading the Quran.

Despite attempts from his friends in Congress to draw him out,

Mr.

Fennerman still does not attend weekly Democratic caucus lunch in the Capitol.

He quit the caucus group chat, he said, because he couldn't figure out how to turn off the notifications.

And most of the conversation

was in the middle of the day.

Did you know how to do anything, John?

Jesus.

Wait, you love this.

It says, it's not like they were on a chain planning to bomb Yemen, he said, referring jokingly to leak signal chats among top Trump officials.

It's mostly just happy birthdays.

Some days it's just emojis.

You know how he does

the birthdays.

He hates.

He can't stand it.

What is his issue with them?

Like, most people in that chat don't even know it's their birthday.

I'm sure you could become the locus of attention.

Like, you already are.

Everyone is already like, John,

how can we get you to stop,

you know, wandering wandering into the duck pond come to you know the moderate caucus bowling night and you're like he's like just don't point to it just throw balls and pins go down it's just pointless what the no one even cares if you win or you strike

i just wish i could be in a tilto whirl full of my dad

Why isn't everyone my fucking dad?

I could bowl a 300 and everyone would still hate me.

I just want to be in the teacups with my daughter.

I want to be in the Gravitron with my father.

I want to play a whack-a-mole with my grandfather.

He's fucking dead.

Speaking of his friends in the Senate, really, really cool dude, Senator Bernie Moreno, Republican of Ohio, said of Mr.

Fetterman, Chuck Schumer is a drooling moron compared to John Fetterman.

Mr.

Fetterman was offended at the suggestion that his Republican friends were exploiting him for political purposes.

That's insulting and patronizing to say.

There's no political upside for them to be nice to me.

they realize what it is, and it's a smear.

I love it.

It's like there's no reason for anyone to be nice to you.

It certainly isn't my personality.

That's it.

So that's it on Fetterman Activated.

The best line for that Fetterman fake RXK song is: I'm the worst member of the Democrat Party.

That's the real RXK syntax.

Oh, man.

The Democratic Party, how much does it cost for an RXK nephew beat placement?

It's probably like $20 million.

Yeah, less than $20 million still.

Yeah, like a few hundred now.

They should just get him to make the Fetterman, Fetterman activated song for real.

Oh, my God.

That would be so good.

Instead of doing a triple standard, instead of all the references to doing Molly are replaced with Hal Dahl.

Yeah, Hal Dahl.

Or some

extremely strong tranquilizer that they give to like fucking zoo animals or something.

Salidomide.

Well,

yeah.

Good luck to the Senate friends on

helping your man out

during his depression quest.

If you are out there

on the hill, can you please try to get, like, do a Project Veritas style secret recording of Amy?

Just ask her what she thinks about Senator Dum-Dum.

She cannot be like in her

like, imagine if one of her, like, millennial staffers was like, oh, I need to take the day off.

My grandparent died, or like, my cat has to go to the vet.

She would, she would fucking destroy them.

So to see this oaf shuffling around being like, I can't vote on this.

I got a daddy-daughter day.

It's so, the daddy-daughter date really just

grossed me out.

Is that like signaling?

Is he signaling to like evangelicals?

And he's like, maybe.

Yeah, like some purity ball kind of thing.

I don't know.

That's that's always gross.

See, like, I would just say, like, I would rather just get dinner with my daughter.

Right.

Yeah, I just, I hate that.

We're about to date with my daughter.

Ew.

I'm sorry, I missed the budget vote.

I had to visit pet cemetery.

Hamster died 30 years ago.

Still thinking about that.

Talking about about my staff with it.

I have Netflix and Dad with my daughter.

And then

after that, I want to visit the memorial site for the Hindenburg.

Fucking bullshit tragedy that no one cares about.

Before I go on with the blimp, I've got to pay respect to all the people who died in a blimp.

Every day I'm

thinking about the blimps, thinking about dying in a hot air balloon.

But it hasn't happened yet.

I wish it would.

I want to visit Arthur Morgan's grave.

He's a hero from history, and we don't learn a lot in schools because he's white.

And I just think that's bullshit.

Oh, the humanity.

Yeah, yeah, best of luck.

Yeah, good luck, John.

All right.

And one final final note before we sign off for today.

A reminder that our summer t-shirt designs are available for purchase at chapotraphouse.store.

If you want to be looking fresh and fit this summer on the beach, at the party, on the block, in your car, in your bed, alone,

in a blimp, in a hot air balloon with Mr.

Fetterman, you're going to want to check out our new summer t-shirt designs at chapotraphouse.store.

All right, moving on,

let's finish out the show with an interview with David Sirota and Arjun Singh about taxes.

Let me tell you,

folks, we are back and it's time to talk for those two certainties in life: death and taxes.

Though they await us all, over the last 50 years, the wealthy have done their best to avoid both of them.

Joining us to speak now about this phenomenon from Lever News, it's our friend David Sirota and Arjun Singh.

Fellas, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having us.

So

the new podcast series you guys have is Tax Revolt, which takes like a sort of the last 50 years or so of a sort of tax revolt against the idea of income tax, against pushing tax cuts for the wealthy.

And up until very recently, this has been sort of the spine that connects the GOP and the conservative movement of the last 50 years.

Now, the show

suggested

that may be cracking up at the current moment under Trump too.

But I just like, before we get into the history of the anti-tax rebellion, the men behind it, and the ideology it promotes, I'd like to start in the present with the budget bill currently working its way through Congress, Trump's big, beautiful bill.

David and Arjun,

how would you describe the content of this budget?

And does this represent the culmination of anti-tax, like anti-government efforts?

Or is this represent in some way like a break with the orthodoxy of the anti-tax religion?

I mean, it completely represents the anti-tax movement because this bill only makes sense if you either want to completely dismantle the government and ruin a lot of people's lives, or you are ridiculously rich and you want to pay no taxes.

Like if you take the idea that governing is about being responsible and utilizing the government to kind of take care of your country and whatnot, nothing about this bill actually makes sense.

What this bill is, is a hodgepodge of all of the different swirling parts of the Republican Party, which, as you were saying, well, is just defined by like all these people hating taxes.

They might not like each other.

They might not agree with each other, but either they hate the government or they don't want to pay any more money.

And so what is kind of hilarious about all of this now is that after Trump made this big play to do this like Pat Buchanan, I'm a secret populist.

I'm a working class crusader.

Now he's like, oh shit, a lot of the people who voted for me actually lean on government services.

Did you guys realize that all these people like having Medicaid, like having housing assistance?

So that's what I see this bill as, Will, is that it's just like a hodgepodge of all of the kind of the worst traits of the GOP.

It's taking people off of vital services it's irresponsible spending it's kicking up the uh the military spending it's raising money for the stupid border wall and it's just doesn't make sense there's nobody who says that it makes sense except either if you're in the cult of trump or you just yeah you want to you hate the entire government you want to get rid of all the the good things about it and maintain the military and the border wall i mean obviously like it's become sort of a cliche in american culture that taxes are the worst thing ever everybody everybody pay hates paying taxes tax season it's like everybody gets nailed to that cross and everyone feels like they're getting ripped off yeah and i mean obviously like there's a lot of uh ideology and like sort of a movement behind that idea but like as far as you know the world goes or comparable nations americans really do it doesn't seem like we get a lot in return for our taxes statement so like where

like this this antipathy to taxes like how does that translate from being like basically the sole province of robber barons and billionaires?

Like, how does that filter down to like regular people who just like see a huge chunk taken out of their income by the federal government?

And they're like, well, gee, I don't have a nuclear missile.

What am I, like, what is this going for?

I think it has to do with the fact that the entire concept of government has come to represent in people's minds the things that they don't like about government.

And a lot of the things that people do like about government are part of what I think has been called the so-called submerged state.

So, the submerged state are all the ways the government benefits us that are kind of invisible.

In fact, you could argue that the best parts of government should be kind of invisible.

You're not noticing that they are government.

I mean, the classic example is like the roads or the subway system just being good.

Like,

when you call the DMV, getting your car

or whatever government document you need to do business in your community, having that be a smooth process, you're not necessarily noticing that as government.

It's the more invisible it is, the better.

So you don't necessarily think that this is what I'm actually paying for at the end of the year when I have to sit down and deal with paying my taxes.

Now, I do think.

that is coming up against, hey, as Arjun just said, hey, the government does provide lots of people, people Medicaid, lots of people in Republican states, lots of Trump voters Medicaid.

This is why I think you see Trump himself saying reportedly,

essentially, don't touch Medicaid at all.

Now, Trump is, there's clearly some bizarre situation where Trump is saying that, even as the bill moving forward through Congress would substantially cut.

Medicaid, would essentially fund massive tax cuts for the wealthy through cutting this program that the Trump voters

and really lots and lots of voters, whether you're for Trump or you're the Democratic voters or whatever, that lots of voters really, really like.

So I do think this process is not over.

It got through the House.

Even Trump is saying, hey, I think the bill might change a lot in the Senate.

I think what he's saying is that this is not the final product because we haven't seen what the politics and maybe the political backlash to this is going to be.

But for it to be a different outcome, I think would mean having to have the fundamental anti-tax paradigm of the Republican coalition be broken apart.

I mean, we wrote an op-ed about our tax revolt series where we started with this quote from Bari Weiss, which really, she was kind of joking about how tax cuts really are the glue that holds that side,

that party together.

She said, quote, here's the quote.

It was at a Federalist Society meeting.

She said, quote, I am a gay woman who is moderately pro-choice.

I know that there are some people in this room who don't believe that my marriage should have been legal.

And then she said, and that's okay, because we're all Americans who want lower taxes.

And the room kind of laughed, ha ha ha.

But actually, what she was saying was a truism that what holds the Republican coalition together are tax cuts.

And if If you need Medicaid cuts to finance those tax cuts, that's what you're going to get out of Congress.

And in order for that formula to change, if it does change, you're going to have to deal with not doing those tax cuts,

which is a fundamental threat against the glue that holds that whole coalition together.

I think, David, something that I want to return to what you said, Will, because I think that's a really important point at the heart of our tax revolt series, though, is that a lot of people who pay taxes feel like they're getting screwed over because they don't see, you know, if you want to call it to use the corporate term, your return on investment.

When you're living in a country and you're struggling to pay for everything and you see a government that either does not speak to those things or you fundamentally ask yourself, why do I hand over all of this money and I don't see anything?

That was what the conservative movement was trying to play on, which was that the tax code is unfair.

And what they wouldn't focus on is it's unfair because people are actively rigging the system.

But they saw that all of the people saw that.

They would say, you know, our wealthy friends have fancy accountants and they don't have to pay as much taxes as me, who just has to work a regular job.

And they managed to take control of kind of the discourse and use that in a way that you see similar to like Elon Musk and Doge, which is like.

taxes fund all of the terrible things that the government does.

So shouldn't you just get rid of them?

And the Democrats, rather than offering kind of a cogent theory as to saying there could be a lot of waste and there is a lot of waste, things are not managed.

Well, you're right.

The tax code sucks and we're just going to cut your taxes too.

And so I think that's a very important thing that the public rightfully identifies that they do pay taxes and it's not being managed well.

But the conservative argument is to kind of get rid of all of these things.

And that's kind of the heart of what this debate is about.

But I think that's an important point you brought up.

Yeah, I mean, because like you talk about the like submerged state and like just like, you know, taxes are a toll you pay essentially to like exist in a civilization, but then you may not notice the roads when everything's when the roads aren't pockmarked with totally, you know, craters or when the subway is working properly, but like all those things are breaking down, and we still have to pay uh premiums every month to a health insurance company.

So it's just sort of like, what's the return here when it's all going to, I don't know, the Pentagon and border security.

I mean, if you look at the like the most recent budget, everything and all basic services that government provides are being cut.

And

then all that money is going to a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget and border security.

I mean, I think it speaks to

the negative bias about, not negative bias, but as you allude to, you notice government when it's not working, right?

Like you know when the subway breaks down or when, as you said, like the road has lots of potholes, you notice that the government is not working and you say, why am I paying my taxes for this if it's not working?

I think part of the problem is that what does work in government,

what we do inherently value if we don't necessarily notice it, isn't really like sold regularly to us.

We're not really reminded of it.

And I think of like as a good example, like the Biden administration.

I mean, it passes the Inflation Reduction Act.

Certainly not a perfect bill.

Certainly lots of problems in it.

But there were some really good things in that that the Biden administration really didn't spend a lot of time kind of selling, reminding people what it would mean.

Now, there's also an argument that, listen, investments take a long time to pay off, right?

You're making five, 10-year investments on a six-month to one-year political election cycle window.

And

those two things are out of sync.

But I think over decades, the paradigm has been you only notice government when it does bad things, when it's not achieving, and yet you do certainly notice every time in your paycheck that you are paying taxes.

And it does go back to a story we tell in Tax Revolt, which is about this sort of Santa Claus theory.

Jude Winiske,

the journalist, the conservative journalist,

wrote this essay back in the 70s about the idea that essentially the New Deal Democrats always got to play Santa Claus by coming up with and offering spending programs that

ended up being very popular and branding the Democrats to those Santa Claus gifts.

And he essentially argued that the Republicans should be the Santa Claus of tax cuts.

That tax cuts could be the gifts that the Republicans sold.

And I think that's a good idea.

Yeah, and you said like a truism in politics was that you don't shoot Santa Claus.

You never shoot Santa.

Exactly.

Like acknowledging that the government spending on programs like Social Security and like, you know, the New Deal era of government was very popular and couldn't be attacked directly.

But like, it's interesting, like, that they created that the tax cuts would be their version of Santa Claus.

Like, you're giving something to the people, but in doing so, you're also actually attacking in an even more effective way those New Deal social programs by removing the, you know, the funding for them.

Well, and also with this bill, you're actually not giving most people a tax cut.

Specifically, the big, beautiful bill, which I kind of love that that's the name of it in actual law, is that it gives a massive tax break to the wealthiest people.

It cuts all of the services.

And there was an analysis, I think, by the University of Pennsylvania.

Everybody else, specifically everyone who makes less than $100,000, is actually going to see more of their tax burden go because they're going to have to make up for some of the services that they're not doing.

So in the Santa Claus theory, it's like now the Republican Party is playing Santa Claus, but everyone's just getting coal except for the richest Americans.

So that's another reason this bill just doesn't even make sense in that theory.

They're not actually giving most of us a tax cut.

They're making most of us pay more money.

And like, but do you think that like for people who make under $100,000 a year, do you think it's like they just hear the $1.7 trillion tax cut and they assume that they're getting some money back?

No, I don't think that because I think if you look at polls, this bill is not that popular.

It's not popular at all.

And actually,

when you look at tax bills in the initial months of Republican presidents, from Reagan all the way through Trump's first term and now Trump's second term, that tax cuts from Republican presidents as they start out their term have become successively more initially unpopular, right?

Reagan starts with

the Santa Claus theory, a very, very popular set of tax cut proposals, and also, of course, bringing down the rates from much higher rates to lower rates.

But then you look at where Reagan started with his tax bill in his second term.

less popular inherently, less foundation, a smaller foundation of popularity.

Then you get to George W.

Bush.

His tax cut, the first tax cut that started out, started out not very popular at all.

Trump's first term in his first tax cut was unpopular and remained unpopular.

So I think, and the same thing for this, the big beautiful bill.

So I guess there is this, there's what happens in Congress and in the political system.

And then there's like what's popular among

people.

I mean, there was a poll that showed 70% of Republican voters say they think taxes should be higher on the rich.

So you have the Republican Party, the actual party in Congress and in the White House, essentially at odds with the Republican voting base.

Now, how salient that is among the Republican voting base?

Will the Republican voting base like punish at the polls Republican politicians who support tax cuts or these kinds of tax cuts?

That's hard to say.

But I'm just bringing it up to say that I'm not sure the average voter who makes, you know, 80 grand, 100 grand, I'm not sure they think the beautiful, the big, beautiful bill is so beautiful.

I will say that one thing on that is that I, and this is a nuance we're trying to pick apart in the tax revolt series, is that on a broad basis, this bill is very unpopular and cutting taxes for the rich is unpopular.

But when you get down to some of the more specific things, and these are policies that I don't think really do actually add up or make sense and will be beneficial.

But if you take something like no taxes on tips,

there is a poll that came out from Gallup that said about 80% of people were comfortable with something like that or with no taxes on overtime.

you know 70 of people in 2023 were showing that and that's i think part of the way that the conservatives try and message this is saying we're trying to help you out too is look at these things that we're doing they're specific to you but the total totality of what this bill is is a massive tax cut for the wealthy and when it's positioned that way and framed that way, people understand it.

They understand what this thing really is.

But I think what the conservatives try and do is they try and hit the, you know, the lower income people by offering no taxes on tips, no tax on overtime.

I did see one interesting kind of take on the no taxes on tips, which said, if everyone hasn't been reporting cash tips, I used to be a bartender and so I know this world well, for their entire time, and all of a sudden everyone's starting to report $25,000, which I think is the exemption you get.

Is that not like a big giveaway to the IRS who's been defunded to not go after Trump's allies, enrich people, to start showing up and start looking for all the fraud and the tax code and whatever, hit these people.

Because this is what the administration likes to do: make a big show, do a lot of nothing, but then have the headline, IRS finds fraud and whatnot.

And it once again contributes to the idea that everything is broken and bad.

And who's one at the end of the day, all of the tax cheats at the top of the code?

By the way, just because we're talking about the tip thing, one thing that we reported that's very interesting,

I think it's the same now.

The early version of the bill essentially gave the Treasury Department almost full power to decide what a tip is.

Like, think about, think through that.

Like, here's a question.

Is the carried interest that a private equity mogul makes off of investing your money

into a private equity scheme, is that now going to be a tip that faces no tax?

Right.

I mean, I know that sounds like insane, but like giving the Trump administration just complete and total control to decide what constitutes a tax-free tip.

I mean, you know,

the imagination can run wild.

You should be able to tip your landlord.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Well, okay,

I want to return.

I want to go into the past now because your series begins in like the like the man who started this movement.

It came out of, like all great things, it came out of Southern California in the late 60s, early 70s.

And what I found interesting about this is that like, this anti-tax movement really sort of took off like and took purchase in a post-Watergate GOP that was looking for a new direction and like looking for a way to rebrand itself as sort of a more sunnier, optimistic party to get away from like the you know dour chip on his shoulder, Ronald Reagan.

But it began with a very, very interesting character who I, in spite of myself, I found myself liking quite a bit.

A man named Howard Jarvis, who is one of my favorite personality types, a Mormon who drinks.

So, yeah, could we begin?

Who is Howard Jarvis?

And, like, where did he come from?

And, like, how did he start this movement to this revolt against taxation?

Yeah, he's a very bizarre, weird guy.

So, one of the first things we did was we read his biography.

Who knows how much is actually in there, but he claims to have sparred with like famous boxers like Jack Dempsey, flying in planes and whatnot.

And

his story starts that he's this business guy in Southern California.

He owned like a latex factory and he's just like your quintessential

mean-spirited, angry conservative.

He owns a factory.

He owns homes.

He's having a great life.

And he's like, the rotten government won't let me live a happy life.

And so he, he has a fervent hatred of taxation.

And he says that it starts because the latex in his factory was confiscated to help fight World War II.

Never mind the fact that, yeah, no, no, no.

And he says that he's all angry and his big latex factory is confiscated.

And one day he went back and all the latex was sitting there, turned into mush because the government didn't even bother to use the latex.

So he wants to destroy and take down the government.

But he figures out that people are really angry about the tax code because Watergate era is happening.

People are already uncomfortable with the government.

It's like the new Hollywood era in the country.

You've got all of this kind of changing cultural values.

And he goes out on a campaign to all of these mostly white people.

And he says, Look, the government's becoming too liberal.

The country's getting too radical.

And you've got Democrats in power trying to do that.

So stop paying your taxes.

They're already trying to screw you over.

And there was a very real problem happening in California, which was that property taxes were rising because they were trying to modernize and centralize their tax code, which meant that it revealed that a lot of county assessors were super corrupt and taking bribes to like lowball people's taxes.

So modernizing it ends up in

essence, raising everyone's taxes.

And Jarvis goes out there and he says, look at how high your taxes are.

You're already paying too much, which was a very real thing people were feeling.

And he swirls it in with your hodgepodge of conservative values.

Oh, and also, should your taxes pay for the integrating school system?

Should your taxes be paying to teach kids all of these horrible liberal values, like, you know, about the civil rights movement, which was ongoing at the time.

So I guess just about racial equality and whatnot.

And it works.

I mean, he

kind of has this joyful spirit to him.

And he goes out on TV and he tries to, you know, echo the Boston Tea Party and these populist movements.

And everyone buys in onto it because in the moment, everyone is feeling really screwed over by the tax code.

And I think the really big lesson to learn from this is that it's all about what you tell people and how you tell people about that.

And when someone comes in with a persuasive argument and they're not met with a counter argument, this is what can happen.

So the California voters vote to knock down their property tax code, which now has resulted in a completely lopsided, underfunded state struggling with education.

Yeah.

Was that Proposition 13?

Proposition 13.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cause you talk about the efforts to get that on the ballot.

And it's interesting because

the business elites of California were opposed to Proposition 13.

But like, how did Jarvis get momentum for this?

And how did he eventually get the wealthy business elites on his side?

And why were they opposed to this getting rid of a property tax?

So a lot of the business owners actually inside California were taking advantage of the kind of gamed tax code, but they were fundamentally like they relied on the government too for their services and to kind of prop up their businesses.

And I think that a lot of the business elite just felt a general discomfort because they work hand in hand with the government.

I mean, property taxes fund the construction industry that is very powerful in California.

But Jarvis saw that there is power in making this a populist message.

And so to his credit, he actually did hit the ground and he would stand outside malls and all these places.

And he got a big group of volunteers.

But he went through things like homeowners associations and home, you know, homeowners groups and whatnot.

And in that, you actually do have a well-funded apparatus of a lot of wealthy people.

And so what you start seeing is that the business community as an organized force, might be a little uncomfortable, but wealthy people in California who see an advantage to their own property taxes getting cut start to kind of work with Jarvis's movement and push that towards the top.

Like, David, you mentioned like Proposition 13, like the effects of it are still felt to this day in California.

Like, what situation has been created by this, like, no new property tax regime in California?

Well, I mean, look, it's

everything from them having the state having trouble funding its schools to the state having trouble funding its uh its fire its fire infrastructure i mean look california complain that there's this there's this narrative about california is overtaxed uh but the fact is is that in a sense the infrastructure for a very large population hasn't necessarily kept up now The conservative movement would argue that it's all a product of democratic mismanagement of the money that comes in.

But over the course of decades and decades, when you essentially limit essentially a resource stream, then the resources can't keep up with population growth.

And California, for decades, population growth was a big factor here.

By the way, we face this in Colorado.

I mean, Colorado,

and I should mention, like Proposition 13 was replicated all across the country.

There was an anti-tax ballot situation in Massachusetts.

There was the most successful one here in Colorado called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which essentially only allows a certain amount of tax money to be collected.

And if it goes beyond any sort of arbitrary limit, you can't collect it and use it to fund the social services and infrastructure to keep pace with your population growth.

And then what ends up happening, of course, the Republicans will say

the failures of government are proof that the Democrats are mismanaging government, not that we don't have enough resources to fund what we need.

And in California,

and again, here in Colorado, it's baked into the...

into the statutes and into the Constitution here in Colorado, where it's hard even for the legislature now to get around it.

I mean, Will, think about this.

In California, you need two-thirds of the legislature to pass any kind of serious, real tax reform or tax increase.

Another structural barrier to better resourcing government.

And again, the conservatives would say, well, that's just the Democrats have to live within their means.

But at a certain point, at a certain point, the resource needs meet reality.

I mean, just a few details about Howard Jarvis, the character that I found fascinating.

First off, he has a cameo in the movie Airplane.

Yeah, yes.

I mean, I knew the Zucker brothers were conservative, but not, wow, that's a real deep cut to put Howard Jarvis.

Have anyone seen the movie Airplane?

He is the guy in the cab who's left, he gets left when the meter's running and the guy leaves to do the whole movie.

Yep, yep.

Another really fascinating detail about him is that his affinity for wearing cheap suits bought at a discount store that he would often set on fire by leaving a lit corn cob pipe in his suit pocket jacket.

So he really, I mean,

he had the populist spiel down pat.

Just get on stage with a shitty suit that's on fire because your corn copy is a good thing.

He's got the Winston Churchill, like, to be great is to be gross and disgusting.

And so he would eat like creamed corn while like drinking straight vodka in Utah, except, you know, pissing off all the Mormons over there.

Even Grover Norquist said to me when I interviewed him that the first time he met Jarvis, he just wanted to see if he would drink because that was all he had heard about him.

I mean, you mentioned the gross detail about the food, that his favorite food food was one can of Del Monte creamed corn mixed into a cup of whole milk and simmered just below boiling before being dumped in a bowl.

Now, David Arjun, I don't know if you've seen the film Twin Peaks Firewalk with Me.

Oh, yeah.

But his daily meal is quite literally the Garman Bozilla that the man from another place, all your pain and sorrow, that's what he consumes.

And I can't think of a better representation of pain and sorrow than creamed corn boiled in milk.

I mean, knowing that this guy's an LA fixture, you kind of understand that David Lynch is coming of age in this era.

And I'm like, of course, all of his movies feature weirdos like this, if this is what Los Angeles was like back then.

I mean, that part of the tax revolution, I have to say, like, I just thought of like, what, what would happen to my stomach if I even ate like one serving of that?

Like, it would be.

You would be radicalized against the government.

You'd be so angry and sick all the time.

You'd be like, I hate everything.

And then the last detail about Howard Jarvis's life is that in 1979, he nearly won Times Man of the Year, but lost it at the very end to Ayatollah Khomeini.

Once again, the Ayatollah has to just come for everyone.

So, like, moving into the like into the 1980s, like Jarvis gets the ball rolling.

Could you talk a little bit about, like, you mentioned the conservative journalist who came up with the Santa Claus theory, but he came up with that theory at a lunch meeting with the economist Arthur Laffer, who sketched out for him the infamous Laffer curve on a napkin.

David, because you talk about who Art Laffer is, one of the most

absolutely Dickensian names I've ever come across.

It's like Pure Dickens naming this Oakam economist Laffer.

But what was his Laffer curve?

And

how did they provide

an intellectual justification for the idea that cutting government revenues will give everyone, will cause actually more money coming into the government.

So it's right after Watergate.

Jerry Ford is president.

Gerald Ford is considering

momentarily

a bill that includes some tax increases to deal with

the budget, to essentially balance the budget.

And Jude Winiske is at this meeting.

I think it was at the Old Ebbett Grill, I think,

which is sort of this old-timey restaurant right near the White House.

And Winitsky is at this meeting with Arthur Laffer and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

Rumsfeld was there, right, Arjun?

Right?

Was Rumsfeld?

So, so there's two, there's two, there's two meetings.

There's Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney meet when Laffer sketches out the curve, and then there's one where Winitsky meets with the Congressman Jack Kemp a little before that.

Yeah, okay.

So they're at this meeting, this first meeting, with

Cheney and Rumsfeld.

And Winitsky is there.

I guess to write it up or

for whatever reason, he's there and he witnesses Art Laffers sketch this curve on a graph on a napkin, which, by the way,

Winiskey ends up keeping the napkin.

And I think the napkin is in the, it's in the Smithsonian, I think.

Yes, it's in the Smithsonian.

Although later, Dick Cheney questioned if that was the real napkin.

Are they trying to get out of it?

Are they trying to evade his own role in all of this?

He's like a laugher-napkin truther.

But anyway, the false napkin.

Yeah, the curve.

There's no bullet holes in there.

I must have not been there.

So the curve essentially argues that the more you cut taxes, the more government revenue will come in because the tax cuts, in theory, will spur more economic activity, which will generate more tax revenue.

Essentially,

there's some the argument is there's a sweet spot where if you cut taxes enough,

the economic activity will generate so much economic benefit and activity and resources that it will actually be a net benefit, a net positive revenue intake for the government.

Now, obviously,

that has never been borne out by what's actually happened.

There's been a series of huge tax cuts which have drained revenue, which have not resulted in surplus revenues coming back to the government.

Although Although the argument from

Laffer and his acolytes is, well, that's just because we haven't cut taxes enough.

But the point is, it's this argument that tax cuts and deficits are not in tension with each other, that tax cuts can actually essentially help reduce deficits because they will spur so much economic activity, which will generate essentially

a return of public revenues to the government.

It's a completely made-up theory.

Well, yeah, I mean, I guess my question about this and like the whole supply-side economics, voodoo economics that you get into, is like, do the proponents of it actually believe this or do they, or like, did they, or did they understand that like their ideological mission is to bankrupt the government?

And there's like, it is a moral principle that the wealthy should be able to keep as much of the profits that they make as possible.

There are definitely two strains of this.

So when we talked to a lot of the economists who had helped inspire Reagan and all of that, one of the economists we we talked to, Richard Ron, he was the head of the Chamber of Commerce.

You know, he said and he admitted to us that we were, quote, flying blind, that the data wasn't there, that this was a model, and that it hasn't really borne out.

But when you ask them, why is it not bearing out, they'll blame everyone and their mother.

It's Clinton's fault.

It's Obama's fault.

It's, you know, sometimes George Bush's fault.

So they will acknowledge that inequality isn't good right now, but they'll say it's because the implementation is wrong.

But I think that the other side are people like a Grover Norquist, who we interview in our fourth episode.

He's this anti-tax activist.

He runs Americans for Tax Reform.

He was just blunt about it.

He's like, I want to defund the government.

And when I asked him afterwards, you know, what about prosperity?

He's like, I don't know if everyone's going to be better off.

Most people are probably going to be worse off.

I just want this world.

So I think that more people are kind of in line with the Norquist side of this issue, which is very Darwinian.

Just get out of my life and I don't care about others.

And you still have some, I would say, misguided individuals who think that we haven't found the sweet spot on the laugher curve.

And if we kick taxes down even more, we'll have so much productivity.

We're going to have like an excess surplus.

Well, I mean,

David, you mentioned earlier that like the

purchase of this idea that like tax cuts pay for themselves or that tax cuts make everyone prosperous or tax cuts fund the government

has been waning over the decades.

It's becoming less and less believable.

Even the people promoting it seem to have a hard time believing it.

But

that gets us to a current moment where there does seem to be like, look, with Trump too, like there seems to be him and the people around him

will occasionally and quite sort of forcefully appear to break ranks with Republican orthodoxy,

especially on something like taxing the wealthy.

There is this like, you know, pseudo-populist Steve Bannon side that says that, yes, we should raise taxes on the wealthy.

We may need a new tax bracket.

And I think it's like, it's sort of because like, I mean, they've, I don't know, I guess they've just realized that so many wealthy people in this country are just liberal Democrats.

So it's okay to

take Steve their money away from them.

But

what is the current state of this?

Is this a real schism or is this just for show like so many things else in the Trump administration?

Like like J.D.

Vance is another example of someone who's like be like, I'd be fine raising taxes on the wealthy people.

Is this just like something they're doing because they understand that

the national mood is in favor of populism and is against wealthy elites?

But like, is there any indication that they're going to like legislate or govern?

I mean, the Big Beautiful Bill would suggest that they are not serious about this.

Well, there's two X.

It's one of two explanations or maybe a mix.

One explanation is they realize they're out of step.

with their even their own base.

As I mentioned, you know, that poll, 70% of Republicans, Republican voters say they think the rich should pay higher taxes.

So Republican leaders may be increasingly uncomfortable being at odds with that sentiment among Republican voters.

And also, obviously, when you look at, you know, the CBO last week reported, showed that

this would essentially raise costs for the

bottom income earners and give a massive tax cut, this bill in totality, give a massive tax cut to the wealthiest.

That's out of sync with a party that is rhetorically trying to present itself as populist.

And so they're looking for a way to say, hey, look, we are being populist.

I mean, Arjun mentioned tax cuts on tips as an example of trying to

argue that they are, even within this bill, this monstrosity, that they are...

there are some Santa Claus benefits

of so-called populism to their base.

But I also think

the floating of tax cuts on millionaires.

I mean, even Trump's, you know, at one point for like a minute, tweeted out or put on Truth Social, you know, hey, maybe the Republicans should consider tax increases on millionaires.

Maybe that is something we should consider.

So it suggests to me that they feel perhaps a little bit of shame.

But then the cynic in me also says what they've floated

is actually not really where the super rich's money actually is.

That there was this proposal floated out there, okay, let's preserve all the Trump tax cuts, but let's say let the top income tax bracket rate revert back to Obama tax rates, which, yes, I guess technically would be some kind of marginal tax increase on people

on income above that marginal rate limit.

But the issue is that the economy has so radically reshaped over the last 20, 30, 40 years that most of the really super rich, like the people who really call the shots in the Republican Party, we're not talking about, you know,

the petit bourgeois or the small business class, we're talking about the billionaires, that their money isn't, they're not getting a W-2, right?

Their money is in assets, right?

It's like that Wall Street line from Gordon Gecko.

You know, I don't make anything.

I don't develop anything.

I just own.

right like that's where the actual money is and so changing the upper income tax rate the highest income tax rate, while, yeah, that's a fine proposal.

That's like a fine idea.

It probably should happen.

That if you're not messing with capital gains taxes, if you're not messing with wealth taxes, if you're not messing with closing the private equity tax loophole, the carried interest tax loophole, if you're not messing with the pass-through income tax, you know, S-Corps,

LLCs, and the like, then you're really not actually

doing anything populist.

And so the takeaway might be they're pretending to float out these ideas that sound pop, hey,

we're serious about real tax reform that hits millionaires, but they're not really serious enough to actually go where the like Republican Party power brokers and financiers were not really willing to go after what they care about.

Well, I guess that brings me to like

another question of the present moment.

Like the current Democratic Party, which seems like

they can't wait to abandon anything associated with the new deal or the great society abundance is the new jive that that they're on right now but like what what what is like what is the current democratic party's attitude towards raising taxes and like conversely what would a uh like a a a sane government be like a liberal progressive left-wing whatever you want to call it what would tax policy look like if you know david sirota were in charge of it i i would say this i mean first of all i i actually do think for the most part that when it comes to uh taxes this is one area where most of the Democratic Party, obviously you're going to have, you know, you had people like Manchin,

Kirstinema on various

specifics oppose, but raising taxes on the wealthy, I actually do think most Democrats in Congress are generally supportive of, at least

to the point of revert back to Obama-era tax rates.

I think it gets somewhat dicier in sort of the consensus of the Democratic Party about, you know, are they willing to actually close the carried interest tax loophole?

The Democrats have a lot of hedge fund private equity guys who fund their party as well.

That's why that tax loophole, you know, has existed and that that loophole has never been closed, the one that allows Warren Buffett to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary, as Buffett famously said.

If I had to wave a wand, I mean, look,

the first and foremost thing that should be on the table, it was on the table 20, 30 years ago,

when I was one of the first employees at the Center for American Progress, like

a lifetime ago when I was in D.C., was let's just make all income income.

Why are we creating an artificially lower tax rate for income you earn on passive investments?

Why is that a lower tax rate than the income you earn?

It seems like it should be a higher tax rate because you didn't work to expect any of it.

Exactly.

You're making money in your sleep.

There should be a higher tax rate than that.

And that had been floated as sort of a Democratic Party position.

Like all income is income,

whether you made it in your sleep or whether you, but I agree with you.

I mean, it should be higher than that.

We should actually preference the earnings that you make in the workplace, if you will.

But that's not on the table at all.

That's like nowhere to be found.

And I do think, look,

that's a commentary on where our politics is.

Our politics, you know, we did a previous

series called Master Plan, which is about how campaign finance laws were deregulated to essentially create a political system where the wealthy get whatever they want.

Part of what the wealthy gets is a tax debate where the farthest so-called left of the tax debate is let's go back to Obama era income tax rates.

Instead of the sort of left edge of the tax debate being like, let's make all income taxed at the same rate or let's tax passive income at a higher rate than income you earn in the workplace.

That's just nowhere to be found in the the debate.

And that's what's bought and

purchased by a campaign finance system that empowers the voices of the wealthy over everyone else.

Arjun,

I want to close with this question.

Like,

if one regards

how a society taxes its citizens, like who gets taxed, where, why, and like for what reason, like, would you say that's a fairly good reflection of what the leadership of that society values and sort of the overall moral calculus of like how we determine what is valuable and what is not.

If you believe that's to be the case, how would you describe what are the current U.S.

government values and how it sees, I don't know, its own citizens?

I think the current U.S.

government seems to want a society that looks quite a bit like the film RoboCop, where we have like androids and robot police just pushing down on citizens in like a completely dystopian,

defunded society.

I mean, the idea of this bill is, it's almost maddening in a way because the premise is that the government's too wasteful.

We have to cut all this spending.

And yet they don't even want to cut what are some of the more wasteful parts, which is like adding drones and palantir technology to monitor the border wall.

It's like, that's what we're trying to say as a society right now.

We're more interested.

That's a priority.

That's a priority.

It's the priority.

Whereas like Medicaid, like, can people see the doctor or not die is not really a priority.

Hey, grandma, I don't care that the insulin that Joe Manchin's daughter makes is too expensive.

You're going to pay $35 for that, but we need to send another drone to Yemen to kill someone, or we need to send another drone to Israel to help Netanyahu wage his campaign there.

It really is an overt.

I mean, it's a slap in the face to so much of society to say that we can't spend on college and education and healthcare because it's too much money.

Hillary Clinton once told Howard Stern that the idea that we can pay for education is like handing out free chocolate milk to anyone.

And yet, magically, whenever we need the money to do all these things that lots of people in society seem to not want, you know, sending bombs to places that hurt children and murder children, we have all the money in the world.

The deficit doesn't matter at that point.

And that's the overt message that we're sending.

And yes, I actually think our tax system is a perfect reflection of our society, which is if you're rich and you are able to take advantage of the government and all the advantages that they gave you and you were born into that status, you have the world as your oyster.

And if you're just trying to like live your life and live your job and do what you need to do to survive, well, screw you.

I think that's a good place.

It puts a fine point on it.

It really does seem that things that kill people are prioritized over anything that might help people live.

It does seem we are sort of system of.

What's the old saying?

The purpose of a system is what it does.

Yeah, what it does.

Yeah, it seems like we're sort of a society of death.

I actually got a

question for you, though.

Will Liam Neeson's going to do Naked Gun.

He's going to play Leslie Nielsen's character.

Let's get Grover Norquist in the system.

I was going to say, who's got to be the Howard Jarvis in the, of course, airplane remake starring Liam Neeson.

Is it Grover Norquist or is it Steve Bannon?

I think it's got to be Norquist.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nice deep cut like that.

Maybe we could have, you know,

Elon Musk, get Elon Musk in the movie.

Maybe.

Oh, yeah.

They already had him in Iron.

Maybe it's Nordberg.

Yeah.

All right.

Thanks so much once again to David Sirota and Arjun Singh of Lever News.

The series is Tax Revolt.

Gentlemen, thanks so much for taking the time.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

I got the jab.

Chop it up with Tom Friedman, then we split the calves.

Before I had a sub, I was incognito tab.

Weigel left the post, now the haters mad.

Puts him a four on the map, cook the Sarota and lab.

Follow on exits to everything at.

I'm in the Lotus, I'm feeling like David Sarota.

I'm puffing on Yoda.

I'm feeling like David Sarota.

Don't look up, it's legit.

I might run up with a stick.

Well, it depends.

I'm in the bins, mask off, dealing Lorenz.

I might chase a check.

I might pour a cup.

Like Sarota, when he corroded, don't look up.

Some were saying block, but screaming.