The Inaugural Episode
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the first edition of Look Through the Chaos, the podcast. My name is Duane Patterson, the producer, long time producer of the Hugh Hewitt show on the Salem Radio Network, a contributing writer and columnist over athotair.com, and a contributing writer now for look through the chaos.com. I am joined on this podcast as I will virtually every podcast by my partner in podcasts. That would be former congressman John Campbell, Used to represent Southern California in the United States House of Representatives for, I don't know, 6, 8, 10 8 years, almost a decade.
Duane:To serve the state of California, as their representative in the assembly and state senate for a few terms before that. Used to be a car guy, is a, cow farmer in Kansas, is an Arizona resident now. We'll get to more bio in a second. Hello, John. Welcome to the Look Through the Chaos podcast that we didn't think we'd ever get started.
John:Hello, Generalissimo. Yes. And, this has been, percolating now for several months, but we're finally here. And we're ready to launch it today and to tell people about what we're doing. Go ahead.
Duane:So the what is this podcast about? This running weekly conversation that John and I have had for, gosh, it's been going on almost a decade behind the paywall for huge, show subscribers as a podcast, we made the decision to kinda launch it publicly. It's now available Apple, Spotify, wherever all the normal podcasts, podcasts, where all the kids are doing the podcast these days, that's where you will find this. And we hope you subscribe to it, download it, make sure you tell your friends and neighbors about it. We want this podcast to grow and prosper because what is this podcast about?
Duane:As the name suggests, look to the chaos. John, as a former car guy, as a former business guy, as a former state representative, as a former US representative, as a former chair of a subcommittee on the, House Financial Services Committee has seen all sorts of things and looks at the world both domestically and internationally as we're in, we're in a mess. There is a lot of chaos out there. There's a lot of conflicting data. There's a lot of conflicting media reports, and people are confused of what to think about things and how to think about things, and that's what John's here to do.
Duane:My job is to be his Sherpa and help kinda lead him through and make him sound interesting, which is sometimes a struggle, but we try. John is, in fact, let's let's give people the, you know, 2, 3 minute, bio of who John Campbell is and why they should care.
John:Yeah. So one of the things is, of course, as you can see, I get no respect on this podcast whatsoever from, generalissimo Dwayne Patterson who, will talk about whether I am entertaining or not and suggest that I farm cows instead of having a cattle ranch, as suggesting that perhaps cows get planted in the dirt and and grown up. But, in fact, my, background is that in addition to all that you mentioned and no reason for me really to repeat that, I'm also a certified public accountant, a CPA, so therefore, accounting and and economics and all that is in my my background. And as I often said when I was in Congress, during the time I was in Congress, there were 6 CPAs in the house and the senate, if you added them all. So out of the 535 members of the house and the senate, there were 6 CPAs.
John:There were about 250, roughly, attorneys at that time. And so, therefore, I considered it a fair fight. And so that is where we CPAs that's where we CPAs land on this. So what this this podcast is going to continue is, I started to look through the chaos.com website a little over 2 years ago, and I I started it because I could see that in various dimensions of the world, economics, political, cultural, societal, international relations, that there is chaos heading, that there's conflict. There's more more disagreement, more schisms than there has been and I am, to tell you I am almost 69 years old.
John:And so I have been around for a while and been involved in politics for a while and been involved in a lot of things for a while, but many of these schisms are much deeper and wider than anything I've seen in my lifetime. And so, what we wanna do is look through them and try and figure out what is happening and where is it going to go because it doesn't matter what what era you look at that was an era of bad things or chaos or whether whether it's the depression, whether it's a war, whether whether it was the civil war, whether it's the American revolution, whether it was various things in American history or any other country's history, When difficult things happen, some people prosper through them, some people get through them. What we wanna do with this podcast is help you help ourselves, help us all try and anticipate what's coming, when it's coming, what it means, and how we manage through it. Now that said, I will disclose to you that today, hopefully, in the future, I won't sound like you do. I have a miserable disease of some sort.
John:Is this just a cold? Is it the flu? Is it COVID? Is it RSV? Is it some other thing that they made up?
John:I don't know. But somehow, I think perhaps, because I did drop into California for a few days, that governor Gavin Newsom that would be to me.
Duane:That would be this guy. Now you may be asking yourself, why did they play the titanicorn when they mentioned Gavin Newsom in California? John, why why do we do that now?
John:Well, this actually comes as you mentioned. We have been doing this on another platform for 10 years. And so when there's certain people that we think are particularly worthy of derision and of of, of being made fun of, if you will, then we because because often what they say and what they do is so different, from one another and that we feel that they need not a theme song, but they need something. So whenever in this podcast, I say Gavin Newsom.
Duane:That would be that guy. It doesn't mean we it doesn't mean we scored a goal in hockey.
John:It does not. It means that that he is basically the captain of a form of the Titanic, which is currently the state of California, which is so heading for a, an iceberg or you could argue has already hit the iceberg, and now there's a question of how quickly it's going to sink. Whichever you prefer to to look at, that is, that is what we think. So we will do that. And as you as you mentioned, generalissimo, we also find the press, what was what we used to call the mainstream press, was it isn't nearly, a a derisive enough, term.
John:So I call them the propaganda media now or the propaganda media that has a wide platform. And so
Duane:I kinda call them I call I kinda call them regime media. It's it's pretty much regime media.
John:Oh, I like that. Oh, I like that. That's good. That's good. But, we for a long time, we used Chuck Todd as emblematic of the regime media.
John:Yes. And we played that. But Chuck Todd left, what, NBC News just, oh, about 6 months ago. Ago.
Duane:Well, he's still technically there as an adviser. He's just no longer on air every day or on Sunday on Meet the Press.
John:Yeah. So we've been searching around and and, by the way, you could we should mention, you can find me on act at at look through chaos. And in this case, through is t h r u, look through chaos. Where can they find you, Generalissimo?
Duane:At radio blogger, all one word, r a d I o b l o g g e r, radio blogger.
John:Yeah. So if you have a suggestion for someone to replace Chuck Todd, you can let us know. But for the time being, we think that George Stephanopoulos.
Duane:Of the current crop of Sunday shows, that's actually got a show, he kind of is the embodiment of everything that we conservatives find wrong with regime media. That's pretty much it. It does it mean that Chuck Todd is the worst ever in in, of media propagandist? Now John may actually argue that point. I don't.
Duane:I think there's plenty of examples where you can have an individual that gets the gold medal for the day for the stupid media take. But Chuck Todd was a recognizable enough entity and he was so consistently in the bag for Democrats that he became the living embodiment of everything that you wanna point to and say, see, that's what's wrong with media. That right there. That was that was Chuck Todd.
John:Yes. And and I agree, that he was definitely not the worst. He's absolutely not the worst. But what drove me crazy about him was the way he would pretend to be impartial. Yo.
John:We are the media. We are impartial. We don't take sides here. We're not this and that. BS garbage.
John:I one one of the things Dennis Prager always pointed out is that, he learned to read, Russian, the Cyrillic alphabet. And he always said that Pravda, which was the official mouthpiece of the Soviet Union, right under the word Pravda, had a in the masthead, it said, the official newspaper of or whatever publication of the Soviet Communist Party. You know what? Fine. At least they're they're straightforward about it.
John:NBC News and Chuck Todd should have said the official mouthpiece of the Democratic Party or the official mouthpiece of Neo Marxist and socialist everywhere or whatever, but they don't. They don't. Arguably Pravda is more honest than they are because they go, oh, no. No.
John:No. We are we are impartial. I have NBC News. I am George Stephanopoulos with ABC News. We are we are very impartial.
John:We we don't take sides here. We just present the news as facts as facts. That's all we do is only facts the truth. The truth. Facts the truth.
John:Just facts the truth. That's all we do.
Duane:So We don't. So just an just an example of this from, you know, yesterday and today, in the last 24 hours. This is appearing on Tuesday this week on super Tuesday. We, of course, won't know any details of what happened in the in the vast array of primaries, But this is coming on the heels of the news on Monday that the supreme court in a very, surprising move issued a very rare, decision on a Monday when they weren't sitting, and it was a 9 o decision that the Colorado Supreme Court cannot be a bunch of rogue pirates and decide what the constitution means all into themselves and throw Donald Trump off the ballot. And, basically, it was a unanimous decision.
Duane:So how does a mainstreaming media or regime media as I like to call it, how do they react? Sun Min Kim, who writes for the Associated Press, The Supreme Court restores Trump to ballot rejecting state attempts to hold him accountable for attack on capital in 2021. Yeah. John, I don't think that's exactly what the court meant and said.
John:No. And, funny, you bring up the Associated Press, and this is an example of what's happened with media. You and I probably grew up with the associate they were straight up. Right?
Duane:They used to be at one time. When I started my radio career back when the earth cooled, yes. It was it was it was a fairly straight up organization.
John:Yeah. They would just they would just I I
John:mean, that's where you went to get just just straight up news, you know, without commentary or whatever. They recently were they were they were broke. They were bankrupt. They were done, finished. They were bought by a leftist nonprofit group.
John:So they're owned by a nonprofit now that is run by avowed absolute leftist. So the whole point of the associate press but most of America doesn't know that. They see AP on something and they, oh, you know, this is just straight straight up news. No. It's full blown propaganda.
John:By the way, I really like your regime. I'm I'm gonna use that. I'm gonna pretend I made it up. So
Duane:Well, so you're basically gonna you're gonna be you're gonna be Hugh Hewitt because Hugh Hewitt has done that.
John:You were gonna say
Duane:Because he's done that for 30 years. All my best ideas, he'd be just Bigfoot.
John:That is exactly why I threw that out there because I was aware of that. I knew you Yeah.
Duane:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
John:Knew you would say that. But but, anyway, got this supreme court decision. Let me say this about it, however. The fact the fact that it was unanimous was a big deal, that it wasn't Oh,
Duane:it was a huge deal.
John:Huge deal. And in terms of things that lead towards chaos, this is not one of them. This is something that is that is going the other way. Mhmm. That those justices said, okay.
John:This is a bridge too far. This is one step or 2 steps, however, beyond what we ought to be doing. As much as they hate Donald Trump and they do, those 3 justices, as much as they want, Joe Biden reelected, and they do, they felt that this was a bridge too far here. For whatever reason, I haven't read their
Duane:It's a Pandora's box. It's a Pandora's yeah. I I actually have read it. It's a Pandora's box to all sorts of problems. Now there was a concurring opinion by the 3 lefties that didn't wanna go as far as where the rest of the court went, but they agreed with the bottom line.
Duane:And they're they're, they're they're not dim enough to overlook the fact that this can be used against them too and all of a sudden you no longer have a functioning, democracy anymore. I mean let's look at what the court actually did. The court said the voters get to decide on whether somebody is on the ballot or not. If people are so upset at one person for allegedly committing something that he's never been actually accused of or indicted on. No no federal charges have been filed against Donald Trump for for insurrection.
Duane:So if you still think that Donald Trump behaved poorly, it's real simple. You don't have to vote for him. Nobody's putting a gun to your head to vote for him. The Supreme Court is simply saying that it is up to the Congress to decide the penalty if there needs to be a penalty if and only if it has been adjudicated that he actually committed an insurrection, which none of that has happened. And if you let a state just act rogue, who's to say Florida can't throw Joe Biden off the ballot?
Duane:Or who's to say a swing state like, you know, Virginia? Let's say, Glenn Youngkin got enough people together and said Joe Biden committed an insurrection and and threw Joe Biden off the ballot in a swing state that might affect the election but here's the problem we go back to regime media. Our friends over on NBC have, all sorts of, people with which to cherry pick for who's got the worst media hot take of the day. Ken Delaneyan is their court reporter, and this was Ken Delaneyan on MSNBC moments after the decision got handed down on Monday. It was play cut 14.
(Audio Clip):Well, it's pretty quiet actually outside the court today. Not a lot of, protesters or or onlookers. Look. In terms of what I think find fascinating about this opinion is that for many, many months, serious people entertain the idea Pause for
Duane:a second. There. 14th. Pause there for a second. He's the NBC News court reporter correspondent, and look how he started his report.
Duane:What I find fascinating is That's not his job, John. His job is to report what happened. No. He's not the host of the show. He's not being brought on as an opinion columnist.
Duane:It's not what he thinks about the decision. It's he's supposed to be there to report what happened, and he's already sticking, his his foot into it.
John:Yeah. And in other regime media, what I saw today was in in the past when it's not unanimous decision. So particularly if it's 63 or even 54 in a in a direction that the regime media doesn't like. The headline is always, you know, Republican appointed Trump appointed court Bush Trump appointed Republicans controlled Supreme Court makes this decision, makes that decision, blah blah blah. Today, the regime media did not say in unanimous decision.
John:You had to read like to the 3rd or 4th paragraph to read that it was unanimous.
Duane:Bury the lead. Right. Bury the lead.
John:Because because that doesn't fit their narrative. Right? If it's unanimous, that means their friends on the court voted for this, and that's not what they wanted. That doesn't fit their narrative, so they either just don't report it or they bury it.
Duane:So let's get back to some of the interesting things that this podcast is going to be about and pick up some of the other news of, the early part of this week. There is an Axios story from Monday morning that January inflation pickup eats into income gains. With the new year came the return of a bad combination inflation eating away, basically all of the pay gains. So if you've got a cola or some kind of a, pay adjustment based upon inflation, and you got, you know, a 3%, 4% bump in pay, Axios is reporting that, well, the personal consumption expenditures price index, rose 0.3% in January or 0.4% when food and energy was excluded, and it wiped out any income gains on average. John, you're the economist.
Duane:You you actually had people from the fed in in front of you in committee as a member of congress. Where are we going economically as we head into the, you know, the summer that the spring and summer of 2024, what's going to happen?
John:Gee, that's kind of a broad question. But but, anyway, I will, I will, we'll be talking a lot about economics in this podcast twice a week as we go forward. But, at the moment, GDP seems to be running fine. I often say that if people have jobs, they have cash in the bank, and their assets, which for most people are their home and their 401 k, are either going up or at least not going down, then they feel pretty good and they buy stuff. They go out to dinner, they go on trips, they buy cars, You know, they they they get a new TV.
John:They do things. So and that's where we are right now. Unemployment's low, 3 point something percent. The cash that was handed out in bucketfuls during the pandemic is winding down. There's no question that it's being spent out spent away, but it's not gone yet.
John:It's still considerably higher than it was pre pandemic. So people still have cash out there, and, obviously, housing prices have been on a rocket ship for the last couple of years. And they have, in a few markets, they've gone down a little, but they haven't gone down that much, and the stock market is at all time high. So all this leads towards generally good economic conditions or an economy that is growing. But inflation is the other side of this.
John:And what everyone, it seems, is talking about is the soft landing where, they say that, oh, you know, the economy stays rocking, but inflation comes down below 2%, and it's just Goldilocks and everything is wonderful. I don't see that happening. I think there are some storm clouds out there on the economic horizon in the future, but certainly as you just mentioned, Dwayne, in leading into this thing, there's a number of indications out there that inflation may have actually bottomed and that it may be ticking back up again. And part of it is exactly what they said. People's incomes have gone up, and so that's fine.
John:But then whatever those people do, whoever they work for, that company has to raise their prices or else the company doesn't make as much money, which companies generally don't like to do. So, so there's a lot of indicators out there that various things are still going up in price. So that the inflation dragon has not been slayed yet. And the experience of the seventies would indicate that this is the case. Inflation went way up in the late sixties, dropped for a while, went up again, dropped for a while, and went up again.
John:So, the Federal Reserve should not be presuming they should not declare victory on the inflation front too soon because there's a lot of indications that may tick up again.
Duane:There is another story out of the I think this is a Bloomberg story. The US national debt is rising by 1 trillion about every 100 days. In fact, the last two thresholds where we crossed over another trillion of national debt, since June of last year occurred almost a 100 days apart, we went from 32 to 33 and then from 34, we're 34.4. Now, Now I seem to recall about a 1000 times since 2021, Joe Biden in some speech or some, public appearance saying that how he cut the he cut the deficit by $1,700,000,000,000. Well, he's gotten 4 Pinocchios for that.
Duane:It didn't happen. There has been no cut to the deficit at all. We are spending more. We've always we've never not spent more, than we take in on an annualized basis adding to the debt going back, you know, decades, right? So with this national debt number, we saw reports that we were approaching $2,000,000,000,000 deficits again under Joe Biden's watch.
Duane:Well, if we're adding a trillion every 100 days well, you see, in my mind, John, we've got 365 days a year. If we're adding a trillion every 100 days, that means we have a 3 and a half $1,000,000,000,000 deficit. That's that's where my mind's going. Why am I wrong?
John:You're not. And, just to give a little old uncle Joe his due a little, remember that the government shipped out whatever, like, $6,000,000,000,000, some absolutely astounding amount of money in 2020 and 21 with the, with with COVID, with with the pandemic.
Duane:They wallpapered the country with cash. They had to to jump start the economy.
John:Well, not to jump start the economy, just to keep it from disappearing when everything was locked down.
Duane:Right.
John:So when Joe said he cut the deficit, what he say from that level? Well, okay. Duh. That was a onetime bunch of cash that went out. But everything else, he's actually, if you pull that one time cash out, all he's done is increase the deficit since he's been president.
John:And as you pointed out, the fiscal year for the federal government ends, well, you didn't point this out, but I am. Fiscal year for the, federal government ends September 30th. As of September 30, 2023, the deficit was about 2,000,000,000,000. And they said, well, we're gonna get it down. It's gonna go down.
John:Well, it's not going down. And it's not going down because tax revenues are are dropping right now. So they are below what they have been, and expenditures are continuing to increase. Now part of that is just old people like me on Medicare and Social Security living longer. Thank you.
John:I'm trying to do that, and and use using more Social Security and more Medicare as a smaller cadre of younger people pays in less. So that's part of it. But part of it is also the the CHIPS Act and all these other bills. I'm trying to remember the names of all. There were 3 major bills that Biden passed when he had control of Congress in his 1st 2 years, and they were like 2,000,000,000,000 or 3,000,000,000,000 of brand new spending.
John:And they were passed in 2021 and 2022. All that money is being handed out now. And even another thing, the Federal Reserve, which for a while was making money, and I just read this just before we got on this podcast, was Federal Reserve was making money and was handing that money to the treasurer, like 200,000,000,000 a year. Oh, wow. 200,000,000,000 a year.
John:The Fed right now is losing money at the rate of about 200,000,000,000 a year, And that is because the Fed holds a bunch of treasury bills at 1% and half percent when when they've when the interest rates have gone up. So just like if you held those, you would lose money on them. The Fed is losing money on them. So that's another bet, like, a half a trillion swing from a few years ago that's going on. So, yeah, that 3,000,000,000,000 is, a much more likely number than 1 and a half trillion or even 2,000,000,000,000 for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024.
John:And the problems that we'll talk a lot about in this podcast over time here is all that money has to be borrowed. And Yep. People who used to buy it, which are foreign governments, foreigners, and the Federal Reserve, none of those people are buying it currently. So that means, others have to buy it. So we won't get into it today, but the Federal Reserve is or sorry.
John:The Treasury is completely changing the issuance that they do, the, duration and maturity of treasury debt in order to try and cushion this. They can do that for a while, but eventually, this amount of money will catch up with them. And and, so we will get into some of that as this podcast
Duane:At some right. At at some point in time, the music stops playing and they run out of chairs. Right? Somebody's somebody's going to get caught. This podcast over the course of time will also talk about cars because John Campbell is a car guy.
Duane:He used to, own car dealerships. He owns a bunch of cars. He's got a bunch of vintage cars. He has fake cars. And when I mean fake cars, I mean he has what is branded to be a Ford Mustang, but it actually is a, 4 door actually, a 4 a 4 door with a hatchback, electric, sedan that Ford likes to pretend is a Mustang, but it really isn't.
Duane:But I've got a story for you, John.
John:This is my Mustang. You you you're you're speaking of my Mustang Mach E, which I love, which is a great card.
Duane:Mach as in m o c k.
John:It has it has, the the taillights. Mustang has little horse badges all over it.
Duane:Is it is it actually spelled out?
John:Very fast.
Duane:Is it spelled out m o c k? M o c k?
John:It handles very well. No. That is not it. But go on. Where were you going with it?
Duane:Daily Mail story for Monday. Electric cars release more toxic emissions and gas powered vehicles and are worse for the environment, finds a shock report. EVs weighs 30% more than gas cars, causing tires to wear out faster. The tire tread releases toxic particles 400 times greater than exhaust emissions. Just all sorts of good stuff wherever you read, John.
Duane:The, the EV, experiment seems to be failing spectacularly.
John:Well, it is, even the and and I own 2 of them, and I and I like them both. And I have said on our previous version of this called the after show that we did that, I I think they have a a purpose. I think they have a use. Not because they're saving the planet. They're not.
John:And the most, let's say, generous to the to the, environmental groups on EVs is that after a 100000 miles or a 125,000 miles, something like that, That an EV starts to be a little better for the environment than than a gas car, but it takes over a 100000 miles to even cross that threshold. That's the most charitable look at EVs. I think they have a use. I think they have a purpose for they're great in town. They're quiet.
John:They have a lot of torque. They're fast, etcetera.
Duane:You're in Arizona next to a golf course. Of course, they have a use. All electric cars have a use in a golf course.
John:I said some time ago that I thought they'd be 25% of the market. I was wrong. They are now at about 9 percent of the market. And they're going
Duane:topping out. They're going the wrong direction.
John:Because they're expensive, they're heavy, you they're hard to drive long distances, and they are depreciating in value much faster.
Duane:And they don't last that long. They don't last as long as a gas car does without spending a bunch of money into
John:it. Right. So so there is that. But one thing we have to make sure we cover is some action that our friend Gavin Newsom.
Duane:That would be this guy. Yes. Gavin Newsom.
John:It's not anything he did in the last week or so. It's something he did, actually, I think in 2022, or maybe 2023, but I think 2022 that he got caught at. Isn't that right?
Duane:Are you talking about the Panera Bread story? Are you talking about his his preferred his preferred treatment? Should we should That would Should we unveil the official, California, portion of the program?
John:Oh, you want oh, alright. Well, we could do that too. Yes.
Duane:We could do that. This is our official when when we shift to California news, and I'll explain in a minute
John:why. Nothing to do but turn around. I always thought there's someone coming for you.
Duane:Your state. If you don't be very, very careful and keep a very keen eye of what's coming, California as California goes. So goes the nation as a saying, is told, and it is actually factually true. It's backed up by reality. John, we we on our after show, when we did it behind the paywall, we've had 100, maybe 1,000 of instances where California did something just maniacally stupid and you mocked it.
Duane:And then sure enough, somebody at the national level started to pick up on it.
John:Yeah. And, in fact, Gavin Newsom
Duane:that would be this guy. And why do we say California is the Titanic? It now just ask you ask yourself this, question. If if you're out there listening to this podcast, and I hope you are and I hope you're bringing people into your eardrums to listen as well. If you, let's say, told your spousal unit that you are a little short this month and your spousal unit says, Oh, how much are we short?
Duane:You say, Ah, we're 38 trillion or 38,000,000,000 down for the year. Oh, okay. And then you come home a couple of months later and you say, you know that 38,000,000,000 I said we were short? Yes. I didn't carry over the one, and I miscalculated a little bit.
Duane:Well, how much are we down? A 120. John, that's unsustainable. You can't do that.
John:Yeah. And, the governor of California, I won't say his name so you don't have to play the horn again, but, he will he will have to deal with this in May. They always have a thing in the budget. They're called a May revise, which is when the he lays out the budget for the next fiscal year, which actually in California starts July 1st, and he will have to to to lay that out. But, getting back to what, the governor of California, said two things.
John:One thing that he said, which is why we bring up California all the time. He often talks about the California way, and we all know he wants to be president. It's absolutely obvious as all get out. He set himself on deck. He, you know, uncle Joe is is in the batting circle and or in the batter's box, and he's sitting there, and uncle Joe can barely hold the bat.
John:So Gavin Newsom, I did say his name that time. Oh, You you have to play it. I have to play it. You have to play it. He he he sat there.
John:He he's he did he's sitting there in the on deck circle holding that bat, swinging like crazy. So put me in coach. Put me in coach. Put me in coach. I'm ready.
John:I can be president. We can do this. But one of the things he's all said is the California way. He wants he's made it very clear. He wants to take the California way and spread it nationally, and it's just gonna be great.
John:So that means even bigger deficits and all this kind of stuff. But the the reason I brought him up and what he did recently is there is a law that was passed a year or so ago, where there's a minimum wage for fast food workers, only fast food workers of $20 an hour as defined.
Duane:Right.
John:$20 an hour. It goes into effect, I think, April 1st. Yes.
Duane:Right? And it's effectually it's effectually known as the $25 cheeseburger bill.
John:Yeah. Yeah. So, all the McDonald's employees, all the whatever. Now we know what these people are gonna do. They're gonna replace them with kiosks and all that kind of stuff.
John:But
Duane:And and raise the price of burgers. Raise the price of food.
John:And by the way, I did a test. Gosh. I did it 5 years ago now. I should do it again. I actually bought a McDonald's meal in Scottsdale, Arizona.
John:Got on the plane, came to to, Orange County, California and bought the same meal there the very next day, and it was 70% more.
Duane:Yes.
John:70
Duane:Yes.
John:Percent more for exactly the same food in, 400 miles apart. You know? Because that's that's what California's regulations and taxes do for you. And I was just explaining that the the meat, the price of the meat isn't any different. What's different is all the expenses that go into delivering that.
John:Well, labor, insurance, environmental costs, rent, electricity bills, gas bill, all that stuff. It's all so much higher in California. My sons still live in California. My electric rates well, let me put it the other way. Their electric rates, we actually compared the rates hour by hour, are 5 times what minority Arizona.
John:Five time. So if I have an electric bill of $300 and I run the same number of kilowatts in California, I'm gonna pay $1500 a month to run that same number of kilowatts. Unfricking livable. So people are leaving California. It's not just because of the taxes.
John:It's because of what And it's
Duane:not it is not that California is an energy poor state. We have resources literally pulling up from the, under the ocean and and rising to the surface in Santa Monica Bay. We have oil all over the place here.
John:And the climate is is is moderate. You know? That it's mild climate, etcetera. But so, what we found out about this bill was there is an exception, and the exception was written into the bill that I think it's as of a date in September in 2022.
Duane:Yes.
John:So, that, any fast food restaurant that bakes bread on-site, not including bagels, buns, There was something else in there.
Duane:It has to be it has to be an item that specifically can be sold as a bread item. As a bread item. So like a sub like a subway like a subway that bakes bread for their sandwiches, you can't just buy the roll. You can't just buy the bread, so they so they don't count.
John:Right. And they excluded bagels and something else that that you can't buy separately.
Duane:Doughnuts or something. Yeah.
John:Yeah. That you can, yeah, that you can buy separately in some place. So so excluded those. So if you bake bread, not a doughnut, not a not a, bagel on-site and sell it as separate bread on that date, then you are excluded. There is only one entity.
John:One rest entity, one restaurant, Jada Respa, in the state of California that met that criterion, and that would be Panera Bread.
Duane:Which just so happens.
John:Coincidentally, I'm sure, completely coincidentally that the CEO of Panera Bread is one of Gavin Newsom's biggest contributors. Biggest contributors. Now what's amazing is too, it's only as of that date. So when this was discovered, a bunch of people came out and said, well, okay. Why doesn't McDonald's just start baking bread and saying you can buy a bun?
John:You don't have to buy it, you know, or bread. We're gonna make bread, we're gonna bake it, and you can buy that separately because it only counts if you did it on that date. You can't start to do it later. So there's I mean, it's they this is the way the sausage is made. When you want to exclude a particular company, but you know that if you just put that name in there, it looks bad.
John:You do stuff like this, which is just so devious.
Duane:What? It it was it was their their outcome was, how do we give a break in this law for Panera and nobody else? So they had to come up with what's an exclusivity that Panera does that literally nobody else in the marketplace does, and they crafted the legislation so that it would be only applicable to Panera Bread. I mean, it's so
John:They can it it's unbelievable. So they can still pay their employees $15 an hour on April 1st, and everybody at McDonald's has to play has to pay 20. So it's absolutely unbelievable, but this just came out last week. So, mister Gavin Newsom is in a little bit of hot water on this. And and so what does he do?
John:He comes out and says, oh, no. They're not exempt. But they which is which is what it's amazing to me how these Democrats, they just say stuff that's a lie. They know it's a lie. We know it's a lie.
John:They know we know it's a lie. Everybody knows it's a lie, but they just say it because the regime media will will, challenge them on it, will Right. Question them on it. They'll just go along. So that's his way out where he says, oh, they're not exempt, but they are exempt.
John:And everybody agrees there. The lawyers agree there. Everybody agrees they are exempt, and but Aero Bread is not saying anything about it. But that is the way government works, in California. I remember, when, they there was a it didn't pass, but there was an initiative to raise property taxes on commercial real estate.
John:But it exempted apartments because the apartment people were huge Dems. And they came and said, well, you can't include us in this. And so the Dems said to them, well, if if we exclude you, will you support the bill? In other words, raising, property taxes on every other form of commercial real estate except us, and they said yes. So they did it.
John:So this so they had this proposal to raise commercial real estate, property taxes on everything except rental apartments, rental properties, and so the rental property people support it because they get exempted.
Duane:Right.
John:This is the way, it works in leftist government. It really is crony capitalism. It really is, leading democratic, business people make their money from the government not in spite of the government like Republicans
Duane:do. Last piece of business we're gonna do for this edition of look through the chaos, and again, we're gonna kinda go where the news goes and tie it to a lot of these overall themes. But the the subject of the culture and the requirement by government to try to force equity and inclusion and diversity and all these all these, big words. John wrote about a little bit last week in look through the chaos. He had a column called games, people play in within that column Was a subject of university waste and then black lives matter now at home Depot.
Duane:And within that talks about how the editorial board is missing, how the left manages all these things, like the, acronyms of BLM and ESG and DEI and all this kind of stuff. And I I I look at that and John has been a a fierce warrior for, attacking all these stupid DEI programs, all this woke agenda. That's he was one of the first people that I talked to about all the woke stuff. Well, we actually have a piece of good news to report again, not the chaos side, but a moment of clarity out of Florida on Friday, our friend Ben SAS with governor Ron DeSantis, supervising fired every single one of their DEI employments in compliance with state law at the university of Florida. It was a remarkable refreshing change, John.
Duane:Did you catch that story?
John:Oh, yeah. I caught absolutely caught it. And, there is a cultural war and an educational war going on in American universities right now because others are doubling down on this stuff. And, they they are, you saw where at Berkeley last week, they they were gonna have a Jewish speaker Yep. Talk about Israel and stuff.
John:And they he wasn't able to speak because the the pro Hamas Nazis, were out there and and started, the
Duane:And they are and they are modern day Nazis. They there is
John:They are.
Duane:There is no diss the same sensual difference between them.
John:They are. And the University of California, Berkeley is not saying anything. Not not a problem here apparently. And so you you have universities going in different directions. You have, Ron DeSantis, in my opinion, the best governor in America, starting to begin to turn the Florida State Universities around.
John:Whereas at the same time, you have Harvard, MIT, Penn, University of California, USC, the list goes on. It's more universities than not going deeper and farther into, this DEI stuff. And we now see we'll be talking about I assume you saw it's now getting into medical school.
Duane:Yep. I did.
John:Yeah. And one of those is Duke and the other one is UCLA where we now have evidence that they will
Duane:Your alma mater, I I remind people.
John:My undergraduate alma mater, UCLA, not surprising at all. It was it was half communist when I was there, in in the early 19 seventies. But, they're basically admitting I mean, they they've caught them and they've taken this stuff down but saying that, we're going to put, diverse doctors in there and if they make mistakes and people die, we we don't care. We'll just we'll just cover it up and we're gonna continue to do it. In other words, basically say what what the fundamental thing is here is is this country, are the universities this country, is the way this country operates based on merit or not?
John:Is do you, do you get ahead because you do something well? Do you get a job because you're good at it? Or do you get it because of the color of your skin? That is and because of your political positioning and because of your sexual preferences. Those are that's where that's a huge dividing line in this country going forward.
John:Are we going to be about merit, or are we going to
Duane:be about these other? And with that, that concludes the first edition of Look Through the Chaos, one of what we hope to be years of attempts to
John:like 12 I have like I have like 12 more topics.
Duane:I know. I know. In fact, you're gonna be writing a column at Look Through the Chaos. I'm gonna be writing something this week as well, maybe a couple things. And then we will be back right here and this, podcast wherever you, signed up, Apple, Spotify, wherever you, got the this edition of the podcast, it will be there and we hope that you put it into your permanent, feed stream, whatever you do, and don't miss a moment.
Duane:We will be back on the Thursday edition of Look Through the Chaos. For John Campbell, I'm Duane Patterson. See you, everybody.
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