Speaker 1: 0:23

Hello and welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast. I'm your host, jack Hopkins. Today's guest is William Taggart. William is a 30-year professional engineer and if there's anything that life has taught me, it's that engineers are solution-focused. They look at what works and what doesn't work. That's their whole game finding solutions. They tend not to get married to ideas or a certain concept or a certain philosophy about how something should be done or how to go about it. They are willing to ditch anything that doesn't work and embrace anything that will.

Speaker 1: 1:16

William is the author of Fixing America, an engineer's solution to our social, cultural and political problems. Now, if you are somebody who's never listened to Our Social, cultural and Political Problems, now if you are somebody who's never listened to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast before and today's your first episode you might come away from it thinking I don't know that. I can say for sure who this guy voted for. And in this episode that's kind of the point, because the thrust of this book is saying look, just because this party has had this idea and run on this concept for decades and it's very important to them, if it's not working, let's criticize it, let's ditch it and let's talk about the lunacy of continuing to run with an idea that hasn't worked or just isn't feasible to implement. And you'll find that the solutions offered in this book do not honor any particular party. In fact, on almost every point or issue cultural issue, societal or political concern, societal or political concern he talks about things that each party needs to give up and get rid of in terms of the agendas that they push, but he also talks about what each party needs to be willing to embrace.

Speaker 1: 2:58

I only got William's book in the mail yesterday and I had told him originally I wasn't going to read the book before we did this episode because I wanted to come from a know-nothing state of mind. Well, I guess I lied to him because I thought, well, I'm just going to just kind of take a peek and this was late yesterday afternoon, I guess it was and as I started reading, I soon found that I couldn't put it down. I found that so many of his concepts and thoughts on the various issues mirrored mine so closely, the difference being he had done the hard work, the deep research to back everything up, and it was really interesting and refreshing and I can't wait to dive back into the rest of it tonight. You are going to like this episode because it does something that's pretty rare today. It doesn't honor a particular party, it doesn't have a bias to it, doesn't have a slant to it, it's just an exploration of ideas and concepts, and you may hear me agreeing with some things or nodding to some things in this episode that make you go, or nodding to some things in this episode that make you go. What Jack's agreeing with that?

Speaker 1: 4:34

If there's anything I pride myself on, it is always being willing to change my position based on new and better information, and I've got to tell you there have been some points made in this book that are backed by the data, that have altered my thinking on some pretty critical issues. Not that they are not important to me any longer, it's just that how we go about solving them. That is what is a little bit different now, because somebody has showed me that, hey, you know the way you thought we had to do this. Here are the facts. That way has never worked and and it won't, and here's why. But here's the data on what will. So it's an interesting episode and if it's one that leaves you scratching your head, that's a good thing, because I've always said the worst type of episode or book that you can read, in terms of you learning and growing, is one where you agree with everything every step of the way, if it doesn't make you rock back and go I don't know about this and force you to think about it in more detail. It may be interesting, but you are probably not growing and learning. So anyway, with that, let's dive into this discussion with William Taggart, the author of Fixing America and the Engineer's Solution to Our Social, cultural and Political Problems.

Speaker 1: 6:31

Okay, william, I had told you in some emails that you know, when I get your book maybe I'll glance at the chapters, but I kind of want to enter this from a know-nothing position so I can really curiously ask you about the book. And I found that I'm going to still be able to do that. But I couldn't keep myself. I thought I'm going to peek at a couple of chapters and then I couldn't stop. A couple of chapters and then I couldn't stop. And I couldn't stop because what you have written just makes sense and it's so refreshing because so many of the books out there today, if they are written by somebody who voted Democrat, they're going to have a Democratic slant to them for their voted for. So I think what you and I have in common, even though what we've done in our lives are seemingly so different you as an engineer and myself as a change agent, helping people with their personal problems the thing that you and I have held in mind, I think that is the same.

Speaker 1: 7:53

People used to ask me, jack, what theory do you operate from, meaning you know, psychological theory or therapeutic approach? And my answer was always the same I don't. I don't. Theories for me in the realm I worked, are a trap. The minute I assign a certain theory, it's kind of the if all you have have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Yeah, right and yeah, so let's get into. I know you have kind of a foundational section in the front of the book that kind of lays out the um underpinnings the, the premise, and it's it's so.

Speaker 2: 8:45

My thing is coming from an engineer, and one of the phrases that drives me insane is when people say think outside the box. Well, when you're an engineer, you're tasked to build something that has a job to do, so the function is the first thing. You've submitted a budget. They've agreed to pay this much money for that task to be done, and then you've got a schedule they want it done by this date. So those three things define the box that engineers have to play in, and so you can be creative as hell as you want inside the box, but don't break the budget, don't go be late and, for God's sake, it's got to do what you said it would do. So this is the idea that those first eight chapters lay out. Okay, what's the box? We have to play it.

Speaker 2: 9:30

And the thing I'm coming to more and more is this the national debt can't be broken. You got to get, you got to work with it in the terms of the national debt. Um, climate change is the thing that first got me started in this, and I'll tell you that story in just a moment. And then it's. You know, this is America. We have the Constitution, we've had a balance between authority and responsibility and we've got to maintain that it's what's worked, so don't break that rule. And that defines the box. We need to find it, and I think our commonality is we're looking for solutions, yes, and we're not trying to lock in on an ideology. It's, hey, what works here, and that was really amazed me yeah, you know you, you bring up.

Speaker 1: 10:17

You said, I think what we have in common we're both looking for solutions.

Speaker 1: 10:21

Um, I will tell you something this whole influencer thing on social media was nothing I ever planned to do, but with it has come facing some responsibilities and obligations that I fear a lot of influencers never recognize. For example, one thing I've discovered at this point is, if I want to gain a whole lot more followers, right, all I need to do is fall in step with the democratic, democratic idea on everything, and that will assure me that write new followers. But when you think about the term influencer my responsibility, as I see it, if I'm going to be influencing people, I have a duty to influence them in useful ways, not popular ways, right, and sometimes popular, as I'm sure you had running through your head as you were writing this book. What's popular within the party and what works or what's sensible are at odds with one another, at least initially. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean initially, in the acceptance of the idea, they're not at odds with one another in terms of the uh outcome or that it, this idea, can eventually work.

Speaker 2: 12:04

It's just that in that acceptance period, but one of the big things I see that's wrong is we've become very tribal. We've become very much. We're in our group, we're in our media bubble and we don't venture out of it. And one of the things I make in the book is you've got leaders who are saying the other side is evil, they're deranged, they're mad and, as a result, people can talk with other people and make deals where they don't totally view, if they view the other side as intelligent and they can work to find a middle ground, but if you say the other side's insane or deranged, you're not going to talk with them. We've lost those discussions and, as a result, people live in these media bubbles. We've become very tribal and I think that's the big thing that's killing us right now. Because it's interesting the book was.

Speaker 2: 12:58

I never set out to write a book. What happened was in 2020, I was running a big oil and gas project through the worst of covid and at the end of that, I realized I've been working straight for 32 years at that point and I said I'm done, I'm broken, I've had enough, I gotta step away from this. And I stepped back and I had time. And one of the first things is when you're in oil and gas, you're, you're told we're burning the planet down. Our climate change is a hoax and I'm like, okay, I, for my own peace of mind, I need to understand this, and I'm tired of being told what to feel, what to believe. I want to look at the data right um.

Speaker 2: 13:41

so my career was built around two main things. One, I was either running big projects and having to get stuff built and that's part of you got to learn how to compromise, because you got to stay and play within the box and you got to figure out how to get it done. But the other times I would be given a problem. It's hey, this is broken, find out, why, fix it. So when someone says do the research, I've done the research. I've had to go, pull all the data, look through all the files and figure out, okay, what went wrong? Who pulled the wrong valve? What's going on here?

Speaker 2: 14:12

So I looked at climate change. I said, okay, let's look at this. And when I got done, there was a point where I went, okay, this is not the answer I expected. In the book I talk about how I didn't get the answer initially, once I started looking at population density and other stuff, I began to realize what climate change is. Climate change is real, but we're not burning the planet down, but we do need to make adjustments for it. And once I did that, it led me into immigration, it led me into lots of other topics and at that point I turned to my wife I said okay, this needs to a book, and that's when it started to be a book. But I never set out to write a book.

Speaker 1: 14:49

It's been a weird path, and you said something that is interesting to me, because you said climate change is real, but it's not burning the planet down, and what we've talked about previously is this idea that if you accept that climate change is real, you also have to accept that it's burning the planet down. Now, as your research showed, that's not the case, and I think what we see over and over again is when somebody comes in with something that clashes with the narrative, they want to boot them out of the, but you have electrical power lines that started the fire.

Speaker 2: 15:47

You have lots of brush and dryness that was left to thing, there was a reservoir that was allowed to drain down, there's a whole lot of other stuff and by claiming it's climate change, you excuse everything else. Well, that's not right. And the other thing is you've got to realize if you're building in that area and you're not building a fireproof house, why.

Speaker 1: 16:10

Good point.

Speaker 2: 16:11

I had two houses flooded from hurricanes. One was in New Orleans, one was in Houston and my view was, when the house in Houston, I was like, okay, I've got to raise it up, I've got to do something, I've got to make it more proof. Now, because of personal reasons and all that, we ended up just selling the house and being done with it. And the other guy there right behind me, he just rebuilt it as is, flipped it and sold it. And I'm like, okay, well, if it happens again, that house is still vulnerable. So we really haven't learned from what happened. And that's, I think, the big thing is.

Speaker 2: 16:45

But yeah, there's lots going on there where we're using climate change as the excuse. We've cast the oil companies as the primary villain, when I think there's a lot of other factors involved, kind of created this Hollywood story of climate change. It's killing us. The oil companies are bad. Stop fossil fuels, that's all you got to do. And I'm like, no, that's not it. There's a lot more going on there. And that's what worries me is we've taken these simple solutions.

Speaker 1: 17:33

Every industrial problem I've solved has had a simple solution to it, or the desire to pick just one and say this is the problem and then put all resources behind. That probably is going to lead you astray almost every time. How would you feel about that statement?

Speaker 2: 17:58

That's completely it. So I'm speaking at Rotary Clubs and at breakfasts. I'm going to talk at a conference in Austin soon and one of the things I say is so if you look at 1960 to now, our energy usage has only gone up in the US by about 15% per person, but our population has gone up by 91%. And if you look worldwide, we've gone from 3 billion people in 1960 to 8 billion people now. I mean that's big. And if you look at that energy usage worldwide, we've had an increase of about 67%. It was very low numbers, lots of people. We use energy in the US way more than anyone else does, but the world is catching up and that, combined with the massive increase in population, is the big problem. So if you just focus on carbon dioxide and we don't talk about population increase, we don't talk about all the trash that we're putting out, we don't talk about all these other issues, I think you're missing the point.

Speaker 2: 18:59

Right, and one of the things I'm X oil and gas. So I watch, watch the energy industry a lot. If you shut down drilling, you know let's say the whole we're going to stop fracking. If you stop fracking, you stop drilling, because new oil wells are not economical unless they're. If you stop drilling, stop fracking, us oil production from the shale fields drops by half in 18 months. You can't build renewables fast enough. You can't build electric vehicles fast enough. You're looking at creating an energy shortage, and that's why, when these people are doing all these crazy protests screaming stop oil, stop oil, you can't do that. You will kill people if you do that. So it's got to be a reasonable solution that we need to be working on.

Speaker 1: 19:51

How many of the challenges that we are facing that you have looked at, do you see, stemming from the fact that the untruths are popular things to run on as a politician? That, for example, as we were speaking before we went on air. You were raised Republican, as was I, was I, and while I am a fierce advocate for reducing the number of gun-related deaths in this country, one thing you will never see me post is it's the guns. Yeah Right, Because that's one area where I have looked at the data and guns are an easy thing to become fixated on, especially for the Democratic Party, because while a fair number of Democrats own guns, guns weren't necessarily part of the culture in the same way they were for Republicans, who not only own guns but have had guns in the House for multiple generations. There's a different view about those. So speak to that, not necessarily about the guns, but just on the simplicity factor.

Speaker 2: 21:32

Well, that's it, and you've hit on it. A good point, because it is. We take a simple solution to complex problems. And guns was one of the points where I went into the chapter thinking, oh yeah, we got too many guns on the street. This is ridiculous. And then, once I started getting into the data, I'm like but wait a minute, it's like a tenth of a percent of the guns are used in crimes. Well, 99.99% are in the hands of people following the law. So how is this going to work?

Speaker 2: 22:02

And digging deeper into the data, it really comes down to, you know, we have gun suicides and that's mental health, poverty, problems like that. And then when you look at the homicides, there's actually a lot of countries in the world that have higher rates of homicide than the US and the thing they all have is higher levels of poverty. And I've come to that point where it's the poverty that drives the crime. And I found that correlation in so many places. And I was watching a special on Lyndon Johnson and he declared war on poverty in the 1960s. And I hate to tell everybody, but we may have declared war in the 60s on poverty, but we lost.

Speaker 2: 22:43

We have not got it resolved. They may have declared war in the 60s on poverty, but we lost. We have not got it resolved Right. And it has had an amazing impact, not only on crime, education, health. You know, in the chapters on health care, I look and I say, okay, overall we have a 60% diet of fast food, of ultra-processed food, an unhealthy diet, and that's really more focused in the poor than it is in the rich and, as a result, we're getting high levels of obesity, high levels of diabetes in poor people and they can't afford it and, as a result, it's dragging our healthcare system down. And I think poverty is something that we've got. Either you're going to get serious about it or we have to accept the fact that it's harming our statistics. And it was that digging into the data and really looking at it that forced me to look at things. And, yeah, we simplify. You know, we want to do our debates and our policy with 250 character Twitter response access responses, as I should say and it just can't do it.

Speaker 1: 23:43

I think people underestimate and I should clarify, I think people who say we just we need to get rid of the guns. First of all, I don't think most people think about the impossibility of that. It is just not something you could ever do, not in this country. And so often people will point to other countries and what they've done there and the difference. As I see it, the same gun culture did not exist there.

Speaker 1: 24:19

And that, I think, is the box that you talk about. You have to work from inside the box, and our box includes gun culture.

Speaker 2: 24:30

Right. And the thing is with the guns you can't confiscate them. There's too many people that legally own them, that haven't used them for anything bad, and why should you force them to give them up? During the last Trump administration they had an event in Las Vegas and the bump stocks were declared illegal. They haven't been able to confiscate any. It's held up in the courts. Nobody's turning them in on their own. It just shows me that you're going to have a real hard time confiscating guns. And when you get down to it, if you address the poverty and you address the hate that's being pumped into our culture, which is the cause for most of the mass shootings, then you don't need to take away the guns Now. We do need common sense gun restrictions.

Speaker 1: 25:12

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 25:14

There needs to be a waiting phase. You know, remember when we used to have to go to buy a car and we'd have to come. Here's our car, we're going to buy that car and we'll come back in two days and actually get it, because it takes that long to process the whole application we didn't get the car immediately right.

Speaker 2: 25:27

Um, and the thing is with the gun. It's the same way. I don't. I think you need to have a cooling off period. Yeah, I'm going to buy that gun. I'll come back in two days. Well, in two days the guy goes oh, you know, my kids need shoes and they can really use that. Maybe I don't need to buy that gun. That would make so much more sense. But that's not something that the gun sellers want. They want that immediate. Hey, here's your gun, and I think we're going to run smack into the NRA about that.

Speaker 1: 25:53

I think so too. It's necessary. By the way, everyone should buy this book. Buy this book If you are interested in reading about real solutions, and not just what's popular within your party, but actual solutions that would work. Get the book. One thing I want to point out in your book, william, just so that anybody listening to us right now is not inclined to think, oh this Tiger guy, he's anti-guns. That's not the case at all. One thing you point out that I absolutely agree with, even though I am a gun owner. I don't want to give up my guns, but I agree with this point you should not be able to carry an assault rifle in public, right, and can you speak to why that is? I think anybody listening probably has their version of why that is, but what was your basis for that?

Speaker 2: 27:10

So my thing is okay, we should have gun ownership. If you want to have concealed carry, that's great, that's fine. But in the 2020 elections and in some other cases, we've seen people with semi-automatic weapons, with big magazines walk up and that the police officers are the ones saying look, we're outgunned, and all it's going to take is one guy pulling the trigger and then we've got a mass shooting event and that, just to me, is insane. So I really don't think you should have. You know, if you have concealed carry, if you have to, if you're allowed to openly carry pistols, bolt action rifles, stuff like that, that's fine.

Speaker 2: 27:49

But if you can walk up with a semi-automatic weapon with a 30 round my gosh, the guy in Las Vegas had 100 round magazines I mean that's that's insane, right? That is just too much of a potential for an event, so we should not allow that. But yeah, I think it's concealed carry. Open carry, that's fine, but not when it's a military grade weapon that can carry 30, 50, 100 rounds. I mean that's just we're asking for trouble. We need to be reasonable about that.

Speaker 1: 28:21

Right, and on that note and the lethality of high-capacity weapons, I did a ride-along with a friend of mine a few years back who's a highway patrolman, right, and at that time he was doing drug interdiction on Air State 35, where there is a lot of drug activity going on. And I met him at midnight at a truck stop to park my car and get in with him, just off of 35, and I had brought along one of my handguns. Right, he said, if you want to, because we're going to be stopping some hairy people, things can go wrong. So I brought mine.

Speaker 1: 29:07

But we were talking in between stops that night and what we both agreed to very quickly was that if we or if he pulled someone over and they stepped out of the vehicle with a high-capacity, high-velocity weapon and started firing, we were probably both going to die. Right, he had a shotgun, which was an amount which he would have to, you know, take a moment to get it out and then to be able to get out of the car with it, and a sidearm, a handgun, and I had a handgun. Well, if the other person's out of the vehicle before you are, everything they're firing is going to go through every part of that car except the engine block right. So you spoke to high-capacity accessories. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Speaker 2: 30:19

Yeah, and in the book I lay out some things and one of them I say is you need a delay period to buy the weapon. We do need, like, a national concealed gun permit that could be adopted nationally, Because right now if you've got a concealed gun permit, you don't know what state you're legal in and what state you're illegal in, and that's kind of a ridiculous situation. It should be a national system. These are the national minimum requirements. If you meet this, the permit qualifies for national and you can go into these other areas and just have a coordination there, Right. But then the other thing is if it's 30-round magazines, 150-round magazines, I don't see the need for them. If you need a 30-round magazine to to go hunting, you probably need a marksmanship course because you bet it, and it just when you look at the mass shooting events.

Speaker 2: 31:12

The the three common denominators are, uh, high velocity rifle, semi-automatic and big magazine. Well, if you want to go hunting, semi-automatic high velocity is kind of a need to. You know you're not going to take down an elk with a 22. Right, you'll piss that elk off, but that's about it.

Speaker 2: 31:32

Right. So to me it came down to the high capacity magazine was the thing. If you control that, then it allows people to keep hunting, it allows people to do other stuff. But that was the thing I looked at was okay, let's restrict the high capacity magazines. You know, saying we're going to ban assault weapons makes no sense, because then you know what's a hunting rifle. Is it an assault weapon or is it not? It's a question there of what is the true technical definition that you're going to ban.

Speaker 2: 31:58

And I thought the magazine was the easiest solution.

Speaker 1: 32:01

I think so too, because, look, any weapon can become an assault weapon. Right, I have a—one of my handguns is a Glock handgun, a 9mm Glock, and the capacity of the weapon as it comes is seven if you include one in the chamber. Right, it's one of the smaller versions. Single stack doesn't have the double magazine they market and sell. Right, I can load up as many as 30. Right, I, I can load up as many as 30. Now, it's going to be extending past the grip, but if, if I had ill intentions, right, and decided, hey, I want to do as much damage in as short a period of time as possible, I could buy two or three of those. Right, I go in with three. I've got 90 rounds that I can fire in a very brief period of time.

Speaker 2: 33:09

The guy in Las Vegas. I can't remember the number, it was like 500 or 700 rounds that he shot off. I mean that's insane, and it's just to me. The magazine was the. So what everybody needs to understand is this book lays out, each chapter, gives you the history, the data and then some possible solutions. So I'm not saying this is the only solution. I gave you possible solutions and at least give us a starting point to have the discussion.

Speaker 2: 33:35

And in fact, on the book there's a website. If you go to the website, there's a tab called data. You can actually look at my original data tables. There's a tab called data. You can actually look at my original data tables. I will show you how I got, where I got, and show you where the data came from. And that's one of the things that drove me crazy is, with it, people will make a claim and it's like well, where did that come from? And they don't say and to me, that's hey, we were taught in school, you got to show your work. So I think it's a good idea to have that. But yeah, to me, it me, it's with the guns. There are very sensible rules that we need to apply, but mainly it's address the poverty, address the hate, and that will get us back into a better position.

Speaker 1: 34:17

Well, I think one of the things you point out in the book you looked at various periods and times, specifically after 9-11. Yeah, right After 9-11, there were just as many guns, right, same amount of guns. But you describe what existed mentally and emotionally and culturally in the United States at that time, that you feel responsible for, the decline and the thing is so after September 11th, after 9-11, we had no mass shooting.

Speaker 2: 34:55

I think we had like two mass shootings between then and the end of 2002. I mean, over 15 months we had almost nothing. And to me that shows you that it's not the guns, the volume of guns, it's the hate, it's the anger within. And when we came together after 9-11, the mass shootings just dropped to nothing. Now people say, oh, we had heightened security, we had heightened security at airports. We didn't have it at churches, we didn't have it at businesses, and that's where most of the mass shootings occur are at schools. And we didn't have it at businesses, and that's where most of the mass shootings occur, are at schools.

Speaker 2: 35:27

And to me that shows that it's a that's really the issue, it's the hate within the society. And I mean you look at it, right now You've got far right, far left, both pouring out, screaming, you know, and amplifying this hate. But yeah, and the thing is, I look at it drives me insane with the solutions where, so you know, nra says we're fine gun laws going to harden the schools. Well, you're hardening the schools from a mass shooter when it's much more common event that fires occur. So if you're limiting everybody to one way in, one way out. How's that going to work with a fire, which is a much more common event? And that just it amazes me, because we get focused on the wrong thing and we do the wrong analysis.

Speaker 1: 36:25

Yes, and it almost becomes like a fad, right? Certain solutions become like a fad. It's the thing that's popular to talk about. It's the thing if you post about it will assure you a lot of likes. And I see social media as playing such a big role in our societal problems today and I think you address that some, I do.

Speaker 2: 36:52

I do. And the thing that I think is well, first of all, everybody's got to understand is Twitter on X, x, blue sky threads, facebook, all those they are not public squares threads, facebook, all those they are not public squares. So when you get angry that Elon Musk is maybe kicking people off X or doing something, or Zuckerberg has decided he's not going to do something on Facebook, it doesn't matter. A corporation owns that site, owns that media event, and you can't think of that as first amendment protected. That is, if you don't trust the company running the site, you can't trust the site, and that's just the way it's got to be the way it is. Um, and one of the things I think you got to do is so, right now, if a newspaper were to run an article and say you, I don't like this or I don't like that, and to violate any show, any racism or any inequality at all, that they would be subject to certain criminal laws. There are certain laws that apply to those newspapers and to radio stations and TV stations, but it doesn't apply to the social media sites because of I can't remember the number now, but anyway, it's a section of the US Code where it says because other people are making the content and the social media site is simply putting the content up. They're off the hook.

Speaker 2: 38:14

Well, I don't think that's totally right If you're holding the New York Times to one set of standards, but Facebook is held to something completely different. There's a bit of a disconnect there is held to something completely different. There's a bit of a disconnect there. I think what we have to have is Facebook X, blue Sky. They have to know that they're dealing with a real human being.

Speaker 2: 38:34

I mean, we've had bots, we've had all kinds of crazy stuff that I think you've got to control and you've got to set it up where, if somebody posts something that essentially is just propaganda and someone else flags it, the media site has to check and go yeah, that is propaganda, we need to take it down. And, by the way, the cost of that effort should be applied to the person who put it up. There should be a penalty. Anyway, I'm not going to get too far into the details of that, but I think around social media, there is stuff that we need to do, and while people will say, oh, it's not covered under the Constitution, the Constitution is over 200 and what is it now? 240 years old Getting close to that. Yeah, it'll be 240 in 28, 2028. And I'm sorry, I don't think they thought about this when they wrote it no, you know go ahead.

Speaker 1: 39:23

I didn't want to interrupt you there.

Speaker 2: 39:26

No, I was trying to remember when the last constitutional amendment was. It's been a long while, so to me we're due for some constitutional amendments to start addressing some of these issues.

Speaker 1: 39:35

Yeah, you know, I think of that often when that topic comes up. One thing I like to ask people, just kind of get them thinking, is if you were scheduled for open heart surgery tomorrow, would you be okay with having surgery with a surgeon who is using the surgical techniques from 200 years ago? Would, of course, not right. We can recognize that there have been all kinds of changes since then and we want the most current and that's been able to utilize the science and the technology to say look, this is the best we have. Hey, that's what I want.

Speaker 2: 40:23

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:23

But we, for some reason, we don't apply that same thinking when we think about the Constitution, that, hey, it's not that these guys were stupid, it's just like right now. We cannot anticipate what the world's going to be like 200 years from now, so how could we write something that will still be serving the people well?

Speaker 2: 40:48

And the thing is so. The constitution was extremely well-written and it was extremely well thought out, you bet. But the thing is we have allowed the separation of powers to shift. Congress used to have much more authority, much more power. I saw some memes where there was like, oh, trump ran up this much debt and Biden ran up that much debt. I'm like, no, the Congress ran up the debt, the Congress controls the purse.

Speaker 2: 41:16

We've let Congress off the hook and I think the big problem we're seeing is that we've gotten rid of the moderates. There are no moderates left in Congress. There's nobody who's sitting there going trying to make a deal, trying to work it out, trying to get us back to a balanced budget. I mean, that's what we're missing. We have allowed the Republican Party to go farther to the right. The Democratic Party's gone farther to the left and everybody in the middle has been left out in the cold. The Democratic Party's gone farther to the left and everybody in the middle has been left out in the cold. And that was the thing about my book. In talking to a lot of people, I'm talking to those moderates. Those moderates are coming up and talking to me, going. I love your book. Now can you just tell me how to get it done? And I'm like well, you've got to start electing moderates to Congress.

Speaker 1: 42:01

You know, I know a couple of former congressmen personally and love them both to death and they are currently still making wonderful in fact probably bigger contributions to the nation out of Congress. But I would describe both of them as moderates and they are no longer in Congress. Right, there's no space for a moderate today. When you look at the other people in Congress, they don't want moderates working around them. They gum things up, they slow things down, they want extremists for lack of a better word Somebody who just will parrot. I can tell you. I can tell you've got some thoughts on that. Go ahead.

Speaker 2: 43:03

I think we I think on the Trump side we're seeing Trump as a potential dictator, but watching Biden rule, I was seeing a lot of the same thing. We have ceded too much power to the presidency. I hate to say it. I hate to say it. I actually think we need to have a president fully indicted and impeached just so that we can have that event and get past it.

Speaker 2: 43:34

Andrew Johnson, lincoln's vice president, who became president after he was assassinated. They didn't impeach him by one vote and the guy who cast the vote said he didn't want to be the guy to be the first one to cause a president to be impeached. That line was so feared to cross that the guy said, no, I'm not going to impeach him. And Andrew Johnson was probably one of the people who most deserved to be impeached, but that didn't happen. And I think that's the same thing is. We just don't want to cross that line and until we do, the presidency has become too powerful. It's become too immune. I mean, I'm very concerned about the Supreme Court decisions where we've given the president even more immunity?

Speaker 1: 44:12

Oh boy, yeah, you and me both. I've often thought, and I have nothing to back this up. It's speculative, of course, but I've often thought had Nixon served 18 months in prison rather than being pardoned, I'm not sure that Trump would have happened in the way that he did, if at all. I don't know that he would have even wanted to run if we had that precedent. You know, if we had that precedent.

Speaker 2: 44:43

I think we should have a policy where every when a president finishes his term, he has to go before Congress in a trial to be, you know, to have his record reviewed and see did you break any laws? If so, we're sending you to jail, Right. I mean, that would be a great event, that would be like a closeout event, but instead we say okay, go build your library somewhere and have fun.

Speaker 1: 45:11

we're letting you off the hook and it's like that's wrong. On that note, you. You share something very similar in your book that I agree with 100 where it comes to solutions for some of the gun issues that we face, and it's pretty simple make the owner of the gun criminally responsible for what happens with that gun. End of story, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 45:32

You know, that.

Speaker 1: 45:34

Look, I know as a gun owner just knowing that. Look, no matter what, no matter what, whatever happens with this tool, somebody does with it. You are responsible. That shifts your thinking very quickly, right?

Speaker 2: 45:57

Well, but think about it If your son steals your car, or well, he takes the keys and goes out on a joyride or something and he has an accident, your insurance is on the hook. Oh yeah, you loan the car to somebody, your insurance is still on the hook.

Speaker 1: 46:13

Right.

Speaker 2: 46:13

So how do we let a gun be different? That's the interesting thing and one of the things. So we don't register guns in this country. It's only voluntarily, and that's fine. But the thing is you look at cars 95% of America's cars are registered and tracked, and we don't do that with a weapon that can kill 30, 40 people at a shot.

Speaker 1: 46:39

That's a little different yeah, and I think that's. I think that's something that a lot of people don't realize, that that as many weapons are not registered as as there are. I I think a lot of people, uh, just assume that there's a, just as you stated, because there is with vehicles. I think they just assume that there is some recorded transaction when a firearm is purchased or sold. And I can tell you right now, a couple of the handguns I've owned were from people. I just went to their house, paid them the asking price and walked away with it and nobody had to know about that.

Speaker 2: 47:27

Yeah, I think that's a that's a weak link in how we do business regarding firearms yeah, it's, it's we need, and I don't think we have to change that thinking so much. But so we need to do something to understand and to realize the a handgun is a threat, it's a responsibility and it needs to be treated more as a responsibility. Right, but yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:51

Let's talk a moment because this is something that and again. You were raised Republican and I was Republican until not that long ago. In the grand scheme of things, but one thing I have always been that did not win me favor with friends in the Republican Party when I was Republican. I've always been a fierce defender of LGBTQ rights, Because I've seen the bullying, the hate and just the. I've always been. I'm for the underdog right. Look, if you aren't doing anything wrong, if you are just trying to live your life and somebody is screwing with you, just for that, count on me being there to back you up. With that being said, you bring up some issues in the book, which I agree with, by the way, that we probably would see more progress made in this area if we stopped pushing so hard for these particular points. Do you mind?

Speaker 1: 49:07

talking about that.

Speaker 2: 49:09

Yeah, and actually I've run a little blog on Substack and I wrote about after the election. I said I think one of the big issues with the election was the Democrats are pushing the DEI stuff. They're pushing, you know, bring more inclusivity and all that. They're pushing it so hard and the thing you got to realize is a lot of the older middle class people they grew up in the 60s they have, they've had to, they've seen their world shift so much, you know allowing, you know being more open to gays, being more open to lesbians, being more open to all this other stuff. And yet we're demanding more change from them.

Speaker 2: 49:47

And you can't change how a person thinks. You can't rewire their brain. It just doesn't work like that. So the harder you push against those people, the less you're going to get. Now in the book I talk about how we had these Supreme Court cases and the first one was the Colorado baker who refused to make a cake and they took it all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court says you can't force this guy to make a cake. And then he's back in the Colorado court system because somebody walked in and demanded that he make a cake for a trans person's birthday and it's like guys, you know, this man doesn't want to do that, why did y'all go do that? And the thing is because some of these trans activists are so insistent that they're provoking these cases and I think you know people aren't going to like this idea, but it's creating a backlash.

Speaker 1: 50:35

It is, it is, it is, and I can tell you from posts that I've made on social media people don't like some of these ideas because, again, it doesn't line up with the narrative. And my thing is is if you haven't been able to achieve the results you seek with the narrative you have, maybe you ought to look at changing the narrative and including something different.

Speaker 2: 51:02

So and one of the things you can look at is and I got to shoot, I'll have quick, I'm going to have to find the data real quick but back in the 1960s they were asking about interracial marriage Do you accept it, do you not? And I think the people against it in the 1960s was like 96%, something like that, and the last time they asked the question it was like down to 8%. That's a huge improvement. If you want to get it down to zero, that's not happening, guys there are racist people out there and you can't change them, you can't rewire them.

Speaker 2: 51:35

You've made great progress. Except the progress you've made, hope to make more progress in the future, but don't try and force it. And I think what we're seeing right now is um. I think that that Trump won the election for three main reasons. One is um Biden shouldn't have run in the first place. His that.

Speaker 2: 51:56

I was listening to that first debate. My wife and I were on a trip and we were driving a rental car and I was listening to that debate on the radio and I was shocked. I was like, oh my gosh, this is horrible and I think that was a huge deal. The other thing is the Democrats are all proclaiming Biden was the next FDR. Oh, he did so much, he did so great stuff. He passed a couple infrastructure bills, all of which were either funded with deficit funding or with future tax cuts, when we're $36 trillion in debt. That's not good guys, right. And then the third thing was they kept pushing the DEI, kept pushing the. You know, we're going to be more inclusive, we're going to give more stuff to these people, more stuff to those people, and it's like you know what the middle class said no, thank you.

Speaker 2: 52:41

I think that was the big thing. The middle class came out and voted and said we want the border fixed. And the thing is, in the first two years of the Biden administration they didn't touch the border. No-transcript the Democrats talk about. It's our messaging. It's our messaging. It's our messaging. No, it's your governance. America wants good governance. America is now wanting to see something done about the deficits and about the debt. There's a lot of focus there, but neither party is addressing that.

Speaker 1: 53:34

No, no, I recently wrote about this to some extent in an article that I wrote for my newsletter, and when I brought up the topic of the border not being aggressively approached by the Biden administration, one of the most common comments back will be and it's a valid point for that particular time, but it doesn't make up for the rest of the term is well, they put forth the bill that Republicans rejected, and that's correct. But what were we doing prior to that? What did we do?

Speaker 2: 54:25

after that, in 21 and 22,. You had Democratic control of both houses. You could have got it through the House, put it in front of the Senate, republicans and said, okay, shoot it down. If you want, go ahead. I mean that was the whole thing. I don't think they did that. And the thing is, you see the result. I mean the Democrats lost the Texas border region with Mexico. Those were hardcore Democratic counties and they went red. And I mean, if that's not a big red flag. And then you go, look at New York and California, where there was a massive shift to the Republicans in those two states. That should be a screaming announcement to Democrats Stop fooling around. People want to have, they want good governance. Yeah, it would be nice to make things fair for all the minorities. I appreciate that. But the thing is, don't allow it to be unfair for the minority, but don't push it too far the other way.

Speaker 1: 55:21

People want, they want the cities to function in the book, the way I so often think about it. If you are thinking from the position of somebody who while it's a very ambiguous term, but somebody who's an independent or somebody who's an undecided, somebody whose vote you might be able to win over right, looking at it through their lens and through their eyes, they look at the percentage some of these populations make up of the entire United States, correct? So if you look and I do remember you addressing this in the book I think the number of transgender people in the United States I think it was less than it was like 0.6%.

Speaker 2: 56:24

Well, but Jack, we don't know that's the problem.

Speaker 1: 56:30

Right, right, I think I used a figure of like 1.2, but I also think I addressed that it could be more, just because we don't know.

Speaker 1: 56:42

I guess, my point being this let's just assume it's 10%, right, let's just really ramp it up. If you are somebody on the fence just before the election and most of the noise that you are seeing and hearing on social media've got no problem with transgender people, but they are 10% of the entire population. I don't hear you spending as much time talking about the issues that unpack everybody. Yeah, right, yeah. And so the point I make in this newsletter article is this the point I make in this newsletter article is this Undecideds don't necessarily look to the politicians and what they are consistently bringing up in their rallies and their speeches without knowing that they are also constantly monitoring the posts on social media and looking at what's the most prevalent topic that's being addressed on social media, and then they unconsciously assign that to the candidate right and the entire party and they say look, this is a party that only cares about transgender people in restrooms, right, and they feel left out because they don't hear the discussion. That applies to everybody. How?

Speaker 2: 58:27

off. Am I on that? No, you're not, you're dead on. And to think about it, actually, I'll turn it around slightly. So I don't know if you saw the debate between Cruz and Allred in the last few weeks.

Speaker 2: 58:39

Cruz kept coming back and hammering, allred on the transgender thing. You voted for these transgender bills and bang, bang, bang. Did we get a nuanced discussion of energy policy, which is one of the biggest things in Texas? No, right, and that's the thing is. It's also extremely easy for these politicians to hit the culture, war issues than to sit there and try and discuss okay, what are we doing about energy? How are we going to handle the energy transition? And to me that's a huge thing In the analysis.

Speaker 2: 59:09

I've got a little bit in the book. I've got more on the blog that I'm working at. You know, I don't think Texas is ready for when the Permian is going to peak in its production and start to go into decline. I think that's, and I think that's in the next three to 10 years, and we should be having discussions about that right now and we're not. And then the other thing is the $36 trillion debt. I mean the interest rates. I saw where recently, where some interest rates are still going up even after the Fed made cuts to the interbank loaning rate. That's a new factor that has a bad indication. There's what's called the Gini coefficient. It measures income inequality. It's been going up. The last time it was this high was in 1929, just before the great stock market crash and the Great Depression. We're not having those discussions. What are we talking about? They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats when it turned out, it weren't.

Speaker 2: 1:00:04

I mean what's going on here? We've allowed these culture war issues to take over everything when, in fact, the government is here to address structural problems and to address the structural things that we, the people, can't build on our own. We need a government to maintain a military, to build the large-scale infrastructure we need to set long-term policy. I just did a look back on the ERCOT 2024 year and I just published it on the blog on the Substack blog I run, and the thing that really jumped out at me was we don't have a 20-year energy policy.

Speaker 2: 1:00:41

And when you look at China, china has massive amount of nuclear reactors being built. They're building a huge amount of what's called pump storage, hydroelectric, which is big long-duration energy storage. We have zero in construction right now here in the US and to me that is a huge indicator that we're not taking that long-term view that we need to be taking, and that's the whole point of the book is. The book is look at the culture war issues, but now look at these other issues that we're not talking about, that we're not letting Congress off the hook and not letting them have to address, and to me it's just insane, and I have to say I've said it before but I want to keep saying it your book is not to defend a party.

Speaker 1: 1:01:24

Your book is about solutions. You talk about both parties, you criticize both parties, you praise both parties. It's about solutions and that is, I think that's where social media has really amplified the problem, because it has not only has it. You know, we always hear about creating a division, but I think the bigger issue is the intensity that it generates on either side of that line. We've always had division, but now the level of angst and hate and frustration. There's a big shift in the emotional aspect of our division.

Speaker 2: 1:02:17

And not only that, but to me social media really provides a means for third parties, for foreign actors, to go and drop a little bit of vitriol in here and put a little bit of hate over there and you can just pin that thing up.

Speaker 2: 1:02:30

We know the Russians did that in 2016. We don't know what's been done in the last election. And that, to me, is why? Because that's where, if you allow bots and you allow people to be in social media and you don't know whether they're actually in China or in St Petersburg, russia, or in Macedonia, then you know, some guy claims to be your next door neighbor and he's actually somewhere far on the far side of the world. You don't know. So how do you trust that voice? And to me it comes back to and I think it was you were talking about earlier about how you wanted to be a real voice, a trusted voice. Trusted voices are what we need right now, and we've lost them no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 1:03:38

I've always felt like and we'll never know, but I've always felt like that Walter Cronkite had enough integrity that had the producers have come to him and said here's the angle we are going to run with this. This is the approach we need you to take. I think he had enough integrity. He would have refused and, at the extreme end of things, he would have resigned. We don't have that kind of commitment in journalism any longer.

Speaker 2: 1:04:09

I don't think, not as a whole, well, the whole semantic lawsuit brought out. So much about Fox News, where you were like, where they were like, oh my God, this is crazy, but we're going to run with it anyway, right, it's like that's insane. Yeah, I mean, you have to have that ability to have a trusted voice, and that's one of the things I look at is there's a chapter on fake news where I say, okay, you need a way to challenge the news companies on stories, but the news companies also need a way to challenge the news companies on stories, but the news companies also need a way to challenge the government as well.

Speaker 1: 1:04:39

And you got to have that balance and we've lost it.

Speaker 2: 1:04:41

Yeah, um, but yeah, we need that.

Speaker 1: 1:04:42

I think something too, and I think you can appreciate this as an engineer I I think we need. We need a much greater willingness to admit when we are wrong. Yeah, To admit. For example, people ask me all the time, not as much as they did when I first made the shift to Democratic Party, at least in terms of voting and support. People say how did you do that after you know so long of being a Republican? First of all, I had to be willing to admit that the guy I had voted for in 2016 was in error, that I had not done due diligence. I had to accept some things about myself and my decision that aren't pleasant. You don't get excited about them, but at the end of the day, to me, it's just how you live. If you realize you've made a mistake, correct it.

Speaker 2: 1:05:49

Yeah, rather than doubling down, which is what so many of these other people do now. And that's the thing where and one of the things that drives me insane is and we have an event in some city or in some state, and they go to the president and go what do you think of that? And the president should go? That's the governor's job, not mine, right? Just say that that would be fine if we could accept that. Yes, you've got your wheelhouse, stay in it. Yes, but we don't do that. We're demanding that Hollywood actors give us opinions on political situations worldwide. It's like wait a minute, what do they know? Have they really looked at the detail on that? Right, because it's hard. And that was the book. The book was a three-year effort of research, no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 1:07:00

You've made a huge mistake, and I see a lot of people doing that. Oh, did you hear the funny story? The flat earthers sent a delegation down to Antarctica, because if you can have the 24-hour sun, then the earth can't be flat. So a group of flat-earthers with some scientists went to Antarctica and they saw the 24-hour sun. The sun stayed up for 24 hours because Antarctica is on the edge, and all that and the flat-earther emails back to the other group. Oh, I guess we were wrong and I'm like like that is the moment. Yeah, right, because they've got some really slick video. One of the slides I showed in my presentation was I said look, you can look at these slick videos that the flat earthers have done and at the same time you can watch a live feed from the international space station. And to me that showed the insanity of youtube, of what know we could be blatantly lied to and then we could look at the truth. And how do you tell the difference? You've got to make your choice there.

Speaker 1: 1:08:04

And, having been immersed in the field of psychology and human behavior my entire life, I'm fascinated by how easily our perceptual filters are fooled right.

Speaker 1: 1:08:17

And I'm also continuously fascinated by, even though I know so much of this stuff, how easily I can still be fooled right. And just out of curiosity, I thought I'm going to watch some of these flat earther videos, right, and I have to tell you, there were a couple where I chuckled in the middle because I realized that if I was watching that and not really being on my toes and asking questions internally about what I was watching as I was watching it, I might have been able to be swayed to at least question my previous assumptions. Right, and that's a scary thing to realize is that I'm watching this to analyze it and I'm watching this having a pretty good, solid background in human perception, and I still feel myself getting tugged a little bit and going right. And so I came away with that going wow, man, that's spooky, because if you take somebody who doesn't have that background or who does not push, click or play, having already decided they are going to analyze it and ask questions, they may very well be converted on the spot.

Speaker 2: 1:09:51

And that's the thing. And it amazes me how we've gotten to a point now where we're insisting that. You know, we have some people insisting that you have to have both versions of a theory shown in school. Well, you know, I'm sorry, there's not both visions of a theory on flat Earth.

Speaker 1: 1:10:08

Right the.

Speaker 2: 1:10:09

Earth is round. We've proved it. The Greeks proved it 3,000 thousand years ago. So we're having this discussion. Why it's? It's insane, so, but I think we've got to do that. We've got to get to the point where, um a, I think we got to address poverty, we got to address education and we've got to address the fact that we've lost the moderates. The moder moderates have been taken out of government and we now have a government where we have crazy people from both sides and they're driving us toward a cliff, and I think we've got to do something.

Speaker 1: 1:10:46

I agree. Look one more time. Let me get my highlighter out of your book because I've been highlighting like crazy. Look, this is a book I have not yet completed because I just got it in the mail yesterday. But I was up very late last night reading this, even after I had promised William I'm not going to read it before we do the podcast. I couldn't help myself once I started. I can't wait to dive back into it later today. Once I started, I can't wait to dive back into it later today.

Speaker 1: 1:11:19

If you are thinking, I wonder if that's something that would be useful in expanding my knowledge and helping me clarify how I think about the solutions to the problems our country's facing by the book. I can tell you already that it will do those things. It has helped me. As I was talking with William before we went on air, I said you know, from what I've read so far, you and I align on so many of these issues, difference being, you've done the hard work, the deep research on these which allowed me to go oh okay, I'm not off base for feeling that way, for thinking that, because there's actually information that supports it. I think it's central to what we've been talking about which is we need to be willing to step into that middle ground and talk about solutions.

Speaker 1: 1:12:22

All throughout the book, from what I've read so far, you again, you're not defending any party, you're not sparing any party. Right, you go for the throat when it's warranted and I appreciate that. But but then again and this is where we have this similarity um, look, acknowledging something useful out of the republican party, as hard as it may seem to find these days. When you do that, there's always going to be pushback if you are a Democrat, correct? But I think until we start setting the example that, look, we've got to take these little micro steps towards coming close.

Speaker 1: 1:13:13

We may not be ready to reach across the aisle and grasp hands, right, but if we don't start that movement so that incrementally there's less and less distance from this side to that side, look, and as you pointed out, we're never going to probably get to the place ever where everybody's holding hands across the aisle. That's just not a reality. But a reality is because we've been there before where there's not as much space between. If you were going to answer the question why should you buy my book? What will I get out of your book if you buy it, what would you say?

Speaker 2: 1:13:57

I would say that the book because it's written not from either party's policy or dogma, but it's written from find the history, find the data present it and say, okay, here are some solutions. It gets you more educated on every one of these topics so that you can be more educated to discuss that topic with other people. It gives you the foundation so that you understand where our taxes are at. Where's our debt? Where did it come from? Why do we have these laws? Where did social security come from? Social security is in trouble right now because when it started, it was eight workers to one retiree. We're now to three workers per one retiree and that's why we're starting to have problems. That ratio has changed, the demographics have changed, and that's what we need to understand.

Speaker 1: 1:14:43

And will that? I've never done the math or taken it that far, but at some point would there be an inverse of that, where it flips, where you've got more retirees than workers, or do you?

Speaker 2: 1:14:56

have they? They're projecting it'll get down to two workers per retiree in, I think 19 in the 2030s I can't remember the exact year, but yeah, it's going to keep going lower. Um, one of the things that shocked me was the gig economy. 36 of our jobs are now gig economy guys where they don't work for a company, they don't have that 2,000-hour work week, a year working job, you know 40-hour-a-week job and the very fundamental being the fundamentals of being a middle class or lower class worker have changed in ways that I don't think we've fully gotten our minds around.

Speaker 2: 1:15:35

So, yeah, but the book is to help you understand the issues that we're about to be facing.

Speaker 1: 1:15:40

I can't recommend the book enough Fixing America an Engineer's Solution to Our Social, cultural and Political Problems by William Taggart IV. William, I am so glad that you were on today. I've learned a lot. I had learned a lot from you before we even spoke, just from reading your book, and I understand that I'm going to be learning a lot more soon. I would like to have you back on sometime, because I think what would be fun is to just say, okay, let's pick one slice of this book and let's talk it to death, and there are so many issues in there we could do that, there will be one chapter that will jump out at you, that will grab you and make you question what you believe.

Speaker 2: 1:16:28

Pick that chapter, jack, and I'm happy to come back anytime you want.

Speaker 1: 1:16:32

Fantastic. Hey, you're a sharp guy. I appreciate you bringing the frame of reference you use for thinking about the world to the public, because it is a frame of reference we desperately need right now.

Speaker 2: 1:16:49

Great.

Speaker 1: 1:16:50

Thank you, I'll talk to you again soon.

Speaker 2: 1:16:52

Thank you, jack, take care.