George Neuwirt and Matt Cross - November 22nd 2024

Newstalk 99.7 WNTK AM 1490 FM 98.9 W U VR and welcome back to New Hampshire perspectives with Georgia Mag. Good morning, George. Matt. Hello. How are you? No, not too bad. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. How was your, uh, how was your previous? Oh, so last week, last week we aired a show on, uh, winterizing your house. How did what we did? Cause I called you and I said, Hey, when are we recording? And you're like, Hey, dummy.

I was already covered this case. I was like, Matt, Matt, hello, where are you? We set this up already, George? I'm like, sugar. Yeah, I worked out. I'm going to do winterization. Okay, so that was the same winterization show we had last year. Well, it was this year, but I think it was like February.

Okay, so the biggest thing I want to talk about with the winterization show, I just want to touch on one or two things, and that is that everybody waits until the last minute to get their cert, their heating system serviced, and then all of a sudden it's six degrees outside, and it's snowing like crazy, and the furnace goes down. The best thing you can do, contact Randy Willy at Lakes on the Plumbing and Heating, you can contact

who else around here. I think Clayton Miller, CA Miller does some maintenance and service, but there's a couple freelancers around here that will do combustion services, I think, that will do maintenance on your system. And you could just take the, you know, there's nothing that sucks more than a service technician sitting at his house.

on a saturday afternoon watching football and then his pager goes off because somebody you know has an emergency i'm saying that ninety foot ninety percent of all these emergencies can be resolved if you just

Maintain. Do your maintenance. Yeah. It's very simple. Just have your, if you have an oil burner, the biggest thing that happens is that there is a nozzle that sprays the diesel, the diesel onto these electrodes and the electrodes are electrified and the diesel

catches fire basically through these electrodes, but because oil is dirty and oil has like some contaminants in it. The little nozzle that the oil goes through, the orifice is very small and it gets clogged with stuff and it's just a very simple, like 90% of all burner services is changing the orifice, changing the nozzle. That's what they do with mine this past summer.

you know you can prevent this from happening and not only that that the rates for service calls are substantially higher than regular maintenance you can schedule it you can allocate the money do your maintenance but everyone's like oh i think i can get another year out of it that's just not the way it works do your maintenance and everybody's going to be more happy with you because you're going to be demonstrating a

proactive concern for your burner technicians that are on call 24-7, and I'm telling you, 95% of service calls are because of maintenance not being done. So then what they do is they come out in the middle of the night to get your boiler up and running, and then they say, well, you really need a cleaning, so not only did you pay for the emergency service, but now you have to pay for a cleaning, and you end up paying twice as much, so it doesn't make any sense, people.

Well, that and just the fact that, you know, it's not even from a standpoint of just, you know, like breakdowns in the middle of winter, just efficiency wise. Yeah. I mean, you can get like an extra five, 10% efficiency just by replacing the nozzle. Exactly. And efficiency, when Matt says efficiency, what he means is that if you look at the amount of energy that's in a gallon of propane or a gallon of heating oil, a gallon of heating oil has 134,000 BTU is British thermal units. I don't know why they're called.

British thermal units were in America, but propane has a hundred nineteen thousand BTU so if you look at the cost comparison oil certainly has so we talk about efficiency we're talking about how much energy you are able to extract out of a gallon of.

fuel and the better the system works, the more efficient the system works, the more energy you're going to be able to extract. I and IE, it's going to be cheaper for you to keep your appliances. We call them an appliances and just a washer or dryer and appliances. Any furnace mechanized unit, a toilet is an appliance. We call it, you know, anything that operates. So just do your maintenance.

Yeah. Okay. So that's the big thing. I mean, we can go on to windows and doors and all that, but you know, main main thing based on that show, the main takeaway that I had is just make sure that you have your insulation done properly. There's companies that you can contact. Day co-insulation, I think has an infrared camera. They can come to your house, tell you where your heat loss is like they can do an evaluation. And it's kind of cool. And you know, you're housed on a television, on a screen where all the heat's bleeding out of it.

Okay, last week. There's more to say about that, but basically, maybe I'll do another show, cover it up in the next week or two about winter maintenance. How was your last week? What happened, Matt?

I went to Arizona on vacation. How was it? Yeah, it was good. I hear it's a dry heat. So dry out there. It was like, it was. Well, so, so I went to Sedona. It's kind of where I typically land when I go out there. You have friends? No, I just like the area. Okay.

It's about 4,500 feet up, so it's not crazy high, but yeah, the air is just horrifically dry. I mean, it's just static. Like nose, like nose bleeding dry. Yeah, like when I wake up every morning, like my nose had some blood clots. What's the elevation? Is it like 4,500? Oh, it's high. Yeah. And then literally like a 30 minute drive from there is fly staff, which is like eight or 9,000 feet. So.

I've never been. No, it's an interesting area just because it's so drastic. Like a climate difference between two areas that are half hour apart. Where do you stay when you're out there?

I rented a B&B, which was ridiculously expensive this time around. I don't know why compared to last time, but I think last time we went in the dead of winter, so it was a little bit more affordable. But I think this time ended up going on the very tail end of the tourist season, so they jacked the prices up pretty nicely.

Big demand they certainly made their money if it's the choice between staying in hotel room and staying in an airbnb although sometimes i feel like hotel rooms almost better sometimes well it's more reasonable and if you don't need that home type. Yeah experience then.

Well, the only thing is like, I mean, it's just like Airbnb's I feel like over the years have slowly kind of grown and their demands on what you kind of can't do and what you need to do before you leave and stuff like that. Yeah. It's like if I'm spending like thousands of dollars for like a week to rent your home, like I feel like I shouldn't have to like do the laundry or like take out your trash or whatever. It's like, I mean, I feel like you're paying someone a couple hundred bucks to come in and clean the whole house. Like do you really need me to do that? I just feel like that's excessive. I don't know.

I had some neat features in my Airbnb. I had a wine rack with wine bottles in it and each wine bottle. So when someone comes to my house, there was three things I think I did that was my assistant chain actually did them. We did them together, but he administered it and that was

we had a stocked wine rack with 10 bottles of wine, and each bottle of wine had a price on it. So we charged five or $10 over what the wine cost us, and it was really nice. It was all different price points. It was cheap, stupid, you know, loans farm, and it was, you know, some Kendall Jackson, some mainstream Josh is one I like, like some mainstream wines that are like $15 or $20 a bottle.

They come in, they see this fully stocked wine bar, and they're like, oh my God, it's so nice, I don't have to go anywhere. The second thing we did was we had a cold bottle of champagne in the refrigerator. Every renter, regardless of whether it was for a weekend or a week or a month or whatever it was when you arrive, you don't know this until you get there.

When you get the text for the code for the front door where the key is, you also get a notice that says, hey, there's a nice chilled bottle of champagne in the fridge for you and two chilled glasses or however many people. Then we had a dog pen. So that was really nice to have a dog pen. And then the big thing we did that I know is

kind of weird, but I wanted it to be more personal is I never took any of my pictures down of anything like race and motorcycles or pictures of my son and me skiing or never took any picture down. So it was basically like they walked into a house that was obviously mine.

and they were really curious, and one of the biggest feedbacks we had was that they felt like they were being invited into someone else's home, and it became really personal, like when they filled out the logbook, we had a little book for people to fill out, and almost every person said, how nice it is to get to know the owner a little. Kind of a neat little feature, whereas I've been to Airbnb since then, and you walk in, it looks like a hospital room.

Yeah, I hate that. Yeah, it really depends on the host. I mean, some hosts are like you like where, you know, like they offer little extras and then there's some people that are just incredibly stingy. I mean, it's you run the whole gambit when you go to enough of them, but I do enjoy when you go. Yeah, I mean, it's not even like the money, like how much it costs. You know, it's like literally if there's like a, you know, like a bowl of fruit or something on the table, you know, like it's just like that's just so nice to come to as opposed to just everything empty and bare and just buy everything yourself.

I wanted to have people come to a place that they knew they were staying in a person's home and that home had a personality and it had a life and it had experiences and had a history and it was relatable because I raised children and, you know, like children are a part of our lives and they're kind of an integral source of pain. I mean, joy.

Yep, yep. The joy of child rearing us, as the Bible calls it, the joy of child rearing us. Oh my God, I hear some stories, but I got to tell you, I lucked out so well with that son of mine, Ryan, that handsome son of mine, I lucked out, I lucked out. Like I didn't, he's not a risk taker. He's not some bonsai, you know,

speed demon like he is just a mild mannered responsible young man that did not put his mother and I through the ringer. He did wrestling in high school for four years like he was just one of those kids that you could be like, hey son,

And, you know, there wasn't any like BS going on. He was, he was straight up. So it was pretty awesome. But that's, but that's, that's pretty neat. But the Airbnb thing has been a lot of regulations in towns now happening. Sonopi just enacted a big Airbnb last year or two years ago about Airbnb's and, you know, how they interpret you using your home for a commercial, your private home as a business for, well, not

Not full. I guess it's for a business as a business. Yeah, as you mean, you are making money. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So last week, so you went out there. Did you do anything fun? I did a few things. I went to a wolf sanctuary. Wow. Seriously? Yep. That was pretty interesting. It was kind of on the outskirts of town. It's about 20 minutes out, but they had like eight purebred wolves. And then I think they had like one or two that had some dog in them. Don't they aren't they just like a German Shepherd?

Because Big German Shepherd is basically, yeah. And it depends on the kind of wolves there, too. I think they have like two timber wolves, which are like the massive, massive wolves. And then they have, I don't even know what the other ones were, but they weren't as big as I thought they were. Like some of them were definitely bigger, but. Did they have any like, that were in the Lord of the Rings or? No.

No, no, nothing, nothing for easy, or mythological. When you CGI wolves, it's kind of funny. You take the wolves, you take dogs, and you take, you know, coyotes. I always want to call them coyotes because of wildy coyote. But, you know, I have game cameras up in Pittsburgh and I'm catching.

You know, coyotes on my game camera all the time and they're howling is like, we'll put the fear God into anybody. Yeah. Especially when they're in a packet night. Yes, exactly. Okay. Glad you had a good times. Nice to go out, go out and do a little relaxing. Okay. So people, we know we had an election recently and, you know, I've been warned by several people not to discuss go here. I've been, I've been warned. And

Uh, I think that we discussed the guns. Um, they haven't really got into religion yet, have we? No, I don't think we've done any religion much, but you know, we were able to discuss guns pretty convincingly. We got zero. Did we get any backlash on the gun show? No.

No, I mean, if anything, we got positive feedback. Right. So I think we can walk this pretty well. And I'm, you know, I don't, I don't think anybody out there, I don't think I'm, I'm not going to put bumper stickers on my truck and I'm not going to, you know, I think it's also the way that, you know, we kind of address it. I mean, we're not, we're not, you know, trying to force opinions on it. We're just giving people information and information as best we can. But I do think it's fascinating what happened in this country. I do. And I'm not saying that,

I just think from a geographical standpoint, don't you think it's amazing? It's kind of crazy. Yeah. I mean, just the fact that every swing state led one way this time. I think that was surprising, I think, to a lot of people.

So one of the things that I try to do is that I try to think about whether my affiliations will alienate my customers or have them be, it's either going to be a separating factor or a

Um, you know, telling unifying factor and I just find it. I just find it crazy that that's even a concern for people. I mean, I understand why it is, but the fact that we live in a day and age where your political, your personal feelings impact potentially your business on a drastic level is crazy to me.

You know, the funny thing to about it is that I've never been the kind of person that has to have all the teas crossed and the eyes dotted in order for me to have a gut feeling or in order for me to have an opinion about something that I can't necessarily defend, but I just feel it's a certain way. And this is one of those situations in which, you know, I mean, the reality is is that

there's arguments on both sides that need to be heard like if we could you know before the before the show i asked matt question like you know what's happening out there like you know after the election where it was is our people writing in in the streets do we have writing anywhere

I don't think so. And that's kind of what I was talking to George about off air was just the fact that it's just, from my experience, from what I've witnessed, it just seems very quiet. It just seems like people are just very reserved and just kind of, I don't know if it's like an acceptance or like a silent stewing of like anger or like, or what it is, but I'm just, I'm surprised. I'm not saying I'm unpleasantly surprised, but I'm just surprised at how calm it seems right now. Like it just, it seems like everyone's kind of just. Nothing numb.

I don't know. I mean, that's, that's really the question. I don't know if it's. You're out there all the time. You, you have your hand on this pulse. Like what? I mean, from, from what I've seen from the news, I mean, it's, it's, they kind of echo what I'm talking about where it's just, you know, like a, like an eerie calm or just, you know, just, I think the way a lot of places are kind of explaining it is just that people are just

I think it's just like a mental exhaustion just from the past, you know, I mean, the campaigning really never stops until like, I feel like you have like two months after an election before the next campaign starts. So what I'm dumbfounded in is the fact that Kamala Harris spent a billion dollars.

one billion. That's a thousand millions, a thousand million dollars on an election. And paid, I don't know, Oprah Winfrey and JLo and this Beyonce $10 million. Yeah. So you have this, I don't know, I just considered it an unbelievable waste of money. I think Donald Trump raised 381 million.

He ended up having a big surplus. He had a big surplus. And here is that. I think they're in a deficit. 20 million. Is it 20 million, something like that. So, again, don't take us, if you have any comments or questions about things, we are not here to shovel our

stuff we're just here to think about bring to light the concept of what happened and try to maybe look at the look at this look at it in stark contrast to.

you know, what's happened in previous years where, or events that happen around the country in which people just loot cities and destroy stuff and you know, like the voices that people want to, the voices that they want to be heard is violence and you know, obvious displeasure, which is demonstrated by

Peaceful and unpeaceful progress, right? That's what I always I never understood the irony of just you know Stating your displeasure with something by just being destructive like it's just me. Who's that helping? I don't get it

Okay, so one of the things I wanted to discuss again, you know, it's kind of sensitive. This whole thing with, you know, our political views, it's very sensitive. I mean, you have, you know, I'm sure you have people on both sides like wailing and beating themselves senseless over, you know, why and

You know, I'm not I'm a bright guy, but I'm not like Superbooks part, but when I think about you know the the analysis of What happened in this country and the fact that Donald Trump got the

popular vote by 5 million, 5 million, 100,000, something like that. I think it ended up after everything. I think it ended up closer, like 3 million. But it was still substantial. It was just amazing to me that I didn't stay up for the election, but I went to bed at 11 and they were

counting and counting and counting. I think I went to bed when it was, he had like a 92% chance of winning. I was like, okay, this is pretty much a done deal unless something insane happens. But yeah, the part that surprised me most was the house. Cause I was, that was not expected to flip and I mean, the chance. Yeah. I think the house had a chance of like, it was like at one point, it was like 20% chance of flipping Republican. And they did it somehow.

So somehow this country sent a resounding message to its elected officials that the direction it was going was not the direction that they felt was wise. The majority of Americans felt was right.

So we can sit here and we can throw stones at whoever, but we can also look at what happened and try to analyze it less emotionally and more factually and come to a consensus over what this country is going to tolerate and what it's not.

the substantive issues, primarily immigration. You know, that was the front line topic for the, and you know, it's funny as the Democrats and the Republicans. You know, it's funny as I heard a thing recently where the inner city, they were talking about Chicago, which primarily is Democrat. And they talked, they pulled, they, they pulled inner city blacks and Hispanics from these congressional districts. And basically they

They voted for Trump because they were ticked off that the borders, the poorest borders were allowing in workers that were taking their jobs. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you saw a lot of an uptake in black and Hispanic voters for Trump this time around, definitely, which I think Pennsylvania had.

This isn't hard to understand people. Listen, this isn't hard. If you are engaged, if you're not an educated person and you're engaged in a menial job, like I'm not, I mean, I don't mean menial, like it's not important. I mean like a service job and your job is now the job you have that you are qualified for and that you do is now in jeopardy because of some employer wanting to take advantage of the atmosphere of

Can we say free labor? Almost. So, you know, the Democrats, I've seen more and more democratic interviews where people, you know, every governor of the states that

thought the democratic way was the way to go. The governors come on and say, we are going to fight with every, we're going to fight this, we're going to fight this and we're going to fight this. And I'm thinking to myself, um,

when the will the people basically said do this and not this what are you fighting against i'm not saying that there is an individual states where you know the democratic agenda is going to be strong now in thirty years from now i'm not saying that that's not the case i'm saying is if you look at what happened you have to pause your rhetoric and say what what should be

a normal response under the circumstances, what should be a normal response? It's hard sometimes to define the word normal because normal is so subjective to each individual person's interpretation, but normal means, I'm not saying because the country voted this way, we should vote this way, I'm saying that the message that was sent was the majority of people didn't like the direction that the country was going and they were some fundamental

problems that the Democrats did not take seriously that even the Democrats took seriously and voted for Trump. So can you do that as a Democrat? How does that work? If you're a Democrat, can you vote Republican or do you change your vote at the you change to an independent at the ballot? I think it depends on I don't know the I think there's different regulations by state.

But I know I don't think you can vote for Republican if you're a Democrat registered Democrat So I think you would have to change to at least independent and independent. Yeah, okay, so That's all I really want to say about that. I think that it's I think it's up to each person now and or family unit or company owner or whatever to

I mean obviously everybody wants to be on the side of the winners right don't we don't like being on the side of the winners but that's not necessarily the point the point is the country was ready for a change country spoke and when you think about the landslide and it was a landslide of people choosing

the more desirable of the two less desirable candidates. I think one of the interesting things that happened was when you just look at the state by state ratio of Democratic versus Republican votes,

And how some traditionally incredibly liberal states have started kind of evening out a little bit. I mean, even California, if you look at that, it's traditionally very, very liberal. But this time around, I mean, there was like half of the counties in California voted Trump.

Same with New Hampshire. I mean, I know I saw a poll like a day or two before the election. Those saying Kamala was up by like six or such a joke Yeah, by like 16 points in New Hampshire and she ended up I think like 2% above Trump like in the actual vote. I mean, I think if nothing else I think

This election has kind of disillusioned the public at large to the media's influence on polling and what's accurate, because it was all wrong. It was all wrong. Every single poll almost had Harris up by double digits in some cases. Other than some kind of agenda being in place, how do you explain that many people or the percentages would be off that substantially?

Well, the same thing happened with Hillary. I mean, Hillary was a shoe-in. Right. I mean, absolutely a shoe-in. I just, I feel like, I mean, I feel like they've traditionally been, I mean, I don't think it's a surprise to any listener that this is the case, but, you know, I think they're skewed, obviously, just based on who's doing the polling, and I think people

I feel like, I don't know why, but I feel like after this election, people just kind of finally threw their arms in the air and said, these are useless. I'm not going to fall these at all. Right. And then the other thing too is think about the way that we're getting our news today. Like the mainstream media is being whole, wholeheartedly rejected by

the population deferring to podcasts like Joe Rogan's. Yeah, I'm a crafter trying to find their own Joe Rogan now. And I think his interview with Trump had like millions. Yeah, there was like a point where it was literally a 1.5 million views in an hour. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, if you look at the viewership of mainstream media, even during the election,

during and leading up to the vote count, like CNN was down to like 6.3 million viewers or like all the viewership on mainstream media was down at least 30%. And so it's been steadily declining and steadily declining. And then you have these hosts.

and you're just seeing a fundamental dynamic shift in the way we are getting our news. It is, yeah, I mean, like our consumption of media is changing substantially. So when you think about this radio show, we are media, right? Yep.

We are media. And so, you know, if we can, if people listening, how many, how many viewers do we, how many listeners do we reach? What's the potential reach? And don't say that this broadcasts out into outer space too. Like how many? How many humans? Yeah, humans. Not the extraterrestrial. No, not the extraterrestrial. Okay. How many people does this radio brought? Does this show have the potential to reach? Well, I mean with a podcast.

infinite, because we do have the podcast, too. Yeah. Locally, somewhere around 10,000, I think something like that, 1,000 people. So if people are listening to the show and maybe they hear something that they think is neutrally based and more fair and honest, that's the point. The point is to not, we're not necessarily here to shovel an agenda, we're here to get the conversation started. And it's been kind of cool.

because it is an exposure. You think about the assassination attempts of the president, and you think about the nature of political side-taking. You basically can commit suicide

by choosing a side, one side or another. That's not the point of the show. The point of the show is to say we're all on the same planet. Does everyone own an electric car right now make sense? Does everyone owning a

Do more people owning guns make sense? Do more people owning guns that aren't trained to make sense? Do Democrats make sense? Do Republicans make sense? Is the independent field growing faster than anything? Like how do we navigate through changing landscapes and changing environment when

You know, when you think about it, you think about the evolution of the television. I mean, families just used to sit in front of the television. We, families used to like, I, I am a Pandora listener. Like, I stream music and it's got kind of pay for it because it's got commercials in it. But, you know, our, all of our habits are changing. So yeah, interesting demonstration, how the country was like, we don't like the direction we're going. And I honestly think the immigration was

Number one on the list. I think a big frustration for me with the immigration issue is the fact that a lot of people don't really take the time to really understand the position on immigration. I think that they just kind of follow just the trend that Republicans hate immigrants. And it's not true. No, it's not. I mean, it's just the real conversation is

legal immigration versus illegal immigration. I don't think I haven't heard like a single conservative talk about just not wanting anyone to come into this country. That's not true. No. And then, but they label it that way. So then it just, it becomes like a good versus evil thing. And then it just spirals out of control and like an issue that's generally, you know, should just be based on

you know, law, legality, and everything just becomes this emotional issue that, you know, like, oh, we must hate everyone that's not us. And, you know, it's just like, it's not right. It's not true. I was warned recently by a significant person in my life that, that it's.

In this situation, it's very easy to posture. Everyone wants to be on the winning team, and it's easy to posture when you feel like things went your way.

I have no interest in posturing. I just don't. I just want whatever differences that people have, I'd like more discussion. I think we just need to get back to that as a whole, as a country and just as individuals. I think we've lost our ability to

as a whole to really just debate. And at the end of it, shake hands and say, you know what, we agree to disagree, but we're still people and we solve lives and we can still, you know, communicate effectively and be in each other's lives. Okay. So that's all I want to really say about that. But it's been, if every, if the listeners out there can just think about what happened and if you think about it less emotionally and more factually,

That you have to go to a place in your mind where you're maybe not comfortable going, but you know, it's difficult to negate the circumstances and the outcome of what happened. It's impossible. You can't just dismiss it. It's impossible. Okay. So.

That being said, there's an interesting piece of this election that I didn't know about until two weeks ago when I was informed of what the structure is of our nation. And so we're going to digress a little. We're going to stay on the same topic as our first

criticism of the show was like, you guys are a bunch of squirrels, like you're all over the place. So we're gonna try to stay on topic. And the topic is, again, we're trying to, how are we doing on time, we all right? Halfway. We're gonna try to create a little, we're gonna try to make, present some information that hopefully people can walk away from the show and go, I didn't know that. As I didn't know this, three weeks ago until it was brought to my attention. So first of all, I had my company meeting,

on Monday, no, not this Monday, the past Monday, and we had a discussion about whether or not we are a democracy, is the United States a democracy. I don't think we are. I think we're a constitutional republic. Almost everybody in my organization did not know that.

And so this is kind of a thing. So, you know, one of the things that I did some research on is what is a democracy and what is a constitutional public when the anthem says, and to the republic for which it stands, that is because we are structured as a constitutional republic and not a democracy. A democracy is basically a

a structure of government in which popular, the popular opinion, what is it, vote, popular, whatever, majority, right, better. Yep. Majority rules. And when we, when the founding fathers started the

country, they could see the growth and they could see like they were pretty insightful. It's pretty remarkable when you think about how the old documents were written. They were written for how things were going to be and not, it was like a projection into the future.

And so what I wanted to do is just talk a little bit about a constitutional republic versus a democracy. And so I'm hoping that when people listen to this show, they can be like, now I didn't know that. Or if you do know that and there's something you can contribute that is significant, just email. How do they email? Matt, M-A-T-T-S-W-N-T-K dot com. Matt.

like my name. Shut up. Matt at WNTK.com. Tell us something we don't know. It's awesome. What I'm going to do is talk about the concept of a constitutional public versus a democracy.

downloaded some things to help clarify a little bit about it. And I'm just going to read some things about defining what a constitutional republic is. So here we go. So we are a constitutional republic. We are not a democracy. A constitutional republic is a form of government in which the head of the state as well as other officials are elected by the country citizens to represent them. Those representative

Those representatives must follow the rules of that country's constitution in governing their people, like the US government. A constitutional public may consist of three branches, the executive, the judicial, and the legislative, which divide the power of the government so that no one branch becomes too powerful. So when you talk about the

a constitutional republic a country is considered a constitutional republic if it has a constitution that limits the government's power and the citizens choose choose their own heads of state and other government officials of course this is how a constitutional republic is supposed to work in practice it's not always this way

Some republics are governed by constitutions that can be ignored by the heads of state. The types of officials that Americans can directly elect include council members, state representatives, governors and senators. Certain officials like mayors may not, may not be directly elected. For instance, and however, the governing, the legislative branch must confirm whoever he nominates for a position. Okay. So the constitutional public versus a democracy,

The democracies form a government in which the leaders, while elected by the people, are not constrained by a constitution as to its actions. In a republic, however, elected officials cannot take away or violate certain rights of the people. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 and adopted by Congress in 1942, as I heard on the radio the other day that they're trying to make a new Pledge of Allegiance. I had not heard that, but I wouldn't be surprised.

okay so the pledge of allegiance which was written in eighteen ninety two and adopted by congress in nineteen forty two as the uh... official pledge even makes reference to the fact that the u.s. as a republic i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible liberty and justice for all so it's kind of interesting that

The, I didn't know this. I didn't until like three weeks ago. And my human resource man, Mike Butler was like, I don't know, we had this strange conversation and he goes, Oh, by the way, this is, you know, we're not actually this or this. Okay.

Let's see here. Despite the fact that most countries claim that democracy is their main goal, most countries govern as republics. However, not all republics are the same. With some, for instance, operating under president like the US and others operating under a parliament like the UK in which the people elect a legislative branch that then decides the executive branch. Even some monarchies operate as republics despite having royalty as the heads of state.

So, basically, in a nutshell, the structure of our government is that the people elect officials, those officials then represent us. That's why, in our elections, the majority rule doesn't dictate the president.

And so then we have this feature called the Electoral College. So if anybody doesn't know about the Electoral College, the Electoral College, I'm not a constitutional scholar, people. So if anybody has any corrective corrections of what I'm going to say, again, the show has never been about

whether or not things are exact it's just the concept of it right so if you think about the constitutional if you think about the electoral college so what is the electoral college we we say in order for the president to be elected in order for the candidate to be elected president he needs two hundred and seventy

votes from the Electoral College, which is a majority of the 538 votes that are eligible based on all the states. So the purpose of this system, which everyone says is outdated, it should be just like popular vote should win, is gaining traction depending on what time of the year or in what areas that you're

yeah exploring but the purpose of the electoral college is is it seems like as a discussion about it everyone says also outdated like we shouldn't do it anymore the purpose of the electoral college is that

it doesn't it it provides an avenue by which the most populated states don't control the companies the country's president all the time so you have populated states like california new york texas in florida florida's got twenty two million texas is got thirty one million in california's got thirty seven million so if you live in the states and you wanna but i think i think

You want to think that numbers rule, the purpose of the electoral college is that it divides the sheer weight of people's voting blocks so that states that have lesser dense populations can have an equal say.

And so what I did was I came up with some numbers. Basically, it's based on congressional districts, but you could go down a rabbit hole with this in a pretty significant way. So I'm going to try to keep it simple. And the simple explanation is that the founding fathers of the Constitution wanted

people in less populated states to have an equal share in the decision making process as those in more populated states, so that it created a more a fairer distribution of the country's wants needs and desires. And so I'll give you I just I have some examples here. So hold on, I gotta I gotta get my notes here for a second. Okay.

If you look at certain, if you look at certain states, let me just divide it up by, by, by populations. What I did was I just took, I just took some states and said, okay, you know, one of the things too that to, to be conscious of here is that each electoral vote that's cast, let's just say,

Uh, New Hampshire has four electoral votes. An electoral vote is actually a person. This is a, this is a bit hocus pocus because I don't know anybody that can name who the four people are that hold the votes. Yeah. Is it even knowledge? I don't even know. Maybe it is. I don't know. I'm not sure.

So this is one of those things too that I did some research on trying to find out who the electoral vote casters are and basically what I was able to figure is that they aren't widely exposed because

they could be influenced by forces. And so the key to the electoral votes of New Hampshire, there are four people that hold four votes.

and the votes are supposed to be cast in the direction of whichever way the state voted but it gets a little more complicated with congressional districts because the number of electoral votes we have is based on the number of senators and the number of congressional districts so the bigger the state the more congressional districts the more every state has two senators right so you have two electoral votes for every state regardless because you have two senators

But if you have a state like California with 37 million people, you have more congressional districts, therefore you're going to have more electoral votes representing those congressional districts. But it's disproportionate. It's not like, oh, so let me run some numbers. So New Hampshire, if I'm wrong on anything, if I'm like, totally out the lunch, please, somebody write in and we will do an on air corrective

What is it called? Corrective measure, whatever. So New Hampshire, for instance, 1.6 million people in New Hampshire, it has four electoral votes. That's one electoral vote per 400,000 people. So the design of this is that a vote cast represents a block of people. So that's New Hampshire. You go to Vermont. Vermont has 638,000 people.

It has three electoral votes. That's one per every 200,000 people. So if you look at the ratios... It's like double. Right, it's double. So Vermont has almost equal, more than equal number of votes that are influential, even though their population is less.

Texas, 31 million people, they have 40 electoral votes. That's one vote for 775,000 people. Interesting. So it's not that consistent. It's designed so that the states with lesser populations can still have as influential an impact on who becomes president.

i mean based on what you're reading their like with the statistics like of like how many people represents it doesn't seem super equal it's designed that way it's designed so that

Texas having more people, each electoral vote represents 775,000 people, but in Vermont, each electoral vote represents 200,000 people. So it's skewed based on populations so that the more populated state with more electoral votes do not dictate year after year after year, which way the country is supposed to go. A couple others here. North Dakota.

has three electoral votes with the population of 783,000. That's 200 and that's one electoral vote per 261,000 people. You take Florida, for instance, Florida is not much different than Texas, 22 million people with 30 electoral votes. That's one per 733,000 people.

You take California. Here's the big one. 37 million people with 54 electoral votes. Each vote represents 685,000 people. Maryland, 6 million people, 10 electoral votes. Each vote stands for or represents 600,000 people. So if you look at the numbers,

You can see that if you live in a disproportionately populated state, your electoral vote is going to mean a similar, it's going to carry similar weight as a state with less population.

And so the, the, the fathers of our constitution. So if I, if I read down through the states that have numbers of electoral votes, it's 538 electoral votes total. And each election cycle requires the magic number of 270, which is a majority, obviously 540 270 to be able to win it. Donald Trump received 310 14 14. Yeah. And

Kamala Harris received 224, I think, something like that. That's pretty close, I think, I think. So, traditionally what's supposed to happen is that depending on which way the state votes,

democratic or republic that states electoral votes go completely towards that candidate. So if a state votes a certain if the if the state goes democratic, then that states electoral votes.

will all go democratic. In other words, it's the responsibility of the electoral voters, the people. So for instance, California has 54 people representing its districts, including two senators that are supposed to vote the way that the people vote. This is why

You can have somebody. I mean, let's just say California votes completely Republican and the Republican vote goes to Donald Trump and they were out of 37 million people. Let's just say they were 20 million people that voted, right? All those 54 electoral votes are going to go towards that candidate.

But if 34 million people vote in California, it still only gets 54 electoral votes. That's why you can have more popular votes.

and lose and lose the election. Right. Which has been the case. Right. Does that make sense? Yeah. You can have more popular votes. You can have more people in the country vote for you as the candidate and still lose the election. I think that happened with Gore and Bush. It did. It's happened four times since like 1790. There is paragraphs in here about it. Yeah. Let's see.

Okay, so allocation among the states. This is how the electoral voting is set up. It says electoral votes are allocated among the states based on the census. Every state is allocated a number of votes equal to the number of U.S. senators, equal to the number of senators and representatives in its congressional delegation.

two votes for its senator in the Senate, plus a member, a number of votes equal to the number of its congressional districts. So if you do your own research on how the system works, it's designed so that, you know, Hillary Clinton in 2016, won, lost the election to Donald Trump, but received 7 million more votes than he did.

and she lost and that's what kind of gets people in sense an outrage as to why our system is so outdated or is outdated i don't think it's outdated but that's just not saying it doesn't need updating i'm saying that the founding fathers of the constitution understood that

if the popular vote was allowed to dictate our president, then we would be a democracy, we wouldn't be a constitutional republic. And so it's kind of fascinating, don't you think? It is, yeah. I mean, I think the Electoral College kind of exists also because, you know, you don't want every decision dictated by a majority if, for example,

You know, 80% of Americans lived in New York City and Los Angeles. Exactly. And you have 20% that live in the heartland that are, you know, dealing with a completely different way of life. You know, they're running farms, you know, they're providing food to people. They have a completely different set of, you know, circumstances. Like, you don't want them to have no voice because

There's fewer of them, even though they're just as important to the well-being of the country as people that live in the cities. So each electoral vote is a person casting a vote. So each electoral vote, foreign New Hampshire has three people casting a ballot for which way that the state was supposed to go. And that direction is based on how the voters have voted.

So what's, what, what is curious about these things is if you look at the swing states, the reason why that they're called swing states. So let me see the swing states. Let's talk about swing states. Nebraska, who, who do we have for swing states? There's seven of them. Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan. Yep. Um, Arizona. Keep going. Five 38. Yep. Uh, let's see who else Georgia.

okay here we go right okay let's see how you are what are the swing states most states consistently vote for the same party in every election this is why the presidential candidates target specific swing states where the vote could go either way rather than trying to win over voters across the whole country two thousand twenty four top battleground states arizona georgia michigan of out of pennsylvania in wisconsin pretty close matt pretty good uh... so um... each swing state which is

the states that are more in jeopardy of going a certain direction, like when they called it the blue wall, the blue wall was this impenetrable barrier of democratic, leaning states that consistently votes democratic, but because the

Voting block is very much down the middle like 51 to 49 48 to fit me to the math 52 to 48 like it's very close These candidates spend in an ornament amount of time and money trying to swing sway the state even a percentage point or two because if that state swings in a particular candidate's direction even by

a percentage point or two and they can win that state, then all those electoral votes of that state go to them in their quest for 270. And there is a couple.

Uh, exceptions to that. There is some exceptions. I know Maine has two districts. I think Nebraska has two. There are four exceptions to the rule in which the electoral voters can split the vote. So two, if the state is divided 50-50 down the middle, then two electoral votes could go to the Democrats and two to the Republicans. There's four states where that is possible.

They are called, they have a name for them, hang on, hang on, they have a name. They have a name for these types. They're called, no, they're not called fake electors. Fake electors, okay, created their own, oh yeah, okay, so hang on.

Oh, Mamma Mia. OK, so there's other things too, like what happens if the electoral college ties in an election? There's a lot of pieces to that to this. I can't remember what they are.

There's a lot of pieces to this that will involve some individual research on your part to get more to the bottom of how the system works. But for me, coming from a religious Jehovah's Witness background who was never allowed to vote in any election, I never voted in an election until I was like 37. When I think about how our nation was founded, the founders were quite clever.

I mean to be able to see something like this, this far in advance in the future to me is pretty amazing. So what I did was I have a list here of

So you also have, like for instance, Washington DC, I don't know what the population of Washington DC is, but I don't think it's that many. It has three electoral votes. You have Alabama, nine votes, Alaska, three votes. I think Alaska only has a population of 700,000, something like that. It's like same similar to Vermont.

Arizona, 11 votes. Arkansas, six votes. Colorado, 10 votes. Connecticut, seven. Delaware, three. District of Columbia, three. Florida, 30. Georgia, 16. Hawaii gets four votes. Idaho's four votes. Illinois. What the heck does Illinois get? 19 votes. Oh, Chicago.

Indiana 11 votes, Iowa 6, Kansas 6, North Carolina, which went Trump 16 votes, New York 28 votes. So if you think about like the comparison between Florida, Texas and California, California's got 37 million people with 54 electoral votes. Texas has 31 million people with

30 electoral votes and Florida's got 22 million people with 40 electoral votes and Texas has 31 million with 40 electoral votes.

You look at Maryland, 10 votes. Maryland, do I have it? Yeah, 6 million people in Maryland, Maryland, 10 votes. Massachusetts, 11 votes. Michigan. So, Michigan's a swing state, right? Michigan. So, you think about Michigan.

You know, the population of that state and the fact that it's divided down the middle, you know, you look at the dynamic of each state and you look at its manufacturing and you look at its blue collar versus white collar workers, you know, these patterns become fairly prevalent after a while. Mississippi, six votes. How we doing in time?

We're at the end, okay. Missouri 10 votes, Montana, four votes. I think Montana is one of the least populated states. I think it only has half a million people. It's not many. But it's got four votes. So one vote for 150,000 people, right? Whatever it is, yeah. So we're just trying to explain the concept. We don't have it all right, we know. Nebraska, five votes, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey.

14, 14 votes from New Jersey. New Mexico's five votes. Wyoming, three votes. Wisconsin, 10 votes. West Virginia, four votes. Washington State, 12 votes. Virginia, 13. Vermont's three votes. Utah's six votes. Texas. Texas? Yeah. 40 votes. Yep.

Tennessee's eleven South Dakota's three South Dakota I did North Dakota North Dakota has a population of seven hundred and eighty three thousand and three electoral votes gives it three one per two hundred and sixty one thousand people South Carolina nine votes Rhode Island pencil

Pennsylvania's 19 votes. What the heck? Pittsburgh, Philadelphia. Oh, for goodness sakes. Oregon, eight votes. Oklahoma, seven, Ohio, 17. 17 votes. Why are they big? I think it's just the population. It's because it's good.

Cleveland, Dayton, Toledo. Good. Nice, Matt. North Dakota three votes, so I did that one. So that's our show for the day. So hopefully you walk away from this going, huh? I learned something new and everyone needs to do their own homework. But it's every person's responsibility to like figure this out and understand what the issues are and figure out what is

valuable, what they should do, what votes align with their value system, how they vote so that it aligns with their value system.

But the biggest piece of this election that I felt really proud of is that I got three people to vote that had never voted before. And I didn't ask them. I didn't say, oh, if you don't vote this way, I'm gonna kill you. I was like, just be part of the process. And we had some real struggles within our companies about people with spouses and people. We had some real struggles because

you know, there were certain people that felt like if they didn't vote with their spouse or their girlfriend, there was going to be problems. And so, you know, a healthy relationship maybe is being different. I don't know. So, okay. So that's our show for the day. Hopefully we helped. And again, if you have any feedback, Matt, M-A-T-T, W-N-T-K dot com. That's right. All right, that's our show. Thanks, people.

Don't forget you listen online anytime to this and any previous episode at wntk.com and the podcast page. We will talk to you again next Friday at 9 on News Talk 99.7 WNTK AM 1490 FM 98.9 W UVR.