Matt Connarton Unleashed 5-16-23

It's a great storm and I don't know it. Welcome everybody, here we go. It is that time again, Matt Connerton Unleashed and we are live from the studios of w m n H ninety five point three FM in glorious downtown Manchester, New Hampshire. Also on Comcast ninety seven if you're in Manchester, and hello to all of our online listeners across an age and around the globe. You can go to my website Matt Connerton dot com for all of your live streaming options, social media links, contact in folk show archives, etc. Etc. Today is Tuesday, May sixteen, two thousand twenty three.

We have an exciting show for you today coming up in a just a few minutes. Hopefully it works out. The last time we had an international guest, there was a little bit of a technical kerfuffle, but it did get figured out using Skype, so we hope for the best. But we have another European who's gonna be skyping in, our new friend, Yuri from the band oberdon Or. I'm sorry, Oberon. I keep wanting to put a d in there that's not there. It's Oberon. He's gonna be skyping in at four or fifteen from Italy, and we'll talk with him for a bit.

Really like his music. We played a couple of his songs yesterday. In fact, yesterday I opened the show with a song called Time to Sleep Part one, and the one that you just heard was Time to Sleep Part two. I feared that would be an appropriate opener for today, and we'll play something else of his later as well. So he's gonna be joining us again. Good Lord William and the creek sn't rise. That's an expression I've heard, So that'll be uh coming up at four fifteen. And then in the second hour today, we're going to be joined in studio by Steve Laughey, who is a a Republican presidential candidate, one you might not have heard of.

You know, we hear about you know, we hear about Donald Trump, and we hear about Ron DeSantis and some others. But Steve Laughey, he's a former mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, and he's gonna be joining us in studio today and we'll talk with him. He also used to host a radio show, so I'm interested in asking him about that as well. But so busy show today, lots lots to do, but I also want to mention too. Jenny is in the chat room and says shalom peeps from Washington, d C. Yes, Jenny is in Washington, d C. Right now.

She landed there safely, and we'll be testifying later today. I think it's gonna she said. It's supposed to stream on the official Senator Bernie Sanders facebook page. She's gonna testify in the for the or give her a presentation or speech, which she did rehearse and I think it's excellent. So I think I know she's gonna do great and I can't wait to see the video. But that will be happening this evening and then so she'll be flying back tomorrow. She's gonna stay in Washington, DC overnight. So very proud of her.

She's doing a great job, great work that she's doing. So I can't wait to hear all about her trip, that's for sure. So great weather for it, at least it is here, although here it looks like it could there could be thunderstorms. I don't know, but so far the weather has been nice, little humid, but I don't mind it. I don't mind it at all. So anyway, so we have a couple of great guests coming up today on the program. Let's go ahead and say hello everybody quickly. In the Facebook live chat, Jenny, I did mention, is in there.

Also our friend Melanie Liberty from the great state of Vermont joins us. Also Jay Fed, also from Vermont joins us. And Ronda Favero all the way from California says greetings, Hello Ronda. Melanie says good luck Jenny, and Jay Fed says great job. Jen Coffee. Yes, absolutely absolutely we should mention today too. So their meeting again today for a debt limit discussion, and it looks like Biden is going to be cutting his trip a little bit short overseas. We'll know more, I mean, honestly, we'll probably know before the show is over today.

You know, if you remember the last time that they met, it was a relatively brief meeting. I think it was over before the end of the show, and I'm concerned that today might be similar. I would really like to see them get this done. I did see this pop up on Political Centrist Democrats are plotting to a save McCarthy strategy for the debt limit if the Speaker cuts a deal that alienates conservatives, some Democrats are willing to help save his gavel. Now this is interesting. It says here, Kevin McCarthy faces a clear challenge as he tries to strike a debt limit deal, and he compromise he makes with President Joe Biden risks sparking a conservative rebellion aimed at ending his speakership.

Remember part of what uh you know, the deal that McCarthy had to make. So finally, on the I think the fifteenth attempt he could get enough votes to make him speaker. He had to really give away quite a bit. And I think it only takes uh did it get down to one in the final deal? I think it only takes one Republican congressman to call for a vote to oust Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker. So it says here some Democrats have a plan to spare him. And why would they do that? Of course, well to get the debt limit raised.

You know, if you can get I mean this is this would be kind of an end run around the you know, they used to be the Tea Partiers. Now we call them the House Freedom Caucus. The Republican members of Congress who either want very deep cuts in the budget before they'll agree to a debt limit raising, or they would rather just say a default, you know, which apparently is a former President Trump's position, as he discussed in the CNN town hall, might as well default, which I think is insane. So it says you're a small group of moderate Democratic lawmakers have quietly reassured its House GOP counterparts that it can help protect McCarthy's gavel if his right flank revolts over a debt agreement.

According to two people familiar with the discussions, if Conservatives responded to a McCarthy Biden deal by forcing a full House vote on ousting, the California Republican Democrats say they have enough members to help block it, keeping him in power quote will protect him if he does the right thing, said one of the House Democrats involved in the talks, who requested anonymity because of the ongoing debt negotiations. That democrat added that McCarthy himself has been briefed on the discussions.

It's a polarizing strategy for those centrists to entertain and private with other Democrats, let alone admit to planning to deploy and senior Republicans dismiss the likelihood the gambit would come to pass. That's because it's not clear that Conservatives would try to depose a speaker even if he edges away from the position he's staked out on the debt limit, and should they try to. Republicans from McCarthy's camp on down insist there can be no Democratic bailout. Well, ultimately, he'll do what he has to do to hang on to his disposition as Speaker.

McCarthy's spokesperson Mark Bednar said in a statement, quote, the Speaker has never heard of this garbage, has zero interests in it, and thinks Democrats would be better off focusing on doing the jobs they were elected to do. Unquote. Well, of course he has to say that, because even if, even if there have been discussions, even if even if there have been discussions directly with McCarthy himself, he can't admit that right when some Democrats floated a similar offer to then Speaker John Bayner in twenty thirteen, similar during a similar fiscal fight with the GOP.

Within the GOP, he later decided to resign rather than lean on his opponents to keep the gavel. However, its potential insurance for McCarthy and a sign of the growing sense of desperation on the Hill as the White House and congressional leaders raced toward a debt I'm sorry, I race toward a deal to avert an an economy rattling debt crisis in the coming weeks. Those who revealed the conversations on condition of anonymity declined to name who's leading them, But chatter about the protect McCarthy idea is growing across the Democratic Caucus, and it's perhaps the loudest in the bipartisan problem Solvers Caucus.

Well, that absolutely makes sense, and it's okay, so Democrats in the problem solvers And if you don't know the Problem Solvers Caucus is a bipartisan well I guess actually, well, I guess it's it's actually House members. I'm sorry. You know, uh, Whenever, whenever Republicans and Democrats do work together in a bipartisan fashion and some sort of official or quasi official capacity, it has to have a name. Very often it's referred to as a gang of something like there was the Gang of six, the Gang of eight, the Problem Solvers Caucus.

I think it's a good thing. You know, you want to have you want to have people working together to solve problems. Imagine that Democrats in the Problem Solvers Caucus, which has a reputation for attempting to back channel during high level talks, are specifically looking to counterbalance the influence of the roughly forty ultraconservative Republicans in the Freedom Caucus with their own members forty of them by the way, forty ultraconservative Republicans and the Freedom Caucus. So that's a lot of people who either think we should go ahead and default, and that is the stated position of some of them, hopefully not many of them, but who either think we should default or we need deep, deep cuts in the budget.

The group includes thirty two Democrats. Not all of them are involved in the talks about backing McCarthy on a so called motion to vacate the speakership, but their numbers are nearly enough to neuter the threat from the right. Members of the Problem Solvers have privately discussed the idea for months, though conversations have become less theoretical as debt talks advanced in recent days, according to both people involved in the conversations, Even outside of that moderate group, however, senior Democrats have also been floated the protect McCarthy idea, even raising it for party leaders, according to three other people familiar with those conversations, and they said some Democrats have suggested the House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries that he used it as leverage over the speaker in the debt negotiations.

Jeffries insisted that any game planning for a potential GOP move to topple McCarthy should play no part in the debt debate. Quote. No, I don't think that the two are connected at all, unquote he said in a brief interview. Well again, though, even if he knows about it and he thinks it's a good idea, he can't say that. No one can say anything out loud about this until it happens, or the whole thing will blow up.

Hello to DJ Steve, who joins us in the Facebook live chat.

And Melanie made a comment that I can't read on the air, but let's just say she sounds like she thinks Kevin McCarthy is in a big heap of trouble. I think the young people say that heap of trouble. It says here, and Republicans are already rejecting the notion of a Democratic salvage mission for McCarthy. Should he and Biden an ink pact that alienates conservatives. Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, who, by the way, was one of the early early members of early Republicans in Congress to come out and endorse Ron de Santis to over Trump.

He got out, He got out there early and did that. He's an interesting guy, Chip Roy. He said, quote, we're not talking about all that stuff. Republicans remain united. We're not going to negotiate against ourselves. Unquote. Melanie in the chat room says, thanks, Matt. I thought big heap of trouble would be inappropriate to say in the chat I hate to be inappropriate in here, I know, Melanie. Yes, you can say big heap of trouble, big heap of trouble. Just don't as long as you don't say it in an aggressive tone, because then people get nervous.

They're like, oh, when you say big heap of trouble, is that directed at me? I'm gonna have a big heap of trouble. Nobody wants a big heap of trouble. Whether it's a big heap of small heap of heaping helping. Nobody wants trouble, Uri, is that you? Sorry? Yeah, of course, oh but there is I think that there isn't the video for you. Yeah, there's no video. We're strictly audio with this. Okay, sorry, okay, Yeah, no worries. Hey, I'm just glad we were able to connect. Sometimes, uh, when it's uh, when we're crossing continents with Skype, it doesn't always work on the first try.

We had a band uh skype in from Germany a couple of weeks ago, and uh it took a few times to get it to work. So that happens. But uh, yeah, but I'm happy. I'm happy to talk to you. We featured some of your music. Yes, yes, much for the interview and for giving me the opportunity to to be there, So thank you so much. Oh, happy to do it. How do you announced your last name? Christians you But don't worries, Yuri is fine, You're good, okay, very good, very good. Yeah, sorry for my English because I'm yeah, you know, I'm Italian.

So yeah, no worries, no worries. Can I can I understand you? Can? I can understand you? Fine? Okay, okay, absolutely so. Um so, we've been playing some of your music. We played some yesterday and it got a really got a really great response from the audience. And I opened with one of your songs today too, the tracks from Oberon. Am I saying that correctly you're your band? Yeah? Yeah, this is correct. Yeah, it's correct. Yeah. Now in in Oberon? Is that do you do everything or do you have other musicians who you work with?

Well, it's a it's a project of mine. So it's basically I compose all the music and uh and then with other musicians we can uh yeah. We we played in the studio and uh yeah. But basically I compose all the music and then I share it with with other musicians and uh yeah that's it basically. Um So,

Well, in that album the Sleep Producers Monsters, I played guitar and then other people played bass, guitar, drums and organs. But I I I composed all the music. So yeah, okay, uh do you has it been that way from the beginning with that that project? You you write everything yourself? Or are there any co writers at any point? Or is it all you? Yeah? No, No, I write I read everything by by myself. So yeah, it's it's my project, and then I share the music with with other musicians and then uh yeah, we we record them, we record the music and then uh uh yeah.

Basically that that it's a mind it's a project of mind. So it's a like a solo solo project, but with occasional musicians that play the past for me that I can't play maybe or something like that. So it's um yeah, it's it's a solo project, but with other musicians involved. So yeah, okay, um, Now, everything that I've listened to so far of that project is instrumental. Are are there any tracks with vocals or do you strictly do instrumental? Well, we we recorded two albums at the moment, and the first the first one is with a uh um yeah, with a singer, a female singer, and the second one is instrumental.

So the Sleep Producers mosters is the instrumental is an instrumental album. And yeah, during this year, I've recorded another album and in which I will I will sing. So I am the new I hope so and the new the new singer of the of the project. Oh so very good, very good. Yeah. Yeah basically that so it's a it's an evolving project and uh yeah, I like to, you know, to to evolve myself and to evolve my my music into and try different things, you know, so from instrumental music and the next album is more like Pink Floyd but more more jazz and more a little bit more problems.

So it's a you know, trying different stuff and uh, um yeah. Basically that it's it's an evolving project. So it's like the progressive rock. H the I don't know how to say, sorry, it's like the you know that. Um it. It can be a challenge to describe your own us. Yeah, well yeah it is, it is, actually it is. It is a challenge. So I try to to evolve myself and to to try to try different things and uh and go on with this with this kind of of thinking, of of of way of thinking, so

like like his progressive rock, so to to go to go further and further. So yeah, basically do you I I have I have to ask you, uh this. Um so we've been playing these tracks from from the newest release, The Sleep Produces Monsters, which obviously is a reference to Nightmares. Is that something or I assume is that something that you've had a problem with do you do you have a lot of nightmares? Do you have difficulties sleeping? What? What? What? What was it that inspired this? Yeah, well it was inspired by the by a lot of things, I think, because the way of right a concept album is more is a personal way.

So there are a lot of things in but yeah, there are there are a lot of point of view, I think, so, uh, you know, and I don't want to to give an answer to that question because I think that in art there are no answers. So I think that

you know, um, every people has to to give an answer to uh,

to what he sees, to what he's listening to. So but yeah, it's like, yeah, it was a troubled period for me, and I wrote this, uh this album to you know, like, um, you know, to like a way of of of escapism from from the reality see and yeah, to me, it's a very personal album. So um, yeah, you know, it's a different it's it's a different questions so sure, and yeah, it's it's a way of of escapism from from a difficult period and yeah, in my life, so yeah, okay, it's it's not so related to nightmare to nightmares but I think it's related to nightmares in real life.

Uh yeah, you know, I think that you can hear it from the from the tunes with especially with guitars, because it's very guitar, a guitar driven album, so you know, so that this kind of guitar, fuzzy guitar, it's very impactful. I think. So yeah, I think you can hear it on the on the records. I hope so, yes, yes, um. And I noticed in your bio that you sent us you said something about you you don't like to necessarily put limits on what you're doing musically. You you keep it. Uh so does that mean when when you approach these songs, do you not necessarily say okay, I want it to sound like this.

Is it more kind of an exploratory thing where you're just seeing where it leads you when you start writing. Yeah, for sure, definitely like this. I think that, Yeah, I don't have limits, and I don't I don't want limits, and it's a it's another thing that and I I love music and I love to work like that, and I also love I think you're you read it in my bio. I love the I love the fact that I'm starting composing music for films, and and yeah, it's it's another territory, it's another um, you know, a place to experiment in any ways, so I think it's great because you don't have any limits.

And and also in my personal music, I don't want any limits, you know, like a verse you know two verse chorus obviously, and you know the bridge and other chorus and other verse, you know, something like, I want to be free and without limits in that um when I'm compusing music. So yeah, it's like that with composing for a soundtrack? Is that a big adjustment in the in the sense that it's not just your vision that you have to be concerned with, but also what the film is is that is it difficult to kind of change your approach or or maybe your approach doesn't change very much.

I don't know, but it is the process much different. Well it's not that different, but but at the same time it is. So it depends on your on your on your sensibility, I think, and you know, oh yeah, I think it depends on your sensibility because composing music for I love I love composing music for films, and I love that the way the music work with with images, and yeah, I think it's it's easier for me also because when I compose music for my for my project, for my albums, I start visualizing some some images and then trying and then trying to compose music for that for that specific situation or something like that.

So it always starts in my mind with, yeah, with a sort of a film or or a short images or or something like that. But um, you know we are we are always looking for um, yeah, for for for this spiration. I think that you can find it on the on the feelings on the or on our images. But yeah, I think it's easier for me. Also. Okay, okay, how many how many films have you have you written for and recorded for so far? Well, I've done a future film and about I think six or seven short films. So yeah, so you're not bad.

Yeah, So it sounds like you're you're doing more of that than than writing your own years. Yeah, and the last few years I'm doing so much more U soundtracks instead of playing or composing for my project. But because I'm recording my my next album for the Oberall project, I'm yeah, it's like three years I'm recording it due to the COVID situation or other problems. But I've just finished it and maybe the next year will come out, so I hope so and uh yeah, but yeah, it takes time. Yeah, fortunately, it takes time.

Yeah, but I'm happy with the results. So hope. Oh yeah, I think that the next year will come out another album for for the Oberon project. So yeah. And do you have any um plans to tour with Oberon or have you been touring well at the moment, No, because uh, basically I'm I'm a solo artist with

friends that helped me when I have to to record music. And uh but maybe, you know, I don't know, in the future, sure, maybe the next album will will be uh, I don't know, will be better or could give me the possibility to to tour or to to do some you know, some some events or some festivals or I don't know. But you know, I'm I think I'm more an oriented, a studio oriented person. So at the moment, I'm I'm constructing myself to compose music and to to produce new albums. But maybe I I think that there's a possibility and we will see the next year maybe, So yeah, I hope, So yeah, obviously.

Yeah, absolutely absolutely, um Uri, thank you, thank you so much for for skyping in in with us. It's it's wonderful to uh talk with you. And um, I want to ask you too, do you have new um, do you have a new obviously you know you're always working on soundtrack music, but yeah, um, any idea when your next Oberon release will be or is that well is that half away is a bit? I'm working on releasing some new singles on the next few months, so uh, I think that maybe maybe on the alpha of the next year, a new album will come out okay Lee and yeah, and two more albums for my projects for my soundtrack projects.

So yeah, I'm working on a lot of things and U I can't wait to share with to share them to to the people that can listen to to my music too, because I would love to to start working on something new again. So you know, it's a yeah, I I would love to. I always love to to produce new music. So I can't wait to uh yeah, to release to release it, and I hope to do so in the next few few months or maybe at the beginning of the next year. Sure great, well, whenever you do, we'd love to have you back. Like I said, we've we've been playing thank you so much.

We've yeah, we've been playing you on the show and and to great response. And uh, in fact, in a moment, I'm gonna work, I'm gonna go. When we finish our conversation, I'm gonna go back in time a little and play something from the Mountain of Fate. Uh oh, thank you. Yeah, that'll that that'll be fun to listen to. UM, listen to how it all started, this track, sailing Oblivion. Okay, thank you so much. Really, it's a it's a really great thing for me. And thank you for so much for your support. Absolutely, Urie.

Before you go, what should what should listeners know about where to find you online to keep up with your music and everything that you're doing where they can. They can reach me out on Instagram for sure, okay, or Facebook at you know, the the Auberon page or uriqus that is my personal uh Instagram okay, and also on Spotify for for the for listening to the trucks that at the least, and yeah x excellent and of course you're on band camp as well, and yeah, yeah for sure, camp every everywhere, everywhere, Um, very good, very good.

Well, Uri again, thank you so much for skyping in today all the way from Italy. This has been wonderful. We will definitely, absolutely, we will definitely talk with you again when you have some some new music and I look forward to hearing it and I wish you continued success. Thank you so much, thank you so much so for the for the opportunity. Absolutely absolutely our pleasure. All right, Yuri, thank you, take care, Thank you so much, take care, you got it, bye bye bye. All right, wonderful. That was our new friend, Yuri, all the way from Italy, and I'm glad that worked out with Skype.

I'll tell you when it's when it when it's a call coming in from Europe. It never works, It never works the first time. But we got there. We gotta figured out outstanding. So we will finish off the segment with um this track from the first Oberon album, Uh, Mountain of Fate, and this is what the singer that he was talking about that he had on this um Uh. This is called Sailing Oblivion. And then we'll come back and I think uh actually shortly our guests are our number two Numero doos guests should be arriving.

But we'll see, so after the song we might have him here, or it might be a few minutes and we'll we'll get into some other stuff in the interim show, some left to our sponsors and so forth. But but here it is. This is sailing oblivion from Oberon. Here on Matt Connerton Unleashed. Check this out. I really like what this guy's doing. Welcome back, everybody. This is Matt Connerton Unleashed as we enter our number two numrods live from the studios of Wmnheve point three FM, inglorious downtown Manchester, New Hampshire, although it looks like it's gonna rain.

Also on Comcast ninety seven if you're in Manchester, and hello to all of our online listeners across the nation and around the globe. You can go to my website Matt Connerton dot com for all of your live streaming options, social media links, contact info, show archives, etcetera, etcetera. Today is Tuesday May sixteen, two thousand twenty three, and I am not alone. We have at the news desk. He looks like an actual new he looks like a news anchor. I'm ready. Steve Laughy is here. Presidential candidate and businessman and uh and former radio hosts.

From what I read, so, I was delighted to see that that you are a brother in broadcast. I love it. Yeah, it's yeah. Well, I do want to ask you about that. Um. I was I was reading up on you, and obviously you know, we'll talk about your presidential campaign and all that. But UM, a couple of things as I was reading about you that I said I definitely have to ask him about this. One is is um when you were on the air in Providence and um, and the other is and I. So I have not read Uh, you're also an author.

We should mention, UM, I have not read the book that you've written yet, but it is I'm going to put it on my reading list. About your your center, well, uh, the title really got my attention, and UM, I love that kind of stuff, and you know I'm a political junkie, so UM, so I want to ask you about that too. And Elizabeth Dole got involved apparently all that from what I was reading online. But I do want to read the book and then you know, hopefully you'll come back in the future and we can have a deeper discussion about that after after I've had a chance to read it.

But I do want to ask you a little bit about that today. But if you have any questions or anything at all for our guest, the Republican, he's a Republican candidate for the presidency in twenty twenty four, give us a call. The studio line is open six zero three two five O six zoo seven six zo three two five ozho six zero seven. You can also text me at six one seven nine one seven four four seven six. I'm on social media at Matt Connerton. You can interact end opine in the Facebook live chat uh, and of course you can email me Matt at matt Connerton dot com.

But the best thing to do so that we can hear and enjoy your dulcet tones is give us a call at six three two five oz six o seven. Our friend Melanie la Liberty from the Great State of Vermont in the chat room says, he looks super serious. I'm kind of scared. Well, well, he has a presidential candidate now and now are you? Um? Are you going to be on the ballot in New Hampshire? Is that I was the first person to take on Donald Trump February first I announced, and uh, listen, the nation just refuses to directly confront these problems, giant problems.

I mean, if I get one more email from another Republican, tell me all Democrats a Marxis send the money, I'm gonna throw up. We need serious people, and the time is right for a financial expert, me who has my unique background we can get into. Yeah, yeah, to fix these problems. I don't really do anything but fixed problems. I mean fix, like really fix and make people vote my way. That's what I do. Do you feel that Donald Trump is un serious? Yes, and I think it's been even well what happened last Wednesday.

We don't have to get into all his stuff, but yeah, you know, it's just it's not serious stuff. Yeah, you're you're afraid of the town hall? I mean really, people laughing when he's talking about it of a women who I don't know anything about. I don't know, really, I don't pay much attention to it. But you know, Pete, what's the what's who? They're not my fellow Republicans in the order. Yeah, yeah, you know. I mean we haven't been a serious country for many, many years, but certainly not on the bush Obama, Trump or Biden.

We've spun out of control. And I hate to say, we'd love to have Bill Clinton backs. We can get some kind of a balanced budget, but but the debt, the debt now is simply too big. And so my background is just we get into a by background is unique. I wanted to mention you mentioned Bill Clinton, and do you know Greg Moore from the New Hampshire's Chapter of Americans for Prosperity. No, I don't, I haven't. He's um. You'll probably meet him at some point. Uh, he's been on the show. He hasn't been on in a long time.

I haven't seen him in a long time. But I remember him saying something once about Uh. He said that Bill Clinton was actually the last fiscally conservative president that we ever had, you know, because he did leave us with a balance budget and a surplus actually um and uh, you know, and then of course w came in and we went to war and didn't win everything with you know Bush in the second Bushes. We went to war, but we didn't win immediately like it went on for years. It was the first, by the way, in my US Senate race, and No.

Six, I was the first Republican to call for Don Rumsfeld's resignation. Kidd, and I got all this national attention, but I didn't realize that was the first one. I mean, I must say, now that I look back at some of these things, how was I the first one to do this? Like it was a It was a terrible job. Right. It's the same thing with the Federal Reserve today. We need their resignations, Like Matt, if you're in a business and you're off by a factor of four or outside three standard deviations of normalcy, like they want inflation at two, but it ran at eight for a year and a half.

I mean, in June of twenty twenty one, the head of the Fed says it's going to run it three and a half. By the end of the year it's seven point four. These are like, and you don't have to we don't have to fire you. You need to come in with your residence. And they don't. There's no apology. The middle class people out walking the streets I see today. You know, spent four thousand dollars more on energy course last years. And by the way, just so people know, when inflation finally ends, whatever that is, whenever the Paul Voker shows up again.

Um, they don't. They don't send you the money back they took. They took it. It's gone true. Anyway, Well let me ask you. I do have questions about your background and um so, uh yeah, tell me about you hosted a show and it was in Providence, correct, Yeah, radio show, weekly show. So when you time my quickly my just my real background. I'm a relatively poor kid from Cranston, Rhode Island, who at eighteen went to went to Bowden College up in Maine. I'm from Rhode Island, so pretty you know. I've been in New Hampshire hundreds of times.

Yeah, yeah, I've been at ruggles minds with kids. I've been there when I was a kid. Right. So I ended up at Howard Business School at the age of twenty two. Okay, I was a directed man. I graduate. I spent most of my career, almost all my career, in the financial field. This is the key. I helped run a financial firm, the largest one in the South. I was the president, the chief operating officer. I started and ran the venture capital operation. All this was successful. We sold the firm for seven hun eighty five million dollars when Alan Morgan, wonderful man, the CEO,

my power of convention. We convinced him in an hour. I did to sell a firm he was never going to sell because it was best for the shareholders. It was best for him, but it wasn't best for me in a sense. I left. I went to Stovermont. I was going to start a hedge fund. Should have maybe went to Loon Mount, but I went to Stovermont and so and so. I just had this vision I should go to Cranston. My wife who was with me today, and some of our kids we went the next day. Yeah, and Cranston went bankrupt.

Cranston around effectively didn't declare bankruston because I became the mayor, but it was borrowing three month money at fifteen percent, the worst bond rating in the United States of America. The day before I was elected, nobody knew who I was. When I came home, I hadn't been home in twenty years, eighteen to thirty eight. And we fixed it in the most rapid financial turnaround. And while I was doing that, I taught the top finance course at the University of Rhode Island. Heard the word finance like I know money.

This is what I do, and that's why the time is right Like this. In the seventies, the time was right for Jimmy Carter to become president. He was mister clean. He was a really good guy. I mean, things overcame him as presidency and so forth. But but after Watergate, but in November seventy five, people didn't know who he was, right, and so I decided, this is my time, we should we should mention two. You won reelection in Cranston right with the widest margin in Cranston's history. Fairly conservative, populace, Republican and the most democratic state.

You know, maybe you're not Vermont, but hardcore, you know, stay hard to get elected as a Republican. No statewide elected officers have been elected since I left. So after I laughed, you know, and I ran for the US Senate in oh six and it was the biggest race in the country. That's why I have a big book deal with Pegwood Books, and my book Primary Mistake is still read by many people, especially when they get ready to run. Yeah. I get calls from people over the country or friends, Hey, this guy's running for government, this guy's running for House of Representatives.

Just read your book. Is it really liked it? I'm like, yeah, really it really was like that. So the NAT I am the only elected Republican to be attacked when running for higher office. According to Craig Shirley, Reagan's biographer, he wrote an article about No. Six. Yeah, to be attacked by the National Republican Party, that's me, Steve laughing. Okay, they preferred a person who was far to the left of Nancy Pelosi in a Republican primary. If you're in a Democratic primary, like looks good in Rude Island.

But Lincoln chaffing. Yeah, they attacked being with millions of dollars us. He's an odd guy. And yeah, he's a very very odd guy. By the way, he couldn't be a nice guy. If you talk about horses. I know, I've heard, I've heard. I've never met him. I'ford he is very nice, but just I just, uh, he seems odd. Yeah, stop talking to him about Listen, he ran for president. He wanted to do the metric system. I'm running for presidents to fix social security. Remember, so it's a vast different you know, I have these five things that have to be done to fix the country.

We can talk about yeah, but no seven and after I lost, I wrote a book and it's that's what happened. And in twenty ten I told the people of Rhode Island, really, and I say this very seriously, you really only want me Rhode Island, where I'm from, if you have a financial problem and you want to fix it. Christon did Rhode Island doesn't. I'm on my way. I moved to four Collins, Colorado, and I raised I have six children, by the way, Yeah, and so I have a unique background in education where I've homeschooled my own children and healthcare.

I homeschooled them because my daughter came down with stage four cancer. That's the way. For eight or nine yeads. You haven't heard from me. Okay, my beautiful wife here. She went to the hospital for two hundred nights a year at the Child's hospital, and she's alive. By daughter. She's graduating from bu grad school a week, no, not a week in five days on Saturday. She's still let's cancer. If you just go to Steve Laughey dot com and you read some of my substacks, the person who corrects that is Sarah Grace laughing.

He's alive. She's twenty six, She's going to get married, but she still has cancer. The brave person. So I've seen five to seven million dollars of healthcare cross crossed my desk, which I didn't have to pay, but a lot of people do. Yes. So with my kids, I personally have homeschooled there. The last three are all sophomores at Kiro State University. One is fifteen years old. He's the youngest admitting in the school's history because I homeschooled them. So I know education. I know what goes on into public schools.

I've dealt with antagonistic school committees. All these things we can talk about. But my background is unique to be able to help the country at this point and if all I really do is change the direction of the Republican Party, So someone takes this seriously rather than a joke or try to be the mini Trump and not have answers for people like you when you come on. But yes, to be directly about two thousand and five, WPR Row the powerhouse stationed down there, you know, wanted me to always have a show.

Yeah, and they thought I would lose my Republican primary for mayor. But I didn't so the very good people, yea. And I love doing I did lots of radio. I've hosted for lots of people. I filled in for people like you all over country. Yeah. I just walking with do shows. Yeah yeah. So I did the Steve Laughy Show because mister Cass, who had the biggest show, you know, the most popular guy, he didn't want he was older, he didn't want to come in on Friday, and so I came in. So the Steve Laughy Show was started.

Now, the big story about it, why it was a national story, was that the Democrats, who kind of run the board of Elections, decided that I could not have a show. Think about it. I can be the mayor, I can brush my teeth right at the same time, I can have a radio show. I can write an op ed piece. It's called free speech. Yeah. But they were so crazed by what I was talking about in the radio, which was widely popular. The lines are full people that either hated me loving me, you know. Yeah. And if they'd only asked, like Steve, when are you gonna get off?

I would have said, when I announced for the US Senate, that's my employe, I would have told them. Okay. So they sued me, yeah, to stop me from having a radio show. And the federal judge in Rhode Island, Judge Leasy, who didn't wasn't who said she wasn't really up on the second, you know, the first Amendment. I don't know how she get to be a judge, but she she agreed with them. So I went to the first Court of Appeals, one step away from the Supreme Court in two weeks, and in that ruling, three judges heard the case yeah, and literally said something like to the other side, Hey, listen, it's Thursday.

It's twelve noon. By Monday morning, laugh, he's on the radio. Wow, Okay, we don't want to hear another word about this. Really, Okay. They basically there's the dumbest thing they ever heard, and you need to deal with your murky rules down there. Well, what was what was the grounds under which they sued he that I'm not clear on that. I was that I was actually elected official. Now, oh, it made no sense. There were a lot of elected officials, by the way, Rudy Giuliani had had a radio show. Yeah, he was mayor.

Lots of people around the country did yeah, and ran many of the elected officials couldn't talk that well, so I guess they didn't. But it wasn't unusual in the country, right right, So that was the case that went to It was all big national story. But is there an actual law on the books that they know? They just made it up. That's why they slapped them around so hard. Okay, and just said it so we don't even want to write a ruling just he goes back on the year. If he's not on by Monday morning, we're gonna have to take another action.

Yeah, and so that and then I got off after a couple more weeks because I ran for the US edit. So that was your So you were intending to when you announced your sun that was my implicit agreement. I didn't have to legally get off then yeah. Yeah. Being the only US Senate candidate, what would be a big time race, right right. Wpr Row and I we just sort implicitly said, I said, listen, if I go run for higher office, which they knew I was going to, Yeah, then I'll get off the week before and I did. Yeah.

Yeah, So that's my radio that's my radio show. But you know, the country today needs a financial expert not a real state developer. We need these. If you're listening to this show and you're like forty year under, it must be quite the thing to get your security fighter thing. And no, you're not getting it. Like let's say someone out there's making fifty grands, say they make it a hundred grands. Whatever they make it, they make it a hundred grand, and they're forty. They're getting twelve grand taken out and they're not gonna get it.

But at Steve Laughy dot com, we have a complete plan to fix it, not to like just say we're going to raise the retirement age like Nicky Haley and she doesn't know how. She doesn't know anything about it. Does she set up Yeah? Okay, but she doesn't know what to raise it too because she doesn't spend any time on it. Yeah, or Donald Trump say I'm not going to touch it. That just immoral, financially immoral. The governor of Florida not going to touch it now. When he was a congressman, he wanted to.

He wanted to hack it. But we don't need to do either. We need to modernize its, strengthen it, especially for the twenty year old entending the work system they need to get. By the way, I wrote a paper about this in economics in nineteen eighty three. Oh I know about this like that. The returns have been terrible for people getting it. So just remember, if you go to Steve Laughy dot com, what we're gonna do. We're gonna take the twenty year olds and put up in a new system. Everybody's sixty two, it's gonna get we promised them, and the people in between are gonna get, are gonna get a hybrid some of the old, some of the new.

But if you're twenty, you're gonna get five to six, seven times eight times more. And if we don't do this, sixty one trillion dollars unfunded liability. Like this is how we fix it. If we don't do it, you're gonna get a check one day, but it's just gonna be the eighteen hundred dollars they promised you, and that letter they sent you, it'll be eighteen hundred dollars ten years from now, twenty years from now, it'll just be three hundred dollars. Is this um as inflation is what you're proposing.

And by the way, I'm bad at math. So if you throw a number. I mean, you can throw numbers at me. I might miss a lot, but the audience is I have a smart audience. Whatever I don't get that, they'll they'll be able to figure out. But um, are this sounds like tell me if I'm right? Is this um? Because during the w administration it was briefly talked about, but the idea didn't really go anywhere at the time. Privatizing social security? Is that what you're suggesting, I'm gonna want to privatize it at all.

So let's just take the twenty year old. We're gonna take ten percent of his pay. We're gonna put it in a mixture of stocks, bonds, real estate, everything. But but isn't that privatization? No, Okay, he doesn't know, he doesn't get it. It doesn't go to Charles Shwa. That's that's what Bush wanted to do. He wanted to privatize it. It lasted six days. Yeah, he only lasted six days, and he gave us that's because that's because he didn't have he didn't have a real progum. He never really thought it through.

So if you take any forty forty five year period, so let's say your twenty. Here's what happened. Let's stop with a twenty year old. He gets to be thirty, gets married. The sexist nature. What goes on SoC soci security today. Listen to this, ladies, when it was designed, If you're not married for long enough, you don't get some of your husband's social security. Does everybody realize this? If you're married to someone for five years, yeah, and he makes a million or the max and you're staying home raising children, yeah, you don't get it.

Really, Yeah, you're gonna be married for a certain amount of time, Okay to grab your husband. Now, it could be the other way around these days, it could be I'm talking the nineteen fifties. Now, it could be a woman's work and the father whatever. But implicitly it was. It's unfair. So let's say now you get married at thirty and divorced at forty. You're both exactly thirty. To make it simple, you split what you're putting in. Yeah, and when you're divorced, you split it again. You just don't worry about it.

Right now. You die at forty. Unfortunately, your ears get it doesn't go to the federal government. But you get to be sixty two. Now we stop buying annuities with ten percent of it per year or fifteen percent per year. So when you turn seventy, everybody who's left it's got a really large check. It's not privatized. It's in one computer child Schwab, JP, especially JP Morgan. They never get a hold of it because what happens in four or one cape lands with people who are twenty three twenty six they switched.

You know that was designed when people stayed at IBM for forty straight years and got a golden watch. Oh yeah, those days are gone, and now people are switching jobs and cashing out right right, and so what's going to happen. We're gonna have a giant problem in twenty five thirty years. So here's the problem or the problem people could call in about. Can anybody get less mister Laughey maya laughy, Steve laughy. Yes, the guy who's fifty three who goes into this system the day we do it. Yeah, yeah.

And by the way, the difference between me is I'm actually gonna do this. So at the end of this thing you might say, what's the first thing you're gonna do? Steve laughy. I'm gonna do this, Like people say, I just talked about it for an hour, but I'm gonna do this to save our children, because we sixty year olds have taken way too much from our kids. So you're fifty three, you go into the new system, but you're still getting the old system. Whatever it said, you're gonna get it. Fifty three, you're gonna get that.

Okay, But you have seven, ten years, nine years to go to the new system. Could you get less? Yes, we could have nine bad years. Biblically, we could have seven straight bad Well, I was gonna say, is there not an element of risk to this? There's not really any real By the way, let's compare the risk to stay doing what we're doing when they cut your check by your third in twenty thirty.

Okay, so right, so let's take the risk that's really there. There's sixty one trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities double our national debt. So what that means for anybody is that the sixty one trillion means discounting from to the today. I'm from the future, what we're taxing and what we say we're gonna pay out. Yeah, the difference is sixty one trillion. So it's so it's gonna it's it's imploding in front of our face, like it's it's over, Like you're not gonna get it, or they're gonna run inflation so high that, like I say, when you get it, it won't be worth anything.

So why don't we just fix it? Well part of the problem too, if I find it. And again I'm far from an expert on this, but um, we have an aging population and obviously and birthrates are plummeting. Yes, so there's gonna be just I mean, it's just common sense. There's going to be more and more people. And so the reason that we just can't have the future people getting it from the present people today. What happens today is that when we started Social Security nineteen thirty three, a temporary program by Roosevelt right, never meant to be all your retirement, but say it is, whatever we're living into today, we're not living in eighteen eighty.

I'm talking to my fellow conservatives now who want to end it. We're not doing that. We're gonna fix it, we're gonna modernize it, we're gonna make it okay. But what happens is now there's three workers, but those three workers are sending the money directly to Social Security recipients today. So what's going to happen is that forty years from now when they erect a statue in my name because everybody's got a great, great job, you know, and social Security is working out. Really what I'm joking, Okay,

what's going to happen is that the people who are sixty two today are going to be dead. But the people today just have their system. We don't even talk about it anymore. If they've owned some New Zealand bond, some real estate, not in Russia probably, but they own some real estate in Europe, they own some stocks, they own they own some votes wagon, they own some all these things together bonds, they're going to do better than anybody's ever done. They have unless the world ends, And if the world ends, we're not going to talk about it.

Right. The world has ended, right, So there's no forty year period where this wouldn't have massively outperformed. Again, I wrote a paper about eighty three. The numbers I came up with then are still the numbers today. So that course, that's not the only thing we have to do. You know, this inflation. Stuff has to stop. We've got a situation where the Feder reserve and for people who don't know this, and again I'm not saying people and everybody spends their time like I do without it, but there's nobody running for president who wants to fix the Feder Reserve.

Some people want to end it, but we're not going to end I hear in libertarian circles. I I often hear about audit the phrase we should all that stuff. Rand Paul talk about it, and Rand Paul is correct, and I would prefer a gold standard. But the first step to get back to some sense of normalcy is for the FED to only concentrate on inflation and keep it at zero one goal. Right now, they have what we call a dual mandate. It's really one long paragraph, but people refer to it as a dual bandit because the FED, starting in the late sixties seventies, used to just do inflation, but then they put in that they should try to keep employment high or unemployment low.

They call full employment. Yeah, well, folks, they have like not to get into algebra two and bore people. But if you can remember back to algebra one, they were like these three unknowns and two equations, and you couldn't solve They can't solve that problem. And so what's been happening. We've had way worse situations because the FED has been worried about employment and inflation. The people worried about unemployment have to be the people in Congress. What they've done is handed their power to the FED, and that's why they've never called for their resignations.

They've handed the power of fiscal power to the FED Reserve. So if the Fed Reserve is only worried about inflation and the job was to keep it at zero, and I can get seventeen people from my high school buddies to do this, yeah, it's not Listen, it's not that hard. Are there are? I don't want to quote the Taylor rule from John Tanuel at Stanford. There's lots of ways that we know about money supply to keep inflation at zero. But when you also worried about employment, you let inflation run too hard.

That's what happened in twenty twenty. They were worried about a collapse. They should not have been. They should have been keeping inflation at zero. Well, but in twenty twenty, I mean that was such a I mean, you know, the pandemic just I like to say it. You know, it took the puzzle and just threw all the pieces in the air we were in. It should have been the FETs problem to overreact about employment. It should have been the Senators and House of Representatives people if they wanted to do something, if they wanted to backstop unemployment, which is all they really had to do, they didn't.

They did much more. The PPP program is full of nothing but fraud. There are law firms in New England who each partner got fifty six thousand dollars oh yeah, yeah, and so they did that. And Donald Trump signed that, and I was against all of that. But the governor of Florida was for it. Nikki Haley was for it. The President was for it. Vice President Pence was for it, like Pompeia was for They were all for it because a very quick and easy thing to get their friends money. Really rich people took advantage of it.

Really more people got a check for fourteen hundred right, yeah, yeah, and their inflation was four thousand dollars more p year for two years. A few of the rich people did give back the money but that's just because they got caught. That's true. It's true. So this is the serious nature of running for president that we're having. Yeah, that other people I'm having. Can I ask you though about inflation? And again I'm far from an expert, but isn't a big part of the problem there's all this price gauging going on and and and by the way, I have no idea what you do about that, but but it isn't that a big part of what's going on?

Because I feel like, this is my perception, there's a lot of price gouging. The mainstream media doesn't talk about it because you know, they're part of of this, uh, this corporate ecosystem, because the only way I learned about it is through alternative alternative media, you know, and these these numbers, and again a lot of it's over my head. But um, but it seems to me like so prices have been artificially raised to some degree. The media for the most part ignores it because like I said, they're they're part of this, this whole corporate apparatus.

And then we're just sort of fed this thing um that uh, you know, and and by the way, I understand, you know, there's other factors. Suit Like I said, the pandemic really just threw everything up in the air. But but it isn't that isn't that part of it? The price gouging. No, price gouging is one of the things that you know, people talk about, but it's really a very small problem. I mean, for example, look at Tyson Foods recently the President Biden said they were price gouging a year ago. The profits are falling off, the going down, the price is going down.

They're not price gouging now. I gouging among chief executive officers of Lodge corporations. Price gouging the shareholders been going on for thirty years. They make way too much money. They and by operating out of China and taking jobs out of Manchester, right for thirty years. For thirty years, this has been going on. Yeah, they've been gouging the CEOs and that's been okayed by Republicans and Democrats. But price gouging. Listen, the truth is if the price of butter went up, you'd buy margarine.

There's a lot of substitutes for a lot of things. But what happened is that the money supplied for twenty ten to twenty twenty, money supply went up at about five percent. What we call the velocity of money, how many times it turns over, Like if you're in Venezuela right now, or in Argentina. Argentina inflation one hundred percent. If we wake up in Argentina and some of you hand me some Argentina whatever lara or whatever they call it, I spend it as quickly as possible because by the end of the day it's gonna lose ten percent of its value.

I'm gonna buy an apple. I'm gonna go We're gonna do it in America. That's not what's going on. The velocity went down five percent per year. Not to get again, I don't want to get two technical, but I know this stuff. The feder Reserve didn't let the velocity go up because it paid banks not to lend. So the economy grew slowly, not didn't grow, it grew slower one of the reasons. But in twenty twenty, money supply went up twenty percent very quickly. Now just pictures a scene where we all wake up tomorrow morning.

It happens overnight. Everybody's got twenty percent more money in every bank account. Overnight. Well, the guy who figures it out first makes out like a Bandit buys that house in Florida. You and I show up a month later, like too bad. Prices up, some prices, some things didn't go up. Then you do have the supply change problem, right, you have the problem of what's happening out of China. They closed their economy. We depend way too much on prescription drugs, on things from China. I fight about this.

By the way, my movie is I travel the country this movie. And if you watch Fixing America, my movie at Amazon, I can for our Facebook viewers. In fact, I can put the camera on me for a moment and hold it up. Yeah, you brought me this dvd. Fix in America. This is um and this is currently available on Amazon. Correct, sure, Amazon, you can stream it. It's an old movie. But if if, if, if you don't show the debt clock to somebody in the movie, you wouldn't know. I didn't make it yesterday. It's me traveling the United States of America talking to regular folks like here in Manchester, about China, about the debt.

Yeah, about energy that by the way, that's something I think everybody can agree on. Uh, you know that we need to rely a lot less on China for things like prescription drugs and and but here's the problem. I've been talking about this since two thousand and five public he made a movie about it. Yeah, my Republican Party is finally sort of coming around to understand this, right, And the reason it takes so long is that daring company, Big giant Walmart. They made their CEO so much money in the backs of workers here in America losing their jobs.

But that's how they did it. Now, it's unusual for Republican to say this, but but it happens to be the truth. Yeah, And I've been wanting to stop this for a long time. And by the way, it's starting to stop anyway. China became a one person rule company. One person runs that company's a dictatorship. Now it's not even a communist party, right, So we're going to be bringing stuff home anyway. This supply chain stuff's stopping like it's not going to be come from China. So we need to be the leader in logistics and bring this stuff back to America, Canada, Mexico.

Some stuff is better to be in one of the country's neras but it's better for Americans because the one thing that's true about manufacturing jobs, and my father was a toolmaker. I watched him lose his job, lose part of his work during the Japanese thing in the seventies, you know, the japan Dam was taken over the auto manufacturers. Yeah, and so I mean Amber's chain where he worked. Harry Mbers kept everybody working, but maybe twenty hours a week. Sometimes maybe they closed for seven. He wanted to keep everybody there.

My father was the shop stewart. So I lived this growing up about you know, I lived it was tight financially, all these kind of things. Yeah, so, but it never stopped happening because China took over. So. But but a manufacturing job coming back to America, it's four jobs. What do I mean by that? You open up a manufacturing concern over here to make bicycles, swin bicycle comes back and starts making them over there. Whatever, Well, someone shows up and serves coffee, right, they need they need some parts of handles there, some guy up in Littleton, I don't know where right or or over in bath made or something right.

So a manufacturing job is the biggest job creator and we need them to come back. Now. Will they all come back now? I mean, can China still make T shirts? Great if they want to make T shirts, but a lot of high tech stuff has to come back to America. Yeah, And I'm a guy who buys. By the way, everything you can look at here is made in America. And I didn't do it for the show. This This tie was made by bow tizing Vermont. I do think too. I mean, I would say, you know, obviously you're a Republican, but I think you can probably reach a lot of Democrats with that message too, because I do think there's a lot of unanimity on the idea that we just have to stop depending on China, especially with I hope it doesn't come to this ever, but you know, the possibility of war in the future and so forth, or or if they decide to move on Taiwan and then we're involved, and which these are nightmare scenarios that I don't like.

As a leader. We have to try to avoid these things, but we have to. We have to know that missus Jones out here and she needs tilital or she needs liperto. I don't know what she needs, but we know that ninety percent of it, the active ingredients and stuff is still made in China today. Yeah. No, in twenty twenty again the talking politicians, the Tom Cotton from the Republican Party, probably a great guy. He talked and talked and talked about it, and do anything about it. Right. So in this country, by the way, and now we're facing medication shortages.

Yes, and that's and that's. This is the kind of stuff that I know how to. Yeah, that this is what we're talking serious stuff. So far we're not talking about dastardly democrat. I mean it's gotten to the point now where there's so many disconnected people they don't think it can change. It goes to our campaign finance laws. For example, when I was making the movie in two thousand and eleven, this is what my conservative friends always disagree with you about, right Yeah, And I'm a pretty conservative guy, by the way, but because I think that's what works.

But when I talk to them about campaign finals laws, and I say, listen, I'm going through Youngstown, Ohio. I could have been in nashviewa New Hampshire. But people generally have, like I don't know, a couple hundred bucks they want to put into a campaign over a year if they want to help somebody. But then they read George Soros on the left has sixty million for a race and the Koch Brothers on the right have seventy million for a race, and they're like, what is my fifty bucks going to do? So that needs to change.

That needs to be that, that needs to stop. It can't be that special interest unknown people five or one C fours and no one knows who they are. They can't be funding dark money. Yeah, we just gotta stop it. And maybe it's gonna have to be something. There's gonna be some limit we got to put on it, you don't you know what I always say though too about this, and this is an unpopular opinion. I think that as much as we all complain about it, um, you know, we talk about it a lot on the show, I also think though that the American people, we need to take more the onus ourselves of actually just doing the research, because it's not hard to do.

I always say, if you go to a like a great website, Open Secret Stock or great website, you go to a website like that and you look up a candidate or someone who's currently in office, and you can find out who who Actually it is public information except for the dark money that you know, the shadowy packs. That's got to go. But but as far as companies, organizations, law firms that are actively donating to these campaigns, lobbyists, you can find that out. And I always tell people, once you know who's donating to these candidates or the people who are currently in office, once you know that, then you know exactly who they actually work for, because they damn sure it don't work for us, that's right.

You know they have it for a long long time, right, I mean, you're you're gonna hit the nail on the head. This has to change. This is about the corruption that goes on. And it's not the corruption when people get arrested. It's the PPP program, the paypack, it's that. It's The Wall Street Journal wrote four giant articles starting five months ago to like three months ago. They wrote four articles about not even about elected officials, front running trades. Yeah, they wrote about the agency people, the guys who work at the Department of Energy who meet with Chevron coming in and they're gonna allow some drilling or whatever.

Twenty six hundred of them front running people who have to show up in front of them publicly traded companies. So my policy is vastly different, and you won't hear any about to say this. Yeah, but we want to align the president, the vice president, the Congress, the senators, whatever, with the American people. If all of them couldn't do blind trust, blind trust, really, come on, if someone they're not blind, it's a joke. Right when Mitt Romney was running, we heard we suddenly heard that phrase quite a bit, the silly what if they all had to keep their money at banks like most people do in the US dollars?

Let me ask everybody a question. You think they would have paid you zero on your interest from two thousand and nine to two thousand and twenty one, or would they paid you three or four percent, three or four percent like it used to be? The powers that be by keeping rates too low, took a trillion dollars out of the people listening to this show over twelve years. The guy who's like, hey, I got I make sixty grand, but I say forty grand. I want to buy a home. I used to you know, that guy used to get twelve hundred dollars at zero.

So the twelve hundred dollars. The missing twelve hundred dollars didn't allow him to have enough lobbying power to go down to what would take him twelve hundred dollars to get a hotel room for two nights to go see his congressman. Right, So he didn't do it. But the really really rich guy I was like, well, it's the grace thing. Ever. Yeah, I own these stocks. They're gonna go up because the alternative investment is zero. He used to be five percent. I own I owned gold, I owned silver, whatever. They're gonna make a lot of money.

They did. Yeah, but the average American got hosed. So we stop it. That's what I want to do. These are serious, serious things that if we could align. And by the way, I have a gift for this. This is what I'm good at. If you would call people in Rhode Island, say they'll say I didn't like Laughy. You know, I didn't like him, blah blah blah. They won't say I was wrong. There's no article that you looked up that some guy said, you know what, financially he did the wrong thing. There's not an article that's true.

I didn't find one that's true. There was a palace coup, there was this. There was no article saying, wow, that guy, he made a bad decision running that trade. There's no there's no article. I have a gift for this. I don't have again. I can't change a lightbulb. I fell off a lot of I had to finally sell my tractor. I could barely drive it. I stink at a lot of things. But this stuff put in the right person in the right position to do the best job. That's my gift. Yeah, getting to the heart of a matter and forcing other people to vote my way, that's my gift.

UM, I want to look at the I don't know if this. UM. I thought I saw a question for you in the chat room. Well, you know what I wanted to ask you while I look for that is Oh, yeah, it was about um. Someone had asked a question in here. It's hard to find this a busy chat room today. But somebody had asked about schools, and you had mentioned home schooling, and I had read you were talking about it. Is it true? Is it still your position you want to actually eliminate public schools? Ultimately not tomorrow morning, But yes, I think that that that let me go let me go through this with people, because oftentimes, even in New Hampshire, which is by the way, there are many good schools, I mean, yes, relatively good schools, right so yeah, yeah, so, but for the nation as a whole, by the way, the local people want to keep this schools go ahead.

It's just that the state and the Feds, what are they really doing? How have they improved things? So think about it. From nineteen sixty two one, our test scores have gone down. Last week, our history scores for eighth graders found that thirteen percent, not thirty three. Thirteen percent of eighth grades in the United States America were proficient in history knowing who George Washington was. Twenty percent were proficient in civics. Do we have a democracy? Do we have a monarchy? They didn't know.

Now people listening today may be listening to a school somewhere in New Hampshire were sixty or sixty five percent of the kids are proficient, which is still, by the way, terrible, It's terrible. But that means in Denver, Memphis, Detroit, Jacksonville, we got numbers near zero. Because they get the thirteen percent. You've got to have some places like in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles in the pandemic, they didn't know what happened to twenty five percent of the kids. So public schools in a totality have failed.

Many people listening might say, well, what are you talking about? I just saw that episode of Little House in the Prairies and like that. No, or they might say to themselves, yeah, what happened to those PTA meetings? They don't exist, folks. When I was a kid in the sixties and square dancing in first grade, you know, and the parents were yelling, I want little Johnny to blah blah blah, mister Hayes the principal. So you haven't lost my facility yet. I know. I know all my teachers, so I'm not too old.

So so that that doesn't exist. What exists our teachers unions that are way too powerful, right, Sure, some teachers on the paid to some overpaid. I don't want to get into that. What I want to tell you is I think a lot of them are underpaid. They could very well be, of course they have the summers off and blah blah anyway, whatever, But the parents need to get a check and we need competition, and especially at the federal level. If you if you're someone listening to this and you don't have kids, especially your property taxes wherever you live.

The largest input is probably schools, but they're averaging twenty to twenty three thousand dollars a kid. I homeschooled my kids and put them in this and that for four thousand. Catholic schools are doing it for eight. I mean the margins of getting a better education and cheaper we can do that now at the federal level. Let's all as think about one thing. How do you know that the federal government couldn't kill us? Do you think they do? Right now? There's something called the internet came around the late nineties, and right now today the best algebra one teacher could be for free, free on that federal website doing videos talking about why equals MX plus B, what the slope is boop.

They could do all that for free. So when little Johnny or little Isabelle miss got sick or had a pandemic, the moms could say, let's just watch this tonight. It doesn't exist, they don't have it up there. They'd be bold into the National Teacher Union, who would never allow it. A lot of this could be done for free. Now, am I trying to do away with school sports? I'm not listen. This is one of these things that will take years. But well, this is a This is a tough sell because a lot of people really love their public school system.

I. Um, there was a moment on the show. This was a few months ago, but it was kind of funny. Rob as a veto who hosts a show here. He came in early for his show and he sat and we were talking, and my dad called, and my dad's very conservative, he'll he'll probably he'll, he'll probably be very approving of a lot of what you're saying. But he got into it was a pretty pretty big moment. Actually, he had into a bit of an argument, like a yelling argument with Rob, because you know, my dad was talking about the failure of public schools and Rob was saying that his kids have had a great experience in public school and um, and I believe that, you know, they've they've done very well and they're going off to college and so forth.

And I think that, Um, part of the problem you run into with this idea is I think that, yes, there obviously there are schools, school systems around the country that are are very doing a very poor job. And and that is evidenced by when you contrast our numbers of learning proficiency with that of other countries, other modern industrialized nations. It's it's it's pretty bad. Um. But there are also school systems where where they do a great job. And I'm not sure how you how you sell this to parents in school districts who are doing a great job.

They don't have to. Yeah, if somebody out there in some rural community says we want to keep it and blah blah blah blah blah, but just don't depend on the state for money. While you're depending on the state for your kids, you can't. The more things we keep local and not federal state, the best off we are. We have a call and my dad must have been listening because he's on the line. Hello, Hey, Maddie, I love your guests. Your guest is presenting such a I knew you wrote information, and uh, I just this is between us.

But I'm gonna be brief because I want to your guest to have the the opportunity to continue. And I know we're right out of the time. I just gotta have a meeting, But do you remember, um a debate I had with you a little bit, but more with a guest about the perils of public education. Do you remember that one? Well, I just I just referenced it. I assumed that's why you were calling. Yeah, I was just telling Steve about that the argument. Uh, And it did become quite the argument that you had with Rob as a veto on the show.

Yes, Rob, I love and I Rob. I love Rob as of Vito, and I didn't know that it was he. I would have taken a different tack. But my point is that you've got books out there, like uh, your guests probably read them or aware them. Like I just mentioned too, Waiting for Superman is a great book by Ton. And then there's Golden Book, which I love. It's called Savage Inequality and it goes to the issues your guest is talking about public education. In New Hampshire. We're doing reasonably well, but not nationwide at all, and that's a disgrace.

And it's you know, just parenthetically. And this is not to pin roses on me or to try to hurt anyone's feelings, but I grew up in a different world and all of my life experience not perfect by any means, of course. But from grammar school to high school to college and graduate schools, I had great mentors and great opportunity for training and education even in the military. You know, I was very, very fortunate. That was a grace of God in my judgment. I know we're not a religious program, so I'm not gonna go too far.

That was. But but we need to challenge the issue of public education, which has become more indoctrination and propaganda. And these kids can't think. They can't they don't know how to problem them solve. They don't know how to ask for help. They don't know they're mathematics. You know. I still practice my algebra. Not because I'm great at math, guys, but because it's a challenge to help me think critically and logically. It's a discipline for me. I don't advise that necessarily for other people, but for me, it works.

You know, I don't want to. But this goes to elite capture, and there are two parts of elite capture. I just want to throw that out for your guests too. It's it's more an oblique reference, but it's important and it's related. It's germane and that is that you have elite capture A and b A is easy to see. It's when a corporation or organization or teachers unions are Chinese Communist governments, even Romainian governments. Apparently we still need to know more delineate that more foid with Biden.

But they try to influence pedal and they do. You know, they capture people's behavior and policies through big money. But then there are I'm not going to go into the mall but today because of time, but there are four other aspects of persuasion and buying, control and propaganda. So I'll just mention one of them, and that is the separation, purposeful separation of families from the government, particularly the federal government. But that includes school boards when people are not included and people don't get involved.

You know, two sides of the same a similar coin there. And as a result of that, secrets are kept, issues of personal values are kept, and education is undermined. So that's elite. Sure, that's a structure that's not only problematic, but it is pernicious. And you see this with that thirteen percent your guests just mentioned. I'm so appalled by that and discouraged by that, but I'm not surprised at all. And the twenty percent we need to do so much better. You know, some of these kids. When I was in eighth grade, and again it's not meaning by my other students too, we had teachers that taught these things.

We were interested. Our parents reinforced that and demanded that and had a discipline with that. We knew who the senators were, We knew how how many states were in the union. We knew the three branches of government and we could talk about it. We know who wrote the Constitution and why it was important. These kids don't know today. So I'm a little bit vindicated on that issue. But there are many things we could do, I believe, to improve the situation, but we have to have the will and the value system to do that.

Finally, I just wanted to say, God bless Jenny. We don't always agree on some major issues, and I don't call to debate her, are you or anything like that, but I am with you guys, one hundred percent. I never thought I'd be with Bernie Sanders on anything, frankly, but we need to have one a system in this country where everyone gets medical care. Uh, these insurance companies have abused it. I've been slow to come to this conclusion, but I'm there now with you, guys, So kudos to you. I'll stop there, guys.

Great show, matt I love the way you take a balanced position on these issues is very sophisticated. I'm very proud of you. Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. I assume you were talking to me, or did you mean Steve?

Actually, actually I was talking to you. You're my son, Mattie, and I think Steve is a distant relative. I think I may be a great uncle or something. The work you're doing, well, we're gonna we're gonna get this across to America. And your dad's a very wise man. You mean, one you learn over time. And the bottom line for education is simply this, with these kind of test scores that keep going lower, what does everybody else want to do? That's the same time, I mean, we have Republican governors who want to take the wokeness out of schools.

God God bless him. That'll six That'll fix three percent of the problem. The problem is right now your dad talking, is that there's a guy like your dad. I don't know what he did the kids named Steve Lampy. He's sitting in Detroit right now, he's sitting in Memphis, he's sitting somewhere in Manchester. And he's either really smart and get ahead, but no one's letting him get ahead. By the way, the three kids I homeschool because of the cancer in my family. One of them is the youngest Admitia cars State University in the history of the university, at the age of twelve, so he wasn't held back the other one by one.

He was only two years older there. So listen, we can we have to change this thing radically. We can't wake up. We're gonna wake up next year and I'm gonna be on the show and you I'm gonna tell you about the new math scores that are lower. And someone's gonna call in and say, oh, we can't do that. Our schools are pretty good. We'll keep ump. But I want to check for every mom and dad so they can make the choice. And here's the math that the unions always do. Oh, you're gonna take our best students.

Do the math? Folks, if at seven thousand dollars a kid out of a hundred kids in one school and ninety leave and there's ten left. Heck, you can give him all forty grand and save money for taxpayers and get better education for all. We're so d Dad. We gotta let you go in a second. Just a quick question though, before you go. Are you are you prepared now publicly to dump Trump and endorse Steve Laughy. I just want to hear you saying yeah, yes, I am, yes, yeah, send me some material, you know. I gotta say, just very critically quickly.

I do like uh Vivic Lamaswami. Have you guys listened to him at all? Ye, yes, I have to get into it. But he's a very smart guy. But lots of stuff he comes up with doesn't solve the problem, like having the FED look at commodities, but we're not gonna look at commodities. We're gonna keep it at zero. But the importance, but the important thing is Dad, you have you have said you are willing to dump Trump and Okay, well we gotta go. Purpose that's right. I know it's all right Dad. Well we do have to go, though, But thank you for the call.

I appreciate it, my pleasure or not. Thank you for your guests. Wonderful presentation. All right, love you all right, by bye? All right. That was my dad, Martin Connerton. I do want to get this in Steve just quickly because a few people brought it up in the chat room concern about um in terms of education kids with disabilities, if we go to a primarily a homeschool model, they're probably listening and that kind of that kind of model, we're gonna have to listen. As an eighteen year old kid, I was president Student Council Ranston East.

Joe Ventetula walks in and we're integrating special needs students. We had different names for it back then, and he's like, you know what, you're the president student council. No one makes fun of these kids down syndrome and so forth. Yeah. So, by the way, we had a great year. We did, and I got all the clicks together, the greed what we would call greasers and you know, hockey players, and we just made sure we had a great ear kids with doing stuff. Yeah. Listen, in the end, we're always gonna be left with people that really really need our help, and we'll got to spend the money to help them.

Yeah, and that's going to be a special situation. But here's the problem with what the federal government does. They go like this with the PPP program. My arms are as wide as I can. Instead of saying, you know what with a rifle, what do we really need to do? I figured, of rifle, what do we need to do to help? So we're always going to help the special needs kids, the kids who have down syndrome, we're gonna put We're not gonna put them away so we don't see them. They're gonna be out in front, and we'll have extra money to spend on them so they have the fullest life.

And by the way, I grew up with families that had these situations. Now I had different situations. I had schizophrenia in my family. I had a lot of different things going to my family. Right. Yeah, my brother tried to burn down the Institutentmental Health in Cranston, Rhode Island while I was the mayor. Wow, you got locked up in a psychiotic ward for criminally in saying oh howny many years wow. So I know this stuff, right, It's not like I'm trying to ignore it, but when it comes to that kind of stuff, we are.

But let's have the extra money to target on special needs, not wasting it left and right. And by the way, these eighth grade kids should be deciding like they do in Germany in many respects. Hey, you know what, I don't want to do algebra two. I'm gonna fix cars. Why not? Right, what we do is we keep taking the square peg and we kind of keep jamming these round holes. Right, the square peg can't go into these round holes. Let's find a better situation for the kids.

We're Yeah, we are about out of time. I feel like we just barely at the surface. So well, if we'll have to have you on again soon. Are you in New Hampshire, I'm Steve Laughy. I'm in New Hampshire. I've been here since off and on since February twenty fifth. Yeah, I don't have any intention of leaving. We're gonna make it on the ballot and we're gonna make our We're gonna make our breakthrough the way Herman Kaine did in Florida in twenty eleven, who became a friend of mine. Which is why I have the nine tax plane at Steve Laughey dot com and um because we need a simple system that people can understand it.

It works and we collect a lot more money. But I'm gonna be in New Hampshire. I'm here, I'm just here. Yeah, I'd love to have at it again. I'd love to have an in depth conversation with you about healthcare. Um. You know, Jenny is uh, you know, as as my dad referred to and as I mentioned earlier in the show, Jenny is in Washington, DC right now. We probably disagree on that, but you know we support she and I and my dad too at this point, support socialized medicine. But I know you have a lot of ideas about healthcare.

Um, so i'd love to talk to you about that and renewable energy and some other things. So yeah, well we'll do the again. We'll do this again soon. And um and you got my dad to say that he'll dump dump Trump, so that's good. I'm not I don't know how you feel about I'm not a fan. No, while you're running against him, so I'm running against him, and I think I think a lot of it is marketing. And listen, as a conservati there were some good things that happened if you're a conservative person like myself, But it's but running.

But listen to everybody listening who hasn't yet dumped Trump. President Trump, I try to be respectful. We if you're listening in your conservative we were totally against Barack Obama's eight trillion dollar deficits over eight years, and many of them not me. I was always against him, never voted for Donald Trump. We were okay with eight trillion dollars deficits in four years, and now we're not okay with Biden's less than that in four years. But we're not okay with any of it. We want to shut down the Government's not that, that's it.

We we have no credibility Republicans. Listen, Let's get back to the basics, and that means stuff. I'm talking about, real solutions and acknowledge that some people won't like it. Well, I always say Republicans only care about the debt and deficits when there's a Democrat in office. You got it. I care about it every day because I am no I have no debt. I don't have any debt. I always run surpluses. Yeah, I know, you got to end the show, but yeah, it's Steve Laughy dot com. By the way, I'm the only website with this hundreds of hours of stuff you want to hear about me and Ariel Sharone.

I got an hour on that. I don't know why anybody would, but I didn't take anything down. What I've said for a long time, I still say it. Well all right, well yeah, so we will. We will have you back, and thank you for coming in. Wonderful to meet you. I actually have I actually have a song. I'm gonna close. I picked a special song for you. This is a little weird, but there was a hip hop group called d Foelle and they had a song called Laffy Taffy. And I was reading about you online and I saw that when you were running for mayor, you gave out laughy taffy at a campaign event.

At a campaign event, I bought a crate of it, did you. Yeah, it's too long to tell you. Yeah, yeah, but lay became. So let's just put it this way. In Cranston walking behind some kids with my kids, and one kid in front says, hey, what's with this laughy taffy? This year? Why that was the yard won the election? There you go. That might have been around when the song came out. Actually it's a terrible song, but I just I thought I thought it was funny, so yeah, let's go with it. Well, we'll end with this, but thank you, thank you again, Steve, thank you very much for having me absolutely Republican candidate for the presidency Steve Laughy.

And thank you again to a Yuri from from the band uh. Let make sure I get the name right this time from the band Oberon who skyped in all the way from Italy. During the first hour. If you miss any part of today's show, it'll be up in just a little bit of WMH radio dot org and in my website Matt Connorton dot com. And tomorrow is Wednesday, which means in the first hour will be joined by Eric Pilcher as he's doing a new segment with us on Wednesdays where we talk about media. And then in the second hour we have a musical guest, Horsefly Gulch.

We'll be joining us and they are coming in live in studio. So that's going to do it for us for now. Oh and if you're listening live on Tuesday, coming up next immediately after this show is through the Stage Store hosted by Rob Dyon, and then at seven pm, a replay of Friday Night's retro Spectrum Radio with Pauli c and Steve Laughy. Thank you again and here's a little bit of Laughy taffy for you.

Matt Connarton Unleashed 5-16-23

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