Season 7, Episode 10 February 11, 2024

This week marks the second anniversary of The Listening Tube.  This episode has a common theme:  Law and Rock and Roll.  I hope you enjoy it!

Transcript

Hello!  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley.  This week is the two-year anniversary of The Listening Tube!  On this episode, we’ll hear a common theme about two things that don’t normally go together;  rock and roll and the law….but first (Not the Headlines!)

There are two states in the U.S. that have a law called, “theft of advertising services.”  So, what is it?  It’s when someone puts something in a newspaper that isn’t supposed to be there.  Advertisements are what pay for a newspaper to be published.  There are also subscription fees, but the bulk of a newspaper is, or was, funded by the advertisements you see in it.  In fact, the number of pages in a newspaper is determined by how many advertisements are in it.
There was a time when the Ku Klux Klan would put their own literature inside newspapers without permission, thus getting circulated by the paper itself, while the paper wasn’t collecting any fees for said distribution.  That’s why the law was created.  To make sure anything that was in the paper was put there by the paper itself.  As is the case for most laws on American books, they’re still laws, and are still enforceable.  
That happened to be the case when the campus paper of Northwestern University in Illinios, one of the two states that have theft of advertising services laws, was the victim of what the law was meant to prevent.  So, what happened?
A story in Poynter by Angela Fu tells the tale of what are being called “false fronts” or fake front pages of the campus newspaper, The Daily Northwestern.  Made to look similar to the actual publication, these fake front pages were found all around campus, and often wrapped around actual copies of the campus paper.  Well, the Student’s Publishing Company, which runs the paper, reported the false front pages to university police.  They were upset that unknown actors had hijacked the school paper to distribute propaganda about the war between Israel and Hamas.  The false front pages looked very real, obviously printed on newspaper-type printing presses, using standard newsprint of the same size.  I ran newspaper printing presses for 20 years, so it’s easy for me to tell from a photograph of it.  One of the headlines on the false front page said, “Northwestern complicit in genocide of Palestinians” while another counted the number of dead, broken down into groups of children, women and elderly.  
It was obvious that someone was attempting to hijack the reputation of the paper to spread pro-Palestinian propaganda, and the true publishers wanted it to stop and find out who was responsible.
You might be thinking, “But Bob, it’s just a college newspaper.  What’s the big deal?”  Well, let me tell you.  I once ran the printing press at the Lewistown Sentinel, in Lewistown, Pennsylvania.  It’s not a big town, and I don’t remember exactly how many copies we printed every day, but it was peanuts compared to the other newspaper we printed there:  The newspaper of Penn State University, the Daily Collegian.  Not only was the college paper bigger than the city paper, we printed two or three times as many.  College newspapers are big business, and protecting their intellectual property and reputation is paramount.  The Daily Northwestern has every right to pursue those who would seek to tarnish its reputation and advance their own agendai, agendas, whatever the plaural of agenda is.  That’s why the campus police were notified, and that’s why they launched an investigation.  As it turns out, theft of advertising services is a class A misdemeanor.  Being found guilty of it can cost you a year in jail and a fine of up to 25-hundred dollars.  Regardless of how you feel about the war in Gaza, it’s wrong to steal the services of a publication.  You might think that the University itself would be concerned.  You might think that the reporters and editors and others involved in the production of the Daily Northwestern would be supportive of a fitting punishment for those who were charged with theft of advertising services by misrepresenting the newspaper and possibly damaging the reputation of it’s leadership.  The subject matter alone may have been enough to cause upheaval on campus, putting those who favor one side or the other at risk of injury, or even causing a campus-wide riot.  After all, the inflammatory language on the false front pages weren’t meant to cause a whisper.  They were meant to cause a roar.  A roar is what they got.  A roar to boycott the college newspaper unless charges were dropped against the perpetrators.  The Poynter story https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2024/daily-northwestern-parody-gaza-israel-charges/ says more than 6,000 people signed a petition that criticized the paper for going to the police in the first place.  Seventy campus groups called for the charges to be dropped.  Two-thirds of the paper’s own editors called for the charges to be dropped.  Why?  As it turns out, the investigation revealed that there were two people responsible for distributing the false front pages of The Daily Northwestern.  Both of them were black male students.  Groups calling for a boycott of the paper unless the charges were dropped called the charges, “emblematic of larger issues involving the over-policing of Black people.”  So, it was okay to apply an anti-KKK law from long ago, until it was discovered that the perpetrators were Black.  How can it be over-policing of Black people if they didn’t know the guys were Black until the investigation revealed it?  This just might be one of the most ironic demonstrations of racism I’ve ever heard about!
Following the debacle, the newspaper staff acknowledged that the false front pages broke Illinois law, may have cost the paper money, and posed what they called, “significant personal and professional challenges for staffers, and recognized that members of the newsroom found the content objectionable.”  But all that is alright.  What’s wrong was involving the police and endangering the safety of our peers.”  So now they’re calling their adversaries their peers.  These two men, who happen to be Black, who somehow bankrolled the printing of actual newspaper, in full color, and then used a legitimate publication to illegally spread pro-Hamas propaganda, have been forgiven by the publication they used to spread an opinion that Northwestern University itself was supporting the genocide of Palestinians.  
The chairman of the board of the Student’s Publishing Company was quoted in the story as saying, “It was the use of The Daily as a vehicle to distribute the fake front page that upset us. This co-opting of the work of our student journalists and the potential damage to the reputation of the paper built upon more than a century of hard work was the problem.  To us, it seemed no different from someone hacking into our website to post their own content and replace ours.”  That makes sense.  I’d be pissed-off, too.  For a moment, I thought this guy might have some intestinal fortitude.  But then he added this:  “We have been listening to our fellow community members, and they have been heard. We understand and recognize why we need to take action.  We hope to heal the hurt and repair the relationships that have been damaged and frayed by our unintentional foray into the criminal justice system.”
In other words, it’s more important to protect the two students who committed Class A misdemeanors against our century-old publication that it is to protect our century-old publication.  But only because they’re black.  Not because they support a terrorist group.  That would be racist.

Here’s another story that involves the law and how the woke mob can’t seem to see the forest through the trees.  It’s a story about an actress who was fired from her job for what some are calling her political beliefs, and what others are calling outright bigotry.  She’s now suing her former employer because of the termination.  I’m not personally familiar with any of her work, but there seem to be a lot of people who are.  She was in a show called the Mandalorian.  It’s a spinoff of the Star Wars movies.  While I’ve seen all 9 of them, I haven’t succumbed to the temptation to follow along with all the side-hustles of the franchise.  So, please forgive me if I mispronounce the woman’s name.  She’s a handsome woman, full-figured, someone who might be found attractive by most of either gender.  I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers.  Anyway, she was enjoying the fruits of her labors as a former woman professional wrestler turned actress.  She built a following on social media as well as a fan base of sci-fi fans for her role in The Mandalorian and other projects.  I’ll admit that the only thing I know about the Mandalorian is that it’s a pretty fun pinball machine, despite some design flaws.  The point is, I have no skin in this game whatsoever.  But I couldn’t help but wonder what she could have done to upset her employer so much that they felt they had to let her go.  So I read the lawsuit.  I must say, some of it was more shocking than finding out Darth Vader was Luke’s dad.   Oh, uh, sorry.  Spoiler alert!  Now, she was fired back in 2021, but just file the lawsuit last week.  In it, they detail her rise to stardom thanks to her appearances in a number of familiar films like Deadpool, some of the awards she won, and of course, her role in The Mandalorian.  It says she earned 25,000 dollars per episode, which I thought was a little low.  She tried to get a raise for season two, but was denied.  All the while, Disney and Lucasfilm brass showered her with praise, and even announced she would star in a new Star Wars spinoff called Rangers of the New Republic.  That role would have paid up to a quarter million dollars per episode!  But the lawsuit says all of that ended in February of 2021.  Disney announced that Carano was let go, and added that she wouldn’t be hired for any other Disney projects.  Lucasfilm put out a public statement that said, “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek added that she was fired because she didn’t align with company values.  So what are those values?  Well, Mr. Chapek listed them.  He said they are, “values that are universal: values of respect, values of decency, values of integrity, and values of inclusion.”  Disney make it clear Carano was not fired for being a bad actress.  What could she have said that was so vile?  Well, at first, she was criticized for not saying anything.  The lawsuit cites two examples of when people following her on social media compelled her to say something with which she didn’t agree.  Specifically, two men, one named Sam Morales, and another who’s moniker is rach djarin, both asked Gina to say ACAB, which stands for “All cops are bastards.”  She didn’t agree, so she refused to post it.  
Another subject to which Gina was resistant was the Black Lives Matter movement.  The lawsuit has screen shots of what people said to her on social media.  One guy named maeve501 BLM said, “you’re a racist of you completely ignore the blm movement and don’t support it.  Being silent put you on the side of the racists and oppressors.”  One person named boba fett !! wrote on twitter, “...gina.  If you’re not racist, then show us.   Support and donate to black lives matter.  Use your platform and voice to stand up against the police who are committing crimes against the people they are meant to protect.  If 12 year olds on twitter can do this, you can too.”  Both of those posts came on the same day, August 4th, 2020, the same time BLM protesters were rioting and burning cities across America.  On the same day, someone named Cloe wrote to Gina on twitter, “These aren’t trolls, these are people trying to educate you so you can get on the right side of history.”
Finally, again on August 4th of 2020, Gina replied, “In my experience, screaming at someone that they are a racist when they are indeed NOT a racist & any post and/or research you do will show you those exact facts.  Then I’m sorry, these people are not “educators”..they are cowards and bullies.”  
She did get some support from other people in the form of posts on twitter, and she continued to promote values like love and compassion, all the while being bullied by so-called fans who insisted she promote Black Lives Matter and say All Cops are Bastards.
Gina did show support for some causes, which Disney saw as Right-wing viewpoints.  For example, she encouraged businesses and churches stay open during the pandemic in September of 2020.  She said, “You’re telling me Covid-19 knows the difference between a protest or praise & worship.  I haven’t been to church in over a decade but I sure would go now.”  Disney, says the lawsuit, called the statement “political views” with which they didn’t agree.  I would agree that a disease doesn’t know the difference between protesters and worshippers.  I would disagree that the statement is political.
It wasn’t just accusations of racism that got Gina fired.  She was also accused of being transphobic when she didn’t put her preferred pronouns on her twitter biography.  There are people who can’t just assume she’s a woman, and need some kind of guidance.  Personally, my preferred pronouns are “hey you.”  But even that’s not good enough for some internet bullies.  One person who wants to be referred to as a woman wrote to Gina and said, “50% of Hollywood wears masks and respects the trans community.  To bad ur not included in that.”  Another asked, “hey do you just not go by any pronouns it’s hard to tell.”  Elmira/BLM said, “Gina just so you know, pronouns are a part of most languages and putting them in your bio is just a decent thing to do.”
Finally, Gina responded by claiming R2D2’s pronouns, “boop/bop/beep.”  Gina then wrote that she spoke with one of her cast mates and that she now understands why people are putting pronouns in their bios.  She then added that she wouldn’t be putting them in her bio, but good for all you who choose to.  She finished the post by saying, “I stand against bullying, especially the most vulnerable & freedom to choose.”
In mid September of 2020, Gina directly addressed her bullies with a twitter post that said, “I don’t think trans people would like all of you trying to force a woman to put something in her bio through harassment & name calling EVERYDAY for MONTHS.  Such as “Racist, Transphobe, Bitch, Weirdo, I hope you die, I hope you lose your career, you’re fat, you’re ugly.”
In response to all the bullying and harassment Gina was going through from BLM and trans activists, Disney criticized her for not embracing the transgender activist community, and required her to meet with representatives of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Discrimination, which she did.  Then Disney demanded a public apology from Gina for “mocking and insulting an entire group of people.”  She refused, as she didn’t believe she did such a thing.
Then, Disney wanted Gina to participate in a Zoom call with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and 45 employees who identified as LGBTQ as a “litmus test” of her willingness to endure harassment and humiliation.  As an alternative, Gina offered to take about a half dozen of them out to dinner, so they could talk face to face.  Disney found that insufficient.
After the 2020 election, Gina made a statement on social media that said, “We need to clean up the election process so we are not left feeling the way we do today.  Put laws in place that protect us against voter fraud.  Investigate every state.  Film the counting.  Flush out the fake votes.  Require ID.  Maker voter fraud end in 2020.  Fix the system.”
Whether or not you agree with the outcome of the 2020 election, addressing voter fraud is a legitimate issue.  The problem for Gina is that it’s seen only as a right-wing issue.  Needless to say, she was harassed for that post as well.  Phil Jimenez said, “Oh you sad, pathetic idiot.”  Cliff the Storyteller posted a meme that said, “Well, we’re just going to have to kill her.”
Then she got accused of being racist again when just a beefy boy wrote, “Just say you don’t like it when black people vote and go.  When a republican talks about voter fraud they’re just mad too many POC’s are voting.”  POC’s is short for people of color.  Gina’s response?  I feel nothing but love for my fellow Americans no matter who they felt in the heart they needed to vote for.”  How dare she?!
By comparison, some of Gina’s fellow cast mates made posts that in no way could be mistaken for anything but vitriol.  Pedro Pascal, according to a screenshot in the lawsuit, compared President Trump and anyone who voted for him as a Nazi.  He posted a meme that equated the American Confederation and the Nazis to the Make America Great Again movement.  No word from Disney on that.  Pacal even posted a drawing of two Sesame Street characters, now owned by Disney, as supporting gay rights, Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police.  He wasn’t fired or required to hear other viewpoints.  Perhaps the biggest star in the Star Wars universe, Mark Hamill, made similar claims on twitter, calling Donald Trump Putin’s puppet and the KKK’s candidate.  Hamill compared Trump to the Third Reich.  Disney was okay with that.  Here’s something else Disney seems to be okay with...Director James Gunn was rehired by Disney a year after being let go for the these social media posts:  “I like when little boys touch me in my silly place.” and “The best thing about being raped is when you’re done being raped an it’s like ‘whew this feels great, not being raped!’” and if that wasn’t enough to demonstrate Disney values, he also said, “The Expendables was so manly I f-ed the shit out of the little pussy boy next to me!  The boys ARE back in town!”  Think about that the next time you plan a trip to Disneyland.
But Gina Carano, for simply stating that she believes in common sense, holds no ill will against any body or group of people, and supports free and fair elections, not only lost her job, but was vilified by Disney for not towing the company’s political line.  While at the same time, Disney let her male counterparts express their beliefs that conservatives are Nazis.
There are California laws that expressly forbid the interference of an employer to impede an employees legal political philosophy or the expression thereof.  We’ll see how this lawsuit ends up.  But I were forced to compare a political movement to the Nazi’s of the 1940’s it would be the political movement that punishes you for not believing the exact same things they want you to believe.  It would be the social movement that bullies people into conforming with ideologies with which they don’t agree.  The real American Nazi’s are the cancel culture and those who claim they know what’s best for everybody and insists you follow along like sheep to slaughter.

Let’s Go back liner

1633
Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.  Today we refer to him simply as Galileo, so you might say he was the Tupac of his time, but he lived a lot longer.  He got in trouble with the Catholic church for supporting Copernicus’s view that the Earth revolved around the sun, rather than everything in space revolving around the Earth.  But in 1632, according to history dot com, Galileo published the “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.”  He hoped it would be accepted as a balanced argument for each viewpoint, but it didn’t work out that way.  So, he was summoned to Rome and was convicted of “vehement suspicion of heresy,” and threatened with torture unless he recanted his writing.  Having done so, he spent the rest of his life under house arrest, passing away in 1642, at the age of 77.  

1778
The United States Flag is formally recognized by a foreign naval vessel for the first time, when French Admiral Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte rendered a nine gun salute to USS Ranger, commanded by John Paul Jones.  No, not the bass player from Led Zepplin.

1843
The event that inspired the Beatles song Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! is held in England.  John Lennon saw a poster for a circus that was to benefit said Mr. Kite, and needing another song to complete the Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album, went about writing it.  He wanted it to sound like a circus, which, thanks to help from production and engineering, kind of does!  Lennon wasn’t happy with the final product, though.  It made the album nonetheless.

1879
American President Rutherford B. Hayes signs a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.  Three years earlier, when lawyer and presidential candidate Belva Lockwood went to congress to get the rule changed.  Because, according to a story on womens voices media dot org, the Supreme Court against it.  Chief Justice Morrison Waite said at the time, “By the uniform practice of the Court from its organization to the present time, and by the fair construction of its rules, none but men are permitted to practice before it as attorneys and counselors.”  
Justice Joseph Bradley chimed in, too.  He said, “Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.  The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.”
Ms. Lockwood would have the final say, however, and argued two cases before the Supreme Court, losing the first and winning the second.

1909
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded.  According to wikipedia, the NAACP was founded as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans.  It says it’s mission in the 21st century is “to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination."  Ironically, the name National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is, in fact, race-based discrimination.  Additionally, we’re really not supposed to say colored people anymore.  We’re supposed to say people of color.  Either way, the term refers to those with African ancestry.  Which begs the question:  How can Vice President Kamala Harris claim to be black, when neither her father nor mother claim African heritage?  

1957
The “Toddlers’ Truce”, a controversial policy in the United Kingdom that required television stations close down between 6 and 7 pm is abolished.  It may be hard for young people today to comprehend the possibility of a television station going off the air.  But it wasn’t that long ago when the all did.  Usually at midnight, all the networks would sign off the air after playing the national anthem.  After that, it would simply go dark or the screen would show nothing but a test pattern until the station signed back on around 6am.  But the Toddler’s Truce was different.  It was meant to give parents a chance to put the kids to bed before adult programming began.  The BBC didn’t have a problem with it, as it gave everybody a one-hour break.  But when ITV came on the air in 1955, it didn’t like the policy, because it relied on advertising to exist, thus losing an hour of income while the BBC was funded by television license fees, paid by viewers.  But the postmaster general, who for some reason had some authority over the whole thing, didn’t like the Toddler’s Truce, saying it was the responsibility of parents, not the state, to put their children to bed at the right time.  The BBC didn’t want to end the one-hour break, as it was having a detrimental effect on ITV, it’s competitor.  The Postmaster General convinced parliament to end the outage. 

1970
Black Sabbath releases their debut album, arguably the very first heavy metal album.  Although panned by the critics, it had commercial success, and was quickly followed up by Paranoid the same year, and Mater of Reality in 1971.  Their vocalist, Ozzy Ozbourne, was fired in 1979, but soon eclipsed his former band in popularity and craziness.  He would later reunite with the band while enjoying a successful solo career.  The guitarist, Tony Iommi, is the only member of the band to appear on every Black Sabbath album, of which there are 19 studio albums, 8 live albums, and 13 compilation albums.  

1985
Hezbollah is founded.  Inspired by the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when 52 American hostages were taken and held for 444 days, the Ayahollah Khomeini gave them the name, meaning “Party of Allah.”  Hezbollah holds seats in the Lebanese parliament, has it’s own military wing that’s said to be more powerful than that of Lebanon, it’s own radio and tv station and social services.  Hezbollah gets military training, weapons and financial support from Iran.

1989
Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa encouraging Muslims to kill the author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie.  It was a fictional book but inspired by the live of the prophet Mohammad.  Since then Salman has had to live looking over his shoulder.  He’s been in the United States for decades in his effort to stay alive.  As recently as 2022, he was stabbed while waiting to deliver a lecture in Chautauqua, New York.  

2003
Protests against the Iraq war take place in over 600 cities worldwide. It is estimated that between 8 million to 30 million people participate, making this the largest peace demonstration in history.  In hindsight, those 30 million people were right.  The justification the U.S. used to invade Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, turned out to be false.

2004
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces the discovery of the largest known diamond in the universe.  So, how big is it?  

Look that up liner

It’s big.  Bigger than the Hope Diamond by far.  It’s value is priceless.  Bill Gates can’t buy it.  Jeff Bezos can’t buy it.  Elon Musk can’t trade twitter for it.  It has a radius of 2, 500 miles and it’s 48 light-years away from Earth.  It’s a white dwarf star called BPM 37093.  Astronomers nicknamed the star “Lucy” after The Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.

Phone and email liner

A lot of the talk in the news this week was about the failed bill working it’s way through the U.S. Senate to address not only aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, but also the porous southern border and how best to stop the flow of illegal immigrants.  It resulted in a 370-page bill, of which the first few dozen pages were used to describe how money and weapons will be filtered through our military to foreign governments.  Although there are many in congress who are exhausted by the billions of dollars in foreign aid, the shit didn’t hit the fan until it got to the part about immigration.  In a nutshell, the bill couldn’t get out of the Senate, where months of work went into drafting all 370 pages.  The mainstream media tells us that the Democrats gave the Republicans everything they wanted, and still the Republicans shot it down.  On the surface, that’s true.  But the devil is in the details, and this bill was so full of so-called poison pills that the Republicans had no choice but to abandon it.  While the name of the bill, the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act sounds like it’s something we should all vote for, it didn’t exactly live up to the title.  When we finally get to the part about securing our borders, the first thing the bill does is say that we need to hire more personnel.  That’d be great, except that if we go by what’s been demonstrated so far, the only job we need more people for is to cut the razor wire put up by the state of Texas, and administrative people to keep the lines of illegal immigrants moving.  Those aren’t exactly border-securing positions.  Still, it takes 8 pages to describe it.  Starting at page 109, it describes how alternatives to detention programs are to be administered and standardized.  In other words, here’s how we’re going to let the people who crossed the border into the United States illegally should be released into the country.  It stipulates that border patrol be trained in fundamentals of law, including the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.  That’s the one about searches and seizures.  Well, we don’t want to illegally confiscate somebody’s fentanyl pills!  The bill puts so many restrictions on our Border Patrol that they might as well just stand aside and let the migrants walk by.  But that’s what they’ve been doing for three years.  The bill also requires training on the impact of border security operations on natural resources and the environment, including sttategies to limit the impact of border security operations on natural resources and the environment.  
As you may recall, it was under the guise of environmental impact that the U.S. government sued the states of Texas and Arizona to remove obstacles to illegal immigration.
People entering the U.S. under duress, or the threat of physical harm or torture, are afforded a protection determination.  That seem fair.  However, such protection determination cannot be conducted in a facility that is managed, leased, owned or operated by U.S. Immigration and Custome Enforcement or Customs and Border Patrol.  It’s like the federal government is telling the border patrol, “we’ll let you know who’s allowed to stay and who isn’t.”  There’s literally more than a hundred pages of who, how, when and where and alien may or may not be subject to admission or removal, but the bottom line is that it stretches out the process for so long that by the time a determination is made for most, they will have already blended into the countryside or city scape without a trace.  There’s exception after exception for family units and unaccompanied minors and people from certain countries, all making for a patchwork of rules and laws and procedures that will make your head spin, opening the door for a whole new breed of lawyers to navigate the system and find the loopholes that are put in place for the benefit of the illegal immigrants.  For example, on page 220, it says, “Any alien who, during a  period of 365 days, has 2 or more summary removals pursuant to the border emergency authority, shall be inadmissible for a period of 1 year beginning on the date of the alien’s most recent summary removal.  So, if you’re removed from the country twice in a year, you’re not allowed to try to come in again for another year.  Your tax dollars at work! 
When it comes to the flow of fentanyl over the southern border, the bill has a plan for that, too.  Make it more expensive to transport it across the border.  Really?  That’s the plan?  Sic the Treasury department on the smugglers.  That’ll fix it.  The bill also addresses money laundering.  Thanks.  
The bottom line is we don’t need a 370 page bill to fix the problem.  President Biden can do a lot to help, but he won’t.  We’ll have to get a border bill someday, but it probably won’t be under the Biden administration.

This episode marks the two year anniversary of the Listening Tube, which is written and produced by yours truly.  Copyright 2024.  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube.  Subscribe today.  I’m your host Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.