The Tragedy in Buffalo

Following a man’s racist attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, in which he killed 10 ...

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Following a man’s racist attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, in which he killed 10 people and wounded three more, our hosts are here to discuss what it means for our politics and culture. Sarah, Jonah, and Declan then discuss the baby formula shortage. How did the Biden administration drop the ball? And finally, reactions to the latest round of primaries around the country.

Show Notes:

–The Dispatch: “A Look at the State of Red Flag Laws After Buffalo”

–TMD: “Grappling With the Buffalo Mass Shooting”

–Capitolism: “America’s Infant Formula Crisis and the ‘Resiliency’ Mirage”

–The Sweep: “Headed Toward a Recount in Pennsylvania”

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  1. Avatar photo
    JohnF

    I'm a little late to the party here, so I'm not sure if anyone will ever see this, but I thought it was still worth commenting on. I think you guys missed the boat on the baby formula discussion.
    Here's the thing. I'm beginning to wonder whether there is anyone left who fits the description of a small-government conservative.
    In the immortal words of the noted economic philosopher Mo Brooks:
    𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑜𝑚 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑙𝑖𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑒, 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑖𝑛 𝑠𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑑𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑠. 𝐶𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑛𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟, 𝑓𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑟 𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑒. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡. 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑦, 𝑆𝑜𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑚 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑚𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑒. 𝑆𝑜𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑦, 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑜𝑚 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑠, 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑐 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑏𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑟, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡.
    So far, so good. Socialism bad, government intervention in the economy bad, let the free market do its thing.
    But wait! The Biden Administration has screwed up big time because there is no baby formula on the shelves! And that's just one thing. Why haven't they brought down the price of gasoline?
    Which leads to the question, do you really want the government managing the production and distribution of baby formula? Do you really want them controlling Oil and Gas markets and prices?
    Apparently, Republicans do. From Elise Stefanik's website:
    𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘, 𝐸𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑆𝑡𝑒𝑓𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑘 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑤𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝐴𝑠ℎ𝑙𝑒𝑦 𝐻𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑛 (𝑅-𝐼𝐴) 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝐷𝐴 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑎 𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑎 𝑖𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔-𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑚 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑧𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑙𝑦 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑟𝑢𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑎.
    Really? We want the government actively managing the baby formula supply chain? Which other products should have their means of production and distribution controlled by the government?
    I say that partially tongue-in-cheek because there is a large amount of irony in seeing the people who proudly proclaim that they are "fighting socialism" every day, also calling for central planning and management of the baby formula market.
    However, the question is still there. If we are going to complain about the government's management of the baby formula market or the gasoline market, then we are essentially saying that we believe that the government should control that market (while we're also saying, as Jonah does, that they are doing so incompetently).
    The FDA plays an important role in ensuring that babies aren't being poisoned by contaminated products. I don't think anyone would say that they don't want the government doing health inspections and/or enforcing health standards. Personally, I don't want the people who are looking for botulism in baby formula also worrying about potential supply chain issues. That's just asking for a scandal down the road. There is an argument to be made that other parts of the government have contributed to the market concentration and supply chain issues through protectionism and subsidies. However, there have also been benefits to that situation (most notably the ability to procure large amounts of baby formula for poor mothers and children at deeply discounted prices). Again, there is a question here. What do we want the Federal government to do?
    It depresses me that the next series of elections will be fought based on who uses what bathroom and how kids who can't learn math or grammar are apparently being thoroughly indoctrinated in racial propaganda, yet no one is going to be debating the actual role of the Federal Government in today's society and economy.
    Instead, Elise Stefanik will be fighting socialism while demanding that the government control the means of production.

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    1. Avatar photocircle-angle-nib
      Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

      Yeah but in this case the government caused the shortage with their govt-granted monopoly. Soooo when you break it, you buy it. Damn right they need to go get formula from Europe and fly it back here. AND THEN end the tariffs and state-run monopolies. Then they can get out of the business. But too simplistic to say small government conservatives can never support government intervention.

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      1. Avatar photo
        JohnF

        One quick point. Just so I don't sound like a partisan hack (leave my guy alone), I should note that I'm Canadian, I don't have a dog in this hunt. I just keep hoping that political discussions could begin to go beyond the "these guys suck and they should get up and fix this" (or something more explicit along those lines) and take a deeper view. A few weeks ago, Steve was happily blaming Biden for both inflation and high gasoline prices without considering that inflation was rampant in many countries and gasoline prices reflect the fact that the world Oil price has doubled in the past year (largely due to global supply and demand issues that go beyond US borders). Similarly, "end the tariffs and state-run monopolies" sounds great, but what are the financial implications for the part of the Government that provides food and nutrition to millions of women and children?

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      2. Avatar photo
        JohnF

        Fair, but it's also too simplistic to say that "the Government" caused the shortage. "The Government" is a very large beast with many heads and tentacles. One part of "The Government" (USDA) purchases and distributes baby formula to poor women and children. It's been doing this since 1972. They have a vested interest in stretching their dollars as far as possible, so they have developed a single-sourcing model that provides volume to the lowest bidder, allowing them to make a profit due to the large volume. Over the past five decades that has resulted in market concentration. Market concentration and competition is the domain of the DOJ (as I'm sure you know). Tariffs are yet another Government department and these have been in place for years (interestingly, they were further compounded by Trump's renegotiation of NAFTA, which further restricted imports from Canada). The FDA has contributed to the protectionist problem by erecting various non-tariff barriers through regulation (a progress that began in 1929). With all this in place, the current crisis was ignited because another part of the FDA was actually doing its job (although perhaps not quickly enough for some).
        All of which is to say that the current problem has taken decades to create, which is why these shortages are so obviously due to the incompetence of the Biden Administration (as you were all quick to point out).
        As you stated on the podcast, you will be voting in November based on this issue, but I'm curious about what you're going to be looking for? Do you want to see the Administration bring together all of these pieces under a single umbrella to manage the supply chain (as Elise Stefanik is advocating for)? Will you be voting for the Party that promises to eliminate the tariffs and non-tariff barriers to leave things up to the free market? Or the Party that promises to introduce competition to the WIC program (thereby increasing program costs)? Or the Party that promises to solve the whole problem through central planning and control over the means of production and distribution? (Just kidding on that one, even the far-left democratic socialists aren't going to stick their necks out that far).
        I know I sound annoying here, but that's not my intent. 🙂This is a complex problem and complex problems don't get solved if the analysis of them simply leads to the conclusion that "Biden dropped the ball again."

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        1. Avatar photocircle-angle-nib
          Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

          Except I didn’t say I’d be voting based on this issue, did I? I’d bet I said I thought it could be a political issue much like abortion, meaning touching the same voting demographic. But to your point, I think we’re agreeing. I’m blaming the biden admin for not handling the current crisis…but they didn’t cause this. Not even close. This is government incompetence—and I take your point that “government” has many parts—but indeed that is MY point. That a government can precipitate a crisis for exactly the reason that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. So two different issues: crisis of baby formula shortage happens on your watch then it’s your job to ensure babies don’t starve. Duh. Second issue: crisis of competence that the formula shortage happened in the first place was decades in the making and as much trump, Obama, and anyone else’s fault bc government messed with the market in such a fundamental way that it can’t recover when one plant gets shut down (by the government without any plan for how to replace that product.)

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          1. Avatar photo
            JohnF

            At around the 37:40 mark, Declan is talking about how it's possible that voters will be angry about something else in November. Your response is "To be clear, I won't, baby formula will be 𝐭𝐡𝐞 thing I am most angry about for years" Declan later says that he is "sure that there are some people, you being one of them, for whom this will be a motivating factor in November." Since you didn't contradict him, I may have assumed that he was correct in assuming that the issue you said was the one you are most angry about would also be front of mind in November. My bad.
            So I think we do agree on some things:
            1. The Government needs to fix a supply problem ASAP (it seems to be doing that through emergency imports).
            2. The overall situation is complex and took decades to develop. It landed on the current Administration. However, it was set off by something done in one department of one branch of the Government, so (keeping in mind the 'buck stops here' and all that) just blaming Biden doesn't bring us any closer to understanding and solving the problem and I, at least, am prepared to cut him some slack for not having anticipated a disruption in the baby formula supply chain given everything else that's on his plate.
            3. It is still fair (and fun) to mock Republican politicians who go on incessantly about opposing socialism while simultaneously demanding that the government control the baby food supply chain and get gas prices under control. 😀
            I'm still not convinced by the "they should have thought about the supply before they shut down the plant" argument though. As I said earlier, I don't believe that we want the people responsible for keeping botulism and other toxins out of the baby formula also thinking about the business and economic repercussions of shutting a plant down, if there is a risk that the plant could be putting out a contaminated product. That's just asking for trouble down the road (imagine the headlines if a few babies got really sick and died and it turned out that the FDA knew about the risk but chose not to do anything about it because they were concerned about the supply chain.)
            Presumably, there are industry analysts and/or economists within the government who are looking at the industry holistically and are doing risk analyses that could have identified the potential risk in taking this plant offline (if not, should there be?). The question then is whether we want the government to do something about it (fixing a potential issue within a private-sector supply chain) and, if so, what?

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  2. Maddmac

    While I have sympathy for parents dealing with this, it's not something that I feel should impact one's vote. If anything, anyone who is already railing against the Democrats or the Biden Administration, this may push them further in the direction of the right. I get easily annoyed with the Biden Administration too. But anyone with half a brain should be voting against the party that now appears to be embracing authoritarianism, and no other issues need to factor into the decision. But that's just me.

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  3. Maddmac

    Yeah, sorry I was triggered in a different way. I really cringe when I hear the "attendance in church is down" as one of the reasons why people go down these horrific paths.

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  4. Eric Swenson

    My goodness, can we get just a transcript of Sarah's breakdown of the stats on formula tariffs, WIC purchases, and market share? That stands on its own as pretty much the most succinct breakdown of what caused the problem and why the GOP didn't vote for the FDA bill.

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  5. Karin

    Why do we believe the Buffalo shooter’s manifesto? He says he’s not mentally ill, so we accept that? Even though his diaries reveal him to have stabbed and beheaded a cat? His manifesto is how he justifies his murders, not the literal truth of how he got to that point.

    Please don’t read this as a denial of the impact that 4chan et al had on him; it’s just that that is not the whole story. I think that he went looking for a reason to go on a murderous rampage and found one. But he could have found another.

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    Tony Martyr

    Sarah, are you allowed to talk about your recent appearance on Left, Right & Centre? Or is that against either the formal rules or the accepted norms? I thought the previous week with Tim Carney holding a lone hand on Roe V Wade was a classic - where "guest host Jessica Yellin" first declared herself "the centre", THEN declared herself partisan and proceeded to duet with Jill Filipovic. But yours was even better - Centre (you), Left ( "guest host Jessica Yellin" and Jeh Johnson, Obama's DHS Secretary) and that other bloke (" Baratunde Thurston, a founding partner at Puck") who was somewhere else entirely. I'd be really interested to hear how you felt about it from the inside?

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  7. Mark

    Fascinating discussion as always.

    One comment that stood out to me was when Jonah said (paraphrasing) that "racism is not nearly the problem in America that the Left thinks it is." I would love to see Jonah and David French have a podcast where they discuss that, as David seems to think it is a far bigger problem that what Jonah does, and has spoken favorably of some people within the Christian church (including a former Director for Ibram Kendi's organization) who are pretty "illiberal" in some of their viewpoints.

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    Occam's Razr

    On the sectarian resonances of "Dark MAGA":

    I think this is a stretch, but I couldn't help but notice some similarities between the Dark MAGA phenomenon and schisms in churches. It is very common for a sect with a charismatic founder to spliner and fragment upon the death of the founder, or when the movement is going through hard times, etc. Dark MAGA really feels like a political version of the familiar schismatic cry "The old leader has fallen from grace, and God has spoken to me and I'm the new person to lead things forward." That is, Old MAGA was insufficiently faithful, so, to really mix our political and religious metaphors, they have lost the mandate of heaven and it is time for the pure and faithful New MAGA or Dark MAGA or Decaf MAGA to come forward.

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    Ben Connelly

    Did Declan just coin the term “MAGAverse?”

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  10. Jon Craig

    I'm confused about the claim that Dems want to open immigration to acquire more Dem voters. If I recall Civics class, only citizens can vote Those granted asylum can become citizens, but it takes time (5+ yrs) and effort. And as Sarah noted, not all immigrants vote Democratic. Undocumented immigrants can never vote, but they pose another set of problems.

    I'm not watching the Depp v Heard slugfest, but based on what I've read it's just sad. I also think we're seeing alcoholism and drug addiction in action, and that's never pretty.

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