Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Muckrek podcast. I'm Jared Yates-Saxton. I am sitting in a gas station parking lot in my car. My apologies. America's infrastructure absolutely blows. But guess what? I'm excited to be here. I'm talking with my good friend Nick Houseman. Nick, how we doing, man?

You know, it's so funny, I was having the same issues with the infrastructure and just like the state of our roads the other day. It's really frustrating.

It's bad. Frustrating is a kind way of putting it. I think it's putting it in action. It's allowing for empathy.

We have allowed, by the way, we're, I believe in the 50th anniversary of the interstate system,

which like has not really been taken well care of. Basically what has happened in this country

is that we have created all kinds of amazing things

in the mid-20th century and we've just allowed them to go to shit, Nick, just absolutely gone

to shit. It is like, it's like driving through a war zone out there. Oh, I agree. And it just feels

helpless because, you know, it's funny, at some point in Chicago, way back in the day, the mayor daily, the second daily number two, he decided to fix a lot of the potholes and all the sidewalks and all its stuff.

And I always felt like that was a really smart idea because whether or not he was doing anything with other policies, here were some very visual things that you can see that actually felt tangible. But I don't know if that blueprint is spread across the country or anyone else has done since because I got to tell you, like in L.A., it is the state of our roads is horrible. And it's really frustrating. There's so many things that are horrible here. That is one of them. And it would be just an easy thing just to kind

of take care of. And they don't even want to spend money on that, I guess. I don't know.

What's incredible is that we, again, we've created all these things post-World War II that are like

almost wonders of the world. And instead of keeping them up, we've let them go into absolute decline.

And here's the thing, Nick.

We live in a country where we could have high-speed rail, where we could have better ways of getting around. And we're going to go ahead and we're going to go with the car. We're going to go with the interstate. And we won't take care of that. Either way, you're absolutely screwed. But that is not what we're here to talk about. This is not your favorite podcast about highway infrastructure.

We have to talk about. This is not your favorite podcast about highway infrastructure.

We have to talk about what is going on in American politics right now. And I'm going to tell you,

folks, things are getting fascinating. You know, this is a story I think. I got emailed.

You know, you always know when a story is interesting when you get them emailed and DM to you by roughly 20 people.

And one of the thing that's coming out of one of our favorite states, that's right, the state of Florida, everybody, is that Florida education in its continuous unending war against woke is now going to push for educational standards that are going to

portray the enslavement of human beings chattel slavery that is right they are going to say

that slavery was actually very beneficial to the enslaved nick much like having an internship

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