Podcast 206

Boardwalk Empire and the 1920’s. A new guilty pleasure and obsession is HBO’s award winning ‘Boardwalk Empire’. 1920’s America was a time of great upheaval, social change and prosperity. Innovations like Radio, telephones, automobiles, commercial flight, electricity and mass production enabled some to make enormous sums, but also created a burgeoning middle class. As the nation’s wealth doubled, the Jazz Age began. Prohibition, depressed crop prices, waning unions and progressivism, the shift of population from small towns to cities gives this era real bite. What’s not to like about the 1920’s. ‘Boardwalk Empire’ is doing a great job showing the good – and the bad – from 1920’s America. If your image of the 1920’s is crowds milling around Wall Street in October of 1929, you’re really thinking about the 1930’s. In fact the 1920’s was an era throughly embraced by its young people, for its raw growth, music and opportunity. But it was also an America that had not been fully transformed by a national ‘image’, a time when cities were smaller (Chicago only could claim 2.5 million citizens), and every place still still claim some level of ‘uniqueness’. Even train travel as we know it today was still relatively new. Still ahead was the depression, the run up to World War II, and the post war world. Behind the 192o’s was World War I. It was a time of peace and prosperity. Generally speaking, good times. How does this era compare to the 1920’s? What kinds of discoveries, innovations and developments are on the horizon to explode, and transform our world – for the better – if and when prosperity returns? Sponsored by Autonomouscad.com. 

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Podcast 195

Ferguson – The Rush To Judgement. A very late podcast for Bob Davis, and a very early Friday morning podcast for you. Updates for your weekend start with the controversy surrounding a police shooting and subsequent death of an 18 year old. Is the media fanning the flames? Should President Obama be interrupting his vacation to comment on the situation? Tensions have calmed somewhat with the introduction of State Police Security and the removal of a militarized local police force, at the request of Missouri Governor Nixon. Are our police too militarized? Some first hand memories of Saint Louis and surrounding communities may help people who have never been there visualize what is happening; Saint Louis is an aging industrial city, dealing with many different problems at once, with several surrounding small communities suffering as well, on the North Side. Might incompetent policing be at the core of this controversy and tragedy? Moreover, is it possible the root causes of discontent are economic, not racial? With economic growth stalling around the world, retail numbers dropping here in the US, are the policies directed at solving our economic problems working? If you watch television (broadcast or cable) these days, how would you know? What passes for ‘analysis’ is pure comedy, most of the time. Television short circuits your ability to reason, exciting your reptilian, emotional brain. Of course, the vast wasteland that has become broadcast talk radio, only seems to play on those emotions as well. Music by Brian Just. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul.

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The Bob Davis Podcast

Podcast 191

Minimum Wage. A Stillwater Minnesota restaurant is under fire from rabid leftist netizens for adding a .35 cent “minimum wage fee” to the bills of customers to compensate for a 75 percent increase in the minimum wage in Minnesota. Can the ‘price of labor’ be set by Government? Get ready for an onslaught of ‘junk research’ ‘proving’ the minimum wage decreases unemployment. Is it valid? How is the minimum wage like the French Revolution? Meanwhile, President Obama says ‘Congress’ should ‘end’ corporate inversions – the practice of buying or merging with a foreign company and moving the home office out of the US. The solution? Make it Illegal? Sick the IRS on firms that have strayed from obedience to Obama? What about lowering the US corporate tax, currently now the highest in the world. And what are the top investors in companies that invert? The answer may surprise you. Meanwhile, the 1 percent continue to legally avoid paying tax. Actor and liberal activist Robert Redford, who made millions from selling his stake in The Sundance Channel, says he doesn’t owe New York a cent in taxes since his S corporation already paid taxes in Utah. Pay your fair share, huh? And what about Robert Reich, former labor secretary in the Clinton administration, currently on the hustings condemning the “1 percenters” for creating no social value. Reich currently earns over $250,000 a year for teaching one class at the University of California, not to mention his earnings for speaking and books. One percent indeed! And Ebola continues to frighten people. Africans are now angry they aren’t getting the ‘vaccine’ the US has given to two of its citizens. Is it a vaccine? Has it cured them? Finally, there is proof the media is biased. A secret cabal of left wing journalists collaborate in private to gain support for their appearances in media, and write articles to further the left’s goals, and never reveal their association in the articles they write. Sponsored by Sedation and Implant Dentistry of Saint Paul.

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