Podcasts about K Street

Ralph welcomes Dr. Mimi Syed to discuss the recent report from Brown University's Costs of War Project: “Lethal Precision Without Accountability: Israeli Government ‘Quadcopter' Use in Gaza.” Then, Ralph speaks to Joel McCleary (former Deputy Assistant to President Jimmy Carter and international consultant) about his “Dancing in the Dark” essay series on the strategies that Trump is using to hold onto power at almost any cost.Dr. Mimi Syed is an emergency medicine physician and assistant clinical professor at University of Washington and Washington State University, and a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians. Dr. Syed served in Gaza at both al-Aqsa Hospital and Nasser Hospital, where she documented severe injuries from drone strikes and she has firsthand experience treating civilians targeted by the IDF. She is co-author of the Costs of War Project's new report: Lethal Precision Without Accountability: Israeli Government “Quadcopter” Use in Gaza.A lot of the attention has essentially fallen off from Gaza because of this so-called ceasefire…And the media (Western media) unfortunately is complicit in this—has no interest in covering Gaza, has no interest in covering the ongoing slaughter that's happening in Gaza.Dr. Mimi SyedThe irony of all of this is that the drones and the capabilities that these drones have to shoot and to distinguish between a civilian and a combatant—the whole purpose of this is to mitigate civilian harm. And instead, perversely, they're being used for the opposite. They're being used to target civilians and children. And in the U.N. report, they specifically talk about a soldier describing the experience, saying that it's like a video game. He can be sitting somewhere far away, away from the dangers of a military zone, away from the dangers of combatants, and essentially target whoever he wants, and shoot. And these drones have the capability of distinguishing between a child, an adult, a combatant. And most of these cases that I documented, the child was by themselves. There was no other adult harmed.Dr. Mimi SyedJoel McCleary served as Deputy Assistant to the President during the Carter Administration. As president of the Sawyer-Miller Group he oversaw international strategic advisory work for fourteen prime ministers and presidents. Currently, he is Managing Partner of Four Seasons Ventures, which has conducted in-depth studies for the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security on biodefense. These studies reviewed the emergency powers of the President in the event of a pandemic or major biological weapons attack. He is co-founder of the nonpartisan nonprofit Keep Our Republic.November 3rd is just the prelude to January 3rd—the game (so to speak) is who controls the Speakership. And that is determined by the certified members who are certified by the current House—they will determine who meets on January 3rd. So obviously what Trump does not want (or any President does not want) is there to be an opposing party's Speaker.Joel McClearyWe're not saying that anything is inevitable. We're just saying what is possible if you look at what they're saying and if you look at where they might go if they feel compelled to do so. So NSPM-7 is probably the most frightening aspect of this whole thing. And what's most frightening is how few people have focused on it. All of us need to read these documents at the ACLU (the Brennan Center has done fantastic work). And Mark Medish and I just are appalled that still, in Democratic circles or other circles, we are not yet comprehending the meaning of NSPM-7 and how it threatens each one of us in reality.Joel McClearyNews 8/21/26* This week, another round of primaries were held, most notably in Florida. For progressives, the biggest victory is that of Angie Nixon, a DSA-backed member of the Florida House of Representatives, representing Jacksonville. Nixon trounced her opponent – Alex Vindman, who testified against Trump during the 2019 impeachment effort – winning 56% of the vote to his 44% despite being outspent by a margin of 16 to 1. Forbes reports that in her victory speech, Nixon said “We have proved that everyday people are more powerful than corporations and billionaires…We went up against the political establishment, against millions of dollars of outside spending…and we won. This win was for the little guys and girls…We, the hardworking everyday people of Florida, sent a shock wave to the Washington, D.C., establishment.” Unfortunately, Nixon's candidacy, like that of any statewide Democratic campaign in the Sunshine State, remains a long shot. The last Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in Florida was former astronaut Bill Nelson in 2012.* More disappointing were the down-ballot results in these primaries. In the 20th congressional district, a majority-minority district centered on Broward County, Debbie Wasserman Schultz won with 45% of the vote, according to NBC. She defeated four Black candidates, including young progressive Elijah Manley. Wasserman Schultz previously represented the 25th district, but following the Republican-led mid-decade redistricting program carried out in Florida, she opted to seek reelection in this heavily Democratic seat. The Black candidates had tried and failed to consolidate behind a single choice.* And in Florida's 25th congressional district, ultra-zionist incumbent Congressman Jared Moskowitz “warded off” a challenge from his left in the form of Oliver Larkin, a DSA-backed union organizer. Larkin drew substantial media attention, first when he appeared on Fox and, asked about immigration and crime, he demanded accountability for “this pedophile president Donald Trump” and others implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and again during an interview with WPLG Local 10 when Larkin was “faced with genocide denial.” According to the Middle East Eye, Larkin “raised the topic of Israel's genocide in Gaza, pointing to statements and findings from institutions such as the United Nations, Amnesty International and Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem,” which the interviewer, Glenna Milberg incorrectly dismissed as “factually incorrect.” Larkin “outlined Israel's deliberate targeting of civilians, restrictions on humanitarian aid and attacks on churches, schools and other places of worship,” and Milberg again “interrupted and said his account was ‘factually not correct.'” The Middle East Eye writes that the exchange was then “cut short when Milberg said she was being told they had to wrap up the interview.”* Turning to Texas, NOTUS reports Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico – capitalizing on the acrimonious primary battle between sitting Republican Senator John Cornyn and his victorious primary opponent Texas AG Ken Paxton – has taken the extraordinary step of bringing a Cornyn aide onto his campaign. According to this piece, “Jacob Smith, who worked for Cornyn for five years as a deputy legislative director and policy adviser, is taking on the role of deputy policy director for Talarico's campaign.” In a statement, Smith said that he is “proud” to join Talarico's campaign and that “Instead of playing partisan politics, Talarico speaks to the needs of everyday people who day in and day out work too hard for too little.” Smith also laid into Paxton, calling him “the most corrupt, self-dealing politician in Texas who would sell their futures to the highest contributor just to hold onto power,” and urging “fellow Republicans who know Ken Paxton is unfit to serve in the Senate to finally hold him accountable at the ballot box.” This piece quotes an anonymous “Republican operative” who characterized this kind of “cross-party hire” as “unheard of.” He added that Talarico has a “better chance than any Democrat has had in the state in a very long time.”* In more primary news, last week we discussed the victory of former Hartford, Connecticut Mayor Luke Bronin over 14-term incumbent Congressman John Larson. That same day, the Lever published an exposé of Stephen Mandel, a Connecticut-based billionaire hedge fund manager and Democratic mega-donor who is the “largest bankroller of a nascent political machine promising to ‘redefine' the Democratic Party.” Via two organizations – Majority Democrats and the Bench – Mandel and his wife have funneled tens of millions of dollars to candidates of their choosing in an attempt to form a “new [political] center.” According to this report, Bronin amassed a “sizable war chest,” during his primary challenge against Larson, much of which traces back to Mandel. Not only that, apparently, Bronin “used to be on the payroll of a nonprofit funded by the billionaire,” and his campaign's policy stances reflect the network's preferences and priorities. The Lever notes that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Mandels did not return their requests for comment.* In more Connecticut news, in the wake of Larson's defeat, local media is beginning to question whether Senator Richard Blumenthal should run for another term in 2028, with WTNH noting that he will be 82 at the end of his current term. While Blumenthal has not formally announced that he will run for a fourth senate term, he did confirm that he has a campaign committee and it is raising money. This piece notes that Blumenthal is the second oldest member of Connecticut's congressional delegation, behind only Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, 83, who represents the state's third congressional district. With the increased scrutiny on aging Democrats, and donors like Stephen Mandel bankrolling primary challenges by younger candidates, Blumenthal's decision of whether or not to run or anoint a successor could prove critical. For his part, Blumenthal is quoted saying “Age is a state of mind…and I am very, very happy doing my job right now, as energetically as I feel is appropriate.”* Senator Blumenthal features prominently in another story this week from a different part of Washington. NOTUS reports that on K Street, lobbyists for the defense industry – literally the military industrial complex – are “girding for aggressive investigations of President Donald Trump's Pentagon and the companies that do business with it,” if the Democrats retake one or both houses of Congress in the midterm elections. This piece emphasizes that Democrats have “spent two years seething that the Trump administration shut Congress out of decisions about the Pentagon, from the Iran war to politically connected contractors and a defense budget that's ballooned to $1.5 trillion.” Lobbyists are reported to be particularly wary of their clients being caught between outraged congressional Democrats and an uncooperative White House for the next two years. Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Investigations Subcommittee, is already zeroing in on 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is an investor, and American Ventures, where Eric Trump is an investor, both of which received billions of dollars in government awards. He is quoted saying “We need to look into whether Trump's sons are profiting from investments in defense contractors that involve insider information or contracts awarded in ways that compromise defense interests.” Other investigations he signaled they might pursue include a probe of “the administration's growing reliance on single-source contracts and whether the administration has given preferential treatment to companies with political ties, particularly those that donated to Trump's White House ballroom project.” In the House, Democrats on the Armed Services Committee will likely focus on “military strategy, acquisition decisions and the Pentagon's rapidly growing budget,” while the Oversight Committee, is more focused on “corruption, conflicts of interest, companies connected to Trump allies such as SpaceX and other ethics issues.” When Republicans won control of the House, Senate, and presidency in 2024, many lobbying firms axed their Democratic staff. It seems they are beginning to regret that decision.* Our next two stories have to do with the AI boom. First, in Wisconsin, the politics of AI data centers have come to in large part define the ongoing race to succeed Democrat Tony Evers as Governor. DSA-backed candidate Francesca Hong rode her vow of a moratorium on new data center construction to front-runner status in the primary, only to lose by a hair to Evers' last minute chosen successor, David Crowley. Since becoming the nominee, Crowley has refused to adopt Hong's signature issue and his opponent, Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany is taking full advantage. According to Wisconsin Public Radio, Tiffany's campaign has released a new TV ad labeling his opponent “data center David Crowley.” In the ad, Crowley is “seen saying Wisconsin has the opportunity to be ‘an AI and a data hub not only for the entire country, but for the entire globe.'” Ironically, Tiffany himself has cast “pro-data center votes in Congress” and Crowley's campaign argues that Tiffany “wouldn't be as hard on developers as his campaign claims,” though he is now campaigning on “ending state subsidies for data centers and creating additional protections for ratepayers and the state's farmland and water.”* Next, a stunning feat of reporting by 404 Media exposed how “Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process.“ To investigate this, the outlet placed a tracking device in a rare book that they suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data. Then, when indeed it was, they followed the book around the country to its final destination – an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada – where employees say that “all [they] do is scan books..Some are assigned to cut books, and others go to receive where they get books and scan the bar codes.” The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands. The piece notes that the AI company Anthropic has previously been sued for engaging in the practice of destroying rare books in order to feed them into their large language models, or LLMs, on copyright grounds, but the “judge in the lawsuit ruled it was fair use and not a copyright violation for Anthropic to scan a book for training data in part because it destroyed the original, printed copy.” The author of this piece notes that these rare books are not necessarily monetarily valuable – they could be rare because “not many copies of them were ever printed,” or “they are in a foreign language not many people speak.” Still, as one bookseller said “There are different types of value…[besides monetary value] There's historical value, intellectual value, sentimental value. All sorts of things, and all of those the AI companies don't care about. They just want the content as a bunch of words strung together.”* Finally, we turn to the Vatican, where, Drop Site reports, Pope Leo XIV is using his pulpit to call for the opening of humanitarian corridors for civilians in Sudan. In his weekly Angelus address, the first American Pope highlighted “the plight of civilians in the besieged city of el-Obeid.” In addition to his call for humanitarian corridors, the pontiff called for both sides to “cease attacks on civilian targets.” Drop Site explains that El-Obeid, the largest city in Kordofan – the region comprising central Sudan – has faced intense drone attacks as the rebels of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) battle the Sudanese army for supremacy in the region. An RSF siege has “left over 500,000 people in famine conditions for months and without supplies.” The United Nations warns that if El-Obeid falls, it could follow in the mold of el-Fasher, which fell to the RSF last year and resulted in “mass ethnic cleansing massacres by the RSF that killed an estimated 60,000 people.” We can only hope that the world will heed the Pope's plea for peace and humanitarian assistance to the civilian population of Sudan.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Democrats are champing at the bit to conduct more oversight of the Trump administration's close ties to the oil and gas sector if the regain power in Congress in November's midterms. What are they planning to home in on? And what are energy lobbyists doing to prepare? POLITICO's James Bikales breaks down what to expect if Democrats take hold of the committee gavels.

We'll hear more about what a mistrial means for victims in a recent court case. Plus, we'll meet a board member who helped turn a struggling arts institution around. Finally, two of this month's featured storytellers share tales about their pets.

Tonight on TV Party Tonight we are reviewing K Street, Steven Soderbergh's ambitious 2003 HBO experiment that blurred the line between fiction and reality long before audiences were ready for it. Set inside a bipartisan Washington lobbying firm, K Street combines fictional characters with real political operatives, including James Carville, Mary Matalin, Howard Dean, Chuck Schumer, and dozens of other familiar faces, all reacting to the political news of the week through largely improvised dialogue. We'll discuss how Soderbergh's guerrilla filmmaking style created one of television's most unusual political dramas, why the conversations between actors and real politicians feel so radically different, and how the series has transformed from an overlooked curiosity into a fascinating time capsule of pre-social media Washington. Is K Street a failed drama, an experimental documentary, or one of the most unique political television series ever produced? Join us as we revisit one of HBO's boldest and strangest forgotten series.Disclaimer: The following may contain offensive language, adult humor, and/or content that some viewers may find offensive – The views and opinions expressed by any one speaker does not explicitly or necessarily reflect or represent those of Mark Radulich or W2M Network.Mark Radulich and his wacky podcast on all the things:https://linktr.ee/markkind76alsohttps://www.teepublic.com/user/radulich-in-broadcasting-networkFB Messenger: Mark Radulich LCSWTiktok: @markradulichtwitter: @MarkRadulichInstagram: markkind76RIBN Album Playlist: https://suno.com/playlist/91d704c9-d1ea-45a0-9ffe-5069497bad59 

The prescription drug rip-off is so bad that 94% of Americans — Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between — agree Big Pharma is the problem. Former Arizona Congressman JD Hayworth joins The Marc Cox Morning Show to lay out exactly how drug companies raised nearly 1,000 prescription prices in 2025 alone, pocketed $157 million in combined executive compensation increases, and have been getting away with charging Americans three times what other wealthy nations pay. President Trump's most favored nation executive order is a game-changer — but Congress has to codify it before Big Pharma's K Street army kills it. JD Hayworth knows how this fight gets won — and he's not holding back. If your family is being crushed by prescription costs, this is the segment you've been waiting for. Hashtags: #MarcCoxMorningShow #JDHayworth #BigPharma #PrescriptionDrugPrices #HealthcareReform #TrumpRx #MostFavoredNation #PharmaReformAlliance #ConservativeRadio #STLRadio #AmericaFirst #MAGA #HealthcareCosts #ConservativeTalk #DrugPrices #MidtermsMatter

Sat, Jun 20 9:02 AM → 10:03 AM SACRAMENTO Calif. PSN A shooting investigation is underway in Old Sacramento after officers heard gunfire early Saturday morning and later identified a wounded man who investigators believe was involved in the incident.According to the Sacramento Police Department officers assigned to the Old Sacramento area heard multiple gunshots just after 2 a.m. Saturday near Firehouse Alley and K Street. At approximately the same time dispatchers began receiving reports of shots fired in the area.Responding officers located evidence indicating a shooting had occurred but did not initially find any victims at the scene.A short time later an adult male arrived at a fire station in the Natomas area suffering from a non-life-threatening gunshot wound. He was transported to a local hospital for treatment.During the subsequent investigation officers determined the man was likely involved in the shooting in Old Sacramento. Police arrested him on an outstanding felony warrant and for being a felon in possession of ammunition.Investigators said the circumstances surrounding the shooting remain under investigation including the involvement of all parties connected to the incident.No additional suspect information or arrests have been announced as of Saturday morning.Anyone with information about the shooting is encouraged to contact the Sacramento Police Department. Radio Systems: - Sacramento Regional Radio Communications System

Listen below or click here for full show notes Subspace Chatter 2 New Star Trek Series Announced, And They’re Taking The Franchise In A Bold Direction (Exclusive) Star Trek launches first WEBTOON series, teases mystery follow-up Star Trek Stargazers Writer on Deep Space Nine, Easter Eggs in Comics Star Trek: TOS writer returns for 60th anniversary comic book (along with many others!) ‘Star Trek’ Adds Unexpected Alex Kurtzman-Era Stories for the Franchise’s 60th Anniversary Paramount+ Serves Up Bizarre AI Slop Thumbnail For Star Trek Paramount+ Used AI To Make The Ugliest Star Trek Thumbnail Ever SNW showrunner wanted William Shatner to play Kirk (in a way fans would have loved!) Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 will be fully episodic Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Changes Its Storytelling Formula In Vulcan, Alberta, Canada news… Vulcan County resident making sweaters for her cow | Calgary Herald CLICK HERE to see our ratings for Star Trek episodes and movies we have discussed on the show. Ratings ata compiled and maintained by Listener Diane Here are links to 57 additional stories.broken out by series, movies and other categories. CLASSIC TV SERIES (in order of premiere) Star Trek: The Original Series (1966 – 1969) [3 seasons] Star Trek Stargazers Writer on Deep Space Nine, Easter Eggs in Comics  Star Trek Canon Debate: Were the Cherons Really Extinct?  A Star Trek: The Original Series Actor Had Their Role Reduced Thanks To Paramount  What Happened on the Last Episode of the Original ‘Star Trek’ & Why Was It Canceled?  Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 – 1994) [7 seasons] Geordi La Forge’s 5 Best Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes, Ranked  Video Details the Origin Story of the STAR TREK: TNG Era – Nerdist  Star Trek's Best Showrunner Knew Nothing About The Franchise When He Was Hired  STREAMING SERIES AND MOVIES (in order of premiere) Star Trek: Discovery (2017 – 2024) [5 seasons] Star Trek: Discovery's Ending Already Beats Strange New Worlds' In 1 Important Way  Star Trek: Picard (2020 – 2023) [3 seasons] Star Trek: Picard Quietly Killed the Biggest Fumble in Sci-Fi History  Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022 – present) [4th season yet to premier, 5th/final season filmed] Star Trek James T. Kirk actor admits it ‘is terrifying’ to play the iconic role in SNW  Star Trek: SNW showrunners say the puppet episode was ‘a delight’ to make  Star Trek: TOS ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ 60th anniversary (Redshirts retro review)  Star Trek: Starfleet Academy [2026 – present] [season 2 will end series] 5 reasons Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is must-see streaming  Starfleet Academy’s ‘The Life of the Stars’ is way better than its low rating (and this is why)  THEATRICAL MOTION PICTURES (in order of premiere) Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) Must-see Star Trek film celebrates 40th anniversary in 2026 OTHER MEDIA Star Trek video games/board games ‘Star Trek Voyager: Across the Unknown' Adds Delta Flyer With Free Update Today, More DLCs Announced – TrekMovie.com  Star Trek toys/collectibles/other merchandise We Build LEGO Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D, Starfleet’s Finest Flagship  Star Trek Comics/graphic novels/magazines Star Trek: Celebrations – Comic Book Preview  Star Trek Just Dropped The Ultimate Tribute To A Beloved TOS Cast Member, But There’s One Problem`  Star Trek’s Jay-Den & Kyle are missing in the upcoming issue of SFA: Lost Contact  Star Trek Confirms the Borg Are Returning Despite Their Final Defeat  Star Trek 60th anniversary sneak peek features Sulu wielding a sword!  MISCELLANEOUS Paramount+ / Paramount Skydance Paramount Sued by Subscribers Over Warner Bros., Skydance Deals  Liccardo to FCC: Paramount “Cannot Gaslight the American Public” | Congressman Sam Liccardo  ‘Fire Country' Will Exit Friday Nights Early Next Season as CBS Cuts Episode Orders for Multiple Shows  Lawsuit claims Donald Trump told Oracle founder: Larry, it looks like Netflix is gonna get Warner Bros., but if you really, really …  Calls for investigation into bribery after Stephen Colbert cancellation  Mark Ruffalo, Ben Stiller, Zachary Levi react to WB and Paramount merger; warn about fewer opportunities and fewer jobs  Paramount's WBD Deal Nears The Finish Line As Streaming Revenue Climbs | AdExchanger  NickALive!: Paramount Reports First Quarter 2026 Financial Results  Paramount Global Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript | Fortune  Paramount Skydance shares slide after earnings beat fails to impress on guidance | NASDAQ:PSKY  CNN legend slams CBS' new owner for ‘hemorrhaging viewers' – AOL Paramount Unifies TV Sales Under One Roof As Grant Madigan Takes VP Role – B&T  Paramount Skydance Corporation’s Stock Price Dips to $10.66, Marking a 4.22% Decline: An Investment Opportunity? | Smartkarma  Paramount and WBD spend big on K Street amid merger headwinds – GCR USA  FCC Commissioner Demands Scrutiny of Foreign Investment in Paramount’s Warner Bros. Proposal  Paramount (NASDAQ:PSKY) Exceeds Q1 CY2026 Expectations  Paramount Skydance Launches New Book Publisher  Star Trek related science news Star Trek Made Her a Scientist – YouTube  Franchise-wide/Miscellaneous 10 Best Star Trek Captains Of All Time, Ranked  32 Years Ago, Star Trek Wrote Out the Underrated Cult Hero Who Turned Down Both Deep Space 9 & Voyager – ComicBook.com  Star Trek Can Still Save Its 60th Anniversary  Star Trek’s Future Reportedly Revealed After Comic Con Rumors – ComicBook.com  After 17 Years Together, Star Trek: The Next Generation's Entire Crew Abandoned Worf  5 Worst Things Spock Ever Did On Star Trek, Ranked  Star Trek made Andrew Phung into a reader. Here are 5 books that have shaped him | CBC Books  15 Best Star Trek Characters Of All Time, Ranked  Which Star Trek Ship Is The Franchise’s Most Powerful?  Star Trek fans have 10 reasons to be thankful for Alex Kurtzman  4 Star Trek Movies Are About to Stream Free (Including 2 of the Best) – ComicBook.com  Ten galactic ways to commemorate 60 years of ‘Star Trek’  New Video: Star Trek Fans Divided: United Vs Legacy  Convention news/fandom Star Trek actor Jonathan Frakes announced as guest for 2026 Hal-Con | PNI Atlantic News  The Inglorious Treksperts STLV Schedule Features ‘Star Trek' Reunions And TV Legends – TrekMovie.com  Actor Watch Karl Urban (Still) Hopes For Another Star Trek Kelvin Movie – TrekMovie.com  ‘Star Trek’ star William Shatner almost abandoned his historic space trip  Star Trek veteran ‘desperately wanted’ this iconic role 60 years ago Main Mission Star Trek: The Next Generation novel“Q-Zone”The second of 3 books in the “Q Continuum” storyPublished August 1998Written by Greg Cox End Of Show It’s about time to refill the dilithium chamber and get on out of here. Find Clinton at Comedy4Cast Find Chuck and Kreg at Technorama Podcast If you liked the show, please be sure to tell a friend about it. And subscribe, so you’ll never miss an episode. We’d love to hear from you. Follow us on BlueSky (@thetopicistrek), visit our Facebook page or call us at 816-TREKKER, that’s (816) 873-5537 Don’t put on the red shirt!

Today I demonstrate how conservatives are allegedly losing ground on nearly every major issue despite Republican control and Trump's dominance over the GOP. The old guard of establishment Republicans — the Mitch McConnells, Thom Tillises, and Bill Cassidys — are running out of gas. But instead of replacing them with true constitutional conservatives, Trump is using his massive 96% endorsement success rate to elevate a new, more dangerous breed of establishment candidate: "MAGA Inc." RINOs. Candidates like Julia Letlow and Ashley Hinson don the red hat and mouth the right slogans, but their voting records reveal they are completely beholden to K Street special interests, corporate data center land-grabs, and medical tyranny. Because they wrap themselves in the MAGA banner, they are twice as hard for actual conservatives to defeat. I also expose how the abortion pill mifepristone — supported by Trump's FDA, DOJ, and Supreme Court appointees — is effectively nullifying the Dobbs decision and reshaping the abortion fight nationwide. It's a perfect example of how even our greatest victories are illusory.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and Fidelity Investments Canada.Alright, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites, we're sinking deep into the Washington swamp today. Our guest is Brody Mullins, co-author of: “The Wolves of K Street”.If you've ever wondered about the cigar chomping, big-time lobbying industry in Washington, located on K street just a few blocks from the White House, its rise, its non-existent moral code, its supplanting of American democracy for corporate interests ... this book is for you.I like this quote from USA TODAY Washington Bureau Chief, Susan Page: “However nefarious you think the lobbying industry is, Brody and Luke Mullins have news: It's worse.”Brody Mullins is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter. He spent two decades at The Wall Street Journal writing stories about the intersection of business and politics, exposing numerous scandals, and prompting new laws to protect Americans against corruption by government officials, lobbyists and Wall Street traders. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Politico and just about everywhere else. Washingtonian magazine calls him “one of the 50 best reporters in politics.”Join us for a look into politics, money, power and lobbying in the second Trump administration.Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

Jason Dick and Brody Mullins talk about the ongoing disruption of politics, business and journalism, how history repeats itself, Brody's book and podcast, "The Wolves of K Street" and his new podcast, "The Deciders," which focuses on the lobbying and influence world.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jason Dick and Brody Mullins talk about the ongoing disruption of politics, business and journalism, how history repeats itself, Brody's book and podcast, "The Wolves of K Street" and his new podcast, "The Deciders," which focuses on the lobbying and influence world.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fifteen years after Citizens United, the conventional wisdom was wrong. Corporations never flooded Super PACs with cash — and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Brody Mullins, co-author of The Wolves of K Street, explains exactly why. On this episode of Facts About PACs, Brody joins Micaela, Adam, and David to unpack why publicly traded companies have stayed on the sidelines, who is spending big in the Super PAC game, and which industries — crypto, big oil, Wall Street, and AI — are starting to rethink that calculus.

Post Malone BioSnap a weekly updated Biography.Post Malone has been making waves with his Nashville bar Postys teaming up with Jason Aldeans spot for a heartfelt holiday gesture. Whiskey Riff reports that from December 23 through 26, first responders get free meals at both Broadway venues, building on their Thanksgiving tradition of honoring everyday heroes in Music City. This community move underscores Malones deepening roots in country culture since opening the massive 26000 square foot Postys this summer.On the music front, Billboard quotes him teasing new tracks for his Bud Light Super Bowl concert next year, confirming theyve got 45 songs in the works with a likely country vibe. A December 4 Consequence piece highlights his confidence: A hundred percent, with diligent studio time amid a packed schedule. Pollstar News from December 15 crowns his Big Ass Stadium Tour a smash, ranking tenth worldwide with nearly 198 million grossed from 1.37 million tickets across 36 dates in ten countries, blending festivals and massive venues.Business buzz includes his investor role in nicotine pouch startup Sesh, per Politico Influence on December 19, as they hire K Street lobbyists to challenge Zyns dominance after raising 40 million. Sony tapped him for their 2025 For The Music campaign, with ITOCHU noting AKQA Tokyos creative visuals linking his artistry to their gear.Socially, HypeAuditor tracks his Instagram at 27 million followers with steady 0.53 percent engagement, though growth dipped slightly lately, and New Engen spots White Iverson fueling December TikTok trends for nostalgic throwbacks. His Diamond Collection holds strong at 25 on Hits Daily Double charts December 19. Holiday pics sparked unverified weight loss chatter online, but no official word from Malone. Amid F-1 Trillion Tour whispers tied to a new country album via The Lagos Review, hes eyeing even bigger biographical leaps into 2026.Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOtaThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

For the final episode of the year, I'm joined by John Scofield, founder and partner of S3 Group—one of Washington's most respected government affairs firms.John's career arc mirrors the evolution of influence in Washington. He began as a highly regarded communicator on the House Appropriations Committee, where he learned firsthand how policy, process and power intersect. He later brought that experience to the private sector, building a government affairs practice that clients actively seek out— but because they get results.In our conversation, John and I talk about:* What separates effective government affairs shops from the rest* How Hill experience shapes credibility outside the institution* Why trust, preparation and institutional knowledge still matter in a rapidly changing town* And how the best lobbyists think less about access—and more about outcomesThis episode also marks an important moment for The Friday Reporter. As we close out the year, I'm announcing that In the Lobby and The Friday Reporter are officially merging into one unified show: The Friday Reporter—continuing to air, as always, on Fridays.This evolution creates room for new, exciting programming in 2026—while staying true to the original goal of the show: smart conversations with people who understand how influence really works.Thank you for listening this year. More to come. Get full access to Authentically Speaking at thefridayreporter.substack.com/subscribe

It's Wednesday, November 26th, A.D. 2025. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com.  Written by Jonathan Clark.  Filling in for Adam McManus I'm Ean Leppin. (Contact@eanvoiceit.com) Christian Institute Proposed Street Preacher Charter. Officials in the U.K. are increasingly targeting Christians who express their faith in public. In response, the Christian Institute launched its new “Street Preacher's Charter” in Parliament last week. The document defends the rights of street preachers in England and Wales. The wrongful arrest of a Scottish preacher in 2022 inspired the charter. Mike Judge, a trustee of The Christian Institute, said, “This Charter is a timely shield for those who dare to speak — and a timely corrective for a society tempted to silence them.” U.K. Street Preacher Acquitted A jury in the U.K. acquitted a street preacher recently. The case began after a Muslim family reported street preacher Shaun O'Sullivan to authorities. Officials charged him with religiously aggravated intentional harassment. However, O'Sullivan testified in court that he simply preaches the Gospel in public after being saved from a life of crime and violence. Andrea Williams with the Christian Legal Centre said, “This was another example of police overreach . . . The acquittal is . . . a reminder of the fragile state of fundamental freedoms in our country right now.” When commanded not to preach, the apostles said in Acts 4:19-20, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak about the things which we have seen and heard.” Christian Universities to Launch Outreach to Europe One of the largest Christian universities in the United States is launching outreach to Europe to counter the rise of secularism there. Liberty University of Lynchburg, Virginia is now offering over 600 online degrees to students in Europe.  Lucian Mustata is Liberty's European representative for the project. He told Christian Daily International, “we need to invest in the next generation. In the long term, secularism grows in Europe because we're not investing in teenagers and the next generation with Christian values. It's very important to have Christian education in Europe.” Trump Designates the Muslim Brotherhood as Terrorist Organization On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to designate certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations.  The organization was founded in 1928 with chapters across the Middle East. Last week, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott similarly designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. He said the goal of the group is to “forcibly impose Sharia law . . . These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas.”  This coming on the heels of a report released called The Muslim Brotherhood Strategic Entryism into the United States.  Chris Mitchell from CBN News has more concerning this report. MITCHELL: “And what it does, and why this is so significant – it exposes a generational strategy to impose Shariah Law on the United States. They call it “a civilizational struggle,” and it's based on four pillars. One is influencing public policy. Two, influencing legal strategies, and what that tries to do is minimize criticism of Islam and turn that into charges of Islamphobia and charges of discrimination. Number three is infiltration of institutions – charities, universities, schools, and even to influence Middle East studies in those universities. And, four is to control the narrative through the medium, to shake the public debate. A key issue in this is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We've heard charges of Palestine, from the river to the sea, globalize the Intifadah. That puts it in context, is what they're trying to do is just influence media, the society, and then just introduce, in a gradual way, Shariah Law.” Planned Parenthood Forced to Shut Down Centers Due to Financial Strain Planned Parenthood announced yesterday it is closing one of its locations in Ohio. The abortion giant has now closed 45 centers so far this year. Many closures are due to the Trump administration's support for defunding abortion providers. A recent report from Planned Parenthood admits, “Already buckling under immense financial strain due to our country's frayed and underfunded public health system, Planned Parenthood health centers across the country are being pushed to the brink.” New Survey Concerning the Understanding of Salvation is Released by Barna Dr. George Barna released his latest research on the worldview of Americans. The survey found most U.S. adults say eternal salvation demands a blend of works and grace. For example, one-third of Americans who call themselves “born-again” believe good people can earn salvation. And nearly half of Americans believe they will earn their way into Heaven by being generally good or doing enough good deeds. Dr. Barna noted, “There remains a shocking degree of misunderstanding among Christians regarding sin, repentance, forgiveness, and salvation.” Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” Bible Sales Surge This Year And finally, mainstream media outlets are noting this year's surge in Bible sales. The Associated Press reports Americans have purchased over 18 million Bibles this year.  Brenna Connor with Circana BookScan told Religion News Service, “Sales for Bibles have been steadily growing in the U.S. since 2021 and have set unprecedented annual sales records since 2022. 2024 marked a 20-year high for Bible sales in the U.S., and 2025 is on track to surpass these levels, underscoring the growing interest in religious content among U.S. consumers.” Close And that's The Worldview on this Wednesday, November 26th, in the year of our Lord 2025. Follow us on X or subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com.  Plus, you can get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. Filling in for Adam McManus I'm Ean Leppin (Contact@eanvoiceit.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

 Brody Mullins, and his brother, Luke, wrote the much heralded “The Wolves of K Street”, about how the last fifty years of corporate influence in Washington had shifted Washington D.C.'s center of power from elected officials to extravagantly paid operators, using a new bag of tricks, who bent public policy in favor of corporate interests.  … Read More Read More

Hosted by David and Nycci Nellis. On today's show: · One of the hottest new restaurants in D.C. is K Street's Barbouzzard, French for “secret agent”. Inspired by the French Riviera, this place is just as hot. Barbouzzard's creator and principal managing partner, Nasr El Hage, and executive chef and partner – and one of our favorite guys in the world - Cedric Maupillier – join us; · Tysons Corner's Tower Club is a Northern Virginia legend sitting on the 17th Floor of a beltway landmark – the high-rise building that looks like a shopping bag. The Tower Club recently underwent a multi-million-dollar reinvention, including its menu. Vinny Mauriello, City Clubs' senior VP and national food and beverage director joins us with all the delicious details; · Caviar is undeniably one of the world's great delicacies. But what do you really know about it and its origins? Alboroz Tajik, owner of Northern Virginia's celebrated Merolin Caviar, is in with tastes and talk of his amazing offering of imperial osetra and imperial gold caviar; · And we're gonna need something good to wash down all that caviar. Fortunately, Anna Valero and Brian McGahey are in with cocktails from District Still and Supply – shh … a speakeasy … that will do the trick. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We are beleaguered and besieged by communists on the Left, Islamists, third-world migration, and then institutional Republicans who help facilitate it while pretending to fight it. The divide used to be between the grassroots and K Street. But now reactionaries who claim to oppose all of this but then add their own fascist nonsense to the mix of vices we face are ensuring that no legitimate right-wing movement with a soul, mind, and heart can arise to redress our problems. Today, I discuss how algorithmic prostitutes are distracting from the real civil war on the Right with corporatist special interests and making everything about Israel and the Jews. Towards the end, I discuss problems with use of federal land for AI data centers rather than food and how AI is all about escapism rather than creating solutions and progress. Interestingly, AI chatbots are a lot like the online Right.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joint Sword 2024: China's Anaconda Strategy Against Taiwan and Washington's Persistence in Failed Engagement. Captain James Fanell and Bradley Thayer assert that America must urgently reverse its strategic errors regarding China. Fanell notes that China is currently demonstrating aggression toward Taiwan, announcing two days of "Joint Sword 2024 Alpha" exercises conducted very close to Taiwan, inside the contiguous zone. China is using the recent inauguration speech of Taiwan's new President Lai as the casus belli, claiming his equating Taiwan and China as two separate nations constitutes a move toward independence. Fanell expects the operation to include ballistic missiles fired into closure areas, with China practicing targeting key areas, blockading, and isolating Taiwan. The PRC is employing an "Anaconda strategy," increasing pressure and suffocating Taiwan. Bradley Thayer assesses Washington's response, stating that fundamentally, little has changed despite some rhetorical and policy shifts, as the Biden administration remains influenced by the "engagement school." Thayer attributes the persistence of this flawed framework to the PRC's strategy of "elite capture," spanning Wall Street, the Chamber of Commerce, think tanks, K Street law firms, and Congress.

On this episode of the Chuck ToddCast, Chuck unpacks a whirlwind of economic, geopolitical, and political developments shaping America's future. From Trump's tariffs likely surviving a fast-tracked Supreme Court review to rising fears of stagflation fueled by deportations and trade headwinds, the economic outlook is looking grim. Abroad, Russia escalates the war by sending drones into Polish airspace, while Israel's strike on Hamas in Qatar risks leaving it more isolated on the world stage. Back home, Trump once again rewrites reality, denying ties to Jeffrey Epstein as his allies echo the talking points — raising fresh parallels to Orwell's 1984.Chuck also looks ahead to the Democratic Party's long-term challenges: how can they remain competitive nationally by 2032, when the current path to 270 electoral votes is likely gone? With Georgia and North Carolina emerging as decisive swing states, Democrats will need to expand their map and rethink their message — particularly as the “socialism” label remains toxic to southern voters.Then, political strategist and K-Street veteran Bruce Mehlman joins Chuck to unpack how politics, media, and business have collided in the Trump era and beyond. From the days when three television networks shaped a shared national narrative to today's fractured landscape of Substack newsletters, podcasts, and hyper-partisan social feeds, Mehlman and Chuck explore how the internet broke traditional politics.  They dive into how Washington has become a magnet for American business titans, the sky-high costs of lobbying access to President Trump, and whether bipartisan firms can even survive in the current climate.The conversation then widens to the global stage, connecting the 2008 financial crisis to the populist revolts of Brexit and Trump, and questioning whether the public underestimates just how much globalization has improved daily life. From Trump's reliance on tariffs to the reality-versus-perception debate over crime, immigration, and the economy, Mehlman outlines the policy flashpoints that will shape 2024 and beyond. Plus: what the redistricting wars could mean for democracy, and why some argue the House of Representatives needs to grow in size to reflect America's population.Finally, Chuck gives his ToddCast Top 5 states each party should target in order to make them battlegrounds by 2032, and answers listeners' questions in the “Ask Chuck” segment.Timeline:(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)00:00 Introduction01:00 Trump's tariffs likely to stay in place despite expedited court ruling02:15 Trump's team pushed SCOTUS to rule quickly04:00 John Roberts is always hesitant to upset those in power06:00 The bad vibes surrounding the economy look to be right07:15 Economy was facing headwinds, tariffs & deportations make it worse09:30 The conditions for stagflation are forming11:30 Incursion of Russian attack drones into Polish airspace12:15 Putin has escalated the war since Alaska summit with Trump13:45 Israel makes brazen strike on Hamas political wing in Qatar15:45 There's no chance Trump would have approved strike in advance16:45 Strike could further isolate Israel18:00 Israel is a wedge issue amongst the American electorate20:00 Trump goes full George Orwell, denies letter to Epstein21:15 Trump staffers have been willing to double down on behalf of Trump22:30 We're living through Orwell's 198424:30 Democrats can weaponize Epstein to highlight Trump's dishonesty26:30 How can Democrats become a competitive national party in 2032?27:30 By 2032, the current path to 270 won't be there for Democrats29:15 Georgia and North Carolina will become the most important swing states30:30 Democrats need to figure out how to expand their path to 27032:30 The word socialism is toxic to voters in the south34:30 Democrats will have to rebrand and back off the socialism label39:00 Bruce Mehlman joins the Chuck ToddCast 41:30 Traditional media is forced to "sand the edges"due to political climate 42:15 The internet broke politics and media 43:15 When there were 3 networks, news catered to the entire country 44:45 The energy in media is in the podcast/substack space 45:45 The importance of a varied media diet 47:00 Twitter/X has become incredibly right-wing 48:00 Washington D.C. has become a tent-pole for business titans 49:15 Can bipartisan firms succeed in DC these days? 52:30 How is the "Trump purge" affecting K-Street? 54:15 Lobbying firms with access are charging astronomical rates 55:15 Congress isn't passing legislation, it's all executive orders 56:30 Does Mike Johnson have a go-to shop on K-Street? 58:00 Was Brexit the event that caused this era of global instability? 58:45 Brexit and Trump were downstream of the 2008 financial crisis 1:00:15 The populist revolt was inevitable after the financial crisis 1:02:30 The public takes for granted the benefits of globalisation 1:05:15 Successful western countries haven't compensated for globalisation 1:07:15 The public suffers from recency bias, things are better now 1:09:00 The perception of the economy is the economic reality 1:11:15 People who predict doom are perceived as right and smarter 1:12:45 If SCOTUS takes away Trump's tariff power, will congress restore it? 1:13:45 Trump views tariffs as the solution to every problem 1:16:00 If Trump loses in court on tariffs, he'll just use another law 1:17:15 There's no incentive for Dems to cut a deal due to recissions 1:19:00 If Republicans agree to no recissions, they could find a deal 1:20:15 If legislation passes one chamber, it should force a vote in the other 1:21:15 Fallout from the raid on South Korean workers at the Hyundai plant? 1:23:30 There's support for the "why" of Trump's immigration policy, not the "how" 1:27:15 What pushback to Trump's deployment of troops to cities is most effective? 1:29:30 The perception of crime in cities vs the reality 1:30:45 Downplaying crime is a political loser 1:31:30 Democrats' support for capitalism is falling and socialism is rising 1:33:15 The most important electoral states will be GA, NC and AZ 1:36:15 Socialism is least popular in the states Democrats need in the south 1:38:00 Higher embrace of socialism in cities and amongst younger voters 1:39:45 Thoughts on the redistricting wars? 1:42:00 The size of the house needs to grow with the population1:44:30 Chuck's thoughts on the interview with Bruce Mehlman 1:45:15 The Toddcast Top 5 - States each party should target as battlegrounds 1:46:30 Top 5 states Democrats should target 1:53:00 Top 5 states Republicans should target 1:57:30 Ask Chuck 1:57:45 Why be in congress if you have no interest in exercising power? 2:04:15 Potential democracy reforms that the U.S. could pass? 2:08:30 Was the eugenics movement similar to the current anti-vax movement?

Political strategist and K-Street veteran Bruce Mehlman joins Chuck Todd to unpack how politics, media, and business have collided in the Trump era and beyond. From the days when three television networks shaped a shared national narrative to today's fractured landscape of Substack newsletters, podcasts, and hyper-partisan social feeds, Mehlman and Chuck explore how the internet broke traditional politics.  They dive into how Washington has become a magnet for American business titans, the sky-high costs of lobbying access to President Trump, and whether bipartisan firms can even survive in the current climate.The conversation then widens to the global stage, connecting the 2008 financial crisis to the populist revolts of Brexit and Trump, and questioning whether the public underestimates just how much globalization has improved daily life. From Trump's reliance on tariffs to the reality-versus-perception debate over crime, immigration, and the economy, Mehlman outlines the policy flashpoints that will shape 2024 and beyond. Plus: what the redistricting wars could mean for democracy, and why some argue the House of Representatives needs to grow in size to reflect America's population.Timeline:00:00 Bruce Mehlman joins the Chuck ToddCast02:30 Traditional media is forced to “sand the edges”due to political climate03:15 The internet broke politics and media04:15 When there were 3 networks, news catered to the entire country05:45 The energy in media is in the podcast/substack space06:45 The importance of a varied media diet08:00 Twitter/X has become incredibly right-wing09:00 Washington D.C. has become a tent-pole for business titans10:15 Can bipartisan firms succeed in DC these days?13:30 How is the “Trump purge” affecting K-Street?15:15 Lobbying firms with access are charging astronomical rates16:15 Congress isn't passing legislation, it's all executive orders17:30 Does Mike Johnson have a go-to shop on K-Street?19:00 Was Brexit the event that caused this era of global instability?19:45 Brexit and Trump were downstream of the 2008 financial crisis21:15 The populist revolt was inevitable after the financial crisis23:30 The public takes for granted the benefits of globalization26:15 Successful western countries haven't compensated for globalization28:15 The public suffers from recency bias, things are better now30:00 The perception of the economy is the economic reality32:15 People who predict doom are perceived as right and smarter33:45 If SCOTUS takes away Trump's tariff power, will congress restore it?34:45 Trump views tariffs as the solution to every problem37:00 If Trump loses in court on tariffs, he'll just use another law38:15 There's no incentive for Dems to cut a deal due to recissions40:00 If Republicans agree to no recissions, they could find a deal41:15 If legislation passes one chamber, it should force a vote in the other42:15 Fallout from the raid on South Korean workers at the Hyundai plant?44:30 There's support for the “why” of Trump's immigration policy, not the “how”48:15 What pushback to Trump's deployment of troops to cities is most effective?50:30 The perception of crime in cities vs the reality51:45 Downplaying crime is a political loser52:30 Democrats' support for capitalism is falling and socialism is rising54:15 The most important electoral states will be GA, NC and AZ57:15 Socialism is least popular in the states Democrats need in the south59:00 Higher embrace of socialism in cities and amongst younger voters1:00:45 Thoughts on the redistricting wars?1:03:00 The size of the house needs to grow with the population

Today, we return to the subject of investing in the global commodities markets. What are the key narratives out there on Main Street, Wall street and K Street and how are they shaping opportunities? How can you sort narrative from thesis? How does policy volatility and geopolitical volatility impact investments? And in a potential return to 1970s -style stagflation, what does that mean for commodities and portfolio theory? Our guest is Shia Hosseinzadeh, Founder and Chief Investment officer of OnyxPoint Global Management LP, an alternative asset manager focused on businesses serving the commodities sector. For more on OnyxPoint visit: https://www.onyxpointglobal.com/our-firmFor the Argus Global Markets Conference sign up here: https://www.argusmedia.com/en/events/conferences/global-markets-conference

#Throwback Take: This week, Jenny and Thanasis revisit a conversation with Paige Soya, Managing Partner at K Street Capital, a seed-stage venture firm investing in high-growth regulated markets. Paige shares her journey from launching GoTab—a fintech startup she created as an MBA school project and later sold—to leading K Street's evolution from an angel group to a VC fund. She dives into the firm's $26M fund-of-funds program in partnership with Washington, D.C., her take on why the DMV is an ideal hub for innovation, and how having a pulse on regulated markets can make or break scaling. Along the way, she shares what she looks for in team dynamics, why her weekly meetings always include discussions on latest AI tools, and her biggest founder lesson: a finance background alone doesn't make you a VC.

Discover how Andy Novins turns business challenges into big wins! Andy shares with host Andrew Stotz how he uses Deming strategies to outsmart competitors, watch for market shifts, and win loyal clients in one of the toughest industries around. TRANSCRIPT Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm here with featured guest Andy Novins. Andy, are you ready to join and share your Deming journey?   Andy Novins: I sure am. Yep.   Andrew Stotz: We've done a lot of prep for this, had some good conversations, and I'm looking forward to it. Let me introduce you to the audience. Andy first got introduced to the teachings of Dr. Deming more than 30 years ago and has been hooked ever since. He attended Dr. Deming's four-day seminar in August of 1993, only four months before the passing of Dr. Deming on December 20th of 1993 at the age of 93. Andy was a co-owner of a women's athletic apparel company, which was eventually purchased by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. For the past 23 years, he's been applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to his work in real estate, which traditionally has operated in what could be described as in opposition to the teachings of Dr. Deming. Andy, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you're doing right now and maybe a little bit about how you got into what you're doing now, and then later we're going to talk a little bit about your experience with Dr. Deming and all that. But just let us know, where are you at? What are you doing?   Andy Novins: Okay. Well, I am in Northern Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., and after my partners and I sold the company that Andrew just referred to, I had to decide what I was going to do. And I had about six months to do that because part of the contract required me to help the purchaser, which originally was Russell Corporation, a big athletic, they made all the Major League Baseball uniforms and everything. We had to transfer my company's systems to their systems, and that was one of the worst six months of my career, watching everything we had done, which was really all Deming-based, being sort of dismantled and worked into another Fortune 500 company at the time. It was, somewhat, actually it was a few years later that Berkshire Hathaway bought it, and it was because Russell was not doing very well. It was a rescue-type purchase by Berkshire Hathaway, which sort of had some satisfaction in mind that their systems weren't all that good. So that's where I got into Deming, and I've taken a lot of what I learned from the apparel company into real estate, which, as Andrew just mentioned, is very volume-centric, volume-focused, and focusing on processes as opposed to systems.   Andrew Stotz: And in the real estate world, for those people that don't know, let's say real estate, what position are you in? For instance, my sister is a mortgage broker in Maine, and that's a different place within the whole sphere of it, but maybe you can explain exactly where you are in the value chain.   Andy Novins: Okay. We focus on residential real estate. What we call in real estate farm, okay? I send out 5,000 newsletters a month that show to eight different areas, really, but they're all within, believe it or not, two miles of my house. And those news, I've been doing that for over 20 years. I've never made a cold call. I will never call anybody and say, are you thinking of selling or anything like that. Yet, using this process, which is all really Deming-based, I've done about 10 times the volume of any other realtor in the 5,000 homes that I service. It's the process... I don't want to use process. The system we used is based on Michael Porter, his concept of competitive advantage. And it's a system that's focused on a value chain, things that we do that other people can't do. For example, there are close to 300 sales a year in my 5,000 home market. I see every one of them. And when you see a house that's on the market, you know a lot more than anybody else does by looking at pictures. If you've ever been to an open house and after seeing it on the internet, it's a lot different than what you saw in the pictures. No other agent can do that because most agents in my area focus on Northern Virginia, which would be about 20,000 transactions a year, not 300. So they can't even try to compete with me in my area. So that's the whole concept of it is doing things. As Michael Porter would say, you have a value proposition. That's my expertise in my local area.   Andrew Stotz: Porter talks about different strategies. One, he says, is the low-cost leader. Another is the differentiation. And the third one he talks about is focus and where you're focused on a niche in the market. And then I guess I always kind of think that really he's talking about two, because with focus, you're picking a niche, but then you're going to either be a low-cost leader or probably a differentiator in that focused area. But when you talk about Porter and what he's teaching, can you explain a little bit more for those people that don't know what he talked about?   Andy Novins: Sure. Yes. Basically, yes. I mean, I'll never forget. My partner and I were at a breakfast, realtor breakfast at one point, and there was an agent sitting across the table from us and he said, I just got this listing. And he said, but I had to go down to 1%. And he's, you know, for commission. And at that time, commissions were pretty much 3%. And he kind of looked at us and said, that's better than nothing, right? And that's the low-cost. Low-cost producers will never win. It'll always be somebody else. And Porter says, you can't be the best either. Okay. There's no such thing as the best realtor. There's always going to be somebody else. So the concept for real estate is picking a niche, that for me, it was farming. I'm a pretty good writer. So I write a newsletter, and people call me when they're ready to sell their house. And it's worked beautifully for... I started that in 2003. Okay. But there's people that focus on luxury, the luxury market or people that focus on first time buyers, or people that focus on... There's all kinds of different niches downsizing or upsizing. And so you can become an expert in anything. And that's how you differentiate yourself in real estate.   Andrew Stotz: And that concept of not competing to be best that Porter talks about is great because it also forces you to think. You're focused on the wrong thing if you're focusing on how to beat the competitor. And I always enjoyed the fact that Deming was so focused on the customer.   Andy Novins: Yes.   Andrew Stotz: And that, I think with Porter, I like that. But with Deming, I just really love the idea that he saw quality in the eyes of the customer. He saw innovation and continuous improvement in relation to the customer as primary over trying to benchmark off of some competitor.   Andy Novins: Exactly. And if I go back to my apparel business, the name of our company was Moving Comfort, and we just made women's apparel. Nobody else ever stuck to just that. We were the only company. Just, everybody broadened out to try to get more. So again, it's the same concept of a niche. Okay. But one of the policies, I guess, we've developed, it was a Deming related policy, which was fun, okay, was when we made a mistake, which we often did, whether we shipped somebody the wrong thing or we did other things, our objective was to make the, delight the customer, as he would say, make them happy we made the mistake. And that didn't matter what that cost to do that, sending them free stuff, doing whatever. And I think that's a Deming concept that we used in the apparel business aside from many, many others. Back to real estate, that's, I don't know anybody else in the Washington area that does what we do, because nobody's willing, that's the so-called trade-offs. Nobody's willing to say, I'm just going to focus on 5,000 houses.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah. It's scary.   Andy Novins: They can pick whatever they get.   Andrew Stotz: Yep. Yep. And maybe why don't we now go back to August of 1993. How did you find yourself in a four-day seminar? And I'm kind of jealous because what... My seminars I went to in '90 and '92 were two-day seminars.   Andy Novins: Really? Okay.   Andrew Stotz: And I had thought that he... I had thought by that time, maybe he was only doing two days, but then I learned that he was still doing four days. But what got you to that seminar? Where was it, and what got you there?   Andy Novins: Okay, I was going on vacation. Okay, this was in 1990. We were going to go to Cancun. And there's this, I guess they're still around, but there was a bookstore in DC on K Street called Reiter's. And it was all business and science. And I used to go there because pre-Amazon or anything like that. I think it was even pre-Borders. But I used to go there and spend an afternoon looking at books. And I found Out of the Crisis. And I brought it home and I said to my wife, by perusing through it, I didn't know anything about Deming at that point. But perusing through it, it just struck me as something I really wanted to read. And I went home and I said, I'm taking this book to Cancun, and I'm going to sit on the beach and read it. Well, I actually didn't read it till got home. But I got completely enthralled with it.   Andy Novins: And being in suburban DC, we're like eight miles from the White House. The Deming Study Group was very active in DC. Dr. Deming lived in DC. And there were just a lot of very well-known, famous speakers that would be part of our group, including Deming at one point, but I wasn't. But I think it was before I joined the group. So I read the book, joined the group, and after about three years, I had heard enough about the seminar that I wanted to go. And I went to that in Chicago. It was the first or second week of August of '93. And one of the things that I never really understood that Dr. Deming would say a lot was talking about being transformed, or the transformation that you get when you're studying his philosophies. And I always kind of said, well, that's not going to happen to me. It just was foreign to me. That third day of the seminar, I was transformed. I don't know how to describe it, but ever since then, I look at the world through his eyes and see things and think in systems and variability. And you get all that when you first get exposed to them, but you're not transformed. Somehow it all comes together. I couldn't describe it, I never thought it was, but that happened during that seminar.   Andrew Stotz: And what Dr. Deming talked about was the idea is that the person who's leading the organization has got to go through a transformation in order to truly implement this.   Andy Novins: Exactly.   Andrew Stotz: What was it like there? How many people were in the room? And what was your... You walked in knowing a bit. I walked in knowing nothing, basically. And it was just like, whoa. But I'm just curious, what were your first impressions? For those people that have never and never will have a chance to go in, give us a feeling about how it went.   Andy Novins: I don't know if I mentioned it was in Chicago.   Andrew Stotz: Yep.   Andy Novins: Okay. Which is a great city, and it was in the summer, which is often hot. But I was amazed because at that point, and I may be wrong, but I think it cost $1,000 to go. Okay. And he had 500, and I'm pretty sure that's about what it cost. And do you remember what yours was?   Andrew Stotz: Mine was about 500 people, for sure. I didn't pay for it, so Pepsi paid for it but I would think it was even more than that. But who knows? But maybe mine was a two-day, so it was less, I don't know.   Andy Novins: But it was 500 people. That's what I remember, because being a numbers person, I translate that to 500,000 for the four days. And so that kind of stuck in my mind. And he did a lot of them. And one of the things, too, that he did a lot of them, and I think, geez, he's making a lot of money doing this. He lived in a little tiny house on a street in Washington, and he worked in the basement. One of the things that happened to me after that, again, with the Deming Study Group, was his son-in-law, Bill Ratcliff, okay? Somewhere shortly after the four-day seminar, he called me and he said, I'm getting a lot of feedback, you guys at Moving Comfort are doing a lot of using Deming's theories and everything. Could I come and visit the company and you show me what you're doing? And I said, sure. I mean, any more exposure to any of the people interested in Deming at that point was fascinating to me. And so he came and he spent a good part of the day at the company. And then I'm not even sure if at the time I knew that he was Deming's son-in-law, but then we went out, his wife was Linda Deming Ratcliff, okay? And so he and Linda and my wife went out to dinner a couple of times after that. And it was fascinating to hear both of their stories about Dr. Deming. What I remember is Bill would say, we used to go over there on Sunday mornings and read the newspaper, and Dr. Deming would be down in the basement working. And he'd come up periodically and say, how are you doing, Bill? In his voice, and then go back down and work. And he constantly was focused on his work. And so those relationships just tied me into Deming forever, especially after the four-day seminar.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah. I think it was a discussion with Bill Scherkenbach when I asked him about what it was like in the basement. And Bill was telling me, I don't think we got this recorded, but Bill was telling me that somebody asked him why you have all of this stuff around you and in your office. And he said, I'm desperate. I'm absolutely desperate. And with the idea that he was on such a mission. And I just feel like when I went to the seminar, the first one was in Washington, and then the second one was in Los Angeles. I didn't know how significant he would be in my life at the time, and I didn't understand the transformation I was going through. But what I did later really come to understand is that he inspired me to have a mission. And like, why am I doing what I'm doing? It's one thing for all of us to be busy, working really hard, doing all kinds of stuff and bringing value to our clients. But for what? What's the mission? And was a huge, that's a much bigger takeaway for me now than it was then. But what I witnessed was this man who is very old, just conveying an incredible message. So, yeah.   Andy Novins: Yeah, it was, and he was... Well, DemingNEXT, if anybody is involved in that and can see a lot of the videos with Dr. Deming, especially during the years that I was interested in watching and everything else, he just had a unique way of presentation, but he did have a sense of humor. And it was a dry sense of humor, I guess, maybe going with his dry martinis.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah, tell us that story about Deming Martini.   Andy Novins: Yes. As one of the sessions at the four-day seminar ended, apparently this Deming Martini is famous or was pretty well-known at that point. So he described how he loved martinis and he acted out the process of making one. And again, he's 93 and just you could tell this is just part of his life he loved. And he, so he kept his vermouth in the freezer, okay? And it was, and so he demonstrated how he poured the gin, and then he acted out like he went into the refrigerator freezer and took out the vermouth. And then he would not open the bottle, but he would wave the bottle around the glass and then he'd put it back in the freezer, and he'd say, this is the best martini you can make. And he had a lot of stories that added a lot of spice to it.   Andrew Stotz: So when you left that seminar, what changed in the way that you were operating? And obviously you had already had awareness of the teachings, but did that inspire you to go to a different level or what did it cause?   Andy Novins: Yes, and I'm not sure at what point the so-called transformation took place in the four-day seminar. You knew that that's how you were going to think for the rest of your life. That wasn't, you were going to think in systems and variation and predicting from the system and all those things. But so I can't really remember what years we did it, but as an apparel, our company basically, we designed, manufactured through separate factories and sold women's athletic apparel to specially sporting goods stores around the country. Nordstrom's was a client, one of the bigger ones, L.L. Bean and those kinds of things. And so one of the things we implemented that was really a Deming concept was improving our shipping, the picking process, which is filling an order. And we automated that with a carousel, which brought the product right to the picker, the warehouse person, and barcodes and scanned the order, and it brought the thing right to them. It incredibly reduced our error rate in shipping. And at the time, this would have been like 19, this was '91 or somewhere early on that. And at the time, we were way ahead of other companies.   Andy Novins: Even Nike, they would get an order, they'd walk around and pick their orders. And so that was a Deming-inspired process or way of improving our system. With apparel and you're designing 100 different styles or sizes and styles and everything else, the design development group, the functional silos that, I don't know if Dr. Deming used that term, but the system that every department has to hand off is working for the next department. In apparel, it's really complicated. And that was the biggest Deming issue we would focus on. It never went away. You really had to always, because our designers would put bells and whistles into a garment. We were very high-end and it either wasn't practical price-wise or it wasn't practical in the factory or we didn't have a good source for where we were going to put it, where, what factory we were going to put it in, that type of thing. So that's where really the Caribbean Basin Trade Initiative at that point came out. That's where we had factory, up until about 1990, all our production was in the United States.   Andy Novins: After that, it got too expensive, labor, sewing labor in the United States. That's when most companies started going offshore. We did a lot in the Caribbean. And when you're manufacturing apparel, back at the beginning, you would ship, we would buy the fabric and we would ship it to the Caribbean factory that we were using and they would sew it, and put it together. And then trade agreements came out where the factories could buy the material. And essentially, instead of they being just a sewer, they would be making a finished product for us. That had huge implications on simplifying the system and transferring responsibility to the people that really needed it. But now maybe I'm getting too much into apparel, but...they haven't been doing it for 23 years.   Andrew Stotz: So let's talk about what you're doing about your application of Dr. Deming's teaching in real estate. And I know you've also brought something along to share and go through, but maybe you can just talk a little bit about how you're applying that in the real estate business.   Andy Novins: Yeah, and that's the control chart concept. And all real estate statistics are lagging indicators, whether we're talking median prices or active listings, or I guess active listings are the only one that's not a lagging indicator, but almost virtually every month's supply of inventory, all those things are lagging indicators. So they tell us as realtors what happened. And in my market here, it bottomed out after the 2008 recession in March of 2009. And until this year, it's gone straight up for 16 years. So most realtors, virtually no realtors... Well, most realtors haven't experienced a shift in the market, which is what we're going through now, where the market goes from being a buyer's or seller's market for all those years. And I'm talking about a strong seller's market. A seller's market is defined by the National Association of Realtors as any market where the months' supply is less than six months. And our supply was hovering around two to three weeks. And it's now almost two months, but the market has shifted and it's incredible how many people don't realize that.   Andy Novins: Everybody knows there's something going on, but the media takes care of that. But all the statistics we get are, again, median prices are still very high, okay? But using control charts, you can plot, for example, a couple of months of live inventory. That started going down in April, okay? I mean, that went out of the control limits in April, okay? That's telling us that something's happened. It tells us directly that the market shifted, okay? The other thing that I watch is price drops, okay? How many price drops? That went out of the control limits in, I think, June, they started out, okay? And we're looking at that weekly, and that's showing us every week, the number of price, it's so far out of the control limit right now, it's amazing. There's no... You can't... You can look at price drops, and you can look at months' supply on a graph, okay? But it doesn't tell you that the system's now out of control. But control charts do tell you that, so...   Andrew Stotz: Should we look at your control chart? Maybe that's a good time to do that.   Andy Novins: Sure, yeah. And before we do that, one of the things in real estate is seasonality, okay? And that hides a lot of problems because prices go up in the spring, down in the summer, down in the fall, up a little bit, then down. But let me bring those up and talk about them. Okay, you can see this?   Andrew Stotz: Yep, and for the listeners out there, I'll just describe. You've got a line chart up here, and a line that's going up and down, and then recently is going up a lot. And it starts in July of 2023, and it goes to June of 2025. And so why don't you take that away and help us understand what you've got here?   Andy Novins: Okay. So the control limits, the upper and lower control limit are the red lines on this. And going back to July of '23, everything was stable. And if we went back long before that, it would also have been stable.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah, and by the way, just to make it clear, it's monthly supply, or month supply, sorry, of housing.   Andy Novins: I'm sorry.   Andrew Stotz: Can you explain what it means, month supply?   Andy Novins: Yeah, month supply is the number of active listings at the end of a month divided by the average monthly sales for 12 months, the 12-month average. So it's basically saying if you've got 10 active listings and the average is two a month, that you've got a five-month supply of listings. Okay?   Andrew Stotz: And the average on this is one month supply.   Andy Novins: The average, right. And you can see where during the pandemic, we've had times where it went down to just a number of weeks, which is pretty incredible, but that's our market. So again, this chart is telling us that... Well, there's another thing, other ways that Dr. Deming would look at this. We've got several months where it's going, the month supply is just going up. So starting in December '24, you can see that the supply keeps going up. And then it went out and broke the upper control limit. So what he would say in this, looking at this chart is that up until really of March 2025, the system was in control, it was predictable, okay? And then starting in March or April 2025, it was out of control, it was not a stable market, and the market is a system.   Andrew Stotz: And it went up above the upper control limit of 1.6 roughly or 1.55. And now the highest it went up in May was about one point, almost, yeah, 1.8.   Andy Novins: 1.8, okay. And so Dr. Deming would say that number one, it's a shift in the market, number two, the market is no longer predictable. Okay? Clients don't like to hear that, but using these charts and explaining it to them, they do understand it. And in real estate, one of the most important things when markets are changing, or always actually for that matter, is managing client expectations, okay? And using Deming's theories and control charts, it makes it... And I'll get into that a little bit more in a minute, but managing their expectations becomes more of a science than scripts, which is what...   Andrew Stotz: One of the things I learned from Dr. Deming was be skeptical of data,  and I know I've spent my career as a financial analyst manipulating tons of data. And every time I see something out of control like we see here, the first question I ask is, is there an error in the data? And then the next question is, okay, so what's going on out there that the chart is one thing, but can you just talk briefly about what's going on? What do you think is behind this? What's causing it? What is that shift that you're seeing?   Andy Novins: Well, if you were asking me this in 2008, I could have told you. The irresponsible lending and all kinds of other things. Today, the market is in our market more than others is impacted by uncertainty. Okay. Uncertainty surrounding the impact of tariffs. Okay. But especially in our area, the impact on federal workers job security. Okay. In our area, which is an expensive area, almost any couple that is buying a house is buying it on two incomes. And if one of those, one of the members of the couple is, works for the federal government or is a government or works for a government contractor or is affected by any, in any company that may be impacted by government cutbacks, they're not buying a house right now. They're waiting. So they don't want to buy on one income. And so they pulled out of the market. And that's, that's the biggest reason for the increase in the supply. The other is,  people do want to move. People want to downsize and upsize. Well, most people have a 3% interest rate or better or slightly around there. So with the impact of low, you know, of rising interest rates and everything else, there's people that want to downsize. And if they move, they'd be paying more for their smaller house than they were for their house they're staying in. So they stay.   Andrew Stotz: What are, what are mortgage rates right now? Roughly.   Andy Novins: That's  675, 6.75. 30 year. But what's interesting on that, and I haven't done it, but it would be an interesting exercise is when I began my career as a CPA in New York, I moved down here in 1982 to be part of the company that I talked about before, the apparel company. I, when I said to her, when I had that opportunity, I said to my wife, what do you think about moving down to Washington? We lived in Westchester County, New York, and she said, well, sure, but, and at that point, I was treasurer of a bank in the New York metropolitan area, and she was willing to take the risk. It was a risky move, but she said not, but not, we can't sell our house. We have an eight and a half percent mortgage. We'll rent it, and if it doesn't work in Washington, we can always come back to it. So that eight and a half percent mortgage back in '82 was not something you got rid of, and people don't realize that the average mortgage rate in the past 50 years is eight percent. So at 6.75, it's not that bad, but it's relative to the three percent interest rates we had. It's making it tough for people to move.   Andrew Stotz: So just talking now, I just want to wrap up on the chart by saying, so once you use, you're demonstrating using a control chart in the industry of real estate, and you're discussing the fact that right now, you've got three points that have breaking out of the upper control limit, which now tells us, as you said, it's unpredictable at this point. What else, what do you take from that, and how does that drive your actions when you see this chart? How does that impact you, and in other words, how are you applying Deming's teachings once you've now done this?   Andy Novins: Great question. When you price a house to sell it, you use what we call comparable sales. When a market is going up or stable, comparable sales are a good indication of what you're probably going to price it at if it's going to go on the market soon. What realtors do is what we call a comparative market analysis, and that's comparing at least three homes to their home. There's all different ways of doing that, which is part of a Deming system too. But when you go to somebody and say, well, we got these three homes and they sold it at 800, but if you're going to put your house on the market next month, we're probably looking more like at 750. And most people would say, well, I'm not going to use that guy. This other realtor says 800 is the way to go. And using the control chart showing that the market has shifted and that those comps are no longer valid is one of the most valuable uses of control charts in real estate because, again, it's evidence that the comps aren't valid anymore.   Andy Novins: The other thing is comps represent, even if it closed yesterday, it went under contract a month ago. So the comps are just not necessarily good if the market is shifting, and this is pretty powerful evidence to a potential client that pricing is really important and you can't just use past comps. I'll go to the next chart, which is price drops. And this is something, again, our market really just shifted recently, so this is something I'm actually doing actively right now looking at. But you can see that this is weekly price drops. Okay, it started off monthly because I can't go back and get that data. But if I go back to a stable year, last year is the base. You can see that price drops were pretty stable process in the pricing system. They were...   Andrew Stotz: So what does that mean? Just so we understand, let's say the average is 25% projected monthly price drop. What does that actually mean?   Andy Novins: That's saying that every month that of the active listings on the market, 25% of them are reducing their price. That month.   Andrew Stotz: So in other words, 75% are either keeping it the same or raising it.   Andy Novins: Say that. Yes, right.   Andrew Stotz: The opposite of that. Okay.   Andy Novins: Right. And that's each month. That doesn't mean somebody didn't lower their price on that same house the month before. But it's registering the number of drops that homes on the market are doing.   Andrew Stotz: And that would mean it's like a pretty good seller's market again when only a quarter of listings need to drop their price in order to get the sale.   Andy Novins: Yes, exactly. Yep. Exactly. And you can see this...   Andrew Stotz: And let's just talk about the January 2024 to December of 2024. So for the year of 2024, what's your observation of the data?   Andy Novins: It was stable. It's not a change in the market.   Andrew Stotz: Yep. Okay. Normal variation.   Andy Novins: Yeah, normal variation. Okay. But when it starts to go up like it has, and it's even worse because what I'm using is an average for these weeks. The next week starting tomorrow will have the four-week average. They're actually quite a bit higher, the last two, than what they show here because they were averaged down. But when you see rampant price dropping, that's out of control, so to speak.   Andrew Stotz: Right. So it's gone from a mean of 25 up to 60-plus percent of monthly price drop. I'm just curious. It says on your y-axis, it says projected monthly price drop. Does that mean somebody's making some estimate on that, or what does that mean?   Andy Novins: That's because right now I'm doing it by the week.   Andrew Stotz: Okay. Ah, okay.   Andy Novins: Okay. And I'm averaging the week. And then when I get the month, it'll be like the earlier ones.   Andrew Stotz: So the most recent ones are the projected, and the other ones are the actual month.   Andy Novins: Yeah.   Andrew Stotz: Okay.   Andy Novins: And right, I'm using, I'm multiplying them times four the week. So it's right now I'm projecting what July will be, basically, the total, but it'll be up around 60%.   Andrew Stotz: And this chart corroborates the conclusions that you made in the prior chart, or are there any other additional...   Andy Novins: Yeah. And the month supply chart is more of a leading indicator of a market shift, because this is the reaction of sellers and realtors to a market they didn't anticipate properly. And so this is a much more now type of thing. And again, if I go back to a client and say, you know, all the comps are 800, but we're going to recommend 750, this is pretty convincing evidence that basically almost everybody in the market is reducing their prices.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   Andy Novins: And in a falling market, the worst thing you can do is chase the prices, chase it down.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And what this doesn't show, it shows that 60% are dropping their price. It doesn't show what the remaining 40% are. And that composition of that could just be, there could be no price increases. We don't know from this data whether that's holding the price the same or increasing it.   Andy Novins: Right. But it doesn't mean that there aren't homes in those active listings that didn't reduce their price, that reduced their price. They may have reduced their price last month. Okay. So it's really just showing the panic that's out there.   Andrew Stotz: Okay. Got it.   Andy Novins: But it's a great leading indicator from that standpoint.   Andrew Stotz: Okay. So two charts that show us the application of control charts and Deming's teachings there in real estate and making a note of the fact that these are now out of control. Interesting.   Andy Novins: Yes. And again, the most important thing you can do, I think, in real estate is accurately manage your client's expectations. Yeah. Because, and I'm going to back up for a second, that's another real benefit of having a niche practice. And again, like the competitive advantage Michael Porter concept. And for me, writing a newsletter, which gives them what we hope to be useful information for the 5,000 homes that get it. When they're ready to sell, again, I don't call them, they call me. And they call me because they trust me. They believe I know what I'm doing. And so part of a system that would be outside of what Dr. Deming talked about, but part of the system is your clients, the quality of your system is going to depend on the quality of your clients. And so having a niche, again, what I'm doing in terms of that so-called farming and the newsletter is I'm attracting clients that will trust me. Okay. That's so much a Deming concept in terms of the overall system and how it affects it. We see all the time when buyers that are buying one of our listings and they have all these problems and the other real estate agents, their buyer's agent says, I know they're crazy. I can't wait till this is over because their buyer clients aren't listening to them and they're asking for unreasonable things or whatever. So a critical part of the system in real estate is getting clients that will listen to you because theoretically we know what we're doing.   Andrew Stotz: And if we look at this chart, one of the things that some people may ask is what about forecasts? And I know I spent my career as a financial analyst in the stock market forecasting earnings. And then when I worked on my PhD for my dissertation, I decided to calculate the accuracy of analysts in earnings forecasts. And as I said, the title of my dissertation was analysts were only 25% wrong. And in other words, here is the highest qualified people to forecast the earnings of these companies and they get it wrong by 25% on average. And so for those people that say, well, what about your forecast and all that? I always say, I live on the cutting edge of history. Don't try to go too far out in the future. Just make sure you understand. And that's where this chart shows July 19th to July 25th that you could say that's pretty much, and if you get the data out the next day, that's the cutting edge of history.   Andy Novins: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And in the past, people say, well, should I wait?  At this time of the year, they might say, should I wait and put the house on the market next spring? Or should we do it after Labor Day? And in the past, I would have said, wait till next spring because things were going to be better. You could... Everything was stable and rising. What these charts show, and they do require some explanation, is that the market is out of control right now. You can't predict it. And then if so,  then it becomes a decision that a client makes based on what they really need. Do they want to move yet? Do they want to wait? Do they... But these control charts are showing that you can't predict. Whereas in the past, you could be pretty safe.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And the point of that, too, is that a control chart can't solve every problem. It tells you where things are, so you understand things a lot better. But then, how you're going to actually use that information, well, somebody may use it to say, I need to sell my house now. Somebody else may say, I'm going to wait because I think this is bad and it's going to get better later. And somebody's going to say, I'm going to sell now desperately because I think this is going to get much worse, right? That's the hard part.   Andy Novins: Yeah.   Andrew Stotz: But if you don't know what's actually happening, which the control chart gives you that information, then there's none of that.  It's just, there's no basis in fact of what you're doing.   Andy Novins: Exactly. Right. They provide a window into the market that I have never seen anybody use this or talk about it.   Andrew Stotz: And do you have any more charts? Was that it?   Andy Novins: No. Yeah, I got more.   Andy Novins: Okay. Whoops. Oh, but before we get to that, okay, so this is a concept, and if I'm going too long, cut me off.   Andrew Stotz: No, no. Go ahead.   Andy Novins: So in a falling or stable market like we're in, okay, in a rising market, you pick a price, and if you're good, you're going to do well. If you do it right, they're going to bid it up. That's the way it's been for five years since COVID. Okay. Now the market is not rising. It's falling or even in a stable market. So the PDSA cycle that Deming talked about is absolutely so on target for what we're going through right now. So I'll just briefly go through this. The plan part is you price using comps or adjusted comps based on what the control charts are showing where the market is going rather than where it was. Okay. And then you put the listing on the market in the MLS. And then what we do, okay, is we study what's happening, okay? And again, the market is not in control. It's not a stable system. So we monitor and we subscribe to special services that most agents don't get. They cost money, but they give us a lot of information. We can see the number of views all over the internet that a house is getting that's on the market. And we can subscribe to another service that shows all the showings that are comparable houses in our zip code or any way we want to do it are getting. And then we use the control charts and we look at feedback and everything else.   Andrew Stotz: So do you have more charts, Andy?   Andy : I sure do. This isn't actually a chart. It's one of the core tools that Dr. Deming used. And it's what he called the PDSA cycle. And that is the most important tool that we use with the data we get from the control charts. So I'm going through an example here of pricing. And so the PDSA is plan, do, study, act. And the planning section of this process is we price using comps, like I've described. But we also use the control charts to let us adjust the comps for what's happening in the market right up to today, basically. And the do is just in real estate is just simply putting the listing in the real estate market, MLS, and listing it so people can see it. The study, though, is what's really important. And that's where a lot more data comes in. We subscribe to services where we can monitor all the views all over the Internet of our listings. And we can monitor showings that our listings are getting, which we know, but other listings. We can monitor what they're getting in terms of competitive listings, similar prices, and that type of thing.   Andy : And we also monitor what houses, if any, are going under contract since our property went on the market. And that provides what we talk. So we have to act on that data. And that's the A of the PDSA cycle. And so we use feedback loops. So just as an example, I won't necessarily go through all these. If we have a lot of views, high views, and high showings, we know the price is right. We're going to get offers. On the other hand, if we have high views and low showings, we know buyers are interested in it, they like it, but they're not ready to come and look at it. They're waiting for that price to go down, which in this market, it probably will. So we advise our clients based on the data we're getting, and then we either reprice or we don't. There's also some other things we use to monitor, but I won't go into those at this point.   Andrew Stotz: What's interesting about that is it's like every single listing is a test.   Andy : Exactly.   Andrew Stotz: That's cool.   Andy : Yeah. And that data is so important. And when you tell a client, you're getting all kinds of... You're getting... And we compare it to the other listings. We give them charts, which shows the other houses. And we say, look, you're getting twice the views of these other houses, but nobody's coming to your house, or very few are coming. And the other listings are getting less views and more showings. People think you're overpriced. And it's very convincing to a client.   Andrew Stotz: Is there one of these that you're aiming for? And if you are close to that in your listings, you're hitting the right spot? Or what are you aiming for?   Andy : High views and high showings. That's the best. Everybody's looking at it. People are coming. Okay. There's other tests down the road because traditionally if you get 16 to 18 showings and nobody makes an offer, you're still probably overpriced, but that's very unlikely. Okay.   Andrew Stotz: And is price the only factor that you can adjust here, let's say high views, high showings could be just the type of house, the location, but you don't necessarily control those things?   Andy : No, the one down near the bottom. Low views, high showings. It's ikely a niche piece of property. Not many people are looking at it, but the people that want that niche, whatever may be different, it's a unique piece of property, they'll get a lot of showings relative to their views, because most people aren't interested. But there isn't much else we can do because we spend... We pay for staging. We don't pay for it. We do it. We have our own inventory and staging. We have contractors that we've used for years to help get a house ready. So the product itself, the house, and the presentation, there's never much more we can do to make that better.   Andrew Stotz: And quality in the eyes of the customer is the best price sold quickly, I guess.   Andy : Yes. Yeah. That's right. There's a saying which not everybody agrees with in the real estate industry, but you want to make the most amount of money in the least amount of time with the least amount of hassle.   Andrew Stotz: I think that's everywhere.   Andy : That's true.   Andrew Stotz: Yes. I want that. Great.   Andy : That's what everybody wants, but some people say, well, if it's too fast, you didn't... But that's usually not true. Fast is usually good as long as it's priced right. The next chart I have is a whole other way we use control charts, and that's to evaluate our own performance, which is what this is doing. And it's using sales-to-list price ratios. In other words, what percentage of the list price was the sales? And here we're using a long base period, and I'm just going to back up for a second. In some of the two recent, the ones I did on price drops and supply of inventory, we only had a year worth of, for the base line. And normally it's better to use more than that, but those two years I used were stable, and we didn't go back further because the Fed had been raising interest rates, and that created a... That was not a stable market when they did that, so we didn't want to use that as a history.   Andy : So this is showing our performance, and you can see starting with the pandemic, we went way above the control limits a lot of times. But what you do when you're looking at or using a chart like this for your own improvement is you want to narrow the upper and lower control limits, the two red lines. The closer they get together, the less variation you have, the smaller your standard deviation. And for us, it's 0.2. And our range between what... That's normal is between 95% and 107% of the sales price. And just to how we use it and how we get better at it is we focus on pricing. We focus on improving negotiation, which is a big deal, especially in the last few years. We are always looking to improve our client base. We're always looking to improve our preparation and presentation. We think we got that pretty well down pat. And the other thing is to stay within your area of expertise, because when you go out of that, okay, if I was to work on a house out of my market, okay, I wouldn't get this kind of performance. So that's going to lead me to the next and really the final chart. And that's another group, okay? And I'm using this group because... Just to...   Andrew Stotz: Sorry, when you say another group, what do you mean?   Andy : It's not my team, no offense industry...   Andrew Stotz: So it's a competitor or it's...   Andy : This is a well-known group. It's led by two Ivy League graduates. And it's a much bigger team than ours. Their standard... And it's the same base period, 2017 to '19. Their standard deviation is three times what ours is. Their range of what they do within the control limits is 78% to 114%. And that... Why do we do this? Why do we care? It's always nice to benchmark yourself. But most of all, with groups or agents that we compete with, if these guys put a house on the market, okay, and we thought it was overpriced, or let's say we thought it was underpriced, okay, and it was competing with one of ours, we wouldn't tell our client to reduce their price to match their price, okay, because we know they probably are underpricing. In this case, we'd say let it go. Likewise, if we're working with a buyer who's buying one of their houses and we think it's overpriced, what their listing is overpriced, then we will probably make a lower offer knowing that they also know that their pricing can be way off. So understanding your clients and where they fit on these control charts is useful information.   Andrew Stotz: And I can imagine that some people, let's say, at another firm, as an example, may say, oh, I don't care about this variability because one side of the mean is more favorable than the other, so I'm just trying to get to that other side. Whereas what you're saying is I'm trying to reduce variation around the mean.   Andy : Yes, and that'll take me to this last section I have here. If we compare the two groups, what are the major differences? Number one, if it was a million-dollar listing, okay, we would probably get $43,000 more than they would based on these control charts. Most of all, the biggest difference...   Andrew Stotz: The selling price of your customer would be $43,500 more?   Andy : Well, our average selling price is a little over 100%. Their average selling price is 96%. So on average, they're getting $43,000 less on $1 million house than we are. But the most important thing in this is the consistency and the predictability of when you lower those control chart limits, you're making your performance much more predictable, and it's an important part to all of our clients. I mean, Deming had a... One of the things he used to say is quality is in the customer's eyes, not your eyes. So I can say we do all this great stuff and all that. It all boils down to what does the customer think. And when a group's working on volume, which is pretty typical in our industry, that's what we're taught, how to get more volume, how to get more volume, that's... The customer doesn't care. The client doesn't care about what kind of volume they do. What the customer cares about is service. And you can see some of the other things, consistency over time, process control and all that. I'll get out of here now and say that that's really what control charts and Deming's philosophy and the PDSA, it all focuses on quality in the customer's eyes, consistent performance, better service, and not a lot of guesswork. We're using data that other agents don't even know exists. And that's unfortunately not an exaggeration, really. I've never talked to anybody that knew about this.   Andrew Stotz: When Deming talked about quality, he often referenced the idea that you could have a quality system in place and still go out of business if you weren't looking at quality in the eyes of the customer and being completely connected to the customer. And I have a little story on this from my coffee business. Many years ago, we had a restaurant chain in Thailand that's a global chain come to us and we won the bid. And they said, we chose you over all these other suppliers for coffee and we're going to come to your factory and when we do, we're going to do an audit, we're going to ask 600 questions and if you get below 75% or whatever, you're fired. But, hey, I knew Deming and I knew all of this stuff and we cared about quality and we never had quality problems, so we thought we're in good shape. And they came out and they said, your score was 68, you're fired. You have six weeks to fix it or you won't be our supplier. Well, we learned something very quickly there, which was to them, paperwork was quality.   Andrew Stotz: And that was a quality system to them that meant that we had quality. And so we had a passion for quality, but we didn't have the paperwork system that they wanted. So luckily, when you have passion for quality, it's pretty easy to overlay a paperwork system on it, if that's what the customer required. I would hate to be in the opposite situation where you go and do like many people when they go and get certified or ISO or whatever and they build a paperwork system without that commitment to quality. Now, that's a disaster. But the point is that we had to realize that in order for us to satisfy that customer's needs, we had to appeal to quality as they saw it. And so we've got to always keep the customer in mind as we're working on our quality.   Andy : I got another story. My wife reminded me today that sometimes in probably early '80s, maybe mid '80s at the latest, I looked up in the... I wanted to find a statistician and I looked him up in the yellow pages, which a lot of the listeners may not know what that is. And I wanted to... What I wanted to do was find a way to improve, optimize our inventory and try to approach just-in-time inventory because we had factories all over the place and we were getting stuff in. And we never did it. And I imagine with Dr. Deming, we could have done it, but we never did it because exactly the quality's in the customer's eyes. We were shipping to specialty restock stores primarily, and if we couldn't stock their shelves, okay, they went somewhere else. Didn't matter how much they liked us, they had to have those shelves full. So we decided it wasn't worth the risk of just-in-time and optimizing our inventory at the expense of having maybe too much inventory, but satisfying our customers. And it's just so true.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Yeah. In the story that I told, that particular chain never ran out of product and certainly never ran out of coffee. And I know myself, being a customer of that chain, never in my life did I walk in there and they ran out of a particular product. And they made that very clear. That's quality to us is that our supply chains are never broken. And for 16 years, we never broke their supply chains. It was never the case. So in the eyes of the customer, well, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussions and for listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. But I thought I would leave the closing comments to you to maybe wrap up and give the audience what you think should be their main takeaway from this discussion.   Andy : I think probably the main takeaway would be that Dr. Deming's philosophy, the Profound Knowledge, everything he taught is as relevant to real estate, okay, pricing, probably most markets as it is to a factory or production or anything like that. I think that it took me a while, after I became a realtor, it took me a while to realize, wow, all these things we can use. And we have more data to play with than anybody. So that's a good takeaway for anybody, especially realtors.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I think, and I'll just add on, I enjoyed the conversation because I love Michael Porter's stuff and talking about figuring out where's your niche and trying to bring a differentiated offering to the market. And that differentiated offering could be based on what I like to say from my study and teaching of corporate strategy is there's kind of two main corporate strategies. One I would say is the type that engineers build, which is an operational corporate strategy. And another one is a differentiating strategy that a sales type of person would build, which is about the interaction with sales, with the product and all of that. And so with Dr. Deming, one of the benefits we get is the process part of our business can just be improved forever. And then we can overlay that with whatever we want from what we bring to the market. And I think you've given us an example of how you can apply Deming's principles to the process of your business and do that in a niche area or an area that you've defined and dominate. And so I love that.   Andy : Yeah, and one of the things, just a last thought, is something you and I had talked about, is you don't have to have a PhD in physics or you don't have to get a doctorate in something to understand Deming. And he even says it in his book. You don't have to be an expert in any of it. You just have to understand it. And that's the beauty of it. Anybody can do what I'm doing with just nowhere near the effort you'd have to do if you were going to be a physicist or something else like that. And that's something people can take away.   Andrew Stotz: And on that hopeful note, this is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. I always repeat it because it's such a great quote, and that is, "people are entitled to joy in work."      

Same Swamp, Different BroodThe DC Madam & the Secret That Still HumsClose your eyes: DC, late ‘90s into the 2000s. Suits at the Mayflower, steakhouse hush-hush deals on K Street, the kind of power that smells like dry-cleaned wool, stale cigars, and cheap cologne. There was no Tinder. No casual fling on a swipe. If you wanted vice, you went through the shadows — or you called Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the DC Madam.She didn't run some back-alley hustle. Pamela Martin & Associates was an escort network for the capital's respectable sinners: contractors, agency lifers, moralists with Bible verses on their lapels. Palfrey kept her insurance policy — a spiral notebook stuffed with names, numbers, and notes that could melt marble. The Black Book.She told the feds: If I go down, I take them with me. A threat like that should've cracked the swamp wide open. For a moment, it did. Randall Tobias — Bush's AIDS czar — out. Senator David Vitter — Mr. Family Values — outed, then forgiven by his base because, well, power forgives itself.But that was it. The machine dribbled out just enough names to keep the wolves fed, then buried the rest. The notebook vanished into sealed court files. And Palfrey? She swore to reporters she'd never kill herself. In 2008, they found her hanging in her mother's shed. Officially: suicide. Unofficially: she was the prototype for “Epstein didn't kill himself” a decade before Epstein was the punchline.That's the pattern: every so often, like a cicada brood clawing up through swamp mud, the black book returns. New names, new rumors. But the roots never get pulled. Epstein was the next cycle — kids instead of consenting adults, island flights instead of Mayflower hotel rooms, rumored Mossad cameras instead of a battered flip phone. The same cycle: names teased, a few low-levels tossed to the mob, the real ringmasters vanish behind sealed files.We like to think the moral panic back then was quaint — grown men sweating bullets over consenting sex work when now you can hook up on an app before your third cocktail. But the real taboo still stands: the blackmail, the kompromat, the buried evidence that would show just how much the moral scolds and law-and-order saints have always been the filthiest ones in the room.Pam Bondi teases Epstein files. Cash Patel shrugs there's no list. Elon Musk huffs about betrayal. The base fumes: Where's the list? They'll be fuming decades from now, too. Because the truth is, you're not on the team that gets to read it.Once, an escort scandal nearly cracked the Capitol. Now, even child trafficking by billionaires fizzles out behind a security badge and a sleepy courthouse clerk. Same secrets. Same hush. Same swamp.You feel that hum? It's the cicadas. They'll be back. The black book always comes back. The swamp always hums.It's not the scandal that ever dies — it's your hope that this time, the list might actually matter.

In this fiery episode, Tara and Lee dismantle the false financial narratives pushed by Wall Street elites and the mainstream media. Remember April? It was supposed to be the worst stock market month since the Great Depression—thanks to Trump's tariffs. But instead? Consumer confidence soared, stocks rebounded, and mom-and-pop investors held strong while hedge funds quietly bought back in. Tara exposes how fear-mongering was weaponized to sabotage Trump and mislead the public—again. The second half turns local and political, diving deep into why Senator Lindsey Graham continues to survive primary challenges in South Carolina despite widespread grassroots opposition. From open primaries to the influence of K Street money and Charleston moderates, Tara and Lee break down how the state's political machine keeps conservatives sidelined. This episode is a sharp wake-up call for investors, voters, and anyone fed up with being gaslit by both Wall Street and Washington.

Leigh Ann Caldwell joins Peter Hamby to dig into the messy Senate G.O.P. primary showdown brewing in Texas between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton—a race which riled up the White House after Paxton hired political strategist Jeff Roe, a Trump bête noire, to run his campaign. Then they chronicle the hard times facing Democratic lobbyists in Trump's D.C. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Doge exposes waste at its finest! Chris Markowski rages over the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS)—a 9-story K Street tower for 60 employees, most working from home, with luxury suites and taxpayer-funded perks. Luke Rosiak's Daily Wire exposé reveals it all. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com

Shaun talks to John O'Connor, author of Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate, and Began Today's Partisan Advocacy Journalism, about who the REAL bad guys are....and it all traces back to K Street.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shaun discusses Trump's speech and loser Brandon Johnson testifying to Congress. PLUS, The Heartland Institute's Donald Kendal talks to Shaun about the high cost of the climate scams in the Inflation Reduction Act. And Shaun talks to John O'Connor, author of Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate, and Began Today's Partisan Advocacy Journalism, about who the REAL bad guys are....and it all traces back to K Street.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Situations involving stalking can be a gray area.Does the person mean well but are just awkward in their approach? Are you reading too much into it? Let's not jump to conclusions and end up smearing an innocent person. We should give the benefit of a doubt until we have our facts straight.All of these are very natural impulses, rooted in solid values that generally speaking serve us well. And they could have cost Idy Marcus dearly.Idy was raised in a very loving home by parents who married and started their family later in life. They adored each other and were connected in every way. This sentiment passed down to Idy and her sister, who picked up values like your handshake is your bond, present yourself well, give people the benefit of a doubt, and be honorable in all things.She also learned to be bold, take chances, and not be afraid to take the plunge. Her family encouraged her to be curious, courageous, and not fear failure. These traits all served Idy well as she grew her career as a leadership management and corporate conflict resolution expert. When she started her own company, she figured if it didn't work out, she had enough contacts eating lunch on Washington DC's K Street that she wouldn't go hungry. After her sister passed and then suddenly her dad two years later, Idy insisted her mother come live with her. Her mom attended events with her and served as a fantastic business resource. Just before they were to move overseas for work with a corporate client, her mom suffered a massive and debilitating stroke, rendering her unable to speak and with limited mobility. Idy immediately put her career on hold to stay at the care facility with her mom full-time. In her unique way, Idy carved out a path where everything was fine, until it wasn't – after all, Fine is a 4-Letter Word.One of her mother's caretakers seemed nice enough, if a bit awkward. Idy didn't make a whole lot of his obsession with her and minimized others' concerns. Then she found black roses left on her car. Then her car was broken into. At first she tried to reason with the man, to give him the benefit of a doubt… until he started stalking others.In a moment, when you meet Idy, you'll discover how dealing with this situation led her to take on the role of CEO for Pro-Tect Services, LLC, a startup that uses trained U.S. veterans to provide on-demand close protection security service to those confronting domestic and intimate partner violence and stalking.Idy's hype song is "Let's Go Fly a Kite" from the "Mary Poppins" Soundtrack.Resources:Idy Marcus' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idy-idora-marcus-520513277/ Invitation from Lori:This episode is sponsored by Zen Rabbit. Smart business leaders know trust is the foundation of every great workplace. And in today's hybrid and fast-moving work culture, trust isn't built in quarterly town halls or the occasional Slack message. It's built through consistent, clear, and HUMAN communication. Companies and leaders TALK about the importance of connection and community. And it's easy to believe your organization is doing a great job of maintaining an awesome corporate culture. Because there are… Annual all-hands meetings where once a year you hear a well-rehearsed speech, employees clap politely, and everyone leaves with the same unanswered questions they came in with. "Open door policies" that no one ever uses because people are uncomfortable walking in to talk with someone they don't feel like they know very well. "Fun" team-building events like escape rooms, trust falls, and awkward,...

Steven Soderbergh isn't just a prolific director with 35 feature-length films to his credit—he also finds time to make TV shows, too! In today's episode, Keir and Mike discuss his work on “Fallen Angels,” “K Street,” “The Knick,” “Mosaic,” “Full Circle,” and “Command Z.” Social media Instagram @thefilmographers Twitter/X @filmographerpod Letterboxd @filmographers YouTube @TheFilmographersPodcast Website: https://filmographerspodcast.com/ Join our Pateron! Credits Keir Graff & Michael Moreci, hosts Kevin Lau, producer Gompson, theme music Cosmo Graff, graphic design

So yesterday, President Trump actually demanded a TWO YEAR lifting of the debt ceiling.This is frankly insane given the fact that he won the election campaigning against the ‘Biden Economy' and profligate government deficit spending which he promised to cut! How pray tell, do you cut spending while simultaneously ramping up the debt?What is the point of electing Republicans when they spend like drunken Democrats? It's all patently absurd and apparently there is only one guy in Washington, DC with the balls to call him on it.Chip Roy deserves an enormous amount of credit for standing firmly in the truth space regarding the nightmare economic situation.Despite relentless pressure to cave from the incoming president and his acolytes, Roy is at the very least shining a spotlight once again on the unsustainable spending situation in Washington, DC.

John Slattery is an American actor and director. He is best known for his role as Roger Sterling in the AMC drama series Mad Men. He has received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations and two Critics' Choice Television Awards for AMC's series Mad Men. He was also part of the Mad Men ensemble cast that won two SAG Awards. In 2013, Slattery directed his first feature film, God's Pocket, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. He is currently on the HBO series Veep. Apart from his role on Mad Men, Slattery is also known for roles on Homefront; the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon; the HBO series K Street; guest appearances on Will & Grace; Judging Amy; Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. Other films include Mona Lisa Smile, Flags of our Fathers, Charlie Wilson's War and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2015, Slattery portrayed journalist Ben Bradlee Jr. in the Academy Award winning film Spotlight, and also appeared in the Netflix comedy series Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, for which he earned a nomination for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Guest Performer in a Comedy Series. Little Known Fact - He is an avid surfer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Slattery is an American actor and director. He is best known for his role as Roger Sterling in the AMC drama series Mad Men. He has received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations and two Critics' Choice Television Awards for AMC's series Mad Men. He was also part of the Mad Men ensemble cast that won two SAG Awards. In 2013, Slattery directed his first feature film, God's Pocket, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. He is currently on the HBO series Veep. Apart from his role on Mad Men, Slattery is also known for roles on Homefront; the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon; the HBO series K Street; guest appearances on Will & Grace; Judging Amy; Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. Other films include Mona Lisa Smile, Flags of our Fathers, Charlie Wilson's War and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2015, Slattery portrayed journalist Ben Bradlee Jr. in the Academy Award winning film Spotlight, and also appeared in the Netflix comedy series Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, for which he earned a nomination for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Guest Performer in a Comedy Series. Little Known Fact - He is an avid surfer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

404 Media's Jason Koebler returns to discuss AI in the classroom, Balaji's private island/supervillain lair, and the growing deluge of AI generated slop by US political campaigns. Not so much in the form of deepfakes or Midjourney memes on social media, but rather by making a larger tidal wave of more personalised spam. Also, we discuss a hot new startup that's ruffling a lot of feathers on K Street in Washington using artificial intelligence, and (more importantly) artificial names. Check out 404 Media here! https://www.404media.co/ If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo's UK Tour Here: https://miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

On this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan and Corey welcome Brody Mullins to the show. Brody is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and author of the new book The Wolves of K Street. He joins the podcast to share insights from his two-plus decades spent investigating the Washington political scene.  Brody kicks off the show by discussing his history reporting on antitrust regulation. He notes that recently, both major political parties in D.C. have become less friendly to Big Tech companies and are using antitrust regulation to slow their growth. After, Brody talks a bit about how he got started in journalism, the importance of holding those in power accountable, and why he has dedicated his life to investigating companies. (1:27) Next, Brody shares some details about his book. He points out that for most of this country's history, companies had very little influence in Washington. Things only changed in the 1970s once the economy cratered and stagflation hit. Then, companies began to lobby in order to twist regulations and gain an advantage in the market. Brody also explains lobbying in simple terms, including how lobbyists raise money for members of Congress. He argues that legal loopholes and undisclosed funds to influence constituents have made companies nearly untouchable. (15:10) Finally, Brody discusses why there's still hope for the American people to fight back. He explains that negative public perception about these big, powerful corporations (such as Amazon and Google parent Alphabet) has influenced antitrust regulators to begin taking action. He also talks about insider trading among members of Congress and emphasizes that all of these conflicts of interest are not limited to one party. (33:38)

In Today's special live-to-tape episode of Moment of Truth, Saurabh and Nick sit down with Brody Mullins, Author of "The Wolves of K Street" and former investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, to discuss the rise of corporate power in Washington, how lobbying has evolved over six decades as seen through the stories of mega-lobbyists like Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., Paul Manafort, Tony Podesta, and Evan Morris and why grassroots activism holds the keys to the future.#BrodyMullins #TheWolvesOfKStreet #BookReview #BookTalk #Investigation #TonyPodesta #EvanMorris #PaulManafort #TommyBoggs #Lobbying #Campaign #Election #Power #Politics #WashingtonDCBrody Mullins is the Author of "The Wolves of K Street" an investigative book the exposes the rise of corporate power in Washington DC. He was formerly an investigative reporter in the Washington bureau of The Wall Street Journal, where he covered business, lobbying and campaign finance. Recently he covered the political intelligence industry and how investors mine Washington for market-moving information.Learn more about Brody Mullins's work:https://www.wsj.com/news/author/brody-mullinshttps://x.com/brodymullinsdcPurchase Brody's new book, "The Wolves of K Street":https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Brody-Mullins/156463980Become a 'Truther' or 'Statesman' to get access to exclusive perks. Watch ALL EPISODES a day before everyone else, and enjoy members-only bonus content: youtube.com/channel/UC4qmB5DeiFxt53ZPZiW4Tcg/join––––––Follow American Moment across Social Media:Twitter – https://twitter.com/AmMomentOrgFacebook – https://www.facebook.com/AmMomentOrgInstagram – https://www.instagram.com/ammomentorg/Rumble – https://rumble.com/c/ammomentorgCheck out AmCanon:https://www.americanmoment.org/amcanon/Follow Us on Twitter:Saurabh Sharma – https://twitter.com/ssharmaUSNick Solheim – https://twitter.com/NickSSolheimAmerican Moment's "Moment of Truth" Podcast is recorded at the Conservative Partnership Campus in Washington DC, produced by American Moment Studios, and edited by Jake Mercier and Jared Cummings.Subscribe to our Podcast, "Moment of Truth"Apple Podcasts – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/moment-of-truth/id1555257529Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/5ATl0x7nKDX0vVoGrGNhAj Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

President Joe Biden continues to face questions about his ability to serve another four-year term following his disastrous debate performance last week. Plus: Keith Stern heads to K Street. And, the latest from The Canvass. Want more in-depth daily coverage from Congress? Subscribe to our free Punchbowl News AM newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, we're talking about politics and lobbying in America. It's hard to imagine a time when the influence of big corporations and billionaires didn't touch every part of American politics, but the kind of lobbying we have now didn't really exist before the 1970s. Now, our political debates about everything from energy, finance, and healthcare are deeply intertwined with corporations and their money — and new big players in tech now spend tons of political money of their own. To understand the structure of today's political lobbying and how we go here, I brought Pulitzer Prize winner Brody Mullins on the show. Brody has a new book he co-wrote with his brother Luke Mullins called The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government, which came out last month. It's a definitive history of modern lobbying in America, told through the lens of some of the industry's most unsavory characters and the influence they've exerted on DC politics across decades.  Links: If Donald Trump Wins, Paul Manafort Will Be Waiting in the Wings | NYT Meta had its biggest lobbying quarter ever | The Verge Apple quietly bankrolled a lobbying group for app developers | The Verge The Many Reinventions of a Legendary Washington Influence Peddler | Politico  The Wolves of K Street review: how lobbying swallowed Washington | The Guardian Big Tech Has a New Favorite Lobbyist: You | WSJ SOPA bill shelved after global protests from Google, Wikipedia and others | WashPo The Russia Inquiry Ended a Democratic Lobbyist's Career. He Wants It Back. | NYT The Swamp Builders | WashPo The Rise and Fall of a K Street Renegade | WSJ Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Will Saletan guest hosts as Tom Edsall joins the panel to discuss rising political polarization, Biden's latest moves on immigration, and the crackdown on social media and kids using smartphones. Highlights / Lowlights Tom: The book 'Wolves of K Street' by Brody and Luke Mullins and a story from  his weekly poker game. Linda: Experts Handicap the Trump-Biden Debate (Karl Rove, WSJ) Damon: No, I Don't Want to Protest (Pamela Paul, NYT) Why Activists Keep Failing the Causes That Fire Them Up (Sarah Isgur, NYT) Bill: The Return of Peace Through Strength by Robert C. O'Brien (Foreign Affairs) Biden and Trump tied in the Emerson Poll in... Minnesota. Will: Louisiana Requires All Public Classrooms to Display Ten Commandments (NYT) Bibi's shameful Biden attack video

Anna and Jake go over what's in store for this abbreviated work week on Capitol Hill. Plus: Checking in on The Canvass — how does K Street feel about election interference? Want more in-depth daily coverage from Congress? Subscribe to our free Punchbowl News AM newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Major sits down with authors Brody and Luke Mullins to talk about Washington's favorite pastime - and it's not baseball. Their new book, “The Wolves of K Street,” argues that the last few decades of lobbying members of congress and policymakers has only benefited corporations and the lobbyists themselves, leaving behind the general public. Join us at The Dubliner on Capitol Hill (where lawmakers and lobbyists have been meeting for 50 years!). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, the fellas kick things off with a deep dive into a delicious treat for political enthusiasts: James Carville's latest commentary. Known as the architect of the Clinton '92 campaign, Carville's recent remarks are causing waves. He's not holding back, claiming that what the Democrats are doing simply isn't working. They break down Carville's blunt assessment and discuss its implications for the Democratic Party, highlighting the growing gap between traditional Democratic strategies and modern party dynamics. As the political landscape heats up earlier than usual, the fellas explore the shifting focus from legislative activities to intense political reporting and general election preparations. With elections looming, everything is under the microscope until November. They also bring you the latest election analysis, including the New York Times/Siena poll showing significant movement towards Trump in key swing states. What does this mean for the Democrats? The potential impact is discussed, and what strategies might be needed to change course. The featured guest today is Brody Mullins, a journalist who dives into the influence-peddling industry in his new book, "The Wolves of K Street." Hear about his journey and insights as he tackles the swamp, offering a fresh perspective on the inner workings of Washington. Visit ElectronicPaymentsCoalition.org and tell your Senators to oppose the Durbin-Marshall credit card bill  Check out this great new site from our sponsor Americans for Prosperity: Bidenomics.com  Go to our sponsor ZBiotics.com/RUTHLESS to get 15% off your first order, or use code RUTHLESS at the checkout.

Episode 3598: The Wolves Of K Street; Peter Navarro For VP

Brody Mullins, an investigative reporter in the Washington D.C. bureau of The Wall Street Journal, joins Federalist Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to trace the evolution of K Street lobbying and explain how it affects the current political climate. You can find Mullins' book, The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government, here.If you care about combatting the corrupt media that continue to inflict devastating damage, please give a gift to help The Federalist do the real journalism America needs.https://surfshark.deals/FEDERALIST

Brody Mullins, an investigative reporter in the Washington D.C. bureau of The Wall Street Journal, joins Federalist Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to trace the evolution of K Street lobbying and explain how it affects the current political climate. You can find Mullins’ book, The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money […]

Episode 3131: K-Street Fears Mike Johnson

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