The fight isn't capitalism versus socialism. It's the American System, building and producing things here at home, against a globalist system that has spent decades gutting our manufacturing, our agriculture and our energy.

Susan Kokinda has been in this fight since Bobby Kennedy's 1968 campaign. We sat down right after the midterms to talk about what went wrong, what's actually coming back, and how we tell that story to a generation that has never seen a productive economy.

Susan Kokinda is a Michigan-based organizer and author with Promethean Action and Coalitions Vice Chair of the Michigan Republican Party, focused on reviving the industrial economy and producer culture of the Midwest.

In this episode:

• August 15, 1971: why Susan sees the end of Bretton Woods as the turning point, and who ends up setting the prices producers get
• We used to have 56 million sheep in this country. Now there are fewer than 5 million, and you don't build that back overnight
• Rush hour is back outside Detroit: new factories, third shifts and jobs coming home
• Diesel emission rules, the bureaucrats waiting out the president, and Troy Lake, who went to prison for fixing diesel engines
• Stablecoins, the CLARITY Act, and keeping money in the hometown banks that fund agriculture
• How we reach young voters with the American System instead of a false choice between socialism and a system that isn't working for them

Gas is $4.29 and diesel is over $6. I don't like it either. But staying home on November 3 is the worst thing we could do.

We learned during COVID that our food supply had less cushion than we thought. Our fuel supply is the same story.... and the midterms decide whether we keep fixing it.

In this solo episode I talk through why prices are where they are and what's on the line Tuesday, November 3. Do I always agree with the president? No. But I'm going to get out and vote, and I hope you will too.

In this episode:

• The Iran war and Hormuz hit a fuel system that had very little cushion

• The last major U.S. refinery came online in 1977

• Keystone XL, federal leasing and the LNG export pause

• We wash our wool and ship it overseas to be processed, then ship it back as clothes

• Textile mill jobs fell from 384,900 in 2000 to about 78,000 today

• Southwest border apprehensions are down 95%, with zero Border Patrol releases for 17 straight months

• If Congress flips, a lot of that work is at risk

https://carsonjorgensen.com

#midterms #vote #energy #foodsecurity #sheep #agriculture

Chapters

00:00 Midterms and the price at the pump

01:04 Why staying home is the wrong answer

02:01 Fuel and food: why we had so little cushion

02:31 Refining capacity and 1977

02:59 Keystone XL, leasing and LNG

03:57 Refinery closures and the cost of investing here

05:07 Outsourcing: EVs, textiles and tanneries

07:13 Wool shipped overseas and back

08:02 Deregulation, trade and better paying jobs

09:01 The border: down 95%

09:51 Europe as a warning

11:18 What the Democratic Party has become

13:30 The endangerment finding and grazing

14:00 Bureaucrats waiting out the president

15:18 Ask not what your country can do for you

16:54 Why I'm voting Nov 3

Cheap food ran out of road. Brazilian beef at 19 US cents a pound. Cities still get the bargain. Our herd keeps shrinking.

Rodger Savory has been a rancher, consultant, and Holistic Management specialist since 1987. He has operated and owned cattle ranches and wildlife and forestry properties in Africa, Canada, Australia, and the United States. He pioneered the Biological Carpeting Method of land restoration and livestock management and perfected it over several decades. Born in Africa and raised in both Africa and the U.S., he is a U.S. Army veteran and a graduate of the University of New Mexico. He is CEO of Savory Holistics and leads Deserts to Grasslands.

In this conversation:

• Root cause: Bretton Woods, cheap food for cities, and 82 years without hunger wars
• Why Brazilian beef lands at 19 cents a pound, and what 300,000 tons of imports do here
• How Brazil doubled its herd every seven years while the U.S. sells heifers for hamburger
• Holistic management vs what America heard as “chopsticks”
• Desertification, extractive policy, and why city-based ag leadership misses the ranch
• What a national policy looks like if it regenerates land instead of only harvesting it

#cattle #beef #ranching #agriculture #foodsecurity