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Kurt Wallace: This is Kurt Wallace and our guest today on Rare, Katie Kieffer author of “Let Me Be Clear: Barack Obama’s War on Millennials and One Woman’s Case for Hope,” and Katie thanks for being with us today on Rare.
Katie Kieffer: It’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
Kurt Wallace: Let’s just jump into the book right away because the book is very relevant to what’s happening in America today. First you talk about your generation having kind of an epidemic of depression and stress, tell us more.
Katie Kieffer: Well yes, there’s over 15% of Millennials right now who are unemployed, over a third are living at home with their parents, and those aren’t places where we want to be right now. According to Deloitte Millennial Survey over 70% of Millennials say that they aspire to become entrepreneurs. So you have a case where you have a generation that’s 95 million strong, our role models are people like Steve Jobs, and we want to be out there innovating, creating working for either innovative companies or starting innovative companies.
And yet we face a situation where we literally can’t move out of our parents basements because we have so much student loan debt and the job prospects out there are meager. It’s hard to find a job unless it’s a part-time job, and so what I do is I point that situation out. These are historic numbers that we haven’t seen for the last 40 years in the United States. And also offer some solutions and hope for the future using my research and my own business experience so that we can dig ourselves out of this predicament.
And stop being so depressed.
Kurt Wallace: I’ve traveled all over the world. Just got back from Singapore and Indonesia. Two very different countries, one is a first world country the other one is a third world country. There’s a high rate of young adults that live at home all over the world Africa, South America, Central America and poorer countries in Europe, Eastern Europe. They live at home, this is a trend happening here in America.
Katie Kieffer: Yes, that should not be happening and what many people don’t realize that, what I find so fascinating especially given my background in real estate, is that you can trace this entire economic downturn to housing policy that start under the Carter years but then primarily came to fruition under President Bill Clinton and then exacerbated by Barack Obama. Many people don’t realize that it’s a very interesting story because there’s so much scandal and corruption involved in people like Henry Cisneros who many Americans, especially Millennials, have never heard of before. And I offer that story in the book because the first step of getting ourselves out of this mess and becoming entrepreneurs is first of all understanding how it happened and libertarians are first and foremost more educated on the matter than most people.
But I still don’t think many people know the ins and outs of how closely connected the real estate market and the housing policies were to this mess. So, once we understand that and can explain that to other people, other Millennials, we’ll be on the fast track to getting ourselves out of that. That chapter is called “The New Shacking Up” and that’s my term for young people that are living with their parents and even their grandparents sometimes against their will.
Kurt Wallace: Now the book, you take President Obama to task and we’re addressing leadership and fatherhood. How do they connect?
Katie Kieffer: We do want the President of the United States to be a strong role model in this country. Many people think of President Obama despite his policies as being very much a family guy. And what I point out is outside his four person family unit he, really was not a family guy at all. And I even compare him to JFK and to Bill Clinton and I show that even in comparison to those two he is a scoundrel because his poor behavior was on a public scale where theirs was on a personal and private scale.
What Obama did was public. And he, through his words, through his actions and violating the Constitution, and states’ rights, and individual rights, he truly set a poor example. And he particularly, despite a historic opportunity to go in and help the black community, he set that community back more than any other community. And use of groups of people like how Barry’s exotic male poll dancers, and poll is spelled p-o-l-l, and these are very interesting individuals that once you read about you’ll realize, yes, he and Michelle did set for us truly terrible role models.
Kurt Wallace: Absolutely, this is right out in front of everyone’s eyes, so maybe it desensitized in some way with this history over the last ten fifteen years of shock media and we’re just becoming less inhibited, I guess. Is that what this president represents?
Katie Kieffer: Yes, and as a libertarian-conservative I don’t think the president should be telling people of course how to live their lives or what faith to practice or what not. But my problem with this president is he sets forth very unhealthy role models. Especially for the black community. He said that he was for women and that he was for promoting peace and yet he set forth these individuals that through their lifestyles they promoted battering women and violence and basically abuse.
So, you shouldn’t uphold those people on a public scale for young people and say that they’re good role models. And also, he continually trampled on the first amendment and states rights. His handling of the Trayvon Martin was completely unacceptable. And that actually, I believe, went to some copycat situations due to the speech and how Obama handled it and those are all issues that I address in the chapter “Why Fathers Matter.” In addition to also some really interesting scientific research that Millennials should be aware of, such as scientific research with regard to men and their biological clock. This is new research that has come out in the last couple of years that many young people aren’t aware of. And one reason why we need to get this economy back on track is so that young people have more options and choices. Now not every young person wants to get married or wants to have children but you don’t even have that option in front of you if the economy isn’t healthy.
So, that’s one reason why I put so accountability on him and his administration for these socialistic policies. Because not only did they prevent young people from finding great careers but also from starting families or even basically having those options that previous generations had available to them if they wanted those options.
Kurt Wallace: Now let’s discuss foreign policy for a moment. Your generation, the Millennials, a lot of them voted for Obama in 2008 because he was going to end the war in Iraq and he was going to bring back this humble foreign policy. War is the health of the state and we’re seeing more expansion of it, he’s going back into Iraq. What is the message for your generation moving forward?
Katie Kieffer: Our generation is bearing the burden of these wars. And I point out that Bush kept us over in the Middle East longer than he said he would. Then we of course had 9/11 which no one was anticipating but I do point out that elephant in the room–Bush did keep us there longer than he anticipated. But the problem with Barack Obama is that he ran, and the reason why young people gave him their vote, was because he ran as the president of peace.
He was going to end these wars and what did we see?
Well, he escalated the number of troops in Afghanistan and under this president we’ve seen more drone strikes killing–even American citizens and innocent children in record numbers–they won’t tell us the numbers. And my generation is bearing the burden. We’re seeing these troops are coming home with record numbers of suicidal depression. Even the special ops troops are the toughest of the toughest, they are experiencing record high numbers of suicidal depression and they’re committing suicide in record high numbers.
So, what I did in my book is I interviewed some of these troops and veterans. One of them is one of the Marines who gained a lot of media attention because he urinated on the Taliban and most people don’t know the truth behind this story, so I expose that story. There’s other stories in there as well such as a soldier who’s now in prison for merely firing at the Taliban.
So, I point out that the expectations over there the rules of engagement are ridiculous and we need to pull out of these countries because we’re just creating anti-American sentiment.
Kurt Wallace: Well speaking of anti-American sentiment let’s talk about a lot of Americans that are anti-Hillary Clinton and as you point out Barack Obama 2.0. What is your message to your generation right now moving forward with the next election?
Katie Kieffer: I believe that we need to educate our peers and ourselves about the connection really between Hilary and her husband’s policies and Barack Obama’s policies. Many of the things that he’s implementing such as Obamacare are policies the Clintons tried to put forth many years ago and weren’t successful at. And so the housing policies, those started with Clinton. And so, if we have four more years of Hilary Clinton it’s going to be Barack Obama 2.0 and you can tell that by seeing that their policies are the same.
And each chapter in my book I compare Obama’s policies to those of Bill Clinton. You can see how sort of the seed that allowed Obama to have the policies that he has today. And that’s important for young people to realize because many people only remember that under Bill Clinton we had a better economic time. But they don’t realize that the results of many of his policies have carried out in the way that Obama has carried them out doesn’t yield economic success.
So I want young people to be educated in that way to realize that we need to become more free market individuals much like Steve Jobs who happened to be a Democrat, but was also a free market capitalist instead of a socialist.
Kurt Wallace: Katie Kieffer your book “Let Me Be Clear,” your website KatieKieffer.com, thanks for being with us today on Rare.
Katie Kieffer: Thanks so much for having me.