Capitalist Sage: Carolyn Bourdeaux Talks About Her Run for Congress [Podcast]

On this special episode of the Capitalist Sage, Karl Barham and Rico Figliolini sit down with Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux, who is running for Congress in Georgia’s 7th District. Join them as Carolyn shares her views on healthcare, education, immigration and much more.

Resources:

Website: https://www.carolyn4congress.com

“Everybody wants affordable quality healthcare. We all want that. We all need that. We need that for our families, for our businesses, for our community. How we get there. We can come up with different ways to get there.”

Carolyn Bourdeaux

Timestamp:
[00:00:30] – Intro
[00:04:30] – Carolyn’s Background
[00:06:11] – Taking a Closer Look at Healthcare
[00:13:43] – Uniting the Parties
[00:18:37] – Data and Privacy
[00:21:40] – Education
[00:28:46] – Bi-Partisan Work
[00:29:37] – Immigration Issues
[00:34:59] – Carolyn’s Race
[00:36:57] – Closing

Karl: [00:00:30] Welcome to the Capitalist Sage Podcast where we talk to business owners, leaders in the community about things that matter here in Peachtree Corners, in surrounding areas, where informed people, share information with folks, and just help people understand some of the issues that might be impacting, whether it’s their lives, their homes, their businesses, and so on. I’m Karl Barham with a Transworld Business Advisors, and my co host is Rico Figliolini, Mighty Rockets Digital Marketing, and the publisher of the Peachtree Corners Cagazine. Hey, Rico, how are you doing today?

Rico: [00:01:05] Hey, Karl. Good, good. Let’s talk about some sponsors.

Karl: [00:01:08] Yeah.

Rico: [00:01:08] I’ll do that. So let’s get that out of the way before we get into our guest today. So we are at Atlanta Tech Park in the City of Peachtree Corners, and it’s actually an accelerator that houses about 90 plus companies. It has a far reach through the Southeast because of the venture capital work it does as well. And because of the executive Robin Bienfait, who found this location and this place when she was an executive with Samsung, back there and few other companies. So, we’re glad to be here. We’re glad there are spots that allow us to use the podcast room. This place is located on Curiosity Labs at Peachtree Corners, which is about a one and a half mile. It’s an autonomous vehicle track that anyone could come to. It’s a living lab essentially. So Autonomous vehicles. Internet of everything. People walking, people driving, everything’s live. There’s no make belief here, and you can bring your company, small or large, larger startup or established company and actually test things on this lab, on this one and a half mile track, and the backbone of this, which is enabled by 5G Sprint, 5G technology. Everyone’s talking about 5G. You can’t do autonomous vehicles without 5G. You can’t do the internet of everything without that. But you’ve got to bring the internet to it though, right? And so you still got to use cable and fiber to be able to do that. And our lead sponsor is Hargray Fiber. And they’re the backbone of Curiosity Labs. They actually provide the fiber for this to be able to work there. This one and a half mile track.

Karl: [00:02:41] It’s incredible the technology that is already being deployed right here in Peachtree Corners to enable smart city application. Everything from E-scooters where you can get here on the scooter that driverless shuttles, both, both the backbone that’s being built and then the Sprint 5G network is enabling that to, a lot of companies are coming into this area too, to explore the technologies.

Rico: [00:03:06] Tremendous map, almost like, I mean better than planted up in Michigan, which is, we got the place to be. So if you want to find out about Atlanta Tech Park, it’s AtlantaTechPark.com. HargrayFiber.com for if you’re a small business or an enterprise size business and you’re looking for fiber and enterprise solutions.

Karl: [00:03:29] Well, today we have a special episode of Capitalist Sage where, one of the things we like to do is share, the different types of leaders and people. Thought leaders in the
community at the top, contributing to the success of our community, whether it’s through business, whether it’s through government, whether it’s through citizenship and private individuals. And today it’s my pleasure to welcome Carolyn Bourdeaux, running for the US Senate seat here.

Carolyn: [00:03:57] Congress.

Karl: [00:03:58] Congress, seventh congressional district here in Georgia. Hi, how are you doing today?

Carolyn: [00:04:04] I’m doing great. Thank you all for having me.

Rico: [00:04:06] Sure. It’s pleasure. Actually, the second time. Second for us. Yes. When you ran back in 2018.

Carolyn: [00:04:12] 18 yeah. I’m back to finish the job.

Karl: [00:04:14] Oh, fabulous. So one of the things we wanted to start off with, just kind of reintroduce you to folks that may or may not know who you are and, and kind of learn a little bit, why are you jumping into this and serving your country by running for Congress?

Carolyn: [00:04:30] Right. So a little bit of my background. I live in Swaney. I have a, my husband and I, we have an eight year old son who’s enrolled in public schools here. My day job is I teach at the Andrew Young School of policy studies at Georgia State. I teach public policy and public finance and have spent a lot of my life working in various roles in public service. I worked for several members of Congress for US Senator. I was director of the Senate budget and evaluation office here in Georgia. I founded the center for state and local finance and so have been in public life and in public service in many ways for a long time. I got into this race back in July of 2017 and was motivated by several things. But one of the big ones was health care. And what’s happened with healthcare reform in this country. And, my parents passed away, two years ago after my father, after a really prolonged illness. And, you know, all of their discretionary income was eaten up, paying for healthcare costs. And so watching the skyrocketing prices of prescription drugs, the extortionary rates that many of us pay for health insurance in this community. We have 110,000 people without health insurance. And so that was a big driver watching the destruction of the affordable care act and just sort of the many, many issues that many of us face in healthcare.

Rico: [00:05:48] That was a big issue at the time. Still is actually.

Karl: [00:05:52] It’s very topical because, you know, as you hear more about other countries battling health concerns and so on. What are some of the things you’ve seen in other countries that might help us look at healthcare and how we do it here differently?

Carolyn: [00:06:11] So I’ll start with healthcare generally. And, you know, most other countries have some form of universal healthcare and they have different ways that they’re trying to get there. They use different strategies. The one I talk about a lot is, you know, going back, standing the Affordable Care act back up. Actually implementing that legislation. A lot of pieces of that were never implemented, including the expansion of Medicaid here in Georgia. By not expanding Medicaid in Georgia, the state basically returns to the federal government between $2.2 and $3 billion a year.

Rico: [00:06:46] That’s voluntary.

Carolyn: [00:06:48] It is voluntary, yes. So they volunteer $2 billion a year at least, you know, as much as $3 billion now. And that means that around 500,000 people in the state don’t have health insurance. And that’s a lot of people to hang out to dry. I also am someone who thinks we need a public option on the exchange. We still, that won’t cover everybody. And we need a low cost alternative for small businesses and for individuals to opt into as well.

Rico: [00:07:18] How do you feel about everything that’s going on in, there’s podcasts galore now and shows about Coronavirus, the Novel Virus, Depen Damick according to see. Well, who will probably happen? It is expanding. You could get the test, maybe if you’re lucky and someone’s gonna pay for it, but if you want to get the test, I mean, there’s so many questions about who’s going to actually pay for it and how are you going to take care of hospital bills, if you’re actually affected that late and you have to go to the hospital, what’s your thoughts on that?

Carolyn: [00:07:55] So we just saw a story in Florida where a person thought they had, you know, some kind of Coronavirus. They went to the hospital and then were immediately slapped with a $2,000 bill for it. I think one of the things about Coronavirus is it really or the Covid-19 is it really shines a bright light on some really serious problems in this country. And one of them is that we have hundreds of thousands of people. We have millions of people in this state, over a million people without health insurance. And, you know, even if you’re not worried about them, you might be worried about yourself because it would be really helpful if they feel sick, if they can see a doctor. And so, I think it is. You know, we face a situation where we may be in real trouble because we still, after years of arguing about this, still do not provide health care and access to a doctor for many, many people in our community.

Rico: [00:08:53] For the people that lead it, they can’t afford it. Then I’m not going to go because they can.

Carolyn: [00:09:00] Exactly. Yeah. They are much less likely to go. And I think, you know, we talk about the response to Coronavirus and people are like, well, you know, don’t touch your face, or, be sure to wash your hands. And that’s right. I mean, and that’s good. That’s important. But we also have to recognize that the response also needs to address the gaping holes in our, I don’t want to say safety net because we think of that as being associated with poor people, but
we all need a safety net at different times. Another huge issue is paid family medical leave. We have lots of people in our community, who live paycheck to paycheck. What are they going to do if they are quarantined? We have lots of people who don’t have any kind of paid family medical leave and they need, you know, that, that money, what are they gonna do? And so when we talk about how we respond to the pandemic, we need to think not just about sort of those basic health care, washing your hands, those kinds of things, but also how as a society do we respect.

Rico: [00:10:04] Well, their economic impact.

Karl: [00:10:06] Yeah. If you do some, if you think about it, some simple math, if people start getting sick. They’re going to flood emergency rooms and the cost of service saying that many people, it’s gonna. It’s gonna really be huge.

Rico: [00:10:22] Not just the cost, but there won’t be enough beds, enough ventilators, enough equipment, enough safety equipment for the healthcare workers. Can you imagine? Yeah. Some people showing up.

Karl: [00:10:34] So there’s going to be an economic impact. The question is, you know, can you plan ahead and spend the money wisely so that people could, can go earlier before it requires an emergency room, get treatment.

Carolyn: [00:10:51] I think it’s, you know, it’s a start and we’re going to have to take this one step at a time. But there are many tiers to this issue, right? One is sort of the, you know, how do we deal with this as a society? There’s another, yes, how is our healthcare network going to deal with it? And obviously we really have to try to protect our healthcare workers. And we saw thousands and thousands of them in China get sick from the Covid-19. And, we’re going to have to think about that and do we have what they need to be supported. And one thing I see when a lot of folks are talking about, you know, it’s a small percentage of people who die from this or need hospitalization. Our problem is that even a small percentage of a large number can quickly overwhelm our hospitals. And one of the reasons we quarantine and kind of shut things down is not, because you know, it’s gonna wipe out and kill lots of people. It’s just that we have to stop that overwhelming of our healthcare system and try to manage, you know, how, the diseases unfolding. And so, you know, I know they’re good people thinking about this. I just hope, you know, that they have a voice in this process and are able to help us manage through.

Karl: [00:12:02] So I’m always curious about the impact for small business owners. So, I saw a statistic 44% or so of people are employed by small business to 99.7% of all businesses happen to be small businesses and native, they don’t, may not have the ability to extend, large company healthcare benefits that people get to enjoy. What are some of the strategies that business owners at least have available to them, and what can they do to get their voice heard, to help drive change so that they can, they can offer their employees better options.

Carolyn: [00:12:39] Well, again, there’s sort of the immediate crisis issue, right? And then there’s the bigger picture issue. And you know, for me, ensuring that we have, you know, some form of universal healthcare coverage is a small business issue, right? And we need to do it to protect our small businesses so that they are not being crushed by the burden of health insurance and healthcare coverage, and that they can provide that for their employees. So, you know, one of the many reasons I really advocate for that is because I hear from small businesses all the time and how they really struggle to get insurance for themselves and for their employees. The immediate crisis is you know, I think folks need to start advocating with the state government and with the federal government, to, you know, get some real solutions coming down the pipe. Some real ideas for what is going to happen and how we’re going to manage through this if this happens and how we’re going to protect small businesses. I think that is an issue and I don’t think it’s really been addressed.

Karl: [00:13:43] Yeah. And I hear it often when I talk to small business owners that they are doing what they need to do to survive first. And they’re, they’re one catastrophe or something away from really losing their business very often. I get asked a little bit, so as we see problems like this and healthcare is a big one, there’s a lot of others like that. What are ways that the two parties can work together to come to a solution? There seems to be a blockage of that, that used to exist many years ago. But it’s getting more polarized and we’re not seeing people come together. Have you seen hope that that can be improved?

Carolyn: [00:14:30] I, you know, I wish I could say yes, but it’s a tough situation we’re in. I have worked with Republicans, you know, in the past when I worked in Congress for, I worked for a Democratic Senator, Ron Wyden. Every single piece of legislation I worked on had Republican co-sponsors. I think that coming together is very, very important. But I think our first step is we need to agree that everybody needs health insurance. And have some basic fundamental agreement on those issues and the electorate needs to send that message, did that something they want. And then there are lots of ways to solve that problem, I think in ways that, you know, Republicans might agree with. Actually the affordable care act, right, was originally introduced in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney. It was a Republican idea. It was a bipartisan idea and we need to go back to that. A time when we can have that kind of conversation.

Rico: [00:15:30] That was a bit of a moderate, moderate Republican idea, but they disowned later though, right? So I don’t know if they’ll ever go back to that. At least this set of Republicans.

Carolyn: [00:15:41] It’s very unfortunate. It was a market based idea. If we’re trying to address, you know, get us to universal health coverage.

Rico: [00:15:49] How do you find them? For example, right now, Warren, Senator Warren decided to bow out at this point today made sense. I mean, she said no path to go, so we have to. I mean the third one, close, but she’s like 2% so there’s really two candidates, right? Two different plans. All, it’s like almost all or nothing. So where did we go from this, if, if between the
two of them? Between Biden and Sanders. I mean, I feel the burn, but I don’t know if I can go all the way there. But how do you feel about that?

Carolyn: [00:16:23] You know, when I talk to people in the district and I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people about this issue, we start with where we want to go. And I think it’s the same issue as we try to, you know, bring, you know, Republicans along and have a bigger coalition around it. Everybody wants affordable quality healthcare. We all want that. We all need that. We need that for our families, for our businesses, for our community. How we get there, we can come up with different ways to get there. You know, again, I think we already have a law on the books. That’s the most straightforward way. I do believe in fiscal responsibility and, you know, the public option has been shown to save money. And you know, I think we can come up with ways to get there. Whether it is, you know, a Sander’s way of buying weight, we all have to focus on the goal of where we want to go and then work our way through how we’re going to get there.

Karl: [00:17:14] Very often you’ll see, you know, different strategies play out, and public policy. How do you get grassroots involvement on an issue like this? How do you mobilize people to, to really get out there and like, what specifically can people do to whether their representative is Republican or Democrat get done to look at an issue in a bipartisan way?

Carolyn: [00:17:42] Yeah. I’m a big believer in education and having dialogue with folks. The most difficult policy issue I ever addressed was, helping the state balance the budget during the Great Recession. And it was a really tough time. George’s revenues dropped by 20%. And what I did and many other policymakers did was we did public forum after public for after public forum. Showing what was happening with the state revenues, showing how we’re going to try to address this issue. And I think we need to have something similar on healthcare, where we are just out there talking to folks. And I, you know, as part of the campaign, I do hundreds of community meetings and, you know, and we talk about these kinds of issues. And I think that’s very, very important for, you know, getting people, having a chance to kind of hash out those ideas in a community.

Rico: [00:18:37] Well, let’s see. We’ve got technology. You know, we talked about business a lot on this podcast, but recently Google was found to have been working with a healthcare provider that does the back office work that you all, so they’ve been accumulating data and not just generic data, but names and everything like that. It’s coming to the forefront now. Google and Facebook, I mean, they’re all in there in the mix. Apple’s doing stuff, but Google is the biggest gorilla in the room, if you will. How do you want to deal with technology where on the one hand, something like that can actually help during a crash, like an epidemic? Or can help bring down costs, but you have to share that. Oh, they got rid of the privacy limit. The privacy in this, it’s very shaky. How do you handle that?

Carolyn: [00:19:28] It’s particularly an interesting question for me because as somebody who does research around public policy, I see the enormous power of data and how it can really help
us fine tune public policies to have a much more significant impact. So for instance, Georgia state, uses analytics to try to target students who might be more likely to drop out of school and then intervene early before they run into problems. And they’ve been enormously successful with this. They’ve been really very successful driving up their graduation rates. So I see, I see both sides of it. On the other hand. I’m a pretty passionate advocate for privacy and, you know, it’s just a personal thing. I don’t want everybody knowing every click I made and every location I have been. And I would imagine most of us don’t. And, you have these, you know, very large companies. Now you have maybe the government as well, just collecting tremendous amounts of data on us. So I am interested in looking at ways where we do put some brackets around this, where, you, you see Europe and California now have passed legislation, legislation laws. To, if, if you do collect data, it really does have to be anonymous. There have to be a lot of protections around it. As an individual you need to know, so what data is being collected and you’re allowed to inquire and find out about it. And that’s very important. And as a citizen, you’re also allowed to say, I want you to get rid of all the data that would identify me. And so I think, you know, legislation around that is, is calming. And you know, we do need to find, you know, think about how we’re leveraging its power, but at the same time, protecting privacy so you’re not able to identify individuals and really drill down in a way that can be very damaging to someone should information, you know, get out.

Rico: [00:21:21] Okay. I mean, you look at China, we looked away, they left one province in a country like that can’t do that because there’s no privacy. Because the privacy, they can lock it down and just stop in there. Supposedly, if we can believe there, their rates of infection, it’s way less now than it was four weeks ago.

Karl: [00:21:40] I’m curious if, like if I get asked a little bit about education, you, you work a lot with, students and folks that are going for, I see now the emphasis on education. Kind of getting deemphasized in a lot of circles. There was a time where we led with EDU educating everyone, free education. It was, maybe a national security issue as well as a way for economic advancement. And now, there’s a lot of people there. They’re paying for colleges getting expensive, and you’ve got some candidates that are, you know, everyone should be able to go to college for free. And, and most jobs are now requiring that. How do we balance or rebalance our focus around educating our young?

Carolyn: [00:22:30] So this is a district where we care a lot about education. You know this is, the seventh district is about families and children and raising our children and giving them access to the American dream and the opportunity. And I would venture to say that most all of us agree that one of the keys to that is having a really good education. And, you know, I do think we have taken our eye off the ball there. And, when I left Georgia state, one of the things I was working on, was looking at currently about 40% of young people, in Georgia get some sort of higher education, whether it’s through our technical schools or through colleges and universities. To compete with countries like Korea, Canada, and Japan, we need 60% to get through. That’s a big shift. I think I calculate the back of the envelope. It would mean investing around a billion more in our public universities in Georgia to get to that. So we spend, I think around $2 billion in
state funds on our universities, so that’s an enormous jump and investment that we would need. We need to start thinking about that. I generally am not a free person, but I am an affordable person. When I graduated from college, I had a tremendous amount of student debt. It is a big part of my story. And so I’m deeply sympathetic to young people now with that ball and chain around their ankle. And so it needs to be within reach of every student who wants to go to get a higher education. They should not see cost as a barrier.

Karl: [00:24:11] That’s one of the things now, I feel there’s a generation from 2005 to probably 2015 that went to college or in the economic crisis when they came out, they were probably underemployed because of the economy. And I feel they were at least five years behind where previous generations or peers were. And I don’t know if they ever caught up or at least they haven’t caught up yet. They might’ve already wanted economically. Where they’re getting married at 27 to 33 and buying the first house. They’re delaying starting a family by five, six years because they’re still paying off student debt and those types of things. What can we do? you know, for that group that’s now getting older and what do we do to prevent that if that were to happen again? So, so many folks don’t get left behind.

Carolyn: [00:25:10] Yeah, so we have, you know, one, we just, we have not made the baseline investments, in programs that are used to reduce the cost of higher education. I went to school on Pell grants and I don’t think we’ve increased the Pell grants in almost a decade instead of what that covers. We have disinvested in our public universities. In 2007 or so, around 75% of the revenues for our public university, 75% tax dollars came from our investment, 25% came from tuition. Now it is below 50% comes from sort of the state, you know, guarantee or the state input. And, you know, over 50% comes from tuition. And we’ve seen that in dramatic jumps in the tuition. So one of the big things we need to do also is just reinvest in those public universities so that they are affordable. You don’t go to them and you have, you know, some people have hundreds of thousands, but a lot of, you know, $20-$30,000 in debt when we leave. So those are certainly some things we can do to try to address that. I’m interested in some of the loan forgiveness as well. I think, you know, there are a lot of folks out there who have a lot of earning potential, right? And they, it’s not going to be a big issue, but, you know, for lower income folks, people who choose service jobs, people who choose jobs that are, you know, in the community that might not make as much, you know. Pegging their student loan repayments to a smaller percentage of their income is certainly something we can do. Forgiveness, you know, for people who go into that.

Rico: [00:26:49] Really what’s going on now, right. Because the education department now have the program of forgiveness for a certain set of people that applied and mostly that that’s not happening.

Carolyn: [00:26:59] They, they’ve undone it. Yeah, yeah. Yes, absolutely. I mean, I’m running, I deeply disagree with the priorities, right. That we’re setting right now.

Karl: [00:27:08] Even Frost, they go into a field like teaching, they’re leaving because the salaries they’re making, they can’t live. And anyone here could tell you. I remember a teacher that probably changed the course of your life because of the way they were able to impact you.

Rico: [00:27:24] They even spend their own money. I mean, most of them do buy stuff for the classroom.

Carolyn: [00:27:28] I tell them the most important person in my life right now is not some wall street banker. It’s not. It is my son’s second grade teacher and we need to treat her and pay her, and I support her accordingly.

Rico: [00:27:45] Do you think I’m saying this, been talking to her a little bit more? I think not a free, again, free, but everything could be free I guess, but a free childcare and talking about providing that childcare. And also making a creek in kindergarten. You know, putting an investment in the lower grains to hopefully bring, because it is a big difference, I think for a kid that’s young that doesn’t get 12 well, it doesn’t have the right exposure. I mean, what do you think?

Carolyn: [00:28:16] I do support moving towards universal Pre-K. And making that available. Not, not mandatory, but that any, anybody who wants to, does have access. Just like we have kindergarten, move that down a grade. And that’s important. But we need affordable childcare too. There are lots of women, you know, we want people to work. If you want people to work, then you need to support them as they do work. And you know, having quality childcare is also extremely important.

Karl: [00:28:46] You’re running as a Democrat. And I’m curious, are there things that you see the Republican party doing well in policy, something where they think you think they’re on the right path and they might be leading the way in any particular area of policy currently.

Carolyn: [00:29:05] I think there’s a lot of good bi-partisan work, around the VA and around veterans issues. That’s something where we have a situation that is, is quite bad in the VA. I talked to lots of veterans who have had to wait years. I had a friend whose brother killed himself, as he came back and didn’t get the mental health treatment that he needed. And I see people in both parties, you know, working together to address those issues. And those are very important ones and I’m glad to see them move forward on a bipartisan basis.

Karl: [00:29:37] I wonder like, issues like immigration there, there’s a lot of polarizing opinions about it. But you do hear some talk of, of finding ways to bring more people, to be naturalized citizens or to become citizens within the country. I hear it on both sides. Republicans talk about it. They seem to get stuck and how, and when, and the pace to do it. But our approach to immigration has drastically shifted in 30 years, where I grew up in New York and there was the Statue of Liberty. And, and, and I remember it on school trips. It was a premiere, poor, and, and,
and, and arms opening. And, and there’s been a shift, and I don’t know if it’s a shift in the people, is it, or is it a shift in the policy?

Carolyn: [00:30:28] Oh, well, I mean, I think Trump clearly ran on a huge anti-immigrant platform and, the seventh congressional district, 25% of the people in this district were born outside of this country. And it is the policies coming out of Washington now around immigration just strike at the heart of this district. And it is interesting, you know, the business community needs immigrants. And, we have always benefited from bringing the best and the brightest from all over the world, hard workers from all over the world, coming to our country and, making a life for themselves and their families. And, you know, we have rolled that back and I was interested to see Mick Mulvaney out there the other day, you know, I guess he slipped up and said that, you know, wait a minute. These really do have a big economic impact. If you all will recall back in 2007, Georgia passed a huge anti-immigrant piece of legislation and it’s kind of evaporated. And what they found was right away, after they passed it, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of crops rotted in the fields in South Georgia. And, you know. So it’s this weird dichotomy. They’re like, we don’t want immigrants, but then, you know, once that kind of fewer passes, Oh wait, we really do need them.

Rico: [00:31:51] How would they not realize that?

Carolyn: [00:31:52] Right. I don’t know, but you know, and then they’ve legislation kind of, you know, it was found to be unconstitutional or illegal in various ways and kind of vanished. You know, we’re going to see that same thing cycle again. And one of the problems we have is that our immigration laws do not match the economic realities on the ground, and we need to have that match. I mean, the other thing about immigration is that, you know, we are now, you know, we are a country that deeply believes in human rights and respect for human dignity and to see what’s happening at the border, with these camps and, you know, taking children away from their parents. You know, everybody’s a parent just feels in their guts, you know, to how wrong that is. And we have just lost our moral bearings now around immigration. And that fundamentally has to be reestablished. I was just in a Hispanic church a few weekends ago and sat down with a man whose brother was here. He ran a landscaping business, you know, in our community right here. And his, wife, for some reason ended up being undocumented, was deported by Ice back to Honduras. And, he followed her back and was shortly thereafter killed. His hands were chopped off, his head was chopped off and his wife was raped. And we’re sending people back to their countries and they’re being killed. And, that’s really, really wrong. And we have to address that. Both the moral, the human rights issues, as well as the economic ones in our immigration policy.

Karl: [00:33:28] There’s a lot that’s going on here in Metro Atlanta with immigrants. If you go to areas like Clarkston and others where you’re seeing, I’d call it a rebirth. The immigrant communities building businesses there, there’s a program there called Start Me, with Emory where they’re partnering with the universities and friends of refugees and nonprofit organizations in the community to help new Americans and refugees build businesses here in
the community. And, and it’s amazing when you see folks that have the ability. And all they might need is some help and guidance on navigating. There might be some language skills that they’re, they need some help with, but they’re putting out good business. Catering businesses and restaurants and clothing businesses and so on because they want to provide, they want to create jobs within the community and make sure the money stays within the community. So you know, if folks want to get a sense of how immigrants are thriving, you know, there’s areas right here in Metro Atlanta that they can go and experience that if they, if they want to kind of just meet someone, have lunch, have coffee, and it changes your perception.

Carolyn: [00:34:40] It’s not a zero sum game, right? They are creating business and opportunity and that in turn is lifting everybody up. And I think that’s another important point about immigrants coming into our community. You know, they bring a tremendous amount of economic growth and vibrancy to our community.

Rico: [00:34:59] You know, a few minutes left. And then we gotta let Caroline go. But I want to get, if you don’t mind, just a couple of questions in about politics. That’s just not issues. But, so we have Sanders and we have, do you have a choice? As far as you know, down there, they’ve been talking about Sanders and down the ticket and how that may affect other candidates. You have six, I think, running as the democratic primary in the seven candidates in the Republican. So they’re having a free for all on the other side, but you’ve raised the most money, you feel good about winning.

Carolyn: [00:35:44] I do. Yeah. I come in with, you know, I came within 433 votes last time. I’m flipping the seed. It was the closest race in the country. And, you know, I’m starting at, you know, tremendous momentum coming out of that. I think a lot of folks. Saw what we accomplished in 2018 and saw it as a victory. I mean, we closed a 20 percentage point gap in this area, to get to that point. The previous Democrat came in at 40%. and so, you know, that enthusiasm and momentum and excitement, you know, it is reflected in my fundraising numbers, right? Those are not. But also any endorsements. I just picked up Hakeem Jeffries, a Congressman who came, Jeffery’s endorsement. He is a rising star in the house leadership, democratic house leadership. I have John Lewis, Andrew Young, Hank Johnson, Sam, you know, a host of local folks. And it’s just, you know, we are coming back to finish what we started last time.

Rico: [00:36:43] How do you feel about Kelly Laughlin?

Carolyn: [00:36:46] Oh, bless her. Welcome to politics.

Rico: [00:36:57] I appreciate you coming down with us. Carolyn: [00:36:58] Absolutely.

Karl: [00:36:59] Just getting to talk to folks and get to hear more about what you think about policies, and issues that are affecting people every day, you know. Thank you very much for coming and joining us today.

Carolyn: [00:37:15] It’s a real pleasure to talk with you guys.

Karl: [00:37:18] Well, we want to thank everybody for listening to the Capitalist Sage Podcast, today. I’m Karl Barham with Transworld Business Advisors. You, we help business folks, figure out exit strategies for businesses. Rico, what do you have coming up?

Rico: [00:37:34] Sure. So Peachtree Corners Magazine, if you go to LivingInPeachtreeCorners.com, you can find out. Well about what, what’s going on in the city. But the next, this one is about youth sports, doing good with homegrown nonprofits. And a few other stories that were chock-full stuff. So that’ll be coming out in April / May issue. So April 10th, right after spring break downs.

Karl: [00:37:58] And I’m going to suspect in the next few weeks and months, there’s going to be lots of activity here in Atlanta Tech Park, our sponsor, and where we broadcast this podcast from, part of the City of Peachtree Corners, Georgia. We want to bring, be a place where business people can come together, interact with people in politics, in the community, to help make what the city’s really all about. So, I want to thank Atlanta Tech Park and invite anybody to come out here and take a look whenever they have a chance. And for that, that’s the end of this week’s podcast at the Capitalist Sage. Thank you everybody for listening. Take care.

Rico: [00:38:38] Thank you.