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Philip Howard

Founder and Chair, Common Good · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderauthorother@PhilipKHoward ↗philipkhoward.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Philip K. Howard is an American lawyer and civic leader who founded Common Good, a nonpartisan coalition advocating to simplify bureaucratic regulation. He is best known as the author of the bestselling 1995 critique The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America.

12statements → 5claims → 5claims resolved → 80%fully supported → 4.08/5average certainty → 3/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated →

4 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 2 opinions · 4 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Philip argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Howard: 90% of Brandon Johnson's Campaign Funds Came From Unions
“Well, the government, the current governor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, 90% of his election funds came from the unions.”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 13:11 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
100% certainty 4
50% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Philip Howard on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Philip Howard said on American Optimist that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Howard: Most Environmental Groups Have Become Insidious Forces
“And I mean, not all environmental groups, but most of them are really have become insidious forces and In our society.”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 22:44 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale
Insight
Howard: Slow Environmental Reviews Dramatically Harm the Environment
“All these lengthy environmental reviews turn out to be dramatically harmful to the environment because we can't fix the bottlenecks. We can't create the new transmission lines that carry electricity from the, you know, renewable sources and such. It's overwhel…”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 21:58 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale
Opinion
Howard: Civil Service Reform Act Made Accountability Impossible
“The Civil Service Reform Act in 1978, which made it impossible to hold anybody accountable, you know, was at the end of the seventies”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 3:09 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale
Insight
Howard: Replacing Human Judgment with Rulebooks Paralyzed Government
“There was a kind of a fatal theoretical flaw that they, ah, that they committed, ah, which was to try to create a government that was better than people. They wanted to create governing as a kind of a software program where, If you had a thousand-page rule boo…”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 3:09 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale
Disclosure
Howard: Common Good Preparing Constitutional Lawsuit Against Public Union Power
“We're at the beginning of doing this white paper, which we hope to do in the next two or three months on unmanageability, and then we have, we already have a draft complaint that we're working on, that we've developed, and so then we're going to go to the Trum…”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 15:43 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale
Insight
Howard: Thousands of worker safety rules actually hurt safety
“So when you have 4000 worker safety rules, most of which are completely self-evident, it doesn't actually help, there's studies of this, it doesn't help worker safety. It actually hurts worker safety, because figuratively speaking, people have their noses in t…”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 9:02 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale
Assertion Supported
Howard: 90% of Brandon Johnson's Campaign Funds Came From Unions
“Well, the government, the current governor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, 90% of his election funds came from the unions.”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 13:11 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale
Insight
Howard: Pruning regulations fails because remaining mandatory rules still paralyze systems
“They think you can just cut some of it out. You can't cut some of it out and have it work. You can't prune a jungle. The jungle grows back. So let's say you cut 80% of the rules and the processes. The 20% that's left is still mandatory.”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 36:07 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale
Assertion Supported
Howard: US federal government has 162 unreviewed STEM training programs
“You know, we have a 162 STEM training programs, and no, in the federal government, nobody goes to see if they work or consolidate.”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 8:02 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale
Assertion Partly supported
Howard: US has 150 million words of binding federal law and regulation
“It's actually a hundred and fifty million words of binding federal law and regulation.”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 8:23 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale
Assertion Supported
Howard: Hudson River Tunnel Project Is Taking 30 Years to Complete
“A tunnel under the Hudson, which had already been the subject of environmental studies is still taking 30 years to do.”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 17:59 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale
Assertion Supported
Howard: Opening a restaurant in New York requires visiting 11 separate agencies
“I mean, in New York, you've got to go to 11 different agencies to open a restaurant.”
Philip Howard Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 27:09 Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Why It's Legally Impossible To Build In America · Joe Lonsdale Dec 11, 2025 23m
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