Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 3: Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints.
Speaker 1: We have less than two days until what almost one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand workers could walk off the job
Speaker 1: in Detroit if they don't strike a bargain with the
Speaker 1: big three automakers. We're going to talk about that in
Speaker 1: just a moment. We also have some news on COVID origins.
Speaker 1: What else what else we got today?
Speaker 4: Well, of course the big news about impeachment. We're going
Speaker 4: to start with that. We have lots of video clips
Speaker 4: that I think give a great glimpse and said, what
Speaker 4: was happening in Capitol Hill yesterday? Ryan was there, so
Speaker 4: he can share some color from actually doing some on
Speaker 4: the ground reporting inside the halls of the Capitol last night.
Speaker 4: We're going to talk about the Biden administration's new waiver
Speaker 4: to unfreeze some of Iran's own money and the controversy
Speaker 4: that has erupted. We're going to hear from the White
Speaker 4: House their response to criticism from Republicans. We're gonna be
Speaker 4: talking about Woody Harrelson his response to some the war,
Speaker 4: the war in Ukraine. I'm going to be talking about
Speaker 4: a little bit of a snitch line that's happening in
Speaker 4: La Ryan, You've.
Speaker 1: Got some Yeah, Today, we're going to get inflation numbers.
Speaker 1: Those are going to be out by the time that
Speaker 1: you've watched this, so we'll be talking about that later
Speaker 1: in the program. We'll talk about the inflation numbers as
Speaker 1: they relate to worker power and the battle between capital
Speaker 1: and labor. And then at the end, speaking of capital,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about this incredible story of how
Speaker 1: one of Warren Buffett's kids bought a town.
Speaker 3: Why not if you can?
Speaker 4: Why not? Why not?
Speaker 1: But Yeah, So I was on Capitol Hill yesterday and
Speaker 1: all the reporters, how are you responding to Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: deciding that he's going to open an impeachment inquiry?
Speaker 3: And it was so kind of depressing.
Speaker 1: It's like I was with Federmal who cares you don't
Speaker 1: have the votes for this?
Speaker 3: Why are we doing this? What's going on? Anyway? Here
Speaker 3: is what everybody was responding to.
Speaker 1: Let's roll Kevin McCarthy's kind of quick press conference that
Speaker 1: he called yesterday morning.
Speaker 5: I am directing our House Committee to open a formal
Speaker 5: impeachment inquiry to President Joe Biden.
Speaker 6: This logical next step.
Speaker 5: Will give our committees the full power to gather all
Speaker 5: the facts and answers for the American public. It's exactly
Speaker 5: what we want to know, the answers. I believe the
Speaker 5: President would want to answer these questions and allegations as well.
Speaker 1: Now, crucially, the way that an impeachment inquiry is opened
Speaker 1: is through a vote on the House floor. Typically, typically
Speaker 1: that's what it is supposed to trigger all of the
Speaker 1: kind of extra powers that come with that impeachment inquiry
Speaker 1: and the ability to obtain records, deeper subpoena power. McCarthy
Speaker 1: has said he's not going to do that, He's just
Speaker 1: going to declare an inquiry. But we also have some
Speaker 1: suggestion of where this declaration come from came from. Here's
Speaker 1: Matt Gates speaking on the floor A little bit after
Speaker 1: McCarthy's announcement.
Speaker 7: On this very floor in January, the whole world witnessed
Speaker 7: a historic contest for House Speaker. I rise today to
Speaker 7: serve notice, mister Speaker, you are out of compliance with
Speaker 7: the agreement that allowed you to assume this role. The
Speaker 7: path forward for the House of Representatives is to either
Speaker 7: bring you into immediate total compliance or remove you pursuing
Speaker 7: to emotion to vacate the chair.
Speaker 4: So there you see very clearly the connection here between
Speaker 4: impeachment and the motion to vacate, and this is all
Speaker 4: tied together. That's why this is such a busy fall
Speaker 4: because this is going to get into the government shutdown argument,
Speaker 4: This is going to get into changing the speaker, and
Speaker 4: this is going to get into impeachment. All of this
Speaker 4: is colliding in this short number of days that they're
Speaker 4: actually in session a before a government shut down at
Speaker 4: the end of this month. So now they're going to
Speaker 4: be fighting over whether they pass a continuing resolution to
Speaker 4: fund the government into December, which is McCarthy's preference, and
Speaker 4: then they have to figure out how to fund the
Speaker 4: government before the end of the year, or I mean,
Speaker 4: it's McCarthy's like between a rock and a hard place,
Speaker 4: and he's been there for six months now, six months plus,
Speaker 4: so he has some experience there. But holy smokes, is
Speaker 4: this entangled not for him in the next.
Speaker 3: Couple of months.
Speaker 1: And so Gates is saying that if he puts a
Speaker 1: CR on the floor, he will introduce a motion to
Speaker 1: kick McCarthy out of the speakership. A CR stands for
Speaker 1: continuing resolution, which also isn't very helpful if you're not
Speaker 1: following Congress. It basically means whatever the kind of line
Speaker 1: of the budget lines are now, those continue until a
Speaker 1: certain date. So if they do a CR until December fifth,
Speaker 1: then the government stays funded at the same rate until
Speaker 1: December fifth. And they've been kicking around the idea of,
Speaker 1: you know, a CR into December. Gates said, no, you
Speaker 1: do that, We're going to kick macarthy out of the chair.
Speaker 1: Now does he have the votes to kick macarthy out
Speaker 1: of the chair, We don't know. But the alternative is
Speaker 1: to pass a dozen appropriation bills through all the different
Speaker 1: committees and then pass those through the Senate and then
Speaker 1: have those signed by President Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: Well that's a complete fantasy, of course. So he's saying
Speaker 3: neither is okay.
Speaker 4: And right right, and there are a million We're going
Speaker 4: to get into this, I think a little bit later
Speaker 4: in the block, but there are a million different scenarios
Speaker 4: where neither is okay. Like those are the two options
Speaker 4: on the table, and they're not workable whatsoever. So it's
Speaker 4: it's just going to be for people who want their
Speaker 4: government to function. Some people don't want their government to function.
Speaker 4: A lot of people in the on the right say like,
Speaker 4: screw it, you know you're not doing anything for us anyway.
Speaker 4: I don't mind if you shut down for a month,
Speaker 4: but if you're not in that camp, this fall is
Speaker 4: going to be, uh, not going to be. It's going
Speaker 4: to be a bloodbath from that perspective.
Speaker 1: And what makes it all feels so empty and why
Speaker 1: it felt so hollow upon the Hill yesterday is Later
Speaker 1: in that speech, Gates talks about the things that the
Speaker 1: Freedom Concus wants kind of in exchange for their leveraging
Speaker 1: of this this power.
Speaker 3: Here's what he said. He wants to vote on a
Speaker 3: bounced budget amendment.
Speaker 1: He wants a vote on an impeachment inquiry, not just
Speaker 1: a declaration of it. He wants to vote on term limits.
Speaker 1: So he wants these three votes, very reminiscent of force
Speaker 1: the vote back in twenty twenty one when the left
Speaker 1: was saying we want to vote on Medicare for all,
Speaker 1: because just like that vote, Gates acknowledges on the floor.
Speaker 1: He says, these things aren't going to pass. Bounced budget
Speaker 1: amendment's not going to pass. He no, term limits probably
Speaker 1: won't pass. And he says, oh, term limits might pass.
Speaker 1: It's an easy thing to vote for because you know
Speaker 1: the Senate's not going.
Speaker 3: To take it up. And he says even impeachment inquiry
Speaker 3: might not pass. But they just just wants to be
Speaker 3: seen fighting.
Speaker 4: He needs it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he needs to give his base something. So it
Speaker 1: feels like McCarthy justes, okay, fine, vote on a balanced budgement.
Speaker 1: But then right exactly, you have people like Nancy Mace
Speaker 1: who are like, why are you making us walk the
Speaker 1: plank on these unpopular items?
Speaker 4: And that's where so there's the Tuesday Group Republicans, god
Speaker 4: of moderate Republicans or people who are aligned with them,
Speaker 4: versus the Freedom Caucus Republicans. And actually, when you have
Speaker 4: the slim of a major of a majority, both are
Speaker 4: in a big position of power for Kevin McCarthy. And
Speaker 4: so Nancy Mace though, went on CNN with Caplon Collins
Speaker 4: and defended the impeachment inquiry. And this is where without
Speaker 4: a vote, and this is where the rubber meets the
Speaker 4: road for Republicans in that they know even in moderate districts.
Speaker 4: So Nancy Mace is from a solid red state, but
Speaker 4: you know, not a not a let's say, you know,
Speaker 4: red meat necessarily.
Speaker 3: Part of South Caroline, Charleston.
Speaker 4: People are doing all right, not like a populist haven
Speaker 4: in South Carolina, but people want impeachment. Republican voters want impeachment.
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter if you're populist or not. They look
Speaker 4: at what's happened with Joe Biden Hunter Biden. They see
Speaker 4: that there were outright lines over the course of the campaign,
Speaker 4: and they want an impeachment from it. And so here's
Speaker 4: Nancy Mace defending impeachment. As we heard this from Kevin
Speaker 4: McCarthy as well. But this is the key. You're going
Speaker 4: to hear what she says that it gives them certain powers.
Speaker 4: And Ryan and I are going to get into whether
Speaker 4: or not that's actually the case. But here's Nancy Mace
Speaker 4: making that case.
Speaker 3: You support launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean, it's hard to say at this point.
Speaker 8: I think there's a difference between an impeachment vote and
Speaker 8: an inquiry. The inquiry would give us another tool and
Speaker 8: a toolbox, specifically to look at Joe Biden's bank records.
Speaker 8: Everyone's screaming about the evidence. Where's the evidence. The bank
Speaker 8: records hold all of the evidence. And if the American people, Caitlin,
Speaker 8: if you could see the suspicious activity reports that I
Speaker 8: have seen on the Biden family, you would too, would
Speaker 8: probably support an impeachment inquiry just as a tool to
Speaker 8: get more information on specifically the bank information bank records
Speaker 8: of Joe Biden as family members. That's an important tool
Speaker 8: in our toolbox.
Speaker 9: What is a difference an inquiry and a peachment?
Speaker 10: There is no difference on They have to vote on
Speaker 10: whether to move forward on impeachments.
Speaker 3: That's what the vote is.
Speaker 10: That's what when we voted on impeachment of Donald Trump,
Speaker 10: who we impeached twice because there was real credible evidence
Speaker 10: that came up publicly and was evident and obvious, not
Speaker 10: this hazy gray area that they're hanging their hat on.
Speaker 10: They've acknowledged there's no evidence against Joe Biden. They are
Speaker 10: going to vote. The House has to vote to move
Speaker 10: forward on an impeachment period. They're adding the word inquiry
Speaker 10: like they're still going to do some investigations. They've been
Speaker 10: investigating for months and months. They've acknowledged they have no evidence.
Speaker 3: Well they have not actually acknowledged they have no evidence.
Speaker 1: But on her other point, you do have to vote,
Speaker 1: and this is according to Politico reported this last night.
Speaker 3: If you don't vote in the House that you're.
Speaker 1: Opening an impeachment inquiry, then you're just some dude saying
Speaker 1: some stuff, and then therefore you don't open up the
Speaker 1: extra powers that come with the impeachment creer. That's according
Speaker 1: to Trump's Office of Legal Counsel right that issued or
Speaker 1: issued a kind of internal ruling on this. And it
Speaker 1: matters because you know, you say, well, that's just the
Speaker 1: opinion of the Trump administration, and now it is obviously
Speaker 1: the opinion of the Biden administration. But it matters because
Speaker 1: now if you get a subpoena that gets sent to
Speaker 1: the White House, the White House, we'll just send it back.
Speaker 1: Like here's the OLC memo from the Trump administration, thank
Speaker 1: you for your subpoena. Once you vote on the House floor,
Speaker 1: then you come back to us and then maybe we'll
Speaker 1: comply with this. Their only route then is to try
Speaker 1: to sue them, but that gets into some awfully diceyat
Speaker 1: balance of powers questions, and the White House can be like, hey,
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, thank you.
Speaker 3: For your opinion.
Speaker 1: Yes, but we're also not letting you weigh in on
Speaker 1: the balance of power issue like this.
Speaker 4: And I think that's imminent no matter what, even if
Speaker 4: Kevin McCarthy brings this to a vote on the floor,
Speaker 4: I think all of this is going to get tied up.
Speaker 4: Because I actually went into this yesterday. I was trying
Speaker 4: to figure out exactly what powers are granted to you
Speaker 4: by declaring an inquiry or even voting to start an
Speaker 4: impeachment inquiry. And it's basically Court's interpretations of what it
Speaker 4: means what powers. As you were just referencing what powers
Speaker 4: you have of the House of Representatives, what powers constitutionally
Speaker 4: impeachment grants you. And so if you're going for bank records,
Speaker 4: if you're confident that starting this impeachment inquiry is going
Speaker 4: to get you bank records, I would imagine that's going
Speaker 4: to get tied up in courts no matter what, because
Speaker 4: the Biden administration has zero interest in complying with any
Speaker 4: of that. They don't feel like they have to comply
Speaker 4: with any of that, So I don't see why they
Speaker 4: wouldn't kick it to the court system anyway. So it's
Speaker 4: not going to be neat and clean no matter what.
Speaker 4: Here's actually speaking of the Biden White House. Here is
Speaker 4: a response from Ian Sam's he's working in communications over
Speaker 4: at the White House. I think he's actually a communications
Speaker 4: director there. He said, Well, anyone asked Speaker McCarthy, why
Speaker 4: an impeachment inquiry is the next logical step? The House
Speaker 4: GOP investigations have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing by Potus.
Speaker 4: In fact, their own witnesses has testified to that, and
Speaker 4: their own documents have shown no life to Potus. I
Speaker 4: don't think that's true, but we'll keep reading what Ian
Speaker 4: Sam says. Reminder, McCarthy already said weeks ago in Fox
Speaker 4: he'd move forward with an impeachment, an appearance in which
Speaker 4: he based his impeachment push on non existent obstruction of
Speaker 4: a non existent request. Why no mainstream accountability for that falsehood?
Speaker 4: We can keep going with Ian Sam's Here is his
Speaker 4: final tweet or X on the matter. McCarthy is being
Speaker 4: told by Marjorie Tayler Green to do impeachment or else
Speaker 4: sheield shut down the government. Opening impeachment despite zero evidence
Speaker 4: of wrongdoing by Potus is simply red meat for the
Speaker 4: extreme right wing, so they can keep basically attacking him.
Speaker 4: They admit it. We can move to the next element
Speaker 4: here too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you admit it.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't know. So I actually think this
Speaker 4: is pretty interesting because even in Axios this morning, Mike
Speaker 4: Allen's newsletter Morning Newsletter admitted there's a big problem for
Speaker 4: the Biden White House here, which is that Joe Biden
Speaker 4: flat out lied about a whether he had been involved
Speaker 4: more than just like very very super officially in the business.
Speaker 4: He lied about that. He lied about whether Hunter Biden
Speaker 4: made any money from China. Those are two things he
Speaker 4: said on the campaign trail in twenty twenty that if
Speaker 4: we zoom out to the thirty thousand foot view and
Speaker 4: look at it, say, why would somebody lie about those
Speaker 4: two things? Even though we may have like color here
Speaker 4: and there, and you know, understand it a little bit
Speaker 4: from you know, the perspective of the politics. If you
Speaker 4: zoom out as as an average American, you look at
Speaker 4: it and you're like, well, that's pretty weird and that's
Speaker 4: pretty bad. So I think Republicans feel like they have
Speaker 4: the win at their backs when it comes to that. Now,
Speaker 4: on the other hand, when it comes to all this
Speaker 4: minutia about tying it back to Joe Biden and you
Speaker 4: know what the text about the big guy means, and
Speaker 4: you know, giving half your salary to Pops all of
Speaker 4: those things, that's a little bit more difficult of a
Speaker 4: case to make, even though I think that's legitimate evidence.
Speaker 1: The other fundamental problem that this impeachment inquiry has is
Speaker 1: that it involves activity that predated and was known before
Speaker 1: he was president. So we had an election, I agree
Speaker 1: on which the Republicans ran heavily on the idea that
Speaker 1: he was corrupt, and he was elected anyway, and so
Speaker 1: it would be breaking new ground to say that you're
Speaker 1: going to impeach somebody for something that they did before
Speaker 1: they were in office. Generally that's you know, you prosecute
Speaker 1: them or you sue them, But impeachment is for things
Speaker 1: that you do in office. You know, the whole audience
Speaker 1: is going to say, what about Spiro Agnew. I don't
Speaker 1: know about all the details.
Speaker 3: Of spiritu agg.
Speaker 4: Everyone in the audience right now.
Speaker 1: What about spirit ag And he did not get impeached.
Speaker 1: He'd resigned in disgrace, so that's slightly Would he.
Speaker 3: Ever have gotten impeached, I don't know.
Speaker 1: He was busted in all sorts of Maryland corruption and
Speaker 1: he was Nixon's vice president.
Speaker 3: That's how we wound up with Ford.
Speaker 1: And so that's the only one that I can think
Speaker 1: of that, you know, you might have gotten close to
Speaker 1: getting impeached for something that he hadn't done while he
Speaker 1: was in office. And then I think is a high
Speaker 1: part of voters too, because the voters are like, look,
Speaker 1: this was up to us, you know, we just sid
Speaker 1: at this, And the Republics will say, well, there was
Speaker 1: you know, Twitter censored us from like sharing all this information.
Speaker 1: So therefore I guess we have to impeach him now.
Speaker 1: But also, as Matt Gates admitted in the in the
Speaker 1: pieces that you just posted, that this is a platform,
Speaker 1: this is a way to drag.
Speaker 3: Down his numbers.
Speaker 4: Well, and that's why they can.
Speaker 3: Do it fast. They will help democrats so that somebody
Speaker 3: will replace Biden. Iron Democrats can get somebody reasonable.
Speaker 4: In there, you know. Actually that was a case made
Speaker 4: in the Washington Post just this morning, basically that like,
Speaker 4: the time is it's time for Joe Biden to step down,
Speaker 4: and the clock is ticking.
Speaker 3: Democrats to start leaking, right, maybe they will.
Speaker 4: Ryan's dms are open, but no, ironically, it's actually Kevin
Speaker 4: McCarthy is the one who said that about the Benghazi
Speaker 4: hearings and Hillary Clinton and gotten huge hot water with
Speaker 4: a sort of establishment Republican sect when he came out
Speaker 4: I think it was on Fox News back in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: I mean it must have been twenty fifteen, about how
Speaker 4: Benghazi was. He tied it to Hillary Clinton's campaign fortunes,
Speaker 4: essentially the Benghazi hearings. On that note, and on the
Speaker 4: note of Matt Gates talking about how it's all about
Speaker 4: tarnishing Biden, let's go to the thread A seven here.
Speaker 4: The dynamics internally the Republican Party, which we talk about
Speaker 4: a lot here on the show, are absolutely key. This
Speaker 4: is Mani Roger saying. Matt Gates warns that if McCarthy
Speaker 4: puts a c R on the floor to keep the
Speaker 4: government open, then he will force a vote to oust him.
Speaker 4: He also warns there will be regular votes to oust him. Quote.
Speaker 4: We are going to have them regularly, he says, and
Speaker 4: suggests that it could happen daily. Let's put a eight
Speaker 4: up on the screen. This is from Melanie Zna of Politico.
Speaker 4: She says, the knives are out or CNN for Representative
Speaker 4: ken Buck, one of the key lawmakers standing in the
Speaker 4: way of a Biden impeachment. There's a serious effort to
Speaker 4: recruit a primary challenger, while Marjor Taylor Green says he
Speaker 4: shouldn't serve under the judiciary or whip team anymore. So
Speaker 4: let's quickly ken Buck is under fire and the Freedom
Speaker 4: Caucus with Freedom Caucus folks right now, because he came
Speaker 4: out against making a huge deal of the January sixth,
Speaker 4: the allegedmis treatment of January sixth prisoners, and wrote a
Speaker 4: letter to I think it was like a county chairman
Speaker 4: in his district back in Colorado, refuting some claims of
Speaker 4: allegedmist treatment of the January sixth prisoners. This got on
Speaker 4: the wrong side of Marjori Taylor Green a lot of
Speaker 4: people in the Freedom Caucus. Marjor Taylor Green is not
Speaker 4: even in the Freedom Caucus anymore. So what does this
Speaker 4: have to do with impeachment? What does this have to
Speaker 4: do with a government shutdown? Well, actually voting on impeachment,
Speaker 4: as we talked about earlier, if you lose Ken Buck,
Speaker 4: somebody who would have typically been counted on as a
Speaker 4: gimme because he's a member of the Freedom Caucus and
Speaker 4: you can only lose four people in an impeachment vote,
Speaker 4: that's huge in and of itself. If he's out, then
Speaker 4: we're talking about a totally different navigation. And then on
Speaker 4: top of that, if these dynamics internally between Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 4: Green Matt Gates, Matt Gates was flirting this week with
Speaker 4: getting Democrats to help him with a motion of vacate
Speaker 4: to oust Kevin McCarthy, Meaning if he got like two
Speaker 4: hundred Democrats to vote as just chaos agents, they could
Speaker 4: ask Kevin McCarthy with justin Matt Gates and a bunch
Speaker 4: of Democrats, because that's how bad the numbers are for
Speaker 4: Kevin McCarthy and for Republicans. So this has to do
Speaker 4: with the markets based on a government shutdown. It has
Speaker 4: to do with all of us the way that our
Speaker 4: lives run. When we're talking about a government shutdown, it
Speaker 4: has to do with what's going to happen with government funding,
Speaker 4: what's going to get funded, what's not going to get funded.
Speaker 4: It's a mess this fall, and they don't have a
Speaker 4: lot of time to handle impeachment and funding.
Speaker 1: And what's so depressing about all this is that ken
Speaker 1: Buck has been really good on antitrust stuff and has
Speaker 1: been willing to work with Democrats going after a big
Speaker 1: tech and actually bridging that kind of populist coalition that
Speaker 1: gets talked about. But that's not what's important in Washington.
Speaker 1: Like it, it doesn't have the juice. What has the
Speaker 1: juice is you know, impeachment hearings and saying stuff about
Speaker 1: you know, is sticking to the party line about what's
Speaker 1: going on in the DC jail, even if ken Buck
Speaker 1: looked into it and thinks that's not what's going on
Speaker 1: inside the DC jail. But the person that kind of
Speaker 1: channeled my own response to this the most was actually
Speaker 1: probably Fetterman. So do we have Fetterman's response when he
Speaker 1: was asked about.
Speaker 3: This is the Beach inquiry?
Speaker 4: A five? Yeah, let's watch this ask you about this
Speaker 4: news that Speaker McCarthy has formally launched an impeachment in
Speaker 4: sad he's going to Oh my god, really, oh my gosh,
Speaker 4: you know, Oh, it's devastating.
Speaker 6: Don't do it, Please, don't do it.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, yeah, sounds about right, because the whole
Speaker 1: thing's theater.
Speaker 3: They're not going to get sixty seven votes in the Senate.
Speaker 3: They might not even have the votes in the House.
Speaker 3: So what does matter?
Speaker 1: Over in Detroit at eleven fifty nine PM on Thursday,
Speaker 1: contracts expire and president UAW President Sean Fain, who first
Speaker 1: democratically elected president of the UAW basically ever and elected
Speaker 1: by a kind of lefty reform kind of energy inside
Speaker 1: the UAW, taking a very aggressive stand and says that
Speaker 1: they will walk out on on auto companies who have
Speaker 1: not that they've not reached a bargain with yet. He
Speaker 1: spoke with Jake Tapper recently and ahead of this. What
Speaker 1: he talked about, and we're going to play some of
Speaker 1: this clip. What we talked about is that profits and
Speaker 1: CEO pay have been up forty percent over the last
Speaker 1: couple of years. Nobody freaked out about that. Let's hear
Speaker 1: Sean Fain talking about the workers demands.
Speaker 11: When workers ask for their fair share, it's always the
Speaker 11: end of the world. And you know, no one you know,
Speaker 11: the last four years in general, okay, in the last decade,
Speaker 11: these companies made a quarter of a trillion dollars in profit.
Speaker 11: In the last six months alone, they made twenty one
Speaker 11: billion in profit. In the last four years. The price
Speaker 11: of cars went up thirty percent, CEO pay went up
Speaker 11: forty percent. No one said a word, No one had
Speaker 11: any complaints about that. But now God forbid that workers
Speaker 11: actually asked for their fair share of equity and the
Speaker 11: fruits of the labor and the product they produce, and
Speaker 11: all of a sudden, it's the end of the world.
Speaker 11: So you know, if you know, the talking heads, the pundits,
Speaker 11: the companies want to say that, you know, if we strive,
Speaker 11: it can wrect the economy. It's not that we're going
Speaker 11: to wreckt the economy. We're going to we're going to
Speaker 11: wreck their economy, the economy that only works for the
Speaker 11: billionaire class. It doesn't work for the working class.
Speaker 4: Here are that analysts? All right?
Speaker 1: Uaw President Sean Feng, thanks for your time today, appreciate it, sir.
Speaker 3: We did invite the big three automakers to come on.
Speaker 3: They declined. The invitation is openreach.
Speaker 4: Brother, it's aggressive, and he is ever from his position,
Speaker 4: he has every reason to be aggressive. They have one
Speaker 4: hundred percent. And you know this is a It's actually
Speaker 4: kind of interesting because the UAW feels like they can
Speaker 4: if a strike happens. They feel like they're in a
Speaker 4: position unlike ups where they can last a little bit.
Speaker 4: Like they don't feel the same crunch to make a
Speaker 4: deal before anything happens like the rail workers like it
Speaker 4: for them, doesn't feel like an emergency to get the
Speaker 4: deal out before a strike starts at all. Uh So,
Speaker 4: I mean it's not the same exactly the same thing.
Speaker 4: But on the other hand, the UAW has all of
Speaker 4: the leverage in the world right now. I mean, that's
Speaker 4: why you see that's such an aggressive stance from fame,
Speaker 4: because they really are in the driver's seat. And I
Speaker 4: did not mean for that horrible pun to actually be
Speaker 4: a horrible punt, and that just was actually saying they're
Speaker 4: really in the driver's seat here.
Speaker 3: Outrageous.
Speaker 1: Now, they have about three months in their strike fund,
Speaker 1: but within weeks the auto companies are going to start
Speaker 1: seeing problems in their supply chain. They've been working literally
Speaker 1: over time the last weeks and months to produce as
Speaker 1: many cars as possible so that they have a kind
Speaker 1: of glut so that if there is a strike, there'll
Speaker 1: be cars to go out out to the dealers, but
Speaker 1: that will only last a couple of weeks, after which
Speaker 1: consumers who are looking for new cars are going to
Speaker 1: go to other car companies. You're going to see car
Speaker 1: prices increase, which which gives autoworkers leverage there at the
Speaker 1: same time, the auto companies have the leverage in the
Speaker 1: sense that three months is a long time, but you've
Speaker 1: seen how long the writers strike is going on, so
Speaker 1: you know, if the auto companies think they can wait
Speaker 1: them out for three months, A lot of this is
Speaker 1: going to come down to public opinion, you know, you
Speaker 1: know who, you know, who's take who's taking the heat
Speaker 1: for this, and so we'll you know, we'll we'll see
Speaker 1: the the The U a W is also saying that
Speaker 1: it's willing to bargain with individual car companies, which I
Speaker 1: think is very smart because they're trying to then split.
Speaker 1: So if the car companies see, like, oh wait, we
Speaker 1: we have a better relationship with our union our segment
Speaker 1: of the UADUB. So we're going to reach a deal
Speaker 1: and then we can start moving cars out and we
Speaker 1: can get the good will publicly that comes with that,
Speaker 1: while these other people get called, you know, strike breakers,
Speaker 1: and so it looks like the U a W is
Speaker 1: in a strong position to get a serious deal, just
Speaker 1: the way the teamsters did. I mean, we'll we'll see,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of you know, there will probably
Speaker 1: be a collapse today.
Speaker 3: That's that's how these things go.
Speaker 1: You'll get news that like talks have completely broke down,
Speaker 1: then like six hours later, you get news that actually
Speaker 1: they're back together. And then the questions do they collapse
Speaker 1: again on Thursday?
Speaker 3: Do they walk out for one or two days? Do
Speaker 3: we get something extended? We'll see, But this is a
Speaker 3: real chance for workers to flex some power.
Speaker 4: We talked about this a little last week with Sarabamari,
Speaker 4: but I want to highlight this quote from Fain. He said,
Speaker 4: our union isn't going to stand by while they replace
Speaker 4: oil barons with battery barons. And I love that because
Speaker 4: I think these dynamics are really fascinating, that sort of
Speaker 4: pit working class, bloue collar union guys who already very
Speaker 4: tentative about the uaw's politics, especially on like cultural issues,
Speaker 4: I mean basically only on cultural issues too, sort of
Speaker 4: like culturally increasingly feel alienated to the union if they
Speaker 4: care about those sorts of things, which is not everybody,
Speaker 4: but there are That is true of some union members
Speaker 4: now against the economics of basically Democrats who are pushing
Speaker 4: for the shift to electric vehicles. That is a very
Speaker 4: very interesting fault line and basically this negotiation forcing the
Speaker 4: Biden administration to deal with it and forcing one of
Speaker 4: the biggest unions of UAW to deal with it, that
Speaker 4: is setting the tone for like the next ten years
Speaker 4: and the evolution of the economy as it shifts to
Speaker 4: greener sources of energy. Batteries well, to the extent batteries
Speaker 4: are greener sources of energy, but you know, as we shift.
Speaker 3: From oil more climate friendly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, put up this a p article because that gets
Speaker 1: into this and that's where you see actually an overlap
Speaker 1: between the point that AMILY is making. The overlap between
Speaker 1: the writer's strike and the autoworkers strike is that both
Speaker 1: of them are about control of the future changing economy.
Speaker 1: When it comes to the writer's strike, AI is a
Speaker 1: huge part of it. They don't want, you know, they
Speaker 1: want to make sure that humans are still involved in
Speaker 1: the writing here and that they're not getting.
Speaker 3: Just taken over by AI.
Speaker 1: Whereas on the auto side, they're worried about these much
Speaker 1: lower paid and kind of easier to do in some
Speaker 1: ways electric vehicle jobs, because if you look at an
Speaker 1: electric vehicle, it's like four wheels in a battery. And
Speaker 1: you look at an internal combustion engine, you're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: you can assemble this on Christmas morning?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, people do. Let's slap it together.
Speaker 1: And so there are gonna be a lot fewer workers,
Speaker 1: and UAW knows that, but they want to make sure
Speaker 1: that at least, even though they are going to be
Speaker 1: fewer workers, that at least those workers are as well
Speaker 1: paid as the workers are today. And they want to
Speaker 1: get back to where they were before because and the
Speaker 1: APS talks about this too. Then in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, when Detroit had its crisis, the
Speaker 1: workers help save Detroit by taking huge concessions by saying,
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to get rid of our pensions.
Speaker 3: We're going to move over to these crappy four oh
Speaker 3: one case.
Speaker 1: We're going to give up pay raises, we're going to
Speaker 1: get worse health insurance. And what the UAW is saying
Speaker 1: now is that, Okay, we did that. Now we're back
Speaker 1: to massive profitability. So bring us back in. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's a completely reasonable case to make, but it shows
Speaker 1: that once capital has gotten some type of gain, they're
Speaker 1: not willing to just hand it back without it being
Speaker 1: forced to.
Speaker 4: And to your point, I mean public opinions, public favorability
Speaker 4: of unions is soaring. I mean it is at levels
Speaker 4: that haven't been seen in years. So if the Big Three,
Speaker 4: if they want to test the political waters and public
Speaker 4: opinion on this, it's not really going to be the
Speaker 4: right time. I mean, they can send their PR people
Speaker 4: out to say the workers are going to make cars
Speaker 4: cost more money, they're going to wreck the economy. They
Speaker 4: can try that this time, but when you have feign,
Speaker 4: you know, even defending that as well as he did
Speaker 4: on CNN saying, listen, we just went through COVID CEO
Speaker 4: pay is increased x amount and this is what we're
Speaker 4: asking for the end of the day, he's going to
Speaker 4: get a good deal no matter what. From the standpoint
Speaker 4: of right now, at least, let's see so meanwhile, just
Speaker 4: a wild story on the COVID origin controversy put up
Speaker 4: c one here.
Speaker 1: The House Republicans announced that they have a whistleblower that
Speaker 1: they are saying is credible from inside the CIA, who
Speaker 1: tells this story that there were seven people assigned to
Speaker 1: a task force responsible for analyzing whether or not or
Speaker 1: what the origin of COVID was, was it natural origin
Speaker 1: or did it come out of this lab in Wuhan.
Speaker 1: According to this whistleblower, six of the seven analysts wanted
Speaker 1: to say with low confidence that Wuhan the lab was
Speaker 1: the likely origin of COVID. The seventh, who was superior
Speaker 1: to these other six, wanted to say with low confidence
Speaker 1: that it was a natural origin. According to the whistle blower,
Speaker 1: there were then financial incentives that were given to the
Speaker 1: six members of the task force in order to pressure
Speaker 1: them to go along with the natural origin.
Speaker 3: That's what we know.
Speaker 1: Letters have been sent to the head of the CIA
Speaker 1: and to others over at the CIA asking for records
Speaker 1: and details. And we'll see if this whistleblower turns out
Speaker 1: to be a cranker, turns out to be somebody who
Speaker 1: actually has credible information.
Speaker 3: If you read this letter.
Speaker 1: It's somebody inside the CIA CIA who clearly knows what's
Speaker 1: going on. They got the names of the task force,
Speaker 1: they got the names of the people, they got the numbers.
Speaker 1: So it's somebody who has some sense of what's going on.
Speaker 1: We'll find out how much of this is genuine power
Speaker 1: play that's where the whistle is being blown, and how
Speaker 1: much of this is kind of internal office drama, Like
Speaker 1: this person got a promotion and I didn't think that
Speaker 1: they deserved a promotion, And I think they got a
Speaker 1: promotion because they didn't go along with COVID, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to blow the whistle on that, Like that's possible. Well,
Speaker 1: it could be that kind of like annoying office stuff
Speaker 1: could also be a major story.
Speaker 4: It could. It could be absolutely huge. Although at the
Speaker 4: same time, as of right now, that term financial financial
Speaker 4: incentives is so vague.
Speaker 3: I promote like they are they could have gotten a
Speaker 3: promotion or something.
Speaker 4: Right, because financial incentives could mean, you know, a million
Speaker 4: dollars they got a.
Speaker 3: Three point five percent cola rather than the three.
Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, and so so we need we need information, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: because you would think, by the way, that if it
Speaker 4: was some cold dollar amount, you would at least say
Speaker 4: they were bribed with a check or so, you know,
Speaker 4: you could say something more specific than financial incentives. Maybe
Speaker 4: you can't for legal reasons, or maybe it's even unclear
Speaker 4: to the whistle.
Speaker 3: Go into its black box and just handing cash.
Speaker 4: Out like Trump with the paper towels, you know. I mean,
Speaker 4: this could be a lot of different things. At the
Speaker 4: end of the day, though, when you have a CIA
Speaker 4: whistleblower making allegations like this, it's probably probably serious, but
Speaker 4: we don't quite know yet, accept Ryan. What we do
Speaker 4: know is that the intelligence community hasn't exactly been shy
Speaker 4: to say that this is likely allowed. They've had this
Speaker 4: like low confidence. A lot of different agencies that have
Speaker 4: come out with the low confidence classification for their investigation.
Speaker 1: The key ones have been the FBI and the Department
Speaker 1: of Energy. We don't know some of them, but the
Speaker 1: CIA has been The CIA basically has said can't figure
Speaker 1: it out. They're like, we don't know, Like we're not
Speaker 1: saying one way or the other. If we put up
Speaker 1: C three, we do have response from the CIA. It's
Speaker 1: rare that they put a name on a response or
Speaker 1: can give a response at all. So CI Director of
Speaker 1: Public Affairs Tammy Cooperman says, at CIA, we are committed
Speaker 1: to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity.
Speaker 3: Don't coffee. We do not pay analysts to.
Speaker 1: Reach specific conclusions. We take these allegations extremely seriously and
Speaker 1: are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight
Speaker 1: comittees appropriately informed.
Speaker 3: So it's not a denial, it's a.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is this is a serious allegation that cuts
Speaker 1: against what we say we do, and we're going to
Speaker 1: look into it. So I think that we kind of
Speaker 1: have to leave it it there until we until we
Speaker 1: get more. The CIA is going to hopefully respond in
Speaker 1: a serious way to the COVID Select Subcommittee and either,
Speaker 1: you know, refute with some evidence these charges or maybe
Speaker 1: find out that you did have somebody who was running
Speaker 1: this task force who had a particular take on it.
Speaker 1: And you could also see a non conspiratorial way where
Speaker 1: let's say that the boss of this task force really
Speaker 1: believes that it's natural origin and has been convinced of
Speaker 1: that that they can then use their authority inside the
Speaker 1: institution to get their way out of a task force.
Speaker 1: That's called bureaucracy. That's how these things work. The public
Speaker 1: deserves to know if it was done in an improper way,
Speaker 1: and the public deserves to know what are these six
Speaker 1: analysts who looked closely into this actually think, Yes, call
Speaker 1: them up to the hill, let's hear from them.
Speaker 4: We should. And this is I mean, they got it
Speaker 4: with the irs whistleblowers. We ended up hearing from them
Speaker 4: very recently, a very recent parallel to that, I'm actually
Speaker 4: really interested in this question of CIA specifically because the
Speaker 4: Trump administration was increasingly adamant that a Lablaku was not conspiratorial.
Speaker 4: In I mean as early as like the summer of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, as early as like the spring of twenty twenty,
Speaker 4: the Trump administration was pretty hardcore about saying, we think
Speaker 4: that there's a lot of evidence this is a lab leak.
Speaker 4: At the time, the media was saying that this was
Speaker 4: essentially a racist conspiracy theory. The evidence starts going in
Speaker 4: different directions. But why I think the CIA's involvement is
Speaker 4: so interesting is, as we've talked about, although the media
Speaker 4: doesn't talk about it much, this implicates a Lablik directly
Speaker 4: implicates the United States government, so that the CIA would
Speaker 4: be in a very CIA way perhaps having someone go
Speaker 4: rogue and just saying like, hey, cut it out and
Speaker 4: figuring a way out where there's probably no fingerprints whatsoever.
Speaker 4: But having you know, just one rogue agent be like,
Speaker 4: we got it. What can we do? What can we
Speaker 4: do here?
Speaker 1: You could certainly see a situation where somebody's like, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, this is not just a Wuhan China
Speaker 1: run lab that we can just blame on China. Turns
Speaker 1: out we were actually funding this as well, which is true, Like,
Speaker 1: that's not a conspiracy. Intercept got the documents that show
Speaker 1: US money was funding that lab and so, and that
Speaker 1: makes it uncomfortable when when if you're just trying to
Speaker 1: pin in on a lab, it's like, yeah, turns out
Speaker 1: that's a US funded lab too.
Speaker 4: Yes. And it's something that I think the Trump administration has,
Speaker 4: not not just the Trump administration, but sort of the
Speaker 4: Republicans who are on that side of the Lab leak
Speaker 4: and were who were on that side of the Lab
Speaker 4: league early, have to really reconcile with their distaste for
Speaker 4: Fauci and the sort of byzantine bureaucratic system that allowed
Speaker 4: American tax per dollars. As the interception is reported to
Speaker 4: fund the lab laboratory with very little transparency and apparently
Speaker 4: very little, very few guardrails as to how that money
Speaker 4: was being used, whether it was being used responsibly, with
Speaker 4: the reality that it's very possible that this bio hazard
Speaker 4: emerged from that lab, because initially the theory was that
Speaker 4: this was potentially a bio weapon or that China was
Speaker 4: a malign for an actor that couldn't be trusted for
Speaker 4: X number of reasons, and this was proof of that.
Speaker 4: And if we're involved, and we're at the very least
Speaker 4: complicit in funding a Chinese laboratory while not enforcing any
Speaker 4: guardrails on the way that the money is being spent
Speaker 4: or whatever it is, and reckless by the way, again,
Speaker 4: at the very least, it's very difficult for Republicans to
Speaker 4: reconcile those two points because the United States government is
Speaker 4: implicated in it. Why are we funding this research? Is
Speaker 4: it just because you have gain of function nerds at
Speaker 4: the NIH who really believe in gain of function? Maybe
Speaker 4: or maybe there's something else going on, And these are
Speaker 4: really really serious questions. So I'm glad. Actually the CIA
Speaker 4: is under a microscope because the intelligence communities motivations here,
Speaker 4: the political motivations here. That is something that I don't
Speaker 4: think has fully been probed.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, as Chuck Schumer said, they have six ways
Speaker 1: to get you from Sunday. So we'll see how this
Speaker 1: works out for the covids, like subcommittee, so over and
Speaker 1: over Iran some news that also relates to gas prices,
Speaker 1: to CPI, to the economy, all of this intersects. So
Speaker 1: the big controversy now in Washington is a prisoner swap
Speaker 1: that was struck between the United States and Iran. Five
Speaker 1: Iranian prisoners being traded for five US prisoners plus six
Speaker 1: billion dollars in Iranian funds being allowed to be released
Speaker 1: from a South Korean bank to a cuttery bank, which
Speaker 1: Iran will then have access to only for humanitarian concerns.
Speaker 1: And so people understand the way that this works. Iran
Speaker 1: ships oil around the world. We sanctioned the heck out
Speaker 1: of Iran, and so most banks don't want to move
Speaker 1: any money that might have something to do with the
Speaker 1: Iranian oil shipments. And so if money winds up and
Speaker 1: say a South Korean bank, south Korean bank might say,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, this looks like it had something to
Speaker 1: do with Iranian oil shipping. We're not moving this money, right,
Speaker 1: and that boom, now the money is frozen. By unfreezing it,
Speaker 1: you allow Iran to continue to put more oil into
Speaker 1: the global market, which then counteracts actually opex reduction in production.
Speaker 1: And so the Biden administration actually has real incentives. Even
Speaker 1: if we can't buy oil from Iran, the entire world
Speaker 1: price benefits from more supply being in there. John Kirby
Speaker 1: was asked this White House spokesperson was asked about this deal.
Speaker 3: Here's was his response to it.
Speaker 9: The parameters of this arrangement Andrea are very clear, very concise,
Speaker 9: and the Iranians have signed up to this, so there
Speaker 9: should be no doubt in anybody's mind how this is
Speaker 9: going to work. And again, I think it's important to
Speaker 9: remember this is not US tax payer dollars, It's not ransom.
Speaker 9: These were Iranian funds that had been frozen in a
Speaker 9: South Koreana account that they did not have access to.
Speaker 9: All we're simply doing is moving this money to cutter
Speaker 9: to cuttery national banks so that it can be accessible
Speaker 9: to them for again, very discrete, targeted purposes.
Speaker 4: I love how he's like, all we're doing it's the
Speaker 4: simple matter of transferring the funds to cutter. But actually
Speaker 4: there also I think what's so interesting about this is
Speaker 4: that it's a waiver to your point that you were making,
Speaker 4: it's a waiver that says, this whole decision was just
Speaker 4: the Biden administration saying we're going to give you a waiver.
Speaker 4: That should assure you South Korea that this is not
Speaker 4: going to be sanctioned money, that you're not going to
Speaker 4: get sanctioned from moving this money, like US sanctions won't
Speaker 4: apply to this. Here's a waiver, sort of like a
Speaker 4: kindergarten teacher will give you a waiver. That's really what's
Speaker 4: happening here.
Speaker 1: US sanctions are so draconian and overbroad that banks over
Speaker 1: comply with them all the time, and over compliance to
Speaker 1: sanctions is a huge problem. So like in an Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: for instance, none of the aid money could get into
Speaker 1: the country because the banks were saying the US has
Speaker 1: said aid money can flow into Afghanistan, but our reading
Speaker 1: of the sanctions is that it's a little dice and
Speaker 1: might get too close to some of the groups that
Speaker 1: they say we're not allowed and so we're not allowed
Speaker 1: to finance, and so we're not sending money to the
Speaker 1: red Cross, We're not sending money to any of these
Speaker 1: organizations inside Afghanistan, and so then it kicks off this
Speaker 1: entire bureaucratic process where the Treasury Department will then have
Speaker 1: to specifically say, no, we waive it. Here is paper,
Speaker 1: it's signed by all these bureaucrats. It's fine, but that's
Speaker 1: a one time thing. And then you get jammed right
Speaker 1: back up again. It appears like that's what's going on here. Okay,
Speaker 1: you can move this. You can move this six billion
Speaker 1: dollars now, now you put the Fox News clip up here.
Speaker 1: As you know Fox News, you know acknowledges in this article,
Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting that this is Iranian money,
Speaker 1: because a lot of times in the public mind that
Speaker 1: this gets kind of conflated with US.
Speaker 3: Money getting shipped over to Iran, that we're like giving
Speaker 3: them our money. It's not.
Speaker 1: We give our money to Saudi Arabia, not to Iran.
Speaker 1: We would never, never, never support a theocratic terrorist financing country.
Speaker 3: We're friends with Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: But so there was kind of a maniacal ted Cruz
Speaker 1: response to this that I was curious to get your
Speaker 1: take on what he's alluding to. He thinks that he
Speaker 1: has found evidence of some secret nuclear deal. President Biden
Speaker 1: has established a secret nuclear deal with the Iranian regime
Speaker 1: that is being kept from Congress and the American people.
Speaker 1: Today's News confirms there has already been a side deal,
Speaker 1: including a six billion dollar ransom and the release of
Speaker 1: Iranian operatives. Nevertheless, these are only the barest outlines of
Speaker 1: the staggering concessions that Biden has already made it intends
Speaker 1: to make to the Ayatola, including an additional ten billion
Speaker 1: dollar transfer and indeed hundreds of billions of dollars by
Speaker 1: not enforcing oil sanctions, he goes on. Meanwhile, he has
Speaker 1: allowed the Iranian regime to all but acquire a virtual
Speaker 1: nuclear arsenal over the last two and a half years.
Speaker 1: The Biden administration must keep their deal secret because if
Speaker 1: they disclose it, the law requires them to come to
Speaker 1: Congress and defend it, and this appeasement is utterly indefensible. Instead,
Speaker 1: they will continue lying about their policies until Congress forces
Speaker 1: them to do otherwise. So what I'm confused about here
Speaker 1: from Ted Cruz is what kind of nuclear deal is
Speaker 1: it if we if we're giving them money and also
Speaker 1: allowing them to develop a nuclear program in nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: Seems like the earlier deal in which we pulled back
Speaker 1: on some sanctions in exchange for them not creating nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: was better, and maybe we should state in that well,
Speaker 1: it's an.
Speaker 4: Interesting question of better versus like bad. You know, there's
Speaker 4: bad and then there's bad, but better, and I think
Speaker 4: maybe that would be a good question. Top post to
Speaker 4: Ted Cruz if you see him in the hallway this week,
Speaker 4: is it a manner of like, was the Iran nuclear
Speaker 4: deal at least better than the post Iran nuclear deal order?
Speaker 4: He'd probably say the Biden administration is still basically bungling
Speaker 4: it in the last couple of years because obviously Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: at the urging of people like Ted Cruz, pulled out
Speaker 4: of the Iran nuclear deal. The Biden administration comes in
Speaker 4: and implements this policy that Cruz is taking issue with.
Speaker 11: Here.
Speaker 4: Your point about gas prices is what's really interesting to me,
Speaker 4: because Republicans have been pointing to the President of Iran,
Speaker 4: and we saw John Kirby say there are guardrails on
Speaker 4: how this money can be spent by Iran that are
Speaker 4: on like actually the bank, like we have ways of
Speaker 4: monitoring how this money is going to be used. It
Speaker 4: essentially has to go to helping the Iranian people. The
Speaker 4: government of Iran, the President of Iran has said, yeah,
Speaker 4: well it for quote like helping the Iranian people. Wink
Speaker 4: and nod, basically like we can do what we want
Speaker 4: with this money, and you know whether or not we're
Speaker 4: able to actually ensure that's the case. Republicans are saying,
Speaker 4: they're basically calling bs. They're like, there's no way that
Speaker 4: this money is actually going to be used on things
Speaker 4: like food and you know, just like it's going to
Speaker 4: go into the pockets of actually struggling Iranians. Struggling Iranians
Speaker 4: partially because of sanctions, not in any small part because
Speaker 4: of sanctions. So they're they're skeptical and have this idea
Speaker 4: that like the Biden administration is trying to do what
Speaker 4: Ben Rhoades and the Obama administration we're doing back in
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen, when the original twenty fourteen, when the original
Speaker 4: Roun nuclear deal was struck, because they just sort of
Speaker 4: have this dubvish approach to Iran. I actually think the
Speaker 4: gas prices are a way more reasonable explanation for what's
Speaker 4: happening here than a conspiracy, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the big mistake the Biden administration made was not
Speaker 1: getting back into the Iran deal as quickly as possible,
Speaker 1: you know, dragging its feet asking for some you know, concession.
Speaker 1: It's like, we sign a deal with them, they follow
Speaker 1: the deal according to all international observers and according to
Speaker 1: the EU, and then we walked out of it because
Speaker 1: Trump didn't like that. Obama cut the deal with them,
Speaker 1: and so the Iranian is like, how can we trust
Speaker 1: you to stay in it again? And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you can't, Like we're completely unreliable negotiating partners. We struck
Speaker 1: a deal and then two years later, for no reason
Speaker 1: other than that we had a change in president, walked
Speaker 1: out of it. And so the result has been, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Iran getting that much closer to a nuclear weapon. It's
Speaker 1: one of the most The only explanation for it is
Speaker 1: that the leading force behind undermining it, which is the
Speaker 1: kind of pro Israel lobby and Israel itself kind of
Speaker 1: once a hawkish confrontational approach with Iran, Like the idea
Speaker 1: of an Iran that is actually not sanctioned and is
Speaker 1: abiding by a nuclear deal with the EU, the United
Speaker 1: States and Russia makes it harder for them to then,
Speaker 1: you know, raise conflict with this country like that, and
Speaker 1: there's some domestic benefits to having Iran out there and
Speaker 1: being able to save a rattle back and forth, like
Speaker 1: none of it otherwise makes sense because our policy is
Speaker 1: pushing around closer to a nuclear weapon rather than further
Speaker 1: away from it.
Speaker 6: You know, it's a.
Speaker 4: Obviously on Israel's from Israel's perspective, it's a very well,
Speaker 4: it's a more existential question and visceral I think because
Speaker 4: of that, but which.
Speaker 3: Would make you think they'd want to get it right.
Speaker 4: Well, So this is what's interesting, because you know, we
Speaker 4: have two more elements here and that I think are
Speaker 4: worth mentioning. Iran this week confirmed the detention of a
Speaker 4: Swedish EU worker, So this is yeah, And we're also
Speaker 4: on the one year anniversary. This is the next element
Speaker 4: from the Associated Press of the Masamini protest which erupted
Speaker 4: last fall. There is some evidence that there's government crackdowns
Speaker 4: coming right now on the anniversary of the protest, and
Speaker 4: that there have been government crackdowns in the aftermath of
Speaker 4: Masamini's death. And this is all happening as Irani and
Speaker 4: drones are being found on the battlefield in Ukraine, and
Speaker 4: the conventional wisdom of American foreign policy over the last
Speaker 4: several decades would of course be, especially in the context
Speaker 4: of Israel, would of course be, this is not the
Speaker 4: time to be easing sanctions. This is the time to
Speaker 4: be implementing more sanctions. This is the time for saber rattling,
Speaker 4: if anything, people like Ben Rhodes and you know, I
Speaker 4: would say gas prices aside. Let's say gas prices, which
Speaker 4: I think probably is the most reasonable explanation. But hypothetically,
Speaker 4: let's say that had nothing to do with it. And
Speaker 4: there were real ideologus in the Biden administration, Ben Roads
Speaker 4: type ideologues, and we have evidence that Barack Obama is
Speaker 4: behind a lot of the Biden administration's decision making. Let's
Speaker 4: say that's what they're doing. That's a challenge to the
Speaker 4: conventional wisdom of United States foreign policy in the way
Speaker 4: that actually Obama campaigned on challenging the conventional wisdom of
Speaker 4: US foreign policy back in two thousand and seven against
Speaker 4: Hylary Clinton and into two thousand and eight. It's not
Speaker 4: this like black and white, you know, hawk versus Dove.
Speaker 4: It's actually saying, is the hawkishness even effective at accomplishing
Speaker 4: hawk goals.
Speaker 1: But imagine, imagine a world where after twenty fifteen, Trump
Speaker 1: comes in and instead of becoming you know, after a
Speaker 1: close nuclear standoff with Kim Jong un like, he becomes
Speaker 1: best buddies with this North Korean dictare would imagine, becomes
Speaker 1: best buddies instead with the Iyatola and stays in the
Speaker 1: nuclear deal and money continues flowing back and forth, and
Speaker 1: relations with Iran get better, and they just they agree, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we are going to continue allowing inspectors in.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna you know, we're not going to build
Speaker 1: this nuclear program, this nuclear weapons program anymore. Once the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian invasion comes around. Then in twenty twenty two, if
Speaker 1: Iran and the US are on much better terms at
Speaker 1: that point and Russia comes in, it is like, hey,
Speaker 1: we need help with drones.
Speaker 3: Iran is going to.
Speaker 1: Think twice about that, because now they have something to
Speaker 1: lose with the United States because their population loves United
Speaker 1: States already. Like that's the one kind of trump card
Speaker 1: that the US still has is that culturally the US
Speaker 1: is still very popular, or foreign policy extremely unpopular, but culturally,
Speaker 1: hip hop Hollywood just kind of the American ideals of liberty, freedom, equality,
Speaker 1: all of those things resonate with people. And if you
Speaker 1: were in a place where we're on good terms with Iran,
Speaker 1: Russia comes in, it's like, yeah, we need drones. Iran
Speaker 1: might be like, you know what, maybe you shouldn't have
Speaker 1: invaded in another country, and you can make.
Speaker 4: The same case. I think it's actually a case that
Speaker 4: is being made about Ukraine and China too, that the
Speaker 4: sort of conventional hawkish approach to Russia and the conventional
Speaker 4: hawkish approach to China because we're sort of caught caught
Speaker 4: in this Cold War muscle memory that is now being
Speaker 4: grafted onto the China conflict. In some ways, I think
Speaker 4: there are actually even people in the Republican Party in
Speaker 4: the conservative movement. The Heritage Foundation put out a damning
Speaker 4: indictment of our policy towards Russia, which was rather interesting,
Speaker 4: but I think that's actually becoming a more like top
Speaker 4: line conversation. And actually, speaking speaking of which, we have
Speaker 4: some video from actor Woody Harrelson who weighed who weighed
Speaker 4: in on Ukraine and on imperialism. Let's take a listen
Speaker 4: to Woody Harrelson here.
Speaker 12: You know, I'm the kind of guy who just thinks
Speaker 12: it's abominable when superpower with all this military might, with
Speaker 12: no provocation attacks a country that is you know, like
Speaker 12: you know, Iraq, sorry, afghan vi It, Korea, No, sorry,
Speaker 12: Ukraine terrible.
Speaker 3: I like that he threw Korea in. There is a
Speaker 3: deep cut listening to Blowback.
Speaker 4: What did you make of those comments from Woody Harrelson.
Speaker 3: Love Woody, Yeah, great, so good. Well, I mean it's
Speaker 3: it's good. The mirrors need to be held up in
Speaker 3: front of imperial powers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's actually so similar to what we were just
Speaker 4: talking about with Iran when you're making these equivalent sees
Speaker 4: as he's he's making his joke there about Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Ukraine.
Speaker 10: This is.
Speaker 4: One of the things I've been thinking about since the
Speaker 4: entire inate Russia's entire invasion of Ukraine started, is just
Speaker 4: how the Cold War is still ever present in foreign
Speaker 4: policy every single day in ways that we think we
Speaker 4: sort of turned the page on end of history. But
Speaker 4: we've had nuclear power or on the face of the
Speaker 4: earth for not even one hundred years. As we talked
Speaker 4: about when Oppenheimer came out this summer this is really new,
Speaker 4: and the idea that humans it can eliminate tens of
Speaker 4: thousands of other humans on another part of the world
Speaker 4: with the push of a button has dramatically changed the
Speaker 4: way that we relate to each other just as human beings,
Speaker 4: let alone as great powers. And we're not even one
Speaker 4: hundred years in this vast scope of human history into
Speaker 4: that world order. So the blink of an eye and
Speaker 4: we've run a lot of experiments unsuccessfully without realizing it yet.
Speaker 3: So Emily, what's your point today.
Speaker 4: Well, a couple of weeks ago, I was in Los
Speaker 4: Angeles giving the remarks on a panel basically, and as
Speaker 4: I was walking back to my hotel, I noticed something
Speaker 4: interesting on a bus sign. Let's put this picture up
Speaker 4: on the screen. This is exactly what I saw, report
Speaker 4: acts of hate. The sign on the bus stop said
Speaker 4: dial to one one. That was really interesting to me
Speaker 4: because A, there are hate crime laws and the police
Speaker 4: are involved, and obviously this is there's a legal system,
Speaker 4: there's law enforcement that exists to enforce all of these things,
Speaker 4: and B I wonder just exactly how this was being
Speaker 4: facilitated in a context of a culture that doesn't really
Speaker 4: agree on what hate actually is, and that's been the case,
Speaker 4: you know, in different periods of American history, and we've
Speaker 4: had to fight and overcome that. But it's a serious
Speaker 4: problem right now. People who tend to be on the
Speaker 4: right of center, like myself, are more concerned about it
Speaker 4: the people on the left of center, because people in
Speaker 4: the left of center right now have a lot of
Speaker 4: power in government and in pop culture, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: But I think this is a problem that affects everybody,
Speaker 4: regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum. So
Speaker 4: we have a young writer who goes to U. C.
Speaker 4: Davis and I sent the picture to her and I
Speaker 4: was like, oh, let's look into this. At the bottom
Speaker 4: of that picture you would have seen the group la
Speaker 4: versus Hate. There's their website, la versus Hate dot org.
Speaker 4: I was particularly curious to know if this was a
Speaker 4: government funded project and a government authorized project. So we
Speaker 4: dug into la versus Hate dot org and actually have
Speaker 4: a new story up on The Federalist from Rebecca the
Speaker 4: student I was talking about just this morning. You can
Speaker 4: put that up on the screen. What we found, in fact,
Speaker 4: is that la Versus Hate this is a government group
Speaker 4: out in Los Angeles County runs a snitch line. It's
Speaker 4: funded by Biden. They got in some sense, they got
Speaker 4: this grant from the Biden Administration's American Rescue Plan about
Speaker 4: a million dollars. It's funded by Kaiser, Permanente and Blue
Speaker 4: Shield of California. But most importantly, it's funded by taxpayers,
Speaker 4: and it is operated by Los Angeles County. Now, the
Speaker 4: key here is not that this is merely is that
Speaker 4: this is not just merely a tip line to report
Speaker 4: hate crimes. It makes sense in some cases that you
Speaker 4: have a tip line to report things that are actual
Speaker 4: criminal behavior, for instance, domestic abiefs, women who don't want
Speaker 4: to go to the police and would be more comfortable
Speaker 4: calling a hotline something to that extent. So I'm not
Speaker 4: saying it's crazy to have a tip line for criminal offenses.
Speaker 4: And this is a tip line for potentially criminal offenses,
Speaker 4: and they have fielded calls for criminal offenses based on
Speaker 4: their own records. But what's really important is that they're
Speaker 4: also open to calls about quote, hate incidents, hate incidents,
Speaker 4: and nowhere on their website do they define what it
Speaker 4: actually constitutes hate. And when the federal has reached out
Speaker 4: to ask for a definition of hate to ask if
Speaker 4: things based on their website, which endorses you know, full
Speaker 4: trans ideology, endorses the Black Lives Matter movement. There are
Speaker 4: a lot of people in the country. There are certainly
Speaker 4: people in Los Angeles County who are decent and disagree
Speaker 4: with you every sort of aspect of trans ideology for
Speaker 4: whatever reason in or disagree with the Black Lives Matter
Speaker 4: movement for whatever reason. Are they committing hate incidents if
Speaker 4: they make a reasoned case against either of those movements?
Speaker 4: For instance, let's say the Dave Chappelle special. Let's say there,
Speaker 4: Let's say, can somebody report one of the Dave Chappelle
Speaker 4: specials his criticism of the trans movement, which some people
Speaker 4: may disagree with, But is that a reportable hate incident
Speaker 4: to the government of Los Angeles County Because they refused
Speaker 4: to define, because they refused the Free Press's questions on that,
Speaker 4: it doesn't give me a lot of optimism that this
Speaker 4: isn't you know, a government snitche line essentially that operates
Speaker 4: in a way that should actually be chilling. This is
Speaker 4: the case actually that Edward Snowden, who hasn't you know,
Speaker 4: I don't want to put any words in his mouth.
Speaker 4: He hasn't weighed in on this particular incident, but he
Speaker 4: made a lot when he was, you know, more front
Speaker 4: and center in the news about how just the knowledge
Speaker 4: that you're being watched, just the knowledge that the government
Speaker 4: is monitoring, surveilling what you say, what you do, and
Speaker 4: is looking out for those things, changes the way that
Speaker 4: we think. It changes the way that we interact with
Speaker 4: each other. And it's really really bad. It's a bad
Speaker 4: precedent whether you're in deep, deep blue Los Angeles County
Speaker 4: or a deep deep red area and people are having
Speaker 4: issues with let's say, you know what I think are
Speaker 4: sometimes incorrectly referred to as book bands. You know, there
Speaker 4: have been some really excessive legislations pieces of legislation when
Speaker 4: it comes to that. I think there have been some
Speaker 4: really reasonable ones we've talked about here on the show.
Speaker 4: But the principle is basically the same that the government
Speaker 4: doesn't have any business, especially we're talking about adults, not children.
Speaker 4: The government doesn't have any business monitoring your sort of
Speaker 4: ideological consumption. Conversation. Discourse is not the business of the government.
Speaker 4: It is the business of a society to decide what
Speaker 4: its norms are, what is hate. It's a business of
Speaker 4: individuals to come together and make those decisions, and obviously,
Speaker 4: through the democratic process, they should be reflected in our laws.
Speaker 4: But non criminal quote hate incidents should not be facilitated.
Speaker 4: You shouldn't facilitate a tip line. The government of all
Speaker 4: places and these major corporations should not facilitate a tip
Speaker 4: line for people to snitch on one another for non
Speaker 4: criminal quote hate incidents that we can't even define the
Speaker 4: root cause of what a hate incident actually actually is.
Speaker 4: And all over the website you can see very clearly
Speaker 4: this was Elie versus Hate or something that was launched
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty. I think they started the process of
Speaker 4: launching it in twenty eighteen, but it formally became a
Speaker 4: program in twenty twenty, so it's been around for a
Speaker 4: couple of years. They do list examples of hate incidents
Speaker 4: on their website that could call name They could include
Speaker 4: name calling, insults, displaying quote hate material on your own property,
Speaker 4: posting alleged hate material that doesn't result in property damage,
Speaker 4: and distributing materials with hate messages in public spaces. But
Speaker 4: if you cannot fundamentally define hate, especially in a time
Speaker 4: right now when there's so much of that word being
Speaker 4: flung at people, even on the left who disagree with
Speaker 4: some people on the left. That is just extremely dangerous.
Speaker 4: And it's not just going to hurt people on the
Speaker 4: right or people who disagree with BLM or transideology. It
Speaker 4: is going to hurt everybody when we set precedents like this,
Speaker 4: because when another person gets in power. We're actually seeing
Speaker 4: this happen in the Capitol this week as the impeachment
Speaker 4: inquiry came up for a vote. That you sort of
Speaker 4: break one of those precedents, you break a norm, that
Speaker 4: norm is going to be broken right back at you
Speaker 4: when the other side is in power. And the principle
Speaker 4: of government monitoring ideological conversations discussions and lumping it into
Speaker 4: that broad category of hate is really really dangerous. And
Speaker 4: so my message would just be this is not good.
Speaker 4: Whether you're on the right, whether you're on the left,
Speaker 4: this is a wild abuse of government power out in
Speaker 4: La County under this very innocuous and seemingly virtuous mission
Speaker 4: of combating hate. There's nothing wrong with combating hate, that's
Speaker 4: for sure, but this is not nearly as innocuous as
Speaker 4: it sounds. There are new inflation numbers. You've been crunching
Speaker 4: the numbers. Actually, we took a little break here so
Speaker 4: Ryan can dig into the inflation numbers, which would.
Speaker 3: We be looking at well.
Speaker 1: So the inflation data was released today found that the
Speaker 1: core rate of inflation remained the same at four point
Speaker 1: three percent year over year. Core inflation, which excludes energy
Speaker 1: and food basically for August, had been expected to run
Speaker 1: at zero point two percent, but came in at zero
Speaker 1: point three percent. That means that when the Fed meets
Speaker 1: next week, they're likely to keep interest rates where they
Speaker 1: are now. The leading driver of overall inflation this month,
Speaker 1: as anybody would guess, rising gas prices.
Speaker 3: But we'll get into all of these numbers soon in
Speaker 3: a bit.
Speaker 1: Whenever you hear that the Fed is planning to raise
Speaker 1: interest rates to cool off the economy, because of these
Speaker 1: inflation numbers that you're hearing, it's useful to understand what
Speaker 1: the titans of industry are really after.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 1: I often try to explain that interest rates and unemployment
Speaker 1: are really about worker power, but nobody has explained it
Speaker 1: better than this guy, Tim Gerner, who's the founder of
Speaker 1: the Gerner Group. He spoke here recently at the Financial
Speaker 1: Review Property Summit.
Speaker 3: Here's his lesson.
Speaker 13: I think the problem that we've had is that we've, yeah,
Speaker 13: we have people decided that they didn't really want to
Speaker 13: work so much anymore through COVID, and that has had
Speaker 13: a massive issue on productivity. You know, tradees have definitely
Speaker 13: pulled back on productivity. You know, they have been paid
Speaker 13: a lot to do not too much in the last
Speaker 13: few years. And we need to see that change. We
Speaker 13: need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump forty
Speaker 13: fifty percent in my view. We need to see painting
Speaker 13: the economy. We need to remind people that they work
Speaker 13: for the employer, not the other way around. I mean,
Speaker 13: there is a there's been a systematic change where employees
Speaker 13: feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them as
Speaker 13: opposed to the other way around. So it's a dynamic
Speaker 13: that has to change. We've got to kill that attitude
Speaker 13: and that has to come through hurting the economy, which
Speaker 13: is what the whole global you know, the world is
Speaker 13: trying to do. The governments around the world are trying
Speaker 13: to increase unemployment to get that to some sort of normality,
Speaker 13: and we're seeing it. I think every employer now is
Speaker 13: seeing it. I mean, there is definitely massive layoffs going
Speaker 13: off for people might not be talking about it, but
Speaker 13: people are definitely laying people off, and we're starting to
Speaker 13: see less arrogance in the employment market, and that has
Speaker 13: to continue because that will cascade across the cost balance.
Speaker 1: Now, Emily, believe it or not, it turns out that
Speaker 1: this was the avocado toast guy put at this next one.
Speaker 3: If people remember, this feels like five ten years ago.
Speaker 1: At this point, there was this viral sensation going around
Speaker 1: where a dude said, the reason that millennials can afford
Speaker 1: to buy a home is that they buy too much
Speaker 1: avocado toast. This guy's back with a new take, And
Speaker 1: what's useful about this guy is that that avocado toast
Speaker 1: idiocy was obvious idiocy, but it was the distilled It
Speaker 1: was the wisdom of the kind of titan class distilled
Speaker 1: down to its essence.
Speaker 3: And by distilling it down, you can really see how
Speaker 3: idiotic it is in its purest form.
Speaker 1: Because there are a bunch of people who were saying
Speaker 1: at the time, look, it's just these spendthrift millennials, that's
Speaker 1: the problem. It's not that rent is too high, it's
Speaker 1: not that wages are down. It's not that there aren't
Speaker 1: enough jobs coming out of this the financial crisis. It's that, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just spoilt and spending money on avocado toast. But
Speaker 1: back to his point that he's making now, it's the
Speaker 1: same thing.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 1: What he's saying feels idiotic because he's just saying it
Speaker 1: so bluntly, But it is really the wisdom of the
Speaker 1: ruling class distilled down to its essence. And to me,
Speaker 1: what it suggests is that a capitalist class doesn't deserve
Speaker 1: to exist because.
Speaker 3: If they can't handle a full economy that is humming
Speaker 3: on all cylinders, you know, that.
Speaker 1: Is employing as many people as it possibly can. Like,
Speaker 1: if they can't handle that, if their reaction to that
Speaker 1: is that they have to undermine it, then they should
Speaker 1: be thrown out, like let some other system in that
Speaker 1: can actually allow humanity to flourish in its full dignity.
Speaker 1: Like what he's saying there is that we can't do this,
Speaker 1: like we don't know how to run a full economy
Speaker 1: because if we're running a full economy, workers have power
Speaker 1: and we don't like that. Now, you go back to
Speaker 1: some of these inflation numbers. You put up this chart
Speaker 1: from recently. This shows kind of the direction that we're
Speaker 1: looking at. And so the headline number, you know, popping
Speaker 1: up because of gas prices, but overall you're seeing this
Speaker 1: kind of mountain. You know, we climb, We climbed up
Speaker 1: the mountain in twenty twenty one, and we're heading down
Speaker 1: the other side of the mountain now.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: The problem being if you look at where you know,
Speaker 1: prices were back in twenty twenty, which saw massive deflation
Speaker 1: because of COVID, compared to where they are now, that's
Speaker 1: that's the kind of that's the gap that spells the
Speaker 1: headache that we're all living in. And so you do
Speaker 1: have food prices coming down the numbers showed, but you
Speaker 1: have gas prices going up. Gas prices haven't gone up
Speaker 1: as much as people are worried about. We're probably going
Speaker 1: to see more pain on that front. But so what
Speaker 1: it means is that we're not going to see a
Speaker 1: We're probably not going to see an inflation increase, an
Speaker 1: interest rate increase at the next FED price, but we're
Speaker 1: not going to see a cut either. I don't know
Speaker 1: what's what's your takeaway on the avocado toast man Howard Buffett,
Speaker 1: who is billionaire Warren Buffett's son own a town essentially
Speaker 1: in Illinois, Decater, Illinois. And we're joined now by Amos
Speaker 1: Barshad of lever News, who who was out indicator to
Speaker 1: try to figure out what it's like living in a
Speaker 1: town effectively owned by a billionaire.
Speaker 3: And the story is terrific. You can put it up here.
Speaker 3: Is called American oligarchy.
Speaker 1: And it's and it's something of a kind of allegory
Speaker 1: for our, I think, our broader society, because we all
Speaker 1: live under the thumb of a Warren Buffett one way
Speaker 1: or the other. But these folks, you know, live right
Speaker 1: specifically underneath that thumb and they can see it every
Speaker 1: single day. Amos, you know, welcome to the program, Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us in grats on this piece.
Speaker 6: Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 14: Yeah, and yeah, I should clarify he obviously doesn't legally
Speaker 14: own the town, that's not possible, but yeah, his influence
Speaker 14: over you know, two decades now can be seen, can
Speaker 14: be felt, and that was kind of my hope from
Speaker 14: the piece is to to go to Decatur, uh and
Speaker 14: to hear from regular people, you know, what it feels
Speaker 14: like to live amongst amongst Buffett's influence, and that's how
Speaker 14: the story was first introduced to me. I was happening
Speaker 14: to speak with a someone who was born and raised
Speaker 14: in Decatur who's now a professor at the University of Virginia.
Speaker 6: His name is A. D.
Speaker 14: Carson, and we were actually talking about a completely different topic.
Speaker 14: It was the Illuminats popularity and hip hop, and he
Speaker 14: just kind of happened.
Speaker 6: To mention, you know, this, this this thing with with
Speaker 6: Howard Buffett, which I just had never heard of. I
Speaker 6: don't think a lot of people have.
Speaker 14: But after he told me about it, you know, I
Speaker 14: read up and learned that there has been some great
Speaker 14: reporting on him, some of his influence on the Southern border,
Speaker 14: you know, some.
Speaker 6: Some more positive coverage.
Speaker 14: He donates a lot of money internationally globally, and but
Speaker 14: I felt like this piece hadn't been done, this piece
Speaker 14: where we focus on the people of Decatur, what it
Speaker 14: feels like to to live, yeah under under the influence
Speaker 14: of Howard Buffett.
Speaker 3: Yeah nine team.
Speaker 1: My colleague, my then colleague at the Intercept, Rachel Cohen,
Speaker 1: wrote about his wrote about this kind of phenomena. She
Speaker 1: focused on the weird marijuana fight that was going on
Speaker 1: that was that was my first introduction to the idea
Speaker 1: that Howard Buffett had decided he was going to spend
Speaker 1: his money effectively just kind of running the show over
Speaker 1: here and has all of these weird kind of interests
Speaker 1: in being a sheriff sometimes actually, as you report, literally
Speaker 1: being a sheriff, otherwise kind of playing.
Speaker 3: One on TV.
Speaker 1: But so when I say that he effectively owns the town,
Speaker 1: like what what is that? What does it mean to
Speaker 1: kind of like how does he exert his influence indicator?
Speaker 14: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So Yeah, first of all, that interescept
Speaker 14: PC mentioned is a great piece and I encourage everyone
Speaker 14: to seek that out. She was reporting from the time
Speaker 14: time as he it was revealed that he had pushed
Speaker 14: back against a dispensary. So Illinois had legal legalized uh,
Speaker 14: you know dispensaries, marijuana dispensaries statewide, and so then the
Speaker 14: you know, municipality of.
Speaker 6: Decatur had to decide if they were going to have one,
Speaker 6: and a lot of people were very pro the dispensary.
Speaker 14: There was a referendum that was run in the township
Speaker 14: of Decatur, uh uh, and and showed that there was
Speaker 14: you know overhall and majority of people wanted the dispensary.
Speaker 14: But basically, uh, you know, as the as that piece,
Speaker 14: the Intersip piece reported, you know, due to Buffet's explicit
Speaker 14: influence the city council members, the majority voted against the dispensary,
Speaker 14: and it gets tied back into his personal views.
Speaker 6: His personal views against marijuana, against you know, pro war
Speaker 6: on drugs.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 14: Interestingly, there's a big addiction recovery center that he built
Speaker 14: in town, which feels, you know, you know, objectively, a
Speaker 14: good thing to to to provide addiction treatment, recovery treatment.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 14: But where it gets more complicated is in the idea
Speaker 14: of how you you know, it's a philosophy, right, it's
Speaker 14: like a it's like a world building, is how he
Speaker 14: sees the world. So he believes in addiction recovery, but
Speaker 14: he doesn't believe in access to marijuana. So you know,
Speaker 14: you see these things as you shouldn't be opposed, but
Speaker 14: in his point of view, they are, so you know,
Speaker 14: so it's it's a very a palpable thing that he's
Speaker 14: able to control, you know, what happens in this town
Speaker 14: through his influence and through his financial support. From there,
Speaker 14: it goes on to just kind of you know, when
Speaker 14: you walk around the town. You'll see signs, you know,
Speaker 14: thanking his foundation. The local zoo has an exhibit for
Speaker 14: the paying homage to the guards of the Verunga National
Speaker 14: Park in Congo and the mountain gorillas. You know, strange,
Speaker 14: but you know it's one of his passions.
Speaker 6: So it's there. The Children's Museum.
Speaker 14: Which is a private museum, it has an exhibit called
Speaker 14: the Heroes Hall, which is like this very very explicitly
Speaker 14: pro law enforcement exhibit. You basically go in there and
Speaker 14: you you know, you read these plac guards about how
Speaker 14: the police are heroes, and you can put on different
Speaker 14: uniforms and pretend to be a cop and you're told
Speaker 14: about what, you know, the great things that the police do.
Speaker 14: And you know, it's as a children's museum, it's like
Speaker 14: all primary colors and you know, fun running around stuff.
Speaker 14: There's a statue of Buffet from his time when he
Speaker 14: guessed he was actually officially share if. There's a statue
Speaker 14: of him outside of the museum as well. So yeah,
Speaker 14: I mean it's just about I think when someone has
Speaker 14: this amount of money and this amount of focus on
Speaker 14: a small town, they're able to you know, actually literally
Speaker 14: change people's daily lives. You know, the things that they see,
Speaker 14: the information that they're provided through their daily lives.
Speaker 4: Now, his representative told you in the story when you
Speaker 4: asked to potentially speak with Howard Buffett, basically that listen,
Speaker 4: he would have moved out of Illinois years ago if
Speaker 4: it wasn't for his wife health. You know, he's too
Speaker 4: busy for Decatur basically except for planting and harvesting season.
Speaker 4: He's traveling around the world with his charities. But you
Speaker 4: also point out that Decatur is a really interesting kind
Speaker 4: of case city. It's not your typical maybe rust belt city.
Speaker 4: There's something it's shrinking, like many many roust belt cities are.
Speaker 4: But analysts look at it and say, there's a decent
Speaker 4: number of jobs here. People are able to make a living.
Speaker 4: What can you tell us actually about Cater just as
Speaker 4: a city? What kind of city is it? What is
Speaker 4: it like? And you know, how has the city reacted.
Speaker 4: You have some really interesting stuff in there too about
Speaker 4: how the city itself has reacted in different ways to
Speaker 4: Howard Buffett over the years.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 14: Absolutely, this is you know, all stuff that I learned
Speaker 14: from my reporting, and you know, I really enjoyed being
Speaker 14: indicator and learning this and so yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 14: kind of classic Illinois farm country as you imagine you're
Speaker 14: driving through and you're seeing you know, rows and rows
Speaker 14: of crops and it feels, you know, endless. And the
Speaker 14: big company that's there is Archill Archer Daniel Midlands, this
Speaker 14: agricultural giant. So you know they take all these uh
Speaker 14: take all his corn and make all these products that
Speaker 14: end up in our food and all these millions of
Speaker 14: different ways, and which is obviously a very lucrative business
Speaker 14: to be in. And that's actually what brought Howard Buffetts
Speaker 14: town originally, which is another kind of layer to this
Speaker 14: that he's not from Illinois. He's from Nebraska, you know,
Speaker 14: famanasy like his father, and so he comes here almost
Speaker 14: arbitrarily and becomes it starts building his influence over the
Speaker 14: years and uh and so yeah, so there are jobs,
Speaker 14: and that is a profitable company. What I heard from locals,
Speaker 14: people that are involved in this in the city in
Speaker 14: different ways, of activists and also a member of the
Speaker 14: school board, is that they feel that there's been a
Speaker 14: lack of you know, the maintenance of the infrastructure or
Speaker 14: the things that the school needs, you know, the thing
Speaker 14: the city needs, like schools, and you know, I was
Speaker 14: told that, you know, literally some of the public pools
Speaker 14: have been closed down as this private pool kind of
Speaker 14: complex had come in. You know, just things that any
Speaker 14: person that lives in a town would think about, you know,
Speaker 14: if you have children or not. You know, you're just
Speaker 14: you know, this is these are the basics that the
Speaker 14: town might need. And that's what they felt. They felt that,
Speaker 14: you know, despite the fact that there's this benefactor who
Speaker 14: has spent all this money, somehow none of that has
Speaker 14: manifested in, you know, the basic needs of a town,
Speaker 14: what a town really needs. And yeah, I think that
Speaker 14: kind of that's kind of the interesting point. You know,
Speaker 14: someone spending money, are they spending money the way they
Speaker 14: want to or are they spending money the way that
Speaker 14: the town might need. And so yeah, so I think
Speaker 14: you know, while while a Decatur has had factory closures
Speaker 14: that have led to job lost, you know, as we've
Speaker 14: seen throughout the country, throughout the rest Belt. Uh, the
Speaker 14: feeling that I got from some of these activists is
Speaker 14: that if we just made some decision decisions differently, we could.
Speaker 6: Prop this town up a little better.
Speaker 14: And that goes back to the dispensary you know, the
Speaker 14: tax revenue that they would hope to get from that.
Speaker 4: Uh you know.
Speaker 14: So, so what has happened since the original fight over
Speaker 14: it is the dispense dispensary has opened, but over the
Speaker 14: over the Decatur border, So it's a small municipality just
Speaker 14: over you know, just you know, five minute drive from
Speaker 14: Decatur that's getting that tax revenue. So I think that's
Speaker 14: a very kind of a blunt and clear example of
Speaker 14: you know, if locals are saying that they want something
Speaker 14: because they believe that it will lead to tax money
Speaker 14: that they can spend on things they want, and then
Speaker 14: you have a billionaire who has spent all this money
Speaker 14: and has accrue political capital, you know, political influence through
Speaker 14: that spending, deciding that that's not going to happen.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I think I think that that that puts it
Speaker 14: pretty starkly, you know, the idea of who who like
Speaker 14: who does this person have in his best interests as himself.
Speaker 6: Or is it the town?
Speaker 1: And so if Buffett here is kind of an avatar
Speaker 1: for the billionaire class and the way that they are
Speaker 1: kind of organizing society to you know, to their whims,
Speaker 1: what can we learn about the pushback to that who, like,
Speaker 1: who are the activists and what can we draw from
Speaker 1: what it looks like to kind of try to like
Speaker 1: galvanize some energy against that and reclaim a kind of
Speaker 1: self government.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you know, I think that.
Speaker 14: I think that that's what was so interesting to me
Speaker 14: about Decatur and being indicator. You can literally physically see
Speaker 14: his presence, and you can hear from people, and you know,
Speaker 14: people see him around and it's this rare example of
Speaker 14: the billionaire that is controlling or influencing your life. Isn't
Speaker 14: is really there where most of the time, you know,
Speaker 14: we'd be hard pressed to try to exactly connect the
Speaker 14: dots between you know, the way money is spent and
Speaker 14: you know the way it affects our lives. And so
Speaker 14: I think that also manifested itself and the ability for
Speaker 14: some activist specifically to rally around the dispensary. Uh they
Speaker 14: were fighting the city council to kind of reverse the
Speaker 14: decision against the dispensary. And I think through that a
Speaker 14: lot of attention was paid to the manner in which
Speaker 14: Buffett did influence the whole thing, and from what I
Speaker 14: was told by local activists that they feel that that
Speaker 14: did push him back somewhat from from being as gung
Speaker 14: ho about you know, further actions than that in that
Speaker 14: kind of capacity. And and you know, the idea that
Speaker 14: maybe maybe they're pushing him out of Central Illinois a
Speaker 14: little bit altogether. Maybe he has lost the appetite to
Speaker 14: to uh, you know, influences as as aggressively as he
Speaker 14: has in the past. I think that this specific fight
Speaker 14: around the dispensary was the most kind of cohesive grassroots
Speaker 14: pushback that he's felt, that he's seen. And uh, and yeah,
Speaker 14: I think that kind of might have might might uh
Speaker 14: might kind of stymy any given person. You know, nobody
Speaker 14: really wants to be in the spotlight like that. You know,
Speaker 14: especially when you're someone who spends a lot of money,
Speaker 14: you're also interested in how that money is interpreted. So
Speaker 14: if you can, you can google him, you'll see a
Speaker 14: ton of great coverage, you know, from his time as sheriff.
Speaker 14: You know about how he's just this guy who loves
Speaker 14: the small town life and just runs around, you know, wanting.
Speaker 6: To help people.
Speaker 14: You know, where the reality of how he became sheriff
Speaker 14: is much more complicated.
Speaker 6: You know, sheriff is an elected position.
Speaker 14: Uh, he he was, he was appointed when the acting
Speaker 14: sheriff uh quit and and and and signed him as
Speaker 14: the sheriff.
Speaker 7: UH.
Speaker 14: Later on this this sheriff went on to to work
Speaker 14: at this kind of police training facility, this big police
Speaker 14: training facility that one activist compared to you know, Atlanta's
Speaker 14: cop city to me that they have an indicator and
Speaker 14: so yeah, so there's just like very direct, uh kind
Speaker 14: of an influence buying that you could that you could
Speaker 14: kind of see or assume. There was also an issue
Speaker 14: with the Buffett had gotten somewhat of a fraudulent lost
Speaker 14: certificate and the person who gave him the cpercificate he
Speaker 14: was involved with this standards board in Illinois. He ended
Speaker 14: up being indicted on on on charges of you know, felony, uh, forgery,
Speaker 14: fraud and uh and uh you know this this certificate
Speaker 14: business came out. So you see, like you see some
Speaker 14: of the more nefarious uh or or or you know
Speaker 14: sort of kind of a not as appetizing elements of
Speaker 14: how Buffett ended up becoming sheriff and how he kind
Speaker 14: of yeah, plays out some of his law enforcement fantasies.
Speaker 4: And finally, were you able to determine uh, this shocking
Speaker 4: anecdote in the story, does the guy really drink a
Speaker 4: gallon of coke for lunch? Do you have any information
Speaker 4: on this? Could you confirm.
Speaker 14: From an interview with an Australian newspaper that that that
Speaker 14: was you know that that that interviewer did sit down
Speaker 14: with Buffett. So I have no reason to believe that
Speaker 14: that is not true. That was not my direct reporting.
Speaker 14: I did not witness it. I have to clarify that.
Speaker 14: But I assume this person went to lunch with Buffett
Speaker 14: and that's what he saw. Otherwise, why you know why
Speaker 14: I put that in there.
Speaker 4: I'm almost impressed.
Speaker 1: But he doesn't like Wade, but fascinating that weed seems
Speaker 1: to be the thing that broke us back, and so
Speaker 1: the key to breaking the grip of the billionaire class
Speaker 1: is weed.
Speaker 3: And it's also good for it broken back. So there
Speaker 3: you go.
Speaker 4: Sager doesn't watch the segment. Amas, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: It's rare also to have such great writing and great
Speaker 4: reporting at the same time. The writing the story is
Speaker 4: really great. We recommend you check it out over at
Speaker 4: the Lever. Thank you so much, Amos, thank you so much.
Speaker 6: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Well, that doesn't for us today on this edition of Counterpoints,
Speaker 4: we told you impeachment was coming, and here it came.
Speaker 3: It sort of came.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well we don't know.
Speaker 4: So Ryan's going to head back over to Capitol Hill.
Speaker 4: We'll have more for you on all these internal dynamics
Speaker 4: and Republicans Democrats, impeachment, Will Matt Gates get AOC to
Speaker 4: finally vote with him. We'll be back with more next Wednesday.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for liking and subscribing. It has
Speaker 4: been a year here at Counterpoints. We appreciate all of
Speaker 4: you guys so very much.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and if you're here, you're in DC tonight
Speaker 1: at GW I'm going to be doing an event with
Speaker 1: Naomi Client seven pm at the GWU Amphitheater. She got
Speaker 1: a new book out, really fun book called Doppelganger.
Speaker 3: Quite good. Anyway, see you there if you're there,