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Speaker 3: At the end of last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin
Speaker 3: said that Ukraine had tried to assassinate him and his family.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump confirmed that he believed that this had happened.
Speaker 3: Since then, we've heard almost nothing about it. We wanted
Speaker 3: to walk through this wild story that has just completely
Speaker 3: kind of evaporated from Western press attention. Matt Bivens his
Speaker 3: in his sub stack The one hundred Days, wrote about it
Speaker 3: recently and put this first element up on the screen.
Speaker 4: This is a the whole the whole piece is worth reading,
Speaker 4: but we'll.
Speaker 5: Former editor of the Moscow Times, I believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, Mett, very serious reporter, and stitch together
Speaker 3: this timeline which is which is, which is quite wild.
Speaker 3: It's December twenty eighth, and so a lot's going on.
Speaker 3: Then you're starting to have the protests in Iran. Trump
Speaker 3: is meeting with Zelenski and also with net and Yahoo
Speaker 3: and mar A Lago and also capturing Maduro like so
Speaker 3: tons and plus it's the end of the year. Nobody's
Speaker 3: paying attention, right, everybody's checked out. I was skiing, as
Speaker 3: a matter of fact, literally literally checked out. I was
Speaker 3: checking in, but checked out. So it's easy to miss
Speaker 3: an attempted assassination of the head of it superpower or.
Speaker 4: Yes, especially major nuclear power.
Speaker 5: The government is strained down play it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so what happened?
Speaker 6: And so.
Speaker 4: We put up D two here, which is relevant. We'll
Speaker 4: come back to this.
Speaker 3: So Putin has ordered CCD CCTV to be turned off
Speaker 3: around him because the US and Israel or Israel appeared
Speaker 3: to use this in their assassination of iotol Kamani and others.
Speaker 3: So Putin, just because your paranoid doesn't mean you're wrong.
Speaker 3: So on December twenty ninth, Trump was asked about a
Speaker 3: claim but that Putin had just made that Ukrainian drones
Speaker 3: had swarmed his family's compound and in an attempt to
Speaker 3: assassinate him. And here's here's what Trump said on next
Speaker 3: sitting next to standing next to that, on December twenty ninth.
Speaker 5: Straight straight on his sudden.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I don't I don't like it. It's not good.
Speaker 8: I heard about this morning. You know, tell me about it.
Speaker 7: President Putin told me about it early in the morning.
Speaker 7: He said he was attacked. It's no good. It's no good.
Speaker 7: Don't forget, you know, the tomahawks. I stopped the tomahawks.
Speaker 7: I didn't want that because we're talking about you know,
Speaker 7: it's a delicate period of time. This is not the
Speaker 7: right time. It's one thing to be offensive because they
Speaker 7: were offensive. It's another thing to attack his house. It's
Speaker 7: not the right time to do any of that.
Speaker 3: So then a couple of days later and put up
Speaker 3: D four, wal Street Journal and others report that actually,
Speaker 3: we didn't do this, Ukraine didn't do this, didn't happen.
Speaker 3: So Trump was then asked about it again on Air
Speaker 3: Force One.
Speaker 8: You said that you were really very angry with the
Speaker 8: Ukrainian president Silinski, if he was the one who conducted
Speaker 8: that strike on Putin's residence.
Speaker 7: I don't believe that strike happened, right, So Putin.
Speaker 8: Had said in that phone call to you that that
Speaker 8: strike happened. You came out and said that, and you
Speaker 8: believed Putin. There was some criticism there is.
Speaker 7: Something that happened fairly nearby but had nothing to do
Speaker 7: with this one.
Speaker 8: Why did you believe Putin in that moment and then
Speaker 8: go say that about nobody.
Speaker 7: Knew at that moment. I mean, that was the first
Speaker 7: I heard about it. I said that his house was attacked.
Speaker 7: We don't believe that happened. You know now that we
Speaker 7: have been able to check, But that was the first
Speaker 7: thing I ever heard about it. We just hoped that
Speaker 7: Russia and Ukraine get it settled. Then you know, it's
Speaker 7: costing us nothing. In fact, we make money.
Speaker 3: So if you had a hard time hearing that as
Speaker 3: Trump saying, we don't believe that happened anymore, and so
Speaker 3: Putin says, okay, hold on a second, you think it
Speaker 3: didn't happen, We've enroll D five here. He released a
Speaker 3: video of what he says and what he says, are
Speaker 3: Ukrainian drones that crashed in the forest. They released also
Speaker 3: kind of a flight map that showed I think ninety
Speaker 3: one drones that they counted that moved from Ukrainian positions
Speaker 3: to this compound where the fam Putin's family was apparently staying.
Speaker 3: And it's offered and they met with the American ambassador
Speaker 3: and said, you want to, you want to, you want
Speaker 3: to look at them, and go ahead, you can, you can,
Speaker 3: you can study them yourselves, like we shut down a
Speaker 3: bunch of these.
Speaker 4: Some of these crashed like here they are. We didn't
Speaker 4: hear you.
Speaker 3: Know any We don't know if the CIA ended up
Speaker 3: obtaining some of these or not. Uh Zelenski at the
Speaker 3: time called it a fabrication. He said this, you know,
Speaker 3: Putin is trying to blow up the piece deal that
Speaker 3: Zelenski and Trump were talking about in mar Lagouh. Putin said, no,
Speaker 3: Zelenski is actually trying to blow this up. Zelensky has
Speaker 3: now taken a different tune.
Speaker 4: In June fourth.
Speaker 3: On June fourth, he wrote a letter to Putin filled
Speaker 3: with a bunch of you know what might as well
Speaker 3: be expertives put up d D seven here, he wrote,
Speaker 3: he writes this letter, Uh, this is Zelenski.
Speaker 4: We often hear that you are comfortable with this war.
Speaker 3: Of course, not in those cases when it comes to
Speaker 3: the security of your residence in Valdy or your parade
Speaker 3: in Moscow.
Speaker 4: Your own life is valuable to you.
Speaker 3: Valdi is where the compound was, where his family was staying,
Speaker 3: and where Putin says.
Speaker 4: That they tried to kill him. He was asked.
Speaker 8: So.
Speaker 3: Also recently, a drone which may have been Ukrainian, maybe
Speaker 3: in Russia, We're not sure yet. I think it went
Speaker 3: into Romania and it crashed into the top of an
Speaker 3: apartment building and it injured I think a grandmother and
Speaker 3: her grandson with some like burns on their arms are okay,
Speaker 3: but it was scary, you know, hit a building. New
Speaker 3: York Times wrote about this big giant Western coverage like this,
Speaker 3: this errant drone that hit this NATO country.
Speaker 4: We need to do war about this. And so.
Speaker 3: Putin was asked about this drone and in this press
Speaker 3: conference that will play this for a second. But what
Speaker 3: he based says is okay, like let me see the drone. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll study the drone and you can just look at
Speaker 3: the drone and then you can figure out if it
Speaker 3: was Ukrainian or Russian.
Speaker 4: He's like, either way, it was a mistake, said us.
Speaker 5: People could look at them.
Speaker 4: Just go and look at the drone.
Speaker 3: And he says, just like we did with the drones
Speaker 3: that tried to kill me, that we turned over the drones.
Speaker 4: So World d eight.
Speaker 9: Here, the same is happening. Here has happened here and
Speaker 9: until we received some objective data, like the data that
Speaker 9: we handed over to the representative of the American administration,
Speaker 9: the data and the debris of the drone that hid
Speaker 9: the residence of the Russian president. So we gave the findings.
Speaker 9: If we receive these data from them, and then we
Speaker 9: can share our estimates of what happened.
Speaker 3: So not to say that Putin doesn't lie. Putin obviously lies.
Speaker 3: President's lies. Putin lies a lot, But in this case,
Speaker 3: he's turning over the material itself for us to examine.
Speaker 5: Assuming I mean, sure, I guess it could have been
Speaker 5: tampered with. But yes, he's saying, then you could examine
Speaker 5: whether it's been tampered with.
Speaker 3: And you can just like look at the like here,
Speaker 3: here's here's a drone. We say it's crashed in the forest, here,
Speaker 3: like you know, here's our chain of custody here, Like
Speaker 3: I guess you can always just disbelieve everything, but at
Speaker 3: some point, like if you do launch ninety one drones,
Speaker 3: like it's going to leave some evidence behind.
Speaker 5: Right, we also have the pre existing evidence that the
Speaker 5: president at first seems to believe Putin right, And just
Speaker 5: one quick point on my end, Bivens points out. He
Speaker 5: says in summary recent in recent days, both Zelenski and
Speaker 5: Putin have again referenced an attack on Putin's home and
Speaker 5: family carried out by US supported Ukrainian droones. This is
Speaker 5: the same attack that Trump initially believed in but then
Speaker 5: scoffed at after the CIA formally told him it never happened,
Speaker 5: but it clearly did happen, which suggests the Vin says
Speaker 5: that the CIA is giving false briefings to the president,
Speaker 5: So that then becomes Germaine when you're thinking about Iran, Cuba,
Speaker 5: Venezuela and all of these other places, China and Taiwan
Speaker 5: around the world where we're in hot conflicts or potential
Speaker 5: hot conflicts. About if John Ratcliffe and his CIA is
Speaker 5: under Odie and I outgoing Odie and I and Tulsa
Speaker 5: Gabbard where we know they are conflicts seemingly between Odie
Speaker 5: and I and CIA. What information is getting to the
Speaker 5: president that's extremely important and obviously right now we should
Speaker 5: mention Ukraine is saying that missiles hit a military plant
Speaker 5: really far inside of Russia, so all the way like
Speaker 5: five hundred and sixty miles from the front line according
Speaker 5: to BBC.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess it's Telsa Gabbard ode and I maybe
Speaker 3: she can come on the show now that she's retired,
Speaker 3: she can talk about this assassination temp attempt. I don't
Speaker 3: know if people have quite under stand the fire that
Speaker 3: we're playing with here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm going to send a comment request actually on.
Speaker 4: This right now because excellent. All right, give them the
Speaker 4: report back. Let's do it.
Speaker 5: Next up, Jane Kim.
Speaker 3: One of the least discussed but perhaps most important races
Speaker 3: in California that was decided recently may have been the
Speaker 3: one for Insurance Commissioner. There will be two Democrats that
Speaker 3: will move into the general election. One of them, Jane Kim,
Speaker 3: had the endorsement of Bernie Sanders and was running on
Speaker 3: a platform of insurance for all, which and we're going
Speaker 3: to talk about what exactly that means. But first to
Speaker 3: start with a little bit of the message that she
Speaker 3: ran on to finish first in this top two.
Speaker 8: I'm Jane Kim.
Speaker 10: I'm running for Insurance Commissioner to fight for us, and
Speaker 10: I'm not going to take a dime from the insurance companies.
Speaker 10: I'm running to make insurance available for everyone, to lower
Speaker 10: costs right away by capping excess profits and CEO pay,
Speaker 10: and to write a plant to guarantee healthcare for every
Speaker 10: child in California.
Speaker 3: Joining us now is Jane and Kim the number one
Speaker 3: of the top two finishers for Insurance Commissioner. Ben Allen,
Speaker 3: State Senator, was the second. I believe he's welcome to
Speaker 3: join as well. But Jane, thank you so much for
Speaker 3: being here.
Speaker 8: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: So we wanted to talk to you because insurance is
Speaker 3: one of these and this is not health insurance for
Speaker 3: correct me if I'm wrong, there's some relation.
Speaker 8: So this office oversees the three point three trillion dollar
Speaker 8: industry and it regulates all types of insurance, but managed
Speaker 8: healthcare plans.
Speaker 3: Right, So we wanted to talk to you because insurance
Speaker 3: is one of those things that is not.
Speaker 4: Talked about very much.
Speaker 3: Although it's everybody has to think about it whenever they're
Speaker 3: making any serious decision. They think about it when they
Speaker 3: get there, when they get their bill every month. And
Speaker 3: it's right at the intersection of basically everything you know, climate, earthquakes,
Speaker 3: you know, natural disasters, and the ability fires, fires, and
Speaker 3: the ability to kind of continue a functioning human civilization,
Speaker 3: like it's that important.
Speaker 4: Yet it's that under discussed.
Speaker 3: California, as we think about it over here, is fairly
Speaker 3: corporate dominated, and so I'm curious, you know how you
Speaker 3: managed on a kind of anti corporate campaign, with an
Speaker 3: anti corporate campaign, how you managed to kind of break through.
Speaker 3: What was the message that you were bringing that was
Speaker 3: able to kind of get beyond the clutter that's usually
Speaker 3: thrown up by the insurance industry to make sure that
Speaker 3: they control this critical position.
Speaker 8: So this office is created in nineteen eight by the
Speaker 8: voters California to be the backstop between forty million Californians
Speaker 8: and this trillion dollar industry. And this industry is an
Speaker 8: industry that is doing quite well. In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 8: property and casualty insurance netted one hundred and seventy billion dollars,
Speaker 8: and so this narrative that they're going bankrupt is just
Speaker 8: simply not true. Meanwhile, we are required to have insurance
Speaker 8: to drive to work or to school, to on a home,
Speaker 8: or to open a business or a nonprofit of any kind,
Speaker 8: and the system is failing. Rates are going up, they're
Speaker 8: canceling our coverage, and even if we have insurance, they
Speaker 8: fight our claims every step of the way. And so
Speaker 8: we ran on the message of a more affordable California
Speaker 8: and that this office should be the champion of consumers
Speaker 8: and not a lapdog for billionaire corporations. And this message
Speaker 8: resonated across the state of California. We ran on a
Speaker 8: platform talking about new ideas, at least to the US,
Speaker 8: a single payer home disaster home program guaranteed for all
Speaker 8: that is publicly run and nonprofit. We talked to expanding
Speaker 8: our art existing low cost nonprofit auto insurance program and
Speaker 8: Medicare for kids. And as you can see from our results,
Speaker 8: we're plus eight in the top two. We didn't just
Speaker 8: win in San Francisco, which is my backyard, which we're
Speaker 8: plus eighteen. We also won in Los Angeles County, where
Speaker 8: my main opponent resides, and we're in first place in
Speaker 8: Republican and rural counties across the state of California, which
Speaker 8: just showed that Californians are tired of the status quo
Speaker 8: and they want to see someone who's going to champion
Speaker 8: a more affordable California.
Speaker 5: I think it made such an important point that you're
Speaker 5: required to have insurance to operate into complete basic functions
Speaker 5: in the state of California and of course in other states.
Speaker 5: So he tell us a little bit more about what
Speaker 5: you would be able to accomplish in this role, like
Speaker 5: what's possible, what gives you hope that you could actually
Speaker 5: do should you be elected.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So this is an executive office that regulates this industry.
Speaker 8: And by the way, there's a zero federal oversight of insurance,
Speaker 8: which is also really interesting. So it's regulated by the
Speaker 8: fifty states, and it has this as I say, on
Speaker 8: who gets to build wealth in this country? Right? I mean,
Speaker 8: you can't drive to work without auto insurance, you can't
Speaker 8: own a home or open a business. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 8: and as was mentioned earlier, it sits at this very
Speaker 8: interesting intersection of this what everyone is feeling, the wealth, inequality,
Speaker 8: climate disaster, and fairness, and ultimately what people want is
Speaker 8: they want a fair and level playing ground. And this
Speaker 8: is what this office can do. It regulates the industry,
Speaker 8: sets the ground rules for how property and casualty industry
Speaker 8: plays in the state of California, in the most populous
Speaker 8: state in the country. And so there's a couple of
Speaker 8: things that I have talked about. One one of the
Speaker 8: biggest fights is around claims. And we're seeing this whether
Speaker 8: you live in the Palisades or in Paradise. And so one,
Speaker 8: I want to freeze your rates when you file a claim.
Speaker 8: You shouldn't be utilized for using the business that you've
Speaker 8: been paying into, often for decades. Second, I want them
Speaker 8: to pay you interest every day they deny, delay, or
Speaker 8: underpay a valid claim. That is actually a big part
Speaker 8: of their business strategy. Their main business is not really insurance,
Speaker 8: it's their banks. They take our premiums and they invest
Speaker 8: it in the bond markets. By the way, they're huge
Speaker 8: institutional investors in fossil fuel, which is driving climate disaster,
Speaker 8: and then they cancel coverage on the homes destroyed by it.
Speaker 8: So they try to keep their money in their float
Speaker 8: for as long as possible. So I also want to
Speaker 8: create a financial disincentive from doing that by having them
Speaker 8: pay you interests. The other is that we want to
Speaker 8: really cap their profits, and that's something that the insurance
Speaker 8: Commissioner can do. In the rate setting, you ACA mandates
Speaker 8: that eighty five cents if every dollary paying premiums goes
Speaker 8: back into paying claims. I think we should do the
Speaker 8: same for home insurance, maybe at sixty five cents a dollar,
Speaker 8: not even as high, or an auto insurance seventy five
Speaker 8: cents a dollar and making sure that and by the way,
Speaker 8: currently in California, it's roughly around forty nine cents of
Speaker 8: our premium dollars go back into paying claims and make
Speaker 8: sure that they're not spending it just on shareholders, CEOs
Speaker 8: and Super Bowl ads.
Speaker 4: So what that's wild?
Speaker 3: So of the of every dollar that goes into the
Speaker 3: insurance industry in California, forty nine cents comes back and claims,
Speaker 3: what's the other fifty one.
Speaker 4: CeNSE go to?
Speaker 3: Now, presumably, if I'm going to like kind of steal man,
Speaker 3: let's say the insurance industry argument, they'd say, well, for
Speaker 3: for disaster insurance, they don't hit every year, you know,
Speaker 3: so we need to build up massive reserves so that
Speaker 3: when they do hit that we can pay them off.
Speaker 3: So maybe you would need to stretch that out over
Speaker 3: a longer time horizon than one year. But like, what,
Speaker 3: so what are they where's that other fifty one cents going?
Speaker 3: How much is going to that reserve and how much
Speaker 3: is going to profits or to kind of the operations
Speaker 3: required to keep their cash flow business going.
Speaker 8: Okay, so let me start with their business model. So
Speaker 8: part of their revenue is, of course are premiums. And
Speaker 8: by the way, at least in the last few years,
Speaker 8: our premiums have outpaced what they have paid in claims,
Speaker 8: despite at least in California as some of the biggest
Speaker 8: fire claims payout in history. Too. They take our premiums
Speaker 8: and they invest it in what they call their float,
Speaker 8: so they invest it in the bond market or fossil fuels,
Speaker 8: and so all of this is a part of their
Speaker 8: revenue model, and they're doing exceedingly well. Every billionaire invests
Speaker 8: in insurance. It makes a ton of money. And so
Speaker 8: when I say sixty five cents to a dollar, we're
Speaker 8: just talking about the premium revenue. And so the remainder
Speaker 8: goes to their shareholders. It goes to CEO pay. Of course,
Speaker 8: some of it goes to their reserves, it goes to
Speaker 8: their advertising. And what this office can do is that
Speaker 8: it can shine a light in terms of mandating that
Speaker 8: we understand where our dollars are going. And by the way,
Speaker 8: this message resonated in Tuallomee County and Nevada and El Dorado,
Speaker 8: which are more rural areas of California, and it did
Speaker 8: well in Republican counities like San Diego, Riverside and in
Speaker 8: cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, paulse. You know,
Speaker 8: insurance industries don't treat you differently because you're a Republican.
Speaker 8: Everyone is feeling fleeced by the insurance industry and they
Speaker 8: see their rates go up, they see their coverage get canceled,
Speaker 8: and then they hear about how much money these industries
Speaker 8: are making. And one example I'll just give is in April,
Speaker 8: a Travelers, which is in the top ten of property
Speaker 8: casualty industry, announced that they did so well just in
Speaker 8: the first quarter of twenty twenty six. They had two
Speaker 8: point two billion in excess capital. What did they do
Speaker 8: with it? They didn't provide discounts or refunds to their policyholders.
Speaker 8: They didn't invest back in the communities that they have
Speaker 8: profited from in the form of resilience, sand fireproofing, and floodproofing,
Speaker 8: which would collectively make us all safe. They gave it
Speaker 8: all to their shareholders. And one of the reasons why
Speaker 8: I'm proposing a single payer, nonprofit, publicly run disaster insurance
Speaker 8: program guarantee for every home run or in California is
Speaker 8: that I want to claw back some of those premium
Speaker 8: dollars that we're already spending and have them stewarded by
Speaker 8: the public. We would invest those premiums as well, and
Speaker 8: when we have excess capital, like New Zealand, we would
Speaker 8: invest it back into floodproofing and fireproofing and resiliency. And
Speaker 8: so there are two ways to lower your risk, right
Speaker 8: because ultimately that is what is driving up the cost
Speaker 8: of insurance. And if you want to make insurance affordable
Speaker 8: and available, you have to actually address risk. Private insurance
Speaker 8: market prices risk, and so we would take a portion
Speaker 8: of that revenue and actually invest it in making us
Speaker 8: collectively safer. While the private insurance market reduces their risk
Speaker 8: by canceling covers are what they consider their sickest homes
Speaker 8: or their homes with pre existing condition. And by the way,
Speaker 8: this is not our idea. This is modeled after what
Speaker 8: we see in New Zealand. Frans and span also a
Speaker 8: form of a publicly run disaster in transfer all program.
Speaker 8: Canada very interestingly has single pair auto insurance in some
Speaker 8: of their provinces, and they also use access capital to
Speaker 8: invest in roads and filling potholes because they know that
Speaker 8: that also will reduce risks in the future.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there seems to be some real parallels there between
Speaker 3: the arguments for single payer healthcare as well, that the
Speaker 3: government would then be incentivized to do preventive medicine and
Speaker 3: to invest in clinics and and other you know, in
Speaker 3: primary care to try to make it so that people
Speaker 3: go to the er less and which is also then
Speaker 3: better for society.
Speaker 4: People don't want to get sick. People don't want their
Speaker 4: houses to burn down.
Speaker 3: I would imagine that one of the criticisms or the
Speaker 3: questions that you get that this is the thing that
Speaker 3: occurs to me is.
Speaker 4: Okay, but what about that?
Speaker 3: What about that house that's in the area that has
Speaker 3: burned down, well, you know, six times in the last
Speaker 3: ten years.
Speaker 4: Or whatever, like that's.
Speaker 5: A very real part.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was just going to add like that's I randomly
Speaker 5: did a long investigation to the NFIP, the National Flood
Speaker 5: Insurance Program a while back, and it's what Ryan is
Speaker 5: saying is a real thing, at least with the NFIP,
Speaker 5: is that you have a house that keeps getting rebuilt
Speaker 5: like twenty times in some cases in a very dangerous
Speaker 5: flood zone. Which it's not just a problem for the raids,
Speaker 5: it puts people's lives at risk.
Speaker 4: So sorry Ryan to interrupt you, No, that I think
Speaker 4: Emily and I have the same question.
Speaker 3: What if you have a publicly run if you have
Speaker 3: a public option or a single payer system, how do
Speaker 3: you make sure that the public isn't helping somebody, you know,
Speaker 3: build a house on stilts every year.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So this is a big problem throughout the state of California.
Speaker 8: Because of our train and the size of our state,
Speaker 8: our geography, we experience almost every type of disaster climate
Speaker 8: disaster that you can imagine, much slides, floods, fires, and
Speaker 8: one thing that we have been thinking a lot about
Speaker 8: is that we would want to guarantee disaster insurance for
Speaker 8: existing homeowners and keep in mind right. Many of these
Speaker 8: homeowners moved into these parts of California long before they
Speaker 8: became wildfire distress zones. In fact, what we call the WUUWI,
Speaker 8: the Wildfire Urban Interface, has grown one hundred and eleven
Speaker 8: percent since twenty eleven, so the wildfire regions moved into
Speaker 8: neighborhoods and areas. In many ways, we don't want to
Speaker 8: penalize these homeowners, many of whom are actually working class
Speaker 8: and middle class homeowners, not just wealthy vacation owners and
Speaker 8: the Palisades and Tahoe. They have nowhere else to go.
Speaker 8: California is such an expensive state. There are very few
Speaker 8: places for them to relocate and move into, and so
Speaker 8: we would want to make sure that we covered folks
Speaker 8: and make sure that people aren't bankrupt or destitute. We
Speaker 8: wouldn't want to cover new developments in the WOWIE because
Speaker 8: we wouldn't want to give developers that type of incentive
Speaker 8: that they would get covered in case a disaster hit,
Speaker 8: knowing that they are building in a waldfire zone. But
Speaker 8: we have a very big problem across the country because,
Speaker 8: as I mentioned, the WEI has expanded one hundred and
Speaker 8: eleven percent, So even if you live in a safe
Speaker 8: zone today, you may not in five or ten years.
Speaker 8: And so it's going to take way more than just
Speaker 8: insurance as a tool for us to become more resilient
Speaker 8: as country. We actually have to take on fossil fuels.
Speaker 8: So we keep talking about how homeowners and the public
Speaker 8: is going to pay for these disasters, but we haven't
Speaker 8: yet talked about how we're going to hold fossil fuels accountable.
Speaker 8: And also are dependent on fossil fuels, so all we
Speaker 8: have to make polluters pay, and we need to. We
Speaker 8: need to revamp our land use and our building code
Speaker 8: as well to become more resilient. But the one other
Speaker 8: idea that we are considering is allowing structural coverage to
Speaker 8: be used for relocation and replacement. So if your home
Speaker 8: does burn down, you can take the insurance that you
Speaker 8: get and instead of rebuilding that you're allowed to actually
Speaker 8: use it to move and buy another home.
Speaker 4: Oh, because currently you have to end it right there.
Speaker 8: Yes, yes, so that's.
Speaker 4: A great idea.
Speaker 8: Exactly, if you have insurance and you're down, the only
Speaker 8: thing you can do with that money is rebuilt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right now, it's a no brainer. Come on, come on, California,
Speaker 3: This is, and everybody else should do this and.
Speaker 8: Everybody else right, it's not just California, I mean Texas, Florida, Nebraska.
Speaker 8: Actually the biggest claims payout is wind and.
Speaker 3: Hail, right, fascinating, fascinating. Oh, Jane Kim, one of the
Speaker 3: two Democratic nominees for insurance Commissioner in California, Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for joining us.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much for having me and covering one
Speaker 8: of the most important jobs you may have never heard of,
Speaker 8: that really sits at this incredibly interesting fascination around economic fairness,
Speaker 8: wealth inequality, and climate injustice. And really excited to be
Speaker 8: in this race for this office. Thank you for having
Speaker 8: me on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I look forward to having you back whenever you
Speaker 3: come back on, assuming you do become the commissioner, it
Speaker 3: will be in difficult situations, no doubt, but interesting ones
Speaker 3: that we have to grapple with as a country and
Speaker 3: a society.
Speaker 4: So glad somebody's thinking about it.
Speaker 5: Were joined in studio this time by friend of the show.
Speaker 5: Wanted to Vid Rojas. He's an independent journalist. You can
Speaker 5: find his writing all the time over at Compact. He
Speaker 5: had a big, big story about his work kind of
Speaker 5: as a social worker with people who had come during
Speaker 5: the Biden surge and we're making asylum claims, and some
Speaker 5: big takeaways from the piece we want to talk about
Speaker 5: Claudia Shinbaum, We want to talk about some different things
Speaker 5: happening around Latin America. Pete Hegseeth is actually at Guantanamo
Speaker 5: Bay today, but let's start just with some of the
Speaker 5: big picture takeaways that you had through your time spent
Speaker 5: actually working in this capacity with people who are trying
Speaker 5: to make asylum claims, who are trying to be here
Speaker 5: in the United States as long as possible during the
Speaker 5: Biden years. What'd you find out?
Speaker 11: Yeah, so I worked as a social worker with what
Speaker 11: are called you see and accompany children. Those are miners
Speaker 11: under the age of eighteen who like come to the
Speaker 11: border without like parents or legal guardians, and so they're
Speaker 11: like held in a shelter and release of what are
Speaker 11: called sponsors, typically family members, but not always sometimes sometimes
Speaker 11: this and relatives and sometimes even people who they're not
Speaker 11: related to.
Speaker 6: In the slightest we.
Speaker 5: Should mention by the way, people may be familiar with
Speaker 5: us from a huge New York Times story on Javier Bessera,
Speaker 5: who is making the runoff in the Calivernia governor's race
Speaker 5: is going to be against Steve Hilton. This is a
Speaker 5: huge piece of baggage that Javier Bsara now comes in
Speaker 5: because while you were working in this capacity, New York
Speaker 5: Times in a deep dive on how many U sees
Speaker 5: ended up.
Speaker 11: Go on, Yeah, it became a political issue. So I
Speaker 11: was a case manager and so basically, like my job is,
Speaker 11: once like these kids were released to sponsors, you have
Speaker 11: to check on them, make sure that they track their
Speaker 11: immigration hearings, get like pro bonomo attorneys, you know, have
Speaker 11: a roof over their head, stuff like that. And you know,
Speaker 11: this piece took me a really long time to write.
Speaker 11: It was really hot to write. It's a very delicate
Speaker 11: issue and I wanted, like people from both sides of
Speaker 11: the aisle to take like the right.
Speaker 6: Things out of it.
Speaker 11: And that New York Times piece you mentioned, I can
Speaker 11: thankfully say that during my time there was only one
Speaker 11: case that I sid in the peace of a miner
Speaker 11: who went like that you just ran away and couldn't
Speaker 11: find them in anyway. Yeah, yeah, yea, yeah, that's another thing.
Speaker 11: I worked in South Florida, the Miami office of this agency.
Speaker 11: So like Cubans, Venezuela, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: South Americans, et cetera.
Speaker 11: And well, you know, the thing about one of the
Speaker 11: main things for on Left of Center that I wanted
Speaker 11: people to take out of the piece is that, you know,
Speaker 11: there's this idea typically that it's.
Speaker 6: Like, oh, you know, if you come here.
Speaker 11: To arrive at the border, like you know, you must
Speaker 11: be really desperate, you're fleeing violent stuff like that.
Speaker 6: That is the case.
Speaker 11: But in my experience, and this is also reporting that
Speaker 11: has been done, the vast majority of these asylum claims
Speaker 11: are economic migrants, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 11: So yeah, and I worked in twenty twenty two, twenty
Speaker 11: twenty three, I've had a tricuratus professional career of journalism.
Speaker 6: Was kind of an accident.
Speaker 11: But but yeah, yeah, you know, in my experience, these
Speaker 11: were all very hard working, loving families. But in my experience,
Speaker 11: again it was a small minority of people. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 11: we're like fleeing persecution from the Ortega dictatorship, the Cuban regime,
Speaker 11: of violence, from gangs. The rest wanted typically just to
Speaker 11: work in the US and maney other families, and some
Speaker 11: of them, to be fair, also wanted to go back
Speaker 11: and that's another complicated aspect of this that because like
Speaker 11: you know, you like come here either illegally or stillicit asylum,
Speaker 11: then going back to your country sometimes becomes difficult. But
Speaker 11: essentially for on the like the right side of the aisle,
Speaker 11: like I try to be very compassionate and talk about
Speaker 11: like some of these stories even like people who like
Speaker 11: didn't have in my opinion, legitimate claims of asylum. These
Speaker 11: are good people, They're not all criminals. On the other hand,
Speaker 11: the issue I saw under Biden was there was just
Speaker 11: no enforcement once people were inside of the country. And
Speaker 11: you look at the data deportations inside of the country,
Speaker 11: Interior enforcement under in Obama's first term was like two
Speaker 11: hundred thousand a year, then in by Trump's first term,
Speaker 11: I was like one hundred thousand, and then by Biden's
Speaker 11: term it was fifty thousand. Basically, once you get into
Speaker 11: the country, you don't get deported, so you know, and
Speaker 11: there's like debates about this that oh a lot of
Speaker 11: people were deported at the border. Inside of the country,
Speaker 11: not so much. And the problem with that is you
Speaker 11: get this insane backlog of asylum claimants, and that hurts
Speaker 11: actual assylees because you have so many economic migrants crowding
Speaker 11: out people with legitimate claims, and so my perspective is
Speaker 11: there needs to be limits. I consider myself a social democrat,
Speaker 11: an old school social democrat, and in the olden days,
Speaker 11: social democrats were more restrictive on immigration. Yeah, not because
Speaker 11: like immigrants are bad or anything like that. It's just
Speaker 11: there needs to be limits to these things. Like you
Speaker 11: want to have controls on capital, there needs to be
Speaker 11: limits on immigration thoughtfully. And it's same thing with like deportation.
Speaker 11: A critique I would have what I've seen now under
Speaker 11: Trump is like you just have these deliberate this deliberate
Speaker 11: abuse what I find to be gratuitously sadistic policies. People
Speaker 11: are detained for like a year on end. I have
Speaker 11: a line on the piece that's like deportation should be
Speaker 11: neither pleasant nor like deliberately performative. And like Chris Kobak,
Speaker 11: former Attorney General of a Kansas Republican, he stressed that
Speaker 11: the best way to do this is to have a
Speaker 11: national regime of eve verify on employers, meaning you punish
Speaker 11: employers for contracting a legal labor and that would be
Speaker 11: a lot more efficient than having an eighty billion dollar ice.
Speaker 5: Yes, well, and the economic conditions of these countries, whether
Speaker 5: it's Cuba or Venezuela, is extremely relevant to our incursions
Speaker 5: into those countries continuing under the Trump Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, Indeed, when you know, when we destroyed Mexico's
Speaker 3: kind of agricultural economy, we've sent a massive win nineties
Speaker 3: because they have of Mexican migrants northward. Mexico now doing
Speaker 3: much better. There's a lot we want to get get
Speaker 3: through with you. So to move to Mexico real quickly,
Speaker 3: we could put up f one here.
Speaker 4: Walk us through what.
Speaker 3: Is the cloudy cloudy Scheinbaum was celebrating the launch of
Speaker 3: this like five thousand dollars you know, electric vehicle, this van.
Speaker 3: If you're not watching it kind of as Mac described,
Speaker 3: it kind of looks like a little airport shuttle. I
Speaker 3: would love to have one of these guys a tool
Speaker 3: around the neighborhood. Five thousand bucks. Yeah, like the smart cars,
Speaker 3: right yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: Speaking of social democrats.
Speaker 3: So what's so, what's going on with Mexico's kind of
Speaker 3: ev industry? Is this are are we headed to a
Speaker 3: place where the US is going to just be making
Speaker 3: you know, fifty to sixty thousand dollars, you know, gas guzzlers,
Speaker 3: while the rest of the country, while the rest of
Speaker 3: the world is just driving these five to ten thousand
Speaker 3: dollars EV's like, how long is that gonna last?
Speaker 4: What is what is going on here?
Speaker 5: And she's doing this on the eve of the World
Speaker 5: Cup Bush Mexican as well Mexican Games games in Mexico
Speaker 5: on Thursday. Lots of anxiety about potential violence. You ow
Speaker 5: and Girl had a good piece on that and those
Speaker 5: kind of tensions.
Speaker 4: So there's politics in there too.
Speaker 6: Totally, totally yeah that I believe.
Speaker 11: It's called the Oina and it's not very fast. I
Speaker 11: think it's top speed, doesn't look for miles an hour,
Speaker 11: and so like some of the opposition have said that,
Speaker 11: oh it's basically just a glorified scooter, but I mean, yeah,
Speaker 11: that could reasonably get you around and like some big cities,
Speaker 11: like that's a flagship that the Mexican government had they
Speaker 11: wanted to have their own Mexican manufacture. Is there a
Speaker 11: Chinese partnership, Like what's the I don't think so. I
Speaker 11: think it was pretty Mexican made. Now there's a ton
Speaker 11: of Mexican evs in China and a lot of anxiety
Speaker 11: of that if they'll ever be let into the US,
Speaker 11: and you mean Chinese Chinese vs. In Mexico that will
Speaker 11: be let in and I actually you guys bring that
Speaker 11: up with an after that's a good point. Like Mexican immigration,
Speaker 11: for instance, has gone down, all immigration to the US
Speaker 11: has gone down a lot, actually commers at this point,
Speaker 11: I think, so, yeah, there's even a lot of people
Speaker 11: that are going back and a.
Speaker 6: Have to destroy way more going to Mexican that too, expats. Yeah,
Speaker 6: something like two million.
Speaker 3: What do we call that Mexic paths is not migrants? Well,
Speaker 3: probably not migrants. That's a that's another story. But we
Speaker 3: try to use language here like equally. So, yeah, American
Speaker 3: US migrants.
Speaker 6: US migrants.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well Pete Hegseth.
Speaker 3: In making Mexican jobs laptop jobs that Mexicans won't.
Speaker 5: Do in Gwandan Mobay today becoming another US official to
Speaker 5: visit the to visit the island of Cuba in recent weeks,
Speaker 5: raising all kinds of anxieties of course among the skeptics
Speaker 5: of a potential US intervention.
Speaker 4: Now you follow this.
Speaker 5: Very closely at one so with Hext now making the
Speaker 5: trip Radcliffe has made the trip. You're reading the tea leaves.
Speaker 5: What's your expectation about what could come in the days
Speaker 5: and weeks ahead.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think we'll probably see the strikes of something,
Speaker 11: some sort of Maduro operation. Who knows, maybe they'll even
Speaker 11: go for a full invasion. I mean right now, there's
Speaker 11: like they basically have all the same assets they had
Speaker 11: for the Maduro operation, around ten thousand troops. The thing
Speaker 11: is Cuba is a lot smaller, has more favorable geography,
Speaker 11: and you know, there's a history there.
Speaker 6: And the lobby. I could see them pushing for this.
Speaker 11: On the other hand, you know, with Iran that's complicated
Speaker 11: and actually trying this to our initial conversation. You know,
Speaker 11: like under Biden, it was something like three million Cubans
Speaker 11: left the island, half of which came here and especially
Speaker 11: to South Florida, a lot of people that I worked with.
Speaker 11: Now under Trump, if you didn't have such like restrictive
Speaker 11: policies at the border, you'd have millions of Cubans still
Speaker 11: coming in. And actually this is something that went under
Speaker 11: noticed the Nicaraguan government. Yeah, in twenty twenty two, they
Speaker 11: remove visas on Cubans and that allowed Cubans to just
Speaker 11: go to Nicaragua and then straight to the US. They
Speaker 11: put visas back on apparently as a gesture to the
Speaker 11: Trump ad minister. Should guess it didn't work because they
Speaker 11: just got sanctioned a bunch a few days ago.
Speaker 5: You probably talked to people who'd done that. I talked too, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: who had done that too in Mexico. I went through
Speaker 5: Nicaragua and then right up to the US.
Speaker 11: So and yeah, and so this is just to me
Speaker 11: logical that, hey, if you don't want to have millions
Speaker 11: of people coming here yet. On the one side, yet
Speaker 11: I disagree that, you know, the immigration policy should be
Speaker 11: so relaxed, especially with asylum.
Speaker 6: I think there should be a lot of reform.
Speaker 11: On the other hand, we shouldn't go about wanton intervening
Speaker 11: in all of these countries.
Speaker 6: It's completely counterproductive.
Speaker 3: Yes, give us a quick update while we have you
Speaker 3: on the elections. Elections in Colombia, elections, brew As is
Speaker 3: the believing government can fall brazilkly.
Speaker 6: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot. Bolivia. Yeah, I
Speaker 6: don't know.
Speaker 11: I don't think the government is going to finish its term.
Speaker 11: But yeah, maybe support from the US will help there's
Speaker 11: elections right now in Peru and in Colombia. They're still
Speaker 11: counting votes in Peru. It's like the closest in La Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 11: You know a lot of people pointed that out that
Speaker 11: Peru counted however many votes, but yeah, there's like ninety
Speaker 11: seven ninety seven percent of the vote counted and it's
Speaker 11: like fifty point zero something to forty nine point nine
Speaker 11: to nine something.
Speaker 6: So yeah, these elections, left is up by a little bit,
Speaker 6: slightly slightly.
Speaker 11: The problem is the votes coming in now are mainly
Speaker 11: like super rural, which are in favor of the left,
Speaker 11: and and abroad that are super in favor of Fuhimori.
Speaker 3: It's I always find it interesting that in South America
Speaker 3: the rural votes are more left wing.
Speaker 11: Sometimes it depends. In Peru's interesting because a lot of
Speaker 11: these leftists, I call them base leftists. They're like socially
Speaker 11: conservative right, but you know, economically left wing and uh.
Speaker 11: And you know this makes sense because they're based is
Speaker 11: rural and so in like the highlands in Peru.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 11: This guy, the current candidate, his big promise was to
Speaker 11: pardon former president be Castidio, the guy with the hat,
Speaker 11: and this guy like he was like an evangelical, like
Speaker 11: pro life, like anti LGBT, super right way social issues
Speaker 11: and so this this guy Sanchez, is that he's not
Speaker 11: as like he he's a background as a psychologist, and
Speaker 11: so his track record in Congress was he said he's
Speaker 11: in favor of like civil unions stuff like that. But
Speaker 11: he still like builds himself as like pro life and
Speaker 11: a man of faith and stuff like that.
Speaker 6: But it's still left wing.
Speaker 11: And so you know, the narrative you usually here is
Speaker 11: just that it's communism versus capitalism.
Speaker 4: Looks like they're doing well in Columbia.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it looks like there's this crazy mob lawyer.
Speaker 11: He was a lawyer for like drug trafficking paramilitaries and
Speaker 11: former president Udie who's currently under trial and so.
Speaker 5: Pardon him you never know, yeah traffick. Yes, well one
Speaker 5: front of the show. Go check him out on social media.
Speaker 5: Has a sub stack as well. I know you're taking
Speaker 5: some reporting trips to South America and all over Latin
Speaker 5: America in the days and weeks ahead. So thank you
Speaker 5: for joining us in the studio. It was a pleasure
Speaker 5: to have you here for the first time. You saw
Speaker 5: in the studio.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me you guys, of course, Well that's.
Speaker 5: Going to do it for us on today's edition of
Speaker 5: Breaking Points. We so appreciate you taking the time to
Speaker 5: be with us on this Wednesday, Ryan.
Speaker 4: Anything else, that's it.
Speaker 5: Ryan has declared it is over all right. Well, Ryan
Speaker 5: and I will see you on Friday, crystalin soccer. We'll
Speaker 5: see you back here tomorrow. Have a great one, everyone,