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Speaker 1: Hey, guys, thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal

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Speaker 1: and Sager. We're going to be totally upfront with you.

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Speaker 1: They are ripping this country apart. They are making millions

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Speaker 1: of dollars doing it to help support our mission of

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Speaker 1: hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our

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Speaker 1: reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate and

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Speaker 1: weekly ask me any things, and you don't need to

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Speaker 1: the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys, Good morning, everybody,

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Speaker 1: Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today

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Speaker 1: when we have Crystal, Indeed we do. Let's to get

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Speaker 1: to I'm very excited. We're going to have one of

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Speaker 1: the workers who is striking at John Deere on to

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Speaker 1: give us an update on what is going on there

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Speaker 1: and lay out in detail what their concerns are why

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Speaker 1: they decided to take the dramatic action of going out

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Speaker 1: on strike. We have some other union news for you

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Speaker 1: as well. Update on there're Starbucks workers in Buffalo. I

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Speaker 1: think we brought you this news before who are trying

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Speaker 1: to unionize first Starbucks location in the country that would

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Speaker 1: be union if they, in fact, we're able to win

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Speaker 1: that election. Starbucks is going to some extraordinary lengths to

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Speaker 1: make sure that doesn't ultimately happen. So we'll bring you

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Speaker 1: the details there. Amazon, including Jeff Bezos facing potential criminal

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Speaker 1: referral to the DOJ from a bipartisan group members of Congress.

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Speaker 1: We'll bring you those details. Major DC media brand Litico

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Speaker 1: is now owned by a company that is requiring their

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Speaker 1: employees be loyal to various political causes, some of which

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Speaker 1: are quite controversial. Talk to you about that. An interesting

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Speaker 1: moment on CNN with Brian Stelter and Barry Weiss that

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Speaker 1: we also want to break down for you. But let's

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Speaker 1: start with yesterday, we talked to you about the death

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Speaker 1: of Colon Powell caused by complications from COVID and blood cancer.

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Speaker 1: Today we've got a little bit of a look at

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Speaker 1: how the media has handled his death. I think this

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Speaker 1: is really important. It's on a variety of levels. First

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Speaker 1: on the culture war, just inability to just not let

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Speaker 1: somebody die without immediately inserting some sort of X, Y

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Speaker 1: or Z virtue signaling either way on the side, and

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Speaker 1: that's pretty much exactly what happened. So immediately after we

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Speaker 1: learn about Colon Powell's death, his family put out a statement.

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Speaker 1: I read it for you guys on the air yesterday.

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Speaker 1: They said he died of complications from COVID. He was

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Speaker 1: fully vaccinated. Then it comes out like moments later that

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Speaker 1: he had multiple myeloma blood cancer complications from that for

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Speaker 1: a long time he was extraordinarily at risk. Immediately, and

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Speaker 1: I literally mean immediately, everybody is jumping in trying to

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Speaker 1: make this either into a vaccination thing or virtue signaling

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Speaker 1: on how supposedly great he was just whitewashing the Iraq

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Speaker 1: war whenever it comes to that. Fox of course, this

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Speaker 1: is literally how they covered it, almost immediately, trying to

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Speaker 1: make it into some vaccination thing. Let's take a listen,

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Speaker 1: you brought up COVID. Look, this day will be a

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Speaker 1: day for many things, for remembering the man, for remembering

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Speaker 1: the leader that was lost. It's also a day to

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Speaker 1: understand the implication on everyday Americans, and the reports are

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Speaker 1: he died from complications of COVID. The family has made

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Speaker 1: a point in their post on Facebook this morning that

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Speaker 1: Colin Powell was fully vaccinated. And as Americans out there

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Speaker 1: wonder what lies ahead for them, and they search and

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Speaker 1: they need truth moving forward, we're seeing data from across

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Speaker 1: the world. We're seeing data from Europe, from the United Kingdom,

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Speaker 1: the fully vaccinated people are being hospitalized and fully vaccinated

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Speaker 1: people are dying from COVID. And here we have a

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Speaker 1: very high profile example that is going to require more truth,

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Speaker 1: more truth from our government of our health leaders as

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Speaker 1: well as we talk about this story on a day

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Speaker 1: when state after state and institution after institution are pushing

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Speaker 1: mandates for vaccination in this time it divided. The country

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Speaker 1: is very divided. One thing, people are pretty quick You're

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Speaker 1: going to get both sides of the aisle weighing, and

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Speaker 1: just as strongly with Colon pal because I think it

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Speaker 1: was pretty hard not to have great respect to the

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Speaker 1: person he was and what he's achieved. His parents were

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Speaker 1: immigrants from Jamaica. This there you go, Crystal. I mean

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Speaker 1: it was almost and once again you can even talk

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Speaker 1: about all of that, but kind to link it into

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Speaker 1: the Colon Powell thing. It just didn't make any sense

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Speaker 1: because by that point he actually knew about the cancer.

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Speaker 1: You know, of course that one doesn't get discussed and

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Speaker 1: it's just all, you know, drifts into the realm of

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Speaker 1: trying to insert it into day to day politics. While

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Speaker 1: also as you saw bridekil Medies, you know, pretty big

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Speaker 1: neo con just whitewashing exactly what's going on. I love

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Speaker 1: the actual legacy. They did it all there. Not only

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Speaker 1: do they, like you know, dabble in some anti voh

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Speaker 1: this causes us to have a lot of questions stuff

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Speaker 1: using one frickin anecdote to prove your point number one.

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Speaker 1: Number two, you know that he had blood cancer and

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Speaker 1: therefore his immune system was suppressed. So those are the

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Speaker 1: types of folks who, yeah, break through infections are really

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Speaker 1: dangerous for those people, and actually answer you get sick

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Speaker 1: like it's not good, right, and actually, on the contrary,

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Speaker 1: rather than making a case against a vaccine. That's why

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Speaker 1: people who are healthy do need to get vaccinated, not

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Speaker 1: just to protect themselves, but to protect people who have

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Speaker 1: conditions similar to colon pals, who for whom the vaccine

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Speaker 1: is not as effective and continue to be at high

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Speaker 1: risk to this disease because of a suppressed immune response.

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Speaker 1: So I love how they they're able to do, you know,

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Speaker 1: filter right into the right wing culture war, but also

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Speaker 1: toss it to Brian Kilmade who's then does the whitewashing

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Speaker 1: of Pal's reputation. So they had it all there on

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Speaker 1: Fox in Front. It was the same thing. Immediately John Roberts,

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Speaker 1: who actually like and respect you know, he tweeted about

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Speaker 1: how he's like this raises questions about the efficacy and

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Speaker 1: the long standingness of the vaccine. Let's put that tear

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Speaker 1: sheet up there on the screen from Business Insider, and

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Speaker 1: he quickly had to delete it, I think because Fox

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Speaker 1: News Corporate made him do so. Once again. We can

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Speaker 1: discuss vaccine efficacy declining over time, immunity versus natural immunity,

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Speaker 1: all of that, but I think it just always goes

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Speaker 1: to that people want to latch onto something in the

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Speaker 1: news and then try and immediately cleave into a political point,

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Speaker 1: and don't you worry. It's not like we're just focusing

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Speaker 1: there on Fox the entire political spectrum. Also because Colon

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Speaker 1: Powell in his latter years after the Iraq War, became

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Speaker 1: one of the most high profile Democrats in the country

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Speaker 1: and endorsed Barack Obama famously in two thousand and eight, Biden,

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Speaker 1: you know, was vehement against the Trump administration. All of that,

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Speaker 1: he got a total media makeover and Obama wrote this

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Speaker 1: like long hay giography to Colon Powell. Put that up

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Speaker 1: there on the screen, please, I mean this extra. Of

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Speaker 1: course Obama has to make it about himself. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: endorsement about Yeah, that's what he really does, right, I mean,

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Speaker 1: this is clastic Obama. He's not allowed to let somebody

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Speaker 1: pass without making it about himself. And what the real

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Speaker 1: reminder here is that so many people wanted to try

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Speaker 1: and have it both ways. What they really want to

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Speaker 1: do is just squash the Iraq stuff so that they

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Speaker 1: could hold him up as they did long time in

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Speaker 1: the media and say, see former Republican Colon Powell supports

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Speaker 1: Barack Obama. And I remember when I was like sixteen,

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Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, that's crazy. And then after

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Speaker 1: a while you're like, oh, they're doing this about everything

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Speaker 1: former Colon Powell supports this media, you know, narrative, and

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Speaker 1: then they don't really want to talk about Colon Powell

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Speaker 1: and his legacy. And we I think, you know what

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Speaker 1: we did yesterday, we talked about Iraq. It's will be

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Speaker 1: his most lasting imprint on this country. Let's be honest,

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Speaker 1: and the world and the entire world you can ask

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Speaker 1: iraqis also you could say, well, the tragedy is he

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Speaker 1: had an inspirational life story, served in Vietnam, he was

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Speaker 1: a chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he had a

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Speaker 1: great career, and ultimately he mortgaged his reputation with the

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Speaker 1: American people to sell us on the most disastrous foreign

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Speaker 1: policy adventure of all time in US history. And that's

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Speaker 1: really just the entire story of who Colin Powell was.

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Speaker 1: And we're not you know, look, I wish his family

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Speaker 1: the best relative all of that. Nobody wants to cause

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Speaker 1: them pain. But when you are a public servant and

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Speaker 1: you have such a long impact on the world, remembering

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Speaker 1: who these people are correctly is important. The stories that

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Speaker 1: we tell about who people were and about their faults

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Speaker 1: and then some of their pluses. It doesn't have to

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Speaker 1: be just one or the other. And unfortunately, that's basically

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Speaker 1: how the entire like you know, mainstream media tried to

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Speaker 1: cover this, like they are attacking people who even brought

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Speaker 1: up the Iraq War. That was the real problem I saw. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So none of these people who lied us into war

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Speaker 1: faced any sort of accountability in terms of justice for

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Speaker 1: the crimes that they committed, the lives that they perpetrated

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Speaker 1: on the American people, the servicemen and women of ours

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Speaker 1: who were sent overseas to fight and die or be

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Speaker 1: grievously wounded, or just be taken away from their family

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Speaker 1: at critical moments their life. There was never any accountability

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Speaker 1: for that, let alone the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis

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Speaker 1: who died in that conflict, let alone what happened in

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Speaker 1: Afghanistan over all of these many years as well. There

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Speaker 1: was no justice or accountability over that. So at the

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Speaker 1: very least, when a person passes, there has to be

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Speaker 1: an accurate public record of what they actually did. As

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Speaker 1: you know, a public figure with immense amounts of power

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Speaker 1: in their life, it's not to be mean, to be nasty,

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Speaker 1: it's not to cause his family pain, who one hundred

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Speaker 1: percent I feel for them in their sorrow. And all

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Speaker 1: the reports are on a personal level that he was

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Speaker 1: a kind and wonderful person. This has nothing to do

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Speaker 1: with that. This is about when you are a public

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Speaker 1: figure who had that kind of immense power in the

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Speaker 1: final calculus, the public record needs to be accurate of

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Speaker 1: what exactly you did. Now, there was one more that

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Speaker 1: happened last night Fox incident to Adivils, which is after

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Speaker 1: the whole day of knowing that it was not only

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Speaker 1: COVID but blood cancer. Of course, Tucker does an entire

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Speaker 1: monologue about how this shows you that you've been lied

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Speaker 1: to about the vaccine and all of this, I mean,

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Speaker 1: just flagrantly wrong and irresponsible and all of those things.

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Speaker 1: But I think your right to frame this as immediately

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Speaker 1: his death, rather than seeking what is an accurate portrayal

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Speaker 1: of his true lasting legacy and the imprint he left

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Speaker 1: on this country in the world. It was immediately filtered

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Speaker 1: through the culture war lens on the right. They wanted

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Speaker 1: to use this to make a point about vaccines and

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Speaker 1: liberals who have held up not only Colin Powell, but

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Speaker 1: any number of Bush era neocons, some of the worst

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Speaker 1: war criminals in history. They've held up as icons of

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Speaker 1: the resistance because they happen to be against Donald Trump.

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Speaker 1: Trump becomes the defining figure, the defining issue. Nothing else matters.

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Speaker 1: Any other sin or crime you created in the past

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Speaker 1: can be forgiven so long as you have the right

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Speaker 1: answer on that one question of where do you stand

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Speaker 1: on Donald Trump. By the way, this also showed up

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Speaker 1: with some folks on Fox, Chris Wallace. We've showed you

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Speaker 1: Brian Kilmead earlier. We can throw the Chris Wallace tear

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Speaker 1: sheet up on the screen. He went, you know, out

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Speaker 1: of his way to say this, Oh, this one thing

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Speaker 1: with regard to Iraq and the infamous WMD speech, that

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Speaker 1: was just a blot on a time figure's career. And

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Speaker 1: it shouldn't define Colin Powell. And in fact, I know

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Speaker 1: Colon Powell very much wanted for that not to define

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Speaker 1: his entire legacy. But the fact of the matter is

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Speaker 1: that is the largest impact that he had. That is,

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Speaker 1: he used what was a pristine reputation in Washington with

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Speaker 1: Democrats and Republicans and the entire American people, and the

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Speaker 1: people certainly the DC Foreign Policy establishment. The Bush administration

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Speaker 1: knew they didn't have that kind of credibility, so they

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Speaker 1: used Colin Powell to make the case at the UN,

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Speaker 1: to make the case to reluctant Democrats in Congress as well.

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Speaker 1: He was the one that I don't know if you're

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Speaker 1: with this is like digging up the past, but I

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Speaker 1: think it's important to remember these things. He was the

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Speaker 1: one that came up with this initial strategy of we're

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Speaker 1: going to get new weapons inspections and a vote to

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Speaker 1: authorize war. Well, that's really just putting pressure on the

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Speaker 1: UN to be more aggressed of against Iraq. Of course

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Speaker 1: that turned a vote for war turned out to be

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Speaker 1: a vote for war. Who could have seen that coming.

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Speaker 1: But because Colin Powell had endorsed this strategy, that gave

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Speaker 1: a lot of Democrats who were open to it but

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Speaker 1: who were on the fence that pushed them in the direction.

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Speaker 1: And then of course the speech that he gives at

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Speaker 1: the UN, that he carefully crafted, that he delivered very forcefully,

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Speaker 1: that said it was you know unequivocally that Iraq had

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Speaker 1: these biological weapons and weapons of mass destruction. It is

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Speaker 1: hard to understate, like you cannot overstate how much that

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Speaker 1: changed the calculus in Washington. How much that pushed some

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Speaker 1: of these reluctant players on board. Powell, from all reports,

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Speaker 1: had a lot of reservations about this war and was

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Speaker 1: opposed internally to going into a rock. He basically said,

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Speaker 1: you know, listen, you break it, you buy it, and

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Speaker 1: this could be a potential disaster. But rather than speaking that,

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Speaker 1: rather than resigning in protest, rather than taking any number

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Speaker 1: of other paths, instead he fell in line. He was

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Speaker 1: case that led to utter disaster. He was instrumental in

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Speaker 1: ultimately ultimately making that case. And you know what's ironic here.

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Speaker 1: As you mentioned he served in Vietnam. He also played

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Speaker 1: a small role in covering up a massacre in Vietnam

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Speaker 1: as well. So that's a little preview of things that

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Speaker 1: were to come in his career. But the pal doctrine

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Speaker 1: was all about avoiding the mistakes of Vietnam. Yeah, that's true.

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Speaker 1: It was all about we have to make sure that

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Speaker 1: the public's on board. We have to make sure that

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Speaker 1: there's a clear objective that you go in with overwhelming

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Speaker 1: force and then you get the hell out of there,

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Speaker 1: so that we don't end up mired in these forever wars.

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Speaker 1: And then in the in the end, he of course

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Speaker 1: becomes instrumental in pushing our nation back into the next Vietnam,

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Speaker 1: a conflict from which, you know, which was just a

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Speaker 1: disaster from start to finish, which was necessary and uncalled

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Speaker 1: for to begin with, and which lasted, lasted and lasted

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Speaker 1: without public support. So that's the truth about coldon POW's legacy.

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Speaker 1: I think that's right. And look, I think our listeners

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Speaker 1: who are eighteen nineteen or even you know, maybe even

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Speaker 1: a little bit older, you guys probably don't remember like

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Speaker 1: how the run up to the war and how instrumental

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Speaker 1: that he was. I mean, this was the speech, the

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Speaker 1: defining speech that pushed the public and a lot of

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Speaker 1: the people in the international community to support the invasion

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Speaker 1: of Iraq. Let's take a listen to that. Things that

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Speaker 1: emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on O

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Speaker 1: Racks biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities

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Speaker 1: used to make biological agents. Let me take you inside

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Speaker 1: that intelligence file and share with you what we know

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Speaker 1: from eyewitness accounts. We have first hand descriptions of biological

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Speaker 1: weapons factories on wheels and on rails. The trucks and

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Speaker 1: train cars are easily moved and are designed to evade

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Speaker 1: detection by inspectors. In a matter of months, they can

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Speaker 1: produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire

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Speaker 1: amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years

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Speaker 1: prior to the go for Sadam Hussein's intentions have never changed.

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Speaker 1: He is not developing the missiles for self defense. These

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Speaker 1: are missiles that Iraq wants in order to project power,

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Speaker 1: to threaten, and to deliver a chemical biological and if

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Speaker 1: we let him nuclear warheads. Yeah, not a single thing.

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Speaker 1: And that turned out to be true, Chris, Yeah, not one.

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Speaker 1: And actually sitting behind him was George Tennant, the CIA director,

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Speaker 1: who also was instrumental and also has never faced any accountability.

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Speaker 1: And there was a good tweet, Actually, let's put this

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Speaker 1: up there on the screen, which just goes to show,

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Speaker 1: I mean, this was the aftermath of how important that

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Speaker 1: speech was in convincing the American foreign policy establishment to

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Speaker 1: go to war. And I thought Spencer Ackerman actually put

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Speaker 1: this quite well. Put the next one up there on

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Speaker 1: the screen, please, which is that? And this is why

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Speaker 1: we're spending so much time on this whatever else Colon

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Speaker 1: Powell achieved in life, and it was a lot. He

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Speaker 1: was the only man who could have stopped the Iraq War,

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Speaker 1: and instead he chose to swallow his doubts about the

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Speaker 1: disaster that he knew it would be and sell the invasion.

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Speaker 1: And I think that that's what it is. He was

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Speaker 1: a man of integrity, and he was somebody who developed

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Speaker 1: the power doctrine. He was somebody who off the record

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Speaker 1: was calling every journalist in Washington saying, this is going

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Speaker 1: to be a total disaster. But when it came down

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Speaker 1: to it, he did not look President Bush in the

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Speaker 1: eyes and say I'm against this war. He never told

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Speaker 1: him that he was actually against it, and at the

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Speaker 1: end of the day he acquiesced to it. And when

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Speaker 1: Iraq started to become a disaster, he put it off

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Speaker 1: onto Condoleeza Rice in Donald Rumswell's hands and said, Okay,

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Speaker 1: you guys handle it. Because he wanted to preserve his

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Speaker 1: Stirling reputation and get out of the administration while maintaining

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Speaker 1: the credibility without having done anything to prevent the war

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Speaker 1: in the first place. Well, that's what we have to

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Speaker 1: talk about here. There's a lot of human flaws that

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Speaker 1: led him to that moment. First of all, there's the

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Speaker 1: soldier's mentality, the fall in line. You know, you're not

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Speaker 1: there to have an opinion, You're there to do what

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Speaker 1: you're told. It's okay, the secretary of State, you literally

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Speaker 1: are there for your opinion. Indeed, yes, indeed, and not

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Speaker 1: to mention. I mean, just when you reach those heights

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Speaker 1: of power, your judgment really really matters. And especially because

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Speaker 1: there was so much trust vested in him, he really look,

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Speaker 1: there's no guarantees he could have avoided war, but as

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Speaker 1: Spencer puts it, there he was the last man that

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Speaker 1: really had a shot, and instead, when Bush came to

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Speaker 1: him and said, listen, I think we got to go

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Speaker 1: into a rock. Are you with me? He said yes,

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Speaker 1: I am, yes, sir. And part of it too was

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Speaker 1: careerist ambition. I don't think there's any doubt about that.

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Speaker 1: The truth of the matter was within the Bush administration

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Speaker 1: he was kind of on the outside. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condallieza Rice,

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Speaker 1: they were the ones who were really the power players

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Speaker 1: who had the you're the president and so what Condallieza

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Speaker 1: Rice advised Colon Powell reportedly was that if he you know,

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Speaker 1: threw in with Bush on this, and he went and

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Speaker 1: made the case the un that he would be in

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Speaker 1: the position then he could manage the war. And he thought, okay, well,

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Speaker 1: if I can be the person who manages the war,

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Speaker 1: then this can be less of a disaster. Of course,

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Speaker 1: they had no intention of actually using him in that regard.

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Speaker 1: They only wanted to use him because of his reputation.

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Speaker 1: And so he ends up just being the one that

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Speaker 1: launders all of this for the American public and for

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Speaker 1: Democrats in Congress, and that's ultimately shameful. And also, you know,

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Speaker 1: I saw a lot of o in the end. He

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Speaker 1: regretted it, et cetera, et cetera. But look, I went

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Speaker 1: back and watched a bunch of interviews of Colin Powell

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Speaker 1: from after he was out of the administration two thousand

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Speaker 1: and five, two thousand and six, when number one, it's

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Speaker 1: totally clear there's no weapons of mass destruction. Number two,

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Speaker 1: it's totally clear that a rock is a complete disaster.

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Speaker 1: But when he still could have had a lot of

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Speaker 1: influence in terms of the course and direction of that war,

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Speaker 1: he was still carrying water for Bush, saying listen, the

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Speaker 1: President and didn't know we use the best intelligence that

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Speaker 1: we had, and so I think that's one other learning

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Speaker 1: from this too, though, is that you know, he was

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Speaker 1: a creature of the foreign policy establishment of Washington, and he,

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Speaker 1: even though he was reluctant to go to war in Iraq,

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Speaker 1: he thought, like the rest of the foreign policy establishment did,

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Speaker 1: that there were weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam Hussein

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Speaker 1: was this you know, bad actor that needed to be

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Speaker 1: taken out. And so because he was of that total

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Speaker 1: group think mindset, which we see far too often here

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Speaker 1: in this town, that also was what pushed him in

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Speaker 1: the direction of ultimately making this incredibly faithful speech and

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Speaker 1: paving the road that ultimately led to the utter catastrophe

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Speaker 1: for our nation and for the globe that was the

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Speaker 1: Iraq for It's very difficult to describe just because we're

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Speaker 1: on the tail end of it now, what Iraq did

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Speaker 1: to our international credibility, to our domestic politics, to everything. Really,

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Speaker 1: I mean, the entire world that we live in is

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Speaker 1: because of Iraq. Even the financial crisis, arguably I mean Afghanistan,

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Speaker 1: the trillions of dollars spent, Who knows how different it

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Speaker 1: all could have come together. So we have to spend time.

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Speaker 1: And part of the real tragedy of the Iraq War

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Speaker 1: was all of the people like Powell, media and more

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Speaker 1: who had a lot of trust with the American people

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Speaker 1: who mortgaged it for a lie that cost the lives

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Speaker 1: of thousands of American soldiers. Of who knows how many

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Speaker 1: Iraqis of Isis Syria. I mean, we are so much

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Speaker 1: less safe and worse off because of the Iraq War

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Speaker 1: that it's difficult to understand. And so it's in these

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Speaker 1: times that we have to have this discussion, a nuanced discussion, yeah,

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Speaker 1: about what it meant and why and the people who

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Speaker 1: were involved, so that the people who are younger who

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Speaker 1: don't remember, can have an accurate understanding of what actually

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Speaker 1: went down. Yeah. And the last response, highly cringe response

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Speaker 1: that will show you is from Congressman Jamal Bowman, squad

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Speaker 1: member Progressive, who said, as a black man just trying

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Speaker 1: to figure out the world, Colon Powell was an inspiration.

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Speaker 1: He was from NYC, went to City College and rose

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Speaker 1: to the highest rank of our nation. Sending love, strength,

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Speaker 1: and prayer to the family and friends of Secretary Powell.

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Speaker 1: Rest in power, sir, so, I don't doubt that Colin

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Speaker 1: Powell was in his you know, truly remarkable up from

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Speaker 1: the bootstraps immigrant parents. Not an exceptional student goes to

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Speaker 1: city college in New York, so not you know, Harvard

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Speaker 1: or Yale or one of the big name schools. I

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Speaker 1: don't doubt that that example was an inspiration to many.

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Speaker 1: But you cannot leave out that that inspiration turned out

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Speaker 1: to be fools gold, because in the end it resulted

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Speaker 1: in total catastrophe. And if you're not telling that part

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Speaker 1: of the story, then you're just not telling the truth

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Speaker 1: about the life and legacy of this man. Ultimately. That's right,

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Speaker 1: Chrys all right, So we've got some really interesting news

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Speaker 1: for you here on the union busting front, a couple

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Speaker 1: of stories to bring to you. Let's start with Starbucks. Slitzer.

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Speaker 1: This tear sheet up on the screen. So a number

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Speaker 1: of stores, Starbucks stores in Buffalo have been working to unionize,

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Speaker 1: news that we brought you before, and this would be

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Speaker 1: the first These would be the first Starbucks stores to

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Speaker 1: be unionized in the entire country. So this is a

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Speaker 1: really big deal, and Starbucks appears to be totally freaking

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Speaker 1: out and taking radical approaches to making sure that these

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Speaker 1: workers do not Ultimately unionize New York Times with a

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Speaker 1: good story here about some of the tactics that have

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Speaker 1: been employed. The lead is During her decade plus at Starbucks,

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Speaker 1: Michelle Iisen says she's endured her share of workplace stress.

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Speaker 1: She points to increase productivity, goals, high turnover, etc. But

432
00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:48,040
Speaker 1: she had never encountered a change that the company made.

433
00:23:48,080 --> 00:23:50,280
Speaker 1: After workers at her store and two other Buffalo area

434
00:23:50,359 --> 00:23:54,920
Speaker 1: locations filed for a union election, two additional support managers

435
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:57,960
Speaker 1: quote unquote from outam State who often work on the

436
00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:00,240
Speaker 1: floor with the barisas and who according to Massi and

437
00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:04,320
Speaker 1: have created on ees. Now. Starbucks says those additional managers

438
00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:08,160
Speaker 1: in along with they've also flooded these stores with new

439
00:24:08,160 --> 00:24:12,119
Speaker 1: workers who haven't weren't initially involved in the union efforts.

440
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:13,960
Speaker 1: So now you've got a new whole group of people

441
00:24:14,040 --> 00:24:16,080
Speaker 1: that you've got to educate and you've got to persuade,

442
00:24:16,560 --> 00:24:18,880
Speaker 1: and by the way, you've got to do this under

443
00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:24,000
Speaker 1: the watchful eye of these like corporate level managers who

444
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:27,800
Speaker 1: have come in to effectively spy on these workers. It's

445
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:31,239
Speaker 1: very clear what's going on here. Another tactic that they

446
00:24:31,359 --> 00:24:34,919
Speaker 1: use so early on, they have pushed to expand the

447
00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:37,280
Speaker 1: bargaining unit, so that it's not just these couple of

448
00:24:37,320 --> 00:24:39,800
Speaker 1: stores that said, hey, we want to unionize that they're saying, oh,

449
00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:41,760
Speaker 1: we want it to be all of the stores in Buffalo,

450
00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 1: which of course makes it harder because again you've got

451
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:45,560
Speaker 1: to go now, you've got to organize all of those

452
00:24:45,560 --> 00:24:48,120
Speaker 1: stores in Buffalo. So they did that. Then they had

453
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 1: these quote unquote listening sessions, which of course were you know,

454
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 1: anti union propaganda one on one in a very intimidating setting.

455
00:24:56,440 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 1: They had corporate executives all the way up to the

456
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:03,200
Speaker 1: level of how we're Schultz come in and you know,

457
00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:05,880
Speaker 1: be in these stores and sit for some of these

458
00:25:05,920 --> 00:25:09,600
Speaker 1: listening sessions with workers. And now what they're partly doing

459
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:14,240
Speaker 1: is flooding the stores with new workers, sending in these spies,

460
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:16,760
Speaker 1: these assistant managers to make sure there's no you know,

461
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:20,960
Speaker 1: funny business about talking about worker solidarity or unions. They're

462
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:24,000
Speaker 1: going above and beyond to make sure that this union

463
00:25:24,080 --> 00:25:26,439
Speaker 1: drive is ultimately not successful. And we got to be

464
00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:29,160
Speaker 1: honest with you, I mean, i'll probably work oh yeah,

465
00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:32,280
Speaker 1: because we've we've seen when companies decide there's not going

466
00:25:32,320 --> 00:25:34,840
Speaker 1: to be a union there, whether it's Starbucks, whether it's Amazon,

467
00:25:34,840 --> 00:25:38,320
Speaker 1: whether it's Walmart, they will do whatever's necessary. Now, I

468
00:25:38,359 --> 00:25:41,199
Speaker 1: will tell you that some of these, according to New

469
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:43,920
Speaker 1: York Times, and according to my own knowledge of labor law,

470
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:47,879
Speaker 1: some of these tactics probably fall into the category of

471
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:51,760
Speaker 1: illegal intimidation. But you have to investigate it. Union elections

472
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:54,600
Speaker 1: are supposed to take place in a laboratory like condition.

473
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:57,159
Speaker 1: It is not supposed to be subject to all this

474
00:25:57,240 --> 00:25:59,600
Speaker 1: kind of pressure and manipulation and changing the game and

475
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 1: bringing people in and these assistant manager as serving spies.

476
00:26:03,040 --> 00:26:05,600
Speaker 1: That none of that is supposed to be happening. So

477
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:09,240
Speaker 1: it's very possible that, like what happened in Bessemer, Alabama,

478
00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:12,120
Speaker 1: if the union election does happen and the workers who

479
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:14,960
Speaker 1: want a union do not prevail, it is likely this

480
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 1: will be contested and they may have to run a

481
00:26:17,320 --> 00:26:19,879
Speaker 1: new election, et cetera, et cetera. But especially in a

482
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:23,760
Speaker 1: service industry where turnover is already very quick, the more

483
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:26,280
Speaker 1: you push these things off into the future, the greater

484
00:26:26,359 --> 00:26:29,680
Speaker 1: your chance of ultimate successes. So Starbucks likely breaking the

485
00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:32,480
Speaker 1: law here, and also it likely won't matter. Well, what's

486
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:34,639
Speaker 1: stunning is that they even have a transcript of a

487
00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:37,679
Speaker 1: video in which a district manager this was just in September,

488
00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:41,200
Speaker 1: was in Arizona, and she tells coworkers the company asked

489
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:43,640
Speaker 1: her to spend time in Buffalo over the next ninety

490
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:46,640
Speaker 1: days because quote, there's a huge task force out there

491
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 1: that's trying to fix the problem. Because if Buffalo York

492
00:26:49,280 --> 00:26:52,880
Speaker 1: has unionized, it will be the first market in Starbucks' history. Yeah,

493
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:55,600
Speaker 1: and she also says that when someone as if the

494
00:26:55,640 --> 00:26:58,360
Speaker 1: task force is a quote last ditch effort to try

495
00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:01,040
Speaker 1: and stop it, she says, yeah, we're gonna save it.

496
00:27:01,320 --> 00:27:05,560
Speaker 1: I mean, it's on vidio. It's literally out the open.

497
00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:08,240
Speaker 1: It's pretty stunning. I love how they're just packing these

498
00:27:08,240 --> 00:27:10,399
Speaker 1: stores full of employees, even though they don't need to

499
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:13,359
Speaker 1: be there all in order to try and screw with it.

500
00:27:13,400 --> 00:27:15,560
Speaker 1: I mean, look, it doesn't take a genius to say

501
00:27:15,560 --> 00:27:18,639
Speaker 1: that this seems pretty illegal allegedly for the star wars

502
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:22,600
Speaker 1: Starbucks lawyers, and you know, for whatever their official explanation

503
00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:24,879
Speaker 1: for all of this, they say it's official company policy

504
00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:27,600
Speaker 1: just for the record, But put that in the context

505
00:27:27,640 --> 00:27:28,879
Speaker 1: of where we are right now, and this is what

506
00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:31,159
Speaker 1: we've been trying to keep our eye on. The biggest

507
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:34,360
Speaker 1: story in the country. Is millions of people quitting their

508
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:38,200
Speaker 1: jobs getting higher wages. You know, many tens of thousands

509
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:40,919
Speaker 1: at John Deere and many Kellogg all their places coming

510
00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:44,760
Speaker 1: together and demanding better working conditions after a huge moment

511
00:27:44,800 --> 00:27:48,240
Speaker 1: of sacrifice in the economy. And you put all of

512
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 1: that together and you really do see a stunning but

513
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:56,560
Speaker 1: I think a stunning disconnect in terms of where national

514
00:27:56,640 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 1: attention and focus is and where it should be. And

515
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:01,800
Speaker 1: it's because of the class bias that we see in

516
00:28:01,840 --> 00:28:03,879
Speaker 1: so much of our media. Like I said, I mean,

517
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:05,959
Speaker 1: I jokingly was telling you all this, but the Sunday

518
00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:08,720
Speaker 1: New York Times was literally about January six was about

519
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:12,400
Speaker 1: recreating January sixth and pointing to the seven people who

520
00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:15,240
Speaker 1: are most you know, responsible, And I'm like, do people

521
00:28:15,359 --> 00:28:18,320
Speaker 1: truly have nothing better to do to elevate to the

522
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:21,200
Speaker 1: highest consciousness? Look? To be fair, we are. This is

523
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:23,439
Speaker 1: a New York Times story. I'm not saying that it

524
00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:26,639
Speaker 1: isn't covered in any way. But ask yourself what's on

525
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:30,520
Speaker 1: cable news. Ask yourself what is really having momentous attention.

526
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:33,800
Speaker 1: And it's because there's not a big there's no Trump

527
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:37,920
Speaker 1: angle here, there's no like Republicans bad, Democrats good or

528
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 1: like you know, Joe Manchin, Bernie Sanders or whatever. It's

529
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:45,520
Speaker 1: just just people who are trying to get a better wage.

530
00:28:45,920 --> 00:28:49,560
Speaker 1: And the absolute lengths a political lengths, right. I mean,

531
00:28:49,560 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 1: remember this is Howard Schultz, these you know, big time

532
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:55,560
Speaker 1: Democrat and all of that big founder they have Black

533
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: Lives Matter all over the stores, all that stuff. I'd

534
00:28:57,720 --> 00:28:58,880
Speaker 1: love to know, by the way, how many of these

535
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:01,640
Speaker 1: workers are actually black, given what we know about Buffalo,

536
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:04,560
Speaker 1: New York. And of course they're willing to, you know,

537
00:29:04,640 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: take out all the stops there, so it stops right

538
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:09,360
Speaker 1: there whenever it comes to wages end. But I think

539
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:13,320
Speaker 1: it's amazing when you see that class bias really penetrate,

540
00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: and we just see each one of these data points

541
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:18,200
Speaker 1: bubble up all across the country, and it really does

542
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:20,760
Speaker 1: take almost a John Deere level one to even get

543
00:29:20,760 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 1: the media to pay the tiniest little bit of attention,

544
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:26,680
Speaker 1: Like it takes ten thousand workers at John Deere. But

545
00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:30,520
Speaker 1: this is happening everywhere, I mean, and Starbucks throwing everything

546
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:33,040
Speaker 1: at it. We saw the roots of that in Amazon,

547
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:35,680
Speaker 1: and I think this is going to be a continuing

548
00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:37,920
Speaker 1: through line for the next couple of months, more and

549
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:40,440
Speaker 1: more people are going to think about trying to unionize.

550
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: And the companies themselves, they're richer than ever. Crystal they

551
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 1: made more money than ever in twenty twenty because of

552
00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:48,040
Speaker 1: the pandemic, which the unions tell us all the time,

553
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:50,000
Speaker 1: and they're going to use that money in order to

554
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 1: try and crack down on what's happening. Yes, And I mean,

555
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:55,600
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you can tell that Starbucks sees

556
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:57,400
Speaker 1: this as a real threat, and that in and of

557
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:00,400
Speaker 1: itself is encouraging, just as Amazon saw the best of

558
00:30:00,440 --> 00:30:04,720
Speaker 1: our effort as a real threat. And so they do

559
00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 1: fear that if one of these shops were to sneak through,

560
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 1: it could start a domino effect. And I don't think

561
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:14,160
Speaker 1: they're wrong to fear that. On the media point, it's

562
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 1: not just that there isn't like Trump versus Biden angle

563
00:30:18,240 --> 00:30:21,520
Speaker 1: here to be had. It's also that the whole idea

564
00:30:22,080 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 1: of a cross partisan, multi racial working class working together

565
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:29,320
Speaker 1: in solidarity goes against the entire narrative that they've been

566
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:32,360
Speaker 1: selling the country for years now. Is very inconvenient. We're

567
00:30:32,360 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 1: supposed to hate each other, right, We're supposed to be

568
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:38,400
Speaker 1: inches away from a civil war. We're supposed to believe

569
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 1: that our greatest enemy is you know, the person who

570
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 1: thinks differently about politics or comes from a different cultural

571
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:49,280
Speaker 1: background or whatever it is. That's who's supposed to be

572
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:52,400
Speaker 1: the real enemy. So when you see these workers, and

573
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:54,400
Speaker 1: as I mentioned before, we're going to talk to a

574
00:30:54,600 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 1: local president with John Deere about what's going on there.

575
00:30:57,360 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 1: But you know, you see these workers not just fighting

576
00:30:59,800 --> 00:31:03,320
Speaker 1: for them themselves, but a lot of the core of

577
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:06,560
Speaker 1: the strikes right now are about a two tier wage system.

578
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:10,720
Speaker 1: So you've got older workers who are good, they're doing

579
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:13,920
Speaker 1: pretty well, they've got a pretty good contract, and they're

580
00:31:13,920 --> 00:31:17,120
Speaker 1: fighting for their brother and sister coming down the line

581
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:20,120
Speaker 1: who's coming up with a much worse deal. And they're saying,

582
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 1: this is about me fighting for our future. It's not

583
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:26,920
Speaker 1: even about myself. That sort of solidarity and collective action

584
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 1: is not supposed to be a thing in America today,

585
00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 1: if you believe the lens in the prism through which

586
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:35,920
Speaker 1: the media presents everything, where it's all about, you know,

587
00:31:36,440 --> 00:31:40,320
Speaker 1: outrage over masks or not masks, or vaccine or not

588
00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 1: vaccine those or Trump or not Trump. I mean, that's

589
00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:46,360
Speaker 1: all the ultimate fault line in all of this, so

590
00:31:46,640 --> 00:31:48,600
Speaker 1: to see this type of action, while it just doesn't

591
00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 1: fit with their narrative, Starbucks is not the only big

592
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 1: corporation who's out there union busting. I can bring you

593
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:58,400
Speaker 1: another update on Dollar General. This one's pretty interesting too.

594
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:01,960
Speaker 1: Let's throw this more perfect union had this scoop. Guys,

595
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: they're doing such good work over there. Make sure you

596
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:06,479
Speaker 1: follow them if you can support the work that they're doing,

597
00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:08,840
Speaker 1: because they've really been highlighting these union struggles in an

598
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:12,960
Speaker 1: effective way, they say Scoop. Dollar General was caught illegally

599
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 1: intimidating workers just days before a store in Connecticut is

600
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 1: set to vote on whether to form the company's first

601
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 1: ever US union district. Managers visited the store on Saturday

602
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:27,840
Speaker 1: and threatened to close it if workers voted yes. I mean,

603
00:32:27,880 --> 00:32:34,560
Speaker 1: that is blatantly textbook illegal worker intimidation tactics. It happens

604
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 1: all the time, mind you, it happens all the time.

605
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:40,800
Speaker 1: Whether it's as explicit as this reportedly is that they

606
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:42,760
Speaker 1: just came in and were like, you know, you vote

607
00:32:42,760 --> 00:32:44,520
Speaker 1: for a union, the store is getting shut down, You're

608
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 1: not going to have a job anymore, or whether it's

609
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:51,040
Speaker 1: more subtle. I remember during the VW organizing in Tennessee,

610
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:54,280
Speaker 1: there were politicians who were suggesting, hey, you know, they

611
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:57,640
Speaker 1: may just not have the jobs here for you going

612
00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:00,360
Speaker 1: forward if you vote to unionize, even though Volkswagen themselves

613
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:02,480
Speaker 1: were actually in favor of the union. So you see

614
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 1: this happen all the time. It's also worth noting more

615
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,800
Speaker 1: Perfect Union says that the union involved here UFCW, they'll

616
00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 1: fight file charges with the NLRB against Dollar General for

617
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:17,400
Speaker 1: those union busting activities the voter schedule for this Friday.

618
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:22,160
Speaker 1: And part of the context here is Dollar General actually

619
00:33:22,200 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 1: pays the lowest wages of any retailer, and workers who

620
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 1: have been talking to more Perfect Union and other outlets

621
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 1: say that they have also been dramatically understaffed, especially during

622
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:37,320
Speaker 1: the pandemic. And you know, we've been covering like customers

623
00:33:37,360 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 1: coming in very upset and ordering stressed down, and workers

624
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 1: have felt their lives to be at risk. Police have

625
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:44,680
Speaker 1: had to be called in for all kinds of incidents.

626
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:51,280
Speaker 1: So it's about low wages, long hours, no leave, and

627
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:54,280
Speaker 1: people feeling like their physical safety is at risk because

628
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:57,960
Speaker 1: they're it's basically they're alone in the store having handled

629
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:00,840
Speaker 1: whatever ultimately comes to them. So that's why they're trying

630
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:03,959
Speaker 1: to unionize the Dollar General, going above and beyond again

631
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:07,920
Speaker 1: with illegal, allegedly illegal tactics to try to intimidate these

632
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:11,040
Speaker 1: workers and make sure it doesn't happen. Yeah, like we said,

633
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:13,400
Speaker 1: it's going to continue happening. And you look at Dollar

634
00:34:13,440 --> 00:34:16,239
Speaker 1: General and even you know, the impetus for the unionization,

635
00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:18,600
Speaker 1: according to one of the employees who spoke with the

636
00:34:19,040 --> 00:34:22,560
Speaker 1: within these times, was that they were being treated terribly

637
00:34:22,640 --> 00:34:26,279
Speaker 1: and that the district manager allegedly ignored a complaint of

638
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:29,560
Speaker 1: sexual harassment and was heard making racement remarks. And then

639
00:34:29,600 --> 00:34:32,960
Speaker 1: the district manager unfairly accused a manager of stealing, and

640
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:35,200
Speaker 1: they all got scared because they were like, they can

641
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:37,600
Speaker 1: do this to us. They have this amount of control

642
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:39,759
Speaker 1: of our lives. And if you've been in a rural

643
00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:42,040
Speaker 1: part of the country, sometimes Dollar General is the only

644
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:44,040
Speaker 1: game in town, and a lot of people have to

645
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:46,239
Speaker 1: drive like twenty thirty miles just to like go to

646
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:49,680
Speaker 1: a Walmart in order to try and buy general necessities,

647
00:34:49,760 --> 00:34:52,239
Speaker 1: let alone groceries, which is a big problem for a

648
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:54,800
Speaker 1: lot of people. So Dollar General and the Dollar Store,

649
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:56,960
Speaker 1: you know, these various types, they have a lot of

650
00:34:56,960 --> 00:35:02,040
Speaker 1: power in these rural communities and advising power for wages

651
00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:05,040
Speaker 1: they can pay nothing. This is an Amazon story which

652
00:35:05,040 --> 00:35:07,680
Speaker 1: we're about to get to as well, so it's incredibly

653
00:35:07,680 --> 00:35:09,440
Speaker 1: important that we track it. Yeah, they have an incredibly

654
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:13,040
Speaker 1: predatory model. I mean, that's the bottom line. They thrive

655
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:17,080
Speaker 1: when economic times are difficult, when the working class is struggling.

656
00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:19,720
Speaker 1: And I think the stat I saw is that seventy

657
00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:22,480
Speaker 1: five percent of the population lives within five miles of

658
00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 1: a dollar general. They're everywhere, and you know, I live

659
00:35:26,120 --> 00:35:28,319
Speaker 1: in a rural community. We've got one few miles away

660
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 1: from me. They're ubiquitous, and yet they're and highly profitable.

661
00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 1: They did extremely well during the pandemic, record breaking profits

662
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:40,920
Speaker 1: and yet lowest wages of any large retailer in the

663
00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:43,680
Speaker 1: entire country. So that's what those workers are fighting for,

664
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:46,040
Speaker 1: that's right. Hey. So remember how we told you how

665
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:49,080
Speaker 1: awesome premium membership was. Well, here we are again to

666
00:35:49,160 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 1: remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't

667
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:55,239
Speaker 1: have to listen to our constant pleas for you to subscribe.

668
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 1: So what are you waiting for? Become a premium member

669
00:35:57,680 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: today by going to breakingpoints dot com, which you can

670
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:04,960
Speaker 1: click on in the show notes. Speaking of corporate malfeasance Amazon,

671
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:10,359
Speaker 1: This is pretty fascinating. So members of Congress at least

672
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:13,279
Speaker 1: signaling that they might get a little bit tough on

673
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:18,239
Speaker 1: Amazon after it looks from new reporting that executives there

674
00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:21,720
Speaker 1: up to and including Jeff Bezos, may have at least

675
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:26,400
Speaker 1: misled and possibly blatantly lied to members of Congress in

676
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:30,040
Speaker 1: testimony about their anti competitive practices. Let's throw this tear

677
00:36:30,040 --> 00:36:32,879
Speaker 1: sheet up on the screen. This is from the Wall

678
00:36:32,880 --> 00:36:35,840
Speaker 1: Street Journal. The headline here, members of Congressional Committee question

679
00:36:36,360 --> 00:36:39,760
Speaker 1: whether Amazon executives misled Congress in a letter by Parson,

680
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:43,879
Speaker 1: Group of reps ask for documents and exculpatory evidence as

681
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:48,760
Speaker 1: they consider whether to recommend a Justice Department criminal referral

682
00:36:48,840 --> 00:36:54,440
Speaker 1: for an investigation. So these members of Congress again, some Republicans,

683
00:36:54,440 --> 00:36:57,960
Speaker 1: some Democrats. You had Primilogi, Apologerry Nadler, David Cislinios had

684
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:01,120
Speaker 1: Ken Buck, you had Matt Gates. They sent this letter

685
00:37:01,160 --> 00:37:04,320
Speaker 1: that Wall Street Journal got their hands on, saying to Amazon,

686
00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:08,440
Speaker 1: you better show us some evidence, some exculpatory evidence, proving

687
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:12,400
Speaker 1: that you weren't lying to us about using third party

688
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 1: seller data to create your own products. So what they're

689
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:19,480
Speaker 1: what they're doing, according reports, is they'll see what's performing

690
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:23,759
Speaker 1: well on their platform. They'll grab all that data, take

691
00:37:23,800 --> 00:37:26,120
Speaker 1: all that data from those sellers, all of the product

692
00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:30,759
Speaker 1: specifications down to measurements of shirts, I mean absolute specifics.

693
00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:34,680
Speaker 1: They'll use that to create their own knockoff product. And then,

694
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:38,799
Speaker 1: as if that wasn't enough theft, then they prioritize their

695
00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:44,440
Speaker 1: own product in the search results above the original maker

696
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:46,800
Speaker 1: and product. And I'm sure a lot of you guys

697
00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:49,920
Speaker 1: use Amazon. This is the world we live in, and

698
00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:53,120
Speaker 1: you probably know when you search for something, probably you're

699
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:56,760
Speaker 1: gonna select what's in the first one, two, three, five results.

700
00:37:56,920 --> 00:37:59,279
Speaker 1: On basics, it's always cheaper and it's always first. So

701
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:03,120
Speaker 1: that's what they're doing. They are privileging their own products

702
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 1: which they ripped off from other makers in the search results. Again,

703
00:38:06,680 --> 00:38:09,120
Speaker 1: they deny this for the lawyers, allegedly, et cetera, et cetera,

704
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:11,960
Speaker 1: but based on quite a lot of reporting at the

705
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:14,719
Speaker 1: moment that I'll get into in a moment. So when

706
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:19,320
Speaker 1: they were asked about this exact practice before members of Congress,

707
00:38:19,400 --> 00:38:22,399
Speaker 1: they said, no, no, no, we don't do any of that.

708
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:28,200
Speaker 1: It's against company policy, and when Bezos specifically was asked, well,

709
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:30,680
Speaker 1: do you know of incidents when it happens, he was like,

710
00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:32,520
Speaker 1: not that I'm aware. I don't know. I had to

711
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:34,279
Speaker 1: get back to you, not that I'm aware of So

712
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:36,879
Speaker 1: clear dodge there. Let me give you a little bit

713
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 1: of what the letter actually says. So they asked the

714
00:38:40,960 --> 00:38:44,520
Speaker 1: company to providing sculpatory evidence to corroborate the sworn testimony

715
00:38:44,520 --> 00:38:49,360
Speaker 1: that several leaders provided. They say, we strongly encourage you

716
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:52,120
Speaker 1: to make use of this opportunity to correct the record

717
00:38:52,160 --> 00:38:56,120
Speaker 1: and provide the committee with sworn, truthful and accurate responses

718
00:38:56,160 --> 00:38:59,520
Speaker 1: to this request as we consider whether a referral of

719
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:02,759
Speaker 1: this matter to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation

720
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:06,960
Speaker 1: is appropriate. So a pretty significant threat there. They were

721
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:11,000
Speaker 1: all testifying under oath you can't lie. And this was

722
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:13,960
Speaker 1: all sparked by Reuter's report. While Street Journal had done

723
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:16,799
Speaker 1: some reporting on this before, but a Reuter's report that

724
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:18,200
Speaker 1: I believe we can have we can throw this tear

725
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 1: sheet up on the screen. They got their hands on

726
00:39:21,280 --> 00:39:27,240
Speaker 1: thousands of pages of internal Amazon documents saying not only

727
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:31,000
Speaker 1: was this like something that happened occasionally, this is standard

728
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:37,680
Speaker 1: operating procedure. In particular, they got into the Indian market

729
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:40,960
Speaker 1: and looked at the way that Amazon operated there. And

730
00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:43,120
Speaker 1: just to give you one example of how this worked,

731
00:39:43,560 --> 00:39:47,279
Speaker 1: there's a shirt called a John Miller's shirt that was

732
00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 1: for sale. It was very popular. Amazon decided to follow

733
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:54,440
Speaker 1: their measurements down to the centimeter to replicate these shirts

734
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:57,799
Speaker 1: and privilege them. And of course they're sort you know,

735
00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:00,120
Speaker 1: their products have taken off and done extraordinarily well well.

736
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:04,360
Speaker 1: And this behavior, this anti competitive behavior, has greatly disadvantaged pedal.

737
00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:06,799
Speaker 1: I want to explain to people because people have been like, yeah,

738
00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:10,320
Speaker 1: but you know Walmart has private label, Target has private label.

739
00:40:10,320 --> 00:40:13,680
Speaker 1: Here's the difference. Amazon is both the platform and the retailer.

740
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:16,640
Speaker 1: And that's the briggest problem, which is that Amazon is

741
00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:19,759
Speaker 1: the single platform on which these businesses exist. They actually

742
00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:23,320
Speaker 1: don't really have another option in order to sell their stuff.

743
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: So whenever you're both the platform aka the marketplace, and

744
00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:31,960
Speaker 1: you're the seller and you have the ability to de

745
00:40:32,239 --> 00:40:35,760
Speaker 1: rank somebody in the algorithm and put your stuff ahead,

746
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:37,600
Speaker 1: I mean, look, if you go to Walmart, yeah, you

747
00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:39,200
Speaker 1: may be able to put something down on the shelf,

748
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:41,319
Speaker 1: but you can still see it if you're not on

749
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:43,920
Speaker 1: the page. You literally can't see it. I mean technically

750
00:40:43,960 --> 00:40:46,920
Speaker 1: you could click over. And also, fifty something percent of

751
00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 1: online retail sales in the United States were made by Amazon,

752
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:52,640
Speaker 1: I mean on Amazon. So you put market power together.

753
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:56,560
Speaker 1: The differentiator of the Internet, the fact that there is

754
00:40:56,640 --> 00:41:01,760
Speaker 1: both the marketplace and the actual retailer itself. Size in particular,

755
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:04,880
Speaker 1: I think, is what makes this the most big and

756
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 1: glaring problem. And look, Amazon knows this. That's why they

757
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:11,799
Speaker 1: say it's against their company policy because they know it's

758
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:14,799
Speaker 1: a bad look. Yeah, they specifically know that the marketplace

759
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:17,160
Speaker 1: is their biggest seller for all of this. That's how

760
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:20,319
Speaker 1: they make so much of their money. Also, Walmart and

761
00:41:20,400 --> 00:41:22,160
Speaker 1: all these other companies don't even have close to the

762
00:41:22,239 --> 00:41:25,279
Speaker 1: level of the third party data that you would have.

763
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:28,440
Speaker 1: So this is why technology is just functionally different than

764
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:31,000
Speaker 1: like a Target, a Walmart, or you know, like a

765
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:34,400
Speaker 1: grocery store, Kroger GB or something. They go in and

766
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:38,319
Speaker 1: they look at all the customer reviews exactly right, they

767
00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:40,439
Speaker 1: look at how many returns are going to be made.

768
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:44,400
Speaker 1: They're able to evaluate the specifics of this data across

769
00:41:44,480 --> 00:41:47,720
Speaker 1: you know, every brand and every version of shirt. For example,

770
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:51,160
Speaker 1: that's being sold on their platform, and then they're able

771
00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:52,920
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, this is the one that gets the

772
00:41:52,920 --> 00:41:56,359
Speaker 1: best reviews, this is the measurements, this is what it

773
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:59,719
Speaker 1: looks like. And there have been retailers before. I think

774
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:02,239
Speaker 1: it was it was Williamson Nomer. It was like a

775
00:42:02,280 --> 00:42:07,239
Speaker 1: home furnishing company that took Amazon to court over just

776
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:11,360
Speaker 1: blatantly knocking off their products. Was settled. Ultimately. There's a

777
00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:14,920
Speaker 1: shoe company called All Birds that also has called them

778
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:19,520
Speaker 1: out for just blatantly replicating their like wool sneaker that

779
00:42:19,600 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: they sell. So this has been known for a long time,

780
00:42:23,280 --> 00:42:26,360
Speaker 1: but executives have consistently either directly lied about it or

781
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: pretended that they didn't know what was going on. I've

782
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:31,960
Speaker 1: got a little montage of them denying that they have

783
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:34,560
Speaker 1: any idea what's actually happening at their company. Let's take

784
00:42:34,560 --> 00:42:36,840
Speaker 1: a listen to that. Let me get back to your office,

785
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:39,600
Speaker 1: happy to get back with your office. Happy to get

786
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:41,520
Speaker 1: back to your office with an answer to that question.

787
00:42:41,719 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I

788
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:46,239
Speaker 1: don't know the answer the direct answer to your question.

789
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:48,719
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that question. I don't

790
00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:50,200
Speaker 1: know the answer to your question, do you know if

791
00:42:50,239 --> 00:42:53,080
Speaker 1: they were designated as essential? I do not. I don't know.

792
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. I can't save the email,

793
00:42:55,760 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 1: and so I don't know the context. I don't know

794
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:00,520
Speaker 1: the specifics of that situation. Not sure where you're referring to.

795
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 1: I can't answer that question yes or no. I don't

796
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:08,319
Speaker 1: remember that at all. I cannot comment on that because

797
00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:12,000
Speaker 1: I don't remember it. So that was a smart guy

798
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:14,400
Speaker 1: that would remember a lot of right fairness. That was

799
00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:17,719
Speaker 1: a bunch of different big tech CEOs, but Bezos prominently

800
00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:19,920
Speaker 1: featured there as having no idea what's going on in

801
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:21,520
Speaker 1: his own company. And by the way, that was one

802
00:43:21,560 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 1: of the things from the Reuters report is that they

803
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:28,279
Speaker 1: found in these internal documents that highest level executives in

804
00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 1: India had been informed and involved in practice there. So

805
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:33,840
Speaker 1: there you go, and the reason why let's put that

806
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:36,760
Speaker 1: tear sheet up there. The reason why we cover Amazon

807
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:39,880
Speaker 1: so much is around size. It is the second largest

808
00:43:39,960 --> 00:43:44,320
Speaker 1: private employer in the United States. Amazon they are looking

809
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:48,240
Speaker 1: to hire one hundred and fifty thousand additional workers ahead

810
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:50,960
Speaker 1: of the holiday season to keep up with demand. This

811
00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: is generally standard practice, but it's more than one hundred

812
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:57,880
Speaker 1: thousand than Amazon announced last year. So the size of

813
00:43:57,920 --> 00:44:01,439
Speaker 1: Amazon just continues to go up and up and up.

814
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:03,959
Speaker 1: And whenever you start to go up that high, your

815
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:08,000
Speaker 1: decisions around unions and wages and how you conduct business

816
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:11,839
Speaker 1: and how you employ people, it matters because they are

817
00:44:11,880 --> 00:44:15,080
Speaker 1: slowly gobbling up the labor market of this entire country,

818
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:17,759
Speaker 1: and they're very, very astute in what they do. The

819
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:20,359
Speaker 1: announced yesterday, Oh we're gonna pay twenty one dollars an hour.

820
00:44:20,640 --> 00:44:22,759
Speaker 1: You're gonna have all this su and look great. I'm

821
00:44:22,760 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 1: glad you know they're paying twenty one dollars an hour.

822
00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:27,240
Speaker 1: But don't you dare form a union. Don't you dare

823
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 1: complain about your break time. Don't you dare, you know,

824
00:44:30,640 --> 00:44:34,840
Speaker 1: take a break whenever you're supposed to be walking thirteen steps. Also,

825
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:37,800
Speaker 1: all your data that's available for us, your steps, everything

826
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:41,280
Speaker 1: is tracked. Oh, delivery wasn't on time. Screw you, you're fired.

827
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:43,840
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just one of these things where with

828
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 1: the wage comes a lot of power. And when you

829
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:48,879
Speaker 1: have that level of power and you're the only game

830
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:51,280
Speaker 1: in town and a lot of these rural communities, twenty

831
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:54,120
Speaker 1: one dollars an hour or the only option for somebody

832
00:44:54,120 --> 00:44:57,160
Speaker 1: who may be low scaled. Then you become of you know,

833
00:44:57,200 --> 00:45:00,279
Speaker 1: a central point of how you conduct business control the

834
00:45:00,280 --> 00:45:03,520
Speaker 1: lives of millions of people in America. That's why we

835
00:45:03,560 --> 00:45:05,680
Speaker 1: care so much. The fate of the working class should

836
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:07,840
Speaker 1: not be in the hands and subject to the whims

837
00:45:07,840 --> 00:45:10,320
Speaker 1: of the benevolence of one billionaire. Yeah, that's right, or

838
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:13,839
Speaker 1: even a few billionaires, and so okay, good, they get

839
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:16,279
Speaker 1: a little raised. But the whole point, and what we

840
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:18,759
Speaker 1: show you with these worker movements is workers should have

841
00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:22,440
Speaker 1: a direct say in the conditions of their employment. That's right.

842
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 1: There should be a push and pull here. It shouldn't

843
00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:27,720
Speaker 1: be all on one side. And that's what collective action

844
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:31,520
Speaker 1: through a union or through other means. But union is

845
00:45:31,520 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 1: the most effective one we have. That gives the workers

846
00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:36,000
Speaker 1: a little bit of power and a little bit of

847
00:45:36,040 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 1: say where they can. Hey, if breaks are really important,

848
00:45:38,480 --> 00:45:41,160
Speaker 1: if a predictable schedules really important to them, they can

849
00:45:41,440 --> 00:45:44,279
Speaker 1: bargain for those items in their contract and not just

850
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 1: hope that Jeff Bezos is feeling generous today. Please don't

851
00:45:47,080 --> 00:45:50,400
Speaker 1: schedule me at close and open instead of you can't

852
00:45:50,600 --> 00:45:52,880
Speaker 1: schedule how many is people has that happened to and

853
00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:55,040
Speaker 1: knows how much it sucks when you don't have a

854
00:45:55,120 --> 00:45:57,359
Speaker 1: say over your labor conditions. That's what we really need

855
00:45:57,360 --> 00:46:00,719
Speaker 1: in America, right, Yes, that is exactly right. Okay. Big

856
00:46:00,760 --> 00:46:05,440
Speaker 1: media story here in d C was the sale of Politico,

857
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:08,920
Speaker 1: the Ultimate, you know, tigerbeat on the Potomac. Some people

858
00:46:09,000 --> 00:46:16,239
Speaker 1: call it like DC Insider. That was perfect. That is

859
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:18,319
Speaker 1: exactly what it is. I don't know who made that up.

860
00:46:18,360 --> 00:46:20,080
Speaker 1: I don't get credit for it, but anyway, that is

861
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:22,920
Speaker 1: what it is. Tiger Beat on the Potomac. Politico sold

862
00:46:22,960 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 1: to a big German publisher called Axel Springer, and Axle

863
00:46:26,640 --> 00:46:29,239
Speaker 1: Springer already owns a lot of different properties, including what

864
00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:32,839
Speaker 1: used to be Business Insider and is now Insider. And

865
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 1: we're getting a look, I didn't realize this. They require

866
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:42,320
Speaker 1: their German employees to actually sign a pledge that commits

867
00:46:42,400 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 1: them to a certain number of company principles. And we

868
00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:49,880
Speaker 1: can throw this tweet up there on the screen. Among

869
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:54,560
Speaker 1: them support for Israel, for a United Europe, and a

870
00:46:54,680 --> 00:46:58,279
Speaker 1: free market economy. They say that is like a constitution

871
00:46:58,600 --> 00:47:02,120
Speaker 1: they apply to every employee of their company, and that

872
00:47:02,239 --> 00:47:07,960
Speaker 1: those who disagree with unconditional support for Israel, a United Europe,

873
00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 1: and a free market economy, among a number of other things.

874
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:13,760
Speaker 1: They also say basically like you have to support NATO

875
00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:18,239
Speaker 1: too effectively that those who disagree should not work for

876
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:23,040
Speaker 1: Axel Springer. Then I also had the nerve the head

877
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:25,320
Speaker 1: of this company to be like, you know, the problem

878
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:29,399
Speaker 1: in America is this biased partisan journalism. It's like, really, wait,

879
00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 1: what You're requiring your employees to pledge themselves to these

880
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:38,480
Speaker 1: very specific and very fraught and very politically charged topics.

881
00:47:38,800 --> 00:47:40,320
Speaker 1: And then you have the nerve to be like, but

882
00:47:40,440 --> 00:47:45,239
Speaker 1: we're totally unbiased over here. It's it's out, it's insane,

883
00:47:45,360 --> 00:47:50,360
Speaker 1: it's outrageous. And you know, the American employees at Politico,

884
00:47:50,760 --> 00:47:53,080
Speaker 1: they're not going to be actually required to sign the

885
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:56,160
Speaker 1: loyalty pledge that the German employees, probably because it would

886
00:47:56,160 --> 00:47:59,839
Speaker 1: be illegal under US law. Probably yeah, probably it would

887
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:04,279
Speaker 1: at least be you know, hopefully frowned upon. But the

888
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 1: fact that you have political is extremely influential, extremely influential.

889
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:11,839
Speaker 1: Their playbook that they put on every morning is you know,

890
00:48:11,920 --> 00:48:13,759
Speaker 1: the comings and goings of DC. I mean, it really

891
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:16,040
Speaker 1: does help to set the agenda for the day in

892
00:48:16,080 --> 00:48:18,840
Speaker 1: this town and the way that people think about these issues,

893
00:48:18,880 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 1: and it's all oftentimes like brought to you by Chevron

894
00:48:21,120 --> 00:48:23,560
Speaker 1: or whatever, which is a whole other issue, but it's very,

895
00:48:23,640 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 1: very influential. And the fact that now their employees have

896
00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:33,560
Speaker 1: to be explicitly on board with this set of policies,

897
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:38,000
Speaker 1: I mean, it creates a wildly apparent inherent bias in

898
00:48:38,160 --> 00:48:40,239
Speaker 1: what they're doing. I want people to understand that because

899
00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:42,319
Speaker 1: you may not have ever heard of Politico, but what

900
00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:46,480
Speaker 1: it is is essentially the trade journal of Washington d C. Right,

901
00:48:46,520 --> 00:48:48,960
Speaker 1: So they have that playbook email which goes out to

902
00:48:49,080 --> 00:48:51,200
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people, usually people who are in

903
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:53,840
Speaker 1: the business, lobbyist and more, and it kind of describes

904
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:56,960
Speaker 1: like what lawmakers are saying about a particular bill, what

905
00:48:57,080 --> 00:48:59,719
Speaker 1: you know, outside interests. They also break good. There are

906
00:48:59,719 --> 00:49:02,319
Speaker 1: many many good reporters over there, many of whom we've

907
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:04,520
Speaker 1: had on the show or use their reporting. So I

908
00:49:04,520 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 1: don't want to say Checkinger, we were there. A Thompson

909
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:10,240
Speaker 1: does a good job, right. But it's important though, because

910
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:13,400
Speaker 1: it is a disproportionate impact in the way that people

911
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:17,960
Speaker 1: here think, as in what Politico reports or says or

912
00:49:17,960 --> 00:49:21,680
Speaker 1: puts in their newsletter about something can both be what's happening,

913
00:49:21,719 --> 00:49:24,279
Speaker 1: and it can also influence the events that are on

914
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:26,640
Speaker 1: the ground. That's one of the pernicious things about media

915
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: in DC, especially insider media. So this is I would

916
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:32,680
Speaker 1: say up there with Axios is one of the most

917
00:49:32,719 --> 00:49:37,120
Speaker 1: important brands in terms of how people in power actually think,

918
00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:40,520
Speaker 1: work and read every single day. That's why Axel Springer

919
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 1: is buying it for a billion dollars. Well, yeah, and

920
00:49:45,120 --> 00:49:47,440
Speaker 1: this is the next piece of the segment. Ben Smith

921
00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:50,000
Speaker 1: just had a column about some of the internal workings

922
00:49:50,040 --> 00:49:52,440
Speaker 1: of Axel Springer over at the New York Times, and

923
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:55,160
Speaker 1: there's a lot in this that we can unpack. Can

924
00:49:55,160 --> 00:49:57,399
Speaker 1: throw this up on the screen. The headline is at

925
00:49:57,440 --> 00:50:00,799
Speaker 1: Axel Springer, Politico's new owner, allegations of x lies and

926
00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:03,719
Speaker 1: a secret payment. I'll get to all that part. But

927
00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:07,880
Speaker 1: you brought up Axios. Yes, reportedly they also wanted to

928
00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:12,680
Speaker 1: buy Axios. Axios was founded by someone who left Politicos.

929
00:50:12,719 --> 00:50:14,960
Speaker 1: There's a lot of bad blood there and what they

930
00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:20,000
Speaker 1: effectively pitched to Axios is we want you Jim Vandahai,

931
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:21,760
Speaker 1: who is now the head of the Axios who left Politico.

932
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:23,960
Speaker 1: We actually want you to run the joint entity. We're

933
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:26,440
Speaker 1: going to buy both Axios and Politico put them together.

934
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 1: We want you to run the joint entity, but we

935
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:31,239
Speaker 1: know the Politico people will be pissed off about it,

936
00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:34,040
Speaker 1: so we're not going to announce it until after the

937
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:37,080
Speaker 1: Politico thing is a done deal and they can't back out.

938
00:50:37,480 --> 00:50:40,399
Speaker 1: And Vanda Hid, to his credit, reportedly was like, that's

939
00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:42,480
Speaker 1: screwed up and that's not what we want to how

940
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:45,680
Speaker 1: we want to operate. So no, thank you. But that's

941
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:47,719
Speaker 1: the way that they play in this industry. The other

942
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:51,719
Speaker 1: the focus of this column is the fact that one

943
00:50:51,760 --> 00:50:55,919
Speaker 1: of their executives there was apparently sleeping with all kinds

944
00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:58,719
Speaker 1: of junior women and then he'd give them promotions that

945
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:00,919
Speaker 1: they didn't really deserve, and then when he was done

946
00:51:00,960 --> 00:51:03,080
Speaker 1: with them, he would either fire them or sort of

947
00:51:03,160 --> 00:51:06,279
Speaker 1: kick them down back down in the organization. That this

948
00:51:06,520 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 1: was a routine pattern of behavior. That part of the

949
00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:12,600
Speaker 1: reason they actually did a whole investigation, but they didn't

950
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:15,200
Speaker 1: reveal the results of what they found in that investigation.

951
00:51:15,239 --> 00:51:17,640
Speaker 1: They decided to keep them on board until yesterday when

952
00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:20,680
Speaker 1: they finally fired the s guy after Bensmith's column. But

953
00:51:21,239 --> 00:51:23,560
Speaker 1: part of why, going back to the whole we're not

954
00:51:23,640 --> 00:51:25,960
Speaker 1: part of the media thing. Part of why they kept

955
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:29,200
Speaker 1: him on is because they liked his politics. Oh, the

956
00:51:29,239 --> 00:51:32,320
Speaker 1: head of the organization said, we have to be especially

957
00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 1: careful because mister Reischult, I think, is how you say

958
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:37,840
Speaker 1: his name, is the last and only journalist in Germany

959
00:51:37,840 --> 00:51:41,840
Speaker 1: who's still courageously rebelling against the new GDR authoritarian state.

960
00:51:43,000 --> 00:51:46,600
Speaker 1: Ben describes the GDR or Communist East Germany in this

961
00:51:46,680 --> 00:51:50,160
Speaker 1: context is a bit like woke mob. So they like

962
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:52,520
Speaker 1: that part. On the other hand, I mean their politics

963
00:51:52,520 --> 00:51:54,799
Speaker 1: are a little bit interesting there. Mostly you describe them

964
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:59,279
Speaker 1: as right wing mostly, but then they also they're also

965
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:02,600
Speaker 1: sort of authority terran Like, let's throw this Glenn Greenwall

966
00:52:02,640 --> 00:52:04,200
Speaker 1: tweet up on the screen, this dude that just got

967
00:52:04,280 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 1: fired for his sexual harassment. You know, bad behavior at

968
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:14,920
Speaker 1: the organization had aggressively gone after Glenn and Snowden and

969
00:52:15,040 --> 00:52:20,080
Speaker 1: Julian Assange saying that Glenn and Edward Stone have enabled

970
00:52:20,200 --> 00:52:26,000
Speaker 1: terrorists that Putin loves him. That they've enabled isis that

971
00:52:26,360 --> 00:52:31,719
Speaker 1: the Kremlin loves all the like standard stupid tropes. So

972
00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:34,960
Speaker 1: that's the other that's the other part of what's going

973
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:38,160
Speaker 1: on with that hallmark German righteousness. Everybody in Europe knows

974
00:52:38,239 --> 00:52:41,960
Speaker 1: exactly what I'm talking about, And yeah, look, maybe it's

975
00:52:42,000 --> 00:52:44,640
Speaker 1: just me. I'm a little uncomfortable a bunch of German

976
00:52:44,680 --> 00:52:48,800
Speaker 1: billionaires controlling some of the most you know, important company

977
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:51,680
Speaker 1: media entities in the United States. I would be maybe,

978
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:54,880
Speaker 1: I guess I'd prefer our billionaires to do it. And

979
00:52:55,160 --> 00:53:00,160
Speaker 1: especially if these people are requiring like oaths of loyalty

980
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:04,239
Speaker 1: to foreign countries also United Europe. So it means let's

981
00:53:04,280 --> 00:53:06,440
Speaker 1: really think about the implications of what that means. So

982
00:53:06,480 --> 00:53:08,880
Speaker 1: that means if you support Brexit, that you are somebody

983
00:53:08,880 --> 00:53:11,040
Speaker 1: who can't work at actional springs? Yes? Or on Israel?

984
00:53:11,160 --> 00:53:13,520
Speaker 1: Does it apply to BDS? That does that apply to

985
00:53:13,640 --> 00:53:16,759
Speaker 1: the territories? Which applies to b And see what I'm saying, So,

986
00:53:17,080 --> 00:53:21,080
Speaker 1: oh which border nineteen sixty seven or pre your post? Well,

987
00:53:21,120 --> 00:53:23,480
Speaker 1: if you're pre ninety sixty seven, does that count as

988
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:25,800
Speaker 1: pro Israel? What if you believe in a two state solution.

989
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 1: What if you're wanting to free market principles, what does that?

990
00:53:29,239 --> 00:53:32,560
Speaker 1: What does that? Maxactly? Universal healthcare? What? What did they

991
00:53:32,600 --> 00:53:35,360
Speaker 1: have in Germany? But what about here? So is it

992
00:53:35,440 --> 00:53:39,319
Speaker 1: okay here, but not there. Once again, you shouldn't have

993
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:42,839
Speaker 1: any of this. Whenever you are a media entity, and

994
00:53:43,080 --> 00:53:47,560
Speaker 1: especially whenever you control the opinions really and or one

995
00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:51,200
Speaker 1: of the biggest taste makers in the entire United States,

996
00:53:51,200 --> 00:53:54,040
Speaker 1: there should be a lot more outrage about this, and

997
00:53:54,080 --> 00:53:55,880
Speaker 1: there's not. And I think that's really what it is.

998
00:53:56,080 --> 00:53:59,200
Speaker 1: How much of this do you see CNN's Brian Stelter.

999
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:01,239
Speaker 1: We're about to do a second about him. Maybe this

1000
00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:04,000
Speaker 1: would be a good segment to cover. Maybe well, I

1001
00:54:04,040 --> 00:54:06,960
Speaker 1: mean maybe the other we can transition to the segment,

1002
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 1: because part of this, too is there's a hypocrisy on

1003
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:12,319
Speaker 1: you know, the people on the right who focus a

1004
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:18,360
Speaker 1: lot on censorship, cancel culture, and media bias. But because

1005
00:54:18,400 --> 00:54:22,160
Speaker 1: this is about you know, largely principles that they're comfortable

1006
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:25,880
Speaker 1: of free market, oh you know, un yielding support for Israel.

1007
00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:32,120
Speaker 1: This didn't a major DC outlet having an explicit and

1008
00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:36,200
Speaker 1: clear and stated bias and requiring their employees to be

1009
00:54:36,360 --> 00:54:40,680
Speaker 1: loyal to their biases. This somehow escaped their notice. Yeah,

1010
00:54:40,680 --> 00:54:43,600
Speaker 1: that's totally nuts. And let's go to see an ed

1011
00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:46,520
Speaker 1: Crystal because this is just some of the most stunning

1012
00:54:46,520 --> 00:54:48,759
Speaker 1: stuff that i've seen in a long time credit to

1013
00:54:48,800 --> 00:54:52,239
Speaker 1: Barry Weiss may have some differences of opinion there, but look,

1014
00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:55,320
Speaker 1: she did a great job whenever she went on CNN's

1015
00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:58,120
Speaker 1: Brian Stelter and really called him in the network out

1016
00:54:58,440 --> 00:55:02,640
Speaker 1: to his face and her own around the lab leak hypothesis,

1017
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:05,520
Speaker 1: how the media covers up stories which are bad for

1018
00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:07,560
Speaker 1: the narratives that they don't like, and just really how

1019
00:55:07,560 --> 00:55:10,319
Speaker 1: irresponsible they are. Let's watch the entire thing in full.

1020
00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:13,120
Speaker 1: It really is worth watching. You're right, there are tens

1021
00:55:13,120 --> 00:55:15,359
Speaker 1: of millions of Americans who aren't on the hard left

1022
00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:18,520
Speaker 1: or the hard right who feel the world has gone mad.

1023
00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:21,960
Speaker 1: So in what ways has the world gone mad? Well,

1024
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:25,759
Speaker 1: you know when you have the chief reporter on the

1025
00:55:25,760 --> 00:55:28,880
Speaker 1: beat of COVID for the New York Times talking about

1026
00:55:28,920 --> 00:55:31,680
Speaker 1: how questioning or pursuing the question of the lab leak

1027
00:55:31,840 --> 00:55:35,040
Speaker 1: is racist, The world has gone mad. When you're not

1028
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:37,480
Speaker 1: able to say out loud and in public that there

1029
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:40,879
Speaker 1: are differences between men and women. The world has gone mad.

1030
00:55:41,239 --> 00:55:44,920
Speaker 1: When we're not allowed to acknowledge that rioting is rioting

1031
00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:48,120
Speaker 1: and it is bad, and that silence is not violence

1032
00:55:48,160 --> 00:55:51,920
Speaker 1: but violence is violence. The world has gotten mad. When

1033
00:55:51,960 --> 00:55:54,920
Speaker 1: we're not able to say that Hunter Biden's laptop is

1034
00:55:54,960 --> 00:55:58,680
Speaker 1: a story worth pursuing. The world has gone mad when

1035
00:55:58,920 --> 00:56:02,799
Speaker 1: in the name of progress, young school children as young

1036
00:56:02,800 --> 00:56:06,880
Speaker 1: as kindergarten are being separated in public schools because of

1037
00:56:06,920 --> 00:56:10,400
Speaker 1: their race, and that is called progress rather than segregation,

1038
00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:14,400
Speaker 1: the world has gone mad. There are dozens of examples

1039
00:56:14,400 --> 00:56:16,719
Speaker 1: that I could share with you, and with you often

1040
00:56:17,200 --> 00:56:20,760
Speaker 1: you say Aloud knows this, and you say we're not allowed,

1041
00:56:20,840 --> 00:56:24,480
Speaker 1: were not a who's the people stopping the conversation? Who

1042
00:56:24,480 --> 00:56:30,839
Speaker 1: are they? People let work at networks, frankly like the

1043
00:56:30,840 --> 00:56:33,360
Speaker 1: one I'm speaking on right now, who try and claim

1044
00:56:33,480 --> 00:56:36,960
Speaker 1: that you know it was it was racist to investigate

1045
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:40,759
Speaker 1: the lab leak theory. It was you said. But I'm

1046
00:56:40,760 --> 00:56:42,440
Speaker 1: just saying that when you say Aloud, I just think

1047
00:56:42,480 --> 00:56:44,359
Speaker 1: it's a provocative thing you say. You say, you say,

1048
00:56:44,360 --> 00:56:46,840
Speaker 1: we're not allowed to talk about these things, but they're

1049
00:56:46,960 --> 00:56:48,839
Speaker 1: all over the internet. I can google them and find

1050
00:56:48,880 --> 00:56:51,480
Speaker 1: them everywhere. I've heard about every story you mentioned, So

1051
00:56:51,560 --> 00:56:53,960
Speaker 1: I'm just suggesting, of course, people are allowed to cover

1052
00:56:54,040 --> 00:56:56,319
Speaker 1: whatever they want to cover, but you and I both know,

1053
00:56:56,600 --> 00:56:59,919
Speaker 1: and it would be delusional to claim otherwise that touch

1054
00:57:00,239 --> 00:57:03,640
Speaker 1: your finger to an increasing number of subjects that have

1055
00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:07,759
Speaker 1: been deemed third rail by the mainstream institutions and increasingly

1056
00:57:07,800 --> 00:57:11,320
Speaker 1: by some of the tech companies, will lead to reputational damage,

1057
00:57:11,680 --> 00:57:17,000
Speaker 1: perhaps you losing your job, your children sometimes being demonized

1058
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:19,000
Speaker 1: as well. And so what happens is a kind of

1059
00:57:19,480 --> 00:57:22,760
Speaker 1: internal self censorship. This is something that I saw over

1060
00:57:22,840 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 1: and over again when I was at the New York Times.

1061
00:57:25,040 --> 00:57:30,680
Speaker 1: M look, that is so obvious and everything she's just said.

1062
00:57:31,000 --> 00:57:33,440
Speaker 1: I sometimes I don't know about Brian. I really don't,

1063
00:57:33,520 --> 00:57:36,919
Speaker 1: you know, we as a good reporter, And I think, yeah,

1064
00:57:36,960 --> 00:57:39,480
Speaker 1: maybe a glutton for punishment. It's like, you got to

1065
00:57:39,560 --> 00:57:43,000
Speaker 1: know better than to pretend you don't know exactly what

1066
00:57:43,040 --> 00:57:46,800
Speaker 1: she's talking about. And I also particularly hate whenever they

1067
00:57:46,840 --> 00:57:49,560
Speaker 1: do that trope of well, I've heard of every single

1068
00:57:49,560 --> 00:57:51,640
Speaker 1: one of the stories that you're talking about, Well have

1069
00:57:51,800 --> 00:57:54,560
Speaker 1: you ever covered it? Have you ever done a single seconment?

1070
00:57:54,800 --> 00:57:57,640
Speaker 1: Is your job, right? It's your job not only to

1071
00:57:57,680 --> 00:57:59,680
Speaker 1: cover these stories, but also is your job to know

1072
00:57:59,720 --> 00:58:03,320
Speaker 1: about them. So the fact that you like journalist who

1073
00:58:03,400 --> 00:58:06,440
Speaker 1: makes your living knowing about news stories, knows about them,

1074
00:58:06,480 --> 00:58:08,480
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that they've been you know, shared with the

1075
00:58:08,480 --> 00:58:12,360
Speaker 1: American public. Listen. My my issue with While it is

1076
00:58:12,440 --> 00:58:16,760
Speaker 1: satisfying to watch certain parts of that exchange, Barry Weiss

1077
00:58:16,840 --> 00:58:21,560
Speaker 1: is a very poor spokesperson for this view because she's

1078
00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:24,280
Speaker 1: not sure. She has a gigantic blind spot where these

1079
00:58:24,320 --> 00:58:26,960
Speaker 1: things are concerned as well. I mean, this actual Springer

1080
00:58:27,000 --> 00:58:30,440
Speaker 1: story we're just talking about, because it is, you know,

1081
00:58:30,560 --> 00:58:34,800
Speaker 1: something that she's comfortable with this type of censorship, You're not.

1082
00:58:35,040 --> 00:58:37,440
Speaker 1: I haven't heard a word from her, not on her substack,

1083
00:58:37,640 --> 00:58:40,680
Speaker 1: not on her Twitter feed. This is a may If

1084
00:58:40,760 --> 00:58:44,920
Speaker 1: you care about censorship and stories not getting covered, you

1085
00:58:44,960 --> 00:58:48,520
Speaker 1: should care a lot about that story. And this isn't

1086
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:51,240
Speaker 1: a one off look. Anyone can miss any particular story.

1087
00:58:51,280 --> 00:58:54,000
Speaker 1: I'm sure I've missed instances of censorship that matter too,

1088
00:58:54,600 --> 00:58:59,919
Speaker 1: But she consistently only looks at those that fit her

1089
00:59:00,120 --> 00:59:03,520
Speaker 1: particular agenda. And I think anyone on the left or

1090
00:59:03,600 --> 00:59:06,160
Speaker 1: the right who is viewing the issue of quote unquote

1091
00:59:06,160 --> 00:59:10,880
Speaker 1: cancel culture and censorship and authoritarianism and creeping lack of

1092
00:59:10,960 --> 00:59:14,560
Speaker 1: ability to have free speech through a purely partisan right

1093
00:59:14,680 --> 00:59:18,680
Speaker 1: left lens, I think is missing the story entirely. So

1094
00:59:18,720 --> 00:59:23,520
Speaker 1: she doesn't bring up the state codified censorship of Republican

1095
00:59:23,600 --> 00:59:28,480
Speaker 1: past anti protest laws or anti BDS laws, or any

1096
00:59:28,640 --> 00:59:30,920
Speaker 1: of the folks who have spoken out on behalf of

1097
00:59:31,040 --> 00:59:34,280
Speaker 1: Palestinian human rights, who have been canceled or lost their

1098
00:59:34,360 --> 00:59:37,480
Speaker 1: jobs or be demonized, some of which she herself did

1099
00:59:37,880 --> 00:59:39,600
Speaker 1: when she was a college student. And look, I don't

1100
00:59:39,600 --> 00:59:41,480
Speaker 1: think people should be judged for their whole lives of

1101
00:59:41,520 --> 00:59:44,800
Speaker 1: what page or knowledge. But she's come out and said

1102
00:59:44,800 --> 00:59:48,440
Speaker 1: that she regrets, but you don't see her changing in

1103
00:59:48,520 --> 00:59:51,680
Speaker 1: terms of actually having a lens that's inclusive of all

1104
00:59:51,840 --> 00:59:55,640
Speaker 1: of the people and causes who are being censored right now.

1105
00:59:56,000 --> 00:59:59,400
Speaker 1: So that's why, while it is very satisfying to see

1106
00:59:59,400 --> 01:00:02,200
Speaker 1: Brian sel Stelter be told to his face at CNN sucks,

1107
01:00:02,240 --> 01:00:04,560
Speaker 1: I enjoyed that as well. That is why I think

1108
01:00:04,600 --> 01:00:07,800
Speaker 1: she's a very poor spokesperson for this, because she has

1109
01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:10,360
Speaker 1: just as many blind spots as Brian Stelter does. I

1110
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:12,680
Speaker 1: think it's always fair in order to point that out

1111
01:00:12,720 --> 01:00:14,800
Speaker 1: around what people talk about cancel culture. You know, Ryan

1112
01:00:14,840 --> 01:00:17,440
Speaker 1: Grimm did a great segment yesterday. I saw about a

1113
01:00:17,760 --> 01:00:22,760
Speaker 1: campus what was it, a campus newspaper which was fired

1114
01:00:22,880 --> 01:00:26,400
Speaker 1: people from the pro unions O. They wrote an article

1115
01:00:27,120 --> 01:00:30,160
Speaker 1: there were workers who are trying to unionize. The student

1116
01:00:30,160 --> 01:00:33,080
Speaker 1: newspaper publish an article with quotes from those workers. The

1117
01:00:33,120 --> 01:00:36,560
Speaker 1: administration forced them to retract it and publish a new piece,

1118
01:00:36,920 --> 01:00:39,560
Speaker 1: and in place of those quotes with workers, they had

1119
01:00:39,680 --> 01:00:44,000
Speaker 1: anti union propaganda. Something tells me that I don't want

1120
01:00:44,000 --> 01:00:45,800
Speaker 1: to only pick on Barry here, but no one on

1121
01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:48,200
Speaker 1: the right. I shouldn't say no one few on the

1122
01:00:48,280 --> 01:00:50,280
Speaker 1: right are going to bring that back. I haven't seen it.

1123
01:00:50,440 --> 01:00:52,560
Speaker 1: I saw that story with great interest, and I think

1124
01:00:52,560 --> 01:00:54,880
Speaker 1: it's a very good, important one in order to point

1125
01:00:54,920 --> 01:00:58,000
Speaker 1: out because as we all know, there are endless amount

1126
01:00:58,040 --> 01:01:00,439
Speaker 1: of clicks and money to be had whenever we're talking

1127
01:01:00,480 --> 01:01:02,320
Speaker 1: about can't. By the way, I agree with pretty much

1128
01:01:02,360 --> 01:01:04,400
Speaker 1: every single thing that she said around all those issues,

1129
01:01:04,400 --> 01:01:06,440
Speaker 1: and I do think it is outrageous anytime one of

1130
01:01:06,480 --> 01:01:09,840
Speaker 1: those things does happen. And there's a lot of hay

1131
01:01:09,880 --> 01:01:11,360
Speaker 1: to be made around the culture war, and I think

1132
01:01:11,400 --> 01:01:13,360
Speaker 1: there's plenty of people who are fighting that, yes, but

1133
01:01:13,440 --> 01:01:15,520
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of people fighting the class war.

1134
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:19,160
Speaker 1: And what did we point out today on the unionization

1135
01:01:19,280 --> 01:01:23,240
Speaker 1: segment on Starbucks? I mean, these guys Dollar General and

1136
01:01:23,280 --> 01:01:26,400
Speaker 1: Starbucks are throwing everything they have at making sure that

1137
01:01:26,480 --> 01:01:31,920
Speaker 1: they're working class employees in Buffalo, New York or Dollar General.

1138
01:01:31,960 --> 01:01:33,520
Speaker 1: I mean, have you ever been to a Dollar General

1139
01:01:33,560 --> 01:01:36,160
Speaker 1: in a rural place? Like? Sometimes these places are sad.

1140
01:01:36,200 --> 01:01:38,440
Speaker 1: And this is no commentary on the people within that.

1141
01:01:38,520 --> 01:01:41,240
Speaker 1: I don't blame them whatsoever. You'll see like a rotting

1142
01:01:41,280 --> 01:01:44,200
Speaker 1: piggly wiggly right next to it, right, or some other

1143
01:01:44,280 --> 01:01:46,520
Speaker 1: grocery store which has been closed for like ten years,

1144
01:01:46,720 --> 01:01:48,720
Speaker 1: and these people out there are fighting to like make

1145
01:01:48,760 --> 01:01:51,520
Speaker 1: more than like twelve dollars an hour so that they

1146
01:01:51,520 --> 01:01:54,400
Speaker 1: don't have credit card debt. Freedom of expression is being quashed.

1147
01:01:54,480 --> 01:01:57,280
Speaker 1: It is, yes, it is being quashed. And so yeah,

1148
01:01:57,320 --> 01:01:59,560
Speaker 1: you don't hear those concerns, and so listen, here's the

1149
01:01:59,560 --> 01:02:02,000
Speaker 1: thing is I actually care about this issue. That's why

1150
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:04,160
Speaker 1: I try to you know, I'm sure I have my

1151
01:02:04,200 --> 01:02:06,360
Speaker 1: own blind spots, Lord knows, but I try to be

1152
01:02:06,400 --> 01:02:08,960
Speaker 1: fair about even in places where I disagree with the

1153
01:02:09,000 --> 01:02:11,720
Speaker 1: person saying, listen, they shouldn't be kicked off the platform.

1154
01:02:11,800 --> 01:02:14,400
Speaker 1: They shouldn't be kicked off of Twitter. Donald Trump shouldn't

1155
01:02:14,400 --> 01:02:16,560
Speaker 1: have you know, this is a powerful political figure. He

1156
01:02:16,560 --> 01:02:19,200
Speaker 1: shouldn't have been deplatformed from all these places I try

1157
01:02:19,200 --> 01:02:22,600
Speaker 1: to be consistent, and the reason why is because it's

1158
01:02:22,640 --> 01:02:27,440
Speaker 1: not about my pet issue or cause getting deplatformed and censored.

1159
01:02:28,000 --> 01:02:32,000
Speaker 1: It's about the principle. And the fact of the matter is,

1160
01:02:32,240 --> 01:02:35,960
Speaker 1: if you actually want a different direction, you're not going

1161
01:02:36,040 --> 01:02:41,240
Speaker 1: to get there by turning this into a partisan sectarian issue.

1162
01:02:41,360 --> 01:02:43,840
Speaker 1: You're actually the opposite wall the op I tell people

1163
01:02:43,840 --> 01:02:46,080
Speaker 1: that all the time will happen, and it is happening.

1164
01:02:46,400 --> 01:02:49,520
Speaker 1: That's exactly what is happening. The real beef that some

1165
01:02:49,760 --> 01:02:52,240
Speaker 1: on the right have is that they aren't the ones

1166
01:02:52,280 --> 01:02:56,480
Speaker 1: that exclusively get to do the censorship anymore. Both sides

1167
01:02:56,520 --> 01:02:59,680
Speaker 1: are really fighting to have control over what is allowed

1168
01:02:59,720 --> 01:03:02,640
Speaker 1: to be said in the public sphere. And if you

1169
01:03:02,680 --> 01:03:05,440
Speaker 1: don't see that overarching piece where this is a threat

1170
01:03:05,480 --> 01:03:08,000
Speaker 1: to this is true. It is truly a threat to

1171
01:03:08,840 --> 01:03:11,640
Speaker 1: democratic force and the ability for independent voices to rise

1172
01:03:11,680 --> 01:03:14,120
Speaker 1: and all of that. That's one hundred percent true. But

1173
01:03:14,400 --> 01:03:18,440
Speaker 1: it is not exclusively the province of the left or

1174
01:03:18,520 --> 01:03:21,080
Speaker 1: the right. And if you want to have allies across

1175
01:03:21,080 --> 01:03:24,560
Speaker 1: the political spectrum, you have to be willing to look

1176
01:03:24,600 --> 01:03:27,520
Speaker 1: at those places where people who have views that you

1177
01:03:27,600 --> 01:03:30,680
Speaker 1: do not personally support are also being censored. It's not

1178
01:03:30,720 --> 01:03:32,440
Speaker 1: fun to be principled, but it's the only way to

1179
01:03:32,440 --> 01:03:34,720
Speaker 1: actually do anything about it. Wow, you guys must really

1180
01:03:34,760 --> 01:03:36,400
Speaker 1: like listening to our voices. Well, I know this is

1181
01:03:36,400 --> 01:03:39,160
Speaker 1: annoying instead of making you listen to a Viagric commercial.

1182
01:03:39,320 --> 01:03:41,480
Speaker 1: When you're done, check out the other podcast I do

1183
01:03:41,560 --> 01:03:43,919
Speaker 1: with Marshall Kasoff called The Realignment. We talk a lot

1184
01:03:44,000 --> 01:03:47,640
Speaker 1: about the deeper issues that are changing, realigning in American society.

1185
01:03:47,800 --> 01:03:50,120
Speaker 1: You always need more crystal and soogur in your daily lives.

1186
01:03:50,200 --> 01:03:52,960
Speaker 1: Take care, guys. All right, Sager, what are you looking at? Well,

1187
01:03:53,080 --> 01:03:55,520
Speaker 1: the greatest tragedy of COVID is what could have been.

1188
01:03:55,640 --> 01:03:58,680
Speaker 1: I'll be honest. Back in February, I truly had hope

1189
01:03:58,680 --> 01:04:01,400
Speaker 1: that we would make the most a coming national crisis.

1190
01:04:01,720 --> 01:04:04,200
Speaker 1: I mean, look, we had this virus that literally came

1191
01:04:04,240 --> 01:04:07,120
Speaker 1: out of communist China, which they covered up. We had

1192
01:04:07,120 --> 01:04:10,680
Speaker 1: a supply chain crisis, highlighting how dangerous globalization has been

1193
01:04:10,680 --> 01:04:13,160
Speaker 1: for the United States over the last forty years. We

1194
01:04:13,200 --> 01:04:16,440
Speaker 1: had a national moment where everyone, for a very tiny,

1195
01:04:16,680 --> 01:04:19,920
Speaker 1: tiny tiny amount of time, was actually all in this together.

1196
01:04:20,280 --> 01:04:23,240
Speaker 1: We had a record economic package in which we pushed

1197
01:04:23,280 --> 01:04:26,760
Speaker 1: money out the door and we broke so many barriers.

1198
01:04:27,080 --> 01:04:30,520
Speaker 1: The time was then to reset the American relationship with

1199
01:04:30,640 --> 01:04:34,520
Speaker 1: China and with itself, to reaffirm the principle that we

1200
01:04:34,560 --> 01:04:37,800
Speaker 1: actually need to build things here in America again. We

1201
01:04:37,840 --> 01:04:40,120
Speaker 1: need to take care of our workers, we need to

1202
01:04:40,120 --> 01:04:43,160
Speaker 1: take care of ourselves. It could have been a great

1203
01:04:43,160 --> 01:04:45,760
Speaker 1: depression and World War two style event. It could have

1204
01:04:45,800 --> 01:04:48,960
Speaker 1: been a moment of national reinvention for the better, and

1205
01:04:49,000 --> 01:04:52,880
Speaker 1: then the culture War took over instead. Trump ended up

1206
01:04:52,880 --> 01:04:56,000
Speaker 1: being a moron. The Libs actually did go crazy, and

1207
01:04:56,040 --> 01:04:58,280
Speaker 1: we just argued about masks and vaccines for the next

1208
01:04:58,320 --> 01:05:01,000
Speaker 1: eighteen months. We elected the an eighty year old dude

1209
01:05:01,000 --> 01:05:04,479
Speaker 1: who's been in Washington for the last fifty years as president. Yes,

1210
01:05:04,680 --> 01:05:08,160
Speaker 1: the economic packages we'd passed they were extraordinary, but it's

1211
01:05:08,160 --> 01:05:10,400
Speaker 1: been a long time since those twelve hundred dollars checks.

1212
01:05:10,480 --> 01:05:13,160
Speaker 1: If you take a look around DC here today, nothing

1213
01:05:13,200 --> 01:05:16,400
Speaker 1: has really changed. It's back to normal, except honestly, it's

1214
01:05:16,480 --> 01:05:20,640
Speaker 1: much worse because now today we not only have the

1215
01:05:20,640 --> 01:05:24,439
Speaker 1: policies of yesterday, we have the effects of COVID, which

1216
01:05:24,440 --> 01:05:28,160
Speaker 1: have left us more vulnerable than arguably were in February

1217
01:05:28,200 --> 01:05:31,280
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty, after the entire nation. Just saw that

1218
01:05:31,360 --> 01:05:34,160
Speaker 1: we didn't have what we needed for ppe during the pandemic,

1219
01:05:34,440 --> 01:05:37,440
Speaker 1: realized that most of the world's vitamins basic medical supplies

1220
01:05:37,480 --> 01:05:40,640
Speaker 1: originated in China. You might have expected the United States

1221
01:05:40,680 --> 01:05:44,280
Speaker 1: government to reduce our dependency on that nation, right, Yeah,

1222
01:05:44,440 --> 01:05:48,080
Speaker 1: that's actually completely wrong. In fact, things have gotten much

1223
01:05:48,120 --> 01:05:51,560
Speaker 1: worse right now, in the middle of the supply crisis

1224
01:05:51,600 --> 01:05:55,000
Speaker 1: that we face. Chinese exports to the United States are

1225
01:05:55,120 --> 01:05:59,360
Speaker 1: up thirty one percent since January of twenty eighteen, when

1226
01:05:59,400 --> 01:06:02,280
Speaker 1: Trump put ten tariffs on that nation. In fact, per

1227
01:06:02,320 --> 01:06:06,280
Speaker 1: asia times at a seasonally adjusted rate, the United States

1228
01:06:06,320 --> 01:06:09,800
Speaker 1: is buying six hundred and thirty five billion dollars worth

1229
01:06:09,840 --> 01:06:13,440
Speaker 1: of Chinese goods, equal to twenty seven percent of our

1230
01:06:13,440 --> 01:06:18,600
Speaker 1: total US manufacturing GDP. That level of import dependency on

1231
01:06:18,720 --> 01:06:23,160
Speaker 1: a single nation relative to domestic manufacturing is quote the

1232
01:06:23,280 --> 01:06:28,720
Speaker 1: sort of import dependency economists associate with third world countries

1233
01:06:29,000 --> 01:06:33,520
Speaker 1: dependent on former colonial powers. Yes, you heard that correctly.

1234
01:06:33,880 --> 01:06:37,080
Speaker 1: After a crisis which exposed all of the faults of

1235
01:06:37,080 --> 01:06:42,560
Speaker 1: globalization and Chinese dependence specifically, we have become more economically

1236
01:06:42,600 --> 01:06:46,560
Speaker 1: dependent than ever on China. How did that happen? It's

1237
01:06:46,600 --> 01:06:50,040
Speaker 1: a term that actually implicates everybody. It includes me and

1238
01:06:50,120 --> 01:06:52,640
Speaker 1: probably most of you. But let's start with Trump. He

1239
01:06:52,720 --> 01:06:54,840
Speaker 1: talked a big game on China, and to his credit,

1240
01:06:54,920 --> 01:06:57,760
Speaker 1: he did put tariffs on that country. At the same time, though,

1241
01:06:57,880 --> 01:07:01,000
Speaker 1: he also gave a massive tax cut to the real corporations,

1242
01:07:01,160 --> 01:07:03,560
Speaker 1: and as part of that tax cut, the GOP bill

1243
01:07:03,720 --> 01:07:07,320
Speaker 1: actually cut depreciation allowances for capital equipment in order to

1244
01:07:07,360 --> 01:07:10,680
Speaker 1: pay for their lower corporate tax rate. And so that's

1245
01:07:10,640 --> 01:07:14,520
Speaker 1: screwed with incentives so much so that in twenty nineteen

1246
01:07:14,840 --> 01:07:17,800
Speaker 1: it was the first time since the two thousand and

1247
01:07:17,960 --> 01:07:22,080
Speaker 1: eight crash that US companies spent more money buying back

1248
01:07:22,120 --> 01:07:26,000
Speaker 1: their own stock than actually investing in their equipment. It

1249
01:07:26,040 --> 01:07:28,720
Speaker 1: was a perfect storm because it caused a decline in

1250
01:07:28,880 --> 01:07:32,240
Speaker 1: orders of US manufacturing equipment all the way down to

1251
01:07:32,320 --> 01:07:34,480
Speaker 1: the very same levels that we saw in this country

1252
01:07:34,800 --> 01:07:38,560
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two. We simply do not even have

1253
01:07:38,600 --> 01:07:42,120
Speaker 1: the domestic capacity right now to make the machines which

1254
01:07:42,120 --> 01:07:45,360
Speaker 1: you can turn can make stuff. So the GOP tax

1255
01:07:45,400 --> 01:07:49,120
Speaker 1: bill basically set us up for failure heading into the pandemic. Now,

1256
01:07:49,160 --> 01:07:52,000
Speaker 1: before that, of course, Joe Biden and George W. Bush,

1257
01:07:52,000 --> 01:07:55,080
Speaker 1: in the entire establishment were united in helping destroy the

1258
01:07:55,200 --> 01:07:59,560
Speaker 1: US manufacturing sector by allowing China into the wto signing

1259
01:07:59,640 --> 01:08:03,280
Speaker 1: NAFTA into law. Those twin actions, more than anything, hallowed

1260
01:08:03,280 --> 01:08:06,480
Speaker 1: out our industrial Midwest, and it reduced manufacturing to near

1261
01:08:06,520 --> 01:08:08,960
Speaker 1: all time lows in the United States. But where do

1262
01:08:09,080 --> 01:08:12,880
Speaker 1: we come into play. Well, everyone, I, like you, am

1263
01:08:12,880 --> 01:08:16,519
Speaker 1: probably afflicted by the most American of diseases, as for

1264
01:08:16,680 --> 01:08:20,360
Speaker 1: almost two years of coronavirus madness. It sometimes just feels

1265
01:08:20,400 --> 01:08:23,160
Speaker 1: better than ever to just buy stuff, And it turns

1266
01:08:23,200 --> 01:08:26,639
Speaker 1: out I'm not the only one. In fact, consumer spending

1267
01:08:26,720 --> 01:08:31,040
Speaker 1: in the last year or so has skyrocketed to record levels.

1268
01:08:31,360 --> 01:08:33,880
Speaker 1: Of course, we intended some of that to happen with

1269
01:08:33,960 --> 01:08:36,040
Speaker 1: the twelve hundred dollars checks and the other efforts to

1270
01:08:36,120 --> 01:08:38,960
Speaker 1: stimulate the economy. But the problem is when you can

1271
01:08:39,000 --> 01:08:42,160
Speaker 1: only make stuff in one country and suddenly everybody wants

1272
01:08:42,160 --> 01:08:45,040
Speaker 1: to buy stuff, then US dependency on China is of

1273
01:08:45,080 --> 01:08:48,840
Speaker 1: course going to increase. In other words, we have multiple crises.

1274
01:08:49,040 --> 01:08:52,880
Speaker 1: Chief among them is ineffective political leadership. Both Trump and

1275
01:08:52,920 --> 01:08:56,360
Speaker 1: Biden have utterly failed to reduce US dependence on China.

1276
01:08:56,439 --> 01:08:59,759
Speaker 1: Despite talking a big game, neither of them have shown

1277
01:09:00,120 --> 01:09:03,439
Speaker 1: any of the requisite political will to dramatically transform the

1278
01:09:03,520 --> 01:09:06,280
Speaker 1: US economy and to take on the corrupt business leaders

1279
01:09:06,280 --> 01:09:08,840
Speaker 1: who want this status quo. In fact, as I covered

1280
01:09:08,880 --> 01:09:11,679
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, Biden is actually making it easier

1281
01:09:11,720 --> 01:09:16,599
Speaker 1: for US companies to increase dependence on China with tariff exclusions. Trump,

1282
01:09:16,760 --> 01:09:19,719
Speaker 1: while talking a big game, made the situation much worse

1283
01:09:19,720 --> 01:09:21,680
Speaker 1: with the tax bill. But I also don't want to

1284
01:09:21,760 --> 01:09:24,080
Speaker 1: let all of us off the hook either. Yes, it

1285
01:09:24,160 --> 01:09:26,920
Speaker 1: is true our culture and our political leadership have taught

1286
01:09:27,000 --> 01:09:30,360
Speaker 1: us that. As Matt Stoler said yesterday, consumerism is more

1287
01:09:30,360 --> 01:09:34,280
Speaker 1: important than citizenship for some. But let's be honest and

1288
01:09:34,320 --> 01:09:38,040
Speaker 1: realize that politicians also respond to incentives. The reason that

1289
01:09:38,080 --> 01:09:40,680
Speaker 1: both Biden and Trump can get away with this is

1290
01:09:40,720 --> 01:09:44,479
Speaker 1: because we let them. Most people would prefer to just

1291
01:09:44,520 --> 01:09:47,720
Speaker 1: shrug and say, yeah, that's terrible. Someone should do something

1292
01:09:47,800 --> 01:09:50,240
Speaker 1: about that. Also, don't you dare tell me that the

1293
01:09:50,240 --> 01:09:52,280
Speaker 1: stuff I buy at Walmart's going to be ten cents

1294
01:09:52,280 --> 01:09:54,840
Speaker 1: more expensive if you do try to do something about it.

1295
01:09:55,160 --> 01:09:57,479
Speaker 1: The race to the bottom in our politics right now

1296
01:09:57,760 --> 01:09:59,920
Speaker 1: is as much of a reflection of us and all

1297
01:10:00,040 --> 01:10:03,240
Speaker 1: our values as it is the decrepit leadership class that

1298
01:10:03,360 --> 01:10:06,559
Speaker 1: rules US. So to change this, we have to actually

1299
01:10:06,600 --> 01:10:10,080
Speaker 1: demand change. I know that really sounds simple, But the

1300
01:10:10,160 --> 01:10:13,320
Speaker 1: hardest thing we can actually do is let's stop being

1301
01:10:13,439 --> 01:10:17,599
Speaker 1: consumers and start being citizens again. How stunning is it, Crystal,

1302
01:10:17,760 --> 01:10:20,840
Speaker 1: that in the years after the Trump tariffs that x

1303
01:10:20,880 --> 01:10:23,920
Speaker 1: imports from China actually went one more thing, I promise.

1304
01:10:24,280 --> 01:10:26,480
Speaker 1: Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast

1305
01:10:26,479 --> 01:10:29,320
Speaker 1: with Kyle Kolinski. It's called Crystal, Kyle and Friends, where

1306
01:10:29,320 --> 01:10:32,120
Speaker 1: we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky,

1307
01:10:32,200 --> 01:10:35,479
Speaker 1: Cornell West, and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any

1308
01:10:35,520 --> 01:10:38,920
Speaker 1: podcast platform, or you can subscribe over on substack to

1309
01:10:38,920 --> 01:10:41,280
Speaker 1: get the video a day early. We're gonna stop bugging

1310
01:10:41,280 --> 01:10:43,880
Speaker 1: you now. Enjoy all right, Crystal, what are you taking

1311
01:10:43,880 --> 01:10:47,040
Speaker 1: a look at? Well? Guys, do you remember this? The

1312
01:10:47,080 --> 01:10:50,640
Speaker 1: only way we can deal with corporate greed in America

1313
01:10:50,800 --> 01:10:55,400
Speaker 1: is union power. That's a fact. You're the only ones

1314
01:10:55,400 --> 01:10:57,800
Speaker 1: to keep the barbaris another side of the gate man.

1315
01:10:58,280 --> 01:11:02,920
Speaker 1: You're the only ones. I promise you. The fair labor

1316
01:11:02,960 --> 01:11:06,160
Speaker 1: standard Zach passed way back in Roosevelt's day didn't say

1317
01:11:06,640 --> 01:11:09,360
Speaker 1: we're allowed to have unions and said the government should

1318
01:11:09,400 --> 01:11:13,920
Speaker 1: promote unions. I promise you I will be the most

1319
01:11:13,960 --> 01:11:18,120
Speaker 1: pro union president you have ever seen. I guarantee you

1320
01:11:18,160 --> 01:11:23,000
Speaker 1: a seat at the table the government should promote unions. That,

1321
01:11:23,080 --> 01:11:24,720
Speaker 1: of course, was Joe Biden, and that was on the

1322
01:11:24,760 --> 01:11:28,400
Speaker 1: eve of election day in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. Fun fact,

1323
01:11:28,479 --> 01:11:31,280
Speaker 1: I used to live right next door neighboring East Liverpool, Ohio.

1324
01:11:31,760 --> 01:11:35,960
Speaker 1: So after launching his campaign at a Pittsburgh firefighters union hall,

1325
01:11:36,240 --> 01:11:39,320
Speaker 1: Biden closed his campaign by promising to be the most

1326
01:11:39,520 --> 01:11:43,280
Speaker 1: pro union president in history, by promising that he would

1327
01:11:43,320 --> 01:11:48,240
Speaker 1: not only allow workers to unionize, but would actively promote unionization.

1328
01:11:48,760 --> 01:11:51,040
Speaker 1: Now as president, he's also made clear he sees the

1329
01:11:51,040 --> 01:11:54,280
Speaker 1: decline of unions as a critical threat to America, saying

1330
01:11:54,320 --> 01:11:57,240
Speaker 1: that the trend has quote weakened our democracy. Those are

1331
01:11:57,240 --> 01:12:00,760
Speaker 1: pretty strong words. Yet here we are the beginning of

1332
01:12:00,800 --> 01:12:04,120
Speaker 1: a major strike wave with workers from coast to coast.

1333
01:12:04,160 --> 01:12:07,639
Speaker 1: We're talking bus drivers and nurses and factory workers alike,

1334
01:12:08,040 --> 01:12:12,439
Speaker 1: all authorizing strikes, some rejecting contracts, some hitting the picket lines.

1335
01:12:12,800 --> 01:12:16,160
Speaker 1: And what has the self proclaimed most pro union president

1336
01:12:16,200 --> 01:12:19,120
Speaker 1: in history had to say about it? Pretty close to

1337
01:12:19,439 --> 01:12:22,439
Speaker 1: nothing at all. His press secretary delivered the company line

1338
01:12:22,479 --> 01:12:24,320
Speaker 1: that they would have nothing to say about any of

1339
01:12:24,360 --> 01:12:27,880
Speaker 1: the ongoing strikes. Well, noting generally that Biden is pro union,

1340
01:12:28,439 --> 01:12:31,200
Speaker 1: you've got about ten thousand John Gear workers on strike,

1341
01:12:31,240 --> 01:12:34,360
Speaker 1: and about other strikes going on, how concern are you

1342
01:12:34,400 --> 01:12:36,640
Speaker 1: about the impactors might have on an economy or the

1343
01:12:36,640 --> 01:12:41,360
Speaker 1: supply chain, and do you have any plans to intervene? Well,

1344
01:12:42,360 --> 01:12:45,800
Speaker 1: we of course are not going to speak to any

1345
01:12:45,800 --> 01:12:51,160
Speaker 1: individual ongoing potential individual labor actions, as you know as

1346
01:12:51,160 --> 01:12:54,120
Speaker 1: a standard, but I will note that the president and

1347
01:12:54,120 --> 01:12:57,120
Speaker 1: the Vice president often say and that this is the

1348
01:12:57,160 --> 01:13:00,960
Speaker 1: most pro union administration in history, and they will continue

1349
01:13:01,000 --> 01:13:06,559
Speaker 1: to govern and lead with that in mind. You got

1350
01:13:06,560 --> 01:13:08,240
Speaker 1: to love how that question is framed too, about what

1351
01:13:08,280 --> 01:13:11,240
Speaker 1: the strike would do to the supply chain, not about

1352
01:13:11,280 --> 01:13:14,280
Speaker 1: what it might mean for the workers. For example. Then

1353
01:13:14,360 --> 01:13:17,000
Speaker 1: we were grace with a few utterances from mister most

1354
01:13:17,120 --> 01:13:20,400
Speaker 1: pro union president in history himself. He said that his

1355
01:13:20,560 --> 01:13:23,280
Speaker 1: message to those striking workers is that they have a

1356
01:13:23,360 --> 01:13:25,280
Speaker 1: right to strike, and they have a right to demand

1357
01:13:25,360 --> 01:13:27,719
Speaker 1: higher wages, and the companies they're striking on are doing

1358
01:13:27,840 --> 01:13:30,640
Speaker 1: very well, not going to get into the negotiation. But

1359
01:13:30,760 --> 01:13:32,720
Speaker 1: my message is if you think that's what you need,

1360
01:13:32,760 --> 01:13:35,400
Speaker 1: then you should do it. Guys. Let's just be honest.

1361
01:13:35,600 --> 01:13:38,559
Speaker 1: This is extremely weak. A tectonic shift is happening right

1362
01:13:38,600 --> 01:13:41,000
Speaker 1: now in relations between labor and management. You see it

1363
01:13:41,080 --> 01:13:43,360
Speaker 1: in the strikes he's see in the great resignation. You

1364
01:13:43,400 --> 01:13:46,519
Speaker 1: see it in skyrocketing approval ratings for unions and Biden

1365
01:13:46,960 --> 01:13:49,960
Speaker 1: he is largely missing in action. He hasn't said a

1366
01:13:49,960 --> 01:13:53,880
Speaker 1: word about other strikes happening at Kellogg's and other workplaces.

1367
01:13:54,240 --> 01:13:56,800
Speaker 1: Some of the workers who are risking their livelihoods here

1368
01:13:57,000 --> 01:14:00,400
Speaker 1: they've noticed his absence from the fight. Carrie Williams, president

1369
01:14:00,479 --> 01:14:04,160
Speaker 1: of BCTGM Local three seventy four g told Politico quote,

1370
01:14:04,360 --> 01:14:07,000
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, Kellogg's is an iconic

1371
01:14:07,080 --> 01:14:11,280
Speaker 1: American manufacturer food wise, we were essential workers, and I

1372
01:14:11,320 --> 01:14:14,599
Speaker 1: would hope the Biden administration will put something out there

1373
01:14:14,640 --> 01:14:17,559
Speaker 1: to encourage the kellogg management to get back to the

1374
01:14:17,560 --> 01:14:21,080
Speaker 1: negotiating table. Look, let me be totally clear. Biden, of course,

1375
01:14:21,120 --> 01:14:23,400
Speaker 1: has been way better on labor than Trump. It's not

1376
01:14:23,439 --> 01:14:26,360
Speaker 1: even close. Most critically, he staffed the National Labor Relations

1377
01:14:26,400 --> 01:14:28,720
Speaker 1: Board with people who actually believe in the mission of

1378
01:14:28,760 --> 01:14:31,960
Speaker 1: that body instead of union investing lawyers. But as Jonah

1379
01:14:32,000 --> 01:14:34,679
Speaker 1: Furman and Gabriel Wnant point out in a recent article

1380
01:14:34,960 --> 01:14:38,360
Speaker 1: he's also weakened labour's hands significantly by allowing a lot

1381
01:14:38,400 --> 01:14:42,000
Speaker 1: of key pandemic supports to expire. Workers out on strike

1382
01:14:42,080 --> 01:14:44,960
Speaker 1: they lose their employer sponsored health insurance. So those COBRA

1383
01:14:45,000 --> 01:14:48,599
Speaker 1: subsidies that we did have, those have expired. They would

1384
01:14:48,640 --> 01:14:51,840
Speaker 1: have been rather useful. Talk of the pro Act, of course,

1385
01:14:51,840 --> 01:14:54,559
Speaker 1: initially pitched as an integral part of the Build Back

1386
01:14:54,640 --> 01:14:59,040
Speaker 1: Better plan, that has completely vanished from public debate, and

1387
01:14:59,080 --> 01:15:02,080
Speaker 1: as I detailed early, Biden has stuck to a legalistic

1388
01:15:02,200 --> 01:15:05,320
Speaker 1: dodge when asked about these strikes, failing to directly advocate

1389
01:15:05,400 --> 01:15:08,200
Speaker 1: for the workers. This power of the bully pulpit is

1390
01:15:08,240 --> 01:15:11,599
Speaker 1: also not to be underestimated. Media coverage of strike Tober

1391
01:15:11,680 --> 01:15:17,400
Speaker 1: has been sorely lacking. Biden forcefully weighing in would be controversial,

1392
01:15:17,439 --> 01:15:20,000
Speaker 1: and it would force the press to actually pay attention.

1393
01:15:20,439 --> 01:15:23,040
Speaker 1: That would put pressure on all of the companies involved

1394
01:15:23,240 --> 01:15:25,760
Speaker 1: not to mention help inform the American people about what's

1395
01:15:25,800 --> 01:15:29,040
Speaker 1: going on. We are truly at a pivot point in

1396
01:15:29,120 --> 01:15:31,240
Speaker 1: terms of the labor movement and in terms of the

1397
01:15:31,240 --> 01:15:34,120
Speaker 1: fate of the American worker. In fact, at least some

1398
01:15:34,160 --> 01:15:36,080
Speaker 1: of the workers out on strike right now, they see

1399
01:15:36,120 --> 01:15:39,479
Speaker 1: their struggle in the broader context of an existential battle

1400
01:15:39,640 --> 01:15:43,280
Speaker 1: for the middle class. After all, rising in equality and

1401
01:15:43,360 --> 01:15:46,600
Speaker 1: falling union density, those things go hand in hand. You

1402
01:15:46,600 --> 01:15:49,400
Speaker 1: can see it in this chart. It's a direct relationship.

1403
01:15:49,680 --> 01:15:54,320
Speaker 1: As unions decline, wealth concentration accelerates. It is a clear

1404
01:15:54,320 --> 01:15:57,280
Speaker 1: as day correlation. And of course it makes perfect sense

1405
01:15:57,560 --> 01:16:00,360
Speaker 1: when war workers are unionized. Unions have more power. When

1406
01:16:00,439 --> 01:16:02,880
Speaker 1: unions have more power, they're able to win better deals

1407
01:16:02,880 --> 01:16:05,360
Speaker 1: for their members, and when their members win better deals,

1408
01:16:05,640 --> 01:16:09,919
Speaker 1: it lifts wages and conditions even for non union workers.

1409
01:16:10,400 --> 01:16:13,519
Speaker 1: It is no accident that as union density has declined

1410
01:16:13,560 --> 01:16:17,439
Speaker 1: in America, wages have stagnated, and corporate profits have soared.

1411
01:16:18,000 --> 01:16:20,640
Speaker 1: There is a moment here to be seized, one of

1412
01:16:20,640 --> 01:16:23,120
Speaker 1: the most hopeful moments that I frankly have seen in

1413
01:16:23,160 --> 01:16:26,280
Speaker 1: a long while in American political life. A sea change

1414
01:16:26,320 --> 01:16:28,559
Speaker 1: in how workers view their jobs and how they view

1415
01:16:28,600 --> 01:16:31,599
Speaker 1: their bosses. A tight labor market that is giving workers

1416
01:16:31,640 --> 01:16:34,519
Speaker 1: a little bit of leverage to play with. What's more,

1417
01:16:34,880 --> 01:16:38,120
Speaker 1: public opinion is dramatically on the side of the workers

1418
01:16:38,160 --> 01:16:42,040
Speaker 1: who we claimed as essential but then were treated as disposable.

1419
01:16:42,640 --> 01:16:45,160
Speaker 1: Why not President Biden show up at a picket line.

1420
01:16:45,520 --> 01:16:48,080
Speaker 1: Why not dramatically join the right side of the class

1421
01:16:48,080 --> 01:16:50,920
Speaker 1: war for once. Why not force a vote on the

1422
01:16:50,960 --> 01:16:54,599
Speaker 1: pro act and make every anti union legislator go on

1423
01:16:54,680 --> 01:16:58,639
Speaker 1: the record as being for or against worker power. Biden

1424
01:16:58,680 --> 01:17:01,080
Speaker 1: said that Beaver County Camp Pain speech I played that

1425
01:17:01,200 --> 01:17:03,479
Speaker 1: the only way to deal with corporate greed in America

1426
01:17:03,680 --> 01:17:06,840
Speaker 1: is through union power. So Joe Biden doesn't have to

1427
01:17:06,840 --> 01:17:09,760
Speaker 1: look back to FDR or anyone else to know what

1428
01:17:09,840 --> 01:17:12,960
Speaker 1: his role should be right now. He only needs to

1429
01:17:13,000 --> 01:17:16,360
Speaker 1: live up to his own promises. And you know, Sager,

1430
01:17:17,240 --> 01:17:19,960
Speaker 1: obviously this is a bit of wishful thinking, But I

1431
01:17:20,080 --> 01:17:22,599
Speaker 1: just don't think we can let go of the fact

1432
01:17:22,600 --> 01:17:25,360
Speaker 1: that there is a moment right here that if someone

1433
01:17:25,880 --> 01:17:28,360
Speaker 1: all right joining us. Now we have Chris Larson. He's

1434
01:17:28,400 --> 01:17:32,400
Speaker 1: the former UAW Local seventy four president, a local there

1435
01:17:32,439 --> 01:17:35,719
Speaker 1: in Iowa and worked at John Deere for nineteen years.

1436
01:17:35,720 --> 01:17:38,360
Speaker 1: Great to have you, Chris, Good to see you. Chris. Hey,

1437
01:17:38,400 --> 01:17:40,880
Speaker 1: thank you and thanks for having me on your show.

1438
01:17:41,320 --> 01:17:43,160
Speaker 1: Oh it's our pleasure. Thanks for taking the time. So

1439
01:17:43,280 --> 01:17:45,880
Speaker 1: just give us an update. What's going on with the

1440
01:17:45,920 --> 01:17:50,439
Speaker 1: strike this morning and what were the key issues that

1441
01:17:50,479 --> 01:17:54,600
Speaker 1: forced you all out on the picket lines. Okay, so

1442
01:17:55,360 --> 01:17:58,320
Speaker 1: you know we're manning the picket line twenty four to seven.

1443
01:18:00,000 --> 01:18:03,800
Speaker 1: Our negotiating team went back up Timolinomoi yesterday to make

1444
01:18:03,840 --> 01:18:09,040
Speaker 1: themselves available for negotiations. It's to my understanding that Deer

1445
01:18:09,120 --> 01:18:11,160
Speaker 1: did meet with them. Other than that, I have no

1446
01:18:11,280 --> 01:18:17,880
Speaker 1: details from that. The tentative of agreement that was brought

1447
01:18:17,920 --> 01:18:19,960
Speaker 1: back to us and then we voted down by ninety

1448
01:18:19,960 --> 01:18:24,400
Speaker 1: percent on August or October fourth. There were several problems,

1449
01:18:25,560 --> 01:18:28,839
Speaker 1: as you might know, since nineteen ninety seven, we've been tiered.

1450
01:18:29,800 --> 01:18:34,000
Speaker 1: Anybody hired after one October of nineteen ninety seven came

1451
01:18:34,080 --> 01:18:42,720
Speaker 1: in with a substantial less wage, no post retirement healthcare, KIP,

1452
01:18:42,880 --> 01:18:46,559
Speaker 1: factors on our incidentive plan that were lower, and many

1453
01:18:46,600 --> 01:18:48,880
Speaker 1: other things, and you know, a pension plan that was

1454
01:18:48,920 --> 01:18:51,160
Speaker 1: a third and a a half of what our predecessors were.

1455
01:18:52,479 --> 01:18:56,360
Speaker 1: And then after twenty five years of concessionary contracts, we

1456
01:18:56,840 --> 01:19:00,840
Speaker 1: finally have a an environment that's ready for us and

1457
01:19:01,160 --> 01:19:03,519
Speaker 1: the balls in our court and we know it. And

1458
01:19:03,640 --> 01:19:06,120
Speaker 1: part of what drives that we see that, you know,

1459
01:19:06,200 --> 01:19:10,120
Speaker 1: Deering Company has been experiencing record profits. Their third quarter

1460
01:19:10,200 --> 01:19:15,000
Speaker 1: reportings exceed their record profit year of twenty thirteen. They're

1461
01:19:15,000 --> 01:19:17,400
Speaker 1: projected to make between five point seven and five point

1462
01:19:17,479 --> 01:19:23,479
Speaker 1: nine billion dollars this year. You probably know CEO John May,

1463
01:19:24,120 --> 01:19:25,920
Speaker 1: the board seemed fit to give him one hundred and

1464
01:19:25,960 --> 01:19:32,680
Speaker 1: sixty percent pay increase. And also you know, look, you know,

1465
01:19:32,760 --> 01:19:36,400
Speaker 1: Dear rewarded their investors in August with the seventeen percent

1466
01:19:36,760 --> 01:19:43,040
Speaker 1: dividend hike in a concerted effort to you know, increase

1467
01:19:43,080 --> 01:19:45,640
Speaker 1: wealth within their shareholders. And what we see with that

1468
01:19:45,800 --> 01:19:49,519
Speaker 1: contract or the tentative agreement that was brought back, it's

1469
01:19:49,560 --> 01:19:52,680
Speaker 1: not fair, it's not equitable, and uh, you know, we're

1470
01:19:52,760 --> 01:19:55,760
Speaker 1: ready to make a stand, Chris. Why is it important

1471
01:19:55,880 --> 01:19:59,880
Speaker 1: to you, maybe some of the older members to fight

1472
01:20:00,160 --> 01:20:05,160
Speaker 1: against the tier system and the continuation of if you

1473
01:20:05,200 --> 01:20:07,400
Speaker 1: guys are taken care of Why is it important for

1474
01:20:07,479 --> 01:20:10,479
Speaker 1: you know, older members or people who have better benefits

1475
01:20:10,520 --> 01:20:13,559
Speaker 1: to fight for people who have lesser and which John

1476
01:20:13,640 --> 01:20:16,720
Speaker 1: Deere may be trying to take advantage of. You know,

1477
01:20:16,840 --> 01:20:22,120
Speaker 1: that's a great question. You know, look, you know we've

1478
01:20:22,160 --> 01:20:24,479
Speaker 1: had twenty five years of being in the tier system.

1479
01:20:24,760 --> 01:20:26,880
Speaker 1: I mean it's lept a bad taste in everybody's mouth.

1480
01:20:27,600 --> 01:20:30,160
Speaker 1: And for me, when I seen the tenet of agreement,

1481
01:20:30,680 --> 01:20:33,280
Speaker 1: the non starter from the beginning, even before we talk

1482
01:20:33,320 --> 01:20:39,600
Speaker 1: about wages is the fact that Deer is, you know,

1483
01:20:39,960 --> 01:20:42,800
Speaker 1: determined to maintain a lower paid workforce. And we can

1484
01:20:42,840 --> 01:20:46,280
Speaker 1: see that when they offered no secure defined pension to

1485
01:20:46,560 --> 01:20:50,800
Speaker 1: new hires after one November of twenty twenty one, just

1486
01:20:50,840 --> 01:20:54,360
Speaker 1: a four one K match. I personally feel, and I

1487
01:20:54,400 --> 01:20:57,280
Speaker 1: think a lot of others do, that we don't want

1488
01:20:57,280 --> 01:21:02,760
Speaker 1: our retirement benefits turned into a Wall Street speculation portfolio.

1489
01:21:04,680 --> 01:21:08,000
Speaker 1: We've covered here how they're One of the tactics they're

1490
01:21:08,080 --> 01:21:10,559
Speaker 1: using to try to break the strike is they've brought

1491
01:21:10,600 --> 01:21:13,840
Speaker 1: in salaried workers to try to do the jobs that

1492
01:21:13,920 --> 01:21:18,360
Speaker 1: you all were doing. How is that going well? I

1493
01:21:18,400 --> 01:21:19,960
Speaker 1: can't speak to that. I mean, I'd love to be

1494
01:21:20,000 --> 01:21:22,439
Speaker 1: a fly on the wall in there, but that is true.

1495
01:21:22,439 --> 01:21:27,479
Speaker 1: They do have some salaried employees in their working You

1496
01:21:27,520 --> 01:21:30,599
Speaker 1: know what they're doing, I don't know, it would seem

1497
01:21:30,920 --> 01:21:32,680
Speaker 1: pretty far stretched. Do you think that they would be

1498
01:21:32,800 --> 01:21:36,559
Speaker 1: capable of doing any sort of production at all? You know,

1499
01:21:36,560 --> 01:21:40,280
Speaker 1: maybe they're just taking inventory. I'm not real sure. There

1500
01:21:40,320 --> 01:21:42,360
Speaker 1: have been a few loaded trucks that go out that

1501
01:21:42,520 --> 01:21:47,880
Speaker 1: have equipment on it, but those are the vast machinery

1502
01:21:47,880 --> 01:21:51,160
Speaker 1: that was built before we went on strike. Yeah, and

1503
01:21:51,200 --> 01:21:53,040
Speaker 1: you know, Chris, something we've been trying to cover here

1504
01:21:53,160 --> 01:21:55,200
Speaker 1: is why, now, you know, why is it that so

1505
01:21:55,240 --> 01:21:58,120
Speaker 1: many people are rising up right now, either to quit

1506
01:21:58,120 --> 01:22:00,719
Speaker 1: their job or better wage or unions who are going

1507
01:22:00,720 --> 01:22:04,160
Speaker 1: out on strike demanding better from these companies. Why now,

1508
01:22:04,760 --> 01:22:06,639
Speaker 1: you know, after John Deere did have a record year,

1509
01:22:06,640 --> 01:22:08,600
Speaker 1: but they've been doing well for a time, why is

1510
01:22:08,640 --> 01:22:11,840
Speaker 1: this moment the right one to stand up? Well, I

1511
01:22:11,840 --> 01:22:14,200
Speaker 1: think what you're seeing is the rebirth of the American

1512
01:22:14,280 --> 01:22:16,720
Speaker 1: labor movement. And there's several factors that kind of went

1513
01:22:16,800 --> 01:22:21,280
Speaker 1: into that. You know, I think the one silver lining

1514
01:22:21,320 --> 01:22:24,640
Speaker 1: in the pandemic is that, you know, treated art shortages

1515
01:22:24,720 --> 01:22:30,120
Speaker 1: and spy issues, they put geer behind on production and

1516
01:22:30,160 --> 01:22:34,120
Speaker 1: it's made it, you know, harder for businesses. And we

1517
01:22:34,200 --> 01:22:38,080
Speaker 1: see that the cheap labor bubble is finally busting, which

1518
01:22:38,120 --> 01:22:40,160
Speaker 1: is a good thing. Workers are demanding more, you know,

1519
01:22:40,200 --> 01:22:42,000
Speaker 1: they're not wanting to go out and work for peanuts,

1520
01:22:42,800 --> 01:22:45,960
Speaker 1: and you know it's time that you know, workers are

1521
01:22:45,960 --> 01:22:48,479
Speaker 1: saying it's sign to distribute to wealth a little more evenly.

1522
01:22:49,760 --> 01:22:53,559
Speaker 1: What type of solidarity have you seen within the communities there,

1523
01:22:55,000 --> 01:22:58,840
Speaker 1: you know, I tell you, Crystal, the solidarity, the outpouring

1524
01:22:58,840 --> 01:23:02,560
Speaker 1: and support in this community has been absolutely amazing and overwhelming.

1525
01:23:03,760 --> 01:23:05,680
Speaker 1: You know, we can't even keep track of all the

1526
01:23:05,680 --> 01:23:10,080
Speaker 1: different businesses that have donated food, water supplies people from

1527
01:23:10,160 --> 01:23:12,600
Speaker 1: the community. You know, as we stand out there on

1528
01:23:12,600 --> 01:23:17,479
Speaker 1: the picket line, you know, it's constant hawking, solidarity fists

1529
01:23:17,520 --> 01:23:23,599
Speaker 1: out the window, and the community is behind us, and

1530
01:23:23,600 --> 01:23:24,960
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of the you know, even

1531
01:23:25,000 --> 01:23:28,080
Speaker 1: the farmers that buy the equipment are behind us. And

1532
01:23:28,160 --> 01:23:32,599
Speaker 1: we have to see, you know, how long can John

1533
01:23:32,680 --> 01:23:37,200
Speaker 1: Dear not produce. There's a big demand for agculture implements

1534
01:23:37,240 --> 01:23:39,880
Speaker 1: right now because the corn prices are up, the soybean

1535
01:23:39,880 --> 01:23:43,599
Speaker 1: prices are up, so the agg market's really strong. Farmers

1536
01:23:43,640 --> 01:23:47,040
Speaker 1: are harvesting their their crops. That's when they get paid,

1537
01:23:47,600 --> 01:23:51,120
Speaker 1: and that's when they're looking to buy tractors and combines

1538
01:23:51,160 --> 01:23:54,320
Speaker 1: and bailors and things of that nature. What type of

1539
01:23:54,360 --> 01:23:58,240
Speaker 1: political support have you received and do you have an

1540
01:23:58,240 --> 01:24:02,920
Speaker 1: expectation of political support? Is something you want to see? Yeah,

1541
01:24:02,960 --> 01:24:05,679
Speaker 1: I mean obviously we take we want all the support

1542
01:24:05,720 --> 01:24:10,160
Speaker 1: we can get. Yeah, we've had several you know, politicians

1543
01:24:10,160 --> 01:24:12,960
Speaker 1: and candidates come down and walked on the line with us.

1544
01:24:14,800 --> 01:24:18,880
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders called me last Friday and asked, you know,

1545
01:24:18,920 --> 01:24:22,160
Speaker 1: how he could be of support and he bought piculars

1546
01:24:22,200 --> 01:24:25,720
Speaker 1: here at u aw logal seventy four pizza Saturday for

1547
01:24:25,840 --> 01:24:29,840
Speaker 1: lunch and also send down he's videographer to help us

1548
01:24:29,840 --> 01:24:33,320
Speaker 1: make some videos to push out and get our message out. Yeah,

1549
01:24:33,479 --> 01:24:35,639
Speaker 1: we've had, you know, several people come down and walk

1550
01:24:35,680 --> 01:24:37,840
Speaker 1: the line with us, and we appreciate it very much.

1551
01:24:38,600 --> 01:24:40,240
Speaker 1: One of the things that we've talked a little bit

1552
01:24:40,240 --> 01:24:43,600
Speaker 1: about here, Chris, there's a lot that we find inspiring

1553
01:24:43,640 --> 01:24:46,559
Speaker 1: about what you and your brothers and sisters there are doing.

1554
01:24:46,640 --> 01:24:49,479
Speaker 1: But we also find an example inspiring that I'm sure

1555
01:24:49,479 --> 01:24:52,479
Speaker 1: you have people from a range of political views and

1556
01:24:52,560 --> 01:24:57,160
Speaker 1: perspectives supported different candidates, et cetera. And it's kind of rare,

1557
01:24:57,320 --> 01:24:59,920
Speaker 1: sadly that you see in the media that example of

1558
01:25:00,080 --> 01:25:04,360
Speaker 1: people from all different background grounds and political ideologies coming

1559
01:25:04,400 --> 01:25:07,280
Speaker 1: together in this way to fight for something. And I

1560
01:25:07,320 --> 01:25:09,600
Speaker 1: was wondering if you could just speak to that that

1561
01:25:09,760 --> 01:25:12,160
Speaker 1: concept of solidarity and the way that that has played

1562
01:25:12,160 --> 01:25:15,320
Speaker 1: out in the strike in particular. You know, that's one

1563
01:25:15,360 --> 01:25:17,680
Speaker 1: of the most remarkable things I see coming out of

1564
01:25:17,680 --> 01:25:21,919
Speaker 1: this is a display of solidarity. You know, our membership

1565
01:25:22,000 --> 01:25:25,439
Speaker 1: is very divided on political lines. It depends on what

1566
01:25:26,280 --> 01:25:31,920
Speaker 1: type of corporate media you prescribe to, but we do.

1567
01:25:32,280 --> 01:25:35,640
Speaker 1: I mean, we are all together. Everybody's setting their differences aside,

1568
01:25:36,560 --> 01:25:39,040
Speaker 1: you know, coming together as one. You know, my hope

1569
01:25:39,160 --> 01:25:42,920
Speaker 1: is that once it does settles, people can be reflective

1570
01:25:43,000 --> 01:25:45,760
Speaker 1: and you know, see who came, who showed up, and

1571
01:25:46,240 --> 01:25:49,400
Speaker 1: who was with us. Well, we're one hundred percent with you, Chris,

1572
01:25:49,439 --> 01:25:51,479
Speaker 1: so we really appreciate you joining us. Thank you. Yeah.

1573
01:25:51,479 --> 01:25:54,200
Speaker 1: And last thing, Chris, if people want to support you

1574
01:25:54,320 --> 01:26:00,519
Speaker 1: and the other strikers, where can they go. Well, that's

1575
01:26:00,560 --> 01:26:02,880
Speaker 1: a little bit of an issue. I mean here specifically,

1576
01:26:02,920 --> 01:26:05,720
Speaker 1: we have a Fairway Food Stores giving us food at

1577
01:26:05,720 --> 01:26:10,679
Speaker 1: cost Despire Strike Kitchen. If anybody's in the Autumboil area,

1578
01:26:11,080 --> 01:26:14,479
Speaker 1: they can go to Fairway and make a donation for

1579
01:26:14,560 --> 01:26:18,800
Speaker 1: the UAW Local Strike Fund and we can receive money

1580
01:26:18,840 --> 01:26:22,320
Speaker 1: that way. I will say, I'd like to give a

1581
01:26:22,320 --> 01:26:25,160
Speaker 1: shout out to a group that I'm very proud of

1582
01:26:25,439 --> 01:26:27,479
Speaker 1: being part of and that's United out of Workers for

1583
01:26:27,520 --> 01:26:31,519
Speaker 1: Democracy and we're trying to reform our union. They started

1584
01:26:31,560 --> 01:26:35,160
Speaker 1: to go fund me a few days ago and raised

1585
01:26:35,200 --> 01:26:38,120
Speaker 1: like forty five thousand dollars almost before they shut it off.

1586
01:26:38,160 --> 01:26:42,080
Speaker 1: So you know, right now, we have so much food,

1587
01:26:42,080 --> 01:26:45,200
Speaker 1: we have so much water, different things that people have

1588
01:26:45,240 --> 01:26:47,720
Speaker 1: brought in. But if you really want to help and

1589
01:26:47,760 --> 01:26:50,799
Speaker 1: you want to support, and if you're near john der facility,

1590
01:26:50,880 --> 01:26:53,120
Speaker 1: join us on the ticket line and that would be

1591
01:26:53,160 --> 01:26:56,879
Speaker 1: a great way to show your solidarity with us. Awesome,

1592
01:26:56,920 --> 01:26:59,559
Speaker 1: all right, Chris, thank you so much. Good luck out there,

1593
01:26:59,600 --> 01:27:02,320
Speaker 1: keep us updated. We're really grateful for your time. Thanks Chris,

1594
01:27:02,720 --> 01:27:06,560
Speaker 1: thank you very much, our pleasure. Thank you guys so

1595
01:27:06,640 --> 01:27:08,800
Speaker 1: much for watching. We really appreciate it. You know, we

1596
01:27:09,200 --> 01:27:11,200
Speaker 1: just can't thank you guys enough for supporting the show.

1597
01:27:11,240 --> 01:27:13,320
Speaker 1: It gives us life, the ability. You know, you could

1598
01:27:13,400 --> 01:27:15,280
Speaker 1: listen to what Chris says, that's how we have the

1599
01:27:15,320 --> 01:27:18,120
Speaker 1: ability to elevate stories like is to cover the stuff

1600
01:27:18,240 --> 01:27:20,439
Speaker 1: that needs to be done, to actually look at you know,

1601
01:27:20,560 --> 01:27:23,600
Speaker 1: Starbucks and Amazon and really what's happening here, and to

1602
01:27:23,640 --> 01:27:25,280
Speaker 1: try and have a better conversation. So if you can

1603
01:27:25,280 --> 01:27:27,439
Speaker 1: support us it really means a lot. We've been being

1604
01:27:27,479 --> 01:27:31,040
Speaker 1: screwed around both by YouTube for you know, quite a bit. Now.

1605
01:27:31,240 --> 01:27:33,879
Speaker 1: The only reason it doesn't matter is because of your support.

1606
01:27:34,040 --> 01:27:36,040
Speaker 1: So link is down their description if you can become

1607
01:27:36,040 --> 01:27:37,960
Speaker 1: a premium member today. We really appreciate it. Yeah, and

1608
01:27:37,960 --> 01:27:39,320
Speaker 1: I also want to thank you guys for the way

1609
01:27:39,320 --> 01:27:41,680
Speaker 1: that you've supported some of the guests and outlets that

1610
01:27:41,680 --> 01:27:44,240
Speaker 1: we've brought on as well. We hear from them that,

1611
01:27:44,400 --> 01:27:47,280
Speaker 1: you know, when they come on, they see that they're

1612
01:27:47,400 --> 01:27:50,559
Speaker 1: able to continue their subject, they see that there's funds

1613
01:27:50,560 --> 01:27:53,439
Speaker 1: coming into their strike funds. So can't thank you guys

1614
01:27:53,560 --> 01:27:56,120
Speaker 1: enough for the support that you've shown to the entire

1615
01:27:56,240 --> 01:27:59,400
Speaker 1: Breaking Points community. We love you guys. Have a great day,

1616
01:27:59,400 --> 01:28:01,200
Speaker 1: and we'll see you back for a full show on Thursday.

1617
01:28:01,200 --> 01:28:17,639
Speaker 1: See you Thursday. Thanks for listening to the show, guys,

1618
01:28:17,680 --> 01:28:20,240
Speaker 1: We really appreciate it. To help other people find the show,

1619
01:28:20,320 --> 01:28:22,280
Speaker 1: go ahead and leave us a five star rating on

1620
01:28:22,360 --> 01:28:25,840
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Really helps

1621
01:28:25,880 --> 01:28:29,120
Speaker 1: other people find the show as always special thank you

1622
01:28:29,200 --> 01:28:32,760
Speaker 1: to Supercast for powering our premium membership. If you want

1623
01:28:32,760 --> 01:28:35,799
Speaker 1: to find out more, go to Crystalansager dot com