Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent coverage.
Speaker 3: That is possible.
Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means
Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that,
Speaker 2: let's get to the show. Some interesting and possibly good news.
Speaker 2: Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: The share of US adults who are identifying with select
Speaker 2: political affiliations has gone to an all time low for
Speaker 2: Democrats and Republicans at the very same time that independence
Speaker 2: has actually increased. So in two thousand and four, thirty
Speaker 2: five percent of the American people identified as Democrat, thirty
Speaker 2: three percent as Republican, thirty one percent as independent. Today,
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three, forty nine percent of Americans identify
Speaker 2: as independent. Only twenty five percent respectively identify as Democrat
Speaker 2: and Republican, So basically half of the entire count tree
Speaker 2: sees themselves as politically independent. At the moment, that approval
Speaker 2: for the two of the major parties is all the
Speaker 2: way at the bottom, and that actually raises a lot
Speaker 2: of questions around the way that we even run our
Speaker 2: political electoral system, because we elevate people through primaries and
Speaker 2: then throw them at independence.
Speaker 3: But if the vast majority of people don't believe in.
Speaker 2: Those parties themselves, then why are we allowing like hyperactive
Speaker 2: as basis of people who we don't necessarily agree with
Speaker 2: us to surface, people who are then thrown at us
Speaker 2: in terms of our two options. So I think it's
Speaker 2: really interesting the more that these parties collapse.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know why the system is the way
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love I would love the sort of
Speaker 1: reforms that you're referring to to open it up. So
Speaker 1: there was more more of an opportunity for third party
Speaker 1: candidates that more accurately reflect perhaps the views of this
Speaker 1: group of nearly a majority of Americans who view themselves
Speaker 1: as politically independent. Underneath the data, what they say is
Speaker 1: driving this phenomenon primarily young people. They quote Apoltter It
Speaker 1: says it was never unusual for younger adults to have
Speaker 1: higher percentages of independence than older adults. What is unusual
Speaker 1: is that as gen X and millennials get older, they
Speaker 1: are staying independent rather than picking a party as older
Speaker 1: generations tended to do. And I have no doubt that
Speaker 1: gen Z also is disproportionately politically independent. Now that's different.
Speaker 1: See like the corporatist centrists types like the no labels
Speaker 1: of the world would look at this data and see
Speaker 1: they're crying out for moderation. They're crying out for what
Speaker 1: we have to offer. But don't misread the data in
Speaker 1: that way. Many of these people who are politically independent,
Speaker 1: you know, they may be people who were affiliated with
Speaker 1: the Birdie movement and are actually more to the left
Speaker 1: of the party on a variety of issues and just
Speaker 1: see the Democratic Party as like, you know, corporate shills,
Speaker 1: as you know, sort of like how I see them.
Speaker 1: Or they may be to the right of the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: So the fact that they identify as politically independent doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they're like wishy washy centrists. Doesn't mean they don't
Speaker 1: have really clear or hard ideological or you know, even
Speaker 1: relatively extreme views or what would be conceived or perceived
Speaker 1: of as extreme in mainstream American discourse. So it's different
Speaker 1: than saying, like, oh, everybody's in the Center. It's just
Speaker 1: they're disgusted with these two political parties and don't feel
Speaker 1: like they're actual effective, actually effective in getting things done.
Speaker 3: That's an important point.
Speaker 2: It's not that people want like lower taxes on corporations.
Speaker 4: They're not. Like Joe Manchin stands, I.
Speaker 3: Think the political system is broken.
Speaker 2: I think things that are all over the place that
Speaker 2: are both simultaneously Republican and Democratic ideas, and I don't
Speaker 2: like the brand of the parties themselves. Look how it manifests.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day.
Speaker 2: The vast majority of people still actually do kind of
Speaker 2: code right and left.
Speaker 3: That is actually pretty clear.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately most that tax onto then Republican and Democrat.
Speaker 2: The question is whether those two vessels are the ones
Speaker 2: that should be the ones that attract those types of
Speaker 2: votes and maybe not something else.
Speaker 3: So look, I don't know how it works out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the last time that we had a major political
Speaker 2: part I have one behind me, the Bull.
Speaker 3: Moose Project or the Bull Moose Party.
Speaker 2: It was really the last time it was I wouldn't
Speaker 2: even say electorally viable, but at least one a decent
Speaker 2: amount of votes. I guess outside of Ross pro it
Speaker 2: takes a lot for parties to crumble and for things
Speaker 2: to change.
Speaker 3: But I mean, it can happen.
Speaker 2: Has happened twice in modern American history since eighteen sixty,
Speaker 2: so I don't know.
Speaker 3: I haven't lost all hope just yet.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, the other thing that has more happened in more
Speaker 1: recent history is basically like revolutions within the parties themselves.
Speaker 4: You can think of, in a.
Speaker 1: Very bad way, in my opinion, the way that Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton and the DLC took over the Democratic Party and
Speaker 1: really hijacked it and turned it into something different.
Speaker 4: You could think of the way the Tea.
Speaker 1: Party changed the Republican Party and then Donald Trump changed
Speaker 1: the Republican Party again. You can think of the way
Speaker 1: that in certain states, like in Nevada, the Bernie Sanders
Speaker 1: wing of the party was able to basically take over
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party and make it into something different than
Speaker 1: what it was. So there's more precedent in recent history
Speaker 1: for something like that happening.
Speaker 4: But I just look at.
Speaker 1: This data and I see it as basically like an
Speaker 1: opportunity that people's eyes are open, and it's also someone
Speaker 1: but contradictory with the fact that you know, there are
Speaker 1: so many fewer swing voters. You know, even as people
Speaker 1: are saying they're independent, they're very consistently voting in a
Speaker 1: party line fashion.
Speaker 4: But I do think the fact that there.
Speaker 1: Is clearly this disenchantment with the two major parties creates
Speaker 1: an opening for positive change and also, frankly, has created
Speaker 1: an opening for a different media ecosystem that's just not
Speaker 1: just like partisan cheerleading the way that the cable news
Speaker 1: networks are.
Speaker 4: So I see it as a good thing in general.
Speaker 3: Absolutely So, all right, we'll see how it works out.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, got a little Amazon HQ two taxpayer
Speaker 1: hustle update for you.
Speaker 4: Go and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: We previously reported that, you know, there was this whole
Speaker 1: nationwide contest of Amazon just basically extracting as much tax
Speaker 1: money of jurisdictions as they possibly could before deciding to
Speaker 1: land in New York and Northern Virginia, places where they
Speaker 1: were going to go to anyway to start with. But
Speaker 1: now they get to do it with, you know, nearly
Speaker 1: billion dollars in subsidies. So Amazon recently announced they're postponing
Speaker 1: a lot of their development there. They're not even building
Speaker 1: what they said they were going to build. But guess what,
Speaker 1: They still want their money. They are kicking off a
Speaker 1: process that means they could receive more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty two million dollars in state money by the
Speaker 1: summer of twenty twenty six. All of the tax credits
Speaker 1: here are based on the number of jobs they create
Speaker 1: technically and not based so much on the construction. And
Speaker 1: so there's a couple of things going on here because
Speaker 1: it's not only have you know, the dreams of development
Speaker 1: and shops and restaurants and hotels, those haven't come to
Speaker 1: fruition at all, in part because they aren't going forward
Speaker 1: with this huge additional development, which of course would bring
Speaker 1: in construction workers and all sorts of additional work to
Speaker 1: the area, but also post pandemic. Their workers, even if
Speaker 1: they're creating these jobs, are not working in.
Speaker 4: The office full time.
Speaker 1: So much like other places around the country, you don't
Speaker 1: have this, you know, glut of office workers who want
Speaker 1: to go to life lunch and want to do whatever
Speaker 1: office workers do during the day and spend money in
Speaker 1: the region. So this has been a disaster for Virginia,
Speaker 1: I would say, And you know, Amazon, in spite of
Speaker 1: it all, they still want their one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million bucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think this is why it's complete BS, is that
Speaker 2: the government of Virginia showered them in tax benefits that
Speaker 2: they are now not fulfilling their obligations. Because the basically
Speaker 2: the trade was like, well, all these people who have
Speaker 2: a lot of money will move here. Small businesses and
Speaker 2: actually a lot of apartment complexes were going around in
Speaker 2: that area.
Speaker 3: I live pretty close by.
Speaker 2: A lot of businesses were opening and banking on the
Speaker 2: idea that these Amazon executives were going to be moving in.
Speaker 2: And now they're pulling out, which is already actually a
Speaker 2: disaster you know, for.
Speaker 3: The local economy. But then they want their tax benefits too.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, hold on a second, and actually this
Speaker 2: vindicates a lot of the fight about what was going
Speaker 2: on in New York where New York at the time
Speaker 2: pulled its benefits. And you know, that was the other
Speaker 2: point with that at the time. New York City doesn't
Speaker 2: need to anybody in tax benefits to get people to
Speaker 2: want to work and live like a lot of business,
Speaker 2: A lot of people like the network effects of it,
Speaker 2: and you know, you know, especially on its face, it's
Speaker 2: a hell of a lot better place to.
Speaker 3: Do business than San Francisco or Seattle.
Speaker 2: I think if you take a look at variable crime rates,
Speaker 2: especially whenever we're talking about Manhattan. So they didn't need
Speaker 2: to and then Amazon was like, fie, we're going to
Speaker 2: go to Virginia. And then it didn't even work out
Speaker 2: for the state of Virginia. So it's actually very embarrassing.
Speaker 1: This was a shakedown. The whole thing was a shakedown.
Speaker 1: They made this whole show. I mean, it's really embarrassing.
Speaker 1: I did a whole monologue. It's embarrassing when you go
Speaker 1: and look, it's sad at these little cities or places
Speaker 1: that are in long term decline because you know, they
Speaker 1: were deindustrialized or whatever.
Speaker 4: And they were like, I'll.
Speaker 1: Name my city after you, and I'll you know, like
Speaker 1: making all of these promises and putting together these pitch
Speaker 1: decks to try to lure Amazon with the thought that hey,
Speaker 1: if you know, if they showed up in a mid
Speaker 1: tier city, they could take it to the next level.
Speaker 1: They could revive a place that's struggling, they could go.
Speaker 4: Somewhere in the heart and like Jera, it would be
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: All like so many, so much possibility for what it
Speaker 1: could mean and then at the end of the process
Speaker 1: they locate in the two places where, by the way,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos already had residences, making it clear like this
Speaker 1: was where they were always going to choose. They just
Speaker 1: wanted to shake down the governments by doing this whole
Speaker 1: competition for as much as they were possibly worth.
Speaker 4: And by the.
Speaker 1: Way, Virginia, for all of the hundreds of millions that
Speaker 1: they ponied up in terms of tax incentives, nothing compared
Speaker 1: to what New York had offered them. New York had
Speaker 1: offered them way more, which is part of why that
Speaker 1: the plug ends up being pulled on that completely, because
Speaker 1: the price tag was just so insane and outrageous. But
Speaker 1: you can see even for Virginia this has not worked out,
Speaker 1: Amazon pulling the plug on development, still demanding their money.
Speaker 1: That Arlington is quoted in this Arlington County, which where
Speaker 1: it's located, is quoted in this article saying the hotels,
Speaker 1: the short term rentals, all this stuff, none of this
Speaker 1: has shown up. None of this has materialized whatsoever. And
Speaker 1: then there's also this is typical of a corporate incentives.
Speaker 1: Amazon was going to locate somewhere and so it just
Speaker 1: ends up being this like national race to throw a gigantic,
Speaker 1: extremely profitable company hundreds of millions of dollars that you
Speaker 1: know they don't need, and that could go to any other.
Speaker 4: Number of state level priorities.
Speaker 1: So anyway, just the last latest grow tesque slap in
Speaker 1: the face from Amazon.
Speaker 4: To Virginia taxpayers.
Speaker 3: Certainly right.
Speaker 1: So, our partner Jordan Sheridan over with Status Quo, has
Speaker 1: been on the ground. He was at a strike recently
Speaker 1: by students at Rutgers University demanding better pay, among other things,
Speaker 1: and he asked gen Z about their view of America,
Speaker 1: about their view of the American dream.
Speaker 4: I should not need.
Speaker 1: To ask all of gen Z, some representatives of that generation,
Speaker 1: and the response is quite interesting.
Speaker 4: Take a listen to it.
Speaker 6: In the next ten years, factory jobs, truck drives, all
Speaker 6: these simpler jobs will be automated, and then we're gonna
Speaker 6: have more and more problems. Automation is going to kill a.
Speaker 3: Lot of these jobs.
Speaker 6: The market is dying and we're on the verge of
Speaker 6: a recession.
Speaker 3: I'm just kind of waiting. At this point, We're not
Speaker 3: gonna be able to buy a house and dream.
Speaker 7: I honestly believe that the American dream is dead for
Speaker 7: our generation. Frankly, our purchasing power is some of the
Speaker 7: lowest in history compared to prior generations compretered Millennials, compared
Speaker 7: to Baby Boomers and Gen X, our purchasing power is
Speaker 7: some of the lowest, combined with some of the highest
Speaker 7: costs of living ever.
Speaker 1: Ever, so fears about technology. American dream is dead. I
Speaker 1: won't be able to buy a house. And they made
Speaker 1: a number of comments about how you know their parents,
Speaker 1: their grandparents, you know. For gen Z, they're like they
Speaker 1: were able to achieve these things. I have no hope
Speaker 1: of that in my left.
Speaker 2: The only thing I would disagree with him is he
Speaker 2: was like talking about truck drivers. I don't think truck
Speaker 2: drivers will be irrelevant in five years. But I do think, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: a lot of the white collar jobs that college graduates
Speaker 2: are doing may not may be a lot more irrelevant
Speaker 2: than truck driving. I've been hearing about truck driving for
Speaker 2: a long time time now with chat GPT, and though
Speaker 2: it seems like what really is under threat is business
Speaker 2: insider journalism entry students. So that's the only place I
Speaker 2: would quit. Well, but look, I hear this all the time,
Speaker 2: you know, from people who are my age from who
Speaker 2: are younger? A vast majority of our audience is either
Speaker 2: millennial or gen Z. So we see the things that
Speaker 2: resonate the most. Housing. I told you have been on
Speaker 2: this kick. I ever sid that Dame Ramsey monologue of
Speaker 2: just listening to these like horrific calls of people who
Speaker 2: are like I have six hundred thousand dollars in student debt,
Speaker 2: I have a million dollars. They're on my age or
Speaker 2: younger who have a million dollars. Can you imagine having
Speaker 2: a million dollars in student debt? And it's one of
Speaker 2: those where like, yeah, he makes a quarter mill but
Speaker 2: like it's.
Speaker 3: After tax and all.
Speaker 2: That's going to take him ten years or so to
Speaker 2: pay that off. That's the only thing that he does.
Speaker 1: And these are like the lucky p Yeah, these are
Speaker 1: the ones that quote unquote did the right things and
Speaker 1: made it who are in this position, And yeah, you
Speaker 1: go try to buy a house in any major metro area,
Speaker 1: forget about it. You know, unless you have the whole
Speaker 1: cash down payment from your parents or you know, another source,
Speaker 1: you're going to be priced down to that market. And
Speaker 1: I think what was stunning to me is the awareness
Speaker 1: and recognition that these two individuals had, but just how
Speaker 1: much things were stacked against them. That is a real
Speaker 1: indictment of our society. I mean, the thing that you
Speaker 1: always hoped is that like your kids would have it
Speaker 1: better than you, And for most of American history that
Speaker 1: has been the case, where it's just like continued upward trajectory.
Speaker 1: You can expect more leisure time, you can expect, you know,
Speaker 1: a better house, you can expect a better education, you
Speaker 1: can expect better healthcare.
Speaker 4: No longer the case.
Speaker 1: And if you think that's not going to dramatically upend
Speaker 1: our politics as millennials and now gen Z come into power,
Speaker 1: into voting age, into increasing political awareness, you know, you
Speaker 1: got your eyes closed because this is a real reckoning
Speaker 1: set to happen. People are not just going to sit
Speaker 1: back and accept this. This is why you already see
Speaker 1: the bubblings of you know, the Starbucks workers movement, the
Speaker 1: Amazon workers movement. You see them taking into their own hands,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think in some ways, you know,
Speaker 1: in some ways you see gen Z, you know, others
Speaker 1: super woke and they're into all this identity stuff.
Speaker 4: But you also see some throwbacks.
Speaker 1: To an older type of material politics which was really
Speaker 1: ascendant in America at a time when people couldn't take
Speaker 1: for granted some of the basics of like food, shelter, clothing, healthcare,
Speaker 1: et cetera, that a couple generations now have been able
Speaker 1: to basically take advantage of.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, it's going to change everything.
Speaker 2: I think ten years from now, when forty year olds
Speaker 2: have never had a house, have no assets, and are
Speaker 2: still in debt, I think that's when things are really
Speaker 2: going to be weird, because that's when you're going to
Speaker 2: have almost a majority of the country who is both
Speaker 2: had no upward mobility for their entire adult lives and
Speaker 2: are now on the bad side of middle age. Whenever
Speaker 2: you look at life expectancy tables. That's if there is
Speaker 2: a flippaning. I think it'll come sometime around that. Not
Speaker 2: being able to have kids, not being able to buy
Speaker 2: a house, having zero assets, having no retirement, knowing social
Speaker 2: Security may work out for you or at very least
Speaker 2: is not going to tie you over for the next
Speaker 2: twenty or so years. What do you do in that situation?
Speaker 2: That's when I think things will get weird.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I could definitely see that.
Speaker 1: A new opera is coming to the Kennedy Center and boy,
Speaker 1: oh boy, is h something.
Speaker 4: Thanks to our friends over.
Speaker 1: A responsible Statecraft for flagging this one along with producer
Speaker 1: Griffin put this up on the screen. Killer Drone Opera
Speaker 1: lands at Kennedy Center this fall. It's got tears drama
Speaker 1: in F sixteen's Rounded is explosive fun for the whole family.
Speaker 1: Brought to you by General Dynamics. Let me read you
Speaker 1: a little bit of the details here, they say. This fall,
Speaker 1: DC denizens will be treated to the world premiere of Grounded,
Speaker 1: an opera following an Air Force ace named Jess whose
Speaker 1: unexpected pregnancy forces her to leave behind her beloved F
Speaker 1: sixteen and join the quote chair Force. Throughout the show,
Speaker 1: the hot shot pilot wrestles with the mental impact of
Speaker 1: firing rockets from a Jordan in Afghanistan from a trailer
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas.
Speaker 4: As just tracks.
Speaker 1: Terrorists by day and rocks her daughter to sleep by night,
Speaker 1: the boundary between her world's becomes dangerously and Ad tells
Speaker 1: us the production is brought to you by presenting sponsored
Speaker 1: General Dynamics, one of the world's largest weapons companies. And oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, wouldn't you know it, the maker of
Speaker 1: Jess's favorite plane, apparently Sager. This is like a spinoff
Speaker 1: or like a redo of some one woman play that
Speaker 1: Anne Hathaway started by the same name, which actually had
Speaker 1: somewhat of a critique.
Speaker 4: Of drone warfare, and hard to.
Speaker 1: Imagine the same sort of dynamics occurring in this opera
Speaker 1: given that General Dynamics is the sponsor.
Speaker 2: So I watched this Ethan Hawke movie, which is vaguely similar.
Speaker 3: It came out in like twenty fourteen. It just looked
Speaker 3: up Good Kill was that movie.
Speaker 2: It was fine, It wasn't particularly good, but they were
Speaker 2: trying to make the same point. And it's again it
Speaker 2: came more to like an anti drone more humanistic message.
Speaker 2: This one, I'm just gonna guess doesn't have that. Just
Speaker 2: really odd. It's especially odd that General Dynamics is sponsoring it.
Speaker 3: It's like, I don't know, whatever.
Speaker 2: Look, I think it probably is genuinely traumatic to like
Speaker 2: kill people like in a video game and know that
Speaker 2: it's real. That's kind of what the movie was about.
Speaker 2: I guess at its best, like that's what the play
Speaker 2: is about. But I think that at their worst, like
Speaker 2: what we're doing here is trying to turn it into
Speaker 2: some human drama story and miss like the actual implications
Speaker 2: of what it means to do this abroad is part
Speaker 2: of a broader like campaign of war.
Speaker 3: So yes, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's also you know, this is like a particularly flagrant,
Speaker 1: in your face example of this type of thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: we also talk about the way that like General Dynamics
Speaker 1: and these other military industrial complex behema's sponsor, like Politico
Speaker 1: Playbook and all these other DC insider tip sheets and
Speaker 1: media organizations. But then there's also this interaction between the Pentagon,
Speaker 1: these weapons makers and Hollywood as well, which frequently is
Speaker 1: a lot more under the radar, which you know is
Speaker 1: very like seldom picked up on the way that the
Speaker 1: Pentagon works with filmmakers to make sure that war is
Speaker 1: portrayed and that these battles are portrayed and their weapons
Speaker 1: systems are portrayed in a way that sort of like.
Speaker 4: You know, plays up their version of.
Speaker 1: What the American military is all about, what American foreign
Speaker 1: policy has been all about.
Speaker 4: So here we have, in the nation's capital.
Speaker 1: No less, General Dynamics actively sponsoring an opera about drone warfare.
Speaker 1: Pretty pretty extraordinary. May we could go we could go and.
Speaker 3: Do a review of it.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I could take it.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't even like opera.
Speaker 4: Have you even been to an opera?
Speaker 3: I have been to one. It was okay. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm just if we're going to go, like, I'm.
Speaker 2: Not even like that big of a musical guy, but
Speaker 2: I would much rather go to a actual fun musical.
Speaker 3: I mean watching Book of Mormon for examples, like a blast.
Speaker 3: This just sounds like, yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a taste you like have to cultivate,
Speaker 1: but I have no culture.
Speaker 2: I think it's a taste for when TV didn't exist,
Speaker 2: people were willing to subject themselves to all kinds of
Speaker 2: things because life was bored. You know, people were dying
Speaker 2: of Typhus, and they were like, well, this is more
Speaker 2: interesting than that.
Speaker 1: If you are a singer, maybe there's more to appreciate.
Speaker 1: Like I love the ballet because I grew up dancing,
Speaker 1: so I really enjoy it and appreciate it. But I
Speaker 1: totally understand how someone who didn't come up with that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be their things. So anyway, maybe I'll go to
Speaker 1: the opera and I'll let you guys, now, let.
Speaker 3: Us know if you like the opera.
Speaker 2: Quite a bit of attention being paid to the Miller
Speaker 2: Noll CEO, who's gone viral after she gave an internal
Speaker 2: rant to employees in which she told them to stop
Speaker 2: worrying about why they weren't going to get a bonus
Speaker 2: and to start working harder and to lead by example.
Speaker 2: We'll tell you a little bit about why that's so
Speaker 2: hypocritical after you see the video.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 8: Questions came through about how can we stay motivated if
Speaker 8: we're not going to get a bonus? What can we do?
Speaker 3: What can we do?
Speaker 8: Some of them were nice and some of them were
Speaker 8: not so nice. I'm going to address this head on.
Speaker 8: The most important week thing we can do right now
Speaker 8: is focus on the things that we can control. None
Speaker 8: of us could have predicted COVID, none of us could
Speaker 8: have predict to supply chain, none of us could have
Speaker 8: predicted bank failures. But what we can do is stay
Speaker 8: in front of our customers, provide the best customer service
Speaker 8: we can, get our orders out our door, treat each
Speaker 8: other well, be kind, be respectful, focus on the future
Speaker 8: because it will be bright. It's not good to be
Speaker 8: in a situation we're in today. But we're not going
Speaker 8: to be here forever. It is going to get better.
Speaker 8: So lead, lead by example. Treat people well, talk to them,
Speaker 8: be kind, and get after it. Don't ask about what
Speaker 8: are we going to do if you don't get a bonus?
Speaker 4: Get the day on twenty six million dollars.
Speaker 8: Spend your time and your effort thinking about the twenty
Speaker 8: six million dollars we need and not thinking about what
Speaker 8: are you going to do if we don't get a bonus?
Speaker 5: All right?
Speaker 4: Can I get some commitment for that?
Speaker 9: I would appreciate that.
Speaker 8: I had an old boss who said to me one time,
Speaker 8: you can visit Pitycity, but you can't live there. So
Speaker 8: people leave PITYCD. Let's get it done. Thank you, have
Speaker 8: a great day.
Speaker 3: Okay. So psychotic really all around one of.
Speaker 4: The reasons we're an energy from this lady.
Speaker 2: This is stone cold crazy, absolute craziness. You could see
Speaker 2: it in the eyes. And what do we learn about her?
Speaker 2: She herself received a three point nine million dollar bonus
Speaker 2: in executive compensation on top of her one point one
Speaker 2: million dollar fixed salary. Now, what she's referring to the
Speaker 2: twenty six million is the overall sales goal of the
Speaker 2: company as to why the employees won't be getting a
Speaker 2: bonus and or a raise.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing.
Speaker 2: If everybody in the company is not getting a bonus,
Speaker 2: that's one of the as a leader you could be like, listen, I'm.
Speaker 3: Not taking any bonus now, I'm taking a bonus.
Speaker 2: That's how it is. You know this, We're going to
Speaker 2: get together. You make money, I make money, period. I
Speaker 2: don't even think people would care. Then if she got
Speaker 2: paid four millions. She's the CEO of a company based
Speaker 2: in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's got eleven thousand employees. Okay, reasonable,
Speaker 2: I guess. But when you are paying yourself and then
Speaker 2: you're lecturing these people who make way less than you.
Speaker 2: And if you're assuming here, people work in sales, so
Speaker 2: a lot of them live and die by bonus, not
Speaker 2: just about their base salary, yeah, whether you can literally
Speaker 2: feed your kids. Yeah, And you're saying stop the pity
Speaker 2: city thing is perfect. I've watched the video fifteen twenty
Speaker 2: times at this point. I just can't get over the narcissism,
Speaker 2: the way in which she thinks that she's better than
Speaker 2: everybody else.
Speaker 3: And here's the best part. We want her LinkedIn profile.
Speaker 2: She's all about diversity, equity and inclusion and like feminism
Speaker 2: and all that stuff, but not for just being just
Speaker 2: being a decent person to your employees.
Speaker 3: That's the crazy part.
Speaker 1: The thing that gets there's a lot that gets me here.
Speaker 1: But you can tell she's kind of like keeping it
Speaker 1: together at the very beginning, and then it just becomes.
Speaker 4: Increasingly angry it are in hinds.
Speaker 1: She's clearly like personally hurt that people are wondering if
Speaker 1: they're going to be able to get paid and feed
Speaker 1: their families or whatever. Miller know, their primary products is
Speaker 1: apparently office chairs and so posts. You know, during the
Speaker 1: pandemic and post pandemic, with people not being in the
Speaker 1: office as much, the demand for office chairs has plummeted.
Speaker 1: So she's you know, still doing okay getting her four
Speaker 1: million dollar bonus.
Speaker 4: Now worries about her.
Speaker 1: But the thing that actually Yegor is a person who
Speaker 1: flagged this clip for me initially, and he made the
Speaker 1: point that you know, for the boss class, it's totally
Speaker 1: expected and understood that they'll be out for the money,
Speaker 1: that they'll be looking at their compensation, they'll be maximizing
Speaker 1: their compensation package. They'll be locking in their golden parachute.
Speaker 1: If they screw up the company, they'll still get to
Speaker 1: walk away, okay. But then they try to sell to
Speaker 1: the workers that they should be in it just purely.
Speaker 4: For noble reasons, about.
Speaker 1: The family, about the project they're engaged, and how dare
Speaker 1: you even worry about what your compensation is ultimately going
Speaker 1: to be? How could you not be just committed to
Speaker 1: this team of selling office chairs. So it's incredibly psychologically
Speaker 1: manipulative too, And I think revealing of a tactic that
Speaker 1: is deployed all the time in America, of trying to
Speaker 1: sell people on this like deeper mission or this family
Speaker 1: that you're a part of in lieu of expecting actual
Speaker 1: compensation for the labor that you're committing to the profits
Speaker 1: of the business.
Speaker 3: Completely. Yeah, it also bothers me.
Speaker 2: You and I now have people who work with us,
Speaker 2: and it's one of those things where I cannot I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: You can never cut somebody's pay and take more money yourself.
Speaker 3: Oh, I would be. I could not live with myself.
Speaker 4: I can't imagine talking to someone like that.
Speaker 10: Never.
Speaker 3: Never.
Speaker 4: It's a city city.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately, yeah, most people who are But I've worked
Speaker 2: for people like that.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you have to. Everybody's had a boss. There's
Speaker 3: something about when you beat when we are a boss.
Speaker 2: For a lot of people, maybe they just like have
Speaker 2: amnesia about what it was like to be treated like
Speaker 2: shit by your boss.
Speaker 3: But you know that one, it really struck a nerve,
Speaker 3: and not just.
Speaker 2: Me, I think a lot of people out there, because
Speaker 2: I almost have felt it a little bit.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 3: Well, it's I even feel so small when you have
Speaker 3: not when these type of people will just rule your lives.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and there's this cultural narrative that feeds people like
Speaker 1: this that there they deserve to be in this position
Speaker 1: of power, and that causes them to truly look down
Speaker 1: on the workers that they're in charge of. And so
Speaker 1: it treats this disgraceful power trip like psychopathy as you
Speaker 1: see displayed in this video.
Speaker 3: Very true. All right, we'll see you guys later.
Speaker 9: So don Trump was indicted and arraigned. No one is
Speaker 9: above the law depending on the law, because there are
Speaker 9: certain laws that the entire US is above, and that
Speaker 9: includes Trump. Now, he may or may not see consequences
Speaker 9: for this batch of charges, but there are other offenses
Speaker 9: that he will definitely not go down for And they're
Speaker 9: the kind of offenses that have been committed to varying
Speaker 9: degrees under every living president, from Carter to Bush to Obama,
Speaker 9: and today I want to talk about some of them.
Speaker 9: Welcome to breaking points. If you've seen this video, you've
Speaker 9: heard the story. In nineteen seventy four in East Tmoor,
Speaker 9: this new government took over the Fredelen Party, a democratic
Speaker 9: socialist pro independent party. They want self determination for East Temor,
Speaker 9: so obviously no one was into it. Australia, the UK,
Speaker 9: the US and Indonesia all agreed that East tim Or
Speaker 9: should probably just become part of Indonesia. Self determination was
Speaker 9: off the table. In December nineteen seventy five, Indonesia invaded
Speaker 9: East Temoor. Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger go over to
Speaker 9: Indonesia to see the president there and they tell them
Speaker 9: that they're totally cool with this.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 9: Indonesia at the time held more political prisoners than anywhere
Speaker 9: else in the world. Ford even warned the president there,
Speaker 9: if you want Congress to keep approving aid packages for
Speaker 9: you, you should probably let some prisoners go. And so, after
Speaker 9: a lot of negotiating, Indonesia announced plans to release thirty
Speaker 9: thousand political prisoners over three years, so that quieted Congress enough.
Speaker 9: Nineteen seventy seven, Carter's inaugurated. Meanwhile, Indonesia is committing atrocities
Speaker 9: in East Team Or, reports coming out alleging fifty thousand
Speaker 9: to one hundred thousand civilians dead, but the State Department
Speaker 9: basically dismisses this. The goal was to improve relations with Indonesia,
Speaker 9: not have them be a pariah state. So the National
Speaker 9: Security Council they recommend downplaying East Teamwor. You have people
Speaker 9: saying just focus on the thirty thousand political prisoners being
Speaker 9: released instead. National Security Advisor Brazinski, father of MSNBC host
Speaker 9: Mika Brazinski, is saying that these Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia,
Speaker 9: provide a hospitable climate for our investments. Also, the assumption
Speaker 9: by the Carter administration and others was that East Tmoor
Speaker 9: becoming part of Indonesia, that was an inevitability at this point.
Speaker 9: At the same time, the CIA is saying Indonesia is
Speaker 9: running out of weapons and they can't really control the
Speaker 9: countryside of East Timor. In nineteen seventy eight, Vice President
Speaker 9: Walter Mondale goes on this tour of the region. He
Speaker 9: goes to Indonesia and offers them sixteen Skyhawks, and now
Speaker 9: fast forward to two thousand and six. The East Team
Speaker 9: War Truth Commission concluded that nineteen seventy seven to nineteen
Speaker 9: seventy nine was the worst humanitarian crisis in East tam
Speaker 9: War's history, and the key to Indonesia's assault was aerial
Speaker 9: bombardment by OV ten Broncos F five's and Skyhawk A
Speaker 9: four airplanes. By nineteen eighty one, between one hundred and
Speaker 9: eight thousand and one hundred and eighty thousand people died
Speaker 9: out of a population of six hundred thousand, massacring civilian populations.
Speaker 9: Wars of aggression, we're talking about war crimes and crimes
Speaker 9: against humanity and aiding war crimes, say by supplying fighter
Speaker 9: jets can be a violation of the law of armed
Speaker 9: conflict and also a war crime. On August twentieth, nineteen
Speaker 9: ninety eight, President Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on
Speaker 9: a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The Alshifah Pharmaceutical Plant was
Speaker 9: the target. This plant supplied half of Sudan's medicines and
Speaker 9: a lot of they're veterinary medicines. Now is there a
Speaker 9: good reason to blow up such a place. I mean maybe,
Speaker 9: but that would be an extraordinary set of circumstances. By
Speaker 9: the way, do you know who owned the factory? Maybe
Speaker 9: they were manufacturing chemical weapons. Maybe they're manufacturing the x
Speaker 9: nerve gas. As a matter of fact, a soil sample
Speaker 9: was taken nearby containing two and a half times the
Speaker 9: normal amount of empta, which is a chemical used in
Speaker 9: the x nerve gas. This was the main evidence showing
Speaker 9: that the factory produced the nerve gas. They also thought
Speaker 9: the plant might be linked to Osama bin Laden, but
Speaker 9: as George Tennant said, that wasn't ironclad. Also get this.
Speaker 9: One piece of evidence was that, unlike the websites of
Speaker 9: other known pharmaceutical manufacturers in Sudan, this company's website did
Speaker 9: not mention any products. Only terrorists have bad websites. The
Speaker 9: State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research put together a
Speaker 9: report for Secretary of State Madelin all Right before the attack.
Speaker 9: It basically said, our evidence isn't really enough to justify this,
Speaker 9: but it was a foregone conclusion this plant had to go.
Speaker 9: Wait who owns the factory? Officials are raising concerns up
Speaker 9: to the night before the attack. But August twentieth, they
Speaker 9: blow up this pharmaceutical plant that was maybe making the
Speaker 9: x nerve gas. No, they weren't, They were just making medicine. Also,
Speaker 9: they still don't know who owns the factory. It ends
Speaker 9: up being a Sudanese businessman named Salah Idris. Conveniently, though,
Speaker 9: he turns out to have an indirect connection to Osama
Speaker 9: bin Laden. They freeze his accounts at various Bank of
Speaker 9: America branches. They kind of got it right by accident, maybe,
Speaker 9: but at least this wasn't all for nothing. Oh no,
Speaker 9: except Idris denied that he had any connection to any
Speaker 9: terrorist group. He sues the government and the us unfreezes
Speaker 9: his assets. It was all for nothing. Can we at
Speaker 9: least learn something from this? Though probably not. Someone from
Speaker 9: the State Department wanted to draft a report outlining the
Speaker 9: issues with the evidence. Obviously, it got killed by higher ups,
Speaker 9: and Albright apparently was not interested in having that debate rehashed.
Speaker 10: Case closed.
Speaker 9: The month after the attack, Human Rights Watch comes out
Speaker 9: with an open letter to Bill Clinton saying international humanitarian
Speaker 9: law says that you have to do everything feasible to
Speaker 9: make sure you're hitting a legitimate military target and it
Speaker 9: really seems like you didn't, which would mean you're in
Speaker 9: violation of the law of armed conflict or lowak. But
Speaker 9: funny enough, blowing up Sudan's primary source of anti malaria
Speaker 9: drugs is not the scandal Clinton is remembered for. Okay,
Speaker 9: So Bush is an easy one. For one thing, the
Speaker 9: Bush administration authorized an international torture program after nine to
Speaker 9: eleven black sites popped up in places like Afghanistan and
Speaker 9: Romania and Thailand. The CIA's secret detention program, entailing prolonged
Speaker 9: incommunicado detention without trial, violated international legal prohibitions against enforced disappearances.
Speaker 9: Disappearances violate or threatened to violate a range of rules
Speaker 9: of international human rights and humanitarian law, including arbitrary deprivation
Speaker 9: of liberty, torture, and the right to life. Waterboarding is torture.
Speaker 9: Bush endorsed waterboarding and admitted to using it. This covers Bush,
Speaker 9: Dick Cheney, former CIA director George Tennant, and Condoliza Rice,
Speaker 9: who apparently gave the first known approval of waterboarding. I
Speaker 9: haven't watched their master classes, but if they have, sections
Speaker 9: on running international torture programs and never facing consequences for it.
Speaker 9: I mean they are the experts in that there were
Speaker 9: over five hundred drone strikes during Obama's two terms. Let's
Speaker 9: go over some of the legality.
Speaker 11: Simply put, these strikes have saved lives. Moreover, America's actions
Speaker 11: are legal. We were attacked on nine to eleven Within
Speaker 11: a week, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force. Under
Speaker 11: domestic law and international law. The United States is at
Speaker 11: war with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.
Speaker 9: Okay, so, paraphrasing Yaleen Policy Review, the associated forces Obama's
Speaker 9: talking about are essentially co belligerents. That's the relationship between
Speaker 9: third party states and warring parties. This is controversial, and
Speaker 9: it is far from clear that the groups at issue
Speaker 9: are sufficiently organized and associated with al Qaeda to render
Speaker 9: them co belligerents under international law. The claim was essentially
Speaker 9: that the laws of war enable the US to kill
Speaker 9: anyone anywhere. That position is highly legally contested, and to
Speaker 9: accept the idea that anyone anywhere in the world can
Speaker 9: be killed, even if civilians may be killed two would
Speaker 9: in effect mean recognition of the concept of a global battlefield.
Speaker 9: International human rights law is the generally accepted framework for
Speaker 9: dealing with acts of terror in the international community, and
Speaker 9: under that there is no right to pre plan intentional
Speaker 9: killing and there is no tolerance for the death of bystanders.
Speaker 9: No state has the right to consent to US violation
Speaker 9: of these rights. Also, drone strikes aren't even necessarily productive
Speaker 9: in their goal strikes, and Yemen had apparently increased support
Speaker 9: for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Okay, so on
Speaker 9: to Trump. Trump did watch Shark Week with a porn
Speaker 9: star in a hotel room, but his sins as president
Speaker 9: actually get much worse than that. Yemen is the worst
Speaker 9: humanitarian crisis in the world because since twenty fifteen, Saudi
Speaker 9: Arabia has been bombing.
Speaker 3: Them into the Stone Age.
Speaker 9: There have been about twenty thousand civilian casualties, in part
Speaker 9: because the bombing raids target infrastructure and schools and hospitals. Now,
Speaker 9: Obama had asked Saudi Arabia pretty nicely to try a
Speaker 9: little harder to not kill as many civilians, and Saudi
Speaker 9: Arabia keeps forgetting that he asked. So the thing is
Speaker 9: that targeting civilians is a war crime, which makes selling
Speaker 9: weapons to Saudi Arabia also a possible violation of international
Speaker 9: humanitarian law. This war started under Oboma, and this fact
Speaker 9: was not lost on the administration because at a certain
Speaker 9: point people in the Obama administration said, Hey, we might
Speaker 9: be doing war crimes over here. We should maybe stop this.
Speaker 9: State Department officials who shepherd arm sales overseas are worried
Speaker 9: enough to consider retaining their own legal counsel and have
Speaker 9: discussed the possibility of being arrested while vacationing abroad.
Speaker 10: So even though.
Speaker 9: Obama initially supported Saudi Arabia, he ended up blocking a
Speaker 9: shipment of bombs he had originally okayed, but then Trump
Speaker 9: came in and sent the bombs anyway. But it is
Speaker 9: very unlikely people like this will ever be held accountable
Speaker 9: for the real crimes they commit where people actually die.
Speaker 9: In fact, the US has been so hostile toward the
Speaker 9: idea of international justice and the International Criminal Court that
Speaker 9: the United States preemptively sanctioned ICC officials for opening an
Speaker 9: investigation in Afghanistan that might reach US personnel bik Obama
Speaker 9: opting not to investigate anyone from the Bush administration. Every
Speaker 9: incoming administration offers that professional courtesy to the outgoing administration
Speaker 9: I mean, if Biden went after Trump for violating the
Speaker 9: laws of war for giving weapons to Saudi Arabia, how
Speaker 9: could he under any circumstances justify also selling weapons to
Speaker 9: Saudi Arabia? And with that That'll do it for me.
Speaker 9: If you found this video interesting, make sure you are
Speaker 9: subscribed to Breaking Points. You can also check out my
Speaker 9: YouTube channel where I talk all about media and politics
Speaker 9: and things Lincoln description. Liking and sharing always helps.
Speaker 3: Please do that.
Speaker 9: Thank you to Breaking Points. Thank you so much for watching,
Speaker 9: and I'll see you in the next one.
Speaker 10: Hey there, my name is James Lee.
Speaker 5: Thank you for tuning into another segment of my show
Speaker 5: fifty one to forty nine on Breaking Points, where I
Speaker 5: talk about topics related to business, politics and society. Now
Speaker 5: who here tried to watch The Love Is Blind Season
Speaker 5: four reunion on Netflix last Sunday and was met with
Speaker 5: an absolute debacle of a livestream. Netflix was just absolutely
Speaker 5: roasted by every one in the chat, online, Twitter, everywhere.
Speaker 5: Maybe a few of you guys tried to tune in.
Speaker 5: I know Crystal and Sager had season two alum Nick
Speaker 5: Thompson on the show last year, so there's probably at
Speaker 5: least a little bit of overlap or crossover between fans
Speaker 5: of Breaking Points and fans of Love is Blind.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 5: It's not lost on me, despite the online roasting that
Speaker 5: the societal impact of Netflix's technological blunder on its own
Speaker 5: is probably not consequential. But I do think the decisions
Speaker 5: that the Netflix executives made leading up to that livestream
Speaker 5: is a telling microcosm of everything that is wrong with America.
Speaker 5: If you remember, early in twenty twenty two, Netflix made
Speaker 5: headlines all over the tech and financial news in a
Speaker 5: bad way for losing subscribers for the first time in
Speaker 5: a decade. Let's just say the shareholders were none too pleased.
Speaker 5: Some even sued the company, alleging Netflix had misled investors
Speaker 5: about declining subscriber growth. This is a bit of an aside,
Speaker 5: but does it not seem like shareholders win no matter
Speaker 5: what you know. When the stock goes up, the market's
Speaker 5: working perfectly, but when the stocks go down, they cry
Speaker 5: foul anyway. Predictably, Netflix very quickly abandoned all of their
Speaker 5: previously held company values by raising prices and instituting new
Speaker 5: passwords sharing restrictions that can only be described as convoluted
Speaker 5: and confusing. So much so that they've had to walk
Speaker 5: back and amend their policies several times. I suppose at
Speaker 5: this point we really shouldn't be taking too much stock
Speaker 5: in a company's purported values. You know, every corporations, big
Speaker 5: and small, they have one of these. If you go
Speaker 5: to their website, they have a mission statement and a
Speaker 5: company's values page. By now we should all know that
Speaker 5: is all bs Hi.
Speaker 4: You said it was an emergency. The live stream isn't
Speaker 4: working like the live stream code based from my intern
Speaker 4: project four years ago.
Speaker 3: Are you guys airing another Chris Rock.
Speaker 4: Special Love Is Blind? You're using that for Love is Blind? No,
Speaker 4: I can't allocate more resources. It just runs with my laptop.
Speaker 5: Yes, that is supposed to be funny, but it does
Speaker 5: get at something very real. This is reporting from the
Speaker 5: Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 10: Quote.
Speaker 5: Netflix is hiring more junior employees, from interns to recent
Speaker 5: college graduates. That's part of an expanded emerging talent recruitment initiative.
Speaker 5: People familiar with the program said previously the company had
Speaker 5: generally recruited experience staff, particularly for engineering roles. Wow, emerging
Speaker 5: talent recruitment initiative.
Speaker 10: That is a new one.
Speaker 5: What a euphemism for a directive that I imagine is
Speaker 5: nothing more than corporate speak for let's hire people who
Speaker 5: will work for less. Continuing on quote, Netflix is trying
Speaker 5: to better control rising cloud computing costs with longtime cloud
Speaker 5: partner Amazon Web Services. According to people familiar with that work,
Speaker 5: Netflix has long spent heavily on cloud and network infrastructure,
Speaker 5: viewing the reliability of its service as a key selling point.
Speaker 10: Yes, that's totally how you get more subscribers.
Speaker 5: Hey, you want to pay twenty bucks a month for Netflix,
Speaker 5: But sometimes it won't work because they don't want to
Speaker 5: invest in the infrastructure it takes to run their platform.
Speaker 5: Because shareholders are whining and the executives are all turning
Speaker 5: to their Mackenzie buddies for these genius ideas. Well, with
Speaker 5: all these tech layoffs, it's good to know that somebody's
Speaker 5: getting paid.
Speaker 10: New Netflix co CEO Greg Peters is.
Speaker 5: Set for a big raise with more than thirty million
Speaker 5: dollars in potential stock options and bonuses.
Speaker 10: On top of a three million dollar salary.
Speaker 5: Like I went to business school and I get the
Speaker 5: realities and economics of running a business, I do. Sometimes
Speaker 5: you got to make hard decisions to save the company.
Speaker 5: But it is interesting, is it not? That time and
Speaker 5: time again, executive compensation is oftentimes completely divorced from company
Speaker 5: performance and unimpacted by these restructing plans, and more often
Speaker 5: than not, executives would rather hollow out their own company
Speaker 5: to the point of putting the entire company's operational infrastructure
Speaker 5: at risk than reduce their own pay.
Speaker 12: I'm not trying to come super hard at ceopay, but
Speaker 12: you do have to acknowledge this as a conversation that
Speaker 12: is occurring, and there have been ongoing questions for years
Speaker 12: because CEO pay has increased many, many times faster than wages,
Speaker 12: which have been stagnant for forty years. Right, ceopay has
Speaker 12: increase Yeah, three hundred and twenty two percent. Since nineteen
Speaker 12: seventy eight, CEOs were paid three hundred and fifty one
Speaker 12: times as much as a typical worker in twenty twenty,
Speaker 12: so CEO pays up thirteen hundred percent.
Speaker 13: That kind of makes sense to me.
Speaker 12: The average American wages have been flat for forty years.
Speaker 13: The value these individuals, these elite executives provide is even
Speaker 13: more valuable than the percentage more they're getting paid. The
Speaker 13: average employee at Amazon versus Andy. If he gets paid
Speaker 13: three hundred and fifty times when they get paid, or
Speaker 13: even a thousand times, M'd say he's ten thousand times
Speaker 13: more important than the average employee his ability to do that,
Speaker 13: just like Steph Curry.
Speaker 10: Yes, just like Steph Curry.
Speaker 5: Totally the same thing running a business and playing basketball.
Speaker 5: But in all seriousness, the impact of Netflix gutting their
Speaker 5: infrastructure and bungling the Love is blind live stream is
Speaker 5: more or less inconsequential when it comes to society as
Speaker 5: a whole.
Speaker 10: Probably some would disagree with that, but my point is
Speaker 10: Netflix is not unique.
Speaker 5: That's how all companies operate, and that's why I'm talking
Speaker 5: about this today. Because for the most part, business executives
Speaker 5: aren't held accountable for anything. So business strategy one to
Speaker 5: one would simply be to make as much money as
Speaker 5: possible while cutting as many expenses as possible Legally. Of course,
Speaker 5: I'm sure there were a number of Netflix engineers who
Speaker 5: were like, I think this is a bad idea, but
Speaker 5: we're told to just push on. And in the case
Speaker 5: of Netflix, we could all have a few laughs at
Speaker 5: their expense. But what if we're not talking about a
Speaker 5: live stream that crashed. What if it was a train
Speaker 5: that crashed carrying dangerous chemicals and toxic materials. Not a
Speaker 5: hypothetical obviously, and not a one off occurrence according to
Speaker 5: publicly available data. You need pausit this video if you
Speaker 5: want to read these four charts, But the data shows
Speaker 5: train crashes are commonplace in the US. Accidents, fatalities, derailments,
Speaker 5: and damages all on the rise over the past decade. Remember,
Speaker 5: everything is an expense. Safety is an expense. It's all
Speaker 5: a big ruse. Nothing is coincidental. Just like Netflix engineers
Speaker 5: were told to sacrifice reliability, there is a clear mandate
Speaker 5: for rail engineers to skip safety checks because doing those
Speaker 5: tests would cost the company money. I'm using train crashes
Speaker 5: as an example here, but industrial accidents of all types
Speaker 5: are happening at alarming rates all over the country. We
Speaker 5: talk about conspiracy theories, right here's one. Safety costs money,
Speaker 5: and if we can downplay safety, that means we can
Speaker 5: cut costs. And even if it train crashes, people won't care.
Speaker 5: I don't think it is a coincidence that the media,
Speaker 5: corporate media specifically, will sometimes downplay these types of stories
Speaker 5: for as long as possible. If that story will make
Speaker 5: corporations look bad because if they report what's actually going on,
Speaker 5: their advertisers will get mad and pay.
Speaker 10: Them less money.
Speaker 5: Like a lot of the early coverage I saw of
Speaker 5: the East Palestine train derailment was reporting not from cable
Speaker 5: news or any of the legacy outlets. The real information
Speaker 5: on the ground was coming from TikTok. I don't think
Speaker 5: it's a coincidence either, that the Transportation Secretary, Pete bootage
Speaker 5: Edge continuously drags his feet when it comes to taking
Speaker 5: on these powerful industries. He's supposed to oversee what be
Speaker 5: trains or planes like this headline suggests, The truth is
Speaker 5: that there are decades long financial arrangements in place between
Speaker 5: rail companies, lobbyists, and lawmakers people to just doing his
Speaker 5: job will necessarily threaten the millions of dollars that flow
Speaker 5: in all directions. To tell you the truth, at this point,
Speaker 5: I can't even tell you where the military or corporations
Speaker 5: end and where the government begins. And when that happens,
Speaker 5: it becomes very clear to the people, the public how
Speaker 5: rigged the game is, and naturally people become disillusioned and
Speaker 5: society will naturally become increasingly more unstable.
Speaker 10: There was just another mass shooting in Kentucky? Why not?
Speaker 3: Why not? You know what I get it now.
Speaker 13: It's not about pronouns, it's not about the laft, it's
Speaker 13: not about the right.
Speaker 10: They're not gonna ban guns. They have set the field.
Speaker 10: People are fing helpless.
Speaker 3: Why wouldn't they just what's that?
Speaker 4: There's no point. You're giving people no point to live.
Speaker 3: You're giving people nothing to lose.
Speaker 5: People getting violent on airplanes, mass shootings, riots, insurrections. These
Speaker 5: are all interconnected. Right When the whole of society exists
Speaker 5: on top of an economic structure built upon a failed
Speaker 5: and outdated economic maxim and that is shareholder privacy at
Speaker 5: all costs. This is the expected result when institutions, whether
Speaker 5: they be governmental something like the Department of Transportation or
Speaker 5: private something such as the media, institutions that are supposed
Speaker 5: to function as advocates for citizens and report on abuses
Speaker 5: of power, end up as extensions of those corporations.
Speaker 10: This is the expected results when.
Speaker 5: Rules have been crafted that allow for the legal exploitation
Speaker 5: of large swaths of the country's population. This is the
Speaker 5: expected result. So let's end legalized bribery in this country.
Speaker 10: There are at.
Speaker 5: Least three amendments that have been proposed stuck in Congress.
Speaker 5: House Joint Resolution one, known as the Democracy for All Amendment,
Speaker 5: House Joint Resolution forty eight, known as the We the
Speaker 5: People Amendment, and House Joint Resolution twenty one, known as
Speaker 5: the People's Rights Amendment. Right to your members of Congress
Speaker 5: prioritize this issue. We are due badly for a constitutional
Speaker 5: amendment that will return the country to the people. And
Speaker 5: that is how you get from Netflix's Love Is Blind
Speaker 5: to corporate malfeasans to trading, derailments, to insurrections.
Speaker 10: And mass shootings. What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree?
Speaker 5: Share your thoughts in the common section below, Because I
Speaker 5: think this is a very important discussion to have you
Speaker 5: want to explore more like this, I'd encourage you to
Speaker 5: check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel fifty one
Speaker 5: to forty nine with James Lee, where I break down
Speaker 5: a ton more topics related to business, politics in society.
Speaker 5: The link will be in the description below. Thank you
Speaker 5: so much for watching Breaking Points, and thank you for
Speaker 5: your time today.