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.
Speaker 3: Coverage 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.
Speaker 1: More scrutiny coming for Harvard University's admissions policy. Let's go
Speaker 1: and put this up on the screen for the New
Speaker 1: York Times. The headline here is Education Department opens civil
Speaker 1: rights inquiry into Harvard's legacy admissions and inquiry and admissions
Speaker 1: preference for family of alumni and donors began after the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court's decision last month limiting affirmative action. So the
Speaker 1: tld R here is basically, listen, you all know what
Speaker 1: happened to the Supreme Court decision. That's a no more
Speaker 1: affirmative action, which considers race as a class. You can
Speaker 1: consider it in individual circumstances. Harvard was part of what
Speaker 1: led to that case getting the Supreme Court, and specifically
Speaker 1: their treatment of aations in their admissions process. And so
Speaker 1: now in the wake of that, the Education Apartment is saying, okay, well,
Speaker 1: if we're ruling out affirmative action, what about the incredible
Speaker 1: preferences that are given to the wealthy and specifically through
Speaker 1: the legacy admissions process. I actually did a whole monologue
Speaker 1: on this earlier this week because there's new research about
Speaker 1: exactly how much this matters in terms of the children
Speaker 1: of the very wealthy, not even one percent, like the
Speaker 1: point one percent. What a massive boost they get into
Speaker 1: admissions into top schools like Harvard and the other ivys
Speaker 1: through the legacy process. It gave them something like an
Speaker 1: eight times advantage over your average student. And with regard
Speaker 1: to Harvard, they have some specific numbers here which are
Speaker 1: pretty wild. So they say Harvard gives preference to applicants
Speaker 1: who are recruited athletes, legacies and not just you know,
Speaker 1: so you know you are the child of someone who
Speaker 1: also went to Harvard, relatives of donors and children of
Speaker 1: faculty and staff. As a group, they make up less
Speaker 1: than five percent of applicants, but around thirty percent of
Speaker 1: those who are admitted each year. And there is you know,
Speaker 1: because wealth has been concentrated among white people in this
Speaker 1: country for a long time. That means about sixty seven
Speaker 1: point eight percent of these applicants who are admitted are
Speaker 1: white according to court papers. So you've got a wealth
Speaker 1: privilege here that also translates into disproportionate number of white people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's absolutely wild.
Speaker 2: So for applicants with legacy status at schools where they
Speaker 2: are legacies, you have a thirty seven percent admissions rate
Speaker 2: for elite colleges. When they apply to a similar school
Speaker 2: where they're not a legacy, the application is eleven percent accessful,
Speaker 2: So you have almost a one in four or sorry,
Speaker 2: a four out of ten chance of actually getting in
Speaker 2: if you're a legacy, and only one out of ten
Speaker 2: if you aren't. Now, for non legacy applicants, the acceptance
Speaker 2: rate at the same school is nine point five percent.
Speaker 2: So you can see there's relative parity for the person
Speaker 2: who's applying to the similar school when they don't have
Speaker 2: legacy status. But it's just astronomical really whenever it comes
Speaker 2: to the actual legacy ones for elite colleges. And then
Speaker 2: the also, as you were alluding to, I would actually
Speaker 2: point more at this about the distribution of parental income
Speaker 2: for legacy admissions, some twenty nine percent are in the
Speaker 2: top one percent of household twenty nine percent of legacy applicants,
Speaker 2: the thirty six percent are in the ninety fifth to
Speaker 2: the ninety nine percent.
Speaker 3: And we're not talking here just about income. We're talking
Speaker 3: about wealth.
Speaker 2: And so to be in the top one percent or
Speaker 2: the top five percent or whatever of wealth in this
Speaker 2: country is a ton of that is millions of dollars
Speaker 2: in networth.
Speaker 1: So the inquiry is specifically going to look into allegations
Speaker 1: by three different liberal groups that Harvard's legacy admissions process
Speaker 1: discriminates against black, Hispanic, and Asian applicants in favor of
Speaker 1: white and wealthy students who are less qualified. So that's
Speaker 1: where the race numbers come in to play here. As
Speaker 1: they're saying, listen, we're being discriminated against. This is basically,
Speaker 1: and I think this is accurate, legacy admissions are basically
Speaker 1: affirmative action for rich white people.
Speaker 4: So that's what the Education Department is looking into.
Speaker 1: They go on to say in this article that their
Speaker 1: Office of Civil Rights has powerful enforcement authority that could
Speaker 1: eventually lead to a settlement with Harvard or trigger a
Speaker 1: lengthy legal battle like the one that led to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court's decision to severely limit race conscious admissions last month,
Speaker 1: reversing eight decades long approach that had increased chances for
Speaker 1: black students in those from other minority groups.
Speaker 4: So that could be the end case here.
Speaker 1: You could end up with this one in front of
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court as well, And my recollection is one
Speaker 1: of the justices.
Speaker 4: It might have been.
Speaker 1: Gorsa specifically wrote about how about legacy admissions, how it
Speaker 1: could potentially also be indefensible. So you may have, you know,
Speaker 1: an interesting split on this one at the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: if it ultimately ended up there.
Speaker 4: But I think this would be a major step in
Speaker 4: the right direction.
Speaker 5: Nukid.
Speaker 3: This is what we need, real meritocracy. That's the whole
Speaker 3: goal of the affirmative action decision. That's great, get rid
Speaker 3: of it. There's no reason you shouldn't.
Speaker 2: Another reason why legacies is complete BS is that you know,
Speaker 2: the elite status these colleges have obtained has really only happened,
Speaker 2: let's say, in the last fifty years or so. So
Speaker 2: if your grandfather was just lucky enough to be like
Speaker 2: a relatively wealthy, like Boston businessman, like why should your
Speaker 2: grandson be allowed to get into based on that person's code.
Speaker 3: It makes no sense.
Speaker 2: Or you know, if you were one of these like
Speaker 2: wealthy California families that went to the original Stanford School
Speaker 2: of minds, Stanford wasn't Stanford like back then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, then you're in a fourth generation or something like that.
Speaker 2: Again, you're literally writing on geographical luck of where your
Speaker 2: great grandfather happened to be. So, look, I don't believe
Speaker 2: in that. I don't think America has founded that on all.
Speaker 2: It's effectively as like an American cast system, and that's
Speaker 2: what my family and many others you know, want to
Speaker 2: escape by coming to the West.
Speaker 3: So I think it's important to get as far away
Speaker 3: from that as pobible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's important to know too.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting results that came out of the
Speaker 1: study that we covered earlier this week is that it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually make that much of a difference whether you
Speaker 1: go to one of the ivy leagues or the other
Speaker 1: of the twelve like elite private schools that they studied
Speaker 1: in that in that particular research doesn't make a huge
Speaker 1: difference income wise. It makes a huge difference in terms
Speaker 1: of whether you make it into these super elite institutions.
Speaker 1: That's where the big difference shows up. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: it really matters, whether we like it or not, who
Speaker 1: gets into these schools. And the fact that you have
Speaker 1: the you know, children of the elite who are given
Speaker 1: a huge leg up in terms of admissions. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's part of what makes it so that you do
Speaker 1: increasingly have this rigid class based society where now we're
Speaker 1: in a situation where it's actually easier to withscend your
Speaker 1: you know, whatever class status you were born with in
Speaker 1: a lot of European countries than it is here. It
Speaker 1: really is a direct attack on the American dream all
Speaker 1: that would say.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, I'm even looking here.
Speaker 2: People have talked a lot about this, specifically whenever it
Speaker 2: comes to like the Supreme Court. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: if you if you look at the current makeup, the
Speaker 2: current makeup of the Supreme Court leads almost entirely to
Speaker 2: the Ivy League. They even say that even the road
Speaker 2: to a Supreme Court clerkship starts at just three Ivy
Speaker 2: League colleges, Harvard, Yale, and Prison. I personally know people
Speaker 2: going through this product. If you think admission to Harvard
Speaker 2: is crazy. Getting a clerkship is the most wild process
Speaker 2: I have ever heard of in terms of the machinations,
Speaker 2: the crap you have to go through. I mean definitely
Speaker 2: pays off, don't get me wrong. You get a big
Speaker 2: fat bonus whenever you eventually leave your clerkship from a
Speaker 2: nice law firm. But again, you have to It starts
Speaker 2: so far back, like when you're a twenty two year old,
Speaker 2: and there's just no denying that.
Speaker 3: Like, when you're that young, you ain't getting there on merit.
Speaker 2: You're getting there based on what your parents are. They
Speaker 2: who you know, Yeah, exactly, And it all come to
Speaker 2: the dinners. And even when you get there, like you
Speaker 2: got to have some serious cash because you have to
Speaker 2: be attending and you know, networking and all of these things.
Speaker 2: For every Barack Obama who is the Harvard Law Review
Speaker 2: President or whatever, there are plenty of rich kids who
Speaker 2: are all around you who end up into these positions
Speaker 2: of power. So anyway, destroying it or at least making
Speaker 2: that more equitable is is incredibly incredibly important, and not
Speaker 2: equitable just in the dei way that they use that term.
Speaker 3: All right, we'll see you guys later.
Speaker 6: Hi, I'm Matt Stoler, author of monopoly focused substech newsletter
Speaker 6: Big and an anti trust policy analyst.
Speaker 7: I have a great segment for you today on this
Speaker 7: Big Breakdown.
Speaker 6: It's about a young YouTube based content creator and entrepreneur
Speaker 6: with millions of fans and his new snack food business line,
Speaker 6: and more broadly, today I'll be talking about why chocolate
Speaker 6: bars are kind of.
Speaker 7: Boring and what monopoly has to do with it.
Speaker 6: Last month, the fierce new competitor of Mars and Hershey's
Speaker 6: went on a popular YouTube channel and attacked the chocolate
Speaker 6: deopoly for bullying rivals and buying up shelf space.
Speaker 7: Here's what the guy said.
Speaker 5: And like no one has been able to get in there.
Speaker 8: It's like Hershey's, Mars, Mars, Lent and Ferraro, and it's
Speaker 8: just it's pretty crazy. But even most of it, it's
Speaker 8: just Hershey's and Mars. They like to do like seventy
Speaker 8: five percent of chocolate revenue in America, and so it's
Speaker 8: like it's kind of like monopolistic. It's like you can't
Speaker 8: if you have a successful chocolate company, they'll just buy
Speaker 8: you are just like fully use you don't get shell space.
Speaker 8: And so these guys like just own all the chocolate
Speaker 8: space and they don't innovate, like a Hershey's bar. To me,
Speaker 8: just tastes like, yeah, it tastes very processed, and I
Speaker 8: don't really like it at all, to be honest, I mean,
Speaker 8: and so it's so fascinating to me, like why why
Speaker 8: are they not new, innovative, cool, like you know, snack
Speaker 8: products coming out more often. It's because these guys just
Speaker 8: have all the shelf space and they have no need
Speaker 8: to innovate. It's just you're just gonna buy what's there,
Speaker 8: and no one's really threatening them. So to me, it's
Speaker 8: fun to like put pressure on them and try to
Speaker 8: get as much shelf space as possible and you know,
Speaker 8: try to figure out what they're doing but better. It's
Speaker 8: like the only thing in my life outside of YouTube
Speaker 8: that I've like gotten hooked on and like on that
Speaker 8: same high yet working on YouTube.
Speaker 6: That was James Steven Dolinson, better known as mister Beast,
Speaker 6: the most popular YouTube influencer in America Mister Beasts Empire,
Speaker 6: and that's increasing what it is rivals Amazon Prime in
Speaker 6: terms of reach. He has more than one hundred and
Speaker 6: sixty million subscribers on his main YouTube Channe and two
Speaker 6: hundred and seventy million across all of them. His video
Speaker 6: recreation of the popular TV shows Squid Game, for example,
Speaker 6: has four hundred and fifty six million views. Mister Beast
Speaker 6: is a twenty five year old college dropout who's simply
Speaker 6: obsessed with business strategy. His goal isn't just to be famous,
Speaker 6: but to compete aggressively in every realm that he can
Speaker 6: to make goods and services that please the public. He's
Speaker 6: been obsessed with commerce since he was thirteen and started
Speaker 6: to crack the YouTube algorithm. Now one result of his
Speaker 6: obsession in talent is that his videos regularly exceed top
Speaker 6: grossing movies and TV shows in terms of reach. He
Speaker 6: uses his fame strategically asking random pedestrians whether they subscribe
Speaker 6: to his various social media channels many do, and incorporating.
Speaker 7: This feedback into his videos.
Speaker 6: Over the last few years, mister Beast has branched out
Speaker 6: into a whole bunch of other products, doing experiments such
Speaker 6: as opening hundreds of mister Beast Burger restaurants using ghost
Speaker 6: kitchens two years ago. While this wasn't a massive success,
Speaker 6: they are still available in some areas and they were
Speaker 6: a test case for his fans' interest in food products
Speaker 6: off of the YouTube channel. Year and a half ago,
Speaker 6: mister Beast created a line of snack foods called Feastables,
Speaker 6: headlined by organic chocolate bars with fun, lighthearted marketing. Now,
Speaker 6: as an aside, I know a lot of people hate marketing.
Speaker 6: Just realized that those of us who do hate marketing
Speaker 6: are unusual weirdos. This is actually the kind of thing
Speaker 6: that most people like.
Speaker 9: Which is better my chocolate bar are the one that
Speaker 9: costs one hundred times.
Speaker 5: More stepan or oh really, there's seconds.
Speaker 6: Us almost from Mister Beet's expansion into chocolate led him
Speaker 6: straight into the maw of dominant snack food companies, whose
Speaker 6: purchase of shelf space with giant retailers keep firms like
Speaker 6: his excluded from the market.
Speaker 7: The power of exclusive arrangements.
Speaker 6: Is something I've I've talked a lot about and it's
Speaker 6: not a function of the market, It's a function of law.
Speaker 6: Remember earlier, mister Beast cited two problems with getting into
Speaker 6: chocolate as a small rival, acquisitions by dominant firms Hershey's
Speaker 6: and marsh will just buy you out and then exclude
Speaker 6: of rivals via the purchase of shelf space. They own
Speaker 6: all the shelf space. Now, let's talk about shelf space,
Speaker 6: which is really valuable. So in two thousand and five,
Speaker 6: Procter and Gamble bought Gillette for fifty seven billion dollars.
Speaker 6: It's a similar line of business. They sell in retail outlets,
Speaker 6: razor blades and things like that. It's not that different
Speaker 6: from chocolate. One analyst said, and here's a quote that
Speaker 6: shelf space is diamond encrusted gold. So it's exposure to
Speaker 6: the consumer, and everyone wants exposure to the consumer. And indeed,
Speaker 6: monopolizing shelf space doesn't just happen in razor blades and chocolate.
Speaker 6: It is actually pervasive across the economy. The Department of
Speaker 6: Justice Anti Trust Division is suing Google, for example, for
Speaker 6: buying up what is the equivalent of shelf space in search,
Speaker 6: which is the default to your to browsers on your phone.
Speaker 6: The Federal Trade Commission got involved in a series of
Speaker 6: murders in the razor blade space, which we're also all
Speaker 6: about shelf space that I do with Harry's meat monopolies business,
Speaker 6: soface for firms, soft drinks, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and TV streaming.
Speaker 6: They're all actually about power and distribution. For example, the
Speaker 6: Kroger Alberts and Supermarket merger is about shelf space. It's
Speaker 6: about consolidating shelf space. Now controlling shelf space, in particular
Speaker 6: bribery to control shelf space, and that's what Mars and
Speaker 6: Hershey's are engaged in, although they wouldn't call it bribery exactly.
Speaker 6: That's the key to creating monopolies. And there's a lot
Speaker 6: of research on this. Now, we eat unhealthy food because
Speaker 6: of this shelf space monopolies. We are charged too much
Speaker 6: for medicine because of these shelf space monopolies. We get
Speaker 6: paid less than we should because of these kinds of
Speaker 6: shelf space driven monopolies, and we have less credible information
Speaker 6: about our world because of these shelf space monopolies. Indeed,
Speaker 6: it's not too extreme to say that one of the
Speaker 6: core social problems in America fostering everything from obesity to
Speaker 6: the dominance of big tech, is control of shelf space,
Speaker 6: of what is put in front of us as a.
Speaker 7: Consumer, and who controls that.
Speaker 6: So the collusive deal that mister Beast encountered between big
Speaker 6: suppliers and big retailers, well, it makes sense from the
Speaker 6: perspective of a big business. It's good for the dominant
Speaker 6: chocolate incumbents who get to box out rivals like mister
Speaker 6: Beast and a lot of us other smaller entities. But
Speaker 6: it's also good for retail incumbents, who get better prices
Speaker 6: from Hershey's and Mars than independent stores that compete with them.
Speaker 6: It's bad, however, for people like you and me, for
Speaker 6: everyone else. Now here's the thing that's kind of astonishing
Speaker 6: about this situation, and about mister Beasts going on YouTube
Speaker 6: and saying exactly what he did. Agreements like this, the
Speaker 6: ones between Hershey, Mars and retailers are illegal, and they
Speaker 6: have been illegal since. A law banning control of shelf
Speaker 6: space through these kickbacks, called the Robins Patman Act, was
Speaker 6: signed into law by President Franklin dell Or Roosevelt in
Speaker 6: nineteen thirty six. Now, at that time, the law was
Speaker 6: meant to stop the same kind of business behavior then
Speaker 6: being used by a different company called the A and P.
Speaker 7: Grocery Giant, which was the original Walmart.
Speaker 6: In my newsletter at the Big Newsletter dot Com, I
Speaker 6: cite this passage, which highlights a section of the law
Speaker 6: that says middlemen can't pay or be paid to exclude rivals.
Speaker 6: The law is still on the books and it would
Speaker 6: seem to indict all the games played by retailers. So
Speaker 6: why is mister Beasts encountering exclusionary behavior. Well, enforcers stopped
Speaker 6: enforcing this law in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties
Speaker 6: as part of the reversal of the traditional American policy
Speaker 6: frame against monopolies. They also stopped enforcing anti merger law.
Speaker 6: So that gets to the other thing that that Misterbeast
Speaker 6: was talking about.
Speaker 7: Now, why do they do this?
Speaker 6: Well, one key argument for not enforcing this law was
Speaker 6: that the new techies and then eventually the Internet made
Speaker 6: fights over shelf space irrelevant since you can sell things
Speaker 6: through mail order, through websites and get around retail bottlenecks,
Speaker 6: so you know, there's plenty of competition, or so said.
Speaker 6: The argument that, clearly though, isn't true. After all, it's
Speaker 6: impossible to find someone with more expertise in the Internet
Speaker 6: and Internet marketing than mister Bees and he's complaining about
Speaker 6: the shelf space bottleneck.
Speaker 7: There's good news today.
Speaker 6: There's a whole series of small business groups, from the
Speaker 6: National Grocers Association to the National Association of Convenience Stores
Speaker 6: to the National Beer Wholesalers Association. And these actually aren't
Speaker 6: just small businesses. They're small, medium, and even some large businesses,
Speaker 6: just not as big as Walmart or Amazon. These guys
Speaker 6: are actually lobbying for the enforcement of the Robinson Patman
Speaker 6: Act and other rules against exclusionary practices. So here's an
Speaker 6: ad by one of these trade associations of smaller and
Speaker 6: medium sized stores playing to try to influence policymakers to
Speaker 6: bring back enforcement of this law.
Speaker 5: This is the only place that you can buy fresh
Speaker 5: groceries for twenty to thirty miles.
Speaker 10: Independent grocers are the backbone of countless communities, but big
Speaker 10: chains are using their market share to squeeze suppliers and
Speaker 10: box out competition. Americans face higher prices, less choice, and
Speaker 10: access to fresh food. Existing antitrust laws have been ignored
Speaker 10: for a generation. It's time for a change.
Speaker 5: That's the reason all these laws exists.
Speaker 11: We just want our fair show.
Speaker 10: Tell the FTC, protect American families, revive the Robinson Patman Act.
Speaker 6: Another good sign is that the Federal Trade Commission, under
Speaker 6: thirty four year old Chair Lena Kahn and several other
Speaker 6: commissioners alv Ro, Meadoya and Becka Kelly Slaughter. They're actually
Speaker 6: trying to resurrect the Robinson Patmanact.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 6: Con is exquisitely aware of the problems that mister Beast cites.
Speaker 6: In fact, in an article for Time Magazine that Con
Speaker 6: wrote ten years ago when she was a young journalist,
Speaker 6: she described the candy oliga and how it uses control
Speaker 6: of yes shelf space to effectively make bringing any new
Speaker 6: candy into mainstream markets extremely difficult. Now, mister Beast will
Speaker 6: get into the market since his brand and distribution capacity
Speaker 6: is so powerful, but it's much harder than it should
Speaker 6: be for him. And if it's this hard for him,
Speaker 6: then imagine all the other innovators that are really good
Speaker 6: at making candy but maybe not that great at making
Speaker 6: YouTube videos, that are finding it impossible or you know,
Speaker 6: don't consider it, and then enjoy the endless see of
Speaker 6: boring Hershey bars, thanks for watching this big breakdown on
Speaker 6: the Breaking Points channel. If you'd like to know more
Speaker 6: about big business and how economy really works, you could
Speaker 6: sign up by going to the link in the description
Speaker 6: below and taking a look at my market power focused newsletter.
Speaker 7: Big Thanks and have a good one.
Speaker 12: Hi, a Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor in chief of
Speaker 12: the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People,
Speaker 12: and this is the art of class war.
Speaker 5: On Breaking Points.
Speaker 12: On September fourteenth, last year, right here on Breaking Points,
Speaker 12: just days before we were set to potentially see the
Speaker 12: first national rail shutdown in this country in thirty years,
Speaker 12: I interviewed Michael Paul Lindsay the Second, a locomotive engineer
Speaker 12: for Union Pacific. Paul is a military veteran who has
Speaker 12: worked for the past seventeen years as a trained conductor
Speaker 12: and then as an engineer based out of Pocatello, Idaho.
Speaker 12: After largely ignoring the long brewing crisis on the nation's
Speaker 12: freight rail system for months and even years, when corporate
Speaker 12: media finally started covering the national rail dispute that was
Speaker 12: playing out last year between the class won rail carriers
Speaker 12: and the twelve unions representing over one hundred thousand rail workers,
Speaker 12: their coverage was predictably chock full of rail industry spokespeople,
Speaker 12: business class serving pundits, pearl clutching economists warning about the
Speaker 12: damage or railroad strike would do, and anti union cranks
Speaker 12: of all stripes. As someone who had been interviewing countless
Speaker 12: railroad workers all year for the Real News and for
Speaker 12: my podcast Working People.
Speaker 5: And even here on Breaking Points.
Speaker 12: It was frankly maddening for me to see how difficult
Speaker 12: it was to initially get other outlets to talk to
Speaker 12: actual workers and hear their side of the story. But
Speaker 12: I also saw how much of an impact it made
Speaker 12: when a handful of brave rank and file workers, particularly
Speaker 12: those affiliated with the Crosscraft Solidarity group railroad Workers United,
Speaker 12: at great risk to themselves and their jobs, spoke out
Speaker 12: publicly about how Wall Street greed and corporate greed had
Speaker 12: destroyed the rail industry for the sake of record profits.
Speaker 12: They had run railroad workers into the ground, damaged our
Speaker 12: economy and our vital component of our supply chain, and
Speaker 12: endangered communities like.
Speaker 5: East Palestine, Ohio. Paul was one of those workers.
Speaker 12: Through his popular TikTok channel, through interviews with media outlets,
Speaker 12: and through op eds written for industry publications like Railway Age,
Speaker 12: Paul has exposed with a veteran railroaders insight and with
Speaker 12: a deep clear love for the industry, that he had
Speaker 12: devoted his life to the destructive business and labor practices
Speaker 12: of Union Pacific and the other Class one rail carriers.
Speaker 5: When we hear the term.
Speaker 12: Whistleblower, we tend to think of names like Daniel Elsberg,
Speaker 12: Mark Felt aka Deep Throat, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange,
Speaker 12: heroes who have risked their freedom and even their lives
Speaker 12: to expose government lies, abuses of power, and state secrets
Speaker 12: that the public has a right to know about. But
Speaker 12: there are actually a range of federal statutes designed to
Speaker 12: protect those who blow the whistle on their employers as well,
Speaker 12: especially when those employers are breaking the law and or
Speaker 12: endangering their workers and the public. And frankly, any way
Speaker 12: you slice it, Paul is a whistleblower, and for his
Speaker 12: whistle blowing, after seventeen years of dedicated service and good
Speaker 12: standing with the company, Paul was recently fired by Union Pacific.
Speaker 12: To talk about all of this and more, I'm honored
Speaker 12: to be joined on the art of class war once
Speaker 12: again by Michael Paul Lindsay the second Paul is great
Speaker 12: to see you again, brother, although I wish more than
Speaker 12: anything that we were meeting under less despicable circumstances, And
Speaker 12: I just want to start by saying from all of
Speaker 12: us here at breaking points that we are sending all
Speaker 12: of our love and solidarity to you at this incredibly
Speaker 12: difficult time.
Speaker 13: Well, it's great to hear from you again.
Speaker 7: Max.
Speaker 14: Always joy doing segments with you, and you do a
Speaker 14: fantastic job of spotlighting the issues that need to be
Speaker 14: discussed for the sake of labor and for the country
Speaker 14: and for the businesses that rely on you know, the
Speaker 14: services of the railroad. You know everyone that the consumers
Speaker 14: that rely on it. I appreciate you taking your time
Speaker 14: for this. Max.
Speaker 12: Right back at you, brother, and you know, let's we
Speaker 12: got a lot to dig in here too, here, and
Speaker 12: I know you've got a lot going on, so I
Speaker 12: don't want to keep you too long. So let's start
Speaker 12: by reflecting on your seventeen years working on the railroads.
Speaker 12: Talk to us about why you started working on the
Speaker 12: rails and what that work was like. And then let's
Speaker 12: talk about what you and I have talked about on
Speaker 12: my podcast and previous segments. Let's talk about how you
Speaker 12: have seen firsthand the industry change over your seventeen years
Speaker 12: working for Union Pacific as railroad executives and their Wall
Speaker 12: Street sharehold holders pushed these top down profit maximizing policies
Speaker 12: to be implemented across the rail system. How did that
Speaker 12: change your work and why did you feel compelled to
Speaker 12: start speaking out about this publicly.
Speaker 14: Let's see so the first part, what it was like
Speaker 14: initially starting out, Why I started at the railroad.
Speaker 13: I always wanted to work for the railroad.
Speaker 14: I always loved the rail industry ever since I was
Speaker 14: a kid, and I loved trains. I started getting involved
Speaker 14: in learning about the industry and how it works from
Speaker 14: a very young age. It wasn't just liking trains themselves,
Speaker 14: but I wanted to see the industry expand and succeed.
Speaker 14: And you know, as a kid looking back seeing the
Speaker 14: merger movement growing up at the time and seeing all
Speaker 14: these paint schemes of railroads that were now merged into
Speaker 14: larger and larger and larger monopolies, not realizing at the
Speaker 14: time that I'd never see something like this again, and
Speaker 14: that it was major, it was historic, and it was
Speaker 14: going to affect my career going forward. But I finally
Speaker 14: got my opportunity after I got back from deployment in
Speaker 14: two thousand and six in the Marine Corps and hired
Speaker 14: on in California in the Bay Area, and it was Yeah,
Speaker 14: I was about the proudest moment of my life, and
Speaker 14: it took.
Speaker 13: The standards were very, very high back then. They really.
Speaker 14: They really tried to make sure that you were going
Speaker 14: to conduct yourself in a way that was safe, because
Speaker 14: bottom line, safety was really the biggest important factor because
Speaker 14: they knew they couldn't run a profitable railroad if it
Speaker 14: wasn't safe. And they had one.
Speaker 13: Hundred plus years.
Speaker 14: Of figuring that out of chopping off people's arms and
Speaker 14: limbs and killing people over the years in the eighteen
Speaker 14: hundreds to finally create a safe environment. Well, so then
Speaker 14: you ask how I've seen the industry change, and with
Speaker 14: the Wall Street Wall Street consolidation and the desire for
Speaker 14: more with less, there's been less emphasis on things that
Speaker 14: we would consider very basic, like maintenance.
Speaker 13: Things that industries like the like the aviation.
Speaker 14: Industry wouldn't dream of cutting because federal regulators would just
Speaker 14: come down like a ton of bricks on them. But
Speaker 14: something that we all started to start to notice is
Speaker 14: that especially when it cut when it came to maintenance,
Speaker 14: if they had a train that was running out of
Speaker 14: town that was long, they keep they keep increasing the
Speaker 14: length of these trains, and it creates problems for a
Speaker 14: terminal if you have multiple trains coming through a terminal.
Speaker 14: But by god, they've got to get there for teen
Speaker 14: thousand foot monstrosity out of there, and it's blocking every
Speaker 14: single main line in the terminal. Well, it doesn't matter
Speaker 14: that maybe there's some brake shoes that need to be replaced.
Speaker 14: We can just send that on and kick it down
Speaker 14: the road to the next terminal. And then it gets
Speaker 14: to the next terminal and they've got their fourteen thousand
Speaker 14: foot train they need to build, and they're like, well,
Speaker 14: we can't do it here, kick it on to the
Speaker 14: next terminal, and then you know, cutting staff, cutting the numbers.
Speaker 14: The numbers are people doing the work so that even
Speaker 14: if they wanted to do it, there's not enough people
Speaker 14: there on hand, because if they do not make their
Speaker 14: departure time numbers, then it's going to make their lives miserable.
Speaker 13: They're going to hear it on the conference call. I've seen.
Speaker 14: A major stray away from caring about safety, and it
Speaker 14: almost seems like it's a calculated cost analysis, like they figure, well,
Speaker 14: if we have a toxic derailment, that poisons a river.
Speaker 13: It's only going to cost this much.
Speaker 14: But if we managed to run fourteen thousand foot trains
Speaker 14: for three years leading up to it, we're still going
Speaker 14: to make profit even after paying out these people.
Speaker 13: They don't care.
Speaker 5: So no, they clearly don't.
Speaker 12: I mean, like and just like, East Palestine is a
Speaker 12: perfect example, right like I mean, I am begging folks,
Speaker 12: go to the real news, go to my podcast. I
Speaker 12: have not only spoken with railroad workers about East Palestine.
Speaker 12: I've interviewed residents living in and around Ease Palestine. They
Speaker 12: have been completely abandoned. They can't go home, They and
Speaker 12: their kids are continuously sick, they can't drink their water.
Speaker 12: They're not getting the help that they need from their
Speaker 12: local or federal governments, and their sure as hell not
Speaker 12: getting the help that they need from Norfolk Southern. And
Speaker 12: yet their lives have been completely upended. There is no
Speaker 12: normal to go back to for them. This is their normal.
Speaker 12: That is what they have told me. And yet, to
Speaker 12: make Paul's point, that is just a line item on
Speaker 12: Norfolk Southern's like budget. That is just like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 12: the cleanup's going to cost this much. The negative publicity
Speaker 12: is going to cost this much. But ultimately the destructive
Speaker 12: practices that Paul is talking about, making the trains longer,
Speaker 12: making them heavier, having fewer people working on the trains,
Speaker 12: having fewer people checking the track, checking the cars, fewer
Speaker 12: people checking the signals in the dispatch office, trying to
Speaker 12: replace human maintenance work with technology like hotbox detectors, which
Speaker 12: Paul has exposed the flaws in through his popular TikTok,
Speaker 12: and in fact, that was a big reason why Union
Speaker 12: Pacific fired him. We're going to get to that in
Speaker 12: a second, but I'm just trying to kind of like
Speaker 12: refresh everyone's memory about what Paul and I talked about
Speaker 12: in September, what we at breaking points were talking about
Speaker 12: all throughout the contract dispute on the railroads last year,
Speaker 12: while all of this was happening, while staff across the
Speaker 12: rail system has been getting cut.
Speaker 5: Year after year after year.
Speaker 12: The Class one freight rail carriers have eliminated thirty percent
Speaker 12: of their workforce since twenty fifteen alone. And so when
Speaker 12: you cut that many people, and you take all of
Speaker 12: that risk on of trains derailing, of workers getting exhausted
Speaker 12: and run into the ground, and workers are reportedly quitting
Speaker 12: in record numbers. You are inevitably going to have catastrophes
Speaker 12: like East Palestine. You are going to have over a
Speaker 12: thousand derailments around the country like we average here in
Speaker 12: the United States every year.
Speaker 5: And the way that everything played.
Speaker 12: Out last year between scab Joe Biden and Democrats and
Speaker 12: Republicans in Congress forcing railroad workers to accept a deal
Speaker 12: they did not want, they effectively endorsed all of the
Speaker 12: practices that Paul is describing here that have taken over
Speaker 12: the railroads for the sake of Wall Street and executive profits.
Speaker 12: Because let us not forget while all of this is happening,
Speaker 12: the express goal is to maximize profit, and the railroads
Speaker 12: have been successful there, even though we are moving less
Speaker 12: freight than we should be, even though shippers who have
Speaker 12: to use the rails are pissed off by the high
Speaker 12: prices and declining quality of service, even though rail workers
Speaker 12: like Paul are losing years off their lives from working
Speaker 12: under draconian attendance policies and workloads and having fewer people
Speaker 12: to help around. All of that has contributed to the
Speaker 12: railroads being more profitable than they've ever been. Stock buybacks,
Speaker 12: shareholder dividends, executive pay have all gone through the roof,
Speaker 12: while workers, consumers, and members of the public like the
Speaker 12: resident of East Palestine are getting screwed by this.
Speaker 5: And that is what Paul was blowing the whistle on again.
Speaker 12: Through his TikTok channel, through interviews, through his own writing,
Speaker 12: you can see and hear how much he loves this
Speaker 12: industry and how much how worried he has been about
Speaker 12: where this is all headed. And we saw in East
Speaker 12: Palestine where it is all headed. And instead of being
Speaker 12: rewarded for that, instead of being commended for being a
Speaker 12: hero and a patriot and doing a vital public service,
Speaker 12: Paul was targeted and fired by Union Pacifics. So let's
Speaker 12: talk about that, Paul, while I still got you to
Speaker 12: us about the conditions of your firing. What happened, what
Speaker 12: reasons did the company give, and what does Union Pacific's
Speaker 12: treatment of you say about the industry as a whole.
Speaker 13: Right now, we'll answer your last question first.
Speaker 14: What it says about the industry as a whole is
Speaker 14: this is an industry that feels that they're untouchable, that
Speaker 14: they will not be held accountable, which, of course Joe
Speaker 14: Biden when he broke our legitimate labor strike and then
Speaker 14: supported work stoppages by the companies themselves. They were emboldened
Speaker 14: that they are untouchable. So the conditions leading up to
Speaker 14: it really surrounded East Palestine. Because I've been making videos
Speaker 14: about the railroad for a very long time, I had
Speaker 14: millions of views, and I decided to make one on
Speaker 14: East Palestine and the detectors. And one of the big
Speaker 14: things that's come out now is that those detectors are
Speaker 14: not actually regulated by anybody. The FRA doesn't regulate them,
Speaker 14: even though they totally should be a regulated device.
Speaker 13: So if anything came out legislatively, that should be it.
Speaker 14: And I made a video about East Palestine and they
Speaker 14: put that and four others into an investigation against me
Speaker 14: and terminated me based on those five videos.
Speaker 13: But it's interesting it wasn't local management.
Speaker 14: They were told, oh, we got a call from Omaha
Speaker 14: telling me to telling them to pull them out of service,
Speaker 14: you know, to pull me out of service.
Speaker 13: And I just had a good, full work day and
Speaker 13: they came up and said.
Speaker 14: Yeah, Omaha, Omaha called, We've got to pull you out
Speaker 14: of service and escort you off the property. And then
Speaker 14: they held a formal investigation over it, and then to
Speaker 14: make matters worse, to add insult to injury another one
Speaker 14: of those. These companies are untouchable. So I believe that
Speaker 14: anyone in labor that was forced back to work against
Speaker 14: their will without a contract that they voted on would
Speaker 14: agree that we feel like slaves to the company, slaves
Speaker 14: to the attendance policy and everything else. And I mentioned
Speaker 14: that in the investigation, and then they came back and
Speaker 14: investigated me again for using that word to describe myself
Speaker 14: and said that apparently that's racially discriminated. So then they
Speaker 14: fired me again, defamed my character and tried to and
Speaker 14: basically fired me again for using that word. And this
Speaker 14: is a company that openly, willingly discriminated against people of
Speaker 14: color for you know, lots and lots of years over
Speaker 14: their history. It's really amazing that they would have that
Speaker 14: moral high ground to think that they.
Speaker 15: Should do that.
Speaker 14: And then they came back and used another video I
Speaker 14: made about the SEMA derailment in California and fired me again.
Speaker 14: So I've never heard of this, and no one in
Speaker 14: the Union has ever heard of this, where they wanted
Speaker 14: me so bad they held three formal investigations against me
Speaker 14: to fire me to silence me. And my end goal
Speaker 14: of this is legislative protection for whistleblowers, you know, really,
Speaker 14: because I believe that these whistleblower protections that we do
Speaker 14: have were created in an era before social media, and
Speaker 14: the railroad is saying that they don't believe that I
Speaker 14: have any protection because I was using social media. Well,
Speaker 14: if I can be the one that sets the precedent
Speaker 14: that gets people to be able to have a voice
Speaker 14: out there, to speak out against their employers and to
Speaker 14: speak out against companies when they are openly pressing workers,
Speaker 14: when they're open to openly violating safety, you know, then
Speaker 14: then it'll all be worth it.
Speaker 5: Jesus man, I'm I'm barely containing.
Speaker 12: My rage here because this is just so egregious, so ridiculous,
Speaker 12: and so unforgivable. Right, like two things I want to say,
Speaker 12: and we're going to wrap up in a second, but
Speaker 12: like one, it is it is, you know, big posturing
Speaker 12: from a company like union person to suddenly get woke
Speaker 12: and say like, oh, this railroad worker is racist because
Speaker 12: he described himself as feeling like a slave to the company.
Speaker 5: So we're going to go after him for that.
Speaker 12: We're not going to do anything about the conditions that
Speaker 12: make him and other workers feel like slaves to the company. Instead,
Speaker 12: we're going to invoke, you know, like this, this kind
Speaker 12: of pseudo racial justice language to discipline and silence our workers.
Speaker 12: And I would just say that is bullshit, and we
Speaker 12: see you Union Pacific. And you know, another thing I
Speaker 12: want to emphasize, because there were also developments on the
Speaker 12: investigation into the derailment in East Palestine. Recently, hearings that
Speaker 12: were held in East Palestine where railroaders like Jason Cox
Speaker 12: testified about what Paul described in his TikTok about the
Speaker 12: hot box detectors. We don't have to go into all that,
Speaker 12: but these are the machines on the track that are
Speaker 12: supposed to detect if you have, among other things, an
Speaker 12: overheated bearing like the one that caused the derailment in
Speaker 12: East Palestine. Supposed to relay that information to the crew
Speaker 12: so they can stop in time and check it. That
Speaker 12: did not happen in time for the crew to stop
Speaker 12: the train. And it turns out there are a number
Speaker 12: of reasons for that, because, as Paul said, those hotbox
Speaker 12: detectors would have been which have been implemented on the
Speaker 12: rails explicitly to replace people like the car men and
Speaker 12: the maintenance of way guys who are checking the cars
Speaker 12: in the track with their eyes, with their expertise, to
Speaker 12: say that is not safe to go on the rails.
Speaker 12: The rail carriers say, well, let's just automate it and
Speaker 12: it'll all be fine. Clearly, in East Palestine it was
Speaker 12: not fine. But the thing on the point I'm trying
Speaker 12: to make is that in those hearings that were held
Speaker 12: in East Palestine just the last month I believe, or
Speaker 12: at the end of June, Norfolk Southern admitted that, Yeah,
Speaker 12: the federal government does not set the standards for what
Speaker 12: constitutes like a threat level to report to the crew.
Speaker 12: It's all determined internally by the rail carriers themselves. They're
Speaker 12: the ones who determine whether or not a signal or
Speaker 12: a distress signal caught by one of those hotbox detectors
Speaker 12: rises to the level of let's relay.
Speaker 5: This to the train.
Speaker 12: As Paul described it to me on my podcast, Working People,
Speaker 12: this is like if you're flying on a plane and
Speaker 12: there's an engine that blows out. It's like that news
Speaker 12: goes to the ground control folks and they decide whether
Speaker 12: or not to tell the pilot like that is insane
Speaker 12: to me. So the Norfolk Southern basically admitted what Paul
Speaker 12: exposed and his TikTok about the hotbox detectors, and Paul
Speaker 12: has been fired.
Speaker 5: By Union Pacific for that. That is not right.
Speaker 12: And I could go on for days about this, But
Speaker 12: our main goal here is to let people know about
Speaker 12: this injustice, let people know about what whistleblowers like Paul
Speaker 12: are going through, and to help build momentum to fight
Speaker 12: against this. And so with the last minute I've got you, man,
Speaker 12: I just wanted to ask how you're doing and what
Speaker 12: people out there can do to support you.
Speaker 14: Right now, I'm doing okay, just kind of traveling around,
Speaker 14: spending some time with my daughter that I haven't been
Speaker 14: able to doing a long time working for the railroad.
Speaker 13: They took a lot of my time.
Speaker 14: But the way people can support is really to keep
Speaker 14: talking about these companies, to not let it be in vain.
Speaker 14: Don't let the railroads hide from what they've been doing
Speaker 14: to the US economy. It'll only keep getting worse. We
Speaker 14: need to pressure regulators to bring this industry to heal,
Speaker 14: to bring them back under control so that it actually
Speaker 14: focuses on safe transportation and not share buybacks. You know,
Speaker 14: these problems, whether they be safety, whether they be poor
Speaker 14: transportation that results in higher prices at the grocery store,
Speaker 14: higher prices and everything else that we rely on, it'll
Speaker 14: just keep getting worse until eventually, my prediction is the
Speaker 14: industry fails and they go into bankruptcy, which they don't
Speaker 14: care about because they'll just ask you and I for
Speaker 14: a big fat bailout and say that they're too big
Speaker 14: to fail. That's going to probably be the end result
Speaker 14: with this company if we do not do something to
Speaker 14: rein in the share buybacks and the obsession with more
Speaker 14: with less, And that's the cursed phrase I want to
Speaker 14: see removed from the industry and the corporate saying more
Speaker 14: with less or yeah, more with less where they want
Speaker 14: more profit, more productivity, more everything without having to put
Speaker 14: anything with anything more.
Speaker 13: That's what needs to be rained in.
Speaker 14: But yeah, so what you can do is don't stop
Speaker 14: talking about the railroad and don't let them hide in
Speaker 14: the shadows. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying
Speaker 14: to whitewash the whole thing and get us to forget.
Speaker 12: So that is Michael Paul Lindsay, the second Paul is
Speaker 12: a military veteran who has worked for Union Pacific as
Speaker 12: a trained locomotive conductor and engineer for the past seventeen
Speaker 12: years until he was fired earlier this year by the
Speaker 12: company in suspected retaliation for his whistle blowing. Thank you
Speaker 12: for watching this segment with breaking points, and be sure
Speaker 12: to subscribe to my news outlet, the Real News Network
Speaker 12: with links in the description. See you soon for the
Speaker 12: next edition of the Art of Class War. Take care
Speaker 12: of yourselves, take care of each other, Solidarity forever.
Speaker 16: I am here with Jeremy Corbell.
Speaker 2: We are outside of the Rayburn House office building where
Speaker 2: we just had the historic UFO hearing. Jeremy, you were
Speaker 2: seated there right behind all the witnesses. Give us the
Speaker 2: biggest moments from the hearing, a little bit of the
Speaker 2: background about what it took to actually make this possible.
Speaker 16: You were instrumental in that.
Speaker 17: The biggest moment of the hearing is that it happened
Speaker 17: at all. This is the only time in history. I mean,
Speaker 17: if people knew how many times this was tried to
Speaker 17: be stopped, diminished, stalled, you heard they didn't even weren't
Speaker 17: even allowed to have a skiff because there was a
Speaker 17: guy there who could have put them in a skiff
Speaker 17: and told them all the things he couldn't say in
Speaker 17: front of the public.
Speaker 16: Why don't we get into that a little bit. So
Speaker 16: for a skiff, it's called.
Speaker 17: A sweatshot done. This is your story of government. This
Speaker 17: is his story because it's never happened before. Firsthand direct
Speaker 17: eyewitness to climony with somebody who is the first whistleblower
Speaker 17: who officially went through the ICIG process. That was David Grush.
Speaker 17: You've got Commander Fravor got Lieutenant Underwood, and you got Grush.
Speaker 17: That is it's exceptional what happened today. And then we'll
Speaker 17: go on to the next.
Speaker 16: Right, and so one of the things you're referencing.
Speaker 2: A key moment of the hearing everyone is when the
Speaker 2: congressmen repeatedly were talking about how they were denied access
Speaker 2: to a special compartmentalized facility so Dave Grush could give
Speaker 2: them specifics about this UFO program.
Speaker 17: Yes, yeah, and let me tell you shouldn't be hard.
Speaker 17: I mean, I've been in them very recently. So the
Speaker 17: deal is this that was intentional and that bothers me
Speaker 17: this is about transparency, So you get it right there.
Speaker 17: We got a lot, so don't don't there were Adam
Speaker 17: bombs that would rop don't worry right right. Yeah, But
Speaker 17: even with that said, from the get go, from the
Speaker 17: top down, there has been an attempt and you know,
Speaker 17: just very logistically to stop this from happening, and I
Speaker 17: we achieved it. So I'm elated because you know, I
Speaker 17: care about this truth. If it is true, I think
Speaker 17: the American public have a need to know.
Speaker 16: So that was one of the extraordinary moments for me.
Speaker 2: Dave Grush, Commander Fraver Ryan Grave, all of these people
Speaker 2: are testifying under oath. Dave Grush made repeated and actually
Speaker 2: stunning allegation.
Speaker 16: So let's get into some of them.
Speaker 2: One of them is that non human intelligences be in
Speaker 2: possession of the United States government since the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: That actually pre dates UFO lore. I mean, can you
Speaker 2: maybe give us some background on that and what he's
Speaker 2: talking about here.
Speaker 17: So first of all, you said, you know, I helped
Speaker 17: set it up and all this. I want to be
Speaker 17: very clear. The whole thing about under oath, actually we
Speaker 17: had to fight for that. They all wanted to be
Speaker 17: under oath right. So that already tells you why would
Speaker 17: people not want them to be under oath R right.
Speaker 11: So that was a huge achievement. That was great.
Speaker 17: Now, what you're talking about it might sound fantastical, but
Speaker 17: that doesn't have any relevancy to whether or not it's true.
Speaker 11: Yes, if that is true, then it is true.
Speaker 17: And again the American public and global public have a
Speaker 17: need to know that information, if true. Not a right
Speaker 17: to know, they have a need to know because it
Speaker 17: would have implications for what it means I mean to
Speaker 17: be human straight up.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the fascinating things also is that Dave
Speaker 2: Grush talked at certain points about non human biologics that
Speaker 2: we're in possession. He talked about theoretical studies of time travel.
Speaker 2: I mean, once again, he is testifying here unders he's
Speaker 2: a physicist. These things may sound again fantastical to the
Speaker 2: general audience. He is testifying here under oath.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But also, Jeremy, he detailed multiple threats to his own life, yes,
Speaker 2: and to other people who are around him by career
Speaker 2: government and ex government officials. Can you maybe give us
Speaker 2: some insight into what he's talking about.
Speaker 17: It is not my position to give insight to what
Speaker 17: he's talking about. However, it is true, and I feel
Speaker 17: that that will be revealed to everybody. But you know,
Speaker 17: the point is, it's way beyond an individual. It's way
Speaker 17: beyond one person, one siding one thing. This is a
Speaker 17: symptom of what's been going on for a very long time.
Speaker 17: And there's been arguments that, well, why aren't these advanced
Speaker 17: tech that from foreign adversarial nations we just don't know?
Speaker 17: Are are black projects? Some of our friends actually, oh yeah,
Speaker 17: think now here's the deal.
Speaker 11: One. The UFO phenomenon is not real.
Speaker 17: I was the UFO phenomenon has been here a long time. Yes, right,
Speaker 17: any type of advanced technology that Commander Fravor can't tell
Speaker 17: you right openly what he's doing for work right now,
Speaker 17: he didn't testify to that.
Speaker 11: That's a man that would know. And I'll put it
Speaker 11: that way.
Speaker 17: So these things that we're seeing, how they operate, it
Speaker 17: predates our black programs, It predates the Pentagon. I did
Speaker 17: provide something for Congressional record that was submitted into congressional records,
Speaker 17: so did George Knapp, And in that I try to
Speaker 17: detail the estimate of the situation from my perspective as
Speaker 17: somebody covering this with knowledge that I can't yet go
Speaker 17: public with because of issues like we're having with David Grunt.
Speaker 16: So this is so important for people to understand.
Speaker 2: He said, on multiple occasions his life was threatened, there
Speaker 2: was retaliation.
Speaker 13: Yes.
Speaker 2: Another very interesting thing that Leslie Keen has talked about,
Speaker 2: I know you've looked into as well, is about the.
Speaker 16: Way that these black programs are funded.
Speaker 2: Dave Grush intimated that it defectively involves DF Defense contractors
Speaker 2: charging the US government extra and then using that money
Speaker 2: to fund outside black programs, including possible crash retrieval maintenance
Speaker 2: study in which some cases even said one person was injured.
Speaker 16: While that occurred.
Speaker 11: Yeah, are you surprised by that?
Speaker 16: No, but to hear it under oath.
Speaker 2: To testified to the fact that the Pentagon hasn't been
Speaker 2: able to pass an audit for five years in a row,
Speaker 2: maybe this explains a little bit to some of the
Speaker 2: people here. That really what hit home to me just
Speaker 2: on a personal level, sitting there and understanding that this
Speaker 2: is all under oath, that this is being made on camera,
Speaker 2: that your statements are being injured in the congressional record,
Speaker 2: Like if they're lying, they need to be prosecuted.
Speaker 16: They've actually wasted it my time, your time, like so
Speaker 16: many of our time.
Speaker 2: But I mean to put yourself in a position where
Speaker 2: you could go to jail on multiple levels for coming
Speaker 2: forward on this, that brings a hell of a lot
Speaker 2: of weight, I think to the testimony.
Speaker 11: I thank you for seeing what this is.
Speaker 17: What this is is a hearing to motivate, inspire, and
Speaker 17: provide confidence for people who have come forward to me already,
Speaker 17: people that have come forward within certain compartments within our
Speaker 17: government because a fear of reprisal and breaking from the fold,
Speaker 17: have not come forward publicly. And again I said, the
Speaker 17: public has a need to know. So this hearing is
Speaker 17: the greatest thing that it is is it is a
Speaker 17: symbol to give confidence. How David Grush is treated from
Speaker 17: here on out with his whistleblow or complaint, how Commander
Speaker 17: fravor how Lieutenant Graves, how they are treated right now
Speaker 17: by the public is what's going to gauge what the
Speaker 17: public will be able to learn in the future. These
Speaker 17: people are American heroes and to me, I mean I've
Speaker 17: been a champion to get them here. That that's the
Speaker 17: thing I think Commander Favors really pissed at me from
Speaker 17: time to time.
Speaker 11: You know, he always blames me.
Speaker 17: You know're talking about being a past, you know, get
Speaker 17: him to do things. These guys that don't want to
Speaker 17: be jumping in front of cameras.
Speaker 2: That was very clear, just so everyone knows from behind
Speaker 2: the see was he did not want. It's hard in
Speaker 2: the spotlight.
Speaker 17: Look, he's got a job. He's going back to work
Speaker 17: and jumping jumping, you know, to work the next day.
Speaker 17: They all came on their own dime. They all came
Speaker 17: here because of a sense of duty and maybe because
Speaker 17: I can be a past, but you know, they came
Speaker 17: because they have a sense of duty and that was
Speaker 17: really empowering. So what we're seeing here saga you're going
Speaker 17: to break down for everybody that listens to. You understand
Speaker 17: the mechanics of it more than most journalists I know
Speaker 17: that cover it. And you've covered politics. Now you've got
Speaker 17: politics and UFOs. So you are in a quagmar.
Speaker 16: This is the intersection. Okay, So final question, what's next?
Speaker 2: Man, you're the guy to know many people of congressmen included,
Speaker 2: they intimated they're like, hey, there's more people come in
Speaker 2: this is just the first of many. I saw it
Speaker 2: really as the start of something, not the end of something.
Speaker 2: You are also in a position to know a little
Speaker 2: bit about that.
Speaker 16: You don't have to give away details, but you know what,
Speaker 16: are we going to learn more?
Speaker 11: Don't tempt me. I'm known to have a been please day.
Speaker 18: No.
Speaker 11: No, here's what I can say for sure.
Speaker 17: What I can't say for sure is that there are
Speaker 17: numerous individuals that have been verified to have worked within
Speaker 17: programs of reverse engineering, of craft not of only unknown origin,
Speaker 17: but craft of extreme technol logical advancement, where the Material
Speaker 17: Sciences Commander Fever kept saying is something we have not
Speaker 17: achieved yet on the scope of humanity, and we will
Speaker 17: not ever get there for the next one hundred two hundred.
Speaker 17: I think he's being really generous with how little time
Speaker 17: he thinks we might get there. Those people have already
Speaker 17: been put into process to be able to feel that
Speaker 17: they can come forward.
Speaker 11: That is one thing I know is going to happen.
Speaker 11: I know there's going to be more hearings. Yep. This
Speaker 11: is like cracking the egg.
Speaker 17: That's what we did to say, we cracked the egg,
Speaker 17: and now everybody has to acknowledge that it's cracked. As
Speaker 17: long as we keep fighting for transparency for the right reason,
Speaker 17: not using national security as a way to subvert what
Speaker 17: the American public has a need to know, but respecting
Speaker 17: national security but not using it to subvert, then we're
Speaker 17: going to make progress and we're going to all learn
Speaker 17: that maybe maybe the fabric of what we understand might change.
Speaker 11: And I think that's evolution absolutely.
Speaker 2: All right, Jeremy, thank you for your time. Let's let's scramble.
Speaker 2: Let's make an online oka.
Speaker 3: The backlash against Blackrocks.
Speaker 4: All roads lead to good for Blackrocks.
Speaker 2: To your point though, about Blackrock becoming this absolute lightning.
Speaker 4: Rod Desantus for example, pulling funds from.
Speaker 9: Blackrocks, Blackrock getting its headquarters sex you.
Speaker 4: Say here for Blackrock, an alliance with Blackrock.
Speaker 9: We're talk an awful lot about Blackrock here on Breaking Points,
Speaker 9: and they're also the target of numerous conspiracy theories online.
Speaker 9: What is Blackrock?
Speaker 16: This company quite literally owns the world.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so Blackrock is an Organization's a company public listed
Speaker 10: on NASDAC.
Speaker 3: Blackrock runs pretty much the entire global economy.
Speaker 5: Well, here's the research more on who Blackrock is.
Speaker 16: If you don't know that's an organization which is funded
Speaker 16: all the same people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so they've got all these different groups that they funded.
Speaker 5: What about who's in the narrative.
Speaker 9: So today we're going to dive deep into Blackrock, their
Speaker 9: business model, their agenda, the kinds of powers they wield,
Speaker 9: and if they do in fact control the world.
Speaker 18: Just a made up story, none of it's real.
Speaker 19: Welcome this morning, United States of black Rock. Id Damn,
Speaker 19: my bed shirt felt comfy. Well, we keep it moving,
Speaker 19: So I gotta went, hopped in the shower, cleaned myself off,
Speaker 19: made myself a nice cup of coffee, and I was
Speaker 19: just about to go sit on the toilet when I
Speaker 19: got a call from my buddy. He's like, Yo, we're
Speaker 19: going on vacation. Buddy wouldn't tell me where, so I
Speaker 19: had to quick bag and hopped on my Harley. Moved
Speaker 19: down to the airport where I checked into my gate.
Speaker 19: But I had enough time to go grab another cup
Speaker 19: of coffee.
Speaker 18: You know me, I keep it lit.
Speaker 19: But then we hopped on our plane and shit, we
Speaker 19: went to Disneyland.
Speaker 9: Baby, has your interest been pinked?
Speaker 13: Well?
Speaker 9: I hit up cancel this clothing company. Who hasn't asked
Speaker 9: almost a million followers on TikTok in just a few months.
Speaker 9: By covering Blackrock to help us separate fact from fiction
Speaker 9: when it comes to this seemingly mysterious Wall Street firm.
Speaker 18: When you start from who owns this company perspective, you
Speaker 18: very quickly run into Blackrock because when you start looking
Speaker 18: at ownership sheets, Blackrock, Bank Guard on State Street, the
Speaker 18: Victory investment firms are at the top of all of them.
Speaker 9: But before we get to anything else, the first question
Speaker 9: we have to tackle is how did Blackrock get so
Speaker 9: big while the seeds of Blackrock were actually sewn within
Speaker 9: the walls of another financial powerhouse, Blackstone. In nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 9: Larry Fink, along with seven others, founded Blackrock as an
Speaker 9: internal asset management division within Blackstone. Within just a few months,
Speaker 9: their business had turned profitable, and by nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 9: the group's assets had quadrupled to two point seven billion dollars.
Speaker 9: Central to Blackrocks Meteoric Rise are two transformative innovations ETFs
Speaker 9: and aladden. Their proprietary trading algorithm ETFs, or exchange traded funds,
Speaker 9: allows investors a simple and efficient way to diversify their
Speaker 9: investments while reducing risk and costs. Aladdin is Blackrocks hensive
Speaker 9: risk management system, a digital brain so to speak, that
Speaker 9: they pioneer to keep track of portfolios and manage risk
Speaker 9: by predicting how likely it is that a specific investment
Speaker 9: will fail. Today, Blackrock is the largest of the three
Speaker 9: investment firms, managing nearly ten trillion dollars in assets, followed
Speaker 9: by Vanguard at roughly eight trillion and State Street at
Speaker 9: four trillion. Technically these assets do belong to investors the
Speaker 9: clients of Blackrock, but effectively speaking, Blackrock manages or owns
Speaker 9: all of these shares. So what happens when the shares
Speaker 9: of supposedly competing firms are owned by the same few
Speaker 9: investment firms, Well, it effectively creates what Harvard Business Review
Speaker 9: calls quote a different form of monopoly, which they say
Speaker 9: harms competition, consumers, and the economy. Just imagine two I
Speaker 9: stream carts next to each other with different owners. They
Speaker 9: would either need to lower their price or enhance their
Speaker 9: offerings to compete for your business. But if both cards
Speaker 9: had the same owners, they would not be incentivized to
Speaker 9: cut price because that would only result in a lower
Speaker 9: total profit for their investors. This kind of dynamic plays
Speaker 9: out every day in companies across all industries in the
Speaker 9: real world. Take supermarkets, for example, who are the largest
Speaker 9: shareholders of Walmart, America's largest supermarket chain, Blackrock and Vanguard.
Speaker 9: Kroger's also Blackrock and Vanguard. What about Target? You guessed it,
Speaker 9: Blackrock and Vanguard. And what's happened to food prices? We've
Speaker 9: all felt it. It's gone up, up and away. This
Speaker 9: same pattern of ownership repeats across every major industry. So
Speaker 9: what we think of as the most powerful companies in
Speaker 9: the world, companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, the executives at
Speaker 9: these firms still have to consult with companies like Blackrock, Vanguard,
Speaker 9: and State Street before they make any major decisions since
Speaker 9: they have such a large share of their ownership. So
Speaker 9: the point almost isn't the fact that they own every company.
Speaker 9: It's how such a structure of concentrated institutional ownership impact
Speaker 9: the quality of life for ordinary people.
Speaker 18: They're deeply intertwined with political power, the political.
Speaker 13: Powers that be.
Speaker 9: When we talk about power, when we talk about control,
Speaker 9: there's perhaps no better evidence than being given the ability
Speaker 9: to choose winners and losers.
Speaker 4: What in the world is happening on Wall Street two.
Speaker 9: You're no yields one from one ninety to one sixty six.
Speaker 12: In the blink of it up the Nasdaq, everything and
Speaker 12: more has been completely wiped out.
Speaker 9: It was the worst day on Wall Street since the
Speaker 9: crash of nineteen eighty seven. The two thousand and eight
Speaker 9: financial crisis proved to be a remarkable opportunity that propelled
Speaker 9: Blackrock into becoming the financial titan it is today, as
Speaker 9: the firm secured uncontested contracts to take over the assets
Speaker 9: of major collapse banking institutions like Bear Stearns and AIG.
Speaker 9: A similar thing happened again in twenty twenty, when the
Speaker 9: FED tapped Blackrock to help oversee efforts to stabilize the
Speaker 9: bond market amid the economic turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Now,
Speaker 9: they didn't get handed the keys by accident. It was
Speaker 9: all a very carefully and methodically orchestrated plan. Over time,
Speaker 9: there is a playbook, so to speak, campaign contributions, making
Speaker 9: friends with both major political parties, specifically targeting the House
Speaker 9: Financial Services Committee, the folks who could potentially cause Blackrock headaches,
Speaker 9: and of course, employing an army of professional lobbyists. Just
Speaker 9: how high up in the US government have they been
Speaker 9: able to penetrate well. Currently, there are three Blackrock veterans
Speaker 9: with appointed positions in the Biden cabinet. Brian Diese, the
Speaker 9: former global head of sustainable Investing at Blackrock, is Biden's
Speaker 9: chief Economic director. Michael Pyle, BlackRock's former global chief investment strategist,
Speaker 9: is Kamala Harris's chief economic advisor. Let me tell you
Speaker 9: those two positions do not require Senate confirmation, and they
Speaker 9: are actually the first duo of the modern era to
Speaker 9: go from the same Wall Street investment firm to jobs
Speaker 9: as top economic advisors to the President and the Vice
Speaker 9: president of the United States at the same time. Wally
Speaker 9: Atayemo the former chief of staff to Blackrock CEO Larry Fink.
Speaker 9: He is now the current Deputy Treasury Secretary. And let's
Speaker 9: not forget Larry Fink, the chairman and CEO of Blackrock,
Speaker 9: is a member on the board of Trustees of the
Speaker 9: World Economic Form.
Speaker 20: Let me tell you it's not who's the President's controlling
Speaker 20: the Wall persons.
Speaker 9: Defense. This is conjecture, but it cannot be a coincidence
Speaker 9: which firm, of all firms was capped to lead the
Speaker 9: investment to rebuild Ukraine. You guessed it, Larry Fink and Blackrock.
Speaker 9: Another data point. In twenty twenty one, Blackrock became the
Speaker 9: first global asset manager licensed to start a wholly owned
Speaker 9: onshore mutual fund business in China. So do they own governments? Swell?
Speaker 9: It's hard to say exactly what goes on behind closed doors,
Speaker 9: but I think all the evidence points to significant influence
Speaker 9: that certainly warrants further scrutiny.
Speaker 20: The people who are forcing these companies to bud light
Speaker 20: themselves already have enough money. Companies like Vanguard, Blackrock, the
Speaker 20: companies that own major Stakes and Target or Disney, So
Speaker 20: with all that shareholder cloud.
Speaker 11: They can force these companies to do whatever they want.
Speaker 11: They confess this is what they're doing. Behaviors are going.
Speaker 5: To have to change, and this is one thing we're
Speaker 5: asking companies.
Speaker 12: You have to force behaviors, and at Blackrock we are
Speaker 12: forcing behaviors.
Speaker 9: Ah yesg. Environmental social governance, the woke agenda or whatever
Speaker 9: you want to call it, the idea that return on
Speaker 9: capital shouldn't be the only consideration in an investment. This
Speaker 9: is definitely a complicated topic because The genesis of this
Speaker 9: idea isn't based on indoctrination, as some of us have
Speaker 9: been led to believe, but rather it is a marketing
Speaker 9: campaign based on deflection. It's meant to give the illusion
Speaker 9: that a pro often maximizing firm cares about more than
Speaker 9: just profit maximization. They also care about other considerations like
Speaker 9: the environment, diversity, sustainability, fair compensation, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 9: But the complication arises because there becomes this kind of
Speaker 9: unavoidable hypocrisy. Does Blackrock have this woll agenda to incentivize
Speaker 9: companies to diversify the composition and expand the pool of
Speaker 9: talent beyond just white men. Yes, they do, not because
Speaker 9: they care about equality, but because they are trying to
Speaker 9: deflect from the fact that they also buy up entire
Speaker 9: neighborhoods that will in effect eliminate the possibility for historically
Speaker 9: marginalized groups of people to claim a stake in society
Speaker 9: through home ownership. Can Blackrock really advocate for climate sustainability
Speaker 9: net zero by twenty thirty or twenty fifty if they
Speaker 9: just named Saudi Aramco CEO ADMIN NASAR to their own
Speaker 9: board of directors.
Speaker 15: The last five and ten years, you saw Lary Fai
Speaker 15: and you saw Blackrock very aggressively talk about ESG.
Speaker 13: And in particular climate.
Speaker 15: In fact, I remember doing an interview with him where
Speaker 15: he talked of a climate and carbon as being one
Speaker 15: of the central issues of his life.
Speaker 13: Of his life.
Speaker 15: He then gets tortured in the last two years by
Speaker 15: the right. It appears to some degree he is now
Speaker 15: placating that group, and I imagine may shoot himself in
Speaker 15: the foot again on the other side. And what I
Speaker 15: fear is that people are going to think that this
Speaker 15: firm has just flipped floped from one side to the
Speaker 15: other side, to you know, and just to you know,
Speaker 15: whatever the wind is blowing today is the way we're going.
Speaker 9: And that is the central conundrum for BlackRock's ESG marketing campaign.
Speaker 9: Nobody is happy. Investors aren't happy because ESG funds haven't
Speaker 9: been shown to perform very well. Conservatives flaming culture wars, Oh,
Speaker 9: they're not happy. And just to make a point, in
Speaker 9: several states, they've actually pulled their funds completely out of Blackrock.
Speaker 9: Progressives they hammer Blackrock for their hypocrisy, and there's a
Speaker 9: lot to criticize there. Larry Fink the CEO of Blackrock,
Speaker 9: recently said he is no longer using the term ESG
Speaker 9: because it is politically weaponized and he's ashamed to be
Speaker 9: part of the debate on this issue. The truth is,
Speaker 9: from my perspective, Larry Fink isn't ashamed of ESG. He's
Speaker 9: just come to the realization that his marketing campaign didn't
Speaker 9: work and that it's completely incompatible with the nature of
Speaker 9: the business that he's trying to run. And the end
Speaker 9: result is not only that everyone is pissed off, but
Speaker 9: his firm's bottom line is being materially affected.
Speaker 18: You need to assess humans in the space as individuals
Speaker 18: making their own choices. You need to assess corporations and
Speaker 18: companies as individual corporation to companies making their own choices.
Speaker 9: Evilness is by definition subjective. But here's what I'll say.
Speaker 9: Based on the incentive structures in place, Blackrock derives the
Speaker 9: majority of its revenue from investment, advisory and administrative fees
Speaker 9: charged to its clients. Their entire business model is predicated
Speaker 9: on increasing the value of the assets they manage, meaning
Speaker 9: that day by day, year over year, corporations as a
Speaker 9: whole need to grow, need to increase their value the
Speaker 9: rules of engagement to grow in a purely capitalist society.
Speaker 9: You could like this or you could not like this,
Speaker 9: But it requires companies to extract the most value they
Speaker 9: can in every transaction business to business and business to worker,
Speaker 9: and give up the least amount possible. There's little to
Speaker 9: no human consideration whatsoever. The very reason why Blackrock have
Speaker 9: been able to make a name for themselves in a
Speaker 9: matter of just three decades versus firms that are hundreds
Speaker 9: and hundreds of years old, is because of an algorithm.
Speaker 9: An algorithm that distills everything down and everyone down to
Speaker 9: ones and zeros and the present value of all future
Speaker 9: cash flows. There is, by necessity, an inherent inhumanity. Will
Speaker 9: we be financialized and commodify everything where you and I
Speaker 9: and everybody else become objects of trade? Now I think
Speaker 9: that's pretty darn evil, But again, evilness is subjective and
Speaker 9: it's up to your own personal values and interpretations. That's
Speaker 9: all from me this time. What are your thoughts about Blackrock?
Speaker 9: Sound off in the comments below. If you enjoyed this
Speaker 9: beyond the headline segment, I would encourage you to check
Speaker 9: out and subscribe to my YouTube channel fifty one forty
Speaker 9: nine with James Lee. The link will be in the
Speaker 9: description below. I'd really appreciate that, and as always, keep
Speaker 9: on tuning in to breaking points and thank you for
Speaker 9: your time today.