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.
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 1: So Mary and Williamson presidential contender, had an interesting exchange
Speaker 1: over on Fox News Now. The context here is that
Speaker 1: most of the mainstream process completely shut her out. Now
Speaker 1: Fox has our own self interested reasons if they want to,
Speaker 1: like so descent and all whatever. But Brian Kilmeade over there,
Speaker 1: it gave her a very fair hearing.
Speaker 4: Take a listen to what she had to say to
Speaker 4: protect Joe Biden.
Speaker 5: The DNC has announced there'll be no primary debate.
Speaker 6: So he does not have to flesh this out.
Speaker 5: That shuts out candidates like marian Williamson. She's running for
Speaker 5: the Democratic Party's presidential nomination again. She joined us now
Speaker 5: with her reaction, Marianna, are you surprised on that DNC decision?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 8: I'm not surprised. They've been indicating for a while that
Speaker 8: there were probably going to be no debates.
Speaker 6: Disappointed.
Speaker 8: Disappointed certainly because I believe in democracy. I believe that
Speaker 8: the political parties should stay out of the issue until
Speaker 8: the primary voters have weighed in, and then whoever wins
Speaker 8: the primaries that to the DNC or where there arenc
Speaker 8: for that matter, should support. So yeah, I don't think
Speaker 8: the DNC should be dictating from on high that they
Speaker 8: will try to invisibilize any other candidates.
Speaker 5: The DNC didn't want to hear from you, but we do.
Speaker 5: Mary and Williamson, thanks so much, best of lucking your
Speaker 5: appearance tomorrow. Thank you, you got it.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you watch that whole exchange, she
Speaker 1: doesn't pull any punches about you know, Medicare for all
Speaker 1: and like her view very like solidly progressive, left of
Speaker 1: center view for her campaign, and you know they let
Speaker 1: her voice it on their era. I think it's very
Speaker 1: telling that the other networks are apparently afraid of having
Speaker 1: her on because they don't want to run crosswise with
Speaker 1: their buddies in the Biden administration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 2: I mean, and look, we also know, why is Fox
Speaker 2: doing it because they like jabbing wid and you know,
Speaker 2: I look, that's fine because they have a big audience
Speaker 2: and even though much smaller now on Brian Field Show.
Speaker 2: That said, the points stand and they're actually very important,
Speaker 2: you know, to make sure that we have these debates.
Speaker 2: And the more I think about it, I think it's
Speaker 2: really sad. I always come back to if the current
Speaker 2: primary schedule that Biden has in place was there in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, Barack Obama would not be president.
Speaker 3: It would have been Hillary and then who the hell
Speaker 3: knows Romney.
Speaker 4: With that representation and whatever they leave that.
Speaker 2: Part out, Obama would never have been elected. If South
Speaker 2: Carolina was first. A lot of people forget that. You know,
Speaker 2: the voters in South Carolina didn't take up seriously untill
Speaker 2: he won the Iowa caucuses. So it took the small
Speaker 2: state of Ioa. Now, I think Iowa was a problem
Speaker 2: for many reasons, ethanol and all that.
Speaker 1: The last time around, they took themselves no favors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, administratively, demographically, economically, Iowa was a problem.
Speaker 3: But the theory behind it of giving the small people
Speaker 3: that you ants, yeah, I think that was good.
Speaker 9: It was good.
Speaker 2: It was a good thing, I think for the country,
Speaker 2: and he's rigging it up up and down. And it's
Speaker 2: not just about Biden because as you know, Crystal, what
Speaker 2: about next time?
Speaker 3: What are we gonna have the coronation of Kamala Harris?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Probably, yeah, most likely, right, but somebody deserves a chance,
Speaker 2: or what that the coronation of Pete Budajedge.
Speaker 3: We don't live in a kingdom like we don't.
Speaker 2: This is we don't want to live in that system,
Speaker 2: and yet we're moving towards that.
Speaker 3: Away from the primary.
Speaker 1: Not to mention how much have we heard from the
Speaker 1: Democrats about democracy, how important it is to them, how
Speaker 1: they're going to be protectors of democracy.
Speaker 4: Joe Biden launched his campaign daring.
Speaker 1: To talk about how he will be the protector of democracy.
Speaker 4: Then what is this?
Speaker 7: Then?
Speaker 1: Why are you actually afraid of the democratic process and
Speaker 1: why are you doing everything you can to short circuit it.
Speaker 1: You're talking about the re ordering of the states. Everyone
Speaker 1: can see through this idea. We're doing this because we
Speaker 1: want more diverse representation.
Speaker 4: That's nonsense.
Speaker 1: Obviously they're doing it as a political power play. Members
Speaker 1: of the DNC admitted outright as much But the other
Speaker 1: thing people are forgetting is New Hampshire didn't just lay
Speaker 1: down and say, okay, fine, we're going to lose our position.
Speaker 4: Yes, they're still planning on moving.
Speaker 1: Forward, and they are furious at Joe Biden over this.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about like you know, random left
Speaker 1: wing operative. I'm talking about the longtime chair of the party.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about local state officials who have significant, significant power.
Speaker 1: They are deeply interested in hearing from other candidates, and
Speaker 1: they want to have them to the state. They are
Speaker 1: not seating their ground and so that also is a
Speaker 1: problem for Joe Biden not to mention this narrative from
Speaker 1: the media that there are no quote unquote serious candidates,
Speaker 1: which I don't know who you know, appointed them to decide.
Speaker 1: I thought it was up to the American people to
Speaker 1: decide who they took seriously or not.
Speaker 4: This is not really panning out for them.
Speaker 1: They're not being successful at completely squashing support for Biden's
Speaker 1: primary contenders in the way that I know that I
Speaker 1: hope to. Fox News also did a poll of the
Speaker 1: actual primary field, put this up on the screen, reported
Speaker 1: on this earlier. And you know, given the fact that
Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy Junior and Mary and Williamson have been completely
Speaker 1: invisibilized and smeared and dismissed by the media. You still
Speaker 1: have Bobby Kennedy at nineteen percent, Mary and Williamson at
Speaker 1: nine percent, Joe Biden only at sixty two percent.
Speaker 4: This poll is.
Speaker 1: Not orders of magnitude different from the Donald Trump, Ron
Speaker 1: DeSantis poles. So the more you have results like this,
Speaker 1: and I would not be surprised to see these numbers
Speaker 1: for the challengers grow give you a majority of Democrats
Speaker 1: who want another option than Biden, the more difficult it's
Speaker 1: going to become for the media to continue to say
Speaker 1: they're not serious. He has no real contenders, no real opponents,
Speaker 1: and it will become more and more difficult for them
Speaker 1: to justify not having a single primary debate.
Speaker 4: So Fox is.
Speaker 1: Self interested here, but also the mainstream press and the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party should be ashamed of themselves.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, so yeah, look, maybe we should have Marion
Speaker 2: again soon. Let's have our fk On and the Mariona. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we will make sure that we at.
Speaker 4: Least definitely give them a platform here. It would be
Speaker 4: fun too to have I was thinking about that.
Speaker 2: We'll see if you guys want it, Maybe we can
Speaker 2: try and make it happen. All right, we'll see guys later.
Speaker 2: Extraordinary bit of news out of Afghanistan. Let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and put this up there on the screen. The mastermind
Speaker 2: of the Kabble Airport bombing, which killed thirteen US service
Speaker 2: members was just.
Speaker 3: Killed by the Taliban.
Speaker 2: An extraordinary development, the post says, spotlighting the Biden administration's
Speaker 2: newfound reliance on a former battlefield adversary to help confront
Speaker 2: terrorist threats. Now, I wanted to cover this for a
Speaker 2: couple of reasons. I was told, in no uncertain terms
Speaker 2: that when Biden pulled out of Afghanistan, Afghanistan was going
Speaker 2: to become a terrorist hell hole, and that the Taliban
Speaker 2: weren't going to kill anybody for us, and that we
Speaker 2: would all be less safe and in oh and also
Speaker 2: there would be like a mass.
Speaker 3: Slaughter of American citizens.
Speaker 2: Actually, not a single American citizen has been killed by
Speaker 2: I am not supporting the Taliban.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying they're good people.
Speaker 2: I'm saying that I was told very few, very specific
Speaker 2: things that American citizens would be in danger and would
Speaker 2: be killed.
Speaker 3: Nope, that hasn't happened.
Speaker 2: By all accounts, every single American citizen at this point
Speaker 2: that wanted to leave the country has left the country,
Speaker 2: and the Taliban has basically let them do so too.
Speaker 2: On the terrorists front, we wouldn't be able to kill
Speaker 2: terrorists in Afghanistan because we didn't have it on the
Speaker 2: ground presence, except we actually killed the leader of al
Speaker 2: Qaeda I'm on al Zawahari with a drone. And now
Speaker 2: the person who was responsible for killing our service members,
Speaker 2: we didn't even kill them.
Speaker 3: The Taliban killed them for us.
Speaker 2: It's almost like it was a multifaceted full of situation
Speaker 2: and the people who were criticizing the withdrawal saying it
Speaker 2: was quote making us less safe, were full of shit.
Speaker 4: And they never follow up on that though.
Speaker 2: Do Yeah, they never do follow up there. How many
Speaker 2: people died in Afghanistan? How many Americans were killed? And
Speaker 2: I was literally how many times did you hear that
Speaker 2: abandoning Americas in Afghanistan? How many of them were killed?
Speaker 3: Name one, show me one person who was killed. Asn't happened.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying what happening there is a good thing.
Speaker 2: I think it's sad, but do I think that it's
Speaker 2: worth the lives of American service members so that Afghan
Speaker 2: girls can go to school.
Speaker 3: No, sorry, I don't care.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think it's sad, But do I
Speaker 2: think that it's worth like money, material? And I think
Speaker 2: this is the best thing that Joe Biden ever did
Speaker 2: in his presidency. Everybody's like, oh, you should have left
Speaker 2: Bogram open. Okay, all right, you know, listen, that's like
Speaker 2: criticizing the tactical stuff when the strategic is what matters.
Speaker 2: He did it, He's the one who did it. And also,
Speaker 2: if you support Ukraine so much, so many of these stands,
Speaker 2: try and support Ukraine.
Speaker 3: If we still had this goddamn Afghan war going on.
Speaker 2: There's a pretty good evidence actually that given the amount
Speaker 2: of material we were pumping in Afghanistan or the military
Speaker 2: resources and all that, that half of the amount of
Speaker 2: Ukraine aid would have been actually needed by the military.
Speaker 2: So even if you consider it on that face, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: We live in a realistic world and this is only
Speaker 2: a vindication of the withdrawal.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to remember too that in that
Speaker 1: horrifying terrorist attack that killed thirteen American service members, it
Speaker 1: also killed an estimated one hundred and seventy Afghans, so
Speaker 1: they certainly had a stake in taking out this leader
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 4: And the big you know, we heard a lot of.
Speaker 1: Arguments for why the US should never leave Afghanistan, but
Speaker 1: the most core, sort of like compelling one, I suppose,
Speaker 1: was the idea that it's going to once again be
Speaker 1: a safe haven for terrorists as it was before nine
Speaker 1: to eleven, harboring Asama bin Lad and they're going to
Speaker 1: go back to that. And to me, what this shows
Speaker 1: is that does not appear to have come to fruition,
Speaker 1: and in fact, you know, they are also not happy
Speaker 1: about isis K at least terrorist organization operating on their soil.
Speaker 1: So just shows you the landscape is a bit different
Speaker 1: than the way it was painted by the detractors in
Speaker 1: the wake of that messy withdrawal.
Speaker 2: That's why the whole rhetoric around this is so stupid.
Speaker 3: The Taliban and isis hate each other.
Speaker 2: They've been killing each other for since twenty sixteen when
Speaker 2: i's K even emerged, and I think it was in
Speaker 2: Nangahar Province, which is near Pakistan. The point is it's
Speaker 2: a complicated place and to try and put us politics
Speaker 2: onto it was the death of American soldiers of Afghan civilians.
Speaker 2: From the beginning, it was a nightmare and it was
Speaker 2: a mess. We should have gotten out decades ago. Every
Speaker 2: president kicked the ball, you know, kicked it down the road.
Speaker 3: You know, it's weird. I walk my dog past Stanley.
Speaker 2: Macrystal all the time, and it's the weirdest thing because
Speaker 2: I sometimes I'll look at him and all I really
Speaker 2: want to say is a what happened to Michael Hastings.
Speaker 3: That's number one.
Speaker 2: Number two is I just look at this guy who's
Speaker 2: sitting pretty by.
Speaker 3: He was making millions of dollars or some sort of consultant.
Speaker 2: He's got this big office building nearby, and I'm just like, man,
Speaker 2: look at this guy. He's like, he's sitting pretty, he's
Speaker 2: getting into his nice car, he's got a chauffeur and
Speaker 2: all this stuff, and like the wreckage of what he
Speaker 2: left behind.
Speaker 3: Nothing.
Speaker 2: He made big promises and he was a failure. And
Speaker 2: all these guy they get richer when they leave. That's
Speaker 2: what drives me nuts.
Speaker 1: And then they get called on in instances like this
Speaker 1: by the media, Yes, to come on and advocate for
Speaker 1: war forever. I think it was so illustrative to watch
Speaker 1: the bipartisan cross any sort of partisan media outlet, how
Speaker 1: they all fed the exact same narrative. And it's always
Speaker 1: like this. The push from the media is always in
Speaker 1: the hawkage direction. It is almost never in a ending
Speaker 1: Wars pro piece direction. And that was never more obvious
Speaker 1: than with regard to Afghanistan. I just want to say,
Speaker 1: since our withdrawal, I think some of our actions have
Speaker 1: been unconscionable in denying them funds. Afghanistan is going through
Speaker 1: horrible famine. It's been very tough times for their people.
Speaker 1: We have been complicit in that. But suddenly again all
Speaker 1: of their feigned concern in the moment for the people
Speaker 1: out of Afghanistan, the women, the girls, et cetera, suddenly gone.
Speaker 4: We never hear about it anymore.
Speaker 7: Very very true.
Speaker 3: All right, we'll see you guys later.
Speaker 1: Just before actually the firing of Don Lemon, CNN announced
Speaker 1: another significant move. They are bringing Charles Barkley and Gail
Speaker 1: King in a show together that they're calling King Charles
Speaker 1: into primetime once a week.
Speaker 4: Say listen to know what they had to say about that.
Speaker 10: All right, it's official, King Charles. A different kind of Woryalty,
Speaker 10: a brand new show hosted by award winning journalist Gail
Speaker 10: King and NBA superstar Charles Barkley. It will be debuting
Speaker 10: on Wednesday nights on CNN this fall. They made announcement
Speaker 10: just moments ago on TNT's NBA tip Off Take a Look.
Speaker 11: I wanted to be non political, just too people. We'll
Speaker 11: talk about political will, yeah, but we don't want to
Speaker 11: say we're a liberal conservative, Republican Democrat. That's one of
Speaker 11: the things that is already ruin television in general. And
Speaker 11: I know she's going to be a straight shooter. You
Speaker 11: know I'm gonna be a street shooter. And when we
Speaker 11: got together for lunch, we just started talking about random
Speaker 11: things and it was really curious that we had different opinions,
Speaker 11: which is fine, like we want I always correct, but
Speaker 11: we were like, all I want is people, even if
Speaker 11: I disagree with them, I want them to be honest
Speaker 11: with me. I don't want them saying things to get clickbait.
Speaker 11: That's what driving me crazy about our people in our
Speaker 11: profession right now, we're not trying to get people to
Speaker 11: click on.
Speaker 4: I know she's gonna be fair, not gonna lie. I
Speaker 4: actually will watch the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if I'll watch it, I'll watch
Speaker 2: the highlight clips or whatever. I mean, Look, I actually
Speaker 2: do think it is I don't. I'm not a huge
Speaker 2: fan of Gail King. She basically drifted off of Oprah
Speaker 2: and her relationship with Obama to get her position, So
Speaker 2: let's put that aside. She has some genuine talent. She
Speaker 2: had a good job in what was it the R.
Speaker 2: Kelly interview.
Speaker 3: Oh she did. I was like a little job and
Speaker 3: that that was That's what a meme.
Speaker 4: No, I think she's my life.
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of like as a broadcaster, I
Speaker 1: think she's a talented broadcaster. But the real action is
Speaker 1: Charles Barkley, who is no question she's funny, and I
Speaker 1: mean there's all kinds of things. Of course I'm going
Speaker 1: to disagree with him on but I am actually I'm
Speaker 1: shocked that he's willing to do it. They must have
Speaker 1: offered him a huge amount of money number one, number
Speaker 1: two in the wake of the train wreck catastrophe disaster
Speaker 1: that was their morning show attempt.
Speaker 4: This is actually a reasonably good idea, Like I.
Speaker 1: Could see people watching this, I could see it creating
Speaker 1: moments that people want to share I could see Charles
Speaker 1: Barkley in particular, saying things that like make the CNN
Speaker 1: audience a little uncomfortable, or that are a little edgy
Speaker 1: or a little bit off from what the cable news
Speaker 1: audience normally expects.
Speaker 4: So I am interested to see how this goes.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, I mean listen to Charles, as I said,
Speaker 2: as a compelling talent. He's a guy who is funny,
Speaker 2: he's got He's had some moments before I think we
Speaker 2: even posted one.
Speaker 4: I heard something.
Speaker 3: What was it? It was like Charles is.
Speaker 2: Like, you know, Republicans and Democrats, like we should all
Speaker 2: be able to come together.
Speaker 4: And but he was like at actually both sides.
Speaker 2: He was trashing, like both sides, and he's like everybody
Speaker 2: wants to rip us apart. I don't know if CNN
Speaker 2: is a place where I go to heal the nation's wounds,
Speaker 2: but I'm interested. Will this save CNN, especially if the
Speaker 2: Lemon thing? Look no, I mean even in primetime we're
Speaker 2: talking about a weekly program.
Speaker 3: They need averages.
Speaker 2: It will give them some well needed press, and it
Speaker 2: could give them a genuine hit. But I'm just you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know if hits exist in the cable business anymore.
Speaker 2: Because let's say you take CNN Primetime from four hundred
Speaker 2: K to a million, that's still seventy eighty ninety percent
Speaker 2: boomers who.
Speaker 3: Are watching it. Is that really a hit?
Speaker 2: You know, it's more it's bet it's like less dying
Speaker 2: than before. You know, you've got a better heartbeat, but
Speaker 2: you're still like on the verge of complete collapse.
Speaker 7: I just don't know.
Speaker 1: They're also I mean, Charles Barkley, I'm sure was a
Speaker 1: huge amount of money. Gil King also was not coming
Speaker 1: here cheaply, So your talent expenses are very large for
Speaker 1: a one night a week's show, and I'm sure the
Speaker 1: business thinking is okay. But we bring people into this
Speaker 1: show and then they'll stick around and they'll see what
Speaker 1: else we have to offer. That's the piece that I
Speaker 1: don't think is going to pan out, and so then
Speaker 1: it just becomes a really expensive show that I do
Speaker 1: think we'll probably rate better than whatever else they're doing
Speaker 1: in primetime at that hour right now, but will justify
Speaker 1: the expense, will lead to some rebirth of the network unlikely?
Speaker 3: All right, we'll see you guys later.
Speaker 2: We're doing a lot of homages to Don Lemon here
Speaker 2: as you can see you've got my hoodie on. And
Speaker 2: what we decided to do as a team is look
Speaker 2: back throughout history some of Don's best or some might
Speaker 2: say worst moments on the CNN network. He shall be
Speaker 2: sorely missed, at very least from a content perspective.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, well, now it's that content.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we certainly will. Don will will miss you.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure anybody else you ever worked with Will
Speaker 2: here were your best.
Speaker 11: That's how we started.
Speaker 7: That's how we started.
Speaker 9: But it's gone down.
Speaker 12: This All will talk about age makes me uncomfortable. I
Speaker 12: think that. I think it's the wrong road to go down.
Speaker 12: She says, people, you know, politicians or something and not
Speaker 12: in their prime. Nikki Haley isn't in her prime.
Speaker 7: Sorry.
Speaker 12: When a woman is considered being a prime in her
Speaker 12: twenties and thirties and maybe forties, that's not according to me,
Speaker 12: for what it depends.
Speaker 7: And it's just like prime. If you look it up,
Speaker 7: it'll see you.
Speaker 12: If you google when is a woman in a prime,
Speaker 12: it'll say twenties, thirties and forties.
Speaker 7: I don't necessary.
Speaker 12: So I got another I agree with that. So I
Speaker 12: think she has to be careful about saying that you
Speaker 12: know politicians aren't in their prime.
Speaker 4: We need to qualify it a you're talking about prime
Speaker 4: for like child or are you talking.
Speaker 3: About that's a drug?
Speaker 12: Jersey facts are Google at everybody at home. When is
Speaker 12: a woman in a prime? It says twenties, thirties and forties.
Speaker 12: And I'm just saying, Nikki Haley should be careful about
Speaker 12: saying that politicians are not in their prime and they
Speaker 12: need to be in their prime when they serve, because
Speaker 12: she wouldn't be in a prime according to Google, Google
Speaker 12: or whatever it is.
Speaker 4: Just google it, Emily in facts.
Speaker 6: I google it.
Speaker 4: I can't find me that.
Speaker 3: I don't know what goes on in Don Lemon's.
Speaker 1: Br it'sn't like consuming too much Andrew Tate content.
Speaker 2: But what he reveals is that at the trial is
Speaker 2: that CNN's Don Lemon warned him via text in twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen that the cops did not believe his account of
Speaker 2: the attack.
Speaker 12: I mean to bring that to the King's legacy and
Speaker 12: to dict is to dictate the making of art in
Speaker 12: the celebration of them, is really strange for me. I
Speaker 12: think it's I mean, obviously, you see what you want
Speaker 12: is said in the art and I think sometimes the
Speaker 12: most compelling art is.
Speaker 6: A controversial art.
Speaker 12: In large part of tongue in cheek interview, you know,
Speaker 12: because it's still rogan and there's lots you're jockeying.
Speaker 7: Back and forth.
Speaker 12: But he did say something about ivermectin that I think
Speaker 12: wasn't actually correct about CNN and lying. Okay, Ivermectin is
Speaker 12: a drug that is commonly used as a horse dewormer.
Speaker 12: So it is not a lie to say that the
Speaker 12: drug is used as a horse de wormer. I think
Speaker 12: that's important, and it is not approved for COVID.
Speaker 13: But when you're saying something and then the person you're
Speaker 13: saying it about has literally ten times the audience, you do,
Speaker 13: you dumb motherfucker.
Speaker 6: Do you know what you did? You just proved my
Speaker 6: point continuing that conversation.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you the conversation. Thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Papa.
Speaker 4: We'll talk about China, Yes, talk about chime you come back.
Speaker 14: Oh, thank you much to say on declaring independence from China.
Speaker 3: So you've been now, Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Very excited as always to talk to you. A great
Speaker 1: friend of the show. A Rebosa from Pong of the
Speaker 1: Funky Academic great to see my friend.
Speaker 9: Thanks for having me on. This should be a hoot.
Speaker 4: Yes, as always.
Speaker 1: So, you've been thinking a lot about constitutional amendments and
Speaker 1: what some good ones would be, and why it's important
Speaker 1: to hold out the idea of amending the Constitution even
Speaker 1: though that hasn't happened quite some time.
Speaker 4: So tell us what you're thinking about.
Speaker 15: Well, you know, I get a little bit tired of
Speaker 15: watching Americans kind of pray to the Supreme Court that
Speaker 15: it rules in our favor and pretending that it's self governance.
Speaker 9: That's not self governance.
Speaker 15: That's hoping that you know, some unelected people in robes
Speaker 15: kind of like respond to your petition. So we need
Speaker 15: to actually solve our problems in a way that's adequate
Speaker 15: to the concept of the nation.
Speaker 9: Right, So let's talk about why.
Speaker 15: We don't do constitutional amendments and what constitutions are. So,
Speaker 15: constitutions are just the way the governing authority declares the
Speaker 15: rules of the game. If the governing authority wants the
Speaker 15: people to play the game, then the people need to
Speaker 15: know the rules, and that way everyone can be accountable
Speaker 15: for the rights and responsibilities of playing the governing authorities games.
Speaker 15: But just because there's a constitution, doesn't mean that the
Speaker 15: people make the rules right. So the NBA has a constitution,
Speaker 15: but that doesn't mean that the players get to decide
Speaker 15: where the three point line begins and ends.
Speaker 9: And the people of Kutar.
Speaker 15: Kutar has a constitution, but that doesn't mean that the
Speaker 15: people of Kutar get to decide are the governing authority, No,
Speaker 15: it's just the way that the governing authority actually makes
Speaker 15: its will manifest, makes the rules manifest to the people
Speaker 15: that then play right. And there's freedom in playing by
Speaker 15: somebody else's rules. You don't have to govern in order
Speaker 15: to enjoy freedom. For example, it's it's arguable that there's
Speaker 15: a quality of a freedom.
Speaker 9: There's the quality of Islam. You can only.
Speaker 15: Practice and cut here, and you can't practice in the
Speaker 15: United States because there's so many special interests that might
Speaker 15: like distort our rules right. And there are a lot
Speaker 15: of NBA players who don't want to decide where the
Speaker 15: three point line begins and how many fouls, And there
Speaker 15: are a lot of people in the United States who
Speaker 15: don't want to govern. They want someone else to govern
Speaker 15: and then just let us play and know that our
Speaker 15: rights are secured. With someone else deciding what those rights
Speaker 15: are right, But if you're actually serious about self governing,
Speaker 15: which the United States is supposed to be, we're good
Speaker 15: at like for the people, we're good at of the people.
Speaker 9: We're not so good at by the people.
Speaker 15: But if we're serious about self governing, then we have
Speaker 15: to be serious about actually making the rules for self government.
Speaker 15: So I wanted to just kind of kind of float
Speaker 15: a few constitutional amendments that would actually I think make
Speaker 15: self government more real in the United States. That would
Speaker 15: be better for our democracy and better for our nation.
Speaker 1: And I romy to you mind. I know you probably
Speaker 1: have an order in mind, but I'd love to for
Speaker 1: you to speak to one we've discussed privately before, which
Speaker 1: is the idea of requiring political candidates to subject themselves
Speaker 1: to political debates. And the reason I asked you to
Speaker 1: start with that one is because it's highly relevant given
Speaker 1: that the DNC has just announced like, no, we're not
Speaker 1: going to have primary debates. We're just gonna annoy and
Speaker 1: by and we're going to rig the states to make
Speaker 1: sure they're the best in his favor. We're not even
Speaker 1: going to allow Democratic voters who really would like other
Speaker 1: alternatives to even know there are other alternatives, or certainly
Speaker 1: to get to evaluate them versus the current guy, who
Speaker 1: a lot of people have a lot of concerns about.
Speaker 1: So this one seems very particularly relevant to be right now.
Speaker 15: Right, So, there's this idea that the DNC is just
Speaker 15: this fully private entity that can do whatever it wants internally,
Speaker 15: and it doesn't the public interest, doesn't have an there's
Speaker 15: no public interest in the DNC, and that is an
Speaker 15: illusion because these political parties have a privileged access to
Speaker 15: our political system, which means even Republicans have an interest
Speaker 15: that the DNC is run somewhat democratically and realizes the
Speaker 15: value of the nation. So we have to get rid
Speaker 15: of the illusion that these major political parties are merely
Speaker 15: private entities and don't have a privileged access to our
Speaker 15: political institutions. That doesn't mean we actually determine the content
Speaker 15: of the candidacies of the political parties, but it means
Speaker 15: that we have as a people, have an interest in
Speaker 15: their procedures.
Speaker 9: Right, So you just have a.
Speaker 15: Constitutional amendment that acknowledges that political parties, that there's a
Speaker 15: public interest in the democratic workings of political parties, and
Speaker 15: that political parties need to mandate who have the elected
Speaker 15: office at least three primary debates at least and then
Speaker 15: you just kind of let the parties at the time
Speaker 15: to decide like when those are you could you could
Speaker 15: throw it to administrative a body like the Commission on
Speaker 15: Presidential Debates. It doesn't have to be detailed, but it
Speaker 15: does have to be the expectation and the commandment almost
Speaker 15: that political parties have three primary debates before that candidate
Speaker 15: is on a general ballot.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the other example where this is really relevant
Speaker 1: right now is with Diane Feinstein, who you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of Californians had a lot of concerns about last
Speaker 1: time she stood for re election. Part of how she
Speaker 1: was able to secure her reelection was number one, Barack
Speaker 1: Obama and Nancy Pelosi and other top national Democratic figures
Speaker 1: came in and endorsed her, and number two, she basically
Speaker 1: hit herself and didn't allow voters to evaluate whether she
Speaker 1: was up to the task and whether this was really
Speaker 1: the person they wanted.
Speaker 4: In that job.
Speaker 1: That's a real subversion of democracy. You can't claim that,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, voters will have they had a democratic
Speaker 1: choice to choose someone else, when they didn't even have
Speaker 1: an opportunity to really evaluate those choices.
Speaker 15: No, it's a power play that ends up privileging the
Speaker 15: party elites over you know, everyday citizens, which the government
Speaker 15: should be for.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 15: So if that's too much, if people find that federally
Speaker 15: elected officers shouldn't have to submit themselves to a debate,
Speaker 15: then I then we just have a like, we just
Speaker 15: have to hash that out as a public because I
Speaker 15: think we have different understandings of the responsibilities of democracy.
Speaker 15: I think I don't think that's too much to ask.
Speaker 15: I am disgusted that someone like Nancy Pelosi can get
Speaker 15: through decades of leadership and deny debates.
Speaker 9: Jim Cliburn is another one.
Speaker 15: He just says he doesn't want to have debates and
Speaker 15: so there aren't debates, and that I don't think that's appropriate.
Speaker 15: I don't think that's fair as a citizen and the media,
Speaker 15: and I mean as a media person. How do you
Speaker 15: feel about Clyburn just saying like, I don't feel like
Speaker 15: debating my challengers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean, listen, it's it's very possible that
Speaker 1: if he did have debates, people would look at the
Speaker 1: you know, analyzing for whatever reasons that they perceive their
Speaker 1: self interest to be they may stick with Jim Clyburn,
Speaker 1: but they at least deserve the opportunity to evaluate the
Speaker 1: options in some.
Speaker 4: Sort of a reasonable fashion.
Speaker 1: I know another one you were interested in, and this
Speaker 1: was one I've taken an interest in.
Speaker 4: Lately as well.
Speaker 1: Is you You posit there should be an amendment that
Speaker 1: distinguishes the personhood of a citizen versus the personhood of
Speaker 1: a corporation.
Speaker 4: Speak to us about that.
Speaker 15: Yeah, there are both citizens and corporations are persons in
Speaker 15: so far as they have willful actions. But there's going
Speaker 15: to be a difference between a citizen who actually governs
Speaker 15: with an idea of the whole and what kind of
Speaker 15: rules should be installed for the good of the whole,
Speaker 15: and a corporation, which is by its nature like just
Speaker 15: designed for its public interests, its personal particular interest.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 15: So, even when I act as a citizen, when I
Speaker 15: pull the lever as a citizen, when I talk as
Speaker 15: a citizen, I'm not just thinking about my particular interests.
Speaker 15: I'm thinking about the rules of the game for even
Speaker 15: people who don't agree with me.
Speaker 9: When a corporation acts, it.
Speaker 15: Is mandated to only concern itself with its shareholder profits,
Speaker 15: so when it markets, it's not doing the same as
Speaker 15: when I speak, and we just need to clarify those
Speaker 15: two roles.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and this has been a sort of contested issue
Speaker 1: throughout our history, and what corporations used to be and
Speaker 1: the way that we were treated by the law and
Speaker 1: the way that we're understood and that their personhood was
Speaker 1: understood stood has changed over time. So I think it
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense to sort of clarify what
Speaker 1: those rights and responsibilities are. You have a couple here
Speaker 1: that you suggest that speak to economic rights. One is
Speaker 1: a federal job guarantee and another one is guaranteed union membership.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts on those and are do you
Speaker 1: see those as qualitatively different from any other provisions in
Speaker 1: the Constitution. I can't think of ones that really guarantee
Speaker 1: any sort of like you know, specific explicit positive economic rights.
Speaker 15: We have a pre industrial constitution. We have to understand
Speaker 15: that the Constitution was first ratified in seventeen eighty nine.
Speaker 15: That's the contingent didn't even come to the early eighteen hundredths.
Speaker 15: I think Eli Whitney was born like in the seventeen eighties, right,
Speaker 15: So we have a pre industrial constitution, which means that
Speaker 15: the presumption was that all actual members of the like
Speaker 15: meaningful body politic were either going to be landed gentry
Speaker 15: or independent, independently wealthy, or independent professionals. Right, we didn't
Speaker 15: have a constitution made for employees or nation of employees.
Speaker 15: And the idea that we are a nation of employees
Speaker 15: is true since ninety five percent of the working populace
Speaker 15: works for somebody else but is not really reflected in
Speaker 15: our congress. That's why our Congress is made up of
Speaker 15: landed gentry and independent professionals and it's not really represented
Speaker 15: in our democratic norms and guardrails. So and John Adams
Speaker 15: actually talks about this because he says, like, look, people
Speaker 15: who work for somebody else. And this isn't a letter
Speaker 15: between John Adams and James Sullivan. He's like, people who
Speaker 15: work for somebody else, they're not really politically independent. They're
Speaker 15: just tools of their employer. So just give their employer
Speaker 15: the vote and we don't really have to worry about
Speaker 15: the employees, which, in a way, while Ghosh isn't wrong, right, So,
Speaker 15: if you were working for Rising and you had to
Speaker 15: represent the brand every time you opened your yap, that
Speaker 15: would actually change the quality of your political speech. And
Speaker 15: so we need to organize and kind of subordinate our
Speaker 15: economic system to the needs of political democracy, which means
Speaker 15: that in a way that like, you know, a command
Speaker 15: of control economy doesn't. Because yeah, so we need to
Speaker 15: make sure that even while we expect and demand that
Speaker 15: our people work or earn their daily bread in some
Speaker 15: way that they are also they do so in a
Speaker 15: way that's consistent with political participation. Right, So I think
Speaker 15: we need to be honest at their economic conditions to
Speaker 15: political independence. And if political speech and even running for
Speaker 15: office jeopardizes your livelihood and jeopardizes the way that you
Speaker 15: could actually secure bread for yourself and your family, then
Speaker 15: we need to reorganize a political and economic system so
Speaker 15: that people can both participate in the economy and.
Speaker 9: Participate in public office. And I know you ran for
Speaker 9: public office.
Speaker 15: And had to kind of negotiate a lot of this,
Speaker 15: But one of the ways we do that is by
Speaker 15: saying that no matter what you say in your political speech,
Speaker 15: you have a job at the end of it. And
Speaker 15: if we're serious about that, that means the federal government
Speaker 15: needs to be the employer of last resort and needs
Speaker 15: to guarantee people a job.
Speaker 1: It makes sense to me because it highlights the fact
Speaker 1: that you do not truly have freedom, whether it's political
Speaker 1: freedom or other freedoms, unless you have those basic economics secured. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's a positive notion of freedom. And you know,
Speaker 1: and you also don't really have democracy if you don't
Speaker 1: have democracy in the workplace, which is what a union
Speaker 1: ultimately is all about. The next two I think also
Speaker 1: fit together because they're both about having the ability to
Speaker 1: navigate the systems that we all are forced to navigate.
Speaker 1: That would be the legal system, since we, as you
Speaker 1: put it, our nation of laws, and the tax system,
Speaker 1: since we are so our nation of taxes, you posit,
Speaker 1: we should have legal care for all in civil and
Speaker 1: criminal matters and tax preparation for all.
Speaker 4: What brought you to those two?
Speaker 15: Yeah, the amount of money you have any bank accounts
Speaker 15: shouldn't decide shouldn't determine the quality of your legal reps
Speaker 15: or your legal personhood. Right, So the idea that you
Speaker 15: can buy a quality of lawyer that will get you
Speaker 15: better representation than your competition is like on American it
Speaker 15: should be acknowledged just so, right, So we need to
Speaker 15: start talking about so Peter Thel, and I believe I
Speaker 15: gave you an element concerning this Peter Thel. In an
Speaker 15: interview with a you know, a friend of the show,
Speaker 15: z Jilani admitted that you know single digit millionaires, and
Speaker 15: if you don't know Peter theele is a billionaire. Single
Speaker 15: digit millionaires just don't have real access to the legal system.
Speaker 15: These poor single digit millionaires, they're just chump pretty much
Speaker 15: for the billionaire. And this guy's a billionaire, he's got
Speaker 15: no reason to lie, right. So if a billionaire is
Speaker 15: telling you that single digit millionaires are not really in
Speaker 15: the legal game, are not really governed by laws in
Speaker 15: the same way that he is, then we need to
Speaker 15: actually take that seriously and think of it as a
Speaker 15: problem for democracy. And some people will say that, like, well,
Speaker 15: you know, there's like legal aid and all these charities
Speaker 15: and pro bono work, but that's.
Speaker 9: Like believing in magic to secure your rights.
Speaker 15: I don't want my rights to be secured by charity
Speaker 15: or like some.
Speaker 9: Laurier's extra time.
Speaker 15: I want to make like legal care in general less
Speaker 15: sexy and give everyone access to the legal care in
Speaker 15: civil and criminal matters that they deserve at at a
Speaker 15: rate that's comparative to the problems that they have. Right,
Speaker 15: So it's not like you have cancer and you go
Speaker 15: into like an emergency room. If you need a legal team,
Speaker 15: you get a legal team. And that's why if you
Speaker 15: have cancer, you get a team. Right, So everyone should
Speaker 15: have access to the legal care if we're serious about
Speaker 15: being a nation of laws to the problem that adequate
Speaker 15: to the problem that they come against.
Speaker 1: And in terms of taxes, the fact that you have
Speaker 1: a whole, massive, multi billion dollar industry around tax preparation
Speaker 1: means they also have an investment in like making taxes
Speaker 1: as confusing and complicated and burdensome on everybody as they
Speaker 1: possibly can.
Speaker 4: And then you also have this.
Speaker 1: Vast inequality where again the Peter Thiel's of the world, man,
Speaker 1: they've got the best accountants out there fighting to make
Speaker 1: sure that they have to pay as little taxes as
Speaker 1: they possibly can. And meanwhile for everybody else, they're just
Speaker 1: like hoping and praying that this works out okay for them.
Speaker 9: We like, we have the standard deduction for the poors.
Speaker 15: But if we are serious about actually having a tax
Speaker 15: law that's lawful, which means it takes a specialist to
Speaker 15: understand it, then we need to avail everyone of specialists.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 15: So there's this idea that you could pay accountants. And
Speaker 15: you know, some of these tax accounts we're friends with,
Speaker 15: probably a few of them are very well to do.
Speaker 15: They make a lot of good money doing taxes for
Speaker 15: the wealthy. You can pay accountants to game the system
Speaker 15: or to get you the most efficient tax return possible.
Speaker 15: It should be an American insofar as if we have
Speaker 15: taxes and if we have tax breaks, everyone should equally
Speaker 15: as American citizens be.
Speaker 9: Be have access to them.
Speaker 15: And that means you need access to the brain that
Speaker 15: allows you to, uh, the mind that's been trained to
Speaker 15: discern which tax privileges that and tax rights that you
Speaker 15: are available to. So, yeah, single payer tax, single payer accountants,
Speaker 15: tax accounts. Maybe not all business accounts. I think businesses
Speaker 15: should pay for their own business accounts. But single payer
Speaker 15: tax preparers, uh, single payer option for tax preparers, for
Speaker 15: high quality tax preparation. It sounds like it's none of
Speaker 15: these things. If you listen to me and you think
Speaker 15: about it yourself, they're not going to make our democracy worse.
Speaker 15: They're not going to America democracy work. I notice I said,
Speaker 15: a federal job guarantee and not like I'm not in
Speaker 15: favor of the UBI, just because I think that there's
Speaker 15: a lot of work that needs to happen in order
Speaker 15: to make our economy and our politics work, and there's
Speaker 15: work that needs to be done. I live in the
Speaker 15: South right now, there's like seventy years of deferred maintenance
Speaker 15: that needs to be done.
Speaker 9: And like you don't have internet at home?
Speaker 4: Correct, that's right, So we could pay.
Speaker 15: Someone twenty five to thirty dollars an hour to like
Speaker 15: get fib at a Crystal's farm.
Speaker 1: Listen, you just sold me right there, right there, you
Speaker 1: just sold me. I mean what I appreciated value is.
Speaker 1: In certain ways, I would even call you a cynic.
Speaker 1: In certain ways, you're certainly very sort of practical about
Speaker 1: the country as it exists, but you never lack in
Speaker 1: political imagination. And I think it's always really important to
Speaker 1: stretch our minds and imagine the things that could be.
Speaker 1: And when you lay all of these you know, potential
Speaker 1: amendments down, every single one of them makes sense. And
Speaker 1: like you said, they're certainly not going to make the
Speaker 1: democracy worse, and they definitely have a shot at actually
Speaker 1: improving the quality of our democracy so that more closely
Speaker 1: approximates in actual democracy.
Speaker 9: Can I talk about one more?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll take care for all, elder care for all,
Speaker 1: older care.
Speaker 15: For all, look man like we decided that we have
Speaker 15: a quality of elder care system with a social security system.
Speaker 15: Insofar as you know, one way to make sure that
Speaker 15: the elderly are doing well is to actually give them money.
Speaker 15: They can spend it as they want. But another way
Speaker 15: is to make sure that they actually have full time
Speaker 15: like the care that they need. And caring for an
Speaker 15: elderly loved one actually kind of distorts the freedom of
Speaker 15: the caregiver, right, Like, if your parent or loved one
Speaker 15: needs full time care, you can't really participate in politics,
Speaker 15: you can't really participate in civil society.
Speaker 9: So if we're going to actually secure.
Speaker 15: Everyone like the blessings of liberty, like the Constitution supposed
Speaker 15: to do, we need to start talking about elder care
Speaker 15: for all and sim with child care for all.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, I agree with both of those.
Speaker 15: And also children should not be punished because they come
Speaker 15: from poor parents. The USDA every year, every other year
Speaker 15: comes out with a survey about how much it costs
Speaker 15: to raise a middle class child. And apparently, after you
Speaker 15: take away childcare and elder after you take away childcare,
Speaker 15: it's about nine hundred bucks a month. Let's just give
Speaker 15: every parent nine hundred dollars a month per kid. That's
Speaker 15: like and you put that with a federal job guarantee
Speaker 15: which is supposed to take care of the parent, and
Speaker 15: that means every kid is not punished materially for just
Speaker 15: coming from poor parents. And that means they could actually
Speaker 15: like participate in the quality of enrichment activities that will
Speaker 15: lead to a robust citizenship.
Speaker 4: I think that is all very well said.
Speaker 15: Yeah, we can link it to the USDA's own report
Speaker 15: about what middle class parents spend on their children's.
Speaker 1: And then pagets too inflation so that it continues to
Speaker 1: just autoescalate and you don't have to depend on a
Speaker 1: political class to increase it. I think that's all a
Speaker 1: very good idea. I Army is always great to have you.
Speaker 1: It's always great to speak with you.
Speaker 9: Thank you so much, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, our pleasure.
Speaker 13: I'm Matt Stoler, author of monopoly focused Substack newsletter Big
Speaker 13: and an anti trust policy analyst. They have a great
Speaker 13: segment for you today on this Big Breakdown. It's about
Speaker 13: how the giant credit reporting bureau Equifax, through its monopoly power,
Speaker 13: has become a firm that sells what are effectively tax
Speaker 13: records of any American to pretty much anyone who wants them. Okay,
Speaker 13: The movie The Big Short is about fraud during the
Speaker 13: Great Financial Crisis. In it, there's a famous scene where
Speaker 13: fund managers betting on a housing collapse are trying to
Speaker 13: learn about the Florida housing market and are interviewing some
Speaker 13: frat boy type Florida real estate agents. The agents keep
Speaker 13: discussing their self serving and illegal behavior like falsifying paperwork
Speaker 13: or selling homes to people who knowingly can't pay back mortgages.
Speaker 13: At a certain point, the main characters when his fund
Speaker 13: manager asks his colleagues about these guys, why are they confessing?
Speaker 13: And there's a great response. Here's the scene.
Speaker 7: I don't get it.
Speaker 6: Why are they confessing.
Speaker 7: They're not confessing, they're bragging.
Speaker 6: Not confessing, but bragging.
Speaker 13: So these people weren't just breaking the law, but saw
Speaker 13: the law itself as irrelevant. It was a true story,
Speaker 13: or mostly true, and it continues to be a true
Speaker 13: story in many white collar areas so late last year,
Speaker 13: the CEO of Equifax Mark Begor presented at a Golden
Speaker 13: Sex conference for investors and openly told them how much
Speaker 13: market power his firm has in the business of selling
Speaker 13: what's called income verification services to creditors.
Speaker 6: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 16: We have meaningful pricing power in that business. I wouldn't
Speaker 16: put it in the same zip code as Mico, but
Speaker 16: we have a very un data asset, just like they
Speaker 16: have with the micro score. Only Equifax has that employment data.
Speaker 16: So you know, we bring price to the marketplace every year.
Speaker 16: We've already got our January one, twenty twenty three pricing
Speaker 16: increases in the market. They went in a couple months ago,
Speaker 16: so we know what price is going to be in
Speaker 16: twenty twenty three. And we have more pricing power here.
Speaker 6: Than we have in other businesses.
Speaker 16: And if you think about four percent from price and product,
Speaker 16: decide how you split the four I won't do it
Speaker 16: for you, but you know we have an ability to
Speaker 16: grow price well in excess a BDP.
Speaker 13: We have meaningful pricing power. Only Equifax has that income
Speaker 13: and employment data. That's market power, that's monopoly power. Now
Speaker 13: a CEO should know better than to confess to monopolization.
Speaker 13: Only it seems as if he wasn't confessing, he was bragging.
Speaker 13: So why would a CEO brag to investors? Probably because
Speaker 13: he can. I mean, Equifax's controversial behavior is near legendary.
Speaker 13: The firm is an important credit bureau and credit data
Speaker 13: is exactly what we wouldn't want to fall into the
Speaker 13: hands of hackers who could then easily use it to
Speaker 13: engage an identity theft on mass. But in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 13: Equifax had one of the biggest data breaches in history
Speaker 13: when it accidentally exposed the personal data of one hundred
Speaker 13: and forty seven million people, so that's social security numbers, names, etc.
Speaker 6: Etc. The Federal Trade Commission find.
Speaker 13: The company more than five hundred and seventy five million dollars,
Speaker 13: and the CEO, CIO, and chief security officer were all
Speaker 13: forced out. But the firm itself didn't suffer any long
Speaker 13: term damage. And that's because it's a monopoly. There's nowhere
Speaker 13: else to go. People may not like it, but they
Speaker 13: have to use it, okay, so there's no real consequences
Speaker 13: to the company. And let's go back to the product
Speaker 13: that Bager told investors about at the Golden Sex Confact,
Speaker 13: which is called the work number. That's a business line
Speaker 13: that bundles data about the incomes of hundreds of millions
Speaker 13: of people like you and me and sells it to
Speaker 13: interested parties like lenders, landlords, employers, government agencies. Payroll in
Speaker 13: data is by some estimates, a ten billion dollar market
Speaker 13: and now brings in a majority of the firm's domestic revenue. Now,
Speaker 13: Equifects used to just track whether we pay our debts.
Speaker 13: They would sell that information to lenders. That's what a
Speaker 13: credit bureau does. But over the last ten years it
Speaker 13: has transformed itself into a sort of tax information agency,
Speaker 13: which sells data about our salary and income and workplace
Speaker 13: to third parties. It's a better business than just credit
Speaker 13: data because while three firms have information about whether you
Speaker 13: pay back your credit card, only Equifax has complete information
Speaker 13: about where you work and your salary. And a monopoly,
Speaker 13: as the CEO bragged, is better than an oligopoly. Now, first,
Speaker 13: let's start with why this business exists. Sharing information about
Speaker 13: where you work and what you make is something we
Speaker 13: all need to do.
Speaker 6: On occasion.
Speaker 13: If a bank or an auto dealer wants to lend
Speaker 13: someone money to buy a home or car, that bank
Speaker 13: or creditor needs a verification that the person works where
Speaker 13: he or she says he works and makes the income
Speaker 13: he or she says they make. Now, sometimes a potential
Speaker 13: employer or landlord needs to check work history, or a
Speaker 13: public agency needs to ensure that someone qualifies for government
Speaker 13: assistance or that, or they have to update someone's immigration status.
Speaker 13: All of these things require that kind of data. Well,
Speaker 13: how do these third parties verify this data? Lawyers don't
Speaker 13: like it when their human resource departments are constantly getting
Speaker 13: requests from lenders about their employees and their salaries and
Speaker 13: so on and so forth. So for years, employers have
Speaker 13: been sending data on this to Equifax. If you're trying
Speaker 13: to find out someone's work history and income, it's pretty
Speaker 13: likely at this point that Equifax has it. And we're
Speaker 13: not just talking about the data that the irs has.
Speaker 13: We're talking about data on pay for every payroll cycle,
Speaker 13: your overtime amount to start, an end date for your job,
Speaker 13: your title, your healthcare provider, whether you have dental insurance,
Speaker 13: if you've ever filed an unemployment claim, and so on
Speaker 13: and so forth. Now, this whole income and verification business
Speaker 13: line didn't start out with Equifax. It started out with
Speaker 13: a company called Talks, started in the nineteen seventies, but
Speaker 13: Equifax bought it in two thousand and seven, and along
Speaker 13: with a bunch of companies in this space, Equifax and
Speaker 13: Talks continue to buy up companies. Now, Talks had signed
Speaker 13: contracts with most big businesses Fortune five hundred businesses, as
Speaker 13: well as governments, universities, and so on and so forth
Speaker 13: to get data. But part of these contracts, we're not
Speaker 13: just to get the data, but to stop these companies
Speaker 13: from sharing their data with other brokers. So now that
Speaker 13: was to exclude rivals, not some privacy things. So the
Speaker 13: story here is monopolization. And I'm not just saying this.
Speaker 13: Fifteen years ago, the Federal Trade Commission actually sued Equifax
Speaker 13: Talx's business for antitrust violations, and that was because of
Speaker 13: the contractual arrangements that I just described, the ones that
Speaker 13: excluded rivals from the market. Only people didn't really notice
Speaker 13: because the income verification business was a side show back
Speaker 13: then to Equifax's main credit reporting revenue line. Today, however,
Speaker 13: Equifax is now a monopoly income verifier and it's got
Speaker 13: kind of a side hustle in the credit information business.
Speaker 13: Now there are network effects here. The more data Equifax
Speaker 13: gets from employers, the more likely it is to be
Speaker 13: the place that lenders and government agencies seek to do
Speaker 13: income verification. Now, of course, the employees don't know that
Speaker 13: their own data is being sold by their employers, and
Speaker 13: even small businesses who use payroll services like ADP don't
Speaker 13: realize their data is being so ADP sells it all.
Speaker 13: A lot of third party services sell that data. Now,
Speaker 13: small businesses can opt out, but they actually have to
Speaker 13: know that this data is being sold, and then they
Speaker 13: have to tell their payroll provider, which they often don't
Speaker 13: know that they should or could do.
Speaker 6: Big companies they just make money, you know.
Speaker 13: JP Morgan just sells its data and they get money
Speaker 13: in and so they've turned human resources into into not
Speaker 13: a cost center but a revenue generator. Now, the net
Speaker 13: effect of these arrangements, at least in terms of the
Speaker 13: income verification market, is that smaller players in the market
Speaker 13: are boxed out. If you're doing income verification and you
Speaker 13: put someone's social Security number into Equifax, you have roughly
Speaker 13: fifty to seventy percent chance of getting a successful hit,
Speaker 13: a successful conversion finding out whether that person works where
Speaker 13: they say they work for other brokers, it's much lower,
Speaker 13: maybe thirty percent. So if you need the information you basically,
Speaker 13: if you're credit or your lender and you want to
Speaker 13: find something out, you have to use Equifax. Now on
Speaker 13: the other side of the market, right, Equifax has also
Speaker 13: erected barriers to entry. If you're a frequent buyer of
Speaker 13: income verification or income or employment data, equifecs will offer
Speaker 13: a loyalty discount if you move all your business to
Speaker 13: the work number. So a loyalty discount sound sounds nice,
Speaker 13: but it's basically just a mechanism to exclude rivals. So
Speaker 13: one background check provider called swift Check, explained that Equifax
Speaker 13: told them that, quote, if our organization performs the work
Speaker 13: number verification on every employment verification, a discount is offered.
Speaker 13: In other words, if you use a rival, your price
Speaker 13: goes up. That's classic monopolization. That's standard oil and the railroads.
Speaker 13: I mean, you go back one hundred years for this.
Speaker 13: Now we can see this market power at work in
Speaker 13: the pricing. As their CEO noted in December, Equifax has
Speaker 13: been raising prices on lenders substantially for years. So in
Speaker 13: twenty seventeen, the price for a record for just to
Speaker 13: look up someone was twenty dollars. In twenty twenty, it
Speaker 13: was forty one dollars and ninety five cents, and today
Speaker 13: it lists its price at fifty four dollars and ninety
Speaker 13: five cents for a record of where you currently work.
Speaker 6: This is their public prices.
Speaker 13: They have lots of other prices, so we're not totally
Speaker 13: sure what they charge. It's likely much more to some customers,
Speaker 13: but it can potentially be up to two hundred dollars
Speaker 13: for records with more historical information.
Speaker 6: Now, to give you a.
Speaker 13: Sense of these price hikes, that's an inflation rate of
Speaker 13: twenty five percent. That's why the CEO was bragging about
Speaker 13: being able to raise prices faster than GDP growth. Now
Speaker 13: it goes way beyond price. That's just the harms to
Speaker 13: the lenders and the ultimately they pass that down to
Speaker 13: the people.
Speaker 6: Who are borrowing money.
Speaker 13: The work number can according to the government, this is
Speaker 13: where it gets kind of creepy. Help determine quote unquote
Speaker 13: an applicant's social service eligibility or quote unquote informed child
Speaker 13: support collections and enforcement. There are also often errors and
Speaker 13: getting your own data from Equifax and getting them to
Speaker 13: change data so that it's right can be difficult. It's
Speaker 13: also a system that is prone to abuse. So Apple
Speaker 13: told the work number that every worker who left was
Speaker 13: automatically given the title quote unquote associate, regardless of whether
Speaker 13: they were a top engineer or salesperson or whatever. And
Speaker 13: according to one of these people who left Apple, the
Speaker 13: error quote delayed the hiring prospects process at a prospective
Speaker 13: employer by nearly a week, during which time the company
Speaker 13: rescinded the offer.
Speaker 6: That's bad. And though Equifax.
Speaker 13: Claims there are controls who can buy this information, security
Speaker 13: researcher Brian Krebs noted in twenty seventeen that it's easy
Speaker 13: for pretty much anyone to get this information to learn
Speaker 13: your salary. The work number, in fact, is so important
Speaker 13: that Equifax is engaged in the work that should be
Speaker 13: reserved to a government. Equifax uses its data to build
Speaker 13: services for firms, such as managing unemployment compensation. When a
Speaker 13: firm lays off a worker, that worker is supposed to
Speaker 13: have rights to unemployment insurance with the firm, which the
Speaker 13: firm has to pay for. But if that employee was
Speaker 13: fired for cause or quit, then the worker isn't entitled
Speaker 13: to unemployment payments and the firm is off the hook.
Speaker 13: So managing this process along with appeals is something that
Speaker 13: Equifax does for firms, and at the height of the
Speaker 13: Great Recession in twenty ten, Equifax was processing thirty percent
Speaker 13: of the employment claims in the country.
Speaker 6: That's massive. But here's the thing.
Speaker 13: It had an automated system to systematically deny applications regardless
Speaker 13: of merit, so it's clients employers would have to pay
Speaker 13: less in unemployment taxes. So in order if you applied
Speaker 13: for unemployment you had to escalate like that was just automatic.
Speaker 13: That's what's something that's a service that Equifax sold. We
Speaker 13: will automatically deny unemployment claims, no matter how legitimate, and
Speaker 13: this goal is on the firm's investment documents, which uses
Speaker 13: the anodyne wording of quote unquote. We offer the service
Speaker 13: of reducing the cost of unemployment claims through effective claims representation.
Speaker 13: That's how it describes as service it provides to employers
Speaker 13: who give it dead data. So it's perhaps no exaggeration
Speaker 13: to note that Equifax is a quasi governmental agency monopoly
Speaker 13: provider of evidence that you work where you work and
Speaker 13: what you make if there's an error or if someone
Speaker 13: lies about you. Too bad effect with the facts itself
Speaker 13: is paid.
Speaker 6: To harm you. Too bad.
Speaker 13: If a government agency gets the wrong data and denies
Speaker 13: you assistance or screws up your immigration status, that's on you.
Speaker 6: Well, you have limited to no rights in this situation.
Speaker 13: In some rights, you might have more a fear from
Speaker 13: Equifax than the irs, And Equifax understands this. They lobby
Speaker 13: for this particular situation. So here's Stephen Colbert making a
Speaker 13: quick point about the problem and Equifax's politics.
Speaker 3: Here's the nilio.
Speaker 14: Well, we still have litigation as the last line of protection.
Speaker 14: Maybe because Equifax is waging a concerted campaign to repeal
Speaker 14: federal regulations upholding.
Speaker 3: Consumers right to sue.
Speaker 14: Ah, No, our right to sue is what makes us American.
Speaker 13: Equal facts really wants to strip people's rights from making
Speaker 13: sure that their data is correct. It have to be
Speaker 13: this way. I'm talking about the whole industry. I mean,
Speaker 13: maybe you could make the argument a few decades ago
Speaker 13: when you had centralized databases and it was kind.
Speaker 6: Of hard to move this information.
Speaker 13: But with the Internet, and the Internet is twenty twenty
Speaker 13: years old or something at this point. But the Internet,
Speaker 13: with cloud computing, there's just no technical reason for a
Speaker 13: centralized repository of employment and verification data, at least not
Speaker 13: the way that it's set up today. It's quite possible
Speaker 13: to have a system allowing any fire verifier to ask
Speaker 13: the individual, to ask the individual for his or her records,
Speaker 13: but that would cut against Equifax's business model. That is,
Speaker 13: they don't keep your data secure, but they're a monopoly,
Speaker 13: so it doesn't matter. They don't ask you, but doesn't
Speaker 13: matter because they're monopoly, they have the data.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 13: Frank Abognel advises companies and individuals on security's He was
Speaker 13: featured in the movie Catch Me If you Can, and
Speaker 13: here's his observation about the incentives that Equifax face is
Speaker 13: in the legal system in this country.
Speaker 17: Ever said to Equifax, you know what, you can store
Speaker 17: all my personal data and you can make billions of
Speaker 17: dollars selling it for background checks, employee checks, credit checks.
Speaker 7: No, I never said that.
Speaker 17: So what I want to say is, Equifax, you can
Speaker 17: keep my data, but you cannot show it to anyone
Speaker 17: without my consent, And if for some reason it gets
Speaker 17: in the wrong hand, I have the recourse to come
Speaker 17: back on you because you put me in jeopardy.
Speaker 13: So it shouldn't it shouldn't be this way, and in fact,
Speaker 13: it doesn't have to be this way. There are actually
Speaker 13: other companies who notice this monopoly and they're trying to
Speaker 13: compete in the market using privacy safe solutions. A lot
Speaker 13: of you know entrepreneurs were like, this is a crappy system.
Speaker 13: Let's build something better. Only they're running into roadblocks. So
Speaker 13: there are two particular firms. I talked to the leaders
Speaker 13: of both sur Trey and Argyle, who recently sent letters
Speaker 13: to the Federal Trade Commission asking for an investigation into
Speaker 13: this market, and they were pointing at the abuse of
Speaker 13: consumers buy Equifax and to a lesser extent experience, which
Speaker 13: is the number two. But like way, way, way down now,
Speaker 13: the strategies for each of these rivals are different, but
Speaker 13: both give the customer control over who can access their
Speaker 13: data instead of building a giant centralized repository controlled by
Speaker 13: a monopolist, and both charge much lower prices. The overall
Speaker 13: point here is that having a centralized data broker that
Speaker 13: has a quasi monopoly over income and verification data and
Speaker 13: since largely unregulated, is ridiculous. It's obvious that Equifax is
Speaker 13: immune to competitive forces, despite the price hikes and devastating
Speaker 13: and routine news stories about hacks, errors and problems, as
Speaker 13: well as public polling showing increasing concerns over privacy and
Speaker 13: new technologies like large language learning models that make this
Speaker 13: data useful in all sorts of other ways that could
Speaker 13: be really useful but also dangerous. Equifax marches on unbothered
Speaker 13: and unchasened. And that's the classic monopoly position, a recognition
Speaker 13: that there is no alternative to the entity in the market.
Speaker 12: Now.
Speaker 13: There are many legal levers here, from anti tres trust
Speaker 13: to credit reporting laws to regulation that can work regardless.
Speaker 13: I'd like to thank Equifax CEO Mark Baker for bragging
Speaker 13: about his firm's market power, because without that, I never
Speaker 13: would have taken the time to learn out why Equifax
Speaker 13: can act as a private irs, put out a middle
Speaker 13: finger to each one of us, and collect our money regardless.
Speaker 13: Thanks for watching this big breakdown on the Breaking Points channel.
Speaker 13: If you'd like to know more about big business and
Speaker 13: how our economy really works, you can sign up below
Speaker 13: for my market power focused newsletter Big in the description,
Speaker 13: Thanks and have a good one.
Speaker 18: Hey everyone, I'm Ken Klippenstein with breaking points to the
Speaker 18: Intercept edition. I did a story recently that I'd like
Speaker 18: to talk to you all about. Let's talk about Havana syndrome, or,
Speaker 18: as the US government calls it, the anomaloust health conditions.
Speaker 18: That's the new official term. You don't use the word
Speaker 18: havana syme for it anymore. What Havana syndrome refers to
Speaker 18: is a set of alleged symptoms alleged by US spies,
Speaker 18: diplomats and other person now at various US embassies that
Speaker 18: they say resemble you know, hearing strange noises, cognitive issues, headaches, nausea.
Speaker 18: It's a really mysterious set of symptoms, and over a
Speaker 18: thousand of these individuals have alleged this. So I took
Speaker 18: a look at the Pentagon budget which was released last month.
Speaker 18: To my surprise, nobody had reported one thing that was
Speaker 18: in it, which was the budget for responding to Havana syndrome.
Speaker 18: That's thirty six million dollars. That's a budget that's been
Speaker 18: increasing every year since they've first allocated money to this.
Speaker 18: And something I find interesting about the government response to
Speaker 18: Vana syndrome.
Speaker 7: Is how bipartisan it is.
Speaker 18: At the time that it seems we can't get folks
Speaker 18: in government to agree on anything. I mean, they're debating
Speaker 18: now cutting food stamps, subsidies to clean energy, you know,
Speaker 18: potentially sending the government into default if you believe some
Speaker 18: of the more extreme members of the Republican Caucus. Something
Speaker 18: that they universally agreed on, every single cenator, every single
Speaker 18: representative of Congress two years ago was to fund a
Speaker 18: response to the so called Avana syndrome, or rather anomalist
Speaker 18: health incidents. I'm sorry, we had the user proper verbidge here.
Speaker 18: And so what's interesting about that is not only did
Speaker 18: they authorize that fund in a couple years ago, it
Speaker 18: continues to increase every year. So let's talk about what
Speaker 18: exactly that thirty six million dollars entails. It's not just
Speaker 18: healthcare treatment for the individuals affected. It's also R and
Speaker 18: D research into what the conditions are that you might
Speaker 18: lead somebody to be susceptible to this, how to respond
Speaker 18: to it. And as Politico, the budget's not terribly detailed
Speaker 18: about what that all entails. But as Politico reported a
Speaker 18: couple of weeks ago, the military is experimenting with different
Speaker 18: weapons systems to try to see if they can induce
Speaker 18: the conditions that would cause what they believed to be
Speaker 18: a Vana syndrome. Now, something I think that's really important
Speaker 18: to address and all this is that it's not clear
Speaker 18: what havanas syndroime is exactly. There's all sorts of disagreement
Speaker 18: over you know, what constitutes it. And if you look
Speaker 18: at the CIA interim study that was released last year
Speaker 18: that spent you know, all sorts of resources investigating this, again,
Speaker 18: they had about a thousand a little over a thousand
Speaker 18: people saying that they had it. They were able to
Speaker 18: rule out the majority of those cases as having environmental causes,
Speaker 18: pre existing health conditions, so on and so forth.
Speaker 7: Now, I don't think it's bad to respond.
Speaker 18: I mean, even if something is psychiatric, that's still something
Speaker 18: that you can respond to and provide health care for.
Speaker 18: But the manner in which they're approaching this, as you
Speaker 18: recall when it first came out have van a smem
Speaker 18: The title refers to the US embassy in Cuba, where
Speaker 18: diplomats and spies first started alleging these symptoms. But since
Speaker 18: then these symptoms were reported all over the world, embassies
Speaker 18: all over the world, China, Russia, I mean there's like
Speaker 18: over a dozen of them. And what's interesting, you know,
Speaker 18: I do a lot of work in national security interviewing
Speaker 18: folks in that space.
Speaker 7: I realized when I started asking them. Almost immediately, I said,
Speaker 7: you know, what is this? What are you hearing?
Speaker 18: Because very often, even when stuff is highly classified, things,
Speaker 18: you know, word gets around.
Speaker 7: It's very hard to keep a secret.
Speaker 18: People would hear things from retired people, would hear things
Speaker 18: from people inside. People inside might talk to you and
Speaker 18: tell you what they're hearing about it. And what was
Speaker 18: amazing was the range of opinions that I was able
Speaker 18: to solicit. When I asked folks this question, it seemed
Speaker 18: almost like a roar shock test. It was like the
Speaker 18: people I knew that worked counter intelligence in Russia, They're like,
Speaker 18: it's got to be the Russians, it's a Russian energy weapon.
Speaker 18: The people working counter intelligence against the Chinese, it's got
Speaker 18: to be Beijing. They're doing this to us for X,
Speaker 18: Y and Z reason. Other people said it was Cuba.
Speaker 18: And you know these I mean, these are obviously probably
Speaker 18: private conversations that I had, But if you look back
Speaker 18: at the media coverage, initially it was taken very seriously
Speaker 18: that this must be some kind of directed energy weapon,
Speaker 18: and a lot of people pointed the finger at the Russians.
Speaker 18: But what that CIA interim report that I mentioned a
Speaker 18: couple of minutes ago found was that it's unlikely that
Speaker 18: there was a foreign adversary. And just a couple of
Speaker 18: weeks ago, a conclusive multi agency intelligence community assessment reiterated
Speaker 18: that in greater detail, finding that it was quote highly
Speaker 18: unlikely that it's a foreign adversary doing this. So they've
Speaker 18: just tossed out this idea that it's a direct energy weapon.
Speaker 7: Not much.
Speaker 18: You know, reflection on the part of the press about
Speaker 18: why did we run with this before?
Speaker 7: You know, when I were writing.
Speaker 18: These stories, I thought, wow, they're really throwing their lot
Speaker 18: in with this theory that if it turns out not
Speaker 18: to be true, they're going to have egg on their face.
Speaker 18: Turns out, if you just don't talk about it, there
Speaker 18: won't be any egg on your face. So there's just
Speaker 18: been this complete shift now where it's like, oh, it's
Speaker 18: not a foreign adversary, and you know, people can say, well,
Speaker 18: this is the intelligence community's assessment, how do we trust
Speaker 18: that that's true.
Speaker 7: I have a feeling that if they find something.
Speaker 18: Derogatory about the you know, nation state adversaries on which
Speaker 18: their budget and money and resources and really reason for
Speaker 18: existing depends. I'm a feeling they're going to release that,
Speaker 18: so I don't think they're going to be particularly shy
Speaker 18: about it. But in any case, what was most astonishing
Speaker 18: in this Pine Gone a budget to me not just
Speaker 18: the amount thirty six million, but the spending on R
Speaker 18: and D. As I mentioned the political report, they're experimenting
Speaker 18: with their own weapons systems to try to create conditions
Speaker 18: that they think might lead to Havana syndrome. Is just
Speaker 18: how sophisticated this response that continues to It's just classic
Speaker 18: national security. You allocate money to something and it never disappears,
Speaker 18: even after this conclusive report that found that it can't
Speaker 18: have been very unlikely to have been caused by a
Speaker 18: foreign adversary. What I found is it's not just the
Speaker 18: military that's doing this. Although the Pentagon budget, I think
Speaker 18: the Pentagon takes point because they have the healthcare resources
Speaker 18: in place to most effectively respond to this. They're responding
Speaker 18: in conjunction with a bunch of different agencies. This task
Speaker 18: force to have that's responding to it has more than
Speaker 18: doubled in size since its inception, which was just only
Speaker 18: just a couple of years ago. If you read a
Speaker 18: Inspector General report that the Pentagon put out last year,
Speaker 18: they found that not only has that staff doubled, it
Speaker 18: includes a two star military general to give you a
Speaker 18: sense of like how seriously they're they're taking this, who's
Speaker 18: detailed and a bunch of full time staff. So these
Speaker 18: are not just people working on the side occasionally to
Speaker 18: work on this task force. It's something that the military
Speaker 18: is taking very seriously with regards to not just money,
Speaker 18: but the seniority of the individuals detailed detailed to this
Speaker 18: task force. And in addition to that, it's people from
Speaker 18: all sorts of different service branches air Force, military, police,
Speaker 18: marine corps.
Speaker 7: So it's astonishing.
Speaker 18: The size of this response is something that we still
Speaker 18: don't know a what it is and b if there
Speaker 18: is even a what there even if it's something that's
Speaker 18: not just psychogenic. You know, when I interviewed folks who
Speaker 18: worked with the CIA, the impression I got was such
Speaker 18: an American story. It was like I heard the same
Speaker 18: kinds of distrust for their internal medical system that you
Speaker 18: hear from folks in this just ordinary everyday people. I
Speaker 18: don't trust the healthcare system, and I understand that that
Speaker 18: should precipitate a different kind of response than this mad
Speaker 18: dash to find out about the secret weapon that you
Speaker 18: know they've developed out of a Bond movie versus you know, Again,
Speaker 18: if it's just psychiatric I still think that's something that's
Speaker 18: reasonable to respond to. But does it require this whole
Speaker 18: regime that we've set up, not just within the military
Speaker 18: service branchies, but with the State Department as well. I
Speaker 18: had a document leaked to me last year showing that
Speaker 18: the Department of Homeland Security was trying to solicit reports
Speaker 18: from their personnel on whether or not they had experienced
Speaker 18: any of these symptoms. So what you're seeing is just
Speaker 18: this huge multigovernment dash. And we only know about the
Speaker 18: Pentagon side of the budget. We don't know about the
Speaker 18: classified intelligence community budget, which is a black budget, which
Speaker 18: is likely you know, includes at least a bit more money,
Speaker 18: if not a lot more. And so I just like
Speaker 18: to see some debate on this issue about which there
Speaker 18: seems to be total partisan There is total partisan agreement. Again,
Speaker 18: every single member of voted for that funding two years ago,
Speaker 18: but which the public isn't aware of and that's not
Speaker 18: their fault. The government has not talked about these things.
Speaker 18: There was no press release for this thirty six million
Speaker 18: dollar budget. There's no discussion by the press secretary. I
Speaker 18: only found it because I went through the you know,
Speaker 18: over thousands of page budget to just look for it,
Speaker 18: and I just searched for the term anomalous health incidents,
Speaker 18: knowing that that's what the government called it, and found this,
Speaker 18: and so I that's really what I want to bring
Speaker 18: this to your guys attention. I hope that there's some
Speaker 18: discussion on this on the part of committees, because again,
Speaker 18: we're talking about cutting all sorts of domestic programs because
Speaker 18: of the debt. And what is the one thing you
Speaker 18: never hear about cutting the Pentagon. That's something that is
Speaker 18: explicitly off the table that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said
Speaker 18: will not be something that's subjected to cuts. And that's
Speaker 18: incredible because virtually everything else is. That's not to say
Speaker 18: they will cut everything else with the ideas, they're open
Speaker 18: to the you know, discussing that, putting that on the
Speaker 18: table and having that be a part of the nego ciations.
Speaker 18: So I'll be your hero is always paying attention to
Speaker 18: what the Pentagon is doing and what they're not telling
Speaker 18: you guys about it. But thanks so much for joining
Speaker 18: me once again, and I'm Ken Clippenstein with breaking points
Speaker 18: to the Intercept edition.