Speaker 1: This Welch's fucking cocktail ship is So it's just so
Speaker 1: weird because you can tell like there's like a nostalgia
Speaker 1: play here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like they can look exactly like the fucking
Speaker 2: Welsh's ship that I used to drink in, like.
Speaker 1: A little fucking weird, Like when are they gonna like
Speaker 1: I feel like we're right around the corner from Juicy Juice,
Speaker 1: Like there's gonna be like juicy juice malt liquor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Capri remember that ship? Oh my god. You know if
Speaker 1: they did a fucking Son.
Speaker 2: Destroy with Caprice Son and trans Caprice Son vodka bone
Speaker 2: marrow transplant.
Speaker 1: That's what we need. But I mean, like you can
Speaker 1: just tell like they're just sort of using these like
Speaker 1: because the Sunny Delight I think was the canary in
Speaker 1: the coal mine. When Sunny d came out with their
Speaker 1: vodka thing, I was like, this is I'm we're pretty squeeze.
Speaker 1: Ites is gonna have to be next?
Speaker 2: And guess what vodka confused gushers? I say, Oh, like,
Speaker 2: I mean do they have they probably have CBD gummies
Speaker 2: that are gushers?
Speaker 1: Right? Oh maybe probably?
Speaker 2: I mean they go even the one that I meant
Speaker 2: to say when I said zb I'm hip and I
Speaker 2: do the drugs.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember like in the early days of
Speaker 1: like sort of like weed edibles, there would be like
Speaker 1: the you know, Ganja, Nestley, crunch bar, like kind of
Speaker 1: evoking these old brands and stuff like that I actually
Speaker 1: haven't seen. Is like very specifically associated with little children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well just like preschool snack time. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Their ads were like straight up like a kid who
Speaker 2: couldn't pronounce all their words, being like I like grape juice,
Speaker 2: wepe juice. Yeah, they'll be like and you won't be
Speaker 2: able to talk either after you have five of our
Speaker 2: vodka twenty.
Speaker 1: Years Illo, grape juice, Way, weep juice, waste sit off,
Speaker 1: grape juice.
Speaker 2: Off that Welch's Vodka Transfusion. Hello the Internet, and welcome
Speaker 2: to Season three forty three, Episode two of Dark Daily's
Speaker 2: guys production of My Heart Radio. This is the podcast
Speaker 2: where we take a deep dive in New American share
Speaker 2: Couchesteni's Tuesday, June eighteenth, twenty twenty four, Happy birthday to
Speaker 2: my wife. Oh okay, no time for that.
Speaker 3: Six times we don't have time six eighteen three sixes
Speaker 3: the devil equals eighteenth, the eighteenth day of June. Okay,
Speaker 3: you see I'm doing here with the saches breaks up
Speaker 3: into twenty four, which also when you turn the sixes
Speaker 3: upside down or not or six is equal rolling in
Speaker 3: that six folk on boom and everybody.
Speaker 2: Everybody says riding down anyway.
Speaker 1: It's also national oh, national spurs Day, National gold fishing Day. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a reason we're speaking this fast, folks, don't worry,
Speaker 1: and it's not because run that Biden crank.
Speaker 2: Because yeah, I just got I just got that State
Speaker 2: of the Union good good truck and.
Speaker 1: Biden Biden back to get us real fucking amps right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: My name is Jack O'Brien, a here Potato's O'Brien, and
Speaker 2: I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co
Speaker 2: host mister Miles Bred.
Speaker 1: Yes, sin is Miles Grace.
Speaker 3: We get to speed to like trying to be like
Speaker 3: Joe Biden doing the State of the Union address. It's
Speaker 3: also the Lord of lankersam aka the Showgun with no
Speaker 3: Gun because I got no gun problems.
Speaker 1: Miles Gray faint.
Speaker 2: That was great, Thank you for being here, and Miles Gray,
Speaker 2: we are thrilled to be joined by the executive director
Speaker 2: of Civil Rights Corp, which is a nonprofit dedicated to
Speaker 2: fighting systemic injustice. Has been a civil rights lawyer, a
Speaker 2: public defender, named twenty sixteen's Trialaler of the Year by
Speaker 2: Public Justice, author of several books, the incredibly compelling Usual Cruelty,
Speaker 2: which we've had him on to talk about before. He's
Speaker 2: got one coming mate this year. Most importantly, a great
Speaker 2: follow on Twitter and all the social media.
Speaker 1: Is just kidding, that's my most important.
Speaker 2: But please welcome back to the show. The brilliant, the
Speaker 2: talented Alec Hurricanzone. What's up about you?
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you for being here. And the reason we're
Speaker 2: talking like auctioneers is because we only have you for
Speaker 2: forty five minutes, so we wanted to get right into it.
Speaker 4: You all sound great, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Man, repped up man, trying just getting through it, just
Speaker 1: getting through it.
Speaker 2: Just some people from buying White House and they they've
Speaker 2: got some Daddy's little helpers is.
Speaker 1: What they call him.
Speaker 2: No, it's amazing to have you back. You know, we
Speaker 2: usually do search history underrated, overrated, but I think I
Speaker 2: think we can just skip that unless there's something you
Speaker 2: desperately want to get off your chest that you think
Speaker 2: is overrated or underrated, or something from your search history.
Speaker 4: I don't have anything I'm dying to tell everybody. I
Speaker 4: don't think.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, good, Then we'll ask the questions. We'll ask
Speaker 2: the questions here, Alec. All right, So last time we
Speaker 2: checked in with you, there was This was a little
Speaker 2: over a year ago, or maybe actually a little less
Speaker 2: than a year ago, but there was a lot of
Speaker 2: talk in the mainstream media still about how crime was
Speaker 2: up because everyone defunded the police. And there's been an
Speaker 2: emerging story that crime has been plummeting much much less
Speaker 2: popular story with the mainstream media. And I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: there hasn't been like a corresponding like the police were
Speaker 2: never defunded, so like their theory of the case seems
Speaker 2: to have been exposed as bullshit. So presumably the mainstream
Speaker 2: media has been flooded with articles explaining what they got
Speaker 2: wrong and taking a long hard look at their methodology.
Speaker 2: How are you seeing these latest crime statistics where crime
Speaker 2: has gone down?
Speaker 4: I think it's first to just take a step back
Speaker 4: and understand that whether we're talking about last year or
Speaker 4: the year before the year before that. Overall levels of
Speaker 4: police reported crime in this country are near historic loves.
Speaker 4: So even when there was all that frenzy about retail
Speaker 4: theft and shoplifting or car theft or violent crime or robberies,
Speaker 4: you know, we were still at a stage in history
Speaker 4: where all of those things were were extraordinarily low relative
Speaker 4: to you know, what they were, let's say in the
Speaker 4: nineties or or in the early two thousands. And it's
Speaker 4: also important to understand that when you hear about crime
Speaker 4: statistics in the news, it's really only seven or so
Speaker 4: crimes that the police track and report to the FBI.
Speaker 4: And even then most people don't understand that, Like forty
Speaker 4: percent of police departments don't even report that data to
Speaker 4: the FBI. So a lot of it is just like
Speaker 4: FBI statistical estimates based on the police reporting like a
Speaker 4: few what they call index crimes. So what is left
Speaker 4: out of crime statistics, Well, almost all the crimes committed
Speaker 4: by police themselves, almost all the crimes committed by jail
Speaker 4: and prison guards, almost all white collar crime. Right, So
Speaker 4: while you hear a lot about theft in the news
Speaker 4: and retail theft and shoplifting, what don't the police report,
Speaker 4: and what doesn't FBI report when it's talking about crime
Speaker 4: rates tax evasion or wage theft. You know, and wage
Speaker 4: theft is about fifty billion dollars a year, So that
Speaker 4: right there is three times all of the crime that
Speaker 4: FBI is reporting is property crime combined. And so you
Speaker 4: just have to understand the way the media talks about
Speaker 4: crime stistics is really messed up on like a lot
Speaker 4: of different levels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wage theft and tax evasion being two crimes that
Speaker 2: the general populace, the readership, the intended audience of the
Speaker 2: mainstream media are the victims of Those are the ones
Speaker 2: that get ignored, The ones that that's not breathlessly reported,
Speaker 2: are the ones where Procter and Gamble is, you know,
Speaker 2: is the victim, and that's that that's treated as like
Speaker 2: the more important crime.
Speaker 4: And I think this is really important lesson for people,
Speaker 4: Like you can really mislead people by giving them a
Speaker 4: few anecdotes. So for example, if you have like a
Speaker 4: week of news stories, even if the anecdotes you're you're
Speaker 4: giving are true, like you report on seven true examples
Speaker 4: of shoplifting from Walgreens every night, you give the people
Speaker 4: the impression that shoplifting is a huge problem. It might
Speaker 4: be increasing even, Right. It's kind of like if I
Speaker 4: compiled a video of every shot Michael Jordan missed in
Speaker 4: his career and put.
Speaker 2: Them all together.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you could create the impression that Michael Jordan is
Speaker 4: a terrible basketball player just by taking all of the
Speaker 4: shots which he actually did miss right, if you don't
Speaker 4: show the other shots, right, And what the news is
Speaker 4: doing is something very similar. It's not showing the public
Speaker 4: any of the tax evasion, or any of the wage steps,
Speaker 4: or any of the pollution violations. Right. There's one hundred
Speaker 4: thousand violations that we know about of the Clean Water
Speaker 4: Act every year. It causes enormous death, cancer, rotting teeth,
Speaker 4: children suffering from a variety of different preventable illnesses, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Those are not treated as urgent. And so there's this,
Speaker 4: and they're not reported on the daily news. And so
Speaker 4: just through through its reporting of anecdote, even if those
Speaker 4: anecdotes are actually happening and true, the news can distort
Speaker 4: our much deeper truths about like what kinds of activity
Speaker 4: is really harmful to us? And shoplifting is a good example,
Speaker 4: because tax evasion is about a trillion dollars a year,
Speaker 4: so that's you know, sixty times every property crime the
Speaker 4: FBI reports combined, And yet everyone is freaking out of
Speaker 4: our shoplifting and nobody is thinking about tax evasion, right.
Speaker 1: I feel like the shoplifting thing is still like vibrating
Speaker 1: through like my childhood neighborhood. Like there are people who
Speaker 1: like lived in the neighborhood I grow u that are
Speaker 1: still harping about like, well, you know, there's nothing at
Speaker 1: CBS anymore because all the shoplifting and like we need
Speaker 1: to have like a neighborhood meeting about this. And it's like, dude,
Speaker 1: this is like a two year old conservative take on
Speaker 1: crime that you're like now being like it's happening, and
Speaker 1: we it's the scores of our community at the moment.
Speaker 1: But like, I'm curious for this stuff that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: Like where is there like a centralized place where you
Speaker 1: can see like where like DA's or something are reporting
Speaker 1: things like wage theft or like in a centralized place
Speaker 1: so I can be like, well, what about this stuff?
Speaker 1: Or is that more just having to be really vigilant
Speaker 1: about what is actually coming out of the courts and
Speaker 1: things like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, one of the big scandals of
Speaker 4: our time is that the agencies who are supposed to
Speaker 4: be investigating a lot of these crimes have been completely decimated. So,
Speaker 4: for example, the federal antitrust regulators have been completely decimated.
Speaker 4: They're far fewer regulators even looking into whether companies are
Speaker 4: doing price fixing and doing all kinds of illegal stuff
Speaker 4: that drives up the costs of goods for consumers, et
Speaker 4: cetera than there were forty years ago. We have fewer
Speaker 4: people investigating that stuff now. And the same is true
Speaker 4: with the so called War on drugs, right they shifted
Speaker 4: a huge percentage of federal agents who were working on
Speaker 4: things like white collar crime, fraud, corporate fraud, tax of asion,
Speaker 4: et cetera, and they shifted government resources toward the drug war.
Speaker 4: And so there's just fewer people actually even looking for
Speaker 4: the crimes that are committed by wealthy people. And that
Speaker 4: means that unfortunately, a lot of the crimes that are
Speaker 4: happening just like aren't even brought into the legal system
Speaker 4: at all, and so they're not being reported by prosecutors,
Speaker 4: not being reported by the police at all, and so
Speaker 4: we rely on nonprofit organizations really good investigative journalism. Some
Speaker 4: times the government will will itself investigate in some ways
Speaker 4: that shed some light on some of these things, and
Speaker 4: you have to cobble it all together.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's yeah, I mean he realized just how much
Speaker 1: of that is just to kind of emphasize what, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of the status quo wants to even define as crime.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, don't look at that stuff, because then
Speaker 1: all these other people get caught up in our perception
Speaker 1: of what criminality is, and we're absolutely don't want to
Speaker 1: do that. It's to actually just be like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's the shoplifters. It's these kinds of things that are
Speaker 1: big capital see crime that we need to worry about.
Speaker 1: When yeah, so like everyone's saying, these are the ones,
Speaker 1: like these other things are the things that affect the
Speaker 1: everyday person on a much deeper level.
Speaker 2: Were they locked up old spice at CBS? Also, we're
Speaker 2: the victims there. I do not want to wait fifteen
Speaker 2: extra seconds to get my old spice dewd ran out
Speaker 2: of the plastic case.
Speaker 1: But it embarrassing to say I want.
Speaker 4: To us a victim anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, we're just gonna pretend you didn't say that,
Speaker 2: because what about acts? And it's a combination of acts
Speaker 2: and old spice.
Speaker 1: I mix it together. It's a home blend.
Speaker 2: The axe is the new, the old spice is the old,
Speaker 2: and that's why I smell great to myself. Not everybody agrees,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it's a great how what crimes we talk about,
Speaker 2: what crimes we actually report, is a great way to
Speaker 2: understand what our society actually values. And it seems like
Speaker 2: this is yet another place where we find out that
Speaker 2: we value corporations and corporate earning more than individual human
Speaker 2: beings and individual human lives.
Speaker 4: But I think it's important to understand that the people
Speaker 4: who tell you that they are like tough on crime,
Speaker 4: law and order people, what those people are actually meaning
Speaker 4: by that is they are sort of ruthlessly punishing some
Speaker 4: crimes committed by some people some of the time and
Speaker 4: gleefully ignoring other crimes committed by other people at other times.
Speaker 4: So like in general, when you hear someone who's tough
Speaker 4: on crime and law and order, what they mean is
Speaker 4: like they want to enforce a lot of very minor
Speaker 4: crimes against the worst people in our society, and they
Speaker 4: want to create conditions under which wealthy people can violate
Speaker 4: the law with virtual impunity. That's what law and order
Speaker 4: actually has meant in the US political system for the
Speaker 4: last fifty years.
Speaker 1: Right right, That kind of like what you're talking about
Speaker 1: sort of remind me another thing you posted about about
Speaker 1: representing these kids in Flint and just sort of how
Speaker 1: again another example of like just sort of really going
Speaker 1: after vulnerable people in society for other people to make
Speaker 1: a ton of money, where like these kids, and how
Speaker 1: courts have been set up to sort of keep children
Speaker 1: from visiting parents that are awaiting trial and things like that.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about that case and
Speaker 1: sort of what's happening there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so all over the country over the last ten years,
Speaker 4: and I want to say up front, this happened well
Speaker 4: before the COVID pandemic, but you know, over the last
Speaker 4: ten years or so, many hundreds and maybe even thousands.
Speaker 4: It's really hard because it's hard to count, but many
Speaker 4: hundreds of jails at least have eliminated the ability of
Speaker 4: children to at their parents. And we started getting complaints
Speaker 4: about this from our clients all over the country, saying
Speaker 4: I'm not able to hold my child's hand. We got
Speaker 4: complaints from children saying I want to look into my
Speaker 4: mom's eyes or or hug my dad. So we started
Speaker 4: looking into what's going on, and we started looking at
Speaker 4: the contracts that these jails are signing. It turned out
Speaker 4: that starting a little over ten years ago, there was
Speaker 4: all these contracts with jail, the jails and private equity
Speaker 4: owned multi billion day.
Speaker 2: We have to have a drink because they're the scourge
Speaker 2: of this country.
Speaker 4: It's really remarkable. Honestly, when I talked to even other
Speaker 4: people in private equity, nobody can quite believe what I'm
Speaker 4: about to tell you. But the two largest jail and
Speaker 4: prison telecommunications companies are owned by private equity, and they've
Speaker 4: created a situation where sheriffs get up what is essentially
Speaker 4: a kickback to ban children from visiting their parents in jail.
Speaker 4: How does this work? Well, the theory is if you
Speaker 4: stop kids from having free in person visits with their parents,
Speaker 4: families will be so desperate that they'll spend more money
Speaker 4: on phone and video calls into the jail. And of course,
Speaker 4: these companies negotiate monopoly contracts with each sheriff and each
Speaker 4: jail to charge exorbitant rates per minute for phone and
Speaker 4: video calls.
Speaker 2: So the rates are like those nine hundred numbers from
Speaker 2: the eighties. They're like crazy, the amount that they just
Speaker 2: gouge people. That's unbelievable.
Speaker 4: And keep in mind that most people who are in
Speaker 4: jail in the United States are awaiting trial. They're not convicted,
Speaker 4: they're presumed innocent. And because the United States and the
Speaker 4: Philippines are the only two countries in the world that
Speaker 4: use a for profit commercial money bail industry tree to
Speaker 4: determine who's in jail and who's not, in much of
Speaker 4: the country, most of the people that we're talking about
Speaker 4: in these jails are only in jail because they can't
Speaker 4: pay a certain amount of cash bail to get released.
Speaker 4: It not because any judge has found them to be
Speaker 4: dangerous or risk of flight or anything like that. So
Speaker 4: we already are taking the poorest people in our society,
Speaker 4: and then we're taking the children of the poorest people
Speaker 4: in our society, and we're saying to them, we're gonna
Speaker 4: jail you because you're poor, and then we're gonna prevent
Speaker 4: your children from visiting you, and prevent you from visiting
Speaker 4: your mom and your dad for free. And if you
Speaker 4: want to see them or or talk to them. You're
Speaker 4: gonna have to pay exorbitant rates to do sort of
Speaker 4: a really really shitty equivalent of FaceTime or phone call.
Speaker 4: And you know, it has all these glitches, it freezes,
Speaker 4: it's not private, it's all surveiled and recorded. So now
Speaker 4: we've got these huge databases of the faces and voices
Speaker 4: of hundreds of thousands of children across the country that
Speaker 4: can be monetized. It can be AI algorithms can be
Speaker 4: trained on these children's faces and voices that can then
Speaker 4: be sold. We don't have a good sense of what
Speaker 4: they're doing with all this, but it's all part of
Speaker 4: a scheme to kind of profit off of family separation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like in some places too, Like aren't there
Speaker 1: like sort of like tablets that these companies create, So
Speaker 1: they're like, yes, if you want to download music, like
Speaker 1: that's another fee we can collect. Like they've found a
Speaker 1: way to sort of like monetize sort of all of
Speaker 1: this information that goes in and out from prisoners.
Speaker 4: And a lot of people don't know that. You know,
Speaker 4: people have heard of private prisons, but what people don't
Speaker 4: realize is public jails and prisons everything in them essentially
Speaker 4: is now privatized for profit. So there's tablets if you
Speaker 4: want to if you want to watch something or or
Speaker 4: read an email, you have to pay for stamps to
Speaker 4: send an email. A lot of places they're not even
Speaker 4: getting physical mail anymore, so you can't even send your
Speaker 4: mommy or dad a card or a letter. They get
Speaker 4: scanned and then and you have to pay to review
Speaker 4: them on your tablet that they give you food, toilet paper, soap,
Speaker 4: medical care. You know, you want to see a nurse
Speaker 4: or a doctor, you've got to pay for it.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4: The entire system here is, you know, they don't give
Speaker 4: you blankets. It's very very cold. If you want an
Speaker 4: extra blanket, you've got to pay for it. Essentially, you know,
Speaker 4: prisons in jails are huge cash cows or local state
Speaker 4: and county governments and for the companies that are sort
Speaker 4: of parasitic on these governments. And so we're representing an
Speaker 4: amazing group of children in Michigan who are trying to
Speaker 4: make a very simple argument. And that argument is that
Speaker 4: in our society, under our constitution, and given our history
Speaker 4: as a civilization and as a country, children have the
Speaker 4: right to hug their parents. Children have the right to
Speaker 4: be around their parents. They have the right to hold
Speaker 4: their hand, they have the right to talk to them,
Speaker 4: and if the government wants to take away that right,
Speaker 4: it has to have really good reasons. So maybe there
Speaker 4: are good reasons and in any particular case, and but
Speaker 4: the government can't just ban all children from visiting their parents,
Speaker 4: and so exactly, and that's what these kids. These kids
Speaker 4: are really courageous and it was a real honor. A
Speaker 4: couple of weeks ago, I was in court with my
Speaker 4: colleagues and we were arguing the case against the telecom
Speaker 4: companies and the sheriff, and the courtroom was just packed
Speaker 4: with kids, and packed with elderly people too, because you know,
Speaker 4: another sort of silent thing that happens a lot in
Speaker 4: our society is that older people who's whose own children
Speaker 4: are incarcerated as adults, who depend on their children to
Speaker 4: take care of them in their life, to you know,
Speaker 4: who are getting who may be relatively lonely, who may
Speaker 4: need help navigating whether it's how to sign up for
Speaker 4: health care or how to understand things that are happening.
Speaker 4: Like there's a lot of older people too who who
Speaker 4: are really harmed by the inability to communicate with their
Speaker 4: loved ones and they're jailed for a few months or
Speaker 4: for years anyway. So there's a lot of older people
Speaker 4: that showed up too, saying we have this right too.
Speaker 4: It's not just it's not just children, it's it's families
Speaker 4: really have the right to communicate with each other, and
Speaker 4: if you're gonna take away that right, you better have
Speaker 4: really good reasons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's wild too, Like I was just reading that
Speaker 1: one of the like one of the Platinum equity one
Speaker 1: of these private equity firms that is backing another one
Speaker 1: of these telecoms companies that deal with prisons eventive. It's
Speaker 1: like that guy who owns that who runs that firm,
Speaker 1: is the guy who owns the Detroit Pistons. And it's
Speaker 1: just wild to see, like how people in our society are, like,
Speaker 1: it's the it's the great owner of our beloved basketball
Speaker 1: team who's profiting off of this like heinous industry at
Speaker 1: the moment, it's really it's like dystopia. It's just like
Speaker 1: so yeah, and it's just so right in front of
Speaker 1: your face. Yeah yeah, And to the idea that it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to commodify the desire of families that their
Speaker 1: need to communicate with each other through this already already
Speaker 1: exploitative system that we've created to extract even more money
Speaker 1: from people.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break and we'll come back. We'll
Speaker 2: keep talking about this. We'll be right back, and we're back.
Speaker 1: So yeah, oh yeah, So I was just saying, so alec,
Speaker 1: I know, like there's only like a handful of states,
Speaker 1: right that have actually done away with this system where
Speaker 1: it's like, actually, no, we need we can't. This can't
Speaker 1: be a thing that people are profiting off of. Like
Speaker 1: I know, I think Minnesota was maybe one of the
Speaker 1: more recent states to say, like, we're doing away with
Speaker 1: this system. Is this is kind of I'm imagining that
Speaker 1: is sort of the at least that is the path
Speaker 1: towards progress, is for the states to like sort of
Speaker 1: outlaw this practice within their own prison systems.
Speaker 4: I think there are a few things at different levels.
Speaker 4: So first of all, people like that owner of the
Speaker 4: Detroit Pistons should not be profiting off of monetizing human contact.
Speaker 4: And it's been alarming, honestly to see the silence of
Speaker 4: the NBA and a lot of the players around this.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure how many of the players know about it,
Speaker 4: and that one of the goals here is is to
Speaker 4: you know, make sure that we're talking about these issues
Speaker 4: openly and that people should be talking about these issues
Speaker 4: so that we can make social decisions collectively about what
Speaker 4: kind of policies we want. And so I think to
Speaker 4: answer your question about what kind of policies we want,
Speaker 4: like you know, I think at different levels of generality,
Speaker 4: these policies could be Yes. Of course, companies shouldn't be
Speaker 4: profiting off of monopoly priced, exorbitant phone and video calls
Speaker 4: for people in jail in prison. So there are a
Speaker 4: lot of cities in particular around the country that are
Speaker 4: starting to make calls free. There are some state prison
Speaker 4: systems that are that are making calls free. There's an
Speaker 4: organization called Worth Rises that is leading a lot of
Speaker 4: that advocacy and they're really great. But at a deeper level,
Speaker 4: we have to be asking much more difficult questions about
Speaker 4: how did this system of incarceration get so big? Right?
Speaker 4: I mean, this country is putting black people in jail
Speaker 4: cells at six times the rate of South Africa at
Speaker 4: the height of apartheid. You know, we're jailing all people
Speaker 4: in the US like six times more than we did
Speaker 4: even just fifty years ago. And so when you do that,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of opportunity to make money, a lot
Speaker 4: of people's jobs start depending on it. And one of
Speaker 4: the consequences of this is that every single year, several
Speaker 4: million kids have a mom or a dad or a
Speaker 4: parent who are incarcerated. And as a society, we have
Speaker 4: not reckoned with the incredible effects that has in the short,
Speaker 4: medium and long term on trauma, on child development, on
Speaker 4: future crime, on future economic possibilities, etcetera, mental health. And
Speaker 4: so I think a deeper reform is asking much more
Speaker 4: profound questions like why are all these families being separated
Speaker 4: in the first place, Are there really good reasons that
Speaker 4: these parents are in jail, that these children are being jailed,
Speaker 4: that these families are being separated, or are there other
Speaker 4: ways that we can address underlying problems that actually don't
Speaker 4: involve family separation. So one of our goals with our
Speaker 4: case is not just eliminating the profit hearing and allowing
Speaker 4: free visits, et cetera, et cetera, but it's actually thinking
Speaker 4: about what kinds of government policies are better for families,
Speaker 4: are better for public health than mass incarceration, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, question we're still wrestling with. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Are we seeing any positive like progressive reforms to policing
Speaker 2: and criminal justice around the country that you feel kind
Speaker 2: of encouraged by? I know there were, you know, some
Speaker 2: initial ideas a Denver program that route nine to one
Speaker 2: one calls to an unarmed response team, like when the
Speaker 2: potential offense was not violent. Are you what are you
Speaker 2: hearing that is actually kind of giving you hope in
Speaker 2: terms of just reform to this horrific system.
Speaker 4: I don't want to sugarcoat it. We're at a pretty
Speaker 4: bleak time because both the Democratic Party and Republican Party
Speaker 4: have embraced this copaganda kind of fear mongering punishment is
Speaker 4: the answer to everything mantra, and so as a result,
Speaker 4: the environment for reform has become really poisoned. But I think,
Speaker 4: without being too pollyannish, I think there are some really
Speaker 4: incredible things happening that are very exciting to me. At
Speaker 4: least Number one, you have to understand the incarceration rate
Speaker 4: has gone down significantly in the last ten years. I
Speaker 4: think we're at a moment where there are a lot
Speaker 4: of people that want to start incarcerating more people again.
Speaker 4: But you know, the incarceration rate has gotten down at
Speaker 4: least ten percent overall, So that's a couple hundred thousand
Speaker 4: people that were imprisoned who are not now. There's been
Speaker 4: some really profound beneficial effects on poor families and black
Speaker 4: families because of that, and we can't, you know, we
Speaker 4: shouldn't gloss over that. Even though the rhetoric and the
Speaker 4: narrative is getting a lot worse, and the Democrats and
Speaker 4: President Biden are proposing one hundred thousand new police and
Speaker 4: massive increases in police surveillance and border patrol and the
Speaker 4: militarization of police, and things are getting relatively bleak. But
Speaker 4: the movement to reduce the size and power of punishment
Speaker 4: bureaucracy and the company's profiting off it over the last
Speaker 4: ten years has had some successes. Another success is we've
Speaker 4: seen in a number of places reforms to the cash
Speaker 4: bail system. There are you know, cities like Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: There are places like Californi, generally Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey,
Speaker 4: New York is a great example. Dramatic increases in pre
Speaker 4: trial release, reduction in the use of cash to determine
Speaker 4: who's incarcerated. And so we are seeing, like, you know,
Speaker 4: hundreds of thousands of people who would have been detained
Speaker 4: because they're poor every year in the United States who
Speaker 4: are now being released. And that's another thing to be
Speaker 4: really encouraged by.
Speaker 2: For people who aren't familiar with the cash bail system.
Speaker 2: I mean, the people are held because they don't have
Speaker 2: access to money like that, that's straight up. You are
Speaker 2: jailed because you're poor in a lot of places in
Speaker 2: the country. And there's been a pushback against that. That
Speaker 2: is it sounds like we're seeing some results.
Speaker 1: So that's great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's a lot of propaganda about it, right,
Speaker 4: So we know from this is one of the most
Speaker 4: rigorously studied areas in the criminal law. We know that
Speaker 4: releasing more people prior to trial actually reduces crime because
Speaker 4: when you jail people for even a few days or weeks,
Speaker 4: they lose their jobs, they interrupt their mental health medication,
Speaker 4: they sometimes lose their kids, they lose their housing, and
Speaker 4: so when you destabilize someone's life, you actually make them
Speaker 4: more likely to commit crime. So if you want to
Speaker 4: reduce crime, you actually need to be reducing the use
Speaker 4: of pre trial jailing. And so we're seeing that and
Speaker 4: in some of our cases. For example, our case challenging
Speaker 4: the misdemeanor money bail system in Houston, Texas has released
Speaker 4: over one hundred thousand people of the lasts for seven years.
Speaker 4: And researchers from around the country and Duke University, University
Speaker 4: of Houston, and other places are studying that University of
Speaker 4: Pennsylvania and what they're showing is remarkable. Not only has
Speaker 4: the county saved tens of millions of dollars and the
Speaker 4: economy has saved hundreds of millions of dollars, but crime
Speaker 4: is going down as a result of the decision to
Speaker 4: just stop jailing people in low level cases because they
Speaker 4: can't pay one hundred and two hundred bucks.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the thing that I feel like i've heard is
Speaker 2: catch and release these li role activists DA's are, you know,
Speaker 2: contributing to the a rise in crime. So that's great
Speaker 2: to hear. I just wish it was being more widely reported.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like climate SciTE denial. There's a whole industry
Speaker 4: for decades that was relatively successful, led by the petrochemical
Speaker 4: industry that so doubt over policies to reduce emissions, and
Speaker 4: we're seeing the same thing with the bail industry, and
Speaker 4: police and police unions and punishment bureaucrats generally, because if
Speaker 4: you dramatically reduce the people in incarcerated pre trial, you
Speaker 4: actually do something much more profound. You take away a
Speaker 4: lot of the leverage that the system has to get
Speaker 4: people to plead guilty, because most of the guilty pleas
Speaker 4: in this country are caused by people being incarcerated and
Speaker 4: just desperate to get out right, so they come to
Speaker 4: court and they're given a deal, like, if you plead
Speaker 4: guilty today, you won't investigate your case, you won't get
Speaker 4: a lawyer to fight it. You know, you won't you know,
Speaker 4: get a trial in front of jurors, but you will
Speaker 4: get out up today and you will owe us a fine.
Speaker 4: And this is how the system turns.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: But if you can get people out right away and
Speaker 4: they can fight their case, a lot of people don't
Speaker 4: want to plead guilty because it turns out that the
Speaker 4: police and prosecutors can't prove a large percentage of the
Speaker 4: cases that they bring, and so the people that actually
Speaker 4: fight their cases have pretty good results. We're seeing like
Speaker 4: if you look at Houston what used to be, you know,
Speaker 4: eighty four percent of people pleading guilty in the median
Speaker 4: of three days in misdemeanor cases. Now, in those same
Speaker 4: low level misdemeanor cases, only about a third of people
Speaker 4: are getting convicted after they're arrested because they're out and
Speaker 4: they can investigate their cases and it turns out like
Speaker 4: the cops didn't have strong evidence against them, or the
Speaker 4: prosecutor can't possibly prosecute all these cases. So I think
Speaker 4: it's just it's important to understand that there are kind
Speaker 4: of downstream consequences to things like whether we jail people
Speaker 4: pre trial or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. And I guess also, while we're talking about
Speaker 1: copaganda in that whole the media's role in that. I
Speaker 1: you had a really interesting thread, Like I said, we'll
Speaker 1: have to talk about the New York Times, which is
Speaker 1: one of your favorite topics on Twitter, and one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things to see you tweet about was Nicholas
Speaker 1: Christoph's really wacky column about immigration, where it's like it's
Speaker 1: okay when I did it, but now I'm thinking maybe
Speaker 1: not so much for other people. And like this is
Speaker 1: kind of on the heels of like you're seeing articles
Speaker 1: about like, yeah, democrats agree that something had to happen
Speaker 1: over at the border. But like, you know what, but
Speaker 1: the asylum thing maybe not a great not a great moment.
Speaker 1: This Nicholas christoph like column almost makes it feel like
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, liberal, it's okay if we're just a
Speaker 1: little bit racist this time, you know, like it's that's okay,
Speaker 1: Like have you I mean, like right now, I think
Speaker 1: it's become such a huge issue talking about immigration, especially
Speaker 1: with the election coming up in Biden. You know, whether
Speaker 1: he's moving to the right or just doing what any
Speaker 1: person in power does to maintain the status quo, that
Speaker 1: it completely a different debate or observation, But like, how
Speaker 1: do you see this conversation sort of moving given that
Speaker 1: you have people like you know, Christoff at the New
Speaker 1: York Times sort of writing this kind of nonsense that
Speaker 1: just sort of obscures like what the issues are and
Speaker 1: like maybe what America's actual role is in changing immigration
Speaker 1: and how to create a little bit more equity outside
Speaker 1: of our own borders.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think Christoff is obviously a very
Speaker 4: silly person, but I think it's important to you know,
Speaker 4: you can learn a lot by looking at what kinds
Speaker 4: of opinions appear in the New York Times. Because the
Speaker 4: role of the New York Times is to get educated, wealthy,
Speaker 4: generally liberal minded people who want to think of themselves
Speaker 4: as well informed and well meaning, to get them to
Speaker 4: support stuff that is extremely violent and contrary to their
Speaker 4: values and contrary to evidence a lot of the time,
Speaker 4: and unjustifiable really, And so there's sort of layers and
Speaker 4: layers of propaganda that The Times kind of spews that
Speaker 4: I try to dissect in helpful and practical ways on
Speaker 4: social media and obviously in the Copaganda book that I'm
Speaker 4: publishing in a few months. But I think just to
Speaker 4: start with christophin immigration, this is an area that has
Speaker 4: been widely studied. There's a really important study that came
Speaker 4: out last year from Oxford in the UK which showed
Speaker 4: that when liberal and center left political parties adopt the
Speaker 4: rhetoric and even the policies of the right wing on immigration,
Speaker 4: they actually lose votes, they become less popular, they do
Speaker 4: worse in elections. That's a really profound I think it
Speaker 4: rings true, obviously, but they've quantified and studied this, and
Speaker 4: you know, one of the things that this means is
Speaker 4: when you've got someone like Biden who who is adopting
Speaker 4: more and more outrageous kind of policies and immigration that
Speaker 4: are more and more indistinguishable with the far right is advocating.
Speaker 4: It's very disorienting and confusing for a lot of voters.
Speaker 4: And for voters who are persuaded by all of that,
Speaker 4: what the research shows is that they're gonna if they're
Speaker 4: persuaded by that and they like that, they're going to
Speaker 4: vote for the real thing, not the political party of
Speaker 4: the person who they think is approximating that thing. And
Speaker 4: also a lot of people who would be excited about
Speaker 4: in organizing for Biden lose the energy and the momentum
Speaker 4: to fight for him if he is trying to be
Speaker 4: a bad approximation of the far right. And so this
Speaker 4: general set of studies, which is not just studying the
Speaker 4: US but studies center left political parties across Europe, is
Speaker 4: a really important insight and I think it helps to
Speaker 4: explain why the Democrats have been so unsuccessful over the
Speaker 4: last couple of tamescades when they try to play into
Speaker 4: the underlying mythologies and narratives of the far right. So
Speaker 4: I think it's a really bad strategy for the Democrats.
Speaker 4: If you care about Democrats winning, it's a really bad
Speaker 4: strategy to sort of like validate the myths like immigrants
Speaker 4: are hurting our you know, depressing our wages and and
Speaker 4: costing us jobs and all these things.
Speaker 2: Christas say, right, yeah, they're actually good for the economy
Speaker 2: and less likely to commit crime than other people.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I digress.
Speaker 4: No, I mean, but like that's the thing, Like, by
Speaker 4: by adopting these policies like Christoph Biden others, they they validate.
Speaker 4: They make people think that these right wing talking points
Speaker 4: must be true or else why would these self professed
Speaker 4: liberals be doing this. And so it not only like
Speaker 4: makes it harder for people to get excited about voting
Speaker 4: for Biden and pushes people towards the right, but it
Speaker 4: also validates the underlying arguments the right wing is making
Speaker 4: in people's minds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this quote, in particular from your kind of thread
Speaker 2: on Christoph you said, for many liberals, the destruction wrought
Speaker 2: by global capitalism, it's an equality, it's starvation, it's ecological degradation,
Speaker 2: it's war, it's authoritarian corruption, et cetera, is taken as
Speaker 2: a given. Like that feels right, Like, it feels like
Speaker 2: a lot of the so called liberal perspectives that I
Speaker 2: hear on social media or in the mainstream media. They're
Speaker 2: basically conceding a lot of the shit that like far
Speaker 2: right people are saying. So like, how are you going
Speaker 2: to get any enthusiasm or energy behind your messaging when
Speaker 2: you're basically like, yeo, they what they're saying is basically right, though,
Speaker 2: like we just like are only pretending it's not. But like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, It's like I always talk about how
Speaker 2: they they treat idealism and progressivism as childish essentially, like
Speaker 2: it feels like their overall strategy.
Speaker 4: I think one of the most powerful forms of propaganda
Speaker 4: is the type of propaganda that makes us feel like
Speaker 4: a better world is not possible, right, And that's when
Speaker 4: when you when you can achieve hopelessness in a population,
Speaker 4: you can do a lot of things to them. And
Speaker 4: so the theme underlying a lot of what Christoph has
Speaker 4: been writing recently, which you know, unfortunately now people send
Speaker 4: me because I've written these threats, so I've got to
Speaker 4: read a lot of this.
Speaker 1: Christ just dropped, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: And you know, it's like watching a small child emerge
Speaker 4: from the wilderness having ever been you know, or having
Speaker 4: been raised by right wing wolves. He he's just sort
Speaker 4: of regurgitating random quotations and lines that don't make any sense.
Speaker 4: And and and I think the core of it all
Speaker 4: is like the world is really messed up. Global warming
Speaker 4: is happening, all these other countries have these problems. We're
Speaker 4: going to omit the part about how, you know, the
Speaker 4: role the United States is playing and creating those problems.
Speaker 4: But we're not going to even talk about, like what
Speaker 4: might a different set of policies be to reduce global inequality,
Speaker 4: to reduce global violence, to reduce global starvation, to improve
Speaker 4: the environmental sustainability in other parts of the world. We're
Speaker 4: don't even talk about any of those things. What we're
Speaker 4: going to do is we're going to build walls and
Speaker 4: we're going to protect our castle and everyone who made
Speaker 4: it in before you know, November seventeenth, you know, two
Speaker 4: thousand and eight, or you know March twenty seventh, you know,
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety four. Depending on how how right wing you are,
Speaker 4: you have different ideas of like what counts as a
Speaker 4: pure American or what state? Yeah exactly, yeah, you see,
Speaker 4: now India has and this is not just the United States, right,
Speaker 4: the sort of right wing fascist ruling party in India
Speaker 4: has a new set of laws that unless if you're Muslim,
Speaker 4: unless you you entered India in this sitey of documents
Speaker 4: showing that you entered prior to a particular day in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy one, then you're no longer considered Indian citizen.
Speaker 4: You're subject to mass detention and deportation, even if you
Speaker 4: and your parents are all born in India. The United
Speaker 4: States is doing something similar, and the idea is, you know,
Speaker 4: we have to close off our borders rather than work
Speaker 4: together with other people in the world to make the
Speaker 4: whole world better. And inherent in this is a deep
Speaker 4: form of not just racism and jingoism, but a really
Speaker 4: powerful conception that conservatives have as a center of the worldview,
Speaker 4: and a lot of liberals don't want to acknowledge it
Speaker 4: as being very central to their own view as well,
Speaker 4: but this idea that some people's lives are worth more
Speaker 4: than others, and that is at the core of US
Speaker 4: foreign policy, and anybody who talks about things like open orders,
Speaker 4: who talks about things like, you know, addressing the problems
Speaker 4: of the world holistically, for impoverished people and vulnerable people,
Speaker 4: for animals and plants the world over, and those people
Speaker 4: are are ridiculed and pillary does sort of naive dreamers
Speaker 4: and impractical people. And I think what Christoph is doing
Speaker 4: here is he's giving a lot of liberal people permission
Speaker 4: to think and believe those things because someone else who
Speaker 4: says they're liberal is saying them right, right. It's more
Speaker 4: appetizing when Christoph uses these words in the New York Times,
Speaker 4: and it is when Trump says something like lock them up,
Speaker 4: build the wall, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like kind of the difference like when Trump's
Speaker 1: in office, like the New York Times is like racists
Speaker 1: are people too, and then like when Biden's office, When
Speaker 1: Biden's in office, the New York Times like, look, it's
Speaker 1: okay if we're just a little racist as a tree,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Because it's always at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, Yeah, it's just about sort of
Speaker 1: maintaining that sort of status quo. And I think because
Speaker 1: like American imperialism is sort of like at the top
Speaker 1: of that, like why why bother to examine what the
Speaker 1: actions are of the United States as it relates to
Speaker 1: like immigration. And I always think, like being someone who
Speaker 1: grew up in la and like all the handring about
Speaker 1: like MS thirteen. I'm like, have you gone back a
Speaker 1: little bit to understand where like why we have MS thirteen.
Speaker 1: It's because of the US government's intervention and backing, like
Speaker 1: right wing groups in El Salvador during their civil war.
Speaker 1: Yet we just want to treat it like as this
Speaker 1: thing in a vacuum, like, oh my god, these people
Speaker 1: are coming to our borders who we initially deported to
Speaker 1: then create the gang there. But yeah, there's just this
Speaker 1: always not wanting to sort of look at again like
Speaker 1: what the real solutions might be because they always involve
Speaker 1: dismantling these power structures that again the people and medium
Speaker 1: power are meant to uphold. So yeah, it can be
Speaker 1: very frustrating.
Speaker 2: Well, like I know we're losing you now. I feel
Speaker 2: like we could talk to you for three hours, but
Speaker 2: where can people find you? Follow you? Here? More from you.
Speaker 4: I'm on Twitter at quality ALEC. Who knows how much
Speaker 4: longer I'll be there, So I do have a newsletter
Speaker 4: called Alex Kopaganda Newsletter. And of course our organization is
Speaker 4: really amazing. There's over thirty people at the organization doing
Speaker 4: incredible civil rights work. It's called Civil Rights Core Corps
Speaker 4: and you can find Civil Rights Core on all the
Speaker 4: major social media places. You can find us on our
Speaker 4: website civil rights core dot org. And then at the
Speaker 4: beginning of next year, I'll be out all the new
Speaker 4: book called Copaganda, which talks about all this stuff and
Speaker 4: much more detail. Will probably have some kind of a
Speaker 4: book tour people can come to in different cities and
Speaker 4: just deepen the conversation that we have about how the
Speaker 4: media talks about things like safety and crime and justice.
Speaker 4: And I'm looking forward to talking with people all over
Speaker 4: about these important issues because we're entering a period of
Speaker 4: rising authoritarian and this stuff is more important than ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Well, thank you for doing the work that
Speaker 2: you're doing, and thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2: And yeah, would love to have you back again as
Speaker 2: soon as you have some free time. We are miles
Speaker 2: and I are going to take a quick break and
Speaker 2: then we'll come back to close it out.
Speaker 5: We'll be right back and we're back.
Speaker 2: And yeah, wow, Alec carrit cat sanis Yeah, always super enlightening. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that had a bunch of other things we wanted to
Speaker 2: get to that we didn't have time to, but yeah,
Speaker 2: just that that image of the inside of jails right now,
Speaker 2: where like you get your iPad and you get your
Speaker 2: like little media device and then they're just like gouging
Speaker 2: you for yeah paid.
Speaker 1: I mean it'll be stuff like, oh, you want to
Speaker 1: listen to us, that's like two dollars and thirty cents, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to listen to one song. You know, it's just again,
Speaker 1: but it's also wild how how often we observe these
Speaker 1: like again, like all of these things we observe and
Speaker 1: these like these systems of oppression, they always eventually come
Speaker 1: for us. And even in this version about like nickel
Speaker 1: and diming prisoners for every part of their existence, like
Speaker 1: you see, just bleed into other parts other industries where
Speaker 1: we thought certain things were just like a given to us,
Speaker 1: right where it's like you know, you know, like the
Speaker 1: shitty version is like you know, an air travel where
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, yeah, you're back, we have to charge
Speaker 1: you for your backpack now, right. It's like fuck, I
Speaker 1: thought that's part of like the whole thing. But again,
Speaker 1: they found a way to sort of break down and
Speaker 1: you know, find all these smaller opportunities to take more
Speaker 1: and more money from people. And of course they're going
Speaker 1: to start with the most vulnerable groups first, that being
Speaker 1: people that are incarcerated. So yeah, it's that's sort of
Speaker 1: the pattern like continues to repeat all the time. And
Speaker 1: just like yeah, that that that Nicholas Crystal thing is
Speaker 1: just so wild too, because like the whole the whole
Speaker 1: take of that too is sort of like, well I benefited.
Speaker 3: He's like, I wouldn't be here if a family didn't.
Speaker 3: You know, what's the word I'm looking for, Not endorsed,
Speaker 3: but like sort of support like our bid to immigrate here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like but it's like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I can say that system still works as well, but that's.
Speaker 2: Me and I am better somehow for some reason.
Speaker 1: And I'm from Europe. See my family was from Europe.
Speaker 1: And if you notice what we're doing, it's mostly people
Speaker 1: coming from the Global South, and that's the group that
Speaker 1: we It's okay if we are even more discriminate, discriminatory
Speaker 1: towards but yeah, I mean the New York Times, going
Speaker 1: to New York Times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is nice to hear some like slightly positive
Speaker 2: news about following incarceration rates and you know, so some
Speaker 2: of the things where we're actually making progress on cash
Speaker 2: bail and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: YEA, well, and I think his point is I think
Speaker 1: it was taken well at least for me, like to
Speaker 1: look at it. How there is still there's an entire
Speaker 1: alternate media universe built on climate change denial that the
Speaker 1: same thing would exist for anything about you know, whether
Speaker 1: whether or not we can improve the sort of human
Speaker 1: caging system we have now or at least obscure any
Speaker 1: progress that's been made that would sort of create additional
Speaker 1: momentum to truly have a reckoning with our caarcial system.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it just takes so much more momentum to
Speaker 2: have a reckoning than it does to like all the
Speaker 2: exploitative capitalistic things that is driving shareholder value aka making
Speaker 2: wealthy people more wealthy. That stuff is the stuff that
Speaker 2: has the momentum, and even if you kill it, it
Speaker 2: will pop back up. Like Jason Boorhies, you know, that's
Speaker 2: the stuff you have to like keep your eye on
Speaker 2: to make sure it's dead. Like and whereas like good
Speaker 2: ideas require similarly constant vigilance just to keep alive in
Speaker 2: this country at least at this point. But with people
Speaker 2: like him, you know, out there, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 2: maybe one day there'll be some changes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's that. Like in that I was reading an
Speaker 1: article about the the you know, the telecoms private equity thing,
Speaker 1: and one of these people from this guy Paul Wright,
Speaker 1: who's from the Human Rights Defense Center, like to your point,
Speaker 1: he describes it about like even when you try and
Speaker 1: address these things, he said, quote, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: stepping on a balloon. You squeeze it down in one
Speaker 1: place and it just bulges up somewhere else. And that's
Speaker 1: the problem we've got with these companies.
Speaker 2: Problem or solution. It sounds like private equity is making cheddar.
Speaker 2: That's what's cool. No, it sounds private equity. Uh yeah,
Speaker 2: that might be bad.
Speaker 1: We'll see.
Speaker 2: We'll continue to keep an eye on it.
Speaker 1: Who's going to be like the first like celeb private
Speaker 1: equity apologist the first.
Speaker 2: I'm sure like a lot of companies that are.
Speaker 1: But I mean in this sense to try and get
Speaker 1: in front of it, Like it's like, well, allow me
Speaker 1: to explain why they're charging money. You're like, what the
Speaker 1: for real?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I do. I do feel like private equity knows
Speaker 2: that they're bad guys, which is why like part, like
Speaker 2: a major part of the strategy is to be hidden
Speaker 2: behind like fourteen shell companies, you know, yeah, and so
Speaker 2: they're just like, yeah, nothing to see here. We did
Speaker 2: get this endorsement from the spaceman Kevin Spacey, but we
Speaker 2: think we're gonna keep our powder dry on this one.
Speaker 3: Actually yeah, but yeah, I mean it did feel like
Speaker 3: that thing because even when like the Walt, like the
Speaker 3: sometimes in like those Red Lobster articles or other articles.
Speaker 1: Like you started to see like CNB seeming like and
Speaker 1: that's a problem with some of these private equity companies
Speaker 1: like oh, oh, oh, well, we're going to be a
Speaker 1: sacrificial lamb, so we can then wash our hands and
Speaker 1: be like we got rid of the bad apple, the
Speaker 1: tree remains.
Speaker 2: That's right, the Red Lobster for listeners who haven't listened
Speaker 2: to every single epis So it was undone by, among
Speaker 2: other things, but mainly private equity, private equity, Samuel's, j
Speaker 2: CRWE Toys, r us KB Toys. Many brands that you
Speaker 2: friendlies suddenly went bankrupt after being you know, five years
Speaker 2: before being incredibly successful, and household names suddenly go bankrupt.
Speaker 2: Look and see if they got taken over by private equity,
Speaker 2: which is essentially an industry of parasitic companies that come
Speaker 2: in charge the company just just find ways to extract
Speaker 2: money from consumers, from employers, from the companies they take over.
Speaker 2: And then when the companies go bankrupt, they're still like
Speaker 2: it's still.
Speaker 1: Good for them. They still do great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So anyways, I guess I guess that's it. Miles.
Speaker 2: Where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff?
Speaker 2: And is there a work of media that you've been enjoying?
Speaker 1: Find me at Miles of Gray on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: Find you there, thank you, thank you. And you can
Speaker 1: also find Jack and I on the basketball Podcastles and Boostis.
Speaker 3: You can find me talking ninety day fiance on for
Speaker 3: twenty Day Fiance a tweet. I haven't really been looking
Speaker 3: at the tweets. I was just mostly her majesty and
Speaker 3: I were just finishing Bridgerton.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, how do we do?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, it's all right. You know, like there are
Speaker 1: a lot of times I remember the first couple of like,
Speaker 1: oh maybe this could be a storyline, this could be
Speaker 1: but it's it's always just very straightforward, like you know,
Speaker 1: period era romance. So yeah, if you're a Bridgerton fan,
Speaker 1: might as well complete it. You might as well complete it.
Speaker 1: There you go. But oh, man, but cresta woof fucking Cresteda. Man,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know how I feel. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I feel bad for her. I feel like
Speaker 1: she should have really got it worse.
Speaker 2: But hey, yeah, man, I'm still trying to make up
Speaker 2: my mind.
Speaker 1: But cresseda kawper Man, Yeah, victim or or a villain?
Speaker 1: I think most pressed that name. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore Obrian
Speaker 2: A couple of things I've been enjoying on Twitter. Have
Speaker 2: you seen this video of Elon Musk emerging? I think
Speaker 2: wu tang is for the children retweeted it, what what
Speaker 2: are you emerging emerging from a chrystalist? No, just emerging
Speaker 2: at it like being announced and then he comes out
Speaker 2: and like it's trying to like, uh I I'll link
Speaker 2: off to it in the footnotes. It is Jane at
Speaker 2: Jane ost Underscore tweeted he's being called the most juiceless
Speaker 2: man on earth and it is a wildly earned description
Speaker 2: of what we're saying. Wait, let me see this now.
Speaker 2: I got to see it.
Speaker 1: We can't.
Speaker 6: I don't, I can't leave it, hang it, send it
Speaker 6: where put it. So he emerges, Oh, ship miles away yourself?
Speaker 1: What was that? Flying jump? Jack? Just what is this?
Speaker 7: He's a marionette? Yeah, he's like doing a weird marionette thing.
Speaker 7: Oh my god, we're fucked. I can't do it that truly,
Speaker 7: it's so disturbing. Y'all have to watch it for yourselves.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he like comes out he does like a
Speaker 2: flying jumping like jump what.
Speaker 1: Do you call that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he doesn't jumping jack flash exactly. His shirt lifts
Speaker 2: up over his belly. Then he lands and like does
Speaker 2: a sort of like.
Speaker 1: I got no string still whole. That's like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: kind of he's doing like a weird puppet rogue puppet dance?
Speaker 1: Is that because he just got his money? Is that
Speaker 1: what that?
Speaker 2: I think? I think this is older than that, But
Speaker 2: I actually, wow, maybe not, maybe maybe it is. Well,
Speaker 2: maybe he just got his money and he's that is
Speaker 2: how he's going to touchdown dance on all of their graves.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, someone someone put someone, But he's doing an
Speaker 1: X with his body still up. Self righteous dumb ass.
Speaker 2: In response to the person making fun of him. Wow,
Speaker 2: keep it, okay, that's cool.
Speaker 1: Wow, Well he should work on a mobility man, It's
Speaker 1: all about mobility. I think you could have got those
Speaker 1: heels further apart, but hey, who am?
Speaker 2: I and Harry Hill tweeted a picture of Welsh's grape
Speaker 2: Juice like an old Welsh's grape Juice commercial next to
Speaker 2: the new Welch's vodka transfusion drinks, and they said the
Speaker 2: Welsh's grape Juice to Welsh's vodka transfusion pipeline is insane,
Speaker 2: and Puck at puck Meat tweeted, pivoting from grape juice
Speaker 2: to alcohol is actually the most sane pipeline. It literally
Speaker 2: happens on its own.
Speaker 1: Good point. I don't know if I like vodka transfusion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know why it needs to be transfused.
Speaker 2: I don't know why we need like a medical procedure
Speaker 2: to happen. You could just call it vodka.
Speaker 1: Wait, isn't Isn't that like mostly a medical term? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just trying to be cool like about that, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Yeah, I'm like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a vodka transfusion. I'm like, I don't know, dude, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking blood transfusions.
Speaker 2: Plus, man, I just got a nice transfuse from my
Speaker 2: drinking Yello transfusion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jesus Woway.
Speaker 2: You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore. Brian
Speaker 2: you can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist, at
Speaker 2: the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have Facebook fan page
Speaker 2: and a website, Daily zegis dot com where we post
Speaker 2: our episodes and our footnotes where we look off to
Speaker 2: the information that we talked about in today's episode, The
Speaker 2: Most Cursed Celebration You've Ever Seen by Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: We will off so be linking off.
Speaker 2: To that as well as a song that we think
Speaker 2: you might enjoy. Myles, what song do you think people
Speaker 2: might enjoy?
Speaker 1: There's an artist, Jessica Pratt who's a fantastic singer songwriter.
Speaker 1: I like, I remember really with her first album, like
Speaker 1: maybe this was like in twenty twelve, and then I
Speaker 1: kind of like would hear about her here and there?
Speaker 1: But then Brian the producer was like, Yo, have you
Speaker 1: heard the new Jessica Pratt album? And I've peeped it.
Speaker 1: She's doing like something. I don't know her. This album,
Speaker 1: as he describes it, which is a good description, it's
Speaker 1: like feels like like tracks Nancy Sinatra would have made
Speaker 1: in her heyday but just didn't. And it has that
Speaker 1: sort of style of production and her like she has
Speaker 1: just such an interesting voice in the way she uses
Speaker 1: it is really dope. So this is a track from
Speaker 1: her new album which is called Here in the Pitch.
Speaker 1: This track is called better Hate and this one is
Speaker 1: by Jessica Pratt.
Speaker 2: All right, we will link off to that in the footnotes.
Speaker 2: The daily guys to the production of iHeart Radio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio is the iHeartRadio Wrap
Speaker 2: Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2: That is gonna do it for us this morning. We're
Speaker 2: back this afternoon though, to tell you what is trending,
Speaker 2: and we will talk to you all then. Bye bye