2/17/23 Weekly Roundup: CNN Courts Charles Barkley, Plane Dive Disaster, Elon Twitter Boosts His Posts, Sanders vs Moderna, Chicago UBI

dot com CNN is flailing. They got to figure it out. The lowest ratings ever in modern history. So what do they do? First? They have Bill Maher reruns I guess for overtime that they're going to play Already, by the way, Bill Maher already broke the rules by cursing, and he was like, sorry, CNN, Well now they've got a new idea. Let's put this up there on the screen. They are looking to hire Charles Barkley to come on CNN, and as much as I want to make fun of it,

I got to say it's not a terrible idea. Charles is a compelling guy. He is fun to watch. The only question is what does he belong? Why? Would he belong on a news program for any reason whatsoever? Like, are they just going full you know, I guess with the comedian thing, even with Bill, I mean Bill has been involved in public public affairs and events, political stuff for basically his entire life. I mean, Charles is a sports commentator, a very former, very successful professional athlete, pop

culture figure in his own right. But does he really have something that he wants to say five nights a week on CNN. Frankie would also be a demotion for him because far more people probably watch his NBA broadcast. Yeah, ever watch CNN? Yeah, I mean, Charles Barkley is hilarious. If they did actually secure a primetime news show with Charles Barkley, I would probably watch it. Yes, I actually don't think it's a terrible idea in terms of audience interest.

Do I think there's any chance in hell that he would do this? No way, maybe he might though he's good on the camera. I mean, yeah, he already looked. He already has a great gig where he makes millions. Apparently they tried to lure him to be a commentator for Live Golf. I mean it was like no, So, I mean I forgot the Charles loves golf. He's got a sweet gig where he's at. So I don't see this. I don't see this one happening, but you know, as one of the better ideas they put out there, just

in terms of sheer like entertainment value. Not that I think that he'd have like, I think he'd have good sort of like every man takes on politics, which is kind of what he's to the extent he's waited into politics in the past. That's kind of the vibe he's given up. Well, that's where you reminded me of this clip that we covered, which a lot of people were really interested in at the time. Charles sounding off on politics. Let's take a listen. I think most white people and

black people are great people. I really believe that in my heart. But I think our system is set up where our politicians, whether they are Republicans or Democrats, are designed to make us not like each other so they can keep their grasp of money and power. They divide

and conquer. I truly believe in my heart most white people and black people are awesome people, but we're so stupid following our politicians, whether they are Republicans or Democrats and their only job is, Hey, let's make these people not like each other. We don't live in their neighborhoods. We all got money. Let's make the whites and blacks not light like each other. Let's make rich people and poor people not like each other. Let's let's scramble to

middle class. I truly believe that in my heart, Well said, Ben true. What can I say? You know, I mean, I should take this back. He has been political at some point. I remember. I think he said he wanted to run for the governor of Alabama and he had like he had to establish residency. I believe he identified as a Republican. I don't know if this identified at the time he was. He called himself a Republican, and I know he had some political aspirations at the time.

This was talked about, you know, years and years ago. He hasn't talked about it in a long time, but hey, maybe he should. Here we got at it. Charles Barkley on running for Alabama government. He says he no longer has any interest, but that implies that he did. At one point. He said Democrats and Republicans are both full of crap. So I think that's a sentiment that would capture the hearts and minds of the majority of American people. At this point, he says, they do nothing for actual people.

The Democrats and Republicans are both full of crap. You see now with this pandemic, they aren't doing anything for these people. So anyway, he says, I've been a Democrat all my life. I just realized now they've done an awful job taking care of poor people. They make the same boasts every four years, come to the black community and say they're going to make things better, but they don't really make things better. I'm still a Democrat, but

I don't fall for stupidity. So anyway, would be interesting and be fun to watch. If it happens, We'll see, guys, another horrifying, nearly catastrophic airplane disaster that is just now coming to light. Gun and put this up on the screen. This is terrifying. The headline here from the Daily Mail is every passenger's worst nightmare. United Airlines flight from Hawaii I Eat to San Francisco nose dived fourteen hundred feet during epic storm, came within seven hundred and seventy five

feet of the Pacific and terrifying forty five second ordeal. Insanely, this had not come out because this happened a little while ago, and actually I think happened on the same day that Sagar there had been that other flight where there was massive turbulence and a number of passengers were injured fairly seriously, and so the thinking here is this had to do also with the stormy conditions that were

prevailing that day. The other thing that's crazy is after it landed in San Francisco, they like inspected the plane and then it flew again with that I think the same grow and whatever. So that's kind of crazy as well. It's also wild that we're only now learning about it. Nobody tweeted about it or had a video of it

or whatever. But the details here are terrifying. They say that the gravitational forces, like the g forces that they were facing, were extremely so they say it was in between radio calls with the air traffic controllers and Malley throughout the forty five second dive, the climb produced forces of nearly two point seven times the force of gravity on the aircraft and its oucumants that's used to describe the acceleration of an object relative to Earth's gravity, and

upwards acceleration of about five g's is enough to overwhelm the ability of your heart to pump blood to your brain. Causes oxygen starvation. You'll black out within a few seconds. But a downward or negative G force of the type that you would get in like this nose dive is even worse. The blood pools in your head, your face swells up, your lower eyelids are forced over your eyes. This is called redoubt because all you see is the

light shining through your eyelid lids. At negative three G, the blood can't get back to your loves to reoxygen eight, so you pass out. So this is a crazy situation. They came within seven hundred feet of smashing into crashing into the ocean, which obviously would have been probably killed everybody on a ward. And it also comes on the heels of we've had a number of these near misses or actual catastrophes in the past number of days and weeks.

You have planes that are almost running into other planes on takeoff. You had a plane actually hit a passenger bus that was there on the tarmac. So I don't know what's going on. Soccer I don't know either. I mean, it's pretty scary. You know, they were only at two two hundred feet before they dove, and they say it was at eighty six hundred feet per minute, which is terrifying.

And yeah, I mean the aviation industry. Actually, what concerns me is that the flight then lands in San Francisco and then it takes off two hours later, and United said that they had closely coordinated with the FAA and inspected the plane, you know, right before takeoff. I don't know, man, I'm not you know, I don't know if I would want to go and find if you even known that

had just happened. No, And look, the other actually even scarier thing is that there was nothing wrong with the plane and it was pilot error, which is even more terrifying, right, which you know I've read. I have a weird fascination with plane crashes, studied a lot on that Air France crash that people will remember that that one was nuts because it was also in bad weather and it was pure pilot error where they crashed right into the ocean.

I think it was like a Brazil to Paris flight, one hundred percent pilot error and it's one that people study a lot in terms of getting dragged away from your sensors or fixating too much on some things. And yeah, I don't know. I mean from reading on this, the fact is is that if the plane did take off and it was cleared from a safety inspection, then that's even scarier because that means that there was a human situation involved. And I just want to know what's going

on with those pilots right now today. Yeah, well, so you had the you have this, which seven hundred feet in the ocean is not a lot of feet, guys. I mean this was a close close call. You had the near miss at JFK of two planes almost colliding. You had near miss at Austin actually the very day that we were flying out Awsome that morning, but no it us I flew off and I took off an hour later. Yeah, there was a near miss. Go ahead

and throw out this this graphic. You could see. This is what the flight trajectory of this one with the nosedive looked like. Where they came within eight hundred feet, so steep, steep descent rate and then a steep after that climb rate and coming within seven hundred and seventy five feet of the ocean. They talked to an aviation expert, a pilot by the name of Juan Brown. He said, these sorts of incidents are increasing at an alarming rate.

He talks about there's a huge turnover in the industry, not only among pilots, but also amongst air traffic controllers, mechanics, mats. I don't know what that is, rampers, and with the state of hiring practices and training today, in the relentless effort to do things faster, cheaper, and more efficiently, we're just one radio call away from having the biggest aviation disaster in history. And apparently both the JFK and the Austin incidents experts have said directions that were issued by

air traffic controllers appear to have been an issue. So you've got pilot issues here, you've got air traffic control issues, and you have the overlying element of like you know, corporate greed, probably push people too hard, and massive industry turnovers. So scary, scary, scary situation. It certainly is some major news out of Twitter, not actually major, just more amusing.

Let's get this up there on the screen. Apparently Elon Musk has designed a special system, according to Twitter insiders, that will actually boost his tweets first, after Joe Biden's Super Bowl post got more engagement than his. This comes after some reported discontent by Elon from inside the company, who was worrying about why his impressions had gone down after an engineer actually told him that it was because

organic interest in Elon sweets went down. He fired one of the engineers who told him that, and has created now a special system. So, I mean, I don't know, Chris Well, I guess we could all sympathize with If you're going to own a platform, you might as well boost your own message, right if I owned you too. If I owned you too, would sweet to us. I would definitely boost breaking points friends over here. I guess

I have some sympathy with that. But I think it just does show you, you know, some of the more capriciousness that continues, because I mean, even the whole way that this went down. At two thirty six on Monday morning, James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers, we are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform. This is the cousin of Elon. He says, any people who can make dashboards and write software police helps oflf thise

problems higher urgency bleary eyed engineers. If we log onto their laptops, the emergency becomes clear. Elon's tweet about Super Bowl got less engagement than Biden's, so in the wake of these losses, the CFO actually got people who are inside of the company to boost and change the Twitter algorithm to boost more of his tweets and include them on the for you page for everyone. So I personally just find it very amusing. It is, I mean, the

whole thing is amusing. The first piece that broke was like how upset he was that his tweets weren't getting as much engagement, and he thought like, oh, there must be a problem very deep in the algorithm. That's like

suppressing my tweets. And when an engineer broke it to him, that just looked You're just not as hot as you used to be, which is normal, and that like there was a whole whole news cycle Elon newscycle where people were hanging on as every word and all kinds of news stories were written about every little thing that he

uttered on Twitter, like Okay, that moment has passed. That is a natural ebb and flow, But I mean outrageously he fires the engineer who told him the truth, which is no way ready to run any place, and you just end up surrounded by a bunch of yes men who are going to tell you whatever you want to hear. That's number one, But number two, I mean it is kind of hilarious that he then made it a top priority for them to rig the algorithms promote his stuff

at two in the morning. Yes, that's also a crisis for me. Listen, if you weren't presenting your leadership of Twitter as like some free speech you know, beacon of free speech and free speech safe art. Because using the algorithm to rig the results and promote certain people over other people, it's consistent with what he said about freedom of speech, not freedom of reach. But it is equally as gamed and manipulated as active like censorship and active

banning and blocking. In some way, it's more nefarious because it's harder. There's no transparency around it, Like you can tell if you've been kicked off the platform, and you can say something about it, and you can try to call awareness to it, but there's no way to know who's being pumped and who's being suppressed, and everybody ends up just with their own little like conspiracy theories about

what exactly is going on with the algorithm. So the best way to handle this would be to have it go back to being a neutral platform where it's just like here's your timeline and the tweets come up in order, or at the very least, which I think is something. Didn't he saga promise that there will be transparency around the way the algorithm word, at the very least, have it really clear and public how these things are ultimately operating. But those are not promises that he has followed. Yeah,

follow through on today, I certainly hope. So all right, all right, Marpy yell later. So we got an interesting little lesson, I would say, in the art and impact of actual governance. Let's just go ahead and put this up on the screen. So Bernie Sanders threatened to have the CEO of Maderna forced to come and testify. Bernie is now chair of the Health Labor Pension Education Labor Pension Committee, and so as part of his chairmanship, he has been calling a number of corporate CEOs on the

carpet and calling them to come testify. Well, lo and behold. Just after he does this, Maderna is now saying, oh, we're going to keep our COVID vaccine free after all. Previously they said they were going to jack up the price by four hundred percent. Let's go and put this up on the screen what they were saying previously. Maderna may raise COVID nineteen vaccine prices up to one hundred and thirty dollars. That is roughly four hundred percent increase.

Bernie Sanders calls it outrageous and zaccher. This is something we've been talking about for a while. One of the greatest powers of the Senate chairmanships of the President of the United States is the power of a good public shaming. You know, when these corporations, as they continue to do jack up prices and contribute to inflation and give themselves and their shareholders these big bonuses and pay them out

and screw over their workers. One thing that you can do outside of regulation is force them, subpoena them and force them to come and faced questions. They don't want to do that, and so oftentimes just the threat of any sort of like public accountability and shaming can force some sort of action on them. We saw this when Joe Biden very briefly, remember when he went after the

meat packers for jacking up prices. He made comments about it, issued a White House statement about it, and lo and behold, right after that, meat prices went down a bit. Just this power to call CEOs on the corporate on the carpet and force them to answer for their crimes and their outrageous behavior sometimes can be as powerful as anything else. Yeah. To the thing I have never understood on this is like who is still taking the COVID vaccine? Like who

do you even charge for it? Is it the government? Like in terms of keeping it freeze like future boosters because they're already free as I understand it, That was one part where I'm not entirely clear on, like why this is even a skin Well, I think wants it at this point If you're not going to take it,

you're clearly not going to take it. Yeah, Well, I think the government funding for this for to continue to be free is about to run out, and so they were going to be charging either health insurance or individuals this like outrageously jacked up price. So okay, Yeah, So

It's a perfect example though. I mean, it's just insane greed from these companies who have already made so much money off of these vaccines guaranteed backstop by the US government, off of research that we developed, off of a process and operation warp Speed, which was a great success under President Trump. I mean, the way they moved heaven a nerd to get these things developed and out to the public.

But you know a lot of government resources went into this, and they just want to continue to try to milk this thing for everything it's worth. Yeah, I mean, really what needs to be done is that they shouldn't even have patent or any of this stuff on it, and a lot of it should be much more open to absolutely research and all of that. That's the biggest problem, yes, I have with this. Okay, all right, we'll keep it free for everybody who wants it. I don't really know

he's still taking it, but go for it. Yeah. Well, you know, Bernie has also I know he wants Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to testify because Starbucks has been engaged in this just like utterly lawless behavior with regards to union busting, with the grassroots union drive that has swept across the country at Starbucks stores, and you know, those sorts of things that they can be very they can be a very powerful tool. And I'm certainly looking forward to see some of these people have to answer for

what they've been up to. Definitely, all right, y'all, more for you guys later. The New York Times this week dug into a universal basic income program playing out outside of Chicago, in which they're giving five hundred dollars a month to residents to test what that does for economic security, for satisfaction, for quality of life, et cetera. Shockingly, they're

finding people like it. Emily, what is your general take on on UBI and how is there a faction of the right that is, like, you know what, maybe there, I mean, maybe there is a place for this. It has its origins as as I'm sure you know, kind of in the kind of Alan Greenspan world so it or Milton Friedman, you know, as there was this kind of libertarian right that believed if you give everybody a very basic level of income, that that would allow a

lot more human flourishing. But where is that now when it comes to the right. Yeah, you know, a great example or a great illustration of the arc is when Senator Romney introduced the Child Allowance Bill that was basically cash payments to the extent that I mean, there were very very generous cash payments to parents from the womb all the way up to eighteen years of age, depending on your number of children, and that immediately got sort of yanked. It was criticized by Marco Rubio tech Cruz

and others because it didn't have a work requirement. So Mitt Romney reintroduced something that had a ten thousand dollars annual work requirement. And so I think the right, even the New Right, you know, as illustrated by the arc of the Romney Bill, is very wary of anything that doesn't include a work requirement or that doesn't sort of and I know there are ways to do ubi that might get around that job training and other things like that.

But I'm really curious about these experiments because they're happening all over the country. I think there's one happening in Arlington or Alexandria. Right outside of DC. There are cities municipalities that are experimenting with this, and I am genuinely curious about the results. Although I also think they suffer from a problem that over the COVID period when there was a very generous cash allowance for parents as well, that we talked about a couple of times, Ryan that

found it. It It basically immediately alleviated chob poverty. It had a huge fact on quality of life, Like right out of the gate. I get worried about sort of not being able to measure possible long term ramifications of that in the way that you and I would probably disagree over some great society programs. It sort of did well and then or seemed like they were doing well, and then over time we've had maybe a different perspective on them. So that's one of these are some of the limitations

I see when looking at these experiments. But I mean, I'm completely open minded to the results. And I started out saying outside of Chicago. For some stupid reason, it's it's in Chicago. I don't know, I don't know why I said that. I wanted to read one one quote quote from this guy, Christopher Ellington from the New York Times story. He said, talk about shock, and this goes to one of the things you were saying. It was like he said, it was, Hey, the government is doing this.

Wait a minute, I don't have to you know, report this and report that. You don't have to go through all of my business, and I don't have to watch what I say. I was like, this is how it

should be. And so it does go back to this thing where people people are now just a tuned or accustomed to the fact that if they're going to get anything from the government, which our government, the thing that we all kick into and which is which is ours democratically, that they expect they're going to be harassed and humiliated and controlled. If they're going to try to control what you can say, you're gonna have to piss in a cup.

You're gonna have to you know, you're gonna have to go through all through all kinds of hoops, you know, open up your bank account to them. And you mentioned the train. But so often the job training stuff just becomes like this ridiculous kind of pencil pushing exercise where you have to show up at this place and there's somebody who doesn't want to be there, you know, telling

you how to use Google, and everybody's just doing skills. Yeah, everybody's just doing it because they've been told that they have to do it because politicians believe that it's better if they, you know, attach this this work requirement to it, but you know if but anyway, so uh, I also worry, uh to go back to what you were saying, saying post pandemic about the fate of UBI, not just for the reasons that you mentioned, but because of the linkage

in the public's mind and in politicians' minds between the money and inflation. Now, I think, and I think the economic data is bearing out that that something like half of it fifty It almost looks like fifty sixty percent was corporate was kind of structured corporate greed in other words, like they saw that there was an opportunity for them to start raising prices and not get blowback either politicians or from consumers, and they went for those price increases.

And they've been able to measure that it's like a huge portion of it was that. But and that was related to the supply chain problems and also related to the distortion in spending. So yes, it's true that people had more money because of the child tax credit, because of the kind of stimulus checks that were given out, but because people weren't going out, because people were locked

in their homes. They were spending their money on Amazon and on other goods, on other goods rather than on services, and so the amount of goods that purchase clogged up the supply chains, and so then you did have inflation as a result of that. So I worry that that UBI has been set back, you know, badly as a result of that, because the next next time people come forward, they say, well, look what happened last time we had

We had inflation as a result of it. Are you seeing on the right people who try to advance kind of these types of kind of family credits or child child tax credits. Are they confronting that that obstacle in a way that they weren't before. That's a really good question, and I think it gets to what you were talking

about originally. How strange it is that a very libertarian proposal, truly a very libertarian proposal came to be kind of owned right now by either the corporate descender center or the like very progressive left because one of the things that would happen if UBI were to be implemented, and I don't like our system right now of just sort of band aids put on to patch up holes in our safety net. I hate that. I think it's in

humane and I don't think it's been helpful. But those band aids go away with UBI, and you end up with a system where there are programs people are maybe dependent on, and a lot of that goes away. And so this question of inflation and overheating the economy, et cetera, et cetera is an interesting one because then you do get really big discretionary spending cuts, and you might even

get this as an excuse to slash entitlements. You would certainly get this as an excuse for very serious proposals to slash entitlements if there were a federal UBI program. State basis is different, although on a state level those entitlements would certainly be in danger too, And so kind of using these as a laboratory for what would happen economically, all of the hypotheticals if a UBI were to be

implemented on a large scale. It is really difficult, but I think some of those to alleviate the economic concerns that you were just talking about, a lot of those safety nets would just be snipped right away, I think, And I also think with just how much power employers have in this country that with a labor shortage, there's just no way they're going anywhere near this. And I think I think in Texas, correct me if I'm Wronger, I heard that they're either either past legislation or they're

moving the past legislation. The Texas Republicans are to say that no, no municipalities can try ubi like that's like, that's how that's how hostile they are to it, that they don't even they don't even want towns like Chicago, you know, experimenting with it, because they've got this you know,

May there. They've got bosses who are saying, look, we've got this labor shortage, and what the labor shortage is driving up wages what they call wage inflation, what other people call a raise, and they and they don't want to encourage any more kind of worker militants because the other thing you get when people feel comfortable in their job is that they start airing their grievances and they start talking to their coworkers about how they can address

those grievances. Sometimes that leads to them forming into a union. Whereas if there's more caarity, if you get fired, then you're going to get evicted and you're totally screwed. Then the idea of coming together and trying to form a union, which is arduous and often gets beaten back, is less appealing to people, and I think a lot of bosses would like to get back to a place where that's

less appealing. Yeah, and you know, one of the reasons the right would be increasingly hostile to something like this after the pandemic, I think is illustrated really well by a story one of my colleagues, Droy Pullman, wrote, which is that these strings that are attached were used, for instance, in the case of school lunches, to implement new bathroom policies, and basically the federal government held school lunch subsidies hostage

to bathroom policy implementation, and so conservatives are now very wary, myself included, like in the state of Texas, that any of these subsidies people accept are going to start coming with, for instance, an emergency vaccine requirement and something that people are on a large scale uncomfortable with from the federal government. And so the pandemic definitely created those concerns. And again, of course we've covered it many times here. We're vaccinated.

We hope our loved ones are vaccinated, but conservatives are very very wary of that. Now. Yeah, I remember when the federal government basically used highway funding to push the drinking age from yes because I'm from Wisconsin, they did it to us. Were the victims? Were you the last holdouts? We were the last holdous drinking Germans in Wisconsin. We're just yeah German. I had a friend once who got got pulled over in the officer askemi, if you been drinking,

and he said, just beer. But and he was serious, like he just beer, that it's basically water. Yeah, this is the guy that belongs belongs in Wisconsin. But yes, I mean that that is a thing. And uh, you know, with our with our federal system, with these states pulling apart from each other on these on these cultural issues, it does show that like doing this, doing this stuff on a federal level is going to be that much

more difficult. This overlap of cultural and and and fiscal issues, with maybe the Obamacare Medicaid expansion being being the first example of this. In our new era where John Roberts you know wanted you know, every he wanted him to overturn all the Republicans wanted to overturn the A c A, and he didn't. As his little compromise, he's like, okay, well Medicaid, you cannot you cannot force states to accept

and expanded medicaid. And so then for political reasons, all the states started saying, well, we don't want you to keep keep your dirty Medicaid money. You know, we're happy being you know, forty ninth and fiftieth in medical care down here. Which again it will become another flashpoint because

it's a dysantas issue. This comes to disantas, and it will be another flashpoint in a primary in twenty twenty four where you have cultural populism then mixing with economic populism, more people being forced to make those arguments or confront them. But in the meantime, in the meantime, looking forward to seeing the final results from from this experiment, it's good.

That good that people are trying. I was. I was skeptical of UBI and remain so to some degree because to me it seemed like it was coming out of some Silicon Valley tech utopianism, where yes, you had a bunch of tech bros who were like, don't worry we're going to put everybody out of work, but then we're going to give everybody credits that they can spend with us, you know, And that just felt felt something about it felt dystopian, So don't. I don't think it's an open

and shut, obvious, obvious thing. But I also think that that people do, like deserve just a basic sense of dignity and economic security, and if this gets them there, then then then we should pursue that. So I'm glad that Chicago's doing it. Hey, and if it was a Freedman proposal originally, what better place to experiment with it in Chicago Chicago School. There you go.